i'm like half in love with D3 and half disapointed. the half that i love is that the combat system is very visceral (at least for the monk). like it feels like i'm doing more than hold down left or right, and it feels like each encounter is its own sort of challenge depending on mob attributes and layout. there's a lot of fluidity in how my character moves, sound and graphics are rewarding, and the ability to switch on the fly is much cooler than i anticipated.
i like the fact that they changed around the quest system, so that it feels like you're actually doing something the first time you play, and it's fairly easy to ignore afterwards.
the character sheet is much more transparent and easy to use. i like the fixed stat increments (at least in theory), and think it's cool that gems are now the main way that you customize.
i don't really care about the DRM scheme, even though i can see how you would be pissed at it, and also have been lead to understand there's already an exploit to spoof session IDs and steal accts (be careful in public games, yo).
all that being said, i think the game is sort of a failure overall because it seems very cash-shop without actually being cash-shop.
ok, so the problems start with the item system. basically legendaries (formerly uniques) aren't good - not compared to really boss rares that can spawn anything within level range and item appropriateness. i guess i can understand why they did this, but unfortunately it leads to a lot of really samey gear. like, for example, frostburns used to be good midlevel gear because they gave you things most gloves didn't (+mana, +frost damage), but now they're just shitty rares because there aren't unique things that spawn on uniques that you can't find on other items, or if there are then they're mitigated by not having the +stat modifiers that you need to survive past nightmare.
this pretty much funnels all game activity in to the auction house. i haven't traded with a person in game yet. everything i do feels like it has the end goal of get money > browse AH > upgrade next 14 points in DEX and VIT. this is sort of how D2 was, but at least there you would trade with other people (or maybe not - if you were high level you'd just use Forum Gold to buy what you wanted). the auction house formalizes it, so everything is transparently a quest for higher numbers. it strips out the fun extra stuff that D2 had, like character building, and just makes it transparently a farmville like click fest where a certain amount of time results in a certain amount of gold results in a certain amount of stat gain. there's a little bit of economics metagame to it, but not enough to keep me interested. as soon as they add real money (good luck with that - if you want to give people an incentive to hack your shit then put real-ass dollars in it) i think it's going to lose any pretense of being anything but a grind/buy situation.
i guess what it comes down to is that you could say the same thing about D2, but at least with D2 I had attachment to my char. my chars here just feel like very obvious time sinks. i don't assign stats, i can change skills on the fly, and there's no sense of real ownership. put in X amt of time get out X levels which let you equip X gear that you spend Y amt of money to get. finding something rare my first response isn't "hey, i can use this on my other character" it's "hey i can flip this for 10k on the AH and work towards getting the next 10 points of VIT that I need for my build". the auctionhouse metagame isn't compelling enough to make me want to put in the time to actually find shit to sell or to build the characters to wear it. i can't imagine playing through the main quest again with low-level characters since it's a fucking breeze, and i don't care enough about the metagame to trick out a magicfind build to really compete on the ah.
there's some stuff they could do to fix this. right now, unless you find plans for an in-demand legendary, crafting is useless. the rares that they make are mostly junk, and mostly levels behind what you need. creating gems is pointless since it costs money and it's much easier to go to the ah and just spend a little more to save yourself the trouble and straight-up buy what you need. if they gave the artisans more functionality, like give them white junk to influence what rolls on crafted items, or give them special items to force specific attributes on rares, or give them the ability to combine gems to create hybrids that give + to dual stats, or add sockets to gear (a socket is pretty much necessary for anything to be good, since +stat gems play such a huge role in character optimization), or like any reason to use anything other than the ah, then it might be more compelling.
one other things that's simultaneously good and bad is that there are now sidequests that you hit when you're running a quest. like in act 2 i came across this treasure vault that's timed to collapse as you explore it and kill you if you're still inside, and at the end were three high-end chests that actually popped a few rares for me. that was fucking awesome. but it's totally random that you get that, and i can count on one hand the number of cool side dungeons like that. they need much, much more cool side stuff like that - running the main quest is boring as fuck after the first few times.
anyway, on the whole i'd say i'm disappointed, and i'm probably going to force myself to stop playing (it's addictive, but not really fun) until things improve
also, if i'm being honest w/ myself, i have to say that at least part of it is that i'm not 15 any more and as i'm playing i'm thinking to myself like, "hey, what about practicing coding, or how about how you got kinda fat last semester dogg, maybe you should work on that instead of playing glorified farmville"
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