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Diablo 3 is here!

I'm just more surprised that someone who has spent that much time on a forum could say something so childish and bafflingly stupid. Not to mention egotistical.

Oh the multileveled irony.


Enjoy your game, man :). Don't let the stupid poopie heads and their provocatively worded opinions get to you.


Just a quick note to any mods who might be getting an itchy trigger finger over this - notice the lack of any specificity in my original post, as opposed to our friend Zennousha over here. There are over 3 million people playing this game, so my comment casts a rather wide net. For any one individual to take an opinion such as mine, however worded, and turn it into an opportunity to make targeted insults shows, quite clearly, an exceedingly sensitive psyche.

Just because I think the target audience for this title is 15-19 year olds doesnt mean we can't hug it out, cmon Zennousha :cool:
 
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My friend sent me a trial code and I have started playing to see for myself if my concerns with D3 are true.

Aaaaand they are. Every single one of my main concerns is valid. In a matter of two hours, I got disconnected from the servers twice, and both times I lost significant exploration progress and good items from my inventory. The entire time I experienced significant warping lag which made the game unplayable at times. All of this was happening while I didn't see a single other soul ... it was simply a SP game with all the nasty side effects of an MMO. Oh and no pausing ... it's ludicrous. Love me some draconian DRM of the worst variety.

From a gameplay stand point, I'm not impressed with D3. The game just feeds you skills ... gone are the skill trees from D2 where at least you had to make choices about how you wanted to develop your character. Now all of that is taken care of for you, which severely reduces replayability. Even the runes which add a layer of depth to the shallow system are fed to you via unlocks, and the entire set up feels artificial, contrived, and uninteresting. The removal of assigning stats also feels like a gross mistake. I'm really shocked Blizzard went with such a dumbed down system -- though I suppose it makes the game ideal for 10 year olds.

The removal of scrolls of identify and town portal really take away from the game, and I hate how enemies drop little health orbs like Devil May Cry ... it just feels lame somehow -- no longer do I really have to manage my character's health, which I thought was interesting in D2 (despite the potion problems). In fact, the game is so damn easy that I never really felt like I had to worry about health much at all, and I don't even have access to an auction house (can't use it in the trial), which would make things even easier. I am aware that you can unlock harder difficulties, but the game should NOT be this easy on Normal -- especially since you can't simply skip the difficulty level. I'm also aware that the game probably gets harder, but even so, I can't imagine the tedium of playing through level after level of such an easy experience.

I have to admit that the graphics style looks more impressive when I played the game in person, but even so, the low resolution textures really make this feel like a title from 3-4 years ago. Physics destruction is a nice, if mostly totally cosmetic touch. Music and voice work is more than solid, which is to be expected. Even so, with the unrewarding gameplay thus far, the strong presentation fails to carry the game for me.

On the whole, D3 feels like a Diablo-inspired casual action game made by a different company -- not an action RPG that requires tactical strategy or smart player choices. For these reasons, I'll stay clear of D3, and I'm glad I had a chance to play it for myself to not only avoid hypocrisy but to confirm my suspicions about the game.

thanks, you've saved me a few hours of demo play or 60$...
 
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I hate to be 'that guy' but the game really picks up at inferno. As for the tedium of leveling up, there are a number of ways to get to level 60 in a couple of days or if you have a friend higher level then you only a few hours.

I think blizzard at least did a good job making getting the best items actually very challenging. At level 60 killing a rare pack gives you a 'valour' buff which gives a large increase in gold/magic find for 30min. So the challenge comes from getting 5 stacks of the buff and then holding on to it in order to beat a level boss.

To actually clear levels like this as a group without losing hundreds of thosands in item repair takes a lot of teamwork and strategy. Also switching any skill will remove the valour buff so it makes the whole skill tree system suddenly make more sense as it was much too forgiving and almost gimmicky before.

D3 is much more challenging in this way compare to d2 (where basically you skip everything before the end boss). The biggest fault for endgame though is that the itemization is really boring and obvious compare to d2. There are no real unique characteristics and the only decent weapon stat aside from crit and just bonus damage is life on hit.
 
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I don't really find that concept of trying to hold on to a buff while you dry hump D3's loot system that endearing. As you said, buff or no buff, challenge or no challenge, the gearing priorities aren't interesting. They're straight forward, painfully obvious and lack variety. If the goal of Inferno is to grind until you get gear both with stats you need and appreciable amounts of the stats that you've been waiting 4 difficulty modes for.....yeah, no.

I'm starting to understand why everyone is doing half of their gearing at the AH. The game is easy enough up to Hell that you can plow through most of it....and then you find yourself behind the damage and health curve and getting raped. And rather than going back to the earlier difficulties, players just say **** it and start shopping for their gear.
 
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I'm starting to understand why everyone is doing half of their gearing at the AH. The game is easy enough up to Hell that you can plow through most of it....and then you find yourself behind the damage and health curve and getting raped. And rather than going back to the earlier difficulties, players just say **** it and start shopping for their gear.
I have seen some stuff and heard some stuff but that is the worse thing about gaming that I ever read (note: not you, just where the game is steering you). Making sure your addicted by effects that make you feel more and more powerful when you grind, making sure you get addicted by making sure the game feels like a cake walk so that player aches for a challenge then making the items you need "rare" so that you willing to use to game gold to get what you need but there is is only so much gold which you can get in they game. So they made a way around this using the real money auction house which comes out on the 12th of June...

...and people still think that Blizzard are the good guys.
 
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I've vowed not to use either auction house. The idea of paying for anything in a game built on the concept of farming **** loads of random loot drops has always been preposterous to me.

On the other hand, I guess that means I'm going to have to run each act in Hell+ several times to get the gear I need so I don't just get one shot repeatedly. I imagine that'll stay "fun" for a couple more weeks and then I'll get sick of it.

As for the challenge....nightmare mode seemed to be a good balance to me. (Assuming you hadn't found the gear to complete trivialize the challenge...again.) Hell mode elite packs are the kind of thing you end up kiting all the way back to the level entrance, and melee has to deal with the worst of the lag issues and getting one shot because they're getting hit by 3 things at once, where just one would be enough to force them to retreat. Since that challenge is entirely based on gear (and not skill), whether or not the game is balanced for the INDIVIDUAL player is a complete and total crapshoot. Unless you decide to become part of the AH crowd, or you've finally made to Inferno where everything is being held equal.

With your character almost entirely dependent on gear, you're basically beholden to the drop rate or to the auction house for any meaningful progress anymore. You were still gear dependent in D2, but at least you had some meaningful pro-active things in your control, with stat and skill spending. In D3 changing the level differential between you and mobs is the only real benefit you get from experience, and that ends promptly at 60. I just can't see the point in going to the AH so you can get geared to farm more gear. I simply don't like the game to that degree.
 
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I've vowed not to use either auction house. The idea of paying for anything in a game built on the concept of farming **** loads of random loot drops has always been preposterous to me.

On the other hand, I guess that means I'm going to have to run each act in Hell+ several times to get the gear I need so I don't just get one shot repeatedly. I imagine that'll stay "fun" for a couple more weeks and then I'll get sick of it.

As for the challenge....nightmare mode seemed to be a good balance to me. (Assuming you hadn't found the gear to complete trivialize the challenge...again.) Hell mode elite packs are the kind of thing you end up kiting all the way back to the level entrance, and melee has to deal with the worst of the lag issues and getting one shot because they're getting hit by 3 things at once, where just one would be enough to force them to retreat. Since that challenge is entirely based on gear (and not skill), whether or not the game is balanced for the INDIVIDUAL player is a complete and total crapshoot. Unless you decide to become part of the AH crowd, or you've finally made to Inferno where everything is being held equal.

With your character almost entirely dependent on gear, you're basically beholden to the drop rate or to the auction house for any meaningful progress anymore. You were still gear dependent in D2, but at least you had some meaningful pro-active things in your control, with stat and skill spending. In D3 changing the level differential between you and mobs is the only real benefit you get from experience, and that ends promptly at 60. I just can't see the point in going to the AH so you can get geared to farm more gear. I simply don't like the game to that degree.

To be honest, Hell is only gear dependent if you're a melee class. I'm an underlooted Wizard and by simply changing my play style drastically I went from dying at least once to each rare mob to maybe once if I slip up.

Kiting doesn't seem something as profitable or as achievable with melee classes, or at least for Barb. So it seems like Barb is the odd class out in that case. Which is fine, since everyone knows Barbarian is the worst class right now. Especially once Inferno hits.
 
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Melees can kite, but their damage is intended to be consistently applied. So like the Wizard and the WD and the DM to a lesser degree can fire off a couple high damage shot and run....where the Monk and Barbarian have to take a swing or two and run away, and maybe build up enough resources to use a finisher. It just takes them that much longer to kill things and their margin for error is much smaller.
 
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I finished the campaign as a solo barbarian on normal difficulty. Considering everyone going on about how easy it is and how many difficulty modes they already plowed through, not sure whether I'm just a nub or what but it took me a long *** time and I died probably around 20 times.

Anyways, here's my ol' bullet list of thoughts.

Pros
+Graphics. Wonderfully smooth and colorful looking environments that do probably the best job I've ever seen of looking like moving concept art.

+Feel. Expert level of polish on how everything feels when you're playing. Whether it's the pounding of enemies into a bloody pulp while various body parts go tumbling through the air or simply the whirling clang of gold dropping around, its all very satisfying.

+Enemy designs. Almost every area throws a new type of demon at you and they all look pretty damn cool and interesting. Maybe could have used more variety in how they fight but the visual styles are fun to look at.

+Sound. Not groundbreaking by any means but it does the job of backing up the excellent visuals which is a tall task.

Cons
-Story. I actually read a bit on the backstory of the Diablo universe and its badass. The story in D3 does an awful job of utilizing the awesome lore they had to work with. I never really felt involved in the story and was always kinda waiting for the real **** to go down when it turns out, the game was convinced it already had. There was no real buildup to any of the boss fights and every one of them was anticlimactic. Plus the whole Leah story was just flatout lame. Its as if they wanted to throw a cutesy female character in there to appease the masses. She looked and sounded far too modern for a medieval setting and couldn't get any more bland. People complain about how women are sexualized in games (I agree) but there is also an equal trend of ok, let's not be cliche' sexy, so lets go with the cliche'd alternative of short haired, cute brunette that looks like Juno. The Last of Us is doing it, the new Tomb Raider is doing it, and I'm sure there's more. Just really boring work right there. It didn't help that the voice work was boring across the board. I can't say any of it was flatout bad but it was just so...expected. All the playable classes sound ok. Again, not groundbreaking but OK. But the child emperor...wtf was that. It sounded like they grabbed a random kid off of some Saturday morning kid's show.

-Cutscenes. From what I remember of D2's cutscenes, they were much better. They had a sinister tone, interesting dialogue, and superbly done atmospheric settings. D3 again managed to be exceedingly bland. There was no wow moments and all the best parts could already be seen in prerelease footage. That's not to say the CGI was bad. By no means was it bad, it just had zero substance and no creativity. Plus there's no CGI for the classes. No Barbarian backstory, slaying demons in awesome HD CGI, or Witch Doctor hanging out in a jungle with his zombie friends. None of that. Nope, just some cool but ultimately underwhelming 2D drawing background/animation things. I expected so much more here.

-Low res textures. Like I said above, the visuals are great overall. But considering its 2012 and the budget of this game, there is no reason the textures should be so low resolution. The game largely gets away with it because of the stylized concept art look but if you look in close it still could benefit from a considerable upgrade in detail.
-Boss fights. They lack almost completely any type of creativity. All of them are set up in a round or square arena area with some sort of column or hole pattern for some cover and all the bosses kinda just walk around and have one pattern of ranged attack and one melee attack. And in general, at least on low levels, you kinda just repeatedly beat them up, back off, recover, repeat until dead.

-A MP game that is SP. This is a weird point. But I don't quite get how the game is setup. The game is clearly geared towards multiplayer in that coop and loot grinding is the main focus. So then, why must we play through the same storylines over and over as if we're redoing the single player perpetually ad infinitum? You should be able to turn off all the story dialogue crap if you want so that its just pure objective and award after you're done with the story. I don't mind redoing the same quests, but I don't need to rehash the story over and over and over, especially cause it sucked.

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Conclusion:
I seemed to have written way more about negatives but that doesn't trump the fact that the positives are such ridiculously strong positives. Overall I'm very pleased with the game. Yes, it could have been alot more, especially in terms of story, but I'm taking it for what it is, and, like I said earlier, its exactly what I wanted for the most part: a glorious, satisfying, visually appealing click fest.
 
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-A MP game that is SP. This is a weird point. But I don't quite get how the game is setup. The game is clearly geared towards multiplayer in that coop and loot grinding is the main focus. So then, why must we play through the same storylines over and over as if we're redoing the single player perpetually ad infinitum? You should be able to turn off all the story dialogue crap if you want so that its just pure objective and award after you're done with the story. I don't mind redoing the same quests, but I don't need to rehash the story over and over and over, especially cause it sucked.
That's just Diablo. It never bothered to turn off the story elements in the other games either. The difference here is those were just one long, strolling voice over. You either listened to it or you walked away. In D3, you have to click x a bunch or walk well away from the speakers. (There weren't a lot of dialog exchanges between NPCs in D2. Hardly any, actually. D3 is overflowing with them.)

There were way more filler cut scenes (the parts with the character's take on what's happening) in D3, where D2 opted for a few strong, really awesome cutscenes at pivotal moments.

The SP/MP crossover....is totally driven by the MP side of the game. You can see the benefits of it by playing multiple characters in SP. It's intent is to streamline trading loot between characters and pooling your cash to make purchases on the AH. I actually really dislike the shared gold inventory. You can go from rich to broke without realizing when you're fiddling with making gems for an alt or something.

You didn't seem to cite the lag as a problem, which I find it odd, because it totally undercuts the handling and polish of combat to me.
 
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You didn't seem to cite the lag as a problem, which I find it odd, because it totally undercuts the handling and polish of combat to me.

You're right but I didn't really run into that many problems with it. I got dropped only once a few days after launch. And I haven't had enough lag hiccups to consider it a big problem. There were only a handful.

And agreed about your other points. I would have much preferred a few really strong cutscenes like D2 to the flourish of little bits and pieces of so-so stuff they put into D3.
 
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I rubber band enough during play that I notice it, and as I get into the tougher difficulties where fights go on for much longer....it becomes an pretty big issue. Rubber banding when you're dodging between 3 arcane beams is ****.

D3 isn't super demanding yet I seem to experience lag and slowdowns when there's a lot of **** going on in game. I've also died because I, and most other people I know, experiencing crippling lag when first logging in. And because the game likes to drop you at your last checkpoint (usually an outdoor area) and everything is respawned....I've died a couple times to it. A few people I know playing hardcore have lost characters to it. (Like DCing and coming back dead.)

So my experience with always-online has been a lot rockier. Not OMFG, but it's persistent and damn annoying. I've played co-op almost exclusively, so maybe it's more stable when playing alone.
 
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I rubber band enough during play that I notice it, and as I get into the tougher difficulties where fights go on for much longer....it becomes an pretty big issue. Rubber banding when you're dodging between 3 arcane beams is ****.

D3 isn't super demanding yet I seem to experience lag and slowdowns when there's a lot of **** going on in game. I've also died because I, and most other people I know, experiencing crippling lag when first logging in. And because the game likes to drop you at your last checkpoint (usually an outdoor area) and everything is respawned....I've died a couple times to it. A few people I know playing hardcore have lost characters to it. (Like DCing and coming back dead.)

So my experience with always-online has been a lot rockier. Not OMFG, but it's persistent and damn annoying. I've played co-op almost exclusively, so maybe it's more stable when playing alone.

I don't doubt that at all. I've only starting playing co-op last night but even during solo play, all the worst hiccups of the few I experienced all were during large end-of-area battles. What you've experienced is unacceptable. They better fix that before they unleash pvp as well.
 
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