DiabloFans

Quote from Irrational

Haha what? Don't you mean you have to living underneath a rock to overplay this game to the point of hating it? Sorry bud, try again

It's a known fact? Decent? -____- You can hate on it as much as you want, but your thesis kind of sucks without some supporting arguments.

He's probably referring to all the cut out material such as the mystic, death scenes, and no initial PvP etc... A lot of people live in a dream world of LoD 1.10 where everything was duped and easy to obtain OP gear that face rolled an easy game and expected the same experience.

Inferno was then announced they promised it was hard and only the elite could complete it, now everyone complains that it isn't as farmable as it should be. Inferno obviously wasn't tested and the "end game content" does not allow very much flexibility in character builds. Most of these fixes will come out in future patches but people expect it from release even though no Blizzard game has been perfect from day 1 in over 15 years.

Itemization is terrible and the problem is this game purely revolves around items, again this should be addressed. The carrot on the stick incentive is bad because uniques dropped like candy (whether they were godly or not) in D2 and in D3 legendaries suck the big one (again fix in future patch). The itemization approach for D3 has made all low level uniques and sets useless which makes me sad.

Most people didn't know about 3rd party sites and now the fact the AH has made it a common practice people have "gear progressed" quickly and are wondering why farming has become useless. Overall farming in D2 also took forever but again most people are used to the LoD days of rune-words. People also don't realize that trade channels are now a simple click on the AH.

Economy and inflation are an issue but they were in D2 as well, the only saving grace was a ladder. In D3 the economy check is hardcore mode, beyond that there is nothing else.

People expected a fully finished game that compared to a product of multiple years of patches, fixes, and an expansion. D2 vanilla vs. D3 vanilla = D3 wins easy. The most butthurt people are PvPer’s / greifers and I agree that since there is no PvP at the moment there is a lot less to do at “end game”. Griefing will never happen in this get over it and move on (yay). It’s hard to tell where PvP will go, arena’s is an okay approach but player dictation of PvP rules is always most exciting.

Since there is no mindless grinding to out-level content people again don’t know what else to do. Leveling may have been “trivial” but it’s a tangible aspect for people to feel like they are progressing. It also seems a lot of players are WoW players and have no idea what the Diablo series is about. People also seem to have the idea of WTF game dying but every Diablo has a massive decrease in activity considering 90% of sales are usually casuals. Every patch and or content update always brings people back; there is no dying (just temporary inactiveness).

Random maps are terrible; the game is missing some old nostalgic sounds, the socket system is simplistic and boring, cow level (ponies) is just plain sad, and overall I think the music is not as good. Over the game has improved on so many aspects but people are negative and bitch. Many of us are guilty of nostalgic aspects no game will influence you more than when you were kid/teenager (influential age) compared to be a rational adult who has experienced many things. A lot of people are also burnt out of 2 weeks to 2 months of 600+ hours of doing the same thing... and your surprised?

TL;DR

A lot of people wanted Diablo 2.5; this isn’t it (thank god). Blizzard never puts out a finished product from release and they drastically improve the game over time. Usually to the point of being an epic game, every release has been like this. People forget things over time, it will be fine.

Quote from sifuedition

/snip

I would prefer that approach as well, increase low to mid range drop rates, use AH for Godly stuff. I don't have a hate on for you I just disagree with your take on the AH, I see it just as another trade method from before, the problem is it's a "tad" over reliant for progression. The inferno debate is another whole can of worms; if it was tested properly the lack of normal gear finding might not be an issue. I just think everyone would be much happier if itemization was fixed, then adjust drop rates accordingly.

Total itemization overhaul i.e. less random on affix rolling & more interesting affixes, such as ability on hit and class specific stats only on a single class useable item

Overhaul of gems i.e. don't add just a static boring stat add a complex system that allows to add other stats besides the main four.

"Actual" randomization of maps

I'd like a fourth option of a scaling % of deposit on AH items to help with inflation but its minor compared to the first three.

Quote from DeepThought

Sorry. Gotta hit that quota to be eligible for the free loots.

They did state quality posts but honestly who's checking, right?

Quote from Kalenen

the shoulders are pretty much as close to perfect as you can get them in the game... so they are worth it

Well try RMAH, or accept the fact your going to have to post them for a long time since most people that have that kind of money already have gear that good and won't be buying it.

It's a good thing I have this saved, been needing it a lot over the last month.

Quote from KdLoL

this game is all disappointment, no reward, they do whatever they can to piss the user off, Blizzard is terrible to the customers, every night, when I run act 3 with friends and chat on skype, whenever we find useless lootz and nothing good for the whole run, we all curse Blizzard to go bankrupt, its funny

Quote from Gheed2010

808 days, 760 of which were based on hype, espn commercials, and the legacy of previous titles...

What happened when people actually played it?

There's QQing, and then there are http://finance.yahoo...urce=undefined; facts.

Look at most companies on the market, everything is down because the Euro is going to crash... Also markets are not efficient and are poor indicators of actual performance. I'd explain accounting theory to you but its very long... start here and get back to me when you know what your talking about.

http://www.amazon.ca...t/dp/0132072866

Oh to also counter your "fact" I guess Enron was a successful company because it's stocks were such a valid point of measurement. Thanks for coming.

Quote from Efrye

You think I am dumb, right? Of course I played D1 & D2 regularly. NO I didn't use Godly full plate mail of the whale and stuff like that in D1 and I also didn't use ITH or bugged items in D2 1.09 or duped later on in the game. Gearing up in a new ladder season was fun, including runewords with selffound runes.
But still, gear was NOT a real requirement in order to kill something. It takes you one week max. from starting a new character to running through hell, but still gearing up in Diablo 2 is the main goal and is motivating, even though it is damn easy.

Regarding the Diablo 3 mechanics, how do you approach a fight with an elite phase beast pack having jailor, desecrator, arcane enchant and frozen/nightmarish if you see this beforehand?
The moment you see them they teleport on you, you are probably already in jail and 2 arcane enchants are spawning around you.
No problem to survive till now, but then they start making frost bombs while you run in fear from nightmarish, which alone made you run through the arcane sentries while 4 sword-wielding phase beasts thrash on you. But hey, I would have made it for sure if I had approached this correctly. Or simply outgeared it.

I don't think your dumb, I just don't think you are knowledgeable in what your talking about. Overall I'm assuming all your cool downs were off or your a glass cannon with no oh shit buttons. Gear was never a requirement to kill anything in D3 either (up to inferno), and D1 & D2 didn't have inferno mode. In all honesty D1 hell mode (solo) was nearly impossible without being cheap (apoc staff for the win or potion spamming).

159 posts of Derp... and counting.

Hello, I just completed an Excel spreadsheet that I have been working on that calculates and displays your character's dps, its damage reduction, its effective health, and various other information. It is very great tool for comparing everything from a single piece of gear, to a whole set of gear. It allows you to see how much you are gaining or losing from whether or not you have a certain buff or passive. The best part is that it is very simple to use.

Here are the steps:
1. Go to the Inputs tab.
2. Put in your characters level.
3. Use the dropdown menus to change classes, damage types, and weapon types.
4. You may also enter passives and buffs that you may have.
5. Go to the Stats tab and enter your stats.
Displayed below is all the information about your character.

A few dps bugs still need to be worked out. Due to Blizzard's rounding it can be off by about 0.1% of what is shown in game. I'm still working out what will work in all situations.

Here is some information about the Stats tab:

-My character's stats are already entered as an example. All you have to do is empty the boxes and then start entering your own stats.

-Nothing needs to be changed in the first row that is labeled "Base w/ Passives & Buffs". All base stats are updated according to your class, and your other various inputs.

Here is some information about the Active and Passive skills in the Inputs tab:

-The Active Skills drop down boxes only include the runes that are calculated by the spreadsheet. "No Rune" means it is only calculating the base effect of the skill.

-Uncolored skills in the inputs tab are only applied to that class. For example, the Barbarian passive Ruthless will only be calculated if your class is set to Barbarian.

-Skills that have an orange color will be applied to all classes. For example, this allows a Wizard to enter War Cry if he has a Barbarian buffing him.

-Aqua colored boxes are also applied to all classes. These are considered debuffs. For example, if you have Threatening Shout active you will receive an additional 20% damage reduction under the debuff bonuses box in the stats tab.

I uploaded the file to File Dropper because Diablofans won't allow me to add an excel sheet as an attachment. Just go to the link below and download the sheet.

http://www.filedropper.com/diablocraft101_1

Credits:
I would like to thank Edimasta for allowing me to use his calculations for the Demon Hunter's Sharpshooter Passive.

Quote from kendro1200

I think the real issue most people have from this game is that they feel the need to use the AH in order to succeed. Any time you make a game and then add something to it that takes you out of the game and become a time sink out of the game, but feels mandatory in order to play the game, people get upset.

Players obviously "feel," a lot of things about Diablo 3, but the feeling that the RMAH is mandatory has no substantial basis in reality.

Quote from kendro1200

People want to play Diablo 3, they don't want to play the Diablo 3 auction house. Regardless of if it's the gold or real money auction house.

This is just infantile. Regardless of what an isolationist wants to do with their gameplay experience, the AH, like trade channels, forums, and websites before them, are part of the game. In all my years of playing Diablo 2 I never once had a windforce drop for my amazon. I had to go and trade a bunch of other items for it. I knew people in similar position for other particular uniques. It took months, if not years, to amass a full collection of good-roll uniques/sets in completion. Trade has been part of the game since then, why would you disdain a much better system for trade that actually saves time and effort over spamming a channel or bumping a forum post for days?

Quote from kendro1200

Putting in the auction house helps limit account compromising scenarios and issues, but when you then balance the game around its existence, then it becomes an issue.

Putting in the RMAH was a countermeasure to illicit third party websites, but it is not how the game is balanced. If you can't beat inferno with any class using no more than the gold AH, you have problems which do not stem from your gear.

Quote from kendro1200

The AH is essentially item trading streamlined, and in D2 item trading existed, but drop rates weren't balanced around people trading items.

I've already covered this, but it bears repeating. Yes, drop rates were higher on uniques in Diablo 2, but no, they were not so high as to render trade a frivolous use of time. If you remember D2 as the game where everything you wanted was dropped in less than a few months, you're remembering incorrectly.

Quote from kendro1200

So the fact that drop rates were set really low at the beginning (when everyone was first trying out the game for the most part) because the "AH existed" was an unjustified move.

The fact that drop rates are notably lower than in Diablo 2 for the most elite items is something worth campaigning against. Itemization, at least in the unique/set department is already on Blizzard's agenda. That said, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the AH being an instrumental part of the game. If you want to find everything yourself, you are free to do so (I suggest a DH or Wizard), but don't expect the drop-rate on godly items to become trivially high because you don't like trading. That isn't Diablo 3 and it was not Diablo 2 either.

Quote from sifuedition

@ LDVvinci

Nice job ignoring his entire point AGAIN. An analogy has to be a relative comparisons and those analogies were horrible ones. He was right.

If you want to make an analogy to a job in the real world, how about this. You can come to work for me. I need you to work 50+ hours a week. At the end of the week, I'll sign a check to you. It may or may not have any value. You should want to work for the extremely rare chance that it could be a large check. In short, there is no guarantee to any reward for your effort becuase that would make you an entittled dbag.

That is more the feeling this forum is trying to impose on anyone who prefers the reward systems of the previous titles in this series. But no, you'll slippery slope that into "I want free purples for logging in".

Speaking of absolutely fucking terrible analogies...

Are you rolling a god damn dice to decide his paycheck? Is the job sitting on your ass watching TV? What if you're doing a job you expected to pay to do in the first place, and now you've actually made money from it?

Seriously, stop trying to give others shit for something and then do a piss-poor job of yourself.

You two can +1 eachother and circle-jerk to until your heart's content, but you're still sounding like entitled brats. There's no slippery slope here (so stop using it, because you sound ridiculous). He very clearly stated he DOES want rewards at an expected point in time (whatever his subjective idea of "reasonable" is), which is exactly what this series has never offered. He's already made money for fuck's sake, but that's not enough "reward." He wants more. Entitlement. Gratification. Get a dictionary, both of you.

Quote from sifuedition

open exchange of ideas

Bro, it requires two open-minded people to exchange ideas. You are very closed-minded and you do your share of attacking people who don't hate D3. You have shown your insistance on repeatedly using antagonistic and derisive terms like "Econ 101" and trying to use Wikipedia definitions to attack anything that anyone says that does not conicide directly with your vision of Diablo 3.

The fact of the matter is that you're not playing "their" game (as in the people who disagree with you). You're playing Blizzard's game and Blizzard is very well within their rights to decide what they feel is OK behavior and what is not OK behavior, including exploits and the like. The idea that a small group of posters on DiabloFans.com dictate the direction of the game is laughable and, again, antagonistic and paternalistic.

You may not see it, but your holier-than-thou attitude - routinely claiming that everyone else is slinging shit, while doing the very same yourself - is why people dislike your posting. You are the very same as the rest of us, but you continue to act as if you're better than everyone and it's a turn off to EVERYONE.

I mean you spent almost a page of this thread arguing about the definition of "MMORPG" when someone simply said "MMO" (which, coincidentally, are not the same term) and you have the audacity to insinuate that the other people on this forum are somehow responsible for the low quality of posting and that you have absolutely no hand in it when you absolutely derailed this thread with a Merriam-Webster shootout at high noon for who can be the superior eNerd? Give it up dude. You're no better than everyone else.

Quote from maka

Sorry, but where was it ever said by anyone involved with the game that this game would basically lack true SP functionality? I'll wait.

That insinuates that you believe the game doesn't have single player functionality. That is what I was responding to, since it was part of the quote tree. It had some relevance to the most-recently quoted bit too.

Quote from maka

And why does Online SP imply interaction with the community? Supposedly, and according to Blizzard, the always-online measure was to curb piracy and ensure a hack-, bot-, and dupe-free gameplay. And to support the RMAH, of course. Which none of you seem to want to acknowledge. As usual.

Why does "single player" given an online format have to imply NO INTERACTIONS WITH ANYONE?

Why are your assumptions about the game so much more correct than everyone elses?

Why are you so blinded by your brutal hatred for the AH that you cannot see that D3 is D2 without offline capabilities? I notice that you can't go even a few posts without making a "RMAH IS THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE" comment. And, as for the hacking/duping/botting.... if the server code were on the client computers, as it was in D2, don't you think we've had had a LOT more issues than we have had so far, given that there are so many more people playing D3 than D2 and that there is such a huge market for selling gear? Instead of being so snide, face the reality that if Blizzard didn't make this decision to be online-only, the online game would have been decimated by hacks and dupes within the first few days.

Everything you're raging about existed in D2 if you played "solo" on Battle.net. None of this is new. None of this should come as a shock. Acting ignorant of the reality of a game that existed for 10 years in this very condition is not an excuse. There is absolutely nothing different about the structure of "single" versus "multi" player games on Battle.net between Diablo 2 and 3 aside from the change to player limit from 8 to 4.

Can we stop living in fantasyland?

450+ hours huh? Are you sure you're not just, I dunno... Bored of the game after spending most of the past couple months on it? With a release date of May 15th, that means there has been 66 days between the release of D3 and now.

66 * 24 = 1584 hours total
Minus 8 * 66 = 528 hours for sleep, gives us 1584 - 528 = 1056

1056 - 450 = 606

450 hours spent on the game, 606 not... I hate to break it to you, but you've spent almost half of your waking hours on D3 since release. I'm pretty sure anyone would call that a resounding success.

Surely if the game was so horrible, you'd have stopped playing about 400 hours ago maybe? Then your argument wouldn't seem so ridiculously flawed.

Quote from Zergie

D2 did the same, but a meph ( pindle, baal WHATEVER ) run took >a minute or two, so you didn't notice, it was anticipated loot after anticipated loot.
D3 however, it forces 30-45 mins runs through NV stacks. AND YOU FEEL IT.

The only farming these days is goblin farming.
Anything else is yawn.

Blah blah blah bring back meph pindle and Sorc-port Baal runs? NTY.

You're basically complaining about being forced to actually play the game for more than 20 seconds to get a boss drop. Guess what that's the point.

Man Blizzard could make you 100% happy if they just put a webpage up on BNet that generated a picture of a random loot drop and just let you spam click the "reroll" button until you got a perfect rare/legendary. And maybe a little message saying "you're an awesome player, nice work!" underneath.

Personally I'm not really sure I like the idea of changing mf, but Blizzard seems intent on changing it anyway. So if changing MF is the only option then here is my personal solution. I like option 4 the best, but it has too many downsides, such as swapping a regular non-mf piece of gear and being penalized for 3 minutes. So here is my proposal. Make it so only when you equip an item that increases your mf you are penalized for 3 minutes, and remove the part where your mf drops to 0% for the 3 minutes. Here are a few examples:

Your total mf is currently 100%.
Take off an item with 15% mf on it.
Exactly what you expect to happen happens. Your mf drops to 85%.
Now you are at 85% mf.
MF was not increased and no penalization was incurred.

Now put back on item with 15% mf on it.
Your mf remains at 85% for 3 minutes.
3 minutes later you are back at 100% mf.
You switched an item that increased your mf, and are penalized for 3 minutes.

Now you are at 100% mf.
Switch 15% mf gloves for gloves with 10% mf.
Your mf drops to 95% without having to wait 3 minutes.
Your mf was not increased and no penalization was incurred.

This modified option 4 will basically minimize any negative secondary affects that may impair your gameplay due to the mf changes. Please comment and state whether or not you like this change and discuss why. Thanks.

Quote from FuriousBalls

People are not leaving the game because of attack speed or any damage nerfs, you got it a bit wrong.

People are leaving the game because of simple things they got bothered with :

1. Drop rate is ruined and game is completely broken now. Farming is completely useless now, unless you want to vendor everything you get.

RUINED I SAY, RUINED! OH, ALSO COMPLETELY BROKEN!

No hyperbole here folks. Every single player has quit because it is 100% broken; unplayable; useless; trash; garbage; throw-it-away-right-now-never-work-again-pile-of-poop.

Farming is useless, you heard it here first. All those items on the AH right now? Figment of your imagination. They were actually bought off of random vendors, not farmed for. Because that doesn't work anymore, remember?

Quote from FuriousBalls

2. People are annoyed with RMAH and AH. I personally don't have anything against those but it would be better without them probably.

Definitely better without them. That way people could create games without titles hoping someone randomly joins them to have manual trades with bartering in chat. How efficient that would be!

Quote from FuriousBalls

3. There are so many broken classes, broken skills and so many bugs.

So completely true. I mean, what with this game being out for over a month now, everything should be working perfectly. Flaws just don't happen in IT-based systems, because this is the 21st century gosh dang it!

Quote from FuriousBalls

4. There is no end game for hard core players. This is not D2, this is not time of gaming from 1999. This is 2012 and people like challenges, end game content and rewarding system.

Whew, you got something right. This isn't D2. It's D3. But don't let that stop you. Let's pretend we know what everyone wants, and what the primary vision for this game is (probably something very much akin to what you've already played for years, because we all know something different is bad. Very bad! (Please ignore the huge population of players who continue to play despite this lack of content - they're a statistical anomaly)

Quote from FuriousBalls

So once again, there are many issues with the game and damage is the last problem. I m personally still playing game even tho I cleaned entire content 3 weeks ago. Loot is currently broken as long as many other things. I m not a flamer, QQ'er or anything like that.

I m not fan of blizzard nor any other gaming company. I play games I like, I don't care who made them. Be realistic and don't look at the game subjectively.
I hope blizzard will fix this game soon cause game itself has a lot of potential to rock and roll.

Have fun

Oh, I'm glad you cleared up that you weren't a flamer or QQer, I was really beginning to wonder. You're still playing, so I must assume that the majority of your above points aren't deal-breakers, and you were just exaggerating for giggles.

Maybe you can take your own advice after this and "have fun," eh?

Tl;DR - I agree it needs more to do at the end - after it is fixed. People need to stop expecting it to satisfy everyone. It isn't WoW, stop asking for endgame. People need to learn something about game development before they start demanding more game.

------------------------------------------

Wow, this thread is just retarded.

(1) OP has 1 post - this one. Even *if* the ideas were good, this would give me pause.

(2) Some "endgame" perks would be cool. Once the game works right as it was sold. Not for the whole *maybe* 4% of people who can beat Inferno.

D2 was no better at "endgame" - it is the genre, not the game itself. Titan Quest and Torchlight were incredible too - and yet, endgame was the same. And sure they could change the formula - they made it - but seriously, the people who don't like the game style will not stay regardless of the changes.

And yes, I know the idea of "D2 was like this, it is OK" is flawed.I am not saying some improvements here are *not* needed - just that they aren't needed now.

(3) Maybe play PvP to win, and take pride in your skill, and not for the need to rub peoples faces in it?

(4) Drez - damn, you either have no clue what the Diablo series is, or have clouded memories of your time playing it. You spend hours farming items because that is the game. PvP serves a purpose - testing your skill. If your only interest in PvP is your e-peen, you should play "Counseling: The Game".

I don't disagree about carrots post-60. It is a critical piece of psychology in games. But you can never add enough carrots, and a month (or 2, or 3) from now, Kripp or someone would still be here posting this - instead of accepting that the game as developed isn't for them.

(5) Frozenkex - he made the video because he wants money. He still plays because he wants money. As soon as a new cash-cow arrives, he will go make videos of that - for the money. If his comments help improve the game, it would be nice. But I seriously doubt he will be here when any of them get implemented.

They will have to do what ARPG's have to do - farm for better items. After a content update or 2 I am certain we will see more things to do once Inferno and drop rates and item qualities get better tuned.

(6) GreenFlubber - So let me get this straight - you have a ton of money, nothing to spend it on, and wan't to rush a char to 60 and have the best gear when you get there, without farming/gathering it yourself - but won't spend the money on gear either?

This is a gear game, based around farming and gathering the best gear you can find. It is *more* diverse because you can use different builds be retuning the stats you stack on your gear. D2's diversity was shit - you had a ton of "clicks" in the tree, usually balanced around 1 ability, and the diversity was "oh, let's have all the same clicks, but a different target" skill. Beyond that, once you had BiS gear, you could faceroll content with no talents at all. D3 may get there, but only for a very small % of players in the near future.

Besides which, your sig just makes you look like a douche.

(7) ElKapitan - every game has an end. And it depends entirely on the player. People who rush content always get there first. WoW has a crap-ton of content, but 30 days after every ExPac or content release, some tiny % of the population are on the forums, bitching about not enough content. Too many of you misunderstand the type of game you are playing, and the content pipline behind it.

(8) PvP ranks based on matches played would be cool, Champion levels would be cool. Exposing wins/losses would not, they want it to be fun, not a pissing contest. Ladders and ranks like that would reduce the number of people pvping, because people that aren't good won't be inclined to do it with jackasses criticizing them for not being the best with the best gear. This system allows everyone to play, get matched against equal players (by level/gear/skill), and have a *chance* at winning everytime. The elitists who think PvP is terrible unless it has the chance of teabagging your opponents need to move along.

(9) Fuleira - why does everyone relate the comments by a tiny % of the game community with "mass exodus". Being extremely generous, the vocally negative number of people in *this* community is maybe .25%, and across the top 10 game communities, I'm betting no more than 1%. There*will* be many people who leave - the game isn't for everybody, and D2 didn't have close to 7 million payers - maybe across it's lifetime, but certainly nowehere close during launch to a couple years after. Many bought it to try it out, many won't get what they want, or expect. That is how games work, and no changes made by Blizzard will fix this. Maybe for a few here or there, butultimately, those people will leave regardless - because IT ISN'T THEIR GAME.

(10) Soujiro89 - your entire post condenses down to - I don't like this game, please change it to what I want.

- the content is all repetitive. You don't get a new game with each new difficulty. That is the genre. Sucks you expected different, but it is something you won't get outside ExPacs with new Acts.
- That is *exactly* the reward. The genre is about farming for the best gear. Again, that is typical for the genre.
- The gearchecking is actualy new for Diablo. before, you finished Hell facerolling with mediocre gear, then farmed THE SAME bosses ad nauseum until you had the best gear. Then did it again with a new class.
- you don't understand the concept of skill, outside what you want it to be to make you feel skilled. Understanding the interworkings of your gear/skills/tactics is critical to succeeding in Inferno, gearcheck or not.
- AH prices - those are on the players, not Blizzard. You clearly have no clue how negatively it would effect the economy if Blizzard put there foot in and started massaging prices and values.
- I agree drop rates and stats need some attention. I think the thing you are "missing" from above is getting enough good loot (even if not yours) to encourage you to keep farming. But again, no amount of tuning will make you like the game if you aren't pre-disposed to.

In the end, people need to understand a couple of very basic game development concepts. (1) No amount of content will satisfy your players, (2) content is finite and limited by how much time/money you can spend on it, and how fast your game engine/chassis is created, and (3) no game system will satify every single buyer.

(1) Some people will be faster/better/stronger than others. Some just won't like stuff. Every game has to balance content against items like longevity, non-content game systems, alternative gameplay types or systems. In D3 the primary content isn't the storyline/quest, it is the gear hunt. PvP, Inferno, HC are all plays on that concept - find the best gear you can, and defeat progressively harder content with it. I agree, some ancillary systems once 60 would be nice, to relieve the head trauma Inferno causes - and I am certain we will see it. But the D2 forums were like this 30 days in too, and it became great, and even greater with an expac.

(2) Because of 1, you have to put a lock on how much content you create for launch, and how much you dole out later via content releases and ExPacs. In regards to launch content, you have to limit how much content you plan for and advertise ahead of schedule based on how quickly you can get a game engine and testing chassis running reliably. All the content in the world won't help you if you can't test it and make it behave as intended. This plays into Q&A time, which runs in parallel to the end of development. you also have to understand the contcept of feature-freezing - the process by which a game is locked from adding new features, and focus is placed on getting what is present working and polished. This means what you got in the box may not be neough, but gets the stuff they couldn't finish or wanted to add later into the pipelin faster.

(3) Every game, new or old, derivitive or new concept, takes certain basic concepts to the table, then fleshes them out with the dialogue the develpoer has created. Things like control schemes, camera angles, etc. Anyone that has ever played a game with a truly horrid control scheme knows, some things you just don't screw with - and doing so will lose you players faster than any lack of content. Some things you can mess with to a point, and players will try it out. But some things are considered genre- or series- defining, and can only be touched withthe utmost caution, because chaning or removing them or burying them under other features will destroy the game.

Which is where I feel Diablo was at launch. They made the game as much like the previous as possible while incorporating feedback from years of people playing D2. I think they failed a bit in also understanding how gaming has changed in the last 12 years, though. SC2 doesn't have any farming, but WoW had tons of it - and most players hated it, which is why rep farming has had so many iterations. Famring has to have a noteable time/reward system in place, or it sucks. D3 currently gives you lots of rewards, but because of the way loot is randomized, it's more like opening an xmas present - and finding dog poop. Then doing that 12 more times, followed by your brother beating your ass (fire chains/vortex/Invuln/waller).