Diablo 3 reviewed by someone that didn't play Diablo 2 or 1

[traen]

It's just the first review out of many.
D3 is all about farming.
Farming does not make any sense for console games.
Just imagine that instead of playing 3d shooter you had to farm the same location over and over killing the same soldiers standing on the same spots.
Most of the console players have never seen games like this. They don't understand the concept.

But in the same time they are so used to bad console games with a lot of hype around them that most of them won't even complain.
D3 is disappointing? "No worries, I'll buy another game".

I guess we are just getting old. The whole idea of playing 2-3 big, high-quality games a year is dying.
I want to play the game that will keep me interested for 5 years.
New generation of players gets bored after playing the game for one week, no matter how good and deep it is.

[Iseeyou]

Diablo 3 is one of the biggest disapointment in the gaming history.

Pc or Console wise.

[Beazy]

Diablo 3 is one of the biggest disapointment in the gaming history.

Pc or Console wise.

That must be why it continues to sell so well a year after launch.

[traen]

That must be why it continues to sell so well a year after launch.

Go buy Windows Vista then. So many people bought it, you should not be disappointed, right?

[Ebonheart]

That must be why it continues to sell so well a year after launch.

That is the fall back lame response one gives when they run out of excuses. Its cool we smell a fan boy from miles away.

It has an addicting play style which gets pretty boring after a bit.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

That is the fall back lame response one gives when they run out of excuses. Its cool we smell a fan boy from miles away.

It has an addicting play style which gets pretty boring after a bit.

Implying someone is a fanboy is also a sign of bad arguments.

[Beazy]

That is the fall back lame response one gives when they run out of excuses. Its cool we smell a fan boy from miles away.

It has an addicting play style which gets pretty boring after a bit.

If diablo sucked as bad as you want us to believe, it would not sell well 12 months after release. Do you think the new SimCity is still selling well on origin? Youre just mad that the game YOU think sucks, doesnt actually suck, and people are still flocking to it in droves. Your "sales dont mean shit" argument was crushed after the initial sales continued to climb because of popularity, not decline because it sucks.

Sorry your hateraide taste so bad, try the grape flavor next time.

[traen]

If diablo sucked as bad as you want us to believe, it would not sell well 12 months after release.

Give us a link to per-month selling statistics or your assumption is invalid. I don't believe that it "sells well" after 12 month.

Also What makes you think that bad things can't sell well?
It's wow and d2 that are selling this game, not d3 itself.
If this game was released with different name from different developer, it would not sell even 1/10 of what it was able to sell.
You never know what you are buying before your bought it. It's not a car, there is no test drive.
And most people don't even try to do a research before buying games. "Hey, I heard about this game somewhere" or "I saw an advertisement on tv". And then "well... it was not what I expected to see ;(".

The number of sales is not important. What is important is customer satisfaction. And the number of disappointed customers was extraordinary high.
No blizzard game caused so much hatred before.

Obviously the game is still better than most of the games on the market. It's just failed expectations.

[Coldkil]

God of War is pretty much an ARPG and those guys do it a thousand times better.

God of War is NOT and ARPG. It may have some rpg elements, but it's an adventure/platform game.

[Beazy]

Give us a link to per-month selling statistics or your assumption is invalid. I don't believe that it "sells well" after 12 month.

Also What makes you think that bad things can't sell well?
It's wow and d2 that are selling this game, not d3 itself.
If this game was released with different name from different developer, it would not sell even 1/10 of what it was able to sell.
You never know what you are buying before your bought it. It's not a car, there is no test drive.
And most people don't even try to do a research before buying games. "Hey, I heard about this game somewhere" or "I saw an advertisement on tv". And then "well... it was not what I expected to see ;(".

The number of sales is not important. What is important is customer satisfaction. And the number of disappointed customers was extraordinary high.
No blizzard game caused so much hatred before.

Obviously the game is still better than most of the games on the market. It's just failed expectations.

Read the last Blizzard quarterly financial report and cry harder. Thanks for trying though, your pix are epic!

[traen]

Read the last Blizzard quarterly financial report and cry harder. Thanks for trying though, your pix are epic!

Why do you cry about someone's financial reports? Mind your own business.

And what's the point of taking one quarter financial report if d3 development costs were distributed to 7-10 years? For 10 years they took revenue from world of warcraft and used it to develop d3.

2011 revenue: 4,755.00.
2012 revenue: 4,856.00 .

Well, cool, but it looks like a profit from selling 12 million copies of d3 was just a fracture of their income and it was barely able to cover wow subscriber loss.

But what has it all do with the particular game quality?

[Frozen Death Knight]

It's wow and d2 that are selling this game, not d3 itself.

Diablo 2 didn't sell 12+ million copies and I don't know how exactly this makes much sense at this point when most people that played Diablo 2 who wanted to buy the 3rd installment on PC already did the first month or so. Sure it had an impact on sales, but you can't honestly make the claim that people are still buying it because of Diablo 2.

[Andromedes]

I love blizzard games, but i understand why a lot of players are disapointed.
Yeah this game is about farming, but its about in what environment you farm, what items you farm..

I really hate hunting items in linear environment where you know, where to go. Its missing that feel of danger. Then you must go through all these cheesy dialogues like ,,RAWR, YOULL NEVER DEFEAt ME!!'' etc.. (What i would propose? Non story mode, with opened waypoints. And about environment? Make more random environments. Outside maps are the same. There is always one road, so you cant get lost. I think the solution is obvious.

And about items you farm. I am glad, they are reworking drop system. But auction house ruins it for me.. The respond ,,dont use it'' is out of place. If you know, that there is option to use it, you will use it anyway, even if you dont like it. Why? Because the whole itemization is broken. In D2, there was always good Unique item.. Now there is loads of useless legendary crap - really cool...
With better itemization and without AH, there would be motivation to play. Now everyone stalks the AH. Hmm, really immersive way to obtain items.

There could be more ways to obtain good items. I really liked the rune words from D2. Set bonuses were cool. In D3, tal rasha set gives you +3% cold spell damage - wow.

Hell i would want skill trees back. It had RPG feel (isnt diablo aRPG?). Synergies and passives were cool, every character was unique.

I know it looks like i want a lot of elements from D2 to D3, but isnt it what keep the game fresh and replayable?

[traen]

Because the whole itemization is broken. In D2, there was always good Unique item.. Now there is loads of useless legendary crap - really cool...

D2 itemization was broken as well.
There was no depth in it, there was no where to go.
In d3 average players have 100k dps, top players have 1m dps. And top players are not even close to bis items. There is always where to go.
In d2 most of your BiS items were dropped by mefisto on nightmare...
Bis gear was so common and affordable that it was not even funny.
It was possible to fully gear up a budget sorceress with items that dropped for you in just 3-4 days of farming. And you knew that even with absolutely bis gear you won't be able to increase her dps even by 2-3 times.
There was just no room for improvement in d2.

In d2 yellow items in most slots were absolutely useless.
In d3 you know that yellow item can cost a fortune if you are lucky.

D3 uniques can roll with bad stats. D2 uniques with rare exceptions had no value on second drop.
In d3 when I see that echoing fury dropped for me I know that it can be so amazing that it will be worth more than all my gear altogether. I'm excited, I do my prayers to God of Random to help me with roll.
In d2 if oculus dropped I said "another oculus, vendoring it". And it was like that for pretty much every bis item in the game.

It is possible to do stat inflation in d3. Buff uniques drop rate by 100-200 times, Buff uniques stats to be a guaranteed roll of 95-100% of their maximum stats.
So echoing fury will always roll with 1500 dps and it will drop for you every 2-3 days.
You'll get pretty much the same itemization that you had in d2.
But would it make the game better? I doubt it.

[yazu777]

i think you are excluding gameplay, some classes can use skill to overcome the gap in gear, like snapshotting skill.

[Ebonheart]

Read the last Blizzard quarterly financial report and cry harder. Thanks for trying though, your pix are epic!

LoL Blizzard fan boy.

Contribute constructively, please

[Deleted]

That is how the genre works unfortunately, and going to any of the competition will result in more of the same.

That's a statement I don't agree with. The concept of a basic dungeon crawler is outdated and needs to be reinvented with plenty of innovation.
The fact that Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 were succesfull games doesn't mean Diablo 3 should remain the same, there needs to be innovation. Today's gaming generation is different, and thus the game needs to be different.

In the case of Diablo 3 it's simply a matter of lack of content. The basic game is fine, but it just needs more variety. I think the expansion will deliver on that (or at least partially), but it's a bit late. You don't get a second chance to make a good first impression. Diablo 3 has become a stain on the franchise, it will take time to recover from that.

But I don't agree that all dungeon crawlers should remain with the simple concept of "Kill > loot > power up > repeat" as the OP says. It's a good start, but a new game in this genre needs more than that to keep people interested. This is not the year 2000, it's 2013.

- - - Updated - - -

The number of sales is not important. What is important is customer satisfaction. And the number of disappointed customers was extraordinary high.
No blizzard game caused so much hatred before.

Obviously the game is still better than most of the games on the market. It's just failed expectations.

I think what's more interesting is how many people buy the expansion and/or how many people buy an eventual Diablo 4.

Because I think most people just bought Diablo 3 without even thinking about it, expecting it to be even better than Diablo 3. Now that they realize that they shouldn't trust Blizzard so easily, the sales numbers of their next Diablo games are very interesting. It could show what an impact Diablo 3 has had on the fans.

[traen]

I think what's more interesting is how many people buy the expansion and/or how many people buy an eventual Diablo 4.

A lot. People buy pretty much anything that looks familiar to them.

Like this
- Let's go to "The Fast and the Furious 6!
- Well, I did not really like The Fast and the Furious 2-5, they are getting worse with each new movie in the series.
- Well, we can go to "Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa" or "2 Guns".
- Oh, f.ck it, lets go to The Fast and the Furious 6, maybe it won't be as bad as previous one.
(2 hours later)
- Damn...

[wariofan1]

As someone who didn't play 2 or 1 either until afterwards I'd say it's neither amazing or terrible. It's a decent game, but I hate games that expect you to do the same shit over and over again just because it's on another difficulty, and the story itself was incredibly lackluster. I'd also have liked a little more interesting boss battles, but that's about it. It's not horrifying, it does have its good things, but it's no miracle either.

I will however say that having played Diablo 2 after 3 was a terrifying experience, that's gotta be the game that gets praised the most out of pure nostalgia, because my head hurt after just sitting for 1 hour with those clunky controls and slow gameplay.

[schwank05]

I hated the AH and thus hated the PC version, now that I have the PS3 version, I am loving every minute of playing. Gear that drops is actually good, no more getting a 600 DPS legendary that is terrible every legendary, hell even rares are sweet and have excellent useful stats. I love the PS3 version, feels like the game should have been released that way from the beginning.