New Expressions Coming!

There will be a PTR Pacth 1.0.8 review this weekend! I am rendering out original content right now, for the glory of the podcast. I died several times, by now means the elite player I dream to be, but not like my first time lol.

I will go over the changes, the criticisms, and hopefully provide a nice round up for what hopefully will be a speedy deployment to the live servers.

MMM Reminder!

The entry thread has already been posted for April. The podcast explains it all as well in the post info. Give it a view or read, than enter! Not too much time left, have till end of the month!

Blue Post Info.

Hey everyone, it's been a while since I posted anything close to a personal note on a frontpage post. It's gotten really busy. Holding down a full time job as a Mechianical Engineer Drafter and now doing two other websites for a client and sister, been trying my damndest to get content on the site. So all I can say is I may be a little behind, but no more than a day on small stuff, but will be asap on the BIG STUFF. I love doing this and giving you guys more places to go for info and perspective on Diablo 3 and what's going on. Have no fear : D

MMM: Mega Monthly Millions - April!

The entry thread has already been posted for April. The podcast explains it all as well in the post info. give it a view or read, than enter!

Oh and the internet can really be a funny place sometimes, it seem the real "Mega Millions" lottery thinks I have money to contribute or something...Look at the top "RT" lol

Blue Post Info. (Mega Thread)

There were a ton of posts done, I have decided to make all blue posts after a page break. Really, there has been just that much!

PTR up for Downloading

The PTR is up for downloading purposes right now, get a jump on it. Will do a FB and Twitter shout out when servers go live.

Ask the Devs: Itemization part 2

Here is the second part of the Q&A that we have been waiting for.

The developers participating in this Q&A round include:

• Wyatt Cheng, Senior Technical Game Designer
• Travis Day, Game Designer

We're doing things a little differently this time around and will be providing developer answers in several parts spread over multiple weeks. Below are the answers for part 2.

To review the answers for part 1, click here.

Q. Can class-specific items please have guaranteed class-specific stats?

- Dispirit#1859 (Americas [English])

Travis: Class specific items can sometimes fall into a weird place. For example, you're playing your Demon Hunter, you see a Rare quiver on the ground, you identify it, and BAM! +300 Strength. At this point, you're probably thinking (or even saying aloud) "Why is that even possible?!"

While we feel that randomness is an incredibly important aspect of Diablo games, we also agree that players need to feel like their next great item is just around the corner. Items can roll many stats that may not be valuable to the player who finds them, and that's fine—but most items should feel like they could be good for someone.

Quivers rolling their primary stat as Strength doesn't really play any role here; however, we don’t want to remove randomness completely and have it be a forgone conclusion that every quiver you pick up will roll with the exact stats you want. While we are changing it so that class specific items can't roll the primary value of a different class's stat, that doesn't mean you will never see +Strength on a quiver. What it does mean is you will only see +Strength on a quiver if it came as part of a Dex/Str affix or a Str/Vit affix, which is providing some benefit (even if not ideal) to the class the item is intended for.

Q. You talk about "game changing" items but mention only gimmicks that affect certain skills or builds. There is a reason people choose best in slot items. These items allow for the greatest damage and survivability possible so that the player can efficiently farm as high of a monster power as they can. Since damage affects any build out there to (usually) the greatest extent, would there be any reason to choose anything besides best in slot items?

So how will your itemization update approach literally "Best-in-slot" items? Will you make items to compete with the current heavy weights such as mempo, echoing fury, skorn, manticore, witching hour?

- RTBear (Americas [English]) Headache #2655 (Europe [Polish])

Travis: Best-in-slot is a subjective term. What is the best for one class or play style isn't necessarily the best for everyone.

Currently, itemization has the problem that it is largely supported by a handful of affixes that increase your damage in varying degrees. Because almost all items can very easily be distilled down to their DPS value, it quickly turns into a numbers game. This is a side effect of the fact that there really aren't any items that provide intangible benefits beyond raw damage. It is also an issue because there are no items that can improve your play experience or efficiency other than those that simply increase your character sheet DPS.

We have plans to try to create more interesting item choices, and I've talked a bit about what those plans are in my previous blog, if you want to take a look. Will there still be a "best-in-slot" item for a particular build of a particular class? Probably, but that's never really been the problem. There will always be best-in-slot items for specific builds and setups. The problem today is that we have items that are universally best-in-slot, regardless of your class or build. Right now, items that are best-in-slot for a Demon Hunter are probably also best-in-slot for a Monk, and that's one of the big things we're looking to address.

Q. The game is filled with white and grey item drops. In practice white and grey items are pretty much ignored as equipable items after level 5 due to Blue and better items becoming available. White and grey items only real purpose currently seems to be to fill out the loot fountain effect, as they are neither cost-effective to vendor nor are they sellable on the Auction Houses.

Do you have plans for making such items useful? All previous uses for white and grey items did not make it to production D3 - salvaging white and grey items, socketing, enchanting, etc.

If you have no plans to improve them can you just remove them from the game above level 10? Or at least allow them to be filtered out of view via a setting in Options?

- Zuzax#1341 (Americas [English]) WuKong#2469 (Europe [Russian])

Wyatt: We aim to provide players with some sort of global context for the full spectrum of item rarity and power. In a sea of items, we want to emphasize that, at least in this universe, white items, blue items, yellow items, and legendary/set items are increasingly rare relative to one another. White items are currently the baseline, and all other items become rarer and more powerful beyond that.

If we removed white items completely, there might be a tendency to feel like blues are the new baseline. Some of you might think, "Well, that'd be really cool! I want blue items to be the baseline." As developers, we want items to feel increasingly special, so that means some will always be more useful than others. If we just kept removing whatever tier of items is "worse" from the game and moving up the baseline, then there's the risk that all items will become equally valuable, and that kind of homogenization (while totally appropriate for other games) doesn't really fit with what Diablo is all about. That said, it definitely feels like too many white items drop right now and we are already looking at some significant changes to these ratios in the future. We'd rather drop less white items rather than removing them or adding an option to hide them completely, however.

We've also talked about allowing white items to have alternate uses—for crafting, for example, like you noted. It's interesting, though, that some people are excited at the prospect of having white items with purpose, while other folks are almost offended that their end-game characters would want white items. If we were to introduce a system that made white items appealing to pick up, it would need to be something that has wide appeal since it affects everybody (and since different players have different opinions towards white items).

Q. do you still planning to exclude mf and gf affix from gear?

- Ubivash#2149 (Americas [English])

Travis: We're still trying to find a better solution for Magic Find and Gold Find. In the past, we've talked about removing it from gear, reducing the effectiveness of it, lowering the cap, or even implementing diminishing returns.

The problem with MF, specifically, is that it makes it really difficult to design a game that feels rewarding to all of our players instead of just some of them. When players first started getting to max level and farming Inferno, we used to get a lot of feedback saying "I haven’t found a single Legendary item yet" and other people who would say "I find about one Legendary an hour," and the difference was really how much MF they were stacking. While we like the idea MF, because of how it allows players the option to customize their character for item finding, we don't like that, in many situations, it feels mandatory. We also want players to feel like their time playing Diablo III is always rewarding, and having an MF discrepancy of up to 300%+ between players makes that incredibly hard from the design perspective.

So, while we haven't finalized what we want to do just yet with MF, we know we want to do something, and we want that change to be meaningful. We'll be sure to let you know about any changes to MF or GF that might be coming your way, and of course we'd love to hear your feedback in the meantime.

Q. Question about Weapon Type: Are you going to change on how weapon type works in future patch? Except the minor IAS speed different from each weapons, current weapons type are boring. Because each weapon doesn't have specific bonus or ability, players tend to seeks weapon with higher dps number and desirable stats, even if it is a dagger.

At least in D2, blunt weapon does additional damage to undead class. I am expecting some different for each weapon. For example, a spear weapon will increases the range of the character's skill or mace does additional damage against undead and etc in the future patch.

Also, will elemental weapon going to be useful too in the future? Except cold weapon, other elemental weapons are simply useless except looking pretty.

– Kilometer (Americas [English]) blimblim#2642 (Europe [German]), Mash#2904 (Europe [Russian]), MetalToad #2259 (Europe [Italian])

Travis: Applying innate benefits to each weapon type gets brought up a lot. While we don't currently have plans to make each weapon do something different, it isn't off the table. At the heart of that question, though, is the desire for weapons to be more than just a DPS number and that is something we would like to add, but that will most likely come in the form of elemental damage.

Elemental damage is something we are actively trying to find a good solution for. The stat already exists in the game, but currently it's just six different flavors of the same affix—Cold is the only exception in that it snares targets. One thing we are actively discussing is what kind of effects we could associate with each element and then add it not only to weapons but all damage sources of that type. We haven't finalized anything just yet, but we really want to make this happen.

Q. Issue: Damage disproportion between physical and elemental type weapons.

Question: Why did you design physical (black) damage weapons to be superior damage-wise to elemental damage weapons?

Reasoning:

I´m asking about your thought process behind the fact that black damage on weapons:
1. gets the bonus from the "+x% damage" affix and elemental damage does not;
2. is used to calculate the "adds x% to elemental damage" affix while elemental damage on the weapon is not taken into account;
3. is bugged - the MinMaxDamage affix adds min damage first and then checks if the new minimum weapon damage is higher than base maximum damage; if it is higher, the game uses the new minimum +1 as the new base maximum and adds max damage to this value, resulting in higher overall black weapon damage compared to elemental weapons.

It makes no sense that there´s damage differences when there´s no additional elemental damage effects (beside cold snare) in the game and monsters have no resists. This damage difference limits our gearing options as comparably rolled physical weapons will always outperform elemental ones.

Here's two suggestions on how to fix this issue http://us.battle.net...948?page=11#201

- Nubtro#2147 (Americas [English])

Wyatt: We did not intentionally design physical (black) damage weapons to be superior (damage-wise) to elemental damage weapons. The reason that they are superior is actually due to two bugs.

The first bug is that "+x% damage" was supposed to work for elemental damage only. So, for example, "+5% Fire damage" was supposed to take any fire damage that you did and add 5% more. If you dealt 100 Fire damage, you would get 5% more Fire damage and deal 105 Fire damage in total.

However (and this is where the bug comes in), instead of looking at your elemental damage, the game would always look at your physical damage, and add a percentage of that as elemental damage. So, to continue with my example, "+5% Fire damage" would take 100 physical damage and then produce 100 physical damage, plus 5 fire damage on top of that. As a result, rather than making you want items that matched the elemental damage types you had bonuses for, the bug simply made black weapons the best.

The other bug is the way the MinMaxDamage affix works. As you mention, minimum damage is applied first and increases the maximum damage to be 1 more than the minimum value. This is correct behavior, since we don't want maximums that are less than the minimum. The bug here is that the game always attempts to ensure that the maximum damage on a weapon is higher before maximum damage values are even applied, which results in inflated damage amounts. (We actually fixed this bug in the new version of the Ruby in 1.0.7.)

So, hopefully it's clear that the current situation was not the intended one—it's the result of two bugs that had some very radical and significant effects.

Now, this obviously raises the question, if this situation is due to two bugs, why weren't the bugs found before release and now that they're found, why don't we just fix them?

One of the realities of developing software is that a) you’re not going to find every bug before you ship a product and B) when you do find a bug, there are multiple approaches to addressing it. Some bugs are very difficult to resolve, both in terms of time and resources as well as complexity.

In this specific case, we don’t want to change how existing items work, and fixing these bugs would absolutely do that. We know that acquiring and valuing items is an important part of the Diablo experience and do not want to change the mechanics of how an item property works when people have already invested in it.

We're also looking to revamp itemization, and part of the revamp will include moving to fixed versions of the elemental damage increasing attribute, as well as the MinMaxDamage affix—put simply, we'd fix the bugs for new items. "Legacy" items will continue to use the current (bugged) version. The new versions will likely bear different language such as "Fire damage you deal is increased by 5%" to differentiate from the old mechanics. (That wording isn't final, it’s just an example.)

Q. Simple but important question: Are you going to at least try to devaluate the Critical Damage to be less affecting overall player damage?

Right now it's just absurdly high compared to normal "white" damage. Every build is centered around these two stats really (IAS is just addiction to make the bigger yellow numbers come more often). This means there is no really build diversity when 95% of players want the same gear, while other "could be interesting" affixes are omitted. Sorry for bad English :<

- Tanvage#1797 [Europe [English])

Travis: There are no current plans to devalue Critical Damage. Yes, it is one of the single largest DPS increasing stats in the game across all classes, but that's not necessarily a problem. The real problem is that Critical Damage is the only thing that all players want and we need to try to address that. It’s OK to say "Crit Damage is awesome, give me more!" but we would prefer it if some classes or builds wanted to prioritize something else over Crit Damage.

So, no we have no plans to nerf player items at any point. We do want to encourage diversity, but we want to do it right by providing more choice, and that is a much more difficult problem to solve.

Q. Diablo 2 had one time quest rewards (based on difficulty). Most of these were minor but you had the option to craft a random rare, socket an item, personalize and item, as well as destroy a soul stone for gems/runes.

Is there discussion on adding similar features to Diablo 3 to could personalize gear? Ideas like make the item bound to account but allow you to put your toon's name on it and maybe give some advantage of + damage or armor, give a random white/grey weapon and have it converted to a random rare, etc

- Valindria#1184 (Americas [English])

Travis: These were pretty cool, but there haven't been any discussions about adding these effects to the game. On the surface they were great, but they did have their own set of issues.

For example, adding a socket to an item as the result of a one-time quest reward feels really awesome, but over time it starts to become more of a burden instead of a benefit. When you have to level a new character through the entire game just so you can socket the new cool weapon you want to use, the shine starts to wear off really fast.

The ones that I thought were "cool" but not really burdensome were the ones that gave you permanent resists, but really those were artificial gameplay—your resists were permanently reduced and then you were given a potion to offset that a little bit.

We do like the idea of customizing your items, though, and giving players more opportunities to really feel invested in what they’re equipping. As Don pointed out in the last round of developer answers, we're considering a few options, including:

• The ability to change a portion of a particular stat on an item to another stat of your choice
• The ability to augment an existing item with a stat bonus of your choice
• The ability to create an item with one or several fixed affixes—similar to the Rare recipes introduced in 1.0.7
• We've also discussed adding other types of "socketables" with a wide variety of possible affixes that you can put in your socketed items instead of gems

Adding a socket isn't off the table, either. We just want to make sure that whatever we add makes sense for Diablo III, and aren't just fluffy mechanics that only make it seem like you have more customization and control (but actually provide little overall value).

Podcast with RTG Sibcoe

Over the weekend I did a podcast over at RedTeamGaming with RTG Sibcoe. We've done a few and this one primarily dealt with Patch 1.0.8 and the Dev Blog on multiplayer improvements. GIve it a watch and hopefully you like the points, and if not, let me know why : D

Wyatt Cheng's Redit Answers on top of Dev Journal for Patch 1.0.8

Wyatt Cheng recently followed up on some player questions over on Reddit. The main thread can be found here, but I've highlighted his responses below (along with links to their original locations).

http://www.reddit.co...vements/c97a1er

Is the hellfire ring bonus multiplicative as well? I think it's additive but I'm not certain.

Wyatt: Hellfire Ring is additive.

As an example. Suppose you have 35% from Hellfire Ring and 31% from a Ruby in your helm. That's a total XP bonus of 66%.

Suppose you're in a 3-player game, granting you 20% more XP (multiplicative). 1.66 (ring/ruby) * 1.20 (20% multiplayer) = 1.992

Assuming I did my math right, total bonus XP in a 3-player game with your ring + ruby: 99.2%

http://www.reddit.co...vements/c979ep6

How come there is no "Item Hunting" tag, which means the intention to skip around all over the place to hunt elites, and farm specific areas. Not many people do "full act clears" anymore. And "questing" is akin to "full act clears" isn't it? Plus keywarden is part of Item Hunting.

So the tags would be better if they were: Questing, Item Hunting, Uber Bosses, and PvP.

Wyatt: The main concern with "Item Hunting" as a matchmaking tag is whether it actually makes it easier for multiple strangers to get around the Act quickly. As it is, everybody has a slightly different play style, route, etc. Skipping around to different locations can be worked out solo, or with a good friend, but with a stranger requires a higher level of co-ordination. Our experience is that players in Public Games often end up travelling linearly through the game because the overhead of coordinating a route erodes the efficiency gained by bouncing around that it ends up not being worth it. We really want our tags to be "Player chose tag X, therefore the expected shared activity will be Y", and for that shared activity to be unambiguously clear to all players who enter that game.
This isn't a "no" to an "Item Hunting" tag, I'm just stating our concerns. I'd say, think about it, try out Public Games on PTR, and leave us your feedback.

http://www.reddit.co...vements/c979bgm

looking forward to trying a lot of these things out in the PTR!

Wyatt: PTR should be very soon.

Very soon eh? Might as well skip the Ask the devs part 2 and just go straight to PTR later this week or next week.

Wyatt: The Ask the devs questions right now are focused on itemization, and we know people still have itemization questions. Since 1.0.8 is focused on multiplayer, it seems like both could happen in parallel.

Thx for a response Wyatt, it's been awhile since Ask the Devs 2: Itemization Part 1 has come out, I just hope that Part 2 is coming soon, like hopefully this week. I thought it was going to come out last week, but then there was the GDC and you and some of the other developers were up North at the time I'm not sure if that is cause for the delay but it would be nice to see more of those responses, and hopefully on some of the tougher questions ;)

Wyatt: Yes - GDC was a big factor for the delay on the next round of Ask the Devs questions, sorry about that!

Any word on MOB density? Coming in this patch/ptr or moved on to the next? Great changes ahead anyway. Hope to get our hands on these much needed multiplayer improvements!

Wyatt: Yes! Mob density is 1.0.8. The blog was focused primarily on multiplayer improvements but 1.0.8 also includes increased monster density for Acts 1, 2 and 4 as well as other features such as "Craft Multiple"

http://www.reddit.co...vements/c979rao

No mention of Density changes, is this still in 1.0.8? Or is it pushed back or added later on to the PTR?

Wyatt: Increased density in Acts 1, 2 and 4 are in 1.0.8

http://www.reddit.co...vements/c979d5f

Excellent additions to party play! It's going to be awesome actually wanting to play with my friends rather than feeling obligated to simply because they're my friends. Another great step.

Wyatt: Thanks! Our goal is to constantly improve the game with every patch. Personally, I play a mix of co-op and solo and definitely hear where you're coming from. I'm looking forward to the patch going live too!

Known Issues with Patch 1.0.8

Seems Blizzard is ready to start the PTR as they already have a "Know Issues list" up and going. I would say Thursday be the day it comes out to give them Friday as an emergencey day to fix things if need be before weekend.

Hello everyone, and welcome to Patch 1.0.8! Below you will find the Known Issues list for our 1.0.8 patch. Please do not report bugs that you see on this list as we already know about them, and help out other players reporting bugs by referring them to this list.

As a reminder, this list will not list every bug that is active in the 1.0.8 patch. What it is listing are a select few issues -- chosen due to severity/impact -- that are active and confirmed as bugs by Quality Assurance with verifiable steps and an expected fix. We have hundreds of bugs in our database, so it would be impossible to list all known issues. Just because a bug is not on this list does not mean we don't know about it! In addition, potential exploits and the like will never be listed here.

Please note that documented bugs may not always be fixed in the order in which they were reported. In some cases, we may not have a timeline for a when a bug will be fixed and some bugs may not be able to be fixed at all. If we are able to verify that a documented bug cannot be fixed, it will be removed from this list.

Thank you for your continued reports, and enjoy Diablo III!!!

Achievements

• The achievement Bashanishu is awarded inconsistently between the old and new versions of Rakanishu’s Blade.

• The Demon Hunter achievement “Bleed, You Filth!” is not granted the first time you complete the criteria.

• The Demon Hunter achievement “Death Trap” is not granted the first time you complete the criteria.

• The “Self Sufficient” achievement is not awarded the first time you kill the boss and fulfill the requirement.

• Unlike the “Naked Lust” achievement, “The Hero’s New Clothes” Azmodan criteria requires players to deliver the killing blow for credit.

• The “Fallen Angel” achievement isn’t granted when you meet the criteria.

Auction House

• Spam clicking Show More Items will show duplicated entries of the same item in the completed tab.

Battle.net

• The game can get into a semi-locked state when your spot in the party gets filled by another player.

• Players can become locked out of private chat channels under certain conditions.

• It’s possible for party members to get stuck in a broken game with greyed out Resume Game buttons.

• The party guide doesn’t have the option to promote other players into their role.

• Clicking the broadcast message box cancels a party invite.

Combat

• Wizard’s Archon Teleport cannot go through walls.

Items

• The Legendary Chest piece, Tyrael’s Might, can roll Ignores Durability Loss twice.

• The Bind on Equip affix can roll by itself on items.

• The Murlocket no longer drops in game.

• The new Account Bound crafted items from the Jeweler and the Blacksmith do not follow the same order as the Hellfire Rings.

Monsters

• Hitting Diablo with certain abilities, like Whirlwind, during his beatdown phase can lag the client significantly.

• Some NPCs, such as Angel Troopers, Bastion’s Keep guards, and event NPCs, will attack idle Treasure Goblins.

• Shake Stalkers in the Silver Spire do not grant experience or loot.

User Interface

• The Rare Engaged chat notification can pop up for Champions, bosses, and a Rare’s adds.

• Legendary item icons can show on the mini-map when there are no items.

• The Multiplayer buff disappears during an act transition.

Mac

• Launching a quest on Inferno Difficulty and Monster Power 10 asserts the client on a Mac running 10.6.8

• The lock cursor option does not work on Mac.