Imagine if you owned a 1999 sports car of a fictional maker run by Blizzard called Endo. You loved that car in 1999 but some things were a little off. In the following years, Endo implements several recalls where they enhance the car's features. Then in 2003 they release a special GT-R version of that car. That bad boy is amazing and a huge improvement over the stock 1999 version. You follow that car for years but eventually it's 2010 and starts to feel out dated. But Endo has promised a new lineup for 2012 showcasing it with pride at the auto show.
It's finally 2012 and the 2012 line up is released. You buy one and then realized that the car requires a constant GPS signal to the satellite in order to start the car. Absolutely ridiculous right? But Endo claims it's to reduce auto theft. But more people than expected buys the same car and there isn't enough server power to activate all the cars at once. You then sit around for a few days waiting for the servers and the satellite to be upgraded so you can drive your new car while Endo is already pocketing your hard earned money.
Finally they fix all the connection issues and you can finally drive your car. Instead, you soon discover the car is missing a bunch of cool features the older models had. The new model doesn't have a built in CD player, no cruise control, only two settings for the windshield wiper and no manual version, all models are automatic shift. Because Endo believes drivers prefer the simplest driving experience, the only modes available on on the shifter is Drive, Reverse and Neutral. The car is designed with major incompatibilities with any third-party parts. Therefore, modding or tuning the car for extra power to race or showcase is strictly limited to whatever Endo themselves allow you to have.
But hold the phone, Endo has promised to release a series of tune-up parts and accessories to make sure your new car can finally tear up some road. BUT...after 7-8 months, the lead designer goes public to tell everyone that they decided they didn't like the upgrades they had been working on so they will need more time to come up with something that all drivers will enjoy. The good news however, is that they will finally release a manual stick shift version of the car so aspiring racers and car enthusiasts can "mess around" a little bit.
That is how ridiculous things would look like if Diablo 3 was a car and Blizzard was an auto-maker.
Imagine if you owned a 1999 sports car of a fictional maker run by Blizzard called Endo. You loved that car in 1999 but some things were a little off. In the following years, Endo implements several recalls where they enhance the car's features. Then in 2003 they release a special GT-R version of that car. That bad boy is amazing and a huge improvement over the stock 1999 version. You follow that car for years but eventually it's 2010 and starts to feel out dated. But Endo has promised a new lineup for 2012 showcasing it with pride at the auto show.
It's finally 2012 and the 2012 line up is released. You buy one and then realized that the car requires a constant GPS signal to the satellite in order to start the car. Absolutely ridiculous right? But Endo claims it's to reduce auto theft. But more people than expected buys the same car and there isn't enough server power to activate all the cars at once. You then sit around for a few days waiting for the servers and the satellite to be upgraded so you can drive your new car while Endo is already pocketing your hard earned money.
Finally they fix all the connection issues and you can finally drive your car. Instead, you soon discover the car is missing a bunch of cool features the older models had. The new model doesn't have a built in CD player, no cruise control, only two settings for the windshield wiper and no manual version, all models are automatic shift. Because Endo believes drivers prefer the simplest driving experience, the only modes available on on the shifter is Drive, Reverse and Neutral. The car is designed with major incompatibilities with any third-party parts. Therefore, modding or tuning the car for extra power to race or showcase is strictly limited to whatever Endo themselves allow you to have.
But hold the phone, Endo has promised to release a series of tune-up parts and accessories to make sure your new car can finally tear up some road. BUT...after 7-8 months, the lead designer goes public to tell everyone that they decided they didn't like the upgrades they had been working on so they will need more time to come up with something that all drivers will enjoy. The good news however, is that they will finally release a manual stick shift version of the car so aspiring racers and car enthusiasts can "mess around" a little bit.
That is how ridiculous things would look like if Diablo 3 was a car and Blizzard was an auto-maker.
Wait, that's from the thread I created :D
That was one of my favorite posts in it of yesterday.
Imagine if you owned a 1999 sports car of a fictional maker run by Blizzard called Endo. You loved that car in 1999 but some things were a little off. In the following years, Endo implements several recalls where they enhance the car's features. Then in 2003 they release a special GT-R version of that car. That bad boy is amazing and a huge improvement over the stock 1999 version. You follow that car for years but eventually it's 2010 and starts to feel out dated. But Endo has promised a new lineup for 2012 showcasing it with pride at the auto show.
It's finally 2012 and the 2012 line up is released. You buy one and then realized that the car requires a constant GPS signal to the satellite in order to start the car. Absolutely ridiculous right? But Endo claims it's to reduce auto theft. But more people than expected buys the same car and there isn't enough server power to activate all the cars at once. You then sit around for a few days waiting for the servers and the satellite to be upgraded so you can drive your new car while Endo is already pocketing your hard earned money.
Finally they fix all the connection issues and you can finally drive your car. Instead, you soon discover the car is missing a bunch of cool features the older models had. The new model doesn't have a built in CD player, no cruise control, only two settings for the windshield wiper and no manual version, all models are automatic shift. Because Endo believes drivers prefer the simplest driving experience, the only modes available on on the shifter is Drive, Reverse and Neutral. The car is designed with major incompatibilities with any third-party parts. Therefore, modding or tuning the car for extra power to race or showcase is strictly limited to whatever Endo themselves allow you to have.
But hold the phone, Endo has promised to release a series of tune-up parts and accessories to make sure your new car can finally tear up some road. BUT...after 7-8 months, the lead designer goes public to tell everyone that they decided they didn't like the upgrades they had been working on so they will need more time to come up with something that all drivers will enjoy. The good news however, is that they will finally release a manual stick shift version of the car so aspiring racers and car enthusiasts can "mess around" a little bit.
That is how ridiculous things would look like if Diablo 3 was a car and Blizzard was an auto-maker.
Wait, that's from the thread I created :D
That was one of my favorite posts in it of yesterday.
Jay Wilson and Dustin Browder both deserve to be fired immediately. 8 months of development then pull it back because it isn't good enough but replace it only with a pitiful 1v1?? Seriously how difficult can it be to balance PvP, there are TONS of features you can tweak with... It's a rediculously easy task if you just give the community some time..
The simple fact of the matter is that the game in PVP is going to be MASSIVELY imbalanced. So, people will go crazy about the balance. Blizzard lately has seemed to be extremely frustrated with complains about balance in pvp, both in Wow arena and SC2.
So how does Blizzard try to solve all these complaints?
They can:
1. Try to adjust all the abilities that are imbalanced. (And making a mess of the PVE) 2. Have abilities function differently in PVP. (or do a lot less damage in PVP or whatever) Blizzard has always hated this "2 games" solution for some reason.
I don't think they like any of the solutions.
I don't buy this nonsense that "people got bored of team deathmatch after a few hours" Ya right. Does blizz realize how many HUGELY successful games are based on this exact concept?
On December 28 2012 19:16 HyunA wrote: If Jay Wilson will show his face at the next Blizzacon, i think people should boo him and throw things at him. This is totally unacceptable and altho it hurts me to say this, Blizzard is nothing but a wreck of what it used to be.
RIP Blizzard february 1991 - may 2012.
... why?
Diablo 3 sold millions of copies and many players played for hundreds of hours. Diablo 3 scored 88 on metacritics. (The Diablo got 94 (topping the original Starcraft, which scored 88), Diablo 2 got just 88 too, Lord of Destruction only 87.)
Wings of Liberty got score of 93. Despite declining playercound, WoW still seems to be a big game in the MMO genre.
Does anyone really doubt that a yet-to-be-announced Diablo 3 expansion will do for the game what so far any Blizzard expansion did?
The number of copies it sold is a testament to what people hoped it would be, not what people hope it is. The unignorable truth is that, for a game with 3 million copies sold, it seems a very, very sad few of those people actually still play the game... and while a hundred hours is a damn lot for a single-player game, it doesn't feel like a lot for a multiplayer game produced by blizzard.
Is Diablo 3 blizzard's downfall? Hell no... but acting like it's a 94 to Starcraft's 88 only applies if they were released the same year.
How ridiculously bad a developer must one be, to screw up this badly with these timelines? Not just the PvP patch but the main game.
Have they considered that the PvP doesn't work well, because the basic mechanics are simply bad? They polished that turd for years to get PvE passable, but that doesn't really help making PvP work.
Though another thing to consider is, how balanced or long-appealing PvP in D2 was?
From my perspective Diablo3 was a excellent single play experience. Sure, it was not top notch but I enjoyed it.
Multiplayer wise however I was going to write that D3 is the worse online game experience I've endured, that is until I played WarZ, so now Diablo3 is the second worse online experience.
And I'm not surprised they pulled the plug on PvP play since the team behind the game doesn't seem to be able to create a good online game in the first place.
Imagine if you owned a 1999 sports car of a fictional maker run by Blizzard called Endo. You loved that car in 1999 but some things were a little off. In the following years, Endo implements several recalls where they enhance the car's features. Then in 2003 they release a special GT-R version of that car. That bad boy is amazing and a huge improvement over the stock 1999 version. You follow that car for years but eventually it's 2010 and starts to feel out dated. But Endo has promised a new lineup for 2012 showcasing it with pride at the auto show.
It's finally 2012 and the 2012 line up is released. You buy one and then realized that the car requires a constant GPS signal to the satellite in order to start the car. Absolutely ridiculous right? But Endo claims it's to reduce auto theft. But more people than expected buys the same car and there isn't enough server power to activate all the cars at once. You then sit around for a few days waiting for the servers and the satellite to be upgraded so you can drive your new car while Endo is already pocketing your hard earned money.
Finally they fix all the connection issues and you can finally drive your car. Instead, you soon discover the car is missing a bunch of cool features the older models had. The new model doesn't have a built in CD player, no cruise control, only two settings for the windshield wiper and no manual version, all models are automatic shift. Because Endo believes drivers prefer the simplest driving experience, the only modes available on on the shifter is Drive, Reverse and Neutral. The car is designed with major incompatibilities with any third-party parts. Therefore, modding or tuning the car for extra power to race or showcase is strictly limited to whatever Endo themselves allow you to have.
But hold the phone, Endo has promised to release a series of tune-up parts and accessories to make sure your new car can finally tear up some road. BUT...after 7-8 months, the lead designer goes public to tell everyone that they decided they didn't like the upgrades they had been working on so they will need more time to come up with something that all drivers will enjoy. The good news however, is that they will finally release a manual stick shift version of the car so aspiring racers and car enthusiasts can "mess around" a little bit.
That is how ridiculous things would look like if Diablo 3 was a car and Blizzard was an auto-maker.
On December 28 2012 03:39 Pufftrees wrote: For my third post of the first page... I honestly think Blizzard's ONLY CHANCE to save face is to start firing people, like Jay Wilson. This reminds of a sports team that is just failing epicly and has all all-star players... you have to just blame someone and move on. Or else your fans really just leave (too late for d3 probably).
its too late man, i mean at least from my perceptions, most the guys that i played with all have quit because the game just doesn't have that extra oomph that d2 had.
I feel they are sort of giving all their games other than titan half assed jobs while they work on titan.. i really hope titan is good because otherwise im done with blizz with how their last 3 releases have been..
They are completely incompetent. The reason that it will ''mess'' with PVE is a perfect example of how dumb they are. How about nerf/change spells ONLY when you enter a PVP arena and keep them like they are in PVE?? I could tell them how to fix their game in 15 minutes of talking
On December 29 2012 02:58 KiWiKaKi wrote: They are completely incompetent. The reason that it will ''mess'' with PVE is a perfect example of how dumb they are. How about nerf/change spells ONLY when you enter a PVP arena and keep them like they are in PVE?? I could tell them how to fix their game in 15 minutes of talking
to be fair it takes a little more than 15 of work than your 15 mins of talking ~_~ i dont doubt you could come up with better ideas but i think their issue is all the red tape they have to go through nowadays to do anything *cough* activision owns them
On December 29 2012 02:58 KiWiKaKi wrote: They are completely incompetent. The reason that it will ''mess'' with PVE is a perfect example of how dumb they are. How about nerf/change spells ONLY when you enter a PVP arena and keep them like they are in PVE?? I could tell them how to fix their game in 15 minutes of talking
Making it so certain moves have different stats (or even effects) vs players and vs mobs is something they should have been doing, oh I dunno, like 5 years ago in WoW. It makes absolutely no sense as to why they continually refuse to adopt this style of balancing as it would be infinitely easier than trying to balance stuff for PvE AND PvP. It's not that the idea hasn't been pitched either, I used to constantly see people bring it up when they were ruining certain PvE specs to balance the PvP side of things in WoW.
Point is, they could easily do this is D3, but no they won't. Maybe they just like having an excuse to leave stuff broken. I dunno, I'm done with Blizzard games anyways, they've become complete failures that only care about money.
On December 29 2012 02:06 Chylo wrote: The simple fact of the matter is that the game in PVP is going to be MASSIVELY imbalanced. So, people will go crazy about the balance. Blizzard lately has seemed to be extremely frustrated with complains about balance in pvp, both in Wow arena and SC2.
So how does Blizzard try to solve all these complaints?
They can:
1. Try to adjust all the abilities that are imbalanced. (And making a mess of the PVE) 2. Have abilities function differently in PVP. (or do a lot less damage in PVP or whatever) Blizzard has always hated this "2 games" solution for some reason.
I don't think they like any of the solutions.
I don't buy this nonsense that "people got bored of team deathmatch after a few hours" Ya right. Does blizz realize how many HUGELY successful games are based on this exact concept?
How about they stop making stupid design decisions and do what ALL THE OTHER GAMES THAT PLAN ON INCLUDING PvP DO....
Step 1) Balance the abilities around PvP, THEN extrapolate the enemies health/armor/etc around those numbers, to at least get a baseline balance. Step 2) Modify the abilities stats/cc/etc for PvP with separate functionality (as you mentioned) OR with the PvP buff (that they ORIGINALLY said they are going to do). Step 3) If after all this they still can't get things balanced, give PvP a completely separate gear progression where you unlock the gear and runes through PvP similar to GW1 (NOT their horrible system from WoW arenas where each classes gear is restricted to 2-3 builds). And DO NOT force gear progression through the Ladder like WoW arena's but give the gear progression through casual games - it's horrible game design to give the top players who are already winning EVEN BETTER GEAR. That ENCOURAGES imbalance.
For some reason Blizzard has always been insistent on including PvP in their games, but balancing around PvE, and then extrapolating the stats for PvP. From a design perspective this makes NO sense at all, since NPC's can be balanced around the players, instead of players balanced around the NPC's. It doesn't work like that! Case in point: EVERY BLIZZARD GAME OUTSIDE OF SC.
They should have woke the hell up by now, it's common sense for a logical order of doing things. Many abilities/strategies are much stronger in PvP and ineffective or not resourceful in PvE (such as if you made a Monk blinking single target mobility build, which would be completely ineffecient in PvE but super strong in PvP) therefore you need to balance around that first and foremost. PvE by nature is going to be narrowed down to a few specific efficient methods, where PvP builds are higher in number due to the added strategy and team building.
SC is the perfect example of this design theory... Was the PvE of Starcraft/Starcraft 2 hurt at ALL from the game being balanced around PvP??????
On December 29 2012 02:06 Chylo wrote: The simple fact of the matter is that the game in PVP is going to be MASSIVELY imbalanced. So, people will go crazy about the balance. Blizzard lately has seemed to be extremely frustrated with complains about balance in pvp, both in Wow arena and SC2.
So how does Blizzard try to solve all these complaints?
They can:
1. Try to adjust all the abilities that are imbalanced. (And making a mess of the PVE) 2. Have abilities function differently in PVP. (or do a lot less damage in PVP or whatever) Blizzard has always hated this "2 games" solution for some reason.
I don't think they like any of the solutions.
I don't buy this nonsense that "people got bored of team deathmatch after a few hours" Ya right. Does blizz realize how many HUGELY successful games are based on this exact concept?
How about they stop making stupid design decisions and do what ALL THE OTHER GAMES THAT PLAN ON INCLUDING PvP DO....
Step 1) Balance the abilities around PvP, THEN extrapolate the enemies health/armor/etc around those numbers, to at least get a baseline balance. Step 2) Modify the abilities stats/cc/etc for PvP with separate functionality (as you mentioned) OR with the PvP buff (that they ORIGINALLY said they are going to do). Step 3) If after all this they still can't get things balanced, give PvP a completely separate gear progression where you unlock the gear and runes through PvP similar to GW1 (NOT their horrible system from WoW arenas where each classes gear is restricted to 2-3 builds). And DO NOT force gear progression through the Ladder like WoW arena's but give the gear progression through casual games - it's horrible game design to give the top players who are already winning EVEN BETTER GEAR. That ENCOURAGES imbalance.
For some reason Blizzard has always been insistent on including PvP in their games, but balancing around PvE, and then extrapolating the stats for PvP. From a design perspective this makes NO sense at all, since NPC's can be balanced around the players, instead of players balanced around the NPC's. It doesn't work like that! Case in point: EVERY BLIZZARD GAME OUTSIDE OF SC.
They should have woke the hell up by now, it's common sense for a logical order of doing things. Many abilities/strategies are much stronger in PvP and ineffective or not resourceful in PvE (such as if you made a Monk blinking single target mobility build, which would be completely ineffecient in PvE but super strong in PvP) therefore you need to balance around that first and foremost. PvE by nature is going to be narrowed down to a few specific efficient methods, where PvP builds are higher in number due to the added strategy and team building.
SC is the perfect example of this design theory... Was the PvE of Starcraft/Starcraft 2 hurt at ALL from the game being balanced around PvP??????
SC really isn't the perfect example as its an entirely different genre. Not to mention single player had very little to do with anything in either SC game whereas PvP balance does affect the single player game a lot in games like d3/WoW
I mean i do understand your points but really you are preaching to the choir here on the forums, it wont ever be heard (rather implemented, they hear plenty) because they have it all ass backwards and pretty much ignore 99.99% of feedback they get.
On December 29 2012 04:21 KiWiKaKi wrote: Thats what happens when you get a WOW guy to be the lead designer of diablo
I dont see why you want to bash on WoW originally WoW was actually pretty damn good and its just been a slow downhill spiral each expansion after burning crusade.
On December 29 2012 04:19 sc14s wrote: SC really isn't the perfect example as its an entirely different genre. Not to mention single player had very little to do with anything in either SC game whereas PvP balance does affect the single player game a lot in games like d3/WoW
I mean i do understand your points but really you are preaching to the choir here on the forums, it wont ever be heard (rather implemented, they hear plenty) because they have it all ass backwards and pretty much ignore 99.99% of feedback they get.
Well, SC is the perfect example from blizzard games. The fact that it's separated and has little to do with each other is kinda the point. PvP balance doesn't need to affect the single player game if the NPC's are balanced around that from the start.
Heres an example: If a player balanced around PvP can do max (just throwing out numbers here I know they are low for D3) ~500 DPS and a 2k burst you can adjust health so enemies take as long as desired to finish. CC already has separate balance. If PvP balanced spellcasters can do almost as much dmg as a melee from range while kiting and have it too easy, give them higher magic resist and some abilites to force the ranged character to evade. Etc.
And yeah I know I'm preaching to the choir. But it just shows how out of touch Blizzard is these days. Many MMO's have balanced this way successfully (and lets face it, D3 is balanced more like a MMO than anything else). SC was balanced this way. FPS are balanced this way. Basically EVERY game focused around PvP is balanced this way.
They have so many examples of success for this type of balance in the industry, and there's many examples of balancing around PvE primarily failing. They have nobody to blame for their PvP balance issues but the root of their balance being around PvE.
Let's face it - can you honestly say D3's PvE (being balanced around PvE primarily) is balanced better than any of these other games/game types I listed? D3 isnt exactly known for its amazing balance...
EPT
originally WoW was actually pretty damn good and its just been a slow downhill spiral each expansion after burning crusade. 
