Yeah, this to me is good news - it means they feel close enough to a relase date that they can make these calls, and this is a good call in my opinion. Arena mode sounds cool, but do it right and do it later.
Also, this official announcment was tagged by Jay Wilson as “sign of release” which of course could be him fucking with us, but is pretty cool regardless.
Between that and the sudden damage-resist-instead-of-balance-tweaking I have this image in my mind of Activision storming Blizzard’s offices and demanding they finally release the game.
damage resistance for melee classes makes sense, especially having played a Barbarian and STILL getting creamed a few times. It was probably better the boost the melee players instead of making the game too easy by lowering overall damage.
Well yeah it makes sense to have more damage resist for melee, but I mean there’s like five different defensive passive barbarian skills that used to have twice the effect and almost all the lifesteal/healing skills and runes used to be two or three times as effective according to the old skills posted online. It just seems weird (not good or bad) that they’d go from nerfing all those different things that gave survivability, presumably because it made stuff too easy, to suddenly just giving base damage resist. To me it sort of sounds like someone somewhere put their foot down and demanded a final deadline that doesn’t leave time for slowly trying to find a better balance in the skills or stats.
Yeah, I tend to agree with this. Melee classes obviously need more survivability than ranged ones because they take more hits, but that survivability should come from gear only they can wear and skills only they can use. This feels like a brute force approach, which is not what Blizzard’s famous for. Post release patches will probably fix it, but the looming Q2 release is obviously driving this.
As for the loss of PvP, it matters to me not at all. PvP in the Diablo series was always an unbalanced afterthought, and I don’t object to its later incorporation. Delaying the game for it would make no sense, as Jay Wilson said in his post. Let everyone start playing PvE sooner instead of delaying the whole game for PvP that only a subset care about.
I’d be thrilled if they stopped devoting any development time at all to PvP.
Still, is not a bit pathetic that Blizzard, with all their money and all their years of development, couldn’t finish properly the PvP? They had to cut it to release it this year?
The PvP never seemed to be a major feature in their eyes. They always said that they wouldn’t be balancing for it and it was more or less just there as a bonus. I’m not surprised that they cut it and am another person who doesn’t really care. I just want to play already!
KevinC
3369
Absolutely. How long has this game been in development and with how many developers? And what exactly took that long, it’s not like it is revolutionary in terms of technology and design.
That being said I didn’t plan to PVP so it’s not a big issue to me but it’s surprising they couldn’t get it done given the time and resources they have.
It sounds to me like it IS done, but it’s not tested and polished as much as they want it to be, and they are moving those resources instead to focus on the rest of the game. I don’t really see what the big deal is, to be honest. I’ve never made a game but blanket statements like “how long could it take with so many people working on it” (to paraphrase) strike me as being a tad naive.
While it would be nice to have everything at release, PVP is certainly the lowest priority of a Diablo game. If this means they have more resources to polish up PVE and fix serious bugs like item duping, I’d say it’s all for the best.
KevinC
3372
That’s not naive, that’s how it works, at least in the business world. Time and resources are two major metrics that determine what we can accomplish in a given time frame. Blizzard has both of those in spades and Diablo 3 isn’t exactly breaking new ground in terms of gameplay or technology.
Cutting PVP is undoubtedly the right decision to make in this situation, it’s just a little surprising to me that they are IN that situation.
MikeJ
3373
It’s unlikely that PvP is seriously broken. Just not fun/polished enough. Most companies don’t have the luxury of doing so many iterations, but it seems to work for them.
Another thing to consider is that since D3 is always-online, there’s really no reason not to hold PvP back and issue it in a patch / update. It’s isolated enough to chop off without ripple effects, and everybody is still going to see that content when it comes out.
skyride
3375
Really? Then why were they promoting it so big at those Blizzcon thingies? I have a friend who is a hardcore Blizzard fan who goes to every one of those Blizzcons. He played some PvP at the demo there and said it was so much fun and that he was looking forward to PvP more than PvE after trying it.
And he’ll still get to do the PvP when they patch it in later on. It’s not gone forever, just out of the initial release.
This statement is overly general, without any supporting facts.
You might as well say that Blizzard should have had the whole game finished 3 months ago or a year ago. Seeing as how they have so many developers and all and it ain’t revolutionary.
The game [X] took [Y] amount of time to make (Blizzard style). Making the game [X+1] will take more time. Such is life. Waving your hand and saying that Blizzard has a lot of money and developers so the game should magically appear yesterday is a broad, sweeping statement.
Is it disappointing or surprising that PvP isn’t in? Mildly. Is it shocking in view of Blizzard’s style that things have taken this long? Not at all.
KevinC
3378
I agree with you, it was very general as I don’t work on the project. :) All I’m really trying to say is that given the time and resources, it’s surprising to me that they’re having to hack off features at this stage in order to get this boat to float. I respect Blizzard’s willingness to iterate and get things right, but their past couple releases have left me wondering.
Maybe I just need to hit the Koolaid and STFU.
Giaddon
3379
Was… the last Blizzard game I played WarCraft 3? checks
Yes!
HOLY SHIT… that was 10 years ago!
I’m not a huge RTS person, nor am I into competative MP, but that being said I really, really enjoyed the StarCraft II campaign. It’s meaty and by itself was worth the $ for the game, day one. My son did end up playing a TON of competative multiplayer AND the single player campaign, as well as lots of skirmishing on my account, so I definately got my money’s worth on that one, for what it’s worth.
