My thoughts on what the developers can learn from Diablo 3

After no lifing Diablo 3 for about two weeks (I have two level 60 Characters deep into Inferno, both a Wizard and a Monk), I can safely say that the developers can learn alot from the mistakes Blizzard has made. I believe that in fact, Path of Exile can surpass Diablo 3 quite easily in terms of quality. It already has in alot of ways, and it's only a beta right now. I've been testing PoE for awhile, and I can safely say that the developers are on the right track.


Here are some tidbits that I think you as the developers should learn from Blizzad's disastrous launch.


1) If you include an AH, do not change the drop rates because of the AH. Right now the drop rates in D3 are abysmally low, and the loot tables (as in the range of items you can get) are phenomenally huge in Inferno, thus resulting in you getting more trash items than anything even though you need bare minimum iLevel 60 to progress with any speed in Diablo 3, particularly as a melee. Right now the grind is absolutely monotonous, and there is no feeling of progression at all without usage of the AH.

Diablo 1/2/Path of Exile/Titan Quest/Other ARPGs have always been about gear and progression through your gear. The way Diablo 3 has been designed, particularly at end game content, completely stalts your progress ON PURPOSE in order to FORCE users to utilize the AH. This is in fact, nothing more than a ploy to get users to utilize the RMAH that will be released eventually. You should be able to progress through the game at a reasonable rate without having to massively grind for gear, or utilize the AH. It's just not good game design at all.

People say that if you include an AH without really low drop rates, you will have a crashed economy. This is a completely false statement by Blizzard employees and supporters. If you have GOOD itemization and unique and creative modifiers on items, this won't be a problem at all. It just means you need to have more content for the end game, and more creative item modifiers that make end game content more interesting. This brings me to my second point.

2) Diablo 3's itemization is absolutely garbage. There is nothing creative about the itemization, no unique modifiers, nothing good at all. All that matters are stats like vitality, all resist, damage modifiers, and primary stat. Legendary (or Uniques) are absolutely terrible, and rarely have any good modifiers on them that would make them better than Rares/Magics. Only a very few of them have decent modifiers such as Bojanglers with IAS on boots, or Anderial's which has a combination of IAS and Increase Crit Chance. This garbage itemization is directly tied to the fact that Blizzard wants to FORCE players to continue to progress through ONLY in a certain way through their gear, not through creative and unique modifiers like you can in Path of Exile or Diablo 2. I know you guys are doing a good job right now, but please for dear god, don't do what Blizzard did. It's so horrible.

3) Fake difficulty. In previous old days I saw alot of players on the forum wanting to increase the difficulty, yet the devs did not want to do so without adding new content. I remember one particular patch where they actually doubled the amount of mobs did, and they found that the spike damage was way too high. Difficulty DOES NOT = CHALLENGING. A player should utilize creative tactics, gear choices, skill choices, etc. in order to overcome CHALLENGES. Making a game extremely difficult is easy; look at Diablo 3 Inferno Mode Acts 2/3/4. White trash mobs killing you in 2-3 hits is not challenging or fun; it is difficult and tedious.

This leads me to another point regarding fake difficulty. Champion mobs with modifiers is great; stacking multiple modifiers on one another however clearly has not worked out. It's seemingly just another lazy way in order to artificially increase the difficulty of the game in a cheap way. There's no way melees survive against certain combinations, just like how ranged characters can never survive against certain combinations.

The implementation of more creative mobs such as the Goat Shaman, Totem Boss, etc. is a great way, because you can actually challenge those mobs, they are still challenging, but it isn't impossible to overcome with the correct choices. Certain spawns in D3 are just simply not only impossible to avoid, but also impossible to kill.

IMO, it is better for an ARPG to be TOO easy than it is for it to be TOO hard. At least you can progress and continue to farm gear if the game is somewhat easy. You cannot do that if the game is far too hard, and that will kill off your player base.


4) Do not HOTFIX builds that SEEM overpowered. Force Armor/Diamond Skin, Critical Mass Builds, etc. SEEMED overpowered, but if you took a look at their weaknesses they still couldn't deal with certain mob packs. The only truly overpowered skill that needed to be fixed was Smoke Screen with Preparation. I liked how you guys dealt with Avatar of Fire/Elemental Weapon Damage, because you left it in the game and tweaked it around quite abit before deciding to remove it for re implementation later. The only reason you should hotfix is when it is BLATANTLY OBVIOUS and CLEAR that the skill is completely broken and needs to be fixed immediatly. The only skill that fit the bill was Smokoe Screen. The rest still struggled heavily against Champions/Rares, particularly packs that had DoTs like Plague, Molten, and Desacrator.



I may add some more tidbits to this thread, but that sums everything up.

Nice post, hope they take it into consideration.

Excellent feedback.

I'll just note that Chris Wilson (if none of the others at GGG) has a Collector's Edition of D3 and very explicitly took 15th May off to play it. While I wouldn't say it was in the aid of 'researching the enemy' -- Chris is clearly a long-time ARPG fan, like so many of us -- I'm sure he picked up a few do's and dont's along the way. ;)

I don't believe there will be an AH. We've had some fiery debates about this on the board, but from what I can tell, GGG are going more for the approach of public stashes becoming player-run shops (I like this idea very much) and somehow incorporating the already present web connectivity to the game to allow on-site trading. I don't like this idea because it sounds awfully addictive and I don't need more addictions!

Also, wouldn't it be sort of hard to have an auction house when there isn't a base currency? How would you up my bid of, say, 3 orbs of alchemy? 4? Or 2 exalted orbs? maybe a mirror of kalandra? This is essentially what an auction is -- even if most people use a 'buy now' function, the heart of the auction is bidding, outbidding and going for the highest price players are willing to pay. A public shop, however, set up from a stash, is much simpler: this is what I have, this is what I want for it. No negotiation, no haggling, no outbidding. If you can afford it, you can have it.

Finally, I feel something as centralised as an auction house is entirely against the setting of Wraeclast. Entirely.

About unique modifiers: I have yet to see a unique item that could be replicated by a rare. Every single one does something no rare can, even if a really good rare item can outstrip a unique in raw power/functionality. I believe very strongly in GGG's vision for unique items. Very. I think I hardly need to iterate that, given that I put down a small fortune to make one of my own, guided by their philosophy. See here for details.

Great post - I especially agree with D3's lacking item/weapon/armour customisation. It was a let down. having said that it also has positives that PoE can consider - such as destructible elements in the environments and very fluid character animations (albeit these are basically just cosmetic suggestions rather than gameplay related). Lots of polish to D3 in the presentation department - but the grit is what kinda shines about PoE.

"

Charanjaydemyr wrote:

Excellent feedback.

I'll just note that Chris Wilson (if none of the others at GGG) has a Collector's Edition of D3 and very explicitly took 15th May off to play it. While I wouldn't say it was in the aid of 'researching the enemy' -- Chris is clearly a long-time ARPG fan, like so many of us -- I'm sure he picked up a few do's and dont's along the way. ;)

I don't believe there will be an AH. We've had some fiery debates about this on the board, but from what I can tell, GGG are going more for the approach of public stashes becoming player-run shops (I like this idea very much) and somehow incorporating the already present web connectivity to the game to allow on-site trading. I don't like this idea because it sounds awfully addictive and I don't need more addictions!

Also, wouldn't it be sort of hard to have an auction house when there isn't a base currency? How would you up my bid of, say, 3 orbs of alchemy? 4? Or 2 exalted orbs? maybe a mirror of kalandra? This is essentially what an auction is -- even if most people use a 'buy now' function, the heart of the auction is bidding, outbidding and going for the highest price players are willing to pay. A public shop, however, set up from a stash, is much simpler: this is what I have, this is what I want for it. No negotiation, no haggling, no outbidding. If you can afford it, you can have it.

Finally, I feel something as centralised as an auction house is entirely against the setting of Wraeclast. Entirely.

About unique modifiers: I have yet to see a unique item that could be replicated by a rare. Every single one does something no rare can, even if a really good rare item can outstrip a unique in raw power/functionality. I believe very strongly in GGG's vision for unique items. Very. I think I hardly need to iterate that, given that I put down a small fortune to make one of my own, guided by their philosophy. See here for details.

Oh I certainly love the way they have done the unique modifiers in PoE. The uniques may be outstripped in terms of raw power in certain ways, but they can be utilized in certain unique builds. You cannot do that in Diablo 3 right now, because the Legendaries are just so bad.

I also was just merely pointing out that if an AH of any sort was implemented, they need to ensure that the droprates either stay the same, or are minimally reduced. Right now the drop rates are so low, combined with large item level drops, causing people to forcibly utilize the AH. The AH should compliment the game, and shouldn't be a necessary component to the game.