Quote:2002.12.22  15.38
How to be successful without thinking

Be Blizzard entertainment.

No, seriously. Especially Blizzard North.

How do I figure? Well, it's fairly old at this point, but play Diablo 2 some time, particularly with the expansion if you can manage it. Today I'm going to totally avoid discussing Blizzard's capability of successfully getting money out of its customers while simultaneously #$%&ting on them. It's not part of the point.

For those not familiar (all six of you), Blizzard's claim to fame has been success via the Street Fighter Theory; i.e. you can release the same basic game multiple times with different graphics and your fans will consider you geniuses. They have three basic games they've continually released in order to profit; Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo. Today, we're going to discuss the lattermost. Specifically Diablo 2.

Diablo 2 is a horrible game, but that's not to say it's bad. It's a great game, and quite addicting, but the horrible part is that it's just so close to being -so- much better, but it just can't quite get there. I'm going to be discussing what I consider to be design flaws; some of which I may fix in a module at some point if I feel moved to really get at it, but much of what I'd like to change is hard-coded and I couldn't do without the source code. Anyhow...

Okay, first major problem is this; randomness is good, but too much is banal. About the only thing not random in Diablo 2 is eight or nine areas of the game (out of about 60) and the plot. Actually, the plot is fairly random, but let's not go there. The thing is how MUCH randomness is really there. Magic items are a starting point; there's literally millions of possible magic items in the game. Just magic items; one prefix and/or suffix. They're not all available early on, many of the affixes require you be a certain level or advanced a certain amount into the game to get (which isn't to say they're good, more on this later). Magic items are the bread and butter of a character who did not receive gifts; they're your closest shot to getting items to do what you want, primarily because you can "shop" for them by reloading the merchants in town, who often have a decent selection of items. But see, here's where things break down.

Merchants themselves are quite random and very lacking; they are evidence that during most parts of the game which would benefit from planning and careful application of thought; Blizzard instead relied on randomness to accomplish their goals. Even what the merchants carry is random; there is a -huge- bias towards swords, while many other weapons suffer for it - there are times when you won't even load axes, blunts, polearms, or spears. Bows are about the only other thing you can consistently count on seeing, particularly in multiples. Anyhow, here's the rub...the higher level you get, the more items that become available to you by means of what affixes are allowed to you, but thusly the less likely you are to see the combination you actually want. Once you hit level thirty or so, the chances of you finding useful magic items in the store drop dramatically; and at truly high levels (75+) all but astronomical. Now, knowing that given enough time and effort, the game WILL load what it is you want to purchase, I don't see why they force you to go through the motions - it would be much easier at that point to just "order" what you want and wait a set amount of time for it to arrive, or pay double for the special arrangements or whatnot, just to avoid the (literally) hours of tedium trying to get the item you -know- could be there. This is of course particularly frustrating for non-sword melee types - many types of non-sword exceptional and elite (higher grade versions of base items) are never even seen in stores; there are no purchasable one-handed blunt elites. Enjoy trying to gamble for them (more randomness, except you can't reload this infinitely without infinite cash) as the odds are quite stacked against you even at level 99. Brilliant.

And this doesn't even -begin- to get on "rares" which are basically magic items with up to 1-3 prefixes and 1-3 suffixes. Consider that I already said that just with one prefix and suffix apiece, there were millions of magic items. Consider that for a moment while you consider how many rares that makes. Anyhow; the affix pool for rares is lower because some affixes only show on magic items, but then there's many, many more combinations, and rares can only be found or gambled. You'll realistically never find a 6 mod rare with 6 mods you want. It's like no one at Blizzard knows how basic probability works; briefly discussing elite unique items (not technically intended to be unique - unique simply means the item has a name and will generally have the same stats every time one is found) and runes; many of them each have less than a one in a million chance of dropping. Each. As in you're not likely to ever see any of them without some hardcore repetition in your play. It's a shame that so much was put in this game, but in order to experience half of it you have to play the lotto or cheat your ass off. It makes me sort of wonder what the point of including most of this stuff is if you're not likely to ever even see it. Aside from Blizzard employees selling the stuff on Ebay, which I'm pretty sure they do; there's no other logical explaination for making anything that rare, particularly in single player. I mean, wow. The average single player user will never complete a set (a group of items, usually between 3 and 5 items, which all give extra benefits when used in tandem), never see an elite unique nor the top 11 of 33 runes, most exceptional uniques, or any number of rare combinations they might like to see. This is 75% of the best gear in the game, which for meleeists is virtually necessary in Hell difficulty, and you're never realistically ever going to see it in single player, even after having completed Hell difficulty, if you do one pass full clear (going through -every- area and monster in the game once, without stopping to farm xp or items). Wow. I mean, wow. That's just asinine.

There's so many small things wrong with the game that go along with big blunders like this. The game is enjoyable and playable, yes (especially if you eschew melee), but there's always that burning needle in the back of my mind that it could be so much better were a little more care applied to the process instead of randomness. I could go on about more of the stuff in the game that's just terribly broken because of the lack of a bit of forethought, but the people I play with know these things and the rest of you are just happy you've followed along so far if you don't play, sooooo...

Number of times today I've banged my head on the keyboard: twice.