…that is itemization is one of the biggest issues behind why Diablo III (and by extension, any expansion which continues to rely on this same underlying core system) feels uninspiring and unrewarding. Just tweaking drop rates so that more loot drops will not fix this aspect. What we’re also concerned about is the quality of those drops, as well as the impact all of this has on the entire game play experience. In vanilla, it’s just plain boring. In Reaper of Souls, they took those affixes and split them into this 4+2 (primary/secondary) system and tried to create the illusion of a more meaningful itemization system (by adding in skill cooldown and resource management as potentially desirable affixes beyond the usual trifecta which defined vanilla items).
For the most part though, the majority of loot 2.0 items are still uninspiring; if you want the “cool” stuff, the chase becomes those higher end legendary/set items (which has a stingy drop rate). And power is still derived from the same trifecta (along with elemental damage) they tried to marginalize. So they basically solved nothing with loot 2.0, and in many regards, made items look even more boring (and I didn’t think even that was possible as I really thought they’d learn from past mistakes).
And this is what the current maintainers of the franchise don’t seem to understand. What made Diablo II items interesting were their properties. I hate to bring it up again, but…
Sure, many legendary/set items will have ONE special property on them, and some of these items proc effects are basically going to be gimmicks only (meant purely for fun/humor). That’s fine. For the non-gimmicky effects, with multiple legendary items and/or a complete set, that character will have several of these unique effects/properties working together. So what’s the problem? This still misses the bigger picture though when comparing Diablo III (plus loot 2.0) item properties with the ones that existed in Diablo II.
For one, our character power is defined by our weapon damage plus our main stats (and then stacking attack speed, critical hit chance, and critical hit damage). Remove that gear, and our high and mighty level 70 character will have problems knocking out zombies except on the lowest difficulty settings. Contrast to Diablo II where you could still do damage playing without gear (since character power was derived from their skill point allotments). Thus there is some meaning behind all of that leveling which is actually associated with that character (not just its gear). While DPS is no longer everything in patch 2.0.1 (as it is also about cooldown reduction and resource reduction), the fundamental lack of interesting affixes, results in this rather uninspiring/unrewarding loot system.
And here’s the ironic part. At lower levels, the loot system works well. Why? Because you’re character for the most part, feels powerful as they level and find upgrades. The effects tend to work well and the focus isn’t on min/max of stats at that juncture. This all changes at level cap and playing in the higher difficulties that yields a chance at the better rewards though, where now we do have to more or less have stats that weren’t previously mandatory (so we stack all resistance, attack speed, critical hit chance, and critical damage). And because of the way the “difficulty” system is implemented, it’s basically a numbers game (stacking these properties) in order to outgear each setting (while mechanically, the monsters remain the same).
Let’s look at monster mechanics in vanilla for example: Normal elites have one affix, Nightmare elites have two affixes, Hell elites have three affixes, and Inferno elites have four affixes. Thus as we level, there is actual increased challenges involved as the difficulty increases. Inferno is currently the difficulty where end game content exists. The inclusion of Monster Power only increased monster health pools and damage (but their mechanics remained the same). The key challenge is getting gear to handle the larger numbers, not dealing with changing up your game play like how one had to adjust with dealing with more affixes as our characters leveled and played through each difficulty.
With patch 2.0.1, this tiered difficulty goes away, and monsters level with our characters. Content can have their difficulty scaled by changing game settings (Normal, Hard, Expert, Master, Torment). Thus at certain character levels, monsters gain affixes; therefore, again, as we level, there is at least this increased mechanical challenge. I’m not going to go into the cheap mechanics aspect of some of those crowd control affixes though (as that is another subject onto itself). Torment I-VI (which is where there are increased rewards) once again is about increasing monster health pools and damage, and not about qualitative mechanical changes; i.e the key challenge once again is getting gear to handle the larger numbers.
Basically, the developers only seem to have the same one trick pony up their sleeves. And it all comes down to bigger numbers and being able to outgear that content. And because the itemization system is still fundamentally boring, end game play tends to not be very fun since it basically becomes about grinding for that better loot in order to progress to the next difficulty setting (for a very small chance at this mirage-like, “increased rewards”). So we’re basically grinding for stuff that has bigger numbers in the backend database as opposed to looking for items that makes for very fun and entertaining game play. And that also translates into an overall more rewarding experience that isn’t entirely wrapped up in how much loot drops, which still contributes to the dopamine fix that players get. This development team however is simple minded in thinking that rewards is mainly about increased drop rate of items; they basically don’t get this philosophy of rewards based on challenges/effort.
Contrast this to the fun ways one could gear up in Diablo II and then play; it made the end game grind a heck of a lot more fun and tolerable. For Diablo III, adding in actual qualitative mechanical changes as a means of difficulty increase would at least detract from the uninspiring loot system, and give players an actual challenge (just like how it is early on as mobs gain affixes), to where it is not all about finding gear that can trivialize the numbers.
It goes without saying though that fixing the underlying root cause, would have been a better solution (especially since they made the decision to increase the level cap and thus quickly obsolete current gear). Instead of doing that, they wasted at least 1.25 years performing this bandaid fix known as loot 2.0, and it shows. As I noted in my leveling with patch 2.0.1 post, character leveling is fun and the loot system works well. The ugly part is just like vanilla, where the end game grind is a borefest.
And since they defined that legendary/set items are basically where most of the power/specialness lies, players are left grinding for that. And just like vanilla Diablo III, there are no guarantees they will be good. Thus the end game grind again will feel unrewarding and unfun for many (basically making the same mistakes all over again). Oh, but wasn’t soul binding supposed to address this? Uh no, soul binding was meant to stop 3rd party botting and mucking up the economy again. Furthermore, it’s how the designers want players to get their loot; remember Josh clenching his fists and stating “epic loot from killing monsters” though I’m personally over the “epic” part. It was never meant to throw players a bone at end game as that aspect will still be relegated to the same RNG that plagues the current game. And I already went over how this development team does not grok the whole reward based on effort/challenges aspect due to their layering of this RNG (as a means to artificially increase the playability of the content).
Again (have to do this broken record routine), this development team does not know how to scale this part of the game (design philosophy) and haven’t been able to implement in-game systems which give players options (like not being able to deliver a better PvP system than Brawling or some type of seasonal competition like Trials since they had to sacrifice working on the backend tracking system for it in order to perform these bandaid fixes with the loot). And given their pace of design iteration and then implementation, I’m personally not holding my breath they’ll be able to deliver such systems within the next year since they’ll be busy putting out fires again with their 2.0 systems. It’s seriously almost comical now because even I thought they would not be making these same mistakes, and thought they were going to pull out all the stops for this expansion (this is all documented in various postings on this blog where I felt cautiously optimistic about Reaper of Souls).
And yes, I do remember what Kevin Martens said in an interview about them not not making “that game” (aka Diablo II) and how they weren’t going to turn Diablo III into that game. It’s a rather defensive stance and one filled to the brim with developer ego. I don’t have a problem with that so long as the team can actually deliver a product that can really stand on its own merits. Diablo III FAILS massively on that accord because way too many folks still compare it to its predecessors. The majority of its sales were based on the legacy of the name of the franchise.
I’m not saying the first two games didn’t have their own problems (both still have their individual issues). The key thing is that Diablo II built and extended on the things Diablo I did well. Lord of Destruction further built on top of the deficiencies that clearly existed in the base game. Diablo III did do some things well (graphics, character mechanics, physics, health globes and getting rid of potion spam) but also took several steps backwards in others (the stuff I’ve written about ad nauseum). And the key place it is lacking by a huge margin is in the end game play experience (rewarding players for their efforts). And so long as key developers on this team don’t check their egos and take the time to learn why the first two games have had the sort of longevity they’ve both had, then they will keep repeating the same mistakes trying to reinvent the wheel.
So I guess that old adage really does apply here: fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me (so yes, I feel like a putz believing this team would actually over deliver for this patch/expansion). Yes, I know there is still 1.5 months left until release (doesn’t matter either if the current client/server beta we’re testing is several builds behind from they are running internally). The reality is this isn’t much time to address the major bugs that exist in closed beta/PTR. And there is no time to address the design deficiencies of this atrocity known as loot 2.0. So based on the overall track record of this development team, I am pretty confident the 2.0 systems+expansion will need signficant patching post-release (no, I doubt there will be an executive decision made to move back the release date since giving this team extra time won’t make a difference).
