DiabloFans

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Really?

This horribly formed, ill-conceived argument... again?

"Customization" in Diablo II is a lie. Period.

When it came to stats you either did it the right way, i.e. enough str/dex to wear gear and the rest into vitality, or your character sucked. Having a choice between doing it one way or sucking is not really customization.

As for skills, so many were broken or pointless that there was only a handle of builds for each class. No one pumped lower level skills except as synergies, and anything worth taking was worth putting 20 points into 99% of the time, so skill points were fairly trivial as well. Almost every viable spec in Diablo II was based around 1 or 2 skills, so for all those dozens of skills spread out over three skill trees you used... one. Maybe two. Plus whatever was needed to get to them.

Enter Diablo III, where each class has 25~ viable skills, X5 skill runes for each, and six slots to put them in. That's a few billion possible combinations for each class without even talking about the 13~ passives for each class that will be quite game changing. But with a few billion ways to do it decently and conceivably thousands of way to do it really well, we're already talking about more customization than Diablo II ever dreamed of.

And did I mention that all of Diablo III's skills will work, and have working resource systems that are class appropriate to back them up?

Now enter in Diablo III's item pool. I'm betting it will be larger than Diablo II's anyway, but as we've already seen, the real defining factor here is that even the level 60 legendaries in Diablo III have randomized stats on them. Not randomized within a pre-existing selection of stats like the Diablo II items, but mod pools that will actually make two of the same legendary items essentially different items. Most customization in Diablo II was gleaned from the item selection, period. Enigma changed the game forever, entire specs were designed around it, etc. So instead of people determining the value of nice items in an asinine way like the defense on a Shako (aka Harlequin Crest), we'll actually be seeing trades done based on relevant things, and more importantly, we'll have a ton of customization options based on the randomized items we're finding. Not that there won't be tons of reason to stick to items that drastically increase our current character's primary attribute, but there will be tons of other things to consider as well.

I could expand on the consideration you posed as well as my answer, but since I've already fought and won this battle, I'll simply refer you to my blog post about it that was taken off the D3 forums:

http://www.diablofans.com/blog/181/entry-603-my-answer-to-diablo-vets-who-hate-diablo-iii/

Logged onto the Diablo III launch site and created one last sigil just for grins, and I FINALLY got an email confirming that I had done this. I hope that those who haven't gotten this but participated will still get their sigil but just to play it safe, go do it now, you have 20 minutes before the next one starts!

Quote from Aerisot

Blizzards biggest Consol game to date was Starcraft: Ghost which is just dorment, not canceled last I saw, Think of it like Diablo 3, it will just take a very long time to come out.

My guess we won't see STarcraft: Ghost till AFTER "Legacy of the void", why? They want us to get to know Nova first...I bet you.

Ghost is "indefinitely delayed". It will never see the light of day. You can consider it cancelled for all normal purposes.

1. Diablo (1), Warcraft II and Starcraft all made appearances on consoles (PSX, PSX, and N64, respectively). People tend to forget that.

2. Blizzard began its career on consoles, first doing ports, then bringing its own IP such as Rock n' Roll Racing and Lost Vikings.

Conclusion: It's nothing new.

Blizzard is not "moving to console games" or anything of that nature. They're just trying to grab some more market share. But if history teaches us anything, the PC version will be, by far, the better of the games, and by far more popular.

Quote from Snaks42

Quote from Zaagazug

Quote from Molster

EArly Mid Late

Early easily can be first 4 months

Nah - only in the mind of a sophist.

They know there is a slight delay as well and hence all the wrapping around the Q2 release window 'we made changes based on community feed-back so that Diablo 3 can live up to our high standards - etc'.

I have stopped caring really (I will play the game for sure) - but the game has clearly been delayed twice. First the late 2011 releae became early 2012 and then early 2012 became Q2 2012.

we are arguing semantics here. Early is as whoever said it perceives it to be, and to me, logically to the end of April I would call early. It's not divided into quarters if you actually want to divide it. If anything it would be thirds, early, middle, late. Early = jan until mid of may, middle is mid of may till mid september, and late is sept - end of december.

The problem with semantics is that they're semantics. I'd say with the passing of every week and for sure every month we pass an exponential number of peoples' definitions of "early". According to you, if April passes with no release, then even you'd have to say they lied or misconstrued or were less than honest about the actual release. Even now they're using the words "targeting Quarter 2" instead of "will release in Q2". Which worries me despite the fact that I'm not a conspiracy theorist at heart.

I'd venture that most people on Earth who use "early" in reference to year, as in "I'll get to that early next yearly" mostly likely (95%) mean January-February. With the real point being that while everyone's definition of "early" can theoretically be a reasonably wide array of dates, no one would really say "early" and mean anything after April-May. Anyone in their right mind would simply say "mid-next year", whereas Blizzard seems to be perfectly fine with anything before July, and perhaps after if it suits their needs.

In summation, a more forthcoming and exact style of communication would have been better from the start. I think fans would overwhelmingly like to know more and have a better idea of an actual release date, rather than a fictitious release "window (Which has already been delayed twice), than be given tantalizing promises that aren't lived up to in the end.

Quote from Arnull

Again.... They never said Q1. They said EARLY 2012. Now, I'm more interested in knowing what Blizzard's definition of early is...

Early 2012 Means "In the first couple months of the year" in normal human speak. Only fanbois would try to make that distinction to defend Blizzard. Sycophants ftl. And what rationalization will you start using after June has passed?

Seriously, giving pirating as an excuse for "PC gaming dying" is the stupidest argument ever. Period. You can easily pirate console games, and even find advertisements on craigslist for people that will hack your system for a nominal fee. Believing that media horseshit about pirating killing PC games is totally unbased, and ignorant.

Secondly, digital sales through mediums like Steam, Origin, and Impulse have skyrocketed sales for PC game companies across the border. Terraria, a small-time independent game, sold SOOOOOO many copies in such a very short time, and has been on the Steam top 10 sales list for literally months.

So quit quoting stupid jargon, it's really tired, old, and asinine in the first place.

1. "It's pretty impossible to tell what will be "pre-mature" and not without knowing all the facts. Take a look at 1.13 today and compare it to early versions of Classic Diablo. Even simple things like vendors having a finite supply of potions, or not having magic points at all. Being unable to shift-click to put potions in your belt or sell litems to vendors. All of these things that you'd take for granted in Diablo II today didn't even exist when the game came out. And yet they're simply matters of convenience, not a "premature" release. I agree that there exists the possibility of mechanics in the game that need to be changed before release, but I'm not sure this is one of them.

2. Scrolls of reforge come with a hefty penalty by way of a permanent 10% reduction to the item's durability. That means that after just a few rolls, the item would become almost useless. If you've played a lot of Diablo II then you'd know how annoying it was to have a 25 durability lance that you'd end up running to town every 5 minutes to repair. Also it rerolls them into completely random mods. You go out of your way to suggest that the re-roll would be either the mods they need or better versions of the one they have. Neither of these things are explicitly true or even plausible chance-wise. If Diablo III has anywhere near the mod-pool that Diablo II did, you're just as likely to end up with a worse item as you are a better one. As such, I believe you're drastically overestimating the detrimental effect these might have had on the economy, as you're more likely to end up with an item that blows and has crap durability long before you re-rolled it into something valuable. After all, 6 perfect skulls and a rare still works. The only difference is you can't use them on uniques; the trade-off being that uniques can still have affixes that rares cannot.

3. Scrolls of reforge are infinitesmally less volatile than the nature of the RMAH itself. You're correct in thinking and stating that things can get ugly with real money involved, but it's the system itself that causes the trouble, not mere pieces of it. Think back to 1.08 when Iceblink went from "godly for all WW barbs" to "completey useless." They can't simply do things like this, even if they're necessary, because angry customers stand to lose lots of money if and when they do. When you start mixing any kind of real money system into the paradigm of what changes need to be made to a game, things are gonna get ugly, and it's not gonna be good for the game.

4. 1.09 would have saw a much less SoJ-centric economy. Elite Uniques commanded quite a bit of traded value, and SoJ value started to become pretty murky at the time.

5. I agree that Diablo traders are completely retarded, and unfortunately that will only worsen the effect of the RMAH. If I had a nickel for every time I got into a squabble with someone over the value of something that I was trying to trade based on a stat that was COMPLETELY irrelevant...

I see your point, but I don't think it's very relevant in light of the RMAH itself, which is pretty inevitably going to be the source of a great deal of frustration in the future - which is exactly why I will likely never use it myself, except perhaps to sell off gear I have absolutely no use for.

I'd like it announced right now, no matter what the date is.

"Played with it (the skill system) for several hours..." don't mean shit dude, you're still playing with less than half of the primary skills, a third of the passive skills, and 0% of the runes.

The skill system is fine. If you don't like it.. something is wrong with you. Quoting Jay saying things about reworking the skill system doesn't mean they're gonna change what you like, or that they're even changing anything drastic about the skills. History and odds say the main thing in the works is overhauling runes, not skills.

Furthermore, the bulk of the skills that you do have access to in the beta are far more powerful, relevant, and fun than the things found in Diablo II. Sounds like you're just a bad judge of skills in RPG's, because what we had in Diablo II was truly archaic by comparison and it was still fun as hell.

You have no facts, stop claiming you do, you have severely biased (and poorly formed imo) opinions on systems that you have experienced only the barest percentages of, so stop throwing that around like its a weapon you don't even have.

The game feels very polished even at this point, saying otherwise is stupid, foolish, or a lie. If you're referring to the RMAH I could give a shit about that because it's a horrible idea in the first place, and if you're referring to any actual game mechanic then your standards are stupidly high (beyond reasonable levels) or you're outright lying. Since the moment I began playing the beta my first question was "why isn't this out yet?" There are things that can be improved, but the game could be released tomorrow and it'd be better than 95% of the crap that's on the market, period.

Quote from Findulidas

Well if you spent +150 hours on a game it cant be that bad.

I think Lee was attempting to say that he's tired of these mother fucking snakes in this mother fucking game.

Quote from Antirepublican

Don't worry about it, those forums suck donkey balls.
Nothing but kids and trolls.

...while in the other hand, diablofans.com has GREAT and mature contributors such as Antirepublican

Quote from AcidReign

I actually had reasonable patience throughout the games development, but I think my patience finally ran out when it was a month or two into the beta and Mike Morhaime announced the delay of the game. There I sat, waiting for a beta key, as well as waiting even longer for the release. It left a bad taste in my mouth.

And I sit here still, with no beta key, getting unlucky at every beta key contest imaginable, and a release date announcement unforseeable. Patience is long gone. May marks my 6th year here at these forums.

However, I think the early moments of February will be promising in terms of release date news.

But, some may claim that it's just not possible to have a line drawn. That if you do, you are lying to yourself.

I'm at my limit dude, it's not a joke. I ask for a timely release from announcement. If they wait till Q4 it will be 5 years of development(that we know of) I can only wonder how much development time is really needed. An artist can over do his work if he doesn't know when to stop. Same can apply here.

Feel like, if Diablo 3 needs 5+ years of development, then I really don't have the time and patience to devote to the game. Hell, SWTOR took less time then D3, WoW took less time then D3, most games take less time then D3. The only game on par with D3 right now is Duke Nukem Forever, and we all seen how that played out.

Cant believe this process. Ya. Im at the raging point. Irrational raging just because its a release and gets my negativity out on an online forum rather than bringing it into my outside life.

Its really depressing that I turn 30 in 5 days and still have yet to even hear a release date for this game I played as a kid.

Has anyone here ever told someone else they were going to do something in the early part of the year while thinking spring/summer in their head?

Can we form a closer communication/relationship with Diablo's development and the (*edit "future) players?

That would be such a huge win win. The mystery element such as announcements of announcements feels like dirty marketing. im no marketing expert and i still feel like the lack of information seems to translate to a lac of interest in the community to allot of people (based on the responses I've read).

Can we have announcements of systems followed up by a more in-depth progression still honoring the integrity and non reveled elements of the game?

sincere feedback.

I know what you mean... could mean next month or the month after just for this simple write up that in reality probably means NOTHING

I'm fine with how it currently is. Diablo is a casual, hack and slash, get-the-best-gear-that-I-can game. Shoot, you share all your gear, gold and artisans with all toons on your account. Being able to swap skills out at any point in the game is right in line with the type of game that it is.

If they absolutely no longer wanted to make skills swappable in their current form, the only thing I'd agree with is immediately out of combat. None of this "No damage in the past 120 sec/Skill not useable for next 60 sec" crap. As soon as all mobs you are engaged with are dead, you are out of combat and can switch. Every other option just doesn't go with the gameplay Diablo 3 gives.

Given all the choices we have, I doubt there will ever be a "build to rule all builds" type of thing. Some will be good for bosses, some good for trash and others for pvp. However there's no doubt people will be switching throughout the game if possible. Part of the fun of the game is going to be trying out all the different combos of spells and runestones.

Barbarian ( or Monk? o.o)

''You keep it''
Ranks: 3
10% per rank chance to passively throw projectiles back at enemies






another Barbarian OR Monk?

''I must go on''
Ranks: 3
4% per rank X 1 per percent below 33% your health is ( maximum 396%) damage is added to your attacks when your health is below 33% ( you would only get the 396% if you were at 1% of your maximum health)




( as much as i hate weapon specific things, I thought this fit)
Monk:
''Walk lightly, and carry a big stick''
Ranks: 3
120% damage to all attacks ( Per rank )(Maximum 360) when using a staff when your health is atleast 95% or higher