Let me say first off, that I really like Diablo IIIās current incarnation. There are a lot of players still, and while this is my first time on the forums, I canāt imagine the people complaining on the forum speak for the majority of people actually playing the game. I started when this game launched, spent hundreds of dollars in the RMAH, went through RNG hell, and still, on infernal difficulty, there was no possible way to survive even the weakest possible hits. The adrenaline needed to play a non-monk/barb at that time was insane, so when they revamped everything, I stopped playing, because it wasnāt the same game that endured near-heart attacks learning to play. I came back around Season 14 with the new seasonal buffs started happening, and found a much more enjoyable game. Gearing was now gamified, crafting made a lot more sense. RNG was reigned in. Sets were obtainable and made for some engaging play styles. All of the masochistic things that made D2 and D3 originally unbearable were remodeled into a way that made progressing in the game mirror the learning curve, rather than be a flat, impossible grind.
The hatred of this game on the forums and the love for D2 is mind-boggling. Then I realized what all the D2 people are begging for is a sado-masochistic game that they can cheat at by buying botted goods, and it becomes clear that maybe some of them are just masochists, but they probably are also influenced by those who have an agenda to get Blizzard to create a market for botters and sweat shops like D2 had.
Now that all that is out of my system. I too, hate competitive gaming. I hate that every game that I enjoy has to be an extreme streamed commercialized e-sport. But I also love having the fan sites, and many of the friends I enjoy playing with need that competitive social graph to be able to enjoy the game.
This is one of those situations where what they do doesnāt really hurt how I play the game. If other people grind for months to try to get that 0.1 sec lead on GR120, you know, thatās really their loss when competing in a video game becomes THAT important to them. My judgment shouldnāt limit their fun though, itās their time to do with as they please.
Obviously Iām not going to defend botting. It needs to be eradicated or muted (once identified, let them still play the game, but donāt let non-botting people see their records, so they end up wasting their time without knowing theyāve been caught).
I hear you on toxicity, and the e-sports competitive nature is for sure a big drive towards toxicity. Somehow in anonymous e-sports, thereās no room for e-sportsmanship. There are steps to curb that sort of behavior though. I donāt play League of Legends, but I hear Riot has implemented several successful tools to improve the quality of user interactions. I do play FFXIV, where the North American community is much more wholesome than WoWās, and the Japanese community is far more friendly than the American one still. These things are in part sometimes due to the less competitive nature of the games, but also because the games take steps to reward good behavior and friendly interaction. This is an area where as far as I know, Blizzard has failed tremendously.
Some of Americaās most toxic political groups started with Steve Bannonās analysis of World of Warcraft forums. The idea was to isolate a bunch of white men, make them angry, and harness that for political purposes, and well, looking at the world around us and at the office that Bannon briefly held, Iād say the āBlizzard forum modelā worked as intended. The way Blizzard creates these forums as echo chambers, and then refuses to address the growing anger makes people incredibly furious over things that often people not on the forums wouldnāt give much thought to.
Americans will always find some way to make things a competition. Itās not hard to build a network sniffer that records your DPS, times, etc, and uploads them to a website like worldoflogs. Whether Blizzard puts a leaderboard in or not, itās going to happen either way, because itās just how American gamers are. However, to address toxicity, the thing they need to do is add positive player rankings and commendations and such to encourage people to be nice and helpful to as many other players as possible.