Blizzard Admits Diablo III End-Game Failure

[Combustion Kevin]

Blizz admits it, why cant Bioware?

other threat.

OT: it is clearly evident that this is not the same team that made the previous installments, neither in mentality nor design direction, and it's a shame to see things end up like this.

I'll be getting torchlight too, I guess.

 

[Siege_TF]

For all of the "we can'ts" and "we didn'ts" I feel the need to ask; Why not? Exactly what was Blizzard short on that they had to fail to provide these things? I seriously doubt funding was an issue, or that it seemed like not enough people were eager for the game to warrant the 'extra' work.

It seems like Blizzard took a misstep in EA's direction and got lazy towards the end.

 

[magter3001]

No modding community. That's why people played Morrowind for ever, Diablo 2, whatever... Blizzard Activision screwed up.

 

[Chunga the Great]

Here's a thought, how about finally making a patch that allows players to game WITHOUT BEING ONLINE ALL THE TIME?! I have no interest in making a diablo account, a battle.net account and I have no interest in having the game lag and be tied to the whims of my (relatively poor) internet connection.

Hence, no sale. Do something Blizzard. It's not your end game that's broken. It's your GAME.

The game is broken because your internet connection sucks?

The game is broken because it treats the players like criminals, has crappy servers that won't allow people online on a whim and, on top of it all, if you dare to buy a digital copy, you're not going to get to play it for three days after the purchase because they want to validate it due to the ridiculous auction house.

I have a pretty shitty internet connection and I never get any problems with logging in or playing the game. And you can play it if you buy it digital, it's just that you have the same content as the people who got the "Free Trial" codes for 72-hours. Good thing I bought a genuine copy. (The 72-hour "wait" is still absolute bullshit though and so is the DRM, but it isn't as bad as you think.)

 

[Kungfu_Teddybear]

Here's a thought, how about finally making a patch that allows players to game WITHOUT BEING ONLINE ALL THE TIME?! I have no interest in making a diablo account, a battle.net account and I have no interest in having the game lag and be tied to the whims of my (relatively poor) internet connection.

Hence, no sale. Do something Blizzard. It's not your end game that's broken. It's your GAME.

The game is broken because your internet connection sucks?

The game is broken because it treats the players like criminals, has crappy servers that won't allow people online on a whim and, on top of it all, if you dare to buy a digital copy, you're not going to get to play it for three days after the purchase because they want to validate it due to the ridiculous auction house.

I have a pretty shitty internet connection and I never get any problems with logging in or playing the game. And you can play it if you buy it digital, it's just that you have the same content as the people who got the "Free Trial" codes for 72-hours. Good thing I bought a genuine copy. (The 72-hour "wait" is still absolute bullshit though and so is the DRM, but it isn't as bad as you think.)

They're not even doing the 72 hour wait thing anymore. They dropped it after like a week or something because people complained and/or they realised it was a stupid idea. There are still other restrictions for the first 72 hours, no chat, AH etc etc. Pretty much all the online features are restricted, but you can at least pass the first act. Pretty much what they've done is made the game almost single player for the first 72 hours.

 

[CrazyCapnMorgan]

You know, if you take the word "End" out of the title...you would have a proper description of Diablo 3 in general

Captcha: shake a leg. Even Captcha is telling you what to do, Blizzard!

Not like you're gonna do it anyways, buuuut...

 

[Goofguy]

I quite enjoy the game but find that even the stuff you can get by crafting is often more than enough to give you success (at least on the initial difficulty, I haven't played enough to advance past that yet so final results may be different). I haven't used the AH and don't plan to, but I've heard enough from enough people to know how game breaking it must be.

The crafting becomes useless pretty quickly. The blacksmith is not worth the money and effort to upgrade as the equipment you craft will be considerably weaker than what you loot at like level 20+.

I had no intentions of using the AH either but the problem was that I was looting equipment that was 4-5 levels lower than my actual level. Grouping with other people meant that I was doing the least DPS and taking the most damage. I felt forced to use the AH just to keep up.

 

[Carnagath]

My question is, what kind of endgame is even really considered an "endgame" for ARPGs? Endless dungeons? PvP? The only games of this type that I have played recently are Torchlight and Diablo 3 so I'm not exactly sure what an endgame would even entail with this genre. What did Diablo 2 do that kept people around for like a decade? and was it even an endgame or did people just play the game over and over with different characters?

D2 had some advantages and also massive disadvantages that people tend to overlook. The advantages:

1) It took longer to get to max level than D3. Way longer. Like, 5 times as long.
2) There was PvP and dueling from day 1. It was a complete joke, sure, but at least it was there.
3) There was more customization for the items due to the runes, and some of those runes were unbelievably rare.
4) Legendary and set items had fixed stats and were really good. You knew what Windforce was and what it did and why you were after it. In D3 the complete RNG of everything strips away all "personality" and fetishistic charm of the loot.
5) You could grind in very short bursts. A couple of Pindleskin runs only took about 5 minutes. In D3 bosses drop rubbish and you need to get 5 stacks of nephalem valor before you can say that you are seriously grinding and not wasting your time, so if you don't have at least an hour you might as well not log in.
6) There were no brick walls between the difficulty levels, you could always progress even if your loot wasn't the best.
7) There were many different viable builds for each character and of course fully customizable talent trees. In D3 there is no need to make a second character of the same class, ever.
8) There was no auction house, so you had to trade with other players by joining their games, talking with them and checking out what they had to sell. There was also a lot of showing off going on during trading. It was all pretty charming, you could show off your e-peen and also communicate with, you know, other human beings, instead of the fucking stock market. There was a lot of flaming and a lot of dueling going on. Time flew.

Disadvantages:
1) Hackers
2) Dupes
3) Cow level powerleveling
4) Class balance was a complete a joke.

 

[Kungfu_Teddybear]

I quite enjoy the game but find that even the stuff you can get by crafting is often more than enough to give you success (at least on the initial difficulty, I haven't played enough to advance past that yet so final results may be different). I haven't used the AH and don't plan to, but I've heard enough from enough people to know how game breaking it must be.

I had no intentions of using the AH either but the problem was that I was looting equipment that was 4-5 levels lower than my actual level. Grouping with other people meant that I was doing the least DPS and taking the most damage. I felt forced to use the AH just to keep up.

I will say that is one of the few things that really annoys me about the game. I'm playing the game at the moment, I'm level 48 and I just found a rare drop. I identified it and it was a level 31 item. I've still not come to the point where I feel forced to use the AH because I've barely used it and when I have it's been for things like pages of jewelcrafting or some gems. But yeah, the loot is a joke sometimes.

 

[kortin]

It always amuses me when people desperately cling on to the hope that single player games won't be always online in the future.

Spoiler

They will.

 

[Azmael Silverlance]

Its good to see them recognize and admit the huge blunder that they made with Diablo 3.
I think they were blinded by the games own pre-release hype and believed fans will just eat it like cake and never question its contents.

I myself couldnt even reach level 60 thats how fast i got bored of the game. Literraly in few days.

I played a hack`n`slash for the PS Vita and it was better than Diablo even though an obvious rip off. So there you have it . . . . blizzard`s first real black mark.

 

[bullet_sandw1ch]

Having never played D2 and haven't played D3 it doesn't matter to me, but I am curious about what 'end game' means in these types of dungeon crawlers? What does D2 have that D3 doesn't? I thought the 'end game' in these things was just repeatably grinding the high level dungeons over and over for RNG-stat loot, so it will take a really long time to get the perfect gear, hence the long play time. Both games have this as far as I'm aware.

So what's different with D2 apart from the auction house?

As far as I know and heard at least, Diablo 2 didn't have end game either.

what im garnering from this is that its cool to hate on D3, just like how it is with apple and COD. if there are no problems except from some inconvienences, why are people bitching?

 

[LeeHarveyO]

I wonder what made D2 last so long....... oh wait user generated content in other words Mods!!!!!

 

[Royas]

Here's a thought, how about finally making a patch that allows players to game WITHOUT BEING ONLINE ALL THE TIME?! I have no interest in making a diablo account, a battle.net account and I have no interest in having the game lag and be tied to the whims of my (relatively poor) internet connection.

Hence, no sale. Do something Blizzard. It's not your end game that's broken. It's your GAME.

The game is broken because your internet connection sucks?

OT: That's fine by me, I stopped playing after I completed the game on Normal and have only just gone back to it and I'm still playing through Nightmare, so I still have plenty of stuff to do.

The game is broken because it requires an internet connection for someone to play single player. I don't buy the argument that Diablo is primarily a multi player experience, as I've only played it single player. Ditto for pretty much all of my friends. Given that some people don't want to play this game with others, requiring a connection even for playing solo is adding a point of failure that is extraneous to the function of the game. Thus, the game is broken if anything keeps a solo gamer from playing.

OT - I can't believe they really didn't expect people to be reaching the end game by this point. Hasn't their experience with WoW taught them that there are plenty of hardcore gamers out there who blow through levels like kleenex. I would have expected to need endgame content by the end of the third day after release.

 

[Kungfu_Teddybear]

Here's a thought, how about finally making a patch that allows players to game WITHOUT BEING ONLINE ALL THE TIME?! I have no interest in making a diablo account, a battle.net account and I have no interest in having the game lag and be tied to the whims of my (relatively poor) internet connection.

Hence, no sale. Do something Blizzard. It's not your end game that's broken. It's your GAME.

The game is broken because your internet connection sucks?

OT: That's fine by me, I stopped playing after I completed the game on Normal and have only just gone back to it and I'm still playing through Nightmare, so I still have plenty of stuff to do.

The game is broken because it requires an internet connection for someone to play single player. I don't buy the argument that Diablo is primarily a multi player experience, as I've only played it single player. Ditto for pretty much all of my friends. Given that some people don't want to play this game with others, requiring a connection even for playing solo is adding a point of failure that is extraneous to the function of the game. Thus, the game is broken if anything keeps a solo gamer from playing.

Whether you buy the argument that it's a multiplayer experience because you have only played it on your own is irrelevant, because it did in fact originally start out as an MMO and there will plenty of people that play it multi-player. Requiring an always on internet connection does not break the game, if it did, the majority of players would be experiencing problems, and if someone doesn't want to play it because they don't want to be online all the time that does not make the game broken.

People need to stop overreacting to the always online requirement and people also need to stop using the word 'broken' to describe Diablo III because the game is by no means broken. Have a go at Blizzards stupid decisions until your hearts content, don't have a go at what is a perfectly functional game.

 

[Darth_Dude]

I find in unbelievable that Blizzard would release a game, after YEARS of development, and not put in the final levels, because they thought, "they wouldn't be needed"??

It's amazing how ridiculous things have become..

 

[JerrytheBullfrog]

Here's a thought, how about finally making a patch that allows players to game WITHOUT BEING ONLINE ALL THE TIME?! I have no interest in making a diablo account, a battle.net account and I have no interest in having the game lag and be tied to the whims of my (relatively poor) internet connection.

Hence, no sale. Do something Blizzard. It's not your end game that's broken. It's your GAME.

Can people PLEASE stop crying about this? The game runs off of Blizzard's servers. Everything from damage numbers to creature spawns and map generation is run off their server. They CAN'T make an offline mode at this point. That ship has sailed. Get over it.

Wrong. It's already been cracked and runs perfectly fine off-line. Please, do continue buying into the lies that Blizzard keeps telling you.

No it hasn't. Any "cracks" I've seen are halfhearted, shitty versions of the game at best with the SOLE benefit that you don't need to be online. Everything else is worse.

The game isn't bad because of the AH though. Yeah, sure, it's the reason Blizzard are implementing all these dumb security measures, but it's not making the game bad. The AH has nothing to do with how fun the game is. And as for people struggling to log in because of bad internet connections, that's not exactly Blizzards fault. I think people are just getting far too worked up about the always online connection and the AH. Raging over nothing really.

The game is bad EXACTLY because of the AH. Hunting for items is fun, buying them not so much. And the item hunt is ALL there is. This alone might not be that bad, had Blizzard not balanced the game solely around the AH. The drops are ridiculus. I played the game for 100h, with 4 characters on 4 difficulty levels, and I had exactly 1 single unique drop. Once I reached Nightmare, it was nigh impossible to progress, without getting stuff from the AH. The items I found were simply too bad. I know that they wanted to make the AH work and so they needed the players to need tge AH, but by doing that, they sucked the fun right out if the game. They didn't really sell a game with an AH supplement, they sold an AH with a game supplement.

Wrong. The problem is that they DIDN'T balance the game around having an AH. If you read anything, they didn't expect the AH to take off and dominate the game nearly like it has.

Anyway, I'm still playing Diablo 3. Game is great. Fuck the haters.