I know it's fashionable to tie every game design decision you don't like into the RMAH as a gotcha to Blizzard, but it's really not helpful for productive discourse. They've publicly stated their motivation for pretty much every decision they've ever made, and it's always at least reasonable in theory. The enrage timer is there as a final prevention of cheesing the content in lame ways, and as a way of communicating "look, you can't do this, just forget it" to the player so they know they need to change something. Diablo is a gear game - no matter how you get the gear, there will always be the risk of utter failure when your gear isn't sufficient.
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Blizzard admits Diablo 3's end-game is lacking, would like to fix eventually
- Thread starter Nirolak
- Start date
I know it's fashionable to tie every game design decision you don't like into the RMAH as a gotcha to Blizzard, but it's really not helpful for productive discourse. They've publicly stated their motivation for pretty much every decision they've ever made, and it's always at least reasonable in theory. The enrage timer is there as a final prevention of cheesing the content in lame ways, and as a way of communicating "look, you can't do this, just forget it" to the player so they know they need to change something. Diablo is a gear game - no matter how you get the gear, there will always be the risk of utter failure when your gear isn't sufficient.
That's the way Diablo's always been. The best stuff in the game is rare. I never once saw a Stone of Jordan in D2 actually drop. Or a high rune.
Sounds like the WoW mechanic where boss monsters pretty much instantly kill your group if you haven't killed them within X minutes. It allows them to tune the bosses specifically for what DPS you need to have to kill them, and thereby the gear you would need on average.
They are more soft enrage timers (like the fire at butcher burning more frequently and more) and are really hard to even reach because they are really generous.
The_Darkest_Red
Member
Ah, the perfect question for me to answer after my experience with the game last night. So I'm currently working my way through Inferno with my Monk and I'm trying to finish up Act II by beating the final boss of the act (for the third time, by the way, since the game seems to forget my progress every time I do this, even when it clearly tells me I've reached the next checkpoint). Anyway, for this particular boss there is an "enrage" after a few minutes that causes him to start doing insane attacks that are almost impossible to dodge for more than a minute or so and will kill you in one hit. So basically it doesn't matter that my monk can more or less stand there and not move the entire fight because my survivability is pretty decent, if I can't kill him fast enough I still lose. I tried a few times and kept getting him down to next to no health before he would enrage and kill me so I switched up my build a bit to make things easier. What do you know, it worked, and he went down on my first try. The thing is, it felt the farthest thing from satisfying. I just sat there and held my mouse button down for about 90% of the fight, only moving to dodge one of his attacks that requires a slight bit of skill to dodge. At that point I thought to myself, "why am I doing this?"
What makes this entire thing even worse is that the first time I beat this guy was with two of my friends before the new enrage timers had been patched in. It was an awesome battle of attrition that easily lasted 10-15 minutes and it involved a good deal of strategizing and quick-thinking. But apparently that type of experience is too much fun so Blizzard patched it out in favor of a system that requires nothing more than the right gear. It's honestly a shame.
And, even with all of that fine-tuning that was supposed to help smooth out the difficulty curve I still can't make it past the first group of elites in Act III. 4 million gold on that new weapon just isn't enough, I suppose.
When I said rare, I meant yellow items, not Legendary or set items. I'm not even close to being able to afford set pieces that are worth a damn.
Champion/elite packs get a DoT that increases in damage after 4 minutes. Eventually it will just kill you unless you have godly health regen.
Butcher's enrage at 3 minutes lights up the entire ground. Any player that doesn't have the damage necessary to kill him within 3 minutes probably won't survive the fire long enough to kill him.
I wouldn't consider ZK or Belial to have soft enrages either; ZK start teleporting to you and instafragging you with melee meteors and Belial pretty much does a non stop bomb phase with more bombs than usual.
The_Darkest_Red
Member
They used to be generous before 1.0.3 (I think that's the one). Now Belial is enraged in something like 3-4 minutes which is disastrous for lower DPS survivability geared Monks and Barbs.
ihearthawthats
Banned
tank builds are completely possible. first time i beat inferno butcher on my dh he only had 7k dps, so i relied on using a tank build and lamed him out.
Baraka in the White House
2-Terms of Kombat
Bashiok has always struck me as a bit of a douche. Here he's talking like they only had a year-and-a-half to push Diablo 3 out the door. "Yeahhh, we didn't really think making the randomized drops suck ass would hurt the item hunt that much. Guess we just needed more time to work that out. Mmm, maybe we can patch some things up later, I don't know..."
I think that depends on the character. Enrages on elite packs arent a problem for my Barb, but I have gear so good I cleared the entirety of Inferno nearly half sleep.
Unsurprisingly the way to ignore an enrage timer is to head to the AH and get yourself some great gear SMH.
The boss enrages on the other hand will destroy you. I tried letting Belial enrage on my Barb a few times to see if my survivability would overcome his enrage, it ended badly. He still killed me pretty quick. Basically, you can survive standing in the fire at Butcher and stuff, but that tends to only be the case when you already outgear the encounter massively anyway.
Blizzards enrages remove the possibility of a guy overcoming his gear deficit through clever play, accurate play, skill, and determination. They basically just say:
"No..... you are not going to 'skill' your way past a challenge. Get your ass to our Auction Houses and out gear it, no other method of progression will be tolerated."
Its bullshit. The comment they made about progressing through skillful play being "not fun" infuriated me to no end. I was literally speechless.
I think the inclusion of the Real Money AH drove their itemization strategy. It's frustrating, I've only used a handful of items I've gotten from drops.. most everything else has been me blowing all my gold (which I don't make enough of to keep up with the repair bills really) on the AH.
Yeah, you should read some of the posts on this page on this issue.
The fact is people CAN kill the bosses with their gear, but the game won't let them. I honestly don't see a problem of people spending 5-10 mins on an Act ending boss if its necessary.
Amen brotha.
The_Darkest_Red
Member
Pretty much. This is my first Diablo game and one of the aspects of the game that surprised me about it the most was just how little skill is actually involved. It's only gotten worse since launch, too.
Ploid 3.0
Member
Yep, them trying to tell me what they think should be fun for me is crossing the line. Taking the cookie from you and saying the broccoli tastes better.
Keep forcing people to play the way you want blizz, enjoy having your game to yourselves and the people that go along with your dictator like attitude.
It used to be that I sometimes stopped picking up blues, the people i played with thought it was weird. Then I started NPCing the blues. Now I npc blues and yellows. I'm not excited to see any of them drop, the thing I was hoping to see drop was storm shield or something. Now I don't care for gobs or the golden chests. Gobs can be good but since I build a certain way to be able to kill and survive elites (solo play mostly) I can't stop or catch the running gobs. Did the gobs get some charging ability or something? Maybe its so they can get out of freeze and what not. I find it funny that chests are still behind firewalls, and the traps. Screw those chests, they contain crap now.
Keep forcing people to play the way you want blizz, enjoy having your game to yourselves and the people that go along with your dictator like attitude.
It used to be that I sometimes stopped picking up blues, the people i played with thought it was weird. Then I started NPCing the blues. Now I npc blues and yellows. I'm not excited to see any of them drop, the thing I was hoping to see drop was storm shield or something. Now I don't care for gobs or the golden chests. Gobs can be good but since I build a certain way to be able to kill and survive elites (solo play mostly) I can't stop or catch the running gobs. Did the gobs get some charging ability or something? Maybe its so they can get out of freeze and what not. I find it funny that chests are still behind firewalls, and the traps. Screw those chests, they contain crap now.
thetrin
Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
not only the endgame sux
tradingsystem - sux
skillsystem - sux (would be good for an MMO)
Itemization - sux
onlinesystem - sux
levelsystem - sux
PvP - lol
Movement/casting - good
best way to fix it is to play Path of Exile
I must be the only person on the planet that thinks Path of Exile is utterly boring and unfun (Torchlight 2 will probably be stupidly brilliant, though). I think Diablo 3 has plenty of issues, but its combat and skill system are brilliant.
I look forward to endgame stuff. I've already gotten a whole 200 hours out of the game, and for $60, that's major bang for my buck.
Most developers would kill to get 100 hours out of their consumers.
I didn't read it like that at all. Internally, they enjoyed Inferno greatly. You can't predict that your userbase is going to take to something the way your dev team does. Development just doesn't work like that. I wish it did. Everyone would be making fantastic games.
I'm personally just glad they're looking to work on, and improve the game. So the game's not perfect. That's unfortunate, but they're willing to work on it to make it better, and they're willing to push that to us for free. Most developers would be pushing those improvements via a $40 disc 9 months later (UMvC3) or via a paid expansion.
I think it's healthy to continue to be critical, but I also feel these guys deserve some credit for being humble about it, and working to improve the game without charging us extra. In this day and age, that's a dying breed.
Um, yeah, I don't think that's what happened.
This. This one sentence is the fundamental difference between D2 and D3, and honestly this is the main reason Diablo 2 is better than 3. All the complaints about certain builds not being viable, the pointlessness of gearing up to just kill more stuff to gear up to kill more stuff, the difficulty in inferno etc.. these are all things that have been prominent in the Diablo franchise since forever. People who loved Diablo 2 really have no reason to complain about these particular issues.
In Diablo 2 classic, the itemization was very similar to the way it is now in D3... tri-resist rares with good main stats were the only thing that mattered. The item base 'economy' in D2 classic was so inflated though because of duping. Then the expansion came out, and rune words, sets, uniques, were the most sought after items because they were basically always GOOD, and if you were lucky they were GODLY. So if something that could be good dropped, it was likely actually good. It wasn't a barbarian only belt with 150 int and 150 dex, and increased health globe pickup radius...
Playing auction house was very much Blizzard's intent. With the RMAH, it is their only source for sustainable cash flow from the game. So they've basically routed everyone through there. I go on a farming run now in inferno with decent MF and fill my inventory up 4-6 times with blues and rares... I am so used to just vendoring everything that I am guessing I have accidentally sold items that were actually good. You get the occasional 100-400k item... and then every 10 runs or so if you're lucky you get something worth 1-10 million... Wait for all the crap to sell and then you can go buy something you want.
When people who play Diablo 3 talk about Diablo 3, they don't even talk about skill builds or gear or anything now, they just talk about how much they flipped item X for on the AH. It's boring. I still do a run or two a day just because I can whip through it, and I like mindlessly running through with some music on... but other than that I'd say the AH has ruined the game.
thetrin
Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
Alright. Whatever. They're looking to improve it. I don't see how that's some great crime against humanity.
The problem is that the difficulty has outscaled the typical drop rate.. so you literally have no choice if you want to progress other than just constantly farming at a difficulty you've already beaten.. but who the hell wants to do that?
thetrin
Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
Hey, the dev team played through the game without an AH. They never said how much farming they did, but they were pretty undergeared for a lot of content, if I remember correctly. Wyatt Cheng said he went into Inferno Butcher with a 200 DPS axe, for crying out loud.
I don't really get the issue with the AH either. I don't think I'd want to have to farm for crap, just because there's no way to buy good gear from other players.
The issue is that a lot of people don't realize that D2 had JSP, which was the EXACT same thing as the AH, but it was run by a third party. They just brought it under their umbrella and made it readily available to everyone. If you don't like it, don't use it. Hell, the D2 economy was jacked as hell because of duping. I'm starting to realize people don't really like the D3 drop rates because the economy isn't broken. It actually works, and people don't actually like RNG as much as they thought.
That said, it's there so you CAN avoid farming. Just farm for gold, which is assured, and then buy stuff from the AH. I don't mind that at all.
I love spreadsheets, though, so the AH is kinda my bag.
They never finished Inferno. The difference between ACT1 and ACT2 is insane.
Alex
Member
Path of Exile has some great ideas and it all seems lovely on paper, but for me its an absolute chore to play. I look forward to Torchlight 2, though. The original was decent for what it was, so I hope the sequel cleans up as nicely as it seems like it can.
Drama aside, I'm pretty pleased with Diablo III. There's a lot I like about it, and I had a great deal of fun with it. I also think they have a very good base game and while they may not make exactly what I want out of it in the end (nor will anyone ever!) I think it'll be a Diablo II like experience where it really catches good steam over time.
I'm done for now though, but it's something I look forward to returning to in the future. I'm glad they're open about things I consider to be the cornerstone problems.
I think my major "it needs work" list boils down to mostly:
1.) End game progression becomes fairly tedious with the current setup. This is the biggest problem for me. This game, moreso than any other I can think of, badly needs some fluff in addition to another meaty type of play (infinite dungeons, etc)
2.) Itemization needs a serious kick in the ass. Legendaries and sets need to become more common all around, as well.
3.) The skill system is great, and combat is great, but there needs to be more types of scenarios to fight in and there needs to be more meat to the systems. Just having skills and runes really isn't enough. I appreciate the flexibility and the removal of timesinks, but something else has to enter, customization wise.
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That's been addressed plenty of times in this thread...
1) They never finished Inferno.
2) The Inferno they tested internally was much easier than the Inferno that shipped with the game.
thetrin
Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
Yes, I know about #2. Did not know about #1.
Yes, Inferno is a huge issue. They didn't test it properly. Totally agree. Again, they're looking to fix it. That's cool. I like that.
In the meanwhile, I've been playing all of the classes, and I'm about to get my 3rd and 4th 60. It's been a blast for me. I'll touch endgame when it's fun. No point stabbing myself in the dick just for shits and giggles.
I'm just going to move on to HC from there.
I dunno. I don't feel like the game doesn't have much content. I've gotten my money's worth and more. That said, if you don't like it, you don't like it. That's unfortunate. Good thing they're not just abandoning the game.
Couldn't agree more.
That's the beautiful thing about this game though. We don't just play it, say it sucks, and then relegate it to the shit pile. The team wants to work on all of that. I can't wait to see how the game evolves.
D2 kinda sucked when it first came out too. It's virtually a different game now.
Interfectum
Gold Member
It's not the exact same thing.
Like you said, it's a 3rd party solution. It's not officially supported and Diablo 2 wasn't designed around it. It's something hardcore D2 players will use but it's not front and center on the main screen and Blizzard doesn't stand to profit from it.
I can't believe people are still making excuses for Blizzard. D3 was so obviously designed around the RMAH it's not even funny.
Ploid 3.0
Member
I was just now reading the blizzard forums and crossed this thread. http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/6019513218
In it the poster talks about a wizard skill that act as a life steal ability. When you get it you should be in hell or inferno. By then the ability is useless because it's reduced too much because of the difficulty tax. In inferno some are getting 0 health return hah.
In it the poster talks about a wizard skill that act as a life steal ability. When you get it you should be in hell or inferno. By then the ability is useless because it's reduced too much because of the difficulty tax. In inferno some are getting 0 health return hah.
=\
Good luck with that I guess. I'm never touching HC in D3 with its terrible latency and rubberbanding. I've heard too many horror stories of people losing their HC characters due to the servers shitting the bed.
The whole "This type of skill loses X% effectiveness in higher difficulties" sucks ass IMO. I would almost rather them make those skills less effective everywhere than to have this terrible dropoff thats poorly communicated to the player. Ill bet thousands of players have no idea that their 3% Lifesteal is reduced by 80 fucking percent just because they are in Inferno.
Interfectum
Gold Member
Yup and they'll quit the game in frustration like loads of people are doing right now.
thetrin
Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
Anyone who cares about their HC is headed for trouble. I don't know why you would give a fuck about a character that can die at any time, forever. Seems like masochism.
I just want to play HC to see how far I can get without dying. Then, when I die, I'll make another one, and see if I can beat it. I see it as a high score contest.
I've already had the full leveling experience via SC anyway. I'm not missing out on something.
I'm not making excuses. I truly enjoy the game, and I truly don't mind the AH. That puts me in the minority, and that's fine. The whole world doesn't need to agree with me.
Considering the gold AH exists and plenty of people are selling decent gear on it, I don't see how it's built around the RMAH. It's maybe built around the AH as a concept, but the RMAH is just another feature of it.
If you consider that making an excuse for them, then I don't know what to tell you.
I'm not saying the game is perfect, but it's far from bad, and it will get better.
I'm just sayin', when your HC character dies due to factors you cannot control, well, that sucks balls.
Except gold AH doesn't really work that well thanks to botters. Everything is super inflated.
thetrin
Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
Totally sucks, no question. But alas, his existence is fleeting and brittle. I shall try my best not to get attached.
thetrin
Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
I don't know much about the Inferno level AH (again, I'm enjoying the Normal -> Hell progression with each of the classes), so I can't speak to it, but I have heard it's super inflated. That sucks. It's really unfortunate, but I think it has more to do with Blizzard needing to crack down more on botters than it does with the AH being inherently broken or insidious in its existence (which is what most people are complaining about).
Blizzard just needs to be way more vigilant about this stuff.
10 years of development.
Pretty much sums up the game - almost nothing was even tested or well thought out.
old manatee
Banned
A good loot game is designed so that the player always feels like there is a carrot dangling just out of reach. When I was playing Diablo 3 I felt like I was just watching Blizzard eat the carrot in front of me.
SatelliteOfLove
Member
That's an interesting observation. There are alot of games, RPGs especially, that "wear out their welcome" or end too quickly, and a seriously long-haul game like what Blizzard makes should be made with that VERY much in mind during development. Not the initial crush of emotion, but what'll happen months and years down the line.
Remember, "satisfied" means you don't want more, but "fun" does.
Nouveau Blizzard telling people exactly how to play their game, and exactly how to enjoy it? Perish the thought! lol
I don't get the "you spent 100 hours on this game so it must be good" argument either. D2 and D3 have similar goals: get to the last difficulty to farm better items. At least in D2, you can actually find USEFUL uniques and set items on the way. In D3, you can literally disregard every item that drops until inferno because you know it'll be garbage. I don't consider my 60 hours in this game to be "value". Maybe 5 hours (or whatever my first run through took) of it was actual "enjoyment". The rest was literally a brain-dead, boring ass grind with no redeeming value or reward at all.
lol, well said. The motivation for me in my last week of playing was to try to make back the money I spent on this game and even that I couldn't do. Just wasn't worth playing through anymore; even for money.
lol, well said. The motivation for me in my last week of playing was to try to make back the money I spent on this game and even that I couldn't do. Just wasn't worth playing through anymore; even for money.
HappyHunting
Neo Member
I'm just reading through all these posts and everything pretty much points to one theme...
Blizzard failed to predict obvious results of obvious problems.
Now they are retro-actively fixing the problems, and until they pro-actively move forward, they will be hard pressed to please the masses.
God I want to keep loving this game.
Blizzard failed to predict obvious results of obvious problems.
Now they are retro-actively fixing the problems, and until they pro-actively move forward, they will be hard pressed to please the masses.
God I want to keep loving this game.
The_Darkest_Red
Member
It's like hiking up a mountain to see a spectacular view. When you first start it's pretty fun and you're enjoying yourself but eventually you start feeling fatigued and less interested. Nonetheless, you carry on because you believe the reward at the top will be worth it. Only in the case of D3, instead of a beautiful landscape waiting for you at the top of the mountain you just get a big, ugly, obnoxious door with a sign that says, "welcome to the auction house."
I still like Diablo 3 a lot but inferno has definitely soured me on the overall experience somewhat.
Trickster
Member
Pretty much, the game is riddled with faults that are very apparent to even the average player. Which makes it VERY strange that blizzard didn't seem to see those faults.
Ploid 3.0
Member
hahaha
I expected the drops to be more interesting in Inferno. All that talk about NV and killing elites for the best drops before the game launched made me think the drops would be unique between monsters. Instead everything has the same drops, all of the items are just about the same with only different names and slots you equipt them to.
I did learn the name for dex blue rings, and socketed blue items. After seeing a few hundred of them you can start avoiding picking them up. You don't even have to hover over them to look at the stats. The names are so all over the place that you have to shift click the gold in the AH after you sold something to see what it was that you actually sold (I see you nodding).
Dreams-Visions
Member
sums it up.
BravesCountry
Banned
Reasons I am no longer playing:
1. Poor Itemization
2. Lack of a good community
3. Ungodly amount of time needed just to slightly upgrade boring stats
Lack of community really killed it for me though. The auction house removes the necessity for everyone to be trading with each other personally, which I know is more efficient but its so impersonal and doesnt breed a good sense of community. Another thing that hurts the community is the lack of being able to create games with titles removes the ability to create a public game just for, say, whimseyshire, or other things besides progressing through acts. Like dueling..oh wait. This leads to no one really communicating with each other throughout the game, no one playing public games, and since all of my friends quit a long time ago and I was getting bored, it was a no brainer for me to stop playing.
1. Poor Itemization
2. Lack of a good community
3. Ungodly amount of time needed just to slightly upgrade boring stats
Lack of community really killed it for me though. The auction house removes the necessity for everyone to be trading with each other personally, which I know is more efficient but its so impersonal and doesnt breed a good sense of community. Another thing that hurts the community is the lack of being able to create games with titles removes the ability to create a public game just for, say, whimseyshire, or other things besides progressing through acts. Like dueling..oh wait. This leads to no one really communicating with each other throughout the game, no one playing public games, and since all of my friends quit a long time ago and I was getting bored, it was a no brainer for me to stop playing.
I haven't seen anyone bring up the biggest issue with the AH and loot in D3, the lack of item consumption. WoW gets away with selling good items on the AH because of Bind on Equip, something sorely lacking in Diablo 3. Items and gems just keep stacking up in the economy, so the longer the game runs the more out of date items you find outside of the AH will appear as they get maximized by demand over time and resold as people progress to a slightly better piece of gear, which is also minimizing the acceptable range of item quality. Gems are basically worthless with no way for them to be removed from the economy.
Loot in this game is just fucked up though. Useful item drop rate is terrible and there is a lack of type of useful items. I want my set items or etheral socketed gear that I'm trying to get for specific rune words, etc. etc. But really, that is my only issue with Diablo 3. I enjoyed the content and gameplay mechanics and love not getting locked into skill trees.
Diablo 2 was mechanically shit since everyone saved their stat/skill points for end game centric builds, and it was all about maxing skill points and stamina while minimizing stats to equip gear. Those system were and are bad, but we overlook it since it had a kick ass reward loop.
Loot in this game is just fucked up though. Useful item drop rate is terrible and there is a lack of type of useful items. I want my set items or etheral socketed gear that I'm trying to get for specific rune words, etc. etc. But really, that is my only issue with Diablo 3. I enjoyed the content and gameplay mechanics and love not getting locked into skill trees.
Diablo 2 was mechanically shit since everyone saved their stat/skill points for end game centric builds, and it was all about maxing skill points and stamina while minimizing stats to equip gear. Those system were and are bad, but we overlook it since it had a kick ass reward loop.
Hey, can I get a link to this comment? I looked around the thread a bit and didn't see it. Very curious.
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