Did people really dislike 3 that much? I’d heard it was pretty rough at launch, but I only jumped in around Reaper of Souls and had a blast with it. I’ll admit the writing was a little busted but I thought the gameplay loop was excellent.
I played through the campaign for 4, and while it had its moments, I couldn’t stick with it for longer than that. I think their biggest mistake was making it an online open world. If they go that direction with 5, any excitement I may have had otherwise will be dead on arrival.
Personally I liked D3 after it got rid of the AH bullshit. For the same reason that a lot of people disliked it: It’s relatively low complexity. People will look down on that as dumbing it down, but to me it’s just getting rid of uninteresting filler. I can’t stand those giant skill trees full of +x% this and +y that. It’s boring AND overwhelming. I have no interest in trying to make my own build in those games. D3 had a small number of choices that for the most part felt distinct enough to understand why you’d choose one over the other.
I also really liked that brief period in WoW where they changed the skill trees to those sets of 3 choices each level breakpoint. It was really interesting thinking about which choices would be most useful for any given situation instead of just looking up a guide then forgetting about it until next expansion.
Alas, they went back to boring number increases because people mistake complexity for depth. This is why I really enjoy roguelikes. The well designed ones give you those bite sized choices with big impacts on your run and the depth comes from understanding the system and your current situation rather than mathing out the optimal set of stat increases.
At launch, it was pretty bad. The story was awful. Bad writing. (Whoever wrote ‘How tastes your fear?’ needs to go back to school). Misogyny.
The gameplay was really bad at launch. The auction house borked it up. The game is essentially a lot of gear checks, and at launch you would slam into that wall pretty frequently. The same tactics would wipe or be a snooze based entirely on the numbers on your gear. Getting good gear was really hard, unless you used the auction house. It was deeply unsatisfying. Also most of the random boss powers were really annoying to play against.
Even after the expansion and updates, it tends to turn into disco laser rollercoaster. Personally, I’m not a fan of that. I preferred the original’s more sedate, gloomy, mood. Holding down right click to shoot lasers and drop meteors for billions of damage is amusing for a little while, but it’s so tactically shallow it doesn’t hold my attention for that long.
I played it a lot anyway, because the first two games were favorites in my youth. I didn’t even get 4. Fuck microsoft.
Did people really dislike 3 that much? I’d heard it was pretty rough at launch, but I only jumped in around Reaper of Souls and had a blast with it. I’ll admit the writing was a little busted but I thought the gameplay loop was excellent.
I played through the campaign for 4, and while it had its moments, I couldn’t stick with it for longer than that. I think their biggest mistake was making it an online open world. If they go that direction with 5, any excitement I may have had otherwise will be dead on arrival.
Personally I liked D3 after it got rid of the AH bullshit. For the same reason that a lot of people disliked it: It’s relatively low complexity. People will look down on that as dumbing it down, but to me it’s just getting rid of uninteresting filler. I can’t stand those giant skill trees full of +x% this and +y that. It’s boring AND overwhelming. I have no interest in trying to make my own build in those games. D3 had a small number of choices that for the most part felt distinct enough to understand why you’d choose one over the other.
I also really liked that brief period in WoW where they changed the skill trees to those sets of 3 choices each level breakpoint. It was really interesting thinking about which choices would be most useful for any given situation instead of just looking up a guide then forgetting about it until next expansion.
Alas, they went back to boring number increases because people mistake complexity for depth. This is why I really enjoy roguelikes. The well designed ones give you those bite sized choices with big impacts on your run and the depth comes from understanding the system and your current situation rather than mathing out the optimal set of stat increases.
At launch, it was pretty bad. The story was awful. Bad writing. (Whoever wrote ‘How tastes your fear?’ needs to go back to school). Misogyny.
The gameplay was really bad at launch. The auction house borked it up. The game is essentially a lot of gear checks, and at launch you would slam into that wall pretty frequently. The same tactics would wipe or be a snooze based entirely on the numbers on your gear. Getting good gear was really hard, unless you used the auction house. It was deeply unsatisfying. Also most of the random boss powers were really annoying to play against.
Even after the expansion and updates, it tends to turn into disco laser rollercoaster. Personally, I’m not a fan of that. I preferred the original’s more sedate, gloomy, mood. Holding down right click to shoot lasers and drop meteors for billions of damage is amusing for a little while, but it’s so tactically shallow it doesn’t hold my attention for that long.
I played it a lot anyway, because the first two games were favorites in my youth. I didn’t even get 4. Fuck microsoft.