What Diablo 3's Dev Team Says Vs. What It Does. 2.0

[BohemianStalker]

Oh yeah, I think I read the best thread on US.Battlenet in years! I apologize if its already here, in that case just delete this post mods. In case it isnt, here we go(shameless ctrl+v):

This is a revamped, revised, and enhanced version of the synopsis of my original thread ( http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/10787818839 ) I have also posted it on the bottom as a TLDR. Enjoy.

Disclaimer : All of the following is based upon actual community record and is dated for accuracy, if you find a technical inaccuracy, feel free to add a link and factual data (not opinion) including a small description of the disputed topic in a post below.

PREFACE : Many of us who are long time Diablo fans who care about the Diablo franchise. Some of us ate, drank, and breathed the Diablo experience, and as a hardcore Diablo gaming fanatic I have seen several unfortunate in my opinion several misdirections ,exaggerations & over emphasis on memory compartmentalization as well as an excessive secrecy over quality of life issues within the game, and unfortunately a couple of straight forward possible lies on purpose or accidental to the player base from the Diablo development team

GOAL : My hope is to add a little transparency to frustrating conflicts in information, and subjects discussed that just make you scratch your head about, because you are possibly confused about what others are talking about.

"The Diablo community deserves an even better game from Blizzard"

Rob Pardo 1/18/2013​

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/7592242994?page=106#2104

And so it begins...

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PVP

Blizzcon 2010 - Battle Arenas were unveiled, They are a specialized game type in which players can engage in PvP combat in a controlled, regulated environment.

PvP (short for ‘player versus player’ combat) has had a storied history in the Diablo series. For Diablo III, we’ve decided to take it in a new direction to ensure that it’s deep, organized, frantic, and fun.

Diablo III’s PvP battles are fought in arenas spread out across the world of Sanctuary. These arenas aren’t random — they’re all unique, designed with differing amounts of terrain and cover. You participate in PvP using the character of your choice, with access to all of the gear and skills you’ve accumulated playing the game in single-player or cooperative mode.

You’ll learn many of the fundamentals of PvP (like how to avoid attacks or target specific foes) by playing the single-player game, but PvP differs in that it isn’t an ideal venue for gathering new weapons and armor. Your rewards for shedding blood in the arena are purer than that: bragging rights, the joy of sending friends old and new to their swift and inglorious deaths, and points that represent how far you’ve progressed on the path to fame and glory.

When you participate in ranked games (fights that pit two opposing teams of players against each other in ‘best of’ matches), you’ll earn points for advancement based on kills, accomplished objectives, wins, and other factors. Points lead to multiplayer achievements, titles, and more. Our system is focused on encouraging furious combat and multiplayer progression, not stringent competitive rankings, so you’ll earn points after every match and Battle.net matchmaking will pit you against similarly skilled opponents.

We’re also looking into other PvP game types that exist outside the ranking system, like 1-on-1 duels and mutually chosen team battles (for example, you and your friends could divide into two teams for an arena showdown). We’ll have more information on the availability of these game types in the future.

Our aim for Diablo III’s PvP is to set you up with dangerous, exciting gladiatorial matches, let you battle it out with other players at your own pace, and allow you to proudly display your rewards. We’ve added a robust system to remove the obstructions that may have kept you out of the action, so that you can focus on what really matters: answering the age-old question of ‘who would win in a fight’ — with a gauntlet to the face.​

- Jay Wilson Blizzcon 2010

- Arena Team Death match received overall high marks and great approval of the Battle Arenas systems after being demoed.

= Result : Pvp is scrapped on launch and never seen until brawling over a year in which nothing was regulated, damage wasn't mitigated, no unique challenges awaited, Just one area that allows you to target everyone, you can't team, you cannot keep a score, and there is no sense of definable quality effort put into the brawling mechanic whatsoever.

with all things Blizzard, we want to be sure that the features we add to Diablo III are actually worth it and will make the game better, and PvP is no exception.​

- Jay Wilson 12/27/2012 http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/8163085/

= Conclusion : Diablo 3 Expansion Pack Coming out 2014 - No quantifiable & or definable effort into improving or enhancing features making **quality Pvp an option before after release of the Reaper of Souls. The future of Pvp isuncertain.


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http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/blog/10030838/
Sharing Is Caring: The Shared Stash
Dated : 13/09/2011

You’ll be able to buy up to 5 tabs, each containing 70 slots of space, for a total of 350 slots of shared storage! Once bought, the upgraded storage space will be available to every character on your Diablo III account.
​

- Lylirra

11/09/2012 10:24 AMPosted by Lylirra
We reevaluated average character and account storage space requirements, and found it necessary to ensure we could handle what we anticipate will be a large amount of data very quickly after release.​

11/09/2012 10:08 AMPosted by Lylirra
That was a change made long ago during beta:http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/3967947405#5

We're still open to the idea of increasing stash space in the future, though.​

( Changing 5 Tabs to 3 Tabs)

11/09/2012 10:24 AMPosted by Lylirra
We obviously have room to grow if our projections are incorrect​

- People who actually play Diablo 3 are out of inventory space and make mules.

= Conclusion : No change planned, despite having the addition of more crafting materials, more legendaries, keys/organs added from ubers, more recipes, more gems, higher quality gems to stack, and quest bounties.

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The Mystic

From Caravan FAQ, released in August 2010 at the Gamescom expo.

The mystic creates scrolls, potions, magical weapons, spell runes, and charms, and can also enchant items.

A Diablo 3 Dev quote from an interview with indiablo.com from Gamescom 2010 confirms that the bonuses are not random:

"There’s a fixed number of added bonuses. Enchants work like Gems. We wanted the enchant to do what it does each time, rather than force players to use the enchant over and over again (on the same item).​

BlizzCon 2011 Panel: Gameplay & Auction House, and discussed in Blizzcon 2011 interviews. Here's Andrew Chambers speaking on the topic.

Gameplanet: Are the Mystic's item enchantments randomised or can they be selected?
Andrew Chambers: You specify the item you want, then you choose the enhancement you want, and that enhancement actually has a range. So say the plus experience might be 10 to 20 percent: when she applies it you might get +15% experience. You can reapply that and you’ll have a change of getting +16% or +17% experience, but it will never go beneath the current enhancement and you've always got a chance to improve to the maximum possible value.​

2013

The Mystic's return was revealed at Gamescom 2013 although details of all her abilities were not revealed the fact she would be able to reroll an affix (enchant) was and welcomed by the majority of the community.

Conclusion : Mystic only returns in Reaper of Souls with identical/less functionality she had from 3 years ago.

Ref.

? 1.0 1.1 Enchant Q & A - CM, Blizzard Entertainment, 13/11/13
? More Details on Enchanting - Blizzard Entertainment, 04/09/13
? Gamescom Interview - August, 2010
? Jay Wilson Interview Diablo3-esp.com, 21/11/2010
? The Fate of the Mystic's Enchants - Blizzard, 28/1/2012

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Cauldron of Jordan

Left-click the Cauldron and then Left-click the item you wish to sell, or use Shift-Left-click to sell several items at once. You can buyback the last several items you've sold from any merchant.

Nephalem Cube

It allows the player to break items down into materials that can be used in crafting. Left-click the cube and then left-click the item you wish to salvage, or use Shift-Left-click to salvage several items at once. Warning: this will permanently destroy the item!

So we’ve decided to remove the Cauldron of Jordan and Nephalem Cube. They were implemented to allow for salvaging and selling items when there was no quick and easy way to return to town. Now that the Stone of Recall exists, we found that keeping the Cauldron and Cube in the game detracted from the benefits of returning to town to sell items, salvage, craft, and interact with the townsfolk. It’s a good idea to break up combat so that players have a moment to evaluate their gear and crafting options before venturing back out. In addition, we’ve decided to just call it what it is and the Stone of Recall is now Town Portal, and is integrated directly onto the skill bar UI.

The Blacksmith artisan will now salvage items. With removal of the Cube we needed some mechanic in town that allowed you to salvage your items, and it just makes sense for the Blacksmith to offer it.​

1/19/2012
Jay Wilson
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/4325959

Conclusion : Do you find going to town to sell/salvage equipment would be better spent in town or out on the battlefield, given that you are already forced to go to town when you do get a premium legendary not belonging to your class, excess rares or legendaries, excess crafting materials, healing potions, or to craft items, upgrade gems, change followers, and possibly give a friend an item in your stash?

Q : Do you agree with this choice?

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Rune Stones

http://www.diablowiki.net/images/9/98/IconRunestones.png

Runes have no function on their own, other than beautifying your inventory. They are only useful once they're socketed into a skill, where they alter the skill's function. All runes improve the base skill effect, and in every known case any rune is better than no rune at all.

That said, a rune'd skill may not be an improvement over the base skill in every situation -- using a rune to change a fire attack to a cold attack (as the Crimson rune does to the Hydra skill) would obviously be a poor choice against cold resistant monsters.

The functions of each type of rune in each skill vary widely. While the early runestone system had fairly predictable bonuses -- certain runes added +damage, or multishot, or lowered the resource cost in almost every skill -- the complexity and variety of rune effects grew steadily over the course of game development.

Devising and implementing the effects of the Runestones was a tremendous amount of work for Diablo III's developers and artists; there are nearly 120 skills in the game, each with a basic function which is modified in at least four or five totally different ways by each runestone.​

Alabaster rune: Wild card functions.
Crimson rune: Generally provides +damage and/or fire damage.
Golden rune: Generally reduces the resource cost.
Indigo rune: Generally provides multishot in some form.
Obsidian rune: Wild card functions.

- Ref http://www.diablowiki.net/Rune_Archive

Rune Stone Versatility.

Will the increase in rank continue the change that the first rank made to the skill? For example, with the WD blow dart skill, the alabaster runes turn the dart into a snake. What does a higher ranking alabaster rune do?

Bashiok: Yes, the mechanic stays the same for the rune type in all ranks (more or less). It simply increases in power. For the Alabaster-in-Poison Dart example I’m actually not sure the increase in effect, but it likely plays off of the stun effect (higher ranks stun the target for longer). Runes that reduce cost reduce even more cost as the rank increases. A rune that would cause multiple projectiles would fire even more projectiles as the rank increases, etc.
It’s not necessarily a hard and fast rule though that the increase must only be one thing. Maybe it means more projectiles AND ups the damage a little to make sure it remains competitive with other runes or skills. It has to be a somewhat fluid system.​

Rune Drop Rarity

Are all five runes equally as rare or is one or more types rarer than others?

Bashiok: That’s a good question, I can see how that could be justified. I don’t know what the plan is there, I’ll have to ask. My gut is that it would be too much to keep some type of rune ‘power rating’ in mind when altering drop rates, especially post-release where patches could jumble them around a fair bit. “This rune sucks now but it’s still the rarest!â€
Also, ideally, each rune type will be equally viable to different people and builds. Saying one is more powerful than another would mean we’re probably balancing them to be, and that’s not the case.​

Upgrading Runes

The D3 Team has confirmed that the Mystic will have some crafting recipes to create new Runestones, though there are no details yet, other than that they will use old Runestones in the process. It will also be possible to salvage unneeded Runestones for magical materials, and even make new ones from scratch.

It's not known if the Mystic can upgrade the quality of runestones though, as the jeweler can by combining three gems of the same type/level to create one of the next higher level.​

I could find no other evidence that anything was wrong with this system, except that excess amounts of runes would drop, leaving the player who collected all of the runes with no inventory space. I could find nothing wrong with the mechanics themselves.

Q : Do you find this system to be not interesting, somewhat interesting or very interesting compared to the skill system we have at the moment?

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Talisman & Charms

http://www.diablowiki.net/images/3/32/Talisman_full.png

The Talisman was revealed to be a storage area for charms, which could modify core attributes of your character. Few details were given on specific charms bonuses, though the new look of the device was shown off in the demo build. In terms of functionality, the Talisman slots unlock as your character progresses through the levels. The example in the picture to the above right shows 6 slots unlocked. It is not specifically known yet at what levels the slots unlock, but it is safe to assume that they will all be unlocked by level 60 for a total of 13 slots.

The Talisman officially debuted at Blizzcon 2010. As had long been hinted at, it's an interface option that allows characters to add additional bonus items to their character. Charms are placed in the few sockets in the Talisman, where they provide fairly small boosts to the stats and other modifiers.​

Ref http://www.diablowiki.net/Talisman

Why the Talisman & Charms were removed.

It was a cool idea at its core, but right now it's just really too basic and doesn't provide anything you can't get from the armor and weapons you're equipping. It requires a lot of the player to invest time and energy into finding and storing yet another type of item just to add player stats. When they do all that, it's just to do something pretty boring that they can already do with awesome things like armor and weapons. Originally the Talisman had a much deeper design, but it proved very ambitious and it got whittled down over the years to a very basic +stat per single square. We like simplicity in our designs, but charms became superfluous in their purpose. We really like the core idea, but we don't want to stop everything and spend a large amount of time trying to fix the Talisman, although we do have some great ideas already. So, it'll very likely come back in some form or another after the game ships. And be awesome.​

Date 5/25/2011,
- Bashiok

Conclusion : The mechanics were fine, the charm design were considered uninspired, and too simplistic..

Q : Would you have preferred this system to be in the game?

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Traits

Traits are a separate set of skills, all of which are passive, that provide strong bonuses for the active skills and general character abilities. Characters do not earn enough points to use every trait, or even most traits. Choosing which traits to spend point in allows each character to specialize their play style in unique fashion.

Examples :

http://static2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20101108111243/diablo/images/c/c3/Inner_Rage.jpg

Inner Rage (Barbarian)

"While most orders teach the merits of calming the seas of the soul, the guardians of Arreat have embraced the raging inner storm." - Chronicler Ravgres
Rank 0/5
Reduces the rate of Fury lost and increases Fury gained for hitting the same target.

http://static4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20101108111346/diablo/images/c/cd/Prismatic_Cloak.jpg

Prismatic Cloak (Wizard)

An icy mist that freezes to the bone, the low hum and spark of electricity in the air… even touching a Wizard can have dire consequences.
Rank 0/3
Increases the effects of Ice Armor and Storm Armor by 100%.

Some traits were meant to carry over to all the classes.

Those of you who know and love the original Diablo and Diablo 2 Character Customization is a Huge part of the game, and if you are new to Diablo that's what it was all about.​

More variety equals more builds, every class has roughly 30 traits, and you can spend between 1-5 points in them, that adds up to 90 points per character.​

The skill system has been totally revamped, and we’ve added an all-new traits system. The skill system we showed last year was fairly Diablo II-like. We knew at the time that the basic mechanics were sound, but we felt it wasintimidating, and that it overly encouraged spreading your points around into as many different skills as possible instead of focusing on the skills that fit your play style. If you’ve spread your points into 30 different skills, then you’ve broken your character. The system wasn’t facilitating playing the game well. We also moved passive skills into their own UI, and renamed them traits—because no matter how good a passive skill is, it’s hard to pass up picking an active skill instead. The traits tree allows us to expand the number of passives and focus on core character customization ideas like, “I want more health,†or “I want more damage.†It replaces attribute-point spending, which we didn’t consider to be a very good customization system because there was always a *correct* way to spend points. With traits, players will find there are a lot more choices to make that will be better balanced against one another, and will include flavorful or role-playing choices to cater to a broader group of players.​

Jay Wilson - Blizcon 2010

Conclusion : Many websites I have read say that the passive skill tree was a natural evolution of the trait system.

Q: Do you agree that the passive skill tree was a natural progression with the removal of trait enhancement points?

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Offline Mode

How Blizzard feels about Diablo 3 on PC :

"We thought about this quite a bit," says executive producer Rob Pardo. "One of the things that we felt was really import was that if you did play offline, if we allowed for that experience, you’d start a character, you’d get him all the way to level 20 or level 30 or level 40 or what have you, and then at that point you might decide to want to venture onto Battle.net. But you’d have to start a character from scratch, because there’d be no way for us to guarantee no cheats were involved, if we let you play on the client and then take that character online.​

Offline Mode for Console

Q: What if a friend wants to bring his hero to my house to play?
A: On the PS3 version, you have the option of downloading your hero from cloud saves or bringing your hero on a USB device. On the Xbox 360 version, you can download your heroes from the cloud, but only Gold members will be able to save when not on their home machine. If you want to save your hero’s progress while at a friend’s, but do not have a gold account, you will need a USB device. (Source:http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/9280238334#5 &http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/9281758552#4 )

Diablo 2 Offline mode

What types of Multiplayer modes are supported in Diablo II?
Diablo II supports secured play over Battle.net, where players play with Realm Characters. It also supports play with Open Characters over Battle.net and with TCP/IP connections.

What is an Open Character?
Open Characters are stored locally on your own computer and, while you can set up games and chat over Battle.net, you cannot play these characters on a Diablo II Realm. In an Open Game, one player's computer is the game server, while the other players connect to it. Since Blizzard cannot be responsible for the locally stored characters, or the servers upon which the games are played, Open Games are more vulnerable than Realm Games to certain forms of manipulation and abuses by other players. The big advantage of Open Games, however, is that you can bring your Single-Player Characters onto Battle.net. You can play with your friends over Battle.net and then continue playing that character in Single Player as often as you want.
​

Ref - http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/faq/multiplayer.shtml

Conclusion : Diablo 2 accomplished an online only and singleplayer offline / multiplayer experience online on PC, while Diablo 3 only managed online only for PC and singleplayer offline / multiplayer online (Open Character) for console only.

Q: Do you feel Rob Pardo's answer sufficiently explained why (Online/Offline) exists?

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LOOT 1.0 - Launch day and beyond.

(Developers also claimed Legendarys were place holders for the actual items to be release, but were kept in game instead and conveniently forgotten about)

Item data we've exposed is by and large placeholder, and we're actually in the process of pulling it down due to a lot of reactions just like this. We thought it'd be cool to show some pre-release items in very temporary states, but it's just a matter of fact that people are going to take it at face value. Not that you or anyone else isn't able to discuss the particulars without assuming it's final content, we don't believe that to be true, but in general we don't think the discourse is healthy when it's going to be largely based on placeholder data.

To comment on your specific points though, the vast majority of affixes are simply not implemented in-game, and as the website directly queries game data, it can't pull something that isn't implemented. I'd say affixes are though one area where we want to do as much as possible by game release, but they are directly limited by when we want to finally get the game out the door. At some point feature creep has to stop, and we have to begin testing what should be (game mechanic-wise) a final product.

As you stated though a lot of the crazier affixes did not ship with Diablo II, but were added later. I don't believe that's because the designers didn't have those ideas, but they simply make more sense to expand and broaden the game featureset post-ship. You could argue that it's something that should be baked into the core experience, that Diablo III should be mechanically more complex than Diablo II at release, and the fact of that matter is that it is substantially more complex than Diablo II was at launch.

Bottom line we want as many affixes as we can get for launch, but with runestones, passives, and the itemization we're shooting for, we're already launching a game with far more diverse build potential than Diablo II.​

Thread : Re: The items are weak design, and why
Bashiok
09/23/2011

Example:

Sever [Legacy]
Legendary Sword
323.4–818.3 Damage Per Second
(165-384)-(297-785) Damage
1.40 Attacks Per Second

+(130-149) Vitality
(1.0-2.6)% Chance to Stun on Hit
+(87-306) Minimum Damage
+(116-401) Maximum Damage
+(5-12)% Damage to Demons
Critical Hit Chance Increased by 1.0%
+1 Random Magic Property

Jayesh smiled to himself. He had never seen a blade so perfectly suited for dismembering demons.
Required Level: 60 Item Level: 61
Durability: 25-45 Sell Value: 1,890​

Conclusion : Blizzard considered this an end game weapon at launch.

Q: After finding this weapon how long would you have to play to figure out it a weapon that rolls 323 Damage Per Second was or was not viable end game?

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LOOT 1.5 - beyond launch day.

Sever
Legendary Sword
534.1–1,138.9 Damage Per Second
(274-540)-(489-1087) Damage
1.40 Attacks Per Second

+(150-169) Vitality
+(112-296) Minimum Damage
+(149-391) Maximum Damage
+(36-40)% Damage
Critical Hit Chance Increased by 1.0%
+(15-25)% Damage to Demons
Slain enemies rest in pieces.
+1 Random Magic Property

Jayesh smiled to himself. He had never seen a blade so perfectly suited for dismembering demons.
Required Level: 60 Item Level: 62
Durability: 25-45 Sell Value: 1,920​

Q: After finding this weapon how long would you have to play to figure out it a weapon that rolls 534 Damage Per Second was or was not viable end game?

Recognition : 2014 : 2 Years After release Loot 2.0 is planned, and third iteration of the same items from release.

Q: Is it acceptable to have a iteration period this long with basic items from launch?

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BATTLE.NET SECURITY

I was hacked! was the headline on scores of posters subject lines.

Blizzards response:

"Despite the claims and theories being made, we have yet to find any situations in which a person's account was not compromised through traditional means of someone else logging into their account through the use of their password,"​

- Bashiok

We've been taking the situation extremely seriously from the start, and have done everything possible to verify how and in what circumstances these compromises are occurring. Despite the claims and theories being made, we have yet to find any situations in which a person's account was not compromised through traditional means of someone else logging into their account through the use of their password. While the authenticator isn't a 100% guarantee of account security, we have yet to investigate a compromise report in which an authenticator was attached beforehand.​

- Blizzard Official

In which Blizzard takes the opportunity to inform you that you can secure Your Gear with the Battle.net Authenticator for a low price of $6.50 on top of the additional price of what you paid for your always online game for in the first place.

Blizzard says : Hacking isn't Unusual.

Responding to claims that even accounts using authenticators are being hacked, Blizzard added that "the Battle.net Authenticator and Battle.net Mobile Authenticator (a free app for iPhone and Android devices) continue to be some of the most effective measures we offer to help players protect themselves against account compromises."The studio encouraged all Battle.net users to use authenticators, and also made mention of the new "Battle.net SMS Protect" system, which allows users to monitor and maintain their accounts via text message.

Ref - http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/117373-Blizzard-Says-Diablo-3-Hacking-Isnt-Unusual-UPDATED

Ref - http://www.geek.com/games/blizzard-has-made-26-million-just-from-battle-net-authenticators-1453575/

May 20, 2012

After getting through the bevy of release date errors, Diablo 3 players are finding their accounts under attack. It’s not clear whether it’s an exploitable glitch within Diablo 3 or improperly secured accounts on the client side, but many accounts on Diablo 3 have been hacked on May 19 and 20. Those who have recent activity with an account named “leyiongâ€, “Nevinâ€, “SBJunkieâ€, “luckllezzâ€, “McLeast†or any other person you know you never played with are almost assuredly the victims of this hacking and will need to take steps to re-secure their account as well as get their items back.

Blizzard’s answer to the mass of hacked Diablo 3 accounts, is, "Change your password and get an authenticator" - though many accounts with authenticators have also been among those hacked.

You can also submit a ticket to support and authorize an account roll back. This will take your character back some levels - how many will depend on when Blizzard staff can reset your account back to - and return some of your gold and items. Be aware that there are restrictions on the number of rollbacks available - it seems to be two based on answers to submitted tickets - and that being hacked more than once will cause your account to be banned permanently from using the soon-to-be-released real money auction house.

Most likely this group of hackers is preparing for the opening of the Diablo 3 real money auction house. This is just a taste of what’s to come in the future when the auction house officially opens and hackers everywhere try to steal goods and gold to sell for real cash.

This reporter, after having her own account with authenticator hacked, firmly believes this is a serious security breach on Blizzard’s side, though they either do not want to admit it, or are still unaware of the problem. Many who have had their account on Diablo 3 hacked were logged in at the time of the hack and support staff tells them there was no evidence of their account being hacked. That indicates there is an exploit in the system being taken advantage of.​

- http://www.examiner.com/article/accounts-on-diablo-3-hacked

Reports of hacks instantly stop.
Date : 2012-06-09
http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Diablo-3-Hacked-Account-Claims-Instantly-Stop-What-Happened-43412.html

BLIZZARD REPORTS A SECURITY BREACH

This week, our security team found an unauthorized and illegal access into our internal network here at Blizzard. We quickly took steps to close off this access and began working with law enforcement and security experts to investigate what happened.​

-Mike Morhaime

Ref - http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/securityupdate.html

Q : Do you find the breach that occurred to the battle.net servers in the same monthly period a coincidence?

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Beating Inferno

“Internally, we had this super hardcore test group – we’ve got a lot of hardcore players at Blizzard – that tested Inferno, and we got it to the point where they thought it was challenging enough. Then we doubled it. Because we knew, no matter how good we are, our players are gonna be better. We focused on making that as difficult as we could make it.â€​

- Jay Wilson

But do you think this is very fast clear inferno? I mean: Did u ever think pro players can make clear inferno in 4 days? –AkiEvans
no, I thought it would take them a whole week. –Jay Wilson

Ref - http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/diablo-3s-inferno-difficulty-has-been-defeated

Conclusion : After Alpha Testing, Friends & Family Testing, Closed Beta, and Open Beta testing, Blizzard was expecting to having all 4 difficulties of its newest Diablo game beaten in 4 days?

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Identify

The identify system has gone through quite a few internal iterations already, and I think we’ll probably see quite a few more. It’s an interesting system in a lot of ways because first off it’s something everyone remembers from the previous games, so if it wasn’t there you’d probably wonder where it went. In a different light you could literally remove it entirely and probably not impact gameplay itself very much at all. It’s also open ended enough where you could blow the system out and do something new and cool with it. Ultimately (and I know it’s a broken record at this point) we’ll do what is best for the game and what adds to the best game experience possible.

Personally – my own personal thoughts on the system – are that I think you could do almost anything with it and I’d be just fine. It wasn’t annoying to me when playing the previous games, it was just a part of how they played, if it was removed I don’t think I’d really miss it either, and if it was changed for the better then that’s cool too.
​

- Bashiok

In response to player feedback Patch 1.0.5, released in October 2012, reduced the time it took to identify items.

The cast time for identifying Rare items has been reduced to 1 second
The cast time for identifying Legendary items has been increased to 4 seconds

Identify All

Several hundred threads have been created since launch.

Blizzard Acknowledges the issue post launch

Solution arrives with Patch 1.0.8 on May 8, 2013, Approximately one year post launch.

Diablo 2 launched with Deckard Cain able to utilize Identify All June 29, 2000.

Q: Blizzard acknowledges work on Diablo 3 began from 2005, is it sincerely acceptable to forget, misplace, or avoid testing functionally sound mechanics that was a staple of the previous game 13 years prior?

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Auction House Commas

Diablo 3's Auction House was launched without Comma's because of the following :

One thing to keep in mind is that Diablo III is a global game, available in multiple regions around the globe. And, across those regions, the decimal style varies.

In the US, for example, decimals are identified with periods (ex: 1.23). Whereas in a lot of places in Europe, decimals are identified with commas (ex: 1,23). This means that a number like one million would look a bit different in each of those regions. In the US, it would look like "1,000,000" and in Europe it would look like "1.000.000".

So, which decimal style do we use? That question is actually one of the main reasons we chose not to include commas initially, since it could be confusing to players in other regions outside North America. In the end, we just decided to go without separators, but we didn't fully realize what kind of impact not having breaks would have on the user experience (and, yes, that's our bad).

That said, we agree that not having any method of breaking out values in the auction house isn't ideal, so we're currently discussing how best to address the issue (hopefully without creating other issues for players in other countries). Sure, we could just use commas since that's what's already available, or we might just do something more universal likes spaces​

- Ref Lylirra 11/2/2012
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/7005433457#6

Post Admission of failure to recognize the problem (Their Bad), no noticeable effort or change has been discussed or implemented to improve the situation over a year later.

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Auction House Systems

We haven’t made a decision about something like an auction house, but we want a better trading system than the one in Diablo II. It could take the form of an auction house or it could take the form of a new trade system that is easier, facilitating trades through Battle.net. That could be another way that players could trade items without having to actually go into the game. We haven’t made a decision on any of that, but we are going to do something to that end. We consider it really critical to the game.
​

Jay Wilson commented on trading in an interview from BlizzCon 2009

The Auction House can **short-circuit the natural pace of item drops, making the game feel less rewarding for some players. This is a problem we recognize. At this point we're not sure of the exact way to fix it, but we’re discussing it constantly, and we believe it's a problem we can overcome.​

Jay Wilson 8/22/2012
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/6398870250#1

"I think we would turn it off if we could," Wilson admitted, "but the problem is not as easy as that." He says that Blizzard has no real idea how many players actually enjoy the feature, and he doesn't want to remove something that some players might like. That said, he says that the team are working on a "viable solution" to the Auction House problem, but stopped short of actually explaining what it would be.​

Jay Wilsons' remarks from Blizzard Admits Diablo III Auction House Was a Mistake
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122980-Blizzard-Admits-Diablo-III-Auction-House-Was-a-Mistake

'At the core of the Diablo experience is a promise of killing monsters, killing demons, for the promise of finding those epic items,' he explained. 'The Auction Houses made that experience way too convenient and really **short-circuitedour core reward loop.'​

Blizzard's Josh Mosqueira admitted that the real-money Auction House was a "mistake".
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2013/09/18/diablo-iii-auction-house/1

Blizzards first stance :

The game's Terms of Use clearly states that all World of Warcraft content is the property of Blizzard Entertainment, and Blizzard does not allow 'in-game' items to be sold for real money. Not only do we believe that doing so would be illegal, but it also has the potential to damage the game economy and overall experience for the many thousands of others who play World of Warcraft for fun ... While we can understand the temptation to purchase items for real money, we feel that players can find ample equipment and money for their characters within the game through their own adventuring and questing.​

- Ref http://massively.joystiq.com/2007/12/20/blizzard-wont-support-legit-rmt-service/

Blizzards Second Stance :

We’ve always tailored our business models to match what we’ve felt would be most appropriate and effective for each game and in each region, and that’s the case with Diablo III as well. The item-based nature of Diablo gameplay has always lent itself to an active trade-based ecosystem, and a significant part of this trade has been conducted through unsecure third-party organizations. This has led to numerous customer-service and game-experience issues that we’ve needed to account for. Our primary goal with the Diablo III auction house system is for it to serve as the foundation for a player-driven economy that’s safe, fun, and accessible for everyone.​

(Blizzard's official Auction House FAQ, released in July, 2011)
- http://www.diablowiki.net/Auction_House_FAQ

Blizzard's Third Stance

Can Hardcore-mode characters use the currency-based auction house?
No. Hardcore characters will only have the option to buy and sell items together with other Hardcore characters via a separate "Hardcore-only" gold-based auction house; they will not be able to use the currency-based auction house. Hardcore mode is designed as an optional experience for players who enjoy the sense of constant peril that comes with the possibility of permanent death for a character. All of a Hardcore character’s items are forever lost upon that character’s death, so to avoid the risk of a player spending real money on items that could then be permanently lost when the character dies, we decided restrict the use of the currency-based auction house in Hardcore mode.​

(Blizzard's official Auction House FAQ, released in July, 2011)
- http://www.diablowiki.net/Auction_House_FAQ

Blizzard's Fourth Stance

When we initially designed and implemented the auction houses, the driving goal was to provide a convenient and secure system for trades. But as we've mentioned on different occasions, it became increasingly clear that despite the benefits of the AH system and the fact that many players around the world use it, it ultimately undermines Diablo's core game play: kill monsters to get cool loot. With that in mind, we want to let everyone know that we've decided to remove the gold and real-money auction house system from Diablo III.​

John Hight 9/17/2013
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/10974978/

Blizzard's Fifth Stance

Bind On Account :
Q: In the BlizzCon demo, legendaries are all automatically Bind on Account, as well as any item that is socketed. Doesn't this go against trading, if we can't trade the legendaries that we find?

Currently in the game, we're in the process of really figuring out what the trading landscape is going to look like.
​

- Josh Mosqueira
http://diablo.somepage.com/news/1704-diablo-iii-fansites-qa-with-developers

• First Conclusion : Jay Wilson started off unsure of the auction house system, despite wanting a superior trade system to Diablo 2, Jay Wilson then admitted the auction house system was failing, but was confident that they would find a solution, however the solution never came, and now it is unanimous belief that the idea was a failure.
  
  Second Conclusion : Blizzard has had several stances when it comes to real money transactions,
  
  The first stance is that it was important to keep real money transactions out of the game because it interfered with the fun & experience inside of the game.
  
  The second stance is real money transaction is a positive, because the nature of the Diablo game play makes sense to have RMAH as a option.
  
  The third stance, because you can die in hardcore, it does not make sense to have RMAH and dying means you can lose the item you paid for,
  
  The Fourth Stance is that the RMAH interferes with actually playing the game ( No comments specifically related to the losing battle of Gold Inflation, and 3rd Party websites).
  
  The Fifth and current stance seems to come back to Jay Wilson's position in Blizzcon 2009, and it seems to be another experiment that Blizzard is unsure of, which is Bind on Account Legendarys.

Q: With Blizzards inability to solve the problem of trading since launch without it affecting quality of life within the game, how confident are you in their future endeavors?

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Bind on Equip

Blizzards First Stance on Bind on Equip :

Yeah, we realized that binding is kind of a crappy way to pull items out of the economy. If you say that the average player produces 100 items an hour and maybe gets 1 upgrade in that time, then binding at best can account for removing 1% of items from the economy. And that's being very generous at high levels.

Binding isn't really substantial in making a viable economy, but it is really good at establishing item prestige. Which is how it's used in WoW.

We expect salvaging to be compelling enough to remove a good percentage of the most valuable items from the economy. High end components obtained from salvaging high end items are needed for high end crafting and enhancement.
We're not promising anything on patch content, but we also feel that keeping up on introducing new items consistently will keep it from being possible for a glut of the best items from building as 'the best' can be a constantly moving target.​

Dated: 04/29/2011
Bashiok
http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=27807930581&sid=3000&pageNo=2 (Link leads to a no longer functional forum, however a internet snap shot is available in the internet archives of the exact comment)

I’m happy to announce that we recently decided there will be no binding of items in Diablo III. They will be freely traded for the life of the item. The only way we are going to do any kind of binding would be for things that are not progression-sensitive. Like we might say…a quest item. We don’t want you to be able to give to other player to short circuit a quest, but if you find a sword, piece of armor, or gem....anything that you find in the ground, once you pick it up, you can freely trade it... forever.​

Date April 2011
Jay Wilson in an interview with Diablo3.cc

Blizzards second stance on Bind on Account :

I think at the end of the day Diablo is about killing monster and getting awesome loot. And if we have more bind on account items, it means that we can preserve that, but more importantly, we can drop more items for everybody. Because now we don’t have to worry about all these players generating all these items that are going into the economy. Now it’s your legendaries on your own, your legendaries on your own and my legendaries on my own and I think it preserves this core elemental again.​

http://diablo3.ingame.de/szene/interviews/diablo-3-interview-mit-josh-mosqueira-brian-kindregan-blizzcon-2013/

Q : If Josh Mosqueira's opinions on Diablo 3 is that preventing players from trading Legendarys will allow more drops in Diablo 3, how in fact can he explain the economy of Diablo 2 surviving through botting, duping, hacking, injected items, Hex items, iths, Amazingquarks, and packet injection over 13 years after its release?

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Appear Offline Feature

“Appear Offline†Option Coming Soon to Battle.net

In the coming months, we're planning an update to Battle.net that will give you more control over your online presence when playing Blizzard games. Soon, World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, and Diablo III players will be able to select "Appear Offline" as one of their Battle.net social-status options (along with Available, Busy, and Away) for those times when they want to wander Azeroth by their lonesome, dominate the galaxy in radio silence, or slay demons in solitude. When you choose this option as your status, all of your Real ID friends, BattleTag friends, and character-level friends will see you as “Offline†in their friends list whenever you’re logged into a game.​

- Blizzard Entertainment 9/20/2012

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/7315730/appear-offline-option-coming-soon-to-battlenet-9-20-2012

Today's date : 12-10-2013. Appear Offline option is still unavailable.

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Legendary Dye

We’re definitely working on making all dyes work for Legendary items. It’s not a quick-fix, though; as Fearophobias surmised, our artists actually need to go back and redo the textures on all the Legendaries in order to make them dye-compatible.

Since we know this process will take some time, we wanted to make sure that players could at least use Vanishing Dye for now (it was the most-requested dye for Legendaries that we’ve seen to date).​

Vaeflare
Dated January - 2013

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/7593623207?page=2#21
(Source forum link returned 404 Page Not Found ) - Alternate Citation below.
http://d3domination.com/diablo-3-news/dyes-for-legendary-items/

04/01/2013 01:29 PMPosted by Vaeflare
Dyes for Legendaries are still being worked on, but they will not be coming with patch 1.0.8.

As I mentioned previously, our artists actually have to go back and redo the textures on all the Legendaries in order to make them dye-compatible, which is why it isn't a quick-fix.​

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/8518532694#new-post
Dated 4/1/2013
Vaeflare

Date 12-10-2013
Legendary dye still unavailable

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Skill Locking Bar

As a player, I want to have some sort of warning and/or confirmation box when I'm about to do something that will cause me to lose Nephalem Valor stacks so that I don't accidentally move or change an ability and lose my stacks.​

Sounds reasonable. We're adding in an action bar lock which should help with that, but a confirmation sounds like a possible addition to that. I think we'd like to try to see if the action bar lock works well enough first.
​

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5593230830?page=10#189
Bashiok Date : 6/1/2012

Current Date : 12/11/2013

 

[BohemianStalker]

Heh 175 views yet no comments...you guys are awesome readers

 

[Sukkoi19]

Well it a nice document that sums up the past woes of Diablo 3. People have a habit of promising things they can't or won't deliver, corporations are not immune to this anymore than individuals. The nice thing about freedom of association is that you don't have to give them anymore money if you don't want to. For my own part Blizzard really has let me down with Diablo 3 but like an idiot I keep playing thinking that next patch or expansion will be the ticket to bring back the feeling I got from Diablo 2.

 

[Mackan]

For my own part Blizzard really has let me down with Diablo 3 but like an idiot I keep playing thinking that next patch or expansion will be the ticket to bring back the feeling I got from Diablo 2.

Waiting for the next patch or expansion to bring back the old Diablo feeling will never happen, sadly. This cartoony and cute art style deviates strongly from the previous games, so the feeling is lost already there for me. On top of that, they changed everything they could from the previous games. What did they keep? The sound from the health pool is perhaps the same.

Our only hope is that Blizzard scrutinises themselves and make a worthy Diablo 4 game. And I guess that happens when Hell freezes over.

 

[Clavdivs]

The God read the thread in its completeness, and cold facts and cites pretty much spoke for themselves. Divine being felt no urge to comment, since the text speaks for itself loudly enough.

 

[BohemianStalker]

The God read the thread in its completeness, and cold facts and cites pretty much spoke for themselves. Divine being felt no urge to comment, since the text speaks for itself loudly enough.

I love the way you write haha , keep it coming.

 

[MrSelfDestruct]

This team is made of a bunch of incompetents. They don't have a f***ing clue how to make a diablo game. I bet I could gather a group of people from this forum and make a better game than they did. Lots of people should get fired, they made Blizzard look pathetic with this mediocre product. And Blizzard should thank d2 team, because d2 is the reason they sold so many copies of d3.

 

[snurrfint]

Well, I agree that PvP and the item game could have been handled a lot better throughout the development, both at launch and after. The legendaries at launch were just terrible to be honest. Shockingly bad, and a poor poor drop rate.

After the first real item patch things got a lot better. I think the current items on live is on par with the items in d2 in terms of how useful and game changing they are. D2's items get too much credit tbh. +to all skills trumped all other stats. The difference is that d2 had:

1. Higher drop rate of top quality items.
2. Ladder resets.
3. Items where less important over all, some characters handle the game just fine without any good items at all.
4. No AH to speed up inflation of economy.
5. Ability to find top items at lower difficulty.

And d3 was stuck with:

1. AH, which make it almost impossible to find upgrades on your own, while it is too easy to just spend 5 millions on the ah and give yourself a set of items that would take 3 months of pure farming to get on our own.
2. Lower drop rate because of AH.
3. No reset of economy.

This differences make d2's item game feel more satisfying than d3's.

It may not be perfect but I'm very confident that loot 2.0 will make the item game much much much better than what's currently on live.

The other things that this post mentions, except for PvP, is just "meh, who cares" kind of points.

Identifying items. Who cares?
The mystic has less functionality than originally announced. Who cares?
"Rune stones" vs "skill runes". Impossible to say whats better.
Traits vs Passive skills. Impossible to say whats better.
Offline mode. Couldn't care less.
Stash space. I find it just enough tbh.
Charms, it's just another stat system that require stash and inventory space.

Q : If Josh Mosqueira's opinions on Diablo 3 is that preventing players from trading Legendarys will allow more drops in Diablo 3, how in fact can he explain the economy of Diablo 2 surviving through botting, duping, hacking, injected items, Hex items, iths, Amazingquarks, and packet injection over 13 years after its release?

He can explain it with ladder resets. Without it, d2's economy is more ****ed than d3's.

 

[HardRock]

Snurrfint summed things up pretty nicely in my opinion, although I do think that an offline mode would be pretty nice, even though my connection is fine and I never had any issues with B.net. Also, Legendaries can be dyed on the PTR.

 

[Tigerpaw]

Yeah, Blizzard made a lot of missteps along the way (really, A LOT of missteps), but because they took so long to develop the game AND were very eager to promote the game at the same time, it was unavoidable that they were going to end up promoting features that either changed drastically or ended up being completely removed. I'm not going to defend Blizzard at all on any of the above points, though that doesn't keep me from still playing the game as well (which I still enjoy quite a bit). Diablo 3 has gotten way better since it launched and I gladly welcome all such improvements…whether or not those should have been included when it first launched.

What I do hope is that the devs might get a little better at evaluating their creation (I think the beta will help with that) and avoid making so many missteps going forward. =^-^=

 

[MrSelfDestruct]

You guys are right, I agree the game is better now. But it could be so much more. And sometimes I just feel angry because Blizzard is the only game company I feel passionate, since I was a teenager. I hate to see this company being bashed because some people made very bad or stupid decisions. So far I'm enjoying some of the new stuff in RoS ptr. Lots of things need to be balanced, still. I hope it gets better and I hope this game brings me entertainment for more than a month when it releases. And, yeah, bring those ladder resets.

 

[Greizer]

My all time favorite must be Bashiok's quote about the place-holder items. I can't believe I actually fell for that trick; it seems so transparent in retrospect. I did have a strange feeling in my stomach, but ignored it due to the intense craving for a new Diablo experience. Bad mistake and I paid for it (literally).

A year and a half later and they still haven't fixed this ****:
http://i.imgur.com/JgWnd9o.jpg

And then the BoA in RoS... They finally profess to 'get it' and put wheels on the race car -- and then they make everyone drive in a tunnel at the same exact speed?! There's no light at the end of that tunnel, either: it just gets darked and darker until you run out of gas and quit. Well, Ladder resets could salvage a BoA environment somewhat, but without trading it's just not the same.

I'd shake my head if the DIII team was worth the effort that takes, but this post is already too much of a courtesy towards them.

 

[MrSelfDestruct]

I'm with Greizer on BoA. It's one of the things that doesn't feel good to me. I like to do whatever I want with my items.

 

[D jr]

Heh 175 views yet no comments...you guys are awesome readers

Raveharu likely choked on his coffee while scrolling down that list.

PS
I'm an old hand when it comes to Diablo franchise. Never in my wildest expectations I imagined D3 failing so hard compared to D2

 

[BohemianStalker]

Raveharu likely choked on his coffee while scrolling down that list.

PS
I'm an old hand when it comes to Diablo franchise. Never in my wildest expectations I imagined D3 failing so hard compared to D2

man I am so glad you brought Raveharu up first. Now I can say. Where are you now Raveharu? Got anything to say in your IDOL´s defense?


There are few missing things on the list if I am not mistaken. Like those nice fatalities we had in first video, but then we were told it was all staged ,-)

 

[Chaosmage]

And sometimes I just feel angry because Blizzard is the only game company I feel passionate, since I was a teenager. I hate to see this company being bashed because some people made very bad or stupid decisions.

Don't be, the company who made Diablo, Diablo2 and Starcraft doesn't exist any more, it is run by totally different people under a different leadership, they just kept the name.

 

[HardRock]

man I am so glad you brought Raveharu up first. Now I can say. Where are you now Raveharu? Got anything to say in your IDOL´s defense?

There's not much to defend really. Their reasoning for the online requirement doesn't make much sense and they blatantly ignored the fact that many people have spotty internet connections. Ironically this is especially true for the US based on everything I've heard so far, which is one of their largest market. On this issue they are obviously completely disconnected from the real world.

PvP should really be in the game already, but it was never really a focus for Diablo games in the past either, so I understand that they choose to fix other things first. In fact, we already have as much support for structured PvP as the previous games had.

The other valid point your quote makes is that they messed up the itemization, but everything I've seen from the PTR so far makes me think that finally they are fixing this.

Other than these, the only thing your post proves is that things often change during development. People don't realize this, because big development studios tend to work on their games in complete silence. Threads like this are the reason for this. It's always implied that nothing is set in stone until the game is released (that's why it's called development) and people not familiar with game development (in other words almost everyone) tend to flip out when they think that a promise has been broken.

 

[Clavdivs]

I, Tiberius Claudius Augustus Caesar Germanicus, The God, state that EVERY criticism of D3, or mistakes and flaws made by D3 development team, ends in either comparison how good D2 was, or pointing imaginary flaws of D2 as a reason why D3 has the same, similar or worse (but real in all cases).

The God states that this thread is about D3 ONLY, and what was PROMISED and SAID, and later SCRAPED or CHANGED RADICALLY TO THE WORSE.

D2 has literally NO connections with what Blizzard spokespeople promised, even had demoed or included in the beta, and what they delivered. In D3. Blizzard almost denounced D2 publicly (semi-officially, by some of weaker-nerved plebeian scum with zero merits of their own)

Heavenly being urges discussion to stay on topic of D3 promises-vs-reality, and not stray to discuss whether it is better than its predecessor, the crowned king of arpg. We have enough of those already.