Diablo 3 is fundamentally broken

[Bolty]

Softcore is easy mode in all difficulties. Move on from Inferno softcore and play normal difficulty hardcore.

I'll just let this sit out there for my amusement.

[Tal]

Softcore is easy mode in all difficulties. Move on from Inferno softcore and play normal difficulty hardcore.

And it's not about me being a better player. I know I'm not, and I bow down to Frag as a better player in all ways. But at some point, you should take on the challenge, if/when you get bored of softcore. It is a very different game than softcore, and you might actually find it more fun.

MJ - you're still coming across as a elitist prick in this whole HC vs SC thing. Don't point at Frag to deflect away from the fact that you're been all over the forums looking down your nose at anyone who chooses to play Softcore over Hardcore. Want me to go get examples? I could spend a few minutes to do so if you absolutely want.

At the end of the day - if you fail to rise to the challenge you have to level a new character. That's fine and it's your prerogative. Doesn't make you better than anyone else.

[RiotInferno]

MJ - I read it in a sarcastic, teasing voice; not a superior, taunting one. After my 3 hours playing Naked Ironman Hardcore, I definitely see the appeal of it, and know that I'll be able to wring a lot of variety out of this game (hopefully)

[MongoJerry]

MJ - you're still coming across as a elitist prick in this whole HC vs SC thing. Don't point at Frag to deflect away from the fact that you're been all over the forums looking down your nose at anyone who chooses to play Softcore over Hardcore. Want me to go get examples? I could spend a few minutes to do so if you absolutely want.

Yes, please, find one this year where I say I'm awesome because I play hardcore and softcore players suck.

I say things like "softcore is practice," "hardcore is a better richer game," but I never say I'm better than softcore players. (And, no, this one doesn't count, because it's clearly a self-deprecating joke in response to Kurosu's question).

And while you're spending your time pouring over my posts, you might consider that you are spending all this time because you're riled up over a throw-away line explaining that there is more to the game than just leveling 5 characters to 60 in softcore.

[Tal]

MJ - you're still coming across as a elitist prick in this whole HC vs SC thing. Don't point at Frag to deflect away from the fact that you're been all over the forums looking down your nose at anyone who chooses to play Softcore over Hardcore. Want me to go get examples? I could spend a few minutes to do so if you absolutely want.

Yes, please, find one this year where I say I'm awesome because I play hardcore and softcore players suck.

I say things like "softcore is practice," "hardcore is a better richer game," but I never say I'm better than softcore players. (And, no, this one doesn't count, because it's clearly a self-deprecating joke in response to Kurosu's question).

And while you're spending your time pouring over my posts, you might consider that you are spending all this time because you're riled up over a throw-away line explaining that there is more to the game than just leveling 5 characters to 60 in softcore.

I'd like to clear something up first. I'm not 'riled up' over a throw-away line. I'm not 'riled up' in the slightest.

I'm curious Mongo. What response do you expect to get when you refer to softcore as "practice" and "easy mode". You don't get that there is a judgement that you're applying there?

There are many reasons why people don't play hardcore. For me the risk does not outweigh the benefits. I have limited time to play and experience Diablo 3. I don't want to throw it away because my ISP sucks or by getting caught in a bad situation because I'm not experienced with the game.

FYI - levelling a character repeatedly to learn how to beat a boss encounter? That counts as practice too.

[MongoJerry]

Of course, now that they're nerfing Inferno, you'll never have the opportunity to see what everyone was talking about.

Also, Bolty, I see you're jumping on the "you haven't seen Act 2 Inferno, you don't know what you're talking about" bandwagon.

So tell me, Bolty. What is it about Inferno Act 2 that is so amazingly different than what I have experienced in hell? As far as I have been able to ascertain, what is different is that elites get an additional modifier and the mobs hit harder and have a lot more health. Is there something else that I as an Inferno ignoramus don't know about? Does Deathwing fly by randomly and kill you? Does the game mid-fight change into the final level of Pac-man and you have to beat it before you can continue? Pray tell me what is this great mystery about Inferno that I as a layman have not been able to fathom?

I believe I have been very consistent with the points I have made:

1. The game is hard, because players don't have the gear necessary to match the level of damage output or health that the mobs have.
2. Initially, this was the players' faults because they were rushing ahead in Inferno without spending enough time farming in the current act. (Those who claimed that the game was broken before Inferno simply needed to l2p).
3. However, it is possible that the gear needed to play well in the upper levels of Inferno doesn't exist, yet.
4. My conjecture has always been that Blizzard will release additional gear along the way, which will amount to a "nerf" of Inferno.
5. If you feel like you are banging your head against the wall, stop. Either go back to an earlier level to see if you can gear up better there, start up a new character, start up a hardcore character, finish off achievements, or try out the Lurker Lounge tournament. Basically, do something else until Blizzard starts releasing the next batch of gear.

What have we learned since then?

1. Through herculean efforts of goblin farming, a few select people have been able to finish Inferno in hardcore, although even with all of their efforts, it's still not easy for them.
2. Blizzard is nerfing the health and damage output of mobs in upper Inferno.
3. Blizzard is making it easier to obtain better gear in lower acts of Inferno and in Act III/IV hell.
4. Blizzard is making it cheaper to craft items.
5. Changes are coming in 1.1 to player skills to make more builds viable and to make legendary items stronger.

So, basically, all of your "sky is falling" pronouncements that Diablo III is a big scam to get people to use the RMAH and that if you don't use it, you won't be able to finish the game were complete farces. People will use the RMAH, if they want to, just like people used 3rd-party sites to get items in Diablo II and WoW. At least at this rate, these players will know that they will get their item securely and that they won't get scammed or have their battlenet accounts broken into by purveyors of those sites. However, if you don't want to use the RMAH and are not obsessed with owning the best roll of the best item in every equipment slot, then you will still be able to progress and eventually beat the game, albeit at a slower pace than someone who did use the RMAH.

However, please tell me, as I am clearly an ignorant person, maybe there is a mechanic used in Inferno that I am not aware of. Perhaps a souped-up version of the Butcher appears randomly and chases your character around the zone if you haven't spent $100 on the RMAH?

[ErickTheRed]

The difference is that Inferno starts to present you with problems that you can't reasonably solve with gear. The gear exists, but takes too long to farm yourself and is too expensive. In theory it's not that different from being an under geared character going through Hell, but you can't fix your problems by leveling up some more, or realizing that maybe resist gear is good after all. The only way to progress is to change your play style and play better.

So you advance to the next act, and die a lot as you find different ways abilities combine and kill you. When I play Act 2 now I probably die only 1/2 to 1/3 as often as when I first seriously tried it, and it's not because I have that much better gear. It feels kind of like learning a hard boss fight in WoW. Part of the reason that I'm playing softcore is that I specifically wanted to try out the endgame before it gets retuned and also before experts emerge and understand the best gearing and build choices. I mostly enjoyed it and when I got frustrated I did something else.

[Bolty]

Also, Bolty, I see you're jumping on the "you haven't seen Act 2 Inferno, you don't know what you're talking about" bandwagon.

You haven't seen Act 2 Inferno. You don't know, and will never know (thanks to the nerfs), what you're talking about. And what you don't realize, and will never realize, is that your repeated posts about Inferno difficulty are tantamount to trolling. The entire time you have been playing Diablo III, you've been in easy mode, where the game is balanced with a steady progression of difficulty and gear rewards to match it. That progression ends in Inferno difficulty. But you'll never see it now.

Ever wonder why it seems like a "bandwagon" to you? Keep on' truckin.

Pray tell me what is this great mystery about Inferno that I as a layman have not been able to fathom?

It's been explained to you dozens of times. You don't seem to realize what the extra modifier does on certain boss combinations (yay Arcane Enchanted Invulnerable Minions Desecrator Frozen as melee!), and you routinely ignore the damage numbers that have been presented. You respond to Demon Hunters complaining about getting 3 shot and suggest they need better gear or more defensive skills, and anyone who has played past Act II Inferno will simply shake their head and laugh at that. I don't really know where to begin.

You continuously post as an authority on the subject without ever having experienced it. I do not post as an authority on hardcore mode, because I do not play it. You are the subject of continuous derision by a number of Lurker players who play in "easy mode" Inferno difficulty, but you just don't stop.

(snipped authoritative posts suggesting that people stop playing Inferno mode and do something else)

Now for the fun part! Been looking forward to this trolling here:

So, basically, all of your "sky is falling" pronouncements that Diablo III is a big scam to get people to use the RMAH and that if you don't use it, you won't be able to finish the game were complete farces.

I NEVER SAID THIS, ANYTIME, ANYWHERE, EVER.

I'll repeat for you, since you can't read, that I said that the end game of Diablo III is the auction house. Statistically, and mathematically, you will always reach a point where the most efficient way to upgrade your character is to log on and sit on the auction house all day, since the odds of actually finding an upgrade from the game itself will approach zero at a steady pace. I never once stated that you will need to play the auction house to beat the game. To beat the game, you can either farm for a disgustingly long time, or play the auction house.

However, please tell me, as I am clearly an ignorant person, maybe there is a mechanic used in Inferno that I am not aware of. Perhaps a souped-up version of the Butcher appears randomly and chases your character around the zone if you haven't spent $100 on the RMAH?

Nice troll, Mongo. I'll troll you back - I'm glad I play Diablo III in practice mode, so that I don't have to interact with real players like yourself who know everything and enjoy replaying the easy difficulties over again when their characters die. Your tactic of:

1) Make snarky comment about softcore mode and its players
2) Get called on it
3) Pull back and say "I just want people to try everything the game has to offer"

It's so over-the-top trolling. You should let Gnollguy advertise the benefits of hardcore mode, because he does it right, instead of your method of trying to put down softcore players.

[LochnarITB]

the Lurker set will start leveling up characters with oddball builds and restrictions... adding limitations like "only uses items he or she finds."

Not the first time I've been called oddball. Been doing that since day one. I did actually sell something on the AH for maybe 500g to see how it works, though. I would guess that there are a lot of us who don't want to use the AH, for whatever reason, so maybe not so oddball after all?

I also didn't use a follower (unless game forced) until I couldn't get past Nightmare Rakanoth (probably only really needed to study the fight a little better). I'm finding him pretty necessary as I move through Hell, though, so I guess that restriction goes away.

[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

[Trevan]

You haven't seen Act 2 Inferno. You don't know, and will never know (thanks to the nerfs), what you're talking about. And what you don't realize, and will never realize, is that your repeated posts about Inferno difficulty are tantamount to trolling. The entire time you have been playing Diablo III, you've been in easy mode, where the game is balanced with a steady progression of difficulty and gear rewards to match it. That progression ends in Inferno difficulty. But you'll never see it now.

Ever wonder why it seems like a "bandwagon" to you? Keep on' truckin.

I beat release act 4 inferno, and have 2 level 60 DH, both in HC and SC. I think I have too much time on my hands. But I will throw in my two cents.

To a degree, I agree with mongo. But Erick is right. Gear becomes a very huge wall that you cannot easily overcome because you cannot afford the gold/time. I managed to get by with very minimal gear, being a DH and kiting like a boss (or parking like a valet), but not all classes can do such a thing. Even with that advantage, one of the largest problems I ran into during my run was enrage timers. For some packs (shielding, extra health, or invulnerable), unless your dps was ASTRONOMICAL (I ended with 27k dps), it was very easy to trigger the enrage on a pack, and if it wasn't the enrage it was the super duper full hp heal in 5 seconds. Also to Mongo: About the something that changes in Inferno that wasn't in Hell, I'd have to say Enrage timers and Wolverine healing are it. I NEVER encountered that until I reached inferno, and that made all the difference.

My biggest problem with inferno was that some threats were absolutely impossible to react to, and no amount of gear would change that. There was no time to say "that looks threatening" and disengage. It was "walk forward on screen then get one shot by an oppressor charge for 150k". I was able to deal with that through smoke screening the moment they showed on screen, but that's only if they decided to not engage with a charge.

Release inferno is something my HC DH would NEVER go into. I'm not krip. I don't have the time or the gold to farm up amazing gear, and even if I did a DH does not have the defensive tools of a barbarian or the wizard he finished with. I finished inferno in SC, and the only way was to "not get hit". Even if I applied that same thing for my HC DH, there are mechanics that force hits and thus death.

Inferno, regardless of SC or HC, was not easy mode.

[Tuftears]

As someone who's taken a DH partway through act 2 Inferno, I'm going to throw in with the 'You have to experience act 2 Inferno at release to understand it'. It's not just gear, it's not just skill, it's the blatant unfairness they throw at you. For me, it's those snakes that can stealth, move up to you completely undeterred by any attacks or traps (they pass through), then de-cloak and one-shot you. That's ragequit time for me.

Then you have those soul lashers that throw really fast-moving tongues at you, doing pretty heavy damage in act 3, and all you can do is pray that they don't spawn as champion or elite..

[FoxBat]

Inferno A2 was nerfed pretty hard. Overall the changes are good, as I was stuck there too, but I still feel a bit saddened about the loss of Battletoads difficulty somehow. Maybe I just miss being trashed by trash, I doubt Blizzard is going to change their opinions on the gap between trash and bosses though.

[Trevan]

Inferno A2 was nerfed pretty hard. Overall the changes are good, as I was stuck there too, but I still feel a bit saddened about the loss of Battletoads difficulty somehow. Maybe I just miss being trashed by trash, I doubt Blizzard is going to change their opinions on the gap between trash and bosses though.

Act 4 isn't hitting my DH too hard. I feel it was overnerfed. But time will tell.

[Elric of Grans]

Mongo, you do not need to preach to me about variantism. Check Lemming's old Variant Database: I created my fair share. Nothing I made compares to that of the true masters, but I got plenty of fun out of their works too

As for hardcore, I played Ironman in Diablo all the time, and had multiple hardcore characters in Diablo II (including a three-dotted lvl99). The reasons I do not touch hardcore in Diablo III are lag and cheap mechanics. Try coming to Australia to play and you will understand why I cite lag as a reason Cheap mechanics mean losing a hardcore character in Diablo III does not always feel fair. If you make a mistake, sure, learn not to do that again. If you fight Rakanoth not knowing about his one-shot attack and lose your character, that is not fair; discovering the Out of Time debuff for the first time is also unfair because it is not in the manual (and just a stupid mechanic anyway). Some Elite combinations are just not fair, and just not fun either.

Even in softcore, I try to avoid death at all costs; I consider it losing the fight. My characters have suffered few deaths, and they can usually be attributed to something cheap (eg loading a game and having a Hoard/Plague/Mortar/Jailer mob spawn on the checkpoint). I do not play glass canons who `graveyard zerg'; I play high-defense, high-life characters who do everything possible to avoid death, I just choose to play softcore so bad luck or cheap mechanics do not equal game over. Some people (eg Frag) are happy enough to play with that caveat; I am not, plain and simple.

Also, Hell difficulty is easy mode. You cannot understand because you have not played Inferno. My Demon Hunter tanked most of Hell difficulty (stand and deliver tanking, not Smoke Screen cheese), because few enemies had the slightest possibility of causing any significant harm to her. I cannot do this in Inferno difficulty, plain and simple: I have to play with skill to avoid death. Sometimes, even skill is meaningless due to the way the game was `balanced'.

[Kurosu]

I believe I have been very consistent with the points I have made:

1. The game is hard, because players don't have the gear necessary to match the level of damage output or health that the mobs have.
2. Initially, this was the players' faults because they were rushing ahead in Inferno without spending enough time farming in the current act. (Those who claimed that the game was broken before Inferno simply needed to l2p).
3. However, it is possible that the gear needed to play well in the upper levels of Inferno doesn't exist, yet.
4. My conjecture has always been that Blizzard will release additional gear along the way, which will amount to a "nerf" of Inferno.
5. If you feel like you are banging your head against the wall, stop. Either go back to an earlier level to see if you can gear up better there, start up a new character, start up a hardcore character, finish off achievements, or try out the Lurker Lounge tournament. Basically, do something else until Blizzard starts releasing the next batch of gear.

What have we learned since then?

1. Through herculean efforts of goblin farming, a few select people have been able to finish Inferno in hardcore, although even with all of their efforts, it's still not easy for them.
2. Blizzard is nerfing the health and damage output of mobs in upper Inferno.
3. Blizzard is making it easier to obtain better gear in lower acts of Inferno and in Act III/IV hell.
4. Blizzard is making it cheaper to craft items.
5. Changes are coming in 1.1 to player skills to make more builds viable and to make legendary items stronger.

So, basically, all of your "sky is falling" pronouncements that Diablo III is a big scam to get people to use the RMAH and that if you don't use it, you won't be able to finish the game were complete farces. People will use the RMAH, if they want to, just like people used 3rd-party sites to get items in Diablo II and WoW. At least at this rate, these players will know that they will get their item securely and that they won't get scammed or have their battlenet accounts broken into by purveyors of those sites. However, if you don't want to use the RMAH and are not obsessed with owning the best roll of the best item in every equipment slot, then you will still be able to progress and eventually beat the game, albeit at a slower pace than someone who did use the RMAH.

However, please tell me, as I am clearly an ignorant person, maybe there is a mechanic used in Inferno that I am not aware of. Perhaps a souped-up version of the Butcher appears randomly and chases your character around the zone if you haven't spent $100 on the RMAH?

You keep mentioning that players do not have the items required to play well in Inferno, and that these items may not currently exist in the game yet.
Why isn't this considered as a huge flaw in the game itself, as it is thus not winnable through normal means.
Some people have beaten the game yes, but only through exploits, or such extreme amounts of farming which even your "average" Diablo fanatic cannot muster.

If you don't wish to have your player base complaining about issues such as this, you simply can't release such a difficulty and not give them the means to beat it.
Telling them to keep farming in the lower areas and wait for the next patch that might bring better items (or might not) simply doesn't cut it.
The content is available in the game, and people will want to attempt to beat it, this is human nature.

Also, beating Diablo on Inferno, while it is a feat, it is far from the real issue, as the challenge lies with the elite/champion packs that can often spawn with impossible to beat combinations no matter how good your gear is, except perhaps for those rare few in the very top percentile.

As for mechanics:

-Damage/HP on enemies disproportionate to player HP/damage values that are realistically attainable even for enthusiast players: simply completely different from anything up to Hell
-Unfair elite modifier combinations, or attacks that are unfair to begin with such as the charge attack on Oppressors (or a boss pack of Oppressors for double the fun)
-"Enrage" timers (I'd rather see them call it "game-over" timers)
-Bosses regenerating to full HP

Most of these things are already present in the earlier difficulties, but you don't notice them as much as the game is perfectly playable and beatable up to Hell, it is Inferno act 2 where people start to notice the unfairness, and if they somehow manage to make it beyond, the numbers are even more out of scale thereafter.
It is simply frustrating to the player to die to ridiculous attacks that are nigh unavoidable.

One example of such an attack:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pla...Jp14STmANU

I read that Blizzard is lowering the damage on these creatures in specific and overall in A2-4, which is good as it shows they listen to their players, but people who have been getting killed by this kind of bullshit are unsurprisingly not happy about it.
And then when someone who has not even tried Inferno yet keeps telling others to learn to play better or get better items (which don't exist!), it is also not surprising that people lash out back at you.

I am sorry that I'm writing a post such as this as a new member and I do not mean to be offensive, but I felt it had to be said.

[FireIceTalon]

Are the changes made in Act 2 onward only? Cause I just logged on with my Wiz and tried to do a Butcher run and I noticed NO change in the difficulty. If anything it seemed a little bit harder, and the new repair costs just SUCK. Makes me want to play Inferno even less now, since they made the already harsh death penalties even harsher. Booooooooooooo.........

Meh, even if they did make it easier, they are still going by the philosophy of "monster over powered, player under powered", and this is just not how it should be.

[Chesspiece_face]

Are the changes made in Act 2 onward only? Cause I just logged on with my Wiz and tried to do a Butcher run and I noticed NO change in the difficulty. If anything it seemed a little bit harder, and the new repair costs just SUCK. Makes me want to play Inferno even less now, since they made the already harsh death penalties even harsher. Booooooooooooo.........

Meh, even if they did make it easier, they are still going by the philosophy of "monster over powered, player under powered", and this is just not how it should be.

Act 1 difficulty is the same. If you had geared heavily towards attack speed, however, you probably have taken a hefty hit to damage.

[Taelas]

Are the changes made in Act 2 onward only? Cause I just logged on with my Wiz and tried to do a Butcher run and I noticed NO change in the difficulty. If anything it seemed a little bit harder, and the new repair costs just SUCK. Makes me want to play Inferno even less now, since they made the already harsh death penalties even harsher. Booooooooooooo.........

... how can you possibly describe the previous death penalties as "harsh"?

The only thing you lose is coin. I don't particularly like farming, so I have gathered maybe 2.5 million over the course of my entire D3 career so far (never having more than the 450k I had at one point), and I didn't notice repair costs when my gear was at 0 durability.

Patch isn't up in Europe yet, so I can't comment on whether or not the new costs are too high for me, but the previous cost barely amounted to a speed bump, let alone a "harsh" penalty.

The only death penalty that I consider harsh is the respawn timer, which has absolutely nothing to do with repair costs.... and which, to my knowledge, wasn't affected at all in the patch?

[FireIceTalon]

Are the changes made in Act 2 onward only? Cause I just logged on with my Wiz and tried to do a Butcher run and I noticed NO change in the difficulty. If anything it seemed a little bit harder, and the new repair costs just SUCK. Makes me want to play Inferno even less now, since they made the already harsh death penalties even harsher. Booooooooooooo.........

... how can you possibly describe the previous death penalties as "harsh"?

The only thing you lose is coin. I don't particularly like farming, so I have gathered maybe 2.5 million over the course of my entire D3 career so far (never having more than the 450k I had at one point), and I didn't notice repair costs when my gear was at 0 durability.

Patch isn't up in Europe yet, so I can't comment on whether or not the new costs are too high for me, but the previous cost barely amounted to a speed bump, let alone a "harsh" penalty.

The only death penalty that I consider harsh is the respawn timer, which has absolutely nothing to do with repair costs.... and which, to my knowledge, wasn't affected at all in the patch?

The fact the enrage timer EXISTS at all is a complete joke, so making the repair costs higher in conjunction with that (not to mention the respawn timer and full health regeneration of many/most mobs) compounds the death penalty to the point where there is NO incentive to play Inferno, unless you are the very top percentile in terms of gear. If you die even once, you are looking at probably upwards of at least 15k in repairs. It doesn't matter if they have nothing to do with one another or not, just the fact they co-exist means I no longer have ANY desire or incentive to try and progress. Raising the repair costs completely cancels out any good the nerfing of Inferno did in my eyes. The increased repair costs are a bad idea in a long, sad history of bad ideas by Blizz.