DiabloFans

Sounds like my Barb will come out of semi retirement - having the option to play with out Frenzy would be nice

I bet the Monk gets some similar stuff when it comes to EVERYone using Fist of Thunder cause of its faster Attack Speed (LoH)

Win

I wasn't expecting so much awesomness.

So excited! Now I actually feel like stacking MF

I'm personaly using this time to level the last two classes that I don't have at 60, go for some of the odder achievements.

To me, having such an easier inferno to farm, with increased drop rates from normal monsters and improved legendaries to go after makes farming right now feel even more annoying that it already is/was.

So for my money, do stuff you've been putting off, like playing a Witch Doctor.

Overall.. id say the AH is, if not the main thing - right up there at the top - really holding the game back.

Its not fun really at all to have no chance to find your own upgrades.. and instead just grind gear to buy upgrades.. just not the way I'd like to play.

For instance.. as a Monk.. not only does a piece have to be good - but it has to Roll AR and Fire Resist for me to even think about it..

Of course this post will come with many many people saying "They said inferno would be hard, now its nerfed to the ground!"

Well.. I agree somewhat, but when you read between the lines, I think what they are actually saying is this:

"Look guys, inferno was a bad idea - we meant it to be a flat always hard difficutly, we found out that wouldn't work in testing, but we knew we couldn't remove it because people would have a fit if we removed ANOTHER feature. A side problem was our original intent for END GAME was inferno - well with inferno not working out how we wan't we no longer have an end game - but we're working on that. Here are some changes to make the game play more like it should with out the concept of inferno - stay tuned for more changes to totally fix the game"

Thats what I read. I think the part of me that wants to see a hard game is sad at how easy a time I'll have on my monk in Inferno - It will be face melting hilarity.. but then.. thats what D2 was and I loved it! I don't need 5 min champ pack fights - I need fun REWARDING demon melting fun. I think this all sounds like a good first step to that goal.

The Weapon Damage on i lvl 61-62 increase thing is AWESOME. Not only will it make finding weapons more exciting, it will make crafting weapons worthwhile.

So, this is a great first step - I feel like this hits the nail on the head as far as a "look the game is messed up, we can't make it perfect fast (ie in 1 patch) but we are doing these things to make it as good as possible in its current state"

Bravo imo - looking forward to playing again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S0RY2kQ3GM

Why did D3's team think end game could be ignored!? I just don't get it..

Any way.. Path of Exile.. which already looked AWESOME now looks even more amazing.. open beta weekend is still on for another 8 hours.. gogo

Melancholia

Disturbing, scary, beautifull

Couldnt believe I hadn't heard of it untill now

I think your conclusion is largely correct, that is, that the game fails.

However, the reason is off IMO.

Think of the items and thier prices like a rubber rope:
Over the course of the game, the rope is being stretched - in both directions. Amazing, top end items keep going up up up up in price because people have more gold (fail gold sinks).

But, the other end of the rope is also being stretched in the other direction, bad items are getting cheaper cheaper cheaper.. every day some items that used to be worth trying to sell, are no longer worth trying to sell.

So.. the best of the best items are out of reach.. but the quality of items that sell for very very little is getting better. I killed diablo on inferno with my Monk, with only 3-4 mil worth of gear at the time.

Your conclusion of fail is still accurate though, the games "now we want you to go to the AH so you can keep progressing" model is horrible.

Only thing that jumps out to me is low armor (use enchantress, 50% Dex to Armor passive)

Resists are low, but not horrible.

How is your attack speed? With LoH, fast weapons are a must - I use a Dagger with my monk and he is pretty much unkillable unless I stand in 3 Arcane Sentries.

My Monk: 980 AR - 7800 Armor - 18K dps - 1270 LoH

Fists of Thunder (Thunderclap - Teleport) - Serenity (Duration) - Blinding Flash (30% Holy Damage) - Sweeping Wind (Vortex thing on Crit) - Convicition (Overwave) - Heal (15% damage for 45 seconds).

I think sacrificing some of your damage for more armor/AR will do wonders, my Monk flies through act 3 as being able to just stand and kill somthhing trumps having to run.

EDIT - Oh and high block shield also does wonders - if your dual wielding that could be your problem.

For your shield (IMO) High Block (at least 18% before you think about buying - 20+ is even beter) Your Resist (Not All resists, price is lower) - Dex - Crit Chance (For vortex sweeping winds)

Quote from sifuedition

I'm going to call BS here. Game design, which Blizz in the past has proven they understand, has very established concepts. There are psychological reasons for almost everything they do. Smaller indie companies are often less versed at these things and might make a game just to be fun to gamers. As proof, here is an interesting article from a writer turned game designer discussing some of this psychology:

http://insertcredit....-a-ghost-story/

When you are playing games by major developers, there are no two ways about it, you are being manipulated. When done well, it's fun and you don't really notice. Where I'm going with this, is that the game developer has to build in "wins". Something that is the reward, the carrot on the stick, the little motivating force behind wanting to play more. In D2, it was ID'ing drops that were incremental upgrades or even if you got lucky, godly items.

To say, "I've just accepted that there are no rewards and play only to smash monsters" is ok. If that's fun to you, awesome. To say to anyone else, "If you don't like that, you are the problem" is narrow minded and almost insulting.

The motivator in D3 switched from finding gear to buying gear. That is one of the fundamental reasons many are upset with the game. Another is boring itemization. Another is that players feel too weak. The Diablo title has always been about smashing hordes of mobs. Now, we run from them in a war of attrition that many find disappointing because it is so polar opposite to the previous two Diablo titles.

You win the thread IMO! +1

Perfectly sums up most of my frustrations

So I think you are miss hearing the "whiners" at least the ones who have a legitimate argument.

I am still playing - allbeit loosing interest.

Its not that I want to find an amazingly rolled rare item ever hour - not at all! I think the rate at which I am finding really good Rares is exactly right. Its all about the set/Legnedary drop rates for me. Thats where the loot hunt feels the thinest.

In 250+ hours I've found 2 set items (more than most it seems) and about 9 Legendaries. Thats not enough! We need somthing shinny and Different to drop to make the hunt more exciting. I'd like to see 40-50 set items in 250 hours and 100+ legendaries - the Catch being that its hard to rollup awesome ones - so out of all those, maybe 5 set items were really really valuable and 10 legendaries.

The thing about the "whiners" is that there is more to the complaints than just the drop rate your speaking of - for me, I'm loosing interest, not because of the drop rate, but because the game its self does more to piss me off than get me excited. Rare Skelly packs getting stuck on a corner and healing to full before I realize they stopped following me, cheap affix combinations, rubberbanding while holding shift attack making it near immpossible to navigate Sentries, Molten tracks - I could go on...

I still like the game, I still play the game, I still farm inferno - but to me the biggest problems are actual mechanical problems with the game.

After that (and before drop rates) is the problem with no replay value (if you can call 250+ hours no replay.. hehe) - at least not for Diablo standards. I have 3 60s - I want to play the last two classes up and get act 3-4 quality gear on them too - but the drive isn't there for me. The world of Diablo 3, albeit amazing looking, is just not done Right.. I've tried to put my finger on it, I think back to all that "Different every time you play" stuff we heard.. and I'm just not seeing it. I've played through the game 12 times, then farmed various parts of all the acts endlessly.. and I dont see ANYThing new, ever.. and havn't for a long time. To make matters worse, most of the "rare events" that I was so excited about back in development, I just skip. They aren't worth the time. Most of them end with 800 gold and a pat on the back. Once in a blue moon you get one of the ones that ends with a Purple Uniquemonster, but those don't have a point either. The few that end in Champ/Rare packs are the only ones worth doing.

They need to add more randomness to their randomness. Make all the events have a chance to roll up rare packs.

Lastly, the replayability with each class is severerly lacking.. and its all because of the AH. I know, I know.. you're saying "just don't use it" well thats true, I could not use it.. but as many have pointed out, the game has trained all our minds to use the AH for upgrades.. so its hard to turn that mindset off while leveling. Basically, with about 4-5 trips to the AH while leveling, you can make the entire 3 playthrough untill inferno 100% pointless / easy and no challenge at all. And you'll only have tyo spend maybe 50-100k total during that time.

Now - I look into the future - and I think "what the hell were the Dev's thinking we would all do long term?"

Even the most diehard could only do what we are doing for a year at most.. theres no reason to level alternates of the same class (outside the achievements) and nothing to replace ladder resets.

The whole "freesepc" thing we all argued about endlessly during development, IMO, will turn out to be the biggest killer for Diablo's lifespan. Its a great idea - in theory - "Dont like this spec - try this one out!" But in practice it just flys in the face of what this game should be.. I want to levela new wizard, focusing on a different play style - it would rock! But no reason too.. and I don't have much motivation to jump right in to Inferno with a level 60 mele wizard in gimp gear.. I'd rather have that expirience from the ground up.

Any way - I'm running off on a tangent.. but suffice to say, the game has alot of problems - 1.03 did 1 thing to help, made all acts in inferno somewhat worth playing - lets see if they continue to fix this game.. my gosh I hope they do! Because at this point, I spent about 10 times longer waiting/reading/devouring development news than I have playing the game..

I too started loving D3 even more than I already did when I switched characters.

I started out from day one as a Wizard - kting my way to success with Force Armor and clearing inferno very very quickly. I farmed gear but the play style was not fun for me after a while.

I switched to Monk and am now LOVING IT!!! I beat Diablo on inferno already, but its still a blast to kill stuff on my monk in Act 3 and farm loot.

For me, even though I love the game - I'm not afraid to point out its flaws, or what I consider to be flaws. Fanboys won't point out flaws at all - but saying some one is a fanboy and blindly loving a game just cause they say somthing good about it is just silly.

I say good things about Diablo 3, but I also say bad things about Diablo 3. The combat is AMAZING, the skill system is mostly AMAZING, the graphics are AMAZING - the end game loot is SEVERELY LACKING, the gaping hole at the end of the game (where Ladder resets used to be) is HORRIBLE, the way they ballanced weapon damage is AWFULL (meaning everyweapon is 100% worthless if it didn't roll up good damage mods too).

Sure is a good thing there are so many people out there like me who arent affraid to say whats wrong, because Blizzard is actually listening and (if what they say is accuracte) seems to be fixing stuff.

I'm happy playing the game as it is untill then.

Remember back before release? When people always said: "Just RELEASE THE GAME ALREADY, we don't mind playing it in its current state - I just want to play!" Well guess what, Blizzard did just that. They released a game with no PvP, stripped down artisans (not polished enough), bare bones items and OBVIOUSLY untested late skill build choices - not to mention Legendary items that if anyone had actually played the game for any amount of time would have been caught.

They released the game sooner than they wanted to, they would never admit it, but they did. So - play the game as it is now or dont and let them finish it.

I found the trick to this fight.. be playing a Monk and you win automatically.

But in all seriousness - before I switched to a Monk this was VERY difficult to kill on my Wizard with Blizz/Hydra sppec. I did evetually kill it.. was just clever uses of teleports and high life regen

Quote from BigEd781

Quote from Kaoskadosk

I'm getting fed upp with all this RMAH conspiracy nonsense crap...

It's easy to write everyone off as a consiparacist or tin-foil hatter, but think about it for a second; the RMAH is Blizzard's recurring revenue model for DIII. Recurring revenue is a desirable business model, they want to make as much money off of DIII as they can. There is nothing wrong with this, it makes perfect business sense.

However, when Blizzard says things like "item drops are not balanced around the RMAH" I just don't buy it. I don't think they are some evil entity with the sole intention of changing the game in any way that best suits the RMAH regardless of what negative affect it may have on gameplay (that would be a conspiracy theory), but do you honestly think it doesn't factor into the decision making process at all?

They built this feature for a reason, they're not going to make changes to the game that make it undesirable or irrelevant.

The game would NOT be fun if amazing items were not very rare.. every time I see someone type this comment your making (dont get me wrong, I see where your coming from, I just don't agree) I feel like the one saying it just isn't understanding the game. People talking about the item drops being ballanced around the RMAH are just making to big a blanket statement. The items in the LAST, HARDEST difficulty, inferno, need to be rare otherwise the game would become pointless very fast. (Everyone would have BiS gear within 50 hours of play time, and then everyone else would have it because all of those items would be on the AH, and then there would be no point to playing)

Quote from AudioCG

I think Blizz really did drop the ball on the Sets/Legendarys, they are fixing them, and that is great. (I cannot wait!)

I also think that 60/61/62/63 items should have a slightly higher "minimum" base for rolls.

Also, MOAR skills + affixes that are more powerful would not hurt one bit!

That being said, I am having a blast with Diablo 3, and literally find GREAT items pretty much every single day.

This. I play 2-6 hours every night before the wife gets home from work and I find somthing of value every night. Some nights its just a pair of gloves that will sell for 200K gold, maybe a ring that looks good for my starter set when I level my Barb.. Other nights I hit the jackpot and find a weapon that sells for 8+ Million gold. It's been taking about a week at a time, but I end up with 20ish million gold and buy one really nice piece for my self.

During that time, Ive found 4-5 very very nice piece (worth 15+ million) that I am using myself.

I think the item system needs tweaks (as you say, and as I've already said in this thread too!) and a larger section of the poulace will enjoy the item hunt.. I just dont think its as far off as alot of the people think it is.