Why Diablo 3 is a bad game

[Zeriphor]

The problem with D3 is that everything was made with the RMAH in mind. Case in point: Inferno difficulty. They nerfed some spells players were using (Diamond Flesh was one of them, forgot the other) and made it much more difficult to go through without good gear, thus the RMAH. Blizzard makes a cut on every RMAH transaction, so naturally they would want to maximize profits as much as possible.

Smoke screen for demon hunters, serenity for monks, and energy armor for wizards are the ones I'm aware of. Basically any skill that allowed you to progress through inferno mode without being geared enough (Blizzard's words, not mine) were hotfixed to no longer work that way.

Note that I said hotfixed, not patched. As in, someone using a skill to defeat content harder than their gear expects was deemed such a great threat that Blizzard felt the need to hotfix this.

 

[zinho73]

1: Items on The AH cannot be obtained without regular gameplay.
Conclusion: nerfing skills is false since you cannot obtain the gear on the ah without someone obtaining it normally.

2: see point one.

3: Everything on the AH is someone else trash. The AH doesn't change your odds. there will still be the same amount of sword of awesome in rotation. If you cant beat the guy who bought the sword you cant beat the guy who sold the sword. Your odds are the same.

4: False conclusion made on the idea that RMAH decided it needed to be online. Fact is Blizzard decided it was to be played online. A RMAH didn't force guild wars to be allways online yet fact remains they could have made it just like Diablo 2 battlenet. Their product is online. Deal with it like you dealt with every other online only product ever.

Skills and farming points are nerfed because if enough people exploits the game, the whole economy crumbles.

The MAH changed your odds before the game was even launched. The ratio time vs reward is the worst I've ever seen in a game of its type. By far. I don't think Blizzard cannot do basic math algorithms. I think they did that on purpose. The problem became worse because they've tied skills with equipment, making the game all about gear check.

Exploits are exploits with or without the RMAH.

You make the conclusion they wouldn't fix them if the RMAH wasn't there?

Also "you think they did it on purpose".

You are not looking for an answer. You are looking for a reason for your predetermined conclusion. In other words. You are making a false conclusion by leading evidence. You conclusion is false.

The game needs to be balanced in order for gear to drop and be put on the AH. By making you char to weak without it the gear, it cannot be obtained in the first place. Your conclusion that skills is nerfed because of the AH is quite simple false logic.

Exploits with RMAH get another, more serious connotation because real money is involved. They are harder to address and must be fixed with more urgency. A bad combination for gameplay balance (as the patches Blizzard is launching are proving. They even admit that they don't have the slightest idea of what the effects of some decisions will be, like greater repair costs. They are iterating by trial and error, which should only be done in a game in the beta phase - the post referring to this is on the front page of Blizzard forums).

About the loot: They either seeded the loot drop like that on purpose or they don't know how to program basic algorithms. It can only be one or the other.

I'm neither looking for an answer nor a reason. I'm stating my opinion. You are free to disagree with.

I don't understand your last paragraph. If people cannot be too weak in order to progress then they should not be nerfing skills and farming places. They should upgrade them.

Look, what Blizzard is doing is this:
Trying to avoid that a player or group of players gets too efficient. THEY NEED TO DO THAT ONLY BECAUSE THE RMAH, because it would be easier to program bots and break the economy. Or heaven forbid, people would not even consider using it.

One good example is nerfing pots and treasure chests. Treasure chests with poor loot is a dreadful design decision, but they had to do it because people and bots were farming them.

The MAH is not the only factor determining this. It is actually a long string of cause and consequence and a series of poor design decisions (starting with bland itemization), but saying that the MAH does no affected those decisions (specially the poorer ones) is being incredibly naive.

You can love the MAH. Nothing wrong with that, but you must see it for what it is. It is not a completely separate package from the game. It is a money grab scheme very integrated with the game itself (otherwise it wouldn't even function properly and would have no reason to exist).

 

[zinho73]

You can't really say D3 is a "bad game" while inserting all sorts of opinion pieces in your post. Kinda kills the credibility a bit.

Not that it's a bad game at all. Some parts are done poorly, and some are done well. For now, I'm playing and having some amount of fun with it.

I can and I did and I gave all kinds of opinions because I think it is a complex issue. I don't believe in good or bad without a context.

If 4 kids have done the game in their basement I would be in awe.

But, given the source material, the company developing it, the time they had to put everything together and the money behind it, Diablo 3 can be safely considered a subpar effort by Blizzard.

However, it was clearly enough for a bunch of people that are having fun with the game to this day and even I, the dreadful critic, had fun with it in my first 100 hours (which is a lot). But looking from a more distant point of view, the flaws become much more evident to me and I think we just missed the opportunity to play one of the most incredible games of all time because Blizzard got greedy. That is a little bit sad.

 

[RJ 17]

More than any other reason, I'd say this about sums things up:

Seriously....fucking seriously...is ANYONE actually stupid enough to use that real money AH? If so, you know you could save yourself a lot of time by just throwing your wallet into a wood chipper.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

You can't really say D3 is a "bad game" while inserting all sorts of opinion pieces in your post. Kinda kills the credibility a bit.

Not that it's a bad game at all. Some parts are done poorly, and some are done well. For now, I'm playing and having some amount of fun with it.

I can and I did and I gave all kinds of opinions because I think it is a complex issue. I don't believe in good or bad without a context.

If 4 kids have done the game in their basement I would be in awe.

But, given the source material, the company developing it, the time they had to put everything together and the money behind it, Diablo 3 can be safely considered a subpar effort by Blizzard.

However, it was clearly enough for a bunch of people that are having fun with the game to this day and even I, the dreadful critic, had fun with it in my first 100 hours (which is a lot). But looking from a more distant point of view, the flaws become much more evident to me and I think we just missed the opportunity to play one of the most incredible games of all time because Blizzard got greedy. That is a little bit sad.

agreed, the game is fun, i'll give it that, and i'm sure i'll keep enjoying it for a while, but there are tons of things about it that just yell out "mehh", even by 2003 standards in depth and setup.

For now, i'm still having more fun, but i think i am experiencing what you have described in that the annoyances are really starting to get to me and they are only getting bigger as I go along.

I'm pretty sure i'll end up picking up torchlight 2 at some point, as it seems to be catering more to what I'm looking for than D3 is. (yes I have sold items on AH, and it does seem like blizzard is bending the game around the AH as it's main feature, rather than having a game with an attached AH)

 

[Blade_125]

If I were a manager at Blizzard and you came to me with that argument I would fire you. The goal is to make it fun enough so that many, many people buy it. If we do more work and do not reap more sales then that is a waste of money. Any business will tell you that. Return on investment.

That being said, when I look at your list of complaints they look like things that would stop me from having fun. I didn't buy the game because of problems I could forsee. So I'm not sure your example at the beginning really ties into the problems you list.

I guess Blizzard has to ask will they lose future sales in Diablo 3 and other games because of any work they didn't put into the game.

 

[zinho73]

Dude you are still leading the evidence.

You need to trying to force your conclusion.

I'm explaining why I get to those conclusions and I'm not forcing anything, I even said you are welcome to disagree.

The time V loot ratio has always been like this in a dungeon crawler.

You have no idea what are you talking about. Play 2 hours of Diablo 2, Torchlight or Titan Quest. In terms of customizing you character with loot and/or abilities you will probably have 5 times the options than in D3. As time passes, the difference will be even greater as items in D3 are harder to get almost exponentially, while in those other games you will be always progressing in some way - and finding incredible loot with way more frequency. See? It is you that is failing to back up your opinions with facts.

You say the RMAH makes urgency in fixing exploits? Then that is a positive thing. Not a negative.

It is a negative if:
1. The exploit is not really a big issue if it weren't for the AH (keeping the development team from dealing with other issues).
2. They do not have the time to test it properly but must launch it anyway.
3. The developer stealth fix them trying to pass them unnoticed.

But hey if all of this is just your opinion that the RMAH has the effect you are saying ok.

It is my opinion that Blizzard is all run by aliens who try to enslave the human race my making us dull zombies.

The thing about opinions you see.... they are like assholes. Everyone has one, and they are back up by shit.

Ok, time to stop feeding the troll. You realize you are the one making crazy and out of the blue assumptions, right?

Unless you can bring me some fact then Ill take your opinion as that. Something that doesn't need to be true.

I just gave a lot of examples and comparisons on all my posts. I even invited to read Bashiok post on the first page of the Blizzard forums in which he says that they think they went overboard with repair prices, but are not sure yet, because they have to acquire data on how this will turn out in light of the other changes. This my friend, is called beta testing.

Ill explain the last paragraph for you thou.

They need to balance it. If the player cannot kill the mob that drops the loot, without the loot they have made an a self defeating loop. Like trying to get your first job, but every job demands you have experience to get the job. They need to mob to be hard without but easier with.

Maybe if I put in WoW terms. If Boss X cannot without having the loot that drops from Boss X then he cannot be beaten. Do you understand now?

Hm, that's what I understood the first time, but I was giving you a way out because it has nothing to do with what we are discussing. That's not a problem with D3 (well, maybe in Inferno for some). I was discussing nerfs done because of the RMAH.

If the loot is on the AH means that you can get the loot without paying. Because the guy who put the loot there did. Simple as that.

If the loot is in the AH, mathematics says that your best chance to get it is buying it, because the chances for you to have a similar roll is close to zero given the way random number generators work on this game. Also, if you buy something to get an advantage you are paying to win. Simple as that. Sorry to break it to you.

 

[zinho73]

Yes because it is about expectations. Kenyan superstar marathon runner comes in fifth in NY marathon = failure. 80 year old stroke victim finishes last in ny marathon after rehab = success. You cannot evaluate something with looking at the context, imo.

We can word this more appropriately. You could say "Diablo 3 did not meet my expectations" or "Diablo 3 should have been better than it is". That is different from saying Diablo 3 is a bad game. In terms of gameplay and of lifespan (and hence of value for money), I would call it an above average game. To say otherwise would be to set a highly unrealistic measure.

Further, what exactly was your expectation? I expected a Diablo style game with some sense of progression over its predecessors in terms of gameplay. By that I mean I wanted a more involved combat style where a greater number of abilities needed to be employed and where their uses were more circumstantial and strategic. On this, Diablo 3 delivered. The hotkeys, resources and cooldowns were a valid and natural progression for the series. It is, at its core (though not necessarily in its content), a superior game to Diablo and Diablo 2. That was what I was looking for, and that is how I rate the game.

Not that I don't have objections of my own. The itemisation is one such gripe. I don't fault the use of primary stats on gear (for one thing this adds a better sense of gear progression), but I do fault having primary stats competing against less important stats in the gear budget. In Inferno, when you have the NV stacks consistently up, then rares will start to drop like nothing else, but then the vast majority of those rares will be vendor trash. This I feel was a mistake. You could instead set the drop rate considerably lower, but itemise the equipment better so that the rares that dropped would be much more likely to be usable pieces. For instance, a spirit stone with strength instead of dexterity is a useless drop. Make them rarer and then make every spirit stone come with dex, and you would have a much more fulfilling system IMO.

I could word it in another way, but it would not sound true to me. In my point of view I just saw a group of highly payed professionals performing very poorly. This is bad.

I said D3 is bad game and then I explained the light I was viewing it. I do not believe in good or bad without context. This choice of words also helps to understand why there are so many people calling it the "worse game ever" when it is clearly not.

Also, what I see is that the bad moniker is not even affixed to the game on expectation alone. Most people that dislike the game gave it a fair chance, playing it until Inferno at least. The steam was lost when they were able to see through the cracks (or when the shortcomings were more evident).

 

[zinho73]

First, a little bit of history:

Back in my university days, I had a professor that gave me a B in an art direction work that was clearly more polished and better than the work from other students.

When I asked why, he said that I was already working professionally and was clearly capable to do more while the others made the best they could. He was right. I had the resources and knowledge to make a much better work, but I didn?t because I did just enough to be better than the competition. I was lazy and did not give my best.

Apples and oranges. When calling a game good or bad we're talking about the end result alone. Not the same for your class apparently. We're not grading their effort like your professor was grading yours. When I say a game is good I mean that I enjoy it, doesn't matter how much effort or a lack of it was put into it. This is not an evaluation on their improvement and what they're learning.

It is more an evaluation of skill and capacity. Some parts of the game are great and others (like itemization) are almost amateurish. Having fun with the game resides on your ability to really like what is well done and and mostly ignore what it isn't.

All games have good and bad parts.

A game might be good enough for me, might be good enough to make a profit on its own, might be good enough to ride on the success of its prequels but still not as good as it should be.

Is this unfair criticism? I don't think so, it is a criticism of the size of Blizzard themselves. This is a company that made great games - not good enough ones.

 

[BoogityBoogityMan]

We can word this more appropriately. You could say "Diablo 3 did not meet my expectations" or "Diablo 3 should have been better than it is". That is different from saying Diablo 3 is a bad game. In terms of gameplay and of lifespan (and hence of value for money), I would call it an above average game. To say otherwise would be to set a highly unrealistic measure.

Further, what exactly was your expectation?

Personally, I expected a well made and well tested game that focused 100% on gameplay and the player, like Diablo I&II.

I guess I was just being naive in expecting a billion dollar multinational corporation to not try to maximize shareholder value.

 

[WoW Killer]

If the loot is on the AH means that you can get the loot without paying. Because the guy who put the loot there did. Simple as that.

If the loot is in the AH, mathematics says that your best chance to get it is buying it, because the chances for you to have a similar roll is close to zero given the way random number generators work on this game. Also, if you buy something to get an advantage you are paying to win. Simple as that. Sorry to break it to you.

You've missed Draech's point there. It is very viable to go through the game without using the auction house. The proof of this is in the auction house itself. Whatever is being sold there was a drop for some player somewhere along the line (and incidentally you can get ilvl 63 gear, the best in the game, from Act 1, so it's not a case of better geared players feeding the lesser players). Though I've used the auction house a lot myself, at one point recently (this is in Inferno) I had more than half of my slots filled with items I'd found myself. I've since bought a few upgrades, but I've also had decent items drop for other classes that I've sold on (or kept for alts; for some reason the RNG keeps throwing strength gear at me, which might be my cue to roll a barb - that new double tornado build looks sick). If I'd kept hold of all the relevant gear I'd had drop I could probably be in a full set of self found items easily good enough for Act 2, and this is doing mostly Act 1 runs. Of course it's going to be easier using the auction house. That's the very nature of having 5 classes each with different gear they're looking out for. However likely it is that a usable item will drop for you, it is five times as likely that an item drops that can be traded for an item you can use.

This drop rate argument doesn't add up though. You're suggesting that a higher drop rate would necessarily make the game more enjoyable. I'll tell you what it would do, it'd make the game a lot shorter. Gear is the point of the game; the endgame is loot grinding. As soon as someone has all the best items the game is over for them. Further, if the drop rates are too low then you're going to get less trade in the AH and in the RMAH, which means less money for Blizzard. In other words, the idea that the drop rates were set lower than they should be due to the RMAH is ill founded. Still, they may not have got it exactly right on the first try, and in fact they have upped the rates slightly since release. This is to be expected with a new game; Diablo 2 had years of patches, and an expansion, to get it right. Diablo 2 also had duping, so take the availability of decent gear in that game with a pinch of salt.

 

[NeoShinGundam]

Didn't you see Jim Sterling's proof that Diablo 3 is blatantly better than Torchlight 2:
http://www.destructoid.com/diablo-iii-is-blatantly-better-than-torchlight-ii-229923.phtml
Reason #1 Always Online DRM (Digital Rights Merriment)
Reason #2 Diablo III Does Choice Correctly
Reason #3 Torchlight II Has Too Many Colors

 

[zinho73]

If the loot is on the AH means that you can get the loot without paying. Because the guy who put the loot there did. Simple as that.

If the loot is in the AH, mathematics says that your best chance to get it is buying it, because the chances for you to have a similar roll is close to zero given the way random number generators work on this game. Also, if you buy something to get an advantage you are paying to win. Simple as that. Sorry to break it to you.

You've missed Draech's point there. It is very viable to go through the game without using the auction house. The proof of this is in the auction house itself. Whatever is being sold there was a drop for some player somewhere along the line (and incidentally you can get ilvl 63 gear, the best in the game, from Act 1, so it's not a case of better geared players feeding the lesser players). Though I've used the auction house a lot myself, at one point recently (this is in Inferno) I had more than half of my slots filled with items I'd found myself.

I get it, but the fact that someone's have it doesn't mean it is viable. It means it was viable for that guy. I understand that eventually anything is possible, but D3 RNG are really bad seeded.

Look, I'm not inventing an statistic here.

That Force strategy guy, a man that loves the game and played for who knows how many hundred hours said that the game makes you feel like you need to buy gear.

There are hundreds of posts of people complaining about dumb drops and a lot of people (me included) that played for hours without an upgrade. This is not normal on any Action RPG I have played to date.

The best gear thing on ACT 1 is actually recent and a move and a move on the right direction but things are still pretty slow moving.

This drop rate argument doesn't add up though. You're suggesting that a higher drop rate would necessarily make the game more enjoyable. I'll tell you what it would do, it'd make the game a lot shorter.

One thing does not eliminate the other. It would make the game more enjoyable and also shorter, unfortunately. If Blizzard wanted us to have fun for a longer time, they could have made a higher level cap, ladders, PVP, endless dungeons. Yes - a boring grind is a way to make the game harder and longer, but is it the best way?

Gear is the point of the game; the endgame is loot grinding. As soon as someone has all the best items the game is over for them.

Yes, D3 is built that way, but this is not true for most of ARPGS. Action Rpgs that I have played in the past (Titan Quest, Torchlight, Diablo 2, Loki) are about progressing making fun and diverse builds, including gear and skills to kick ass. The very endgame is all about gear, I agree. And that's exactly why people are complaining about the RMAH - a lot of people that bought what they wanted suddenly realized that the game was over for them. And yes, that's self-defeating.

Further, if the drop rates are too low then you're going to get less trade in the AH and in the RMAH, which means less money for Blizzard. In other words, the idea that the drop rates were set lower than they should be due to the RMAH is ill founded. Still, they may not have got it exactly right on the first try, and in fact they have upped the rates slightly since release.

The drop rates are not too low for the AH. The drop rates are too low to be truly rewarding (also, quality of the items, not just the drop rates, but that's another can of worms). The AH should be there for people that want to be godlike, not for normal progress through the game. You might have not needed, but, trust me, a lot of people did.

Blizzard did not miscalculated slightly. People were quitting the game. They've made a serious mistake, they did almost everything wrong with their items:
- poor drop rates;
- bland uniques;
- useless and uninteresting affixes;
- set items with no bonuses (seriously, how do you do that?);
- poor seeding;
- over-dependence of some stats in items;

This is to be expected with a new game; Diablo 2 had years of patches, and an expansion, to get it right. Diablo 2 also had duping, so take the availability of decent gear in that game with a pinch of salt.

This is not to be expected. Diablo 2 had its problems, but things weren't nearly this bad. Blizzard is trying to fix things that should never get past the beta stage of the game.

Also, this argument is too condescending. If Diablo2 took its time to get it right, Blizzard should have learned those lessons. A developer of this caliber cannot afford to make the same mistakes that were made 10 years ago.

 

[LiberalOpinion]

Tl;dr
Nice one OP! But still too mild in judgment. You got lucky that you found something to like this game for, but I admit that it there could be some surface over the cracks...

Hi Zinho

Thank you for your quite analytical and especially reasonable explanation on the broken D3 game mechanics. I must admit that I still envy you, that you had fun with the game for a considerable amount of time. I personally was uberly bored by the game during all playthroughs. Eventually, these were only driven by the expectation that at some point a real Hack?n?Slay ARPG feeling as I knew it from the predecessors could be lurking behind the next corner. It was really the dumbed down mechanics on all the described layers which killed it for me already in normal mode. I rolled another character as I thought that maybe only the firstly chosen class was boring, but was proven wrong.

I give in, that the flow seems ok at first glance, but the lack of character customization left me without an aim. This made the whole process painfully pointless and thereby not entertaining. I mean in the end a game does not serve a purpose or sophisticated reason for the player to play it (It should simply be fun, right?). However, D3 is streamlining so obviously towards the poorly customized endgame itemization that it hurt me. There was a brief moment I was actually enjoying to wreak havoc on the demon hordes. But as soon as I realized to the end of act III in nightmare that there is not much to come except a bow with 60 dexterity than 50 dexterity, it fell from me. I should mention that I really enjoyed D2 and can get along with repetitive gameplay quite well. I even maxed fishing in WoW BC as you could make a certain use for it to progress in the game.

In the beginning I was a little bit confused that there were (and still are) people that like playing the game and actually have fun for hundreds of hours suddenly being struck by the fact that it feels like a dysfunctional grind mill. So there seems to be at least something in the game that can semi-sustainably establish the excitment of carving through devil minions. Yet it ultimately becomes disappointing for a considerable amount of players. That is why I would true and simply call it a bad game. My personal gaming experience ranges between disastrous and catastrophic, which I admit is due to my matter of taste. It certainly is not the worst game but if it were released by an unknown studio it would be rated quite poorly.

A quick call out for the people who think that the RMAH does not affect the way the game works and their playing experience if they do not use it: It does. Loot chances are clearly below a reasonable rewarding rate in order to prevent the economy to tank. That was more or less uneasily admitted by Bashiok at some earlier point in time. I know that there are a lot of people out there who still find the long lasting item hunt extra challenging. Believe me, if you put the loot balance point to higher rates you could have increased the overall level of player satisfaction a lot. But here again we see the valid point of the OP ? missing variety. If you would have had customizable characters you might been specifically looking for a different set of items than player X. Suddenly different types of item categories would be required and unsuspicious loot could be valuable to someone else to trade with. Simplicity killed it.

Moreover it is mere statistics. Superior items are found by players/bots who play a lot and put the stuff in the AH. Even at constant drop rates for every player (which is not the case as you get better loot at higher "levels") this ultimately erases the chance for the average player to find something which is better than what he could find on the AH. Fun fact: in order to avoid such a scenario in other games (take WoW, maybe Blizzard programmers know about that one?), you make good stuff BoE, BoP and have effective gold sinks in the game. If you as a company want to ?encourage trade? in an RMAH you leave these smart option out of the game and earn some extra revenues via micro transactions.

Nowadays, you obviously have inofficial trade channels and a black market even without the RMAH. But as it comes to almost fiscal policies, a strict law and order approach would have been much more healthy than this capitalistic beast of an AH which does nothing but exponentially extinguish the feeling to play a fun game. Spend real and expensive effort to identify sold stuff and let people lose their progress bought from these sources. Actually it would mean some rather strict regulations for trading (item tagging, delayed trade transactions for items and gold not found in the same game, and so on). I know that sounds sad and real-worldish but it is the only way to go if you feel that your GAME is overrun by greedy bastards or an (human labor)exploiting farming industry.

 

[ProtonGuy]

Original poster, I want to hug you, and then buy you a beer. This is exactly how I felt the moment I (finally, no thanks to error 37) logged in. It's a great game compared to half the crap out there today, but for a Blizzard title it might as well have been Wii shovel-ware.

 

[Bocaj2000]

OP, you're cute trying to copy your teacher. You are an internet nobody trying to critique a AAA game that is the most polished and artistically driven dungeon crawler I have ever played (until Diablo III it was Titan's Quest (Torchlight is okay at best)). Your critique skills are mostly opinion based and very poorly executed.

I suggest you rethink your argument or at least explain it better instead of talking about how your teacher wants you to improve. Blizzard isn't an art student drawing nudes; it is a company that has grown more than you can imagine.
EDIT:

Title of thread: "Why Diablo 3 is a bad game"

First, a little bit of history:


Compared to what we have in the market today, Diablo is not a bad game.

...

Diablo 3 is a bad game simply because you could have done a lot better and chose not to.

I am confused, do you like this game or not?

I almost forgot when you did this OP. This is gad arguing at its core. Never contradict yourself.

 

[Johnny Impact]

For decades critics have denounced the industry for paying too much attention to superficial features such as graphics, and not enough on the all important aspect of gameplay. With Diablo 3 we have a game that even the most emotive of haters seems to regard as having decent gameplay, but is then criticised on superficial grounds like its plot or it not being "dark" enough. It bothers me you can call Diablo 3 a bad game despite being fun. Being fun is the key indicator of a good game.

Pretty much this. I see tons of missed opportunities in the game -- what if Ghom swallowed the player, and he had to navigate a "cave" full of digestive juices and half-chewed victims before engaging the cave itself in battle, carving an escape through tissue that tried to constrict him? And that's just off the top of my head.

On the other hand I've put 80 hours into D3 because it's so much damn fun to click-click-click through legions of monsters.

 

[Don Savik]

May I ask why you think the game needs end game?

Its not a subscription game so it doesn't need it. Some people think that getting better gear is useless unless you can show it off to other people, but that doesn't hold true to the majority. The majority of D2 and D3 players played the game single player. The very nature of dungeon crawling to get cooler loot is whats addictive, and people find that fun.

Now, it doesn't have as much replayability as D2 or Torchlight, but I won't criticize it for "having no end game" because its not a game with any persistant anything. It doesn't have to constantly keep your attention. To be honest, dungeon crawler pvp is terrible. I don't think its a genre that was really based around having it be a big deal.

Is it lazy? Yes I guess you could say it is. I just don't think that "failed potential" is the same thing as "failure". Its fine mechanically, its well polished, good art design, just a tad linear than what we we're expecting. Dissapointing? Yes. Bad game? A little meh, but no.

I would give it....6.5/10 (5 being average, no IGN rating system bullshit)

captcha: steam punk <----WTF A COOL CAPTCHA? WHAT IS THIS SORCERY!??!?!

 

[WoW Killer]

I get it, but the fact that someone's have it doesn't mean it is viable. It means it was viable for that guy. I understand that eventually anything is possible, but D3 RNG are really bad seeded.

Look, I'm not inventing an statistic here.

Hmmm? The itemisation is poor which makes the loot quality sporadic as I've admitted, but that's nothing to do with the RNG seed. I'm not inventing any statistics either. I've found these literally in the time since my last post:

Spoiler

The gloves will go straight to my DH, and the belt... remember what I said about strength gear? Yeah I should roll a Barb. And you know what else? I had fun. Well, except for this guy, he wasn't fun:

Spoiler

That Force strategy guy...

...


Yes, D3 is built that way, but this is not true for most of ARPGS. Action Rpgs that I have played in the past (Titan Quest, Torchlight, Diablo 2, Loki) are about progressing making fun and diverse builds, including gear and skills to kick ass. The very endgame is all about gear, I agree. And that's exactly why people are complaining about the RMAH - a lot of people that bought what they wanted suddenly realized that the game was over for them. And yes, that's self-defeating.

Funny you should mention Force. He said in his last D3 video that he was expecting the loot grind because that was what D2 was all about. And having played D2 myself, that's what I was expecting too. I'm not sure what you believe D2 had; endgame was Baal runs. Over and over again. I was in every way a gear grind.

I happen to agree with a lot of what Force said by the way. He wasn't blaming the drop rates (RMAH yes; separate issue and I agree with him on that). He also quit after playing the shit out of the game. He got considerably more playtime than 100 hours, again putting the game at well above the average in value for money.

The rest of what you're saying is again that you think the drop rates are too low. I'm getting the odd decent drop almost every time I play. I feel like I'm progressing. If the drop rates were any higher maybe I'd have finished the game already. I can't say much more than that. Our experiences have differed.

 

[zinho73]

OP, you're cute trying to copy your teacher. You are an internet nobody trying to critique a AAA game that is the most polished and artistically driven dungeon crawler I have ever played (until Diablo III it was Titan's Quest (Torchlight is okay at best)).

Well, it is not a genre very populated, but I would say good for you?

Your critique skills are mostly opinion based and very poorly executed.

You understand that this is not a game review and it is an opinion piece, right?

I suggest you rethink your argument or at least explain it better instead of talking about how your teacher wants you to improve. Blizzard isn't an art student drawing nudes; it is a company that has grown more than you can imagine.

Yes, they've grown enough to get away with half-baked game design. About the explanation... Well, it is written there. I'm sorry if you didn't get it and I'm glad that others did. You can't win all, I suppose.

I almost forgot when you did this OP. This is gad arguing at its core. Never contradict yourself.

Hm.. It is supposed to be contradictory? Let me rephrase it to see if I can reach your superior level of understanding:
Although Diablo 3 is a good game by today's market standard, it is not good enough if we consider Blizzard's own standards in the past. That's why so many people have the feeling that the game is bad, even when it is selling seven million copies. It is simply not as polished or as tested.