The "enjoyment graphs" might explain why I like D3 more than D2, despite the fact that according to many in the D3 forums it is a horrible game.
I played D2 back when I was a college student, so I had the time to spend in those long troughs between finding awesome items. Well, I didn't actually play D2 that much because I didn't find it fun -- and perhaps this article explains why. But for the people who want D3 to have the same addictive feel of D2, I speculate that part of it has to do with being able to commit a lot of time to get those rare spikes of joy upon getting a fantastic drop. All the serious D2 gamers knew all of the best items and finding them was a big part of the game for them (or perhaps it WAS the game?)
For me, I'd rather have a game where the combat is fun, and that's where I think D3 is a huge improvement upon D2. Blizzard's own stats show that people are playing with a wide variety of skills. That's a lot different than D2, where many skills were useless, there were only a handful of worthwhile builds, and everybody lusted after the same items.
At first I didn't understand why a randomly generated magic item could be better than a "legendary" item, but now it makes sense. If a person gets a legendary item, they know they've gotten something that will be good for most players, but it won't be the best. As such, people still have the ability to grow and get better items instead of thinking, "Well, I've gotten Sword of Awesome, no need to do anything more." To me, that makes the game more interesting, and it enhances replayability for when I sign on and play with friends. I guess things might be different for people who only play alone, though.
I'm sure the Auction House plays a big role in all of this, and many want to ascribe "evil" motives to Blizzard. Certainly the item economy will take time for them to fully understand. But even if there wasn't an AH, I think that the way they went with items (and the way skills play off of them) was the right choice for creating a game that is consistently fun. At least until Inferno -- which was meant to be ridiculous anyways!
All the serious D2 gamers knew all of the best items and finding them was a big part of the game for them (or perhaps it WAS the game?)
Diablo was always about the exploration and the loot hunt. That was the game. Diablo 3 is a deviation. The loot hunt kept you playing. It let you set defined goals: "I want to obtain a perfect Skin of the Vipermagi and then use the quest reward to socket it with a perfect topaz." D3 does not let you do that. You don't set item goals, you set achievement goals: "I want to beat inferno."
I'm sure a lot of people will prefer this, but the effect is much different. In particular, without the excitement of the item hunt, there is no reason to keep playing after you complete the game a few times; No surprises.
Blizzard could've made it easier to replay if you didn't have to go through the same dialog (story) again and again.
I got half way through Nightmare and was like "I am not wadding through this crap dialog again". And put the game down.
The "story" was lackluster at best. Easy to predict. And absolutely no surprises. And to make me run though it again, at each difficulty level is just mean.
Additionally, the boss mechanics were extremely disappointing for normal and nightmare, so there's no real triumph the first two times you play through the story. For most of the bosses, you have to _try_ to die.
I'd love to play hardcore, but the friends I play with aren't on board. I love the idea of it (and I've been watching some Hardcore-Inferno players on TwitchTV)
You can hit space bar or escape to flip through the quest dialog more quickly. There's only a few places where you also need to wait for an NPC to do something, but they're far enough between that it's not a huge issue.
That's a good point. I was originally disappointed with the item system in Diablo 3, but I quickly realized it doesn't matter as much as I would have expected.
The core gameplay feels a lot more solid and fun than in Diablo 2, and that's what makes me think the game will be successful in the long term. Itemization and difficulty can and will be tweaked after release, but it's much harder to fix the gameplay if it isn't fun.
However, I stand by my argument about the game's addictiveness (in the literal sense) in its current form. Many will see this as a good thing :)
If you want challenge through gameplay, for example a Dwarf Fortress player, then you are a very different creature than someone who is there for loot/run efficiency.
Wouldn't changing the game type/changing expectations like this make them lose a lot of players?
As an extension - wouldn't the RMAH launch delay will end up costing Blizzard more than they anticipate, since its pretty much the Key stone of D3s item/economy.
But yes, the changes in the reward schedules will make it a lot less addictive.
People ascribe "evil" motives to Blizzard because they have clearly changed since merging with Activision. They can claim autonomy all they want to but since the merger it has been one terrible decision after another with these guys. Without an auction house or the requirement to connect to the internet for single player, Diablo 3 would be a very worthy successor.
The game as it stands, has large amounts of blizzard polish behind it.
Its fun in its own ways, and would have made a great single player game which could have been played offline or on a LAN.
Without the AH - and hence higher drop rates to balance - the game would have been fine.
You would have had the game balance and fluidity, plus the incessant "ooh shiny!" of D2.
All of the constraints imposed in the parent article trace back to the Auction House and the Real Money Auction House. Each of them is an economic constraint to ensure the RMAH is actually usable.
Edit: Well its bound to happen too - a single agency controls the bank, the economy and the laws/game play.
Interesting perspective! I agree that the article leaves out multiplayer which represents a huge source of fun. Plus, one thing you can more easily do with a group of friends is agree to skip the AH on those particular characters, relying on drops alone, which makes item drops rewarding again. With enough players you get a decent chance that one of you will find a nice fist weapon or Wizard hat and be able to share that with the monk or Wizard in your party and have it be an upgrade.
Sounds like a great idea but what about solo players? I believe many are upset that blizzard stated drops were altered due to AH considerations. Basically, you need to use the AH or you'll die of boredom - and it was designed this way.
The best solution would be a mode with higher drop rates and no access to the AH (only trading). This would have lowered AH usage and cost Blizz $$.
The skill thing isn't a very fair comparison, since you were skill locked and couldn't respec which left you having to build to the small subset of builds that could work all the way through hell. Now you can consider what you expect to work with what you are about to encounter and build towards that, making niche skills viable.
I think that D2 needed to better balance the niche skills, but D3 drops the ball with the rune system.
It really doesn't go far to push samey builds, and despite Blizzard's deceptively generic statements from my experience I have a hard time believing that people are doing much of anything.
It was posed that Inferno's secondary purpose was to find and see the broken builds as they arose via people rocketing through this near-cheaply difficult mode.
I played D2 back when I was a college student, so I had the time to spend in those long troughs between finding awesome items. Well, I didn't actually play D2 that much because I didn't find it fun -- and perhaps this article explains why. But for the people who want D3 to have the same addictive feel of D2, I speculate that part of it has to do with being able to commit a lot of time to get those rare spikes of joy upon getting a fantastic drop. All the serious D2 gamers knew all of the best items and finding them was a big part of the game for them (or perhaps it WAS the game?)
For me, I'd rather have a game where the combat is fun, and that's where I think D3 is a huge improvement upon D2. Blizzard's own stats show that people are playing with a wide variety of skills. That's a lot different than D2, where many skills were useless, there were only a handful of worthwhile builds, and everybody lusted after the same items.
At first I didn't understand why a randomly generated magic item could be better than a "legendary" item, but now it makes sense. If a person gets a legendary item, they know they've gotten something that will be good for most players, but it won't be the best. As such, people still have the ability to grow and get better items instead of thinking, "Well, I've gotten Sword of Awesome, no need to do anything more." To me, that makes the game more interesting, and it enhances replayability for when I sign on and play with friends. I guess things might be different for people who only play alone, though.
I'm sure the Auction House plays a big role in all of this, and many want to ascribe "evil" motives to Blizzard. Certainly the item economy will take time for them to fully understand. But even if there wasn't an AH, I think that the way they went with items (and the way skills play off of them) was the right choice for creating a game that is consistently fun. At least until Inferno -- which was meant to be ridiculous anyways!