Theo wrote on Jan 13, 2015, 07:28:
@ CJ - there are 3 difficulty's available at level 1
I know. And the hard difficulty says you should play on hard if you have geared up with legendary loot from a normal playthrough. So you're pretty much forced to finish the game on normal the first time as I said. And normal is retard mode. When I played through all five acts I needed to make use of exactly one potion on the final boss of the expansion. I'm not exaggerating. It really was that easy and stupid. It was just a clickfest with absolutely zero challenge.
I didn't use any tactics either (kiting etc.). Just spammed my left and right mouse button and occasionally pressed a number key.
Sorry if it offends you but the game
is balanced for retards on normal.
Diablo 1 + 2, while not exactly hard per se, were still much more challenging on the first (normal) playthrough. I even remember dying a few times which has yet to happen to my level 49 Diablo 3 character who hasn't really come close to dying yet.
OK. So maybe the scaling is better once you play on hard or do some of those challenges, but after five completely challenge free acts, I only dabbled a little in those challenge maps and then quickly got bored again.
Also, i would argue that the problem was not with the RMAH, but with the AH its self (gold); as we had a shared item store to buy from with gold, the game was more about grinding gold than finding items and drops suffered as a result of this common resource.
I'd say it's very obvious what Blizzard's idea was. Nerf drops into oblivion and force players to look on the (RM)AH for any equipment they might require. I remember coming out of the campaign (then four acts) pre-RoS and pre-loot patches with exactly one legendary item. It was so boring compared to Diablo 2. No legendaries, no set items, barely any other neat stuff for crafting, enchanting etc... nothing.
The problem was definitely Blizzard's greed. They intentionally ruined the experience because they wanted us to spend cash to get all the cool stuff from their lame auction house.
I'm glad that gamers did not fall for this crap and that Blizzard was forced to react. Their reaction IMHO was to turn Diablo 3 into a much less challenging, dumbed down Diablo 2 HD. And, no, I'm not willing to give them a lot of credit for playing it safe and going back to a decade old formula. It's the least they could do and the game should have been released like it is now (plus better balancing and much more challenge on normal). I'm not going to applaud them for cleaning up their crap.