I've played Diablo 3 through to "Hell" difficulty, and I've not been using my own looted gear since the middle of the "Normal" mode - there's just no competition between drops, and what you can buy on the AH for very little money. The "sensible" play style is just to farm gold, and buy AH kit. Found an item? Sell it for gold (or, very occasionally, AH) - don't use it!

It's hard to feel like a hero when you're popping off to Macy's every few hours to grab a new +1 Sword of Wounding. Your quest to save the world - sponsored by Nike?

In Diablo III, a high-level item is giving you 200+ vitality. I don't know about other characters, but I believe my Monk is getting 2 vitality per level (and there are 60 levels). A _single_ item can give me more of a stat than I gain from leveling all the way from 1 to 60. As such, leveling up doesn't do much other than allow equip items with better stats.

Because items in Diablo II gave, comparatively, closer benefits to gaining another level than those in Diablo III, I felt like I was making progress with either a level up or a nice item drop. If my character was getting decimated in Act IV of Nightmare, I could go back and gain a few levels and maybe get some new items in the process. In Diablo III, not only do your levels not increase your survivability or killing power in any way (besides new skill runes), by the time you feel like you aren't strong enough to defeat an encounter you'll most likely have few or even no more levels left to gain. The only tangible measure of progress is "phatter lewt" at this point.

First, a single item of, for instance, 200 vitality, is not giving you a +200 to your vitality at lvl 60. Instead, it's giving you the difference between 200, and what ever the bonus would be on average eq that you can get easily in the game by being level 60 and killing a few things.

Second, levels do increase your survivability, in several ways:

1. You get vitality, every level, at +10 life per point plus any percentage bonuses you have 2. You get your key stat, every level, which increases your damage directly and indirectly 3. You become able to wear higher-level equipment when you gain a level, and of course, that equipment improves based on its own level. 4. You learn new skills, not just new skill runes, and both are quite significant. The higher-level skills are more powerful in many cases.

D2's uniques and runewords were more common and reliably useful than D3's legendaries. Finding good uniques (e.g. Stone of Jordan[0]) led to big jumps in character power unmirrored by a level or two.

I don't agree that items were less important in D2 than in D3, but suspect they're presently much harder to obtain in D3 without turning to using the auction house. This is probably intentional.

[0] http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/normal/urings.sht...

[0]: http://www.twitch.tv/kungentv

But in reality you'll just run-die without killing mobs and only killing bosses. Like everyone else. So that you can farm the bosses later / play hardcore, etc.

That, or you farm and hope that the piece of loot that you want serendipitously drops.

The comments on TFA make it sound like it's impossible to complete D3 without buying gear from the AH, which makes me a very sad panda.

My experiences were with Witch Doctor & Demon Hunter.

It's funny there's a lot of whining about melee classes being weak and I just don't see it (I'm only halfway through nightmare) -- I'm playing a monk with my wife's wizard and the monk is just as ridiculously overpowered as the barbarian (as in run to the biggest concentration of mobs and make them explode). Demon Hunters have to deal with enemies that are immune to missiles, which is ridiculous. (The worst thing with melee so far is dealing with flies in Act II.)

As for the challenge level of normal, I think it's fine for new players. I just wish nightmare were unlocked to start with (with whatever mechanics you like). I don't like games to assume every player has played twenty similar games and knows how to finesse gear, specs, etc. I imagine normal is quite challenging for new players (and I had trouble with two bosses on my DH and one on my Barbarian -- mostly because I had gotten so far using simple minded tactics and actually had to think).

Forget about not using the AH in inferno, a barbarian pretty much needs gear farmed in act4 to progress.

I'm halfway through inferno on my DH and haven't met a missile immune mob yet. I think some of them have damage reduction for missiles, but I still dps them down easily. The hard mobs are the ones with invulnerable minions/fast.

And yes, in D3 you cannot progress past inferno a2 without ah gear or exploit farming (goblins)

this changes at the inferno level though, because here the rate of gold gathered vs needed to upgrade jumps significantly. You begin to grub at every blue, yellow drop for the upgrade that gives you a little bit more survivability.

I think they the system more of a grubbing for small coins all around the map to buy crack from the AH.

They reduced the frustration loop by removing the "oh this wasn't the rare I wanted" and change it to "I can sell everything for gold, I just need a little bit more". Since you can see continuous progression you don't feel frustrated (as much). I would think this is analogues to being told why a que is taking so long instead of waiting blindly in a que.

I think it's intended though, soon as the RMAH rolls around all us terribly frustrated people can just buy our way into progression, without even having to farm for the gold!

It's not just the gold farming that bothers me though, I feel like it is gimmicky, not genuinely difficult (as compared to Heroic WoW bosses anyways). Blizzard learnt through WoW that 1-shot deaths, even on tanks, was a horrible prospect and toned down burst damage a lot. They really need to figure out a way to make D3 more difficult without the monster just killing you because you looked at it.

Meanwhile, you can go buy it from Chinese gold farmers for a few bucks... pretty clear something was wrong with that.

The AH here though assumes that having to buy from chinese gold farmers was an issue which everyone faced, and now makes the AH an issue for everyone to face.

People may complain about Craiglist or a Bloomberg terminal, but at the end of the day, they still use and love them. Similarly people may complain about D2, but they still loved it.

  > que

In America it's more common to hear it than ever see it.

Hell, I only know how to spell it because of scrabble.

More of Schultz's work looks at this [1]. Basically, a reward of 50% of the time is far more addictive for Julio and his pals than 100% (eg. the Staff of Beatings only drops 50% from The Butcher). Diablo 2 uses a traditional variable reward schedule for its loot system, as seen in most other RPGs. Diablo 3 uses gold (stick with me). You need gold to get the items the game requires you to have from the AH, and you're mostly burning the loot you find in-game for gold on the AH or other mats. This means that you're working on a small, 100% drip feed, which you eventually cash out in a predictable fashion. Not as addictive!

I don't agree with your assertion of a frustration loop being different. Diablo 2 could be just as frustrating if loot you needed didn't drop in time. One thing I think Blizzard has done very poorly is that AH transactions do not provide instant gratification, but take up to 48 hours to process(!). This means if you are in a rut, you'll have two days stuck in it, and perhaps just break the habit and leave altogether.

[1]: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/299/5614/1898.full

A take home message from this is that an ideal diablo 2 drop has a expected drop time of T, and should never change. The reward, of course, can come from increased benefit of character strength, or from the rare item itself (Herald of Zakarum + Barnar Star ftw).

It seems to me like the T for Diablo 3 is much greater than that of Diablo 2, and because pretty much set items and unique items are non-existent, the satisfaction of getting the item from drops is also non-existent. Alas, the AH allows you to gain strength when you are stuck, but because the time it takes you to go to AH is not a function of T itself, since you can go whenever you want, it does not really contribute to the over all game reward mechanism.

Not to mention the horrible infrastructure they have built for the AH as Lewisham mentioned.

As I'm still working through this stuff, and am certainly no psychologist or neurobiologist, did I say anything above that was contradictory to this? It sounds like you know more than I do about the subject (I'm dabbling in it for my Computer Science thesis) and I'm always paranoid that I'm overstating or overgeneralizing some experiment result.

Because of this, most Auction House transactions completed are buyouts. Bidding on almost-expired items happens, but most people (especially under max level) are only buying items.

My buyout on Sunday still hasn't posted today.

Although how was I to know that?

I'm not convinced there's any actual security breach, but Blizzard has been doing a pretty terrible job of explaining the authenticators to their players.

"While no security method is 100% fool-proof (even Authenticators), please note that it is possible that players reporting to have been compromised while an Authenticator was attached to their Battle.net account may have been using the Dial-in Authenticator. The Dial-in Authenticator does not provide the same level of protection as the Battle.net Authenticator or Battle.net Mobile Authenticator app, and -- more importantly -- is not currently supported for Diablo III."

Post made by Community Manager.

C'est la vie, I guess.

I played D2 back when I was a college student, so I had the time to spend in those long troughs between finding awesome items. Well, I didn't actually play D2 that much because I didn't find it fun -- and perhaps this article explains why. But for the people who want D3 to have the same addictive feel of D2, I speculate that part of it has to do with being able to commit a lot of time to get those rare spikes of joy upon getting a fantastic drop. All the serious D2 gamers knew all of the best items and finding them was a big part of the game for them (or perhaps it WAS the game?)

For me, I'd rather have a game where the combat is fun, and that's where I think D3 is a huge improvement upon D2. Blizzard's own stats show that people are playing with a wide variety of skills. That's a lot different than D2, where many skills were useless, there were only a handful of worthwhile builds, and everybody lusted after the same items.

At first I didn't understand why a randomly generated magic item could be better than a "legendary" item, but now it makes sense. If a person gets a legendary item, they know they've gotten something that will be good for most players, but it won't be the best. As such, people still have the ability to grow and get better items instead of thinking, "Well, I've gotten Sword of Awesome, no need to do anything more." To me, that makes the game more interesting, and it enhances replayability for when I sign on and play with friends. I guess things might be different for people who only play alone, though.

I'm sure the Auction House plays a big role in all of this, and many want to ascribe "evil" motives to Blizzard. Certainly the item economy will take time for them to fully understand. But even if there wasn't an AH, I think that the way they went with items (and the way skills play off of them) was the right choice for creating a game that is consistently fun. At least until Inferno -- which was meant to be ridiculous anyways!

Diablo was always about the exploration and the loot hunt. That was the game. Diablo 3 is a deviation. The loot hunt kept you playing. It let you set defined goals: "I want to obtain a perfect Skin of the Vipermagi and then use the quest reward to socket it with a perfect topaz." D3 does not let you do that. You don't set item goals, you set achievement goals: "I want to beat inferno."

I'm sure a lot of people will prefer this, but the effect is much different. In particular, without the excitement of the item hunt, there is no reason to keep playing after you complete the game a few times; No surprises.

I got half way through Nightmare and was like "I am not wadding through this crap dialog again". And put the game down.

The "story" was lackluster at best. Easy to predict. And absolutely no surprises. And to make me run though it again, at each difficulty level is just mean.

The core gameplay feels a lot more solid and fun than in Diablo 2, and that's what makes me think the game will be successful in the long term. Itemization and difficulty can and will be tweaked after release, but it's much harder to fix the gameplay if it isn't fun.

However, I stand by my argument about the game's addictiveness (in the literal sense) in its current form. Many will see this as a good thing :)

Wouldn't changing the game type/changing expectations like this make them lose a lot of players?

As an extension - wouldn't the RMAH launch delay will end up costing Blizzard more than they anticipate, since its pretty much the Key stone of D3s item/economy.

But yes, the changes in the reward schedules will make it a lot less addictive.

Its fun in its own ways, and would have made a great single player game which could have been played offline or on a LAN.

Without the AH - and hence higher drop rates to balance - the game would have been fine.

You would have had the game balance and fluidity, plus the incessant "ooh shiny!" of D2.

All of the constraints imposed in the parent article trace back to the Auction House and the Real Money Auction House. Each of them is an economic constraint to ensure the RMAH is actually usable.

Edit: Well its bound to happen too - a single agency controls the bank, the economy and the laws/game play.

The best solution would be a mode with higher drop rates and no access to the AH (only trading). This would have lowered AH usage and cost Blizz $$.

It really doesn't go far to push samey builds, and despite Blizzard's deceptively generic statements from my experience I have a hard time believing that people are doing much of anything.

It was posed that Inferno's secondary purpose was to find and see the broken builds as they arose via people rocketing through this near-cheaply difficult mode.

This is completely wrong, there is a very powerful reward loop. Whenever you find an item that you can sell at the auction house - that's a reward. It's arguably as good as it is in Diablo 2.

I think the real reason why Diablo 3 is less addictive than Diablo 2 is simply because the folks who played Diablo 2 are now 12 years older. There's something about getting older that makes you less prone to being addicted to games.

Someone's mentioned 12 years old or 12 years older now several times. I'm sorry but this simply does not apply. Diablo 2 is so incredibly popular NOT because people played it back then and are returning now, but because of the SHEER mass of people that continued to play it for 5+ years. So even by the norm of sales you're looking at people merely 5-6 years away, not including that some of the most vocal people STILL PLAY IT.

I was playing through the last two ladder resets, one of them just a few weeks prior to D3 launch.

The biggest problems aren't caught by people who have nostalgia goggles on, they're caught by the people who still played it regularly (off and on over the years.

Not to mention most of the items you find (even rare items) are vendor trash not worth selling on the AH. And crafting is just terrible in this game.

I think there's definitely something to your second point though. Are we less prone to addiction, or more likely to recognise it and choose to break the loop?

The "scientific" part was pretty tongue-in-cheek given all the handwaving I do, I obviously didn't hook up electrodes to anyone's brain while they're playing (although that would be fascinating). I'll edit the blog title to put it in quotes, can't edit the submission title though.

Now what is the hypothesis - that D2 will drive significantly more metabolic activity than D3, because some blogger thinks that it is a better game?

This would tell us nothing of any scientific interest whatsoever. (Not to say you couldn't make a poster or even get grants for such rubbish, with the right connections)

If there is a testable hypothesis in here, it is so bizarrely specific as to have no practical value nor any value in distinguishing among meaningful theories about how the brain works.

No one said science had to be useful.

Note that this theory has nothing to do with whether or not one likes the experience. Someone very well may like the experience with more frustration more, for whatever reason. The theory is not "This is why Diablo 2 is better than Diablo 3," but an explanation for why many people may feel less satisfaction playing Diablo 2 than Diablo 3.

It's not my field, and I don't know if the analysis in the blog post was flawed or not, but there are plenty of people trained in the field who work in the video game industry (and the gambling industry) and they definitely show results with pretty solid metrics under well controlled conditions. Balance the reward cycle and tune the levels of challenge and frustration properly and you get players to spend more time in the game.

I agree that it's a stretch to conclude that D3 is less addictive than D2 but I took it as interesting speculation based on actual science.

I believe (but have no good citations / evidence for) that there's another system in the brain for rewarding behavior, one that is based on the satisfaction of accomplishing tasks that are difficult. This other loop may be a little harder to study, I'd imagine that it would be difficult to get most animals to exhibit this loop.

Just take a look at a sample of walkthroughs for various games, alongside traditional guides you'll find esoteric ones: guides marked as "low-level", "solo", "pacifist", "naked", etc. There are also play styles such as "ironman". Back in the day, I used to play Diablo ironman with friends. You're not allowed to talk to merchants in town. I played FF6 "low-level", where you don't allow the characters to gain levels: run from any fight you can, but you still have to fight the bosses with a woefully underpowered team.

It's tapping into the same reward systems that reward programmers for refactoring code.

So I guess my final point is that you can't call something less addictive by analyzing it, since you can only analyze the addiction mechanisms you know about. You have to determine how addictive it is by measuring the behavior of the actual people using it. From a scientific perspective, this article is really a hypothesis.

Not even the dopamine system is exactly and entirely a "reward system," there are multiple pieces carrying out various signal-processing tasks without clean alignment to our intuitive categories.

Despite the existence of localization and specialization in the brain, it is not common for any high-level behavior to weigh completely on just one distinct piece of the brain.

Tastes change, but I don't think that's the primary issue at play here.

But I play them both significantly less, but frankly, I've changed more over those 12 years then Starcraft, seems to be a more likely culprit.

Starcraft 2 has improved it's e-sports appeal which I credit mostly to the community but it suffers from the lack of variety in strategy and the dumbing down/nerfing of a lot of micro. HotS will likely shift add more strategies alongside future patches that tweak the balance, but I think it's still about a year or two before gamers are truly satisfied with the state of the game. Kind of like what Starcraft 1 went through.

[1] This looks pretty rough, and coupled with the N64's controller not being ideal for FPS, it's pretty much unplayable if you didn't play back then.

[1] http://i.imgur.com/0QCcu.jpg

I have proof, my tickets were deleted from Battle.net support and my 3 posts were deleted from Battle.Net forums.

The person who hacked me was EVEN on my recently played list (I only play solo and with friends.)

Here's yet another post from an hour ago: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5592454673?page=9#176

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.312830668801514.730...

This was the second time I was hacked, I'm a fairly intelligent programmer, my browser doesn't even run Javascript/flash without a button click from me, I surf intelligently, the password was only used on this D3 account and was changed after the first hacking.

No notification of new login location, nothing. Authenticator was bypassed 100%.

Realize that I provided evidence and this post was just FACTS.

#1 I was hacked. #2 Twice. #3 Had authenticator for both. #4 My password is secure. #5 Blizzard's emails/ticket responses insist that it was on my end. #6 They are claiming the same of all people hacked.

Diablo 2 is a superior game. I'll continue to play D3, but I'm feeling like my $60 would've been better spent on some Indian food and a copy of Torchlight 2 for $20.

Also, he said exactly how much he thinks his $60 is worth in very specific terms: all the Indian food he can buy for $40 and Torchlight 2.

I'll probably give up Diablo 3 by year's end.

Putting aside any attempts to put a 'price' per hour of enjoyment, that is pathetic.

Blizzard should be embarrassed by Diablo 3, they've destroyed the franchise for me as I was worried they would.

I can't trust them to make another game like Diablo or Diablo 2 again. I have to assume that the disintegration of Blizzard North has ruined them.

The consequences here are more serious than my wasted $60. It's about the end of an entertainment dynasty.

They sold like 6.5 million copies. I really don't think they care at this stage.

I blame nobody for prioritizing money, I'm just saying that it's unlikely they'll have me as a customer again.

Its successor in turn can't promise 1 year.

The game is fine as it is - you pay more $$ to get less value from other things in life.

Yet, its not in the same league (at this patch juncture) as D2, its ageing predecessor. Which is what the OP is referring to as shameful.

Thank you for explaining.

The sentiment was "There is a large portion of gamers that do not enjoy playing games, they enjoy winning games."

I think this translates to Diablo 3 very well- everyone was perfectly happy farming Diablo or Baal (previous "final" bosses), yet no one seems to enjoy farming Act 1 or Act 2 inferno. It's the exact same thing, but I believe people are not enjoying it because they are unable to beat the game.

I see a lot of talk about how it's impossible to beat the game just by grinding, and you have to play the AH to get gear from the people that have already beaten the game but it's important to remember that there were people that beat the game for the first time. These people didn't have people to purchase the best stuff of off because they were the furthest of anyone in the world.

Similarly, there are people progressing (albeit slowly) through inferno hardcore where there are probably less than ~100 people in the world. There's very little gear on the market and there are still people progressing by farming gear themselves.

According to some, it's more of a D2 sequel in spirit than D3 is. Darker setting, more emphasis on skill and action play, etc.

The goal when making PoE was to create a game where the item economy was really strong. There is no gold in PoE. Instead you have currency items (see http://www.pathofexile.com/news/dev-diary/).

All of the shops are horrible for trade, offering tiny amounts for even great items. If you really want something good, you have to trade for it directly with other players or find it yourself.

It is a far more addictive game than either D2 or D3 because a greater range of interesting, random things happen.

PoE also has some great mechanics, for instance flasks (health / mana) are items that last for a long time - they use charges when you drink them and recharge as you fight. They can be magical and unique.

Also, the skill tree offers a far greater range of choice.

Definitely worth checking out.

PoE was great fun playing, and the fact that builds can go in any direction is definitely a huge plus point.

After seeing some of the ideas from D3, I'm quite hopeful that PoE will be a solid competitor in this area.

With Torchlight 2 coming out as well, its going to be very crowded in this niche of the gaming arena.

[1] http://www.pathofexile.com/news/dev-diary/

  Diablo3 is not PvE or PvP, it is PvAH.

Updating my residence? I just need to send in a government issued id and, if that doesn't include an address, a recent utility bill..

Want to delete a battle.net account? It seems the only way is calling a hotline of some sorts. I'd bet they ask for similar bullshit.

Yes, I enjoy Diablo 2 more. The braindead way Blizzard treats me excludes any new version as mere option. Ignoring all the always online idiocy.

Prices for weapons, armor, and gems will keep dropping to lower and lower prices as long as you aren't in the first wave of players. There's nothing to stop that price drop since demand for items will decrease over time AND supply will increase.

An example of the bad design is in the fact that constructing a gem in the game (which takes mutiple lower quality gems you have to find) costs more money than to just buy it from another player. And it will only get cheaper.

As more of anything spawns, the market supply increases. Everyone would cry if they couldn't farm monsters for good stuff like gems. So at higher levels, great gems are spawning, and then they are going on the market, increasing supply and driving the price toward zero.

You could make gems decay in storage to take them out of circulation, but everyone will cry. You could make gems into very fragile/limited-use items, but everyone will cry. You could increase the work required to generate gems, now they will not be accessible to anyone except by buying from Chinese gold farmers or working Diablo like a job.

All you can do is forbid any kind of selling of gems (or whatever). But then the entire market is the black market and again the game is run by people who are using automation to produce items to sell for cash. So you actually have to prevent transfer of ownership altogether... but nobody suggests that because it doesn't sound like any fun.

And anyway, even if you do that you will still have people paying for someone else to level up their character and get goodies.

One thing that particularly annoys me is that Diablo 3 developers are in denial about the game even being different. They are either in denial or they're cynically lying. Check out this thread, a guy responds to Jay Wilson's sentences point by point. Highly recommended !

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5638007856?page=1

(While I like the fact I can find things to improve my character on the auction house, the fact that I need to because I find a very small number of upgrades makes me sad.)

1. Play hardcore. This instantly transforms the entire point of the game from "get the best gear" to "stay alive", though of course awesome gear is still fun because it helps you stay alive, and squish monsters faster.

2. Don't use the Auction House. Sure, this means I won't be competitive (level for level) with players who do, and I probably won't ever be able to play Inferno, but I play mostly single player or with friends who use similar rules.

A lot of people do seem to love the gear grind of D2, and that's fine for them, but I'd much rather play it in the vein of a classic roguelike.

TL;DR: Diablo 3 was WoWified: broke itemization and skill builds, and thus replayability.

In D3, finding a rare item is "ID, does it have those stats? Yes: keep, No: salvage". Brainless.

In D2, finding a rare item is "ID, weird combination of stats, but I don't think anyone wants this so I'll throw it away, go to d2jsp and find some absurdly rich player wanting that ridiculous combination and kicking yourself for vendoring it".

--

Background: thousands of hours manually farming and botting Diablo 2 since vanilla release, equivalent time spent trading/on d2jsp (most of this will refer to 1.09 since that is most fresh in my mind). Also lvl 60 demon hunter in Diablo 3 Inferno Act 3.

Please don't argue that D2 was just as broken on release. The D3 team had YEARS of experience to look back on.

--

1) D2 was all about plowing through monsters. If you were underleveled or undergeared, bosses should be somewhat difficult. If you were reasonably prepared, bosses should be fairly easy. If you even had decent gear, bosses should be a joke.

D3, on the other hand, treats everything like a WoW raid. Hours of grinding to prepare for a fight, min-maxing forcing everyone into a single class or build (energy armor wizard or PMS demon hunter?), and even then, the fights are difficult( vs champions/elites).

Why is this important? Because D2 was so "easy", many many skill builds were viable. Wanted to roll a melee sorc? Go ahead. Fishymancer ( = pet wd in d3)? Works. Throwing barb? Surprisingly strong. Thorns + fire aura pally? Too good.

The proliferation of crazy builds is important, as it makes a MUCH larger proportion of items valuable. This will tie in with the next point.

--

2) D3 itemization is broken. First, there are very, very few item stats that are important. Weapon DPS, main stat, vitality, resist all. Maybe atk speed, crit, crit dmg, move speed. Everything else is garbage. Health globe radius, seriously?

What made many D2 builds viable was the much larger variety of item effects, as well as lack of dependence on stats. Life tap wands made smiters useful, enigma was good for everyone, infinity runeward allowed lightning sorcs and javazons to fight lightning immune, etc.

--

3) Rare items. The above 2 problems, when taken together, kill the D3 end-game. D2 was all about making a MF build, getting some money, then making a bunch of crazy characters, either min-maxing MF or PVP or Baal runs or something, but there was a ton of variety in what you could do. End game economy revolved around rare items.

In D3, finding a rare item is "ID, does it have those stats? Yes: keep, No: salvage". Brainless.

In D2, finding a rare item is "ID, weird combination of stats, but I don't think anyone wants this so I'll throw it away, go to d2jsp and find some absurdly rich player wanting that ridiculous combination and kicking yourself for vendoring it". This means that botting was difficult, because the really big $$ items are ones you wouldn't even recognize, and stash size was a limitation.

--

Anyways, that's why I stopped playing D3. I really don't think they can fix these problems without very large patches, which seems unlikely coming from actiblizzard.

Can I get an explanation for the downvotes at least?

Anyway, this is more of a personal question. I was wondering if you've actually looked deeper into the personal question of why loot drops, etc, even constitute a reward. This is not blackberry juice! It is manipulation of RAM that affects the display. I play D3, and the closest I've come to understand is that it's the challenge of maintaining forward progress against increasing resistance. In which case the OP is correct - one waits for resistance to grow too high, go the AH, buy new gear.

The other option, of course, is to adopt/discover a new strategy (which can then drive your gear choices, of course). But really my question (which is still a bit perplexing) is why I want to maintain forward progress going through content that I've already seen.

I would agree that one of those aspects is surmounting obstacles.

For me, and I would argue for the majority of hardcore Diablo players, the main aspect is market manipulation. It feels GOOD to buy cheap and sell, or find some inefficiency in the market and exploit and profit.

Diablo is essentially the free market at its best and worst, and I find it amazingly addicting to go from rags to riches, and the power that comes with that. If you are rich enough, you can essentially create a niche market by yourself.

There was this insanely rich guy on d2jsp that offered large amounts of currency for the most ridiculously bad items. This "make people do stuff for me" power is even apparent at lower levels of the heirarchy. I remember finally reaching "middle-class" status and going into trade games and offering somewhat valuable items to new players in exchange for them doing inane things like bringing me tedious (unnecessary) quest items, or answering trivia.

Other aspects are pride in skill builds (I want to try this ridiculous skill build and show it's viable), showing off items ( through faster PvE, more wins in PvP, etc )... many more probably.

Status is such an interesting, and compelling, enticement for behavior. Even entirely synthetic status, like D3, has it's advocates. In that case, we can say that the dopamine spikes occur during status events.

Perhaps that's D3's real problem - the dearth of status events. Perhaps PvP will sove that problem for ActiBlizzard.

(Personally, I don't think I'm motivated by status events. I'm more motivated by puzzle solving, and although D3 has some puzzles, particularly in the meta-game, they aren't particularly compelling to me.)

Firstly, you can't use a term like status and then apply it across the entire D3 player base. The edge cases here are complete player types which make a sizeable portion of the player base.

If you do not want to apply it across the player base, fine. But one must provide an alternative, perhaps some partition across the base according to motivation. I'd be interested to see that from you.

Survey results of 3000 mmo gamers on what motivates them, Nick Yee.

2. In the list of MMORPGs WoW is not listed. That seems strange, casting doubt on this study.

3. The word "status" is the 5th word in table 1.

It's great that there are multiple motivations, but I'd like to see which motivations are most prominent in the sample. That is, are 80% motivated by achievement, 50% by social, and 40% immersion? (And note that in this case, the percentages don't need to add to 100).

As I have said elsewhere you can go to the dwarf fortress forums and you will find status to be a far lesser motivator than doing cool stuff.

Gaming is studied pretty extensively nowadays, I pulled the first result you get for video games plus motivation. A few further google searches will help illuminate this further for you.

I'm not sure I understood this - are you saying that since its just virtual its not that real?

I'm wondering why some pixel changes constitute a reward, and others don't. To wit, the pixels that represent your bank balance are far more impactful, and yet people don't get addicted to watching those pixels.

From a more scientific position - games like d3 and wow use multiple skinnarian reinforcement mechanism to keep people engaged. Regular schedule reinforcement comes from the xp bar which was made huge so that your regular growth on that is visible. Then variable reinforcement comes from random drops. Getting a shiny new blade is fun because it's useful and makes killing things satisfying. Hence it has value.

There was a really old article (bbc I think) where the op Ed explained one other really important aspect of why games can suck people in : they provide huge fat pipes of data perfectly tuned for the brain to consume.

So that's another reason games and their rewards are so addictive, they are immediate feedback and information in a way the brain craves.

In the end there is no deeper reason. You could ask why people like playing any game with no monetary reward and a luck/loot component. It's just fun.

Status matters only to some sub section of gamers. Quite a bit more just want to blow stuff up. You should see the corpses of CS players caused by griefers back in the day for example.

Others, such as dwarf fortress or minecraft forums where creating stuff is the key thing and status is secondary or irrelevant.

Similarly during wow, my more hardcore friends soon tired of the base game and meta gamed the auction house instead. At the same time a larger portion didn't care at all for that.

But my theory is that while you provide some good information both your format and tone are not really in line with people here.

I took no offense coming from a hacking perspective, as it's normal to be fairly caustic. But this is merely called hacker news, it's mostly for startups related to the tech industry.

I only come here for the occasional papers and such, but little programmatically is learned. I even asked for employment advice at one point and it was probably the slowest and least visited ASK HN that day, despite some person of "i need handout" quality having a very popular one the same day.

I guess this really isn't the proper place to discuss this topic, as the longevity of Diablo 2 can only really be understood by players who contribute to that longevity, ie put in many, many hours.

Well said. Tweaking and experimenting, rather than constantly and tediously fighting for your life (which is rendered all the more pointless when you realize one amazing piece of gear can fix it for you).

Normal mobs still pretty much 4-shot me. I have to kite EVERYTHING. I'm pretty sure I could have the best gear possible in the game and still die in less than 10 hits, less for elites/champions.

Perhaps something for an "Ask HN" or an in-game channel? I'll go sit in a "HackerNews" channel when I'm online.

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So, I sort of agree with the linked post, but I feel it doesn't apply to the game as a whole, rather only to certain sections and to certain demographics. I'll explain by digging into the presence/shape of the reward and frustration loops (which can co-exist, imo!) for each difficulty level both with and without use of the Auction House.

On Normal: The game is never very hard. As a result, the frustration loop is non-existent for both AHers and non-AHers. Players using the AH and players not using the AH are pretty much in the same boat, though decent items are inexpensive enough in this level range (1-30) that a player can pretty easily flatten the reward loop entirely (and thus never find anything truly useful to him/her) by purchasing new "good" gear every few levels that's very likely to blow away anything they're going to find. tl;dr: on Normal, the AH serves only to destroy the reward loop (and removes all challenge from the game as well).

On Nightmare: The game begins to get more difficult; you realize things are a bit more serious the first time you see an elite pack with potently synergetic affixes. The increased challenge does not frustrate most players, and for these players the game (as well as the effects the Auction House has on rewards/frustration) is the same as on Normal. For inexperienced players, however, the effects explained in the OP's post begin to manifest themselves. The game gets tough in some places, and the AH can alleviate this pain at very affordable prices. Using the AH creates a frustration loop because buying cheap, relatively powerful gear is easier than learning to play better, and as such the idea becomes to "out-gear" rather than "out-think" challenges. This dampens the peaks of the reward loop significantly for AH users. Nightmare is very doable without using the AH, and as such many users are unaffected and the game still feels a lot like Diablo II.

As of Hell, D3 becomes much, much harder. Elite packs with deadly affix sets become common and characters can be killed very quickly at times whether or not they're prepared for what's coming. Hell, I think, is the part of D3 that is most negatively impacted by the Auction House. Hell is completable without using the AH, but it's hard enough/some parts are frustrating enough that many people will use the AH to augment their gear before finishing it (and will likely do so several times). Hell difficulty, IMO, is where the linked post really shines, and I think everything in the OP's article really describes this very well. Lots of people will use the AH to complete Hell, and as a result will experience the frustration loop and lack of a reward loop described in the post. Since the gear necessary to complete Hell is very affordable still, players can buy their way out of difficult situations and power through without the addiction that comes along with finding awesome stuff every so often.

If you've read this far, thanks! This is where the game changes.

On Inferno, the linked post doesn't apply. Starting with Act II, Inferno becomes incredibly difficult to the point where characters just "playing through" and even characters who have been farming (collecting gold and new items) for awhile in Act I are eliminated by foes instantly and frequently. Inferno is nigh-impossible (yes, some people have finished it, but the vast majority won't for awhile if at all) as it is intended to be and the absolute best gear is needed to progress without major pain.

This gear is very, very expensive, and most players won't be able to afford it. I don't have statistics to back this up (yet?), but imagine that gear quality follows a power law distribution in which there is a ton of crap and only very infrequently do the wonderful things pop up. The wonderful things are needed to progress on Inferno, so the demand for them is very high, higher even than it'd be if Inferno could be reasonably completed without them. The game is now different. Instead of being able to smoothly purchase the items you need as you go, there is a brick wall in front of you that says you must be THIS TALL to ride, and you're only half this tall. So how do you get THIS TALL? You farm.

You farm and farm and farm. The game becomes about total equippable assets. Say a suitable item for a given slot costs 1 million gold; 2x rings, 1x amulet, 1x chest, 1x helm, 1x boots, 1x pants, 1x weapon (2h for sake of example), 1x belt, 1x gloves, 1x shoulders = 11 items = 11 million gold. You don't need to find or trade for 11 suitable items; you just need to be able to purchase them. You feed the power law curve of crap on the Auction House by selling everything you think will sell for a reasonable price so that you can buy the super-expensive items you need to progress.

Here's the kicker: this means that the presence of the AH doesn't actually dilute the reward cycle! The inability to trivially purchase everything you need means that the items you find have full meaning. Even if you can't wear the good ones, you'll sell them or give them to friends who need them, building up gold and friend-goodwill s.t. they'll give you things they find as well. In short, the incredibly high bar set by Inferno combined with the rarity of the items needed to progress through Inferno balances with the effects of the AH in cheapening the reward loop, restoring the feel of Diablo IIness.

For those wondering about the Inferno frustration loop, I argue that the presence of the AH doesn't change it. Were it not for the AH, Blizzard would still find a difficulty bar befitting their highest difficulty. (It would likely be easier to compensate for having no AH -- or perhaps good rare items would drop more frequently -- but the difficulty would likely not change substantially.) In both cases, the very rare amazing finds are what pushes the player toward progression; in the AH case, the few major item find successes give the player the gold he needs to move on; in the non-AH case, the few major item finds are what you actually use. The reward loops then are awfully similar if not the same (hence the feeling of Diablo IIness).

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To sum up: for players who use the Auction House whenever it's in their best interest to do so before Inferno, yes, I agree with the linked post. The game is cheapened, the reward loop doesn't feel as good or doesn't exist, and a lot of the challenge is removed. This does, however, allow Blizzard to make the game more difficult for players looking for a challenge (as not using the AH through Hell is pretty tough!) while still making it possible for less experienced players (via using the AH). Perhaps that's part of their design, and they should have made it more obvious (like a recommendation not to use it for experienced players until later, etc).

So your party have to synergize alot in order to overcome this scaling. This is further exacerbated by the Nephalem Valor buff's mechanics - a bonus to magic find you accrue after killing hard mob packs - which prohibits changing your skills and runes mid-game. Hence you cannot really have your party members leave and be replaced by someone of different class without losing the synergy (or the buff).

In solo play, of course, you don't have these problems.

All you get is a spam of join/leave of people like you trying to form a party.. with proper classes and that doesn't seem to ever happen.

1) You cannot get gear good enough for progressing through Act 2 Inferno from Act 1.

2) Items are actually absurdly cheap. It's the combat that is annoying. Other than the super geared barbs, every character past Act 3 Inferno is a wizard or demon hunter, whose every fight is a 10 minute kite or a reset.

Inferno isn't a challenge, its a stupid chore. Kiting is really easy and boring, and there are certain affix combinations a class will NEVER be able to kill. Kite and reset is how people play inferno. Or corpse hopping to kill the super easy bosses.

If that's not totally broken, I don't know what is.

To be brief, the ending of D1 and D2 were ominous, at best. D2's ending left off with doing something so horrible and crazy that no one knew the full consequences.

D3's story favors the archangel Tyreal over humans or the heroes really. The ending is some unicorn pooping rainbows where in Disney fashion as soon as the bigger baddy is defeated by the hero, the angel steps in for a "finishing" blow on the downed enemy, proclaims himself wise, the area is magically repaired of all damage. What follows (the falling) is the single stupidest way to end it, ignoring the consequences of it in favor of a symbolic ending.

Almost every character at some point in the timeline, has their moral compass turned 180.

At least here there was hopefully an unambiguous disney ending for once. I'd give them time, they have lots of scope to improve on the story line (levels 60-70, 70-80 and 80-90 I'm sure.)

There was already far too much missing from the game as promised. But to deliver an obviously incomplete game (lvl 60 cap, no PVP, still no RMAH despite the strategy needed to make it viable ruining parts of the game).

Now on my 3rd time through, some of the stuff has me scratching my head. Why am I lighting the signal fires, doesn't everyone already know everything is fscked? NPC's are completely useless against even the lowest of creatures, and so are the followers... The only formidable fighter in the entire world is you.

What's stupid is that the majority of Act 1 is CAUSED by "the fallen star".

All in all the plot isn't horrid but it's not a gothic Diablo plot but more of a fantasy plot in the Diablo universe.

If you like being ( in the story ) some unrivaled being that everyone flatters and looks up to and expects you to defeat all evil, you'll love it.

Voice acting was superb, though. I guess I just found Diablo 2's ominous "good luck hero, you're gonna need it" atmosphere more realistic when going against the embodiment of all evil.

Did you actually read Diablo III storyline? The idea was: the worldstone is destroyed, everybody will be nephalem now. There's no reason why you would be nepalem and anybody else won't. People were miserable but now they actually become what they should be in the first place.

Yes I read the D3 storyline, and I think you're a bit mistaken in how it happens.

The humans (nephalem) are offpsring between angels and demons, but their potential power was too much, so the Worldstone was used so that each new generation of humans would be progressively weaker. Since you killed the Worldstone in D2, and some time has passed, some humans have regained nephalem powers.

The question becomes: how does every minor character know what a nephalem is? how do they know it's all powerful? why does everyone have so much faith in me to defeat the evil that has pretty much been uncontested forever?

D3's story makes me feel like I'm Superman, born to save the world and everyone knows.

a good read: http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/05/10/diablo-3-the-story-so-far/

Ancient entities like Diablo and Imperius recognise you being nephalem because the difference is as obvious to them as the difference between an ape and a human.

Which I'm playing right now on my Android phone...

Anyway, it's wonderful, check it out and see for yourself.

- Whiner who likes whining more than playing games.

- Bad genre match: go play your mindless Max Payne or Counter Strike, we won't possibly feel any worse without you.

- Not really remembering Diablo II downsides that were fixed in Diablo III. Having idealized past and snarky today.

Of course you have to play on hardcore. AH makes single player softcore much less fun; multiplayer softcore a bit less fun (it was possible to trade even in Diablo II); and hardcore becomes a lot more fun. Because seriously.

Now, Diablo II had a lot of problems of its own that I'm glad are fixed in Diablo III. A clear improvement.

Come on! Meph running without maphack is NOT fun! Throwing out every magic and rare item is NOT fun! Ignoring every non-mandatory dungeon because the only good drop is from bosses is NOT fun! Skipping acts 1 & 2 because good exp only comes in 4&5 is NOT fun! Running thru huge levels killing monsters with lots of health but little scare factor is NOT fun! First scene in act 5, where very good exp could be made but no scary monsters or interesting drop - a definition of boredom!

We loved Diablo II, but now we love Diablo III, so please ignore the whiners and give it a try! Hardcore.

So many mops that jump or do quick long range attacks. Not to mention elite packs.

Takes just too much time to be a considerable challenge. I know its about farming gear on hardcore... but the chance of rolling perfect stats that you need.... slim.