Burzghash, friend - its a simple fact that blizzard killed their newest makings ( wotlk , cataclysm, starcraft 2... ) with making the games "accessible" to everyone. examples.
starcraft 2 = extreme retarded coinflip shitgameplay. played it ? go play it hardcore straight for 1 year and think about it.
Well that's certainly irrefutable scientific logic if I've ever seen it. Would you care to actually back your stance that SC2 = extreme retarded coinflip shitgameplay? More importantly, how about linking us to your SC2 profile to demonstrate to us that you actually have some measure of deeper understanding of SC2's gameplay? If you have specific criticisms about SC2, it appears that they're related to game balance. How does having an imbalanced game benefit casuals? Hint: Casuals want a well-balanced game just as much as anyone else, where the outcome is determined by player skill rather than luck of the draw. Arguing otherwise is disingenuous.
wow ? wow was a damn nice mmorpg while it was released, even back in burning crusade it was top notch. after casualing down the whole game, its stupid as fuck. content gets patched in and bashed in 2 weeks, including the "hardcore community content" like heroic raids. whats when nobody bashed the content in 4 weeks? well, they just nerf everything to the ground. here an example.... the firelands-raid. the raid was real nice in design and fight-mechanics. after a little bit about 5 weeks after content release 6 out of 7 bosses were nerfed to death in heroics, suddenly you could do it random instead of trying it for hours with your mates - thats not funny.
5 weeks for the tip-top cream of the crop of players to beat the content? Players who were likely already incredibly geared and experts in the game? That sounds pretty well done to me. But that might be because I'm actually taking the whole picture into consideration; that only an incredibly minute fraction of players were downing those heroic raids in 5 weeks. The overwhelmingly large remainder of the population wasn't coming close to downing the content in just 5 weeks. Do you have a link to your WoW profile that shows you having beat the heroic raids?
and it annoys me. blizzard claimed that the inferno difficulty would be only for the "hardcore community" since no "newb" would ever take a foot in this. but then why nerf it pre-release or even after release? casual-catering #247. nobody calls me and invites me to a pro american football team cause they want to make it accessible for everyone, yeah thats really dumb isnt it?
Again, you have no frame of reference for the difficulty level which is present, and you haven't presented a factual or logical argument against their reasoning for putting Inferno on a curve instead of a flat difficulty. You could start by actually trying to refute some of the points in the big post I quoted above, of which you haven't refuted any.
I'm not upset, again if you can't stop bashing people personally then take it to private messages instead of the forum (or just stop). I was indeed "lied to" since the video can't reflect the difficulty anymore.
Again, you've just arbitrarily assigned some unknown values to the prior level of difficulty and the current ones, then arbitrarily decided "Oh the old values were okay, BUT NOW THIS IS TOO EASY!"
You don't have any frame of reference. It's meaningless conjecture.
You have no frame of reference for the assumptions you make above, but in case you didn't realize you were making them, I'll point them out for you:
You assume that you will no longer frequently and repeatedly die. False, in all likelihood.
You assume that this nerf will even be perceptible to you, and that you're not going to have nearly as difficult a time going through Acts 1 and 2.
You falsely assume we don't still have something to work on til the next expansion, when we still have exactly that.
You falsely assume the game wont' be crazy hard.
Again, stop making it personal.
I did assume I won't be dying as much, which is not false since they just nerfed act 1 and 2.
Yes I do assume that I will see the nerf, otherwise they would not make a post about it so no I'm not going to have as hard going through act 1 and 2 as I would without the nerf.
I do assume that we won't have as much to do until the next expansion because we're forced to do act 3 and 4 repeatedly instead of a whole difficulty.
I just said the last two acts will be as hard, so yes I am assuming that the game will be hard.
There's nothing personal about it; I'm pointing out your assumptions.
1 - You're still going to be dying plenty. If the imaginary number X you invented for the amount of times you would've died under the old difficulty makes the difference in fun for you between the new imaginary number Y you've invented for the number of times you'll die under the new difficulty, then more power to you. But realize that your reasoning isn't based on ANY form of logic or facts whatsoever, you've just arbitrarily determined in your own mind that the amount of time you spent dying under the old difficulty is always going to be better than the amount spend dying under the new difficulty. That's nothing to do with facts or reality. That's you being butthurt about a developer decision, and turning the scientific method in reverse. You've already determined the conclusion you want to come to, and now you only listen to evidence and are willing to believe things which reinforce your faulty conclusion that you're determined to come to.
2 - You're not going to see the change in difficulty, because you have no frame of comparison. You'll have absolutely zero idea how much more difficult the old difficulty in Acts 1 and 2 were before the change. And more importantly, you have absolutely zero familiarity what the overall feel of the game was prior to the implementation of scaling difficulty. As the developers already said, the game itself feels better to feel a progression of difficulty over the course of Inferno, and their logic substantiates this. If you expect to provide an argument to the contrary, you should probably try to demonstrate your point based on something factual instead of things you're not at all familiar with and being unable to address their points about player psychology and behavior.
3 - Again, you're not being forced to farm Acts 3 and 4 only. That is a restriction that you have invented in your mind that no one but you is going to force you to adhere to. So quit pretending as if everyone is being forced into this imaginary scenario that exists nowhere except your own mind. This is further substantiated by the post from the general discussion board above, which details loot overlap.
If you expect to be taken seriously further on this topic, you should at least familiarize yourself with the concept of loot overlap he describes and why you will NOT be forced to farm only Acts 3 and 4. Because at this time, you've clearly demonstrated how little grasp you have on the reality of how these changes will play out.
One of the best posts from the official forums I've seen on the matter:
I'm seeing a lot of butthurt over these changes. And to be honest, I can see where the kneejerk is coming from. We all wanted a difficulty that we could be in any single place in the game, and the difficulty and loot would be the same. We could choose where to farm, and when to farm, and that was that.
TLDR at bottom of post.
There are more than a few problems with that system, though, if we are honest with ourselves. The game is designed for the other three difficulties, so the monster types, the way they attack, and the pacing and saturation of overall level design are created in order to fuel that progression from easier to harder, in terms of Act 1 to Act 4
Can we tweak the monsters to present the same challenge start to finish? Yes. Is it going to feel awful? Probably. You'd have to scale the monsters so that later act monsters where easier in terms of damage and health in order to make up for the challenging attack mechanics and design. Or else change the pacing, composition and saturation of monsters to account for this.
In the end, you would wind up getting to Act IV Inferno, and you would be disappointed. I mean, this is it? The pinnacle of what the game has to offer? You've crushed your face against three acts before this, but you have your inferno gear now. You've got this, and it feels off. It feels /too easy/ because in every other difficulty, this was the place. This was where the challenge tested you the most, and now the monsters aren't any worse than that first pack of mobs outside New Tristram.
And so, a difficulty progression just feels more natural. Any flat difficulty, will, inevitably, be either too hard, or too easy. It may be just right, for a minute, but in a game like Diablo where loot is everything, where the whole point is getting stronger, better, faster, you could never stay right on that cusp of 'perfect' is term of challenge.
So what does a ramping challenge give us? How does this help us from feeling like the pinnacle of the Diablo III experience has fallen flat?
Imagine, if you will, going into Inferno for the first time, and getting your soul crushed. The difficulty up from Hell is noticeable, and that was already straining your abilities some. You need to get better. Better skilled, and better gear. You shift back down to late Hell, and farm some, you practice your synergy with your team, and you try again.
Now you can get through to the SK, but he whoops your !@# all over the place. So you are stuck farming, training, and gearing, for each piece of content. What's important here, though, is that you aren't necessarily always farming in the same spots.
Maybe you dip back to hell to get more experience with a certain type of monster, Maybe you switch down to pre-SK so you can just work on synergy while preparing to tackle Act 3.
And for each piece you accomplish, each piece you earn, you get that sense of pride and accomplishment, so that when you finally do make it to the end boss of Inferno, you know you've worked tooth and nail for every inch.
And then, the farming. This was actually the initial reason for this post, but I seemed to have gone off on a tangent a bit. Let's make this very clear:
This is Diablo
What is that? Seriously, what even IS that?
Random Items
. The crapshoot. The not knowing if that legendary you just picked up is going to be the most godly item the world has ever seen, or a complate waste of the time you spent trying to get it.
So let's talk about what makes this possible, eh? The answer, is
Loot Overlap
. On any single item, it's power range, can go from absolutely useless, to really freaking awesome. And the loot tables are designed in such a way that you can get items in Act 2 of nightmare that you probably would have never used or even wanted to, in Act 2 of Normal. If every item you get from a run was amazing, then you'd never want for anything. You would be the badass of every difficulty just as soon as you spent a little time there getting the gear.
We all know that isn't how it works in a Diablo game. The gear you get from running an endgame boss is probably going to give some good stuff. But it might not. It might not give you anything that is worth more to you than as vendor trash.
So in this case, yes, it could be that Act IV inferno has the potential (And I'm talking, one in several thousand runs, here) to drop some godly items that you wouldn't find anywhere else.
But that doesn't mean you can't find an item in Act IV HELL that isn't going to still be just as good of an upgrade for you. The range is just too large. If you consistently are able to get high-end items, from every single act, then constantly running Act IV just may not be the most fun or most efficient way to get your loot.
For illustrative purposes, let's give loot a level of awesome from 1-20.
Hell Act IV - Some items in the 8-12 range, more 1-6 range.
Inferno Act I - Some in the 9-15, more in the 4-10 range.
Inferno Act II - Some in the 12-16, more in the 6-10 range.
Inferno Act III - Some in the 15-18, more in the 8-12 range.
Inferno Act IV - Some on the 16-20, more in the 8-14 range.
These are arbitrary, but it shows how despite dropping different gear levels, the item overlap extends enough that running even 'inferior' content (Which could happen because you don't have your core team of elite buddies online right now, because you don't feel like needing to push yourself to the edge of your capabilities just for the chance at slightly better loot, or any of several dozen other reasons.) you are still going to be acquiring awesome and useful gear, from all the places in inferno. And let's also remember that the Nephalem Valor buff encourages going from one Act to the next in a single game, providing a benefit to running earlier Acts as well.
And this is without even considering MF. Maybe you have to tweak your gear down to no magic find just to clear Act 4 inferno? What if you can bump it to 100 or 200% MF while running through Act 2?
What is more efficient then?
Then the game becomes seeing how much MF you can get in a particular area, and farming it for progressively more and more perfect gear until you can run Act IV with insane amounts of MF for Teh Good Lewts.
These sorts of things are what progression offers that flat difficulty just can't do for you. These things will make Inferno, as a difficulty level, last for YEARS (Months, for some of you really hardcore badasses) of challenging play and progression, as opposed to just giving you a single flat challenge, and once you can beat it, you can beat it, and there is no incentive to get any better.
==TLDR ==
Okay, yeah, that rambled on for far longer than I intended. Here is the gist, A progressive combat difficulty provides more challenge and fulfillment, and loot overlap (This Diablo. Loot is not a static thing. Rarity does not necessarily equal quality, and never will.) combined with progressive content allows for even mathematically 'Inferior' loot drop areas to drop useful goods and be used for extensive farming for a number of different reasons.
Sigh...It just really goes to show how much the current developers really have no clue how to make a Diablo sequel and they really are just throwing **** at walls to see what sticks. I've never seen so many flip-floppy decisions regarding game design especially when the game is a month from releasing!
Only the incompetent and Republicans believe that adapting to changing situations and new knowledge is flip-flopping. To everyone else, actually having the wit and intelligence to change your mind in the face of something that isn't working out as expected, or in the face of new information, is the mark of people with more than two brain cells to rub together.
Blizzard released a video not too long ago about the difficulty level of Inferno, promising that we would die A LOT and that we would have something to spend our time on until next expansion. Now they decided to nerf this and therefore the video etc is no longer equivalent to how the difficulty is. So they basically lied to us about that, how is that nothing to get "angry" about if you were looking forward to a "crazy" hard game?
You have no frame of reference for the assumptions you make above, but in case you didn't realize you were making them, I'll point them out for you:
You assume that you will no longer frequently and repeatedly die. False, in all likelihood.
You assume that this nerf will even be perceptible to you, and that you're not going to have nearly as difficult a time going through Acts 1 and 2.
You falsely assume we don't still have something to work on til the next expansion, when we still have exactly that.
You falsely assume the game wont' be crazy hard.
In short, you're getting upset over a complete lack of information and a bunch of unlikely assumptions you have no basis for believing, and sensationalizing it by throwing a tantrum and saying you were "lied to".
Yes, the last two acts will be as hard, BUT after you've finished the game(which isnt going to take too long) you are now forced to farm act 3 and 4 instead of having a whole difficulty to play around with. Diablo is about farming, so of course this is something to worry about.
More assumptions from you. You have no idea whatsoever how long it will take to "finish" the game (whatever that term even means for a game that's supposed to be infinitely replayable), so please don't pretend you do. You also have no basis for your belief that you will be "forced" into farming acts 3 and 4 whatsoever. Especially not with the wording we've already seen where they've specifically stated that gear from the earlier Acts will be fairly comparable. If you end up feeling compelled to play the same 2 acts over and over again because of your own hangups, then that's a personal problem. But Blizzard is tackling it in such a way as to continue to make the entirety of the game attractive enough to the non-OCD/sperg crowd who freak out over the most minute of things that don't actually matter.
nerfing down act 1 + 2 results in easier acts 3 +4 since youre abled to farm really good inferno gear in act 1 or 2. the "balls-hard" difficulty for inferno goes with act 1 + 2 if you ask me.
You don't know for a fact this has actually occurred.
In addition, I love how people immediately get incensed when they so much as even get the whiff of a nerf. The worst is they get all indignant about it while simultaneously having NO context as to whether or not a nerf was warranted.
If Blizzard designs endgame scenario X, then announces they nerfed it - why would anyone get upset? You have absolutely NO context for how hard it was. What if it was overtuned and more difficult than it ever should have been? What if it was launch C'thun and mathematically impossible to do?
No, of course that doesn't factor in. People aren't smart enough to be able to think beyond, "BLIZRD Y U NERF MUH CONTENTS!? NO NERFS!!1! NURFS BAD! HURPA DURP1!1!!"
It's really not something to be scared of. And in fact was actually quite intelligent of them.
Under a flat Inferno difficulty curve, ALL of inferno was going to be one difficulty: balls-hard. That means that Act 1 was the same difficulty as Act 4. It also means that once you beat Hell, you hit a huge wall, forcing you to continue grinding in Hell. Hitting walls in difficulty is just not very much fun when you want to progress from one difficulty to the next. You've already beaten Hell, you want to start making progress on the next level. This change does a better job of transitioning players from Hell into Inferno, while still preserving the balls-hard difficulty for Acts 3 and 4.
A big part of it is also human psychology. Players will sit here and bitch and cry endlessly, "WAHHHHH! We wanted all of Inferno to be the exact same balls-difficult experience start to finish!" Unfortunately, it's another case of players thinking they know what they want but really not. There's gameplay and behavioral reasons for having the difficulty continue to scale upwards even across Inferno, and for making a smoother transition upwards than just simply a flat difficulty curve.
Beyond that, it's endlessly amusing to hear people who likely have no hardmode raid achievements in the slightest try to pretend that because they could get through Cata heroics that they're the pinnacle of gaming, and D3 won't provide a challenge in the slightest XD
I'm preserving user names and posts from this thread so that a few weeks after release, we can all have a good, long laugh as some of these children are forced to eat their words :3
lulz bashiok posted itll take "weeks" even for the super dedicated veterans to beat inferno. hes effing high. i give it 4-5 days before im 60 and itll take me a week at the MOST to beat inferno even if mobs can 1 shot you. they really overexaggerate the difficulty of these games and its just going to piss off the veterans when it comes out. a game labeled "hard" is only really considered that by the masses or unskilled gamers. WoW 25 man HC raids werent even hard and you only wiped because of idiocy so this wont be anything to write home about but i am glad that inferno goes up in difficulty though
You're delusional. But it's okay, we'll get to see just how much so in a few more weeks.
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Ok, I'll humor you.
Well that's certainly irrefutable scientific logic if I've ever seen it. Would you care to actually back your stance that SC2 = extreme retarded coinflip shitgameplay? More importantly, how about linking us to your SC2 profile to demonstrate to us that you actually have some measure of deeper understanding of SC2's gameplay? If you have specific criticisms about SC2, it appears that they're related to game balance. How does having an imbalanced game benefit casuals? Hint: Casuals want a well-balanced game just as much as anyone else, where the outcome is determined by player skill rather than luck of the draw. Arguing otherwise is disingenuous.
5 weeks for the tip-top cream of the crop of players to beat the content? Players who were likely already incredibly geared and experts in the game? That sounds pretty well done to me. But that might be because I'm actually taking the whole picture into consideration; that only an incredibly minute fraction of players were downing those heroic raids in 5 weeks. The overwhelmingly large remainder of the population wasn't coming close to downing the content in just 5 weeks. Do you have a link to your WoW profile that shows you having beat the heroic raids?
Correlation does not equal causation.
Again, you have no frame of reference for the difficulty level which is present, and you haven't presented a factual or logical argument against their reasoning for putting Inferno on a curve instead of a flat difficulty. You could start by actually trying to refute some of the points in the big post I quoted above, of which you haven't refuted any.
Again, you've just arbitrarily assigned some unknown values to the prior level of difficulty and the current ones, then arbitrarily decided "Oh the old values were okay, BUT NOW THIS IS TOO EASY!"
You don't have any frame of reference. It's meaningless conjecture.
There's nothing personal about it; I'm pointing out your assumptions.
1 - You're still going to be dying plenty. If the imaginary number X you invented for the amount of times you would've died under the old difficulty makes the difference in fun for you between the new imaginary number Y you've invented for the number of times you'll die under the new difficulty, then more power to you. But realize that your reasoning isn't based on ANY form of logic or facts whatsoever, you've just arbitrarily determined in your own mind that the amount of time you spent dying under the old difficulty is always going to be better than the amount spend dying under the new difficulty. That's nothing to do with facts or reality. That's you being butthurt about a developer decision, and turning the scientific method in reverse. You've already determined the conclusion you want to come to, and now you only listen to evidence and are willing to believe things which reinforce your faulty conclusion that you're determined to come to.
2 - You're not going to see the change in difficulty, because you have no frame of comparison. You'll have absolutely zero idea how much more difficult the old difficulty in Acts 1 and 2 were before the change. And more importantly, you have absolutely zero familiarity what the overall feel of the game was prior to the implementation of scaling difficulty. As the developers already said, the game itself feels better to feel a progression of difficulty over the course of Inferno, and their logic substantiates this. If you expect to provide an argument to the contrary, you should probably try to demonstrate your point based on something factual instead of things you're not at all familiar with and being unable to address their points about player psychology and behavior.
3 - Again, you're not being forced to farm Acts 3 and 4 only. That is a restriction that you have invented in your mind that no one but you is going to force you to adhere to. So quit pretending as if everyone is being forced into this imaginary scenario that exists nowhere except your own mind. This is further substantiated by the post from the general discussion board above, which details loot overlap.
If you expect to be taken seriously further on this topic, you should at least familiarize yourself with the concept of loot overlap he describes and why you will NOT be forced to farm only Acts 3 and 4. Because at this time, you've clearly demonstrated how little grasp you have on the reality of how these changes will play out.
Only the incompetent and Republicans believe that adapting to changing situations and new knowledge is flip-flopping. To everyone else, actually having the wit and intelligence to change your mind in the face of something that isn't working out as expected, or in the face of new information, is the mark of people with more than two brain cells to rub together.
You have no frame of reference for the assumptions you make above, but in case you didn't realize you were making them, I'll point them out for you:
You assume that you will no longer frequently and repeatedly die. False, in all likelihood.
You assume that this nerf will even be perceptible to you, and that you're not going to have nearly as difficult a time going through Acts 1 and 2.
You falsely assume we don't still have something to work on til the next expansion, when we still have exactly that.
You falsely assume the game wont' be crazy hard.
In short, you're getting upset over a complete lack of information and a bunch of unlikely assumptions you have no basis for believing, and sensationalizing it by throwing a tantrum and saying you were "lied to".
Pffft.
More assumptions from you. You have no idea whatsoever how long it will take to "finish" the game (whatever that term even means for a game that's supposed to be infinitely replayable), so please don't pretend you do. You also have no basis for your belief that you will be "forced" into farming acts 3 and 4 whatsoever. Especially not with the wording we've already seen where they've specifically stated that gear from the earlier Acts will be fairly comparable. If you end up feeling compelled to play the same 2 acts over and over again because of your own hangups, then that's a personal problem. But Blizzard is tackling it in such a way as to continue to make the entirety of the game attractive enough to the non-OCD/sperg crowd who freak out over the most minute of things that don't actually matter.
You don't know for a fact this has actually occurred.
In addition, I love how people immediately get incensed when they so much as even get the whiff of a nerf. The worst is they get all indignant about it while simultaneously having NO context as to whether or not a nerf was warranted.
If Blizzard designs endgame scenario X, then announces they nerfed it - why would anyone get upset? You have absolutely NO context for how hard it was. What if it was overtuned and more difficult than it ever should have been? What if it was launch C'thun and mathematically impossible to do?
No, of course that doesn't factor in. People aren't smart enough to be able to think beyond, "BLIZRD Y U NERF MUH CONTENTS!? NO NERFS!!1! NURFS BAD! HURPA DURP1!1!!"
Under a flat Inferno difficulty curve, ALL of inferno was going to be one difficulty: balls-hard. That means that Act 1 was the same difficulty as Act 4. It also means that once you beat Hell, you hit a huge wall, forcing you to continue grinding in Hell. Hitting walls in difficulty is just not very much fun when you want to progress from one difficulty to the next. You've already beaten Hell, you want to start making progress on the next level. This change does a better job of transitioning players from Hell into Inferno, while still preserving the balls-hard difficulty for Acts 3 and 4.
A big part of it is also human psychology. Players will sit here and bitch and cry endlessly, "WAHHHHH! We wanted all of Inferno to be the exact same balls-difficult experience start to finish!" Unfortunately, it's another case of players thinking they know what they want but really not. There's gameplay and behavioral reasons for having the difficulty continue to scale upwards even across Inferno, and for making a smoother transition upwards than just simply a flat difficulty curve.
Beyond that, it's endlessly amusing to hear people who likely have no hardmode raid achievements in the slightest try to pretend that because they could get through Cata heroics that they're the pinnacle of gaming, and D3 won't provide a challenge in the slightest XD
I'm preserving user names and posts from this thread so that a few weeks after release, we can all have a good, long laugh as some of these children are forced to eat their words :3
You're delusional. But it's okay, we'll get to see just how much so in a few more weeks.