Question about Weapon Damage - Page 2

So how is crit chance calculated if you are dual wielding and have a crit chance bonus on both weapons and you are using a skill like Shockwave ?|||It may end up being just like D2 where there is no global cooldown between skill usages but you still have to wait for the attack to complete before you can use it again. Like hitting the next frame breakpoint with IAS. If D3 uses a system like that (only with no breakpoints) then skills used with slower weapons will take longer before you can use it again.

If it doesn't work like that then I've got no answer for you other then 1h weapons will just have half the power/stats/dps of 2h weapons.|||Quote:








So how is crit chance calculated if you are dual wielding and have a crit chance bonus on both weapons and you are using a skill like Shockwave ?




I think both weapons should be calculated separately... it's not really rocket science to code it

Question about Weapon Damage

I have noticed that a lot of the skills from the physical damage dealing classes say that they deal things like "100% weapon damage". When talking about weapon damage and using a two hander vs. two one handers, is the weapon damage that the skill uses based off the weapon in the main hand (WoW) or both weapons together? It would seem to me that a two hander would hit more slowly but for a higher amount of damage. Does anyone that has had time with the game know this or have any idea at all?|||The exact mechanics are unknown, but Blizzard essentially stated that the choice between Dual Wield and Two Hander is "designed to be aesthetic."

In short, the two weapon damage will add up in a manner that makes them "equivalent" to the damage of an equal level two hander item.|||I read that quote but the manner in which he said that they would be equal was this:

"There's obviously a difference in the way they play, yeah. Two-handers are bigger, slower, but feel more powerful. And dual-wield is much faster and bashier. What I meant was from a damage perspective they should be balanced so that no matter what you use, two hander or dual wield, you're going through enemies at the same pace. One slow two-handed swing would equal a few bashes from dual wielding."- Bashiok

From what Bash said it sounds like he means basic attacks, but with skills you are talking weapon damage. This is where my question comes in. When you are dual wielding are both weapons taken into account or just the main hand like wow's system. If that is the case, wouldn't a 2 hander be more beneficial to a class that isn't going to be using their basic attacks such as the monk?|||Isn't the damage based on the weapon that is actually swinging ? Swing 1 with weapon 1 with skill that deals 150% damage = 150% of weapon 1 damage ? Then Swing 2 with weapon 2 with skill that deals 150% damage = 150% of weapon 2 damage ? Then weapon 1 again, etc... With dual wield weapons, the attack would be about 1/2 slower, but the base damage for these weapons would be about double ? That is just a wild guess, I should check the wiki. Give me a few minutes....

Edit : Hum... that is a good question, but I think for "simple skills" what I have described would work, as you would do a bit more damage with two handed weapons while using those skills, but the attack speed of the dual wield would kind of compensate. For the more impressive skills, I guess they would somehow combine both weapon damages and apply the skill modifier on that (and possibly add some extra magic calculations if necessary to balance things out).|||Quote:




From what Bash said it sounds like he means basic attacks, but with skills you are talking weapon damage.




Considering that 99% of the damage you will be doing will come from skills, I am fairly certain he meant overall balance.|||How would that work out konfeta seeing as the monk in the videos ISN'T move any slower when using a staff than he does when dual wielding. Its cause the speed of his skill is the same I assume.



Someone responded on the official forums with : "Specific Spell weapons damage based will be, in most of the case, similar to concetration,beserk,etc from D2.

After that, you can think what you can ^^"

Translation anyone?|||I could see situations where two-handers could be better. If a monk's Seven Sided Strike does let's say, 7 attacks at 50% weapon damage, you would think the pure damage of a staff would be better, and I don't think staves slow the skill down.|||Many games are normalizing weapon damage.. so in Diablo it could work in pretty much same way...

Normal attacks and attacks which depend on attack speed will use real damage values..while instant attacks will use DPS .. so 150% weapon damage means 150% of DPS..so fast weapons wont deal less damage just because these are faster.|||Quote:




Someone responded on the official forums with : "Specific Spell weapons damage based will be, in most of the case, similar to concetration,beserk,etc from D2.




Basically that's an overly fancy way of saying that that there will be skills that use are based off weapon damage.




Quote:




Normal attacks and attacks which depend on attack speed will use real damage values..while instant attacks will use DPS .. so 150% weapon damage means 150% of DPS..so fast weapons wont deal less damage just because these are faster.




Something like that would make sense, actually. Basing skill damage off the "Damage per second" value will likely eliminate any basic imbalance between Attack Speed vs. Damage considerations.

A skill like "Cleave," which is effectively a regular attack would behave as normal from Attack Speed and Damage. A skill like Shockwave, on the other hand, would have to be based off DPS.|||Using dps is certainly a feasible option; of course it would have to be based off of the total dps of main and off-hand damage in order for dual weild to be equitable to two-handed damage. Perhaps there is an "overall character weapon dps total" that can be used as the skill base.

You think youre excited for beta huh?

Just imagine if and when there is an official date and a preorder collectors edition.|||nice post......|||Quote:








Just imagine if and when there is an official date and a preorder collectors edition.




I want my 10 seconds back please !|||oh you know it was an amazing post.|||It was wonderful|||Can I get in on this too? ...Welcome to the Pen15 club, yay!|||Does this genuinely amuse you, or do you think anyone else will find it clever/amusing?

FML.|||AzmodansWrath,

Next time, make threads with contents because it was totally useless ... .

Sincerely,

Welcome aboard comrade !|||Little bit more content would have been good in your opener AzmodansWrath. Otherwise this could have been added to another thread.

What do you want in D3 Beta news/content coverage?

Hey guys.

Elly and I have been talking about what we're going to focus on when the beta kicks off, and it occurred to me that I don't really know what you guys most want to know. I assume you'll want to see videos; we'll be linking to live streams of people playing, and putting up a bunch of screenshots and interface views and such. But what else? What should I be focusing on during my play time?

Do you want write ups of content? Quest walkthroughs? Summaries of the game story info? Comparative analyses of class strengths and weaknesses? Item stats?

Obviously we'll be doing all of that, for the site and the wiki, but I'm just wondering where we should focus our initial efforts, and to how much depth.

Obviously the beta isn't very much of the game, and we already know pretty much everything that's in it in general terms, but with the whole thing in our hands we'll be able to go into much more specifics.|||As many of the game mechanics as you can find. Doubt there will be anything else worthwhile from "Up to Blood Raven" amount of game content.|||Hey Flux, first off, THANKS for asking and actually seeking community feedback. We appreciate it.

Second, I have been encoding some high quality 1080p videos for Chris at GGG (Path of Exile Beta) and they have been looking great. So for me, I am just a technical junkie and I want to see a FULL QUALITY 1080p video (not a stream) and all the video/sound/interface options.

Third, any info on lore/quest info would be great even though we know Blizz will tear some out.

Thanks again!|||HD videos w/ intelligent, knowledgeable commentary.|||I am interested in mechanics of skills etc more than anything. I really want to see and hear how they actually play out and how the new energy mechanics are affected or their effectiveness. And of course great footage with clear and concise narration.|||I want to know what its like to actively use multiple skills. switching back and forth between several of them, based on some type of strategy. is it as good as blizz claims it is? after the newness wears off?|||@Flux, will there be separate beta forums after it launches or will most discussion still be in this forum?|||Live stream of people playing will be on the frontpage Of this website?

I would like to know if the beta discussions are in the current forum of D3. Could it be possible to push a "spoiler button" inside beta test threads so we can decide if we want to read or not about specific infos inside the beta? On the other side, if it's too complicated by using a spoiler button, could it be possible to put a specific color for each threads in relation with official beta test.|||I want data! Screenshots of the interface! Tooltips! Numbers! Stats! The beginnings of an item database!|||High quality sound effects would be nice. I feel like all the videos we get lately are muted or playing other music in the background.

Other than that I mainly want to see in depth skill analysis and some armor progression (what little there will be in the small portion of act 1 available).

Resource System

So, I couldn't find a thread on this in the first five pages of this forum, which I think is approximately the time frame in which the resource system was posted on Bnet. Here's what I perceived, based on the intentionally convoluted explanations given by Blizzard.

WD - Mana. Same as from earlier Diablos.

Wizard - Mana. Just with a different name, and colour.

DH - Mana. Only, there are two mana gauges. Some skills, generally the more blatantly offensive skills, cost mana A, and the other skills cost mana B. They have different quantities and regeneration rates.

Monk - One of the only two classes who really has a new, unique resource system. Basically, this is a more sophisticated incarnation of the Assassin's combo system from D2. He has skills that build up spirit, and skills that cost spirit. So he's using combos to the best of his efficiency by constantly gauging his gauge (heh....). The gauge is also static when the player does nothing, so he's(she's) in charge of the pace of combos.

Barbarian - This one's my favourite system (although that doesn't mean barb is my favourite class). Fury constantly degenerates, which forces you to play as quickly and intently as possible in order to keep the gauge up. It builds up by your dishing or receiving damage. This makes skills that cost fury behave like Final Fantasy 9 style Limit Breaks. I just hope you can rarely (or never) get to the point where a skill does so much damage, it builds up more fury than it costs.

Does anyone have any comments or criticisms of my take? What makes the first three resource systems truly unique?|||Keep in mind that the WD's mana and the Wizard's arcane power work in completely different ways.|||"Completely" is a bit of an overstatement.|||Quote:








"Completely" is a bit of an overstatement.




Well, completely, in the sense that one is a pool that scales with level and regenerates slowly, and the other is a pool that is fixed and regenerates quickly.

I guess they are about as similar as a Mage's mana and a Rogue's energy in World of Warcraft. Which is to say, not very.|||Quote:








Well, completely, in the sense that one is a pool that scales with level and regenerates slowly, and the other is a pool that is fixed and regenerates quickly.

I guess they are about as similar as a Mage's mana and a Rogue's energy in World of Warcraft. Which is to say, not very.




Actually, if this is the case, I think they should remove cooldowns from the wizard entirely. Let Arcane Power be the entire limiting factor of spell casting, since level shouldn't affect how often you can cast spells.|||http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/s...d.php?t=809040

It even had "Resource" in the title of the thread.

Environmental Threats - Page 2

I love environmental threats; I think it's a welcome addition. I would like to see a lot more.

I think one example of a great thing they can do is, for some small levels (caves like the Underground Passage in D2, for example, where it's a small quick passageway through which you traverse, and not a big chunk of the act), is give certain locations a hazardous form of air, such as really hot air, or toxic air, which slowly drains your life. That way, you really have to get yourself focused before entering the level, and then you have to do things quickly once you get in, while still being careful not to over commit, and get yourself killed by monsters.|||The giant hatchets are awesome. I want MOAR.|||Quote:








I love environmental threats; I think it's a welcome addition. I would like to see a lot more.

I think one example of a great thing they can do is, for some small levels (caves like the Underground Passage in D2, for example, where it's a small quick passageway through which you traverse, and not a big chunk of the act), is give certain locations a hazardous form of air, such as really hot air, or toxic air, which slowly drains your life. That way, you really have to get yourself focused before entering the level, and then you have to do things quickly once you get in, while still being careful not to over commit, and get yourself killed by monsters.




There was a level like this in a favorite game of mine, Armored Core (where my namesake comes from fyi.) Closed, cramped corridors filled with an acidic gas that was constantly chipping away at your life total in addition to having to deal with the enemies in this claustrophobic place that made it nigh impossible to dodge their shots...

**** THAT LEVEL!! **** IT TO HELL!

Sorry... Bad memories.|||I thought this was gonna be about trees and squirls and stuff.

I don't (or wouldn't) mind them being in the game, I think it helps for more diversity, that is if they are punishing enough. If they are like in d2, for ex. fire in houses in tristram, people will soon forget about it and thats that.

Environmental Threats

Watching the Wizard video on the front page today, I see the fire dungeon now has environmental threats in the form of giant hatchets the player has to time their progression to pass through. I'm assuming if hit by them, you'll either instantly die, or take a massive amount of damage. This sort of thing was in Torchlight, and it didn't really seem to contribute much. This isn't Megaman or Mario, I think it just kind of gets in the way of the PvE, plus your summons/hirelings etc are too stupid to safely make it through traps like this. But I don't mind as long as they don't overdue it. Maybe 1 or 2 traps of this sort limited to 1 or 2 dungeons, but if they throw these sorts of things everywhere it's gonna be annoying.|||They did a fair amount of damage to the player but seemed to do a lot more damage to the enemies. We'll probably see more stuff like that thrown around here and there, but they are far from spelling your doom if you accidentally misclick and get hit by them... On normal mode at least. Gloves come off on Inferno though.|||Quote:








They did a fair amount of damage to the player but seemed to do a lot more damage to the enemies. We'll probably see more stuff like that thrown around here and there, but they are far from spelling your doom if you accidentally misclick and get hit by them... On normal mode at least. Gloves come off on Inferno though.




Good point. Is it possible that one of their main intentions with these environmental threats is to frustrate bots in Inferno?|||Quote:








Good point. Is it possible that one of their main intentions with these environmental threats is to frustrate bots in Inferno?




Bot traps. What a brilliant solution!|||Well it is an Action RPG, so I think things that add more dodging and timing and moving are welcome additions. I don't want to simply play 'click on the monsters and hope my numbers are bigger than their numbers." I want reasons to have to move around and re-position my character.

These types of traps are certainly more interesting than the "touch the chest or barrel and randomly take damage" variety.|||That might work pretty well on bots, good thought!

It seems they also just want to slow down the play a bit, and make the game less about getting to a certain spot really fast, but about the entire game.|||In the blizzcon 2009 build it got to a point that the cave we were in was about to collapse and a timer popped up showing how much time you had left to escape.|||I like the idea of environment threats, and i hope to see more of thous in the game.

They did a great job with the environment being able to use it to our advantage like colliding stones and stuff.


Quote:








In the blizzcon 2009 build it got to a point that the cave we were in was about to collapse and a timer popped up showing how much time you had left to escape.




I would like to see the cave actually collapse while escaping, being able to get hit by falling stones and stuff!

GIMME DYNAMICSSS!|||or when you openj the botom chest of the "Cave" it dings "you have 2.223 min to escape"|||Perhaps you only have "soo " long to clear instanced areas, maybe they give say "20:00 "Min to clear the "cave" and when 20 min is up you get 5 min to escape or it collapses

impossble to clear noaw fine. impossab;le to clear in 3 months! no, way

The inevitable "Rollback" - Page 3

Why they have made a rollback in WoW ?

I'm curious ... is it because hacks and dupes were out of control for a small portion of time ?|||Quote:








Never in my years of WoW & D2 experienced a rollback that made me anything more than slightly annoyed.

I doubt that this will be a problem.




Well that was my opinion also.

Until when I had a DBW roll back. And the rollback itself was about one(!) minute worth.

Those who played WoW during the WotLK days surely understand.|||Rollbacks are what helped me discover, in D2, that when an unidentified item drops, the game has already determined what that item is. Before that, I thought a random sequence was still initiated upon identification.


Quote:




Wow I didn't know these sort of things happened. What happens if you found some **** hot item worth a tonne, then went and sold it on RMAH and made a nice sale and then boom! It rolled back to the point where you no longer had the item to begin with? What of the item, the money, the trade? What happens to the receiver of said item?

Can this happen?




I expect that the best of the best items will last at least many hours, but typically days to weeks in an Auction House. Its possessor will want to carefully make sure he/she's getting the best deal.|||Quote:




Wow I didn't know these sort of things happened. What happens if you found some **** hot item worth a tonne, then went and sold it on RMAH and made a nice sale and then boom! It rolled back to the point where you no longer had the item to begin with? What of the item, the money, the trade? What happens to the receiver of said item?

Can this happen?




I doubt it. For ex. in wow if you post an item on the ah it automatuically gets 'permed'. Same goes if you equip it and it becomes soulbound. It works similarily to save&exiting the game in d2. It is just scripted to different events. I'm pretty sure such thing can't really happen. and if it did then nothing would be lost as money isn't transfered from accounts until the trade is completed.

The inevitable "Rollback" - Page 2

Peace runeword exploit. Nuff said.|||I know it'll happen, but it'll be for under 6 hours, tops. And I know I'll rage like all the fires of Inferno, since they forced this whole online song and dance crap down my throat in the first place.|||Never in my years of WoW & D2 experienced a rollback that made me anything more than slightly annoyed.

I doubt that this will be a problem.|||Exactly what happened with all the other ones. Everyone will ragequit and the game will be deemed a total failure, never to be played again. Two weeks later, all the servers will be permanently taken down.|||I expect that all auction house transactions will have multiple redundancy with duplicate servers in separate locations, so I don't think that there will be any roll-backs on the auction house.



Rollbacks on characters shouldn't be longer than 1 to 5 minutes depending upon how long the game server buffers character updates before saving to the character/account storage system. There might be something longer if there is a data center fire or a massive tornado and blizzard hasn't gone the extra distance to do simultaneous remote duplication for the account storage system. A data center fire is pretty unlikely and I wouldn't build a flimsy data center in a region plagued by tornadoes so I am not worried about rollbacks.|||I doubt there'll be any serious rollbacks in Diablo III - they learned a lot from WoW.|||Coming from an IT background, Backup infrastructure has drastically improved over the last 10 years, I wouldn't expect a rollback to go back more than 1 hour. Also, since roll-backs in RPG type games consist of a Database rollback (usually because something happened with items), there are new methods that can be used to fix the issue without resorting to a rollback. For example, if there is a major dupe outbreak that is discovered and goes viral, Blizzard would use a complex query to locate those items and destroy them without having to roll the servers back.|||Wow I didn't know these sort of things happened. What happens if you found some **** hot item worth a tonne, then went and sold it on RMAH and made a nice sale and then boom! It rolled back to the point where you no longer had the item to begin with? What of the item, the money, the trade? What happens to the receiver of said item?

Can this happen?|||Quote:








Wow I didn't know these sort of things happened. What happens if you found some **** hot item worth a tonne, then went and sold it on RMAH and made a nice sale and then boom! It rolled back to the point where you no longer had the item to begin with? What of the item, the money, the trade? What happens to the receiver of said item?

Can this happen?




|||Quote:








Wow I didn't know these sort of things happened. What happens if you found some **** hot item worth a tonne, then went and sold it on RMAH and made a nice sale and then boom! It rolled back to the point where you no longer had the item to begin with? What of the item, the money, the trade? What happens to the receiver of said item?

Can this happen?




Blizzard: Trollface.gif

The inevitable "Rollback"

Time and time again, online RPG's have suffered one small annoyance, which while rare, happens.

A server Rollback. Server crashes, data is lost, the most recent backup puts the entire game back 12hr, 24hr, who knows.

-How will you react?

-How will Blizz react?

-How will Blizz refund lost time/money?

-Will Blizz's backups be within minutes of a server/data failure? Or perhaps redundant such that a full data loss + server rollback will "never" happen?



Thoughts?|||I suppose I'll feel a little annoyed and then quickly get over it.

Unless it happened right after my favorite hardcore character died, then I'll feel happy and a little guilty.|||I've never seen D2 rollback more than five minutes.

Maybe I'm naive, but I don't think its an issue.|||This is a great question. I don't remember many rollbacks in vanilla wow so I am not sure if it is still an issue but I would imagine the server that maintains the RMAH will be separate from the players servers and have a mirror that is updated instantly.|||I've experienced rollbacks, but almost all were not blizzard games. I would imagine, with all the tall orders they are promising (server side game, RMAH) that if anything goes down, it will immediately be back up.

This probably helps explain why things are taking forever, they have to make this thing (relatively) fail proof.|||I remember a major rollback around 2002 for diablo 2|||IIRC I experienced a few rollbacks with D2 and WoW, nothing more than a few minutes nor really memorable.|||I'll probably go play offline oh wait.....|||Quote:








I'll probably go play offline oh wait.....




|||If they're going to be using the same kinda of database processing that the WoW servers use, roll backs (if any, haven't seen one in years) will have minimal effect. You'll keep everything you had the minute the servers go down for the rollback.

Followers in D3

Blizzard has revealed in the past that followers were intended to be in single player only. Does anyone know if it's changed or not ?

If it's similar, I do believe Blizzard should change their mind because in D2 it was fun and added a new dimension of PvE at first but also for PvP with certain characters (pal,sorc .... Just to name a few)|||They said that followers may be usable in multiplayer but they will take player spot....so party could be 2 players with 2 followers ..or 3 players and one player using follower.

We didn't heard anything new since then.. Except one thing.. They said they want have followers usable only in normal difficulty at first. On 1.August, they said they may change that and followers could be viable for whole game...for cost of passive slot or something.|||i loved mercs in d2 !!! i always wished they made it more personable and something to invest in or something like a sidekick haha|||Well, I highly doubt there will be aura items such as Infinity or Insight, so mercs probably will be less viable in the late game than they were in D2. I'm okay with this, because they're not balancing D3 from any reference point in D2, they're doing it from scratch. Anyways, I feel like mercs made things too easy for ranged players in D2, who were originally supposed to use hit & run tactics.

However, I do hope that there will be more NPCs fighting alongside you, as there were Barbarians in the beginning of Act 5, just to contribute to the atmosphere of the game a little bit. The barbarians gave us the nice illusion that an entire faction was trying to push back a siege, and that it wasn't all being done by one person (even though that actually was the case). More locations that have a war like feeling would be nice.|||Quote:




They said that followers may be usable in multiplayer but they will take player spot....so party could be 2 players with 2 followers ..or 3 players and one player using follower.




I don't believe they ever said that. That was player speculation/suggestion.|||My recollection is that they said Followers would be too weak to be useful in multiplayer. not that they wouldn't be allowed.|||Actually, they never said that. Followers have only ever been available in single player.|||Followers leave if anyone joins your game, never once has it been said they are usable with other people ingame.|||Yes, thank you, I forgot to mention that detail.|||no this hasnt changed

http://www.diablowiki.net/Followers

Free online games; how will Diablo 3 earn its keep? - Page 12

Anet is also developing Guild Wars 2 now and released 3-4 expansions if I'm not mistaken. Then you factor in all the Steam sales they had for them to boost sales when they were flagging and I can see how they would remain operational on box sales.

It doesn't seem like a good strategy to do more than "stay afloat", so it will be very interesting to see the model Guild Wars 2 uses, as it's expected to be much more popular.

Free online games; how will Diablo 3 earn its keep? - Page 5

Quote:








I think that you need to check the laws for your state. In DC, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan, the four states I know about, it is illegal for underage persons to vend for real money except under certain circumstances - and an online auction house is not one of them. It doesn't matter what account they put the profits into, it is illegal. I doubt underage persons will be able to legally fund their account this way.

Moreover, there is a whole issue of self-employment for minors who make a bunch of money. And if a parent finds out that their child sells $1000 bucks of items on the RMAH and gets angry because their kid is online too much, you can bet they will sue Blizz for child labour infractions, and there are plenty of judges - I am not saying I agree with them - who would rule in favour of the parents. And this comes on top of using credit cards without permission. So, even if it is legal in your state, I doubt Blizzard will risk the lawsuits.

I could imagine a slippery scenario to get out of this dilemma where Blizzard says that your Blizz account represents "monopoly money" that adults can exchange out for real money if they want. But then if Blizz does that, there is very little difference between this and the system I suggested. Blizz already said they weren't doing that, though, and I doubt it would resolve any legal issues if they did.

I think it is a safe bet underage persons will not have access to the RMAH.




With the RMAH you have an option; attach an account with the 3rd party provider to your Bnet account (eg. Paypal), or have any money earned from the RMAH deposited into your e-account.

If the money goes into your e-account it cannot be cashed out later, so for all intents and purposes it is "monopoly money" and no different from gold or Microsoft points or TF2 hats.|||Quote:








With the RMAH you have an option; attach an account with the 3rd party provider to your Bnet account (eg. Paypal), or have any money earned from the RMAH deposited into your e-account.

If the money goes into your e-account it cannot be cashed out later, so for all intents and purposes it is "monopoly money" and no different from gold or Microsoft points or TF2 hats.




You can attach a 3rd party to your bnet account, but each AH transaction is individual in terms of whether you want the cash out or not; also, there is a circular way to revolve the money from your bnet account out, by buying items with the b-net money, then selling the items, and then taking those proceeds out...that said, you may not get back what was in there, depending on what you sell.|||Quote:








What Torr is missing though is the most important part that differentiates World of WarCraft and Diablo3. While in WoW the story of the game constantly progresses trough content patches, which justifies a monthly subscription fee, when it comes to Diablo3 we get all the content with the box, the story does not progress trough content patches, but only trough expansions.That and the lack of features puts Diablo3 in a position in which requirement for a monthly fee would be simply unreasonable. And before people start arguing, the main argument would be that Blizzard themselves don't feel comfortable enough with a subscription fee model for Diablo3, since they are well aware that they cannot justify a monthly subscription fee for a game that doesn't have most of the features of games that do require a subscription fee, the most important of which is continuous development of the story and the content, and that is why they are not going with a subscription based model.




I'm not missing that point, because I agree with everything you said. I was heavily against monthly fees in another thread (Machinations), so I didn't want to come here and repeat myself. My whole point was what you said... D3 in it's current form doesn't give you enough to warrant monthly fees, and I also agree with you that Blizzard is not going to have a subscription fee for Diablo in the future.

To me the comparison of D3 to WoW proves the point that a monthly fee would be unreasonable at this time.|||Quote:








I also find extremely hilarious how some players think that if a game does not have a subscription free is free and you don't really have the right to demand a quality service for $50-60 game. The most hilarious statement of all was from the previous thread about how the cost for the game "goes for the development, but the support comes extra". Customers should expect support for the product they are purchasing, they shouldn't be explained by random people on the forums that things that don't have monthly fee are free.




Seriously. Some people seem to want to pay more. To them I say Blizz, I'm sure, will happily accept any checks you wish to send them.|||Quote:








You can attach a 3rd party to your bnet account, but each AH transaction is individual in terms of whether you want the cash out or not; also, there is a circular way to revolve the money from your bnet account out, by buying items with the b-net money, then selling the items, and then taking those proceeds out...that said, you may not get back what was in there, depending on what you sell.




Yes, but the point is that there is no legal issue with allowing anyone to sell an item for virtual currency, regardless of their age.|||Quote:








You can attach a 3rd party to your bnet account, but each AH transaction is individual in terms of whether you want the cash out or not; also, there is a circular way to revolve the money from your bnet account out, by buying items with the b-net money, then selling the items, and then taking those proceeds out...that said, you may not get back what was in there, depending on what you sell.




But you see it is not virtual currency, regardless of how it feels. Someone paid you real money and no matter what account it goes into (Blizzard or third-party), it is real money. Indeed, Blizzard plan to take a percentage of it (the transaction fee) and call it real revenue.

If Blizzard made this monopoly money, then they would say that choosing to put money in your Blizzard account means purchasing this "monopoly money", which is equivalent in value to real-world dollars, but not real-world dollars. In addition to that probably not holding up in court when legal issues, it would mean that Blizzard could not collect real revenue from sales where the money goes into your Blizzard account.

But, Blizzard has already stated that their plan is not to do this and that the Blizzard account will have real money, which means it is illegal in most states for underage players to take part in the RMAH.

My suggestion for an exclusively gold-for-item auction house and exclusively cash-for-gold auction house does nothing to prevent buying items for cash, which I believe should be in the game. It just puts an intermediary of gold in there, thereby allowing underage players to access items that would be off limits, ensuring a gold sink, possibly reducing lawsuits (because underage persons can wait until age 18 to sell their gold) and moving the brunt of the transaction fees to those who will not care as much about them - something that is good for revenue made off of transactions and, because more people are likely to stick around, expansions.|||^Not a percentage. Flat fee.|||Quote:








^Not a percentage. Flat fee.




Yep. Sorry.|||Quote:








There are people who are very quick to call out Blizzard for trying to make money on the RMAH, who DON'T appreciate the fact that this game is free.




I understand what you mean, but the game isn't free. It'll be $60 I'm assuming, and probably another $60 for the xpac, just like it's predecessors. Like someone else mentioned, that will probably do them just fine being that they're going to sell an insane amount of copies. Sure, they could make more in some way or form, but do they need/want to? That's the point worth arguing I suppose.|||Quote:








I understand what you mean, but the game isn't free. It'll be $60 I'm assuming, and probably another $60 for the xpac, just like it's predecessors. Like someone else mentioned, that will probably do them just fine being that they're going to sell an insane amount of copies. Sure, they could make more in some way or form, but do they need/want to? That's the point worth arguing I suppose.




Not only that but they made the decision to make the game online only. If they had included offline single player then it could be argued that online support isn't included in the initial price.

Free online games; how will Diablo 3 earn its keep? - Page 4

The danger which subscription fees, and micro transactions present to the gaming industry, is that they present aleternate revenue streams that can sometimes be more lucrative than box sales. When game companies start focusing more on how they can nickle and dime than the core game itself, or worse, build the core of the game around subscription fees and microtransitions, then those games aren't going to be very good.

As consumers, we should always demand at minimum 99% of the content be included in the box sale. Developers should have to meet this demand however best they can. The exception being MMOs and 'persistent game worlds' that exist online only. And no, throwing a game online only (D3, etc) doesn't qualify it as an MMO, or 'persistent game world.' In which case, the box sale of the game should be little or nothing, and the only charge fees/subscriptions.|||Quote:








They aren't charging a monthly fee. Be thankful.




well said my friend.|||Quote:








But they're not limited. An underage or poor player can sell items or gold for money and then use that money to purchase items on the RMAH.




Have you ever tried to create an account on PayPal, eBay, etc? Pretty much all companies that work in these sorts of monetary transactions refuse to service underage clients. In the US, this is because it is illegal in most (all?) states. But even if it were not illegal, you can imagine the legal fees that add up when a kid uses his/her parents' credit card without permission and the parents decide to sue Blizzard, and that is one of the main reason these age limits are on the game - a user agreement preventing these sorts of lawsuits.

Add that to the odd lot that will sue for child labour, a case that wouldn't make it through the courts, but wouldn't need to either because it would be cheaper and more in the PR interests of Blizz to settle out of court.|||I get the feeling that the inevitable console version will be where the big bucks come from. Console gamers are a huge market, and Diablo is probably the most suitable Blizzard game for consoles.|||Quote:








Have you ever tried to create an account on PayPal, eBay, etc? Pretty much all companies that work in these sorts of monetary transactions refuse to service underage clients. In the US, this is because it is illegal in most (all?) states. But even if it were not illegal, you can imagine the legal fees that add up when a kid uses his/her parents credit card without permission and the parents decide to sue Blizzard, and that is one of the main reason these age limits are on the game - to be a user agreement preventing these sorts of lawsuits.

Add that to the odd lot that will sue for child labour, a case that wouldn't make it through the courts, but wouldn't need to either because it would be cheaper and more in the PR interests of Blizz to settle out of court.




The money can be deposited in your Blizzard "e-account" which can be used to pay for a WoW subscription, buy games/merchandise from the Blizzard store and buy items via the RMAH. No credit card is needed.

So an 8 year old could get an item or gold, sell the item/gold and buy an item via the RMAH.|||I feel like we were already discussing this topic in a separate thread, but maybe a fresh start will be good. Rather then rehash that thread, I'm going to take a different tact. First, let me say that I prefer microtransactions to monthly fees if they are optional to game enjoyment, like LOTRO or Guild Wars... in terms of D3 I am fine with RMAH fees, vanity items, perhaps even monthly fees for optional add-ons like major guild support. But if were going to talk about a straight monthly fee for D3, perhaps we need to discuss what you should get for a WoW-like fee.

So for that monthly WoW fee you get access and storage on their servers, an auction house, seperate warring realms to split players competetively in open-world pvp and major guild support to group players cooperatively in pvp or pvm, special events, better tech support, the ability to have many, many players raid together in both pvp and pvm, a persistent game world where you can explore freely rather than a more linear RPG, hundreds (thousands?) of quests, mounts, vanity items, etc., etc.

So rather than argue against monthly fees, I'm willing to discuss how much Blizzard needs to add to D3 so that it is worth a monthly fee. Right now it doesn't have enough of those features above to fairly warrant a subscription by Blizzard's own "definition" of what you get for that price.|||I will proceed on the assumption that they will not charge monthly prescription in the future, as that will be a huge PR disaster, we can throw that possibility out and not waste time talking about an unlikely scenario.



However, it is very likely (bordering on certainty) that they will implement vanity stores, which is perfectly good in my book, as long as goods sold give no gameplay advantage and stick to the cosmetic side of things, giving convenience advantage though like more shared stash space or slots for RM will start to be riding the line.

I imagine the finalized fee extraction model to end up similar to:

-RMAH transaction fee.

-Vanity store

Supplemented by expansion sales, which is another word for a big DLC really. Whether they will mix smaller DLC alongside the expansions is another possibility, though I'd hope not, D3 seems more suited to bigger DLC (expansions) then numerous optional DLC, a poorly implemented rapid DLC model can fragment the game community too.|||Quote:








The money can be deposited in your Blizzard "e-account" which can be used to pay for a WoW subscription, buy games/merchandise from the Blizzard store and buy items via the RMAH. No credit card is needed.

So an 8 year old could get an item or gold, sell the item/gold and buy an item via the RMAH.




I think that you need to check the laws for your state. In DC, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan, the four states I know about, it is illegal for underage persons to vend for real money except under certain circumstances - and an online auction house is not one of them. It doesn't matter what account they put the profits into, it is illegal. I doubt underage persons will be able to legally fund their account this way.

Moreover, there is a whole issue of self-employment for minors who make a bunch of money. And if a parent finds out that their child sells $1000 bucks of items on the RMAH and gets angry because their kid is online too much, you can bet they will sue Blizz for child labour infractions, and there are plenty of judges - I am not saying I agree with them - who would rule in favour of the parents. And this comes on top of using credit cards without permission. So, even if it is legal in your state, I doubt Blizzard will risk the lawsuits.

I could imagine a slippery scenario to get out of this dilemma where Blizzard says that your Blizz account represents "monopoly money" that adults can exchange out for real money if they want. But then if Blizz does that, there is very little difference between this and the system I suggested. Blizz already said they weren't doing that, though, and I doubt it would resolve any legal issues if they did.

I think it is a safe bet underage persons will not have access to the RMAH.|||Quote:








I will proceed on the assumption that they will not charge monthly prescription in the future, as that will be a huge PR disaster, we can throw that possibility out and not waste time talking about an unlikely scenario.



However, it is very likely (bordering on certainty) that they will implement vanity stores, which is perfectly good in my book, as long as goods sold give no gameplay advantage and stick to the cosmetic side of things, giving convenience advantage though like more shared stash space or slots for RM will start to be riding the line.

I imagine the finalized fee extraction model to end up similar to:

-RMAH transaction fee.

-Vanity store

Supplemented by expansion sales, which is another word for a big DLC really. Whether they will mix smaller DLC alongside the expansions is another possibility, though I'd hope not, D3 seems more suited to bigger DLC (expansions) then numerous optional DLC, a poorly implemented rapid DLC model can fragment the game community too.




I agree with every word of that post except that I'm very skeptical that the RMAH will ultimately prove profitable.|||OP, you realize D3 will likely make $500 million-$1billion in revenue over its lifespan? SC2 has made hundreds of millions already and without an expansion or DLC, which is coming very soon.

Free online games; how will Diablo 3 earn its keep? - Page 3

Yes, profits will likely decline for any product over time. (No game will ever be an endless revenue source, not even WoW.) By the time there's not enough profit in it for it to seem worth it to them...D4 will have been announced. |||Quote:








Yes, profits will likely decline for any product over time. (No game will ever be an endless revenue source, not even WoW.) By the time there's not enough profit in it for it to seem worth it...D4 will have been announced.




With 10-15 years between releases D3 will need to be very successful for a very long time to maintain the level of support we're all anticipating. Will be interesting to see what happens.|||I figure the blizzard name will justify the purchase of D3. Free to play games can usually only survive so long before they start forcing people to pay for "required" aspects of the game. The whole cosmetic only non sense usually only lasts for so long. I'm a fan of actually buying a game and getting everything that comes with it.|||Quote:








Will be interesting to see what happens.




On that, I think everyone can agree with.



(I don't much like RMAH but I'm fascinated to see how the experiment turns out. I think many people are underestimating the possibility that it'll end up being a big failure.)|||Quote:








I think his point was that items could ONLY be sold on the gold-to-item auction house and the only way to put real money into the game is the gold<->cash conversion.

I think ultimately it's the same thing, but it does change people's perception on the value of items.




So essentially have a gold auction house only and then Blizz goes into business selling gold for real money lol.|||Quote:









Quote:








They are; you will be able to sell and buy gold for real money via the RMAH.




I think his point was that items could ONLY be sold on the gold-to-item auction house and the only way to put real money into the game is the gold<->cash conversion.

I think ultimately it's the same thing, but it does change people's perception on the value of items.




For some reason, people seem to misunderstand me a lot on that. Yeah, I was proposing one auction house exclusively for gold-for-item transactions and one auction house exclusively for cash-for-gold transactions.

It would likely not only change the perception of item value, but also (1) would allow all players (including underage ones) access to all items on a single market instead of dividing them between the RMAH and GAH with underage players limited to the latter, (2) would preserve a gold sink on valuable items if they migrate predominately to the RMAH and (3) allow for a restructuring of the transaction fees toward those trying to make money off of the game rather than on everyone and thus potentially increase Blizzard's revenue through adjusted fees as well as more expansion sales thanks to happier underage, poorer and even regular players.


Quote:








So essentially have a gold auction house only and then Blizz goes into business selling gold for real money lol.




How? Blizz isn't going to sell gold; players interested in so doing will be finding and selling the gold just like the gold-farmers in other games (including WoW). The only difference is that all items will be accessible to all players via gold or, indirectly, cash.

I guess Blizz could increase gold drops, but that will do nothing to increase the value of gold and, thus, the transaction amounts or frequency.

And, indeed, the system I proposed might keep the farmers more interested in gold so that they do not go after items as much, potentially helping to reduce item saturation. Maybe that should be a number "4" on my list above.|||Quote:








For some reason, people seem to misunderstand me a lot on that. Yeah, I was proposing one auction house exclusively for gold-for-item transactions and one auction house exclusively for cash-for-gold transactions.

It would likely not only change the perception of item value, but also (1) would allow all players (including underage ones) access to all items on a single market instead of dividing them between the RMAH and GAH with underage players limited to the latter, (2) would preserve a gold sink on valuable items if they migrate predominately to the RMAH and (3) allow for a restructuring of the transaction fees toward those trying to make money off of the game rather than on everyone and thus potentially increase Blizzard's revenue through adjusted fees as well as more expansion sales thanks to happier underage, poorer and even regular players.




I really like this idea. The idea of split/separate economies due to two AHs is one of the things that I see as being potentially harmful in the long run. Having a single AH like this is far more palatable to me.|||I think the easiest solution is to make it optional. All those players who want to pay a monthly fee can just donate whatever they want to Blizzard. Anyone who doesn't want to pay can skip it. Everybody's happy.



As for cash for gold AH and items for gold AH. I sorta like the sound of it. I'm not sure how it would play out off hand. It might turn into two tiers of items. Those that sell for a reasonable amount of gold and those that sell for astronomical amounts that you'll never be able to grind if you have a life. So, basically back to the same problem it would just put a middle man in there.

It also probably wouldn't work perfectly because some people would buy the gold and then turn around and see the item they wanted gone before they got their gold.|||Quote:








It also probably wouldn't work perfectly because...




Pretty much no system is going to work "perfectly" (even if you could define what "perfect" would look like in this case). I fully expect a lot of weird things to start happening as a result of the way it's set up now!|||Quote:








would allow all players (including underage ones) access to all items on a single market instead of dividing them between the RMAH and GAH with underage players limited to the latter




But they're not limited. An underage or poor player can sell items or gold for money and then use that money to purchase items on the RMAH.

Free online games; how will Diablo 3 earn its keep?

Blizzard has a small stable of online games that all have a means of supporting themselves. World of Warcraft has a subscription fee and many micro-transaction fees; Starcraft2 is licensed out to many different tournaments for e-sports; so where does that leave the Diablo franchise?

Now I've heard Blizzard only intends to break even on the operating costs of the RMAH with transaction fees, so what's left? Basically expansion sales, which both other franchises also bring in. People scoffing at Blizzard for taking a piece of online transactions, and getting indignant over the idea that Blizzard could dare consider a subscription fee, should take some time to consider what a sink this franchise actually is.

I would hate to see waning interest from Blizzard after the first couple years, but it's a definite possibility.|||I really just can't understand this mentality. Why do you people keep bringing this stuff up? Do you really want to pay a monthly fee that bad? You can send me $15 a month if it will make you feel better.

They aren't charging a monthly fee. Be thankful.|||Quote:








I really just can't understand this mentality. Why do you people keep bringing this stuff up? Do you really want to pay a monthly fee that bad? You can send me $15 a month if it will make you feel better.

They aren't charging a monthly fee. Be thankful.




It's not like a Blizzard rep is going to read this and go "oh crap, we didn't think of that! Better add a subscription fee!"

I'm just trying to understand the other side of this. There are people who are very quick to call out Blizzard for trying to make money on the RMAH, who DON'T appreciate the fact that this game is free. People who act like a subscription fee would just be Blizzard frivolously gouging us. There are things those people need to understand.

I'd also like to hear what people think will sustain this game over the years, or if they all think it'll just fade away.|||All I know is that I still play D2 from time to time and that game hasn't made Blizzard a cent in a long time. If D3 is anywhere close (and I expect it is), I think it will be around for quite a while.|||Quote:








All I know is that I still play D2 from time to time and that game hasn't made Blizzard a cent in a long time. If D3 is anywhere close (and I expect it is), I think it will be around for quite a while.




The state that D2 has been left in isn't something I would particularly enjoy in D3. I'll take a subscription fee over that.|||Some things to consider. There's a lot of "free" to play games out there, they get microtransactions for odds and ends. Penny-arcade recently made fun of one for spending all their money on it and saying they can't afford any free games. Diablo III is still going to be $60 up front, RMAH or no. They are still going to make a killing on the expacs.

And an interesting note on the free to play games again, DDO and LOTRO both became MORE profitable for their company after becoming free to play.|||Quote:








Some things to consider. There's a lot of "free" to play games out there, they get microtransactions for odds and ends. Penny-arcade recently made fun of one for spending all their money on it and saying they can't afford any free games. Diablo III is still going to be $60 up front, RMAH or no. They are still going to make a killing on the expacs.

And an interesting note on the free to play games again, DDO and LOTRO both became MORE profitable for their company after becoming free to play.




Let me be sure I get what you're inferring before I decide if I want to jump in this grinder.

Are you saying D3 should not cost anything up front and go with a purely microtrans model? And are you naming LOTRO and the like as a model for D3 to emulate? Are you saying that if they have RMAH and they should not charge anything up front?

I ask this in a strictly neutral and informational spirit.|||The reason blizzard will be fine is because they make 60 dollar games that are worth $500, while other companies make f2p games that are worth about the same as they cost.|||The box is going to be RRP $60/�40 for at least the first 12 months of it's lifespan - that's normally enough for most games.|||Quote:




Let me be sure I get what you're inferring before I decide if I want to jump in this grinder.

Are you saying D3 should not cost anything up front and go with a purely microtrans model? And are you naming LOTRO and the like as a model for D3 to emulate? Are you saying that if they have RMAH and they should not charge anything up front?

I ask this in a strictly neutral and informational spirit.




Not really saying that at all. I'm just saying that games don't need a monthly fee to be profitable. I'd think that D3 would be fine with the Borderlands model too, no xpac, but smaller $10 download packs released a little more frequently than xpacs. Not saying that's how it should be, but saying that Diablo III would work with it.

Question about RMAH - Page 2

Quote:








Check out http://us.blizzard.com/support/artic...rticleId=27045 Should help you out.




Thank you very much !!


Quote:








What do you mean by credit? Money will be transferred though a third party. I guess the money in your Blizzard account can be considered credit, but its not transferable for real money.




So does it mean, if I dont have a third party such as Paypal, my money will be transfered in my blizzard account (So i'll be able to use that money to buy items but I won't be able to cash out?). So we can participate with only a credit card to buy/sell items but the money will be transfered in our blizzard account instead of a third party (paypal, ebay...) to cash out.

Am I correct?|||Quote:








Thank you very much !!



So does it mean, if I dont have a third party such as Paypal, my money will be transfered in my blizzard account (So i'll be able to use that money to buy items but I won't be able to cash out?). So we can participate with only a credit card to buy/sell items but the money will be transfered in our blizzard account instead of a third party (paypal, ebay...) to cash out.

Am I correct?




Yes you are. You can actually participate without even a credit card, by building up a balance through their weekly free RMAH listings and then just using that to buy and sell on the market. You can't cash out though once the money is transferred to your Blizzard account.

Question about RMAH

Hello,

I would like to know if i'm obligatory to have a paypal account to participate into the real money auction house?

Is it possible to participate by only using a credit card ?



Thanks|||Nobody knows for sure who will be handling the third party RM aspect of the AH yet. People have just been saying Paypal, that doesn't mean it'll be them, though. In fact, it maybe impossible, since Paypal has age restrictions if I recall.

Anyway, no, you won't have to have an account with the third party money people to use the AH. That's only if you want to cash out. If all you want to do is buy and sell, then all you need is a card attached to your Blizzard account.|||In regards of what you just said, is it possible to attach a credit card on my Blizzard account now because i'm sure it's probably the same thing with WoW afterall.|||Yeah. On B.Net you can add up to 20 different payment methods/cards to your account.|||Quote:








Yeah. On B.Net you can add up to 20 different payment methods/cards to your account.




If its possible to add a payment method for my battle net account, where do I click? Could you post the link cause I can't find it.|||Quote:








If its possible to add a payment method for my battle net account, where do I click? Could you post the link cause I can't find it.




Check out http://us.blizzard.com/support/artic...rticleId=27045

Should help you out.|||I'm wondering if you will buy credit to use in the game rather than money being transfered direct.it makes sense to do it this way as things can be sorted within the game.If theres an exploit or glitch where an item disappears it would be easier to reimburse the credit in game.|||Quote:








I'm wondering if you will buy credit to use in the game rather than money being transfered direct.it makes sense to do it this way as things can be sorted within the game.If theres an exploit or glitch where an item disappears it would be easier to reimburse the credit in game.




What do you mean by credit? Money will be transferred though a third party. I guess the money in your Blizzard account can be considered credit, but its not transferable for real money.|||I hope the money could be paid by credit card because i don't have a paypal acc.|||Quote:








I hope the money could be paid by credit card because i don't have a paypal acc.




You can set up a paypal account with a credit card. I think it used to be linked to bank accounts but it's definitely not anymore.

Customization (Numbers)

(Sorry for the TL;DR post. I put the important numbers in bold, so many of you may just skip to that, and find the numbers interesting. I start out with the parameters and assumptions I'm making. I then give the relevant numbers. Afterwards, I explain my calculations for those who think I'm blowing smoke, or are just generally interested [I hope that you read them even if you believe me] But at least you can look at the bold numbers.)

I don't know if it's been done, but I thought it would be fun to mention the actual numbers for how many possible specializations you can give a character, excluding gear; only accounting for skills, and traits activated, and runes. Since there's never a good reason to have a skill without a rune (there will always be at least one which just flat out benefits it with no compromise), I'm excluding the possibility of having skills without runes. I also won't account for the fact that different tiered runes can be inserted, as we'll always mechanically aim for the highest tier rune.

I'm assuming a class has 24 skills and 20 traits. 6 skills and 3 traits may be activated, and each skill can be socketed with one of five types of rune. With that, there are 2.4 trillion specializations (2.397 x 10^12).

If you exclude passive traits, that gives you 2.1 billion (2.103 x 10^9).

Let's look at a slightly more realistic model. I remember on the old bnet forums, that a mod mentioned that on average, each class should have something like 12 skill types of a particular nature, and 2 of each type. With that, it wouldn't be ideal for a character to have two of the same type. (For example, both Slow Time and Wave of Force act as a crowd control mechanism for a wizard, and with only 6 active skills, you probably won't find a wizard with both). With this model as an approximation, the new numbers are:

1.1 trillion (1.053 x 10^12) including traits, and nine hundred million (9.24 x 10^8) excluding traits.

Interesting, right? For those of you who don't know how to get those numbers, hopefully you were thinking "where the hell did he get these", rather than "oh okay, cool thanks". If you know how to get them, you'll probably be very bored by the following, so you can just skip to the last paragraph, or stop here.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you have N things to choose from, and you can select R of them, and you don't care about the order in which you pick them (we don't care about the order in which we pick skills), then the number of ways you can make this choice is

N Choose R = N! / [R! (N-R)!]

Where an exclamation point is a "factorial"; N! = Nx(N-1)x(N-2)x.......x2x1. (2! = 2, 3! = 6, 4! = 24, etc...)

Here's why. In your first choice, you have N things to choose from. In your second choice, you have N-1 things. Then N-2. On your R'th choice, you have N-R+1 things to choose from. So the number of possible ways to choose them is

Nx(N-1)x(N-2)x.....x(N-R+2)x(N-R+1) = N!/(N-R)!.

However, in this calculation, we cared about order. That is, counting skill A and then skill B was a different outcome from skill B and skill A. With R skills, there are R! possible ways you can order them, so with N!/(N-R)!, we counted each set of skills R! times (each with a different order), so we divide by R!. Thus, there are N! / [R! (N-R)!] possible ways of picking R objects out of N, where the order doesn't matter.

So, with 6 out of 24 skills, and 3 out of 20 traits, we already have a customization of (24 Choose 6)x(20 Choose 3). That is excluding runes.

Now if you have R objects, and each object has S manifestations (eg. you have 6 skills, each has 5 manifestations from a different rune), then you have S^R (S to the power of R) possible ways of manifesting those R objects. Here is a proof by induction.

1) If you have one object, and there are S manifestations of each object, then there are only S ways of manifesting that one object.

2) Say that with N-1 objects, there are k ways of manifesting those objects. Well, if you add one more object, with S ways of manifesting that one object, then there will be k manifestations of the whole set for each manifestation of that one object. Therefore, with k ways of manifesting N-1 objects, there are kxS (k times S) ways of manifesting N objects.

Apply statement 2) to statement 1), where N = 1. That says that one object has S manifestations so two objects must have S� manifestations. Apply statement 2) to that, where N = 2, and you get that 3 objects has S^3 manifestation. Apply statement 2) N times, and you get that there are S^N ways of manifesting N objects. Proof by induction.

In our context, with 6 skills, and 5 ways of manifesting each skill, there are 5^6 = 15625 possible ways to rune a particular set of 6 skills (remember, excluding skills that have no rune).

So objectively, there are (24 Choose 6)x(5^6)x(20 Choose 3) ~= 2.4 trillion possible ways to select 6 skills, put runes in those skills, and select traits.

Remember my approximation to eliminate builds that aren't viable. If each character has 12 types of skill, with 2 of each type, and you would never pick two of the same type, then the calculation becomes (12 Choose 6)x(10^6)x(20 Choose 3) ~= 1.1 trillion builds.

That is, you picked 6 out of 12 types of builds, so 12 Choose 6; then each of those 6 types had two skills to choose from, so 2^6, and each skill had 5 possible runes, so 5^6 (note 2^6 x 5^6 = 10^6; another way of thinking about it is that instead of two skills each with 5 types, you really just had 10 different skills to choose from for each type), and finally 20 choose 3 for traits.

Discussion! For example, maybe my estimation of 12 types of skills with 2 of each type was a bad estimation (although I can swear I saw something like that in a blue post once; I may try to find it later). Or maybe the number of skills and traits that I was assuming (24 and 20) is not the same, or inconsistent with character class (that's what the Wizard is given). In that case, though, it's easy to just redo the calculation with a given number of skills and traits. Maybe there will be lots of runed skill combos that simply aren't viable in practice, even if the skills are of different type.

EDIT: Okay, I just found the blue post to which I was referring.

http://forums.battle.net/thread.html...=2&sid=3000#27

Just read the paragraph right after that whole dice list.

How will spells(skills) be cast?

Hello, I'm new here.

I suppose this question is directed to people who played WoW, since spells will be on number key macros, as it was in WoW, instead of toggled F keys as in D2, so I would assume you cast spells in the same manner.

If I have a spell on key 1, with which I must give a target or location, do I have to hit "1", and then click on the target? Or do I have to click on the target while holding 1.

The two make a big difference. With Magic Missile, for example, if the former is to be the case, if I wanted to spam MMs at an opponent, I would keep on having to press "1-click-1-click-1-click-1-click-etc...". However, if the latter system is imposed, all I would have to do is hold "1" and press "click click click click....". I prefer the latter, of course, as it makes execution faster.

How did it work in WoW? Also, was there any info from Blizz reps regarding this in D3?

Thanks.|||I was always assuming that you pressed the key while hovering your mouse where you wanted it to go (no clicking necessary). Anyone who has played any of the demos able to answer this? Because I'd like to know as well.|||Quote:








I was always assuming that you pressed the key while hovering your mouse where you wanted it to go (no clicking necessary). Anyone who has played any of the demos able to answer this? Because I'd like to know as well.




Pretty sure that's how it worked in the demo I played. That was like the monk demo though. So who knows what they've done since then.|||Hmm, not bad. That's actually simpler than either of my thoughts; I can't believe I didn't think of that.

Will we also be able to bind an ability to right and left click?

EDIT: I also remember seeing some AoE skills cast in arena footage, where a circle hovered over the area in which the spell is cast. Maybe I'm just remembering incorrectly, but if this is the case, doesn't that mean that the process for those skills are different? (Like one of the ones I mentioned in my original post.)|||I've been wondering to but I believe it's "point where you want then one-one-one-one-one-one-one".


Quote:








Will we also be able to bind an ability to right and left click?




Those are by default the 1st two of your total 6 hotkeys.|||its as yovargas says, you point with the mouse and activate the skill with a single hit of wherever you have it hotkeyed on your keyboard.

played a game called nox like this way back during diablo 1's time and it is very nice for chaining spells together.|||you could get a good feel for it by playing torchlight, i believe it's basically the same thing.|||Then you have to remember with the Left Mouse ability you have to actually click the enemy (otherwise you just run to wherever you click). The only way to bypass this is by holding down Shift, then you can click anywhere and it will just use the ability rather than run.|||So basically like it is now, except with the added ability to actually cast abilities from keybinds... Nice|||Okay but what about AoE spells. I seem to recall footage where, just before an AoE spell is cast, a cursor highlighting a circular area is moved around. (Maybe I'm crazy?) If an AoE spell is bound to a key, do you still just press the button with your mouse hovering, or do you have to press and click?

Gamespy: Torchlight II vs. Diablo III

Full article:

http://au.pc.gamespy.com/pc/diablo-iii/1191870p1.html


Quote:




Art Direction: Initially, Diablo III got beaten black-and-blue for allegedly being "too cartoony," but -- based on the game's earlier bits -- you won't be seeing any smiling rainbows or wisecracking wascally wabbits. Instead, Diablo III's general atmosphere strikes a nice balance between gothic spookiness and ethereal wonderment. Torchlight, on the other hand, embraces zaniness instead of telling it to go stand outside in the rain. During the demo I played, I spelunked everything from an Egyptian-themed crypt to a gear-heavy steampunk lava cavern. Tonally consistent? Not really. But look! Lights and sparkles and a tank-sized, self-operating terror pistol! The game's level and character designs have an airresistible sense of whimsy to them, which also helps to mitigate some of the deja vu that tends to go hand-in-hand with randomly generated areas.

Next D3 community blog - The Sin War Trilogy

Looks like Blizzard's web team has made a goof. The next blog post looks like it was supposed to go up today (8/31/11 @ 6:32pm) and cover "The Sin War Trilogy". They updated some of the sidebars to show it, but the link is dead.

What do you think? Just going to be a plug to buy the novels? Or, are they going to detail some lore up to the beginning of Diablo III?

Here's a pic (see the bottom entry), or you can go here to see it in the sidebar.

|||From a lore point The Sin War Trilogy was pretty interesting for a fan of the Diablo series.

However, from a purely critical stance the novels were absolutely awful. Knaack has a knack (ba-dum-tish!) for making completely loathsome protagonists.

I don't think I've ever hated a character in a novel as much as I hated Uldyssian...it made the series extremely hard for me to finish due to how badly written and irritating he was.

I would like to see a clean, organized summary of all the events that took place in the novels since I read them a couple years back and am not up to reading them again, well, ever.

Final verdict: probably a plug to get people to buy the novels in lieu of the impending DIII beta- I'd advise you don't and just find a summary online somewhere instead, they aren't worth the time and money.|||They goofed like that with the resource systems page as well. It went up on the sidebar I think a day or two before the actual blog did.

But as for its content, I agree with Drytchnath.|||I think they are going to release it as a single volume like they did with warcraft's War of the Ancients trilogy.|||Agree with Drytchnath, Uldyssian was irritating, and the series as a whole was a wasted opportunity.

D3 cosplay - Gamescom 2011 finalist - Female Barbarian

There was a Blizzard costume contest during Gamescom 2011. I was hoping @Diablo would post some pictures of the female barbarian finalist, which was a crowd favorite. No need to wait, though! Sophie Marot (~dinotiste) posted a nice, high quality picture of the costume on her deviantart page. I'm not sure if she placed, but the Blizzard blog post on it suggests that perhaps she was third place? Diablo3.cc also has a nice video posted where it shows Sophie on stage. She almost takes the announcer's head off with one of her blades!

http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs71/i/20...te-d47djx0.jpg

Edit: Turns out there's also images in Blizzard's photo gallery for Gamescom 2011.







|||Thanks for the pics! That suit is extremely impressive to say the least!|||Thanks Varquynne for posting these. I was looking for some pics of her but couldn't find any good ones.

For those interested here are some fantastic Wizard cosplay pics which happen to feature a female Barbarian as well:

http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/s...d.php?t=809155|||You forgot to mention the Demon Hunter, you can see here on the right in this one



Oh wait....

|||Nice! That outfit looks... heavy |||Quote:








You forgot to mention the Demon Hunter, you can see here on the right in this one

*pic*

Oh wait....






Sylvanas Windrunner from Warcraft Series |||My kind of woman...|||Quote:








My kind of woman...




Something tells me you would like death by Snoo snoo.

some new informations about gear set

here are ome new informations about gear set form bloodface�s shorthand notes when he visited Blizzard Headquarter in July. everything is unsure since everything is W.I.P. just some interesting news.

The following records are from the Blizzard development team blackboard ：


Quote:




L0 none

L1 level 1-6 , cloth | Fur Leather

L2 level 7-13 , quilted | Woven linen

L3 level 14-19 , Hide | Leather

L4 level 20-24 , chain | scale

L5 level 25-28 , split | brigandine

L6 level 29-31 , plate | ancient




we think it's a gear set design under Normal difficulty.gear set is divided into L0-L6，each L required certain character level and each L have their own item categories as listed.for example， L4 gear set need character level 20-24，and L4 armors are chain or scale .



PLEASE don't repost it to the offical forum.thankyou my friend Risingred

source: Diablo3.cc

i think the google translate did a nice job this time |||Wow... if this stuff is legit (and I see no reason why it isn't), someone at Blizz is seriously risking their job.

Awesome stuff!

edit:

Gotta wonder though: If it's 6 tiers for the first 30 levels, then wasn't it 18 tiers in total or something? I remember them saying that normal was level 1-30, nightmare 30-50, hell 50-60, inferno 60. So how would that work? 6 x 3 = 18, but there are 4 difficulties now.|||Quote:








PLEASE don't repost it to the offical forum.thankyou my friend Risingred




-.-

I gave you my word a long time ago, now, and I haven't posted anything since.


Quote:






source: Diablo3.cc

i think the google translate did a nice job this time




What does "naga" mean in these translations from google? I know that "dark" means "Diablo". It says "naga" in this line:

（2009年这面墙上展示的第二场景地下城纳迦的设计图）

Google translation:

(2009, this side of the wall showing the second city of Naga underground scene of the design)

This seems about right, though, if you think about it like in Diablo II. Ancient Armor was the end of the armor sets for normal mode, before it went into nightmare and re-used the quilted armor, etc.|||Yeah I'd put this in the "99.99% accurate" category. Any other info Secondii?|||Wow he must of jotted that down quick in that day planner!

Thanks for the info. Cool beans.|||Quote:








-.-

I gave you my word a long time ago, now, and I haven't posted anything since.



What does "naga" mean in these translations from google? I know that "dark" means "Diablo". It says "naga" in this line:

（2009年这面墙上展示的第二场景地下城纳迦的设计图）

Google translation:

(2009, this side of the wall showing the second city of Naga underground scene of the design)

This seems about right, though, if you think about it like in Diablo II. Ancient Armor was the end of the armor sets for normal mode, before it went into nightmare and re-used the quilted armor, etc.




Could Naga have any reference to a race of lizard-men? The Naga in WoW are sort of lizard-men from the sea.|||Grammatically, 纳迦 is placed as the name of the underground city.

Also, it's info from 2009 design scribbling, things could change, we'll see... hopefully before 2012!|||Quote:








-.-

I gave you my word a long time ago, now, and I haven't posted anything since.




nice man

and naga/纳迦 means Tomb Viper，bloodface visited Blizzard before monk announced in 2009，then they appear in the monk cinema.

there‘s another wall showing the runes ，the mechanism and relationship between them, but it's so complicated that bloodface can't describe.|||as a physician ... we write alot of stuff on whiteboards and have it rethought afterwards... so I wont take this for 100% accurate, but still interesting stuff, and as it seems legit

thanks alot for posting this!|||Quote:








nice man

and naga/纳迦 means Tomb Viper，bloodface visited Blizzard before monk announced in 2009，then they appear in the monk cinema.

there�s another wall showing the runes ，the mechanism and relationship between them, but it's so complicated that bloodface can't describe.




Tomb Viper, that makes sense. Half man, half snake. Thank you, that was bothering me for a long time.

Curious about this rune diagram now, though.

Would you pay to get beta access? - Page 9

Count me in under the "would not" crowd.|||No I won't pay to get access even it is D3 we are talking here.|||Quote:








It is easy to say you wouldn't but when a price is put on it things can change.

If all you had to do was log on to battle.net and pay 5 dollars to get access would you?

I would say yes to that for sure.

Of course this won't ever happen and if it did I would definitely think much less of Blizzard. I would think of them like Activision and their crappy 15 dollars for a map pack of a few maps with some that are recycled. I bought two of those and I really regret it. It is why I never bought black ops and I will go with bf3 over mw3.




If it was $.50 I still wouldn't pay to access the beta. It's going to be fairly brief and probably buggy. Not worth anything IMO.|||Quote:








It is easy to say you wouldn't but when a price is put on it things can change.

If all you had to do was log on to battle.net and pay 5 dollars to get access would you?

I would say yes to that for sure.




I would want to but would have to say no on principal.

I think that would be a horrible thing for Blizzard to do. It would be an exploitation of the community, and it would be counter-intuitive to the nature of a beta test.

So I would have to say no to it. But there's a reason they don't charge money for their beta tests.

I mean, technically they did for SC2 but that money was taken off the final purchase price of your game, and it was a way to pull in RTS fans to test, which they sorely needed. I have no moral qualm with that.

Would you pay to get beta access? - Page 5

There is gonna be a collector's edition?

Wish they would release some blasted info.. NOW!|||Quote:








Noo... It would contain the portion of the game that requires testing. In this case it's the Online and System Requirements, therefore you don't need much game content to test that. I'm pretty sure that you'll encounter big packs of monsters to test how your pc and connection reacts to that.




Yes, because it is not at all important to make sure that the higher level skills, items, and enemies work as intended, even though they are what players will spend the vast majority of their time interacting with. Further it is also true that encountering the sparse groups of enemies in Act 1 Normal will test your system just as well as the undoubtedly larger groups of enemies with more intensive abilities later right?


Quote:




How do you know that Act 1 is the least interesting one? You played it yet? Having said that, there were numerous mentions in various interviews that they'll be releasing only a small part of the game not to spoil the plot/enviroments of the first acts. Not to mention that they'll strip the beta of all major plot points, so the game is... unspoiled on release. And i cannot blame them for that. After all it's a beta test. You're supposed to test, not sample the game.




It is a RPG. That is all I need to know to know that the earliest part will be the least interesting part as you will be doing nothing but using basic skills, items, and abilities against basic enemies with basic attacks using basic strategy. That's without deliberately going out of your way to remove even more interesting things from the game, and simply leaving things as they are with an early credits screen.

Conversely the later part introduces more options for everyone, and will therefore be more interesting.

As for the beta vs demo thing, it is quite clear that betas are meant to test the game before release. So they are likely to be a buggy, and not final version of the game but they will, overall contain the same stuff as the game. Whereas demos only give you a tiny portion of the game.|||I've never been a fan of participating in betas. If it's a game I'm anxiously awaiting I want my first experience with it to be the complete game. I want everything to feel brand new on release day.|||Quote:








Yes, because it is not at all important to make sure that the higher level skills, items, and enemies work as intended, even though they are what players will spend the vast majority of their time interacting with. Further it is also true that encountering the sparse groups of enemies in Act 1 Normal will test your system just as well as the undoubtedly larger groups of enemies with more intensive abilities later right?




First of all, we don't know how act 1 plays out. All we know is that our ability roster won't be huge. That's obvious, whole character progression concept and all that jazz. But basically, we know basically nothing about all the encounters in store for us. Therefore we can't really say that Act 1 is necesseraly a bad place to test the system and online capabilities for the game. It also makes sense to have beta contain only that part of the game, instead of any other, which basically to this day is unknown to us. It makes sense considering what blizzard said about the beta itself ofc.

About testing out the later content. As i said, we can assume, judging by Blizz's attitude towards d3 beta (quick and intense), that most of that content is aleready tested internally. Not to mention that they said they'll be doing lots of balancing and tweaking after release, especially with inferno. And if the game difficulty curve/game mechanics are aleready tested, why release it to the public prematurely? I'll keep repeating myself. It has been said in interviews, beta isn't about game content. They got this covered, all they need is data about how the game/connection during game runs.


Quote:








It is a RPG. That is all I need to know to know that the earliest part will be the least interesting part as you will be doing nothing but using basic skills, items, and abilities against basic enemies with basic attacks using basic strategy. That's without deliberately going out of your way to remove even more interesting things from the game, and simply leaving things as they are with an early credits screen.




Obviously, there has to be a character progression curve, which goes hand-to-hand with difficulty curve. Having said that, it doesn't necesseraly mean that game is the least interesting at that point. Espiecially it shouldn't be said, when noone played the finished product yet. Who knows, maybe it will actually be challanging? Basing on what we know, it might as well be.


Quote:








Conversely the later part introduces more options for everyone, and will therefore be more interesting.




For us, yes. For Blizzard? Not so much. They're more interested in system/connection capabilities of their playerbase, especially in light of online-only annoncement.


Quote:








As for the beta vs demo thing, it is quite clear that betas are meant to test the game before release. So they are likely to be a buggy, and not final version of the game but they will, overall contain the same stuff as the game. Whereas demos only give you a tiny portion of the game.




True. Also, most of the time, demo versions are just shortened version of final product. In case of D3 Beta, length has to do only with what i said earlier. Not spoiling the content.|||There is no way I would pay to play a Beta of any kind. After all it is just a beta.|||Quote:








First of all, we don't know how act 1 plays out. All we know is that our ability roster won't be huge. That's obvious, whole character progression concept and all that jazz. But basically, we know basically nothing about all the encounters in store for us. Therefore we can't really say that Act 1 is necesseraly a bad place to test the system and online capabilities for the game. It also makes sense to have beta contain only that part of the game, instead of any other, which basically to this day is unknown to us. It makes sense considering what blizzard said about the beta itself ofc.




Even if you ignore the standard rule of RPGs... we do know how it plays out. Remember, this is the same beta that people have actually played and provided news coverage on, and the same one that videos exist of. So yes, we do know how things go encounter design wise. We also know, based on other videos that later fights are more involved.


Quote:




About testing out the later content. As i said, we can assume, judging by Blizz's attitude towards d3 beta (quick and intense), that most of that content is aleready tested internally. Not to mention that they said they'll be doing lots of balancing and tweaking after release, especially with inferno. And if the game difficulty curve/game mechanics are aleready tested, why release it to the public prematurely? I'll keep repeating myself. It has been said in interviews, beta isn't about game content. They got this covered, all they need is data about how the game/connection during game runs.




Sounds like being paying beta testers to me. Which means the answer to the thread's question is "Wait six months or don't have a choice." As for why, well release now patch later. That's the modern PC gaming mentality, and it's why PC gaming is dying fast.


Quote:




Obviously, there has to be a character progression curve, which goes hand-to-hand with difficulty curve. Having said that, it doesn't necesseraly mean that game is the least interesting at that point. Espiecially it shouldn't be said, when noone played the finished product yet. Who knows, maybe it will actually be challanging? Basing on what we know, it might as well be.




Again, standard rule of RPGs. Not to mention if the first half of normal act 1 was actually hard, it's likely most players would be quickly discouraged.|||I would. I wait for this game so many years and I have not tried it yet, finally playing even beta version of the game would be totally awesome.|||I personally would not but I remember beta prices of warhammer online (for instance) was about 200$. I think that its the same situation here. There will be black market with beta invites (or is it black?) and price will depend on amount of beta tickets put into circulation. In the end price will be propably be from anywhere 100$ to -300$.|||I am almost never interested in Betas, especially not singleplayer story ones. I don't want to spoil the game with unfinished material. And I don't want to judge the game by a crappy test version.|||Quote:








It is a RPG. That is all I need to know to know that the earliest part will be the least interesting part as you will be doing nothing but using basic skills, items, and abilities against basic enemies with basic attacks using basic strategy. That's without deliberately going out of your way to remove even more interesting things from the game, and simply leaving things as they are with an early credits screen.




Wrong. For many ppl the beginning is the most exciting part. Its new and its not overproportioned. I enjoyed startin new chars for the sole reason that the beginning was the part that had the best feeling in D2 and D1. Finding that first blue. The first rare mob. The first boss. Basic skills made it not feel that exagerated. Mobs were a bit scarce etc. I liked it alot and finst part in act one is my favourite cause of that. Maybe not the one i would choose to replay in D3s inferno but i bet it will be the act with the best memory for me. And im sure alot of ppl agree with me. So once again the earliest part can be the most exciting.