Lylirra egy hosszabb kék poszt sorozatot írt fórumon, melyben elsőként a konzolos D3-at érintő változtatásokról számolt be. Tulajdonképpen semmi újat nem mondott: a felhasználói interfész újradizájnozásával azt akarják elérni, hogy a játék ugyanolyan játékélményt nyújtson a konzolokon, mint a PC-n. A dropokat érintő dolog viszont már sokkal érdekesebb: kevesebb, de jobb minőségű item fog esni (ez még szerintem nem a beígért “itemizációs patch” vonzata, maximum előszele a konzolokon), mindemellett a fehér és szürke itemek esésekor bizonyos esély van arra, hogy az item automatán “golddá konvertálódjon”. Mindemellett kiemelt három riportot is a konzolon történő itemekkel kapcsolatos változtatásokról, ezeknek linkjeit megtaláljátok a kék posztban. A konzol témához még végezetül annyit, hogy az 1.0.7-es javítással és néhány 1.0.8-beli újításokkal fogják szállítani a konzolos verziót és ez már véglegesnek tűnik.
Nos mi hírt kaptunk akkor a PC-s verziót itemizációról? Gyakorlatilag semmit. Olyan panaszokra válaszolt Lylirra, amik gyakran a mi oldalunk hírei alatt is megfogalmazódtak: “Ehhez kellett nekik két hónap? ez csak egy gyors fércmunkának tűnik. – Ezt egy hotfixben is kiadhatnák! – Mi tart ilyen sokáig? – Az itemizációról már hónapok óta semmi érdemi hír nem érkezik, miért?” Lylirra válaszai nagyjából a következőek voltak: Vannak dolgok, melyeket gyorsan ki lehet javítani, de vannak amikhez több idő kell. Megérti azt is, hogy néhány patch hatása csak amolyan gyors tűzoltás jellegűnek tűnik, megemlítette itt a legendary patch-et, mely után még mindig kijelenthetjük, hogy a legendary cuccok túlnyomó része kukába való szemét. Éppen ezért szánnak most több időt az itemizációs patchre: nem egy gyors, elhamarkodott munkát szeretnének kiadni, mindemellett a játék magját képező dologhoz kell most hozzányúlniuk: az itemekhez. Mindemellett azért sem tud újdonsággal szolgálni, mert nincs érdemi hír az itemizáció kapcsán. Említette Travis itemizációs blog bejegyzését, ami alatt szomorúan olvasták a “nesze semmi fogd meg jól” típusú játékosi visszajelzéseket és mivel azóta nincs semmi lefixált információ amit közzé tudnának tenni, ezért inkább hallgatnak még az ötleteikről is. Természetesen ha lesz már valami konkrét, kézzel fogható tervük akkor folytatódik a blogsorozat, de hajlanak a videóblogos bejegyzések irányába is, példának okáért a május 15-i Archon videóriportot hozták fel, amiben kevesebb formalitással, szabadabban beszélhettek a játékról.
Interesting quote! (Also, apologies in advance for the TL;DR response.)
While the core of the console game is based on the PC game — you get all the same content, systems, classes, skills, and runes on the console as you do on PC — the console version of Diablo III is really its own thing. It’s a familiar, but ultimately unique experience. Our goal when developing Diablo III for console was to deliver that same visceral gameplay you get with a mouse and keyboard, but at the same time feel completely natural when using a controller. (Basically, whichever platform you prefer for gaming, you can pick that version and know that it was tweaked to be best suited for the platform of your choice.)
In order to achieve that, we’ve made a variety of tweaks to the the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions, including a complete re-design of the UI and character controls, inventory management, as well as combat pacing and boss fights. The item game is predominantly the same, but we’ve also made some minor adjustments to itemization. Items will drop less frequently, but will typically be of higher quality. There’s a chance that when a white or gray item drops, that it will be automatically converted to gold too. These changes were made to help manage the flow of gameplay and keep players in the midst of combat (and out of their inventory screens) as much possible. Inventory management is a little more difficult on the console version than it is on the PC, where you have a mouse to quickly navigate through menus, so this was a pretty key tweak for the PS3 and Xbox 360.
Many of these adjustments inspired future changes we’d like to make to PC, and many of them were inspired by plans we already had for improving itemization as a whole. Since we use staggered development (meaning, the PC and console games more or less have separate teams and development cycles), though, it’s possible that one game will receive changes before another. Over time, which game that is may switch back and forth. Even so, PC will always be the lead platform.
Regardless, here are a few interviews and hands-on reviews from PAX East you may want to check out. I’ve only highlighted ones where itemization on console gets addressed, but I figured this was kind of important, as it lets you get the information directly from the developers. 🙂
Penny Arcade Report
Kotaku
IGN (Skip to 5:25)Thank you for linking that blog. I wanted to confirm how long ago it was, and three months is a long time to stand around and do nothing, from a player’s perspective. Ask the Devs isn’t even done, and the blog came before it, three months ago. Three months
Correct. Sometimes, changes to games can be made quickly. But that’s not always the case, especially when you’re looking at a system (like itemization) that’s very core to the game itself. We can definitely understand that players would like said changes made overnight — heck, we would too — but we’d much rather take our time and come up with something that’s actually meaningful and relevant, rather than implement something quickly that doesn’t satisfy the current problems and/or make the game anymore engaging.Everything we get is super rushed feeling instead of complete and considering the amount of time you guys spend being mum about things, we are being reasonable to doubt you guys care.
We know that some players feel that way about previous changes we’ve made (i.e. legendary improvements), and it’s not unreasonable. Even if that’s not actually the case, that’s part of the reason why we’re taking things a little more slowly this time around and really looking at more big/sweeping changes to the core of the item game.That’s disrespectful towards the community, even though I know you guys regret that the itemization blog came out so soon (e.g. Travis Day said that in his interview with Archon on Twitch). Once it’s done, just stand up to it, don’t hide your heads behind your hands, like they could cover you.
So, Lylirra, this comes from a respectful player who loves D3 : why did you guys stop communicating about itemization for so long ? You come out as very unprofessional, especially after you yourself said you guys were going to make efforts to communicate with the community
That’s fair. At the moment, we just don’t have a lot of details to share about itemization (beyond what we’ve already communicated). Our goal is always to share new information once it’s available, but the tricky part is what to communicate in between those points. Do we just reiterate what we’ve already said? Do we talk high-level only? Or do we just remain mum until that new information is out? Players are definitely divided on what they want.Going to back to Travis’s blog, itemization was a very popular topic and we wanted to acknowledge the concerns that players had officially, even if we didn’t have a lot of details to share about how we were going to approach specific pain points. That was also feedback we’d heard a lot of: “We don’t care if you don’t have any details to share. Just respond to us.” And so that particular developer journal blog was born, as well as the following Ask the Devs topic.
The upside to posting Travis’s blog when we did is that is tackled some of the major discussions players were having while they were new and relevant. It was also a direct response to the feedback we’d been given. The downside is that the blog came out just as we were starting to approach our itemization revamp, so there’s not been a lot of new information to share between then and now. We’re still working on the same ideas and theories, but nothing’s really reached a point where we can communicate that a) these are the things have been locked down and B) here are all the details of how those systems will work. Also, the communication we’ve provided on those “in-between” stages has been met with a lot of criticism (see the responses to the all itemization-related “Ask the Devs” answers) so far. Some people even said: “I don’t know why you’re even bothering to answer this if you don’t have any details to share” — which was the exact opposite feedback we’d heard just a few weeks prior.
We’d love to do more informal chats like what Travis and Wyatt did with Archon on the May 15, where the developers just take some time to casually talk about the game and their approach to certain issues. We might not have a lot of new information to share in those chats, but at least it would establish a nice of cadence of conversation. Less formal, more frequent.
But I don’t know — is that something that you guys would appreciate? We’re always willing to experiment and find out what method works best to getting you information about the game. (Granted, it may not always be new information since Diablo III doesn’t iterate as frequently as games like World of Warcraft or ones that are still in beta, but I think just having some transparency and candid communication with the developers would be nice.)
Over a decade and counting ain’t enough?
Not sure what you’re actually looking for here with your comment? We admit the item game we created in Diablo III has flaws, we’ve openly admitted those flaws to our players and that we want to improve them. The next big step is to identify the right way to fix those flaws and, in the process, really re-capture that lust for loot and feeling of “HOLY CRAP ORANGE” that many players feel is missing right now.Yes almost 100% console version will have 1.0.9
Going to nip this one in the bud. The console version of Diablo III will ship with all of 1.0.7 content, plus some features from 1.0.8 — but that’s it. Detailed that a little more here: http://us.battle.net…ic/9245624848#4 (forrás)
