Jay Wilson Apologies for Diablo III Comment; Discusses Game's Future

A lengthy post on the Diablo III forums have a follow-up from Blizzard's Jay Wilson for his Facebook comment in reaction to comments by David Brevik where this developer on the original Diablo questioned some of the design choices made in Diablo III. He apologies to Brevik, saying he "deserves to be treated with greater respect," goes on to explain why he felt the need to defend his team, and concludes his message apologizing to the players in the community as well. In between he discusses the current state of the game, and the work they still have ahead of them to get it where they want it:
Part of the problem, however, is not just item drops, but the variety of things to do within the game. Many of you have stated that there needs to be more to the game than just the item hunt, and we agree completely. The Paragon system is a step in the right direction, giving meta-progress for your time in the game, but it does little to address the variety of activities you can do while playing. I don't think there’s a silver-bullet solution to this problem, but I do think we can make this aspect of the game better, and as such we're planning more than just PvP for the next major patch. Not trying to be coy, but we're still firming things up and will talk about this as soon as we can.

Difficulty has been a constant source of division when discussing the game. Some players believe Diablo has never been about crushing challenges, but more about efficiency and farming. Some players want a game that tests them to their limits. Neither player is wrong. As it stands, Diablo III simply does not provide the tools to allow players to scale the game challenge to something appropriate for them. We set Inferno as the high watermark and took a one-size-fits-all approach to game challenge. Later in the development of Diablo II, the 'players 8' command -- which let people set monster difficulty -- was added to address this issue, and we're considering something similar for the next major Diablo III patch to allow players to make up their own minds about how hard or how easy is right for them.

The Auction House has also proven to be a big challenge. It adds a lot of power for players to trade and acquire items. Getting a great Monk drop that you can trade for better gear for your Wizard is obviously a great benefit, but it does come with a downside. The Auction House can short circuit the natural pace of item drops, making the game feel less rewarding for some players. This is a problem we recognize. At this point we're not sure of the exact way to fix it, but we’re discussing it constantly, and we believe it's a problem we can overcome.

While these are some of the major issues with Diablo III, they aren't the only things we're looking at. On a daily basis we ask ourselves if the classes are satisfying to play, if rares and champions are fun to fight, if they’re tuned well relative to normal monsters. Can we make further improvements to social elements of the game? How can items be even better?
View : : :
10.
 
Re: Jay Wilson Apologies for Diablo III Comment; Discusses Game's Future
Aug 22, 2012, 21:37
10.
Re: Jay Wilson Apologies for Diablo III Comment; Discusses Game's Future Aug 22, 2012, 21:37
Aug 22, 2012, 21:37
 
The (main) problem with Diablo 3 is that to keep items worthwhile they had to neuter the drop rates, well now it's the item rolls (stats on items) to keep them valuable on the AH.

This in turn with having a low level cap and making boss runs pointless just put people off their own game. There was literally no point in logging in for a quick boss run - as you got NOTHING in return.

I just laugh at the comments devs/cms make that the AH had no influence on game design. It was clearly built from the ground up to take advantage of it which in return shat on their own gamers. The game lost what it was that made diablo in the first place - an Item hunt. Instead it's just a gold grind or an AH simulator.
Date
Subject
Author
 10.
Aug 22, 2012Aug 22 2012
Re: Jay Wilson Apologies for Diablo III Comment; Discusses Game's Future