Diablo III

[GothicGothicness]

Mind you, I really hate voice acting… female sorcerers sound like a real wank.

HAHA, first thing I thought about... also started with female sorcerer.

 

[JDR13]

What I remember of D2 (and I just replayed it), only bosses were hard. All the rest was quite easy unless you really invested badly in skills or tried moving from one area too fast onto the next.

Speaking of the bosses in D2, I hated how they respawned even in single-player mode and without any explanation. That pretty much killed the immersion for me and is the primary reason I quit playing it.

Please tell me bosses don't respawn in D3.

 

[codename47]

Speaking of the bosses in D2, I hated how they respawned even in single-player mode and without any explanation. That pretty much killed the immersion for me and is the primary reason I quit playing it.

Please tell me bosses don't respawn in D3.

I think the reason they respawned was because of the uber loot drops.

 

[joxer]

Dunno about D2 and D3 bosses… I never liked D2 and never finished it because I got bored… But in D1, there was a miniboss, The Butcher. I remember replaying D1 just to nail that one over and over. Dunno why it was fun back then, it really feels lame today, why on earth did I do that, liked that, can't say.

 

[rossrjensen]

Dunno about D2 and D3 bosses… I never liked D2 and never finished it because I got bored… But in D1, there was a miniboss, The Butcher. I remember replaying D1 just to nail that one over and over. Dunno why it was fun back then, it really feels lame today, why on earth did I do that, liked that, can't say.

The butcher scared the crap out of me! AHH, fresh meat!

 

[chamr]

Hopefully it gets more difficult. [snip] I will keep going and see if it gets any harder,

In my experience, it does. Boy does it ever. I'm about 10 hours in, and I'm having to be careful and change tactics from area to area. I'm surprised. Based on D2 and my experience with the beta, I assumed I'd be waltzing through all of pre-boss Act 1 Normal at the very least, but I'm not finding that to be the case. Perhaps it's a balance issue with the DH, but more likely Blizz has amped up the difficulty and put more oomph into the rank and file beasties.

@code: well, of course I'm not talking about materials you can't get anywhere else legitimately. although i don't understand how you can't get them, but the pirates can and you can get them from the pirates, but whatever...

 

[xSamhainx]

The butcher was like that, he made you want to kill him over and over again because he probably killed you over and over again. He was the first real challenge in that game, and he probably scared the crap out of you the first time encountered. To put him to rest was very gratifying.

I think Leoric was a little too easy in D3, i was expecting more. The big problem that I'm having is the health globes issue, they're everywhere, and kinda kills the challenge at times. You have to be a completely incompetent retard to not be able to kill Leoric the first time around, theres health everywhere. I have a problem with that

And when it comes to piracy, i'm all for pirating porn. Everything else i pay for, but i feel no guilt whatsoever for pirating smut. Ahoy, i say! Shiver me timbers!

 

[chamr]

You have to be a completely incompetent retard to not be able to kill Leoric the first time around

Then color me incompetent, because I died once! What class are you playing, Sammie?

 

[xSamhainx]

Yeah, maybe I was being a bit rough. I'm playing a ranged class, the Demon Hunter, so yeah maybe someone that's running up and whacking away could fall much easier. He does hit very hard. Sorry for the insult, let's just say that it was aimed more at Blizzard than you ='.'=

Trying out the Witch Doctor right now, so far another quite fun class to play! I like how the beginning intros ( which are well done) are different for each class, instead of you just being in the right place and right time.

 

[fatBastard()]

You do have a point Sammy. I'm playing the Witch Doctor (her voice acting is pretty cool if you ask me) and I've just reached Act 3 without dying once.

I remember the usual approach to End of Act bosses in D2 was to place a town portal near the entrance of the boss area so when died over and over you wouldn't have to walk too far to get back to the action.

Once the fight started I usually died when I had run out of potions to chug (or when you got one-shot killed) but in D3 I rarely use potions at all.

I do hear rumors that the harder difficulty levels are a lot worse.

Another thing is that I have yet to find a single set item. In D2 at the beginning of Act 3 I would have collected lots of bits and pieces for the first 5-10 different armor sets (none of them would be for my class or course ), but nothing in D3. Heck, I've only found a single orange item ... which of course yet again wasn't for my class.

 

[chamr]

No worries, Sammie, it's just gamin', so no insult taken.

I'm playing the DH as well. Hmm… maybe I was too aggressive in my approach, but I did have trouble getting away from his spawns of skellies and teleporting on top of you. Perhaps I should have dropped Caltrops and ran away each time instead of pumping them full of arrows first. It's just that the machine gun skill is so damn fun it gives me an itchy trigger finger!

I've died twice so far and have had several close calls, and I'm not even done with Act 1 yet. FatBastard, I need to crib your notes, dude! ;-)

 

[Ihaterpg]

(about http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-reason…noying-future/)

To me, that's not humorous at all, but instead very serious. And yes,
…
I believe that this article's title is dead right.
…
I believe that's true. D3 is a glimpse into the future.

Yes some parts of this article are probably giving an idea of future of Video Gaming, but Blizzard can't be the model but for the very big companies.

A Steam like model is clearly more the model of future and I think EA is agree with me on that when I look at their client cloned from Steam client.

Around 2006 on some music forums I whine that there was missing an online store for selling very small labels albums and the best would be to allow listen freely and buy the physical copy and at same time get instantly the digital version without to wait for the delivery of the physical package.

The second point wasn't in my wish list but the point is in the digital version of a music album you already have the core of the music artist work, the package, the vinyl, the CD or cassette are totally secondary stuff, more symbols and often quite far from artist core creation, the music.

Bandcamp isn't yet the standard but it's rising and some indie PC/Mac game developers could have contribute a lot to increase its popularity.

Sure the future announced by this article is unpleasant but on some points it's certainly an evil necessity and a logical progression. What we need is Gamecamp.

The problem is more complex than Bandcamp but not sure it's really impossible. Copied from Bandcamp here some suggested key points:

• No game selected on their quality (ie No Steam selective approach).
• No game rejected for legal suspicion, that should be fully endorsed by the developers/editors (ie No Apple frightened and authoritarian attitude)
• No game rejected for moral suspicion, that should be fully endorsed by the developers/editors (ie No Apple frightened and authoritarian attitude)
• No endorsement about bugs, lack of support or updates, it's full responsibility of developers/editors.
• All type of organization accepted, Freeware non commercial games accepted, Totally independent developers accepted, mid size video game companies and even multinational video game accepted if they ever want.
• No front store management, up to developers and editors to manage their com. This is for a neutral position of the store, and most probably to save a lot of cost.

This mixed with some other key points copied from Steam for the non mandatory DRM support :

• Online client control at launch if the computer is online, frequent refresh of control data to bother pirating.
• If computer not online, no online control for a very long time (not sure the time limit for Steam, one or two month seems fine).
• Easy DRM API to use in a game.
• Allow games not use any DRM.

You have the starting key points now you just need make it concrete and in some years make billions of it, well after 24/24h 7/7 day of work.

PS: I don't hide, I dropped myself my old account, sort of auto bane function.

 

[fadedc]

I've died a few times on the wizard too, about halfway done with act 2. The difficulty can be a little uneven, sometimes it's just right, sometimes there's not much challenge.

It is important to note that in D3, the metric for difficulty is no longer how many potions you have to drink to win a fight. The fact that potions now have a substantial cooldown adds the potential for much more difficult fights then D2 ever had.

 

[xSamhainx]

One word - vault.

I'm getting good with the Demon Hunter's vault skill, and that makes a huge difference. It's pretty much a short-range teleport. Vaulting whenever I think something is teleporting to me, vaulting behind enemies, into enemies, out of trouble. It's really a useful skill, I love it.

 

[Moriendor]

I went for a Witch Doc first which I also played in the public open beta. Love the guy. The whole nutty killing in the name of "da spirits" thing is funny as hell (pun intended ).

Ran into a nasty bug though. When I played the night before yesterday I created my character on the Euro servers. Logged in today. No character to be found anywhere. I could just create a new one. WTF? So I googled the issue and found out that the game sometimes randomly changes servers without informing the user and... sure enough... there was my Witch Doc on the US servers where he definitely did not and does not belong and I have no idea whatsoever how he got there.
Luckily I was very low level still so I deleted that character and created a new one on the Euro servers once again. Hope it sticks this time.
This is the kind of stuff that I don't think should happen to a game that's been in development for about a decade and then a couple of years in beta but what the hell do I know. It's Blizzard. They're infallible, right?

 

[Ihaterpg]

Well to come back to topic ie Diablo 3 :

• Installation process : Boring, it's not 1, not 3 but 5 user agreements to check. You need create separately an online account, it takes hours.
• No difficulty setup : Boring.
• Forced Online for solo play : Boring.
• Server disconnections when you solo play : Boring.
• No save/load back backup : Boring.
• Fights for solo play with Demon Hunter : Disappointment during Act 1 when compared to Torchlight 1 Vanquisher. As game progress and the Demon Hunter gains some more fun skills it becomes less a disappointment.
• Exploration for solo play : Mildly boring… as expected, the surprise is how it feels like Diablo 2 despite the switch from Iso to 3D. So even if mildly boring, the relatively good non linearity and fairly good density of secondary stuff is quite impressive for a similar 3D game.
• Graphics for Weapons and Armors : Disappointing… I mean they are nice and cute graphics but where is the fun and diversity and imagination and aesthetic there's in Torchlight? I hate those items collecting stuff but at least Torchlight succeed make it fun, Diablo 3 failed.
• Graphics for everything else : Woo great, there's style, it's art or sort of, overall between stunning and very good.
• Sounds : Good stuff.
• Voices Acting : Good stuff in my language (French) except the Mage companion.
• Story telling : Simple story but how it is told is very nice, excellent NPC talks light system, excellent book light system, excellent general story telling making the hero telling the story, excellent use of books in dungeons to bring some story elements inside dungeons, fun or cool talks during dungeons between companions when you have more than one or between companion and hero.

All in all I'd say that it's an unfair feedback because I have play only a part of the game and only one class, Demon Hunter, probably not the best done.

 

[chamr]

One word - vault.

Yeah, I was Vaulting, but in the wrong order I guess. I'd Caltrops, Machine Gun, and then Vault when my health got low. It probably should have been Caltrops,Vault, Machine Gun.

I've since dropped Vault from my skillset in favor of trying to go heavy snare. I'm not sure it's working. May go back to Vault, especially now that I have the passive that increases Discipline regen.

 

[Falchor]

I've just logged a few hours as Demon Hunter in solo (going to do some co-op this evening) and man the atmosphere has really pulled me in. I was one of those slagging the whole "always on" approach and poor launch etc., but I'm quite happy to eat my words. I'm finding it difficult to think of a single thing I don't like about it, other than some AA voice acting in spots and the occasional lag spike, due to server-side processing. And I'm freaking loving this class choice, even the voice acting for Demon Hunter, which I believe is the guy who did the cocky Brit guy in Saints Row 3.

All in all, I'm completed psyched to get in some quality co-op this weekend. Well done Blizzard, although I still don't like the "always on" requirement.

 

[chamr]

Speaking of the bosses in D2, I hated how they respawned even in single-player mode and without any explanation. That pretty much killed the immersion for me and is the primary reason I quit playing it.

Please tell me bosses don't respawn in D3.

It's Diablo. I'd assume everything respawns. Having said that, just curious, but if you were playing solo and assuming you weren't loot farming, why did you ever go back to boss maps to see them respawn anyway? Seems to me you could avoid spoiling your immersion by just pushing forward as you would in a normal single player RPG.

 

[xSamhainx]

I have been cheering all day long and making a racket in here as I play, it's pretty funny actually, my wife keeps poking her head in to see if I'm ok ='.'=

Besides the action:

I explored the auction house thing a bit, and it looks like I thought it would - filter items by character and level, bunch of stuff up there to buy. The real currency is not implemented yet (supposedly on 5/22), you can only purchase with gold. I'm going to toss a few things up there and see how it goes, I'm broke from leveling up my craftsman and crafting.

SO, the crafting.. is ok.
Basically, you have a smith in town that you can dump money in to train, as he levels, he makes better stuff. You break down spare magical loot for materials. So far the majority of stuff on his menu is crap, but he's only level 2. That said, there are a few choice pieces in there. For instance I have not found one single shoulder pad the ENTIRE TIME Ive been playing, and he was able to craft a pretty nice one w/ several different magical properties for 608 gold. Yes, youre paying thousands to level him as well, whatever. I'm filling in gaps in my armor set w/ magical equipment made to order. That's a good thing.

From the menu you can check out all your characters, all their stats, inspect all their equipment, skills, time played, achievements, all that. Also, you can do the same with other people's accounts. Right click on them in the friends list (it will also have other people that may have been in any MP game youve been in as well) and you can fully check out all their characters and stuff. It's a great interface, I like just checking other people's characters out, interesting to see their loot and skill choices etc.

I like the fact that you can go back and replay any section of the game you want, right from the menu. It also looks like the multiplayer component is easy to hop into and play those sections, and once you start building up a friends list it's easy to get a game going in any section that youve previously beaten. I think you can even invite people in right as youre playing the SP game.

Starting to feel a little bit of that Diablo MP itch, if any RPG Bros to just start friending up so we can look at each other's characters and stuff that would be cool. I'll do some MP eventually when you want to. No pressure, I'm having plenty of fun w/ the SP experience. If you played an enjoyed the other Diablos, youre missing out if you dont get in on this action!

BattleTag: Samhain#1125