DiabloFans

I will try to make it to as many of these as possible. If only I didn't have to work and go to school, I could focus solely on these podcasts

Definitely try to make it on as many as possible! Gotta represent!

Awesome cast, I loved the topics. I'm glad Force is also excited about Armor Dyes, I'm super pumped for them. Even more so that there could be special texture ones

I love listening to these! sure all the info they give are on this site before it was posted but its awesome to hear people ideas about the new info we have been given each week. Keep it up fellas!

Ok I'm still a little bit confused about item tiers. There's going to be 12 acts with 18 tiers. That works out to change looks roughly one or two times per act. But there's going to be more items per act, so there could be a leather cap, skull cap, and full helmet in the first act - but they will all look like the first tier of helmet armour, correct? How easy would it be for the developers to do slight modifications like recolouring the non dye parts and adding/removing parts to make it that much more interesting? They could bump it up to 18 totally different item tiers with another 18 looks that differ slightly throughout each act.

Not to be a buzzkill but I think it will be dull having the exact same helmet with different names dropping over and over throughout the act.

Edit: Ok it would be a little bit more work than I first considered but Blizzard is a massive company and it's peanuts for the extra diversity we would be getting.

I'm at 6 mins through the diablocast (paused while i'm typing this message) and scyberdragon just finished explaining his take on might be the phasing on how many tiers per difficulty. All I have to say is a big no no. I will be playing this game for a long time and if they put more tiers in normal and lesser in hell that will be a very big disappointment for me (for the first time) if blizz go that way. We don't know how long the game yet so I won't judge any further but I'm really opposed on your take scyber-d.

You got a cool and funny podcast there, way to go. Keep em coming.

I got 3 points in your podcast i want to point out:

(~20:38 min) The monk has "resource-free" attacks, it would be fair to say that every charactar has probably an ability to deal damage without draining your Mana or Fury. Cleave of the barbarian dont use fury, and its possible that the casters have spells too that dont use so much resources to be spamable endless with some regeneration or traits.
Personally, i think the resources of the classes should not "limit" your playstyle, it should indicate which attack is real heavy but drains your resource (that for cant be over and over again). Other, smaller attacks probably cant deplate your recource or take a long time to do so.

(~22:22 min) That struck me as odd. The kite scenario with the barbarian and the monk, you looked at the resources and said, the barbarian's resources will deplate. I dont think thats correct. He will probably take some damage while he is kited, fueling his fury or he has passive reggen or skills to use to gain fury. On the other side, the monk dosent "profit" in any way by taking damage or being kited forever.

(~33:00 min) You missed one point from the info form Bashiok about player collision, he said:

There's no player collision. You can't block others, only monsters can do that. (exception being in the arena against enemy players, of course)

Please do let us know if you have any other ideas though, we're always curious about potential griefing mechanics.

He should write "There's no player collision in PVE". Because in the next sentence he clarifys that in the arena, you can be blocked by zombiewall or the bulky barbarian. But you got your escape skills, so use them

I found your idea interesting of dealing damage to your teammates. It could work well if you have a group of friends and want an additional challenge. You should probably only take a fraction of the dmg, say 10-20% Frendly Fire. It should affect your gameplay but dont oneshot your barbarian if you got hit by a firebomb.
It should force the group to use the skills more realistically and i like the added difficulty, but then again, i see the griefing potential and the careful gameplay, thats not what Diablo gameplay is all about.

@critter - I think a big problem people are having with this concept is that they are thinking every player will be upgrading all of there gear to the next tier level at once and then keeping that until the next tier level is available. This just isn't the case in diablo because of the random attributes. Think of it more like:
Act 1 normal - tiers 1-3 are viable
Act 2 normal - tiers 2-4 are viable
Act 3 normal - tiers 3-5 are viable
Act 4 normal - tiers 4-7 are viable
Act 1 nightmare - tiers 4-8 are viable
Act 2 nightmare - tiers 5-9 are viable
Act 3 nightmare - tiers 5-10 are viable
Act 4 nightmare - tiers 6-12 are viable
Act 1 hell - tiers 7-13 are viable
Act 2 hell - tiers 8-14 are viable
Act 3 hell - tiers 9-16 are viable
Act 4 hell - tiers 10-18 are viable

Really, there's a good chance that 3-10 different tiers types might be useable based on the random stats attributed to them. As mentioned in the cast, I used a nightmare act 1 weapon all the way through act v he'll because of the great stats on it. So it's very possible that gear will still flucuate a lot through the acts with different tiers.

@crusader - given the break down I gave is somewhat accurate, my point is that they need less new tiers available at end game because more overall tiers are possible by that point. If the first 7-8 tiers are available by normal, that gives you a good mix to start the game with. Also, given my breakdown, that still leaves approximately 8 tiers of gear you may find and equip through playing hell. Overall the progress just needs to be quicker at the beginning to keep you going. The same way the level progression is 1-30 on normal, 31-50 on nightmare, and 51-60 on hell. But there will still be more gear options at end game.

on the tier topic, i see things similar like ScyberDragon.
Blizzard would be stupid if they create 18 tiers of armor and only use the 18th tier for every endgame item. in that case, you would only see one awesome looking set over and over again.

I think the last 6-8 tiers of armor can have all endgame stats on them or are used for legendaries. so you have a nice mix, change some colors to match it overall or to look unique.

Quote from ScyberDragon

@critter - I think a big problem people are having with this concept is that they are thinking every player will be upgrading all of there gear to the next tier level at once and then keeping that until the next tier level is available. This just isn't the case in diablo because of the random attributes. Think of it more like:
Act 1 normal - tiers 1-3 are viable
Act 2 normal - tiers 2-4 are viable
Act 3 normal - tiers 3-5 are viable
Act 4 normal - tiers 4-7 are viable
Act 1 nightmare - tiers 4-8 are viable
Act 2 nightmare - tiers 5-9 are viable
Act 3 nightmare - tiers 5-10 are viable
Act 4 nightmare - tiers 6-12 are viable
Act 1 hell - tiers 7-13 are viable
Act 2 hell - tiers 8-14 are viable
Act 3 hell - tiers 9-16 are viable
Act 4 hell - tiers 10-18 are viable

Really, there's a good chance that 3-10 different tiers types might be useable based on the random stats attributed to them. As mentioned in the cast, I used a nightmare act 1 weapon all the way through act v he'll because of the great stats on it. So it's very possible that gear will still flucuate a lot through the acts with different tiers.

@crusader - given the break down I gave is somewhat accurate, my point is that they need less new tiers available at end game because more overall tiers are possible by that point. If the first 7-8 tiers are available by normal, that gives you a good mix to start the game with. Also, given my breakdown, that still leaves approximately 8 tiers of gear you may find and equip through playing hell. Overall the progress just needs to be quicker at the beginning to keep you going. The same way the level progression is 1-30 on normal, 31-50 on nightmare, and 51-60 on hell. But there will still be more gear options at end game.

One of the reason why I'm opposed to lesser tiers on hell is because it will kinda be like WoW where you're basically have limited gears "visually" at end game. Like I mentioned we don't know yet how big the game is and how long normal will take to finish (not to mention they haven't announced any end game info yet) in one play through so if normal takes 40 hours to finish then yeah maybe more tiers on normal is reasonable. I also want to make sure that I'm not confusing the tiers with stats (don't want peeps to think I'm new to the game). It's mainly on looks/visual.

You guys mentioned (sixen i think) that there's a possibility Legendary has its own visual. Just curious where you guys get the info from, blue post, interview, tweet? In d2 unique has different icons so I'm excited on this if it's confirmed for d3.

Quote from ScyberDragon

@critter - I think a big problem people are having with this concept is that they are thinking every player will be upgrading all of there gear to the next tier level at once and then keeping that until the next tier level is available. This just isn't the case in diablo because of the random attributes. Think of it more like:
Act 1 normal - tiers 1-3 are viable
Act 2 normal - tiers 2-4 are viable
Act 3 normal - tiers 3-5 are viable
Act 4 normal - tiers 4-7 are viable
Act 1 nightmare - tiers 4-8 are viable
Act 2 nightmare - tiers 5-9 are viable
Act 3 nightmare - tiers 5-10 are viable
Act 4 nightmare - tiers 6-12 are viable
Act 1 hell - tiers 7-13 are viable
Act 2 hell - tiers 8-14 are viable
Act 3 hell - tiers 9-16 are viable
Act 4 hell - tiers 10-18 are viable

Really, there's a good chance that 3-10 different tiers types might be useable based on the random stats attributed to them. As mentioned in the cast, I used a nightmare act 1 weapon all the way through act v he'll because of the great stats on it. So it's very possible that gear will still flucuate a lot through the acts with different tiers.

I agree it will be more diverse in later acts where you have older items dropping for you but the point I'm trying to get across isn't about what's viable, it's just flavour. I know I'm being nitpicky but on the chance that I have a good chain mail and a good breastplate in act 3 I will be pissed to change them over and see no difference on my character. It will still fluctuate a lot with normal play as you said because you'll hang on to gear but I had a lot of fun trying on every new item the first few play throughs of D2 trying to see all the different looks - and it was only minor changes. It was a great step up from D1. Every new item was a guaranteed new look, even sometimes on the same item type but coloured differently. They've made another step up with D3 with radically changing armour, changing looks through the difficulties and the unique looks for legendary items (love this feature a lot) but IMO they should have completed the picture by making every item have some small change.

Wait did I just heard in the cast that we won't be able to use our companions in Nightmare and Hell?!?

Quote from Daemaro

Quote from DeathsAngel

Wait did I just heard in the cast that we won't be able to use our companions in Nightmare and Hell?!?

Yes it was talked about here.

You can still USE them but they'll get less and less useful.

Thank you very much!

I'm quite sad that they won't have much utility in Nightmare or Hell difficulties... I thought it would have been great for solo thing.

Very well done guys I love listening, very insightful!




Thanks

The advertisement for Buffalo Wild wing... that white dog sure look like albino Diablo!