Plenty of other ARPG's coming out actually, ie Torchlight 2 and Path of exile.
Grim Dawn too. That's the one I'm really hopeful for since I don't see PoE fixing their end game.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
The genre is far more limited then others around is all. Hack n Slash has been a pretty quite genre since its not exactly the most popular, particularly now a days when ADD rampently plays in the gamers mind (even my own has been corrupted due to the wide variety).
There is less competition in the genre is all, but it doesn't mean there isn't anything good. Diablo 3 has recieved a lot of negative reviews becuase honestly, I feel 90% of the people reviewing are pretty much Negative Nellies and just view a game purely for its faults and can't embrace its good points, particularly after they idolized a game so much. Buying so much into hype seems to make even a decent game become completely bad in their minds. Add in that a lot of people jump into the game not liking the genre, its to be expected they would view it negatively and fill it with their bias due to being used to the very 'laid back' MMO style of games they have grown to know.
Don't get me wrong, Diablo 3 is far from perfect, but from a Hack n Slash lover's view its still a good game. Is it better then its competition? Yes, what is out right now it does stand above just due to its production quality (keeping in mind the little polish components, there are flaws with it keep in mind) but none of its real competition has been released yet in terms of new games. I'll bet torchlight 2 will find a lot of attention due to its low cost and Path of Exile might do well itself.
Just give a few months for the 'new' competitors to come out and you can see people doing a tug of war with which is better. In the end the genre just isn't as popular as the casual MMO genre that is top dog in the field and with Action being implimented more (such as Tera) its much more likely that it will remain at top of its own type of ladder seperate from all the normal MMos you see on this site.
The genre is far more limited then others around is all. Hack n Slash has been a pretty quite genre since its not exactly the most popular, particularly now a days when ADD rampently plays in the gamers mind (even my own has been corrupted due to the wide variety).
There is less competition in the genre is all, but it doesn't mean there isn't anything good. Diablo 3 has recieved a lot of negative reviews becuase honestly, I feel 90% of the people reviewing are pretty much Negative Nellies and just view a game purely for its faults and can't embrace its good points, particularly after they idolized a game so much. Buying so much into hype seems to make even a decent game become completely bad in their minds. Add in that a lot of people jump into the game not liking the genre, its to be expected they would view it negatively and fill it with their bias due to being used to the very 'laid back' MMO style of games they have grown to know.
Don't get me wrong, Diablo 3 is far from perfect, but from a Hack n Slash lover's view its still a good game. Is it better then its competition? Yes, what is out right now it does stand above just due to its production quality (keeping in mind the little polish components, there are flaws with it keep in mind) but none of its real competition has been released yet in terms of new games. I'll bet torchlight 2 will find a lot of attention due to its low cost and Path of Exile might do well itself.
Just give a few months for the 'new' competitors to come out and you can see people doing a tug of war with which is better. In the end the genre just isn't as popular as the casual MMO genre that is top dog in the field and with Action being implimented more (such as Tera) its much more likely that it will remain at top of its own type of ladder seperate from all the normal MMos you see on this site.
You have a point about the negative nellies and all that. Personally, I was waiting for the game for years, then starte dlearning more about it and got pretty turned off and hd no intention of buying it especially with GW2 coming out soon. But since my GF actually likes Diablo 2 (the only game of mine she likes) and really wanted to try D3 I ended up buying it a few days after launch.
So let me give a little bit of both perspectives.
I was a huge fan of D2, played it constantly from about 3 months after launch until probably 2 years after LoD came out. Sinc ethen played it on and off a bit when i got bored with other games. Now with D3, it does have its good points sure, but TBH the collection of bad things in the game is kind of overriding most of the good. I guess the biggest factor in it all is that its freaking Blizzard, and they made the other 2. Yes I know its not the same staff, but you would thin that they would be at least remotely aware of what it was that made D2 so loved to so many people. But instead they got rid of the majority of what people enjoyed in D2 and replaced it with nothing but crap. If it were a different game made by a different company, you wouldnt see some of the complaints you do, but that fact that it IS Diablo and they ruined so much of what made Diablo 1 & 2 great is why so many are complaining. Most of us were expecting a new & improved Diablo 2, not the hollow shell of the series that it turned out to be. Im still playing it a bit in hopes it will get better with some patches, but honestly if GW2 were to launch today I dont think I would ever touch D3 again without a major overhaul of a big chunk of the game.
Now for my girlfriend... She isnt a big gamer, most experience she has with gaming is on consoles. But like 6 months back she saw me playing D2 and was like "that looks fun as hell i want to play it". So I installed a copy on her laptop and she has been hooked ever since. She reamed me when I said I wasnt going to buy D3 because she also thought it would be an improved Diablo 2. She played it for a few days, and now keeps bugging me to reinstall Diablo 2 because it was so much better. Her review of Diablo 3 is basically... "this is f*cking lame, i want diablo 2 back". For her part, like I mentioned she isnt all that experienced, and doesnt pay attention to all the little details and no all the ins and outs of games and understand stats & gear and all of that stuff very well. Her opinion is basically just wether or not she is having fun playing the game. To her, its extremely boring.
I'm kinda the opposite. I'm a pretty casual player, too, and couldn't care less for all the Inferno crap. I've been playing DII prior to DIII (after getting bored of Path of Exile, no less) coming out and I got so sick of the 1-spell gameplay I actually installed Diablo I (lol) and played that instead, and then installed Hellfire and played that instead... after playing DIII, I don't see myself coming back to DII. Simply because 6 spells > 2 spells.
Its a fun game for what it is....an arcade action RPG.
Its not like a mmorpg (this site needs to change its name to anything.com btw) where you need to devote a huge chunk of your time to accomplish stuff.
What i am impressed with is the ground objects in the game. Theres all sorts of grat to shoot, destroy, loot on the ground, and its interesting to see the actual game enviroment react to you killing stuff. The tourture chamber was what really got me, destroying a torture table causes a partial corpse to roll ofwn through the grind wheels in it, theres fire troughs that spill out fire, somewhat of an obstical course with fire floors and giant chopping butcher knifes. Theres a lot of interaction with the actual world other than just killing stuff and looting obvious chests. Plus theres a lot of ground crumbling as you walk over it and stuff caving in ect. Very creative with their loot objects to the point where you sometimes pull a lever and a pully machine hauls up a chest from off screen ect.
Its this that makes this game stand out, on top of the merger of diablo style left/right click combat and DOTA style 4 skills.
I think people who devote unnatural amounts of time to this game are going to be dissapointed, it doesnt have the replayablity that a mmorpg with raids and battleground has, on top of a lack of a guild system (jesus why didnt they add guilds with a raidable guild dungeon that other guilds could attack?)
For a casual play game its pretty good, i dont mind the lack of stats or skill buying, since now i can swap skills on the fly and change runes which can significantly change the skills.
Will i still be playing in 5 months...probably not...however that wasnt the goal of buying this game...and no subs so ill always be able to head back if i get the urge for an arcade game rpg.
It depends on how the original poster sees competition: is it someone releasing a product like D3 or is it one that will sell as many box sales as D3? If it is the first, it will be a definite yes with at least three titles coming to the markets soon (should include Grim Dawn here to the other two that have already been mentioned). If it is the latter, I would say doubtful unfortunately.
The one title I think will do quite well is TL2 though. People can poke fingers at Runic for retailing their game at 18€, but I think it is awesome. TL2 probably did not cost anywhere near what D3 cost in development, not just because Runic have a smaller team, haven't advertized as much, and are spending a fraction of the development time. Why not offer it at a different price that is more competitive? A lot of indie companies are doing this these days, and to me the future of the genre will go where the indie companies take it because it is clear to me that people really do like indie games. Just look on steam to see how many are being offered there and that quite a few make the "most sold" list.
Just because TL2 is retailing at 18€ does not make the game a joke or a lesser game than D3. In fact if anything, all of the beta impressions of TL2 have been glowing or at least positive, whereas they really weren't for D3.
Just because TL2 is retailing at 18€ does not make the game a joke or a lesser game than D3. In fact if anything, all of the beta impressions of TL2 have been glowing or at least positive, whereas they really weren't for D3.
The price for TL2 is most certainly why it will do so well. It may not have the precise level of polish that Diablo 3 does, but at one third of the price, people's expectations are going to be far more grounded. The biggest thing I'm seeing with D3 is that while a lot of people think it's worth the price, there is also a lot of "it's good, but not 60 dollars good." In the end, the presence of evenly mildly negative PR is going to hurt Blizzard as previously they have not experienced much of even mild disappointment as a result of a new game release.
I don't know, but sites just slap on a very high rating to D3 "just because" when it has SO VERY MANY problems, gets old fast, and is a mess of hacks, exploits, a horrendous plot, lackluster gameplay, server problems, and general incompetence it all gets so annoying..
Looking like Diablo 3's review here on MMORPG will be nothing but fluff also..
Torchlight 2 looks to be yet another "Blink and you're done" like the first game though, so it's hard to see any longevity from it.
Path of exile also has like no content and can be rushed through so absurdly fast it will also reach a "Why even bother..?" with nothing to keep you coming back to it when it's trying to be cash shop driven also..
Guess if you stop and think about everything, it IS pretty depressing..
Plenty of other ARPG's coming out actually, ie Torchlight 2 and Path of exile.
Well Torchlight is a good arpg game but it remains to be seen if TL2 can run with D3. Based on my D3 experience I highly doubt TL2 will compete, but for the sake of competition I hope I am wrong. Path of Exile just plain blows so you can toss that one out. So basically to answer the OPs question: No, D3 has no competition. In fact, it took D3 to dethrone D2.
Plenty of other ARPG's coming out actually, ie Torchlight 2 and Path of exile.
Well Torchlight is a good arpg game but it remains to be seen if TL2 can run with D3. Based on my D3 experience I highly doubt TL2 will compete, but for the sake of competition I hope I am wrong. Path of Exile just plain blows so you can toss that one out. So basically to answer the OPs question: No, D3 has no competition. In fact, it took D3 to dethrone D2.
PoE just blows huh? Care to explain what blows so much about it. I think it is a very good game, even better than D3. I have played D3 since it came out, hardcore and softcore and the game is just not very good. I lose my desire to log in as each day passes, I find it boring with the loot and the 'must have' skills, which we were told ALL skills would be viable. That is laughable.
I have been waiting on D3 since I heard it was in development. I played lots of D2 and loved most of my time in it. This game is just not on the same level - enjoyment wise. Sure it looks better, has flashy effects and improved on some design flaws in D2 but overall it is not what I expected. But this is the price to be paid with the Activision takeover, i.e. money hungry, and the loss of Blizzard North, which is now ArenaNet.
My problems with D3:
-Auction House always down. You get 10 auctions and sometimes they get stuck in limbo and you have to wait til they time out to post them again or new items. I've lost hundreds of thousands of gold because items value changed over those 48 hours I had to wait to get my item back to resell it.
-Loot sucks. Main Stat+Vit has to be on every gear or its mostly worthless, barring weapons. Who thought ~1% chance to freeze, fear etc was a good idea? All legendaries and sets are terrible compared to high end rares.
-Lack of randomization of maps. Each map pretty much is laid out the exact same way.
-Lack of testing = spot hotfixing. They have nerfed several skills and hampered some classes in the process. This also affects people who have spent hard earned gold to gear out for a spec then have blizzard nerf it into uselessness. This has also brought an influx of gear that should have otherwise not been obtained, which in turn has let others get further than they should be and now you have very high level gear that was supposed to be very hard to get.
-Lack of PvP support. There will be no ladders or rankings. They aren't even going to heavily balance the classes because they don't want it to become an e-Sport. Wouldn't this draw more attention if it was touted as an e-Sport? This comes off as a lazy ass dev team to me.
-Customer Support. Put in a ticket and wait over 50 hours for a response, and not even a custom response but one that is copy pasted. They didn't even read my ticket and gave me a blanket response to an issue close to my own. I then had to call them to get it taken care of and waited over 70 minutes on the phone.
-Lack of hotfix changes. They keep nerfing things and don't let us know exactly what was changed for hours or days until after they did it. Huge problem for hardcore characters and terrible community interaction.
-Lack of ways to progress on your own. This is probably my biggest problem with the game. If you were not to use the AH to buy new gear, especially weapons, this game would become impossible - barring the most epic luck ever. Each zone drops gear that is about 6-8 levels LOWER than the monsters you are killing. How am I supposed to get gear in Inferno Act I to progress into Act II?
-Difficulty. I love a hard game but there is a difference in hard and absurd frustration, which is what D3 is. I can kill shit on my wizard but I can't count how many mobs have charged me, or teleported on me or vortexed me in and instantly killed me. Blizzard knows this is a problem and I am not asking for an easy time, but there is literally no riggle room here. Even people with 1100 armor and 1k resists get 2-3 shot in Inferno Act 3/4.
Maybe one day it will be an enjoyable game, for me that time is not now. I now await PoE in open beta, since they won't be wiping those.
Originally posted by bumuscheekus I think Guantlet from 1985 gives it a pretty good run for its money. Same game basically minus the storyline. Coop bash bash bash.
And if I recall correctly, Gauntlet had a pretty innovative business model, too. You could feed in extra coins to replenish your health during the game, couldn't you? I remember thinking it must have been a crazy moneymaker given the number of coins I saw some people pouring into it.
Well, as already mentioned, there are quite a few worthy alternatives to D3, but it will be difficult for them to compete in terms of sales, given the huge pre-existing fanbase of Diablo.
That said, what does it matter if these other ARPGs match the sales of D3? Isn't it enough that they are fun to play?
Path of Exile, despite what some obviously uninformed fanboys claim, is of exceptionally high-quality and extremely fun. It has also made some great innovations to the genre; the flask system is simply the best iteration of health/mana post I've seen. The barter system is also extremely clever and alleviates many of the problems caused by a currency-based system. Add the amazing passive skill-tree, the equipable primary skill gems, and the customizable leagues...oh and world pvp tournaments, and there's plenty here that you can't get from D3.
Torchlight II is also shaping up to be very good. I wasn't a huge fan of the first one, but it loks like they are pulling out all the stops this time around. Customizable characters, 8 player co-op, and mod support are things you're not going to find in any other ARPG.
Lineage Eternal is also around the corner. Not sure too much about the details, but the videos I've seen look amazing, with great physics and environmental interaction.
Point being, has there ever been a better time for ARPGs? I don't think so.
Originally posted by bumuscheekus I think Guantlet from 1985 gives it a pretty good run for its money. Same game basically minus the storyline. Coop bash bash bash.
And if I recall correctly, Gauntlet had a pretty innovative business model, too. You could feed in extra coins to replenish your health during the game, couldn't you? I remember thinking it must have been a crazy moneymaker given the number of coins I saw some people pouring into it.
I bet I put more than $100 into Gauntlet alone when I was a kid. DON'T SHOOT THE HEALTH!!!
"I am not in a server with Gankers...THEY ARE IN A SERVER WITH ME!!!"
The only problem is the competition not being out yet.
After playing the betas of PoE, TL2 and D3 I found I really prefered PoE. It's the only game of the three that managed to get me excited by a somewhat higher difficulty right from the start. It also is a fresh breath of air in character development compared to the other two by offering much more freedom and choice. It requires planning and thinking ahead before you commit choices and that's something which I really enjoy.
Also it has a less linear world than D3 and feels much more dark and foreboding. So I decided to keep my money in my pocket and skip on D3 for the time being.
Just like people mentioned, there are other hack and slash games out there that offer competition to D3. Notably Torchlight and Path of Exile. Additionally the neverwinter nights games were also hack and slash based.
I will say that D3 is a very good game but people are getting burnt out once they hit Inferno because Inferno is insanely hard. And to excel at inferno, you need to be geared. To get geared, you need to either have a lot of gold or be extremely lucky. To get gold you need to grind (or exploit certain game mechanics...)
They need to add pvp in to keep people hooked. Talking with a lot of D2 and D1 players, people aren't use to hitting brick walls and its becoming very frustrating to them.
Comments
Lineage Eternal, though god knows when that will be out.
Torchlight 2, Path of Exile. I was under the impression that was plenty of competition on the horizon.
However, the BlizzKids will of course scream that Diablo is the only game in the genre. Just like WoW was the first and is the only MMO *fact
Healing the world since 2005
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
Grim Dawn too. That's the one I'm really hopeful for since I don't see PoE fixing their end game.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
The genre is far more limited then others around is all. Hack n Slash has been a pretty quite genre since its not exactly the most popular, particularly now a days when ADD rampently plays in the gamers mind (even my own has been corrupted due to the wide variety).
There is less competition in the genre is all, but it doesn't mean there isn't anything good. Diablo 3 has recieved a lot of negative reviews becuase honestly, I feel 90% of the people reviewing are pretty much Negative Nellies and just view a game purely for its faults and can't embrace its good points, particularly after they idolized a game so much. Buying so much into hype seems to make even a decent game become completely bad in their minds. Add in that a lot of people jump into the game not liking the genre, its to be expected they would view it negatively and fill it with their bias due to being used to the very 'laid back' MMO style of games they have grown to know.
Don't get me wrong, Diablo 3 is far from perfect, but from a Hack n Slash lover's view its still a good game. Is it better then its competition? Yes, what is out right now it does stand above just due to its production quality (keeping in mind the little polish components, there are flaws with it keep in mind) but none of its real competition has been released yet in terms of new games. I'll bet torchlight 2 will find a lot of attention due to its low cost and Path of Exile might do well itself.
Just give a few months for the 'new' competitors to come out and you can see people doing a tug of war with which is better. In the end the genre just isn't as popular as the casual MMO genre that is top dog in the field and with Action being implimented more (such as Tera) its much more likely that it will remain at top of its own type of ladder seperate from all the normal MMos you see on this site.
You have a point about the negative nellies and all that. Personally, I was waiting for the game for years, then starte dlearning more about it and got pretty turned off and hd no intention of buying it especially with GW2 coming out soon. But since my GF actually likes Diablo 2 (the only game of mine she likes) and really wanted to try D3 I ended up buying it a few days after launch.
So let me give a little bit of both perspectives.
I was a huge fan of D2, played it constantly from about 3 months after launch until probably 2 years after LoD came out. Sinc ethen played it on and off a bit when i got bored with other games. Now with D3, it does have its good points sure, but TBH the collection of bad things in the game is kind of overriding most of the good. I guess the biggest factor in it all is that its freaking Blizzard, and they made the other 2. Yes I know its not the same staff, but you would thin that they would be at least remotely aware of what it was that made D2 so loved to so many people. But instead they got rid of the majority of what people enjoyed in D2 and replaced it with nothing but crap. If it were a different game made by a different company, you wouldnt see some of the complaints you do, but that fact that it IS Diablo and they ruined so much of what made Diablo 1 & 2 great is why so many are complaining. Most of us were expecting a new & improved Diablo 2, not the hollow shell of the series that it turned out to be. Im still playing it a bit in hopes it will get better with some patches, but honestly if GW2 were to launch today I dont think I would ever touch D3 again without a major overhaul of a big chunk of the game.
Now for my girlfriend... She isnt a big gamer, most experience she has with gaming is on consoles. But like 6 months back she saw me playing D2 and was like "that looks fun as hell i want to play it". So I installed a copy on her laptop and she has been hooked ever since. She reamed me when I said I wasnt going to buy D3 because she also thought it would be an improved Diablo 2. She played it for a few days, and now keeps bugging me to reinstall Diablo 2 because it was so much better. Her review of Diablo 3 is basically... "this is f*cking lame, i want diablo 2 back". For her part, like I mentioned she isnt all that experienced, and doesnt pay attention to all the little details and no all the ins and outs of games and understand stats & gear and all of that stuff very well. Her opinion is basically just wether or not she is having fun playing the game. To her, its extremely boring.
I'm kinda the opposite. I'm a pretty casual player, too, and couldn't care less for all the Inferno crap. I've been playing DII prior to DIII (after getting bored of Path of Exile, no less) coming out and I got so sick of the 1-spell gameplay I actually installed Diablo I (lol) and played that instead, and then installed Hellfire and played that instead... after playing DIII, I don't see myself coming back to DII. Simply because 6 spells > 2 spells.
Its a fun game for what it is....an arcade action RPG.
Its not like a mmorpg (this site needs to change its name to anything.com btw) where you need to devote a huge chunk of your time to accomplish stuff.
What i am impressed with is the ground objects in the game. Theres all sorts of grat to shoot, destroy, loot on the ground, and its interesting to see the actual game enviroment react to you killing stuff. The tourture chamber was what really got me, destroying a torture table causes a partial corpse to roll ofwn through the grind wheels in it, theres fire troughs that spill out fire, somewhat of an obstical course with fire floors and giant chopping butcher knifes. Theres a lot of interaction with the actual world other than just killing stuff and looting obvious chests. Plus theres a lot of ground crumbling as you walk over it and stuff caving in ect. Very creative with their loot objects to the point where you sometimes pull a lever and a pully machine hauls up a chest from off screen ect.
Its this that makes this game stand out, on top of the merger of diablo style left/right click combat and DOTA style 4 skills.
I think people who devote unnatural amounts of time to this game are going to be dissapointed, it doesnt have the replayablity that a mmorpg with raids and battleground has, on top of a lack of a guild system (jesus why didnt they add guilds with a raidable guild dungeon that other guilds could attack?)
For a casual play game its pretty good, i dont mind the lack of stats or skill buying, since now i can swap skills on the fly and change runes which can significantly change the skills.
Will i still be playing in 5 months...probably not...however that wasnt the goal of buying this game...and no subs so ill always be able to head back if i get the urge for an arcade game rpg.
It depends on how the original poster sees competition: is it someone releasing a product like D3 or is it one that will sell as many box sales as D3? If it is the first, it will be a definite yes with at least three titles coming to the markets soon (should include Grim Dawn here to the other two that have already been mentioned). If it is the latter, I would say doubtful unfortunately.
The one title I think will do quite well is TL2 though. People can poke fingers at Runic for retailing their game at 18€, but I think it is awesome. TL2 probably did not cost anywhere near what D3 cost in development, not just because Runic have a smaller team, haven't advertized as much, and are spending a fraction of the development time. Why not offer it at a different price that is more competitive? A lot of indie companies are doing this these days, and to me the future of the genre will go where the indie companies take it because it is clear to me that people really do like indie games. Just look on steam to see how many are being offered there and that quite a few make the "most sold" list.
Just because TL2 is retailing at 18€ does not make the game a joke or a lesser game than D3. In fact if anything, all of the beta impressions of TL2 have been glowing or at least positive, whereas they really weren't for D3.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
Because they make good fun games. Why is it sad? I have great fun playing D3 and it deserves my $60.
If you don't like it, don't play it. Its huge success should not concern you.
The price for TL2 is most certainly why it will do so well. It may not have the precise level of polish that Diablo 3 does, but at one third of the price, people's expectations are going to be far more grounded. The biggest thing I'm seeing with D3 is that while a lot of people think it's worth the price, there is also a lot of "it's good, but not 60 dollars good." In the end, the presence of evenly mildly negative PR is going to hurt Blizzard as previously they have not experienced much of even mild disappointment as a result of a new game release.
I don't know, but sites just slap on a very high rating to D3 "just because" when it has SO VERY MANY problems, gets old fast, and is a mess of hacks, exploits, a horrendous plot, lackluster gameplay, server problems, and general incompetence it all gets so annoying..
Looking like Diablo 3's review here on MMORPG will be nothing but fluff also..
Torchlight 2 looks to be yet another "Blink and you're done" like the first game though, so it's hard to see any longevity from it.
Path of exile also has like no content and can be rushed through so absurdly fast it will also reach a "Why even bother..?" with nothing to keep you coming back to it when it's trying to be cash shop driven also..
Guess if you stop and think about everything, it IS pretty depressing..
why would d3 need competition its not a fkin mmo its a single player game its competition would be skyrim
Well Torchlight is a good arpg game but it remains to be seen if TL2 can run with D3. Based on my D3 experience I highly doubt TL2 will compete, but for the sake of competition I hope I am wrong. Path of Exile just plain blows so you can toss that one out. So basically to answer the OPs question: No, D3 has no competition. In fact, it took D3 to dethrone D2.
PoE just blows huh? Care to explain what blows so much about it. I think it is a very good game, even better than D3. I have played D3 since it came out, hardcore and softcore and the game is just not very good. I lose my desire to log in as each day passes, I find it boring with the loot and the 'must have' skills, which we were told ALL skills would be viable. That is laughable.
I have been waiting on D3 since I heard it was in development. I played lots of D2 and loved most of my time in it. This game is just not on the same level - enjoyment wise. Sure it looks better, has flashy effects and improved on some design flaws in D2 but overall it is not what I expected. But this is the price to be paid with the Activision takeover, i.e. money hungry, and the loss of Blizzard North, which is now ArenaNet.
My problems with D3:
-Auction House always down. You get 10 auctions and sometimes they get stuck in limbo and you have to wait til they time out to post them again or new items. I've lost hundreds of thousands of gold because items value changed over those 48 hours I had to wait to get my item back to resell it.
-Loot sucks. Main Stat+Vit has to be on every gear or its mostly worthless, barring weapons. Who thought ~1% chance to freeze, fear etc was a good idea? All legendaries and sets are terrible compared to high end rares.
-Lack of randomization of maps. Each map pretty much is laid out the exact same way.
-Lack of testing = spot hotfixing. They have nerfed several skills and hampered some classes in the process. This also affects people who have spent hard earned gold to gear out for a spec then have blizzard nerf it into uselessness. This has also brought an influx of gear that should have otherwise not been obtained, which in turn has let others get further than they should be and now you have very high level gear that was supposed to be very hard to get.
-Lack of PvP support. There will be no ladders or rankings. They aren't even going to heavily balance the classes because they don't want it to become an e-Sport. Wouldn't this draw more attention if it was touted as an e-Sport? This comes off as a lazy ass dev team to me.
-Customer Support. Put in a ticket and wait over 50 hours for a response, and not even a custom response but one that is copy pasted. They didn't even read my ticket and gave me a blanket response to an issue close to my own. I then had to call them to get it taken care of and waited over 70 minutes on the phone.
-Lack of hotfix changes. They keep nerfing things and don't let us know exactly what was changed for hours or days until after they did it. Huge problem for hardcore characters and terrible community interaction.
-Lack of ways to progress on your own. This is probably my biggest problem with the game. If you were not to use the AH to buy new gear, especially weapons, this game would become impossible - barring the most epic luck ever. Each zone drops gear that is about 6-8 levels LOWER than the monsters you are killing. How am I supposed to get gear in Inferno Act I to progress into Act II?
-Difficulty. I love a hard game but there is a difference in hard and absurd frustration, which is what D3 is. I can kill shit on my wizard but I can't count how many mobs have charged me, or teleported on me or vortexed me in and instantly killed me. Blizzard knows this is a problem and I am not asking for an easy time, but there is literally no riggle room here. Even people with 1100 armor and 1k resists get 2-3 shot in Inferno Act 3/4.
Maybe one day it will be an enjoyable game, for me that time is not now. I now await PoE in open beta, since they won't be wiping those.
Well, as already mentioned, there are quite a few worthy alternatives to D3, but it will be difficult for them to compete in terms of sales, given the huge pre-existing fanbase of Diablo.
That said, what does it matter if these other ARPGs match the sales of D3? Isn't it enough that they are fun to play?
Path of Exile, despite what some obviously uninformed fanboys claim, is of exceptionally high-quality and extremely fun. It has also made some great innovations to the genre; the flask system is simply the best iteration of health/mana post I've seen. The barter system is also extremely clever and alleviates many of the problems caused by a currency-based system. Add the amazing passive skill-tree, the equipable primary skill gems, and the customizable leagues...oh and world pvp tournaments, and there's plenty here that you can't get from D3.
Torchlight II is also shaping up to be very good. I wasn't a huge fan of the first one, but it loks like they are pulling out all the stops this time around. Customizable characters, 8 player co-op, and mod support are things you're not going to find in any other ARPG.
Lineage Eternal is also around the corner. Not sure too much about the details, but the videos I've seen look amazing, with great physics and environmental interaction.
Point being, has there ever been a better time for ARPGs? I don't think so.
Told blizz to do a currency free system but nope they didn't.
This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
I bet I put more than $100 into Gauntlet alone when I was a kid. DON'T SHOOT THE HEALTH!!!
"I am not in a server with Gankers...THEY ARE IN A SERVER WITH ME!!!"
The only problem is the competition not being out yet.
After playing the betas of PoE, TL2 and D3 I found I really prefered PoE. It's the only game of the three that managed to get me excited by a somewhat higher difficulty right from the start. It also is a fresh breath of air in character development compared to the other two by offering much more freedom and choice. It requires planning and thinking ahead before you commit choices and that's something which I really enjoy.
Also it has a less linear world than D3 and feels much more dark and foreboding. So I decided to keep my money in my pocket and skip on D3 for the time being.
My brand new bloggity blog.
Just like people mentioned, there are other hack and slash games out there that offer competition to D3. Notably Torchlight and Path of Exile. Additionally the neverwinter nights games were also hack and slash based.
I will say that D3 is a very good game but people are getting burnt out once they hit Inferno because Inferno is insanely hard. And to excel at inferno, you need to be geared. To get geared, you need to either have a lot of gold or be extremely lucky. To get gold you need to grind (or exploit certain game mechanics...)
They need to add pvp in to keep people hooked. Talking with a lot of D2 and D1 players, people aren't use to hitting brick walls and its becoming very frustrating to them.