Bandwidth Place 2

I've been wanting to "vent" my thoughts and ideas about a few different things, and well I figured
that this could be a decent place to start. I didn't want to do FaceBook for a variety of reasons and
message boards tend to be biased and rather then people being able to reflect and spark intelligent
conversation. So, who knows... here goes I guess:


I'd like to talk about blizzard games in this post. Blizzard games have been, at least for me, the pinnacle
of computer gaming over the last 15 years. I have enjoyed many blizzard titles to varying degrees including
games like: Diablo 2, Starcraft, Warcraft 3 (and it's expansion, The Frozen Throne), World of Warcraft, Starcraft 2,
Diablo 3 & Reaper of Souls, Hearthstone and so on. I've gotten a ton of enjoyment out of most of them and even
the ones that do not make my "favorites list", still ranking very highly and offering a level of play-ability/replay-ability
that ranks high in my book.

Top Tier:

Diablo 2
Warcraft 3
Warcraft 3 The Frozen Throne


Mid Tier:

Diablo 3 (ROS)
Starcraft
Starcraft 2


Bottom Tier:

World of Warcraft
Diablo 3
Hearthstone


Games in the top tier are games that I've spent hundred and hundreds of hours (maybe 1000+)
and the games never felt like a "chore" but rather an enjoyable experience that I wanted to be a part of. I actively wanted
to pick up the game and play it on a daily basis.

Games in the mid tier are games that I honestly got quite a bit of enjoyment
out of, but not something that I wanted to invest large amounts of time. These are games that I could put maybe 100-200 hours
in over a year or two, playing occasionally but no strong urge to play daily.

Lastly the games in the bottom tier are still games
that I really feel are good games, but are flawed by how the game is played or business logic on Blizzards behalf. These are games
that I probably put around 50-60 of hours into, maybe as much as 100. These are games that I frequently got discouraged playing
and "fell off the wagon" quite a few times. All three games are ones that I've taken long breaks from, in excess of a year, without
playing or wanting to play at all.


A deeper look into the tiers:

The top tier are games that I feel are "almost" perfect. I felt like almost every element was flawless, and even the flaws there were
didn't affect how I felt about the game at all. These games were games that I wanted to play, I would wake up early and stay up late
to extend my playing time. I often feel that "updates" to these games would make them better then most games out today. Mostly graphical
but even slight extensions in the gameplay. They could probably update, remaster and then start reselling these games. I'd buy them in a heart
beat.

The mid tier holds games that are very good, but don't quite have the draw for me to want to invest crazy hours into them. I feel that RoS pretty
much saved Diablo 3 and addressed a fair amount of what I didn't like about the game. The $25 I paid for it resulted in over 100 hours of game play
so far and for what I have invested is a win win for my money. The game itself is "flawed" (that's my opinion anyways) in a way that it's a grind fest at the end game.
I have little interest in an eternal grindfest, really not wanting to invest hundreds of hours to get more gear which results in being able to grind faster. As
far as the starcraft games go, they are very good, and feel polished. I go through phases with these RTS games, it's a love hate kinda thing. I loved games
like command and conquer and warcraft 3, and didn't feel so crazy about games like Civilization. Starcraft falls in between for me, I got good enjoyment from
it for the money but again I won't play for hundreds upon hundreds of hours. I'll be fair to Starcraft.... it's a bias on my own part. I feel the game is pretty good
and can see it being top tier in a lot of cases. Just because I don't love it doesn't mean it isn't of good quality.

Then we have the bottom tier. I don't think these games were terrible, but I do feel they had some big flaws that really ruined them for me. I'd honestly not invest
upwards of 20-30 hours into them... if I could struggle through that much.


World of Warcraft:

This game was a bit of a trend setter, starting blizzard down the path of trying to extract a lot more money from it's customers. Back then, this was the first major
subscription type game. Sure other games had subscriptions, but this one was pretty expensive in comparison. You had to pay $60 for the license and then you had
to pay for a subscription monthly to continue to play the game. I played for a few months after the original title launched in 2005 or so, but quickly gave up for two
main reasons. The game was a total grind fest, and took a long time to get leveled up. The other reason was that the game just cost too much. For my first three or
four months worth of play time, I spent $100. That was an absurd amount of money for me back then , and even now making great money as a software engineer,
I still have no desire to spend that much money on WoW. The game today has gotten almost too easy, it went from taking forever to level up to being able to level
up in no time at all.

Diablo 3:

This game had HUGE shoes to fill, and it failed miserably. The launch was as big of a disaster as you could possibly have in so many different ways. Server instability
and the game being pure crap were the two biggest problems. When I was finally able to play, I found that the difficulty ramped up so fast it was infuriating. The developers
were almost proud of how hard they were making Diablo 3. They made the game so hard, I hated it and rage quit within 20 hours of play time. I dropped the game for good
for months and months until they changed a lot of crap. Even after they "nerfed" the hardest difficulty modes, I still couldn't get to a place where I could enjoy the game. Not
without utilizing cheesy tatics or dumping hundreds upon hundreds of hours into the game. When I'm forced to play that much, I really really don't enjoy the game. I want the
game to make me want to play it through enjoyment, not by forcing me. Having said all of that, the game had the potential to be wonderful.

Hearthstone:

I liked the concept. I felt it was really innovative on Blizzards behalf and I was excited for the launch. The game itself wasn't terrible on launch, but it left something to be
desired. This is almost a game I'd place in the mid tier, but it fails for one major reason in my book. This one will be pretty short because there was one core issue that all
three of these games share to some degree and it's the main reason they are all down here in the basement.


Freemium and/or Pay to Win

Hearthstone is a freemium game, and I hate freemium. I do not want to have to invest money in this game on a regular basis. The RnG nature of
buying card packs is complete crap to me, and just a way to generate crazy money on blizzards behalf. Most people who spent money on
card packs have probably bought in excess of a hundred packs by now. Some of those people have even spent money on things like arena
entrances and the expansion sectors of the game. I can easily see a somewhat frequent hearthstone player investing upwards of $200 on
this game. I'm not interested in that. Either make the packs cheaper, make them easier to obtain in game or charge money upfront for the
game. The whole freemium concept is just a turn off for me. They are now even adding in new "character portraits" which really do NOTHING
for the game. They make one, very small, graphical change that is simply cosmetic in every way. They charge $10 for it too boot! This isn't
quite as insane as blizzard charging $30 for crap like mounts in WoW, which people pay for and that blows my mind, but they are starting
down that path with HearthStone. Freemium is just not for me, never has been and never will be.

Pay to win is even worse. It's a total killer in my drive to want to play a game. Diablo 3 was the biggest culprit, but WoW even failed here
to a degree. In Diablo 3, when the auction house was up and running, the most effective way to advance your character by far as by playing
the auction house and not by playing the game. Sniping items that people list for sale that are way cheaper then they should be, and then
reselling it for crazy profit was how things were done. That or, by investing real money into buying things on the auction house. A $10 bill
could effectively offset over 100 hours of game play advancement. I quickly got to a point of "why bother"? Same for world of warcraft. The
game was almost entirely driven on gold back then (and my still be) and you could buy gold off of ebay very easily. Felt disappointing to know
everything you've grinded for could be achieved for a few lousy bucks.

I feel these two things have dropped the quality of blizzard games. The games themselves are still "of blizzard quality" but the business logic
behind these decisions are somewhat of a turnoff for me. I'm also not nuts about the idea of a recurring subscription but I can
almost understand that, especially if they deliver for the excess of premium paid for the game.


So what do you guys feel about Blizzards line up? Feel free to make comments or ask questions below!

Personally I moved away from Blizzard games and moved into Steam. I did play Starcraft and Warcraft and Diablo 1 and 2 in the past. I did and do like the games but the newer ones never appealed to me. I don't play very many games and can't devote a lot of time. I have played all the Half Life, Portal and Bioshock games. I would have liked to get into World of Warcraft but I didn't want to have to pay for the game AND pay to play online. Freemium and pay to win sound awful. Good thing I moved away from Blizzard.

lol

I haven't played any recent Blizzard games except for Starcraft 2. I did buy the Heart of the Swarm expansion too but haven't installed or played ever.

Totally agree about freemium and pay-to-win and don't play such games. It's not just games that have in-game purchases, though. It's the entire idea of being able to be better than a fresh/new account just by having better in-game equipment. It's like if you played chess and your opponent was like "oh I bought the polygamy upgrade, so my castle/knight/bishop are all queens. gl hf"

Fuck. that. shit. Those kinds of games are no longer about skill and all about how much time or money you want to spend on them. Rule of thumb: If a super-experienced pro at a game makes a new account and cannot immediately perform as well as they did on their original account, that game is inherently flawed.

Well....

Here's an update for Diablo 3 and it's newest patch/season.

Recently Diablo 3 upgraded to patch 2.3 and season 4 started around two weeks ago.


Patch 2.3 brought with it some very interesting changes, including Kanai's cube, changes to the way greater rifts work,
rehasing of crafting materials and some new/improved set items and legendary items.

Before there would be 3 different types of crafting materials for magic / rare all depending upon the level of the items
that were salvaged to get them. This resulted in basically a ton of useless crafting mats once you were anywhere remotely
close to end game level. Blizzard made a great call in boiling down all the crafting mats to the same 3 or 4 different kinds
regardless of the level of item they were salvaged from. They also granted the player the ability to convert and excess of
one kind to another kind for a fee through Kanai's cube.

Kanai's cube itself is probably the biggest change, and what got most of my attention in my last little 70-100 stint of game play.
The cube will allow you to randomly re roll set pieces to a different part of the set, again for a fee. So if you find like 4 of the same
pieces in a set, you can reroll them into 3 of the other pieces you need. This is much more time/resource effective them trying to find
or gamble the pieces you haven't got yet. The resulting pieces just can't be ancient. For those who don't play, ancient items are just versions
of items that are about 15% better than non ancient versions.

You can also upgrade rare items into legendary items. The legendary items will be randomly selected from the drop pool of possible drops
from that rare item type, and again this can be a MUCH easier way to get that one legendary item you need but just can't find. If a type of
rare item only has two possible legendary item rolls, then you have a 50% chance of getting one upon upgrading rare items of that type.
It might take tens if not hundreds of hours to have one of that item drop in the game.... so you can see the benefit.

Greater Rifts are now changed in that you can select any GR level you want, and do not have to go through the realm of trials on a GR stone
that hasn't been used before. Gone are rift keystones, and normal rifts can be opened at will without needing any items to do so.

The cow level can now be opened at any time, by placing a certain legendary item into Kanai's cube. The item is rare, but this means the cow
level lives on now and is fun.

Hellfire amulets now always roll with a socket, and the keywards no longer drop keys and instead drop infernal machines directly. This makes farming
machines and in turn hellfire amulets a lot easier. I still have yet to ever craft one.


So those are basically most of the big changes:

I've rolled a witch doctor and got it to level 70, got basically two full sets of the witch doctors 4 different sets and
my character is moderately powerful. Probably the strongest D3 char I've ever had. I also have a lvl 70 barb but
he isn't all that powerful, I don't really have a collection of set gear for him.

I've invested easily 50+ hours into season 4 but I've already got back to the "this is such a grindfest feeling" that
although I will continue to play I really have no drive at all to do so. I want to craft a few hellfire amulets, and finish
perfecting my witch doctor. It would be fun to play the cow level / vault levels a few more times and maybe even try
to push my witch doctor as far as I can into greater rifts. I honestly don't see even another 50 hours of D3 for me until
the next patch...

The biggest problem is that at the end of the day, it's just a grind fest to farm more items. Farm crafting mats/blood shards/items
and just push the strength of your character up and up. I'm just not interested in spending hundreds of hours, with just the ability
to get "stronger".... kill stuff "faster". I won't ever be competitive in the leaderboards. I don't have 8+ hours a day to play, and if I did
I still wouldn't want to pour them into something like this.

I honestly think an expansion feature another new character is the only real thing that will get me interested again. Reaper of Souls was
a hell of a good step in the right direction for the game. Before this last expansion... D3 was dead to me. For the $25 I paid for it, I've gotten
over 200 hours of game play... and I'm pleased with that. If Blizzard puts out another new expansion, with another new class to play I'll probably
buy it.

I have devoted some time to the RPG games like Balder's Gate, Never winter nights and Icewind dale. I do like the games so much I got an advance purchase of Sword coast legends. I am trying Divinity original sin now. Not sure about it tho. Out of all the Blizzard games I would try Diablo 3 someday.

... Sooo, at least Blizzard cutscenes are always really pretty right?