Seriously though, this time, it's for real. I am going to review this game one last time in a somewhat lengthy detailed analysis and then I am going to stop talking about it on my Blog for the sake of sanity.
But before I get to the game itself, I want to talk about cycles and how they apply to all sorts of aspects of life.
For example, there have been countless studies done on Empires, how they start, how they grow, how they decay and how they die. Countless examples throughout history suggest that this cycle is largely consistent and that in many cases the same thing happens again and again and again.
The empire cycle can be studied elsewhere with much greater detail than here, but I will gloss over some of their aspects so as to later draw some parallels.
And empire is usually built out of some change, a rebellion, a catalysing event, some major movement. The empire grows and builds great wealth, enters its prime and eventually due to over-stretching its bounds via imperialism and placating its populace through bread and circuses, decays and eventually is overrun by an outside force, and then the cycle continues.
A brief example of this is the American empire, that rebelled from the British empire in the 18th century because the British Government was large and corrupt. The founding fathers rebelled from England, established a small and effective government and experienced the largest growth in wealth any empire has ever recorded in history. America was filled with great workers, great minds and industry kept exploding. Fast forward and the Government is essentially a re-creation of the large bloated corrupt entity it was escaping in the first place. It's tax code is 16000 pages long, it has corrupted its people and is overstretched...you get the point. This empire is experiencing the end of its cycle.
Now lets move back to our topic of discussion, Diablo and more importantly, Blizzard, which itself can be likened to an Empire that has grown big and bloated.
You see, when I play Diablo 3, I feel as though I am engaging in a very beautiful very polished simulation that on the surface, appears to offer me a wide variety of choices and interesting things to do. Imagine you are in a room with clean white walls and a bunch of buttons on a gorgeous central panel made of polished glass. Each button has a very distinctive icon on it, like the pommel of a sword. One of them has the semblance of an elephant on it. You press the button and it sinks into the panel with a satisfying click. Seconds later the walls display an African savannah and you can smell the greenery and the mud around you. You are in the midst of a herd of Elephants! Rumbling through the wilderness, heck the ground in the room is even trembling! After a minute or so, the scenery dissipates and the vibrating stops and you find yourself back in the room. The next button is that of a whale. You press that one and the room is transformed into a section of ocean deep under the surface. You see whales as big as basketball court swimming by.
Then a third button has lions on it. You press that one and...the wall displays a 2d image of a lion and it roars at you then disappears. You think something is wrong so you press the button again only to replay the same dull animation, again and again and again, until you almost go mad. The panel is made of material and craftsmanship so great, it must be VERY expensive. The way they made the floor vibrate and all the amazing effects, why go to all the trouble to make such a quality simulation and leave so much of it unfinished?! It makes no sense!
This is how I feel when I play Diablo 3. A lot of it just doesn't make any sense, at ALL.
Their budget was bigger than any budget. Their team worked on the game for a DECADE.
I played two classes primarily during my experience of this game, a Wizard and a Barbarian. I played from 2.1.1 to 2.1.2 post ROS release. I did not play prior to this, I did not see the RMAH or any of the problems players used to have back in INFERNO or whatever you call it.
My experience as the mage was pretty fun initially. The combat in diablo 3 is TOP quality. The simulation is great, the effects are great, the physics are brilliant, the animations are perfect. Every interaction you see on screen is brilliant. These are well designed SYSTEMS. A SYSTEM is a set of rules that define an interaction. For example, we have a leveling SYSTEM. You gain XP and get to the next level which gives you more stats and opens up new skills.
Design within a system is not just fine tuning math, but making sure as well that some events and experiences happen at regular intervals or happen at all, to ensure the player gets to experience these things. An example of design is for example the careful coding and design of the camera controls in God of War. If you've played God of War, you would know the way in which the camera displays things to you plays a big part in framing the action, in suggesting to you where to go next, and in subtly hinting to you special areas that contain valuable power ups.
Back on topic, what I see in Diablo 3 is a game whose systems are in place, but whose game is not yet designed. To use a metaphor, its like mixing the best ingredients known to man into a dish and half cooking it. You can still sense the quality of the components, but because it has not properly meshed together, you find it somewhat lacking in several respects.
You see, once I hit max level on the Wizard, I began to acquire the best end game set for the Wizard, firebird. Eventually I had a ring of royal grandeur and enough pieces to enjoy the six piece set bonus. Suddenly I found myself doing way more damage than before and was able to clear up to GR 35!! I felt GREAT, I was mastering my class and the style of play, AND I was progressing and learning.
Along the way lots of items were dropping that were interesting for other potential builds, but because there was no set with a super powered six piece bonus to fit those items (that suggested playing a cold Wizard), those choices were severely sub optimal and basically useless. In other words, if you are playing a Wizard and want to progress and enjoy the end game, you are going to play a Firebird Wizard or you are going to have difficulty clearing content and progressing at all.
Further, you need a weapon in this game that has good damage (physical dps) to deal good spell damage, a role playing purist would find this abhorrent to say the least. Back to the loot for another second, you see because the firebird set is top, you have to mostly wear those pieces, and your OFF pieces are mostly going to be those that provide +% to elite damage, because all other mods are worthless compared to this, causing the pool of items you actually want to be very small.
Most of the items that drop are very very generic and do not feel legendary, have basically no flavour at all.
My experience with the barbarian was worse, because while I enjoyed playing the Raekor set, I am an old school player who loves whirlwind. What I would frequently do when an item dropped that was good for whirlwind is I would try the build out, then after 10-15 minutes of seeing my kill speed cut to 1/3, I would go back to using Furious charge and the raekor set.
Essentially, Diablo 3 is unfinished. 3 years later, millions of dollars later, the game is largely unpolished and lacking in actual design outside of the SYSTEMS. The items need to be designed, they are NOT. The builds need to be designed, they are NOT. The end game content needs to be DESIGNED, instead they have automated systems that generate random dungeons.
I decided to do what I used to do in Diablo 2, which is BOSS runs. So in adventure mode I went ahead and killed Diablo and then Malthiel or whatever his name is. They dropped crap loot, I got no bonus experience and the entire experience felt pointless, like I had pressed the lion button but the developers had left an IOU or TODO sign there instead of actual content.
If I had to compare Diablo 3 to a dish of food, it would be sweet and delicious pork ribs that were mishandled during cooking and as such not enough meat was left on the bones, so Im sitting there sucking at these bones for scraps of meat and occasionally getting a nugget in my mouth, but mostly just hoping there was more meat on the bones.
There isn't enough to do, the items are not well designed, build diversity was killed by set bonuses (Which could be solved if they had actually shipped with sets for a wide variety of builds that were all endgame viable, but that did not happen). And the endgame consists of doing the same thing over and over. Why not just let the player go to a particular dungeon or environment they LIKE with a specific set of monsters they LIKE and let them grind for loot there? There is no CHOICE, there is no DESIGN, there are only systems that you must accept, its quite brutal.
The Greater rift system for example is quite stupid in its design. Eventually the monsters deal so much damage that you have to have a tank and CC and dps to clear, in other words solo is impossible beyond a certain point unless you spec a VERY limited and stringent way. The game essentially forces you to play a certain way. While I would love to play whirlwind, not only is the damage far too low, but the survivability sucks. Furious charge continuously stuns all the enemies around you, and without constantly stunning them in greater rifts, you would die over and over VERY quickly.
In other words, the game systems were put in place and no design or attention to detail was put into ensuring the player could try to solve the problem in different ways. There is often only one way to try and overcome the challenge. All that money you guys paid went to shareholders and Bobby Kotick's fat ass. Attention to detail an quality design are not the concern of a multi billion dollar company, they know you will buy their game on reputation alone, so they don't even need to deliver you the good shit anymore.
Funny thing is, the game itself is classical conditioning and it is no different than buying the game. You kill monsters and get upgrades over and over until eventually even if you don't get upgrades, you keep killing the monsters HOPING to get upgrades.
You play blizzard games over and over because theyre good, and eventually, you keep playing and buying them HOPING they're going to be good.
And now we come back full circle to the empire analogy I started with. Blizzard got too big, too bloated, so successful it things it doesn't even need to finish its games anymore before releasing them. The indie developer it once was, with attention to detail and quality has become the very thing it was running from, big corporate and unpolished.
I would wager they are at the end of their cycle as the tier 1 developer. Some barbarian horde is ready and waiting to take their territory.
Friday 30 January 2015
Tuesday 20 January 2015
And yet, there's Hearthstone
This game by contrast, is designed with a very specific intention by a team of people that are clearly dedicated and LOVE their product.
The card design is flavourful and mostly balanced (I suppose Flamestrike comes to mind as one card that is a tad overpowered compared to others).
The game feels well tuned, the experience is enjoyable almost indefinitely. The game is damn good.
While there is a not insignificant potion of luck involved, there is a good amount of skill as well. In fact it could be argued that this game has a better luck/skill ratio than Magic the Gathering, by virtue of the simple fact that in Magic you have to roll a dice every turn to EITHER draw something you can use to affect the board and outcome of the game, OR you draw a land and do little to nothing that turn. In person you can bluff that you just drew a good card, but online this is not so. Furthermore, because players have access to hero powers, and because cards are very well balanced in Hearthstone (not all the case in Magic), games tend to be much more interactive with a healthy back and forth before someone claims victory.
Time will tell if Hearthstone is able to maintain this without resorting to power creep to keep people engaged. This is extremely telling in Magic the Gathering. Once upon a time a 2/2 for 2 passed the vanilla test. Then it became a 3/2 for 2, then a 3/3 for 2, then it gets haste or some other plus ability etc.
Cards in MTG have gotten so swingy that I wonder whether the starting hands need to be smaller and the starting life needs to be higher (perhaps 30 or 25).
Regardless, lets shift our focus back to Hearthstone. Another reason it kicks solid ass is that the micro-transaction system they have is basically perfect, that you can do a draft (arena) for just 2 bucks and if you are a busy kind of person, you can do one or two drafts a week off of daily quest rewards alone and never have to invest any money. BUT you can always splurge on a few packs or binge on arena if you so choose by spending very modest amounts of cash.
Furthermore, the Arena system is much much better than MTG drafting. You can pause picks at any time, play as many games as you want in one sitting. Overall this product while casual friendly, still appeals to the hardcore because of the very real optimization and perfection of decision making in a game and the tactical challenges in both picking cards and playing the games.
Now it does have its faults, but those are perfectly acceptable and make the experience better overall. One glaring fault is that you may get very unlucky during arena drafting and be presented with mediocre cards and might face off against someone who was very fortunate during their draft. Your chances in this sort of match up are usually marginal at best, regardless of player skill and decisions. But of course, if you have the exact same quality of draft deck every time, it would get stale pretty fast, so this perceived weakness is in actuality a strength.
I must admit I can find no actual obvious flaw in this game.
The card design is flavourful and mostly balanced (I suppose Flamestrike comes to mind as one card that is a tad overpowered compared to others).
The game feels well tuned, the experience is enjoyable almost indefinitely. The game is damn good.
While there is a not insignificant potion of luck involved, there is a good amount of skill as well. In fact it could be argued that this game has a better luck/skill ratio than Magic the Gathering, by virtue of the simple fact that in Magic you have to roll a dice every turn to EITHER draw something you can use to affect the board and outcome of the game, OR you draw a land and do little to nothing that turn. In person you can bluff that you just drew a good card, but online this is not so. Furthermore, because players have access to hero powers, and because cards are very well balanced in Hearthstone (not all the case in Magic), games tend to be much more interactive with a healthy back and forth before someone claims victory.
Time will tell if Hearthstone is able to maintain this without resorting to power creep to keep people engaged. This is extremely telling in Magic the Gathering. Once upon a time a 2/2 for 2 passed the vanilla test. Then it became a 3/2 for 2, then a 3/3 for 2, then it gets haste or some other plus ability etc.
Cards in MTG have gotten so swingy that I wonder whether the starting hands need to be smaller and the starting life needs to be higher (perhaps 30 or 25).
Regardless, lets shift our focus back to Hearthstone. Another reason it kicks solid ass is that the micro-transaction system they have is basically perfect, that you can do a draft (arena) for just 2 bucks and if you are a busy kind of person, you can do one or two drafts a week off of daily quest rewards alone and never have to invest any money. BUT you can always splurge on a few packs or binge on arena if you so choose by spending very modest amounts of cash.
Furthermore, the Arena system is much much better than MTG drafting. You can pause picks at any time, play as many games as you want in one sitting. Overall this product while casual friendly, still appeals to the hardcore because of the very real optimization and perfection of decision making in a game and the tactical challenges in both picking cards and playing the games.
Now it does have its faults, but those are perfectly acceptable and make the experience better overall. One glaring fault is that you may get very unlucky during arena drafting and be presented with mediocre cards and might face off against someone who was very fortunate during their draft. Your chances in this sort of match up are usually marginal at best, regardless of player skill and decisions. But of course, if you have the exact same quality of draft deck every time, it would get stale pretty fast, so this perceived weakness is in actuality a strength.
I must admit I can find no actual obvious flaw in this game.
Monday 19 January 2015
My last post on Diablo 3 and Blizzard games for a while
Here is all you need to know about Diablo 3 as to whether or not you want to play it.
The unique items (legendary I suppose) have about 80-90% of their stats rolled as random.
In other words, no two copies of the same legendary are alike, this is especially true for item slots with a wide range of affixes.
In other words, the legendary items are not exactly legendary or designed at all, they're just random stat holders with shiny colours that are a shade more golden/rust looking than the yellow rares, but are basically as useful as said rares if they don't roll precisely the mods everyone wants out of them.
In other words, there is no intention to the game play of Diablo 3, the items were not at all designed, thus the characters were not designed, thus the gameplay intention was not designed. Sets were designed to pinpoint specific gameplay, but that leaves little to no interesting gearing decisions to the player.
In other words, the decision to make Diablo 3 was entirely a monetary one not because there was anything interesting to add to the genre. Things were added to give the illusion that they had something of value to add to the genre, everything was put in place to give the illusion of substance, however there is none to be found.
In other words, Blizzard is as I previously stated, is dead.
RIP Blizzard entertainment, 1991-2012 (about the time the RMAH was released, nail in coffin of final type)
The unique items (legendary I suppose) have about 80-90% of their stats rolled as random.
In other words, no two copies of the same legendary are alike, this is especially true for item slots with a wide range of affixes.
In other words, the legendary items are not exactly legendary or designed at all, they're just random stat holders with shiny colours that are a shade more golden/rust looking than the yellow rares, but are basically as useful as said rares if they don't roll precisely the mods everyone wants out of them.
In other words, there is no intention to the game play of Diablo 3, the items were not at all designed, thus the characters were not designed, thus the gameplay intention was not designed. Sets were designed to pinpoint specific gameplay, but that leaves little to no interesting gearing decisions to the player.
In other words, the decision to make Diablo 3 was entirely a monetary one not because there was anything interesting to add to the genre. Things were added to give the illusion that they had something of value to add to the genre, everything was put in place to give the illusion of substance, however there is none to be found.
In other words, Blizzard is as I previously stated, is dead.
RIP Blizzard entertainment, 1991-2012 (about the time the RMAH was released, nail in coffin of final type)
Thursday 15 January 2015
Blizzard Entertainment stops being Blizzard Entertainment
So I've been playing more Diablo 3 the past two days since the patch hit. I've never found myself playing a game as much as this and asking the question frequently "Am I enjoying this?". I find the game mechanics to be largely untuned and the mob damage is too spiky.
Many melee oriented builds are straight up nonviable in torment 6 because you can literally get one shotted by a combination of abilities in rapid succession.
It got me thinking about how this game was likely made by marketing research and studies in what would be popular as opposed to people rolling up their sleeves and doing the nitty gritty work of fine tuning combat mechanics and values.
They did nerf jailer damage, that much was clear, but other spiky sources of damage were not tuned down because players complained about them less. Another thing you're seeing is design as a response to player complaints on the forums.
Heck I remember back in the day World of Warcraft was hardcore as fuck. You couldn't get good gear, the five mans were hard and brutal, boss fights were so tightly tuned that only min max extremists were consistently successful.
Then the massive incomparable wave of QQ from the mostly casual player base came and Blizzard buckled and made WoW much more casual, much easier to gear up, handed things to players on a silver platter or a spoon. And for a while this worked to retain large casual player bases.
Blizzard made their games much more casual but it was okay so long as their reputation was retained as Blizzard. The chips are starting to show however and the ramifications of the dumbing down of their games is beginning to be felt. Many players no longer regard the developer with the same reverence, after buying Diablo 3 and realizing it was just another action RPG and not the best game in the genre by far, I find myself much more hesitant to buy the next expansion for Diablo 3. I feel as though I am going to get the game that the developers think their audience wants, when what I want is the work of a creative mind delivering something they love.
Passion in your work shows, it used to show in Blizzard's products, it has since diminished in my estimation. What they need is someone to take a risk and deliver a game or features in a game that are not marketing approved, that will slightly piss off the casual player base but make the hardcore gamers look twice. Besides, if all the cool kids and streamers are playing their game, it will attract all the casuals as they are mostly followers anyway...
Yesterday I saw that D3 was significantly more prominent on Twitch TV than previously, suggesting that the new patch has indeed reignited interested in the game. Time will tell if this interest endures in a week or two.
Many melee oriented builds are straight up nonviable in torment 6 because you can literally get one shotted by a combination of abilities in rapid succession.
It got me thinking about how this game was likely made by marketing research and studies in what would be popular as opposed to people rolling up their sleeves and doing the nitty gritty work of fine tuning combat mechanics and values.
They did nerf jailer damage, that much was clear, but other spiky sources of damage were not tuned down because players complained about them less. Another thing you're seeing is design as a response to player complaints on the forums.
Heck I remember back in the day World of Warcraft was hardcore as fuck. You couldn't get good gear, the five mans were hard and brutal, boss fights were so tightly tuned that only min max extremists were consistently successful.
Then the massive incomparable wave of QQ from the mostly casual player base came and Blizzard buckled and made WoW much more casual, much easier to gear up, handed things to players on a silver platter or a spoon. And for a while this worked to retain large casual player bases.
Blizzard made their games much more casual but it was okay so long as their reputation was retained as Blizzard. The chips are starting to show however and the ramifications of the dumbing down of their games is beginning to be felt. Many players no longer regard the developer with the same reverence, after buying Diablo 3 and realizing it was just another action RPG and not the best game in the genre by far, I find myself much more hesitant to buy the next expansion for Diablo 3. I feel as though I am going to get the game that the developers think their audience wants, when what I want is the work of a creative mind delivering something they love.
Passion in your work shows, it used to show in Blizzard's products, it has since diminished in my estimation. What they need is someone to take a risk and deliver a game or features in a game that are not marketing approved, that will slightly piss off the casual player base but make the hardcore gamers look twice. Besides, if all the cool kids and streamers are playing their game, it will attract all the casuals as they are mostly followers anyway...
Yesterday I saw that D3 was significantly more prominent on Twitch TV than previously, suggesting that the new patch has indeed reignited interested in the game. Time will tell if this interest endures in a week or two.
Wednesday 14 January 2015
About Diablo 3 and Path of Exile
So as of late I have found myself playing both of these games quite a bit.
Path of Exile recently released their 1.3 patch in which they added lots of new uniques and pvp. Diablo 3 just recently released their patch 2.1.2 which includes new items, new set bonuses, new goblins and balance changes to boot.
I have played far more Path of Exile than Diablo 3 as I write this, although I have gotten to paragon 360 or so on Season 1, which isn't terribly high, but it isn't low either, it shows I've played a substantial amount of end game.
Anyway, before I get all bogged down in facts and figures, I wanted to explore design elements in both games and some observations I have made.
At their core, both games are about getting loot to build cool toons, to get more loot, to build even cooler toons, to .... I think you get the point.
At some point or another, people who design games figured out how dopamine works in the brain, how random rewards are so very addictive to people, put two and two together and began to release games that act as pseudo dopamine reward systems. Action RPG's fit this formula exceedingly well, and loot driven gameplay, that is, gameplay where one of, if not THE primary focus is to obtain new items, is exceedingly addictive and profitable.
With all of that intro babble out of the way, I want to talk about Diablo 3 and Path of Exile in more detail for a moment. As I write this, I must get one thing out of the way, I love Path of Exile and I only sort of pseudo like Diablo 3. My biggest gripe with Diablo 3 is the shallowness of the itemization, how uninteresting I found items, and how so rarely I found an item I would qualify as 'good'. If you do rifts in T6 with other players, you will find a set or legendary item every couple of minutes, and in some cases, several per minute. The loot literally rains from the heavens, and this seems pretty awesome, until you actually identify the items.
When you do this, you realize that because no items (including uniques and sets) have a fixed set of stats, you're basically rolling another set of dice when you actually find the item to hope that the right mix of stats have rolled on it. Some items are particularly ultra rare in this system, as such finding one of those poorly rolled...must be even more frustrating that I can imagine, although I don't know as it has never happened to me yet, I have not found a Furnace and the one SoJ I found was pretty well rolled (near perfect in fact...).
Regardless, we all know that the gameplay in these games is largely REPETITIVE. You're basically doing the same things over and over, and yet people continue to play these games for months or years at a time. The reason is the loot grind and the epeen and <insert your own fringe motivation here>. As such, if there is a long term appeal in the game, people will continue to play DESPITE the repetitive nature of it. As I write this, I find myself unable to find the long term appeal of Diablo 3. This would be why I can only bring myself to play it in short spurts here and there.
And then there's Path of Exile. The combat isn't as good as Diablo 3, the group play isn't as smooth as Diablo 3, or as coherent. The feedback and user interface are clunkier, the experience of managing the game is more cumbersome, and yet, the mechanics are so tight, so finely tuned, the reward system is so subtle, carrot on a stick sort of thing perfected to give you the feeling of advancing without giving you too much at once. The items that drop are mostly bad, much like Diablo 3, a good item is HARD to find, but when you do, it's even more exciting. Build diversity is much higher, there are many many more interesting build enabling uniques (as opposed to six piece set items in diablo 3, which limits your gearing options). I like the fact that I can get lucky and find a good trade on path of exile, I like the fact that if I do boss runs for an hour straight and luck out on a sweet item, I can try to find a buyer for it. The game has more in it to learn, more to master, more to discover and try, this is why I like it better.
This may have to do with the fact that I'm 32 and I'm used to hardcore games and that I find casual easy to pick up games with little depth uninteresting quickly. I suppose my palate is more attuned to finer tastes, but perhaps this is becoming a thing of the past? I am not sure. Blizzard does not let you make a bad decision anymore, they try to avoid punitive aspects in their game, Path of Exile gives you MANY opportunities to make bad decisions that would literally render your character useless and unable to progress any further. Diablo 3 is on rails, Path of Exile is a sandbox. Diablo 3 optimal builds can be discovered with trial and error and a little time, to do the same in Path of Exile would require tons of time and hundreds or thousands of Orbs of Regret.
Pete Sampras has a great serve, Andre Agassi has a great return. Yin yang, etc... I guess you can't have one without the other, who knows.
I don't think any of this that I wrote really made sense, except to say I like games.
In conclusion, I like games.
Path of Exile recently released their 1.3 patch in which they added lots of new uniques and pvp. Diablo 3 just recently released their patch 2.1.2 which includes new items, new set bonuses, new goblins and balance changes to boot.
I have played far more Path of Exile than Diablo 3 as I write this, although I have gotten to paragon 360 or so on Season 1, which isn't terribly high, but it isn't low either, it shows I've played a substantial amount of end game.
Anyway, before I get all bogged down in facts and figures, I wanted to explore design elements in both games and some observations I have made.
At their core, both games are about getting loot to build cool toons, to get more loot, to build even cooler toons, to .... I think you get the point.
At some point or another, people who design games figured out how dopamine works in the brain, how random rewards are so very addictive to people, put two and two together and began to release games that act as pseudo dopamine reward systems. Action RPG's fit this formula exceedingly well, and loot driven gameplay, that is, gameplay where one of, if not THE primary focus is to obtain new items, is exceedingly addictive and profitable.
With all of that intro babble out of the way, I want to talk about Diablo 3 and Path of Exile in more detail for a moment. As I write this, I must get one thing out of the way, I love Path of Exile and I only sort of pseudo like Diablo 3. My biggest gripe with Diablo 3 is the shallowness of the itemization, how uninteresting I found items, and how so rarely I found an item I would qualify as 'good'. If you do rifts in T6 with other players, you will find a set or legendary item every couple of minutes, and in some cases, several per minute. The loot literally rains from the heavens, and this seems pretty awesome, until you actually identify the items.
When you do this, you realize that because no items (including uniques and sets) have a fixed set of stats, you're basically rolling another set of dice when you actually find the item to hope that the right mix of stats have rolled on it. Some items are particularly ultra rare in this system, as such finding one of those poorly rolled...must be even more frustrating that I can imagine, although I don't know as it has never happened to me yet, I have not found a Furnace and the one SoJ I found was pretty well rolled (near perfect in fact...).
Regardless, we all know that the gameplay in these games is largely REPETITIVE. You're basically doing the same things over and over, and yet people continue to play these games for months or years at a time. The reason is the loot grind and the epeen and <insert your own fringe motivation here>. As such, if there is a long term appeal in the game, people will continue to play DESPITE the repetitive nature of it. As I write this, I find myself unable to find the long term appeal of Diablo 3. This would be why I can only bring myself to play it in short spurts here and there.
And then there's Path of Exile. The combat isn't as good as Diablo 3, the group play isn't as smooth as Diablo 3, or as coherent. The feedback and user interface are clunkier, the experience of managing the game is more cumbersome, and yet, the mechanics are so tight, so finely tuned, the reward system is so subtle, carrot on a stick sort of thing perfected to give you the feeling of advancing without giving you too much at once. The items that drop are mostly bad, much like Diablo 3, a good item is HARD to find, but when you do, it's even more exciting. Build diversity is much higher, there are many many more interesting build enabling uniques (as opposed to six piece set items in diablo 3, which limits your gearing options). I like the fact that I can get lucky and find a good trade on path of exile, I like the fact that if I do boss runs for an hour straight and luck out on a sweet item, I can try to find a buyer for it. The game has more in it to learn, more to master, more to discover and try, this is why I like it better.
This may have to do with the fact that I'm 32 and I'm used to hardcore games and that I find casual easy to pick up games with little depth uninteresting quickly. I suppose my palate is more attuned to finer tastes, but perhaps this is becoming a thing of the past? I am not sure. Blizzard does not let you make a bad decision anymore, they try to avoid punitive aspects in their game, Path of Exile gives you MANY opportunities to make bad decisions that would literally render your character useless and unable to progress any further. Diablo 3 is on rails, Path of Exile is a sandbox. Diablo 3 optimal builds can be discovered with trial and error and a little time, to do the same in Path of Exile would require tons of time and hundreds or thousands of Orbs of Regret.
Pete Sampras has a great serve, Andre Agassi has a great return. Yin yang, etc... I guess you can't have one without the other, who knows.
I don't think any of this that I wrote really made sense, except to say I like games.
In conclusion, I like games.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)