f13.net

Hey everyone,

I wanted all of you to be some of the first to know that I've made an important decision about my future, and how that decision will affect the future of Diablo.

I recently celebrated my seven-year anniversary working on Diablo III, and while it's been one of the most challenging and rewarding periods of my life, I've reached a point creatively where I'm looking forward to working on something new. The powers that be at Blizzard have been gracious enough to give me that opportunity. Over the course of the next several weeks, I will be moving off of the Diablo III project and transitioning elsewhere within Blizzard. This decision was not an easy one for me, and not one I made quickly, but ultimately it's what I feel is right.

The first thing I want to assure you all is that this will not negatively impact our ongoing support of Diablo III. The game was not made by one person, far from it, and the team that poured their passion and considerable talent into it isn't going anywhere. We have lots of things planned for the future, and those plans will carry forward as normal. I also won't be abandoning the team, and will remain available to them during the transition period while we determine who will take over duties as game director.

To that point, you shouldn't be surprised if you see a job posting for a game director on Diablo III, as we want to make sure we explore every opportunity to find the best possible leadership for the project. We're looking forward to finding this person and hearing what kind of fresh ideas they can bring to the table.

I'm proud of Diablo III, and despite our differences at times I will miss the community that has formed around it. I feel I have made many mistakes in managing that relationship, but my intent was always to provide a great gaming experience, and be as open and receptive as possible, while still sticking true to the vision the Diablo team has for the game.

I know some of you feel we fell short of our promise to release the game "when it's ready." While we're not perfect, we try to make the best decisions we can with the information and knowledge we have at the time. That doesn't mean we always make the right decisions, but if we made a mistake then I feel we've made an exceptional effort to correct it.

This is what you can always count on from Blizzard: that we will stand by our games and make every effort to continually improve them over time. We heard the feedback and suggestions from the community. For example, we agreed that Diablo III's itemization at launch was not good enough, so the team made numerous changes, including changing drop rates, re-tuning legendaries, and adding scores of new items to the game. We also agreed that the end game needed more depth, so the team added new events, and new systems like Monster Power and Paragon levels.

Our commitment to making our games as good as they can be is what has always defined Blizzard as a game studio, and that commitment never ends for us at a ship date. With your help, we'll continue to play, debate, and improve Diablo III, as we've done with every Blizzard game.

To that end, patch 1.0.7 is underway, the PTR is live, and there are many other great things brewing for Diablo in 2013. I'm leaving Diablo III in good hands, and my departure will not jeopardize the progress of the game as we continue to do what we do: listen, play, and improve.

You are the most passionate, dedicated group of gamers a designer could hope to have. I wish you all the best, and want to thank you for making this an amazing experience for me. Keep your axes sharp, your spell books handy, and that crafty devil in check.

--Jay

I recently celebrated my seven-year anniversary working on Diablo III

I've reached a point creatively where I'm looking forward to working on something new.

I recently celebrated my seven-year anniversary working on Diablo III, and while it's been one of the most challenging and rewarding periods of my life, I've reached a point creatively where I'm looking forward to working on something new. The powers that be at Blizzard have been gracious enough to give me that opportunity.

...

To that point, you shouldn't be surprised if you see a job posting for a game director on Diablo III, as we want to make sure we explore every opportunity to find the best possible leadership for the project. We're looking forward to finding this person and hearing what kind of fresh ideas they can bring to the table.

Was Diablo 3 really that bad?

I feel like there's this "Diablo 3 sucked balls!" bandwagon that everyone has jumped on.

Certain things were absolutely godawful. The auction house was really stupid, but I can forgive someone for thinking it'd be a good idea. Kind of.

I've never looked to a Diablo game for years of replayability, though, I guess? I played it for like 3 weeks and enjoyed it for what it was.

The guy's entire goodbye post read like an apology. That seems unfortunate that he felt he had to do it that way.

Was Diablo 3 really that bad?

[...]

He took 7 years to develop a game that had every bit of potential to blow the cover off the market, similar to the way WoW did when it was released. You had a perfect storm of a prior game that was well-loved, an almost rabid fan following, and a large time gap to whip up an absolute frenzy amongst older and new players.

And then we got an RNG loot nightmare mess, polished to a homogonized shine. He couldn't handle the job, couldn't handle the fact he released an unfinished game, and his PR was horrific. He was a cancer, and hopefully it's the first move of many by Blizzard to get rid of those guys.

It's a symptom of the "New" Blizzard.  For as much as people want to say Kotick would be a fool to kill the golden goose, people do just that all the time, and Kotick has.   He's done many interviews where he brags about how Blizzard employees used to come to meetings with him with only ideas or notions and speak in roundabout design terms.  BUT NOW they come to him with spreadsheets, ROI projections and discussions of alternate revenue streams instead of "Hey, this would be cool."

Jay Wilson is a product of this environment.  Blizzard is now that souless EA-like developer, it simply hasn't shown in any large way because they only have 3 product lines and are fucking SLOW to release anything so the 15 years of goodwill haven't been shit on enough.  Yet.

Anyone who thinks that Kotick is currently searching soul and looking to change back to the good old days is severely misguided.

No, I don't. I do think he realizes that the current iteration of development is not working to deliver the profits he wants. There is such a thing as making a connection between game sales and a happy customer base.

Diablo 3 was the factory production line of games.  You could clearly tell it was simply made without any love or care or attention at all.  It was soulless and polished and marketed and entirely without soul.

And in my head, all I can hear is RocknRoll racing and 'JAKE LIGHTS HIM UP'  'JAKE IS IN ANOTHER TIMEZONE!'

Days gone by.

Anyone who thinks that Kotick is currently searching soul and looking to change back to the good old days is severely misguided.  More Profits.  Full Steam Ahead.  We'll be lucky if the 3rd installment of Starcraft isn't 'pay per mission'

How does that line up with the jillion people in the WoW thread all going "why won't they listen to us?".

How does that line up with the jillion people in the WoW thread all going "why won't they listen to us?".

It's a symptom of the "New" Blizzard.  For as much as people want to say Kotick would be a fool to kill the golden goose, people do just that all the time, and Kotick has.   He's done many interviews where he brags about how Blizzard employees used to come to meetings with him with only ideas or notions and speak in roundabout design terms.  BUT NOW they come to him with spreadsheets, ROI projections and discussions of alternate revenue streams instead of "Hey, this would be cool."

They've been resting on laurels too long, and they are slowly trying to break that habit by removing people who just want to ignore the customers. 2013 will be a make or break year for Blizzard in terms of their staff.

In what way are Diablo 3's problems due to ignoring customers? The game is stream-lined and over-simplified to the point of absurdity. This wasn't done because the developers were building a game for themselves, they were trying to build a Diablo game that they thought would appeal to gamers in 2012. The game probably would have turned out better if they had built it for themselves rather than trying to build it for the customer they wanted, we probably would have ended up with something less accessible but also complex and interesting like PoE. Their older designs for pretty much every system in the game seem more interesting than what we got but they scrapped them to build something that they thought their target customer would be able to understand easier.

That be a pretty nice job actually.  :why_so_serious:

Some days I wonder just who Rokal is at Blizzard that he feels the need to so vehemently defend their shitty decisions over the last 5 years.

Clearly, if something makes a bunch of money it must be good.

Thanks for clearing that up forums poster Kail!

Making 500 mil when you probably expected to make a billion and walk away with every GOTY award is pretty much a failure. Remember that most "failed" MMOs end up being really profitable still.

Some days I wonder just who Rokal is at Blizzard that he feels the need to so vehemently defend their shitty decisions over the last 5 years.

I didn't say it was good, I've never played it.  It is a success, though.  You seriously think Activision is looking at Jay Wilson and going "Well, Diablo 3 made 500 million dollars, but I read on an internet forum that it suxors, and that's unacceptable, so you're fired"?

3.  Or I have to finish the game multiple times to access the good loot tables? 

2.  Disappointing loot.  The game is to buy the good loot at the AH?  What?  You kill monsters, you see what drops, THAT'S Diablo.
...

They made these mistakes due to their desire to monetize loot.  Making money trumped design, where D1 and D2 made money due TO their designs.

http://i.imgur.com/h6OUS.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/h6OUS.jpg

That really isn't an accurate picture. For a start D2's itemization at various times was all over the shop and LoD and 1.10 made significant changes to it.

That really isn't an accurate picture. For a start D2's itemization at various times was all over the shop and LoD and 1.10 made significant changes to it.

Fuck that loser.

Interesting discussion so far.  I think I can sum up most of the reactions to this news with a quote from one D3 dev though.


=p

Tying skills to DPS is something inherited from WoW; because gear balance is very important (in WoW), you can't tie skills to weapon damage or slower weapons will always be better.

They would need to redesign skills and weapons in a fundamental way in order to make that work, for no reason other than the fact that tying skills to an abstract concept (DPS) makes less sense than the more concrete weapon damage.

This thread saddens me greatly. I know that the Battle.net forums have earned a reputation for rough justice, but I do not believe justice is being served by how people are speaking about Jay’s departure from Diablo III.

I am very proud of the Diablo franchise and what the team was able to accomplish with Diablo III. As a gamer I have enjoyed the game and played for many, many nights with friends and family. I’m not, however, going to use that as an excuse. The Diablo community deserves an even better game from Blizzard and we are committed to improving it. We have a talented team in place and have no intention of stopping work on Diablo III until it is the best game in the franchise.

I’m the only person in this thread who has actually worked with Jay. I hired Jay to head up the Diablo project and had the pleasure of getting to work with him, both in building the team and designing the game. He has great design instincts and has added so much to the franchise with his feel for visceral combat, boss battles, and an unparalleled knack for making it fun to smash bad guys. I’ve worked with many, many designers at Blizzard and Jay is one of the best. He has a great career at Blizzard ahead of him and I guarantee that you will enjoy Jay’s game designs in future Blizzard games.

If you love Diablo as much as we do, then please continue to let us know how you feel we can improve the game. If you still feel the need to dish out blame, then I would prefer you direct it at me. I was the executive producer on the project; I hired Jay and I gave him advice and direction throughout the development process. I was ultimately responsible for the game we released and take full responsibility for the quality of the result.

I know some of you feel we fell short of our promise to release the game "when it's ready." ... That doesn't mean we always make the right decisions, but if we made a mistake then I feel we've made an exceptional effort to correct it.

He wasn't unprofessional on Twitter (to my knowledge); he was unprofessional on what it appeared he thought was a non-publically-visible Facebook page. The degree of fuckup there is somewhat less. (Obviously still present, but if it had been on Twitter, he'd have been gone the next day.)

It's not so much where he said something and circumstances thereof, but that he actually said it. It speaks volumes about the person's mindset and personality, such that their first response was what it had been.

Really? Huh, well I guess it might be a different culture over there. To me it was grossly spiteful and petty to react that way, unprofessionalism aside. I was frankly surprised he kept his job.

It's not as if game developers on the whole are known for their maturity and professionalism. That doesn't mean they get a free pass when they publicly do something really stupid, though.

If you work in a creative industry, there will be critics. There will especially be critics that work in the same field. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what they think if your customers are happy with the product. The problem in this particular case was that the customers weren't satisfied, and many of them agreed with the vocal critic in question.

D2 LoD gameplay - don't touch a fucking thing, not a tiny thing! Update the graphics engine to widescreen and re-render the characters/monsters/effects and shove it out the door for $30. Make it SP/P2P (screw battlenet unless you really want to run ladders etc, but really, just make it no-connection needed for SP/LAN/P2P and don't worry if people mod it. It'd sell bloody well!

Guys, I think it's pretty weird that everyone's acting like this is obviously some sort of sign of disappointment with D3 when it's just a game director moving on to another project at the company.  You know, like they often do.

That doesn't mean it wasn't a disappointment, but the game director moving on to a new project about a year after release is hardly abnormal for a successful project.

Guys, I think it's pretty weird that everyone's acting like this is obviously some sort of sign of disappointment with D3 when it's just a game director moving on to another project at the company.  You know, like they often do.

Hmmm... maybe Blizzard is actually working on this now...?

https://twitter.com/Angryrobotics

Jay Wilson
@Angryrobotics
Game Director @ Blizzard on an unannounced game.

 :awesome_for_real:

Yeah, hiring an outsider to head up a project is definitely a red flag that there's something suspicious going on.  Oh, wait, Jay Wilson was himself an outside hire as Game Director.

Sorry, I realize I'm coming off as a prick.  I like all you guys.  I simultaneously believe many of you are slightly insane when it comes to diablo.

This post is a good read with a lot of great feedback and I appreciate you putting it together. Thanks! While there are other points in the original post, I wanted to briefly talk about items since it’s the big one.

We know that (for many players) it’s much more rewarding to gear up from items that you find while playing normally than it is to necessarily go through Auction House, and we’re working to make improvements in that area. There are a lot of ways we could attempt to reach that goal, and choosing the best one(s) to go with is not always a fast process. I want to encourage you all to continue to post your thoughts on the subject and I promise we will keep reading and relaying them.                               

Grimiku (Community Manager) has a much better way of saying "no you're not playing our game properly":


in response to:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/7709861367?page=1

(Wall of text but really well thought out and written.

I thought I'd put my money where my mouth is and do an Act 1 inferno run on my monk (because the other 60s don't have the gear/resists to solo).

I had EXACTLY ONE level 63 yellow drop the entire run - a DH chest with int/str on it WTF? Tons of 59s (because yeah I need to downgrade), no 62s, a smattering of magic 61s and nothing of use plus no legendaries. I maintained my 5 stacks of Nepthalim Valor, am only a level 1 paragon and had no MF admittedly but "fuck that guy", this game still sucks endgame.

I want to play, but this isn't my game :(

As far as being a success or not, I had people on my Facebook page who I didn't think even played games at all excited about D3 without knowing anything about it. "Diablo 3" was going to sell well, regardless of what it was, simply because it was Diablo 3

That could be the case. However, I don't recall them doing anything similar a year after WoW released.

His full EQ name was Tigole Bitties and he was a raging douchebag back then too.

Jeff Kaplan seemed like a nice guy when I worked support for his team. His past along with Afrasiabi and Pardo were common knowledge. They were also remarkably good at their jobs and the first to be self-critical about mistakes made and how the game could always be better. Great guy in-person -- humble. Though I presume working on WoW and its challenges during that period of time matured him?

Tigole

Plot twist: the new project Jay Wilson moved to was D3 on consoles.

You think it was a long game, rather than just fuck stupidity ?

Really ?

I mean for all the negative shit the game gets, what kind of consumer are you trying to grab that hasn't already purchased the game? The francise wasn't designed for a console before, and it's going to be well over a year out of the box.

You could have said the same about Minecraft and that sold crazy numbers on Xbox. Granted, Minecraft was actually a good game. Still, Diablo 3 on consoles doesn't seem like a terrible idea for Blizzard.

:facepalm:

At least we'll still have Torchlight Path of Exile.

Well it barely plays well on a PC. I mean for all the negative shit the game gets, what kind of consumer are you trying to grab that hasn't already purchased the game? The francise wasn't designed for a console before, and it's going to be well over a year out of the box.

I just don't get how the port is worth the time or money, and I'm not sure how the AH would work. Is the interface workable for a console? Is the RMAH part of that plan?

Remember how D3 on the PC didn't have offline play?

http://www.diablofans.com/topic/86606-diablo-3-offline-play-on-playstation-3-4/
 :popcorn:

I am not sure why anyone would care about a D3 port to PS4 though, or tin-foil hat that the game was really designed for consoles.  The sales for the game on PC are, what, well over 10 million at this point?  No one at Blizzard is thinking the PS4/Xbox720 version of this will sell anywhere near that amount, or designed it for consoles that will be launching at least 1.5 years after the PC version.

Thanks for taking the time to put your thoughts on paper for us. There are a lot of topics here that deserve attention and I want to share our views on them with all of you. Stay a while and listen.

Challenge

Challenge is certainly something that has value; players can’t feel a sense of accomplishment if everything in the game can be face rolled. I think many people would agree that, at launch, the game was too challenging. It was very difficult to progress through Inferno depending on your class or items and the challenge was a large part of the reason players felt like they were driven to the AH in the first place. When you present players with difficult content they will find a way to overcome it which usually means using only the most powerful items and abilities. The unfortunate side effect is it also drives players away from the play styles they feel are “just fun”. We have taken steps to improve this problem a number of ways; reducing the overall difficulty of Inferno, improving the potency of underused skills to allow players more diversity in their gameplay, and introducing Monster Power to allow players to set the game to a level which they feel is enjoyable. I think the right way to introduce challenge is to make it optional, for example having difficult content for the players that enjoy it without penalizing the players who prefer a more relaxed gameplay experience.

Items and AH

Items are a topic with a tremendous amount of depth and also a very sensitive subject, so I’ll do my best to provide some of our insights into the matter. Removing “bad” affixes is certainly a suggestion that surfaces from time to time, another suggestion is to group all the good affixes into a shared category so that they can’t all roll on the same item. I think on the surface those sound good but the reality of what they would do to the itemization isn’t what we want. I addressed the topic of the “bad” affixes in a prior post about items so I won’t go into too much more detail here, but I think it’s well within our ability to make those affixes compelling for some people, Pickup Radius and Witch Doctors are a good example of this. Specifically as it relates to Thorns, no one will disagree that in its current state is pretty lackluster, but it supports a play style that I’m sure we can capture with enough alterations to both the core mechanic and some supporting class abilities and passives.

As it relates to bucketing affixes so Crit Chance, Crit Damage, and Attack Speed are mutually exclusive, yeah that would add more choice to item selection, but it would be artificial. I think this issue has some underlying causes that we should look at before going to the extreme of preventing them from existing on the same item. One of the first reasons trifecta items are an issue isn’t that they are so good; it’s that they are the only thing that is good. Of course you want the only three stats that increase your character damage in a meaningful way on the same item, because there are ONLY three stats that increase your character damage in a meaningful way other than your primary stat. I don’t want to derail this by getting into why primary stats were introduced or debate whether they are good or bad. I do want to say that Diablo 3 has been through much iteration during which a vast number of approaches to stats and items were tested and in the end we felt primary stats were the right thing for Diablo 3. I think a better approach to this issue is to introduce more affixes that players are interested in, so there is a sense of tension over what the six affixes are on your “ideal gear”. When a perfect pair of gloves is “Core Stat, Vit, Res All, Crit Chance, Crit Dmg, Attack Speed” and you can’t even imagine another stat you would want instead of one of those, we have a bigger problem. Introducing more choice instead of less and giving players more ways to feel like they are customizing their character is what we want to see. If gloves also had the ability to roll +% School Damage, +Life on Hit, Skill specific affixes, plus a couple more things you want, than players may find themselves in a situation where trifecta isn’t as clearly defined anymore.

The “problem” with trifecta items can’t be discussed without also pointing out that it is only a problem because the AH makes obtaining these items so easy. On a basic level, I have no problem with items existing that players highly desire, but when it is a forgone conclusion that you will have those items then we have problems. If the auction house never existed, players wouldn’t be upset that trifecta exists, they would be upset that they haven’t been lucky enough to find their own trifecta items. To summarize, I think the right solution to this problem isn’t cutting trifecta items from the game, but rather it’s about getting to a point where you want more things than you can fit on an item.
I think your affix ideas are cool, and we have spent a lot of time lately talking about what kind of awesome effects we could put on items that we don’t currently have. I’d even say that as cool as some of these ideas are, we can go even further. We are putting a lot of effort into coming up with really awesome item ideas for future content. I’ll give one quick example of my personal favorite so far before moving on and also to give context to the direction we are moving in. Imagine a pair of Legendary boots that read “Makes you ethereal, allowing you to freely move through enemies”. Whether or not that idea makes the final cut is hard to say, but we want to really push the boundaries as much as we can, so legendary items become things that players can get really excited about.

Character Customization

Your system idea for Nephalem Power Stat is basically a roundabout way of suggesting we re-implement the Diablo 2 skill system. The old skill system was fun, back in the day, but I think it’s honestly dated in today’s landscape. People fondly remember making tons of characters and trying out different builds, and while I have a lot of those same fond memories, I also remember that usually the end result of my time investment in my “cool new character” was complete and utter disappointment.
Today the availability of web sites or posts about character builds would mostly overshadow any of that old character rerolling. You would read a post saying someone else tried the build that you had imagined would be amazing, only to find out it was awful, or you would find out it was great and build it also. The skill system today allows people the flexibility to try out things they enjoy without penalizing players who want to experiment with new ideas. The only difference is if their idea doesn’t pan out, you didn’t waste hours leveling a bad character.
Character customization is fun. People want more ways to feel different from their neighbor, and we want to help provide players with more options in this regard as well. There are lots of things that we have discussed and some ideas we have for long term system additions to the game to help in this regard. One of them which I mentioned in another post is the plan to eventually introduce a system to allow players to customize their character appearance more. Another system we haven’t talked about before is the long term plan to change the way the Paragon system works to allow it to offer more character customization in the form of actual power. The details of that system are still being worked out and players probably won’t get their hands on it for quite a while. We do agree that customization is important and we want more ways for players to both express themselves and differentiate themselves from their friends and other members of the community.

Too many items

I cover this topic in some depth in the upcoming Item Blog that community is in the process of getting ready for release next week. I will briefly say that we agree that too many items drop and we have plans to eventually reduce the rate that players see items, while also taking measures to improve the general quality of items you do see. The end result should be fewer items that are better instead of tons of items you don’t want.

Legendary and Set items

This is a topic I’ve touched on some in this thread and it is also a talking point of the upcoming Item Blog, so I’ll just say that we agree and we want Legendary items to feel game changing.

Finding your own gear

Whenever we talk about what the fantasy of Diablo is and what we want the core gameplay to be, never do we say “we want players to farm gold and go buy items off the auction house”. The AH definitely has made an impact on Diablo 3 and we talk about it constantly, but our conversations are usually in the context of “how can we get players to find their own loot instead of just buying it”. The new crafting recipes and Demonic Essences were added to provide a little bit of this gameplay but we have a lot of ideas for the long term about how we want to go about addressing this. At the end of the day, it is our intention that players are able to find their own items, because we feel the game is just more fun that way. There are several reason why it might not feel that way right now. One is the inherent randomness of our loot system. Another is the fact that the AH completely removes all friction between player trades. And another is when players DO find items they should be excited about, they are often disappointed because this items are not very good. All of these are very important and we hope to address them over time.

Skill Diversity

This is something we constantly strive to improve. Yes, there are a lot of runes and abilities that are lacking, but as you can see with our patches, we try over time to improve the balance of them regularly. In some cases runes are designed just to be fun or cool. In other cases, we try to make a large spectrum of runes competitive, but the math ends up favoring one over the others. In some cases, certain abilities or ability combinations are so potent that they overshadow almost every other option available. WW/Sprint/Battle Rage is a good example of this. There are some cool ideas here, but I don’t want to turn this post into a discussion about specifics of design. This is a problem that we can’t fix overnight, but we are confident that over time we can constantly improve the situation and hopefully the community can see that we are making efforts on this front with every patch we release.
Crafting
What crafting was meant to be and what it ended up being aren’t necessarily the same. Again there are a long list of reasons why it turned out to be a bit underwhelming for some people. Not the least of which is the existence of the AH. Why make random things when you can buy exactly what you are looking for? We are constantly exploring new ideas for how to make crafting more relevant and trying to carve out a more defined role for it within the scope of Diablo 3 itemization. We have discussed ideas such as letting players have some control over what stats will appear on the item they are crafting, using the crafting system to allow players to reroll the values of affixes an item already has, etc. This is a system that, with time, should be able to find a better place in the overall gameplay experience of Diablo.

Social Features

This is an area that has a lot of room for improvement. I personally used to talk about the fact that when I would play with my brother and two of my good friends, I constantly felt like they were a detriment to my ability to farm, which is at the core of my enjoyment of the Diablo series. Since then, we have made changes to improve the coop experience like reducing the health multiplier of additional players and removing the damage scaling when more players join the game. However, we need to do more to improve both the in and out of game experience. We want it to be easier for players to find other like-minded people to play with and this is a topic we are actively trying to improve in the near future.

Conclusion

Ok I’ve reread this thing enough times that my brain is starting to melt. The Diablo team is incredibly passionate and constantly striving to make the game we love even better. I hope this post helps clear the air about where we stand on a lot of these topics and I also hope I never find myself never feeling the need to write a post this long again lol.

As it relates to bucketing affixes so Crit Chance, Crit Damage, and Attack Speed are mutually exclusive, yeah that would add more choice to item selection, but it would be artificial. I think this issue has some underlying causes that we should look at before going to the extreme of preventing them from existing on the same item. One of the first reasons trifecta items are an issue isn’t that they are so good; it’s that they are the only thing that is good. Of course you want the only three stats that increase your character damage in a meaningful way on the same item, because there are ONLY three stats that increase your character damage in a meaningful way other than your primary stat. I don’t want to derail this by getting into why primary stats were introduced or debate whether they are good or bad. I do want to say that Diablo 3 has been through much iteration during which a vast number of approaches to stats and items were tested and in the end we felt primary stats were the right thing for Diablo 3. I think a better approach to this issue is to introduce more affixes that players are interested in, so there is a sense of tension over what the six affixes are on your “ideal gear”. When a perfect pair of gloves is “Core Stat, Vit, Res All, Crit Chance, Crit Dmg, Attack Speed” and you can’t even imagine another stat you would want instead of one of those, we have a bigger problem. Introducing more choice instead of less and giving players more ways to feel like they are customizing their character is what we want to see. If gloves also had the ability to roll +% School Damage, +Life on Hit, Skill specific affixes, plus a couple more things you want, than players may find themselves in a situation where trifecta isn’t as clearly defined anymore.

The “problem” with trifecta items can’t be discussed without also pointing out that it is only a problem because the AH makes obtaining these items so easy. On a basic level, I have no problem with items existing that players highly desire, but when it is a forgone conclusion that you will have those items then we have problems. If the auction house never existed, players wouldn’t be upset that trifecta exists, they would be upset that they haven’t been lucky enough to find their own trifecta items. To summarize, I think the right solution to this problem isn’t cutting trifecta items from the game, but rather it’s about getting to a point where you want more things than you can fit on an item.
I think your affix ideas are cool, and we have spent a lot of time lately talking about what kind of awesome effects we could put on items that we don’t currently have. I’d even say that as cool as some of these ideas are, we can go even further. We are putting a lot of effort into coming up with really awesome item ideas for future content. I’ll give one quick example of my personal favorite so far before moving on and also to give context to the direction we are moving in. Imagine a pair of Legendary boots that read “Makes you ethereal, allowing you to freely move through enemies”.

To be honest, that's the first thing I've read that shows they understand where they went wrong.

Can they fix it ?  I actually don't think so.

In related news, my very first Legendary dropped yesterday.  The brief excitement was instantly cunted by having a brief look on the AH and realising there were thousands better, at about 20k buyout.

 :ye_gods:

I can see the console release working if they release it as a GOTY package including an expansion.

Is our Blizzard learning?

According to PAR: PS3 will have offline play, local multiplayer, no item shop (http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/console-diablo-3-playable-offline-real-money-auction-house-removed-not-exac).

Wonder if they'll patch those "features" into the PC version when the PS3 one launches.

Fuck them.  No more money from me ever.  Total fucking cunts.

Whatever magical spark they had that made Blizzard, Blizzard is long gone.  They might as well have been bought out by EA.

I think that's probably the only way Blizzard will ever stop this behavior of release, realize, correct. It's become pretty shameful as a company over the last 2 years that they've completely isolated a huge chunk of their players, offering less options instead of more options. Or even worse, tons of shitty options that don't address the player's desires.

Online-only was always about copy protection anyway. The RMAH was a smokescreen because even Blizzard isn't EA-Stupid about saying things like that.

I don't believe it was about copy protection in any important sense in this particular case. Blizzard games have never had a big pirating problem. It was all about taking control of the secondary market.

It's one of the reasons Dota spread like wild fire, any asshole could get an easy copy of War3 to run it.

Former Diablo 3 Game Director Jay Wilson admitted during a talk at GDC 2013 in San Francisco that both of Diablo 3's Auction Houses (both the real-money and the in-game gold item auction house) "really hurt the game." Wilson said that before Blizzard launched the game, the company had a few assumptions about how the Auction Houses would work: He thought they would help reduce fraud, that they'd provide a wanted service to players, that only a small percentage of players would use it and that the price of items would limit how many were listed and sold.

But he said that once the game went live, Blizzard realized it was completely wrong about those last two points. It turns out that nearly every one of the game's players (of which there are still about 1 million per day, and about 3 million per month, according to Wilson) made use of either house, and that over 50 percent of players used it regularly. That, said Wilson, made money a much higher motivator than the game's original motivation to simply kill Diablo, and "damaged item rewards" in the game. While a lot of the buzz around the game attacked the real money Auction House, "gold does much more damage than the other one does," according to Wilson, because more players use it and prices fluctuate much more.

"I think we would turn it off if we could," Wilson said during his talk. But the problem is "not as easy as that;" with all of Blizzard's current players, he says the company "has no idea" how many players like the system or hate it. Blizzard, Wilson said, doesn't want to remove a feature that lots of players will be unhappy to see go. But he did say that the team is working on a viable solution, without giving any other details about what that would be like.

Really?  You design a game where the drops are vastly inferior to your level and you didn't expect folks to use the AH for level appropriate items?  Really?

Oh bullshit.  Bull-farking-pigs-fly-out-my-ass-shit.

I believe he's telling the truth. They wanted to decrease fraud and rake in the outside cash they were losing from 3rd party sales.

The problem is you have to have a finely tuned economy to pull that off, and D3 has absolutely no sinks of consequence to remove inflation from the system. Considering the complete lack of business sense most designers have, it's not shocking they can't anticipate an economy.

They need to take a cue from WoW and do more to encourage spending gold in the game. I'd use item gambling, ridiculously expensive cosmetic items/titles/unlockables, and revamps to crafting that require much more in materials, but much less in actual gold. Introduce more pets and companions you can buy with gold that provide perks. Hell, there's tons of sinks available, but they've just tried the dumb ones like increasing repair costs.

They have gambling, they just called it crafting this time.

Actually the new BOA recipes turn out some really, really good stuff. But yeah the release recipes were not exciting.

the game's original motivation to simply kill Diablo

Either that guy really, really didn't have a fucking clue about his own game...

Plus you can quickly announce a D4 and, hat in hand, humbly admit mistakes were made but D4 will be the bees knees.  And the fanboys will lap it up.

Not to mention Blizzard isn't exactly one to fire off sequels.

Ummmm what?

Warcraft: Orcs vs Humans -> Warcraft 2 + expansion -> Warcraft 3 + expansion -> World of Warcraft + 4 expansions
(Ignore the cancelled Warcraft: Lord of the Clans)

Starcraft + expansion -> Starcraft 2 + expansion + the eagerly awaited Revenge of the Metzen expansion on the cards
(Ignore the cancelled Starcraft: Ghost for console)

Diablo + Hellfire expansion (3rd party and shit) -> Diablo 2 + expansion -> Diablo with boobies + Return of the boobies hypothesised as a future expansion.

3 key IPs and sequels seem to be all Blizzard can do

and if they fix itemization and drops the AH will be forgiven anyway. 

Ummmm what?

Warcraft: Orcs vs Humans -> Warcraft 2 + expansion -> Warcraft 3 + expansion -> World of Warcraft + 4 expansions
(Ignore the cancelled Warcraft: Lord of the Clans)

Starcraft + expansion -> Starcraft 2 + expansion + the eagerly awaited Revenge of the Metzen expansion on the cards
(Ignore the cancelled Starcraft: Ghost for console)

Diablo + Hellfire expansion (3rd party and shit) -> Diablo 2 + expansion -> Diablo with boobies + Return of the boobies hypothesised as a future expansion.

3 key IPs and sequels seem to be all Blizzard can do

Yeah what Simond said.  I bet Wilson sold Blizzard a bill of goods and when they finally figured out he didn't know what the fuck he was doing it was too late.  I'd be very amazed if he was still at Blizzard six months from now. 

I say keep the AH.  You've already stained the franchise, might as well make all that money you hungered for now.  Plus you can quickly announce a D4 and, hat in hand, humbly admit mistakes were made but D4 will be the bees knees.  And the fanboys will lap it up.

You think anyone in the industry thinks he failed because of the game itself ?

Don't be daft.  He probably hurt his career more with the 'fuck that loser' thing than actually releasing a pile of shit to wanking fanboys.

You think anyone in the industry thinks he failed because of the game itself ?

Don't be daft.  He probably hurt his career more with the 'fuck that loser' thing than actually releasing a pile of shit to wanking fanboys.

No, I don't.  I'm playing it right now.

It's shit.  I can't believe anyone makes a fantasy wizard this badly.

And still nothing drops.  Nothing.  NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING EVER.  But it's ok, because I'm breezing through these monsters with no problem at all.  Why ?  Went to Wal-Mart and bought myself some rares.

Fucking stupid game.


The reality is the same as it's ever been.  This game fails fundamentally and you simply can't patch it to be 'better' because what is wrong with it can't really be patched out.

Went to Wal-Mart and bought myself some rares.

Why?

You think anyone in the industry thinks he failed because of the game itself ?

Don't be daft.  He probably hurt his career more with the 'fuck that loser' thing than actually releasing a pile of shit to wanking fanboys.

Goooood goooood let the hate flow through you.

Once more the white knight mounts his charger.

 :uhrr:

There is maybe no dumber comeback on the internet. Oh no, someone is defending a game he enjoys.

But attacking said game is verboten eh?  Why is Mal's opinion valid and Iron's isn't?  

OK I understand now.  Should we stop not liking what you like? 

But attacking said game is verboten eh?  Why is Mal's opinion valid and Iron's isn't?  

OK I understand now.  Should we stop not liking what you like? 

Why what ?

Nothing drops that upgrades.  So you go to the AH because of the enormous frustration of the drops still being utter fuck (and, sure, you can argue that they aren't and, well, you'd not be playing the same game I am) and the only things that are really selling are the ones that are built to speed you through it and they're cheap.  So you get them. 

What don't you understand about why ?

This is a game that cost 120quid for two copies and was a shameful, shameful dissapointment.

I still can't believe I'm firing fucking lasers as a Wizard.  It's so stupid.

Please also bear in mind that the irreverent Utter Fucking Asshole that you see me play here is not exactly who I am in real life...

Yeah, it's amazing the shit you'll put up with if you got the game free.

 :why_so_serious:

The top never gets the hammer, because the top, in any industry, is populated by asshole man children that never take responsibility for anything they do wrong.

I've had D3 uninstalled for months now and feel no pressing need or desire to play it. I don't give a shit what they patch the game into; I don't really want to try it again. Maybe with the expansion, but even then probably no.

That's how bad D3 is. I don't give a fuck if they fixed it. They put me off it already. I've moved on.

While I agree with you, cuddly monkey, the last two CEO's I have worked directly under have been the slash and burn variety.  It's really, really not pleasant being a part of that.  Indeed, that's why I resigned from the highest paid and most fun job I've ever had once he decided in a board meeting that defrauding our clients was the way to go, while feeding his brother a million pound contract.

Sigh.

$40.  Plus no reach-around.

If they patch in reach-arounds, I'm sold.

No seriously, I'm married, if I get a reach around, I'm buying that fucking expansion pack.

The Dawn of War/Company of Heroes games were pretty good, IMO.

It's never just 1 of the wrong person working on a game. Look at any company. Pick one of the leads. Now proceed to look at who works with them. Look at their employment histories.

If you're wondering why most gaming companies turn out the same (which is either dead, or hated) or certain games (Diablo 3) turn out like they do, it's almost always incest. Some people call it Nepotism. Those people are wrong. Nepotism doesn't produce genetically flawed babies.

HAHHAHAHHAHAHHahhahahaHHAHAHAHhahahahahhaha

Yes, of course, 'one of the few'.

AHahahahhahahah

Hooo Fuck.  You're such a funny wee accountant.

He's right. So much of the game was screwed up. The ridiculous part was that the stuff they screwed up had almost nothing to do with the way the game plays.

What? Er, I mean, can you explain what you mean? I am having a slow brain this week.

or they never understood what drove people to play it and enjoy it.

It's as though some of them played a completely different Diablo 2 game than everyone else, or they got something completely different out of it, or they never understood what drove people to play it and enjoy it.

It's as though some of them played a completely different Diablo 2 game than everyone else, or they got something completely different out of it, or they never understood what drove people to play it and enjoy it.

The WoW part of what you say makes no sense to me, nothing in Diablo feels especially WoW-like to me except the bosses talking to me, which is annoying but I file under general Metzen story derp. I guess some boss fights have phases? Seems a bit shaky.

The AH was intended to kill the 3rd party grey market, yes, I don't think anyone is under the impression it is anything else. But it wasn't WoW's item market that made dollar signs appear in their eyes, it was the *Diablo* secondary market they were trying to kill/take for themselves. Fortunes were made on that secondary market.

Not sure where that idea came from? 

I wish it had a "story mode off" option, that just killed cutscenes and anytime the game breaks for things like Chen in the barrel and the follower starter stories.  I'm getting ready to put my WD into Inferno soon and the process of waiting for everyone to get done talking is bad.

I wish it had a "story mode off" option, that just killed cutscenes and anytime the game breaks for things like Chen in the barrel and the follower starter stories.  I'm getting ready to put my WD into Inferno soon and the process of waiting for everyone to get done talking is bad.