Blizzard's Diablo 3 game director Jay Wilson posted a long update, detailing recent design changes to the core systems of the game.
Summary
Scrolls of Identification are no longer in the game.
Fifth quick slot button is now a dedicated potion button.
Mystic artisan NPC is removed from the game.
Stone of Jordan and Nephalem Cube are both gone.
White (common) items can no longer be salvaged for crafting.
Town portal is back in as a dedicated hot bar button, not a scroll.
Core attributes completely reworked and renamed.
Many people are fuming on the official forums over these changes as they are too drastic for a game that is deep into its Beta phase. Subsequently, further release delays are now expected.
Keep in mind everything detailed in the article today is already in the game, and most of it is complete. Once you get Patch 10 and see that, I think it may sink in that these aren't theoretical changes we're still working on, they're changes we've completed. Obviously the potion button still needs a little work to hook it up correctly, and the character attribute changes need to be balanced and tested for itemization throughout the game, but overall these are changes we've already made.I do not intend to impress that we're close to release, or infer any such "we're <-- this --> done" kind of statement, but most of these are fairly straightforward changes that are already complete and implemented. We do have more changes, skills and runes, affixes to add, more items, Battle.net features, testing, testing, and more testing etc. to do so we're obviously still not there yet, but none of the changes detailed today are theoretical or yet to be implemented.
Actually, a lot of the changes they made are new. Yanking the cube out means you now have to run to town in order to salvage things you pick up. No more identity scrolls, adding of town portal to the hot bar, removing some of the enchantments, white drops can no longer be salvaged, etc... reeks of making the game longer without actually adding content. The dev mentions that instead of opening inventory and being able to salvage, they wanted people to portal to town and scrap mats there. It just slows the pace of the game down.
Many of the "new" stat changes aren't actually new. They are ripped right from Diablo II. So, they made fundamental changes to the game that made D3 different from the previous versions (commenting on the beta before this new patch), only to fall back on those new ideas and adopt the old system. In essence they dumbed it down to make it accessible to a larger (console) audience while cutting out what made it different from their past games. Grrr.
Many of the "new" stat changes aren't actually new. They are ripped right from Diablo II. So, they made fundamental changes to the game that made D3 different from the previous versions (commenting on the beta before this new patch), only to fall back on those new ideas and adopt the old system. In essence they dumbed it down to make it accessible to a larger (console) audience while cutting out what made it different from their past games. Grrr.
How do you know that they dumbed it down for the console audience and not that, through feedback, they learned that people preferred the old way and that it possibly worked better? Did they say that was the reasoning for reverting or is that just an assumption?
Serious question, since I'm not following the development that closely.
How do you know that they dumbed it down for the console audience and not that, through feedback, they learned that people preferred the old way and that it possibly worked better? Did they say that was the reasoning for reverting or is that just an assumption?
Serious question, since I'm not following the development that closely.
The reason given was that it was causing confusion as to what to put your stats into. Here is the quote from the dev:
Quote:
This change makes the stats more intuitive and fixes some of the itemization issues we were running into. We want to make it clear that junk items aren’t worth picking up, and make it easy to identify other items as not for your character. We want to drop a ton of items, but to really pull off a sense of excitement when finding a great item, there needs to be non-optimal items, both for your class, and in general. By specifically targeting stats at classes, we can reduce the amount of item overlap, diversify our item pool, and create a cleaner, more exciting itemization system.
Honestly, I wasn't confused, and the explanation reads more to a "simplified" method of stat generation. By cutting down on overlap (dropping Defense, Attack, and Precision as attributes), and combining those into Amor and Weapons to make up those stats, it makes it easier to open it up to a larger audience. That larger audience would be in the form of console players that might not be familiar with the Diablo universe. While most of this is speculation on my part, I'm going to assume that the console version of this game is going to have a check box that says "apply best armor upon pick up" which would be easier for the built in inventory stats tracker to manage.
Yeah, I dont see how any of these changes could even begin to connected to a console make of this game. Wait I take that back, one I can see, the potion hot key. The others, not so much. But hey, if you want to hate that they are dumbing down a game just for the sake of I dont know, dumbing it down, go ahead, attempt to blame the consoles. Its cool.
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Originally Posted by lockwoodx
Why the fuck do people care about guns anyways? Oh right... they equal a penis.
Yes, I made it a generalization about consoles when it should have been more focused on the design team. My overall venom comes from the months of the development team going on and on as to why they chose the stat choices and item system. Then, within a handful of months of possible release, they decide to rewrite the way stats and inventory are managed including the hotbar right after it was confirmed they were doing a console version of D3. I extrapolated that based on my beta time playing and how well the current system worked. The cube is a huge time saver. The yanking of identity scrolls seems weird. The D2 style of stats seemed like they are taking a step backward. Again, this is just my opinion.
The thing is, in your time in the beta, you didn't find a glitch/exploit or flaw in the system. It doesn't mean there isn't one. They might be yanking these things, because someone is exploiting something, or there is a trend going on that people are doing that are taking away from the overall experience.
The other thing is that, maybe these items are just too readily available or too powerful for later in the game. A lot could be speculated.
Plus, this is an opinion based world, they could have been receiving massive amounts of mail stating what people dont like and what they do, and they could have made their decision based on this as well. I just dont like when people try to throw something under the bus (in this case consoles) when there is no real explanation for it.
Nothing off of that list I see here, connects this being all because of the console port that isn't even guaranteed yet. Its just something they are looking into.
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Originally Posted by lockwoodx
Why the fuck do people care about guns anyways? Oh right... they equal a penis.
It's Blizzard... if they didn't completely redesign a few systems before launch and gamers didn't take to the forums complaining about "dumbing down" and artificially extending gameplay through boring treadmill mechanics it wouldn't be the same.
(Nor would it be the same if they didn't redesign essentially the entire game a few times post-launch.)
Hell it would all be so different that we'd probably see forum bitching about how Activision was ruining Blizzard because they weren't being as obsessive about design anymore.
(Nor would it be the same if they didn't redesign essentially the entire game a few times post-launch.)
This, a thousand times this. I know people who will not roll a WoW Paladin alt because they are afraid they will learn the class just in time for it being changed to a completely new class.
Scrolls of Identification are no longer in the game. (cash shop)
Fifth quick slot button is now a dedicated potion button. ([COLOR="rgb(255, 140, 0)"]consoles[/COLOR])
Mystic artisan NPC is removed from the game. ([COLOR="rgb(255, 140, 0)"]cash shop[/COLOR])
Stone of Jordan and Nephalem Cube are both gone. ([COLOR="rgb(255, 140, 0)"]annual events[/COLOR])
White (common) items can no longer be salvaged for crafting. ([COLOR="rgb(255, 140, 0)"]cash shop[/COLOR])
Town portal is back in as a dedicated hot bar button, not a scroll. ([COLOR="rgb(255, 140, 0)"]consoles[/COLOR])
Core attributes completely reworked and renamed. ([COLOR="rgb(255, 140, 0)"]gear scaled poorly so it's easier to change the character before players get attached to them[/COLOR])
[/CENTER]
Looks interesting.
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Originally Posted by gzsfrk
Dude, you would have been, like, the coolest older brother ever.
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Originally Posted by rubbishfoo
EA executives should drive Star Destroyers. Its somehow fitting.
Well, you know, when you have to redesign a game so it can be played on a console...
3rd comment and it is a FUCK YEAH MASTER PC RACE comment. Diablo 1 was on the ps1 btw.
ANYWAY
I have noticed this simplified bs on games WAY TO OFTEN I knew Diablo 3 was gonna be toned down because they took out Diablo and replaced it with unicorns and this game will be a huge disappointment. Staying away from Diablo 3 despite the hype just like NUKEM.
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Originally Posted by Capt_Thad
heh I believe you may be suggesting that giving up used games in favor of exclusive 3rd party support excites you sexually.
That's cool... I've got way too much on my playlist backlog anyhow.
It was a good run for this company, they made some real quality stuff happen. Still holding out for Valve, but I'm gonna have to donate my "Blizzard Fanboy" hat to Goodwill.
