nintendoman58
Member
Made this in 20 minutes with MS paint.
Thought it summed things up nicely.
Thought it summed things up nicely.
-
Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!
Blizzard admits Diablo 3's end-game is lacking, would like to fix eventually
- Thread starter Nirolak
- Start date
Diablo's fanbase has never known what it is they actually want. Delaying the game longer would not have affected this particular issue. No one ever objected to the idea of D3's endgame being about running Inferno again and again for better loot. That's what D2's endgame was, and gameplay-wise it was far dumber because all there was to do was powerlevel new characters and do super-fast boss runs of content that is no longer challenging at all. I think Blizzard's biggest mistake was not realizing how incredibly niche that experience was, and how many people today who want to like D3's endgame would not enjoy that.
What I meant is this. Let's say you have 4 years overall on a game. You spend the first two years designing a specific mechanic and implementing it. Then, you realize that the feature doesn't work and you scrap it or salvage it into something different. 4 years overall, 2 years on each feature. Some overlap between the two and recycling helps cut down on wasted time, but you sure didn't polish that feature.
I mean, purely from a content perspective, Diablo 3 isn't that big of a game. The AH and the RMAH have a rudimentary interface with very few options. The coop system is bare-bones and lacks any kind of depth. The PVP is missing, with the feature coming who knows when.
Worst of all, Inferno was never properly tested by Blizzard. They just took the Hell damage and life values and tripled them. I think they went on record saying that not one member of their QA team finished Inferno. Then, you have the big debate regarding the itemization and the AH in relation with progression and gear.
So yeah, to me, even if Blizzard took 5-6 years to ship D3, they still rushed it. But that's just my own interpretation of the word "rushed". I guess I fell more it's regarding the game quality and not just related to an arbitraty amount of time spent building the game.
Dreams-Visions
Member
well said. I think someone said it really well a month or so ago when they said that it may have been a bit more enjoyable (longevity) if they had gone with 8 short Acts with aesthetic and enemy diversity rather than 4 long acts. Different locals and ideas may have added to the lifespan of the game for me since I honestly hated most of Act II's styling (the sewers especially) and others.
but there are plenty of other problems that are more pressing. perhaps this one is just a matter of expansion packs. by the time those arrive I'll have moved on, though.
I probably have like 250 hours logged in the game by now. Beat Inferno with my DH and Barb, and I cannot deny the absolute truth in this.
Its a shame really. You dont play to find gear that are upgrades, because that happens to rarely. You play to find items that sell on the AH so you can buy your upgrades. I think we all know why they did this, it synergizes with their plans to monetize the game through the AH.
The problem is, this is a game breaking issue, and it cannot be fixed unless they are willing to let go of their insistence to drive the game through the fucking Auction Houses. I dont think its likely that whoever runs them now nor whoever runs them after they are sold will want to change that. So the game might actually be doomed. Probably would have turned out a better designed game if it had a monthly fee. The fact that they have cemented on monetizing it through the AH is spilling over into the game a bit and causing some serious issues. It needs to be abandoned.
Add a new shard that has no Auction houses, and that has ladders and whatnot. Then adjust drop rates and itemization accordingly on that shard. Then sit back and watch the shards with AH's die off.
Seriously. I still don't understand why they didn't just make a a longer more immersive game with 1-2 difficulty levels instead of making a short boring game with four difficulty levels. I guess the jokes on us though as Blizzard has our money and could care less.
Finaika
Member
Made this in 20 minutes with MS paint.
Thought it summed things up nicely.
So the way to fix this is to replace "Buy Better Gear from the Auction house" with "Farm better gear"?
Make the item farming exciting and rewarding for the player. Give him the chance to actually upgrades. I mean, the AH broke any kind of balance between normal gear farm and buying your gear. In seconds, I can buy the best gear for my class. D3 loot is disappointing, bland and terribly frustrating. It doesn't help that legendary items can be worse than magic and rare items. Why even call them legendaries at this point?
Dreams-Visions
Member
It's funny that we were complaining about the loot drops back in May and it's still a depressing thing today. I don't know how this changes considering Blizzard's end-game is the RMAH. Their goal isn't for you to get good enough in-game drops to upgrade all 12 item slots, after all. They need us to interact with and eventually buy things from the RMAH.
I suppose they could scale back the number of item drops after level 60 entirely while increasing their overall quality) to make finding something even more rewarding...but I don't see why they would.
Super_Chicken
Member
What killed it for me was the lack of a skill tree.
Why should I level two wizards to level 60 when I can simply change every skill on the first one to "create" the second...
Why should I level two wizards to level 60 when I can simply change every skill on the first one to "create" the second...
Treemonkeys
Member
But if you were doing that then you already beat hell, people chose to do that because they wanted better gear for PVP or for faster farming. It wasn't something everyone wanted to do nor did people feel obligated to do it just to complete the game. D3 requires you to bang your head just to beat inferno.
Treemonkeys
Member
Yeah me too, then they add achievements for lvling two of each class?!?!
CorruptShadow
Member
I still don't understand all the the hate for this game:
1) Is D3 as good as D2? No
2) Does D3 have fundamental problems? Yes
3) Is D3 a great game? Not Especially
4) Did I get my money's worth? YES
The reality, as I see it, is that I've sunk 90+ hours, into a game for which I paid $100. Not only were those hours fun, but value wise it's pretty crazy. I mean it costs $15 for a ticket to a 2 hour movie, and I could easily drop $100 on a dinner with the wife. To sum this up while I agree with most of the complaints, does anybody really think they didn't get their money's worth?
1) Is D3 as good as D2? No
2) Does D3 have fundamental problems? Yes
3) Is D3 a great game? Not Especially
4) Did I get my money's worth? YES
The reality, as I see it, is that I've sunk 90+ hours, into a game for which I paid $100. Not only were those hours fun, but value wise it's pretty crazy. I mean it costs $15 for a ticket to a 2 hour movie, and I could easily drop $100 on a dinner with the wife. To sum this up while I agree with most of the complaints, does anybody really think they didn't get their money's worth?
Treemonkeys
Member
It's kind of a love/hate relationship for me but I did get my money's worth.
They must be seeing an abnormally large drop off of players. I'm not really surprised since each difficulty is an almost exact cookie cutter copy of the others. They should have added new content to each difficulty, something for players to strive to see. That would have kept more regular people cracking away at it. Or better yet different missions for each of the classes. Does anyone really care about the story at all after making it through nightmare? I've been just clicking through all the text and cinemas since that difficulty.
No one is debating the money/time ratio. We're just discussing which issues we feel the game has. Which is something I can do even if I must have sunked over 100 or so hours in the game.
Bashiok mentionned that they still had hundreds of thousands of players every day. I doubt they are seeing anything but a slight drop. Which is always happen following a game release. Of course, he's a Blizzard employee so why wouldn't he say that? :tinfoil: :consipracy:
I got my money back like four times over now, so at least it has that going for it. The game still is fundamentally flawed.
Finaika
Member
One for each sex.
Diablo 3 is for me the most disappointing game of the last few years if not the last decade, Played Diablo 2 for 10 years Diablo 3 lasted less than 2 weeks.
Around mid way though Hell difficulty I never dropped a single upgrade to my gear if I wanted to progress I had to buy off the the AH, whats the point of a loot based game if they're no loot.
Force hit the nail on the head Diablo 3 is a Auction house simulator with a game tacked on.
Around mid way though Hell difficulty I never dropped a single upgrade to my gear if I wanted to progress I had to buy off the the AH, whats the point of a loot based game if they're no loot.
Force hit the nail on the head Diablo 3 is a Auction house simulator with a game tacked on.
It's to further incentivize selling level 60 characters when it becomes available on RMAH!
I would fucking love this option.
Wow I would love this. Plus 5 trillion points for this post.
Treemonkeys
Member
I don't think the game is designed around the AH, and it certainly doesn't explain the drop rates. D2 already had a good system for an AH if it wasn't for the duping, uniques worth quite a bit, but perfect uniques being worth a fuck ton. They can make good loot drop like candy and people will still pay an arm and a leg for a very small stat increase over what is common.
Diablo 3 was one of those strange games for me. I liked it, played through it twice, and I'm likely done. But I was left thinking....Where was all the money and development time spent? It was a short, pretty basic hack and slash. Blizzard has endless cash for development and I just didn't see it with this game. Personally, I thought the graphics for Sacred 2 were better especially in the detail found in the weapons and armor. I guess my expectations were set too high.
Did you watch the credits? It seems like 50 people were working on the game and 500 in accounting.
Yep, the AH team was probably just as big as the gameplay dev team.
It's there (in a limited sense), the helms, weapons, and offhands tend to provide bonuses to certain skills. eg. 10% dmg to hungering arrow or +5% critical chance to twister.
This. A million times. I'm not asking for godly gear, just good enough gear to play through the game. Those who want to keep farming after that can and those that find farming tedious will still feel satisfied with what they accomplished and move on.
Indead, we hit level 60 and spend 400+ hours on our character, forced to grind for weeks to progress. Yes, we get it, loot in diablo 2 was harder to get. BUT YOU FELT LIKE A FUCKIN BADASS looking for it.
In D2, you could do a baal run then go fuck around in other acts. Look for runes, whatever... All in the same game.
What kind of stupid ass idea... Whose stupid ass idea was it to separate the acts and feed us stupid story and cutscenes constantly in a loot game based on REPETITION?
I'm not sure why I'm still playing... I have a lot of gold laying around, none of it made from farming. I haven't farmed in over a week yet I made the most money I've ever had during that time. Meanwhile, my friend farms all day and has nothing to show for it. 138M to his 6M... So am I "playing" the game right? If so, then it's broken.
The problem of shit loot is that D3 is ONLY based around loot and nothing else. They coud've added so much more content and ways to upgrade your character, approach battle situations etc.. They just tried to make a streamlined copy of D2 which hopefully appeals to WOW crowd. They didn't fail at selling the game but they certainly failed at making it real shine.
Also, instead of getting rid of boss runs etc, they should've implemented them! After you beat the game you see all "run possibilities" for a certain act and you can directly approach them choosing them in the menu and then go for it. They could've added some sort of ladder just for that and then put out daily rewards for the "fastest runs", the "runs with most damage" etc. pp. - they did not understand the true nature of their own game and constantly tried to force the player to play the game like he doesn't want to at a certain point, that is playing through the game from start to finish over and over again, going through the story over and over again. It's just so fucking tedious. There is no surprise and no reward in the game.
Also, instead of getting rid of boss runs etc, they should've implemented them! After you beat the game you see all "run possibilities" for a certain act and you can directly approach them choosing them in the menu and then go for it. They could've added some sort of ladder just for that and then put out daily rewards for the "fastest runs", the "runs with most damage" etc. pp. - they did not understand the true nature of their own game and constantly tried to force the player to play the game like he doesn't want to at a certain point, that is playing through the game from start to finish over and over again, going through the story over and over again. It's just so fucking tedious. There is no surprise and no reward in the game.
Yeah...one of the biggest problems I have with the game is, how the hell did Blizzard release Inferno without any sort of internal testing. There is no way in fucking hell they release Inferno the way it is if they actually played it through, especially since they tested the game internally without AH. The difficulty spike from Act I -> Act II -> Act III is just...ridiculous to say the least.
On the other hand, if Inferno was any easier, there would be even less people playing. Without pvp, the only carrot on the stick is finishing inferno.
That part is true, but its still ridiculously unbalanced. You can have the gears that finishes or farm Act I comfortably. And with the same set up, you can (and probably will) get killed by a regular Wasp within first 5 minutes of Act II. It just doesn't make sense.
Oh...and let's not even bring up the enrage timer. A big "fuck you, go to the RMAH and buy some better gears if you want to progress" to the players.
Supposedly they tested inferno and tweaked the difficulty until the "hardcore" testers said it was challenging, then they doubled it, because the actual players would no doubt be better than their testers.
Personally, I find inferno too easy now, it only becomes difficult when you play with people who are under geared for the act and you have to carry them.
Deaths to wasps in act II are completely avoidable, and is one part of the game that actually depends on the players ability to pay attention to what is going on.
Might be a bit too late to fix anything since the AH system is already set in stone. D2 was so much better (even though jsp still existed) due to system/more sense of community. Also, they could bring back interest and still gain revenue through ladder resets, but I doubt they'll implement ladder anymore.
With all the best items in the auction house how can you have an end game really. If you buy an item that is better than anything getting dropped and you stop caring about basic loot (besides putting it back into the opera house) then really of course there will be no point. It does take awhile to get there though (depending on how you use the auction house early on), so you'd think people would be getting their money's worth
My gearing through inferno has been based upon slow and steady farming to trade for gear, be it by the AH or not, exactly the same as D2 was.
I haven't had any jackpot sales, my most expensive item that sold was for 2 mil. I just have a lot of time right now to invest into the game.
BlazingDarkness
Member
I put about 12 hours in, and didn't find even a minute of it remotely interesting, it's dull. I didn't get my moneys worth.
mhayze
Member
First people were complaining that D3 is not a single player game. Now they are complaining it's not an MMO. I never expected an MMO like 'end game' with mega-dungeon raid events etc. It's Diablo (version next). You kill monsters, you farm gear (or buy it), you fight an end boss and then either the game is done for you, or you play some more in higher difficulty curves.
I bet the vast, vast majority of people get 100+ hours on this game before they start complaining about some of these issues that are discussed in the OP. If you just didn't like the game as the poster above didn't during the first 12 hours, that's a whole other
concern, IMHO. Claiming you no longer enjoy a game after reaching inferno, i.e. tons of hours spent, is more a case of broken expectations than a broken game - again, IMHO.
For a normally priced one-time up front payment game ($60), this is what I would expect. People are complaining that their 3rd, 4th or nth play-through of a basically static game is no longer fun and therefore this game is [broken, not fun, not worth the money, etc.]. I personally find the game to be pretty much what I expect, which is a AAA SP dungeon crawler. Throw in the co-op elements, the many improvements to small things that made D2 a chore, the game in a game which is the AH, and the promised PvP, and I find this to be beating my expectations.
Best advice, if you're not enjoying it now, take a break / stop playing for now. There will be more content soonish (PvP), and long term there will be real new content (expansion pack) with new levels. At which point, even if you don't buy the expansion, all this level 60 gear will be considered crappy, and you can buy and enjoy it for a song on the AH - but that's also a whole new thing to bitch about, for another thread.
I bet the vast, vast majority of people get 100+ hours on this game before they start complaining about some of these issues that are discussed in the OP. If you just didn't like the game as the poster above didn't during the first 12 hours, that's a whole other
(much more legitimate)
For a normally priced one-time up front payment game ($60), this is what I would expect. People are complaining that their 3rd, 4th or nth play-through of a basically static game is no longer fun and therefore this game is [broken, not fun, not worth the money, etc.]. I personally find the game to be pretty much what I expect, which is a AAA SP dungeon crawler. Throw in the co-op elements, the many improvements to small things that made D2 a chore, the game in a game which is the AH, and the promised PvP, and I find this to be beating my expectations.
Best advice, if you're not enjoying it now, take a break / stop playing for now. There will be more content soonish (PvP), and long term there will be real new content (expansion pack) with new levels. At which point, even if you don't buy the expansion, all this level 60 gear will be considered crappy, and you can buy and enjoy it for a song on the AH - but that's also a whole new thing to bitch about, for another thread.
Interfectum
Gold Member
Pretty sad.
Team Filler
Member
That's some quality projecting right there. Perhaps you could go back and read what a lot of people have actually been saying.
Mammoth Jones
Member
This is why I stopped playing. It was satisfying in other games to see items drop you can use but with D3 it's like all I'm doing is grinding gold until I can afford a nice new shiny off the AH.
This is how the RMAH screwed up their game design. Everything is now meant to push you there....
Those items drop or they wouldn't be in the auction house in the first place.
Wait, "enrage timer"? Do the inferno monsters get stronger over time as you fight them or something?
But, they are extremely rare. I spent over 60 hours in Inferno before I found an item that would sell for close to a million gold. I have yet to find an upgrade for my own character while in Inferno. Every single piece of gear I use is from the AH.
Similar threads
- Poll