Diablo 3 Road to Redemption - GDC 2015 (Destiny)

by JComboBox, Wednesday, March 11, 2015, 15:50 (3355 days ago)

Join Josh Mosqueira as he discusses the dramatic shifts in gameplay, core philosophy, itemization, and rewards in Diablo III: Reaper of Souls.

https://youtu.be/vWYEWRrFgUY

I found this talk to be very compelling and I think it bears bringing up within the context of Destiny's own loot system. In my opinion, the two best loot based games that are out there right now are Diablo 3 with Loot 2.0 (drop rate+ variety) and Borderlands (RNG Loot Weapons + variety). The replay-ability (hyphenate?) of Diablo 3 allows for me to defeat the same bosses and play the same areas over and over again, but I never get bored since I'm always building towards something that's fun (becoming overpowered and customizing builds with interesting items).

I love Destiny, but I feel like what's missing is variety of the items and the rate at which they drop. The only really unique feeling items are exotics and the effects and mechanisms of those are so known and controlled. The legendaries just feel like it's a stepping stone to level and that's about it. It's not particularly meaningful to grab a piece of gear over another since the perks are so mundane outside of the Raid armor perks (which are really only supposed to help with HM Raid). Plus, binding the gear to your light level means that I'm grinding away to get basically the same set of perks on armor, but a different look and light level.

I'm guessing that the real challenge that defines Destiny's systems is trying to let what makes a PvE loot based system fun, but balance PvP. Thus, all Diablo 3 based arguments needs a huge grain of salt since they basically abandoned PvP because it is crazy hard to balance!

I know this is a bit rant-esque (?) but thought I'd throw these thoughts down anyway.