1. You kill monsters in order to get loot. You need the loot in order to make your character more powerful. You want to be more powerful in order to kill more monsters. You want to kill more monsters in order to get more loot ... (etc. ad infinitum)
2. You kill monsters to level up. You want to level up to become more powerful. You want to be more powerful to kill more monsters. You want to kill more monsters to level up faster ... (etc. ad infinitum)
3. You find a cool item, but you can't equip it because of the requirements. So you need to clear some dungeons to level up. By the time you levelled up, you will have found a new, better item with even higher requirements, so you need to clear some more dungeons to level up. While levelling up, you find an even better item ... (etc. ad infinitum)
We might add "rerolling" here, too. Again, the game's message is that you are never really done.. Even though you may have maxed out a certain skill, there are a lot more skills to try, and in order to do that, you'll have to start over (= play a lot more).
Basically every aspect of the game is designed so that in order to reach your goals, you have to play more.
However, not so in D3. This is largely due to the clvl limit of 60. This removes a huge incentive to keep playing after finishing Hell. There is no more character progression after that point at all (well, depending on whether you count runestones as gear or character abilities...), so spiral 2 will be broken at that point. In fact, spiral 3 will be broken as well, because no item will have higher requirements than clvl 60.
Which leaves the circle 1... However, this one will be totally and utterly broken by the RMAH. The incentive "kill monsters to get loot" will not be there anymore, because you are now able (and silently encouraged) to simply buy your gear with $$ and skip actually playing the game (= killing monsters).
"Rerolling" seems to be out of the picture entirely, due to freespecs�. Since you can't make any "mistakes" in your character build, there is no more incentive to start over.
So, while D2 was designed to give you incentives to keep playing endlessly, D3 seems to have removed most of those (well, after clvl 60).
The question is: Why?|||Another post acting as if the ability to purchase gear is somehow new to Diablo.
It didn't seem to stop people from playing D2.|||Because the Diablo 3 is attempting to circumvent the eternal banality of this genre - the part where it produces mostly terrible games. A major impetus for many of the changes is to enforce minimal complexity/depth in combat.
Ideally, by becoming a more in-depth game, Diablo 3 will be inherently more fun to play for more people. As such, it will not need to overly rely on "carrot on a stick" design.
Besides, the item search thing is plenty. There are obviously people who are addicted to the feeling of progression who will lose out, but the strongest addicting aspect - randomized loot system, is still there. It will probably be enough, or at least Blizzard is banking on it being enough.|||If you think that the level 60 cap is the major reason for people to stop playing after they reach that level, because "there is no more character progression", then surely you have never heard of World Of Warcraft.|||Once you hit the mid 90's in D2, exp gains were pathetic and all you were doing is running for items anyways. Trimming it down to 60 was a good move if you ask me, plus that give Blizzard the option to bump that up in expansions. A little "WoW-esque," but that aspect of it is okay in my book. They wanted to make levels more meaningful in D3 and I think that will be accomplished.|||Quote:
This is largely due to the clvl limit of 60. This removes a huge incentive to keep playing after finishing Hell. There is no more character progression after that point at all (well, depending on whether you count runestones as gear or character abilities...), so spiral 2 will be broken at that point.
Huh? I don't know about you but in D2 I had to PAY people to rush me through hell so I can start Cow and Baal runs with my lvl 15 character. If there was a button that I can click so that my new level 1 char instantly level 99, I would've used it. For me, the end game started AFTER I hit the level cap.|||Imagine how long it will take to get level 7 skillrunes in all your abilities? and perfect armor? That is lots of replayability right there. Besides, with freespecs you can switch to a totally different playstyle on the fly, so you will want new gear to complement the new skills. Not to mention shifting around all your runes... the only thing different from d2 is the level cap...|||Quote:
Huh? I don't know about you but in D2 I had to PAY people to rush me through hell so I can start Cow and Baal runs with my lvl 15 character. If there was a button that I can click so that my new level 1 char instantly level 99, I would've used it. For me, the end game started AFTER I hit the level cap.
....what end game? You really felt the game STARTED at 99? It takes so immensely long to get to the level cap, what is there left to do for "end game" at 99? You will have done everything there is to offer in the game... you really hit the cap before playing the game for real?|||Quote:
....what end game? You really felt the game STARTED at 99? It takes so immensely long to get to the level cap, what is there left to do for "end game" at 99? You will have done everything there is to offer in the game... you really hit the cap before playing the game for real?
Yeah, that StarMage is such a jerkface... enjoying the game in a different way than we do! Let's form a posse of those who like to play the "right way", then find a bunch of people who like the different things and beat them up!|||One person's 'incentives' are another one's headaches. I never cared for the leveling grind in D2 and I welcomed respecs with open arms. For me the game was all about the items, farming and trading them, apart from the first one or two playthroughs. Because, unlike in leveling, where you knew the results of the grind in advance (I'll be level xy after 1,000,000,000 runs, whoop-de-fudging-doo), with items you never knew what was going to drop next, which is the mental equivalent of crack laced with heroin.
I then traded the items I found (even more addicting than finding them imo) and tried out new builds for fun and profit. D3 will remove all the annoying obstacles like leveling or 're-rolling' for misplaced stats: once you have 10 chars, that will be it, no need for more. You can focus on the builds (which are made by items, as they were in D2), instead of the boring, non-valueadding chores. I might even buy a few chars if I can because I cannot stand the idea of leveling chars when they're available on the AH.
It's a funny word, incentive, btw. Nothing's stopping you from leveling new chars in D3 after you hit 60. If it is so much fun, why must you be forced into doing it?
It's win-win the way it is: you can still do it, while those of us who don't like it don't have to. Sure, you can no longer spend 10 more hours to make a char that has 1 point less in str and 1 more in vita, but frankly if you can't find better stuff to do for 10 hours then you've got bigger problems than the nyances of video games. (And yes, I did it several times and I'm one of those peoples with problems; D3 is the medicine if not the cure, so to speak. 
)
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