decided to go for this again - what I remember from first install when DIII was out

[Deleted]

Bought on day one, finished the game, then it said to go up a level and I was stunned and wondered why there was so little content.

- Was expecting a huge game - walking through many lands, different themes and would take long time to get through each chapter and would meet many adventures
result -> Was very surprised at how small each zone was and how quickly I progressed and how little I felt like I was involved in an epic strife or
adventure
- Was expecting loot to feel unique and for there to be real names that one tries to get, some classic pieces
result -> loot was all random? I was in disbelief at that, how could they mess that up?
- No content past finishing final fight against Diablo, but that can't be it.
result -> You have to play it again? But they hit harder? Like the lazy Wow ideal of heroics for dungeons or raids? They just tweak the monster stats?
- Poor AH. I have a few million in Wow as I like to play economy but the interface was awful at start of DIII.
result -> let's see, hope it's better
- Nice sound.


I am hoping this game is going to be much better now. Will let you know. Must be many more that played at launch and left shortly after super disappointed.

Has anyone else gone back lately after abandoning after the launch after being not that happy with it? If so - thoughts on the game now after some upgrades?

[xskarma]

I returned last week after not (barely) playing the game since the first 2 months and I'm having a blast again. I never left disappointed though, I was just sort of played out, and needed my time for WoW again (mostly beta).

You seem to have gone in with wrong expectations though, tbh. Expecting a huge MMO like world and content is not what Diablo has ever been about. Same with playing the game again on a harder difficulty, that's not bad design, it's intended design. I'll give you the AH though, it was pretty crappy at the start, but I've had a lot of interaction with it the past week, and it's both slightly better now in user friendliness + the AH itsself is actually better stocked with gear, so you'll have no problem getting good gear and selling good gear.

[Deleted]

xs - thanks for reply - I played Diablo2 and remember the territory and zones being absolutely massive - am I wrong?

---------- Post added 2013-02-22 at 12:54 AM ----------

Seems the Ah is still appalling. Oh come on Blizzard.

For example, the search facilities are rubbish, I tried to search on all in AH for real money to see what the most expensive item was. 1 eur 25. Obviously wrong.

[Deleted]

xs - thanks for reply - I played Diablo2 and remember the territory and zones being absolutely massive - am I wrong?

Well, not really massive. But definitely a little bigger and more random than Diablo 3.

Most of it were squares randomly put together though. But when you look at Diablo 3, a lot of the zones are only a path, hardly any room to move to the sides, only forward or backwards. It's as if you're in a rollercoaster, you don't have much freedom to move around.

[philefluxx]

xs - thanks for reply - I played Diablo2 and remember the territory and zones being absolutely massive - am I wrong?[COLOR="red"]

Large for the time, but not massive by any means. But the big difference was the randomization which is arguably far superior to what D3 does. You couldn't run in the same direction and expect to find what ever your looking for and sometimes you had to complete the entire map to find it. I'm looking at you Maggot Lair....

[Maelle]

I play it on and off, just in chunks of an hour or two to relax. It's a good game to play in group mode while streaming tv shows etc.

I find it enjoyable, but I did take a long break after the intial spamming of it on release. I think it's best played in shortish bursts, and as long as you don't expect to get awesome loot constantly and are content with little finds and the hope that one day you will win the loot lottery it's fine ^^

[MoanaLisa]

I'll propose a theory which may or may not have any validity whatsoever. When Diablo II came out, the zones seemed enormous because for the time they really were. That plus the randomization factor made them seem perhaps bigger than they really were.

Fast forward a dozen years and the standard world size for most games of this type has become enormous. Even more so if you've played World of Warcraft or just about any modern MMO.

Now drop into Diablo III and the zones would seem to be relatively small compared to what you might be used to from the last few years. I think they're a bit smaller than D2 to be honest and much less random. Which for me makes them feel a little more closed up. It's not really my favorite thing. I thought and still think that the game world is too small by about half. But I'm aware that when I enter a game world, I'm used to World of Warcraft, Skyrim and games like that which are really enormous in comparison.

[Shinzai]

Some things that I'm finding interesting about Diablo 3 in comparison to playing Path of Exile lately:

Most new comers complain about the areas being far too big - they don't like having to spend almost an hour in a single quest area at low level. It takes too long to reach waypoints, or waypoints are lacking in certain areas altogether, meaning that if you die or get dc'ed, you've generally got a huge trek ahead of you. Worse still is when an area that you just ran through resets and you die unexpectedly with no waypoint set, you often end up fighting your way through it all over again.

Also, in Diablo 3, travel speed in general is far higher from the off set - most of the maps are fairly large, but the characters default movement speed is quite fast. With movement speed boots/bonuses, you end up sprinting around areas in minutes. In Diablo 3, you go through a similar sized land mass to Diablo 2/Path Of Exile, but it's far more fragmented - you're allowed constant respite or are just out right sent back to base, almost as though they designed it to be played in shorter bursts.

The Gold AH I still have no issue with and the RMAH is a case of 'whatever' for me - use it if you want, there's no valid argument to suggest anyone's forced to use it. If anything, the Gold AH is a huge boon to the game. I've seen so many people in terrible gear in PoE, struggling through areas, complaining about farming for days with no half decent yellows or legendaries, or getting level 9 legendaries at level 53. Not to mention that a vast majority of the players simply vendor everything, because they can't be bothered joining the spam train that is the Trade channel, or trying to pick out things that may be of use to them from it: Having a singular place to put items that might be useful to other people, or to get items that you haven't managed to get yourself is hugely helpful.

However, on the flip side of the whole AH/loot system, I will say that it's obvious they gutted a much more rewarding loot system from the early beta/alpha demos. Whoever decided that there had to be an AH system ensured that the standard drop/loot system wouldn't make the AH pointless. One of the earliest things Blizzard told us about loot, was that it should be rewarding and you should always be getting good or at least usable items. In the original 20 minute play through they showed us of the Barbarian, they took about 2 minutes to explain that finding loot in game would be a great experience. But whatever, I doubt it's going to change at this point in time.

As to no content past Diablo - that's pretty much what Diablo 2 and all other Diablo clones are all about. Spam running the same bosses or areas over and over. They're designed to be based around farming, almost endlessly. Diablo 3 does have the infernal machine system too now for end game play, for the time being anyway.

[ZamboUK]

I was thinking about reinstalling D3 this morning, but still unconvinced.... Gah, damn my indecisive ways!

[BenBos]

Some things that I'm finding interesting about Diablo 3 in comparison to playing Path of Exile lately:

Most new comers complain about the areas being far too big - they don't like having to spend almost an hour in a single quest area at low level. It takes too long to reach waypoints, or waypoints are lacking in certain areas altogether, meaning that if you die or get dc'ed, you've generally got a huge trek ahead of you. Worse still is when an area that you just ran through resets and you die unexpectedly with no waypoint set, you often end up fighting your way through it all over again.

Also, in Diablo 3, travel speed in general is far higher from the off set - most of the maps are fairly large, but the characters default movement speed is quite fast. With movement speed boots/bonuses, you end up sprinting around areas in minutes. In Diablo 3, you go through a similar sized land mass to Diablo 2/Path Of Exile, but it's far more fragmented - you're allowed constant respite or are just out right sent back to base, almost as though they designed it to be played in shorter bursts.

The Gold AH I still have no issue with and the RMAH is a case of 'whatever' for me - use it if you want, there's no valid argument to suggest anyone's forced to use it. If anything, the Gold AH is a huge boon to the game. I've seen so many people in terrible gear in PoE, struggling through areas, complaining about farming for days with no half decent yellows or legendaries, or getting level 9 legendaries at level 53. Not to mention that a vast majority of the players simply vendor everything, because they can't be bothered joining the spam train that is the Trade channel, or trying to pick out things that may be of use to them from it: Having a singular place to put items that might be useful to other people, or to get items that you haven't managed to get yourself is hugely helpful.

However, on the flip side of the whole AH/loot system, I will say that it's obvious they gutted a much more rewarding loot system from the early beta/alpha demos. Whoever decided that there had to be an AH system ensured that the standard drop/loot system wouldn't make the AH pointless. One of the earliest things Blizzard told us about loot, was that it should be rewarding and you should always be getting good or at least usable items. In the original 20 minute play through they showed us of the Barbarian, they took about 2 minutes to explain that finding loot in game would be a great experience. But whatever, I doubt it's going to change at this point in time.

As to no content past Diablo - that's pretty much what Diablo 2 and all other Diablo clones are all about. Spam running the same bosses or areas over and over. They're designed to be based around farming, almost endlessly. Diablo 3 does have the infernal machine system too now for end game play, for the time being anyway.

Good round up on an otherwise excellent thread made by the OP.

Why ? Because it shows the OP had no clue that Diablo was not another MMORPG with seamless worlds etc... Lots of people didn't know what to expect, certainly not a lot of the WoW crowd.

A second problem was that at launch Inferno was ridiculous hard. It was created for the 0.5% supermen among us.
While this challenge is great for pros ... It kills it for us mere mortals.

Add in the basement dwellers of old D2 players with their nostalgic glasses of 14 year olds ... And you see why D3 got flak.

Today though ... A lot changed. Inferno can be played without even using the AH. And the "wall" of Inferno is broken down with 11 difficulty levels of Monster Power Play.

Since launch some very GREAT tools have been introduced.

1. Paragon levels to extend play beyond level 60 and raising your heroes with an extra long 1-100 Magic Find levels.
2. The excellent MP play which offers the players a choice in difficulty levels according to their gear (from lvl 1 to 60 even)
3. The excellent hunt for keys from Keywardens to create a crafting Machine with new boss mechanics. The fact the MP difficulty is related to the chance of finding these keys was very nice.
4. More bind on account crafted gear so people have other choices in the end game to craft things.

In the state D3 is currently in, this is a game you will keep playing from time to time when in the mood for smashing mobs, be that in solo play or in groups. No attunements, nor reputation grinds, no gearscore required and still long term goals both in softcore as in hardcore mode.

[ibotdiablo]

I return for a few weeks after every patch to check it out. Seems to be when most people return. It's crazy to see how the economy reacts to MMOs over time... just tanks because of the bots.

[traen]

1. Paragon levels to extend play beyond level 60 and raising your heroes with an extra long 1-100 Magic Find levels.

I wish I was as happy as some people.
The only reason you like paragon levels is because you've seen the game without them. Boring game with nothing but gear hunting.

But I can't agree that the idea of paragon leveling was anywhere good.
You don't need two separate experience based leveling systems in the game, one is more than enough. There is no difference between current system and ordinary leveling system with lvl 160 as max level.
But obviously its stupid to make lvl160 max level. It was much more reasonable to make lvl100 max level and increase the experience needed per level. Or you can make a level 200 max. If you like this "ding" feeling and want to get it more often.

The same goes about "inferno" difficulty. There was no need to create 4-th difficulty that in the end turned out to be de-facto easier than Hell difficulty in d2.

2. The excellent MP play which offers the players a choice in difficulty levels according to their gear (from lvl 1 to 60 even)

All I can do is to blame blizzard that they did not introduce it from the beginning. It is not something new. It was in d2 from start.

3. The excellent hunt for keys from Keywardens to create a crafting Machine with new boss mechanics. The fact the MP difficulty is related to the chance of finding these keys was very nice.

Again, "Ubers" in D2. Exactly the same mechanics. Keys farming, multiple "old" bosses in the same area you open portal into. Why did not they introduce them right away?

4. More bind on account crafted gear so people have other choices in the end game to craft things.

Again, all I can do is to blame blizzard for massive failure with implementing crafting system, which was basically unusable from start. And guess what? its still unusable. No one crafts any sort of gear but keys and new boa items.
Hundreds of recipes, crafting materials, crafting leveling - you can safely remove it right away because no one uses it.
Now, with "new" items it works exactly as an old Horadric cube - "put 1 ruby, one demonic essence, one random legendary item and roll a random amulet of strength".
NOTHING changed. Just a crafting interface.

So... tbh.. I see no hype here. After 10 month after release they were barely able to reimplement old features from d2.
IMO, they should've been there from the release, and now we should've had NEW interesting features.

So come on, where is your player's dignity? Don't be fooled by reused content, demand something new!

[Deleted]

People were expecting it to be generations ahead of what it was though - and rightly in my opinion. The same jump that diablo 2 was from the original, deeper, more expansive, more interesting, more features etc.

What we got was a short and repetitive dungeon grinder, where you can play for 10s of hours without getting a useful drop (without the AH or RMT at least) and where depth was removed instead of added. Blizzard did not change or advance gameplay in any way at all, and there was no room for exploration or anything like that, just a series of linear grind tubes.

D3 was a dinosaur years before it was even released. Then Torchlight 2 blew it away, and PoE seems much more geared towards the hardcore players who wasted their youths on d2 . I keep thinking about trying out the new stuff, (I'm still a vanilla 60 with no paragon levels or anything) but when I log in, I instantly remember the boredom.

that's not bad design, it's intended design

Those are not mutually exclusive terms, misguided development caused the game's problems, just because they intended it doesn't make it fun or good game design.