Diablo III: Reaper of Souls - Preview @ Ausgamers
 

Ausgamers has started a new beta diary of their time spent playing Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls. The entry deals with the improved loot system, or better known as Loot 2.0.

More information.

This man is not nearly jaded enough; but the new system sounds like a vast improvement, over the old.

I wonder how many are going to stick to their "price too high for an expansion, wont buy" resolution…

I can't be the only one that keeps misreading the title of these newsbits as POS.

The game title is to long in the news-bit on the frontage. I changed it back. You can now see what I'm talking about. I hate when titles are to long.:)
I still haven't bought the original. So that should answer your question.

I have not bought it either. Even 1.5+ years after release, its still cost £23 to buy in UK!!!! I guess only Blizzard can get away with such high prices for an "old" PC game? (this is the steam discounts talking lol)

The only bad thing about the expansion/patch is the removal of the RMAH. I actually loved that aspect of the game - it was just stupid to force it on players.

Just finished D3 so looking forward to a fresh play through on a new class.

At this point I'm waiting for Grim Dawn to release as the best candidate to possibly slate my thirst for diablo-style game-play. For me at least. almost anything they do to Diablo III is too little too late to recapture my interest.

Relax, Couch. I wasn't exactly complaining.

I didn't say you were.;) I just explained why I shortened the title.
I agree with you. I find it funny though. I hated Diablo 3 because you needed to be online to play Single-player. Yet I love playing Path of Exile, and it is a F2P MMO.

That's not really funny - it's human nature :)

Maybe it is but at least I didn't have to pay a single dime to play one of them. That was the major reason why I enjoy Path of Exile.:]

Perhaps :)

Personally, I don't think games magically suck or play better depending on price. I like to seperate one from the other :)

That said, their value could potentially fail to justify the price - but that's another matter.

I believe I understand why Blizzard chose online-only and I both respect and support that choice. However, they made a lot of mistakes - and now they've chosen to compound those mistakes by removing the AH - which wasn't a bad concept at all, it was just poorly implemented.

Yes, it does. Without the main game, it cant be an expansion.

I started D2 last night to see what all the raving is about and why D3 is so loathed. I found D2 remarkably similar but with an amazingly annoying inventory system. Other than the death penalty and bad graphics it is fundamentally the same game. There is some additional stats management but depending on what class you chose its fairly obvious what to pick. I may not agree with that decision but I can see why Bizzard dispensed with it.

You can't judge a game that quickly.

The primary difference - that D2 fans have a problem with - is that the skill system in D2 doesn't allow free customization, which is a huge incentive for replaying the game with the same class. A lot of people like to replay the game using different build paths - which is a very significant strategic component that Diablo 3 doesn't have at all. You can test everything at will - which means it takes all of 5 minutes to test everything.

It would be like playing Civilization where you could cheat and change all your cities and your research around constantly - meaning you wouldn't really need to play more than once.

Sure, it saves a lot of time - but it also makes the experience very short term.

The "stat system" is not as obvious as you think, and there are several examples of builds focusing on stats you wouldn't expect - like vitality for certain caster builds and what not.

Beyond that, the item system is vastly different - where weapons aren't just "DPS sticks" that rely on the primary stat and are basically just skill facilitators - but behave differently and alter playstyle immensely.

Beyond those, there's more interesting PvP and runewords, both of which are glaring omissions in D3.

The people in charge of D3 simply didn't understand Diablo - but they were still talented developers. So, they made a very playable game with great production values - but it wasn't Diablo.

Now, with the upcoming changes, I think we'll get something approaching Diablo - though it's not at all what it could have been.

But I still think it's better than PoE, TL2, Grim Dawn, Van Helsing, and the other recent ones.

I'm about 4 hour in, level 9 I think. I'm finding the skill selections at lower levels pretty uninspiring. No cleave? The jump is fairly useless. It's a long road to get to useful skills and the ranged critters are a real hassle. Fun though. I didn't die until level 8 so imagine my shock when I respawned naked with no gear and no gold. Stupidly I saved and quit so while I have my main gear back I've lost 18k gold! Live and learn!

The actual skills are much cooler in Diablo 3.

I'm talking about the skill system.

The best part of Diablo 3 is the sheer amount of satisfying skills - each with multiple variations that are all quite significant.

Definitely a HUGE step up in that particular way.

I'll give more impressions after a few more play sessions. It's an interesting comparison what you gain vs give up between the two. D3 can certainly use more detail so I'm looking forward to this expansion for sure.

The thing about the skills in D2 was that at the time the game came out, it was a completely new and unique approach to character building. The D2 skill tree was poorly designed and balanced by modern standards (although it was improved by patches), but by the standards of the time it was pretty amazing.

I also find it interesting to remember how in D2 when a new patch came out, it would frequently completely destroy someone's character build that they had spent 100s of hours working on, and because there were no respecs, there was nothing they could do but start over. I don't think people would put up with that today.