Diablo III - Page 5

Yeah, given access to the same gear, any two characters in the same class can become completely identical.

 

I'm ok with that. The designers said in D2 your stat choices often boiled down to:

- X amount of Strength for your end game gear

- Y amount of Dex for your target block

- 0 Energy

- everything else in Vitality.

 

And for talent trees, you could make your choices, but it was an enormous time sink to recreate a new char if you wanted another talent build. So interests of fun, they basically removed the barriers to respeccing.

With D3, there is an enormous variety in skill choises. Something like 24 skills, each with 5 rune variations, split over 6 slots. A lot of room for experimentation and differentiation. Even more when gear effects are added on over the top.

I have a level 10 Demon Hunter and all I can say so far is, damn, is this game dumbed down from the previous two.  Virtually no side quests, and I really miss the idea of having even a rudimentary input into the stats of my character.  This plays more like an oversimplified console port of a Diablo clone.

 

Please tell me I will at least get some gear crafting, or transmogrifying or something more interesting than very basic dungeon crawling.

This is going to be a pretty fast game, enjoying it though.
 

There is a crafting merchant... but from what I've seen you'll get far better gear (at least in the early stages) by visiting the auction house.

There are some side quests, but they are more like random events you may run across. ie. I came across a room with an item in the middle that spawned a minute worth of enemy waves to survive.

 

I've found it a bit repetitive, but I'm only at level 10. I'm hoping the skill options  expand over the next 10 levels and give enough options to make it more interestingplaying. Every new level brings at least one new choice for character build.

 

Plus I want to get into the multiplayer more.

I get all of that, but half of the fun of creating a character was the inherent riskiness of it. In the old Diablo games, the reward of creating a powerful character was balanced by the risk of creating a bad one. It's not like DII was such a huge game that rolling a new character was that big of a deal, anyway; I remember ditching my Necromancer halfway through after reading about the Barbarian, and I didn't consider any of that playtime wasted. After hearing stories about corpse explosion, I even created a new DII Necromancer years later, and had a blast with it. It wouldn't have ever occurred to me that I'd want to create the mathematically perfect and most efficient character - I want my own DNA in my build. That's why they called it an Action RPG. Diablo 3 is an Action PG.

 

I also cry foul with the weapon identification. Returning to camp with a haul of unidentified weapons was such a great example of delayed gratification, and made the looting experience that much more addicting. It's easier to just pick up a trinket and put it on, I guess, but it misses the clever point of leaving these treasures as mysteries for later.

 

I'm surprised how much character this game lost in favor of streamlining. I remember playing through the bland and simple Dungeon Siege III and thinking, "Wow, it's like someone took Diablo and wrung everything interesting out of it." This game feels more like Dungeon Siege III than either of the Diablos, although at least that game had some vague semblance of story and character interactions.

 

To your point that D3 emphasizes fun over tinkering, that's only true if you don't find the tinkering fun. Risk, reward, and punishment all go hand in hand, and when a game is all reward, none of it is. It's why Dark Souls is probably my favorite game of the current gen.

I suppose they thought that most of the 'danger' in building bad characters was taken away by numerous websites explaining exactly how to build a character successfully. And for the 'casual' player, they were just screwing up their characters by putting stats/talents in places that were non viable at the mid/end game.

I think D3 does cater for tinkering, because there is a huge amount of choice when it comes to skills (and passive talents) mixed with a low barrier to respeccing.

 

It doesn't have the harsh punishment for death that a game like Demon/Dead Souls has. 

 

But realistically, punishment in video game terms often equates to 'time'. Trying a character build and having it fail at lvl 30, means starting from scratch and repeating 29 levels that you've already beat, before finding out your new build works. Or you give up, research and choose someone else's DNA because it's proven.

Again, I don't personally understand why anyone would ever want to build the statistically perfect character in an RPG based on someone else's blueprint. The fun of it is in the ferreting out. Why would I outsource the best part of the game?

 

I don't really do PVP, though. If D3 is a game built around tactical combat and easy respeccing, that's fine, but that's not at all why I liked Diablo in the first place.

I would have rather that they just kept the old skill trees with the synergys.  I liked the dramatic differences between a lightning mage vs. a frost mage vs. a fire mage or a bowazon vs a throwazon.  Why not just add a respec option with the skill trees? 

First of all, I won't be able to play on the US servers sadly, at least for now. 500 to 800 ms of lag with spikes up to 1.5k is unplayable. In the Europe servers everything has been pretty much flawless so far. Would anyone mind and, just for curiosity's sake, make a character in Europe from the US and report on the lag?

 

Let me guess, you haven't played much Diablo II in higher difficulties?

 

You'd better be min-maxed perfectly or you'd be quite useless. Meph and Baal runs in Hell difficulty were probably some of the fastest multiplayer gaming I've done in all the years I'm gaming. If your character wasn't perfect you wouldn't be able to move fast enough through them to get any sort of worthy loot. Thus getting gimped even more the next time you tried. In D2 and in WOW you could pretty much tell how someone had allocated his points simply by seeing his level. Customizability only existed early on. Once you started running into mobs invulnerable to fire with your fire sorceress and having to clear rooms by plinking them with some stupid dagger or something you were done. The repair costs alone would break you.

 

D3 is, as far as I can tell, probably trying to make high level play do-able without external guides. 

I'm pretty sure the variety between builds within a class is achievable. Probably more so than in D2. It's just that none of the choices are permanant (except maybe whether to blow a million gold on an item at the AH or not).

 

It's also worth mentioning that the stats are still there (Str, Int, Dex, Vit) but you modify them through gear only, rather than permanent Level up allocations.

 

 

Re: Stelios and lag. In Aus we have to go US servers. The best I got last night was 198 with a spike of 1800+.

 

Thanks. So I guess you'll all be playing together with me alone in my corner.

 

Stats will also be manipulated by socketing gems.

 

Anyway I got hooked bad. My barbarian is still around twenty something DPS and I'm already seeing characters with 6000+ DPS not being able to move past Act 1 in Inferno. And for some reason this makes me even more excited to try it myself.

I'm with Trevor on this.  D3 feels a lot less "fun" then D2.  I must have played through D2 a hundred times with different iterations of characters.  Yes, I really want to learn how the story plays out, but after that's done, there just isn't enough there to keep me coming back.  D3 is likely to be a one and done.  For me Streamlined = dumbed down.  D3 feels like Blizzard tried a lot harder to make a game with extremely broad accessibility rather than a follow up aimed at the fans of the series.  That plus the insultingly Draconian DRM kill this thing for me.

 

The Auction house?  I couldn't care less.  A big part of the fun of loot hunting is the randomness, and trading with friends to find that amazing ring of +500 fire resistance.  Now all I have to do is be some rich boy noob with a ton of cash and just buy it.  Wow....fun.

 

I'm sure this game will appeal more to the run and gun types, and Blizzard will make a bazzion gillion quadrillion dollars.  Perhaps I had unrealistic expectations when I heard that D3 was on its way, but this game feels off, reduced and not what I was hoping for as a successor to D2.  Great job reinventing the wheel Blizzard........

I don't get the dumbed down comments at all. The auction house and DRM complaints I get. But dumbed down? There are literally three times the amount of possible skill combinations in this. Forcing you to start again from level one just to see what a skill does is a not a sign of intelligence, so that its omission would constitute dumbing down.

 

It's the "tick-tick-ticking" aspect of D2 they've got rid of, which is fine by me. Having to put 5 points into a skill to get it to work halfway decently created the illusion of having 5 choices, but in reality you only had 1 choice, especially if you wanted to progress further down the tier. I don't miss stat point selection either, as I'd spend them the same way every single level.

 

What D3 has that the previous game had far less of is the ability to augment your skills in real, game-changing ways that will provide for hours of tinkering.

From playing it, it still has all of that stuff that we liked about D2 in terms of character tinkering, but it's visible in different ways. It seems to me that in D3 they've tried to articulate individual preference through gameplay tinkering instead of stat tinkering. I think that both approaches can be lots of fun, but I'm really liking D3 and its potential so far. 

 

Not really. I played a few characters through on Nightmare, but I had more fun experimenting with the builds than creating a DPS efficiency machine. I don't begrudge anybody for liking that, but it doesn't interest me.

 

I'm sure there's a great sense of accomplishment associated with laying waste to the higher difficulties for people who want to max things out, too. For me, DII had these amazing synergies between different accomplishments that this game (so far) can't touch: there's the sense of accomplishment of unlocking an ability through leveling, and then there's the sense of accomplishment of defeating a high-level enemy using that coveted ability. My Paladin may have been a wuss by hardcore elite player standards, but he was MY wuss, which made eventually defeating Diablo something special.

 

And then there's planning. In DII, you could spot a spell or ability 10 levels away and perform long-term planning to unlock it. Unlocking the coveted spell was a big deal. In this game, all planning is done on the micro; there's no delayed gratification, which means that nothing is a big deal. Instead of a burst of hard-earned endorphins, the only reward I feel for leveling up in D3 is a happy shrug. Oh, look - a new toy. Neat.

 

I'll certainly play through this game. It's atmospheric, the music is incredible, and the monsters are inventive. It's just that I don't get any sense of accomplishment from leveling up anymore, which was DII's biggest draw for me.

 

This is what a lot of people don't realize when they mis-characterize DIII as having become more like an MMO. The classical MMORPG leveling style of using points awarded upon leveling to unlock branches of a skill tree owes heavily to the DII skill tree. The next skill you will unlock is the carrot on a stick that keeps you leveling. DIII, and come to think of it, most new MMOs are leaving this mechanic behind.

 

Instead they switched to a variation of the Skinner Box to motivate leveling. Push a button to get a stick to push a button that's further away to get an even bigger stick to push a button that's even further away and so on. I think this helps them make a two pronged attack on the gaming audience. The very casual people will not end up spending ten hours making a broken character and leaving the game afterwards, while the more hardcore can spend more time growing their e-penis in the endgame without spending time speedrunning the early stuff.

Yes, this is exactly what Blizzard has done. Interestingly, I think they strike a devil's bargain in this two-pronged attack - by focusing on the needs of the ultra-casual and the hardcore, they left out all the people in the middle.

I don't know. This mechanic can be terribly addictive if you don't know what is happening. Actually, judging by myself it can be terribly addictive if you know what is happening too.

 

And I believe they have already sold millions of this. They're OK. 

I don't care about their sales either way, but I do wonder how many people who bought the game (like this guy, and good on Blizzard for being nice) will be silently checking out of the franchise.

A friend of mine has already completed the game on two different characters.

 

I agree with most of the comments posted here to some extent, the good and the bad.  One thing I do miss is the wider field of vision you had in D2.

 

Overall, I'm enjoying the game and happy to group up with folks, but I don't see myself hanging on this game throughout the summer.  Probably move on to GW2 at some point, then head back to Lotro in the fall when Rohan hits.
 

So how many of you guys are gonna get your free vibrator? *Ahem* for your lady friends of course. *Ahem* Absoloo is apparently giving away "small" vibrators to people that bought the game. Or some such non sense. Go get your tickle on.

I'm at lvl 16 or something. The first 10 levels are quite slow. Only one new thing per level (which, by the way, is far more exciting than D2's new stuff every 6 levels). However after a while it turns into 2-3 new things per level. New skills, new runes, new passives. There's always something to try out and see if it suits.

 

For example, my (hardcore) Monk is choosing between attacks that are AOE in front, teleporting, 360 attacks, knockback... and that's just the primary skill slot. After that there's choices for healing, stunning, escaping, more damage, more teleporting, damage avoidance, damage mitigation. with the 5 ability slots I've unlocked there's always a good choice of what to do at any point at time. 

 

I've sort of adopted a stragey of getting in the thick of things and using multi-hit attacks + healing to survive. I can imagine a far more nimble monk build, but this deals with swarms well. And yeah, Hardcore is a crazy experiment that I assume will end in tears. If I can finish Normal I'll be very impressed.

My main criticism (so far) is the combat is quite simple. ie. Click on things till they die. And also be a bit careful if it's boss/unique mobs. And the story, while much better integrated than D2, is laughable. 

 

I suppose it's just what happens when you click on things is what makes it so exciting. (Not sure if I'm contradicting myself... but I will declare I'm having fun)

 

Bravo to you sir! Never tried that mode but I imagine it gets increasingly shittening as it progresses, let us know if you crash and burn so we can mourn you!

Finished Act 1 last night with my monk, picked up an awesome magic daibo, then shortly after that a pair of awesome rare knuckle spikes. Something that I really like about how this game is playing so far: I don't need to respec my guy to use cool gear that I find. If the monk were in D2, there'd probably be builds that I could make that specialized in either knuckle weapons or daibo. Once I got to a certain level, one or the other would be completely useless, or even worse I could break a potential build by putting points into skills that would allow me to use the cool new shit that the boss just dropped. It's looking like certain skills work better with certain kinds of weapons, especially class-specific weapons, and it's more a matter of configuring your skills/runes to take advantage of your gear.

 

I really like that, even though I do miss some of the satisfaction that came from getting a build "right" in D2. Still, especially after patches and expansions (which really helped D2 shine), I think that this way of doing things is going to stop being so controversial. A lot of the changes seem to be an attempt to get the customization aspects out of menus and into the actual gameworld, which is a great idea even though I think that it could use some refinement.

Anybody down for a CHUD game tonight?  Got a lvl 20 wizard but also willing to start from the beginning with something new.

Now that I've come to terms that this is basically an action strategy game, I'm feeling less regretful.

 

The story is so bad, and a lot of the design is obvious and hacky. We went from fire-breathing tiki midgets and interdimensional arcane sanctuaries to Skeleton Kings and Spider Queens. Why does every fantasy game need to include a goddamn Spider Queen?

Well, it looks like my connection woes are on their way out - managed to get a good couple of hours in today, teaming up with a friend to take out the Skeleton King. And it was GOOD.

 

Have stelios and elsnakeo on my friends list, and will send out some requests to some of you other chaps as well. Definitely up for some Chewer dungeon bashing, time differences allowing.

The Diablo franchise has always worn its 2nd Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons influence so far out on its sleeve* that a lack of spider queens would be an inexcusable oversight. And that's a part of the franchise's appeal to me, to be honest. This is one of the most entertaining Dungeons and Dragons video games to come down the pike in years.

*A Diablo campaign setting and rules mod was one of the last products TSR published for their game's second edition, and there were Warcraft campaign setting supplements published by a third party for 3rd Edition D&D under that game's Open License. These are not people who keep their nerdery in the closet.
Edited by Reasor - 5/19/12 at 9:44am

Had my first CHUD game, with Bob Loblaw slumming with Subotai and I.  Was lots of fun, and I even pulled my first legendary drop on my Monk.

That was fun.  Will be on again tonight, for those who want to get in on the CHUD action.  Tag:  Luckyjack#1205.

I'll be up for some CHUD party action probably in a couple of weeks. I need to drink in the fine liquor of the terrible story on my own first.

Is anyone playing on Europe?

Sorry I missed you guys' session, will keep an eye out for the future though. Logged a good 3-4 hours with my friend over the weekend, and I have to say: I fucking love this game. Exploding Palm is now officially my jam.

Holy fucking balls, do these guys know how to make CG movies or what? 

 

Exploding Palm is great.  Mystic Ally is GREAT.

I was wrong. The story blows and it feels nothing like DIablo II, but this is still a great game.

Of course besides Arthas' fall, which was cliche as fuck but still well executed, Blizzard's stories always sucked. Their lore is cool in a bugfuck nuts sort of way but their stories leave something to be desired. To put it mildly.

My disintegrator wizard is a walking god (on normal, at least).

There stories feel like something out of the world of Brutal Legend or something. It's totally overwrought fantasy metal type stuff, and it is unquestionably bad, but I can't hate it on its own terms. It turns out to be kind of cute, like a sixteen year old's idea of epic and meaningful and serious.

 

And yeah, there's a part of me that goes "Duuuuuude!" when monsters explode into a shower of gibs.

I'm finding myself feeling the same feeling towards this as I do to Civ5. In the case of Civ5 I see the game in my steam install list but just don't have the will to click it and play it. The same feelings I'm developing for the Diablo 3 shortcut on my desktop.

Never really given any weight to the story of the games. Evil is out there, go kill it, come back and sell your junk. That's it, in addition to some neato cutscenes. The only annoyance is Leah taking too fucking long to go, oh shit just got real - and she has that revelation long after shit got real. The followers also need a mute button, or stop repeating their lines. I half think they included the Lore recordings to justify the laziness of bringing back the butcher..."In hell there are numerous butchers wandering about down there, this totally explains how we paid fanservice to the 1st game"...

I'm warming up to the skill unlocks. Being able to pick and choose your perks - which comes in handy when you're exploding mobs of critters but then need to activate your harpoon to pull in the bird based creatures who too often fly away from you.

Loot drops feel useless. I've gathered enough armor to increase the percentage of unique items that you find, but haven't really found anything special. Once every couple of days I'd come across a coveted yellow, sometimes for another class. I ran all of the first act using an ice sword I bought from the instanced miner sidequest, haven't come across any weapons equaling or exceeding that purchase. I'm not really feeling there's a use for the Armorsmith. I've spent money training him to Journeyman level. Either the stuff I can create is behind the curve or 5 levels too advanced for my character to wield, and when I do meet the requirements I already have items better. So that system feels like a waste of money right now.

Auction house feels useless. I've put up a fair share of yellows and blues 20-30 percent below market asking prices, to see if anything was going on. No bites at all. What there is for sale on the marketplace is so astronomically beyond my means I wonder if people are even able to afford some of the rarer items just yet. What I do have that is special I've stashed away, with the hope that hey I can recoup some of the money spent on this game.

It's alright when you get in the groove of playing with friends or spouse, but on its own it feels just mindless clicking on things for the sake of clicking on things, rinse repeat (and I have upped the difficulty).

 

Spot on there, and let's not forget about their voice acting.

 

 

On a side note, is it true the single-player version of this game must be played online?  If so, Blizz just made a no-sale, and may lose my WoW subscription in protest.

 

 

EDIT:  Read previous page.  What a bummer.  Policies like this encourage piracy.

Edited by Black_Dahlia - 5/20/12 at 3:33pm

I'm feeling a bit bummed out about the item situation. Getting stuff of the AH seems the best way to itemise my char right now. I search for Dex and/or Vit (for my Monk) with a low buyout price (ie cheap) and have managed to get stuff far better than what is dropping during me regularly playing the game. Feels a bit of a hollow experience.

 

The AH is the best place to update your gear, given you have the gold.  Crafting can also produce some good stuff, assuming you have been leveling your blacksmith.  99.9% of the drops i have recieved have been broken down into mats by the blacksmith.  I would say it's a good idea to upgrade your weak link items before trying to proceed in Nightmare.  I just started Nightmare with my wizard and the first time you run into a pack of armored/reflective blue bosses you will understand the need to upgrade.  I had to go back and replace 3 or 4 pieces, but you can find stuff (rares and high level blues) in the AH.  Just stack vitality and your main DPS stat. 

 

The one thing I really like about D3 compared to D2 is that gold is actually worth something, at least early on.  And taking a look in AH, it looks like there are patterns that can be purchased which will allow your blacksmith to produce Legendary items.   Of course it was 3 million gold.

I see a lot of people complaining about the story for D3.  Do you guys actually play Diablo for the story?

Did a bit more reading today. The crafting vendor upgrades carry over between characters which is nice. Someone pointed out this is particularly good for Hardcore characters who are gonna loose all their equipped items on death, but will be able to recraft stuff more easily (assuming they stash away the mats).

 

The economy will need a while to sort itself out. Blizzard may need to tweak a few things to make the various aspects work. ie. Provide an effective money sink, tweak Legendary Items to make them at least partially worthwhile.

 

It's not so much the story for me, but getting a consistant tone would be nice. Halls of Agony in Act 1 are suitably gruesome, but the dialogue coming from Maghda is very cheesy. ie. "You win this round!". She seems much more cartoony that the topless, clawed, poison-spewing Andarial in D2.

 

The game is only sporadically hitting it's stride for me. The most fun is in multiplayer. It may be quite easy on Normal difficulty, but at least it's a race to who can send goatman entrails exploding all over the screen the quickest.

 

As an aside, I've got a friend who's at 60 already and doing Act 1 inferno. Says the champion mobs are impossible.

I am having an absolute blast in Nightmare right now.  The rare and champion packs come out and things go crazy.  

 

The worst I had was a pack of Molten Arcane Disembodied Hulks.  That means the drops laser beams that sweep the ground AND pools of molten lava you can't step in.

 

Octord#1395

Getting into Nightmare a bit, and having a blast. My level 34 Demon Hunter just whupped the Skeleton King.

 

I had to tweak my build a bit for more survivability, which is cool. I swapped Vault for Smoke Screen with extension rune. If I see any yellow glowy superpowered badasses up ahead, I pop Smoke Screen, stroll in to the middle of them, drop a rain of arrows, then scooch back out, leaving a Caltrops+damage and rocket turret in my wake. That's usually not enough to kill the real jacked up pack leaders though, so then I run around in a panic Smoke Screening while the turret ticks away at them. Those mortar guys are killer! Thankfully, with SS, I can stroll right out of waller walls, though.

 

At the beginning of nightmare you start getting all kinds of crazy gems for loot too, so get your socketed gear ready. That tips the scales a lot. I might just make it to hell. I'll probably need to join a crew to blast through the rest of nightmare, though. I'm not doing that goddamn spider cave again solo. That's my most hated level in the game.

 

A tip to preserve your sanity: Go to audio options, turn "Voice" down to zero, disable subtitles and dialogue balloons. Everything now plays out like a nice soothing silent movie, where you can imagine better dialogue and story. In fact, just do that at the start of the game.
 

I'm enjoying it quite a bit.

 

- My Witch Doctor is level 24 or so. I have the pets out as meatsheilds, and for most packs I just throw down the AoE slow, dump acid on them, then toss some spiders to mop up. Works well, but I think just about anything would work in Normal.

 

- I do wish the companions would shut up, or at least limit themselves to unique things to say. They repeat themselves a lot.

 

- The dialogue is quite cheesy. It's Diablo, not Shakespeare, but still. The bad guys are kid cartoon goofy: "Stop him! Seize them! You win this round!"

 

- I like the new leveling method. Rather than just waiting for a new toy every five or ten levels, you get something to try out every level up. Experiment - and swap it in or dump it. Keeps things fresh, and there are still things to work toward - the runes can change powers drastically, and there always seems to be one I want to try just a level or two away.

 

- Yeah a level 60 class will have access to the same abilities as another level 60 of the same class, but five characters across four difficulties is still a lot of game.

 

 - The AH does take some of the fun out of item drops. Occasionally I'll find something I can use, but most drops I just sell to buyout new rares on the AH. I dumped some money into crafting, but I've stopped for now. Why risk it? The properties are random, and instead I can search for just what I want on the AH.