Blizzard fails at game design

Did the controversial title make you click through? Good. That was my intention. Before you start hating on me, give me a chance to make my case. I don't really think that Blizzard fails at game design and the title is more tongue-in-cheek than deadly serious. But some of their design decisions do make me scratch my head. It is said that true love has both highs and lows and there's a love-hate relationship between me and Blizzard. There are many occasions in which I cussed them to hell but many more in which I praised them. This little article is meant to question some parts of their game design so bear with me if you will.

With Diablo 3, Blizzard has always maintained that their goal was to encourage a vast number of builds and equipment choices, such that no particular build would shine above all others and no piece of equipment would be mandatory in order to advance through content. It turns out that their plan didn't pan out too well. Here are a few reasons why.

1H vs 2H
Normally it shouldn't really matter which kind of weapon you use. It would come down to personal preference and specific builds which favor one type of weapon or another. Unfortunately, in Inferno it's almost impossible to play as a melee class without a shield. This excludes 2H weapons and makes 1H + shield almost mandatory. To my horror, I heard that even Wizards, Demon Hunters and Witch Doctors are using shields instead of their class-specific off-hands.

I'm sure there are literally tens of players who go against the norm and use 2H weapons but those are the exception. A shield provides too many benefits to give up in favor of slightly more DPS on a 2H weapon: block, armor, life, resistances and other desirable stats.

I would argue that the same thing is valid for 1H vs dual 1H. Though you will get more damage from dual-wielding 1H weapons, the tradeoff might be too big.

Take my Barbarian, for example. Until Act 2 Nightmare he bullied his way through using a variety of weapon setups, including 1H + shield, dual 1H and 2H. But he hit a wall right about that point and I was forced to change both his spec and his equipment to 1H + shield. After that, his problems ended.

Blizzard wanted to stay away from mandatory equipment setups but they failed in this noble endeavor. Unfortunately I don't have a ready solution for this. If I recall correctly (and hopefully I'm not seeing this through rose-colored glasses), Diablo 2 handled this better by offering a much wider build variety, where any combination of gear could be viable. Of course, some were more efficient than others but on the whole you could still finish Hell with a non-mainstream setup.

Strangely, I like D3's DPS system. Translating weapon DPS into skill DPS is very simple and intuitive. But this introduces gremlins into the system. And frankly I don't have any idea how Blizzard will manage to chase those gremlins out.

Crafting
Crafting is supposed to be something exciting, that players find a lot of fun to engage in, as well as a convenient gold sink. Unfortunately, crafting in Diablo 3 leaves me cold. I leveled my Jewelcrafter to some extent and now I regret it. I was hoping to flip some gems and this worked well for a couple of days until commodity auctions were disabled. After that it became useless. Flipping gems is unprofitable now and crafting gems for myself is... meh, since I can usually buy them cheaper from the AH.

Luckily I didn't level the Blacksmith at all, but if I had, I wouldn't find any use for him. From what I can determine, the Blacksmith is only useful to a small niche of players who have figured out how to take advantage of certain crafted items on the Auction House. That's cool but the vast majority of players doesn't engage in AH warfare.

Then there's the small group of players who don't use the AH for certain reasons, preferring to craft their own gear. Unfortunately, until the late 50s you'll be better off buying very good gear directly off the AH so they are still wasting their time and gold.

Blacksmithing does come in its own at max level, but again, only if you invest a lot of gold in it first, buying rare recipes and expensive mats. Even then, there's no guarantee that you will get good stats on an item.

Personally I just don't want to bother with crafting. It is too unappealing to me but I'm hoping this will improve in future patches. Hah, ironically it almost seems like Diablo 2's gambling system was more appealing to players than Diablo 3's crafting system, despite the fact that results were a lot less predictable.

Crafting mats
Another thing that failed, in my opinion, is the market for crafting mats. The only ones that are worth something on the AH are level 60 ones. In other words, Normal, Nightmare and Hell mats are completely useless. I don't even understand why people choose to salvage their items and then sell the mats on the AH. You are losing money people! On the flip-side, those who know how to exploit this will profit by buying cheap mats, crafting certain niche items and selling them on the AH. Once again, these people are a very small minority.

Even at 60, things aren't rosy. The prices for the 3 types of mats are dysfunctional. Leaving aside the fact that Inferno mats are several orders of magnitude more expensive than their lesser counterparts, Exquisite Essences (magic) are 8-10 times more expensive than Iridescent Tears (rare)! How the hell is that even possible? I find it ridiculous.

Blizzard designed crafting in such a way that the demand for lesser materials is much higher (up to 10 times in fact) than that for rarer materials. How messed up is that? Something needs to be done here: either decrease the drop rate of rare items (something that I would hate), or tweak the number of mats of each type required to craft a recipe.

Conclusion
These are just some of the nits I wish to pick right now. While Blizzard is an awesome company with a lot of top-notch talent, they are still human, and humans make mistakes. They have frustrated me on many occasions with what I perceived as stupid design decisions but their games have also entertained me like nothing else. With Diablo 3 they went through several iterations and radical changes in game systems but unfortunately all is not well in the magic kingdom. But this is nothing that a few major patches and an expansion or two can't fix.

Ka-ching!

Apparently Blizzard read my whiny, ranting post the other day and decided to bribe me. After the big IAS nerf I decided to (what the hell) spend some more gold to re-equip my Monk. 1.7 million gold later I found myself with the same DPS I had before the nerf: around 17K. I also switched from using the Scoundrel to the Enchantress and DPS went up to 18K. OK, I was back on track to farming Fields of Misery on Inferno.

So there I was, minding my own business, killing shit in one of the random dungeons that spawn in that zone, namely Scavenger's Den, level 2. I had 4 stacks of Nephalem Valor (for a total of +131% Magic Find) and I just killed a champion group (or was it a rare elite?). The final monster dies and I do a double take when I see what drops:

Yup, a legendary crossbow. I pick it up...

and identify it...

Hmm, not bad. It would make a nice weapon for my Demon Hunter when he hits 60. On the other hand, I had just picked up from the AH for 200K a bow with more DPS, but also with a lot of life leech on it. What if I sell the Hellrack?

About 12 hours later this is what I see in my AH log:

I posted it for $8.48 and ended up with $7.48 after Blizzard's cut. Also notice the other sales that happened in fairly close succession. Pretty good, I'd say. You may think I'm a fool for selling it for such a low price but I did my homework before that. There were better legendary bows on the RMAH for less than $10 and I wanted to sell this quickly. I decided to price it comparably to other bows in that range. Mine had pretty good stats for a Hellrack so I guess that's why it sold so quickly. Could I have sold it for $1-$2 more? Maybe, but it's impossible to know. When they allow us to cancel auctions I will price items more conservatively.

I have three additional reasons why I decided to get rid of this legendary bow quickly. One is that $7.48 will buy me a hell of a lot of gold (if I so desire) once gold buying is enabled. Second is that Hellracks go for about 500K-600K gold, which is pathetic. $7.48 >>>>>>>> 600K gold. Third is that Blizzard will buff legendary items in a future patch. I don't want to risk waiting until that patch, when my own Hellrack becomes worthless.

The point is that whatever you may think about this sale (too high or too low), I am happy with it. It's my highest sale so far, by far. This brings my total to over $11. Yes, it's a pathetic amount but I'm not gonna pay my bills with RMAH money. Instead, I just might use it to buy a really good item or two in the future. I have a feeling that actual money will be a lot more valuable and stable than gold.

Finally, here's a little tip. I have this nasty trick that I use to boost my Magic Find. A bazillion other players use the same trick so I'm sure you are aware of it, and it's "nasty" because Blizzard doesn't really like it but there isn't much they can do about it. I have an extra helm in my inventory with +32% MF. Just before killing the last boss or champion I will swap my usual DPS helm with the MF one. Simple but apparently effective.

So that's it then. All you gotta do to make money on the RMAH is to bitch about Diablo 3 and Blizzard will read your post and give you some nice legendary drops to appease you. I kid, of course, but the funny thing is that something similar used to happen to me in WoW. After a long hiatus or a loss of enthusiasm I would get some really nice drop, when I least expected it. Pure coincidence, all of it. Don't count on this method kids.

It's raining legendaries

Well, chance is fickle indeed. I played Diablo 3 for a month for countless hours, leveled my Monk to 60, grinded a lot of Hell and a tiny bit of Infeno with > +100% Magic Find and I never saw a legendary item drop. And then, on my noob Barbarian I get 2 legendaries a few days apart, with 0 Magic Find (read that again: ZERO MAGIC FIND). A few days ago I got this legendary amulet. Today, at level 51, I got this sword in Act 1 Hell from a random elite boss:

The Ancient Bonesaber of Zumakalis. Now the first question that needs to be asked is who the hell is Zumakalis? Leaving that aside (because we all know it's some random name that Blizzard slapped on this item), the second question is what to do with this sword?

To me this looks like a very good weapon for a Monk. At level 45 120 DPS is not too shabby. Slap a Ruby on it and you cat get a lot more out of it. Attack speed is decent and it looks like there's quite a bit of life leech on it. That's cool. My Barbarian certainly can't use it at level 51 because it isn't itemized for Barbarians and besides he's already got a more powerful weapon, and my Monk is 60 so it's definitely useless to him. The only remaining option is, of course, to sell it.

Luckily, the RMAH is now functional so I can make some good money with this sword. Or can I? Though I was kinda expecting it, I was dismayed to find out that I can get somewhere between $1.70 and $2.00 for it. Oh, minus Blizzard's $1 fee, that would be in fact $0.70 or $1.00 tops. Yikes! Of course, I understand that this is simply a leveling weapon that will be replaced as soon as possible so it can't hold its value very well. On the other hand it has to be better than the yellow weapon I sold the other day for $1.25.

The sad truth is that competition on the AH is bound to be fierce and people will undercut each other viciously. Now, of course, I could try to sell this on the Gold Auction House but I would get between 50K and 70K for it. Not too tempting. That would value gold at 29K-35K per $1 (before Blizzard's tax) or ~70K gold per $1 after Blizzard's tax. It is obvious to me that even after Blizzard takes their cut, I'd still be better off selling this for the minimum of $1.70. I highly doubt you'll be able to buy less than 100K gold for $1 when commodity auctions are enabled. In fact I predict that prices will go down to 1M / $1 or even less, but that's another story.

So it's settled then, I'm going to try to sell this for a maximum of $2. It's sad but necessary. I can't let it gather dust in my inventory because I can't use it (unless I decide to level a second Monk but I doubt that will ever happen).

I've read a blog post somewhere (sorry, can't remember the blog) where the poster argued that it might be better to keep legendaries unidentified in your inventory until the big "legendary patch" is released (probably 1.1), which buffs legendaries going forward. But this assumes items are assigned attributes at the moment of identifying them, and not when they drop. That's certainly possible but we don't know that and I simply don't want to risk waiting until this item is completely worthless.

Should I sell it then after gold trading is enabled? That would allow me to value this item better in terms of gold per dollar. What do you think?

My first legendary

So there I was, minding my own business, killing fools in the sewers of Act 2 of Nightmare with my level 39 Barbarian. After dispatching a group of champions, I couldn't believe my eyes when I noticed this on the ground.

WTF! A legendary amulet! Fricking awesome!

It turns out that this was a pretty good upgrade for the Barbarian, after I fitted it with a Ruby for some extra damage. One of the best features of this amulet is the +7% run speed. Now I have a total of +17% run speed which is pretty sweet.

This amulet, called Talisman of Aranoch, is all the more amazing as it dropped with only 22% Magic Find and it happened not only to be an upgrade for my Barbarian, but also a level-appropriate item.

Now I have become a true believer. No longer am I paranoid that legendary items are just something that Blizzard creates and injects directly into the Auction House. Lol jk.

Muling 101

Some time before Diablo 3 was released, I talked about obtaining free storage space in the game, without paying a lot to expand your shared stash. I would like to expand on that idea, especially now that I've had time to play around with several options.

In the end, I bought all the space in the first shared stash tab, for a total of 40K gold. That's not a huge amount considering that I have over 500K gold and my Demon Hunter is only level 38. On the other hand I don't want to pay 400K to unlock the rest of the shared stash. I'll do it later but now's not the time.

Your first character, or your main, will be a trailblazer and will literally make the game much easier for your alts, by equipping them with the best equipment she finds in her adventures. You will find out soon enough that there's a lot of equipment that you will want to pass on. There needs to be a way to manage all this chaos.

So I've come up with a method that works really well for me. Here are the steps.

Step 1
Create your main. You do have a main class, don't you? My main is the Demon Hunter.

Step 2
Create your 4 other characters, one of each class. You are going to try all of them eventually, are you not? I have:
Demon Hunter - male
Monk - male
Witch Doctor - female
Barbarian - male
Wizard - female

Step 3
Create 5 more toons for the remaining character slots. These are the mules. Create one for each class. As a suggestion, create the opposite gender as your actual characters. For example, if your actual character is a male Demon Hunter, create a female DH mule. I named mine MULEONE through MULEFIVE.

The reason why this works for me really well is twofold. First, I can locate them visually very quickly by their portraits. Second, because their names are in all caps, they are easy to spot.

Step 4
Play each mule to level 2. Reach the point where you get the quest "Rumford at the gate" where Leah asks you to go back to the gate and help Rumford. Complete the quest by killing the Wretched Mother and the zombies outside the gate. Once the quest is done, log out. Pick "Change quest" from the menu and make sure to select "Rumford at the gate". Then you can log in to your mule.

The reason for all this is that this quest places you the closest to the shared stash as you'll ever be.

Step 5 (optional)
Buy all the space in the first shared stash tab. Believe me, this is highly indicated. It will be much easier to transfer stuff between characters and mules.

Now that the initial setup is done, you can start transferring stuff back and forth. I like to be organized so I will send Dex equipment to the Monk mule, Str equipment to the Barb mule and so on. When I need an upgrade for my alts, I can just log in on the appropriate mule and select whatever I require. This way I won't have to clutter my alts' inventories with gear that will only be usable in 5-10 more levels.

For example, once my Monk turned 10-11, I transferred items up to level 15 from the mule to his inventory. At level 15 I will transfer more items, this time up to level 20. By doing this, I will ensure that he always has access to nice upgrades when he levels up.

Eventually, once all of your characters reach level 60, you won't need these mules so much because there won't be a lot of hand-me-downs. Instead, this is the moment when you can make full use of the shared stash. After all, the method I outlined can be a bit time-consuming if there are lots of items to be transferred, but the biggest advantage is that it keeps everything organized, by class, making it extremely easy to pick the items you need.

One final tip that I'd like to share is that you can see all the items on all your characters at a glance from the Auction House interface. Just look under the "Sell" tab. The only caveat is that you can't see any details for items that are not fully repaired (they will appear in red).

I'd like to hear your thoughts on this but I find this method very convenient for me. It certainly beats spending 400K on the shared stash. Suggestions and improvements are welcome!

A bunch of level 40+ items

A few days ago I was watching this fascinating Blizzard dev diary video and I noticed at one point that the player demo-ing the Barbarian was equipping him with a bunch of items. To do that, of course, he had to mouse over those items. I took screenshots for each exposed tooltip and made a collage of them. Here they are.

The items range from level 43 to level 50. There are 2 blues and 4 yellows (rare). So what's the big deal about this? Well, within a month we should all have something similar in our possession, on our own characters. But I still find it fascinating to look at real, in-game items as opposed to the generic ones shown in Blizzard's armory. Here are a few observations.

Notice the vendor selling cost of these items. It ranges from 204G for the lv.44 Legs to 899 for the rare lv.43 Shoulders. Interestingly, the rare lv.43 Shoulders are more expensive than the rare lv.49 Shield. It looks like the game puts a greater value on attributes than on sockets.

Also notice the large number of attriutes for the rare lv.43 Shoulders. 7 attributes, wow!

On the other hand, these items don't have great rolls on them. I mean, Str, Dex and Int for a warrior? Dex can be very useful but Int? It's also strange that the tester who was demo-ing this character had no less than 4 items with Intelligence on them. I'm guessing that Blizzard has some sort of item generator for their internal testing and they quickly created a bunch of items for the purpose of this demo.

The large number of attributes on rare items also tells me that it will be incredibly hard to get the perfect stat combination from crafted (or even found) items. Not only is the probability of getting the most desirable attributes very low, but getting the highest values for those attributes is even less probable. As such, this will make the "perfect" rare item potentially a lot more valuable than the equivalent legendary.

Anyhow, if you wish to comment on these items, I'd be happy to hear your thoughts.

Edit: My first commenter asked for the Barbarian's stats. That's all I have from the movie.