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| If you don't understand how violent Diablo 3 is, and where this is going. Please. Just think about it. |
So unlike every other redditer (redditites?) and every other person who posts on the Diablo 3 Forums, Will and I have not reached level 60 yet. You know, that life thing.
As casually "hardcore" gamers we try to be, we at least have made it to level 50 and Act 4 of nightmare difficulty. At a young age, we found out that we could soak up our parents electricity bill by playing Diablo and Diablo 2 on two separate computers while listening to Limp Bizkit, we have pretty much stuck together through any Blizzard game. Yes, this even includes World of Warcraft. *Sigh* Damn, this is already depressing... Quick! To the first key point!
Single-Online-Multiplayer-...Player?
I may never truly understand the full decision behind this. I may never want to know, but my first completely uneducated guess is that Blizzard plays too much Farmville.
Now, for my educated guess. Thanks to the ever increasing doom of piracy, game developers feel this need to tether everything to multiplayer and the internet. As many of you know this bit them right where it counts when it came to launch day. I may never understand why this decision was made but I still just cannot grasp how you turn a single player game series, into an online thing.
When Diablo 3 launched I had a couple of my friends come over to play in a LAN party-ish way. This is obviously not achieved but I wanted to make it feel like how we used to play games. Yet again, Blizzards prerequisite of having to be online to play screwed that one too. With only 3 computers on my high speed internet connection, we all had our latency go up. This meant we got to enjoy this game at ~500ms latency, while in the same room. For those of you that have gamed before having the luxury of this internet machine, you can probably feel my pain.
If you haven't noticed yet, I'm sick of this happening. It's starting to feel like Charlie Sheen's career. We all learn to love it's quips and fun, just to find out it's shine is starting to fade. Then, we await the next multiplayer/internet tethered game to feel blown away to just feel this returning feeling of apathy.
Feeling less depressed?... No?... To the second key point!
A shiny nickel in exchange for the Prime Evils.
If you have every played any game that has some kind of reward system. Usually this means the harder the quest or objective the greater the reward. Well Diablo 3 seems to roll the other way when it comes to this.
In Act 2, you pulverize tons of demons and other horrors to get to Belial to wrap up Lut Golein 2.0. When we first ran through this act on normal we were rewarded with decent yellowy items and with gem's aplenty. Now, continuing this act in nightmare difficulty as not been rewarding what so ever. In fact, nightmare difficulty has not even been remotely rewarding at all. Nightmare is Christmas at 22. There is nothing there for you. Except pounding your face full of sugary treats and wearing terrible sweaters.
I understand that at level 60 you get the Nephelem buff that can stack that will guarantee at least one rare when it comes to a boss fight. Now clearly that helps me like Vin Diesel helps make the acting in a movie shine. Right now the only piece of motivation I have to hit level cap is to hopefully get Nephelem buffs, and go hunting for great level cap gear. Whoa, wait a minute. This feels all too familiar.
Also, where's the damn legendary's? It is the worst game of Where's Waldo ever.
The day leveling up turned bland
One of the greatest things in Diablo 2, in my opinion, was that you could screw up a character and it would take time and more level up's to fix. When you leveled up you could choose where to put 5 skill points in 4 skills. This kind of gave you a creative freedom of how you wanted to make your character. You were able to calibrate your character to your liking. If you felt like you were dying to soon, you threw some points extra points into Vitality or Dexterity. You might also throw a talent point in an existing ability or a new one to help your DPS or survivability.
In Diablo 3, they went for the MMO kind of feel where pretty much everything is laid out for you when you level up. The way it works is, they give you some abilities and they give you runes to that ability and just keep rolling out runes to "upgrade" it. Which truthfully sometimes isn't even an upgrade. Your stat's will also be done for you so please, do not worry about that.
With my level 50 Monk, I have all the abilities I need to fulfill this cookie cutter class to even survive and do optimal DPS. The next 10 levels will be simply to just lurch forward to level 60 and hope to get better gear. If I stopped getting quiver's and crossbow's I might be able to make an honest, well geared man out of my Monk. Poor Shado...
There I said it. This game isn't complete crap, mostly because I refuse to feel that certain aspects of this game tarnish my favorite Blizzard lore. It does feel like this general concept of leveling to hit cap and reap the benefits has certainly been done before. (Familiar?)
I understand some of you will simply reply with, "Just hit cap level, stupid." I understand that. I get it. That's how this game works. But is this how a game should work? Only appeal to the first 12 hours of game play then create a bridge of monotonous game play? Then to feel like life will be re-birthed into it when you hit level cap with all kinds of shiny rewards? It just doesn't feel consistent and rewarding throughout.
We are at the point where rare groups and enchanted groups of monsters are more challenging than any boss we have ran into. We go into most bosses swinging and never really have a moment of fear or a sliver of strategy that is needed to down this boss. Then, we run into a group of monsters that are enchanted with Arcane and Molten and we are running for our lives.
If you haven't figured it out by now this game really wasn't all I, or even some other people were hoping it would be. It kinda of felt like Blizzard wanted to make a familiar game to maintain and which class is good and bad for a perpetuating cycle of nerf's and buff's. (Familiar?)
Yet there are things that still bring me back time and time again to play this game for 2 hours at a time with my brother. Maybe it's the simple fact that it returns a small portion of nostalgia for us. Maybe we just persevere to hopefully get that legendary quiver we have been always wanting to find, to simply swear it away to the auction house.
We may never know.
Stay Classy, Internet.
-EF
I may never truly understand the full decision behind this. I may never want to know, but my first completely uneducated guess is that Blizzard plays too much Farmville.
Now, for my educated guess. Thanks to the ever increasing doom of piracy, game developers feel this need to tether everything to multiplayer and the internet. As many of you know this bit them right where it counts when it came to launch day. I may never understand why this decision was made but I still just cannot grasp how you turn a single player game series, into an online thing.
When Diablo 3 launched I had a couple of my friends come over to play in a LAN party-ish way. This is obviously not achieved but I wanted to make it feel like how we used to play games. Yet again, Blizzards prerequisite of having to be online to play screwed that one too. With only 3 computers on my high speed internet connection, we all had our latency go up. This meant we got to enjoy this game at ~500ms latency, while in the same room. For those of you that have gamed before having the luxury of this internet machine, you can probably feel my pain.
If you haven't noticed yet, I'm sick of this happening. It's starting to feel like Charlie Sheen's career. We all learn to love it's quips and fun, just to find out it's shine is starting to fade. Then, we await the next multiplayer/internet tethered game to feel blown away to just feel this returning feeling of apathy.
Feeling less depressed?... No?... To the second key point!
A shiny nickel in exchange for the Prime Evils.
If you have every played any game that has some kind of reward system. Usually this means the harder the quest or objective the greater the reward. Well Diablo 3 seems to roll the other way when it comes to this.
 |
| This is how Normal kind of worked. Kind of. |
In Act 2, you pulverize tons of demons and other horrors to get to Belial to wrap up Lut Golein 2.0. When we first ran through this act on normal we were rewarded with decent yellowy items and with gem's aplenty. Now, continuing this act in nightmare difficulty as not been rewarding what so ever. In fact, nightmare difficulty has not even been remotely rewarding at all. Nightmare is Christmas at 22. There is nothing there for you. Except pounding your face full of sugary treats and wearing terrible sweaters.
I understand that at level 60 you get the Nephelem buff that can stack that will guarantee at least one rare when it comes to a boss fight. Now clearly that helps me like Vin Diesel helps make the acting in a movie shine. Right now the only piece of motivation I have to hit level cap is to hopefully get Nephelem buffs, and go hunting for great level cap gear. Whoa, wait a minute. This feels all too familiar.
Also, where's the damn legendary's? It is the worst game of Where's Waldo ever.
The day leveling up turned bland
One of the greatest things in Diablo 2, in my opinion, was that you could screw up a character and it would take time and more level up's to fix. When you leveled up you could choose where to put 5 skill points in 4 skills. This kind of gave you a creative freedom of how you wanted to make your character. You were able to calibrate your character to your liking. If you felt like you were dying to soon, you threw some points extra points into Vitality or Dexterity. You might also throw a talent point in an existing ability or a new one to help your DPS or survivability.
In Diablo 3, they went for the MMO kind of feel where pretty much everything is laid out for you when you level up. The way it works is, they give you some abilities and they give you runes to that ability and just keep rolling out runes to "upgrade" it. Which truthfully sometimes isn't even an upgrade. Your stat's will also be done for you so please, do not worry about that.
With my level 50 Monk, I have all the abilities I need to fulfill this cookie cutter class to even survive and do optimal DPS. The next 10 levels will be simply to just lurch forward to level 60 and hope to get better gear. If I stopped getting quiver's and crossbow's I might be able to make an honest, well geared man out of my Monk. Poor Shado...
10 years for a satisfactory feeling
There I said it. This game isn't complete crap, mostly because I refuse to feel that certain aspects of this game tarnish my favorite Blizzard lore. It does feel like this general concept of leveling to hit cap and reap the benefits has certainly been done before. (Familiar?)
I understand some of you will simply reply with, "Just hit cap level, stupid." I understand that. I get it. That's how this game works. But is this how a game should work? Only appeal to the first 12 hours of game play then create a bridge of monotonous game play? Then to feel like life will be re-birthed into it when you hit level cap with all kinds of shiny rewards? It just doesn't feel consistent and rewarding throughout.
We are at the point where rare groups and enchanted groups of monsters are more challenging than any boss we have ran into. We go into most bosses swinging and never really have a moment of fear or a sliver of strategy that is needed to down this boss. Then, we run into a group of monsters that are enchanted with Arcane and Molten and we are running for our lives.
If you haven't figured it out by now this game really wasn't all I, or even some other people were hoping it would be. It kinda of felt like Blizzard wanted to make a familiar game to maintain and which class is good and bad for a perpetuating cycle of nerf's and buff's. (Familiar?)
Yet there are things that still bring me back time and time again to play this game for 2 hours at a time with my brother. Maybe it's the simple fact that it returns a small portion of nostalgia for us. Maybe we just persevere to hopefully get that legendary quiver we have been always wanting to find, to simply swear it away to the auction house.
We may never know.
Stay Classy, Internet.
-EF
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