Jay Wilsons list of Diablo 2 flaws

"Stat progression as a system is very difficult for a lot of players to understand because you get these 5 points,"

oh god i laughted my ass off on this comment! What a fuckhead this guy is... automaticly assuming that all players are brainless consumers with only input that says "INTAFUN!"

thank god for poe....

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species258 wrote:

"Stat progression as a system is very difficult for a lot of players to understand because you get these 5 points,"

oh god i laughted my ass off on this comment! What a fuckhead this guy is... automaticly assuming that all players are brainless consumers with only input that says "INTAFUN!"

thank god for poe....

Well I do agree with him. GGG also fixed the problem. I would blame him for not fixing it just deleting it :-/

Jay-Everybody remembers Deckard Cain saying, “Stay a while, listen.” But the reason they remember it fondly now is because it was so damn annoying! He said it every time, and you had to talk to him so often!

From what I remember Dechard Cain only said that when you clicked on him (haven't played D2 for awhile), and the text didn't appear, only the "talk" or "identify" options. Identify All is probably the only reason why people "talked" to him so much, something that they didn't put in the game because they like people unwrapping coal instead of decent "gifts".

Jay-In Diablo II, the most optimal way to play was to find the quickest boss you can do, and repeat that boss run forever. It’s our intent to create a system that encourage people to play a lot more varied amount of content, and have that be the most beneficial way to play, such that the boss runs are really mitigated as a primary things that people do and become more secondary.

Another problem that they've tried to fix with Nephalem Valor. However the itemization system is horrible with most rares being crappy and lots of legendary/set items made to fail. Then... you have to deal with rng in hopes of getting that one good affix to make the item actually good.

Jay-One of the pieces of feedback we got during the internal alpha was that skill points as an element of our skill system didn't really suit the game, It created a lot of conflict in terms of what the players would choose to do. So what we had is this system that has these six – it used to be seven, now six – slots, that implies that you should have six skills, but a system with skill points? Well, you really want to dump every single point into one skill.

Yet in D2 there were plenty of skill points used for one point wonders to help you in some sort of way. Also there was synergy in skills which is one reason why a lot of builds only had you using 1-2 attacking skills (when you actually might have 1 or 2 other skills that you upgraded for the synergy). 98 skills points and there were items which game you even more skills or + to all skills. The skill tree system isn't a bad idea, just that Diablo 2 had a few skills that didn't give any synergy, didn't upgrade well, or just weren't good.

Jay-I feel that in a lot of ways the current system has more choice involved in it compared to Diablo II because that finite limit of how many skills you can take versus the number that you have means that you have to make a very restrictive choice, so we focused a lot more on restricting the number of skills you have and having that be the interesting choice, as opposed to skill points, which are really commitments before you even know what you're committing to.

Honestly I would rather have a game where you have a character that could have access to any of the available skills, but to upgrade the skill and gain access to higher related skills you had to first use that skill to a certain degree so that you master it and become more rooted in that area of expertise. So essentially with enough time you could upgrade every skill in the game, but it would be unlikely that you would use all of them (this probably would be better in an mmo then arpg).

Jay-(Regarding DII's Skill System) "What you probably did was go up on a website and find out what the optimal build was, because there's just too much math involved for you to really get involved in it. A small number of players will go in and do the math… but the majority of players will go 'I don't know, I guess I'll just put it in whatever I already have'."

WW Barb... instead of going to a website you just have to go on the D3 forums to find out what is the best build/gear set so they didn't solve this "problem".

Jay-"(Regarding Stat Distribution In D2) "Stat progression as a system is very difficult for a lot of players to understand because you get these 5 points, but you don’t exactly know where to put them or what benefit you’re getting with them. You might make some obvious choices, for example, with Diablo II’s Sorceress, you might put all of your points into energy because that’s the obvious choice, right? Except that for almost every build out there, you’ve just made the wrong choice."

Diablo 2's stats were flawed and simply didn't have enough benefits per stat. As an example I would rather have the 4 primary stats (str, dex, vit, int/energy) and have every one of them give a lot of advantages. Then you would have hybrid stats in which you would have those advantages mixed around to create new stats so there would be more customization. Whether that customization would or wouldn't become cookies cutter builds, well that would depend on how diverse it would be.

DeMasked - I really like your skill building idea.

It hits the nail on the head for me about what bothers me in ARPG skills systems.
Even with a tree it always looked silly that a Sorc who never used fire skills except blaze suddenly starts Meteoring everything in sight.

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lethal_papercut wrote:

We all know you have a serious chip on your shoulder about being banned from the D3 forums Fireskull but I would wager that you probably said some pretty heated stuff that caused it.

I have made tons of posts on the D3 forums & most of them bashing the game but you know what I did at the same time? I tried to offer reasons as to why I thought they made bad decisions in a rational way & without calling out Jay Wilson as a fucking douche nozzle. Blizz know they made mistakes with their game, they openly admit it & they are changing the game as a result. If the game will never live up to your expectations then that is YOUR problem & the adult thing to do would be to just move on and get on with doing things you do enjoy rather than lashing your acid tongue at D3 whenever it's mentioned.

You know why D3 has an auction house? Cos of all the players who botted, duped, scripted & jsp'd their way to victory in D2. Blizz saw what was happening and thought "if you can't beat em', join em'" and took control of the money for their own game. The players are as much to blame for the shitsauce that is D3 as they put Blizz in the position of where they felt they were losing money to 3rd party sites. So next time you are slinging shit around remember to throw a little in your own face aswell.

Edit: How do you think GGG will feel if POE takes off & items are being sold on JSP making 3rd parties just as much money as GGG are from selling cosmetic upgrades? You think people are gonna spend money on funky looking spells if the alternative is spending money on in game upgrades or currency from JSP? If that happens expect POE2 to have an auction house.

I find it amusing that you say Blizzard made the AH to profit off of all the cheaters/exploiters profiteering off their game. Seems to me that a good developer would instead... IDK.. stop the cheaters/exploiters from ruining the game. Just one of the infinite instances where the dev team took the easiest out possible.

Must say that I admire the original D3 team that did not crack to the pressure from ActiBlizz to turn the game into AH Tycoon. Unfortunately they still got what they wanted by firing the entire team and hiring some random 'yes' men to rape the franchise for all its worth.

Had there been no AH/RMAH in D3 then there would more than likely be just as many bots as there are now, maybe more. The reason being all the profit that is now going to Blizz (30% I think) would be funding 3rd party sites & software. Imagine how 'the general public' would feel if the world's fastest selling PC game was also a huge blackmarket industry for 3rd parties? (I know it still is but there is at least some regulation to it now). It would more than likely give the game a worse reputation than it currently has.

Ofcourse a 'better' developer would do a better job of tackling the root of the problem rather than profiting from it as business, but Blizz do have some of the better antihack/cheat/bot software out there. They do at least put some effort into dealing with it as they recognise their games attract an unholy amount of the clever use of game mechanics crowd. No doubt they could do more but I think the same could be said about pretty much any large software company.

It's like someone said, they did in some way make a 3rd party problem a problem of sorts for everyone and that sucks. However, if they were to do a better job of dealing with bots then I think overall the AH being in game is the lesser of the 2 evils. RMAH...unfortunately I think it is a sign of the times, if there was no demand it wouldn't exist.

POE is relying on people wanting to spend money on an otherwise free to play game just because they want it to look different to the default. It's not something I would normally do, I will in this case because I want to support the devs. I have spoken to others who say "just charge £20 for the game & make it look decent for everyone" or "I would never pay for cosmetic shit". Buying graphical upgrades for a free to play game can be a stretch for some people, it's a fairly new concept & will be unique to the genre. It may do well, it may just fail but if it does then it won't only just be heralded as a bad decision but will be the demise of the game aswell. My point is D3 already made it's bad decisions but they didn't kill the game, POE is yet to run the gauntlet.

POE really needs to do an awesome job with the cosmetics shop. It needs to have stuff that really makes your character look awesome and it needs to have such a huge diversity of cosmetics for spells/equipment that when you buy something you don't feel like every other player that you see will also be using it. If they do those two things I feel like it will work out fine for them. Their reputation will help carry them which I feel like they have in spades. D3's reputation will do nothing but hurt them in the long run.

Sounds like a hell of a responsibility for the art department doesn't it?! Aside from stash tabs & whatever they do with private leagues it looks like the weight of cash generation is gonna fall heavily on the art department by the sounds of things. I can imagine the extra gore but they are gonna have to make Freezing Pulse look so good I can't live without it for me to part with cash.

When it comes to how GGG plan to make money from this game the whole thing seems shrouded in some mystery. We know they intend to do aesthetic things but we haven't seen so much as a concept sketch as to what any of it might look like. We had the thread about extra sound files, I'm not sure how many ideas that generated but I have to wonder how many people would actually part with cash for their character to say a few more lines. I think there is a good chance there will be more pets, that's kinda cool, I paid the extra to get the kiwi as a little pre launch memento. I can see folks paying a little ($5) for pets and the odd crazy looking spell or gore but I'm not sure how many will fall in love with the game enough to want to part with much cash when they can just play for free.

The thing is GGG have to make the default game look good enough for people to wanna play but they can't be too good else people won't pay. There is a line to be drawn somewhere in there but to some extent GGG have to make thing's look 'not quite as cool as they could look' in order for there to be any aesthetic upgrades. Now that's not accounting for just personal taste on what looks cool but as I said there is a line to be drawn somewhere.

I am hoping for cool things, I just wish we had a bit of better understanding as to what we can expect from the shop. As I have said before I intend to spend X amount on the game regardless as I just want to support it, I'll be taking the gore, but I must say I do have some reservations as to whether GGG will make their $$$.

Back on topic:

While we are giving Blizz Quotes, here is one from Rob Pardo

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Q: Now that we're a few months away from the release of Diablo 3, can you tell us how the real money auction house worked out for Blizzard? Are you happy with the feature and how it was received by players? Would you consider adding the same feature to new games, or even existing games?
A: I would say that internally the way we look at the feature right now is mixed. I think it was really a big experiment and it is something that I think has done really well in some ways and in some ways has really changed the game a lot. I think it gets to be a very complex answer, because there is the component that is the real money auction house and there is the part that is the auction house.

When you see a lot of complaints on the forums, they are talking about how it has gotten so easy to skip to the best items in the game and how it devalues your progression or advancement. A lot of that would happen with any sort of auction house, even if you are paying gold you have that same sort of feeling. You have to separate that from the real money component of it, which also has its own unique issues.

Anyone that plays the game now looks at items with a dollar sign attached. With all of the different games out there that have microtransactions that is more acceptable, but in some peoples' minds it has damaged the purity of the game. One of the main reasons why we did it is that we knew there was going to be a lot of third party auction sites out there. We felt like it is already going to exist so we would rather give players a more safe and secure way of doing that. I think in that way it has been successful. We are really talking a lot internally though about the right way to evolve or iterate on the auction house.

source; http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2940-Rob-Pardo-Interview-Level-90-World-First-Team-FS-Interview-Blue-Posts-Devs-Video


Sounds like Blizzard are realising that they made a mistake with the RMAH.

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lethal_papercut wrote:

Ofcourse a 'better' developer would do a better job of tackling the root of the problem rather than profiting from it as business, but Blizz do have some of the better antihack/cheat/bot software out there. They do at least put some effort into dealing with it as they recognise their games attract an unholy amount of the clever use of game mechanics crowd. No doubt they could do more but I think the same could be said about pretty much any large software company.

I would like to just comment on this paragraph. I can write an incredibly simple AHK or AutoIt script to bot the AH or different in game runs and have it up and running within a few hours. This is VERY easy to do and also VERY easy to detect, yet the bots run unhindered for weeks at a time. It seems to me if they did have good antihack/cheat/bot software this would not be the case. Hell, its harder to bot in lineage 2 than it is in D3 and that game is way old. There are steps they could take to stop botting, but I truly feel that is not a priority as it only decreases revenue. Periodically banning them to force the botters to buy new CD keys is MUCH better for Blizzard financially then actually crushing the bots at the source.