Diablo 3 - The Phantom Menace

[jvbastel]

Your personal assurances are meaningless. The game is a 7/10 TOPS. Not up to Blizzards usual standard and not worthy of being called it's successor. It fails as an rpg and it fails as a story. The only thing it may succeed in is being a revenue stream.

It's a sad day when a 7/10 game "sucks".

The game sold more copies already than D2 ever has, and basically everyone I see in game shops/internet café's is playing it, and enjoying it immensely.

IIRc you're a SWTOR fan, a game that's often bashed on these forums as well. Just because a lot of people talk negatively about that game doesn't make it a bad game either. I played it for a while but wasn't satisfied enough with it to pay a sub fee, but I won't start calling it a bad game just because it's not my thing, because it just isn't.

Contrary to popular belief, D3 is doing fine.

[Leonard McCoy]

It's a sad day when a 7/10 game "sucks".

The game sold more copies already than D2 ever has, and basically everyone I see in game shops/internet café's is playing it, and enjoying it immensely.

IIRc you're a SWTOR fan, a game that's often bashed on these forums as well. Just because a lot of people talk negatively about that game doesn't make it a bad game either. I played it for a while but wasn't satisfied enough with it to pay a sub fee, but I won't start calling it a bad game just because it's not my thing, because it just isn't.

Contrary to popular belief, D3 is doing fine.

Hardly. I frequent a few net cafes myself and they went back to LoL pretty fucking fast. A 7/10 game sucks for Blizzard because they usually produce much better quality. It's shocking how many poor decisions and design choices were made in this game. It's left me with a bad taste in my mouth just like the phantom menace. In the end I came away extremely disappointed because my most BASIC expectation wasn't met with either. It simply wasn't fun. It's a sad day when posting on these forums is more fun...

What swtor has to do with this I'll never know but yes continue to beat the dead horse. I happen to think Diablo 3 is a bad game regardless of what is and what did happen with swtor.

[Leonard McCoy]

This is not patronizing. You bought a game for 50 Euros. You played 100+ hours. You got a fair deal. If you dislike the game, that is great. But: You are no professional game reviewer and your OP is no good review. It is saying how bad PM was for 5 paragraphs and you compare it to D3 in the last sentence. That is an opinion. Yes, you are free to express it. We are free to tell you why it is presented badly and thus why we do not care.

You don't consider telling people with reasonable critiques "to take it like a man" patronizing? I have a better Idea. You don't like the OPs original post. You take it like a man and don't post in his thread. Read it and move on. Accept that not every body likes d3 for a number of reasons. Take it like a man.

[Deleted]

After 100+ hours played, you payed in the end 50 cents per hour. You viewed the PM three times at 10 dollars a viewing. That is 5 dollars an hour. I say you got a fair deal out of Diablo3.

You can only top this by telling us you got it free with the AP.



This is only true if that is THE SOLE AND ONLY reason why you play a game. Sad for you if you are that type of guy. Believe it or not: There are people out there who play through the game once or twice or 10 times to experience every character, to kill every boss and to have...wait for it....FUN!!

And you know why I know that? Because the bloody RMAH that everyone keeps getting worked up about.....is NOT even yet in the game!

I think all of us play the game to have fun but seeing Diablo drop 3 blues every time you kill him is just retarded. They added this new cool mechanic called Nephalem Valor to the game but as it turns out its a god damn waste of time to go get 5 stacks and then kill a boss. Grinding the retarded soul bosses or w/e you want to call them is much more efficient.

And on hardcore its a 24/7 goblin grind, because making their spawn points completely random would have been so hard right?

Nephalem Valor is a flop and fact of the matter is that YOU will never find the gear you need to complete all of Inferno legit, the game was made arround the AH and not the other way arround.

[jvbastel]

What swtor has to do with this I'll never know but yes continue to beat the dead horse. I happen to think Diablo 3 is a bad game regardless of what is and what did happen with swtor.

I mentioned SWTOR because the posts in this subforum are basically copies of the ones on tor's after its release. People bashing a decent game they probably haven't played because they have nothing better to do. It'll happen again when GW2 hits, and then it's off to the next big release. It's getting a bit boring, to be honest

[Vankrin]

I don't post here very often anymore as I am not currently playing WoW, although I am a sucker for every WoW expansion and I'm sure I will purchase MoP.
With that said, I want to also say that I don't mean to insult the OP when I say what I am about to say:

MMO's are mmo's for a reason, they are designed to be a time-sink, whether you admit that, or not. There is no single-player in WoW, or mmo. Questing solo is not single-player mode, that's called questing alone in an MMO. I feel like people have been jaded by the ability of online oriented games, WoW, to quench their thirt and keep them busy for so many hours, that if another game doesn't do just that, that is is a failure. This is a jaded, false opinion of a game that makes no sense. 100 hours into diablo 3, and it didn't live up? Do you realize that 90% of games that come out see about a 10 hour playthrough and MAYBE a second playthrough, and many of these games are deemed successes. Diablo 3 is not an mmo, it's an online action rpg with the option to play alone, or with others. 100 hours is WAY more time than 90% of other 60 dollar games are going to give you. Stop being jaded and enjoy your 100 hours.

Ultra nerds with no responsibilities run games into the ground by "no-lifing" them then go and complain on forums that the game didn't suck enough time out of their lives. This is a more than a little pitiful.

My tiny bit of advice is a well known phrase that says: "Everything in moderation." I guarantee that if you play Diablo 3 -from time to time- with people that you like, for less than 12 hours at a time, you will find that it is great fun, just like many other games that you run into the ground then deem boring. So jaded.

TLDR; Stop expecting non-mmo's to eat up the time of your probably sad life. Enjoy games in moderation, like you should everything in life. Stop being jaded. It's a sad day when 100 hours for 60 bux is considered a bad game LOL.

[Leonard McCoy]

I mentioned SWTOR because the posts in this subforum are basically copies of the ones on tor's after its release. People bashing a decent game they probably haven't played because they have nothing better to do. It'll happen again when GW2 hits, and then it's off to the next big release. It's getting a bit boring, to be honest

I don't see how that's relevant in the slightest. In fact what it is is an attempt to reduce any all critique of the game to nothing. Make it so that it's easily brushed off as the usual hater crowd that just walks around. You don't agree with his opinion that's fine. You don't agree with my opinion that's fine to. It's not silly however, just as you are welcome to disagree with it they are welcome to have their opinions. Selling more copies as you full well know doesn't mean jack shit to anybody but the publisher I'm afraid. D3 suffers from fundamental design flaws that would take some serious thought and looking at to fix. On top of this is the usual host of balance and technical issues that new releases also suffer from. It's shit and it's strange usually Blizzard does better than this.

---------- Post added 2012-06-05 at 08:35 AM ----------

Like I said: I don't consider your critique "reasonable" You compared the game to PM - which means: A hype that doesn't live up to YOUR expectations. I fail to see any arguments that you presened. And I fail to see why we should consider those arguments valid? Because "TonyIommi" said so?

Again: Yes you can express your opinion - which you did. I am allowed to disagree and telly ou that you preseneted them badly and unconvincingly.

I had one expectation. That I would have fun with the game. It is reasonable since I played the first 2 and had a great time and last weekend getting into the tl2 beta and playing was also a blast. That expectation was not met with the Diablo 3 for a host of reasons. That's my position, take it like a man and move on.

[jvbastel]

I think all of us play the game to have fun but seeing Diablo drop 3 blues every time you kill him is just retarded. They added this new cool mechanic called Nephalem Valor to the game but as it turns out its a god damn waste of time to go get 5 stacks and then kill a boss. Grinding the retarded soul bosses or w/e you want to call them is much more efficient.

Would you prefer it the D2 way? zerging the same boss over and over again? The NV system is a pretty good way to fix a few problems D2 had.

-Botting: it was VERY easy to just have a bot doing your farming for you in D2. It will probably happen in D3 as well, but it will be a lot harder due to the fact that the game encounters are more random. You can't just have a bot do just diablo because it will earn you next to nothing. Hell, I even botted myself for a while with my sorc in D2.

-Boss runs: Let's face it, running pindleskin or baal (or even NM Andarial for that matter) for ages was just boring as fuck. At least in D3 we get some random bosses.

Yes the game is built around the AH. It's a game about gear, of course it will be. That doesn't mean you have to buy stuff from the RMAH.

[valzyf]

...and it's definitely better than D2 was at release.

That's the thing, though. D2 wasn't so good at release and yet over the years they patched it and released an expansion that made it better. And add on top of that all the time between D2 and D3 when it was released. After all of the success and longevity of D2, all the stuff they got RIGHT over the years, shouldn't it have made D3 a much, MUCH better game, even if it was just released? Couldn't (shouldn't) they have learned from the improvement process of D2 to make it better? Why does D3 have to have a shaky release of not being as good a game and then have to go through the years, if it lasts that long, of patches for improvement?

EDIT: To clarify, when I say shaky release I mean the mountains of player feedback about how bad the game is, not the fact that it sold 6 million copies or whatever, cause people expected a Blizzard game to live up to the quality of the games they released in the past.

[Leonard McCoy]

Yes the game is built around the AH. It's a game about gear, of course it will be. That doesn't mean you have to buy stuff from the RMAH.

The game promotes it in every way possible. Simply put gear should be obtained through drops, not buying it on the AH out of frustration after farming 100x worse than you did in the previous games. When something does finally drop the rng usually ensures that it's shit anyway and you better off selling it. The RMAH will be a HUGE success. Blizzard is counting on the hardcores to farm up for it because they know the "casuals" will simply either give up playing or give up farming and just buy the gear. It teases you with the carrot of gear from the AH because the gear from mobs is denied to you on so many levels. It's strange because Blizzard is USUALLY more concerned with making things more accessible for players. The AH accomplishes this but at the cost of the actual game. It not quite pay2win but it's close enough that it should be given real consideration.

Again I managed to recently get into the tl2 beta and for a game that's 1/3 the cost I had vastly more fun and the "feeling" of progression through gearing was so much better. The items that dropped were better suited, the stats on them were more interesting and they actually dropped for me. It was fantastic. Everything diablo would be without the AH.

[Deleted]

Well then - maybe I am just hardened from 2 years of Baal runs. This game is barely out 3 weeks. It took me 2 years (in Hardcore even) to get MOST of the juicy stuff. And I still never got those awesome runewords because I never saw a Vex or Zod rune drop and never was rich enough (itemwise) to trade for them.

At this point of the game it is much too early to call anything retarded. The game is barely out of the starting blocks

I dont see why not, its not like they will do a 180 all of a sudden. Getting the right gear in Diablo 2 on SC didnt take more than a month, no the gear was by no means perfect but it was the right uniques that you needed to have perfect stats.

In Diablo 3 that is just impossible and will take years even on SC unless you have lots of RL money. Take 1 Hand weapons for example, a perfect 1 hander for a barb would have something like 2k life on hit, 25% IAS, 250 vit, 250 str and 1400 dps. Now go on AH and check the 1 Hand weapons and you will still not find a single perfect 1 hand weapon for any of the classes and people have been farming act 4 for atleast 2 weeks now.

You also have to take into account that more people are playing Diablo 3 than Diablo 2 so surely there should be a perfect 1 hand weapon on the AH.

[Karry]

I don't post here very often anymore as I am not currently playing WoW, although I am a sucker for every WoW expansion and I'm sure I will purchase MoP.
With that said, I want to also say that I don't mean to insult the OP when I say what I am about to say:

MMO's are mmo's for a reason, they are designed to be a time-sink, whether you admit that, or not. There is no single-player in WoW, or mmo. Questing solo is not single-player mode, that's called questing alone in an MMO. I feel like people have been jaded by the ability of online oriented games, WoW, to quench their thirt and keep them busy for so many hours, that if another game doesn't do just that, that is is a failure. This is a jaded, false opinion of a game that makes no sense. 100 hours into diablo 3, and it didn't live up? Do you realize that 90% of games that come out see about a 10 hour playthrough and MAYBE a second playthrough, and many of these games are deemed successes. Diablo 3 is not an mmo, it's an online action rpg with the option to play alone, or with others. 100 hours is WAY more time than 90% of other 60 dollar games are going to give you. Stop being jaded and enjoy your 100 hours.

Ultra nerds with no responsibilities run games into the ground by "no-lifing" them then go and complain on forums that the game didn't suck enough time out of their lives. This is a more than a little pitiful.

My tiny bit of advice is a well known phrase that says: "Everything in moderation." I guarantee that if you play Diablo 3 -from time to time- with people that you like, for less than 12 hours at a time, you will find that it is great fun, just like many other games that you run into the ground then deem boring. So jaded.

TLDR; Stop expecting non-mmo's to eat up the time of your probably sad life. Enjoy games in moderation, like you should everything in life. Stop being jaded. It's a sad day when 100 hours for 60 bux is considered a bad game LOL.

Was just about to write something like this. It is really sad when someone ( who basically has nothing to do all day everyday ) plays a game so much that they get bored of it and then feel the need to go on forums and vent their frustrations so that maybe he gets other people to agree with his opinion so that he can feel good ( personal problems much ? ).

Take me for example ( lot of players are in this situation ). I go to work in the morning get of at like 17-18 and then come home sometimes tired sometimes not.If I didnt work I'm very sure I wouldve played a lot ALOT more then I do now.But I'm just in Act I Inferno just farming it for gold ( Monk ) and having fun till I can get in Act II, no need to rush things.

O and every single soul who goes "No good items drop" has clearly not played Diablo before.There was no AH in Diablo2, but there were a lot of trading forums so it still the same, only now you can play D3 and play the AH a bit.Diablo "newbies" seem to bring the WoW complaints of loot here in the sense that they want it and they want it NOW.So then they can complain that" omg loot so easy to get now I have nothing to do GG blizz you kiilled the DIablo franchise".Kids please...

[momozaza]

Staff can be a specialist and also well-known MMOG forex owner.

[Deleted]

Would you prefer it the D2 way? zerging the same boss over and over again? The NV system is a pretty good way to fix a few problems D2 had.

-Botting: it was VERY easy to just have a bot doing your farming for you in D2. It will probably happen in D3 as well, but it will be a lot harder due to the fact that the game encounters are more random. You can't just have a bot do just diablo because it will earn you next to nothing. Hell, I even botted myself for a while with my sorc in D2.

-Boss runs: Let's face it, running pindleskin or baal (or even NM Andarial for that matter) for ages was just boring as fuck. At least in D3 we get some random bosses.

Yes the game is built around the AH. It's a game about gear, of course it will be. That doesn't mean you have to buy stuff from the RMAH.

I love the idea behind NV but the execution is so horrible that it made a perfect mechanic into a pos mechanic. In Diablo you could potentially farm all bosses without making a new game but in Diablo 3 you either have to clear an entire act or just go for 1 boss and only just get it stacked to 5 before you kill the boss. The game would be more fun if you could open a game where you had all the waypoints (you have completed all the quests already anyways) and get your 5 stacks, kill skeleton king, kill butcher, kill magdar, kill siegebreaker, kill azmodan and finally kill all the bosses in act 4.

Instead you have to restart the game every time you want to kill a boss in another act and you cant even unlock all waypoints in act 1 and kill both skeleton king and butcher because they force the story on you.

[Liania]

Guild Wars already has been labelled the Saviour. Like 90% of other MMO's it'll be good and 'Stand Alone' well enough in it's own right but in no way will it ever kill WoW.

More OT however I personally feel a similar way. The Story (Alot More-so after Act 1) was uneventful, disappointing and cliche/predictable. Only VO's I enjoyed was Leah and Deckard. Dungeon Crawling became hopelessly boring and I'm not a Stat/Gear Obsessed person in any game so that whole aspect was completely lame (In alot of SP RPG's I'll actually take gear that LOOKS better visually then better stats). I play my games in Easy/Normal and have no desire to move into more difficult modes, More interested in the story then the challenge.

So basically in my opinion I generally agree with the OP... Extremely Hyped, mixed feelings initially, then you realise it's complete rubbish. True for Phantom Menace and true for D3 (IMO OFC). However I only did 1 playthrough, maybe 10-12 hours of gameplay instead of getting to 100 and then realising it was crap :S Got for free with AP so whatever >.>

Alot of people, especially this guy also comes into diablo 3 with WAY wrong expectations. I mean come on, you play diablo, but dont care about gear or the challenge, well... there goes 90% of the game for you. Diablo has ALWAYS been about the gear / grind primarily and after that maybe a bit of story.

What I think is that alot of the "new" diablo players are people coming from WoW, expecting a game like WoW, then when they get something completely different, they go on forums whining about it not being what they expected.

I mean come on...

[Deleted]

Played 60 hour only on my Barbarian and I'm 59, considering that on games as mass effect I have like 80 hour of play on two or more playthrough I would say that Diablo III is fairly good in terms of player engagement.

Of course is a game that has a "end" is not like an MMO, there's an artificial treadmill with the 4 difficulty levels and gearing but in the end is a game that has a beginning and a end.

[Deleted]

Sorry, you are confusing me: On one hand you say "Diablo 2 on SC didnt take more than a month, no the gear was by no means perfect" but in D3 you now "will still not find a single perfect 1 hand weapon for any of the classes ". So both games are the same after all? Because - I mean..why would you need this perfect equipment (especially in SC)? The game is beatable as it is. Yes, specially enchanted Elite packs can one shot you. Just like in D2. But you can play through all areas, avoud mobs if you want and beat all the bosses. Even in Inferno. People are doing it.

Actually as Blizz said under 1%. THAT is also why I say it is much, much, too early to judge anything and it is too much of a generalization to say what "everybody" wants out of the game.

Maybe I didnt make it clear enough. In Diablo 2, you most likely didnt find perfect equipment but you can be sure as hell that other people did. In Diablo 3 you still cannot after 3 weeks find a single perfect 1 hand weapon on the AH. I dont know about you but it tells me that the RNG in this game is just too extreme and drop rate on good items was made this low because of the AH.

[Deleted]

Never really liked the prequels of Star Wars. But I'm loving Diablo 3. Even after 3 weeks. And yes, I also was overly excited about the game. Except for the errors I'm far from disappointed.

[jvbastel]

But that's the thing, D2 wasn't so good at release and yet over the years they patched it and released an expansion that made it better. And add on top of that all the time between D2 and D3 when it was released. After all of the success and longevity of D2, all the stuff they got RIGHT over the years, shouldn't it have made D3 a much, MUCH better game, even if it was just released? Couldn't (shouldn't) they have learned from all the success of D2 and the years and patches it took to make it better? Why does D3 have to have a shaky release of not being as good a game and then have to go through the years, if it lasts that long, of patches for improvement?

EDIT: To clarify, when I say shaky release I mean the mountains of player feedback about how bad the game is, not the fact that it sold 6 million copies or whatever, cause people expected a Blizzard game to live up to the quality of the games they released in the past.

Even after the expansion it was still full of bugs, dupe-hacks and exploits. A lot of people actually didn't like it when they fixed them. (I myself got a bit sad when marrowwalk was fixed )

Blizzard did look at their mistakes in the previous games, and did a lot of effort to fix them. They made some decisions I disagree with (legendary/set itemization, removing rune words,no modding etc.), but overall, they've done a pretty good job and I'm having a great time playing the game with friends, screaming on vent when we encounter Fire chains/invulnerable minions/molten/Plagued champions

Also, after reading most of the bad reviews, it's obvious most of them came from people who either didn't know what type of game it was or posted random stuff on metacritic because it was the next "thing" on /v/

The worst thing about D3 is the fact that they gave it for free with the AP, to people who had no idea what a hack and slash grind game even was.

[Deleted]

Blizzard did look at their mistakes in the previous games, and did a lot of effort to fix them. They made some decisions I disagree with (legendary/set itemization, not implementing rune words,no modding etc.), but overall, they've done a pretty good job and I'm having a great time playing the game with friends, screaming on vent when we encounter Fire chains/invulnerable minions/molten/Plagued champions

Rune and runewords may always come up with the expansions, maybe as the Enchanter artisan. Who knows?