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11589 Posts
Most complaints about StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3 seem to be summed up by, "Well it's not BroodWar/Diablo 2 so it's bad!". Admittedly, neither game was perfect on release, but neither of their predecessors were either. Games take time to develop and perfect, especially games which are so dependent on players PLAYING them. StarCraft 2 can't be perfect and have a deep strategic metagame until people have been given sufficient time to develop and refine those strategies. Diablo 3 can't have a well-tuned economy running unless people are playing the game. Both games depend on large amounts of highly skilled people playing the game for them to realize their full potential.
Admittedly, Diablo 3 didn't have a requisite reward system to keep people playing the game for such a long time, but with the legendary changes and the introduction of paragon levels, the problem has been alleviated greatly. People are being rewarded for their grinding in a more guaranteed and appreciable way. If the playerbase increases and stays relatively even, the item economy should be better than it is now because there will be more of a demand for mid-level gear (which just got a whole lot better thanks to the inferno nerfs and weapon dps changes). And for people with godlike gear, now they have a long-term goal in capping their magic find passively, and they have the incentive to farm the relatively tough content to get the ilvl 63 set items.
Any other complaint about the design philosophy of Diablo 3 is a matter of taste. If you don't like the story, then you miss the point of an ARPG. If you feel like the gameplay is too different from Diablo 2, then go play Path of Exile or Torchlight which simulate it much more closely. If you don't agree with the Auction House, then you fail to see how much more streamlined and simplified it makes the entire ARPG gear grind. The RMAH is Blizzard's alternative to the third-party market which would exist whether Blizz implemented the RMAH or not. You can't fault a company for wanting a cut of the profits of gold sellers and item sellers in their own game.
If you have legitimate issues with balance and itemization and the tweaking of drop rates, Blizzard is obviously working to find a sweet spot to make you feel more rewarded for the time you spend playing their game. However, if you merely want everything to be the way it was in Diablo 2, then go play that game instead, because you are only wasting your time trying to change this new game, which I and other people legitimately enjoy.
Oh, and anyone who calls the game a "money grab" should realize something: games are a business. They are expected to make companies profit, otherwise there won't be any more games. If you have a problem with a company wanting sustained revenue from their product, then you should take your complaints to capitalism, not to a company playing by the rules. If you only ever want to play indie titles made "for the gamer", then by all means make the capitalist consumer decision and give your money to whomever you feel deserves it. I, however, realize that a balance has to be struck somewhere for game companies to grow and thrive in this world, and am happy to pay more to support companies that make games I enjoy.
EDIT: I posted this in this thread as a response to everyone who feels like the topic should be shitting all over D3. As for the actual topic; Brevik's comments are that of a game developer critiquing a game he wished he had made. Would it have been better? Worse? The exact same? Who knows, but the game was a huge success at launch, admittedly due in part to the franchise's history, and should be seeing a resurgence of the playerbase within the next two patches. To call it a failure at this point is just being blindly biased against the game for one of the reasons I outlined previously.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On August 22 2012 01:25 wintergt wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2012 00:18 oneofthem wrote:
even the new uniques are much less varied than d2 items. they just threw in random monster effects, while the items are still limited by the basic rules of DPS+primary stats > everything. These new legendaries are way more varied than D2 uniques and DPS on legendaries (and even i62 and i61) has been normalized so they all roll up to the highest values. Also, you mainly want crit damage on your weapon next to high dps, not main stat.
d3 items are kind of like the arreat's face etc line of d2 uniques. you can do a list of 'required stats' on a good item that goes like +skill, +stats, etc etc. problem is d3 only has this kind of itemization, with the mob abilities thrown in kind of as a gimmick. it seems cool but the creativity is still lacking.
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On August 22 2012 01:37 yamato77 wrote:
Most complaints about StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3 seem to be summed up by, "Well it's not BroodWar/Diablo 2 so it's bad!". Admittedly, neither game was perfect on release, but neither of their predecessors were either. Games take time to develop and perfect, especially games which are so dependent on players PLAYING them. StarCraft 2 can't be perfect and have a deep strategic metagame until people have been given sufficient time to develop and refine those strategies. Diablo 3 can't have a well-tuned economy running unless people are playing the game. Both games depend on large amounts of highly skilled people playing the game for them to realize their full potential.
Admittedly, Diablo 3 didn't have a requisite reward system to keep people playing the game for such a long time, but with the legendary changes and the introduction of paragon levels, the problem has been alleviated greatly. People are being rewarded for their grinding in a more guaranteed and appreciable way. If the playerbase increases and stays relatively even, the item economy should be better than it is now because there will be more of a demand for mid-level gear (which just got a whole lot better thanks to the inferno nerfs and weapon dps changes). And for people with godlike gear, now they have a long-term goal in capping their magic find passively, and they have the incentive to farm the relatively tough content to get the ilvl 63 set items.
Any other complaint about the design philosophy of Diablo 3 is a matter of taste. If you don't like the story, then you miss the point of an ARPG. If you feel like the gameplay is too different from Diablo 2, then go play Path of Exile or Torchlight which simulate it much more closely. If you don't agree with the Auction House, then you fail to see how much more streamlined and simplified it makes the entire ARPG gear grind. The RMAH is Blizzard's alternative to the third-party market which would exist whether Blizz implemented the RMAH or not. You can't fault a company for wanting a cut of the profits of gold sellers and item sellers in their own game.
If you have legitimate issues with balance and itemization and the tweaking of drop rates, Blizzard is obviously working to find a sweet spot to make you feel more rewarded for the time you spend playing their game. However, if you merely want everything to be the way it was in Diablo 2, then go play that game instead, because you are only wasting your time trying to change this new game, which I and other people legitimately enjoy.
Oh, and anyone who calls the game a "money grab" should realize something: games are a business. They are expected to make companies profit, otherwise there won't be any more games. If you have a problem with a company wanting sustained revenue from their product, then you should take your complaints to capitalism, not to a company playing by the rules. If you only ever want to play indie titles made "for the gamer", then by all means make the capitalist consumer decision and give your money to whomever you feel deserves it. I, however, realize that a balance has to be struck somewhere for game companies to grow and thrive in this world, and am happy to pay more to support companies that make games I enjoy.
EDIT: I posted this in this thread as a response to everyone who feels like the topic should be shitting all over D3. As for the actual topic; Brevik's comments are that of a game developer critiquing a game he wished he had made. Would it have been better? Worse? The exact same? Who knows, but the game was a huge success at launch, admittedly due in part to the franchise's history, and should be seeing a resurgence of the playerbase within the next two patches. To call it a failure at this point is just being blindly biased against the game for one of the reasons I outlined previously.
Huh?
Both Diablo 3 and SC2 are significantly worse than their predecessors from a BASIC game design standpoint. You can't fix that. Period.
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On August 22 2012 02:23 superstartran wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2012 01:37 yamato77 wrote:
Most complaints about StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3 seem to be summed up by, "Well it's not BroodWar/Diablo 2 so it's bad!". Admittedly, neither game was perfect on release, but neither of their predecessors were either. Games take time to develop and perfect, especially games which are so dependent on players PLAYING them. StarCraft 2 can't be perfect and have a deep strategic metagame until people have been given sufficient time to develop and refine those strategies. Diablo 3 can't have a well-tuned economy running unless people are playing the game. Both games depend on large amounts of highly skilled people playing the game for them to realize their full potential.
Admittedly, Diablo 3 didn't have a requisite reward system to keep people playing the game for such a long time, but with the legendary changes and the introduction of paragon levels, the problem has been alleviated greatly. People are being rewarded for their grinding in a more guaranteed and appreciable way. If the playerbase increases and stays relatively even, the item economy should be better than it is now because there will be more of a demand for mid-level gear (which just got a whole lot better thanks to the inferno nerfs and weapon dps changes). And for people with godlike gear, now they have a long-term goal in capping their magic find passively, and they have the incentive to farm the relatively tough content to get the ilvl 63 set items.
Any other complaint about the design philosophy of Diablo 3 is a matter of taste. If you don't like the story, then you miss the point of an ARPG. If you feel like the gameplay is too different from Diablo 2, then go play Path of Exile or Torchlight which simulate it much more closely. If you don't agree with the Auction House, then you fail to see how much more streamlined and simplified it makes the entire ARPG gear grind. The RMAH is Blizzard's alternative to the third-party market which would exist whether Blizz implemented the RMAH or not. You can't fault a company for wanting a cut of the profits of gold sellers and item sellers in their own game.
If you have legitimate issues with balance and itemization and the tweaking of drop rates, Blizzard is obviously working to find a sweet spot to make you feel more rewarded for the time you spend playing their game. However, if you merely want everything to be the way it was in Diablo 2, then go play that game instead, because you are only wasting your time trying to change this new game, which I and other people legitimately enjoy.
Oh, and anyone who calls the game a "money grab" should realize something: games are a business. They are expected to make companies profit, otherwise there won't be any more games. If you have a problem with a company wanting sustained revenue from their product, then you should take your complaints to capitalism, not to a company playing by the rules. If you only ever want to play indie titles made "for the gamer", then by all means make the capitalist consumer decision and give your money to whomever you feel deserves it. I, however, realize that a balance has to be struck somewhere for game companies to grow and thrive in this world, and am happy to pay more to support companies that make games I enjoy.
EDIT: I posted this in this thread as a response to everyone who feels like the topic should be shitting all over D3. As for the actual topic; Brevik's comments are that of a game developer critiquing a game he wished he had made. Would it have been better? Worse? The exact same? Who knows, but the game was a huge success at launch, admittedly due in part to the franchise's history, and should be seeing a resurgence of the playerbase within the next two patches. To call it a failure at this point is just being blindly biased against the game for one of the reasons I outlined previously. Huh? Both Diablo 3 and SC2 are significantly worse than their predecessors from a BASIC game design standpoint. You can't fix that. Period.
Precisely this. Diablo 3 is essentially a gimped version of Diablo 2 -- of course it's going to be compared. It has the exact same gameplay mechanics and just about everything that makes up the game that Diablo 2 was. Except with less variety, fewer interesting stats on weapons, an extremely badly told story (this is basically objective because it's so awful), the boss fights are uninteresting for this day in age, my god -- what does this game do well? I can't think of a single point that it does as good as Diablo 2 in, because it doesn't.
Also, Blizzard isn't about sustained revenue these days. They're going to get fewer and fewer sales for these titles as the years go on with the method they're currently employing. WoW is starting to fall because the content is cheap, Diablo 3's sales were only strong because they (the customers) were willing to test the waters because it was a new Diablo game -- but I don't think customers will be fooled as easily again. I think they're in it for the short-term profits, in other words -- massive amounts of profits on release but not for long-term sustainability.
Look at the amount of players that log in to Diablo 3 now compared to even a month ago. It's dying, and fast. I really doubt expansions will help boost sales at all, either. Me and 15+ of my friends don't plan on purchasing any Blizzard products ever again, especially not Diablo 3/WoW/SC2 related ones. How many of them will actually follow that promise, I don't know. But I do know that the large majority of people aren't happy with Blizzard -- it's not a vocal minority from all of my experiences.
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On August 22 2012 01:01 Swift118 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2012 23:34 TaShadan wrote:On August 21 2012 23:30 BurningSera wrote:On August 21 2012 23:25 TaShadan wrote:On August 21 2012 22:37 Deadlyhazard wrote:
I assure you, even if any products they make in the future are fairly good, I will not be purchasing another Blizzard game. I could not support such an arrogant company that's willing to throttle user experiences in their games to ensure cash flow (RMAH, DRM, etc...). I don't understand how any self-respecting individual could buy another Blizzard title after this, unless they're the type of junkies that buy Call of Duty ever year. That's what Blizzard's franchises have been reduced to since '07 IMO.
Starcraft 2 isn't as interesting as BW (Colossus is much more boring to watch than reaver micro i.e.), Diablo 3 is an epic failure on several different levels (such as writing and gameplay which is huuuuuge), and WoW has sucked since WoTLK. I don't understand how people can enjoy inferior products like this in which the developers are basically mocking their own fanbase that they don't deserve.
Oh well. Never buying a product from them. I advise people to look at better companies -- such as Cd Projekt Red, Arena Net, From Software (minus their PC port of DS), Rocksteady, Runic, and there are more that are genuinely good out there with consistently high quality games.
Blizzard is no longer a high tier developer. They're a commercial kitsch factory. i feel the same and i didnt buy d3 after sc2 dissapointed me. also i dont plan on buying d3 or sc2 expansions. I was so determined not to get D3 after SC2 (i hated sc2 so much but support it for esport because it is still the best rts out there) but the hype got me  So no HotS for me even i am a HUGE zerg fan. grrrrr its not hard to be the best rts game if there is no other competetive titel left... bw is the best esports titel but thanks to blizzard and kespa its dead now. No, its dead because it lost popularity. Like it or not its fact. Its like sc2 fans now hating on LoL becuase that is developing into the biggest e-sport.
yes it lost popularity but without blizzard we might have seen 1 or 2 more years of bw pro scene. But honestly i dont mind anymore. I dont think sc2 is a bad game in general but i dont like it. lol will be bigger than sc2 in korea (it already is).
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In my opinion SC2 and D3 broke the 'blizzard magic'. I no longer trust them and wont ever buy at release again. There seems to be like-minded, especially on tl.net.
As i see D3 it was a cash grab based on the success of blizzard up to vanilla-wow. They broke the magic to sell a ton of games but i dont think it will be worth it in the long run.
SC2 is just a story of alienating the hardcore gamers to get to a wider audience. This wont succeed since there still is miles of dumbing down to get to LoL.
Edit: kinda forgot my point in my rant:
Jay and the pack has absolutely nothing to support their arrogance. Their train wreck of a game would have sold close to nothing if they hadn't had the blizzard brand to offer customer trust. This customer trust is now wearing thin.
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No more instabuy for blizz games.
The discussion on why d3 failed from a player/design standpoint has been beaten to death countless times. The fact is IT WAS AND STILL IS AN INCOMPLETE GAME. No "it will be fixed, tweaked, improved" bullshit as may have been the case with sc/bw or even sc2. Not this time, it is still incomplete. They didn't have the RMAH ready, PvP is not even being discussed by devs, with the bajillion presales they had, they still didn't have servers ready.
That being said, the thing that bothers me most is the artificial difficulty setting that is inferno, with all the thoughtless properties the elite and champion packs have and how it was either "doable with eyes closed easy" or "lets remake the game impossible."
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On August 22 2012 02:29 Deadlyhazard wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2012 02:23 superstartran wrote:On August 22 2012 01:37 yamato77 wrote:
Most complaints about StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3 seem to be summed up by, "Well it's not BroodWar/Diablo 2 so it's bad!". Admittedly, neither game was perfect on release, but neither of their predecessors were either. Games take time to develop and perfect, especially games which are so dependent on players PLAYING them. StarCraft 2 can't be perfect and have a deep strategic metagame until people have been given sufficient time to develop and refine those strategies. Diablo 3 can't have a well-tuned economy running unless people are playing the game. Both games depend on large amounts of highly skilled people playing the game for them to realize their full potential.
Admittedly, Diablo 3 didn't have a requisite reward system to keep people playing the game for such a long time, but with the legendary changes and the introduction of paragon levels, the problem has been alleviated greatly. People are being rewarded for their grinding in a more guaranteed and appreciable way. If the playerbase increases and stays relatively even, the item economy should be better than it is now because there will be more of a demand for mid-level gear (which just got a whole lot better thanks to the inferno nerfs and weapon dps changes). And for people with godlike gear, now they have a long-term goal in capping their magic find passively, and they have the incentive to farm the relatively tough content to get the ilvl 63 set items.
Any other complaint about the design philosophy of Diablo 3 is a matter of taste. If you don't like the story, then you miss the point of an ARPG. If you feel like the gameplay is too different from Diablo 2, then go play Path of Exile or Torchlight which simulate it much more closely. If you don't agree with the Auction House, then you fail to see how much more streamlined and simplified it makes the entire ARPG gear grind. The RMAH is Blizzard's alternative to the third-party market which would exist whether Blizz implemented the RMAH or not. You can't fault a company for wanting a cut of the profits of gold sellers and item sellers in their own game.
If you have legitimate issues with balance and itemization and the tweaking of drop rates, Blizzard is obviously working to find a sweet spot to make you feel more rewarded for the time you spend playing their game. However, if you merely want everything to be the way it was in Diablo 2, then go play that game instead, because you are only wasting your time trying to change this new game, which I and other people legitimately enjoy.
Oh, and anyone who calls the game a "money grab" should realize something: games are a business. They are expected to make companies profit, otherwise there won't be any more games. If you have a problem with a company wanting sustained revenue from their product, then you should take your complaints to capitalism, not to a company playing by the rules. If you only ever want to play indie titles made "for the gamer", then by all means make the capitalist consumer decision and give your money to whomever you feel deserves it. I, however, realize that a balance has to be struck somewhere for game companies to grow and thrive in this world, and am happy to pay more to support companies that make games I enjoy.
EDIT: I posted this in this thread as a response to everyone who feels like the topic should be shitting all over D3. As for the actual topic; Brevik's comments are that of a game developer critiquing a game he wished he had made. Would it have been better? Worse? The exact same? Who knows, but the game was a huge success at launch, admittedly due in part to the franchise's history, and should be seeing a resurgence of the playerbase within the next two patches. To call it a failure at this point is just being blindly biased against the game for one of the reasons I outlined previously. Huh? Both Diablo 3 and SC2 are significantly worse than their predecessors from a BASIC game design standpoint. You can't fix that. Period. Precisely this. Diablo 3 is essentially a gimped version of Diablo 2 [Subjective] -- of course it's going to be compared. It has the exact same gameplay mechanics and just about everything that makes up the game that Diablo 2 was [What!? Its way different. And you even go on to tell all the differences below]. Except with less variety [considering the massive amount of skills, multiplied by 6 for runes, multiplied again by the fact that you have 6 abilities and not 2, this is plain wrong], fewer interesting stats on weapons, [possibly, although the "interesting" part is subjective, and I have no idea who judges a game based on what stats are on weapon. Must say out of all tens or hundreds of complaints I've heard about D3, this one was new] an extremely badly told story (this is basically objective because it's so awful) [Subjective. Yes, it is subjective], the boss fights are uninteresting for this day in age [Subjective], my god -- what does this game do well? I can't think of a single point that it does as good as Diablo 2 in, because it doesn't. [Aaaaand, subjective]. Also, Blizzard isn't about sustained revenue these days. They're going to get fewer and fewer sales for these titles as the years go on with the method they're currently employing. WoW is starting to fall because the content is cheap, Diablo 3's sales were only strong because they (the customers) were willing to test the waters because it was a new Diablo game -- but I don't think customers will be fooled as easily again. I think they're in it for the short-term profits, in other words -- massive amounts of profits on release but not for long-term sustainability. Look at the amount of players that log in to Diablo 3 now compared to even a month ago. It's dying, and fast. I really doubt expansions will help boost sales at all, either. Me and 15+ of my friends don't plan on purchasing any Blizzard products ever again, especially not Diablo 3/WoW/SC2 related ones. How many of them will actually follow that promise, I don't know. But I do know that the large majority of people aren't happy with Blizzard -- it's not a vocal minority from all of my experiences.
Rather than making 20 quotes out of your first section which makes it awful to readt, I took the liberty to add my own comments to what you said in brackets and bold text. Should make it more readable.
Also:
Of course Blizzards is about sustained revenue, as the guy above said (within a limited time frame of course, you dont make a game which you expect to make revenue from in 50 years). If you dislike that, go complain about capitalism and send your money to indy makers, as stated. My guess is the last 10 or 20 or 100 games you played were made by companies/people who.... *drumroll* made the games to make money. You are right about massive profits on release though. And thats been the go-to business model for games for decades. Admittedly, recent new games have shown that other business models work too (see LoL), but Im not sure why you are blaming Blizz for using a business model which Every. Other. Game-company. Used. For. Decades. Its working, and its working well.
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On August 22 2012 18:34 Kreb wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2012 02:29 Deadlyhazard wrote:On August 22 2012 02:23 superstartran wrote:On August 22 2012 01:37 yamato77 wrote:
Most complaints about StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3 seem to be summed up by, "Well it's not BroodWar/Diablo 2 so it's bad!". Admittedly, neither game was perfect on release, but neither of their predecessors were either. Games take time to develop and perfect, especially games which are so dependent on players PLAYING them. StarCraft 2 can't be perfect and have a deep strategic metagame until people have been given sufficient time to develop and refine those strategies. Diablo 3 can't have a well-tuned economy running unless people are playing the game. Both games depend on large amounts of highly skilled people playing the game for them to realize their full potential.
Admittedly, Diablo 3 didn't have a requisite reward system to keep people playing the game for such a long time, but with the legendary changes and the introduction of paragon levels, the problem has been alleviated greatly. People are being rewarded for their grinding in a more guaranteed and appreciable way. If the playerbase increases and stays relatively even, the item economy should be better than it is now because there will be more of a demand for mid-level gear (which just got a whole lot better thanks to the inferno nerfs and weapon dps changes). And for people with godlike gear, now they have a long-term goal in capping their magic find passively, and they have the incentive to farm the relatively tough content to get the ilvl 63 set items.
Any other complaint about the design philosophy of Diablo 3 is a matter of taste. If you don't like the story, then you miss the point of an ARPG. If you feel like the gameplay is too different from Diablo 2, then go play Path of Exile or Torchlight which simulate it much more closely. If you don't agree with the Auction House, then you fail to see how much more streamlined and simplified it makes the entire ARPG gear grind. The RMAH is Blizzard's alternative to the third-party market which would exist whether Blizz implemented the RMAH or not. You can't fault a company for wanting a cut of the profits of gold sellers and item sellers in their own game.
If you have legitimate issues with balance and itemization and the tweaking of drop rates, Blizzard is obviously working to find a sweet spot to make you feel more rewarded for the time you spend playing their game. However, if you merely want everything to be the way it was in Diablo 2, then go play that game instead, because you are only wasting your time trying to change this new game, which I and other people legitimately enjoy.
Oh, and anyone who calls the game a "money grab" should realize something: games are a business. They are expected to make companies profit, otherwise there won't be any more games. If you have a problem with a company wanting sustained revenue from their product, then you should take your complaints to capitalism, not to a company playing by the rules. If you only ever want to play indie titles made "for the gamer", then by all means make the capitalist consumer decision and give your money to whomever you feel deserves it. I, however, realize that a balance has to be struck somewhere for game companies to grow and thrive in this world, and am happy to pay more to support companies that make games I enjoy.
EDIT: I posted this in this thread as a response to everyone who feels like the topic should be shitting all over D3. As for the actual topic; Brevik's comments are that of a game developer critiquing a game he wished he had made. Would it have been better? Worse? The exact same? Who knows, but the game was a huge success at launch, admittedly due in part to the franchise's history, and should be seeing a resurgence of the playerbase within the next two patches. To call it a failure at this point is just being blindly biased against the game for one of the reasons I outlined previously. Huh? Both Diablo 3 and SC2 are significantly worse than their predecessors from a BASIC game design standpoint. You can't fix that. Period. Precisely this. Diablo 3 is essentially a gimped version of Diablo 2 [Subjective] -- of course it's going to be compared. It has the exact same gameplay mechanics and just about everything that makes up the game that Diablo 2 was [What!? Its way different. And you even go on to tell all the differences below]. Except with less variety [considering the massive amount of skills, multiplied by 6 for runes, multiplied again by the fact that you have 6 abilities and not 2, this is plain wrong], fewer interesting stats on weapons, [possibly, although the "interesting" part is subjective, and I have no idea who judges a game based on what stats are on weapon. Must say out of all tens or hundreds of complaints I've heard about D3, this one was new] an extremely badly told story (this is basically objective because it's so awful) [Subjective. Yes, it is subjective], the boss fights are uninteresting for this day in age [Subjective], my god -- what does this game do well? I can't think of a single point that it does as good as Diablo 2 in, because it doesn't. [Aaaaand, subjective]. Also, Blizzard isn't about sustained revenue these days. They're going to get fewer and fewer sales for these titles as the years go on with the method they're currently employing. WoW is starting to fall because the content is cheap, Diablo 3's sales were only strong because they (the customers) were willing to test the waters because it was a new Diablo game -- but I don't think customers will be fooled as easily again. I think they're in it for the short-term profits, in other words -- massive amounts of profits on release but not for long-term sustainability. Look at the amount of players that log in to Diablo 3 now compared to even a month ago. It's dying, and fast. I really doubt expansions will help boost sales at all, either. Me and 15+ of my friends don't plan on purchasing any Blizzard products ever again, especially not Diablo 3/WoW/SC2 related ones. How many of them will actually follow that promise, I don't know. But I do know that the large majority of people aren't happy with Blizzard -- it's not a vocal minority from all of my experiences. Rather than making 20 quotes out of your first section which makes it awful to readt, I took the liberty to add my own comments to what you said in brackets and bold text. Should make it more readable. Also: Of course Blizzards is about sustained revenue, as the guy above said (within a limited time frame of course, you dont make a game which you expect to make revenue from in 50 years). If you dislike that, go complain about capitalism and send your money to indy makers, as stated. My guess is the last 10 or 20 or 100 games you played were made by companies/people who.... *drumroll* made the games to make money. You are right about massive profits on release though. And thats been the go-to business model for games for decades. Admittedly, recent new games have shown that other business models work too (see LoL), but Im not sure why you are blaming Blizz for using a business model which Every. Other. Game-company. Used. For. Decades. Its working, and its working well.
There is a difference between making money and sucking your customers dry and making the product worse. If quality is lacking and the price is increasing you will lose customers.
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On August 22 2012 02:23 superstartran wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2012 01:37 yamato77 wrote:
Most complaints about StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3 seem to be summed up by, "Well it's not BroodWar/Diablo 2 so it's bad!". Admittedly, neither game was perfect on release, but neither of their predecessors were either. Games take time to develop and perfect, especially games which are so dependent on players PLAYING them. StarCraft 2 can't be perfect and have a deep strategic metagame until people have been given sufficient time to develop and refine those strategies. Diablo 3 can't have a well-tuned economy running unless people are playing the game. Both games depend on large amounts of highly skilled people playing the game for them to realize their full potential.
Admittedly, Diablo 3 didn't have a requisite reward system to keep people playing the game for such a long time, but with the legendary changes and the introduction of paragon levels, the problem has been alleviated greatly. People are being rewarded for their grinding in a more guaranteed and appreciable way. If the playerbase increases and stays relatively even, the item economy should be better than it is now because there will be more of a demand for mid-level gear (which just got a whole lot better thanks to the inferno nerfs and weapon dps changes). And for people with godlike gear, now they have a long-term goal in capping their magic find passively, and they have the incentive to farm the relatively tough content to get the ilvl 63 set items.
Any other complaint about the design philosophy of Diablo 3 is a matter of taste. If you don't like the story, then you miss the point of an ARPG. If you feel like the gameplay is too different from Diablo 2, then go play Path of Exile or Torchlight which simulate it much more closely. If you don't agree with the Auction House, then you fail to see how much more streamlined and simplified it makes the entire ARPG gear grind. The RMAH is Blizzard's alternative to the third-party market which would exist whether Blizz implemented the RMAH or not. You can't fault a company for wanting a cut of the profits of gold sellers and item sellers in their own game.
If you have legitimate issues with balance and itemization and the tweaking of drop rates, Blizzard is obviously working to find a sweet spot to make you feel more rewarded for the time you spend playing their game. However, if you merely want everything to be the way it was in Diablo 2, then go play that game instead, because you are only wasting your time trying to change this new game, which I and other people legitimately enjoy.
Oh, and anyone who calls the game a "money grab" should realize something: games are a business. They are expected to make companies profit, otherwise there won't be any more games. If you have a problem with a company wanting sustained revenue from their product, then you should take your complaints to capitalism, not to a company playing by the rules. If you only ever want to play indie titles made "for the gamer", then by all means make the capitalist consumer decision and give your money to whomever you feel deserves it. I, however, realize that a balance has to be struck somewhere for game companies to grow and thrive in this world, and am happy to pay more to support companies that make games I enjoy.
EDIT: I posted this in this thread as a response to everyone who feels like the topic should be shitting all over D3. As for the actual topic; Brevik's comments are that of a game developer critiquing a game he wished he had made. Would it have been better? Worse? The exact same? Who knows, but the game was a huge success at launch, admittedly due in part to the franchise's history, and should be seeing a resurgence of the playerbase within the next two patches. To call it a failure at this point is just being blindly biased against the game for one of the reasons I outlined previously. Huh? Both Diablo 3 and SC2 are significantly worse than their predecessors from a BASIC game design standpoint. You can't fix that. Period.
In what way? The truth is that d3 is miles better than d2 in a large number of ways, but people aren't very bright and don't realize that. The reason they decided to ship d3 with no pvp baffles me, as it's the main reason d2 has survived for as long as it has.
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On August 22 2012 18:48 TaShadan wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2012 18:34 Kreb wrote:On August 22 2012 02:29 Deadlyhazard wrote:On August 22 2012 02:23 superstartran wrote:On August 22 2012 01:37 yamato77 wrote:
Most complaints about StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3 seem to be summed up by, "Well it's not BroodWar/Diablo 2 so it's bad!". Admittedly, neither game was perfect on release, but neither of their predecessors were either. Games take time to develop and perfect, especially games which are so dependent on players PLAYING them. StarCraft 2 can't be perfect and have a deep strategic metagame until people have been given sufficient time to develop and refine those strategies. Diablo 3 can't have a well-tuned economy running unless people are playing the game. Both games depend on large amounts of highly skilled people playing the game for them to realize their full potential.
Admittedly, Diablo 3 didn't have a requisite reward system to keep people playing the game for such a long time, but with the legendary changes and the introduction of paragon levels, the problem has been alleviated greatly. People are being rewarded for their grinding in a more guaranteed and appreciable way. If the playerbase increases and stays relatively even, the item economy should be better than it is now because there will be more of a demand for mid-level gear (which just got a whole lot better thanks to the inferno nerfs and weapon dps changes). And for people with godlike gear, now they have a long-term goal in capping their magic find passively, and they have the incentive to farm the relatively tough content to get the ilvl 63 set items.
Any other complaint about the design philosophy of Diablo 3 is a matter of taste. If you don't like the story, then you miss the point of an ARPG. If you feel like the gameplay is too different from Diablo 2, then go play Path of Exile or Torchlight which simulate it much more closely. If you don't agree with the Auction House, then you fail to see how much more streamlined and simplified it makes the entire ARPG gear grind. The RMAH is Blizzard's alternative to the third-party market which would exist whether Blizz implemented the RMAH or not. You can't fault a company for wanting a cut of the profits of gold sellers and item sellers in their own game.
If you have legitimate issues with balance and itemization and the tweaking of drop rates, Blizzard is obviously working to find a sweet spot to make you feel more rewarded for the time you spend playing their game. However, if you merely want everything to be the way it was in Diablo 2, then go play that game instead, because you are only wasting your time trying to change this new game, which I and other people legitimately enjoy.
Oh, and anyone who calls the game a "money grab" should realize something: games are a business. They are expected to make companies profit, otherwise there won't be any more games. If you have a problem with a company wanting sustained revenue from their product, then you should take your complaints to capitalism, not to a company playing by the rules. If you only ever want to play indie titles made "for the gamer", then by all means make the capitalist consumer decision and give your money to whomever you feel deserves it. I, however, realize that a balance has to be struck somewhere for game companies to grow and thrive in this world, and am happy to pay more to support companies that make games I enjoy.
EDIT: I posted this in this thread as a response to everyone who feels like the topic should be shitting all over D3. As for the actual topic; Brevik's comments are that of a game developer critiquing a game he wished he had made. Would it have been better? Worse? The exact same? Who knows, but the game was a huge success at launch, admittedly due in part to the franchise's history, and should be seeing a resurgence of the playerbase within the next two patches. To call it a failure at this point is just being blindly biased against the game for one of the reasons I outlined previously. Huh? Both Diablo 3 and SC2 are significantly worse than their predecessors from a BASIC game design standpoint. You can't fix that. Period. Precisely this. Diablo 3 is essentially a gimped version of Diablo 2 [Subjective] -- of course it's going to be compared. It has the exact same gameplay mechanics and just about everything that makes up the game that Diablo 2 was [What!? Its way different. And you even go on to tell all the differences below]. Except with less variety [considering the massive amount of skills, multiplied by 6 for runes, multiplied again by the fact that you have 6 abilities and not 2, this is plain wrong], fewer interesting stats on weapons, [possibly, although the "interesting" part is subjective, and I have no idea who judges a game based on what stats are on weapon. Must say out of all tens or hundreds of complaints I've heard about D3, this one was new] an extremely badly told story (this is basically objective because it's so awful) [Subjective. Yes, it is subjective], the boss fights are uninteresting for this day in age [Subjective], my god -- what does this game do well? I can't think of a single point that it does as good as Diablo 2 in, because it doesn't. [Aaaaand, subjective]. Also, Blizzard isn't about sustained revenue these days. They're going to get fewer and fewer sales for these titles as the years go on with the method they're currently employing. WoW is starting to fall because the content is cheap, Diablo 3's sales were only strong because they (the customers) were willing to test the waters because it was a new Diablo game -- but I don't think customers will be fooled as easily again. I think they're in it for the short-term profits, in other words -- massive amounts of profits on release but not for long-term sustainability. Look at the amount of players that log in to Diablo 3 now compared to even a month ago. It's dying, and fast. I really doubt expansions will help boost sales at all, either. Me and 15+ of my friends don't plan on purchasing any Blizzard products ever again, especially not Diablo 3/WoW/SC2 related ones. How many of them will actually follow that promise, I don't know. But I do know that the large majority of people aren't happy with Blizzard -- it's not a vocal minority from all of my experiences. Rather than making 20 quotes out of your first section which makes it awful to readt, I took the liberty to add my own comments to what you said in brackets and bold text. Should make it more readable. Also: Of course Blizzards is about sustained revenue, as the guy above said (within a limited time frame of course, you dont make a game which you expect to make revenue from in 50 years). If you dislike that, go complain about capitalism and send your money to indy makers, as stated. My guess is the last 10 or 20 or 100 games you played were made by companies/people who.... *drumroll* made the games to make money. You are right about massive profits on release though. And thats been the go-to business model for games for decades. Admittedly, recent new games have shown that other business models work too (see LoL), but Im not sure why you are blaming Blizz for using a business model which Every. Other. Game-company. Used. For. Decades. Its working, and its working well. There is a difference between making money and sucking your customers dry and making the product worse. If quality is lacking and the price is increasing you will lose customers.
Of course. Thats very common much sense.
Though, companies arent sucking anyone dry, customers do it to themselves. If anyone is in an economic state where buying a game make them feel "sucked dry", then I would definitely question their decision to spend 60$ on a computer game.
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On August 22 2012 18:34 Kreb wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2012 02:29 Deadlyhazard wrote:On August 22 2012 02:23 superstartran wrote:On August 22 2012 01:37 yamato77 wrote:
Most complaints about StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3 seem to be summed up by, "Well it's not BroodWar/Diablo 2 so it's bad!". Admittedly, neither game was perfect on release, but neither of their predecessors were either. Games take time to develop and perfect, especially games which are so dependent on players PLAYING them. StarCraft 2 can't be perfect and have a deep strategic metagame until people have been given sufficient time to develop and refine those strategies. Diablo 3 can't have a well-tuned economy running unless people are playing the game. Both games depend on large amounts of highly skilled people playing the game for them to realize their full potential.
Admittedly, Diablo 3 didn't have a requisite reward system to keep people playing the game for such a long time, but with the legendary changes and the introduction of paragon levels, the problem has been alleviated greatly. People are being rewarded for their grinding in a more guaranteed and appreciable way. If the playerbase increases and stays relatively even, the item economy should be better than it is now because there will be more of a demand for mid-level gear (which just got a whole lot better thanks to the inferno nerfs and weapon dps changes). And for people with godlike gear, now they have a long-term goal in capping their magic find passively, and they have the incentive to farm the relatively tough content to get the ilvl 63 set items.
Any other complaint about the design philosophy of Diablo 3 is a matter of taste. If you don't like the story, then you miss the point of an ARPG. If you feel like the gameplay is too different from Diablo 2, then go play Path of Exile or Torchlight which simulate it much more closely. If you don't agree with the Auction House, then you fail to see how much more streamlined and simplified it makes the entire ARPG gear grind. The RMAH is Blizzard's alternative to the third-party market which would exist whether Blizz implemented the RMAH or not. You can't fault a company for wanting a cut of the profits of gold sellers and item sellers in their own game.
If you have legitimate issues with balance and itemization and the tweaking of drop rates, Blizzard is obviously working to find a sweet spot to make you feel more rewarded for the time you spend playing their game. However, if you merely want everything to be the way it was in Diablo 2, then go play that game instead, because you are only wasting your time trying to change this new game, which I and other people legitimately enjoy.
Oh, and anyone who calls the game a "money grab" should realize something: games are a business. They are expected to make companies profit, otherwise there won't be any more games. If you have a problem with a company wanting sustained revenue from their product, then you should take your complaints to capitalism, not to a company playing by the rules. If you only ever want to play indie titles made "for the gamer", then by all means make the capitalist consumer decision and give your money to whomever you feel deserves it. I, however, realize that a balance has to be struck somewhere for game companies to grow and thrive in this world, and am happy to pay more to support companies that make games I enjoy.
EDIT: I posted this in this thread as a response to everyone who feels like the topic should be shitting all over D3. As for the actual topic; Brevik's comments are that of a game developer critiquing a game he wished he had made. Would it have been better? Worse? The exact same? Who knows, but the game was a huge success at launch, admittedly due in part to the franchise's history, and should be seeing a resurgence of the playerbase within the next two patches. To call it a failure at this point is just being blindly biased against the game for one of the reasons I outlined previously. Huh? Both Diablo 3 and SC2 are significantly worse than their predecessors from a BASIC game design standpoint. You can't fix that. Period. Precisely this. Diablo 3 is essentially a gimped version of Diablo 2 [Subjective] -- of course it's going to be compared. It has the exact same gameplay mechanics and just about everything that makes up the game that Diablo 2 was [What!? Its way different. And you even go on to tell all the differences below]. Except with less variety [considering the massive amount of skills, multiplied by 6 for runes, multiplied again by the fact that you have 6 abilities and not 2, this is plain wrong], fewer interesting stats on weapons, [possibly, although the "interesting" part is subjective, and I have no idea who judges a game based on what stats are on weapon. Must say out of all tens or hundreds of complaints I've heard about D3, this one was new] an extremely badly told story (this is basically objective because it's so awful) [Subjective. Yes, it is subjective], the boss fights are uninteresting for this day in age [Subjective], my god -- what does this game do well? I can't think of a single point that it does as good as Diablo 2 in, because it doesn't. [Aaaaand, subjective]. Also, Blizzard isn't about sustained revenue these days. They're going to get fewer and fewer sales for these titles as the years go on with the method they're currently employing. WoW is starting to fall because the content is cheap, Diablo 3's sales were only strong because they (the customers) were willing to test the waters because it was a new Diablo game -- but I don't think customers will be fooled as easily again. I think they're in it for the short-term profits, in other words -- massive amounts of profits on release but not for long-term sustainability. Look at the amount of players that log in to Diablo 3 now compared to even a month ago. It's dying, and fast. I really doubt expansions will help boost sales at all, either. Me and 15+ of my friends don't plan on purchasing any Blizzard products ever again, especially not Diablo 3/WoW/SC2 related ones. How many of them will actually follow that promise, I don't know. But I do know that the large majority of people aren't happy with Blizzard -- it's not a vocal minority from all of my experiences. Rather than making 20 quotes out of your first section which makes it awful to readt, I took the liberty to add my own comments to what you said in brackets and bold text. Should make it more readable. Also: Of course Blizzards is about sustained revenue, as the guy above said (within a limited time frame of course, you dont make a game which you expect to make revenue from in 50 years). If you dislike that, go complain about capitalism and send your money to indy makers, as stated. My guess is the last 10 or 20 or 100 games you played were made by companies/people who.... *drumroll* made the games to make money. You are right about massive profits on release though. And thats been the go-to business model for games for decades. Admittedly, recent new games have shown that other business models work too (see LoL), but Im not sure why you are blaming Blizz for using a business model which Every. Other. Game-company. Used. For. Decades. Its working, and its working well.
Every. Single. Thing. About this topic is subjective. It's not an argument to say 'subjective.' You need to say why you disagree with me and for what reason if you want to make sense.
And no, the items have less variety on stats (like crushing blow/freezing/poison nova/etc) for Diablo 3 than Diablo 2. Just about everything has less variety. I think unique skills (in other words, abilities reanimated) are fewer in Diablo 3 than Diablo 2. This could be for the simple fact that there are more classes in Diablo 2.
You can say the storyline thing is subjective, but that doesn't mean a thing because you could even say a pile of crap on a random fanfic site is good and it doesn't mean you're right. The literary usage is very basic in Diablo 3, and the story is predictable the entire way through with nothing meaningful gained from it. If you disagree, and think Diablo 3's story IS worthy, I'd like to hear you justify it. I forgot about it the day after I played it because it was such a typical black-and-white fairy-tale from the get-go. Note I'm not comparing it to Diablo 2 in this section because I don't think Diablo 2's story was great either. It was just presented better with less obvious in-your-face dialogue.
I mean, what's with a guy like Azmodan? He tells you what hes going to do before every attack? How is he a master strategist he's made out to be? Why is Belial the most predictable character in Act 2 when he's the lord of lies? Why is Zoltun Kulle very obviously a bad person from the beginning with his evil generic laughing? You know he's going to portray you. There are no surprises in this game as far as story is concerned, no interesting characters, no plot development...you would expect something better. They somehow managed to make it worse feeling than previous Diablo games.
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On August 22 2012 19:14 Deadlyhazard wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2012 18:34 Kreb wrote:On August 22 2012 02:29 Deadlyhazard wrote:On August 22 2012 02:23 superstartran wrote:On August 22 2012 01:37 yamato77 wrote:
Most complaints about StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3 seem to be summed up by, "Well it's not BroodWar/Diablo 2 so it's bad!". Admittedly, neither game was perfect on release, but neither of their predecessors were either. Games take time to develop and perfect, especially games which are so dependent on players PLAYING them. StarCraft 2 can't be perfect and have a deep strategic metagame until people have been given sufficient time to develop and refine those strategies. Diablo 3 can't have a well-tuned economy running unless people are playing the game. Both games depend on large amounts of highly skilled people playing the game for them to realize their full potential.
Admittedly, Diablo 3 didn't have a requisite reward system to keep people playing the game for such a long time, but with the legendary changes and the introduction of paragon levels, the problem has been alleviated greatly. People are being rewarded for their grinding in a more guaranteed and appreciable way. If the playerbase increases and stays relatively even, the item economy should be better than it is now because there will be more of a demand for mid-level gear (which just got a whole lot better thanks to the inferno nerfs and weapon dps changes). And for people with godlike gear, now they have a long-term goal in capping their magic find passively, and they have the incentive to farm the relatively tough content to get the ilvl 63 set items.
Any other complaint about the design philosophy of Diablo 3 is a matter of taste. If you don't like the story, then you miss the point of an ARPG. If you feel like the gameplay is too different from Diablo 2, then go play Path of Exile or Torchlight which simulate it much more closely. If you don't agree with the Auction House, then you fail to see how much more streamlined and simplified it makes the entire ARPG gear grind. The RMAH is Blizzard's alternative to the third-party market which would exist whether Blizz implemented the RMAH or not. You can't fault a company for wanting a cut of the profits of gold sellers and item sellers in their own game.
If you have legitimate issues with balance and itemization and the tweaking of drop rates, Blizzard is obviously working to find a sweet spot to make you feel more rewarded for the time you spend playing their game. However, if you merely want everything to be the way it was in Diablo 2, then go play that game instead, because you are only wasting your time trying to change this new game, which I and other people legitimately enjoy.
Oh, and anyone who calls the game a "money grab" should realize something: games are a business. They are expected to make companies profit, otherwise there won't be any more games. If you have a problem with a company wanting sustained revenue from their product, then you should take your complaints to capitalism, not to a company playing by the rules. If you only ever want to play indie titles made "for the gamer", then by all means make the capitalist consumer decision and give your money to whomever you feel deserves it. I, however, realize that a balance has to be struck somewhere for game companies to grow and thrive in this world, and am happy to pay more to support companies that make games I enjoy.
EDIT: I posted this in this thread as a response to everyone who feels like the topic should be shitting all over D3. As for the actual topic; Brevik's comments are that of a game developer critiquing a game he wished he had made. Would it have been better? Worse? The exact same? Who knows, but the game was a huge success at launch, admittedly due in part to the franchise's history, and should be seeing a resurgence of the playerbase within the next two patches. To call it a failure at this point is just being blindly biased against the game for one of the reasons I outlined previously. Huh? Both Diablo 3 and SC2 are significantly worse than their predecessors from a BASIC game design standpoint. You can't fix that. Period. Precisely this. Diablo 3 is essentially a gimped version of Diablo 2 [Subjective] -- of course it's going to be compared. It has the exact same gameplay mechanics and just about everything that makes up the game that Diablo 2 was [What!? Its way different. And you even go on to tell all the differences below]. Except with less variety [considering the massive amount of skills, multiplied by 6 for runes, multiplied again by the fact that you have 6 abilities and not 2, this is plain wrong], fewer interesting stats on weapons, [possibly, although the "interesting" part is subjective, and I have no idea who judges a game based on what stats are on weapon. Must say out of all tens or hundreds of complaints I've heard about D3, this one was new] an extremely badly told story (this is basically objective because it's so awful) [Subjective. Yes, it is subjective], the boss fights are uninteresting for this day in age [Subjective], my god -- what does this game do well? I can't think of a single point that it does as good as Diablo 2 in, because it doesn't. [Aaaaand, subjective]. Also, Blizzard isn't about sustained revenue these days. They're going to get fewer and fewer sales for these titles as the years go on with the method they're currently employing. WoW is starting to fall because the content is cheap, Diablo 3's sales were only strong because they (the customers) were willing to test the waters because it was a new Diablo game -- but I don't think customers will be fooled as easily again. I think they're in it for the short-term profits, in other words -- massive amounts of profits on release but not for long-term sustainability. Look at the amount of players that log in to Diablo 3 now compared to even a month ago. It's dying, and fast. I really doubt expansions will help boost sales at all, either. Me and 15+ of my friends don't plan on purchasing any Blizzard products ever again, especially not Diablo 3/WoW/SC2 related ones. How many of them will actually follow that promise, I don't know. But I do know that the large majority of people aren't happy with Blizzard -- it's not a vocal minority from all of my experiences. Rather than making 20 quotes out of your first section which makes it awful to readt, I took the liberty to add my own comments to what you said in brackets and bold text. Should make it more readable. Also: Of course Blizzards is about sustained revenue, as the guy above said (within a limited time frame of course, you dont make a game which you expect to make revenue from in 50 years). If you dislike that, go complain about capitalism and send your money to indy makers, as stated. My guess is the last 10 or 20 or 100 games you played were made by companies/people who.... *drumroll* made the games to make money. You are right about massive profits on release though. And thats been the go-to business model for games for decades. Admittedly, recent new games have shown that other business models work too (see LoL), but Im not sure why you are blaming Blizz for using a business model which Every. Other. Game-company. Used. For. Decades. Its working, and its working well. Every. Single. Thing. About this topic is subjective. It's not an argument to say 'subjective.' You need to say why you disagree with me and for what reason if you want to make sense.
Goodie! Then we're on the same page. I just had a problem with someone stating opinions as facts (theres a difference between saying "This game is bad" and "I think this game is bad").
My opinion? Well, Im not sure why people would care about my opinion, but if you're intested here would be my extremely short review of it:
+ Show Spoiler +Overall good, got about what I expected. Well spent money for the hours spent playing. Improvement from D2. Like the skills and runes very much. Liked bosses and mobs. Liked the difficulty (dont like the nerfs, but understandable for more casual player base). Not a fan of the story, too cheesy for me. AH good addition, but UI needed improvements (being fixed). Didnt like the penalty for group play, was so much easier playing alone (was fixed, or at least remedied). Lacked a bit more endgame content (being fixed). Obviously endless content would be cool, but not realistic. Dont mind PvP not being there, it would have pushed back release date even further had they done so.
Well, thats about it =)
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On August 22 2012 19:25 Kreb wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2012 19:14 Deadlyhazard wrote:On August 22 2012 18:34 Kreb wrote:On August 22 2012 02:29 Deadlyhazard wrote:On August 22 2012 02:23 superstartran wrote:On August 22 2012 01:37 yamato77 wrote:
Most complaints about StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3 seem to be summed up by, "Well it's not BroodWar/Diablo 2 so it's bad!". Admittedly, neither game was perfect on release, but neither of their predecessors were either. Games take time to develop and perfect, especially games which are so dependent on players PLAYING them. StarCraft 2 can't be perfect and have a deep strategic metagame until people have been given sufficient time to develop and refine those strategies. Diablo 3 can't have a well-tuned economy running unless people are playing the game. Both games depend on large amounts of highly skilled people playing the game for them to realize their full potential.
Admittedly, Diablo 3 didn't have a requisite reward system to keep people playing the game for such a long time, but with the legendary changes and the introduction of paragon levels, the problem has been alleviated greatly. People are being rewarded for their grinding in a more guaranteed and appreciable way. If the playerbase increases and stays relatively even, the item economy should be better than it is now because there will be more of a demand for mid-level gear (which just got a whole lot better thanks to the inferno nerfs and weapon dps changes). And for people with godlike gear, now they have a long-term goal in capping their magic find passively, and they have the incentive to farm the relatively tough content to get the ilvl 63 set items.
Any other complaint about the design philosophy of Diablo 3 is a matter of taste. If you don't like the story, then you miss the point of an ARPG. If you feel like the gameplay is too different from Diablo 2, then go play Path of Exile or Torchlight which simulate it much more closely. If you don't agree with the Auction House, then you fail to see how much more streamlined and simplified it makes the entire ARPG gear grind. The RMAH is Blizzard's alternative to the third-party market which would exist whether Blizz implemented the RMAH or not. You can't fault a company for wanting a cut of the profits of gold sellers and item sellers in their own game.
If you have legitimate issues with balance and itemization and the tweaking of drop rates, Blizzard is obviously working to find a sweet spot to make you feel more rewarded for the time you spend playing their game. However, if you merely want everything to be the way it was in Diablo 2, then go play that game instead, because you are only wasting your time trying to change this new game, which I and other people legitimately enjoy.
Oh, and anyone who calls the game a "money grab" should realize something: games are a business. They are expected to make companies profit, otherwise there won't be any more games. If you have a problem with a company wanting sustained revenue from their product, then you should take your complaints to capitalism, not to a company playing by the rules. If you only ever want to play indie titles made "for the gamer", then by all means make the capitalist consumer decision and give your money to whomever you feel deserves it. I, however, realize that a balance has to be struck somewhere for game companies to grow and thrive in this world, and am happy to pay more to support companies that make games I enjoy.
EDIT: I posted this in this thread as a response to everyone who feels like the topic should be shitting all over D3. As for the actual topic; Brevik's comments are that of a game developer critiquing a game he wished he had made. Would it have been better? Worse? The exact same? Who knows, but the game was a huge success at launch, admittedly due in part to the franchise's history, and should be seeing a resurgence of the playerbase within the next two patches. To call it a failure at this point is just being blindly biased against the game for one of the reasons I outlined previously. Huh? Both Diablo 3 and SC2 are significantly worse than their predecessors from a BASIC game design standpoint. You can't fix that. Period. Precisely this. Diablo 3 is essentially a gimped version of Diablo 2 [Subjective] -- of course it's going to be compared. It has the exact same gameplay mechanics and just about everything that makes up the game that Diablo 2 was [What!? Its way different. And you even go on to tell all the differences below]. Except with less variety [considering the massive amount of skills, multiplied by 6 for runes, multiplied again by the fact that you have 6 abilities and not 2, this is plain wrong], fewer interesting stats on weapons, [possibly, although the "interesting" part is subjective, and I have no idea who judges a game based on what stats are on weapon. Must say out of all tens or hundreds of complaints I've heard about D3, this one was new] an extremely badly told story (this is basically objective because it's so awful) [Subjective. Yes, it is subjective], the boss fights are uninteresting for this day in age [Subjective], my god -- what does this game do well? I can't think of a single point that it does as good as Diablo 2 in, because it doesn't. [Aaaaand, subjective]. Also, Blizzard isn't about sustained revenue these days. They're going to get fewer and fewer sales for these titles as the years go on with the method they're currently employing. WoW is starting to fall because the content is cheap, Diablo 3's sales were only strong because they (the customers) were willing to test the waters because it was a new Diablo game -- but I don't think customers will be fooled as easily again. I think they're in it for the short-term profits, in other words -- massive amounts of profits on release but not for long-term sustainability. Look at the amount of players that log in to Diablo 3 now compared to even a month ago. It's dying, and fast. I really doubt expansions will help boost sales at all, either. Me and 15+ of my friends don't plan on purchasing any Blizzard products ever again, especially not Diablo 3/WoW/SC2 related ones. How many of them will actually follow that promise, I don't know. But I do know that the large majority of people aren't happy with Blizzard -- it's not a vocal minority from all of my experiences. Rather than making 20 quotes out of your first section which makes it awful to readt, I took the liberty to add my own comments to what you said in brackets and bold text. Should make it more readable. Also: Of course Blizzards is about sustained revenue, as the guy above said (within a limited time frame of course, you dont make a game which you expect to make revenue from in 50 years). If you dislike that, go complain about capitalism and send your money to indy makers, as stated. My guess is the last 10 or 20 or 100 games you played were made by companies/people who.... *drumroll* made the games to make money. You are right about massive profits on release though. And thats been the go-to business model for games for decades. Admittedly, recent new games have shown that other business models work too (see LoL), but Im not sure why you are blaming Blizz for using a business model which Every. Other. Game-company. Used. For. Decades. Its working, and its working well. Every. Single. Thing. About this topic is subjective. It's not an argument to say 'subjective.' You need to say why you disagree with me and for what reason if you want to make sense. Goodie! Then we're on the same page. I just had a problem with someone stating opinions as facts (theres a difference between saying "This game is bad" and "I think this game is bad"). My opinion? Well, Im not sure why people would care about my opinion, but if you're intested here would be my extremely short review of it: + Show Spoiler +Overall good, got about what I expected. Well spent money for the hours spent playing. Improvement from D2. Like the skills and runes very much. Liked bosses and mobs. Liked the difficulty (dont like the nerfs, but understandable for more casual player base). Not a fan of the story, too cheesy for me. AH good addition, but UI needed improvements (being fixed). Didnt like the penalty for group play, was so much easier playing alone (was fixed, or at least remedied). Lacked a bit more endgame content (being fixed). Obviously endless content would be cool, but not realistic. Dont mind PvP not being there, it would have pushed back release date even further had they done so.
Well, thats about it =)
There we go. That's reasonable. Yeah the problem with arguing on the internet is that everyone has to state that what they're doing is subjective otherwise it looks like one is trying to argue objectively, which is quite a difficult case for something on the topic of a game. Wish people would just assume everyone is trying to talk subjectively when it comes to cases like this where we're discussing the quality of a game title. :3
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On August 22 2012 18:34 Kreb wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2012 02:29 Deadlyhazard wrote:On August 22 2012 02:23 superstartran wrote:On August 22 2012 01:37 yamato77 wrote:
Most complaints about StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3 seem to be summed up by, "Well it's not BroodWar/Diablo 2 so it's bad!". Admittedly, neither game was perfect on release, but neither of their predecessors were either. Games take time to develop and perfect, especially games which are so dependent on players PLAYING them. StarCraft 2 can't be perfect and have a deep strategic metagame until people have been given sufficient time to develop and refine those strategies. Diablo 3 can't have a well-tuned economy running unless people are playing the game. Both games depend on large amounts of highly skilled people playing the game for them to realize their full potential.
Admittedly, Diablo 3 didn't have a requisite reward system to keep people playing the game for such a long time, but with the legendary changes and the introduction of paragon levels, the problem has been alleviated greatly. People are being rewarded for their grinding in a more guaranteed and appreciable way. If the playerbase increases and stays relatively even, the item economy should be better than it is now because there will be more of a demand for mid-level gear (which just got a whole lot better thanks to the inferno nerfs and weapon dps changes). And for people with godlike gear, now they have a long-term goal in capping their magic find passively, and they have the incentive to farm the relatively tough content to get the ilvl 63 set items.
Any other complaint about the design philosophy of Diablo 3 is a matter of taste. If you don't like the story, then you miss the point of an ARPG. If you feel like the gameplay is too different from Diablo 2, then go play Path of Exile or Torchlight which simulate it much more closely. If you don't agree with the Auction House, then you fail to see how much more streamlined and simplified it makes the entire ARPG gear grind. The RMAH is Blizzard's alternative to the third-party market which would exist whether Blizz implemented the RMAH or not. You can't fault a company for wanting a cut of the profits of gold sellers and item sellers in their own game.
If you have legitimate issues with balance and itemization and the tweaking of drop rates, Blizzard is obviously working to find a sweet spot to make you feel more rewarded for the time you spend playing their game. However, if you merely want everything to be the way it was in Diablo 2, then go play that game instead, because you are only wasting your time trying to change this new game, which I and other people legitimately enjoy.
Oh, and anyone who calls the game a "money grab" should realize something: games are a business. They are expected to make companies profit, otherwise there won't be any more games. If you have a problem with a company wanting sustained revenue from their product, then you should take your complaints to capitalism, not to a company playing by the rules. If you only ever want to play indie titles made "for the gamer", then by all means make the capitalist consumer decision and give your money to whomever you feel deserves it. I, however, realize that a balance has to be struck somewhere for game companies to grow and thrive in this world, and am happy to pay more to support companies that make games I enjoy.
EDIT: I posted this in this thread as a response to everyone who feels like the topic should be shitting all over D3. As for the actual topic; Brevik's comments are that of a game developer critiquing a game he wished he had made. Would it have been better? Worse? The exact same? Who knows, but the game was a huge success at launch, admittedly due in part to the franchise's history, and should be seeing a resurgence of the playerbase within the next two patches. To call it a failure at this point is just being blindly biased against the game for one of the reasons I outlined previously. Huh? Both Diablo 3 and SC2 are significantly worse than their predecessors from a BASIC game design standpoint. You can't fix that. Period. Precisely this. Diablo 3 is essentially a gimped version of Diablo 2 [Subjective] -- of course it's going to be compared. It has the exact same gameplay mechanics and just about everything that makes up the game that Diablo 2 was [What!? Its way different. And you even go on to tell all the differences below]. Except with less variety [considering the massive amount of skills, multiplied by 6 for runes, multiplied again by the fact that you have 6 abilities and not 2, this is plain wrong], fewer interesting stats on weapons, [possibly, although the "interesting" part is subjective, and I have no idea who judges a game based on what stats are on weapon. Must say out of all tens or hundreds of complaints I've heard about D3, this one was new] an extremely badly told story (this is basically objective because it's so awful) [Subjective. Yes, it is subjective], the boss fights are uninteresting for this day in age [Subjective], my god -- what does this game do well? I can't think of a single point that it does as good as Diablo 2 in, because it doesn't. [Aaaaand, subjective]. Also, Blizzard isn't about sustained revenue these days. They're going to get fewer and fewer sales for these titles as the years go on with the method they're currently employing. WoW is starting to fall because the content is cheap, Diablo 3's sales were only strong because they (the customers) were willing to test the waters because it was a new Diablo game -- but I don't think customers will be fooled as easily again. I think they're in it for the short-term profits, in other words -- massive amounts of profits on release but not for long-term sustainability. Look at the amount of players that log in to Diablo 3 now compared to even a month ago. It's dying, and fast. I really doubt expansions will help boost sales at all, either. Me and 15+ of my friends don't plan on purchasing any Blizzard products ever again, especially not Diablo 3/WoW/SC2 related ones. How many of them will actually follow that promise, I don't know. But I do know that the large majority of people aren't happy with Blizzard -- it's not a vocal minority from all of my experiences. Rather than making 20 quotes out of your first section which makes it awful to readt, I took the liberty to add my own comments to what you said in brackets and bold text. Should make it more readable. Also: Of course Blizzards is about sustained revenue, as the guy above said (within a limited time frame of course, you dont make a game which you expect to make revenue from in 50 years). If you dislike that, go complain about capitalism and send your money to indy makers, as stated. My guess is the last 10 or 20 or 100 games you played were made by companies/people who.... *drumroll* made the games to make money. You are right about massive profits on release though. And thats been the go-to business model for games for decades. Admittedly, recent new games have shown that other business models work too (see LoL), but Im not sure why you are blaming Blizz for using a business model which Every. Other. Game-company. Used. For. Decades. Its working, and its working well.
The problem here is that Blizzard has been the gold standard for games. It's not EA which pumps out loads of crap for every hit they produce, Blizzard has been a unique company who historically speaking has raised their middle finger too release dates and kept on polishing something 'until it's ready'. This has produced some pretty damn epic games and some of the finest gaming experiences at least I have experienced.
I kind of like D3, but I don't play it as much as I did if it had been WoW or Diablo 2 for example. I used to buy every Blizzard game released for a platform which I owned, but I'm not sure I'm going to do that anymore. Not sure if worth the monies anymore. Before Diablo 3, I had no such doubts.
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The problem here is that Blizzard has been the gold standard for games.
This is a somewhat overreaching statement I think. Arguably Valve has a better track record on polish/innovation/community engagement. All blizzard has had is a dogged dedication to fixing and tweaking games post release until they're actually good, consistently the most accessible modding tools around (which is really the basis of the success of their RTS franchises, and to some extent WoW) and a metric fucktonne of talent in the underappreciated field of low-level interface design. There ain't many other games that give you the same smoooooth clicks as a gen-u-ine blizzard game.
I'm not shitting on their record, which speaks for itself, but saying that Blizzard's design studio produces either upfront innovation or polish is just not correct. You really have to beat them around the face with a problem before they come up with a completely obvious solution for it (as this patch demonstrates), but implemented so smoothly it feels impressive.
As (somewhat precosciously) one of the few people in the world who is an actual trained and studied game designer, (IE my skillset and training is in designing good games, minus all the aesthetic and multimedia trappings of the videogame industry) I can tell you outright that blizzard's design team has never been very strong, they just happen to have a lot of good artists, engine designers and an ethic of never giving up on making something better.
Unfortunately, the same can be said of pretty much every big developer these days. I'm amazed when I read the credits for these games and there isn't a single designer on the staff (I have enough experience to know that 'senior designer' or 'lead designer' in the industry just means manager, and 'level designer' or 'character designer' just means 3d artist. Actual game design (as opposed to content generation by random testing and iteration) is something of of a myth  .
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http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/6398870250#1
Jay's actual response
As many of you probably know, I recently made a comment on Facebook about Dave Brevik. I want to make it clear that I am very sorry for what I said. I have higher expectations for myself than to express my feelings in such a rash way and disrespect a fellow developer like Dave, someone who deserves to be treated with greater respect.
What I said was expressed out of anger, and in defense of my team and the game. People can say what they want about me, but I don't take lightly when they disparage the commitment and passion of the Diablo III team. Dave is awesome. In Diablo and Diablo II, he made two of the games that have most affected me as a developer. I respect his vision for Diablo, but just like he said in his interview, the Diablo III team must drive a vision for the game that is true to us. We believe in Diablo and have stuck by it through years of hard development to make it a reality.
The foundation of the Diablo team was built from the remnants of Blizzard North: Our lead programmer, who built the basis of the Diablo III engine while at Blizzard North; our lead tech artist, who drove much of the combat visuals, FX, and skill direction of our classes and is one of the most avid Diablo II players you can find; our lead concept artist, who helped establish the core look of the game; Wyatt Cheng, our senior technical game designer, who writes many of our blogs and works tirelessly on the live game. All these people and many others made the commitment to Diablo even after Blizzard North shut down. It was hard for me to see their contributions be diminished by someone they worked alongside, and even harder for me not to try to jump to their defense. I only wish I'd done so in a more professional manner.
Joining the Diablo team was a dream come true for me. In my house, the name Diablo was always spoken in hushed tones. It meant late nights that turned into early mornings, moments of pure adrenaline and pure joy. It meant countless conversations, debates, scouring websites for good builds, and more than one or two sick days. When Diablo II was released, I took a week off work and sent my wife out of state... and she was pregnant at the time! I played Diablo II with my dad during one of the most difficult times of his life, and the experience brought me closer to him, and I hope helped him through it. I joined the Diablo team because the idea of a world without more Diablo seemed like a pretty crappy world to me. I wasn't sure if I'd be good enough. I'm still not sure. But I felt I had to try.
Regardless of how I've done, my team has been more than good enough, and I'm proud of the game we made together. We believe it's a great game. But Diablo III has flaws. It is not perfect. Sales mean nothing if the game doesn’t live on in all of our hearts, and standing by our games is what Blizzard does. Patch 1.0.4 is a step in the right direction, but we have no illusions that our work is done.
Playing Diablo III needs to be a rewarding experience. The new legendaries are a big step in the right direction, as are tweaks to item drop rates. But I'm not convinced that we've gone far enough. If you don't have that great feeling of a good drop being right around the corner -- and the burst of excitement when it finally arrives -- then we haven't done our jobs right. Out of our concern to make sure that Diablo III would have longevity, we were overly cautious about how we handled item drops and affixes. If 1.0.4 hasn’t fixed that, you can be sure we'll continue to address it.
Part of the problem, however, is not just item drops, but the variety of things to do within the game. Many of you have stated that there needs to be more to the game than just the item hunt, and we agree completely. The Paragon system is a step in the right direction, giving meta-progress for your time in the game, but it does little to address the variety of activities you can do while playing. I don't think there’s a silver-bullet solution to this problem, but I do think we can make this aspect of the game better, and as such we're planning more than just PvP for the next major patch. Not trying to be coy, but we're still firming things up and will talk about this as soon as we can.
Difficulty has been a constant source of division when discussing the game. Some players believe Diablo has never been about crushing challenges, but more about efficiency and farming. Some players want a game that tests them to their limits. Neither player is wrong. As it stands, Diablo III simply does not provide the tools to allow players to scale the game challenge to something appropriate for them. We set Inferno as the high watermark and took a one-size-fits-all approach to game challenge. Later in the development of Diablo II, the 'players 8' command -- which let people set monster difficulty -- was added to address this issue, and we're considering something similar for the next major Diablo III patch to allow players to make up their own minds about how hard or how easy is right for them.
The Auction House has also proven to be a big challenge. It adds a lot of power for players to trade and acquire items. Getting a great Monk drop that you can trade for better gear for your Wizard is obviously a great benefit, but it does come with a downside. The Auction House can short circuit the natural pace of item drops, making the game feel less rewarding for some players. This is a problem we recognize. At this point we're not sure of the exact way to fix it, but we’re discussing it constantly, and we believe it's a problem we can overcome.
While these are some of the major issues with Diablo III, they aren't the only things we're looking at. On a daily basis we ask ourselves if the classes are satisfying to play, if rares and champions are fun to fight, if they’re tuned well relative to normal monsters. Can we make further improvements to social elements of the game? How can items be even better?
We made Diablo III because we believe in the Diablo games. We think the gameplay is awesome, the world is compelling, and it's the game we all wanted to play. Because we believe in it, we'll continue to stand by it and make it better. We are committed to making Diablo III the best Diablo game to date, and we hope you'll continue to help us do just that.
Saying that, I'd like to apologize to all of you, the players in our community. You deserve better than my reaction to Dave's comments. You deserve more honest communication about the game and what we're doing to make it a more awesome experience for us all. We care about Diablo very much, and appreciate your passion for it. Without you, we wouldn't be able to do this, and for that I can't thank you enough.
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Much better, and I'm sure appreciated by the community. Still not enough for me to purchase a new account with Blizzard though. :D
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On August 22 2012 18:56 Skwid1g wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2012 02:23 superstartran wrote:On August 22 2012 01:37 yamato77 wrote:
Most complaints about StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3 seem to be summed up by, "Well it's not BroodWar/Diablo 2 so it's bad!". Admittedly, neither game was perfect on release, but neither of their predecessors were either. Games take time to develop and perfect, especially games which are so dependent on players PLAYING them. StarCraft 2 can't be perfect and have a deep strategic metagame until people have been given sufficient time to develop and refine those strategies. Diablo 3 can't have a well-tuned economy running unless people are playing the game. Both games depend on large amounts of highly skilled people playing the game for them to realize their full potential.
Admittedly, Diablo 3 didn't have a requisite reward system to keep people playing the game for such a long time, but with the legendary changes and the introduction of paragon levels, the problem has been alleviated greatly. People are being rewarded for their grinding in a more guaranteed and appreciable way. If the playerbase increases and stays relatively even, the item economy should be better than it is now because there will be more of a demand for mid-level gear (which just got a whole lot better thanks to the inferno nerfs and weapon dps changes). And for people with godlike gear, now they have a long-term goal in capping their magic find passively, and they have the incentive to farm the relatively tough content to get the ilvl 63 set items.
Any other complaint about the design philosophy of Diablo 3 is a matter of taste. If you don't like the story, then you miss the point of an ARPG. If you feel like the gameplay is too different from Diablo 2, then go play Path of Exile or Torchlight which simulate it much more closely. If you don't agree with the Auction House, then you fail to see how much more streamlined and simplified it makes the entire ARPG gear grind. The RMAH is Blizzard's alternative to the third-party market which would exist whether Blizz implemented the RMAH or not. You can't fault a company for wanting a cut of the profits of gold sellers and item sellers in their own game.
If you have legitimate issues with balance and itemization and the tweaking of drop rates, Blizzard is obviously working to find a sweet spot to make you feel more rewarded for the time you spend playing their game. However, if you merely want everything to be the way it was in Diablo 2, then go play that game instead, because you are only wasting your time trying to change this new game, which I and other people legitimately enjoy.
Oh, and anyone who calls the game a "money grab" should realize something: games are a business. They are expected to make companies profit, otherwise there won't be any more games. If you have a problem with a company wanting sustained revenue from their product, then you should take your complaints to capitalism, not to a company playing by the rules. If you only ever want to play indie titles made "for the gamer", then by all means make the capitalist consumer decision and give your money to whomever you feel deserves it. I, however, realize that a balance has to be struck somewhere for game companies to grow and thrive in this world, and am happy to pay more to support companies that make games I enjoy.
EDIT: I posted this in this thread as a response to everyone who feels like the topic should be shitting all over D3. As for the actual topic; Brevik's comments are that of a game developer critiquing a game he wished he had made. Would it have been better? Worse? The exact same? Who knows, but the game was a huge success at launch, admittedly due in part to the franchise's history, and should be seeing a resurgence of the playerbase within the next two patches. To call it a failure at this point is just being blindly biased against the game for one of the reasons I outlined previously. Huh? Both Diablo 3 and SC2 are significantly worse than their predecessors from a BASIC game design standpoint. You can't fix that. Period. In what way? The truth is that d3 is miles better than d2 in a large number of ways, but people aren't very bright and don't realize that. The reason they decided to ship d3 with no pvp baffles me, as it's the main reason d2 has survived for as long as it has.
Did you really just tell everyone that enjoys Diablo 2 more than Diablo 3 that the only reason they do is because they're too stupid to know what THEY enjoy?
Maybe, just maybe, I enjoy Diablo 2 because it's just a lot more fun to play for me, decade old graphics or not. I played Diablo 2 in the last few days in fact while waiting for Guild Wars 2 and I had a blast. It's a game I've played hundreds of times and I still love it. I've played Diablo 3 through to Inferno on 2 characters (excluding inferno itself beyond act 1) and I didn't enjoy it much, to the point I stopped playing after 2-3 weeks. It's not the worst game of all time, it just feels like there's no substance there. No need to think when choosing skills, just swap it out if you don't like it; no need to think with equipement, just check the main stats on it and upgrade those!
One of the main points people never seem to mention about Diablo 3's failures (beyond skills that are overall a lot less spectacular than in Diablo 2, stats or the lack thereof, no permanent decision ruining the feeling of progression, itemization being what it is, the story, etc) is the level design. Diablo 2 has expansive areas with tons of enemies and just feels right (I guess this is hard to explain but go play through Act2, 4 and 5 and you'll enjoy the squishyness of everything you kill). Drop a Lightning Fury or Ice Orb in a pack of monsters and it just feels right, from the skills to the monsters and the areas themselves. In Diablo 3, I didn't really get that feeling with any area or with any skill (well, I'll be fair, the Barbarian had a few of those moments with some good timing on skills but overall Diablo 2 takes the cake by a mile).
It's not like I wanted to hate Diablo 3. It's just what the game is, and it's not because I'm not bright enough to understand the "revolutionary" gameplay that has been dumbed down enough for my grandmother to get through the game.
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