Why you did not like Diablo3

[BobTD]

Many players played the new Diablo for a while and then stopped. They where not having as much fun as they thought they could be having so they played something else. This is a valid reason to stop playing and there are two big reasons for this I'm going to highlight. But I also want to really get into legitimate failings of this game, despite my love for it.


Two common complaints:


It was to slow: holding your full set of skills and giving them to you slowly up to lvl 60 really made it so that all the customization was at the end of the game. So I understand why some people felt this way. This is because the game was built mostly with focus on smooth difficulty in the beginning that let you focus on the story, and very difficult end game that let you focus on gear hunting. The idea was that it would appeal to hardcore players. (and did)


It was to fast: It is only 4 Acts long right now, and each act can be completed in about an hour (if you really go for it, there is an under 1 hour achievement). But first time around each act might have taken you 2 or more hours. Still, many players completed the game and thought "this is it?".


Hardcore diablo 2 fans were not surprised because they understood the game had 3 more difficulties to complete. But if you where playing multiple characters this put the end game pretty far off. But the idea of rushing to the end game did not offput a lot of players, who raced there and began enjoying the end game content, hidden boss fights, full skill access, the race to find and sell legendary items, and a nearly impossibly difficult inferno mode. The idea was that this would appeal to hardcore players. (and did)


The thing is that this was a game made with a cash auction house in mind, an incredible event in gaming and even from a world economic standpoint. So to counter potential disaster of managing this they took precautions,some better than others: There was a limited max transaction of $250 (didnt stop the black market though) they focused on making it very gradually paced up to the point where the real money was being spent, and very gradually lowered the difficulty to a point where it was accessible to less obsessed players.


I fall under the crazy obsessed category. I have sold and bought items on the auction house for ridiculous prices. And there was a dark side to this as well.


(if anyone is interested this is my character list: bobtd/diabloprogress, and if you like the xbox version I have a barb that can pull 800k legit damage)


Back when this came out we had a lot of fun buying and selling on the Real Money Auction House (rmah). But I am, and I don't doubt many other fans, going to be glad to see it taken down to make way for improvements to the game March 18th. Besides the hunt for epic loot, to sell for hundreds of dollars (and I have, and we did) we had a lot of fun finding the builds that where able to break the game. I played one of the first Critical mass builds and me and a group of friends defeated the 3 Uber boss sets on monster power 10 the first week they where out without a single player death. So we had a blast developing overpowered characters.

The fundamental problem in this is that the true fanatics, who could be said to be hardcore, are outnumbered by the regular players just looking for a fun game. Don't get me wrong the game was a lot of fun, it was just a lot harder to be included in. Reaching that end content was how you found the real meat of the game.


But this is when the dark side of the hardcore game, for my group, began. Some of my friends made, literally, thousands of dollars on rare drops. Someone even sold a lucani prowler drop and went out and got a brand new BMW. But that person had gotten that drop off a bot he was running. pretty soon almost everyone in my group was obsessed with cheating there way through the game to make money. The way this for the most part happened was with a program called Demon Buddy, a virtually undetectable bot that could be loaded with behaviors that made them vary everything from how fast they picked up loot on the ground to path choosing. I wont get to much into the program itself, but I will say the official version was (or maybe still it) a pay to use program. They sold it to you for $1 a day.


But not even that was enough, that program was hacked so that (some) bot users could run it without paying for it. (I did get invited to use it, but I dont bot for fear of loosing my account, i wont even open it on my computer, not worth the chance of loosing my characters). Not only did the bot make it possible to grind to paragon 100 in mere weeks (8 hour sessions, most people only ran it this long to avoid suspicion)but it could look at a dropped item and determine Its ilevel (1-63) without identifying it. So it only picked up ilvl 63 items, identifies them and then saved, sold or broke down those items according to its setting.


This program was virtually invisible as well. My guess is that blizzard had to observe and ban on a case by case basis because they could not simply detect it in action. And this actually really sucked for the hardcore players like myself as well as the community at large. On one hand the auction house became flooded, and all those people I used to play with now ran bots, and had them set to farm in a way that was more efficient than playing legitimately.


So now a game that had alienated the less hardcore players had also alienated many of its hardcore players. And for a while I pretty much stopped playing as well. This is actually pretty depressing.


But I have high hopes for this series after the next expansion. They are removing the auction house, and adding another game mode (to help with players who dont want to repeat the story, they now have an adventure mode) as well as drastically improving the legendary item drop rate. Loot 2.0 was the reason I picked up the game on xbox, and in about 3 weeks I have found roughly 300 legendary drops. I know it sounds like a lot, but it seems pretty well balanced where it it. Is feels more like playing the original diablo in terms of drop rate.


Actually you can watch the beta and see the new loot system in action on live streams:


Twitch Tv - reaper of Souls


So those are the reasons, despite a very high quality production a lot of people didnt seem to enjoy the game. Despite these flaws this game has, for me, been one of the most entertaining games. I have had a blast playing it and I hope I will in the future.

[paecmaker]

As a fairly new player to diablo I never really had any trouble with it, I thought it was fun even if I personally didnt like the thought of the auction house. I didnt play up to top level before someone hacked me and got my account banned(I only noticed it a couple of weeks after as I had stopped playing).

[Trunks]

After reading this it makes me want to install Diablo 3 again and give it another try lol. I just got bored of the repetitiveness, I mean you basically have to beat the game 4 times to reach max level for one character.

[BobTD]

After reading this it makes me want to install Diablo 3 again and give it another try lol. I just got bored of the repetitiveness, I mean you basically have to beat the game 4 times to reach max level for one character.

getting to lvl 60 is not really that hard, if you wanted I could rush a character to 60 for you sometime. It might be worth it if you are considering getting into it again after the expansion.

As a fairly new player to diablo I never really had any trouble with it, I thought it was fun even if I personally didnt like the thought of the auction house. I didnt play up to top level before someone hacked me and got my account banned(I only noticed it a couple of weeks after as I had stopped playing).

That really sucks, I know how that feels because I had a guild wars account with all necro elite skills capped hacked, and a runescape account with over 100mil hacked. Any game that has an authentication key gen you should get. I use an authenticator for d3, starcraft2, WOW, Rift and TOR, and have never had an account hacked on those.

Also on a side note, the game is a lot easier to get into now in terms of how fast you level up, and how hard inferno mode is. When the game first came out Inferno was roughly 10 times harder than it is now. But that was done so thye could balance the player skills at high levels, and was also before they introduced monster power 1-10. If you set the game to monster power 8 you can get an idea of how hard inferno used to be.

[Mizel]

I was writing this post trying not to compare D3 to D2… but you know what? Screw that. It’s a sequel and it should be compared. As a hardcore Diablo 2 fan, many of the reasons I don’t like D3 are based on the fact that, imo, it lacked the depth and replayability that D2 has absolutely nothing to do in any way with loot drop rates or the AH.

Creating your own character is not nearly as fun and challenging as it was before. In fact, it’s not really challenging at all. (And no, this isn’t another “D3 is so dumbed down" argument.) The combination of the huge variety of items and weapons (especially those that had + skill bonuses) and the fact that any class could use any weapons, the use of gems (more types than D3) AND runes, and completely customizable attributes and skill points allowed you to create *unique* builds. And before anyone gets butthurt… yes, I highlighted the word unique on purpose. I realize that there are plenty of builds in D3. The problem is that they all have the same basic structure and form. In D2 every single class could be played the exact opposite of how it was “meant” to be played. You could create a battlemage that wears heavy armor and uses a two-handed mace. Or, you could create a Barb that wields a wand and uses warcries. You could create a Paladin that didn’t even carry a weapon and just used fists. And a lot of the time some of these crazy builds were surprisingly powerful. And hell, even if you created a character that wasn’t viable in any way, you had the choice. And it was fun!

To add on to that, in D2 there were many skills with their own different damage formulas. However, in Diablo 3, every single skill has it’s damage calculated in the EXACT same way: all are tied to weapon damage. Because of this, not only do you need similar (if not the same) stats on ALL of your gear and weapons… but your weapon becomes your single most importance piece of gear. Again leading to the same boring basic structure of each character. Why was D2 set up the way it was? Because it encouraged experimenting with different weapons and such (without your skills suffering)!

All of that being said, nothing bothers me more than reading something where a huge D3 fan bashes on a D2 fan for not liking D3 as much. The majority of the time if you mention your reasons for not liking D3 as much, and also mention that you are a hardcore D2 fan, you are told that you are just a nostalgic idiot. No, that is not the case. I’ve spent many hours on D3 just like I’ve spent many *years* on D2. The difference is that 13 years later, I still have the urge the play D2 while it only took me a few months to get bored with D3.

If they could just take D2 and reskin it with D3’s graphics…. I would be so happy :P

[paecmaker]

Mizel, if you have tried path of exile(or torchlight 2) how close is it to diablo 2?

[BobTD]

I realize that there are plenty of builds in D3. The problem is that they all have the same basic structure and form. In D2 every single class could be played the exact opposite of how it was “meant” to be played.

Parts of this are true and parts are false. While I agree with you creating a character was a lot more fun in D2, its not true that there was no variety in class forms.

I know this because I have an infinite frost nova wizard gear set that focuses on skill cool down and life on hit, as well as an infinit archon build, a witch doctor zero dogger(zero cool down on zombie dogs and self destructs them), an infinate wrath of the berserker barb, an infinit whirlwind bard, an infinit strafe demon hunter.

But there are only a few really good builds for each class, compared to D2. But even D2 had its absolute best class builds. Also not to nit pick your argument but your characters main stat, was not the only important stat, crit chance and crit damage, hitting 24% move speed and all resist were all stats you have to balance and each was absolutely important after lvl 60.

You might be happy to hear that they are trying to recover some of that character building in the next expansion. They are changing paragon levels into points that you can spend on your character in different ways. Adding more gems, and making the legendary items (many of witch have unique stats) much more common. So clearly a lot of your argument is legitimate and being addressed.

You still sound a little bit angry in your post. I do not really understand why, I agree with you that D2 did a lot if things right that could have been carried over to D3. But if you think D3 was not challenging your kidding yourself. D3 is also a much more technically complicated game, that presents many options for skilled gameplay that D2 doesnt have, simply out of lack of technology at the time. The skills being heavily based off the weapon damage rather than a flat amount from points spend on skills does not take away from that at all. It did makes it easier to balance a game attempting to incorporate a real money auction house. And it is a system that makes sense more than letting people put all their points into a single skill like bone spear or frost nova and dealing a pre defined amount of damage. Using one skill the entire game is more fun? More challenging? I dont agree with that.

And I am actually glad they attempted the auction house, despite being glad that it is being taken down. They did something bold and took risks, but at the end of day it was unique event in gaming that a lot of people got to experience.


As for taking D2 and reskinning it as d3, I strongly disagree that game developers should be doing something like that. There is no innovation, no experimentation, no new development that way.

You can compare a sequel all you like, but simply not being a clone of its predecessor to me sound more like a badge of honor, like someone refuses to follow the trend of appealing to the lowest common denominator and making clones like some series tend to.

Despite being a huge fan of d2, DIablo 3 not being a reskinned Diablo2 is not a shortcoming.

[Mizel]

Mizel, if you have tried path of exile(or torchlight 2) how close is it to diablo 2?

I’ve played Torchlight 2 before. I only played for about 2 nights or so, but it’s really fun! I’ve always heard that it’s the “D2 clone,” but I don’t get why people say that? I mean sure, it’s similar in ways… but nowhere near a clone.

Parts of this are true and parts are false. While I agree with you creating a character was a lot more fun in D2, its not true that there was no variety in class forms.

I know this because I have an infinite frost nova wizard gear set that focuses on skill cool down and life on hit, as well as an infinit archon build, a witch doctor zero dogger(zero cool down on zombie dogs and self destructs them), an infinate wrath of the berserker barb, an infinit whirlwind bard, an infinit strafe demon hunter.

But there are only a few really good builds for each class, compared to D2. But even D2 had its absolute best class builds. Also not to nit pick your argument but your characters main stat, was not the only important stat, crit chance and crit damage, hitting 24% move speed and all resist were all stats you have to balance and each was absolutely important after lvl 60.

You might be happy to hear that they are trying to recover some of that character building in the next expansion. They are changing paragon levels into points that you can spend on your character in different ways. Adding more gems, and making the legendary items (many of witch have unique stats) much more common. So clearly a lot of your argument is legitimate and being addressed.

Oh, I know your character’s main stat isn’t the ONLY important stat. I didn’t say that at all. What I said was, “To add on to that, in D2 there were many skills with their own different damage formulas. However, in Diablo 3, every single skill has it’s damage calculated in the EXACT same way: all are tied to weapon damage. Because of this, not only do you need similar (if not the same) stats on ALL of your gear and weapons… but your weapon becomes your single most importance piece of gear. Again leading to the same boring basic structure of each character. Why was D2 set up the way it was? Because it encouraged experimenting with different weapons and such (without your skills suffering)!”

I also never said that there isn’t variety isn’t class forms. I actually said the opposite: “And before anyone gets butthurt… yes, I highlighted the word unique on purpose. I realize that there are plenty of builds in D3.” There is a variety of builds in D3, sure, just not to the extent that there were in D2 and not anywhere as unique.

I have been reading up on the expansion and it’s awesome that they are addressing these concerns. I will absolutely be getting the expansion. Like I said, I don’t hate D3. I think it’s fun and I enjoyed it (even if I did get bored fairly quickly) and I can’t wait to see the changes they’ve made.

You still sound a little bit angry in your post. I do not really understand why, I agree with you that D2 did a lot if things right that could have been carried over to D3.

Haha No, I’m not angry at all. I didn’t mean to come across that way :P It’s just like I said, I’ve made these points before in other forums and was basically ripped a new arsehole. I don’t hate D3, I don’t love D2 just because of nostalgic reasons. I enjoy D3, just not as much as D2. Some people just can’t comprehend that.

But if you think D3 was not challenging your kidding yourself. D3 is also a much more technically complicated game, that presents many options for skilled gameplay that D2 doesnt have, simply out of lack of technology at the time. The skills being heavily based off the weapon damage rather than a flat amount from points spend on skills does not take away from that at all. It did makes it easier to balance a game attempting to incorporate a real money auction house. And it is a system that makes sense more than letting people put all their points into a single skill like bone spear or frost nova and dealing a pre defined amount of damage. Using one skill the entire game is more fun? More challenging? I dont agree with that.

Again, I never said at any point that D3 wasn’t challenging. I simply said that I thought D2 was *more* challenging. And I still feel that way. I don’t mean difficulty of bosses/levels, I mean simply when it comes to character creation. In all of the characters I’ve made on D3, I’ve not had one that wasn’t successful. Meaning, I managed to make my way through the game with it. In D2 because of all of the options you have to create crazy characters, it was hard making that something that worked and got you through the game! I made multiple characters that failed poorly. Hell, I had ones that didn’t even make it through the first Act :P But it was always fun to make something unique and try.

And yes, for some people, they do consider that fun. The whole point is that you had the *option* to only use one skill if you wanted. You had the option to create a character that was totally the opposite of what it was meant to be. Everything character creation-wise was totally in your own hands! What Blizzard did was take away many of these options. For a lot of people the whole character creation and the choice to do whatever you want, viable or not, is what makes the game so much fun (myself being one of these people). It’s the same thing they did with WoW. Took away options and implemented “hand holding.” It’s obvious by the decline in players for both WoW (World of Warcraft loses another 600,000 players, only 7.7 million now subscribe | Games | Geek.com) and D3 (http://cdn2.ubergizmo.com/wp-content...2/06/xfire.jpg) that most people want and enjoy these options.

As for taking D2 and reskinning it as d3, I strongly disagree that game developers should be doing something like that. There is no innovation, no experimentation, no new development that way.

You can compare a sequel all you like, but simply not being a clone of its predecessor to me sound more like a badge of honor, like someone refuses to follow the trend of appealing to the lowest common denominator and making clones like some series tend to.

Despite being a huge fan of d2, DIablo 3 not being a reskinned Diablo2 is not a shortcoming.

I was just being sarcastic I would love nothing more than for some changes for the better to made to D3 (and honestly, they've already started some of these changes, for example removal of the RMAH). And with the expansion, that’s exactly what I expect and hope to see. I’m very excited to see what the expansion holds.

You asked what things we did not like about D3 and I explained my opinion and where I'm coming from. I appreciate the fact that you did not just freak out on me because of my opinion and instead offered some good points. It's kind of refreshing to have a civil debate/conversation about something like this.