"Inferno is not designed to be beatable by HC character" - Jay Wilson

[HardRock]

Are these the same internal testers that got confused by what a %-symbol was when they saw it in the tooltips, and were annoyed that the numbers were greater than the amount of fingers they had on both hands?

I doubt internal testers suggested the inclusion of simplified tooltips. When you're playing a game in development for 6-7 years, you tend to lose perspective and forget about the needs of new players. You get used to the little quirks of the game. Believe me, I know. Completely new people are brought in to test the game when it's almost finished during internal alpha tests and public beta tests for exactly this reason: internal testers aren't good at gauging how user-friendly your game is. The simplified tooltips and similar convenience features were most likely suggested by these new testers.

Win.
As usual, whenever a developer calls their own game difficult, be skeptical!
Game developers tend to suck at their own games (unless they hire their players Starcraft 2 style).

It always pays to be skeptical and I agree that designers, artists and programmers aren't always good at their own game. However, don't delude yourself by thinking that this is true for internal testers as well. You tend to get good at something that you have been playing for 8 hours per day (probably more), 5 days a week (or more) for a couple of years. These testers logged more hours in the game than the majority of the player-base ever will.

[konfeta]

You tend to get good at something that you have been playing for 8 hours per day (probably more), 5 days a week (or more) for a couple of years. These testers logged more hours in the game than the majority of the player-base ever will.

Wish that was true, there is a large segment of LoL players with 500+ games played who are still decidedly rage inducing level of bad.

[Chaosmage]

I agree inferno will be tough and highly tuned like the ref. LK encounter. The more I learn about the class's the more I'm convinced that coop...good pro coop, will be the most effective inferno approach. They took out all the P.I.A. parts of raids (schedule, number of peeps etc) and left the best elements...team work, group buff/debuff interplay, team CD overlap, healer, die if you stray...devs have said they want to encourage group play...so tuning endgame to be very risky solo does this..esp in HC. This twitter snip enforces the...inferno solo is not reliably survivable, and leaves the door open for...but good coop is! Just my ideas. (more supporting reasons on pg 5/p6.) Any1 else see this?

At first, probably

The problem is the "no nerf" policy which might end up making it a joke again in the worst case scenario. There already are couple of skills which might end up giving classes a solo ability if players find a way around the cooldown, spells which have a duration in its own and if the cooldown if sufficiently reduced might end up with continuous use.
For example the wizards archon or the witch doctors mass confuse might fall into that category.
Both have tremendous survivability improvements when active and potentially enable players to deal 1000% AOE damage almost continuously. (archon directly mass confuse via sacrifice)

[mr punk]

If the game is designed so that you will eventually learn the game and stop dying (if you play well enough), then I would argue that it is by definition designed for HC.

i don't think the game was designed this way because of the level of abstraction. it looks you can still possibly die even with good play because skill won't be as big of a factor as gear, builds, etc and the outcome of combat is calculated by the game. ie: the game determines you died from a massive damage spike because your character didn't make a successful dodge at a certain point in combat after he got seemingly simultaneously hit from multiple sources.

http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/com...ange-extensive

[HardRock]

Or maybe with that knowledge in hand you'll bring Frost Nova with you, use it when enemies surround you, thereby preventing them from hitting you.

If you're the kind of player who likes to evade attacks by moving out of their way, then you can also use items and skills that boost your movement speed. The melee hit range is indeed longer than in D2, but every attack can still be dodged. It's hard with the base movement speed, but not impossible. More speed should help.

[Lokiftw]

is see your point chaosmage.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying solo can't complete and that over time, gear build up and player evolution wont help that....I'm just theorizing that based on several b/f mentioned reasons, including the topic of this thread, that good coop will make inferno more EFFICIENT, less prone to death (esp. early in our exposure to the content) and at a faster pace than strictly solos.

These char.s look pretty balanced..and good balance in D3 = good $ for blizz..they wont drop the ball on this one much, i bet.

Your WD/Wiz example...imagine both in a group...and the wiz drops slow time - timeward on a boss/champ....the WD (and any other party memeber, will see a boost to their dps by 20% for what..8 sec, every 20 sec(w/o CD mod.) Add in monk attack speed party buff..etc etc.

I have a feeling that if/when they make adjustments to ease mid-skill lvl players ascent in inferno, new content(higher tier items specifically) will likely be at hand, all the firsts will be captured already, and if you care about $ the focus will begin to be on the new stuff.

No nerf policy you say...makes me wonder if they consider slight, gradual treaks to damage I/O over time a nerf....hmmmm.

For fun, I'm going to predict that the majority of HC inferno completions occuring in the first 5 months (assuming no down tuning) will be from (skilled)co-op. 3 and 4 mans.

[Kblavkalash]

Seriously, d2 hell was easy. After a ladder reset people would beat Hell the first day on HC. There were very few dangerous things in d2 and if you didn't play recklessly it was very easy to avoid falling to those.

D2 hell was easy only because of several broken things in D2. That's duping and overpowered skills. In the beginning of the ladder in D2 there are only several viable builds which make hell easy. Other builds required OP items which were introduced with duping and botting.

Remove dupes & bots, removes OP skills and items and D2 hell it really hard. Try playing hell with melee barb without godly

P.S. It's funny for me how many players are planning to start D3 with HC char, because all of them gonna fail and reroll again and again..

[Lokiftw]

May 1st gamespot interview: Jay Wilson confirming the game is designed for coop.

[HardRock]

D2 hell was easy only because of several broken things in D2. That's duping and overpowered skills. In the beginning of the ladder in D2 there are only several viable builds which make hell easy. Other builds required OP items which were introduced with duping and botting.

Remove dupes & bots, removes OP skills and items and D2 hell it really hard. Try playing hell with melee barb without godly

QFT

May 1st gamespot interview: Jay Wilson confirming the game is designed for coop.

No surprises there.

"Diablo is first and foremost a cooperative game." - Jay Wilson, WWI 2008