Diablo 3 is fundamentally broken

[Elric of Grans]

Definitely agree there, Treesh. Many of the best things in games were bugs and/or unanticipated. Combos in Fighting Games and Mutalisk stacks in StarCraft (original) are perfect examples of play being enhanced.

[RogueMage]

@Treesh - Exactly. Blizzard's antagonistic attitude stands out in their recent response to players' complaints about 1.03's across-the-board IAS nerf:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5...?page=2#34

Q: The IAS nerf has had a few side effects which I am not sure were considered in the process. Monks and some barb builds relied on IAS to provide adequate healing through either leech or on hit healing abilities. However with the IAS nerf many are finding that this is no longer a viable path...

A: Actually, it was quite the opposite. This was one of the main reasons for the IAS nerf. In fact, if it wan't for those additional side effects, and only about DPS, we likely wouldn't have changed IAS at all.

And there you have it in writing. The oft-heard claim that Blizzard was forced to kneecap IAS because it overpowered weapon DPS wasn't the real issue at all. Blizzard truly hearts DPS and genuinely regards their mission as thwarting players' efforts to craft viable alternative ways to survive and enjoy playing the game. Clearly, this is the ultimate evil that players are challenged to defeat, and fortunately, Blizzard's track record of unintentional side-effects and howling technical oversights provides heartening reassurance. I'm confident that Blizzard's clumsy attempts to retroactively purge players' most effective insights and innovations will produce ever more opportunities to shamelessly exploit the hidden potentials that lie buried within the game.

[Elric of Grans]

Actually, I think the best indication of it was the comment that kiting and tempting were unfun mechanics and the super-large hitboxes and certain Elite affixes were added to prevent players from doing this. W. T. F?

[Archon_Wing]

This kind of tampering with the meta-game is destructive.

Throughout gaming history, gamers have always been able to bend games in creative ways to finish it in ways never forseen with developers. It develops longevity, and you can just find one of the thousands of speedrun videos on Youtube that show players beating games in ways never imagined before. Thus, good gameplay is simply not forseeable and shouldn't be tampered with. That's why it's better to have slower, more subtle changes and let people discover things, allowing the meta-game to evolve.

Take Brood War. If you select 11 mutalisks in conjuction with an overlord, there is a strange game mechanic bug that causes the mutalisks to stack together, temporarily creating a potential death ball of damage. There's no way in hell that was intended design, and in today's climate such a thing would be quickly removed. But it wasn't and we enjoyed watching Koreans perform entire strategies and feats around this odd quirk.

I'm not saying bugs shouldn't be fixed. They should be. But sometimes things add flavor and interest to the game totally by accident. It might just be that Starcraft wasn't intended to be the massive fan favorite pinnacle of balance and esports-- but by chance it happened. Don't try to twist this-- by limiting options, you restrict gameplay and make it more boring and shallow when you try to enforce what you assume is the "correct" way. Millions of players figuring out strategies is going to collectively outperform the minds of even the best developing teams.

But the worst part of this is that Blizzard is seemingly deciding what is fun, and that, I think is not an attitude that should be had, especially, when they just don't know all the implications. Like I've said, if they were able to play their own game effectively, then they wouldn't have these problems. But it's obvious they just don't know how inferno gameplay works. The user base knows better, so they'd be wise to consider that and their internal stats and testing.

[Zarathustra]

Over at Penny Arcade, Tycho made this post about Diablo 3. It seems to jibe with what I've been hearing from everyone playing it.

I keep thinking I’m going to get back into Diablo 3, but it never seems to happen; they inspire new outrage on a weekly basis with everything that surrounds the clicking, but I’m not even running the executable! I’m safe altogether from these fresh horrors. And everyone else beat it and left. If I wanted to get back in, I’d be doing it alone. So that might not happen.

So, as those who have mostly left the bulding already, Diablo 3’s Real Money Auction House is double mysterious and we don’t know what it’s for. Well, okay: we know know. The “moneys.” What I’m saying is that getting new shit actually is the game. For us, anyway. Getting and, crucially, equipping new loot. The whole AH thing short-circuits the entire idea: the game is, functionally speaking, a pinata. Right? Obviously, you could just go buy candy at the store. It’s not about having candy. It’s about getting candy.

If anything, it seems Blizzard is making that piñata hard enough to crack that you're forced to visit the candy store they've set up just next door. I'm of the mind that if the auction house weren't included at all and people had to resort to normal trade channels, the game would be more "fun" for people. Inferno play would be worn like a badge instead of an assumed "oh, he bought those items" situation (be it with gold or real money).

I still plan to pick the game up eventually, but I guess I was hoping for the second coming of D2, which people are still playing a decade later.

[RTM]

Over at Penny Arcade, Tycho made this post about Diablo 3. It seems to jibe with what I've been hearing from everyone playing it..

As with most online comments and reviews, the feedback you're seeing is HEAVILY biased toward the negative. I am not going to say that the game doesn't have it's issues, but it truly is a good game. There is more to the game than Inferno, which is all people talk about. Getting there is fun in and of itself and you will definitely get your money's worth.

[ErickTheRed]

Take Brood War. If you select 11 mutalisks in conjuction with an overlord, there is a strange game mechanic bug that causes the mutalisks to stack together, temporarily creating a potential death ball of damage. There's no way in hell that was intended design, and in today's climate such a thing would be quickly removed. But it wasn't and we enjoyed watching Koreans perform entire strategies and feats around this odd quirk.

This specific mutalisk stacking mechanic was unintended, but the look at that from the bigger picture. Before Brood War mutalisks were problematic for the same general reason. They were mobile flying units with good anti ground damage, so it was always a threat to concentrate firepower and overwhelm defenses. Brood War gave the two other races rather specialized units specifically to counter this strategy, and this was considered a good thing. I may have the details wrong, but as I remember Zergs were considered a bit underpowered until JulyZerg found this, and it lead to a resurgence as everyone had to adapt but didn't unbalance the game.

Something very similar did happen in SC2. Thors were pretty obviously intended to be a hard counter for clusters of mutalisks. Someone discovered Magic Boxing which lets them kill Thors without the swarm all taking splash damage. This strategy wasn't taken away, because it turned out to not unbalance the game.

Game designers know that having lots of options to explore and finding new strategies is fun. It's some huge blind spot that they have would be fixed if they only listened to the players. The problem is that the reverse: strategies that look like they were intended to be viable but actually don't work are very frustrating. (Oops, my necromancer skeleton army wasn't viable past a certain point. Oops, I put too many points in Zeal and now my character is ruined. Oops, turns out stacking armor rating is pretty worthless unless you combine it with a skill that massively amplifies your defense.) The difficulty is that most issues aren't clear cut one way or the other.

Which players do you listen to anyway? Some people seem to really hate the way hit boxes and kiting now works. I happen to love the way movement works in melee combat now - it feels much more tactical now. You either stand still and trade damage or you move for tactical benefit, and there are many reasons to do this (health globes, avoiding monster effects on the ground, moving to a terrain where you can't be surrounded. etc.) There are a few monsters with melee attacks that you can dodge, and I like that variety, but I'm rather happy that all monsters don't have that mechanic, especially with the lag of online play.

[ViralSpiral]

As with most online comments and reviews, the feedback you're seeing is HEAVILY biased toward the negative. I am not going to say that the game doesn't have it's issues, but it truly is a good game. There is more to the game than Inferno, which is all people talk about. Getting there is fun in and of itself and you will definitely get your money's worth.

I'm not sure it's necessarily biased. The first thing I noticed in Hell difficulty was that it was blatantly obvious none of the gear that got me there was going to be viable by the end of the difficulty. Trash mobs were taking 10-15 seconds to kill with gear that got me through NM almost easier than my time in Normal. Now I have two L32 items from Normal or shortly into NM. I expect those to be obsolete. However six of my thirteen items are L45-47 and shouldn't be immediately obsoleted by L50. First thing I ended up doing was going to the AH and plunking down 15K for a L51 weapon, which boosted my damage about 40% over the L47 I was using. Hell is basically starting the game over like Normal - none of the gear you start with is going to cut it later. I expected that in Inferno, but it was a bit of a wake up call first thing in Hell, with almost half my gear having been updated within the last five levels.

Of course I fully intend to get my armour over 5K, resists over 500, and at least 16K DPS before I even enter Inferno, and at least 20K DPS before I step in the Butcher's domain. I have no intention of taking it up the tailpipe from Enrage timers.

[Mavfin]

Over at Penny Arcade, Tycho made this post about Diablo 3. It seems to jibe with what I've been hearing from everyone playing it..

As with most online comments and reviews, the feedback you're seeing is HEAVILY biased toward the negative. I am not going to say that the game doesn't have it's issues, but it truly is a good game. There is more to the game than Inferno, which is all people talk about. Getting there is fun in and of itself and you will definitely get your money's worth.

Well, RTM, even here, we have two camps. One camp is incessantly negative, and have been since the beginning, when they couldn't farm Inferno the first week, and the other will post about problems, but not in a 'Blizz sux! This game is fail!' manner, and are otherwise too busy playing to bother posting very much. Or, to put it another way, one camp posts about barriers in the game, and others figure out how to get over/past them.

Yes, the game has issues, but, Zarathustra, it's very much worth it if you liked D2, imo. Just don't let all the negative Nancys bother you. Ask Chesspiece_face, or Frag about it for a contrasting opinion with realistic comments about what the issues are, vs "This game is just broken!" that you're getting from people. I think game news has fallen prey to the same things that TV news has: so much of it is on video now, and, guess what...good news doesn't make ratings/ad revenue as well as bad news does. And don't forget that it's 'cool' to bash on 'evil, greedy Blizzard' now, too.

[Archon_Wing]

Take Brood War. If you select 11 mutalisks in conjuction with an overlord, there is a strange game mechanic bug that causes the mutalisks to stack together, temporarily creating a potential death ball of damage. There's no way in hell that was intended design, and in today's climate such a thing would be quickly removed. But it wasn't and we enjoyed watching Koreans perform entire strategies and feats around this odd quirk.

This specific mutalisk stacking mechanic was unintended, but the look at that from the bigger picture. Before Brood War mutalisks were problematic for the same general reason. They were mobile flying units with good anti ground damage, so it was always a threat to concentrate firepower and overwhelm defenses. Brood War gave the two other races rather specialized units specifically to counter this strategy, and this was considered a good thing. I may have the details wrong, but as I remember Zergs were considered a bit underpowered until JulyZerg found this, and it lead to a resurgence as everyone had to adapt but didn't unbalance the game.

And could anyone, anyone, regardless of how smart they were foreseen how the game actually turned out at release? Or even 4 years after release when the pros took the game to unbelievable levels (and manage to crush that too?) That is why too much tinkering can have bad effects. Just allow people more time to figure out stuff.

As for Mutalisks, they were overpowered pre-expansion due to mobility and terran marines couldn't catch up to them. Well, they could with stim but medics didn't exist. With medics entering the fray, Marine+Medic proved to be insanely deadly vs Zerg and the winners of the big tournaments were mostly Terran. JulyZerg didn't actually win by using muta stacking as we know it now, but he did control them well enough by using fast actions to quickly bunch them together and pick off marines so fast that medics couldn't heal them. And naturally Zerg saw a new resurgence where mutalisks became the scariest thing on the block. Later, they would discover the glitch that made muta stacking even easier, and mutalisk harass is now one of the deadliest things in the game. But the precision required it is so high that a single failure would cause all the mutas to melt. And then Terrans like Flash developed just as lethal reaction timing to counter it. And tons of now cheaper missile turrets.

With the introduction of later strategies like defilers ultralisks, and early Terran attacks happening at insane timings to Zerg building sunken colonies at the very last second to m&m scrambling in 5 different directions away from the Zerg swarms while picking the monsters in the front off, Terran vs Zerg in Brood War was a matchup that turned into a fine art-- the skill cap seemed limitless

Something very similar did happen in SC2. Thors were pretty obviously intended to be a hard counter for clusters of mutalisks. Someone discovered Magic Boxing which lets them kill Thors without the swarm all taking splash damage. This strategy wasn't taken away, because it turned out to not unbalance the game.

Another excellent dynamic was created here, and I'm glad they didn't remove it. It means that Thors are still very good vs mutas, but the Zerg player can mitigate the damage, but they can't just be negligent.

Game designers know that having lots of options to explore and finding new strategies is fun. It's some huge blind spot that they have would be fixed if they only listened to the players. The problem is that the reverse: strategies that look like they were intended to be viable but actually don't work are very frustrating. (Oops, my necromancer skeleton army wasn't viable past a certain point. Oops, I put too many points in Zeal and now my character is ruined. Oops, turns out stacking armor rating is pretty worthless unless you combine it with a skill that massively amplifies your defense.) The difficulty is that most issues aren't clear cut one way or the other.

It certainly is an issue, but we sure took a lot of testing for 1.10 D2 and that forever changed the game, for better or for worse.

Which players do you listen to anyway? Some people seem to really hate the way hit boxes and kiting now works. I happen to love the way movement works in melee combat now - it feels much more tactical now. You either stand still and trade damage or you move for tactical benefit, and there are many reasons to do this (health globes, avoiding monster effects on the ground, moving to a terrain where you can't be surrounded. etc.) There are a few monsters with melee attacks that you can dodge, and I like that variety, but I'm rather happy that all monsters don't have that mechanic, especially with the lag of online play.

Well, there's certainly people who are more credible over the noise of the battle.net forums. I assume people who are popular from streaming and are actually proficient with the game and its mechanics are worth listening to. We don't have "pros" in Diablo, but every game has its high level players that should be fairly evident.

[Elric of Grans]

Which players do you listen to anyway? Some people seem to really hate the way hit boxes and kiting now works. I happen to love the way movement works in melee combat now - it feels much more tactical now.

I think you will find most of the people complaining about that are not melee players, but ranged players who are sick of melee attacks hitting them from half-way across the screen. They have added a lot to melee combat, indeed, but ranged play has taken a severe hammering as a result. For a personal view, I always play the archer-class and love ranged combat in all games, finding melee quite boring. In Diablo III, I despise the mechanics for ranged play, finding most of the fun and tactical elements have been removed, and instead find myself enjoying melee more than ever before.

[smegged]

I think the real issues that most D2 players have with D3 is that it really doesn't feel like there's a whole lot of longevity to this game.

What do I do once I have my 5 level 60s? Play hardcore with lousy ping? You only have ten character slots. I don't want to be deleting characters to make room. I sure as hell don't want to be paying for the same game again.

Blizzard really messed up the launch by not allowing proper single player.

Blizzard really messed up the longevity of the game by not allowing the player to make permanent, character-altering decisions.

Blizzard really messed up ranged play by limiting the power of kiting (in many cases it's preferable to stand and deliver than kite, particularly against mortar bosses). There is too much unavoidable damage. Avoiding damage was the one thing that let D2 players play crazy variants which were drastically underpowered. You can't even portal-park any more.

One of the great parts of the Diablo 2 leveling/reward system was allocating stat and skill points. You had to be disciplined to save your points for when abilities became unlocked. But that was fun too. It was a piniata, but a different type of piniata. One that has been largely removed from d3.

D3 gets so many things very right. I love the new stat system. I like that caster classes are more gear dependent. But it's the longevity I worry about.

[FireIceTalon]

Anyone know how to beat Kulle on Inferno? Just got to him, and its a complete brick wall. I have 41K hp, 700+ all resists, and 32k DPS, and he basically 1 shots me with that teleport/explosion attack. What. The. Fuck....lame.

When I see things like this, I can't help but agree with the thread title.

[Treesh]

<snip>
Blizzard really messed up the longevity of the game by not allowing the player to make permanent, character-altering decisions.

<snip>

One of the great parts of the Diablo 2 leveling/reward system was allocating stat and skill points. You had to be disciplined to save your points for when abilities became unlocked. But that was fun too. It was a piniata, but a different type of piniata. One that has been largely removed from d3.

These two things I was glad to see gone in D3. Yes, sometimes it was enjoyable to plan out a character in advance, but I really hated being forced into it especially if a skill I wanted to try out was deeper in the tree but turned out to be something I didn't like. I still reroll alts like crazy in D3, but I just make them HC instead. Gives me the same bit of satisfaction because no two toons ever grow up the same thanks to the variation of champs/rares and not having the same gear all the time.

[BellaStrega]

I don't think it's fundamentally broken, but the IAS nerf did end my nightly playing, at least temporarily. Being as my character in inferno was a monk, finding that act I actually got harder for me while inferno 2-4 were supposed to be more accessible was a bit demoralizing.

If they nerfed it because of the synergy I relied on for survivability (life on hit), then that just means my break will probably last a bit longer.

I fully admit that it's me being annoyed at the game, and I'm not making a comment on the game's quality. I do like what people are saying about how Blizzard is screwing with the metagame, however. It feels like they don't want a metagame.

[Zarathustra]

To those who replied to me: Don't get me wrong. I'm not ragging on the game and haven't written it off. I appreciate the input and, hell, it's Diablo 3. I will play it. It just didn't factor into my time and budget when it came out and has been put on a back burner.

[Occhidiangela]

I've been thinking about this lately and I still don't think D3 is fundamentally broken, despite all the issues. I think what's really broken is the idea the devs bring to the game. When players find something that the devs didn't forsee (some combination of either gear or skills or what-have-you), Blizzard seems to automatically react with ways to prevent it, ways to stop the players from playing how they want to. If you continually try to force people to play in a way that they don't enjoy, yes, they'll leave and/or complain loudly. I think that's really what the big problem is with this game. They're trying to hard to force people into one type of playstyle rather than letting folks find what they enjoy to do.

If you are right, then the design motif of Blizzard South (who are all that remains of Blizzard, since Buzzard/Condor departed to create Flagship Studios) is the antithesis of .... Fun Is Where You Find It.

That formula, FIWYFT (pronounced Fie-Wift?) is what made D I and D II so replayable and for me a great value. Starcraft is likewise very replayable, and I suppose WoW is, even though I lost interest in that game early on. (Not the game's fault, it just didn't "click" for me).

I have not researched the Real Dough Auction House details enough to understand if Blizzard gets a cut of each transaction. IMO they should as Intellectual Property owner of Diablo III (sort of like royalties on an oil well, as I see it). It if is one percent, or half a percent, or a quarter of a percent override on each transaction, it seems fair as they run the servers upon which this marketplace operates.

If "replayable" isn't a feature of this game as part of the business model, then I'd venture to guess that it's staying power, and micro revenue stream if they get a cut, will shrivel. Granted, units sold is a fine number to date, as befits a fun game. (Which it is).

Fun Is Where You Find It. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

[Spangles]

Anyone know how to beat Kulle on Inferno? Just got to him, and its a complete brick wall. I have 41K hp, 700+ all resists, and 32k DPS, and he basically 1 shots me with that teleport/explosion attack. What. The. Fuck....lame.

When I see things like this, I can't help but agree with the thread title.

Keep an eye on Kulle's icon in the minimap. It will wink out just before he teleports. Step aside at that instant and he will miss you.

[FireIceTalon]

Already tried that, and it doesnt work. Pretty sure this is some sort of enrage timer mechanism that starts after about 3 mins.

Whatever the hell it is, is a COMPLETE brick wall for me. I've tried literally everything that is viable, and nothing. Even tried joining co-op games, but that is even harder, and ive probably lost 150k+ gold trying to beat this turd. Reallly, really, hating this game right about now. I'm almost ready to quit entirely, its ridiculous.

Even if I do get past him though, the trouble and frustration certainly isnt worth it - not even close, and everyday, I am agreeing more and more that this game is indeed fundamentally broken.

[Quark]

Already tried that, and it doesnt work. Pretty sure this is some sort of enrage timer mechanism that starts after about 3 mins.

Uh, yeah, it was in the patch notes. Walls come down more often and he does more damage. Get more DPS.