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

[Mavfin]

Granted, this is super easy since difficulty doesn't matter, but in D3's case, farming Inferno, whether you want to get gear directly or try and farm gold to use for the AH, is very tedious and un-fun. There has to be a happy medium of some sort - hopefully 1.03 will fix this issue.

So, Conc is exactly right in your case? Had the game ended at Hell difficulty, you'd be perfectly happy? That's what the above sounds like.

But, since they added on Inferno, you're frustrated that you can't just faceroll-farm it endlessly?

[FireIceTalon]

I've stated this many times - I play video games to have fun, not to do chores. Inferno is a total chore, and its not even because it is hard, it is because it is ARTIFICIALLY hard - meaning it relies on flawed mechanics and "cheese" to remove complete control away from the player. This has no place in a Diablo game, in my humble opinion. I'm fine with the game being challenging, I'm NOT fine with it being cheezy and tedious, which is what Inferno is for the most part. There is a huge difference. If I want to do chores with bullshit video game mechanics where I get cheesed, I'll go play a Nintendo game from the 80's, like Ghosts N' Goblins or something. As far as the game ending at Hell difficulty, it matters not to me, as when all is said and done, PvP will be my primary focus, eventually.

[Concillian]

The difference, in my mind, is that the results of item runs in D2 were more fun and varied than anything D3 has to offer. With set/legendary items being rarer than rare (and, for the most part, something to get excited over purely in a "hey, this might be worth a reasonable amount of gold on the AH" sense), you're left with only blues and yellows. These really are nothing more than utterly soulless and virtually indistinguishable affix containers for whose acquisition I, at any rate, find it just about impossible to muster any kind of enthusiasm – a bland mess of bonuses to attributes and resistances whose impact on my character's performance is so absolute, and strangely sterile in a way, that all but the godliest of upgrades will be met with a matter-of-factly "uh huh" and nothing more. In D3, items are far more important than they ever were in either of its predecessors, but at the same time this has rendered them transitory and their acquisition curiously unalluring, as far as I am concerned.

But if you place Act IV Hell as the endpoint, these items are much less tranistory. I definitely concede that the prime stat system makes upgrades a little sterile, but I think a lot of the issue with that goes away when you don't NEED the gear to "complete" a goal.

Diablo 2 may not have featured an overall greater amount of usable loot (though I'd disagree on that count as well), but farming Mephisto, say, or Pindleskin, still was far more engrossing simply because there were outcomes other than "bunch of crappy blues", "bunch of crappy blues and yellows", and "bunch of crappy blues and one yellow that's a little better than what I'm using", even if those additional outcomes were just as superficial and of equally little benefit for the most part. In D3, though? Once in a great while, your farming efforts will pay off (increasingly more rarely so as you near the threshold of Inferno-level gear),

Again, the entire point of what I posted was that if someone were to pretend inferno didn't exist D3 is more like D2 than most would like to admit. Inferno-level gearing wouldn't be necessary or any kind of issue. Gear progression would be for the sake of going from being able to beat Act IV hell to being able to BEAT Act IV Hell handily.

I still maintain that if people have an issue with the farming, they should try to pretend that inferno doesn't exist and treat the game like Diablo II. If you make an entire game mode that puts all the inferno legendaries / sets on Diablo, then you have that additional loot type that also is actually good when the only other loot to compare to is loot that drops in hell difficulty.

The issue people are having is that the farming that many people did by choice in Diablo II has become mandatory for inferno difficulty. By making it "mandatory" (inferno difficulty is optional, so it's not really mandatory except for inferno difficulty) people interpret it as work, or as a chore.

So... what if... these same people just pretend inferno difficulty doesn't exist?

It's a serious question.
I mean, I haven't seen inferno difficulty yet either. I'm in no rush to get there. I'm having fun doing what I'm doing, and apparently inferno will kill the fun, so why would I rush headlong into it? I'm going to sit back and farm the shit out of Hell and NM before moving on to inferno, because I had a pretty good time farming the shit out of Hell and NM in Diablo II for like 2 years.

It's like Blizzard added this supposedly bonus difficulty that they said was going to be harder than hard and people get there and find out it's harder than hard and are somehow surprised? I mean, there's not really that many ways to make computer games hard outside of huge timesinks / grinds. Even that isn't "hard" per-se.

---

I've stated this many times - I play video games to have fun, not to do chores. Inferno is a total chore, and its not even because it is hard, it is because it is ARTIFICIALLY hard - meaning it relies on flawed mechanics and "cheese" to remove complete control away from the player.

How do you suggest they make it hard?

People on the official forums are whining about Vortex... that there should be a tell so you can move out of it... that's not hard in the slightest. See bad --> move out of it. That's not hard... that's Gaming 101, it doesn't get much easier. Especially for ranged... I mean they're on the move so much anyway... they don't even have to think about it. I mean this is a modifier specifically put on packs to make them hard for ranged and people's suggestion for making the game hard is making it so easy you don't even have to think about it...

Do that and it becomes a ranged-fest like Diablo II was and naked Amazons (sorry, DH) are clearing Act IV inferno because that would make the game super easy. In Diablo II, it was so easy, that people had bot scripts for fighting... I mean, if you can make a simple macro to fight for you (successfully)... how can that be considered difficult?

It's really clear with the hotfixes today or yesterday or whenever they were, that they're finding anything that a bot script can be written for to farm and nerfing the hell out of it... because that's EASY. They want the loot to be coming from the stuff that you can't write bot scripts for. I'm stating that with confidence, but I really have no proof beyond that it seems pretty obvious that's what they're doing. You can't bot script the champion pack and random elites, so that's where loot is going to come from.

So what do you suggest for difficulty?

[FireIceTalon]

That's just it though, Vortex is completely unavoidable for ranged classes, and when you are as fragile as the DH is and everything 2 shots you, it makes playing pretty pointless. Either they need to make Vortex avoidable, or they need to give ranged classes, in particular the DH, better defensive skills to mitigate the outrageous dmg. I realize they are going to decrease monster damage in Inferno come 1.03, but I still have a sneaky suspicion that DH is still going to have it rough. But Vortex is nothing compared to Invulnerable Minions, which is by far the worst of the offenses. In the case of DH though, the problem lies just as much in the poor design of this class as it does Inferno itself.

They could reduce monster dmg in Inferno by 25%, and reduce the number of monster affixes from 5 down to 4, and there would STILL be plenty of challenge to overcome - it would remain substantially harder than Hell difficulty, without it being the complete cheese-fest that it currently is.

My Barb and Wiz are currently playing hell difficulty, and I'm having quite a bit of fun. I die to most elite/champ packs at least once, and the really difficult ones can take 3-4 tries to kill (ive only come across a couple that I had to flat out skip, thankfully). I can deal with this though, and it is a balanced challenge - hard, but not to the point where its frustrating and I want to rage quit (at least rarely, I've had a couple packs where I realized I stood no chance at victory because of the monster type, with tough affixes, but I just avoided them and went about my business). Again, Inferno needs a happy medium: harder than hell mode, but easier and less tedious than it currently is, without leaning toward either end.

When I play my Barb, I really like the thrilling close-calls I get even vs many mobs. Like if I'm facing a pack of Berserkers with fire chains, plagued, and extra health, and my life constantly drops to frighteningly low numbers and Revenge becomes activated JUST IN the nick of time to save me....THIS is fun, as well as exciting. And even if I die a couple times, it isnt a big deal. But when you get 2 or 3 shotted by everything and you cant even make the fight last more than 30 seconds, let alone have any chance of victory, this is NOT fun.

[Mavfin]

So what do you suggest for difficulty?

Once they tweak them correctly, Hell and Inferno elite packs will be a minigame unto themselves for those wanting a challenge. For those expecting faceroll farming, ala D2, well, they're in the wrong game, or at least the wrong difficulty.

Take <base creature>+<3-4 affixes> and mix well. Deal with the result.

They just need to tweak a few things about how that works, and it'll be a minigame unto itself for at least as long as D2 worked for me, I'm sure. YMMV.

[MonTy]

Really interesting discussions. As far as end game goes, the most fun I've had in an ARPG has been "uberlevels" from the Diablo 2 Mod, Median XL. They were Dungeons that offered a great challenge for those that were daring, but not forced on you through the main story line.

[Concillian]

That's just it though, Vortex is completely unavoidable for ranged classes, and when you are as fragile as the DH is and everything 2 shots you, it makes playing pretty pointless.

So why do people ask to make the game super easy by essentially removing all danger from vortex rather than asking for fixes to DH utility and defensive abilities so they don't get one shot?

This is what I don't get.

If you ask me, the root of the problem is that dodge is useless when 2-3 hits will kill you. Dodge is the defensive stat that DH get, and therefore DH will always have this issue unless you nerf damage from monsters to the point that every other class can go completely glass cannon. The defensive model of "classes with prime stat DEX get free Dodge for their defense" completely breaks down when you can be killed in fewer than 10 or 15 hits, and the game, quite literally, cannot be balanced with DH getting dodge as their only defensive component to their prime stat. Either the game will have DH being the easiest class or it will have DH dying to every pack with vortex.

If you ask me to fix this problem, I add some form of mitigation to DEX and virtually eliminate dodge as a defensive stat. It's only really useful in areas you completely outgear, so just get rid of it, it doesn't work, or at least significantly reduce the DEX --> dodge component of the stat and either make it add to armor like STR does, or resist like INT does, or half and half. It needs a mitigation component. Period. Full stop. The game cannot be balanced at the inferno difficulty level without it.

I would also buff natural armor and resist from prime stats, which reduces some of the NEED of resist all. Not a lot, you don't need much tuning here, a little would go a long way, I think the about 10% more mitigation than they have now, and this would lessen the need for the specific resist all modifier. I suppose they're going the opposite route by nerfing the monsters a bit, but I would have gone with increasing mitigation rather than decreasing monster damage done just from the psychological aspect of buffing characters is more "feel good".

Now with that design, you have a high DEX DH with a significant chunk of extra armor. The way the mitigation formulas work, that means that resist also becomes a significant chunk more useful. It's suddenly less of a chore to get to the point where they can take a couple hits, so people might actually do it. Right now the issue is that you need to pretend you're a tank barb to even take a couple hits. The design goal would be to reduce the need for full defensive and have mid defensive be semi-usable. From there, you need to re-work defensive abilities so they aren't all-or-nothing. Sentry should be able to take a hit for you, for example. Remove that god awful tether rune and make it more like the guardian familiar where sentry will take a hit for you once in a while.

Change shadow power to a defensive cooldown that increases your resists or armor by a large percentage. I mean, life leech is useless in a 1-3 hit scenario. DH need something to buy them a couple hits. This with the understanding that DH will have fairly low values and often need a big spike of mitigation, so I think this would be okay to be a really high incoming damage reduction. 60-90%, but this would probably warrant a cooldown as well.

I assume that vault can move a jail, but I've never played a DH. If it can't, it needs to be able to.

I completely agree that the defense gap between a DH and any other class is huge. Even Wizards and Witch Doctors get ~120 resist from gearing reasonably offensively, and they both have a few abilities to amplify resists and/or armor. The solution is not to remove all difficulty from vortex, the solution is to re-work the mechanics of the DH so one can actually survive. I mean, there are no DH mitigation skills outside of sentry with a 15% mitigation. Woo-hoo, that almost makes up for having no useful defensive value from your prime stat. This is where the problem lies... not in making the game EZ-mode.

[Lissa]

That's just it though, Vortex is completely unavoidable for ranged classes, and when you are as fragile as the DH is and everything 2 shots you, it makes playing pretty pointless.

So why do people ask to make the game super easy by essentially removing all danger from vortex rather than asking for fixes to DH utility and defensive abilities so they don't get one shot?

This is what I don't get.

If you ask me, the root of the problem is that dodge is useless when 2-3 hits will kill you and dodge is the defensive stat that DH get. The defensive model of "classes with prime stat DEX get free Dodge for their defense" completely breaks down when you can be killed in fewer than 10 or 15 hits.

If you ask me to fix this problem, I add some form of mitigation to DEX and virtually eliminate dodge as a defensive stat. It's only really useful in areas you completely outgear, so just get rid of it, it doesn't work.

I would also buff natural armor and resist from prime stats, which reduces some of the NEED of resist all. Not a lot, you don't need much tuning here, but a little would go a long way. I just feel like there is a little too much defensive gear necessary for inferno. I suppose they're going the opposite route by nerfing the monsters a bit, but I think increasing the defensive component of your prime stat is going to be a more attractive route for gamers.

Now with that design, you have a DH with a natural mitigation of some +2000 armor from where they are now. From there, you need to re-work defensive abilities so they aren't all-or-nothing. Sentry should be able to take a hit for you, for example. Remove that god awful tether rune and make it more like the guardian familiar.

Change shadow power to a defensive cooldown that increases your resists or armor by a large percentage. This with the understanding that DH will have fairly low values and often just need a big spike of mitigation rather than full time mitigation, but this would probably warrant a cooldown, as well.

I completely agree that the defense gap between a DH and any other class is huge, but the solution is not to remove all difficulty from vortex, the solution is to re-work the mechanics of the DH so one can actually survive. There are no DH mitigation skills outside of sentry with a 15% mitigation. Woo-hoo, that almost makes up for having no useful defensive value from your prime stat.

There's a simpler solution for dealing with vortex...it's called vault. I can't understand why people undervalue vault as it's a good escape skill. The only thing that would make it better is make it so you are invulnerable while the vault is in effect (this is the only real problem with the skill IMO).

[ViralSpiral]

Keep in mind most of the people on the main forum aren't asking for it to be easier, they're asking for it to be effortless. I'm willing to bet most of the complainers are lazy 18-25 males wanting desperately to farm "ph4t l3wt" to sell on the RMAH when it's in full swing. They don't care about anything except those loot spawns and if there were a skill they just made everything they clicked on explode and made them invincible for 5 seconds every time they did, they would use it constantly and never complain or feel regret for using an obviously overpowered skill like that.

I mean we only need look at the history of this series - D1 and D2 had legitimate players basically be a secret cult. Given the slightest chance, both player bases relentless duped, used gear that was impossible to spawn legitimately, and devalued every legitimate achievement into the ground. I'll bet every D2 server has at least 50,000 Enigmas on each of them. I've never seen Jah or Ber in my friggin' life, much less both.

I mean I understand a DH is probably in a really bad place when Jailer/Vortex/Invuln Minions/Mortar shows up, (and IM probably needs to stop existing...boy, that acronym is just unlucky for Blizz, yeah?) and there are -some- things which need tweaking, but the Blizz forum is not a place to be taken seriously, for the most part. We know that, and luckily I think they do too.

[FireIceTalon]

That's just it though, Vortex is completely unavoidable for ranged classes, and when you are as fragile as the DH is and everything 2 shots you, it makes playing pretty pointless.

So why do people ask to make the game super easy by essentially removing all danger from vortex rather than asking for fixes to DH utility and defensive abilities so they don't get one shot?

This is what I don't get.

If you ask me, the root of the problem is that dodge is useless when 2-3 hits will kill you. Dodge is the defensive stat that DH get, and therefore DH will always have this issue unless you nerf damage from monsters to the point that every other class can go completely glass cannon. The defensive model of "classes with prime stat DEX get free Dodge for their defense" completely breaks down when you can be killed in fewer than 10 or 15 hits, and the game, quite literally, cannot be balanced with DH getting dodge as their only defensive component to their prime stat. Either the game will have DH being the easiest class or it will have DH dying to every pack with vortex.

If you ask me to fix this problem, I add some form of mitigation to DEX and virtually eliminate dodge as a defensive stat. It's only really useful in areas you completely outgear, so just get rid of it, it doesn't work, or at least significantly reduce the DEX --> dodge component of the stat and either make it add to armor like STR does, or resist like INT does, or half and half. It needs a mitigation component. Period. Full stop. The game cannot be balanced at the inferno difficulty level without it.

I would also buff natural armor and resist from prime stats, which reduces some of the NEED of resist all. Not a lot, you don't need much tuning here, a little would go a long way, I think the non melee classes need about 10% more mitigation by inferno than they have now, and this would lessen the need for the specific resist all modifier. I suppose they're going the opposite route by nerfing the monsters a bit, but I would have gone with increasing mitigation rather than decreasing monster damage done just from the psychological aspect of buffing characters is more "feel good".

Now with that design, you have a high DEX DH with the current equivalent of some +1500 armor or so for free and it's less of a chore to get to the point where they can take a couple hits. From there, you need to re-work defensive abilities so they aren't all-or-nothing. Sentry should be able to take a hit for you, for example. Remove that god awful tether rune and make it more like the guardian familiar where sentry will take a hit for you once in a while.

Change shadow power to a defensive cooldown that increases your resists or armor by a large percentage. I mean, life leech is useless in a 1-3 hit scenario. DH need something to buy them a couple hits. This with the understanding that DH will have fairly low values and often need a big spike of mitigation, so I think this would be okay to be a really high incoming damage reduction. 60-90%, but this would probably warrant a cooldown as well.

I assume that vault can move a jail, but I've never played a DH. If it can't, it needs to be able to.

I completely agree that the defense gap between a DH and any other class is huge, but the solution is not to remove all difficulty from vortex, the solution is to re-work the mechanics of the DH so one can actually survive. There are no DH mitigation skills outside of sentry with a 15% mitigation. Woo-hoo, that almost makes up for having no useful defensive value from your prime stat. This is where the problem lies... not in making the game EZ-mode.

I have to agree with most this, especially regarding Dex and dodge - it just isn't working. DH as a class in general just needs to really be re-worked. It feels waaaay rushed, like no thought was put into it regarding the defensive skills or even combat in general. So things like Vortex, teleport, etc, as annoying as they are, would probably be a lot more tolerable if DH could actually survive a hit, lol. Barb can survive vs things like molten, plagued, or even Arcane sentry because they have the defensive skills to do so, though it is certainly wise to to avoid standing in poison or fire/arcane beams in the first place. Avoiding it entirely isnt possible ofc, thus your defensive skills come into play here. DH just straight up lacks these abilities.

Resistances to all elements in this game seem very very difficult to get. It seems to be an affix that is found only very high end gear, that costs a fortune to buy in the AH. I like the idea of making Dex half and half on armor and resistances, this would not only make the DH much more "buff", but would also reduce its item dependency relative to the other classes. It would balance out because while Dex would give them less armor and less resistances, it at least would contribute to both, while strength and intelligence give a larger boost to armor and resists respectively. I could see Barb and Wiz/WD players objecting to this though, since they would be like "no fair, Dex gives to both armor and resists!"......But it would have to give less to each, with the compensation that it contributes to both.

[Archon_Wing]

See, the whole "Hell is the last difficulty and you don't have to play Inferno" thing, as much as Buzzard tries to say, will fall on deaf ears because it simply doesn't work like that. And just because it was intended, doesn't mean it was sound either.

Did you have to beat Uber Tristram in D2 to get some of the best items in the game? Uber Diablo? No. Yes, there were 2 special charms that you couldn't get elsewhere, but for the majority of hell mode, you could easily find the very best items in the game. It wasn't even needed to reach the official end of the game to find the grand majority of godly items. This isn't currently possible in Diablo III. And thus beating hell mode feels like the game is incomplete. And if you can't get the best items in the game, then the shiny new Auction House feature will feel worthless, as you realize that the items you found are literally, worthless.

I think the argument that "You didn't have to play through hell mode in Diablo 2" is stronger than "You don't have to play Inferno in Diablo 3", really. And thus, if I were to apply the Inferno argument to Uber Trist, that would make sense because it was never meant to be part of the regular game. You can have almost perfect characters and gear without entering it at all. And potentially just trade for the charms.... Can you tell me that with a straight face that you can trade Hell gear for Inferno gear?

I'm sure a lot of people just want to make the game so they can roflstomp it, but really, a lot of the game revolves around gear. Diablo has long revolved around gear. I mean there's already a lack of customization for the character. And thus "the game ends at Hell" just doesn't work for the majority of people because this isn't fun. I mean what else is there to do after 60? You only have 10 character slots unless you want to buy another copy. Even if you were to replay the game with different other builds, you'd have to delete a slot you invested time into playing.

[FireIceTalon]

Well, you could always do like me and play PvP (once its implemented) after you reach 60, but like beating Inferno, this also requires extremely high end gear, and the only way to obtain that gear is to farm Inferno. You could always stay in hell mode and duel only with people that have your gear level, but this is a disservice to yourself since it doesn't reach the boundaries and possibilities of potential apex char builds and abilities.

I guess as someone else said, I want to have my cake and eat it. But hey, the point of cake is to eat it, right? I don't want to rush through Inferno and just stomp everything in my path. I just want it to be fun and not feel like its a chore - though I would like to get my chars, to a point some day that they are "comfortable" in that difficulty, and that running it is fairly routine. I don't expect the journey there to be easy or handed to me, however, nor do I even want it to be. But I do want that end point to be possible, and right now it just doesn't feel like I could ever get there.

[Bolty]

It seems like the people who most enjoyed the endless Pindle/Baal runs, versus building characters and actually playing the game, are the ones most dissatisfied with D3.

Erm, no. What a strange generalization. As a player who never performed Pindle/Baal runs, or took a character to level 99, I'm quite dissatisfied with Diablo III because I feel the game design is poor.

I enjoyed the Diablo series because it was practically sandbox in its design. The game wasn't particularly hard to "beat" - what made Diablo 1 and 2 interesting was the analysis of the game mechanics, trying out new and different builds/ideas, and so on. The entire rise of variant play was based upon the fact that the game allowed for it - with enough knowledge and skill, you could pull off amazing stuff that would surprise your average player.

Diablo III's inferno difficulty forces me into a Pindle/Baal run kind of player. The only way to advance is not through skilled play, but gear farming. Until you experience firsthand the silliness of being able to clear Inferno Act 1 without breaking even a sweat, followed by getting killed by a white mob in Act II (no, not a wasp, a standard melee mob), you will not quite grasp what the playerbase is complaining about.

It's too easy to dismiss such complaints as "they just want the game handed to them," or "they don't like it because it's hard." There's nothing hard about being 2-shot by a champion mob as a melee player. Blizzard has created a game design with an artificial difficulty level designed to force players to farm for hundreds of hours to advance (or play the Auction House). There are some players that won't mind this at all, and consider it fine. 12 years ago, I also wouldn't have had a problem with it - I think I would have rather enjoyed the challenge just as something to do.

Nowadays? I recognize a silly game mechanic when I see it. And a game series that (around these parts) is all about finding joy in esoteric gameplay has been cut off by Diablo III's Inferno difficulty. There's no more "I wonder what happens if I create a character based around X abilities," because you can just take your level 60 character and change the skills around on the fly - and rapidly see how they don't work anyway. Replayability has gone down the tubes. In creating a difficulty level based on cheesy mechanics and plenty of 1 or 2-shot death structures, they've ruined the series for me.

Feel free to dismiss the statements of a guy who's been running a Diablo fansite for 13 years lightly as "that's your hardcore raider mentality" all you like. I find that line ironic. Diablo III's Inferno difficulty is extremely hardcore in terms of time and dedication to clear, so I should like it, right? So why don't I?

There's no more "sandbox." There's no more exchange of ideas or interesting concepts. It's get your five characters to 60, farm for +resist all, +main stat, +vitality, +health regen gear for hundreds of hours, and that's about it. It's...boring, like the soul has been sucked away from the games that I loved. Either that, or 12 years have gone by and I've just moved on from this style of game...but I don't think that's it.

I do realize it's kind of silly as well for me to hang around this forum to complain about how this game's just lacking, so I'll move on. I hope you all find the joy in it that you're looking for.

[Lissa]

It seems like the people who most enjoyed the endless Pindle/Baal runs, versus building characters and actually playing the game, are the ones most dissatisfied with D3.

Erm, no. What a strange generalization. As a player who never performed Pindle/Baal runs, or took a character to level 99, I'm quite dissatisfied with Diablo III because I feel the game design is poor.

I enjoyed the Diablo series because it was practically sandbox in its design. The game wasn't particularly hard to "beat" - what made Diablo 1 and 2 interesting was the analysis of the game mechanics, trying out new and different builds/ideas, and so on. The entire rise of variant play was based upon the fact that the game allowed for it - with enough knowledge and skill, you could pull off amazing stuff that would surprise your average player.

Diablo III's inferno difficulty forces me into a Pindle/Baal run kind of player. The only way to advance is not through skilled play, but gear farming. Until you experience firsthand the silliness of being able to clear Inferno Act 1 without breaking even a sweat, followed by getting killed by a white mob in Act II (no, not a wasp, a standard melee mob), you will not quite grasp what the playerbase is complaining about.

It's too easy to dismiss such complaints as "they just want the game handed to them," or "they don't like it because it's hard." There's nothing hard about being 2-shot by a champion mob as a melee player. Blizzard has created a game design with an artificial difficulty level designed to force players to farm for hundreds of hours to advance (or play the Auction House). There are some players that won't mind this at all, and consider it fine. 12 years ago, I also wouldn't have had a problem with it - I think I would have rather enjoyed the challenge just as something to do.

Nowadays? I recognize a silly game mechanic when I see it. And a game series that (around these parts) is all about finding joy in esoteric gameplay has been cut off by Diablo III's Inferno difficulty. There's no more "I wonder what happens if I create a character based around X abilities," because you can just take your level 60 character and change the skills around on the fly - and rapidly see how they don't work anyway. Replayability has gone down the tubes. In creating a difficulty level based on cheesy mechanics and plenty of 1 or 2-shot death structures, they've ruined the series for me.

Feel free to dismiss the statements of a guy who's been running a Diablo fansite for 13 years lightly as "that's your hardcore raider mentality" all you like. I find that line ironic. Diablo III's Inferno difficulty is extremely hardcore in terms of time and dedication to clear, so I should like it, right? So why don't I?

There's no more "sandbox." There's no more exchange of ideas or interesting concepts. It's get your five characters to 60, farm for +resist all, +main stat, +vitality, +health regen gear for hundreds of hours, and that's about it. It's...boring, like the soul has been sucked away from the games that I loved. Either that, or 12 years have gone by and I've just moved on from this style of game...but I don't think that's it.

I do realize it's kind of silly as well for me to hang around this forum to complain about how this game's just lacking, so I'll move on. I hope you all find the joy in it that you're looking for.

I know exactly where you're coming from. It seems like with each iteration I've enjoyed this series less and less. I played D1 for 2 1/2 years and really stopped when D2 came out. D2, I played for maybe a year to year and a half and just didn't feel the enjoyment anymore even with the endless possible builds and such. I'm not even sure I'll make it to 3 months with D3 as I'm already looking to go back and finish off an insanity ME 3 (up to within the last 5 minutes of the game... ) along with going back and playing SWtOR and working on all the toons there. Right now, D3 just doesn't feel fun.

[FireIceTalon]

It seems like the people who most enjoyed the endless Pindle/Baal runs, versus building characters and actually playing the game, are the ones most dissatisfied with D3.

Erm, no. What a strange generalization. As a player who never performed Pindle/Baal runs, or took a character to level 99, I'm quite dissatisfied with Diablo III because I feel the game design is poor.

I enjoyed the Diablo series because it was practically sandbox in its design. The game wasn't particularly hard to "beat" - what made Diablo 1 and 2 interesting was the analysis of the game mechanics, trying out new and different builds/ideas, and so on. The entire rise of variant play was based upon the fact that the game allowed for it - with enough knowledge and skill, you could pull off amazing stuff that would surprise your average player.

Diablo III's inferno difficulty forces me into a Pindle/Baal run kind of player. The only way to advance is not through skilled play, but gear farming. Until you experience firsthand the silliness of being able to clear Inferno Act 1 without breaking even a sweat, followed by getting killed by a white mob in Act II (no, not a wasp, a standard melee mob), you will not quite grasp what the playerbase is complaining about.

It's too easy to dismiss such complaints as "they just want the game handed to them," or "they don't like it because it's hard." There's nothing hard about being 2-shot by a champion mob as a melee player. Blizzard has created a game design with an artificial difficulty level designed to force players to farm for hundreds of hours to advance (or play the Auction House). There are some players that won't mind this at all, and consider it fine. 12 years ago, I also wouldn't have had a problem with it - I think I would have rather enjoyed the challenge just as something to do.

Nowadays? I recognize a silly game mechanic when I see it. And a game series that (around these parts) is all about finding joy in esoteric gameplay has been cut off by Diablo III's Inferno difficulty. There's no more "I wonder what happens if I create a character based around X abilities," because you can just take your level 60 character and change the skills around on the fly - and rapidly see how they don't work anyway. Replayability has gone down the tubes. In creating a difficulty level based on cheesy mechanics and plenty of 1 or 2-shot death structures, they've ruined the series for me.

Feel free to dismiss the statements of a guy who's been running a Diablo fansite for 13 years lightly as "that's your hardcore raider mentality" all you like. I find that line ironic. Diablo III's Inferno difficulty is extremely hardcore in terms of time and dedication to clear, so I should like it, right? So why don't I?

There's no more "sandbox." There's no more exchange of ideas or interesting concepts. It's get your five characters to 60, farm for +resist all, +main stat, +vitality, +health regen gear for hundreds of hours, and that's about it. It's...boring, like the soul has been sucked away from the games that I loved. Either that, or 12 years have gone by and I've just moved on from this style of game...but I don't think that's it.

I do realize it's kind of silly as well for me to hang around this forum to complain about how this game's just lacking, so I'll move on. I hope you all find the joy in it that you're looking for.

Wow. We rarely agree on much, but this post echoes PERFECTLY what I have been trying to say. Couldn't agree more.

I really hope the 1.03 patch makes things better, because besides this issue (and the flawed skill mechanics of the DH class) and a few other very small things that are easily fixable, D3 is awesome - and if these problems are solved, I have no doubt it will be the best game in the series (if it already isn't). Ive seen alot of people hate on the story and writing, calling it predictable, but what do they want? The two other prime evils were killed off, so you knew Belial and Azmodan would be in this game somehow, and when Adria talks about Diablo and say how at last "his grand design comes to fruition", I think this is a brilliant climax and summation of the Diablo series and storyline. Sure, the story may be predictable in some areas, but I don't see the big deal really.

[Archon_Wing]

I was able to ignore the lackluster plot, or the pittance that was act 4 that went through so quickly, in the hopes that the endgame would be interesting. Had Blizzard placed interesting end game content, maybe inferno only events, or plot forks, it would come across as imaginative. Unfortunately it's the same game with massive stats. You could say the same about Diablo 2, but like I've said before, being anywhere in the last official difficulty gave you a chance to slowly progress your hero to the stars. Nobody forced you to do anything. Hell, elite uniques, including arguably the best helm in the entire game, can start dropping in the end of nightmare, for crying out loud.

[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!)

[ViralSpiral]

I know this is a minor thing and Blizzard will probably never care, but part of the fun of reading player reports was the one pass full clear or one pass, all quests and waypoints nature of them. Player reports that involve several paragraphs of "and then I farmed a couple of hours in order to be able to progress" aren't going to be nearly as thrilling.

[Athenau]

Vortex used to make me rage until I realized that you could avoid it by placing obstacles between you and the enemy. Engage around the corner and the vortex will pull you up against the wall and fail.

[Quark]

That's just it though, Vortex is completely unavoidable for ranged classes, and when you are as fragile as the DH is and everything 2 shots you, it makes playing pretty pointless.

I stopped reading here. Vortex has a maximum range, as does Jailer.

Edit: Bolty, two quick points.
1) Why not rejudge when 1.0.3 hits? In the meantime, everything before Act 2 Inferno I find very fun.
2) Must get the gear to advance sounds astoundingly like ... WoW. Except it's not making me log in and do freaking daily quests every day to get a little token that says "here, buy this item from a vendor".