Diablo III Wild Speculation and Rumor Mongering Abounds

[Stabs]

On the issue of whether always online helps with control of cheating here's the official word:

You're guaranteeing that there are no hacks, no dupes," Bridenbacker said of the system

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/36402/Blizzard_VP_Surprised_Over_Response_To_Diablo_III_Online_Requirement.php

He's either miles dumber than me or miles smarter, I have no idea which.

[Soulflame]

I stick with offline single player in D2 for a couple of reasons.

1. Storage.  ATMA is awesome, because I don't need to maintain a bazillion mule characters to go all crazy hoarder with all the nifty things I found.

2. Character storage.  B.net only stores your characters for a maximum of three months.  I will sometimes not play D2 for a year, and then pick it up again.  Mostly because no other dungeon crawler seems to measure up.

I assume #2 won't be an issue, in that characters will be stored for longer term than three months.

[Malakili]

Yea, I'm about 95% sure they've already said there will be no 3 month thing with this.  Also, there is going to be some kind of shared stash, but I am not sure how much total storage you'll have.  I expect more than in D2, but we will see. 

[Ingmar]

Lagdeath matters to people who play hardcore mode for the challenge.  Assuming there is a hardcore mode, which may not be the case.

I have to imagine most of those people were already using Battle.net for the hardcore ladder?

[El Gallo]

I thought the point of D2 was to let you click the same lolwhirlwind button over and over then maybe switch once in a while to heroic leap.  I don't see why focusing on one skill is a problem here.

This is the company that removed "hit random keys and win" WotLK raiding/grouping in favor of a more demanding system that has cost them tons of customers in Cataclysm.  They really think their customers are interested in some form of challenge.  I think they're probably just as wrong here.   

[Talpidae]

Yup.  I think they're wrong too.

I'd be really interested in numbers of people who played all 3 difficulty modes of Diablo 2 and where the bulk of the time was spent.  I'm fairly sure it wasn't on the more challenging bits.

[Margalis]

It seems that they are now worried about doing textbook "good design" rather than stuff that feels good, is fun and people respond to.

On an intellectual level adding some challenge or making the game not just spamming whirlwind has obvious appeal.

[Shrike]

I'd be really interested in numbers of people who played all 3 difficulty modes of Diablo 2 and where the bulk of the time was spent.  I'm fairly sure it wasn't on the more challenging bits.

I spent most of my time in hell diff. Once you hit about 77 or so, NM gave you bupkiss for experience. You HAD to move on to hell diff if you wanted to cap your levels--and it still took fucking forever.

If you wanted two-button snooze runs you stayed in normal difficulty. NM wasn't too hard until late in act2. Then things stiffened up quite a bit. You'd better have your shit together in Act5 NM, because if you didn't the stuff in hell diff was going to eat your face. This pretty much mirrored how things were in orginal Diablo, too. I'd expect D3 to be similar.

[Malakili]

Yup.  I think they're wrong too.

I'd be really interested in numbers of people who played all 3 difficulty modes of Diablo 2 and where the bulk of the time was spent.  I'm fairly sure it wasn't on the more challenging bits.

You think so?  I mean on battle.net it was SOP to just power level to hell mode.  If you had your set of gear farmed up, or at least a reasonable enough set of gear you could be solo in hell mode literally day 1 of making a character.  Even if you weren't ready for hell mode solo that fast you could certainly be running nightmare Mephisto in the meantime for some decent but not ultra top end gear.  Maybe I have tunnel vision since thats pretty much the only way I played, but certainly on closed battle.net it seems to me that normal mode was (at least after you have knew at least one person with a high level character), was a hour long stop on the road to bigger things.  I guess it depends on what you consider to be "the more challenging bits" but certainly no one really cared about normal mode past a relatively narrow window when the game was still newish.

[Rendakor]

I played normal mode almost exclusively. I think I got to Act 4 nightmare on one toon, but never beat it (nor made it to Hell, obviously). I mostly played single player, or LAN with a few friends. D2 was (and still is sometimes) my go to game for a get together with friends, or when my internet is being shit. Even with cable I have kind of a weak connection (living out in the sticks ftl; I get frequent disconnects while playing WoW) so I really don't like the "always online or gtfo" thing. I'm probably still going to buy it, but it'll be as an MMO-replacement, and not my single player game of choice.

[Malakili]

but it'll be as an MMO-replacement, and not my single player game of choice.

This is actually what I always expected D3 to be for me.  All the loot collection meta game I like about MMOs, but I can solo everything, and the combat is more fun.  I've said elsewhere, and maybe here on occasion, I always thought D3 might be that elusive "WoW killer."

[Stabs]

Interesting point. It launches during a rather dull time for WoW. It appeals to Blizzard loyalists. And there's the prospect of casually earning beer money in the course of playing. Could have a real impact on WoW's numbers.

[Soulflame]

I spent most of my time in hell as well.  It's where the best loot can be found!

[FieryBalrog]

Once LoD came out and getting to Hell was derp-easy thanks to the Bloody Foothills/Cow Level/Baal Runs, everyone on closed just stayed in Hell, like all the time.

Before LoD it was a little less ridiculous, although I wouldn't say "harder"- except for me, hooray dial-up.

Diablo 2 was really badly designed in some ways, despite being addictive and fun as fuck. It's probably Blizzard's most unpolished game (certainly the net-code is). I think Blizzard's current designers are just reacting to that, esp since lead Jay Wilson poached from Relic comes from an outside looking in.

Like, everything outside the Cathedral (and OK, Tristram's brief cameo) is dull as shit in Act 1, Act 3 = lol, iron maiden on mobs, the Teleport skill breaking the game, the TP spam potion-chug combat, the spam 2 skills character builds, high rune drop rates which seemed designed around cheating, etc.

Of course the shit they had down they had down. And also, no other ARPG offered closed servers. In fact, it boggles my mind that no other RPG managed to do better than D2 despite its laundry list of flaws, and decisions like "what's multiplayer?" were part of that.

[Stabs]

Actually the more you put it under the microscope the more glaring those flaws became.

For example Lightning Enchanted was a pretty nasty mod that caused a boss to give out charged bolt sparks when hit. Multishot was a mod that only spawned on ranged bosses that allowed each ranged attack to create multiple arrows. Fire enchanted was a mod that added Fire damage to attacks. On Hell you could get MS LE FE bosses that spat out charged bolts as if cast at a high level (so lots of bolts ie 20), multiplied the number of bolts according the the multishot skill (each bolt got lots of extra copies) and added fire damage to each one. We lost a lot of people in Hardcore to that rather buggy boss combination, it was completely out of line with how dangerous it was. Of course that could also be considered part of the fun.

Another bug/feature was the way lightning fury, an Amazon skill, stacked with pierce. The Lightning Fury skill hit a monster then spawned several lightning bolts. The pierce skill allowed a ranged attack to penetrate a monster and go on to attack the monster behind. Together they created an infinite loop when the bonus lightning bolts could pierce and if they did (high probability) they would spawn several more lightning bolts as if a fresh lightning fury had been cast and these bonus lightning bolts in turn could spawn more and so on infinitely. It only worked where monsters were very densely packed but this is why Javelin Amazons were so good in Hell Cows. It's pretty amateurish to have an infinite damage skill.

[Azuredream]

I think the whole "teleport has no cooldown" pretty much covered re: why d2 had whacked out mechanics. I couldn't even play a non-sorc unless I had an Enigma runeword because I was so used to skipping everything.

[Mosesandstick]

I think it might have been a sign of deeply flawed dynamics that sorcs were key to the way in which most closed players played.

[Lantyssa]

I don't think we should generalize.  I never played a sorc, and 90% of my time was with variations on my Amazon.

[Mosesandstick]

You're right, I'm sorry. I should have said I'm referring to those of us who uh, played more "seriously"? (I can't think of a better way to describe us)

The Meph runs, rushing alts all the way to hell, etc. I really don't think D3 is going to be the same game, my impression is it'll have more in common with 1.10+ D2 then the old D2.

[WindupAtheist]

I stick with offline single player in D2 for a couple of reasons.

1. Storage.  ATMA is awesome, because I don't need to maintain a bazillion mule characters to go all crazy hoarder with all the nifty things I found.

2. Character storage.  B.net only stores your characters for a maximum of three months.  I will sometimes not play D2 for a year, and then pick it up again.  Mostly because no other dungeon crawler seems to measure up.

I assume #2 won't be an issue, in that characters will be stored for longer term than three months.

I play offline single-player in D2 for the following reasons:

1) Online adds nothing but lag and mouthbreathers.
2) ...no actually that's about it.

[Malakili]

I think it might have been a sign of deeply flawed dynamics that sorcs were key to the way in which most closed players played.

People would teleport past content in pretty much any game if they were allowed to. D2 just allowed them to in certain circumstances, and since that so drastically sped up the way you could do things, it because practically necessary if you were "serious" about the game.  What sorceresses allowed people to do was to pull the slot machine lever more often, not even Blizzard is really going to deny thats the addictive part of the game.

[Lakov_Sanite]

The problem with hard modes in most games is that they are not so much bard as they are tedious.  They end up being chip damage fests or run and gun. None of which is terribly hard, just needs to be repeated for 30min it takes the boss to die.

[Malakili]

The problem with hard modes in most games is that they are not so much bard as they are tedious.  They end up being chip damage fests or run and gun. None of which is terribly hard, just needs to be repeated for 30min it takes the boss to die.

This is why I play hardcore mode, for when I want an actual challenge.  Unfortunately, whenever things get too "hard" people just quit.  If its easy but tedious people will grit their teeth and put in the time.

[Amaron]

They quit because for most of them gaming is a leisure activity.   Many of them probably face difficult challenges they find interesting in other activities and then fire up a game after that.   The solution is more things like hardcore mode where difficulty is not tied to rewards that leisure types enjoy.

Of course that will never satisfy the people who want to teach all these gaming scrubs that they are inferior.

[Malakili]

They quit because for most of them gaming is a leisure activity.   Many of them probably face difficult challenges they find interesting in other activities and then fire up a game after that.   The solution is more things like hardcore mode where difficulty is not tied to rewards that leisure types enjoy.

Of course that will never satisfy the people who want to teach all these gaming scrubs that they are inferior.

I don't particularly disagree, its just unfortunate that most games don't have an option like that.

[Paelos]

They quit because for most of them gaming is a leisure activity.   Many of them probably face difficult challenges they find interesting in other activities and then fire up a game after that.   The solution is more things like hardcore mode where difficulty is not tied to rewards that leisure types enjoy.

Of course that will never satisfy the people who want to teach all these gaming scrubs that they are inferior.

We could just round them up and have them all caned?

[Arinon]

I'd rather they make games hard and add an easy mode than the reverse.

[Malakili]

I'd rather they make games hard and add an easy mode than the reverse.

That would make sense if the people who wanted a hard game massively outnumbered those who wanted easy game and not vice versa.

[Paelos]

I'd rather they make games hard and add an easy mode than the reverse.

That would be the stupid way of doing it. You make normal doable, and you make Hardcore HARD. You don't insult your customers by putting in an EZ mode.

Frankly, the only difference in the way you want it is packaging.

[Malakili]

I'd rather they make games hard and add an easy mode than the reverse.

That would be the stupid way of doing it. You make normal doable, and you make Hardcore HARD. You don't insult your customers by putting in an EZ mode.

Frankly, the only difference in the way you want it is packaging.

Not necessarily.  When your "easy" mode is the default things are going to be balanced with that in mind.  If hardcore was the default you can imagine their being a few more get out of jail abilities and such, not to trivialize the difficulty of the mode, but just to let people be a bit more aggressive .  Instead,  you have to rely on just not making mistakes at all to stay alive.  This actually makes Hardcore much more interesting, but I think the point is that its not *just* a matter of presentation.

[Amaron]

Speaking of different modes I now desperately want a no-trading-period ladder or something.   You can't pick up other gear people drop or use the auction house etc.  Have it last for 3 months and your rating could be based on your best equipped gear or something.   That would solve all my objections to this RMT AH stuff and be fun at the same time.

[Paelos]

Not necessarily.  When your "easy" mode is the default things are going to be balanced with that in mind.  If hardcore was the default you can imagine their being a few more get out of jail abilities and such, not to trivialize the difficulty of the mode, but just to let people be a bit more aggressive .  Instead,  you have to rely on just not making mistakes at all to stay alive.  This actually makes Hardcore much more interesting, but I think the point is that its not *just* a matter of presentation.

Yes, it is. If I have 2 modes of play with one intended to be more difficult than the other, you don't want to present the more difficult one as standard. The modes are what they are. The reaction to the modes will be different based entirely on how you present them.

[Malakili]

Not necessarily.  When your "easy" mode is the default things are going to be balanced with that in mind.  If hardcore was the default you can imagine their being a few more get out of jail abilities and such, not to trivialize the difficulty of the mode, but just to let people be a bit more aggressive .  Instead,  you have to rely on just not making mistakes at all to stay alive.  This actually makes Hardcore much more interesting, but I think the point is that its not *just* a matter of presentation.

Yes, it is. If I have 2 modes of play with one intended to be more difficult than the other, you don't want to present the more difficult one as standard. The modes are what they are. The reaction to the modes will be different based entirely on how you present them.

I don't disagree with that.  But what I am saying is if one is meant to be the "normal" mode, and the game is designed around it, it seems the modes would end up different.  I can't see how if Blizzard was making a game from the outside that was hardcore mode as the intended game mode they would make the same serious of design choices as they have with the current version of d3 in which hardcore mode is basically just an abritrary limitation to make the game more difficult tacked on to a mode that already exists.

[Ratman_tf]

The problem with hard modes in most games is that they are not so much bard as they are tedious.  They end up being chip damage fests or run and gun. None of which is terribly hard, just needs to be repeated for 30min it takes the boss to die.

Totes. I pretty much stay away from Hard modes for this reason.

[LK]

Csikszentmihalyi was right.