Supposedly, the Diablo 3 expansion had been announced. Part of the expansion will apparently mark the return of Jay Wilson since Blizzard’s Titan title will be delayed. Originally, I heard the rumor/announcement on Kripparian’s youtube channel and he offered some thoughts on what the game ought to be. The main thing he wanted was a reset.
At that point, I had to stop the video and find something else.
It’s clear that Kripparian’s view is that races are what make games great. But you have to understand something very carefully. Kripparian is someone who professes to have no life, dedicating his entire time to gaming. In fact, without these races, Kripparian practically wouldn’t exist at this moment as a streamer. But that’s what he implies by having the expansion essentially reset everyone’s work. Right now, he points the finger at those who pay real cash to get ahead. But those people are not the only ones who would be affected by the equivalent of a reset. What about those who had grinded for months since the start? Does that mean that their efforts suddenly would be devalued as well?
But that’s what a reset implies. Yet there’s a very nefarious scheme behind what Kripparian wants here. The idea is that Kripparian, since he abandoned Diablo 3 in favor of a game that he gets paid for (i.e. Path of Exile), he would be at the same level as everyone else once he steps back in. At that point, he could easily play catch up because everyone would be at his level. Then he could go and do whatever exploitations of the game he desires along with using his group of followers to push him ahead.
I found his video to be quite insulting in how he described Blizzard as catering to casuals. Isn’t the point of any game company to make a product that has a broad appeal? If a company dedicates their resources to cater to a very small group, then they wouldn’t have much of a product nor following. That’s just how it goes. But that’s the poison that these people who profess to be “hardcore” gamers want from game companies.
But that’s not exactly what gaming is about. Gaming is about having fun, not a dick race, which is what the industry apparently has turned into with all these streams and e-sports monikers. Yes, it is fascinating watching people play competitively. But that type of play should not be the focus in the design of a game.
Going back to the subject of a new Diablo 3 expansion, I addressed the subject a while back and want to talk about some points. The first is dealing with the problem about the game being far too gear centered. Blizzard had coded themselves into a wall by limiting the number of levels and making the game focused all around gearing. The problem is that with an expansion, what do you do about the people who spent tons of money to buy upgrades? Or what about the grinding that people had done to obtain the best gear?
World of Warcraft already has this issue and it’s something that I believe is a mental disease in Blizzard in creating the dangling carrot. The thing is that gear centered games face the same problem as technology. You easily surpass it after a certain point and everyone wants the best. However, after doing the rat race long enough, people gradually burn out once they realize that their efforts pretty much amount to bling at the end of the day. My guild master once summarized the problem in saying that he wanted to do pet battles because he recognized that his pets weren’t going away.
Then you have the whole paragon leveling issue. Should someone who has paragon 100 be as power as say someone who was level 70 (if the game added 10 more levels)? The thing is that ultimately the people who have stuck around and continued playing the game despite all the disasters should be rewarded for their efforts. Even if someone was a sucker in spending say a few thousand dollars on gear upgrades, why sh0uldn’t they seem some form of gratification? Perhaps that person works exceptionally hard at a job and spends money on gear because he wants to. I don’t see any issue with that. The only people who care are those who have an ego problem because they cannot be the best in terms of gear.
So the question is what should Blizzard do now that they’ve built their own prison? One thing that the new lead developers mentioned was reintegrating the skill system into the game. Something I thought of was to retain the benefits of Paragon levels and focus on a separate type of leveling system that would focus on the skill system. I’ve seen some games like Skyrim, Wasteland and Wizardry who implement skill leveling through usage. You could make such a system layer on top of the build system on place so it acts as an augmentation system. That would solve the leveling issue.
What about gearing? My biggest gripe about Diablo 3 and World of Warcraft is that your items essentially are like modern cars; they constantly depreciate in value over time. It would be nice to be able to continue to use them, especially if you’ve gotten lucky with a good find, deal on the AH, etc. But obviously you want better gear at the same time. My thought is that there needs to be other ways to enhance what you’ve earned. In World of Warcraft, they partly handled this through the upgrade system. But the upgrade system works only between one tier. Once the ilvl difference increases to a certain point, your items once again lose value and you’re forced to do another item hunt.
Take for instance the legendary gem and Sha Touched weapons. The second you find a Thunderforged weapon you’ll more than likely toss your hard earned Sha Touched weapon into Void Storage. So why even put in the effort in the first place, especially for something described as a “legendary quest?” (or do they mean legendary waste of time?)
So I hope that they have some mechanism to upgrade your items. Perhaps using existing items or a way to reforge your stats into something more meaningful. Either way, that type of mechanism needs to be in place so that items don’t go to waste. I think if Diablo 3 attempted to go the direction of World of Warcraft where all the new items far exceed everything, then it’ll cause a lot of people to lose even more faith in Blizzard. I mean, Diablo 3’s connection to real money and the grinding necessary to remain semi-competitive make the situation extremely sensitive to players. Now, Blizzard has to live with the consequences.