Reaper of Souls Feedback Cut-Off Date?

[Hound]

A fan asks if there's a deadline to submit feedback on Reaper of Souls, given that March 25th isn't that far away (a fact that amazes me every time I think of it). Blue says no...

Cut off Date on Feedback from Players for ROS...When?

With the production and packaging and delivery of ROS and the time that's needed for that, what do you think the cut off date will be for the players feedback to make any difference for this initial release Blizz?</font>
Nevalistis: Stating a cut-off date would imply that there's a point where we'd no longer be seeking your feedback. That simply isn't the case, and I think that setting a cut-off would be more counter-intuitive than helpful. You could consider a "soft" cut-off being the end of the Beta/PTR test phase; however, we do not have date for that at this time.

The biggest benefit to our approach with Diablo III is that it̢۪s an ongoing development process. The launch day of Reaper of Souls shouldn't suggest an absolute finality. While we are, of course, working to make the expansion the best it can possibly be from day one, there will always be room for growth, and continuing to read, review, and pass on player feedback will remain the biggest part of that process.[source]

Obviously there is some internal deadline since they have to lock the features and go gold at some point, and games require at least 6-8 weeks before launch to have time for all the final prep for an international simultaneous release. But what the Blue says most fans have come to expect from online games; a big-*** patch on launch day (or not long afterwards) with all fo the final beta feedback and testing changes and bug fixes that didn't get into the gold master version.

 

[blackoutchili]

"The biggest benefit to our approach with Diablo III is that it's an ongoing development process."

this leaves me speechless on so many levels

 

[Speedster]

"The biggest benefit to our approach with Diablo III is that it's an ongoing development process."

this leaves me speechless on so many levels

It would leave me speechless... if I hadn't bought software in the last decade. Everything we use in business these days gets patched on an ongoing basis.

Adobe doesn't even ship CDs anymore for the graphics suite my team uses at work.

 

[yovargas]

Of course, if they said it *wasn\'t* an ongoing development process, you\'d complain about that too.

Who are the idiots upvoting crap like this?

 

[nasarius]

Because D3 is online-only, the gold master carries very little significance. What they release is whatever\'s on the servers that day.

We really should have seen an \"ongoing development process\" with D3, as you get with most MMOs. In reality it\'s just been a small handful of major patches and some bug fixes. Compare with Guild Wars 2, which has had a ton of new content since release with no subscription fees.

 

[ultronij]

pre-

 prefix
before in time, rank, order, position, etc: predate ; pre-eminent ; premeditation ; prefrontal ; preschool

[from Latin prae-, from prae before, beforehand, in front]

 

[BaronScarpia]

On a recent blue post they said the expansion will be pre-downloadable this month (maybe the big mpqs encrypted, with a giant patch pending that will be avaliable closer to release).

Maybe the boxes will be manufactured around the same date.

It looks like a lot of stuff is set on stone right now, without minor stuff pending (some patch material and some hotfixes).

Someone else mentioned that there was a prediction by blues about loot 2.0 showing up 2 months or 2 weeks before expansion. Well, there\'s a greyed AH icon on PTR (it\'s a button, down there), so it isn\'t impossible seeing loot 2.0 at the end of this month.

Just remember: Isn\'t impossible <-------- (huge gap) --------> very likely.

 

[ultronij]

I always assumed that nothing would be released prior the closure of the AH.

I\'d rather have 2.0.1. earlier than that too, heck, just release it tomorrow and take down the AH right away, meh...

 

[BaronScarpia]

*\"Isn\'t impossible\" doesn\'t mean \"it\'s very likely\". Comments section destroyed my Ascii art...

 

[BaronScarpia]

Imo, it would be an elegant solution to shut down AH before releasing the loot 2.0 but, imo, the hard truth is that it would be unnecessary.

Most gear would be BoA and people can get some low tier gems or gold on AH if they feel like joining the \"can\'t find gold anymore\" panic. (Buying rares doesn\'t worth the trouble because legendaries just can roll better - and are BoA).

When they announced the AH closing, we started to expect loot 2.0 on the same date.

Before that, some of us expected loot 2.0 on january, since after blizzcon meant thanksgiving, holidays, \"stuff\". And there\'s a greyed hammer button on PTR.

I don\'t remember blizzard saying \"we need to close AH before releasing loot 2.0.\"

And, to be honest, there isn\'t a lot of testable things to test on PTR (or a crazy amount of testers - it seems). If there are broken procs on legendaries, it would take more than a couple months to test all of them with the current drop rates.

The broken part of lvl 60 (no more lvl 63 monsters and items on lvl 60, which makes the next patch easier than the current one) will most likely remain broken, since the D3V isn\'t a separated game, but the same lvl 60 of RoS (if they kept vanilla unchanged, RoS progression would be 59, 63, 63, 63, 63, 64... since vanilla and expansion chars live on the same world.)

Personally, I tested the 5 classes, I leveled 1 char from scratch and managed to get them on master (except monk - I can tank mobs on master with DH, but I can\'t do the same with monk...). And I wrote giant walls of text on official forums.

I would like the basics - separeted servers for vanilla and expansion (so they could keep density, challenge and whatnot of vanilla); better drops; etc. Question is: They want/can (budget) do it or not? No need to test it, imo.

That said, I would rather have loot 2.0 at the end of month as well...

 

[Flux]

That\'s a good point at the end there. D3 has much higher standards for quality and fun than an MMO since it doesn\'t have social pull to keep people playing.

Q: How many WoW players have thought about quitting numerous times but kept going since they had friends who relied on them in their clan?
A: All of them.

 

[Flux]

I still figure the whole patch with Loot 2.0 and such won\'t go up until the AH shuts down, which happens a week before RoS launches. Then again, I was 8 months off on my RoS release date prediction, so maybe don\'t take my advice.

 

[Steven Hazani]

That\'s a good point at the end there. D3 has much higher standards for quality and fun than an MMO since it doesn\'t have social pull to keep people playing.

Q: How many WoW players have thought about quitting numerous times but kept going since they had friends who relied on them in their clan?
A: All of them.

This is exactly it. I kept playing a different MMO long after I got bored of it just because I wasn't bored of the people there. Conversely people leave D3 left, right, and center. Sometimes they return, sometimes not, sometimes they just troll forums for the lulz. People playing together in D3 is all but unheard of, even stuff like ubers or crypt prep rarely gets off the ground.