I think this is the best I've ever seen it worded.Quote from shaggy
You sound more like a bitter shareholder than anything else.
The #1 thing I hate about this absolutely fucking shitty community is the constant need to blame people. Something went wrong? We need a public execution to make amends.
It's like we've completely lost our sense of civility because we've all turned into spoiled little man-babies.
For example I'm not a fan of Jay Wilson, but I never really understood the bloodlust with which he specifically was pursued by the community. People demanding that he lose his job because they didn't like decisions that the D3 team made. "Raaawr screw that guy and his family because his team made a decision I didn't like in a video game!"
2
It's funny that "all you ever hear is non-seasonal players bitching and moaning" because it sure sounds to me like you are bitching and moaning that you need special snowflake content.
You made a choice to play seasonal content just like others made a choice to play non-seasonal content. Yet, it really seems that you cannot live with your choice unless that means that you get exclusive content. Somehow you don't see the complete hypocrisy in that stance.
Why do some seasonal players have this God complex where they believe that everyone else is inferior and undeserving? Besides, storage space is a massive issue for everyone in the game. It knows no bounds between Seasons, Non-seasons, and Hardcore. It's a problem that we all grapple with regardless of our game mode. When you have a problem that effects everyone, like storage space, you don't put it in one of the three game modes. Tying a very basic game feature such as storage space to any specific game mode is tantamount to the developers denouncing the other game modes as not the "real" game.
Imagine if you had to do some specific task in Hardcore or Non-season to unlock the tabs. That would be just as wrong. I support your desire to play Seasonal characters. It would be completely unfair of Blizzard to give us more stash tabs and simultaneously tell you, the Seasonal player, that you had to spend a few dozen hours playing Non-seasonal characters to unlock them. It's similarly wrong to tell Non-seasonal players that they have to spend a few dozen hours playing Seasonal characters to fulfill a basic need.
I haven't played much of the game since 2.2. I tried some 2.3, it was OK. I read the 2.4 patch notes. I saw how they were removing season-only legendaries. I was happy with this news. Then I saw that they tied storage space to seasonal play and immediately my happiness was replaced with incredulity. They managed to make the situation worse. They managed to thumb their noses at Non-seasonal players even more than they were in the past. I cannot imagine why they'd want to be so spiteful and hateful towards a segment of their playerbase. It just doesn't make sense.
I was ready to give 2.4 a whirl simply because of Legacy of Nightmares because, at this point, I simply have no desire to even attempt to push leaderboards. This single issue, though, will keep me from even trying out 2.4. It's high time they stop treating Non-seasonal players as if we're playing the game "wrong." At the very least with the items in previous seasons we were able to earn them eventually. With the current stash tab proposition we can't even do that. We can't even get them after the season has ended. It's "play seasons" or "go to hell."
9
The #1 thing I hate about this absolutely fucking shitty community is the constant need to blame people. Something went wrong? We need a public execution to make amends.
It's like we've completely lost our sense of civility because we've all turned into spoiled little man-babies.
1
The DH, via M6, has the BEST ability to (reliably) deal damage while also having the best chance to out-range, line-of-sight, or whatever other tactics necessary to avoid the incoming damage.
My WD sure as fuck can't out-range jailer if I want to kill the monster any time before next Tuesday. And therein lies the imbalance, which is really only an imbalance when monsters are doing SO FUCKING MUCH DAMAGE that the only way to kill them without constantly running back to your corpse is to do so from five screens away.
Greater Rifts need a lot of work, philosophy-wise otherwise this will continue to be a problem no matter how many skills, items, passives, mechanics they buff/nerf.
1
It's much like the lottery. And I don't think that anyone with any brain would argue that holding a lottery to determine the #1 spot in ANY semi-competitive environment is the right way to do it.
World Series? Nah. Just draw straws. It makes so much more sense. That's PRECISELY what Conduit Pylons push the "endgame" towards. So it doesn't matter if it's "fair" because it's absurdly-bad gameplay.
2
What they need to do is sit back and take ANOTHER long, hard, look at itemization.
We still have 100% useless legendaries. Most specs are 100% set-centric. There's very little room to assemble a "set" of legendaries that create synergy and roll with that because Firebirds, Akkan, Maraduers, etc. are just far too strong. This means that the RoRG is, by virtue of the set-centric endgame, a virtual necessity for most players.
The only competition between orange and green items is basically for whichever slot you choose not to equip because of your RoRG and most of the time that's determined by which non-set piece gives the best synergy with the set (Quetz, MoJ, T&T, etc.).
The inherent power of some of the set bonuses is just so immeasurably strong and that's where the problem lies. DHs are pretty shitty, but M6 makes them unbelievably powerful. This is the problem at hand. A set can take a class from "Oooooh I wish I could clear T2" to "HAR HAR HAR HAR GR45 NUBZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ."
When Josh talked about build-changing legendaries, I really didn't envision itemization completely dominated by sets where legendaries were sprinkled in only where sets weren't necessary. I think more people really believed we'd be able to find a "set" of legendary items that all had good synergy and assemble those into working builds (electro-stun wizard comes to mind here as high synergy among items but generally low effectiveness).
2
They are rifts... with a timer... and infinite scaling. It's just not my cup of tea in terms of "something I'd like to do forever and ever into the future" which means, from my perspective, it's not really "endgame." I have come to expect Blizzard to be innovative and think outside the box, and Greater Rifts don't feel like any thinking, let alone thinking outside of the box, ever happened during the development process. They just seem like panem et circences - stuff to keep us entertained enough that we don't realize how crappy the stuff we have is.
I would honestly prefer if the "leaderboards" amounted to who could clear T6 rifts fastest and not who could manage to ninja-click their way through the most one-shot mechanics. I'm just not into such binary challenges. If you fuck up and misclick at any time it's over. To me that sounds more like a bullet hell game than an ARPG, and I guess that's what fundamentally has held me back from really enjoying 2.1. The "challenge" seems to be something that really isn't appropriate to an ARPG. It seems misguided and off-target.
Because Josh and friends really seem to think that there is one "best" way to play the game and anyone who doesn't follow that exact mold is doing it wrong and has no business playing the game. In addition to Hellfire Rings/Amulets, it's plenty obvious that the only "right" way to level your legendary gems is in co-op games. Why? Because the scaling between solo and co-op isn't even close to right. Things like this SHOULD be plenty apparent and should be fixed - there's no reason that co-op players should be able to get more ranks on their gems than a solo player. Then again, this is also a testament to how ass-backwards the current gem leveling paradigm is. It shouldn't have anything to do with what GR level you're clearing. This was echoed by almost EVERYONE during the beta.
If they removed the legendary gem ranking up from Greater Rifts, then this problem would *mostly* rectify itself as Greater Rifts would basically be for ePeen only.
So long as Greater Rifts have actual rewards (in this case, more powerful legendary gems) then the issue that they stifle diversity matters. It's an absurdly simple fix, though. Which makes me wonder why they went with the LEAST-FAVORITE method for leveling legendary gems among the community. Tying gem progression to Greater Rift level is just so bad and creates far more problems than it solves.
Just give us an xp-based system. Separate legendary gem progression from Greater Rifts. If you do that then suddenly trials are so very easily removed because it doesn't matter one goddamned bit if you can "spam" high-level Greater Rifts and you've killed two major problems with one, very straightforward, change.
2
I find it absurd that they removed trading because players could circumvent the natural flow of the game and gain some kind of "advantage" over other players. Yet, when faced with people exploiting a bug with XP gains in rifts, they just fix the bug and move on. If one is a problem then the other is a problem. If one problem requires compete eradication of trading then the other surely requires more than just letting the people who exploited keep their spoils. It's inconsistent stances like this which frustrate me.
They want to open up diversity? So they implement a game mode that actively encourages us to seek out every last little .5% increase in effectiveness of our builds. Greater Rifts are the biggest hit to build diversity (and related item diversity) since the horrible decision to "double it" in regards to Inferno difficulty.
They want to open up diversity? So they make Campaign Mode completely useless and Bounties useless except as a gate to Rifts and as a mechanism to get a select few items. Our choices as to *how* to spend our time are at an all-time low. Want to rank up your legendary gems? There is only one way to do that. If you're not going a Greater Rift of equal, or higher, level than the gem you want to rank up then you probably aren't going to be making much progress on that front.
Instead of allowing legendary gems to rank up independent of where you are playing, they chose to limit it which further shoehorns HOW we play. This is OK when it's used sparingly. I'd argue that the Uber events are basically "enough" of it for the whole game, currently.
And I really think the guy/gal who OKd Trials should be tied to a telephone pole and we should be allowed to punch them in the face until all the bones in our hands are broken. They are truly boring and entirely unnecessary. Since they fixed pet survivability I've been able to enjoy 2.1 much more. It was a major stumbling block for me. But, even still, every single time I realize that I have to do a trial I log off. Trials are not fun. They're horrible. The people who thought they were fun make me so angry that I seriously want to hit someone.
I've never felt that way about anyone at Blizzard, ever. I've never wanted to take a swing at Jay, or Josh, or anyone. But if someone stepped forward and took responsibility for Trials I seriously would take a swing at them if I saw them in the street regardless of the repercussions. How anyone, including the people QAing that shit, could have given it the thumbs-up as something enjoyable that enhances the overall experience of the game is beyond me.
Trials are hands-down the absolute worst thing D3 has ever seen. I'd rather have the shitty itemization and AH back than do trials. The fact that I have to spend 15+ minutes talking myself into doing a single trial is mind-blowing. They really should be ashamed of themselves that this is the best they can do given the rocky history that this game has had.
What's worse is that they keep trying to apply band-aids to a system that many people hate and that really isn't working for the playerbase. I do not know a single person who actually enjoys doing trials. Every single person I know would prefer that they were removed from the game. While that's anecdotal, I think it's pretty obvious WHY people might feel this way and WHY it probably is a majority opinion. It shouldn't be shocking that people dislike a must-perform task that gives no rewards at all other than very poor XP.
But, this wouldn't be a major issue.... IF I COULD RANK UP MY LEGENDARY GEMS OUTSIDE OF GREATER RIFTS.
If Greater Rifts were purely "epeen mode" it would help to mitigate how uninspired and boring the Realm of Trials actually is.
2
It's not like my barbarian has any need to access mojos, sources, quivers, and all that jazz. Even so, I'd gladly trade the very minor inconvenience of having to swap characters to gain access to their specific tabs in order to have an appropriate amount of storage.
They keep giving us one tab here and one tab there, and it's one subject that it's clear the designers just don't "get it" at all. They are so amazingly wrong on this subject it's unbelievable. In a game about items that change your builds and create synergies it's not remotely smart to have our options limited by storage space. It's thoroughly counterproductive.
2
http://www.npr.org/2014/02/25/282431939/boeings-787-dreamliner-can-t-shake-major-malfunction-issues
http://www.businessinsider.com/r-us-faa-tells-boeing-to-fix-747-8-software-to-avoid-crash-2014-26
Please, tell me more about this magical bug-free software.
Jesus fucking Christ. If AIRLINE CONTROL SOFTWARE has bugs, despite literally being responsible for people's lives, I'm not sure why you'd think a goddamned video game wouldn't have bugs.
It's like an intelligence vacuum around here lately.
1
What you're saying is that they should attempt to achieve something that is only doable in theory, not in practice.
They need pragmatic solutions, not theoretical solutions. Pragmatically, bugs will exist. Pragmatically, people will use those bugs to their advantage. It's just life. Trying to play it off as "code harder, get all the bugs" is so blissfully naive it's almost cute.