D3 longevity: what WERE people expecting?

[Slummish]

I could have been totally fine with D3 just the way it is. However, the auction house aspect of obtaining gear, mats and gold has changed the game for me. You simply cannot make a grinding/farming game and then have the whole premise undermined by being able to buy gear...

[Glorious Leader]

Your a master of stating the obvious. Tell me what interesting affixes you could get on a Rare item in D2? Interesting bonus's are on set's/legendaries and runewords, much like they are now. Want a helm with IAS then you need Andarial's etc. Yes Blizz will bring out an expansion with better loot, that's the whole point and YES they will make money off it.....no matter how at odds you seem to be with people making money.

And I call bullshit. That was something they fixed in LoD when they made loot more interesting. Why the regression in d3? Only one fucking reason.. Items in d3 should be as interesting as LoD items were. Not a regression to sell as another feature in an expansion. Do you generally buy sequels in games expecting them to be worse than the expansions from prequels? Is Blizzard that hard up for ideas they have to repeat stuff over again? Furthermore are you that much of a sheep for accepting that? If any other game company was so naked about it the outrage would be massive.

[Kolymos]

And I call bullshit. That was something they fixed in LoD when they made loot more interesting. Why the regression in d3? Only one fucking reason.. Items in d3 should be as interesting as LoD items were. Not a regression to sell as another feature in an expansion. Do you generally buy sequels in games expecting them to be worse than the expansions from prequels? Is Blizzard that hard up for ideas they have to repeat stuff over again? Furthermore are you that much of a sheep for accepting that?

This pretty much sums up my entire view of what's wrong with the game. I understand items not granting skills from other classes, but I expected a whole lot more "X does Y% more damage" or "X's resource cost reduced by Y" or "Skill X gains additional effect Y", fun things that they put in D2. Blizzard has had YEARS to learn from D2 and use that info to make D3 FUN right from release, I don't understand why they didn't.

[Santti]

No it's not better than it ever was in d2. That's just false. The loot in d2 was interesting and was not standardized horse shit. I could get items that gave me another classes ability (for example) and that was neat. I would often times take a "weaker" piece of gear because it gave me a neat bonus. The legendaries themselves are shit as well and getting one is basically meaningless as a blue item with bigger number will always be better. Mark my words, they'll announce an expansion with better item affixes and more interesting items in general and you people will praise them for fixing the mistake they fixed already in LoD. I have no problem with them making money, I have a problem with what are obvious cash grabs.

They already stated they are buffing legendaries, including adding interesting weapon procs to them. No need to wait for expansion for that, so it's not all bad.

[Glorious Leader]

They already stated they are buffing legendaries, including adding interesting weapon procs to them. No need to wait for expansion for that.

I knew they were buffing the stats, I didn't read anything about adding better affixes to them. Procs is good but it depends what the procs are I guess.

[Kronik85]

And I call bullshit. That was something they fixed in LoD when they made loot more interesting. Why the regression in d3? Only one fucking reason.. Items in d3 should be as interesting as LoD items were. Not a regression to sell as another feature in an expansion. Do you generally buy sequels in games expecting them to be worse than the expansions from prequels? Is Blizzard that hard up for ideas they have to repeat stuff over again? Furthermore are you that much of a sheep for accepting that?

What's your definition of "interesting loot", go to Arreat's Summit if it still exists and trawl the item DB for "interesting loot". Personally I don't want the interesting loot of 1.10, it was all about rune words that made everything else that previously dropped vastly inferior, despite being riddled with interesting stats I don't liek that sort of loot. At the end of the day most loot has to be understandable by people that can't write their own spreadsheets.....there's nothing wrong with being able to look at an item and actually understand it where as if I was to understand how Absorb works in D2 I'd have to use a third party site that explained it properly. Aside from +bonus's to other classes skills the loot there's more Affixes and Suffixes on items then there ever was in D2.

D2 Prefixes/Suffixes
Ele Damage
Weapon ED
+Armor
+Stats
Thorns
LL/ML
IAS
Run Speed
Res
MF/GF (lulz GF! in D2)
Res
All Res
Sockets
% Recovery Speed (which has no value to you if aren't very familiar with the game and breakpoints found on third party sites)

Pretty confident anything else was Legnedary/Set item only. You have all that in D3 with a few others thrown in and that's not really a need for any others, what is often interesting is merely interesting because it's needlessly complicated.....like all "interesting" things in D2's loot tables. Your not taking a step back from anything, don't break what ain't broken.

[Glorious Leader]

What's your definition of "interesting loot", go to Arreat's Summit if it still exists and trawl the item DB for "interesting loot". Personally I don't want the interesting loot of 1.10, it was all about rune words that made everything else that previously dropped vastly inferior, despite being riddled with interesting stats I don't liek that sort of loot. At the end of the day most loot has to be understandable by people that can't write their own spreadsheets.....there's nothing wrong with being able to look at an item and actually understand it where as if I was to understand how Absorb works in D2 I'd have to use a third party site that explained it properly. Aside from +bonus's to other classes skills the loot there's more Affixes and Suffixes on items then there ever was in D2.

D2 Prefixes/Suffixes
Ele Damage
Weapon ED
+Armor
+Stats
Thorns
LL/ML
IAS
Run Speed
Res
MF/GF (lulz GF! in D2)
Res
All Res
Sockets
% Recovery Speed (which has no value to you if aren't very familiar with the game and breakpoints found on third party sites)

Pretty confident anything else was Legnedary/Set item only. You have all that in D3 with a few others thrown in and that's not really a need for any others, what is often interesting is merely interesting because it's needlessly complicated.....like all "interesting" things in D2's loot tables. Your not taking a step back from anything, don't break what ain't broken.

Bonuses to another class skills is one example, your forgot +life on hit in that list but even that was more interesting in d2. Weapon procs are missing. When I get home I'll log back into my d2 account and list the shit I have on him. For now it's important to understand that as someone on the official forum put it "D2 gave us an item system the drove people spend money out of pocket on items. They failed to do that in d3". What they gave us in d3 was standardized and sterile loot, akin more to the progression system in world of warcraft. Yes everything is simpler that's also a design philosophy from Warcraft and taking a step back in terms of complexity is breaking what is fixed. The expansion in d3 will also make everything inferior btw (which isn't true for d2 cause I kept older stuff if it had cross class bonuses) because it will likely follow the wow system of item level progression where ilvl 64 65 66 will be the new standard. It's a step backwards from d2:lod and not in any way shape or form an improvement.

[Ferocity]

No it's not. The AH WAS a factor in how loot dropped. They talked about that even if they don't tell you exactly what they did.

They did it by increasing randomization in item creation.

First of all, D2 used smart item creation. There were no Sorc weapons with bonuses to Paladins' skills. In D3 we have it on right and left (Spirit Stones with intellect, Sources with Strength, etc.).
D2 had less useless stats - Light Radius, Indestructible, Self-Repair. D3 has a lot of them (health Globes, +exp, + life after kill, etc.).

D2 had a solid ilvl system. Sure high level mobs could drop low level items (as if it is not happening in Inferno to some degree). But item's ilvl was dictating the range of affixes item could get. So if you get high ilvl item in D2 - you could expect decent stats on it, of course not super good combos each time, but not like Thorns which could roll on ilvl 61 D3 item as high as 1712 and as low as 365. Add to this items were also less or more useful due to smart item creation. But in Inferno, even if it would be dropping only ilvl 60+ items - they'd be crap almost all time.

Legendaries and sets is another big example. Most of those in D3 is complete and utter trash (Item from Tal'Rasha set for wizards with dexterity and reduced cost of some barbarian's ability? Guys, you gotta be kidding...) due to being heavily randomized themselves. D2's legendaries and sets had only a slight level of randomization and actually had a cool set of stats.

This randomization did make it close to impossible to farm your own gear in sane time frame. We are speaking here of 1000s and tens of 1000s hours per one AH'able decent yellow item drop in Inferno, and hundreds of 1000s hours for useful item for you, on solo farm. And as wrote it in other thread, gearing with AH is possible as even if only 100k-200k players were doing Inferno atm - there would be decent yellow item or two added to AH of Inferno level each hour, and it goes exactly like this.

People who say itemization works same as in D2 perhaps don't even know what is Affix system, it's mechanics in D2 and D3, and just speak out their empty assumptions that they are same, while most likely staying on their chars in Hell or judging Inferno from Act 1 on their ranged chars (and/or not even playing D2 in depth). Sure Hell can be beaten in decent gear from late normal, and Inferno Act 1 isn't that much gear demanding too (especially for ranged). But for Act 2+ - you either exploit what is yet exploitable to progress, or you are stuck in farming gold and relying on AH for your upgrades.

[aekya]

Why always assume that people getting tired/bored of it is due to insanely high expectations that weren't met, instead of the simpler truth, the game isnt that good?
I understand trying to protect the product your spend money on and expected for a long time, but its nothing more than patting yourself in the back to make the laughter go away :P

The model doesnt have much longevity by itself, what diablo 1 and 2 had was character, which makes me sad to say, D3 doesnt
It lacks the appeal its predecessors had, the game technically is good, but feels empty.
Its something that i noticed 10m into playing it (i played more, dont go rawr rawr play more), in D1 i was stuck right away, in D2 i even had tears on my eyes after 10m, on D3 i was wondering what the hell am i doing playing this after 1h.

[Ravenblade]

In order to clear this: "Diablo 2 had more interesting items" topic up.

Diablo 2 had about 30 affix classes (14 prefix classes, 16 suffix classes) which resulted in over 300 possible affixes whereas Diablo 3 just knows about 90 affixes.
Now the difference was that in Diablo 2 stats were split into stat ranges and each range given an affix with each affix requiring a minimum level to spawn so in fact the higher your level the more possible names could pop up. Whether as a whole there more items or usable items could be debated. Diablo 3 did not take over all item classes and the crafting is different and there is no enchanting or gambling.
Diablo 3 has "smart" affixes and a lot hybrid affixes like Feral standing for Dexterity and Vitality, they also roll between ranges regardless of your level but seem to have a minimum level requirement at least for either the affix itself or the top range.

People perceive the D3 itemization as more bland because a) there are in fact less items, b) less affix classes and hybrid affixes and affixes as a whole featuring "smart" ranges sometimes going with lowest range even at max. level, c) less options (drop or AH, or expensive crafting, no gem combos just gem effects).

Why did Blizzard go backwards? Well, one could speculate that they saw what LoD offered in the end as cap and they just decided to empty the glass to fill it up again over time, or they thought it's actually in accordance with what players demanded and streamlined the system towards this i.e. removed the crud and left in only shiny parts. But one can only stare so long at the glitter.

I think they can improve a bit upon it. It shouldn't be hard to see going by the deficiencies how they could do that. I actually believe - remembering my time as D2/LoD modder - that D3's system is actually capable of more, so it seems they are holding back.

[Kronik85]

Bonuses to another class skills is one example, your forgot +life on hit in that list but even that was more interesting in d2. Weapon procs are missing. When I get home I'll log back into my d2 account and list the shit I have on him. For now it's important to understand that as someone on the official forum put it "D2 gave us an item system the drove people spend money out of pocket on items. They failed to do that in d3". What they gave us in d3 was standardized and sterile loot, akin more to the progression system in world of warcraft. Yes everything is simpler that's also a design philosophy from Warcraft and taking a step back in terms of complexity is breaking what is fixed. The expansion in d3 will also make everything inferior btw (which isn't true for d2 cause I kept older stuff if it had cross class bonuses) because it will likely follow the wow system of item level progression where ilvl 64 65 66 will be the new standard. It's a step backwards from d2:lod and not in any way shape or form an improvement.

Semantics. I find the loot in D3 interesting, you don't. End of really lol.

/edit: I just found bracers with 154 Str, 76 Vit, 56 All Res and 13 MF, finding them made me excited. I never got excited bout a Rare in LoD.

[Glorious Leader]

Semantics. I find the loot in D3 interesting, you don't. End of really lol.

You may enjoy that it's simpler that's fine. I think it leaves the game wanting and breaks what was good before. Hey your welcome to that opinion.

---------- Post added 2012-06-12 at 02:13 PM ----------

Why did Blizzard go backwards? Well, one could speculate that they saw what LoD offered in the end as cap and they just decided to empty the glass to fill it up again over time, or they thought it's actually in accordance with what players demanded and streamlined the system towards this i.e. removed the crud and left in only shiny parts. But one can only stare so long at the glitter.

I think they can improve a bit upon it. It shouldn't be hard to see going by the deficiencies how they could do that. I actually believe - remembering my time as D2/LoD modder - that D3's system is actually capable of more, so it seems they are holding back.

I don't think we'll see cross class stuff coming back but I would hope they added more interesting item affixes. I'm just wholly disappointed that they couldn't come up with anything more original and they basically just have to go through the same rehash they did in LoD. I don't think the genre is a dead end but when they do things like this it kinda makes me wonder.

[Kolymos]

Guys, guys, guys. Can we all just agree that

TORCHLIGHT 2 IS GONNA BE AWESOME. =D

Please post on topic and constructively

[xebtria]

diablo 3 already lasts longer than most if not all "pay once and you're done" game of the last 10 years.

I'm fine with that.

[aekya]

diablo 3 already lasts longer than most if not all "pay once and you're done" game of the last 10 years.

I'm fine with that.

Lol no it doesnt
Its longevity for me was about 2 weeks.
I could list the amount of games ive played in the last 10 years that had more than half a year longevity btw, some older games i still play today time to time.
You may be referring to some of activision/EA horrid titles that dont last long, but 3 weeks is nothing really.

Although i wonder why would you take pleasure/comfort from it having outlasted some mediocre titles?
The games merit is on its own, why compare it to other games?

[Frozen Death Knight]

No it's not. The AH WAS a factor in how loot dropped. They talked about that even if they don't tell you exactly what they did. Even if what you say is true you honestly think it's okay that they regressed from LoD? Let me guess, they'll fix it in an expansion and everything will be gravy if you give them more cash. I can't believe anybody accepts that..

Like SW: TOR? Ka-ching!

[FathomFear]

It wont have the same long term popularity, because it has competition now. Competition that does a better job, from blizzard themselves.

This. I don't understand why people don't talk about this aspect more. The gaming environment in 2012 is leaps and bounds more advanced than it was in 2000. So many more options.

And for the record, vanilla D2 was loaded with tons of problems. The game didn't really come into its own into the expansion pack. I suspect the same will happen D3.

[Ferocity]

This. I don't understand why people don't talk about this aspect more. The gaming environment in 2012 is leaps and bounds more advanced than it was in 2000. So many more options.

Actually not. However bad D3 wouldn't be, it is best out there of ARPG genre currently since D2/DS2/TQ, and will be until Grim Dawn for sure. Modern gaming environment is pathetic. I remember time when we had Nox, DS1, other game (forgot it's name) of ARPG genre releasing close together, as well as Final Fantasy VII/Septerra Core/Tales of JRPG subgenre, Fallout/Arcanum of ala GURPS RPG, W7/MM 6/Demise of dungeon crawlers, etc. lots of decent games in 1-3 years span.

Now gaming environment is just full of mediocre games, and however bad D3 wouldn't be, it is still better than any other modern game of it's genre. However stale WoW wouldn't be, it is still better than it's numerous clones.

[Glorious Leader]

Like SW: TOR? Ka-ching!

Nice. I've learned it's alot easier to go on the offensive on this forum. I'm glad to see others have recognized it to.

[Frozen Death Knight]

Nice. I've learned it's alot easier to go on the offensive on this forum. I'm glad to see others have recognized it to.

Considering that you happen to be banned because of that, you kind of missed the point by a mile. You sure got a bit frisky with your attitude towards others that disagree with you, so trying harder in that aspect would be the last thing you should do.