Jay has posted on the official forums apologizing for a comment posted on facebook a few days ago. However some interesting thoughts behind where Diablo III is and where it is going can be found in this post. Three interesting parts are highlighted below, but you should read the full thing for yourself to get the most information out of it!
- "The Auction House can short circuit the natural pace of item drops, making the game feel less rewarding for some players. This is a problem we recognize. At this point we're not sure of the exact way to fix it, but we’re discussing it constantly, and we believe it's a problem we can overcome."
- " Later in the development of Diablo II, the 'players 8' command -- which let people set monster difficulty -- was added to address this issue, and we're considering something similar for the next major Diablo III patch to allow players to make up their own minds about how hard or how easy is right for them."
- [Regarding end-game and the item hunt] "I don't think there’s a silver-bullet solution to this problem, but I do think we can make this aspect of the game better, and as such we're planning more than just PvP for the next major patch."
Originally Posted by Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
(As many of you probably know, I recently made a comment on Facebook about Dave Brevik. I want to make it clear that I am very sorry for what I said. I have higher expectations for myself than to express my feelings in such a rash way and disrespect a fellow developer like Dave, someone who deserves to be treated with greater respect.
What I said was expressed out of anger, and in defense of my team and the game. People can say what they want about me, but I don't take lightly when they disparage the commitment and passion of the Diablo III team. Dave is awesome. In Diablo and Diablo II, he made two of the games that have most affected me as a developer. I respect his vision for Diablo, but just like he said in his interview, the Diablo III team must drive a vision for the game that is true to us. We believe in Diablo and have stuck by it through years of hard development to make it a reality.
The foundation of the Diablo team was built from the remnants of Blizzard North: Our lead programmer, who built the basis of the Diablo III engine while at Blizzard North; our lead tech artist, who drove much of the combat visuals, FX, and skill direction of our classes and is one of the most avid Diablo II players you can find; our lead concept artist, who helped establish the core look of the game; Wyatt Cheng, our senior technical game designer, who writes many of our blogs and works tirelessly on the live game. All these people and many others made the commitment to Diablo even after Blizzard North shut down. It was hard for me to see their contributions be diminished by someone they worked alongside, and even harder for me not to try to jump to their defense. I only wish I'd done so in a more professional manner.
Joining the Diablo team was a dream come true for me. In my house, the name Diablo was always spoken in hushed tones. It meant late nights that turned into early mornings, moments of pure adrenaline and pure joy. It meant countless conversations, debates, scouring websites for good builds, and more than one or two sick days. When Diablo II was released, I took a week off work and sent my wife out of state... and she was pregnant at the time! I played Diablo II with my dad during one of the most difficult times of his life, and the experience brought me closer to him, and I hope helped him through it. I joined the Diablo team because the idea of a world without more Diablo seemed like a pretty crappy world to me. I wasn't sure if I'd be good enough. I'm still not sure. But I felt I had to try.
Regardless of how I've done, my team has been more than good enough, and I'm proud of the game we made together. We believe it's a great game. But Diablo III has flaws. It is not perfect. Sales mean nothing if the game doesn’t live on in all of our hearts, and standing by our games is what Blizzard does. Patch 1.0.4 is a step in the right direction, but we have no illusions that our work is done.
Playing Diablo III needs to be a rewarding experience. The new legendaries are a big step in the right direction, as are tweaks to item drop rates. But I'm not convinced that we've gone far enough. If you don't have that great feeling of a good drop being right around the corner -- and the burst of excitement when it finally arrives -- then we haven't done our jobs right. Out of our concern to make sure that Diablo III would have longevity, we were overly cautious about how we handled item drops and affixes. If 1.0.4 hasn’t fixed that, you can be sure we'll continue to address it.
Part of the problem, however, is not just item drops, but the variety of things to do within the game. Many of you have stated that there needs to be more to the game than just the item hunt, and we agree completely. The Paragon system is a step in the right direction, giving meta-progress for your time in the game, but it does little to address the variety of activities you can do while playing. I don't think there’s a silver-bullet solution to this problem, but I do think we can make this aspect of the game better, and as such we're planning more than just PvP for the next major patch. Not trying to be coy, but we're still firming things up and will talk about this as soon as we can.
Difficulty has been a constant source of division when discussing the game. Some players believe Diablo has never been about crushing challenges, but more about efficiency and farming. Some players want a game that tests them to their limits. Neither player is wrong. As it stands, Diablo III simply does not provide the tools to allow players to scale the game challenge to something appropriate for them. We set Inferno as the high watermark and took a one-size-fits-all approach to game challenge. Later in the development of Diablo II, the 'players 8' command -- which let people set monster difficulty -- was added to address this issue, and we're considering something similar for the next major Diablo III patch to allow players to make up their own minds about how hard or how easy is right for them.
The Auction House has also proven to be a big challenge. It adds a lot of power for players to trade and acquire items. Getting a great Monk drop that you can trade for better gear for your Wizard is obviously a great benefit, but it does come with a downside. The Auction House can short circuit the natural pace of item drops, making the game feel less rewarding for some players. This is a problem we recognize. At this point we're not sure of the exact way to fix it, but we’re discussing it constantly, and we believe it's a problem we can overcome.
While these are some of the major issues with Diablo III, they aren't the only things we're looking at. On a daily basis we ask ourselves if the classes are satisfying to play, if rares and champions are fun to fight, if they’re tuned well relative to normal monsters. Can we make further improvements to social elements of the game? How can items be even better?
We made Diablo III because we believe in the Diablo games. We think the gameplay is awesome, the world is compelling, and it's the game we all wanted to play. Because we believe in it, we'll continue to stand by it and make it better. We are committed to making Diablo III the best Diablo game to date, and we hope you'll continue to help us do just that.
Saying that, I'd like to apologize to all of you, the players in our community. You deserve better than my reaction to Dave's comments. You deserve more honest communication about the game and what we're doing to make it a more awesome experience for us all. We care about Diablo very much, and appreciate your passion for it. Without you, we wouldn't be able to do this, and for that I can't thank you enough.
What I said was expressed out of anger, and in defense of my team and the game. People can say what they want about me, but I don't take lightly when they disparage the commitment and passion of the Diablo III team. Dave is awesome. In Diablo and Diablo II, he made two of the games that have most affected me as a developer. I respect his vision for Diablo, but just like he said in his interview, the Diablo III team must drive a vision for the game that is true to us. We believe in Diablo and have stuck by it through years of hard development to make it a reality.
The foundation of the Diablo team was built from the remnants of Blizzard North: Our lead programmer, who built the basis of the Diablo III engine while at Blizzard North; our lead tech artist, who drove much of the combat visuals, FX, and skill direction of our classes and is one of the most avid Diablo II players you can find; our lead concept artist, who helped establish the core look of the game; Wyatt Cheng, our senior technical game designer, who writes many of our blogs and works tirelessly on the live game. All these people and many others made the commitment to Diablo even after Blizzard North shut down. It was hard for me to see their contributions be diminished by someone they worked alongside, and even harder for me not to try to jump to their defense. I only wish I'd done so in a more professional manner.
Joining the Diablo team was a dream come true for me. In my house, the name Diablo was always spoken in hushed tones. It meant late nights that turned into early mornings, moments of pure adrenaline and pure joy. It meant countless conversations, debates, scouring websites for good builds, and more than one or two sick days. When Diablo II was released, I took a week off work and sent my wife out of state... and she was pregnant at the time! I played Diablo II with my dad during one of the most difficult times of his life, and the experience brought me closer to him, and I hope helped him through it. I joined the Diablo team because the idea of a world without more Diablo seemed like a pretty crappy world to me. I wasn't sure if I'd be good enough. I'm still not sure. But I felt I had to try.
Regardless of how I've done, my team has been more than good enough, and I'm proud of the game we made together. We believe it's a great game. But Diablo III has flaws. It is not perfect. Sales mean nothing if the game doesn’t live on in all of our hearts, and standing by our games is what Blizzard does. Patch 1.0.4 is a step in the right direction, but we have no illusions that our work is done.
Playing Diablo III needs to be a rewarding experience. The new legendaries are a big step in the right direction, as are tweaks to item drop rates. But I'm not convinced that we've gone far enough. If you don't have that great feeling of a good drop being right around the corner -- and the burst of excitement when it finally arrives -- then we haven't done our jobs right. Out of our concern to make sure that Diablo III would have longevity, we were overly cautious about how we handled item drops and affixes. If 1.0.4 hasn’t fixed that, you can be sure we'll continue to address it.
Part of the problem, however, is not just item drops, but the variety of things to do within the game. Many of you have stated that there needs to be more to the game than just the item hunt, and we agree completely. The Paragon system is a step in the right direction, giving meta-progress for your time in the game, but it does little to address the variety of activities you can do while playing. I don't think there’s a silver-bullet solution to this problem, but I do think we can make this aspect of the game better, and as such we're planning more than just PvP for the next major patch. Not trying to be coy, but we're still firming things up and will talk about this as soon as we can.
Difficulty has been a constant source of division when discussing the game. Some players believe Diablo has never been about crushing challenges, but more about efficiency and farming. Some players want a game that tests them to their limits. Neither player is wrong. As it stands, Diablo III simply does not provide the tools to allow players to scale the game challenge to something appropriate for them. We set Inferno as the high watermark and took a one-size-fits-all approach to game challenge. Later in the development of Diablo II, the 'players 8' command -- which let people set monster difficulty -- was added to address this issue, and we're considering something similar for the next major Diablo III patch to allow players to make up their own minds about how hard or how easy is right for them.
The Auction House has also proven to be a big challenge. It adds a lot of power for players to trade and acquire items. Getting a great Monk drop that you can trade for better gear for your Wizard is obviously a great benefit, but it does come with a downside. The Auction House can short circuit the natural pace of item drops, making the game feel less rewarding for some players. This is a problem we recognize. At this point we're not sure of the exact way to fix it, but we’re discussing it constantly, and we believe it's a problem we can overcome.
While these are some of the major issues with Diablo III, they aren't the only things we're looking at. On a daily basis we ask ourselves if the classes are satisfying to play, if rares and champions are fun to fight, if they’re tuned well relative to normal monsters. Can we make further improvements to social elements of the game? How can items be even better?
We made Diablo III because we believe in the Diablo games. We think the gameplay is awesome, the world is compelling, and it's the game we all wanted to play. Because we believe in it, we'll continue to stand by it and make it better. We are committed to making Diablo III the best Diablo game to date, and we hope you'll continue to help us do just that.
Saying that, I'd like to apologize to all of you, the players in our community. You deserve better than my reaction to Dave's comments. You deserve more honest communication about the game and what we're doing to make it a more awesome experience for us all. We care about Diablo very much, and appreciate your passion for it. Without you, we wouldn't be able to do this, and for that I can't thank you enough.
Anyone remember this famous quote from "Dazed and Confused" (referenced by Brian in Family Guy one time, if you're not from my generation):
"That's what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age."
I wish I could say that I get older, and gamers stay the same age.
Every year that goes by, the gaming community as a whole gets more immature, more hostile, more sexist, more racist, more nerdraging, more foaming-at-the-mouth-tantrum-throwing insane.
And while all this happens.. every survey indicates that the average (biological) age is increasing, even as the mental age decreases, and the emotional age plummets.
It's enough to push you into playing single-player games exclusively.
That said, I must say I am intrigued by the things coming in the next few months. If the team keeps working hard and stays on the right course, we just might get an awesome product and a worthy Diablo sequel by the end of this year. Yay.
His arrogance is beyond measure.
And now, the paragon system is not even their idea, Kripp was the one who came up with it and thank god they listened to him because now I have a purpose to play instead of farming for hours finding nothing and then have nothing to show for it felt like a big waste of time so I stopped playing because of that. Kudos for listening to the players on that one.
Having an AH for this game was such a bad idea imo, it ruins the game and it seems like they realise that too now, but can't come up with a solution to fix it yet. To me only solution is to remove the AH, players are spending more time on it than actually playing the game.
New things for end game are required, we need an endless dungeon with a ladder for competition.
Also wouldn't mind another type of dungeon or temple filed with corrupt versions of the character classes. You're not the only barb or wizard etc in the world of sanctuary, why not have a dungeon with waves of different classes that have random skill combinations similar to the shadow clones that we have to kill because they've been corrupted or something. That would provide a new, unique enemy type, I think that would be an interesting, new challenge. They can also get even more creative with this down the track and add classes from D2. Would love to go against a pack of Paladins, Amazons etc each with a diff type of build we all used back in D2. Example you come across a pack of Paladins, one is a hammerdin, the other a zealadin, the other uses a shield with Smite.
I hate that stupid pony level it sucks and makes my eyeballs bleed, I just can't play in it.
It's not idiocy, it's a expectation, a reasonable one at that. He can speak out against the interview in a more reasonable way. People are critizsed every day on a much larger scale on television. Do you hear Obama or any other presidents saying, "Fuck, those losers" ? -- well aside from Bush and the blacks in New Orleans.
Adults tell other adults to F off all the time - hell I do it at work too but in more polite terms usually. It's irrelevant if you think Jay is nice or ought to be nice, etc. Doesn't matter - he's not paid to be a nice guy, he's paid to do a job and he's human so when you mix stress with tight deadlines and constant feedback from external sources, it can result in minor transgressions.
Personally I don't care if these guys take out full page ads in the NY Times telling eachother to F*!$ themselves and email eachother's mothers links to lemonparty as long as they don't lose sight of the big picture. Everything else is just blowing off steam.
A broad statement... what exactly is broken?
Near the end of D3 dev, they were saying a lot of wrong things (based on what I wanted D3) but now they are backtracking on almost all of those decisions. I see great things for D3 in the future (it's already amazing in 1.0.4 imo).
Do I care about Jay? No.
Do I care about Dave? No.
Do I care how these adults are acting poorly and enforce the retardation of human interaction of a public website? No.
Do I care about Diablo 3? Yes.
Does this news change anything? No. (no new ideas and all issues are already known)
Does defending Dave or Jay bring any meaningful conversation or actually affect the game your playing? No.
If Dave punched a baby in the face would it make D2 shitty? No.
+1 for the use of a Dazed and Confused quote.
And yeah, I feel like an old man, shouting at these whack chilluns to get off meh damn digital lawn!
No, Audio, it's not just you. You post summed up my feelings on this controversy exactly. I get "Sikk" and tired of reading darkhorz's ass anonymous and vitriolic spewage toward a person apologizing for a comment far less obnoxious than their own. They may be chronologically adult, but they give no indication that that they have mentally left adolescence.
Except you couldn't be more wrong. The average age of video game players is now 30.
http://www.theesa.com/facts/index.asp
oh shut up.. while what brevik said sounded professional, it was a HUGE insult to the entire team.
jays response was no doubt unprofessional.. but heres an idea, you go put your heart and soul into something that means the world to you for 4 years, then when it's not doing so hot some other guy basically says your team is incompetent and didn't have a chance because all the talent left..
see how you react.
god people are retarded.
what he said was unprofessional, but was human, and he apologized as he should have.
water under the bridge, grow up.
the more you say fuck the more intelligent your argument sounds.