The only aspect of this game that is remotely competitive is the leaderboards, and the push for the leaderboards has blinded players here of what Diablo 3 is all about -- which is having fun!
There are so much arbitrary difficulties some players here want to incorporate into D3, and that's ridiculous. I am an old retired guy playing with other old retired guys, and some occasional youngsters once in a while. This game is SO easy, you can play it most times with one or two buttons -- it's not worth making into a sport. The skill ceiling, although present, is too low. And you guys want to make this game harder??? Play Guild Wars 2, or Starcraft 2, or CS:GO -- I've played those games, some are even actual e-sports, they have no problems on their HUD, not like D3, and the difficulties are not arbitrary, like what some of you guys want to happen in this game.
And even if someone wants it to be a sport -- who would even pay??? Remember, a sport requires professional athletes, sponsors, arenas where audiences pay to watch, ceremonies where awards are given for excellence and sportsmanship -- hell, if this was a sport, supermodels would want to bang the top players -- which they don't, which is why I don't understand the stupid epeen behavior of some of the "top" players in this game.
Hell, when I asked about overlays, button remapping, etc to Blizzard customer support, all they told me is to read the TOS, and to exercise personal judgment on what is allowed or not -- if this is a serious sport, Blizzard would give CLEAR RULES on what is allowed or not. BTW, that customer support ticket allowed most of what I asked, but Blizzard is kinda wishy-washy, in the sense that they REMOVED that ticket from my ticket archive, meaning I don't even have the Blizzard communication that allowed what I want to do in this game -- which gives me the impression that even in Blizzard's case, the line on what is above-board and what is not moves all the time.
So, yeah -- do what you feel is right, what you feel is cheating and not cheating, ask Blizzard technical support when possible, and just suffer the consequences for doing what you feel is right AND fun. For me, using THUD and disabling the maphack IS NOT CHEATING, and I stand by this (and I thought Blizzard did, too, until they removed the communication from their "Game Masters").
As long as Blizzard prefers a bare UI, there is always going to be a demand from players for THUD, or features that THUD has. Even though there has been improvements in the UI since the recent patches, these improvements are pretty much half-hearted. To date, there is no easy way to look into one's inventory and see which are ancients, and which are not. There is also no way to see if an item is cubed unless you mouseover each item, and stare at a shaded small dot beside the orange legendary affix of that item. The buff bar still does not give cooldown numbers of skills, just this analog timer that can be seen at the top of edge of the skill bar (in this age of digital information, why go analog?). And to date, the location of my buffs in the buff bar still changes too much that I cannot keep track of the buffs that I really care about -- I just want my COE or F/R buffs in a single location, not changing all the time, darn it.
I can live without the stupid map hack, which I turn off because of my ethics on that issue -- but the other features of THUD are QoL changes that are must-haves, frequently requested in PTR, and only SLOWLY adapted in a half-assed sort of way. I would not be surprised if the reason the changes to the buff and skill bar and item tooltips happened PRIMARILY because players like me demanded them so that we don't have to use THUD for them.
I say if Blizzard cannot incorporate these QoL changes into the UI, addons should be allowed on Diablo 3 in a controlled manner, and endorsed on a case to case basis. I want to play rifts and GRs, not stash and inventory tetris half the time.
1
The only aspect of this game that is remotely competitive is the leaderboards, and the push for the leaderboards has blinded players here of what Diablo 3 is all about -- which is having fun!
There are so much arbitrary difficulties some players here want to incorporate into D3, and that's ridiculous. I am an old retired guy playing with other old retired guys, and some occasional youngsters once in a while. This game is SO easy, you can play it most times with one or two buttons -- it's not worth making into a sport. The skill ceiling, although present, is too low. And you guys want to make this game harder??? Play Guild Wars 2, or Starcraft 2, or CS:GO -- I've played those games, some are even actual e-sports, they have no problems on their HUD, not like D3, and the difficulties are not arbitrary, like what some of you guys want to happen in this game.
And even if someone wants it to be a sport -- who would even pay??? Remember, a sport requires professional athletes, sponsors, arenas where audiences pay to watch, ceremonies where awards are given for excellence and sportsmanship -- hell, if this was a sport, supermodels would want to bang the top players -- which they don't, which is why I don't understand the stupid epeen behavior of some of the "top" players in this game.
Hell, when I asked about overlays, button remapping, etc to Blizzard customer support, all they told me is to read the TOS, and to exercise personal judgment on what is allowed or not -- if this is a serious sport, Blizzard would give CLEAR RULES on what is allowed or not. BTW, that customer support ticket allowed most of what I asked, but Blizzard is kinda wishy-washy, in the sense that they REMOVED that ticket from my ticket archive, meaning I don't even have the Blizzard communication that allowed what I want to do in this game -- which gives me the impression that even in Blizzard's case, the line on what is above-board and what is not moves all the time.
So, yeah -- do what you feel is right, what you feel is cheating and not cheating, ask Blizzard technical support when possible, and just suffer the consequences for doing what you feel is right AND fun. For me, using THUD and disabling the maphack IS NOT CHEATING, and I stand by this (and I thought Blizzard did, too, until they removed the communication from their "Game Masters").
2
As long as Blizzard prefers a bare UI, there is always going to be a demand from players for THUD, or features that THUD has. Even though there has been improvements in the UI since the recent patches, these improvements are pretty much half-hearted. To date, there is no easy way to look into one's inventory and see which are ancients, and which are not. There is also no way to see if an item is cubed unless you mouseover each item, and stare at a shaded small dot beside the orange legendary affix of that item. The buff bar still does not give cooldown numbers of skills, just this analog timer that can be seen at the top of edge of the skill bar (in this age of digital information, why go analog?). And to date, the location of my buffs in the buff bar still changes too much that I cannot keep track of the buffs that I really care about -- I just want my COE or F/R buffs in a single location, not changing all the time, darn it.
I can live without the stupid map hack, which I turn off because of my ethics on that issue -- but the other features of THUD are QoL changes that are must-haves, frequently requested in PTR, and only SLOWLY adapted in a half-assed sort of way. I would not be surprised if the reason the changes to the buff and skill bar and item tooltips happened PRIMARILY because players like me demanded them so that we don't have to use THUD for them.
I say if Blizzard cannot incorporate these QoL changes into the UI, addons should be allowed on Diablo 3 in a controlled manner, and endorsed on a case to case basis. I want to play rifts and GRs, not stash and inventory tetris half the time.