DiabloFans

With such insane drop rates I'm almost tempted to whip up a new char and try out ye olde D2 again...

Quote from "scyberdragon" »

That's fine if they want to sell it but they would not be able to sell them to other players only vendor trash them. This would give people the opportunity to respec if they wanted and the other players just get some gold.

The item would drop vary rarely and balanced enough so that you would only get 1 every two-three levels worth of game time. That way you would still have to plan out your build but if you made a mistake, it would not break your character.

Are you suggesting that the item must remain equipped or the respec will roll back? If that were the case, it would essentially be useless...because it would be replacing a tier 1 item, meaning that mistakes could not be taken back without "ruining" the character...and in that case, I'd be all for it simply because I hate the idea of respeccing to begin with (lol).

If the respec item were a consumable item, I think that makes it a more logical way to administer respecs....but....it has to be a lot more rare than once every 2 or 3 character levels. Most likely you don't even want to respec at all until reaching at least like level 30 which means by that time you've already 15 respec items...making it an extremely commonplace item equivalent to about "2 chipped gems." If its there, it should have more the rarity of about a Shael rune.

Quote from "SFJake" »

Really?.
Ahem.

Well... I find it rather strange. Certainly DON'T get rid of it. If you really want that though, a simple option to disable gold auto pickup would be nice, so that you can do it like you want, and I can have it on auto pickup.

Uh, no...having an option to disable auto-pick up would be completely useless and defeat the point....

The reason that manual gold pickup is better than auto-pickup is that it gives the player something else to think about while playing, giving them another way to differentiate themselves by creating a more powerful player than someone else who doesn't think about these things.

A player who wastes him time picking up tiny gold drops will slow his progress to other areas of the game where gold drops are larger, which actually reduces the amount of gold he can get in the same time. But if you don't pick up any gold at all, then you don't get as much gold per second as someoen who intelligently picks up drops that are close to him and dont delay him much.

If there exists an option to auto-pickup, then this interesting decision is removed from the player because the best decision is obviously to enable it.

It also puts a damper in inflation, because people stop caring at higher levels. If gold drop is auto, it will make inflation more of a problem because EVERYONE will be picking up gold ALL the time. Yes, the inflation problem exists no matter what, but this just means that whatever sinks they introduce to counteract inflation will need to be even more effective than they would have to be.

There is one thing that could be improved: getting rid of auto-pickup on Gold. Some people like to take the time to pick up gold, tohers dont. Personally I always have a "threshold" and if its more, I pick it up, if its less I figure that the time it takes me to make 1 click is going to reduce my overall "gold per second" by picking it up as opposed to running past it, and waiting for a bigger drop. I enjoy this complex interplay. Why take it away?

The designers keep making stupid decisions based around the idea that FIGHTING is the fun thing in Diablo, and making everything else automatic so that you can spend as much possible time fighting. Well, guess what....fighting has always been the most boring aspect of Diablo. Its thinking about how to assign stat points, thinking about how to arrange that tetris inventory, figuring out how to mazimize your DPS, Gold-Per-sec, XP-per-sec, unique-per-sec, etc, that makes the game fun. I spent at least as much time buried in game manuals plotting out stat points for builds as I did actually playing, and the thinking part was the most fun part.


In my opinion MF and the tetris style inventory are iconic elements and I am very glad they will not be lost. Moreover, I think that these two elements contributed significantly to the success of the franchise.

The tetris style inventory gives the player the "feeling" of actually having a backpack and getting to put things in it, in a way that is not nearly as difficult as actually having to arrange a physical backpack full of junk...but at the same time accomplishes the effect of making the player feel like they are tangible things. The different sizes of items has several values:

a) gives a crude sense of scale to items, which makes them feel more real to the player.

introduces an additional aspect of something to be balanced, which keeps things interested....is it worth it to hold onto that 6 slot item if you're just going to sell it, or is it a better use of time to ignore it and pick up smaller items so you dont have to go back to town as frequently? You may criticize this as being "unfun" but it really is part of the fun of Diablo. Just as, when I worked on a ferry, directing cars into the slots to try to even the weight of the boat could be fun. There isn't much to do in Diablo, and I'd prefer that these simple pleasures not be taken away from us.

c) allows larger more prominent items like armor and weapons to be given more dominant artwork

As for MF, it is critical to getting players addicted to give them a way to increase their own chances of finding items...because the primary source of fun in Diablo is not killing monsters, its finding sweet shit. The prospect of finding something is more pleasurable than the actual ACT of finding something...psychologically, and for this reason finding MF items just skyrockets the addiction factor.

Quote from "milanv" »

honestly I have no idea what you are talking about

it's those maps or whatever. I have no idea what those are, at least in this context...

And that is totally fine, because you're a player. You're not expected to know. But you don't know what you're missing

as for the T... I don't think so. YES, it can be seen in that way but I think it's more of a just a joke, and you should be able to laugh at yourself first and then everybody else and admit it is a good joke

I'm all for jokes, but there is no humor in this. It's like...the US attacks some country, and they say, hey please stop attacking us, and the US laughs and the president starts wearing a T-shirt that says, "Nuke the bastards!" A little more serious because it involves peoples lives but thats the same basic thing: people ask for a change, and the company laughs it off and makes a T-shirt saying they don't care. Where is the joke in that? That's just being an ass.

How about a new Tshirt, "Diablo 3: Made For Blizzard Employees, By Blizzard Employees."

Quote from "milanv" »

and what about those fans that like the style? are we not fans? you would please yourself and the minority just because of your needs? but hey, look at the big picture. blizz doesn't care about YOUR opinion, they care about the MASSES opinion.

I hear what you are saying.

Now hear me: I don't think the graphics in D3 are bad. When I first saw them, I was impressed. It was not until later, after the shock of D3 settled down, that I began to notice ways in which they are lacking. As a 3D artist and hobby game developer, I tend to notice things like this. I am a perpetual critic. There is no game on this planet that I don't have criticisms for. That is not because I think everything sucks, but rather, because I know everything can be improved to become even better than it already is.

I don't really care that Diablo 3 has rainbows in it. I like the overall art style of D3, but I know that using normal bump maps, a standard practice, would make it look a lot better without a lot of additional effort. Flat shading just looks bad in comparison. I doubt anyone who currently likes the art style would disagree that normal bump maps would improve it dramatically, if they were to implement it and show you a comparison.

I'm not saying that my opinion is more important than other peoples, but there are a lot of fans who wanted to see a little bit darker, scarier, grittier Diablo. A lot of fans. Blizzard doesn't have to listen to those fans, but they can at least be respectful of them. This T-shirt is highly disrespectful to all the fans who showed concern with the art style. It is Blizzards way of saying, "we don't give a shit about those fans. we are gaming gods, and we don't make mistakes, so shut up and sit down and wait until the game is released."

It's this attitude that bothers me.

Leonard and Jay Wilson claimed that they weren't planning on releasing the t-shirt because they worried some fans wouldn't appreciate the lighthearted treatment of a game like Diablo. Personally, I think the shirt is hilarious and want to see it made available to the public. I like to think that all of you share the same sense of humor.

I agree with you, it is very funny when your favorite hellish game franchise is taken over and turned into a cute cuddly world lacking in darkness, contrast, grit, which are replaced with colorful effects and rainbows. It is even more funny when fans complain, and the designers give them a big middle finger by creating a T shirt to show just how little they are about fan opinions, which they wear to all public events. The only thing funnier is that the designers dont think releasing the T shirt to the masses would make it any more public than wearing it to every press conference.

Wtf are they talking about...the fun of Diablo has always been collecting items, not their lame excuse for "action." Don't get me wrong, Diablo 1 was my favorite game of its time, Diablo 2 is my favorite game of all time...but its for the item hording, not the action. Stop messing around and giving us a lame inventory system. I have a suggestoin -- how about we have item weight, and a grid-based system combined...this way we can spend more time balancing out inv to squeeze things in as tightly as possible. Maybe I dont speak for everyone but I thinkthat would be pretty cool.

In this interview he says that he liked the Spellbooks in D1 but he did not like the rune words in D2. How the heck do you get "there will be no spellbooks in D3" from that? It sounds more like, if anything, we will lose rune words-- and that SUCKS!