Evilsausage said:
Sorry don't agree D3 feels so dumbed down. Its has some fun casual slaughter but thats not enough for me to back to it over and over like with Diablo 2 and Path of Exile.
Diablo II's big problems come from its interface. I wouldn't mind the boring skill progression that Blizzard reused for
WoW if you had hotkeys that let you use multiple attacks without needing to manually swap between them on your primary attack buttons. It's inconvenient, it's clunky, and it significantly slows down the pacing of the game.
Diablo III is a massive upgrade in that regard; it still doesn't give the freedom of some of its contemporaries, but the ability to have six skills available simultaneously is infinitely more fun than needing to juggle your keybindings on your proper attacks.
As for the skill tree itself, I disagree that it's "dumbed down".
Diablo II is just a static increase of stats system. There's very little nuance, and very little incentive to spec as anything less than "optimal".
Diablo III might give you all of your skills automatically as you level up, but the rune system makes it far more dynamic. Abilities actually change, and between the runes and equipment you pick up, you could end up completely overhauling your ability loadout in the middle of your game just because you suddenly got something entirely new and different. How is that less interesting than
Diablo II's system? If you're a min-maxxer then okay, but that's not me so
Diablo III's method is far more appealing. But maybe that's because I spent five years playing
WoW and honestly didn't mind when they decided to completely redo the skill system in that and remove all of the superfluous "your [Ability] deals 3/6/9% more damage" skills.
And
Path of Exile? A clear case of quantity over quality. That skill tree is
Diablo taken to its logical extreme. Which, I suppose, is a good thing if you prefer the
Diablo II way of doing things, but that's not my cup of tea.
Also, can we please just stop saying "dumbed down" in the first place? There is no more trite a criticism of a game that can be thrown out these days. Just say you don't like it because it doesn't make you click all of the upgrades yourself.