Why can't we be more thankful?

[Pegleg]

I remember a time when Diablo 2 was in patch 1.09. During this long period of time we recieved 0 zero nadda updates on the game. Some even said blizzard stopped working on the Diablo franchise all together. Now we have Diablo 3, and we have blizzard who is changing the game up a bit as they go to please more of their audience. Keep in mind this is a completely different team that worked on Diablo 2. They are kind of learning on the fly as to what we are wanting in this game. Give them some credit for seeing their mistakes and correcting them as they go.

[Dogbert]

O Lord, we thank Thee for this blessing of an update and all the joy it brings

[droppin]

I remember a time when Diablo 2 was in patch 1.09. During this long period of time we recieved 0 zero nadda updates on the game. Some even said blizzard stopped working on the Diablo franchise all together. Now we have Diablo 3, and we have blizzard who is changing the game up a bit as they go to please more of their audience. Keep in mind this is a completely different team that worked on Diablo 2. They are kind of learning on the fly as to what we are wanting in this game. Give them some credit for seeing their mistakes and correcting them as they go.

It's a large internal fight between good feelings (like thankfulness) and rage of why was it like this to begin with. I'm thinking people are about 20/80 split between those 2 options and that's why people aren't more "thankful". It's also customers wanting what they paid for. Blizzard is a business and a business should hold up their end of the bargain. Alot of people feel/felt cheated by d3 and Blizzard fixing it is not a favor, it's requirement to conduct good business. That's also why people get upset on forums with blue replies because many feel like they are doing half the work without affecting anything. Overall, people feel more frustration and rightly so...for now:P

[Valeli]

Games, game pr, the interwebs, and electronic communication have all changed a great deal since D2 came out. While blizzard may not have communicated very well back then, the game was also (to a large extent) an off-line single player game back then as well. And while people could access the web, I don't feel that the same type of forum back and forth with companies existed or was necessarily desired at that point.

Anyways, regarding D3, I'd have to say you're absolutely correct about Blizzard communicating their intents/changes fairly well (apart from a few snafus at launch where they made some significant changes without notifying anyone, resulting in a few unnecessary HC deaths etc).

Why aren't we thankful for this?
1: Some (many) people are thankful for it, actually.
2: Other people (like me) appreciate it, but aren't particularly thankful because good communication won't ultimately change a game.
3: Other people probably simply aren't thankful because it's become the norm. In this day, Blizzard is expected to communicate, and doing so is in their own best business interest anyways - it's not a special favor to us going above and beyond the call.

[Kinmaul]

Blizzard is trying to fix the game. The problem is no matter what they change or how fast they change it people are still going to find things to complain about. Honestly I think Blizz's biggest mistake was having such a limited beta, if they tried that with WoW raiding content things would be a complete cluster****. If they would have opened up the entire game on beta for even a month a lot of these problems would have been fixed before release.

[sacridoc]

People will always complain about this game until they quit and get away from it. It's been made to appeal to the widest possible audience, with serious casual elements. This turns of a ton of people off (though many currently still play the game for a bunch of reasons).

D3 will never be what people want it to be because the design philosophy isn't really based on creativity, it's just based on appealing to as many people as they can and making the game overly simplified.

Beyond that though, a lot of things the game shipped with need to be fixed which aren't even related to this design philosophy. And I think players have a hard time understanding why the game was shipped like that.

For example... why don't the champs in Northern Highlands have affixes listed under their names? And isn't it a bit obvious that they changed the women stuck in Aranae's web from the Mystic to some random NPC?

Some things about the game just strike people as sloppy outside of the simplified nature of the game.

This goes back to all the flip flopping they did before release with the rune system, etc.

[buddah]

Thankfulness will come once people feel they have a great product in their hands. You're just never thankful for something you bought with hard earned cash unless you feel you got something more than you paid for. Patch reviews are fun but just a promise of a better game, not a sure thing yet

[Dacar92]

The thing is why couldn't they have polished the game before release? I know many things are dependent on post release data collection. But this game was released in a pretty messy state and the reviews were still mainly good. I am thankful that D3 was released. But after all the years of development it did not meet my expectations. Were my expectations insanely high? Probably. I am thankful that Blizz is working on the game balance and item structure. I will also be thankful if 1.04 meets the high bar people are setting for it in their own minds, mine included.

[marshmallow]

Patches are nice but mostly superficial. Most of my main complaints can't be fixed now without starting the whole game over. Maybe the expansion could change some of the core design mechanics, but it'd just be for one act unless they (unlikely) go back and retool previous levels.

[Valeli]

Marshmallow's a bit off the OP's point (that bliz is updating people well, which I agree they are).

But I agree with Marshmallow entirely. It's hard for me to be "grateful" in general because D3 is - basically - a big reboot that was presented in the guise of a sequel. Some people like its new design. Other people, like me, clearly do not. The art/plot/charachters/skill system almost certainly aren't going to be radically overhauled no matter how well Blizzard informs us.

D3 had a lot of fundamental flaws that can be fixed by patches (and, to some degree, it looks like it's being addressed. Although I'm curious how the new set of patches won't OP player characters.... I guess it's an honest attempt to make inferno accessible to everyone without RMAH/GMAH dependancy, but that -to me- just begs the question of why was the RMAH allowed anyways. ... it also begs the question of why a 4th difficulty was needed. To this day I just find it entirely gimmicky, like Spinal Tap's amplifier going to 11.)