Blizzard on Diablo III

The Diablo III Forums have a Message from Mike Morhaime reflecting on Diablo III in the two months since the action/RPG sequel launched. He recaps and explains the game's growing pains after launch, and goes on to discuss its future, saying they are working on a way to make the game playable without playing Diablo tycoon on the auction house, reducing issues related to the game's always-on requirement, and they are "also working on a gameplay system that will provide players who have max-level, high-powered characters new goals to strive for as an alternative to the 'item hunt'." Here's a bit:
You’ve seen some of that work already in patch 1.0.3, and you’ll see additional improvements with patch 1.0.4. On the game balance front, this update will contain changes designed to further deliver on the team’s goal of promoting “build diversity,” with buffs to many rarely used, underpowered class abilities. Another topic we’ve seen actively discussed is the fact that better, more distinct Legendary items are needed. We agree. Patch 1.0.4 will also include new and improved Legendary items that are more interesting, more powerful, and more epic in ways you probably won’t be expecting.

We’re also working on a number of interface updates, including social improvements that will allow players to more easily view their friends’ achievements, more quickly join games, and more efficiently communicate with each other. In addition, we’ll be making updates to the auction house in the future to provide players with better information through tooltips and notices, offer improved search functionality, and more.
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Re: Blizzard on Diablo III
Jul 21, 2012, 11:02
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Re: Blizzard on Diablo III Jul 21, 2012, 11:02
Jul 21, 2012, 11:02
 
Verno wrote on Jul 20, 2012, 10:28:
Attempting to get back on topic after Krovven's usual trolling:

Mike says that they are buffing legendary items in ways that players aren't anticipating, I hope hes being sincere. I want silly shit like "on hit summons 2 skeletons" or "10% chance to cast Meteor at target" type stuff. The game has enough bullshit Slightly Increment Numbers modifiers already. It's an instanced action RPG, they don't need to worry about balance other than making sure everyone can kill shit. There's a reason people liked +skill items in Diablo 2 and while buffing your main DPS stat might be an equivalent in Diablo 3, it isn't represented in a way that is enjoyable to players.

Gear also needs to be less universal to builds. Main Stat + all res + vit or whatever pretty much translate to everything. Most people just swap gear for MF or maybe to throw on a single defensive item like a shield. Heck, due to NV people try to avoid swapping at all. Compare this to Diablo 2 where different builds had drastically different gear setups and you start to see the reduced variety and complexity. A smiter was geared nothing like a hammerdin in Diablo 2. Contrast to that to Diablo 3 where my Wizard can swap from a melee-critmass build to Disintegrate ranged without changing anything. Those kinds of decisions really affect the games longevity value more than they realized.

The class skills/runes really need a redo as well, they went too drastic at the end of beta and really should have tested longer. Looking at my Witch Doctor is a chore, he has so many interesting things and pretty much none of them are viable. Even the summons start dropping off in usefulness in Nightmare, let alone Inferno.
As long as they keep the silly stuff actually useful, it's sad when 100% of the 5-6 legendaries I've seen total in 100+ hours are made even more useless than they had to be by having random stats in useless combinations, such as DEX+INT on a barbarian-only weapon (useless anyway due to far too little DPS).. It's currently like "YAY LEGENDARY!!!!! oh.... :((".. No thanks to +10% chance to spawn a menagerie of dancing leprechauns

Completely agree this being an instanced RPG. They really need to stop balancing drops around a global economy/auction house. The chance of finding anything good in this game is already tiny, so that proverbial carrot to keep you playing is completely missing. In my own experience we're talking less than one usable item in 20 hours of A1/A2 inferno farming. With usable mostly meaning sellable.

I really wonder how they spent all that development time. The core gameplay is solid enough but the game feels *rough* in spots. Really braindead simple stuff that shouldn't have been overlooked with any form of playtesting. It seems obvious that Inferno basically got the "Hell x 50" treatment. Moreover you have silly things like succubi homing blood stars debuffing melee class armor by 50% (i.e. die twice as fast to nearby phase beasts) while ranged classes are merely inconvenience with attack debuff.. Then there's all the completely useless skills/runes, the fact that two-handed weapons are seriously gimpy compared to weapon+shield or dual-wielding, and a whole slew of other things.
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