@zero I've tried to understand your point of view but.. I can't, basically, you area implying that the game is ok but the problem is the people's expectation is wrong or they just play the game "wrong", if that is even possible.
The current state of the game lacks deep of.. everything, from viable skill rune combinations to the big buzz word itemization.
Is not that the people only choose Skorns because everyone choose Skorns, is because it is the best weapon out there for a lot of skill builds, and when I say a lot I mean 4.
This is probably going to change in the future, but for now, the game is what it is.
A friend asked me if he should buy D3, then I asked to him: "what do you expect?, do you plan to play it like D2?, forget it, do you want to play it for no more than 60 hours?, this is your game, buy it now".
The game is only not ok for those who care about what's "most optimal" and what's the "best way to play the game", which is a very negative way to view games nowadays, imho.
I'm not saying they're wrong (either in how they play or their expectations).
I'm saying these people in particular willalways feel that the game is unfair, not deep enough, not fun enough - no matter the changes made. For these people in particular, perfect balance is the most important aspect of the game (balance between item affixes, balance between specific skills/runes, balance between classes/builds, balance between acts/bosses/elites/farming areas). And that won't happen in an ARPG, ever!
The sooner they realize this and start just enjoying things instead of caring about something that affects 0,000001% of the playerbase, the sooner they're gonna move out of the hatewagon and start actually enjoying the game for what it is: a solid action rpg experience with very fast paced and fun (or challenging, depending on your build and MP) combat and coop.
I'll take some time to explain my point of view further (considering what you said), because I honestly think these 2 topics have been discussed to death but never appropriately. Sorry in advance for the wall of text
On skills:
The simple fact that you say there are 4 skill builds (either for all classes or for each of them) is saddening to me, because that's how most players see D3 nowadays.
Just for my Archon MP1 farming build I can think of 5-7 variants of it, some with Storm Armor for better movement speed (Scramble) or AoE (Shocking Aspect or Reactive Armor), some with Teleport Wormhole for faster movement when I'm out of Archon form, some with Blizzard and Hydra so that I can throw AoE and leave monsters be (if I don't care about gold/items). Passives can include Evocation, Critical Mass or Galvanizing Ward - again that depends on other skills and whether you mind dropping out of Archon to recast armor spells. I can think of dozens of variants that I've tried for the popular builds that fared better for my gear/MP than what is considered to be the best.
If I go for Critical Mass, I might consider Force Armor with +5% crit chance, and I might drop my Hellfire Ring for a crit chance rare ring, and then I might be able to up MP a bit with the added armor, and the cooldown reduction from Critical Mass will keep me in Archon form. This is theorycrafting, and this is the one of the "role playing" aspects of Diablo 3 that people claim isn't there.
That's ONE thematic build. People say Wizards only have Archon or CM builds, and I heavily disagree with that. I've been recently using The Oculus, a Wizard off-hand that greatly decreases Teleport cooldown and increases Blizzard duration, and I'm able to do a crapload more damage with Blizzard + Hydra than I can with CMWW.
And I don't EVER have to care about Fire Chains, Desecrator, Plagued, Molten, Frozen, Nightmarish + Arcane with it. I can sacrifice a ton of EHP for damage. But then I have to be really careful with Jailer/Waller (to not blow my Teleport cooldown too early), I have to be really careful with really fast and resilient minions (hordes) since I can't burst them to death.
"Oh, but that's because your gear sucks!!!", YES IT DOES! Awesome isn't it? My gear sucks, I change my weapon and off-hand and a couple skills and suddenly the way I play changes completely. But I can still play on MP 4-7. With Teleport + Evocation + Fracture I got decent repositioning skills + ranged firepower (which is invaluable versus goblins and ranged elites/monsters).
And that's the beauty of it: I don't give a SHIT if my "build of the day" is 5-10% less effective than John_Doe's. All I care is that in every session I'm playing my ARPG and enjoying its combat in a completelly different manner.
Could give dozens of examples on other classes, but this is long enough as is.
On items/itemization:
Another urban legend right here: there's no choice in items/affixes.
That's pure, utter, absolute bullshit. "Oh but it's SO obvious which stats you want on items, and the BiS IS SO OBVIOUS too!!!"
Oh really? Please, enlighten me which are those. "Well, you want mainstat, vitality, all res on most defensive gear, and then you want like average damage, mainstat, attackspeed, crit chance, crit dmg on rings/amulets, and then mainstat/crit dmg/crit chance on gloves..."
If you can describe 3-4 desired stats on a given slot (can go up to 6-7 on rings/amulets), there is a goddamn choice. "But I want them all, otherwise the item is useless" (people love this word, don't they?). No, it's not useless - it's just no the absolute best item.
I have never used a trifecta gloves with decent stats (vit or int or whatever). I am completely aware that I will never use a perfect pair of trifecta gloves. That's something reserved for the top-end players. And if you can't have everything (all 5 stats on your gloves) AGAIN, you have a freaking choice right there.
It does not affect me in any way whatsoever (nor the majority of the complainers), because I still need to choose between crit dmg, crit chance and attackspeed, and I still need to decide whether I want some EHP in there as well (all resist, armor, vitality). There's a choice when you look at 2 items and see that one has pickup radius and the other has physical resistance (secondary affixes) and you can't be 100% sure which would be better for you at the MP you play and with the build you use.
I certainly don't mind that some affixes are primary (more important than others for the core of my character) and some are secondary (refer to specialization, like specific resistances). People want "+ bonus to health globes/pots" to be as important as +Intelligence and that (again) just won't happen.
"But BUT how about the Best in Slot items? Skorn for instance?"You got me there. That is obviously the strongest 2-handed weapon when perfectly rolled, but hey, what's the chance of you getting a perfectly rolled Skorn if you try reaaaally hard? 5%? 10%? I know mine is 0%. If I dropped something like that, I'd sell it for 2 billion and buy mid-tier gear for all slots on all my characters.
Most people complaining have "pretty damn good gear", but FAR from perfect or best in slot. And some of these guys have 2k+ hours played (sometimes 3k+), and they're not REMOTELY close to having BiS items. AND THEN D3 HAS NO END-GAME - brain: exploded!!!
The price on these BiS legendaries is also way higher than something like an IK's Boulder Breaker or an Inna's Reach which can fulfill the same needs. A BB can work wonders with a HotA build and it can give you a full IK's set bonus, which is pretty awesome for a HotA build as well. An Inna's Reach can reduce the cost of Lashing Tail Kick or increase the crit chance of WoL as well as give you the free SW bonus. Skorn can do neither of those.
The same can be said for the oh-so-mighty Witching Hour. Is it the best DPS belt in the game? Yes. Is it the ONLY belt worth using? Hell no. Rares can still add a crapload of EHP (my Wiz's belt gives me 150 vit, 60 allres and armor). I will never be able to afford a WH with those stats.
The fundamental game design that says that DPS is more important than EHP (hence why mainstat is almost always more valuable than vit/allres/armor) is the same that dictates Diablo has no defined roles - everyone is a DPS machine. You can NEVER have too much dps, but you can (and most preach that you SHOULD) have the minimum defensive stats to survive long enough to kill your enemies.
That's WHY mainstat, crit-chance, crit-dmg and average dmg (weapon dmg) will ALWAYS be more important than defensive stats. That doesn't mean you can't have 150k HP + 4 million EHP + 3k LoH, but there's simply no point to it when we know the enemies capabilities.
Again, the whole idea of efficiency comes to mind. People don't do that because it's not "efficient". We could have a huge change of paradigm when (and if) PvP arena comes. Suddenly EHP might become a huge deal.
The sheer ignorance regarding these themes shown on D3 forums blows my mind. Sometimes I think the biggest deal is that people didn't get what they personally wanted from the game. But then again everyone (fans) got what they wanted from Torchlight 2 and Borderlands 2 and nobody is playing those games anymore - go figure.
Let me make myself very clear here. I, too, have a buttload of suggestions and feedback to the developers. I do have a very long list of criticisms. I do think there's a ton of things they can and should improve, both in items, skills and overall game-design.
But I simply refuse to become a tunnel-visioned hater who just repeats what the others are saying. I've had a very strong critic sense my whole life, and almost never believe on what's presented to me without putting a lot of thought and research into it.
And that won't change with D3 or whatever gaming community I'm part of.
Why not have survival dungeons, better PVP, even skills like collecting, gathering, cooking like an MMO would have?
Because we don't want an MMO?
The play style of Diablo isn't laid back enough like an MMO to have crafting professions, we'll call them that for the sake of this discussion. At the moment people complain about having to wait around for nearly a few minutes identifying items, now imagine just finishing up a run or teleporting back to town to identify, cook, smelt, tailor the things you've found on your venture through the burnings hells. That's just more time spent away from doing what this game is about, killing sh*t. Which just makes daily runs seem like even more of a chore and less fun.
Having crafting and gathering professions in an MMO works great because you've got something to do while you wait for your dungeon, raid, battleground, or whatever to start. An MMO is a slow paced game no matter how fast its combat may be or how fast you can get through content, you'll always have that time of the day where you'll be sitting in a city/town sorting out your professions (unless you're in the top guild or something, I'm pretty sure they pay people to do that for them). Because that's part of the MMO play style. Because you've always got time for it.
Not to mention it's just another thing to take up valuable inventory space which we don't have a lot of in Diablo, in comparison to the ridiculous amounts of inventory space you can get in an MMO.
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Bashiok - Blizzard Representative - 08/01/2011 -"So how many skill combinations are there now? Well taking into account 6 active skills, all the rune combinations, and 3 passives we currently expect each class to have roughly 2,285,814,795,264 different build combinations."
"Hey, I thought you'd like the witty irony of grub-on-glowie violence!"
The game is only not ok for those who care about what's "most optimal" and what's the "best way to play the game", which is a very negative way to view games nowadays, imho.
I'm not saying they're wrong (either in how they play or their expectations).
I'm saying these people in particular willalways feel that the game is unfair, not deep enough, not fun enough - no matter the changes made. For these people in particular, perfect balance is the most important aspect of the game (balance between item affixes, balance between specific skills/runes, balance between classes/builds, balance between acts/bosses/elites/farming areas). And that won't happen in an ARPG, ever!
The sooner they realize this and start just enjoying things instead of caring about something that affects 0,000001% of the playerbase, the sooner they're gonna move out of the hatewagon and start actually enjoying the game for what it is: a solid action rpg experience with very fast paced and fun (or challenging, depending on your build and MP) combat and coop.
I'll take some time to explain my point of view further (considering what you said), because I honestly think these 2 topics have been discussed to death but never appropriately. Sorry in advance for the wall of text
On skills:
The simple fact that you say there are 4 skill builds (either for all classes or for each of them) is saddening to me, because that's how most players see D3 nowadays.
Just for my Archon MP1 farming build I can think of 5-7 variants of it, some with Storm Armor for better movement speed (Scramble) or AoE (Shocking Aspect or Reactive Armor), some with Teleport Wormhole for faster movement when I'm out of Archon form, some with Blizzard and Hydra so that I can throw AoE and leave monsters be (if I don't care about gold/items). Passives can include Evocation, Critical Mass or Galvanizing Ward - again that depends on other skills and whether you mind dropping out of Archon to recast armor spells. I can think of dozens of variants that I've tried for the popular builds that fared better for my gear/MP than what is considered to be the best.
If I go for Critical Mass, I might consider Force Armor with +5% crit chance, and I might drop my Hellfire Ring for a crit chance rare ring, and then I might be able to up MP a bit with the added armor, and the cooldown reduction from Critical Mass will keep me in Archon form. This is theorycrafting, and this is the one of the "role playing" aspects of Diablo 3 that people claim isn't there.
That's ONE thematic build. People say Wizards only have Archon or CM builds, and I heavily disagree with that. I've been recently using The Oculus, a Wizard off-hand that greatly decreases Teleport cooldown and increases Blizzard duration, and I'm able to do a crapload more damage with Blizzard + Hydra than I can with CMWW.
And I don't EVER have to care about Fire Chains, Desecrator, Plagued, Molten, Frozen, Nightmarish + Arcane with it. I can sacrifice a ton of EHP for damage. But then I have to be really careful with Jailer/Waller (to not blow my Teleport cooldown too early), I have to be really careful with really fast and resilient minions (hordes) since I can't burst them to death.
"Oh, but that's because your gear sucks!!!", YES IT DOES! Awesome isn't it? My gear sucks, I change my weapon and off-hand and a couple skills and suddenly the way I play changes completely. But I can still play on MP 4-7. With Teleport + Evocation + Fracture I got decent repositioning skills + ranged firepower (which is invaluable versus goblins and ranged elites/monsters).
And that's the beauty of it: I don't give a SHIT if my "build of the day" is 5-10% less effective than John_Doe's. All I care is that in every session I'm playing my ARPG and enjoying its combat in a completelly different manner.
Could give dozens of examples on other classes, but this is long enough as is.
On items/itemization:
Another urban legend right here: there's no choice in items/affixes.
That's pure, utter, absolute bullshit. "Oh but it's SO obvious which stats you want on items, and the BiS IS SO OBVIOUS too!!!"
Oh really? Please, enlighten me which are those. "Well, you want mainstat, vitality, all res on most defensive gear, and then you want like average damage, mainstat, attackspeed, crit chance, crit dmg on rings/amulets, and then mainstat/crit dmg/crit chance on gloves..."
If you can describe 3-4 desired stats on a given slot (can go up to 6-7 on rings/amulets), there is a goddamn choice. "But I want them all, otherwise the item is useless" (people love this word, don't they?). No, it's not useless - it's just no the absolute best item.
I have never used a trifecta gloves with decent stats (vit or int or whatever). I am completely aware that I will never use a perfect pair of trifecta gloves. That's something reserved for the top-end players. And if you can't have everything (all 5 stats on your gloves) AGAIN, you have a freaking choice right there.
It does not affect me in any way whatsoever (nor the majority of the complainers), because I still need to choose between crit dmg, crit chance and attackspeed, and I still need to decide whether I want some EHP in there as well (all resist, armor, vitality). There's a choice when you look at 2 items and see that one has pickup radius and the other has physical resistance (secondary affixes) and you can't be 100% sure which would be better for you at the MP you play and with the build you use.
I certainly don't mind that some affixes are primary (more important than others for the core of my character) and some are secondary (refer to specialization, like specific resistances). People want "+ bonus to health globes/pots" to be as important as +Intelligence and that (again) just won't happen.
"But BUT how about the Best in Slot items? Skorn for instance?"You got me there. That is obviously the strongest 2-handed weapon when perfectly rolled, but hey, what's the chance of you getting a perfectly rolled Skorn if you try reaaaally hard? 5%? 10%? I know mine is 0%. If I dropped something like that, I'd sell it for 2 billion and buy mid-tier gear for all slots on all my characters.
Most people complaining have "pretty damn good gear", but FAR from perfect or best in slot. And some of these guys have 2k+ hours played (sometimes 3k+), and they're not REMOTELY close to having BiS items. AND THEN D3 HAS NO END-GAME - brain: exploded!!!
The price on these BiS legendaries is also way higher than something like an IK's Boulder Breaker or an Inna's Reach which can fulfill the same needs. A BB can work wonders with a HotA build and it can give you a full IK's set bonus, which is pretty awesome for a HotA build as well. An Inna's Reach can reduce the cost of Lashing Tail Kick or increase the crit chance of WoL as well as give you the free SW bonus. Skorn can do neither of those.
The same can be said for the oh-so-mighty Witching Hour. Is it the best DPS belt in the game? Yes. Is it the ONLY belt worth using? Hell no. Rares can still add a crapload of EHP (my Wiz's belt gives me 150 vit, 60 allres and armor). I will never be able to afford a WH with those stats.
The fundamental game design that says that DPS is more important than EHP (hence why mainstat is almost always more valuable than vit/allres/armor) is the same that dictates Diablo has no defined roles - everyone is a DPS machine. You can NEVER have too much dps, but you can (and most preach that you SHOULD) have the minimum defensive stats to survive long enough to kill your enemies.
That's WHY mainstat, crit-chance, crit-dmg and average dmg (weapon dmg) will ALWAYS be more important than defensive stats. That doesn't mean you can't have 150k HP + 4 million EHP + 3k LoH, but there's simply no point to it when we know the enemies capabilities.
Again, the whole idea of efficiency comes to mind. People don't do that because it's not "efficient". We could have a huge change of paradigm when (and if) PvP arena comes. Suddenly EHP might become a huge deal.
The sheer ignorance regarding these themes shown on D3 forums blows my mind. Sometimes I think the biggest deal is that people didn't get what they personally wanted from the game. But then again everyone (fans) got what they wanted from Torchlight 2 and Borderlands 2 and nobody is playing those games anymore - go figure.
Let me make myself very clear here. I, too, have a buttload of suggestions and feedback to the developers. I do have a very long list of criticisms. I do think there's a ton of things they can and should improve, both in items, skills and overall game-design.
But I simply refuse to become a tunnel-visioned hater who just repeats what the others are saying. I've had a very strong critic sense my whole life, and almost never believe on what's presented to me without putting a lot of thought and research into it.
And that won't change with D3 or whatever gaming community I'm part of.
well said +1
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May the heroes rise from the pit of despair and the bards sing of the day of death renewed to everlasting immortality....awaiting your return to the lands of Sanctuary may peace be with you on this day...your day of birth.
Personally I keep playing because I like leveling characters. My personal end-game is plvl100 characters with 200k+ DPS all with there own gear. I find D3, as a game, no different than any other game I play and I play all types. FPS, RPG, RTS whatever. All games are repetative. I play map X in COD go to point Y when game starts to kill people throw grenade in point Z to kill camper wash rinse repeat. I go to NPC X in Skyrim, get quest, walk to point Y, kill 100th bear on the way, enter cave Z get helm whatever wash rinse repeat. Hell I loved Pac-Man and Donkey Kong....the same maps and movement over and over and over....but it was fun. I dont get in depth with games...because they are games. I accept them for what they are, a temporary break from the hectic real life I live. Shoot, in summer Ill be on a boat, in the same fishing hole I used as a child, throwing the same lure over and over and over in the water to find that "Legendary" hog fish of a lifetime...and it will be fun!!
Are there things that can be improved...absolutely. Do I like the direction Bizz is going with Diablo...yup.
Well the simple answer would be 'because it's fun', if you aren't finding it fun anymore perhaps it's time to put D3 away for a week or a month or however long and play one of the other games out there, personally I'm playing through Far Cry 3 at the moment, I will no doubt return to D3 at some point, but my Steam list is full of games picked up in sales all calling for my time and at the moment I'm happy to follow D3 via the forums and see what changes/improvements are in the pipeline.
Hell you could even use the break from D3 to go outside and take up some non-digital activity or something :P.
The biggest problem for me was hitting a brick wall in Act 3 Inferno on my barb. I farmed gear for HOURS (Act 1&2) and couldn't get gear better than what I had. The only builds I could use were glass cannons (in terms of inferno, if I didn't stay still for longer than a second I could put up a decent fight). After dieing/blowing all my gold on repairs I finally just said **** it and walked away. I WANT to get back into this game..but..yeah..
The biggest problem for me was hitting a brick wall in Act 3 Inferno on my barb. I farmed gear for HOURS (Act 1&2) and couldn't get gear better than what I had. The only builds I could use were glass cannons (in terms of inferno, if I didn't stay still for longer than a second I could put up a decent fight). After dieing/blowing all my gold on repairs I finally just said **** it and walked away. I WANT to get back into this game..but..yeah..
Times have heavily changed. What's stopping you right now?
The biggest problem for me was hitting a brick wall in Act 3 Inferno on my barb. I farmed gear for HOURS (Act 1&2) and couldn't get gear better than what I had. The only builds I could use were glass cannons (in terms of inferno, if I didn't stay still for longer than a second I could put up a decent fight). After dieing/blowing all my gold on repairs I finally just said **** it and walked away. I WANT to get back into this game..but..yeah..
Times have heavily changed. What's stopping you right now?
I picked up playing the game again a few months ago, ran into the same problem. Tried making a new character for a 'fresh' experience, but having max leveled two characters (before the Neph Valorleveling system was implemented), then trying after it was put in, I still got bored pretty fast.
I picked up playing the game again a few months ago, ran into the same problem. I still got bored pretty fast.
Honestly, Inferno is a shadow of what it used to be. Any character who could have any success in Act 1/2 before would certainly be able to walk through Inferno on MP0.
There's plenty of people that do not find fun in leveling a second "Alt" character, a different class does not make it a different experience to me, I've been unable to play pretty much any Single Player game more then once through if it didn't have something new awaiting me at the end.
Borderlands 2, you play through once and you don't hit max level, you still have levels to gain so you play the second difficultly and hit max and begin the end game which is essentially the same thing you did the entire game but its side quests that I skipped the first time purposely, gave me content the second time, I had to give myself content in this way or I would of been bored to tears my second time through.
Mass Effect (all) You play through making different choices and can play through with a different class, if you wished, even with the diversity that comes from these choices, certain characters alive, dead, ect I still could not make it through with a second class it still bored me, it was still essentially the same thing with minor changes in characters who were there or not there.
Diablo (all) Multiple levels of difficultly that you level through, forced to complete the story line each time to be able to progress, feels lazy in essence but is actually just a design choice, It still bored me that I was forced to play the same story multiple times, still did it cause there was more at the end, or was there? Again, has classes that offer game play but still could not level more then one class without falling asleep in my char.
World Of Warcraft. This is the big one, I played WoW for 7 years and in that time, I only ever had one character at max level at any given point. I also only ever had two characters in that whole time that I considered my "main".
My main point in describing any of this is that tons of games use the classes and tons of people take that to mean "Oh boy! Lots of classes means lots of diversity!" Me? I take It to mean that I get to pick whichever one I'm going to enjoy the most because I will not be leveling another class to the end, which one am I going to enjoy the most? I'll be doing everything to make that one character as strong as possible and in every way possible, but only that one.
So before you tell people/ask people if they've leveled each class to max and each to max Paragon. Are you shitting me? I couldn't even level each class to max let along take that a step further and level to max Paragon, remember your end game and what makes game experience, an experience is completely different to everyone else around you.
If you're anything like me then this game offers almost nothing once you hit max level at get to being able to farm MP5, its at that point that the game loses any and all fun.. there's nothing new anymore and you've went through the game play cycle enough to have seen everything, many times, dodged many things, many times. There's nothing left for you.
New God Of War - Purchased on Tuesday evening for $65, had it beat yesterday afternoon.
D3 - Purchased on 5/15/12 for $65, still playing it here and there.
Yeah, I'd say I got my money's worth.
For the most part, everyone on these forums got their "money's worth" by playing it longer than most other games you paid the same amount of money for. Oh, and did I mention Blizzard is still updating, tweaking, and adding things to the game?
What a bunch of spoiled brats. Sick of the game? Walk away. They got your money, and you got your money's worth, like it or not.
While I don't agree with everything you said (e.g., not everyone is striving for efficiency in every game, there are plenty of people with 500+ hours played and no p100 char), you raise two very important, very true points.
Group play in D2 was more rewarding. My biggest issue is not the group size, but the limited synergies/mechanics that are sometimes even counter productive for group play (e.g., Archon) and the fact that group play is slower than solo play in terms of paragon, loot, and so on.
And it's absolutely true that there was more incentive for twinking in D2, while in D3 you're being punished for twinking (paragon levels are just too important for progress since it's all about MF).
If I'm anything like you it turns out I won't be enjoying almost any game on the market.
I never stated I didn't enjoy any of the listed games, I simply showed what isn't game content to me (And others). Which is in simplification, any second play through of the same game with slight changes (class, difficulty). Yes, I got my enjoyment out of the game, yes I got my money (lolfree in this case).
Game content is measured differently by every individual, Diablo 3 in my case does not offer much.
Most top-down point n' clicks need something more in my case to be able to play it for an extended period of time, I'm more of a third-person action RPG type person, that's my preferred style of game play but usually that style of game play specifically comes with an extreme lack of content in almost every case, there's very few games in that genre that offer anything more then 8 hours, which comes pretty close to contradicting my statement from earlier, but what can you do, the more the delve, the more complex it gets.
If you level ONE class to 60 and refuse to level any other class, then I don't think you know what this game (series) is about.
I don't want to get into the whole "oh, you're not a real fan" attitude, but Diablo games are not really about picking one character and playing it exclusively.
If youve played from start, you probably would have multiple max level characters.
As for me, i have every class to 60 other than WD which playstyle i just cant enjoy. Out of them 3 of them are 20+ para and 1 is 60+. Yes ive played a lot and i do admit the game was good. But now i have nothing to do hence the suggestions. I dont see downside to my suggestions. With more support hopefully they can come true and make this game much much better.
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The current state of the game lacks deep of.. everything, from viable skill rune combinations to the big buzz word itemization.
Is not that the people only choose Skorns because everyone choose Skorns, is because it is the best weapon out there for a lot of skill builds, and when I say a lot I mean 4.
This is probably going to change in the future, but for now, the game is what it is.
A friend asked me if he should buy D3, then I asked to him: "what do you expect?, do you plan to play it like D2?, forget it, do you want to play it for no more than 60 hours?, this is your game, buy it now".
Ha. Bagstone.
D3 is an MMO. A very, very gimped MMO.
I'm not saying they're wrong (either in how they play or their expectations).
I'm saying these people in particular will always feel that the game is unfair, not deep enough, not fun enough - no matter the changes made. For these people in particular, perfect balance is the most important aspect of the game (balance between item affixes, balance between specific skills/runes, balance between classes/builds, balance between acts/bosses/elites/farming areas). And that won't happen in an ARPG, ever!
The sooner they realize this and start just enjoying things instead of caring about something that affects 0,000001% of the playerbase, the sooner they're gonna move out of the hatewagon and start actually enjoying the game for what it is: a solid action rpg experience with very fast paced and fun (or challenging, depending on your build and MP) combat and coop.
I'll take some time to explain my point of view further (considering what you said), because I honestly think these 2 topics have been discussed to death but never appropriately. Sorry in advance for the wall of text
On skills:
The simple fact that you say there are 4 skill builds (either for all classes or for each of them) is saddening to me, because that's how most players see D3 nowadays.
Just for my Archon MP1 farming build I can think of 5-7 variants of it, some with Storm Armor for better movement speed (Scramble) or AoE (Shocking Aspect or Reactive Armor), some with Teleport Wormhole for faster movement when I'm out of Archon form, some with Blizzard and Hydra so that I can throw AoE and leave monsters be (if I don't care about gold/items). Passives can include Evocation, Critical Mass or Galvanizing Ward - again that depends on other skills and whether you mind dropping out of Archon to recast armor spells. I can think of dozens of variants that I've tried for the popular builds that fared better for my gear/MP than what is considered to be the best.
If I go for Critical Mass, I might consider Force Armor with +5% crit chance, and I might drop my Hellfire Ring for a crit chance rare ring, and then I might be able to up MP a bit with the added armor, and the cooldown reduction from Critical Mass will keep me in Archon form. This is theorycrafting, and this is the one of the "role playing" aspects of Diablo 3 that people claim isn't there.
That's ONE thematic build. People say Wizards only have Archon or CM builds, and I heavily disagree with that. I've been recently using The Oculus, a Wizard off-hand that greatly decreases Teleport cooldown and increases Blizzard duration, and I'm able to do a crapload more damage with Blizzard + Hydra than I can with CMWW.
And I don't EVER have to care about Fire Chains, Desecrator, Plagued, Molten, Frozen, Nightmarish + Arcane with it. I can sacrifice a ton of EHP for damage. But then I have to be really careful with Jailer/Waller (to not blow my Teleport cooldown too early), I have to be really careful with really fast and resilient minions (hordes) since I can't burst them to death.
"Oh, but that's because your gear sucks!!!", YES IT DOES! Awesome isn't it? My gear sucks, I change my weapon and off-hand and a couple skills and suddenly the way I play changes completely. But I can still play on MP 4-7. With Teleport + Evocation + Fracture I got decent repositioning skills + ranged firepower (which is invaluable versus goblins and ranged elites/monsters).
And that's the beauty of it: I don't give a SHIT if my "build of the day" is 5-10% less effective than John_Doe's. All I care is that in every session I'm playing my ARPG and enjoying its combat in a completelly different manner.
Could give dozens of examples on other classes, but this is long enough as is.
On items/itemization:
Another urban legend right here: there's no choice in items/affixes.
That's pure, utter, absolute bullshit. "Oh but it's SO obvious which stats you want on items, and the BiS IS SO OBVIOUS too!!!"
Oh really? Please, enlighten me which are those. "Well, you want mainstat, vitality, all res on most defensive gear, and then you want like average damage, mainstat, attackspeed, crit chance, crit dmg on rings/amulets, and then mainstat/crit dmg/crit chance on gloves..."
If you can describe 3-4 desired stats on a given slot (can go up to 6-7 on rings/amulets), there is a goddamn choice. "But I want them all, otherwise the item is useless" (people love this word, don't they?). No, it's not useless - it's just no the absolute best item.
I have never used a trifecta gloves with decent stats (vit or int or whatever). I am completely aware that I will never use a perfect pair of trifecta gloves. That's something reserved for the top-end players. And if you can't have everything (all 5 stats on your gloves) AGAIN, you have a freaking choice right there.
It does not affect me in any way whatsoever (nor the majority of the complainers), because I still need to choose between crit dmg, crit chance and attackspeed, and I still need to decide whether I want some EHP in there as well (all resist, armor, vitality). There's a choice when you look at 2 items and see that one has pickup radius and the other has physical resistance (secondary affixes) and you can't be 100% sure which would be better for you at the MP you play and with the build you use.
I certainly don't mind that some affixes are primary (more important than others for the core of my character) and some are secondary (refer to specialization, like specific resistances). People want "+ bonus to health globes/pots" to be as important as +Intelligence and that (again) just won't happen.
"But BUT how about the Best in Slot items? Skorn for instance?" You got me there. That is obviously the strongest 2-handed weapon when perfectly rolled, but hey, what's the chance of you getting a perfectly rolled Skorn if you try reaaaally hard? 5%? 10%? I know mine is 0%. If I dropped something like that, I'd sell it for 2 billion and buy mid-tier gear for all slots on all my characters.
Most people complaining have "pretty damn good gear", but FAR from perfect or best in slot. And some of these guys have 2k+ hours played (sometimes 3k+), and they're not REMOTELY close to having BiS items. AND THEN D3 HAS NO END-GAME - brain: exploded!!!
The price on these BiS legendaries is also way higher than something like an IK's Boulder Breaker or an Inna's Reach which can fulfill the same needs. A BB can work wonders with a HotA build and it can give you a full IK's set bonus, which is pretty awesome for a HotA build as well. An Inna's Reach can reduce the cost of Lashing Tail Kick or increase the crit chance of WoL as well as give you the free SW bonus. Skorn can do neither of those.
The same can be said for the oh-so-mighty Witching Hour. Is it the best DPS belt in the game? Yes. Is it the ONLY belt worth using? Hell no. Rares can still add a crapload of EHP (my Wiz's belt gives me 150 vit, 60 allres and armor). I will never be able to afford a WH with those stats.
The fundamental game design that says that DPS is more important than EHP (hence why mainstat is almost always more valuable than vit/allres/armor) is the same that dictates Diablo has no defined roles - everyone is a DPS machine. You can NEVER have too much dps, but you can (and most preach that you SHOULD) have the minimum defensive stats to survive long enough to kill your enemies.
That's WHY mainstat, crit-chance, crit-dmg and average dmg (weapon dmg) will ALWAYS be more important than defensive stats. That doesn't mean you can't have 150k HP + 4 million EHP + 3k LoH, but there's simply no point to it when we know the enemies capabilities.
Again, the whole idea of efficiency comes to mind. People don't do that because it's not "efficient". We could have a huge change of paradigm when (and if) PvP arena comes. Suddenly EHP might become a huge deal.
The sheer ignorance regarding these themes shown on D3 forums blows my mind. Sometimes I think the biggest deal is that people didn't get what they personally wanted from the game. But then again everyone (fans) got what they wanted from Torchlight 2 and Borderlands 2 and nobody is playing those games anymore - go figure.
Let me make myself very clear here. I, too, have a buttload of suggestions and feedback to the developers. I do have a very long list of criticisms. I do think there's a ton of things they can and should improve, both in items, skills and overall game-design.
But I simply refuse to become a tunnel-visioned hater who just repeats what the others are saying. I've had a very strong critic sense my whole life, and almost never believe on what's presented to me without putting a lot of thought and research into it.
And that won't change with D3 or whatever gaming community I'm part of.
Having crafting and gathering professions in an MMO works great because you've got something to do while you wait for your dungeon, raid, battleground, or whatever to start. An MMO is a slow paced game no matter how fast its combat may be or how fast you can get through content, you'll always have that time of the day where you'll be sitting in a city/town sorting out your professions (unless you're in the top guild or something, I'm pretty sure they pay people to do that for them). Because that's part of the MMO play style. Because you've always got time for it.
Not to mention it's just another thing to take up valuable inventory space which we don't have a lot of in Diablo, in comparison to the ridiculous amounts of inventory space you can get in an MMO.
Bashiok - Blizzard Representative - 08/01/2011 -"So how many skill combinations are there now? Well taking into account 6 active skills, all the rune combinations, and 3 passives we currently expect each class to have roughly 2,285,814,795,264 different build combinations."
"Hey, I thought you'd like the witty irony of grub-on-glowie violence!"
well said +1
immortality....awaiting your return to the lands of Sanctuary may peace be with you on this day...your day of birth.
The Crew
Are there things that can be improved...absolutely. Do I like the direction Bizz is going with Diablo...yup.
Well the simple answer would be 'because it's fun', if you aren't finding it fun anymore perhaps it's time to put D3 away for a week or a month or however long and play one of the other games out there, personally I'm playing through Far Cry 3 at the moment, I will no doubt return to D3 at some point, but my Steam list is full of games picked up in sales all calling for my time and at the moment I'm happy to follow D3 via the forums and see what changes/improvements are in the pipeline.
Hell you could even use the break from D3 to go outside and take up some non-digital activity or something :P.
Times have heavily changed. What's stopping you right now?
Ha. Bagstone.
I picked up playing the game again a few months ago, ran into the same problem. Tried making a new character for a 'fresh' experience, but having max leveled two characters (before the Neph Valorleveling system was implemented), then trying after it was put in, I still got bored pretty fast.
Honestly, Inferno is a shadow of what it used to be. Any character who could have any success in Act 1/2 before would certainly be able to walk through Inferno on MP0.
Try again, maybe it will be a faceroll.
Borderlands 2, you play through once and you don't hit max level, you still have levels to gain so you play the second difficultly and hit max and begin the end game which is essentially the same thing you did the entire game but its side quests that I skipped the first time purposely, gave me content the second time, I had to give myself content in this way or I would of been bored to tears my second time through.
Mass Effect (all) You play through making different choices and can play through with a different class, if you wished, even with the diversity that comes from these choices, certain characters alive, dead, ect I still could not make it through with a second class it still bored me, it was still essentially the same thing with minor changes in characters who were there or not there.
Diablo (all) Multiple levels of difficultly that you level through, forced to complete the story line each time to be able to progress, feels lazy in essence but is actually just a design choice, It still bored me that I was forced to play the same story multiple times, still did it cause there was more at the end, or was there? Again, has classes that offer game play but still could not level more then one class without falling asleep in my char.
World Of Warcraft. This is the big one, I played WoW for 7 years and in that time, I only ever had one character at max level at any given point. I also only ever had two characters in that whole time that I considered my "main".
My main point in describing any of this is that tons of games use the classes and tons of people take that to mean "Oh boy! Lots of classes means lots of diversity!" Me? I take It to mean that I get to pick whichever one I'm going to enjoy the most because I will not be leveling another class to the end, which one am I going to enjoy the most? I'll be doing everything to make that one character as strong as possible and in every way possible, but only that one.
So before you tell people/ask people if they've leveled each class to max and each to max Paragon. Are you shitting me? I couldn't even level each class to max let along take that a step further and level to max Paragon, remember your end game and what makes game experience, an experience is completely different to everyone else around you.
If you're anything like me then this game offers almost nothing once you hit max level at get to being able to farm MP5, its at that point that the game loses any and all fun.. there's nothing new anymore and you've went through the game play cycle enough to have seen everything, many times, dodged many things, many times. There's nothing left for you.
D3 - Purchased on 5/15/12 for $65, still playing it here and there.
Yeah, I'd say I got my money's worth.
For the most part, everyone on these forums got their "money's worth" by playing it longer than most other games you paid the same amount of money for. Oh, and did I mention Blizzard is still updating, tweaking, and adding things to the game?
What a bunch of spoiled brats. Sick of the game? Walk away. They got your money, and you got your money's worth, like it or not.
If I'm anything like you it turns out I won't be enjoying almost any game on the market.
Ha. Bagstone.
While I don't agree with everything you said (e.g., not everyone is striving for efficiency in every game, there are plenty of people with 500+ hours played and no p100 char), you raise two very important, very true points.
Group play in D2 was more rewarding. My biggest issue is not the group size, but the limited synergies/mechanics that are sometimes even counter productive for group play (e.g., Archon) and the fact that group play is slower than solo play in terms of paragon, loot, and so on.
And it's absolutely true that there was more incentive for twinking in D2, while in D3 you're being punished for twinking (paragon levels are just too important for progress since it's all about MF).
I never stated I didn't enjoy any of the listed games, I simply showed what isn't game content to me (And others). Which is in simplification, any second play through of the same game with slight changes (class, difficulty). Yes, I got my enjoyment out of the game, yes I got my money (lolfree in this case).
Game content is measured differently by every individual, Diablo 3 in my case does not offer much.
Most top-down point n' clicks need something more in my case to be able to play it for an extended period of time, I'm more of a third-person action RPG type person, that's my preferred style of game play but usually that style of game play specifically comes with an extreme lack of content in almost every case, there's very few games in that genre that offer anything more then 8 hours, which comes pretty close to contradicting my statement from earlier, but what can you do, the more the delve, the more complex it gets.
If youve played from start, you probably would have multiple max level characters.
As for me, i have every class to 60 other than WD which playstyle i just cant enjoy. Out of them 3 of them are 20+ para and 1 is 60+. Yes ive played a lot and i do admit the game was good. But now i have nothing to do hence the suggestions. I dont see downside to my suggestions. With more support hopefully they can come true and make this game much much better.