Diablo III Is Broken

[Catrixa]

Urgh, I feel like this is what will keep Diablo III from being something I come back to for years to come, which is downright tragic, because the game is fun. I normally judge games for their gameplay first and story second (I didn't hate Diablo III's story, because I have terrible taste, but it wasn't as interesting to me as, say, Starcraft II was. See aforementioned terrible taste >.>), and Diablo III is mechanically wonderful to me. It just has absolutely no replay value for me. The fact that every monk/demon hunter/wizard/barb/witch doctor are functionally identical means I've got about 5 replays in there (unless I want to play hardcore, which takes a certain mood) MAX. No need to reroll if all I'd do is get to the end and grind for the "real" gear (no need to make a couple of a class for different strategies if I can change them on the fly/there's only one that works endgame anyway).

The Blizzard obsession with numbers isn't helping me, either. I quit WoW because the flavor of the game was "now how good are you at arithmetic?" down to the very last detail. It's hard to be enthused with a game when I am just here to produce a specific number, and my inability to do so is being constantly scrutinized (i.e. my worth as a human is derived by my ability to find number-increasing items and hit buttons in a certain order). To some extent, this is unavoidable due to people being douchebags (yes, I, like most humans, am capable of learning), but the game doesn't compensate at all. It pretty much reinforces this mentality by saying, "well, there's nothing else in this game but the gear. Hell, we're doing our absolute best to strip out all the flavor in favor of homogenization in order to achieve balance." With lackluster legendaries and absolutely no low level sets, it seems like this is the goal with D3. Which is just as depressing as it is in WoW, because both games are mechanically satisfying for me. I just hate it when that's the *only* thing that's making a game worth playing.

 

[alj]

In other news water still wet sky still blue and the speed of light is still a universtal speed limit.

 

[oldtaku]

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.

Absolutely not. After 200 hours you will be nowhere near having the best items or even decent Inferno surviving items unless you use the AH. If you're very lucky you will get a single piece of improved gear (out of your entire outfit) once you're past Nightmare mode (difficulty 2 of 4).

I know a guy who's put 600+ hours into it (I know, I know, crazy), which I verified by looking at his profile, and he still can't beat Inferno with Witch Doctor. All his gear is AH because statistically you do not get drops that you can use. He spends his time farming gold using his gold farming outfit so he can afford better gear so he can try to get a little further in Inferno. That's a Job.

 

[zinho73]

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.

Absolutely not. After 200 hours you will be nowhere near having the best items or even decent Inferno surviving items unless you use the AH. If you're very lucky you will get a single piece of improved gear (out of your entire outfit) once you're past Nightmare mode (difficulty 2 of 4).

I know a guy who's put 600+ hours into it (I know, I know, crazy), which I verified by looking at his profile, and he still can't beat Inferno with Witch Doctor. All his gear is AH because statistically you do not get drops that you can use. He spends his time farming gold using his gold farming outfit so he can afford better gear so he can try to get a little further in Inferno. That's a Job.

I agree with that. The AH doesn't even act like a real shortcut most of the time due to inflation and outrageous prices.

Instead of farming items you have to farm gold, which was made more difficult in the last patches.

The RMAH is the real shortcut to the best items.

 

[UsefulPlayer 1]

I like playing Diablo 3 because I love customizing my builds. I change it at the beginning of every game to try and get something that's better and fun. I mainly complain about how imbalanced the skills are in the game. Certain runes are just so much more overpowering than their counterparts.

I'm not entire sure what you mean when you make the connection between Auction House and Difficulty. Inferno is supposed to be ridiculously hard. You don't need to play at that level.

Thought I do admit there no reason to play, except for my reason, when the auction house finds the items for you.

 

[Sovereignty]

I knew this would happen the day the real money auction house was announced. You don't funnel people into using a system you make money on, by having the items they need drop in their games. Their greed shut out the core player base that loved D2.

And for the other people whom wanted a solid RPG experience without the multiplayer trappings (And headaches).

They basically removed their pants and defecated on them. There was absolutely no challenge in normal. None at all. And most people can't bear to play a game that was so easily boring twice because, "That's when the real game starts."


I hope the industry learned something from this. Tutorials should never be hours long.

 

[Nimzabaat]

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.

Absolutely not. After 200 hours you will be nowhere near having the best items or even decent Inferno surviving items unless you use the AH. If you're very lucky you will get a single piece of improved gear (out of your entire outfit) once you're past Nightmare mode (difficulty 2 of 4).

I know a guy who's put 600+ hours into it (I know, I know, crazy), which I verified by looking at his profile, and he still can't beat Inferno with Witch Doctor. All his gear is AH because statistically you do not get drops that you can use. He spends his time farming gold using his gold farming outfit so he can afford better gear so he can try to get a little further in Inferno. That's a Job.

Okay I guess i'm not understanding something here. So are you saying that Blizzard is putting the best gear in the auction house themselves? Because my assumption is that some player would have had to have found the loot and put it in the auction house in the first place. Meaning that the loot did actually drop and they picked it up and, because they had better gear equipped, auctioned it. If that's not what is happening and it's a Blizzard employee putting the items in the auction house, then that is indeed a completely broken system. Like any other kind of DLC that is better than items available in game.

 

[oldtaku]

Okay I guess i'm not understanding something here. So are you saying that Blizzard is putting the best gear in the auction house themselves? Because my assumption is that some player would have had to have found the loot and put it in the auction house in the first place.

What's happening is you have several hundred thousand players (just a guess) grinding and finding stuff, very often stuff they can't use because it's for another class, and putting it up on AH. I did this too, because you have to make money to buy new gear on the AH and you get much more gold on AH than just vending it.

One of those thousands of active players /did/ find that Super Excellent Voodoo Mask of Whale Int I just bought on the AH. But I would probably have had to play a few thousand hours to get it to drop myself - again, I've played entire Hell mode games without ever finding a single equipable piece of equipment. It's just a statistical thing.

 

[StriderShinryu]

Okay I guess i'm not understanding something here. So are you saying that Blizzard is putting the best gear in the auction house themselves? Because my assumption is that some player would have had to have found the loot and put it in the auction house in the first place.

What's happening is you have several hundred thousand players (just a guess) grinding and finding stuff, very often stuff they can't use because it's for another class, and putting it up on AH. I did this too, because you have to make money to buy new gear on the AH and you get much more gold on AH than just vending it.

One of those thousands of active players /did/ find that Super Excellent Voodoo Mask of Whale Int I just bought on the AH. But I would probably have had to play a few thousand hours to get it to drop myself - again, I've played entire Hell mode games without ever finding a single equipable piece of equipment. It's just a statistical thing.

Well, that and didn't Blizz confirm a while back now that drop rates in game are altered based on the items available in the AH? If that is still the case, it would make sense if having even one of a particularly powerful item in the AH system meant that it would be less likely to appear in game.

 

[LetalisK]

This'll probably say something more about me than the OP, but...

200 hours? Half of that running through the same two chapters over and over? What the fuck?! This probably isn't much compared to a lot of people, but I can't understand what would drive a person to run the same content over and over ad nauseum like that. Wouldn't that drive someone to insanity? I guess that's why I never got into WoW end-game either.

 

[his1nightmare]

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

Thanks for fixing . Sorry for my tone.

 

[Mike Kayatta]

> 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, this may have been unclear (I guess?), but this wasn't a news piece. I realize it may be a bit confusing for you since I'm the News Manager of this site, but this is an Op-Ed. I'm not reporting on anything further than my own opinions and personal experience. So, if you want to be rude about someone "crossing a finish line" late, please feel free to direct that at me personally instead of the site at large. Or, you know, don't be rude at all. I'll leave that one up to you.

 

[oldtaku]

Well, that and didn't Blizz confirm a while back now that drop rates in game are altered based on the items available in the AH?

Based on this: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5575468638 I think that was a misunderstanding by the OP.

What's on the AH right now doesn't directly influence the drops right now (at least from this), but it does confirm that they designed the game drops to be extra stingy because they know you have access to the AH. Which comes back to Mike's (and almost everyone else's) whole 'They broke the game for the AH.'

 

[Sheo_Dagana]

I know that feel, Bro.

Seriously, I hate the Auction House in Diablo. It took all the loot-hunting out of the game, and what you're left with isn't much better than Diablo 2. In fact, I liked Diablo 2 better because I could customize my character to a far better extent. When a yellow item or better dropped, I got excited. Now I'm just perpetually disappointed.

Sure, you could just NOT use the Auction House... if you're stupid. But you can get excellent gear on there for a very meager amount of gold. It's just too easy, and while I could solve that problem by not using it, the Inferno acts are pretty much set up to where you have to go and get better items just to survive. I hit 60 long before the end of Nightmare and never found an item worth keeping.

If Diablo 3 could be traded in, I would have done so with gusto. As it stands, the icon just sits on my desktop, forever a testament to the fact that you can never trust any developer, even those who have an otherwise untarnished record.

 

[walrusaurus]

Yeah this is basically my sentiment, i stopped playing around the middle of june. I don't mind the RMAH, for me it is the Gold based AH that ruined the game. THe single worst design decision in any blizzard game ever. Hands down.

 

[MetallicaRulez0]

In the end Diablo 3 is simply one thing, a terrible failure from all angles.

I don't think that's true at all. It does several things extremely well. The classes are all fun and semi-balanced (up until cutting-edge Inferno, of course). The combat is easily the best in the genre, by a pretty large margin I might add. The abilities are fairly unique and interesting. Monster AI is pretty decent. However, all of that is marred by the existence of the Auction House. it removes the entire point of the end-game: hunting for items. Without the Auction House and with some more unique itemization options, I think Diablo 3 would have been seen as a huge success rather than a gargantuan turd sandwich.

 

[Do4600]

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?

You're not seeing the real problem here. The auction house is the answer to those online sellers but it unbalances the game even if you don't use it. It does this because Blizzard balanced the drop rates in the game for the auction house. I played Diablo 3 personally for 130 hours and have found one terrible unique item, Doombringer. It happens to be my favorite item in the diablo universe, but in Diablo 3 in order to advance to the stage where it would drop I had to buy a weapon that was in every aspect was better than the Doombringer. If I had played Diablo 2 for 130 hours I would expect about 30-40 unique items, not all would be good but they would keep me playing.

In Diablo 2 unique items are rare for the individual and because you only have access to eight players at a time your visibility of tradable items is very small. Websites that sell D2 items give you a much better idea of just how common those items are. A Stone of Jordan sells for $0.50, meaning they are very, very common. Just for argument I'll estimate that 1 in 10 players have the best ring in the game. Also remember that it was abundant enough to be used as a defacto currency until runes gained ground.

In Diablo 3 the auction house provides perfect visibility for all tradable items and the individuals drop rate is balanced for that. The best unique rings in Diablo 3 are I believe Stone of Jordan, Oculus and Skull Grasp. Last time I did a auction house search on those items they turned up maybe 8 pages of results each, if memory serves me correct there 50 results per page, if not lets say there are 100 results per page and lets just say "fuck it all" and say there are 40 pages of results for each ring meaning that within the auction house there are 12,000 of the best rings in the game meaning that if we have a player base of 3 million there is one ring for trade for each 250 people, and I vastly overestimated how many rings there are in the auction house over an auction period. Even after I inflate the stats, and add all three ring totals together they are still 25 times harder to find than my conservative estimate on the rarity of an item that is relatively more powerful in Diablo 2.

The auction house adds transparency to trade and to balance that transparency the drop rates on epic gear have to be significantly lowered and stats have to be randomized so many of the items are useless. If they didn't do that a Stone of Jordan would cost $0.50 a piece just like they do on those D2 sites. That's why the auction house ruins the game, because the game is based on finding cool epic loot and killing things with it, and the auction house adds the economic necessity of it being nigh impossible to find for an individual, and that doesn't change if you just "never use the auction house." This is the true problem, I hear it from everybody that plays or has played Diablo 3, "I can play for 10 hours and never find an item worth using or selling"

 

[Do4600]

In the end Diablo 3 is simply one thing, a terrible failure from all angles.

I wouldn't say that, I played it a relatively long time, and I know many people who have played it for a really long time, just, you know, not nearly as long as Diablo 2. I played it for 130 hours before I reached the point where I stopped having fun; which is certainly more than nearly all other games I own, more than Team Fortress 2, more than GTA IV, Just Cause 2, Stalker, Skyrim etc. It's just that there was such tremendous pressure for this game to be good for several hundred hours, that it would be one of those truly great games that can be played for years in between other games, turned out to be good for only a couple months. If anybody can actually fix it so it becomes great it's Blizzard but it seems their golden period of development has faded.

 

[Nimzabaat]

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?

You're not seeing the real problem here. The auction house is the answer to those online sellers but it unbalances the game even if you don't use it. It does this because Blizzard balanced the drop rates in the game for the auction house. I played Diablo 3 personally for 130 hours and have found one terrible unique item, Doombringer. It happens to be my favorite item in the diablo universe, but in Diablo 3 in order to advance to the stage where it would drop I had to buy a weapon that was in every aspect was better than the Doombringer. If I had played Diablo 2 for 130 hours I would expect about 30-40 unique items, not all would be good but they would keep me playing.

In Diablo 2 unique items are rare for the individual and because you only have access to eight players at a time your visibility of tradable items is very small. Websites that sell D2 items give you a much better idea of just how common those items are. A Stone of Jordan sells for $0.50, meaning they are very, very common. Just for argument I'll estimate that 1 in 10 players have the best ring in the game. Also remember that it was abundant enough to be used as a defacto currency until runes gained ground.

In Diablo 3 the auction house provides perfect visibility for all tradable items and the individuals drop rate is balanced for that. The best unique rings in Diablo 3 are I believe Stone of Jordan, Oculus and Skull Grasp. Last time I did a auction house search on those items they turned up maybe 8 pages of results each, if memory serves me correct there 50 results per page, if not lets say there are 100 results per page and lets just say "fuck it all" and say there are 40 pages of results for each ring meaning that within the auction house there are 12,000 of the best rings in the game meaning that if we have a player base of 3 million there is one ring for trade for each 250 people, and I vastly overestimated how many rings there are in the auction house over an auction period. Even after I inflate the stats, and add all three ring totals together they are still 25 times harder to find than my conservative estimate on the rarity of an item that is relatively more powerful in Diablo 2.

The auction house adds transparency to trade and to balance that transparency the drop rates on epic gear have to be significantly lowered and stats have to be randomized so many of the items are useless. If they didn't do that a Stone of Jordan would cost $0.50 a piece just like they do on those D2 sites. That's why the auction house ruins the game, because the game is based on finding cool epic loot and killing things with it, and the auction house adds the economic necessity of it being nigh impossible to find for an individual, and that doesn't change if you just "never use the auction house." This is the true problem, I hear it from everybody that plays or has played Diablo 3, "I can play for 10 hours and never find an item worth using or selling"

Even with all the math, the only way that argument makes any sense is if those rare epic items of awesomeness never ever drop. In which case, they'd never show up in the auction house. I find a new piece of gear that either the toon i'm playing, or one of my other toons can use, every hour (I only played for 1.5 hours today and found about eight pieces of gear that were better than the ones I had equipped). I do hear what you're saying, it just doesn't match my personal experience with the game.

Something that this article doesn't address is that the majority of Diablo 3 players are casual players who won't get to endgame. The "necessity" of the auction house, if it's to be believed, only kicks in on Inferno level anyways. So if the majority of players won't keep playing past normal, then they'll never need to use the auction house. So here's this story telling them that they "have" to use the auction house to play but it's just not true.

What bothers me is that before there was an article, it was just people whining about a feature that they could've avoided if they had some persistence. Such complaints are easily written off because people ***** about everything whether it makes sense or not. Now it's got a little weight to it because you see this "Diablo 3 is broken", whereas it's really just some of the players that are broken. I still think that there are better problems to be complaining about (lag? LAG? LAG! Yeah I die way more often because of lag than I do from any difficulty setting or "lesser" gear).

 

[creamy5000]

I guess the best way to win in Diablo3 was discoverd in 1983 by a computer..."A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?" W.O.P.R.
Always room for a Wargames quote