Diablo 3: Immortal or Short Lived?

It's not easy to create lasting appeal for a game. In a culture overflowing with short attention spans and an unquenchable thirst for new content, developers need to be constantly innovating to provide replay value. While Diablo 3 is a solid game that provides more than the average amount of fun, it is doomed to a short lived large following.

The game suffers from two main problems, balancing and endgame content. The imbalance in the character classes arises from the way the games damage is structured and perceived advantages to classes that don't truly exist in full.

All skill damage is based on the damage of your main weapon. This largely favors melee classes, as their weapons are almost always much more powerful. This mechanic also suffers from the fact that certain key class weapons (like Ceremonial Knives) cannot be found within many level ranges. This means that for a period of levels, you will be using underpowered weapons and thus doing underpowered damage. This almost exclusively hurts ranged classes as they are really the only ones who should stick to specific weapon types. The melee classes also have the benefit of higher armor than ranged classes, making them even better in contrast.

All of these factors are generally the case in most RPGs, but are balanced by the non-melee attribute of ranged attacks that allow you to stay out of harm’s way. While this works in most games, and should in theory work for Diablo 3, it does not. The truth is that even ranged classes like the Wizard or Witch Doctor are constantly surrounded by hoards of enemies.

The camera zoom also furthers this dilemma. Since you are not capable of seeing enemies more than a short distance away from your character, you often stumble into large groups without being able to initiate the battle from a safe ranged position.

I will grant that in the later difficulties (mainly Hell), kiting enemies is a little harder with melee classes. However, given that probably 90% of the game is played while not on Hell difficulty, this isn't enough to balance the classes out.

As mentioned earlier, the game also lacks enticing endgame content. There are no raids, no exceptionally hard dungeons, and no content that you haven’t completed in your previous playthroughs. Yes there are 5 classes, but as each might not appeal to every player, you are left twiddling your thumbs once they are all done.

The way that many RPGs, especially MMORPGs, solve this problem is with player verse player (PvP). PvP gives you a reason to go out and waste 5 days collecting all that super sweet best gear. In the PvP model, you get better gear to more effectively win ever-changing games against opponents who are also constantly upgrading their gear.

Without PvP, upgrading your character's gear once you have hit max level serves no true purpose. In essence, you are getting better gear just to get better gear. These upgrades will not allow you to do anything you haven't already done, and no one will notice but yourself. Once you have done everything, what's the point of being more powerful?

And now to anticipate the raging criticism all diehard Diablo fans have been wanting to scream at me by this point; yes, Diablo 2 possessed the same problems. And yes, it remained popular for years. But ask yourself who it remained popular with, and how many people really played it past it's glory days?

As with any game, there will always be a portion of the population that consider themselves to be extreme fans. Maybe they like the storyline, maybe the gameplay, or maybe they ration themselves to one game every  ten years. Either way, this select group dedicated individuals is not enough to declare a game without fault, but only to acknowledge that it possessed something special. Diablo 3 definitely has something special, but not for all of us, and I think not for long.