The Diablo Formula and how Diablo 3 falls short

[Archon_Wing]

The majority of items were junk, but the thing is that they frequently also have more longevity. I brought up the example of Twitch in my last post because the ias and extra block was consistently useful all the way to the end of the game. Most midlevel uniques could carry one easily, such as Duriel Shell or Skin of the Vipermagi. And yes, while they came out via the expansion, I don't see a reason why we should compare D3 to D2 vanilla; why take a step backwards?

The rest of this, I'll leave, but this is a key point. Games have to be made individually. You can't just take the state of a game after years of intensive patching for balance and content, and then assume that's now the new square one for the sequel. It just doesn't work that way. All this stuff takes development time and resources.

Maybe they could have launched with a better item system. But they can't launch with years of patches already under their belt. It just doesn't work that way. Each new game is not going to be a pareto improvement on the last iteration of the last game.

-Jester

True, but this I consider that to be a broad concept in which was simply conceptualized wrong just makes me feel that they didn't draw upon the many years of experience and lessons to be learned in D2 sufficiently.

It's also why the balancing of the game around hell mode was doomed to fail too, if one just observed Diablo 2 online for a little bit.

Finally, just because Diablo II did it wrong with the uniques and other items doesn't make Diablo 3's failings here in that area any better. And even so D2 vanilla lacked level reqs which means they were great twinking gear and very useful for low levels. That doesn't make it any better, but it did something!

Or even go back to Diablo 1, where we had entry level uniques that served as a fine placeholder for the true loot to come.

Just because an item isn't top tier, doesn't mean it has to be useless. Legendaries don't have to be top-tier, but they should have a role.

It is why I cannot complain too much about bugs and exploits, because no code can be perfect right away. Flawed concepts on the other hand...