Time Capsule from PoE Closed Beta -- a classic PoE vs D3 thread circa 2012

You might want to post that in the beta invitation forum as well, Black3r. Plenty of very eager would-be Wraeclastians (??? Wraeclasters? Wraeclastinese? Wraeclastians??) in there.

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

You might want to post that in the beta invitation forum as well, Black3r. Plenty of very eager would-be Wraeclastians (??? Wraeclasters? Wraeclastinese? Wraeclastians??) in there.

Wraeclonians. :)

It's upsetting to see how Activision clearly has more stake in development than the DEV team.

I'm sure at meeting they showed off these features to the guys from Activision and they said "no no no this will alienate too many people we want EVERYONE to want to buy this game."

Sigh, money has ruined gaming.

Yes, and that is why it is so hard to find good games these days. Popular ≠ good. I like games that challenge me ;)

No hand holding!!! XD

Whether that was their concern or not, I don't understand the reasoning behind casualisation in the first place.

The assumption that more casual gameplay will bring more sales is probably the most flawed assumption you can make.
Why? Well, because people that like casual gameplay ('casual gamers') do not watch news about the games they buy, and even if they do, they will buy the game regardless of what the developers do with it. Call of duty fans for example. The hardcore fans, however, might be more upset about the changes, and choose not to buy / play the game.

The end result is that your game will have practically the same amount of sales regardless of whether you casualise it or not, but you will get lower review scores and more disappointed hardcore fans. The same thing happened with Halo: Reach. They casualised it and as a result the sales were practically what you would expect from a halo game, while the hardcore fans were largely upset by the (imo flat-out stupid) changes.


Ps: Do note that most of what I said here mainly applies to sequals to established franchises, although it also applies to non-sequals, but possibly in a lesser fashion.

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Tagek wrote:

Whether that was their concern or not, I don't understand the reasoning behind casualisation in the first place.

The assumption that more casual gameplay will bring more sales is probably the most flawed assumption you can make.
Why? Well, because people that like casual gameplay ('casual gamers') do not watch news about the games they buy, and even if they do, they will buy the game regardless of what the developers do with it. Call of duty fans for example. The hardcore fans, however, might be more upset about the changes, and choose not to buy / play the game.

The end result is that your game will have practically the same amount of sales regardless of whether you casualise it or not, but you will get lower review scores and more disappointed hardcore fans. The same thing happened with Halo: Reach. They casualised it and as a result the sales were practically what you would expect from a halo game, while the hardcore fans were largely upset by the (imo flat-out stupid) changes.


Ps: Do note that most of what I said here mainly applies to sequals to established franchises, although it also applies to non-sequals, but possibly in a lesser fashion.

I think it's pretty obvious in this case. Blizzard don't want people to just buy this game. They want them to play it. To take part in that grand abomination that is the Real Money Auction House. After all, after a few free transactions/listings a month, *everyone* who uses that RMAH pays a number of fees to Blizzard just for using the service.

Now we must acknowledge that Diablo 3 was made with the WoW playerbase in mind. It is utterly ignorant and head-in-the-sandface of any of us to say otherwise. We live in a post-WoW world, where you are just as likely to meet a WoW player at the pub as you are someone who is into whatever your local favourite sport might be. She is likely to be far from the most unattractive girl you've ever seen. And she won't be afraid to talk about her mount. This is the world we now live in.

Diablo 3 cannot possibly cater to that sort of crowd *and* to the veterans. Not with an equal intensity. This is why another D1/D2 veteran friend of mine who did blunder his way through WoW (after we quit Guild Wars 1 post Eye-Of-The-North) laughed at me, literally bust his gut, when I showed interest in Diablo 3's proposed rune skill system. He said that there's no way that'll work, and that'll probably eventually resemble something from WoW.

...I'm not sure if he's over being so right about something so tragic.

To steer back on course: while D3 clearly sides with the casual gamer (at least at first; nm/hell/inferno might be extremely hard but it's still using the same baby-hand-holding character growth method to drag you through it), it has plumbed the lore quite deeply, and will no doubt present it in a very cinematic, eventful, DRAMATIC way. The first time I saw Cain waiting to be rescued, of course I had this crazy rush of nostalgia. Same voice actor, same crotchety demeanour -- holy God, I'm playing Diablo again! Not to mention the hints that all the Prime Evils would appear, that the Sin War would finally be resolved. And of course, Lachdanan's journal entries as you explore the cathedral -- talk about going back to the roots of Diablo 1!!

...But in the end it's all window-dressing. No matter how many names they drop, how many references and callbacks they make, the base gameplay experience has been watered down, simplified and some might even say concentrated. Is it still a clickclickclickkillfest? Of course. In fact, here, we'll take some of the work out of it for you, so you can *focus* on the clickclickclickkillfest. Have fun. Also, isn't our story awesome?!

...And that's how they've made it work. The gameplay is casual early on, probably ramping up into NM and beyond, but the lore/mythos is very hardcore, drawing on all the facets of the first two games. And both the newcomer and the veteran get to do precisely the thing that supposedly defined Diablo: clickclickclickkill.

This is, of course, wrong. What really defined Diablo was what you did to your character before and after the clickclickclickkill.

Been a member for 8 days and you already have beta?

That's somewhat funny.

Good post once again ^.

I had forgotten about the auction house, that makes sense indeed.
However, I don't think the auction house is such an abomination really.
Do I like that it's there? No. Ofcourse not.
But it might as well be. Everyone who has played diablo 2 for a long time knows that very large amounts of people bought from (according to game laws 'illegal') item websites.

All blizzard is doing is making it more safe so people don't get screwed in any way, while also making a profit out of it for themselves. And at least this way they can impose their own limits upon the system like say: Only 1 purchase a week, or whatever they come up with.

Cildaten: If you're referring to me, I consider it nothing shy of miraculous. You can find my first posts on the Beta Invite Forum. I deliberated over them for quite some time -- I typically hate gaming fora. And I really hate jumping through hoops with people I don't know just to try something.

I sat and watched the counter for a while, usually alt-tabbing out of Sins of a Solar Empire (whattagame) or from my actual *work*, and then sucked it up and said a few things on the Invite forum. And someone nicely threw me a key.

...It's that simple, that inexplicable and that wonderful.

My playing the game is the thank you to that person and to GGG; these posts are actually just me indulging a long pent-up frustration, disbelief and indignation. I'm not going to take all that to a D3 forum; I'm going to put it where it belongs: a forum likely to attract people who may share some of those sentiments, each with their own reservations, doubts and hopes.

This is easily the most successful, enjoyable (for me, at least!) and I think fruitful thread I've made about a game...ever. And I used to post like a madman on the diabloii.net fora, back in, oh, 2001 or so.

And that first line of my signature? I mean it. I really, really mean it.

One thing I still want to say though:
Perhaps we cling to much to the past, and perhaps we should forget about past installments and enjoy diablo 3 for what it is. Because even though it has argueably less depth in the skill-planning department (Or, at least, less trial and error).
But it will offer plenty of build combinations and options.
The road to those builds is less self-made, but it boils down to the same thing.

Also, it seems to me like people who enjoy playing singleplayer are forgetting something.
In diablo 2 you started out with nothing, and when you casted 2 skills you were basically out of mana already.
In D3 you will get fun skills from the beginning, while not losing a sense of progression, because as you level up you get progressively more bad-ass skills, as well as new and cooler skill runes for your old and new abilities.

To me, this really strengthens the singleplayer experience that diablo 3 offers, because once you had a high level char in diablo 2, starting a new one with no cool skills, no mana regen and no mana steal was (again, to me) rather tedious at times.