Diablo III refund.

I bought the game a few days after release and still haven't installed it. I probably won't have it installed by the time I hit 30 days.

Originally Posted by fadedc
Fair enough, but it still serves my main point. It was a big difficulty spike for you. It was not a big difficulty spike for me. Different people have different levels of skill and have trouble with different things. This makes adjusting difficulty hard.

No.. I think you're still missing his point. His main complaint isn't that he had trouble with the Butcher, it's that the 8 hours prior were too easy. He's talking about the learning curve more than the difficulty of that one encounter. Individual skill has nothing to do with that.

I didn't really find the Butcher all that difficult; it was more a case of MMO gimmicks & tricks that had to be overcome and, since I have a bit of experience on that front, I was more surprised at Diablo's incorporation of that mechanic than I was flustered by it. With regard to such MMO mechanics, the second act's boss was even more challenging.

Overall, the game's boss "events" are much less challenging than the elite packs found throughout an act. Here, one can truly make the case for obnoxiously unbalanced difficulty. In fact, many people will skip these enemies outright in Inferno.

Originally Posted by Galaad

Anyway, I'm having fun. I guess that is what matters the most .

Oh and while we're at it! Go back Two Guys SpaceVenture and Tex Murphy on kickstarter if you've got nothing better to do. Would love to see those projects succeed!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/…s-of-space-que

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/…project-fedora

Ooooh Tex Murphy, thanks Galahad, I had completely missed this. What memories those games bring

Well but his complaint was that it was really easy and then it suddently jumped to hard without there being anything between. That's certainly a valid issue for him, and I can see that being frustrating. But for many people the Butcher was just a gradual increase in difficulty rather then a sudden jump. So what can be a gradual learning curve for some can be a steep one for others.

Originally Posted by JDR13
No.. I think you're still missing his point. His main complaint isn't that he had trouble with the Butcher, it's that the 8 hours prior were too easy. He's talking about the learning curve more than the difficulty of that one encounter. Individual skill has nothing to do with that.

Originally Posted by Drithius
I didn't really find the Butcher all that difficult; it was more a case of MMO gimmicks & tricks that had to be overcome and, since I have a bit of experience on that front, I was more surprised at Diablo's incorporation of that mechanic than I was flustered by it. With regard to such MMO mechanics, the second act's boss was even more challenging.

Overall, the game's boss "events" are much less challenging than the elite packs found throughout an act. Here, one can truly make the case for obnoxiously unbalanced difficulty. In fact, many people will skip these enemies outright in Inferno.

I thought that was quite silly - the elite packs being harder.
Giving an extra ability per difficutly level sounds good, but I'm guessing that beta testing just didnt get far enough into the game to realize how much of an issue it would be. Invulnerable, extra fast, mortar is much more terrifying than Act bosses that have 1 worrying ability.

Aye, story related bosses are usually less of a problem than elite/champion packs. Most people who kill Diablo on inferno can't actually kill the elite/champion packs leading up to him.

It's a bit of a strange system, certainly.

Blizzard felt they should force people to do packs - because apparently people can't figure out for themselves what they find entertaining.

Originally Posted by fadedc
But for many people the Butcher was just a gradual increase in difficulty rather then a sudden jump. So what can be a gradual learning curve for some can be a steep one for others.

Which makes me believe that this game was rather tailored for the fans. For the "real" fans.

Those who are *so much* into the mechanics that it isn't a steep learning curve to them anmore. They might be just probably too much used to this kind of gameplay, I fear.

Originally Posted by Galaad
Not only has the refund thing left me a little flabbergasted as Zloth was saying, but it also amazes me that a great many people who take pleasure in dissing the game haven't even tried it themselves.

In some ways, I think we're in an era (of the internet) where people express hate or dislike for the sake of going against the mainstream, or pissing other people off, because they know they can get away with it. I'm noticing a trend of recent, popular games getting downvoted by a large number of players. There's definitely a conflict of opinion between games that are given 10s by review sites and given 1s by players - neither side of which can really be trusted anymore.

I can say that, based on what others have commented here, I'll be skipping this one as well (as expected). I'm not a meta-gamer or end game grinder at all, but for those that are, I hope they enjoy it.

Count me as one that doesn't get all the bellyachin' either. Again, boils down for me to either:

a) You're jaded and have an ax to grind
b) aRPG's just aren't your thing

D3 is plenty fun. Finally found the time to finish Normal. Was a blast. Lots of creativity went into this. Love the way they mix up how monsters come at you and have more interesting mods than previous Diablos. Love the effort put into the scripted Boss battles. I can see those being an especially great kick in the head in later difficulties.

To address a couple of complaints:

Moriendor: really? did you play D2? it was the exact same model. The game didn't make you work a little to stay alive until Act II. Why did you expect D3 to be different in that regard?

Elites farming vs. Boss farming: the stated design principle from Blizzard here is that Boss farming was complained about by much of the Diablo fan base as mind-numbingly repetitive. They took that to heart and tried to make a system that encouraged hunting down packs in the wild with all the variety and unpredictability that entails rather than running to the same Boss over and over. Makes sense to me. I don't see how anyone can call that a bad idea on the face of it. You may not think that Blizzard nailed it in execution, but that's a different subject.

Originally Posted by chamr
Count me as one that doesn't get all the bellyachin' either. Again, boils down for me to either:

a) You're jaded and have an ax to grind
b) aRPG's just aren't your thing

Sorry, but that seems pretty narrow-minded to me. Unless aRPGs = Diablo+clones to you and exludes games like Gothic, Two Worlds, DKS, etc. Otherwise you just sound like a fanboy who can't except that not everyone likes Diablo as much as you.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Sorry, but that seems pretty narrow-minded to me. Unless aRPGs = Diablo+clones to you and exludes games like Gothic, Two Worlds, DKS, etc. Otherwise you just sound like a fanboy who can't except that not everyone likes Diablo as much as you.

I definitely do NOT consider Gothic et al aRPGs. To me those are straight up RPGs with action-y combat systems. Not the same thing.

You misunderstand. I don't care that people may not like D3 as much as I do. That's fine. It's what I perceive as over-criticism that I'm reacting to. Much of it smacks of agenda-driven or just plain silly. Take, for instance, the GB review. After having read that when I was in Act II, I was worried the last two acts would be a big disappointment. Not at all. Having finally gotten through the game once, and looking at that review, I just don't get it. To go so far as to say the writing gets so "moronic" as to undermine the value of the high quality voice acting and to claim not to be able to bring himself to recommend the game to other gamers is so overboard it leaves me scratching my head, especially considering that the writers over at GB tend to be among the best in the game journalism biz.

Originally Posted by chamr
I definitely do NOT consider Gothic et al aRPGs. To me those are straight up RPGs with action-y combat systems. Not the same thing.

Just as a side-note : I hold the same opinion.

The word "action" as in "Action-RPG" has a distinct and imho even very different meaning compared to the *normal* word "action".

The word "Action" in "Action-RPGs" is almost like a symbol … like the command "print" is a kind of symol to any non-English speaking basic programmer.

This, the definition of the sub-genre "Action-RPG" is very narrow indeed : It contains *only* games like what Blizzard did, sacred, Titan Quest, well, essentially everything tht is fast-paced and hack&slay at the same time. Gothic is this not, because in Gothic you just can't metzel or schnetzel your way through hordes of monsters like in Sacred or in Dungeon Siege 1.

Originally Posted by chamr
I don't care that people may not like D3 as much as I do. That's fine. It's what I perceive as over-criticism that I'm reacting to. Much of it smacks of agenda-driven or just plain silly.

Let me draw your attention to those sentences chamr. They prove that JDR has a point.
If somebody likes D3 less than you than they will criticize some things that you consider are just right. So, if you consider that their criticism is misguided, it means that you seems to think that your bench mark it the only legit one and anything below it is just bitching…

Originally Posted by zahratustra
Let me draw your attention to those sentences chamr. They prove that JDR has a point.
If somebody likes D3 less than you than they will criticize some things that you consider are just right. So, if you consider that their criticism is misguided, it means that you seems to think that your bench mark it the only legit one and anything below it is just bitching…

That's all very nice but the minimum criterion one can expect from someone criticizing a game is that they have at least PLAYED it which is not the case for quite a few of the people making comments here.

You are of course all entitled to your opinions but I, for one, quite frankly don't give a rat's ass what you think of a game you haven't actually played.

Originally Posted by fatBastard()
That's all very nice but the minimum criterion one can expect from someone criticizing a game is that they have at least PLAYED it which is not the case for quite a few of the people making comments here.

You are of course all entitled to your opinions but I, for one, quite frankly don't give a rat's ass what you think of a game you haven't actually played.

That's nice, except it has nothing to do with what we're talking about. It's also quite obvious that most of the people here who have negative comments have played it since they're commenting on very specific things.

Heaven forbid we actuall make purchasing decisions based on other peoples experience and feedback. I've heard many moronic statements in my days from fanbois, but that takes the cake.

Found this link for those who are unsure whether the refund policy is real or not.

http://us.battle.net/support/en/arti…urns-exchanges

If you receive an order from the Blizzard Store and discover that the goods are damaged or incorrect, you can contact our corporate office to request a return or exchange within 30 days. You can also return unopened and undamaged goods for a refund within 30 days.

It clearly says refunds are valid for goods that are damaged or incorrect, but many people on the official forums have said they've gotten refunds without any question, even for digital downloads. Whether or not it's ethical or moral to ask for a refund after making it to inferno is another question, Blizzard doesn't seem to care, so I figure nobody else should either.

Originally Posted by fatBastard()
You are of course all entitled to your opinions but I, for one, quite frankly don't give a rat's ass what you think of a game you haven't actually played.

So I have to play D3 to be able to point to logical flaws in somebody's statement?