**OFFICIAL** Diablo 3 Thread

[Doppel]

As mentioned, I've not been given a beta pass for this or played it, but reading the comments and knowing the history of this game (many delays), I get the strong impression that leadership is lacking on this project. It is a risk many successful groups go through. They lose the hunger for release and focus and just spin their wheels, resting on laurels, because there is no pressure to release anything.

It's amazing to me how many changes Blizzard appears to be making to extremely essential gameplay this late--or what should be this late--in the development process. Do they actually have any deadlines? Do they care? Are they really so well off they can indefinitely tweak and fiddle and nitpick? As I probably mentioned earlier, if they had basically taken Diablo II, given it some new worlds, juiced the graphics and called it D3 that alone would have sucked a bunch of people into stores to buy it. I can't imagine it really takes this much effort to enhance the skills tree that they are substantially going back to the drawing board trying to figure out what to do.

 

[Dumac]

Q2 2012. I'm guessing June.

June? When they basically just retooled the whole skill system?

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Are they really so well off they can indefinitely tweak and fiddle and nitpick?

They're so well off they could probably say no, we're not going to release Diablo III it wasn't meeting our standards and drop all the progress they've made on it. That said I think with activision having some obvious control over Blizzard won't let that happen, and won't let them remain in development forever. Then again these massive changes could all be a red herring to hide the delays needed to make it cross platform.

 

[Fenixgoon]

They're so well off they could probably say no, we're not going to release Diablo III it wasn't meeting our standards and drop all the progress they've made on it. That said I think with activision having some obvious control over Blizzard won't let that happen, and won't let them remain in development forever. Then again these massive changes could all be a red herring to hide the delays needed to make it cross platform.

they did that with the warcraft adventure game a number of years ago, before they were super duper successful i think.

 

[Pheran]

Well, at least Diablo 3 and Mass Effect 3 won't be coming out around the same time as I originally feared.

 

[badb0y]

They know Diablo 3 has to fill in the shoes of Diablo 2. People have been waiting for this game for ten years, I would rather have it late and amazing then early and disappointing.

Personally, I think they need to rework the skill/stat mechanics and make it more customizable and flexible. I like the atmosphere and the content we have seen so far so I don't think they have to change much there. As for the difficulty, I remember Diablo 3 being fairly easy in the beginning to it wasn't late into the game that I thought it got hard.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

they did that with the warcraft adventure game a number of years ago, before they were super duper successful i think.

They more or less did it with starcraft ghost as well. While those were somewhat far along they weren't as much as d3 as far as I know. If I remember right from a making of dvd there was a project they never announced that they dropped to work on wow because they just weren't feeling it.

 

[Aikouka]

It's amazing to me how many changes Blizzard appears to be making to extremely essential gameplay this late--or what should be this late--in the development process.

I guess if I were "in charge" at Blizzard, my first question would be, "why now?" Not that the change is a bad thing, but rather... why didn't it get implemented sooner? Were there complaints about the original variant before, and what happened to the complaints?

I can't fault them too much though. I work in software, and I know I've performed reviews, had no qualms with an implementation, but later on found things that I considered issues. Sometimes it just doesn't pop at me until I sit down to use it, and say, "Wow! This was a really bad idea!"

 

[lupi]

As for release, I'd day they were probably hoping for an early q1 release (like before financial data release). With the recent wholesale changes, upper management probably thinking about a (early) q2 title while the crew racing to get it out during the summer.

There's a few concepts that it almost seems. They can't decide on how to implement, so even a summertime release could be in jeopardy.

 

[isekii]

As for release, I'd day they were probably hoping for an early q1 release (like before financial data release). With the recent wholesale changes, upper management probably thinking about a (early) q2 title while the crew racing to get it out during the summer.

There's a few concepts that it almost seems. They can't decide on how to implement, so even a summertime release could be in jeopardy.

It seems like they're still trying to figure out the whole skills and rune system.

Also No skill points to mess with points not to mention character stat points ?

 

[Doppel]

I guess if I were "in charge" at Blizzard, my first question would be, "why now?" Not that the change is a bad thing, but rather... why didn't it get implemented sooner? Were there complaints about the original variant before, and what happened to the complaints?

I can't fault them too much though. I work in software, and I know I've performed reviews, had no qualms with an implementation, but later on found things that I considered issues. Sometimes it just doesn't pop at me until I sit down to use it, and say, "Wow! This was a really bad idea!"

Yeah but how many months or years does that revelation take to hit you?

 

[BudAshes]

Yeah but how many months or years does that revelation take to hit you?

They do have an almost infinite source of income in WOW at this point. I kind of wonder why they even bother with other games anymore.

 

[tedrodai]

It seems like they're still trying to figure out the whole skills and rune system.

Items/item mods too. Remember the placeholder stats they had on the official page's game guide for everything up to legendary/set items just before the beta started? BORING stuff. They were still nowhere close to being ready with those.

 

[SMOGZINN]

I can't fault them too much though. I work in software, and I know I've performed reviews, had no qualms with an implementation, but later on found things that I considered issues. Sometimes it just doesn't pop at me until I sit down to use it, and say, "Wow! This was a really bad idea!"

I don't think it was any one thing that was not working. I think that the the Q&A department was focused on specifics until Beta started (or maybe a few months into Beta) feedback from their Q&A, then they switched over to doing full play throughs. When doing full play throughs it they started reporting a serious problem, the game just was not fun. Nothing seemed to matter but your weapon, and that really only on the hand to hand characters. The skills all are just ways to deal damage and once you were past the look, they all worked much the same, and runes were really just graphical enhancements to them, so you just pick 2 and keep spamming them.

So, there was a major overhall, and since it is reactionary instead of a planned system, are still working on getting it working.

 

[CottonRabbit]

Yes, it's amazing how little progress they've made since announcing the game in June 2008. The game looked close to finished by the 2010 Blizzcon. Then they decided they wanted to basically be different for the sake of being different and got rid of a bunch of standard RPG features.

 

[gorcorps]

I can't imagine it really takes this much effort to enhance the skills tree that they are substantially going back to the drawing board trying to figure out what to do.

But there AREN'T any skill trees anymore. It's a skill stick at best... every level you unlock a single skill or rune to another skill. You get no choice in the matter and there's no "branches" or "paths" to follow.

 

[Doppel]

But there AREN'T any skill trees anymore. It's a skill stick at best... every level you unlock a single skill or rune to another skill. You get no choice in the matter and there's no "branches" or "paths" to follow.

I am reading what you're saying, but if it's true it's so fvcking insane I refuse to believe it. As I may have mentioned, though it shames me, I am playing through Diablo 2 now and my necromancer is almost 100% summoning, with a couple of curse spells. I haven't done an entire branch of possible spells, out of design. If I had picked another branch the game would still be playable, but quite different in how I do combat. That's kind of the damn essence of any game that has even an inkling of RPG/skills progression. Auto-leveling or forcing down a single path is the ultimate in lame.

 

[Aikouka]

I am reading what you're saying, but if it's true it's so fvcking insane I refuse to believe it. As I may have mentioned, though it shames me, I am playing through Diablo 2 now and my necromancer is almost 100% summoning, with a couple of curse spells. I haven't done an entire branch of possible spells, out of design. If I had picked another branch the game would still be playable, but quite different in how I do combat. That's kind of the damn essence of any game that has even an inkling of RPG/skills progression. Auto-leveling or forcing down a single path is the ultimate in lame.

Consider it this way... if they were to take that Necromancer and put it into Diablo 3, you would just have to take the Summoning skills as all of your active abilities. In a way, it does allow you to do nearly the same thing, but it's also slightly more user friendly for the less advanced crowd.

The only aspect that may get screwed over by this is point allocation. Although, unless someone was doing some crazy, awkward and generally rarely (if ever) used build, point allocations don't change much. Kind of like when I was playing Dungeon Hunter on my iPhone, I would always alternate between putting 2 in my main DPS stat, and the next level, I would put 1 in my DPS stat and 1 in Vitality (health).

 

[Daverino]

I am reading what you're saying, but if it's true it's so fvcking insane I refuse to believe it. As I may have mentioned, though it shames me, I am playing through Diablo 2 now and my necromancer is almost 100% summoning, with a couple of curse spells. I haven't done an entire branch of possible spells, out of design. If I had picked another branch the game would still be playable, but quite different in how I do combat. That's kind of the damn essence of any game that has even an inkling of RPG/skills progression. Auto-leveling or forcing down a single path is the ultimate in lame.

Well that is how it is, at least currently. There was a long post about how they wanted to itemize Runes but simply couldn't do it without turning it into a grind. The intent was to give players the power of new abilities immediately.

So basically every character gets four skills each of which can be augmented by a rune which buffs the skill in a certain way. You then get three passive skills that are available at all times. Skills are broken down into basic skills that generate resources, power skills that consume them, and defensive skills that increase your survivability. And that's pretty much it.

The big problem I see is that the skills that unlock at higher levels are usually more powerful than ones that unlock at lower levels. Same thing goes for Runes. Otherwise, why make people wait for some skills and runes? So the majority of time you just pick the newest greatest ability or Rune available when you level up. Either that or you click the new thing and quickly realize it's worse than what you were using before. The additional problem is that, because everyone has everything available at all times, there are no choices to be made. That means after a few weeks, the community will quickly uncover the best combination of skills to use and cloning will be rampant. This was already true enough in D2 but now the element of experimentation has been removed from the game. On the other hand, you can change back and forth from any set up with a few clicks, and perhaps the D3 team wants people to do this. So your barbarian that rampaged all the way through Act 1 might be gimp in Act 2 unless you change your skills around. Or a particular boss is resistant to your current setup and you need to use another build. Not sure. The Beta is not nearly deep enough to see whether this is the case.

Anyhow, the point is that there are choices to be made in your build but never any sacrifices. Choosing any skill or rune does not cut you off re-choosing at any time. Stats are allocated automatically based on class. The only way to tweak them is with gear. I have not yet seen any gear that modifies your rune or skill abilities.

 

[CottonRabbit]

Well, I hope no one could actually believe that last part is true. I mean, in Diablo II you were locked, you had no option to change your attributes or skills, and all you did then was go on an item hunt to perfect that build by getting the most perfect items. How is having no choice at all, save leveling a new character, more compelling of a game than one where you can use your knowledge, and experience, and change and adapt and min-max as you go? It has a definite psychological premise. I made these choices and for better or worse, they’re mine. But our argument is that it’s not actually a better or more enjoyable game, and the psychology of that customization process isn’t actually based on any real needs for the game to be fun or enjoyable. For some games it absolutely might be, because they have a game style, pacing, or other mechanics that work really well with that kind of system. It is not true for Diablo, and it is not true for World of Warcraft, which is going to a hot swappable format in Mists. We all subscribed to the idea that in an RPG you build a character, there’s an investment in those choices, and that makes the game fun. We do not believe that to be true for these two games any longer, it may make total sense for another game, but for ours it does not. (It is worth noting that in World of Warcraft you don’t pick and choose all of your abilities based on talents, which I would argue makes the Diablo III customization that much more compelling.)

Telling blue post on the design goals at Blizzard. At this point, BF3 gives you more meaningful character building choices.

 

[lupi]

If you've any idea of how wow talents are getting done, they seem to be trying to fit a similar system into d3.

 

[Anonemous]

Having played the beta for almost a week and beat Leoric with all 5 characters, here are my impressions of D3.

The skills are awesome but I'm sad to see runes (as items) gone for the skill runes. Like others have said, people will just copy each other once the optimal set of skills are discovered.

The characters play differently. But it seems the WD is the weakest of the bunch (in the beginning) to level up. It's very noticeable.

My biggest gripe of the game is the chat/bnet system. The current chat GUI makes it extremely lonely since there is barely anyone in chat (1-2 max in each room). You don't get to see what games are available (just what quests are), so it's extremely hard to get into a pub game if you don't have friends/clansmen online. D2 had a great chat GUI, you could make and name games why did they bother killing that? One other question I had is if you get disconnected from a pub game, how the hell are you supposed to get back if you can't even know the name of the game you are in?

 

[RPD]

Man this game went from an omg must buy the second I heard it, to now being in the "meh" catagory to probably won't even buy -_-

 

[Anonemous]

I guess they also addressed the farming issues, the 'boss' Leoric doesn't drop anything good after the first run through and all the Waypoints/quests are reset after you've done them so you would have to start from the very beginning to just to get to the 'boss' so the fastest way is to try to jump in on someone's game that's going for the quest. Since the loot is separated (ala guild wars) whatever drops for you is for YOU while anybody elses drops are hidden so jumping in on someone's boss kill doesn't ruin it for them.

 

[Ns1]

Man this game went from an omg must buy the second I heard it, to now being in the "meh" catagory to probably won't even buy -_-

Same. No desire to even try the beta.