Why I came Back to Diablo 3, and Why I am Enjoying it Immensely
Posted 27 August 2012 by FluxShortly after patch 1.03 came out several months ago, I stopped playing Diablo 3. I was tired of the terrible difficulty and ridiculousness of Inferno, and was simply not enjoying the end-game what so ever. As many of you will also recall, I was very vocal about my discontent of some of the game mechanics, particularly 
Loot and Difficulty. And then a few weeks ago, something happened. 1.04 happened.
When I read the various 1.04 previews, I, like most people, was excited but at the same time cautious. It sounded like they were taking a step in the right direction, but than again so did patch 1.03, and that made things arguably worse for the game. And than the Legendary previews came out, and my excitement skyrocketed. The Legendaries actually looked good, and powerful. Before the preview, I had visions at the back of my mind of Blizzard “not getting it” again, and not going far enough with the changes to Legendaries. Boy was I wrong.
OMG I am excite?!?!
So fast forward the release of 1.04, and for the first time ever in Diablo 3, I get excited when I can log on and play. I wake up on a Saturday morning, and jump straight in, and pretty much don’t stop until I am forced to by something in real life. In fact, I think I played more hours this weekend than I have played the game post-level 60 altogether before. This is a far cry from how it was just months ago, where I would almost have to force myself to PLAY the game, because it was so frustrating and simply not fun.
What about 1.04 has made the game so much better for me? I put it to a few things:
1) Legendary and Set items are powerful therefore exciting to find, and that sub-consciously makes the game far more exciting when playing.
2) Paragon system brings back that feeling from D2 where you always felt like you were working towards something.
3) The changes to rare drops (more items having the potential to be good rather than just ilvl 62+) have made identifying items exciting.
4) The game difficulty is no longer AS frustrating as it once was, however this point comes with an asterix – it could still be better. I am on the side of the fence of the people who feel Diablo games aren’t and never were about “conquering difficult challenges” but rather about kill speed and efficiency, so I am very much super anti-difficulty.
While there still are some issues with the game (Crafting system is almost useless, difficulty is still jarring for most, itemization still needs some improvements), 1.04 was a giant leap for the game as a whole.
On top of those points though is an underlying factor that gives me a lot of hope – the development team appears to “get it” about what people want from a Diablo game. The upcoming changes as hinted in Jays recent post are things that I fully believe in, and finally, the future of Diablo 3 looks to be very bright.
So if you, like many veterans, have not played the game in months, I implore you to give it a shot. From one disappointed gamer to another, the game is currently in a place where it is well-worth playing, and I think you will have fun when you give it a go in the post-1.04 world.
A good read, and sums up exactly what I felt about Diablo coming into 1.04. I just didn’t want to test it, but now I can do exactly what I wanted to in Diablo before it even released–play a summoner. Thanks Blizzard for FINALLY listening to your fans (I’m gonna take a wild guess and say Activision is the cause of the problem.)
Obviously not playing HC where game/server glitches for their still-Beta version (1.04? lol, try 0.94) kills off your valuable time/effort. -FanBoy turned Hater.
I’ve played HC almost since day one and I have never had any “game/server glitches” kill me…In fact I can only remember one time lag even gave me a scare. Maybe I’m in the minority, but for me “game/server glitches” do not seem to be as big an issue as others claim.
Or perhaps I’m in a minority – either way, I’m glad to hear of your HC success. Playing exclusively HC in D2 for years, I can’t go back. But until they really do something to stabilize the persistent issues, my time is too valuable. I’m okay dying by my own hand (greed, lack of attention, stupidity), but for just playing? That’s just a broken game. ^-^
I’m glad you know what I’m doing since I don’t. At least someone knows what I’m doing, since I’ve played HC a lot, died to server glitches at least 10 times with HC character’s and even non-HC characters. Thanks bud.
In the old days we called this propaganda.
The verdict has been reached and with low attention spam these days if you don’t mind blow everyone away on day 1 (**** it, on first month at least) it will not work 6 month later.
I can’t believe they still want to try and milk this. They should be overloading this game with content.
If the game was any easier, it’d go from “sort of easy” to “insanely easy” at which point it’d be [more?] boring.
There’s reasons the game is lacking, and difficulty isn’t one of them. Just my opinion, of course. I do think 1.04 is a pretty good patch, for what it’s worth.
I agree. The difficulty is good as it is now. More easy would be too much.
The reason I maintain that the game should still be less “difficult” is because the game simply plays better when you are able to absolutely devastate hordes of monsters. You feel more awesome, and yes you can still die, but it’s more about efficiency rather than frustrating challenges of trying to kite and gimmick your way in to killing the champ packs.
I discovered this when I twinked up my DH in hell. It was literally 10x funner than Inferno and it felt far more immersive, my character felt much cooler and “heroic”, and it felt much more like that candy-land feeling of Diablo 2. Killing champ packs in 5-10 seconds rather than over a minute felt immensely satisfying, fun and I could do it for 12 hours a day without getting sick of it. It felt like a D2 javazon using Lightening fury. A feeling I have SORELY missed.
I’ve heard many other people experience the same thing as I did, and it really opened by eyes. Try it some time. The game simply plays better like that.
There’s also the matter of the decreased difficulty opening up more build possibilities. Since the patch I’ve been able to get more creative in Inferno without the fear of getting one shot over and over again. That’s very satisfying.
I should add that getting close to 25% movement speed makes the game a hundred times better, especially if you’re a Monk without Tempest Rush (and most monks are). Being able to run to retreating monsters and away from frozen/arcane/etc makes the game that much less frustrating. Also if you happen to die you don’t have to “run” 30 minutes to the other side of the map. Honestly can’t believe I had put this off for as long as I have. Anyone that doesn’t have vault/sprint/etc should buy some MS gear.
Totally agree with this.
Never understood why the game needs to be so damn hard.
As you mention, the fun in diablo is to kill stuff, and to do it fast. With a lower difficulty you can still feel progression because getting better items would make you kill even faster than before. You never really going to one-shot inferno elite packs anyway.
Difficulty works well in games where you can learn from you mistakes and then overcome the difficulty by becoming a better player. Donkey Kong country returns comes to mind where one map could take 30 tries before mastering it. But when you do master it, you get a feeling of becoming a better player.
That’s not true in diablo 3 where you have no tools to overcome the difficulty other than better items. It’s not like playing the same elite over and over again would make it easier. Btter quality of items, and pure luck is the tools you are given in diablo 3. Knowing how to play your char, and choosing a good overall build is only a small percentage of your characters power.
If I want to be challenged I would play PvP actually, where I’m matched with ppl with the same kind of gear and skill.
I think reducing the difficulty just a little bit more (mainly the hp of elite packs) is the way to go, and then as Jay suggested, add some feature like /players X to ppl that needs to be challenged.
The reason why I say that they shouldn’t make the game easier is because IT WILL become as easy as Diablo II if you give it the time. I’d even argue that with all best in slot items, it will be even easier. For example, my char can take down champs in less than 15-20 secs and pretty much never dies in act 3. And he’s far from perfect. I don’t have best in slot items. Now imagine with those. If we give it time, we will eventually all have the best items just like we had them all in Diablo II, and the game will be easy, fast, etc..
i miss that feeling so much
lightning fury come back 2 us with the addon please 
Great article Azzure. I too am enjoying 1.04 – my DH is using what most would call an “off-build” that simply wasn’t viable pre-1.04.
As for him not being “that guy”, this website is LOADED with “those guys” – you know, always negative and ever-predictable. Check it out, I’m about to be refered to as a white knight that loves Kotick or told that this is a clearing house for all opinions, especially those slamming D3.
But you still want to be rewarded for improving your gear (since NO ONE’s gear is anywhere close to ideal right now), and you need at least some amount of difficulty to make that possible. Feeling like an absolute badass is great and all, but if you feel that way too soon, then what is the incentive to keep improving??
This.
I have a level 60 barb halfway through Act 3 Inferno. I started a monk, and really, really enjoyed leveling her to 60 into Act 1 Inferno before 1.04. I enjoyed it so much I stared a wiz and got her to level 20 before patch 1.04, twinking them both along the way.
I really love paying barb- I always play that toon from D2, and WoW (warrior) and every other game i play, but it was just too high a difficult level and too frustrating to die so much and then spend a boatload of time farming in previous acts to have money to repair.
I’m disappointed by the skill changes. By and large, except for Barbarian and Witch Doctor, all they did was make things more damaging. They didn’t look at the mechanics of skills and in many cases didn’t do anything with many skills that have only 1 or 2 runes worth using and the rest being pointless.
Think long term. 1.0.4 is just the beginning of skill tunning. Do you know how many skills they have to cover? The 1.0.4 theme seems to be tuning resource spenders so future patches can tune other skills. Everything takes time. Be patient.
Most devs take this time in a phase called TESTING. Blizz/Activision wanted their money, hence we get a pre-Beta release in May.
IME 1.04 skill changes where the stuff that they felt they need to do ASAP, like make the WD pets usable etc and making skill choices more or less equally useful.
I’m enjoying it because it opened the purse strings
I hope you’re joking in this post, this game is still terrible. Paragon levels are only a minor improvement. Not enough to keep people wanting to play.
Don’t be “that guy”.
No, he is right. The linear, simplistic gameplay is exactly the same. The paragon system lets you progress through the same broken content over and over again. After about plvl 5 it becomes insanely boring, especially for those who were already doing fine in inferno. And don’t even bother making the argument that D2 was the same, because D3 doesn’t have half the content D2 does – runes, jewels, runwords, more than 3 socketed items, the ability to socket unsocketed items, personalisation – the list is endless.
GW2 offers a tonne more things to do for about the same price, thus GW2 is in direct competition with D3 in terms of “bang for your buck” – you get a better game for the same price.
Everything you have listed that D2 had over D3, none of which existed in D2 Vanilla, yet it was far better received than Vanilla D3, while D2:LOD was less well received by some than Vanilla D2…
I am not saying D2 is the same as D3, it isn’t, it was WORSE than D3. Everyone could outgrow the game difficulty insanely easily in Hell difficulty in D2 by simply running a Sorc to Nightmare Meph, MF the crap out of it until you have enough gear to do Hell Meph, then MF the crap out of it to gear other characters, then, you build other characters to do other things, albeit differently. I wouldn’t call this ‘content’
I also wouldn’t call an extra act as ‘Far more content’, especially considering that the 5th act was an expansion.
I can guarentee that, had Diablo 2 been released 10 year later than it actually did, with updated graphics, and absolutely NOTHING else was changed, it would be very heavily panned by players.
Oh and btw, this comment isn’t directed at the poster, since I assume it’s as a futile effort as trying to get a reply from a brick wall, but for other players to see how that comment is purely prejudiced against D3 rather than a true comparison. (I player D2 in case anyone was wondering, for a very long time)
A few good points there. Just a couple of things, though:
“Everything you have listed that D2 had over D3 – none of which existed in D2 Vanilla – was far better received than Vanilla D3, while D2:LOD was less well received by some than Vanilla D2…”
I can’t really make sense of what you are saying here. If you mean to say that D2 vanilla was better received than D3 vanilla, then of course. What are you saying again?
“D2 (vanilla) is … WORSE than D3.”
How about comparing D3 to D2 as it is now? A sequel aims to be as good or better than its predecessors. D3 chopped out almost everything that was good about D2. Don’t agree? Then why all the patches and recent apologies if D3 was already better than D2?
“I wouldn’t call this ‘content’”
This IS the content for both D2 and D3. However, D2 has greater flexibility, more atmosphere, better plot, brilliant items/skills/classes/players per map/more choice/variety… really, the list goes on and on.
“I also wouldn’t call an extra act as ‘Far more content’, especially considering that the 5th act was an expansion.”
No, I was referring to the variety of ways to do things. D2 has more customisation, greater degrees of randomisation, greater vaiety of ways to do things… and so on. In an item driven game, the items/classes/skills/ways to do things ARE the content.
“I can guarentee that, had Diablo 2 been released 10 year later than it actually did, with updated graphics, and absolutely NOTHING else was changed, it would be very heavily panned by players.”
D2 vanilla, maybe. It is really a poor argument to say, “Had event X not occurred, Y would have happen.” Consider: Had D2 taken the place of D3, D2 would be equally revolutionary as it was 10 years ago as there was nothing like it since D1…
If I compared D2 to D3 as they are now, I won’t lie, there are still good things about D2 compared to D3 (such as builds that do not exist in D2), but there will be things I will not miss. Things such as Immunities (I detest that concept more than any other flaw in this game, but this is a personal opinion) and Crushing Blow (the physical stat that makes Uber Tristram easy for those with ability to use it, such as a Smitedin, but makes it impossible for caster classes).
However, our definition of freedom when it comes to using classes is vastly different. My definition is that you can use whatever skills you want without it so that one would stop you from getting another. For example, in D3, I can make a purely fire damage based Wizard, or a purely Arcane build with only minor functionality losses (such as not being able to use the more useful side effects of other damage types), in D2, you can do that, but the damage became pitifully small, to the point of unplayable in Hell. But specialising in 1 spec also means I’d be gimped with immunities later down the line. So in essence I felt D2 skills was more of Which would give me the least penalties rather than the most benefits. Also, I couldn’t build a character using only Ice Bolt, Charged Bolt and Fire Bolt and expect to do any damage beyond act 1 nm, but D3 doesn’t have that limitation. Sure, there are better skills at higher levels, but earlier skills still scale with your level.
Lastly, if D2 was never released and D3 was replaced by D2 with updated graphics, yes, D2 will still might be revolutionary in terms of gameplay, but the flaws will stand out much more than before. Because the player base and attitude change over time. As you will undoubtedly have noticed, player community 10 years ago is VASTLY different than the community we have now, and they tend to focus on the flaws rather than the merits. (For example, the other day I read someone was quitting D3 because there was rainbows and ponies in the game, imagine what his response would be if the best leveling method in a demon slaying game was killing intentionally badly dubbed humanoid cows).
lol, exactly. I was all hyped up about runes, jewels and stuff in LoD and it turned out most of that was useless. How many runewords were actually useful? Or even runes by themselves? More doesn’t always mean better. I would rather have less but well balanced stuff.
That’s not to say D3 is all perfect, I’m disappointed by the crafting system, it should be much more useful.
@Michal
D3′s crafting system more useful? In what way? You run the risk of contradicting yourself if you maintain that they need to add functionality to D3′s crafting system.
The first step in this whole D2 vs. D3 debate is admitting that D2 does more things right. If you admit this, then it is a matter of which things D2 does right.
Balance is important, but there are right ways to balance things and there are wrong ways. Making every aspect equal to every other aspect in the game means you lose the difference between those aspects. For example, high crit lightning and high AOE dps fireball. If these two elements are made equal, you lose the functionality of one or both. Making one useful in one context and another useful in other contexts is the right way to balance them. Disparity between items/skills/etc is the very thing that allows for uniqueness – something D3 is severely lacking.
And BTW, a lot of runewords were useful depending on what you could make (Merc Polearms, low, mid and high level runewords for armor, weapons etc). The runes themselves could be used for recipes in the HQ/crafting, so they were individually useful as well. That is why people would farm entire areas just for runes.
I think you have chosen to omit certain truths about D2 to make it look worse than it really is just to win an argument…
Apologies, Couldn’t edit last reply. I meant, in the second paragraph, is that if I built a multi-element character in D2, the damage sometimes becomes pitifully small that it becomes unplayable (and continue from there).
For the most part, I agree. However we do differ on one very important point. Having the ability to mess up a character is a good thing as it separates a good player from a superb player. Not all builds are viable in D2, which means those that study it more – know more about the mechanics of the game – are rewarded more and can build some amazing characters. This generally doesn’t happen in D3 (admittedly there are death-zerging builds that are pretty interesting but they are the exception rather than the rule).
With respect to our definition of “freedom”, I believe that sure, D2 limits skill choice to one or two choices (in reality several, BO on weapon switch for eg.), but this increases build variety rather than limits it. You can build a very viable Tri Elementalist in D2, or wager a higher single-element build but lose the ability to kill some enemies, which is only fair. This, IMO, is better than the sandbox “you can kill all everything with whatever” approach D3 implements, which amounts to systematically carpet-bombing build variations. There must be about 100 builds on these forums for D2, some gear dependant, others skill based, and yet others are strategy based. All builds in D3 are gear dependent (as inferno so often reminds us) and all toons have the same skill set.
Lastly, my point about retrospective arguments still stands
Messing up a character so that it becomes a challenge is one thing, however, if such mess up easily makes the game unplayable, THAT is when I have a problem.
If it meant that some misjudged and misplaced points won’t matter so much, I won’t mind too much, I’ll be dismayed sure (since my character won’t be at full potential), but back in the days of 1.10 (1.09 was a joke, cows die practically to everything), until the respec came out (IMO one of the best updates to D2 gameplay in its history), if I didn’t know D2 any better and played the same way as I played it during my early D2 career, I probably wouldn’t have gotten nightmare alive, physically, let alone hell. Which will make me realise, oh look, I have to replay the game again… I am extremely against games where mistakes results in replays of the game or the game becomes excruciating. Diablo 2 1.10 was one of those.
What I enjoy every much about D3 is that skills are freely changeable, sure, I find it rather unfortunate that stats are preset (EG if I had the choice, I would have put the default 1 point in Str and Dex into Int and Vit), it would be nicer if it did. But regardless, I enjoy playing with a viable character, but I really much prefer playing a character build I have developed rather than dictated by Synergies, game environment or some one elses (EG Who would use Spectral blades, especially the 20 yard rune, when you have 60% slow Blizzard and arcane hydra
)
Hahaha, this is exactly where we differ again. I rebuilt my characters over and over again, as well as tried completely new, ridiculous builds like a concerntrate barb or a reviver necro. Yeah they sucked, but I learnt a whole stack about the game that way (as well as looking up info on these forums). I remember playing through D2 for the first time with a bitsa bowazon in D2 classic. Duriel ate my face, which was the turning point for me – I could either say the game was unbalanced and rage quit, or I could think ahead of time how to spend my skills to avoid getting face-****d again.
Agreed, the respec ability in D2 was needed, but it was not game-breaking without it.
And lastly, the respect system in D3 is completely crap – not because respeccing is crap (on the contrary, GW1 and RIFT do it fantastically), rather because the skill system is arbitrary. At least in D2, points in a fire skill contributed to other fire skills, and so on. In D3, you roundhouse kick monsters for umpteen levels then drop a bell on their head. The only reason they don’t have all the skills unlocked at level 1 is so the little kiddies don’t get overwhelmed and quit before they have a chance to spend their parent’s money on the AH…
If I see…ONE more GW2 comment @ D3 topics…I’m gonna punch a nun in the face -_-
The lack of fixes for this still-Beta release is going to drive me to GW2.
And yet spend another $60 for a F2P-P2W MMORPG game client… right…
still haven’t found a single set item
and the only legendary I’ve found was way back in early June
I must be the unluckiest person in the game
I’m enjoying the Witch doctor MUCH more, but this is getting really tiring
This is my issue as well. The carrot would be tempting now, if I could even see it. As is, it’s tough to continue with drop rates so low. Paragon levels are a big help too however.
So the only carrots are sets/legendaries? I made $7.50 off of a rare I found last week. Yellow carrots are still carrots.
I’d hardly call them carrots as they are still among the most boring items I’ve ever seen in an ARPG.
LoL while I understand your sentiment…Gotta say my opinion.
My $7.50 is less boring than your proc chance.
To some of us, there’s more to a carrot than potential monetary return value. Especially considering there’s no RMAH in HC.
Can I be on your team for the unluckiest player?
Set items – Zero!
Legendary items – very few (6 max, if that) pre-1.3 patch.
Later,
Adrian
same here! only legendaries i have ever found were a hellrack and a set monk helm pre this patch
i might be going insane but it seems as if this patch has made drop rates even worse for me than previously
It’s my understanding that drop rates for set items and some legendaries have gone down as a result of those items being buffed to higher ilvls (typically ilvl 61 -> ilvl 63). Exactly how big the nerf is depends on the act you’re in, as different acts have different drop rates.
For instance, act 1 inferno mobs have a 23.9% chance to drop ilvl 61s and 4.8% to drop ilvl 63s, which means that the chance of finding a set item in act 1 has been reduced with, as Blizzard would put it, a factor of 5. But hey, at least buffing normal mobs’ chance to drop magic/rare items by a factor of 4 was good, right?
This is all assuming that Blizzard didn’t buff drop rates to compensate for the change in ilvl, but since they didn’t mention drop rates at all in their preview articles – which is one of the biggest complaint people have when it comes to legendaries – I think it’s safe to assume that they didn’t want to touch upon the subject because they didn’t have any good news to give us.
Personally, I’ve played about 4-5 hours a day since Wednesday now and I have yet to find a single legendary/set item. It’s just disheartening at this point, especially when you read the official forums and see people who’ve played for twice as many hours as I complain about the same thing.
So far, what should’ve been the best thing about 1.04 has become the worst, and that’s pretty bad.
This is very spot on because right now this game is about the item hunt yet the drop rate (although I think good items should be hard to find) is maybe ok/could be better but since that is all there is to diablo 3 right now in the way of what keeps us playing its not in good standing. I think Jay Wilson in his “hint” blog may realize this when he says that the game needs other stuff for the end game – although I think when PvP finally comes out I think PvP will be a heck of a lot of fun. I think randomization of the lay out of acts 1-4 will help a lot.
Act 3/4 inferno, and the elite mobs there, are still way too OP in many situations and for many builds. Not everyone plays a DH or WW barb with a 1200 dps weapon and insane crit, and I don’t intend to play any of these ridiculous cookie cutters.
The WD is a pretty good measure how well balanced inferno is. If there is any pack/mod combo the WD cannot beat with relatively good equipment, then it’s definitely OP. A this point, the WD has become much more enjoyable, but inferno as a whole is still far way from being balanced. The “flow” is still missing from act 3 inferno on. I don’t want deal minutes with one boss pack, it’s against the hack & slash principle. I also don’t want boss packs to one-shot my WD, like this teleport/illusionist/mortar/frozen **** you meet so often in act 3 inferno. This nonsense has to be fixed asap.
And when they finally got inferno right, they can furthermore incresae the drop rate for good rares, legendaries and sets, which are still way too low. As Brevik said, Diablo should be a fun farming game with an addictive flow, and Diablo 3 is still not yet there.
It’s not just the witch doctor but even “strong” classes with OP builds such as double WW barbarians – barbarians that are anything but double WW struggle way more than a double WW barbarian with Act 3 inferno I’ve tried it.
My barbarian (not WW/tornado) is now waiting for patch 1.0.5 because she dies way too often in act 3 inferno, and gameplay just sucks when you have poke endlessly into mobs to kill just some of them.
Who ever had the idea to make inferno super hard, was totally wrong.
It’s still easier to think of things about D3 that suck than things that are fun.
I’ll admit I’ve logged more hours in the past week than the last two months, but it still hasn’t “got it” to me quite yet. It is better, but still not enjoyable. The increased speed of gameplay from d2 to d3 still has getting one-shotted quite easily, maybe it is easier to adjust to d2 because the gameplay is a tad slower, instead I feel like I’m playing a super fast paced FPS, even faster paced than HG:L.
Another thing I hope gets “fixed” is that once you get to a certain point gear-wise, you’re basically just farming Act 3 over and over since there’s no point doing anything else.
I agree but this was a problem in D2 as well. What was the point after you got to a certain point gear-wise? Mowing cows to get to 99?
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