What ruined the longevity of Diablo 3?

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Auction House? No, not really. It actually in a sense made the game fun and almost addictive once you start. Playing and buying stuff on the auction house was addictive and actually fun. I don't see what removing it accomplished. The game had more than one thing to do and people actually spent hours upon end watching and using the Auction House and then the same amount of time playing and testing their gear in the game.

Kadala and Rift it Forward? BINGO, that's your answer. People are gearing their character completely out in one day just by farming Rift Fragments and exchanging it for blood shards which you can gamble on specific items.

Either way, the longevity of Diablo 3 didn't change, if anything removing the Auction House and adding BoA is what ruined the longevity.

The game is actually way to restrictive compared to others. The only way to trade or give away your gear you don't want is to find it in a group and give it or trade it within two hours. There is currently no way to sell your gear to other players.

 

Meh. As an avid MMO player, I am well aware that some people enjoy spending their days on auction houses. However, economic endeavors are only fun for a distinct minority and it pisses me off when people get stuff by not actually playing the game. This is actually the primary reason why it was removed anyway, and it works just fine as it is now. Also, the AH in D3 was poorly implemented, so no great loss there.

 

For me Diablo II was all about trading. I loved to farm gear, making auction threads and have bid wars on the diabloii.net forums. I loved the personal aspect of it as well. To meet up with the buyers and chat with them.

The Auction House I did not like so much. I especially did not like the real money auction house. Pretty much all my friends bought gold on the RMAH, and then went on to twink out their characters with items bought from the regular AH. And why not, when you can get a great fully geared character for the cost of 1-2 hours of work? Especially when you consider how frustratingly hard it was to get a good geared character without either resorting to the RMAH or putting insane amounts of time into the game (this is pre-loot 2.0).

Personally I don't see the point of doing this. For me, it's the process that I enjoy the most, not the end result. To find that one elusive upgrade, or that one gem you can sell for a small fortune.

Then came the expansion. They removed the AH, and made a lot of funky changes. I like how loot 2.0 works. The BoA thing, not so much.
Without being able to trade your stuff, you're just grinding gear, for the sake of grinding gear, and I don't see the fun in doing that.
So no, I did not like the AH, but neither do I like the BoA thing.

Personally I think the longevity of the game was ruined from day one, when they obviously did not have a proper plan for end-game.

 

The AH was an invaluable tool back when the game was newer. It didn't "evolve" as well, I guess.

Among other things:

• Terrible plot/story, "single player" mode generally unrewarding compared to multiplayer, end-game is essentially a grind/farm fest, character skill system is pretty good but the combat system (super-deadly needle-sized projectiles, companions not very useful, not enough mobility on several classes, etc) leaves a lot to be desired.
• Not enough incentive to play the game as anything other than as a pseudo-MMO after you've killed Diablo/the angel of death a couple of times. As a result it will always end up being compared to MMOs, and it will probably lose to titles currently out atm.
• Under-representation/lack of character archetypes. Considering how well the D2 classes managed to represent popular character archetypes I still find it hard to believe just how much D3 sucked in this regard.
• Lack of support for several character sub-archetypes except those that revolve around specific skills. I mean no one expects updates from D3 every week like MMOs, so one would think the D3 devs would have had more time to polish/improve skills or introduce support for various sub-archetypes. Like an NPC that gives your weapons unique bonuses to your favored skills, for example. The addition would have been natural considering Charsi's enchantment/socketing back in D2.
  Granted, it seems the devs have been slowly trying to address this.

 

What actually killed it for me from the very get go, was the fact that it's an online game. Yeah, Blizz is making some efforts to fix the game, which may or may not appeal to people (I do appreciate bold strokes like removing AH). However, D1 and D2 were very much moddable, and I've made some wonderful mods that fixed or improved things for me and other people, especially for single player. That extended their replay value considerably, and the fact that D3 has no actual offline/single player mode where you're not at the mercy of battle.net is depressing.

 

1)Lack of interesting fights. (the pack/boss AI is equal to the AI of old Commodore 64 AI)

2) Lack of Challenges other than grind more if you are "stuck". "Progress" is just the same difficulty just with biigger numbers.

3) Lack of decent PvP

4)Terrible storyline

5)It inspires people to "the grind for hours a day" mentality. Games can be good without this.

6) The low cost of dying. You can even respawn on top of your corpse in combat! Where is the grim universe!! Where death matters? Made me play HC but that just made (2) a lot worse and the annoying reliance of Battlenet stability.
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Removing the AH was GREAT btw.

 

I do not understand the end-game = grind/farm fest complaint. Isn't that what all MMOs are about? I haven't played any MMOs, so I might be wrong, but if not that, what is the appeal of end game in a good MMO?

 

I agree with henkie that the whole "endgame" issue with D3 is the players own demise. End game in D3 is meant to be grind feast.

A good MMO endgame for me is challenging well scripted fights that cannot be solved with the "grind more" mentality but good coordinated group play. And naturally PvP.

D3 could be just that, if the devs had more manpower. But they don't really tbh. It is not a subscription game and Blizzard is owned by Activision which is a stockholder company that needs to generate a venue. Reaper of Souls just had to be the bare essential success for lowest cost. My guess is they use D3 to test new gfx engines other than the ancient WoW gfx engine for their upcoming mmo.

That said Reaper of Souls is much much better than the original Diablo 3. It did not get the evil taint of Jay Wilson. I wonder what he is up to atm. What evil is stirring in the dephts of Blizzard. He must have mind controlled them. That is the only rational explanation for his continued service in the company.

 

The problem wasn't that it was a grind fest. The problem was that it was hard to have any clear goals with it.

In Diablo II, you could make a sorcerer, level it up, and then start gearing it up doing Magic Find runs. This was possible because uniques was pretty much the best items (not counting high end runes words, and some rare rings, gloves and circlets), and you could farm for them specifically, because there were a limited number, and specific bosses dropped a set range of item levels.

You could not do this at the beginning of Diablo 3 because if the way item drops worked.
Bosses actually dropped WORSE gear than random named monsters, making it pointless to farm them. Uniques were terrible, making it pointless to farm for them. So you were left with farming random trash mobs for rare items, which could spawn with a plethora of different modifiers, in as many different combinations. To get anything actually good (not to mention something that was good for the class you were playing at the time) was extremely rare, because not only did the item need the right modifiers, but it also needed the right combination of modifiers...
So were' back to the point where you pretty much had to buy your way to success.

I don't mind grinding. But it is pretty disheartening when you don't get anything to show for your hard work.

 

Diablo 3 is not a true MMO. It is a single player game trying desperately to be an MMO.
Note that I'm not just using "MMO" here to just mean "massive multiplayer online game" or a game that requires an internet connection, I'm using it in the sense of what "MMO" stands for as a gaming genre.

Anyway comparing the size/scope/scale of Diablo 3's maps to the worlds of some of the bigger MMOs would be like comparing the size of Earth to Jupiter. This is because true MMOs are more about creating worlds for players to lose themselves in, since that's how the people/companies behind the game get paid (via online stores or monthly subscriptions).

For some reason, as omilikrig points out, Diablo 3 is failing as a single player game. Single player games are really more about keeping the player happy, since the devs only get paid once (when you buy the game/expansions) and that's it. Games like BG2/DA:O reward you with a (hopefully) amazing experience, while games like Diablo 2 are basically light storytelling/ego boosters.
I have no idea why the people behind it are acting like they're managing a true MMO.