WTF is this article about? Do you people even try? I know it doesn't take that much to become a (game)journalist but can you please actually PUT some relevant information into an article? Why is this guy upset? Is he having personal issues, does he think War Z ripped him off, is he bitching about the fans? Just what the **** is going on!?
I'm just wondering... do any of you people that have an allergic reaction whenever you see "Michael Pachter" realize that this guy is not paid to give a shit about your hurt feelings? He doesn't really care whether his "opinion" is going to upset you because he gets paid HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of $ a year (maybe more) to say what he thinks? Sure, he doesn't know a thing about games, nor do I think he cares, but if his opinion is worth the money he's making and a upper floor office at a fairly big securities trader I would definitely say he knows his shit.
@x-TwilighT-x The've admitted a 10th of their fault. To me bad design that stops me from playing the game is bad design - regardless of their ability to patch it. While I'm sure Blizzard will patch the game, for the moment the issues remain. But that's not the whole issue: like I said, drops in the game are simply bad, and even increased drop rates (at least by their patch-preview notes) are not going to fix the fact that the most common items dropped are randomly generated rares. In Diablo 2 after doing a 5 minute MF run in the highest level areas of the game I would end up with at least an item or two after a few runs. In Diablo 3 runs take 15 minutes and after an hour of gameplay you might still come up empty handed.
I've been thinking about posting this for a long time, so here goes. I have a lv. 60 wizard, in Inferno Act 2 and a low-level Barb. I've spent well over 70 hours with this game since I got it two weeks ago, which in my book is a lot of time to spend with a game in such a short period of time. However, right now I fell burnt out and simply stuck. I can't get past Act 2 Inferno without grinding and waiting for my loot to sell on the AH – I simply cannot kill enemies fast enough and live through battles because my gear is not up to par. IMO that's just simply horrible design. The problem with D3 is that it's simply too linear and too focused around gear to be compelling. The skill system in D2 needed a revamp (go figure! It's only been 12 years!) but tearing down all semblance of choice and linking leveling to gear is simply not a good design choice. The skill system greatly limits your amout of choice in terms of gear and drops. Without several different alternatives to the „highest-DPS” standard looking for good gear is the equivalent of ice-sculpting the Statue of Liberty with a toothpick – it's a ton of grind with near zero-satisfaction. Gear drops are horrible until inferno Act 3 and I have no money to buy better items to help me get there because every 1000+ dps sword is at least 500k. Resistance + intelligence gear is also extremely expensive. Sources with loads of damage are also insanely expensive. What I'm left with is trying to farm Warden/Butcher (the latter of which I cannot kill solo because, like every monster in this game, he one-hits me) and hoplessly cling to trying to sell the items I find on the AH. In Diablo 2 items from every boss and/or high level farming area WERE USEFUL! You could farm NM Mephisto for a ton of items: Lidlles Wall, Occulus, several set items, Skin of Vipermagi, tons of unique rings and armors, etc. You HAD ****ING CHOICES! If I could not afford Full Tal-Rasha's set with 2 x SOJ I could still farm bosses and low-lv. Areas to get my character higher up in survivability. The reason farming worked was because of a combination of things: more item choices meant you weren't looking for a needle in a hay-stack because you had several alternatives, better drop rates meant you didn't get to max level and finished hell WITHOUT A SINGLE SET OR LEGENDARY DROP, better item stats meant that not everything was randomized and you knew what you were looking for because if item Y dropped you KNEW THAT ITEM WAS WORTH SOMETHING OR NOT, skill trees meant that builds were equipped to deal with monsters even with garbage gear because leveling was not tied directly to gear, etc. These were the things that made Diablo 2 great, and still make it great – 12 years after it's released it's unmatched in terms of itemization (not a word) and skills/classe. Diablo 3 is NOT a bad game by any means. I'd rate it a solid 7, which in my book is a good game, but coming from a lineage of games that defined a genre and nearly destroyed my social life a „7” is just not good enough.
@rarson Are you kidding me? This card beats the 7970 (a great card in its own way) to a bloody pulp. It's roughly $50-100 cheaper, when it "loses" it does so at 1-2 frames and when it wins it crushes the AMD in benchmarks by 20%-30%. Would I buy one? No, it's too expensive, but it's a great card for people who want to have the best single card possible and who have 2560x1600 monitors.
Half-Life is the best game ever made and easily the most influential game of the last 15 years. Without it, for better or worse, the gaming industry would still be presenting games with paper thin stories, FPS games without AI and Quake would be a yearly release... basically unchanged from Quake 3 Arena.
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