Diablo III: The Problem With Spam

[Spooler]

This entire game has been pretty sloppy imho I play it mostly because I am a fanboy but the whole thing from technical aspects to design aspects has been really badly handled imo

/2 cents

[Bronze_D]

Can't you deal with that by using a visual buffer?

The way I play hardcore is to expect that I'm 0.2 seconds behind everything, and play accordingly. So I have a few meters less of space than I really do.

It saves a lot of deaths.

I've had to deal with my share of one-shot kills, and it's usually fine if you either react faster, or run a more tanking build.

That's fine with moves that are INTENDED to one shot you

overall however when you reach the inferno difficulty you will take significant attrition overall from EVERYTHING, and that includes standard basic attack which can actually be dodged (not from your dodge stat but by physically moving your avatar out of it's reach before the animation reaches the hit confirmation state).

or at least it would be if your latency isn't significant enough that by the time you see it it's already in hit confirmation state.

Diablo3 in inferno is kinda like danmaku overall (bullet hell), you weave through lethal AoEs and shell barrage, fire chains, arcane sentries, where you are expected to minimize contact at all possible (since there is no such thing as tanking them except by full on invul (which is already nerfed) or if you are a maxed out armor/DR running a dmg reduction active skil with 30 seconds cooldown). Except of course danmaku doesn't have these latency issues.

Which is the problem...

I enjoy challenge in a game (finishing a danmaku on some godlike difficulty is incredibly satisfying)... but i am somewhat annoyed by the fact that we get an extra latency challenge on top of that which isn't exactly entertaining.

[Sathias]

From last night's patch notes, first item listed

Players will now automatically join General chat when logging in

I guess they figured not enough people were seeing the spam

[mans]

Haha sathius I was just about to mention that, it's a shame they think people should be using those chat channels.

[Sathias]

...and the new patch has broken login. They are not doing well.

[Auld]

I have a better issues. Launcher says my game is up to date (its not), once I login the game says it need to exit to patch to a newer version. Once exited the patcher says D3 is already running and quits.

I believe it is because I have my language set to enGB and I bought it from England, here is the solution thread;

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/ ... 037?page=1

[Sathias]

I have a better issues. Launcher says my game is up to date (its not), once I login the game says it need to exit to patch to a newer version. Once exited the patcher says D3 is already running and quits.

I believe it is because I have my language set to enGB and I bought it from England, here is the solution thread;

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/ ... 037?page=1

I had a similar issue as I was playing on the Asian servers last night while the US ones were down. Client patched then when it ran it detected that the Asian servers were of a different, older version.

[xMrSmooth]

I'm going to chime in here and say two things.

1. People who don't have to deal with the spam because you can just leave general chat: congratulations, you got a (semi) working game. Some of us out here have to be in general chat or we get disconnected every 5-10 minutes with a 3007 error. This is why they introduced the whole "everyone connects to general on login" in the patch, because lots of us were getting annoyed at disconnecting any time we forgot to join. They'll probably be removing it soon because of all the complaints (hopefully they leave it in as an option in the menu, or better yet, fix the damn 3007 errors).

2. Blizz has already done what they want to do about gold sellers: making it so that each account can only post 10 things on the AH at a time. With this system in place, gold sellers will have to buy lots and lots of accounts to sell lots of items, therefore increasing the money they're spending on the game. Oh Blizz will still ban accounts that are definitely linked with selling gold, but only so that the gold seller will buy another account.

[Auld]

I'm going to chime in here and say two things.

1. People who don't have to deal with the spam because you can just leave general chat: congratulations, you got a (semi) working game. Some of us out here have to be in general chat or we get disconnected every 5-10 minutes with a 3007 error. This is why they introduced the whole "everyone connects to general on login" in the patch, because lots of us were getting annoyed at disconnecting any time we forgot to join. They'll probably be removing it soon because of all the complaints (hopefully they leave it in as an option in the menu, or better yet, fix the damn 3007 errors).

No ****, thats appalling. What the reason not being in chat gets you d/ced?

[R3DNUT]

didnt even know there was a chat. i click; play - login - continue game.

i guess cause i havent had much time to play this yet (only lvl 14) i havent noticed any problems except a few tiny glitches (i think theyre referred to as rubberbanding). im loving the game. the story part is a bit g@y but the cinematics are awesome so far (only seen the intro and end of act1 vid).
im really impressed with the inventory and detail in which all your stats are shown. i like how you can see what your party is wearing and their skills that they have selected.. i wont bother with public play for a long time and will stay away from the AH as much as i can.. this will probably change quickly once up to harder levels. I guess this is me rebelling against the online only stuff. Single Player / LAN FTW!

[xMrSmooth]

No ****, thats appalling. What the reason not being in chat gets you d/ced?

It's something to do with certain routers being incompatible, and they only send for updates from blizz every x amount of time, but because it's been so long since the last update, it disconnects you. If you're in general, every time a message comes through it receives an update from blizz, so as long as people are talking (gold spammers included, so they're actually a godsend at times of no chat activity) you'll get updates fast enough to stay connected.

[PinothyJ]

This article is a waste of time if you do not ask Blizzard to officially comment. It is like the currency exchange where the only way to make money on the forex is to write books and make videos on how to make make money on the forex -- it does not help anyone. While you may be 100% spot on without using your (limited) influence as an established gaming news website (back by a large national ISP) to do something about it you are just blowing smoke.


With all that being said it is still a well written article…

[InAUGral]

Well here's an honest review.

In Australian prime, about 7pm to midnight, latency hovers around the 220 area (for me). At this latency, the game is perfectly playable. Skills seem instant.

When the servers come under stress form all the Americans logging on, you can expect latency to jump by another 100-150. This causes some delay sometimes, but game is still playable.

You'll occasionally get redbars that make the game unplayable, but those pass quickly.

I don't have it so I cannot judge but it sounds like Diablo III can basically be treated like an MMO and your comments make sense to me as like an MMO (where you have say 200+ ping from Aus) by adjusting your gameplay to suit the delay.

[peber]

One of the news programs did a segment on it years back (4 corners perhaps) and the company they went to in China just had a couple of rooms that were floor to ceiling WoW boxes purchased in bulk directly from Blizz, I've often thought it;s one of those "ignore it because we're shipping copies" incidents.

Do you think Blizzard really should go over each order and try to verify the purchasing company?
Blizzard don't (and shouldn't) care whether the buyer is a game shop, gold farmer or kid in his parents basement buying 100 copies of a collectors edition in the hope they might one day be worth something.
It would be madness to try and verify every company at the end of the supply chain who have purchased a copy of something.

Well here's an honest review.

In Australian prime, about 7pm to midnight, latency hovers around the 220 area (for me). At this latency, the game is perfectly playable. Skills seem instant.

When the servers come under stress form all the Americans logging on, you can expect latency to jump by another 100-150. This causes some delay sometimes, but game is still playable.

You'll occasionally get redbars that make the game unplayable, but those pass quickly.

The effects of latency get more pronounced as the game rises in difficulty, but most people complaining about it still have stuff on farm, so it's akin to a WoW raider complaining that their raiding schedule is slowed down by a few minutes.

+1 here.
I've had zero issues with this game, right from the start with the beta.
I get none of the error messages people have been reporting, my ping is almost always around 250ms (the worst "lag" I've experienced has been a problem with my connection, not battle.net) and right now I'm playing through Hell.

All of this on a (relatively) ancient Q6600 with a cheapo video card.
I like the fact I don't need to drop $2k on a high-end rig to run this game!


Bluefire's post http://games.on.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=2603015#p2603015 is amusing, but the so-called issues it highlights really aren't a problem (for me?!) at all. 50% of it's points aren't even valid, given the status of technology and gameplay when the original Diablo was released.

For those who are sitting on the fence and unsure whether to buy this game, my take is:
1: Having to be 'online' is a non-issue, even if you're only interested in single player (let's be honest, 99% of gamers are always connected anyway).
2: Latency has so far (about to start Act III on Hell difficulty) posed no problem at all.
3: It's not the same as Diablo I, but what can you expect? Demographics change, game strategies change... None of the subsequent Matrix movies were as good as the first. None of the C&C series lived up to the original either. There's often a gap between peoples expectations of sequels and what can realistically be delivered.
4: Inventory management is 1000 times better than the original. The only people who I can possibly imagine are unhappy with this are those who like to drop/change/port-and-scrap/tinker with an aspect that was never meant to be the focus of the game.

The game has its faults, but what game doesn't? It seems the norm nowdays to ship games before all the bugs have been worked out.

Have Blizzard dropped the ball in some areas? Absolutely. They didn't plan for the server demand. They ignored some major issues (eg 3007's) that impacted a large number of people.

I'm not saying they are perfect, however as an original Diablo player, I'm loving Diablo 3 just as much as the original

[Tera]

Latency is an issue - that's not debatable. Attempting to avoid projectiles at 300-400ms is not consistently achievable and when you get burnt down by them so quickly (especially in the higher difficulties) it's straight up not fair.

ESPECIALLY AS A MELEE CHARACTER!