Diablo 3 - 1.0.4 Coup de Grâce or a Silver lining?

With patch 1.0.4 of Diablo 3 coming soon to improve Legendary items for players what does this mean for the game itself?

Before dropping any hate or praise about the game let's have a look first before we speak.

We should first have a small look at the PvP state of Diablo 3 before talking about patch 1.0.4 and its suspected effects of Diablo 3. Let's talk about patch 1.1.x of Diablo 3 briefly.

For those who have been following the trend(or not) happening at Blizzard with development updates, Patch 1.1.x where x being any number is when Diablo 3 will acquire PvP systems.

Yes that's right, PvP. Any version past 1.1.0 (Edit: I even read a rumor somewhere where this may be paid DLC, you must be joking... JUST A RUMOR THOUGH, I'm sure it's not true. I really am.)

If they are going in patches from succession of 1.0.4-5-6-7-8-9-10 with 10 carrying over to 1.1 then yes we will have PvP by about maybe Christmas of 2012 or even 2013. Unless these are versioning numbers then that 10 can go up to whatever it wants to and to follow up with that there seems to be no apparent news as to when PvP may be coming and not even an estimated quarter of the year. (Or I simply could just not know, who knows? Anybody?) With articles posted and I quote from this source of a May 29th article of 2012, mentioning PvP in the "upcoming patch" there still has been none to show for in present day time(Or this article when it was written(August 15, 2012).

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2012/05/29/diablo-iii-pvp/1

Just from a simple google search of PvP diablo3 as keywords many articles pop up mentioning the balancing of Legendary and Magic/Rare items in PvP and this same mentioning of PvP in the "upcoming patch". Yet currently they are introducing new Legendary items to the game or "improved" versions of them.

Okay, now back to 1.0.4 with this.

What this means for the game itself

As it stands right now Patch 1.0.4 we can expect to see players acquiring monster affix abilities, should the player acquire a new Legendary item with said effect or something else like a summoning of a creature.

Okay that sounds fine.

While this may be cool just upon advertising and what it means for the game, it still does not shuffle itself away from its tedious repetition. 

Imagine how long it would take to farm a Legendary. Just for the luck of the draw/drop it ranges anywhere between 4hours to 190 hours. 4 being you're really lucky and 190 you're just downright cursed.

What's the scheme here?

Entice you to come back and play of course! 

It's a worthy cause for any game company to try and get you to come back and stay. I applaud Blizzard's efforts for this but realizing these mistakes and prolonging the movement of these upgrades and other features the game needs is quickly going to diminish extremely fast with giantly-hyped games such as Guild Wars 2, or similar games such as Torchlight 2 or Path of the Exile heading to the market.

Even if the hype for a game which not all agree can be true since Diablo 3's hype being a let-down(though not everyone agrees on this I've seen enough, enough being surges of players quitting, to come to this conclusion) the other choices of game are emerging and fast. I don't care if you hate Guild Wars 2 or Torchlight 2 or absolutely love either. It's the fact that they are going to be another "option" to compete against. With only 10 days to go before another game giant flies out.

Hang on! Before you say Diablo 3 was one of the best games you've played for a while open your eyes a little and look for that statement that one developer from Blizzard said.

"What the players said about Legendary items were fairly harsh... but worse they were dead-on accurate." as reported by IGN the same site that gave the game, Diablo 3, a 9.5/10. A game near "perfection" shouldn't have something so Legendary be that off where they take 3 months to fix something which may be noticed as URGENT within the first month.

http://ca.ign.com/articles/2012/08/15/diablo-iii-how-blizzard-is-improving-legendary-items

*tears*

As a gamer who's always willing to give a game another chance, I feel this patch won't make me want to come back to do anything. With the numerous amount of garbage legendaries I have in my storage right now the question that remains in my head is "Do these stay sh***y or do they get upgraded along with the patch?". I doubt the latter will happen.

Personally I would go back and give it another try, but having to farm another Legendary which could take a while just to experience something minimal feels detrimental to my free time which could be invested in exploring other games currently out(trying Drakensang Online as mentioned by a Guest in previous article, RaiderZ, and GW2 StressTest). But nonetheless I'll give it 5 hours(Already 200+ in!).

If it feels no different, the patch itself made no difference. For a new player it won't even matter.

Legendary items will also shift the market of the Auction House, not that I used it very much to begin with and definitely stopped when RMAH was released everything sky-rocketed to 20mil+ for anything decent. Since Legendary items now carry a feature with them selling it on the RMAH is practically selling a piece of the game's function to someone else and degrading your own being void of it when you sell it. If it was to be sold on the regular gold auction house I bet the price will probably be somewhere around 100mil-200mil+. Unless you have multiple Legendaries of the same then okay. But that can't be said for the majority of the population. With most Legendaries appearing in Hell or Inferno being interesting the rest barely before that has anything to offer from the get-go.

With this patch they hope to bring new builds with these items, most of which may prove either extremely viable or utterly useless fodder to be tossed into the AH. They also mention the changes of skills and things but these are all static and are only controlled by Blizzard themselves, not the player.

If they have ability boosting effects on just Legendary items everyone will be seeking them and throwing Rares into the trash next. With Magic items being only subpar to Rares, a Rare is almost indefinitely better than a Magic most of the time and those who aren't rich on cash spend on the Magic item having that one super high stat they need.

In 1.0.4 the predicted shift will now include Legendary being greater than a Rare since the rolls on the statistics of a Legendary, throwing Rare into the bundle where Magic used to be. Whites being absolutely no reason to pick up ever I don't know why they still don't have a simple filter for that yet to not display them on the floor ever. Furthering the uselessness of previous items. If you happen to come across a Legendary I am probably going to bet you will never replace it with a Magic item unless it is a much higher leveled one. If its a ilvl 61-63 Legendary, highly unlikely with anything else other than another Legendary.

Inferno is also being reduced in difficulty. For those who've completed it they probably are in utter rage. For those who haven't they probably aren't even there yet or stopped playing. The game having to repeat itself 4 times just to reach this stage makes it no different than its 3 earlier adventures, with numbers only being higher and a random mob having a random ability.

I know this isn't about Guild Wars 2 but the amount of hype it is getting regardless of whether its good or bad, it's the same kind Diablo 3 had, could be even more I don't know.

Just because a game can boast about 3.5million copies being sold the first day means nothing. If it sits in the dust or in the corner in a room never to be looked at again by about 3.5 million owners it is the shame of a product remembered by 3.5 million owners never to trust the one who distributed it to begin with. FYI, I still play my Diablo 3 rarely and like my soulstone USB.

The only thing Guild Wars 2 has to prove is if it is a let down or not in the first 3 months. Unless IGN is ready to drop it a 10/10 which I doubt, Diablo 3 is going to have some serious competition.

Diablo 3 had a good closed beta, I participated and thought Diablo 3 would be a long-term success. Much to my surprise, my expectations were defeated immediately upon playing the game after launch(May 15, 2012) having many of the previous features be removed/changed entirely to a more open-repetitive system. (Anyone who was in CB remember the Mystic? She mystically disappeared. Top reason why rings and amulets are 50mil+). The idea of runes being upgradeable and attached to skills was awesome, never heard of it before. Then they trashed it *facepalm*.

The aforementioned title that's about to release doesn't seem to be doing that with all its recent tests/events right up until its launch date. (There's just no way they can flip all that in 10 days unless they made 2 games and was ready to throw away the good joke and bring in a bad case of rage).

How often do you use the No Rune option?....... How many times have you had to "restart" Act III Inferno Heart of Sin?...

Why not make abilities more dynamic rather than having a flat level-based statistic on it that's controlled by you; the developer?

Why is the death timer increasing in my solo games?

A profile page... if I was going to show off stuff why aren't my acheivements even on there. Why didn't you just create a lobby town or something in Whimyshire where people can just gather and inspect... and talk?

How many times have you seen those hidden footprints? (Lol)

Diablo 3 is a simple game, kill, move forward 1-way, pick up items, return.

But with another game emerging with a similar price, comparisons will no doubt emerge immediately.

For those who will try both Diablo 3 and the other, they may never even go back to either one(Idk maybe you like autonomous grind/farm and hate the open-world the other has or vice versa. Heck even sometimes I like to just do some mindless grinding in games just to pass time). The other having PvP already and a large story to fit, and a multi-branching path, and an actual massively multiplayer scheme, Diablo 3 already sounds like it has been left in the dust. (If you're going to tell me Diablo 3 is an MMO...  then you must by default agree that Dungeon Defenders and Magicka are MMO's as well since they share exactly the same player set up as Diablo 3 and one having a very similar trading system, being Dungeon Defenders or am I being baseless here?).

End comments: I'm playing Drakensang Online(free) at the moment just to try it out, it's a browser-based MMO and sadly enough to say I did screenshots side by side with Diablo 3($59.99), and ...well let's just say I got depressed. (I went out for tea to calm down.)

What do you think? Silver Lining or Game Over?

If you think it's a silver lining do tell! Would love to know good constructive reasons to go back and try. :)

If you think it's game over well... not much to be said there. :(

As always please keep comments civil thanks!