Is the PTR available right at 12:00 am?

General Discussion
9

I was curious about that as well since there wasn’t a listed time. I’ll check in periodically tomorrow to see when the PTR is finally available, but I have a feeling it won’t be ready till around 3-5 pm pacific time.

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11

Game balance? I can understand game balance for WoW because of PvP but for D3? There is no general leader board for all classes. Leader boards are and always have been per class. So they nerfed witch doctor for game balance… balance for who or what? The leader board competition is among witch doctors only. Is Blizzard afraid everyone will play witch doctor? Why aren’t all classes capable of the same high end if the player is good enough? Because some classes have stronger builds than others? Maybe instead of nerfing the strong one they should boost the weaker classes. I am a casual player. The witch doctor in season 20 allowed me to finally crack the 100 GR barrier (previously stuck at 98 DH). I believe it is the elitist , 24/7 players that want “balance” because they don’t like the fact that more casual players can reach triple digit GRs.

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12

I feel like you answered your own question :slight_smile: You seem to know that while there is no direct class competition, they do want all classes to feel reasonably viable.

That is usually their philosophy. They prefer to buff instead of nerf. There does reach a point though where power creep becomes an issue. Just how far do they want to buff things? At what point does it force them to increase Torment levels again or GR levels?

Just to keep the whole game from getting too power inflated, nerfs are going to have to happen at times. I really don’t think it is “elitists” trying to push down the common player.

Now to make coffee! :coffee:

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13

kinda i think its more that they have their hands tied or simply dont have resources devoted to this game

14

Unfortunately, D3 seems to be towards the bottom of Blizzard’s priority list. It’s unfortunate because there is so much potential for this to be a great game; if only they continued to add real content to it at least seasonally. Nevertheless, ready for PTR to go live to check out DH & Necro sets.

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15

That’s not precise.
There had come a point they asked if they should continue investing in d3, or start anew with D4.

I think their decision is blessed.

I love what they keep doing with D3, and can’t but wait for Immortal & D4!

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In terms of manpower, time, resources, financial investment, added content, etc… Where would D3 rank on a list of current Blizzard games?

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Hard to tell, but at 8 years old I would imagine it is not as well staffed as newer games. However the Diablo Franchise as a whole has lots of energy, investment, and resources. They are just working on D4.

Incubation Team has Diablo Immortal and Classics Team has D3. I am honestly kind of surprised, in a good way, at the work they are still putting into D3 with new sets, new/changed items, and new Season themes. Even some new pets/cosmetics.

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18

Exactly. I have noticed this reasoning failure on the part of many, they say that “in this game there can be no balance” or “balance is useless”, but at the end of the day, they ask that build A or class B “receive more love”.

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No they didn’t, there’s a lot of good old players here that they really put their time and effort to do the math, check how mechanics for specific skills works, give feedback, make videos about it and yet a lot of stuff still hasn’t been addressed unless someone finds a broken mechanic that give advantages. I can give you a number of things that are still broken within the game mechanics that came from vanilla time. Players reported and still they did not address to this day.
It pains me to say this but so far I’m still waiting to see when they are going to care about what players that took time and effort to do the math come up with great ideas to see that 100% implemented in game. Usually what I’ve seen through out all these years is that Blizz always take the easy way out when it comes to solve hard problems either with a set, either with power and numbers and hell even with the “Stability Standards” you’ve mentioned. I’m still waiting to find a single player to show up and say that he never have Dce’d on a live game.
Oh yeah then you go to support and it’s always your connection fault, you do the Path ping, or is a incompatibility with your computer or your internet company.
So like I know you’re an MVP and you can’t be bashing them much otherwise you’ll lose your status but I’m not and I don’t pet them in the head either. And as far as “Free” stuff goes. Remember one time that players actually came up and even asked for more content on this same exact forum even if we had to pay a monthly fee for it? What happened with that? Yes we were left in the dark again because D3 is casual. Don’t you have cellphones?

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The answer to this, honestly, is that they made the intentional decision NOT to do certain things. That includes setting up a cash shop for D3, so far. To think it has not been considered would be kind of silly. Of course they did. For whatever reasons they chose not to.

With a few things there are also issues with a very old game engine from a tech perspective. I suspect there are changes they want to do, but without major changes, that are expensive and expensive, they can’t. If they want to make those changes, like a better stash system, it will be in D4.

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That is understandable to a degree yet Diablo 3 is basically the flagship of the franchise for the time being. Although the development of D4 draws personnel and resources (for good reason - Immortal is a whole different can of worms) it will eventually replace D3 to a degree once released. It would stand to reason that striving to keep this current game “fresh” and “engaging” would serve to benefit not only the present but equally help to ensure the future of the franchise. Other than the two new sets for next season, most of the changes are rather marginal at best. There is approximately a 3-4 month window between seasons yet the additions seem to be somewhat repetitive in many aspects. It would be great to see a new class on the horizon, like an Assassin or perhaps a new chapter or missions in the campaign. The launch of the Necro added a lot of excitement into the game, for example. Doing the beta for it first was a thrill too and led me to purchase it immediately once released. Bottom line, D4 will not be finished for a long time. Let’s keep improving D3 in significant ways until D4 is released! It will be worth the investment!

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Blizzard is made up of several teams for game Dev and Support. ALL of Team 3 is working on Diablo 4. D3 is now totally separate. The ones that we know of are: Blizzard Entertainment - Wowpedia - Your wiki guide to the World of Warcraft

Teams

After the release of World of Warcraft , the company divided its development staff into numerically designated teams (e.g. Team 2 is the dev team for World of Warcraft ), each team focusing on a specific project. While relatively small, each team is supported by a much larger cast of employees, as well as being overseen by other groups within the company.

In addition to the numerically designated teams, “strike teams” were formed, as a result of Chris Metzen’s desire to keep the company’s original culture intact. These teams are not assigned to any one project, but give feedback on separate projects. A “design council” also exists, a gathering of all of the game directors and lead designers throughout the company.[4] As of August 2017, most of Blizzard’s development focus is on supporting its existing IPs, but is working on new IPs as well.[26] As of November 2018, Blizzard’s current development model is to effectively have one team per IP and support indefinitely. As a team grows and reaches a certain size, elements of the team will be spun off to work on a new IP. Each team consists of around 100–300 people.[27]

The list of teams currently include:

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Yes I agree it was made with an old engine. There are changes to be done but with major changes you need the team to actually think what they have on their hands. But apparently they have not been creative want an example?
Big changes cost a lot (fact) What can we do to raise the money needed to make those changes and give our players a better experience and hype for the game again? = Expansion Pack. If they held onto these new set items and took the time to develop a bit more content to add in game they wouldn’t need to charge a monthly fee they could make an expansion pack and charge like let’s say $30 to be fair since it wouldn’t have new classes only the sets for all existing classes. But everything reworked and viable to be competitive and balanced.
Another example of bad decisions, they nerfed WD for next season was it really necessary to nerf the way they nerfed like making it so the pet gem wouldn’t work? nope they could simply have reworked the barber bonus by finding a better %dmg number that would decrease the power of the build or even just revisit the set bonus number to tweak and find a sweet spot, but no.
So that’s what I’ve meant about easy way out, to me it seems that what they are doing currently is that they are striving so much to make the new sets excelent and after they have had their time in the spotlight (1 season) they nerf it to the ground.
Tweaking numbers to make a character fun to play it’s not a major change, but it takes a lot of will power for someone to want to do that and as far as I see there’s none, it’s nerf hammer all the way. Also I wonder what happened with the ban hammer for something that a lot of para 5k - 6k etc… use to get there. It seems also that the warden caved in and retired for complete.
Don’t take this rant personally I’m not aiming this at you but you also know that I’m not saying anything that isn’t true.

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So your saying the 32490237469823 people who say to do something dont know better then the handful of devs this game has left? lmao. They always ignore what everyone says. We say something is OP or under powered and they let it go live only for it to get buffed or nerfed later. It doesnt take a rocket scientist to realize how stupid this dev team is. Well actually most of blizzard now. Im just hoping the d4 team has a few brain cells left after working for blizzard.

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I was taking it as a conversation, not something aimed at me personally. No worries. You are not wrong overall. I hear what it is you want. What I was trying to do was offer some perspective on WHY they don’t do the things you want them to do.

The biggest is they prefer to invest the money and time into newer games. Period. D4 is the focus, not D3.

We ALL agree D3 could be even better with some changes. Big ones like a new char, major new features, stash rework (requires engine change most likely), etc. You are not wrong that they could put out DLC and charge for it, or charge for cosmetic MTX. They have floated that in test markets and surveys before, and so far feel it is not a viable proposal. Maybe someday that will change, but not for now.

For numeric changes on gear and such, that is well within what the current team can do. Same with making new items. You are right on that part. What I think is also interesting, is that you perceive them as nerfing everything where as many others constantly criticize the power creep in D3 of increasing numbers.

I can’t really talk about most of that. It (anti cheat software) does still exist but the team who hands it is singular and has to cover all the games with conflicting priorities. To further complicate that, Diablo 3 was not made with the ability to track our progress second by second and record it does not exist. That is why they don’t have any types of item restoration or in-game assistance. WoW does have it, which is why they have better support. What is being done about that and when :zipper_mouth_face: :shushing_face:

26

Seems like a wee bit of an exaggeration

I am pretty sure you are familiar with the Dev cycle they use. Once something hits the PTR it is mostly final. As you note, they DO keep track of the issues, but they don’t get changed until a later patch, usually. Exceptions are of course bad bugs. This is not a function of intelligence, but of process. They don’t have an agile and rapid process that makes players feel their input is heard in a timely way.

You are right though, it makes players very frustrated, especially when there is not enough communication to say “WE HEAR YOU and here is when/if we will do something about it.” People can take being told yes with a timeline, or no, but they hate feeling ignored.

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Yes its an exaggeration but really not far from the truth only because you can have 90% of the people on the forums, reddit, twitch and other sites all saying to do this or that but they dont listen. They do the opposite. Its just like the blizzcon 2018 I think it was when the forums and other sites were LOADED with posts saying no mobile game and that ended up being their big announcement. They say they listen but they clearly dont. Some how, the few devs this game has left think they know better then the rest of the community.

So what the hell is the point of the ptr if they are not going to change anything?(yes I know they do tweek stuff here and there) I mean they do what they want because they can and I am fine with that but they have not release one patch in over 2 years that didnt break something in the game that didnt need to be touched in the first place.

Sure they say that a few times a year but still ignore what everyone is telling them.

And im not trying to be a dick or argue with you but over the years, you have stuck up for blizzard way to many times when they were in the wrong. I know people love to stick up for companies and their heroes but its not always black and white and some times people get blinded. I dont come to the forums often anymore but I have seen time to time where you have actually said, hey d3 devs your wrong. I cant qoute anything unless I do research but you seem to have finally seen what everyone else has been pointing out for years now.

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That could be because I probably have a different point of view as seasons went by. The first seasons we could barely clear GR 30 and such and then with other seasons coming that number was only getting higher to the extent that I think their agenda is to “end” D3 only after we reached the peak at 150 for all classes. So yeah power creep will always exists as far as I can see and probably what is holding them a bit with that is exactly what you’ve mentioned about D4. They have to gain time before D4 is at a state where they can open a Beta test for players. That’s where it comes in the “Mystery” of the D2 remake as well that it could be used also to derail the attention from D3 for the hype of a D2 remake so they can gain time in order to conclude whatever they are doing for D4.

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Uhm what? Very old game engine? Let me show you exhibit A… EverQuest… 21+ year old game engine… Now you can begin talking about old game engine

I would actually “like” if they had put in a ingame store (visuals/pets/wings/whatever) that were store only… visiual crap that didn’t matter to the gameplay itself

Heck I could even accept a larger inventory/stash buyable from the store

1 Like