Diablo III

[ectogemia]

I don't think I ever posted my contact info for you people.

ECTOGEMIA#1224

Let's farm shit.

[Vakri]

Personally I'd like to see difficulty changes that aren't just "less/more damage, less/more health," at least with regards to the end-game (Inferno).

I think enemies should gain new abilities. Things like shield skeletons gaining a stun-bash that leaves you vulnerable if it hits, giant spiders being able to spit acid pools that do damage over time and/or lower the armor value for those standing in the pool, zombies that can revive themselves and/or explode in a cloud of poison upon death, etc. Basically, things that make difficulty a little less about "do you have enough Resist + Armor + Vitality to survive being hit by high spike damage mobs" and place a little more emphasis on active dodging, situational awareness and proper skill management.

[Vakri]

Sigh... I keep trying to like this game (and Blizzard for that matter), but then things like this happen:

My WD, who's current build is based on Zombie Bears, is worthless. Not because of a nerf, but because the last patch completely broke the skill. In typical Blizzard fashion, they haven't even acknowledged the issue, nor is there any kind of ETA on a fix.

Reminds me of when Warlocks had flat-out broken Talents and were overall waaay underpowered after WoW's release, but they just left them as-is for who knows how many patches until the community got so mad that Blizzard finally decided that something HAD to be done... so they gave Warlocks a free mount to try and shut the Warlock players up. When that didn't work, they finally started to actually fix the class. Guess some things never change...

[Mr. Bottle Rocket]

^Kripparian killing inferno ghom with WD, bears seem ok to me, bro.

[Vakri]

^Kripparian killing inferno ghom with WD, bears seem ok to me, bro.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5913061953

[Mr. Bottle Rocket]

Huh, well good to know.

[Vakri]

I guess there was a post yesterday regarding Zombie Bears. It's not very encouraging, though:

"Hey guys!

Happy Friday, I have some good news for you. We have decided to make a 1.0.3a patch to fix some critical issues and I have convinced the developers to include the fixes to the two Zombie Bears issues that arose after 1.0.3 launched. Thank you very much for your patience everyone, and for your discussions on these forums, Reddit, fan sites, and other places. It's awesome to see such an active community.

This patch does not have a release date yet, but it will be releasing in the near future (as in before 1.0.4) :)"

So basically, Zombie Bears is broken as all hell, but Blizzard wasn't even going to address the issue until "Quality Assurance" man Vasadan convinced them to do so. Really instills a lot of confidence in the developers dedication to fixing broken mechanics and WD's specifically...

If this were any other MMO/online RPG (aside from WoW), a quick 10 second patch download would fix this issue promptly (Guild Wars would tell you to log off and back on to download a quick update, which would take a total of a few minutes), but because it's Blizzard, we'll have to wait for some unknown Tuesday when the whole game will go down for 6+ hours just to apply a few bug fixes, and chances are, more issues will arise anyway. Color me frustrated...

[Brandon Strader]

I sold all of my tomes of jewelcrafting on a whim, had 53 of them and the unit price was a little over 1,000 each. They sold before I even finished my auction house selling which usually takes like 4 minutes.

Seems like an easy way to make almost 50k before tax. Or, you know, collect an assload more and make some easy cash. I wonder how people get like 20 million dollars to buy some of this stuff. EH.

[zircon]

How to make money? Farm, of course. I don't have that many hours logged (relatively speaking) but I've found numerous items that sell anywhere from 10-50k each to millions. Generally, look for stuff with high values of any one particular stat, socketed items, items with 40-50+ all resistances, critical hit %/damage, shields with high block % and block damage, 1h weapons of ~700+ dps and 2h weapons of ~900dps.

Given current crafting prices, you should always salvage items with character level requirement of 60 (or 59 if they are follower special, or jewelry). This is assuming you would get nothing on the AH. One blue essence from a salvaged item sells for about 1700 gold right now.

[Brandon Strader]

DUDE!!! I dropped those off at the merchant a long, long time ago because I didn't feel I needed them ever. Now that I know, I will be breaking down crappy gear and selling the essences on the AH. Might take longer than just selling the items though, and repair costs sheesh.

[Brandon Strader]

One blue essence from a salvaged item sells for about 1700 gold right now.

Ugh. I got some Shimmering Essences not realizing that you probably meant whatever the Inferno essences are... dang. Got some on my Witch Doctor in Nightmare difficulty. Lame. Maybe I'll make a couple hundred gold though. lol

Oops double post. I am sorry. Please merge my 2 posts if you can. Sorry.

[HoboKa]

Diablo has gnarly boobs

[Sir_NutS]

So, by now everyone knows what some of us saw written on the wall for a while now: Diablo 3 didn't have the legs D2 had.

My friend list is dead, and I feel no incentive for logging in and play. it was very fun while it lasted though.

I just read patch 1.04 is coming in the next few weeks. It will make inferno easier but I feel this is too little too late. I honestly felt the extreme difficulty of inferno along with the auction house were the main cause of this game's lack of longevity.

Inferno's difficulty proved to be counterproductive to the main goal of diablo 3: build diversity, and the auction house also countered one important aspect of any ARPG: the item hunt.

Is anyone here still playing the game? anyone plans to return anytime soon to it?

[Tensei]

I don't know, I liked the game throughout but I just stopped playing it in favor of Dota 2 and I recently uninstalled since I wasn't playing it anyway.

I might return to it once it has had some content patches (in a few years maybe) but I don't see me getting back into it anytime soon. This is kinda how I played Diablo 2 as well though, I only played it every couple of years but I would play it very intensively for short periods of time.

[Gario]

I actually would like to log on and play periodically, but Blizzard shut down my account. Kind of a dick move on their part, actually.

One issue with the game that I could notice is that they have an easily reachable level cap without too much endgame content. D2 had a level cap that was all but impossible to reach (yet was something people could always strive for), and WoW had enough endgame content to make their level cap relatively meaningless. D2 also had the smart idea to NOT give the players the option to change how their character was built mid-game (In a much later patch there was the limited option for a stat change, but even then it was limited in it's use). D3 is fun, but I could see people dropping it off once they've done everything that there is to do.

Still, the story content was good, and the game play was great. It's just not nearly as enduring.

[Nabeel Ansari]

No, Blizzard, additional difficulty modes does not count as additional hours of content.

[ectogemia]

So, by now everyone knows what some of us saw written on the wall for a while now: Diablo 3 didn't have the legs D2 had.

My friend list is dead, and I feel no incentive for logging in and play. it was very fun while it lasted though.

I just read patch 1.04 is coming in the next few weeks. It will make inferno easier but I feel this is too little too late. I honestly felt the extreme difficulty of inferno along with the auction house were the main cause of this game's lack of longevity.

Inferno's difficulty proved to be counterproductive to the main goal of diablo 3: build diversity, and the auction house also countered one important aspect of any ARPG: the item hunt.

Is anyone here still playing the game? anyone plans to return anytime soon to it?

I agree with all of this...

...although to say that D2 had a diverse set of viable builds would be false. Granted, it was still more diverse than what D3 permits.

Yeah, I sorta thought the auction house was the killer. *THE* reason I have *EVER* played MMOs or D2esque games was for the item hunt. Yes, there have always been player-to-player transactions of some kind in every MMO, but often, there are no-drop items (or whatever other MMOs call them; I only have Everquest terminology to work with ) that can only be obtained by killing monsters or completing epic quests and cannot be traded. These items are, rightfully so, the most powerful. Putting a price on power cheapens the process of developing a powerful character.

So that being said, I don't have plans to play it as much as I did when it came out, but I might log on from time to time. It just doesn't have the staying power of other similar games, and it certainly lacks the je ne sais quois of D2.

[Sir_NutS]

I agree with all of this...

...although to say that D2 had a diverse set of viable builds would be false. Granted, it was still more diverse than what D3 permits.

Yeah, I sorta thought the auction house was the killer. *THE* reason I have *EVER* played MMOs or D2esque games was for the item hunt. Yes, there have always been player-to-player transactions of some kind in every MMO, but often, there are no-drop items (or whatever other MMOs call them; I only have Everquest terminology to work with ) that can only be obtained by killing monsters or completing epic quests and cannot be traded. These items are, rightfully so, the most powerful. Putting a price on power cheapens the process of developing a powerful character.

So that being said, I don't have plans to play it as much as I did when it came out, but I might log on from time to time. It just doesn't have the staying power of other similar games, and it certainly lacks the je ne sais quois of D2.

The main problem with the AH is that it doesn't work for a game like D3. It works in World of warcraft because there you can't get all you gear from the AH alone. You need to play the game, earn the drops or accumulate points to do so.

In D3, is the other way around. Doing Inferno feels like work because you know that 99% of the drops will be absolute trash and all you're doing is farming gold to get the items you want from the AH. You feel like a chinese gold farmer. The excitement of picking up drops and finding what they are isn't there because of how the game is built around the AH and gold farming. you know most of the loot will be trash, you're there to accumulate gold to play the AH.

I bet a lot of people enjoy the gold farming but I think the way you earn your items in D2 and other ARPGs like torchlight is much more rewarding. You play the game not to face a brickwall or to farm gold, you play it to build the character you want with the loot you get. I honestly think the AH was the biggest mistake they did in the development of D3. Most design problems stems from the fact that the game is built around the AH.

Anyways, anyone heard of this game called Path of Exile? It looks interesting so far. It has a huge skill tree (seriously look it up its huge) and a really interesting way to build items.

[Brandon Strader]

So they're making Inferno easier again?

I might have to play D3 again someday. I never did manage to get my Witch Doctor up to level 60, totally just gave up on the game and moved on like everyone else.

Though I gotta say it's legitimately fun to start a new character and start unlocking skills for it.

[Sir_NutS]

So they're making Inferno easier again?

I might have to play D3 again someday. I never did manage to get my Witch Doctor up to level 60, totally just gave up on the game and moved on like everyone else.

Though I gotta say it's legitimately fun to start a new character and start unlocking skills for it.

yeah basically they're nerfing champion packs again, and nerfin co-op difficulty. Also nerfing the affixes on champion packs and getting rid of some bullshit ones (like invulnerable minions). Also getting rid of more BS like elites recovering their health after a while and enrage timers.

[Brushfire]

Why does anyone still play this game?

[Omni-Psyence]

Why does anyone do anything?

[Sir_NutS]

Why does anyone still play this game?

Well that's the point, no one does anymore. But some people still care it seems (I do).

[SuperiorX]

Yeah I agree the Auction House kinda ruined the game for me. At first I loved being able to buy sweet items, but then I found myself caring more about looking through the AH instead of actually playing the game. What's the point of replaying through all the difficulties when the best items are in the AH? I've only played one character class so far tho, so I am still interested in replaying the game with the other characters, at least.

[ectogemia]

I bet a lot of people enjoy the gold farming but I think the way you earn your items in D2 and other ARPGs like torchlight is much more rewarding. You play the game not to face a brickwall or to farm gold, you play it to build the character you want with the loot you get. I honestly think the AH was the biggest mistake they did in the development of D3. Most design problems stems from the fact that the game is built around the AH.

I've played D2 a fair amount since it came out, and I've *never* once picked up a single item that I actually was able to trade, and I found only a few items I was able to use (aside from 50 dozen Lidless Walls or so). I found a high rune, *once*. This, after probably a couple thousand meph runs. I've actually found more usable gear in D3 than I ever did in D2. My D2 wealth was built by working people to get insane deals on good items, then selling them back at twice the price D3 removed most of the personal facet of trading with the auction house which forced me to farm to become wealthy, and that became a chore after a couple of weeks.