Diablo 3 Discussion Thread

Intel_Hydralisk said:
Borderlands was fun but not really because of the loot. The loot system was also pretty shallow in that game to be honest. After beating the game, how many people farmed it continuously afterwards for the loot? I most certainly did not. This is also true of TQ and TL etc. They were a fun playthrough but that's it.
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:confused: What else was there to play Borderlands for? Slaughtering people was fun enough, but without the loot carrot...? It most certainly wasn't the story!

LeninGHOLA said:
Right, but you simply didn't need the best of the best in D2 outside of ladder and PVP. Honestly, I think capping D3 at 99 and making levelling more spread out would have helped the itemization issue. If not, adding alternate experience after 60 (like buying the abikity t improve skills in 5% increments).
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Completely agree about the leveling contributing to the itemization issue. However I also think it is expectations of Inferno. If it wasn't in the game at all, I don't think we'd hear half the complaining (or be complaining half as much myself, TBH). It was meant to be insanely hard and nearly impossible, not to be beaten by a week or month of farming your own gear. If you want to beat it more quickly, there is the AH. However it wasn't intended to faceroll through like D3 Normal - Hell, or all of D2. That's the problem however is that it seems most of the players don't feel that way. And as a dev I can see how that could be frustrating.

Interestingly enough, isn't there/wasn't there a thread about hard games that could never be made again in the current era? We see that with Inferno - it wasn't meant to be for everyone with their own gear. You can get through Hell without the best of the best, but because Inferno is there everyone feels that Blizzard OWES it to them to give them the gear to get through it. Not so.
 
Intel_Hydralisk said:
The complaints about 1-59 is mostly from some individuals in this forum. I don't have evidence about overall population, but I speculate that most people don't have an issue in that range with item drops. Everyone I know on my friends list (a lot of whom are new to Diablo type games) never had an issue with it. They all however did hit the inferno brick wall and stopped playing largely.

I don't think building sets in nightmare was what made D2 successful. Especially considering the vast majority of players elected to power level given the option. There's really only so many times you could stand to go through every act all over again... especially if it was because you misclicked a stat / skill.

Borderlands was fun but not really because of the loot. The loot system was also pretty shallow in that game to be honest. After beating the game, how many people farmed it continuously afterwards for the loot? I most certainly did not. This is also true of TQ and TL etc. They were a fun playthrough but that's it.

This is why I bring up the magnitude of these games. D3 has more lofty goals in mind. They don't want people to play through and just drop it - this wasn't what D2 was about either. Which brings up the whole concept of if D2 game concepts would really be ideal nowadays. What do we really want players to do after Diablo is dead? D3's answer was: Farm for months in Inferno. This was the wrong answer clearly. So what if we just bring it back to what D2 was? Grinding to 99 in different ladder seasons? Maybe... but I know I wouldn't do that.

If you were to balance the game solely based off of personal drops - what do you think is fair? You do realize Inferno is likely clearable with your own drops - it would probably just take several more months of farming. Clearly the population as a whole is not willing to do that. I wouldn't want to do that either. The way I played the game, I had no issues with the AH. I think the bitching is more psychological than anything else. It's certainly not about effectiveness since Inferno (now more than ever) is very clearable without the super expensive gear.
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Good items drops in D3 are fewer than D2, it's not even an opnion. People with item drop issues are commonplace. Yes, there is the AH. The AH is a wholly unsatisfying experience in an RPG. Yea, you earn the gold to buy the gear, but the feeling of getting a good drop is completely different that sending a good buy to your stash.

Building sets, getting uniques, and finding cool randoms (in Normal-Hell D2) was what kept people going. Yes, a couple years later, the people who had put in 1000s of hours would run through the game.

Yea, a good part of the fun of Borderlands was the random loot, shallow or not. Without it, it would have been Rage with a shittier story. People didn't continue to farm it because it was easily hackable and had no bnet style infrastructure. Same goes for TQ (TL had no co-op). TQ gear was actually well done, though.

Yes, much of the draw of replaying or making new builds in D2 was indeed ladders and PVP. People wouldn't still be playing it if it didn't have random loot. Simple.

No, I think the balance should have been 50/50 player drops/AH. If that fucks the economy, then they should have never implemented AH in the first place. Slowing down or expanding levelling would have helped this quite a bit, especially in the short run. In the long run, they release an expansion with LoD + style complexity and start the grind again.

Yes, Inferno can now be farmed with OK gear. But, once it is cleared, what's the point? To sell shit on RMAH for cash? Once again, fix levelling and gear tiers, add PVP and ladders, profit.
 
dremic said:
that gives a retarded edge to the people that have nothing to do all day, not to mention progression like that means progression in inferno which translates into cash via the rmah.

you didnt need the best of the best in d2 cause d2 wasnt hard; theres nothing hard about killing baal 50-100 times
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People who have nothing to do all day will always have the retarded edge.

I think you're actually agreeing with me here?
 
HardUp4HardWare said:
Hey guys, (and gals if there are any).

Can someone point me to a site/app or anything that will help me with builds?
I have a monk now and I don't know squat about d3 theorycrafting. But I don't think his DPS is where is ought to be.

I could search for it, but y'all probably know the best quickest coolest way to do this because you are all so amazingly cool and all...
Thanks!
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Checking out the Monk forum on b.net is always a good idea.

What level are you? I'm sure we can help you out with some builds. And what's your gear like? Are you rolling dual wield, 1-h and shield, or 2-hander?
 
TwistedAegis said:
Completely agree about the leveling contributing to the itemization issue. However I also think it is expectations of Inferno. If it wasn't in the game at all, I don't think we'd hear half the complaining (or be complaining half as much myself, TBH). It was meant to be insanely hard and nearly impossible, not to be beaten by a week or month of farming your own gear. If you want to beat it more quickly, there is the AH. However it wasn't intended to faceroll through like D3 Normal - Hell, or all of D2. That's the problem however is that it seems most of the players don't feel that way. And as a dev I can see how that could be frustrating.

Interestingly enough, isn't there/wasn't there a thread about hard games that could never be made again in the current era? We see that with Inferno - it wasn't meant to be for everyone with their own gear. You can get through Hell without the best of the best, but because Inferno is there everyone feels that Blizzard OWES it to them to give them the gear to get through it. Not so.
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I think there are a couple issues with it. One of which is it took longer to beat Hell/99 than Inferno/60. Difficulty notwithstanding, it is actually a shorter game to cap out on.

As far as removing inferno goes? No, they should have just beta tested it. They said nobody at Blizzard could beat it, which is just stupid as fuck. That means they couldn't even test it, and public beta was 1/3 of act 1... No other game company would get a free pass for that. You can't blame people for complaining about a poorly designed difficulty, then get butthurt and say you didn't have to release it at all.

I don't see a problem with needing to farm to beat Inferno, just adjust some of the affixes to keep the challenge and ramp up difficulty organically, rather than brick wall parts of it. Add corpse runs to Inferno and stop the corpse hopping.

I actually want it to be hard, but you need to add something to it to make proper "end game" in a non MMO. My idea of putting points into certain abilities to "level" them post level 60 would work well. Just don't make the increases too powerful then release a patch a month later nerfing the fuck out of everything and then revamp the game to punish botters and regular players alike ;)
 
Intel_Hydralisk said:
If you were to balance the game solely based off of personal drops - what do you think is fair? You do realize Inferno is likely clearable with your own drops - it would probably just take several more months of farming. Clearly the population as a whole is not willing to do that. I wouldn't want to do that either. The way I played the game, I had no issues with the AH. I think the bitching is more psychological than anything else. It's certainly not about effectiveness since Inferno (now more than ever) is very clearable without the super expensive gear.
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Yeah, that's pretty much it. Blizzard intended Inferno to be a post-game, gear-based progression tier, hence the min requirement of level 60. It was for people who dominated Hell to get even more challenge at a slow and steady pace. Obviously, this intention fell apart as most people simply saw it as another difficulty level that's been so overtuned that you're "forced" to use the AH to make "progress."

In D2, you could farm the last boss on Hell difficulty over and over to make an already easy game even easier. The feeling of D3, where you're farming in a "low level" area just to make it to the end can hurt a lot of egos out there.
 
I'm sure anyone can be the best <insert class here> in the world if you have 10,000 people give you all their gold.
 
Yoshiyuki Blade said:
Yeah, that's pretty much it. Blizzard intended Inferno to be a post-game, gear-based progression tier, hence the min requirement of level 60. It was for people who dominated Hell to get even more challenge at a slow and steady pace. Obviously, this intention fell apart as most people simply saw it as another difficulty level that's been so overtuned that you're "forced" to use the AH to make "progress."

In D2, you could farm the last boss on Hell difficulty over and over to make an already easy game even easier. The feeling of D3, where you're farming in a "low level" area just to make it to the end can hurt a lot of egos out there.
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You're also missing that getting loot drops in a random loot game is absolutely psychological. Just like gambling. Gambling is addictive and provides thrill to those addicted. Sure, you can Vulcan/Aspergers and say that element doesn't matter, but you'd be missing the fact that to most people who enjoy gambling, it is the only thing that matters. Why do you think people wasted hundreds of hours actually gambling in D2? The dev crew for that game understood exactly what it meant.

It isn't ego, it's addiction withdrawals from not getting their (our) fix. If you try to apply logic you learned from playing WoW to D3, you're really missing the point entirely.
 
I must be one of the few that enjoys where inferno is/was. I don't mind grinding to get gear, and I don't feel entitled to be able to beat the game right away. I would rather grind towards a goal like beating inferno as opposed to 'let's fund my next character' which is all I ever did in D2.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
You're also missing that getting loot drops in a random loot game is absolutely psychological. Just like gambling. Gambling is addictive and provides thrill to those addicted. Sure, you can Vulcan/Aspergers and say that element doesn't matter, but you'd be missing the fact that to most people who enjoy gambling, it is the only thing that matters. Why do you think people wasted hundreds of hours actually gambling in D2? The dev crew for that game understood exactly what it meant.

It isn't ego, it's addiction withdrawals from not getting their (our) fix. If you try to apply logic you learned from playing WoW to D3, you're really missing the point entirely.
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WoW is psychological too but i get what you mean theyre totally different diablo 3 is more gambling. although wow the rolls from the loot tables on bosses totally is thrilling and that feeling of getting an item is psychological too.. fucking video games man.. they hold so much power its scary hahahah
 
LeninGHOLA said:
You're also missing that getting loot drops in a random loot game is absolutely psychological. Just like gambling. Gambling is addictive and provides thrill to those addicted. Sure, you can Vulcan/Aspergers and say that element doesn't matter, but you'd be missing the fact that to most people who enjoy gambling, it is the only thing that matters. Why do you think people wasted hundreds of hours actually gambling in D2? The dev crew for that game understood exactly what it meant.

It isn't ego, it's addiction withdrawals from not getting their (our) fix. If you try to apply logic you learned from playing WoW to D3, you're really missing the point entirely.
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Gambling is in D3 though. They just renamed it Crafting.

IcedEmotion said:
I must be one of the few that enjoys where inferno is/was. I don't mind grinding to get gear, and I don't feel entitled to be able to beat the game right away. I would rather grind towards a goal like beating inferno as opposed to 'let's fund my next character' which is all I ever did in D2.
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Nah I was enjoying Inferno as well, in fact I'm not sure if I like the Inferno nerf because I already reached the point where I was farming Azmodan with 5-stacks in ~20 minutes. Now it's not really worth killing bosses, just port around and hope you don't get an annoying champ pack.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
I think there are a couple issues with it. One of which is it took longer to beat Hell/99 than Inferno/60. Difficulty notwithstanding, it is actually a shorter game to cap out on.
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That seems to be true, although not for me. I seem to actually decrease in gaming IQ as I get older, rather than better at some portions of them...Act2 was stupidly hard for my friends and I, we were reduced to chain reviving to get huge groups of mobs moved 20 feet away from our corpses, just enough for one guy to be able to run away to a new zone.

LeninGHOLA said:
As far as removing inferno goes? No, they should have just beta tested it. They said nobody at Blizzard could beat it, which is just stupid as fuck. That means they couldn't even test it, and public beta was 1/3 of act 1... No other game company would get a free pass for that. You can't blame people for complaining about a poorly designed difficulty, then get butthurt and say you didn't have to release it at all.
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True Inferno could have been designed better, but I think you would have gotten some of the complaints anyway - if there are levels in a game nowadays, people expect to be handed the ability to beat it.

I actually want it to be hard, but you need to add something to it to make proper "end game" in a non MMO. My idea of putting points into certain abilities to "level" them post level 60 would work well. Just don't make the increases too powerful then release a patch a month later nerfing the fuck out of everything and then revamp the game to punish botters and regular players alike ;)
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I do really really miss adding points to different abilities and continuing to grow more powerful organically rather than just through gear. That was actually my favorite part of D2.
 
dremic said:
WoW is psychological too but i get what you mean theyre totally different diablo 3 is more gambling. although wow the rolls from the loot tables on bosses totally is thrilling and that feeling of getting an item is psychological too.. fucking video games man.. they hold so much power its scary hahahah
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Yep, loot tables on bosses fits exactly in with what I'm saying. RNG. It isn't anything psychological about the color of the drops, I played EQ for 7 years and there are no colored items, just items with good or bad stats. Simply put, getting something to drop that you actually need/want gives you much more satisfaction than buying them from the AH.

I honestly don't mind difficulty in games, in fact I prefer it. You just need to keep players satisfied with gear enough to keep playing, but unsatisfied enough to have to keep playing. In D3, it's either a gear wasteland pre- 5 stack NV, or a gear bonanza in the AH. It doesn't balance itself to that addiction model.

You think people who got to level 60 one or two days after release gave a shit about what gear they used before Inferno? You have to give a shit the whole time. Comparing gear/leveling burnout at a month after the D3 release to the same burnout you feel/felt after doing the grind in D2 for 2-3 years is a bad comparison.
 
AceCR42 said:
Gambling is in D3 though. They just renamed it Crafting.
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True, and the crafting changes are welcome. Gambling was far more random, though. There was a chance you could get super items gambling, crafting is ovbiously tiered.
 
Because he is Athene, that's why. I think he got hacked early on, and his fan base gave him a shit ton of loot.

I wouldn't say he is the best at anything, especially considering every one of those videos are a gear check, not skill. He just stands in one spot and spams one or two abilities because he is so overgeared due to donations.
 
TwistedAegis said:
I can't watch the video so...wtf, people are so flush they give money to people who are really good at D3 just...because?
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Also, we're supposed to feel sorry for him and give him money because he put his password into the wrong field and exposed it to thousands of people, causing his account to get "hacked"?

Okay... :rolleyes:
 
TwistedAegis said:
I can't watch the video so...wtf, people are so flush they give money to people who are really good at D3 just...because?
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okay... if you follow the link to the site where you donate, it says:

www.opsharecraft.com said:
"Millions of people, most of them innocent children, are at risk in the Horn of Africa due to the worst hunger crisis in 60 years. The Internet has come to a point where when we simply collectively reach out for what we think is right, real change often follows.

You can join Operation ShareCraft and add your own voice to the campaign. I can't raise one million dollars on my own, but together we can."

&#8212;Athene
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but if you don't go to the site, you just see a video of athene playing d3 with "today's goal: $750,000" etc going across the screen.

As for D3, it would have been nice if they made it take WAY longer to get to 60, and if each difficulty actually felt challenging. Problem is they just didn't balance the game at all.

I am constantly getting pissed at inferno, not because it's hard---i like hard things, see, but i only like hard things when there's a way to beat them. Inferno is not a hard you can outsmart, or use tactics to overcome... it's 100% gear check, which is 100% retarded. On top of that, half of my moves (exaggeration) become obsolete in inferno, in the game where i'm supposed to be able to pick my build--i'm talking about the cc reduction that everything has making any cc move worthless.

So after i drop my CC moves and try again, it goes a little better--but i still brick wall against the first group of elites i see. So i go to the AH out of dispair to try to fix this problem---with my 900k, i could probably buy 1-2 items. While looking for these items i'm getting frustrated because the AH interface sucks donkey dick. Then i finally find a good item--click buy--nope, already sold SRY!

These things combined made my play session last night very frustrating.

I want to like this game very much, but damnit blizzard... y'all don't make it easy.
 
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Another thing that annoys me - could I please get a WAND as a wizard that actually has wizard stats on them? My wiz running around with a big spartan spear is just not what I envisioned. I have not used a wand on my wiz since the start wand.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
Why do you think people wasted hundreds of hours actually gambling in D2?
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I believe it's because gambling in D2 was extremely easy and had very low stakes. An MF run took about as much effort as pulling a lever on a slot machine. It didn't matter if the best gear had a low or high drop rate because people placed their hopes on something dropping eventually. In D3, where farming is a more involved and actually losing resources is possible, people lose that determination.
 
JayteeBates said:
Another thing that annoys me - could I please get a WAND as a wizard that actually has wizard stats on them? My wiz running around with a big spartan spear is just not what I envisioned. I have not used a wand on my wiz since the start wand.
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personally I loveeeeee the 2handed sword im dragging around i think it looks bad ass.

i feel you though what i would do to have a 1200 dps staff instead. i think staves are so bad ass looking
 
Yoshiyuki Blade said:
I believe it's because gambling in D2 was extremely easy and had very low stakes. An MF run took about as much effort as pulling a lever on a slot machine. It didn't matter if the best gear had a low or high drop rate because people placed their hopes on something dropping eventually. In D3, where farming is a more involved and actually losing resources is possible, people lose that determination.
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good point. my buddy complains about repair costs and i think it discourages him. its like now that the system works and makes sense he hates it. hahahahha
 
Yoshiyuki Blade said:
I believe it's because gambling in D2 was extremely easy and had very low stakes. An MF run took about as much effort as pulling a lever on a slot machine. It didn't matter if the best gear had a low or high drop rate because people placed their hopes on something dropping eventually. In D3, where farming is a more involved and actually losing resources is possible, people lose that determination.
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I was more talking about what drove people to love the RNG. It makes more sense in its context. The RNG is always a gamble, the balance of the payoff should subtly scratch the itch. It should never be too rewarding or too punishing, but the house comes out ahead in the end. The player is paid with the thrill of the experience and a handful of trinkets and hotel soaps.
 
Can anyone here craft decent gear? Wizard specific or at least general decent stuff? Maybe we should have another thread but I'm looking to see what I can get crafted. Thanks!
 
screenshot004ct.jpg


lmao
 
Intel_Hydralisk said:
I don't mean to sound dismissive, but I honestly don't think drops while leveling is an issue. I never had issues gearing up from my own drops. I just cannot relate to all these posts about having difficulty getting to 60 without the AH. Maybe it's not the gear.
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Not to laugh, but I didn't say nor imply that I was having problems lvling. I did it no problem, I'm stating that at any point in the game, when the vast majority of my drops are significantly lower item level then I am at that moment just makes it frustrating as hell.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
I was more talking about what drove people to love the RNG. It makes more sense in its context. The RNG is always a gamble, the balance of the payoff should subtly scratch the itch. It should never be too rewarding or too punishing, but the house comes out ahead in the end. The player is paid with the thrill of the experience and a handful of trinkets and hotel soaps.
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Yeah, D2 and D3 have fundamentally different design goals. People probably want the slot machine type of RNG after all. Their intent with D3 was to make the player play normally and let the loot flow with a less linear range risk and rewards. Not the monotonous repetitive boss kills of D2. In the end, "playing normally" became an obstacle rather than enjoyment. I'm personally enjoying the "intended" way to play, however.
 
Rizen said:
my guess is that's to slow down gold farmers and botting. Once those accounts get banned they can't just download another copy and start up again.
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Yeah this is pretty much it. There are people out there buying 10+ digital copies and using them exclusively for botting.
 
Yoshiyuki Blade said:
Yeah, D2 and D3 have fundamentally different design goals. People probably want the slot machine type of RNG after all. Their intent with D3 was to make the player play normally and let the loot flow with a less linear range risk and rewards. Not the monotonous repetitive boss kills of D2. In the end, "playing normally" became an obstacle rather than enjoyment. I'm personally enjoying the "intended" way to play, however.
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I never found myself farming bosses too hard in D2, I played it like you're playing D3 mostly. I never much traded with people, never duped, but did play ladders and PVP after the grind wore thin.

It just feels like the balance of risk and reward is off on both ends of the spectrum in D3. One side has too little (drops) and the other offers too much (AH).
 
Over the last couple days I've gotten decent stuff in Inferno. A few 600 dps weapons, some 500 dps weapons, a few decent pieces of gear with resist all, etc. I get a healthy amount of ilvl 61-62 drops which you can salvage and sell the essences for 2k a piece which is nice. Nothing amazing but definitely some usable gear.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
It just feels like the balance of risk and reward is off on both ends of the spectrum in D3. One side has too little (drops) and the other offers too much (AH).
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The rewards are just non-deterministic at the moment due to the lack of useful legendaries. You can get anything form bad, to good to amazing gear through personal farming runs. But when you're just getting "good" gear most of the time, it looks terrible when the AH has countless lists of amazing gear. The AH just demoralizes people because the top search results basically rub in their face about how lucky some people got.

I think people feel rewarded when they know to a certain degree of what they got (with uniques/sets/legendaries). I don't see the old rewarding feel coming back any time soon due to the sheer rarity of legendaries in D3. Even if they are going to be useful, not seeing any orange text for days or weeks at a time makes it a hard motivator.
 
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