stusser
2761
I have no particular problem with the salvage changes. I like that it’s no longer compulsory to pick up non-magical items.
I’m not a huge fan of being forced to go back to town to sell/salvage equipment, though. Even though it only takes a minute or two, that’s a minute I’m not hitting monsters with my disintegrate ray.
Agreed. If my toon is badass enough to identify magical items, he/she should be able to break common items into their basic components.
Gendal
2763
Me either. Wandering around town for the bazillionth time is not as nice as just clicking something in the inventory. It’s a minor complaint on my part, everything else sounds fine. I fully support Blizzard taking as long as they can, the quote above is overused these days but still just as true.
I think part of what Blizzard is (correctly) reading is that making something possible has a tendency to make it necessary with anal-retentive gamers (i.e., nearly all gamers).
Making white items salvageable limits their hands for the loot-pinata effect because gamers will compulsively stop and break up all those items. Now, they get the loot pinata effect and a small percentage will bother to collect them to sell. Cash itself is too abstracted from the power mechanics of crafting to make gamers feel that it is compulsory.
I think it is a well-thought out change that reasonable persons can disagree on. Basically, it’s another sign that these guys have deconstructed the art of game making beyond “my toon is badass”. They are essentially engineering how the game will be played.
No doubt, but I’m not certain that in 2012 forcing gamers to break gameflow because of a restriction such as inventory space is a good choice. Sure, the pace of combat was affected even with the cube present in the inventory screen, but it will feel more disruptive to use the town portal, walk to the blacksmith, bring up his window, break those items down, walk back to the portal, adn then get back to slaying. It’s not a big deal to me either way, but having played in the beta (borrowed a friend’s account) I think I prefer the former system.
From reading the explanation, they view Diablo as two games: the action game and the loot/crafting/design game. They felt the cube muddled the two and they wanted more distinct periods of the loot game.
Frankly, Blizzard has never been about giving players that much “choice” in terms of how the game is played. There may be a zillion options/flavors in the choice that they decide to feed you, but their games have always been streamlined to hell and back. This is another example of that- they want to impose a periodic break between the action game and the loot game.
Personally, their style works for me. I’ve always enjoyed the action part of Diablo because it is the proving grounds for builds and it is the source of loot. But my main joy in Diablo has always been more of the loot and build parts of the game. Some times, two flavors work very well together, but not if you muddle them up too much.
That said, I can see why some would feel that leaving the option in this instance (which is very different than the salvageable whites issue) would have been the better approach.
Daagar
2767
Sounds like the biggest frustration is that this just adds more delays in releasing the game. The assumption was that D3 was the ‘bridge’ to WoW’s next expansion (especially for those that did the annual pass), and well… maybe not so much. I’m not terribly concerned at the moment, cause the feds will somehow figure out how to link battle.net with megaupload before then, so it will all be moot.
I thought I read Jay saying that these are all changes that have already been implemented so far, at least in their internal build? Not that it means we’re any closer to release or anything (psh Blizzard).
Every change detailed today is already implemented and will be rolled out in the beta 10 patch incoming any day now.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/3932904644?page=5#80
Cougar
2770
Contrary to the popular opinion here, I actually like the town breaks. I almost always play this co-op with my wife, and as such I need the town breaks as a way to pause, train, swap things around and generally think about progression rather than mindless kill to keep up with my wife :)
~C~
Daagar
2771
Well that’s what I get for only skimming the blog entry, and reading the frothing rage in the comments. If this is already already implemented, then this is unlikely any “huge” delay of D3 until 12/22 like you’d think was happening from the sky-is-falling crowd.
The identification scroll example would be a wee bit more impressive if it wasn’t an issue that it took Blizzard fifteen years to recognize and address … and if the existence of i.d. scrolls in Diablo wasn’t an example of them copying part of a mechanic from other games without actually understanding its purpose.
The Rogue-likes the original Diablo was emulating included identification mechanics because those games allowed you to equip and use unidentified items. So using an unidentified item was a risk. You could take the chance and use an unidentified wand. It might turn you into a dragon … or it might teleport you into the middle of a couple dozen monsters.
If that risk didn’t appeal to you then you could take the safe route and i.d. the item, at a cost of scarce resources – i.d. scrolls were generally few and far between in Rogue-likes.
But in Diablo you couldn’t equip unidentified items, and getting i.d. scrolls was just a matter of money. So there was no longer any interesting choice involved. All i.d. scrolls were doing were preventing you from using an item the instant you picked it up, acting as a minor money sink, and creating a bunch of drudge work for the player.
I disagree - I think Jay put it best when he said getting an unidentified item was like getting a wrapped present. You want to open it up and have that moment of “oh, sweet!” that you wouldn’t quite get when you pick it up pre-identified.
And you COULD actually equip unidentified items in Diablo, if I recall correctly, but I do see your point. Still, I’d rather just be able to identify something than wonder if I’m really getting ALL I can get out of an item and also not have to stare at my stats and put on/take off some item over and over to note all the differences. Ugh. Some mechanics can just stay dead, I think.
You’re quite right – I’d forgotten, but Wikipedia says that in Diablo 1 you could equip unidentifed items … but that only base attributes of the unidentified item would apply, and not magical effects.
Nonetheless, since items in Diablo 1 couldn’t have the negative/hilarious effects commonly found on Rogue-like items, it still wasn’t an interesting choice. The worst that could happen from equipping an un-id’d item was unknowingly using a less-than-optimal item.
I’m with Bleedthefreak, it’s clear that Blizzard has a different design goal for ID’ing than what may have been the mechanic in past games.
Rather, ID’ing in D2 was all about seeing a unique war bow graphic pop, and then wondering if you got the lower level or higher level version. The wrapped present effect, as they say.
As with Bleedthefreak, I can’t imagine playing with a unknown item effect mechanic for the haha of what it does.
You’re not seeing the whole picture. You are “breaking game flow” as soon as you start to muck with inventory instead of bashing heads. With the cube/cauldron, you are going to do this constantly because each time you will just break down enough to give you a little space, then keep fighting. Meaning that you are constantly mucking with inventory. By having the mechanic require going back to town, you will go back, clean everything out, stash the stuff you are keeping, and head back to the fight with plenty of space to fight for a while inventory management-free. I’m really glad that they realized this was a problem. Hellgate had a similar mechanic and it definitely detracted from the flow.
Interesting exchange on the official forums between an angry poster and Bashiok, the best known community rep. It’s interesting/informative enough to copy it here:
It’s interesting, I don’t know about informative. Other than this Cyclonus guy and equally uninformed ilk, I think most gamers know that iterative design, relentless polish, and done-when-it’s-done are hallmarks of Blizzard’s approach.
Also, I don’t see that any of the stuff that Blizzard posted as changes would constitute extensive, fundamental changes. They’re mostly UI and gameflow changes.
I have the impression that they move more and more back to the Diablo II ‘model’ - which is a good thing in my book.
Some things simply worked in Diablo I/II and made the franchise what it is.
I had almost completely lost interest in Diablo III for various reasons but these recent developments give me hope again. Diablo II is one of my favorite games of all time after all.
