Even though the theoretical best items might come from the later Acts, well-rolled items from earlier acts will still be better.
I think your not understanding what he meant correctly.
What that quote you just linked says is, that the best items in the game come from the later acts. Period. But of course, well rolled items from earlier will be better than poorly rolled items from later in inferno.
Yes you need to add the 'than poorly rolled items" but thats obvisouly what he means.
Nope it's not "obviously what he means".
It’s all because of the highly random items having lots of overlap in their power distribution curves
He is saying that a great item from act 1 will beat a bad item from act 4.
But a perfect item from act 4 will beat a perfect item from act 1.
It doesn't sound like a perfect item from act 4 will be a whole lot better than a perfect item from act 1 though, hence the "lots of overlap".
He is saying that a great item from act 1 will beat a bad item from act 4.
But a perfect item from act 4 will beat a perfect item from act 1.
It doesn't sound like a perfect item from act 4 will be a whole lot better than a perfect item from act 1 though, hence the "lots of overlap".
So I guess it's just a matter of the benefits of farming the hardest content being very marginal. Reminds me of heroic mode in WoW. I could see them doing that. Personally I would complete Inferno for the achieves and just farm much easier acts in inferno for slightly less quality gear. Just not enough power incentive to work at trying to farm something much harder, at least not for me. Others just can't live with themselves if they don't have the best of the best, even if it means working 100x harder for that next point of power compared to effort the previous point. That's what farming Act III and IV will probably end up being for.
My first reaction is being extremely disappointed with this change.
Progression is something we have 3 whole difficulties to enjoy (increasing level from monsters, Hell is already supposed to be hard-ish). Inferno for me was going to be the ultimate "action" experience inside Diablo, never having the battles become easy due to being overleveled and overgeared, and whoever couldn't beat Inferno could still get the items from trading and enjoy Hell - that was good enough for the more casual playerbase imho.
Which is why to me this is another amazing feature with a lot of potential to become a staple of the franchise (and action-rpgs) just being thrown out of the window because it "feels strange". The whole "progression feeling" should come from experiencing the apex of difficulty in the different monster and bosses mechanics, not from increased stats/levels. If an Act 1 Boss (or monsters) has more interesting mechanics (which makes them "more difficult") than the Act 4 boss (or monsters), that's a design issue (that could use some fixing), not a difficulty issue.
There another part of that post that worries me: "There’s a wide variety of players out there and we wanted to make sure everybody had something to sink their teeth into."
Which leads me to believe that Hell (and even acts I-II in Inferno) will be easily overpowered with decent gear (which everyone will get eventually), which if it's true is really sad to me. I was craving for that "deep combat experience", but this change makes me feel like they might go the WoW way with D3 too (making it easier as time progresses so people don't feel "left out").
You are not wrong, it was all hype, and people bought it hook line and sinker. Did you actually think they would alienate millions of players, just so the super duper hardcore could get a challenge on the last difficulty?
It is so obvious to anyone who sits down and actually thinks about it for 10 seconds, that that scenario was never going to happen. They merely told the fan base what they wanted to hear.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
One is never hurt by being given additional choices, only by taking them away. A QUADRILLION MAGIC FIND is worthless if you can't kill shit!
You are not wrong, it was all hype, and people bought it hook line and sinker. Did you actually think they would alienate millions of players, just so the super duper hardcore could get a challenge on the last difficulty?
It is so obvious to anyone who sits down and actually thinks about it for 10 seconds, that that scenario was never going to happen. They merely told the fan base what they wanted to hear.
unfortunately true. why do they always cater to the masses? because it always equals more money. its a common sense business move that will forever be the way of gaming, making the majority or even a big part of the game not accessible to the masses is a backwards move from a business perspective and they will never do that. ever.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"once the pretty hardcore gamers we had testing inferno found it fairly difficult, we then we doubled it" -trolololol jay wilson
You are not wrong, it was all hype, and people bought it hook line and sinker. Did you actually think they would alienate millions of players, just so the super duper hardcore could get a challenge on the last difficulty?
It is so obvious to anyone who sits down and actually thinks about it for 10 seconds, that that scenario was never going to happen. They merely told the fan base what they wanted to hear.
Why are you acting as if you knew this was going to change before hand? I don't remember you ever saying anything of the sort.
"I'm just getting started. I'm gonna pull the whole thing down. I gonna bring the whole fuckin' diseased, corrupt temple down on your heads. It's gonna be Biblical."
I'm tentative on this, I really can't make a final decision until I actually experience Inferno. I can speculate, but that's about it. It's not really clear to me from what he said if they nerfed Act 1, or if they just buffed the shit out of Acts 2, 3 and 4.
We'll see I guess. I was sort of looking forward to the flat difficulty.
I am one of those minority that will play the crap out of the game and consider myself a very hardcore Diablo fan and "good" at the game.
And I approve of this change, it made no sense to me to have a flat level playing field, why would I ever go past act 1 ever in inferno if there was the exact same chance of end game items.
It's intention is farming items, at this point im not longer looking at the story or what i'm killing i'm looking at item explosions, I don't care if its act 1 or act 4.
With this change it makes it worth playing through to the end and gives you a reward for it, how can people NOT want that?
I am one of those minority that will play the crap out of the game and consider myself a very hardcore Diablo fan and "good" at the game.
And I approve of this change, it made no sense to me to have a flat level playing field, why would I ever go past act 1 ever in inferno if there was the exact same chance of end game items.
It's intention is farming items, at this point im not longer looking at the story or what i'm killing i'm looking at item explosions, I don't care if its act 1 or act 4.
With this change it makes it worth playing through to the end and gives you a reward for it, how can people NOT want that?
I agree with you.
People think this is a nerf so that casual gamers can do inferno, I'm pretty sure we will still get our assess kicked in A1. Just a little less and it means that when that is easy we can move to A2.
Really, after all this time and hammering by Blizzard I really think Inferno will be very hard (exploits that will probably appear don't count). They don't need to catter for casuals (real casuals) for the hardest difficulty but they want their game to last long and make the hardcore community happy.
I may eat my words later or the haters can eat them, who knows. It would just baffle me if all this "you will die, it's hard" ends for nothing. What I am sure of is that messing this up would make them lose $$$ a lot more than making inferno easy for casuals would earn them $$$. Casual will buy the game anyway because there is an easy part that shows most of the game, that's what normal and nightmare are for, they don't care if the rest is too hard.
We'll see. For one I'm happy the difficulty has a progression and is not 100% flat. I await the challenge.
Fun thoughts: If someone would make a poll on this forum asking if people on this forum think they will finish inferno without pulling their hair out I'm pretty sure 90% would say yes. The reality may very well be different. The beta I think made everyone underestimate the game, I'm willing to bet on a surprise.
I liked flat difficulty. Not because of challenge, but because it allowed you to play the acts you enjoyed without loot penalty. In D2 with my barbs, I liked act 1 and 5. Trav runs were fun, but hated rest of act 2 and 3. 4 I enjoyed prior to iron maiden, but iron maiden ruined act 4 for me. So for loots sake I had to run mostly act 5 over and over.
:Regardless it doesn't change the fact that they state you WILL NOT stroll through any of the Inferno content, so whats the problem?
Not one of us have even seen any inferno content yet we are calling nerf's how do you know it didn't need nerfing even for the "elite players"?
Edit: My post is direct at Atreyor.
He speaks out of his ass like always when people speaks about the difficulty of D3. We have no idea, the only people that knows are at Blizzard. So you either think they lie (or suck at the game) or they speak the truth.
And I approve of this change, it made no sense to me to have a flat level playing field, why would I ever go past act 1 ever in inferno if there was the exact same chance of end game items.
Because you wanted a change of scenery?
One of the points of Inferno originally was that you would not be confined to a specific area which were in line with your current strength, but instead could choose to play in the act or area you happened to prefer to play in.
It meant that all 4 acts were end-game, instead of just the last act being end-game.
This change also pretty much means that Inferno is "just another difficulty" like the others.
To be honest, Blizzard should have removed Nightmare dificulty a long time ago, it makes very little sense to have it, other than for mindless repetitiveness.
Normal-Hell could have the lvl 1-60 progress, and Inferno would be end-game as it is now, but having that pretty much pointless difficulty stuck in the middle is weird - just like Nightmare was for the most part the difficulty you just wanted to get over with in D2, and that was with just 3 difficulties rather than 4.
This change also clearly underlines why the game will need some actual end-game content post-release. Inferno is unlikely to cut it.
Content which dynamically scales with the player and can keep offering challenge no matter how great gear you collect. No matter if it might comes through 'über' versions of bosses, Endless Dungeons, Horde Mode or all of them together - just something which can keep offering challenges, and mix up the gameplay more than the standard 4 acts.
And I approve of this change, it made no sense to me to have a flat level playing field, why would I ever go past act 1 ever in inferno if there was the exact same chance of end game items.
Because (in theory) before it wasn't about where to farm "the best items", there was no such thing as 1 act drops being better than the other. It was all about farming "different" items.
Maybe there's a couple of affixes/suffixes or specific legendaries that only dropped on Act 4. And it was about fighting different monsters, seeing different places, without having a penalty to loot drop. As you said, if the purpose is farming items, why bring back the whole "game becomes more difficult" concept for a 4th time?
You don't need progression on difficulty or monsters with 50% more damage to do that. And the improved difficulty would just come from better, improved combat mechanics (more interesting boss scripts, better dungeon traps, monster mechanics), not dull and planned numbers (as it is going to be now) that you can "overpower" with numbers yourself (better gear).
And you nailed it "why ever go past act 1", that's the deal, if you didn't want you wouldn't need to. Now, even with a marginal 10% better drop chance in the later acts, we can speculate very accurately what's going to happen.
The whole "we don't want people to not experience content" motto is empty to me, people who can't play on Inferno can still play on Hell and have a blast in it (if it's anywhere as difficult as they promise), have access to all skills and runes, and they can still buy Inferno gear, they are just not capable of fighting at 110% efficiency. And I don't even know if I was going to be able to play on Inferno myself, but I just didn't care, because the concept was absolutely refreshing and had a ton of potential.
I'm tentative on this, I really can't make a final decision until I actually experience Inferno. I can speculate, but that's about it. It's not really clear to me from what he said if they nerfed Act 1, or if they just buffed the shit out of Acts 2, 3 and 4.
^ this, which is just plain sad. Another month and a half to go.
But a perfect item from act 4 will beat a perfect item from act 1.
It doesn't sound like a perfect item from act 4 will be a whole lot better than a perfect item from act 1 though, hence the "lots of overlap".
So I guess it's just a matter of the benefits of farming the hardest content being very marginal. Reminds me of heroic mode in WoW. I could see them doing that. Personally I would complete Inferno for the achieves and just farm much easier acts in inferno for slightly less quality gear. Just not enough power incentive to work at trying to farm something much harder, at least not for me. Others just can't live with themselves if they don't have the best of the best, even if it means working 100x harder for that next point of power compared to effort the previous point. That's what farming Act III and IV will probably end up being for.
Progression is something we have 3 whole difficulties to enjoy (increasing level from monsters, Hell is already supposed to be hard-ish). Inferno for me was going to be the ultimate "action" experience inside Diablo, never having the battles become easy due to being overleveled and overgeared, and whoever couldn't beat Inferno could still get the items from trading and enjoy Hell - that was good enough for the more casual playerbase imho.
Which is why to me this is another amazing feature with a lot of potential to become a staple of the franchise (and action-rpgs) just being thrown out of the window because it "feels strange". The whole "progression feeling" should come from experiencing the apex of difficulty in the different monster and bosses mechanics, not from increased stats/levels. If an Act 1 Boss (or monsters) has more interesting mechanics (which makes them "more difficult") than the Act 4 boss (or monsters), that's a design issue (that could use some fixing), not a difficulty issue.
There another part of that post that worries me: "There’s a wide variety of players out there and we wanted to make sure everybody had something to sink their teeth into."
Which leads me to believe that Hell (and even acts I-II in Inferno) will be easily overpowered with decent gear (which everyone will get eventually), which if it's true is really sad to me. I was craving for that "deep combat experience", but this change makes me feel like they might go the WoW way with D3 too (making it easier as time progresses so people don't feel "left out").
Really sad about this hopefuly I'm dead wrong.
It is so obvious to anyone who sits down and actually thinks about it for 10 seconds, that that scenario was never going to happen. They merely told the fan base what they wanted to hear.
A QUADRILLION MAGIC FIND is worthless if you can't kill shit!
unfortunately true. why do they always cater to the masses? because it always equals more money. its a common sense business move that will forever be the way of gaming, making the majority or even a big part of the game not accessible to the masses is a backwards move from a business perspective and they will never do that. ever.
Why are you acting as if you knew this was going to change before hand? I don't remember you ever saying anything of the sort.
- Clay Shelton
We'll see I guess. I was sort of looking forward to the flat difficulty.
And I approve of this change, it made no sense to me to have a flat level playing field, why would I ever go past act 1 ever in inferno if there was the exact same chance of end game items.
It's intention is farming items, at this point im not longer looking at the story or what i'm killing i'm looking at item explosions, I don't care if its act 1 or act 4.
With this change it makes it worth playing through to the end and gives you a reward for it, how can people NOT want that?
I agree with you.
People think this is a nerf so that casual gamers can do inferno, I'm pretty sure we will still get our assess kicked in A1. Just a little less and it means that when that is easy we can move to A2.
Really, after all this time and hammering by Blizzard I really think Inferno will be very hard (exploits that will probably appear don't count). They don't need to catter for casuals (real casuals) for the hardest difficulty but they want their game to last long and make the hardcore community happy.
I may eat my words later or the haters can eat them, who knows. It would just baffle me if all this "you will die, it's hard" ends for nothing. What I am sure of is that messing this up would make them lose $$$ a lot more than making inferno easy for casuals would earn them $$$. Casual will buy the game anyway because there is an easy part that shows most of the game, that's what normal and nightmare are for, they don't care if the rest is too hard.
We'll see. For one I'm happy the difficulty has a progression and is not 100% flat. I await the challenge.
Fun thoughts: If someone would make a poll on this forum asking if people on this forum think they will finish inferno without pulling their hair out I'm pretty sure 90% would say yes. The reality may very well be different. The beta I think made everyone underestimate the game, I'm willing to bet on a surprise.
Not one of us have even seen any inferno content yet we are calling nerf's how do you know it didn't need nerfing even for the "elite players"?
Edit: My post is direct at Atreyor.
He speaks out of his ass like always when people speaks about the difficulty of D3. We have no idea, the only people that knows are at Blizzard. So you either think they lie (or suck at the game) or they speak the truth.
That's not what it sounds like to me after reading it again, it actually sounds like they buffed the later acts rather than nerfing the earlier ones.
Pessimists are bitter people that never get disappointed.
One of the points of Inferno originally was that you would not be confined to a specific area which were in line with your current strength, but instead could choose to play in the act or area you happened to prefer to play in.
It meant that all 4 acts were end-game, instead of just the last act being end-game.
This change also pretty much means that Inferno is "just another difficulty" like the others.
To be honest, Blizzard should have removed Nightmare dificulty a long time ago, it makes very little sense to have it, other than for mindless repetitiveness.
Normal-Hell could have the lvl 1-60 progress, and Inferno would be end-game as it is now, but having that pretty much pointless difficulty stuck in the middle is weird - just like Nightmare was for the most part the difficulty you just wanted to get over with in D2, and that was with just 3 difficulties rather than 4.
This change also clearly underlines why the game will need some actual end-game content post-release. Inferno is unlikely to cut it.
Content which dynamically scales with the player and can keep offering challenge no matter how great gear you collect. No matter if it might comes through 'über' versions of bosses, Endless Dungeons, Horde Mode or all of them together - just something which can keep offering challenges, and mix up the gameplay more than the standard 4 acts.
Maybe there's a couple of affixes/suffixes or specific legendaries that only dropped on Act 4. And it was about fighting different monsters, seeing different places, without having a penalty to loot drop. As you said, if the purpose is farming items, why bring back the whole "game becomes more difficult" concept for a 4th time?
You don't need progression on difficulty or monsters with 50% more damage to do that. And the improved difficulty would just come from better, improved combat mechanics (more interesting boss scripts, better dungeon traps, monster mechanics), not dull and planned numbers (as it is going to be now) that you can "overpower" with numbers yourself (better gear).
And you nailed it "why ever go past act 1", that's the deal, if you didn't want you wouldn't need to. Now, even with a marginal 10% better drop chance in the later acts, we can speculate very accurately what's going to happen.
The whole "we don't want people to not experience content" motto is empty to me, people who can't play on Inferno can still play on Hell and have a blast in it (if it's anywhere as difficult as they promise), have access to all skills and runes, and they can still buy Inferno gear, they are just not capable of fighting at 110% efficiency. And I don't even know if I was going to be able to play on Inferno myself, but I just didn't care, because the concept was absolutely refreshing and had a ton of potential.
^ this, which is just plain sad. Another month and a half to go.