I’m not at all a software developer, but if a random dude can let me play skyrim as the Alien xenomorph and make all crabs Zoidberg, changing an existing multiplier from 100% to 400% doesn’t seem that hard. The problem is that the one intern who carries the entire D1/D2/D3 franchise works his day job at Subway and has little time for anything else.
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But if he can’t even properly convert between decimal and binary values, then how can he be a modder, as claimed?
You are right, of course. It literally takes close to zero effort the tweak a few numbers. What takes an awful long time, is sorting out the problems that follow after when tweak are made without thought.
There’s no red tape to be seen here, I think…
That’s why there’s a PTR right?
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Agreed.
What fouls my mood most are people who think that “simply changing a number from one value to another” is without consequence.
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Depends on what you’re looking at I guess. If you take a god awful set like Firebirds and double the damage it’s still going to suck. You have to actually know how each build works to know what items needs to be tweaked.
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Its amazing the people that plain do not understand how software development and tech support actually work…every “suggestion, or bug they report is the most important and highest priority”
PTR feedback has been more about creating wish lists rather than information that might be useful.
They tweaked a few items, They asked us to test those items. Not to see if you can clear GR 150 with said item, but rather is the item working as described. If the tweaks cause any play issues or misspellings etc.
They want feedback on the seasonal theme…clones and playing with the 4th slot.
If you favorite build does not use the items they you are left with the seasonal theme and cube slot.
Keep things focused and suggestions may be implemented. Asking for things in the PTR to become permanent is pointless. Just say hey I enjoyed having that 4th slot and the shadow clones gave me a +2GR
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Perhaps he just typed out a random sequence of 1s and 0s, in much the same way as he typed out a random sequence of decimals. He was probably more concerned with hyperbole than the accuracy (or lack thereof) of a decimal to binary conversion to show that the calculation time would be the same regardless of the two values being calculated if they were the same data type, e.g. LongINT
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Forgive me for being sour, but the programming argument when you’re talking about adjusting numbers is largely nonsense imho. I’ll accept that in the case of adding a slot in the Kanai cube (and the seasonal theme) as that’s a change in mechanics as it add’s another variable, but not really for anything else.
I mean, if the mechanics work and are unaltered then simply adjusting the number doesn’t break it. Sure, you can have unforeseen side effects as lag, but at it’s core the mechanics STILL WORK (it’s just that the game engine can’t keep up).
It’s also not really a matter of the Devs needing to work out how changing number falls into the balancing aspect of the game. That’s basically what the PTR is for. There are far more players number crunching on the PTR, which are doing a hell of a job, then Devs balancing the game. Hell, if D3 devs only took a handfull of the suggestions I’ve read for number tuning balance would be a whole lot better.
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I am not, and I never claimed to be.
Modding is not the same as developing a software.
Yes, and I explicitly implied that.
Again, I never claimed that I am knowledgeable in IT or whatever, but IT and modding D2 are very different things.
Do you know how modding in D2 works (at least for the basic stuff)?
You go to website (I don’t know if I can say the name here), download the programs with which you can extract, open and edit the files (they then look like on the screenshots that I posted), and then you can adjust the numbers and put the edited files back into the patch file.
Yes, you need to know what the specific row/columns do in which you change the numbers, but that is what a Glossary is for which also exists on the internet, so you easily can do some basic changes, but modding D2 does not require (much of) a knowledge in IT.
It depends on what kind of numbers you change and in which rows/columns you change them (and also by how much).
Certain “small and simple number changes” in certain rows/columns do not create any issues at all, however, even “small and simple number changes” in certain other places can have huge effects.
That is my point.
This is true, anyone can mod.
But in order to do it properly, and to be able to fix the inevitable screwups that incorrect changes can cause, you need to have even a rudimentary knowledge of coding.
You couldn’t even even properly represent the differences between Decimal and Binary numbers (which is I believe an integral part of being able to mod) and could not correctly convert between the two. Which, if you where a developer of even limited means, would know that computers do not have to do work of any kind of work to convert between decimal and binary, because it all happens internally as binary. The conversion comes in only when or even if if the numbers need to be displayed in a human readable form (in other words on-screen).
But what is it with you and modding D2? You’re going on and on and on about it. If you like D2 so much, what indeed are you doing here on the D3 forums?
Perhaps you should go here, instead:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/blizzard/c/diablo-ii-general-discussion/48
But that is not what we are talking about here.
We are talking about basic changes, like
- reducing the Cooldown of a skill
- replacing the Cooldown of a skill with charges
- adjusting the multipliers of item, skills, passives, etc for damage / reduced damage taken / resource costs / etc
- …
This here is a (very simplified) illustration of what I think a spreadsheet for D3 could look like, based on my experiences with modding D2
And here is an imgur album of screenshots I made of how modding in D2 actually looks like:
Just take a look at it.
You do not have to put binary numbers into that.
Doing things like adjusting adjusting damage, resource costs, casting delays, the affixes that can spawn on items and their range, the level it which item types and certain affixes can start to appear on items, etc can be done easily.
And I am not talking about things like adding a new cube slot, changing the size of the inventory, etc. Just very basic stuff.
And this are not even official tools from Blizzard and they were for Diablo 2.
You can be certain that Blizzard has tools with which this all can be displayed even better, especially for D3. And they even talked about it in interviews that they have such tools and that they can make these very basic changes easily.
The conversation here was/is about why certain changes in D3 that are easy to make are not happening, although they should be easy and don’t cause any problems. Then someone said that making even basic changes are not easy to make and can lead to severe issues, so I jumped in and said that even in D2 it was easy to make very basic changes without causing any issues and that there is no reason for why it shouldn’t be like that in D3…
… because it makes no sense that the devs would create a game from the ground up, where they can not make easy adjustments (for at least basic things) for a game of which the know that it will require changes and adjustments in the future even after the game has launched (aka Patches).
Me bringing up modding D2 here is just to illustrate the point. It is not even about D2 itself.
EDIT:
I just found this video of a someone making a modding tutorial for D2, where he is changing the mana costs of a skill easily - starts at 15:50 and with him explaining it and showing it ingame it takes 2 and half minutes to do that:
An adjustment like that can be made in less than 30 seconds. Same for damage numbers on items, skills, etc.
He uses another program to edit the files than me, that is why his thing looks different than mine, but it works the same.
You do not need any knowledge about coding or whatever to do something like that.
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Again, really? If no coding knowledge is required, then where and how do the modding tools come from that even you are using?
And what happens if you need to enter a numeric decimal value that is reliant on binary patterns? How will you do this without even a rudimentary knowledge of coding basic?
Can you tell me the difference between 0x7F, 127 and 0111 1111?
You’re going on an on about how easy it is to make changes to Diablo II, and that Blizzard should follow suit and make easy changes to Diablo III.
But Diablo III is vastly more complex than Diablo II ever was and is consequently much harder to implement changes.
I’ll say it again.
Even something as simple as changing a cooldown time can have negative consequences. Shorter cooldown means more actions in the same amount of time, which means more processing power required on the server.
I do not recall where, or how long ago I said so, but I quit playing Diablo a few months after Diablo II was released, when all my friends also had Diablo II. I did the same for Diablo III. Only when all my friends also had Diablo III did I stop playing Diablo II entirely. The same would likely happen with Diablo IV.
Go ahead an mod away on Diablo II as much as you want, and keep your head in the past. You seem to appreciate that game far more than you do D3.
What you are saying here is equivalent to saying that if someone wants to teach you how to operate a car or a forklift, they also need to know how to build one in order for you to consider their knowledge about operating/driving one relevant.
Or like telling your grandmother that all her knowledge on how to bake a cake is useless because she doesn’t know how to build an oven.
Actually I just wanted to explain to someone that making certain changes is not difficult, and then you jumped on…
Right, and that is why over the past 3 or even 4 years the numbers on sets have increased and increased and increased…
Lowering the Cooldown of Teleport from 11 to ~6-8 Seconds or to give Teleport 3 Charges with a Recharge Time of 8 Seconds like the Monks Dashing Strike is not going to break the game.
The Wizard has some of the worst Mobility in the game and to suggest that changing something about this is going to break the game when there are Multishot Demon Hunters with basically infinite Vaults, Leap Quake Barbarians, Charge Barbarians or Generator Monks with countless of Dashing Strikes, is just absurd.
No, it is not.
The devs have talked about that they are able to make such changes like adjusting the duration of a stun or cooldown, the damage, etc easily.
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I learned how to mod in D2 LoD from a Modding site… They had detailed tutorials on how to change different things in D2 LoD and once I started doing it myself I’ve had more fun with D2 LoD than playing either on CBNET or the normal game without any mods…
If you could MOD D3 RoS on PC it would bring a lot players back and it would be a modders dream come true…
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I actually found the quote and apparently with the developer tools it is even easier to do the kind of adjustments in D3 I and others were talking about in this thread, than it is for D2 with the modding tools that I showed you earlier.
EDIT: starts at 10:55
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I can very much relate to that. I did some very interesting stuff with it as well.
I let some of the Minor Skills like
- Bash
- Jab
- Lightning Bolt
- Power Strike
- Magic Arrow / Fire Arrow / Cold Arrow
- Fire Bolt / Frost Bolt / Charged Bolts
- etc
… generate Mana instead of spending it.
I gave some Sorc Spells a Weapon Damage Multiplier in addition to their Innate Flat Damage and let Caster Weapons spawn with %Weapon Damage.
Removing Synergies and replacing them with Self-Synergies so that every Hard Point you put into a Skill would actually be a Synergy for the Skill itself.
And of course increasing the damage values on skills and items, as well as making changes to attack rating…
Making unused Skills more viable.
I also remember that I turned the Sorceress Warmth Passive into Healing Skill like it was in Diablo 1, so that it would regenerate Life instead of Mana.
A lot of other stuff to items:
- Bows had higher base damage
- Assassin Claws were dropping more often,
- lategame magic and rare weapons did not roll anymore with things like 40% increased Weapon Damage, but things like 150% increased weapon damage and more was rolling much often on lategame rares and magic items
- Crushing Blow and Deadly Strike could now also roll on magic and rare weapons
- giving different weapon types Innate Affixes, so that e.g. Hammers would always roll with Crushing Blow or that certain Bows always roll with a Chance to cause Missiles to Pierce
Or things like adding a Cooldown / Casting Delay to Meteor and in return significantly increase its damage, or removing the Cooldown / Casting Delay from Frozen Orb…
And much more…
And knowing from what the developers say, doing things like these in D3 is even easier.
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Nobody programs in machine language or binary anyway. Someone in house puts together an engine or set of tools, based on the needs of the development team, and most things after the fact are done through those tools. If something major is needed to be changed to the engine it likely will never be done after a certain point.
This is why, for example we’ll never get a stash increase, but we continue to get skill, stat and paragon changes and even item upgrades.
The one person on the classic games team who is maintaining D2/D3, Star Craft 1/2 and the hand full of other old games, yes including the seasonal updates for Diablo 3, is not coding a damn thing; and if he is, it’s in a scripting language module within the engine/tools. Trust me, they don’t get paid enough to know the sh*t you’re talking about. 
Many modern games from “not Billion $ companies” use prebuilt engines with addons and mostly script and GUI their way through creating games these days anyway. They might hire one guy to make some major modifications to an engine, to facilitate a new feature that nobody has thought of yet, but for the most part it’s much easier, faster and cheaper to do it through engines and tools. That’s why games are super bloated. You ever wonder why GTA online is over 150 gig? 
This ^ exactly.
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now it’s a lot easier. extremely much easier! before there wasn’t even notepad ++ and I don’t even talk about dev enviroments like netbeans or sql developer. with netbeans i worked on projects with 10-20 mil lines code myself. and there are some guys (with the intellect of a donkey?) saying that adjusting any numbers is a lot of effort. or how you can need more than a day for the s21 season theme “development”, I can’t even imagine.
I also started with zx spectrum first and later studied assembler. that was hardcore. before there wasn’t even google.
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Lower maintenance cost and complexity to the minimum is a major point in projects in general, and certainly in software engineering. With uncoupling and other SOLID practices, it should tend to a minimum; with continuous unit testing the change of a function or a class is easy.
The unknown is: how long does it take to have the feedback from unit testing ? Another important metrics is: how long does it take to deploy a commit ?
I don’t think they unit test the change of a constant, this one should be outside the code, in a file or a database. If it’s just about changing a constant, it could be done on the fly without the necessity of a new deployment (patch release).