Diablo 3 Discussion Thread

Rdzona said:
All I want out of D3 is to be able to play the game and find some sweet drops over a reasonable amount of time to eventually have a pretty sick character. I don't expect it to happen in a week, but I shouldn't have to feel like I have to farm and grind for 10 years either.

Is that too much to ask?

(Blizz's first thought) What would happen to the AH then? :rolleyes:
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It actually is too much to ask for a Diablo game.

Since there are no loot tables for boss encounters, and the itemization is entirely random crap for the most part, you will not be able to achieve what you want out of the game. That should have been clear though if you played Diablo before.
 
Thuleman said:
It actually is too much to ask for a Diablo game.

Since there are no loot tables for boss encounters, and the itemization is entirely random crap for the most part, you will not be able to achieve what you want out of the game. That should have been clear though if you played Diablo before.
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didn't d2 have loot tables?
 
stevedave said:
Man my entertainment was banned.

guitarslingerchris your gear is hot. Doing 49k without force weapon or spark flint is impressive. I bet it would cost at least 10+ million to upgrade any peace of your gear.

without force weapon I'm under 40k and my gear is probably pretty close to 50 million.

Fully geared for DPS (Glass Cannon, Spark flint, and Force Weapon) I'm at 57k and in single player this is how I farm. Multi Player I take out Spark Flint for Dimond skin as its harder to kill people. This drops me to right around 50k. 1900 Lilfe per second So I don't need escape spells like teleport.
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Yeah, I played around with multiple gear setups and this was the best "happy medium" for a set of gear that I switch between my Wizard and Witch Doctor. Once it got to this level I just sold anything equivalent or better on the RMAH and set to work leveling/clearing with all of my other toons.

I wouldn't mind more crit damage though if I'm honest, it's pretty awesome seeing 100k+ individual Poison Darts on the WD.
 
I popped Inferno Diablo and haven't played since two days after that. Been about a week now and man I sunk a lot of time into that game.
 
Thuleman said:
It actually is too much to ask for a Diablo game.

Since there are no loot tables for boss encounters, and the itemization is entirely random crap for the most part, you will not be able to achieve what you want out of the game. That should have been clear though if you played Diablo before.
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Way to recognize a rhetorical question!

A rhetorical question is a figure of speech in the form of a question that is asked in order to make a point and without the expectation of a reply.[1] The question is used as a rhetorical device, posed for the sake of encouraging its listener to consider a message or viewpoint. Though these are technically questions, they do not always require a question mark.

For example, the question, "Can you do anything right?" is asked not to literally evaluate the abilities of the person being spoken to, but rather to insinuate that the person always fails.
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chockomonkey said:
any new news on pvp?
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They are probably trying to figure out how to balance matches where guys that have BiS gear vs fresh 60's. I predict they will follow the WoW method and raise dps by 10% in arenas and lower health by 90%. That way it will be a race to see who can push "skill" button #1 first.

No, but seriously how are they going to balance pvp when some guys can afford to buy BiS gear? Never going to happen so what they should do is take a page from DOTA 2 and just live stream the matches so we can watch the guys with gear fight. Not skill; gear.

Vortex, Mortar, Teleport, Slow, Adds, Extra Life, Reflect Damage. Not an elite. That's the Wizard that just pwned your arse.
 
I don't see how pvp could be good in D3, no matter how they implement it. That said, I'd like to try it anyway.
 
Got my barb to 60 yesterday

Spending about 200k a pop on upgrades(half a mil on weapons) and went from like 13k dps to 40k. Survival is low, but I steamrolled through the rest of hell. I burned through shadow diablo before the third clone popped, it was pretty funny.
 
cageymaru said:
They are probably trying to figure out how to balance matches where guys that have BiS gear vs fresh 60's. I predict they will follow the WoW method and raise dps by 10% in arenas and lower health by 90%. That way it will be a race to see who can push "skill" button #1 first.

No, but seriously how are they going to balance pvp when some guys can afford to buy BiS gear? Never going to happen so what they should do is take a page from DOTA 2 and just live stream the matches so we can watch the guys with gear fight. Not skill; gear.

Vortex, Mortar, Teleport, Slow, Adds, Extra Life, Reflect Damage. Not an elite. That's the Wizard that just pwned your arse.
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From what I know they'll have an invisible ranking system. This system will be similar to SC 2 that it moves you up and down to try and keep your w/l ratio close to 1:1. Contrary to WoW arena, there will be respawning, but the details of respawning is unclear.

It'd be cool if it was designed with the spirit of AV, a mix between pvp/pve that allows more ways to win than simply killing enemies more time than they kill you.
 
cageymaru said:
No, but seriously how are they going to balance pvp when some guys can afford to buy BiS gear? Never going to happen so what they should do is take a page from DOTA 2 and just live stream the matches so we can watch the guys with gear fight. Not skill; gear.
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That would actually be simple if they wanted to have balanced pvp... but balanced pvp doesn't mesh with their goals with the RMAH.

It'd be as simple as a gear score comparison.
 
cageymaru said:
They are probably trying to figure out how to balance matches where guys that have BiS gear vs fresh 60's. I predict they will follow the WoW method and raise dps by 10% in arenas and lower health by 90%. That way it will be a race to see who can push "skill" button #1 first.

No, but seriously how are they going to balance pvp when some guys can afford to buy BiS gear? Never going to happen so what they should do is take a page from DOTA 2 and just live stream the matches so we can watch the guys with gear fight. Not skill; gear.

Vortex, Mortar, Teleport, Slow, Adds, Extra Life, Reflect Damage. Not an elite. That's the Wizard that just pwned your arse.
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Bashiok already said that it is going to be very similiar to the way SC2 does matchmaking, which is the ELO system. The aim of the system is to rank you, MMR, and then you can be matched up with people who have similiar MMRs. In theory you should have a win-loss ratio of 50/50 when all is said and done unless you are at the very extreme ends of the distribution and hence no one is above or below you.
EDIT: Thats why grandmaster players can boast that they have 60-70% win rates.

So really it should be independent of your items. Think, does SC2 have any items or anything to base your ranking off of other than wins or losses? No, that's why they have a 5 game placement matches to initially place you in a league or assign you an MMR.
 
Rdzona said:
Bashiok already said that it is going to be very similiar to the way SC2 does matchmaking, which is the ELO system. The aim of the system is to rank you, MMR, and then you can be matched up with people who have similiar MMRs. In theory you should have a win-loss ratio of 50/50 when all is said and done unless you are at the very extreme ends of the distribution and hence no one is above or below you.
EDIT: Thats why grandmaster players can boast that they have 60-70% win rates.

So really it should be independent of your items. Think, does SC2 have any items or anything to base your ranking off of other than wins or losses? No, that's why they have a 5 game placement matches to initially place you in a league or assign you an MMR.
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So you win a bunch and are then punished by having to face people with superior gear and/or skill, so then you lose a bunch. I don't enjoy this q system in LoL, and i probably won't enjoy it in D3.
 
I would like it if they put everyone onto an Inferno level server and it was free for all. Oh that guy jumped me while questing yesterday. Let me cast slow on him while he tries to kite that Extra Speed frog elite pack. We know that it can't happen, but it would be epic!
 
chockomonkey said:
So you win a bunch and are then punished by having to face people with superior gear and/or skill, so then you lose a bunch. I don't enjoy this q system in LoL, and i probably won't enjoy it in D3.
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No system is perfect, but over time you'll be placed in a group of similarly geared/skilled players. It may over shoot placing you in the right spot a few times, but you'll get close.

What type of matchmaking system would you prefer?
 
Rdzona said:
Way to recognize a rhetorical question!
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I full well understood that it was rhetorical, I was merely pointing out that it was based on a flawed premise.

Expecting what you wanted out of the game was just not reasonable given the game mechanics. In the best of cases you knew that before you bought it, if you didn't then sorry for your financial loss.

IMHO Diablo has always relied on item trading to build a decked out character. One could perhaps question why a decked out character is necessary. The content doesn't require it and in what is essentially a single-player game the e-peen factor doesn't really count for much.
 
Breath_of_the_Dying said:
No system is perfect, but over time you'll be placed in a group of similarly geared/skilled players. It may over shoot placing you in the right spot a few times, but you'll get close.

What type of matchmaking system would you prefer?
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ELO is fine as long as there is also a FFA cuthroat option too.
 
Breath_of_the_Dying said:
No system is perfect, but over time you'll be placed in a group of similarly geared/skilled players. It may over shoot placing you in the right spot a few times, but you'll get close.

What type of matchmaking system would you prefer?
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I like fair fights, so something which includes a gear comparison to eliminate pay to win would be nice.

In a game like LoL or SC, i'm not really sure the solution (because there is no gear).

Anyone know the ETA of pvp? I haven't played in a long time, and probably won't until pvp comes out.

I'm still really hoping for bracketed pvp, so that you can pvp before 60. Twinking would be awesome in this game, and it'd actually be a reason to have several wizards (for instance), twinked at different levels with different builds.
 
Rdzona said:
Bashiok already said that it is going to be very similiar to the way SC2 does matchmaking, which is the ELO system. The aim of the system is to rank you, MMR, and then you can be matched up with people who have similiar MMRs. In theory you should have a win-loss ratio of 50/50 when all is said and done unless you are at the very extreme ends of the distribution and hence no one is above or below you.
EDIT: Thats why grandmaster players can boast that they have 60-70% win rates.

So really it should be independent of your items. Think, does SC2 have any items or anything to base your ranking off of other than wins or losses? No, that's why they have a 5 game placement matches to initially place you in a league or assign you an MMR.
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Correct, the only way the system isn't accurate is if you're at the extremes. However, more fundamentally, the system isn't accurate if you don't play enough games to be statistically significant. The basis of an ELO system for individual accuracy is the assumption that you've played enough games for the system to rank you properly.

This is where things get tricky for online video games. In the USCF, you are "Provisional" for 25 games. This is basically the placement games in SC2. In SC2 beta, there was a time where you had 10+ placement games. Player feedback reduced this to 5. Why? Your average player really doesn't understand the system. The backlash from 5 games is that they're now playing opponents in leagues not your own and sometimes getting stomped. In reality, their rating is still highly inaccurate despite being "placed in a league" after just 5 games.

Another problem with ELO is that by definition it becomes static over time unless there's a change in how good the player actually is. In SC2, they dealt with this by making the ELO hidden and instead introducing a displayed rating which is effectively inflated by bonus pool etc. so it will always keep going up. To combat rating inflation, they reset the ladder every now and then. Again, this isn't transparent to your casual gamer and is kind of a half way solution which yields backlash from those who don't understand it.

Now let's talk about Diablo 3. ELO matchmaking is fair on a statistical level. Personally, as someone who understands the goal of ELO / MMR, I'm not fond of my ELO basically being roughly equivalent to my gear level. That's just appalling to me.

There's another fundamental issue with PvP. I've said this before, but they have to somehow reward players for playing (win or lose). Certainly reward players more for winning, but players have to feel like they got something out of losing at least. It's a fact that most people want to win most of the time.

Looking at other games, it seems FPS games have this fact well under control. The losing team isn't penalized enormously in a game like COD or BF3 etc. In fact, most of the time I didn't really care if my team won all that much. It was another statistic (like KDR), but most importantly the most I'd lose was probably 200 points for the win badge. This is kind of where SC2 fell flat for a lot people who avoid the ladder. In SC2, bonus pool was the incentive to play, but it was tacked on as a reward for winning, not an incentive to play regardless of if you lost. In WOW, they tried promoting playing with the 10 games a week deal in arenas for arena points. In a more recent example, D3 might learn a thing or two from GW2 when it comes to getting people to actively participate in PvP. You might have to downplay winning, but winning doesn't really need a lot of rewards since there's inherent reward in winning itself.

It'll be interesting to see how they accomplish this, but the bottom line is people won't find PvP fun if they lose a lot (and almost EVERYONE will - 50% of the time).

And there will always be the typical complaints where people will complain about fighting those who are more geared and simultaneously ignore the fact that they probably beat up on the lesser geared.
 
chockomonkey said:
So you win a bunch and are then punished by having to face people with superior gear and/or skill, so then you lose a bunch. I don't enjoy this q system in LoL, and i probably won't enjoy it in D3.
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Essentially, yeah. Its designed so you win just as much as you lose. I know what you mean. When you realize this, its kind of deflating since your kind of held in this 50/50 bubble. But this is kind of a global view.

If the reason you went on this win streak is due to better skill or better weapons, but then started losing a bunch, it just means that is how far your skill progressed or how much better your gear was. If you keep improving your gear and skill, well then you should just keep moving up through the rankings. Its a pretty good system in my opinion.

Of course this is all hidden, so you never know your MMR or when you can make that transition to the next higher league, which is probably for the better.
 
Rdzona said:
Of course this is all hidden, so you never know your MMR or when you can make that transition to the next higher league, which is probably for the better.
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Which then begs the question: Why upgrade gear?

Which then begs the question: If I play with my face, I should still have a 50% win rate (I'll literally be facing opponents that are so bad, they have a 50% of beating me when I only use my face). So why play with my hands?! This is equivalent to the Worker rush folk in SC2 that went 3000-3000 for their portraits.

Have they talked about PvP rewards / incentives yet? I haven't followed it in a while.
 
@intel

Agreed and all good points. Good write up. It may just be semantics, but I wouldn't really say it isn't accurate at the extremes, its just that there is no more distribution and thats essentially where you belong. It should be a Gaussian distribution (bell curve). Lets take it to the real extreme. Lets say your #1 grandmasters. You could play the #2 seed and if you had a 50/50 win/loss ratio you would keep the #1 spot. #2 can't progress since he couldn't beat you say 51% of the time and the #1 spot won't regress for the same reason.

And yeah I do agree about the 5 game placement, didn't know that was a result of player feedback. But seriously 5 games is not enough of a sample size to properly rank someone.
 
Intel_Hydralisk said:
Which then begs the question: Why upgrade gear?

Which then begs the question: If I play with my face, I should still have a 50% win rate (I'll literally be facing opponents that are so bad, they have a 50% of beating me when I only use my face). So why play with my hands?! This is equivalent to the Worker rush folk in SC2 that went 3000-3000 for their portraits.

Have they talked about PvP rewards / incentives yet? I haven't followed it in a while.
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Yea, see, you upgrade gear in order to get a momentary boost to your win chance, but it will slowly go away, which means you then need to buy more gear.

It's just wonky.
 
I quit when I realized that there was no gear I could really invest in since everything is still getting fixed or balanced out.

I mean the time to acquire a meaningful upgrade is ridicoulous especially if it becomes worthless later.
 
Intel_Hydralisk said:
Which then begs the question: Why upgrade gear?

Which then begs the question: If I play with my face, I should still have a 50% win rate (I'll literally be facing opponents that are so bad, they have a 50% of beating me when I only use my face). So why play with my hands?! This is equivalent to the Worker rush folk in SC2 that went 3000-3000 for their portraits.

Have they talked about PvP rewards / incentives yet? I haven't followed it in a while.
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Completely agree. But you could argue that with those tactics, you'll just be sitting on your plateau. Usually people want to "progress", get in higher leagues for bragging rights or whatever. Who is proud that they are in bronze league vs the people who are masters? The 50% win rate is only when you've plateaued and you are no longer gaining or losing skill/items. You can have local win percentages higher than 50%.
 
I remember my buddies in WoW that before they quit the game lost every single match one season. Just kept losing over and over. Then the last month or so would queue late at night when low rated teams had to fight high rated teams because nobody was really online. Then they would mud stomp the 2700+ rated teams and power level to Gladiator in no time flat for the season.

Wonder how Blizzard would handle that this time around.
 
chockomonkey said:
Yea, see, you upgrade gear in order to get a momentary boost to your win chance, but it will slowly go away, which means you then need to buy more gear.

It's just wonky.
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That's perfect for Blizzard as you'll end up on the RMAH where the best gear usually is for trying to beat the curve. Imagine that you played BF3 and had a KDR of 1. You'd never get into an elite clan.
 
Rdzona said:
Completely agree. But you could argue that with those tactics, you'll just be sitting on your plateau. Usually people want to "progress", get in higher leagues for bragging rights or whatever. Who is proud that they are in bronze league vs the people who are masters? The 50% win rate is only when you've plateaued and you are no longer gaining or losing skill/items. You can have local win percentages higher than 50%.
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Right, which goes back to how they're going to reward players for actually having a higher ELO... and the concept of is that actually a good thing? Because then they're essentially rewarding you for basically having better gear.
 
chockomonkey said:
I like fair fights, so something which includes a gear comparison to eliminate pay to win would be nice.

In a game like LoL or SC, i'm not really sure the solution (because there is no gear).

Anyone know the ETA of pvp? I haven't played in a long time, and probably won't until pvp comes out.

I'm still really hoping for bracketed pvp, so that you can pvp before 60. Twinking would be awesome in this game, and it'd actually be a reason to have several wizards (for instance), twinked at different levels with different builds.
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So you'd be ok if you lost every game you ever played because everyone in your gear bracket could have more skill than you? That's fair?

You cant match games based on gear alone. In each gear level "bracket" there will be super skilled players that can just dominate, and a lot of the players will continue to lose a more than half the matches because they continue to match up with players out of their skill league even if wearing the same gear. It's like playing chess and always getting matched up against a grand master, and calling it fair because you start with the same number or chess pieces.

Matches are based on your ability to win, in games where gear plays no part(Starcraft 2) skill is the only way to determine your ability to win. In games like Diablo it's a combination of gear and skill. Regardless of how much gear affects your ability to win is irrelevant, as you continue to play your "ranking" will eventually get determined and you will be matched up against people similar to you. They may have less skill than you, but make up for it in gear, or they may be more skilled than you but is being held back in gear. This is okay because the ranking is invisible, the only thing that matters is you're matched up agains people similar to your ability to win.

Playing with people close to your ranking will make the most entertaining matches. Utterly dominating or being dominated gets old quickly. Losing sucks, but playing close matches it always more entertaining.
 
chockomonkey said:
Yea, see, you upgrade gear in order to get a momentary boost to your win chance, but it will slowly go away, which means you then need to buy more gear.

It's just wonky.
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I hear ya. But imo its only "wonky" when there are items in the game and you can buy those items with real money. Makes the whole thing well just as you said wonky.

But in Starcraft, everyone is on a level playing field, for the most part. As long as the races are balanced. For example I can't buy something for my terrans or protoss to use to make them stronger. So I think it works fairly well. Its not the games fault that you're not handed a cookie for not progressing. This system actually comes from chess, which is probably the most mental skill only dependent game there is.
 
Intel_Hydralisk said:
Right, which goes back to how they're going to reward players for actually having a higher ELO... and the concept of is that actually a good thing? Because then they're essentially rewarding you for basically having better gear.
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Just like WoW they will give you an even more overpowered set of gear to wear to the arena. This set of gear will be vastly superior to anything that drops in the game and can only be obtained via pvp.
 
Intel_Hydralisk said:
Because then they're essentially rewarding you for basically having better gear.
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This is the thing i hated most about WoW arenas. People with better gear got rewarded with even better gear, and if you didn't have that gear you had to beat people who had the better gear in order to get better gear.
 
chockomonkey said:
This is the thing i hated most about WoW arenas. People with better gear got rewarded with even better gear, and if you didn't have that gear you had to beat people who had the better gear in order to get better gear.
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You forget about the part where the guy who beat you calls you a scrub because you don't have the weapon off Boss x so you need to Lrn2Pve. Ha ha I can imagine the nerd rage when someone says that and the guy on the receiving end has killed Boss x 100 times and only level 61 rares have dropped each time.

:)
 
Hmm, my WOW arena experience (Season 1 and 2) was that if you really wanted the arena gear, you'd be able to get it within 1 season even if your rating was mediocre (10 games a week yo). A lot of it was from BG's anyway.

That's how I worked myself up in terms of gear. Just methodically played 10 games a week then made a push at the end for gladiator.

At least there was a way to do this (structured, etc.). D3 is an entirely different animal for gear issues.
 
Intel_Hydralisk said:
Right, which goes back to how they're going to reward players for actually having a higher ELO... and the concept of is that actually a good thing? Because then they're essentially rewarding you for basically having better gear.
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I'm not sure I follow you. What do you mean higher ELO? Do you mean MMR? ELO is the last name of the guy who created the system. EDIT: nm, just read in my own link that the phrase "Elo rating" is used. I guess I just never heard it used that way. I always hear MMR.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system

Well they reward players with high mmr by putting them into cool named leagues. "Masters" with a flashy diamond badge, or GrandMasters with a blazing orangish badge with wings and fire and stuff (lol) I'm not sure how else you reward these players in a video game. Give them cash or something? that would be cool I guess
 
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Breath_of_the_Dying said:
So you'd be ok if you lost every game you ever played because everyone in your gear bracket could have more skill than you? That's fair?

You cant match games based on gear alone...
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I agree lol... i said it should 'include' gear, not be the only metric. Although the more we all talk about it, the more i am seeing that it's a 'good as it gets' sort of scenario.
 
in D2, the various high end gears are optional.

in D3, they are a must if you go to Inferno mode.

bottom line, if your not willing to pay in the RMAH, then the game hits a wall.
 
Rdzona said:
I'm not sure I follow you. What do you mean higher ELO? Do you mean MMR? ELO is the last name of the guy who created the system. EDIT: nm, just read in my own link that the phrase "Elo rating" is used. I guess I just never heard it used that way. I always hear MMR.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system

Well they reward players with high mmr by putting them into cool named leagues. "Master" with a flashy diamond badge, or GrandMasters with a blazing orangish badge with wings and fire and stuff (lol) I'm not sure how else you reward these players in a video game. Give them cash or something? that would be cool I guess
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MMR is what's commonly used for terminology in online games I believe. In the context of Chess, that doesn't really make sense. There's no match making system in the USCF.
 
Intel_Hydralisk said:
Right, which goes back to how they're going to reward players for actually having a higher ELO... and the concept of is that actually a good thing? Because then they're essentially rewarding you for basically having better gear.
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I guess this is is the change of gamers expecting a reward for winning and losing, and not thinking that enjoying the match should be the bulk of the reward to begin with.

Back when I played Super smash brothers with my friends we played to have fun. There was no reward for winning beyond short lived bragging rights. There was no unlockables, long term points, or upgrades for winning (we had every cheat unlocked). My friends that owned the game were usually a step ahead of me be because they played more, but definately not out of my league. I lost more times than I won, but most of the time I could hold my own pretty well. It was a blast.

Now everything has to be about progression, unlocking more abilities, more gear, some incentive for playing and more incentive for winning. Pvp points is another grind for something else, and playing an even match isn't as fun as it used to be. Everyone wants to dominate for those points.

I play to have fun, and when I lose at pvp I don't rage quit or go crying to mommy a out gear differences.
 
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