If "the endgame in Diablo 3 is pathetic", then Diablo 1 & 2 endgames are uber super pathetic?
Diablo 1, sure. But Diablo 2's end game is GOD over Diablo 3's end game, why even make such a BS statement. You had ubers, you had boss runs that actually had a good chance of dropping good stuff, runes, so many great stuff, then you had a higher level cap where you actually was excited that you gained a level where you could finally use a bad ass rare gear that you were saving for. In Diablo 3 I was getting bummed everytime I was getting closer and closer to level 60, I was like 'oh come on, its only day 2 and I'm almost max level, pls not 60, please not 60.' Diablo 2's end game blows Diablo 3's end game out of the water, straight up. Diablo 2's longevity where people still play today is a testament to that.
I don't know how you can speak to D3's longevity when it hasn't even been out for two weeks and we have yet to see what Blizzard's post release support looks like (the first two things I bolded in your post are examples of post-release support). It's hard for any game to stand the test of time like D2/LOD did, but it will be interesting to see how the gaming population treats the game in a year -- especially with so many people who got D3 through the annual pass not really knowing what the Diablo series was really about. Hopefully Blizzard will listen to the community but, unlike WoW, not bow down to the lowest common denominator.
Also don't forget that in D2, anything much beyond level 70-80 did not matter too much even before synergies were introduced. Oftentimes builds were done and all pieces of gear could be worn. Leveling up to 99 was just for ladder or mere accomplishment. But by that point it's pretty much just running Baal again and again and again. I'll let you have your opinion of which game has a better endgame, but after years of running it Baal's throne room can DIAF.
Its quite easy for me or anyone to randomly think ideas that could work in making every difficulties more challenge. Blizzard sure as hell could, too, but the point is, they just didn't. I would think if I had years of time and a big team with lots of opportunities for massive brainstorming, I'd try and come up with variations through the difficulties, instead of lazily copy pasting. I'd try to vary the game as much as I can, to make every difficulties as interesting as they can be.
And most of these changes are, coding wise, not very difficult at all, since they mostly rely on things that already exist! Why didn't they try? I have no official game design experience, I only have modding experience and the likes.
I hope you won't tell me just TRYING to make the difficulties more different is exactly "hard". In my mind they just didn't see the need and never bothered. That bothers me, because it means they think 4 difficulties copy-pasted will get everyone hooked and no more effort is needed, and worst is they're right! I don't believe any truly passionate developer would look at this and not WANT to vary things up, when they know how big a part the difficulties play in a game like Diablo!
I'm not surprised by your response. I like your suggestions and I am also all for more variety in gameplay instead of simply upping the stats from difficulty to difficulty. I'm sure most players would say they would love to see Blizzard, or any developer, do more instead of sit on their hands if given a choice between the two.
That said, it appears we come from two different design philosiphies. Both have merit, but both have pitfalls as well. You seem to be taking the kitchen sink approach -- which is illustrated in what I bolded. You want to add as much as you can until the bucket overfloweth with fun.
But the problem is one resource that is as finite for you and me as it is for a large development team like Blizzard: time.
It takes time to design creatures. It takes time to design abilities. It takes time to animate attacks. It takes time to debug code. It takes time to make sure everything works together as it should. Yes it starts from resources that exist, but a good portion of it will also have to come from scratch. You can add bit by bit, piece by piece, and block by block. Creative teams are great at brainstorming, and I'm sure there are some quality idea guys at blizzard (except for maybe in their writing department...*hides*) -- but it's up to the director/producer/team leader/teammates to make sure the project is not so bloated that it can actually be completed in a realistic timeframe. As great as the design phase is, eventually it has to end and eventually development has to start without dipping back into too much redesigning.
What are some common pitfalls from letting ideas get too big and too bloated (including some of my own prior mistakes):
1) TOO LATE: Blizzard loves pushing the date back. At one point in time, although not so much since being acquired by Activision, they were known for working until a game was perfect no matter how long it took. But the reality is that there are not only internal timetables that must be met by the devlopment studio, but also external pressures. Take too long adding in little things and fine details, and eventually someone beats you to the punch. Or worse, they do it better. Or worse, what you have been coding becomes entirely obselete (Duke Nukem Forever anyone?) so that even though you have these fantastic details, no one is going to buy it. The product just ships too late.
2) HEMOGINEZATION: Is there such a thing as doing too much? Lets say creatures have unique art and some unique animations, but that there are only so many ways an enemy can poke a player to do damage. It may look different or cool, yes. But one trap developers fall into (and one you seem to suggest/imply by saying the resources for it already exist) is to create more content by transplanting qualities of one creature/place/etc. to another and vice versa. Suddenly that cool attack appears all over the game. Suddenly that super imposing creature gets pallete swapped so much that it loses its luster (ex. first Dragon Soul boss, or pallete swaps in the Monster Hunter series). Suddenly so many creatures have so many attacks that there is little making them unique or setting them apart. Where your game once had character, now it has sameness.
3) MISPLACING RESOURCES: If you're aware of the Diablo 3 development timeline, you'll know D3 was scrapped in its entirety and begun anew because it was beginning to look like D2.5. I bring this up because that meant the team had to go back to designing things all over again. To plan and implement all over again. As awesome as it would be to build an everything engine, it is impossible to make a team a) plan for everything or b ) design so much that the other teams are crushed under the burden of implementing it. And with time being a finite resource, that design time and its consequences are going to have to come out of something else in development. What if it's bug testing? That would go over well (EA/Bethesda still seem to be selling okay though, and like Blizzard they have the $ to suck up the bad PR). What if it becomes apparent that there is too much too late, and suddenly a lot of content gets cut. It happens all the time in development, but what that means is that the overplanned game had people working on parts that are not going to be implemented instead of what will ship in the final product. Too much of this and the product crumbles. Will teams have to rush and play catch up? If other teams are waiting for one team to get stuff done, then the answer is quite possibly yes. As a result, letting too many ideas leave the design phase can have a negative impact on development as a whole.
4) END USER EXPERIENCE: This speaks directly to your comment about an elite mob that is a Jailer and with other combinations becomes almost impossible to kill and your idea of Tree spreading. How would player know? Games like Demons Souls are in the minority, most players are not going to like, and not going to tolerate surprises that pull up out of the blue to destroy them. So what I find interesting is that you do not want the game to make elites harder or more compliated to kill as you go up into higher difficulties (something the player can predict and expect), but on the other hand you want some enemies to arbitrarily have abilities that can effect the entire field of play while others of the same kind do not (something that would come as a total surprise)? As a developer it is important to look from the eyes of who will be playing your game and determine what surprises are acceptable and what are not -- be the gatekeepr as it were. But allowing too many surprises to slip into the fold can confuse or otherwise turn away the player. That's not what you want.
5) MORE DOES NOT ALWAYS MEAN FUN: Games are like anything else, you need a certain level of predictability to make the surprises more interesting. There needs to be a certain level of familiarity. Yes, the game is neatly split up into Acts with different locales and flavor. But what happens when enemies can do too much? When you don't know what's coming? When changes happen all the time. It can be neat or interesting. It can also be frustrating and alienating. The questions a game designer needs to ask is not whether variety is being added for the sake of variety or freshness. Instead, the question must always be whether variety is being added in because it makes the game, as a whole, more fun. Sometimes more is more. Sometimes less is more. There needs to be a balance.
TL;DR: You're not wrong, but Blizzard had reasons for making the design choices they made and seem to be working on successfully implementing them. But obviously, it is impossible to please everyone all of the time. That's why they're "design choices" instead of "correct choices"
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Also don't forget that in D2, anything much beyond level 70-80 did not matter too much even before synergies were introduced. Oftentimes builds were done and all pieces of gear could be worn. Leveling up to 99 was just for ladder or mere accomplishment. But by that point it's pretty much just running Baal again and again and again. I'll let you have your opinion of which game has a better endgame, but after years of running it Baal's throne room can DIAF.
I'm not surprised by your response. I like your suggestions and I am also all for more variety in gameplay instead of simply upping the stats from difficulty to difficulty. I'm sure most players would say they would love to see Blizzard, or any developer, do more instead of sit on their hands if given a choice between the two.
That said, it appears we come from two different design philosiphies. Both have merit, but both have pitfalls as well. You seem to be taking the kitchen sink approach -- which is illustrated in what I bolded. You want to add as much as you can until the bucket overfloweth with fun.
But the problem is one resource that is as finite for you and me as it is for a large development team like Blizzard: time.
It takes time to design creatures. It takes time to design abilities. It takes time to animate attacks. It takes time to debug code. It takes time to make sure everything works together as it should. Yes it starts from resources that exist, but a good portion of it will also have to come from scratch. You can add bit by bit, piece by piece, and block by block. Creative teams are great at brainstorming, and I'm sure there are some quality idea guys at blizzard (except for maybe in their writing department...*hides*) -- but it's up to the director/producer/team leader/teammates to make sure the project is not so bloated that it can actually be completed in a realistic timeframe. As great as the design phase is, eventually it has to end and eventually development has to start without dipping back into too much redesigning.
What are some common pitfalls from letting ideas get too big and too bloated (including some of my own prior mistakes):
1) TOO LATE: Blizzard loves pushing the date back. At one point in time, although not so much since being acquired by Activision, they were known for working until a game was perfect no matter how long it took. But the reality is that there are not only internal timetables that must be met by the devlopment studio, but also external pressures. Take too long adding in little things and fine details, and eventually someone beats you to the punch. Or worse, they do it better. Or worse, what you have been coding becomes entirely obselete (Duke Nukem Forever anyone?) so that even though you have these fantastic details, no one is going to buy it. The product just ships too late.
2) HEMOGINEZATION: Is there such a thing as doing too much? Lets say creatures have unique art and some unique animations, but that there are only so many ways an enemy can poke a player to do damage. It may look different or cool, yes. But one trap developers fall into (and one you seem to suggest/imply by saying the resources for it already exist) is to create more content by transplanting qualities of one creature/place/etc. to another and vice versa. Suddenly that cool attack appears all over the game. Suddenly that super imposing creature gets pallete swapped so much that it loses its luster (ex. first Dragon Soul boss, or pallete swaps in the Monster Hunter series). Suddenly so many creatures have so many attacks that there is little making them unique or setting them apart. Where your game once had character, now it has sameness.
3) MISPLACING RESOURCES: If you're aware of the Diablo 3 development timeline, you'll know D3 was scrapped in its entirety and begun anew because it was beginning to look like D2.5. I bring this up because that meant the team had to go back to designing things all over again. To plan and implement all over again. As awesome as it would be to build an everything engine, it is impossible to make a team a) plan for everything or b ) design so much that the other teams are crushed under the burden of implementing it. And with time being a finite resource, that design time and its consequences are going to have to come out of something else in development. What if it's bug testing? That would go over well (EA/Bethesda still seem to be selling okay though, and like Blizzard they have the $ to suck up the bad PR). What if it becomes apparent that there is too much too late, and suddenly a lot of content gets cut. It happens all the time in development, but what that means is that the overplanned game had people working on parts that are not going to be implemented instead of what will ship in the final product. Too much of this and the product crumbles. Will teams have to rush and play catch up? If other teams are waiting for one team to get stuff done, then the answer is quite possibly yes. As a result, letting too many ideas leave the design phase can have a negative impact on development as a whole.
4) END USER EXPERIENCE: This speaks directly to your comment about an elite mob that is a Jailer and with other combinations becomes almost impossible to kill and your idea of Tree spreading. How would player know? Games like Demons Souls are in the minority, most players are not going to like, and not going to tolerate surprises that pull up out of the blue to destroy them. So what I find interesting is that you do not want the game to make elites harder or more compliated to kill as you go up into higher difficulties (something the player can predict and expect), but on the other hand you want some enemies to arbitrarily have abilities that can effect the entire field of play while others of the same kind do not (something that would come as a total surprise)? As a developer it is important to look from the eyes of who will be playing your game and determine what surprises are acceptable and what are not -- be the gatekeepr as it were. But allowing too many surprises to slip into the fold can confuse or otherwise turn away the player. That's not what you want.
5) MORE DOES NOT ALWAYS MEAN FUN: Games are like anything else, you need a certain level of predictability to make the surprises more interesting. There needs to be a certain level of familiarity. Yes, the game is neatly split up into Acts with different locales and flavor. But what happens when enemies can do too much? When you don't know what's coming? When changes happen all the time. It can be neat or interesting. It can also be frustrating and alienating. The questions a game designer needs to ask is not whether variety is being added for the sake of variety or freshness. Instead, the question must always be whether variety is being added in because it makes the game, as a whole, more fun. Sometimes more is more. Sometimes less is more. There needs to be a balance.
TL;DR: You're not wrong, but Blizzard had reasons for making the design choices they made and seem to be working on successfully implementing them. But obviously, it is impossible to please everyone all of the time. That's why they're "design choices" instead of "correct choices"