A "blast" from the past?

I was one of many that were there on the very night Diablo 3 launched. I remember it so well as if it were yesterday. The launch party, the sausage fest and when I stood in line behind the many geeks to get my C.E edition of the game and how so excited I was.






On the night of release, I had my Red Bull + Whisky ready. Lights out. Perfect. I was thrilled and was counting the minute to get it installed.

You couldn't pre-load back then if you went with the C.E. edition. Game is installed, heart beats racing, I log in to see a queue asking me to wait for 1 hour!. So I waited patiently, and one hour later indeed I was in as the game promised but, just to find my self getting disconnected and having to do it again. Which I of course did. Many whiskey shots later and just as many hours after, I got in and I did not disconnect this time. I have chosen a barbarian. All looked perfect and I started and so did the endless headaches. From the Shielded elite affix that made the npcs accompanying the elite immune to damage until the elite dies to the very extreme damage of torment difficulty to the most importantly, Real Money Auction House, very low rate of anything at all whatsoever good dropping to the sudden removal of the Enchantress, which was reintroduced at later point in the final game.

People played during this time will remember so, so well, how God-like, the attack speed increase affix was at this time and how much of an incredible feat it was for an item to have +All res. Demon Hunters ruled initially but, Barbarian ruled supreme after with the WW build that made face rolling the game at the highest difficulties possible.

It was a living nightmare if there was ever one generally but I played it until the end of inferno and moved on with life and came back now so many years later to roll a Necromancer and ah, was I amazed with the changes!.

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Diablo was planning loot boxes back in 1994?

In the original design doc by Condor Games they talk about selling randomized loot on disks sold at game stores. Would there have been the same controversy back then as there is now?

Ref: http://www.graybeardgames.com/download/diablo_pitch.pdf

Hate behind (the Star Wars game specifically) was based on products that were advertised as part of the core game when in reality they were sold separately. People of course tend to get angry when they are lied to like this so that's it. Also the approach to play the game dosens of hours in order to unlock a character people expected to play the dosens of hours to begin with, of course, fuelled the fire further. It's okay to unlock things on the go thorough story progression and future DLCs, but vanilla content marketed the way they did, behind a paywall beyond initial cost, is cheating to say the least. Iconic and overpowered items won't help.

Lesson is: Never offer vanilla content behind a paywall beyond initial fee unless either the products are not overwhelming beyond competitive edge of skill or they don't have any symbolical value enough to draw contrary expectations in comparison to what you actually offer; in an environment that does not need the offered items for the players to progress in a game.

Go free-to-play if you want to play it safe. It's okay to offer items with some advantages, but the balance of skill must be kept at least at such moments where players compete against each other. When it comes to iconic characters like Luke Skywalker and other franchise mascots, make sure to clearly mention what your customers have to do in order to play as them in case they are actually sold separately and also separate them from the vanilla game marketing side. Plus, in case I need some in-game currency to pay for anything within a game I play, the products such currency can be used on are considered to be behind a paywall even though the same currency or yet another can be gained by playing the related game or games if the pace is beyond reasonable effort.

 Reasonable effort means to keep the gameplay experience fruitful and fresh to players every single moment as best as you can. One map and one character with a ten hour pace can only go as far as an early grave. Ten maps and ten characters with one hour pace may perform better, but ends in the same grave.

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A simple thing I believe would buff Legacy of Nightmares without making it overpowered.

I’m sure we can all agree that 2.6.1 brought the best balance in the game so far. What I really miss is an opportunity to use LoN to at least some comparison to the 6-piece sets’ power.

The problem with LoN is (as stated a lot times already) that it is extremely hard to balance and simply buffing numbers won’t do any good.

So my idea:
Both rings to have an empty slot for a Legendary power that can be transferred to them ONLY from another ring – CoE, ORotZ, Ring of Emptiness, Band of Might, etc.

Why I think that would work well:
- The biggest damage boosters occupy ring slots – Ring of Emptiness, CoE, F&R, Traveler’s Pledge, Krysbin’s Sentence, so it would be a more natural buff to LoN.
- Playstyles like LoN Bomb Crusader, that are not so loved by the community, won’t be affected, because they already use CoE, and for Crus there are not any other damage boosting rings.
- The 6-piece sets can still use the same ring legendary powers, so it would be easier to balance.

I don’t mind LoN being inferior to 6-piece sets, but at the moment the power gap is just too big. Let me know what you think.

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