MattyC wrote on Aug 20, 2012, 17:06:
Exactly, though oddly most of the people complaining about it really claimed to have loved D1 & D2. It was always an item drop hunt (or ladder grind if that was your thing). Not sure what games these people played, but they certainly weren't Diablo titles.
I played D2 for the random.
The game was fun because I could get lost in a dungeon and be rewarded for it. Accidentally hitting a barrel would provide an item that was invaluable. Or finding a weird combination of skills on a boss I would split the pack and work them down (these days called kiting). They built a game that was fun in itself, not an afterthought.
The current blizzard model is to piecemeal out an experience while catering to the topper or rather the end game enthusist. The game industry is too fond of their elite players, and the top tier end game enthuists. Those folks drive the media and blogs turning the actual content that was enjoyable into a race to see who could bypass it the quickest. D3 is a product of that mentality. Carefully crafting a game that would "setup the players for an endgame that is longlasting and relationally worthwhile".
I'm not one of those players and hence I don't play online competitively anymore. I prefer to enjoy a game; avoid walkthroughs and spoilers and really involve myself in the storyline.
Sorry for the wall of text, but D3 team has proven they wanted to be very conservitave in their itemization. They go to such lengths to dribble out mathematic facts about the engine and logic they used to determine gameplay. This is a smoke screen for the fact that they unveiled a marketplace and are very worried about the $$$ that roll in. They were not creating a trade space to benefit the player. This was a viable source of income that would make them all rich. Maybe they were in the first revision but now it is just the waterfall model.