A Diablo III expansion is in the mix, and apparently there is still quite an outrage over the whole system Blizzard has employed. Though I must say I really enjoyed playing through D3 (I couldn’t really see myself ever reaching max level though), I’m not so keen to ignore an the expansion as much of the gaming community seems.
From what I’ve heard, many players would appreciate an expansion that contained multiple Acts, but how have expansions been presented in the past? Did Blizzard expect you to pay a premium for minimal content? Furthermore, has the implementation of the AH within Diablo 3 TRULY ruined all the fun? Sure you can buy your way through the game, but no one is stopping you from playing it through on your own terms. To this day, I haven’t run a dungeon with another player. I’m not even sure HOW you do that… Instead, I’ve been perfectly happy enjoying the content on my on terms, and at my own pace: thoughts?
I fired Diablo 3 back up this weekend with my Son to explore the quality-of-life changes they’ve put in. The big one is the addition of the flexible “Monster Level”, which allows players to tweak the difficulty (and thus augment the XP and Magic Find) right out of the gate. It’s very convenient and for seasoned gamers like us who tire of the early leveling that’s dull and on the easy end of the spectrum, we were able to accelerate and get challenged much quicker. That was a big plus.
As for any other changes that have been made, I’ve not been back since the initial introduction of the Paragon leveling system.
In regards to the RMAH, yeah, I think it cause a huge problem. The game was designed and balanced around it – it was not just bolted in. So, the quality of those great items balanced against how frequently (read: INFREQUENTLY) they appeared was heavily skewed. You don’t have to crunch numbers to get a verdict, you talk to a teenage kid like Hunter. I asked him why he got bored of D3 and he said “Nothing good every drops. It gets dull after the first pass.”
Hiking up the challenge is fine, but reward should always match effort. Blizzard of all companies should know this. Those initial legendaries…yeesh. Talk about forgettable. There was a great article shortly after D3 came out that drew a line graph demonstrating the difference of how a player experiences D2 vs D3, comparing it to a monkey pulling a lever to get juice. When the rewards are rarer and less satisfying, people move on.
Fundamentally, Diablo 3 is another game that has suffered at the hands of the dumbhammer. Flattening the complexity out of the character customization led it down a path that produced an interesting side-effect: A game that was (at launch) mind-numbingly easy at the start and brutally oppressive near the end.
I much preferred the design taken in Diablo 2 (and early WoW Talent Trees) in which there was far more to customize (read: TO GET WRONG) and if you made poor choices, yeah…the game bent you over. As it should.
But…
…make intelligent choices, and even at the highest difficulties, you wade through a sea of demons and slice through them like butter, while gold and rewards rain down from the skies.
I MAY pick up the expac when it launches, but I will definitely be playing the QOL patch before the expac releases to see if its even worth it. 1 extra zone and a new class won’t fix why I would rather play POE than D3 for my DIABLO killing experience. They are supposed to be changing up how loot drops and adding in loot runs and such to the vanilla game, so hopefully that will fix the massive turd thats the endgame right now.
And as for the AH killing D3, there is no way you can argue that it hasn’t. Even if you never use it, the good items just aren’t designed (yet!) to drop all the time so your char will never have a full set of medium quality gear. If it dropped all the time, the prices on the AH would be shit since it drops like candy. If you do use the AH, you are going to be grinding and wheeling and dealing on the AH just to be able to afford medium to high quality gear. So basically, they turned a monster slaying loot grinding game into a monster slaying money grinding game so you can buy better gear. I would MUCH rather see item upgrade drops than watch my pile of gold slowly grow, much more gratifying even if it takes just as long to grind up a good item as it would to grind up the gold to buy it.
That’s exactly how I feel about Diablo 3 myself. As somebody who was new to this series after getting it via annual pass, I found it pretty dull how I had spend all this time selling every garbage randomized drop I found so I could buy items relevant to my character. The progression becomes a repetitive amalgamation of farming gold and buying progression with it. Meh.
I started going through more difficulties but it just didn’t catch my interest.
I have to agree that I don’t really feel the “need” to continue playing even past level 34 since I already defeated Diablo, etc. The game is just sort of over, and playing through with higher difficulty isn’t really going to change it for me.
I suppose I just need to play with other people, but I’m not even entirely sure how to do that
