Auction House Online: The Game (Diablo 3) is a MASSIVE decline

[joeydohn]

A game should never be about its duration. That's a horrible misconception that still sticks around since the early days of the gaming industry, an leading to many games consisting mostly of filler tasks, which makes playing the game feel more like a job than being entertained. I finished Limbo in a little more than 2 hours. Still, it is one of the best and most memorable games I've played, because the developers did not cram its game with 100+ hours content, just for the sake of putting that as a bullet point on the game package (a quite common practice for CRPGs in the late 90s early 2000, I remember). There was only the content that needed to be there, and the content there was, was executed well.

And now, the excess funding of wasteland 2, leads to all kinds of new areas and characters and portraits and stupid shit. It's a wasted opportunity, because those funds could go into making the pre-existing areas more unique and interesting, pre-existing character more 3 dimensional. And if that ended up in a 20 hour game, fine, would much rather do that then to waste 100+ hours on another RPG with 80% grind. I fear that wasteland 2 will end up being just that though.

Long CRPGs tend to have a lot of trash mobs and damage sponges, funnily enough so does the D3 beta.

 

[Stabwound]

I think they fucked up a bit in splitting the content between difficulties... especially such an important thing as Monster AI!

Oh well, mods will fix- Waaaaait a minute!

I think that it's a GOOD idea to do that.

New difficulties get new equipment, abilities, weapon attributes, monster AI and abilities, etc. If everything was thrown into Normal difficulty it would be boring and they'd have to resort to strictly fake difficulty (buffing monster HP and damage only) which would be lame.

 

[aris]

The real question is whether or not the content is FUN, not about how long it is.

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

What's the fucking point of playing through the same story again? Unless you're a complete lootfag that "content" won't be worth a wooden penny.

 

[Average Manatee]

So easy game that teaches people to spam skills and click blindly again and again = preparing players for high difficulties. Easy to learn, difficult to master my ass. Just about the only thing in Diablo III's systems that would allow for any sort of "mastery" comes in item and skill selection, and I'm not sure what's so masterful about grinding for gear. What, do cooldowns, mana costs and so on increase as you go into the game? Does life regeneration gear become harder to find?

If there's a difficulty curve, with gear and skills becoming relatively less powerful against monsters, then doesn't that just fit the definition of HP bloat? Diablo is not a very complicated game and the most complicated parts of it always came from the character system, not loot drops - with that out the window, there's no involved Devil May Cry-style action to pick up the slack. I honestly do not see much potential for depth in a game with suck a simple and limited set of inputs, and I'd love to be wrong... but there's only so much you can do with a single character and the interplay between HP, blocking(?) and elemental resistances.

Axe to grind much? They've already said (and fans data mined info to back it up) that the monsters gain more abilities, will actively have more agressive AI, the bosses will gain new modifiers, and in inferno you won't be able to out level the content like you could in diablo II. The monsters are always higher level than you and the resists will take that into account.

D2 had all those things other than the "outlevel the content", which is just an irrelevant point because player level has no direct correlation to monster level in D2 (you could survive Hell with lvl 50 chars easily even though you were technically massively outleveled). Pretty sure D1 had all of those too but I would have to dig out the unofficial player guide PDF to verify. D1 mods certainly have all of those changes with higher difficulties.

In other news, Blizzard likes to talk about making good games but stopped actually utilizing those ideas as soon as SC:BW was finished.

 

[General Maxson]

A game should never be about its duration. That's a horrible misconception that still sticks around since the early days of the gaming industry, an leading to many games consisting mostly of filler tasks, which makes playing the game feel more like a job than being entertained. I finished Limbo in a little more than 2 hours. Still, it is one of the best and most memorable games I've played, because the developers did not cram its game with 100+ hours content, just for the sake of putting that as a bullet point on the game package (a quite common practice for CRPGs in the late 90s early 2000, I remember). There was only the content that needed to be there, and the content there was, was executed well.

And now, the excess funding of wasteland 2, leads to all kinds of new areas and characters and portraits and stupid shit. It's a wasted opportunity, because those funds could go into making the pre-existing areas more unique and interesting, pre-existing character more 3 dimensional. And if that ended up in a 20 hour game, fine, would much rather do that then to waste 100+ hours on another RPG with 80% grind. I fear that wasteland 2 will end up being just that though.

What you call a horrible misconception gave us the best cRPGs in recent history. I agree about boring and stupid filler shit, but I also disagree on making such short games as you think would somehow benefit cRPGs. Fallout 2 was pretty long if you didn't exploit it, and I had fun every fucking minute of it. On the contrary, Diablo 3 is short AND banal, shit, boring, so your argument is invalid. And most of the very short games are pretty shallow. Don't know if you're trolling though... And I'm glad W2 won't be a casual 20 hour game.

 

[Captain Shrek]

In any case, game length is important simply because it gives you more value per dollar spent.

 

[joeydohn]

In any case, game length is important simply because it gives you more value per dollar spent.

World of Warcraft:-

• /played
• 700 days in 4 years
• £0.022/hour

 

[Stabwound]

What's the fucking point of playing through the same story again? Unless you're a complete lootfag that "content" won't be worth a wooden penny.

Serious question: did you play Diablo 1 or 2? Both of them did the same thing; it's just a way to extend the length of play you get out of the game.

Most people feel as though they haven't completed the game until they get through it on the highest difficulty level. If you want to play through it once on Normal then you can do that and see all of the story content.

In any case, game length is important simply because it gives you more value per dollar spent.

That alone isn't true. If a game takes 5 hours to get through the story to the final boss but then requires 95 hours of grinding to kill it, it doesn't mean you had 100 hours of enjoyment out of it.

 

[General Maxson]

In any case, game length is important simply because it gives you more value per dollar spent.

World of Warcraft:-

• /played
• 700 days in 4 years
• £0.022/hour

Yes, you and gaudaost really bring out the best examples of rpgs in your debates... I agree, boring filler just to artificially lengthen the game is stupid. But everything else you said is invalid. You have to be retarded to be satisfied with a 10 hour game you pay 60$ which had almost limitless funding and was 10+ years in the making, and will probably contain numerous 60$ expansions, just like with starcraft 2.

 

[aris]

What you call a horrible misconception gave us the best cRPGs in recent history. I agree about boring and stupid filler shit, but I also disagree on making such short games as you think would somehow benefit cRPGs. Fallout 2 was pretty long if you didn't exploit it, and I had fun every fucking minute of it. On the contrary, Diablo 3 is short AND banal, shit, boring, so your argument is invalid. And most of the very short games are pretty shallow. Don't know if you're trolling though... And I'm glad W2 won't be a casual 20 hour game.

But zero of those games were good cRPGs because they were lengthy. I did not say that games needs to be short, I'm saying that "it is a 20 hour game" is not valid criticism in itself, and that developers should never strive to make the game's length above some certain threshold.

World of Warcraft:-

• /played
• 700 days in 4 years
• £0.022/hour

You have to be retarded to be satisfied with a 10 hour game you pay 60$ which had almost limitless funding and was 10+ years in the making.

Not if I'm satisfied with that 10 hour package. Let's break this down a little, 20 hours for 60$ is 3 dollars per hour. Buy a film and you easily pay 15-20$. An average film lasts 2 hours, so you are essentially paying 7.5-10$ per hour, I still don't see many people that complain about movies being too expensive.

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

What's the fucking point of playing through the same story again? Unless you're a complete lootfag that "content" won't be worth a wooden penny.

Serious question: did you play Diablo 1 or 2? Both of them did the same thing; it's just a way to extend the length of play you get out of the game.

I've played both, yes. And I thought it was bogus in those games as well.

 

[Stabwound]

There's no way Diablo 3 will have only 10-20 hours of play in it anyway. If you plan on playing through it once with one character on normal difficulty then you shouldn't buy it at all, because that's not really what the intention is. You're supposed to play a few characters, do hardcore mode, play the normal game, etc. When you can play with other people online it's pretty fun. I'm going to guess that it will probably take at least a good 100 hours to complete from Normal through Inferno mode.

If you've never played D1 or D2 the premise probably sounds shitty but it really isn't. The storyline itself is secondary, the game really is just about strengthening your character to overcome stronger challenges.

 

[Average Manatee]

In any case, game length is important simply because it gives you more value per dollar spent.

World of Warcraft:-

• /played
• 700 days in 4 years
• £0.022/hour

MMOs: The treadmill that makes you fatter.

There's no way Diablo 3 will have only 10-20 hours of play in it anyway. If you plan on playing through it once with one character on normal difficulty then you shouldn't buy it at all, because that's not really what the intention is. You're supposed to play a few characters, do hardcore mode, play the normal game, etc. When you can play with other people online it's pretty fun. I'm going to guess that it will probably take at least a good 100 hours to complete from Normal through Inferno mode.

If you've never played D1 or D2 the premise probably sounds shitty but it really isn't. The storyline itself is secondary, the game really is just about strengthening your character to overcome stronger challenges.

What? Unless Blizzard plans to massively force item grinding (and they probably are, but it doesn't count as actual game length), beating all difficulties won't take more than 30-40 hours if it is anything like D2.

 

[Brayko]

The storyline itself is secondary, the game really is just about strengthening your character to overcome stronger challenges.

By being a lootfag.

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

will probably contain numerous 60$ expansions, just like with starcraft 2.

http://www.amazon.com/StarCraft-II-...KP4G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336770507&sr=8-1

Can we stop using that argument already? It's only been debunked for like three years now.

 

[Stabwound]

What? Unless Blizzard plans to massively force item grinding (and they probably are, but it doesn't count as actual game length), beating all difficulties won't take more than 30-40 hours if it is anything like D2.

If Normal takes 20 hours I doubt you're going to get through the 3 harder difficulty levels in 5 hours each. 100 hours is probably an overshoot but I doubt it will be 40 either.

It's pretty easy to speed through D2 these days but it took me a lot longer than 40 hours to go through the game completely (kill Diablo in Hell) the first time.

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

What's the fucking point of playing through the same story again? Unless you're a complete lootfag that "content" won't be worth a wooden penny.

You don't seem to be understanding the concept of Diablo -- near infinite replayability. If you don't like replaying games that's fine; this isn't your cup of tea and not all games should be all things to all people. But to knock Diablo for being exactly what it set out to be -- a game that is fun to play multiple times -- seems a bit odd.

 

[Metro]

Hmmm, well my dad just gave me a $50 Amazon gift code he isn't going to use so I could grab Derpablo 3 for $10.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Hmmm, well my dad just gave me a $50 Amazon gift code he isn't going to use so I could grab Derpablo 3 for $10.

But you're way too for Derper 3, so you'll grab Mass Effect 3 instead, right?

 

[Metro]

Hack-n-slash ARPGs (even ones made by Blizzard) are still more than on-rails console shooters.

 

[General Maxson]

Hmmm, well my dad just gave me a $50 Amazon gift code he isn't going to use so I could grab Derpablo 3 for $10.

But you're way too for Derper 3, so you'll grab Mass Effect 3 instead, right?

Yeah everyone who dislikes something about Diablo 3 is automatically a retard pretending to be :monocle: that enjoys "DEEP RPG" shitgames like Ass Effect 3...

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

What's the fucking point of playing through the same story again? Unless you're a complete lootfag that "content" won't be worth a wooden penny.

You don't seem to be understanding the concept of Diablo -- near infinite replayability. If you don't like replaying games that's fine; this isn't your cup of tea and not all games should be all things to all people. But to knock Diablo for being exactly what it set out to be -- a game that is fun to play multiple times -- seems a bit odd.

True enough. Though in honesty, I played through Diablo 2 about.... 30-40 times throughout two years, so I got my money's worth. Probably will with Diablo 3 too. I just wish that I didn't have to play through boring filler to get to the good bits in the combat.

 

[Black]

The storyline itself is secondary, the game really is just about strengthening your character to overcome stronger challenges.

By being a lootfag.

Yes, and a mechanicsfag.
How terrible, no?

 

[Brayko]

Well if Diablo did concentrate more on character builds and less on loot I could find it more favorable.