I’m a bit disappointed. Not with the game itself, but with the playerbase.
Anyways, I’m currently pretty busy with college. I may revisit this blog when more patches come out or the expansion, or when I am less busy. It has been a good time. For now, I’ll be posting on my real-life blog, A Reasoner’s Miscellany.
From a thread I posted in the forums.
Confirmation Bias.
It is the tendency of humans to to only consider evidence that supports their own theories, while ignoring or pushing aside evidence that goes against their theories. It is most prominent in the “Drop rates were stealth nerfed” threads.
Consider a person who has an unshakable belief that a fair die is rigged to roll a 1 less often than it should. Now suppose the person conducts 6 tests of 6 rolls.
4 2 5 6 1 3
3 2 1 6 2 5
1 1 6 2 3 4
2 4 1 5 1 3
5 2 4 5 2 6
6 4 2 5 3 2
Statistically, this is far too small of a sample size to indicate anything wrong with the die. In fact, in total, the die rolled a 1 exactly 6/36 times, as expected. A statistician will look at this and conclude that the experiments show no evidence of the die being rigged. However, humans are not fully rational, and most humans are not statisticians, and thus do not think of the roll in a rational way.
Instead, if a person already had the pre-conceived notion that the die was rigged to roll 1’s less often, he would only consider experiments 5 and 6, in which 1’s rolled less often, to be relevant experiments. When you ask him, “What about the experiments 3 and 4?”, he will come up with some explanation such as, “It is just luck” or “That’s just a few cases and it does not indicate that the die is not rigged.”
This applies a double standard because his own good cases, experiments 5 and 6, were likewise based on luck and do not indicate anything about the die.
Stealth Nerf Delusions
Now, replace rolling a 1 with rolling an ilvl 63 rare, with proper adjustment for the actual drop rate percentages.
What goes through the mind of someone who is already assuming that the drop rate was nerfed? Basically, when this person has a “normal” run, such as experiments 1 and 2, he do not notice it. When he gets a “good” run, such as experiments 3 and 4, he dismisses the evidence because it is just randomness and luck. But when he gets a bad run, such as experiments 5 and 6, it suddenly becomes solid evidence of a drop rate nerf.
Just based on those two runs, a biased sub-sample of the data, they believe that the drop rate has been stealth nerfed.
This bias is a self-propagating. The more posts there are claiming drop rate nerfs, the more likely it becomes for someone who was previously skeptical to join in despite the lack of evidence. They start only noticing when they get unlucky streaks and start dismissing lucky or normal runs. When enough people believe in such a claim, it becomes a mass delusion.
Of course, under a delusion, people often become overly defensive about their position even though they have no rational reason to agree with it. When questioned, they start making even more ridiculous claims to support their original claim, akin to making up more lies to cover up the original lie. Only, they aren’t aware that it is a lie and they genuinely believe what they are saying to be the truth.
Randomness and Statistics
Besides confirmation bias, many people just don’t seem to understand what randomness is. People mistakenly think the following statements are true:
The first point is statistically not true. In fact, most of the time (82%), you will find less than or more than 5 ilvl 63 items in 100 runs. The Act 1 drop rates for ilvl 63 were analyzed in this post.
The result is that out of 100 random items from Act 1 Inferno, with a drop rate of 5% (rounded up from 4.8%), the chances to get exactly N ilvl 63 drops is the following:
0 : 0.592%
1 : 3.116%
2 : 8.118%
3 : 13.958%
4 : 17.814%
5 : 18.002% (Expected Value)
6 : 15.001%
7 : 10.603%
8 : 6.487%
9 : 3.490%
10: 1.672%
11: 0.720%
When you scale this up to 100,000 players, there should be hundreds of players (0.592%) who should find zero ilvl 63 drops in a random set of 100 drops in Act 1. Here the selection bias kicks in hard. These people who don’t find any ilvl 63 drops become much more likely to complain on the forums, thus becoming a vocal minority and vastly over-representing their actual distribution (0.592%) and try to make it seem as if they a much larger proportion (50%+) of players.
As far as the second point goes, that an event should be “due” when it hasn’t happened for a while, it is simply the Gambler’s fallacy. When an independently random event does not happen for a while, people erroneously assume that it is bound to happen soon. For example, if a coin has landed 10 Heads in a row, people will erroneously bet significant amounts of money on Tails because the chance to get 11 Heads in a row is tiny. This misses the real issue, as the chance for the next flip to be Tails is still 50-50. The chance to flip Tails does not increase when there is a Heads streak.
Similarly, when you don’t find an ilvl 63 item in a while, that does not mean the next item you find has more than a 4.8% chance to be ilvl 63. It still has the same chance as before.
Final Notes
The truth is often painful. But as life works, ignoring the truth does not make it false, and believing in a lie really hard does not make it true. A bunch of people believing in a lie also does not make it true. Someone might have all the faith in the world that the Earth is flat, and cite all the other people who believe this to be the case, but unfortunately, that does not make his theory correct.
Summary
I thought this was pretty amusing. It was the first time in a very long while that I found a strict upgrade. I’ve found plenty of decent upgrades along the way that sacrificed one or two stats to gain others, like losing 30 strength to gain 50 vitality. But I’ve never found an upgrade before that was strictly better statwise than my previous item after hitting Inferno. This was pretty epic.
Click the image to enlarge.
Well, patch 1.0.4 launched earlier today, with many, many changes. Here is a very brief summary:
After about 5 minutes of playing in the new patch, I found this:
The lifesteal affix was originally capped at 3%, but now apparently it can go up to 6%. This is pretty neat.
The Paragon level mechanic forced me to choose a character to main. I decided to go with the Wizard, as I feel it is the most diverse class.
Now I’m interested in what the next patch, 1.0.5, will bring.
Diablofans has datamined numerous changes to come in patch 1.0.4.
My prediction holds that a lot of abilities after the patch will still be useless. They did numerous buffs to certain abilities, but did not address core mechanics besides the Witch Doctor mana change, which is definitely a correct decision. It is sad to see, however, that Monks will have largely the same spirit regeneration as before. The new set bonuses on items are also not too appealing.
Who will benefit the most from the patch? Just judging by the datamined notes, it will be:
The Barbarian is going to absolutely stomp Inferno, and the Wizard has numerous new tricks up their sleeves. Demon Hunters got some well-rounded buffs, Witch Doctors will have many new playstyles, but Monks will mostly play the same as they do now.
Demon Hunter info here, Witch Doctor info here.
The pet changes are great, and the Demon Hunter buffs look decent. I just hope that the Wizard and Monk end up being great as well.
Wizard info here, and Monk info here.
Though these are previews only, they certainly do not outline enough changes to significantly increase the number of builds.
Energy Twister’s proc coefficient is nerfed with the new legendaries in mind. In addition, it is just obviously too powerful in its current state, like pre-nerf Nether Tentacles.
Overall these will be good buffs, but as I mentioned in my post about the Barbarian changes, the buffs shown are hardly enough.
Here’s the newly revealed cinematic:
The beginning reminds of me of the Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos intro cinematic, where a human and orc duel, only to be greeted by a more powerful enemy:
Could this throwback to Warcraft 3 be in anyway a hint to a possible future Warcraft 4? Who knows.
I made a post last week about my first impressions playing the PoE (closed) beta and shared my experience with the earlier stages of the game, comparing it to Diablo 3.
After about a week, I now have 4 characters:
My Ranger is on Act 1 Ruthless while the others are on Act 2 Cruel.
When I wrote my original review, I had great enthusiasm for the game, mostly delighted by the items and passive tree. But now, I think my enthusiasm was based on little more than the truth that “the grass is greener on the other side.” After barely a week of POE, I already feel bored and am switching back to playing Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2.
What I Liked
The passive skill tree itself is amazing.
The way items, skills, and skill gems work is pretty cool too.
Finally, the combat system is, for the most part, well done.
What I Did Not Like
There is very little mood or atmosphere. I know that the game is still in beta, but the story is conveyed through dialog boxes, which is pretty old fashioned.
In addition, the game is still insanely gear dependent. Many passive effects and skill effects are directly based on percentages of stats from gear. There should be a combination of scaling from skill level and gear. Things like Ethereal Knives feel really weird because of its sole scaling with skill level, while something like Burning Arrow essentially scales with gear only.
Next, we have the experience loss on death. This is an outdated punishment. It worked in true single-player games like Diablo 2, where a player could truly blame all deaths on himself. But in the era of online-only play, which POE has, you can’t institute such an insane punishment on death. I have personally died in POE due to random lag spikes, and it’s already bad having to walk all the way back through multiple levels of dungeons. I hate losing experience for it as well.
Then there’s the class discrepancy. My dual-wield claw Shadow just dies in seconds against anything if I ever stop moving in melee range. I have to keep kiting around in circles launching Fire Traps to whittle things down, and this happened in both Normal and Cruel.
The funny thing is, I can stand in melee range much longer on my Ranger and Wizard. My Ranger has higher evasion and dps, and can thus hit-stun monsters longer, and my Wizard has a ton of AOE freezing abilities to slow things down. And on my Marauder, I have died like twice the entire time, due to overconfidence or stupid mistake. The Marauder is just so bulky it’s hard to die with. My Shadow probably died like 15 times. In Normal difficulty. And 15 more times in Cruel so far. The rest of my characters combined is probably like 10. The Shadow needs much higher survivability.
Next is the actual usage of the passive tree in practice. This is closely related to the speed of leveling. Leveling at a quick rate = lots of skill points, and so on. The pace is pretty good up to about level 25. But then, it seems the leveling rate slows to a crawl once Cruel starts. It becomes pretty unrewarding, especially when we want that one good passive that’s 3 or 4 nodes away, but it will take an inordinate amount of time to get there.
Plus, the number of practical skill points compared to the size of the tree is insanely small. I pretty much get bored in Act 2 Cruel because leveling becomes so incredibly slow. In addition, the experience loss on death makes this even crueler, especially on my Shadow, which I now have no desire to play.
Now onto combat. One of the things I do not like is the run-away behavior.
In that screenshot, I had literally chased him for about 15 seconds, getting a hit every once in a while due to luck. If I didn’t get a lucky hit for a few seconds, the monster would just start regenerating energy shield and it would take more hits to just knock out the shield.
The auras are also not very creative. Flat damage reduction, flat attack damage or speed boost, extra health, extra energy shield, and the worst one yet, Allies Cannot Die? Diablo 3 at least has interesting ones such as Molten, Fire Chains, and Arcane Enchanted.
Then we have monster abilities. Enemies lose health over time? This one is really frustrating, because there is nothing I can do besides hope I have enough potions to heal through it. And the worst one of all: Perma-freezing.
Some of those frost elemental monsters just spam Cold Snap over and over and over on your position, and you have to keep running. Cold Snap has a chance to freeze, and sometimes you can literally get chain frozen. Once a single Cold Snap freezes you, you’re pretty much doomed since there is a high chance that within a couple seconds, another one will freeze you, leading to perma-freeze.
For those of you who play Diablo 3, imagine if the Frozen affix allowed elites to explode their freeze bombs instantly and chain cast it on top of you. That’s what these monsters are like in POE.
Conclusion
When I wrote my other post, I was just choosing to look at the good aspects of the game. Now that I’ve played it for a much longer time, I have also seen its follies.
It was a well spent $15 for the supporter pack for the beta test of POE, but I think that for now, my $60 on Diablo 3 was far better spent. I hope both games continue to get better. 😀
Here is the official Blizzard link.
This is a step in the right direction and indeed opens up many possibilities for the class. However, I believe this is nowhere near enough to make all skills and runes useful. Blizzard did not announce that there would be more changes to the class, so it’s safe to assume that these will be the only Barbarian changes in 1.0.4.
Rune Choices
For instance, the vast majority of people who use Frenzy are still going to use the Sidearm rune. The other runes are not being changed, so they cannot really compete. People who use Cleave are still going to use Broad Sweep. People who use Leap are still going to use Iron Impact. The other runes need to be buffed significantly.
Skill Choices
Some skills are still much better than others. Who would take Ground Stomp over Leap or Furious Charge? Who is going to take Threatening Shout over War Cry? We need to make these skills more attractive.
Passive Choices
Even worse, many of the passives are still much better than others. A passive should feel noticeable when you take it.
Good examples:
Bad examples:
Similar things can be said for Juggernaut and Unforgiving. Even Boon of Bul-Kathos could use a buff.
Conclusion
The changes are headed in the right direction, but are simply not enough. Someone really needs to look at each skill/rune choice and passive and try to make them all feel powerful.
Diablo 3 Rants 