How the D3 team want us to play and how the game is designed are not in sync with each other

Anyone else get that feeling?

In the stream yesterday Wyatt Cheng talked about how he didn't want players to reduce Diablo to a maths game, and that he didn't want players to feel forced to use a set of items just because it clears high grifts or puts out the most damage.

And yet, the entire game is built on increasing your damage, and the addition of greater rifts just adds a prism through which all gear has to be scrutinised. Because the leaderboards are so frontward facing, all anyone cares about is how the gear they find is going to help them top the board. There's no room for quirky or interesting builds in this version of the game, because the game itself doesn't reward them. That the devs kept jokingly referring to how badly most of the sets and legendaries are currently designed was kind of telling.

He did mention briefly that he wants the game to recognise your personal milestones more effectively, and the way they were talking sounded like they had something outside of Adventure Mode in the works, but until those changes are made they can hardly be surprised that all anyone is doing is min/maxing for the best damage to the detriment of all else.

In addition, one of the other devs said Diablo 3 was the game you play for a little while and then put down and go play Warlords of Draenor. That was literally his sentiment. Is that really the D3 dev team's lofty ambition for this game now?

Posted in: thoughts