Diablo III Is Broken

[Nimzabaat]

I'm sorry but you didn't actually make any points so I couldn't address them. I've never had to access the auction house, but I get excellent loot, your attempt at a point is therefore invalid. The auction house is a complete non-issue for people who just want to enjoy the game. It's existence has only bothered me because we get so many damn whiners complaining about it. Seriously, if it bothers you DON'T USE IT. It's only there as a stupid tax so don't pay. Simple. And you sir, should appreciate simple.

I beg to differ. I did, and the least you could do is acknowledge them if you're going to bother quoting me, because that doesn't make one question your reading/reasoning abilities.

What I did was compare the RMAH's existence with its non-existence, coming to a conclusion that without its existence as a deliberate design decision, the players would be getting better loot, and the economy not being fractured along the lines of the currencies. The former directly affecting everyone, and the latter affecting everyone who has an interest in trading. Neither "you should appreciate simple", nor "not an issue if all you want is to enjoy the game" is a logical argument of any sort.

And "I get excellent loot" isn't either. You can get outliers in a whole lot of different fields. "I had cancer but it went into remission. A-ha! Cancer doesn't kill people! What now, medicine?"

Fine, you are right. But still I stand the point, that it is such a huge success, is only partly Blizzard's achievement... it's Blizzard North's. The only positive aspect one can think of Diablo 3 is due to it's predecessors and the community they created.

That is true. Without Diablo 2 being practically the creation of an entire genre and remaining the best game in that genre for a decade, I doubt D3 would've made numbers any better than Starcraft 2's - somewhere around 3 million sales in the first month.

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.

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.

 

[zinho73]

Why are people complaining about this?. D2 had an real money auction house, it just wasn't legal (stone of Jordan anyone?). Many, many people paid real money to buy those hard to get items through ebay and other means. Blizzard has just made that whole process more accessible to everyone in an attempt to get rid of the constant gold-seller spam (which hasn't worked, why are people still trying to sell gold?). But yeah, this poster is in complete denial about how D2 actually worked.

For my part, I never bought items for D2 and i've never used the auction house in D3. That's my choice and it hasn't impacted my enjoyment of the game in any way. People in complete denial about item sellers in D2, now whining about how it's no longer "underground" in D3... well that's just whiners for you I guess.

Seriously of all the things to complain about in D3, the auction house is the most stupid, baseless, asinine thing to complain about. It has absolutely zero effect on peoples enjoyment of the game unless they want it to. It's simply Blizzards means of getting rid of this:

http://d2items.com/?gclid=CObk4NGj2LECFYao4AodbnEAMA

http://www.d2craft.com/index.php?cPath=2_383

http://lewt.com/?gclid=CLatmNOj2LECFcJo4AodMVcAFw

Did anyone know that you can turn off general chat? Or that you don't have to open the auction house?

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.

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.

 

[The.Bard]

The problem is of course they don't care, as they only made this game to take a nice percentage of that cold hard real money AH cash flowing through.

This. At some point Blizzard thought they'd devised the Next Big Thing to boost their ongoing profits, and the RMAH went from being a feature of the game to the sole point of the game.

Between this and WoW's latest sub fall they'd better hope that Mists of Pandaria goes over big, or it'll seem that the once mighty Blizzard have lost their golden touch. Honestly, I'd not be sorry to see it happen, they've grown lazy and decadent, and taken the loyalty of their fanbase for granted.

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.

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.

 

[oldtaku]

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.

 

[laserpants]

> 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?

 

[robinkom]

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.

 

[Inkidu]

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.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

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.

 

[Atmos Duality]

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.

"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.

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.

 

[StriderShinryu]

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.

"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.

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?

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.

 

[Trishbot]

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*)

 

[Lord_Gremlin]

You have to understand: Blizzard=Activision. All they want is to milk you for money like a dumb cow you are.

 

[Atmos Duality]

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?

EDIT:
(Theoretically) Grind may appeal more to those who aren't aware of (or refuse to acknowledge) the concept of grind yet. Or children who are (by nature) curious and industrious.
(if that is true, then it's no surprise how Pokemon has persisted to this day)

Cannot even begin to imagine how much of my time was spent farming for exp and random drops in some of the older games I played...including Diablo 2 (which just doesn't quite hold the same appeal as it used to)

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).

Aye. A great number of RPGs (especially older RPGs) have long play times because of their grind factor.

At some point, I realized that the RPGs that have aged the best are those that allow for the player to be creative in finding solutions. Where the player's skill in testing different setups pay off more than their willingness to just grind out a few more levels to brute-force their way through.

It's why I keep going back to play Chrono Trigger (& Chrono Cross), Suikoden 2, Final Fantasy 4-7 (and FFT). The sheer number of clever "outs" in several of those games continue to surprise me.

That's where the matter of "choice" became important to me, and I've applied it to every game I've played since. Grind as an option is fine. But mandatory grind is simply indefensible as it will ruin otherwise good gameplay.

The only major aberration in this is Terraria.

Last year, I sunk an unhealthy 400+ hours into Terraria.
Why? Because everything I can do in that game, I enjoy doing. Exploring. Building. The world is largely randomized, and there is a sense of loose progress to it all as you look for new materials and fight new monsters.

Though I reached a point where I had to stop and ask "Is this grind? Am I spending hours upon hours grabbing stone blocks so I can just convert them later?"

And the answer is kind of strange because the "grind" isn't just a coefficient of existing content (set pieces), but a byproduct of the exploratory/building nature of the game. It's strange.

I stopped playing so I could focus on my schoolwork, and partly so I wouldn't completely burn out on it (didn't help that Redigit just stopped supporting the game entirely).

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.

Agreed. I will only add that it seems to become more true the older I get.
And heaven help me if I ever have children.

 

[Twilight_guy]

I find it very hard to give a crap about this issue. It's not because its not a serious issue, the problem of reward vs. effort, especially in late game when the reward and effort get more spaced out, and refining your Skinner Box is an important issue. It's because by the time you've beaten the game, twice to get into hell difficulty where things actually get to be a hard slog, Blizzard has already accomplish more with D3 then most games. This is high level whine, stuff that bothers people that get deep into the game. The casual gamer would beat the game maybe once, with a class or two and then move on, the high level guys play D3 for several hundred hours and complain that its not fun. Most games would cease being fun after 20 hours and then maybe the player could replay them later. D3 hooks players for far longer without having them want to reset and start over. This kind of complaint bothers me because its basically your most dedicated fans spewing bile all over the company they love and hate at the same time. It just such a weird relationship and it's depressing. Blizzard failed to refine there Skinner Box to the best level, despite, this obviously being a working experiment since D3 is different from D2 and there same formulas need adjustment, and even of other solid elements in play, many are willing to honestly call this a terrible game, and these are Blizzard's biggest fans and most dedicated players of D3.

Ah well. Dungeon crawlers and loot based games are always struck me doomed to peter out, not because there bad but because the formula is inherently flawed. The only reason you play is to get better loot but as you play more the time better better loot gets further and further apart as the quality of your items gets nearer and nearer the top. Eventually that gap of time will be so big that players will get bored with what is now grind and quit. You can't make a sustainable system because your sliding scale can't go to infinity. Your reason for playing is eventually snuffed out by your own efforts. If that is the only reason you're playing, and in D3 after about one play through you've seen everything and all that remains is the loot, then the game formula is doomed to failure. It might be sustainable if players play for 20 hours, 30 hours, 50 hours but the devote fans are playing for hundred of hours and note that the broken formula is broken, then blaming Blizzard. I think the issue that needs to be discussed is how to make this formula less doomed to failure rather then asking Blizzard to change its game, which is broken and unfixable at the moment.

 

[Nimzabaat]

I acknowledged that you attempted to make a point. I also acknowledged that you failed miserably. No need to be a sore loser.

Nope.

Nice rebuttal, there's your absolute lack of intelligence kicking in.

I'm sorry but you didn't actually make any points so I couldn't address them.

Acknowledgement this is not. And you still haven't even begun to address them.

Well they still aren't showing up.

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.

Nope again, on two counts. First, wrong, you weren't stating that the drop rates for loot in D2 and D3 are the same. This is what you were stating.

I've never had to access the auction house, but I get excellent loot, your attempt at a point is therefore invalid.

This contains very little factual value, and there's very little I can deduce from this simply because of the fact that we're talking about probabilities. You may have been lucky or you may be simply lying. What you point out now is actually something that can be addressed in its truth value, and here's where you're wrong again [http://www.cinemablend.com/images/sections/44096/_1340960757.jpg]. In the link is a picture of a Blizzard representative stating directly that yes, the auction house is a factor in how items are dropped.

And I'm glad you mentioned D2 specifically, because this is where you can check out the unique item list [http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/normal/uswords.shtml] of D2 and compare it against the unique item list for D3 [http://d3db.com/item?c=_sword&match=1&quality=0,0,0,0,1] and see, for instance, why the vast, vast majority of legendaries dropped in D3 end up being complete garbage. The randomness in rare and magic items is cranked up too, but it's a little bit harder to see given that those were random in D2 as well. Let's just say you weren't getting level 54 loot that was weaker than level 17 loot.

Wait... are you arguing for my point? Because here you're pointing out that going to the RMAH is pointless because the loot is inferior anyways... I realize you've lost the argument, but stay on your own damn side at least.

This argument that the drop tables were the same between the games on any level other than the fact that they're random is a completely absurd and counterfactual.

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.

I don't know about wits, but at least I come with facts on my side.

Um your facts don't support your side of the argument though. I don't need any help, especially from you.

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.

You seem to fail to realise that what I've been talking about barely has to do with actually using the AH. For the third time, I'm pointing out that the existence of it has effects on the gameplay whether you actually use it or not.

Actually what we've been talking about is how some people (you and the OP) feel it is absolutely necessary to use the auction house and the game cannot be enjoyed without it which is completely false. I know you've been waffling through this response, but if you want give up and talk about other points, this isn't the right thread for you anymore.

But even if I were talking about what you're trying to address, there is no need for a gun to be held to anyone's head for them to realise that hey, using the AH is immensely, dozens of times more efficient than trying your luck at the RNG machine ad infinitum. Which is a problem on another level, that being that Diablo 3 gives players exactly zero control on what items end up dropping. And on a yet another, deeper level, seeing that a character's power is defined almost completely by items, as opposed to D2 and skill levels. But that's a whole 'nother can of worms.

Okay you posted links here stating that the items in the RMAH are worthless compared to the items of D2 so... why buy them? Once again, thanks for providing me with all the ammunition I need against you, but it was completely unnecessary.

Honestly. There was never a way to win this argument. D3 has plenty of actual flaws without choosing the stupidest and least defensible one to pick on. Why don't you choose an argument you can win? Like saying that because it wasn't available on xbox or ps3 you have to buy a pc? It's also a dumb argument but you might have a better chance there.

 

[Nimzabaat]

Yeah whining and complaining about an option that you can completely ignore doesn't seem productive. It's not like the ME3 ending that you HAD to experience if you wanted to complete the game. The bottom line is that if you have a problem with the RMAH, it's all on you. As a player you decided to click that button. You decided to use that feature. Grow up and take some responsibility for a change.

I had a feature in D3 that I really disliked. It was having to put up with general chat. So I disabled general chat. Problem solved. I didn't write a huge post about it, because I had the power to ignore it and I used that power. I have the power to ignore the RMAH, so I do.

Though I do admit, this forum has given me a lot of ideas on how to exploit stupid people who think that just because something exists, they have to use it. Great ideas indeed... (maniacal laugh)

 

[Charli]

Had fun the first 2 weeks. I suppose that's good enough for a freebie that was paid for with my continued WoW subscription.

But I honestly thought nothing could get as grindy as farming gold on WoW.

I wwaaaass wroooooooong.


So now I'm happily fishing/digging/herbing my way through Azaroth knowing that the pay off is not quite as awful as kicking Inferno to bloody pieces of mulch for hours with no adequate results.

If I wanted 'Grind gold/gear - THE GAME' I'll just stop raiding/pvping/having fun in MMO's...
And before Diablo 2 purists flood me with 'that's the entire point' this has been argued to end on MMO champion, go there. That argument is moot.