How Blizzard Saved Diablo III From Disaster

[Julio Franco]

This is an excerpt from Jason Schreier's upcoming book, "Blood, Sweat, and Pixels," which comes out on September 5 and tells the stories behind 10 different games including Diablo III, Uncharted 4, and Star Wars 1313.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/article/1461-how-blizzard-saved-diablo-3/

 

[Black Slasher]

My unpopular opinion: Except the disconnection problems, at launch, Diablo 3 was a WAY better game. Today, I feel like is just another cookie clicker.

I don't feel attracted by this "carrot in the stick/quick pleasure quick reward" design used nowadays that is so seductive for the general public.

See, I'm a Final Fantasy 14 player and because of the new expansion, Stormblood, the game is having a influx of World of Warcraft players. Final Fantasy 14 is a game that starts slow paced, since people play using controllers too, and is lore heavy in its Main Quest. It is fun/tedious/enraging to see almost every day "But in WoW I could do that, should be like WoW".

Well, maybe I'm just getting old.

 

[Stark]

Truly captivating description of events, great read thanks for the article guys.

 

[AntiShill]

D3 has been a complete disaster since the shut down the auction house. Playing the auction house and turning pixles into dollars was one the most exciting and rewarding aspects of D3. Now I just use the blizzard balance I gained from Diable to SC2 and Overwatch and future expansions. I sitll got $100 leftover good for at least a game or two, but I haven't even logged into D3 since AH closed.

 

[AntiShill]

My unpopular opinion: Except the disconnection problems, at launch, Diablo 3 was a WAY better game. Today, I feel like is just another cookie clicker.

I don't feel attracted by this "carrot in the stick/quick pleasure quick reward" design used nowadays that is so seductive for the general public.

See, I'm a Final Fantasy 14 player and because of the new expansion, Stormblood, the game is having a influx of World of Warcraft players. Final Fantasy 14 is a game that starts slow paced, since people play using controllers too, and is lore heavy in its Main Quest. It is fun/tedious/enraging to see almost every day "But in WoW I could do that, should be like WoW".

Well, maybe I'm just getting old.

Nah your not getting old. I also play FFXIV and I can totally understand. Even if FFXIV ARR borrowed some of the good ideas from WoW for QOL improvements and such, we don't want FFXIV to do thing exactly WoW. Had D3 did the auction house like the market board in FFXIV, be it for game gold or real money, there would have been masses of uniformed hate against the AH. The D3 AH pitted the entire playerbase against each other, where people are foolishly bidding up the prices and whales got to scoop up all the goods. The FFXIV MB actually pits sellers against each other to bid down the price which works much better in favor of the playerbase, in addtion you can actually see price history of items sold on the MB, whereas on the AH unless you were monitoring things well you were clueless as to what a fair price of item really is.

 

[Brenton]

My unpopular opinion: Except the disconnection problems, at launch, Diablo 3 was a WAY better game. Today, I feel like is just another cookie clicker.

I don't feel attracted by this "carrot in the stick/quick pleasure quick reward" design used nowadays that is so seductive for the general public.

See, I'm a Final Fantasy 14 player and because of the new expansion, Stormblood, the game is having a influx of World of Warcraft players. Final Fantasy 14 is a game that starts slow paced, since people play using controllers too, and is lore heavy in its Main Quest. It is fun/tedious/enraging to see almost every day "But in WoW I could do that, should be like WoW".

Well, maybe I'm just getting old.

I agree been saying this for years. I love smashing a game and it being punishing or even grinding, I have no idea why people love gear being handed to them.
The Division is another perfect example, the dark zone had some bad *** gear in it and bosses I didn't drop the good stuff all the time, but when you saw a legendary drop it felt amazing, your whole squad would work with you to get to that safe point and other squads trying to kill you for that legendary had to really work hard and I'm sure when they got the kill and then got that legendary item it also felt amazing.
Then they patched it and made it that every dark zone boss would drop a legendary... so now every player had a bag full of legendarys and you had to siff through reading numbers to see which had the best roll. Ruined the game, and I feel like they did the same with D3

 

[Brenton]

For me persoanlly it wasn't the AH, or the drop rates or the difficulty I actually liked how all that was set up, I think as far as the AH went it just needed some patches to be a bit better.

I really didn't like how the abilities were set up, it felt like you didnt have your own unique character which is huge in this style of game. PvP was also a bit of a kick in the guts, I remember me and my mate being so excited about the pvp arena battles they were showing off so made it look amazing. There was a few other things and then the patches they did later on making gear easier to get and removing the AH just totally ruined the game for me

 

[Evernessince]

My unpopular opinion: Except the disconnection problems, at launch, Diablo 3 was a WAY better game. Today, I feel like is just another cookie clicker.

I don't feel attracted by this "carrot in the stick/quick pleasure quick reward" design used nowadays that is so seductive for the general public.

See, I'm a Final Fantasy 14 player and because of the new expansion, Stormblood, the game is having a influx of World of Warcraft players. Final Fantasy 14 is a game that starts slow paced, since people play using controllers too, and is lore heavy in its Main Quest. It is fun/tedious/enraging to see almost every day "But in WoW I could do that, should be like WoW".

Well, maybe I'm just getting old.

Except that Diablo 3 didn't use the carrot and stick system. It used a "Buy this gear with tons of real money or grind for endless hours to get a single piece of gear that might let you get an inch farther" system. The higher difficulties were ridiculous and you never got gear that was actually for your character. It was designed so that you only got legendary gear for other classes and forced you into selling on the auction house. You'd sell your gear for x amount and they'd buy it for x amount and blizzard takes 10% of everything. This aside from the fact that the legendary drop rate was the worst of any game I've ever played. I put over a $1,000 hours into that game after it launched and only got 2, none of them for my own class. I don't even what to talk about how absolutely horrid the itemization was. Fricking strength on mage gear was common. Not to mention the lovely achievement I got for beating the game in a measly 10 hours.

Diablo 3 launched as a joke and blizzard have polished that turd as much as they can.

 

[Brenton]

Except that Diablo 3 didn't use the carrot and stick system. It used a "Buy this gear with tons of real money or grind for endless hours to get a single piece of gear that might let you get an inch farther" system. The higher difficulties were ridiculous and you never got gear that was actually for your character. It was designed so that you only got legendary gear for other classes and forced you into selling on the auction house. You'd sell your gear for x amount and they'd buy it for x amount and blizzard takes 10% of everything. This aside from the fact that the legendary drop rate was the worst of any game I've ever played. I put over a $1,000 hours into that game after it launched and only got 2, none of them for my own class. I don't even what to talk about how absolutely horrid the itemization was. Fricking strength on mage gear was common. Not to mention the lovely achievement I got for beating the game in a measly 10 hours.

Diablo 3 launched as a joke and blizzard have polished that turd as much as they can.

The 2.0 drop system was clearly better in reguards to getting items only for your class, I'm sure anyone would agree that was how it should have been anyway. But I'm fairly certain his point was more so directed that at the moment the whole 'lets give everyone a legendary item for everything they do' strategy is a bit dumb. I'm sure heaps of people love it, but I'm with him in saying I would rather actually play a hard game and really earn some sick loot that took ages to get, then run around and wear **** that everyone can get after a week of playing. The only thing that I feel was great about D3 was the paragon system and the boss battle were pretty epic too

 

[Evernessince]

The 2.0 drop system was clearly better in reguards to getting items only for your class, I'm sure anyone would agree that was how it should have been anyway. But I'm fairly certain his point was more so directed that at the moment the whole 'lets give everyone a legendary item for everything they do' strategy is a bit dumb. I'm sure heaps of people love it, but I'm with him in saying I would rather actually play a hard game and really earn some sick loot that took ages to get, then run around and wear **** that everyone can get after a week of playing. The only thing that I feel was great about D3 was the paragon system and the boss battle were pretty epic too

That's the problem, who cares what other people have? If Diablo 3 was a single player game that wouldn't even have crossed your mind. I don't need some shiny to brag, I just want the game to respect my time. It's funny how drastically people change simply when they are around other people.

 

[Brenton]

That's the problem, who cares what other people have? If Diablo 3 was a single player game that wouldn't even have crossed your mind. I don't need some shiny to brag, I just want the game to respect my time. It's funny how drastically people change simply when they are around other people.

Whoa, settle down there cowboy who said anything about gaining gear to show it off to other random players? For you info to this day my favourite diablo would have to still be diablo 1, which was a single player... I'm talking about replay ability, getting gear handed to you on a silver plater in a game loses it's touch forvme real quick. I personally couldn't care about having the best or the worse gear but at least when the drops are actually rare it feels awesome getting them. Only time showing off gear becomes revelat in my mind is to mates.

 

[emmzo]

Diablo 3 launched as a joke and blizzard have polished that turd as much as they can.

Exactly my thoughts, it`s not about how they turned it into this great game, but rather how they polished a turd. Sure, a lot of people bought the game, but how many of them are actually playing it past a couple of weeks before it gets tediously boring. And then compare it to D2, where it was played for years without any regular "enhancement" patches.
I can`t deny I had some fun, briefly, with RoS and Adventure mode, but it was just a mess to begin with. Something just didn`t click in SP. Take the narrative, too much clisse, too much overused reused material. Too much of saving the universe without a decent story of becoming. Revamped maps of D2 and then bright happy colors, much as upon entering unicorn level, it felt more accurate to the game itself. And thank God for chasing goblins. These guys played a lot of Golden Axe. I also expected mounting beasts, cause if I really think about it, except the last level of RoS, it feels more like a modern Golden Axe game, than anything close to a Diablo experience.

 

[MaXtor]

Funny to see Path of Exile is not mentioned here. Diablo 3 was saved by Blizzard learning from and blatantly copying Path of Exile, a game which was and is, more of a successor to Diablo 2 than Diablo 3...

 

[Darth Shiv]

D3 has been a complete disaster since the shut down the auction house. Playing the auction house and turning pixles into dollars was one the most exciting and rewarding aspects of D3. Now I just use the blizzard balance I gained from Diable to SC2 and Overwatch and future expansions. I sitll got $100 leftover good for at least a game or two, but I haven't even logged into D3 since AH closed.

LOL you are in the extreme minority. The auction house was an unmitigated disaster. The game is infinitely better for it being gone but still has its problems such as the power creep has blown away team play balance.

Having a mechanism that encourages gold and item farming just completely devalues the parts of the game that make it what it is. The hooks of farming for items and incrementally building up your toon's power. It also makes a mockery of the leaderboards which are now the core of gameplay - they would be all worthless for most of the playerbase (the game becomes pay to win for leaderboard).

I still think having an offline single player mode (with completely disconnected profiles from online) would be 100x better than the fully online system.

 

[MikeOD]

It hasn't been "saved from disaster", as it IS a disaster! Way too many alleged 'modern' games are ONLY playable on line, and there are far too many gamers in extreme rural areas that just do not have the facilities to play anything on line. There are also literally millions of gamers (read: consumers) that despise playing anything on line, and much prefer playing one person modes privately. I personally will not play anything whatsoever on line, as the obvious security issues, just as I could care less about any (non)social bs sites (who cares if Mary Jones has new pix of her grandkids?!?)