First Hardcore Inferno Belial Kill (by a Barbarian, too)

[Bolty]

It seems like the people who most enjoyed the endless Pindle/Baal runs, versus building characters and actually playing the game, are the ones most dissatisfied with D3.

Erm, no. What a strange generalization. As a player who never performed Pindle/Baal runs, or took a character to level 99, I'm quite dissatisfied with Diablo III because I feel the game design is poor.

I enjoyed the Diablo series because it was practically sandbox in its design. The game wasn't particularly hard to "beat" - what made Diablo 1 and 2 interesting was the analysis of the game mechanics, trying out new and different builds/ideas, and so on. The entire rise of variant play was based upon the fact that the game allowed for it - with enough knowledge and skill, you could pull off amazing stuff that would surprise your average player.

Diablo III's inferno difficulty forces me into a Pindle/Baal run kind of player. The only way to advance is not through skilled play, but gear farming. Until you experience firsthand the silliness of being able to clear Inferno Act 1 without breaking even a sweat, followed by getting killed by a white mob in Act II (no, not a wasp, a standard melee mob), you will not quite grasp what the playerbase is complaining about.

It's too easy to dismiss such complaints as "they just want the game handed to them," or "they don't like it because it's hard." There's nothing hard about being 2-shot by a champion mob as a melee player. Blizzard has created a game design with an artificial difficulty level designed to force players to farm for hundreds of hours to advance (or play the Auction House). There are some players that won't mind this at all, and consider it fine. 12 years ago, I also wouldn't have had a problem with it - I think I would have rather enjoyed the challenge just as something to do.

Nowadays? I recognize a silly game mechanic when I see it. And a game series that (around these parts) is all about finding joy in esoteric gameplay has been cut off by Diablo III's Inferno difficulty. There's no more "I wonder what happens if I create a character based around X abilities," because you can just take your level 60 character and change the skills around on the fly - and rapidly see how they don't work anyway. Replayability has gone down the tubes. In creating a difficulty level based on cheesy mechanics and plenty of 1 or 2-shot death structures, they've ruined the series for me.

Feel free to dismiss the statements of a guy who's been running a Diablo fansite for 13 years lightly as "that's your hardcore raider mentality" all you like. I find that line ironic. Diablo III's Inferno difficulty is extremely hardcore in terms of time and dedication to clear, so I should like it, right? So why don't I?

There's no more "sandbox." There's no more exchange of ideas or interesting concepts. It's get your five characters to 60, farm for +resist all, +main stat, +vitality, +health regen gear for hundreds of hours, and that's about it. It's...boring, like the soul has been sucked away from the games that I loved. Either that, or 12 years have gone by and I've just moved on from this style of game...but I don't think that's it.

I do realize it's kind of silly as well for me to hang around this forum to complain about how this game's just lacking, so I'll move on. I hope you all find the joy in it that you're looking for.