Diablo 3 - Open Beta Weekend

Each class has over 100 abilities, out of which they can chose 6 active and 3 passive. You can choose any combination you want, you don't need to pick 1 builder and 1 spender (not all classes even have those mechanics). There are millions of combinations. There are certainly many reasonable complaints you can make about D3, but claiming that there is no customization is completely wrong.

As for only being able to pick a limited number of abilities, well of course. If you could have every skill there wouldn't be any choices. That's the whole point of that customization thing you are complaining about. That doesn't mean it was made for consoles.

Unrestigered said:

No, each class has six abilities. Six choices. A builder, a spender, and 4 situationals. 9 choices if you count the three passives, 10 choices if you count male and female I guess. DDO has hundreds of choices. Either way you end up clicking the left mouse button 90% of the time in a thoughtless mannera hnyways.

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How are the raid encounters? Or are they not previewed this early in the game?

fadedc said:

Each class has over 100 abilities, out of which they can chose 6 active and 3 passive. You can choose any combination you want, you don't need to pick 1 builder and 1 spender (not all classes even have those mechanics). There are millions of combinations. There are certainly many reasonable complaints you can make about D3, but claiming that there is no customization is completely wrong.

As for only being able to pick a limited number of abilities, well of course. If you could have every skill there wouldn't be any choices. That's the whole point of that customization thing you are complaining about. That doesn't mean it was made for consoles.

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It was 100% made for consoles. Saying otherwise makes absolutley no sense. That is like saying DCUO wasn't made with consoles in mind and also just happened to exactly transition into a console system perfectly by accident.

Imagine if there is a skill tree with 1,000 “traits” to select. If I can select 100 I have 100 choices to make. If I can select two I have two choices to make. At the end of the day with D3, you have 9 choices, 10 if you count gender. Sure they may be more significant choices than if I had a skill tree with 140 minor traits and 10 abilities at various tiers and I had 50 traits to pick, but that is still 50 choices affecting my gameplay and character.

In D3 you have 6 abilities and 3 passives. Literally 2/3rds of your choices are slotting a different ability into a quickslot. 1/3rd (or measly 3) are the actual traditional crpg choices of making yourself stronger in a specific, numerical way.

I strongly dislike the way Blizzard are moving with their rpgs. WoW absolutely destroyed every conceivable significant choice you have in character builds with cataclysm, leaving you with just 3 choices per class. I’m no D2 fan but the skill trees were nice. What D3 has is pure crap. I’m sure it is easy to balance and less headache for the developers, like the renovated no-choice system in wow, but I don’t pay them my fucking money to make their game more simple and give me less choices so they have an easier time balancing. Fuck them and their 9 choices.

I have zero complaints on ability to play on a stress test beta weekend. It is a stress test and I take it as such. The game plays beautifully minus the occasional lag. And this game was never really meant to be pure singleplayer. The SP experience didn’t sell all those copies of battlechess. Claiming otherwise is crazy.

Also, if you can’t get in and if you want a similar game without spending money or the pure evilness of Blizzard play Drakensang Online. It is free and plays pretty much exactly the same with very similar graphics.

So here you describe it pretty well, and and this is the thing which will either succeed or fail in D3. In D3 instead of 50 minor choices you get 9 major choices. Each major choice can be freely chosen from a wide range of vastly different abilities that dramatically effect the game, and which leads to a staggering number of builds. But it's still only 9 choices. And maybe there will only be a small number of builds that actually work in the long run.

In a more traditional ARPG you have 50 choices but they don't make much of a difference on their own. They are also much more limited in the combinations you can effectively make, there are usually many options you have to take, and many skills that are only effective if you dump a whole bunch of points in them. Usually this results in a fairly small number of builds in the final game, and not as many actual options as those 50 choice points would suggest. It also frequently causes people to only spam that 1 skill they put the most points in. But people really like skill trees. I like them too. They are fun. I like leveling up and putting a point into a skill, even if there is really only one viable option for where it goes.

So D3 is really taking a huge risk here by doing this. But the risk isn't lack of customization. It's the lack of all those tiny little decision points, that people often love. So the question will be how it turns out in the end. Will it really give many more options or will it just fail miserably. Personally though I am happy to see that they are trying something new in the ARPG genre, even if it does end up blowing up in their face.

Unrestigered said:

Imagine if there is a skill tree with 1,000 “traits” to select. If I can select 100 I have 100 choices to make. If I can select two I have two choices to make. At the end of the day with D3, you have 9 choices, 10 if you count gender. Sure they may be more significant choices than if I had a skill tree with 140 minor traits and 10 abilities at various tiers and I had 50 traits to pick, but that is still 50 choices affecting my gameplay and character.

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Unrestigered said:

I have zero complaints on ability to play on a stress test beta weekend. It is a stress test and I take it as such. The game plays beautifully minus the occasional lag. And this game was never really meant to be pure singleplayer. The SP experience didn’t sell all those copies of battlechess. Claiming otherwise is crazy.

Also, if you can’t get in and if you want a similar game without spending money or the pure evilness of Blizzard play Drakensang Online. It is free and plays pretty much exactly the same with very similar graphics.

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Have to agree with this. Blizzard's direction post Activision takeover is no longer one that appeals to me. WoW is being positioned for the 8-12 age market as the focus (see Pokemon and Kung Fu Panda) and 'cross platform' for everything, etc. It's fine for those that enjoy it, just not my thing.

Will check out Drakensang Online. I am currently in beta for Path of Exile (http://www.pathofexile.com/) and think it is more what I hoped D3 would be. Worth taking a look if you like the type of game.

Looks like crap. I like this beta, it saved me money. By Christmas, I expect to see it on Steam for 99 cents.


-Carn

Oh my god guys, you just confirmed my worst fears about Blizzard and D3 .. is it bad that I feel some sort of satisfaction from this?

About console design, that's what I've been arguing for a while now, if games consider consoles early on, the game design is clearly influenced. They will make a hybrid version that feels ok on both (or more like it in most cases limits PC to console). Which I do not approve.

+1 PoE

You guys have encouraged me to sign up for the PoE beta

And the online-only aspect of D3 is really beginning to infuriate me; I'm trying to simply resume my game from earlier but it's timing out. Stress test or no, this is a joke.

Unrestigered said:

I strongly dislike the way Blizzard are moving with their rpgs. WoW absolutely destroyed every conceivable significant choice you have in character builds with cataclysm, leaving you with just 3 choices per class. I’m no D2 fan but the skill trees were nice. What D3 has is pure crap. I’m sure it is easy to balance and less headache for the developers, like the renovated no-choice system in wow, but I don’t pay them my fucking money to make their game more simple and give me less choices so they have an easier time balancing. Fuck them and their 9 choices.

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Eh… wtf are you on about? WoW is MMORPG. Do you know what keeps people interested in MMORPG? Loot and *changes*. I left WoW because I got bored of doing same shit over and over again. Talent tree/character building is one of the factors that Blizzard can keep change to make game feel different by making you re-learn how to play your class again (as Yahtzee put it, work out how to get best *numbers*). And Diablo? That was always border line RPG at best. You can't seriously expect anything much more than mindless Hack'n'Slash and looting in Diablo series.

I just wished they could have been bothered to make an announcement earlier in the week about a beta weekend. Not even an e-mail. Would have been nice to have had sometime before to download the client. I didn't have a clue this was up until I read this Saturday.

Oh well, after reading your posts, sounds like I didn't miss much. Back to POE.

I just finished with the open beta content and I'll just say this: I'm still just as interested in Path of Exile and Torchlight 2. Diablo 3 will not dominate over all other ARPGs like some people claimed it would.

It's a good game but there are many aspects of Path of Exile I like better (like the skill system). One negative about Diablo 3 is it's way too easy. I didn't need to use a healing potion until the final boss of the open beta (after 9 levels), and hardly needed any special attacks to get through stuff. Just left-click constantly and you're good to go. I guess the higher difficulties unlock once you reach level 10, but I'd prefer they have a difficulty switch available early on. The combat got pretty boring due to a lack of challenge.

Anyway, I might buy it someday but its not a must-have for me at this point. I'm a lot more curious about Torchlight 2 and am considering getting in on the Path of Exile beta.

Myrkrel said:

I just finished with the open beta content and I'll just say this: I'm still just as interested in Path of Exile and Torchlight 2. Diablo 3 will not dominate over all other ARPGs like some people claimed it would.

It's a good game but there are many aspects of Path of Exile I like better (like the skill system). One negative about Diablo 3 is it's way too easy. I didn't need to use a healing potion until the final boss of the open beta (after 9 levels), and hardly needed any special attacks to get through stuff. Just left-click constantly and you're good to go. I guess the higher difficulties unlock once you reach level 10, but I'd prefer they have a difficulty switch available early on. The combat got pretty boring due to a lack of challenge.

Anyway, I might buy it someday but its not a must-have for me at this point. I'm a lot more curious about Torchlight 2 and am considering getting in on the Path of Exile beta.

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I am the exact opposite of this, i didnt like the original torchlight and only mildly liked PoE. I think it is because i played with more people like 3 or 4 all the time(enemies are stronger and you get better loot).

Damian Mahadevan said:

I am the exact opposite of this, i didnt like the original torchlight and only mildly liked PoE. I think it is because i played with more people like 3 or 4 all the time(enemies are stronger and you get better loot).

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That's a good point - I didn't play it multiplayer - so maybe my experience would have been different. The easiness might not be an issue in that case. I suppose playing D3 co-op could be more fun in general.

Well well, Blizzard sparks controversy like no other it seems, probably has to do with all the people that have played World of Warcraft, it's that love/hate relationship, right?

Anyway, Diablo III is an incredibly simple hack and slash game with great atmosphere, the whole Diablo 'feel' is still there in my opinion and to me - that's all that matters.Diablo I and II(+LoD)were also very simple games, if anything, Diablo III is the one that's more complicated in most departments.

The beta is pretty easy, but it's only the first hour of the game and is mostly a tutorial. The first hour of almost every game in existance is easy. I expect the difficulty level to be on par with D2 for the most part. There's no higher difficulty unlock at level 10 or anything, it's just like any game, where it's easy at the beginning and harder as it goes along. But it does have the usual nightmare and hell levels for when you beat the normal levels.

As a side note, it's actually intentional that you not use healing potions very often. Healing potions are no longer the auto-win button they were in other games. They have long cooldowns, and are only meant to be used in emergencies. They are also not as freely available as in other games.

Myrkrel said:

It's a good game but there are many aspects of Path of Exile I like better (like the skill system). One negative about Diablo 3 is it's way too easy. I didn't need to use a healing potion until the final boss of the open beta (after 9 levels), and hardly needed any special attacks to get through stuff. Just left-click constantly and you're good to go. I guess the higher difficulties unlock once you reach level 10, but I'd prefer they have a difficulty switch available early on. The combat got pretty boring due to a lack of challenge.

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I went all the way through the open beta as a witch doctor. The biggest threat to this game is the lack of challenging play.

I never needed a single potion, all the way through, even on the final boss.

The crafting system, atmosphere, music, sound effects, and inventory are all real nice. But the difficulty of the game play reminds me of how dumbed down WoW became. No effort at all.

I thought this tweet from a beta player was rather amusing:

Tried playing more Diablo 3, this time, my ping was in the toilet. It's such BS that my single player experience can be neutered by ping

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I've got no real opinion on D3, but I don't like all this talk about how easy it is. If that continues to be the case then I'll be passing on this game.

I've read up a bit more on the D3 forums and it seems my judgement on the lack of difficulty is probably premature. Fadedc's comment confirms that as well. I really didn't think the whole open beta experience would be intended to be "tutorial easy", but in that light I guess I will give it more of a chance.

But Blizzard should realize that a lot of people are going to view this open beta weekend as a sort of demo. I wouldn't see the harm in just having a difficulty level choice at the loading screen, for veterans of the genre who already know how to play these games. The low level of challenge doesn't give a good first impression.

Yeah I think Blizzard's quote was that they wanted the first hour of the game to be so easy that "your grandmother could beat it". There's definitely the risk that people will judge the game based on this. The D2 open beta was the same way, in fact it was quite a bit easier.

There isn't really a difficulty level option to adjust in D3 though. I suppose they could have had an option to start in a later act when things supposedly get much harder, but I don't think Blizzard wanted to reveal too much of the game yet.

Myrkrel said:

I've read up a bit more on the D3 forums and it seems my judgement on the lack of difficulty is probably premature. Fadedc's comment confirms that as well. I really didn't think the whole open beta experience would be intended to be "tutorial easy", but in that light I guess I will give it more of a chance.

But Blizzard should realize that a lot of people are going to view this open beta weekend as a sort of demo. I wouldn't see the harm in just having a difficulty level choice at the loading screen, for veterans of the genre who already know how to play these games. The low level of challenge doesn't give a good first impression.

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Drithius said:

You guys have encouraged me to sign up for the PoE beta

And the online-only aspect of D3 is really beginning to infuriate me; I'm trying to simply resume my game from earlier but it's timing out. Stress test or no, this is a joke.

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Isn't PoE online only as well?