Diablo 3 beta

[UntamedLoli]

This is gold.

http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/commen ... n-diablo-3

http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/commen ... -interview

[IskatuMesk]

The truth hurts doesn't it?

[RazorclawX]

I read about it earlier this week, and I've never heard of David Breavik until then.

Either way, he came off like an ass.

[Hercanic]

So Jay Wilson issued a lengthy apology on his "Fuck that loser" comment, with regard to David Brevik.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/6398870250

As many of you probably know, I recently made a comment on Facebook about Dave Brevik. I want to make it clear that I am very sorry for what I said. I have higher expectations for myself than to express my feelings in such a rash way and disrespect a fellow developer like Dave, someone who deserves to be treated with greater respect.

What I said was expressed out of anger, and in defense of my team and the game. People can say what they want about me, but I don't take lightly when they disparage the commitment and passion of the Diablo III team. Dave is awesome. In Diablo and Diablo II, he made two of the games that have most affected me as a developer. I respect his vision for Diablo, but just like he said in his interview, the Diablo III team must drive a vision for the game that is true to us. We believe in Diablo and have stuck by it through years of hard development to make it a reality.

The foundation of the Diablo team was built from the remnants of Blizzard North: Our lead programmer, who built the basis of the Diablo III engine while at Blizzard North; our lead tech artist, who drove much of the combat visuals, FX, and skill direction of our classes and is one of the most avid Diablo II players you can find; our lead concept artist, who helped establish the core look of the game; Wyatt Cheng, our senior technical game designer, who writes many of our blogs and works tirelessly on the live game. All these people and many others made the commitment to Diablo even after Blizzard North shut down. It was hard for me to see their contributions be diminished by someone they worked alongside, and even harder for me not to try to jump to their defense. I only wish I'd done so in a more professional manner.

Joining the Diablo team was a dream come true for me. In my house, the name Diablo was always spoken in hushed tones. It meant late nights that turned into early mornings, moments of pure adrenaline and pure joy. It meant countless conversations, debates, scouring websites for good builds, and more than one or two sick days. :) When Diablo II was released, I took a week off work and sent my wife out of state... and she was pregnant at the time! I played Diablo II with my dad during one of the most difficult times of his life, and the experience brought me closer to him, and I hope helped him through it. I joined the Diablo team because the idea of a world without more Diablo seemed like a pretty crappy world to me. I wasn't sure if I'd be good enough. I'm still not sure. But I felt I had to try.

Regardless of how I've done, my team has been more than good enough, and I'm proud of the game we made together. We believe it's a great game. But Diablo III has flaws. It is not perfect. Sales mean nothing if the game doesn’t live on in all of our hearts, and standing by our games is what Blizzard does. Patch 1.0.4 is a step in the right direction, but we have no illusions that our work is done.

Playing Diablo III needs to be a rewarding experience. The new legendaries are a big step in the right direction, as are tweaks to item drop rates. But I'm not convinced that we've gone far enough. If you don't have that great feeling of a good drop being right around the corner -- and the burst of excitement when it finally arrives -- then we haven't done our jobs right. Out of our concern to make sure that Diablo III would have longevity, we were overly cautious about how we handled item drops and affixes. If 1.0.4 hasn’t fixed that, you can be sure we'll continue to address it.

Part of the problem, however, is not just item drops, but the variety of things to do within the game. Many of you have stated that there needs to be more to the game than just the item hunt, and we agree completely. The Paragon system is a step in the right direction, giving meta-progress for your time in the game, but it does little to address the variety of activities you can do while playing. I don't think there’s a silver-bullet solution to this problem, but I do think we can make this aspect of the game better, and as such we're planning more than just PvP for the next major patch. Not trying to be coy, but we're still firming things up and will talk about this as soon as we can.

Difficulty has been a constant source of division when discussing the game. Some players believe Diablo has never been about crushing challenges, but more about efficiency and farming. Some players want a game that tests them to their limits. Neither player is wrong. As it stands, Diablo III simply does not provide the tools to allow players to scale the game challenge to something appropriate for them. We set Inferno as the high watermark and took a one-size-fits-all approach to game challenge. Later in the development of Diablo II, the 'players 8' command -- which let people set monster difficulty -- was added to address this issue, and we're considering something similar for the next major Diablo III patch to allow players to make up their own minds about how hard or how easy is right for them.

The Auction House has also proven to be a big challenge. It adds a lot of power for players to trade and acquire items. Getting a great Monk drop that you can trade for better gear for your Wizard is obviously a great benefit, but it does come with a downside. The Auction House can short circuit the natural pace of item drops, making the game feel less rewarding for some players. This is a problem we recognize. At this point we're not sure of the exact way to fix it, but we’re discussing it constantly, and we believe it's a problem we can overcome.

While these are some of the major issues with Diablo III, they aren't the only things we're looking at. On a daily basis we ask ourselves if the classes are satisfying to play, if rares and champions are fun to fight, if they’re tuned well relative to normal monsters. Can we make further improvements to social elements of the game? How can items be even better?

We made Diablo III because we believe in the Diablo games. We think the gameplay is awesome, the world is compelling, and it's the game we all wanted to play. Because we believe in it, we'll continue to stand by it and make it better. We are committed to making Diablo III the best Diablo game to date, and we hope you'll continue to help us do just that.

Saying that, I'd like to apologize to all of you, the players in our community. You deserve better than my reaction to Dave's comments. You deserve more honest communication about the game and what we're doing to make it a more awesome experience for us all. We care about Diablo very much, and appreciate your passion for it. Without you, we wouldn't be able to do this, and for that I can't thank you enough.

[Lavarinth]

I like how it went from "here's my apology to.. this guy" to "here's why our game is going to be good, forget that guy." And of course I'm sure the people replying and praising him have never played Diablo 1 or 2.

[UntamedLoli]

I like how it went from "here's my apology to.. this guy" to "here's why our game is going to be good, forget that guy." And of course I'm sure the people replying and praising him have never played Diablo 1 or 2.

I found this particular comment amusing.

On a side note, the structure of this statement makes it incredibly clear how the PR liason helped craft this mission statement. It's pretty textbook. (Acknowledge mistake, supply defense, supply personal emotional background shifting the aggressor into a defender, address a desire to solve issues without locking into real answers, and finally, come full circle and repeat the apology and thematic statement) There's nothing wrong with this, everyone in a corporate or political setting does it. It's just funny that we've socially come far enough to see through the process.

[IskatuMesk]

I can't wait to see this company fall. I'm counting by the days.

[mAc Chaos]

I read about it earlier this week, and I've never heard of David Breavik until then.

Either way, he came off like an ass.

All he did was make some mild comments which were true. QQ

Man, before D3 and SC2 were even announced, I was saying that there's no way they could capture the same spirit of the game when an entire different group of people would be making it.

It's like making a totally different game and just naming it the same thing.

[Pr0nogo]

It's like making a totally different game and just naming it the same thing.

That's what they did.

[UntamedLoli]

They pretty much got called out on it by the person best fit to do it. They sure as hell weren't listening to their players on anything.

Then the buttdevastation set in. They went completely childish over it. I would normally call it a learning experience. But this is Blizzard, they keep making the same retarded mistakes over and over.

[RazorclawX]

They pretty much got called out on it by the person best fit to do it.

You mean the guy responsible for Hellgate London.

All he did was make some mild comments which were true. QQ.

No, he didn't. He basically said if he were in charge the game would've turned out differently. Well, guess whose fault it is that didn't happen.

That's right, David Breavik. He walked out.

You can reminisce about the 'good old days' and 'how I would do it would've been better', but the fact remains, it didn't, and you can't make it better, because you weren't there to make it better.

[Pr0nogo]

People have a right to be pissed off about something, even if they can't change it. I'm pissed off about the broken judicial and political systems of America, despite not being able to change them, and despite their being far beyond recovery at this point.

Maybe if someone ransacked Vision of the Future halfway through development and made it a product significantly below what you knew you could create, you'd be more inclined to acknowledge Brevik's statements. Now obviously a fan-made campaign with an accompanying mod for an already-established game and having a mostly-already-established setting is an entirely different thing than being part of a team that made two games, but the relationship is relatively similar; something that you held as your creation, and would no doubt try to support if you did in fact care about it, was taken by people who did not understand how your project was formed and turned into something that was, on every level, worse. If you can't understand how such a thing could be frustrating, then I don't know what to say to you.

If you quit your job as creative director at Starbucks, does that mean you're entitled to be pissed when they botch their next big cappuccino? No, not necessarily; but if it's something that you did well, and something that you were passionate about, it doesn't matter what the situation is - you're going to have feelings about it, regardless of whether or not you "should". Adopting your apathy, there's no reason to criticise someone for doing something they're going to do anyways.

[Alevice]

Hellgate london remains as a comeplling point.

[Pr0nogo]

I haven't played it; I can't comment on it. Assuming you're serious (lerl), that's like invalidating a scenario where a really great musician leaves a band, does some solo work that doesn't do too well, and then (as he's working on a more promising piece) comments on the fate of his former band when they started sucking.

that fucking sucked, gimme a sec

Okay, so it goes like this.

A band called Penance does really well for two albums. After that, their lead vocalist/guitarist, who wrote most of the music and lyrics, leaves. Penance goes on hiatus and the lone ex-Penance member goes off to release a solo album. The fans of Penance don't like the new direction as much as they liked the first two Penance albums. After a while, the ex-Penance member enters the studio to record his next album. During this time, Penance gets a new lead vocalist/guitarist and releases their third record, which sucks ass compared to their previous work. A curious fan-turned-journalist interviews the ex-Penance member (while he's still in the studio) and asks him what he thinks of how Penance turned out.

If Blizzard North was Penance and David Brevik was the lead vocalist/guitarist (assuming this analogy fits, as Penance without their lead vocalist/guitarist would be Blizzard South after hiatus), please tell me where he comes off like an ass.

[UntamedLoli]

Hellgate london remains as a comeplling point.

No it doesn't. I've also actually played it, recently. It held my interest far longer than D3 did. It had major technical issues at launch, not a complete disaster for gameplay design like D3 still has.