What’s Wrong with Diablo III?
Posted 31 May 2012 by FluxIn all of the good vs. bad arguments about Diablo III’s features, three videos by Gather Your Party keep getting cited. Each of them makes some good points, while there are other things in them that I disagree with. But since they’re very much a topic of conversation, here’s a main page post about them for your commenting convenience.
Part One covers Poor Implementation of Difficulty, with Normal too easy, NM/Hell scaling up a bit, and then the huge Inferno jump. Of course if Inferno scaled up more steadily it would be too easy in a month, and people would just be complaining about that instead.
As best I can tell from reading countless fan complaints, the main problem with Diablo III is that so many big fans have played way too much of it already, run through all of the content, gotten into Inferno, and found the balance and end game item system lacking. Obviously, saying, “pace yourself and you won’t burn out on it so quickly” is iffy advice, since you can’t close your personal Pandora’s Box at this point, but there aren’t a lot of things you can do for 6+ hours a day, every day, for 2 weeks, without growing completely sick of them.
I’m still enjoying the game a lot, every time I have a couple/few hours to play, but that’s largely due to the fact that I don’t have that much time to play. I’ve got one of each character, currently about levels 46, 35, 22, 17, and 16. I’ve intentionally twinked very little, and I have stayed entirely out of the Auction House to resist any temptation to buy way overpowered weapons that would ruin my progression and difficulty curve. And the game’s a lot of fun, is somewhat challenging, has a nicely-scaled economy, has a good progression of gems, has useful crafting (armor; weapons are underpowered), etc.
Likely I’m playing it about how Bliz designed and balanced it from their testing. They didn’t balance (much/at all) Inferno or high end items, so it’s no surprise that those features are a mess. Those features will get tweaked and reworked and balanced and modified in patches, and I think that part of the game will be as satisfying as the earlier sections are… but not today. And not this week. And probably not even this month or months. Which is no consolation at all to the hordes of “make Inferno perfect now!!” commenters.
Parts two and three, covering Issues with Itemization and Issues with Story, are available on the click through.
Part Three covers Issues with Storytelling and has some spoilers in the cinematic clips, if you’ve not reached Act Four yet.
sigh
I don’t know if your sigh is for or against but I’m posting here just to be at the top.
ENOUGH ALREADY!! If the game is truly the epic OMGWTFBBQ fail..then leave. Simply leave. You can check D.inc for an update or patch every now and then to see if they made the changes that you want. Me personally, not that anybody asked, is that I am staying. I’m here for the ride. The good, the bad, and the other. The game is gorgeous. It has immersion and atmosphere. The environments have a bit of everything. The items, well…loot is loot. The people whining that the items are useless (and this is fact) NEVER PLAYED D2/D2X. Period. I played the crap out that game for years. Never got a stone of jordan. If you got one and a windforce and a grandfather and whatever else, guess what? You probably had your run of good luck for the rest of your life. I hope you enjoyed it. Or you lied and bought em duped off of ebay. I’m not judging but I find it unlikely that a group of 6 friends all found a WF. Not.
Back to D3. The game is not perfect to be clear. But to say its unplayable, blah, blah, blah is a) troll fodder or b) you need meds. I’m not saying people can’t feel that way, its just…well, move on with your life.
I have hit the inferno wall. LOL, and what a wall it is. I did ok over the weekend partnering with a peer who had a melee (I’m a DH). But after 7-8 hours between Sat. and Sun and dying about 1-2 million times, I did have inferno fatigue. Its true. But you know what? The last thing on my mind was to go QQ on Blizz forums or start a webpage about it (although I screamed some choice words at the time). Some of you youngsters are absolutely pathetic. Say nothing about the fact this a dang videogame. You know what my thought was? Get better. Strategy. Gear. Whatever.
So I spent all the gold I had amassed and bought total GF gear as I saw that in order to get the Uber bow 1000+ damage I was going to need a miracle drop or straight cash. My weapon at that point was 835 damage. Not too bad in Act 1 inferno but still not good enough to dominate (if that’s even possible). I was playing with NV stack and saw some benefits so I thought why not take advantage of what I can do instead of pouting about what I can’t. So I went back to hell (along with my pride) and scaled back my damage a tad in favor of GF and I am up to 185K an hour in gold. Thats legit and not some snakeoil internet scam. Im just your everyday casual not-that-good-of-a videogame player. I play the AH. To my own benefit to help my char which I only have one as of now. I have probably bought and sold 1.5-2 million in items to climb the inferno wall. Its about evolving with the game. Sack up fellas.
Did you watch the videos?
I did. While there are 2 kernels of truth a) inferno is obviously insanely difficult and b) items that you find in late hell/early inferno are basically useless, the rest of his complaints/analysis were utter and total garbage. The cut scenes and story development? Are you serious. Hit the spacebar and move the F on. Cain dying is a slap in face. LOL!! This guy actually took the time to make a video on this? And the comparisons to D2/D2X…again. This guy was obviously much too young to even play the game seriously in its heyday. He says that the Baal endgame/metagame was where its at. Next, he claims that his proof that D2 was better is because people would pay for items with real money. Hello, there will be a RMAH and my guess is third party sell sites are coming for D3 if they are not here already. That argument makes ZERO sense. At that point, he lost every shred of credibility. His argument of how bad it is, is simply because he is not getting what he wants from the game. I get pissed everytime a 1000 dps item doesnt drop for me. SAck up. The valid points mentioned above can and likely will be tweaked by blizz over the long haul.
But lets look at this another way. By listening to the guys arguments and seeing that so many of you support him, my guess is that you all, in fact, want an easy conquerable game so you can lap the last act or whatever and collect the set of the highest static gear. I mean there is no other conclusion to draw. And thats cool if thats what you want. I do not. Baal runs were beyond stupid. I did my fair share obviously because it was the ONLY way to try and get the runes or the items needed at endgame.
Again, I’m not telling people what to feel and by no means do I think that D3 is perfect. Far from it. But its like 2.5 weeks old. Give it a minute for crying out loud or go to pandaland or PoE or whatever else floats your boat with story and sophisticated mechanics.
Hello mr. fanboy. I guess its hard for you to understand that most people have a different experience with the game and cannot ignore all the broken **** like you.
P.S. You say you played d2 for years and never found a soj? I guess that explains by itself your understanding on diablo itemization and how much you got into it.
I played for 10+ years and never found a Stone of Jordan either. Depends on whether you were doing boss runs, trying different character builds, etc. I was never a big boss runner – too boring.
dont give me that ive been playing for years and did not find this or that **** srsly….i have REALLY played the game for 10 years and i found every item in the game at least once, except a tyrael’s might, and many HRs totally legit. the times when people used to buy “windforces off of ebay” were back in 2001/2 u sir have no idea what diablo 2 was all about and are probably an extreme casual that played a spear barb in single player to lvl 56 just to die in hell immediately when leaving the rogue encampment. damn why am i even spending time to address your bull**** – maybe because the overwhelming majority of my friends, including myself, has realized that d3 is a poor sequel to d2 and was purely designed to make money off the RMAH…
oh and ofc youre playing a DH, the best class for farming inferno… GUILD WARS 2 prepurchased and looking forward to the next beta weekend starting on june 8. i WILL quit d3 and so will many of my friends who are as disappointed by this mess as i am
I didnt say the game was perfect anywhere in my post did I? There are people out there doing “ok” in inferno which shows it can be done. As for my claims about not finding every item, I dont know what to say. It is the truth. I can’t say I was a constant boss runner. I do know that I have pretty bad luck and that would probably transfer over into a videogame as well. Loot snipers don’t help. The stuff very well could of dropped in a party and I just never got a sniff of it. As for the rest of it, sorry for your troubles. I’d like to say we’ll miss you, but…
“The game is gorgeous. It has immersion and atmosphere”
I think you misunderstand the Diablo games. You cannot create a Gothic atmosphere with world of warcraft cartoon graphics. It simply cannot be done, objectively. Of course, everything looks funnier through the lens of a Fanboy.
Excellent videos with very valid points. By the time they finally do fix all the issues, the majority will have moved on.
Already moved on.
your comment suggests otherwise.
I hope not too many just up and quit. I was under the impression that inferno was ridiculous so that Blizzard could weed out skills that could be abused. I’ve only known one person to have quit so far over it personally and I still bet they come back.
I can understand people taking a break though, because I’m already a little bored with it now. All I find myself doing is farming gold on Act 1 inferno (which I never wanted to see again after beta) and watching the auction house for gear with the stats I’m looking for to move on. I can’t say that it is a particularly fun thing to do. It is a little strange to buy gear to farm the area to find gear. Blizz planned on players following the path of least resistance and that is without a doubt the auction house. It seems like they want to correct that situation a little though else I’m not certain why they’d comment on items being undervalued.
Diablo 2 was kind of like playing a slot machine. I’m wondering if the kind of people that enjoy playing the slots will really enjoy Diablo 3, when the lever is beating them off their stools.
I think itemization is in a bad state. I was hoping for more strategically viable mods that could be stacked to something more than a minuscule proc rate. It feels like many mods can’t be specialized in a meaningful way so they’re just inconsequential bonuses (or those spots you look at on your item’s stat list and think why the hell couldn’t something important have rolled there). Even if someone was to stack them to the extreme and be able to impact play meaningfully, there’s always the fear that it would not be deemed “as intended” and then nerfed. I guess I don’t have that feeling of creating my build through gear choices or the feeling of being truly self customized yet.
That my impression as well based on the changes they made and their comments is they got it harder then they think it should be so we will find the kind of broken skills. IE Force armour + minimal hp + diamond skin = invincible etc.
Good, get rid of the entitled brats of this generation. Leave this game to the folks that like challenges.
This set of videos talks about many issues, including the poor itemization and bad storytelling. And you somehow managed to reduce it to someone whining about difficulty?
Shame on you.
The Itemization and story videos are spot on. The difficulty video less so, although it makes some good points.
Even Flux doesn’t fully understand how ****ed up Inferno is whether it’s difficulty or itemization, someone give the man a atleast decently geared level 60 character to try out, preferably melee.
In D2 atleast one could farm Nightmare to sc**** together some cheap Hell doable gear, in D3 Inferno people can’t even farm Act 1 to get some Act 2 sand wasp doable gear.
Edit: lol, i can’t use the perfectly viable word “sc****” because it has “****” in it? srly? What’s next, censoring words because they sound wrong?
People CAN farm Act 1 to get Act 2-doable gear.
What people can’t wrap their heads around is the idea that it’s going to take some time before that’s possible and that most people can’t do it in just a couple of weeks.
Analogies with the difficulty of other games fail. Diablo 3 is an item game, so Inferno HAS to be a gear check because if you can get by on skill alone, then Inferno could be aced right out of Hell.
And remember, fans ASKED for Inferno to take months and months to beat. Blizzard is doing exactly what fans asked for, and have been very clear about how Inferno worked. We knew EXACTLY what we were going to get (they even said that they reduced the difficulty of Act 1 so that people could at least get their feet wet and that already caused concern that Inferno was being made too easy), but now we complain that Inferno is too hard.
Humans, by their nature, just want to be in an elite while having everyone ELSE struggle to achieve what they have. When they see other people ‘beating’ Inferno while they themselves are unable to, they get frustrated.
z00t, Diablo II isn’t about items. It is about skills, then items. The system is build on the idea that people want to tier out to be inferno like an MMO. That is the problem with this game. If I want to play a tier type raid game I’d play that. There is a reason why people play diablo II over MMOs.
By thinking that people want to farm areas to complete the game and then build it as an item tier type game was their first mistake. I’ve played D2 for 12 years. DIII might last me a whole month because its build and designed to cater to a gearing up mentality. Not what Diablo fans are.
Nah, DII is about items then skills.
No D2 is about the items and the skills. IE you need the correct items to make your skill build work (outside of a few mega skills that is).
You mean the mega skills that 99.9% of the players used. This is getting SO f-ing old.
Very good videos, and explaining much of what is wrong with D3 concisely and without flame-inducing language. It’s a good start.
No, they’re not. They represent one person’s views on why he is not really enjoying the game as much as he thought he should. Most (but, for sure, not all) of the things he says I do not agree with.
Not to mention he must have taken his idiocy pill since he also is comparing the itemisation of a game that’s been out for a couple of weeks with that of a game out for several years with expansions and updates. Moronic.
“Not to mention he must have taken his idiocy pill since he also is comparing the itemisation of a game that’s been out for a couple of weeks with that of a game out for several years with expansions and updates.”
But that’s just it. D2 had many years and many patches to get to where it is now. However, it’s not unreasonable to think that the sequel to that game should use the latest and greatest of D2 as a starting point. Obviously you don’t want a clone of D2:LOD but it makes no sense to throw away all of those years of experience and knowledge building a robust itemization system and then basically have an item system that is a slightly tweaked version of D2 Classic. With all of the extra item stats, affixes, charms, runes, etc, that Blizzard implemented does it really make sense to throw that out and start over with the bare minimum again?
Um yes. Yes it does.
Your point only makes sense if it was a video by a guy who’s saying “Screw this game, I’m leaving forever”. Instead he’s trying to offer constructive criticism – exactly what’s needed to show Blizzard what features fans desire in upcoming patches and expansions.
We need more of this, and less flaming.
Belfarynn – sure, it’d be great to have all that experience put straight to use, but D3 is a different game. Let’s make sure the core aspects are rock solid, first. The complexity brought in by all that extra stuff from D2:LOD is great for players but is a flippin’ nightmare for developers from a logistical standpoint. It’s hard enough balancing a simple game, let alone with hundreds of affixes with random effects, and dozens of ways for players to modify their characters.
What’s more, why chuck all of that in right at the beginning? There’s then less to chuck in when the expansions do come out.
Redrach: yes, he was very mature about his criticism, and I commend him for that. He appears to be one of the few, if trawling through forum posts is anything to go by. But does he really speak for the fans? None of us know… There’s plenty of people complaining, and many silently getting on with it, and who knows what the real ratio of love:hate is? I don’t agree with many of the guy’s points, I love the game as it is (there is always room for improvement, though), as do many other people. Why are we getting on Blizzard’s back when we know they’ve got lots of other stuff planned for this in the future!?
From what I’ve seen, there isn’t any real critisism of D3 going around. People are constantly citing “disaster” and “failiure” like it is a general consenus that the game is either, but when asked directly, all those are BS. Besides the fact that 90 to 95 % of complaints are about servers and (in)ability to play, which is hardly game critisism at all.
Another thing I’d like to say is that, it is anecdotal evidence to a large degree, I presonally haven’t exerienced any “massive” problems that I wouldn’t expect from a game that seven million people bought. Today is the first time that I haven’t been able to play for a prolonged period of time. But, I still fiail to see how that makes the game, the actual game, a “disaster”. The game is awesome and I am having a blast. One thing I’ll never get is why people seem so intent on antagonizing Blizzard, effectivly turning them into some sort of “villains”. The way people are acting on the official forums is like Blizzard is intentionally keeping downtime as long as possible, or that Blizzard are keeping players from playing and then laughing or something. It IS IN BLIZZARDS BEST INTEREST TO KEEP SERVERS UP AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. I wrote that in all caps even though I detest writing in caps to emphasise a point. This isn’t a cheap mexican soap opera and Blizzard is not some rich a?????le who enjoys torturing lowly people or whatever.
Furthermore, there is a great deal of complaints that can be reduced to, “it is different then D2″. These are the types of things we have had to deal with since forever and, at this point, there is really no anwer beyond the usual, don’t like it, don’t play it.
Other then that, the only real complaints are the ones regarding the story and items. Now, story-wise, D3 more or less follows Diablo series standards, relatively bad actual story with some plot holes and etc. which is something that D1 and D2 suffer from, and absolutely amazing backstory and lore. Story is generally a subjective thing but I would agree that the story leaves much to be desired, it fails short in multiple things and, while it does make for intersting experieence, I have to say I expected more before release.
Items, well, call me weird but I like items, more or less, where they are now. This is mostly how I imagine it anyways. Of course the drop rates are low, we have had the game for little over two weeks, did anyone geniunly expect to have all the perfect rolled items or something. Even after years and years of playing D2, top items still remained impossibly rare. The reason why everyone had such amazing items was mostly due to duping. Regarding item strenght, I don’t like the naming scheme, it is a misnomer to call “Legendaries” that because that implies legendary level of quality in those items which they don’t have, and which they shouldn’t have. If legendary items were so good that they outclass everything else, we will all use same items, that would be a) cookie-cutter and b) boring. By keeping randomly generated rares and blues as the best items, they are ensuring that no ones items are the same, which is great for longetivity of the game and for the players.
Now, in regards to strenght of the items. In my opinion, the strenght is more or less fine right now. Greys are the weakest, white are bit stronger but still quickly replaced by your first blues. Now, I think that blues should have the greatest range from all items. They only have maximum of two affixes, but they can spawn strongest affixes from a family of affixes and mods on blues can reach maximum values. Whereas, rares can have more affixes then blues, but they can’t get top in a affix family. That way, in order to get highest value of a stat on an item, you need a blue. This is the way it was in D2, AFAIK, and, honestly, it works in keeping the end-game item min/maxing interesting. Legendaries are better then about half the rares, but the best rares outclass best legendaries, and again, highest value of a stat can only spawn on blues, while rares can have a lot of great mods.
Other then that, the only other thing I’ve noted about players in the first two weeks (aside from overwhelming stupidity and blind hate that average battle.net poster is capable of spewing) are crazy conspiracy theories, mostly involving RMAH, which isn’t even up yet. The latest one being that drop rates are aranged on the fly when you play the game so that Blizzard will derive the maximum profit. All that derived from a simply, innocent comment that Bashiok made. And people wander why isn’t Blizzard more communicative with their fans. Gee, I wonder why. Maybe, if majority of their fans would stop devoting their time to concoting conspiracy theories and devoting less time on battle.net in trying to demonize Blizzard as much as possible, and had more brains then a five year old, they would be more communicative. Seriously, anything that any Blizzard rep says is blown out of proportion, incorporated into crazy theories and used in yet another b.net thread meant to present Blizzard employee as fire breathing, soulless demons. Blizzard North used to be more talkative because they never had to deal with that level of crap. If I was Bashiok or any other Blizzard employee I would snap and rage so hard at some of the posters, job or no job.
Excuse any errors in spelling, I am using a public comp.
I like how you complain others’ opinions as BS all the while stating your own opinion as fact…
oh yes I do too
too long to read, be more concise next time
Alright, I’m going to comment briefly on the itemization issues you brought up. Genuilly I don’t think the video speaking about itemization has anything to do with drop rates or strength of the items that you’re mentioning in your post. The problem with the items is that it’s a \mouse over and are the differences in the green for resistences, damage, and life\. That’s all you care about in the game where with D2 the game was a little more dynamic then just that. For instance, he brought up Plague Bearer in the video. How about faster cast rate? Faster hit recovery? Attacking rating? + to skills? (decent) life steal? mana steal? half freeze duration? lower poison length? + % to certain elemental damage? Where is this stuff? They reduced the game’s mechanics and the background game calculations to nothing. And they just completely removed items from the game (like the video explains): charms, jewels, runes, etc. Still a blast to play, still has that hack and slash goodness, but I just miss looking through my inventory and reading all the extra stats that were on different weapons and thinking about special builds that would work well with those items.
Um, FCR=IAS, FHR=CC reduction, life steal is in there (albeit crappy), life on hit (.01 better than life steal), etc. You make a great point and I hope they adjust some things, tweak, or even add a few, but the game is 3 weeks old. Its a different game. Balance what they have and then add and/or expand.
A lot of the “easiness” of normal and nightmare is because people can’t resist the temptation of the AH. If you play completely untwinked or AH minimally, both of those difficulty modes present some reasonable challenges as you make your way through. No, they aren’t super ridiculously hard, but they shouldn’t be. It’s normal mode, not mega-ultra-hard mode. They’re kind of moderately situationally hard , and if you don’t twink you’ll probably die here and there now and then.
D2 was no different. If you outfitted your level 20-30 character with a ton of low level sets and uniques, socketed with nice gems and jewels, guess what? It was stupidly easy.
The only thing new is that since we don’t need to spend all day making trade games or farming up impossible to find “currency” like high runes, we can actually twink much earlier. If you want the game to be harder, stop buying stuff from that AH that makes it easier. Problem solved.
I found the game to be ridiculously easy all the way to Act 1 Hell. I have not used the auction house once, nor have I re-run areas, instead just playing through until I hit a “wall” so to speak. That happened earlier today around Leoric’s Hunting Grounds.
The problem is not that the game is hard. The problem is that the game is “cheap”. One-shots are not fun, and never have been. But aparently that’s what late-game Diablo is all about, even though the developers themselves stated that they were making the game ”challenging” in ways that were not about just inflating monster stats…
The game is built so that you either need to “grind” to find items to progress, or else head to the auction house to get to those items. The “grind” is usually excessive as they have made the drops so small so as to mitigate a flood of items on the auction house.
Here’s something to think about: You never needed to really twink your character in order to make it through the original games. You chose to continue grinding to find even more awesome items to make it easy. Now instead of being a choice, it has become a necessity. This is where the problem with Diablo 3 lies. The game is just not “fun” anymore…
I agree with you, and I think Something Cool misses the point here.
Legendary items shouldn’t be the best of the best, but they need to be:
1: worth using
2: bring something unique to the table
in diablo 2 we had crushing blow and deadly strike, we got **** in D3.
In addition finding only items that are lower than your level is boring and makes it harder to progress.
You can’t just go and farm in an area of high level and get higher level items from my experience, and it’s borrrring.
Another thing is I don’t have any urge to go farm, as getting another 20 dex or 20 vit on my plate isn’t fun, its boring. Its not special.
I agree with your opinion on difficulty – it’s based solely on items. However stating that you could have completed the original games without twinking is utter trite. In Diablo 2 there are a handful of builds that will allow you to complete Hell pretty much naked, Minion necro and Blizzball sorc being prime examples, but stray away from those and you will get your face smashed in. And in Diablo 1, remember how you had to grind those spellbooks for your sorcerer? And I’m talking about sorcerer because the other 2 classes required much more twinking to be viable.
If you meant that you didn’t need to twink in order to complete normal, then that’s accurate (although still a bit challenging for a warrior in diablo 1), but it’s also true for Diablo 3.
If you meant that you didn’t need to twink in order to complete normal, then that’s accurate (although still a bit challenging for a warrior in diablo 1), but it’s also true for Diablo 3.
Yes, that’s what I meant. People are complaining that Normal mode is too easy, which I think is sort of like complaining that your ice cream is sweet. Of course it is. It’s supposed to be that way.
FWIW, I never played beyond Normal mode in D1. That was a long time ago, but the only major grinding I remember doing was for spellbooks, but you could cheese those by repeatedly starting a new game (or maybe leaving town, I forget) and checking Adria’s shop inventory. The Skeleton King was nearly impossible if you hadn’t found a book of Holy Bolt yet.
“You never needed to really twink your character in order to make it through the original games. You chose to continue grinding to find even more awesome items to make it easy. ”
You know what their mistake is? They listened to fans. Oh god, fans were urging them to make the game hard. They made the game hard. Now the game is not “fun” any more. My advice to them is not to listen to fans anymore. Fans don’t know how to make great games. They do.
Hard is does not mean unavoidable one-shots. Hard indicates challenge. There is no challenge in dying to one-shots repetatively, only frustration. How about actually making something challenging with AI and interesting mechanics, not insta-kills and save-or-die effects?
<quote>Here’s something to think about: You never needed to really twink your character in order to make it through the original games. You chose to continue grinding to find even more awesome items to make it easy. Now instead of being a choice, it has become a necessity. This is where the problem with Diablo 3 lies</quote>
This is so true.
I’ve never used the AH or twinked but my DH and WD both have huge AoE skills that kill nearly everything in 1-2 shots. The game actually gets easier as you progress in Normal because your spells get bigger and you get access to powerful gems and monster HP doesn’t keep up at all. My DH didn’t even really see most monsters in Act 4 because Ball Lightning could clear whole rooms before they could even react.
My poor Monk, with his total lack of decent AoE skills, did have a reasonably challenging time, though.
My poor Monk, with his total lack of decent AoE skills, did have a reasonably challenging time, though.
That might explain a lot. I’m playing a monk.
I say the game is terribly fun with or without the auction house.
I myself prefer it with the auction house. It’s not like I can just buy whatever I want because stuff IS expensive, and there’s the level requirement, and I had a HARD time reaching inferno. In fact, I did so today, and I had to resort to a public game because I could not for the love of god get past Uriel, because he just did too much damage and those opperssors would completely destroy my monk. Then I did Diablo on my first try, simply because he’s so much more about the dynamics and less about the stats.
Inferno is fun. Sure, I can’t get past the first 100m of the weeping hollows because of that incredibly hard boss pack, but it’s fun. I’ll get grinding and hope for a good drop, or wait until I have more money to get a better weapon and armor. I already tried to bid for a couple of things but I don’t think I’m gonna win.
The loot is broken as hell if you have to be in act 3 to find items for act 2..
No, that is merely the consequence of having a tiered difficulty progression in Inferno coupled with completely random item system. Items are generated based on several factors, but items that are generated always have the highest chance of being several levels below you, with having very little chance of being the same level as the monster that droped it, and having very low chance of being significantly below your current level. At least, that’s how it worked in D2 with TC’s.
Anyways, games where end game is designed around tiered progression, one of which is WoW, offer rewards on tier that are good enough to progress to the next tier. Better items that will make the progression easier are of course rarer, but even the best items will only do you good on the next tier. Now, there are several important things to note here, in these games, loot tables are (almost) always fixed, as in, every monsters drops are pre-determined with chance of best items dropping being increasingly lower as quality progresses, but, again, even the best quality is only good enough for the next tier. Besides that, this has implications on the loot, because items are pre-set and hand crafted so that they will get the players through that content, and are also often thematicly correct, e.g. fire dungeon will most often spawn items with some form of fire resistance on it to make the progress to the next tier easier, and the like.
The problem here is that Diablo 3, like all Diablo games, has completely random drops, Completely random drops means that the quality and type of items greatly varies and, due to obvious reasons, isn’t really suited to tiered progression. But Blizzard went with tiered progression through inferno to increase the longetivity of the game and because flat difficulty made some serious balance issues that weren’t solvable.
Namely, if the difficulty is flat, that means that all of inferno has to be balanced around the difficulty that in normal circumenstances only a portion of the difficulty would have, the entire inferno would be balanced around difficulty of one of the acts. And no matter what they did at that point, it wouldn’t turn out well. No matter around what they would balance it, people would need to farm Hell to get to inferno. But, bigger the gap and higher the difficulty, more of artificial it would feel to cross from Hell into Inferno. If they balanced it around one of the easier acts, that would make crossing from Hell to Inferno easy and simple, but would kill both the challange and longetivity of the game. But if they balanced it around one of the latter acts, difficulty and, more importantly, gear gap, because Diablo is gear game, would be too big and it wouldn’t be fun or interesting to play. Imagine going from Act IV Inferno with the gear you got in Act IV Hell. That would force people to grind for waaaay to long of a time and it wouldn’t be fun. And after all that grinding, once people, or if people, got gear to a level where they could clear Inferno, Inferno would be cleared withing hours/days. So, it would be a ridiculously steep wall to climb, but once conquered, it wouldn’t provide enough challange.
I don’t talk about inferno..
I talk about nm and hell.
I didn’t finish hell yet as I play only HC and my monk died on 55
condolences.
Most intelligent comment I have seen to date. It is also a consequence of innovation. Inferno level is something new. New thing never turns out as you expect them to. Therefore Blizzard relies on iterative design. Smart of them. But that also means they won’t be able to fine tune Inferno until months or even years down the road.
People love Blizzard games but they never remember the game when lauched were never perfect. Remember how dominating mutalisk was in starcraft 1? I remember warcraft 2 was about hunter rush initially until they balanced them. Starcraft balance took years to achive. So dare I say, give them time. Or come back when they are ready to release an expansion. I am sure the game would be much more polished then.
cool videos, i disagree with the first, but agree with the other 2
Believing that diablo 3 is a good game is like believing that jesus is real.
How would someone not believe in the most famous dinosaur rider?
Is that a compliment? Afterall how many people believe in Jesus in the world today?
Exactly, people are stupid in general. Just because the majority of people can’t see what’s wrong with the game (yet, until they inexplicably get bored of it and leave, never to be seen or heard of again) doesn’t mean there isn’t something wrong with the game. Too bad their extreme fanboyism forces them to defend stupid crap. It’s obvious the more elite and intelligent gamers that can detach themselves from fanboyism can perfectly identify exactly what is wrong with D3 and why.
more elite and intelligent gamers that can’t handle the game? whaa? you make no sense. And again, never said the game was perfect. Its the “elite and intelligent” gamers who are going to extremes and saying that because some of us feel the game isnt the end of the world we are automatically blizzard apologists. if the game is stupid crap, go. i like the game and further, it will likely get much better. give it a minute. if you are 1337 then game on stud.
QQ… its been 2 weeks… don’t like it.. stop playing… half of his conclusions are subjective and/or irrellevant