DiabloFans

Quote from Gheed2010

Big corporations like Blizzard tend to attract people that are really, really good at writing exposition on a released product that seems generally reasonable, and almost insightful, and almost totally irrelevant in terms of being able to fix hard-wired design decisions.

They don't attract people that fight to clean up these messes back when politically powerful people are still attached to them before release.

Quick pop quiz - how many ARPGs did Jay, Wilson and this guy collectively work on before D3?

Quote from CasmX

Well, there's certain mechanics in D3 that I just don't see how they'll pull off on a console and make it feel natural.

A barbarian with the Leap ability. With a mouse and keyboard, I can put my cursor where I want to leap, click the button and the game does the rest. With a controller? What, do I face my character in the general direction I want to leap? How do I gauge it's distance? By how long I hold the button down? It seems to me that whatever method they use for these kind of ability functions, it'll ultimately feel like crap. Perhaps I just lack vision and creativity to understand how to make this work and feel comfortable on a console.

That's one (and for me, my primary) reason that I just don't think D3 will do well on a console.

Quote from Highborne_D2

Quote from Zeyk23

Quote from Highborne_D2

That is it for the answers? Talk about a failure. I highly doubt that there were that many high upvoted questions about "brawling" at all; instead they picked it because it was new and shit and as such needed to justify their idiocy to their followers. While the actual hard questions were ignored like usual since they cannot answer them because it is so glaringly obvious that the game if flawed in its' two core aspects: Character Inherent Power and Itemization.

The theme for the Q&A was 1.0.7.

Which means nothing to players. We know why 1.0.7 is trash, why "brawling" is trash, and why anything new they add doesn't actually enhance the game (Paragon did nothing, buffed legendaries did nothing, and buffing damage of skills does nothing). Because the core game is broken. As such, unless they actually answer the tough questions, then why even bother doing a Q&A? All it is is a PR stunt for the loyal fanbase, but quickly disenfranchises the on fencers to go try other games or just ditch the failure that is D3.

Quote from Catalept

Quote from trocadero_fuerte

It provides a stable platform for AH prices. You have an X% chance of crafting a godly item at Y gold. Therefore, similar godly items on the AH can't really be much more than 100/X * Y gold (this is a gross simplification, not actual real math, and also ignores the very real problem of gold bots). Also, as mentioned in the QnA, they want people playing the game, not the AH. The goal is to get more and more great gear off the AH and into the game world, namely the blacksmith. I applaud their long range focus on this, but they had this in before the game shipped, and inexplicably did away w/ bound gear by launch. Whoever made that decision (Jay?) was incredibly short-sighted. There's a reason (okay, multiple reasons) D2 had to flush the economy down the toilet every ladder reset.

I think this is one of those tricky side-effects to having an in-game AH. Every craftable item Blizzard introduces nails down that part of the market to a fixed price based on the crafting cost.

IMO they should take a long, hard look at letting us completely re-roll a slot on an item at the cost of making it bound. This would take some of the heat out of the 'quad item' market, put some life into the sub-optimal item market and make viable 'self-found' items more common.

Quote from Zeyk23

I agree with most of their answers, with the one exception being the value of crafting. I don't understand why he thinks crafting becomes more valuable the better your gear is. If you have to pay a billion gold for an upgrade on the AH, you are also going to have to craft an insane number of items to make an upgrade. The reason those items are so expensive is because they're incredibly rare. I feel like either crafting is balanced against the AH costs or it isn't, and that's going to be a very difficult balance to reach as long as the cost of crafting is static compared to the fluctuating AH economy. Even if crafting is a better deal, that just means that AH prices will fall until it comes out on top again.

Quote from X_Gr1m_X

Quote from trocadero_fuerte

These guys refuse to learn from their own mistakes or WoW's mistakes. You have to adjust the numbers between PvE and PvP separately. It's just the starting point you have to work w/. Trying to balance all at once is impossible. Hell, even Starcraft 2 figured this out (no firebats or diamondbacks in PvP). They even said they were going to balance separately, and then backtracked for some strange reason. This whole team has been strangely unfocused; they scrap the Mystic b/c she wasn't polished enough, then gave us four boring as hell gems and the jeweler (maybe the voice actress wanted more money). Not having a hotkey for bulk purchases of potions or dyes, the awful, awful awful skill UI, and then the utter and complete farce that PvP has become. This is unprecedented (for Blizzard) unfinished and unpolished work. "When it's done" has gone out the window.

I think there's a lot going on behind closed doors. I heard they laid off a lot of people and vivendi wanted to sell their stake in the business. But my philosophy is try to make good what you got. I'm sure pvp can be fun under certain circumstances.