[ratoa]

TL went under my radar till a few days ago *looking at ebay for a copy*

From what I gather D3 is a good game but D2 is still better and this new version of the series is geared towards the casuals

[Witzbold]

That about sums it up brother.

[Nemesis]

<excuse tyopos - have bad trapped nerve in shoulder>

@Witz - I trhink a lot of the isues around the colour design of the maps is about the method that brushes were used, vcreating a very "painted" a bit like Cel painting for animation ie: cartoony. Admittedly if they had opted for a mesh rather than painted effect..it could have had a much stronger effect. All that aisde the attention to details on the maps is fantastic. Im glad top see that the borders of maps are now filled with "product" rather than a ledge to a chasm below...now that ledge has housing ..broken bridges & other effects to. A nice touch & a bit of thoutght was put into this area, IMHO only.

As for the Skill Tree It is differing from the last one where a defined path existed to get to skill X...u had to get Z & Y first. With this option Its kind of the same way with the runes & skills but allows you for the option for switching between skills which does come in handy.

LOL...Exploding FROGS....yep...no good for blowing up the crates etc for items...& hard to focus on where they are aimed...so its a click click frenzy to just get as manay as possible out. But if you think they are useless...wait till you try the HEX... lmao.
It took quite a way through the game till I saw my 1st socketed item or a gemstone.

I dont get the whole idea of the stash anymore though. Befotre I used to kep a backup set of items in there since when you died you dropped everything....now you are re-incarnated with all the gear but slightly damaged?! So whats the point of stashing items?!
The Blacksmith Ive spent 30K on training but as to date has yet to offer a single item worthy of crafting that I cant already supersede as a pickup in the field.....but Im hoping that will change.
Dyes...why oh why have the opportunity to colour your equipment when it doesnt show or isnt evident in game! I picked up a psychedelic dye...colours keep shifting but...cant seem to use it...not as though Im fussed.

Some of the AI is done well, other areas are a bit lame whrere they attack followers whilst you can stand right beside them...hammering out damage. Some will come straight after you regardless.

On a whole...I think its still a Diablo game...its too early to judge it based upon a few days gaming especially as Im not in HELL yet, which is hopefully where the gamestyle will actually start to play better, at current it's a bit "STORM IN...WIPE EM OUT..CLICK FRENZY!"
....game on

[Nemesis]

Im stuck cant seem to get past Belial in Normal?!?!?!?
Levl 28 WD + 4 Hell Hounds+ Gargantuan+Archer Rogue hitting at 30+ Runed up for Acid Rain, Soul taking, Swarm etc...but Ive tried for 6 hours to try & defat him...cant do it....dodging that green stuff is a nightmare !!

[Witzbold]

I just stood there and keep punching away with the monk. Killed him for a 3rd time now. But yeah that one where he starts raining down the green ###### is irritating as hell. Hes actually the toughest boss so far. Next one is a cake walk I tell you.

[Fixxxer]

Diablo was great, Diablo II improved on the flaws of it's predecessor, Diablo III does the same. The game plays the same but it just eliminates the needless "aspects" of Diablo II that some people hold so dear.

Like the lead designer said, the min/max attribute system was and is a garbage system. I have no issues with them eliminating that. And once I was introduced to the elective skill system that's in the options menu under interface, I sat in town for an hour just trying to figure out what skills to use. It was much easier when I thought for each slot there were only X amount of skills that I can choose from. Being able to put any skill in any slot changes the entire game.

Cheers! Here's to another decade of amazing gaming.

[galzohar]

Just hit 60 and played a bit with nephalem valor getting a lot of extra gold and loot before servers went down for some fixing. I already wrote most of what I have to say, but I'll just add that nightmare and hell are about as hard as they should be (again, aside from the odd balance issue).

I'd wait with the "this game is/isn't just for casuals" claims until after I've experienced inferno, and I think you should too.

[zoog]

http://www.rockpaper...-a-hollow-game/

[Fixxxer]

zoog, on 19 May 2012 - 02:45 AM, said:

http://www.rockpaper...-a-hollow-game/

"How Diablo III's solo experience....."

yawn

[zoog]

Quote

"Of course, people will argue that to solo Diablo is to miss the point. Two responses to that. Firstly, the game does offer a solo game, and is designed to be played that way, so it’s absolutely vital that it be balanced and worthwhile. And secondly, and perhaps more crucially, of all the points above the solo aspect really only affects the difficulty levels – the rest remains an issue no matter how it’s played. Oh, and if you’ve not had server issues, others have, and that doesn’t make server issues okay – kind of a crucial one to remember there."

I think he has a point. You can say that the solo experience or SP portion is not how it's "meant to be played" or something you shouldn't judge the game by, but as long as they put it in a game as a full fledged feature/part it should be developed/polished for the best experience. However, I'm no diablo fan, I never played it and I don't know if the article is "true", but it was interesting to read about such a big name in the industry.

[Witzbold]

[Fixxxer]

zoog, on 19 May 2012 - 06:35 AM, said:

You can say that the solo experience or SP portion is not how it's "meant to be played" or something you shouldn't judge the game by, but as long as they put it in a game as a full fledged feature/part it should be developed/polished for the best experience.

I sort of agree.

Diablo III has always been first and foremost a cooperative game. Some people just don't care to play mutliplayer, so to reach out to a wider audience, they will of course make it so you can get a similar experience while playing by yourself.

However, the game is just not a single player game. It can be played as such, but it is still an afterthought. It's meant to be played with a few friends that enjoy pure chaos.

[galzohar]

Soloing is just fine in this game (done most of my progression through hell and all the way to inferno skeleton king solo, but also did do some public groups and earlier in normal when friends were still keeping up I did some actual organized coop). If you get bored playing alone, you'll get bored playing alone in any game really.

The only thing that truly bothers me in the long term is the balance issues. I keep finding more, and even though they're much much less than any other game out there, they still seem like they have good potential to be game-breaking (and I'm not even talking about the ones that were already fixed after they were abused in the race to world first inferno clear).

[V2_Bloodline]

[Swedish_Seb]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Euthanasia is ᚠᚢᚲᚲing underrated.

[galzohar]

If you're good enough to start straight into inferno, you're also good enough to get to inferno in only a few hours anyway. I agree 4 difficulty levels is too much, but it's far from the biggest problem of the game, and if they fixed the real problems this would have been something I would just shrug off as an insignificant problem.

Edited by galzohar, 19 January 2013 - 12:33 PM.

[V2_Bloodline]

Why hope for them to try and fix big problems if they cannot even fix such a simple one?

Okay sure, they should prioritize on fixing bigger problems first, but look at Blizzard's stand. It seems that they don't (or won't) recognize their own mistakes, let alone fix them, because they think everything they did was the best solution!

Edited by V2_Bloodline, 19 January 2013 - 07:35 PM.

[galzohar]

Bloodline, I never said otherwise. It's just that too often people seem to get caught on small problems with the game that are really not what is preventing the game from being played endlessly.

What makes the game boring is:

You have little choice in terms of skills that are actually effective. This gets worse as you progress, with a peak at 60 when you can buy level 60 gear and use an obviously optimal build where any attempt of diversity would put you at an obvious disadvantage.

The zones you should be playing at level 60 are well defined and take 10-15 minutes to clear and must be repeated an insane number of times to get good results.

If you want to be effective, you would have to play at the easiest mode (monster power 0), not that the hard mode (monster power 7-10) is actually hard - It's just much slower and slightly harder, where the difficulty is easy to mitigate with the gear that is readily and cheaply available today since it's practically "leftovers" for those who have been playing for a while. Mindless farming only lasts so long. After a while some people want to be challenged, and unfortunately there is little reward for that challenge - Doing more difficult content basically gives you the same stuff as the easy content, but at a much slower rate.

To make matters worse, the best way to make gold and upgrade your gear is find good deals on the auction house. Once you learn how to do that reasonably well, it beats the crap out of actually going out there and beating monsters for loot. Heck, I already mentioned that what most would consider "junk" nowadays is more than good enough to make a very strong character (meaning your farming speed with said equipment will not be much slower than that of a top-geared player, but will be much faster than what it would have been if you were only using gear you found yourself).


Now, you really think having 4 difficulty levels which only take a few hours to clear is a problem, when there are problems that last through the entire time you're going to be spending on this game (up to hundreds of hours if you plan to reach high paragon levels)?

And of course I do agree that Blizzard have shown quite a bit of incompetence when it comes to fixing the problems in Diablo 3. If this was WoW we'd probably be seeing fixes much faster, but with Diablo they already have our money, and besides, it just doesn't feel like the Diablo 3 team is even half as serious as the Starcraft 2 or WoW team, and even those games had some issues that existed for far too long before they got fixed.


But hey, in Blizzard's defense, most game companies don't fix anything. Ever.

Edited by galzohar, 19 January 2013 - 07:51 PM.

[V2_Bloodline]

[Nemesis]

galzohar, on 19 January 2013 - 07:51 PM, said:

Now, you really think having 4 difficulty levels which only take a few hours to clear is a problem,

You mention this several times that you can get through levels within a matter of hours?! How the hell are you. Ive been playing the game on & off since its day one realease running with 3 characters admittedly only once a week...but Im only just getting to Inferno level with all 3 characters around the lvl55 mark. My eldest son has reached lvl 60 paragon/paradigm10 & he admits its even harder once you complete Inferno....so there's actually 5 levels not 4 (Inferno at lvl 60 & Inferno beyond 60)