D3 was absolutely NOT the better of the two at launch.
Yea, RMAH was a HORRIBLE IDEA, but you know what was worse? 99% of rares being better than ANY legendary… AND finding 1 or 2 legendaries A WEEK, that were utter garbage.
Another HORRIBLE design issue, was the difficulty scaling, which was two fold mind you. First and foremost was the ridiculous scaling of enemy damage, to which a trash bug(the stinger) could TWO SHOT you in the 2nd difficulty. Then you had the issue of melee VS range. Melee had NO survivability, despite melee being in the monsters faces, they died just as quickly as the ranged classes. Even after they “fixed” the difficulty scaling of mobs. So then they had to buff barb and monks by giving them a flat 25% damage reduction. It was STILL kind of rough at that point, since you had to sacrifice dps for survivability.
Then you had the art style, which Jay Wilson openly mocked fans about complaining about the colorful style by adding in a rainbows and unicorns secret level.
D3 connectivity was trash and the queues were BAD. I didnt get more than a few hours in for the first 3 days. Every day for the first week had a 20-45min queue, assuming the servers were even up.
D3 story was meh AT BEST.
Seriously, I highly contend anyone rooting for D3 here was there for launch, furthermore, OP admitted himself, that he was comparing D4 to the state of D3 NOW. Since D4 made plenty of COMPLETELY different design choices(which do need som ironing out) lets compare the development time.
D3 started in 2001. Wasn’t released until 2012. Got RoS in 2014 which many see as “fixing the game.” Got necromancer patch in 2017, and got plenty of updates in between all of that and even up until just a few months ago. Thats 22 years of “development.”
D4 was in development for about 6-7 years, and has been released for 12 days so far.
Hell of a comparison to make, truly.
The biggest issue they need to conquer right now is giving the player more power as you level, not less.