Are you done? Why?

[lamaros]

Or you could go to work for a couple of hours, and spend the rest of your time doing something fun?

Took about 15 minutes to put everything up on the AH.  Another minute to sell the gold on the RMAH.

Got an email the next day that my sale went through for about $100.

How much time did you spend playing the game? And did you enjoy it, aside from the money you eventually made?

[MrHat]

Or you could go to work for a couple of hours, and spend the rest of your time doing something fun?

Took about 15 minutes to put everything up on the AH.  Another minute to sell the gold on the RMAH.

Got an email the next day that my sale went through for about $100.

How much time did you spend playing the game? And did you enjoy it, aside from the money you eventually made?

Oh God yes.  I really did enjoy myself.  But the fun wore off and this is the same as trading in a game you don't want to play anymore except I get to play it again a few months from now.

[Bann]

For anyone else whos done but still feels the itch, I've got 2 extra Path of Exile beta keys. Shoot me a PM if you are interested.

*edit* All gone.

[Phred]

No posts for 5 days. Quick trip to the graveyard inc?

[Druzil]

I'm pretty much taking a break and waiting for a patch.  Once they add PvP or the endgame 'levels' hopefully it gets more interesting again.

[Ironwood]

Why, yes, I would imagine it would be much more exciting to get owned by another player who's wearing 600 real life quid of gear.

[waffel]

Why, yes, I would imagine it would be much more exciting to get owned by another player who's wearing 600 real life quid of gear.

Nah, I'm sure they'll add a new PvP server with ladders and no RMAH. Sure of it. Super duper sure. 

[Malakili]

Yeah, PvP might get some people to come back and play the game again who stopped, but I don't think it is any kind of long term "end game" solution.

[Ingmar]

Particularly when they pretty much scrapped their existing plan for PVP because it wasn't fun; one wonders if they've been able to figure out why or even begin to fix it yet.

[Musashi]

It's literally the very last thing they should be worried about.  If you were a d2 pvper, that probably sounds like blasphemy.  But the two dozen of you need to have a conference and come to the inevitable conclusion that not even Jebus could save this game if they're worried about PvP right now.

[Malakili]

Yeah, even I am starting to see drop off in my play.  Playing on and off to level up my last two characters to 60, but I don't really like soloing Inferno much, and my friend who was my Inferno partner has been working nights, so we have little time to play together anymore.   

[Selby]

I think I'm finally done with this game, but not for the reasons everyone else is.  Every time I start to play it, I get sporadic screen freezes and white-outs that aren't always easily restored.  It's quite annoying that my video card apparently isn't up to the task even though it's a GeForce 9800 GT, which isn't exactly the strangest or most unusual card out there on the market.  None of my other games have this problem, not even WoW.  It's a pain in the ass to not be able to play - I sat down to play and it crashed within 5 minutes and I just put my hands up and said "no more!"  I had this trouble with D2 after the 2nd or 3rd patch with my 3dfx video card back then, but Blizzard eventually fixed it.  Guess I'll just wait for them to fix it or my video card to get updated naturally (which may be 2-3-4 years down the road).

[Soulflame]

I had similar problems with my 9800 GT.     On the other hand, my laptop with its mobility 6770 (I think) runs it just fine.

[ezrast]

Huh, getting crazy choppiness with my 9800GT now, too. Thought it was just the new drivers but reverting to the version I was running before didn't fix it.

[Lightstalker]

Ditto, with my AMD Radeon HD 6970.  Good thing I was at the start of Act III or else I'd have lost another Hardcore Barb.
Was massively jumpy, skipping frames, and just non-responsive despite low latency ~60ms according to the display.
New graphical issues since the last patch for me.

[Hawkbit]

My 8800gtx was supposed to be up to the task for it, but the game constantly stuttered.  I spent more time fiddling with settings than I did playing it.  Ultimately, I'd still play it occasionally if it worked, but I didn't find it fun enough to spend the time to make it play decently. 

Oddly, 1.01 is when it broke.  I played without a hitch until the first patch. 

[Rokal]

Barbarian, Monk, and Wizard 1.0.4 previews are up. Lots of significant skill buffs going around. I liked the admission in the Monk diary that they'd like to nerf One With Everything since it was seen as required, but that it would mess up current monk gear (that people purchased via the G/RM AH) too much.

Each preview is written by Wyatt Cheng, who I saw an interesting quote from recently in the design blog of another Blizzard employee.

"Any mechanic, no matter how lame, is considered fun when sufficiently overpowered."



All the skill buffs in the world wouldn't make me want to play Diablo 3 again because it does nothing to fix the core problem, as the Diablo 1 & 2 design lead David Brevik expressed this weekend at Gamescon.

"But I wouldn't have made the same choices that they did for some of the item stuff... It became more efficient to grind for gold than it did to find items. The point of the game is to find items; if you make the point of the game to grind for gold instead, it really loses a lot of what the game is about."

[Maledict]

They are nerfing the only fun and unique build for wizards I've found (the wicked twister build). Not sure why because whilst it has obvious strengths its clearly not overpowered just playing the game, and it actually made gearing up slightly more complex than 'get int'.

[Ingmar]

I wonder if they'll nerf the WD pet auras in the same way.

[Paelos]

If you're ranged you are probably getting a nerf. If you are melee you are getting buffed.

That would be my understanding so far.

[Rokal]

If you're ranged you are probably getting a nerf. If you are melee you are getting buffed.

That would be my understanding so far.

DH is up, no nerfs.

Edit:
WD is also up, arguably no nerfs.

[Malakili]

DH changes look ok.  I suspect most builds won't change dramatically unless the math on those newly buffed skills is a clear winner.  One of the things that makes Hungering Arrow so good is that because you don't need to aim precisely the mechanics of really fast kiting become easier.  They don't seem to address survivability either.  There reason no one uses Rain of Arrows isn't because it has terrible damage (ok that is partly why), but because you basically need all your slots for survivability skills.

[Paelos]

I'm a little surprised DH didn't get a nerf. I'm completely unshocked WD didn't get a nerf because nobody plays them.

[Ingmar]

WD changes look good, might be enough to get my ass in gear to actually play some more Inferno.

[Soulflame]

I find it weird how the blog posts sometimes acknowledge that Act 3 and 4 throw a lot of damage at the player, but so far as I can tell, don't really talk about the problem that players don't have a lot of skill variety because they're slotting every good survivability skill they can, which of course limits them to only slotting the best DPS skill, or maybe two skills that work very well together.

[Paelos]

That's also part of the issue I see with the Barb changes. They are talking about making bash and cleave more attractive than frenzy, but I don't really see how they can EVER be more attractive unless you nerf the speed. More swings per second with higher dps weapons are usually going to beat any damage modifier on slower swings unless it's obviously overtuned. Also, with life on hit trying to extend life expectancies with those other survival skills, unless you directly control the damage done to players in those later acts, nobody will change.

[Soulflame]

Also, there's little to no gear variability, which I think is a larger issue than the skills.  There exists a set of skills + gear that can get you through Inferno.  Skills are easy to set up, and you can experiment on your own, or research on the internet, to figure it out.  Gear, on the other hand, is pretty much set in stone with All Resist, Vitality, DPS stat, Life on Hit, plus maybe increased crit rate and increased crit damage.  When is Blizzard going to address that?

[Merusk]

As soon as they get some talented designers able to look beyond their self-inflicted WOW paradigm of "These stats matter for this class, these don't"

I wouldn't hold my breath.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy it in WOW but this is a fundamentally different game that should have been using a different solution from day 1.

[Paelos]

They need to modify how the skills of dex, int, and str operate across the classes, I agree.

For example, int and dex need to have higher modifiers for Barbs. I would be more likely to look at gear with some INT on it, if I knew that my All Resist modifier was higher. Also, I'd do the same with dex if it increased attack speed. There would be tradeoffs with higher damage from your main stat with other stats.

[Lantyssa]

Use the off-stats to pump up the helpful ones.  Barb gets +INT?  Resist for you!  Wizard gets +Str?  Damage reduction!

[Ingmar]

That's also part of the issue I see with the Barb changes. They are talking about making bash and cleave more attractive than frenzy, but I don't really see how they can EVER be more attractive unless you nerf the speed. More swings per second with higher dps weapons are usually going to beat any damage modifier on slower swings unless it's obviously overtuned. Also, with life on hit trying to extend life expectancies with those other survival skills, unless you directly control the damage done to players in those later acts, nobody will change.

To some extent they don't have to be equally attractive; as long as you can succeed with them, it will be enough.

Use the off-stats to pump up the helpful ones.  Barb gets +INT?  Resist for you!  Wizard gets +Str?  Damage reduction!

It does this already I am pretty sure.

[Soulflame]

The stats do work that way.

[Paelos]

The stats do work that way.

Not enough that people would notice. Right now the modifier is 1 allresist to every 10 intelligence. I think it needs to be 1-4 to be remotely useful. There's no way I'd stack 100 int for a 10 point bump, but I might for 25.

[Malakili]

They do, but not in a way that is more than "Well, I guess the int on this item isn't totally useless, but I'd still prefer more strength."  I'm also pretty sure that all things being equal you could get more resist all just by getting resist all on the item instead of int.   For the examples given, 1 resist all per 10 int is ok, but a drop in the bucket for what is needed, and no barbarian is going to take an item with more int instead of more strength or vitality, or flat resist all.  And Wizards don't live based on mitigation - so the strength is almost entirely wasted even if it does technically add mitigation.  

It speaks to a bigger problem about itemization and build diversity.

[Salamok]

They need to modify how the skills of dex, int, and str operate across the classes, I agree.

For example, int and dex need to have higher modifiers for Barbs. I would be more likely to look at gear with some INT on it, if I knew that my All Resist modifier was higher. Also, I'd do the same with dex if it increased attack speed. There would be tradeoffs with higher damage from your main stat with other stats.

I actually prefer the way D1 did this, pump up str on your wizzy and you get to wear better armor!