DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

[Armando]

Re: DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

because the auction house itself seem to have little to no server-side verification

[cidbahamut]

Re: DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

lolBlizzard

[Firewind]

Re: DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

Torchlight 2 chaps?

[cidbahamut]

Re: DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

I briefly considered it, but the classes didn't really appeal to me enough to warrant dropping $20. Maybe if it goes on sale I'll grab it, but I've got plenty of other stuff I really ought to be playing through already.

[Etra]

Re: DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

Dun wurry, gaiz. Blizz is Gawd. They fix everythang suun!

[Malacite]

Re: DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

I really don't care one way or the other.

They finished the story just fine, and that's what I really cared most about. I have a too many other games to occupy my time than D3. Might come back if/when they get some real fixes in, or do an expansion but for now I'm done.

At least they haven't screwed up SC2 (yet), plus there's WC4 to look forward to as well.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

Just wanted to let all you haters know that thanks to the always-on DRM scheme Blizzard implemented for us, botting, scamming, trade window fraud, and now even rampant item duping are now 100% still a part of the game. Yep, it was completely ineffective at stopping a single damn thing it set out to prevent.

The biggest irony of it all is that the biggest source of exploits has been the auction house itself, because the auction house itself seem to have little to no server-side verification unlike the actual "game" part of the game which literally will not let you take a step without verifying it and even then arbitrarily revokes it anyway. Until a couple of weeks ago, it was possible to convince the AH that your auction was over by changing your local system time. You read that right. So far as I know there is still a live exploit that allows someone using a hex editor to convince the AH server that their bid is actually a buyout. And now this exploit that allows massive item duplication by sending an unsold item to your stash multiple times without confirming to the server that you got it. Of course, a lot of people had given up on finding affordable upgrades on the AH anyway and switched to buying unidentified rares in bulk, except oh wait there's also an exploit that allows you to see which rares are junk without identifying them, so odds are you're still getting conned. Even if the D3 economy wasn't completely broken right now, it'd be completely unsafe to participate in.

So yeah. Always-on DRM: Maximum possible inconvenience to paying customers, minimum possible impact on hacking and cheating. GG Blizzard, seriously.

Well, I hate to say I told you so.



But I did bloody tell you.

At least you don't have to eat demonic cookies over this one.

Thankfully I got this neat game today called Heroes of Ruin. Its not the longest or most creative dungeon hack out there, but its something Square Enix deigned me worthy to play offline. I don't get a nifty pet to sell things, all I have to do is hit up to equip and down to sell something. I'm given a total stat benefit readout by just standing on the loot drops. Neat.

And stats! I get to shape my character to my own liking. That's really thoughtful!

I like these n-Space guys.

[Taskmage]

Re: DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

Message from Mike Morhaime - Forums - Diablo III

For a while now, the rabble on Blizzard's forums has been demanding an apology for D3 and groveling from the higher ups a la Final Fantasy XIV. This is not that, but it is a public statement from the CEO that admits to some mistakes and problems in less equivocal (though still very equivocal) terms than I would have expected, and generally tries to placate the raging hordes. Nothing much new in terms of information or explanation, but interesting in that the head honcho deigned to give the forums an acknowledgement that things are wrong and assurance that they will get fixed.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

Regarding the real-money auction house, our primary goal for including this in the game was to provide convenience and peace of mind for those players who might otherwise turn to third-party services to buy items. Black market trading sites can put accounts at risk and create many customer service challenges. We felt that the players themselves also deserved the opportunity to benefit from the extra loot they found, as opposed to having all of the benefit go to the black market/illegal trading organizations. We know the auction house isn’t perfect, but with your help and feedback, we’ll be able to continue making it a better experience for those who choose to use it. On the flipside, we are also committed to ensuring you have a great experience with Diablo III without feeling like the auction house is mandatory, which was never our intention. Thank you for all the feedback about that.

I think the primary goal for the AH was additional revenue for Blizzard, as that's the only part that appears to be functioning properly at all..

One other common topic we’ve seen in the forums is the always-connected experience, and the perception that the online requirement is nothing but an ineffective form of copy protection that has already been cracked. While we’ve never said that this requirement guarantees that there will be no cheating or game cracks, it does help us battle those problems (we have not found any fully functional cracks). More important to us is that the online requirement is critical for the long-term integrity of the game experience. I fully understand the desire to play Diablo III offline; however, Diablo III was designed from the beginning to be an online game that can be enjoyed with friends, and the always-online requirement is the best way for us to support that design. The effectiveness of the online elements — including the friends list and cross-game communication; co-op matchmaking; persistent characters that you can use by yourself, with others, and in PvP; and some of our customer support, service, and security components — is tied directly to the online nature of the game. These and other online-enabled features are essential to our design for Diablo III. That said, there are still improvements we believe we can make to expand the online experience and make co-op play even more rewarding, and this will remain one of our priorities moving forward. Overall, while there are some downsides to the online-only approach, I still believe this was the best long-term decision for the game.

"While there are downsides... I still..." always amounts to "My horrible idea is still awesome and you just don't understand. Its not changing, deal with it."

This is the kind of horseshit I expect to hear from middle-management at a job, from someone who doesn't really know how things beneath them work. I mean, if you can acknowledge there are an avalanche of downsides and still downplay them, you were never considering changing them to start with because you'd have no fucking clue where to start.

[Malacite]

Re: DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

What's sad is the 1st comment afterwards is pretty much spot on, and then everyone else proceeds to just shit on him for saying it.

Bandaid fix is a bandaid. Yoshi P this guy ain't.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

New Diablo III exploit allows invincible hardcore Wizards -Destructoid

Blizzard is scrubbing forum posts on how to perform the exploit while they come up with another excuse to justify the always-on DRM.

I read the feature bulletpoints for Torchlight II on Steam the other day. I'll just leave them here:

Multiplayer - Play co-op with your friends via LAN or over the Internet for free. No subscriptions, no item sales. Our new matchmaking service lets you find friends, start new games, and join existing games. And, as always, you can play single-player offline as well.

Customizable Characters - Players will create and customize a character from one of four brand new classes. Each class can be played as either male or female, with customized cosmetic features and looks to make each individual character stand out. All new skills and loot give loads of opportunity for unique character builds.

Moddability - TorchED, the Torchlight II editor, will give players the ability to create their own mods, adding even more content to the world. Have your friends download the same mod and play together. TorchED will be available as a separate download very shortly after launch.

New User Interface - Torchlight II boasts a new and improved user interface, designed to be easier than ever for new players to pick up and play. This intuitive interface ensures you can focus on playing the game the way you want to.

Open World - We're not only in the town of Torchlight anymore! Explore vast overland areas and multiple hub towns, fight through rain, snow, day and night. Our level randomization ensures new layouts, paths, loot, and monsters every time you play.

New Game Plus - In New Game Plus, the game's not over until you say it is. Once you've beaten Torchlight II's primary campaign, you can start again with the same character for a significantly greater challenge. You'll keep all of the skills, gold, and gear you worked so hard for!

Pets & Fishing - These popular features make their return in Torchlight II in improved form. More choices, better effects, and your pet will still make the run to town to sell your loot so you don’t have to.

Who knew such a standard set of features could sound so exciting?

[Taskmage]

Re: DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

Interesting.

Honestly though, as big of an exploit as this is, I would still rate crap like this lower on a list of problems with D3 than the boring and linear itemization and character customization, and the broken economy. (As an aside, boring and linear itemization and character customization is also a problem I had with Torchlight.)

I've mostly stopped playing like others. I still log in every few days to see if I can catch some friends online because co-op is still a blast especially when I can help them through content they haven't cleared before. When I don't find them I'll try to start a farming session which lasts for about 20 minutes until the first lag and/or bullshit related death instantly caps out my frustration tolerance for the game and I log out for another few days.

[DakAttack]

Re: DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

The part of the game I enjoyed the most, hunting down rare spawns, becomes complete bullshit. Now everybody I play with just avoids them like the plague. It doesn't seem to matter what combination of abilities they have, it's all still instant death. Who could possibly think this is fun? It gives me flashbacks to Promyvion.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

Promyvion was stupid people not listening and getting everyone killed. That's a bit different.

[Taskmage]

Re: DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

He's talking about people wall-hugging and such to try to avoid any fighting, because mobs were hard enough it was all risk and no reward to engage them. Which is what elite packs are like until you're well-geared enough to faceroll the content they're in, then you hunt them again for the items.

I saw a thread on the Diablo subreddit today called "Some games you play until you're bored with them or beat them. Diablo you play until you hate it." I don't think that could have been more spot on. I've played D3 for over 300 hours. The first 100 were golden. The second 100 were still pretty good. The last 100 have been a pretty miserable experience that I continued to subject myself to in the hope that the fun would resurface. There's a phalanx of people on the internet that would call me a moron for being disappointed with a game I got 200 hours of enjoyment out of, but the endgame such as it is has beaten the appreciation for that time out of me. Like it's hard to appreciate all those good cocaine highs you had after that drug's left you a broken, withered husk of a person. I imagine.