Diablo III Wild Speculation and Rumor Mongering Abounds

[Ingmar]

Also seems like the item cruncher will fulfill something of a similar role to the pet in Torchlight, it is a way to stop from having to go back to town as often. Running out of space? Start crunching your lamer blues.

[Hoax]

I really didn't like the Tochlight system because upgrading and socketing and whatnot was such a huge part of the whole thing.

[Brennik]

I feel like a bad person due to laughing when the narrator introduced himself as jwilson...

[apocrypha]

I wish I hadn't watch that video. Want Diablo 3 now! NOW goddamn it!

Edit: Oh wait, no, let me at least finish the SC2 campaign first. And get a couple of my 80's to 85 in Cata. Blizzard have my soul 

[Segoris]

Well, crafting is somewhat nice in that i won't just start straight up ignoring items if they fall under a certain quality threshhold, i can pick them up to feed them to the grinder to potentially do things with my better items. A good addition overall, I think.

Did they say if lower quality items produce the same quality of materials? If not then ignoring lesser items will probably still be common practice, hopefully this isn't the case though but we'll see.

I feel like a bad person due to laughing when the narrator introduced himself as jwilson...

Do you also laugh at Bee Arthur while thinking it is barthur?

[Murgos]

I feel like a bad person due to laughing when the narrator introduced himself as jwilson...

Maybe he introduced himself as Jay Wilson?  I guess that's not funny though.

[Ingmar]

Yeah his name is Jay.

[Yegolev]

[Slyfeind]

I feel like a bad person due to laughing when the narrator introduced himself as jwilson...

Do you also laugh at Bee Arthur while thinking it is barthur?

I think that was a reference to the slime in UO, named after the reviewer who panned it?

[birdsguts]

Sounds like the Diablo II crating system with a few very small tweaks and mostly just a bunch of "moving around".
I guess that's exciting? 

I think I'm waiting on the multiplayer feature set announcements before I get too stoked on this one.

[Ragnoros]

Sounds like the Diablo II crating system with a few very small tweaks and mostly just a bunch of "moving around".
I guess that's exciting? 

I think I'm waiting on the multiplayer feature set announcements before I get too stoked on this one.

BURN THE HERETIC! 

[ezrast]

Wait, no, explain to the heretic how crafting is better than the monsters just dropping gold that you gamble on shit.

I mean, I'm as eager as the next guy for this game but there weren't nearly enough exploding demons in that video for me to get excited.

[Mosesandstick]

Whatever loot we get, I just want to not have to spend days farming for it, or we may see a return of the pindlebot 

[K9]

Gambling sucked balls

[Typhon]

Wait, no, explain to the heretic how crafting is better than the monsters just dropping gold that you gamble on shit.

I mean, I'm as eager as the next guy for this game but there weren't nearly enough exploding demons in that video for me to get excited.

There are still exploding demons that drop showers of loot.  Because there are, literally, showers of loot dropping and an RNG is rolling each time, eventually you get lucky and get a good item.

But you still have mounds of loot laying about.  If you don't feel like crafting, you ignore it.  If you feel like crafting, you put six pieces of crap loot into your craft box and make crafting materials out of if.  Depending on how high you have leveled your in-town craft dude, you have a number of items that he can make for you.

Haven't gotten a pair of boots and don't like what he has to sell?  Grind some stuff down and have him make a good pair of boots (with some random stats) for you.

Crafting doesn't replace loot showers and exploding demons, it's IN ADDITION to the loot showers and exploding demons.

Because it's extra it makes me HOT.  I'm all atingle!

[Shrike]

It's just another variation on farming for what you want.

Back in D2, you had to farm for gear to get where you needed to go for the build of the day you were working on. Need a new bow for that speedazon? Off to NM Mephisto. Speedazon need some knockback gloves for safety and to annoy bubbas? Bust out the perfect rubies and start gambling for heavy mail--and hope you get lucky on the item creation. Need a nice five socket matriarch bow for that nifty runeword you just completed? Off to act5 hell...umm...first area (can't remember what it's called) to kill demons in job lots, hoping it drops this time. Or how about completing that runeword? Hello blacksmith demon dude (can't remember his name either). Hello a lot. LOTS.

Anyway, that was D2 in a nutshell. I actually rather liked this crap, so I didn't mind too much (usually). Or lets say I liked the results enough to engage in it regularly (kinda like washing the car). Still, I'm looking forward to this quite a bit. The real fun was in the discovery and showing this stuff off to friends. The real trick is convincing those friends--scattered over the PC and Xbox landscapes--to pick this sucker up and plaaaaaaaaaaay.

[SurfD]

I really didn't like the Tochlight system because upgrading and socketing and whatnot was such a huge part of the whole thing.

The main beef i had with the Torchlight upgrading system (the enchanter dude) was that items did not have "base stats".  Every single stat on your item was considered a random enchantment, which meant that if you got a cool ass very rare drop item, you were justifiably paranoid about EVER giving it to the enchanting dude for a chance at adding stats, because if he flubbed it (which was still possible even on the first or secon try), that uber item turned into a 0 stat piece of garbage.   If the items kept their base stats and only wiped the "extras" the enchanter added when he fubbed them, allowing you to keep trying, just at increasingly expensive values per shot, it wouldnt have been as bad.

[birdsguts]

Wait, no, explain to the heretic how crafting is better than the monsters just dropping gold that you gamble on shit.

I mean, I'm as eager as the next guy for this game but there weren't nearly enough exploding demons in that video for me to get excited.

Oh I understand.
I guess I should have taken into account we're talking about Blizzard here but for whatever reason I was hoping they'd get a bit more... I dunno... different with it?

But hey, if it means I don't have to pray I get a white weapon to drop this time so I can craft it into something fancy then that's cool.
I'm just not freaking out and frothing at the mouth about the news.
It's pretty predictable.

[ezrast]

Hmm, looking back I guess there were a lot of D2 builds that required some specific always-piercing bow or fire-damage-enhancing boots or something just to even start sort of working. If you can guarantee those sorts of mods, crafting could be a decent way to bootstrap those builds without having to farm or trade for uniques which you will then never upgrade. I just really hope it's unobtrusive and mostly optional. Which I suspect it will be, but you never know.

[K9]

It may also make the single-player aspect more acessible, since frankly pretty much all of the awesome loot was constrained to multiplayer in D2.

[waffel]

Whatever loot we get, I just want to not have to spend days farming for it, or we may see a return of the pindlebot 

Yes, I'm sick of hunting for loot and not being able to get every piece I want myself. Trading with other players is dumb. I wish game companies would just let me collect all the loot in the matter of a few hours so I don't have to resort to using a 3rd party bot.

[waffel]

Very interesting interview here with Jay Wilson (Lead Developer)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgf__G5jnEE (Part 1)

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9G9wWK7Ttg (Part 2)

He actually touches on a lot of different game mechanics and such.

[Yegolev]

Yes, I'm sick of hunting for loot and not being able to get every piece I want myself. Trading with other players is dumb. I wish game companies would just let me collect all the loot in the matter of a few hours so I don't have to resort to using a 3rd party bot.

This is a fine balance point to try to reach.  I agree that D2 required a degree more grind than I liked.  Castlevania is a bit more generous while not being too easy.  That said, my group is suspicious that drops are better with more people in Harmony of Despair.  Not a lot, if so.

[waffel]

I agree, D2 was a bit excessive. I still remember going through the "one-more-mephrun-before-bed" routine.

However, if D2 had a better trading system without so much spam/rune duping it would have been fine. You could flip items you found for items you wanted a good majority of the time (BEFORE it went to shit)

I do hope that D3 does a better job of a trading system, but I do like how the economy in D2 is player run (at least before bnet went to shit and its filled with nothing but spammers/dupers)

[Yegolev]

Will need to be some method other than meeting assholes in-game.  I won't have time for that.  I'll be happy to post things for trade... as usual EVE has spoiled me and I am thinking of something like their contract system where I can specify what I want in trade without actually needing to be there.

[rrazcueta]

Whatever loot we get, I just want to not have to spend days farming for it, or we may see a return of the pindlebot 

Yes, I'm sick of hunting for loot and not being able to get every piece I want myself. Trading with other players is dumb. I wish game companies would just let me collect all the loot in the matter of a few hours so I don't have to resort to using a 3rd party bot.

It's not like there's real, valuable currrency in games like Titan's Quest. But there is in D2 with SoJs and Runes. Even if you never find any of those, you're going to find something worth an SoJ or mid/high rune.

I think the problem with Diablo 2 was that the random drops never felt like enough to get you through the game. If you're good you can do it through nightmare all on your own. There's a little grinding, but, if you're good, you can spec your class out so it's not a big deal. I'm personally a big fan of owning a boss when I'm just a little bit overpowered...

Once you hit hell, though, the number of viable, item-independent builds drops to like 1 or 2. And I think that's kind of the problem. All of the interesting things to do happen in hell, and even if you find something interesting to do in nightmare it's not viable in hell, so then you're stuck. I can think of a few ways to get around this, but as far as the community is concerned they're mostly fine with D2jsp and other trading sites.

[Malakili]

I can think of a few ways to get around this, but as far as the community is concerned they're mostly fine with D2jsp and other trading sites.

This sort of thing won't fly in d3 though.  Anyone still playing D2 and caring what items they have is a self selected group who also isnt' going to care about going to a website to trade items (most of the time).  When Diablo 3 comes out if there isn't a fairly user friendly way to trade items, a lot of people aren't going to be happy, especially people who are used to an auction house type system which cuts out having to actually interact with anyone else. 

I don't mean that in a bad way either, there is no way I'm going to waste time fucking around with a website to trade items at this point.  I could potentially see myself idling in a battle.net trade chat room for a fe wminutes in between games like I used to, but even that is pusing it at this point.

[Paelos]

If Blizzard was remotely intelligent, they would set up a trading lobby and take a cut.

[K9]

You want good gems? Well get ready to GRIND

So apparently there are 14 levels of gem in D3, and the maximum level dropped by monsters is level 5. If it takes 3 of one type of gem to get a gem of the next highest level you only need a mere 19,683 level 5 gems to make your level 14 gem (or 1,594,323 level one gems, which with a one second combine time would still take 664 hours to combine to a level 14 gem)

 

[Paelos]

There is absolutely no way that holds up through testing. Even the blue posts indicate that "It's possible it may feel crappy..."

Gee, you think? Even if a level 5 gem average dropped off every 100 monsters, and those monsters took 5s on average to kill, you're looking at over 2,700 hours of gametime to get a max gem. That's playing roughly 8 hours a day for a year.

[Lantyssa]

Are gems going to have their own slots?  A gem is small.  You can fit dozens if not hundreds of them in a pouch.  I hated filling up my inventory with them when it should have just been a counter for each quality and type.

[Yegolev]

What might have been better is if they just said there was no maximum.  Plenty of time to raise the cap before anyone found out.

[Zetor]

Wow, that system sucked when it was used in LOTRO's relics (which is comparatively LESS grindy than this, even), and it'll suck here. But then, Blizzard is getting pretty good at making people grind nowadays.  

[Malakili]

Its so clearly a ridiculous number and I just can't see it holding up.  Or, more likely, monsters will start dropping much higher quality gems than level 5.

[K9]

Are gems going to have their own slots?  A gem is small.  You can fit dozens if not hundreds of them in a pouch.  I hated filling up my inventory with them when it should have just been a counter for each quality and type.

Apparently they stack, from what I read.

Its so clearly a ridiculous number and I just can't see it holding up.  Or, more likely, monsters will start dropping much higher quality gems than level 5.

Yeah, this is what I'd guess. So mobs in the equivalents of nightmare and hell will drop 5+ and 10+ level gems maybe?