Diablo 3 - Why So Many People Hated It

Couchpotato

Couchpotato

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Cynthia Zhang of Game Career Guide posted a two page article where she tries to explain why gamers hated Diablo III when it first launched two years ago.

Luckily, not all of Diablo III's initial mistakes was in vain; developers and designers seemed to have learned from their mistakes and made changes in the future releases. From my understanding, the designers have chosen achievers and explorers to be their target consumers, and made the game more like a console game that allows multi-player mode rather than an MMO. Paragon 2.0 opens endless opportunities to improve their characters, and the newest ladder mode allows achievers to better compare their characters with others' for how soon they reach maximum level and how nice their gears or skills are. The team also introduced Act V and bounty modes into the game, which would allow more exploration of new maps and re-playability.
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Also Blizzard is asking for help to figure out why players are having major lag.

We've been asked to collect some information for our network engineers.

We'd like to have your trace route info when you trace to 12.168.209.68. We'd also like to see the results when you run our Looking Glass utility to see the return path of the trace from Blizzard to you. Be sure to select Diablo III in the utility. And lastly, please identify your ISP and geographical location in your reply post with the above info.
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More information.
 
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I would really like to know why those who did buy it, hated it. Never bought it myself nor would.
 
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joxer said:
I would really like to know why those who did buy it, hated it. Never bought it myself nor would.
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Read the article as the writer explains why.;)

I only quoted the conclusion as I did not want to spoil it for everyone. If you still need a reason why just read every news-bit, and forum thread from two years ago.

Link - http://www.rpgwatch.com/games/diablo-3-329/news.html

Plenty of negative comments from various members.
 
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I did buy it and played it at start and again after last big patch for D3 when the expansion was also out (didn't buy expansion). I regret ever buying it.
Why:
1. Graphics are cartoonish
2. Story is for 5 year olds which probably fits with its cartoonish style. D1 and D2 didn't have Oscar winning story but it was still noticeable better than this. At least it wasn't for 5 year olds.
3. No character builds, only thing really different between two characters is their gear. But..
4. Gear is boring. I never felt really excited for anything that dropped.

There are other problems, but those are the main ones.

I cannot even sell it now as it is on same account as my WC3 and SC2 which I still like.

On the other hand, Grim Dawn has no such problems :)
 
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The original release had quite a few major issues, but I'm not really big on the whole hatred thing. But I was severely disappointed, that's for sure.

Ironically, one of my favorite features was removed due to player feedback (RMAH) - and this is the one reason I don't really play it - as I don't find there's anything interesting to "overcome" in the game after completing it a few times. RMAH would have given me a reasonable incentive to hunt for loot and optimise my damage output, so that hunt would be more efficient.

Then they took it away just as they made the rest of the game interesting with proper loot and what not.

Oh well.
 
Couchpotato said:
Read the article as the writer explains why.;)
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The writer says because it went consoley.
Um... But that's not a reason to hate the game. Just a reason not to buy it. ;)
 
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joxer said:
The writer says because it went consoley.
Um… But that's not a reason to hate the game. Just a reason not to buy it. ;)
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I'm shocked as you actually read an article instead of just posting comments.:lol:

Well that's it for me today as it's 3:00 AM in the morning were I live at.:sleep:
 
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Removal of meaningful character building was what killed it for me. In vanilla there were very few builds capable of handling Inferno, especially as a barb, before tweaking was done. I know there whole argument was "people just look up the best builds", but the initial design/balance really just reinforced that rather than moving players away from it. I always had a blast playing with irregular builds (Arcane mage when FFB was popular in WoW for example, and went to Ice when everyone moved to Arcane). The poor balance of Inferno, melee classes (admittedly also an issue in PoE), and drops made experimenting with stuff far less fun/viable for progression.

Drops were truly horrible in the beginning. I got 2 legendary drops early on, both were so worthless I struggled to sell them on the AH to buy gear that was useful. This system was also clearly designed/balanced around grinding gear to play the AH to get upgrades rather than a rewarding slot machine for killing creatures like previous entries. For someone like me who has no interest in the AH and likes to be totally self reliant the system was a hugely frustrating slap in the face.

I did replay it as they patched it before expansion and the drops are a million times better than it was during vanilla, but the character building is pathetic when compared to PoE which is a massively important piece of the puzzle for me. Hands down my biggest complaint with Blizzards new designs as the development has also infected WoW.
 
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greywolf00 said:
Removal of meaningful character building was what killed it for me. In vanilla there were very few builds capable of handling Inferno, especially as a barb, before tweaking was done. I know there whole argument was "people just look up the best builds", but the initial design/balance really just reinforced that rather than moving players away from it. I always had a blast playing with irregular builds (Arcane mage when FFB was popular in WoW for example, and went to Ice when everyone moved to Arcane). The poor balance of Inferno, melee classes (admittedly also an issue in PoE), and drops made experimenting with stuff far less fun/viable for progression.
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Exactly.
For me, Diablo was always about character building and improvement and the planning of that. And the fact that you would always have to live with the consequences. If you focused on fire spells, fire proof enemies would give you a really hard time.
Diablo 3 took all of that, threw it in a bin and replaced it with "every character is great", "change your character completely at any given point" and "no need to think about what you're doing, just try it out".
To me, that completely removed all challenge there was to the previous game. If your character can be anything at any given point, then what is the point of even having a character with skills?
And if you - in D3 - meet an enemy that is resistant/immune to fire, you just switch to your equally good ice skill. Oh, wow. The challenge. *yawn*

Also, no necromancer. Wtf?
 
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greywolf00 said:
Removal of meaningful character building was what killed it for me. In vanilla there were very few builds capable of handling Inferno, especially as a barb, before tweaking was done. I know there whole argument was "people just look up the best builds", but the initial design/balance really just reinforced that rather than moving players away from it. I always had a blast playing with irregular builds (Arcane mage when FFB was popular in WoW for example, and went to Ice when everyone moved to Arcane). The poor balance of Inferno, melee classes (admittedly also an issue in PoE), and drops made experimenting with stuff far less fun/viable for progression.

Drops were truly horrible in the beginning. I got 2 legendary drops early on, both were so worthless I struggled to sell them on the AH to buy gear that was useful. This system was also clearly designed/balanced around grinding gear to play the AH to get upgrades rather than a rewarding slot machine for killing creatures like previous entries. For someone like me who has no interest in the AH and likes to be totally self reliant the system was a hugely frustrating slap in the face.

I did replay it as they patched it before expansion and the drops are a million times better than it was during vanilla, but the character building is pathetic when compared to PoE which is a massively important piece of the puzzle for me. Hands down my biggest complaint with Blizzards new designs as the development has also infected WoW.
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Well melee in PoE is bad because of lag and desyncs. You don't have full control of what is happening. While ranged characters have multiple fire and forget builds where you don't even need to aim but just send projectiles in right direction.

This is why melee in Grim Dawn is so fun, actually better than ranged builds (mostly due to some engine problems and ranged projectiles able to be shot down by other ranged projectiles).
 
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PoE does, indeed, have better character building - but I have to say the moment-to-moment gameplay of Diablo 3 utterly destroys PoE - as does the level of visual fidelity and quality of the animations related to the massive amount of distinct active skills.

PoE has a neat passive skill tree, but it's very bloated and needlessly obtuse. I don't think that's a good way of introducing complexity or interesting builds. It becomes more a puzzle of trial and error than smart planning.

Diablo 3 has the reverse problem, where everything is so clear-cut and you can't really make a bad choice, which is even worse.

But with the enhanced loot, you can now have "good builds" through gear planning and that's decent enough.

Unfortunately, there's really no action RPG out there that fully satisfies all my needs in this way.

DDO is one game that comes close, because the character building is extremely satisfying and combat is "decent" considering the ancient nature of the game. Well, ok, combat is dreadful - but it's actiony enough to be entertaining, considering it's an MMO. Beyond that, it has a massive amount of dungeon crawling and a fantastic loot system. Obviously, it's not a straight-up action RPG - but it tickles many of the same areas.

But Diablo 3 is the clear king when it comes to feel and visceral combat in this genre.

In my opinion, that is.
 
I'm surprised you don't care for Sacred 2, Dart. It has everything that one could want in an action-RPG loot-fest game. Very strong character development (with unlimited unique builds), good loot system with lots of rares, interesting quest-lines and fun enough combat.

Maybe it's time you gave it another chance. You may end up liking it a bit. :)
 
Fluent said:
I'm surprised you don't care for Sacred 2, Dart. It has everything that one could want in an action-RPG loot-fest game. Very strong character development (with unlimited unique builds), good loot system with lots of rares, interesting quest-lines and fun enough combat.

Maybe it's time you gave it another chance. You may end up liking it a bit. :)
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I believe we already went through why I don't like it :)

I don't think it would serve much purpose to go through it again, and all I can say is that I'm glad you enjoyed it!

It wasn't all bad, though, it just didn't do it for me.
 
What killed it for me was the always online requirement, even for a single player game - I have no interest in coop or mulitiplayer PVP. They said that they needed it that way for the Auction House, which to me was just another cash grab. Then they release the PS4 version without requiring you to be online, so I guess they think PC players are a bunch of cheaters since they still require it for PC.

Always online for a single player game is not something I am supporting with my money. I may consider getting it if they ever release a PC version that does not require you to be online.
 
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Playing it casually with my gf on local co-op, it was a nice enough game, though nothing great. Basically we were just out of (A)RPG's to play cooperatively.

The flexibility of builds isn't entirely negative. It's fun if you can change your playstyle several times over the course of one game; after all your class still broadly dictates your role. My monk was still the tank between us two no matter how I changed my skills. What it does is decrease long term replayability though.

Oh, and there was an always online requirement on PC? Hail consoles! ;)
 
The question is largely irrelevant.
The question to be answered is why people bought it.
 
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Loved Diablo One and Two, would never ever buy the third simply because of the online stuff needed. I dictate when I want to play online, not some mindless company. I will never purchase a single player game that has being online as a requirement.
 
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ChienAboyeur said:
The question is largely irrelevant.
The question to be answered is why people bought it.
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Because D2 was one of the greatest games of all time with almost infinite replayability?

D3 has made improvements, but it is now 100% levelled to your character which completely ruins the feeling of becoming stronger. And the skill system, no matter what Blizzard says is not more "fun.

Most interesting thing about D3 is that it was actually awesome at the first Blizzcon, and then got progressively worse and worse. If they had released the early version they had then it may have been a true successor to D2, but then Kotick got involved, Wilson was clueless and the game was destroyed.
 
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Xian & Carnifex said what I'd say as well.

Ironically, I'm mostly playing an MMO nowadays - but to me that's an entirely different thing than an singleplayer game !
 
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