So how was Diablo III not even mentioned during the GOTY podcast?

Because it's not fun

Went back and played D3 today for a bit; geared up my Mage to absurd levels with like 3 million on the AH (1 million gold is 25 cents so essentially 3 quarters); have 60k HP, 6000 armor and 700 all resistance with 3200 hp regeneration, so basically I'm invincible; cleared an act and killed 15 unique packs; no interesting or worthwhile item drops of any kind. If I went and played torchlight for the same length of time I'd basically be guaranteed about 5 unique items. That said I do think D3's compatibility with a computer from the stone age is quite impressive, so that's something.

300 public games softcore, 100 public games hardcore; about 1% and 4-5% of what they were at near launch respectively; no friends on D3 out of 40 or so. Hardcore AH is kind of dead so I'm assuming the number playing HC in general is still extremely miniscule.

I remember Diablo 3 and Torchlight 2 being mentioned at some point during the podcasts, but they were sort of discarded offhandedly. So, they didn't get forgotten about so much as no one really cared to fight for them.

There were better games this year, for sure.

They mentioned the game once during one of the podcasts. 
I think Patrick was the one who brought it up at one point when they were talking about Borderlands 2 and Torchlight 2.  
 
Again, not sure which of the podcasts it were but it was mentioned in one of them

Whooooooo caaaaaares.

Sorry. =\

I'm actually still playing D3 regularly. Should I...should I stop because its not on their list. I'm so confused. Plz help

it was briefly mentioned in the multiplayer bits i remember, they quickly cut it cus well it wasn't great.

@Hailinel said:

@gamefreak9: It's not innovation, though. If anything it's iteration or evolution. Diablo III isn't somehow changing the way that games are played by opening the character customization mechanic to reassign skills at will.

Its at LEAST incremental innovation. Its changing the way players interact with the game, I can't really understand why that's not innovative. If anything its BETTER than other innovation, because even if you structure things a certain way, people might still play the game like they are used to, but if you can make the players change their behavior then your innovation is automatically meaningful since its all about the player.

Just as a side note, you know what's considered to be the most innovative(had the biggest effect) measure for organ donation was changing the default option for people to tick because there is a cognitive tendency to not change the default, increased donations by like 30%.

Innovation isn't just about changing big things. I would call incremental innovation something that changes the result slightly, but Diablo 3 slightly tweaked the skill system but the result changed drastically on how players behave, so I would call it radical because what matters to me is not what the technical side, but the result.

I think its worse that they barley mentioned Torchlight 2. That game has just as much content as D3 and a better end game system with mapworks, for only $20. It feels like DIablo 2 and is really really fun. I understand it not making the top 10 I just think it deserves recognition before D3 does, even though D3 is higher on my personal list because I played it with all my friends.

That and Borderlands 2 seemed like games that were quick burns for all but one or two members of the staff, so never went anywhere when they were mentioned on the GOTY podcasts.

D3 was underwhelming. It wouldn't be in my top 10 list, and I dont think I even played 10 games this year.

@gamefreak9 said:

@Hailinel said:

@gamefreak9: It's not innovation, though. If anything it's iteration or evolution. Diablo III isn't somehow changing the way that games are played by opening the character customization mechanic to reassign skills at will.

Its at LEAST incremental innovation. Its changing the way players interact with the game, I can't really understand why that's not innovative. If anything its BETTER than other innovation, because even if you structure things a certain way, people might still play the game like they are used to, but if you can make the players change their behavior then your innovation is automatically meaningful since its all about the player.

Just as a side note, you know what's considered to be the most innovative(had the biggest effect) measure for organ donation was changing the default option for people to tick because there is a cognitive tendency to not change the default, increased donations by like 30%.

Innovation isn't just about changing big things. I would call incremental innovation something that changes the result slightly, but Diablo 3 slightly tweaked the skill system but the result changed drastically on how players behave, so I would call it radical because what matters to me is not what the technical side, but the result.

Organ donation and video games aren't comparable. Also, it's still not innovation. You should learn what that word means before throwing it around like candy.

@Cold_Wolven said:

It is a bummer that there is no discussion at all for the game in the final podcast, a lot of arguing for ZombiU (which imo should never have made the list) but not a single peep for Diablo 3 which I find to be a great game.

I'm guessing they had to put it on so they won't have to hear Patrick's whining...Teehee.

@MariachiMacabre said:

@GreggD

@Kidavenger: One character counter-argument, fantastic.

Even as a fan of Diablo, saying that Mass Effect 3 has worse characters than the paper-thin cliches-that-talk in Diablo 3 is just crazy. Yeah, Chobot shouldn't be in there but she doesn't negate Mordin, Legion, Wrex, or any of the other characters that made Mass Effect one of the best franchises of the generation.

Exactly, took the words right out of my mouth.

I think you need to be a "special" type of person to enjoy playing that kind of game inferno... and with the action house system everything up until nightmare is a lol-fest due to the cheep items, than comes nightmare and it's like: "you need better armor to kill goat man so go far skeletons for 10000000 gold and buy it from the AH or use a mag exploit build til they fix it".

It's a game that i played and i liked but when i finished hell is realize that it was a fun grind... but nothing else, not even a boss to kill or an arena to duel in, the grind was the only thing that game had, and inferno was just "The Grind" on hardmode.

See where I am getting at ? Some people might enjoy it but most won't, some will simply say "meh" to that experience and couple that with the fact that it had day 1 errors that continued for weeks, I don't blame the crew for not even mentioning it. They didn't mentioned Torchlight ether as far as i am concerned nor did the mention CS:GO, Blacklight retribution or Planetside... those are legitimate GOTY candidates for anyone who played them, the best fps that cam out in the last 10 years both as concept and as mechanics.

But you can't expect them to play every game and like every genre... ain't nobody got time for that.

Every game in the top ten made you feel something other than loot lust.

Those kinds of games are fine and great with friends, but not something you want to really want to declare as a hallmark of the medium.

@Aterons said:

I think you need to be a "special" type of person to enjoy playing that kind of game on nightmare... and with the action house system everything up until nightmare is a lol-fest due to the cheep items, than comes nightmare and it's like: "you need better armor to kill goat man so go far skeletons for 10000000 gold and buy it from the AH or use a mag exploit build til they fix it".

It's a game that i played and i liked but when i finished inferno is realize that it was a fun grind... but nothing else, not even a boss to kill or an arena to duel in, the grind was the only thing that game had, and nightmare was just "The Grind" on hardmode.

See where I am getting at ? Some people might enjoy it but most won't, some will simply say "meh" to that experience and couple that with the fact that it had day 1 errors that continued for weeks, I don't blame the crew for not even mentioning it. They didn't mentioned Torchlight ether as far as i am concerned nor did the mention CS:GO, Blacklight retribution or Planetside... those are legitimate GOTY candidates for anyone who played them, the best fps that cam out in the last 10 years both as concept and as mechanics.

But you can't expect them to play every game and like every genre... ain't nobody got time for that.

I am not going to say you never actually played D3, but your post certainly makes it seem like you never did.

I think if it had been release in October/November, it would have had some more air time on the GOTY podcasts. I just don't think the story was anywhere near good enough to pierce the top 10.

@kishinfoulux said:

I don't want this to turn into "derp Diablo III sucks", but...

Too late, that's what this thread immediately became. There was really no avoiding it.

At least for me, I feel like it didn't really necessitate mention. In my experience, my interest plummeted hard out of nowhere. Around Inferno mode, really. Probably because I spent more time eyeballing the Auction House for slightly better gear to help me push forward a few more quests. I feel like there were at least ten games that were better than Diablo III.

@Huey2k2 said:

@Aterons said:

I think you need to be a "special" type of person to enjoy playing that kind of game on nightmare... and with the action house system everything up until nightmare is a lol-fest due to the cheep items, than comes nightmare and it's like: "you need better armor to kill goat man so go far skeletons for 10000000 gold and buy it from the AH or use a mag exploit build til they fix it".

It's a game that i played and i liked but when i finished inferno is realize that it was a fun grind... but nothing else, not even a boss to kill or an arena to duel in, the grind was the only thing that game had, and nightmare was just "The Grind" on hardmode.

See where I am getting at ? Some people might enjoy it but most won't, some will simply say "meh" to that experience and couple that with the fact that it had day 1 errors that continued for weeks, I don't blame the crew for not even mentioning it. They didn't mentioned Torchlight ether as far as i am concerned nor did the mention CS:GO, Blacklight retribution or Planetside... those are legitimate GOTY candidates for anyone who played them, the best fps that cam out in the last 10 years both as concept and as mechanics.

But you can't expect them to play every game and like every genre... ain't nobody got time for that.

I am not going to say you never actually played D3, but your post certainly makes it seem like you never did.

I did actually mess the name of the difficulties :/... it's not my damn fault the easy/medium/hard/very hard system ain't good for them anymore and every fucking rpg has to have the dramatic names for them.

I meant inferno instead of nightmare and hell instead of inferno

( that is if the order was normal<nightmare<hell<inferno... )

Other than that I do believe i got everything right, i was able to play the game with minimal deaths and no framing if i bought ah items every 15 or so level, and the money permits you to do so, inferno actually required you to grind to even finish the first act ( mind you I am not the best monk player to ever exist but I had read theory-crafting to decide what items/build I began my first act with) and in the first 2 months i saw no trace of pvp being "enabled", only co-op ( didn't log after that nor did i follow the updates ) + the game had no "end goal" other than... kill random elite mob packs (and pray you don't get vortex and arcane enchanter or fire chains combined... or maybe get all 3 combined with speed, because randomly spawned elite mobs as the "bosses" of the game is a fucking good idea, right ?) to get items.

I think Diablo III had the Skyrim effect were months later everyone sort of burned out on the game and began to question what the saw in it in the first place, but unlike Skyrim, Diablo released in May leaving plenty of time for it to sink its fangs in(not saying either games are bad btw)

@Hailinel: I've done dozens of courses on innovation. I did a research project on patents, spin outs and spin offs. I'm pretty sure that I am much more qualified than you to talk about innovation. Also the organ donation was an example of what is perceived as innovative, if you can't click with that then I should not waste my time.

I think a lot of early and day/week one reviews were huge part nostalgia. It was 10 years since anything new Diablo and when it finally came people were anticipating it more than anything else. It looks like it isn't standing the test of time like Diablo 2 did. I can list 5 friends off the top of my head who bought it day one and haven't played it in months. They were all really disappointed by it in the end and I know they aren't alone in that.

@gamefreak9 said:

@Hailinel: I've done dozens of courses on innovation. I did a research project on patents, spin outs and spin offs. I'm pretty sure that I am much more qualified than you to talk about innovation. Also the organ donation was an example of what is perceived as innovative, if you can't click with that then I should not waste my time.

There's a difference between an innovation in the medical field, and being able to change your skills at will in a dungeon crawler.

Wasn't it mentioned for the Classic Revival category? I might be wrong though.

That game is, from everything I've taken from it, rad for about a week. And that's fine for a game that can stick with you because of being an insanely good self-contained story (say, Walking Dead), or doing something new (say, Journey), or just amazing gameplay (say Sleeping Dogs, or Mark of the Ninja). But Diablo III was built with the exact opposite effect in mind. It's meant to eat up your god-damned free time, and basically destroy your social life, like the old games. For a lot of people, it did anything but that. I keep coming back to FarCry 3, or FTL, or Sleeping Dogs. I don't come back to Diablo III. And neither do many people who played it when it first came out. Yeah, that initial fury is awesome, but people got sick of it fast, and a lot of really highly-rated games didn't make the cut. Get used to it.

I know a lot of people were disappointed by it but they all seemed to love it. They did mention it for best multiplayer but that is about it. I'm actually quite surprised.

@gamefreak9 said:

I'm pretty sure that I am much more qualified than you to talk about innovation.

This is silly.

I still haven't finished Diablo 3, still in act III. But maybe this just wasn't a year for loot grinds for me, since I didn't finish Borderlands 2 either.

@coakroach said:

Every game in the top ten made you feel something other than loot lust.

Those kinds of games are fine and great with friends, but not something you want to really want to declare as a hallmark of the medium.

That would make sense if GB was the Academy of video games, but they are not. They had SR3 as there runner up last year purely on it being a fun game.

Also what did the following games make you feel: Sleeping Dogs, Farcry 3, ZombieU, Mark of The Ninja, Syndicate, Fez?

It was certainly my most disappointing game of the year and they should have considered it for that category, but it was SO disappointing that the actually forgot about it. It´s ok.

To be honest people ruined Diablo 3 for the most.

I still like Diablo 3 and will probably play it again at some point. It's a fun game to play while listening to pod casts or I'm to tired to play a game properly and hardcore has always been fun for me.

But man. The bitching. I've never stopped playing a game before, because of the constant hate for something. I can't go to diii.net, Blizzard forums or even this forum and not see crazy hatred for a game. People summarizing the game up to try and make them selves seem smart or some shit, saying it's a pointless game to play because in the end you achieve nothing. Well no fucking shit, much like 99% of the games out there. The only game I can think of that has ever had any benefit to anyone is fold it. It's a crazy time we live in where people actually spend their time to purposely go out of their way to hate something that doesn't need to effect them in the slightest.

Hopefully all this shit will eventually die down and I can go back to enjoying Diablo 3 in the same way I enjoyed Diablo 2. Play on and off for a month, have a break and go back. Actually be able to look at Daiblo specific forums and instead of seeing how stupid I am for playing a game I enjoy, people talking about the game and fun things to do in it.

@haffy: Amen. I mean, at least to Blizzard's credit they are still actively working on getting the game to a point where they are satisfied with it. As I understand it, there have been a few fairly significant patches that have changed a good deal about the game. Post-release support can only ever be a good thing.

@nomorehalfmeasures said:

I have not listened to the podcasts yet but the game was unbalanced class wise and gameplay wise. It didn't launch with pvp. The story and dialogue were laughable and poor. With all that being said I still spent 5 months of my life playing that game non stop ( fuck me) . It seems like a lot of people will really like a game when it first comes out and but than backtrack when they see their peers talk about faults with the game that they apparently didn't see at first ( or failed to recognize at the time). It's not uncommon with people not in the the industry or sorry children. You would really expect grown adults to stick by the things they like while admitting they have faults instead of things being the best thing ever bar none or the worst thing ever.

Despite all you said it still got a five out of five and got a lot of praise on previous podcasts. It's just weird it didn't even get a word in.

Also I feel like people hold Blizzards past stories to a higher regard then they should. Diablo and starcraft have always had silly stories without much going for them, and yet I hear people list that as a negative for both starcraft 2 and diablo 3. These bad stories are nothing new to these games.

I didn't see anyone mention it so I thought I would. Blizzard has posted an update on PVP. Long story short, they had been spending time making a team deathmatch mode, but they decided it didn't work in their game so they shelved it. They are working on putting dueling into the game while they think of a more suitable "big" PVP mode.

@Hailinel said:

@gamefreak9 said:

@Hailinel: I've done dozens of courses on innovation. I did a research project on patents, spin outs and spin offs. I'm pretty sure that I am much more qualified than you to talk about innovation. Also the organ donation was an example of what is perceived as innovative, if you can't click with that then I should not waste my time.

There's a difference between an innovation in the medical field, and being able to change your skills at will in a dungeon crawler.

Its as comparable as it gets. The field is irrelevant, its all about the process introduced and the result that occurs. The goal in one was to get more people to sign up, the goal in the other was to encourage experimentation. The process in one is to change the framing effect, the process in the other is to nullify the switching cost. The point is that you manage to create a behavioral change by giving nudges of what you want to be achieved. If anything Diablo is more spectacular since the other was introducing slightly more effort(ticking a box) to retain the same outcome whilst Diablo was just freeing up the system which gives no guarantee of what will happen(no extra effort to keep things as they were).

@zombie2011 said:

@coakroach said:

Every game in the top ten made you feel something other than loot lust.

Those kinds of games are fine and great with friends, but not something you want to really want to declare as a hallmark of the medium.

That would make sense if GB was the Academy of video games, but they are not. They had SR3 as there runner up last year purely on it being a fun game.

Also what did the following games make you feel: Sleeping Dogs, Farcry 3, ZombieU, Mark of The Ninja, Syndicate, Fez?

Saints Row III also had a great story and sense of style to go with the dumb fun gameplay.

And while I didn't play any of the games you listed, judging by the podcasts/quick looks i'd say Sleeping Dogs did much of the same with more refined mechanics and a different tone and setting, Farcry 3 didn't deliver on it's weird story promise but still made open world FPS's make sense, ZombieU used the WiiU gamepad to create a really strong feeling of tension and helplessness in a horror setting, Mark of the Ninja finally did stealth gameplay right, Syndicate... um... Jeff really liked it?, and Fez felt like you were stepping into the mind of a crazy person.

I'm basing this more on what i've heard rather than what i've played, but when faced with company like that Diablo III seems kinda unremarkable.

It seemed like Jeff and Brad were really the only ones to sink a significant amount of time into the gaming, and it didnt seem like either one of them thought their experience was memorable. You measure that against some of the games that made the list and it becomes a little more understandable as to why it didnt even get mentioned.

@adam1808 said:

...the vibe of the list this year was "New experiences, new ideas". Someone would have taken it to task for that.

Too much of this in 2012 in my opinion.

I'm a little surprised at how much gameplay quality and game breaking bugs were shrugged off in the name of eye-candy, narrative and je ne sais quoi.

Why weren't they mentioned?

Yes, they were excited when it first came out, but they quickly started realizing that it was nowhere near the fun-fest that the two previous games were. Once patch 1.03 came out, they all but forgot that the game exists.

In my own personal opinion (which in no way reflects anything the staff or you as people reading this comment may believe), Diablo 3 doesn't deserve to be discussed in the same breath as the other games they talked about on the Game of the Year list.

If anything, I think I'm more saddened that they didn't bring up Torchlight 2 or Path of Exile, which I personally think are vastly superior games. Then again, I don't think they really dug into Torchlight 2 or Path of Exile at all, so it makes sense.

A couple four star games made it onto the top 10 game of the year list... Diablo 3 was rated five stars.

I don't know what happened there. Personally I have never been a Diablo fan so I don't care but it does seem odd.

@coakroach said:

@zombie2011 said:

@coakroach said:

Every game in the top ten made you feel something other than loot lust.

Those kinds of games are fine and great with friends, but not something you want to really want to declare as a hallmark of the medium.

That would make sense if GB was the Academy of video games, but they are not. They had SR3 as there runner up last year purely on it being a fun game.

Also what did the following games make you feel: Sleeping Dogs, Farcry 3, ZombieU, Mark of The Ninja, Syndicate, Fez?

Saints Row III also had a great story and sense of style to go with the dumb fun gameplay.

And while I didn't play any of the games you listed, judging by the podcasts/quick looks i'd say Sleeping Dogs did much of the same with more refined mechanics and a different tone and setting, Farcry 3 didn't deliver on it's weird story promise but still made open world FPS's make sense, ZombieU used the WiiU gamepad to create a really strong feeling of tension and helplessness in a horror setting, Mark of the Ninja finally did stealth gameplay right, Syndicate... um... Jeff really liked it?, and Fez felt like you were stepping into the mind of a crazy person.

I'm basing this more on what i've heard rather than what i've played, but when faced with company like that Diablo III seems kinda unremarkable.

You said the list made you feel something, then when I asked you what the games made people feel you listed a bunch of game mechanics. Sleeping dogs only improved on hand to hand combat nothing else. The original Farcry and Crysis made open world FPS games make sense. The tension felt in ZombieU is caused by the permadeath situation, which is pulled of so much better in Diablo 3's hardcore mode.

ZombieU, Sleeping Dogs and Syndicate are on the list because one of the crew really liked them, but that's what the personal top ten is for. Sleeping dogs is great and could be on there but ZombiU and Syndicate? Patrick's biggest argument for ZombiU was that it was a launch game for a Nintendo console made by Ubisoft and it didn't suck.

This thread isn't even saying that they should have put it on the list, but the fact they didn't even mention it in the huge list of games that included Spaceteam and frogfractions is just weird.

@zombie2011 said:

You said the list made you feel something, then when I asked you what the games made people feel you listed a bunch of game mechanics. Sleeping dogs only improved on hand to hand combat nothing else. The original Farcry and Crysis made open world FPS games make sense. The tension felt in ZombieU is caused by the permadeath situation, which is pulled of so much better in Diablo 3's hardcore mode.

ZombieU, Sleeping Dogs and Syndicate are on the list because one of the crew really liked them, but that's what the personal top ten is for. Sleeping dogs is great and could be on there but ZombiU and Syndicate? Patrick's biggest argument for ZombiU was that it was a launch game for a Nintendo console made by Ubisoft and it didn't suck.

This thread isn't even saying that they should have put it on the list, but the fact they didn't even mention it in the huge list of games that included Spaceteam and frogfractions is just weird.

Well it sometimes comes down to release dates and what is fresh on their minds at that time. If they cannot remember a game or an experience, that is just telling of how memorable the game was. Then, there are those games they didn't get to play and those who did play them either pushed really hard for them (Patrick for ZombiU [also Jeff agreed with Patrick with ZombiU] and Jeff with Syndicate [which everyone didn't argue enough against]) or they didn't really push at all.

@SSully: Well tbh its hard to pull off a good story without choice nowadays. All the twists are the same, its always someone betraying you. Mark of the Ninja was even worse than Diablo 3 to me, nowadays nobody seems to be able to deliver a good linear story so they only imply, aka journey. I mean I dno if there were any good linear stories introduced this year, maybe dust was more acceptable.