Something went wrong. Try again later

jakob187

I'm still alive. Life is great. I love you all.

22972 10045 178 517
Forum Posts Wiki Points Following Followers

Rome Wasn't Built In A Day...

It's a saying that gets tossed around on a regular basis, an old anecdote with a simple lesson: patience produces incredible things. Granted, the Roman empire crumbled some time after some smartass spouted that sentence off, but the lesson still remains.

Looking at the Diablo forums and all the rage at Inferno mode, you would almost think that there isn't a single person in there that has heard of that saying.

Diablo 2 was the kind of game where people were playing it for a solid decade and still finding awesome things inside of its many intricacies. A little close to two weeks after its release, people seem to believe that not beating Inferno mode at this point is a goddamn world-ending travesty. They complain about how they HAVE to build this way or HAVE to build that way, and it's rather nerve-racking to see.

Then I have to tell myself the following: "for many of them, Diablo 3 is their first Diablo". Whether we all realize it or not, Diablo 2 is twelve years old. That would mean that most of the 18-year-olds and 21-year-olds that are picking this game up now, playing Diablo for the first time...there were 6...or 8...or 9. They don't understand how difficult it gets, how you have to look outside of the box when it comes to your build. They have lived through a time of gaming where entitlement is handed to them directly in almost every situation. They don't realize that you can't just stand there and hold the left-click, expecting everything to die.

Many people I've seen complaining are Barbarians, crying about how they are too gear dependent and they need to rely on buying items from the auction house rather than from pick-ups. For the most part, they are absolutely correct. In Diablo 2, we didn't have the convenience of an auction house available to us. Instead, we had to randomly just into games and hope that we could find people that would be willing to trade. We didn't have a chat option like we now have in Battle.net, where we could link items to our friends and say "hey man, is this better than what you have?".

"...but Josh, the auction house prices are over-inflated. It's bullshit."

Welcome to free market trade, where the community determines the price. The difference between this free market and a real life free market is that in-game gold is free to farm and endless to pick up. Real money is not. Moreover, if you think 300,000 gold is a lot...or even 1 million, then you've got a lot of Diablo 3 to play still. I've personally burned through 2.3 million on the auction house, and I'm sure that won't stop anytime soon. At the same time, I've made at least 1 million from the AH (as I lowball prices on things in order to guarantee a sell as well as offer up some decent gear to those needing it).

If anything, the auction house has now added a new meta to the game. I'll be interested to see how the real money auction house pans out, whether it will be a success or not. If it works, you could easily see things like this being implemented into free-to-play MMOs as a way to fight against the farmers and such.

However, people continue to complain. They will kick and whine and scream about how they aren't getting what they want right now at this second and that they have to practice patience, grind and farm, actually WORK for things in their game.

I'm currently sitting on farm status with Act 1 Inferno. I'm a sword and board Barbarian (as I'm always a pure tank in every RPG I play - it's what I love to do). My stats right now are something like this:

  • 39k HP
  • 7k damage
  • 500 resist to all
  • 26% block
  • 13% dodge

My build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian#WSRVkP!bVe!ccbccZ

I'm pretty sure I'm going to play around with that build a little bit more, try to work Rend/Bloodlust into it. Nonetheless, I'm enjoying myself. Act 2 is a steep brick wall, but I WILL climb over it.

No. Rome wasn't built in a day...and if I had to venture a guess, Diablo III wasn't built to only last two weeks.

I hope your adventures in Sanctuary have been as delightfully fun as mine. I wish the best to you all on your treks through Inferno.

Until next time, piece.

57 Comments

57 Comments

Avatar image for clstirens
clstirens

854

Forum Posts

15

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Edited By clstirens

@NaDannMaGoGo said:

Urgh. If people don't want to grind then that's perfectly understandable. Those people just shouldn't play inferno then. But guys like Seppli, who feel like they're entitled to beating the hardest difficulty easily (yes, that's what he IS asking for in the end), fuck that.

Avatar image for jimbo
Jimbo

10472

Forum Posts

2

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 3

Edited By Jimbo

The 'free market' you're describing sounds like Germany in the early 1920s, ie. not how anybody wants a market to operate at all.  No wonder people think it's bullshit.

Avatar image for ichthy
ichthy

1384

Forum Posts

0

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Edited By ichthy

I'm pretty there was a post stating that they inflated the difficulty in Inferno to be able to figure out what some of the overpowered skills were, and deal with those first. It sounds like their intention was to always lower the difficulty at some point.

Avatar image for jakob187
jakob187

22972

Forum Posts

10045

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 8

User Lists: 9

Edited By jakob187

@ichthy said:

I'm pretty there was a post stating that they inflated the difficulty in Inferno to be able to figure out what some of the overpowered skills were, and deal with those first. It sounds like their intention was to always lower the difficulty at some point.

It's a Blizzard game. They will always end up lowering the difficulty in order to hit the lowest common denominator, then release some form of new content for people that want a harder experience...and so forth and so forth. Just look at the difference in how they handled Burning Crusade in comparison to Lich King as a primary example of that. BT and MT were fucking WRECKING people on the regular, and Blizzard wouldn't touch the difficulty on them until a solid two or three months after their release. Meanwhile, once Lich King rolled around, they essentially did away with the need for any form of CC or mob pull strategy, turned every boss into a tank 'n' spank with big announcements saying "HEY THIS SPELL IS HAPPENING WATCH OUT", and gave epics away. The heroic modes were tough, but solely because they made everything super gear-dependent in the all the wrong ways.

Back in the day, "gear dependency" meant "yo, your tank there...he might want to have a fire resist set if he plans on tanking Ragnaros, because that shit ain't no joke" or "better than that resist for Ony, because she's gonna fuck you in the ass". By the time Lich King came around, it was "hey, just have this much defense and health and you'll be pretty much A-okay". It was disgusting how they began to cater to this crazy oxymoron: the casual gamer that doesn't have much time playing a timesink called an MMORPG.

Anyways, enough of my WoW ranting. Back to the point of Diablo 3...

I'm sure they always had plans at some point to lower the difficulty of Inferno while eventually introducing some new stuff for those high-level high-skill players. I just wasn't expecting them to fold so fucking hard within two weeks of the games' release. Look, sure, 1% of 7 million people are in Inferno...and I'm more than positive that number is creeping up slowly. However, I point out yet again that Blizzard is a company that makes games WHICH LAST FOR TEN YEARS! This is a PROVEN point for their company. From what I'm to understand, changes are coming in 1.03. It's just sad.

With all that said....

I went back into Act 2 last night. I was having a significantly easier time thanks to my new gear upgrades. My buddy happened to get String of Ears to drop as well, passed it over to me. 16% melee damage reduction wins so fucking hard. Regardless, I'm not quiiiiiiite there yet. I've still got about another 50-75 resists that I need in a couple of areas (poison being one of them), and I could do for about another 1k armor. I also switched out my Wrath of Zerk for Leap with 300% armor last night. GODDAMN, THAT SHIT IS AWESOME! Mixing that up with Furious Charge, I can escape and survive pretty much any situation if need be, but it also makes kiting much easier.

@Tru3_Blu3: If they were dealing 50k damage, then I would've been getting one-shot last night. I was able to take 12 of those stupid poison mosquitoes with two Lacunis beating my ass and still surviving. Therefore, they may deal 50k damage UNMITIGATED...but that's about it.

Avatar image for ichthy
ichthy

1384

Forum Posts

0

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Edited By ichthy

@jakob187: Yeah I've heard String of Ears is pretty awesome for barbs. You should also look into getting a Justice Lantern ring if you can afford it. Apparently the +11% block coupled with a high block shield can be a real life-saver.

Avatar image for geraltitude
GERALTITUDE

5991

Forum Posts

8980

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 17

User Lists: 2

Edited By GERALTITUDE

I have my fair share of disagreements with this game but I don't get the whole auction house issue. It's just a button on a menu to me, and I've never pressed it. Why? It's a feature I don't use. Problem solved.

You can say the game is designed to force your hand, but it's not. There are too many examples of the alternate experience for that to be true.

Avatar image for gringus
Gringus

74

Forum Posts

0

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Edited By Gringus

If it's the game's hardest difficulty I don't see why it shouldn't be soul shatteringly difficult. I just don't think many people actually know what Diablo is about.