Inferno was fun once

Here is an archived thread with Bashiok’s post about how Inferno was originally not supposed to have the spiky difficulty that it ended up shipping with.

http://blues.incgamers.com/Posts/1/1/4/10/110647/bash-end-game-philosophy

Given that the difficulty (end game content) wasn’t tested very well outside of Blizzard, it showed when it came to drops (both quality and quantity) which slowed the progression a bit too much (except for those making clever use of game mechanics early in the game like the invulnerable wizard glitch, to farm Act III before the exploit became more widely known over a month later in July).

Like many, I also hit the wall at Act II even against the trash mobs.  At the start, I was sporting around 13k damage and 4k armor.  I managed to get myself to around 24k and used a life regen teleport/illusionist/venom hydra build on my wizard.  Act II was an absolute pain to progress through on my wizard (my monk on the otherhand handled the transition far easier).  Cave of the Betrayer was the worst with its elite spiderlings and vile swarms that often times had the fast/teleporter affix attached to them.  The only thing I was against was the inclusion of the enrage times on elite mobs because often times, I was able to kite and burn them down, but then ran up against their enrage timers (the gear check was just too much of an MMORPG mechanic).  And while I could disengage, by the time the debuff reset, they had again regenerated back to full health.

Rather than try to balance things out via a combination of buffing character skills, increasing the quantity and quality level of drops by nominal amounts, tempering the speed of a mobs life regen capabilities, and modifying the damage/health of mobs by smaller percentages in order to flatten out the difficulty curve between acts,  we had to endure nerfs (attack speed, skills, complete removal of mobs health regen) and also an over nerf of Inferno from 1.0.3-1.0.5.  It’s like the Act III Keywarden; some of us just wanted its abilities to be tempered for Normal-Hell (because it was way out of line with the content and presented a progression obstacle especially for those leveling in hardcore) but it instead ended up being neutered in Inferno.

IMHO, Inferno Difficulty should’ve actually been presented as a completely optional thing sort of like how one has to purposely select Hardcore instead of dumping the player into it after completing Hell.  This compelled players to play it since the highest achievements were also tied to the difficulty.  It’s the rationale they used for the Monster Power system (no separate achievements since they did not want to make it feel mandatory).  Had they used a similar design where Inferno was this completely separate challenge, it likely would not have needed to see the level of neutering it has gone through, and a portion of the player base looking for a challenge would probably even to this day, have that sort of challenging content to keep them busy.

I would actually propose that Blizzard consider doing just this for those looking for challenging content to tackle (Monster Power is not the same as the old Inferno difficulty).   The main purpose of such a mode would be mainly for challenge, not to farm items (that would still be relegated to Inferno).  Create a separate completely optional mode that becomes unlocked for anyone who has completed Inferno called Insanity which brings back most of the old difficulty and mechanics of Inferno with an even higher difficulty spike across all acts (there would be no monster power in this mode) in terms of mob damage/health and abilities (like the inclusion of a 5th affix).  Any achievements (for achievement chasers) would be in its own separate tab like Hardcore.

The only reason I’m still playing right now is because of Hardcore since it is about the only challenging/rewarding (where part of my definition of rewarding is the journey of staying alive) part left in the game for me (I can’t see myself grinding for Paragon levels but I give lots of credit to those who do).  There’s an actual item sink (due to continual player death) and because there aren’t as much players farming Inferno, there is a noticeable rarity of higher end/BiS gear.  The fact that death from disconnects/lag are also an issue (until Blizzard decides to look at their server side disconnect detection system), means that it’s a somewhat stupid challenge that one has to potentially contend with outside of the actual content.

I myself haven’t encountered or died to that yet but I do realize the potential of that happening.  I also know there are folks who don’t have stable network connectivity and therefore, HC is not a viable option unless they enjoy constantly dying from things outside their control.  But considering how many new HC players there have been recently, it is all too common to see many of them biting the dust from their own mistakes before completing normal.  In other words, the challenge of hitting level 60 is still real as is getting through Inferno.