Diablo 3

[Turhan Bey]

Diablo III Beta Patch 10 – v.0.6.0.8296
 
General

A number of significant changes have been made to key aspects of Diablo III in this patch. To learn more about these changes and why they were made, please be sure to read the "System Changes" blog, written by Jay Wilson.

All characters have been wiped. Please note that this wipe will also affect gold, achievements, items, followers, and artisans.

* The Battle.net Balance for all beta participants has been reset to 50 Beta Bucks

* Core character attributes have been reworked significantly

** Attack, Defense, and Precision have been removed
** Dexterity, Intellect, Strength, and Vitality have been added:

Dexterity
+Demon Hunter damage
+Monk damage
+Dodge (for all classes)

Intellect
+Witch Doctor damage
+Wizard damage
+Health from globes (for all classes)

Strength
+Barbarian damage
+Armor (for all classes)

Vitality
+Health (for all classes)

** Armor will now supplement Defense, as well as provide +Physical resist
** +Chance to Crit has been added as an item affix
** Player Life per Vitality has been changed:

Players will now start out with 10 Life per Vitality at level 1

* Nephalem Altars have been removed and players can now swap unlocked skills at any point during gameplay via the Skills list. This will impose a 30-second cooldown on the newly-activated skill, during which time the skill cannot be exchanged for another.
** Please note that the skills system is still considered a work-in-progress and will be undergoing additional changes in future patches. This iteration of the system is not final.

* Scrolls of Identification have been removed and players can now identify an item by right-clicking on the item's icon

* The Nephalem Cube has been removed and the salvage ability has been added to the Blacksmith artisan

* The Cauldron of Jordan has been removed

* Stone of Recall has been renamed to "Town Portal" and can now be accessed directly via the Skill bar UI

* The fifth quick slot button has been moved next to the Town Portal ability in the Skill bar. This slot will eventually be to dedicated to potions, but can currently be used as a normal slot.

* Skills will now display simplified tooltips by default

To view Advanced tooltips, press and hold the CTRL key when hovering over skill icons

* The duration of the global chill effect granted by cold damage has be increased from 0.4 seconds to 0.6 seconds

* Achievements have been re-enabled
 
Classes

Barbarian
Active Skills
Ground Stomp
Damage increased from 70% to 110%
Ignore Pain
Cooldown reduced from 60 seconds to 30 seconds
Duration reduced from 5 seconds to 3 seconds
Leap Attack
Damage increased from 70% to 100%
Revenge
Damage increased from 150% to 220%
Passive Skills
Nerves of Steel
Now increases Armor by 25% of your Vitality

Monk
Active Skills
Blinding Flash
No longer breaks on damage
Duration reduced from 5 seconds to 3 seconds

Wizard
Active Skills
Frost Nova
Damage reduced from 65% to 50%
Ice Armor
No longer increases your Armor
Wave of Force
Damage increased from 205% to 350%
Passive Skills
Temporal Flux
Slow amount increased from 24% to 30%
 
Crafting

* General

Leveling artisans in Normal difficulty now only requires gold

* Salvaging

** Common (white) items can no longer be salvaged and common crafting materials have been removed in all difficulty levels
** Salvaging a Magic (blue) item will always give you a Magic material, as well as a chance to receive a Rare (yellow) or Legendary (orange) material
Salvaging a Rare item will always give you a Rare material and a Magic material, as well as a chance to receive a Legendary material
**Salvaging a Legendary item will always give you a Legendary material, Rare material, and Magic material
 
Items

* General

** Attack, Defense, and Precision random affixes have been replaced with Dexterity, Strength, and Intellect
**The base damage on slower weapons has been increased. This is because we’re also increasing the potency of elemental damage properties, and elemental damage benefits faster weapons more than slower weapons.
** The drop rate of Magic items between level 1 and level 20 has been lowered. Single affix-Magic items are now introduced more slowly, and double affix-Magic items won’t appear until later in the game.

* Vendors

** Wandering Merchants now have a 50% chance to sell a limited stock Rare item of any type
** Amulets have been moved from the Collector to the Fence
 
Monsters

* Electrified monsters no longer spew lightning on death
* Arcane Enchanted monsters no longer cast an extra arcane beam on death
 
Bug Fixes

* Players should no longer be disconnected from Battle.net when moving a stack of 0 items to their Skill action bar
* Rapidly moving around items in a character’s inventory should no longer cause those items to become unresponsive
* Items that display full durability, but are still considered slightly damaged should now be able to be posted on the Auction House
* Monsters that are killed should now always properly play their death animation rather than remain standing

[Captain Mercator]

Finally got the beta invite

[Ezekiel Prellus]

Finally got the beta invite

I went to the Diablo 3 forums just to catch up on the progress of that title and, boy oh boy, all you read are people screaming to get into that beta. It seems as though the beta is widespread enough now that most of the really loyal fans feel anger and resentment over not getting in. I think Blizzard has inadvertently created a really unhealthy atmosphere over there.

I don't own a Blizzard game. Thankfully.

[Turhan Bey]

In related news, the Visual Effects Society gave the "Outstanding Visual Effects in an Animated Commercial or Video Game Trailer" award to Blizzard's Black Soulstone cinematic trailer.

[Irdalth Delrar]

I'm... worried. I tweeted this a few days back, but from http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/08 ... sh-trades/

Online play only and no mods. One of my friends who was easily the most excited of us to get into the game has cancelled his preorder, and while he and I will probably still get it, its now with a lot less enthusiasm.

[Turhan Bey]

I'm not quite sure why the "no modding" thing is such a letdown for some. Neither Diablo 1 nor 2 allowed modding, did they? And this whole "history of allowing mods" thing... I thought that was only ever allowed for their RTS games. WoW's UI customization is definitely not modding. I am sad about the "no offline single player" though, but as stated, I'm also not at all surprised being a long-time StarCraft 2 player.

In any case, because they're going to have the RL$ trading system then I can see how they want strict control over the game. Very bad things will happen if (when?) someone finds a way to hack around it and introduce unlimited dupes of otherwise super-rare gear.

I'm not quite sure why the "no modding" thing is such a letdown for some. Neither Diablo 1 nor 2 allowed modding, did they? And this whole "history of allowing mods" thing... I thought that was only ever allowed for their RTS games. WoW's UI customization is definitely not modding.

There are mods for Diablo 2. They're not officially supported, of course. I don't even think it's the Diablo community being used to modding D2, although I suppose most everybody I know who's still playing D2 has at least heard of the unofficial resolution patch (at least those who aren't playing on battle.net may even be using it). When I look at my old games that I still play, then those are all moddable, and it's the mods that make these games bearable and/or still interesting in 2012. Morrowind being the prime example. It seems to me that moddability can add significant value to a game, much more than many other features. I almost never mod new games and I still think of it as a plus when I see a new title that explicitly allows it.

In any case, because they're going to have the RL$ trading system then I can see how they want strict control over the game. Very bad things will happen if (when?) someone finds a way to hack around it and introduce unlimited dupes of otherwise super-rare gear.

Remember the Stone of Jordan inflation when people found out they could use a packet sniffer to see what items the gambling shop was selling? You'd just refresh the shop window until something came up that you wanted. That didn't require any sort of real hack, it specifically only worked in battle.net games. (It was eventually fixed by not transmitting that data to the client.)

Personally, I don't care about always online, though. Offline play would be a step back for me, I already played D2 more or less exclusively online since hardcore mode is much more fun when you can show off an unquestionably legitimate high level character.

Personally, I don't care about always online, though. Offline play would be a step back for me, I already played D2 more or less exclusively online since hardcore mode is much more fun when you can show off an unquestionably legitimate high level character.

Well to be fair most don't have a constant internet connection.

And I'm going to guess that's it's going to be Uibsoft style loses connection = no auto save because you might of been trying to cheat or some silly thing like that.

Well to be fair most don't have a constant internet connection.

Yeah, what I'm saying is I wouldn't play without a connection anyway. I only had a cheap half broken modem when I played D2 that didn't work half the time, and I still didn't really want to play offline.

Of course it still sucks for those who actually want to play offline.

And I'm going to guess that's it's going to be Uibsoft style loses connection = no auto save because you might of been trying to cheat or some silly thing like that.

From what I've read so far, it's not - because there is no real single player mode. You can only play online, and progress is saved on the server. It seems like Blizzard has realized that they're really competing with MMORPGs no matter what they do. Unlike their rivals over at Runic who think their genre of games where you run around to kill mobs in order to level up and get gear is "starved".

[SeeSeeBeee]

And I'm going to guess that's it's going to be Uibsoft style loses connection = no auto save because you might of been trying to cheat or some silly thing like that.

on reading that i can almost feel the earth shake as the fountain of tears try to erupt to the surface and flood the earth. some dude is going to have some uber gear drop or uber achivement completed and not get saved. i just hope its not going to be me.

[Shori Laya]

So ... if even solo games are played on the servers, can we expect constant online lag? Or is actually only the progress saved but everything calculated locally.

[Irdalth Delrar]

My biggest issue with online only gameplay is that like so many other things, essentially they're saying "you've really just bought a revokable license to our game... servers go down? Too bad, you didn't buy a game, just a license to it. We take the servers down and don't feel like patching to offline play? Too bad, you didn't buy a whole game." With online only play, even though we're paying $60 for a CD with data written on it, they still control our gameplay, and that's bull. If you notice, software is one of the few places in our lives where we accept this as inevitable though... imagine you bought a computer and it had guidelines of its use?

imagine you bought a computer and it had guidelines of its use?

I don't have to buy that computer, then. I did it anyway of course, since I own have in my possession an iPad. It's very common with cars and houses, too.

For me it's just the same calculation as for anything else. Software only has to work for a period of time during which I expect I want to use it, same as a leased car that I would expect to use for two years. Most games, I play for a few months at most. What happens a few years from now is mostly irrelevant. I don't get more out of my money just because I own a game if I stop playing. There are some rare exceptions, I believe I've mentioned Morrowind before in this thread, and some others as well, although the single oldest game I still play is free (nethack). However, if a game actually is that good that I still want to play it in ten-twenty years, I'm willing to accept a little higher risk. In return, let's not forget that I get, at least early on, patches and support from the developer. That used to be different, too.

[Turhan Bey]

This sadly delves into the whole different issue of pirating, for which we already have a thread elsewhere. With those other, more physical, objects, if there was a usage limitation that we were unwilling to accept then the solution would be to not buy it. With software, it seems people (in general) have a sense of entitlement and thus justify pirating because of unacceptable DRM, or unavailability at their location, or the good old "should be free" argument that is mostly used for movies and music because it is "art".

In any case, I figure the whole DRM or limited usage issue is just another factor to consider when deciding whether or not to buy. Diablo 3, from what I've seen so far, will be well worth the purchase price and possible downtime from servers down and connections lost, at least to me. Other games, perhaps not so much, so those titles I won't buy and I won't play.

[Irdalth Delrar]

With physical objects, such as a leased car, the cost reflects your restrictions... you don't way the full price of a new car when going through a lease, and usually a leased car has peripheral benefits to account for the fact that you are restricted. Same thing on when you lease a living accommodation.

You are right in that you don't have to buy it. However, while there are dozens of car manufacturers, and more important, hundreds of agents willing to sell/lease you your car, there is one game developer for a game (there are sellers, but they don't have any options on selling method). Its not an argument about piracy, rather, an argument about monopoly. I don't think there is any entitlement because something is software, and I'd wager that those who pirate because of entitlement also would feel little qualm about stealing a physical object they felt was overpriced if they thought it was as easy as digital material is to take. However, I believe that either companies should be selling games, or selling licenses... if its a game, they shouldn't be telling me my restrictions on using it (like buying a car), and if its a license, the price and what I get should reflect that (a lease). Rather, we have a system where companies readily switch between claiming its a physical purchase (thus allowing the claim that anything that goes wrong with the medium, or the game, is too bad, as it was bought in whole) and that its a lease (that they can tell us what to do with our purchase). There are plenty of law suits where the same company has claimed a purchase is a license when someone tried to sell their copy to someone else, and claimed its a game when someone tried to sue to get a new copy of a cd because of defective packaging (you know, back in the days of CDs). While there is an argument about the moral rights and wrongs of digital piracy, there is also the question of if its a response to companies decisions concerning the sales of digital materials, or if the restrictions arose to counter problems. From my own research/experience, I've found piracy to be the response (I'm not saying its right, I'm saying the companies are no better).

I think the physical objects comparison falls apart simply because digital media companies are trying to have it both ways.