Diablo 3 is fundamentally broken

[Archon_Wing]

Even if you make new characters, there are really only five characters. Get five to 60 and you have done it all. Blizzard have really staked the entire end-game on farming Inferno.

And then you can stop practicing and roll hardcore characters.

But we all know that once we're comfortably able to farm Inferno, the Lurker set will start leveling up characters with oddball builds and restrictions. Sure, you *can* switch skills around with your main character, but it won't be as much fun as leveling him or her up with the skillset along the way and adding limitations like "only uses items he or she finds." There's a lot of replayability allowed in the game. We just haven't seen it, yet, because people are still focused on finishing the game the first time. (Or, are focused on being able to finish the game comfortably without having to run screaming from half the elite mobs in softcore).

And, of course, when 1.1 comes out, PvP will be a popular option as well.

As much as you'd like to admit that you aren't declaring superiority of hardcore, using loaded terms like "practicing" is pretty much accepted as accepting of softcore as a lesser mode since you're implying that people aren't playing the "real" game. Despite the strong possibility that this game wasn't designed for hardcore in mind, quite evidently, given the small penalties for death.

Regardless, it's not going to solve the problem.

In any case, since you won't see inferno as on release anymore, I'll just say the fourth affix on an elite doesn't make them 33% harder. It typically makes them exponentially harder. Boss monsters were pathetically weak compared to your average elite pack. It's not that elite monsters were stronger, they were to the point were boss fights were just extremely anticlimactic. And the item drops were so awful relative to the acts that L2p pretty much became "learn to pay" for your average player. :p