Complaints, gripes, kvetches...

[Falconeer]

I think it's undeniable that Diablo 3 is lots and lots of fun. I feel it's pointless to respond to criticism by saying "whatever, I'm having lots of fun!". Damn, the game was released 9 days ago. If you weren't having lots of fun after 9 days this would be an epic disaster.

No, the real question is: does it have longevity? Using your experience with Diablo 2 to answer that question is, in my opinion, a mistake. That was 8 to 12 years younger You. Not just that, the industry was different and, in a way, there were less instant fun games competing with it. The Diablos drilled a hole in the fiber of our gaming habits and blissfully filled it at the same time. It's not like that anymore, there's plenty of other perfectly exectued and greatly entertaining things to play, ARPG but not just.
Also, to evaluate based on the fun you are having now sounds more like proposing to the girl/boy you just met 9 days ago cause "I'll never get bored of you!". Crushes are not to be trusted.

As the game is now, I see no longevity in this. Lots here didn't hit the broken-loot wall yet, so it's easy to say "oh I don't care". What you should probably say is "I hope they'll fix it before I get there". Same for additional modes, PvP, ladder, etc. and other fixes. Hope they implement them before you realize that you are not 22 anymore and you have been going through the same identical stuff at the same identical pace for a couple of months.

It's an awesome game. I am one of those that is certainly having more fun that I had with Diablo 2, and I didn't think it was possible. But feels more like a casual game to me than one with any kind of staying power at the moment.

[Maledict]

I think that's one of the main reasons behind the always online aspect tone honest. It's going to be the social stuff and playing in groups which keeps thegame going, and they've clearly invested a huge amount of time and money into that. It probably has the best grouping options I've seen in a game pulpy because its so fast and convenient.

Whether or not that will work is still to be seen. (agree completely with you regarding itemisation, and would also add they need to fixit at lower levels as well. People need sets and uniques at the lower levels to push the to play more and play alts. The current system completely lacks that.

Example - on Diablo 2, I killed Diablo first with my amazon, and a Tarn helm dropped. It completely blew my mind that you could get items which increased all your skills at once, and immediately pushed me into nightmare mode to find more - and to roll a sorceress alt to use the helm. In Diablo 3 i got one blue magic item which was a slight upgrade and two rares which looked exactly the same as everything else.

[Tebonas]

Let just agree to disagree on WoW, Maledict. One mans innovation is another mans iteration. Nothing you mentioned is anything put polishing proven concepts.

On Diablo3, I think the problem here really seems to be the AH. If you play the game without it, the items that drop are upgrades. Also, the people already can see what awaits them in the future and the sense of wonder is gone.

Legendaries and Sets need to be improved. Plus, most stats being next to useless was a bad idea as well. I don't see the fun lasting all that long, and a "Gotta catch them all" is missing as well. Not many people will play this in two years.

But the next few weeks/months will be an awesome ride.

[Rendakor]

It's a major design issue to have a game centered around loot drops where the drops are mostly lame compared to what you can buy. And it's a hard problem to solve. In a game like this where almost every creature you kill drops some loot there is never going to be a scarcity of items that aren't good enough to bother equipping yourself but are really good for someone lower. It seems like the main "fix" is to use willpower and artificially make the game more fun and difficult by not using the auction house. It seems like the most fun way to play the game (for many people at least) is to refuse to use one of the major new systems.

The easiest fix would be to increase the required level for items dropped by mobs, either by actually making mobs drop higher level loot or by simply making items require higher levels (although the latter would be messier as it would also constitute a nerf). The problem isn't "mobs drop too many items" it's "level 30 mobs drop level 25 loot". The ideal situation would have mobs dropping things that are as much as 1-2 levels higher than themselves, to allow you save something and actually level up into it; as it stands it's rarely even worth keeping something for an alt because the actual itemization is pretty unimpressive and thus there really aren't many exceptional items.

[Merusk]

It's an awesome game. I am one of those that is certainly having more fun that I had with Diablo 2, and I didn't think it was possible. But feels more like a casual game to me than one with any kind of staying power at the moment.

Games are meant to be casual.  The "Golden Age" of games being played obsessively for hours on end before you even complete them is dead and gone and we're better for it.  This is what the genre is now.  Blame consoles, blame people without Autism spectrum flavors getting in to games, blame the phase of the moon or your own 'old' age. 

In the end it doesn't matter and it has to be evaluated for the time period it's created within.  For that it's a good game with some flaws.

I label the AH as a flaw, yes.  However in this day and age it's going to be there somehow.  The folks who pointed that out when I first started bitching about an RMT AH are correct.  You can't uncork that bottle, only attempt to control the flow and internalize that revenue. That's a problem created by the players, not the game devs.

Games no longer have a sense of discovery. They never will again.  It's just not going to happen unless YOU, the player, choose to ignore outside information and the internet.  Again, not a problem created by the game devs and I wouldn't count that as a flaw just a fact of the age.

Connectivity is a huge issue.  If this is how you're going to control pirating you'd better have a solid hardware base. They don't.  That's a flaw of the game and a failure of the game company. 

The skill system is a boon and a benefit.  I'm kind of tired of seeing whines about it.  Talent points are old and tired these days.  Particularly with a persistent game that's always patched to the latest version.  You're going to have to have a way to change builds or force everyone to level up new characters to do the same cookie cutter builds that are now viable.  What's that you say, add respecs?  Hey, guess what the system in place is.

The item system is kind of fucked up.  You should be getting even-level drops from the mobs you're killing, not below-level.  Just dumb but at least it's fixable.

Bosses are terrible.  That's a huge flaw. They're not even as difficult as WOW bosses and those aren't terribly hard themselves.  Diablo was the only one I really had a rough time with and that was disappointing.  On normal mode, in a party of 4, most bosses just melted.  That's not fun or entertaining, that's just a silly one-time yellow with some terrible story attached.

The story was mediocre at best.  I expected better, but maybe I'm just too old and sophisticated for game stories now.  I recall my parents ripping apart things I thought were awesome in my youth and thinking they were crazy.  Then I got older and watched them again and saw my parent's point.  Probably the case here as well and I should just stop expecting anything but tripe.  I'm sure I'd think it were awesome if I were 17-20 once again.

 

Let just agree to disagree on WoW, Maledict. One mans innovation is another mans iteration. Nothing you mentioned is anything put polishing proven concepts.

[amiable]

Repost from the hardcore thread, but I am going to post it here as well because it really annoys me:

"Dear Blizzard,

I understand you want to hotfix nerfs into the game because folks are beating  the game too fast, and you were all like "no one will ever beat our super hard game" during your press tour.  But if you are going to be lazy about it and not update the tooltips you have a minimum responsibility to let people know on the splash screen that some changes have been made you should be aware of.  I shouldn't be required to scan the forums every time I play to see how my defensive abilities have changed.  

RIP level 22 Demon hunter whose smokesceen tooltip still says it lasts 2 seconds. "

[kildorn]

So on the drop system, as I plod through hell:

I have a feeling they adjusted the leveling curve at some point and didn't match the drops to it. In Normal and most of NM, the beginning of normal I got drops I couldn't use yet due to level. Past act 1 that turned to always getting drops 3-5 levels below me. This continued until Act 4 NM, where I started getting things a level above me, and Hell I've started getting things -1 to +5 of my level.

It's just screaming to me that they mucked with the leveling curve a bit, and forgot to change the item drop levels when they did it. I'm constantly finding useful things in Hell, which I never found before then.

[SurfD]

So on the drop system, as I plod through hell:

I have a feeling they adjusted the leveling curve at some point and didn't match the drops to it. In Normal and most of NM, the beginning of normal I got drops I couldn't use yet due to level. Past act 1 that turned to always getting drops 3-5 levels below me. This continued until Act 4 NM, where I started getting things a level above me, and Hell I've started getting things -1 to +5 of my level.

It's just screaming to me that they mucked with the leveling curve a bit, and forgot to change the item drop levels when they did it. I'm constantly finding useful things in Hell, which I never found before then.

That probably depends on how fast you level through stuff.  And if youwent back and farmed "older" contend for things like the mat drops for the Staff of Hearding on the same toon, or backtracked entrie sections of an act repeatedly cause you were playing with friends.

There is probably a fairly wide range of levels people could be when reaching any given point, like say act 4 nightmare.

[Mrbloodworth]

One other thing, about people being old and jaded and such. It's undeniable that D3 has a lot of problems, both technical and design, and that Blizzard of late has been very conservative in terms of game design. And while a lot of people say "Blizzard always just takes existing concepts and polishes them rather than innovating" I don't think that's really true until you get past Warcraft 3. Starcraft was not a complete revolution in design but it was in no way conservative either. Warcraft 3 was different from Warcraft 2 in some very fundamental ways. It's only in the post-WoW era that Blizzard games can accurately be called modernizations of older games.

A lot of that is probably because a lot of people working at Blizzard now are Blizzard fans - rather than making a great new game they love Starcraft or Diablo and want to make one of those. That's not some sort of cynical bean-counter thing, it's just that people who really love some older game are often perfectly happy recreating it rather than making something bolder.

For a $60 game D3 feels a little thin. That's coming from someone who paid more than $60 for some SNES games with his own paper route money. (Phantasy Star 4 for Genesis cost 100 dollars!!) But times have changed and the market has bifurcated - you either have a game that is $60 (and actually $70+) with a ton of production value and modes or, especially on the PC, you have a game that is heavily discounted. That said personally I get annoyed at "this doesn't feel like a $60 game" talk and I'll gladly pay $60 dollars for a fun game that feels like a $30 game (whatever that means) than $30 for some bombastic bore that feels $60. But, just given where the market is at right now, I think it's fair to say that were the game called something other than Diablo 3 and came from a company other than Blizzard most people would expect it to be heavily discounted quickly.

+1

[Salamok]

I like how when the AH came back up and the expiration timers have been going the entire time it was down, oh except for it wouldn't let stuff expire while it was down so when it finally came back up a ton of items had less than 5 minutes left.  This led to a shopping frenzy of the first few people back in placing low bids on a ton of stuff with pretty much zero competition.

[kildorn]

So on the drop system, as I plod through hell:

I have a feeling they adjusted the leveling curve at some point and didn't match the drops to it. In Normal and most of NM, the beginning of normal I got drops I couldn't use yet due to level. Past act 1 that turned to always getting drops 3-5 levels below me. This continued until Act 4 NM, where I started getting things a level above me, and Hell I've started getting things -1 to +5 of my level.

It's just screaming to me that they mucked with the leveling curve a bit, and forgot to change the item drop levels when they did it. I'm constantly finding useful things in Hell, which I never found before then.

That probably depends on how fast you level through stuff.  And if youwent back and farmed "older" contend for things like the mat drops for the Staff of Hearding on the same toon, or backtracked entrie sections of an act repeatedly cause you were playing with friends.

There is probably a fairly wide range of levels people could be when reaching any given point, like say act 4 nightmare.

If you're chain farming things though, you should expect to outlevel drops and NPCs for a bit until you get back to where you should be.

Level 50/51 to start Hell is pretty much normal, same with being ~30-32 to start NM. Being overlevel isn't the issue with drops. It's being on-level, and a level 40 boss dropping level 30 loot. If a 40 boss drops 40 loot, it's appropriate regardless of character level.

My commentary is mostly just that for whatever reason, 50 bosses appear to be dropping 48-55 loot, which seem s right. But prior to that, the loot level distribution is a bit stupid.

[Paelos]

By Act 3 in NM i was getting level appropriate get for my 46 Barb.

[Malakili]

In Diablo 2 almost everything you got was totally useless.  This is also true in Diablo 3.  I don't see how anything is changed here.  Even the high end boss runs in Diablo 2 gave you vendor crap the huge majority of the time.  Yes, end games unique and sets need to be buffed, but I don't really see a drastic different in the leveling/loot experience between DIablo 2 and Diablo 3.  Almost everything is crap in both games, in Diablo 3 they make it easier to distribute the actual good stuff among people who actually can use it (via AH).  I honestly don't see it as a problem.

I'm not sure if it is a case of people remembering D2 differently than me, or if perhaps people didn't play D2 online/take part in the in game economy?  Trading was common place, I got FAR more of the high end items I used on all my characters through trading than I ever did through drops. 

[Maledict]

In Diablo 2 almost everything you got was totally useless.  This is also true in Diablo 3.  I don't see how anything is changed here.  Even the high end boss runs in Diablo 2 gave you vendor crap the huge majority of the time.  Yes, end games unique and sets need to be buffed, but I don't really see a drastic different in the leveling/loot experience between DIablo 2 and Diablo 3.  Almost everything is crap in both games, in Diablo 3 they make it easier to distribute the actual good stuff among people who actually can use it (via AH).  I honestly don't see it as a problem.

I'm not sure if it is a case of people remembering D2 differently than me, or if perhaps people didn't play D2 online/take part in the in game economy?  Trading was common place, I got FAR more of the high end items I used on all my characters through trading than I ever did through drops. 

This is exactly  it - similar to what I said earlier.

Diablo has always dropped items lower than your level most of the time. It's part of how the randomisation works. Unlike games like WoW where mobs drop specific level range gear, mobs in Diablo can drop gear 10 levels below your level or higher than your level - its all how the dice roll.

What the AH has done is remove most of the barriers to accessing level appropriate gear.  In Diablo 2 you could do exactly the same butit just wasnt worth it due to the hoops you had to go through. By contrast in D3 you can, so people do use it and think the old system broken. Im sure somewhere theres an economics paper that could be written on the Diablo 3 AH.

Because that gear exists on the AH, and because it says your level on it not 5 levels below, and because the acts get tougher in difficulty, people think you need that gear to progress. You flat out don't - but buying gear is more fun to folks than farming act 4 for a while before progressing to the next difficulty. (or using alts and exchanging items between them to gear up).

Maybe putting Nephalim valour in for lower level characters would have been a better solution after all.

[kildorn]

NV for all levels would have been nice, just as a reinforcement/reward for sticking with a build and not skipping content.

[jakonovski]

I got to Diablo, found out that my drops had been so abysmal that I needed to AH even on Normal. Killed Diablo, he dropped a level 17 crossbow, worse than the one I couldn't kill him with. GREAT. I AM SO STOKED. NOT.

[Paelos]

Normal drops are by far the most offensive in terms of level gap. It's nowhere near as bad in NM I've found.

[Rokal]

Luckily normal mode (your first kill) is also the only time bosses shower you with loot.   

I'm about half way done Act 2 of NM, but the majority of items I got so far were under-level. I know this because I barely got any Nightmare crafting mats from shredding all my act 1 loot, which means the vast majority of it was under level 30.

[jakonovski]

Yeah, feels kind of shitty that you have to go to the AH and buy someone's smelly old crossbow that still has the dude's gems in it. What happened Blizzard? Is the AH the loot system now?

[Margalis]

In Diablo 2 almost everything you got was totally useless.  This is also true in Diablo 3.  I don't see how anything is changed here

What's changed is in Diablo 2 there was not a very simple way to get stuff better than the majority of the useless drops.

I think you overestimate how many people participated in the D2 economy. A lot of people played the game alone or with friends, or if they traded with strangers did so very haphazardly. There's something thrilling about getting a pretty good item that in your corner of the world is awesome. A thrill that is removed when your world expands.

I played D2 a couple years ago, I got some sort of lighting/ice dual weapon combo (or a weapon with both??) that was awesome. If I had been able to go to the AH and see a million better weapons it would have been decidedly less awesome, especially if those weapons were priced such that I might as well just sell my shit and buy them instead.

[Rokal]

I think you overestimate how many people participated in the D2 economy. A lot of people played the game alone or with friends, or if they traded with strangers did so very haphazardly. There's something thrilling about getting a pretty good item that in your corner of the world is awesome. A thrill that is removed when your world expands.

That's a big part of it. Even getting a terrible unique was pretty exciting in D2. When you can easily just buy that unique after a 3 second AH search, and can assign an exact value to just how worthless it is? Decidedly less exciting.

[proudft]

I wonder just how clogged with, well, everything the AH will be after a few months since nothing gets soulbound/destroyed/etc.  Frankly, maybe anything that doesn't sell should be destroyed by the auction house to keep that churn going.  After giving you your deposit back... maybe.

[Tannhauser]

I got my first and only legendary drop, a DH quiver.  With dollar signs in my eyes I hit the AH...to find FIVE FUCKING PAGES of that quiver!

 

[Paelos]

I wonder just how clogged with, well, everything the AH will be after a few months since nothing gets soulbound/destroyed/etc.  Frankly, maybe anything that doesn't sell should be destroyed by the auction house to keep that churn going.  After giving you your deposit back... maybe.

I actually agree with that. I have no idea why items aren't soulbound in the game. It's just going to create an infinite amount of crap. That would be the first change I'd make to fix the loot system.

[Rokal]

I actually agree with that. I have no idea why items aren't soulbound in the game.

The same reason enemies drop under-level loot: the loot system was not well thought-out. They took D2-style loot, added a feature (AH) that completely changed how people interacted with that loot, and didn't make any adjustments to account for it.

[Hutch]

I got my first and only legendary drop, a DH quiver.  With dollar signs in my eyes I hit the AH...to find FIVE FUCKING PAGES of that quiver!

 

Wow. Five pages of one legendary item. I wonder what's going to happen on the RMAH, when it's not play money on the line.

Edit to add: Wow. If there's five pages of a legendary on the gold AH, will anyone even bother looking to buy things from the RM AH? Has Blizzard shot the RMAH in the foot here? Have they finally found the cure for RMT? 

[Maledict]

I know I'm probably being silly, but I honestly don't think blizzard are planning on earning millions from the RMAH. The fact was Diablo 2 has been a complete mess for years thanks to the sale of items - there's so much of out it there it's scary. Start a game and you'll be invaded by bots selling stuff and advertising instantly.

I figure the RMAH was first thought about because they realised they were never going to stop that behaviour in this sort of game, so may as well accommodate it and try to make it safer.

[naum]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=711bZ_pLusQ

[Paelos]

I was oddly enthralled by that.

[Hutch]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=711bZ_pLusQ

You're either in the wrong thread, or that was one hell of a metaphor 

[Megrim]

I know I'm probably being silly, but I honestly don't think blizzard are planning on earning millions from the RMAH. The fact was Diablo 2 has been a complete mess for years thanks to the sale of items - there's so much of out it there it's scary. Start a game and you'll be invaded by bots selling stuff and advertising instantly.

I figure the RMAH was first thought about because they realised they were never going to stop that behaviour in this sort of game, so may as well accommodate it and try to make it safer.

Its not impossible that they thought both. Create some kind of secure & stable economy AND make sweet chashy moneys. Of course, what Corporate thinks and what actually happens don't always line up.

[01101010]

I got my first and only legendary drop, a DH quiver.  With dollar signs in my eyes I hit the AH...to find FIVE FUCKING PAGES of that quiver!

 

Wow. Five pages of one legendary item. I wonder what's going to happen on the RMAH, when it's not play money on the line.

Edit to add: Wow. If there's five pages of a legendary on the gold AH, will anyone even bother looking to buy things from the RM AH? Has Blizzard shot the RMAH in the foot here? Have they finally found the cure for RMT? 

Greens will bring the greenbacks.

[Ingmar]

I think killing the secondary market sites was much more important to them than the secondary goal of grabbing the relatively small amount of money involved.

[Rokal]

Source: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/4427663050

Q: I have noticed this issue since I started playing beta. You just get hit by monster's melee attack when you are obvious out of their range. I don't know whether it's a latency issue, or intentional design, or bug?

A: It's intentional. We don't want a game where the most effective way to play is to dodge in and out of enemy attacks. It's not that difficult to do, and it's just not a very fun way to play. "Most effective" and "not fun" just can't be in the same sentence when describing part of the game. We want combat to be based on use of abilities, putting thought into builds, building up offensive and defensive stats, etc. Skill is absolutely a part of all of the systems you'll use, and kiting can be too, but it'd be ridiculous if you could avoid all of the systems that make the game the game because you can time dodges of enemy attacks and negate every other factor.

[Ingmar]

A+ to that, I say.