Some Items to have "NAMEME"
over 80 (updated) items now have a new line of "(NAMEME)" next to the item name. Though they already have names, could be a way to customize? not sure! A few examples:
- Crafted Hell Set 001_104 - NAMEME Asheara's Bindings
- Crafted Hell Set 002_104 -NAMEME Guardian's Regalia
- Crafted Inferno Set 001_104 - NAMEME Demon's Carapace
- Inferno Set 001_104 - NAMEME Bul-Kathos's Children
- Inferno Set 002_104 - NAMEME Danetta's Oath
FYI: All those entries are in the Comment field. They have absolutely no meaning in-game. They were likely put there when they copy/pasted the old set and set item names for reference when they were coming up with new ones (since the new sets don't interact with the old versions, they needed to change the names so that people weren't completely confused).
For reference, here are the raw string tables:
Set Names: http://www.d3lexicon.com/data-string-list/item-sets
Item Names: http://www.d3lexicon.com/data-string-list/items
if there where 5000 bugs in first act, than how many there are in all of them? THis really shows that game is far from release.And they say thats its a important news,Can't think of any other beta where would be so many bugs in first 30min of gameplay. Blizz really sucks
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That was just in response to rozmata basically saying I must be a terrible player that would just use somebody else's cookie-cutter build anyway.
In any case, I fully support being able to experiment with skills on the lower difficulties--its a much better system than feeling like you have to look at guides elsewhere before you start playing.
I'm not saying that a single character shouldn't be able to be different things. I just don't think you should be able to be them all at the same time. My point was that with the current system you don't have to pay any attention to the possible downside of the skills at all. Just pick 6+3 skills that are best for what you are doing right now and if you get to a point where those skills start to show their weaknesses, NO PROBLEM! just switch to a different setup on the fly. Its sort of the "god-mode" of skill systems where you have access to all the power of all the skills at all times. I certainly understand why this appeals to a lot of people, I just think a smidgen of additional limitation would bring actual trade-offs to skill selection and thus make it a more interesting game system.
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I never said anything about having to pay to swap skills or to start a new character. I just suggested that it would be a more interesting choice if people had to stick to their skill choices at least through the course of a single game--a couple hours tops (at least past Nightmare). Join a new game? You can switch up your skills again for free to try something else. I'm not going to cry if the system stays the way it is. I just think it makes the game less interesting than it could be.
As for the "monkey copying skills" comment, that couldn't be further from the truth. Theory-crafting builds and gear setups was one of my favorite parts of D2. In fact, I used to spend so much time playing with different build ideas on paper that I decided to write a web-based talent calculator for D2--you may have heard of or even used "chippydip's D2 Skill Calculator". As for Inferno, I've been focusing specifically on evaluating the defensive benefits and tradeoffs for skills in D3 specifically so that I can figure out what will give me the best shot as one of the first wave of people heading into Inferno without just being able to buy my way to success on the AH. I have a lot of patience, so if I do get stuck at some point I have every confidence that I'll be able to figure out how to switch things up and keep going without waiting for any guides to come out and hold my hand through the process.
I totally agree with this. I think its possible for Blizzard to implement a system that gives them the best of both worlds, though. Allow people to experiment to their heart's content in the lower difficulty levels. Heck, remove the 30 second cooldown so they can swap at will and have every opportunity to try things out. Then, when things get more difficult, make people start to actually make some meaningful decisions that they can be rewarded or punished for, but don't make it too hard to switch things up.
If somebody got to the Skeleton King in Hell and just really didn't feel like they could kill him with their current setup, they could always exit, start a new game, and switch up skills freely within a limited window at the start of the new game to try a different build. Heck, they even get to start right back at the checkpoint before the boss. If you feel like you need to change your skills you can, but you are still highly encouraged to try and pick a build that lets you conquer the entire game rather than having lots of specialty builds that you just whip out for each specific situation.
The big different is that in D2 you had a Hammerdin, or a Zealot, or a Shockadin, or anything else you wanted to dream up--all of these are different types of Paladin that felt very different to play. Each build had a certain playstyle. Each build had different strengths and weaknesses, and therefore different ways of dealing with various challenges the game threw your way.
In the D3 system you don't have different builds for each class, you just have a Wizzard or a Demon Hunter. Different people can pick different sets of skills, but you are picking them because of their strengths and are able to completely ignore the weaknesses of those skills since you can just swap to something else if you need to.
Now imagine if the D3 system was used with the D2 skill trees. It would look something like talent swapping in WoW. You could have a couple of builds and switch between them at will. As a Sorceress, you might like Lightning and use that as your primary build (other people might like Fire or Frost) but if you ran into a pack of fire immunes, you could just switch to your Frost build and keep on plowing through. Hit a pack of double immunes? Just switch to your Fire build. You don't have to pay any attention to the downsides of a single-element build (namely dealing with immunities) since you can just switch things up as needed to completely avoid those downsides.
A system which lets you utilize all of the advantages of the available skills without having to deal with any of the downsides may make you feel more powerful, but at the end of the day the game will be balanced around this power and it won't actually be any easier. Instead of being able to pick a build to play based on its strengths and weaknesses, you will have access to all builds at all times and can simply pick whichever build is best for the current situation.
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I wouldn't hold my breath. Blizzard's MO recently has been to try to remove things from their games where people could be punished for making bad decisions. This seems like a good idea until you realize that the flip side of this is that it also removes the ability for people to be rewarded for making good decisions as well. (The current skill swapping as an excellent example of this--some people are happy that they can't shoot themselves in the foot anymore while other are upset that they won't be rewarded for making smart skill choices--neither group is "right" or "wrong", they are just on different sides of the same coin).
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People who are against easy and unlimited skill swapping don't want to punish themselves, they want a game where their decisions actually matter and good choices are rewarded. Under the current system you can pretty much have whatever you think are the 6 best skills and 3 best passives available for any given situation, but imagine if you actually had to consider if taking an AoE skill for faster trash killing or a stronger single-target skill for bosses would make your build more powerful? What if you had to decide if you wanted to pickup some defensive skills to make bosses easier (or even doable) at the cost of some killing speed on normal monsters? These were the sort of decisions that made the D2 skills system interesting (do you make a single-element sorc and rely on your merc or a party to kill immunes or do you make a tri-elemental sorc that can take anything out on her own, but kills more slowly?). Ultimately, its limitations that force a player to make meaningful decisions that make games interesting.
With that said, the addition of respecs in D2 was a great addition to the game. There's no reason to punish somebody for mis-clicking or even wanting to try a different playstyle. I like the idea of being able to try out new skills as you get them in D3, but by level 30 you have access to all the skills you ever will and should be able to start making some informed decisions at that point. Let's be generous and give players the opportunity to continue to experiment with their full set of choices through Nightmare, but then on Hell and Inferno make players commit to a build at least for the time they are in a single game. Perhaps something like allowing free skill swaps for the first 5 minutes after a player joins a game, but after that no more swapping is allowed until the next game. This would still be a far more liberal system than what D2 has, allowing people plenty of room to experiment, but would make those skill decisions meaningful enough to make them more interesting than they currently are.
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Followers are a single player only feature. When you join a multiplayer game they are automatically dismissed (you can talk to them in town to get them to follow you again when you're back in a single player game).
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1) Do we need 4 difficulty levels or would 3 have been enough?
I'd be fine with 3, but 4 is cool too.
2) Do we need an end-game difficulty where the monsters in Act 1 are just as hard as the ones in Act 4 so you can play through the entire game at max level instead of just running the final boss of Act 4 over and over?
Definitely yes.
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Right now it looks like the max amount of lifesteal you can get is 9% as a dual wielding barbarian (max of 3% can spawn on weapons and mighty belts). There are plenty of skill-based sources as well, but overall it doesn't seem like there will be huge amounts of leech that need to be reduced for balance reasons.
On top of that, I'd be pretty surprised if they used any special player restrictions for boss fights. The Skeleton King is already significantly more powerful than what you're used to fighting when you get to him, and he's not even an act boss. On top of that, people shouldn't really be doing boss runs in D3 like they did in D2. Judging by the Skeleton King, the risk/reward is already at a point where you are better off farming champ/unique packs for loot (assuming the random packs spawn more often on the higher difficulties). It doesn't seem like there's any need or reason to make certain spells not work on bosses or reduce CC durations or lifesteal percentages.
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Immunities are supposed to be a thing of the past in D3. I think different monsters are still supposed to have different resistance levels to damage types, so it may still be beneficial to have a mix of damage type in a build, but it should no longer be mandatory.
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BattleNet Balance can't be cached out directly. When you sell an item on the RMAH you have the option to put the proceeds into your Bnet account or to get the money in PayPal (to buy candy or whatever).
This has always seemed like a silly restriction to me since you can just use your Bnet dollars to buy some gold and then turn right around and sell that gold again and take the profits in your PayPal account. You'll lose the AH cut two times this way, but its better than nothing (and probably means that you're better off sticking with the the gold AH for most of your business and then just selling a pile of gold on the RMAH when you want to cash out or get some Bnet bucks to pay your WoW subscription or whatever).
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Obviously it will be harder to find gear with the stats you want plus the MF, but it certainly seems possible to get most/all of the stats you want plus MF which would mean that pretty much any class can do those MF runs.
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All the values displayed in-game are rounded to 1 or 2 decimal places. The actual values have more significant figures than that, which will lead to small errors since you are calculating based off the rounded damage numbers.
Your explanation does not match your equation and the linked thread. What you mean is that equipping 2 one-handed weapons (dual wielding) will increase your average attack speed by 15%. This is something entirely different from equipping "two-handed" weapons which take both hands to hold a single weapon. ;-)
That's exactly how it works.
It would definitely be nice if the game displayed average attack damage (and perhaps average attack speed) in addition to dps. As far as I know, spell damage scales based on average damage, no average dps. Attack speed effects how quickly you can use a skill with no cooldown. Overall the skill systems seem fairly balanced to account for this, but there are some builds that would benefit from faster attack speed and others that would benefit from larger average weapon damage.
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There's no reason they need to test all the servers that they plan to have for release during the beta. If they expect to have, say, 1 million concurrent users at release playing 500 thousand games on 1000 servers, then they really only need to test 1000 concurrent users playing 500 games on 1 server to make sure their system will be able to handle the load at launch.
It's slightly more complicated than that (they will have to add additional replicated database servers for things like the AH and additional load balancers to distribute incoming connections properly, but those are relatively well-known problems in the IT industry).
Basically, think of the Beta servers as a separate "region" that is very much smaller than the main regions will be on release. Each region is made up of a certain number of server "blocks" where each block can support a certain number of users. Once they test a single block or small number of them, they can be fairly confident that a region build out of a lot more of these same blocks will work just as well for a proportionately larger number of users.
TL;DR The currently closed beta is primarily a stress test for them. There will be no open beta since it would serve no additional purpose.
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Ignoring the fact that resized and compressed images are a pretty poor way to compare this sort of thing, this is still a very subjective evaluation.
The "OFF" versions obviously look blurry in comparison to the "ON" ones, but that's how a sharpen filter works. If you ran another pass of the sharpen filter then the "ON" one would look blurry in comparison.
I personally think that the "ON" ones look washed out and less vibrant. I don't notice the "blurriness" when I'm playing the game because I'm not comparing it to a sharpened version, so I like the way the game currently is.
Like I said, its a very subjective sort of thing. They could probably add an optional sharpen filter that's applied to the scene before the UI is drawn to make most people happy, but just making a global change would probably annoy just as many people as are annoyed by the current state of the graphics so what would be the point of that?