The Truth why D3 is broken. Not a bash/whine/complaint thread!der=0

**omaruswow** · 08-08-2012, 22:07

...from the ultimate blizzard fanboy.

I believe Diablo fans look at D2 with rose colored glasses, when the fact is, the ultimate reason D3 is broken is we’ve changed. Diablo II while glorious 12 years ago, doesn't hold up to our present day expectations for gaming experience, despite what the "I still play D2" players say. Take D2, re-skin it to modern graphic standards, re-release it, and it would fail faster than D3 has.

How can I say this? Well, thats what Blizzard did, in D3, as well as adding everything we wished D2 had. Yes, I know they changed the skills, made it an always online game, made it harder, but the real change is, we are different gamers now, with 12 years gaming evolution under our belt.

Diablo fans wistfully dreamed of a return to the glory days like middle age person dreams of high school. Playing D2 is a time too far gone and expecting the magic of a youthful experience to be relived in our “adult” gaming perspective is impossible.

It's not the AH, nor RMAH, nor the item drop randomization. It's not always online DRM. Nope, it's not really whatever else has been called into question.

The real reason we don’t like D3: It's the Grind.

The real core of D2’s success was addiction to the grind. All games had it back then, we all loved it. The Grind was what successful video games were based on back then. Hell, pacman was always the same map everytime and we played it to death.

Face it, we don’t much like the Grind anymore, we’ve evolved.
We can still do it a little bit, as long as its not too painful. Unfortunately, thats exactly what happens when you hit inferno, it not just painful, it excruciating.

The greatest difference between Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 is us, the gamers.
I do not know how Blizzard can fix D3 much less us.

I’m not blaming us, for D3’s failure, that Blizzard’s fault and cross to bear.

But I think we were both guilty of trying to rekindle an esteemed romance that happened much too long ago.

**moreno** · 08-08-2012, 22:17

Not true. It's not that we don't enjoy grinding anymore, it's that there is nothing to grind in D3 in the first place.

**sifuedition** · 08-08-2012, 22:21

http://www.thinkfeelplay.com/theory-...ng-motivation/
http://seriousgamesmarket.********.c...hology-of.html
http://www.casinotop10.net/the-psych...gambling.shtml
http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/colu...ly03dec01.html

I can find tons more. D3 misses the mark on reward structures based on a huge basis of psychological research. Only a small portion of the player-base is seeing the game reward them in a way that feels compelling (mostly botters, AH flippers and those who are able to farm A3 however they got there).

It's true that the randomization of gear is not the only way to improve the reward structure, but it is the most direct since this is an item hunt game. Other ways can work just as well but Blizz needs to be careful to consider that reward structures need to account for multiple types of players that are motivated differently. There is a large portion of the player-base that does not feel reward from the AH and at the moment, they are the most disgruntled.

**Majaii** · 08-08-2012, 22:24

I do not agree either. I replayed an area in act 1 Hell just for fun on my Barb the other day (He's in Hell, I have not replayed anything up to this point), and got really excited when I did it when I saw items drop etc... If the drops are good, I have fun grinding. If they suck, there is no point. My heart quickened in D2 almost every time I saw a unique drop, especially if it was something like a gold ring, or Diadem. That just doesn't happen in D3 from my experience so far.

**pulli** · 08-08-2012, 22:43

How can I say this? Well, thats what Blizzard did, in D3, as well as adding everything we wished D2 had. Yes, I know they changed the skills, made it an always online game, made it harder, but the real change is, we are different gamers now, with 12 years gaming evolution under our belt.

Uh..... "yes I know they changed it..... but they didn't change it, and what they did wasn't important"

Strong argumentation there!

**sacridoc** · 08-08-2012, 22:56

Yeah this is wrong. The main thing that went wrong with D3 (in addition to the AH) is they homogenized everything.

Blizzard removed customization from the game. There's no build variety and no gear variety. You can't create a unique character in this game because everyone uses the same stats and basically the same builds. The runes don't give a real feeling of change between skills either so it feels like there are way fewer skills than there should be.

ARPGs should be about endless customization. In many ways D3 isn't a traditional ARPG at all. It's more like some kind of MOBA / ARPG hybrid with lots of MMO elements. The combat is superior to what you get in most ARPGs, but the customization is terrible.

And in my opinion, customization is what ARPGs are all about.

**Golbez2** · 08-08-2012, 23:01

I completely disagree, I played D2 right up until D3's release, infact, I've gone back to D2 recently and find the game way more better made than D3. Sure D3 has really nice gameplay but everything else fails, it can't hold D2's jock at the moment.

**Malicious** · 08-08-2012, 23:11

As far as grind motivation is concerned... the huge difference is the drops. In D2 if u did some grinding for 1 hour, u r pretty much bound to find something at least semi-useful. How many hours do u think it takes on average in D3 to find something semi-decent? I can tell u right now it's nowhere near 1 hour. Also, lack of reward for grinding act bosses is fail.

**CarsV** · 08-08-2012, 23:23

Originally Posted by omaruswow

The real reason we don’t like D3: It's the Grind.

Face it, we don’t much like the Grind anymore, we’ve evolved.
We can still do it a little bit, as long as its not too painful. Unfortunately, thats exactly what happens when you hit inferno, it not just painful, it excruciating.

Wrong. I play hardcore only where grinding is mandatory. There is no grind in D3; there is no reward in this game's itemization. It's just who can leverage the AH the most and how much gold you can hoover. The reason inferno is so "excruciating" is because people are pulling teeth for any sense of progression and they don't get any reward. The god mode bugs exposed this. People were finally able to "grind" inferno and yet... they realized they STILL weren't finding anything.

You never find anything in this game worth grinding for. The itemization is so freaking boring. In D2, I could at least grind some areas and find something besides gold and blues/rares to sell. If I didn't find any uniques to sell, I could at least find some interesting base weapons for runewords and crafting, runes, charms, or maybe even a rare ring with faster cast rate that I could trade and thus interact with people to meet new players. This game's social aspect is a festering roadkill.

**AlexanderBarin** · 09-08-2012, 00:24

Originally Posted by moreno

Not true. It's not that we don't enjoy grinding anymore, it's that there is nothing to grind in D3 in the first place.

Do you enjoy making these completely pointless blanket statements?

Anyways, I think there are alot of issues with grinding in D3, my #1 being that there is only 1 way to get better gear (or 2, indirectly): grind same areas over and over whether for items or gold to spend on AH. In D2 I could grind areas, grind bosses or reroll/craft items with recipes or rush a new character for hellforge/sockets. POE got the item grind done quite well: there are tons of ways to improve an existing item rather than just kill mobs in hopes of finding an upgrade. Thankfully, this is easy to fix, and I'm confident it will be some time soon in a patch or expansion. Unlike D2 and PoE, D3 is actually, ya know, a fun game.