D3's difficulties get CNN coverage - again.

[Tal]

Quite right: DII was very easy. Maybe that's one of the big differences, what I call the Heroes of Might and Magic effect. People really like doing repetitive, easy things that give them shiny rewards. Ramp up the difficulty too much, and you lose that constant stream of satisfying rewards. I think this is a large part of WoW's appeal.

Some times you just wanna go through an area killing everything you see.

That sounds like two things: First, you can progress further than your gear can support on skill, which then leads you to unfun challenges. The answer should be to go back to where it was easier and grind some gear, but perhaps that doesn't appeal?

I would have no problem doing so if the drops weren't so maddeningly random and in many cases useless. Like getting a barbarian weapon with Intellect on it.

Second, its' the relative difference between you and other players ... was that not a feature of other Diablo games, if you were playing with someone with overwhelmingly better gear than you? Without squashing the power curve, Blizzard can't eliminate the differences between players in a progression game. Perhaps the exponential curving of power is contributing to this - is there too much power to be gained from the synergies on high level gear?

-Jester

It wasn't as noticeable in D1 and D2. If I got separated from my friends I could still kill things before they killed me - not so much in D3 Inferno.

Perhaps I'm not made of stern enough material. I know the skill level is there but the idea of going and grinding for awhile in a previous act just isn't attractive to me.