Revenge of the Metacritics: Diablo III Getting Review-Bombed

[axlryder]

You know, saying all THESE things about people who negatively voted on a game...

fucking stupid.

bunch of whiny cunts

acting like a child

... is way closer to kicking and screaming, than the act of the negative voting itself. You don't like their exact methods of voting? You think that they should fairly analyze every element of the game, and compare it to others, instead of just voting based on an emotional first impression? Fine. Different methods, I guess. But it doesn't make you more mature than them, neither more calm or level-headed.

Acting agressively and offensively, is far more likely to portray us negatively, than any kind of poll usage.

For all I know, the zerobombers can be all knowledgeable gamers concerned about what this DRM represents, who decided to create bad press for the game months ago based on their ideological reasons, and strategically waited until now, while you are the one who is smashing his keyboard and foaming from the mouth in a knee-jerk reaction to their action. It's hard to tell, since all of us are just interacting through pushing buttons, but so far, you are giving me more material to work with.

What a needless post. "For all you know" is about right, because I actually read the reviews when they first started tumbling in. The vast majority were people who got broad sided by the launch, as evinced by their less than insightful assessment of the situation. The reviews were mostly written from a typical "I want it now" mindset and a few tried to justify their abysmally low scores further by citing other complaints about the early game (many valid complaints, but clearly not significant enough to rationally warrant a 0 or 1, especially considering the WELL established review system where 7=mediocre and 5=bad). A vast portion of other reviews where basically people whining that this wasn't Diablo II. Again, fine, but hardly a good enough reason to give the game a 0. Also, I'm posting on a website for gamers where gamers will most likely see it. They're posting on website where non-gamers (movie and music fans) are far more likely to see their behavior and their poor justification for their scores(all the more so now that the Diablo user reviews are being highlighted on the front page, though a more reasonable one is the main focus). This is a FORUM designed for colloquial chatter and many people on this website are already familiar with the communities' good and bad points. Finally, harshly worded language is just that. Using it doesn't magically make someone immature no matter how badly you wish it did. If anything, going out of your way to attack someone's maturity level just because they said someone was acting like a child (and actually gave a reason for it) doesn't reflect particularly positively on you either, especially considering your own hyperbolic description of my behavior.

Also, are you really one to talk about posting offensive things when your avi is a cropped pic of Emi doing anal? (though, to be fair, I guess one would have to already KNOW what that picture was of for them to be offended by it).

 

[hyker]

I think it's sad that the zeroes will probably be deleted even though people have a right to be angry about not being able to play a single-player game offline. They warned about this before release! I don't care, people should be able to use whatever they purchased.

This does not justify a zero score. Especially since it is NOT news. Especially since D3 is obviously NOT an offline game.

but this game will sell billions, and that'll make publishers use allways on-line, because it seems like it works
metacritic won't change it much, but atleast the majority of the voters say in the comments that they gave 0 because of the DRM, which is good, we should try to fight against it as much as possible

 

[hyker]

I think it's sad that the zeroes will probably be deleted even though people have a right to be angry about not being able to play a single-player game offline. They warned about this before release! I don't care, people should be able to use whatever they purchased.

This does not justify a zero score. Especially since it is NOT news. Especially since D3 is obviously NOT an offline game.

but this game will sell billions, and that'll make publishers use allways on-line, because it seems like it works
metacritic won't change it much, but atleast the majority of the voters say in the comments that they gave 0 because of the DRM, which is good, we should try to fight against it as much as possible

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

The real money auction house affects game balance, your power relative to other players, and your ability to beat content relative to other players you interact with. It impacts the all-important sense of fair play, the satisfaction of challenge and accomplishment, and the concept of the auction house itself. It arguably guts the whole point of playing the game past the credits. There are also other design decisions which may or may not favor funneling people into the auction house over fun and convenience.

Now if none of that matters to you in a multiplayer title, that's fair enough. But I think you can see the issue doesn't disappear when you put your head in the sand. Not that you are doing that. You said it doesn't bother you and I have no reason to doubt it. But it bothers me.

Now please indulge me by letting me vent a little bit: I can't fucking believe I have to defend the concept of playing a game without fucking money involved. Can you see why I feel like the fucking last sane person on earth? Whew, I feel better. Sorry.

Fair enough, but I'm curious to hear why you're bothered by other people having more proficient gear. See, D3 bases everything offensive on the value of your equipped weapon. You're playing as a Witch Doctor? Then find the cudgel or the hand axe with the biggest stats you can early on in the game, and you'll basically clean house. The Offense and Defense stats are virtually the only ones that matter. Everything else - even the uniques' sometimes fairly jaw-dropping stats - feels secondary in nature.

Considering that, wouldn't your personal spoils be enough? The game is never unfair as to leave you with improper weapons in a particularly hard stretch. Seeing as every build Blizz has planned for (if you don't use Elective Mode) is designed to be functional, even entry level spells like the Zombie Dogs are going to be relevant sixty levels down the line.

So when the only things that really matter are how much you can hit and how much damage you can soak, obsessing over some overpriced item in the RMAH just feels a little idiotic to me.

In a sense, D3 is only going to be Pay-to-Win if you put it in your mind that you *have* to be the alpha dog on the team, the one doing the most damage. It doesn't help that the inventory screen shows you your character's DPS - further accentuating the WoW-ish dispositions they'd like their players to take.

Just focus on upping these two base values. Your own item drops will suffice. If, on the other hand, you're trying to build some guy for PVP (which I have no idea if it is even possible in D3), then you might be in for a little more finagling.

The antidote for this is obvious: play with friends. Everyone has their own drops, but all items you discard from your inventory are visible to all. If your friends are the least bit thoughtful, they might run into something that'll work well for your class or your build.

I did not even list "other people having more proficient gear [than me]" as a complaint. I promise that is not the reason I don't like the RMAH. I'm bothered by the Real Money Auction House for all the reasons I listed. It's not that I'm bothered by people having more proficient gear. And it's not that I'm worried about being unable to tackle the game's content. Well, all that is part of it I suppose, but my issue is more fundamental. The ability to bypass the challenge of obtaining that gear by paying money and the fact of other people doing so deflates the motivation for and satisfaction from obtaining it in- and this is crucial- in a multiplayer environment. It also introduces the real-world concept of money into a video game, and not with subtlety or even the most contrived attempt at a gameplay justification. It's not that I can't get by with my personal spoils, it's that all the fun and motivation of doing so is gone. Well, not all of it. But it's a pretty big blow. I totally, utterly, and fundamentally disagree with the idea that what other people are doing in a multiplayer game does not affect your gaming experience. Your interactions with other players are what defines the experience. And it should be fun, challenging, and emotionally rewarding. Everything I listed in my first post contributes to that experience. You said to just ignore it, and all I'm trying to do is explain why that is a very unsatisfying solution for some of us.

The random drops do bother some people, and I don't much care one way or the other about that. But they differ from real money purchases in that random drops apply to everyone equally. You are still playing the game to get them and the process of obtaining the random drops is not being bypassed with money.

If I played exclusively with friends, that would indeed solve the problem. But my friends don't play this type of game, and even if they did I would probably want to play with randoms as well. I don't agree that pay-to-win is a state of mind. I don't agree that a game being pay-to-win is contingent on a person's attitude. Pay-to-win is paying money for a significant in-game advantage or to bypass content, and that's what the RMAH is. I get what you're saying, it won't bother you if you have the right mindset. But I don't share that mindset and I don't particularly want to.

My understanding is PvP is not currently available, but will be added later with a patch.

But doesn't "leave those alone" just mean "don't criticize Blizzard?" I mean, are you being harassed or something?

Harassed? Have you seen half the Diablo III threads on this forum? seems like every 3rd post is either a spambot impressionist going on about how good some similar indie game is or "LOL ERROR 37 ENJOY YOUR GAME SHEEP."

Well of course I want the game how I want it. And I'm going to say so. That's what we do. We talk about stuff.

This'd hold more merit if half the complaints weren't just "We want Diablo III to be Diablo II again!"

No offense, but it sounds like the only difference between the two is whether or not they criticize Blizzard.

The difference is one acknowledges that other people can still enjoy the game while the other basically goes "Well I'm not going to have fun playing this, so I don't want anyone else to enjoy it either."

Now please indulge me by letting me vent a little bit: I can't fucking believe I have to defend the concept of playing a game without fucking money involved. Can you see why I feel like the fucking last sane person on earth? Whew, I feel better. Sorry.

If you don't like the Auction House then don't use it, and if you're so adhered to the concept of "I got this gear by winning glorified dice rolls" being somehow better than "I got this gear by buying it" that you refuse to play with anyone who does the latter then just roll a Hardcore, they can't access the RMAH and have their own separate servers.

Yes, I have seen insulting posts and that is cause for complaint. It was not clear to me from your first post what you were objecting to exactly, but now it makes sense.

You may not agree with people who want Diablo III to be Diablo II again, but I wouldn't say they shouldn't express it on a forum if that is how they feel. Not that I want that. Besides, many of the complaints that are characterized that way could also be characterized as wanting Diablo III to be good. And I'm not saying it isn't.

I don't think not wanting you to enjoy something (a pretty natural and self-serving response if you think the 'something' blows chunks) is an offense worth mentioning. If they are insulting you, I agree that is worth griping about.

I did express why the RMAH problem is not solved if I simply don't buy things from it. Have you heard even one person complain about the RMAH on the basis that they personally would buy things from it? All that would solve are my money problems. Collecting loot is a huge draw for this game, which is why there is an auction house to begin with. You are reducing that appeal to "glorified dice rolls" to defend the RMAH. You are denigrating the game to make it sound as shitty as a real money auction house. Why defend something when you make it sound so shitty? You don't really feel that way, do you? Well, to answer your statement, I don't think collecting loot is as shitty as you imply, and definitely not as shitty as the RMAH.

And playing hardcore is only a good solution if I happen to want to play hardcore, and I don't. It can be exciting but too often it is boring or frustrating.

 

[Atmos Duality]

A vast portion of other reviews where basically people whining that this wasn't Diablo II. Again, fine, but hardly a good enough reason to give the game a 0

Attempting to attach an objective score to a subjective argument is flawed and irrational to begin with.
By extension, arguing over its validity is an even more irrational and meaningless endeavor.

This is a FORUM designed for colloquial chatter and many people on this website are already familiar with the communities' good and bad points.

Sadly, regardless of how it was designed, it's slowly turned into the usual bitchfest soapbox I find on most gaming sites. Meaningful discussion is stomped out or hand-waved away, and threads like THIS take center stage.

I call it "Controversy-Trolling". Where one topic gets spun over and over again.
Before, it was Used Game Sales, DRM, Piracy, Bobby Kotick acting like a heartless businessman in public. (SOPA was a legitimate threat to the net and demanded immediate action. I didn't like seeing SOPA threads everywhere, but I recognized their value at least)

Recently, it was Mass Effect 3, and now it's Diablo 3.

(It's either that, or game hype, which also isn't discussion.)

 

[lowhat]

ry. Businesses have the right to make their products the way they want them to be

Correct. And any sane person understands that customers have a right to not only avoid buying, but also complain about flawed products, particularly when they could encourage other companies to copy the flawed practice.

As simple as that. Please understand that you will have to deal with people criticizing things when a company screws up. If that makes your butt sore because you feel with the company for some reason, I suggest either lube, or avoiding metacritic.

Face it: A lot of people do not like what Blizzard did. Diablo III is catching flak for many different reasons, all of them legitimate. It's not just the DRM, it's that it is an unfinished game.

Quite frankly, they deserve the review bombing. From a neutral point of view, you absolutely cannot condemn these reviews. They are simply correct.

had been an internet during the transition from horses to horseless carriages, would have been so funny to read the rage.

Wow. You're serious. I cannot believe that you're truly so ignorant.

You are aware that in ye olden times, people had this thing called "mail", right? A number of companies actually got buried with mail when they did particularly bad things. Oddly, they changed their nonsense quickly after that happened.

See, the internet doesn't magically create "nerd rage". The internet just creates fanboy rage, such as yours.

Were there a lot of tasty paint chips around your house when you were young? After all, we're all aware of how Henry Ford scrapped the Model-T after receiving a bunch of angry letters from the local ferrier's guild about how automotives were ruining the personal transportation business...oh, wait, I made that up.

My "fanboy rage" just gets a mind of its own sometimes, to the point where I find it laughable how worked up people get over completely trivial consumer products issues, and basically claim that company is killing Jesus or something because the ending to their game sucked, or they chose a distibution model that people don't like. This really is the special snowflake generation, I'm sure that your concerns and boycott are a massive concern to multibillion dollar corporations. First world problems are so pathetic sometimes.

TL;DR this video sums up my response to your silly response quite well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n5E7feJHw0

 

[Deadman Walkin]

The game works fine now, why the anger? Few launches go smooth. I don't enjoy D3 singleplayer nearly as much as multiplayer. I like the game a lot though.

 

[Aeshi]

You may not agree with people who want Diablo III to be Diablo II again, but I wouldn't say they shouldn't express it on a forum if that is how they feel. Not that I want that. Besides, many of the complaints that are characterized that way could also be characterized as wanting Diablo III to be good. And I'm not saying it isn't.

But if you want Diablo II then why not just play Diablo II instead of asking Diablo III to become the sort of clone that people always hate sequels for being? I personally suspect its because some part of them knows that Diablo II wasn't quite as fun as their nostalgia remembers it being.

(I'd also debate as to whether Diablo II was good, although I'm probably in the minority given how everyone else is too blinded by the aforementioned nostalgia to remember all the faults.)

I did express why the RMAH problem is not solved if I simply don't buy things from it. Have you heard even one person complain about the RMAH on the basis that they personally would buy things from it? All that would solve are my money problems. Collecting loot is a huge draw for this game, which is why there is an auction house to begin with. You are reducing that appeal to "glorified dice rolls" to defend the RMAH. You are denigrating the game to make it sound as shitty as a real money auction house. Why defend something when you make it sound so shitty? You don't really feel that way, do you? Well, to answer your statement, I don't think collecting loot is as shitty as you imply, and definitely not as shitty as the RMAH.

I'm sorry but that literally is what it is. You kill a monster, the game rolls a hypothetical million-or-so sided dice and if you get lucky you get the number needed for the "Vorpal Killfrenzy of the Lizard" to drop. Any meaning you attach to this is purely superficial (if that's the correct word.)

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

You may not agree with people who want Diablo III to be Diablo II again, but I wouldn't say they shouldn't express it on a forum if that is how they feel. Not that I want that. Besides, many of the complaints that are characterized that way could also be characterized as wanting Diablo III to be good. And I'm not saying it isn't.

But if you want Diablo II then why not just play Diablo II instead of asking Diablo III to become the sort of clone that people always hate sequels for being? I personally suspect its because some part of them knows that Diablo II wasn't quite as fun as their nostalgia remember it?

(I'd also debate as to whether Diablo II was good, although I'm probably in the minority given how everyone else is too blinded by the aforementioned nostalgia to remember all the faults.)

I don't really care to debate it, to be honest. At least not without specific examples. I just don't see why it should be verboten.

I did express why the RMAH problem is not solved if I simply don't buy things from it. Have you heard even one person complain about the RMAH on the basis that they personally would buy things from it? All that would solve are my money problems. Collecting loot is a huge draw for this game, which is why there is an auction house to begin with. You are reducing that appeal to "glorified dice rolls" to defend the RMAH. You are denigrating the game to make it sound as shitty as a real money auction house. Why defend something when you make it sound so shitty? You don't really feel that way, do you? Well, to answer your statement, I don't think collecting loot is as shitty as you imply, and definitely not as shitty as the RMAH.

I'm sorry but that literally is what it is. You kill a monster, the game rolls a hypothetical million-or-so sided dice and if you get lucky you get the number needed for the "Vorpal Killfrenzy of the Lizard" to drop. Any meaning you attach to this is purely superficial (if that's the correct word.)

I think you're selling the "kill a monster" part a little short. Your last statement is not clear to me but OK, you're still more-or-less saying collecting loot sucks ass. I'm saying the RMAH ruins the fun of collecting loot and you're saying collecting loot is not fun anyway. I don't really know how we proceed from this point. I mean are we... done?

I guess now we go review-bomb Diablo III.

 

[tycho0042]

Best case scenario I'd give D3 6/10
The visuals are nice and they held to the "not broken, don't fix it" standpoint for most gameplay aspects.
The mind boggles at why it took ten years to make this game.
The server issues are pretty annoying at the very least. Thanks to this BS online only crap I for the first time ever lagged playing single player.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

I'm saying the RMAH ruins the fun of collecting loot and you're saying collecting loot is not fun anyway.

So... The presence of a single button labeled "Auction House" in the main menu's interface is enough to totally destroy your experience?

If that's how you feel, then alright, but forgive me for saying that you're reacting a little harshly. I don't agree with the auction system, real money or otherwise - but that doesn't stop me from having fun.

See, the sixty bucks got you two separate entities: the game itself, and the auction house. It's up to you to decide if you'd rather ignore one of these entities or not. Just going "Oh, phooey, other people are going to buy their way to success and that ruins it for me!" equals forgetting the fact that this is YOUR copy of the game.

Hate the RMAH? Don't use it. Hate the auction house? Don't use it. Blizzard isn't about to put a little icon on top of other players alerting you to the presence of auction users in your public game, and the idea of kicking people who chickened out and bought their way to success is pretty excessive. This would be as cheap as back when Team Fortress 2 went free-to-play and idiots started using special kick commands to keep F2P players away from certain servers. Shit, some particularly inconsiderate morons even slapped a hovering title on top of F2P-ers.

You'll never be able to tell the "Pay to Win" types apart from the "Play" types. It's seriously best to just accept it and have fun with what you have.

 

[dead_rebel]

Blizzard: We only release games when they're finished, except when we release a game when it's not finished.

Seriously though, fun game but it seems to be lacking a lot of the "revolutionary" mechanics they promised in the E3 videos; like Arena PvP for example. Yeah they're going to release it as free DLC later down the line, but they cannot claim they never release a game until it is complete if they haven't actually completed it.

 

[axlryder]

A vast portion of other reviews where basically people whining that this wasn't Diablo II. Again, fine, but hardly a good enough reason to give the game a 0

Attempting to attach an objective score to a subjective argument is flawed and irrational to begin with.
By extension, arguing over its validity is an even more irrational and meaningless endeavor.

This is a FORUM designed for colloquial chatter and many people on this website are already familiar with the communities' good and bad points.

Sadly, regardless of how it was designed, it's slowly turned into the usual bitchfest soapbox I find on most gaming sites. Meaningful discussion is stomped out or hand-waved away, and threads like THIS take center stage.

I call it "Controversy-Trolling". Where one topic gets spun over and over again.
Before, it was Used Game Sales, DRM, Piracy, Bobby Kotick acting like a heartless businessman in public. (SOPA was a legitimate threat to the net and demanded immediate action. I didn't like seeing SOPA threads everywhere, but I recognized their value at least)

Recently, it was Mass Effect 3, and now it's Diablo 3.

(It's either that, or game hype, which also isn't discussion.)

Of course pure objectivity is impossible in regards to something inherently subjective. I don't dispute that. However, saying something is a 0 (valueless, garbage, the worst possible) just because it doesn't perfectly capture an aspect of the previous title sounds pretty irrational to me. Also, numbered review scores, while flawed, don't necessarily claim to be objective, but perhaps merely symbolic of the general quality one feels a game has. Just because a perspective is subjective does not mean it's suddenly valueless and beyond scrutiny or that such scrutiny is suddenly invalid due to the subjective nature of said perspective, and there is clearly zero attempt at professional impartiality or fairness with many of these reviews. Of course they're user reviews, and the users aren't obligated to be professional, but I've already stated my personal perspective on such an attitude.

I do agree that there's been a lot of excess in regards to controversy around here. One thread is fine with me personally, but when 50 threads about the same topic spawn and have the same people reiterating the same points over and over that I find it kind of needless.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Also, numbered review scores, while flawed, don't necessarily claim to be objective, but perhaps merely symbolic of the general quality one feels a game has.

Numbers are, in every other field, a measurement. Quantitative.
But the opinions given here are purely Qualitative. They represent experiences; not poll data. Not tabulated data.

Sure, you may have objective or quantitative data to support your opinion, but the score itself does not prove anything, because they fail to answer the question of "Why?".

And since everyone's tastes can vary, that "Why" is far more important than any number.

Just because a perspective is subjective does not mean it's suddenly valueless and beyond scrutiny or that such scrutiny is suddenly invalid due to the subjective nature of said perspective, and there is clearly zero attempt at professional impartiality or fairness with many of these reviews. Of course they're user reviews, and the users aren't obligated to be professional, but I've already stated my personal perspective on such an attitude.

I concur that their opinions aren't above scrutiny. However, I'd say that if it's just review-bombing that we're concerned about, the score doesn't matter at all compared to "why?"

The only reason this is a point of controversy AT ALL is because of Diablo 3's User Score tanking. That's it. The one and ONLY reason anybody brought this up to begin with, and if the users aren't saying anything meaningful to support their low scores, then the score is as meaningless as their opinions.

I see 11 pages of people wagging their fingers and arguing.
It's all discussion and scrutiny over the part of the review that DOESN'T MATTER AT ALL.

I do agree that there's been a lot of excess in regards to controversy around here. One thread is fine with me personally, but when 50 threads about the same topic spawn and have the same people reiterating the same points over and over that I find it kind of needless.

It's just the general bitchiness of the forum that bothers me, and the feeling is sadly contagious. But the worst problem is that nobody is bothering with genuine discussion except for points of obvious controversy.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

I think it's sad that the zeroes will probably be deleted even though people have a right to be angry about not being able to play a single-player game offline. They warned about this before release! I don't care, people should be able to use whatever they purchased.

This does not justify a zero score. Especially since it is NOT news. Especially since D3 is obviously NOT an offline game.

Actually, it justifies even a -10/10.
You pay 60$ and you can't play it? Well, it won't be getting anything above 0 from me no matter how good it is if you somehow manage to run it.

Captcha: "get over it"
No captcha, I don't want to get over it!

 

[dark-mortality]

I've never played any of the Diablo series, could someone shed some light on this pasionate hatred for D3? I've just been wondering, did they fuck with the gameplay a lot or something? Really bad story? ORIGIN?

Hello, not sure if anyone answered you

Basically, there are two... Mistakes we can call them that people are raging over, and both goes into the same category.

The first (And maybe largest one) is the fact that, to be able to play the game, you have to stay online throughout the whole session. You lose internett connection, you will be insta-booted from the game. They (Blizzard) say it's to stop people from hacking the game and earning illegal cash from the real-money auctionhouse that they have.

The second "Mistake" is that Blizzard underestimated the amount of people that were going to play at launch, and because of that, the servers were overloaded. Because the servers were overloaded, there were huge queues and extremely long waiting times, many people even got error-messages. (Error 37 per-example)

I do find it a bit silly myself though that they say Blizzard has made "The greatest mistake EVAH!" As far as I know, when WoW first came, it had the exact same problem, and a lot of the expansions are said to have "Ruined Wow forever". People can't seem to grasp that mistakes are made, but yet millions of people are still going to continue playing WoW and Diablo 3. I have never played WoW, so I can't really say if any expansion has ruined it or not, I am just saying what WoW-fans has been raging over after every damn expansion.

Anyway, went off on a tangent there. Hope I answered your questions somewhat

Quick note: People are also complaining that Diablo 3 has a lighter atmosphere, making it a bit more silly than Diablo 2 which was a pretty grim game. People hate changes, what can we say

 

[Doom-Slayer]

I think it's sad that the zeroes will probably be deleted even though people have a right to be angry about not being able to play a single-player game offline. They warned about this before release! I don't care, people should be able to use whatever they purchased.

This does not justify a zero score. Especially since it is NOT news. Especially since D3 is obviously NOT an offline game.

Actually, it justifies even a -10/10.
You pay 60$ and you can't play it? Well, it won't be getting anything above 0 from me no matter how good it is if you somehow manage to run it.

Captcha: "get over it"
No captcha, I don't want to get over it!

The server issues are only temporary though, and from what I hear are actually going away and almost disappearing already. Once again a similar thing happened with WOW and its hardly unexpected since they even said before release that there would probably be issues.

Also, the requiring internet connection thing, it'll be written on the box and in the game requirements. If you bought the game you agreed that thats perfectly fine. If you dont like it fine, but thats not a fault of the game. If that feature doesn't actually work, then thats review worthy.

And once again, none of these things are worth a 0 review score. Its a game designed to be replayed over and over and played for years, a few days of (potentially, since not everyone has these problems) not being able to play, does not justify giving it a 0.