Blizzard Talks Diablo III's Launch And Future

@Homelessbird said:

@Mr_Skeleton: Actually, I would say that your expectations for D3 are probably your own fault.

It has nothing to do with expectations, there are some major and basic design choices that made the game bad.

I hate this game that I've sunk hundreds of hours into!

Seeing Mike talk about how "oh so successful" they were with 1.0.3, and how they want to keep heading in that direction, it's pretty clear the direction they want to go isn't the one I'd enjoy playing. So thanks for the time we had, D3, but we're through. Was nice knowing ya.

Here's the issue with the statements of: "It can't be bad if you played for 100 hours".

People who were big fans of Diablo 2 consider the game to not really start until the final act and difficulty, and not until you have it on farm and you can go on runs with a bunch of other people. And rush new characters to the end of the game for trades or fun, while new characters get to try out new builds and whatnot. None of this is at all possible in D3. People who didn't care for D2 but loved D1 probably don't have this issue as much if at all.

@George_Hukas: You're allowed to complain about whatever you want. But complaining about a game because you have unrealistic expectations of it just makes you look bad. So does saying it's a terrible game when you've already sunk 100 hours into it. It's hard for people to take that seriously.

Now, people that have sunk a huge amount of time in working together with/ expressing their complaints to the developers to make the game better? That sounds great! I'm pretty sure this isn't an official blizzard forum, though.

@Xiemos2 said:

I played D2 on an annual basis for about a decade.. I played d3 for 100 hours before I was absolutely over it--as in, no desire to play it at all.

What'd Blizzard f up in regards to D3? Two things:

1. There's no more finding fat loots. In d2, you'd do a few hours of mf runs and you were nearly guaranteed to find some badass end-game item (shako, shaft, ss, soj, titans, whatever); you'll find one of those in a relatively fast period. Grind mobs in 8 hours for d3 and what do you get? trash to vendor and buy items on the AH. It's not fun. Seeing meph or baal pop and drop uniques that you KNEW were awesome was a fantastic experience. Right-clicking on yellows for 30 mins so you can vendor them is pretty gay.

2. Your character is never overpowered. In d2, after you invested 50+ hours into a character, you were a badass. In d3, you still get two shotted by every mob. No fun.

See, for me, there's value in needing the best gear you can find to get through the hardest parts. Feeling like a badass is great and all, but I still want some final challenge that I can work towards for that loot to feel useful. That said, I think the drop rates should definitely be better.

I hate this game that I've sunk hundreds of hours into!

D3's not a good game, if I have to gimp myself to get enjoyment out of the first 3 difficulties(60 levels), and have to play the auction house to even play the last one, ya done fucked up the core system of an action RPG. And there's no excuse when they've developed for over 10 years.

@Mr_Skeleton: You're certainly entitled to your own opinion. I was simply guessing you had expectations because of your stated time with Diablo 2.

Most people would disagree with you that D3 is a bad game, though.

@GnomeonFire: And what I would say to that is: people expecting Diablo 3 to be built around how the endgame for Diablo 2 felt may very well be disappointed, and legitimately so. However, them ever expecting the game to be like that was always incredibly unrealistic, and if they really thought Blizzard was going to cater exclusively to their needs then... I dunno. I don't know what to say to that.

It was never gonna happen.

I went in with reasonable expectations for another Diablo sequel, and wasn't enraged by not getting to log on. All in all I thought D3 was a worthy sequel, and I like sequels to games I like when they are not on an annual cycle, I prefer bi-decade or decade sequels.

I get the impression the interwebs has this habit of spontaneously rejecting something that is really good because it has even minor problems. "Oh waiter? There is a hair in my soup."

Maybe its just the spoiled self entitled culture we have. D3 complaints sound like Skyrim complaints: "I sunk 100 hours plus into the game and its SHIT." Like, what the hell? Internet people need to get off this idea of things being either: -universe engulfing awesome / or complete shit. Some things are just good, or great, or B- or even C+. That doesn't make them cancer...

They've got to do a whole lot more if they want me to even think about playing again. I will play other games to fulfill my looting needs.

@George_Hukas said:

Go play an unpatched Phil Fish game.

Kinda hoping this insult starts trending.

@Homelessbird: Why wouldn't you cater exclusively to them? They're the only players who would truly be in it for the long haul. Everybody else is just a short term investment.

Too little too late Blizz. I regret my purchase.

@Maurdakar said:

I went in with reasonable expectations for another Diablo sequel, and wasn't enraged by not getting to log on. All in all I thought D3 was a worthy sequel, and I like sequels to games I like when they are not on an annual cycle, I prefer bi-decade or decade sequels.

I get the impression the interwebs has this habit of spontaneously rejecting something that is really good because it has even minor problems. "Oh waiter? There is a hair in my soup."

Maybe its just the spoiled self entitled culture we have. D3 complaints sound like Skyrim complaints: "I sunk 100 hours plus into the game and its SHIT." Like, what the hell? Internet people need to get off this idea of things being either: -universe engulfing awesome / or complete shit. Some things are just good, or great, or B- or even C+. That doesn't make them cancer...

Having someone's hair in your soup is pretty gross, who knows where it came from...

Honestly though, Diablo 3 is a fine game, I played it for about 120 hours which is definitely more than enough time for a $60 purchase, I just think Blizzard made a lot of bad design choices and the end game just isn't fun.

Looks nice and all, but I'm still waiting for that microstuddering-fix... 11 years man, 11 years.

@Laksa: We'll have to see how good SEGA's US/EU support for the game is, but PSO2 is such a better Diablo style game than D3. It's even F2P! The lure of money destroyed Blizzard's "end game" in D3.

@cmblasko said:

They've got to do a whole lot more if they want me to even think about playing again. I will play other games to fulfill my looting needs.

@George_Hukas said:

Go play an unpatched Phil Fish game.

Kinda hoping this insult starts trending.

I'll get the ball rolling on the Twitter with #unpatchedphilfishgame

@jakob187 said:

@Xeirus said:

@jakob187: Ok, so you got 50 hours out of a $60, I would say you're set. Chill out.

Rephrase that a little bit for a second:

"Okay, so you got 50 hours out of a $60 BLIZZARD game, I would say you're set. Chill out."

See where the problem is there? Again, Blizzard is a company that releases games which you don't quit playing after 50 hours (and for me, it was after around 120 hours...yes, I dumped THAT MUCH TIME into the game before 1.03). THERE ARE PEOPLE THAT STILL PLAY THE LOST VIKINGS ON A FAIRLY CONSISTENT BASIS...AND THAT GAME HAS NO LEVEL OF RANDOMIZATION WHATSOEVER! THEY KNOW THE PUZZLES FORWARDS AND BACKWARDS! It's just a solid game overall. These are games that you play for years after the fact. Now, could that end up happening? Maybe, but I won't know. I'll be on something else because Blizzard could not keep my attention with the one game I was more hyped for than literally ANYTHING else I could name (besides Guild Wars 2, but I loved the shit out of the first game).

If you can personally justify "I got 50 hours out of Diablo III for $60, so I'm good", then that's your own personal justification. However, that does not IN ANY WAY mean that it's alright to me...and honestly, it shouldn't be alright to Blizzard, the company that has ALWAYS stated "when it's done", but then rushed a product out of the door to meet some quarterly earnings.

No, I'm not ok with rephrasing it. I feel like you feel way too entitled to years worth of gaming for free riding on the back of a $60 game.

Anyone should be able to justify 50 hours from a single purchase, like i said you seem to assume Blizzard owes you more than what you paid for, and they don't. Sorry.

My wow account got pirated a couple of times (even though it was inactive) so they freeze my Battle.net account, I basically lost access to all my blizzard games. The first timed it appended I jumped true all the hoops to unfreeze it, but the second time i just gave up on Blizzard basically.

I won’t be paying any more money to Blizzard for any game that requires me to log in to Battle.net, they have failed me.

I'm still really shocked at the amount of bashing diablo 3 is getting. I assume it's mostly people who played diablo 2 and loved that game. I never played any of the previous diablo games and I consider diablo 3 to be a fine and fantastic game. People need to realize that not every game is going to blow your mind and look at it for what it is, another game. The combat does well, finding loot is awesome, and the story and lore of the game are still interesting even for my third time through. Instead of sitting here for the last 2 months whining about how this game isn't diablo 2 is just annoying, because your right, it's NOT diablo 2, its diablo 3 and therefore does not have to have any attachment at all to the previous in any way.

that being said, I can't wait for the next patch as I hope it will fix the latency issues. :)

@GnomeonFire: Because they were hoping to get a much larger fan base than they had with Diablo 2.

And they did. It broke records for sales.

As much as I hate to break it to you - again, they never expected this game to be played by people for ten years straight again. What, other than use of the RMAH, is the benefit to them of that happening, if it's an incredibly small group of people (who just so happen to also be incredibly vocal)?

They do much better by catering to the majority of the market.

@CJduke said:

Honestly though, Diablo 3 is a fine game, I played it for about 120 hours which is definitely more than enough time for a $60 purchase, I just think Blizzard made a lot of bad design choices and the end game just isn't fun.

I agree with this. I played for close to 100 hours, have 3 characters at 60, and I don't feel I got "ripped off" at all for my $60. I just don't think it's a very fun game at level 60.

I'm actually going back and playing Torchlight at the moment with some of the class mods, etc. that came out after I was pretty much done with the game the first time. Getting ready for Torchlight 2, Grim Dawn, Path of Exile, etc. I think I'm probably done with D3 unless some magic happens.

Having played the game for over 400 hours, I don't really have any room to complain about the game in terms of it not being worth the purchase because it certainly was but I still feel that their design choice with elite mobs in Inferno difficulty is still very poor and has lead to some extremely frustrating moments, especially if you're playing as a ranged class against certain mobs indoors. As much as Blizzard has said about balancing the difficulty in Inferno, the one thing they haven't addressed is the unevenness of the difficulty when it comes to Elite mobs. Some mobs are a cakewalk while others are almost impossible to beat without dying over and over again due to certain combinations of affixes and attacks. If Blizzard's desire was for players to skip certain mobs because they weren't worth fighting then I guess they have succeeded.

Judging from just the first page of comments, Patrick, you have successfully rekindled the rage-fire beneath for this game. I'm not going to run out and wave my flag around saying that Blizzard is perfect, but I got my $60 of fun from my 3 60's in Diablo III and I'm okay with walking away for some time.

It seems that the people who are complaining the hardest are the ones that expect some sort of imaginary game-play that enables them to feel like they are playing a brand-new game every time they load up the computer. Those kind of expectations are only going to make you angry and nothing will ever be "enough" for you.

@Homelessbird said:

As much as I hate to break it to you - again, they never expected this game to be played by people for ten years straight again. What, other than use of the RMAH, is the benefit to them of that happening, if it's an incredibly small group of people (who just so happen to also be incredibly vocal)?

How do you know that they aren't planning D3 to be played for the long term? They already have 2-3 expansions in the pipeline, I wouldn't be surprised to see many more if they can keep people attached.

@iAmJohn: @iAmJohn said:

@Onkel_Dunkel said:

first?

Really hope you already had that quest, cuz you done fucked up.

I'm still not fond of their reasoning behind always-online, and this explanation and refusing to answer the pretty simple question of "so why not have an offline-only mode where I can do whatever I want but can't ever take the character online or use the auction houses?" does nothing to make that reasoning any better. :\

While I do not agree entirely with the explanation Blizzard and it's representatives have given, it must be noted that they have in fact answered the question of why they have not allowed for offline characters. A quote from this article reads

" I fully understand the desire to play Diablo III offline; however, Diablo III was designed from the beginning to be an online game that can be enjoyed with friends, and the always-online requirement is the best way for us to support that design."

They do not want to have the games player base divided into separate groups. I don't agree per se, but I can see reasons for the choice. One is balancing. I think i could, without much objection, make the argument that single player Diablo and multiplayer Diablo are rather different beasts in terms of what kind of balancing and other corrections are required and Blizzards on-line all the time system could possibly make their jobs easier since they can focus and perfect a more focused game.

It should be noted that I am only trying to think of possible, and perfectly reasonable, explanations for Blizzards actions and do not necessarily agree with all of my given justifications.

@substandard said:

@CJduke said:

Honestly though, Diablo 3 is a fine game, I played it for about 120 hours which is definitely more than enough time for a $60 purchase, I just think Blizzard made a lot of bad design choices and the end game just isn't fun.

I agree with this. I played for close to 100 hours, have 3 characters at 60, and I don't feel I got "ripped off" at all for my $60. I just don't think it's a very fun game at level 60.

I'm actually going back and playing Torchlight at the moment with some of the class mods, etc. that came out after I was pretty much done with the game the first time. Getting ready for Torchlight 2, Grim Dawn, Path of Exile, etc. I think I'm probably done with D3 unless some magic happens.

I actually got so upset/disappointed with Diablo 3's end game that I went back to Torchlight as well and I'm pretty sure I like Torchlight a lot better because its less about being "hardcore and difficult" and more about having fun and getting loot.

Hunting random items can be fun. But you need to have player agency in the process. With no standard items, a bad skill system, and a poor rate of any sidegrade drops, you can't feel like you're trying different strategies in Diablo 3. Just putting in time.

The game might have a future, but only if they stop deciding money is more important than fun.

A lot of people bought this game on Blizzard's rep and their love of D2. I personally think Blizzard have gotten shittier & shittier since WoW and are now out-right exploitative. They always charge a ton for their games, they demand control over everything, they have abysmal customer support and an "it's your fault" attitude if your account gets hacked or you get exploited and now they make inferior games. They also just harvest old IPs. I personally am done with them and it's nice to see that a lot of people feel the same way.

Warcraft 2 is arguably my favourite game of all time but it appears the people that made that classic are long, long gone.

Shame.

@El_Duderino said:

@iAmJohn: @iAmJohn said:

@Onkel_Dunkel said:

first?

Really hope you already had that quest, cuz you done fucked up.

I'm still not fond of their reasoning behind always-online, and this explanation and refusing to answer the pretty simple question of "so why not have an offline-only mode where I can do whatever I want but can't ever take the character online or use the auction houses?" does nothing to make that reasoning any better. :\

While I do not agree entirely with the explanation Blizzard and it's representatives have given, it must be noted that they have in fact answered the question of why they have not allowed for offline characters. A quote from this article reads

" I fully understand the desire to play Diablo III offline; however, Diablo III was designed from the beginning to be an online game that can be enjoyed with friends, and the always-online requirement is the best way for us to support that design."

They do not want to have the games player base divided into separate groups. I don't agree per se, but I can see reasons for the choice. One is balancing. I think i could, without much objection, make the argument that single player Diablo and multiplayer Diablo are rather different beasts in terms of what kind of balancing and other corrections are required and Blizzards on-line all the time system could possibly make their jobs easier since they can focus and perfect a more focused game.

It should be noted that I am only trying to think of possible, and perfectly reasonable, explanations for Blizzards actions and do not necessarily agree with all of my given justifications.

I enjoyed Diablo II just fine with my friends, both offline and on. Why do you think balancing single player is any different from multi player? The only difference between them in D2 were ladder-only items and rune words, which simply added to the ranked ladder concept and gave incentive to play online.

I feel that they designed the game to be online-only in order to enforce DRM and to funnel people towards the auction houses.

@cmblasko: Sure, I guess I was a little vague there.

What I meant to say wasn't that they don't care if people keep playing - I'm sure they do. What I was trying to say was that they didn't design their game saying "how can we get those people who played Diablo 2 forever to do that again?" There weren't ENOUGH of those people. They said "how can we leverage the fame and success of Diablo 2 into the largest success for Diablo 3?" And the answer they came up with (whether it's right or wrong) is the game you see before you.

It's clear that game was NOT designed with the D2 hardcore in mind - those people made their feelings known all throughout the development process, and they were appeased here and there, but mostly, ignored. Instead, they made a game they thought most people would like the way most people play videogames - play it for a while when it's new, maybe spend some AH money, then get bored and move on.

The expansions, by the way, are actually NOT evidence of their continued support, but rather, mathematically staggered plans to rejuvenate the game with waves of new customers at points when it's statistically likely to lose playerbase.

@jakob187: If that many games have been ruined by patches (all of which I disagree with you on), I politely suggest that it may have more to do with your perception of the game and dislike of change as opposed to any objectively bad changes.

I get that it's hard to have a game change in a way that is less gratifying for you, but I often find that rolling with those punches leads to unexpected fun and a deeper appreciation of other aspects of the game.

For £45 I got easily over 100+ hours of playing a game. Even though I don't play as much now, I still play hardcore every once in a while. I know the game is going to be constantly supported and updated for free. I even got £160 back from the RMAH.

But, yeah fuck you Blizzard. How dare you release a game and try to improve it for free. I want to pay for shity rushed DLC and shity costumes. I also want absolutely no feed back from the company, and be left in the dark for months. Most of all I want you to remake your past games in HD so you can do minimal effort and make easy money. Why can't you just be like every other company? The bastards.

@cmblasko said:

@El_Duderino said:

@iAmJohn: @iAmJohn said:

@Onkel_Dunkel said:

first?

Really hope you already had that quest, cuz you done fucked up.

I'm still not fond of their reasoning behind always-online, and this explanation and refusing to answer the pretty simple question of "so why not have an offline-only mode where I can do whatever I want but can't ever take the character online or use the auction houses?" does nothing to make that reasoning any better. :\

While I do not agree entirely with the explanation Blizzard and it's representatives have given, it must be noted that they have in fact answered the question of why they have not allowed for offline characters. A quote from this article reads

" I fully understand the desire to play Diablo III offline; however, Diablo III was designed from the beginning to be an online game that can be enjoyed with friends, and the always-online requirement is the best way for us to support that design."

They do not want to have the games player base divided into separate groups. I don't agree per se, but I can see reasons for the choice. One is balancing. I think i could, without much objection, make the argument that single player Diablo and multiplayer Diablo are rather different beasts in terms of what kind of balancing and other corrections are required and Blizzards on-line all the time system could possibly make their jobs easier since they can focus and perfect a more focused game.

It should be noted that I am only trying to think of possible, and perfectly reasonable, explanations for Blizzards actions and do not necessarily agree with all of my given justifications.

I enjoyed Diablo II just fine with my friends, both offline and on. Why do you think balancing single player is any different from multi player? The only difference between them in D2 were ladder-only items and rune words, which simply added to the ranked ladder concept and gave incentive to play online.

I feel that they designed the game to be online-only in order to enforce DRM and to funnel people towards the auction houses.

When you balance for multiplayer you can think about how skills of different characters should interact while single player balancing and patching doesn't need to worry about this. That's one example as to how balancing and patching can require different focuses depending on if the game is multiplayer or singleplayer. But this is not the only explanation and I agree that it could be online-only in order to enforce DRM and to funnel people towards the auction houses.

@Homelessbird: The strategy that you are proposing Blizzard applied to D3 just doesn't jive with how they have been handling their other franchises. Seems to me that they are building their games to last. I would consider constant patching and expansions over a period of several years to be long-term support, no matter how you want to spin it.

It's clear Blizzards intention with the game are all shortsighted. For god's sake, they released it without PvP and the first thing they focus on post release was getting the RMAH running before the player base they brought over with WoW annual passes dropped off.

@cmblasko: I'm simply not communicating very well today.

All I was trying to say to the previous gentleman I was speaking with was that it doesn't make any sense for Blizzard to design with only the hardcore Diablo 2 audience in mind when making Diablo 3, because building any game specifically to maintain an extremely specific and small playerbase over a decade is just a bad business strategy. It's something you do because it worked out that way (with Diablo 2), not because you GO for that. You go for Big Early Numbers and you try to maintain whatever you can after that. Which is, I think pretty clearly, what happened with D3.

I'm sure they're still going to support their game, and do their best to keep people playing it. But it's clear they're not expecting the exact same people who loved Diablo 2 to love Diablo 3 exactly the same way. And all I meant about expansions (which I guess I was wrong to say aren't support - they are, as well) was that they are not just about making games more/better - they're about hooking back players that have moved on, and possibly building new playerbase entirely. They're a business strategy as much as they are game content.

Blizzard wants MORE and BETTER, that's what drove/drives them to make the choices they did/do.

Now, whether you think those are the correct choices - that's a whole different argument, and one that I don't really have a position on one way or the other.

@GnomeonFire: I'll agree with you on that. Although you have to wonder how much Activision has a hand in all of that.

At least I can feel reassured by the fact that not all of the internet's most unreasonable gamers are Mass Effect players.

D3 is fucked and I already moved on. It made me hate Blizzard, so FUCK Blizzard.

I deleted all my 60's for my endgame.

I never bought the game. I wonder if we're in for a GTA 4/Doom 3 class flip flop on the game.

Didn't buy it because I prefer single-player, always have even with D2. Not going to put up with bullshit when my router acts up.

Funny they don't mention the trouble in Korea, including being forced to do mass-refunds and having their offices raided by the police, entirely because of their online requirement.

I'm still waiting for Tochlight 2 and Grim Dawn. If I get Diablo III it will be a couple of years from now.

@jakob187:

Are there issues? yes, but you know what? D3 is in a far better postion then D2 was at start. D2 was worse off then D3 when it first came out. D2 has had 11 years to fix what was wrong with it, and there is still tons of things that don't work *cough* Skill tree *cough* There is plenty for me to do as they fix the end game items, like getting all 5 characters to 60.

i recently started playing again once my friend bought it. were in act 2 hell right now. im having a blast.

@Draxyle said:

I don't know. D3 is such a fantastic game, but they can't patch what is ultimately my biggest problem with it; the atmosphere.

And I'm not necessarily talking about just the visual style, that's only one piece of it. The overwrought and highly flawed writing, the cartoonish animations, the voiceacting, the auction house, the online intrusions, etc; all of this make Diablo 3 feel like a "videogame", and not an "experience". There is no atmosphere anymore; I don't feel like I'm in an actual, dreadful place like Diablo 2 made me feel.

Everything piece of it just feels shallow and compromised in order to feed into the auction house, the one thing that ruins the whole point of Diablo. It's tragic.

exactly, it's a great game that I just don't feel like playing

RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE

Beyond the obvious Real Money Auction House debacle, I get the feeling that Blizzard will never be able to satisfy many former Diablo II players because they essentially want the same feeling you got from Diablo II playing it for the first time. 
 
When you eat Chocolate cake for the first time, you love it. You try different flavors of chocolate cake but it will never be the same feeling you got when you first tasted chocolate cake, that experience was new.