For anyone unaware, patch 1.03 came out last night. This was the infamous "Inferno nerf" patch...which was actually more like an "Inferno adjustment" patch. Some things were buffed, some things were nerfed, and some things were changed. Regardless of it all, Inferno is more doable but still tough as nails. That's cool, and I've appreciated the adjustment so far.

What I haven't appreciated...and almost an entire forum's worth of people on the Diablo 3 website seem to agree...is the ridiculous feeling that we are being punished for trying to progress through Inferno at the cost of insanely overpriced repair bills. These hikes in repair bills (from around 5k broken to 50k broken) were essentially the idea that Blizzard had behind "stopping graveyard zerging". This means that people would pull a mob to the last checkpoint that they had popped, continually deal damage and throw their body at the enemy until they die, then respawn with the enemy right there. Since your companion can never "die" but only get put down to one knee, it means that you could allow them to deal damage while you are dead until you decide to rez and take the kill.

Exploitation in a video game is nothing new, and Blizzard has been pushing as hard as possible to kill exploits. However, with the new patch, they have started pushing too hard and it is bleeding over on the good and honest gamers that just want to enjoy their game, try to progress, and have fun with it. For instance, Warden/Butcher runs in Act 1 Inferno had become a common way to make some money in order to gear up. You had to run through four different areas (Halls of Agony LVL 2, Highland Passages, The Cursed Hold, Halls of Agony LVL 3) in order to get to Butcher, while Warden resided on Cursed Hold. During the course of this, you might have a chance to pick up a couple of rare items that would either have some decent stats for you to replace some gear and upgrade or possibly sell on the AH for a little scratch to put towards more upgrades.

Those runs have had a lot of their item drops nerfed, Warden boss was buffed (which he needed it, but he's still a fucking pussy), and the mobs were generally doubled. This is fine for some classes. However, thanks to a nerf in itemized attack speed, it has caused some trouble for Demon Hunters and other classes who chose to play poorly constructed builds based on exploiting the use of skills that has high percentage weapon damage conversion.

That is partially the fault of people playing Demon Hunters for stacking IAS as a main weapon stat rather than secondary, but it's also the fault of Blizzard for itemizing in a way that makes IAS more attractive than other stats.

Nonetheless, it causes a problem because Demon Hunters, Wizards, and Witch Doctors are generally squishy classes. When you double the mobs that are coming at them, you are essentially sending them to their death wish...and then increasing their repair costs by about four times what it used to be (up to six times more if you are wearing iLVL 63 gear).

Moreover, they have removed many of the capabilities to actually make money due to how fast wear and tear happens. Sure, you can drop down to Hell difficulty and farm for money, but is that really "fun"? If you listen to Blizzard's employees that have been showing up on the forums, THEY decide what is fun - not the players.

Is this the proper approach? I'm just the guy that paid the money for your game, and at this point, quitting the game means you are victorious. You made your money and then killed your game. If you think that's a general overreaction, the numbers that are coming out today support it. XFire usage with the game is down to around 2,000 players. Public Games being shown and registered as active on the game has dropped to around that same number. Multiple people on the forums who have stated that they are quitting...have held true to their word.

People are declaring the game as being dead right now...and the numbers are proving it.

Given that it's a Blizzard game, I'm sure it can recoup, but I've never seen a mass exodus of a Blizzard game in this magnitude. It's kind of interesting to see, as many people on the forums actually...speak with logic and sense! *GASP* I've even posted a few of my own threads, namely pointing out how 1.03 is a completely counterproductive patch that breaks more than it fixes, as it has caused players to fear playing the game more than being excited to play the game. You should NEVER instill fear in people to come into your game world and enjoy themselves, despite what exploiters are doing to your in-game economy. It's an ARPG, not an MMO.

Nonetheless, I've made the decision that I'm going to be taking some time away from the game. There is some serious work that needs to be done to Diablo 3 at this point before it is something I even wish to play again. It just means I'll be able to dedicate a bit more time to Dark Souls before the DLC hits later this year, as well as finally dig into Max Payne 3 and maybe some of the Summer of Arcade stuff.

How does everyone else feel about patch 1.03? Are you going to continue trampling through the game, or do you feel like one brick wall has been replaced by another?

Meh, I'll keep playing for sure. Some people care too much.

@SamFo said:

Meh, I'll keep playing for sure. Some people care too much.

That may be because some people have invested an initial $60 buy-in plus 150+ hours into the game already. Might I ask what part of the game you are currently in?

This patch made my barb runs awesome

so idgaf

My honest opinions of it all is that everyone is over reacting to the Umpteenth degree. It's a living game, which means that it is constantly being updated. Everyone was screaming death before the Inferno make-up patch, now the subject has just changed. Blizzard will react as they always do, and push the game to be more manageable. If the patch is really affecting players that much, then obviously they will make quick changes to make sure that doesn't happen.

One thing I have always appreciated with Blizzard is that they don't mind taking risks. They have one of the highest play counts in the world when it comes to games, and thus it is a great experimentation grid. They decided to push the repair costs to it's limits and let the masses react. Well they have, and it's all part of their plan to figure out what will mesh and what won't.

As always, this is just an over-exaggerated out cry of gamers who are way to impatient to allow things to happen. Play something else if the changes don't suit you yet and wait for the changes to happen instead of wasting the internet's time with all this forum non-sense. (This last statement was not pointed at the OP, but at the masses on the Diablo III forums who are being way to childish.)

I skiped Diablo, I will be playing Torchlight 2.

i've bitched enough about the repair costs. hate that it encourages farming and use of the AH.

taking some time off because i can't bring myself to farm for more gold which has now become part of the demands of playing.

i dont want the MMO approach which is what they seem to be going for, keeping you on the hamster wheel. when its about greed and getting more loot (fun) i am all for it.

when it is about maintenance I get put off.

nerf to IAS, i am fine with, i wasn't one to overload on it from the start. their reasoning for the nerf i bought. i am too squishy though and hate the random deaths.

like being in the free and clear, i set a trap, half a second cast time, boss suddenly teleports on me during this and BOOM, dead.

here is another case (and yes i can blame myself for this.) last monster alive out of a huge pack, about to finish him off and he fires a puny lighting bolt, i choose to keep up the fire and kill him so i can get on with my life. i can surely take this ONE small bolt can't i? i'm on full health. nope. DEAD.

I jumped on, excited to play more. Then my game still lagged and I still had the micro-stutter problem, so they fixed neither. Got back into Inferno and was one shot by the first champion I came across. I was never one shot before this "nerf." So basically I'm not playing this game again. They lost me. Fuck Blizzard, I generally do not give a shit about what they do anymore.

Holy fuck, 50k repairs?!

I like Diablo 3 but I'm just playing it casually, I've played about 50 hours and I don't care enough to get into the deeper problems of the game that only impact me if I take it super seriously.

Really good game to listen to podcasts though!

To be honest, I was ignoring repair costs. If I was running into a hard champ or speical fight, I would throw myself into it where dying was just an "oh well" moment and ran back keeping at it till it died.

To be honest, the repair hike is the least of the game's issues (though now that mobs basically insta heal after you revive, the repair cost hike probably wasn't even necessary to combat graveyard zerging). There's the treadmilling/rubber banding issue that can occur frequently to melee characters that basically results in a lot of deaths which are not the player's fault. The game's melee hit detection is awful and so is the consistency of the game's difficulty. 80-90% of Elites are easy to middling difficulty but then you suddenly face some elite groups that are nearly unkillable without luck or amazing gear. Despite the fact that Blizzard has said the patch decreased the difficulty of Act 3-4 of Inferno, I'm finding that the random nature of the mob abilities have a much greater impact on difficulty than anything else, so just decreasing mob damage in general won't prevent situations where you are basically forced to reset the level hoping for a different group of elites since the current ones you are facing are basically unbeatable without a huge amount of hassle/dumb luck. It seems at times that some elites are designed specifically to fuck over your specific character class, which is incredibly frustrating, especially when you've already cleared most of the map. And with the prices in the AH being ridiculous for high-level items and the drops in Inferno (Act I at least) being still somewhat crappy, I probably won't have much success progressing in Act III in the near future.

I feel like I missed out not knowing to stack IAS on my Demon Hunter. Would have saved a lot of headache.

I stopped playing the game regularly about a week after it launched. I got tired of the gameplay and the loot highs failed to get me excited anymore. I might go back eventually but meh... I had my fun. Reading this post has really put the future of D3 in perspective though.

@jakob187: Lvl 59 almost completed hell. Balance stuff really just doesn't bother me. I think Blizz knows what they are doing and just because the community doesn't like it doesn't mean it's wrong.

I think everything with the patch works just fine. If your repair costs are too high you are dieing too much. Stack as much resistance as possible you wont regret it, People seem to think this is LoL. Its not. You need to be viable on your own, and then be able to work as a team. Being a DPS class does not mean stack as much DPS and you possibly can. Your resistance is the most important thing in Inferno. Your not worth shit dead. High repairs = your gear is not cutting it.

"Hey, guys, let's totally penalize the player for dying when our game is still clearly in need of balancing and optimization."

"Great idea, man. That'll keep them playing for sure."

/facepalm

@ck1nd said:

My honest opinions of it all is that everyone is over reacting to the Umpteenth degree. It's a living game, which means that it is constantly being updated. Everyone was screaming death before the Inferno make-up patch, now the subject has just changed. Blizzard will react as they always do, and push the game to be more manageable. If the patch is really affecting players that much, then obviously they will make quick changes to make sure that doesn't happen.

One thing I have always appreciated with Blizzard is that they don't mind taking risks. They have one of the highest play counts in the world when it comes to games, and thus it is a great experimentation grid. They decided to push the repair costs to it's limits and let the masses react. Well they have, and it's all part of their plan to figure out what will mesh and what won't.

Community Manager Bashiok has already stated that repair costs are not likely to change, and that Blizzard is the one deciding the philosophy, not the community.

Sooo...there's that. Blizzard generally doesn't care what the community thinks anymore (and I have that coming from the mouth of a Blizzard employee that I personally know who will remain unnamed...but needless to say, they are packing up their things and leaving in July due to internal changes of design philosophy). They are looking at what will reap the most money, and RMAH with the ability to sell gold to users seems to be the latest notch in that tree.

@EXTomar said:

To be honest, I was ignoring repair costs. If I was running into a hard champ or speical fight, I would throw myself into it where dying was just an "oh well" moment and ran back keeping at it till it died.

Here's the thing: they've changed the way affixes work on champion and rares mobs, so the general setup with be...at least a majority of the time...something that includes a mixture of a limited set of things. These limited things: Frozen, Jailer, Vortex, Arcane, Desecration, Plagued, Molten. The frequency of Fire Chains and a couple of others have been tuned way down, but by keeping the CC capabilities at a maximum and providing a damage nerf to their physical attacks without looking at the overall damage of their spammed AoE's, they've created a paradox where you have to fight something with 3 million health...per enemy...while having to fear dying because it's going to cost 5k for that one death. In turn, it means you'll need to go farm for gold on a lower difficulty for an hour or more just to attempt about fifteen minutes of progression. This is not fun. It's boring and stilting gameplay more than it is providing an experience of challenge and accomplishment. The sense of accomplishment shouldn't come from "I WON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THOSE REPAIR BILLS ANYMORE" but instead from "I JUST KICKED THE SHIT OUT OF THAT THING".

I don't know. Maybe I have a different idea of difficulty since I've played Dark Souls. It's a game where you are punished because of your own mistakes. Once you take your time to have a grasp on the mechanics at play, you are rewarded greatly for increasing your skill and being aware. However, your own misstep is your own doom, and you get angry because you know that it was YOU who caused it. There is rarely an occasion when I play the game that I feel the need to blame the game itself anymore because it ISN'T the game itself (except...ya know...Blighttown, because that frame rate lag is STILL bullshit).

Diablo III, on the other hand, feels like a game that punishes players with its MECHANICS. Once someone finds a way to make some money in a short time to help people gear up, Blizzard puts out a hot fix to kill it. Some of these were exploits that needed to be fixed, but others still involved running through multiple dungeons on Inferno difficulty in order to get the money in general. THAT is where the problem begins to occur - when you nerf something that takes thirty minutes to an hour to go through into general oblivion, you are decreasing the player's enjoyment as well as accessibility to general mechanics that need to be achieved in order to progress. THAT is where the repair costs are causing the problem.

Moreover, increasing the repair costs to this point is a disheartening thing for new players getting into the high end stuff. If you are someone who has played from launch, you are looking at it and saying "well, I know how to farm somewhat, so I can offset this...even if that offset won't be fun". A new player coming in...once they hit Hell difficulty, it's a STEEP ramp-up that can cause a great bit of "WTF" where you question whether you want to continue playing this game.

It feels like Blizzard is trying to make it look like they are walking a tightrope act right now, but they fell off and hit the net of the Auction House to keep them from going into total disarray.

@TheHT said:

Holy fuck, 50k repairs?!

Yep. I'm in iLVL 62/63 gear with a couple of Legendaries, and it was a 50k+ repair bill (rounded up to 52k, something like 51,800 something). It didn't make death feel like something to avoid. It felt like Blizzard was running up to my corpse after working on progression in their game as a TANK BARBARIAN WHO IS SOFT-CAPPED ON ARMOR AND RESISTS WITH 30% BLOCK AND 18% DODGE and said "hehe, gotcha with that Frozen/Vortex/Plagued/Desecration Soul Ripper pack, didn't we?" every time. The thing is that I eventually killed them...but the problem was how they doubled the number of mobs that show up. THEY were the problem - being zerged super hard by shit, fighting for survival, and constantly being pulled into a Plagued/Desecration combo and then Frozen while my Ignore Pain CD was not ready. It just felt...cheap.

Right now, I feel like I'm having to beat Shao Khan on the hardest difficulty without being allowed to cheese him. I mean, I don't WANT to cheese this game. I want to make a viable build and do well. Unfortunately, I don't feel that well-balanced and viable builds are worthwhile in this game, that you are expected to cheese shit.

@jakob187: Lvl 59 almost completed hell. Balance stuff really just doesn't bother me. I think Blizz knows what they are doing and just because the community doesn't like it doesn't mean it's wrong.

@MariachiMacabre: To be fair, if an entertainment product fails to entertain, then it's not a very good product.

I'm not saying there isn't a problem here but I am pointing out there was probably something wrong with the way repairs where calculated. It took my first character *forever* to reach "max repair" of just 2,000 where that first character wasn't farming but still was able to collect over 200,000. Just saying...

And Dark Souls has a terrible model for difficulty since it plays the "I have a secret" designers seemed to have abandoned...except these guys.

Every game has issues. I would imagine it won't take another 10 years to fix all of this ones. Just wait til PVP comes out. The bitching hasn't even begun yet.

I still like playing DIablo and think it's ridiculous how much people are freaking out from my perspective, but I can see how people who are in deep are pissed. I see it like the MLG minority for Halo or Pros for Starcraft complaining about something, only difference is that Diablo has a larger pool of people in that area but less sway than the hardcore players of Starcraft. I'll be interested to see what Blizz does about it, I imagine seeing some hot patches in the next week or so.

I started the game after the patch. So it doesn't effect me.

@MariachiMacabre said:

@SamFo

@jakob187: Lvl 59 almost completed hell. Balance stuff really just doesn't bother me. I think Blizz knows what they are doing and just because the community doesn't like it doesn't mean it's wrong.

Seriously, can you imagine how stupid the game would be if such a shitty community of whiny assholes dictated patches and changes? Fuck that.

I'd add this in an edit but can figure out how to do that with someone on a separate page, anyway I can imagine it and it's called WoW. Ugh the games too easy! Every dungeon becomes difficult. Ugh the games too hard! Every dungeon becomes easy again. Ugh the games too easy! Deathwing is hard to kill for 2 weeks. Ugh it's too hard to kill Deathwing. Deathwing is easy to kill. I can see Blizzard taking this route again and no matter what one group will be unsatisfied. Sorry I'm bitter.

@SamFo said:

@jakob187: Lvl 59 almost completed hell. Balance stuff really just doesn't bother me. I think Blizz knows what they are doing and just because the community doesn't like it doesn't mean it's wrong.

I hate to say this because it sounds dickish in a manner, but it is not how I intend this statement to be taken: you do not come anywhere close to understanding the problem. Particularly, the reason I say this is because at level 59 in Hell, you have not hit anything above iLVL 58 or so. Those repair costs were increased as well, mind you. However, Inferno and Hell are two very different stories.

Regardless, I don't think that the community should DICTATE patches, but I think 30+ pages on your forums saying "hey this is pretty boned" and most of them are filled with logical reasons on how this patch is counterproductive to the philosophies that Blizzard has stated seems to say that the community...at this point...knows a little better than Blizzard. Meanwhile, Bashiok is on the forums telling people "L2Play" (that is a literal quote that a professional Blizzard employee used) as well as "if you can't play the harder content, then don't play the harder content". This is not what I would expect out of a Blizzard employee. You should be ENCOURAGING people to try harder and push further. You shouldn't be saying "well then, don't play it if you don't like the changes". You shouldn't be encouraging players to need to farm for an hour to pay REPAIR BILLS. That's not just counterproductive, but it's insulting as hell.

I haven't played in about a week after having reached inferno act II, and the idea of repairs costing over a fourth of my current accumulated gold doesn't make me want to return anytime soon. I'm sure i could spike my gold stash up by messing around in the auction house more, but I'm not really interested in playing ebay the video game.

@John1912 said:

I think everything with the patch works just fine. If your repair costs are too high you are dieing too much. Stack as much resistance as possible you wont regret it, People seem to think this is LoL. Its not. You need to be viable on your own, and then be able to work as a team. Being a DPS class does not mean stack as much DPS and you possibly can. Your resistance is the most important thing in Inferno. Your not worth shit dead. High repairs = your gear is not cutting it.

And how exactly does one get better gear? The AH prices are ridiculous and the drops in Act I are still terrible. At this point all I really need to progress is a better 1H weapon but there's nothing close to affordable available on the AH. And yes I know that Blizzard insists that it's not their intention to force people to use the AH in order to progress in Inferno but you don't have to be a genius to realize that they are straight up lying.

@John1912 said:

I think everything with the patch works just fine. If your repair costs are too high you are dieing too much. Stack as much resistance as possible you wont regret it, People seem to think this is LoL. Its not. You need to be viable on your own, and then be able to work as a team. Being a DPS class does not mean stack as much DPS and you possibly can. Your resistance is the most important thing in Inferno. Your not worth shit dead. High repairs = your gear is not cutting it.

The thing is, stuff is still going to two or three shot you even if you have 8K armor and 800 all resist. I have a friend who's a barb that has 97% DR with buffs and is still getting worked over by some inferno mobs. Also if you sacrifice too much DPS for resists you won't kill stuff fast enough to survive regardless of how much DR you have.

@John1912 said:

I think everything with the patch works just fine. If your repair costs are too high you are dieing too much. Stack as much resistance as possible you wont regret it, People seem to think this is LoL. Its not. You need to be viable on your own, and then be able to work as a team. Being a DPS class does not mean stack as much DPS and you possibly can. Your resistance is the most important thing in Inferno. Your not worth shit dead. High repairs = your gear is not cutting it.

I currently have 11k armor with over 750 resist to all with War Cry/Impunity activated, 30% block, 18.5% dodge, 16% reduced melee damage, 7% reduced ranged damage, and 15k DPS. I'm not an idiot. I know how to play my character, and I can kill the elites a majority of the time. It's a question of whether the repair costs are equivalent to me actually spending that time doing it. Is it worth trying to get a piece of gear upgrade when the fight is going to cost me a potential 20-30k that I could just farm and spend on the Auction House?

It's about the value of repair costs in proportion to the activities you are doing. Did you know that an auto attack to a barrel in the game now costs you 72 gold each time? Did you know that when a Barbarian uses his Leap skill, it costs a minimum of 98 gold in iLVL 61 and higher gear? That seems menial when you look at one attack. However, this now makes you say "well, if I use Frenzy, then it means I'm wearing my gear down faster...so I'm not going to use that...but Cleave hits multiple targets, all of which cause my gear to degrade".

Moreover, since vendor trash doesn't sell for squat, it means that one full bag of blue loot does not pay for your repair bills at yellow break. Let me reiterate that: a full bag of blues does NOT repair your equipment at yellow break. This is counterproductive. People need to have the money to use your archaic "item durability" method...but in order to make the money, they need to go do boring farms for a while on a lower difficulty so they hopefully don't lose as much durability?

I don't expect anything to be handed to me. I think the new adjustments to Inferno are perfectly fine in terms of the difficulty. It feels like a much smoother and ramped-up difficulty without all the spiky bullshit. However, when I as a player do not wish to progress through your game because you are punishing my amount of gold rather than punishing me as a player...even if it's an unavoidable death that I can do nothing about, then why do I want to play your game?

I admit I find myself playing D3 a lot less then when I first got it. Obviously this is going to happen with any game. But considering to me personally the longevity and love I had for D2:LoD, the newness has worn off and I have a pretty high level character of each class already so there's no real point to go on. Also the ridiculous cost to repair items is definitely a turn off for playing melee characters who are going to get hit and get hit often.

Raising the cost of repairs is unfair to all the legit gamers who didn't do the graveyard zerg'ing tactics and the only reason they really did it was to prevent inflation in the AH, which in turn will make Blizzard more money at the RMAH. laaame.

@spazmaster666 said:

And yes I know that Blizzard insists that it's not their intention to force people to use the AH in order to progress in Inferno but you don't have to be a genius to realize that they are straight up lying.

Actually, the week of the game's release, a blue posted on the D3 forums that Blizzard HAD manipulated the drops and rolls in order to get more people to use the Auction House as a means of gearing up.

That's not good news for someone hoping to make a little mula from the RMAH. MWAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAAA!!!

Didn't effect my demon hunter as I focused on crit damage, not attack speed. So my DH is still pretty powerful. Sucks for anyone with attack speed as their focus. My monk cannot deal any damage at all now because I loaded it with attack speed armor, but I'm not that fussed as I have decided on DH for my main.

People are crazy. I browsed the official D3 forums earlier today and all I saw was a bunch of whiny DH players crying.

I don't know, I stopped playing my DH right after clearing Belial on Inferno because they announced the impending retuning of Act II+. Coming back and my gear is a mish-mash of lvl 51-60 gear with one ilvl62 item and maybe 3 ilvl61 items. My DPS is still hovering at around 20k. I burned my way through Act I and made about 250k after my repair bill just from vendoring about 75% of the drops and picking up gold. Act II was still tough as balls but I managed to keep myself in equilibrium, never spending more gold on repairs than I was making. Combat definitely felt easier, especially against white mobs. Broken Champ/Unique monsters in horrible areas still fucked me over quite a bit but I don't think a poorly geared DH is meant to make it past a Fast/Jailer/Waller/Reflects Damage pack when it spawns on top of them when they zone into a narrow cave.

I don't know what it's like for other classes, especially not melee. I just don't understand why DH players are bitching when we're still fucking abusively powerful. My stats/gear generally suck compared to that of my friends playing other classes and I'm still able to keep pace with them progression-wise and these are extremely skilled, experienced gamers so it's not simply a matter of me being better than them.

So if things are still shitty for melee I'm sorry. I don't know what to say to WD players. Maybe the Wiz players should invest in some 12% movement-speed boots and slot a stronger snare onto their skill bars.

I'm still brokenly good.

@SamFo said:

@jakob187: Lvl 59 almost completed hell. Balance stuff really just doesn't bother me.

Come back here in a week after getting to act 2 in Inferno and playing through it.

@StarvingGamer: DH players are bitching because they focused on a secondary stat rather than primary ones in order to carry them through a game. Those guys deserve to get their asses beaten for being idiots in terms of gearing and their builds. Guys like you make me happy because you know what the hell you are doing.

The problem is that progression will cause death. It's unavoidable, as you will have to find out what you can and cannot go against. Nonetheless, when you punish people trying to progress by making them waste money that they are not in turn regaining, you are causing a counterproductive instance in your game where you are telling people to farm...but killing farm capabilities.

I'd sympathize more if Wizard and DH weren't the two best classes in the game, and both are able to do Imprisoned Angel just fine even without the IAS gear.  For my 15k dps DH, all I had to do was switch to spike trap.  For my 10k dps wizard, all I needed was the Resist gear that I already had.  Hell, DHs still have their quiver IAS completely intact (which by the way, as an offhand that is independent of whether you one or two hand a weapon, is kind of crazy).  Oh yeah, btw, not only are wizards the least tanky of the ranged classes due to 20% physical damage reduction ontop of 40% resistance buff, diamond skin and teleport makes damage negation/evasion relatively easy.
 
Honestly, unless you're a monk, you have little grounds to complain that the patch has somehow crippled your class.  Just play better.

I'm not saying there isn't a problem here but I am pointing out there was probably something wrong with the way repairs where calculated. It took my first character *forever* to reach "max repair" of just 2,000 where that first character wasn't farming but still was able to collect over 200,000. Just saying...

And Dark Souls has a terrible model for difficulty since it plays the "I have a secret" designers seemed to have abandoned...except these guys.

The blizzard community is ginormous. And with any communities this big the stupid has reached critical mass. The game has loads of problems that needs fixing and D3 has been the worst yet among all their games but good on blizzard to not listen to the community.

Their forums have 3 kinds of threads. Those who rage and insult everyone at blizz, those selling stuff on the AH and those where more reasonable individuals asks some meaningful questions which usually gets dozens of reply of angry people telling them to go hang themselves for not being omniscient about the game.

So far repair costs for me are about 10-15k for me atm, which is close to double the original values. So far I have still made more gold despite paying for repairs and potions. I think the higher repair costs are suppose to encourage smarter play, before the patch the repairs costs were almost nonexistent. Also I am pretty sure the devs always want gold to be a useful resource. Inferno is meant to be hard the repair costs reflect that, and will reduce your AH spending gold.

@jakob187: Right but you shouldn't beat your head against the progression wall if you're clearly outclassed. And once you've ascertained that, you can go back to farming Act I Inferno for gold/drops to gear up and try again. I guess maybe I'm just unaware of all the super cool alternative ways people were farming before the patch that have suddenly been nerfed but I'm still farming in exactly the same way I was before 1.03 hit.

I stopped playing awhile ago after unlocking inferno. The loot treadmill is horrible. I hadn't actually looted an upgrade for my char since like act 3 normal. It was basically just farming gold so I could buy shit on the AH. It got to the point where I was barely checking item stats and was just vendoring full inventory loads of nothing but crap. Reminded me of having to do dailies in WoW. Fucking hated that shit.

Really I'd just like to see the actual quote from Bashiok. I have no context, let alone actual words, for the statement that "Blizzard dictates what fun is now and screw the players." So it's hard for me to see that and go "What?! How dare Blizzard!" when so many people take what blues say the wrong way, or are just overreacting idiots about stuff because Blizzard won't bend over backwards to make a game that is strictly developed by the whims of the players and even the slightest change is "the end of days!" Plus I already saw on quote from Bashiok saying that they think that the average wear and tear price for repairs is perhaps too high and that it's likely to be changed there some, which I would imagine would translate to - less durability damage for being hit and more durability damage for dying. Which sounds reasonable.

I guess if people would prefer Blizzard could adopt the stance of most other companies and just not respond to players at all, or cut their communication down by about 75% so that you never actually know what they're doing or thinking, what their intentions are, what might and might not get changed, and so on. Maybe that would just make it better?

I also think there's still another option which is...just take a break. Obviously it's a big deal only because you care so much about the game, but, if Blizzard makes changes you don't agree with, voice your complaints in a constructive manner that is also polite and then stop playing the game. Don't threaten to quit the game if they don't implement changes, just, stop playing the game. If they fix the things that you hate, go back to playing it, if they don't, just keep not playing it. They'll see those numbers change and know that obviously something's not going well and will try to make changes. Or, if they don't ever make changes and turn into this horrible company that laughs at players, kicks them in the junk, then offers them a hand back up just to punch them in the face, then just stop buying their products.

@Dagbiker said:

I skiped Diablo, I will be playing Torchlight 2.

This pretty much.

Taking a break from this game as well, not necessarily because of the patch; I grew bored after reaching Inferno and realizing that there were two paths to progress: farm the areas that I could viably farm for gold to gear up in the AH, or use the RMAH. Neither of those are very appealing to me. I very much enjoyed playing up until this point - I believe I put 60 hours into the game so far - so I can at least say that I certainly got my money's worth from a great game. I do not, however, agree with Blizzard's clear intentions to make the AH and (worse, IMO) RMAH the center of the Diablo experience. I grind for money in my real life, don't feel the need to be doing that in my virtual life as well. If I need a Diablo fix in the meantime, I will gladly return to Diablo II - even after 12 years there is still much I haven't accomplished in that game.

If you were to tell me that I would be more excited for Torchlight II less than a month after the release of Diablo III, I would have thought you were crazy, but here we are.

@StarvingGamer said:

@jakob187: Right but you shouldn't beat your head against the progression wall if you're clearly outclassed. And once you've ascertained that, you can go back to farming Act I Inferno for gold/drops to gear up and try again. I guess maybe I'm just unaware of all the super cool alternative ways people were farming before the patch that have suddenly been nerfed but I'm still farming in exactly the same way I was before 1.03 hit.

Every time I went to farm last night, the amount of money that I was farming was directly inverse to the amount I was repairing for or it was not nearly profitable enough to be worth the time invested in farming.

Honestly, the way to fix it all is to go back to the method that they used in Diablo 2: take a percentage of gold away based on your level for deaths and keep repair bills separate. NO ONE complained about that during the entirety of the game.

@jakob187 said:

@StarvingGamer said:

@jakob187: Right but you shouldn't beat your head against the progression wall if you're clearly outclassed. And once you've ascertained that, you can go back to farming Act I Inferno for gold/drops to gear up and try again. I guess maybe I'm just unaware of all the super cool alternative ways people were farming before the patch that have suddenly been nerfed but I'm still farming in exactly the same way I was before 1.03 hit.

Every time I went to farm last night, the amount of money that I was farming was directly inverse to the amount I was repairing for or it was not nearly profitable enough to be worth the time invested in farming.

Honestly, the way to fix it all is to go back to the method that they used in Diablo 2: take a percentage of gold away based on your level for deaths and keep repair bills separate. NO ONE complained about that during the entirety of the game.

I think you're probably farming areas that you're not geared for. If you're dying too much in Act 2 Inferno, go back to Act 1. Yeah it sucks, but they also extended the drops tables, and champs are guaranteed to drop rares with five stacks, so kill enough and you can make up your repair cost with vendor trash easily.

And no one complained about gold issues in D2 because it was ridiculously easy to come by and to get the maximum amount possible. And I don't see how making death a double hit in gold would be an improvement. People with millions would lose disproportionately more gold.

I used to think people were semi nuts for skipping Diablo 3 for Torchlight 2...but after well over 150 hours into the game, I think I'm done. The RMAH and constant retooling has left a bad taste in my mouth. I think I'm gonna give Torchlight 2 a go

Its pretty simple, you suck. Saying the classes are squishy doesn't mean anything, the hardcore players still manage fine with "squishy" classes. Blizzard is encouraging you to learn how to play instead of constantly dying. Also if you think its fair that a class can just mass damage and still be fine whilst melee classes have to get all defence gear then your misguided. Diablo is not meant to have class archetypes(tank, dps), everyone should theoretically be able to dish out about the same amount of damage, but melee can't since we are being hit so much, the least they can do is make other classes suffer for such shitty all dps builds.

I'm still on Nightmare. I just can't replay the game anymore for some reason. I fall asleep. :/