Diablo 3 : Best video game of 2014

[BenBos]

Ok I said it and despite my attacks on the decision of the deleted trading in 100's of other threads, ... I came back and stands corrected...

If Blizzard keeps its word and will introduce seasonal contests with rankings and special Legendary loot tied to each "season" I think they created an awesome experience.

While I still hate/play Hearthstone, although it can be fun sometimes, Diablo 3 turns circles around any game currently published.

From engine to rewards.

This is the game to play in 2014. No doubt about that.

[Nerraw]

I did not expect this thread. Especially not from you. I'm impressed.

And it is indeed an amazing game.

[garmeth06]

While RoS is currently a huge step-up from the original D3, I feel that the current state of finding new shiny loot will fail to satisfy players over a very large period of time ( read a year in the gaming world). Once all of your gear is near perfect, finding a ring with 5% better stats is going to be extremely tedious and all difficulty increases in the ARPG genre are simply artificial inflation of mob health and damage.

It is fun, and I feel that I am getting my hours out of the money I spent, but I can't see this being my go-to game over starcraft, league, etc.

[Valeron]

well so far maybe, the year has barely begun. But it is a solid expansion for sure.

[BenBos]

While RoS is currently a huge step-up from the original D3, I feel that the current state of finding new shiny loot will fail to satisfy players over a very large period of time ( read a year in the gaming world). Once all of your gear is near perfect, finding a ring with 5% better stats is going to be extremely tedious and all difficulty increases in the ARPG genre are simply artificial inflation of mob health and damage.

It is fun, and I feel that I am getting my hours out of the money I spent, but I can't see this being my go-to game over starcraft, league, etc.

For a while I thought that too, but then I read that in the first content patch Blizzard will introduce "seasons" : a kind of PVE challenges with rankings and special loot exclusives and awards to these seasons.

That right there convinced me that frankly you could play this game forever with the start of every new season.

If they can get the same mechanism as with PvP seasons (like SC2 or HS) but within a strict PVE setting, they made a long time winner as I still think that even PVE can be competitive without the frustration of lost PvP matches.

Blizzard demonstrated at BlizzCon these last years that you can have a kind of PVE competition too (see the competitive live Raid runs by different Guilds). Nothing that is preventing such a PVE competition in D3. A kind of ladder system but with better measuring tools and special season's goals. You already have this PVE competition in WOW in dungeons etc where you go for Gold, silver medals etc ...

I am very curious about these seasons, how long they will last and how the ranking system will work.

If done correctly the call for PvP is really redundant as Diablo is so PvP unfriendly from the get go (as gear is a 100% deciding factor). Those seasons would replace PvP rankings without the frustration seen in other games like HS.

[Captainn]

For a while I thought that too, but then I read that in the first content patch Blizzard will introduce "seasons" : a kind of PVE challenges with rankings and special loot exclusives and awards to these seasons.

That right there convinced me that frankly you could play this game forever with the start of every new season.

If they can get the same mechanism as with PvP seasons (like SC2 or HS) but within a strict PVE setting, they made a long time winner as I still think that even PVE can be competitive without the frustration of lost PvP matches.

Blizzard demonstrated at BlizzCon these last years that you can have a kind of PVE competition too (see the competitive live Raid runs by different Guilds). Nothing that is preventing such a PVE competition in D3. A kind of ladder system but with better measuring tools and special season's goals. You already have this PVE competition in WOW in dungeons etc where you go for Gold, silver medals etc ...

I am very curious about these seasons, how long they will last and how the ranking system will work.

If done correctly the call for PvP is really redundant as Diablo is so PvP unfriendly from the get go (as gear is a 100% deciding factor). Those seasons would replace PvP rankings without the frustration seen in other games like HS.

I really hope they don't screw up the seasons. I hope they're just as fun as the Diablo II seasons were. It sounds like it's going to be awesome. But I have to wonder if it's going to be based on how many rifts/bounties you run or if they're going to add harder ones in, etc. Maybe a point system based on how many rifts/what difficulty. I hope they don't add RNG to it like how many blood shards have you collected...

[anon5123]

It's fun- WAY better than release- but very far from "best game of 2014".


....especially considering that we're barely 1/3 of the way through 2014.

[garmeth06]

For a while I thought that too, but then I read that in the first content patch Blizzard will introduce "seasons" : a kind of PVE challenges with rankings and special loot exclusives and awards to these seasons.

That right there convinced me that frankly you could play this game forever with the start of every new season.

If they can get the same mechanism as with PvP seasons (like SC2 or HS) but within a strict PVE setting, they made a long time winner as I still think that even PVE can be competitive without the frustration of lost PvP matches.

Blizzard demonstrated at BlizzCon these last years that you can have a kind of PVE competition too (see the competitive live Raid runs by different Guilds). Nothing that is preventing such a PVE competition in D3. A kind of ladder system but with better measuring tools and special season's goals. You already have this PVE competition in WOW in dungeons etc where you go for Gold, silver medals etc ...

I am very curious about these seasons, how long they will last and how the ranking system will work.

If done correctly the call for PvP is really redundant as Diablo is so PvP unfriendly from the get go (as gear is a 100% deciding factor). Those seasons would replace PvP rankings without the frustration seen in other games like HS.

The problem is, wow pve is inherently a lot more indepth than action rpg pve. If one hasn't done it, any attempts to justify its difficulty will sound trite so, instead, I will present more quantifiable measurements of its difficulty.

The hard content in WoW is hard no matter what gear you have, and to be on the top of the ladder, the bosses die fast enough that gear hardly matters at all.

Can you imagine being locked in to a specific gear set for an entire week of diablo 3, and thrown at say, the skeleton king and it took you 18 hours to kill him because the mechanics of the fight were so hard? No. The best guild in the world for this past wow expansion, spent 350 times pulling a SINGLE boss ( given the one of the hardest ever made) and ~16 hours of practice to implement and execute a strategy. Action rpgs simply just aren't that complicated, they are, inherently, extremely shallow to their very core. Six months into the last content patch of wow, less than 1% of the player base managed to kill the hardest boss on the hardest difficulty.

The whole reason why wow pve can be made competitive, is because it requires some mechanical skill ( although not nearly as much if you were trying to be a professional at dota 2 or starcraft) and also multitudes of cohesion between teammates. One player taking one wrong step, reacting two seconds too slowly can literally end up killing the other 24. This is the reason why anyone gives two shits about competitive wow pve, D3 is still EXTREMELY centered around gear and RNG to get said gear. Mechanically it is a joke to play. On my witch doctor I press two to activate my grouping spell and then spam right click. If I need mana I press 1 or 4, and if the monster is particularly tanky I press 3.

However, if I press all of those buttons extremely out of order nothing bad will happen besides me killing the mob a little bit slower. There is no depth or skill involved in killing elite packs, it is literally 99% gear. Therefore, the ladder is about gear and time played. There is no strategy, mechanics, or depth to being number 1 in the coming d3 ladder. It will be about hours grinding , the same way path of exile ladder is, except PoE allows for considerably more theory crafting making the ladder a little bit interesting.

I think the ladder will help to add longevity, but I think this genre is limited by the fact that it is too simple, people could accept that when D2 was out, but people have been expecting D3 to be this god of games that will sustain them until they reach old age. I just don't think this is possible with the action rpg genre.

Look on the diablo 3 reddit, half the top upvoted posts are about somebody finding some good loot. This lust for loot will eventually be quelled, and very little will remain. And this isn't D3's fault, I think the game is great for what its purpose is, but I think the purpose is so shallow that I could never consider it to be the best game of the year.


Do you remember when Kripparrian got his world first kill of Diablo on hardcore before multitudes of nerfs? The game wasn't hard then, it was extremely artificially hard, the monsters had a ton of health and did a ton of damage.

Did his skill primarily allow him to transcend this "difficulty?" I would argue not. He literally would farm goblins for DAYS of played time on his stream for gear. Gear gear gear gear gear.