Diablo III Is Broken

[RedDeadFred]

The problem to me is that the items lost almost all of their personality/uniqueness. Sets are near non-existent, and the ones you can get have terrible incremental bonuses. Legendaries are fixed level, and there's only a handful that offer a useful mechanic (Justice Lantern, String of Ears, etc). For a game that is so much about the items you get, and where much of the complaints revolve around how you get those items, they sure did their best at making the items as generic/boring as possible.

I'm not quoting to disagree here, but rather to illustrate this point. By doing shameless advertising.

To whoever doesn't know what people are talking about when we're pointing out that Diablo 3 has absolutely no interesting items, check this list [http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/12056] of Path of Exile uniques. Note that even disregarding the personalities of the items, unique/legendary items in any decent loot game are actually good, unlike in D3, where they're not only generic but complete shit the vast majority of the time.

I didn't even know about this problem but I think that would be the biggest piss off of all. The only loot driven game I've played is Borderlands and I was always excited when I saw an orange gun because it was pretty much guaranteed to be a great weapon. A lot of the legendary weapons had unique effects too like shooting through shields, healing you, regenerating ammo (although that loses it's awesomneness later on), emptying the entire clip when fired while scoped, shot gun sniper rifles, huge elemental effects/proc chance. And then there are the pearlescent weapons added by the Knoxx DLC. Every one of those weapons had a unique effect and were worth the amount of time farming to get them!

The whole point of loot games is to try and get cool unique gear. If you take the uniquness out of the gear, it would become very boring and underwhelming.

 

[Dastardly]

Diablo III Is Broken

How the Auction House sapped the fun from Diablo III?s end-game.

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The RMAH has too heavily impacted nearly every aspect of the game.

As you rightly noted, it altered the difficulty curve to account for the fact that, statistically, someone is selling the belt you need. The usual power creep is accelerated by the availability of items... as long as you have the cash to afford it.

That means most of your run-throughs, like mine, were probably quick, easy gold runs. Nephalem gots to get paid, yo. So a lot of my energy (and I know I'm not alone) was spent finding the best and fastest ways to get hold of gold.

...but then we have the Real Money AH, which is Blizzard's long-term monetization plan. Gold gets in the way of that. So, if you follow your patch notes, each "fix" has also served the purpose of making it harder to get hold of gold. Ostensibly, it's to keep the gold sellers from being able to use their bots to produce untold riches, but it also conveniently makes it harder for Average Joe to get enough for that damnable belt.

Gold drops less. You're penalized for logging in/out too quickly to take advantage of a farming spot. And while they lowered the costs for smithing and gemcrafting, they simultaneously quadrupled the repair rate. Why? Because no one's using smithing, since it's unlikely to produce anything useful (being the equivalent of the billion monkeys with a billion typewriters trying to write Shakespeare).

The game demands loot. Loot demands gold. Gold demands unreasonable amounts of time. But thankfully Blizzard has provided us an out: We can just spend real cash (and give them a cut). Really, this is the problem with Diablo III -- the cash grab was just too blatant, too transparent. All the usual tricks with none of the disguise. A little too much "box," not enough "Skinner."

 

[Lhynn]

called it a year ago and never bought it.
i honestly cant believe some people did...

The only issue here is not the AH or the always online DRM, its the people that isnt smart enough to stay away from a game that couldnt have possibly been any good, and that it was obvius if you did a 10 min. research.

Sadly, when the consumer buys a faulty product its just telling the developers that they love their crap and that they should keep feeding them the same thing.

 

[Rythe]

This whole argument to me is meh. You didn't see this coming how? This ruins the game how?

Diablo 3 feels very much like vanilla Diablo 2 to me, which is to say that yes, Diablo 3 took a few steps back while taking a few different steps forward. The problem isn't the auction house, the problem is the loot and the drop rate/table. The problem is the genre.

You see, I always had this thing in LoD Diablo 2 where my druid got most of the way through Nightmare or the very beginning of Hell and then hit a brick wall where my weapon just couldn't cut it anymore. I spent hours and hours doing Mephisto runs, etc hoping for a drop that never came. Repeat every few months or years or so. Diablo 3 is pretty much the same experience if you don't use the auction house, only with better combat and far less tedious character customization. That said, the character customization between the two is different enough that I can see why it rubs some people the wrong way where I vastly prefer it in D3. My opinion is that Diablo 3 is markedly superior in the meat of actually playing the game.

But going back to Vanilla D2, the itemization there was very similar if maybe only slightly superior to what D3 has now, and D3's drop rate and loot table is only slightly worse too. But those two slightlies translate pretty strongly by the time you hit Inferno, so it's pretty insufferable for most casual players and LoD D2 vets who've done it all too many times before. D3 is slightly inferior/equivalent to vanilla D2 loot-wise, while markedly inferior to LoD D2, and utterly inferior to loot in current LoD Patch 1.x. The loot being the part that keeps people playing these games forever. Which is why people look at the two and call Diablo 3's 'end game' broken.

Personally, I thought it was pretty obvious that Blizzard left things off Diablo 3, especially loot-wise, for the just as obvious unannounced expansion. When D3 gets its expansion, I would then compare it to present LoD patch 1.x to see how the two stack up against each other. While it is fair to compare the two now, it's kinda missing the big picture, I think.

Yes, Blizzard gimped the game, a bit too much as far as loot goes, but the currently released Diablo 3 is still worth the price tag in every other aspect (story strongly debateably so. Personally, I very much enjoy the Templar and Scoundrel banter, which makes up for the rote Blizzard story in many ways). Would Blizzard have dodged a fair chunk of this firestorm if the loot was up to snuff? Yes, but I can see why they didn't go that route. Either way, it's a risk they decided to take.

Additional note: The server/client logic that kicks in with multiplayer modes of LoD D2 sucks, even if you're the LAN host playing solo. I constantly have to game the logic on my werewolf druid to try and get the Fury attack to actually hit things over it's multiple strikes. Or even with enemies not being where they appear. The 'lag' in D3 is generally a huge step up* as far as my experience has been. *Probably werewolf druid specific in large part, but still.

 

[Simonoly]

Gosh, I didn't realise the AH was having such a negative impact on people's experience with this game. I actually stopped playing the game when I got to Act 4 on normal as I realised I wasn't actually having any fun, so I never really got into the whole AH thing.

How difficult is it to create a decent dungeon crawler? It's a pretty straight forward formula and Blizzard pretty much defined the genre yet they seem to be struggling of late.

 

[RJ 17]

Bah, Blizzard are just a bunch of money-grubbing bastards whose greed makes EA look like lil' Timmy running a lemonade stand.

Yeah...I'm still pissed off that they decided to split Star Craft II into 3 separate games on the grounds of "We wanted to put so much into the game we couldn't fit it all on one disc!" Given today's technology, I find that statement to be highly doubtful. But even if that is the case........................have they never heard of releasing a multi-disc game? No. Clearly it's much more fun to charge players 3 times to get the full game (for those like me that care more about the campaign and story than the multiplayer) because people had been waiting well over a decade for the game and you know they'll buy it regardless of what they do.

So yeah, fuck Blizzard.

P.S. And fuck Square-Enix while we're at it.

 

[Lhynn]

Go play Path of exile, that's what D3 should have been.

 

[Danceofmasks]

To people who don't think the AH is at fault, look at it this way.
Diablo 3 is a pretty damn good game, IF you assume neither the auction house nor inferno difficulty exists.

 

[m19]

I never beat D2 on all difficulty levels because I got bored of the same content long before...

 

[vezon]

I'm not surprised. And yes Blizzard can't change anything about it, because, u have to understand 1st was AuctionHouse than was Diablo. Thas why Diablo 1st started as MMO, thats why is alltimeconection. AHouse idea appeared probably ~2006, because of WoW and D2 black market, but by that time it was to late to add in WoW, so they had to create a new game for it, and Diablo is the most perfect for it.

 

[Monsterfurby]

Except for the fact that it has sold over 10 million copies [http://www.imediamonkey.com/2012/08/05/diablo-3-overtakes-warcraft-with-10-million-sales/], which is a massive success from Blizzard's/Activision's perspective.

You can't measure success by sales alone. Their calculations will likely have factored in a sustained playerbase, potential add-ons and so forth. This was one expensive game to make.

Not to mention the damage to the Blizzard and Diablo brands which you could reasonably put into seven to nine figure spheres. (Based on the fact that Brandirectory gives the value of BlizzardActivision's brand as about $2,8 billion http://brandirectory.com/profile/activision-blizzard )

 

[zinho73]

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.

"The Auction House isn't simply an add-on, it's literally a game changer. Because players have full access to hundreds of thousands of items they'd statistically never interact with during natural play, enemies in the game have to accommodate by providing a challenge equivalent to superior gear. And it's not just about item level; it's about options. Stacking certain stats, and designing your gear set with an encompassing strategy (as opposed to the "this is the best helmet I've found, these are the best boots"-type scavenging otherwise required) is a colossal boon to any aspiring Nephalem. In fact, the advantage is so substantial that the game's difficulty is adjusted to it by necessity, thereby reinforcing, if not demanding, the Auction House's use to remain competitive against the A.I."

So, to sum this up for you, the point is that the Auction House (nowhere does this mention the RMAH) can not be ignored. It's essentially required to even attempt a pass through Inferno (and realistically speaking, Nightmare). Saying that "choosing to click that button" is somehow the fault of the player is the same as telling someone playing ME3 that they merely chose to use cover, so if they don't like how it works, then they should just stand out in the open mid-firefight instead.

And, as far as me growing up and taking responsibility "for a change," do we ... know each other? Or are you referring to a similar post you skimmed and took issue with?

No, sorry Mike, that wasn't intended as a personal attack on you or anything. I've just been arguing this same point with someone else who wasn't able to defend their point of view effectively or maturely. That individual even made a couple of great arguments about how items dropped in the game are often better than what people buy on the Auction House.

I do stand beside the fact that you can play the entire game without ever opening the Auction House (real money or otherwise). I played the hell (no pun intended) out of Diablo 2 with the expansion without ever buying an item online. I intend to do the same with D3. Your post is slamming an option that can be ignored. Now it may not be easily ignored but it's still up to the player.

I do like the comment about ME3, because a lot of the time in ME3 I was "choosing" to run, while my Shepard was "choosing" to take cover behind an invisible pixel and get shot in the back

Diablo 2 was very easy to play without buying anything.

Diablo 3 is simply not the same because even your skills are tied to the items, so, if you cannot find a reasonable upgrade (which is common) you have nowhere to go: you cannot outlevel the enemies, your skills will not hit hard enough and you cannot compensate with skill due to huge hitboxes, slow char movement and a lot of elite abilities that simply take out the control from the player (and in Inferno you even have to deal with enrage timers so you cannot even kite).

It is theoretically possible to not use the AH, but in practice it is simply not doable unless you are extremely lucky. And I mean extremely.

 

[zinho73]

And on top of everything else, with the launch of the RMAH, things took a turn for the worse.

Inflation is up, because you can buy fake gold (what a terrible idea) and the best items are no longer available in the AH. Sometimes you cannot even find mid-range items.

 

[Jachwe]

And the auction house is not a bad idea. There has always been auction houseS to provide that service... illegally. Having a controlled enviorment to trade is consumer friendly because the prices are capped and the probability for fraud extremly reduced.

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.

You are right that the majority did not use auction houses for Diablo2. There was no point to it. Paying real money is a hurdle you are not willing to make easily. But it will be the same for Diablo3. The majority will not use the auction house, real money or otherwise. There is no point to it. The game is finished they have seen "everything". They have jobs and responsibilities that need to be taken care of. So my point now is that only the "hardcore" players are complaining about the auctionhouse suspecting design flaws caused by it.
So let me tell you how grateful I was for the existence of the auction house. The auction house is a place under the watch of blizzard itself enabling me to get the items I want. It has changed the game but it got more player friendly. You do not need to grind on a certain boss or mob with magicfind to get the item. You can just be a gold farmer and buy it. Now Blizzard doesn't want that and reduced the golddrop. That is because of the circumstances described in the article. Goldgain was calculatable, itemdrops not so much. You always knew how much gold to exspect from a run but itemdrop chances were much riskier. As an illustration I do not need to grind monsters anymore for 15 hours but can as easily grind gold for 15 hours and get the same result. I get my item. I have used the gold auction house myself when I hit hell because it was so freaking hard. I had a lot of gold stashed up at that point, bought me all the items I needed and was on my way having fun. Granted I needed to buy items more frequently from the auction house but it got me to Inferno without much grinding. Now I also hit that wall. I also started like 3 other characters had some loot in my chest for them they now feed from when they need decent gear to go through normal, nightmare maybe even hell. While playing with the other chars I accumulate gold that I will spend in the near future in the auction house to buy them some items I think they might need but I haven't found getting dropped by a monster.
So the auction house helps me to not need to grind. Certainly what I described was not the super hardcore player who needs to play Inferno. I described a not quite casual not quite hardcore approach where the auction house is a more than useful tool you use in the game.
Now the real money auction house on the other hand... let me just mention it makes sense to have the top gear of the game have even lower drop chances then way back then in the days of Diablo2 because Blizzard might want to cash in on the most rare items being sold for lots of money because getting them otherwise is next to freaking impossible. But that is a concern for the super hardcore players who have spent way more than just 200 hours on the game.

 

[ben-]

I beat it once havent picked it up since. The Activision house takes any replay value out of the game. ( sad too ive played diablo 1+2 probably more than any other game combined, well except maybe starcraft and wow ).

 

[his1nightmare]

Except for the fact that it has sold over 10 million copies [http://www.imediamonkey.com/2012/08/05/diablo-3-overtakes-warcraft-with-10-million-sales/], which is a massive success from Blizzard's/Activision's perspective.

You can't measure success by sales alone. Their calculations will likely have factored in a sustained playerbase, potential add-ons and so forth. This was one expensive game to make.

Not to mention the damage to the Blizzard and Diablo brands which you could reasonably put into seven to nine figure spheres. (Based on the fact that Brandirectory gives the value of BlizzardActivision's brand as about $2,8 billion http://brandirectory.com/profile/activision-blizzard )

Cool that you quoted something I quoted and made it look like you quoted me.
Nice php skills bro.

 

[Nimzabaat]

So... after reading the back and forths a bit, here's the bare bones (as I see it)

Diablo 2: Takes 200+ hours to get the best items to finish the game on the hardest difficulty OR you can buy said items from a black market and risk losing your money and/or credit card information. (or you can just honey badger through like I did, but this isn't about me)
Diablo 3: Takes 200+ hours to get the best items (because they obviously still drop or no one would be able to sell them) to finish the game on the hardest difficulty OR you can buy said items from a legal Auction House (RM or not) if you, as a player, choose that option.

So I was wrong, the auction house isn't a non-issue, it's a vast improvement. Blizzard made an improvement and people are still mad. I guess they just can't win.

 

[mkennedy241]

For the most part I agree with the OP, and any game in which I'm willing to put in 100+ hours across a main and a couple alts constitutes me getting my money's worth. But there's a reason I haven't played in for a couple months now, and it's pretty much what the OP has been getting at and what pretty much everyone who's played the game long enough to hit the Inferno Grind has run into, at least among the people I've spoken with.

In short, it stops being fun. Pure and simple. A lot of what Blizzard promised about the game (in particular, all builds being viable) just ceases to be true once you get more than a few quests into Act 1 Inferno. I played a wizard for my main and had a blast getting to level 60, and even a little afterward, because I could lay waste to pretty much anything as long as I didn't play like a moron. Disintegrate with the rune that causes enemies to explode on death turned swarms of lesser minions into cannon fodder that spontaneously combusted in a rolling cascade of death throes. Archon turned me quite literally into death incarnate, engaged in a gleeful race against time to find more enemies to kill so I could keep the ability active or sealing the doom of whatever boss I was facing. When things got dicey I had a selection of escapes that I could swap out depending on what I felt like using on a given day. I hadn't exactly won the game, but I felt an awful lot like the barbarian in that early trailer hacking through enemies like the deranged god of chainsaws.

That all stopped as soon as I hit Inferno. Bad enough that I have to completely abandon the skills and runes that had made the game fun up to that point in favor of re-speccing for a never-ending kite fest; now all of a sudden the crafting and loot drop systems are effectively useless for giving me the gear I need to progress and anything on the AH that offers a boots is orders of magnitude more expensive than literally two levels ago. I don't want to grind butcher runs for 4 hours just to go comb through auction listings and find the one item I can afford and adds maybe +20 to my resists.

Look, in terms of overall fun for money D3 is very much a worthwhile purchase. But the endgame is totally borked. It's great up until Inferno, and then it's just not worth playing anymore. So I don't.

 

[Monsterfurby]

Cool that you quoted something I quoted and made it look like you quoted me.
Nice php skills bro.

Whoops, sorry for that. Just deleted the wrong line there.
Should be fixed now, didn't mean to misquote

 

[mkennedy241]

So... after reading the back and forths a bit, here's the bare bones (as I see it)

Diablo 2: Takes 200+ hours to get the best items to finish the game on the hardest difficulty OR you can buy said items from a black market and risk losing your money and/or credit card information. (or you can just honey badger through like I did, but this isn't about me)
Diablo 3: Takes 200+ hours to get the best items (because they obviously still drop or no one would be able to sell them) to finish the game on the hardest difficulty OR you can buy said items from a legal Auction House (RM or not) if you, as a player, choose that option.

So I was wrong, the auction house isn't a non-issue, it's a vast improvement. Blizzard made an improvement and people are still mad. I guess they just can't win.

In terms of providing a safe and efficient way to get good gear, sure. But the main problems with the late game are that 1) in-game methods of obtaining gear (i.e. drops and crafting) are randomized in such a way that the likelihood of obtaining something useful in Inferno is statistically insignificant, 2) the auction house becomes prohibitively expensive when one starts to look for items of level 60+, and 3) the *only* way to progress through to the end of Inferno after build optimization (which Blizzard had initially claimed wouldn't be mandatory) is through better gear. This wouldn't be an issue on its own except that the experience becomes hours of farming the same quests and bosses in order to buy an slightly better item, then seeing if the boost is enough to get you through to the next quest, at which you need to repeat the process.

The mechanics and security of the auction house are fine, but the massive economic and time costs associated with late-game progression as a result of the auction house being the only way to reliably get decent top-level gear are discouraging an awful lot of players from continuing to play.