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Showing posts with label Diablo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Diablo. Show all posts
Saturday, 23 March 2013
Tuesday, 2 October 2012
Are you still playing Diablo 3?
A lot of people have been asking this question. Diablo 3 was meant to be Blizzard's big smash of a game for this year, the third instalment of an incredibly successful series. It was meant to be a game that would be constantly replayable, and have people happily prowling its dungeons for years. And yet, it's becoming more and more obvious that, somewhere along the ten year development road, Blizzard messed up. The number of people still playing Diablo 3 is nowhere near the number of sales it had, and I think I can pick out at least a few reasons why.
Number one: no offline mode. I mentioned this in my previous Diablo post, about how you must be online to play the game at all, no other option. I was not the only one irritated by this. A lot of other people complained, and it proved to be a huge downfall for both Blizzard and the players (particularly as being required to be online to play was not advertised before hand, as far as I'm aware). I think I know why they've done it this way - to facilitate the Auction House - but it sure sucks. My opinion? You should have been able to play offline whenever you like, but the moment you try to connect to the Auction House to buy / sell things, THEN require the internet to upload your character info to their servers. Would that have been so difficult? Really?
Number two: difficulty. The difference in difficulty between normal mode and nightmare is apparently incredibly vast. A lot of cynics out there think the reason for this is to encourage people to spend money in the Auction House for better gear. I, unfortunately, also believe this. There is absolutely no reason to make a portion of the game so difficult that any equipment you find in that section is too weak for you to survive through it, unless you intend to make money off of people by making them buy better gear with real money. If this was not the intention, why not make the difficulty of the levels in line with the gear you get from those same levels? I've not yet gotten past normal mode, but already I'm dreading it.
Number three: the patches. The focus of this game used to be on finding the coolest items you can. That was always the joy I had, in finding something unique, or the last piece of that armour set, or a weapon that makes all the enemies turn into blood splatters the minute you walk into the dungeon. However, there have been patches to this game that have, effectively, pushed the game away from that idea. Patch 1.0.3 is the worst offender. A great deal of the numbers that handled when, what kind, and how much loot is dropped have been reduced, making it far more difficult to acquire items of worth unless you spend hours and hours of time in the hope of picking up ONE good weapon or armour piece. In addition, things in the game environment which used to drop items (such as barrels and other destructible objects) no longer drop them at all, and in fact will rarely even drop gold. The direct result of this? I no longer bother to destroy the hundreds of barrels / urns / various other destructible things in the environment. I walk right past them, because I know there's nothing of value in them. They have effectively become unnecessary clutter. And why has that been done, one might ask? Give you one guess.
I can't help but notice a theme here. Every problem I have with this game so far has been directly connected to Blizzard's insistence on including that bloody Auction House. It feels like they are sacrificing good game content in the hopes of scraping money out of the bottom of their players' barrels. Oh wait, except barrels don't have anything in them any more, do they?
So here's my plan. I'm going to continue to play my current character until I finish the normal difficulty. (We won't even get into the long rant about how I had to scratch my level 36 monk and start over because they also killed attack speed by 50% in a single patch, and my monk could no longer hit things fast enough to kill them before being killed herself.) Once I've beaten the game on normal, it's going to get put away. I refuse to spend my money in the Auction House. I refuse to so much as look at it, because I see it as a waste of time, money, and resources. Perhaps I'm being stubborn here. Or perhaps Blizzard will realise how badly they messed up when their players get tired of everything they loved about this series being stripped away.
Number one: no offline mode. I mentioned this in my previous Diablo post, about how you must be online to play the game at all, no other option. I was not the only one irritated by this. A lot of other people complained, and it proved to be a huge downfall for both Blizzard and the players (particularly as being required to be online to play was not advertised before hand, as far as I'm aware). I think I know why they've done it this way - to facilitate the Auction House - but it sure sucks. My opinion? You should have been able to play offline whenever you like, but the moment you try to connect to the Auction House to buy / sell things, THEN require the internet to upload your character info to their servers. Would that have been so difficult? Really?
Number two: difficulty. The difference in difficulty between normal mode and nightmare is apparently incredibly vast. A lot of cynics out there think the reason for this is to encourage people to spend money in the Auction House for better gear. I, unfortunately, also believe this. There is absolutely no reason to make a portion of the game so difficult that any equipment you find in that section is too weak for you to survive through it, unless you intend to make money off of people by making them buy better gear with real money. If this was not the intention, why not make the difficulty of the levels in line with the gear you get from those same levels? I've not yet gotten past normal mode, but already I'm dreading it.
Number three: the patches. The focus of this game used to be on finding the coolest items you can. That was always the joy I had, in finding something unique, or the last piece of that armour set, or a weapon that makes all the enemies turn into blood splatters the minute you walk into the dungeon. However, there have been patches to this game that have, effectively, pushed the game away from that idea. Patch 1.0.3 is the worst offender. A great deal of the numbers that handled when, what kind, and how much loot is dropped have been reduced, making it far more difficult to acquire items of worth unless you spend hours and hours of time in the hope of picking up ONE good weapon or armour piece. In addition, things in the game environment which used to drop items (such as barrels and other destructible objects) no longer drop them at all, and in fact will rarely even drop gold. The direct result of this? I no longer bother to destroy the hundreds of barrels / urns / various other destructible things in the environment. I walk right past them, because I know there's nothing of value in them. They have effectively become unnecessary clutter. And why has that been done, one might ask? Give you one guess.
I can't help but notice a theme here. Every problem I have with this game so far has been directly connected to Blizzard's insistence on including that bloody Auction House. It feels like they are sacrificing good game content in the hopes of scraping money out of the bottom of their players' barrels. Oh wait, except barrels don't have anything in them any more, do they?
So here's my plan. I'm going to continue to play my current character until I finish the normal difficulty. (We won't even get into the long rant about how I had to scratch my level 36 monk and start over because they also killed attack speed by 50% in a single patch, and my monk could no longer hit things fast enough to kill them before being killed herself.) Once I've beaten the game on normal, it's going to get put away. I refuse to spend my money in the Auction House. I refuse to so much as look at it, because I see it as a waste of time, money, and resources. Perhaps I'm being stubborn here. Or perhaps Blizzard will realise how badly they messed up when their players get tired of everything they loved about this series being stripped away.
Friday, 18 May 2012
Diablo III: initial thoughts
(Apologies, this is a long post.)
I played Diablo back when it was originally released. I was just a kid then, but it was one of those games I remember spending hours on. I loved the challenge of killing every evil thing that moved, finding the rarest items, and trying to retrieve everything your character dropped when you died fighting something far bigger than you. (This, inevitably, led to more deaths, because it's really hard to collect your weapon from the floor when the monster who killed you when you were armed now faces you when you have absolutely nothing but bare hands.) It was fun, but once I finished it, I didn't really have the desire to go back to it.
Then Diablo II came out. From the minute I got my hands on it, I was hooked. I loved how it went to different locations, rather than just going deeper and deeper into a boring cathedral where the only things that changed were the things attacking you. I loved the improvements it made over the first game, such as the personal stash, which proved to be a godsend at times. I loved how one of the early quests in the game required you go to back to what was left of Tristram to rescue Deckard Cain, the only character that has survived to see the third instalment of the series. Unlike the first game, this was one I came back to again and again. I still have it installed with all my characters and all my gear, ready for me to play whenever I've had a really bad day.
So, when Blizzard finally admitted to having a third Diablo game in the pipeline, needless to say I was thrilled. I was one of many people who had Diablo III ready to install the moment I woke up on release day. Thanks to having the digital version, and already having all the files on my computer, installation took less than fifteen minutes. I was expecting to have the computer running all day while I was at work, so was very pleasantly surprised to come out half an hour before I had to leave for work to find it ready to play! So. Awesome.
The first ten minutes of the game are pretty good. The opening cutscene with Deckard and Leah was absolutely beautiful, and I was stunned by how good it looked. Character creation is nice and simple, with the added bonus of finally being able to choose your character gender. (It's a little thing, but it makes a big difference.) The game does a good job of giving tutorial-style tips when you first start playing, which helps review stuff that is the same (movement, attacks, etc.) and introduce things that are different (such as skills, which I'm still not sure I understand). It throws you right into the deep end by bringing some zombies out to greet you on your way to town. So far, so good. But at this point, I was running late, and had to leave the game all by itself all day long.
Nine hours later, I'm finally home from work. Everything that needs to be done is done, and I can return to the game. Oh wait... No, I can't. Because, even though you are playing a single-player game, you must connect to the Blizzard servers to play. Yep, even if you're playing by yourself, you have to be online. There is no offline mode for this game. The massive problem with this? Server overload. Release day was a nightmare, because everyone in Europe who had their copy installed was trying to log on at the same time. It took me three hours that evening just to get connected to the server. Three hours!
Now, I know a lot of people would say "It's release day, it's going to be busy, just wait it out." But that's the whole point. Release day. Which means a good percentage of the people logging in were pre-orders. Surely Blizzard could have looked at how many pre-orders they had, added a generous estimate of how many people would buy the game on release day, and make sure their servers could handle that many people? There were apologies from Blizzard, but there were also servers in emergency maintenance for several hours of release day. Not very cool, and meant I spent three hours staring at a log in screen for a game I couldn't connect to long enough to play.
Eventually, though, I did manage to get in. And once I did, I spent a solid two hours doing nothing but explore the game. Some of the changes they made from previous games are a bit annoying; I don't like that I have no control over what stats are improved when I level up. Some are wonderful, such as no longer dropping all of your gear when you die - instead your gear just takes a bit of damage. I also am very curious about how some of the new features are going to work in higher levels (such as skills), or at all (blacksmithing - don't have the faintest idea how this works yet).
Initial thoughts? Damn happy I have this game. Some bits will take some getting used to, and I'm going to have to just hope my internet doesn't go kaput while I'm playing.
I played Diablo back when it was originally released. I was just a kid then, but it was one of those games I remember spending hours on. I loved the challenge of killing every evil thing that moved, finding the rarest items, and trying to retrieve everything your character dropped when you died fighting something far bigger than you. (This, inevitably, led to more deaths, because it's really hard to collect your weapon from the floor when the monster who killed you when you were armed now faces you when you have absolutely nothing but bare hands.) It was fun, but once I finished it, I didn't really have the desire to go back to it.
Then Diablo II came out. From the minute I got my hands on it, I was hooked. I loved how it went to different locations, rather than just going deeper and deeper into a boring cathedral where the only things that changed were the things attacking you. I loved the improvements it made over the first game, such as the personal stash, which proved to be a godsend at times. I loved how one of the early quests in the game required you go to back to what was left of Tristram to rescue Deckard Cain, the only character that has survived to see the third instalment of the series. Unlike the first game, this was one I came back to again and again. I still have it installed with all my characters and all my gear, ready for me to play whenever I've had a really bad day.
So, when Blizzard finally admitted to having a third Diablo game in the pipeline, needless to say I was thrilled. I was one of many people who had Diablo III ready to install the moment I woke up on release day. Thanks to having the digital version, and already having all the files on my computer, installation took less than fifteen minutes. I was expecting to have the computer running all day while I was at work, so was very pleasantly surprised to come out half an hour before I had to leave for work to find it ready to play! So. Awesome.
The first ten minutes of the game are pretty good. The opening cutscene with Deckard and Leah was absolutely beautiful, and I was stunned by how good it looked. Character creation is nice and simple, with the added bonus of finally being able to choose your character gender. (It's a little thing, but it makes a big difference.) The game does a good job of giving tutorial-style tips when you first start playing, which helps review stuff that is the same (movement, attacks, etc.) and introduce things that are different (such as skills, which I'm still not sure I understand). It throws you right into the deep end by bringing some zombies out to greet you on your way to town. So far, so good. But at this point, I was running late, and had to leave the game all by itself all day long.
Nine hours later, I'm finally home from work. Everything that needs to be done is done, and I can return to the game. Oh wait... No, I can't. Because, even though you are playing a single-player game, you must connect to the Blizzard servers to play. Yep, even if you're playing by yourself, you have to be online. There is no offline mode for this game. The massive problem with this? Server overload. Release day was a nightmare, because everyone in Europe who had their copy installed was trying to log on at the same time. It took me three hours that evening just to get connected to the server. Three hours!
Now, I know a lot of people would say "It's release day, it's going to be busy, just wait it out." But that's the whole point. Release day. Which means a good percentage of the people logging in were pre-orders. Surely Blizzard could have looked at how many pre-orders they had, added a generous estimate of how many people would buy the game on release day, and make sure their servers could handle that many people? There were apologies from Blizzard, but there were also servers in emergency maintenance for several hours of release day. Not very cool, and meant I spent three hours staring at a log in screen for a game I couldn't connect to long enough to play.
Eventually, though, I did manage to get in. And once I did, I spent a solid two hours doing nothing but explore the game. Some of the changes they made from previous games are a bit annoying; I don't like that I have no control over what stats are improved when I level up. Some are wonderful, such as no longer dropping all of your gear when you die - instead your gear just takes a bit of damage. I also am very curious about how some of the new features are going to work in higher levels (such as skills), or at all (blacksmithing - don't have the faintest idea how this works yet).
Initial thoughts? Damn happy I have this game. Some bits will take some getting used to, and I'm going to have to just hope my internet doesn't go kaput while I'm playing.
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