Diablo III Players/Discussion Thread

[Holy Knight]

Yes, DIII will not be DI or II since it's the WoW team that worked on it, not Blizz North. This is readily apparent in the art style and other things.

I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. There are some good things going on in DIII.

Originally Posted by Holy Knight

The more I read about Inferno difficulty, the more I get convinced they've designed this with "SNES hard" mentality.

I've just seen the stats from some screens of the Brady Games' strat guide, and holy hell. The jump from Hell -> Inferno multiplies HP and DMG values by roughly 5-10x. Usually 8-10x from what it seems.

Yeahhh... if this is going to be pure stat multipliers = difficulty, then I think many people are going to be turned off from this... At some point it's just not fun anymore if it takes half an hour to kill an enemy for measly rewards.

[Vaikyuko]

Originally Posted by Holy Knight

I've just seen the stats from some screens of the Brady Games' strat guide, and holy hell. The jump from Hell -> Inferno multiplies HP and DMG values by roughly 5-10x. Usually 8-10x from what it seems.

Yeahhh... if this is going to be pure stat multipliers = difficulty, then I think many people are going to be turned off from this... At some point it's just not fun anymore if it takes half an hour to kill an enemy for measly rewards.

So they have no idea how to properly balance difficulty. That sounds completely boring and uninspired. The hilarious part is that that's what MMOs do with difficulty. To make a boss hard for a 40-man group, you make him have higher stats. That's basically it. There's no rhyme or reason to it. You might have some ability counters or something but there's nothing especially different about it.

I'm completely disappointed in that so I guess I'll make it a point to solo Inferno just to emphasize what garbage adding stats is for difficulty (protip for developers: skilled players will curbstomp your hardest difficulties. Learn to mix it up).

[Holy Knight]

They have stated that kind of difficulty wasn't their intention since it's not the "good" kind of hard, so I'm holding out and giving them a chance to show if they have anything better. Maybe the AI is improved, or they have extra abilities or whatever.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that encounters in Inferno are "timed". If you can't beat enemies within a certain amount of time, then their stats begin multiplying exponentially. I think they called these "Enrage timers".

... We'll see how it goes, lol.

[earsofdoom]

Originally Posted by Holy Knight

They have stated that kind of difficulty wasn't their intention since it's not the "good" kind of hard, so I'm holding out and giving them a chance to show if they have anything better. Maybe the AI is improved, or they have extra abilities or whatever.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that encounters in Inferno are "timed". If you can't beat enemies within a certain amount of time, then their stats begin multiplying exponentially. I think they called these "Enrage timers".

... We'll see how it goes, lol.

Enrage timers are a mechanic for WOW boss's, why am I not surprised? Honestly its not that I hate WOW I mean i did play that mmo for like 3 years, its just that these guys should be able to do SOMETHING besides wow. Its a poor artist who can't do any other style and copy/pasteing mechanics from your MMO for a game in development for over 10 years is really !@^&ing lazy.

[Jon]

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/3811455085

Here's a good thread explaining the stat/customization in D3. It explains how it is different from DII, and in fact, MORE customizable. It's a good read, explains a good deal.

Also, I think I'll be a Barb as my first character. Playing a Barb in the beta was so much fun

[Jabberwock]

Originally Posted by earsofdoom

Enrage timers are a mechanic for WOW boss's, why am I not surprised? Honestly its not that I hate WOW I mean i did play that mmo for like 3 years, its just that these guys should be able to do SOMETHING besides wow. Its a poor artist who can't do any other style and copy/pasteing mechanics from your MMO for a game in development for over 10 years is really !@^&ing lazy.

I'm not really sure what you're complaining about here. You're arguing for FF11-style marathon fights that go on for 10+ hours of rinse and repeat?

Enrage timers, when reasonable, are a good way to limit the duration of a fight to acceptable times instead of becoming snorefests. Enrage timers are not meant to make fights harder--they're a valve to make fights an acceptable length.

Imagine tweaking a fight that had INFINITE time limit. You could effectively give it a CAJILLION life, innumerable armor and an attack that damages the party for 1/4 their hp every 10 minutes. As you approach longer fight durations, the "difficulty" becomes greater simply just due to fatigue. That is poor encounter design.

It's one thing to overload the player by harrassing her with obstacles constantly and another entirely to just bore her to death, knowing that your implacable machine will wear her down.

[earsofdoom]

Originally Posted by Jabberwock

I'm not really sure what you're complaining about here. You're arguing for FF11-style marathon fights that go on for 10+ hours of rinse and repeat?

Enrage timers, when reasonable, are a good way to limit the duration of a fight to acceptable times instead of becoming snorefests. Enrage timers are not meant to make fights harder--they're a valve to make fights an acceptable length.

Imagine tweaking a fight that had INFINITE time limit. You could effectively give it a CAJILLION life, innumerable armor and an attack that damages the party for 1/4 their hp every 10 minutes. As you approach longer fight durations, the "difficulty" becomes greater simply just due to fatigue. That is poor encounter design.

It's one thing to overload the player by harrassing her with obstacles constantly and another entirely to just bore her to death, knowing that your implacable machine will wear her down.

Fights in Diablo hardly last as long as they do in an MMO, really rage timers are basically the game saying "well we can't balance it so lets just put a time limit on it." really if I had to play a cookie cutter Everquest style MMO I'd rather fight boss's with actual difficulty rather then a 5-minute IWIN button, but Im hopeing MMO's stop trying to beat WOW by being exactly like WOW and start doing interesting things like vindictus or Tera.

So if i understand correctly from that article stat increase's are from items now? how is that more involved? your basically taking player choice and replacing it with a lottery, and if these are allowed on the real money auction house thats instant pay-2-win.

[Vaikyuko]

Granted, I never fought Ubers or anything, but most of the fights I played in Diablo II ended in less than ten minutes even on Hell. I can't possibly see that as being fatiguing. How the hell long were some of the stronger boss fights in online? >_>

[MechaFan]

Originally Posted by Vaikyuko

Granted, I never fought Ubers or anything, but most of the fights I played in Diablo II ended in less than ten minutes even on Hell. I can't possibly see that as being fatiguing. How the hell long were some of the stronger boss fights in online? >_>

It depends.. If you get a frozen orb sorc or a hdin with enigma then you could solo andy+mephisto+pindle+baal in less then 20minutes.. And while the levels are random there are patterns + room layouts you'll eventually learn to help you teleport through the levels quicker to find the bosses.. I did this for hours upon hours and loved the constant 'gamble' of comeing up with something unique from the bosses.. I got addicted to it


But, if your playing with a rag-tag character that wasn't rushed and didn't have a bunch of items off mule characters then it could take a while to take down the bosses.. I remember when D2 first launched (before everyone had rushed characters and leveled up through cows) trying to take down Diablo was a hell of a chore.. Had to hit all those seals with the unique bosses, all while keeping your finger on the tab button and looking for yellow/gold items It could easily take you a hour or more if you don't wipe over and over, it was even worse before LOD launched and you couldn't get an enigma wearing character to set up a good TP somewhere.

Good times.. Everytime I see that Diablo 3 comercial on TV I'm reminded of how much I loved D2 and why I spent a good 6-7 years playing that game.. I really wanna like D3, but I'll wait on more word about the PvPing.. I know it won't be on the game at launch so I'm hopeing maybe they are working out a way to keep it fair with all the RMT items that will be floating around on single characters.

[Holy Knight]

Lol, the game these days is all about letting the 'bots do their job. They tele + kill Baal all on their own, and since they only go for select loot, you can plunder everything else if you play when no one else does (like say 4am EST or something). They do it all in, like, 5m or thereabouts even with 8 players.

Aside from that that, fights last as good as your gear/build is. If you're a cookie cutter with top gear, then you slice through pretty much everything with breeze. If sub-optimal, then it could take a while depending on gear. Below a certain point, forgedaboutit, man.

But really, Hell in DII post-1.10 really limited the number of viable solo builds. If you aren't a caster of sorts, then you're basically ****ed until you get some good gear going.

[MechaFan]

Originally Posted by Holy Knight

Lol, the game these days is all about letting the 'bots do their job. They tele + kill Baal all on their own, and since they only go for select loot, you can plunder everything else if you play when no one else does (like say 4am EST or something). They do it all in, like, 5m or thereabouts even with 8 players.

Aside from that that, fights last as good as your gear/build is. If you're a cookie cutter with top gear, then you slice through pretty much everything with breeze. If sub-optimal, then it could take a while depending on gear. Below a certain point, forgedaboutit, man.

But really, Hell in DII post-1.10 really limited the number of viable solo builds. If you aren't a caster of sorts, then you're basically ****ed until you get some good gear going.

Yeah they had bots even back when I was playing.. It didn't take long for those to spread and I'll admit I used them for a while myself when I had aquired a good list of CDkeys But before all that I had a lot of fun MFing..

As for melee builds I never really messed with them until much later on and had tons of life-leach gear avaliable.. Just go ahead and WW through a mob of groups and come out without any health missing My first ever character was a summon nec though so I actually could solo through the game pretty easily when I started playing..

But honestly, after LOD came out soloing became pretty easily if only because of enigma.

[Holy Knight]

Originally Posted by Jon

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/3811455085

Here's a good thread explaining the stat/customization in D3. It explains how it is different from DII, and in fact, MORE customizable. It's a good read, explains a good deal.

Originally Posted by earsofdoom

So if i understand correctly from that article stat increase's are from items now? how is that more involved? your basically taking player choice and replacing it with a lottery, and if these are allowed on the real money auction house thats instant pay-2-win.

Ok, I can properly address these now that I'm sober. (And quite the TL;DR it turned into)

I'll start with saying I like the article. I also have nothing against Blizz's direction with stat effects, which seem smarter than DII's.

Now, I hadn't thought that the idea they went with was to shift stat customization to items instead, so that's new info to me, and I think I like it. Stat allocation in DII is very inflexible. You have to hold back on assigning stats because your twinked gear with provide the stats necessary to equip your stuff eventually. In DIII however, you can assign stats however you wish since you just need items with sockets and the proper jewel. Much smarter system, imo, and allows for more flexibility/customization.

-----

But as Ears says this is now a "lottery". I would very strongly argue this is not a bad thing, and is in fact the essence of what makes DII good. I'll extrapolate a bit here and talk about... not-very-general economic theory because I'm a Finance guy and I've made a lot of reading into this stuff, and it's sort of necessary to understand what Blizz has really done.

Ok, so DII's tenet is "randomness". Like a slot machine, the items you find are randomly assigned. You can increase your odds through some factors and character builds, but the chances of finding the really good stuff is quite low. In other words, Diablo II's core is gambling.

And that is why the game is so addictive. People love to gamble, even if they believe they aren't doing it. The economy is pretty much driven by gambling theory, though no economist would ever admit it, lol. The thing is that risk adds fun and spice to otherwise mundane activities. This is also the mechanic that allows for capital allocation, which is what the market is all about, and prevents large accumulations of cash reserves since hoarding stifles economic activity. Risk gets people to bet, and betting provides a medium through which cash will flow, and thus stimulate economic activity. Business decisions are also made on gambling fundamentals as well, though, again, no CEO would ever admit that publicly.

This is probably a controversial point since it's not the conventional view of any market economy, but it is reality. So allow me to explain with a couple examples:

- A business manager has to choose a supplier. He has 5 suppliers to choose from. He knows on one end, there's a company that can provide exactly what he wants, but at a high price. On the other end of the spectrum, he has a newcomer on the market willing to do the job for half the price, though his expertise is unknown. The other suppliers are in-between these ranges.

So if the manager is risk-averse, he'll take the sure bet of the quality supplier, at a premium. If he's willing to take a risk, then he'll either get an outstanding job or lose his money. But if it pays off, he can cut costs.

- An investor is looking into different investment avenues. He can do stocks, bonds, derivatives, ETFs, etc. Each one of these instruments provides different risk profiles, and he can even mix-and-match these in his portfolio. Sounds like fun! But that's exactly what financial engineers want the investor to think. It should be fun to invest, and risk is tailored to the individual in this fashion to get him to bet his portfolio.

- Insurance in particular is quite guilty of this. An insurance contract is no different from pure gambling. The stroke of genius was to say that you are really protecting yourself from natural risks and charge a premium for this. Of course, the insurance company will make sure the odds (premiums) are high enough that the company can survive a 99th percentile event. The truth is, these companies want the people who need insurance least to be their clients, while avoiding the people who do need it.

Anyway, the point of all this is to say that economic activity has very similar characteristics to gambling. Starting a business can be no different from betting on red or black, and the returns on your money quite similar if you make it.

Generally, economists want to separate economic activity from gambling, and these factors are:

- Positive expectancy in the long run (The important one, imo. What separates the pure gambler from the professional is a strategy that makes money consistently in the long run. Example: Apple. High priced products no one can resist with high profit margins. Very good business, that).

- Economic utility (who gives a ****, really? All anyone wants is to make bank)

- Underlying value isn't associated to the risks being taken.

But this is really pure fluff, imo. There is no fundamental difference gambling and any other sort of financial transaction. The mechanics are, for all intents and purposes, the same. And very, very important to economic activity. If there were no gamblers (risk takers is the PC word), then many of the things we see and use today would not exist.

Verdict: So how does all this relate to Diablo? Well, Diablo is a very market-driven game. They've made sure to bring in the very best talent to get a real economy going and the RMAH heavily figures into this.

And as with all economic activity, the real driver behind this is going to be gambling mechanics, or "randomness" as they prefer to call it. This randomness makes sure that people will rarely own a full set of powerful gear whereas in traditional RPGs, you just need to go through the right sequence to obtain the most powerful stuff. Diablo adds spice by making these item outcomes unknown so it feels simply awesome to have a great item appear since you can never tell what you'll get.

The element of risk in Diablo is that you may or may not find a good item in a given session (or, for Hardcore mode, that you'll die). This risk seems to be... different... in DIII since they've stated that they want to increase the pool of useful items, which is commendable. The addition of a working currency is also very much a blessing so that items may be priced correctly. One of the biggest killers of market trading is for goods not to have knowable prices, which makes it difficult to know their approximate trade value which makes people vulnerable to scams and other manipulations. Efficient markets know their price at all times.

So keep pulling that slot reel, bros! You might just get a Zod eventually. It's what keeps you hooked on Diablo, and why it's such a great game.

[MechaFan]

Yeah but in D3 why would I want to 'gamble' on MF runs when I can simply purchase everything I need with real cash?

Why do I need to grind for PvP gear (whenever PvP is eventually added) when I can roflstomp people with the gear I bought at the auction house with all my benjamins?

Shoot, I got a disposable income and I can afford the best of all gear.. Will Battle.net limit me somehow in PvP?

Stuff like that takes all the fun out of it for me.. Then again it wasn't really any different in D2 I guess when ebay still allowed the sale of virtual items Ugh, seriously, why can't I get over this game saleing items for real cash! But I guess D3 is atleast limiting the sale to items in the auction house unlike GW2 which will sale in game currency directly for real cash.

[Holy Knight]

^ I could type up another TL;DR to address the above, but one is plenty.

The gist of it is that no items are created out of thin air. The system through the RMAH is kept zero-sum (or minus-sum if you want to include commissions). This opens up real market possibilities for players.

See it this way. If there is very high demand for cash items, then their price is going to be high. You, as a seller, will want to find these items. Then competition will come in and undercut other sellers by lowering prices. Etc. until the market begins efficiently pricing these transactions.

Basically, the sellers provide a service to those too lazy to do the work themselves or willing to pay for it. The end result is a pure financial transaction with real value since no item is created, only transferred. Blizz did the smart thing here.

You now have a vibrant economy going on right there. What that does to the game is yet to be seen, but I think player skill will play more of a part than you might think, and the RMAH will have less of an impact on gameplay than you might think as well.

I, for one, will relish to observe how the real cash aspect will play out. It's going to be fascinating.

[MechaFan]

Well, I've already seen how real cash has played out on the several F2P MMO's I've played in the past.. Everytime it results in several players who purchase the best of the best for their characters and make PvP one-sided.. But that dosn't really matter at the moment considering D3 is launching without PvP (or so thats what I've read.)

But maybe Blizz has a trick up their sleeve to help balance between the RMT'ers and non-RMT'ers.