I completely hear what you guys are saying and it's being addressed in the upcoming balance patch.
The goal of 0.9.2 was not to fix the skill balance. To do that properly requires stripping stuff back to bare bones and actually addressing underlying issues that have been in the system for too many years. That's what we're doing right now, because it is the most important problem with the game. We did include some skill changes in 0.9.2 as you know, for things that could be easily changed and tested. I am happy to make more changes in the coming days if needed. We're not going to try to stick you with the same patch for several weeks. There's another patch today, for example.
We're working hard on resolving the balance, but trying to do it in a long term way, rather than reactively reading a post about fireball being overpowered and turning it back down, which results in a rant from someone else about how it's now underpowered. It's better to know that we set Fireball correctly, and then get feedback on that, rather than solicit feedback on how loud other people's feedback was.
He understands the importance of giving players specific details about game mechanics, and is willing to answer questions regarding these mechanics:
We didn't change the monster difficulty (other than making bosses harder). Can you help work out what is causing it to feel like monsters are easier to kill? Are you using one of the skills that was boosted in damage?
The purpose of 0.9.3 is to fix the monster difficulty curve forever, so that we have a good point to balance around in the future.
Aside from the currency increase, the change regarding drops was a reduction from 18% to 17% drop rate. That means there should be 5% less items dropping (including 5% less rares/magics), which does appear to be the case. Are you seeing more than 5% less?
He gives accurate time frames and what content to expect in patches:
Three of our NZ developers went to PAX. The guys that went are all leads, so their respective departments worked without much supervision while we were gone. Two of us are back now, and hard at work reading feedback and checking the work that was done while we were away.
There were a lot of changes made while we were gone. A lot of new art has to be checked/improved by Erik (who should be back approximately Tuesday NZ time I hope). There are new skills that must be finished, tested and balanced. We haven't even started making any balance changes from 0.9.1 yet.
We have a choice between rushing out a small patch, or doing a proper job of actually making some meaningful balance changes. At this stage I'm more interested in doing it properly, and not just patching urgently because it has been a couple of weeks.
Once the patch is ready, it has to go through internal quality assurance for a few days, and then some external alpha testing. My best guess is that we will be able to deploy it around Monday 12 September.
It's important to note, however, that Grind Gear Games is an extremely small indie developer (and by extremely small I mean less than 20 people). They don't have any "community managers" like Blizzard does, so the developers interact directly with the players. This creates a much stronger bond between the game makers and game players, as there is no third party filter for communication.
Even though GGG is such a small company, they do have a pretty substantial community. There are around 500-1000 players in the beta, and hundreds more active users on the forum waiting for invites.
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But the actual visualization of the bell itself is goofy. I would rather the Monk enter a meditative state, and hear a very clear bell tone (meditation bells are absolutely beautiful, clear, and the tone lasts a shockingly long time). The visualization could be a representation of focused sound waves, so ripples bending light in the path of the energy wave, or cast.
But yeah. Big sliding bell is pretty goof ball, fix it.
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Gandalf: No, Frodo. The spirit of Sauron endured.
etc.
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I find it's the best way to keep the game fresh and engaging. If done right, they help keep story/lore relevant to we the to-be level-capped. In keeping with the Diablo universe, I would imagine these events to be random.. Either realm-wide on some time interval (on a weekly rotation, for example), or server-specific (generated randomly with each game).
To stoke the idea fire, here are two obvious and general events I could imagine:
1. "Siege" style events: you'll get some kind of in-game announcement about <area> being overrun. So gladiators mount up, fight your way through the area, and suddenly find yourself in an unusual "event" zone, and have to fight your way to some artifact or loot.
2. Event bosses: random non-standard bosses (hopefully tied to story or lore) appear in a side-zone, in-game notification
Thoughts? Ideas? The more detail the better, if you have specific lore-based events in mind, I'd love to hear em.
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Face it: You don't have more than just sparse information. And the bottom line is, what the OP is so "worried" about are hardly issues, they're misinformed neuroses. This game has more than a year's worth of development ahead of it. Now I'm no Bliz cheerleader, and you won't hear me say "trust Blizzard.." I do think they rely on our mindful feedback. But when some emokid shows up and starts "sharing" his/her "worries" about character classes looking like Disney characters, or starts complaining about an isometric camera when he/she clearly has little grasp on the essential elements of the Diablo franchise, that person is gonna get a snarky reply or two.
Oh and thanks for pseudo moderating, we all need people like you to come "represent" on behalf of the poor helpless community that can't handle a couple of pointed replies. If you have a problem with me dissenting these issues, then like, get lost?