Very fun and awesome... until the shallowness becomes apparent

[Zaqwert]

So I was a huge Diablo 2 fan, played the hell out of it for many years, have obviously been excited for D3 since it was announced.

There were many things about it that made me nervous, I didn't like the art direction, the lack of permanent choices kinda bugged, me whatever, I was gonna get it regardless.

So my first playthrough on normal I was all, "This is awesome!" all the areas are new, the combat is great, and everything is hunky dory.

Well I'm now level 55 half way through hell difficulty and bored out of my mind, I barely even played tonight and really have no desire to play new characters either.

The game is absolutely and completely shallow in every sense of the word. Not that Diablo 2 was the most deep game ever, but it at least had a little.

I can forgive a ton of D3's flaws but one I simply cannot

Item hunting simply isn't fun and doesn't feel rewarding

Diablo games have always at their core been about the item hunt, you can do a lot wrong but if you make the item hunt interesting and fun it will keep people hooked.

The itemization is terrrrrrrible and the items are borrrrring. With every mob or boss in D2 I killed or every chest I opened there was a titilation that the super item I'd been searching for would pop, or maybe something awesome I didn't even know about.... there is no such thrill in D3. The legendary items are terrible, there's no desire to find them, you'd rather the vendor spawn some good blues.

The second problem is how boring the items are. There are no colorful or exotic unique modifiers, everything is the same old 5-6 affixes you've seen a million times before.

That brings it back to the main point of shallowness. Everything in the game is shallow, it's like Blizzard has grown scared of complexity. I mean look what they've done to WoW over the past few years. The pejorative term you hear a lot is "dumbed down", I prefer shallow myself.

Anyway, that's my review of D3, the combat is fun, seeing the world the first time is fun, the game is highly polished and visually impressive, but the game lacks depth and has a very poor item system and as such I don't see it having nearly the same legs as Diablo 2 did unless they drastically overhaul it with patches or expansions.

[Jeffyjimbob]

but if you make the item hunt interesting and fun it will keep people hooked.

It's never been fun.

Back in D2 all you did was make a (usually sorc) MF set and boss rush all damned day. If you were remotely lucky you got an item for a different class, which would only be useful for a specific build that's pretty dated, and hardly anyone uses anymore. After you got 10 more of those you might be able to convince someone to give you a high rune. And that was assuming you weren't about to be scammed.

Point is, the whole idea of "beat the game, farm better gear, so you can farm better gear, so you can beat the game on a harder difficulty and find better gear" is never fun. People really do enjoy it, myself included, but I would never call it "fun". Never has been, never will be. It's called farming for a reason. Making "colorful or exotic unique modifiers" wouldn't do anything, other than excite you for maybe a day or two. Then you'll realized "oh, it's just more loot of a specific tier." Either you enjoy boss/dungeon runs for the sake of loot, or you don't.

Since it seems to cheer a lot of people up, you should know it gets a lot easier to find rare stuff once you hit 60. You get a stacking buff that literally makes bosses (only bosses I believe) drop more, and better loot. That doesn't mean you'll stop seeing those 10 str level 60 voodoo masks on your demon hunter, but you will see yellows a lot more often, and it gives you a reason to kill bosses again, other than for story/difficulty progression.

[Caiada]

Well, it's got depth; it's just not in the item system anymore, in it's current form. Itemization is pretty meh though, I agree, mostly due to the centralization of stats under primaries, added damage and resists. It's one part where I agree they might have been too WoWesque in their design, honestly.

---------- Post added 2012-05-24 at 01:38 AM ----------

It's never been fun.

Back in D2 all you did was make a (usually sorc) MF set and boss rush all damned day. If you were remotely lucky you got an item for a different class, which would only be useful for a specific build that's pretty dated, and hardly anyone uses anymore. After you got 10 more of those you might be able to convince someone to give you a high rune. And that was assuming you weren't about to be scammed.

Point is, the whole idea of "beat the game, farm better gear, so you can farm better gear, so you can beat the game on a harder difficulty and find better gear" is never fun. People really do enjoy it, myself included, but I would never call it "fun". Never has been, never will be. It's called farming for a reason. Making "colorful or exotic unique modifiers" wouldn't do anything, other than excite you for maybe a day or two. Then you'll realized "oh, it's just more loot of a specific tier." Either you enjoy boss/dungeon runs for the sake of loot, or you don't.

Since it seems to cheer a lot of people up, you should know it gets a lot easier to find rare stuff once you hit 60. You get a stacking buff that literally makes bosses (only bosses I believe) drop more, and better loot. That doesn't mean you'll stop seeing those 10 str level 60 voodoo masks on your demon hunter, but you will see yellows a lot more often, and it gives you a reason to kill bosses again, other than for story/difficulty progression.

D2's system was bad and D3's is only a marginal improvement (they've basically traded one problem, short boring boss runs, with another, poor itemization), but I fervently disagree that the item hunt can't be fun. They could easily make a few simple changes and have the post-Hell gear hunt be significantly more fun.

[ZeroWashu]

Item hunting simply isn't fun and doesn't feel rewarding.

You are doing it wrong.

After watching a few streams on twitch I have come to a few conclusions

1) exploiting is rampant, this is truly a game of Exploit Early, Exploit Often

2) #1 ensures the field will never be level

3) #1 makes blizzards online only requirement laughable

In regards to my comment about your doing it wrong. Before every chest, before the last few points come off those boss, you must be in the right gear. Hell I have watched streams where they pop in people for certain chests. All featured the same routine, swap gear to bonus magic drops.

[Tehterokkar]

Yes, it is frustrating to get really crappy pieces, played on my Barb last night in Act 2 hell, I got maybe 6 Rares, all of them were equal to some blues you get in Act 3 Nightmare. It's just so stupid.

[Cairhiin]

There are skill modifiers on gear, and other on hit effects. However I agree that itemization could use a little more flavour. Furthermore, I think Blizzard said they are working on the legendaries, which really is my main gripe, they're currently just terrible. Having said that I feel that most people compare D3 to D2 LOD and not classic, and in that regard D3 is very near D2 classic in item design. Let us hope that Blizzard held back the crazy stuff for the expansion.

[Repefe]

Every time I see item with int and str on it I want to punch a baby. Or items with +exp or increased range on gold collect ... waste of property slot.

[Mirakh]

Every time I see item with int and str on it I want to punch a baby. Or items with +exp or increased range on gold collect ... waste of property slot.

Not all items are supposed to be useful. Did you know the Gorilla & Monkey affixes in wow? ye. These items were terrible aswell.

[Deleted]

Don't complain about item hunting until the item hunting starts please. In diablo with the near unreachable level cap item hunting was weird, now it is actually sensical at level 60 but you complain about it before reaching that level. I am very sorry but if this is your argumentation for calling diablo 3 shallow then in my opinion you are very shallow

[Newbryn]

I'm gonna have to agree on the shallowness of the game currently at level 55 act 2 hell and I have no motivation to continue. I personally hope that the games dungeons were real ones not narrow hallways and copy paste interiors, and without any new ares on the higher difficulties its just stating to feel repetitive. I also feel I must address this, challenge and cheap are not the same thing I'd say diablo is mostly cheap than challenging.

[Deleted]

I'm gonna have to agree on the shallowness of the game currently at level 55 act 2 hell and I have no motivation to continue. I personally hope that the games dungeons were real ones not narrow hallways and copy paste interiors, and without any new ares on the higher difficulties its just stating to feel repetitive. I also feel I must address this, challenge and cheap are not the same thing I'd say diablo is mostly cheap than challenging.

If that is your problem with the game then that is a problem with the dungeon crawler genre to be honest and not with Diablo itself. It is like saying you hate WoW for it's world that you share with other people. It is the genre.

[Newbryn]

If that is your problem with the game then that is a problem with the dungeon crawler genre to be honest and not with Diablo itself. It is like saying you hate WoW for it's world that you share with other people. It is the genre.

Fair enough but if that's the case in my own opinion the dungeon crawler genre needs to evolve then.

[Deleted]

Fair enough but if that's the case in my own opinion the dungeon crawler genre needs to evolve then.

I fear that if dungeon crawlers were to not just repeat a relatively short story a few times that then they would lose most of their challenge and longevity. Dungeon crawlers currently offer way more pve challenge than any other genre whilst still allowing the game to be played by people with less skill.

[Shuya82]

I have to agree, I'm still enjoying the game, but I'm very much giving into this feeling as well. I never enjoyed hunting for epic rares in D2, I hunted for uniques. Legendaries don't feel the same.

[Arunu]

agree with Harmloos.

I'm in act3 Hell atm and still enjoying it very much.

sure, i sometimes miss a little " immersion " aswell in the grand story, but ask yourself this.
Was it easier to get really immersed into a game 10 years ago (when you were young ) or now.

thought as much, so it's not really fair to blame rose tinted feeling on Blizzard for that, you have grown older and enjoy different things.
the genre is still the same and the execution of this game is pretty damn good.

sure , it has it's flaws im my opinion aswell, but overall it's good.

[Repefe]

Not all items are supposed to be useful. Did you know the Gorilla & Monkey affixes in wow? ye. These items were terrible aswell.

And the fun factor in crafting one useless item after another is ... I am missing the point You are not deciding between less useful and more useful items ... you are hoping one of the items you craft will not be utter crap with nonsense stats.

[Lysah]

stuff

Anyone serious about making it far in D2 was on d2jsp. Right now I could get a trapsin over 10k LS with infinity in a day or two of playing, from nothing, because the medium of forum gold on d2jsp makes trading a 75% block level 9 shield for an ohm possible where it would never happen if you made a game saying "LLD SHIELD FOR OHM LOL" and waited.

The "colorful or exotic unique modifiers" did wonders for D2. There were tons of ways to screw with the skillset of a hero because of the abilities items, especially runewords, gave them. Shapeshifting barbarians, whirlwind assassin duelers, riftsins, there were tons of extremely interesting fringe builds that were possible in D2. D3 is very obviously less complex in this area. You can't teleport as a barbarian (as much as people hated enigma for this, it still added depth and customization to the game), all you can do is stack more and more "stats."

[Deleted]

And the fun factor in crafting one useless item after another is ... I am missing the point You are not deciding between less useful and more useful items ... you are hoping one of the items you craft will not be utter crap with nonsense stats.

How much fun would it if all awesome items were just thrown at you the instant you desired it? That would get old real quick. It is kind of a WoW-mindset to want items to always be proper and what you expect, but it only works in WoW because there the fun-factor comes from something else. In Diablo 3 the difficult and long item hunt is part of the fun and thus should be more difficult.

[slime]

Not all items are supposed to be useful. Did you know the Gorilla & Monkey affixes in wow? ye. These items were terrible aswell.

I thought Monkey was Agil+stam (not too bad) but yea gorilla is terrible (str+int). I have also noticed the less than epic drops in D3 but for now I'm finishing up normal so I am still enjoying it. I have already been thinking about how the next 2 difficulties will probably be pretty boring re-plays of normal, and already have nerfs for my class to look forward to when I never even got to use the skills pre-nerf.

[Deleted]

Don't complain about item hunting until the item hunting starts please. In diablo with the near unreachable level cap item hunting was weird, now it is actually sensical at level 60 but you complain about it before reaching that level. I am very sorry but if this is your argumentation for calling diablo 3 shallow then in my opinion you are very shallow

This so fucking much !
Completely agreed.