I dont consider myself apart of this "demanding, self righteous player base". But all Blizzard and Diablo fans wanted, was a logical extension to D2.
D3 is not the spiritual succeer to D2. D3 is specifically designed to make Blizzard lots of money through a treadmill grind Auction House. D3 has been ruined. Its just not fun. Its work. Once you hit Inferno, you need to buy expensive equipment to survive. And its just not fun.
Just take a look at the user reviews on Metacritic if you want to know whats wrong with D3.
D3 is a DISGRACE.
Oh please, even if it was that, they'll keep patching untill the point of saturation and then everybody has a legendary, then that's the problem, you're delusional in thinking that there's a proper balance. The fun for most people comes because at least at one point it's just right for you, so don't worry, at certain time in D3s lifespan the balance will be right for you. Don't panic though, because you're taste is that speciffic, you'll be back at hating it in no time.
Originally posted by bubaluba Good or not good question is that. Over 10 mil copies nobody can sell except Blizzard. As a big fan of wow and starcraft i never liked diablo. I can remember times of Baldur's Gate and that game was 1000x better. Diablo never had a soul it was empty game for me and that guy in video is worst game creator ever but he had lucky star in his system with name Blizzard
There, some one who hated it back then, to him, all of this is just noise. Can't wait for BaldursGateHD
Diablo 3 sadly suffered a similar condition as Mass Effect 3 and a couple other recent titles. The dev team was effectively insulated from the rest of the company during development and sought very little external input. Turns out the other groups in Blizzard only got around a month to try the game before they kicked it over to public beta tests and failed to respond to the input from any other teams.
The result being the amount of ideas shared and QA done was only as much as their single team could and would accomplish. They failed to get input on gameplay aspects, art, stryline, or anything else really, and as a result every time they made a major shift it was unknown wha the results would be.
The only things that did disseminate out was the changes such as the last major art shift because that was a company-wide one.
I have good hopes for titan, for personal reasons I really trust some of the people on that team to push for a great game. I however can not place my trust in Blizzartd in general as, like with Warcraft and Diablo, the people who made the games we remember are not the people making what we are getting now. They are new people banking on a legacy and trying to push their ideas onto things we look at fondly when they really should opt perhaps for more new IP or aim for new games using the existing IP rather than giving us 'similar but not quite' versions that make us quirk our heads.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
LOL, only at MMORPG.com... As successful as WoW's been, it's by MMO standards. Diablo 2 sold a whole lot more than WoW ever will.
Yeah because every MMO sells and has 10 million players?
You're delusional if you think everyone thats complaining about D3 are D2 players. Even more so if you think D2 has sold more than or had a larger impact than WoW has by any standards.
Please , if it weren't for Blizzard's greedy nature , they could of made D3 the next big thing , but instead they wasted a good title on a auction house feature that we said will kill the game swiftly.
They wanted to make more money off people ,as if the record box sales weren't enough? I don't feel anything for Blizzard , it's their loss and I hope one day most of the WoW playerbase will wake up and realise who they are giving their monthly cash too.
LOL, only at MMORPG.com... As successful as WoW's been, it's by MMO standards. Diablo 2 sold a whole lot more than WoW ever will.
Yeah because every MMO sells and has 10 million players?
You're delusional if you think everyone thats complaining about D3 are D2 players. Even more so if you think D2 has sold more than or had a larger impact than WoW has by any standards.
But of course! Those who dislike D3 are just Haters... They couldn't be D2 fans who are very disappointed in how D3 turned out... Lets all focus on how many millions the game has sold, just like Blizzard does, and all will be well...
WoW had its positives as well as its negatives. Even with the horrid influence of Ghostcrawler, its still a good game up to level cap (I have nine 85's. Five US, Four EU). But the concept structure is growing old, and the engine needs some upgrades. While it has really increased the over all MMO player base, it has also resulted in much of them being jaded, cynical and fickle.
Given Blizzards FOTM cycle, and other antics, how could it not? But this current affair has demonstrated that the current crop of Dev's have little class, and poor self control around the public.
LOL, only at MMORPG.com... As successful as WoW's been, it's by MMO standards. Diablo 2 sold a whole lot more than WoW ever will.
Yeah because every MMO sells and has 10 million players?
You're delusional if you think everyone thats complaining about D3 are D2 players. Even more so if you think D2 has sold more than or had a larger impact than WoW has by any standards.
Delusional or just mistaken, maybe, but yeah, my understanding is that Diablo 2 has sold more over the years than WoW. I tried Googling it, but couldn't find a clear answer. At the very least, they appear to be comparable, in the 15-20million range.
As for me thinking everyone that's complaining is a D2 player, I don't know what gave you that impression, but it seems like an odd statement on a number of levels.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Diablo 3 sadly suffered a similar condition as Mass Effect 3 and a couple other recent titles. The dev team was effectively insulated from the rest of the company during development and sought very little external input. Turns out the other groups in Blizzard only got around a month to try the game before they kicked it over to public beta tests and failed to respond to the input from any other teams.
That's NOT what is going on at all.
What's happened to Bioware in the last 10 years? What's happened to Blizzard?
The exact same thing. They've both been enveloped and are being consumed by massive corporate interests that seek to monetize gaming as much as possible. That's why Bioware has disgusting DLC that's way overpriced for the amount of game you get out of it. That's why every title Blizzard has released since WoW has had some additional monetization effort.
SC2 wasn't too badly affected, because it has a monetization model that largely makes sense and rewards community involvement. Diablo 3, on the other hand, has a model that encourages developers to adjust the game to maximize RMAH income. Much like adjusting and designing a game to maximize subscription money, this encourages bad design*. And let's not pretend Corporate isn't breathing down their necks encouraging ideas and changes to maximize that money, because that's exactly what EA and Activision are doing (well, in Bioware's case, it seems like the Doctors turned at some point as well).
Honestly, the desire to monetize consumers as much as possible is part of a big problem in modern gaming. Not that I'm against companies making money, but there's a point where money-making tactics become disgusting and no longer serve the interest of the consumers.
*Yes, WoW has bad design elements because of subscription money. Treadmills with slow rewards and a general slow pace of new content considering the massive amounts of money it makes -- it's slower than some other sub games even. WoW does so well because its competition is nearly nonexistent due to rushed games.
I dont consider myself apart of this "demanding, self righteous player base". But all Blizzard and Diablo fans wanted, was a logical extension to D2.
D3 is not the spiritual succeer to D2. D3 is specifically designed to make Blizzard lots of money through a treadmill grind Auction House. D3 has been ruined. Its just not fun. Its work. Once you hit Inferno, you need to buy expensive equipment to survive. And its just not fun.
Just take a look at the user reviews on Metacritic if you want to know whats wrong with D3.
D3 is a DISGRACE.
Oh please, even if it was that, they'll keep patching untill the point of saturation and then everybody has a legendary, then that's the problem, you're delusional in thinking that there's a proper balance. The fun for most people comes because at least at one point it's just right for you, so don't worry, at certain time in D3s lifespan the balance will be right for you. Don't panic though, because you're taste is that speciffic, you'll be back at hating it in no time.
What are you babbling about?
Keep patching until the point of saturation and then everyone has a legendary?
Are we playing the same game? The game is DIABLO 3. I wanted to love it.
But I cant.
The game is horrible, its a mess. Its based around a real money AH. At inferno difficulty things become nearly impossible without top of the line gear that you have to pay money for. Plus:
+ No more stat allocation
+ No more In depth skill trees
+ Cartoonish graphics
+ Bland story
Diablo 3 is a disaster. Sorry, you're in the minority if you believe D3 is anything worthy of the Diablo name. The 3.5 D3 has on Metacritic is not a mistake neither is the 1 star it has on Amazon.
Originally posted by MMOExposed I mean hey, can somebody at least explain what the main problem is with D3?
It's made by Blizzard, seems to be it's only sin, that and the story.
BWAHHAHAHAHAAAA!!! I laughed so hard at the impossiblity of this idea, that I almost pissed myself. Let's put it this way, WC III was made by Blizzard. WOW was made by Blizzard. SCII was made by Blizzard. The only game getting major backlash is Diablo 3. WOW gets some just because of how big the game is, and how long it has been going, but it's nowhere near the levels of hate people are expressing for D3. No, something is seriously wrong with D3.
But I digress. PC Gamer posted an interview on their Facebook yesterday. It was Jay Wilson talking about patch 1.04. The most common, and most liked response was "F that loser." People don't just dislike the game, or feel the need to dislike Blizzard. People actually feel intense hatred for Jay Wilson and the direction he has gone with the game.
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Diablo 3 sadly suffered a similar condition as Mass Effect 3 and a couple other recent titles. The dev team was effectively insulated from the rest of the company during development and sought very little external input. Turns out the other groups in Blizzard only got around a month to try the game before they kicked it over to public beta tests and failed to respond to the input from any other teams.
That's NOT what is going on at all.
Actually that is.
Sure, there's more corporate mindset wiggling it's way into everything and screwing it all up. That is not the only nor is it the all encompassing problem of all of this though. In both situations the dev teams were highly isloated, largely because of their own behavior, and that caused a severe lack of communication and vetting/suggestions on any ideas.
The only things they had to go by was what they thought was the right idea. Apparently what they thought the right idea was, was money I guess?
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Diablo 3 sadly suffered a similar condition as Mass Effect 3 and a couple other recent titles. The dev team was effectively insulated from the rest of the company during development and sought very little external input. Turns out the other groups in Blizzard only got around a month to try the game before they kicked it over to public beta tests and failed to respond to the input from any other teams.
That's NOT what is going on at all.
Actually that is.
Sure, there's more corporate mindset wiggling it's way into everything and screwing it all up. That is not the only nor is it the all encompassing problem of all of this though. In both situations the dev teams were highly isloated, largely because of their own behavior, and that caused a severe lack of communication and vetting/suggestions on any ideas.
The only things they had to go by was what they thought was the right idea. Apparently what they thought the right idea was, was money I guess?
Diablo, Diablo 2, Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, Doom, Quake, etc, etc, etc.
Tons of awesome games have been developed without playtesting them with the public. Tons were done in a highly isolated manner. These sorts of things didn't lead to failure here.
But when the guy in charge of Activision-Blizzard says he wants to take all the fun out of making games, then you're going to have an impact on how the company functions. It's going to chase people away. It's going to instill a certain kind of group-think when corporate is breathing down your neck about making money and talks about how it isn't about fun. Chasing away people that think different, a focus on the wrong things, and a lower quality company structure will result in lower quality products. Short-term this might increase profits, but long-term it is pretty bad for business.
This is very obvious with Diablo 3. The problems there can't be fixed without making the RMAH a very optional element of the game. But that's not what is desired by the company. They want avoiding the RMAH to be annoying and tedious. That sort of thing sucks the soul out of a game. Heck, and we can look at Bioware and see similar things with ME3.
The character you can buy is a guy that should be pretty central to the story. So now they have to design around so that he's purely optional. That and reduced development times, more of a focus on budget and making money and less on making a good game...hurts the final product (not that ME3 was horrible, but it had some glaringly mediocre to bad bits such as the planet-scanning quests and the ending*).
What makes good games or any product has a lot to do with the corporate culture. And frankly, Activision-Blizzard and EA have pretty atrocious corporate cultures that are eating away at the quality of the games they make. EA handles it by buying and destroying good companies, making money off the brand-recognition. Activision-Blizzard erosion is happening slower, but it is still happening. A big part of the bad culture is being overly focused on making money, to the detriminent of making a good product.
*Well, and a questionable design with melee. They talked about how they were encouraging melee to some extent, but then add in a bunch of guys that will insta-kill you in melee. Yeah, that's fantastic. Overall, not much different than ME2 here. :P
I dont think the story sucked ... i think it was an imaganitve way to bring back our favorite villian. I mean after diablo II there were no villians really left alive. And the main villian was supposedly killed for good ....
I dont really like them taking away our favorite classes, Necromancer/Paladin, and giving us cheap clones. Taking the paladin and breaking him up b/w Monk and Deamon hunter. Now alls we have left is to dress up the barbarian in heavy armor ....
And then with the witchdoctor i would have been happy with all the same skills redone for a necromancer!
A real money AH should never have been introduced let alone made the center of the game. And then making it so you have to have an internet connection to play ...
Like I said, I didn't play D1 and D2 when it was the new hotness, so I can look at D3 without the nostalgia geting in the way and I can tell you right here, D3 from a systems and gameplay point of view is by far the best game out of the three. Auction house, always online, story, art direction, all of those are either subjective or perception issues. I can't argue against personal opinion, but we should all be able to separate perception of an issue from how much fun I'm having clicking on things and watching stuff explode bloody gory pinata style.
Blizzard didn't fuck up, they just have the most demanding and self righteous player base out there.
I have a huge problem with this statement here. And it tends to occur with people that have not played Diablo or Diablo II in the past.
The vast majority of Diablo veterans were disappointed with Diablo III because it did not live up to expectations as the sequel to an amazing game.
A large majority of the players that never laid a -finger- on the Diablo franchise hails Diablo III as an extremely good game.
Now, let's set this straight. Generally speaking, Diablo III is not a 'bad' game. But it is a horrible failure in light of the predecessors of the series. It did not live up to expectations, and that has absolutely nothing to do with being overhyped. Was it overhyped? It certainly was. However, from everything I have seen, I can conclude that the majority of the Diablo veterans did not have the game overhyped and did not have misleading expectations; They simply wanted a worthy successor to the Diablo series. Diablo II managed to pull it off with Diablo, albeit it took a bit of getting used to. The majority of people that I'd seen overhyping the game were World of Warcraft or Starcraft II players that were new to Blizzard games freaking out over another release of a Blizzard game.
Diablo III fails horribly as a predecessor to Diablo II. I don't even know how that is debateable at this point. Protip; The feelings the vets get from Diablo and Diablo II are not in any way nostalgic when many of them still have both games installed on their PCs and actively play both of them. It's not like the previous Diablos don't exist and vets solely rely on their past memories of them. But no amount of 'getting used to it' will fix that, because the core mechanics of the series have been unalterably changed. This meant that the entire game devolved into an MMO-ARPG mix, which is most certainly not what Diablo veterans wanted. They wanted their god damn hack'n'slash game. That's it.
Now here's my question. And this can even be applied to the fans of The Elder Scrolls Online that have never laid finger on an ES game outside of Skyrim; Who the fuck do you think you are to come parading in here as a complete newbie to the Diablo universe, stating that we had our expectations too high as Diablo veterans, knowing exactly what we were getting into, and that it actually is a worthy successor and a good game in light of the other Diablo games, and that the majority of our opinions are wrong, when you haven't even played them?
And this goes to every single player claiming Diablo III is still in the Diablo spirit.
Edited in to address Deivos as well; Drachasor is correct. It literally is the complete assimilation of the once dedicated companies into the larger corporations that are interested in money and not player relations/loyalty that is the issue at hand. That is why Indie games seem to be some of the better ones being released or developed currently. They have no big-name corporations to throttle them because they have a passion they want to realize, not a mindset of greed.
I dont think the story sucked ... i think it was an imaganitve way to bring back our favorite villian. I mean after diablo II there were no villians really left alive. And the main villian was supposedly killed for good ....
I dont really like them taking away our favorite classes, Necromancer/Paladin, and giving us cheap clones. Taking the paladin and breaking him up b/w Monk and Deamon hunter. Now alls we have left is to dress up the barbarian in heavy armor ....
And then with the witchdoctor i would have been happy with all the same skills redone for a necromancer!
A real money AH should never have been introduced let alone made the center of the game. And then making it so you have to have an internet connection to play ...
The story didn't totally sucked (my brother bought the game and I played through some of it as well as watched most of the story). But it isn't very good and elements felt a bit forced and out of left field. And some of it was just overly dramatic tripe.
I can understand them mixing up the classes, but it is a little strange to do that and then keep the Barbarian, imho. It was also strange that they had no major class that was shield-based. Parts of the design felt a bit like they decided they couldn't do this or that so they just did some hack and other parts just seemed ridiculously silly and out of place (like dual wielding mini-crossbows).
An internet connection to play is part ensuring they have control and to ensure the RMAH is an option for you.
Honestly, I felt they should have gone with a SC2-like approach if they wanted to make money. They should have found a way to enable user-generated content. That would have kept the game alive for ages. But of course, that sort of revenue stream isn't something that I think they feel comfortable with...they don't control the people making the content. It doesn't let them tweak the revenue stream the way controlling drops and the RMAH does. Perhaps that's why the broken up SC2 the way they did to ensure there'd be 3 box sales out of it.
Diablo, Diablo 2, Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, Doom, Quake, etc, etc, etc.
Yeah yer misinterpreting. I mean the company itself didn't really know what all the dev team was up to. They knew random stuff, but it was only late in the cycle for both titles that anyone else in the company even got to have a crack at the games.
The original Diablo titles Diablo north and company had a really long time playing the game before anyone else saw it. Blizzard as a company only saw Diablo 3 in it's 'release' form a month before it went to open beta, and virtually nothing got fixed between then and the beta.
Mass Effect had a similar problem, but it affected less their gameplay and more the rest of the game. Like the storyline wasn't reviewed by, well, anyone outside the team itself.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Diablo, Diablo 2, Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, Doom, Quake, etc, etc, etc.
Yeah yer misinterpreting. I mean the company itself didn't really know what all the dev team was up to. They knew random stuff, but it was only late in the cycle for both titles that anyone else in the company even got to have a crack at the games.
The original Diablo titles Diablo north and company had a really long time playing the game before anyone else saw it. Blizzard as a company only saw Diablo 3 in it's 'release' form a month before it went to open beta, and virtually nothing got fixed between then and the beta.
Mass Effect had a similar problem, but it affected less their gameplay and more the rest of the game. Like the storyline wasn't reviewed by, well, anyone outside the team itself.
You're going to have to show me evidence that at least some of those previous great games had their stories reviewed by others and then changed them before I'm going to buy that as an argument. Because honestly a lot of story writing is pretty insular and a lot of great stories have been made that way. I'm not familiar with anything that shows that getting reviewed by a random stranger is going to help a story more than having other authors look at it, which is what happens on the teams.
And alpha testing always happens late in the design cycle, so I'm not sure what you are getting at. I'd want to see some dates here backing up what you are saying.
And pardon my skepticism, but part of it certainly comes from the fact we see stuff like this hitting multiple areas of the company and completely different teams. Dragon Age II was a bad sequel for instance, and it didn't have a bunch of ME devs working on it but totally different people. However, same company, some corporate environment, same sorts of pressures being put on the people, etc.
Diablo, Diablo 2, Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, Doom, Quake, etc, etc, etc.
Yeah yer misinterpreting. I mean the company itself didn't really know what all the dev team was up to. They knew random stuff, but it was only late in the cycle for both titles that anyone else in the company even got to have a crack at the games.
The original Diablo titles Diablo north and company had a really long time playing the game before anyone else saw it. Blizzard as a company only saw Diablo 3 in it's 'release' form a month before it went to open beta, and virtually nothing got fixed between then and the beta.
Mass Effect had a similar problem, but it affected less their gameplay and more the rest of the game. Like the storyline wasn't reviewed by, well, anyone outside the team itself.
What are you talking about? They owned the IP and managed the devlopment process 100% of the way through. They never even hinted otherwise. Now, you're contradicting everything about that, and with no evidence? Yeah, no.
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Diablo III fails horribly as a predecessor to Diablo II.
People said the same about D2 when it was released for many of the same reasons. Different stat system, differnet skill system, different mechcanics in general and even the difference in graphics. D2 didn't start out as the awesome classic it became, it took some patches and an expansion pack. Even D1 took a few tweaks after it release.
Honestly to try and act like D1 and 2 are cut from the same mold makes me question if you really have any idea what your talking about. All three games are pretty different in their own ways.
Comments
Well that is true too in many ways, however those players are only a fraction compared those WoW players.
LOL, only at MMORPG.com... As successful as WoW's been, it's by MMO standards. Diablo 2 sold a whole lot more than WoW ever will.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Oh please, even if it was that, they'll keep patching untill the point of saturation and then everybody has a legendary, then that's the problem, you're delusional in thinking that there's a proper balance. The fun for most people comes because at least at one point it's just right for you, so don't worry, at certain time in D3s lifespan the balance will be right for you. Don't panic though, because you're taste is that speciffic, you'll be back at hating it in no time.
There, some one who hated it back then, to him, all of this is just noise. Can't wait for BaldursGateHD
Free to play = content updates for the cash shop. Buy to play = content updates for the cash shop.
Subscription = Actual content updates!
So you know who's the looser he's talking about.
Diablo 3 has fart pants in it.
fart pants.
... fart, pants.
Diablo 3 sadly suffered a similar condition as Mass Effect 3 and a couple other recent titles. The dev team was effectively insulated from the rest of the company during development and sought very little external input. Turns out the other groups in Blizzard only got around a month to try the game before they kicked it over to public beta tests and failed to respond to the input from any other teams.
The result being the amount of ideas shared and QA done was only as much as their single team could and would accomplish. They failed to get input on gameplay aspects, art, stryline, or anything else really, and as a result every time they made a major shift it was unknown wha the results would be.
The only things that did disseminate out was the changes such as the last major art shift because that was a company-wide one.
I have good hopes for titan, for personal reasons I really trust some of the people on that team to push for a great game. I however can not place my trust in Blizzartd in general as, like with Warcraft and Diablo, the people who made the games we remember are not the people making what we are getting now. They are new people banking on a legacy and trying to push their ideas onto things we look at fondly when they really should opt perhaps for more new IP or aim for new games using the existing IP rather than giving us 'similar but not quite' versions that make us quirk our heads.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Yeah because every MMO sells and has 10 million players?
You're delusional if you think everyone thats complaining about D3 are D2 players. Even more so if you think D2 has sold more than or had a larger impact than WoW has by any standards.
Ah I understand now. I guess that is why it is in a different color.
Free to play = content updates for the cash shop. Buy to play = content updates for the cash shop.
Subscription = Actual content updates!
Please , if it weren't for Blizzard's greedy nature , they could of made D3 the next big thing , but instead they wasted a good title on a auction house feature that we said will kill the game swiftly.
They wanted to make more money off people ,as if the record box sales weren't enough? I don't feel anything for Blizzard , it's their loss and I hope one day most of the WoW playerbase will wake up and realise who they are giving their monthly cash too.
But of course! Those who dislike D3 are just Haters... They couldn't be D2 fans who are very disappointed in how D3 turned out... Lets all focus on how many millions the game has sold, just like Blizzard does, and all will be well...
WoW had its positives as well as its negatives. Even with the horrid influence of Ghostcrawler, its still a good game up to level cap (I have nine 85's. Five US, Four EU). But the concept structure is growing old, and the engine needs some upgrades. While it has really increased the over all MMO player base, it has also resulted in much of them being jaded, cynical and fickle.
Given Blizzards FOTM cycle, and other antics, how could it not? But this current affair has demonstrated that the current crop of Dev's have little class, and poor self control around the public.
Delusional or just mistaken, maybe, but yeah, my understanding is that Diablo 2 has sold more over the years than WoW. I tried Googling it, but couldn't find a clear answer. At the very least, they appear to be comparable, in the 15-20million range.
As for me thinking everyone that's complaining is a D2 player, I don't know what gave you that impression, but it seems like an odd statement on a number of levels.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
That's NOT what is going on at all.
What's happened to Bioware in the last 10 years? What's happened to Blizzard?
The exact same thing. They've both been enveloped and are being consumed by massive corporate interests that seek to monetize gaming as much as possible. That's why Bioware has disgusting DLC that's way overpriced for the amount of game you get out of it. That's why every title Blizzard has released since WoW has had some additional monetization effort.
SC2 wasn't too badly affected, because it has a monetization model that largely makes sense and rewards community involvement. Diablo 3, on the other hand, has a model that encourages developers to adjust the game to maximize RMAH income. Much like adjusting and designing a game to maximize subscription money, this encourages bad design*. And let's not pretend Corporate isn't breathing down their necks encouraging ideas and changes to maximize that money, because that's exactly what EA and Activision are doing (well, in Bioware's case, it seems like the Doctors turned at some point as well).
Honestly, the desire to monetize consumers as much as possible is part of a big problem in modern gaming. Not that I'm against companies making money, but there's a point where money-making tactics become disgusting and no longer serve the interest of the consumers.
*Yes, WoW has bad design elements because of subscription money. Treadmills with slow rewards and a general slow pace of new content considering the massive amounts of money it makes -- it's slower than some other sub games even. WoW does so well because its competition is nearly nonexistent due to rushed games.
What are you babbling about?
Keep patching until the point of saturation and then everyone has a legendary?
Are we playing the same game? The game is DIABLO 3. I wanted to love it.
But I cant.
The game is horrible, its a mess. Its based around a real money AH. At inferno difficulty things become nearly impossible without top of the line gear that you have to pay money for. Plus:
+ No more stat allocation
+ No more In depth skill trees
+ Cartoonish graphics
+ Bland story
Diablo 3 is a disaster. Sorry, you're in the minority if you believe D3 is anything worthy of the Diablo name. The 3.5 D3 has on Metacritic is not a mistake neither is the 1 star it has on Amazon.
BWAHHAHAHAHAAAA!!! I laughed so hard at the impossiblity of this idea, that I almost pissed myself. Let's put it this way, WC III was made by Blizzard. WOW was made by Blizzard. SCII was made by Blizzard. The only game getting major backlash is Diablo 3. WOW gets some just because of how big the game is, and how long it has been going, but it's nowhere near the levels of hate people are expressing for D3. No, something is seriously wrong with D3.
But I digress. PC Gamer posted an interview on their Facebook yesterday. It was Jay Wilson talking about patch 1.04. The most common, and most liked response was "F that loser." People don't just dislike the game, or feel the need to dislike Blizzard. People actually feel intense hatred for Jay Wilson and the direction he has gone with the game.
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Actually that is.
Sure, there's more corporate mindset wiggling it's way into everything and screwing it all up. That is not the only nor is it the all encompassing problem of all of this though. In both situations the dev teams were highly isloated, largely because of their own behavior, and that caused a severe lack of communication and vetting/suggestions on any ideas.
The only things they had to go by was what they thought was the right idea. Apparently what they thought the right idea was, was money I guess?
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Diablo, Diablo 2, Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, Doom, Quake, etc, etc, etc.
Tons of awesome games have been developed without playtesting them with the public. Tons were done in a highly isolated manner. These sorts of things didn't lead to failure here.
But when the guy in charge of Activision-Blizzard says he wants to take all the fun out of making games, then you're going to have an impact on how the company functions. It's going to chase people away. It's going to instill a certain kind of group-think when corporate is breathing down your neck about making money and talks about how it isn't about fun. Chasing away people that think different, a focus on the wrong things, and a lower quality company structure will result in lower quality products. Short-term this might increase profits, but long-term it is pretty bad for business.
This is very obvious with Diablo 3. The problems there can't be fixed without making the RMAH a very optional element of the game. But that's not what is desired by the company. They want avoiding the RMAH to be annoying and tedious. That sort of thing sucks the soul out of a game. Heck, and we can look at Bioware and see similar things with ME3.
The character you can buy is a guy that should be pretty central to the story. So now they have to design around so that he's purely optional. That and reduced development times, more of a focus on budget and making money and less on making a good game...hurts the final product (not that ME3 was horrible, but it had some glaringly mediocre to bad bits such as the planet-scanning quests and the ending*).
What makes good games or any product has a lot to do with the corporate culture. And frankly, Activision-Blizzard and EA have pretty atrocious corporate cultures that are eating away at the quality of the games they make. EA handles it by buying and destroying good companies, making money off the brand-recognition. Activision-Blizzard erosion is happening slower, but it is still happening. A big part of the bad culture is being overly focused on making money, to the detriminent of making a good product.
*Well, and a questionable design with melee. They talked about how they were encouraging melee to some extent, but then add in a bunch of guys that will insta-kill you in melee. Yeah, that's fantastic. Overall, not much different than ME2 here. :P
I dont think the story sucked ... i think it was an imaganitve way to bring back our favorite villian. I mean after diablo II there were no villians really left alive. And the main villian was supposedly killed for good ....
I dont really like them taking away our favorite classes, Necromancer/Paladin, and giving us cheap clones. Taking the paladin and breaking him up b/w Monk and Deamon hunter. Now alls we have left is to dress up the barbarian in heavy armor ....
And then with the witchdoctor i would have been happy with all the same skills redone for a necromancer!
A real money AH should never have been introduced let alone made the center of the game. And then making it so you have to have an internet connection to play ...
I have a huge problem with this statement here. And it tends to occur with people that have not played Diablo or Diablo II in the past.
The vast majority of Diablo veterans were disappointed with Diablo III because it did not live up to expectations as the sequel to an amazing game.
A large majority of the players that never laid a -finger- on the Diablo franchise hails Diablo III as an extremely good game.
Now, let's set this straight. Generally speaking, Diablo III is not a 'bad' game. But it is a horrible failure in light of the predecessors of the series. It did not live up to expectations, and that has absolutely nothing to do with being overhyped. Was it overhyped? It certainly was. However, from everything I have seen, I can conclude that the majority of the Diablo veterans did not have the game overhyped and did not have misleading expectations; They simply wanted a worthy successor to the Diablo series. Diablo II managed to pull it off with Diablo, albeit it took a bit of getting used to. The majority of people that I'd seen overhyping the game were World of Warcraft or Starcraft II players that were new to Blizzard games freaking out over another release of a Blizzard game.
Diablo III fails horribly as a predecessor to Diablo II. I don't even know how that is debateable at this point. Protip; The feelings the vets get from Diablo and Diablo II are not in any way nostalgic when many of them still have both games installed on their PCs and actively play both of them. It's not like the previous Diablos don't exist and vets solely rely on their past memories of them. But no amount of 'getting used to it' will fix that, because the core mechanics of the series have been unalterably changed. This meant that the entire game devolved into an MMO-ARPG mix, which is most certainly not what Diablo veterans wanted. They wanted their god damn hack'n'slash game. That's it.
Now here's my question. And this can even be applied to the fans of The Elder Scrolls Online that have never laid finger on an ES game outside of Skyrim; Who the fuck do you think you are to come parading in here as a complete newbie to the Diablo universe, stating that we had our expectations too high as Diablo veterans, knowing exactly what we were getting into, and that it actually is a worthy successor and a good game in light of the other Diablo games, and that the majority of our opinions are wrong, when you haven't even played them?
And this goes to every single player claiming Diablo III is still in the Diablo spirit.
Edited in to address Deivos as well; Drachasor is correct. It literally is the complete assimilation of the once dedicated companies into the larger corporations that are interested in money and not player relations/loyalty that is the issue at hand. That is why Indie games seem to be some of the better ones being released or developed currently. They have no big-name corporations to throttle them because they have a passion they want to realize, not a mindset of greed.
The story didn't totally sucked (my brother bought the game and I played through some of it as well as watched most of the story). But it isn't very good and elements felt a bit forced and out of left field. And some of it was just overly dramatic tripe.
I can understand them mixing up the classes, but it is a little strange to do that and then keep the Barbarian, imho. It was also strange that they had no major class that was shield-based. Parts of the design felt a bit like they decided they couldn't do this or that so they just did some hack and other parts just seemed ridiculously silly and out of place (like dual wielding mini-crossbows).
An internet connection to play is part ensuring they have control and to ensure the RMAH is an option for you.
Honestly, I felt they should have gone with a SC2-like approach if they wanted to make money. They should have found a way to enable user-generated content. That would have kept the game alive for ages. But of course, that sort of revenue stream isn't something that I think they feel comfortable with...they don't control the people making the content. It doesn't let them tweak the revenue stream the way controlling drops and the RMAH does. Perhaps that's why the broken up SC2 the way they did to ensure there'd be 3 box sales out of it.
Yeah yer misinterpreting. I mean the company itself didn't really know what all the dev team was up to. They knew random stuff, but it was only late in the cycle for both titles that anyone else in the company even got to have a crack at the games.
The original Diablo titles Diablo north and company had a really long time playing the game before anyone else saw it. Blizzard as a company only saw Diablo 3 in it's 'release' form a month before it went to open beta, and virtually nothing got fixed between then and the beta.
Mass Effect had a similar problem, but it affected less their gameplay and more the rest of the game. Like the storyline wasn't reviewed by, well, anyone outside the team itself.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
You're going to have to show me evidence that at least some of those previous great games had their stories reviewed by others and then changed them before I'm going to buy that as an argument. Because honestly a lot of story writing is pretty insular and a lot of great stories have been made that way. I'm not familiar with anything that shows that getting reviewed by a random stranger is going to help a story more than having other authors look at it, which is what happens on the teams.
And alpha testing always happens late in the design cycle, so I'm not sure what you are getting at. I'd want to see some dates here backing up what you are saying.
Looking it up, in March of 2011 they were "technically complete" and doing internal testing (it is unclear for how long at that point), and they didn't release it for over a year.
And pardon my skepticism, but part of it certainly comes from the fact we see stuff like this hitting multiple areas of the company and completely different teams. Dragon Age II was a bad sequel for instance, and it didn't have a bunch of ME devs working on it but totally different people. However, same company, some corporate environment, same sorts of pressures being put on the people, etc.
What are you talking about? They owned the IP and managed the devlopment process 100% of the way through. They never even hinted otherwise. Now, you're contradicting everything about that, and with no evidence? Yeah, no.
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People said the same about D2 when it was released for many of the same reasons. Different stat system, differnet skill system, different mechcanics in general and even the difference in graphics. D2 didn't start out as the awesome classic it became, it took some patches and an expansion pack. Even D1 took a few tweaks after it release.
Honestly to try and act like D1 and 2 are cut from the same mold makes me question if you really have any idea what your talking about. All three games are pretty different in their own ways.