So i dont get why Diablo 3 "failed"

[Vocah]

Click click click click + repeat.

Not much else.

That's why.

Just like every other game in this genre.

[Tomana]

Did Skyrim come out, and then the devs realized "oh, we have to buff Daedric weapons, because they're weaker than that stick sitting over there". Did they have to make MAJOR overhauls to each class/talent trees (I forget what it's called in that game) to make each ability and class fun to play? Did they spend a year doing this and still having LOADS of work to do.

Skyrim is a single player game. Consequently, devs can afford not giving an absolute damn about class balance, weapon balance, spec balance, or whatever balance. And in the past, that's how it has been in TES. Some classes were a pain in the booty to level and play with, some were cookie-cutters. But you can't apply such a logic as long as multi-player is concerned.

Mark my words, when TES:Online will be out, they will spend time balancing PVP, specs, weapons and anything else you can think of. Or the game will go the way of the dodo very fast.

Click click click click + repeat.

Not much else.

That's why.

You mean like Diablo 2? XDD

---------- Post added 2013-04-13 at 04:30 PM ----------

Not the customers problem, they had a beta and only opened up to Skeleton King...

Well, maybe on Mars, you have development teams who can iron anything in alpha and beta stages. But here on Earth, this is how it happens

[Melt]

Anyone who expected anything less than playing through the same content a billion times clearly should not have bought a Diablo game... thats what it is. Thats not why it failed. If I had to say why it failed I would say lack of viable character builds. I see what they were going for, put a bunch of interesting skills in a huge pot and see what kind of creativity players have in building new characters, but in the end it just ended up with 1-2 viable builds and that was it. Items were not very interesting either.... no really awesome procs or anything. Even the new legendaries since they tried to address the issue still aren't near what we had in D2.

Players have a much to high standard...
What do you consider viable? You can clear Inferno with just about any skill setup on any character, so most if not all "builds" are viable. If people say a build is only viable if it can farm MP10 just as fast as the fastest build they probably have never played a Hack'n'Slash game ever before. If you would go by that logic Diablo 2 had 1 viable builds in the entire game. Blizzard sorc. After people then duped and botted enough items that opened another 2 viabloe builds... Lighting Sorc and Hammerdin. That's it 3 viable builds.

Same thing goes for items. Nowadays people think a 1k dps weapon is useless, while I still haven't found a single one of those and run around with 850 dps...

[darkwarrior42]

Just like every other game in this genre.

Yeah... anyone who says that's not a fun game is entitled to their opinion, but given how many people were dying for another game LIKE that it's not really the reason D3 failed.

For me, it's just a matter of feel and style. I prefer large skill trees, and in a game were single and small group play is what you do it's not as important to me that every class/spec/build/whatever be exactly balanced. As an example, here's the passive skill tree in Path of Exile: http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMB I'm not trying to push the game (though if you loved D2 and didn't like D3, you'll probably enjoy PoE), but there are a TON of builds available there. Some work, some don't. Some are better than others, but almost all will work if you play them properly.

I also think there's a happy medium between D2's "If you spend one wrong skill or stat point you're screwed" and D3's "you can change anything whenever you want so it doesn't matter." As two examples of said happy mediums, I cite Torchlight 2 and Path of Exile:
Path of Exile: You can potentially earn 120 passive skill points. There is no global respec option; the developers explicitly state that if you want to try a completely different build, you should make a new character. However, there are items you can earn from quests or find as drops/purchases that allow you to refund a small number of passive skill points, and you cannot accidentally spend either skill points or refund points; both require confirmation. This means if you try out a few skills and decide you don't like how they handle, or you want to tweak your build, you can. But if you want to do something completely different, you need to reroll. It encourages smart decision making and identifying with your build, while simultaneously not punishing you for small mistakes.
Torchlight 2: You can spend gold to undo skill point allocations, but only for the last 3 skill points you put in. This lets you spend a point or two to try out a new build, without committing to it. That's really all there is to that system.


Beyond that.... the AH hasn't been overly good for the game, and the style was a sharp departure from the other diablo games. Diablo 3 isn't a bad game now, but many of the features they've added over patches should have been in from the start, and the sheer number of those features that are little more than adaptations of features from Diablo 2 should say quite a bit.

Games evolve, absolutely, and there's not necessarily anything wrong with that. But Diablo 3 doesn't feel like Diablo 2 to me. They're clearly the same universe and concept, but there are enough differences that it feels like an entirely different game.

As another example of how such differences occur: In Diablo 2, all character classes had mana. You used mana for all special attacks, and you regenerated mana naturally, through mana pots, or through various abilities that leeched mana or granted mana on attacks. They wanted to get away from that model in D3, and go toward a model more similar to WoW where pots are limited. They accomplished this by giving each class in D3 a unique resource, that can be replenished through class abilities (Witch Doctor excepted, of course, at least to a degree). This made the game more modern and got away from chain potting, but also made the game feel completely different from D2 in terms of how you use abilities. Melee classes never use their standard attack, because there's no reason to; there's choice in how to spend your resources, but there's always a special attack of some sort to use.

Edit: I admit I've always liked melee/range classes that have a reason to use their standard attack... in Torchlight 2, one of the more amusing builds early on for me was a berserker build that focused on auras and self-buffs, then just ran around auto-attacking everything. But more to the point, the special attacks in such games feel more powerful to me when you can't just spam them all day long, or when there's a reason to conserve resources by not using them. By making some of the special attacks resource generators, that feel is lost for me, even if the resource generators are less powerful.

In Path of Exile (sorry to keep bringing it up, but it's the best example I can think of), all characters use mana, and have flasks. However, flasks are not like potions. Flasks can restore mana or health (or both, if it's a hybrid flask), but are re-usable. They have a certain amount of charges, and using a flask consumes charges. Each time you kill an enemy, all equipped flasks (and they must be equipped to be used) gain 1 charge. So I might have a mana flask with 40 charges, and using it to restore my mana might consume 20 charges. This means I"ve got 2 uses at full mana.. but if I keep killing enemies, my charges return very quickly. This lets you pot frequently during normal gameplay, without trivializing bosses (because unless there are a lot of adds, there's no way to regain your charges on a boss.) Furthermore, flasks are equippable items, and as such can be magical and have different bonuses. One flask might increase your evasion while it's active, another might increase resistance, etc.

My point is NOT to advertise PoE. If you don't want to play it, I don't care. My point is that it's possible to update mechanics and make them more modern, and more advanced and user friendly, without turning your back on the style of the original. Blizzard didn't just want to update Diablo, they wanted to make it more like WoW... and they were completely successful. The problem is that not all WoW fans like Diablo, and not all Diablo fans like WoW. (I kinda suspect that Blizzard really wants people who like all of their games, because then they can more fully integrate all of their games and people won't mind as much, but that's approaching conspiracy theory level so I don't really dwell on it.)

Edit: I apologize for the wall of text, just wanted to share my thoughts. If you don't want to read, that's fine, I'm going to play WoW or PoE now anyways :-P

[Grevie]

My point is NOT to advertise PoE. If you don't want to play it, I don't care.

You re doing it.

[Lolsteak]

Skyrim is a single player game. Consequently, devs can afford not giving an absolute damn about class balance, weapon balance, spec balance, or whatever balance. And in the past, that's how it has been in TES. Some classes were a pain in the booty to level and play with, some were cookie-cutters. But you can't apply such a logic as long as multi-player is concerned.

Mark my words, when TES:Online will be out, they will spend time balancing PVP, specs, weapons and anything else you can think of. Or the game will go the way of the dodo very fast.



You mean like Diablo 2? XDD

---------- Post added 2013-04-13 at 04:30 PM ----------



Well, maybe on Mars, you have development teams who can iron anything in alpha and beta stages. But here on Earth, this is how it happens

Actually you can, since they didn't want to include PvP anyway.

Being better than somebody else in multiplayer has no impact on your own gameplay, exactly the same as in Skyrim.

[OrcsRLame]

You re doing it.

I see nothing wrong with that. PoE is the shit. Like, seriously. I actually didn't think an ARPG could be that good.

[Redblade]

Well, maybe on Mars, you have development teams who can iron anything in alpha and beta stages. But here on Earth, this is how it happens

Why do you think it's fair that a product that cost $60 is broken?

Besides, they could have had a beta that covered, well, the entire game. Wouldn't have needed to be a open beta but still if you decide to test your game internally only then you better be up to the task. Not to mention their abysmal development pace when it comes to fixing the issues, before they fixed the pots, rare chests, and the act 1 rare farming the economy was already in the shitter.

And still, at the end of the day non of this is the customers problem, go out and buy any other product for $60, if it's not working properly you will return it, why should games be excused? Lets go to the number so many fans use to defend this piece of shit game, 12 million boxes sold, that's $720 million if all sold at full price, even at half price that's $360 million, why should the customer stand for a broken product that suffers from bad testing again?

I see nothing wrong with that. PoE is the shit. Like, seriously. I actually didn't think an ARPG could be that good.

Can only join in the praise of PoE, it's really an amazing game that receives a lot of developer love.

[BenBos]

You know the greatest thing about you defenders is using the ''It sold 11 million copies so it doesn't fail''

Correction. Diablo sold 12 million from May 15 to Dec 31 2012.

As since it is STILL in most top 20 sales charts (such like Amazon.de), it probably is already around 13 million copies sold.

AND we now know around 3 million UNIQUE players log in per month... after 10 months.

Which are ALL impressive figures.

I play HC mode and playing like this the game is fabulous.

[Elite Peon]

It fails because it was in development for 12 years and you get a 8 hour long game ...it fails so fucking hard >.< ...Ive played through it once and feel no need to play it again unlike d1 and d2 ...

[Resentful]

Correction. Diablo sold 12 million from May 15 to Dec 31 2012.

As since it is STILL in most top 20 sales charts (such like Amazon.de), it probably is already around 13 million copies sold.

AND we now know around 3 million UNIQUE players log in per month... after 10 months.

Which are ALL impressive figures.

I play HC mode and playing like this the game is fabulous.

It doesn't mean It's a good game.

[Whidbey]

It fails because it was in development for 12 years and you get a 8 hour long game ...it fails so fucking hard >.< ...Ive played through it once and feel no need to play it again unlike d1 and d2 ...

Exactly.. No replay value to it.

[Pendulous]

Skyrim is a single player game. Consequently, devs can afford not giving an absolute damn about class balance, weapon balance, spec balance, or whatever balance. And in the past, that's how it has been in TES. Some classes were a pain in the booty to level and play with, some were cookie-cutters. But you can't apply such a logic as long as multi-player is concerned.

You said ALL games have flaws at release, and I specifically said MMO's don't count. Name one game that had as many major gameplay flaws at launch as Diablo 3, and the devs had to admit the game crashed pretty hard (again, I bring it back: Legacy items).

[icedwarrior]

and the devs had to admit the game crashed pretty hard (again, I bring it back: Legacy items).

I don't remember them saying that the game "crashed pretty hard".

Feel free to use sources.

[Pendulous]

I don't remember them saying that the game "crashed pretty hard".

Feel free to use sources.

General statement, I'm not quoting anyone there.

[icedwarrior]

Name one game

General statement, I'm not quoting anyone there.

Then you can't say that D3 devs said that, since by your own admission, they didn't say that.

[BenBos]

It doesn't mean It's a good game.

The thread was about general "fail" and not about your personal opinion.

So overall it is a success (certainly in sales) AND in player numbers as 10 months after launch there still is a 25 % retention rate of 3 million unique loggings per month.

Most games are never played longer than a few hours. Hell, stats show that 90% of all games never are finished.

So while I consider D3 a fantastic game to be played in HC mode and you would consider it not a good game, the overall stats in both sales AND multi million unique loggings per month shows a lot of people like it.

I hate it when people want to trash talk games I like to play. Why ? Because I don't think your opinion is superior than mine. That's a very simple statement and people should respect the multi million fans of D3.

This last sentence is something a certain moderator does not seem to grasp: fans of D3 LIKE TO PLAY this game... GOT THAT mod ?????

And yes I would like to give an advice: play D3 hardcore and you'll see its huge element of fun.

[Pendulous]

Most games are never played longer than a few hours. Hell, stats show that 90% of all games never are finished.

Most games of what?If you're saying that most video games don't last for more than a few hours and nobody ever finishes games, you really need to rethink that.

[Marmot]

Most games of what?

I think he means in general.

[Pendulous]

Then you can't say that D3 devs said that, since by your own admission, they didn't say that.

I never said they said that, I was paraphrasing, jesus.

Here, game too hard at launch, itemization sucks and needs major changes (still), class skills are still terrible and need reworked, social features suck, all wrapped up into one blue post.