Weekend Gaming – Diablo III

I wish to speak about plateaus.

Not the land forms, nor the pun that they are the highest form of flattery. I wish to speak of the emotional plateaus that can form when playing games of the video variety.

There comes a point when we discontinue our time investment in a particular video game and turn our attention to another. The motivations behind this transition are varied. Sometimes it may be a lethal ragequit. Sometimes it is a victorious completion. Sometimes we can bounce off a game before getting too far into it. Sometimes the game design just kind of shrugs, stops offering new challenges and variety, forcing the player to do the same things over and over again – plateauing.

I forsee myself plateauing with Diablo III. It is inevitable. I will plateau hardcore. Sure, difficulty levels can increase, enemies can hit harder and I can tank more; these numbers increase with every increased difficulty level (in all honesty, is there cap to greater rifts?) And, sure, there are a plethora of builds to experiment with. But in all the game boils down to click > kill > loot > repeat. Loot is needed to create stronger builds, even if loot drops are random. So, aside from escalating grifts levels, and the blind hope for sweet loot drops, there really is not all that much to strive for. This method will not hold my attention forever and I will turn my sights elsewhere.

But not this weekend! No no no. My wizard is finally at a point where she can hold her own in Torment 3. At first, I admittedly had no idea how to build a wizard, trying to make her play like a crusader. But as the orange items starting trickling in and my Kanai’s Cube library filling in nicely, I’ve been able to make her a bringer of fire and vengeance. Likewise, my crusader unleashes havoc no matter what he’s doing. Brother could be standing still and he is bringing the pain.

It has been awesome to create builds that have so many different components, so many different kinds of synthesis. Doing what you can with what you’ve got. Though D3 is maddeningly obscure with its numbers and mechanics in some places, sometimes you’ve just got to observe what is happening in the playing field for the best evidence of a build’s performance… Unless you’re in a set dungeon – at that point it’s like your playing in a quantum level Twilight Zone.

What are you playing this weekend?