Oakianus wrote on Jan 27
th, 2012 at 10:28pm:
They recognized it was stupid that one couldn't use items that count as 'spells' and they obviously can't trivially change a whole lot of things to not technically be spells, so they went for the next best thing. They didn't think of SF pots and recognize they made a stupid mistake, which they're currently fixing in an open manner by discussing it with the community and taking in feedback from the player base.
I can't think of a way that they could have done this better, other than announcing it before it ever hit Lammania - but doesn't that seem pretty extreme for a change to a single item? The enhancement system is a huge overhaul of something that every single player has no choice but to use, whereas this is a change to an item that not every player wants, let alone has. It seems like it would be ridiculous to make a thread about this change and try to hash it out before ever even hitting Lammania.
Considering that the rest of this update is pretty much a handjob for the players and that they're reacting so quickly to this change to the point that we'll never see it on Live, I honestly don't get the complaints.
They could have someone involved in the development who plays the game every once in a while.
Or had some kind of, I don't know, special invite only server, which acts as a focus group of upcoming changes, to make sure the really stupid stuff doesn't get through. Preferably ones who aren't giving the developers blow-jobs while giving 'honest feedback'.
It's not just the silver flame pot thing, it's like they only consider Fighters and Barbarians to be 'melee dps' who might use the boots and that giving a minus to int/cha/wis would only affect pure casters.
Most of the other stuff in the update does look pretty nice, but I can give you the most awesome chocolate cake in the world, but if there is a nice big steaming pile of shit sitting on top, you probably wont remember the cake being all that nice.