Originally Posted by
Bleu42
I don't actually have hard numbers, but if I had to give a conservative guess, I probably put close to 4 thousand hours into D3, since closed beta.
Closed beta to launch, was more stoked then I had ever been about a game. Played it every chance I could after launch, (After exhausting everything I could do in the closed beta).
By max level, the cracks started to show. Itemization was nowhere to be found, and neither was anything close to an end game. End game consisted of running act 3 azmo chest runs. "legendary" items (why not continue to call them uniques, when they have a unique name, art, and stat set is beyond me?) were not balanced at all. Even if they were found at their exact minimum usage level, they were useless. Quite literally any rare item would replace it immediately. Set items were hot garbage. Without looking it up, I remember Tal Rasha's FULL 6 piece set was something like, 3% fire damage.
Yet I still played, aware of these problems but unaware better games existed. I wasted SO much time checking the official site and Diablofans, hoping for a single breadcrumb from the developers on how they planned on fixing problems / adding to the game. Needless to say I was conditioned from years and years of Blizzard games to expect them to be completely silent and never interact with their players. Everything at this time was glowing white hot with obvious signs of core problems at the center of the pillars of ARPGS.
RoS launched, and the loot 2.0 with it. I was ecstatic; finally uniques would be useful! Little did I know this entire revamp really meant the homogenization of quite literally the core of all hack and slash rgps; the loot. Now you HAVE to wear a full 6p set, and you HAVE to use the skills that set tells you to. You HAVE to wear an item that has your main stat on it. You want customization? Well any item slot that isn't for your set, or the supporting uniques you get to have a choice in! Any leftover skill slots that your set doesn't tell you to use, you get to choose! Endgame was now rifts, which weren't bad but needed tweaking, and greater rifts. Oh jesus, the greater rifts.
Want a surefire way to destroy any last player agency in what skills / items to use? Make the endgame (and the ONLY endgame) timed, and with it leader boards. Remember the math on the amount of setups players could pick? Something like in the billions? Yea sorry we really meant ONE setup per class.
Long story somewhat short; it was fun at launch, because I didn't know better. And most of that fun was 'wow I hope this gets better!'. Then it finally all came to a head;
Start a new season, and within HOURS you're quite literally handed a full 6 piece set, and mats to craft the supporting uniques. What are you even playing for?
The entire endgame of Diablo 3 is a 15 minute timed run of completely random monsters on random tilesets. Want to play a build you're thinking might be cool and niche? Well you can, but you can't complete the end game rifts, and can't upgrade your legendary gems.
But that's okay, you can gain INFINITE FRIKKING POWER by just grinding those rifts for +5 main stat, over and over and over. Want to compete on the leader boards but you took 2 days off since launch of the season? Whelp too bad, everyone is running a bot that grinds paragon, and you're so far behind you can never compete now.
You're not looking for rare, awesome items. You're looking for the items you're ALREADY USING, but with a red border around them.
Want to try a hipster setup? Too bad, you play with the items we tell you to, and the skills we tell you to.
D3 has an actual worse endgame then D2 did. D3 has a worse itemization then D2 did, and a worse amount of customization of skills / items.
D3 at very launch? Hell, I would have said 9/10. Less then two years in? 5/10. It's been 8 years, and 1 expansion in? 3/10. Play POE instead.