The Diablo Formula and how Diablo 3 falls short

[Archon_Wing]

$60 retail price / 300 hrs play time = $0.20/hr

Twenty cents an hour. How many times did you walk into an arcade in the 80's drop in a single quarter and play for an hour? Even if Diablo 3 doesn't deliver everything one might hope for, its hard to argue that it didn't deliver value. For my own sake, I have less time in total with my purchases of the God of War series and 2 of the Elder Scrolls titles which probably cost me $250.

Wow, I wish I would have gotten 300 hours out of it. I think I was closer to 115-120 - and at least six to ten of that was on the AH, not actually playing. By contrast, in the t weeks or so since I stopped playing, I've got about 50 hours on Torchlight and 121 on Magic: the Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013. Note these were effectively $10 each, since TL also secured me TL II. I paid 6.5 times as much with tax for D3, and it bored me in less time than it took me to get bored of -one character- in D2.

I'm still holding out hope that they'll patch this into a much better game than it currently is, but that's entirely a hope and not an expectation.

I have 200~. Too bad 1/4 of it was me not playing the game, and spent AFKing occasionally checking on the AH.

I also did one final experiment. All my monk gear is for sale in the RMAH, so I loaded whatever reject gear I had in my stash to not leave her naked.

I ended up concluding these:

It was ruined because Act 1 Inferno was endgame and there's no incentive to move beyond it. What they should have done is make good ilvl 61 and 62 items drop, while the later acts should have lots of 63s. Due to the difficulty spikes still, all people want now is just enough gear for the weaker act 1/act 2. Why would you get better items? Farming for the sake of farming is pointless.

Let's take an extreme example. What's the point of Act 4 inferno? Nothing. The act is too short to farm, and it's in the same class as act 3. The only reasons are bragging rights and achievements.

I also experimented one more time with all the reject gear in my stash and spend 100k more gold to test something. With the reject gear, it's a mere 9.5k dps, though resists are 750ish with 4500 armor and 700~ loh/25k hp. Still enough to smash act 1, though I still get those 10k repair bills for not dying. >.> Must have been really boring had you reached inferno post-patch and they wouldn't be sporting a 3.8k enchantress either-- might as well just gathered gf gear and run nightmare til you fall asleep.

When the best game strategy to gain wealth is to reach level 60 and go back to nightmare, well... fail.

I also engaged in a large elite pack of ghostly miners that threw down arcane sentries every second each and kept chain nightmaring me. I won and never came close to death, but that was enough to make me shut off the game even with 5 stacks because I'm sure not being able to control your character for 80% of the fight is fun. And that really shows everything wrong about this game-- mostly of what you do doesn't matter; the battle is mostly predetermined due to your gear level and some occasional input to avoid instant death.

I actually liked the game more pre-patch, even with the retarded and unfair difficulty. Had they only nerfed the stupid elite affixes (which they haven't, and in fact buffed), made boss drops not suck, I wouldn't be complaining as much.

Yes, I felt that something was actually happening, something minute but meaningful, that something was overcome. Here... well, 10k repair bills and a bunch of essences nobody wants. The item drop buff was not evenly done! Act 3, once a golden land, is just a pitiful shadow of its former self.

At least I could say to myself "oh maybe I could learn to play, or get better gear". Hell, I could probably gear myself up again to kill act 3 if I wanted to now, but I don't care.