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.

Similar to Syp, I too have one heck of a time figuring out what to make of the Elder Scrolls Online.  It seems like everything that made the games great, they are trying to avoid like the plague.

So what makes an ES game?

• Dynamic content
• Skill-based progress
• Fantasy setting
• Hero of the world
• Multiple paths of progress (main story, guilds, etc..)
• Massive enemies from the start
• An end that is a new beginning
• Actions are linked across the world
• World areas stay the same based on your actions
• Housing

Essentially, it’s a snow-globe hero adventure, where every action you take can have repercussions down the line.  It is the pretty much the exact definition I would give to a sandbox game.  TESO however is aiming for the themepark variety, where the world is static, it’s level based, item based, PvP centric and divided into single player and multiplayer like a giant fence you need to climb.

How does anyone who has worked on any ES game before this think it’s a good idea?  How does anyone think we need another fantasy themepark MMO after stumbling of Rift and TOR.  Especially another split between single and multiplayer that is the single point of failure in that game.

It almost makes you feel like they took everything that was core to the ES series, pulled it out, found the worst stuff about MMOs and put it in.  And really, the more the devs talk about the game, the more you go “wut?”  Public dungeons?  Was that not clearly enough of a failure every time it’s been tried?

I am here crossing my fingers that this game gets cancelled soon.  As much as I would love an ES MMO, there is no way I would ever pay to play this game.

So this morning is a patch for Diablo3 and an 8 hour window.

You know what other single player games I have that requires an online connection?  Plants vs Zombie, Fallout 3/NV, Skyrim and all the other games I have on Steam.

You know what the difference is between those an Diablo 3?  I can play them.

It took a bit but I finally unlocked Whimsyshire, Diablo 3’s answer to the Cow Level of D2.  The link has the info as to where the items drop and it was pretty smooth, except for two parts.  The plans from Izual take time since it’s a ~5 minute trek to get to him and a 10% drop rate.  The Gibbering Gemstone drops from a boss that has a chance to spawn in a cave that has a chance to spawn.  Getting to the cave is fast, lightning fast, but it’s still 20-50 runs on average.

Trained my blacksmith, paid the 100K for Wirt’s Bell and 50K to make the darn thing and off I went in Normal.  Access to other difficulties requires you to kill Izual – essentially be on the last quest of the game in Act 4 – then buy the next recipe from a vendor in Bastion Keep.  Nightmare cost me 100K to make and took the first staff, which is fine and dandy by me.

There are a few neat things about Whimsyshire that I should share, above the fact that you know, it’s ponies, teddy bears and clouds.

• all enemies are melee only with no special attacks
• champions roam around, though I’ve yet to see a unique
• enemies are about equal in difficulty to the last enemies in the game (late act 4)
• the zone is made up of roads more than open spaces, making combat much easier
• it’s a loot pinata

Playing in a group is a blast and probably one of the best designed zones in the entire game.  Minus the Act 3 bridge crossing segment, that thing rocks.

When I set my mind to something, I usually exceed at the given task – as would anyone else really.  When I decided a few years ago (middle of Lich King expansion) in WoW that I would spend a month making as much money as possible, I spent a few days reading on ideas, another day building an economical model with possible price points, another day developing a strategy then a plan, and finally after a week I jumped in.  I made 10K the first day.  After the month was over, I had over 300k in cash, had bought the best flight training on every character I had and a few knickknacks along the way.  I easily cleared 500K from my numbers.  And then, I gave up trying because money was all of a sudden useless to me.

At the time, my brother wasn’t necessarily broke but he did think about how to spend his cash in game.  I didn’t have a worry in the world, I could buy whatever I wanted at a moment’s notice.  I could easily skip content and speed up the game process.  In effect, this cheapened the game experience.

Diablo 3 has an auction house but the main difference here is that all the items in the game are tradeable.  That uber-mega weapon in WoW that you can only get by killing Heroic Lich King?  For sale in Diablo 3.  I have a level 54 and a level 48 and across all the levels, I have used 2 items that have dropped.  Every single other item has come from the auction house.  Why is this a problem?

Think of it this way.  In the best case, you have a 1% chance to get an item you can use and is an upgrade.  So you need to get 100 items to drop to see it.  That takes you about 4 hours (25 rares per hour).  Let’s say there are 4 million people on your server (US), that means that every 4 hours, there are 4 million pieces of upgrades found – or 1 million an hour.  Not everyone will sell it but even if half those people do, they are going to compete for your money and sell it at a decent price.  So at any given time, you have access to thousands of quality items, for a decent price and next to no chance to see an upgrade on your own.

From normal, to nightmare then hell difficulties, this isn’t so much of a big deal.  Skill is more of a factor but if you needed to buy items, you could do all 3 difficulties and still come out a millionaire at the end of it all.  Inferno though, is a massive gear check.  If you were getting hit for any noticeable damage in nightmare, you will die in a single hit on Inferno.  This puts an artificial barrier on entry to Inferno where you have to buy your way in.  Since fewer people are there now, and the amount of money that drops from enemies is significantly higher than in Nightmare, prices are 20-50 times higher than they were at level 59.  The cheapest item is 200k and the majority in the millions.

To top it all off, the money sink of the game, disenchanting (or blacksmithing breakdown) provides basic materials that sell for 5-10% of the value of vendoring the item.  And using those items to craft costs about 200K at level 60 and has the same chance of providing a good item as an item drop (1% in our example).  So 200k for a chance, or 200K for a guaranteed item?

It’s an interesting business model. Once more people get into the millionaires club, the prices will rise accordingly, putting an artificial barrier for lower level items.  I mean, if I can sell an item for 1 million, why bother posting something for 5K?  Without item decay, item loss or just a simple money sink, the economy is doomed to spiral to a ridiculous level in just a few months.

Maybe, in the end, this is what Blizzard wants, so that they can sell in-game money to buy the items you need to actually play their game.  Maybe not.

I’m not saying TOR is a failure, I’m saying it’s not a huge success.  Serious errors of judgment were made along the way.  TERA launched to some acclaim and apparently, the fervor is up and done.  Guild Wars 2 is still on the hype train as the savior of MMOs (which I highly doubt) and then we have the Secret World, with an open skill-set game plan.  Sort of like super power sets I guess.

From a “major MMO” perspective, we won’t be seeing anything for a long while after.  Elder Scrolls Online I guess is the next one, with questionable goals, followed by perhaps EQ Next.  One is aiming for some new stuff while the latter is aiming to get back to the original EQ feel.

I played EQ in beta, at launch and for 4 years.  To quote Tobold

So what would you think if Everquest Next had level loss on death, naked corpse runs, 15 minute forced breaks for meditation between fights, forced grouping, 20 minutes waits for boats, and all the other features of the original Everquest?

What is it exactly people are looking for in the next MMO?  What’s wrong with their current one for that matter?  I can think of 20 MMOs running right now that could easily compete for your hard earned money, yet there’s always people clamoring for the next big thing. When trying to compare feature sets, you quickly realize that all the bases have been covered.

If you’ve narrowed down your list to a set of features, say PvE Raids, Mounts, Auction House, you have 5 big games to choose from (WoW, LOTRO, SWTOR, EQ2 and Rift).  Oddly, 4 of the 5 are in the same fantasy setting and use the same “skill bar combat” but the major differentiating factor is the content diversity within those features.  WoW clearly blows the rest out of the water, if only for the amount of time it’s been around.  Rift gives “better” character choices, TOR gives a better story and LOTRO gives a better integration into the game world.

In the end though, why do people move from one of those 5 to another game?  WoW has had the same features since launch (minus a LFG tool 2 years ago and some recent customization options) so why did 2 million people leave?  Why did 400,000 people (25% of the playerbase) leave TOR after only a couple months?

It’s that exact question that buggers MMO developers and game developers in general.  Why does Batman get an average playtime of 10 hours and Skyrim is 50?  Are both successful?  If the metrics say the average MMO player puts in 10 hours a week into a game, do you have 500+ hours of content for the year?  What’s your proverbial carrot on the stick to get people to continue playing?  If it’s a story, then make that story last hundreds of hours.  If it’s item acquisition, make it hard and long to accomplish.   If it’s the social environment, put in the community tools necessary to get people together (guild banks, LFG, housing, customization, etc).

I just hope developers and investors pay attention to the gaming trends.  The medium is saturated with choice and for your product to stand out, it needs to both do something different but also do it for a long enough time to keep people interested for months.  Fingers crossed.

A week in and people are complaining that D3 Inferno is too hard – even though some have completed it.  Mind you, they used abilities that completely (or nearly) negated all damage taken.  Two particular quotes for this:

There are definitely some aspects of Inferno and the way damage comes in that we’re looking at. Before we get there though we want to address the skills that are ‘must haves’, and see how the skill and gear game settles out a bit before we address content. If there’s a skill that you absolutely can’t survive without, that’s a much more serious issue to customization, build diversity, and the game as a whole than someone not being able to progress as quickly as they feel they should.

I think tweaks to content difficulty is a given, it’s going to happen in some shape or form, but we’re not there quite yet.

And

We purposely launched the game with Inferno being far more difficult than what we were able to progress in ourselves, assuming people would find it as difficult but with a few skilled players able to pull it off, or the difficulty would simply help root out problem skills and builds that allowed flaw-filled progression possibilities.

I think the main problem we’re running into is people progress more or less linearly to Inferno, and the brick wall effect makes it seem like these broken skills were the correct way to overcome the difficulty because the belief is that Inferno must be an immediately surmountable challenge, which it isn’t intended to be. Or the reverse, that because these skills allowed progression the classes that did not have them were too weak/broken, which isn’t correct.

From a player perspective, this seems incongruous to Blizzard’s “when it’s done” mantra and usual level of polish.  Mind you, their last release, Starcraft 2, was a PvP game with an insane amount of games in beta.  How could you possibly test the hardest difficulty with a testing team of like 20?  Answer – they didn’t, which is the problem.

There are a few points I take from this and my playtime:

• Someone thought that releasing untested content was a good idea.  Sort of like untested raids in WoW that were bugged for weeks. A beta test would have shown this in a day.
• Melee are at a serious disadvantage on Inferno where they must be taking hits in order to attack, which in turn requires them to reduce their offence and increase their defense.  Ranged attackers do not have this problem.
• Any skill that increases absorption is superior to avoidance – this has been tested profusely in WoW. The difference between spikes and smooth damage taken.  Get hit 1 out of 20 times for 40K or 19 out of 20 times for 2K.  Both take the same damage over the same time except the former needs 41K health to stay alive during that process.
• Healing skills do not scale.  Best heals are 12K and people are running around with 40K+ health.
• People are following a somewhat linear curve from normal to hell, then a big spike in Inferno act 1 and a huge one in Act 2. (30% differences between the last few)
• Blizzard realizes that some skills are seriously underbalanced, others are overpowered and until there is some level of balance on those skills, they can’t tweak the difficulties.

Here’s where I have issue.  If this game was released by any other company, it would have been trashed for the issues mentioned above.  Imagine if in Batman, when you fought the Joker, none of your abilities worked and he one-shot you from behind a wall.  Frustrating a bit?  Blizzard gets away with a lot these days, way more than other companies.  If they had not released Inferno at all, the game would be fine (minus the lag, broken ah, and disconnects).  Yet they pushed a feature in multiple promotional articles and it is for most intents, broken.

Le *sigh*.