As I wrote in a previous post a few days back: if I've figured something out from observing Blizz's actions over the last decade and a half, it's that they will not try and suck profit out of their games unless it's totally justified. DLCs are sadly not.
Here are the main arguments:
1. DLCs will let some people enjoy content others might not be able to. The Blues have learned a very hard lesson over the years and that is to never treat 2 gamers in different ways. I can only make comparisons to WoW, because obviously that's the closest recent product they've put out that compares to D3. The content patches that they release every 3-4 months (not once or twice a year as Malminos presumed) are for everyone and while some people may not be able to get in top raiding guilds and enjoy the same content as the second ones do - it's their own fault for either not wanting to spend the required time to raid seriously or not wanting to spend the required time to learn their class and/or social skills. DLCs will not come out of Blizzard in the near future, if ever.
2. Downloadable content is made so that single player oriented games can get a prolonged life and bonuses while the company can still make profit out of it. Contrary to what people think Diablo 3 will make a lot of money. There is only the boxed version of the game that is getting sold, sure. There are no monthly payments. But the cuts from the auction house will make a lot of players want to pay more to Blizz to put up their items on the AH and I've read enough forums about D3 where players say they'll try and make the most out of the RMAH. Not to mention the people that will surely play the AH, that might give Blizz a lot of money, but they'll definitely see that money return to them, when successful.
Also worth mentioning is that the RMAH is probably one of the best ways Blizz could've figured out to offer a way for people to give them a small fee without actually making them do so. A lot of people will pay simply because they like the game, or they like gambling, or they like thinking they've followed the Greedy Goblin for years now and can do just as well.
I remember when the Seasonal events question was asked and a Blue replied that such things won't happen in D3, but I honestly can't see them living up to those expectations. There are many seasonal events that can go right into Diablo, like Halloween, or an equivalent of the Darkmoon Faire that follows lunar cycles.
EDIT: In the end of the day what I was trying to point out is that we will see content patches that will offer new zones, new gear and new adventures, but they will not be in the form of DLC, but regular updates. I'm 95% certain we will see at least one before they announce the first expansion of the game.
A bit presumptive that you will be in the beta, eh?
Blizz will most likely give beta keys to people that preorder from their site. So yeah, he'll likely get in the beta. Just as everyone else on these forums.
1) Targeting & Selecting. How are u supposed to quickly target the right mobs if there are dozens of them on a screen? Navigating through 350 slots of inventory/menus/etc? Diablo 3 at higher levels is all about fast decision and targeting the right mobs. Hardcore on a joystick? Bool story, cro.
There's not really selecting in PC as well. What there is is highlighting and it helps figure out which mob the cursor is above. You don't really need that on consoles since you can move your character with the left thumb just slashing around with the action buttons. Instead of 5 though you'll likely get 4 skill slots with 2 additional from the R and L upper shoulder buttons. The lower ones can be for instant access to Inventory and Char screen while the Select button will bring up the Skill page. Hitting start can give you more options for menus like the Lore page for example. There's plenty of possibilities. It'll be a tad slower rearranging the skills but experienced console players will take pretty much the same time to swap them as normal PC players.
2) Chatting. Yes, u can use voice or connect a keyboard, but it will be a handicapped computer then, lol.
How is voice chat making it a handicapped computer? Almost any console game out there supports voice chat and people use it regularly. It's us PC gamers that aren't used to that feature yet. On the other hand, again, experienced console gamers can chat pretty fast even with a controller. And of course, there's the optional keyboard you can buy if you really want to be on par with PC players.
3) Controls. This is not an arcade slasher where you press arrows X and O, and you beat the game. Hot swapping skills, careful/surgical actions, ideal synergy with teammates, etc.
Have you played Torchlight on Xbox? KotOR? Mass Effect? Dragon Age? Sure the last 3 had a pause feature to give players time to set up a better strategy, but that's only because they were much deeper RPG experiences in general and the use of the proper situational skills and abilities was much critical. D3 is a hack and slash and will play wonderfully mashing buttons and jumping straight into a crowd of mobs.
350 does sound pretty small, especially if you like to have plenty of items in your stash. Since I'll most likely just play with 2-3 characters I'll use the rest of the character slots as an 'extended stash'.
It sounds small? That's hundreds of items, I figure if I can't use it on a character, or don't want to salvage it I should sell it on one of the AH's and use that for something else. I have no idea who these people are who plan on keeping over a hundred items that they aren't using on their characters. What would those items even be for?
Well, I for example have all 180 slots in my WoW bank filled up + half my character inventory (50). I'm well aware WoW has thousands of items you can gather but my bank there has been full since about BC and I've been trying really, really hard to figure out how to make more room. Not to mention items there take up a total of 1 slot. :]
So for a few days now we got a lot of new info and from it the stash and all its secrets have unveiled to us. I am wondering are people satisfied with the number of slots that they'll have, shared between all their characters.
A few points to consider:
1. The stash is 350 slots that are locked at first and can be bought with gold to extend to that final number.
2. There will be many, many unique and set items that you will not be able to mule to different characters, but you can make a new Bnet account (that will only cost the price of the game) for an additional 350 slots.
3. Every character on your account will have dozens of runes at the least, which are equipped, but I believe a lot of players will keep some runes for their skills in the stash for further/fun use whenever they feel like it. I know I will. Specially things like Barb runes that increase gold/item drop from monsters that aren't generally good at first, but will come in handy while farming.
4. Gems. There will be so many gems that it's hard to figure out how many slots you'll need to be able to collect the smaller grade ones to be able to combine them into higher grades.
5. There will undoubtedly be vanity items which will be fun to use/collect. Not many of these in D2, but Blizz has learned a lot over the past decade and there will be many, many such in D3. For example items that change your shape, give unique skills, add certain effect to your character while equipped and so on.
6. Salvage materials might not look like a lot right now, but when we reach Inferno and the number of unique materials raises up to, say, 25, they will obviously take a good portion of the stash as well. Especially considering how rare some of them may be.
So, with all these points made, and probably a few others that I've missed - how well do you like the shared stash? Is the space given big enough for all your characters? Should there be specific (extended) slots for items such as gems and runes? Or are you completely satisfied with how it turned out? :]
I have a small addition to this, targeted at set items that I feel some of you may like. What if, after you collect the entirety of a certain set - it combines into a single item requiring only 4 or 6 slots for example, so that it doesn't use as much space as its separate parts. You can then easily right click it or something to once again disassemble it into its separate pieces, in case you want to use a certain one. A new neat way to save up space! :]
I suspect a big reason for this is so that they can add further skills in content patches instead of waiting for an expansion. Even 2 new skills per class can be added with a 5 level gap each to level 40. Also 1 passive with a 10 level gap. Brings a lot of future possibilities, that's all.
I'll admit that I have no idea what to play. All the classes seem awesome and have diverse skills and I really want to try every single char and most of their builds and play styles before I figure out what I'm playing with.
At the end of the day... I'll probably have 5 level 60s 2-3 months into the game.
If the console client doesn't require internet for the campaign its size would be doubled and that's a big problem on consoles which have limited space already. Also all the game files would be there for crackers to go through. Which points to - no, there won't be offline play in consoles.
@my Bulgarian neighbor - That's up to Blizz to figure out man. The controls need to be translated perfectly and the interface will surely get a big overhaul. That's why they've had a guy simply figuring out if the game can be released on a console for like half an year now. Research is where it's all at.
So more players is bad somehow? Like, if in some countries (like mine) it's kinda hard to get enough money for a proper PC, but you can buy a console for less than half the price, and on top of that you're an excellent gamer that just loves multiplayer experience and being a part of a community... If that player joins in it's somehow bad for the D3 player base?
Or the fact that some player just straight out prefer wireless controllers and chllin on the couch 2 meters away from the TV?
Really, all it does is give more people more choice on how they can play and on top of that is very revolutionary for the game industry in general. We should be grateful for the opportunity even if 99% of us here are PC gamers.
From what I know Blizz will only release D3 on the PS3 because Sony are a lot more open to interacting with PCs and other game studios for bigger projects. Microsoft has too many requirements and gets a lot of the money that should go to the studios, plus the obvious that they don't use a cloud so that's also a huge loss. In any way the game won't be released until at least 2 years in the future since Blizz are still recruiting a team and not actually developing nothing more than instruments for it right now. And pretty much just checking the possibility of D3 on consoles.
I don't see why anyone would not want more players in D3. After all the point of it is that both console and PC players will be sharing the same servers and will be able to play together. Bnet won't be hard to implement, it would take about 2-3 to a maximum of 6 months to implement, which is very little compared to he possibilities afterwards.
people don't want the taint of WoW on the game that's why? Look at WoW, a Blizzard product that has been rotting away since BURNING CRUSADE ENDED, and they still cant get it right? It's a cash cow essentially and people don't want diablo 3 to be another fail cash cow? No one plays WoW because of the quality of the game, people play WoW because of addiction, or, they cant find another MMO out there yet that gives them what they want. If someone tells me they play WoW because it's a great game, they're trolling. WoW has NOT been a great innovative omg amazing game since BC, and I've played from day 1, to about 4 months into Cata. I understand why SC players want no influence, I understand why Diablo fans want no influece what so ever. Not even the name of an item. You dont pay homage to a shit game that hasn't done anything good since what? 07?
Id want a fucking Lost Vikings influenced item or a SC influenced item before you ever touch anything in Diablo with a WoW item.
Yeah boy, lost vikings, better than WotLK and Cata combined, peace fanboi!
All of your points are so bland it's ridiculous.
WoW currently has more people than I believe have ever played Diablo 1 and 2 combined. Not to mention there has been about 15 million more in the past, a lot of which are looking forward to reentering in case Blizz decides to implement something interesting, like for example an expansion with pandas.
D3 can never be a cash cow simply because it sells once and that's it, the RMAH is optional and most people will simply use their free slots per week to try and cash in some change. D3 will get a grand total of 2 expansions and if you believe $150 or so is much then... damn. I don't see ANY way in the world that WoW can influence D3 to become a cash cow in any way whatsoever.
WoW is still one of the THE best games in the industry to this date. If a new players comes in and tries the game he might literally get lost from all the content that has been implemented in the game since launch. There's probably more than a thousand hours of gameplay which even long trilogies of games can't come close to. It has something for everyone - exploration, raids, dungeons, battlegrounds, arena, vanity items, hundreds of achievements and so on.
I've been following SC2 since before it was officially announced and not once have a read a single topic in any forum that says players don't want any influence from WoW. I've no idea what you're talking about there. If anything they welcomed the implementation of Bnet crossgame chat so they can stay in contact with their WoW buds. Also metaachievements that we will probably see a short time after D3 comes out.
You don't pay homage to a game that.... dear God. EVEN if WoW hasn't done anything interesting since '07, even if the game ended that year, WoW not only set an example of the high quality of games that might be created but took the title of best selling MMORPG and is the bane of all MMO developers out there. Nothing out there can even come close, not even the Star Wars clone that is about to be released. Nothing can scratch its surface. And that makes the game shit and removes the right of its own developers to pay tribute to it? You don't even deserve to be able to get D3 good sir. Not even a chance.
I'll probably add a lot more to this post tomorrow since I'm pretty much falling asleep right now. But God damn you deserve it. Hopefully a moderator locks this because, as it's obvious, a lot of people won't drop this conversation.
After watching it on YouTube, I was a bit disappointed. It seems to be a one at a time thing? That just seems annoyingly slow.
Anyway, what I was hoping to see was something more like the horadric cube. You open the cube, dump what you want in, and THEN click salvage. That way it's not just a miss click that does you in, but you actually have a chance to glance over everything first.
Oh well.
That way, if the storage of the salvage cube is big enough players will use it as a second inventory, which is not its purpose. If they make it so all items pop back into your inventory when you close the salvage cube's storage then sure.
I wouldn't change it. In my opinion, the Lord of Terror is still recognizable in the Logo and more importantly, it has become a well known trademark by now, which many, many people will actually recognize and connect with the name DiabloFans.com. I guess, that's just my humble opinion though. So if you change it (which u apparently plan to do), please make sure to choose a new one, that has similarities to the old Logo.
This though is the D2 Diablo. We need to stay in touch with what the game currently is. The main logo up there was changed with a Diablo 3 logo, so why not bump the diablofans watermarks with his third reincarnation as well. Even MMO-C changed their design recently although the site is flooded with millions of people on a daily basis.
People don't like change but they get used to it. :]]
1
0
Here are the main arguments:
1. DLCs will let some people enjoy content others might not be able to. The Blues have learned a very hard lesson over the years and that is to never treat 2 gamers in different ways. I can only make comparisons to WoW, because obviously that's the closest recent product they've put out that compares to D3. The content patches that they release every 3-4 months (not once or twice a year as Malminos presumed) are for everyone and while some people may not be able to get in top raiding guilds and enjoy the same content as the second ones do - it's their own fault for either not wanting to spend the required time to raid seriously or not wanting to spend the required time to learn their class and/or social skills. DLCs will not come out of Blizzard in the near future, if ever.
2. Downloadable content is made so that single player oriented games can get a prolonged life and bonuses while the company can still make profit out of it. Contrary to what people think Diablo 3 will make a lot of money. There is only the boxed version of the game that is getting sold, sure. There are no monthly payments. But the cuts from the auction house will make a lot of players want to pay more to Blizz to put up their items on the AH and I've read enough forums about D3 where players say they'll try and make the most out of the RMAH. Not to mention the people that will surely play the AH, that might give Blizz a lot of money, but they'll definitely see that money return to them, when successful.
Also worth mentioning is that the RMAH is probably one of the best ways Blizz could've figured out to offer a way for people to give them a small fee without actually making them do so. A lot of people will pay simply because they like the game, or they like gambling, or they like thinking they've followed the Greedy Goblin for years now and can do just as well.
I remember when the Seasonal events question was asked and a Blue replied that such things won't happen in D3, but I honestly can't see them living up to those expectations. There are many seasonal events that can go right into Diablo, like Halloween, or an equivalent of the Darkmoon Faire that follows lunar cycles.
EDIT: In the end of the day what I was trying to point out is that we will see content patches that will offer new zones, new gear and new adventures, but they will not be in the form of DLC, but regular updates. I'm 95% certain we will see at least one before they announce the first expansion of the game.
0
0
0
How is voice chat making it a handicapped computer? Almost any console game out there supports voice chat and people use it regularly. It's us PC gamers that aren't used to that feature yet. On the other hand, again, experienced console gamers can chat pretty fast even with a controller. And of course, there's the optional keyboard you can buy if you really want to be on par with PC players.
Have you played Torchlight on Xbox? KotOR? Mass Effect? Dragon Age? Sure the last 3 had a pause feature to give players time to set up a better strategy, but that's only because they were much deeper RPG experiences in general and the use of the proper situational skills and abilities was much critical. D3 is a hack and slash and will play wonderfully mashing buttons and jumping straight into a crowd of mobs.
0
0
A few points to consider:
1. The stash is 350 slots that are locked at first and can be bought with gold to extend to that final number.
2. There will be many, many unique and set items that you will not be able to mule to different characters, but you can make a new Bnet account (that will only cost the price of the game) for an additional 350 slots.
3. Every character on your account will have dozens of runes at the least, which are equipped, but I believe a lot of players will keep some runes for their skills in the stash for further/fun use whenever they feel like it. I know I will. Specially things like Barb runes that increase gold/item drop from monsters that aren't generally good at first, but will come in handy while farming.
4. Gems. There will be so many gems that it's hard to figure out how many slots you'll need to be able to collect the smaller grade ones to be able to combine them into higher grades.
5. There will undoubtedly be vanity items which will be fun to use/collect. Not many of these in D2, but Blizz has learned a lot over the past decade and there will be many, many such in D3. For example items that change your shape, give unique skills, add certain effect to your character while equipped and so on.
6. Salvage materials might not look like a lot right now, but when we reach Inferno and the number of unique materials raises up to, say, 25, they will obviously take a good portion of the stash as well. Especially considering how rare some of them may be.
So, with all these points made, and probably a few others that I've missed - how well do you like the shared stash? Is the space given big enough for all your characters? Should there be specific (extended) slots for items such as gems and runes? Or are you completely satisfied with how it turned out? :]
I have a small addition to this, targeted at set items that I feel some of you may like. What if, after you collect the entirety of a certain set - it combines into a single item requiring only 4 or 6 slots for example, so that it doesn't use as much space as its separate parts. You can then easily right click it or something to once again disassemble it into its separate pieces, in case you want to use a certain one. A new neat way to save up space! :]
0
0
0
At the end of the day... I'll probably have 5 level 60s 2-3 months into the game.
0
@my Bulgarian neighbor - That's up to Blizz to figure out man. The controls need to be translated perfectly and the interface will surely get a big overhaul. That's why they've had a guy simply figuring out if the game can be released on a console for like half an year now. Research is where it's all at.
0
Or the fact that some player just straight out prefer wireless controllers and chllin on the couch 2 meters away from the TV?
Really, all it does is give more people more choice on how they can play and on top of that is very revolutionary for the game industry in general. We should be grateful for the opportunity even if 99% of us here are PC gamers.
0
I don't see why anyone would not want more players in D3. After all the point of it is that both console and PC players will be sharing the same servers and will be able to play together. Bnet won't be hard to implement, it would take about 2-3 to a maximum of 6 months to implement, which is very little compared to he possibilities afterwards.
0
WoW currently has more people than I believe have ever played Diablo 1 and 2 combined. Not to mention there has been about 15 million more in the past, a lot of which are looking forward to reentering in case Blizz decides to implement something interesting, like for example an expansion with pandas.
D3 can never be a cash cow simply because it sells once and that's it, the RMAH is optional and most people will simply use their free slots per week to try and cash in some change. D3 will get a grand total of 2 expansions and if you believe $150 or so is much then... damn. I don't see ANY way in the world that WoW can influence D3 to become a cash cow in any way whatsoever.
WoW is still one of the THE best games in the industry to this date. If a new players comes in and tries the game he might literally get lost from all the content that has been implemented in the game since launch. There's probably more than a thousand hours of gameplay which even long trilogies of games can't come close to. It has something for everyone - exploration, raids, dungeons, battlegrounds, arena, vanity items, hundreds of achievements and so on.
I've been following SC2 since before it was officially announced and not once have a read a single topic in any forum that says players don't want any influence from WoW. I've no idea what you're talking about there. If anything they welcomed the implementation of Bnet crossgame chat so they can stay in contact with their WoW buds. Also metaachievements that we will probably see a short time after D3 comes out.
You don't pay homage to a game that.... dear God. EVEN if WoW hasn't done anything interesting since '07, even if the game ended that year, WoW not only set an example of the high quality of games that might be created but took the title of best selling MMORPG and is the bane of all MMO developers out there. Nothing out there can even come close, not even the Star Wars clone that is about to be released. Nothing can scratch its surface. And that makes the game shit and removes the right of its own developers to pay tribute to it? You don't even deserve to be able to get D3 good sir. Not even a chance.
I'll probably add a lot more to this post tomorrow since I'm pretty much falling asleep right now. But God damn you deserve it. Hopefully a moderator locks this because, as it's obvious, a lot of people won't drop this conversation.
0