Diablo III Dev: Adventure Mode is Worth The $40 Price Tag

[RA92]

Blizzard overcharging for their content? Mein Gott! Next you know, Steam will have a sale and Activision will make another Call of Duty!

How is 40 for an expansion overcharging? Most dlc comes in broken down bits of 10 bucks, lets break this one down.

Adventure mode-10 bucks, whole new way to play the game

Crusader-10 bucks, whole new character to play as

Act IV-10 bucks, whole new content

Enchanting/Transmogrification/Level cap increase, 3 bucks each.

Loot 2.0 (Depending on the company.) 10 bucks or a free patch, defendably chargeable since it also unlocks new difficulty settings and all monsters scale to your level, while vastly improving the in game items stats to match the new tiers of challenge

By your math, Diablo 3 at launch should have been:

Wizard - 10 bucks, a whole new character to play as in the game

Witch Doctor - 10 bucks, a whole new character to play as in the game

Demon Hunter - 10 bucks, a whole new character to play as in the game

Barbarian - 10 bucks, a whole new character to play as in the game

Monk - 10 bucks, a whole new character to play as in the game

Act 1 - 10 bucks, whole new content in the game

Act 2 - 10 bucks, whole new content in the game

Act 3 - 10 bucks, whole new content in the game

Act 4 - 10 bucks, whole new content in the game

Hardcore Mode - 10 bucks, whole new way to play the game

Loot 1.0 - 10 bucks, gives you items you need to play the game

PvP Combat Patch - 10 bucks, unlocks ways to interact with other players in the game

Auction House - 10 bucks, turns the game into an MMO grindhouse

3 Artisans - 3 x 3 bucks = 9 bucks

Level Cap at 60 - 6 x 3 bucks = 18 bucks (since apparently a 60 to 70 level cap increase is worth 3 bucks) in the game

Total = $157

Holy Burning Hell! Our masters at Blizzard have been magnanimous enough to lower the launch price to a measly $60! We should bow down and praise Diabolus that the artists at Blizzard aren't starving to death!

"Bleh bleh blhe blizzards fucking overcharging for everything, waah wahh wahh" It's like a hate train

Indeed, sir, I shall promptly get off my hate train and jump onto your bandwagon!

 

[black_knight1337]

$40 is a huge price to pay for such little content. The kings of DLC these days is Rockstar. Rockstar gave you an entirely new campaign (Lost and Damned, Ballad of Gay Tony, Undead Nightmare) for $20 each. You got a completely new story, new characters, new voice acting and still managed to not be a $40 release.

Sure, I'll agree that Rockstar's DLC is reasonably priced. But you come off as though they're essentially whole new games. Stats show they are only roughly 20-30% off the content of the base games and a lot of the stuff used is just copied straight from it.

RoS has a new story, new characters and new voice acting along with much much more. That part, which is covered just by the new act, is, to me at least, the smallest part of the expansion and yet that alone puts it on par with the DLC you used as examples. Adding new mechanics, new content(loot, skills etc) and new ways to play makes it well worth it for me.

Torchlight and Torchlight 2 have a dedicated clients for playing using mods. Torchlight 2 has a big multiplayer component and it has full steam workshop support. Daiblo III is not an MMO. Blizzard is a big company, it does not need you to throw a tantrum in their defense and in defense of their thin excuses for always on DRM.

Perhaps you should actually read what I said. If you did you'd realise what you said is irrelevant and/or false. A couple of key things, the use of the word official when referring to the servers and also the lack of mmo or any references to it being in my post. And controlled venting over the frustrations of people constantly spouting outright lies as though they were facts is hardly throwing a tantrum.

 

[Colt47]

Torchlight and Torchlight 2 succeed with core game design and class customization, where as Diablo III wins hands down on presentation. Unfortunately, Diablo III fails on just about every other measurable quantifier even compared to Diablo II with expansion.

However, the biggest problem with Diablo III is that they had developers with no experience with the game series attempt to backwards engineer a Diablo clone with parred down customization. There was no way it was going to live up to what Diablo fans expected from the get go.

 

[Weaver]

Until the game can be played offline on PC I won't be getting it. Since it looks like never, I won't be getting it.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

lol maybe it's because you're used to australian prices..but the last time I spent more than 20 dollars on a full game...it's been probably since mass effect 3. Hell I'm getting south park: the stick of truth on release and I'm spending 40 bucks, and that is me at my maximum for a whole game, not just an expansion pack. Thanks to steam sales/GoG/greenmangaming/humble bundle I haven't spent more than 10-15 bucks average on most of my library, for a grand total of ~400ish games, I see no reason why I should remotely think about giving blizzard 40 dollars for this, they might catch my interest at 15 bucks, but even then, that's going to require me reactivating my account through blizzard because my account got hacked 2x because of D3's horseshit always online shit.

Now I am spending 40 dollars on south park, so I can't exactly talk much, but I am getting it for a whole game, and this is a once a year sort of purchase.

Ah right, full retail prices are so high because you are only buying things on sale. Fair enough view point but isn't that relevant. You need to be comparing similar purchases ie. Other games at full retail cost on release and if you do that it's at a very fair price point.

The reason why I think it is relevant is because actiblizz are quite possibly the stingiest mofo's in the video game business when it comes to sales, which is next to never, so the 40 dollar price tag is here to stay for a LONGGG time short of them not selling any units in which case they'll be forced to lower it a bit.

but I'll try to make a fair comparison, most season passes for DLC are in the range of ~20 dollars, and added up those EASILY match what blizzard puts out into the amount of content, which is why I still think that price tag is being a bit greedy.

Where do you live that South Park is $40 on release? Even the PC version is releasing at $60 in the US, which is also the same price as every other new release AAA title in existence. There are no AAA titles that release at $40, only expansion packs, or sometimes the HD remasters of games, but those were all $60 when they came out the first time.

the internet is your friend, I haven't bought a physical release in years because of the prices.

http://www.kinguin.us/category/2954/south-park-the-stick-of-truth-steam-key/

but if you want to use a site that's more popular, greenmangaming has its standard 20% off coupon going right now where you can get it for 48 bucks:

http://www.greenmangaming.com/s/us/en/pc/games/rpgs/south-park-stick-truth-na/
(just apply the code after you go to checkout, and wallah, there you go)

 

[Augustine]

Blizzard overcharging for their content? Mein Gott! Next you know, Steam will have a sale and Activision will make another Call of Duty!

Meh. Blizzard charges a lot because they put in a lot of hours in everything they do. I can assure you, their profit margin is not different from others.

 

[Shjade]

Err, what? Since when did the Horadric Cube do anything more than combining items to make new ones (ie. crafting which is in D3V)? Looking at multiple sources I can't see where it says you can change the look of an item to another nor replace and reroll stats.

trans·mog·ri·fy

1.
transform, esp. in a surprising or magical manner.

You put objects into the cube to transform them into different objects. I assumed this was what you meant by transmogrification. Crafting in D3 seems to mainly use crafting-dedicated objects to make things, where in D2 it was transforming objects that, on their own, already had uses most of the time - pots into bigger pots, gems into bigger gems, accessories into other accessories, etc.

I hadn't noticed you can move the aesthetics of one item to another in D3 because, frankly, I couldn't care less about that.

 

[black_knight1337]

The reason why I think it is relevant is because actiblizz are quite possibly the stingiest mofo's in the video game business when it comes to sales, which is next to never, so the 40 dollar price tag is here to stay for a LONGGG time short of them not selling any units in which case they'll be forced to lower it a bit.

Fair enough, but, for the most part, the same can be said of the rest of the industry. Just looking around on the Steam store and there's a number of games that still have their regular price at what it was at release. Contrary to popular belief Blizzard do actually have sales and stores quite commonly have sales on Blizzard products. It's not as though the only price you'll be able to get RoS for the next year + is going to be $40.

but I'll try to make a fair comparison, most season passes for DLC are in the range of ~20 dollars, and added up those EASILY match what blizzard puts out into the amount of content, which is why I still think that price tag is being a bit greedy.

Yeah, season passes are usually really good deals. Their akin to GotY editions, complete packs and all that and they already exist for Diablo 3. On the site you linked you can get both for under $75 which is, at it's cheapest, 25% off. Not bad when it includes something that hasn't even been released.

trans·mog·ri·fy

1.
transform, esp. in a surprising or magical manner.

You put objects into the cube to transform them into different objects. I assumed this was what you meant by transmogrification. Crafting in D3 seems to mainly use crafting-dedicated objects to make things, where in D2 it was transforming objects that, on their own, already had uses most of the time - pots into bigger pots, gems into bigger gems, accessories into other accessories, etc.

I hadn't noticed you can move the aesthetics of one item to another in D3 because, frankly, I couldn't care less about that.

Ah easy enough mistake to make. I presumed because I was using the actual title of the feature that the link would have been made. The crafting system is mostly the same, in D3 it's items -> crafting mats and then crafting mats(and sometimes items) -> items, the gem thing is the same though.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Fair enough, but, for the most part, the same can be said of the rest of the industry. Just looking around on the Steam store and there's a number of games that still have their regular price at what it was at release. Contrary to popular belief Blizzard do actually have sales and stores quite commonly have sales on Blizzard products. It's not as though the only price you'll be able to get RoS for the next year + is going to be $40.

I'm genuinely curious, which games are you looking at in particular? and how long have they been out for? While most AAA games on steam DO sit at higher price points for a year or two, the sales are quite frequent (especially on holidays) and they tend to slash the price 50-75% off, which is where my 10-15 dollar average spent on games comes from. I think it's a bit hard to make sweeping generalizations on steam for games being at certain prices unless you are looking at their publisher.

for the second part....eh...I find it very hard to believe that (short of them having abysmal sales, which I mentioned earlier)

Actiblizz is fucking hard pressed as shit to ever have any meaningful sales let alone more than once in a blue moon (figure of speech, I know that literally doesn't make sense.)

but I'll try to make a fair comparison, most season passes for DLC are in the range of ~20 dollars, and added up those EASILY match what blizzard puts out into the amount of content, which is why I still think that price tag is being a bit greedy.

Yeah, season passes are usually really good deals. Their akin to GotY editions, complete packs and all that and they already exist for Diablo 3. On the site you linked you can get both for under $75 which is, at it's cheapest, 25% off. Not bad when it includes something that hasn't even been released.

and that is true, but that site is a bit....deceiving, it isn't that actiblizz is giving the "okay" for that price, it's that certain vendors are selling the keys at the lowest possible price they can go because they get it through magic, I mean fuck, you could (and still can) get thief keys pre-ordered for 22 bucks on release, and that is a standard 50-60 dollar AAA game that just came out.

 

[Kinitawowi]

There's £5 in the difference between the price I paid for Diablo 3 at launch (£35 at PC World - they were the last place left that had it, otherwise it would have been cheaper - I think Amazon had it for £32 but sold out very quickly) and the price for ROS (£29.99 on Amazon right now).

If they want to charge me the cost of a whole new game, I'd expect a whole new game. ROS does not look like being one.

 

[Jadak]

Now if only I could tell what was going on with the console version.

I have D3 on both PC and 360, having acquired the console version for the sake of playing it with my girlfriend. And frankly I like that version more. Unfortunately, that version appears to have none of the updates the PC version has gotten while prepping for RoS, and I'm not sure their are any plans for it.

So, until I know for sure what my options are for upgrading, (ie: Will I ever be able to get RoS on 360? Or, if I get RoS on a newer console at some point in the future, will I still need the base game?) I won't be buying much of anything, I have no interest in buying the same product multiple times to play it where and how I want to play it as I did with the base game.

 

[shintakie10]

While I can only answer those from my own perspective I think it could paint a reasonable picture. Prior to this patch, I'd estimate it at somewhere around 5k people concurrently based off of the pub counts. Now I'd estimate it at 15-20k people concurrently, again, based off of the pub counts. I'd say most if not all people actively playing now would get it and the sales look pretty good, the CE is selling out in a number of places. Personally, at least a 1.5 years or so and by that time Blizz will probably be teasing the next expansion. But beyond that I'd be playing it off and on.

Pub count numbers are really misleading since they only show how many games aren't full. They don't show how many solo players there are or how many group games are full up.

 

[Isra]

Warning: rage post. Enjoy.

Spoiler

I will -never- give these guys another dime. I don't care how good the game is.

Fact of the matter is a lot of the franchise's fans didn't like the direction they were taking D3. A large number of these people, many of whom had supported the company for years, let their opinions be known well before release.

What did Blizzard do with that massive wave of constructive criticism? They became extremely obstinate, and when they failed at convincing people that the game wasn't a departure from the earlier games in the franchise, they all but turned around on their fans and told them to suck it. They got so smart ass that they even put a rainbow unicorn level in the game. Ha. Ha. Ha.

And then the game was complete shit. Joke's on them. It has a 3.9 user score on metacritic right now and a solid portion of the old fanbase moved to Path of Exile.

Now they admit they're wrong, make a few changes and ask us to reconsider? That takes some nerve. I bought games from Blizzard since 1994 until the D3 fiasco, and as a fan I felt that they spat in my face, stomped all over my one my favourite franchises and told me to like it all in the name of greed. It's not easy to make me mad. Even EA doesn't make me mad. But these guys... they made me really mad, because I had respected them, even revered them, and they told me to go fuck myself.

Well, Blizzard, you want this $40? Gooooooo fuck yourself!

 

[Ferisar]

Warning: rage post. Enjoy.

Spoiler

I will -never- give these guys another dime. I don't care how good the game is.

Fact of the matter is a lot of the franchise's fans didn't like the direction they were taking D3. A large number of these people, many of whom had supported the company for years, let their opinions be known well before release.

What did Blizzard do with that massive wave of constructive criticism? They became extremely obstinate, and when they failed at convincing people that the game wasn't a departure from the earlier games in the franchise, they all but turned around on their fans and told them to suck it. They got so smart ass that they even put a rainbow unicorn level in the game. Ha. Ha. Ha.

And then the game was complete shit. Joke's on them. It has a 3.9 user score on metacritic right now and a solid portion of the old fanbase moved to Path of Exile.

Now they admit they're wrong, make a few changes and ask us to reconsider? That takes some nerve. I bought games from Blizzard since 1994 until the D3 fiasco, and as a fan I felt that they spat in my face, stomped all over my one my favourite franchises and told me to like it all in the name of greed. It's not easy to make me mad. Even EA doesn't make me mad. But these guys... they made me really mad, because I had respected them, even revered them, and they told me to go fuck myself.

Well, Blizzard, you want this $40? Gooooooo fuck yourself!

Good thing metacritic userscores mean something. It's all fun and games until someone starts to realize: a 70 by reviewers means the game is a pile of shit, but an 80-100 means the reviewers were paid off and a game is still a pile of shit because, well, LOOK AT THE USER SCORES! They know what THEY'RE talking about, and aren't overreacting! We're gamers, we're all rational individuals who demonstrate our opinions through the use of the democratic process and various forums.

I'm sorry if I sound a slight bit sarcastic here, but mass user feedback (especially on websites where exaggerations are given numerical value) is worth very little.

 

[The_State]

Depends entirely on what skills your using. It's the same for all of the classes, some skills are just designed to have their animations in a certain way so it makes sense. eg. Fists of Thunder is going to be punches, Grenade is going to be you throwing a grenade etc.

In terms of character customisation you've got your skills, gear and paragon points. You get 1 paragon point each level beyond the base level cap with it taking turns for what category it's in. Each of the categories have 4 different stats you can put the point into. eg. Offense has Attack Speed, Cooldown Reduction, Critical Hit Chance and Critical Hit Damage. There'll all balanced so that they are pretty close in terms of how much you want them. All of them except for your main stat and Vitality cap out at 50 points so at paragon level 800 it'll go back to everyone having the same stats although that's a incredibly high amount, I personally haven't seen anyone at even half that.

Yes, all of the skills are still percentage based and that won't ever change either.

Not sure what you mean by this. MMOs aren't the only games to have a lot of balance, it's more for multiplayer games in general. If you're referring to some of the insane builds that have been around, of course they've been nerfed. Outliers have no place in a multiplayer game. In terms of viability though, most skills can be used without sacrificing huge damage or survivability. There's still the odd skill here and there that could use a buff but otherwise you can pretty much use anything you want and still perform relatively well.

But you still can't choose which skills to buy into, or how strong to make those skills through meaningful choices, right? I don't mean to be super-negative towards the game, but the decision to do away with skill points in favor of a rune system wherein every demon hunter of a particular level is essentially the exact same character with slightly different clothes on baffles me. Actually, that's not true. I think I understand it completely.

That decision makes balancing the various classes easier and creates an over-reliance on gear. When equipment is the only means by which to "advance" your character, the RMAH becomes a more powerful force. I am aware that the RMAH is now gone, but the echoes of its impact on game design still persist. Paragon points help to bandage that particular wound. They're essentially the base stats in the first two games in the series.

But that particular design philosophy is what I mean when I talk about it being designed like an MMO. I worded that poorly, as many MMOs are designed very differently now that we are finally coming out of the very long shadow cast by WoW. What I meant is that it is designed like WoW, but the modern WoW that has done away with talent trees in order to take the variable of character build out of the picture in favor of "gear score" and execution. These aren't necessarily poor decisions for that game since there is a culture within that game to succeed at a particular raid or boss, and success usually meant simply copying the meta-build for that character class anyway. It's a very "economical" model based on set percentages and very carefully calculated diminishing returns. Everyone is kept, quite purposefully, at a fairly level playing field so that every build has a chance to succeed. Of course, this required a massive reduction in the number of available builds, just to be sure there weren't any major duds. I'm not actually sure if even that effort was successful.

 

[black_knight1337]

I'm genuinely curious, which games are you looking at in particular? and how long have they been out for? While most AAA games on steam DO sit at higher price points for a year or two, the sales are quite frequent (especially on holidays) and they tend to slash the price 50-75% off, which is where my 10-15 dollar average spent on games comes from. I think it's a bit hard to make sweeping generalizations on steam for games being at certain prices unless you are looking at their publisher.

Civ V is still $70 after 3 years, CoD Black Ops is $90 after 3 years, Delta Force Xtreme 2 is $70 after 4 years, Kingdoms of Amalur is $60 after 2 years and the list goes on. Keeping it at retail costs long after release isn't just a Blizzard thing, it's done by a number of other as well.

for the second part....eh...I find it very hard to believe that (short of them having abysmal sales, which I mentioned earlier)

There was 50-75% off at Christmas, they had a birthday sale for Diablo 3, they've had pre-order discounts and so on. They do have their sales and even then, if you're not happy with their pricing, go to another store for them, places like Amazon have sales quite frequently.

and that is true, but that site is a bit....deceiving, it isn't that actiblizz is giving the "okay" for that price, it's that certain vendors are selling the keys at the lowest possible price they can go because they get it through magic, I mean fuck, you could (and still can) get thief keys pre-ordered for 22 bucks on release, and that is a standard 50-60 dollar AAA game that just came out.

Sure, using the same site you used as an example for lower prices is deceiving. I guess using Steam sales as an example for cheap prices can also be considered deceiving then.

Pub count numbers are really misleading since they only show how many games aren't full. They don't show how many solo players there are or how many group games are full up.

Yep, which if anything only supports my point. Essentially, there is at least numbers like that and of course including private games, full games and that I don't play at peak times the numbers would be much higher. Oh and another thing that isn't factored in is the level restrictions, I've got no idea what the levelling numbers are like. All in all I was essentially saying the numbers are still strong, far from "dead" like many people claim.

Warning: rage post. Enjoy.

Spoiler

I will -never- give these guys another dime. I don't care how good the game is.

Fact of the matter is a lot of the franchise's fans didn't like the direction they were taking D3. A large number of these people, many of whom had supported the company for years, let their opinions be known well before release.

What did Blizzard do with that massive wave of constructive criticism? They became extremely obstinate, and when they failed at convincing people that the game wasn't a departure from the earlier games in the franchise, they all but turned around on their fans and told them to suck it. They got so smart ass that they even put a rainbow unicorn level in the game. Ha. Ha. Ha.

And then the game was complete shit. Joke's on them. It has a 3.9 user score on metacritic right now and a solid portion of the old fanbase moved to Path of Exile.

Now they admit they're wrong, make a few changes and ask us to reconsider? That takes some nerve. I bought games from Blizzard since 1994 until the D3 fiasco, and as a fan I felt that they spat in my face, stomped all over my one my favourite franchises and told me to like it all in the name of greed. It's not easy to make me mad. Even EA doesn't make me mad. But these guys... they made me really mad, because I had respected them, even revered them, and they told me to go fuck myself.

Well, Blizzard, you want this $40? Gooooooo fuck yourself!

I'm not sure how much you've followed news about Diablo 3 but you're wrong on a number of things.
a)Almost every single thing that has been in the patches has been responding to constructive criticism. Of course some on the constructive criticism gets missed but you can't really blame them considering the volume of rubbish that gets posted on a daily basis.
b)Quality of the game is subjective and metacritic is hardly something to go by. Between 4chan(among others) trying to get the score to 3.7 and reviews that say one thing and then score another way it makes metacritic fairly inaccurate. Oh and all the ones just spamming "ERROR 37".
c)Yep, Path of Exile was essentially built upon the Diablo 3 hate train. They're really paying for that now though with the popularity of Diablo 3 shooting back up well beyond what Path of Exile is at currently. I mean, it's got almost 10x the amount of viewers on Twitch atm which says a lot for how much this patch has changed things.
d)Like above they've been doing this since release. It's consistently been along the lines of "Ok, feedback says that X isn't good for Y reasons, here's what we've done to try to fix that". And beyond that, Reaper of Souls isn't required to get things like the new loot system, difficulty scaling, paragon etc, those are all free. You're not losing anything but a bit of time to see if you like the changes they've made.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Can you play offline on the PC? If not forget it I will keep boycotting it.

 

[Isra]

Good thing metacritic userscores mean something. It's all fun and games until someone starts to realize: a 70 by reviewers means the game is a pile of shit, but an 80-100 means the reviewers were paid off and a game is still a pile of shit because, well, LOOK AT THE USER SCORES! They know what THEY'RE talking about, and aren't overreacting! We're gamers, we're all rational individuals who demonstrate our opinions through the use of the democratic process and various forums.

I'm sorry if I sound a slight bit sarcastic here, but mass user feedback (especially on websites where exaggerations are given numerical value) is worth very little.

No offense, but I don't particularly care about the accuracy. It can be argued that metacritic user scores don't mean anything. It can be argued that they mean more than the critic scores do. It can also be argued to great length that D3 was a total hijack of the franchise and its misappropriated title is reason enough to give it a very low score. And surely it can be argued very fairly that D3 is just a shitty cash-in treadmill of a game that thoroughly deserves those ratings, even with all biases, franchise names and rose tinted glasses put aside.

What can not be argued, because it is a fact, is that Blizzard handled the criticism they received about D3 in an extremely disrespectful manner to their existing fanbase during the months before D3's release and for a good while beyond that. I have no loyalty to a company that has no loyalty in return to the customers who made them who they are today. These guys even axed the very team who created Diablo and Diablo 2. Jay Wilson said of lead Diablo 1 & 2 designer David Brevik, and I quote, "Fuck that loser" after David said very civilly that, as co-creator of the fucking IP and legitimate owner of an opinion on the matter, he was a little disappointed in how D3 turned out. That is how obstinate these guys were, they wouldn't even listen to the guy who created the fucking franchise. Who kills a team that gave them one of their biggest franchises and then disrespects them openly while working on the sequel? I can't think of anything more disloyal than this. Sorry, I don't hand my paychecks to ingrates and cutthroats. You can if you want to, but I care where my money ends up. Go buy some EA games while you're at it.

I'm not sure how much you've followed news about Diablo 3 but you're wrong on a number of things.

I'm not wrong on a damned thing. They may have changed their tone with the community, issued apologies, moved Jay Wilson to another project and swept it all under the rug neatly. That doesn't change history.