Are you done? Why?

[Rokal]

To me it's so simple they can't possibly miss it for six months.

1 - Bind items to your account
2 - Increase drops, add shit back to barrels.
3 - Add fun titles and cosmetic shit for goldsinks. Add more space to stash, etc.
4 - PROFIT

I don't think they'll ever make items BoE/BoA personally. Not only is it not 'Diablo-like', but it would probably piss off people that spent real money on items with the expectation of reselling them later. It would also lead to less AH transactions overall, which isn't what Blizzard wants from their RMAH. The more times an item changes hands, the better for them.

Increasing ilvl and quality of drops, as well as quality/fun of uniques/sets is also likely easier said then done. If they didn't add interesting modifiers to gear in the 6+ years the game was in development for, what makes you think they'll add them in by the end of the year? I'm not even sure if they understand that their itemization sucks for 1-59 as most of the complaints are about level 60. That's also the only area they've made any effort to improve.

The Blizzard CM thread here is talking about skills in D2 vs D3 (who knows why it's in that thread) and someone pointed out that saving points to spend when you finally unlock X viable spell was dumb. It's true that it was, but I didn't care in Diablo 2 because it was still fun to play 'non-viable' builds. One of my favorite characters was a terrible poison nova necro. I spent points in skills I'd never use again after getting Nova and it didn't ruin the game for me. It was about the journey, not the end-game. I wasn't thinking about making a character that was going to be viable for hell, I was thinking about making a character that would be fun to play for normal and nightmare. Hell seemed like an afterthought and the game had been created to make the loot experience fun from level 1. Meanwhile in Diablo 3 there really isn't any appeal to replaying normal-nightmare because it feels like an unrewarding slog.

Stolen from elsewhere but:

D3 isn't a loot whore game, it's a trash collector simulator. Sometimes when taking out the trash you find something valuable if you're lucky. Sometimes you throw out valuable things mistaking it for another piece of trash since you're in a rush to destroy it all for recycle money.

To be loot whoring you have to be crossing good loot that you are collecting and replacing your current gear with.

They might fix the Inferno loot problems by the end of the year (I still doubt it), but Diablo 3 will continue to be worse than Diablo 2 until they acknowledge why their itemization sucks and fix it for all difficulties.

[Paelos]

I find it amusing that we have completely switched our faith in Blizzard to deliver a product that will satisfy the playerbase in a matter of a year.

Why can't Blizzard pull off similar feats? 

[Rokal]

I find it amusing that we have completely switched our faith in Blizzard to deliver a product that will satisfy the playerbase in a matter of a year.

I'm pretty confident that MoP will turn out well and satisfy WoW's playerbase. I'm less confident that Diablo 3 will any time soon. It's different groups at Blizzard and the Diablo devs have shown some frankly shocking incompetence. I simply don't understand how someone would have played Acts 2-4, which beta players did not have access to because the Diablo devs were so confident that player feedback wasn't needed, without noticing most of the problems players started complaining about on Day 1. I don't understand how you could work 6+ years on a game, borrowing concepts and ideas that had been developed years earlier, and end up with a short campaign that you need to cut features from to get it out 'on time'.

People have suggested that post-TBC WoW has been run by Blizzard's "B-Team". At this point I'm not sure they actually have an A-Team.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I worry about you Paelos, you seem to have battered housewife syndrome when it comes to blizzard. It's always the last straw until they whisper some sweet words and promise they can change, then you believe them all over again.

[Ingmar]

I'm more worried about the people who only complain, while racking up 200 hour playtimes.

[MrHat]

To me it's so simple they can't possibly miss it for six months.

1 - Bind items to your account
2 - Increase drops, add shit back to barrels.
3 - Add fun titles and cosmetic shit for goldsinks. Add more space to stash, etc.
4 - PROFIT

They don't need to make the items bindable to account.

They just need to make items lose 10% max durability every time the item is traded or bought on the AH.

Flushes items out of the system after being bought and sold a few times.

[Paelos]

I worry about you Paelos, you seem to have battered housewife syndrome when it comes to blizzard. It's always the last straw until they whisper some sweet words and promise they can change, then you believe them all over again.

Let's be fair, I stopped playing WoW when I said I did with the idea that I would be coming back, when and if the attitude shifted from "L2P" to "We fucked up, and we're sorry."

I've stopped playing Diablo under similar circumstances, with the caveat that I can and will return if they fix things. I'm not a salt the earth guy at any insult. I'm all about using our words and dollars and weight as consumers to affect change, AND then responding positively to that change so we get better results in the future.

[waffel]

While that's true, it is still a game-ruiningly bad idea. Practically the entire point of ARPG loot systems is that you can twink your later characters with hand-me-down items.

Except in this game there are no twinks, because you only need to make a class once. They could also have all items bind to account, not 1 character. That way you could twink your own characters to your hearts content with self-found and previously-self-equipped gear.

Not saying I think BoE is the answer (but it is an interesting one) just that twinking wouldn't be hurt by it.

They don't need to make the items bindable to account.

They just need to make items lose 10% max durability every time the item is traded or bought on the AH.

Flushes items out of the system after being bought and sold a few times.

Not a bad idea.

[Ingmar]

I very frequently hand down items to characters of a different class. Only the barbarian stuff doesn't really overlap.

EDIT: And I hand stuff off to friends all the time as well. Losing that would be pretty shitty.

[Abelian75]

I've totally been thinking the BoA thing too (not with items that already exist, but with new stuff they add, presumably), I've just been afraid to say it to anyone because I assume this is horribly antithetical to the Diablo series and ARPGs as a whole, for some reason I'm not awesome enough to understand (this is really the first Roguelike-ARPG I've really played a whole bunch).  It just seems boring to me when you can buy everything.  But maybe that's just me.

[Paelos]

I don't think it's antithetical to the Diablo style to have BoA stuff. Trading models were just a whole lot worse with D2, so you didn't SEE the obvious gear inflation.

People would get over it, because I think they realize it's a giant issue holding the game back.

[Dren]

I know we like hyperbole here, but months? 

Okay, it just feels like months!  It has probably been 3 weeks.  Yeah, I'm still probably off, but I really don't care enough to remember nor research when this game came out.  I had it pre-ordered  and started day one.  I'm not predicting failure for the game or Blizzard.  They'll do just fine.  I just don't like the game as it is and really doubt I'll come back when they "fix" it.  There is just too much other gaming to be done.  

[Rokal]

I don't think it's antithetical to the Diablo style to have BoA stuff. Trading models were just a whole lot worse with D2, so you didn't SEE the obvious gear inflation.

People would get over it, because I think they realize it's a giant issue holding the game back.

I imagine many people would find it hard to get over an item they purchased for up to $250 suddenly being impossible to resell when they bought it with the expectation that it could be resold.

I don't think BoA/BoE gear would be 'bad' for Diablo, personally, but I also think that ship sailed the minute they enabled the RMAH.

[waffel]

I don't think BoA/BoE gear would be 'bad' for Diablo, personally, but I also think that ship sailed the minute they enabled the RMAH.

Yep.  

I can't see them make any sweeping item or gear changes in D3 mainly due to the RMAH. Personally I'm waiting a new ladder 'server' to open up with no RMAH but a gold AH, which has rolling wipes similar to D2.

[Paelos]

Y'all are assuming that they lose money on this change. That's not the case. Binding items with increased rates would create more trading, not less. They only care about volume, not value

[MrHat]

I very frequently hand down items to characters of a different class. Only the barbarian stuff doesn't really overlap.

EDIT: And I hand stuff off to friends all the time as well. Losing that would be pretty shitty.

You wouldn't lose durability giving items to different characters on your account as the items don't get traded in the trade window or the AH.

And if you're giving an item to a friend, well, 10% durability is nothing.

If they decide to resell it or give it to a different friend, that's another 10%.

Only matters later on when you hit 70-80% durability lost through trading.  Now that item isn't as great as it used to be and will be replaced by something 'fresher'.

It's the best solution I could think of to remove items from the game to avoid item inflation.

[Rokal]

Y'all are assuming that they lose money on this change. That's not the case. Binding items with increased rates would create more trading, not less. They only care about volume, not value

Drastically increased rates and more appropriate ilvls would also drive less people to the AH. You'd just play to get your upgrades (hey, that sounds fun!). Good for the game, bad for recurring AH revenue.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

Increasing ilvl and quality of drops, as well as quality/fun of uniques/sets is also likely easier said then done. If they didn't add interesting modifiers to gear in the 6+ years the game was in development for, what makes you think they'll add them in by the end of the year?

This is the part that totally baffles me. Pay me a week's salary and give me a spreadsheet and even if I spend all the money on whiskey I will still be able to substantially improve the itemization of this game. It's just not hard. They could literally just reintroduce all the sets/uniques from D2 with different names and their game would be 500% better.

Yes, if you want it perfectly balanced, etc. then it's harder -- but that's what's so crazy. They don't need ANY of the items you use for levelling to be remotely balanced -- the whole fucking point of finding a sweet usable mid-level unique, or assembling that full level 22-28 set, is that it makes your character feel totally unbalanced for like 5-10 levels, and then you move on (or grow attached to whatever effects it has and then suffer endlessly just to keep it equipped, whatever.) Level 35 unique dagger with +100 resist all and +50% to fire damage? Level 22 boots with +25% movespeed? On a endgame item throwing around interesting stats might be sketchy, but nobody is using a level-35-dps dagger in endgame anyways. (But they might want those boots in their inventory for running around -- hey, you just accidentally made shit more interesting, gj.)

They could make the level 20-50 part of this game twenty times more fun with almost zero effort, with very little impact on any sort of serious end-game balance or economy, and they don't. It suggests some sort of major blind spot regarding their own game design, which really doesn't bode well for the rest of their fixes.

[Malakili]

The infinite respecs stuff does kind of hurt replayability too.  While I really love being able to tweak my build - I also know the chances of me playing through on each cahracter more than once is pretty slim.  I used to create and level entirely new characters simply because I got a couple of drops that fit a build real well.  While I have been enjoying the game and playing it a lot, there is clearly an end here that wasn't quite there in D2.  Granted, I don't play enough that I am going to reach that "end" soon.  To be clear, I'm calling "the end" or at least "my end" beating inferno with every character class.

[waffel]

The way gamers talk nowadays, I wouldn't be surprised if every single game offers an on-the-fly respec for free. Seems gamers aren't interested in building a character with a unique playset, they want access to everything RIGHT FUCKING NOW OMG!

[Ice Cream Emperor]

Err, or they just don't want to be punished for making decisions they had no realistic way of understanding.

[koro]

If you provide the player with infinite, instant, no-cost respecs for all their character development choices, then you kill replayability and (for some) seriously hurt or eliminate attachment to the character itself. But if you give all the info you could possibly need to make an informed decision on what to do to build a character the way they want with no blindsiding from obtuse mechanics in a game with limited or no respeccing, then you'll get complaints about having to do "too much math" to make a character.

There has to be a middle ground of some kind between those. A couple freebie respecs and then all subsequent ones are enough of an effort to unlock to encourage at least some kind of forethrought and planning that you can't really just burn through one after another willy-nilly?

[ezrast]

That is, in fact, a perfectly reasonable solution.

Nephalem Valor does more to prevent people from having fun the way they want than limiting respecs would.

[proudft]

There has to be a middle ground of some kind between those.

Acquiring runes via drops would have accomplished that somewhat, since you basically only got a bit of info at a time to digest for your limited choices.  I never played it in that mode and I kinda wish I had been able to.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

Yes, there's lots of hybrid solutions. A free respec every 10 levels, droppable item-respecs, etc. can all mitigate/eliminate the 'wrong choice, now you're fucked' problem while maintaining a greater degree of build-identity, or whatever.

To be honest I think the mechanism for respeccing could be very basic/nearly-free, and still give that feeling of 'now I am trying a totally different thing' -- just by making it a Seperate Thing You Do Intentionally, that is not identical with what you do when levelling up normally (which is how reassigning skills works now.) RIFT comes to mind as a game where respecs were basically trivial to accomplish, but even with 3 full specs to switch between I still felt like each spec was a Thing I Was, class-wise.

But part of that is because the specs were actually so dramatically different -- I think it's easy to underestimate how much of that 'generic, no-real-spec' feeling in D3 is simply because there is actually so little in-depth customization of skills. I mean you just aren't making that many choices, compared to allocating 60+ skill points between three distinct trees.

[Maledict]

To be fair you were never allocating 60 points over 3 trees. You choose two or three skills and put all your points into them +synergies. Diablo 3 had (theoretically) a huge amount more builds with a huge amount more depth. Unfortunately inferno buggers all that up.

In D2 it didn't matter that my chain lightning  sorceress wasn't  the best possible build, because it was good enough to let me farm Mephisto and have access to almost every item in the game. That's not the case now - if you run a quirky, fun but lower powered build you'll just die in Inferno and there's absolutely no point in farming hell mode.

Re. The comment about Nephalim valour - I thought it was a great idea, but in practice I hate it. I dislike the fact Boizzard have *one* way to play the game and that's it. I don't want to have to spend 30 minutes at a time to benefit - diablo isn't Warcraft, it should be able to do things in faster chunks of time. You should be able to pull the loot bandit lever every ten minutes.

[KallDrexx]

Let's be honest here in this discussion.

Is the *REAL* issue that people aren't unique because people can respect at will, or is it that the skills (and complimentary items) are not interesting enough to generate unique synergies and playstyles depending on which ones you play.

I feel like it's the latter.   I played Guild Wars for many years in which you had almost the same skill system, and yet switching out two or three skills drastically changed the way you played, and people did tend to categorize themselves in different types of builds they preferred.  There really wasn't a whole debate on replayability due to respects or anything with GW, at least from most of the community.

Meanwhile in D3 I never really felt compelled to change my skills that much, and when I did it didn't change my playstyle all that much.

[Merusk]

The skills definitely don't generate enough unique synergies. There are a great number of better skill choices than others (Wizard Shock Pulse.. lol.  Have fun with that after act 1 normal) and the bad choices don't have skills that work with others to make them good choices.   

Those skills that are found with fantastic synergy? Nerfed in the name of balance. It feels like that's all Blizzard knows how to balance anymore.  Yes, nerfs are required, but sometimes buffs are as well - and they have to be the RIGHT nerfs - not "well we're going to totally destroy this synergy.  When wizards were the only ones able to solo Inferno that was bad.. destroying the ability entirely wasn't a good choice.  Reducing the amount of uptime or damage mitigation would have been the right one, while also buffing other classes passives to get a similar synergy going.

The mechanics are fun, I don't mind the 'short' levels or repeating content.  I disagree strongly with any notion that zero respecs or lack of skill points do anything but punish those who want to play - not research - a game.  The loot mechanics are all fucked and I really, really mind that I never feel heroic without visiting the AH to upgrade gear because I have no chance of finding good upgrades solo.

[Typhon]

I'm pretty much done.  I would come back if they did some/all of the following:

• More interesting itemization
• All Resist - fucking stupid stat.  Any piece of armor without it, is a useless piece of armor.  Fix. this. shit!
• (someone else mentioned this) damage types should have interesting secondary effects
• More intelligent affix/mob randomization.  Certain mobs are inherently more difficult - give them a + to magic find.  Certain affixes are more difficult - give them a + to magic find.  Better/more interesting affixes.
• More maps/random maps, more random encounters.  Populate these random maps/encounter
• A pass through skills to boost the lesser-powerful ones.
• Eliminate, nay, eradicate! engage timers.

[Malakili]

Let's be honest here in this discussion.

Is the *REAL* issue that people aren't unique because people can respect at will, or is it that the skills (and complimentary items) are not interesting enough to generate unique synergies and playstyles depending on which ones you play.

There are some different ways to play, but one of the main differences between D2 and D3 is just the entire concept of inferno mode to begin with.  Diablo 2 wasn't difficult - ever. Yes, you could gimp yourself with utterly terrible builds, but as long as you were sort of close to the mark you were capable of farming at the very least the easier bosses which had a very small % chance of dropping end game gear.  Maybe the very end of Hell mode was a bit tough, but not really.  Diablo 3 Inferno is just way way harder than anything that was in D2 - and the result is that only builds with survivability focus are actually viable. 

We are also in an era where the end game is all that matters.  Combine these two things and only the relatively slim number of end game viable skills are worth caring about.  No one gives a crap if you can solo through nightmare with some wonky creative build. If they want to add more playstyles, they need to give some serious thought to adding runes to every skill which help survivability in inferno.  The good news is, I suppose, that given the system they've created this isn't a totally pie in the sky request.

[Venkman]

D3 felt a bit out of time to me. It was a great game to play through, but doesn't have the stickiness that D2. I feel like that's mostly because whereas D2 was unique at the time of PC game dominence and online multiplayer ascendancy, D3 is the same game 12 years after the whole rest of the world caught up.

I personally stopped playing because raid endgames aren't really my thing. Very high quality fun and I enjoyed it. But I'm also not the market for D3. 

I do think had they launched PvP before the real money auction house, they'd have cemented at least a endgame that would then become a high profile much-ranted-about battle of dollars later (unless they planned to separate PvP into with-$$ and without-$$ auction house instances?). Then you have the brinkmanship that sets up the top of the aspirational pyramid which attracts the lower steps of the playerbase pyramid.

[Phred]

I do think had they launched PvP before the real money auction house, they'd have cemented at least a endgame that would then become a high profile much-ranted-about battle of dollars later (unless they planned to separate PvP into with-$$ and without-$$ auction house instances?). Then you have the brinkmanship that sets up the top of the aspirational pyramid which attracts the lower steps of the playerbase pyramid.

Ya I wish they had done this as well. Just to see the absolute shitstorm of forum drama it produced while the 20 people who actually care about pvp in a game that is all about gear freak the fuck out because someone can buy a victory out from under them.

[Mosesandstick]

Stuff

I think Malakili is right in his assessment of D2. D2 didn't have skill variety - the game was just piss easy. You could gimp yourself and still progress, it just might take a lot longer.

[Ingmar]

Ehhh, I dunno, I never hit any transition problems in D3 the way I did from Normal->Nightmare and Nightmare->Hell in D3. (Caveat: I haven't bothered with anything past Act 1 Inferno.)

[Ice Cream Emperor]

I think Malakili is right in his assessment of D2. D2 didn't have skill variety - the game was just piss easy. You could gimp yourself and still progress, it just might take a lot longer.

It's not really an either/or thing -- D2 could both have had a larger variety of skills and also been easy.

But I agree that the easy thing is pretty key -- because when you are talking about variety of builds for a game like this, longevity-wise, you mean 'variety of viable, end-game builds'. If your end-game is really difficult -- or difficult in particular ways -- that is obviously going to reduce the number of viable builds. It's true that in D2 some builds were better than others, but often that just meant 'can kill Mephisto in 12 seconds' vs. 'can kill Mephisto in 30 seconds and sometimes you might die'. For most players who are interested in farming but not spreadsheet-optimizers, the latter is totally adequate and feels like success. You still get to farm Mephisto, and the fact that some other dude is doing it twice as fast really isn't a big deal.

But in D3, the other guy gets to farm Inferno at all and you are stuck in Hell getting almost zero level 60 item drops. The end-game moved from 'how fast/inventively/ENTERTAININGLY can you clear the farming content?' to 'can you clear the farming content at all?' It's hardly surprising that the build variety feels worse, even if in actual fact there is a higher variety of actual interesting abilities in the game. (Pretending for a moment that the gear in both games was equal in terms of providing variety, which it obviously is not.) In the D2 model if your interest flags in repetitious farming, you can invent a new way to farm that feels fun to you -- and you can do that because the challenge of the content is of a different type -- the challenge is 'how fast', or 'with what weird ability combos' or 'how hilariously' or whatever you feel like trying out.

This is kind of a tangent/pet peeve, but it's really sad to see D3 -- and possibly future ARPGs -- take this route, which to me is much closer to gated/gear-checked/high-level MMO content, where the primary question is always 'can you do it?' and never 'how awesomely can you do it?' D2 was firmly a 'how awesomely can you do it?' sort of game, and there are just so many potentially great games and premises that have been ruined by this inability to let games revolve around level-of- and variety-of-achievement, instead of just whether the achievement is possible at all. (See for example most 'superhero' games, where gameplay should so clearly be about just how stylishly you can beat up the eighty-thousand mooks, but instead ends up being watching your superhero get beat up by five faceless goons because you over-pulled or whatever.)