When WoW first came out, it was designed mostly by hardcore EQ players.  There was a system-first mentality to the game where the player had to find their spot within the system.  This did make it hard to compete and had optimum builds but the system, once understood, was extremely solid and easy to tweak.

A lot of lessons were learned in Vanilla and Burning Crusade got rid of a lot of the stuff that didn’t work and built on some interesting ideas – factions, keys and varied combat mechanics.  A lot of people will say that BC was the high point of WoW and though I wasn’t able to fully participate in all of it, I agree with a lot of it.  Lich King basically took the BC model and opened it up to the masses but at the same time, they changed their dev team during development and started making very weird changes to the core mechanics.  No one disagrees that more accessible content is bad but the scaling of things was all wrong.  Armor Penetration was a god stat, Haste was a god stat and people were breaking the system because of incredibly poor design decisions.  The ICC debuff on tanks is a prime example of bad design.

Cataclysm kept going down this path of poor design – reactive design really.  A game with 10 million people playing cannot be reactively designed, it’s a recipe for failure.  You need core metrics and benchmarks for given points.  You can’t just put things in the game and then 2 months later realize that everyone is well beyond what you thought they could do.  You gave them the tools to do it!

Get players back into the game design process.  Real gamers, the ones who run through all the raid content in a day or 2 and track how they are playing.  Use that as the top level of your curve.

To finish, here’s a prime example of my issues with Blizzard over the past few years.  This is why I uninstalled Diablo 3 and got a refund.  The core issue is that Life Steal needs about 120,000 DPS to be on par with Life on Hit in Inferno and the design decision behind that.  Taken from a Reddit AMA.

mkautzm: This is fine and all but this line: “I think Life Steal will come into it’s own in the future, as it scales exceptionally well with gear – if a few months from now people still aren’t using Life Steal, we’ll probably make changes.” This makes me very nervous.

How difficult is it to put these numbers on paper and simply figure out with math when a stat will be ‘worth it’, when it will be ‘good’ and when it will be ‘broken’. The answer is that it’s not hard. How can you design the system for a game like D3 and not at least have a target in mind. something like “At this difficulty with this expected gear, we want players to steal up to X%/Y HP as a function of DPS Health/Z Health per second/shot/spell.” I understand that picking such a number can be pretty difficult but even that can be derived based on what you want the function of life steal to be.

See, it’s things like this that make me incredibly nervous. If your approach to balance and system design is, “Well, lets see if the stat is attractive to players and then nerf/buff based on that”, something is seriously broken in the decision-making phase of ‘making the numbers work’.

It’s phenomenally frustrating to see the developers in charge of the systems of game like this literally say, “If it’s not attractive, we’ll buff it”. No! That’s not how balance works. You should be able to tell me the value of life steal at 30k, at 60k at 120k DPS. You should be able to tell me what exactly those breakpoints you mentioned are and Youshould have already planned their existence, and their means. You should be able to look at Lifesteal and point to a number and say, “Here! This is when Lifesteal becomes attractive”. You should be able to take it a step further and say, “If you have this much health, this much damage and this much lifesteal, More DPS actually becomes more attractive than Effective HP as a survivability stat under these conditions.”

This isn’t what’s happening and it makes me both frustrated and nervous to play a game that’s built under that design philosophy.

 Wyatt Cheng:  Let me clarify. When I say “if a few months from now people still aren’t using Life Steal” what I mean is that I think people will be using it. But I could be wrong. Humans being fallible and all that.

I believe people will be using Life Steal months from now without us having to make any changes. I’ve done the math, I’ve got some spreadsheets, I’ve tested with chars. At the same time I’m not so arrogant as to say “You will ALL be using it ’cause I mathed it out!”. I’ve been wrong many times before, I could be wrong on Life Steal too.

I said I wouldn’t post about Diablo 3 again but I lied.  Actually, I put in a request for a full refund of the digital game shortly after I put the post up and today that request went through.  So, I guess I can’t really post about my in-game thoughts anymore!

Just a bit of context on this.  I have (or had I guess) a 60 Wiz and Monk, both who could clear Act 2 Inferno.  I had played the other 3 classes too, where the Barb is closest to the Monk, Demon Hunter is a Wizard and the Witch Doctor – well there’s a reason only 10% of characters are a WD.

Up until the end of Hell mode, you basically need your main stat, some vitality and a so-so weapon.  Finishing with 5k DPS, 10k HP is more than enough. HP is interesting because you get 35hp per Vitality point at 60, which is 3.5x more than at level 1, so you get a natural boost.

Inferno Act 1 needs at least 15KDPS, 20K HP to kill anything.  If you’re a Monk or a Barb, then you also need about 300 resists to everything, a shield to block (~25%) and decent armor rating.  This is a wall for content by the way.  Here’s why.

There are 2 main item quality types – magic and rare.  Magic items can have 2 affixes and Rares 4-6.  The actual point spread in those affixes is random too.  From a math perspective, Magic items typically make for better weapons or least easier to access since the odds of getting a decent weapon are better with less possible variables.  For about two weeks, the best weapons in the Auction House were blue and 200DPS above the closest yellow.

Moving to armor pieces, if you’re a Wizard or Demon Hunter, you really only need your main stat and then either Vitality or Attack Speed.  Again, magic items are your best bet since the odds of finding quality items is higher. My wizard beat Inferno Act 2 with mostly magic items due to the need for more damage and hit points and magic items being much cheaper to buy.

Barbs and Monks are different here and importantly different.  You must have 300 resist all to clear Inferno act 1.  This is a 3rd variable meaning that you need Rare (yellow) armor.  This is harder to find since there are 2-4x more variables possible on top of being rare to start.  So as a melee, you need your primary stat, vitality and resist all. Monks also need an extra resist stat due to an internal mechanic.  For example, my monk was looking for pants.  They needed 100 dex, any vitality, 40 resist all, 40 arcane.  Cheapest pair was 2 million.  I don’t need strength, intelligence, critical chance, critical hit, magic find, life on hit, life %, life on kill, health globes, health regen, thorns, magic find or gold find.

Act 4 needs about 800 resist.  With 10 slots, that’s an average of 80 resist all on each piece.    80, by the way, is the highest I have ever seen that stat go on a piece of gear.  So you need the absolute best gear in order to clear Inferno Act 4 as a melee.  Ranged can still get by with stacking a glass canon build and they can use those other stat slots for something useful, like Attack Speed, Magic Find or Movement Speed.

A long post, certainly but the short of it is that melee are at a disadvantage to ranged players due to a higher need of a variety of statistics in order to progress.

Rockstar is trying a neat approach to cheaters, they will only allow them to play against each other.  Anyone detected cheating gets placed in a pool of other cheaters and they can go wild there, with no impact on the leaderboards.

That’s a really novel way to visually punish cheaters, though obviously there’s an ongoing cost for the developer.  I think though, in multi-player games, this is an excellent solution.  Perhaps they can put all the foul-mouthed rinky-dinks in the same pool?

In a move that surprised all cave-dwelling Martians, EA has declared that Steam Sales hurt IPs.  This coming 1 week after Origin’s 1/2 off every game (all 4 of them) sale no less.

I like Steam and make no illusions about it.  The service is quick, simple, secure and non-intrusive and has a library of thousands of games.  Origin is none of those.  It is so far from Steam that I would barely call it an online game service.

Steam’s ability to promote and package indie sales allows developers to reach an audience they would not have otherwise.  Would you buy an indie game for 20$ or for 5$?  Maybe after trying one company’s game, you’ll be more willing to try another?  It seems every day there’s some sort of sale going on and it isn’t so much about waiting for something to go on sale as to take advantage of the sales that are available.

This is the same reason that WalMart and co. make money.  Put various items on sale and have impulse buyers pick it up.  They don’t need it, probably never heard of it, but it’s a good deal so they buy it.  To say that this cheapens an IP when you increase market penetration is so absolutely ridiculous that I have trouble believing it was said in the first place.  Plus, it’s from a company that has pillaged every IP it has to mind-blowing proportions.

Yet another drop in the bucket as to why I won’t buy EA games.  They just don’t get it.

I think this will be my last Diablo 3 post for a bit.  I’ve grown somewhat weary of the game’s insane difficulty curve and last night’s 50 solo attempts on Belial, when I could kill pretty much anything before him, were a fairly clear sign to me.  I then decided to ask my brother the Barb to come along.  He has decent gear but he died way faster than I did and he did as much damage as my companion does solo.

This particular post will go over the seemingly un-ending disparity between ranged and melee character.

As as DPS player (and in D3, everyone is DPS) you have two primary concerns.  Dealing damage and staying alive to deal damage.  For a ranged player, you need to worry about ranged attacks, which have a travel time. You need to worry about floor effects, which you can move out of.  In point of fact, you can avoid 95% of all damage unless it’s AE.  That means you can focus 95% of your effort into stacking DPS stats.  So for example, a DPS Wizard would have 40-50K DPS without much effort and about 20-25k hit points.

Now as a melee, you need to worry about the same things except with a different spin.  Ranged attacks still happen, it’s just you don’t have the time to avoid it since you’re face to face.  Ground attacks are harder to see because you’re surrounded by enemies.  Then there’s the melee damage that every enemy does that you need to mitigate.  Depending on the potential damage intake, what was successful originally might be completely out of date  a few hours later.  As an extreme example, if you can face-tank the Butcher in Inferno, there are still really strong odds that you will die to the bees in Act 2 about 5 minutes later.  No matter what you do, you will always need a defensive focus, especially on self-healing.  So your DPS needs have to drop since you’re focusing on defense near equally (if not more).  It isn’t uncommon to find a Barb with 60k hit points and less than 20k DPS.

Let’s not forget the one-shot attacks that neither class can take.  So no matter how much defense the melee might take, that 1 hit is going to kill you.

Monster Affixes

Rare/elite/champions have affixes that give them different abilities.  Let’s see how ranged and melee compare.

• Arcane – ranged can avoid them easily, melee need to navigate through them to get to target
• Avenger – ranged shouldn’t get hit at all but melee take a beating when only 1 is left
• Desecrator – ranged can avoid completely and melee need to pay attention to where they are standing
• Electrified – ranged can avoid most of the effects while melee will eat about 30% of it
• Extra health – same problem for both
• Fast – a near guaranteed death for ranged and you can’t keep them away, while melee are generally good
• Fire Chains – ranged can move out of it while melee need to continually move position to not get hit
• Frozen – ranged can complete avoid it and melee can rarely get out of the frozen effect range
• Health Link – same issues for both
• Horde – Depends on the other affixes.  Typically a worse deal for melee since you now have twice as many hitting you
• Illusionist – A issue for ranged without good AE attacks but melee, just wow.  They can go from 3 people on them to 9 in a flash.
• Invulnerable minions – ranged without piercing and an open spot to kite are dead, melee need amazing life on hit to live through it.  Usually pure death
• Jailer – can be a pain for ranged but most have abilities to break it.  Melee are good here, unless you get a Desecrator.
• Molten – Not too bad for ranged, as long as you avoid the fire trail.  Melee need to keep their distance and once an enemy dies, move away to avoid the explosion
• Mortar – Currently broken range where ranged can avoid it nearly completely and melee can still get hit
• Nightmarish – No effect on ranged if they don’t get hit, huge pain in the butt for melee who will get hit continuously
• Plagued – No effect on ranged unless cornered, melee need to avoid the very large pools
• Shielding – Same problem for both but the ranged can avoid the potential damage while the enemy is immune
• Teleporter – A larger issue for ranged as an enemy can close the gap quickly, can be a pain for melee if they teleport away
• Thorns – Really bad for ranged since they hit in slow heavy shots and have poor self-healing while melee are usually full of self-heal abilities
• Vampiric – No effect on ranged unless they get hit, really bad on melee if they don’t have enough DPS to offset the enemy healing.
• Vortex – Bad on ranged if they are too close with no exit strategy, no effect on melee
• Waller – Can be bad on ranged if you get cornered with no exit, no effect on melee

By and far, the affixes benefit ranged players.  Unless you get an invulnerable minion, fast or thorns enemy, you can usually blow through them.  Melee in the meantime are praying for vortex wallers.

Hopefully patch 1.03 will address this but until that day comes, there’s no reason anyone should bother playing anything but a ranged class.

Blizz put up a new blog about the massive patch 1.03, which essentially says “we messed up” and is putting in a whole pile of quality of life changes.  Of note:

• All items can not drop from Act 1 Inferno, rather than only the best in Act 3/4.  Actually, drops rates in general have been improved.
• Nephalem Valor is being tweaked to provide a better benefit on rare packs with 5 stacks than against bosses.  Currently, people get 5 stacks, kill a boss and repeat.  Blizz wants people to keep playing with the 5 stacks.  We’ll see…
• Monster damage is no longer going to increase in multiplayer games.  Honestly, there is zero incentive to play in a group game currently.  Your magic find drops, health pools go up, damage goes up and there aren’t more loot drops.  In 99% of cases, it’s better to go alone and use /tells to swap gear.
• Nerfs to damage and health of Inferno Act 2,3 & 4 monsters.  Where the rest of the game has a rather linear difficulty curve, Inferno has walls.  I can solo Act 1 pretty easily but get my butt handed to me on Act 2.  I get hit for over 60K a hit and it’s impossible for me to mitigate that damage as a Wizard (already 40% armor and 40% resists).
• Repair costs are going up 4-6x.  Right now, it costs me about 5K if I’m at 100% broken, which is frequent on super bad packs.  20-30K per repair bill is huge.  I don’t expect this to go through.
• Changes to Increased Attack Speed, which is currently a god stat.  This is a problem that existed in WoW, not sure how they didn’t see this coming a mile away.
• Massive changes to prices for crafting tier 2-8 gems.  Which has absolutely no impact at all on anyone in Hell or above.  Odd change.

So as you can see, it’s mostly quality of life changes.  As the game stands, your best bet is to play the AH game, by which you can find super deals, resell them and make about 2 million an hour.  You can then buy your way into Inferno for about 2 million total and have 95% of the best gear available.

For example, I sold a mediocre necklace for 500K the other day and I bought it for 20K.  Because the AH interface shows the highest armor values first, it also tends to show the most expensive items as well.  Meaning anything at the bottom of the 50+page list is dirt cheap and with some massaging can turn a huge profit.  Heck, I bought a weapon for 50k and sold it for 2 million.  Money is a complete joke.

The downside to all this is once the RMAH launches (another month at least), inflation will be so high that gold sales will be the best option.  Meaning you could farm the gold auction house to make gold that you would then sell on the real money version.  Can you say MASSIVE BOTTING?

E3 is upon us and if you have cable, then you can check out Spike TV for some decent coverage.  I had the chance to watch a bit of it yesterday and read about the rest that’s gone on so far.

Microsoft

Again with the gimmicks.  Sure, there was Halo 4 and yet another Call of Duty but no one who likes video games wanted to see those.  It’s like asking for more corn flakes.  The South Park game sorta looked cool.

The odd part was even more integration with Kinect and the launch of Smart Glass – allowing a link between your mobile devices and the new Internet Explorer web browser on the 360. So on one hand, you have more hands-free control and the other, you have more hands-on control.  What?

Sony

Some cool games that I had seen before.  Beyond looks like Heavy Rain, Last of Us is like Uncharted but in the apocalypse.  Assassin’s Creed 3 is coming out, which is a mixed blessing.  I thought every game after #2 was crap and milking the franchise but this game promises to close the story loop that started 7 years ago.  Sort of like my early anticipation for Mass Effect 3, which took a massive dump on the story instead.  Overall though, this presentation was more about games in the new IP universe.  Better but not great.

Electronic Arts

Another Madden with more realistic physics.  For me, sports games have reached such a complex level that I don’t even bother.  A new Sim City – which sounds cool.  Battlefield 3, which is a great sales pitch for every game under 20. SWTOR up next.  They are essentially going to launch an expansion pack as a normal content update – new level cap, more dungeons, zones and whatnot.  Well, other than the new level cap, I would call it a content patch which is confusing.  Interestingly, there is zero positive buzz about this.  I think it’s cool.

New FIFA, new UFC, new Need For Speed, new Crysis.  All sequels.  /sigh

Ubisoft

Everything was an underwhelming sequel, except for Watch Dogs.  Sort of a cross between the openess of GTA and the story aspect of Heavy Rain.  Sounds interesting.

So far

If you’re showing a game that has a number next to it, I don’t want to see it.  1 day in and not much to report.