First Hardcore Inferno Belial Kill (by a Barbarian, too)

[MMAgCh]

I think MMagCH's point is that the loot reward is far too small for the difficulty of the game - at least in Inferno.

It wasn't, really, and I feel I must apologise to Concillian for giving the impression that I was objecting to his point regarding the necessity for farming in view of any one difficulty specifically, when I should have made it clear that I'm not happy with the state of item farming in D3 in general. My attempts to convey this by fairly selectively quoting from his post clearly were a failure, something I'm not unaccustomed to.

More specifically, what I was trying to say is that, while yes, you are pretty much forced to engage in some form of farming to get anywhere in this game after a certain point, all currently available venues of farming in D3 feel inherently unrewarding and thereby unsatisfying to me without even taking into account the possibility of upgrading my gear through them. The odds of acquiring "phat lootz" are a secondary consideration at best; let's say, perhaps, that I'm perceiving a lack of "varied lootz", or "interesting lootz".

Farming, by definition, involves a considerable number of attempts, or runs, or whichever means you wish to measure the effort involved by, because most of the time you'll find junk. That's the nature of the beast, and I don't object to that – what I do object to is that there's no satisfaction to be had even when a run "fails", because you know in advance what you're going to find: a bunch of crappy blues and yellows. In D2, by comparison, there was always the chance (and a reasonable chance at that) of a green/golden item popping out of the vanquished enemy as well, which simply felt more "fun", even if the set/unique in question was every bit as useless as any other random magical or rare item would have been in its place. (Though as we're aware, quite a few set/unique items in D2 were useful for twinking, or putting on a merc, or building an ever-so-slightly non-mainstream character around, more so certainly that most actual rares.)

In a way, Blizzard are aware of this; it's why I mentioned the continued tradition of having to manually identify "advanced" items in D3, which serves no purpose at this point besides making that newly found shiny seem a little shinier. Yes, it's a psychological thing. Yes, maybe I'm just wired funny in this noggin of mine. Still, the fact is that when you intentionally go looking for unsuspecting monsters to beat the crap out of in order to procure items, the results of said beating in D3 are, to an absurdly high degree, bound to be universally unexciting, whether you find something of use or not – and because, as I mentioned before, most of the time you won't find anything useful, I think it's just as important to make at least a considerable percentage of these failed runs somehow interesting. Even the not infrequent sightings of Isenhart's Case when assailing Mephisto in D2, for instance, made those fruitless runs appear a little less so, simply because as common as such items were (sometimes more common than blues and yellows!), they were still special somehow. That, I feel, is something D3 is currently missing.

I did enjoy making boss runs in D2 and hoarding my largely unexciting finds, although at only...I don't even remember, three or four accounts total, I had nowhere near as many mules as other people. I also enjoyed playing a variety of character builds – from a WWS strafer (bar none my favourite use of a "non-godly item", and exactly the kind of thing I would love to, but fear I never will, see in D3) to a freezadin who eventually sported a full Griswold set; none of them obscure by any means, but many of them nothing the common pubbie player would ever touch, either –, so I don't really consider myself someone for whom the item treadmill was the #1 draw about D2/LoD. A part of its appeal, sure, but I think the main draw was the "sandbox" aspect Bolty mentioned.

It's perfectly possible that, with the game still having been out for less than a month, I'm too quick to complain. Maybe the balance/content patches to come will address my concerns; maybe the inevitable expansion pack(s?) will. As the game is right now, though – and unfortunately, the area I find lacking is, I think, not something Blizzard are likely to reconsider and redesign substantially –, there's definitely something missing, and that something does have implications regarding the game's longevity for me and perhaps certain other players as well.

(Maybe I'm just a D2 fanboy, and maybe if I hadn't already played that game for such an absurd amount of hours that I'm well and truly done with it, I should go back to it and leave D3 to those who enjoy it. Maybe it really is objectively wrong of me to esteem the item system of D2 fondly, where you'd find set and unique items frequently enough to get some use of them, even if it was merely as hand-me-downs, or to put to use on some not-quite-mainstream character like you might Serpent Lord on a kicksin for a time. Quite possibly, that exact item system and the Auction House simply do not mesh, and all I'm doing is spew forth prodigious amounts of useless bickering. I still like to think that talking about it can't hurt, if only because change or even interesting ideas rarely come out of not talking about something!)