I tried - I really freakin tried

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I gave it every chance. I've played through the base game. I started doing the bounties afterwards. I just am failing to see the point at what the end game is. I'm still playing on normal difficulty, because the instructions say you shouldn't try the other difficulties (there are like 10 of them) until you have "optimized gear". Since on almost every dungeon run I end up finding an item that replaces something I was previously using, I'm guess I don't yet have optimized gear.

But what's the point then? And what the hell is this entire "paragon" tab on my character screen? It's empty, but I assume it has a purpose. I'm not getting the mindless slaughter of hell spawn without some end game goal in mind. (And I concede that it is strange to expect something beyond slaughter of countless demons when it's a Diablo game ... But still)

 

I hear ya. Stopped playing it months ago. No itch to return.

They lost me when you "win" in the first difficulty mode, effectively starting the game completely over with all of your gear but the difficulty is jacked up to the extreme. Zombies you killed with one hit now take 10. This is just AFTER the pre-final-battle Diablo end-game enemies were all going down in 1-2 hits. It's mindless. A mindless, endless grind.

Don't even get me started on finding multiple copies of the same "Legendary" on every friggin' playthough, regardless of character class.

I know a few people who brag to have gotten several of their characters to Paragon levels. I've told them it's not impressive at all. They agreed.

Le shrug.

 

That's basically end game - farming. And PvP, if you're into that sort of thing.
Paragon levels are basically pseudo-level ups. With each paragon level you gain a paragon point which you can use to significantly improve specific aspects of your character. In terms of the stuff you can do to fully customize/personalize your character it's the closest thing to the Diablo 2 level up system.

Diablo 3 certainly puts things into perspective, doesn't it?

 

Well I feel like dumbass. I didn't touch this game for months but then said what the hell, I'll pick up the expansion and see what's up with v2.x.x of the game. I was thoroughly unimpressed with v1, and was flabbergasted that they may actually have made it worse.

And I hate that there's only "normal" difficulty. That's one of the added "features" of v2. No nightmare or hell modes. It's been a while but I know for sure that there were difficulty levels in v1.

 

Not sure I get all the complaints about this game. Perhaps most of the folks here prefer "traditional" RPGs and are just heaping rubbish on D3 for no reason.

In regards to the difficulty settings, I honestly can't remember if the first playthrough on your first character was locked to Normal difficulty. It's been over 6 months since I bought the PS4 version of the game and can't remember my first playthrough, but I know I played my second character on Master to get some of the boss fight in-game achievements, then every character after that I played on Torment 1 difficulty because even Master was a bit too easy. A couple of chars I even played on Torment 6 up to about level 50-60, due to having a level 25 legendary Gem of Ease, at which point the rest of my gear let me down and I lowered the difficulty to something more comfortable.

The guys that play regularly and do all the season race type stuff on PC recommend choosing a difficulty that allows you to kill white mobs in one or two hits. Me personally, I choose a difficulty that allows me to only just complete the Cursed Chest events that require killing 100 enemies to get the bonus chest. I have one character that can do that on Torment 6, but my other ones are gear limited to about Torment 2 because I don't play them much.

I will say that character creation and planning is nowhere near as interesting as, say, Path of Exile, but the polish of Diablo 3 and the fact it's on Next Gen consoles make it really accessible. Story telling in Diablo is never that deep, but the game is mostly about the loot. Kill lots of things; get lots of loot. It's mindless button mashing and I like it. I don't have to think too hard when I play Diablo and that's a welcome break from other games.

If you're still playing on Normal during the "end game" and feeling like you aren't getting anywhere, turn up the difficulty to the point where you start dying regularly, then back it off one notch until your gear improves. Look up some guides of builds on YouTube and work on increasing your Greater Rift level clearing. So far on my Witch Doctor, which I play mostly solo on Torment 6, I can clear up to about level 30 GRifts.

Higher difficulty; better rewards. Difficulties are Normal, Hard, Expert, Master then Torment 1-6. Just don't treat the game too seriously. It's not really meant for it. Oh yeah, Paragon levels, as someone above mentioned, are just levels past 70 and assigned points make your character stronger overall. Currently I am Paragon 350 on the PS4.

 

That's rather the point. Apparently it's a game you're not supposed to take seriously, which I think is part of the reasonwhy the console version does well.

Diablo 2 had a rather engaging story and good characters that RPG PC gamers could appreciate, before the whole gear grind/leveling. Despite ultimately becoming a near-mindless exercise in farming/monster killing at least 10% of the game was about how cool Tyrael was, how interesting the game locations were, how badass the three Nephalem guardians of Mt. Arreat were, the persona of the character classes, the ambiance/setting/lore/the blood war, etc. Nostalgia definitely played a part in keeping people playing.

Diablo 3 fails miserably at this. It might be a great action game, but some people wanted a hack and slash RPG. And you can't exactly say that people were expecting too much because we waited 10 whole years for the game.
The game mechanics/skill system may also seem foreign to more traditional RPG players. Diablo 3's system is reminiscent of a template system - you basically have a character/template, and you accessorize. It's very different from actually creating a character from the ground up. The paragon levels attempts to address this I suppose. Badly.
The system used to penalize you for changing your skills/build (you lost your magic find buffs), which defeated the purpose of the template system. It was one of the main reasons I stopped playing. This changed only after the console version was launched, apparently the devs realized how stupid this was later on.

Finally, for all it's focus on looting/killing monsters the game has various other shortcomings, including its very limited class system. The game gives you a ranged specialist, two nukers, a versatile melee, a juggernaut and a shield-user.
Seriously. Titan Quest did a much better job at covering almost all the character archetypes and it's 6 years older.
Hell even Diablo 2 did a better job - a juggernaut, a ranged fighter/caster, a melee fighter/caster, a shield user/versatile melee, a skirmisher/caster, various summoner+debuffer/warrior/nuker hybrids, and a dedicated nuker. And ALL of these archetypes were available from the onset, you didn't have to farm like mad for specific items just to be able to play the character archetype you wanted.
At this point you'll understand the frustration of many PC players - Diablo 3 apparently fancies itself an MMO, since the gameplay seems almost entirely focused on the playing up the MMO grind (killing monsters/gearing up/looting). Unfortunately, it falls flat when you compare it to a true MMO, and the PC has dozens of those with bigger worlds, flashier graphics, a better gear/loot/skill/class system, etc.

I suppose that's part of the reason they made a console version in the first place - less competition.

 

Well, there certainly are some interesting mechanics you could explore in Adventure Mode. I am a big fan of the first two games (went as far as writing game guides in Romanian when they came out), but Diablo III is something I only play from time to time with a couple of friends just for the fun we get from farming Legendary items and experimenting -- even if things are pretty limited by design. That's why we focus on items and the way they play out in combination with the small number of skills instead of trying to come up with interesting builds (like we did in early versions of WoW). It's sad, actually...

 

I played religiously for about a year and then drifted away. From what I can the game has changed dramatically and maybe at some point I'll fire it up again, but for now I'm good. I agree with some of the earlier posters that D2 was pretty much the best.

 

I tried too. I got the beta of 3 and I was absolutely hyped to play it, even got the collectors edition. I thought they could do no wrong and not mess it up and make it even better then the second...well it looks pretty I guess.