It sounds like Blizz is beefing up crafting quite a bit, so there's that. And the mystic for playing roulette with your legendary drops.
Diablo III - It's official
- Thread starter N00b
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It sounds like Blizz is beefing up crafting quite a bit, so there's that. And the mystic for playing roulette with your legendary drops.
D
Deleted member 13524
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After this, do they still have any reason to keep the game from playing offline like the console versions?
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Yup, considering that it would sell considerably worse if online wasn't required, I doubt that will ever go away.
Regards,
SB
Regards,
SB
It would?
The Diablo series appeals to three main categories:
1. Those who play for discovery - of world, cinematics, lore and story
(Once they played the game to completion once, the only thing left is the slight differences between classes.)
2. Those who enjoy the battle challenges and elegance/problem solving in fighting.
(Different classes and to a lesser extent different levels encourage extended play beyond first completion. Skill honing can go on for a looonng time.)
3. Compulsive collectors/finders of digital loot.
(Depenging on the depth of their addiction these can go on "forever")
Diablo3 was a failure for me not only because it was designed for the third category (where I have no interest) but because intermittently laggy servers ruined hardcore play, which was how I preferred to play its predecessor in order to maintain a sharp sense of challenge, and would have preferred to play D3 as well.
Mandatory online play remains a critical flaw. Why on earth Blizzard with their piles of cash are unable/unwilling to maintain a dependable server structure is beyond me. I have a good connection. The problems are on their end.
It's probably more complicated than that. The internet has many "ends", since it is not one homogenous structure but rather a mishmash of many separate networks with cross-connections here and there.
Fair enough, I've only been able to determine that my connection isn't the culprit.
Different servers probably provide different stability as well.
Still, the intermittent problems remain, and it is entirely due to their always connected choice.
RenegadeRocks
Legend
I am surprised they are ending the auction house on pc. Once the loot is balanced, does it matter if it remained?
Always online is obviously to prevent piracy and th ereason they will never get a pc sale from me. Recently we had terrible duststorm , many trees were uprooted and wires damaged. Once electricity was restored I played Diablo 3 on ps3 till internet came back after a day and my work resumed. My game would have been dead right when I had the time to play it if it had an online only restriction. Ubisoft removed it fromAC but I don't think Blizzard, emboldened by massive sales for D3, will remove the restriction. Maybe later when D4 is around the corner.
Always online is obviously to prevent piracy and th ereason they will never get a pc sale from me. Recently we had terrible duststorm , many trees were uprooted and wires damaged. Once electricity was restored I played Diablo 3 on ps3 till internet came back after a day and my work resumed. My game would have been dead right when I had the time to play it if it had an online only restriction. Ubisoft removed it fromAC but I don't think Blizzard, emboldened by massive sales for D3, will remove the restriction. Maybe later when D4 is around the corner.
I guess it's a psychology problem. Once you have a way to progress faster (buying from the AH instead of grinding) it creates an illusion that buying from the AH (or "playing the auction house") is "mandatory," despite the main appeal for playing Diablo-type games is to grind for loot.
Yeah, and it will be seen as a shortcut that essentially by-passes the core of the game itself. And with loot drops being muchly improved, AH pricing would collapse anyhow, so the point of the AH being there would largely be gutted.
Good decision all-around to remove it, IMO. Certainly one of the better they've made since putting it into the game in the first place.
I remember trying to trade using battle.net chat channels in diablo 2, and it was an absolute nightmare. I don't think I ever successfully managed to buy or sell ANYthing, which is why I looked forward to the AH in D3 a lot. Then blizzard got greedy and expanded with a real-money AH as well, and that's where everything really started falling apart IMO.
So...good riddance.
Good decision all-around to remove it, IMO. Certainly one of the better they've made since putting it into the game in the first place.
I remember trying to trade using battle.net chat channels in diablo 2, and it was an absolute nightmare. I don't think I ever successfully managed to buy or sell ANYthing, which is why I looked forward to the AH in D3 a lot. Then blizzard got greedy and expanded with a real-money AH as well, and that's where everything really started falling apart IMO.
So...good riddance.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Yes, because then anyone that wanted to play it wouldn't necessarily have to buy it.
You'd have a similar situation as Torchlight 2, where there are likely more people playing it that haven't bought it than there are people playing it that have bought it.
Everyone I've ever met, in RL or online that has wanted to play through the full of D3 has had to buy it. But only a fraction of the people that has wanted to play through the full of Torchlight 2 has bought it. And with some rare exceptions, they all think Torchlight 2 is the better game. But since Torchlight 2 is easily pirated, a lot of people just don't bother to buy it even when they spend 20-30 hours a week playing it. And yes a lot of those people I've met that bought Diablo 3 are playing a pirated Torchlight 2.
And considering there still isn't a full server emulator available for D3 the last time I checked, that isn't going to change anytime soon.
Yes, a certain segment of people love to ignore the effect of piracy on sales, but that still doesn't affect the reality of the situation.
Regards,
SB
It is not a good thing that they removed the AH altogether.
They should have pulled the plug on the real money auction house only.
I think they've done it because they found out that it costs to much to keep the thing under check outside of a subscription system, too many people try to cheat on way or another (real money or not).
EDIT
WRT torchlight 2 it is not a better game for me, different but better it is not. Imo the quality of the support has also nothing to do with what Blizzard is doing.
I've started to enjoying the game a month ago because I use the "synergies" mod. That guy has done a lot of work, an insane amount of work, I don't have the log of what he changed but he might have done some balancing wrt skills. Runic should have done better, instead of letting that type of (great) guy do its job.
I've looked into modding the game (and gave up), but reading topics on the matter here and there there was a lot of things that smelled not finished/barely tested, especially wrt skills. It also look like till late in the game they were not sure about what to do with some classes.
There are a lot of things that doesn't scale as they should, behave weirdly, etc. within such a tiny team I would have expected much more consistently, now because some modder are doing the job it means the game is great? I disagree modders are great, but they are losing their time fixing things instead of creating more content.
If Diablo3 had half the short coming of Torchlight 2 I can only imagine what people would say.
And I've pretty pissed at Blizzard and how badly they implemented the online component of diablo3 and the resulting lag for lots of players.
They should have pulled the plug on the real money auction house only.
I think they've done it because they found out that it costs to much to keep the thing under check outside of a subscription system, too many people try to cheat on way or another (real money or not).
EDIT
WRT torchlight 2 it is not a better game for me, different but better it is not. Imo the quality of the support has also nothing to do with what Blizzard is doing.
I've started to enjoying the game a month ago because I use the "synergies" mod. That guy has done a lot of work, an insane amount of work, I don't have the log of what he changed but he might have done some balancing wrt skills. Runic should have done better, instead of letting that type of (great) guy do its job.
I've looked into modding the game (and gave up), but reading topics on the matter here and there there was a lot of things that smelled not finished/barely tested, especially wrt skills. It also look like till late in the game they were not sure about what to do with some classes.
There are a lot of things that doesn't scale as they should, behave weirdly, etc. within such a tiny team I would have expected much more consistently, now because some modder are doing the job it means the game is great? I disagree modders are great, but they are losing their time fixing things instead of creating more content.
If Diablo3 had half the short coming of Torchlight 2 I can only imagine what people would say.
And I've pretty pissed at Blizzard and how badly they implemented the online component of diablo3 and the resulting lag for lots of players.
Last edited by a moderator:
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Yup. I've been hounding some of them to buy Torchlight 2, even though they have the pirated version that they play so much. I've managed to get some of them to buy it, but a lot of them just don't care. I even point out that they play their pirated version of Torchlight 2 more than they play their legit version of D3. I just don't understand that way of thinking. If you have fun playing something, why not reward the people that made it?
Regards,
SB
Received a beta invite today, and have been playing a couple hours until I got disconnected abruptly from the game server. Maybe something crashed, maybe something else, I dunno.
Early impressions, beyond the somewhat laggy experience due to test realms being located further off geographically than regular realms: it's dark.
Veeery very dark.
Anyone who hated the rainbow after the spider cave in act one of D3 ought to spooge their pants immediately upon seeing the expansion, it is THAT dark... Color tones generally range from blacks, dark slate grey and lots of blues.
I'm getting really terrible framerate by the way. Game seems stuck at 30fps or less, despite my GPU(s) not being stressed at all; fans don't spin up above idle revs from what my ears tell me.
There's some beta wonkyness. NPCs that are friendly yet attackable, items with missing/glitchy text and stats and so on. This for a game that has been live for nearly two years and an expansion launching in two months. *shrug* Beta is beta I guess.
I made a crusader who became level 1, and ran up through tristram to the cathedral. By that time he was level 6, so leveling seems sped up quite a bit. Then I copied my main characters over from live to the PTR, and that totally wiped out the little crusader I made along with game settings and keybinds and reset everything to default again... Oops! Oh well. He was only level 6, which I reached in what, ten minutes?
Less items drop, but it's hard to tell if they're really all that much better than what you found in the past, my sample size is really small so far, but from what I can tell, pure stats seem less common now than under "loot 1.0" system. Instead there's other affixes, more resists and so on. *shrug* Like I said, small sample size. I shouldn't draw any conclusions, really...
Found a nice rare twohander sword with 1600dps on it dropping off some random trash mob I think, well more than either of my legendary weapons. Too bad my character is demon hunter!
Haven't encountered the reforging/transmogging vendor yet, so I don't know how that works.
Diamonds are now in the game apparantly (they show up at the gem combiner), but I don't know what stats they have as the user interface doesn't say. Also, I haven't seen any drop yet. Too early for that perhaps. Speaking of gems, I haven't found any gem recipes (yet) on live realm, but on beta I have three additional quality of gems beyond star ruby. All require three gems of previous level, so crafting even one gem of max quality will be a horrendous effort and require mountains and mountains of gold. UGH!
Not sure I really like the new paragon system. It felt nice when you just got flat buffs to gold/item find methinks, and now you have to pick wether you want gold/item find or some other buff, and that makes me ambivalent as to what I really need or want. Also miss the old nephalem valor buff in a way, but I think you get a full stack by default now so I don't think I'm actually missing any gold find in the beta, I'm not totally sure. It was a while since I last played on live realm, I'd have to check and make sure.
Speaking of things that are gone, all the various sizes of health potions are now unified into one. All (or perhaps almost all) different levels of crafting materials are also unified. Pages and tomes have been summarily removed from the game, so no need to grind that shit anymore. Not that I actually used blacksmithing tomes anyway as all the stuff you crafted with it were utter, utter junk thanks to the uber-random drop system.
The introduction movie clip shown at this past blizzcon does not seem to be included in the files downloaded with the beta. Maybe blizzard is skimping to save on the weight of the download package. Makes me wonder if the final clip is in or not also. Probably not, maybe they're still working on it at the animation department...
HMM. What else? Can't think of anything right now.
Anyone else in the beta?
Early impressions, beyond the somewhat laggy experience due to test realms being located further off geographically than regular realms: it's dark.
Veeery very dark.
Anyone who hated the rainbow after the spider cave in act one of D3 ought to spooge their pants immediately upon seeing the expansion, it is THAT dark...
Color tones generally range from blacks, dark slate grey and lots of blues.I'm getting really terrible framerate by the way. Game seems stuck at 30fps or less, despite my GPU(s) not being stressed at all; fans don't spin up above idle revs from what my ears tell me.
There's some beta wonkyness. NPCs that are friendly yet attackable, items with missing/glitchy text and stats and so on. This for a game that has been live for nearly two years and an expansion launching in two months. *shrug* Beta is beta I guess.
I made a crusader who became level 1, and ran up through tristram to the cathedral. By that time he was level 6, so leveling seems sped up quite a bit. Then I copied my main characters over from live to the PTR, and that totally wiped out the little crusader I made along with game settings and keybinds and reset everything to default again... Oops! Oh well. He was only level 6, which I reached in what, ten minutes?
Less items drop, but it's hard to tell if they're really all that much better than what you found in the past, my sample size is really small so far, but from what I can tell, pure stats seem less common now than under "loot 1.0" system. Instead there's other affixes, more resists and so on. *shrug* Like I said, small sample size. I shouldn't draw any conclusions, really...
Found a nice rare twohander sword with 1600dps on it dropping off some random trash mob I think, well more than either of my legendary weapons. Too bad my character is demon hunter!
Haven't encountered the reforging/transmogging vendor yet, so I don't know how that works.
Diamonds are now in the game apparantly (they show up at the gem combiner), but I don't know what stats they have as the user interface doesn't say. Also, I haven't seen any drop yet. Too early for that perhaps. Speaking of gems, I haven't found any gem recipes (yet) on live realm, but on beta I have three additional quality of gems beyond star ruby. All require three gems of previous level, so crafting even one gem of max quality will be a horrendous effort and require mountains and mountains of gold. UGH!
Not sure I really like the new paragon system. It felt nice when you just got flat buffs to gold/item find methinks, and now you have to pick wether you want gold/item find or some other buff, and that makes me ambivalent as to what I really need or want. Also miss the old nephalem valor buff in a way, but I think you get a full stack by default now so I don't think I'm actually missing any gold find in the beta, I'm not totally sure. It was a while since I last played on live realm, I'd have to check and make sure.
Speaking of things that are gone, all the various sizes of health potions are now unified into one. All (or perhaps almost all) different levels of crafting materials are also unified. Pages and tomes have been summarily removed from the game, so no need to grind that shit anymore. Not that I actually used blacksmithing tomes anyway as all the stuff you crafted with it were utter, utter junk thanks to the uber-random drop system.
The introduction movie clip shown at this past blizzcon does not seem to be included in the files downloaded with the beta. Maybe blizzard is skimping to save on the weight of the download package. Makes me wonder if the final clip is in or not also. Probably not, maybe they're still working on it at the animation department...
HMM. What else? Can't think of anything right now.
Anyone else in the beta?
At higher level you'll notice the item change. The drops are much much better. Items now have a tighter range. ie. Instead of rolling 1-200 it might roll 140-200. I expect by level 62 people will have ditched legendary and set items for not even ideal items.
My character is 62 now but the drops I got so far has been 61 tops. Even so, I've ditched most legendaries I bought off the auction house (because none would friggin drop for me playing the game the regular way), and replaced them with yellows and one legendary 61 nagelring that I got during an event in one of the houses early on in the city.
There's fewer stats and generally no sockets on the replacements, but they're overall much better.
There's fewer stats and generally no sockets on the replacements, but they're overall much better.
