DiabloFans

Often think of dota as an overseas thing. I live in the states(WV/UT) and have met under 10 people who, when I got to know them, pay money for lol, hon, or dota of any kind. That compared to blizzard games, everyone knows what wow is, and most have at least heard of sc2/diablo. Not surprisingly most are stuck in the mainstream of console fps and wow though.

It wasn't surprising, after hearing about a $1,000,000 tournament. Obviously the player base is there, it's just nowhere near me. I guess there's always the possibility that the type of person who plays said games doesn't get out that much in order to be met.

I'm at a misunderstanding. Do you want to be able to play this game and have a shot at the best items WHILE having a life, or not?

What you're saying sounds INCREDIBLY tedious to me. Considering runes are how people specialize their characters' skills, considering diablo 3 is supposedly an Arpg, and considering how good the alternatives are, a random, permanently binding rune system is garbage. It's already been revealed that the best items will be extremely rare. How in the world is this not enough for you? Why do you have to make everything random, including character specialization... I mean runes will already drop randomly as it is. The other side on the debate is willing to deal with affixes so that the hardcore grinders can still get "perfect" affix runes and have a lot of value, why make something more annoying/tedious than it has to be.

Yeah except diablo 2 is over a decade old and the pvp system, even back then, was more hardcore than it will be during launch. I understand that some people can infinitely grind items for the sake of having more/better items (and no other reason), that's why I brought up the farmville comparison. I'm not one of those players. I'll play the content up until I have a reasonably well geared character of each class and have a good feel for the game, and if I'm bored I'll move on to a game that better suits my tastes. But who's to say there won't be a good patch somewhere down the line after launch. I'm not saying it's necessary for blizzard to add ranked pvp/more pvp features to make the game successful, I'm just saying there really isn't a world in which doing so can hurt the net gain of the game, in fact logic dictates the game would be better off if blizzard could simply cater to both or all main parties in the fan base.

I understand the importance of gear in an RPG, but I'm not particularly looking forward to having the best items, especially with how mainstream buying power and how pvp is being treated as an afterthought. Right now I'm looking more forwards to mashing things and tinkering around with the new skills/runes and seeing how they feel. I really couldn't care less about the items given the circumstances.

Don't get me wrong, I love diablofans, Dfans >.

But didn't get the fox news comment. Not everyone on the internet is a liberal.

Besides, I don't watch tv because 1)American cartoons suck donkey nuts, and 2)I hate pop, rap/hip hop culture, propaganda, behavior modification shows for kiddies, boring & depressing updates on the go and much, much more.

If I watch tv at all I'll watch discovery or the history channel, but even those are getting crapped on (history especially) with paranormal bullsht etc.

For pvp I'm just going to pick up every utility ability I can with one main damage skill I can depend on, and passives that suit the actives I end up with. In other words I'll want my character(s) to be as mobile as possible, prevent mobility as possible(crowd control), while trying to deal as much damage as possible with as few abilities as possible. If some passive for durability is made overpowered enough I'll pick it up, but I think anything beyond this is just speculation until I "feel" everything out.

People, generally, are still going to go with the path of least resistance for the greatest possible reward. If there is a single area in inferno where the player can just crush through quickly with the same drops as other areas, these areas will be pinpointed and run routinely. Looking back at diablo 2 this is true for boss farming, leveling areas (such as shenk runs and arcane sanct runs for xp). No real point here, but just worth mentioning that a lot of players will try and label the majority of inferno "useless" ultimately for these reasons.

And yeah I don't know that about the items being in hell otherwise, I was just trying to make a comparison between inferno and hell, versus a comparison between any of the other difficulties.

yeah but same ip bidding will probably 1) be a non/insignificant issue compared to big (important) issues, 2) be fought for, as many households will have more than one player and people can use the excuse it's a family member or friend on the other end.

This can backfire. You only have so many "free listings", the rest cost a flat fee or gold I'm sure.


Can almost guarantee, super epic rare items aside, nobody will find the time to play this game for very long.

Quote from Zero(pS)

Don't get me wrong. I much prefer the aspect of inferno compared to the aspect of boss farming, but in the end it's still not something I would call "end game" because end game to me has an entirely different definition than that of someone who plays and enjoys farmville.

Some people seem to think that with "x gear" everything will be a breeze. In many games getting all the best gear tives you enough firepower to blow things faster and survive for a couple more seconds. If you're not carefully treading and hitting the right enemy at the right time, you will die even with the best upgrades/gear.

Sadly for this kind of player, the "action" part of Diablo 3 should make sure that even with the tiptop gear (which should be slightly better on Inferno not 10000% better), clearing Inferno and killing bosses should still require well placed spells and well executed tactics. If everything is done right, if you're not 110% focused on the game when you're playing you will still die a lot, much like in an action game like God of War and Devil May Cry 4.

I'm going to use Bastion once again (which I recently cleared twice with all Idols activated on NG+), even though I have all upgrades on that game, and tons of passives, it's still pretty difficult to keep track of all things on screen when swarming monsters are hitting you (and countering those Peckers to instakilk them is hard), one guy is slowing you from afar and creating "AoE denials" and the other guy is throwing a damaging 1-hit-halves-your-hp attack. It requires a lot of attention and focus to counter stuff, and it's also extremely satisfying when I finish an area and survive.

I personally believe that the Action part of D3 will make things way more interesting in Inferno than people are giving credit for. And I also can't wait to see these same people with crappy "execution skills" who usually bulldoze through harder content by over leveling and overfarming gear posting on the forums about how impossible it is to play through Inferno.

That's great man, but I honestly don't expect this atmosphere for inferno. It's supposed to be soloable, it's supposed to be beaten and the mentality of the difficulty in d3 reminds me a lot of the mentality regarding the difficulty in diablo 2 and its mods. I'm just speculating on the issue of difficulty, so I'll really have to wait and see, bring it on D3, but the issue concerning difficulty was really twig on the branch of a tree in what I was trying to get across in my post.

My original point was:

-The items in inferno were probably items that would have been in hell. If inferno wasn't around, hell would have been the standing "end game" (in an item definition). And so expanding on this point, the differences between inferno and hell didn't appear to be all that different to begin with. Yeah the monsters are more aggressive and have higher stats, and may use new/old special abilities more frequently, but isn't that true for every other difficulty? My point here is that instead of playing the same content 3 times leveling into end game, all they apparently did was make the best of the best items drop after you're already level 60 in the same environment you've already been playing in the entire time while leveling up. It may very well be more difficult, it's supposed to be, but that's not my point. All I'm saying is while this beats farming specific bosses over and over, it's going to be extremely tedious all the same playing through the same zones from start to finish as well- period.

-And my overall point that "end game" means different things to different people, as people have been saying repeatedly in unison and I agree with. I personally am one of the many wishing there was a larger emphasis on pvp. They have said pvp skills and coefficients will be separate from pvm, I don't understand why they can't just add more pvp modes/ranking system(s) for the 25%+ of us who do want it, it would only result in more RMAH use resulting in more money for the game for everyone (including blizzard). I'm completely lost why they're going out of their way to shit on pvp, while teasing us with a pvp platform in arena.

Well last I heard, Jay's argument for the random rune system was that it was more of a specialization system for skills while leveling. IE -You find runes and invest them into skills you like. However this will, as much or more than the old skillpoint system, force/trick players into using the skills they randomly got "likeable" or "good" rune types for, and they will be spamming a smaller set of abilities.

Also players will spend even more time on webpages looking up "good", "best" rune types for skills, or just trying to learn the runes even do because they would otherwise learn at complete random.


I think the whole rune system suggestion brought forward was a weak argument for basically was was "nightmarish point of comparison (tooltips)". Instead of changing the system and making the game even more tedious and more random than it has to be, why not just keep the old system and revamp the tooltip system- IE, either:

-1) Force's suggestion (I think) in their podcast, add a "rune Diary/journal" or something of the type in the ui/help so that players can look up for information on runes if they want to, and/or
-2) Sixen's suggestion (I think) in the same podcast where you drag the rune over an active ability and it shows the tooltip for that one ability

Sources:
Podcast
Jay Wilson Runestone "interview" INTERROGATION!!


I can completely understand the devs not wanting a huge wall of text on the players screen, but I feel they're making this harder than it has to be and completely missed on the issue, last reported. 100% behind force and sixen in most things, though I feel they really hit the nail on the head here. And yeah wiping runes is better than not being able to wipe runes (if they are indeed made random), but I thought D3 was supposed to be an >Action<RPG, not sitting around town trying to get the right rune from a random rune.

I was extremely excited at the original concept of runes. Affixes are fine, whatever, but random runes not so much. There's already a completely random item drop bias. We don't need to "randomly" specialize our characters. That doesn't make sense to me. I want to "build" my character much like how I'd rather eat with my eyes open as opposed to eating blindfolded.

Quote from MCMXCIX

Unfortunately, this went from a planned mature debate to a chaotic, immature argument between three key players. End game is what you make it. If farming bosses for better gear keep you playing, great. If the prospect of having the best gear keeps you playing, that's great too. But what a lot of people keep forgetting is that the game isn't out yet. The only people who have played it work for Blizzard, and they wouldn't be allowed to post here anyway. We'll find out how Inferno plays... when we play it. That is, if we ever do.

Since people seem to only compare D3, the game that hasn't come out yet, to D2 and WoW, I'll use WoW as an example. The people who say Inferno isn't end-game say that because it's not new content, and repeating the same thing over and over isn't end-game content.
1) There's new AI, new affixes, and tons of things to change the gameplay from Hell.
2) With this logic, there can never be any end-game. Once you kill Baal, you're done, every subsequent kill is repeating old content. Now to compare this to WoW, after killing Yogg-Saron once you're just repeating old content. Yes, there are content updates, but in those content updates you're just repeatedly killing low tier raid bosses to get to high tier raid bosses, and the process continues. After Yogg-Saron it's Ragnaros. Then Illidan. Etc. It's only new content for a short amount of time until it becomes the grindfest people are complaining about.

I personally love the prospect of Inferno, and while I can understand the other side of the "debate," I think the pros outweigh the cons. Most people in this thread, and forum, and internet are speculating on features of the game, and then basing their opinions on aforementioned speculations. We all have to wait for the game to come out in order to see if Inferno really is a long-lasting form of end-game content.

TL;DR I think it's sufficient end-game content.

Putting your attempted flame aside...

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. There is a ton of information to be had, that combined with past experience in rpg's and blizzard titles alike gives rise to discussions, or else this topic wouldn't exist and we wouldn't be following podcasts/blue posts etc. If the everyone just sat around and accepted everything handed to them as it is there wouldn't be "business" and there wouldn't be "individuality" and opinions. I know that a good amount of people just cling to whatever they first hear/see like mindless sheep, but please allow people who are willing to express their opinions do so on equal ground. The game may not be out yet, but we've had a hit and miss stream of information over the past two or three years and we're most likely going to see a beta within a month, so just hold your horse and be patient.


"End game is what you make it. If farming bosses for better gear keep you playing, great. If the prospect of having the best gear keeps you playing, that's great too."
-Did anyone else read this and not understand the implication/meaning? What's the difference between farming bosses for better gear, and having the best gear in terms of "end game". I didn't find a difference between the two, or a point having been made.

"There's new AI, new affixes, and tons of things to change the gameplay from Hell."
-I've been speaking from the perspective of MXL, where creature behaviors, affixes, etc dramatically change per difficulty (and especially in the vast number of ubers) from the normal game. I have experience in this because brotherlaz made a kick ass mod for d2. But that doesn't keep you playing forever. While it is much better than the alternative(d2 original), it isn't really all that replay-able once you get enough gear to crush the rest of the ubers, and leaves the player feeling unfulfilled in terms of end game. There are so many areas of the game in which the player will just get one shot or die instantly, but once you learn the gimmick it's a joke and the content is made "useless". So when you come preaching about how the game could initially create a challenge in inferno, you could very well be right, but that's completely aside from the point. The point is that unless there's a >reason< to farm the best items in the game, a good number of players >will quit the game< after they've >cleared the content< because they feel there is nothing left to do.

"With this logic, there can never be any end-game. Once you kill Baal, you're done, every subsequent kill is repeating old content. Now to compare this to WoW, after killing Yogg-Saron once you're just repeating old content. Yes, there are content updates, but in those content updates you're just repeatedly killing low tier raid bosses to get to high tier raid bosses, and the process continues. After Yogg-Saron it's Ragnaros. Then Illidan. Etc. It's only new content for a short amount of time until it becomes the grindfest people are complaining about."
-What I think is bothering more people than that is the lack of a purpose for items. People didn't infinitely grind MC to have the best items so that they could have the best items.... That just wouldn't make sense. They grinded MC to hell and back because they wanted to have an advantage when blackwing lair came out, and moreover (and mostly) have an advantage in PvP. They cleared it initially, for the first time, because it was new and exciting. That is the overall truth.

Don't get me wrong. I much prefer the aspect of inferno compared to the aspect of boss farming, but in the end it's still not something I would call "end game" because end game to me has an entirely different definition than that of someone who plays and enjoys farmville.


TL;DR I think that Farmville =/= end game content concept for a large % of players, as much as it is the means to what should be an end

Quote from Deventh

Hi. I'm Deventh and my avatar kicks ass.

Too bad the current diablo looks like he's a red female version of mephisto.

For me, if Diablo 3 took only a day to go through hell difficulty from act 1 to 4... That my friend would absolutely suck hairy monkey balls!

I want this game on normal difficulty to last me, from act 1 - 4, at LEAST one week. I've been waiting sooooo long for this game, I want it to take me more than 4-6 hours to complete even normal difficulty before I do the whole thing again on Nightmare.

I don't know about anyone else, but 10+ years on making a game, only to have the story of the game last around 4 hours would be horrible!!!

Diablo 2 took me around a week and a half to get through normal difficulty alone. I hope Diablo 3 takes significantly longer than this. =)

I 100% agree with you, but you have to consider, however, that after you leveled up one or two, or maybe 3 characters the whole process is just going to be so incredibly tedious.


I picked up median XL, one of the best d2 mods and played it through. Despite having completely new skill trees, monster ai, monster count, type etc after playing through a couple times it just started being boring as hell.

Now that we will be playing through the game at least 3 times per character, and the end game will basically be a more difficult version of leveling content we'll be playing through the entire time we're not in "end game", don't you think that is just as *almost* as tedious as repeatedly farming bosses you've already killed 3 times over and over?

I ended up cutting every possible corner playing the game (and the original game) after a while because it got old and all I wanted to do was fool around with the new skills.

Once I had done that, and beaten all the content, there was nothing left to do on MXL and in the original game all I did was pvp, which ended up being trashy compared to the pvp Blizzard experimented with in wow.

That's my hope too. I haven't given up faith, maybe there will enough people who request things be added so that in a content patch down the line there are more reasons to have the best gear and add to replay value, ultimately giving blizzard a larger more active player base years into the game (which will benefit them and the game(us) through use of the RMAH.)

There wouldn't be a problem if jay/otheres weren't shunning the pvp community blizzard has acquired over the past near decade. Games have evolved since diablo 2. It's true that it was a great game a decade ago and a lot of the concepts can still work today, but I think if they had ranked pvp on the *side* of the game (balanced separately from PvM), then they'd be making *nearly* everyone happy instead of just the casual player base who wants to infinitely farm items for the sake of having better items and that's it, or play through normal once and quit.

That said, that is the main reason it's so hard for us to accept inferno as "end game", because there really is no point to clear inferno more than once, unless you're a farmville style gamer who gets satisfaction from continually getting more shiny equipment. I understand an rpg involves finding new items, but only a few players can get a lot of replay value from just finding items without any other reason other than just having said items. Everyone else will just quit when the content is beaten and the game gets boring, unless there is a ever changing system like PvP or constant new pvm material being released.