official Diablo III

[trag3dy]

So, this community buff really feels like this is how the game should be all the time. It actually feels rewarding to play the game now. Even if 95% of the legendary items we find are crap at least we get something for our time invested. Instead of going through 5-6 rifts and having nothing to show for it.

 

It's going to be sad when it goes away and it's probably going to cause an explosion on the official forums.

[Shadrack]

So, this community buff really feels like this is how the game should be all the time. It actually feels rewarding to play the game now. Even if 95% of the legendary items we find are crap at least we get something for our time invested. Instead of going through 5-6 rifts and having nothing to show for it.

 

It's going to be sad when it goes away and it's probably going to cause an explosion on the official forums.

I'm not so sure. If it was this drop rate all the time I'm not sure if the interest in the game would be any higher. It just feels good because it is more than what it was.... I suspect that would be the case at any drop rate. Idk. Your point is well taken, I think that if this were *the drop rate* and there were no 'community event' a lot of my friends that are online now would not be because their interest has already waned.

I think they should just alternate between 100% drop rate and some XP bonus community events maybe once or twice a month.

Also, I wish they would add rift key fragments in story mode. Adventure mode has gotten old.

[Shadrack]

Apparently, local Targets (in the US) are running a sale on Diablo 3 ($20) and RoS ($30) through May 24th:

 

Source is just a discussion.  Haven't seen it myself.

 

http://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/264ly9/d3_20_and_ros_30_on_sale_at_local_targets/

[Vvo]

I'm not so sure. If it was this drop rate all the time I'm not sure if the interest in the game would be any higher. It just feels good because it is more than what it was.... I suspect that would be the case at any drop rate. Idk. Your point is well taken, I think that if this were *the drop rate* and there were no 'community event' a lot of my friends that are online now would not be because their interest has already waned.

I think they should just alternate between 100% drop rate and some XP bonus community events maybe once or twice a month.

Also, I wish they would add rift key fragments in story mode. Adventure mode has gotten old.

Actually, the 100% drop rate stays due to overwhelming feedback from the community

[LittleNeutrino Veteran]

So essentially what they are doing it making it so that Legendary items are common place now and rather easy to get. :( I hope they add another teir of items then so that we have something to strive for.

[spikey_richie]

At least we might be able to get into T V and T VI now.

[Shadrack]

So essentially what they are doing it making it so that Legendary items are common place now and rather easy to get. :( I hope they add another teir of items then so that we have something to strive for.

 

Too many people crying about how they haven't beaten Torment 6 already.  Its ridiculous.  Blizzard even came out saying that Torment 6 was intentionally setup to be just ridiculously hard and didn't expect the vast majority of players to ever defeat it. 

 

So you can only round up gear and are not getting the right drops to get pass Torment IV, so what?!?!?

 

I haven't gotten that far.  Not sure I ever well.  But what I like about the changes they have made with Diablo 3 is that there is (at least) always a higher difficulty to be working towards.  The end game is really just you being sick of playing the same old game over and over again.  Now the end game is going to be defeating Torment 6 and literally having nothing left to do.

 

I've been posting and reading the /r/Diablo and /r/Diablo3 forums since RoS released and one thing is clear there: You post something about how you think Blizzard should increase drop rates and overall nerf the game and you will get a plethora of upvotes.

 

Say anything critical about the prospect of Blizzard nerfing something or say that you like the game how it is now and don't think Blizzard should change it in a dramatic way: you get downvoted to oblivion. 

 

Blizzard has a long standing history of listening to the loudest whiners so none of this should be surprising for me.

 

Next patch they will probably add 2 or 3 or another 12 more difficulties (hell, there is already a ridiculous number of difficulties) followed by people whining that they can't beat the highest one yet because they are unlucky or something like that.

[spikey_richie]

With the crusader changes recently I'm happy in a T III rift and doing T III dailies, and the occasional T IV daily if I'm feeling daring.

[trag3dy]

So essentially what they are doing it making it so that Legendary items are common place now and rather easy to get. :( I hope they add another teir of items then so that we have something to strive for.

 

Hardly. That's being overly dramatic. Even *if* you could get all the legendary items you want a mind blowing 1% faster (that's all the buff is) you're still not guaranteed good stats on anything you find. Assuming you do get something you want the likely hood of getting max rolls on it is even smaller. Besides a vast majority of stuff you find is garbage anyways. 

 

I really don't get it. Do you not like being rewarded for your time invested? I sure as hell do. Doing 5 or 6 rifts in a row without a single legendary drop, which was not uncommon, is the exact opposite of fun.

 

You guys seem to want the game to be more tedious than it really needs to be so I'm sure you'll enjoy ladders whenever those are finally added to the game.

[trag3dy]

Too many people crying about how they haven't beaten Torment 6 already.  Its ridiculous.  Blizzard even came out saying that Torment 6 was intentionally setup to be just ridiculously hard and didn't expect the vast majority of players to ever defeat it. 

 

So you can only round up gear and are not getting the right drops to get pass Torment IV, so what?!?!?

 

I haven't gotten that far.  Not sure I ever well.  But what I like about the changes they have made with Diablo 3 is that there is (at least) always a higher difficulty to be working towards.  The end game is really just you being sick of playing the same old game over and over again.  Now the end game is going to be defeating Torment 6 and literally having nothing left to do.

 

I've been posting and reading the /r/Diablo and /r/Diablo3 forums since RoS released and one thing is clear there: You post something about how you think Blizzard should increase drop rates and overall nerf the game and you will get a plethora of upvotes.

 

Say anything critical about the prospect of Blizzard nerfing something or say that you like the game how it is now and don't think Blizzard should change it in a dramatic way: you get downvoted to oblivion. 

 

Blizzard has a long standing history of listening to the loudest whiners so none of this should be surprising for me.

 

Next patch they will probably add 2 or 3 or another 12 more difficulties (hell, there is already a ridiculous number of difficulties) followed by people whining that they can't beat the highest one yet because they are unlucky or something like that.

 

You're being overly dramatic about the entire thing too. It's a 1% buf. That's it and that's all.

 

The funny thing is the devs of PoE are drastically increasing the drop rates for the majority of unique items in that game and they're only getting praise for it from what I've heard. But blizzard gives us a 1% buff and the game all of a sudden isn't worth playing.

 

The buff literally changes nothing. Instead of getting BiS at 600 hours now you'll get BiS at 500 hours. Most people will give up or get bored with the game before they get anywhere near 500 hours. Blizzard is just terrible.

[LittleNeutrino Veteran]

Hardly. That's being overly dramatic. Even *if* you could get all the legendary items you want a mind blowing 1% faster (that's all the buff is) you're still not guaranteed good stats on anything you find. Assuming you do get something you want the likely hood of getting max rolls on it is even smaller. Besides a vast majority of stuff you find is garbage anyways. 

 

I really don't get it. Do you not like being rewarded for your time invested? I sure as hell do. Doing 5 or 6 rifts in a row without a single legendary drop, which was not uncommon, is the exact opposite of fun.

 

You guys seem to want the game to be more tedious than it really needs to be so I'm sure you'll enjoy ladders whenever those are finally added to the game.

 

I personally already thought the drop rate was too high. play for 1 hour should not grant you several Legendaries And with the Buff active I received 4 legendaries during the first hour of game play after the patch. sure they weren't useful for me but the fact that they dropped at all seamed a bit much.

[trag3dy]

I personally already thought the drop rate was too high. play for 1 hour should not grant you several Legendaries And with the Buff active I received 4 legendaries during the first hour of game play after the patch. sure they weren't useful for me but the fact that they dropped at all seamed a bit much.

 

Why should it not?

[LittleNeutrino Veteran]

Rare items should have that drop rate the point of a Legendary is to be super rare, and currently they are not. Think of other games like WoW or Guild Wars where a Legendary Item is truly something to behold and something difficult to obtain whereas currently in D3 they hand them out like candy.

[trag3dy]

Those games are mmos. Diablo 3 is a single player game with a co-op element to it.

 

I'm still not seeing a reason why legendary items need to be super rare, especially when the majority of them are glorified rares as it is. Give them all game changing affixes and that might be different.

[Shadrack]

You're being overly dramatic about the entire thing too. It's a 1% buf. That's it and that's all.

 

Where did you get the 1% from?  My understanding was that the community buff increased legendary drops by 100%.  It wasn't MF 100%, it specifically said legendary drop increase 100%.  To me I read that as take the current drop rate at whatever difficulty (add rift bonus drop rate if in a rift) and multiply it by 2.

 

I wasn't against the community buff, I think that was a good idea and something Blizzard should have kept doing periodically.  Maybe they will anyway.

 

It is what it is.  For some folks it will shorten the amount of gameplay they get from the game because they can handle the highest difficulty (so what else is there to gear up for anymore?).  Other folks would probably have lost interest before then anyway.  No point really arguing about it though.  It won't keep me from playing the game a bit longer, anyway.

[trag3dy]

Where did you get the 1% from?  My understanding was that the community buff increased legendary drops by 100%.  It wasn't MF 100%, it specifically said legendary drop increase 100%.  To me I read that as take the current drop rate at whatever difficulty and multiply it by 2.

 

I wasn't against the community buff, I think that was a good idea and something Blizzard should have kept doing periodically.  Maybe they will anyway.

 

It is what it is.  For some folks it will shorten the amount of gameplay they get from the game because they can handle the highest difficulty (so what else is there to gear up for anymore?).  Other folks would probably have lost interest before then anyway.  No point really arguing about it though.  It won't keep me from playing the game a bit longer, anyway.

 

Before the buff the drop rate for legendary items was ~1%. Which is increased by 100%.

 

Of course there are various tiers of legendary items. A Shard of Hate for example has a drop rate that is probably closer to .01%.

[Shadrack]

Before the buff the drop rate for legendary items was ~1%. Which is increased by 100%.

 

Of course there are various tiers of legendary items. A Shard of Hate for example has a drop rate that is probably closer to .01%.

 

I guess you put it in terms of a "1% buf" and that is what confused me, because I read it in game as a "100% buf", i.e., if your previous leg drop rate was 1% on Normal it is now 2% and in a Rift (which already had a 100% bonus) it would be 4%.  I think that is a pretty significant increase over the initial design...

[Emn1ty]

After playing many hours of this expansion (and here demonstrating my distaste for it being $40, and I still think it's too much) I will say this update has made the game very fun to play.

 

The increased drop rate on legendary items is nice, but it seems that you constantly get legendary items that aren't much better than standard rares now. Adventure mode is awesome for one sole reason: leveling. It is far faster to level a character in adventure mode than in campaign, and more fun.

 

But moving past that I've found something that really frustrates me about this game, and that's the lack of ability to share items. Every crafting material post 60 is account bound, which means if you're extremely lucky you find yourself with hundreds of an item you rarely use... or unlucky you find yourself without anything you need. I've been stuck trying to upgrade my artisans for a while now cause I get virtually no Death's Breath drops. Yet my friends each have tens of them just stocked up in their inventory with nothing better to do. And Blizzard in all it's wisdom has locked the item to each person's account.

 

I don't understand what harm it would cause to allow you to trade items with friends, if not only at equal level.

 

Blizzard has some of the weirdest ideas sometimes, but other than that I am enjoying the game quite a bit.

[Shadrack]

It is far faster to level a character in adventure mode than in campaign, and more fun.

]

 

After grinding Adventure mode and rifts pretty much continuously since the expansion was released, I'm tired of it.  I've actually started a new campaign game and find that it is a nice change of pace (again...).  Unfortunately, there really is no current incentive to play campaign anymore.  The "reset" guaranteed legendary drop on Diablo is hardly worth the grind through all of the quests (especially with the added Act V).

 

The only efficient way to farm gear is in adventure mode.

[trag3dy]

First look patch 2.1:

 

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/14244559/first-look-patch-210-6-17-2014

 

All in all it sounds terrible. There's literally nothing to be excited about in that preview. On top of that it gives plenty of reason to not bother playing at all because of changes to healing they proposed.

 

I wonder if blizzard thinks these things through all the way.

 

Also if I was interested in starting over again and again I'd just play hardcore PoE. That kind of tedium holds no interest for me.

[Slane]

First look patch 2.1:

 

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/14244559/first-look-patch-210-6-17-2014

 

All in all it sounds terrible. There's literally nothing to be excited about in that preview. On top of that it gives plenty of reason to not bother playing at all because of changes to healing they proposed.

 

I wonder if blizzard thinks these things through all the way.

 

Also if I was interested in starting over again and again I'd just play hardcore PoE. That kind of tedium holds no interest for me.

 

Terrible? How so?

 

Seasons have been a long, long, long wait. They are making more complete X than whoever levels fastest. It sounds good and once it hits PTR we can all get a better grasp.

 

They are further increasing rifts to add Greater Rifts, which will add a challenge to rifts. Increase rewards and Legendary Gems coming from them. You also upgrade Legendary gems via Greater Rifts. Rifts are already the best part of RoS and they made it better. One change they made to the rift system, is all players require just 1, that's right 1 rift fragment to enter. No more "Rift it Forward" communities and playing the menu game. You'll actually be playing the game. 

 

Legendary gems! Finally a reason to have sockets on Amulets/Rings. We don't know what they are other than " and provide special Legendary powers when socketed into the appropriate gear slot." which can be "The gist is that these gems are infinitely upgradeable". Completeing Greater rifts allow you to upgrade the gems. The gems hopefully (haven't seen stats) will be as diverse as the legendarys where in loot 2.0 and open up even more options for different builds.

 

Leaderboards. Kinda of minor but a great way to compare yourself among guildies and others who play D3. Nothing major here, but a nice feature to have.

 

The Dex changes to Monks and DH is a much needed change. That's huge. Dodge was always a so-so stat that is great when it happens, but relying on it sucked. This is going to increase survivability  with DH greatly and Monks slightly. The changes to OWE and the Dex change should keep monks roughly where they are at (again needing to get on PTR to see the change).

 

The healing change is great. Increase LoH and life regen will make gear even stronger than before and keep healing a steadier pace. Far to often, especially on HC, you would end up low on health with potion on CD waiting on a health globe to boost you back to full. With this change the life regen/LoH (and associated passives) should help keep a steadier income of healing. 

 

All in all. I think this is shaping up to be another fantastic patch made by the RoS team. They continue to improve on D3, listen to the community and provide changes that impact in a positive way. The team has really step up there game to release quality products. Still a tad bit early to see what all 2.1 will bring and if in the end it will be a positive patch, but it looks that way.

[trag3dy]

Terrible because seasons are bad and uninteresting. This is not actually new content. They will be dominated by bots, account sharers, and people who can have the time to play 18 or more hours a day.

 

Terrible because if you do not want to play their terrible ladder system you have to wait an undetermined amount of time to get access to months old "content".

 

Terrible because making dex give armor instead of making it unique like every other main stat in the game is lazy. Lazy because they couldn't fix dodge and have it work properly.

 

Terrible because we'll have to completely regear to get decent LoH and regen. In some cases changing builds around completely and making huge sacrifices in terms of power to get the same survivability we have now. Sure fine, seasons will "fix" this. But for those that don't have any interest in seasons? I may as well start over completely. Again. The only thing this can be considered is a huge, drastic, and sweeping nerf.

 

Terrible because people told them LoH and regen were not going to be wanted stats during the RoS betas when they first started talking about removing life steal. They were told that they didn't scale well, at all. Blizzard ignored those warnings.

 

Terrible because due to the proposed changes to healing there's 0 reason to play right now. It's literally wasted time. Even more so than playing games usually is.

 

Legendary gems and hellfire amulets. Okay. Those might be interesting. I'll give you that. Also while Greater Rifts are just rehashed old content they do seem like they will spice things up a bit. 

 

What I want is complete new tile sets and new ways to play the game to along with completely revamped legendary items that are not just glorified rares. And not rehashed game modes and semi-forced restarts that are somehow misconstrued as new content. The only "new" content coming in 2.1 is the new legendary items which I pretty much couldn't care less about because after 2.1 hits which won't be for months I will have to wait even longer to ever see them because I have no interest in seasons.

 

So while I loved RoS and put an unhealthy amount of time into it initially all these changes they're making to the game are doing the exact opposite of what RoS did for me. Which is to say, make me not want to play at all. I do not want to start over because blizzard refused to heed warnings that were first given to them over half a year ago. I've put far to much time into my characters to get them where they are for me to ever want to do it again. At least not in this game. Which is what the proposed changes will require if they don't make huge changes to the mystic and enchanting.

[Slane]

Season are bad and uninteresting? Yet you recommend Path of Exile, the game which prides itself on races and seasons.  As to the second part regarding bots and etc. How is that any different from now on D3 or any other game?

 

What older content? The only thing exclusives to ladders/seasons are legendarys. That are only exclusive to for that season, once it ends it goes to normal content. Rifts, legendary gems etc all are going to be released for seasons once 2.1 hits. No content is going to hidden away.

 

Dex for armor is better than Dex for dodge. I'd say I'd rather Dex didn't' function same way as Str does but it's better this way, even if only marginally. 

 

Maybe, haven't stated whether or not the changes will be retroactively, but seeing how other changes were (2h's) I dont' see why not. And a game that focuses on gearing, and you think it's terrible you have to get more gear? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of playing a game where the gear grind is the main grind?

 

So it's terrible that Blizzard knew it was bad in beta, but didn't fix it and now are fixing it? Where the logic there?

 

How is it a waste of time? It's a waste of time because of proposed changes that where only 1 paragraph in lenth. No numbers nor futher details have been released yet to fully understand how this change is going to affect us. All we have is a paragraph stating the goal and you finding that a reason to not to play? 

 

Gems sound great, I agree it's just a matter of seeing what effects give them that "legendary" shine to them. And Hellfire Amulets. O boy. Finally a reason to run ubers, getting a 5th passive skill that you want along with good stats. Main stat, crit, socket, passive, crit dmg. Jesus.

 

We all want that. Seeing what they are doing with the TLoU rift on PS4 makes me believe they may start slowly adding stuff. I know late last week there was  huge thread on battle.net forums asking for a starcraft themed rift. ######ing up zerglings with your wizard? Hell ya. Thought it remains to be seen what Blizz will do with this.

 

I'm sorry that you find the changes with 2.1 as determent to the enjoyment you get from D3. For me it's the opposite. I see changes making me glad I play and further stoking the coals of my desire to play. But with that, and as you have stated 2.1 is still months away. Getting more into the details isn't really worth all that much until we get more info.

 

Only thing I can say is I think the RoS team made D3 1000000x better than anything Jay Wilson did. And I think they continue to improve it. Some changes aren't the greastest but they really do seem to have the hearts right on making a good game even better.

[trag3dy]

Where did I recommend PoE? All I said is that if I wanted that form of tedious game play I would go play PoE. Hint: I'm not playing PoE.

 

And by old content I mean rehashing rifts. Giving it a variation. There is nothing new here or nothing even remotely innovative. It's literally just adding 1 more difficulty level onto old game mechanics.

 

Believe me when I say I realize these changes are in no way final and are still undergoing heavy testing it just seems like a large part of it could have been avoided had they dealt with it when it was first talked about. Massively increasing health pools and damage received at level 70 and then leaving healing largely as it was at 60 where most people had 1/10 the health they do at 70 didn't make any sense then and it still doesn't now.

 

But now after people have been playing for several months and invested hundreds of hours to get where they are they decided it's the time to completely undo all that effort? I really don't like the idea of having hundreds of hours of my effort undone because of blizzards shortsightedness. 

 

But, like I said. They can fix it by making it so all forms of healing on gear secondary stats and allowing secondary stats to roll independent of primary stats at the mystic. Right now both health regen and health globe healing are secondary where life on hit is primary and only on weapons and accessories only. Where there's already extremely small amounts of wiggle room for what's good and bad on weapons (no socket or no main stat makes a weapon worthless). Accessories have a little more wiggle room but then again, maybe not with the addition of legendary gems and the fact that accessories are a huge source of elemental damage, which is 100% mandatory at higher difficulties.

 

So yeah, the entire system is a huge mess and I really don't have faith that blizzard will sort it out properly.

[Shadrack]

Terrible because seasons are bad and uninteresting. This is not actually new content. They will be dominated by bots, account sharers, and people who can have the time to play 18 or more hours a day.

 

This exactly, +1000.

 

Seasons add nothing in the way Blizzard currently describe them.  Why not just add the new legendaries and be done with it?  I suggested some tweaks on Reddit to fix Seasons so that the ladder worked properly and was completely slammed for it.  Apparently I'm a retard for wanting Blizzard to bow down to "casual gamers".  Sucks to have a life, apparently.

 

Anyway.  Tweaks I think might make Seasons meaningful:

 

1. Limit the gameplay hours per character to something like 8-12 hr/week.  If someone wants to play more than that they can start different characters.

2. (And/Or) Leaderboard progression should be based on completion goal / gameplay hours on character.   Blizzard seems to be designing it towards folks who can just grind long sessions right out the gate.  Its not a "season" per-say...it's a race for anyone who wants to be in the top 1000 rank.

 

Pretty much all my friends have stopped playing D3 for the moment, and I'm not sure this .1 patch is going to be significant enough to respark any interest.  Its a fun game but not an unlimited replay game.