Diablo 3: Its the fault of the audience or the developers?

[Ruzinus]

Is there some reason an MMORTS should be possible? The very idea seems stupid unless you're trying to talk about things like ye olde O-Game, in which case my problem is with the "RTS" half.

You might not think you're defining anything, but by pointing to GW and saying, "that is an MMO," you are defining it.

Don't see why such a young term is already subject to such semiotic stress. It's an acronym, and the words that make it up are pretty explicit.

Massively Multiplayer Online.

Each word should be pretty obvious.

Online - The world exists on some server somewhere, not your own machine. It is Online.

Multiplayer - ...yknow, multiplayer.

Massively - This is the only term that seems to allow even the slightest confusion, because it's not clear if it's modifying "Multiplayer" or "Game" from the term itself. Either way, it seems simple enough that it should be Massive.

Is it Massive? Is it Multiplayer, Massively so? Is it Online (meaning, yes, some level of game world maintained on a server)?

If the answer to any of those is no, how can it be an MMO?

There's not a lot of room for confusion.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Game is rather made of fail desu.

 

[Ruzinus]

I do agree that always-online DRM is disgusting. So far I've only personally encountered it through SC2 and D3 (I think, anyway... I've been hearing some creepy things about Steam seeming to turn into it for some people, but I've yet to have any problems using Offline Mode myself). With SC2 I didn't really think about it, which is the danger of the thing, isn't it?

It wasn't really the point I was trying to make.

It is more like "Game may change during online play" and then only making online play available.

In Anno 2070 they build the DRM into the game as a part of it. When playing you will be set to vote on specific world leaders and they will in turn give ingame bonuses. There are other extras like missions available to you will be dependent on overall performance of everyone who plays. Essentially working your game into the worlds as a whole.

This blurs the line between DRM and feature because this clearly wouldn't be possible to do offline. SC2's feature doesn't directly affect gameplay and therefore allows you to DC and play.

The point is... what then? I haven't played Anno 2070, but I did try the demo of an earlier Anno game, and that one felt like SimCity age of exploration island edition, so I imagine that Anno 2070 is basically SimCity Waterworld edition.

Nothing you are describing about it sounds like multiplayer, it just sounds like what you're doing in your single player space is affected by what other people are doing in their single player spaces, and you can't even directly interact with those other spaces.

 

[elvor0]

Well I haven't actually played any RTS MMOs, so I can't really comment on that, I was aware that the acronym exists and there are games out there that classify themselves as such, but that's about it. I'm not quite sure how an MMO RTS would work really, if you can give me a quick idea of one the basic idea of the one RTS MMOs, that'd be great, (not that I'm saying I don't believe you, just I can't think how it would work, at least not in the traditional sense. MMO /Turn/ based Strategy is an easy one).

Well a MMORTS is in its simplest a regular RTS with a metagame attached to it. Imagine if you will League of Legends if each match would determine land control for Noxus and Demacia (dont know if you have played LoL, but if you have that should make sense). It can also involve element of Farmville style base progression that would then affect the world.

If one were to break it down one could argue that the MMORTS is nothing but a glorified lobby system with some social gaming aspects put on, but now when I think about it that could be said about a lot of MMO's. Even the ones with persistent worlds. WoW may keep playing while you sleep, but more or less everything re-spawns at a short rate. I am starting to think that MMO for me might be how your game is affected by the playerbase as a whole. Werther it being directly or indirectly.

Ah that makes sense, sort of what I was thinking it might be. Only way you could it really, unless you just had a fucking huge world and had bases and stuff, like a real time Civilization, on an MMO scale,completely unfeasable, but cool idea none the less. I think RTS is one of those genres that makes it difficult to make into an MMO, due to the multi controlled nature of them, at least until we have some amazing new level of technology to make something of what I just envisioned possible. But there is still a persistant world, which continues to exist after you log out. The only thing persistent in Guild Wars is the town, which could be replaced by the same thing that D3 has with it's AH and General Chat and retain the same functionality, aside from you being able to run around in the chat room.

I take it if (using LoL states) Darmacia controls more territory, they gain access to more tech and stuff? Actually, I'm quite interested now, any decent ones you can reccomend?

But I'm going to go with it being dependant on the suffix after MMO. I still maintain that WoW, Champions Online, Eve Online etc etc, demonstrate the defining characteristics of an MMO /RPG/, and that Guild Wars is a Co Op enabled RPG. It needs that element of everyone sharing the same space, other wise it's just a misleading way of saying your game has Co Op. Like me calling CoD an MMO-FPS, and arguing it's similar to Planetside.

 

[Signa]

I'm not sure what we are talking about, but every single one of my issues with Diablo 3 comes from choices the developers made. No two ways about that. Then there's the issues my friends are having (since I'm yet to play it), and those issues also stem from lack of dev creativity. What we got was a watered-down action RPG, with all of its central mechanics hinged on an auction house to earn the devs more money post-release. Simple as.

Suggesting the fan base had anything to do with it is just trying to mitigate the blame.

 

[Victoly]

It doesn't matter whether D3 is an MMO or not. It's a pointless argument. A red herring.

Let's recap:
DioWallachia said that D3 developers could have learned a lot from "other games".
Ruzinus asked, "What kinds of other games?"
DioWallachi suggested D3 devs ought to have learned from failed MMOs.

It doesn't matter whether or not D3 is an MMO or not in order to have learned from one (or several) of them. Personally I wouldn't consider it an MMO, since 4-player co-op doesn't strike me as "massively multiplayer", but in the end it's all beside the point. The point is that DioWallachi has suggested a place that D3 developers could have learned something, but hasn't suggested anything specific that they ought to have learned.

Also, that information about D3 being an MMO early in its development? Pretty sure that was back before everyone who had worked on the earlier Diablo games left Blizzard 10 years ago. The current version of D3, which has been in development for the past 6 years, was never intended to be an MMO.

...you killed me with these sentence: "IT IS PURPOSELY A LESSER SKINNER BOX!". Can i ask what they were smoking? i could understand if they fucked up by sheer incompetence but PURPOSELY?

You clearly have no clue what Ruzinus means by "Skinner box". A Skinner box is a BAD THING FOR A GAME TO BE. It is a cheap, superficial way of hooking players based on compulsion INSTEAD of fun. Ruzinus is arguing that D3 tried to be less of a "Skinner Box" and more of a fun game. It's similar to arguing that he wants McDonald's fries to actually taste good, not just to be hooked on them because they lace the cooking grease with heroin.

Go re-read all of Ruzinus' posts and mentally replace "Skinner box" with "bad game that uses cheap psychological tricks to addict me".

Now, on to the main subject at hand...

Basically, I think Ruzinus is correct: Players actually wanted to be Skinner-boxed.

The primary reason many players were dissatisfied with D3 (note: not a reason that D3 was a "bad game", because it wasn't, but a reason many players were dissatisfied - and I think some of that dissatisfaction is legitimate) is because it was harder than D2.

D2 was like a slot machine - it's really, really easy to repeat the process and try again for a win. This caused players to go on mindlessly and endlessly cranking that lever, over and over. With D3, they fundamentally made another slot machine, except this time pulling the lever takes a lot of effort. Players said they wanted a really really hard difficulty where the super-duper UBER best items would drop. Blizzard gave it to us, but Blizzard didn't really think about what the players were thinking.

Y'see, D2 wasn't a hard game at all, but because people like to pat themselves on the back, dedicated D2 players would lie to themselves and claim that what they did took a modicum of skill, rather than just rote grinding. Their super-leet-uber unique item sets were the result of their oh-so-hard work, not just the result of playing the game for ever and ever. So when Blizzard suggested making a (genuinely) difficult end-game, these players thought, "Yeah! We can continue to be the uber leet top-dawgz and show off all our phat lewtz to the WoW-noobz lol."

Fast forward a few months. People reach the end-game and get frustrated. The very vocal D2 fanbase - who were expecting things to be easy FOR THEM (not realizing that D2 was a terribly easy game) - weren't at the top of the heap, which filled them with uncontrollable amounts of envy. The same sort of player that wants to look down upon everyone else and laugh simply can't deal with the possibility that they were being looked down upon by others, which led them to the auction house. They soon discovered that it was easier to grind gold and buy items from botters than to find those items for themselves. So instead of playing the game as it was meant to be played, they play an easier version in which they go back to rote grinding, this time for gold instead of random item drops.

Now, I'm exaggerating a fair bit here about the playerbase, but this was the attitude in general. It wasn't only the D2 diehards that flocked to the AH - it was a very convenient feature for a ton of players - and the botters that were fueling the AH were themselves a tremendous part of the problem.

A lot of people have suggested that the inclusion of the AH was the root of the problem, and that's simply not true. Player trading and forum sales would occur regardless. The AH, however, was a catalyst for a problem that was inherent to the game for a lot of players: the best stuff was actually a challenge to obtain, and a lot of players actually wanted the game to be easy.

TL;DR version: Blizzard misread their fanbase, made the end-game too challenging for most, and didn't crack down hard enough on botters in the first couple weeks of the game (if that's even possible to do).

 

[Victoly]

Oh, and for those suggesting that the plot was a big draw for the first two games in the series? It's time for a reality check. The plot for the Diablo series has never been a strong point; you're just noticing that now because you're no longer eleven years old.

The first game had very little plot. It was replete with atmosphere, and its lack of plot allowed players to use their imaginations to fill in the blanks.

Diablo 2 included some very nicely-presented cinematics involving some drunk named Marius, but the plot itself was pretty lacklustre. "Oh no guyz, demons broke into the basement of Jerhyn's Harem and he kept it a secret from us! Let's go beat them demons up!" "Oh no guyz, demons corrupted some weird jungle cultists or something! Let's go beat them demons up!"

Diablo 3 actually tried to have a coherent plot, and its presentation was an improvement over the first two games in a number of ways. The problems mostly came with incredibly campy dialogue and its caricatured presentation of most of its characters, particularly the villains.

Diablo 3's plot wasn't especially good, but neither was the plot of the first two.

 

[Zenn3k]

The problem with Diablo 3 is that Blizzard made it TOO noob friendly.

They simplified everything SO MUCH that there was nothing to figure out, nothing to add any layers of depth to the game.

Stack primary, vit, and resist. Its not at all complex, its in fact, incredibly boring and unrewarding.

They tried so hard to appeal to as many people as possible that they really ended up appealing to nobody, well, nobody outside of the CoD/Super Casual crowd who doesn't want to figure things out, they just want to do repetitive mindless tasks.

The story is bad, the gameplay is boring, the loot is stale and uninteresting, the skill system is automatic and therefore boring. The game makes no effort to keep the player invented outside of "This is Diablo, love our franchise".

I'm playing Path of Exile now, its SOOOOOOOOOO much better than Diablo 3. Its so incredibly fun and addicting that I haven't gotten more than 4-5 hours of sleep a night since I started playing....up till 3 am killing mobs and loving it.

Blizzard is not what it once was.

 

[DioWallachia]

Also, that information about D3 being an MMO early in its development? Pretty sure that was back before everyone who had worked on the earlier Diablo games left Blizzard 10 years ago. The current version of D3, which has been in development for the past 6 years, was never intended to be an MMO.

www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/117939-Diablo-II-Dev-Diablo-III-Was-Originally-an-MMO

Yes it was an MMO. Now you may say that it ISNT now but that is an empty claim, isnt it? How do we know it ISNT right now an MMO? apparently the people on this post are still trying to define what a MMO even is. In fact, how do we know they arent lying to us? maybe they see the word "MMORPG" and think of it as an ugly word for the audience to hear (along with "streamlined", "retool", "remake" and "simplified") specially with all the competition using the same term, and for that, they decided to say that it WAS an MMO but now it isnt just to keep the people calm about their lives being wasted away in another WOW clone made by the same company that made it to begin with . Lets not forget that many people have died in recent years for playing excessively on MMOs and we dont want that stigma being held over THEIR games. I mean, we are already getting fire for being associated with ACTIVISION and all the Oliver North fiasco on the CoD, we dont want to raise the public awareness TOO much now does it?

In other words, this is kinda like a Parody Retcon to me:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ParodyRetcon

Its just a way to tell us that "Dont worry kids! we have seen so many HORRIBLE games out there with the label of MMO that are out there, waiting to betray you and leave you addicted to a world that isnt worth it. But fear not, because i am here for you, i though ahead for you and made a game that TOTALLY ISNT A MMO, meaning that it will be like the old days, where you play the way you want and no addictive and psychological manipulations are being played at hand to hook you up, i would not DARE FOR SUCH THING!! Honest .

So you can sleep thight this night, and dont forget to save all that money your father gave you!! BLIZZARD AWAAAAAAY!!!!!!!"

You know what? fuck it, this is what ACTIVISION and Bliz reminds me off:

You clearly have no clue what Ruzinus means by "Skinner box". A Skinner box is a BAD THING FOR A GAME TO BE. It is a cheap, superficial way of hooking players based on compulsion INSTEAD of fun. Ruzinus is arguing that D3 tried to be less of a "Skinner Box" and more of a fun game. It's similar to arguing that he wants McDonald's fries to actually taste good, not just to be hooked on them because they lace the cooking grease with heroin.

Go re-read all of Ruzinus' posts and mentally replace "Skinner box" with "bad game that uses cheap psychological tricks to addict me".

And its all right for the Skinner Box to be "BAD THING FOR A GAME TO BE", i dont see the problem...........for the money making perspective that it

You kinda forgot (or didnt read what i say) but i said it bafles me how "they" (the developers) would try to make a shitty SB ON PURPOSE. They CANT make a fun game when they got a formula that manages to EXPLOIT their fanbase to the Nth Degree, why care for the customers if they arent smart enough to get away from this kind of bullshit? the fans deserve to be exploited.
Do you remember that boy who played Diablo 3 and died in a cyber cafe while everyone else didnt give a fuck about it? ACTIVISION and Bliz is like the rest of those people and the fans/audience is that dead guy, do they give a fuck? OF COURSE NOT. And why should they? they only want to do the CoD thing and make a shitload of money with little effort, and now they got the SB to do so.

So with all that in mind, why, OH WHY, would they want ON PURPOSE to make a SB that does a less of a job than the previous one?

I agree with Ruzinus on the fact that "it didnt SB them hard enough", but on PURPOSE?

......really ?

Are you joking? Did they develop a soul in the last moment? did they wish upon a star? were they touched by Vorlons? did they played a CoD themselves and say: "What have we done to the world"? WHY WOULD THEY REFUSE TO USE ON PURPOSE THE TOOLS THAT WILL ALLOW THEM TO MAKE MONEY AT THE EXPENSE OF THEIR FANBASE WHEN IT WAS CLEAR THAT THEY DONT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THEM??
That is the same as EA making a non-rushed, non-glichy, non-streamlined as fuck and without DRM game. IT.IS.IMPOSSIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!

You made me use the CAPS more often, what the hell should i say that i DIDNT say already? i dont care if the fanbase ACTUALLY wants to be SB as you said on the rest of the post, that isnt something i want to know, what i do want to know is if they really fucked up on purpose or by sheer incompetence. It could be that most people that made Diablo 2 before no longer works there but in all seriousness, is it really THAT hard to work without those people? were they the "researchers" on the SB formula and now that they are gone Bliz cant just....you know, find someone else?

D2 was like a slot machine - it's really, really easy to repeat the process and try again for a win. This caused players to go on mindlessly and endlessly cranking that lever, over and over. With D3, they fundamentally made another slot machine, except this time pulling the lever takes a lot of effort. Players said they wanted a really really hard difficulty where the super-duper UBER best items would drop. Blizzard gave it to us, but Blizzard didn't really think about what the players were thinking.

I already posted a video about the items but i will just say here that D3 was a more harder and the REWARDS are more miserable, as you know, those uniques and such are less usefull than ever compared to the ones of D2 were even the most basic ones can be used for late game because their properties could be usefull for a specific kind of play, something that was ALSO removed from D3 since now EVERYONE obtains the same skills on the same order without any player choice in that regard, sending the replay value of every char to fucking NONE.

 

[Zenn3k]

TL;DR version: Blizzard misread their fanbase, made the end-game too challenging for most, and didn't crack down hard enough on botters in the first couple weeks of the game (if that's even possible to do).

D3 end-game isn't challenging at all, it never was and it still is not.

There are two states of D3: You either outgear an enemy and kill it, or you undergear an enemy and you die...usually really fast.

Thats not a "challenge", thats just a straight up gear-check. Thats all D3 has ever been and thats all it was designed to be...a gear-check game.

Sadly, with nothing else to keep playing interested in the game, since its so incredibly stream-lined...people who realize how the gear-check system works, quickly get bored and leave...hence the mass exodus that D3 as experienced just 2 months after release.

The auction house system is a big part of the problem with the game, since the drop rates were balanced around the fact that gear would flood the AH...in order to control how quickly gear floods the AH, they scaled the drop rates way way down at launch. This just further encourages AH usage as the sole method of upgrading your character.

You'd still have the issue of "pure gear-check" with or without the AH, but both of those problems combined make for a very poorly made game.

 

[DioWallachia]

I'm not sure what we are talking about, but every single one of my issues with Diablo 3 comes from choices the developers made. No two ways about that. Then there's the issues my friends are having (since I'm yet to play it), and those issues also stem from lack of dev creativity. What we got was a watered-down action RPG, with all of its central mechanics hinged on an auction house to earn the devs more money post-release. Simple as.

Suggesting the fan base had anything to do with it is just trying to mitigate the blame.

Could it be or the other, i dont know. It just that D3 looks and feels like the combination of EVERYTHING around the word "addicting" that made Wow and D2 successful and we end up with something that varely reasembles a game.

And like i said on the OP, it seems designed around making the late parts of D2 (when you are looking for loot on Inferno even when you already completed the story millions of times) more addictive and easy (in theory anyway)

 

[DioWallachia]

D3 end-game isn't challenging at all, it never was and it still is not.

There are two states of D3: You either outgear an enemy and kill it, or you undergear an enemy and you die...usually really fast.

Thats not a "challenge", thats just a straight up gear-check. Thats all D3 has ever been and thats all it was designed to be...a gear-check game.

Sadly, with nothing else to keep playing interested in the game, since its so incredibly stream-lined...people who realize how the gear-check system works, quickly get bored and leave...hence the mass exodus that D3 as experienced just 2 months after release.

The auction house system is a big part of the problem with the game, since the drop rates were balanced around the fact that gear would flood the AH...in order to control how quickly gear floods the AH, they scaled the drop rates way way down at launch. This just further encourages AH usage as the sole method of upgrading your character.

You'd still have the issue of "pure gear-check" with or without the AH, but both of those problems combined make for a very poorly made game.

This should be the video everyone should look for regarding the "challenge":

 

[Skratt]

Diablo 3 is a great game. I just don't like it. I pre-ordered the damn thing and have never regretted a game purchase more. I wanted Diablo 2 with new levels, characters, stories, etc. What I got was very pretty environments and engaging story with cinematic sequences that were awesome but all of the game play mechanics I liked were missing or fucked with. I am obviously not typical because there are millions who still play this game.

I would argue that it can't be the Devs that made a mistake because they made a shit ton of money and so many people play this game every day. Either the community is the largest collection of sadomasochists I've ever heard of, or they like the game and grumble about a few features and will just live with it.

So that leaves only one option - those of us who expected X and were handed Y. I want my money back and am unhappy with the game but I know that is just me and am not entitled to shit. Nobody forced me or anybody else to pre-order. We aren't pissed at the company, we are pissed at ourselves for making an obvious fan boy choice of supporting Blizzard when we should have done with them the same as we do with all other game companies and make sure they made a game we actually want to play before we buy it instead of saying we loved part 2 and fuck yes I want part 3!

I'll probably catch a lot of heat for that view from those that still think the company wronged them in some way but whatever. If you pre-ordered this game for ANY reason and were unhappy with the results, you have nobody to blame but yourself. We all had options and some of us chose poorly. Get over it.

 

[DioWallachia]

Oh, and for those suggesting that the plot was a big draw for the first two games in the series? It's time for a reality check. The plot for the Diablo series has never been a strong point; you're just noticing that now because you're no longer eleven years old.

The first game had very little plot. It was replete with atmosphere, and its lack of plot allowed players to use their imaginations to fill in the blanks.

Diablo 2 included some very nicely-presented cinematics involving some drunk named Marius, but the plot itself was pretty lacklustre. "Oh no guyz, demons broke into the basement of Jerhyn's Harem and he kept it a secret from us! Let's go beat them demons up!" "Oh no guyz, demons corrupted some weird jungle cultists or something! Let's go beat them demons up!"

Diablo 3 actually tried to have a coherent plot, and its presentation was an improvement over the first two games in a number of ways. The problems mostly came with incredibly campy dialogue and its caricatured presentation of most of its characters, particularly the villains.

Diablo 3's plot wasn't especially good, but neither was the plot of the first two.

So? Citizen Kane has also a "standard" or little plot to begin with but does it job well. After all, isnt that the principle of all entertainment, "Show, Dont Tell?" ?

And the atmosphere WAS there thanks to the execution of the plot.

BUT I LOVE how you keep saying that D3 has a coherent plot, because after all, if a "strategist" demon is telling me ALL his plans in advance (and for every step i take) its CLEAR that i, PUNY MORTAL, cannot comprehend the sheer magnificent bastardy of these TACTICAL GENIUS!! Kinda like how the Reapers are beyond comprehention, right? its not the fault of the developers that the ending revealing these reasons are beyond our understanding, its OUR inability to comprehend for being a bunch of whinny mortals.

Its presentation was useless and was done in a way that remind me off all the games that sacrifices player interactions, to make sure they go the right way to have the story being "properly" told (The Stanley Parable would like to have a few words with the D3 team)

Nice try

 

[DioWallachia]

This is a pathetic thread.

But I'll chip in! Can't pass up on a moment to hate on Blizzard, especially when some of my favorite people are participating in the *air quotes* discussion. Diablo 3 is the fault of the audience as much as it is the fault of the audience trash like Twilight, Transformers or Tstar Wars prequels gets made, or ends up shit. It is my unique opinion that the vast majority of the audience for nearly anything is only mildly discerning at best, and seeing how with Diablo 3 Blizzard had zero pretense of going for anyone other than that audience, we arrive at the cause of it.

Overwhelming mediocrity and blatant failures on what should have been sure things, good job Blizz. Hope your profits keep growing.

So that means that Bliz DID listened to the audience and now we have to pay for the Frankenstein monstrosity that lies before our eyes, right? Wasnt there any pragmatic choice that they could have done to spare us from our own stupidity? because even a hack like Michael Bay played down (NOT ALL, JUST A FEW) the shitty elements of the previous films.

That is not a recommendation to see the fucking movie btw, just because its LESS shitty doesnt mean that it isnt shit anymore.