Back in the day, when I first started playing MMO-style gaming, I always envisioned they would be wildly successful amongst gaming companies as more and more companies (I am using this broadly, to encompass all games from massively played ARPGS like the diablo series, to full on MMO games like World of Warcraft or Everquest.)
To me, small subscription fees were incredibly cheap even to very low income people and in turn you got limitless freedom to play MMO games with huge amounts of depth. An entire year of gaming, plus the base cost of the game, might only rack up something like $150.
What you got from this subscription fee were regular updates and content management, protection from outside forces such as bots and hacks, timely bug and exploit control and TIMELY patches. The game was treated more like something you'd invest time into with the promise that in-game economies were handled delicately, or random stat affixes wouldn't suddenly be changed.
I was quite sure that the horizon would have competitive, in-depth MMO games that would make World of Warcraft look bad. As time went on, however, I began to see an odd change in the gaming industry: Trends of companies whipping out very short-term games with f2p models but zero replayability and content, and very poor design. Trends of things like the RMAH, or cosmetic pay items.
Don't get me wrong, I loved many legendary games which weren't MMO games or ARPGS and lacked replayability, such as Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasies. but, I have to say: I saw atleast some level of subscription based, deeper games with overarching stories that took on more commitment.
It seems the model for the gaming industry, to me, is that they simply want to whip out as many ****ty games as possible, with garbage stories and no depth, and when they've ran their course, the companies simply move on to the next ****ty game with the same promises of amazing gameplay and features that either never come into play or are nothing that they're chalked up to be. I firmly believe Diablo 3 is one of these ****ty games. I also believe the game was basically designed to get boring relatively fast intentionally except to the extreme fans (of which I used classify myself) who would hang around. I don't think blizzard wanted the game to overshadow WoW or the future Titan, because it becomes great, they need to keep a level of commitment to mentoring the game that wouldn't be profitable if it took sales away from other games. If blizzard can dupe players into buying a ****ty diablo 3, maybe spending some money on the RMAH, and then ultimately quitting for promises of better games like Mists of Pandaria or Titan, they've succeeded in selling you two products instead of one. Maybe I'm wrong.
I only played for the first month or so, and I made a good amount off the RMAH, so I have nothing to complain over.. but looking at the evidence:
-Annual Pass system at launch appeared to be an omen of bad faith from blizzard, ensuring players wouldn't stick around for 'too long' on diablo 3.
-A number of incredibly cheap band-aid fixes such as when they simply implemented 'rolling blackouts' on the AH because of too much traffic, making the game feel like some kind of a garbage freeware program
-Blatant lies to the more simple minded communitarians: When discussing stat and skill trees, blizzard frequently uses VERY flawed, and very poor arguments, sometimes that don't even make sense. What exactly is 'artificial complexity' ? An entire video game IS artificial complexity. Does blizzard seek to woo High-Schoolers with big words that chalk up to nothing?
When discussing stat/skill trees, blizzard hands out samples packets of fallacies to it's userbase, stating things like "they just don't work" or "one mistake and your character is wasted" or the absolute worst "everyone just ends up using cookie builds anyway". Does blizzard really want to attempt to disprove Linear Algebra? because that's all a stat point system is. I could write an entire essay on why this system has worked for MANY games, and does so without ever alienating a casual playerbase, and most importantly, how it creates an evolutionary metagame by adding a static and unchanging portion "stats and skills" of your customizable character, to a fast paced and frequently changing portion that you swap out all the time "gear". I could argue how many games have never had a single 'cookie cutter' build through their lifetime, much like MOBA games never have a cookie cutter build on heroes.. because, yes, MOBA games have stat systems too and they're wildly successful. I don't think I need to write it out, however.
-Blizzard threw in the garbage huge, promised portions of the game after spending years 'iterating' (the word they love to use) on their game, even when most of the game was complete in 2008 and it mysteriously took another 4 years to be released without explanation.
-Blizzard introduced very, very depthless and very boring classes into d3 that really don't belong except to simpletons that are fresh from WoW, and even copied many world of warcraft skills and names.
-Blizzard had a master skeleton of a game from diablo 2, A game which could have evolved into a transition between an MMO and an ARPG without losing the Diablo feel, and ultimately they settled for extremely dimensionless mechanics such as 'Armor reducing all types of damage', 'stats like All Resist', and ridiculously watered down mechanics such as 'Dodge allowing spells to miss'. This "roll all stats into one big SURVIVABILITY stat" mindset, in conjunction with poorly thought out systems such as weapon damage effecting all spells, makes for a game with absolutely no depth whatsoever.
When I look at this game, and it's irritating 'FILLER SPELL' idea where you spam a 1-mana cost skill over and over after mana dumping, I've got to say that it feels like it has a very large and specific target audience: People who buy games on the fly without any intent to play them with any level of commitment or longevity (better known as "Game-Hoppers"), people who play too many FPS games (this is where the annoying filler system really hits hard: It feels like blizzard is subtely attempting to attract FPS players with this system, similar to the way you'd repeatedly fire a gun), and people who buy games for other people with no knowledge of what's fun or not.
I do not believe there is a war versus casuals or hardcore players as many do, because I've seen a number of games or skeletons thereof which can support both without fail. But, I always believed the rampant game-hopping where you purchase a game for $50-60, play it for a month or two, then drop it mindlessly and move on to the next popular title would stay away from MMO and ARPG gaming. Again, there are many legendary games such as those everyone idolizes, but they are legendary because of their fantastic stories and characters that live on forever in people's hearts (the SNES dreamteam of Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, and FF's). But I've started to understand that era is dead, and we now have this new business oriented gaming where companies have ****ty game after ****ty game fed to the community which crowds of people hope will be the big game that everyone sticks around on and plays for years, and becomes famous, only to be disappointed. Get your hopes up for the expansion or DLC or sequel or competitor's title and find out the same: that it sucks.
And as for a penultimate review of Diablo 3: It lacks exploration, depth, any scheme of replayability, any level of number balance across the boards, and it ultimately feels like it was built from scrapyard parts of the real series.
If this is the new direction of PC/MMO gaming, count me out.
I understand why some would consider D3 an MMO(rpg), and I respect their view on this.
But as far as I'm concerned, D3 isn't one. The world can hardly be called persistent. Only 4 people can interact at once (and through very limited interactions, no jumping, no dancing, no dueling, mostly moving around together).
Aat most it can be considered a hybrid (with the AH as you pointed out and public games) but leaning heavily towards the single-player story-driven experience, with the possibility of coop.
As such, I don't really think your original argument is correct.
I understand why some would consider D3 an MMO(rpg), and I respect their view on this.
But as far as I'm concerned, D3 isn't one. The world can hardly be called persistent. Only 4 people can interact at once (and through very limited interactions, no jumping, no dancing, no dueling, mostly moving around together).
Aat most it can be considered a hybrid (with the AH as you pointed out and public games) but leaning heavily towards the single-player story-driven experience, with the possibility of coop.
As such, I don't really think your original argument is correct.
As I agree with you that it can be considered a hybrid, I don't believe whatsoever that it isn't an MMO considering that it came down from 8 players in diablo 2 with full stat allocation and skill trees, and in regards to a persistent world, it's hardly different from logging into a raid instance that resets. With that said the classification isn't relevant, and the game isn't changing to meet our needs based solely on how we classify it. but, the ultimate review of the game is whether it has improved or not from diablo 2. What matters is that what was expected, and what was told to us throughout development (I could cite far too many things), and what was delivered were very different things.
I do believe the game, from a business perspective, was designed not to be as fun as it could have been. Quite frankly, any game where the DPS of a character ranges from 10-20k to 200-400k in the same difficulty is very badly designed.
On the same note, the core designs of the game are very, very flawed. It would need a full makeover inside to out in order to be anything decent. I feel most negative reviews are actually very easygoing when they give it a 4-5/10. I would rate it in the area of a 2/10 to 3/10 at best.
(colloquial) A massively multiplayer online role-playing game.
Action role-playing games (abbreviated action RPG, action/RPG, or ARPG) form a loosely defined sub-genre of role-playing video games that incorporate elements of action or action-adventure games, emphasizing real-time action where the player has direct control over characters, instead of turn-based or menu-based combat. These games often use combat systems similar to hack and slash or shooter games.[1]
Zero(pS) pretty much explained it right.
So you're basically saying that any game that isn't turn based from the 1990's is an ARPG? Think again. If I made a checklist of what you've just posted, almost every game in recent memory would be an ARPG.
An MMO is simply any game where many players are interconnected in a (mostly) persistent world, and usually revolving around the creation of a character. Diablo has always fit into this category. This is in comparison to single players games/co-op games, or RTS style games, or simulation games, or FPS games.
D3 is not an MMO. It's an Action-RPG.
And about the economy, there is none to effect your gameplay if you resist AH, even if your friends are there 95% of the time..
To start, no Diablo 3 is not an MMO game. Don't use the dictionary, use your common sense The dictionary is not a gamer, you are. You know more about games than the dictionary does.
Now, with that out of the way.
No, I don't think the game was designed to be boring. Rather, I think the game was designed to cater to a different audience. You might think the only target audience is the old Diablo veterans of the past, but they are not the only people. A large portion of the audience is newer gamers, younger (or maybe even older) people that had yet to experience Diablo. Now, I'm not trying to be judgemental or anything (and its probably going to end up being that way), but I think newer gamers (whether that be the young or the recently started) are not mentally built to enjoy (or perhaps even comprehend) older games like Diablo 1 and 2 (and other notable mentions). I'll tell you why.
Today's games are composed of an entirely different market than what existed in the past, especially in the RPG portion of the industry. Also, games are far more accessible than they were in the past. Today, you can find tons of free games on your phone, the computer, and you can purchase just about any game online at any given time. What does this do? It gives you options, and people with options tend to change between them frequently. So, more games means less time spent on each game, and that time is spread out to other games that are available. If a game is remotely even too hard at some point or slightly confusing, it's far more likely that a newer gamer will move onto a different game. Games that require a lot of time and effort to get good at due to skill trees, complex stat systems, and so on so forth, are actually not what today's gamers are looking for.
That's the challenge that today's gamers and game companies are being faced with. Game companies are making games for the newer generation of gamers, because they know that their older audience is most likely starting to get a life or becoming less interested in video games, while the older generation of gamers that still linger with the hobby frequently are being faced with playing games in a generation that is not particularly meant for their taste and older ideas. While there are plenty of notable exceptions, games for the most part, are not meant to entertain the older audience.
With all of that being said, it's time you realize that if a game is boring to you, it's probably because that game wasn't built with only your taste in mind.
D3 is obviously not an MMO. But trolling or not , boring or not, he does have a point with today's games being boring and shitty.A lot of us played old-school games and have a passion for gaming for years and years and that's what makes us buy all these shitty games because we hope and hope that is it something good.
Hell, i still like diablo 3 im para 88 and still playing cause I get some enjoyment but I play a 1-2 hours per week prolly now.Most of my gaming time is devoted to Dota 2 atm, mostly because I love the game and I need competition.But anyway , even if I like D3, I can admit it is a shitty ass game.
I cant help but feel that if this game was for some strange reason on subscription they would have never released the game in such an abominable state.Too be quite honest the way the content came out after release it smelled like they were planning on patching them on later on, but they saw the game was shit and they needed it faster.
To me what D3 is in patch 1.06 should've been the release.I can have patience for PVP even tho they promised it way sooner, but the way the game was released and the mentality of Jay Wilson that only he knows what is best for the game is just ridiculous.
Not too mention that the damage control letter from Morhaime just freaking pathetic, it was needed, but it was pathetic to admit defeat basically .Ofc he didnt write it, as they have guys good at that to execute that for them.But it is just pathetic that after all those years developing D3 they came out with an abomination of a game.That letter was basically saying that all they got was positive feedback on all stuff and its not their fault THO they will work harder "he" says.
I like Blizzard games because they are top notch usually, but im starting to lose faith because I just cant realise how were they going about in meetings after D3 beta and seeing the game was shit and the saying" yea ok thats good enough for a release". D3 is just hype hype hype and then dissapoint dissapoint dissapoint.
And to end this little rant or w/e this is, me personally I do not think PVP willl save this game.It's a good addition but it doesnt matter if the game is flawed top to bottom. A lot of skills need reworking.Monks are the same since the beginning basically.And they say" welike how monk is" -- realy realy? get the ef out of here with that bs -.
I would seriously focus on making this game better than adding pvp to it.
Why did the discussion lead to weather Diablo 3 is a MMO or not? I think the OP takes up alot of valid points about the state of games being created for no more than friday nights entertainment and thrown into the bin the day after.
I don´t think the game was designed to be thrown in the bin really, but considering the countless years of development, they really landed a shitty product. Shallow, short, tirelessly repetitive (without being nowhere near any fun). The biggest upside I can give Diablo 3 is that I find it extremely beautiful and visually appealing.
Since your post touched on the main point of my post, I'l address you. I feel it's actually a step further than games just being a night's entertainment to be thrown away. I feel that games are purposefully designed for people who don't look for any depth in games andare carless with their money.
It's like gaming companies are moving towards impulse buyers. I believe they are basically "scamming" players into buying poorly made games where very little effort was put into them.
Even simplistic games such as Pokemon took advantage of aspects like elemental damage being a large part of the game. Were the diablo 3 developers really that bad at creating a meaningful, depth-filled game? No, there's no way. They must have intentionally aimed at creating a shallow game, and I should have caught on to this from the annual pass. Why exactly was this annual pass deal created? The developers wanted players to purchase diablo, play it for a month, buy a few items on the RMAH, get bored, and then ultimately go back to WoW.
Cha-Ching! they make money because you're now playing both of their games, where if Diablo had a great amount of replayability and depth then some users might give WoW up, for a f2p game. That's not good for their wallets.
As for the rest of you, you really need to rethink your concept of an MMORPG.
" 1. MMORPG 837 up, 194 down
An acronym for "Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game". Players play the video game competing against and cooperating with other players connected to an online network. Most require players to purchase the software and pay a subscription fee to participate. "
Diablo 3 fits every single one of these descriptions, and 837 people agree that this description is the accurate definition of an MMORPG. Therefore, Diablo 3 is in fact an MMORPG the same way Diablo 2 was. If you can argue this with verifiable facts, you can stay in the discussion.
The term has been around since the 1990's, for most any game where you sink large amounts of time interconnected in a 'persistent' world (Read: A static world you can log in and log out of). I've been playing games since the early 80's, so I think I know the difference,
If you define a persistent world only as a game where you're always logged in to the same server, then I guess raiding on WoW is not an MMORPG either, because an instanced server === creating a game on diablo.
Diablo 3 fits every single one of these descriptions, and 837 people agree that this description is the accurate definition of an MMORPG. Therefore, Diablo 3 is in fact an MMORPG the same way Diablo 2 was.
Errrmmm.... these things really exist in degrees.
I generally agree that Diablo III is, more or less, an MMORPG. I prefer MMO-lite as a descriptor.
Massively: This is where D3 is weakest in the definition, and, in some ways weaker than D2. Party size is severely capped.
Multiplayer: Sure, though this is a bit of a wash. More of a wash with D2 IMO.
Online: YES. You have no choice. Unlike D2.
RPG: D3 is, of course, much weaker than D2 here on many levels. It is about as much an RPG as "Gauntlet Arcade". The thinness of the role playing element is also reinforced by the meh atmosphere, which diligently checks off the high fantasy genre reference points without any cohesion, suspense, or understanding of it or execution on it.
D3 is not an MMO since it's not persistent as others have probably already pointed out. It's more like Ikari Warriors but with wizards and loot.
I think Blizzard decided to take out most of the boring tedious role playing bits and made the game more focused on what people really want and that's killing stuff and finding loot.
The point he was making, fanboy tsunami, was that he thinks Diablo 3 was made to have a relatively short life since they're not pulling in subscription fees.
You do see that games are deliberately designed with short lives (CoD) so they can get the dlc sold then replace it next year.
Whether they really did with D3 or hoped the RMAH would replace subs is the question.
Only reason D3 is always online is for DRM.
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"For the price of one bullet you can eat 4 hotcakes." - Vash the Stampede.
The point he was making, fanboy tsunami, was that he thinks Diablo 3 was made to have a relatively short life since they're not pulling in subscription fees.
You do see that games are deliberately designed with short lives (CoD) so they can get the dlc sold then replace it next year.
Whether they really did with D3 or hoped the RMAH would replace subs is the question.
Only reason D3 is always online is for DRM.
Yes, that is the point, thanks for understanding. The vague reference to it being an MMO is basically just anyone's perspective.
Personally I feel this is an activision strategy, and I believe the annual pass deal should've been a dead giveaway.
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To me, small subscription fees were incredibly cheap even to very low income people and in turn you got limitless freedom to play MMO games with huge amounts of depth. An entire year of gaming, plus the base cost of the game, might only rack up something like $150.
What you got from this subscription fee were regular updates and content management, protection from outside forces such as bots and hacks, timely bug and exploit control and TIMELY patches. The game was treated more like something you'd invest time into with the promise that in-game economies were handled delicately, or random stat affixes wouldn't suddenly be changed.
I was quite sure that the horizon would have competitive, in-depth MMO games that would make World of Warcraft look bad.
As time went on, however, I began to see an odd change in the gaming industry: Trends of companies whipping out very short-term games with f2p models but zero replayability and content, and very poor design. Trends of things like the RMAH, or cosmetic pay items.
Don't get me wrong, I loved many legendary games which weren't MMO games or ARPGS and lacked replayability, such as Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasies.
but, I have to say: I saw atleast some level of subscription based, deeper games with overarching stories that took on more commitment.
It seems the model for the gaming industry, to me, is that they simply want to whip out as many ****ty games as possible, with garbage stories and no depth, and when they've ran their course, the companies simply move on to the next ****ty game with the same promises of amazing gameplay and features that either never come into play or are nothing that they're chalked up to be. I firmly believe Diablo 3 is one of these ****ty games. I also believe the game was basically designed to get boring relatively fast intentionally except to the extreme fans (of which I used classify myself) who would hang around.
I don't think blizzard wanted the game to overshadow WoW or the future Titan, because it becomes great, they need to keep a level of commitment to mentoring the game that wouldn't be profitable if it took sales away from other games.
If blizzard can dupe players into buying a ****ty diablo 3, maybe spending some money on the RMAH, and then ultimately quitting for promises of better games like Mists of Pandaria or Titan, they've succeeded in selling you two products instead of one. Maybe I'm wrong.
I only played for the first month or so, and I made a good amount off the RMAH, so I have nothing to complain over.. but looking at the evidence:
-Annual Pass system at launch appeared to be an omen of bad faith from blizzard, ensuring players wouldn't stick around for 'too long' on diablo 3.
-A number of incredibly cheap band-aid fixes such as when they simply implemented 'rolling blackouts' on the AH because of too much traffic, making the game feel like some kind of a garbage freeware program
-Blatant lies to the more simple minded communitarians: When discussing stat and skill trees, blizzard frequently uses VERY flawed, and very poor arguments, sometimes that don't even make sense. What exactly is 'artificial complexity' ? An entire video game IS artificial complexity. Does blizzard seek to woo High-Schoolers with big words that chalk up to nothing?
When discussing stat/skill trees, blizzard hands out samples packets of fallacies to it's userbase, stating things like "they just don't work" or "one mistake and your character is wasted" or the absolute worst "everyone just ends up using cookie builds anyway". Does blizzard really want to attempt to disprove Linear Algebra? because that's all a stat point system is.
I could write an entire essay on why this system has worked for MANY games, and does so without ever alienating a casual playerbase, and most importantly, how it creates an evolutionary metagame by adding a static and unchanging portion "stats and skills" of your customizable character, to a fast paced and frequently changing portion that you swap out all the time "gear".
I could argue how many games have never had a single 'cookie cutter' build through their lifetime, much like MOBA games never have a cookie cutter build on heroes.. because, yes, MOBA games have stat systems too and they're wildly successful. I don't think I need to write it out, however.
-Blizzard threw in the garbage huge, promised portions of the game after spending years 'iterating' (the word they love to use) on their game, even when most of the game was complete in 2008 and it mysteriously took another 4 years to be released without explanation.
-Blizzard introduced very, very depthless and very boring classes into d3 that really don't belong except to simpletons that are fresh from WoW, and even copied many world of warcraft skills and names.
-Blizzard had a master skeleton of a game from diablo 2, A game which could have evolved into a transition between an MMO and an ARPG without losing the Diablo feel, and ultimately they settled for extremely dimensionless mechanics such as 'Armor reducing all types of damage', 'stats like All Resist', and ridiculously watered down mechanics such as 'Dodge allowing spells to miss'. This "roll all stats into one big SURVIVABILITY stat" mindset, in conjunction with poorly thought out systems such as weapon damage effecting all spells, makes for a game with absolutely no depth whatsoever.
When I look at this game, and it's irritating 'FILLER SPELL' idea where you spam a 1-mana cost skill over and over after mana dumping, I've got to say that it feels like it has a very large and specific target audience: People who buy games on the fly without any intent to play them with any level of commitment or longevity (better known as "Game-Hoppers"), people who play too many FPS games (this is where the annoying filler system really hits hard: It feels like blizzard is subtely attempting to attract FPS players with this system, similar to the way you'd repeatedly fire a gun), and people who buy games for other people with no knowledge of what's fun or not.
I do not believe there is a war versus casuals or hardcore players as many do, because I've seen a number of games or skeletons thereof which can support both without fail. But, I always believed the rampant game-hopping where you purchase a game for $50-60, play it for a month or two, then drop it mindlessly and move on to the next popular title would stay away from MMO and ARPG gaming. Again, there are many legendary games such as those everyone idolizes, but they are legendary because of their fantastic stories and characters that live on forever in people's hearts (the SNES dreamteam of Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, and FF's).
But I've started to understand that era is dead, and we now have this new business oriented gaming where companies have ****ty game after ****ty game fed to the community which crowds of people hope will be the big game that everyone sticks around on and plays for years, and becomes famous, only to be disappointed. Get your hopes up for the expansion or DLC or sequel or competitor's title and find out the same: that it sucks.
And as for a penultimate review of Diablo 3: It lacks exploration, depth, any scheme of replayability, any level of number balance across the boards, and it ultimately feels like it was built from scrapyard parts of the real series.
If this is the new direction of PC/MMO gaming, count me out.
D3 is in fact an MMO, because the entire economy is linked together and has a resulting effect on all players, who may all join eachothers' game.
But as far as I'm concerned, D3 isn't one. The world can hardly be called persistent. Only 4 people can interact at once (and through very limited interactions, no jumping, no dancing, no dueling, mostly moving around together).
Aat most it can be considered a hybrid (with the AH as you pointed out and public games) but leaning heavily towards the single-player story-driven experience, with the possibility of coop.
As such, I don't really think your original argument is correct.
As I agree with you that it can be considered a hybrid, I don't believe whatsoever that it isn't an MMO considering that it came down from 8 players in diablo 2 with full stat allocation and skill trees, and in regards to a persistent world, it's hardly different from logging into a raid instance that resets. With that said the classification isn't relevant, and the game isn't changing to meet our needs based solely on how we classify it. but, the ultimate review of the game is whether it has improved or not from diablo 2. What matters is that what was expected, and what was told to us throughout development (I could cite far too many things), and what was delivered were very different things.
I do believe the game, from a business perspective, was designed not to be as fun as it could have been. Quite frankly, any game where the DPS of a character ranges from 10-20k to 200-400k in the same difficulty is very badly designed.
On the same note, the core designs of the game are very, very flawed. It would need a full makeover inside to out in order to be anything decent. I feel most negative reviews are actually very easygoing when they give it a 4-5/10. I would rate it in the area of a 2/10 to 3/10 at best.
So you're basically saying that any game that isn't turn based from the 1990's is an ARPG? Think again. If I made a checklist of what you've just posted, almost every game in recent memory would be an ARPG.
An MMO is simply any game where many players are interconnected in a (mostly) persistent world, and usually revolving around the creation of a character. Diablo has always fit into this category. This is in comparison to single players games/co-op games, or RTS style games, or simulation games, or FPS games.
And about the economy, there is none to effect your gameplay if you resist AH, even if your friends are there 95% of the time..
:: Enkeria [Twitter / Twitch / Website / Tattoos]
Now, with that out of the way.
No, I don't think the game was designed to be boring. Rather, I think the game was designed to cater to a different audience. You might think the only target audience is the old Diablo veterans of the past, but they are not the only people. A large portion of the audience is newer gamers, younger (or maybe even older) people that had yet to experience Diablo. Now, I'm not trying to be judgemental or anything (and its probably going to end up being that way), but I think newer gamers (whether that be the young or the recently started) are not mentally built to enjoy (or perhaps even comprehend) older games like Diablo 1 and 2 (and other notable mentions). I'll tell you why.
Today's games are composed of an entirely different market than what existed in the past, especially in the RPG portion of the industry. Also, games are far more accessible than they were in the past. Today, you can find tons of free games on your phone, the computer, and you can purchase just about any game online at any given time. What does this do? It gives you options, and people with options tend to change between them frequently. So, more games means less time spent on each game, and that time is spread out to other games that are available. If a game is remotely even too hard at some point or slightly confusing, it's far more likely that a newer gamer will move onto a different game. Games that require a lot of time and effort to get good at due to skill trees, complex stat systems, and so on so forth, are actually not what today's gamers are looking for.
That's the challenge that today's gamers and game companies are being faced with. Game companies are making games for the newer generation of gamers, because they know that their older audience is most likely starting to get a life or becoming less interested in video games, while the older generation of gamers that still linger with the hobby frequently are being faced with playing games in a generation that is not particularly meant for their taste and older ideas. While there are plenty of notable exceptions, games for the most part, are not meant to entertain the older audience.
With all of that being said, it's time you realize that if a game is boring to you, it's probably because that game wasn't built with only your taste in mind.
Hell, i still like diablo 3 im para 88 and still playing cause I get some enjoyment but I play a 1-2 hours per week prolly now.Most of my gaming time is devoted to Dota 2 atm, mostly because I love the game and I need competition.But anyway , even if I like D3, I can admit it is a shitty ass game.
I cant help but feel that if this game was for some strange reason on subscription they would have never released the game in such an abominable state.Too be quite honest the way the content came out after release it smelled like they were planning on patching them on later on, but they saw the game was shit and they needed it faster.
To me what D3 is in patch 1.06 should've been the release.I can have patience for PVP even tho they promised it way sooner, but the way the game was released and the mentality of Jay Wilson that only he knows what is best for the game is just ridiculous.
Not too mention that the damage control letter from Morhaime just freaking pathetic, it was needed, but it was pathetic to admit defeat basically .Ofc he didnt write it, as they have guys good at that to execute that for them.But it is just pathetic that after all those years developing D3 they came out with an abomination of a game.That letter was basically saying that all they got was positive feedback on all stuff and its not their fault THO they will work harder "he" says.
I like Blizzard games because they are top notch usually, but im starting to lose faith because I just cant realise how were they going about in meetings after D3 beta and seeing the game was shit and the saying" yea ok thats good enough for a release". D3 is just hype hype hype and then dissapoint dissapoint dissapoint.
And to end this little rant or w/e this is, me personally I do not think PVP willl save this game.It's a good addition but it doesnt matter if the game is flawed top to bottom. A lot of skills need reworking.Monks are the same since the beginning basically.And they say" welike how monk is" -- realy realy? get the ef out of here with that bs -.
I would seriously focus on making this game better than adding pvp to it.
WoW is a MMO. Vindictus is a MMO. Etc.
Maybe there should be a term called SMBMOSPAO (somewhat multiplayer but most often single-player and always online) game.
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This term should be trademarked. I see potential in it!
Ha. Bagstone.
Since your post touched on the main point of my post, I'l address you. I feel it's actually a step further than games just being a night's entertainment to be thrown away. I feel that games are purposefully designed for people who don't look for any depth in games andare carless with their money.
It's like gaming companies are moving towards impulse buyers. I believe they are basically "scamming" players into buying poorly made games where very little effort was put into them.
Even simplistic games such as Pokemon took advantage of aspects like elemental damage being a large part of the game. Were the diablo 3 developers really that bad at creating a meaningful, depth-filled game? No, there's no way. They must have intentionally aimed at creating a shallow game, and I should have caught on to this from the annual pass. Why exactly was this annual pass deal created? The developers wanted players to purchase diablo, play it for a month, buy a few items on the RMAH, get bored, and then ultimately go back to WoW.
Cha-Ching! they make money because you're now playing both of their games, where if Diablo had a great amount of replayability and depth then some users might give WoW up, for a f2p game. That's not good for their wallets.
As for the rest of you, you really need to rethink your concept of an MMORPG.
http://www.urbandict...php?term=mmorpg
" 1. MMORPG 837 up, 194 down
An acronym for "Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game". Players play the video game competing against and cooperating with other players connected to an online network. Most require players to purchase the software and pay a subscription fee to participate. "
Diablo 3 fits every single one of these descriptions, and 837 people agree that this description is the accurate definition of an MMORPG. Therefore, Diablo 3 is in fact an MMORPG the same way Diablo 2 was. If you can argue this with verifiable facts, you can stay in the discussion.
The term has been around since the 1990's, for most any game where you sink large amounts of time interconnected in a 'persistent' world (Read: A static world you can log in and log out of). I've been playing games since the early 80's, so I think I know the difference,
If you define a persistent world only as a game where you're always logged in to the same server, then I guess raiding on WoW is not an MMORPG either, because an instanced server === creating a game on diablo.
Errrmmm.... these things really exist in degrees.
I generally agree that Diablo III is, more or less, an MMORPG. I prefer MMO-lite as a descriptor.
Massively: This is where D3 is weakest in the definition, and, in some ways weaker than D2. Party size is severely capped.
Multiplayer: Sure, though this is a bit of a wash. More of a wash with D2 IMO.
Online: YES. You have no choice. Unlike D2.
RPG: D3 is, of course, much weaker than D2 here on many levels. It is about as much an RPG as "Gauntlet Arcade". The thinness of the role playing element is also reinforced by the meh atmosphere, which diligently checks off the high fantasy genre reference points without any cohesion, suspense, or understanding of it or execution on it.
I think Blizzard decided to take out most of the boring tedious role playing bits and made the game more focused on what people really want and that's killing stuff and finding loot.
You do see that games are deliberately designed with short lives (CoD) so they can get the dlc sold then replace it next year.
Whether they really did with D3 or hoped the RMAH would replace subs is the question.
Only reason D3 is always online is for DRM.
Yes, that is the point, thanks for understanding. The vague reference to it being an MMO is basically just anyone's perspective.
Personally I feel this is an activision strategy, and I believe the annual pass deal should've been a dead giveaway.