Diablo 3

[Don]

I've been playing again since the game allegedly is better than what it was at the start of the expansion, which is sort of true, but it's still nowhere as interesting as Diablo 2 once was.

I think the problem with Diablo 3 is that Blizzard somehow think people want to play World of Diablo without realizing that anybody that wanted to play that game would already be playing World of Warcraft. Diablo, at its core, is not a very hard game. That's why people did 8 player Bloody Foothills and people still randomly died in a zone that you probably could've walked around with no gear and still live for pretty long prior to the 'act 5 monsters no longer actually show up in act 5' revamp. It takes a while to even get your resist above 0% in Hell and yet you can usually survive pretty well, which is why there are so many useless modifiers out there and yet you can still play the game even though chances of getting any rare with the right mods are slim, because you don't need everything rolling the highest resist modifier or damage modifiers to do stuff. Now I know Diablo 3 still sold a bazillion copies but it's hard for me to imagine the online longevity to be anything comparable to what it was back in Diablo 2. Back in Diablo 2's days we certainly didn't have people entertaining the thought that something like Path of Exile or Torchlight 2 could possibly be a threat to the Diablo franchise, and no I don't think they're a legitimate threat, but back then that wasn't even a question worth asking.

[Shrinweck]

It's a decent casual ARPG to spend a weeks worth of afternoons/evenings with once every year or so but there's really nothing there. By taking out skill trees or any real meaningful (or should I say time consuming) experimentation out of the game they really killed a big part of what keeps people coming back.

In contrast, Path of Exile is able to carve a niche out for itself by making experimentation be basically the only reason to come back to play more. Most major Path of Exile patches bring people back by fulfilling the promise of giving their audience a new mechanic/progression route to experiment with.

Meanwhile, Blizzard has come to depend on the season-to-season rewards to bring people back to Diablo 3. But there isn't anything to do after the initial achievements that give seasonal rewards but grind rifts and bounties. It just isn't very appealing to me. I played this like crazy the week before NMS came out and I looked up the last time I'd logged into Diablo 3. 2014.

Maybe they'll announce a new expansion soon. Since they got rid of the RMT auction house (thank god) there's no real way to monetize the game besides expansions.

So, yeah, maybe an expansion would make the game worth playing again. I also wish they'd concentrate on build diversity. Each class has something like three equipment sets that enable builds for endgame stuff. But often enough 1, 2 or sometimes all 3 of those sets just do not enable builds the way they should. This, even if all three sets worked, forces players to play meta builds in order to compete... If they're going to give up and encourage players to use meta builds they should really at least make it so all three sets are competitive.

[Don]

Well, the sets and even items themselves are all tied to a specific skill, like 'this skill now does 30X the damage' and it's hard to imagine how the game can possibly be balanced when only a few skills have such items, and of course the game isn't balanced and you're pretty much stuck with using whatever skill that currently has the 30X or higher modifier from some random item. You also can't really find any item for another class except possibly the one that shares the same mainstat though it'd still generally not all that optimal. The stuff like imbues/socket quests/Countess runes makes it worthwhile to start new characters and while it's probably not totally time-positive to start over a new guy just for those, it gives you some meaning to start over in Diablo 2 which doesn't exist in Diablo 3. It's in generally pretty hard to actually do any twinking. A gem of ease can get you to level 70 fast enough but then you're still stuck with basically nothing but random legendaries trying to get to Torment X or so without your set and you literally do no damage in this game without your set bonus. Back in Diablo 2 you didn't always have a full set since there was usually one item that was nearly impossible to get for the set (either the chest piece or the armor) but then the set bonus wasn't like '4 piece -> become 300% better, 6 piece -> become 3000% better' so you running your random 4 out of 6 pieces in a set is still pretty respectable and even if you knew (and a lot of people didn't) that the chance of completing a Griswold set was nonexistent, it at least looks like you could complete it on a bring new Paladin.

I think Diablo 3 they made the mistake of catering too much to the hardcore. Diablo 2 was played by guys that had a hard time not dying in Bloody Foothills. It's because the game is easy that you can experiment with something like a poison dagger only Necro or throwing weapons only Barbarian and still actually completing the game (with ample gear help from your more powerful characters). And what does this get the game? Do hardcore players pay more money than the non hardcore? Of course not. In fact, nobody actually pays any money for the game after the initial cost since this isn't World of Diablo. I think if Path of Exile isn't so incredibly niche (any game economy inherently based on barter has to be niche) they might have a legitimate shot at challenging Diablo 3, though I understand that the Path of Exile probably started out with nothing and figured they'd go with a niche concept and avoid fighting Diablo head on since nobody in their right mind would think they should be able to beat Blizzard at the Diablo game.

[Eric]

I've never been able to play Diablo long enough to get to the point where you'r max level fighting the same monsters over and over and blowing them up for millions of damage before they can even react or use any of their traits/abilities. I didn't understand the appeal, at least in an MMO when you get geared the bosses at the highest level can still kill you and your comrades if you fuck up and don't respect the mechanics. Just seems like once you hit a gear level in D3 everything crumbles and all you're doing is farming more gear to make it crumble even faster.

[Don]

I've never been able to play Diablo long enough to get to the point where you'r max level fighting the same monsters over and over and blowing them up for millions of damage before they can even react or use any of their traits/abilities. I didn't understand the appeal, at least in an MMO when you get geared the bosses at the highest level can still kill you and your comrades if you fuck up and don't respect the mechanics. Just seems like once you hit a gear level in D3 everything crumbles and all you're doing is farming more gear to make it crumble even faster.

Diablo is basically for players ganking monsters (and sometimes players) and there's obviously an appeal to blowing stuff up that can't possibly threaten you over and over. Despite Diablo 2 came out behind World of Warcraft and was definitely incredibly successful, Blizzard seemed to decide that they need to convert Diablo 3 to the WoW model without any of the monetization. Diablo 3 actually become some kind of DPS test thing which is definitely not the case of Diablo 1 and 2 where when you're appropriately geared you can just stand next to Diablo or Baal and wait. Sure, people are still loaded on DPS because when you're killing the same thing for the 500th time you're likely interested in doing it as fast as possible, but DPS is not necessarily to winning whereas in Diablo 3 even on a relatively easy Torment level, if the monsters are invulnerable and have you trapped in a corner you'll die in under a minute for sure because you would run out of cooldowns and the game actually made a conscious effort to nerf every kind of possible sustained survival build.

For some reason Blizzard somehow never figured out how to monetize Diablo 2 or even Diablo 3 beyond the initial game sale. Well, the RMAH probably made them a lot of money but it burned a lot of the goodwill too because of how the game was rigged to force you to use RMAH. Diablo 2 wasn't rigged so that you'd need a Zod rune or whatever, but people still paid a bunch of money for them on EBay. Yes, a Diablo 2 like item distribution probably would make less money via commission compared to Diablo 3, but Diablo 2 was what generated the goodwill that let a fiasco like RMAH even exist in the first place, so you'd think there's got to be a way to have a RMAH on top of Diablo 2's loot system for some free money (anyone who bought stuff off EBay in Diablo 2 would obviously use RMAH if it charged comparable fees since it's integrated to the game) and then use the goodwill for other stuff to make more money.