So, the GOTY chatter is becoming louder and louder. And one of things I'm picking up is that apparently people don't like Diablo Tres. How and when did that happened? The feeling I had from those first couple of months was that it was a great game and that it sold like a modafoka. Was I wrong from the beginning or something happened along the way?

It just all got patched too late in the day, the end game grind was just not fun and the drop rates were shocking. It has got better recently but its just too late to save it for a lot of the people that left it behind, including myself.

Remember when they said PVP would be patched in later because it wouldn't be finished for the the final game? What happened to that?

Apparently the endgame invalidates and deletes all the good times people had with it from their memory.

Like with Mass Effect 3, people forget the entire ride when the ending isn't to their liking. Which is understandable to a degree but ME3 and Diablo 3 both offered me amazing experiences when I played them.
 
Diablo 3 ain't the best thing out there but I got a lot of fun out of it regardless. Even if the end part was a bit disappointing I still got a lot of hours played and loved all of it.

@blueduck said:

Remember when they said PVP would be patched in later because it wouldn't be finished for the the final game? What happened to that?

They never got around to that? Dude, that's fucked up.

The moment to moment action in Diablo III is great. The skills are fun to use and the combat hooks are incredible. It's just that almost everything else about the game is boring and homogenized.

In the beginning people thought it was great and thought it would be so for a long long time. People were mistaken.

Because a shallow ARPG not having deep end game content or some crappy PvP invalidates the 100 hours they spent playing through the campaign. People remember playing Diablo 2 back in the day for years after its release and think that should still be happening in 2012. It is still one of the best RPGs of the year.

dude its got devil right in the name

@Christoffer said:

In the beginning people thought it was great and thought it would be so for a long long time. People were mistaken.

This is so damn true.

Wasn't great near the start, terrible drop system, absolutely disastrous Auction House that continues to be atrocious, and no realistic way to "catch up" as it were if they ever implement PvP (to the loonies that actually kept playing it after beating Inferno). I guess on the bright side some of the patches have made it better and it does scale down tremendously well to just about anything which I think does give it an edge over Torchlight 2; though I think they're roughly the same quality; Torchlight 2 just had to be a decent Diablo clone though, Diablo 3 needed to have something vaguely superior over its predecessor and it quite simply doesn't; maybe it will in 2-3 years. Meanwhile summon Necro in D2 is way more fun than anything in D3, and this is coming from someone who did damn near everything in D3 as early as you could possibly do it.

Technically, Diablo is only the Lord of Terror.

I hear a lot of complaints about the end game, but I never even got there. My problem with Diablo 3 is the systems. They suck. All of them. The skill system is shallow, the items are generic, the classes are little more than skins, et cetera et cetera.

What I enjoyed most about Diablo 2 was making up weird character builds and being a unique snowflake. Also, finding interesting loot, like the Ribcracker, and then building a character around that.

Diablo 3 boils down the series to a pure, boring numbers game and then even does the number crunching for you. You just end up clicking, a lot. And contrary to popular belief, clicking wasn't the fun part in Diablo 1 and 2. It was the thing you did to get to the fun part.

@TaliciaDragonsong: Agreed, although I had more problems with the ride of Mass Effect 3 than its destination.

Torchlight II's way better. That is all.

@Hitchenson said:

Torchlight II's way better. That is all.

It's way better at being a poorly balanced Diablo 2.5, if that's what you're into.

Endgame is for crazy people anyway. I finished it twice and had a blast.

@StarvingGamer said:

@Hitchenson said:

Torchlight II's way better. That is all.

It's way better at being a poorly balanced Diablo 2.5, if that's what you're into.

Well I'm not painfully bored of it like I was with D3 about a week after it came out. D3 falls flat as a ARPG, it's just MMO-lite and all the worse for it.

That's not to say I didn't have a blast with it on my first playthrough with friends, but I come to these kind of games for endgame grinding and D3 severely disappointed in that aspect. I even tried to get back into it with the addition of monster power and paragon levels and it didn't "grab me" in any way, different strokes and that I guess.

Diablo 3 was fun for a while, but never felt like GOTY material to me. I actually forgot about it until I saw this topic. It will probably show up on some top 10 lists but I think both the story and gameplay were too mediocre to beat out some of the stronger games this year. The kill-loot-level loop had a strong addictive quality that fizzled out too quickly, without which the game is kinda boring.

Eh, people just like to complain when something isn't exactly how they wanted it to be. I liked it when it came out, and I still play it. Been working on achieving that Paragon level 100. I do usually play with at least one of my brothers though, so that makes it more enjoyable.

Still, having as much fun with D3 as I had with D2. And I played a lot of D2.

Because people get pissed when you give them exactly what you asked for AKA a new Diablo game with no changes. (Except the talent system of course._

Any decent performing musician can tell you: the middle doesn't matter as long as you start and finish strong. I guess Diablo III messed up that last part nicely.

Diablo III was so damn easy that I just gave up when I came to the last act of normal.

I dunno, Diablo 3 is one of the games I played the most this year. I'm never sure why people obsess over GOTY let alone obsess over why others don't like the same thing I did.

If i had a complaint about Diablo 3, it would be I would like a bigger and deeper world generation system.

I'm still playing it - and loving it. Hate all you want but I think it's fun as hell.

I've played a couple hundred hours of D3, at times loving it and at times hating it. It's a really fun game to play relatively mindlessly while listening to a podcast or such. My opinion is that if they come through with some really fun expansions over the next 2 to 3 years, it's a game that should be remembered as a success. If they don't, then I think it should be remembered as a big letdown given the wait and hype behind it.

Yeah I'm with the OP, I got the same feeling when it launched and then all of a sudden people arbitrarily turned around and decided not to like it. Looking at what that game is, between the polish, the gameplay, the loot, all of it and people are still disappointed is proof that expectations are an important element to a game's reputation and success. I just bought it a few weeks ago and I am psyched to start playing it. Also I get the sneaking suspicion that a lot of the Blizzard specific features/expectations are the things people are butthurt about anyway, like the online stuff and hardcore endgame nonsense.

Also the devil rips so...Diablo III is cool in my book. I can see where the game is a modern iteration of Diablo more than a reinvention but whatever, like I said, the devil fucking rips and you click on stuff and get a fat sword or something. Good enough for me.

Probably the worst part of D3 is that it forces you to play the campaign 3 times to reach the endgame, which is simply playing the campaign more. If they had stuck to 3 difficulties like D2, I think people would have had way more patience with the endgame. Also, once you get all your skills, the combat never changes from spamming your favorite aoe and single target skills; they should have added incentives to switch skills often to keep things fresh.

The game does a lot of things great, like the many secret dungeons and events, and the achievement system is exactly what I like in achievement systems. Also the tons of dialogue from companions really made it feel like a current gen game. But I think the things it does best are the things experienced early on, while the longer term problems play out as the leveling curve grows slower and slower and the player has already seen the entire game world 2+ times.

Very bad design in the gameplay, incredibly lazy writing and making the auction house pretty much the main point of the game.

I didn't play the game but I had a blast reading the Amazon reviews where people complained that it was becoming boring after 150 hours

@Winternet said:

So, the GOTY chatter is becoming louder and louder. And one of things I'm picking up is that apparently people don't like Diablo Tres. How and when did that happened? The feeling I had from those first couple of months was that it was a great game and that it sold like a modafoka. Was I wrong from the beginning or something happened along the way?

Just because it sold well doesn't mean that it was a GOTY-worthy game. It wasn't bad but it regressed in many areas that made 2 good.

Diablo 3's a good game. Problem is, people expect a lot from Blizzard due to their financial resources and fan base. In my opinion, the game could have been bigger and a lot better. I wouldn't even consider it for GotY. Far Cry 3 is my personal pick for that distinction.

Having never played a Diablo game I was really excited for Diablo III. I got it and played it solo and with a group to beat it twice, and after a while I just found it extremely tiresome and boring. The actual playing of the game needs to be fun, instead it's just pointless repetitive clicking with watered down MMO style "strategy".

Maybe it's just not my kind of game, and maybe I'm just more immune to the whole cycle of those games. I guess since I have a very analytical and philosophical mind I go into Diablo needing more of a purpose than just doing something for the sake of doing it. I like there to be something to learn, something to master, or something narratively interesting in my game. To me, Diablo is just a pathetic shell of a game for the same simple minded people that get addicted to the Call of Duty style of leveling for the sake of leveling.

Torchlight II's way better. That is all.

What I found strange was that a lot of the people voicing their dislike for the game, prefixed it with "So after 125 hours with this game, I've decided...."

Maybe that's why it took so long for people to knock it; because they're insane.

@blueduck said:

Remember when they said PVP would be patched in later because it wouldn't be finished for the the final game? What happened to that?

Oh man, I had completely forgotten about that.

As for the game, it turned out the way everyone feared, created purely for sucking money out of people through the RMAH.

@Duskwind said:

Diablo 3's a good game. Problem is, people expect a lot from Blizzard due to their financial resources and fan base. In my opinion, the game could have been bigger and a lot better. I wouldn't even consider it for GotY. Far Cry 3 is my personal pick for that distinction.

That's a bold statement.

I liked diablos I and II a whole bunch - Diablo I was basically the first videogame I played - and I thought diablo III was pretty good. Obviously it's not going to be fun if you play for 150 hours straight, but I don't think any game is. The only real problem I have with it is the auction house - having all the best items at your fingertips the whole time really lessens the appeal of looking for stuff, and the "real money" side just leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I averted both of these problems by playing exclusively with freinds, and never touching either the real-money or gold auction houses, but it irritates me that they're there nonetheless - especially since it means the drop rates stay ludicrously low to "keep the game economy balanced".

The story's also terrible, but I don't remember the other 2 games having oscar-worthy material, either.

What I found strange was that a lot of the people voicing their dislike for the game, prefixed it with "So after 125 hours with this game, I've decided...."

Maybe that's why it took so long for people to knock it; because they're insane.

@ajamafalous: I don't think it's fair to admit that you've played a game for upwards of 3,000 hours, and then claim to come from a place of rationality.

Too high of expectations. I mean what other game do people complain that there is no end game after you had a blast playing it for 2.5 times before you hit the wall? I'm pretty damn sure the walking dead game doesn't have an endgame either, but people are talking about goty for it. WTF?

That being said, D3 probably isn't goty just because of the hype of it coming in. It was a great game since it did get more than my fair share of hours that made it worth while./ ANyone that said the game sucked but then you realise you spent over a hundred hours playing it, really should have a reality check.

@mandude said:

@ajamafalous: I don't think it's fair to admit that you've played a game for upwards of 3,000 hours, and then claim to come from a place of rationality.

Over 12 years? The average person has a lot of free time on their hands, especially when/if they are a student. Besides, I think the more time you spend with something, the more valid of a critique you can provide of it.

I don't like Diablo 3 and consider it a huge disappointment on a number of levels. I have a lot of complaints about the game that I won't get into, but my biggest issue stems from the Auction House. I believe that the game was designed to drive the player to use the auction house. Inferno is excessively difficult and item drops are intentionally poor for that reason. I just don't like it, feels completely disingenuous.

I dumped about 150 hours into it and enjoyed it but something never quite hooked me like Diablo 2. I think a expansion or 2 will do wonders for the longevity of that game.

Hell if I know. It's a really fun game, and I enjoyed my time with it. I got to Hell, the difficulty was fucked, and I quit, but I still had a blast playing Normal and Nightmare. And between those two (on one character, mind you, this is not counting my other two characters) I got something like 30-40 hours of fun out of the game. I consider that a pretty damn good return on my $60.

Oh, and I checked back after the most recent patch and they finally seemed to make the difficulty in Hell at the level of "this is challenging but fair" rather than "this is completely fucked". So I'll still probably go back to it, it's just that (as many people are) I'm caught up in other games these days.

I thought the game was pretty fun, but I never bothered with the hardest difficultly, mainly due to the auction house becoming an absolute requirement for getting better gear. I didn't feel like grinding to get the ridiculous amounts of gold people were asking for on there and it just brought the game to a screeching halt for me.

I hear the game has been significantly improved since then, but there's been so much else coming out, I've not felt the need to go back to it. Torchlight 2 and Guild Wars 2 (to some degree) offer similar experiences and do their things far better.

It was in the summer of 2011 when they announced the Always-On DRM and the Real Money Auction House.

@mandude said:

What I found strange was that a lot of the people voicing their dislike for the game, prefixed it with "So after 125 hours with this game, I've decided...."

Maybe that's why it took so long for people to knock it; because they're insane.

108 hours here, and I'm also in the camp of "D3 doesn't deserve GOTY at all". Mainly (for me) it's because of the patch philosophy they had early on which broke my experience with it. No idea if it's changed now, but I don't care if it has.

In my opinion, game hours don't directly translate to enjoyment or GOTY status. I've spent 11 hours with Hotline Miami, and it's a much better video game and I've enjoyed my time with it a whole lot more.

That's not to say I didn't enjoy my time with D3. But it's still probably my least favorite title of this year, and I finished Duke Nukem Forever this year.

Diablo 3 became the root of all evil when thousands of people played DIablo 2 for far longer than necessary thinking to themselves "Man, how are they gonna top this!?"