DiabloFans

My last post appears to have been moderated (presumably because the vagueness of the post led a mod to think I was trolling), so I'll elaborate here.

There's a fundamental philosophical exercise for proving that anything exists. The litmus test, if you will, is to turn the "Prove X exists" around on the person asking the initial question.

The classic example is "Prove that this chair exists." It's ostensibly a test of perceived reality vs. actual reality. The response that proves the existence of the chair, in the most simple and obvious fashion, is to ask "What chair?" The person who challenged with the initial proof is now stuck. They either have to say "That one" and admit that they truly believe that the chair exists within their perceived reality, even when the it is fully possible that the person whom they asked does not believe that any chair exists, OR the person who posed the initial question has to admit that they issued a proof challenge for something that they literally cannot perceive in any way.

The postulate offered by the OP, then, is explicitly "Prove to me that God exists."

So here's the philosophical challenge: "What God?"

I ask that, in the vein of the current discussion (which I really enjoy, by the way), please seriously consider your answer and try to specify what you're talking about before jumping to any statement of "I don't know what God is." There's more to this whole train of thought, but I need to know what you're really describing as the God you want us to prove before we move forward with the discussion from this philosophical direction.

Quote from proletaria

Prove to me your God exists!

What God?

Quote from apples

nice!

join clan BoD for reset party fun time!

How does one join the clan? HC or Normal? Think I'm gonna try out a lightning sorcy.

Crimson, black, and silver. On a female Wizard.

Swords will be superior to staffs because all real wizards will use "Magic Weapon" as their primary ability.

I'm with Daemaro. The problem isn't that corpses are getting bashed sky-high, it's that they float when they get there. Same goes for them sliding across the ground - the dead bodies simply don't have any sense of weight. What's more, they bounce if they hit a wall - that shouldn't happen either. There should be a wet thud and the body should stay there. The corpses need more weight, and gravity needs to be stronger on the way back down from a hit.

Now, I'm sure that the physics guys are saying things like "we're using 9.8 m/s/s!" but the fact of the matter is that when you're not in a first person view, real gravity just looks slow. You've got to beef it up a little.

Interesting to hear the storyline of the beta, but I also wish this had a skill breakdown akin to the earlier class reviews. I now know how the wizard interacts with the plot of the game, but I don't really have a good sense of how it plays,

Anyone hear any updates about this? We've missed the reset date now and I'm wondering if anyone has heard or seen anything that would give us a new timeframe.

Quote from Molster

I like diablo because its not an mmo... I like it for what it is =)

See, I like diablo because it *is* an mmo. Just not a wow-style mmo. Diablo 2 was an mmo. It's online, it's multiplayer, there's a realm with a massive number of players! MMO! Heck, you even level up and collect items... MMORPG! It's just not a slow moving persistent world 40 people to kill one boss timesink game like everquest and WoW. But Diablo very much *is* and always has been an MMO.

Quote from Deadlust

Don't know if this has been posted or not but use the new char planner and give some feedback for a chance at a beta key


http://d3db.com/contest/beta

Seems like a very cool tool as well. Wish they had crit chance as a stat though.

Hey, cool! Thanks for the heads up!

I find that my blizzard sorc could solo hell baal starting around level 84 (full tal's set though - it helps a lot), and I can easily solo hell andy and countess with full MF gear (I'm currently around 600% including charms). Basically the merc kills cold immunes, and I kill everything else. I use the Holy Freeze merc since the slow keeps things in my blizzard longer. The build needs no gear at all to function well even in hell - just stay away from everything and let the merc soak all damage. Use teleport to get the merc in place.


1 point in warmth
1 point in telekinesis
1 point in teleport
20 points in blizzard
20 points in cold mastery
20 points in ice blast
20 points in ice bolt

The build sucks until you can actually get blizzard (level 24?) but then it's OP forever. I recommend building up to where you can solo MF Baal and Meph, and just own them over and over and over until you have the gear you need to get through the next difficulty level. Probably do through level 42 Normal, then level 72 NM, and that should get you into Andy/Countess runs for runes and loot until you're geared enough to clear Meph. You will, however, want help with Diablo's sanctuary... there are just too many cold immunes in there to solo clear it.

After reading this thread, there are several conversations going on, three of which interest me:

1) Unattuned runes vs. attuned runes. I'm with the guy who wants both to drop. I think it would be much more interesting.
2) Skill swapping: All this focus on timers, town, etc.. is too much imo. How about: As long as there are no enemies on screen, you can swap skills. I might also add that in the Diablo world, you can usually die in just a couple of hits. Thus, they don't even need to put a limiter on skill swapping as long as the interface is cumbersome enough. If you know you don't have time to swap skills while defending yourself, then you won't do it. Lastly, your items will dictate your skills a heck of a lot more than the WoW crowd is used to. As a result, it's never going to be as simple as swap skill x for skill y. Instead, you're really looking at swap skill x and y for skills p and q, swap helms, change from 2H sword to 1H sword with shield, change boots, replace the mana pots in my belt with healing pots.
3) Blizzard does indeed sound like they are still making major design decisions about the game at this very late stage. It's a lack of vision and leadership in their design team that allows for this sort of "design creep." Things like changing all abilities to be % of weapon damage, reworking Hatred / Discipline functionality, and the Unattuned runestones are all major changes to very fundamental design elements of the game. I'll be shocked if we see this game before march.

Quote from MallowOni

I'd say go with Doom or Obedience.

Or you could give your merc +str armor. Mine, for example, has an eth Colossus Voulge that needs 210 str, so I just threw a pAmy in his Shaftstop. The weapon was then usable at, I believe, level 84.

Quote from chippydip

Quote from LordRayken

Diablo 3 is finished.

LOL

Having spent the past weeks digging through the data files and looking at the changes that have come since the original beta client build up through the current build 7338 (Patch 3), I can tell you the game most certainly is *not* done.

A few examples:
* An extra salvage treasure class was added to the item tables (ie internal data structures are still in flux)
* Many Legendary/Set items have associated affixes that aren't being applied due to affix level restrictions
* Many Legendary/set items are in the data files, but don't actually have any stats yet
* Some icons are still missing for items
* etc

Activision was most likely pushing for a holiday release for financial reasons, but at their latest status meeting the D3 team decided that they just weren't going to be able to make that deadline so they pushed the release date. (If they wanted to meet that date they really only have a little over a month left before the game would have to go Gold Master and be packaged and shipped to retailers. They could still have a patch on release, but testing release builds takes considerably longer than developer/beta builds so even that doesn't buy them all that much time.)

Having worked for Activision some years ago, and being familiar with both that company and the standard practices of several others, I can say that this assessment is almost certainly true. In fact, to maximize sales in December, the game would have to be on shelves by the 20th (and probably by the 15th) of December. To do that, the game would need at *least* 30 days of physical production (that is, the gold master would have to lock on November 15th). To actually deliver a locked gold master on the 15th, the game would have to be in release candidacy for a minimum of 2 weeks prior (which is no time at all and only terrible, awful games give themselves that little time) - which would be Nov 1st. Realistically, the game would want to be in release candidacy for 6 weeks (with a planned delivery date of the gold master on Nov 1st with a two week buffer in case of major issues), so the actually RC1 date would likely be Sept 15. Which we can quite confidently say that we missed.

I think the hope was to have the closed beta start on Sept 1 and for there to be zero issues aside from network-stress related ones. However, it's quite clear by reading the official bug report forum (why isn't there an interactive in-engine database for bugs? Or at least a web-based one? Seriously - forums are the second worst way to report bugs next to snail mail. But I digress) that major gameplay design choices are still going on, never mind actual bugs with the game in a non-net-stress situation.

In light of the overwhelming publicly available evidence, the game has to be pushed. I can only imagine how bad things are behind closed doors. Re-tooling fundamental game play design at this point in the process is a terrible idea. They really couldn't tell that weapon-based spells vs. flat damage spells was going to be an obvious consideration? They couldn't have figured out prior to the closed beta that the DH could run out of both resources? No one in their internal QA bothered to mention the questionable artwork of the monk resource?

I give blizzard a lot more credit than that, and I think December was - given the state of the beta - a pipe dream all along. January still might be. My money right now is evenly split between a botched January release combined with 2 GB of patches on day 1, or a clean March release.