627 replies to this topic

[GENTLYPORKING]

I find myself spending all of my money on jewelcrafting / blacksmithing upgrades and crafting gems. Not sure how you guys are making hundreds of thousands of gold. I've only sold a few yellows and a legendary on the AH so far.

Hell is hard for a monk, getting stepped on like an autumn leaf. I still haven't found a build that I'm in love with.

I was having issues too. Go shield and one-handed weapon. You'll survive longer.

[Rize]

Yeah, any melee characters needs a shield in hell and certainly inferno. It even helps make nightmare more tolerable if your other gear is not up to snuff.

[Disposable Hero]

I find myself spending all of my money on jewelcrafting / blacksmithing upgrades and crafting gems. Not sure how you guys are making hundreds of thousands of gold. I've only sold a few yellows and a legendary on the AH so far.

Hell is hard for a monk, getting stepped on like an autumn leaf. I still haven't found a build that I'm in love with.

Any difficulty is tough for all classes unless you're geared right. Monk is a pretty strong class from what I've seen and read. Keep working on upgrading what you have and it'll get more manageable.

Gold is king so far for sure. I break and open everything that's available on screen. No stone gets left unturned when I'm in a game. Rize and Ashane are the same way. Gold has a lot of value (for now), so I don't mind taking the little bit of time to make sure I get every gold drop available when we're running through an act. Not sure how good leveling the artisans are just yet. It seems like more people are getting into it now, but I know it's real expensive and you may be better off upgrading your gear through the AH before the RMAH goes live.

Speaking of, I definitely agree with what you posted Rize. I'm still of the thought that speculation is useless for now though. We really won't know how the RMAH affects anything until it's up and running for a while. On top of that, they are supposedly addressing drop rates in the same patch as the RMAH. I will say that since we hit 60, valor has made a HUGE difference in my drops. I need to search for mf tables and see how it compares to the D2 numbers. I wouldn't mind knowing what breakpoints we should be looking at, and at what point we start getting diminishing returns on a stat like that. I'm around 180 with 5 charges of valor right now, but it seems like 250ish is the number I keep seeing in forums around the interwebs (a similar number to the target mf for D2).

Of course, this is all tied together. One of the problems I think we'll see with the RMAH is how ambiguous item values are right now. I've seen several posts discussing cookie cutter builds and how runewords ruined customization in D2. That every elite character had mostly the same gear. Of course they did, isn't that what we want when evaluating empirical data? D2 was a game of numbers. Formulas and probability ruled. We inherently gravitate to what is considered the best because we can objectively see that one piece of gear is better than another. The variable stats on uniques vs. affixes and prefixes of rares/blues was perfect and helped set the market for trading. Now we have a legendary that is the same in name, but literally may have 4 completely different base mods. It's kind of stupid honestly, and really jacks the market up. Not only do we need the actual item to drop (which is a miracle in itself), the mods have to be the RIGHT mods, AND those mods have to be excellent relative to the min and max for that item. It's pretty unrealistic. Meanwhile, retards selling stuff on the GAH are unbelievable with their pricing. I don't expect everyone to have a degree in economics, but have you seen the price tag on even some of the more average high level stuff? The disparity between items of similar stature is amazing. In the end, I think all the tinkering that Blizzard is doing will lead to less transactions on the RMAH because prices are not going to be well thought out at all. I absolutely agree with you man, if they just focused on making the game fun, the RMAH would take care of itself.

All this said, I did want to make a point that I've been meaning to mention. I do enjoy the AH. For anyone that hasn't used a third party trade forum, or didn't play D2 long enough to dig deep into trades and gear hunting, trading on bnet was a nightmare in D2. Something like the AH has streamlined 'trading' and I think that's a good thing. If they can balance drops out vs being too driven by the RMAH then I think this will be a success. I will say that I too will not be afraid to quit playing this game though if it moves into territory I'm not happy with. Here's hoping they get some of these issues fixed.

[Ashane]

lol, so someone over at d2jsp has a theory that D3 was designed to be a console game since it was "made by Activision"... Definitely makes a lot of sense due to all the dumbing down of the game from D2...

You'll be happy to know that Diablo 3 was setup to be a console game.

The reason only 4 players are allowed into a game is for 4 controllers.

The reason the quests make you walk in a linear closed circuit as opposed to big open worlds. is to keep your buds next to you on the same screen.

The reason for no skill points or complicated number crunching? to make console players happy.

The company who made D3? ACTIVISION - Known for console games.

The reason you have 4-5 skills on your bar at once? Very easy to use a XBox / Ps3 controller to use skills.

The reason no runes / complicated shit exists. Simply wouldn't be fun for console gamers.

The reason you cant make game name? Auto join for console users.

The reason for Achievements in game? It's popular among console / COD fans.

The reason for passive skills? Perks like Call of Duty uses.
Everyone unlocks perks and uses their favorite ones.

we're just beta testing for the console release so it wont be full of bugs.

that's how Acti-Blizz intends to make the real money.

Also explains why the game doesn't have VoIP for Pc gamer chat.

Hope this isn't true but ever since I saw the dumbed down shit this game has going for it.
I believe it is true.

The modern day Call of Duty of ARPG's

A Blizzard Job listing.

A job listing has appeared on Gamasutra’s Job Connect website and Blizzard’s own job section looking for a “Senior Producer, Console Diablo III.”

If the job title wasn’t enough to convince you, the description adds:

The ideal candidate has prior experience in console game development and has a keen knowledge of how each discipline operates and interacts.

[JoeMusashi]

I don't see the problem. It makes sense for a company to want to maximize their profits and having a game spread across multiple popular platforms makes perfect sense. It's a given that certain considerations were made to make this playable on a console. It's not even news since it's been talked about forever. However his reasoning for gameplay changes are simply "HURRRRR console gamers are dumb", which is silly. Hack and slash/dungeon crawlers have not been a genre that appealed to the mainstream in a while and that's something they need to do to when we're presented with so many more choices than we were in the D2 days. So I'm not saying this guy is wrong, but I do think he's putting an unnecessarily negative spin on this. Yeah, the game needed to appeal to the masses. Sure, it's dumbed down a little from D2. It's still enjoyable. I'll let current/future content decide whether I enjoy the game, not letting my experience be tarnished because "money grubbing Activision" dumbed down Diablo for "console gamers". No, they designed the game in a way that makes sense. Tapping into that market share makes sense, and using a UI that accomodates that makes sense as well.

[Rize]

Search for swords in the AH with no mods specified and sort by buyout price high to low. There are a bunch of plain white "pirate swords" on sale for like 200000000000000000...? gold (not sure where the series end because the interface won't show them all.

Was there a pirate sword meme I missed?

[Disposable Hero]

Shouldn't a pirate sword have tons of gold find? Not sure about the meme though lol.

[Rize]

ilvl now appears on the weapons in the game guide on the website. wonder when they will appear in game. lvl 60 requirement items have ilvls ranging from 60 to 63 with best mods/dmg/armor appearing on ilvl 63 stuff which only spawns in Act 3 and 4 Inferno (ilvl 61 in Act 1 and 62 in Act 2).

[Ashane]

Sure, it's dumbed down a little from D2. It's still enjoyable.

A little? I'd say everything that he listed are some pretty major changes dude. I'm not saying the game is bad or anything, but it's not even close to the depth and customization that D2 had. I'm having fun with D3 and there's some improvements that I definitely prefer, but they went way too far with simplifying everything. No runes or charms is especially shitty.

Any class can equip any weapon? Really? Since when do spellcasters wield giant 2-handed battleaxes? I think it's pretty lame that when a huge battleaxe drops with 500 dps and +100 str +100 vitality (which sounds like a tank item doesn't it?), a wizard will wield that shit all day because the way the game is designed the dps on the weapon gives the wizard ++++ on his magic dps.

You could equip heavy items like demon plate as a Sorceress in D2, but you had to spend the str points to do that, thus having a smaller health or mana pool. It was a great system where you had to prioritize your stats to equip the items you wanted. There are essentially no class specific items anymore, aside from the ones each class can only equip. Everyone just stacks either str/dex/int along with vit, some all res and MF. That's pretty much it. 20 out of 26 of the total possible mods are USELESS. Increased gold pickup range? Increased healing from health globes? Increased exp. gain at lvl 60?

Blizzard just got too money hungry so they could cater to WoW kids, console gamers, and everyone else in the spectrum of the gaming world. Like I said, I'm still enjoying the game, but it's nowhere near the fun I had with D2. Someone said it best on the D3 forums: Blizzard had everything they needed. They should have just copied the entirety of items from D2, and balanced them for the new classes. Let's hope they clean up their horrid itemization.

[Kilu]

I don't know what game you are playing, but my monk can't equip all weapons or all equipment, so far at least.

[Ashane]

I don't know what game you are playing, but my monk can't equip all weapons or all equipment, so far at least.

Example?

[GENTLYPORKING]

Monks can't equip ranged weapons and some two-handed weapons.

[Ashane]

Monks can't equip ranged weapons and some two-handed weapons.

Ok, so one exception. Doesn't make it any less lame how nearly non-existent the item requirements are. Want to equip a bow or a nice shield? Had to have a ton of dex in D2. Want to equip heavy plate with lots of armor? Had to boost your str or max your inventory with str charms.

D3: everyone wins!

[norg]

yeah monks are actually pretty limited in terms of the weapons they can equip. but monk is the only class i've played so far. chances are other classes can equip a wide variety of things. (:

[Rize]

You can see what classes can use what here:

http://us.battle.net.../#filter=wizard

Barbarians: any melee weapon but staves, no bows
Demon Hunters: any 1 hander or bow (no 2 hand melee)
Monks: any 1 hander or 2 hand polearm or staff
Witch Doctors: no restrictions (outside of class specific of course)
Wizards: anything but polearms


So, many wizards are happily wielding mauls and big axes and yes, it is kind of stupid.




To rephrase that, all classes can use any one hander that isn't class specific. 2 handers and bows are restricted.


Barb: no staves or bows
DH: only bows
Monk: only staves and polearms
WD: anything
Wiz: no polearms