Why Diablo 3 is a bad game

[Zeriphor]

One of my biggest problems with Diablo 3 is the way they handled the AH. I wouldn't mind it being in the game if they hadn't bent the game around it. They reduced the chance to find a useful item (main stat, vit, resists) because they felt players would use the AH in addition to finding gear. The result of this is that you cannot find gear for yourself. At least, nowhere near as well as you should be able to.

There are other things that I've noticed that cause me to think, "All roads lead to the RMAH," but I can't remember them right now.

 

[zinho73]

The way items are handled it is quite possible to play for a very long time without finding any upgrade (or just a marginal increment that is in practice useless).

Yes I know, that's where the 'Random' part of 'Random drops' comes from.
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-but the fact of the matter is that you can pay to get an immediate advantage that will make you progress. A lot.

If I bought some gear in any of the other aforementioned 'pay-to-save-time' games there'd be an immediate advantage too.
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In fact, some people that loved the game, like Force and Athenne said that the RMAH is a feature that makes people stop playing, simply because they go as far as possible with the power of their wallet and not playing the game.

It can't have made them want to stop playing that badly if they still loved the game.
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In TF2 you do not need to buy anything to advance in the game - and you do not feel that you need to buy anything in order to advance.

This has more to do with the fact that TF2's difficulty rapidly changes depending on what the other team is like than anything.
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If you are playing Diablo 3, unless you are terribly lucky, it will come a time in which you will consider the AH as your only option. The RMAH bypass the necessity to even farm for money.

And this is the same as every other game with Random drops, only without the RMAH so it's more 'it will come a time in which you feel like quitting altogether' (and if there was no RMAH in Diablo III this would still happen, just unofficially.)
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For example, in the current game state, PVP is impossible. The one with bigger wallet would have the more powerful character, no way around it. This is not the case in TF2.

And if there was no official RMAH the one who knew which of the aforementioned unofficial RMAHs to go to would win, or the one whose bigger wallet lets them have the better internet connection, or the one who had the most dumb luck with their drop rolls, or the one whose classed happened to be the most overpowered at the moment...

The game is not totally random (if it was it would be the worst game ever). All random number generators are seeded. The smarter you seed, the more rewarding the game becomes. D3 items are poorly seeded (getting level 30 items with a 50 char) and also have a lot of useless afixes, making a good roll even more difficult. This is poor design.

In TF2, the impact of the items you buy is zero if compared to D3.

See my original post about solutions to drastically reduce the impact of a black market. The RMAH is not a measure to mitigate the problem. It is a measure to profit from it. And it gets in the way of gameplay.

Imagine that, as you say, a class is overpowered. To correct this, Blizz would have to jump trough all kinds of programming hoops because it is bad business to nerf stats that people paid a fortune to get. Multiplayer will always be unbalanced, but:
1. Internet connection issues can be improved with time;
2. Overpowered char can be corrected;
3. Luck won't get you the best equipment in every slot - consistently.
4. And gear in D3 is the only difference between characters. Getting better gear utilizing real money is really cheap design.

Sorry, saying that people would try to buy their way in the game anyway so we will allow them officially is a poor rationalization. It is the same thing of saying that I will steal this suitcase that someone forgot in the bench because if I don't others will anyway. It is an ethical shortcut.

There are alternatives to make money and still put the gameplay front and center on your design.

Hell, just a ingame money AH would do wonders to diminish the black market (yeah, people would still buy gold but, once again, see my opening post).

 

[zinho73]

I will nor reply every point> Some things I disagree, but we are not here to win a contest but to discuss and your opinion is as valid as mine.

No worries, I'm just having the discussion. Mind quoting me though so I know you responded?

Sorry about that, trying to avoid massive wall of text but you got a point.

Once again, some disagreements, but I would like to focus on the way Torchlight did it the random environments.

Every area is random - the above area and the underground. And all look very organic and beautiful (in their characteristic art-style). Once the area is generated it stays that way, so the explored areas look consistent, but if you have other characters you will find the same overall quest, but in different locales with different layouts and different sidequests.

They also had a very good use of 3D, with mobs attacking you from above and ambushes, but that's beside the point.

 

[WoW Killer]

Yes because it is about expectations. Kenyan superstar marathon runner comes in fifth in NY marathon = failure. 80 year old stroke victim finishes last in ny marathon after rehab = success. You cannot evaluate something with looking at the context, imo.

We can word this more appropriately. You could say "Diablo 3 did not meet my expectations" or "Diablo 3 should have been better than it is". That is different from saying Diablo 3 is a bad game. In terms of gameplay and of lifespan (and hence of value for money), I would call it an above average game. To say otherwise would be to set a highly unrealistic measure.

Further, what exactly was your expectation? I expected a Diablo style game with some sense of progression over its predecessors in terms of gameplay. By that I mean I wanted a more involved combat style where a greater number of abilities needed to be employed and where their uses were more circumstantial and strategic. On this, Diablo 3 delivered. The hotkeys, resources and cooldowns were a valid and natural progression for the series. It is, at its core (though not necessarily in its content), a superior game to Diablo and Diablo 2. That was what I was looking for, and that is how I rate the game.

Not that I don't have objections of my own. The itemisation is one such gripe. I don't fault the use of primary stats on gear (for one thing this adds a better sense of gear progression), but I do fault having primary stats competing against less important stats in the gear budget. In Inferno, when you have the NV stacks consistently up, then rares will start to drop like nothing else, but then the vast majority of those rares will be vendor trash. This I feel was a mistake. You could instead set the drop rate considerably lower, but itemise the equipment better so that the rares that dropped would be much more likely to be usable pieces. For instance, a spirit stone with strength instead of dexterity is a useless drop. Make them rarer and then make every spirit stone come with dex, and you would have a much more fulfilling system IMO.

 

[fireaura08]

The problem with D3 is that everything was made with the RMAH in mind. Case in point: Inferno difficulty. They nerfed some spells players were using (Diamond Flesh was one of them, forgot the other) and made it much more difficult to go through without good gear, thus the RMAH. Blizzard makes a cut on every RMAH transaction, so naturally they would want to maximize profits as much as possible.

 

[Zeriphor]

The problem with D3 is that everything was made with the RMAH in mind. Case in point: Inferno difficulty. They nerfed some spells players were using (Diamond Flesh was one of them, forgot the other) and made it much more difficult to go through without good gear, thus the RMAH. Blizzard makes a cut on every RMAH transaction, so naturally they would want to maximize profits as much as possible.

Smoke screen for demon hunters, serenity for monks, and energy armor for wizards are the ones I'm aware of. Basically any skill that allowed you to progress through inferno mode without being geared enough (Blizzard's words, not mine) were hotfixed to no longer work that way.

Note that I said hotfixed, not patched. As in, someone using a skill to defeat content harder than their gear expects was deemed such a great threat that Blizzard felt the need to hotfix this.

 

[zinho73]

1: Items on The AH cannot be obtained without regular gameplay.
Conclusion: nerfing skills is false since you cannot obtain the gear on the ah without someone obtaining it normally.

2: see point one.

3: Everything on the AH is someone else trash. The AH doesn't change your odds. there will still be the same amount of sword of awesome in rotation. If you cant beat the guy who bought the sword you cant beat the guy who sold the sword. Your odds are the same.

4: False conclusion made on the idea that RMAH decided it needed to be online. Fact is Blizzard decided it was to be played online. A RMAH didn't force guild wars to be allways online yet fact remains they could have made it just like Diablo 2 battlenet. Their product is online. Deal with it like you dealt with every other online only product ever.

Skills and farming points are nerfed because if enough people exploits the game, the whole economy crumbles.

The MAH changed your odds before the game was even launched. The ratio time vs reward is the worst I've ever seen in a game of its type. By far. I don't think Blizzard cannot do basic math algorithms. I think they did that on purpose. The problem became worse because they've tied skills with equipment, making the game all about gear check.

Exploits are exploits with or without the RMAH.

You make the conclusion they wouldn't fix them if the RMAH wasn't there?

Also "you think they did it on purpose".

You are not looking for an answer. You are looking for a reason for your predetermined conclusion. In other words. You are making a false conclusion by leading evidence. You conclusion is false.

The game needs to be balanced in order for gear to drop and be put on the AH. By making you char to weak without it the gear, it cannot be obtained in the first place. Your conclusion that skills is nerfed because of the AH is quite simple false logic.

Exploits with RMAH get another, more serious connotation because real money is involved. They are harder to address and must be fixed with more urgency. A bad combination for gameplay balance (as the patches Blizzard is launching are proving. They even admit that they don't have the slightest idea of what the effects of some decisions will be, like greater repair costs. They are iterating by trial and error, which should only be done in a game in the beta phase - the post referring to this is on the front page of Blizzard forums).

About the loot: They either seeded the loot drop like that on purpose or they don't know how to program basic algorithms. It can only be one or the other.

I'm neither looking for an answer nor a reason. I'm stating my opinion. You are free to disagree with.

I don't understand your last paragraph. If people cannot be too weak in order to progress then they should not be nerfing skills and farming places. They should upgrade them.

Look, what Blizzard is doing is this:
Trying to avoid that a player or group of players gets too efficient. THEY NEED TO DO THAT ONLY BECAUSE THE RMAH, because it would be easier to program bots and break the economy. Or heaven forbid, people would not even consider using it.

One good example is nerfing pots and treasure chests. Treasure chests with poor loot is a dreadful design decision, but they had to do it because people and bots were farming them.

The MAH is not the only factor determining this. It is actually a long string of cause and consequence and a series of poor design decisions (starting with bland itemization), but saying that the MAH does no affected those decisions (specially the poorer ones) is being incredibly naive.

You can love the MAH. Nothing wrong with that, but you must see it for what it is. It is not a completely separate package from the game. It is a money grab scheme very integrated with the game itself (otherwise it wouldn't even function properly and would have no reason to exist).

 

[zinho73]

You can't really say D3 is a "bad game" while inserting all sorts of opinion pieces in your post. Kinda kills the credibility a bit.

Not that it's a bad game at all. Some parts are done poorly, and some are done well. For now, I'm playing and having some amount of fun with it.

I can and I did and I gave all kinds of opinions because I think it is a complex issue. I don't believe in good or bad without a context.

If 4 kids have done the game in their basement I would be in awe.

But, given the source material, the company developing it, the time they had to put everything together and the money behind it, Diablo 3 can be safely considered a subpar effort by Blizzard.

However, it was clearly enough for a bunch of people that are having fun with the game to this day and even I, the dreadful critic, had fun with it in my first 100 hours (which is a lot). But looking from a more distant point of view, the flaws become much more evident to me and I think we just missed the opportunity to play one of the most incredible games of all time because Blizzard got greedy. That is a little bit sad.

 

[RJ 17]

More than any other reason, I'd say this about sums things up:

Seriously....fucking seriously...is ANYONE actually stupid enough to use that real money AH? If so, you know you could save yourself a lot of time by just throwing your wallet into a wood chipper.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

You can't really say D3 is a "bad game" while inserting all sorts of opinion pieces in your post. Kinda kills the credibility a bit.

Not that it's a bad game at all. Some parts are done poorly, and some are done well. For now, I'm playing and having some amount of fun with it.

I can and I did and I gave all kinds of opinions because I think it is a complex issue. I don't believe in good or bad without a context.

If 4 kids have done the game in their basement I would be in awe.

But, given the source material, the company developing it, the time they had to put everything together and the money behind it, Diablo 3 can be safely considered a subpar effort by Blizzard.

However, it was clearly enough for a bunch of people that are having fun with the game to this day and even I, the dreadful critic, had fun with it in my first 100 hours (which is a lot). But looking from a more distant point of view, the flaws become much more evident to me and I think we just missed the opportunity to play one of the most incredible games of all time because Blizzard got greedy. That is a little bit sad.

agreed, the game is fun, i'll give it that, and i'm sure i'll keep enjoying it for a while, but there are tons of things about it that just yell out "mehh", even by 2003 standards in depth and setup.

For now, i'm still having more fun, but i think i am experiencing what you have described in that the annoyances are really starting to get to me and they are only getting bigger as I go along.

I'm pretty sure i'll end up picking up torchlight 2 at some point, as it seems to be catering more to what I'm looking for than D3 is. (yes I have sold items on AH, and it does seem like blizzard is bending the game around the AH as it's main feature, rather than having a game with an attached AH)

 

[Blade_125]

If I were a manager at Blizzard and you came to me with that argument I would fire you. The goal is to make it fun enough so that many, many people buy it. If we do more work and do not reap more sales then that is a waste of money. Any business will tell you that. Return on investment.

That being said, when I look at your list of complaints they look like things that would stop me from having fun. I didn't buy the game because of problems I could forsee. So I'm not sure your example at the beginning really ties into the problems you list.

I guess Blizzard has to ask will they lose future sales in Diablo 3 and other games because of any work they didn't put into the game.

 

[zinho73]

Dude you are still leading the evidence.

You need to trying to force your conclusion.

I'm explaining why I get to those conclusions and I'm not forcing anything, I even said you are welcome to disagree.

The time V loot ratio has always been like this in a dungeon crawler.

You have no idea what are you talking about. Play 2 hours of Diablo 2, Torchlight or Titan Quest. In terms of customizing you character with loot and/or abilities you will probably have 5 times the options than in D3. As time passes, the difference will be even greater as items in D3 are harder to get almost exponentially, while in those other games you will be always progressing in some way - and finding incredible loot with way more frequency. See? It is you that is failing to back up your opinions with facts.

You say the RMAH makes urgency in fixing exploits? Then that is a positive thing. Not a negative.

It is a negative if:
1. The exploit is not really a big issue if it weren't for the AH (keeping the development team from dealing with other issues).
2. They do not have the time to test it properly but must launch it anyway.
3. The developer stealth fix them trying to pass them unnoticed.

But hey if all of this is just your opinion that the RMAH has the effect you are saying ok.

It is my opinion that Blizzard is all run by aliens who try to enslave the human race my making us dull zombies.

The thing about opinions you see.... they are like assholes. Everyone has one, and they are back up by shit.

Ok, time to stop feeding the troll. You realize you are the one making crazy and out of the blue assumptions, right?

Unless you can bring me some fact then Ill take your opinion as that. Something that doesn't need to be true.

I just gave a lot of examples and comparisons on all my posts. I even invited to read Bashiok post on the first page of the Blizzard forums in which he says that they think they went overboard with repair prices, but are not sure yet, because they have to acquire data on how this will turn out in light of the other changes. This my friend, is called beta testing.

Ill explain the last paragraph for you thou.

They need to balance it. If the player cannot kill the mob that drops the loot, without the loot they have made an a self defeating loop. Like trying to get your first job, but every job demands you have experience to get the job. They need to mob to be hard without but easier with.

Maybe if I put in WoW terms. If Boss X cannot without having the loot that drops from Boss X then he cannot be beaten. Do you understand now?

Hm, that's what I understood the first time, but I was giving you a way out because it has nothing to do with what we are discussing. That's not a problem with D3 (well, maybe in Inferno for some). I was discussing nerfs done because of the RMAH.

If the loot is on the AH means that you can get the loot without paying. Because the guy who put the loot there did. Simple as that.

If the loot is in the AH, mathematics says that your best chance to get it is buying it, because the chances for you to have a similar roll is close to zero given the way random number generators work on this game. Also, if you buy something to get an advantage you are paying to win. Simple as that. Sorry to break it to you.

 

[zinho73]

Yes because it is about expectations. Kenyan superstar marathon runner comes in fifth in NY marathon = failure. 80 year old stroke victim finishes last in ny marathon after rehab = success. You cannot evaluate something with looking at the context, imo.

We can word this more appropriately. You could say "Diablo 3 did not meet my expectations" or "Diablo 3 should have been better than it is". That is different from saying Diablo 3 is a bad game. In terms of gameplay and of lifespan (and hence of value for money), I would call it an above average game. To say otherwise would be to set a highly unrealistic measure.

Further, what exactly was your expectation? I expected a Diablo style game with some sense of progression over its predecessors in terms of gameplay. By that I mean I wanted a more involved combat style where a greater number of abilities needed to be employed and where their uses were more circumstantial and strategic. On this, Diablo 3 delivered. The hotkeys, resources and cooldowns were a valid and natural progression for the series. It is, at its core (though not necessarily in its content), a superior game to Diablo and Diablo 2. That was what I was looking for, and that is how I rate the game.

Not that I don't have objections of my own. The itemisation is one such gripe. I don't fault the use of primary stats on gear (for one thing this adds a better sense of gear progression), but I do fault having primary stats competing against less important stats in the gear budget. In Inferno, when you have the NV stacks consistently up, then rares will start to drop like nothing else, but then the vast majority of those rares will be vendor trash. This I feel was a mistake. You could instead set the drop rate considerably lower, but itemise the equipment better so that the rares that dropped would be much more likely to be usable pieces. For instance, a spirit stone with strength instead of dexterity is a useless drop. Make them rarer and then make every spirit stone come with dex, and you would have a much more fulfilling system IMO.

I could word it in another way, but it would not sound true to me. In my point of view I just saw a group of highly payed professionals performing very poorly. This is bad.

I said D3 is bad game and then I explained the light I was viewing it. I do not believe in good or bad without context. This choice of words also helps to understand why there are so many people calling it the "worse game ever" when it is clearly not.

Also, what I see is that the bad moniker is not even affixed to the game on expectation alone. Most people that dislike the game gave it a fair chance, playing it until Inferno at least. The steam was lost when they were able to see through the cracks (or when the shortcomings were more evident).

 

[zinho73]

First, a little bit of history:

Back in my university days, I had a professor that gave me a B in an art direction work that was clearly more polished and better than the work from other students.

When I asked why, he said that I was already working professionally and was clearly capable to do more while the others made the best they could. He was right. I had the resources and knowledge to make a much better work, but I didn?t because I did just enough to be better than the competition. I was lazy and did not give my best.

Apples and oranges. When calling a game good or bad we're talking about the end result alone. Not the same for your class apparently. We're not grading their effort like your professor was grading yours. When I say a game is good I mean that I enjoy it, doesn't matter how much effort or a lack of it was put into it. This is not an evaluation on their improvement and what they're learning.

It is more an evaluation of skill and capacity. Some parts of the game are great and others (like itemization) are almost amateurish. Having fun with the game resides on your ability to really like what is well done and and mostly ignore what it isn't.

All games have good and bad parts.

A game might be good enough for me, might be good enough to make a profit on its own, might be good enough to ride on the success of its prequels but still not as good as it should be.

Is this unfair criticism? I don't think so, it is a criticism of the size of Blizzard themselves. This is a company that made great games - not good enough ones.

 

[BoogityBoogityMan]

We can word this more appropriately. You could say "Diablo 3 did not meet my expectations" or "Diablo 3 should have been better than it is". That is different from saying Diablo 3 is a bad game. In terms of gameplay and of lifespan (and hence of value for money), I would call it an above average game. To say otherwise would be to set a highly unrealistic measure.

Further, what exactly was your expectation?

Personally, I expected a well made and well tested game that focused 100% on gameplay and the player, like Diablo I&II.

I guess I was just being naive in expecting a billion dollar multinational corporation to not try to maximize shareholder value.

 

[WoW Killer]

If the loot is on the AH means that you can get the loot without paying. Because the guy who put the loot there did. Simple as that.

If the loot is in the AH, mathematics says that your best chance to get it is buying it, because the chances for you to have a similar roll is close to zero given the way random number generators work on this game. Also, if you buy something to get an advantage you are paying to win. Simple as that. Sorry to break it to you.

You've missed Draech's point there. It is very viable to go through the game without using the auction house. The proof of this is in the auction house itself. Whatever is being sold there was a drop for some player somewhere along the line (and incidentally you can get ilvl 63 gear, the best in the game, from Act 1, so it's not a case of better geared players feeding the lesser players). Though I've used the auction house a lot myself, at one point recently (this is in Inferno) I had more than half of my slots filled with items I'd found myself. I've since bought a few upgrades, but I've also had decent items drop for other classes that I've sold on (or kept for alts; for some reason the RNG keeps throwing strength gear at me, which might be my cue to roll a barb - that new double tornado build looks sick). If I'd kept hold of all the relevant gear I'd had drop I could probably be in a full set of self found items easily good enough for Act 2, and this is doing mostly Act 1 runs. Of course it's going to be easier using the auction house. That's the very nature of having 5 classes each with different gear they're looking out for. However likely it is that a usable item will drop for you, it is five times as likely that an item drops that can be traded for an item you can use.

This drop rate argument doesn't add up though. You're suggesting that a higher drop rate would necessarily make the game more enjoyable. I'll tell you what it would do, it'd make the game a lot shorter. Gear is the point of the game; the endgame is loot grinding. As soon as someone has all the best items the game is over for them. Further, if the drop rates are too low then you're going to get less trade in the AH and in the RMAH, which means less money for Blizzard. In other words, the idea that the drop rates were set lower than they should be due to the RMAH is ill founded. Still, they may not have got it exactly right on the first try, and in fact they have upped the rates slightly since release. This is to be expected with a new game; Diablo 2 had years of patches, and an expansion, to get it right. Diablo 2 also had duping, so take the availability of decent gear in that game with a pinch of salt.