Mike Morhaime’s Message
July 19, 2012 in News! by Motorskull
Mike Morhaime has written a state-of-the-game message to players via the official forums.
It’s an interesting read, covering issues from launch til now and then looking forward to Diablo 3′s future plans.
Have a look!
“You’ve seen some of that work already in patch 1.0.3, and you’ll see additional improvements with patch 1.0.4. On the game balance front, this update will contain changes designed to further deliver on the team’s goal of promoting “build diversity,” with buffs to many rarely used, underpowered class abilities. Another topic we’ve seen actively discussed is the fact that better, more distinct Legendary items are needed. We agree. Patch 1.0.4 will also include new and improved Legendary items that are more interesting, more powerful, and more epic in ways you probably won’t be expecting.”
I support seeking build diversity – it is a worthy goal. It should be interesting to see what they buff up and how.
And the phrase “in ways you probably won’t be expecting” in regards to the buff for legendaries makes me salivate a little. I wanna know more!
Hehe, that quote you’ve pulled out from the forum post is at once pretty exciting and a little disturbing to me.
I really want to see more build diversity. One of the things I don’t like is a situation where certain skills are must-haves whilst everything else is garbage.
The encouraging thing is that they want to make the lesser-used skills and passives more appealing through buffs, and not nerfing the so-called must-haves. Hooray!
The thing that I find disquieting is the Legendary item buff. What I’m expecting is that they’ll make them too powerful and they’ll become the only items you’ll want… so I am hoping against hope that I can take Mike at his word and they’ll change them “in ways I probably won’t be expecting.”
I’ve made no secret of the fact that I don’t like Legendaries, since if they are too powerful, you get cookie cutter characters and if they’re not powerful enough no one wants to use them at all. Added to which, there is a widely held perception that Orange must equal godly (simply because of their ‘legendary’ status) or else the game is broken.
If I had my way, the color orange would be consigned to the bin, and you would get rare items occasionally spawning with flavor text on them instead.
I think legendaries are precisely the type of items that can be used to shake up affix restrictions. Some current example in D3 are those Lacuni bracers that have runwalk on them, or The Oculus which can spawn an increased Blizzard duration mod.
One of my favorite D2 examples is Ormus’ Robes, which could spawn +3 to any specific Sorceress skill with level requirement 24 or below. Sure, it might not be as good as Chains of Honor (stupid overpowered runewords), or as generally useful as Skin of the Vipermagi or Skullder’s Ire, but it was a unique alternative.
It might also be interesting to make some class-restricted items with powerful off-class stat buffs. For instance, a quiver with huge Strength and Intelligence buffs, but no Dexterity buff, could be chosen for defensive perks.
I am hoping to see some proccing mods that are more reliable. As is, I don’t really see how it is possible to stack up proccing effectively (besides critical hit or bleed proccing). Having a Fear or Freezing-themed legendary item could be quite satisfying.
I’ve also wondered if it is possible to extend the duration in general of crowd control skills (freezing, fearing, etc.) through an item mod. Some skills seem useless in the late game due to the extreme CC reduction of enemies, so it would be nice to be able to overcome that to some degree.
I am very excited about this patch, I think it could help add a little more back into the game till 1.1. I hope they make legendary items have multi-colored text that the colors keep rotating through just for Mark to further enjoy them. Fun Times.
See you in game,
Slayer
As long as the colors cycled through at about 400 Hz and they add in a Norwegian black metal soundtrack to each item, I’m all for your suggestion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOOebk_dKFo
The soundtrack when Leoric rises at the beginning of the battle is as good as you get.
ROFL, you guys are awesome