Starcraft Patch 1.5

Official patch notes here: [link]

These changes look pretty stellar for the map editor. It’s good to know that Blizzard has kept some focus on the editor, as it is an extremely important part in the longevity of the game.

Starcraft 1 had a pretty decent editor at release, but Brood War made it much better. Warcraft 3 had an amazing editor at release, and The Frozen Throne made it godly, capable of creating DotA. By the time SC2 was released, the vast majority of games played on Warcraft 3 were custom games.

It looks like Starcraft 2 is prepping its map editor for Heart of the Swarm. This is pretty exciting. As a WC3 map maker, I was planning to craft some things with the SC2 editor, but it was just too clunky compared to the WC3 editor. Since I didn’t want to spend too much time on it, I decided to wait till Heart of the Swarm or even Legacy of the Void to start working on maps.

With Patch 1.5 just in, I might give it a try right away… if I can get the patch to work.

Edit: Got the patch working. The new UI looks pretty neat.

Diablo 3: No-AH Hardcore Mode

There’s not much left for me to do in softcore. I’ve leveled one of each class to 60 and beaten Inferno, twice. I’ve played funny/gimmick builds on my characters like a Melee Meteor Wizard, a Thorns/Life Leech Pet Witch Doctor, a ranged Barbarian, a Grenades/Rockets Demon Hunter, and a fairly normal Monk, since Monks just don’t have much variety.

Anyways, this has led me to try out Hardcore, with a couple of restrictions:

• I cannot use the AH.
• I cannot take items from other players.

I want to see how far I can get without external help, and see if the drop rates are indeed balanced against the difficulty in Nightmare and Hell. (It’s obviously balanced in Normal, and obviously not balanced in Inferno.)

So far, I’m overleveling on Nightmare a bit, because I want to minimize the chance of death. I have a level 46 Barbarian, 45 Monk, and 45 Wizard all at the start of Act 3, and I am farming Bastion’s Keep for levels. The reason I made those 3 classes is so that I can share Str/Dex/Int gear with the appropriate class, as I am not using the AH. A Demon Hunter is just too risky in my experience. In softcore, I have more “stupid” deaths on my Demon Hunter than on any other class, just because of how fragile they are. And a Witch Doctor is too bland compared to the Wizard, who can actually use a small variety of builds.

It’s a thrill every time I find a good item upgrade, but at the same time, most items are already turning out to be junk. I crafted 20 of the 5-prop level 46 belts, and only 2 of them were actually upgrades of my level 31-42 belts that my characters currently had. Of course, I know from softcore that this only gets much worse in Inferno. However, I would like to see how Nightmare/Hell feel in general. I will post results here.

I have so far lost a level 34 Wizard. I was farming Crypt of the Ancients, and ran into a rare group of Horde Arcane Enchanted. I got completely surrounded with Teleport still on cooldown, and then TWO Arcane Sentries spawned right underneath me. Not one, but TWO. I couldn’t move. I popped Diamond Skin and tried to wait for Teleport to come back up, but the two arcane orbs ate my Wizard alive.

Anyways, I rolled a new Wizard that is level 45 now, as explained above. I’m trying to avoid surrounds from now on.

Diablo 3 Quotes vs Starcraft 1 and Warcraft 3 Quotes

Narrator: We never paid any heed to the ancient prophecies… like fools we clung to the old hatreds… and fought as we had for generations. Until the day the sky rained fire, and a new enemy came upon us. We stand now, upon the brink of destruction, for the reign of chaos has come at last.

-Warcraft 3

Archimonde: Let this scar signify the first blow against the mortal world. From this seal shall arise the doom of men, who, in their arrogance, sought to wield our fire as their own. Blindly they build their kingdoms upon stolen knowledge and conceit. Now they shall be consumed by the very flame they sought to control. Let the echoes of doom resound across this wretched world, that all who live may hear them and despair.

-Warcraft 3

Zeratul: You speak of knowledge, Judicator? You speak of experience? I have journeyed through the darkness between the most distant stars. I have beheld the births of negative-suns and borne witness to the entropy of entire realities… Unto my experience, Aldaris, all that you’ve built here on Aiur is but a fleeting dream. A dream from which your precious Conclave shall awaken, finding themselves drowned in a greater nightmare.

-Starcraft 1

Quotes like these are the reason that people have such high expectations for Blizzard’s story experiences. Let’s take a look at a few quotes from Diablo 3, which have, to many, caused disappointment:

Azmodan: While you tinkered with your paltry catapults, my demons breached the depths of your keep.

Diablo: So, you approach the Oculus with the aim to destroy it? You will not succeed!

Diablo: Look, Tyrael… your old lieutenant.

-Diablo 3

How can these sayings possibly instill fear, or despair, or any type of emotion?

Taking monologues aside, we can also look at how dialogue was done so much more effectively in SC1 and WC3.

Duran: This creature is the completion of a cycle. It’s role in the cosmic order was preordained when the stars were young. Behold the culmination of your history.
Zeratul: All I behold is an abomination.
Duran: Your violence, young prodigal, is typical. As is your inablility to comprehend the greater scheme of things. You can destroy all of the specimens here. It will do you no good. For I have seeded the Hybrid on many, many worlds. You will never find them all before they awaken… And when they do… your universe will be changed… forever.

-Starcraft 1

Terenas: What is the meaning of this? Who are you?
Medivh: Humanity is in peril! The tides of darkness have come again, and the whole world is poised upon the brink of war!
Ambassador: Enough of this! Guards, remove this madman!
Medivh: Hear me! The only hope for your people is to travel West, to the forgotten lands of Kalimdor! [There is huge outrage by the ambassadors.]
Ambassador: [astounded] Travel West?! Are you mad?
Terenas: Hold ambassador. I don’t know who you are or what you believe, but this is not the time for rambling prophets! Our lands ARE beset by conflict, but it shall be WE who decide how best to protect our people, not YOU! Now, begone!
Medivh: I failed humanity once before, and I will not do so again. If you can not take up this cup, I shall find another who will.
Medivh (narration): The warning has been given. Their fate is now their own.

-Warcraft 3

[Raynor has been sent to rendezvous with Kerrigan, a beautiful psychic]
Lt. Sarah Kerrigan: Captain Raynor, I’ve finished scouting out the area, and… you pig!
Jim Raynor: What! I haven’t even said anything to you yet.
Lt. Sarah Kerrigan: Yeah, but you were thinking it.
Jim Raynor: Oh, yeah! you’re a telepath.
[referring to the mission]
Jim Raynor: Look, Lets just get on with this, ok?

-Starcraft 1

And now a couple from Diablo 3:

Leah: I miss Uncle Deckard so much… It’s hard going on without him.
Player: Cain would be proud of you, Leah.
Leah: Thank you… I’m going to get back to my research.

Adria: While I was in Tristram, Deckard Cain told me of a black soulstone crafted by a renegade Horadrim. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but later, realized its true significance.
I knew the essences of the five slain Lords of Hell still existed in our world, so I spent the last twenty years locating and preparing them to be drawn into the stone when it was finished.
Player: Finished?
Adria: Kulle was interrupted during his first attempt. Now that the soulstone is finally complete, the Lords of Hell have been trapped within it.

These violate the basic principle of “show, don’t tell,” and they just have no emotion whatsoever. Look at the Starcraft 1 and Warcraft 3 examples. A lot more is expressed in each dialogue than just the words.

The only good quotes I found were in a couple of the cinematics:

Cain: And at the end of days… The first sign shall appear in the Heavens. Justice shall fall upon the world of men… The armies of Light and Shadow will clash across the fields of eternity.

That line, from the intro cinematic, actually carries some emotional resonance. Same with one other quote in the fall of Heaven cinematic:

Leah/Diablo: Even in the heart of Heaven… angels can still feel fear.

In context, that is by far the best line in the whole game. Yet most of the lines are nothing like it. Instead, we have stuff like “While you tinkered with your paltry catapults, my demons breached the depths of your keep,” or “Thank you… I’m going to get back to my research,” or “That is not the only hell rift… The flow of my legions will not stop.” It’s like you gave the cinematics a couple of good lines and then gave the rest of the game mediocre lines that an average elementary school student could have thought of.

Why Diablo 2’s Skill System Was Overall Better than Diablo 3’s

[From my post on http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/6201700441]

PROS of D2 Skill System:

1. Much less gear dependence.

In Diablo 3, every skill does damage based on your gear. This is a fact. In Diablo 2, you can walk around naked, but your level 20 Frozen Orb will still flatten legions of hellspawn (albeit maybe not as efficiently). But if you try to walk around naked in Diablo 3, you will get 1-shot by zombies and do no damage. This leads to the feeling in Diablo 3 that your character is innately weak, while in Diablo 2, your character is innately strong.

2. Items add choice, not just damage.

In Diablo 2, you could build a Fire/Ice hybrid Sorc and not have Energy Shield, but get Energy Shield from an item. So you can make a real and interesting gear choice like “Do I want gear with +Fire/Ice to boost my damage or do I want an Energy Shield for defense?” Not a bland gear choice like “Do I want 1799 int and 842 resists or 1826 int and 814 resists?” There are probably a hundred other examples I could use within D2’s interesting item affixes.

3. Synergies add complexity.

Take Freezing Arrow for example:

Leveling Freezing Arrow: +cold damage, + attack rating, but also +mana cost
Leveling Cold Arrow (synergy): +% cold damage to Freezing Arrow
Leveling Ice Arrow (synergy): +freeze duration to Freezing Arrow

While I’m not saying that the synergy skills are always worth it to level, or that there are that many viable builds, I am saying that the potential for interesting complexities exists. For instance, if I wanted to make my Freezing Arrow stronger but with my current gear I am extremely starved on mana, I could level Cold Arrow to increase the damage of Freezing Arrow without increasing its mana cost. Granted, you could just spam mana potions, but at least an interesting interaction is going on.

In Diablo 3, the only “synergies” that boost other skills are currently the ones that remove diversity by taking up a skill slot. Want to make your Blizzard/Hydra more powerful? Use Magic Weapon! Even more powerful? Use Familiar with Sparkflint! More survivability? Energy Armor and Teleport! Do you see the problem here? You took up 4 skill slots just to make your other 2 more effective in combat. The same can be said of most other Wizard builds. Some combination of Magic Weapon, Familiar, Energy Armor, and Teleport are in every Inferno Wizard build.

4. Character personality and diversity.

In Diablo 2, builds could feel completely different. Javazon vs Bowazon. It’s like playing a different class. Summonmancer vs Poisonmancer. Etc.

As stated in point #3, this is not true for Diablo 3. A Blizzard/Hydra Wizard in Diablo 3 feels almost the same as a Disintegrate/Archon Wizard, because the other 4 skills will likely be the same (Magic Weapon, Familiar, Energy Armor, and Teleport), with maybe 1 difference.

CONS:

1. Permanence

I played D2 long before the patch that added in respecs, so skills were permanent. This was terrible because you could waste many hours on leveling a character with a build that is flat-out not viable in Hell. Example: Skelemancer. This was my first character, and I was beyond frustrated when I first got to Hell, when I couldn’t kill anything. I was forced to roll a new character.

In D3, the respec feature is great.

2. Useless Prereqs

Though with synergies, this wasn’t much of an issue.

Analysis: How to Improve Diablo 3’s Skill System

Usually when you design a new system, such as Diablo 3’s skill system, you want to keep the pros of the previous system (D2’s skill system) while eliminating or mitigating its cons.

Diablo 3 successfully negated 2 cons of the Diablo 2 skill system as mentioned above. However, it failed to keep any of the pros.

I am going to go through each of the pros once again, but explain a solution in each case that implements it in Diablo 3.

1. Much less gear dependence.

This is simple. The current problem is that the ratio of Stats From Gear to Stats On Character is too damn high. If you took off all your gear besides your weapon, you would be dealing 10-30 times less damage. For instance, a Monk might have 200 base dex, but 2000 dex from gear.

Since this is merely a number issue, the way to fix it is either:
* Nerf gear
* Buff base stats

Many people would get mad if their gear were nerfed, so it would have to be a buff of the base stats. A Monk should have at least 1000 base Dex at level 60. Same with a Wizard having 1000 base int, or a Barbarian having 1000 base strength.

To really make it feel like D2, 1000 base primary stats would not be enough. You would need 2000 to match the gear. But that might seem a bit extreme, so 1000 is a good base for now.

2. Items add choice, not just damage.

This can actually be fixed simply by adding more variety to item affixes. More on-hit procs that cause certain spells to occur, or more +20% damage to X spell (instead of +2% damage to X spell), will help solve this problem.

3. Synergies add complexity.

Now we get to the complex part. There is no obvious way to add synergies to D3 skills, since we don’t level them anymore. However, there is a solution I can think of. Consider each skill at level 0 if not in your build, and 1 if it is.

Certain skill combos could have synergies. For instance, if you take both Blizzard and Ice Armor, then Blizzard gains +30% damage. This would make the player make a meaningful choice between “Do I want Energy Armor for survivability or Ice Armor for synergy with Blizzard?”

This would take a lot of time to design due to the sheer number of skill combos and synergies, and knowing Blizzard, if they ever were to do this, it would be in an expansion. However, we can drastically reduce the number of individual skill synergies we need to design, with the following, radical idea:

4. Character personality and diversity.

That idea, which knocks out #3 and #4 with one stone, is a skill set system. It basically works like item sets: If you have N items in a particular item set, you gain the N-set bonus. Similarly, if you choose N skills from a particular set, you gain the N-set bonus. This would massively improve the complexity of the skill system, massively increase build diversity, and massively increase character personality.

How would it work? Here’s an example. Say you really liked using Frost and Ice spells on your Wizard and wanted to build a pure Frost Wizard. Right now this is impossible, because giving up Teleport/Energy Armor/Force Weapon/Familiar is too high of a cost. Therefore, I propose that the following skills belong in a set, say the “Freezing Set”:

Wizard Freezing Set
-Blizzard (any rune)
-Frost Nova (any rune)
-Meteor w/Comet
-Hydra w/Frost Hydra
-Ray of Frost (any rune)
-Ice Armor (any rune)

Set Bonuses
(3) All Frost damage increased by 30%.
(4) Reduces Frost damage taken by 75%.
(5) Cannot be Frozen.
(6) All of the Wizard’s Freeze durations are doubled.

Now say you use 3 of the above skills in your build. You gain a “3-set Frost” bonus. With 4 of the skills in your build, you get a “4-set Frost” bonus in addition to that. Etc. Maybe 4 is enough, I don’t know if 5 or 6 is necessary. But this is just for an example.

So if you are using Blizzard, Frost Nova, Comet, Frost Hydra, Ray of Frost, and Ice Armor, you basically become a Frost God. This way, you actually make a meaningful choice: “Do I choose between the survivability or damage of Energy Armor/Magic Weapon, or do I want the freezing power of the Freezing Set?

Note this would also be a unique “build.” Right now I’d argue there is no actually unique build for Wizards, because every build uses some combination of Energy Armor/Magic Weapon/Familiar/Teleport/Diamond Skin. With skill sets added, one Wizard (Freezing) might have completely different abilities than another Wizard (Flaming), which would make characters feel much more personalized. This also makes respec’ing feel like you actually change something fundamental about your character, not just change around 2 skill slots and leave the other 4 alone.

I call this paradigm “Builds, not spells.” We should be playing different builds, not the same build framework with different color animations for our attacks. Right now spells like Energy Armor/Force Weapon/Teleport/Familiar/Diamond Skin for Wizards, and to some degree, War Cry/Battle Rage for Barbarians, Serenity/Breath of Heaven for Monks, Spirit Walk for Witch Doctors, and Smoke Screen/Shadow Power for Demon Hunters, make it so that no build actually feels unique, as they all overlap spells.

Summary:
* D3’s skill system solves a couple big problems of the D2 skill system, but it retains none of the greatness that the D2 system had.
* How to fix: Epic buff to character base stats, more interesting items, and some way of adding synergies to skills and promoting “builds” instead of “spells.”

Stats 101: Understanding RNG in Diablo 3

This is from a post I made on the forums regarding RNG. The thread is here:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/6193839632

The Simplest Case

To begin, consider a coin flip. Assuming the coin is fair, it has a 50% chance to land Heads (H) and a 50% chance to land Tails (T). Thus, if you throw 100 coins, you would expect 50 H and 50 T. In summary:

Experiment: 100 coin flips
Expectation: 50 H, 50 T

But if you actually try this out, you will find, perhaps surprisingly, that you will most likely not get exactly 50 H and 50 T. You might get 46/54. Or 57/43. Or 51/49. Or even, more rarely, 33/67.

As it turns out, the chance to get exactly 50/50 is only 7.959%.

This distribution is called a Binomial Distribution and the formula is [100!/(50!*50!)] * 0.5^100. For more information, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_distribution

Diablo 3 Item Drops

Among other things, there have been many unfounded claims of a “stealth nerf” to drop rates of ilvl 63 gear. According to Blizzard, the drop rate of ilvl 63 gear in Act 1 Inferno is 4.8%: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/6214196/Diablo_III_Hotfixes_-_June_Updated_629-6_29_2012

Let us round this to 5% for convenience.

Now let us say someone collects 100 rare items in Act 1 Inferno. He would expect 5 of them to be of ilvl 63 quality.

Experiment: 100 rare items
Expectation: 5 ilvl 63 rares, 95 non-ilvl 63 rares

The chance to get exactly 5 ilvl 63 rares, however, is not very high: it is only 18.0%. (The formula is [100!/(5!*95!)] * .05^5 * .95^95.) What this means is that 82% of the time, you will not get 5 ilvl 63 rares.

Here is a table of the chance to obtain X ilvl 63 rares in 100 random Act 1 rares:
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%

It falls off rapidly after that.

Point is, if you add up the chances for 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 drops, you end up with a 41% to find less than 5 rares, even though 5 is the expected number!

So a post that simply says “I farmed X rares, but only Y of them were ilvl 63” does not in any way imply the RNG system is broken. Fact is, there is a 41% chance to find less than 5 rares in a set of 100. This is why people often say, “Random is random.”

Short version of the table:

Chance to find X ilvl 63 rares in a random set of 100 rares in Act 1 Inferno
< 5: ~41%
= 5: ~18%
> 5: ~41%

Every time you find more than 5 or less than 5, that is NOT a sign that Blizzard stealth buffed or stealth nerfed the drop rate.

Of course, even if you find 5 ilvl 63s, the chance of any of them being remotely valuable in the current economy is absurdly small. See the thread linked at the top for more information on that. Moving on…

The same holds for goblin spawn rates, item stat rolls, etc. Every time you find >3 or ❤ goblins in 10 runs of the Ancient Path (the expectation is 3, or 30% of 10), that is not a sign that there was a stealth buff or stealth nerf.

Confusion Over Random Versus Pseudorandom

Some people have tried to argue that Diablo 3’s system is not random, and that it is pseudorandom. It turns out these people have been lost to semantics.

True randomness has the implication that sometimes you do not get what you expected, like in the examples above. In true randomness, it is possible to flip 10 Heads in a row.

A pseudorandom generator, on the other hand, might change some parameters to make it “appear” to be random, but in fact be less random. For example, a pseudorandom generator might see 5 Heads in a row, and then massively increase the chance for the next flip to be Tails.

So if Diablo 3 were pseudorandom, then when you don’t get an ilvl 63 item for a while, the drop rate of ilvl 63 items is dynamically increased, making the next item more likely to be ilvl 63. And when you get a lot of ilvl 63 items in a row, the drop rate is dynamically decreased. So your chance to find exactly 5 ilvl 63 items in 100 items will likely be higher than 18%.

Since Diablo 3, as far as we know, uses something that is practically true randomness, you can have lucky and unlucky streaks. When this happens, the Gambler’s Fallacy often kicks in. When someone doesn’t find an ilvl 63 item in a while, they think that one is “due” any moment, when in fact, the drop rate stays exactly the same, so their chance of finding an ilvl 63 item is just as low as before. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_fallacy

Edit: There are other types of pseudorandom as well, such as using the units digit in the nanosecond clock on your computer to generate seed numbers. For instance, the time right now might be 102958208392, but in approximately one second, the clock might say 103952854849.

Let’s just say that, in a super simplified example, that if the last 2 digits say 95, 96, 97, 98, or 99, you are given an ilvl 63 (5% chance). Even if you try to time the second perfectly, you cannot possibly get to nanosecond precision. This is method is practically random and, being practically random, thus explains why people think they have bad streaks of ilvl 63 finding.

New Section: The Many Layers of RNG

Many people in the comments wanted me to talk about why the average drop seems to be terrible. While the relative aspect of it is dealt with in the post linked all the way at the top, I suppose I could add a brief blurb about it here, in a thread that deals fully with RNG.

There are 5 layers of RNG. In the order they appear or roll:

• item level
• # of affixes
• which affixes
• which tiers the affixes rolled
• the final number within that tier’s stat range

In Diablo 2, which used roughly the same system (though it was much less gear-based, so it feels different), your rolls could completely terrible on a couple of these steps, and you could still get a pretty good item.

But in Diablo 3, you have to hit every step almost perfectly to get even a remotely decent item. Doesn’t have a high enough item level? Bad item. Low # of affixes? Bad item. Wrong affixes? Bad item. Low affix tiers? Bad item. Low numbers? Bad item.

What is the chance of rolling a godly item? Just using wild estimations here, suppose you are farming Act 1, it doesn’t really matter. The chance to get an ilvl 63 is 4.8%, but we’ll round this all the way up to 10%. The chance to get a 6 properties is say ~10%. The third step, however, is a killer one. You have to roll exactly the affixes you need for 6 affixes, so the chance is absurdly low, possibly lower than 0.0001%. But let’s just say it’s 0.0001%. Then you need to roll the right tier. Say this is around 10%, but this is for each affix, so the total factor on the item needs to be counted 6 times, or 0.0001%. Finally, to roll high numbers on those, let’s say you want in the top 10%, counted 6 times, or 0.0001%.

Therefore, the chance to obtain a godly item is somewhere on the order of magnitude of .1*.1*.000001*.000001*.000001 = 0.00000000000000000001.

Basically, the chance of this happening is like drawing 2 Royal Flushes in a row, and then getting struck by lightning.

Summary

• The chance to obtain the expected number, whether on item level, goblin spawn rates, or something else, is actually pretty low.
• Even though Act 1 has a 4.8% (near 5%) chance to drop ilvl 63 items, the chance of actually finding 5 ilvl 63 items in a random set of 100 drops from Act 1 is only 18%.
• There is a 41% chance of finding less than 5 ilvl 63 drops, and a 41% chance of finding more than 5 ilvl 63 drops.
• Getting an unexpected result is normal, and even probable. It does not mean Blizzard stealth-changed something.
• For all practical purposes, the RNG in Diablo 3 is true random and not pseudorandom. But as shown in the post, pseudorandom might in fact be better psychologically for players.
• There are many layers of RNG in the item roll, which makes it extremely difficult, if not practically impossible, to roll a powerful item.
• American math education is in a deplorable condition.
• “Random is random.”

Mathematics: Why The AH Is The Main Problem

I originally posted this article on the US battle.net forums, where it has met surprisingly positive responses. I expected to be trolled, but it seems the trolls were on vacation that day.

Many people ask, “Why am I not finding upgrades?” and “Why am I forced to use the AH to progress?”

These are both valid questions, and the answer in both cases is the existence of the AH. Let me explain.

This blue post by Wyatt Cheng should provide a background for what I am about to delve into:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/6317360/6317360#misc

If you don’t want to read through the math and want to skip to the conclusion, scroll down to the part where there are two bulleted lists and start from there.

The Item Scale

First we need a mathematical scale to assign items. By convention, I am going to use a 0 to 100 scale. Let us only consider rare quality (yellow) items.

A 0 is the worst possible rare item you can find in Inferno. E.g., a level 51 chest piece that rolled 10 dex, 46 thorns, 200 health globe healing bonus, and 6 gold pickup radius. You can probably imagine worse, but that item is well under a 1 on the 0 to 100 scale.

A 100 is the absolute best-in-slot item for some slot, with perfect rolls on the stats you want. E.g., Archon Armor chest piece with 200 str, 300 vit, 3 sockets, 80 resist all, and perfect rolls on base armor and bonus armor. This item is a 100.

Everything in between works in percentiles. An item of scale level 99 is better than 99% of Inferno rares. A 10 item is only better than 10% of Inferno rares.

When we talk about “good” items, we only care about items near the 100 end of the scale.

10% More Stats Is NOT 10% More Rare.

I’m going to give two examples of chest pieces to demonstrate relative rarity, which is key to the argument. Say both are ilvl 63:

Chest A:
70 str
70 int
70 vit
70 resist all

Chest B:
77 str
77 int
77 vit
77 resist all

The common but false conclusion to jump to is that Chest B is 10% more rare than Chest A because it has 10% more of every stat. The conclusion is false because several 77’s are much harder to roll than several 70s. The math is below. We conclude that Chest B is in fact 5 times rarer than Chest A.

Say the roll range for Str and Int are 20-100. It’s possible to roll more due to also rolling an affix that has 2 stats, but let’s not worry about that. Say these chest pieces rolled the same types of affixes. Similarly, say that the vit roll is 20-200, and the Resist All roll is 20-80. I know these exact ranges may be off but the fundamental result is the same for my demonstration.

Supposing you rolled a chest that had Str, Int, Vit, and Resist All, what is the chance that it will be strictly better than or equal to Chest A?

The chance is (31/81)*(31/81)*(131/181)*(11/61) = 1.91%

Is the chance to roll strictly better than or equal to Chest B only 10% lower than that? No, it is actually a lot lower!

The chance is (24/81)*(24/81)*(124/181)*(4/61) = 0.39%

Chest B is almost 5 times rarer than Chest A.

And to make it worse, the percentages above are only of the items that rolled Str, Int, Vit, and Resist All, which is a fairly desirable combo despite having only 4 properties. Even having a terrible roll with these 4 properties is still better than any 4-prop chest with Health Globe Healing Bonus, Gold Pickup Radius, Thorns, and say Dex.

Most of Your Items Are In the Top 1%

But wait, you probably don’t just have such 4-prop items. You probably have 5- or 6-prop rares that are much better. But what we have shown above is that even Chest B is in the top 0.39% of ilvl 63 chests that roll those relatively desirable stats.

So Chest A might be around 95 on the 0-100 scale, and Chest B, being 5 times rarer, is a 99. But what about 5 and 6 prop gear? Consider Chest C and Chest D below:

Chest C:
77 str
77 int
77 vit
77 resist all
3 sockets

Chest D:
77 str
77 int
77 vit
77 resist all
3 sockets
597 life regeneration

Chest C is clearly much better than Chest B, and Chest D is much better than Chest C!

How much rarer is Chest C than Chest B? There are 3 factors at play: rarity of 5-prop versus 4-prop, rarity of the +sockets affix, and rarity of 3 sockets within the +sockets affix.

With these combined together, Chest C is likely 30 or more times rarer than Chest B, but just to keep numbers simple, say it is only 10 times rarer. Thus Chest C would have the value 99.9.

Chest D adds a 6th affix as well as an extremely high roll of a nice affix. It’s probably at least 100 times rarer than C, putting Chest D at the very least 99.999.

The RNG

Now say you are poor and can only afford something of Chest B quality. The middle class probably has gear more like Chest C, while the rich have Chest D quality or better. This might not exactly match, but the relative quality is what I am getting at.

Now, a Random Number Generator (RNG) is generating random decimal numbers between 0 and 100. You play Diablo 3. Every time you find a chest armor piece, you take a number from the RNG.

Say you’re poor and you have only bought Chest B. The RNG must give you a number higher than 99 for it to be an upgrade. Statistically, it is very unlikely.

Say you’re a bit wealthier and you have Chest C. The RNG would have to give you a number higher than 99.9 for it to be an upgrade. Extremely unlikely. You’d have to farm for a long, long time.

Say you are even wealthier and have Chest D. Well, good luck beating a 99.999.

The Top 1% Is Your Starter Set

The problem is, most people didn’t find Chest B themselves. They bought it from the AH. This is why it is extremely rare for people to find upgrades. They already have Chest B, something better than 99% of other chest pieces. The next chest they identify has only a 1% chance to be an upgrade. Those of you with Chest C have only a 0.1% chance of finding an upgrade. And those with Chest D have a measly 0.001%. To find something better than D, the chance would be akin to drawing a royal flush. It doesn’t matter if you have 300% MF, it’s still a gamble.

The Blizzard Internal Testers Did Not Have Top 1% Gear

They didn’t even have top 5% gear, because they did not have an Auction House. Even Chest A, while laughable to many of us, would probably have been considered a great item when they were testing the game.

Of course, to get to Inferno they had to have had at least semi-decent gear, say in the top 50%. That translates to their gear level being around 50.

This is why in the article linked at the beginning of this post, Wyatt Cheng claimed that upon entering Inferno, a player might find an upgrade in 30 minutes. After all, if you start with your gear at 50 on the 0-100 scale, then any rare chest piece you pick up has a 50% chance of being an upgrade. Picking up 2 chest pieces sounds reasonable in 30 minutes.

However, using the AH screws things up because it makes you jump from 50 to 99.

Here is a comparison of what happens:

Blizzard Testers/No-AH Players

• At item scale level 50 upon entering Inferno.
• The first chest armor they find is a 37, so it isn’t an upgrade. But the next is a 64, which is an upgrade.
• To upgrade again, they must roll better than a 64.
• They roll a 28, 61 (which would have been an upgrade if they didn’t already have the 64), 12, and finally a 73, an upgrade.
• To upgrade again, they must roll better than a 73.
• Etc. Each time they get an upgrade, the amount of time to the next upgrade goes up gradually (at least on average). Nonetheless, they are steadily finding upgrades. This is what it felt like in Diablo 2, because there was no AH.

AH Players

• At item scale level 99 upon entering Inferno.
• The first chest armor they find is a 37, so it isn’t an upgrade. Neither is the next piece, which is a 64.
• Neither is the 28, or the 61, or the 12, or the 73.
• Or the 91, 8, 29, 67, 62, 72, 84, etc.
• Or the 95, 93, 22, 60, 71, 89, or 96.
• Since seemingly nothing they find is an upgrade, they are drawn to the conclusion that the only way to find a better item is to scour the AH for a 99.9.
• Thus they feel they cannot upgrade on their own. They feel forced to use the AH, which leads to a vicious cycle. Once you use the AH, you are enslaved to it.

The AH is the problem! Of course, another issue that can be seen from the numbers above is the “Doubled It” fiasco. Before they doubled it, it was probably possible to beat the game with 98/99 gear. So it might take a few days to farm the top 1%/2% gear, but you can beat it without much sweat. But once they “doubled it,” instead of being able to beat the game with 98/99 gear, you must do it with 99.99 or 99.999 gear, the top 0.01% or 0.001% gear. This doesn’t take a few days of farming. This takes months of farming and/or blind luck. This exacerbates the RNG and turns the game into a lottery rather than something that resembles Diablo 2. Although, even with “Doubled It,” the Auction House is still the worse issue.

Solution: Release Ladder, with no RMAH and no GAH. The bartering system, while primitive, seems to avoid all the problems of the AH system.

What I Learned From The Wizard “God Mode” Bug

My “God Mode” Experience

In the past 24 hours it became public knowledge among Diablo 3 players how to make the Wizard invulnerable for an unlimited duration, through a combination of Teleport and Archon.

I have a level 60 of each class, so I was naturally inclined to try it out. Initially I was hesitant to use it. After all, it’s plain unfair.

But eventually the curious and game developer side of me won over. This was helped by the fact that Blizzard did nothing about it all day, nor did they say anything about their policies on such an exploit.

So I tried it out for about an hour.

The game suddenly felt alive. It felt like your character was actually powerful. Instead of getting destroyed by tiny spiderlings, he annihilated entire demonic armies, and then some. The game became 10 times more fun.

At the end of the hour, Blizzard announced their server reset warning. But I had already gotten what I needed out of it.

I had seen the future of Diablo 3. As the game continues, players’ gear and power will only improve. Patch 1.0.4 is already known to contain major class buffs and powerful legendary items. And knowing how Blizzard nerfs WoW raids over time, we can only assume the same may happen to Diablo 3 Inferno to appease the casuals, even when better gear already makes the content easier.

The Future of Diablo 3

All this boils down to the fact that eventually, all of us will be entering God Mode, no matter what class we play. We might not be permanently invulnerable, but we will be destroying monsters left and right, instead of running around like chickens and kiting mobs across entire maps.

And with God Mode appeared all the endgame flaws of the game. Even with God Mode, a mode that is 10x more fun than current mode, the game is still not really that enticing to play. There are many things lacking in the endgame, that are especially noticeable when your character has God Mode activated. They include:

• No formalized competition. This will be fixed via a ladder system and PvP.
• Low amount of cool, unique items. Natalya’s set contains pretty much the only “cool” items currently, and only for the set bonuses. This makes grinding for items uninteresting. This will hopefully be partially fixed with 1.0.4 legendaries, but the game still needs more complexity in items.
• Low amount of viable builds. Hopefully 1.0.4 will alleviate some of this, but I doubt one patch alone can fix it. It will take time.
• Lack of complexity. I completely agree with removing the Diablo 2-style stat point system. However, by also removing skill levels, there is almost no complexity in the skill system (as well as item system). This will need a MAJOR patch to fix, such as Diablo 2’s patch 1.10, which introduced synergies, adding a lot of depth to the system.

These changes would make the end game far more interesting than it currently is.

What Happened To Embracing Challenges?

Society of the Winner

This post is about a way of thought. We used to live in a society that embraced challenges and overcame them, leading to winning. Winning was either itself the reward, or led to other rewards, but either way, winning was cheered upon—the winners were our heroes.

We now have a society where the concept of the “winner” is frowned upon. We want everyone to win. We want everyone at the competition to receive a shiny participation medal. We want everyone to feel as if they accomplished something great, even if they accomplished that which a handicapped 5 year old could have done.

You can think of this as the system of the winner versus the system of the masses. You can also think of this as capitalism versus socialism.

Class Hierarchy in Diablo 3

So how does this fit into Diablo 3? When it comes to obtaining wealth, the game itself is extremely capitalist, probably the most capitalist virtual economy so far to have existed. The free market economy allows the exchange of gold on a massive scale, the number of users and influx of gold is so great that the 15% tax does not curb trade, and the scale of money enough such that the 2 billion gold auction limit poses rarely, if ever, a limitation.

Unfortunately, along with capitalism comes winners and losers. The upper class players have hundreds of millions of gold, while the lower class, a much larger group, is working to make ends meet, to furnish their own repair costs. Yet the lower class makes all the wealth for the upper class, as it is the lower class that supplies the massive amount of gold into the economy and buys it off of people in the class above them, which chains eventually to the upper class.

The problem with Diablo 3 is that many of the lower class are pissed off about being in the lower class. They want to win too—they want everyone to win. This is where the class struggle is illuminated. In general it is the upper class who says the game difficulty is fine where it is. Some even say it is too easy. But in the lower class, page after page of threads are filled with the “It’s too hard” argument or something along those lines, sometimes presented in a logical fashion, more often in an emotion, rage-filled manner.

The Winner Is No Longer A Hero

The concept of the “winner” is indeed frowned upon by much of the player base. Those in the lower classes continually bash the super-wealthy players like Athene. They bash Kripparrian. They bash anyone who is more successful than they are, because they are used to a system where everyone who participates, wins.

It used to be that when presented with a challenge, we would try hard to overcome it. Now, we just blame someone else (the gold farmers), blame the system (the difficulty), or blame just about anything (there’s really a lot of examples). In fact, people have grown to cheer their own failures. It is now considered absolutely fine, and even wonderful, to have hit the Act 2 brick wall. Once a poster says he has hit the Act 2 brick wall, others will come in and start bashing the system with him.

Meanwhile, a few people who hit the Act 2 wall will read up on class guides, perfect their build, snipe deals in the Auction House, and and at the end of the day, progress. No complaining, no whining, no RMAH, no excuses. Inferno was made hard for the sake of being hard. And some people pulled it off, and are still pulling it off. That is embracing a challenge and overcoming it.

No, these guys who stood up against all odds and obtained victory—these guys are not celebrated as heroes anymore. They’re now considered to be elitists and no-lifers. It’s the whiners who complain about this and that being too hard—those people are the ones now celebrated as heroes. What has America become?

The Leveling Experience Is Awesome, Inferno Is Not

After a little boredom in softcore, I decided to give Hardcore a try.

The leveling experience, I must say, is awesome. I must have completely skipped over the fun in softcore, since I remember just trying to hit 60 as fast as possible, thus skipping almost every optional area and sticking to one progression build the whole way instead of exploring and trying out fun alternatives.

In Hardcore, since your character only has one life, it is worthwhile sometimes to grind an area until you reach a higher level for the next area. Of course, it isn’t necessary, but given my sometimes laggy Internet, I want to remain slightly overleveled or overgeared for the content I’m doing.

After being used to not finding many upgrades in Inferno, it suddenly surprised me that I was finding upgrades left and right. One area I was grinding was the Crypt of the Ancients in the Festering Woods. I find it great for leveling because of the large number of mobs and the guaranteed elite pack for gear.

Within a 20 minute span, I found 2 legendaries (both too low level for me to use, but still awesome), 5 upgrades, and gained 2 levels. That felt good. That felt like Diablo 2.

I must have had a lucky streak yesterday. Over the course of the day, I found 2 more legendaries, bringing the total up to 4 legendaries in one day. And this is at low level, so I had like 30% MF max, no Nephalem Valor.

Despite this being perhaps a complete stroke of luck, the game suddenly became extremely fun. Due to my being overgeared and overleveled, I decided to make a gimmick build on my wizard, which I was playing melee at the time. The result was this:

It may look standard, but yes, that is the Arcane Orbit rune as well as the use of Storm Armor. My play strategy is basically to cast Storm Armor, cast Arcane Orbit, then run into the middle of hordes of enemies and let those two skills take care of the rest. It felt like Diablo 2 all over again. I rarely had to use my defensive skills.

I’m not sure if Arcane Orbit is bugged, but it seems to be doing insane damage. All the better for me I suppose. 😀

Granted, I’ve been using this build throughout the level 20s and now in the lower 30s, and I bet it’s not viable in Inferno. I’ll try this on my level 60 Wizard at some point, though I don’t know if I can afford to sacrifice Prismatic Armor. Nonetheless, it is extremely fun to use.

The other cool thing about leveling is finding insane upgrades. Check out the following:

I think players feel really happy when they find stuff like that on their own. I have never touched the Hardcore Auction House, and leveling has been a blast. But I bet if I bought AH gear, I wouldn’t be finding any upgrades myself.

One of the cool things about playing Diablo 2 is that I never felt rushed to get into Hell difficulty or to get to a high level, say level 60 or 70.

Diablo 3, on the other hand, psychologically rushes you to get to Inferno and level 60. It could have to do with the improved loot, or the pace of leveling, or the gradual difficulty curve of the first three difficulties. And because of this, I completely missed out on much of the fun, using builds that wouldn’t stand a chance in Inferno, and yet can obliterate everything Normal and Nightmare.

My Hardcore Monk is similarly using a fun build with both Dashing Strike and Sweeping Wind, and my Hardcore Barbarian is using Furious Charge with the Merciless Assault rune, so against hordes of enemies, I can spam Furious Charge and aoe things down. I would not try these in Inferno.

In fact, the penalty for death in softcore Inferno is so high (massive repair costs, resurrection timer, elite health regenerating, walking to where you died) that I am experimenting with builds more in Hardcore Nightmare rather than in Softcore Inferno.

I know perfectly well that one wrong move in Hardcore is permanent death. Take away too many defensive skills, and you increase the chance of dying. I know that. But for some I would rather face a small risk of permanent death than to know for certain I would be facing a massive repair cost, a resurrection timer, the walking time, and the health regenerating in Inferno for trying out something new.

So my tips are:

• Remove some of the penalties for death. The resurrection timer especially needs to be removed. It’s no fun for anyone sitting there and not even being able to look at your profile or character sheet. I know it served the purpose of discouraging corpse-hopping, but since so many people (including myself) have beaten Inferno already, we are past the progression stage of the game now. Who cares if someone corpse hops? They will lose a ton of gold for doing so.
• Increase the drop rate of legendaries. Finding 4 legendaries in one day was probably the most exciting thing to happen in the game since I bought the game. It’s no wonder that people become frustrated when they can spend hundreds of hours and find only one legendary.

Psychological Issues Arising From Diablo 3

Many people are venting on the Diablo 3 forums with various complaints the game, usually in an illogical, emotion-filled manner. Sure Diablo 3 has some gameplay flaws that Blizzard developers are working to fix. But the main reason for so much raging comes from several psychological factors at work.

If people were actually rational (which happens at most one in ten threads), there would be nowhere near as much flaming, trolling, ad hominem attacks, etc. on the forums. But since humans are not rational beings, such things happen. Let’s take a look at what Diablo 3 did psychologically to provoke such outrage.

The Brick Wall

Everybody enjoys a gradual buildup to difficulty. Nobody seems to enjoy a brick wall, the brick wall of Act 2 Inferno.

This graph is what the difficulty level feels like, based on the testimonies of people I know and threads. It seems most people do fine up to Act 1 Inferno (due to AH gear usually), but then have extreme trouble getting into Act 2 and higher. The Act 1 to Act 2 transition is huge, and the Act 2 to Act 3 transition is formidable as well, relative to earlier transitions.

Here is perhaps what the difficulty should have looked like:

Nightmare and Hell should indeed be significantly harder, to lead up to a hard Inferno.

Entitlement From Gradual Buildup In First Three Difficulties

The problem with people being entitled seems to stem from how there’s zero indication within the game that Inferno is so much harder than Hell.

Sure, Blizzard may have said that Inferno is not for everyone, but only a small minority of players actually heard that pre-release. Most people breeze through Normal and Nightmare, struggle a little bit in Hell, and don’t expect Inferno to be much harder because there is no in-game warning of how hard Inferno would be. Based on inductive reasoning, since NM is a little bit harder than Normal, and Hell a bit harder than NM, the logical step would be to expect that Inferno be a little bit harder than Hell. But it’s not a little bit harder. It’s an entire order of magnitude harder.

So the entitlement definitely exists, but it might not be anyone’s fault. It might just be the fault of the game design promoting entitlement.

Possible solutions that Blizzard could have done in order to avoid this Inferno entitlement psychology:

• Force players to view a message saying that Inferno is very hard when they enter Inferno, similar to how players are forced to see a dialog box saying Hardcore death is permanent and for no reason will they restore a character.
• Just put up a bunch of dialog boxes warning about the difficulty, right before Inferno, so players would get that Inferno is hard.
• Change the difficulty scaling of the first three difficulties to lead up gradually, instead of suddenly, to Inferno. Normal remains the same, Nightmare becomes 20% harder, and Hell becomes 50% harder. Inferno was the result of “doubled it” so it is already at 100% harder. That way, people would experience the 0%, 20%, 50%, 100% buildup instead of the 0%, 0%, 0%, 100% brick wall as they do now.

Extreme RNG and Confirmation Bias

When a level 63 item can roll +20 int and vitality on one item, and +200 int and vitality on another, serious issues with the players can arise.

The combat system has a lot of RNG as well, with Dodges and Blocks playing a large part in any battle.

Due to this RNG extremeness, it is very common for players to fall to confirmation bias and believe things that don’t really exist. For example:

• A player dies to an elite group, for whatever reason. It could be lag, the AI, lack of skill, not being careful, or most likely RNG.
• Due to the heavy cost of death, the player is emotionally unhappy. The player, being human, thinks it’s not his fault, and so must find something else as an excuse for why he died.
• Since he didn’t die the previous day (maybe had decent shield blocks and dodges, or just fought easier elites), he jumps to the conclusion that the monster damage must have been buffed.
• He posts this on the forums.
• Other forum posters agree with the original poster in droves, claiming they have noticed the same thing, when it just an emotional outlet for dying.

The whole time, the monster damage remained exactly the same, yet a conspiracy was born out of confirmation bias.

The exact same thing happens to item drops. Even with item drops remaining exactly the same, people will go on an unlucky streak with items or goblins (which is bound to happen, given that it is a random system), but want something to blame. The easiest thing to blame a nerf of the drop/spawn rate. When they post this, many people will post in agreement, saying they have experienced the same. And when enough people see this thread and blindly agree with it, it becomes the de facto truth.

Their thought process is basically this. Every time you have a run with bad drops, Blizzard nerfed the drop rates. Every time you don’t get 3 goblins to spawn in 10 attempts, Blizzard nerfed the spawn rate. Every time you die, Blizzard nerfed your resistances. Etc, etc, etc

Finally, the cherry pickers looking for conspiracies just to rage more at Blizzard will pick up on threads like these, the overnight damage increase and the sudden nerfing of drop rates, and add them to their fuel.

The Auction House and Upgrades

A couple of psychological phenomena have arisen from the Auction House.

The first is the competition, which is one of the reasons for entitlement. In Diablo 2, since there was no Auction House, you weren’t constantly reminded of how much better other people’s gear was compared to your own. That’s just probability: it’s almost certain there are many people with much better gear than yourself.

Even in WoW, which has an Auction House, the top gear is not shown, because all the high-end gear is Bind on Pickup. So a casual player in Diablo 2 or WoW isn’t constantly lured by godly items that only the top players have.

In Diablo 3, godly items are put up on the Auction House for millions and even billions of gold, and for some reason, when you begin a search, before you enter any parameters, the Auction House by default lists the most expensive gear for you to look at. This is just evil. People are by nature competitive (even casual players are competitive to some degree), and they want the best items, which are unattainable for most. Putting it there right in front of them seems to worsen the issue.

The second issue is the ease of use. Because trading in Diablo 2 took at least some effort to set up, it was easy to maintain a completely untwinked character.

But in Diablo 3, since the Auction House is so easy to use, I daresay 99% of people who have ventured into Inferno have used the Auction House.

And then they complain about not being able to find upgrades. Well of course you’re not going to find an upgrade if you just purchased an item in the 99.9 percentile from the Auction House. Even if Blizzard made all droprates 10 times higher, people would still complain about never finding an upgrade, since everyone would have just shifted to gear in the 99.99 percentile, and mathematically it would be just as hard to find an upgrade.

The reason you found upgrades in Diablo 2 was because you didn’t buy uber good gear right away. If you just obtained gear that was better than 99.9% of drops in each slot, then you wouldn’t be finding upgrades in Diablo 2 either.

The Auction House thus becomes a vicious positive feedback loop. Once you enter it, it is nearly impossible to exit, because once you buy a 99.9% item on the Auction House, you will probably never find an upgrade for it yourself, thus prompting you to use the Auction House to buy the 99.99% item, etc.

Life On Hit, and Forced Stats

There was a forum post claiming that Life on Hit is a required stat for Act 2 Inferno and higher. This notion likely comes from many of the top players initially going through Inferno with Life on Hit. But that doesn’t mean it’s necessary. It means that when you are on an extremely limited budget, Life on Hit is a cost-effective way to progress. But plenty of people have found creative ways to go through Inferno with zero Life on Hit. Heck, my Monk cleared Inferno Diablo with 5 stack NV, with zero Life on Hit and no more than 4 million gold worth of gear.

People often consider Crit % and Crit damage to be required as well, yet my Barbarian, Monk, Wizard, Witch Doctor, and Demon Hunter have all cleared Act 2 with minimal Crit % and Crit damage from gear. Yep, that’s all five classes. Granted, they were all doing budget builds in Act 2, but with more stats from gear, they should be able to do Act 3 as well.

The only stat that is truly required at the moment is +Resistance to All Elements, for melee characters. It is just mathematically necessary for surviving high-damage attacks. With incredible gear and a proper gimmick build, it may be possible for a Monk or Barbarian to survive Act 2 or Act 3 with less than 100 all resists, but so far, I have not heard of such a case.

Class Balance

Class balance is also a result of psychological issues arising from Inferno. As I wrote in an earlier article:

Class balance is only an issue because people get stuck at some point in Inferno. Since they know that people using other classes have gotten farther than they have, they accuse the other classes of being overpowered.

In the Beta, which had a level cap of 13 and only allowed up to the Skeleton King on Normal mode, nobody complained about class balance. Sure, there were many good threads containing concerns about scaling and viability later in the game, but as far as 1-13 was concerned, nobody cared about class balance because every class could easily clear it.

Future Considerations

Many of the minor and trivial complaints will go away on their own. For example, I predict that in a year, nobody will be asking for the pointless Diablo 2 stat allocation system back in. It’s really similar to some mechanics in Starcraft 1 such as having to tell each new worker to mine or not being able to select multiple buildings at once to build units. When Starcraft 2 was in its earlier stages, people whined so much much about about auto-mining and multiple building select and threatened to quit the game over it; yet today, nobody complains about them, because they relieve the player from pointless, tedious tasks. Similarly, Diablo 3’s auto stat allocation will be accepted, slowly but surely.

As far as other things like prices on the Auction House and class balance, the complaints might never go away. It is human nature to blame others for one’s own problems. There will always be people complaining their class is underpowered while the other classes are overpowered. From each class.

The only things that really needs fixing on Blizzard’s part are the item stat range randomization and the brick wall difficulty curve of Act 2 Inferno. Diablo 3 just needs more time for development.