Ladders aren’t going to fix Diablo III

Ladders do not address the root cause issues that plague Diablo III though; which is that the game has lower level core deficiencies at its foundations that also need to be addressed in order for the game to reach its full potential.

From my view (others may have their own), D2’s long life was also due to the intangibles that resulted as a quirk of its design; where it had both an online, and offline component which allowed mods (my two favorites being Median XL and Eastern Sun). That particular aspect gave the game a ton of replayability and depth for me. Furthermore, it’s in-game design and systems weren’t over thought (for better or worse in some areas). Any end game systems were designed specifically for the closed Battle.net realms only; ladders and Uber Diablo was put in during 1.10; the first as a method to reset the economy to get around the lag based duping that some folks engaged in and the second to deal with the Stone of Jordan issue, and the Pandemonium Event was something implemented in 1.11.

Digressing, the open ended nature of the game allowed players (up to 8 in a multiplayer game) a lot of freedom to create their own meta games and basically define what was fun to them (very little of the “on rails” type of design that is prevalent in D3 for example). Some folks enjoyed the entirety of it, others only played realms, others played only offline where you had several options (single player, LAN based multiplayer, open Battle.net), others played offline using the many different mods that were available. Others structured their own open world PvP with their individual rules (as opposed to those folks that mainly used the hostile function for griefing). The point is that this gave the game a ton of fun options, and allowed players various ways to extend the life of the game. I played every which way except PvP. I played offline for example while traveling (killing time at the airport or on long international flights), played ladder on the realms, lan games with co-workers/friends.

Was D2 and LoD perfect? Nope, the game had its own set of issues. But overall, the game play experience remained fun for a long time. D3’s gaming experience feels sterile after awhile and I don’t see that changing much with Reaper of Souls. It’s social networking features is something built into Battle.net 2.0, and that is where the root of the whole “ghost town” effect, comes from. Clans & Communities will help a bit (more so with Clans since that will be like a more intimate friends list), but that same feeling just gets pushed off the main menu screen.

Digressing, the vacuum of a timely follow on to LoD also allowed the game to take on a life of its own. And that aspect (the longevity) cemented the sort of expectations, many of us had for any follow up (which at the time, looked grim because even the Blizzard North folks were having problems getting their version of Diablo III to surpass their previous work; and it didn’t help when the exodus took place in 2003 where the game ended up going into limbo). Blizzard Entertainment also lost a significant amount of collective hack-n-slash brain power/experience when a large number of key Blizzard North designers/developers, left the company. Fast forward to 2008 when the official announcement took place. That is a ton of legacy and player expectation for this new development team, to have placed on their shoulders.

And unfortunately, that lack of experience in what made the first two Diablo games tick, can be seen in the final product; where the entire end game experience was defined by being unrewarding, uninspiring, and shallow. They initially had an itemization system that was much closer to the one in Diablo II, but then iterated upon which led them to scrap multiple core systems several times in the process, to where it ended up becoming this current abomination in vanilla. This leads us to the current bandaid attempt at loot 2.0 since it is still built on top of that original flawed design.

And the excuse for this newer tepid design is because they needed to come up with a new baseline given that loot 1.0.x was deemed as having too much “power potential”, and that potential limited the amount of meaningful decision making for players when it came to choosing between an items raw power or survivability. This is a really “nice” way to spin the original flawed design. If the original core itemization had any meaningful depth beyond trifecta to begin with (which is the design they came to), then the meaningful choices issue would take care of itself.

Is this development team for real? Quoting Deckard Cain, “you astound me my friend”. Some folks originally argued with Bashiok back in 2011 about how the itemization system they were heading towards, would lead to a game that lacked depth and long term replayability. Developers response: too much nostalgia and trust us, it’s going to be an epic experience. But the above is just more of them admitting at failing in their initial design objectives, to where they had to make itemization in loot 2.0, worse than 1.0.x. in order to meet that new baseline.

Furthermore, it’s yet another example of inconsistent design philosophies. Take gambling for example. They design that system using Blood Shards as the means to carry out that objective. Yet, Blood Shards themselves have no other meaningful purpose which basically results in no meaningful decision making as to what to do with those Blood Shards (because the base design did not give them any other useful purpose to begin with). Basically, this is another half-baked design in the game which just provides more ammo that this development team, is out to lunch.

Digression back to loot 2.0, not even I thought this would be possible. It solved nothing and prevented work on end game challenge modes. It got in the way of working on quality of life features in the game (like larger/more visible combat cursor, disabling screen shake, ability to view and manipulate inventory/stash from outside a game session since that UI is going to go away soon, disabling the accidental activation of follower, chat, social interface elements during combat, and a host of other suggestions that keep popping up).

With patch 2.0 and the expansion, the mantra was getting “epic loot by killing monsters”. Exactly, where is that epic loot with loot 2.0 during end game? This isn’t to say the new loot system works great from 1-60/70; that entire system works well there and gives your character a ton of eHP compared to 1.0.x items. Beyond that, upgrades naturally tend to get rarer to the point where it feels like vanilla end game all over again in the quality department with the RNG on crafting and with relatively unspectacular drops that actually do little for build diversity until you find those specific legendary items that aren’t the gimmicky ones and/or weren’t subjected to awful RNG. A lot high level items are still “lipstick on a demon” bad though. And if what we’re seeing is epic, then this development team has absolutely low standards or needs to give us those rose colored glasses they are wearing.

Backing up a bit, from their point of view, parts of the feedback they got before vanilla closed beta, was deemed as being one of misplaced nostalgia; while it may have been true in some cases, they completely missed the forest for the trees by putting their collective ego’s (you know, the ones who did not make “that game” and don’t intend to turn this game, into “that game”), over really learning what core system designs, made D2/LoD tick, and why many players felt the entire game play experience, was one that felt rewarding (not just talking about it from the context of loot; this covers everything from theorycrafting, character development, the various communities including the modders, traders, incentivizing players [like w/Uber Diablo and the SoJ issue], etc – basically the entire ecosystem where it all came together). All of this spin doctoring is why the game is the way it is.

Diablo III has significant improvements in the area of graphics, modeling, physics. Basically, that team has always done an incredible job with the rich and immersive visuals. Thus during those rare times when I do fire up LoD now, it’s like blah due to the outdated textures and the bland combat mechanics of the character (this is also why I can’t play PoE for long periods of time). There are systems the game designers got right; I appreciate the larger inventory space/shared stash, the health globe system, auto pickup of gold (and now potions), the fact that potions and other stuff like gems and crafting material stack. But the full potential is held back by the backend design and development of the actual game code (where it really matters) when a core system has design flaws in it (which leads to this poor itemization system in the first place), where it affects other systems that are built on top of that foundation. Thus ladders will not address/fix the underlying issue; just only mask it for a short period. Thus here we are, witnessing them botch up the execution with itemization again. So many great sounding ideas on paper and via presentations between Gamescom through Blizzcon, where it is proving again to be far more underwhelming. Deja-vu.

I’ve stated it before; Reaper of Souls is going to be better than vanilla. But it’s also not going to reach its full potential and give the game the kind of long term replayability many of us have been expecting. For those who are highly addicted to this game, lot of this is a non-issue. For most everyone else, if one lowers their expectations, I believe the game will provide entertainment worthwhile of its price and nothing more. It’s designers explicitly want to define how the game is played (on rails design philosophy even with bounties/rifts for example) for many of their systems in order to define what should be fun, rewarding, and challenging. Thus I’ve already lowered my own expectations not just for this expansion, but for the entire franchise going forward, and have accepted that this development team, has the inability to over deliver (actions in the form of the final product have spoken louder than words many times here, to where a lot of us are coming across as broken records).