As I write this I have played something like 40 to 45 hours of Diablo 3. This is quite a feat for a game, as I simply don?t have the time these days to spend on that much gaming. So D3 must be a really great game that truly grabbed me by the balls, right?
More or less, the truth is, my first feel of the game was one of disappointment. I was playing it with a strong sensation that it would get better as I played it, but I just found that I felt just the opposite: the more I played, the more I asked myself why I was playing.
The first obvious thing that bothered me was the always online thingy. Living in Brasil, I?m far enough from the servers to have guaranteed lag with an uncomfortable frequency. And I also had my share of disconnects (today even, two times), losing progress at key times. People tell me that this is all standard for an online game, but I?m an old geezer that likes to play his games whenever I want to. So it bothered me, but, hey, already bought it, right? I continued to play.
Second thing: the story. It is not that great to begin with (although the cutscenes are great), and from Nightmare on it kinds of get in the way. I found myself hitting the space bar with more vigor than my left button on the mouse. Minor annoyance, very personal, not a reason to stop playing, so I continued.
Third thing: the skill system. About level 20 I stop caring when I leveled up. Almost always the things that were unlocked were not the things I was using and I was fine using them. I discovered that the skill system does not offer a sense of progression. It adds variety, but do not evolve. There are no pre-requisites, no stats to allocate, no synergies with weapons or gear, there is nothing to aim for. It boils down to personal preferences or specific setups like when in coop or boss raids. So I changed when I was going to fight a boss or when going to participate in jolly cooperation. In the beginning I was quite excited to get a new rune or skill, because the beginning of the game is really boring and you are just hurting for anything to happen, but my hard on eventually went away.
I guess this system is all right for a superfast game like DOTA, in which you do not have time to think about your progression, but it ended up taking something away from the game. But it is a solid system and by level 60 I would sure have so many possibilities that my mind would explode with excitement, so I continued playing? But now less so. I also scratched my head in order to find a reason to roll another Char of the same class again. Couldn?t find any reasonable one (the achievement is not reasonable).
Fourth: the gear. My first character was a witch doctor. After half an hour playing I realized that, although I was equipped with a sword, I was still spitting from a zarabatana. Look, if you wanna my character to throw pots at people, please make her use a pot as a weapon. It would actually be a cool, unique, original weapon. Once I realized all magic stuff was related with weapon DMG (any weapon), I felt my immersion going away, I quickly switched to a Demon Hunter so I could not see this aberration anymore.
Fifth: the loot. One thing is the character using a sword to throw pots. Unsettling, but I could live with it. The other thing is the loot itself being uneventful. By level 30 I wasn?t even ?opening? the little yellow packages of rare loot on the spot. I was waiting until my inventory was full to sort things out. The thing is, as a Demon Hunter, the only really useful stuff were the ones that added DEX and VIT, also, most of the blue loot is fantastic and the yellow stuff seemed better suited for maybe two levels ago. I found two uniques that were garbage. Also, bosses were pretty disappointing the second time around. Well, there are a lot of posts on the net talking in detail about the itemization of the game, and I agree with most of them: it is lacking. It is too homogeneous and feels uninspired. Weapons should have had unique attributes or bonuses for certain classes to make more of them viable (and viable for different reasons), blues should be less powerful, uniques should have been way more powerful.
But this is something fixable with an expansion or a patch and it only really hurts the endgame, because there is still a plethora of thins to equip. So I continued playing.
Sixth: the auction house. A little bit on my background: I?ve never bought anything outside a game to progress within it. I guess this is becoming more and more common in these days of DLC, but I simply cannot get used to it. To me, it is simply not part of the game.
Money in D3 is plentiful and if I can buy the best loot from the auction house, my drive to play the game is seriously diminished. Also, there is just one sensible thing to do if you are looking for the best equipment: your main stat and VIT. In the auction house things like that are plentiful, relatively cheap (especially if you are selling everything you come around) and better than almost anything you can find.
Also the whole thing is self sustainable after an initial investment, because you can resell what you have bought. A friend of mine plays to find items to sell on the AC to buy items for his character. Well, wherever tickles your fancy, man. I find the whole thing the endorsement of something that was wrong to begin with, created to exploit our addictiveness. I don?t think this kind of stuff makes us better games and I?m sure that the fact that Blizzard decided to build the game around it lead to some sad design decisions like the always online thingy.
In the end, I think that the action is great (it is actually less clicky), the art direction is ok (if totally uninspired) and the pacing really good (aside from the story bits after beating the game). Also, leveling up between 12 to 45 feels all right, because you can?t really see the loot homogenization (unless you are paying attention) and the skills keep coming (without any kind of greatness, but it is something), also the game ramps up in difficulty and the added challenge is welcome.
But after that... I don?t know. Well, I stop playing to write this boring wall of text, so the drive to get back to it is clearly not there anymore.
More or less, the truth is, my first feel of the game was one of disappointment. I was playing it with a strong sensation that it would get better as I played it, but I just found that I felt just the opposite: the more I played, the more I asked myself why I was playing.
The first obvious thing that bothered me was the always online thingy. Living in Brasil, I?m far enough from the servers to have guaranteed lag with an uncomfortable frequency. And I also had my share of disconnects (today even, two times), losing progress at key times. People tell me that this is all standard for an online game, but I?m an old geezer that likes to play his games whenever I want to. So it bothered me, but, hey, already bought it, right? I continued to play.
Second thing: the story. It is not that great to begin with (although the cutscenes are great), and from Nightmare on it kinds of get in the way. I found myself hitting the space bar with more vigor than my left button on the mouse. Minor annoyance, very personal, not a reason to stop playing, so I continued.
Third thing: the skill system. About level 20 I stop caring when I leveled up. Almost always the things that were unlocked were not the things I was using and I was fine using them. I discovered that the skill system does not offer a sense of progression. It adds variety, but do not evolve. There are no pre-requisites, no stats to allocate, no synergies with weapons or gear, there is nothing to aim for. It boils down to personal preferences or specific setups like when in coop or boss raids. So I changed when I was going to fight a boss or when going to participate in jolly cooperation. In the beginning I was quite excited to get a new rune or skill, because the beginning of the game is really boring and you are just hurting for anything to happen, but my hard on eventually went away.
I guess this system is all right for a superfast game like DOTA, in which you do not have time to think about your progression, but it ended up taking something away from the game. But it is a solid system and by level 60 I would sure have so many possibilities that my mind would explode with excitement, so I continued playing? But now less so. I also scratched my head in order to find a reason to roll another Char of the same class again. Couldn?t find any reasonable one (the achievement is not reasonable).
Fourth: the gear. My first character was a witch doctor. After half an hour playing I realized that, although I was equipped with a sword, I was still spitting from a zarabatana. Look, if you wanna my character to throw pots at people, please make her use a pot as a weapon. It would actually be a cool, unique, original weapon. Once I realized all magic stuff was related with weapon DMG (any weapon), I felt my immersion going away, I quickly switched to a Demon Hunter so I could not see this aberration anymore.
Fifth: the loot. One thing is the character using a sword to throw pots. Unsettling, but I could live with it. The other thing is the loot itself being uneventful. By level 30 I wasn?t even ?opening? the little yellow packages of rare loot on the spot. I was waiting until my inventory was full to sort things out. The thing is, as a Demon Hunter, the only really useful stuff were the ones that added DEX and VIT, also, most of the blue loot is fantastic and the yellow stuff seemed better suited for maybe two levels ago. I found two uniques that were garbage. Also, bosses were pretty disappointing the second time around. Well, there are a lot of posts on the net talking in detail about the itemization of the game, and I agree with most of them: it is lacking. It is too homogeneous and feels uninspired. Weapons should have had unique attributes or bonuses for certain classes to make more of them viable (and viable for different reasons), blues should be less powerful, uniques should have been way more powerful.
But this is something fixable with an expansion or a patch and it only really hurts the endgame, because there is still a plethora of thins to equip. So I continued playing.
Sixth: the auction house. A little bit on my background: I?ve never bought anything outside a game to progress within it. I guess this is becoming more and more common in these days of DLC, but I simply cannot get used to it. To me, it is simply not part of the game.
Money in D3 is plentiful and if I can buy the best loot from the auction house, my drive to play the game is seriously diminished. Also, there is just one sensible thing to do if you are looking for the best equipment: your main stat and VIT. In the auction house things like that are plentiful, relatively cheap (especially if you are selling everything you come around) and better than almost anything you can find.
Also the whole thing is self sustainable after an initial investment, because you can resell what you have bought. A friend of mine plays to find items to sell on the AC to buy items for his character. Well, wherever tickles your fancy, man. I find the whole thing the endorsement of something that was wrong to begin with, created to exploit our addictiveness. I don?t think this kind of stuff makes us better games and I?m sure that the fact that Blizzard decided to build the game around it lead to some sad design decisions like the always online thingy.
In the end, I think that the action is great (it is actually less clicky), the art direction is ok (if totally uninspired) and the pacing really good (aside from the story bits after beating the game). Also, leveling up between 12 to 45 feels all right, because you can?t really see the loot homogenization (unless you are paying attention) and the skills keep coming (without any kind of greatness, but it is something), also the game ramps up in difficulty and the added challenge is welcome.
But after that... I don?t know. Well, I stop playing to write this boring wall of text, so the drive to get back to it is clearly not there anymore.