[April 12] Initial Development Manifesto Feedback

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The only thing I found questionable was claiming the loot drop situation is fine for solo players. It is not. It's actually horrible, with very few currency and uniques dropping, especially compared to party play.

As a solo player, yes I agree as well

Client/server Action Synchronisation
Two questions, particularly regarding your assessment of the "wait on the server" method:
1) Why does this not work for ARPGs? Given the typical 50-250 ms latency (which I fall into), this feels perfectly responsive in RTS/MOBA games. Given a higher latency, there will be some input lag, but to me that seems better than thinking everything is fine until rubberbanding into a pack of enemies and dying. A warning sign, if you will.

2) What are the synch problems in this scheme that you are glad you don't have to deal with? In other words, from the development perspective, why is harder to deal with than a complicated prediction system?

Parties, Maps, Item Quantities and Loot Allocation
Almost perfect. Option for longer timers will appease many people, but I still think that in place of that it should be a distance calculation. Leave your loot behind and it is no longer yours. Everything else sounds pretty spot-on.

Ranged vs Melee Disparity
Sounds pretty reasonable overall. Related to the melee damage passives, I'd like to say that far too many of them are weapon-specific (pretty much all that aren't in the Marauder/Templar starting areas). It feels like taking them locks you out of potential upgrades, a problem ranged characters don't have. Rather, it affects ranged so little as to be unnoticeable - the options are bow and wand vs. 6 or so different melee weapons. That's not even distinguishing between 1 and 2-handed varieties.

I think your bullet list is more or less in the order I think they should be prioritized. Basically it comes down to:
1) Make melee survivable.
2) Make melee do damage.
3) Make it all feel good.

Competitive Play - Races/PvP
Races - I see incremental improvements but nothing substantial. Nothing about adjusting the way points are awarded in races, the only real issue I have with them.

PVP - As long as I can continue to ignore its very existence I'm happy.

I just wanted to comment really quickly on the synchronization. I am glad that you guys are taking it seriously and attempting to find a suitable solution without compromising the amazing game you have created. The honest truth to it however is that there is no bigger problem in the game than desync right now. The random framerate drops, issues with survivability for melee, and the variance of "core" skills do not begin to pale in comparison to desync. It absolutely cripples the game for me and totally pushes me away from racing and leveling in hardcore.

I know you guys are working hard on it and doing your best, but I just won't be putting much time into the game until it is significantly more responsive than it is now. So I hope the planned changes are implemented sometime soon.


Thanks so much for your hard work.

Elem vs Physical

I may be the odd man out here, but I say let's go the other way - remove crit effects all together. Isn't it enough that a crit gives big damage, why must it also trigger all these affects that kills frame rates. Less is more. Removing elemental crit affects will make skills and passives with elemental affects more appealing. Maybe just give a flat 5% chance for elemental effects increased by skills or passives.

If you really want to bring physical to par:
- Fix physical damage nodes (I don't see a 30% phy damage anywhere, nor can I spend 3 points to get 80% physical damage that works with ranged or melee skills). Not saying to go to that extent but elem and phy nodes have a HUGE disparity.
- Allow only one elemental damage mod per item (either fire, lightning or code). Having one physical slot and 3 elemental slot is no where fair. Either that or double/triple the flat physical damage bonus.
- Flat damage mods should not be ubiquitous, i.e. maybe have it only on weapons and rings. Majority of damage should come from the weapon. It's only logical.
- Fix physical reflect. If I can't sit constantly at 85% physical reduction why make my reflect % the same a elemental?

I liked the idea of more rubber-banding. It sounded like it would be useful for me when I'm obviously out of sync and I'm standing in one spot, everything is playing smoothly for many seconds, but I'm standing there and keep seeing my Molten Shell explode several steps away from me. I'm hitting monsters and everything is generally playing smooth, with ping in the 100-150 range the whole time, no spikes, it's odd that it's obviously out of position and won't rubber-band me into the correct location. I have to move around repeatedly to try to end up in the same spot so that it's exploding on me as it normally does and should. This happens regularly when I'm using it in an area where I tend to get surrounded by enemies and I'm frequently surrounded in a different spot than it shows me as and oddly I can tell where I am not by where my character is but by where the explosion is occurring.

Thanks for the update, as a melee character (and with not great connections on top of that) I'm much looking forward to some updates on this front. I just finally beat Vaal Merc last night and man that fight scares my Marauder! (Hardcore Solo of course! Already beat a while ago on Softcore, with a witch I happened to lose to some hard lag, my connection's fault)

Make it simple . You get a crit with about 15000 damage (which is not bad at all) , he has 30K armor which means reduce 14,3 % of ur total damage , he also has 7 enduracy charges ( max is 8 with the unique ring ) which is reduce 35% phyical damage more . He also get those 2 nodes Reduce damage from critical hit ( 30% - near the starting of Marauder class )

Let's do the math : 14,3 + 35 + 30 = 79,% damage reduction from critical

And he got 10000+ life (Kaom chest) with about 7-8+% life regeneration per second (600-1000+/s !!! ) .

THAT'S ALL . Hope u read this GGG ..... or u should remove critical from the game ...

Dont tell me that there's no guys got 13K life and 30K armors ...

This guy with Rightous Fire killed me in 1 second , i got 4000 life ...

Did u really think of anything when u put those in this game ? or u just did it randomly ?

Sry for my bad English O.o

Let me introduce myself : Critical build - Shadow lvl 86

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Trust the client. This means people can cheat, but the results are instant. We will not do this.

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Entities can hit each other from a long distance away
There's no chance to hit - all hits occur for sure
Various speed/collision concessions that make it easy to speedhack and/or walk through monsters with modified clients
Attack animations cannot be interrupted (i.e. what we treat as Stun).

Unfortunately, we don't want to do any of those things!

Okay, none of what's going on in the pictures actually happened but I am really saddened by the news.

I really hope there will be a post about the serious performance and Radeon problems soon.

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There's no chance to hit - all hits occur for sure

Unfortunately, we don't want to do any of those things!

I really wish games would do away with accuracy already.

From the Races/PvP thread:

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Chris wrote:

The power level of the Uniques is a bit higher than in Season One. I was asked twice just this evening if we'll please put the unique Majestic Plate as a prize. Not yet :P

You mean the unique Glorious Plate. :p