[Sawamara]

I have respect for Dustin Bowder's vision with regards to Diablo III, however disastrous it proved to be with the game's hardcore fans. It misunderstood what the franchise was about and fundamentally went against some of its core "values", but at the end of the day, pre-nerf Diablo III at Inferno was one of the most heavy skill-based kite-based arpg to date. You had to be there.

[bob1029]

To me this hints at the core of why small/niche games will always have a place. Diablo 3 and any other mass-consumption AAA title is going to have to compromise some of the edginess to gain wider acceptance. I personally thought the D3 launch experience into the first few months was incredible. That said, I can see how it upset some of the fan base for various reasons.

Overwatch is another example where you can see this battle unfold. There are now 2 completely separate competitive ranked queue options with different rule sets in order to bridge this gap in gameplay expectations. I personally prefer the unconstrained queue where more dynamic teamwork is required, but a lot of players prefer the role queue where they can expect certain meta styles. I think both are perfectly valid ways to play the game, and this approach might be a good example of ways we might be able to handle these varying expectations in a more general way.

[echohack5]

I believe you mean Jay Wilson? Dustin Browder's involvement with Diablo 3 was only from a Strike Team perspective. Browder is more known for his work on Starcraft 2.

[VRay]

Man, I hope so

Diablo 3's hardest difficulty at launch was a nightmare. You had to move around with Ninja Gaiden/Dark Souls-level precision in a game engine that just was _not_ designed to give you that much precise control

So often I'd be trying to run out of something, accidentally click a monster instead of a patch of open ground, and my guy would stop to turn around and shoot. It was horrible

Not only was it un-fun to play, it actively made me feel bad. "Hey, game's over, you're just not good enough to play any more Diablo. Get out."

[vsareto]

> You had to move around with Ninja Gaiden/Dark Souls-level precision in a game engine that just was _not_ designed to give you that much precise control

This is the direction Path of Exile has gone and frankly it sucks. It more closely resembles bullet-hell games than old school Diablo 2.

[notSupplied]

You actually try to dodge things in these games? The control scheme is so horrible for that, I always presumed the correct way to play is “if you’re not nuking everything on the screen with ease, your build is wrong and you’re not strong enough. Come back later.”

[vsareto]

You still have to dodge things because there are one-shot mechanics, it's just that the game is visually very noisy and the visual cues to dodge the thing is often covered or very hard to see because there's so much going on (lots of monsters, monster projectiles, player projectiles, etc.) and it seems like there's no effort to make the really painful things stand out against the background noise.

[bpicolo]

> pre-nerf Diablo III at Inferno was one of the most heavy skill-based kite-based arpg to date

Fun content, but anywhere past Act 2 was dramatically overtuned. Ultimately you don't want the only reasonable path to be cheese strats.

[hnick]

Yeah I had a lot of fun running Inferno Belial back then. You had to dodge every single attack. As flawed as the whole game was, I enjoyed that part a lot.