Looking at the other stuff, it looks like they are removing the stack dependency, so as long as SW is active, you get a flat 50% DR.
- P4_ItemPassive_Unique_Ring_044 Your damage taken is reduced by [{VALUE1}*100]%
for each stack ofwhile Sweeping Windyou haveis active.
0
Minor balance changes to existing items/skills, one new item per class, and maybe some small QOL (GR keys as a currency by bloodshards or something of the like)
0
There is PVP, it's just underwhelming. That forum exists for people to try to work within the current system (or imagine a better system if they so desire).
PVP in D2 (from what I remember) often had rules about items and such to try and get around balance issues, and D3 PVP basically needs that to function in brawling mode.
For instance, how bad is it if you allow players to only use blue items, the cube, no lgems/paragon? There will still be balance issues, but that takes out a large chunk of the multipliers that make it a one-shot fest, and doesn't require any work from Blizzard at all.
Anything more involved than Brawling is going to take away from PVE content development, and it will never be properly balanced, as you said, so why invest the resources. I actually had an interesting time when it was first introduced by only allowing a white weapon and no other gear. Then it comes down to skill selection and execution.
2
The reason for this is that when I play multiple classes and switch between them, GR keys often get forgotten on another character. I know that the work around is to keep them in the stash, but it's an unnecessary extra step to have to stash GR keys after each regular rift, since being a tangible item no longer serves any real purpose.
Making them an account wide currency just makes good design sense at this point.
0
The major fail with how things were in ROS at the beginning was that they weren't random drops (akin to runes from D2) but came from specific super uniques, meaning you had to go farm them specifically, constantly recreating the game, which everyone seems to agree is subpar.
If they merely added those materials back into the general loot table and had varying rarities, they could totally make it work and then make the crafted legendary better.
For the character pack, I see them using it as a way to test the waters. Games are moving the way of having optional content (characters, cosmetics, skins, etc) that can be purchased, and then other gameplay impacting changes, like a new game mode or such, is released to all players. If the necro pack is successful, I could see them doing another one, and implementing another activity (like tower defense or something) to release to all ROS players.
0
The order system just makes no sense, as it was introduced at the same time as the bounty mats, which was the point at which you no longer could skip crappy acts anyway. It never made sense to me that they wanted to force you to do them in some order after that.
All it does now is mean when I need RoRG or Avarice or something, I end up with a ton of extra mats, since I can't just do the other acts, because A1 is the in the middle of the damn bonus cycle, so I either do it anyway or I only do 1 act when it's the bonus act, skipping the hour that a1 is the start of the cycle, which heavily dictates what I and when.
Seems wholly unnecessary to me. If they want to encourage doing all of the acts anyway, it needs a different reward that isn't tied to bounty mats and cache legendaries.
0
That's a legit concern.
I think, and this is certainly just opinion, that the gaming industry as a whole is just evolving past that traditional model, and Blizz is trying to keep up. With that in mind, I'm just not sure that the portion of the player base who would prefer the old expansion model are large enough to justify Blizz keeping it in leiu of models that appear to be "the future".
It's certainly a tough call for those players to decide between gambling that the character pack will lead to additional "free" content patches (that change/introduce systems and such), and if so, whether it will be worth the wait.
I've only accepted it because I've been looking at the landscape (this type of thing interests me as a former developer and current infrastructure engineer). Most PC games are going to either free to play or a lower up front cost with some sort of optional cost that facilitates continued development. The crucible DLC for Grim Dawn is a good example, as they added a new game mode for like 5 bucks, but it's completely optional. I'm sure that someone who's good with statistical data and has that data at Blizz has crunched the numbers and determined that moving forward, Diablo (not just D3) won't be able to compete with the base game + expansions model. I basically just understand that this is the model that the market is demanding, so I can't really blame Blzzard for that (though I blame them for some of the things I dislike about the game in general).
I guess I'm holding out hope that if the character pack sells well enough, we'll see a renewed interest in D3 from the money bags at Blzz, and that it will lead to better free content patches that accompany the DLCs, like how 2.0 changed a lot of things even for those who did not purchase ROS. It's certainly possible that I'm being overly optimistic though, and I can understand you skepticism.
0
If they can prove they have a solid model for future money (DLC), Blizz will invest money in it. Since the AH closed, they haven't had that, so Blizz hasn't been as willing to front the money so to speak, to continue development. When it comes to fronting money, blizz is going to look at ROI. They will, however, reinvest money made by an IP into that IP if it will help them keep market share in the ARPG space.
Some of that hypothetical money is cost recoup for the work invested in producing the content. The time for art, animation, etc. Some of that will go into money swimming pools of some execs beach house, and some will get reinvested into games. I'm sure that they allocate some amount of money to the project that made the money, but I can't say how much. Blizzard as a company has just realized that the old model of Title, Expansion, Expansion, is mostly gone. Without true content delivered between those major releases, players get bored and move on. The gaming market is just super saturated. This (and the micro transaction set up in China) is blizzard seeing what model works best for an ARPG.
Finally, while tuning skills and coefficients isn't content (and my logic never followed there at all), creating art, animations, etc for an additional class or a new zone/tileset is. The playerbase has been asking for a Necro for forever, so it makes the most sense to add it as a class first, if the idea is to prove to execs that Diablo can make them money. Just because it's a class from D2 doesn't change the the design process (it may even make it harder, since they have to compare to existing expectations) , they still have to do all of the work building character models, animating skills. That is content.
Again, if you don't want to buy the character pack, that's fine. I'll buy it because I actually suspect it'll be rather cheap (like sub $20) and it'll entertain me. I think that including consoles with D3 and removing the AH ended up being too much for the team. They lost their revenue stream (which increases their chances of getting stuff from management) and added a road block that makes patching more difficult (they have to submit things to PSN like 3 weeks before a patch launch, and have a second, slightly different environment to consider with every change)
That's why I think they will try to extend D3s life with character packs etc until they are close to releasing whatever the announced project is.
1
That's precisely the misconception I was talking about. Blizz is a much bigger company, with a lot of games that are not as niche as the ARPG has become. So the pressure from above the dev team was to make an ARPG-like game, but make it more approachable, and thus less complex.
And while Blizz as company makes a lot of money, the ROI from a game like Diablo, even if they decide to monetize it via DLC or microtransactions or whatever, isn't as good as the ROI from something like Overwatch, so it isn't going to get the same investment. ALL of GGG's money and development goes into Path of Exile. It's the only thing they do. So every bit of profit is reinvested, the company was founded specifically to make the RPG that those devs wanted, and there isn't any red tape when they want to make a change. It's a completely different model.
What I'm saying is that it's not that it isn't Blizzard's fault for micromanaging their dev teams the way they do (and more so with Activision in the mix), I'm saying it isn't Wyatt or the rest of the teams fault. What they are trying to do, is find a way to remonetize the game, so that they can have the resources they need to actually work at a pace closer to what people expect.
AND YOU ARE GETTING CONTENT. I don't know why you would hyperbole to "no content at all". They are adding a class (for some undisclosed price) and they are adding a game mode that renders paragon moot. It may not be exactly what you want, but it is, by definition, content.
Is it coming slower than it could, yes.
Does it suck that as a result of all of those things, D3 is on a slow train compared to other games, absolutely.
It's mostly about reminding everyone that the devs themselves (and CMs) are caught in a no-win situation, not Blizz.
3
That is why seasons exist. No one who buys the game today should reasonably expect to compete with players who have been playing 1000s of hours since launch in non-season, it's just not realistic. At least not to truly compete. That would be true without so many endless systems, since min-maxing items in other ARPGs is usually a long process that would yield dedicated players a numbers advantage (albeit smaller than with paragon and etc).
That's not to say that some of the design decisions and systems aren't flawed, just that they aren't the reason a new player can't compete in non-season. Without playing a TON and working really hard.
They absolutely are in a no-win situation, because they don't make the final decisions. The develop within constraints given to them by people who care about money, and many of the fan base don't understand the fundamental difference between working for Blizzard and working for Crate or GGG.
With small studios with a single title, there is a lot less bureaucracy involved in decisions. The team makes a decision, and they go with it. They only answer to stake holders who funded the game, which agreed to a specific business model and plan when they signed up. Blizzard and Activision dictate whether something jivs with them or not. They push for approachable as a core design philosophy because that sells more games.
D3 is also multi-platform (both with OS on PC and because of consoles) as well as mutlinational, so every single interface change requires updating for all of that and making sure things are worded for all supported languages. All of this combined means that things move much much slower for these guys and it's out of their control.
It's similar with communication. They have to clear it with a bunch of people to just tell the playerbase anything.
The Necro pack is an experiment in trying to monetize the game, which will be needed to get more resources to develop more content. If players want to show support for the game, buying it is going to be the best bet.
None of this is to say they shouldn't do better, it's just that in order for things to get better, players have to understand the reality of the game. If the devs start trying to communicate more (dev blogs, AMAs on reddit, whatever) and the playerbase reacts negatively to it because it's not exactly what they wanted or they aren't giving specific answers (because they have to be careful of what they disclose), they are just going to not do that anymore because it's not beneficial to them.
If we want to help give them a win scenario, we as a playerbase have to meet them halfway. We can be critical of them, but it has to be with some level of tact.
0
Personally. I'd take it if they just removed the whole bonus act thing and let me do then however I want. I still need to do them all eventually, but after I do a bunch of act 1 bounties for a Rorg or sang bracers, I'd like to not have to do that one when I do bounties for a while because it's the second bonus act
2
Wyatt said at some point during Blizzcon that they had tested (and decided to scrap) a legendary power that would allow you to reconstitute a legendary from the power extracted in the cube. This could just be that the strings and such are still hanging around and the datamine found something that we may never see.
0
I'm honestly really sad about they way they are handling the D1 event.
It was an opportunity to add in something different, and could have even added a new system (like maybe jewels or something) to it, to create another activity, and instead it's simply a time limited, once a year event.
I think it is a really cool concept, and I'm not really all that upset that they spent the time to develop it, but I am pretty upset that it's only going to be for January, and that it took time that could have been used to have the armory/crafting UI ready now, as those are both needed badly.
1
What they just did was showed us how they are going to generate ongoing revenue.
Many of the current systems in the game, including the major ones associated with ROS were all launched as a content patch. Most of the large changes associated with ROS came with 2.0 before hand, as a pre-expansion patch. There is no reason to think that overhauls of some things that both you won't get addressed in some future patch. This pretty much just tells us they are no longer going for the "one large" purchase method, and are opting to have us pay for some things (a new class) to fund ongoing development.
I'd give it some time before you doom and gloom completely.
0
Functionally, the WD in D3 and the Necro in D2 are very similar, but that doesn't mean that introducing a necro into D3 would use the same design template.
Just having summons wouldn't automatically make them too similar, it would depend on how those summons function, how the Necro interacts with them (WD nearly doesn't interact with them minus Carnevil spec), and what other things the Necro does. Depending on how creative they are, they can make a Necro that still brings nostalgia while not overlapping too much with the WD. I mean, the Druid in D2 also had an entire summoning tree, and they still manage to fulfill a different fantasy from the Necro.
0
The combination of character progression and itemization. While I enjoy D3, I've always been a bit sad that they decided to place all of the character progression to items, specifically legendary and set powers.
In the OP, Bagstone talks about the viable builds in D3 and the diversity that actually exists in the game, despite most players thinking that only the Rank 1 build is viable. It's absolutely true, I mostly just dislike the manner in which that balance was achieved, and the way a player obtains that power, aka by using set items. It makes the progression extremely jagged, even when you aren't using the seasonal gift set. For me, it's that the journey is now missing something that I've always enjoyed in other RPGs, and that's getting gradual power from the character while also obtaining items that can enhance your build.
Slightly off topic, but as an example, if you took the 2 set bonus from might of the earth (decrease certain cooldowns for each X resource spent), you could have a system which allows you to choose to be able to lower the cooldown of those skills for some resource amount, and place points decrease the resource spent requirement or increase the cooldown reduction. This helps to create the same playstyle, but allows the player to start immediately investing in becoming a leapquake barb. That's just a simple example of a change that wouldn't impact the end result of the designed build, but would create a smoother progression curve and allow the player to choose their desired playstylefrom the start (or level 70 or whenever the system kicks in and starts accumulating XP).