Please Blizz, don't screw this up..

[HardRock]

Yeah too bad they are still trying to work out drop rates and quality loot 2 years after Diablo 3 was released right? Too bad most of those problems weren't ironed out during vanilla F&F / ALPHA / Closed Beta / Open Beta....

Not opening up the original beta more was a huge mistake. Only giving us access to the first hour of the game really hurt it in the long run. They couldn't do more rapid changes after release, because people using the RMAH would have flipped out if suddenly what they paid good money for became more common.

All of that is in the past however. Looking at the present you can already see that they've learned from their mistakes. With the exception of the final battle with Malthael everything as available to testers. We don't have officially sanctioned real money trading anymore, so the devs will be free to change things more quickly even after release. Now you have no promises that what you buy today for 25$ won't lose it's value overnight.

My point is that yes, they made mistakes, and because of these mistakes they couldn't really fix some things that needed fixing until now. The drop rates definitely fall into this category.

Well you probably wouldn't know, but I would

Sounds like you would be a great asset to the Diablo 3 team then.

"Data is"? You are aware that data is the plural form of datum, surely? "Data are", please.

Actually, I wasn't aware of that. English is not my native language and I had no idea about the origin of the word. As a result of your post I looked it up and what I've found is that while technically you are right, using data with a singular verb is perfectly acceptable as well, similarly to the word "information", which also takes a singular verb. Thanks for the note though, I learned something new.

 

[HardRock]

double post

 

[ShadoutMapes]

Certainly inferno should have been tested more. AHs effect on inferno should have been tested.
Release might have been much less rough then, even though the game mechanic issues would still have been there (not exactly something you fix in a beta).

 

[TheXelnaga]

Sounds like you would be a great asset to the Diablo 3 team then.

Some how I doubt they would let me through the door, since I am pretty sure they would recognize my screen name for railing against their bad ideas like RMAH, and other such things. I'm not sure if Bashiok would want to be my friend or fight me considering the amount of times I have challenged him, and a couple of times he defended what I had to say against practically the entire D3 forum for my assertions on D3 mechanics. Oh, those were the days, Epic forum battles were had.

 

[Sulle]

"Data is"? You are aware that data is the plural form of datum, surely? "Data are", please.

You are right that the word data is a plural form of datum, but semantically data can also be a singular mass noun...like: "lots of data (is) available on..."

 

[mr punk]

But seriously, give me a break. They were unprepared, they are STILL unprepared, that's why they need other people to do their grunt work, and even if it fails they get to blame it on the beta testers.

yes, they were woefully unprepared and so magnificently full of hubris about their ability to make a great game, but the end result was so hilarious. i can't hold it against them. of course, it helps when one doesn't buy their game.

Certainly inferno should have been tested more. AHs effect on inferno should have been tested.Release might have been much less rough then, even though the game mechanic issues would still have been there (not exactly something you fix in a beta).

well, it wasn't an unusual decision (except for the "and then we doubled it part". lulz) many companies don't test things like higher difficulty levels, etc. at the end of the day, if a game is lucky. it will get a genius auteur like Hidetaka Miyazaki as a game director with an innovative core design and steers the direction of the game into a focused ideal vision.. OTOH, if a game is unlucky. you'll get a mere manager like jay, josh, travis, wyatt, etc.