The Diablo Formula and how Diablo 3 falls short
#61
(07-24-2012, 12:15 PM)Yricyn Wrote: $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.
Finally satisfied that this, in fact, a game in the Diablo series.
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#62
(07-24-2012, 12:09 PM)smegged Wrote: It's sad that the premiere Diablo 2 website's forum is now filled with people bemoaning the fact that Diablo 3 isn't keeping them entertained.

FWIW, it's keeping me entertained Smile.

take care
Tarabulus
"I'm a cynical optimistic realist. I have hopes. I suspect they are all in vain. I find a lot of humor in that." -Pete

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#63
I got well over 500 hours logged - but much of that time was spent doing fruitless Imprisoned Angel/Butcher runs. The bottomline is, the loot system is HORRIBLE. It is completely uninspiring, uninteresting, and unrewarding. There is a stick, but no carrot. The fact you even need the best gear just to progress at a reasonable rate on the highest difficulty is indication of a broken system - with a grossly inflated GAH to boot unless you are in the 1% you cannot afford said gear without opening up your wallet. Inferno is horribly over-tuned. And now we got invulnerability bugs - yep. Even though they hotfixed it, it matters not - there are too many other issues and Blizz doesn't seem to be in any rush to fix them - and when they do - they usually just make it worse (see 1.03). Quite simply, they are out of touch with what the gamers want.

I may log on once in a while to play my hardcore char, but other then that, I'm done. I'm not even excited about PvP at all, and as a PvP player I should be but I have little interest in the direction they are taking with it.
https://www.youtube.com/user/FireIceTalon


"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." - Marx (addressing the bourgeois)
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#64
(07-24-2012, 09:09 PM)RedRadical Wrote: I got well over 500 hours logged - but much of that time was spent doing fruitless Imprisoned Angel/Butcher runs. The bottomline is, the loot system is HORRIBLE. It is completely uninspiring, uninteresting, and unrewarding. There is a stick, but no carrot. The fact you even need the best gear just to progress at a reasonable rate on the highest difficulty is indication of a broken system - with a grossly inflated GAH to boot unless you are in the 1% you cannot afford said gear without opening up your wallet. Inferno is horribly over-tuned. And now we got invulnerability bugs - yep. Even though they hotfixed it, it matters not - there are too many other issues and Blizz doesn't seem to be in any rush to fix them - and when they do - they usually just make it worse (see 1.03). Quite simply, they are out of touch with what the gamers want.

I may log on once in a while to play my hardcore char, but other then that, I'm done. I'm not even excited about PvP at all, and as a PvP player I should be but I have little interest in the direction they are taking with it.

The loot system is not the issue, the issue is they tied progression to loot instead of player skill (which is how Diablo and Diablo 2 were setup). They fundamentally turned Diablo 3 180 degrees to how Diablo and Diablo 2 were setup where a bad player with really great equipment will succeed in Diablo 3, but a really great player with mediocre gear will fail.
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#65
(07-24-2012, 04:55 PM)ViralSpiral Wrote:
(07-24-2012, 12:15 PM)Yricyn Wrote: $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. Wink

I ended up concluding these:

Quote: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.

Quote: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.

Quote: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.
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#66
I farmed A3 and A4 for a bit yestarday just to see if the drops were any better than in A1 - and it really exposed to me just how horrid the items in the game are. Found a ton of ilvl 63 weapons with 350-400 dps. I did find one rare xbow with over 1k DPS, but it had arcane damage and 220 strength: vendor trash. I'm all for randomness, but this is just over the top. Inferno Diablo dropped ilvl 55 items, stuff for hell difficulty. It really is a joke.

(07-24-2012, 10:14 PM)Lissa Wrote:
(07-24-2012, 09:09 PM)RedRadical Wrote: I got well over 500 hours logged - but much of that time was spent doing fruitless Imprisoned Angel/Butcher runs. The bottomline is, the loot system is HORRIBLE. It is completely uninspiring, uninteresting, and unrewarding. There is a stick, but no carrot. The fact you even need the best gear just to progress at a reasonable rate on the highest difficulty is indication of a broken system - with a grossly inflated GAH to boot unless you are in the 1% you cannot afford said gear without opening up your wallet. Inferno is horribly over-tuned. And now we got invulnerability bugs - yep. Even though they hotfixed it, it matters not - there are too many other issues and Blizz doesn't seem to be in any rush to fix them - and when they do - they usually just make it worse (see 1.03). Quite simply, they are out of touch with what the gamers want.

I may log on once in a while to play my hardcore char, but other then that, I'm done. I'm not even excited about PvP at all, and as a PvP player I should be but I have little interest in the direction they are taking with it.

The loot system is not the issue, the issue is they tied progression to loot instead of player skill (which is how Diablo and Diablo 2 were setup). They fundamentally turned Diablo 3 180 degrees to how Diablo and Diablo 2 were setup where a bad player with really great equipment will succeed in Diablo 3, but a really great player with mediocre gear will fail.

Yes, that is a problem as well, if not the fundamental one. But even still, the items are just plain awful. Even the best items that go for in the tens of millions on the GAH, are just.....completely boring.
https://www.youtube.com/user/FireIceTalon


"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." - Marx (addressing the bourgeois)
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#67
(07-24-2012, 10:14 PM)Lissa Wrote:
(07-24-2012, 09:09 PM)RedRadical Wrote: I got well over 500 hours logged - but much of that time was spent doing fruitless Imprisoned Angel/Butcher runs. The bottomline is, the loot system is HORRIBLE. It is completely uninspiring, uninteresting, and unrewarding. There is a stick, but no carrot. The fact you even need the best gear just to progress at a reasonable rate on the highest difficulty is indication of a broken system - with a grossly inflated GAH to boot unless you are in the 1% you cannot afford said gear without opening up your wallet. Inferno is horribly over-tuned. And now we got invulnerability bugs - yep. Even though they hotfixed it, it matters not - there are too many other issues and Blizz doesn't seem to be in any rush to fix them - and when they do - they usually just make it worse (see 1.03). Quite simply, they are out of touch with what the gamers want.

I may log on once in a while to play my hardcore char, but other then that, I'm done. I'm not even excited about PvP at all, and as a PvP player I should be but I have little interest in the direction they are taking with it.

The loot system is not the issue ...

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.

It is indeed an issue that one's progression in the game relies almost exclusively on one's items, or at least it is to players used to games doing it differently. However, that issue is further compounded by the items themselves, and the "natural" way of acquiring them, being samey at best and actively frustrating at worst (see: many of the elite packs one is liable to run across, which after all are what one has to kill in order to get those items to drop).
And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
____________.Not shaking the grass.
-- Ezra Pound, "And the days are not full enough"
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#68
Other than being uninspired, the loot system is wrong.

The problem with Inferno difficulty is not that it's overtuned. The problem with Inferno difficulty is that it has a different drop system to Hell difficulty. If it had identical drops to Act 4 Hell, people would not feel as though they *had* to go through Inferno. The game would be a crapload better off for it.

The other huge problem with the loot system is that it's "balanced" by the Auction House. This means a) no uberdrops on your first boss kill past normal difficulty; b) barely anything you find you will end up wearing if you use the AH; and c) you need the AH to progress in Inferno.

Despite the lack of uniques and sets, the loot system could have been much more fun if the pinata dropped more banana lollies and less black jellybeans. It could also have been a lot more fun if they took items out of the economy at a reasonable rate.
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#69
Hey - I like black jellybeans. JK. They are nasty.

I remember the first time I cleared hell/hell with a lvl 31 low ac healing rogue in mediocre gear on D1.....it really was an awesome feeling because it was a genuine challenge and gaming accomplishment. I didn't need amazing gear to beat the highest difficulty, yet I was challenged without being cheesed by artificial mechanics, and I had the SKILL to prevail. Or finding my first Obsidian Zodiac jewel (which I still have, though it is muled since I have found many better ones since - including a perfect 40/20 about 6 months ago). Both of these things were surreal to me - but there is nothing like that in D3.
https://www.youtube.com/user/FireIceTalon


"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." - Marx (addressing the bourgeois)
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#70
I'm cautiously optimistic about the legendary items revamp, although I don't think that will fix the underlying problem- it just means that everyone will want those instead of rares with great stats. If they can pull off some items with unique stats or features, you know, stuff that you can create an entire build around, and make it accessible, I can see folks hanging around.

Like it or hate it, the RMAH means that Blizzard will be committed to finding ways to keep folks playing. At one point they said that they won't do WoW-like content patches, but I don't think an endless dungeon or uber Tristram update is out of the question. Heck, maybe they'd even take a page out of Path of Exile's book and do random maps.

Overall I enjoyed the game and while the Steam summer sale drowned me with new stuff to play, I'll probably still play D3 off and on whenever the urge to kill large quantities of miscellaneous demons strikes me. The lack of a subscription fee means that I don't feel compelled to log in every night like I used to with WoW. I guess that's a good thing?
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#71
Quote:... 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--

Actually, even in normal, I have a visceral distaste for the NM curse since it takes my character out of play and disrupts what I am doing.

Wait a sec, I'm the one who paid to play.

I really, really dislike that one feature. (The prison spell I'll discuss another time, if at all).

The KEY to these games is PLAYER CONTROL. All console games. All PC games. Player controls his avatar/toon.

Would you play Pong if halfway through your paddle would stop moving?

NO!

I don't like Frozen versus slowed by cold.

DON"T TAKE THE PLAYER OUT OF THE FIGHT!

Player is already outnumbered as it is.

The above considered, I am enjoying my few hours of game time, one of each class, working forward and trying out all of those odd skill and rune permutations.

Hours of fun right there.

Occhi
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#72
^^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.
https://www.youtube.com/user/FireIceTalon


"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." - Marx (addressing the bourgeois)
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#73
(07-25-2012, 03:37 AM)Occhidiangela Wrote:
Quote:... 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--

Actually, even in normal, I have a visceral distaste for the NM curse since it takes my character out of play and disrupts what I am doing.

Wait a sec, I'm the one who paid to play.

I really, really dislike that one feature. (The prison spell I'll discuss another time, if at all).

The KEY to these games is PLAYER CONTROL. All console games. All PC games. Player controls his avatar/toon.

Would you play Pong if halfway through your paddle would stop moving?

NO!

I don't like Frozen versus slowed by cold.

DON"T TAKE THE PLAYER OUT OF THE FIGHT!

Player is already outnumbered as it is.

The above considered, I am enjoying my few hours of game time, one of each class, working forward and trying out all of those odd skill and rune permutations.

Hours of fun right there.

Occhi

That's definitely an issue. I feel this, in conjunction with broken hit boxes (you are counted as hit once the animation begins) to remove elements of control from the player. And if that's so, why not automate everything. Why even bother playing the game? I want to be in control of my failures, and just entering death combos due to a single mishap is incredibly broken.

Also, the saddest part? When you sell an item on the Auction House, it does not tell you what the items stats were. Why? How can such a simple log not exist? It tells you the name of the item, but what does that do? The result? When I sold my main gear to the RMAH, and I was informed an item piece sold, I couldn't remember what it was. Yep, I couldn't even tell you what I was wearing, besides the fact that I had about 550 life on hit , 850 resist all, 18k dps and 44k health. A far cry from when I could tell you stories about my Javazon's beloved Twitchthroe that carried her to the end of hardcore hell and got personalized, upgraded, and got even an um rune stuck in it before it finally got decommissioned with the arrival of a Lionheart. Yes, it was a waste to upgrade and socket it with a valuable rune, but I wanted to honor the damned thing; that's how much I cared-- it did a fine job.

I hope you have fun though, perhaps, we can journey with my backup reject gear before I quit; then again I might not if we're lucky. Or go play some hardcore. Wink
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#74
I always loved being hit by Mallet Lords when I'm 2/3rds of a screen away by the time their forever-swing finishes animating. That always made so much sense to me.
Finally satisfied that this, in fact, a game in the Diablo series.
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#75
(07-25-2012, 12:20 AM)MMAgCh Wrote: 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
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#76
(07-25-2012, 03:33 PM)Jester Wrote:
(07-25-2012, 12:20 AM)MMAgCh Wrote: 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.

I very specifically made no mention of the quality of the loot as such. That most drops will be junk is to be expected (although I feel that certain item types might be inclined to be a little too junky), but it's boring junk at that. This is, in no small part, because blues and yellows are pretty much all you can expect to find; nothing else that could, at least in theory, be deemed "shiny" – sets, legendaries, artisan plans – will drop with even remotely the kind of regularity needed to feel rewarding, provide variety, and reinforce the desire to keep hunting for items. For me, at any rate, a more prominent smattering of green and brown (still think that was an unfortunate, if oddly appropriate choice of colour Tongue) among all the blue and yellow loot would surely do its part to make putting up with the prospect of farming items seem a little more worthwhile and entertaining.

That the aforementioned extremely rare items, even if they were to drop more frequently, would still be almost universally awful is, of course, an issue as well, but word has it Blizzard are actually going to address this. (I'm not really holding my breath, but we'll see.)

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

Again, whether or not a given item is "good" per se isn't even my primary concern, though of course I'd prefer useful items to useless ones. Still, D2 managed to deliver on both accounts either immediately or eventually, which means there's even less of an excuse for D3 to be falling behind, really. It was something of a different story with D2/LoD because set items as a whole, and various other aspects of their itemisation, were fairly new concepts at the time, but even 1.10 was released in 2003 – whether the additional content was part of an expansion pack or not, I expect a game not to regress pretty much all the way back to square zero compared to its decade-old precursor.
And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
____________.Not shaking the grass.
-- Ezra Pound, "And the days are not full enough"
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#77
(07-25-2012, 04:03 AM)RedRadical Wrote: ^^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.
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#78
^^This theory has been used time and again, but in practice things almost always turn out differently. Most monsters in the game already have some sort of inherit trait in their normal form, which combined with their absurd life and damage should be enough to make things interesting. No matter how many tools we are given, the mechanics of the game make it so that your death WILL be inevitable, no matter how skilled you are. That is LAZY and poor design, no matter how you try to slice it. All the monsters have to do is chain cast frozen on you, and if you somehow survive that, then they just vortex you into their molten/arcane sentrys. It is a HORRIBLE design philosophy, period, that makes gameplay extremely tedious and frustrating. Most of the time, the monsters can chain cast on you to the point where all your CC's and potion use are still on cooldown. Maybe you find that fun, but I (and the overwhelming majority) do NOT. So yea, we disagree completely on this issue. But I guarantee you its part of a long list of reasons why the D3 population is falling rapidly, and why the overall consensus of the game is that it is a complete disappointment, and that Blizz as a company fell off. Most of my friends have lost interest already, and I havent played since Monday. At this point, I do not think patches will be enough to save this game. It needs a COMPLETE overhaul and re-design if you ask me.

To Jester's post.....the difference is, even the average items in D1 and on D2 were more interesting than the BEST items on D3, and they did much more for your char than items of the same level would on D3. And the actual rate in which you found decent items was much better on the first two games - In 500 hours+ of playing, I've found less than a handful of items that would be considered "good", and none that are in the "godly" category. Thats pretty bad.....in 500 hours on D1, I'd have TWO very nicely geared chars in that same amount of time - and I'd be doing what you are supposed to be doing in a Diablo game: facerolling demons with friends, finding alot of junk but some nice loot along the way and playing a few PvP sessions - this is fun. All we get in D3 is crappy items, 2 grossly hyper-inflated AH's that people roll for hours hoping to find that lucky upgrade, OP monster affixes, enrage timers, and unforgiving repairs costs. NO thank you - I'm not interested.

I found a Grandfather a couple nights ago, and it wasn't even a big deal because 630 dps on a 2h Legendary Sword is just pathetic. I realize blizz has said thy are addressing this but as MM said I'm not holding my breath, and besides this was something that shouldn't haven been an issue to begin with. I think it is too little, too late for them at this point.

Face rolling things (with the occasional death because of something on YOUR end) is A LOT MORE fun than dying constantly to a cheap, lazy design (with a 30k repair bill to boot). Am I missing something here? LOL.....I don't think I am, and that my thought process is perfectly rational here.
https://www.youtube.com/user/FireIceTalon


"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." - Marx (addressing the bourgeois)
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#79
(07-25-2012, 03:33 PM)Jester Wrote:
(07-25-2012, 12:20 AM)MMAgCh Wrote: 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.

(07-25-2012, 08:32 PM)Yricyn Wrote:
(07-25-2012, 04:03 AM)RedRadical Wrote: ^^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.
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#80
(07-25-2012, 10:06 PM)Archon_Wing Wrote: 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
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