Blue Posts

Blue Posts

Blizzard Tracker: June 2, 2013

A reason to fight bosses:

We agree with you that killing bosses could use a little more incentive, and it�s something we hope to address sometime in the future. Travis Day mentions (in this post) that in a perfect world players will ask themselves �What do I feel like doing tonight?� when they sit down to play Diablo III, and boss runs are one of those options we�d like them to consider. He also mentions this idea in this Developer Journal, under the "Farm Monsters, Not the Auction House" section.

No ETA for "Ask the Devs" round 3:

We dont have an exact date to offer you at this time, but we know that itemization is an extremely important topic to many players and were still planning to complete our third round of �Ask the Devs� focused on itemization.

Scheduled Game Maintenance 6-4-2013:

We will be performing scheduled maintenance beginning on Tuesday, June 4th, at 05:00 AM PDT and we expect the service to be available again at approximately 11:00 AM PDT. During this time the game will be unavailable for play.

Taking a break:

We of course want Diablo III to be as fun as it can possibly be, but if you do not think the game is fun to play right now, then it is maybe not a bad idea to simply take a break and check back in again at a later time in the future to see if the game has improved more to your liking by then. 

Also, if you are not sure that the expansion will offer content that is enjoyable to you, then it may be a good idea to first check out things like reviews and gameplay streams of it before making the decision to get it or not.

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Helping new players:

Every so often you meet someone in game who is an absolute blast to play with, and they make going to the extra mile to help them out feel like its well worth the time. Its good to hear you got to help out a fellow player and found the experience rewarding. 

Anyone else inspired to do something nice after reading this?

been doing it all a long ... I thought its what we are supposed to do in games.

Its a natural counter to sad players bashing the game.

Help the new players and get them exited

Its the ethical players that make the game and community. I hope to see more of this in a great game that can only get better

Kudos to you op and all who help other players.

Thanks for your reply! In hindsight I could have written that question a little better. Something like "Have any of you been helping people all along, or felt inspired to do something nice after reading this?" would have been more thoughtful.

I definitely believe that there are a fair number of nice folks who have always been helpful, not as a direct counter to the more negative members of the community, but simply because thats their nature. That sort of kindness can go a long way to enriching our adventures in Sanctuary, and something gamers generally find refreshing.

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Grimiku on Demonic Essences:

I can never hold on to more than 40 or 60 Demonic Essences at a time before I craft them all. It also doesnt seem to matter how good my current item is, it can always be just a little bit better. I should start saving them for my rising alts, though.

Picking up Blue items:

I almost never intentionally pick up blues on my normal characters unless Im going back to town and I have inventory space, but I always pick them up when Im soloing on my Hardcore characters. 

My general rule for looting during group play is to simulate whatever theyre doing. If they are frequently going back to town, then its probably a good idea to grab blues, but if they want to spend as much time in the field as possible, then I get more selective about what I pick up.

Favorite Looking Skills:

There are skills that I use a lot and think are visually interesting (like Zombie Bears and Hammer of the Ancients), but one of the cool things about doing public games is seeing skills in use that you normally dont. Seismic Slam - Rumble, Cluster Grenades, and Living Lightning come to mind as some cool skills that I normally dont see or use.

Co-op Improvements Discussion:

Sometimes I joined into a public game to look for a Keywarden, but I dont know whether it has been killed or not. So should we add an icon to show if its dead?
And how about adding a status beside each players icon to show how much Nephalem Valor they have got?

We�re glad that so many players have been enjoying the various multiplayer improvements we recently introduced in patch 1.0.8, but as with every improvement, we�re always striving to find ways we can do even better. Your feedback has been heard, and we�ll take it into consideration for future designs.

In general, we know that players sit down with an �intent� of the type of player experience they would like to get done. Whether it be key farming, elite killing, legendary hunting, or what-not, we want players to be able to queue and get into a game that lets them meet their specific goals as smoothly as possible. We definitely view it as an ideal to work towards going forward.

Thanks again for your feedback!

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Blues in game:

We all play Diablo III on a regular basis (just like developers and other employees at Blizzard), and while we have a passion for Diablo, we keep our play accounts private so that we can enjoy the game just like any other player. 

My main is a Wizard and I play Public Games quite a lot though, so you might have even bumped into me without knowing it. ;)

Do any CM or developers play HC?

All of the North American Community Managers and each of the Diablo III developers I correspond with frequently do, yes. 

In terms of the CMs specifically, Id have to say that Grimiku probably plays the most Hardcore among us.

Vaeflare, I completely respect you guys wanting to keep your profiles private but one thing bugs me here. You said, "that we can enjoy the game just like any other player." But any other players profile is public and there is not (to my knowledge) a way to make it private.

Can we at least have the options to make our profile private, friends only and/or public implemented into the game in the future?

+1
I have been wanting this for a long time now. The CM kind of put her foot in her mouth this time. It is clearly hypocritical of them to be able to play in secret.

Its not hypocritical in the least, really. My Diablo III characters are on the armory just like every other players, and so are those of the Diablo III developers. When I am off the clock slaying demons in my free time, Im acting simply as any other player, and theres really no need for that to be connected to "work." It certainly doesnt sound like any fun to have people pestering me in game for patch release dates or the like. ;)

The reason you cannot see blue profiles for D3 is because they barely play the game.

Its not because the game sucks or anything like that, on the contrary this is the best game I ever played and you can easily get 10,000 hours out of playing this game due to the nature of it being online and no cheats allowed.

If you were to see blue profiles you would also see they have little to no time put into it. Their items are very bad, and they are probably like paragon 9 or something and without a doubt they have never completed all the characters.

The reason for this is quite simply, grown ups dont play video games. Not the so called grown ups who are in college and CLAIM to be adult gamers. No I mean real grown ups like blues who work for real companies like Blizzard and have real lives and things like children and family to attend to.

Regardless of what blues tell you, what I have told you is the 100% truth. And thats why you cannot see their profile.

If they actually played the game often it would be perfect marketing for them to make it public. They would give anything to have awesome public profile. However their profiles are something no one but a beginner would be impressed about.

If you believe otherwise you are more gullible than people who believe Disney cartoons are real.

Just my $0.02

It never ceases to amaze me the size of some of the tinfoil hats I see round these parts sometimes, yikes!

So heres the thing: if someone is utterly and entirely convinced that myself or any of the other Community Managers or developers have never logged into Diablo III or played a character beyond Paragon level 9 (or whatever the accusation of the week is), theres probably little I can do to convince them otherwise. Its easy (too easy, really) to make blanket statements against other people you dont really know, but its also not very conducive to having a meaningful conversation with them. That said, I implore you to delve a bit deeper with me on this topic.

Everyone who plays Diablo, from the players rocking 200k DPS, to the players with one of every class to Paragon 100, through to the players working on achievement-grinding, all of us have different experience with Diablo III. Some play Hardcore exclusively. Some dont. Some play a few times a week, some play every day. Some have one character they covet, some rotate mains like its going out-of-style. That is part of makes us a really vibrant and passionate community.

In comparison to those posting in this thread, there are some that have more experience with certain classes than I personally do, and there are others where my in-game experience and achievement point count are much (in some cases very much) higher than other players. But that doesnt make me better or worse than any other individual player out there, and it doesnt make their game experiences or feedback any more or less valid. 

The breadth of diverse experience each player has is similarly mirrored among employees here at Blizzard. The Diablo III game team is constantly playing Diablo III and iterating on it, and each developer has different focuses and specialties. Some crunch numbers, others work with tablets to make your spell effects look just that much more awesome. Some (particularly the system design team) play tenaciously and on a regular basis, others like to vary it up. The point is that its a group effort, and one where we as the Community Managers are helping to funnel feedback to and from the developers so that they have a fuller picture on community topics and trends that impact Diablo III. Thats pretty much what I view as my primary job here: Im here to try and make sure player voices are heard by the developers and that development news is heard by players. As such, I as an individual dont need to have 4.5k+ Diablo III achievement points in order to do my job, but it helps that I play nearly every day, certainly, because it ensures Im touch with the pulse of the community. ;) 

TLDR: Blizzard employees play Diablo III. We dont all have 4.5k+ Diablo III achievement points, but thats okay because its a collaborative effort, and our combined experiences and great player feedback continue to help shape the game that were all so passionate about.

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Feedback:

Constructive feedback, ideas, and patience are indeed things we do appreciate, but naturally for some people they prefer to post their concerns and frustrations instead - both kinds of feedback are understandable as well as welcome, of course within the boundaries of the forum rules, but it should come as no surprise that we prefer the more constructive posts as they often contain more useful feedback that can be forwarded to the developers.

We have already acknowledged that not everyone are happy with the state of the game, and the developers are working very hard to improve things for the better. Unfortunately, as with all things, some improvements take longer to do than others, but that doesnt mean that we are ignoring them.

I want to thank everyone here who have spent so much of their time to provide passionate as well as constructive feedback on these forums, be it positive or negative, and I hope you will continue to post your feedback in the future :-)

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Unlocking Cinematics:

Banewaver,

If you edit the cutscene lines in your My DocumentsDiablo IIID3Prefs.txt file to look like these:

PlayedCutscene0 "31�
PlayedCutscene1 "31"
PlayedCutscene2 "23"
PlayedCutscene3 "143"

It will unlock all of the cinematics.