Game News Diablo III Game Design Update

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Tags: Blizzard Entertainment; Diablo III

Blizzard released their promised 'Monday Design Update' today, which covers class balance, items, expensive crafting fees and more. They mention three upcoming patches: 1.02 - addressing several service issues and hotfixes (coming next week), 1.03 - addressing Inferno difficulty (TBE) and 1.1 - introducing PvP arenas and better legendary weapons (TBE).

Here are some highlights from each discussed game design area:

Inferno difficulty
There's a little too much spike damage, but it's generally at the difficulty level Blizzard wants it to be.
They are working on promoting skill-set diversity among classes. Essentially by taking existing viable skill-sets and making them worse.
They mention players attempting Inferno without sufficient gear. Shop Smart, Shop RMAHmart.

Items
In 1.03, items at iLevel (item level) 60 or higher will have their iLevel displayed in the tooltip. That way, people won't be confusing weak legendary items (which is essentially all legendary items besides a few rings and amulets) with magic and rare items that have higher item level.
They are also working on improving legendary weapons. This will happen in patch 1.1 (the PvP patch). These changes will not be retroactive, meaning you should just ignore every legendary weapon up until then.

Crafting
They will reduce the cost of crafting Blacksmith items for level 1-59. This means that a level 60 item will still cost 60-100 000 gold and not be worth crafting, ever. They will also reduce the cost of gem crafting by decreasing the required amount of gems per upgrade to 2 (from 3) - but only up to Flawless Square gems.

So essentially, their game design for the longevity of the game is that of a micro-transaction MMORPG. You won't be improving your character by your own efforts, but rather by purchasing items from the Auction House and the Real Money Auction House. I've been running around in Inferno difficulty for days with over 250% magic find and I have yet to find any item upgrades by myself - they all come from the AH. Any codexers with a similar experience?

Blizzard also mentions a few Fun Facts based on the first couple of weeks since launch:

- On average players have created 3 characters each
- 80% of characters are between levels 1 and 30
- 1.9% of characters have unlocked Inferno difficulty
- 54% of Hardcore players chose a female character
- The majority of Hardcore deaths (35%) occur in Act I Normal
- The most common level 60 build in the game is only used by 0.7% of level 60 characters of that class (not including Passive diversity)
- The most used runes for each class at level 60 are Barbarian: Best Served Cold, Demon Hunter: Lingering Fog, Wizard: Mirror Skin, Monk: Peaceful Repose, Witch Doctor: Numbing Dart

You can read the entire update right here.

Let's be realistic here, did anybody expect something different from Blizzard, after the huge amount of money they made with WoW? As far as I'm concerned Blizzard is dead to me, they can continue to milk their not-so-intelligent mmorpg audience till the end of time.

Yep. I've been playing Hell and it's exactly like that for me - sure, I can grind for 10 hours to find that perfect piece of gear that will let me continue... but that's fucking stupid and boring. The Auction House is my level-up button, just go there when things get difficult and put down some gold. Blizzard outright saying that people are under-equipped for Inferno further reinforces that.

I mean, yeah, the game does get some depth back on the highest difficulties, but... it's not fun. It just gets even more grindy and monotonous.

Still playing on Hell (though about to be done with it, and L60 at last), and I had the exact same thing. I've found a whole one legendary in Whimsyshire (L23 sword, yay) and one sword at L59 that could've been useful if I hadn't had a better one from AH already. I'm not sure where the people get better loot to put on the auctions, either, since most stats I find are exceptionally shitty.

One other thing I completely fail to get is grey and white loot. If it was worth anything to vendor, I'd kinda sorta understand it, but it's utterly worthless, why even bother dropping it on levels higher than Normal - Act I except to fuck up the already somewhat fucked up click-movement?

Yeah, that's what I don't get with people that say they have fun. How the fuck can I have fun, when I need to grind monotonously for 20 hours to have a small chance to upgrade one of my item slots??? The obvious solution is of course the AH, but where is the fun in that??? Like a fucking cheat code to get better equipment.

What's interesting is that they initially planned for Inferno to be level 60 across the board. Meaning you could pick any act and any quest of your preference to farm for gear. What they did was change it so that every act on inferno increases the level of monsters. Maybe because PvP wasn't making it into retail launch, who knows.

"Farm Act 1 for gear to progress". They're actually saying that. With the abysmal drop-rates of anything worthwhile, I just can't believe their shit.

Wait, so they tiered Inferno? So highest iLevel comes from Act 4? What the fuck.

Also, do you have any idea what kind of loot we're talking about in Hell-level Whimsyshire? It generally seems to correspond to late A1/Early A2 of the next difficulty level from what I noticed but am not quite sure.

> I really hate the hypocrites at pirate bay who run off of ads and promote "free" shit that does the same
Meh, I'm still not convinced they make any money whatsoever. Running that site has to be damn expensive. And I'd assume the percentage of people with adblock is far higher among pirates.

And concerning D3: Were you guys honestly that convinced it would be different that you bought it right after release?

They did. Those 900+ DPS weapons you see on AH are all from Act 4 (from Wizards and Demon Hunters who could actually progress beyond Act II). You're lucky if you can find a near-600 DPS weapon in Act 1.
I've never done Whimsyshire.

So Blazzard says:
"People played our game 7 times to get this far. They obviously love it. Let's give them some incentive to stay and farm. Also, it'll feel like more of an accomplishment once they manage to continue."

Can't really blame them for that

I'd like to know what they were thinking when they decided that, as well as the apparent no-limit combination of elite pack abilities. Molten Fire Chain Fast Teleporters? Why sure, that sounds lovely.

I actually farmed up all ingredients and unlocked Normal and Nightmare levels of that. Not too bad loot-wise, I'd say, but the map layouts are pretty repetitive and there's a whopping 3 types of enemies. Still, slicing My Little Ponies in two is quite amusing.

Blizzard also mentions a few Fun Facts based on the first couple of weeks since launch:

- On average players have created 3 characters each

- 80% of characters are between levels 1 and 30

- 1.9% of characters have unlocked Inferno difficulty

- 54% of Hardcore players chose a female character

- The majority of Hardcore deaths (35%) occur in Act I Normal

- The most common level 60 build in the game is only used by 0.7% of level 60 characters of that class (not including Passive diversity)

- The most used runes for each class at level 60 are Barbarian: Best Served Cold, Demon Hunter: Lingering Fog, Wizard: Mirror Skin, Monk: Peaceful Repose, Witch Doctor: Numbing Dart

From Blizzard: I'm watching you play your single-player game.

Concerning loot drops, I haven't had a chance to level up my people as much as some of you but I know most codexers, including myself, probably prefer to play the game solo. My wife also plays and I have noticed that when we play our "Duo Characters" the loot drops are both more frequent and better on average than anything my solo character gets. This could be one reason you'll find better loot on the ah then ever drops for you solo, as the game is designed to reward multiplayer more than solo folks.

What build? There are no builds in D3. Every 60th level barbarian will be the same as the other 60th level barbarian save for gear (and the gear is randomized - auction house and all that). Hell, you can't even mix the skills the way you want any more i.e. as a Wizard you can't have both Teleport and Frost Nova in your spell-slots - you must choose between those abilities before going into action. This drastically reduces the numner of available "builds".