I play one class per season since i do the journey only. This time is the Barb turn (i did a double crusader as i barely dented s2 due to internet issues), but i really want to try my FB Wiz build.
ALso, Barb gets Wastes which is like its name - waste - so i'd have to gather either Raekor or MotE to do serious play.
The problem is how itemization and builds interact. Simply put, even before the free sets which just made the entire system completely broken, there's nothing to hunt for.
Builds are predefined: you stick to one set and use the skill list it provides + mandatory movement skill + big CD skill (Vengeance, Champion, etc) if available. No choice, no freedom, nothing to actually build YOUR character.
So, when you've chosen a set, you're left hunting a bunch of items which most of the times are shared with any other classes (F/R or EW) and basically you're hunting for them in a pool of useless stuff. Maybe you get that rare one for another spec, otherwise everything is just a shard.
Dropping less means only it takes more time to gather them. Too low chance, and you risk people not being able to play their character as builds are balanced around having all these items. So orange rain.
The problem is that most drops are not interesting. Having a set that does all the work has killed the item hunt as a whole.
Since no one has the numbers but Blizzard, we can only guess the situation.
As usual, the vocal and most visible part of the playerbase is the one which looks like has been hit for the most. However it happens a lot of times that the great majority of players in a game are the ones no one talks about or never see a forum.
This leads to a false perception, nothing more, nothing less.
I'm not taking what Blizzard says are ture by default. But since i don't know how many players are actually playing the game and we don't have reliable indicators of it, i'll just say that they're "innocent until proven".
Blizzard will NEVER announce anything about cancelled projects.
I'm curious, since we have literally zero data about a possible or canceled second expansion, i really don't get how people came up with this conclusion.
Or better, i get it: random assumption on the wave of the "d3 sucks, make a better new game Blizz". Which i literally don't get how and when it started.
EDIT: not a personal attack, psyborg. Just me wondering about this new trend. I'm sure that if an new xpack is announced, they hype train will start its course anyway independently on how many people complains now (and some complaints are really solid, while others are useless imho).
"Whining"? - They're discussing what's going on, just like we are. Speculating a bit, perhaps, just like we are. No-one said it was "the official source of news XD", that's something you're just pulling out of thin air, for what reason I dunno.
Well, you're right - not the best word choice my my side and exaggerated a little.
however, i see most posts being more or less disguised "d3 sucks, make d4 now" sentences. I can agree with a lot of negative stuff about d3, but i also think it's way too early to cut the support on it. I don't really get how people came with that conclusion - that Blizzard is working on D4.
I mean, probably concepts of it are running around already, but i don't expect it to come soon, especially given Blizzard reaction and development times.
pls no Q_Q i reeeeaaaally hope its a new Diablo game or a good expack....
yeah, i hope the same. Tbh, i expect the same - i find kinda easy to see through Blizzard way of reasoning, but it's my assumption on how things were/are going.
Back to last year: Legion expansion announced and Warcaft movie officially presented, all operations to try to get WoW relevant again The time was right for a new D3 expansion but given how WoW was/is in a critical situation lots of resources had/have to be spent on it.
Add on top that D3 had a new team which manage to salvage vanilla and make it into a good product (good as in "not bad" not as "godlike game of the century") and a lot of the features added in game were both asked by the community and pretty well received. What is more obvious than to get some of the people there and bring them on WoW team so they could implement some of those appreciated features in it? In WoW not many raid or play organized large group content anymore, while most play solo/small group content - the same target playerbase D3 has.
Adding again more stuff: WoD pretty much bombed. It looks rushed and honestly looks more like they used (willingly or not i don't know) it as a fodder expansion to prepare for Legion. Legion has whatever feature people asked through the years: class/specs redesign, artifacts, progression after level cap, separate pvp/pve talents and spells, Demon Hunters and so on - again it's really something they're putting everything on the line to save WoW or make it last on the long run.
All of this happened while D3 became a more solid game, to the point it could sustain itself, with seasonal gameplay and a playerbase after a little while used to get in and out of it. Plus, lots of features were already delivered via patches with more on the line.
Basically they had two huge games: one on the edge of death and one who just came back from death (overexaggerated words here). It's only natural they invested a lot into saving the first while paking the latter.
What happens now: Warcraft movie is soon to be released, Legion announcments have all been done for the most part (nothing that next Blizzcon cannot solve) so now we have finally some space for D3.
Will it be D4 or a new xpack or said Tristramville game? I don't know (please random god don't let them make Tristramville or please make me blind and deaf) but if anything, this silence makes me wonder what they have in mind for Diablo.
Well, i honetsly believe capping the stacks should have been something baseline.
High GR pusshing is all about stacking as much monsters as possible in a small zone and aoe them down. It's easy to get that more monsters = more buff = more dps. If you want to balance that, you have to cap stacks.
There's a lot more evidence that there won't be another expansion than the opposite.
There is however a lot of things suggesting that they've begun work on Diablo 4 now, and that's where I'm going with this.
As I see it, Diablo 3 has just been abandoned and left running on fumes, just like what happened to Diablo 2.
We'll continue to get new seasons, but there will be hardly any new content.
They will probably use all the new cosmetic wings as seasonal rewards going forward, hence why they were removed from the PTR.
The only question is, how long do we have to wait for Diablo 4? Will it take an eternity once again?
They ditching D3 and announcing a D4 would just backfire immensely.
Again, independently from what people think of current D3, it would be a PR suicide:
- naysayers will just flail around yelling "WE WERE RIGHT!" or "I KNEW IT"
- people liking the game will see it as an abandoned one, and will just leave it
- making a game so huge like D4 would take years, and we all know most people have the attention span of plancton and will simply stop following it
- D4 hype will be much more criticized as everyone remebers what happened with D3
- even if D4 is the future and will be good, people will still look back at D3 and say "yeah all fun and good but previous one sucked" mining the company reputation
Basically, it's just better to put a lot of effort to fix things broken and it demonstrates that the company cares about the product and playerbase. Especially after an expansion that was mostly centered on redoing the game core where possible (since a lot of stuff unfortunately couldn't be changed as it would have been remaking the entire game from scratch) and a streak of patches that added a lot to the game as a whole.
Things need to be put in their context. Everyone can scream "A is better than B", but it may depend on alot of external factors.
Especially if we talk about a videogame, whose main goal is to have fun with. And everyone has a different concept of fun.
You guys are fkn awesome, I love your opinions, (no trolling, actually serious) agreeing the flaws and also the fact that auction house were in fact broken, which I agree already but I just seem to disagree them completely removing it tho?
Thing is, I really don't like how they keep scaling every classes. Back in season 1, I remember clearing something like GR 50 and felt proud but right now it's on 95.... That's ridiculous lol.
Eh, power creep needs to exist, otherwise people will be destined to repeat the same path over and over every season with no progress. One issue is brought by the sets which are not balanced and everytime Blizzrad brings the others on par, potentially making another op build that needs to be dealt with and so on.
If anything, i'm full pro a collapsing of the game difficulties since i think we have a lot of redundant ones and remove normal rifts completely so people wouldn't have to farm for keys (very boring activity) and loot/xp is anyway rewardided from running greater rifts.
Any barb build that is not WW need max resource. And vitality is needed for any supp char.
K, my fault on these.
However, imho there should not be "infinite main stat phase" at all. Infinite progression is fine, but imho it needs to be supported by different systems of increasing character damage/toughness.
Stuff that gets unlocked by paragon levels...i'm a bit torn on this. It provides really long term goals which everyone can be looking for, but make them too small gaps and it's useless, too large and most people won't even have the chance to get them.
A really big problem that is a roadblock for a Paragon revamp: there is a lot of difference between some players with high paragon and most players with low paragon. Dealing with people having like 3k paragon on their account means that fiding a balance between the two extremes vbecomes really difficult. There is a really high risk of making super high paragon levels even more powerful to low ones than they are now, making the situation even worse and making botting even more relevant.
1
I play one class per season since i do the journey only. This time is the Barb turn (i did a double crusader as i barely dented s2 due to internet issues), but i really want to try my FB Wiz build.
ALso, Barb gets Wastes which is like its name - waste - so i'd have to gather either Raekor or MotE to do serious play.
2
The real problem isn't tied to drop percentages.
The problem is how itemization and builds interact. Simply put, even before the free sets which just made the entire system completely broken, there's nothing to hunt for.
Builds are predefined: you stick to one set and use the skill list it provides + mandatory movement skill + big CD skill (Vengeance, Champion, etc) if available. No choice, no freedom, nothing to actually build YOUR character.
So, when you've chosen a set, you're left hunting a bunch of items which most of the times are shared with any other classes (F/R or EW) and basically you're hunting for them in a pool of useless stuff. Maybe you get that rare one for another spec, otherwise everything is just a shard.
Dropping less means only it takes more time to gather them. Too low chance, and you risk people not being able to play their character as builds are balanced around having all these items. So orange rain.
The problem is that most drops are not interesting. Having a set that does all the work has killed the item hunt as a whole.
1
Since no one has the numbers but Blizzard, we can only guess the situation.
As usual, the vocal and most visible part of the playerbase is the one which looks like has been hit for the most. However it happens a lot of times that the great majority of players in a game are the ones no one talks about or never see a forum.
This leads to a false perception, nothing more, nothing less.
I'm not taking what Blizzard says are ture by default. But since i don't know how many players are actually playing the game and we don't have reliable indicators of it, i'll just say that they're "innocent until proven".
1
I'm curious, since we have literally zero data about a possible or canceled second expansion, i really don't get how people came up with this conclusion.
Or better, i get it: random assumption on the wave of the "d3 sucks, make a better new game Blizz". Which i literally don't get how and when it started.
EDIT: not a personal attack, psyborg. Just me wondering about this new trend. I'm sure that if an new xpack is announced, they hype train will start its course anyway independently on how many people complains now (and some complaints are really solid, while others are useless imho).
1
however, i see most posts being more or less disguised "d3 sucks, make d4 now" sentences. I can agree with a lot of negative stuff about d3, but i also think it's way too early to cut the support on it. I don't really get how people came with that conclusion - that Blizzard is working on D4.
I mean, probably concepts of it are running around already, but i don't expect it to come soon, especially given Blizzard reaction and development times.
1
yeah, i hope the same. Tbh, i expect the same - i find kinda easy to see through Blizzard way of reasoning, but it's my assumption on how things were/are going.
Back to last year: Legion expansion announced and Warcaft movie officially presented, all operations to try to get WoW relevant again The time was right for a new D3 expansion but given how WoW was/is in a critical situation lots of resources had/have to be spent on it.
Add on top that D3 had a new team which manage to salvage vanilla and make it into a good product (good as in "not bad" not as "godlike game of the century") and a lot of the features added in game were both asked by the community and pretty well received. What is more obvious than to get some of the people there and bring them on WoW team so they could implement some of those appreciated features in it? In WoW not many raid or play organized large group content anymore, while most play solo/small group content - the same target playerbase D3 has.
Adding again more stuff: WoD pretty much bombed. It looks rushed and honestly looks more like they used (willingly or not i don't know) it as a fodder expansion to prepare for Legion. Legion has whatever feature people asked through the years: class/specs redesign, artifacts, progression after level cap, separate pvp/pve talents and spells, Demon Hunters and so on - again it's really something they're putting everything on the line to save WoW or make it last on the long run.
All of this happened while D3 became a more solid game, to the point it could sustain itself, with seasonal gameplay and a playerbase after a little while used to get in and out of it. Plus, lots of features were already delivered via patches with more on the line.
Basically they had two huge games: one on the edge of death and one who just came back from death (overexaggerated words here). It's only natural they invested a lot into saving the first while paking the latter.
What happens now: Warcraft movie is soon to be released, Legion announcments have all been done for the most part (nothing that next Blizzcon cannot solve) so now we have finally some space for D3.
Will it be D4 or a new xpack or said Tristramville game? I don't know (please random god don't let them make Tristramville or please make me blind and deaf) but if anything, this silence makes me wonder what they have in mind for Diablo.
1
Also on homepage.
Well, i honetsly believe capping the stacks should have been something baseline.
High GR pusshing is all about stacking as much monsters as possible in a small zone and aoe them down. It's easy to get that more monsters = more buff = more dps. If you want to balance that, you have to cap stacks.
1
They ditching D3 and announcing a D4 would just backfire immensely.
Again, independently from what people think of current D3, it would be a PR suicide:
- naysayers will just flail around yelling "WE WERE RIGHT!" or "I KNEW IT"
- people liking the game will see it as an abandoned one, and will just leave it
- making a game so huge like D4 would take years, and we all know most people have the attention span of plancton and will simply stop following it
- D4 hype will be much more criticized as everyone remebers what happened with D3
- even if D4 is the future and will be good, people will still look back at D3 and say "yeah all fun and good but previous one sucked" mining the company reputation
Basically, it's just better to put a lot of effort to fix things broken and it demonstrates that the company cares about the product and playerbase. Especially after an expansion that was mostly centered on redoing the game core where possible (since a lot of stuff unfortunately couldn't be changed as it would have been remaking the entire game from scratch) and a streak of patches that added a lot to the game as a whole.
Things need to be put in their context. Everyone can scream "A is better than B", but it may depend on alot of external factors.
Especially if we talk about a videogame, whose main goal is to have fun with. And everyone has a different concept of fun.
1
If anything, i'm full pro a collapsing of the game difficulties since i think we have a lot of redundant ones and remove normal rifts completely so people wouldn't have to farm for keys (very boring activity) and loot/xp is anyway rewardided from running greater rifts.
1
However, imho there should not be "infinite main stat phase" at all. Infinite progression is fine, but imho it needs to be supported by different systems of increasing character damage/toughness.
Stuff that gets unlocked by paragon levels...i'm a bit torn on this. It provides really long term goals which everyone can be looking for, but make them too small gaps and it's useless, too large and most people won't even have the chance to get them.
A really big problem that is a roadblock for a Paragon revamp: there is a lot of difference between some players with high paragon and most players with low paragon. Dealing with people having like 3k paragon on their account means that fiding a balance between the two extremes vbecomes really difficult. There is a really high risk of making super high paragon levels even more powerful to low ones than they are now, making the situation even worse and making botting even more relevant.