The Problem With Diablo 3 - Part 1

The problem with Diablo 3, shall be a returning segment on just how far the Diablo 3 apple fell from the beloved Diablo tree.

I know you're thinking this...

 I shall return to these whenever I can muster the courage to talk about one of my favourite franchises of all time ( ALL TIME!! ) being bastardised and cut up to make Blizzard some more dough.

#1 - SKILL TREES AND STATS
 
Diablo 2, if any of you knew me, was one of my favourite games. The hours pumped into the online battle.net service was sickening and I played almost every other day for a good number of years. Constantly reinstalling to have one more crack and build up some new characters, make them my own,figure out how I would regain my riches and become a badass Summoning Necromancer or a Poision Necromancer OR BONE NECROMANCER. (yeah, I had a thing for the Necromancer class).

Ahhh the ole Posion Nova. *nostalgia*

It was a simple system, classic Blizzard you could say. When you level up you put points into a move and that move is more powerful, meaning that each person, could hone their character towards a certain playtype having some specialisation. Something to stand out from the crowd. Say you liked raising Skeletons from the dead, well pump it into your summoning skills and dont look back until level 80 by then you would have an army of little dudes running around and effectively doing your job for you.

This along with the easy to use Vitality, Engergy, Strength (required to wear items) and Dexterity (defence) stats page you could decide who you wanted to be, how you were going to do it and stuck by it. Actual progression with a sense of reward when you'd figure out "THAT BUILD".




Fastforward to Diablo 3, where they have dumped both of these systems completely. You no longer decide what powers you want to get, levelling them up as you go, choosing a favourite and developing your own way of playing your class.

Now you level up every other level, World of warcraft style and are handed preset skills, on preset levels. Unlocking a modifier that changes the skill, on preset skills, on preset levels.

"I WONDER WHAT ILL LEVEL UP NEXT, OH WAIT I ALREADY KNOW LOL"

Starting to sound a little boring? I hope so.

 Now I can only think this measure was taken to try and make each class soloable and not being completely wasted if your skill tree can't match up to those champion mobs in the Inferno difficulties and having the option to switch your build around as you please. But from what I have seen, It has made all but a few moves completely unviable. Some just dont match up to the power of those you unlock at a later date, and using them makes you look like a fucking tool. I tried setting up for a Homing Rocket Build on my Demonhunter and that lasted all of about 3 seconds, when I could just swtich back to the tried and tested quickfire that every Demonhunter in the game uses. Had I the choice in later levels to pump skill points of a sort into homing rockets It COULD be Viable, but in this present system experimentation yeilds little reward.

So let me make my feelings on this change clear. When you do this. EVERYONE IS THE SAME. Demonhunter 1 is Demonhunter 2, except he has painted his hat blue!

This makes rolling another character of the same class pointless so effectievly the maximum number of characters you will ever have in Diablo 3 will be 5. Great.

I found this such a backwards step. Say you want to play with friends, both you and your pal are set on the Wizard class. You will level up, exactly the same, each level, unlocking the same skills. Only your items will define you.

Subject A is Subject B, Subject B is Subject C and Subject C is Subject D.

So to conclude rather then bang on about this point for the rest of my life.

They have taken away the things that made Diablo 2 a world beater and a genre setter. Diablo has been watered down and turned into another arm of Blizzards money making scheme at the expense of gamers everywhere. They had the time and the tools to make this game better, In every regard. Improve upon ALL the systems which they have used to great effect in other Blizzard games. Just not this one.

This of course falls in line and becomes alot clearer when next we will talk about problem number 2, Loot....