DiabloFans

Quote from Iccuwan

This has been discussed on the official forums, Bashiok said that it is not final and they might change it to something else like magic resist.

This.

Also, its not like you'll have to give up Int to get other stats. Good rares could typically have 2 or 3 base stats on them plus some of the secondary stats as well (the top-end crafted rares come with 6 random affixes, and some of the current affixes provide 2 primary stats).

As a Wizard, I expect you'll want Int on all your gear, but you will probably be making decisions between an item with Int and Vit or one with Int and Str or Int and Dex, etc (damage reduction vs a bigger health pool). Barbs will be making similar decisions (dodge vs base health vs bigger health globes to go with their Str).

I do think that the health globe bonus would work better as part of Vitality (if you're stacking health, it would be nice if those health globes scales with your bigger health pool) and then give resist all as the bonus for Int.

Right now, though, everybody gets some sort of survivability to go with their damage stat and then can branch out from there however they want. +health globe heals it probably a bit underpowered compared to Str and Dex, but probably not nearly as bad as people might think--particularly if you focus on Int/Vit gear to give yourself a bigger buffer between globes.

Quote from sbsgrinth

The problem I have is there doesn't seem to be a deadline... it seems open ended which is allowing them to keep making changes cause "we aren't pressured with a deadline." sure wish i never had a deadline when it comes to school work... obviously going to college teaches no one. if there is a deadline what is the point in having one if it can so easily be changed?

I'm sure they have a target date, but Blizzard pretty much never announces these dates until they are pressing discs and getting their supply channels filled. When they announce general time-frames like "end of 2011" or "beginning of 2012" people can try to guess at the actual dates (which is easier to do for an "end of 2011" target than a "beginning of 2012" one). Right now any guess from end of Feb to end of June would probably be a somewhat reasonable guess and with that much uncertainty it feels like they are floating a lot more than they probably are behind the scenes.

As an aside, school deadlines are really nothing like deadlines in the real world (particularly for software development). People don't typically fail to meet school deadlines because they truly didn't have enough time to complete an assignment. Usually they just didn't manage their time as well as they should have (and college assignments tend to take far less time than the actual deadline--people just spend a lot of their time partying and things).

In the software business, project deadlines slip because people truly didn't have enough time to complete the work they were supposed to. This usually isn't because they were slacking off at work--more often its because the timelines for these projects are set months or years in advance of a release date and trying to estimate the time required to complete a project when you typically don't even know exactly what that work will entail by the end is very difficult. In addition, people have a tendency to under-estimate these sorts of things (because they don't leave enough time to deal with unexpected issues) so deadline slips are more common than they probably should be. This sort of optimism also means that if an intermediate milestone is late, the release date often isn't update to reflect this slippage because people think "well, maybe we can gain some time later and still make the original target".

Quote from Gheed2010

Funny, you guys still don't get that this whole game is intentional. Cancel your WoW sub yet?

One more time... a recurring 1.5 billion is better than a one-time 250 million, especially when the latter threatens the former.

This is just silly. People who signed up for the annual pass are locked in no matter when D3 comes out (it will be out before the subscription is over).

Most people who plan to stop playing WoW because of D3 have probably already quit WoW (if you know you're quitting soon, why drag it out?)

There will definitely be some people who cancel WoW as a result of the D3 release, but Blizzard is probably lucky if their current subscription fees are even covering the cost of the extended D3 development time. (Hint: delaying the D3 release is not free, and WoW subs aren't 100% profit).

Quote from toothball12

So you CAN prove that RMAH has been approved globally and that the paypal functionality is working 100%? I mean i'm not 100% certain, but i'd love to see some proof beyond "a blue said so." Setting up a feature like this globally is a HUGE undertaking and it is what investors care about. This isn't conspiracy stuff, its simple economics.

Setting up a feature like this does require a lot of work, but I seriously doubt any investor cares too much about it (other than the fact that Blizzard is pretty sure they won't be losing money on it). People that think the RMAH is going to make truckloads of money for Blizzard must think that billions of dollars will be flowing through it each year or something. If you really think investors care about this feature as a profit center, I'd love to see the "simple economics" to back it up.

Quote from toothball12

The only other option is that the devs on this game are not very good at their job. You don't typically see companies give a definitive release window, only to change major feautres AFTER that window has come and gone...

Their original release target was December for the extra holiday sales boost. I'd bet money that if they had felt they could finish the game by then, or even come close (and perhaps release a patch in Jan to fix any oustanding issues as long as there was nothing game-breaking at release) that they would have pushed for that release date. The fact they they decided to push the release tells me that they didn't feel like they were as close to release as they would have liked and that people expecting the game to come out in January or something where just deluding themselves.

Once the release date had been pushed, there was no longer that pressure to hit a specific holiday timeframe. This let them go back and look at the list of features that they felt had been "good enough to release" but that they really weren't 100% happy with.The skill/rune system and stats are two excellent examples of this. Both were in a workable state but probably not ideal.

Once they decided to take a second look at things like this it put them in a bit of an awkward PR spot. People looked at the beta and though: "this game looks good to go--why haven't we heard about a release date". Behind the scenes Blizzard has probably been looking at many changes in addition to what was just announced. Some of those things worked out and others did not. They don't want to tell us about every single idea they they test out, so we only hear about the successful experiments.

At this point, though, I'd be a little surprised if we heard about other major system changes beyond the skills/runes update that they've been talking about. It sounds like they are just about done with whatever they are changing with that and the only other thing I'm aware of that they still likely need to do is go through and itemize all the unique/set items and do whatever tinkering they still have planned for item affixes (this probably includes tweaking item drop tables as well). I can definitely see them finishing their changes and polishing work in another month or so and announcing a release date at that point which could mean a March or April release.

I'm definitely as anxious as the next guy to get this game in my hands, but they will release it on their own timetable and no amount of QQ from me or anyone else is going to change that.

Stat Changes

I like the idea behind the stat changes. In D2 different stats were good for different classes so you could look at something and say "that's a Barbarian item" or "that's a Sorceress item". With the current D3 stats, everyone wants the same stuff so there's fewer reasons to want to trade/AH that great Wizard item you found on your Barbarian for something that's better for you.

This also explains why Unique/Set item stats have been MIA since Beta Patch 5 (they probably started trying to do a final itemization pass on that stuff and realized they couldn't actually target the items to specific classes, so they changed all the stats.)

I was a little concerned at first about class balance thinking that some classes might only need 1 or 2 stats now while others might need 3 or 4 of them, but I suspect what will end up happening is that people will want items with their "primary" stat on it, and then whatever else they can get of the other stats will be a bonus (all stats provide a survivability bonus, so they will probably all be decent and somewhat interchangeable).

Salvaging Changes

I'm not a huge fan of these changes. In the beta right now its pretty exciting to get your Nephalem Cube (similar to getting your Horadric Cube in D2) since its a noticeable quality of life improvement. Forcing people to go back to town to salvage and sell seems like it will just be annoying.

Not being able to salvage common items anymore is a bit of a mixed bag. It was a bit strange to not want to vendor anything (starting out a new character in the beta my bags tend to get full and I feel bad about dropping or vendoring items before I get that cube to salvage them with). On the flip side, it seems like white items will be virtually useless now which is a departure from D2. In D2, an elite armor was worth picking up to vendor the for 35k gold if you had the inventory space, and because of gems and eventually runewords they could be quite valuable to players as well (particularly superior and etherial versions with specific numbers of sockets). That system made the common items a sort of secondary loot lottery--mostly they weren't that interesting, but if the right one dropped it could be valuable.

Mystic Removal

I think this depends on what happens with gems. From looking at the data files, my suspicion is that gems were supposed to provide 2 stats in all slots (one stat no matter where its socketed, and a 2nd stat based on what slot its put into). There are also icons for more types of gems than are actually items in the game. If they flesh out the gem system a bit more then I guess removing the mystic until an expansion is fine.

My biggest concern about the mystic is what will happen to the runestone-combine recipies: http://www.d3lexicon.com/recipe-type/mystic#other ? I don't think this was ever an officially announced feature, but it definitely made a lot of sense to be able to "cube up" lower quality runestones to get those rank 7 ones you really want. I guess I should reserve judgement on this one, though, until they release more info on the skill/runestone changes.

Other Stuff

Scroll of Identify - Not sure if this is a quality of life improvement or not. Scrolls take up an inventory slot, but they are instant. Why make people waste the cast time to ID items? If they decide to remove the cast time it would be a nice little improvement, but at that point why not just have the rares IDed from the start just like magic items? I just really don't see the logic behind this split system where magic items come IDed already but rares don't.

Dedicated Potion Button - This change is just dumb. They are spending developer time to implement a feature that reduces player choice? Really? Not everybody likes to have a skill bound to their left click, but with 6 skill slots and 4 action buttons now, everyone has to use both mouse buttons to bind all their spells. In addition, not all spells can even be bound to left-click. I'm not sure if a build would crop up in practice that used 6 skills like this (perhaps some sort of WD summoner build?) but if such a build exists then its no longer viable because of this change. (On top of this, moving the button is just bad UI design--it messes up the physical-to-virtual spacial relationship with the default keybinds).

Character Stats on Inventory Page - Good change.

Quote from Greyhorn

For small transactions it will probably be better to sell the item on the gold AH rather than sell a two dollar item and have it be hit with fees 3 times on the RMAH. Once you have enough gold from small sales on the gold AH you can put that pile of gold on the RMAH and cash it out then. I think.

Which has gotten me wondering if anyone will end up realling using the RMAH. If you have a bunch of Blizzard Bucks that you want to cash out you'll need to use them to buy a pile of gold on the RMAH and then turn right around and sell that gold again on the RMAH so you can "cash out" that transaction. You'll end up getting hit with 2 extra AH fees in the process.

If the best way to cash out a reasonable sum will be to sell a pile of gold on the RMAH anyway, then why not just sell all your items on the gold AH initally?

Granted, there's nothing really wrong with the system working out this way I guess, but it'll be a bit silly if after putting in all the extra effort to add the RMAH that people just end up using it as a currency exchange.

Quote from Groanan

There is no way that Diablo 3 is going to leave the gates with players having access to all their classes' spells, so I am not sure why people are even suggesting that it was the intention of the designers that players would swap out spells to progress through content.

The current design is clearly not what was originally intended when they implemented this system, but I'm not sure I share your optimism that they will definitely decide to tweak the system in some way before launch.

Lots of people don't seem to want to have to pick a spec for their characters and just want to stick with the current system. I think if given only the option of the current system or a short cooldown or just having to go to town (basically no detriment other than a small amount of time) then I'd rather they just leave it how it is now. We don't need it to feel like swapping skills frequently is an intended mechanic that has been made more difficult for no apparent reason.

But I think they really should at least make a solid decision on if they want people to have easy access to all their skills or if they want the 6 skill slot limit to actually mean something. If its the former, then they should add support for additional hot-keys so you can use what you want without having to mess with skill swaps at all. If they want the latter, then they need to make skill swapping "difficult" enough that its not profitable to switch to a different setup when you need a special utility build or get to a boss, but not so difficult that you can't switch things up when you want to try out a new build for a few games or to match your skills to the party members you get matched with.

Quote from jaclashflash

Less Customization?!?
A Few Billion builds >>>>> A couple Cookie cutter builds.

If rune selection is the only mechanic for "builds" then we certainly will have a huge number of them, with almost all of them being viable choices, but how many of those builds are really different from the rest? How many of those choices will alter the way you play that class? And if this many options would be good, wouldn't even more be better if you actually had to choose just 6 skills as well?

People who don't want to think about skill selection still aren't going to think about it if they can swap skills on the fly vs if they have to pick 6 and stick with it. They will either just pick their 6 favorite skills from leveling, or they will lookup the cookie cutter builds online and go with whatever set of skills and runes that somebody told them was the best setup.

Quote from Zoltor

They removed every ounce of customizeation from the game(lol they even simplified the stats, WTF do they think Diablo players are only 5 years old), they had to add something, otherwise what's the point of playing the game.

Indeed. Stat allocation wasn't a very good game mechanic in D2, but only because the trade-offs between each stat weren't really meaningful (how many times have you read "enough STR/DEX for gear, 0 ENR, rest in VIT"?). They actually fixed the problem in D3 with 4 stats that are all meaningful and could provide character differentiation and interesting trade-offs, but then also decided to switch to static stat allocations. (They could have even gone with a hybrid approach with something like limiting us to putting only 2-3 points into any given stat per level to encourage more balance without removing all customization).

The current freely-swappable skill system is just another example of removing customization options from the game (this is the same sort of "simplification"/"dumbing-down" that is driving people away from WoW). Gear also seems a lot more homogenized in D3 compared to what it was in D2. In D2 specific items and stats were an integral part of most builds, but in D3 rare items will be the most powerful items in the game (so no real way to plan out a gear setup) and most of the stats seem applicable to any playstyle a given class might choose.

Runes are currently the only thing that really allows character customization. Without them, every Wizard in D3 would have exactly the same strengths and weaknesses as every other Wizard.

Quote from emyln

I won't say that there are trillions of builds. We all know at least 1/2 of them will be useless. But if you cannot agree that there are at least double the amount of viable builds compared with D2, then we have absolutely nothing to talk about. We are on such different wavelengths its not even worth talking.

Since a "build" currently is really just the runes you have socketed in each skill then I guess technically there are something like 5^20+ "builds" with nearly all of them probably being "viable". This is certainly way more than the number of viable builds in D2. However, the more important question is: how many of these rune combinations actually make the class feel different to play?

As Zoltar said, D3 would be amazing with stat, skill, rune, and gear customization. With just runes it will still be fun. Patches/expansions will likely add things like runewords and the talisman and other things we might not have even thought of yet. But that doesn't mean that the game would be even better if you had to make a meaningful decision when choosing skills, or could customize your stats now that they could actually matter.

I can't wait to play D3 no matter how it ships, but I would love the game to be even better than it currently is.

Quote from Groanan

Take Monk Mantras for example.
Monks only get six active skills, just like everyone else, but they get four mantras (auras) that do different things (and no monk will waste more than one slot for a mantra).
If a party has two Monks in it, and they both chose the same mantra, and if it were easy and costless to switch, one will have to switch, and if they don't, something is wrong with them.
If it costs gold to switch auras, it would not be worth it for a monk to switch, and no one would ask them to just for the convenience of a single game.

Now, the aura each monk chose, based on how they want to play, is somewhat locked into their character, at least to a point where they are not changing it willy-nilly.

This is a terrible example IMHO. This is exactly the sort of situation where people are perfectly justified in wanting to switch up their skills. If you join a game with another monk that's using the same mantra, go ahead and switch to something else--that's a once-per-game kind of switch--just don't be switching every other boss fight.

During the leveling process I think the current system is a great way for people to experiment and figure out how they want to play their character in the end-game, but at level 60 in Inferno difficulty people shouldn't be changing their skills more often than the party that they are playing with changes. I'm not sure if a gold cost or repeatable quest or cooldown or some sort of rune mechanic is the best way to enforce this, but something needs to be put in place.

People should be able to match their build to the strengths and weaknesses of the rest of their party. They just shouldn't be matching their build to the strengths and weaknesses of each boss as they come to them.

Quote from emyln

None of us know how a level 60 will play, how fesiable this skill changing will be, how runes will affect "builds". How players will truly react when playing D3. Its one thing to say that you have the ability to switch skills on the fly, but in Hell, Inferno, after 10's or 100's of playthroughs, will we still switch skills, is it even worth it?

Obviously this is still speculation right now, but I just can't imagine using one of my limited skill slots for a powerful, but niche, ability if I was able to just swap that ability in easily for the times when I needed it. If you can easily access a character's entire toolkit, why would you restrict yourself to just 6 skills?

After 10's or 100's of playthroughs, people will be looking for ways to automate the switching process (via keyboard or mouse macros if possible) so they can get around the annoying and archaic limitation of only being able to have 6 skills hot-keyed at a time. If this is really how they want the game, they should fully support it by allowing players to hot-key as many spells as they want.

Quote from emyln

Why can't builds for D3 now consist of a 2 builds. 1 for all mobs, 1 for bosses.

Similarly, if this is the design they want, they should support it with a spec switching mechanic (as they did in WoW).

Ultimately they can do what they want and can always change things later. I'll certainly play and enjoy whatever they end up shipping. However, there are plenty of players like myself that really enjoy working through the various trade-offs that restrictions within a game provide. Whenever those sorts of restrictions are removed and those trade-offs become irrelevant it makes the game a little less deep, enjoyable, and replayable for us.

Not having to worry about those sorts of things is obviously attractive to a different group of people and Blizzard ultimately has to pick the balance that will end up selling the most copies. Unfortunately for fans like me, removing trade-offs from the game won't stop many of us from buying it and since its not a subscription-based game it doesn't really matter if we get bored with it more quickly as long as they can get us interested again when the next expansion rolls around. This is frustrating, but really all we can do is try and suggest changes that would keep the game interesting for us without overly burdening the people who enjoy the game differently.

Quote from emyln

Designers limiting us to 6 Active Skills, has more to do with not wanting every skill available on screen at once. So a choice has to be made.

D3 was originally to have skill trees just like in D2, but with easier respecs. The problem they found with that design was that the optimal strategy was to dump skill points into a tier 1 skill until tier 2 opened up. Then respec and put all those points into tier 2, etc. The new design is a great solution for early leveling and allowing the skills you use to evolve as new ones become available. The 6 skill limit (and lower limits earlier as you level) was supposed to preserve the feeling of having a build (like how in D2 you could only choose 4-5 skills to max).

Unfortunately, the ease of switching skills now means that you effectively have ALL skills maxed and just can't have them all hot-keyed at the same time. If this is truly how they want the game to function, they should just remove the tedium of having to swap out skill slots and let you hot-key as many of your skills as you want.

If, on the other hand, they want skill selection to mean something then they have to add some mechanism to make it easier to pick a build that can handle any situation and stick with it than it is to swap out skills for every different situation.

Quote from emyln

As I mentioned, concepts of builds need to change. The main idea is to defeat monsters/bosses and get items. Why is a fluid build so anathema to some people?

For many people the challenge of coming up with a clever or unique build is just as interesting as the thrill when that uber item drops. I realize that plenty of people aren't interested in theory-crafting different builds and/or aren't interested in the unique play-styles of variant builds, but for those who are interested in that sort of thing it will be a disappointment if the current system goes live without any tweaks and we lose that part of what made D2 such a great game.

Quote from emyln

I guess I don't understand the issue. If you don't like the current system, then simply don't switch out your skills. If people you're grouping with do switch out, you don't have to wait for them and you can choose to ignore them after that.

The problem is that the current system eliminates the need to actually put thought into your build and come up with a cohesive set of 6 skills + runes + 3 passives that defines your play-style. Without a limitation on when and how you can swap skills, the designers' intent to limit you to 6 skills is effectively meaningless.

They way respecs were handled once added to D2 worked well. You got a couple of free ones as you leveled and then could get more via a cube recipe with items dropped from act bosses. Choosing a build was a meaningful decision that involved important trade-offs, but you still had the ability to switch to a different build if you wanted to try something out (just not so often that you could use a specialty build for every situation).

The main drawback with the D2 system is that it didn't handle the early leveling process well as you gained new skills. You basically had to either pick one or more level 1 skills to pump and use through normal difficulty and then respec to your "real" build at level 30, or run around through normal with one point into a level 1 skill killing slowly until you could unlock what you really wanted.

The current system in D3 is a great way to handle the early game and allow player experimentation as they level. I think the best solution would be a hybrid system where you can freely swap skills until level 30 (when you have access to everything) and then must pick a build with respec limitations that discourage swapping to tailor your build to specific encounters. Heck, I'd probably even be OK with allowing the current mechanics up through level 59 and only once you hit the level cap/Inferno do you need to put thought into your build and stick with what you choose.

Restrictions are what lead to interesting game-play choices. If skill selection doesn't have meaningful consequences at some point, then a lot of the experimentation that has kept people playing D2 to this day will be lost and D3 won't have the same longevity. (Maybe some people will say this is just Blizzard's plan to make sure people buy the expansions down the line, but I don't think engineered boredom is something they would or should design for.)

Wow...so many people complaining about having to wait 10 seconds on a hearthstone to be able to change skills? Back in my day we spent our skill points carefuly and if we wanted to do something different we rolled a new toon! ;-)

In all seriousness, though, being able to change your build without leveling another character was a nice change when it was added to D2 and will be a great mechanic in D3. However, if its so easy that people are switching skills often then there's really no point in having "builds" and limited skill slots in the first place.

If people in the higher difficulties are changing skills more than maybe once per game then I just don't think the system is working properly. A build should define the way you play your character. So many of the hard choices and trade-offs become irrelevant if you can use a different specialty build for every situation. In order to prevent this, Blizzard needs to make switching skills and runes "difficult" enough that its more convenient to pick one build and stick with it than it is to swap around skills for each situation. On the other hand, it shouldn't be any more difficult than is absolutely necessary to keep people mostly with a single build. I think something along the lines of having to go to town and pay a hefty amount of gold to clear out your skills and let your select new ones would be about right (and another gold sink is always a good thing).

However, the early levels (what we are seeing in the beta) are a different beast entirely. As you gain new skills it makes sense to be able to switch them out more easily to test them and be able to figure out what you want your eventual build to be. Perhaps the best way to handle this is to allow skills swaps without restriction in normal difficulty only or until you reach level 30 (at which point you have all your skills and slots unlocked). After this point, the skill swapping restrictions kick in and you are expected to pick a build and stick with it for the most part. A cutoff point like this should also be fairly easy to code and allows experimentation early while still preserving the feeling of actually having to make meaningful build decisions in the later game which seems like the best of both worlds to me.

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.)