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End-game Items Broken? Legendaries much Weaker than Common Magic Items?

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Posted 20 May 2012 by Azzure at 04:52 GMT

Our affiliated site Diablo 3 Markets have posted some pretty concerning stuff about how Weapons and Legendaries have been tuned in the end-game. It appears that the best Legendary items may be drastically undertuned, and common Blue weapons being far superior and relatively easy to obtain. Head over to the article for more details. A very concerning development indeed.

There is a thread about this issue on the main forums that has yielded a Bashiok response:

Intended design is for an end-game characters to have a mixture of set/legendary, rare, and crafted items.
Legendary items are commonly not going to be the best items. It’s a title that denotes a named item, with set stats, and a unique model. It does not mean they’re the best items.
Completely random rares will be the best items in the game if they roll up the right stats.
….
The problem is legendary items are complete garbage currently. It was fun to find a great legendary in D2. It is no fun to find rares. It isn’t hard to understand, legendaries should be much, much better then they are, and there should be more of them.

Common, Blue weapons having double the damage on them then the “best” legendary weapons is a broken design, if your goal is to make a fun game.

I will take that feedback. Thank you.

As to the “more of them”, Diablo III at launch has more Legendaries than Diablo II had at launch. I’m sure we’ll add more as time goes on, but I do not agree that we don’t already have a lot.
….
Loot is messed up, period. This is carrot on a stick gameplay. It’s a simple idea. If most of the time you finally catch a carrot and it’s rotten, eventually you just stop giving chase.

If you’d like to give any specifics I’d be happy to write them down.

Tagged As: | Categories: Uncategorized | 112 Comments

Diablo 3′s Inferno Difficulty Has Been Defeated

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Posted 19 May 2012 by Flux at 23:54 GMT

Team Method finished off the final boss of Act Four and they have now completed the Inferno difficulty. Well, “completed” is a relative term, since as many of you guys have pointed out their progress through Inferno was largely an exhibition of run-and-stun techniques, as most normal monsters were bypassed with all the battles concentrated on the few Elites required to complete quests… and most of those were passed with “chain rezing” dead teammates during the mad scramble battles. (Team nolife will join Method in a full completion very shortly, as they are live streaming the last boss as I type this update. Note that they are on the US server, while Method is on EU, so nolife is actually faster by hours played.)

Jay Wilson has made a few twitter replies to questions about this, indicating that some fixes are coming up to prevent some of the exploits these early Inferno runners have found and abused.

But do you think this is very fast clear inferno? I mean: Did u ever think pro players can make clear inferno in 4 days? –AkiEvans
no, I thought it would take them a whole week. –Jay Wilson

What do u think about people start crying when Method team made chest framing run in act 2? –AkiEvans
I don’t think they should be banned as many have said, but we will fix that one. –Jay Wilson

Any chance yall are thinking about either increase the rez timer or disable rez in inferno? –qtrWhileTrue
We’re hot-fixing it so rez gets interrupted by damage as was intended. –Jay Wilson

I guess this means we can shut down our Inferno prediction thread and declare winners? It’s Saturday afternoon PDT right now, and the European D3 realm went live Tuesday afternoon. That’s right around 96 hours ago, so technically Inferno was first beaten 4 days after the EU servers went live. Here are all the people who selected 4 days on the prediction pool. Congrats to them all:

  • Mefet, Karpalo, robotxtacy, tyren, betazoid, nitoo, Shucklezzz, In the name of Zod.

    • The 5 day predictions were only off by a few hours, but alas, no credit to Mn_swe2,
    RazeBarb, Widukind, svidikus, Flux, Bgx, SZero, or Cyco. And if you thought I was mentioning those guys just because I’m one of them, you’d be… pretty much spot on, actually.

    There’s no telling how long Hardcore Inferno will take to clear; these teams so far have died hundreds of times, and even used deaths as an exploit in certain situations (that would be spoilery to explain), so clearly Hardcore will be a whole different hurdle, as will a full Inferno clear even for Softcore chars.

    No video of the final battle yet, but you can see Team Method’s defeat of Act Three, if you click through. Spoilers, obviously. I didn’t watch the defeat of Act Four, but as I said above, Team nolife is taking it on right now, and after literally 22 minutes of non-stop combat, the boss is less than half dead. In comparison, the video below is only 16m in total, and it includes some footage from before and after the actual fight.

    Update: Added video of the final Act Four boss battle.

    read more

    Tagged As: | Categories: Bosses, Inferno, Strategy News | 39 Comments

    Hardcore Observations: Still Alive

    22
    Posted 19 May 2012 by JomDarbert at 22:11 GMT

    Between the minions of hell and the dreaded Error 37, hardcore players have it rough. One of the largest struggles has been the sheer lack of information – many abilities and character builds that work well in softcore simply aren’t terribly viable in the hardcore realm where small mistakes can mean death.

    The Incgamers strategy team has been pushing forward and have compiled some observations to help you stay alive in hardcore mode. If you’re thinking about taking the plunge, read on.

    read more

    Tagged As: | Categories: *Strategy Features, Barbarian Builds, Builds, Demon Hunter Builds, Strategy, Strategy Articles, Witch Doctor Builds, Wizard Builds | 22 Comments

    Great Diablo 3 Developer Interviews

    3
    Posted 19 May 2012 by Flux at 17:11 GMT

    In addition to the slew of quickie video interviews, the recent days have seen some more substantive interviews with the Diablo 3 developers.

    Julian Love & Leonard Boyarsky interview with Rock Paper Shotgun. A lengthy conversation recorded on launch day, this transcript covers numerous issues including the pleasures of co-op, better story integration, character balance, and much more.

    RPS: And what difficulties does it raise, in design terms, that the randomness is controlled to a great extent?

    Love: The greatest difficulty is in testing it. You create all this content and then randomise it with all these permutations and it’s a testing nightmare. If you’re not too careful and you create too many dimensions of randomness – and it seems impossible that it would be this way – but you can literally create more permutations than the human mind can cope with.

    So you have to make sure that you’re only doing the stuff that’s going to be meaningful, right? The stuff that’s going to lead to making the gameplay experience better but not detract from the development process.

    Boyarsky: And keep it controlled that’s it’s humanly possible to test it.

    Entertainment Weekly has an interview with story guy Chris Metzen in which he goes into some interesting detail about the Diablo III story and progression.

    You say this is the end of the Diablo “trilogy”? Does that mean we can’t expect more games set this in this universe from you guys?
    Not at all. I see this as the ending of a specific storyline. It’s not at all the end of Diablo, the end of a particular age or era, but it is the end of a series of machinations that have been playing out on Sanctuary for the last couple centuries. If Diablo ever really had a plan to mess people up, to bring about doom and destruction, this game really illustrates how grand that design has always been. Before, we didn’t have all the information. This game shows just how smart and cunning he’s been over the arc of time and why he’s the series’ unique villain. In the first couple games there wasn’t a whole lot more detail to that character other than that he was a big red dude who kicked the s— out of people. So why is the series named after him and not Baal or Mephisto? Is Diablo stronger? I would argue that he’s just really clever, he thinks laterally in a way that his brothers do not. He’s not just one of the seven big Evils. He’s Doctor Doom. And Diablo III is the culmination of his machinations, even if it’s not the end to potential stories we could tell in that universe.

    GamaSutra grabbed Jay Wilson for a long chat about his past game development, crunching to the deadline in Diablo III, Blizzard’s standard of game quality, and some very interesting stuff about his initial Diablo III design presentations (not documents).

    Design is a real, real gray area. So I think it’s better to make a strong, bold choice for a more interesting game. I think if you look at any of the games that people really, really love, there’s some very, very strong choices there. I really love Skyrim, but there’s a whole different design paradigm at work in a game like that than in a Blizzard game.

    You never see a game like [Bethesda's] Skyrim come out of Blizzard — just because. And it doesn’t mean [Bethesda is] wrong. Their design philosophy has been extremely successful for them, but it’s a very different one, and it has its own pros and cons. And it’s the fact that they focused on it is what made them successful, and we’re the same way.

    For us, good design has a lot of depth and is very approachable. That’s always our first priority. And the problem that you run into is we attract a very hardcore audience, and hardcore audiences don’t like things to be approachable. They like their hardcore game. They like their elitism. And that’s just not what Blizzard’s ever been about.

    It’s not that we’re not about our hardcore audience. If anything, we think we’re more about our hardcore audience, because our goal is to make more people become them. But we don’t do that by making our games obtuse and hard to get into.

    Great interviews all. I’m not sure why Blizzard PR thought it was a great idea to ship all these, and dozens more, out on release or in the days right after, when all the fans are busy playing the game and not reading interviews. I guess it’s just their goal of media saturation, to get features everywhere and draw all eyes to Diablo III… but didn’t news about the launch do that anyway? (In largely negative terms.)

    Tagged As: | Categories: Chris Metzen, Interviews, Jay Wilson, Julian Love, Leonard Boyarsky | 3 Comments

    Diablo III Inspiring Filmmakers

    2
    Posted 19 May 2012 by Flux at 15:10 GMT

    Not Hollywood films, but some nice creations by fans who are bored or frustrated with the wait.

    The first offers a tragic Western-style short that expresses the unutterable anguish of fans who are depending on snail mail to bring them salvation damnation.


    What would Diablo III be like if it was a girl? No, this isn’t a DiabloWikiSheablo reference, but an amusing short that’s well worth a view. Sexy, funny, well-done, and with a painful twist ending. I shall describe it no further lest I spoil it.


    Click through for a video that promises to show missing content from Diablo III, and even a couple of angry screaming Hitler subtitle efforts about Diablo III. I bet you can guess what he’s angry about, too. Don;t forget to check out Diablo 3 TV for more videos from the community or even add your own.

    read more

    Tagged As: | Categories: Fan Stuff, Humour, Videos | 2 Comments

    Another Glut of Diablo 3 Team Interviews

    0
    Posted 19 May 2012 by Flux at 14:46 GMT

    We already posted a huge slab of Launch Night interviews, and thanks to fmulder and his GoogleFu, here are a bunch more. These are all quickies filmed from various launch night events, so don’t expect a great deal of introspection and detailed insight into the creative process.

  • Jay Wilson video interview with RPad TV.
  • Christian Lichtner video interview with RPad TV.
  • Noel Wolfman video interview with Gamereactor.
  • Julian Love & Leonard Boyarsky video interview with PC Gamer:
  • Julian Love & Leonard Boyarsky video interview with ZoominGames.
  • Kevin Martens & Jason Regier video interview with GamonaDE.
    • Tagged As: | Categories: Interviews, Media Coverage, Release Date | No Comments

    More Diablo III Reviews

    9
    Posted 19 May 2012 by Flux at 12:32 GMT

    We posted the first very early DiabloWikiDiablo III reviews a few days ago, and here are some more that have popped up since then. News is very busy, so I’ll just link and score to keep this post short.

  • Reghardware: 85%.
  • The Escapist: 4/5 stars.
  • The Toronto Sun: 4.5/5 stars.
  • Wanderson 75: 4/5 stars.

    • We’re going to be updating every legit Diablo III review on a wiki article, so check there for a complete listing. There are currently 16 reviews on Metacritic, and the game has an 88% rating, with reviews ranging from 100% down to a low of 80%.

    Skewing a bit higher than the user-submitted ones, you’ll note…

    Tagged As: | Categories: Diablo III Reviews | 9 Comments

    Diablo III’s Disastrous Launch: Phase Two

    38
    Posted 19 May 2012 by Flux at 09:08 GMT

    How did Diablo III’s launch go for you guys? The feeling I’ve gotten, from reading comments and forum threads, is that most of us (the hardcore fans) were expecting technical problems and B.net issues, and that we just hoped they wouldn’t go on all week (or month). When the log in problems only lasted a few hours, with a few other buggy flare ups over the next few days, I was actually quite relieved. Obviously the launch didn’t go fantastically well, but it could have been a lot worse, and honestly, I expected that it would be.

    Eve Online jabs at Diablo III's error codes.

    If the preceding paragraph is at all an accurate summation of your opinions on Diablo III’s launch, you are far off the curve, since the mainstream consensus is firmly decided that it was a debacle. I collected more than a dozen typical headlines in a big post on Wednesday, and it only takes a glance at those to see what I’m talking about. Error37 even went viral as a #Error37 hashtag on Twitter.

    In some ways, I think Blizzard might have made an error by issuing that apology letter, since all the media observing from a distance took it as an admission of failure that ramified the “terrible launch” meme.

    I titled this post Phase Two, since now that the disaster has been firmly established in the minds of non-players and media critics, they’ve move on to apportioning blame, weighing the fallout, and using the “terrible” launch as a hammer to beat on their own pet issues. The biggest focus of media coverage/hate has been Diablo III’s online-only requirement, which has become the whipping boy for all of Battle.net’s problems, and even a flash point for gamers who hate any sort of anti-piracy or DRM effort.

    A few of the more moderate samples:

  • Wired UK’s Editor says he won’t buy Diablo 3 due to the online-only requirement and thinks that sort of intrusive DRM is unacceptable.
  • Has Diablo 3′s rocky launch hurt PC gaming? Yes, says Indie designer Jeff Vogel.
  • A thoughtful editorial on Stuff NZ ponders the issue of DRM in the digital age and whether or not requiring online-only is a valid piracy prevention technique.
  • A post on Forbes tech blog uses Diablo III’s launch problems as a leaping point into a longer piece about DRM issues in general.

    • Diablo III’s DRM is the focus of most of the zero-bombing user reviews on Metacritic, and while the vast majority of those posts are clearly from haters who would have given D3 a zero for some other reason (such as the “pay to win” RMAH) even if the launch had gone perfectly, the bad launch and online-only requirement has served up their argument on a silver platter. Numerous articles have commented unfavorably on D3′s launch and features by citing the 2.5/5 Amazon score and 3.5/10 Metacritic average. These articles all follow roughly the same path: “Sure those Metacritic hates are dicks, but they have a point…” See Forbes blog, Unleash the Fanboy, MYCE, Digitally Downloaded, and 8 Bit Envy.

    Some of the other media offerings on this issue:

  • Time’s Swampland blog: Online Gaming Bad for Us and Here to Stay?
  • GameRanx: Online-only DRM “sets a dangerous precedent.”
  • Goozer Nation: What constitutes an “acceptable” release?
  • Forbes: Diablo 3′s Launch and the perils of online-only.
  • Venture Beat: Other game characters speak about Diablo 3′s launch.
  • Now Gamer: Quotes an “industry analyst” who says this was embarrassing for Blizzard.
  • AtomicPC: Is a bad launch the end of the world? And if not, why not?
  • Technabob: EveOnline pokes fun at Diablo 3′s launch.

    • It’ll be interesting to see if this controversy has legs. I doubt it, and next week when D3′s no longer the flavor of the moment and the Battle.net servers have performed well for some days, the gaming blogosphere will move on to some other circle jerk. One thing will remain forever, though. The mass media (mis)impression that Diablo 3′s launch was a complete and utter debacle. We’ll be reading and hearing references to that for years.

    Tagged As: | Categories: Controversy, Diablo: IncGamers Articles, Media Coverage, Online-Only D3 | 38 Comments

    The Diablo Podcast #67: Diablo 3 Bold Predictions

    9
    Posted 19 May 2012 by Flux at 08:11 GMT

    Our Diablo III predictions podcast includes short conversations with eight members of the Diablo community, as they predict how the Diablo III experience will unfold. Not every guest was asked exactly the same questions, but most of them got most of the questions, which included the following:

    Name the most and least popular classes shortly after launch. Will they differ for hardcore? Will there be a major hack or cheat or dupe or other problem requiring a patch fix within the first few months. Will Followers be essential, irrelevant, or something in between in Hell and Inferno? Will the RMAH take off with players paying up to the $250 max price cap within the first month? How long will players take to beat Inferno softcore and Hardcore? When will PvP be patched in? When will D3X be announced and when released? Can you make a bold prediction for the 6th class?

    Approximate starting times for the various segments:

  • 1:50 — Azzure’s predictions.
  • 8:00 — The Eliminator’s predictions.
  • 14:30 — Xanth’s predictions.
  • 20:45 — MrFrye’s predictions.
  • 24:30 — Exile’s predictions.
  • 32:35 — Grug’s predictions.
  • 38:45 — Neinball’s predictions.
  • 44:00 — Wolfpaq’s predictions.

    • Tagged As: | Categories: The Diablo Podcast | 9 Comments

    Real-Money Auction House Reminder and Update

    8
    Posted 19 May 2012 by Kaydee at 04:17 GMT

    In perfect time for when people get their salary, Blizzard will (hopefully) roll out the Real Money Auction House on May 29th. At this point I do not miss it at all I’m happy with just the Gold Auction House, even with some items being overpriced. But the opportunity to buy items and gold with money will be a nice addition to the game’s economy. It will be even more interesting to see the prices on the DiabloWikiReal Money Aution House and compare them to the Gold Auction House. Let´s get ready to sell our virtual items so we can recoup our cost of the game.

    As we mentioned earlier this week, we’ve decided to move out our target launch for the real-money auction house beyond our original estimated date of May 22. Our new estimated date for the launch of this new system is Tuesday, May 29.
    To learn more about the auction house system, have a look at the comprehensive Auction House Guide or check out the updated Auction House FAQ.
    Tagged As: , , | Categories: Auction House, Blue Posts, Real Money Trading | 8 Comments

    Diablo 3 News Round-Up

    0
    Posted 19 May 2012 by Flux at 03:51 GMT

    There’s such a glut of Diablo III news around the ‘net these days that you guys wouldn’t have time to read it all even if we took the time to post it all. So instead of everything, here are a few interesting pieces I saw this afternoon that are worth a look.

    One thing about Diablo III finally being released is that countless people who didn’t follow the game’s development are just now learning about many of the huge changes made since Diablo II. I’ve seen constant comments on gaming sites and in forums about numerous issues that we in the community furiously debated months or years ago, and have largely come to terms with… but which are shocking news to plenty of people who are just now dipping their toes into the deep pool that is Diablo III.

    The crash course in those came on launch night, when the online-only DRM made so many new friends, but tons of actual game feature changes are news to people, pro or con. The much-discussed bombing of user reviews on Metacritic is one good example, where the RMAH is universally referred to as “pay to win,” but even regular game features, such as the removal of stat and skill points.

  • Kotaku posted a whole editorial about that issue last week, and updated again in response to fan feedback, most of which echoed points Jay Wilson made in interviews from like, Blizzcon 2009.
  • Another form of this can be seen in this article on WebProNews, where the author wonders how you can give a positive score to a game that’s frequently unplayable (due to B.net being down). That’s a reasonable debate, but he also finds time to complain about auto stat points and no skill points, and makes misleading comments about how the entire content can be completed in 3-7 hours.


    • On to other topics, as there are a ton of them.

  • An editorial on CinemaBlend takes the interesting approach of damning journalists who are *not* furiously protesting Diablo III’s tech-troubled launch. In ordinary times I’d quote a bunch of this and make a whole post about it, but there’s just to much else to cover now, so check it out as it’s worth a read and some thoughts.
  • A piece on Gamenguide.com points to a fan who was so angry over a few hours of B.net downtime that he /ragequit. Literally; he gave up and demanded that Blizzard refund his money. Perhaps, surprisingly, they did. And were even cheerful about it.
  • Article on Time’s techblog points out that Diablo III can be played on an ipad, once you add on some additional software. According to the piece, controlling the action with the touch screen, rather than a mouse, isn’t bad. Anyone tried it?
  • In other tech news, do you want a free ap for your Android phone that will check the Diablo III server status? Get it here.
  • A nice piece from Extreme Tech that lists five lessons learned from Diablo III. They include good news about PC gaming and hardware prices, while worrying that 12 years might just have been too long.
  • A short article about the Los Angeles area Pacific Symphony and their work recording some of the music for Diablo III.

    • Comment on any of these below, and expect several more mega-posts over the days to come, as the news keeps flying.

    Tagged As: | Categories: Controversy, Dumbed Down D3, Media Coverage, Miscellaneous | No Comments

    Have People Forgotten The Early Days of Diablo 2?

    14
    Posted 19 May 2012 by Kaydee at 03:50 GMT

    Yes Blizzard did not have one of its best days when they launched Diablo 3. We had many problems in the first few hours and some problems are still there but in a much lesser scale then before.

    Some users are almost making a fool of them self, when they rate down the game on metacritic to absurd low levels for reasons that are so ridiculous, old and not very valid anymore. Yes everyone is entitled to their own opinion but It is getting to a very low level now. Especially when you see how fine people are with Skyrim a game with far more problems then Diablo 3 and praising it to the skies.

    No I am not saying Diablo 3 is the best game ever made nor that it is the gods gift to mankind but compared to many other titles recently it is way ahead when it comes to polish and bugs for a launch title (Yes I am looking at you Skyrim).

    But have people forgotten how it was back when Diablo 2 came out? It almost looks like that or do we have so many new players that was not around back then? Battle.Net forum user omgitsbees made a interesting post on The Battle.Net forum with quotes from back when Diablo 2 was launched and it was not all rainbows and unicorns from fans back then, but we know how it all turned out in the end.

    Too many parallels between these games as far as botched support issues(the 3dfx “tilt” is the #1 issue). With all of the reports of the bugged higher difficulty levels, I’m beginning to wonder if there really is a reason to play thru the higher difficulties. I don’t like the penalties on higher difficulty with losing hard-won experience points, so unless that gets fixed(probably never in order to keep the “mood” from their perspective) I don’t see much for replayability value.

    Read the entire post for more quotes

    Tagged As: , , | Categories: Battle.net, Diablo 2, Diablo 3, Diablo 3 Sales, Dumbed Down D3, Online-Only D3, Real Money Trading, Removed Features | 14 Comments

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