Diablo III Is Broken
- Thread starter Mike Kayatta
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I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if you quit a game and write an article like this, a fair percentage of that 200 hours wasn't entertaining.jon_sf said:
Looks like Skinner's Casino Diablo 3 is under scrutiny again.
No. I'm not proud of it. I'm disappointed.
If there is one major constant complaint I see from everyone I know who plays (or played) Diablo 3: The drop rates for ANYTHING useful are inhumanly low.
And this is precisely what I said would happen the day they announced the Auction House.Mike Kayatta said:
No. I'm not proud of it. I'm disappointed.
If there is one major constant complaint I see from everyone I know who plays (or played) Diablo 3: The drop rates for ANYTHING useful are inhumanly low.
To me, the real problem is that you don't put points in skills, or, there's no way of making the skills you like stronger. The feeling of character progression is completely missing. I don't want to use the skills that work, I want to use the skills I like and boost them so that they work... The whole game feels like a tutorial, with the real game starting at level 60, but then it just becomes an action game, or a slot machine if you will.
If you forget this point, the other problem is that you HAVE to use the auction house. I don't want to shop, what I like is playing games! I want to find good loot, as I play.
If you forget this point, the other problem is that you HAVE to use the auction house. I don't want to shop, what I like is playing games! I want to find good loot, as I play.
You're right that they have merely existed prior to D3, however there are two major differences this time around. For one thing, the majority of players (not the majority of "hardcore" players) did not use them. Items changing hands by this method was an aberration when compared to the whole of people who tried the game. Because of that, the balance of gold, enemies, and drops were not adjusted to it by Blizzard. The problem isn't there simply is, somewhere, an auction house, but rather a centralized auction house large enough to affect design decisions and gameplay.Jachwe said:
I'm not really sure how to react to this article.
I mean, I totally agree with all of the points presented so there's no problem there. I do, however, find it a bit tough to agree that a game which provided hundreds of hours of entertainment is somehow a poor value. It's sort of an odd place to be.
Either way, my personal experience with the game is that after playing through once on the default difficulty level with one character, I know I'm pretty much done with the game. I'll likely finish up my second character who's already most of the way through and then call it quits. Regardless of the end game, there just isn't enough pulling me along even at the stage I'm at now to keep me interested.
I mean, I totally agree with all of the points presented so there's no problem there. I do, however, find it a bit tough to agree that a game which provided hundreds of hours of entertainment is somehow a poor value. It's sort of an odd place to be.
Either way, my personal experience with the game is that after playing through once on the default difficulty level with one character, I know I'm pretty much done with the game. I'll likely finish up my second character who's already most of the way through and then call it quits. Regardless of the end game, there just isn't enough pulling me along even at the stage I'm at now to keep me interested.
I'm not buying there's no end game just because of the drop rate or the auction house. A: People used "auction houses" for D2, albeit shady auction house you needed a translator to read. It's nothing new that people were buying and selling shit, at least now you don't have to worry about jumping online and being spammed by 500 people looking to offload their Stone of Jordans.
As for the drop rates, I'd have to call bullshit on that too. People are mad because of several months without progress, yet there's people still doing Baal runs 8 years later hoping for their loot to drop.
In truth, it's just not the same world we live in anymore since D2 and dungeon crawlers were hugely popular. In any RPG crawler anywhere ever, the end game has always been (as Yahtzee puts it): "Find pants better than yours so you can find better pants later". Not to mention, it's kind of struck me as ridiculous when people can actually say "I've put 200+ hours into this game, now the end of it seems bad. It must be broken."
As for the drop rates, I'd have to call bullshit on that too. People are mad because of several months without progress, yet there's people still doing Baal runs 8 years later hoping for their loot to drop.
In truth, it's just not the same world we live in anymore since D2 and dungeon crawlers were hugely popular. In any RPG crawler anywhere ever, the end game has always been (as Yahtzee puts it): "Find pants better than yours so you can find better pants later". Not to mention, it's kind of struck me as ridiculous when people can actually say "I've put 200+ hours into this game, now the end of it seems bad. It must be broken."
I'm firmly in your camp. Of all the things people could be complaining about with D3, the auction house is the dumbest possible complaint bar none. It's like me complaining about the women's washrooms. I've never been in one, nor will I ever, but I shall cry to the heavens about how I don't like that they exist.irishda said:
Though on a side note: why are there still gold-spammers? That makes no sense to me.
I acknowledged that you attempted to make a point. I also acknowledged that you failed miserably. No need to be a sore loser. I was also stating that the drop rates for loot aren't different between Diablo 2 and 3. So another attempt, on your part, to make a point failed. You've got an excellent record there.Hammeroj said:
However; I guess I should congratulate you on beating cancer, your ongoing struggle with ADD, and the courage it takes to come to a battle of wits completely unarmed.
Once again, if you don't like the auction house, DON'T USE IT. There's no one with a gun to your head forcing you to open the RMAH. So don't. You can enjoy the game without it. It's the always online DRM and lag you should be complaining about.
It is a problem of scale. Now everyone has access to the damn thing and it is actually necessary to progress past certain parts, unless you are willing to invest an inordinate amount of time or are incredibly lucky.Nimzabaat said:
Also, all the problems relegated to that third party market were brought closer to all players (scams, account hacking, flipping, boting in the AH and in the game and even duping in a much smaller scale). Instead of correcting the problems, Blizzard brought the problems to everyone.
In D2, I mostly played solo offline or LAN with friends. Never bought a item, never been exposed to the possibility of being hacked. Now I don't have a choice in the matter.
Yes, I can stay away from the AH if I want to, but the itemization this time is garbage. In D2, 80% or more of your character power was in the char customization, via skills and abilities. Now 90% of your char strength is in the items he uses.
Past a certain point, you either buy items or leave the game because it is simply not feasible to just find the items in the game world.
If I hadn't just eaten my cookie, I would offer it to you. Sadly, I did just eat it, so the best I can do is offer you the digital memory of a cookie.Sixcess said:
You're spot on, though. Blizzard heard about their own greatness one time too many. I stopped playing their games at WoW, and while I love to see them fail, I still find it shocking how POORLY thought out D3 was. Considering ALL they needed to do was add a few classes and HD paint to D2, it almost boggles the mind how they did this.
Redo graphics, add new class. DONE. That is ALL they needed to do. But noooo, they got greedy and delved too deeply. Well, serves ya right.
Hopefully they take a good hard look past the cash before blindly proclaiming this a success. If the Bioware situation of late has taught us anything, it's that loyal followers can all too easily become empty wallets if the product is not given thorough respect.
We found the same thing. Except on Normal (first time) mode, you statistically never find anything drop that you can use at the time - maybe once in an entire playthrough you find a single piece of gear slightly better than what you have.
So you hit the point where you just start dying left and right. So you have to go to the AH and gear up. Suddenly you can survive again. Repeat.
You never get the D2 thrill of finding fantastic new gear. Once I found a Legendary sword. Ooooo, is this my jackpot? No, of course not. It's lower than my level, worse stats than my current Rare sword.
So at that point we quit. Without ever using the RMH they ruined the endgame for. Which is too bad, because it's a lot of fun except when you run into the places where they transparently broke the game to force you to use the AH.
I'd suggest anyone playing just do a playthrough of Normal and Nightmare with one class, then stop and switch to another class, etc. At Hell it just becomes a Job.
So you hit the point where you just start dying left and right. So you have to go to the AH and gear up. Suddenly you can survive again. Repeat.
You never get the D2 thrill of finding fantastic new gear. Once I found a Legendary sword. Ooooo, is this my jackpot? No, of course not. It's lower than my level, worse stats than my current Rare sword.
So at that point we quit. Without ever using the RMH they ruined the endgame for. Which is too bad, because it's a lot of fun except when you run into the places where they transparently broke the game to force you to use the AH.
I'd suggest anyone playing just do a playthrough of Normal and Nightmare with one class, then stop and switch to another class, etc. At Hell it just becomes a Job.
> Diablo III Is Broken
so the Escapist finally crosses the finish line, welcome to 3 months ago to the so called "news" that finally reached you guys. I will predict that the next piece of "news" that will reach you is that "there are a lot of illegal farming bots in diablo 3 as well", but that won't get to you guys until the end of this year I feel. Keep up the good work guys, you might get around to learn that the whole thing about diablo 3 is nothing more than a pyramid scam by next summer. Yayifications?
so the Escapist finally crosses the finish line, welcome to 3 months ago to the so called "news" that finally reached you guys. I will predict that the next piece of "news" that will reach you is that "there are a lot of illegal farming bots in diablo 3 as well", but that won't get to you guys until the end of this year I feel. Keep up the good work guys, you might get around to learn that the whole thing about diablo 3 is nothing more than a pyramid scam by next summer. Yayifications?
Pretty much all of my friends, acquaintances, and I all quit Diablo III in a little under a month. I capped one Barbarian, got to Act III on Hell Difficulty and found myself doing just what was described in this article. Grind for gold for several hours all to buy 1 or 2 upgrades to my gear for Act IV and Inferno. Rinse, repeat.
I mean there's always been "throwaway" loot drops in Diablo that you pick up just to sell but it was never the necessity to actually being able to continue forward into the next challenge. Not to mention, Diablo III launched with NO PvP combat... the first one in the franchise to do so. I'm not a fan of PvP combat in most games but Diablo was an exception and it was a core reason why all of my friends gave this one up as well.
I had no plans of actually using the Auction House at first, why would I? The first two games didn't have one, we used to trade with other people face-to-face in a game session if we were looking for something specific. Other than that, you used whatever you found and it was enough. But Diablo III did just as described once Nightmare unlocked and I found myself bumming the Auction House for replacement gear. Even cheap upgrades did enough stat boosting to drop the difficulty curve down flat every time I did it.
The positives I walked away with were the story and the various nods to the first game because the original Diablo is still my favorite. I "ooh'd" and "aww'd" at all the references from D1 and smiled at them... then realized "Holy shit, that was in 1996" and it had to be done to recap some things for a lot of people who didn't remember or are too young.
The story kept me interested long enough to distract me from the ultimately broken gameplay structure.
Can't say Blizzard didn't make a pretty penny on this game though. Huge seller at launch. 80% drop in player base though... wow. I hope that lights a fire under their asses.
I mean there's always been "throwaway" loot drops in Diablo that you pick up just to sell but it was never the necessity to actually being able to continue forward into the next challenge. Not to mention, Diablo III launched with NO PvP combat... the first one in the franchise to do so. I'm not a fan of PvP combat in most games but Diablo was an exception and it was a core reason why all of my friends gave this one up as well.
I had no plans of actually using the Auction House at first, why would I? The first two games didn't have one, we used to trade with other people face-to-face in a game session if we were looking for something specific. Other than that, you used whatever you found and it was enough. But Diablo III did just as described once Nightmare unlocked and I found myself bumming the Auction House for replacement gear. Even cheap upgrades did enough stat boosting to drop the difficulty curve down flat every time I did it.
The positives I walked away with were the story and the various nods to the first game because the original Diablo is still my favorite. I "ooh'd" and "aww'd" at all the references from D1 and smiled at them... then realized "Holy shit, that was in 1996" and it had to be done to recap some things for a lot of people who didn't remember or are too young.
The story kept me interested long enough to distract me from the ultimately broken gameplay structure.
Can't say Blizzard didn't make a pretty penny on this game though. Huge seller at launch. 80% drop in player base though... wow. I hope that lights a fire under their asses.
I'll say this up front. I kind of stopped reading after "a loss of 80%" I was so happy. I want Diablo III to fail so hard. It's probably not fair of me, but I don't think Blizzard made any smart or even ethical choices with this game. They're still going to make a ton of money, but I hope the always online thing becomes a total drain on them. If there's an eighty percent drop of your fan base is currently playing the game (that's always online) then you can't shut down your servers because even single player has to be online. So I really hope the cost to operate butchers Blizzard. It's that mean little imp in me, sure, but I still want it.
Not gonna happen, they already have your money (and mine).
I personally haven't even started the second difficulty (nightmare?), so I wouldn't know, but it did instantly get boring once I was totally decked out in amazing armour and never needed to trade my items in.
Blizzard screwed up the end game, didn't they.
I personally haven't even started the second difficulty (nightmare?), so I wouldn't know, but it did instantly get boring once I was totally decked out in amazing armour and never needed to trade my items in.
Blizzard screwed up the end game, didn't they.
"Hundreds of hours of entertainment" doesn't look so good if most of that time was spent being bored because you had to grind just to progress to the next act of the game.StriderShinryu said:
I call it the "Grind Coefficient"; where you take a regular chunk of gameplay, and then multiply it by the number of times you had to replay it to progress (this assumes that there is no other option but to grind short of quitting entirely).
The acid-test: What drives the game's replay-value?
-If the game's content is so good, you want to play it again, or allows for playing variants, it's fine. This leaves the matter firmly in the realm of the content's quality.
-If the game is forcing you to replay the same content over and over until you can acquire what you need to progress (randomly), there are problems.
The missing element between the two is choice. If you want to beat Diablo 3 fully, on Inferno, you are required to have either extraordinary luck or use the Auction House.
If you are slaved to farming items from random chance, than your choices ultimately don't matter, because you're just waiting for that payout from the proverbial slot-machine.
Basic Skinner Box game design. Illegitimate as always.
Enter the Auction House.
The Auction House provides consistency, but it comes at a price.
Since Blizzard designed it so that they profit from the Auction House, they have every incentive to make that random chance even more inconsistent (short of impossible), and consequently, subtracting as much choice from the player as possible.
Very well stated, so I suppose it really turns the question over to the player. Many people have compared D3 to a MMO and it really requires the same thought process and raises the same eyebrow that gets raised in correspondence to many a player of that genre. If your main play experience isn't really fun, but is instead just grind, why keep playing at all? What is the measure of hundreds of hours of play if it's just beating your head against an invisible wall and you're not actually enjoying yourself?Atmos Duality said:
Personally, there are games I've put hundreds of hours into. In total, some of the early final fantasy titles, a handful of fighting games, and both The Matrix Online and Lord of the Rings Online, yet I wouldn't call the majority of the time spent with any of them grinding or just playing for playing's sake (though grinding is an option in all of them).
I suppose it's maybe just a play style I've never really found any enjoyment in. As soon as I reach a point with a game where I see making progress or reaching the next enjoyable point as a grind, I know it's time to turn the game off.
I get the feeling Diablo III is going to be like Final Fantasy 13.
What I mean by that is everyone was hyped for it and a lot of people bought it... but a huge portion of people walked away very disappointed and unsatisfied. Then when/if the sequel comes out, even if it's better, people just won't have the interest in the franchise anymore.
Yes, Diablo III sold a lot, but it's overall impact has slightly tarnished the once respected name of Blizzard, a company once notorious for cancelling near-complete games if they didn't meet their insanely high standards. Under the rule of the old Blizzard, Diablo III as it is would never have seen the light of day.
So... they made money this time, but how much is their reputation actually worth? I guess we'll see how future purchases are made, but for THIS old-school Blizzard fan, I'm quite disappointed and I'll be looking elsewhere to find the satisfaction I desire (*crosses fingers for Torchlight II*)
What I mean by that is everyone was hyped for it and a lot of people bought it... but a huge portion of people walked away very disappointed and unsatisfied. Then when/if the sequel comes out, even if it's better, people just won't have the interest in the franchise anymore.
Yes, Diablo III sold a lot, but it's overall impact has slightly tarnished the once respected name of Blizzard, a company once notorious for cancelling near-complete games if they didn't meet their insanely high standards. Under the rule of the old Blizzard, Diablo III as it is would never have seen the light of day.
So... they made money this time, but how much is their reputation actually worth? I guess we'll see how future purchases are made, but for THIS old-school Blizzard fan, I'm quite disappointed and I'll be looking elsewhere to find the satisfaction I desire (*crosses fingers for Torchlight II*)