Whilst I'm not qualified to comment on the science, I can certainly agree with the conclusion. In Diablo 2, the hunt for loot was part of feeling the "hero" - keep digging for treasure, keep dismembering those skeletons; somewhere, there's that Epic Item with which you can win the day!
I've played Diablo 3 through to "Hell" difficulty, and I've not been using my own looted gear since the middle of the "Normal" mode - there's just no competition between drops, and what you can buy on the AH for very little money. The "sensible" play style is just to farm gold, and buy AH kit. Found an item? Sell it for gold (or, very occasionally, AH) - don't use it!
It's hard to feel like a hero when you're popping off to Macy's every few hours to grab a new +1 Sword of Wounding. Your quest to save the world - sponsored by Nike?
Another thing, related but not frequently discussed, is the change in how important gear is vs. other factors. For instance, in Diablo II a high level item would give +20 vitality. Your character got 5 stat points per level which you could, if you wanted, put all into vitality. This high level item was roughly equivalent to only 4 character levels (of which you got 99).
In Diablo III, a high-level item is giving you 200+ vitality. I don't know about other characters, but I believe my Monk is getting 2 vitality per level (and there are 60 levels). A _single_ item can give me more of a stat than I gain from leveling all the way from 1 to 60. As such, leveling up doesn't do much other than allow equip items with better stats.
Because items in Diablo II gave, comparatively, closer benefits to gaining another level than those in Diablo III, I felt like I was making progress with either a level up or a nice item drop. If my character was getting decimated in Act IV of Nightmare, I could go back and gain a few levels and maybe get some new items in the process. In Diablo III, not only do your levels not increase your survivability or killing power in any way (besides new skill runes), by the time you feel like you aren't strong enough to defeat an encounter you'll most likely have few or even no more levels left to gain. The only tangible measure of progress is "phatter lewt" at this point.
I agree 100% in regards to the Auction House. Me and a buddy are in the middle of Nightmare difficulty, and we hadn't taken a look at the AH yet. Upon visiting the AH, we realized just how bad our gear was, and we managed to cheaply replace almost every piece of armor having stats magnitudes better. Also, the boss fights are extremely disappointing. I fear the only rush I'll get out of the game is rolling a Hardcore character.
You could say the same about D2's economy - it became about MFing (magic finding) for loot that you could trade in for the equivalent market value in item currencies: Stone of Jordan rings, or later, charms and points on a 3rd party forum (forgot the name). Then, you could buy the specific piece of shiny loot that you want for your character's build.
That, or you farm and hope that the piece of loot that you want serendipitously drops.
Sure, sponsored by Nike, but the reward cycle happens with every blue/yellow drop. You sell it for gold and eventually go to the AH to get your fix.
this changes at the inferno level though, because here the rate of gold gathered vs needed to upgrade jumps significantly. You begin to grub at every blue, yellow drop for the upgrade that gives you a little bit more survivability.
I think they the system more of a grubbing for small coins all around the map to buy crack from the AH.
They reduced the frustration loop by removing the "oh this wasn't the rare I wanted" and change it to "I can sell everything for gold, I just need a little bit more". Since you can see continuous progression you don't feel frustrated (as much). I would think this is analogues to being told why a que is taking so long instead of waiting blindly in a que.
They changed the system so they can make money off the auction house later on. But so far they've delayed the "real-money" auction house indefinitely, because of worries that it may make the whole system even worse than it is now. Too bad they had to ruin the reward system, and for nothing.
While I think you're getting there, I think there's a better explanation: variable reward schedules (eg. slot machines).
More of Schultz's work looks at this [1]. Basically, a reward of 50% of the time is far more addictive for Julio and his pals than 100% (eg. the Staff of Beatings only drops 50% from The Butcher). Diablo 2 uses a traditional variable reward schedule for its loot system, as seen in most other RPGs. Diablo 3 uses gold (stick with me). You need gold to get the items the game requires you to have from the AH, and you're mostly burning the loot you find in-game for gold on the AH or other mats. This means that you're working on a small, 100% drip feed, which you eventually cash out in a predictable fashion. Not as addictive!
I don't agree with your assertion of a frustration loop being different. Diablo 2 could be just as frustrating if loot you needed didn't drop in time. One thing I think Blizzard has done very poorly is that AH transactions do not provide instant gratification, but take up to 48 hours to process(!). This means if you are in a rut, you'll have two days stuck in it, and perhaps just break the habit and leave altogether.
The elaborate on the Schultz paper, dopaminergic reward feedback mechanism is for unexpected reward only. Repeated stimulation depreciates the neuronal signals.
A take home message from this is that an ideal diablo 2 drop has a expected drop time of T, and should never change. The reward, of course, can come from increased benefit of character strength, or from the rare item itself (Herald of Zakarum + Barnar Star ftw).
It seems to me like the T for Diablo 3 is much greater than that of Diablo 2, and because pretty much set items and unique items are non-existent, the satisfaction of getting the item from drops is also non-existent. Alas, the AH allows you to gain strength when you are stuck, but because the time it takes you to go to AH is not a function of T itself, since you can go whenever you want, it does not really contribute to the over all game reward mechanism.
Not to mention the horrible infrastructure they have built for the AH as Lewisham mentioned.
> AH transactions do not provide instant gratification, but take up to 48 hours to process(!)
Because of this, most Auction House transactions completed are buyouts. Bidding on almost-expired items happens, but most people (especially under max level) are only buying items.
The "enjoyment graphs" might explain why I like D3 more than D2, despite the fact that according to many in the D3 forums it is a horrible game.
I played D2 back when I was a college student, so I had the time to spend in those long troughs between finding awesome items. Well, I didn't actually play D2 that much because I didn't find it fun -- and perhaps this article explains why. But for the people who want D3 to have the same addictive feel of D2, I speculate that part of it has to do with being able to commit a lot of time to get those rare spikes of joy upon getting a fantastic drop. All the serious D2 gamers knew all of the best items and finding them was a big part of the game for them (or perhaps it WAS the game?)
For me, I'd rather have a game where the combat is fun, and that's where I think D3 is a huge improvement upon D2. Blizzard's own stats show that people are playing with a wide variety of skills. That's a lot different than D2, where many skills were useless, there were only a handful of worthwhile builds, and everybody lusted after the same items.
At first I didn't understand why a randomly generated magic item could be better than a "legendary" item, but now it makes sense. If a person gets a legendary item, they know they've gotten something that will be good for most players, but it won't be the best. As such, people still have the ability to grow and get better items instead of thinking, "Well, I've gotten Sword of Awesome, no need to do anything more." To me, that makes the game more interesting, and it enhances replayability for when I sign on and play with friends. I guess things might be different for people who only play alone, though.
I'm sure the Auction House plays a big role in all of this, and many want to ascribe "evil" motives to Blizzard. Certainly the item economy will take time for them to fully understand. But even if there wasn't an AH, I think that the way they went with items (and the way skills play off of them) was the right choice for creating a game that is consistently fun. At least until Inferno -- which was meant to be ridiculous anyways!
All the serious D2 gamers knew all of the best items and finding them was a big part of the game for them (or perhaps it WAS the game?)
Diablo was always about the exploration and the loot hunt. That was the game. Diablo 3 is a deviation. The loot hunt kept you playing. It let you set defined goals: "I want to obtain a perfect Skin of the Vipermagi and then use the quest reward to socket it with a perfect topaz." D3 does not let you do that. You don't set item goals, you set achievement goals: "I want to beat inferno."
I'm sure a lot of people will prefer this, but the effect is much different. In particular, without the excitement of the item hunt, there is no reason to keep playing after you complete the game a few times; No surprises.
That's a good point. I was originally disappointed with the item system in Diablo 3, but I quickly realized it doesn't matter as much as I would have expected.
The core gameplay feels a lot more solid and fun than in Diablo 2, and that's what makes me think the game will be successful in the long term. Itemization and difficulty can and will be tweaked after release, but it's much harder to fix the gameplay if it isn't fun.
However, I stand by my argument about the game's addictiveness (in the literal sense) in its current form. Many will see this as a good thing :)
People ascribe "evil" motives to Blizzard because they have clearly changed since merging with Activision. They can claim autonomy all they want to but since the merger it has been one terrible decision after another with these guys. Without an auction house or the requirement to connect to the internet for single player, Diablo 3 would be a very worthy successor.
Interesting perspective! I agree that the article leaves out multiplayer which represents a huge source of fun. Plus, one thing you can more easily do with a group of friends is agree to skip the AH on those particular characters, relying on drops alone, which makes item drops rewarding again. With enough players you get a decent chance that one of you will find a nice fist weapon or Wizard hat and be able to share that with the monk or Wizard in your party and have it be an upgrade.
The skill thing isn't a very fair comparison, since you were skill locked and couldn't respec which left you having to build to the small subset of builds that could work all the way through hell. Now you can consider what you expect to work with what you are about to encounter and build towards that, making niche skills viable.
> Diablo 3 has no real reward loop – there is only a frustration loop, which can be temporarily alleviated by using the Auction House.
This is completely wrong, there is a very powerful reward loop. Whenever you find an item that you can sell at the auction house - that's a reward. It's arguably as good as it is in Diablo 2.
I think the real reason why Diablo 3 is less addictive than Diablo 2 is simply because the folks who played Diablo 2 are now 12 years older. There's something about getting older that makes you less prone to being addicted to games.
I disagree with the reward loop you perceive, as #1 Finding loot that you sell doesn't directly increase your avatar strength. Case in point? Find an axe, equip it and now you're plowing through enemies with greater ease. Feels good. Find an axe, POST it on the AH and walk away. The loop doesn't include detached events.
Someone's mentioned 12 years old or 12 years older now several times. I'm sorry but this simply does not apply. Diablo 2 is so incredibly popular NOT because people played it back then and are returning now, but because of the SHEER mass of people that continued to play it for 5+ years. So even by the norm of sales you're looking at people merely 5-6 years away, not including that some of the most vocal people STILL PLAY IT.
I was playing through the last two ladder resets, one of them just a few weeks prior to D3 launch.
The biggest problems aren't caught by people who have nostalgia goggles on, they're caught by the people who still played it regularly (off and on over the years.
Finding drops for the AH isn't as powerful a reward loop (at least pre-inferno) because whether you get a reward or not is at the whim of other players, and because your reward (or failure) is delayed by up to 48 hours. This may be different in the end-game (I didn't get addicted enough to get there) but during levelling it is quite weak.
I think there's definitely something to your second point though. Are we less prone to addiction, or more likely to recognise it and choose to break the loop?
How is this scientific? All I see is a lot of speculation with no experimentation/testing. Vague similarities to another study don't cut it - we are not monkeys, and the monkeys weren't playing D2/D3. He's just assumed the premise that D3 is less addictive than D2, and the rest is an argument made to fit this assumption. I'm not saying he's wrong, just saying that this is bad science.
The "scientific" part was pretty tongue-in-cheek given all the handwaving I do, I obviously didn't hook up electrodes to anyone's brain while they're playing (although that would be fascinating). I'll edit the blog title to put it in quotes, can't edit the submission title though.
Translating these kinds of addiction studies (mostly in animals for ethical reasons) to making games more addictive (but always referred to as making them more engaging) is a pretty established industry at this point.
It's not my field, and I don't know if the analysis in the blog post was flawed or not, but there are plenty of people trained in the field who work in the video game industry (and the gambling industry) and they definitely show results with pretty solid metrics under well controlled conditions. Balance the reward cycle and tune the levels of challenge and frustration properly and you get players to spend more time in the game.
I agree that it's a stretch to conclude that D3 is less addictive than D2 but I took it as interesting speculation based on actual science.
Agreed. Good loot still drops (look at AH), I'm using 3 pieces found myself. I've also found multiple drops worth 1M+ gold, which is also exciting. Maybe the loop is slightly longer than D2 but that doesn't make it non-existent. Anyone can draw a graph.
The complaint here is that inferno (highest) difficulty is not enjoyable in the traditional sense. From what I understand, inferno is not designed do be addictive per se, it's designed do be hard and it's aimed at people who want to play hard games.
I believe (but have no good citations / evidence for) that there's another system in the brain for rewarding behavior, one that is based on the satisfaction of accomplishing tasks that are difficult. This other loop may be a little harder to study, I'd imagine that it would be difficult to get most animals to exhibit this loop.
Just take a look at a sample of walkthroughs for various games, alongside traditional guides you'll find esoteric ones: guides marked as "low-level", "solo", "pacifist", "naked", etc. There are also play styles such as "ironman". Back in the day, I used to play Diablo ironman with friends. You're not allowed to talk to merchants in town. I played FF6 "low-level", where you don't allow the characters to gain levels: run from any fight you can, but you still have to fight the bosses with a woefully underpowered team.
It's tapping into the same reward systems that reward programmers for refactoring code.
So I guess my final point is that you can't call something less addictive by analyzing it, since you can only analyze the addiction mechanisms you know about. You have to determine how addictive it is by measuring the behavior of the actual people using it. From a scientific perspective, this article is really a hypothesis.
I don't think anybody has ever shown any studies with animals being extra rewarded for achieving difficult tasks. To speculate, that may relate to our social wiring.
Not even the dopamine system is exactly and entirely a "reward system," there are multiple pieces carrying out various signal-processing tasks without clean alignment to our intuitive categories.
Despite the existence of localization and specialization in the brain, it is not common for any high-level behavior to weigh completely on just one distinct piece of the brain.
Insightful because I don't seem to enjoy Diablo 3 as much. I'm currently pretty bored with the inferno difficulty level. My options is to keep farming gold until I can afford something strong enough on the auction house to carry me further. Really frustrating. Before I could just farm and eventually get myself an awesome piece of gear and use that for progression.
I think a lot of people dissatisfied with D3 are forgetting they were 12 years younger when Diablo 2 was released. That's a long time for your tastes to change. Everyone who played Diablo 2 as a child is now an adult.
If you've made it to Inferno, doesn't that imply you've enjoyed ~40+ hours of Diablo 3? It's some very cheap entertainment once the hours count gets near the dollar cost.
I think one of the big things that comes to mind is something I remember reading with competitive games like Counter Strike and Starcraft- the games where if you are doing poorly against the competition you're not enjoying yourself at all.
The sentiment was "There is a large portion of gamers that do not enjoy playing games, they enjoy winning games."
I think this translates to Diablo 3 very well- everyone was perfectly happy farming Diablo or Baal (previous "final" bosses), yet no one seems to enjoy farming Act 1 or Act 2 inferno. It's the exact same thing, but I believe people are not enjoying it because they are unable to beat the game.
I see a lot of talk about how it's impossible to beat the game just by grinding, and you have to play the AH to get gear from the people that have already beaten the game but it's important to remember that there were people that beat the game for the first time. These people didn't have people to purchase the best stuff of off because they were the furthest of anyone in the world.
Similarly, there are people progressing (albeit slowly) through inferno hardcore where there are probably less than ~100 people in the world. There's very little gear on the market and there are still people progressing by farming gear themselves.
A friend of mine is making a competing game, Path of Exile.
According to some, it's more of a D2 sequel in spirit than D3 is. Darker setting, more emphasis on skill and action play, etc.
The goal when making PoE was to create a game where the item economy was really strong. There is no gold in PoE. Instead you have currency items (see http://www.pathofexile.com/news/dev-diary/).
All of the shops are horrible for trade, offering tiny amounts for even great items. If you really want something good, you have to trade for it directly with other players or find it yourself.
It is a far more addictive game than either D2 or D3 because a greater range of interesting, random things happen.
PoE also has some great mechanics, for instance flasks (health / mana) are items that last for a long time - they use charges when you drink them and recharge as you fight. They can be magical and unique.
Also, the skill tree offers a far greater range of choice.
I recently wanted to impulse buy Diablo 3.
After seeing a price of 60 USD and clicking order I needed to login to my battle.net account. Which set my country to Germany and the price to 60 EUR.
Updating my residence? I just need to send in a government issued id and, if that doesn't include an address, a recent utility bill..
Want to delete a battle.net account? It seems the only way is calling a hotline of some sorts. I'd bet they ask for similar bullshit.
Yes, I enjoy Diablo 2 more. The braindead way Blizzard treats me excludes any new version as mere option. Ignoring all the always online idiocy.
I think the main problem is their flawed auction house design.
Prices for weapons, armor, and gems will keep dropping to lower and lower prices as long as you aren't in the first wave of players. There's nothing to stop that price drop since demand for items will decrease over time AND supply will increase.
An example of the bad design is in the fact that constructing a gem in the game (which takes mutiple lower quality gems you have to find) costs more money than to just buy it from another player. And it will only get cheaper.
The game's user score on Metacritic wouldn't be so binary if it wasn't for the fact that the game is called 'Diablo'. The name invites certain expectation. If they had the sense (and confidence in their abilities) to call it something else, at worst they would be getting "Meh.", "I played it, finished it, and moved on. A decent game I guess.", "Nice, but nothing special."
One thing that particularly annoys me is that Diablo 3 developers are in denial about the game even being different. They are either in denial or they're cynically lying. Check out this thread, a guy responds to Jay Wilson's sentences point by point. Highly recommended !
I think the OP in that thread is a mix of rose coloured glasses and sour grapes (sour grape coloured glasses?). The rebuffs are mostly of the "D3 does just what D2 did despite what you said!" variety. About the only thing that I felt was pretty valid was the invasiveness of the story, partly through the fluff conversations of hirelings but mainly through all the boss cutscenes. If the cutscenes didn't play after the first time you'd seen them I'd be a lot happier. At the same time I like the story and it's one of the things I've enjoyed most in just about all of Blizzard's games, this being no exception.
(While I like the fact I can find things to improve my character on the auction house, the fact that I need to because I find a very small number of upgrades makes me sad.)
Diablo 3 has some issues (mainly rareness and badness of legendary items and excessive difficulty/frustration in Inferno), but I've still found it the most fun game I've played in quite a while. The most important part of the game - skills and combat - is really excellent.
The original article put "scientific" in quotes. I suggest this title should've kept it, because there is nothing scientific about it. Stating a hypothesis doesn't make it science. It might make for an interesting read though.
How I avoid this problem (and enjoy D3, very much):
1. Play hardcore. This instantly transforms the entire point of the game from "get the best gear" to "stay alive", though of course awesome gear is still fun because it helps you stay alive, and squish monsters faster.
2. Don't use the Auction House. Sure, this means I won't be competitive (level for level) with players who do, and I probably won't ever be able to play Inferno, but I play mostly single player or with friends who use similar rules.
A lot of people do seem to love the gear grind of D2, and that's fine for them, but I'd much rather play it in the vein of a classic roguelike.
Ok, you can't put a bunch of graphs on something and call it a scientific explanation, While the reasoning is decent, there is no data backing up any of these assertions, it hardly seems "scientific" in nature.
As both a scientist and avid Diablo 2 player, this blog post is laughable in its superficiality and its claims.
TL;DR: Diablo 3 was WoWified: broke itemization and skill builds, and thus replayability.
In D3, finding a rare item is "ID, does it have those stats? Yes: keep, No: salvage". Brainless.
In D2, finding a rare item is "ID, weird combination of stats, but I don't think anyone wants this so I'll throw it away, go to d2jsp and find some absurdly rich player wanting that ridiculous combination and kicking yourself for vendoring it".
--
Background: thousands of hours manually farming and botting Diablo 2 since vanilla release, equivalent time spent trading/on d2jsp (most of this will refer to 1.09 since that is most fresh in my mind). Also lvl 60 demon hunter in Diablo 3 Inferno Act 3.
Please don't argue that D2 was just as broken on release. The D3 team had YEARS of experience to look back on.
--
1) D2 was all about plowing through monsters. If you were underleveled or undergeared, bosses should be somewhat difficult. If you were reasonably prepared, bosses should be fairly easy. If you even had decent gear, bosses should be a joke.
D3, on the other hand, treats everything like a WoW raid. Hours of grinding to prepare for a fight, min-maxing forcing everyone into a single class or build (energy armor wizard or PMS demon hunter?), and even then, the fights are difficult( vs champions/elites).
Why is this important? Because D2 was so "easy", many many skill builds were viable. Wanted to roll a melee sorc? Go ahead. Fishymancer ( = pet wd in d3)? Works. Throwing barb? Surprisingly strong. Thorns + fire aura pally? Too good.
The proliferation of crazy builds is important, as it makes a MUCH larger proportion of items valuable. This will tie in with the next point.
--
2) D3 itemization is broken. First, there are very, very few item stats that are important. Weapon DPS, main stat, vitality, resist all. Maybe atk speed, crit, crit dmg, move speed. Everything else is garbage. Health globe radius, seriously?
What made many D2 builds viable was the much larger variety of item effects, as well as lack of dependence on stats. Life tap wands made smiters useful, enigma was good for everyone, infinity runeward allowed lightning sorcs and javazons to fight lightning immune, etc.
--
3) Rare items. The above 2 problems, when taken together, kill the D3 end-game. D2 was all about making a MF build, getting some money, then making a bunch of crazy characters, either min-maxing MF or PVP or Baal runs or something, but there was a ton of variety in what you could do. End game economy revolved around rare items.
In D3, finding a rare item is "ID, does it have those stats? Yes: keep, No: salvage". Brainless.
In D2, finding a rare item is "ID, weird combination of stats, but I don't think anyone wants this so I'll throw it away, go to d2jsp and find some absurdly rich player wanting that ridiculous combination and kicking yourself for vendoring it". This means that botting was difficult, because the really big $$ items are ones you wouldn't even recognize, and stash size was a limitation.
--
Anyways, that's why I stopped playing D3. I really don't think they can fix these problems without very large patches, which seems unlikely coming from actiblizzard.
I'm kind of sad that this was downvoted. I thought on hacker news downvotes were used for factually incorrect or trolling posts, and I don't think this post is either.
Can I get an explanation for the downvotes at least?
"Because D2 was so "easy", many many skill builds were viable."
Well said. Tweaking and experimenting, rather than constantly and tediously fighting for your life (which is rendered all the more pointless when you realize one amazing piece of gear can fix it for you).
I have only played D3 in normal, not touched the AH at all, and definitely felt the lack of addiction and excitement. Putting aside that me and my life are very different now than back in D2 times, there's a very visible issue for me: all loot is just a collection of variations on the same few numbers. A piece of gear can be good, it may have a great combination of the right stats for my char, but it's not special, it's not memorable, it's not unique. I like it but I don't love it.
[+] [-] archgrove|13 years ago|reply
I've played Diablo 3 through to "Hell" difficulty, and I've not been using my own looted gear since the middle of the "Normal" mode - there's just no competition between drops, and what you can buy on the AH for very little money. The "sensible" play style is just to farm gold, and buy AH kit. Found an item? Sell it for gold (or, very occasionally, AH) - don't use it!
It's hard to feel like a hero when you're popping off to Macy's every few hours to grab a new +1 Sword of Wounding. Your quest to save the world - sponsored by Nike?
[+] [-] hazzen|13 years ago|reply
In Diablo III, a high-level item is giving you 200+ vitality. I don't know about other characters, but I believe my Monk is getting 2 vitality per level (and there are 60 levels). A _single_ item can give me more of a stat than I gain from leveling all the way from 1 to 60. As such, leveling up doesn't do much other than allow equip items with better stats.
Because items in Diablo II gave, comparatively, closer benefits to gaining another level than those in Diablo III, I felt like I was making progress with either a level up or a nice item drop. If my character was getting decimated in Act IV of Nightmare, I could go back and gain a few levels and maybe get some new items in the process. In Diablo III, not only do your levels not increase your survivability or killing power in any way (besides new skill runes), by the time you feel like you aren't strong enough to defeat an encounter you'll most likely have few or even no more levels left to gain. The only tangible measure of progress is "phatter lewt" at this point.
[+] [-] RegEx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oacgnol|13 years ago|reply
That, or you farm and hope that the piece of loot that you want serendipitously drops.
[+] [-] DrJ|13 years ago|reply
this changes at the inferno level though, because here the rate of gold gathered vs needed to upgrade jumps significantly. You begin to grub at every blue, yellow drop for the upgrade that gives you a little bit more survivability.
I think they the system more of a grubbing for small coins all around the map to buy crack from the AH.
They reduced the frustration loop by removing the "oh this wasn't the rare I wanted" and change it to "I can sell everything for gold, I just need a little bit more". Since you can see continuous progression you don't feel frustrated (as much). I would think this is analogues to being told why a que is taking so long instead of waiting blindly in a que.
[+] [-] mtgx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Lewisham|13 years ago|reply
More of Schultz's work looks at this [1]. Basically, a reward of 50% of the time is far more addictive for Julio and his pals than 100% (eg. the Staff of Beatings only drops 50% from The Butcher). Diablo 2 uses a traditional variable reward schedule for its loot system, as seen in most other RPGs. Diablo 3 uses gold (stick with me). You need gold to get the items the game requires you to have from the AH, and you're mostly burning the loot you find in-game for gold on the AH or other mats. This means that you're working on a small, 100% drip feed, which you eventually cash out in a predictable fashion. Not as addictive!
I don't agree with your assertion of a frustration loop being different. Diablo 2 could be just as frustrating if loot you needed didn't drop in time. One thing I think Blizzard has done very poorly is that AH transactions do not provide instant gratification, but take up to 48 hours to process(!). This means if you are in a rut, you'll have two days stuck in it, and perhaps just break the habit and leave altogether.
[1]: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/299/5614/1898.full
[+] [-] sterling312|13 years ago|reply
A take home message from this is that an ideal diablo 2 drop has a expected drop time of T, and should never change. The reward, of course, can come from increased benefit of character strength, or from the rare item itself (Herald of Zakarum + Barnar Star ftw).
It seems to me like the T for Diablo 3 is much greater than that of Diablo 2, and because pretty much set items and unique items are non-existent, the satisfaction of getting the item from drops is also non-existent. Alas, the AH allows you to gain strength when you are stuck, but because the time it takes you to go to AH is not a function of T itself, since you can go whenever you want, it does not really contribute to the over all game reward mechanism.
Not to mention the horrible infrastructure they have built for the AH as Lewisham mentioned.
[+] [-] alex_c|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] apike|13 years ago|reply
Because of this, most Auction House transactions completed are buyouts. Bidding on almost-expired items happens, but most people (especially under max level) are only buying items.
[+] [-] muraiki|13 years ago|reply
I played D2 back when I was a college student, so I had the time to spend in those long troughs between finding awesome items. Well, I didn't actually play D2 that much because I didn't find it fun -- and perhaps this article explains why. But for the people who want D3 to have the same addictive feel of D2, I speculate that part of it has to do with being able to commit a lot of time to get those rare spikes of joy upon getting a fantastic drop. All the serious D2 gamers knew all of the best items and finding them was a big part of the game for them (or perhaps it WAS the game?)
For me, I'd rather have a game where the combat is fun, and that's where I think D3 is a huge improvement upon D2. Blizzard's own stats show that people are playing with a wide variety of skills. That's a lot different than D2, where many skills were useless, there were only a handful of worthwhile builds, and everybody lusted after the same items.
At first I didn't understand why a randomly generated magic item could be better than a "legendary" item, but now it makes sense. If a person gets a legendary item, they know they've gotten something that will be good for most players, but it won't be the best. As such, people still have the ability to grow and get better items instead of thinking, "Well, I've gotten Sword of Awesome, no need to do anything more." To me, that makes the game more interesting, and it enhances replayability for when I sign on and play with friends. I guess things might be different for people who only play alone, though.
I'm sure the Auction House plays a big role in all of this, and many want to ascribe "evil" motives to Blizzard. Certainly the item economy will take time for them to fully understand. But even if there wasn't an AH, I think that the way they went with items (and the way skills play off of them) was the right choice for creating a game that is consistently fun. At least until Inferno -- which was meant to be ridiculous anyways!
[+] [-] nocipher|13 years ago|reply
Diablo was always about the exploration and the loot hunt. That was the game. Diablo 3 is a deviation. The loot hunt kept you playing. It let you set defined goals: "I want to obtain a perfect Skin of the Vipermagi and then use the quest reward to socket it with a perfect topaz." D3 does not let you do that. You don't set item goals, you set achievement goals: "I want to beat inferno."
I'm sure a lot of people will prefer this, but the effect is much different. In particular, without the excitement of the item hunt, there is no reason to keep playing after you complete the game a few times; No surprises.
[+] [-] alex_c|13 years ago|reply
The core gameplay feels a lot more solid and fun than in Diablo 2, and that's what makes me think the game will be successful in the long term. Itemization and difficulty can and will be tweaked after release, but it's much harder to fix the gameplay if it isn't fun.
However, I stand by my argument about the game's addictiveness (in the literal sense) in its current form. Many will see this as a good thing :)
[+] [-] phaus|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alanfalcon|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] runevault|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fragsworth|13 years ago|reply
This is completely wrong, there is a very powerful reward loop. Whenever you find an item that you can sell at the auction house - that's a reward. It's arguably as good as it is in Diablo 2.
I think the real reason why Diablo 3 is less addictive than Diablo 2 is simply because the folks who played Diablo 2 are now 12 years older. There's something about getting older that makes you less prone to being addicted to games.
[+] [-] cldrope|13 years ago|reply
Someone's mentioned 12 years old or 12 years older now several times. I'm sorry but this simply does not apply. Diablo 2 is so incredibly popular NOT because people played it back then and are returning now, but because of the SHEER mass of people that continued to play it for 5+ years. So even by the norm of sales you're looking at people merely 5-6 years away, not including that some of the most vocal people STILL PLAY IT.
I was playing through the last two ladder resets, one of them just a few weeks prior to D3 launch.
The biggest problems aren't caught by people who have nostalgia goggles on, they're caught by the people who still played it regularly (off and on over the years.
[+] [-] thalur|13 years ago|reply
I think there's definitely something to your second point though. Are we less prone to addiction, or more likely to recognise it and choose to break the loop?
[+] [-] f0r|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alex_c|13 years ago|reply
The "scientific" part was pretty tongue-in-cheek given all the handwaving I do, I obviously didn't hook up electrodes to anyone's brain while they're playing (although that would be fascinating). I'll edit the blog title to put it in quotes, can't edit the submission title though.
[+] [-] freshhawk|13 years ago|reply
It's not my field, and I don't know if the analysis in the blog post was flawed or not, but there are plenty of people trained in the field who work in the video game industry (and the gambling industry) and they definitely show results with pretty solid metrics under well controlled conditions. Balance the reward cycle and tune the levels of challenge and frustration properly and you get players to spend more time in the game.
I agree that it's a stretch to conclude that D3 is less addictive than D2 but I took it as interesting speculation based on actual science.
[+] [-] watty|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zarathust|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] klodolph|13 years ago|reply
I believe (but have no good citations / evidence for) that there's another system in the brain for rewarding behavior, one that is based on the satisfaction of accomplishing tasks that are difficult. This other loop may be a little harder to study, I'd imagine that it would be difficult to get most animals to exhibit this loop.
Just take a look at a sample of walkthroughs for various games, alongside traditional guides you'll find esoteric ones: guides marked as "low-level", "solo", "pacifist", "naked", etc. There are also play styles such as "ironman". Back in the day, I used to play Diablo ironman with friends. You're not allowed to talk to merchants in town. I played FF6 "low-level", where you don't allow the characters to gain levels: run from any fight you can, but you still have to fight the bosses with a woefully underpowered team.
It's tapping into the same reward systems that reward programmers for refactoring code.
So I guess my final point is that you can't call something less addictive by analyzing it, since you can only analyze the addiction mechanisms you know about. You have to determine how addictive it is by measuring the behavior of the actual people using it. From a scientific perspective, this article is really a hypothesis.
[+] [-] slurgfest|13 years ago|reply
Not even the dopamine system is exactly and entirely a "reward system," there are multiple pieces carrying out various signal-processing tasks without clean alignment to our intuitive categories.
Despite the existence of localization and specialization in the brain, it is not common for any high-level behavior to weigh completely on just one distinct piece of the brain.
[+] [-] weixiyen|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jtchang|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] parfe|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gfosco|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MSM|13 years ago|reply
The sentiment was "There is a large portion of gamers that do not enjoy playing games, they enjoy winning games."
I think this translates to Diablo 3 very well- everyone was perfectly happy farming Diablo or Baal (previous "final" bosses), yet no one seems to enjoy farming Act 1 or Act 2 inferno. It's the exact same thing, but I believe people are not enjoying it because they are unable to beat the game.
I see a lot of talk about how it's impossible to beat the game just by grinding, and you have to play the AH to get gear from the people that have already beaten the game but it's important to remember that there were people that beat the game for the first time. These people didn't have people to purchase the best stuff of off because they were the furthest of anyone in the world.
Similarly, there are people progressing (albeit slowly) through inferno hardcore where there are probably less than ~100 people in the world. There's very little gear on the market and there are still people progressing by farming gear themselves.
[+] [-] gridspy|13 years ago|reply
According to some, it's more of a D2 sequel in spirit than D3 is. Darker setting, more emphasis on skill and action play, etc.
The goal when making PoE was to create a game where the item economy was really strong. There is no gold in PoE. Instead you have currency items (see http://www.pathofexile.com/news/dev-diary/).
All of the shops are horrible for trade, offering tiny amounts for even great items. If you really want something good, you have to trade for it directly with other players or find it yourself.
It is a far more addictive game than either D2 or D3 because a greater range of interesting, random things happen.
PoE also has some great mechanics, for instance flasks (health / mana) are items that last for a long time - they use charges when you drink them and recharge as you fight. They can be magical and unique.
Also, the skill tree offers a far greater range of choice.
Definitely worth checking out.
[+] [-] intended|13 years ago|reply
PoE was great fun playing, and the fact that builds can go in any direction is definitely a huge plus point.
After seeing some of the ideas from D3, I'm quite hopeful that PoE will be a solid competitor in this area.
With Torchlight 2 coming out as well, its going to be very crowded in this niche of the gaming arena.
[+] [-] dkersten|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] b0rsuk|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darklajid|13 years ago|reply
Updating my residence? I just need to send in a government issued id and, if that doesn't include an address, a recent utility bill..
Want to delete a battle.net account? It seems the only way is calling a hotline of some sorts. I'd bet they ask for similar bullshit.
Yes, I enjoy Diablo 2 more. The braindead way Blizzard treats me excludes any new version as mere option. Ignoring all the always online idiocy.
[+] [-] chrischen|13 years ago|reply
Prices for weapons, armor, and gems will keep dropping to lower and lower prices as long as you aren't in the first wave of players. There's nothing to stop that price drop since demand for items will decrease over time AND supply will increase.
An example of the bad design is in the fact that constructing a gem in the game (which takes mutiple lower quality gems you have to find) costs more money than to just buy it from another player. And it will only get cheaper.
[+] [-] b0rsuk|13 years ago|reply
One thing that particularly annoys me is that Diablo 3 developers are in denial about the game even being different. They are either in denial or they're cynically lying. Check out this thread, a guy responds to Jay Wilson's sentences point by point. Highly recommended !
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5638007856?page=1
[+] [-] zarify|13 years ago|reply
(While I like the fact I can find things to improve my character on the auction house, the fact that I need to because I find a very small number of upgrades makes me sad.)
[+] [-] ShardPhoenix|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] okamiueru|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lukev|13 years ago|reply
1. Play hardcore. This instantly transforms the entire point of the game from "get the best gear" to "stay alive", though of course awesome gear is still fun because it helps you stay alive, and squish monsters faster.
2. Don't use the Auction House. Sure, this means I won't be competitive (level for level) with players who do, and I probably won't ever be able to play Inferno, but I play mostly single player or with friends who use similar rules.
A lot of people do seem to love the gear grind of D2, and that's fine for them, but I'd much rather play it in the vein of a classic roguelike.
[+] [-] Arelius|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] d3throwaway|13 years ago|reply
TL;DR: Diablo 3 was WoWified: broke itemization and skill builds, and thus replayability.
In D3, finding a rare item is "ID, does it have those stats? Yes: keep, No: salvage". Brainless.
In D2, finding a rare item is "ID, weird combination of stats, but I don't think anyone wants this so I'll throw it away, go to d2jsp and find some absurdly rich player wanting that ridiculous combination and kicking yourself for vendoring it".
--
Background: thousands of hours manually farming and botting Diablo 2 since vanilla release, equivalent time spent trading/on d2jsp (most of this will refer to 1.09 since that is most fresh in my mind). Also lvl 60 demon hunter in Diablo 3 Inferno Act 3.
Please don't argue that D2 was just as broken on release. The D3 team had YEARS of experience to look back on.
--
1) D2 was all about plowing through monsters. If you were underleveled or undergeared, bosses should be somewhat difficult. If you were reasonably prepared, bosses should be fairly easy. If you even had decent gear, bosses should be a joke.
D3, on the other hand, treats everything like a WoW raid. Hours of grinding to prepare for a fight, min-maxing forcing everyone into a single class or build (energy armor wizard or PMS demon hunter?), and even then, the fights are difficult( vs champions/elites).
Why is this important? Because D2 was so "easy", many many skill builds were viable. Wanted to roll a melee sorc? Go ahead. Fishymancer ( = pet wd in d3)? Works. Throwing barb? Surprisingly strong. Thorns + fire aura pally? Too good.
The proliferation of crazy builds is important, as it makes a MUCH larger proportion of items valuable. This will tie in with the next point.
--
2) D3 itemization is broken. First, there are very, very few item stats that are important. Weapon DPS, main stat, vitality, resist all. Maybe atk speed, crit, crit dmg, move speed. Everything else is garbage. Health globe radius, seriously?
What made many D2 builds viable was the much larger variety of item effects, as well as lack of dependence on stats. Life tap wands made smiters useful, enigma was good for everyone, infinity runeward allowed lightning sorcs and javazons to fight lightning immune, etc.
--
3) Rare items. The above 2 problems, when taken together, kill the D3 end-game. D2 was all about making a MF build, getting some money, then making a bunch of crazy characters, either min-maxing MF or PVP or Baal runs or something, but there was a ton of variety in what you could do. End game economy revolved around rare items.
In D3, finding a rare item is "ID, does it have those stats? Yes: keep, No: salvage". Brainless.
In D2, finding a rare item is "ID, weird combination of stats, but I don't think anyone wants this so I'll throw it away, go to d2jsp and find some absurdly rich player wanting that ridiculous combination and kicking yourself for vendoring it". This means that botting was difficult, because the really big $$ items are ones you wouldn't even recognize, and stash size was a limitation.
--
Anyways, that's why I stopped playing D3. I really don't think they can fix these problems without very large patches, which seems unlikely coming from actiblizzard.
[+] [-] d3throwaway|13 years ago|reply
Can I get an explanation for the downvotes at least?
[+] [-] afterburner|13 years ago|reply
Well said. Tweaking and experimenting, rather than constantly and tediously fighting for your life (which is rendered all the more pointless when you realize one amazing piece of gear can fix it for you).
[+] [-] Jare|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sneak|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aerique|13 years ago|reply
Perhaps something for an "Ask HN" or an in-game channel? I'll go sit in a "HackerNews" channel when I'm online.