Diablo 3 is somewhere inbetween as well; you can see Season Journey, but Altar is hidden for a surprise factor and preventing player from focusing on it to get burnt out. That’s it.
Because a lot of people only think of themselves, not others. People want the game to be JUST for them, which is bad. It is good when games offer choice in how to engage and cater the experience to themselves.
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hhmmm seems you are talking about you!
And what do the Devs want for the game, you might what to think about that too.
Even that my friend lol. Anything…
just as an FYI, not trying to pick a fight here, but the definition of precedent is that there is at least one instance in the past where something is said to have occured, thus, setting a precedent of said occurence.
you could argue that said precedent of said ocurrence does not guarrantee its reccurence (i.e. it does not set precedence), but that is a whole different matter entirely
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But they did spoil it…
That is usually what he does.
D3s altar was not a game of discovery since they spoiled everything beforehand. I would have had a lot more respect for the design if they had kept it completely hidden (heck, they could have randomized it per account if they truly wanted discovery). That clearly was not the goal though.
D3 is a game of everything being explained, even if we dont like that. It just explains it badly, by using external sources for the explaining.
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I just meant that not everything about the altar is spelled out in the game (the discovery part). Bliz provided the details outside the game that people could look to if they wanted to know, instead of discovering.
It’s not totally. There’s hidden properties the normal gems give that isn’t openly revealed. Words like “Frenzy” don’t have definitions. Since the Staff of herding is a popular subject, there’s no direction on where the mats are, nor what to do with it after crafting it. All that had to be discovered initially.
I agree that now there’s not much discovery because it all mostly as been and documented somewhere. That’s just a function of the game’s age. But its core design is discovery based.
Then you would have people complain about having to look through third party guides for explanation. Nothing would change.
And you always complain to claim you would do better than the developers every time at every opportunity you get. This is why I question you. Put the mirror up to yourself first because you are overtly indulgent and ambitious on your part. If anything you would ever suggest were to put on motion for Diablo 4 either project have to be canned early or you’d be way past the budget by your first year.
Spoiled it on an outlier source. Momentary decisions will make the player take a break from it instead of committing themselves to get burnt out. That’s the outcome and what they aim for.
They could have created randomized altar journeys, with unique requirements for each player. Like some games randomize safe codes etc.
I dont think they should. But if the goal was to create a feature of discovery, they certainly failed hard with the Altar.
However, it was not the goal. The goal was full information. Which they then also failed at.
Ok there I agree with you. Or rather let me say that is a good thing. I do think having info about somewhat basic game mechanics in game is probably better. I don’t think everything needs to be explained and even if you need to read up a bit I am fine with it but being able to mouse over and a bit of text saying “Additive” is nice.
But I don’t think everything has to be made available in game. Changes being made that need to be looked up aren’t a problem to me since it is not like patch notes are these hard to come by things.
Although having a popup like the season one that informs you of the patch and an in-game list of notes to read is better than just on a post.
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How do you not use a pen and paper when playing? Heresy.
How can you not take out a notepad or something and write down your season start plan and steps in the week before it starts? Even if it is exactly the same as normal.
And how can you not write down all of the details of the build you are setting up right from skills and their runes, passives and cubed items and gems all the way down to an at least 12 row list of the desired stats on each piece of gear listed in order of importance?
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Don’t forget to decorate it with doodles and funy side notes. 
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Oh, so you have one monitor and the thing that annoys you is alt tabbing. Yeah, I’d be annoyed too. But you know what? I’d use a pencil & paper (as naksiloth suggested) then. It’s easier to take a quick glance at your notes than to alt-tab from the game and back.
Blasphemy! Who would do that?!
Ah dammit. I never thought of that… closest I have come is to underline the heading (In red of course) so I would have “Masquerade of the Burning Carnival Necromancer” underlined with red as the start of my page. Even two lines if I was feeling extra excited.
Maybe I’ll do that when I think of doing a second build for the season.
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Biggest hole in that argument is
The whole altar is just a gimmick for the season and is not really part of the game because
1 it’s not in non season
2 it will be gone at end of season
You don’t like the whole altar go play non season and you won’t even see it
and be playing the game as it’s meant to be
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Quickly, write a memo on a sticky note and put it in your monitor.
and you would still have to break the engagement with the game to get the information in game regardless
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I actually have both a bright yellow/green and pink stack of sticky notes to choose from.
Maybe one to remind me of that and one to make a list of the next altar requirements since my current one is all bland and on a plain piece of paper.
That’s great. Now explain why the information shouldn’t be presented in game.
The Altar is poorly designed. Beyond just the dearth of information regarding all the necessary unlock materials in the Altar UI, there’s also the issue of not letting people use the materials they currently have if they’re stuck on a point that requires something else. Have an ancient puzzle ring now but no ram’s gift yet? Too bad.
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