Patching 1.0.2c -- potentially nerfed mob damage

[Concillian]

I agree, game balance and such are developer issues, and not QA issues.

At least according to my conversations with my friends who work (well worked) in game QA.

Yes, the game has balance issues. In my mind they completely revolve around the design of the DH class defense (almost exclusively avoidance based) clashing with the defensive design of every other class (largely mitigation based), and this results in a situation where it's impossible to tune monster damage. DH have no viable means of mitigating, but other classes can amass huge amounts of mitigation. anything tuned for the other classes will one-shot DHs, anything tuned for DHs will mean a walk in the park for other classes. Can't balance the game until you virtually re-make the DH. Chances of this happening are near zero though. It is a fatal flaw in the design of the game. Didn't happen in Diablo II, since all classes defense worked pretty much the same way.

If you had used the right terminology a couple days ago, we wouldn't have had so much back and forth in this thread.

[Kurosu]

As some others sometimes say in jest, "you're playing a beta version of a game right now".
I don't think this is entirely true as you've gotten a finished game (its quality is besides the point), but there is a core of truth in it.

I think the game is very polished in some areas, such as the overall presentation (GUI, statistic screens and similar), there are also many things that don't seem to have been tested or thought about, at least not sufficiently.
Skills such as Strafe which burns through your entire hatred pool within seconds but does insignificant damage compared to hatred generators even, this is simply sloppy.

If anyone even bothered to use this skill for 5 minutes to clear a few packs of monsters with it, it would've been easily spotted that a skill such as this is very sub-par.
Call it a design flaw, quality assurance miss, or anything else, it's just sloppy.

There have some people on these boards that theorize Blizzard is using the player feedback in these early months to re-tune the balance of the skills, characters and game difficulty, so I'm hoping that Blizzard will actually listen to the rational feedback and adjust the game accordingly.

[Trevan]

As some others sometimes say in jest, "you're playing a beta version of a game right now".
I don't think this is entirely true as you've gotten a finished game (its quality is besides the point), but there is a core of truth in it.

"I did not pay for a beta"
"Did QA even test this?"

Two lines that have been said about almost every single game I've played or investigated since the year 2000. The only ones that weren't were the smaller indie games I play made by a single person to a small dozen man team.

Everyone is a backseat programmer/publisher/developer/garbageman/basketball player.

[MongoJerry]

Mongo, that's when they the raised the cap in the higher difficulties, it was capped before LoD. That was done as a hot fix and then the tooltip was update in 1.03 to note that change. Again, it helps to actually remember how the skill was. You claim others are using nostalgia glasses, but made a huge nostalgia glasses mistake yourself.

Lissa, you do realize that reality doesn't change simply because you say something repeatedly, right? You could static field Diablo down to a sliver right up to the LOD release. That was reality. I know, because I did it over and over and over again right up until the LOD release, and I never had to change my build to compensate for any nerf to Static Field. (I think I might have thrown a few extra points into it to make its radius bigger after the radius formula was fixed, but by that time, I had so many extra skill points to spend, it didn't matter).

[Lissa]

I agree, game balance and such are developer issues, and not QA issues.

At least according to my conversations with my friends who work (well worked) in game QA.

Yes, the game has balance issues. In my mind they completely revolve around the design of the DH class defense (almost exclusively avoidance based) clashing with the defensive design of every other class (largely mitigation based), and this results in a situation where it's impossible to tune monster damage. DH have no viable means of mitigating, but other classes can amass huge amounts of mitigation. anything tuned for the other classes will one-shot DHs, anything tuned for DHs will mean a walk in the park for other classes. Can't balance the game until you virtually re-make the DH. Chances of this happening are near zero though. It is a fatal flaw in the design of the game. Didn't happen in Diablo II, since all classes defense worked pretty much the same way.

If you had used the right terminology a couple days ago, we wouldn't have had so much back and forth in this thread.

See, this is why I say that QA has gotten worse, not better. Things should have been found and sent back to the developers to rectify. It's not just bugs that QA is looking for, they're looking for balance issues, skills that aren't up to par, and other aspects that improve the overall game play. To me, this is why things are worse with Blizzard's QA now than back in the past. They were given more time, had a smaller amount of things to look at, and still missed it. This is the essence of my problem with Blizzard's QA and why I think it's worse.

As to fixing things with the DH, there's a couple things that would easily fix some issues.

1) When using Vault, while the animation is in effect, the DH is invulnerable. The Vault distance isn't that far and typically is just enough to get you out of melee range. Other classes have skills that work in this regard (like WD spirit walk where you become invulnerable while moving).

2) Make mobs that are unhittable until they either get into Melee (looking at the Deceivers here) or can't be hit while performing a move (like the Lacuni) be hittable so that the DH has a chance to kill them before they reach melee range.

3) Increase the DH's inherent dodge so that they can dodge at twice the rate of the other classes (so at 500 Dex, a DH has 40% dodge compared to the other classes that are at 20%, this could potentially lead to issues further down the road through if a DH hits 2000 Dex or even 3000 Dex).

Any one of these would increase DH survivability.

---

Mongo, that's when they the raised the cap in the higher difficulties, it was capped before LoD. That was done as a hot fix and then the tooltip was update in 1.03 to note that change. Again, it helps to actually remember how the skill was. You claim others are using nostalgia glasses, but made a huge nostalgia glasses mistake yourself.

Lissa, you do realize that reality doesn't change simply because you say something repeatedly, right? You could static field Diablo down to a sliver right up to the LOD release. That was reality. I know, because I did it over and over and over again right up until the LOD release, and I never had to change my build to compensate for any nerf to Static Field. (I think I might have thrown a few extra points into it to make its radius bigger after the radius formula was fixed, but by that time, I had so many extra skill points to spend, it didn't matter).

Mongo, you're evidently forgetting things because SF was capped before LoD (either 10% or 25% across all levels). I remember the cries about the change on the forums as you literally could not SF to kill everything anymore. And likewise, never trust patch notes to cover everything the patch "fixed". If I had a dollar for every time I've heard someone find something that wasn't listed in the patch notes, I would have several thousand dollars. So, unless you stayed off B.net prior to the SF cap, you're not remember things are you think.

[Athenau]

See, this is why I say that QA has gotten worse, not better. Things should have been found and sent back to the developers to rectify. It's not just bugs that QA is looking for, they're looking for balance issues, skills that aren't up to par, and other aspects that improve the overall game play.

No. They aren't. You clearly have no idea what people actually do in QA. Nobody in QA has time to look at game balance. QA is about grinding out particular scenarios over and over again to flush out bugs.

Game balance is stuff that gets addressed in internal playtesting, not in QA.

Anyway, anyone complaining that D3 had worse balance than D2 is totally out to lunch. The best tempates at launch (whirlbarbs, multishot zons, fw sorcs) were so much better than anything else that it was laughable. Not to mention the brokenness that was pre-nerf static and corpse explosion.

In D3 we have, what, the bugged quickening + MOH combo and force armor + mass regen (both of which quickly got hotfixed), some problems with DH and Monk skill design, and a poorly tuned endgame (which is getting addressed in the next patch). BFD.

[Concillian]

As to fixing things with the DH, there's a couple things that would easily fix some issues.

1) When using Vault, while the animation is in effect, the DH is invulnerable. The Vault distance isn't that far and typically is just enough to get you out of melee range. Other classes have skills that work in this regard (like WD spirit walk where you become invulnerable while moving).

2) Make mobs that are unhittable until they either get into Melee (looking at the Deceivers here) or can't be hit while performing a move (like the Lacuni) be hittable so that the DH has a chance to kill them before they reach melee range.

3) Increase the DH's inherent dodge so that they can dodge at twice the rate of the other classes (so at 500 Dex, a DH has 40% dodge compared to the other classes that are at 20%, this could potentially lead to issues further down the road through if a DH hits 2000 Dex or even 3000 Dex).

All three of these... ALL THREE... will worsen the game balance rather than work on fixing it. They are in the wrong direction.

Complete avoidance on DH is what is inconsistent about that class compared to the rest of the game design. Adding immunity and extra avoidance will only make the issue worse.

I mean the real issue is that a DH has no viable mitigation, so no DH is going to gear mitigation... so there is a very low value placed on mitigation stats, while every other class does place high value on mitigation stats.

You can't balance the game if one class is encouraged at such a basic level to go complete glass cannon. Your skill suggestions just go a step further in that design flaw. DH will still get one shot, they'll still have the same issues they have now.

So you fix the lacuni in Act 2, but what about the soul rippers in Act 3? what about the corrupted angel charge in Act 4? You gonna keep fixing monsters until the DH have nothing to fear? It's just not the right direction to head.

No, you have to remove some of the invulnerabilities and avoidance capabilities of the DH, then add in some base mitigation and abilities that amplify that mitigation. Demon form, for example, can buff armor / resists or both (significantly) to encourage it's use as a cooldown, since in the world of one-shots, it's current design is not very useful.

If you have a class built around no damage intake, and another class built around damage intake (melee classes) there will always be significant balance issues strictly due to the weight an intelligent player will place on defensive stats. As long as those defensive stats are any form of trade-off, anyway. No, you need to design all the classes with some capability to actually take some hits. The affix bosses are well designed to be able to give ranged some hits. Monsters like the huntresses and such are designed to give ranged some hits. That's good, you just need to give the DH class abilities that scale with their defensive stats that can mitigate those hits rather than stacking the DH full of immunities and avoidance abilities.

The DH design is the balance issue. It's the primary flaw in the gameplay and balance issues. All the issues with "cheap one shots" that DH have will continue to be a problem as long as DH have no viable mitigation mechanism. The only alternative to reduce the cheap one shots is to either nerf damage to the point that all the other classes are laughing at the damage intake and going glass cannon too, or buffing DH to the point where they're never getting hit and clearly dominant.

[Lissa]

See, this is why I say that QA has gotten worse, not better. Things should have been found and sent back to the developers to rectify. It's not just bugs that QA is looking for, they're looking for balance issues, skills that aren't up to par, and other aspects that improve the overall game play.

No. They aren't. You clearly have no idea what people actually do in QA. Nobody in QA has time to look at game balance. QA is about grinding out particular scenarios over and over again to flush out bugs.

Game balance is stuff that gets addressed in internal playtesting, not in QA.

Anyway, anyone complaining that D3 had worse balance than D2 is totally out to lunch. The best tempates at launch (whirlbarbs, multishot zons, fw sorcs) were so much better than anything else that it was laughable. Not to mention the brokenness that was pre-nerf static and corpse explosion.

In D3 we have, what, the bugged quickening + MOH combo and force armor + mass regen (both of which quickly got hotfixed), some problems with DH and Monk skill design, and a poorly tuned endgame (which is getting addressed in the next patch). BFD.

Internal playtesting IS QA. The ultimate goal is to produce a higher quality game. It's more than just bug fixing.

[Athenau]

Internal Play testing IS QA.

No. It. Isn't. Internal playtesting is what developers do. QA is a separate department. They have a fixed test plan. They execute it. They report bugs. They get a new build. Repeat. This is what QA does in pretty much every software development house on earth (games included).

The ultimate goal is to produce a higher quality game. It's more than just bug fixing.

There's really no point in arguing with you on this any further. Your use of the term is not industry standard nomenclature.

[Treesh]

See, this is why I say that QA has gotten worse, not better. Things should have been found and sent back to the developers to rectify. It's not just bugs that QA is looking for, they're looking for balance issues, skills that aren't up to par, and other aspects that improve the overall game play.

No. They aren't. You clearly have no idea what people actually do in QA. Nobody in QA has time to look at game balance. QA is about grinding out particular scenarios over and over again to flush out bugs.

Game balance is stuff that gets addressed in internal playtesting, not in QA.

Anyway, anyone complaining that D3 had worse balance than D2 is totally out to lunch. The best tempates at launch (whirlbarbs, multishot zons, fw sorcs) were so much better than anything else that it was laughable. Not to mention the brokenness that was pre-nerf static and corpse explosion.

In D3 we have, what, the bugged quickening + MOH combo and force armor + mass regen (both of which quickly got hotfixed), some problems with DH and Monk skill design, and a poorly tuned endgame (which is getting addressed in the next patch). BFD.

Internal playtesting IS QA. The ultimate goal is to produce a higher quality game. It's more than just bug fixing.

Lissa, just accept the fact that what YOU think of as QA is NOT the industry standard for QA. They find bugs, not balance issues. Multiple repetitions of you saying it does NOT make it true. Talk to folks who actually ARE QA folks, ask them what their primary job is. Just because you want it to be otherwise does not make it so.

[Lissa]

Internal Play testing IS QA.

No. It. Isn't. Internal playtesting is what developers do. QA is a separate department. They have a fixed test plan. They execute it. They report bugs. They get a new build. Repeat. This is what QA does in pretty much every software development house on earth (games included).

The ultimate goal is to produce a higher quality game. It's more than just bug fixing.

There's really no point in arguing with you on this any further. Your use of the term is not industry standard nomenclature.

I suggest you learn what the definition of Software Quality Assurance is.

[Treesh]

Internal Play testing IS QA.

No. It. Isn't. Internal playtesting is what developers do. QA is a separate department. They have a fixed test plan. They execute it. They report bugs. They get a new build. Repeat. This is what QA does in pretty much every software development house on earth (games included).

The ultimate goal is to produce a higher quality game. It's more than just bug fixing.

There's really no point in arguing with you on this any further. Your use of the term is not industry standard nomenclature.

I suggest you learn what the definition of Software Quality Assurance is.

Game testing. What's your point?

Edit: Aw, Ath, you should have kept your post. Makes the point much more obvious.

[Athenau]

Edit: Aw, Ath, you should have kept your post. Makes the point much more obvious.

Heh, I thought you had things well in hand. That game testing article pretty much puts the nail in the coffin of this "argument" anyway.

So, more on topic, does anyone think that D2 was a more balanced game than D3 at launch? Anyone?

[TheDragoon]

I suggest you learn what the definition of Software Quality Assurance is.

Reading that definition, it sounds very generalized for software development and not necessarily representative of game development. Also, that definition sounds like the type of thing that everyone would be considered to play a part in, not just the people whose job titles or responsibilities are related specifically to "quality assurance."

That sounds like why you are getting pushback from people, they are noting that the actual people with a QA job title don't do what you're talking about. Given your linked definition it sounds like you're not really arguing that QA has gotten worse, but game development, in general. Is that what you're really getting at?

[Mavfin]

That sounds like why you are getting pushback from people, they are noting that the actual people with a QA job title don't do what you're talking about. Given your linked definition it sounds like you're not really arguing that QA has gotten worse, but game development, in general. Is that what you're really getting at?

Actually, he's just doing his usual Blizzard-is-getting-worse spiel, looks like to me. Same thing he's done for the past year or more. First it was 'B team' now it's 'Blizzard QA sucks'.

I can read this stuff on the official forums, no need to get it from Lissa, too.

[Concillian]

Lissa, just accept the fact that what YOU think of as QA is NOT the industry standard for QA.

You've been around long enough to know Lissa isn't going to do this.

Before I posted this:

I agree, game balance and such are developer issues, and not QA issues.

At least according to my conversations with my friends who work (well worked) in game QA.

I had put another sentence that was something to the extent of... not that that matters since you'll argue that the game industries definition of QA is wrong....
I deleted it before I posted, but he is pretty predictable.

Lissa will be Lissa, Treesh. If he hasn't changed by now, he's not about to start. Just let it slide. I mean he's already been arguing with at least 2 or three people who agree with him in in the areas that matter, but disagree primarily in the semantics of the definition of QA... he's drawn in you and TD into the fray because of the definition of a word... just let him live in his world, the thread will die, and we'll all be happier for it.

[Lissa]

I suggest you learn what the definition of Software Quality Assurance is.

Reading that definition, it sounds very generalized for software development and not necessarily representative of game development. Also, that definition sounds like the type of thing that everyone would be considered to play a part in, not just the people whose job titles or responsibilities are related specifically to "quality assurance."

That sounds like why you are getting pushback from people, they are noting that the actual people with a QA job title don't do what you're talking about. Given your linked definition it sounds like you're not really arguing that QA has gotten worse, but game development, in general. Is that what you're really getting at?

Because the company I worked at for 2 years was a software shop for developing software for some of the Natinonal Institute of Health programs and when they did QA, it wasn't, "OMG, find bugs and fix!" it was, "how do we make the software better for the people that are using it?" That's true QA, it isn't just fix bugs, it's fix bugs, determine features that are useful and an improvment, create a GUI that is functional and easy to use, that's what QA is about, making the product better. And what I listed is the standard practices as set down for SQA which a number of businesses follow (hell, there's a number of certifications that businesses can get and are required to get in some cases like CMMi, SCAMPI, ITIL, and such). Everyone that is creating the piece of software is performing QA, it isn't one small group, it's everyone involved from the tester, to the developer, the technical writer, to even the project manager, they all are involved with QA of the product.

[Taelas]

You still don't seem to understand that that is not what QA means for computer games.

QA means bug finding. That is how the industry uses the term. Check Treesh's link; it explains it in detail.

When things like genres are involved, QA cannot possibly be as broad as you seem to want it to be. What makes a good horror movie is very different from what makes a good comedy, and it's the same for games. QA is the same regardless of the genre.

[Lissa]

Lissa, just accept the fact that what YOU think of as QA is NOT the industry standard for QA.

You've been around long enough to know Lissa isn't going to do this.

Before I posted this:

I agree, game balance and such are developer issues, and not QA issues.

At least according to my conversations with my friends who work (well worked) in game QA.

I had put another sentence that was something to the extent of... not that that matters since you'll argue that the game industries definition of QA is wrong....
I deleted it before I posted, but he is pretty predictable.

Lissa will be Lissa, Treesh. If he hasn't changed by now, he's not about to start. Just let it slide. I mean he's already been arguing with at least 2 or three people who agree with him in in the areas that matter, but disagree primarily in the semantics of the definition of QA... he's drawn in you and TD into the fray because of the definition of a word... just let him live in his world, the thread will die, and we'll all be happier for it.

Let me give you a comparison of what I consider a QA success so that you can see what I think is how QA is properly implemented in the game industry.

Even though I hate the last 5 minutes of ME 3, it is a QA success in my book.

1) They sat down and planned out a path from leaving off where ME 2 Arrival ended to the ending of ME 3 and wrote an engaging story (up to the last 5 minutes).

2) They took the annoyances that people found in ME 1 (like the Mako) and the ME 2 (scanning) and put in more streamlined and fun aspects.

3) They minimize the UI as much as possible while still giving you all the information you needed so that you had a more cinematic experience to the game play.

4) There were no glaring bugs.

5) They improved the graphics with better textures.

6) They took what was best about ME 2 (the action) and the best about ME 1 (the upgradeable items) and combined them together.

Simply, the QA process used by BioWare from start to finish of ME 3 (even if the ending has huge plot holes) was superior to what we've seen in D3.

What was missed with Blizzard in their QA process of D3:

1) Story is laughable. While Act 1's story was good, 2 was completely telegraphed, 3 was boring, and 4 was roll your eyes.

2) They made poor choices on how to handle inferno, way overtuning it so only those that used exploitive builds were able to get there before those exploitive builds were slammed down.

3) Complete lack of viabilty of some skills for a number of classes.

4) Issues that have yet to be addressed for some customer (latency for Euros)

5) Bugs that should have been caught internally (like the being able to cancel auctions by just changing your system time).

This is why I think Blizzard's QA is worse. They had a lot of time to look at things and they didn't.

[MongoJerry]

Mongo, you're evidently forgetting things because SF was capped before LoD (either 10% or 25% across all levels). I remember the cries about the change on the forums as you literally could not SF to kill everything anymore. And likewise, never trust patch notes to cover everything the patch "fixed". If I had a dollar for every time I've heard someone find something that wasn't listed in the patch notes, I would have several thousand dollars. So, unless you stayed off B.net prior to the SF cap, you're not remember things are you think.

No, Lissa. Again, I actually played a SF/Orb sorceress obsessively for almost a year. People complained when the distance formula was fixed. Do you remember how the distance formula had a sign error in it that created a four-pointed star shape that reached across most of the screen with only a single point (plus maybe a few +all skills points) in it? When they fixed the sign error, the distance seemed to shrink to a comparatively miniscule amount, so all those sorceresses who were used to killing screenfuls of mobs while running around with 1 point in Static Field suddenly found themselves in trouble. In my case, it didn't really affect me, because my sorceress was already at a high enough level that I didn't know what to do with my extra skill points anyway, so I just threw them into Static Field to raise the radius back up again and I continued to level like nothing had happened. The damage was not capped until LOD came out.

(I do have a vague memory that perhaps they did fix something so that lightning resistance affected static field, which meant that it took an extra second to kill Diablo in 8-player hell).

This is why I think Blizzard's QA is worse. They had a lot of time to look at things and they didn't.

You have to complete the sentence: Blizzard's QA is worse than... what? In this thread, you were saying that Blizzard's QA was worse than it was at the time of the launch of D2 and LOD, and I think I can speak for the majority here by saying that we are laughing wholeheartedly at such a ridiculous notion. If you are now saying, "Well, Blizzard's QA is worse than Bioware's QA at the time of the launch of ME3," you're starting a new discussion.