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KradisZ 		January 3rd, 2013 at 8:13am After reading Vaeflare's recent post on Good game, bad community thread I've decided I'm going to just write my experience here of Diablo 3 and why I didn't like it past that... 2nd time through after Nightmare. I'll assume their CMs read it... or not. Sure i've been on this forum for months w/o playing the game, simply because I'm eagerly awaiting and have clingy hopes of Diablo 3 getting better rather than jump back in so soon just to get another sour taste of grind with nothing special.

If you're going to tell me to gtfo you should do so yourself. This post here I'm going to write why I dont' think very much has improved nor expanded upon new content. Also I will be providing reasons why I think there isn't an improvement. Argue against it if you will but at least provide reasons about the game and that aspect or it's just lame poetry from a troll/fanboy that should be ignored.

What got me playing Diablo 3?
Diablo 2 was remembered as a pretty good game and friends all bought Diablo 3, all in hopes we'd play together. To disintegrate further assumptions, no I am not a D2 veteran by any sort nor did I participate in Battle.net or ladder for D2, I played it offline and on LAN only with friends so I have no nostalgia attachment or any experienced Lord of Destruction expansion material to move in on, yes I beat LOD but I didn't go crazy indepth and never played Druid/Assassin class I compared D3 to D2 in their vanilla forms. In D3 We found out partying made mobs stronger & more hp at the time so we found it actually pointless and detrimental except to corpse hop past walls of gear checks(remember Enrage Timers?) If not then it's CC as much as possible and push our way to Diablo after that it was Farm Act3 repeatedly get cash from RMAH and quit, except for me. (Notice where I am on my profile, literally Inferno Act 3, because I stopped progressing there and just started farming over and over and got well you know greed for cash and promptly quit when I realized it.)

My friends ALL Rolled barbarians back then and with good reason, game director plays it and through trends they saw it never got nerfed as a class and simply buffed in many aspects as in ... other classes get nerfed.
As patches came monsters just got more hp and now no damage buff, so now we all farm slower if we're not top of the line gear and would be much faster on solo for the majority of the time until we actually hit top gear.

Why am I still not playing Diablo 3?
Legendaries Patch - I don't really recall this being an improvement this should've been there since day1, magics and rares shouldn't be way stronger than an item called Legendary from the get-go only to be rectified months later and deprecating the value of all rares and magics in the process leading those who had them early cash out on "crap rares" considered today.

The item my Wizard currently holds used to yield close to 50.00USD back in JUNE (Notice last login date = August 8 and I know it was that because my friend sold something of similar item stats for 60.00USD and I was short 10 int lower on my weapon and a few DPS few being 5-10 difference not really anything). Today it's worth 0. Whatever go on complain or flame at me saying that's ridiculous. But if you haven't been around since, nothing's really been changed past that IMO.

Legendaries being at their proper power level today is what should've been since day 1. Call me ridiculous if you will for expecting such things but if you think enough it's just the next tier past Rare.In that sense it just makes all the other ones before Legendary now obsolete. Before you had some sort of decision between Rare & Magic items. Now its just Legendary. Further simplification of the system and to yield only one item of result to roll you somewhat good stats for BiS item or the fact that everyone is raving about them and completely forgetting about Rares and Magics.

You speak of rares or magics and you'll just get laughed at, all everyone talks about is Legendary this that, mempo skorn, manticore blah blah, I haven't played and read enough to know that's all is being mentioned mainly for items and things, which still isn't even fully viable on the new Monster Power...? And one last thing I know Rares are still somewhat useful just as cheap trash gear now until you find your first Legendary and such, but past that you never look back really.

which leads to my next point...
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Monster Power - This was added in past Paragon levelling. It was due to so many people cringing and disappointed with Inferno's difficulty. So what do the devs do they now set it in the way "you make your difficulty" and adjust it by setting Monster Power.

Why is this not an improvement? Well if I can set the rules of my game's monster and enemies through a slider on multiplier then why wasn't this designed just off Normal Nightmare Hell & Inferno @ level 1?. Rather than having the players go through the game 4x through as an endurance litmus test for each class just to reach Inferno to start trying anything cool, we should've just been able to select Normal or Nightmare or Hell or Inferno and change it if we found it too hard or not between the 4 difficulties, not play the game 4x through just to unlock Inferno per class.

In fact the portion of where you beat the game and unlock Inferno should immediately unlock it entirely for that class to be remade at level 60 for any new character, there's no sense in actually creating a 2nd same class and redoing the entire 1-60 again normalnightmarehellinferno, if you're going to say "Oh d2 was that way" please, that's 12 years ago. Gamers switch games on average within a month these days, back then your choices weren't so abundant, either keep your player hooked or watch them leave without say.

The nerfing of Inferno difficulty that ensued Monster Power also lead the defeat of any challenge remaining in Diablo 3. You can say "Oh but I bet you can't walk through Inferno on MP10 and do whatever", well argumentatively the responding player could just be like "Well I can walk through it on MP0 regardless and farm items for greater value than you 10x faster and you have nothing to show for it other than you can just kill monsters that just have higher numbers not really any changes or new types of monsters because that's all there is to the game currently.", "..."
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Auto Stat Allocation - Okay first off, if you dislike clicking a stat point button to increase a certain stat or just dump all stats into one thing then...

A) Those stats are meaningless and useless by design to begin with and offers no real choice in the matter, if you're going to quote Diablo 2 stats were "Oh lets just all go the optimal path or minimal to equip gear and dunk everything else into something" Well that's 12 years ago, if you couldn't think of anything new within a 12 year time frame you're rather dull and uncreative in that by default.
Examples of Old RPGs with meaningful stats:
Ragnarok -
    STR - Increases Phys Attack at every certain point get a large boost, increases WEIGHT
    DEX increases accuracy, increases some dodge and attack speed every 12 points(which is a LOT) and damage for Ranged classes/weapons, and a little bit of damage for melee every large # of points invested
    AGI - Increases ATTACK SPEED, grants more Dodge RATING, Dodge % capped at 90,
    Dodge Rating- Say a monster has 300 accuracy and you have a dodge rating of 370 then it's simple math of just 370-300 = 70% dodge, can't exceed 90.
    VIT - Grants FLAT damage reduction & more health and more health regen
    FLAT DAMAGE reduction okay your question might be well I need like 40000 vit to mitigate like 80k of damage then right? No ragnarok's defense is that armor and gear's defense reduces damage by %, so if you have 100 armor you're basically invincible, which isn't possible to acquire in the game but it'll be armor from gear which is anywhere from 1-100(100 being unattainable in any form from cards or +'ing your armor) and then subtract vit flat damage, dont' forget you have skills and other things too that help this defense or damage mitigation for EACH class uniquely with their abilities.
    LUK - Grants "LUCK" dodge, more critical chance, ??? effects
    INT - Grants more magic power, more magic regen, more magic DMG.


Class example:
Hunter
    INT - Affects Hawk damage, more mana pool(skills like double strafe eat mana fast but super strong multiplier on damage)
    DEX - Affects Bow DMG, Increase accuracy, minor dodge increase
    STR - Affects Bow DMG - Lets you carry more arrows too, NO accuracy gain (missing reallly sucks)
    LUK - More CRIT or More Occurrence of Auto-Hawk strike on normal attacks.
    AGI - More ASPD, more dodge


Well you might argue "Wizard is going to just go all INT DUH!"
Well Wizards of course are shooting huge spells of destruction so yeah they'll be more stronger, but more squishy and less mobile&agile as a Hunter, but they have like CC effects that help them balance that out. as well the hunter has skills to boost their own powers further.

End result from the example above: Your choices of developing your character aren't exactly easy to distinguish nor how you're going to fit your character to somethign that YOU want.

Some items also had stat requirements and level requirements but if you make the choices and design of those items that have requirements be enticing enough and optimal enough between just even 3 items for that class it's already going to be a tough choice for the player, obviously if one is greater than the rest the other 2 are ignored, but if they're equal then you have uniqueness among players & diversity as well.

But this is from a game that's 12 years old as an example, (Ragnarok released in 2000 much like Diablo 2). And over 12 years you would at least expect an attempt to innovate something different or better with more categories coming from a rich company with a previous title as a premise/foundation. Not the reverse; dumbing down a system down to Main stat + vit & auto allocation of the same path everyone takes.

B) You can grind for 1000 hours and waste so much time ID bad loot over and over repeatedly but couldn't be bothered to click a + button next to a stat for 5 seconds? This speaks for itself as a reason.

C) If I didn't want a stat allocated into a certain category for what ever reason then I am accepting something against my own wishes as development of my character. I'm not a player who goes looks for guide and copy every path just for an optimal efficient build unless I just want to go through and find out the story and not give a crap about any RPG element in the game.

You know most things about games of the past was the learning and discovering in a game. Diablo 3 there's nothing much to discover past that first run and first levelling of a class to Level 60 not to mention going through the same story 4x through in repeated dialogue at scripted points.

That being said, if auto allocation occurs and I have no choice in the matter then I know everyone else out there is the same as me. This is already pretty poor, for a famous game I know then it is TONS and TONS and WAVES AND WAVES of people that are EXACTLY the SAME as my character in THAT CLASS... -_-. If only the real world worked like that we'd have no qualms about anything.

EDIT: I also have no suggestions for stats and how they should be implemented, with the way things are now that's up to Blizzard and the devs to decide. it's not clear how they should be changed/if they are to be changed but the above is a 12 year old system as an example that Ragnarok uses which invigorates diversity & choice & meaningful change between all characters made in their game and fairly simplistic. My explanation of autoallocation is more so why it shouldn't exist or it CAN exist but it should only be a choice to let the system auto-allocate for you, not force you into it.

And how an old game had systems inspired already to lead into multiple diversities and that game is full of skill trees and is immensively popular, so those telling me skill trees & stat points is outdated, tell that to a 12 year old game still surviving and is massively going on updates still. It's only outdated if your skill trees/stats don't actually offer any equality between power & variation.

Re-spec should only be to a certain limited amount just incase you need to experiment a little bit, and only offered a full-respec at max by doing some kind of long tedious quest that may be equivalent to levelling from beginning to that end-type situation. <- oh look a suggestion,

for Diablo's Skill systems, don't see it happening, they need to just enlarge the pool, as in like Guild Wars 1 style. (1000+ skills jesus no other game has that) maybe not to that extent but if full-respec of skills is available all the time there should be equal efficient optimal builds that have players laughing behind their monitors producing different effects with each build just as optimally as they can with/without gear. If gear is a determinant on skill builds and their entire efficiency then your items need to be re-evaluated.

Apart from that the system does it for me and babies it down for me and is practically useless, if it's automatically allocated, why bother even showing any of it to begin with? Just hide it all and leave it at 0 for base stat and have everything reflect on my gear only if the design was so keen on cutting so many features out and simplifying/automating/restricting it for the player.

Which leads me into this...
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Paragon Levelling - This is just an extension of your grind, I wouldn't call it an improvement as well, it's just an "illusion" of accomplishment past level 60 which grants nothing but extra "auto-allocated" stats. At first when I saw it being put in I was tempted to re-login and play, but to find out it's just more automated stats even, made it pointless. But after having the thought of just main stat & vit, why doesn't my Paragon levels just tunnel all those stats gained directly into main stat?
It is just a weaker form of levelling from 1-60, just without skills being unlocked. sigh...

You'd hit EXTREMELY harder for each class and damage wouldn't be an issue. What is it 400 to main stat at Paragon Level 100? I don't remember but the other ones are like 300 200 100 or something if you added all those straight directly into main stat that's like 600% increase on top of that 400% main stat gain based on my fictional value here to your damage since each point in main stat = +1% damage.

And to think every class can achieve this means your grind suddenly multiplied by like 3000x. Paragon Levelling is just Levelling to level 60 maybe 1000x through. It's not hard to do such a thing for any programmer/game to extend a grind it takes seconds to get the core feature made, and just maybe a week or a day to get the interface/graphics in.

It's just a number extension, say you hit 10000 damage and that's the damage cap, well let's increase and it and pad some zeros and make the cap 10000000000. Let's see you, the player, achieve that now. *facepalm* no difference it's just a bigger number, although in terms of damage and destruction that has more meaning than a "level status" grind. 100 Paragon just means - you've been playing and grinding and doing the same thing for months on end and automating yourself into a simplistic routine; that's how brains deteriorate. In the end you only have "endurance" to show for it.

Go play Silkroad Online and grind 4 million skill points for your character by level 120, and I'll believe you really know what a grind is.
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Death Timer - Why is there even one when you're in solo play? It hinders not only the player, wastes their precious time, has them sitting there watching a stop watch, and rubbing a message of "You Died" in your face yeah we get it, game over, well let me click the Respawn/Restart button already.

The numerous amount of times dying over and over with your character is just an experience to help learn/build strategy. But forcing them into a death timer that increases as you die more and more is just stupid. I'm sorry to say and that's harsh but it's true. Unless this has been fixed(Which I doubt), then this still holds as a strong argument just for solo players.
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Infernal Machine - Serves like an event in any MMO it's a scavenger hunt and doesn't seem to thrilling just watching videos and streamers do it. I'm being honest here, it really feels lik an event being held in an MMO, except those FREE MMO's give these kinds of things seasonally and at a higher rate Diablo 3 will ever gain. Even other games do it too not just MMOs. But most aren't priced at 59.99$ they're generally 40 and below.
examples; Dragon Nest, Vindictus, C9, Rusty Hearts, Ragnarok, Guild Wars 2, Killing Floor, The Secret World, FFXIV:ARR,

Reason being you paid 59.99$ already, sure there's DLC and patch updates and such these days and then you're going to say "Oh you're so entitled you paid for the game and demanding more", no screw you, think about it a bit, I'm NOT demanding more, i'm saying HEY LOOK AT YOUR COMPETITION if you're going to let them give more options to us players than you do then we will indeed sincerely leave or come to the forums and post about their games.

FFXIV:ARR For example the DIRECTOR even said to take WoW as a base test and improve on that and make it into their own style, and to study market trends to see what worked and get player feedback and ENGAGE IN CONVERSATION WITH PLAYERS in a LARGE scale not just a few random select individuals, through FORUMS, SOCIAL MEDIA, BLOGS & FREQUENT POSTS.

Result - GAME LOOKS MUCH BETTER ALREADY just on VIDEOS, if the release is CONSISTENT with the TRAILER then YOU'VE GOT GOLD(D3 trailers vs. D3 release COMPLETELY DIFFERENT GAMES!!). Why me, as a customer, is even posting or saying this is unknown maybe I'm just stupid to point out good ways to make money these days being a young fool who follows trends and looks at them daily due to passion. Ironic right talking about how to make money and you say "hahaha Diablo 3 made 10 million sales on first day". If you're that confident I'd love you to boast your numbers when you release your expansion and their sales on Day 1. If they're great fine, I don't know what I'm talking about if not, well see you around then I'll probably be long gone by then since this game doesn't seem to care much already these days. It's strange isn't it how Mists of Pandaria came out and your subscriber base was like 5 million yet only HALF of that population bought the expansion, and you releasing this sensitive data might not even be true in terms of having 5 million subscribers.

I mean that's how Microsoft totally kept up with the times right and just wanted to hope their old faithfuls keep purchasing their product (yeah right, I'm a windows lover but I'm not stupid enough to say Microsoft dominated the market ever since the iPod came out and completely missed the mark to put their stamp on the mobile product movement in technology)

If you're really out to oust me in saying i'm entitled and such i'm going to say you're a dumb consumer and should be milked for cash. I'll literally go out there and make a game called The Devil and have 3 sequels on it, the first one being amazing and utilizing super old systems, I'll literally copy and paste everything Diablo 3 is except without an Auction House(probably because I can't get an agreement going with PayPal), and make it black and white, with spells being the only thing causing color, and have higher detailed 3D models and throw it out there for 30$ half the price, then release the 2 sequels and dumb down the systems and charge you 35$ for it and laugh my head off. Yeah okay no thanks but there's a scenario I would attempt if I wanted to insult the game industry's consumer.

No thanks. I would treat you as if you knew mathematics about vectors & matrix algebra, and not be stupid enough to make wrong decisions for yourself repeatedly or have a system guide you through it, instead I'd give you the choice of if you wanted to be babied through or not, but for those who don't get babied through expect the game to be hard, but rewarding when you understand it, and also have bonus features/hidden scenes or bonuses for not being babied through.

Which leads me finally into this...
You've forced a players hand to go through the game 4x through(Diablo3), the story is EXTREMELY LINEAR compared to almost EVERYTHING on the market today. Why then is there no behind the scenes development as you reach further difficulties? It would've been nice to have known how Belial came to possess that idiot of a child emperor, or how Azmodan actually wiped out the entire basement of Bastion's Keep prior to your arrival as extra scenes upon reaching new difficulties? Just food for thought.
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Actual Improvement idea; new game mode:

"Azmodan's Siege Mode" - Play as your character defending bastion's keep and various regions of a huge castle/keep/fortress with other players of up to capacities of 16 and dynamically fight against super strong AI, while others are defending certain areas

Azmodan's Generals and others invade from certain and different venus like basement, south gate, front gate, etc. what not, and battlefield regions that are heavily occupied by other mobs and things while a small group out of the 16 say like maybe 3-5 of you go guerilla force style to go kill Azmodan and actually stop the invasion and victory the path to Azmodan is only opened after defeating certain generals too to move up the ranks so you don't just tunnel and ninja force straight @ azmodan for speed runs

At the end reward chest to drop nothing but good loot with maybe crap rolls but definitely a guaranteed chance.
Caters to all levels, strongest and highest chars being the ones seeking out and assassinating the greatest tactician Azmodan...(who'll reveal his plans to you! *giggle*).

The rest would speak with NPCs or work together with soldiers at stopping lesser forces from occupying regions up quickly causing more mobs to spawn, if castle gets overwhelmed and the bastion keep's human generals all die you lose and party fails.

Run an algorithm of the party and determine it's total DPS and level and stats and power of each character separately before it starts and set a "MONSTER POWER LEVEL" accordingly to the party in play.

Approx. time of actual entire mission should take like 45min-1hour. Setup should be just people filling up a lobby or even the castle, and the war doesn't begin until at least 14 people are in. You people claim the game isn't dead yet for those who love it so garnering 14 random's in shouldn't be hard right? Also sounds rather hard to bot for so many things going on.

EDIT: Taken from my response to another person on page 4.
My suggestion for this was to also include some kind of ranking system and ladder that everyone's clamoring for like a Siege Rating just for those wanting brag about being able to delegate or get a high ranking or do well in teamwork or something in the siege mode. Apart from that also a teamwork kind of thing to encourage more co-op, and for those who aren't interested in PvP, and also those looking for a challenge + rewards as well for completing it, with the request of having a dps and paragon level detection where the higher and more time invested from players and higher power that is calculated from their character they're using which would then cause the challenge/game mode's difficulty and enemies to increase significantly based on the group of players participating.

Kill multiple problems with 1 feature & differentiating content, that includes mostly a recycled map of Act3, without the traversal of running through the whole act just to get to Azmodan, more like Act3 played simultaneously without having to go across the bridge and down through the crater of arreat but instead to just get to the end of the battlefield outside the keep instead, and maybe even include different maps of the other sides of the keep/castle with a bit of NPCs and soldiers helping.

Can't be that hard to place in if you have followers/Tyrael or random soldiers you find on the field to help you already in the regular campaign. Most of these things can be recycled already. Just need to be placed around.

Seriously think about it for implementation it's not far-fetched you don't have to recreate EVERYTHING from the bottom up, it's more so just a different game mode being made in the Public Games section, mob groups being spawned & directed towards the defend objective and bosses all over the place
That's just ONE idea out of like 15 in my head for improvement already. You might not like it but I only have to say this what are you doing now in Diablo 3? Checking your Auctions or just running the same path of least resistance for the most efficient farm?

Exponential Growth in power - D2 had a linear growth in power in terms of gear and equipment which makes them ultimately in further and later levels not as obsolete whereas in D3 your equipment grants power to your character exponentially causing any previous equipment in any level under 59 to be completely useless later on once you find anything of iLvl 60+

EDIT: Taken from other threads and added on detail to some
Diablo 3 has...
* Less shrines
* Less items(grays whites never useful ever, blues not considered these days, rare... rarely, mostly legendary)
* Less/No item enchantments (Goodbye mystic and goldsink)
* Smaller maps
* Less randomized maps (fixed storyline, at least d2's path to story is different even though the cathedrals and such were fixed but the ways leading there aren't)
* Less classes (the series left off with 7 at the end of d2)
* Less interesting quest rewards(gold + exp... not to mention Nerf on azmodan kill quest because ppl used it to power lvl to 60 early)
* NO LADDER
* NO PVP(not yet for over 8 months... most games that are RPG come with PvP at start.)
* Less gems
* No runes (as in the slottable kind)
* No jewels
* No charms
* God awful crafting (it's like as bad as loot drops but nothing special)
* No gambler (good bye gold sink)
* No cross travel between acts (tedium)
* No commas on GOLD auction house, no excuse about different currencies here, it's in your inventory gold your AH listings and trades but not in your input box. (poor excuse).
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Positive Criticisms(Since some people really had to know what I thought was good, may contain backlash criticisms of negatives though.):
Cinematics were great, top of the notch, was so sad deckard had to be burned away, drew a few tears there, but well as story developed I felt less attached though sadly, but nonetheless great cinematics.

Combat Fluidity - the combat runs smoothly as well as character movement, but that is all the praise I can give. Some things as I've mentioned in other threads don't do so well in terms of Combat Mechanics. Fluidity and smoothness is something entirely different IMO.

Environments - very detailed and filled, not one part seemed empty or lack of polish. However characters and heroes that we players use don't seem to match.
To add more if I can think of any.

EDIT: There's no TL;DR because if there was then I'd be lacking detail/explanation/reasoning/example exhibiting in being constructive. So no I won't write a TL;DR part.

EDIT: I would also like to extend my gratitude for the response regarding some of these points from Vaeflare, with that in hand, I will probably add one more idea out of the 15 I had in my head below the suggested one; Azmodan's Siege Mode, on a current system, Monster Power.

What's your thought? (Probably I'm total hogwash since I haven't logged in since August).
Vaeflare 		January 8th, 2013 at 11:43pm Thanks for taking the time to craft such a constructive and well-intentioned thread. We really do appreciate the passion of Diablo III players like yourself, and you have some very fair points and feedback, so /highfive for that!

And how an old game had systems inspired already to lead into multiple diversities and that game is full of skill trees and is immensively popular, so those telling me skill trees & stat points is outdated, tell that to a 12 year old game still surviving and is massively going on updates still. It's only outdated if your skill trees/stats don't actually offer any equality between power & variation.


While we enjoyed allocating stats and having intricate skill trees in Diablo II (as well as the benefits they provided), we ultimately feel the current stat and skill system is better for Diablo III. We heavily iterated on the skill trees and stat points in Diablo III for quite some time, but we felt that they simply didn’t fit the direction we wanted to go with the game. They added artificial complexity to the game, but didn’t actually add much in the way of customization. They also often rendered a remarkable penalty, in that if you mis-allocated a stat point or skill the wrong way, or simply wanted to change it at a later point in time, you were out of luck, as you were locked to your original choice.

We strongly feel that in general, players will know whether or not they like a particular skill or play style only after they’ve had a chance to try it out for themselves. And while there definitely is some intrigue and fun to permanently committing yourself to a particular character design, it’s not what we envision for Diablo III. We want players to be able to experiment and find a combination of skills and runes that they enjoy and that fit them the best. We also don’t believe that the current skill system would really benefit from a free allocation of stats, either. We think that players can achieve a sizable level of customization through runes, and that this system fits in much better with the overall design of the game.

You speak of rares or magics and you'll just get laughed at, all everyone talks about is Legendary this that, mempo skorn, manticore blah blah, I haven't played and read enough to know that's all is being mentioned mainly for items and things, which still isn't even fully viable on the new Monster Power...? And one last thing I know Rares are still somewhat useful just as cheap trash gear now until you find your first Legendary and such, but past that you never look back really


If you haven’t played in a few months, you might have missed out on some of the item improvements we’ve made along the way. In terms of patch 1.0.4, you might want to check out the blog we did regarding Legendary Item Improvements as well as the various overall item improvements we made in patch 1.0.5.

Regarding the death timer: The incrementing death timer is actually being removed in 1.0.7.
Vaeflare 		January 9th, 2013 at 12:52am
Paragon Levelling - This is just an extension of your grind, I wouldn't call it an improvement as well, it's just an "illusion" of accomplishment past level 60 which grants nothing but extra "auto-allocated" stats. At first when I saw it being put in I was tempted to re-login and play, but to find out it's just more automated stats even, made it pointless. But after having the thought of just main stat & vit, why doesn't my Paragon levels just tunnel all those stats gained directly into main stat?
It is just a weaker form of levelling from 1-60, just without skills being unlocked. sigh...


The Paragon system was designed as a way to help address Magic Find/gear-swapping and the Magic Find stat in general along with offering an end-game character progression grind. The Diablo III end-game is fundamentally for people who enjoy making their character feel more powerful, investing time into slaughtering hordes of enemies, and hunting for loot. The Paragon system provides players with a predictable reward they can work towards. But for us, grinding alone is not enough. We like that there are still random item drops, you can change your build if you get bored, and it's all designed to complement a fluid combat system.

01/03/2013 12:13 AMPosted by KradisZ
Infernal Machine - Serves like an event in any MMO it's a scavenger hunt and doesn't seem to thrilling just watching videos and streamers do it. I'm being honest here, it really feels lik an event being held in an MMO, except those FREE MMO's give these kinds of things seasonally and at a higher rate Diablo 3 will ever gain.


In terms of free additional content, we’d love to add more events similar to Infernal Machine to the Diablo universe, but whatever we add needs to fit within the scope of the game and needs to be weighed against other design costs. D3 isn’t an MMO, so it’s not going to receive regular content additions like an MMO (in terms of frequency and reward structures), but we’re definitely keeping our options open for the future, so don’t hesitate to let us know what interests you!

FFXIV:ARR For example the DIRECTOR even said to take WoW as a base test and improve on that and make it into their own style, and to study market trends to see what worked and get player feedback and ENGAGE IN CONVERSATION WITH PLAYERS in a LARGE scale not just a few random select individuals, through FORUMS, SOCIAL MEDIA, BLOGS & FREQUENT POSTS.


Pertaining to engaging in conversations with the players: we aim to do just that, and we’re dedicated to improving on this further. I for one am extremely active on our official social media channels (especially Twitter and Facebook), and have recently started branching out to other communities to try and connect a bit more there as well (including Reddit and DeviantArt). One of the things I think that it’s key to realize, however, is that while part of our job is indeed to be a presence on the forums and communicate with all of you, part of that job also entails stepping away from the forums so that we can gather feedback, communicate with the developers, attend meetings, moderate, draft up social media, write blogs: the whole shebang. The behind-the-scenes portion of our job isn’t easy to see, but hopefully the numerous improvements that have been made over the passing months shows that we’ve been listening and passing along feedback, and we plan to continue doing just that. :)
Vaeflare 		January 9th, 2013 at 1:29am
01/08/2013 04:54 PMPosted by atom428
Regarding the death timer: The incrementing death timer is actually being removed in 1.0.7.


could we please pick a direction and stick with it? sorry to complain but i had to get it out.


We feel that as the game has evolved and stands now, there are sufficient penalties associated with character death, so the incrementing death timer it doesn’t feel necessary anymore.
Vaeflare 		January 9th, 2013 at 2:28am
01/08/2013 05:28 PMPosted by Gunny
What's she's really saying is "Be glad we did anything for you. Regardless of what you may think, the changes were great and the game is big fun. Item choices are interesting, stat allocation is spot on, and if you can't see that then.. well, you're just not doing it right."


Yeah it’s… not really cool to try and paraphrase my words in order to twist the sentiment of my post. :-/

Design decisions are made with a lot in mind, and it’s an ongoing development process that often involves a lot of people. While I can try to offer insight into why we’ve made or are considering certain design decisions, at the end of the day, people’s opinions on it will undoubtedly vary from person-to-person, and since the folks here at Blizzard are gamers just like you, you can bet this passionate bunch has some varied opinions about all sorts of things relating to Diablo III.

While there are aspects of the game you’re bound to jive with, there are undoubtedly others that simply might not be your cup of tea (or blood, since we’re talking about slaying demons here). If you’ve noticed something that you think could be improved, we truly do want to hear about it, but bear in mind that while a lot of feedback we receive sounds really neat (and believe me, I’ve seen some incredibly awesome ideas floating around here), that doesn’t mean we have the bandwidth to do it all, nor that we necessarily believe that certain ideas are best for Diablo III. But as I’ve said before, we’re down to continue to improve it and make it the best game we possibly can.
Vaeflare 		January 9th, 2013 at 3:08am
Regarding that last part I'm glad to hear you're socially active among the venues that most people check and see, but the forums here are equally as important, if not even more. It's quite disheartening to see these threads & many other things go without any response for pretty much half a month each time.

I know you all have to attend meetings conferences design shakedowns and whatnot, I'm not oblivious to that for sure, but it'd nice to get a check-in from you and the other CMs maybe once a week, daily is just asking too much. I've seen Blizzard's studio and HQ(pretty bold statement I guess), seen development teams and gone through development cycles, game design classes & studios and I know that job is extremely demanding from customers(i.e the players) and highly stressful with crazy crunch time and OT during certain phases of milestones and the like. But a simple drop-in weekly would be nice rather than silence for half a month to something else.

Maybe even just rumor debunking would be nice, or small tidbits of why the blog posts are delayed or something. Not asking for miracles or lies here just some communication.


With the exception of our holiday break and whatever time each of us take off for events or vacations throughout the year, we’re here, and we’re busy. Each week we have numerous blogs that go up concerning a variety of topics, and pretty much every weekday one or more of us are actively posting updates to our social media sites as and posting here on the forums. While what we post on might not always be the issue that concerns you most, I can assure you we don’t go months without posting (I’ve posted about a half a dozen times here today, and Lylirra is very active as well). But when time and schedule allows, I’m personally trying to squeeze in more time to post here and elsewhere on the “interwebs.” :)

As I said though, we’re definitely interested on continuing to improve communication with the community. One of the things we’re looking into is a better method to make sure that important “Blue” posts are highlighted, since I suspect many inadvertently are overlooked (which explains some of the repeat questions I see so often).