Time to take a break from the creative writing on here for a little while (though I will try and continue doing it behind the scenes) and talk a little bit about the current hotness that is Diablo III. Now the furore over its botched launch has somewhat subsided and at least a few people are starting to realise that "online game" and "persistent online DRM" are two completely different things, we can take stock of the things that the game does extremely well.
I wanted to focus on one in particular, because it's something I think Blizzard handles extremely well, and it's also something which divides opinion about modern gaming immensely.
Achievements.
I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Achievements. On the one hand, if used well, they can encourage you to try playing a game in lots of different ways — Crackdown springs immediately to mind here, with its quirky challenges such as playing tennis with a car and rocket launchers, sticking things together, climbing up to the top of the highest building and leaping off without dying. On the other, you get shit like you see in Call of Duty, which gives you an Achievement for starting the single-player campaign.
Some people actively pursue Achievements (or Sony's synonymous Trophies), even going so far as to play a game well beyond its enjoyment event horizon just so they can say they have "1000G-ed" or "Platinumed" it. There's often a lot of "filler" Achievements in there, making this an unnecessary slog at times. On other occasions, it can ruin the experience of playing a game by directing the experience too much — I "1000G-ed" The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and walked away from the game realising that I had still missed at least half of the game's content — and had no motivation or incentive to seek it out after that. The Elder Scrolls series is supposed to be about freeform, open-world exploration, and the Achievements (tied to various quest lines) completely spoiled that for me by shunting me down specific quest paths.
So back to Blizzard, and Diablo III specifically. Diablo III features a wide range of Achievements for all sorts of things. There are Achievements for reaching significant milestones in the game's story — beating bosses, completing Acts, that sort of thing. There are Achievements rewarding those who explore thoroughly and delve into the surprisingly deep lore. There are Achievements for completing special challenges, encouraging players to play more skilfully. There are class-specific Achievements, nudging players in the direction of a good way to play said classes. And there are plenty more besides. There are hundreds of them, as they are not limited by Microsoft and Sony's arbitrary limits, and chasing them is an immensely addictive experience.
One key thing about the whole system uses Diablo III's persistently-online nature to great effect. As soon as someone on your friends list attains an Achievement, you're notified. This helps to encourage communication between people and also lets players see at a glance how their friends are doing. It's even possible for players to browse each others' profiles and check out what Achievements they've managed to snag, providing incentive for a little good-natured competition when, say, one sees that the other has somehow killed the Skeleton King in less than 20 seconds. In short, it helps make Diablo III into a more social game, which is exactly what it's been designed to be. Where its predecessors had discrete, segregated "single player" and "multiplayer" components, Diablo III blends this all together into a seamless online experience that encourages communication, competition and cooperation, where players can feel like they're making progress even when playing by themselves, and continue making progress when they want to play with friends. It's a good fit for the series' gameplay, though it makes the ludonarrative dissonance between the ridiculous on-screen action (punching people's skeletons out!) and the rather serious fire-and-brimstone plot seem all the more silly.
If you haven't given Diablo III a shot yet, it's well worth it. Over 6 million people can't be wrong. Although if you value your sanity I wouldn't advise looking at Blizzard's forums. Ever.
(I think I still have a Starter Edition code knocking around somewhere, so if anyone wants to give it a go for free, get in touch and I can give you the code. First come, first served.)
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The achievements in Diablo were no surprise since of all the time I spent in WoW. And WoW has a lot of achievements like that, a good handful that you'll get simply by going through the content, but almost an equal amount that you have to go out of your way to get. What's kinda disappointing is the reward structure. Pieces for some banner I never see? At least some kind of cosmetic change would have been nice. In WoW when you made progress on a mount/mini-pet achievement you earned another mount/mini-pet. There was a number of titles to earn through achievements. There were also tabards to earn, which are another cosmetic item worn over armor. Why couldn't any of these things be put in Diablo? Hell, it even presents Blizzard with another revenue stream. Do you know how much they've made off of paid mounts/minis in WoW over the years? And Diablo doesn't even have a sub fee.
I imagine it will come with time. They've said they're holding back the RMAH until everything else works properly — perhaps other customisation options and unlocks will come in time. After all, CE edition customers get those shiny angel wings, so the code for visual customisation is certainly in there.
Good exploration of D3's achievement system, but I do have to quibble somewhat.
The achievement structure in D3 isn't bad, but I honestly found it mostly reminiscent of WoW's achievements more than anything else. Matt also has a point about rewards; while Blizzard's integrated a variety of rewards into their achievement system in World of Warcraft, the only rewards I noticed in Diablo 3 were various banner customizations. They're nice enough, but the camera angles pretty much ensure that the only person who will SEE this customizations is you.
Meanwhile, it still isn't an "online game" if you don't play it with other people, Pete…and the part about the game that is most "massively multi", the auction house, is one that I'm very much not sold on yet. I'm really, really concerned that it cheapened the experience in ways that I didn't appreciate until after I'd finished it. The whole "kill-loot-upgrade-kill" cycle is pretty much gone in Diablo 3 once you've clicked on that auction house button. Even MMOs' gear acquisition systems aren't as mercenary as Diablo 3's setup. (The lack of decent affixes doesn't help, either. The best gear is universally "main stat, vitality, damage". We've got stories of legendaries that are inferior to blues of the same level thanks to the overwhelming importance of those three stats.)
Anyway, the other "social" elements, being able to see other people's achievements, is something that Steam, Xbox Live, and Games for Windows Live users have taken for granted for years. It doesn't make a game an "online" game to have that sort of thing. The real-time updating is nice, sure, but you could just as easily integrate that into Steam or XBL. I wouldn't, since there's a significant possibility that people could have plot elements spoiled by their friends' progress. But you can.
That happened to me with D3. Fortunately, the plot's terrible enough that spoiling it doesn't really matter. Seeing the end actually put me off playing the game. Now THAT is an achievement.
I officially agree to disagree on the online game point. Horses for courses and all that, and I frankly can't be bothered to argue any more. Let's just leave it aside.
I haven't had a particular issue with the auction house as yet. You have to either play it well or save up shitloads of money to be able to afford anything on there at the current time, and I haven't bothered to explore it much for this reason — I have been saving money to get the secret level items. It could do with being better integrated into the game — having to leave your play session to check the listings is a bit of a pain. But it certainly hasn't destroyed the whole loot-whoring aspect of the game at all — the equipment I finished my Normal run with was all scavenged in-game rather than purchased with the exception of some chest armour I bought just to see how it all worked. You can very easily ignore the auction house altogether and have a good play experience.
The game will be rebalanced and patched over time. The auction house economy will settle down. I have little doubt that achievement rewards besides banner customisation will come (incidentally, if you play in multiplayer, you'll see each other's banners in town and can use them to transport to one another — you can also press G to drop yours where you want) along with other expansion content — that's why that "launcher" is there, after all.
We'll see. I'm loving it at the moment — though the experience is significantly better with friends — and it's actually making me want to dive back into WoW.
The Auction House is sort of a weird and fascinating case. You're absolutely right that you can play through normal without touching it, and many people do. It seems like the majority of reviewers didn't really bother with it much, for example; while there's some discussion of the Auction House in reviews, it's invariably about how you can sell unwanted leftovers. Buying seems to rarely come into it.
(The obscure interface and lack of in-game integration probably doesn't help.)
If you DO fire up the Auction House, though, it's going to completely and irreversibly change how you look at the game. You're going to see gear that is simply better than the stuff you pick up, simply because the gear you can *equip* always outstrips the gear you can *find* at any given level.
More importantly, you're going to see that it's really, really cheap. I mean REALLY cheap. You can get good rares for late Normal for around a thousand gold, and often even less. Optimal gear at those levels can be picked up for around two to three thousand. That is the price that the in-game vendors charge for a single magic item.
Once you find that out, Peter, it isn't going to go away. I know it didn't for me. Once I'd dropped the coin to grab great gear, I became uncomfortably aware that I just wasn't really interested in the drops anymore. They were useless to me. They were ALWAYS useless to me.
Sure, they're nice for alts, and that's part of the reason that I have a full stable of alts, but eventually I was forced to confront the fact that both magic and rare gear was just vendor bait no matter HOW good it was. I couldn't auction it, and I couldn't store it. The only option was to sell it off for a few hundred gold.
Sooner or later, you'll hit the same point. Informed opinion suggests that you can't advance past the middle of "nightmare" or so without hitting the Auction House, though if you're VERY lucky you might get into "hell". You'll hit the auction house, see what's available, and realize that those drops you're using were and are inferior to the stuff you can buy for comparative pocket change.
That moment changes the game. It changes it irreversibly. It's the first online game I can think of with an honest-to-goodness cash-based economy—in a way that has nothing to do with the RMAH—complete with all the economic and social consequences of that shift. Once cash economies show up, subsistence farming just isn't going to compete.
As a student of economic and political history, it's an absolutely enthralling case study. As someone who just wants to play Diablo 3, though, I catch myself wishing they'd never made the damned thing. The Kill-Loot-Equip-Kill cycle is dead. All that remains is acknowledging it.
(This is a bit spammy, but I wanted to acknowledge that you HAD used the AH. I'd have edited the post to cover that…but WP's comment system appears to be no fan of it.)
Actually, come to think of it…I wonder if this is partially due to the difference between the European and North American auction houses? You barely need to "save" for anything at all on this side of the pond. Maybe it's different where you are.
(One thing, though: you can't buy the secret level items, barring the one. You have to farm them. Mine are coming along quite nicely, by the by.)
Huh. I'm not sure. I've been playing mostly on American servers due to where my friends are. Any equipment I've looked at has been 10,000 gold and up, and not significantly better than what I have. (currently level 36 wizard)
The systems are in there for "bind to account" or "bind to character" items so I wouldn't be surprised if non-tradable items show up at some point — perhaps legendaries or uniques or something. Or further secret content! (I got all the secret level items. It took a lot of farming, but I got there.)
The new patch is supposed to address some of the issues you've mentioned, specifically the underpowered nature of Legendary items. My Diablo-obsessive friend was very impressed with what was coming up, so I'll be interested to see what difference it makes.