They can afford an insanely iterative process, but that doesn’t automatically make them good designers.
Based on what they’ve done since vanilla WoW (before all those people left) - they’re no longer what they used to be.
They’re incredibly rich developers who can afford to just try something based on a seemingly decent idea over and over.
I’m sure the end result will be workable - and it will most definitely be very, very smooth and pretty.
But they need people with actual vision to make TRUE greatness. Starcraft 2 is a good example of a solid game with excellent gameplay and fantastic production values. But it’s NOT greatness in terms of vision and design. The same is true for all the WoW expansions.
D2 was fantastic, but then - they had Blizzard North on board.
Whatever you may think of the travesty known as Hellgate London - it was shock full of strong core gameplay paradigms.
D3 could be “iterated” into a smooth, solid, beautiful game - but unless the lead designer(s) has a strong vision from the heart and soul - it will never be truly great.
Even if you had 20 years to iterate - the core design is the “idea” from which EVERYTHING springs. At some point, you just end up where you started - and when that happens, you need to reconsider the core - not the layers on top of it.
This is exactly right, as making the white/common items unsalvageable means most people won’t pick them up. In the beta, I and nearly all testers, would hoover everything up, and stop a moment to deconstruct them. Now…I will probably still do so to sell back at town, but that’s because I’m insanely OCD with these games. Most folks probably will see the common item drop and walk right by it, meaning the action parts will be even less interrupted.
The changes make a lot of sense. I just hope they balance out drop rates, because before you could make your own items that fit your playstyle if they didn’t drop. For example one game I played as a barbarian, wanting to use 2 handed swords. The only one I got that was halfway decent was the one I had the blacksmith make.
Now, as the salvage components will be much rarer (no more common item input into the system), not sure if that’s something you can really count on.
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned this yet:
“I’ve had a great 5 years there and those guys are going to kill it with Diablo.”
What do people think - pushed or jumped? What is going on at Blizzard?
He was on the verge of getting the game finished in 2012, so he had to be canned. Sad, really. You’d think that after 5 years there, he’d have learned his lesson.
Haha I was reading about this on rpgcodex (don’t ask) and the argument over “what ‘kill it’ meant” spanned a few pages. Someone raised the possibility that he FUCKING QUIT over the consolification of Diablo. Also: rrrrrrAAAAAAAAAAAAAA ect.
Daagar
2786
Apparently he actually twittered a clarification to the ‘kill it’ statement because of the hoopla.
rowe33
2787
I just assumed it was a shout out to his former co-workers/friends there that Diablo was going to be insanely good…people are really taking it to mean they’re going to ruin the series?
It’s obvious what he meant. People on the internet are funny.
The official forums are full of raging former fanbois who are so furious they don’t have the game in their hands right now that they’ll seize on literally anything said by a Blizzard rep and try to twist it into something bad. Jay Wilson’s announcement triggered a firestorm that’s still burning.
aeneas
2790
I wonder if the team at runic will take the delay for D3 to be an opportunity to release T2.
Official Specs announced.
Probably a good sign for those of us waiting on a release date, or at least a step in the right direction.
Nothing too surprising in these requirements otherwise, looks like.
Daagar
2792
Impressively low specs. I know that’s par for the course on a Blizzard game, but their min specs seem… really really low for a 2012 game. Yet playing it on something slightly above recommended spec - it looks great.
The beta has been rock-solid and gorgeous on my rig which is less than the PC crazy crowd would recommend as a “proper” general gaming PC.
Yeah, from the videos I’ve watched it seems like the game has a gorgeous art style and just enough lightning and shadowing going on to really show case that. The spell effects and animation are very well done, as you’d expect, but I’m not surprised to see the requirements be on the low side - it’s a blizzard game after all, and they certainly know how to do “pretty” without the “steep requirements”.
Interestingly, the graphical quality of Starcraft 2 jumped enormously from Beta to Full Release (albeit, some of that is accounted for by me playing the campaign heavily, which featured even more graphical fidelity since it didn’t have to worry about lag issues) without a significant increase in system utilization.
I wonder if we’ll see the same from Diablo III? i.e., is it going to get even prettier when it hits “for realsies”? Mebbe so.
Oh lord, the forums are at it again. Bashiok confirmed a rumor that special player death animations (for when they are slain by bosses) won’t make it into the final release because it’s too much effort for too little reward given current deadlines–a perfectly reasonable stance. Naturally, many of the forum posters aren’t so reasonable:
I am tired of being lied to. That was a feature I was looking forward to. Bait and Switch.Lost my purchase. Goodbye
They better keep the death animations. If not, I refuse to buy the game. I am sick of being showed one thing, then at the last mint hey remove it all and pretend it did not work out. Its almost like a plain out lie of false advertising.
Game about killing demons and zombies.Game not have death animations.Game not good.
Thanks for Ruining a good game, and pulling half the features we were promised in the last couple of weeks …
And so on and so on. Sometimes I forget that a lot the stereotypes about gamers are founded in actual fact. Then I read threads like these and remember that yeah, many of them really are whiny crybabies with no sense of perspective or reality.
God DAMN. Diablo III looks crazy colorful, like a fucking rainbow. I want my dark and brooding Diablo back! Fucking Blizzard.
I’m going to cancel the $100 special edition pre-order I put down this weekend because I found out today that a feature I’d completely forgotten about and couldn’t give two shits about to begin with was canceled. I was lied to!
Excuse me now, I have to go take the garbage out my Mom says, since I’m ten years old.
Oh, I almost forgot to bitch on the internet about needing an internet connection to play this fucking game, too.
This is just going to be the lame modern warefare boycott fiasco again. Those whiners are going to be the first in line to play.
The best part of being older and not having time to play games as much as I used to is that I could give a damn when a game comes out. I’ll enjoy it when it’s out- in the meanwhile, I’ll be too busy to care or complain.
Lorini
2799
It’s their five seconds of fame. How can you blame them?
SlyFrog
2800
Which are what? I agree with your general statement about whiny gamers, but do find it a bit amusing that they are doing it given “current deadlines.” Given the recent teasings about getting information about when the game would be out, to be met with just further silence from Blizzard.
I mean I get it, they can release it whenever they want. Still a bit funny that a game without an official release date is losing features because of a deadline. :)
