This coming from someone who thought that both DA2 and Dungeon Siege 3 were good games. Nuff said.
What a valid point, it is positively brimming with relevance.
In Diablo 3, you aren't underpowered if you use the wrong skills. You are Underpowered if you use any of the skills. And I am not really sure how you can say that there is any depth or strategy to a game. The "Whole" strategy to Diablo 3 is Kite opponents, run away. Kite opponents, run away. If you are a tank, go high vitality and resistances. If you are a caster, go high damage and run like hell. Really in depth strategy there. Also, your choice of abilities is limited to 6, none of which combine or overlap to any degree what so ever. In Diablo 2 you could select from any of your abilities at a moment's notice. Not this 'Click the skills window. Select the Skills 'Group' that you want. Select the Skill that you want. select the 'Rune' that you want to use. Then "Ok", then "Ok" then cool down time. Then cast/use the ability". and there was a fair amount of overlap and cohesion to them such that you could make sub-classes within the classes. Not so in Diablo 3.
In Diablo 2, you are wildly underpowered if you use anything other than a select few strong AoE skills. And I am not really sure how you can say that there is any depth or strategy to a game. The "Whole" strategy to Diablo 2 is spam AoE skills. Click opponents, blow them away. If you are a tank, go high vitality and resistances. If you are a caster, go high damage, run in circles, and AoE enemies. Really in depth strategy there. Also, your choice of abilities is limited to 2 at any one time. In Diablo 2 you could select from any of your abilities at a moment's notice, but only one or two of them would ever be powerful enough to use because you had to invest completely into that skill and it's (often useless) synergies for it to even begin to be worth using. Just because D2 spoonfed you synergy bonuses to showcase ridiculously obvious combos doesn't mean it's some sort of unique feature. In Diablo 3, combos are still being built and discovered and experimented with because they aren't spelled out explicitly.
Examples that come to mind as a Barbarian are Weapon Throw/Sprint mixed with Battle Rage which allows more persistent use of fury-expensive abilities, the various tank 'rotations' that are available, using some crit increasing abilities/glyphs (overpower or revenge) in coord with abilities that benefit from crit (HotA > Birthright, Weapon Throw > Dread Bomb), mixing Inspiring Presence with War Cry's regen bonus when sustain is paramount. The possibilities are there and there's a metric ton of them.
Additionally, as has been stated, in diablo 2, you had to plan out your character. You didn't all of the sudden get all of the abilities. You could make mistakes, but at least you were invested in YOUR character, not the generic toon you get in Diablo 3.
As has been echoed by more than just myself, building in D2 was little more an exercise in following instructions to build characters that used the good skills and not the bad ones. If you wish to have the freedom to build a bad character, you are more than welcome to in D3 by choosing skills that do not complement one another. Nobody's taken away your ability to build a Barbarian that only has skills that consume Fury and none that generate it; the only difference is when you realize it doesn't work you don't have to re-roll an entirely new character.
The items are SIGNIFICANTLY less complex and the drops are eminently less rewarding.
Less complex how? Random properties in D2 were almost the same except more segmented. In D3, a sword can randomly have, say, 1-100 str on it when it's determined it can have the "str modifier" to it. In D2, it simply turned 1-5 str, 6-10 str, 11-15 str, 16-20 str and so on and so forth into different properties and gave them all meaningless names like lion/bear/titan. It's still just a stat.
Itemization actually requires more give and take now than in D2 as well because of Vitality; you can no longer simply allocate all your stat points to vit and blindly use the items with the highest damage output on them. Now you have to decide, is losing X health worth Y DPS? Is getting more crit worth a DPS loss because you'll in turn earn more arcane power, making up for the difference?
Not to mention entirely new stats in the game such as crit hits (deadly strike was physical damage only), crit damage, life on hit, block value, physical/arcane resist, and a much wider array of class specific skill augmentations.
Even discounting the AH, drops are the same as they've ever been. You find a lot of items you can't use and every now and then you do get an upgrade and the longer you play [at 60] the more time there is in between those upgrades. That's the name of the game with random loot.
However when you do take the AH into account, loot is now more rewarding than ever because it is so much easier for you to find a buyer without having to deal with small-time trade games or trade forums and their proprietary currencies. Taking a nice item for the wrong class and trading it in D2 was a chore; but selling them in D3 is a breeze and means you're able to find the items you want far more easily.
There is no variability in your class what so ever.
And there is almost no variability between classes (each class has some variant on slow down or trap or hinder opponent. Each class has some variant on multiple hit attacks against multiple opponents, etc...).
Kind of like how zons could slow with cold arrows, sorcs could slow with cold spells, pally could slow with holy freeze, necro could slow with decrepify, druids can slow with arctic blast, and assassins can slow with blades of ice? Barbs don't get a slow iirc, but they do have howl/stun/taunt.
AoE you've got Lightning Fury/Strafe for zon, pretty much anything/everything for sorc, hammers for pally, corpse explosion/summons for necro, druid gets hurricane, assassin gets lightning traps, and barbs get whirlwind.
Attempting to differentiate classes through such broad characteristics is just not going to happen in a game where one of the design goals is for every class to be capable in their own right. Making that sort of wide idea class specific is just going to further class disparity.
In Diablo 2, for a smaller game on the whole, the game play took longer. There was more reason to get to the next level or the next chapter. There was overall more reward for playing the game.
Reason like what? The game's been about loot since day one, either you want to go to the next act for the higher level loot or you don't, simple as that. Loot hunting as the ultimate totality a game isn't for everyone admittedly, but it definitely hasn't changed between D2 and D3.