#19 - July 19, 2011, 8:29 p.m.
Q u o t e:
As a warning I'm not word smith.
Tier sets. After a month or so higher end gems will be put on the obvious auction house system and bought because farmers will farm gems all day. PVP will be restricted. PVE content will be a breeze; come on it won't be hard. Telling me I haven't played it means nothing because we all know Hell mode will be a breeze. The charm will wear off as soon as we tested out the skills and what not. Monsters will be a cake walk. No strategy involved or any thought except spam skills and they'll die. Bosses will obviously have different stages.
What made D2 so successful was how unrestrictive it is. We've all seen how being more restrictive will push a fanbase away (SC custom maps, even their updated search and what not still hasn't brought anyone back). There needs to be something free about the game that's fun like hostility. Good or bad it was great.
I get the feeling I'll buy it. Reach 60. Play for a bit longer than just call it quits. The game just gives the illusion of choice like Cataclysm and it's pretty sad.
That's a lot of assumptions, and as you said I'm not going to be able to convince you otherwise, so I'm not going to spend precious finger-fuel and try.
But I do think there's something to be said for over-designing games and systems, and that to no small degree what can make a game fun is how loose the mechanics are. I believe we're completely guilty of trying to make systems too tight sometimes, but I just personally do not get that feeling when playing Diablo III.
For one, the amount of randomization we're not only allowing but actively inserting into pretty much all of our systems is pretty insane, and randomization just purely does not allow for tight mechanic control by its nature. And then there's the runestone system, which no sane designer would ever attempt if they had notions of tight balance on their list of goals. Diablo III is well designed in many ways, but it is set on a very solid foundation of randomization and uncertainty. I think that's what will make discovering everything the game has to offer extremely compelling, and very likely for years to come.
