They didn't reach the goal, on account of a few specific mistakes which could be improved upon.
But instead of focusing on fixing those particular mistakes you seem to be taking the "they should just completely redesign the game to be more like D2" angle, which obviously wouldn't be a good idea in D3's current state.
That simply wasn't the route they chose. I haven't said anything remotely like "planes never worked", I'm simply trying to explain to you that they took a car and they're not going to completely change the game at this point.
If you're on a road trip and get a flat, it's completely useless to say "fuck we should've taken a plane". Instead you fix the flat and keep driving. Both travel methods get you to your destination, but once you've chosen one method you stick with it and deal with the associated problems.
In this case D3 just needs to fix the flat; moaning about how they should've taken a plane doesn't help them at all.
Several pieces of D3 could be made more D2-like, and those were covered pretty well in my first post of the thread. But you fixated on a couple rather irrelevant portions of that post of mine (enrages and hard inferno) which really aren't the game's major problems at all.
So now you change your position from "that would not work" to "we cannot completely change the game", fair enough. (But one still has to point out your usual dismissal, the claim that "enrage timers and hard inferno are not the games main problems")
This is another thing we disagree on, i personally do not think a simple tweak here and there will help. Honestly, if they got a flat tire because they chose to drive trough the scrap yard, with the prospect to find more tire piercing pieces of metal on the way, it is their problem.
The main issues people have with the game is stupid difficulty, bland gear system and systemic annoyances (lifesteal/proc chances, unavoidable avoidable hits, story persistence, maps too small and not enough random, and so on).
They cannot change the stupid difficulty, because at this point they would alienate their hardcore audience, which is all they have left (since i am a pessimist and this wild assumption suits my argument ), or very close to that, discounting uber casuals.
They cannot change the gear system without complety overhauling things like the blacksmith, drop the tiered crafting mats rubbish, to really be a item sink, or something similarly complex (like, you know, giving you really wow boss guaranteed loot), in any case it would complicate the ah part of the game, which they seem to care much about. Anything less complex will just shift the overall gear level up and the player will just reach the "i have nothing to do, all the interesting gear is astronomically rare to drop and too expensive to buy" point a few days or weeks later. I want this point to be MONTHS away, is that so much to ask for?
They cannot change the annoyances because they have said they dont want to.
So quite frankly i DO prefer saying "they should have made this like d2", because in my opinion the game is too far away from something truly enjoyable.
So now you change your position from "that would not work" to "we cannot completely change the game", fair enough. (But one still has to point out your usual dismissal, the claim that "enrage timers and hard inferno are not the games main problems")
This is another thing we disagree on, i personally do not think a simple tweak here and there will help. Honestly, if they got a flat tire because they chose to drive trough the scrap yard, with the prospect to find more tire piercing pieces of metal on the way, it is their problem.
The main issues people have with the game is stupid difficulty, bland gear system and systemic annoyances (lifesteal/proc chances, unavoidable avoidable hits, story persistence, maps too small and not enough random, and so on).
They cannot change the stupid difficulty, because at this point they would alienate their hardcore audience, which is all they have left (since i am a pessimist and this wild assumption suits my argument ), or very close to that, discounting uber casuals.
They cannot change the gear system without complety overhauling things like the blacksmith, drop the tiered crafting mats rubbish, to really be a item sink, or something similarly complex (like, you know, giving you really wow boss guaranteed loot), in any case it would complicate the ah part of the game, which they seem to care much about. Anything less complex will just shift the overall gear level up and the player will just reach the "i have nothing to do, all the interesting gear is astronomically rare to drop and too expensive to buy" point a few days or weeks later. I want this point to be MONTHS away, is that so much to ask for?
They cannot change the annoyances because they have said they dont want to.
So quite frankly i DO prefer saying "they should have made this like d2", because in my opinion the game is too far away from something truly enjoyable.
Still no clue where you got the idea I've ever claimed there was only one direction D3 could go.
Difficulty wasn't really a problem, at least not the way you describe. Later challenge is the only thing keeping the game a game. If it was super easy all the way through, it would've died out even faster. Difficulty was a problem for the opposite reason: being forced to play too-easy gameplay to reach a real challenge (as my original post pointed out.)
Difficulty is something they actually could fix. Add a slider for controlling basic mob stats (damage, hp, movement) which also ramps up rewards as it increases (+magicFind, +goldFind, +XP.) It'd be simple and allow everyone to find the exact challenge they want.
They could absolutely improve the gear system, and I imagine that's one of the ways an expansion will take things forward. Crafting could be made viable, but it'd be a bit of work. You wouldn't need to have things be gauranteed, just to ramp up the power of crafted items (like the current endgame recipes, except have that recipe power exist in early game too.)
Heck, an extremely simple way to make crafting viable, important, and engage players a long time would be to let players invest mats into improving existing items' affix strength.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Well, Diablo 3 is a pretty good game in my opinion. I had fun playing it and would recommend it to fans of the previous, but it's not without flaws. My primary issue with Diablo 3 is that Blizzard continues to nerf the enjoyment out of the game with every patch.
Are people finding alternatives to Elite enemies for gear farming? Remove them!
Is magic find working properly and increasing drop rate? Nerf the sucka and put cap on it!
Is this ability making gameplay fun and fast paced? Halve the ability and throw a 5 minute cooldown on it!
Basically, I guess they're just trying to keep it competitive and e-sport like or whatever, but it really seems like they are just driving it into the ground with every patch.
Will Diablo 3 change anything related to other games? No, not really. The sales were great because of the Diablo name, but the game itself was met with much criticism and the revolutionary real money auction house was met with more complaints than anything. I'm eager to see how Torchlight 2 stands in comparison.
Still no clue where you got the idea I've ever claimed there was only one direction D3 could go.
Difficulty wasn't really a problem, at least not the way you describe. Later challenge is the only thing keeping the game a game. If it was super easy all the way through, it would've died out even faster. Difficulty was a problem for the opposite reason: being forced to play too-easy gameplay to reach a real challenge (as my original post pointed out.)
Difficulty is something they actually could fix. Add a slider for controlling basic mob stats (damage, hp, movement) which also ramps up rewards as it increases (+magicFind, +goldFind, +XP.) It'd be simple and allow everyone to find the exact challenge they want.
They could absolutely improve the gear system, and I imagine that's one of the ways an expansion will take things forward. Crafting could be made viable, but it'd be a bit of work. You wouldn't need to have things be gauranteed, just to ramp up the power of crafted items (like the current endgame recipes, except have that recipe power exist in early game too.)
Heck, an extremely simple way to make crafting viable, important, and engage players a long time would be to let players invest mats into improving existing items' affix strength.
Dont you think that the green stuff contradicts itself? Moreover you are again evading, i didnt say the should be no challenge, and challenge is even optimizing your time and hunting items that make you kill stuff faster, not just items that ENABLE you to kill stuff, there is no need to be dense and hadle this like it is somehow binary too easy and too difficult, choose one.
Both your suggestions kinda require lots of work and lots of overhaul (noone will craft a lv 20 item with 10str and 0.5% crit rating and there is no way blizz wil take the status quo and make it medium, it will be the hard setting, killing off the last remnants of item finding), and the stat improvement specifically has the drawback, that it would tempt blizz to tamper with the chances for specific affixes as to keep the best items rare.
Way too many doctrines to balance around, due to the choice of direction.
Given Diablo 3's massive sales we can probably expect a lot more of this stuff rather than less.
Indeed. When you consider an industry that only looks at sales numbers instead of feedback and fall off trends, it's an absolute. Especially in a down gaming market, every sale is under a spotlight. That's why it's been said time and time again. Vote with your wallet and wait and see. Stop pre ordering on hype.
Dont you think that the green stuff contradicts itself? Moreover you are again evading, i didnt say the should be no challenge, and challenge is even optimizing your time and hunting items that make you kill stuff faster, not just items that ENABLE you to kill stuff, there is no need to be dense and hadle this like it is somehow binary too easy and too difficult, choose one.
Both your suggestions kinda require lots of work and lots of overhaul (noone will craft a lv 20 item with 10str and 0.5% crit rating and there is no way blizz wil take the status quo and make it medium, it will be the hard setting, killing off the last remnants of item finding), and the stat improvement specifically has the drawback, that it would tempt blizz to tamper with the chances for specific affixes as to keep the best items rare.
Way too many doctrines to balance around, due to the choice of direction.
Yes i am a pessimist.
Cars need engines. By making this statement I haven't implied there's only one way to travel, I've merely described a trait of cars. In fact all forms of travel inherently involve some kind of engine to power the locomotion.
Nearly all forms of games inherently involve some kind of challenge to create interesting decisions. (The only exception are things like FarmVille, which aren't true games but function more as relaxation/decoration activities; which is fine for them, but D3 isn't remotely close to FarmVille.)
The only suggestion I mentioned which would take 3-4 people more than a week to implement would be the affix improvement, due to needing major new UI elements. The difficulty slider would be particularly easy to implement. Improving crafting would be extremely easy to implement and only take time to balance correctly (and yes plenty of players are going to craft level 20 stuff if it's powerful enough relative to drops.) The real question is whether crafting even deserves to be improved. I think the wisest move isn't to make it stronger than drops but merely balanced with them, as another source of items.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Cars need engines. By making this statement I haven't implied there's only one way to travel, I've merely described a trait of cars. In fact all forms of travel inherently involve some kind of engine to power the locomotion.
Nearly all forms of games inherently involve some kind of challenge to create interesting decisions. (The only exception are things like FarmVille, which aren't true games but function more as relaxation/decoration activities; which is fine for them, but D3 isn't remotely close to FarmVille.)
The only suggestion I mentioned which would take 3-4 people more than a week to implement would be the affix improvement, due to needing major new UI elements. The difficulty slider would be particularly easy to implement. Improving crafting would be extremely easy to implement and only take time to balance correctly (and yes plenty of players are going to craft level 20 stuff if it's powerful enough relative to drops.) The real question is whether crafting even deserves to be improved. I think the wisest move isn't to make it stronger than drops but merely balanced with them, as another source of items.
Games needing challenge (of any sort, because that makes the outcome uncertain, that is why we play) is one thing. Games in no way NEED hight or always increasing difficulty. As of Farmville, discounting it as a game is your loss.
As of your suggestions, yes, they are easy to implement themselves, but it does not change any of my points. But humor me, please explain what you understand under "powerful enough relative to drops", if we want to keep the entertertainment of getting drops alive AND want to keep players from going to town / opening blacksmith interface after each drop and tinker around (both stated goals of blizz).
Games needing challenge (of any sort, because that makes the outcome uncertain, that is why we play) is one thing. Games in no way NEED hight or always increasing difficulty. As of Farmville, discounting it as a game is your loss.
As of your suggestions, yes, they are easy to implement themselves, but it does not change any of my points. But humor me, please explain what you understand under "powerful enough relative to drops", if we want to keep the entertertainment of getting drops alive AND want to keep players from going to town / opening blacksmith interface after each drop and tinker around (both stated goals of blizz).
Well as my very first post stated, the lack of difficulty options is a flaw in Blizzard's design (also present in WOW,) in that players can't consistently experience their personal sweet spot of challenge (which is crucial to hit because if it's too easy it's boring and if it's too hard it's frustrating.) But in that regard "high" difficulty certainly is required to hit the sweet spot of challenge for skilled players.
As for crafting, they're basically at that point right now with endgame recipes which provide enough magic properties. They just need to ensure that's true of mid-range crafting too (which it isn't.) Which probably means randomizing the property count a little. Consumable recipes would also be another opportunity (craft it once and recipe is gone, but it's a mid-game rare or set item instead of the typical magic-quality items you have to craft otherwise.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Fastest selling PC game of all time, 9 million copies sold, hundreds of million of dollars made.
If anything, expect more like this.
Because of what D3 turned out to be, I think it will be the last time Blizzard pulls this off. They vaporized their goodwill and brand image with a lot of game buyers with this release.
Well as my very first post stated, the lack of difficulty options is a flaw in Blizzard's design (also present in WOW,) in that players can't consistently experience their personal sweet spot of challenge (which is crucial to hit because if it's too easy it's boring and if it's too hard it's frustrating.) But in that regard "high" difficulty certainly is required to hit the sweet spot of challenge for skilled players.
As for crafting, they're basically at that point right now with endgame recipes which provide enough magic properties. They just need to ensure that's true of mid-range crafting too (which it isn't.) Which probably means randomizing the property count a little. Consumable recipes would also be another opportunity (craft it once and recipe is gone, but it's a mid-game rare or set item instead of the typical magic-quality items you have to craft otherwise.)
Well, i do not discount games without sweet spots, the game itself can be relatively easy or hard, yet still challenging or not (for example in wow rep achievment hunting is relatively easy, yet challenging timewise and effortwise [but i think that you will discount that one claiming that it is no challenge or bad design]). Skilled (as any other category of players) players will find (invent) the challenge themselves, you just have to give them tools and a fun system, i dont think there are many people who have ever quit a game for being "too easy", they have quit because they have run out of fun things to do. That is why i think basing longevity around difficulty is a tricky thing to do.
I think those are the most fundamental things we clash about.
As for crafting, as i said from the start, they would have to overall fix the system first, to actually make a lv40 item interesting to wear even later, so it is worth crafting, and that is not a easy feat with the ilevels and ah looming over the horizon.
Fastest selling PC game of all time, 9 million copies sold, hundreds of million of dollars made.
If anything, expect more like this.
Because of what D3 turned out to be, I think it will be the last time Blizzard pulls this off. They vaporized their goodwill and brand image with a lot of game buyers with this release.
Good. Then there will be less finicky people compelled to complain about every single little thing in the future releases and those of us who are not chronic complainers can enjoy our games in peace.
All the 17 year old wannabe game developers need to remember they are gamers...not developers and leave game creation to the profesionals.
Well, i do not discount games without sweet spots, the game itself can be relatively easy or hard, yet still challenging or not (for example in wow rep achievment hunting is relatively easy, yet challenging timewise and effortwise [but i think that you will discount that one claiming that it is no challenge or bad design]). Skilled (as any other category of players) players will find (invent) the challenge themselves, you just have to give them tools and a fun system, i dont think there are many people who have ever quit a game for being "too easy", they have quit because they have run out of fun things to do. That is why i think basing longevity around difficulty is a tricky thing to do.
I think those are the most fundamental things we clash about.
As for crafting, as i said from the start, they would have to overall fix the system first, to actually make a lv40 item interesting to wear even later, so it is worth crafting, and that is not a easy feat with the ilevels and ah looming over the horizon.
Plenty of people quit a game for being too easy. In fact for D3 specifically I many people quit very early after the game was out because it was too easy and they were bored. (Which was also one of the worst parts of D2. My favorite mod was one that made early D2 very challenging.)
They may not directly associate the easy difficulty with why they left (most players don't think that deep, even the game developers who these players were,) but I'm sure if the game had challenged them and defeated them a few times early on, forcing them to develop better tactics and work at mastering the game, they would've been engaged more closely with the game. Instead, victory is freely given in early D3 and bored players quit playing.
Some players will invent ways to make the game challenging. A tiny minority. Everyone else? They're gone. The players I mentioned didn't go "D3 is too easy, how can I make it harder". They simply left. That's what the majority does to a game which isn't balanced well.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Plenty of people quit a game for being too easy. In fact for D3 specifically I many people quit very early after the game was out because it was too easy and they were bored. (Which was also one of the worst parts of D2. My favorite mod was one that made early D2 very challenging.)
They may not directly associate the easy difficulty with why they left (most players don't think that deep, even the game developers who these players were,) but I'm sure if the game had challenged them and defeated them a few times early on, forcing them to develop better tactics and work at mastering the game, they would've been engaged more closely with the game. Instead, victory is freely given in early D3 and bored players quit playing.
Some players will invent ways to make the game challenging. A tiny minority. Everyone else? They're gone. The players I mentioned didn't go "D3 is too easy, how can I make it harder". They simply left. That's what the majority does to a game which isn't balanced well.
I disagree with this wholeheartedly with too many things we would argue about (mostly about your generous use of the words like plenty and minority), moreover you are mixing things together, i have specifically mentioned "fun things to do", when someone does not find the concept of repeating the game now with slighly harder mobs appealing and fun and you have NOTHING else to offer, then what you can do?
Oh yes, you can jack up the difficulty for no reason as a fabled universal flytrap, that NEVER worked, because now you have the first group already gone regardless and are alienating another group, leaving you with just the most dedicated group, that is also unfortunately very prone to leaving due to game changes buffs and nerfs.
On the other hand, IF you had a engaging skill and item system...
DIFFICULTY should be your LAST resort, not your first, a roadblock is a desperate move, irl and in games.
Comments
So now you change your position from "that would not work" to "we cannot completely change the game", fair enough. (But one still has to point out your usual dismissal, the claim that "enrage timers and hard inferno are not the games main problems")
This is another thing we disagree on, i personally do not think a simple tweak here and there will help. Honestly, if they got a flat tire because they chose to drive trough the scrap yard, with the prospect to find more tire piercing pieces of metal on the way, it is their problem.
The main issues people have with the game is stupid difficulty, bland gear system and systemic annoyances (lifesteal/proc chances, unavoidable avoidable hits, story persistence, maps too small and not enough random, and so on).
They cannot change the stupid difficulty, because at this point they would alienate their hardcore audience, which is all they have left (since i am a pessimist and this wild assumption suits my argument
), or very close to that, discounting uber casuals.
They cannot change the gear system without complety overhauling things like the blacksmith, drop the tiered crafting mats rubbish, to really be a item sink, or something similarly complex (like, you know, giving you really wow boss guaranteed loot), in any case it would complicate the ah part of the game, which they seem to care much about. Anything less complex will just shift the overall gear level up and the player will just reach the "i have nothing to do, all the interesting gear is astronomically rare to drop and too expensive to buy" point a few days or weeks later. I want this point to be MONTHS away, is that so much to ask for?
They cannot change the annoyances because they have said they dont want to.
So quite frankly i DO prefer saying "they should have made this like d2", because in my opinion the game is too far away from something truly enjoyable.
Flame on!
Still no clue where you got the idea I've ever claimed there was only one direction D3 could go.
Difficulty wasn't really a problem, at least not the way you describe. Later challenge is the only thing keeping the game a game. If it was super easy all the way through, it would've died out even faster. Difficulty was a problem for the opposite reason: being forced to play too-easy gameplay to reach a real challenge (as my original post pointed out.)
Difficulty is something they actually could fix. Add a slider for controlling basic mob stats (damage, hp, movement) which also ramps up rewards as it increases (+magicFind, +goldFind, +XP.) It'd be simple and allow everyone to find the exact challenge they want.
They could absolutely improve the gear system, and I imagine that's one of the ways an expansion will take things forward. Crafting could be made viable, but it'd be a bit of work. You wouldn't need to have things be gauranteed, just to ramp up the power of crafted items (like the current endgame recipes, except have that recipe power exist in early game too.)
Heck, an extremely simple way to make crafting viable, important, and engage players a long time would be to let players invest mats into improving existing items' affix strength.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Well, Diablo 3 is a pretty good game in my opinion. I had fun playing it and would recommend it to fans of the previous, but it's not without flaws. My primary issue with Diablo 3 is that Blizzard continues to nerf the enjoyment out of the game with every patch.
Are people finding alternatives to Elite enemies for gear farming? Remove them!
Is magic find working properly and increasing drop rate? Nerf the sucka and put cap on it!
Is this ability making gameplay fun and fast paced? Halve the ability and throw a 5 minute cooldown on it!
Basically, I guess they're just trying to keep it competitive and e-sport like or whatever, but it really seems like they are just driving it into the ground with every patch.
Will Diablo 3 change anything related to other games? No, not really. The sales were great because of the Diablo name, but the game itself was met with much criticism and the revolutionary real money auction house was met with more complaints than anything. I'm eager to see how Torchlight 2 stands in comparison.
Dont you think that the green stuff contradicts itself? Moreover you are again evading, i didnt say the should be no challenge, and challenge is even optimizing your time and hunting items that make you kill stuff faster, not just items that ENABLE you to kill stuff, there is no need to be dense and hadle this like it is somehow binary too easy and too difficult, choose one.
Both your suggestions kinda require lots of work and lots of overhaul (noone will craft a lv 20 item with 10str and 0.5% crit rating and there is no way blizz wil take the status quo and make it medium, it will be the hard setting, killing off the last remnants of item finding), and the stat improvement specifically has the drawback, that it would tempt blizz to tamper with the chances for specific affixes as to keep the best items rare.
Way too many doctrines to balance around, due to the choice of direction.
Yes i am a pessimist.
Flame on!
Given Diablo 3's massive sales we can probably expect a lot more of this stuff rather than less.
Indeed. When you consider an industry that only looks at sales numbers instead of feedback and fall off trends, it's an absolute. Especially in a down gaming market, every sale is under a spotlight. That's why it's been said time and time again. Vote with your wallet and wait and see. Stop pre ordering on hype.
Cars need engines. By making this statement I haven't implied there's only one way to travel, I've merely described a trait of cars. In fact all forms of travel inherently involve some kind of engine to power the locomotion.
Nearly all forms of games inherently involve some kind of challenge to create interesting decisions. (The only exception are things like FarmVille, which aren't true games but function more as relaxation/decoration activities; which is fine for them, but D3 isn't remotely close to FarmVille.)
The only suggestion I mentioned which would take 3-4 people more than a week to implement would be the affix improvement, due to needing major new UI elements. The difficulty slider would be particularly easy to implement. Improving crafting would be extremely easy to implement and only take time to balance correctly (and yes plenty of players are going to craft level 20 stuff if it's powerful enough relative to drops.) The real question is whether crafting even deserves to be improved. I think the wisest move isn't to make it stronger than drops but merely balanced with them, as another source of items.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Games needing challenge (of any sort, because that makes the outcome uncertain, that is why we play) is one thing. Games in no way NEED hight or always increasing difficulty. As of Farmville, discounting it as a game is your loss.
As of your suggestions, yes, they are easy to implement themselves, but it does not change any of my points. But humor me, please explain what you understand under "powerful enough relative to drops", if we want to keep the entertertainment of getting drops alive AND want to keep players from going to town / opening blacksmith interface after each drop and tinker around (both stated goals of blizz).
Flame on!
Well as my very first post stated, the lack of difficulty options is a flaw in Blizzard's design (also present in WOW,) in that players can't consistently experience their personal sweet spot of challenge (which is crucial to hit because if it's too easy it's boring and if it's too hard it's frustrating.) But in that regard "high" difficulty certainly is required to hit the sweet spot of challenge for skilled players.
As for crafting, they're basically at that point right now with endgame recipes which provide enough magic properties. They just need to ensure that's true of mid-range crafting too (which it isn't.) Which probably means randomizing the property count a little. Consumable recipes would also be another opportunity (craft it once and recipe is gone, but it's a mid-game rare or set item instead of the typical magic-quality items you have to craft otherwise.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Because of what D3 turned out to be, I think it will be the last time Blizzard pulls this off. They vaporized their goodwill and brand image with a lot of game buyers with this release.
Well, i do not discount games without sweet spots, the game itself can be relatively easy or hard, yet still challenging or not (for example in wow rep achievment hunting is relatively easy, yet challenging timewise and effortwise [but i think that you will discount that one claiming that it is no challenge or bad design]). Skilled (as any other category of players) players will find (invent) the challenge themselves, you just have to give them tools and a fun system, i dont think there are many people who have ever quit a game for being "too easy", they have quit because they have run out of fun things to do. That is why i think basing longevity around difficulty is a tricky thing to do.
I think those are the most fundamental things we clash about.
As for crafting, as i said from the start, they would have to overall fix the system first, to actually make a lv40 item interesting to wear even later, so it is worth crafting, and that is not a easy feat with the ilevels and ah looming over the horizon.
Flame on!
Good. Then there will be less finicky people compelled to complain about every single little thing in the future releases and those of us who are not chronic complainers can enjoy our games in peace.
All the 17 year old wannabe game developers need to remember they are gamers...not developers and leave game creation to the profesionals.
Plenty of people quit a game for being too easy. In fact for D3 specifically I many people quit very early after the game was out because it was too easy and they were bored. (Which was also one of the worst parts of D2. My favorite mod was one that made early D2 very challenging.)
They may not directly associate the easy difficulty with why they left (most players don't think that deep, even the game developers who these players were,) but I'm sure if the game had challenged them and defeated them a few times early on, forcing them to develop better tactics and work at mastering the game, they would've been engaged more closely with the game. Instead, victory is freely given in early D3 and bored players quit playing.
Some players will invent ways to make the game challenging. A tiny minority. Everyone else? They're gone. The players I mentioned didn't go "D3 is too easy, how can I make it harder". They simply left. That's what the majority does to a game which isn't balanced well.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I disagree with this wholeheartedly with too many things we would argue about (mostly about your generous use of the words like plenty and minority), moreover you are mixing things together, i have specifically mentioned "fun things to do", when someone does not find the concept of repeating the game now with slighly harder mobs appealing and fun and you have NOTHING else to offer, then what you can do?
Oh yes, you can jack up the difficulty for no reason as a fabled universal flytrap, that NEVER worked, because now you have the first group already gone regardless and are alienating another group, leaving you with just the most dedicated group, that is also unfortunately very prone to leaving due to game changes buffs and nerfs.
On the other hand, IF you had a engaging skill and item system...
DIFFICULTY should be your LAST resort, not your first, a roadblock is a desperate move, irl and in games.
Flame on!
They sold 10mil copies - just think how many they'd sold if it were in any way a good game.
It *is* a good game for me. I am having fun. I will buy the expansion for sure.