Diablo III Wild Speculation and Rumor Mongering Abounds

[Paelos]

They probably realized that most people don't give a fuck about pvp and wanted to release it.

[Musashi]

They probably realized that most people don't give a fuck about pvp and wanted to release it.

If I ever PvP in this game, I'll be really surprised.  I'm actually glad to hear that they haven't spent any time on it.

There are no shortage of games in which I can kill people on the tubes.  That Diablo 3 ships without this feature is absolutely meaningless.  That it will inevitably have PvP in some form or fashion should be considered by those trogs who would populate such a ridiculous haven as bone tossed their way.

[Lakov_Sanite]

They probably realized that most people don't give a fuck about pvp and wanted to release it.

This.  Can't be emphasized enough.

[ezrast]

If I ever PvP in this game, I'll be really surprised.  I'm actually glad to hear that they haven't spent any time on it.

There are no shortage of games in which I can kill people on the tubes.  That Diablo 3 ships without this feature is absolutely meaningless.  That it will inevitably have PvP in some form or fashion should be considered by those trogs who would populate such a ridiculous haven as bone tossed their way.

Yeah, Diablo PvP triggers my stop-having-fun-the-wrong-way reflex really hard too. It's strange that they're admitting the entire system is a huge afterthought, though, since adding PvP into a game already built for and balanced around PvE is such a bad idea. It's going to be broken either way so might as well just release it as-is instead of mangling it into something that doesn't even resemble the rest of the game.

[Stabs]

With regard to release date it's probably healthy that projects that aren't quite perfect are getting cut out. (In addition to pvp they cut some other stuff like the Mystic recently).

Sounds like someone important is going around the offices saying "Is it perfect NOW? OK, we'll cut it and release it later, this baby's going out Soon (tm)."

Regarding D3 pvp we knew that it would be both limited and unbalanced. Were people really pumped about racing to 60, spending £1000, then finding that they lose every match because they didn't pick Witch Doctor?

[Margalis]

This seems like a big deal to me.

PvP may not be important for everyone but it is a classic feature of Diablo and the most fervant Diablo fans are often into it. In addition this shows that the "when it's done" philosophy has limits. Put that together with major design changes made very recently and it does look like the game is being rushed. (As much as a game that has been in dev for this long has been rushed) This seems like a real struggle in way that previous games were not.

Blizzard has had a lot of talent drain for a while. One downside of WoW blowing up is that a lot of the newer hires at Blizzard are WoW super fans. Of course you want people who work for you to like your games but there is a downside to employing too many fans.

Not to say the game will be terrible or anything, but shipping without PVP is definitely a departure.

[apocrypha]

One man's meat is another man's poison.

I, personally, have no intention of ever pvping in a Diablo game, and in fact my only experience of it has been people attempting to grief me in Diablo2. Plus I hate the cycles of buffs & nerfs that have gone on in other games in order to try to balance pvp. WoW has suffered badly from this in the past.

Purely selfishly my feelings are "great, fuck pvp, get the game out ASAP please".

[Maledict]

This seems like a big deal to me.

PvP may not be important for everyone but it is a classic feature of Diablo and the most fervant Diablo fans are often into it. In addition this shows that the "when it's done" philosophy has limits. Put that together with major design changes made very recently and it does look like the game is being rushed. (As much as a game that has been in dev for this long has been rushed) This seems like a real struggle in way that previous games were not.

Blizzard has had a lot of talent drain for a while. One downside of WoW blowing up is that a lot of the newer hires at Blizzard are WoW super fans. Of course you want people who work for you to like your games but there is a downside to employing too many fans.

Not to say the game will be terrible or anything, but shipping without PVP is definitely a departure.

Um, just to repost something I said ages ago but don't read anything into Blizzard redesigning systems at this stage. They have done that in every single Blizzard alpha / beta process even very late on. Its just this time around we get to see everything as it unveils. Heck, Warcraft 3 originally had 6 races in it for example. It's a mark of blizzard being blizzard that even at this stage they are designing and rebuilding stuff. If they *werent* it would mark a significant change from previous games and their general development cycles.

[Paelos]

Not to say the game will be terrible or anything, but shipping without PVP is definitely a departure.

WoW didn't ship with Pvp, though, so I don't think adding it in after the fact is a significant problem or departure for them in their later development life.

[Simond]

As we’re counting down the days until we’re ready to announce a release date for Diablo III, we’ve come to realize that the PvP game and systems aren’t yet living up to our standards. Today, we wanted to let you know that we’ve made the difficult decision to hold back the PvP Arena system and release it in a patch following the game’s launch. After a lot of consideration and discussion, we ultimately felt that delaying the whole game purely for PvP would just be punishing to everyone who’s waiting to enjoy the campaign and core solo/co-op content, all of which is just about complete.

Source: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/4574895/Diablo_III_PvP_Update-3_9_2012#blog

Interesting choice.  I'm fine with it, I wasn't planning on ever touching PvP in Diablo 3 anyway.  I wonder if there will be any backlash.  The main Diablo community has always been PvE minded as far as I know, though I am aware there is a strict contingent of PvPers who swear by it.

Ok seriously how the fuck? This game has been in development for what, 5+ years? By an AAAA developer, yet during all that time they weren't able to flesh out a PvP system?

Come on, man...

Yeah, it's not like balancing PvP is hard or anything. I mean, look at one of Blizzard's other mainly-PvE games - WoW. There's never any balance or gameplay issues involving PvP in that after all the time and money that's been spent attempting to turn it into an e-sport, amirite?

Paelos is right.

[Margalis]

Starcraft 2 didn't have major changes late in beta, in fact I would say almost the opposite, it was more stagnant than it should have been. There were a lot of things that were clearly problems (or at least not as good as they could have been) that were not changed in any meaningful way. It's hard for me to recall any game system changes at all really, for the most part it was individual unit tweaks and not even a lot of those. Most of the patch notes were stuff like "siege tank unit size adjusted."

Although now that I think about it SC2 beta was sort of unnaturally extended by having to wait for Battle.net 2

Yeah, it's not like balancing PvP is hard or anything.

Do they even want to balance it though? My impression is only loosely.

[Typhon]

My take was that they felt they already had most of the Starcraft audience playing Starcraft already and they couldn't change the game too much for fear of enraging/not capturing the eSport crowd.  So, mostly you just saw balance passes.

Diablo 3, being a pve game, has to change to be successful.  So they've been trying out a lot of different systems (many of which ended up needing to be cut or further refined).  I do think that their 'A' team isn't as 'A' or as focused as they have been in the past is also a part of the problem.  Another problem is that there are way more people involved in the decision making process, each with their own version of "Diablo has to have X!'

[Paelos]

I think it's much ado about nothing tbh. The game will be wildly successful based on the ladder play and co-op.

[Soulflame]

I never pvped in Diablo 2, and I was a pretty ardent fan of the game.  Diablo 3 shipping without pvp doesn't bother me in the slightest, as I never intended to pvp in that either.  In fact, I had concerns earlier that there would be balance passes on classes made to affect pvp which would also negatively affect pve.  Which I found annoying enough in WoW.  I'd be even moreso annoyed having my SP game experience negatively affected by changes made to balance pvp.

[Kageru]

Sounds good. The one thing Blizzard still do right is actually play their games and are critical enough to admit when something that looked good on paper just isn't fun in practice. Could do with a lot more of that.

[Mrbloodworth]

Waite, what?

Diablo had PvP? Uh......ok.

[Malakili]

Waite, what?

Diablo had PvP? Uh......ok.

There is a small but noisy section of Diablo 2 fandom which swears the D2 dueling was the greatest thing to ever happen to PvP. 

[Musashi]

Iirc, wasn't D2 "PvP" (dueling) added in well after release as if they realized that if they never balanced for it, it wouldn't really cost them that much dev time to throw a few switches and allow people to go red to each other?

I understand that the D3 system is somewhat more involved that this, but this IS what we're talking about.  It's the D3 equivalent of dueling outside of Ironforge or Orgrimmar.  To say that this is a 'classic feature' is somewhat of a stretch, even if there is a vociferous contingent of basement dwellers who will strap bombs to their chests if it's not a faithful recreation of the original.  Those guys always find something to cry about.

[Soulflame]

Diablo 2 PvP was in during the beta.  I remember people complaining that winning often came down to who was afflicted with chill first.

[Ginaz]

Something tells me that if the game store doesn't "live up to their standards" it will still be in at launch.  This is the new Blizzard and people should get used to this from them.

[Paelos]

Something tells me that if the game store doesn't "live up to their standards" it will still be in at launch.  This is the new Blizzard and people should get used to this from them.

I don't really follow your point. Are you implying that the game store will suck, or just that it could suck and thus Blizzard is all RAWR MONEY GRAB?

Or do you just think the game store is a bad idea in general? The principle of legitimizing an already off-line activity offends?

[Ingmar]

The PVP Arena that I played (or was it just saw? my memory is going) at Blizzcon is not a "classic feature of Diablo." It is a totally new strapped on thing that doesn't really have anything to do with the way PVP was in prior versions.

[Tebonas]

If they implement bad PvP it might have repercussions for the Online Store? Since I'll neither PvP nor will ever use that Online Store I didn't inform myself but is there possible item loss due to PvP?

[Malakili]

If they implement bad PvP it might have repercussions for the Online Store? Since I'll neither PvP nor will ever use that Online Store I didn't inform myself but is there possible item loss due to PvP?

No item loss in PvP.  They did say at Blizzcon that there would be hardcore PvP which results in character loss as is normal with hardcore character death in general.  Obviously in that case you'd lose whatever was in that character's inventory/equipped.

[MrHat]

If they implement bad PvP it might have repercussions for the Online Store? Since I'll neither PvP nor will ever use that Online Store I didn't inform myself but is there possible item loss due to PvP?

No item loss in PvP.  They did say at Blizzcon that there would be hardcore PvP which results in character loss as is normal with hardcore character death in general.  Obviously in that case you'd lose whatever was in that character's inventory/equipped.

They say a lot of things.

[SurfD]

Who in their right mind would participate in hardcore, Death Guaranteed to the loser arena PvP?  That seems like an aweful lot of work to level / gear up a quality character only to then go play russian roulette with it.

I mean, I understand the appeal of Hardcore PvE mode.  Thunderdome style Deathmatch PvP just strikes me as a bit extreme.

[ezrast]

But the ears, man, the ears!

[apocrypha]

their right mind................russian roulette

[MrHat]

Digital preorder is up.

Release date is May 15.

http://us.battle.net/en/int

[Xuri]

$59.99
€59.99
 

[Malakili]

So it begins.

[Bann]

Well, Im in for one pre-order. Not nearly as enthusiastic as I once was, but I've been waiting on this for more than decade. 

[Tebonas]

30% markup on the price is a little steep. I guess I'll wait until the Euro value falls under the Dollar value.

[schild]

Shouldn't take long.

[Tebonas]

My thoughts exactly.