Diablo III

[rpbraley868]

Im in the beta, anyone else? Its pretty good so far, however i dislike greatly how you must be online to play at all, even in single player.



And i miss Paladins.

[Dark Spark]

...i dislike greatly how you must be online to play at all, even in single player.

Deal killer.

And Diablo 1 was the game that introduced me to my liking for killin' things.

Mind you, playing the game as the "Multiplayer character forced to go it alone" was much harder than the actual Single Player itineration of the game. There were less story quests to play in any one run-through, but the enemies were tougher. It made me think the Single Player game was a simply a preschool sandbox in which to practice, an attitude reinforced by the fact that no Single Player characters could be put into the Multi Player world.

[dzio]

Well, in Diablo II I always set the number of players to 8 when playing alone. Where's the fun in playing when you'd have to fall asleep on your keyboard to get killed?

rpbraley868 - anything else you can tell us? I won't have the hardware to run the game any time soon, but I'm still interested, I've spent hundreds of hours on D1 and D2...

[rpbraley868]

Well my computer runs skyrim on about medium graphics with some hiccups. I seem to get a bunch of hiccups when playing diablo III, more than skyrim. It seems to happen most when theres a group of monsters ahead (tho im not sure if its graphics lag or internet lag).
Here is some info about the game, keep in mind i recently started the beta and only play on my free time, so im not far in.

Skills are radically different than Diablo II. You have base skills that are only left mouse button skills, and different ones for the right mouse button. Each class also has 4 different "Skill Trees" which are separate.

The classes are interesting, i do miss the Diablo 2 classes. You can choose between:

Barbarian- Basically the same as in II from what i could tell. Just bash things

Demon Hunter- Plays sort of like a cross between an Amazon and an Assassin. You dual wield crossbows and can lay traps among other things.

Witch Hunter- Kinda feels like a necromancer with posion skills and other debilitating magic

Sorcerer- Different skills than the old class. You have things like a magic missile and a frost ray

Monk- Havent played it as of yet.

You can also choose your gender, but not your looks.

Graphics are much better than II, and the gore is well...gorier lol.
There is an Auction House to sell your items kind of like in WoW.

Anyone want to know anything else?

[The Raven]

No more Hammerdin :(

[dzio]

Heh, my computer is too weak even for Oblivion, so D3 is out of the question for now.

Demon Hunter sounds awesome and the armours look brilliant (even if the lady Demon Hunter apparently has magical, iron hard skin and doesn't mind going to battle with half her chest exposed ). Assassin was always my favourite class in D2, she's just so fast and if you build her right, you can cut through an army before they even think about hitting you back.

How's the gameplay though? From what I've heard D3 was supposed to put more role-playing in "action role-playing".

[rpbraley868]

There is a slight bit of roleplay. Each character is voice acted and has their own personality, although you dont get your own choices in what you say. The gameplay itself feels dumbed down compared to Diablo II. While im sure the higher difficulties present more of a challenge, normal is a cake walk. My barbarian just smashed right through the first few areas, never even needed a potion. I know in II if you rushed ahead too quickly you could die very easily, but thats not able to happen in III.

Areas are smaller than the previous game, but are easier to navigate. Enemies drop little health "orbs" that heal you when you walk over it (which is why i never used a potion) . Gold can be picked up quickly by walking over it, and some items increase the radius at which you can pick it up.

Oh and some minor characters from II make an appearance in III.

[The Tom]

I watched a bit of Barbarian gameplay where he was smashing (literally) through a dungeon and met up with Deckard Cain. I cringed when he started to say 'Stay a while and-' but was cut off by the player character. I like that they're voice acted this time around. In Diablo 2 you had a few voice commands and occasionally the character would say something when you entered a new are. It'll be nice to play someone with an actual personality.

Some might say that the orbs and things are dumbing it down but to be honest all potions did in the first two games was get in the way. I was never short on them and they only took up room in my inventory. As for the areas being smaller, well, good. I hated things like the Arcane Sanctuary where you'd spend hours going down winding paths. That level wasn't fun at all, and all dungeons were like it!

[The Raven]

The Sanctuary was great. It was annoying as hell, but I loved the MC Esher feel of it. My favourite is probably Act 4, though. Pre-Diablo.

[The Tom]

FINALLY got the open beta to log in (for twenty minutes before it logged me out) and I have to say that while the game's fun, I hope it gets going at some point. The levels aren't really that big and there aren't as many monsters in the first bit. I guess that's good in a way but I miss wandering around and killing stuff. Looks suspiciously linear so far.

[DorostheConqueror]

...i dislike greatly how you must be online to play at all, even in single player.

Deal killer.

Thank God for DEViANCE!

Crap if I care about D3, though. That game got shoved into the "don't care anymore" vaporware filing cabinet years ago. Assuming it comes out sometime this year and they don't decide to rebuild the engine from scratch, again, I might deign to play a minute or two at a friends house, but only so I can see how badly Blizzard has screwed it up.

Hey Blizzard, 1999 just called, they want their promising young titans of game design back.

[kareldsouza]

I have played this game. it is one of my favorite game. I feel free then i have played this game.

[fisksallad]

Haven't actually tried the beta yet, despite all the hours I've spent on D2. I'll probably check it out at some friend's place at first.

I do miss the times when everything Blizzard released was solid gold.

[The Tom]

Well it's not solid gold, but compared to generic shooter game #4 Diablo III has definitely got a thick gold plating. It's fun. Diablo II could at times be charitably described as frustrating, since half the skills were broken and the character screen was almost entirely wrong. The third game is more streamlined, in the sense that most people would call dumbed-down. But it works, because all the things that were annoying in Diablo II - like the constant NUMBERS - have pretty much gone and everything's so much tidier. I will definitely be buying it.

[Dark Spark]

D1 had a simplicity to it that was endearing: it forced players to consider terrain and situational awareness in order to survive (mind you, I say survive, not prevail).

D2 was all about gathering and deploying as much firepower as you can muster in one area. Something good was lost in all its gimmickry.

If D3 is closer to the original title than to its direct successor, it's a step in the right direction. Sometimes you don't need a skill tree: give a character a good set of toys, point 'em in the direction of whatever you want to see squished, and have at them....

[Dean]

Has Diablo 3 still got the annoying empty worlds like no.2 did? I liked the second one, don't get me wrong, it just felt like the worlds surface was mainly just grass, sand, or whatever for miles and miles... kind of put me off sometimes because I couldn't tell one screen from the next.

It's one of the reasons I preferred Titan Quest as it was full of little details to make it feel alive and worldly. If it's a combination of both detail and randomly generated worlds, that would be perfect.

[The Tom]

Has Diablo 3 still got the annoying empty worlds like no.2 did?

No. And the dungeons are far, far less annoying. There's usually one main route, one or two secondary routes and four or five little branches that have a chest at the end. For example, you get to play the first big dungeon in the beta, and it has five levels each taking about 10-20 minutes to run through without exploring. Above ground it's more focused because you usually head in one direction but the maps are kind of wide so you can still find chests and things off the beaten path. It's not like the Stony Fields from Diablo II where I walked for five minutes in the wrong direction only to have to turn back. You also FINALLY get an objectives list that actually tells you what to do and a quest marker that stops you stumbling around in the dark.

It's also really fun.

[Will Zurmacht]

Contrasts between D2 and D3 that I noticed from playing the beta weekend:

In D2, loot drops were visible to all players in multiplayer games (fastest clicker got the loot), whereas in D3 all loot is generated independently for each player.

In D2, players customized their character through attribute and skill selections, whereas in D3 attribute increases are automated, and all characters of a given class unlock every skill. Theoretically, characters are customized on the fly by having a few skills "equipped" at a time, but the ability to switch them out at will with only a short cooldown means there really is no character differentiation by skills. The only real way to customize characters in D3 is through equipment choices.

D3's intuitive crafting system versus derpy D2 Horadric Cube. Plus the new crafting system is a good gold sink, which should help hold down inflation.

In D2, equipment trading between players devolved into a derpy exploit-fueled barter system. In D3, there is a meta-level universal auction house in addition to a real money cash shop (the latter reversing a decade of Blizzard policy). Interestingly, Hardcore mode characters (for whom the first death is final) will have a separate auction house that only uses game gold.

[dzio]

Interestingly, Hardcore mode characters (for whom the first death is final) will have a separate auction house that only uses game gold.

Oh, thank the gods for that. I hate it when you can skip actual playing by stealing your mom's visa.

[The Number None]

...i dislike greatly how you must be online to play at all, even in single player.

Deal killer.

Thank God for DEViANCE!

Crap if I care about D3, though. That game got shoved into the "don't care anymore" vaporware filing cabinet years ago. Assuming it comes out sometime this year and they don't decide to rebuild the engine from scratch, again, I might deign to play a minute or two at a friends house, but only so I can see how badly Blizzard has screwed it up.

Hey Blizzard, 1999 just called, they want their promising young titans of game design back.

Games shouldn't be released until they're 100% done and the developers are happy with them. In my opinion, Bethesda has a few things to learn from Blizzard.

[Tiber_Septim_Inn]

Well, in Diablo II I always set the number of players to 8 when playing alone. Where's the fun in playing when you'd have to fall asleep on your keyboard to get killed?

rpbraley868 - anything else you can tell us? I won't have the hardware to run the game any time soon, but I'm still interested, I've spent hundreds of hours on D1 and D2...

Lol, yeah try playing Uber Trists. That thing was HELL.

Interestingly, Hardcore mode characters (for whom the first death is final) will have a separate auction house that only uses game gold.

Oh, thank the gods for that. I hate it when you can skip actual playing by stealing your mom's visa.

Lol, the same thing happened on Diablo 2 and will happen on Diablo 3 or any other game that doesn't allow you to pay exuberant prices to get items...and it's actually cheaper. Check out sites like d2legit or d2items. These sites have made millions off of botting for items and then selling them back at dirt cheap prices (or expensive prices, if you look for perfect and rare gear). Back in the day, it wasn't uncommon to pay 1000s of dollars for a characters equipment for pvp purposes. Still isn't.

[dzio]

Well, it's just my humble opinion, but I think that spending 3 months salary to make sure you can effortlessly make bunch of pre-teens cry by stomping on their characters is just a tiny bit pathetic. Or possibly compensating for something.

Also, I'm not into competitive gaming, but I honestly don't understand how anyone can get a sense of achievement of any kind by doing that. It's like winning a 100 meter sprint by showing up with a motorcycle. Sure, you'll get there first, but it's absolutely meaningless.

[Tiber_Septim_Inn]

Well, it's just my humble opinion, but I think that spending 3 months salary to make sure you can effortlessly make bunch of pre-teens cry by stomping on their characters is just a tiny bit pathetic. Or possibly compensating for something.

Also, I'm not into competitive gaming, but I honestly don't understand how anyone can get a sense of achievement of any kind by doing that. It's like winning a 100 meter sprint by showing up with a motorcycle. Sure, you'll get there first, but it's absolutely meaningless.

You are under the assumption that better items=winning. Not really. Of those folks that I mentioned (the ones that spent 1000s on equipment), I have been able to beat a good deal of them simply by being the better player. Sure, it is really pathetic to have to buy all of your items to get a leg-up on the competition, it's even more pathetic to lose against the guy who didn't. I view investing customers as a challenge, if anything else. They have the good stuff, I don't. If I beat them (and I usually do), it makes the experience much more satisfying.

There are people like this in literally every single game you can come across. Instead of bowing out, I make them think twice before they cross me. Then, after I have stomped those guys, they either spend more money or they quit. Either way, I'm still winning, haha.

[DorostheConqueror]

Thank God for DEViANCE!

Crap if I care about D3, though. That game got shoved into the "don't care anymore" vaporware filing cabinet years ago. Assuming it comes out sometime this year and they don't decide to rebuild the engine from scratch, again, I might deign to play a minute or two at a friends house, but only so I can see how badly Blizzard has screwed it up.

Hey Blizzard, 1999 just called, they want their promising young titans of game design back.

Games shouldn't be released until they're 100% done and the developers are happy with them.

Yeah, see, there's a problem. Games shouldn't take ten years to be fully completed. Especially not when the final result is a resounding "meh". If a game is taking longer than three or four years to go through it's entire development phase, something is wrong. Usually, it's the fault of the developers themselves; they decided to change their entire engine in mid-project, three or four times, for example. Or it may be that the publishers are stupid, and various licensing issues may have caused the game to slip through the cracks, thanks to untimely bankruptcies or inane intellectual property laws. Or maybe they're all just fat and lazy and know their fanboys won't notice the jerk-around. In D3's case, I think it's probably a hefty dose of all of the above, made all the worse by World of Warcraft, aka The Only Thing Blizzard Does Anymore.

In my opinion, Bethesda has a few things to learn from Blizzard.

Oh no. It's bad enough Bethesda's decided to release all their titles exclusively for XBox. If we've got to wait a decade between each increasingly consolized release, and then suffer through online DRM schemes and bafflingly stupid "features", like floating God-of-War style health orbs (because that's what I wanted in Diablo- wait, what?), then no thanks. For the love of the Drowned God, the Diablo series ONLY JUST NOW ADDED THE ABILITY TO CHOOSE YOUR CHARACTER'S GENDER. And you want Bethesda to LEARN from these freaks?!?!

And don't even get me started on World of Elder Scrolls. MMO - No, no, no!

There's usually one main route, one or two secondary routes and four or five little branches that have a chest at the end.

So what you're saying is, the dungeons are linear and predictable? Rail-slashers, huzzah!

[born2beagator]

For someone that knows nothing about Diablo, can someone give me the gist of the series? Is it an MMO? Do you have to pay monthly fees?