As titled, I had stumbled upon an Anniversary Page for 20 Years of Diablo. As I read from the top, I had eventually gone to the Diablo 3 section and found this:
Diablo III’s unique skill system allowed players to switch their abilities at will, incorporating unparalleled flexibility and experimentation into the series.
This made laugh really hard. For their part, at least this was only written and not made as a statement in a video, because I can’t imagine anyone being to say these words with a straight face. It’s just so bullshit considering that:
[list=A]
[li]There are plethora of skills and runes, but a lot of them are badly designed[/li]
[li]Those skills and runes are only useful if there are items boosting the power of those abilities by 10000000000000%[/li][/list]
Yeah, unparalleled in that it was the only skill system that got me so disengaged that after some levels I only checked every 10+ levels what new skills / variations I unlocked.
It’s not that they screwed up. The expansion is proof that they understand how and have the capability to improve everything that’s wrong with the game. It’s that they STOPPED CARING. D3 is worth nothing to them these days. The sales have basically flat-lined. At this point it’s just a minor revenue drain maintaining its always-online design. I don’t think Blizzard has a single developer dedicated solely to D3. At best, the game has off-hour sharing with Hearthstone, Overwatch, and/or Storm.
Diablo 3 is effectively dead in the water. If there will ever be a Diablo 4 is hard to say…and harder still to say what kind of game it might end up being.
This, pretty much. Obviously the base game is screwed up, but it’s just so obvious that Blizzard no longer cares about Diablo at all. At this point, the game is totally dead in the water.
At an earlier point, simple number tweaks (set balance, class balance, meta balance, solo vs. group balance) could have went a long way to improving the competitive side of D3, which was the direction they obviously wanted to go with leaderboards. But the Devs repeatedly ignored advice, ignored the hundreds of the usual PTR gang testing and providing feedback and suggestions, and finally they’ve straight up lied about addressing certain situations.
Obviously, Blizz doesn’t care. They haven’t since around the 4th or 5th season or so. Development just dropped right off. They could definitely learn a thing or two from the guys over here at Crate.
Not sure I would call something dead in the waters if they plan to release a new class in future + more content with it. But I dont think we will see new content on the level of new expansion. But than again d2 had also limited content after its first (and last) expansion release, and it was a lot less than what blizz did with d3.
I would really like to see blizz do a D4 with all their knowledge and experience now in making d3 (as their first arpg because most of old developer of blizz north left the company).
Its really sad that from all blizzard new-ish games, d3 turned out to be the worst one.
I know I might be in the minority here, probably because I’m not a hardcore Diablo-fan. But I kind of love D3 because of it’s accessability to new gamers. I’ve bought it both for PC and PS4, and I love the fact that I can get basically anyone to join the fun.
Over the years I’ve noticed a few bigger changes in the gameplay, and I don’t know if I agree that they stopped caring. They might not care about the hardcore audience, but they sure as hell care about new players finding it easy to get into. Whether this is the kind of progress that you believe is positive or not, well, I guess that’s down to a personal preference.
Oh, I don’t disagree with you at all on the accessibility. My wife loves d3 because of its simplicity; grim dawn is a little too complex for her. And I like playing d3 with her, so it’s fine for that. It’s a fun game to mess around in, but it’s really hard to take it seriously because of the numerous endgame flaws.
I also would agree with you about how they’ve added stuff over the years, just that they’ve been really quiet for the past year. Nothing new has been added besides some very minor legendary changes and a few buffs for some sets.
My biggest problem is that they can’t bring any sort of balance to the game, and act like it would be a monstrous effort to just change some numbers across the board. Obviously no game is ever 100 percent balanced, but the disparity in D3 is massive.
Group meta is totally awful. If you want to be competitive on the group leaderboards, you need 3 people to run support, and one dps. And you need 2 specific classes. Support is really boring, and none of my friends will even think about touching D3 until we can be somewhat compete playing classes and builds we want.
Class sets are totally imbalanced, even within a single class itself. Like some sets perform exponentially better than others. Tweaking a few numbers could easily get these sets much closer.
Xp gains. You get much more xp for groups, and the game is arguably easier in group rifting. People who prefer to group can then take their character to solo and have a huge advantage on the solo leaderboard, because paragon levels increase power infinitely. Solo players are screwed.
So, yeah. If you aren’t competitive, there’s probably not much wrong with the game. However, D3 has clearly been designed as a competitive game. And they really failed on multiple fronts to accomplish a fun environment to compete in. The end game in diablo is the leaderboards; there is almost zero tweaking in character creation or gear, unlike grim dawn. If you want to get far, you have to play the designated overpowered set of the season. Everything is set in stone by blizzard, but what they have set is completely broken.
IMO, d3 was not designed like d2. It was dumb down to cater the console kids.
Purposely designed for the cool kids and not the nerdy kids. (I am the latter).
No skill point tree, no offline on the pc, no pvp arena, etc. That said, I enjoyed playing d3 ros on my ps4.
First of all, that argumentation is a bit wonky. If D3 would be designed just like D2, people would have called it a glorified remake and have been angry for that reason. Instead, try to appriciate that Blizzard dared to do something very different but in the same spirit.
Secondly, so silly to divide PC/Console-gamers as Nerdy/Cool kids. We are all just happy to play games and enjoy them, no matter of choice of platform. And no, you’re not more or less authentic of a gamer if you’re on either platform.
Third, Yes, they did a great port of D3 to PS4, I agree with that sentiment.
-The current design isn’t “daring”. They basically designed a single-player game like a God-damn MMO.
-It looks like they were jealous of the old devs, it’s like the current team were trying to prove they could make something better than the original (and only) Diablo team. They failed miserably.
-They designed it like they had no idea what Diablo was about. The gothic and grim feel is all but absent.
-They have no respect for the player-base of the original franchise and ended up alienating a lot of them
-Being constantly online in single-player is just plain retarded.
-The story telling feels like it’s been done by a 4-year old.
-Diablo has always been a a tale of Good vs. Evil but the way these knuckleheads presented it is just sad.
-They ruined many iconic characters like Deckard Cain and Tyrael. Butterfly death for Cain and Tyrael becoming a human is stupid enough. But him embracing the aspect of wisdom is even more retarded. He made the dumbest mistakes in the entire game.
-In Diablo I & II the NPCs are just grateful for everything we do. Here everyone is ready to suck your cock “nephilim!!”
-In Diablo I & II the villains seldom talk. Heck, Diablo had one fucking line in the entire second game. Here they don’t stop talking, them constantly talking isn’t half as bad as what they’re talking about. These 4-year old twisted disney tropes are either telling us their “evil” plans or just barking the same unoriginal things that every fuckin’ mediocre villain says (true Malthael refrained from doing something like this. but him shattering the soulstone to absorb its power made me loose any respect i had for him)
-Reaper of Souls part about us “embracing” the aspect of death was just plain stupid and lazy. But the accurately represented death in fiction generally is. Still better than Marvel though where Death is a female entity and an alien spacelord has the hots for her.
-And the pièce de résistance, they fucking spit on the original fans with a third rate and mediocre event where the players get to play Diablo 1 as an event. The entire thing looked like it was made on MS Paint. But then again i don’t blame them they knew a Diablo 1 remake would sell more copies than their stupid retarded insult to the word “game” called Diablo III ever could.
-Did the previous games have their flaws? Yes
But mere nostalgia isn’t enough to keep the fanbase playing it again and again.
-That game had class, the music, the atmosphere, the lighting, the dialogues are unbeatable.
-Those old cinematics look like crap by today’s standards, but that moment when Baal reveals himself to Marius and then the music that plays when he starts the fire that burns down the asylum make it better than anything DIII has.
-We also had that small Dark Wanderer moment outside Kurast Docks, it might not seem much. But that kind of detailing is absent in DIII
they call it way worse because of what Blizzard released instead
I agree, it should not simply have been a D2 with better graphics, but what we got is an inferior D2 with better (but crap) graphics…
Crap itemization, no skill investment, boring grind - I’d take D2 with better graphics over D3 any day of the week
Instead, try to appriciate that Blizzard dared to do something very different but in the same spirit.
that would probably have been appreciated, but it is not in the same spirit at all, or only at the most basic of levels. D3 ripped out all the spirit of D2 and replaced it with nothing (best case, e.g. itemization and skills) to a travesty of it (worst case, e.g. story)
no one is butthurt, many people simply found D3 a major disappointment as a game in general - and esp. as a Diablo game.
There is a reason why it sold so many copies (the predecessors, Blizzard hype) and also a reason why the first extension sold so few (relatively speaking) and the second one got cancelled altogether (the disappointing D3 itself)
It simply is an awful game that would have sold little if not for the Diablo and Blizzard name.
Instead, people abandoned it after they had bought it, to the point that the planned 2nd extension never was done because the sales of it would be so abysmal, but I guess a few fanboys have to defend this stinking pile of a game against all evidence…
I am not even a Diablo fan, finished them with one char and moved on, the difference with D3 is that I enjoyed that one playthrough in D1 and D2 while I did not in D3 for many reasons.
I am not posting here because I am butthurt but to correct your nonsense ideas about how everyone should feel about it
But you have to admit, the quality of your experience playing through D3 would have been wildly different depending on when it took place. The original release version of D3 was a god-awful mess. But RoS did a lot to fix all the glaring issues (introduced new ones, yes, but fixed many of the old ones).
