@OSW_Zenkiki
Perhaps you should go check out the main page of the Battle.net (Blizzard app) forum. Nearly all of the posts there are about getting rid of Activition/3rd party games from the Blizzard app. That should be all the indication you need as to our input.
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This actually is not true anymore. It was a few months ago, but that issue has been resolved. Rubberbanding is different than the issue movement speed caused, which was actually a server de-sync. They're both symptoms of the same overall problem (badly written code regarding movement on certain terrain features), but they are not the same thing.
My TR Monk with the Fleeting shrine can easily traverse the indoor areas of Act 3 without rubberbanding or de-syncing, whereas my Demon Hunter just walking in a straight line can rubberband like a maniac sometimes. There is one area where the player has control over rubberbanding, and that is rounding corners too sharply. The code for movement tracking in both battle.net 1.0 and 2.0 appears to have remained near identical as both have the exact same problem: If you take corners too sharply at any movement speed, you'll get snapped back to your original starting position and have to do it again (and if you have incoming damage the damage remains, often killing you).
This can easily be tested in Diablo 2 by taking corners very sharply in the indoor levels on both battle.net and in single player offline mode. In the battle.net mode, you'll run into the rubberbanding. In offline mode you do not. Ever. It is because of this phenomenon that I have learned to take corners in a slightly outward arc, especially on my TR Monk and as a result I almost never have a rubberbanding problem (I've had only one instance of it since 1.0.8).
Once a player learns to adjust how he or she moves around certain terrain/objects, rubberbanding becomes far less of an issue. As for the WW Barbarians, Blizzard needs to deal with that on their end since that is a very special case when it comes to movement as the character spins constantly, thereby changing direction constantly, which creates issues for battle.net that would not be seen in an offline mode.
Quite a number of monsters in Diablo 3 can outrun even a vaulting Demon Hunter. I should know - I've had it happen to me quite often. And with increased monster density as a (pseudo) option now, if you aren't careful when you move, you're going to bite off more than you can chew, further balancing out any issues with run speed.
Our base movment speed is like the Vic Viper in the Gradius/Life Force series without any speed powerups. It functions, but feels horrible, and cannot outrun anything but the slowest projectiles/enemies, and even the first tier speed powerup isn't very good.
The comfort level for how much run speed you get really comes down to how good your reflexes are. Mine are good enough to deal with it at the 84% level that my TR Monk has with the Fleeting Shrine and the TR: Tailwind setup, but just barely. A lot of people wouldn't be comfortable handling such a twitchy level of speed and would probably self cap themselves lower. But for most classes, they wouldn't be able to get that high anyway without a skill or ability that boosts speed as well, so it's really not much of an issue with the exception of the outliers such as WW Barbarians and TR Monks using Tailwind (and not all TR Monks can do that as getting spirit regen high enough is ultra expensive since none of it can come from a Skorn, the preferred weapon of choice due to its CHD/damage and very slow attack speed).
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CHD is a special case in that it has reprocussions outside of the norm in terms of design. It is singularly responsible for Monster Power's absurd HP scaling, since without the huge amounts of CHD it is possible to get in concert with CHC, the monster HP levels could be tuned around that cap assuming a +/- variance for different build makeups.
Run speed on the other hand affects your travel time, not your direct combat damage. Its only other effect is enhancing your ability to kite or get out of / escape The Bad™. Right now, base movement speed is actually so slow that if a melee is fighting a Grotesque family monster and triggers the explosion phase, they're very likely to get caught in the explosion because they can't run out of it fast enough more often than not. And speaking of slow - I timed how long it takes to run from the stash chest in New Tristram to the Ferryman with zero run speed boosts. 22.3 seconds, using the most direct run path. That's just plain absurd.
I hate to tell you this, but slow moving is just aggravating (and in some cases where those large radius explosions are involved, deadly). Diablo games are such where players are meant to be or feel overpowered at some point. That's the allure of the genre. This isn't an MMO where it has to be balanced like World of Warcraft is (and even that game's runspeed sucks). Diablo 2 had zero issues with a lack of runspeed cap and the ability to roll FR/W on multiple items. None. Zilch. Zippo. Nada. And it made the players actually feel alive when moving around instead of like lethargic slugs. And MS is taken to the cap now even with how slow its cap still is. Why? Because being slow blows. It wouldn't matter if every other stat was made to be godlike relative to MS - if you're slow it isn't going to matter how hard you hit since you're taking forever to get around. I'd rather drive around in a fast Halo buggy than a slow lumbering tank. So too would most players.
The only class that can reach absurd levels is the Monk, and only with a specific build (Tempest Rush: Tailwind). I usually use Tempest Rush: Northern Breeze because it allows me to regenerate spirit (or at least maintain my current level) while running around. I lose the Tailwind speed boost, but it's still OK. But even that speed boost feels just a hair faster than D2's base run speed, so that should tell you quite a bit about how badly done D3's run speed values are.
And so what if a few builds can fly through places? TR Monks must kill monsters on the first or second (via tornadoes) hit otherwise they've accomplished nothing but knocking monsters out of the way while they run amok, so there's already balance in there for that. Everybody else has to stop and shoot/attack in order to hit monsters outside of WW Barbarians. Having some nice run speed makes playing feel less like tedium and more like...action.
Ultimately, there is no need to "balance" around runspeed since it was never an issue in previous Diablo games and it wouldn't be an issue now.
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It is actually an itemization issue because there are just too few affixes worth having right now. With more useful affixes overall, a player would still have to choose a balance since there are limits to the number of affix slots available. Now, this wasn't an issue in Diablo 2 because there were a fair number of useful affixes that synergized very well with the skills and abilities the classes had. That's what is lacking in Diablo 3's itemization. Fewer viable affixes = no real customization or choice, which is exactly what we have now.
The reason MS appears to be too powerful is precisely because it's just so pathetically slow in the first place. If the current cap were made the baseline, then the 25% cap would actually make sense. It would also allow for phasing out the Fleeting shrine, which was brought in precisely because base MS is just abysmal, and make it so the devs could create a new shrine in its place that has a different effect.
The reason Fleeting is so good is because it can bypass the cap, and being the most coveted shrine of all is a pretty good indication that the devs got the base MS values completely wrong. Even Diablo 2's base MS was faster than Diablo 3's is. It's definitely too slow.
Now, it doesn't need to be ultra insane like my TR Monk's 84% speed (with Fleeting active), but it sure as hell needs to be more than we have now. Making MS able to roll on any item isn't a bad thing. If the base movement speed is brought up to the current cap and the cap itself remains unchanged, then players wouldn't have to use X item and X item only for their MS affix and can more readily mix and match from whatever they find. It sucks unbelievably how I have to go with Lacuni or Inna's Temperance and sacrifice a ton of capability just for that movement speed increase right now. Why not allow MS to roll on say a rare helm where if I find it alongside some decent stats I'm no longer limited to the Lacuni where I give up a ton of DPS in the process. It shouldn't matter what item I get the MS from - I'm going to want it no matter what because faster = more fun, but at least with it (and other affixes) not being tied to specific Legendary items I'll have some choice of how I can proceed instead of being shoehorned into the same BiS item as every other player.
There is zero fun in running so slowly that I am constantly like "argh am I there YET?" And this isn't World of Warcraft - there's no real reason to limit the speed we run at if everything else is balanced decently.
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Actually, depending on what the desired build is, having more movement speed could open up that build to be more viable for the players. Ranged would especially benefit from more movement speed for hit and run/kite builds. Making us all slow as snails (see below) doesn't promote build diversity in the slightest. Opening up that aspect can.
So just because you think only the "rich" might have access to it (hint: that isn't the case with proper itemization as seen in Diablo 2) is a good reason to not have it? By that logic you would exclude 99% of what is in Diablo 3 today just on that one criteria. And it's a staw man argument on top of that.
That's a problem with itemiztion, not movement speed itself. The fact that MS is only available on boots inherently (and even only as a possibility there) and on certain legendaries after that is the real issue. Affixes should not have been made Legendary Exclusive. That's part of where the "X and only X is BiS" problem came from (the other part is the trifecta mechanic). Eliminate the affix-lockouts on rares and you kill off that part of the problem right then and there.
You're joking, right? Please tell me you're joking. Anything other than my TR Monk feels like they're trying to run through molasses. Even the "small" difference between 9% MS and 24% MS (my HC Demon Hunter vs. my SC Demon Hunter) feels ridiculously slow to the point I actually dislike playing the slower character. Even with how small the maps are vs. Diablo 2's maps, the base run speed is just god awful slow and you know it. And it's been near the top of complaints about the gameplay since launch, so obviously the players don't like feeling like a snail.
Adding a ton of caps doesn't make the player think more. It just makes it such that they're like "get to the cap and then...whatever." That's pretty much the problem World of Warcraft's secondary stats have right now. The difference there is that they use diminishing returns to make the problem more complex as well as that there are soft and hard caps for many stats based on differing scenarios (raid buffs like heroism/time warp vs. not having said raid buffs). Diablo 3 has no such counterpart for soft/hard caps.
The one that that really does need a cap though is CHD, since that is the sole reason MP levels have stupidly insane HP scaling for monsters (which also affects Reflects Damage's cap since that is based on the monster's current HP at any given time). Cap CHD and you've brought the game to a point where it can be balanced around build type, not just skyrocketing damage (which only certain builds can achieve, thus further limiting build diversity in itself).
As for the server de-sync issue, Blizzard appears to have solved that one for the most part. This is not the same as rubberbanding, which still is a major problem. I have a TR Monk that can sustain 59% MS and hit 84% during times when she's buffed with Fleeting and I don't de-sync with her like players used to at launch. The downside to playing that character is that when I go to any other character, I feel like I'm playing in slow motion again, which tells me that the MS limitations in Diablo 3 are just horrific.
Players should have the ability to choose whether or not they want to sacrifice that affix slot for more speed. Sadly all your solution does is limit what affixes do and make them all equally unattractive. That's pretty much the opposite of where the developers need to go where more affixes are wanted than just the trifecta.
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That local-coop demographic is going to find out the hard way that copying saves and using them is more of a pain in the ass than it's worth. Only the primary local user (i.e. the logged in user as you cannot log two users in at once) will receive trophies, and on the PS3 you have to create a user on whoever's console you wish to do local co-op on in addition to activating that console as your secondary PSN conduit, thereby eating your only other device that you can activate your PSN account on. And if you go to more than one friend's house to play, you have to do the activate/deactivate thing constantly and unless you're logged in, you won't get trophies while your friend will.
It's all a really messy way to go about enticing players to play together. The only way to bypass that seems to be having a PlayStation Plus account, which isn't free and use their cloud system. It's a tactic that's sure to raise the ire of many PS3 gamers when they find out how frustrating it is to get local co-op going outside of multiple PS3s on a LAN.
As for "tweaking numbers", the console version appears to have not just tweaked items, but a fully functional "less is more" system where item rolls are more realistic, as well as a system where legendaries can apparently drop in any difficulty, scaling to that difficulty's level range if the Calamity pictures are any indication. That could be brought over to the PC version in a heartbeat and players would rejoice. If the system is sound enough, and it looks to be that way, the AH wouldn't be much of an issue on the PC version anymore since finding loot would be more along the lines of Diablo 2's loot model, which thrived without an AH (and still does to this day). Sure the AH could be an alternate way to gear up of the player chooses on the PC side, but it won't be mandatory as it is now if you want to do anything other than MP0/MP1.
There's literally no good reason to bring that console system over to the PC side since everything else in the game is the same except the AH and UI elements, and the UI elements have nothing to do with itemization so that's a moot point there. At this point things can really only go up for Diablo 3/PC.
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Sure the AH system is part of the mix, but in all seriousness, if itemization were changed to a more viable model, something the console versions apparently have mostly ready, if not already in the final stages of completion, then the AH wouldn't really be an issue for most players since "self found" would be something attainable for the most part without spending your entire life at the keyboard.
It seriously boggles the mind why if there is a known working iteration of itemization (which includes what appears to be legendaries that can drop in multiple difficulties giving players scaled versions and far more variety than they have today) that it can't be applied in any way to the PC version. They use the same skills. The same runes. The exact same stat allocation and modifier mechanics. So why do we have to wait until likely next year for this?
It seems that despite the changes to leadership that the PC dev team simply has no direction whatsoever that they're going in. It's either that or like the tin foil hat theorists are saying they're waiting on profits from the console versions first to milk the cow dry. I really hope it isn't the latter, but there's just no plausible explanation as to why the former is happening either.
I think a single word sums it all up best: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!
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As for modding itself, that can be prevented, but to do so would require all files to adhere to strict MD5 hashes and if they're off at all, the file would be invalidated and require a repair/reinstall. The thing of that is, it's very prone to the least bit of data corruption which can make life a misery for both troubleshooting and in general for legitimate players.
I'm personally for modding if it enhances the longevity of a game. And in Diablo 3's case, that would definitely be the case considering the current content level and how unrewarding the loot system is.
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I'm still kind of mad that Blizzard brought it back and made it Magic instead of Legendary. Not exactly sure what they were thinking on that one...
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Crafting simply opens up another avenue on top of your ability to find drops (limited though that is). The main problem is the gold cost. It's a bit out of whack unless you buy gold from the RMAH, which most soloers don't exactly relish doing.
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If those are considered URLs, you've got some seriously bad/lazy coding going on there...that shouldn't be causing false positives like that.
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Edit: Holy crap, this is the first post that's worked in two weeks. Yay.
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