Diablo 3 Discussion Thread

[Merc1138]

I get what you are saying and it doesn't affect me because I work during days on Tuesdays, but maybe I wasn't making my point clear enough. I'm pretty sure every other game that has remote servers require maintenance but I don't recall a single one that takes their systems down, even the solo play games, for 12 hours every single Tuesday for maintenance. Like you said, they all need maintenance, but I find it hard to believe that the Diablo game servers require that much maintenance that often when no other game companies out there do it like that, but Bliz somehow gets a pass because that is just how they do it? I could see them doing it during a launch week or for an older game like WoW with that amount of players and content but Diablo? I'm not arguing that servers don't need maintenance and I'm not saying the cost would be within reason, all I'm saying is that it amazes me that we have that much apathy to let them continue doing this to a solo-centric game for years without anyone questioning it. You would think that if it was that much of an issue, more companies would do it that way for that length of time.

You keep calling diablo 3 a "solo play" game, that has nothing to do with it. Calling an obviously online multiplayer game "solo-centric" is silly. If they were going to make an offline SP only game, they'd have done it 2 years ago. The fact that people are still harping on about this 2 years later is mindnumbing. Blizzard isn't going to change that. Even still, it's an online game, and whether you're playing solo or with other players is irrelevant. Blizzard doing scheduled maintenance(required or not) on Tuesday morning has been the case for a decade now, and likely isn't going to ever go away. As I said, simply having a regularly scheduled maintenance period on a Tuesday morning(likely chosen based off of looking at statistics about play times) isn't a big deal, and you don't get surprised by it.

Or do you think that blizzard should abandon the regularly scheduled maintenance model and go to a random maintenance model that happens less often but surprises people who might have been expecting to play? Frankly, I do wish more companies would introduce a regular maintenance schedule for their games and sticking to it, doing maintenance as necessary.

You made some other silly statement about maintenance being 12 hours every Tuesday, that's just a flatout lie. If you're going to complain about something, at least use facts. Blizzard's Tuesday maintenance is not 12 hours, and even taking 9 hours is a rarity. Between that and your insistance that this is a "solo play" game(Blizzard doesn't even have any current singleplayer games other than RTS campaigns). Calling it a "solo play" game just because you choose not to play the game with other people is being dishonest. Whether you're lying to yourself or trying to spread some sort of misinformation is irrelevant(the Diablo franchise has always been a multiplayer game series anyway). This isn't the same as Sim City from EA "maxis" that was a single player game that EA decided to tack some bs multiplayer features onto that hardly anyone cared about.

 

[DogsofJune]

Massive lag in Diablo 3 right now. WTF is going on? Is it a DDOS attack? Blizzard needs to step up their game. This is BS.

I am quite dismayed with this as well. Got a good evening to do some leveling, and it's play, pause, play, pause. It's so inconsistent right now.

Are they renting AOL servers?

 

[Merc1138]

I am quite dismayed with this as well. Got a good evening to do some leveling, and it's play, pause, play, pause. It's so inconsistent right now.

Are they renting AOL servers?

They've been having issues periodically due to some ISP problem at one point, and then due to the 30 second games people keep spam creating to get their 4 billion xp an hour. Which one it is currently causing the lag is anyone's guess.

 

[Aix.]

This has been an ongoing issue for many people across the US and Canada for the past few days. Apparently a certain AT&T datacenter is being flooded with iOS update traffic and causing huge latency spikes:

6 38ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 12.249.212.9

7 --- 100/ 100 =100% 91/ 100 = 91% cr1.cgcil.ip.att.net [12.122.99.22]

8 --- 100/ 100 =100% 91/ 100 = 91% cr2.dvmco.ip.att.net [12.122.31.85]

9 --- 100/ 100 =100% 91/ 100 = 91% cr1.slkut.ip.att.net [12.122.30.25]

10 --- 100/ 100 =100% 91/ 100 = 91% cr2.la2ca.ip.att.net [12.122.30.30]

11 --- 100/ 100 =100% 91/ 100 = 91% gar20.la2ca.ip.att.net [12.122.128.181]

12 --- 100/ 100 =100% 91/ 100 = 91% 12-122-254-238.attens.net [12.122.254.238]

13 --- 100/ 100 =100% 91/ 100 = 91% mdf001c7613r0003-gig-12-1.lax1.attens.net [12.129.193.254]

14 409ms 9/ 100 = 9% 0/ 100 = 0% 12.129.209.68

For others, it was an XO Communications hardware issue.

Here's the Blizzard page for running a tracert to their servers: https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/running-a-pathping-test. And the increased latency sticky in the tech support forum.

Personally, I'm on Bell in Toronto and I've been getting a solid 1300ms connection, which is obviously completely unplayable. My workaround right now is using a VPN, which has gotten me back into the green.

 

[Banyan]

Apparently a certain AT&T datacenter is being flooded with iOS update traffic and causing huge latency spikes

i bet at&t will soon follow verizon and start demanding money we are heading on a slippery slope soon with people running backbones. where i work we were impacted by issues between cogent and verizon to such an extent i couldn't really remote any of our clients, even google would take a while to load... it was ridiculous.

 

[travanx]

Is there a good site to follow that iOS update lag? Just got my girl into Diablo and she finally went to sleep after working her night shift because of the lag. She was addicted, starting to look like a gamer, until that.

 

[cageymaru]

This has been an ongoing issue for many people across the US and Canada for the past few days. Apparently a certain AT&T datacenter is being flooded with iOS update traffic and causing huge latency spikes:



For others, it was an XO Communications hardware issue.

Here's the Blizzard page for running a tracert to their servers: https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/running-a-pathping-test. And the increased latency sticky in the tech support forum.

Personally, I'm on Bell in Toronto and I've been getting a solid 1300ms connection, which is obviously completely unplayable. My workaround right now is using a VPN, which has gotten me back into the green.

1300ms to me is normal in D3. North Carolina, USA

 

[Aix.]

1300ms to me is normal in D3. North Carolina, USA

...so you normally play with over 1 second latency?

Normal for me is around 100ms, although the game remains playable in the 250-300ms range as well.

 

[Lorien]

On a whim I looked up if you guys had a clan/community and decided to apply/join. Soloing Cota/cath4 T6 got kinda boring as all my friends are not on when I have time to play (very late nights).

 

[cageymaru]

...so you normally play with over 1 second latency?

Normal for me is around 100ms, although the game remains playable in the 250-300ms range as well.

Yes, 1 second latency is playable and pretty normal for me. I just plan my attack in advance and hope it doesn't become a 30 second lag spike.

 

[Banyan]

did they do something to the drop rates? i haven't had a single legendary drop over a day doing t2/3 act 1/2.

 

[Krenum]

did they do something to the drop rates? i haven't had a single legendary drop over a day doing t2/3 act 1/2.

I hear that they did, but yesterday I found 5 legendaries, so I don't know.

 

[cageymaru]

did they do something to the drop rates? i haven't had a single legendary drop over a day doing t2/3 act 1/2.

If you can't kill the treasure goblins there is a big chance that you missed your legendary drops.

 

[DogsofJune]

If you can't kill the treasure goblins there is a big chance that you missed your legendary drops.

I don't get anything from treasure gobbies except crafting materials. But even witout gobbies, still average at least 1 to 2 legendary's a day.

 

[MavericK]

I've gotten a fair amount of legendaries, but set items? I just got my first ever after playing up through 60 and beyond. They seem WAY more rare.

 

[Aix.]

If you can't kill the treasure goblins there is a big chance that you missed your legendary drops.

In 40 paragon levels (50-90) I have yet to see a treasure goblin drop anything but gems, crafting mats, and the odd rare. If it wasn't for diamonds I'd probably be about as excited to see a goblin as I am to see a Resplendent Chest. I've had a number of legendaries pop out of regular chests, yet the Resplendent Chests seem to have intentionally bad rarity potential...good ol' Blizzard thinking.

 

[mtbush]

I've gotten a fair amount of legendaries, but set items? I just got my first ever after playing up through 60 and beyond. They seem WAY more rare.

Agreed. I've only found a pair of boots for my Barb and I just hit paragon 50. I'm beginning to think people that have 3 or more set pieces got them via AH.

 

[Drawmonster]

Got my first bad lag today. Caused me to miss a treasure imp.

On a positive not, I rolled a Barb once the latest patch dropped. Loving it. When I originally played on release, I had a Monk. Was trying to get away from always playing warriors. But man, I really love the barbarian. Definitely looking forward to a Crusader as well.

 

[Flopper]

drop is random, got leg rings from a goblin once, today I had only one leg drop as far.
its better but as anything you can have 2 in a row and then wait hours.

 

[MavericK]

I've gotten a couple legendaries from random pots and bodies...then I do a Torment boss run and nothing but junk rares...it's just total RNG at work.

 

[song414]

So I played this game at launch for a few weeks, beat the game once on 1 char. Is this game worth coming back to? I also want to know is multiplayer enjoyable with random ppl? I get you just kind of play co-op or do ur own thing in multiplayer but is it like D2 where all you do is boss runs to get good items and then you have awesome gear but nothing to do but more boss runs?

Is there PVP or something? I know they said they would implement it after launch. Also is there a auction house still for game currency? I know they r getting rid of the money one.

 

[JonSC]

I played the game from the launch until a week right before they nerfed inferno (reached Act III on my barb pre-nerf!!). I just recently played it again to see the Paragon levels and new Torment levels. It is much better than it was before but I still feel like I am not really accomplishing anything at the moment. It may be better when RoS comes out as we can gear up and level up again. I also only play with friends so that is another factor for me.

 

[Nytegard]

So I played this game at launch for a few weeks, beat the game once on 1 char. Is this game worth coming back to? I also want to know is multiplayer enjoyable with random ppl? I get you just kind of play co-op or do ur own thing in multiplayer but is it like D2 where all you do is boss runs to get good items and then you have awesome gear but nothing to do but more boss runs?

Is there PVP or something? I know they said they would implement it after launch. Also is there a auction house still for game currency? I know they r getting rid of the money one.

My honest opinion:

If you already beat the game and got sick of it, not much has really changed. Sure, there's loot 2.0, but it's not nearly as great as people make it out to be. Is the game better than what it was? Yes. But while Blizzard has fixed a few flaws, they've introduced plenty more. The problem is, while my self found HC character is much more powerful than he use to be thanks to the new loot, my top tier SC character hasn't found any upgrades with the new loot. Sure, he is an auction house built character, and I never found anything worth while, but the top tier old gear is better than the top tier new gear. With a rare legendary exception, you can't get quadfecta's anymore. And even trifecta gear has major limits.

It is more enjoyable now that you can get useful gear now in a playable amount of hours, but good gear is still next to impossible to find still. And now that everything is account bound, you can't trade. Maybe the mystic will fix this, I don't know. Supposedly the mystic is a gold sink, but gold is incredibly difficult to come by. Maybe adventure mode or higher levels will fix that too. You will find legendaries every couple hours, but most of them are still bad. The problem here is that pre loot 2.0, with top gear, I could find a legendary/set item every 15-25 minutes. But with a few exceptions, magic find is being removed from the game and it's been nerfed heavily.

PvP is still non existent. And random games are still random games, except now everyone is useful to a degree, although people still tend to join games 2 tiers above what they should be playing.

Diablo 3 is just in the honeymoon phase right now with loot 2.0 being introduced only a couple weeks ago. But I have a feeling that once everyone gets a tolerable set of gear, it will go downhill quickly again once they spend several hundred hours still not getting those upgrades due to the account bound items and rarity of quality drops.

 

[RW2112]

Well got to say today was the first time I managed to beat Diablo on a HC character. Built a DH and though I had a few "Oh Hell" moments I did finally do it.

 

[MavericK]

The account bound thing for legendary crafting mats is shitty...farming for Keywarden keys and having you and your friend get a bunch of the ones you need sucks...same with the crafting mats from the Infernal Machines...I have 2 of the 3, and my friend has 3 of the final one I need. But no, no way to trade them.

 

[Deleted member 174368]

If you could trade them then people would bot the Keywardens and sell uber runs/mats for real $.

 

[MavericK]

If you could trade them then people would bot the Keywardens and sell uber runs/mats for real $.

Yeah, I get that...why not have them be tradable like other legendaries, though? Only with people there during the drop, for 2 hours after drop.

 

[elzeus]

Can you solo the demon machine you can make from the keys? I just got all my keys and wasn't sure what to do with it. Do people sell them as "runs"?

 

[MavericK]

Can you solo the demon machine you can make from the keys? I just got all my keys and wasn't sure what to do with it. Do people sell them as "runs"?

It's fun to do it with a group...I don't know if it improves your chances of getting the legendary materials but it's probably easier to do it with a group anyway.

I guess you get the 3 keys, make a machine, and then you get one of three boss fights where you have a chance of getting a rare material, which you need 3 different ones to make the Hellfire Ring? Something like that...

So basically you have to farm keys and then farm the machine bosses. What sucks is, like I said earlier, you can't trade keys or materials from that, so you can't swap parts to get the ones you need to make the ring. Apparently the plan for the ring is like 2 million gold, also.

 

[Nytegard]

If you could trade them then people would bot the Keywardens and sell uber runs/mats for real $.

This is something I've thought Blizzard has always been wrong about. The RMAH was to prevent 3rd party sites from selling stuff. Blizzard wanted their cut. But sometimes, in order to be successful in my opinion, you need to stop taxing your customers and allow some of them to benefit off of your success. The RMAH was apparently just not financially successful enough for Blizzard. But maybe something like this never really can be. You're a multi million dollar company, so a few thousand isn't worth it to you. But to that Chinese gold site, it could be.

People who buy items for real money are never really going to be your long term players to begin with. Blizzard is punishing the whole community over the actions of a few because they wanted their cut. I think it's a downright foolish approach that leads to alienating your base over time.

 

[MavericK]

I gotta say Nytegard, after hitting 60 and farming a bit afterwards, I am starting to agree with your analysis above. Once you have some good equipment it becomes really rare that you find anything that is an upgrade, or even sidegrade, at level 60. The new drop rates flood you with blues and yellows, but at the same time 99.99% of it is total vendor trash. Most of the problem is that it seems you rarely get socketed items worth using. I have a fair amount of legendary gear now but most of it is not socketed, and when I find a socketed item usually the stats are so much worse than my current gear, it's not worth even throwing gems into it, because it'll only maybe reach parity with my current stuff.

I mean, I am having fun with it because I never played it pre-Loot 2.0, but once you hit 60 there is not much else to keep you going other than the slim chance of finding upgrades. Which is silly because even with the nice gear I have now I can't even solo T1, let alone anything higher.

 

[Zangmonkey]

This is something I've thought Blizzard has always been wrong about. The RMAH was to prevent 3rd party sites from selling stuff. Blizzard wanted their cut. But sometimes, in order to be successful in my opinion, you need to stop taxing your customers and allow some of them to benefit off of your success. The RMAH was apparently just not financially successful enough for Blizzard. But maybe something like this never really can be. You're a multi million dollar company, so a few thousand isn't worth it to you. But to that Chinese gold site, it could be.

People who buy items for real money are never really going to be your long term players to begin with. Blizzard is punishing the whole community over the actions of a few because they wanted their cut. I think it's a downright foolish approach that leads to alienating your base over time.

The RMAH wasn't about Blizzard getting a cut... proportionally the money they made from that was so miniscule...
The RMAH was because everybody knew that the items were available for real money whether or not blizzard allowed it. RMAH at least gave buyers a protected venue.

The problem with that is that it undermined the "fun" part of Diablo: run dungeons and find sweet gear. So now they've doubled down on that by making gear easier to find, but making it so that once your team has it, it's yours.

Now you have to kill mobs to find gear, AND it's not going to be available from shady farmers...

 

[Nytegard]

The RMAH wasn't about Blizzard getting a cut... proportionally the money they made from that was so miniscule...
The RMAH was because everybody knew that the items were available for real money whether or not blizzard allowed it. RMAH at least gave buyers a protected venue.

The problem with that is that it undermined the "fun" part of Diablo: run dungeons and find sweet gear. So now they've doubled down on that by making gear easier to find, but making it so that once your team has it, it's yours.

Now you have to kill mobs to find gear, AND it's not going to be available from shady farmers...

I guess I don't look at what PR states, but rather what would motivate a company to create something like the AH. I just can't fathom any major software company devoting a huge amount of resources towards a real money auction house out of pure generosity. At the same time, no company would ever directly state that their goal is to drain money from people. That's just bad business.

Seriously, without the AH, what would it harm for Blizzard to allow trading? It makes sense from a business financial viewpoint of why to not allow trading though.

Even with the AH, I never had enough money to get the best gear. I had extremely high quality gear, but either I happened to catch a mistake of a person labeling it with several 0's off, or I purchased it before it became the flavor of the month, or I sacrificed one stat and made it up elsewhere (i.e. the moneyball effect).

Of course people like finding gear, but the diminishing returns are still too low to be user friendly.

 

[Merc1138]

I guess I don't look at what PR states, but rather what would motivate a company to create something like the AH. I just can't fathom any major software company devoting a huge amount of resources towards a real money auction house out of pure generosity. At the same time, no company would ever directly state that their goal is to drain money from people. That's just bad business.

Seriously, without the AH, what would it harm for Blizzard to allow trading? It makes sense from a business financial viewpoint of why to not allow trading though.

Even with the AH, I never had enough money to get the best gear. I had extremely high quality gear, but either I happened to catch a mistake of a person labeling it with several 0's off, or I purchased it before it became the flavor of the month, or I sacrificed one stat and made it up elsewhere (i.e. the moneyball effect).

Of course people like finding gear, but the diminishing returns are still too low to be user friendly.

As stated, elimination of the farmers. No more gold farm website spam in chat(or friend invite spam from them for that matter). No need to watch what people are botting for gold/items and smack it with the nerf bat(although they're doing that for xp these days...).

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of being able to trade items with other players, and even the gold AH wasn't a terrible concept, but the way it turned out in the first couple of months was an absolute mess. Not to mention the problem of never actually finding gear to use for your character in game, and having to just turn to the AH because you hadn't found a usable/useful item since level 40.

And yes, once you start finding good gear it will become more difficult to come across upgrades, that's bound to happen(would happen with or without the AH), but now you can roll a new character and get gear for that character without going straight to the AH to blow the 40 million gold you just got with your now maxed out character, making the new character equally pointless to play. The simple fact that I can get loot in game for my characters now means I might actually bother playing HC mode, that I haven't played since D2. As much as people want to pretend that Diablo is some sort of hard core l337 MLG esport game, it isn't, and never was. If you're getting bored after playing 40 hours a week, find something else to do.

But back to the basic question? Quality of experience. Unless you liked the constant bombardments of half chinese ads trying to sell you gold. For Blizzard this also means no more customers getting pissed off calling blizzard's customer service line after being ripped off by some scammer(which will happen, happens in WoW all the time), for something Blizzard has nothing to do with, wasting their time.

 

[MavericK]

If you are not obsessed with maximizing you character and want to just have fun with the game SP or MP this patched really changed the game up. Sure it is Loot 2.0 and in a way a loot Piñata but when stuff drops it makes changes to your gameplay.

Example of the procs I've gotten on new items:

[...]

See, I wish I was getting gear like that, with interesting attributes. Sadly since I started playing I don't think I've gotten anything like that. I would especially love that "Bolas explode instantly" one...

Right now I am pretty much exclusively getting junk blues and yellows from boss runs and regular gameplay.

 

[Merc1138]

See, I wish I was getting gear like that, with interesting attributes. Sadly since I started playing I don't think I've gotten anything like that. I would especially love that "Bolas explode instantly" one...

Right now I am pretty much exclusively getting junk blues and yellows from boss runs and regular gameplay.

The only boss guaranteed to drop a legendary after the first time you've killed it, is Diablo and that's only after using the reset quest button and clearing the entire game.

If all you're doing is killing azmodan 10 times in a row or whatever, then yeah you're not going to get anything.

If you want to do runs for items, you need high mob density. Boss fights are pretty much the lowest mob density you can get.

Currently the easiest way to get loot(without just farming 1 area for hours like COTA or something, I don't get how people can do that without being bored to death) would be to speed run the game on normal. I've done it a few times, and typically I'll get anywhere from 5-8 legendaries or set items plus recipes. Yes, torment difficulty has a higher legendary drop rate, but if it takes you 5 times longer to kill the mobs, the legendary drop rate would need to be 5x higher to make up for it(and it clearly isn't).

Then once you've got decent gear, step it up to torment if you have the dps to kill mobs efficiently and get the xp and gold while you're at it.

 

[naticus]

The only boss guaranteed to drop a legendary after the first time you've killed it, is Diablo and that's only after using the reset quest button and clearing the entire game.

If all you're doing is killing azmodan 10 times in a row or whatever, then yeah you're not going to get anything.

If you want to do runs for items, you need high mob density. Boss fights are pretty much the lowest mob density you can get.

Currently the easiest way to get loot(without just farming 1 area for hours like COTA or something, I don't get how people can do that without being bored to death) would be to speed run the game on normal. I've done it a few times, and typically I'll get anywhere from 5-8 legendaries or set items plus recipes. Yes, torment difficulty has a higher legendary drop rate, but if it takes you 5 times longer to kill the mobs, the legendary drop rate would need to be 5x higher to make up for it(and it clearly isn't).

Then once you've got decent gear, step it up to torment if you have the dps to kill mobs efficiently and get the xp and gold while you're at it.

This. Another way at looking at what Torment you should farm is:

150k DPS T1
200k DPS T2
250k DPS T3
300k DPS T4+

This is unbuffed DPS -- also you will need eHP of about 800k-1.5 mil to easily do T3-4 without dying, regardless of class (minus the DH he is screwed up).

My Wizard has 800k toughness and 350k DPS unbuffed (buffed with paragon not skills) and I can easily do t4-t5 rather fast but I stick with t4 for the speed.

Stop doing boss runs, this is not D2. Bosses don't drop shit in this game. It is better to farm Act3 Keeps 1-3 than farm bosses.

 

[MavericK]

Alright, thanks for the info guys. Yeah, I'm playing a DH so I don't know what you mean by him being messed up, but the best gear I've been able to get (including gold AH stuff) is like around 80K base damage, but I'm trying to focus on high crit damage and chance. No clue how to get anywhere near 200K+ damage with the gear that is dropping, though.

 

[Merc1138]

Alright, thanks for the info guys. Yeah, I'm playing a DH so I don't know what you mean by him being messed up, but the best gear I've been able to get (including gold AH stuff) is like around 80K base damage, but I'm trying to focus on high crit damage and chance. No clue how to get anywhere near 200K+ damage with the gear that is dropping, though.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Merc1138-1631/hero/35470517

Only items from the AH are the belt and quiver. My in-game dps is 280k, then there's the extra 40% from skills, and due to the secondary attribute on the bow I get to spam elemental arrow as my hatred generator(multi hit attack that frequently crits for around a million).

The 3 set pieces(from the new version of the set, and I actually have 4 pieces), bow, shoulders, rings, bracers(if they don't show as account bound, it's because I got them earlier and the trade timer isn't up yet), all drops. I got so much crap from drops with my demon hunter that I created a monk, geared mostly in dropped loot(and I have account bound weapons, those two are just slightly better). So yeah, items do drop.

Likely the reason he mentioned DH's being messed up, is that they get no survivability. Rather, they get no means to mitigate damage. DH only gets dodge, no resist or armor buffs. So it's great that you can have a 50% dodge chance, but the time you DO get hit, you're still going to die in 1-2 hits. My monk's toughness in game is actually around 1.4 million, has healing skills, and even more skills to block or avoid damage altogether. So while my monk can take a lot of hits, it takes forever to kill things. While the DH can only kill things as fast as possible, and avoid every ranged hit like I'm playing a shmup because I die if I get sneezed on. A DH could stack resist all, and carry a shield, but you'll still never have the survivability of every other class in the game, and gimp your damage in the process. So while I can kill crap in T4 pretty easily, T5 isn't terrible as long as I avoid 95% of the attacks, T6... random trash mob bumps into me and I die.

 

[MavericK]

I guess I just have to grind more then...here's what I've got going:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/MavericK-11778/hero/39362850

Both the bow and quiver are from the AH because nothing else I've found was even remotely close. Haven't upgraded most of the gear in a long time because all drops have been worse, especially in terms of damage.

I've seen a lot of DH builds using the passive where it makes you do 20% more damage when you're more than 10 yards from an enemy, but especially soloing I've never actually found that to be that useful because you always get swarmed.