Slowly abandoning Diablo 3

[crazyarms33]

I agree. I didn't make it nearly as far as you did though. I made it maybe 10 hours and just stopped caring. When I don't get excited about leveling up, it really irks me. The grind is just not fun like it was in Diablo II, at least for me. Maybe its because my computer barely runs it at all, but I infinitely prefer Diablo II. It's not even close.

The thing that irks me the most though is the "random dungeon" aspect of the game. Look, if I spend 30 freakin' minutes wandering around trying to figure out where to go, the next time I log in I do NOT want to do it again. Not quite sure what they were thinkin there....

This is another thing that bothered me a bit. The outdoor areas are not nearly random enough to my tastes (I'm ok with indoor areas). The events are a coll idea, but it is nice to explore a different map on various playthroughs.

That said, once explored, the area should remain explored, specially due to the nature of the saving system.

But with the always-on thing I guess they were limiting what kind of personal information would be stored on their servers.

I'm just glad I'm not alone in that regard. And I agree, the smaller dungeons I wouldn't/don't have a problem with. But the big area maps? Completely separate issue. And I realize that they needed to reduce the info on their servers because you wouldn't want the very highly anticipated launch to go badly...[sub]right guys?[/sub]

 

[crazyarms33]

One of the things I've found about these "anticipated games" is you can't critique them. The majority of the world loves these games, you loved these games, but the amount of players the series has devoted to its hivemind become an immune system that routes out and destroys anything threatening to the franchise. So many people have become submissive because they don't want everyone to think them weird for disliking Diablo. "Yea, it has problems, but just keep your mouth shut and enjoy the game they worked hard on." NO. It has issues and it being popular does not make those issues less relevant. Remember when people where calling others entitled stuck up whiners for not liking Mass Effects ending? Its the same damn thing.

Diablo 3 may be an ok game, but stop defending it like it saved your family from starvation. Its not a benevolent god that caresses you while you touch yourself. Publishers don't care about your devotion unless it brings them money. Stop it.

If you haven't watch Jim Sterling's Better Doesn't Mean Good, you really, REALLY need to. Being American, I am completely opinionated and have no problem sharing my opinion with anyone and everyone, and letting them know that they are all wrong, as the world can attest to. [sub]It's a joke people, lighten up.[/sub] But what pisses me off is when someone says:

"Well can YOU do better?!"

No, no I probably couldn't seeing as how asking me to program a video game would be like asking a cat to fly a jet. I would have literally no idea where to begin. But that doesn't mean that I can't criticize something that what was made for people like me. I AM the intended audience, and if I don't like it, I deserve to be able to say so, especially if I am the one paying the developer's wages. Maybe that's a ludicrous idea though.

 

[zerragonoss]

I would like to voice a different opinion on most of what has been said, though first off I agree with the loot complaints
On leveling though I like it much more than many traditional leveling systems. I am more excited by leveling than in most games because I like to experiment with my builds, so instead of figuring out my build by level 5 and than losing all interest as soon as all the skills are unlocked I look forward the the new skills and interactions at all levels. It is much more like a tcg than a traditional leveling system though. Instead of building a character you just collect components and than play around with them to find interesting and effective combinations. This does remove any incentive to play with a second character of the same class, but to me the unlock of 1/6th of a potential build will always be more interesting than 3% axe damage even it it is often never used.
As far as the always online goes, I would say its their far more to support the RMAH than as DRM. Even if you can keep cheaters offline, few people would pay money for an item the could just cheat for in single player; with no guilt as why feel guilty for cheating in single player. so it seems a sound business decision, as it affect on most people will be negligible, anti consumer true, but still likely a net positive for blizzard.

 

[Sean951]

I would be upset with Blizzard doing always online if they weren't Blizzard, and here is why. Blizzard has 3 IPs at the moment with a fourth in the works. Warcraft is not always online (it's an MMO, they still support WCII, but they aren't working on it). Starcraft has offered offline play for some time, but they released Battle.net 2.0 when it came out, and the real focus of SCII is the online ladder and map making community, so they expect you to be online as much as you can. Then you have Diablo. Yes, it started as a single player game with optional multiplayer, but having played some D2, it wasn't very fun solo. I wanted other people, so I hooked up a LAN party with some friends since, well, the only person who has actually purchased the game had left it at his house 8 hours away, we acquired it in other ways. Then Blizzard decided they wanted to make D3 always online and to actively encourage you to join other people's games and interact with other people, so they made D3 always online. Oh, and that fourth IP? It's going to be an MMO, another always online game. So that will put Blizzard at 3/4 always online, with the odd one out heavily encouraging it.

Also, face it. We are moving into the digital age, and this is what we have to expect in the future, protests or not. And I for one couldn't care less, so long as they patch it to allow offline play when they shut down the servers, and given how good Blizzard is at taking care of the customer, they will. Say what you want about this launch and Blizzard's reaction, I played WoW for 3 years and never had a reason to complain about the customer service I received, and often praised it. Especially the GMs with a sense of humor.

 

[TK421]

but I'm an old geezer that likes to play his games whenever I want to. So it bothered me, but, hey, already bought it, right? I continued to play.

For sure. The DRM thing is crap.

Sixth: the auction house. A little bit on my background: I've never bought anything outside a game to progress within it. I guess this is becoming more and more common in these days of DLC, but I simply cannot get used to it. To me, it is simply not part of the game.

How I wish more people thought like you do.

I find the whole thing the endorsement of something that was wrong to begin with, created to exploit our addictiveness. I don't think this kind of stuff makes us better games and I'm sure that the fact that Blizzard decided to build the game around it lead to some sad design decisions like the always online thingy.

You're in my head. How did you get in there? I seriously agree with every point you make.

If the world was filled with more people who stated their opinions in the manner that this guy does, it would be a better place.

 

[Rivaria]

I guess its true about the leveling up bit where most of the new runes you get are useless and there are only some that are good, I'm still using the ones you first get and as for the items you would have to buy them from the auction house to have the suitable stats for your character cause rarely you would find equips that could give you the right stats.

 

[Norrdicus]

I agree with you about Diablo II's "one right spec" situation, which is why a similar future for Diablo III would be unsurprising in the extreme.

Yes, people keep defending D3's method of choosing skills by attacking the flawed balance of D2. It's a problem Blizzard brought upon themselves by not balancing thing properly, not a problem that stemmed from the the method of your character's progression being flawed from the first place.

The cold hard truth of D3 skill system is that you get some runes and skills at levels 1-10 and some at levels 51-60. Keeping those balanced will be a nightmare. Balance them too much and many additional runes and skills you get at high levels will feel inferior to the ones you already possess and the feel of powering up is ruined. Balance them too little and in the end only high-level runes and skills will be viable, limiting the builds you can make without crippling your character

 

[Aeshi]

I agree with you about Diablo II's "one right spec" situation, which is why a similar future for Diablo III would be unsurprising in the extreme.

Yes, people keep defending D3's method of choosing skills by attacking the flawed balance of D2. It's a problem Blizzard brought upon themselves by not balancing thing properly,

If balancing were that easy I'm sure somebody would've done it by now. They couldn't balance Warcraft II and that was a game where 90% of each factions units were the same in everything but appearance.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Sooo not even close to being worth 60$? Gotcha.

Saving it for GW2, as planned.

In my case it's $90 I've already pledged to Gearbox instead. And another $20 on the side for Runic just to spite Blizzard, even though I didn't even like Torchlight.

 

[Snowbell]

I'm here to do my usual thing of comparing new games to the very few old ones I have played. Yes, I'm here to talk about Dungeon Siege again!

Now I haven't played Diablo 2, but I'm honestly a little disappointed. The graphics are great but the lack of camera movability and zoom means I can't really appreciate them. The maps are sometimes big, but they always feel really empty. Maybe it's because of the camera angle that I feel that way but it still leads me to a feeling of emptiness and loneliness.

The main character occasionally has little bits of banter with the chosen companion, but these snippets could have been much more witty, and are so dull that they do feel like a generic RP character with no personal traits or interests.

Combat is meh. And awkward, I'm moving when I want to shoot and shooting when I want to move, the enemies provide no sense of challange unless there's several thousand of them mobbing me at once, again it's dull and uninteresting.

Items...oh boy where to begin. In DS1 There were a plethora of armour items, within the first hour of the game you'd have around three seperate sets and a bunch of spells to choose from. In Diablo3 they've done a DS3; given the classes a couple of sets of armour then seperated them into levels so that you look exactly the same for 10 levels or so. Again, you can hardly see the clothes you're wearing because the 'zoom' option is pathetic. However, in one plus point for Diablo3, mages can wear shields. I am very pleased by this, but less pleased by a lack of a playable armour-based class. (We have mages, ranged units, shaman units, brute force units, where's our defence units?)

I like the crafting system, I like that the town portal can be used pretty much anywhere and can take me straight back to where I left, but the story has disappointed me so far, as have the characters and pretty much everything else about the game.

/wall of text over

 

[ResonanceSD]

45 hours out of a non-MMO is a decent run, to be honest.

I think the only games I played for longer than that were Fallout3 and New Vegas.

If I get more than 50 hours out of a game, I might be wasting one of my other purchases. Money isn't my limiter. Time however...

Fallout 3: NV can easily suck that much time out of you =D

 

[shintakie10]

I agree with you about Diablo II's "one right spec" situation, which is why a similar future for Diablo III would be unsurprising in the extreme.

Yes, people keep defending D3's method of choosing skills by attacking the flawed balance of D2. It's a problem Blizzard brought upon themselves by not balancing thing properly, not a problem that stemmed from the the method of your character's progression being flawed from the first place.

The cold hard truth of D3 skill system is that you get some runes and skills at levels 1-10 and some at levels 51-60. Keeping those balanced will be a nightmare. Balance them too much and many additional runes and skills you get at high levels will feel inferior to the ones you already possess and the feel of powering up is ruined. Balance them too little and in the end only high-level runes and skills will be viable, limiting the builds you can make without crippling your character

You seem to miss the point of the D3 skill system. The reason you gain abilities as you level up isn't because they're meant to be stronger the later you get them. The system is meant to space them out so you aren't overwhelmed by choices as soon as you start a game. The side effect bein that the only actual character power you gain from levelin is an increase in stats and the much more important bit about gettin access to the next level of gear for you.

 

[Imper1um]

-snip-

The problem is, you're all talking about problems that happen only in Multiplayer.

I never once played Multiplayer simply because of these issues. In order for me to play singleplayer I am forced to encounter the new issues that the "only online" system has brought.

It may be nostalgia, but there is a difference between nostalgia simply because I like old games, and nostalgia because the policies of the games of old were the best policies.

If there was an offline (single player only) mode, I could:

1. Play Diablo 3 on my laptop while sitting in a cave.
2. Play Diablo 3 on Tuesday.
3. Play Diablo 3 during a Cat 4 Hurricane on my laptop.
4. Play Diablo 3 on launch day.
(I will not try green eggs, Sam I am. XD)

That's all I wanted. Instead, I can't. I'm forced to get myself involved in the multiplayer aspect of the game if I want to purchase the game and play in single player mode only.

---NOTE: I cannot provide a source for ANY of the emulators because it will be against the rules of the forum and I can get warned, so, do your own Google Searches.