DiabloFans

Quote from ScyberDragon

Thanks, although I swear it originally said oct 15.

If you read the rules and such, the fine print so to speak, it does, in fact, say that the submissions must be sent by the 15th of October to be eligible. Perhaps it's a good idea to ask them about this. I, by the way, will likely be entering a diablo-themed story. The biggest problem for me, however, will be scaling back the battle detail... one of the rules that can disqualify your entry, apparently, is depicting "overly graphic" scenes. I'm guessing that going into detail about the anatomical effects of a sword slash on a fallen, and the resulting blood splatter, would be considered graphic, and therefore disqualify me.

Of course, I also don't want to even win the grand prize... Last time I flew somewhere to meet devs, I ended up falling on an escalator and cleaving my knee open to the bone.. ended up missing my plane, the meeting and dinner, and getting a two grand hospital bill.. That was about a year ago, when Microsoft was flying me to San Fran to meet with the devs of Age of Empires Online to brainstorm with them about the game. Kinda makes me leery of doing it again.

I think your information on how drop rate percentages actually work is extremely flawed. Just because 1,000 people roll a 1d35, the chances of them successfully getting, say, a 35, is astronomically small. Remember, each person still only gets a small percentage of a chance for it. More people does not increase the odds of a single person getting it, it just means it turns from a 1/1 ratio to a 1/1 million ratio. That still doesn't mean you'll have a million 35's rolled. It just means you have a higher chance of someone in the POOL of a million getting it, but due to how random numbers work... you could have zero 35's, or a million 35's. Both are extremes, but very possible. These are items that you obtain BEFORE end game gear, so that you can play the way you wish. Jay has stated they make a TREMENDOUS impact, especially tier 7 runes, and quite honestly, It's better to save your "Hunting" and "Farming" for gemstones. After all, we still need hundreds of those to get max-tier. There's no reason to harm customization and being able to play your character HOW you wish and keep it viable at end game, to give even more grind. Again, let me break it down for you. Even assuming that HELL Difficulty only drops runes 5 - 7, you have ONLY a 6.7% chance (Rounded up) for it to be a level 7 rune that you want for your skill. If you're willing to downgrade to a level 6, then you have a 13% chance for the rune you want. If you're willing to go with a level 5 rune as well, that's a 20.1% chance. Assuming that, during the course of hardcore farming, at the best possible monster, that drops Runes at the best possible rate, and you're lucky enough to get, say, 10 drops an hour.. Each rune has a 20.1% chance to be the level 5 - 7 rune you NEED, in order to play your character in HELL mode the way you want to. That doesn't mean 20.1% times ten, that just means 20.1% each time. Now take a 15 sided die. Try to roll a 12. Do it ten times. Write down how many times, without cheating or bumping the die, that you got a 12. Then do it another ten times. Each set of ten is basically the same as one hour of farming, assuming absolute luck at getting 10 rune drops or one rune every six minutes. According to what has been said about rune rarity, this is highly unlikely. It's more likely that you'll be finding MAYBE one or two per hour. Four if you're lucky. Finding more runes -does- increase the chance, but not nearly as much as you think. It's still going to be a 20.1% chance, or a 13% chance, or a 6.7% chance, to be the rune you -need- to customize your character the way you wish. Now as for your "millions of players means millions of the runes you want" argument, you need to keep the following information in mind: First off, they need to be YOUR class. So you'd need them to be millions of, say, Witch Doctors. Secondly, they'd need to socket the rune in YOUR desired skill. So You'd need a MILLION witch doctors, only socketing runes in, say, Zombie Wall. Then, You'd need a Million Witch Doctors, socketing a million runes in Zombie Wall, who DIDN'T want the Golden rune in the game. But, each of those Witch Doctors only has a 20.1% chance to get a level 5 - 7 Golden rune. So a million witch doctors need to socket a million golden runes in a million zombie walls to create one million golden zombie wall runes, AND they'd need to not want to use it themselves. The result will be that most of the runes that are considered "inferior" to the most common builds, will be on the market, and the ones that are considered "Viable" will not be. If the golden rune adds mana reduction to wall of zombies, then it will probably be very common after a year or so, yes. If it, instead, makes your Zombies EXPLODE, or anything that can be considered even slightly useful, then chances are, people are not going to be selling it. Add to the fact that, with patches and nerfs and hot fixes, and skill updates, a lot of players will hoard different runes for their favorite skills, -JUST- in case their favorite skill gets a buff, nerf, or the rune's effect changes because not enough people are using it.
This means your 20.1% chance per person is more like a .00001% chance per person, that you actually end up being able to get the rune you want. The factors that would be required to make "Millions" of a level 7 rune under this system are so astronomical, that they might as well not even include level 7 runes, or they'd need to make them drop as often as gold did in d2.

Also, as stated, Zods did not drastically alter the customization of your game, nor were they required for being able to obtain gear in higher difficulties. In fact, they were the end-game strive-after, mostly for currency, and slightly for wealth or a few runewords. You can't compare the current runes to diablo 2 runes. It's better to compare them to skill points. Which Jay even states himself, in a round-about way. ("We removed skill points, blah blah, runes basically allow you to power up your skills for nightmare, and fill the previous role").


Now, I'm -not- against runes becoming "Attuned" to a skill, NOR am I against random affixes on runes (Hell, I love the idea... It's like a charm, but for your rune), What -is- a major strangle-point against the path they claimed they wanted to take with the game, though, and what -is- a mistake from a game standpoint, is making you SOCKET the rune in a skill, to determine the COLOR. It's nothing LIKE IDing an item, because if you ID a ring in diablo 2, it does NOT restrict the ring to Sorceress only, if you're a sorc. It might be a nagelring, but you can -STILL- use that nagelring on your level 24 barb. Further, that Stone of Jordan you were hoping it was doesn't allow you to use frozen orb, nor does it make your frozen orb spit out fireballs instead of ice shards. It would be far better to keep attunement (Which would mean only your class and build would ever want it, so that -would- cut down on supply, yes, it's kinda like class-based soulbinding), -HOWEVER-, there is no reason to make it impossible to determine the rune TYPE (or even the bonuses on the rune) before socketing, and it will only cause frustration and anger whenever a rune is found, instead of the elation of saying "Oh yeah, this is a level 7 indigo rune, AND IT HAS +10 RESOURCE! I definitely don't need this on my barb, But my Wizard could do some great stuff with splitting magic missiles, and the resource bonus is just icing on the cake!" You'd have people going "Crap... That rune was a level 7 golden rune with +2 life... and I socketed it on my hydra... and now it's only one giant hydra.... when I want to use my Hydra for freezing crowd control. That sucks, it would have rocked if I knew it was golden, I should have socketed it in Arcane Orb. What a waste of a rune."

There's a crowd here that thinks it's more "hardcore" that way. You can be pretty much guaranteed that the same crowd would be the first ones complaining about it, come release, once they realize how much it would actually effect them. It's kinda the same mentality as someone who wrestles alligators, who says "yeah, there's a 60% chance he could bite me arm off, but don't worry, I'm hardcore, I'll be fine.", then they get stung in the heart by a stingray somewhere in the pacific.

Something I'd like to point out, "full Alpha" doesn't necessarily mean the "FULL GAME", it could simply mean, as most "Full alpha's" mean, that all of the current systems are in and accesssible to players. Further evidenced by the fact that he states "they can play TO diablo", not "to the endgame cinematic". It's entirely possible that Diablo may, in fact, only be an act 2 - 3 boss, and that we have access to all current game systems by act 2 - 3, -or- it could simply mean we meet/see diablo at the end or start of act 2 - 3, and we have access to all game systems at that point. Therefore, it's a bit pre-emptive to say it "ends" with diablo, just yet, or that they have all of the acts completed.


Edit: Also, to reinforce this, again, it says "To Diablo", so if you can play TO diablo, but we know the game isn't complete yet, then what's after diablo, to specifically state that you can only play "To Diablo"?

Quote from MasterFischer

You can use tons and tons of low lvl 1 -2 rank runes to test and experiment. Jay has said this MANY MANY times, that lvl 1 runes will be like candy to throw away... have u not read all the interviews my good sir?

I most definitely have, I also can spell "you". It does not change the fact that, as he said, high level runes will be rare drops, and this system is one that would make it frustrating for the player to try to get the customization he promised in skills via runes. Finding a set of armor that gives you 100% crushing blow is one thing, finding an item that is the only real way to customize the skill you use to kill hundreds of monsters, but drops only rarely, and giving you no idea whether it's the right one or not until you socket it in the skill is a completely different story. Perhaps this is your first diablo game. Imagine the following: You have six active skills. Three passives. Assuming you can also rune passives, that gives you nine skills to try to rune. Even if you can only rune the actives, that's still six skills you need to rune up with level 7 runes, in order to play the way you want to, at end game, so that you can -start- farming for equipment. You're looking at five different rune types. But, since you don't know what rune type you'll have until you socket it, it will go as follows: You have a 20% chance, when you socket the rune, that it's the rune you want for your skill. That's each time. That means there is an 80% chance it's not the rune you want. You could get the rune you want the first time, or you could not. Either way, the rune is used, and you either move on to the next skill, or continue searching for this skill. However, these are rare items, and they attune when socketed, therefore making them useless for another item. So you've experimented, you know you want a golden rune in skill one, an obsidian rune in skill 2, etc. That's great, however, your rune drops and it says "A rune.", you socket it in skill one, "An obsidian rune". Too bad for your luck, huh? You should have socketed it in skill two. But you can't now. Farm again.

Hours later, you may have over twenty runes of every type, except golden, that are attuned to skill one. This is different from farming for a pair of war travelers in one major way: War travelers is an item you use to enhance your magic find. Runes are used to customize your skills, and are the only real way to customize your skills. Anyone can swap out skills, anyone can use magic missile, but runes are the only way to make your magic missile split into two. Runes, effectively, are skill unlockers. Bashiok has stated in previous comments that you can have thousands and thousands of skill combinations. That's with runes. Without runes, you now have base skills. Sure, you can use lower-quality runes to try to fill those slots, but you could still be farming for hours just for lower-quality runes, and that's all just being done so that you can play the game the way you want to, with the skills you want to. That's all being done -just- so you can get to the point where you can farm. Meanwhile, if they dropped the rune with the rune TYPE visible to you from the start, you'd merely have to farm until you find the rune type you wish, then put it in the proper skill, and move on. If they're going to keep runes "Grey", then they need to make them -not- attune when socketed, or they need to let runes be ID'd to show the "color" before socketing. The proposed system, instead, only leads to one question: Why even bother including level 7 runes under that system? Only 5% of the gaming population will even bother with them, and they only serve to delay the release date, for a system not many people will use (same reasoning for why they scrapped a few other systems). As I said, it's unlikely to ship with Jay's proposed system, as it's detrimental to what the team has stated they wish for diablo 3.

Quote from dramora2205

Let them move a crimson to another skill without it changing color, but you'll lose the affix then.

And then damage experimentation of builds, which was one of their reasons for the current skill systems (To allow you to experiment easier and change your build easier.) Bonding it to the skill to begin with even damages this. At release, I doubt we'll see runes with random affixes being attuned permanently to a single skill. If they attune to one skill on release, it will probably be easy to wipe them, and keep the affix. Otherwise you just harm experimentation with builds, and people will feel like they -need- to always keep the currently picked skills, otherwise they waste a rune and have to find a new one. In theory it sounds more acceptable, than it actually will be in practice. I'm all for randomized bonuses on the runes, but perm. attunement, I just see as being contrary to the direction they want to take the game, and the skill system. After all, it's just another way of locking in a skill, and why bother removing respecs and allowing players to swap skills around to experiment, if you then also introduce a mechanic that punishes them for experimenting? And as far as having to equip the rune to see what it will do, well, that's not something that will fly in release, either. It will frustrate and confuse people and, again, is contrary to the direction of making it easy to view what each piece of gear/skill is going to benefit. They go to such lengths on the character screen, as far as stats and how things effect your character, I can't see runes having to be equipped to show their benefits, as being a good choice, when combined with permanent attunement.

Quote from sneakywombat

because the merc system failed so spectacularly.

Fishmancers, Esp. CE ones, would disagree with you.