The Diablo Formula and how Diablo 3 falls short

[Archon_Wing]

The loot system is part of the problem, at the very least. It's one thing to have gear requirements imposed by the various difficulty levels/acts, but when drops are as unvaried and generally unrewarding as they currently are, it shouldn't come to anyone's surprise that farming for gear (particularly, D3's implementation of farming) becomes even less desirable to many players than it already is, and that they unsurprisingly and understandably turn to the AH instead.

Diablo 1 and 2 also used this kind of randomization in loot, right? The overwhelming majority of drops I recall in both games were not only garbage for my current class, but for any class. There was nothing stopping the game from generating worthless combinations of affixes.

Diablo 2 eventually introduced quite a lot of sets and uniques that were pretty good, but most of those were from later patches, no?

-Jester

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?

Even if Hell Meph dropped a Isenhart's crappy breast plate, or Sigon's, I can easily hand it down to someone else because those items are good for their level. "Low level crap" in high places that drops in D3 is rarely good for even that level. It's useless for everyone, since the stats on a level 57 item can be worse than a level 36 item. Level 60 whites.... why? An item has value if it's usable by someone. If low level items drop in inferno, and they are usable by low levels, that's fine. Unfortunately, they are generally useless for everyone. They are trash in its purest form. It's even a waste of time to pick them up to sell because it takes up inventory space.

The only chance in D3 is if it spawns with "level requirement reduced by" but that is exceedingly rare.

On the other hand, Sub-60 level items in Diablo 3 are almost never useful. It would be different if some armor had cannot be frozen and CC immune with crap stats-- at least it would be useful.

The other problem is that it takes an ungodly combination of traits for an item to be viable. Your character is not viable without sufficient gear. Helm doesn't have a socket? It's automatically crap or needs godly stats to be able to match any socket.

In Diablo 2, you can farm the final difficulty of the game and have a chance at endgame loot with crappy gear. In Diablo 3, endgame loot is located in inferno, and crappy gear simply won't get you anything.

In summary, Diablo 3's item system is too inflexible where good and bad can be too objectively defined.

^^Agree with that entirely - I want control of my char at ALL times. Thus that means NM, Jailer, Waller, Frozen and Vortex MUST GO - they have no place in a Diablo game, or any RPG for that matter. Teleport and Fast I can live with, though they shouldn't spawn on monsters that are inherently fast to begin with. Invulnerable Minions and Shielding, while not impairing control traits, are just plain cheezy and OP, and should also be removed, same with Dmg Reflect. Extra Health is pretty unnecessary, since most elites already have an asinine amount of health anyways. This would make offensive traits like Arcane, Molten, Desecrate, Mortar, or Illusionist much more tolerable, though I still think Blizz can come up with better solutions to provide a challenging and rewarding FUN experience for gamers.

I adamantly disagree with this. AI controlled enemies need ways to impede other than pure damage. I'm all for Frozen, Jailer, Waller, Vortex they are great gameplay elements. ...... So long as every toon has been given tools and choices with which to deal with these. For example on my monk I am able to use Seven Sided Strike, and Serenity to either avoid, or immediately recover from these loss of control situations.

Unfortunately, while it's true that impeding the player is an interesting thing, the way it's implemented is with Blizzard's sledgehammer style with a complete lack of creativity that plagues the game throughout.

Elite packs can chain spam these abilities that can easily outpace their cooldown. If they have extra fast or teleport, it's close to impossible to deal with them unless you can tank their damage. Plus, there's 4 possible combinations in inferno, and some do not work well.

Instead of Frozen, how about a ticking holy freeze aura that slows you down, as opposed to getting hit by random shards and sitting there watching your character get hit? How about jailer creating a box around you, as opposed to just immobilizing you? How about vortex creates rifts that slowly drag you into them as opposed to just sucking you in and instagibbing you? Instead of invulnerable minions, how about ethereal minions that materialize if the leader dies? They do less damage in ethereal form. Nightmarish is one of the worst, so it should be a terror spell on cooldown.

Any particular instance can be dodged, but since every elite pack comprises of several monsters, they can effectively spam it endlessly.

I really don't see how these things which all can result in insta kill despite severely outgearing the context and demands such precision which is impossible in an online environment with latency can be acceptable. This isn't say like Mario or Megaman where the controls are near perfect and you do exactly what you want. Thus, these factors have no place in a game where precision control isn't always possible.

Thus, the end of Diablo 3 is extremely slowpaced. Potions have huge cooldowns, and most of the game consists of running past white mobs because they suck, and engaging in 3-10 minute kitefests with elite monsters of which the only strategy is to either run away as far as possible and do ranged attacks, or hit your escape skill and do as much damage as the cooldown time allows, rinse, repeat, collect level 56 yellows and a 57 blue, vendor, salvage, and pay 10k repair bills without a single death because you should be penalized for attacking the enemy or getting hit. Or breaking jars apparently. Alternatively, you can spend a few million gold to overgear the act and now steamroll said opponents while dying randomly, coming out none the wiser.

All and all, the game focuses too much on punitive aspects of gameplay, and severely lacks in the reward section. Well, actually the rewards section was nice pre-1.03, but this last patch was utter trash. Besides the blacksmithing cost fix, every change reeked of thoughtlessness.