6201

That’s a kind of depressing blue response. Thanks for the link, though, I definitely missed that one.

6202

When I heard the voice of the templar I was almost positive I’d heard it before. At first I thought it was Noel Fielding from The Mighty Boosh. Turns out it was Dominic Keating (Lt. Reed from Enterprise).

Now back to your regularly scheduled serious discussion.

6203

Noel Fielding would have been dope.

6204

I saw this hypothetical “enjoyment graph” linked on the other site and thought it was spot on to how I feel re: loot between Diablo 2 and 3. It came from this writeup.

Diablo 2:

Diablo 3:

6205

I really enjoy some of this arm-chair hypothesizing and pseudo-scientific analysis over why Diablo 3 is less addictive and clearly a worse game (than Diablo 2), and nobody will be playing it years from now.

In the end, Blizzard is left with two groups of players:

  • New players will not experience Diablo 2’s reward loop, and will not get hooked. They will enjoy the game, get to the end, and (for the most part) wonder what the big fuss was about, lose interest, and wander away.
  • Old Diablo 2 players will be left frustrated, unsatisfied by the lack of in-game rewards they were craving, and become angry, depressed, and reduced to flinging poo on the Battle.net forums.

This made me laugh. Isn’t the first group just normal gamers? That’s how most people play most games! And isn’t this the user-base model for every Blizzard game? Normal gamers and ultra-fanboys?

6206

Incoming anecdotal evidence:

I was LTTP. I finished Diablo once and stopped. Then played Diablo 2 not long after (since I was LTTP) and after a couple of starts and stops, I never even finished. I played one character in each.

Diablo 3. I have one character in Hell and have a second in Act III of Normal.

I never finish much of anything any more and haven’t in years. I think I am a relatively average gamer. I present myself as evidence that the above theory is completely horsht*.

*I am coining that phrase as the lazy man’s “horse shit”. Or I think I am. It is probably already on Urban Dictionary.

6207

Very, very interesting information on the goals for the 1.3 patch that will be out in a few weeks here. For me, the most interesting part is the way they intend to change item drops in Inferno difficulty so that the early acts have a chance of dropping the very best gear in the game (less than later acts, but still significant).

6208

Huge.

We’re fixing a number of bugs with Attack Speed, mainly related to the stat not working on some items, but we’ve also decided we need to reduce the effectiveness of Increased Attack Speed overall. Many players have commented that Increased Attack Speed is such a dominant stat they feel it’s required. While we don’t have an issue with there being important stats, Increased Attack Speed in particular has secondary effects on mobility in combat, resource generation and resource consumption. We want there to be options and considerations for how you gear up, and one uber trump-everything stat can really work against choice and options. There are two different solutions we’re considering to reduce the effectiveness of Increased Attack Speed. The first is to simply reduce the value on all the items to their desired values. In general our desire is to never change items as that makes them feel less concrete, but the upside is you would still be able to look at an item and know exactly what you are getting. The other approach is to change the formula used for attack speed aggregation so that stacking attack speed from multiple slots suffers from diminishing returns. The downside of that approach is that it introduces yet another hidden modifier on an item property (and many people dislike hidden modifiers), and complicates the already difficult decision of item gearing. We’re currently leaning toward the first solution, to simply reduce the value on items, but we’d be interested to read people’s thoughts on the problem.

6209

That all sounds pretty great.

6210

Ahhh

We’re removing the bonus monster damage per additional player in a coop game.

About damn time. I don’t really know what they were thinking with this, anyway. Monsters already had far more HP which means far more hits landing, increasing their damage as well was making things feel exponentially harder the more people that got added. I didn’t like that the most effective way I could play was to ditch my friends and play with a Templar instead. Good change!

6211

Actually, I didn’t know monsters dealt more damage in multiplayer :)

That kinda explains a bit…

I don’t particularly like their “everything is viable” philosophy - but oh well.

6212

Agreed! Some really cool stuff coming in the next patch!

LOVE that they’re nerfing Inferno Act II. That shit in its current state is just ridiculous for some classes.

LOVE that they’re giving us a shot at getting the REALLY good items on Act I/II if we so choose.

LOVE that blacksmithing and jewelery are getting some love, despite already spending WAY too much on them.

I also quite like they’re upping the repair costs by 4-6 times. People were exploiting that like crazy, including me. :) It also makes dying mean something other than just a boring corpse run. I’m going to be much more inclined to run from a fight it doesn’t look like I’m going to win rather than hanging around.

I’m glad they got rid of the extra damage on monsters in multiplayer. That was just a stupid decision from the start.

6213

I had suspicions throughout the game. Those became pretty clear to me when playing Inferno with three of my friends. You know that “Reflect Damage” modifier on champions? Yea, it was a lot of fun having my spike traps crit a pack of elites/champs with that when 4 people were in the game. I’d practically gib myself in one blast.

6214

I’ve only played solo/duo - and I always found solo way easier :)

6215

I’m wondering if they lower AS% across the board if they intend to modify existing items. There are a LOT of those items in the economy already.

6216

It would have to be retroactive to make any kind of sense.

6217

Yeah, they mention that they usually don’t like to modify existing items because it makes them seem less permanent, but that’s the way they are leaning for this one.

6218

I don’t like nerfs (who does?) but the IAS nerf really does need to happen. If an item slot can have IAS but doesn’t, it’s pretty significantly inferior.

So any idea on when this patch is going to roll out? My interest was really flagging but several of the reasons for that are being addressed this patch. I hope it’s not months out, but knowing Blizzard’s glacial pace…

6219

Those proposed changes look really good, other than perhaps the increased death penalty cost, but I can understand why they are doing it. I am just paying more than I should trying to progress in Inferno right now to have a chance at the good gear.

They are basically addressing the biggest problems I am having with the game right now:

  1. Stuck in Inferno Act I without the gear to really progress and without the money to really buy sufficient gear to progress.

  2. Have a load of gems that are too expensive to upgrade.

  3. Don’t want to invite friends because of the damage increase that makes is near impossible to tank mobs with my current build/gear, or even survive at all.

I am also in the same boat as many in that you feel you must have +Attack Speed on any item that is capable of having it. Then, the costs are just through the roof on any items with this and decent other stats that you want.

I wish they would give out a table of chance of iLvl drops per Act the way it is currently. I would imagine by currently farming Act 1 Inferno that the best you can get is a chance at iLvl 62. Hmm, I guess I need to search for info on that to see what is possible while we wait for the changes to go live.

6220

This is kinda obvious - but I’ll put it out there – but go back to Hell and farm money/gear to upgrade yourself.

I’m not even there, and I find myself replaying areas a couple of times to increase my bank/items to get myself ready for moving forward.