DiabloFans

Also, Diablo III will never be taken seriously as a cometitive game.

1. It's a top down, single unit control, click to move game. This setup has some strengths but its not optimal for dueling or versus. People who are serious about player versus player are going to gravitate toward FPS, RTS, and other setups. So put design focus on something your game can't possibly be best at?

2. Dueling viability is not determined solely by skill (like in most competition games) but is instead largely determined by gear.

3. The gear in point 2, drops based on luck. So your dueling capability is also determined largely by the luck of the drop.

4. Even worse, you can buy the gear with real money. So you have a supposedly serious competition game, where the deciding factors largely money and luck. Does anyone see the inherent problem?

Diablo from the control scheme on up is designed to be a one versus many, or co-op, PvM hack and slash. It can not, and will not, be an esport. And Blizzard does have games built from the ground up for the purpose of esport. Starcraft series has always been a major player in esport. Diablo has always been the king of hack and slash pvm. Why jump product category with Diablo, to compete in a market segment that you already have covered?

Quote from Mac_an_tSaoir

D2 Dueling, WoW PvP eSport, SC1 eSport of a nation? SC2, eSport of a nation? WC3 eSport, which then leads to the creation of DotA, which leads to the creation of a new genre of PvP games known as MOBA. The ripple effect creates LoL eSport (although a joke) HoN, DotA and DotA 2 and soon Blizzard DotA

SC and Warcraft are irrelevent. They are different series, designed to be an esport. That's the point of having multiple series- so you can appeal to different player types. Saying Diablo 3 should have a strong PvP focus because Starcraft II does, would be like saying "Capcom should make Megamax XXXIII a tournament fighter, because street fighter was great."

If something is a direct sequel, with an actual sequel number, it should be a continuation. It should follow the design principles and focus of the series. In Diablo, development focus has been very much PvM. In Diablo I and II, a PvM was designed, and then a "Hostile" button was added for dueling, and that was pretty much that. But people enjoyed it. The point is that you don't have to have a highly tuned, perfectly balanced, PvP focused system, to make PvP an interesting element of the game.

Even if BLizzard decided to balance PvP seperately, I think people underestimate how much effort it would take. Look at Starcraft II. There are three races. Each are capable of building several units and several upgrades. Balancing all of it was probably a major part of the development. Now look at Diablo 3, with 5 classes, a crazy number of skills, then each can be runed, then gear that dertmines the strength of the rune effect. modifies the attack rate and damage, changes all your stats, etc, etc. Balancing that specifically for competition would be a massive undertaking, probably worse than the entire balancing phase of Starcraft II development.

Blizzard does not have unlimited resources. And think about this. This is not a subscription game. Blizzard takes in the initial sale price and RMAH fees , then they are responsiblle for tuning PvM, providing server space, security and hack ressistance. On top of that, they will be planing the expansion. Adding "seperately balance PvP to competition level tuning" to the list seems a bit unreasonable. It has taken so many years to develop this game. Do we want expansions and fixes delayed because the Diablo team is basically juggling resources to balance PvM and PvP at the same? It would be nice to have the best of everything but in the real world, you have to pick your focus and do it well.

Quote from camatx

That's where you and I disagree though, I think you are incorrect in believing that the majority wants what you do. They don't .

It's a seriously small little minority of you that are so paranoid of Esports.

I don't think anyone's paranoid about esports. I think most people would be fine with Diablo working as an esport, if it didn't interfere with the main function of the game. Diablo games have always historically been designed as hack and slash action RPGs.

But there are serious obstacles to making it an esport. Character strength is decided as much by gear choices as by skill. That is a mark against making it a sport. Most serious competitive games are skill oriented. The fact that you can buy gear for real money makes it even a worse candidate as an esport. No one is going to take an esport seriously where the outcome can be largely determined by money instead of skill. Plus the characters themselves are geared for PvM balance. There's no way to take those same characters and give them esport level PvP balance, without giving some of the skills completely different stats and behaviors.

The Diablo series has never been designed to be an esport. When you ask for it to be one, you're not asking for the continuation of a strong PvP oriented tradition. You are instead asking them to totally change the focus of a long standing series, to match your personal expectations. The game is going to be a hack and slash RPG, with added PvP elements, like its predecessors.

That is not due to the whining of some "ignorant vocal minority." It is what the game was always designed to be, and what the series always has been.

For me, the game is story driven, and the fun will just be in beating the story, then going through the different difficulty levels. Beyond that, I see it as a cooperative and social experience. I'm not going to care how I compare to other players statistically. If I can pull my weight in my groups and contribute fairly, that's all I care. I will get into gear collecting, gem levling and trading, but I'll just be doing it for fun to make my character better. I won't care if anyone else is impressed or ever notices, beyond my own little group of friends. LOL!

Quote from Markco_Polo

Actually, these secrets are just parlor tricks used to bring the masses to my website. There, I admitted it. I use fantastic "secrets" to increase interest in auctioneering among the masses. You know what I do next however? Instead of attempting to bottle these secrets and sell them as miracle cures, I take the person aside and explain the error of their ways.

This section confuses me. You pull them aside to teach them the "error of their ways", which... they learned from your site?

That tactic seems a bit disingenouous. And it seems weird that you're freelly admitting that the tricks you advertise to pull people into your site probably won't work long term.

I don't think there will ever be potential to make a first world living wage in the Diablo 3 RMAH. The 5$ per week estimate is probably a lot closer.

It comes down to this. There is no way to farm enough things with one account to make good money. That means you are stuck with variations on "buy low-sell high", and making all your profit off the difference between an ideal sell, and a poor sell. But in an economy where most prices will be fairly low, that difference will be mostly small and it's going to take a huge volume of sells. There will be major competition to get those sells, because there's real money involved.

I'm in the beta test. We volunteered for it and, in some cases people even actively competed in competitions for a chance to test. I really feel priveldged that I am getting to test the game. I definitely don't feel like Blizzard owes me anything.

In a way, I wish there would be a sygil or something to recognize beta testers in the game. It was nice getting to participate and having someting permanent in game as a souvenir would be cool. But in the end, I think I'm selfish for wanting even that. There are tons people who wish they could test this game, and the ones of us who are testing are mainly jsut distinguisehed by luck and geography. We shouldn't need bonuses. The chance to participate in the beta is a bonus.

Interesting read! Thanks for taking the time to compile it. And on a side note:

Hey! We are able to vote up posts now!

I think the problem is that this game uses pretty low polygon counts for the characters, so to distinguish high end equipment, they can't rely on little details, but instead have to rely on increasing the ornamentation. Then there is the matter of distinguishing the five classes, even when they are covered from head to too in metal armor. They seem to have decided the best way to manage that, is by giving every class a few bold signature looks that are unmistakable.

They look awful to me now, but watching everyone slowly level, and their gear change slowly over time, the progression will pull you into accepting each set as the next logical step for that class. Much like real fashion. Some things look absurd out of context, but as things shift season to season some trends get slowly more dramatic and the pace of change pulls you into accepting it.

Compared to Diablo II armor looks, these look more gaudy, more inpractical, and have a very WoW feel to them. It's not a game breaker, but disapointing. And out of context, mid grade armors will be the best looking. If you look at everyone's favorite artwork for each character, they are in simpler, mid game armors.

I think there is definitely something out there. We are in nearly infinite sapce, with countless other planets, and the universe is infinitely old. The notion that some life form, in all those levels of infinity, never managed to find the technology to travel space freely and exist perpetually as a species seems unlikely. Its far more likely that there are advanced space traveling races.

Quote from italofoca

Respec in RPGs is stuff created for noobs who can't deal with research, theorycrafting, spreadsheets, etc... I'm not saying noobs are stupid or doesn't deserve to play - they can simply copy someone's build and have fun. But now developers are favoring those who can't build a character in detriment of those who can. They are doing the right thing since majority of people nowdays don't like to build characters and the game have to be made for everyone - but I can't help but be pissed cause i'm in the minority.

I understand your point, but I don't think respeccing hurts challenge level or detracts from the game. It doesn't remove theorycrafting. it just makes testing those theories a lot more efficient. And games should be fun. Testing by trying out the skills is more fun than testing it in a spreadsheet for most people.

Plus, builds will depend on gear and runes. So its not really like you can hit level 60 and then just instantly build anything you imagine. You will have to do some theorycrafting to determine what sort of gear and runes you need to look for to optimize your selected skills.

In the end, it's an action RPG, and the bulk of the challenge should be in live combat tactics instead of front end character building elements. If they will make the fights challenging, I think this game will keep people interested for a long time and provide a fun challenge.

You might be right. They might make the game to boring to be worth replaying, but if it happens it won't be because of respeccing. Its all sepculation until people get to play Hell and Inferno to see if it's hard enough.

Slow work day. Bleh.

Quote from Ronninrogue

finished it in 5 hours without rushing, doing side exploration & looting barrels ect

No... no you didnt.

Have been monitering my Amazon CE statuts since about 8am EST this morning. It has been in the 'Shipping Soon' stage since then.

Ive also been refreshing the amazon CE forum, and several people have posted that their status has changed to 'Shipped'. Also worthy to note is that even when they got their confirmation emails, the actual time stamp shown that it shipped were several hours prior to them getting the email.

So my guess is there are probably tons of orders that have long shipped, and Amazon is just slowly working on alerting everyone with their tracking info.

Quote from Nacho_ijp

I can do that? uhmmm... interesting

Sure put it in your signature, hell push comes to shove I'm certain I can find a computer around at my job I can send you that will do the trick for nothing. I'll make sure it has a decent graphics card, we're replacing a bunch of computers right now and are just going to donate them off. Message me with a shipping address and I'll have it out to you in a week.

4. no
5. no
6. they obviously will
10 HELL no. that will cause too much clutter, too much lag for some people and remove one of the nice benefits of playing solo.

Just wanted to make a post about my girlfriend. I started going out with her right around the time Diablo 3 was first announced, and that was something I told her I couldn't wait for that it was going to be the best game ever and that we totally had to play it. We've gone through a lot of different struggles and challenges in our relationship, dealing with distance, school and communication. She went from being a person who rarely played video games at all to being a total gamer like me that I can talk to about game content and play hardcore games with me like SC2.

We've been living together for quite sometime, and she recently had to go away for an internship on the other side of the world in Hong Kong and I miss her greatly, what I'm more sad about is that she can't play Diablo with me when it releases. I know that we can play when she gets back, I've come to terms with that, but it's what she told me the other day.

She said that she really enjoys sharing the experiences with me, with going to the midnight launch, and opening up that collector's edition box, and looking through all the goodies. She said she really missed not being able to go with me to this midnight release because it has been something I've been following since the beginning of our relationship.

I think its weird how some people say women can't be gamers and how it's a male only thing. I know that my girl could give them a run for their money.

What I'm really trying to say though, is thanks, for being there for me, and not only learning about my hobby, but making it something you enjoy too, and understand its meaning to me.

Cheers to all the girls who take care of us gamer guys!

Quote from Antirepublican

I was redirecting him to a thread with the answer. I was not suggesting the poll had any real meaning, nice try though champ, but you assumed wrong again.

I was not suggesting the poll had any real meaning

a thread with the answer

yah that's why the wizard is 2nd from last in the Highest DPS thread on main page.

nice try though champ

Thirty-one to FIFTY?!? Man, you must think 30+ year olds don't play video games or something. Hehe

Quote from Beechsack

Quote from tanis0

Ok, I'll concede the video point. However, do you seriously think that someone putting forth the amount of time and effort necessary to beat dedicated teams of professional gamers to a world first isn't going to stream that live?

'Professional gamers' don't go after shit like this unless they're being paid to do so. And since the timestamp of reaching level 60 isn't viewable by anyone in the public, nobody is going to sponsor a professional gamer to do it, so they won't.

Now you're just mincing words. There are clearly very visible teams headed by interent gaming celebrities, some of which have achieved world firsts in the past, who are gunning for the world first level 60. You can argue semantics all you want, but you neither addressed nor invalidated my question.

At first, I was miffed because I didn't get in the beta and it was more goodies that weren't coming my way. And then I realized that the actual goodies don't really mean anything, and I don't really care about a sigil or FoS that's a reward for getting lucky. Big deal, you can wear it with pride all you want, but I don't even really want it. It's just the overdeveloped sense of entitlement that pervades the masses these days that stops people from realizing it's just a friggin FoS and sigil that says "I got lucky," not "I'm better than you."

EDIT:

I do think Blizzard underestimated how petty people can be though, and I don't think this was a good move on their part. No one was cheated because they didn't get in a closed beta that was advertised as such, and no one should feel cheated because the people lucky enough to get a random invite also get a FoS and sigil that only shows that they were LUCKY.

FoS means absolutly nothing, except what they say. This player was a beta tester. It's no way a matter for merit.