zircon

Haven't found any legendaries yet but I've found some pretty outstanding 800+ dps weapons, and some good helmets too. I think this is a big improvement for the game. However, I'm also excited that Jay Wilson noted the remaining problems/areas of improvement, and said that we can expect more stuff with future patches - for example, more difficulty (or ways to tailor difficulty), addressing the auction house vs. finding your own items, more content/randomly-generated stuff, build diversity, etc.

Sort of a reverse situation, but there's a part of FF5's "Battle on the Big Bridge" that has almost exactly the same chords as the intro to "Hotel California" by the Eagles. http://zirconstudios.com/music/wips/FF5_HotelCalifornia.mp3 Only one chord is totally different, another is just the relative minor in FF5. Cool eh?

Relevant video from the AVGN.I'll throw my memories into the ring, too. I inherited a whole bunch of Nintendo Power magazines from a family friend who was going off to college. At the time, I didn't even HAVE a console (NES or SNES). I got a Gameboy first, but pined for all the awesome-looking NES games, especially Final Fantasy. I'd read the issues cover-to-cover, despite them being years out of date, and enjoy all the screenshots, tutorials, comics, etc. It made the time when I got to actually PLAY the games all the sweeter. As the AVGN noted though in the video above, as time went on the issues started to get just... bad. Gross ads, jackass editors. I never had a subscription, so I'd see the new issues at a friend's house.

I haven't tried group play yet but I think it's better because the mobs only scale 75% per player instead of 115%, which was crazy. So it will actually be easier now with each player you have. The new drop rates and item scaling are great. 800+ dps ilvl 62 weapons are quite common.

You're assuming that we contacted them after the deadline had passed.

Actually, I legitimately think the droprate is good enough that you can find some amazing items for yourself. Gold might still be the best way to get some very specific kinds of items, but I found like 3-4 weapons in a single Act 3 run that would have been... I don't know, 1 in every 50 Act 3 runs pre-1.0.4. I found a socketed 830 damage 1h with crit damage, int, vit, as well as multiple 750+ dmg 1handers and 900-1000+ dmg bows/2handers. It's nuts!

Well, with these kind of listening studies they do it blind so you can't tell what you're listening to. ABX means they'll play 192, 256, and then X, where you don't know what X is.

Yeah, I gotta say, it's well-worth it. I rolled several 2 handers with 1000+ damage and ilvl 61-62 1handers with 700-800 damage, which was unthinkable or impossible in pre-1.0.4. Not to mention the 2handers had actually good affixes. The changes allowed me to swap in a new skill on my Monk (Seven-Sided Strike) and I might do more changes later as my gear shifts around. The Paragon system also makes things a lot more addicting (I hit paragon level 1, woo!) while the AH is now much nicer to use. Blizz did an excellent job with this patch. Lastly the drop changes were pretty apparent as I was getting more blues/yellows off trash for sure.

Just stupid drama. They posted it (presumably) privately on Facebook. Brevik accused them of not reacting quickly, which I thought was a bullshit thing to say when I can almost guarantee everyone on the D3 team has been working 80 hour weeks since release (and probably before). Anyway, as for 1.0.4, it's AWESOME. This is the Diablo I love!

Well, it would have been unrealistic to expect them to make another 100 levels worth of skills and runes. Impossible, really. Most players just wanted a little bonus that came from playing the game, much like how in D2 you got your little 5 stat points per level. It's not like a level 95 character in D2 was truly more powerful than a level 90, you just had a slight edge. Getting permanent MF/GF and stats for grinding and doing runs is a very nice reward, particularly if you're on an unlucky streak. You can always look to your XP bar and see progress being made. A LOT of players + streamers were asking for this exact feature.

Paragon Levels confirmed. Awesome! http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/6968517/Introducing_the_Paragon_System-8_20_2012 The XP grind from Diablo 2 is back full force. Each level gives you permanent stats, MF and GF, plus an aesthetic addition to your character portrait. Bravo on this Blizz!

Afrojack sucks. No innovation or creativity in his music or most other popular electronic artists, sadly. Decent production at least. Pro tip: Supersaws or single buzzy overcompress saw waves being pitched around aren't cool.

I really don't get why people found that funny or stupid or bad design. I actually think Inferno should have been even harder, along with Hell, but don't put all the best item drops at the end of Inferno. What happened was a few people used exploits (basically) to get to Act 3/4 to farm as DH/Wizard, which then messed up the economy. Meanwhile, it took hardcore players WAY longer to beat Inferno for the first time because the economy didn't have the same problem. Anyway, I don't think having an XP grind was meaningful at all. It was really easy to hit level 80 or so; you could do it in a few hours. 80-90 was like a few days maybe. Then after 90, you leveled up so slowly that it was basically pointless. I don't think I had any characters above 90 or 91, and most were 75-80.

I don't think the draw of Inferno was supposed to be better items... they pitched it as just being a big challenge, for people that like being tortured with difficulty. And that's pretty much what Inferno was, though it has been toned down since. They also improved drop rates and made ilvl 61-63 items drop in Acts 1-2. Plus they're making ilvl 61-62 weapons better next.

Well, this is where it comes down to preference, I guess. I thought leveling to 60 was one of the most fun parts of the game. Again, I don't know where this notion that all video games should be about the end and not the journey came up. I literally could not stop playing until I hit Inferno. It's incredibly addicting how you grow in power and constantly get new skills & runes. Plus, because the difficulty is tuned much better in Normal-Hell (unless you use the auction house, which I mostly didn't) you feel like you're very powerful, but that there's a decent challenge starting in NM. It's funny because on the reddit Diablo forum, which is VERY negative overall, almost everyone agrees that the basic 1-60 leveling experience is really fun and done well. I don't get the supposed endgame of Diablo 2 either. That was probably my favorite PC game ever, and I bought it about three times with expansion, but it had very little in the way of endgame. Hell was overall a joke of a difficulty. You could get rushed to 70-80 in less than an afternoon and beat Baal easily. There was no challenge that compares to Inferno in D3. The endgame was searching for items. It took them something like 6 years after LoD came out to actually add any additional monster content in the form of Ubers, which were of course easily farmed by many. So what exactly are you remembering with regards to D2 endgame? The way I played it, along with most people I knew, was that we would all roll new characters periodically, level up, grind gear, get maxed out, and then stop.. then do it again in a year. Let's talk about PVP. I would love to see D3 PVP, sure. But I doubt it will be any more interesting or serious than D2 PVP, which was essentially a joke (and this is coming from someone who actively PVPed). D2 PVP was 99% Amazons with Burizas or Windforces shooting guided arrows from 3 screens away. There was no semblance of balance, especially after 1.10 when they basically gave everyone Teleport and Whirlwind via runewords. Why people think this was such an amazing thing is beyond me. I had fun with it, but only because I had a group of intelligent people to play with. Trying to do any kind of organized PVP in public games was impossible, and don't even attempt to tell me the hostile/PK thing was fun or an 'endgame'. That being said, I agree skill diversity isn't optimal in Inferno, and I think Blizzard realized this, hence all the skill buffs coming up. Monks were probably most limited of all, but now that you can actually output serious damage with stuff like Wave of Light and SSS, I think you could make a very fun build focusing on burst damage which previously was impossible. With 2handers being buffed and all the numerous legendary item -> skill boosts I bet there could be a lot of other fun possibilities as well. I do agree on map randomization. It's fine for outdoor areas like Act 1 stuff, but no idea why a lot of the dungeons aren't more randomized in terms of layout. My guess/hope is that Blizzard will run with the idea someone suggested of an endless dungeon with increasingly hard monsters as you go down. Even if you don't get unique loot there (just ilvl 63 stuff), it would be fun to brag about how far you got.

As opposed to what? All Roguelike/hack & slash games are like that. You level up, find gear, and kill hordes of monsters. The fun is in the variety of items, the variety of powers/skills you get, and the difficulty of the monsters and their abilities. It's not supposed to be like World of Warcraft where raids are carefully choreographed 'theme parks', or Zelda, focusing on puzzle-solving and small skirmishes. I mean you might as well say the problem with the FPS genre is that you do too much shooting. You're complaining about a basic part of the game. But hey, if you don't like the style of gameplay, that's fine too. I think the problems with Diablo 3 on launch were the following: * Uneven Inferno difficulty (fixed, and getting another fix) * Many skills not useful (getting fixed) * Many legendaries are bad (getting fixed) * No motivation to play co-op (getting fixed, better multiplayer scaling) * No reward for playing at level 60 beyond finding items (getting fixed w/ paragon levels, I assume) * Not enough items with unique abilities promoting different gameplay (getting fixed) * No pvp (not being fixed right now, but planned for 1.10) * Drop rates too low (getting fixed) * High level items don't drop in early inferno (fixed) So I think they're on the right track.

http://www.diablofans.com/news/1317-unofficial-patch-104-changes-class-changes-new-items-affixes-and-more/ HOLY CRAP. Assuming these datamined notes are true, and they might not even be complete, this is practically like an expansion in terms of awesome changes and new stuff. Tons of class balance changes (BUFFS), like 40-50 new legendaries with insanely awesome unique procs, new 2-handed affixes, new 'paragon' XP levels (?!) presumably for when you hit 60... just wow. This is outstanding. Combine that with the server-side changes like getting rid of Invuln mobs, reducing the BS elite affixes, making elite packs easier but trash mobs harder, increasing drop rate on trash by 4x, and it looks like Blizzard is going to knock it out of the park.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ9GwywAJF0&feature=youtu.be Very good followup from the Game Chasers (who created the Kickstarter video) - they apologized for not making the details of the Kickstarter clear, but confirmed that this is not a scam at all. I actually loved the video and got the idea immediately but I guess some people didn't. Also, Greg himself wrote an update here: http://www.bitloaders.com/2012/08/17/pabich-responds-to-cheetahmen-kickstarter-controversy/ Of particular note, they're apparently working on a brand-new Cheetahmen game for iPhone and OUYA. That's awesome.

Usually, if mixes from an album get posted long after the release, it's because they were submitted later, not because we just felt like spacing it out. Anyway, isn't that pretty off-topic? We don't have any problems promoting albums. We do a ton of PR work for most every release, showcase albums at conventions, etc. The problem is day-to-day mix post backlog, not album promotion.

If we haven't already shared specific information, then we are not going to be able to share it. So, nobody should expect any kind of breakdown or details regarding our discussions with SE. Also, starting a new KS is obviously not a problem. Our difficulty is with the old one.

And this is why Expert Village is a total joke.

Any drama about it is just ridiculously overblown. Greg broke down the costs at about $45-46 per unit, so asking $60 per copy is reasonable ($15 profit margin isn't huge on a $60 product). He's also got a track record in that he's ALREADY self-funded and produced an NES cart (Cheetahmen: The Lost Levels). So, why anyone would think he's not legit is way, way beyond me. My impression is that the people complaining are people who just think Cheetahmen II sucks, and it's pointless to spend money on it when you could just play the ROM. I think they're missing the point. Especially with all the recent interest in retro gaming, systems that play NES games, chiptunes, etc., there are way more people buying/trading old game carts. Should we go to every MAGfest vendor and tell them they're idiots or scammers for selling SNES/NES carts when you could just play ROMs? No, of course not, so I really don't know why there's been any drama at all here. It's objectively unfounded.

There isn't much more to be said. We have, over the years, had people volunteer to do coding work for the site. We've had people on staff offer to try their hand at specific projects, such as the aforementioned remix submission form. However, they tend to quickly lose interest because coding backend things for an existing website isn't exactly exciting for most, especially when they're not being paid. Most people capable of skilled programming/web coding (whatever) have a full-time job and their own projects to work on. So again, if someone (Avaris) feels they are interested and can dedicated a good chunk of time to such a project, while still following our requirements for how the application/addition needs to function, then we can talk. Email me at aaversa@gmail.com. It's not like we have a lack of ideas to implement! Most of the suggestions have either been done or aren't feasible. I can share specifics on anything people are interested in hearing more about. I've already talked about why we don't have an automated submission form yet, and why simply adding more staff or delegating isn't a permanent solution (we DO constantly bring on new people, but there is a lot of turnover as well). We've talked about this at length and the decision is always the same - we don't want to open up front page remix posts to the community. The problem is that, as we saw with VGmix, people ALWAYS.. and I mean ALWAYS... gravitate toward popular ReMixers and popular games. A stellar remix from an obscure game might get no attention or love, while a mediocre guitar remix of a Final Fantasy boss theme will get massive attention and bias. There is simply no way around this bias. We could try to tell people to just not be biased in what they vote on, but without vetting each individual person, there's no way to know if they are in fact capable of that. This is also to say nothing of the other remix evaluation issues. Non-musical listeners may have a hard time discerning a complex source in a remix, they may have limited production knowledge, they may miss key issues about the validity of a source tune or game, and so on and so forth. I will say that I've thought about whether we could 'crowdsource' ONLY the inbox somehow. Select random swaths of active community members to just vote 'Yes' or 'No' on mixes in the inbox. 'Yes' sends to judges panel, 'No' gets direct reject. But again, the problem would be those complex/obscure sources, bias for ReMixers, games or sources, all that sort of stuff. I don't see a solution to that problem. Now, one compromise that we have been planning to do for years (but have been unable to, due to lack of resources) is to implement a variety of upgrades to the WIP forums. The ultimate goal would be to almost create a mini-VGmix, where people could upload and tag remixes into our primary database, and others could search by remixer, game, source tune, composer, etc. (the latter functionality we already have). We would still have a judges panel and a separate queue/spotlight for official approved mixes, but with this system, we'd be able to host a large amount of remixes (that perhaps don't fit within our normal submission guidelines) in a searchable, browsable database. Why haven't we done that yet? Again, lack of resources. It's an enormous project, but not only is it a huge amount of effort (just look at how much trouble VGmix had), such a system would have to integrate with our existing forum and database, both of which are completely customized. So, even if we had an entire team of full-time programmers, they would still need to interface with Dave quite a bit to get anything done.