Was inferno really necessary?

[mysticc]

As I slowly get each class up to level 60, I find myself questioning the design decision to have inferno difficulty. I'm sure others have raised this, and I will admit, I have thought this might be a problem many times in the past - including before the game was even released - and I am starting to actually feel the negative effects to having 4 difficulty levels.

To be honest, playing the game 3 times is actually kind of long as it is. Asking players to play through the game yet a 4th time seems like a bit of padding to me.

It's not so bad when you level your first character, but when you're on your 4th, it's getting tiring. I haven't even been playing *that* much per week either, so it's not like I am experiencing burnout because I am playing 8 hours a day. I barely get in 10-15 hours a week at this point due to work.

I just find myself wishing normal difficulty was harder, and hell difficulty was actually inferno.

[AceOfJacks]

Well, the thing about games, is that when you're bored of them, you know, you can, like, you know, like, stop. Seriously? YEAH SERIOUSLY! OMG NO WAI! YES WAY! OMG! I NO RITE?!

Ok, seriously, if you're bored with the game, just take a break. Nobody's forcing you to play the game. If you think you've have enough, then put the keyboard and mouse down. Do something else with your time. Games are meant to be enjoyed, and if you're knot enjoying it, then don't play it anymore. Simple as that.

Also, there is a loophole that allows you to completely skip some quests and even some Acts, if you choose. You don't have to play through the entire game over and over again if you don't want to. Just use the Public Games to bypass the areas that you thought were monotonous and boring.

[kestegs]

Well, the thing about games, is that when you're bored of them, you know, you can, like, you know, like, stop. Seriously? YEAH SERIOUSLY! OMG NO WAI! YES WAY! OMG! I NO RITE?!

Ok, seriously, if you're bored with the game, just take a break. Nobody's forcing you to play the game. If you think you've have enough, then put the keyboard and mouse down. Do something else with your time. Games are meant to be enjoyed, and if you're knot enjoying it, then don't play it anymore. Simple as that.

Also, there is a loophole that allows you to completely skip some quests and even some Acts, if you choose. You don't have to play through the entire game over and over again if you don't want to. Just use the Public Games to bypass the areas that you thought were monotonous and boring.

You missed the entire point of his post.

They also already fixed that exploit.



But to be on topic here:

I've thought the same thing. I think they just wanted us to feel like we were getting more than we did in D2. I still think it's an okay move and don't hate it. I enjoy playing the classes through and going through the skill progression with them.

[Greizer]

Well - think of it this way: in D2 you had three difficulties, but had to roll many, *many* chars, especially before respecs. In D3 there's one more diff but you only ever need 5 chars (10 if you play HC). I do wish that you could just create a lvl 60 char once you've finished the game once, but it's never gonna happen.

@AceOfJacks: They *still* haven't fixed that exploit? o_O I guess it's 'working as intended', lol... Unlike urn runs.
Edit: fixed I see, thank Heavens.

[mysticc]

Well, the thing about games, is that when you're bored of them, you know, you can, like, you know, like, stop. Seriously? YEAH SERIOUSLY! OMG NO WAI! YES WAY! OMG! I NO RITE?!

Ok, seriously, if you're bored with the game, just take a break. Nobody's forcing you to play the game. If you think you've have enough, then put the keyboard and mouse down. Do something else with your time. Games are meant to be enjoyed, and if you're knot enjoying it, then don't play it anymore. Simple as that.

Also, there is a loophole that allows you to completely skip some quests and even some Acts, if you choose. You don't have to play through the entire game over and over again if you don't want to. Just use the Public Games to bypass the areas that you thought were monotonous and boring.

I'm not bored of the game. Ideally I'd like to play many of the classes in inferno. What I'm saying is that I don't like playing through 3 difficulty levels of padding just to get to the "good part".

I think the biggest reason I see it this way is that playing a second+ character is kind of a purposeless grind. There's nothing interesting to find in these 3 difficulty levels, and you can make more gold just doing 1 butcher run on inferno than you can playing for several hours or days straight through normal or nightmare.

Diablo 2 at least had a few items on the lower difficulties that were nice to find, especially lld items. There's not really anything like that going for diablo 3.

But with diablo 2, there was rushing, and that's something I don't disagree with and I often got rushes or rushed myself in diablo 2 to get past this purposeless grind. As far as I can tell, there's nothing in diablo 3 that will let you do this now.

There's only so many times you can play through the content, and when you have limited time to have fun with the game, sometimes you just want to skip to where you will have the most fun. Playing through and grinding these early acts with alternate characters is not fun for me, but it seems that blizzard made it a requirement in order to have fun later on. Not a very good decision in retrospect.

I just want to have a bunch of classes to best utilize the gear that drops, and to use the right complementary class when I play with one friend or another.

[yovargas]

I've thought this since they announced Inferno and argued about it a good bit on here. I'm hoping the xpac eventually replaces Inferno with something more imaginative.

[mysticc]

Yeah, I thought this when they announced it too. Things work better in 3's as they say. 4 times is too much. I would have rather had Hell difficulty actually BE inferno.

I'm hoping the expansion's story actually just assumes you are level 60 and beyond, that way to not pointlessly extend the acts further than required.

I think the times have changed too. Back when d2 hit the shelves, most of us were kids, and we had more time. We still love games and play them, but we don't have the time we did anymore. This sort of grinding has slowly become less and less appealing to me as I've gotten older.

If it has to be a grind, at least it shouldn't feel like a grind. Diablo 3 actually does feel too similar and grindy. I sort of wish inferno was a bunch of really interesting random content that was endless and unpredictable, and the whole point of it was to survive, fight tons of interesting packs and bosses, and get tons of fat loot. Playing through the content over and over again is less interesting after you've done it 10-15 times.

[Greizer]

Endless dungeon in expansion... Max stats on items raise by +1 every level... One can always hope.

[Delvin]

Fourth difficulty made sense when it was flat difficulty, way for high level characters to run any part of the game without having to feel handicapped in terms of loot potential.

Admittedly after the change to a progression based difficulty I think three times would've been plenty.

[beingmused]

Well, if they wanted to have a way to include some real difficulty, then it would have been mighty difficult to incorprate that difficulty curve into just normal/nightmare/hell. Things would have gotten tough a lot faster, and people might have whined a lot if they had been shut out of progressing beyond act1 hell without doing some serious farming.

If you did inferno the same way you did the earlier difficulties - running through it once and then moving on - then I think running all the quests 4 times in a row would be tiresome. But since quest progress more or less comes to a halt at inferno and you have to stop for gear progress...it doesn't feel the same as the 3 earlier difficulties.

I've thought this since they announced Inferno and argued about it a good bit on here. I'm hoping the xpac eventually replaces Inferno with something more imaginative.

What kind of Diablo endgame can you imagine? It is not an MMO that can have a new tier of raids every 6 months or so. I think that given the nature of the game, refocusing the endgame around elites rather than boss running was rather imaginative (and you can see how rough of a time many are having adjusting to that change).