Thoughts on Diablo 3

[Deadyawn]

Spoiler

Titan Quest was better.

*Gasp* But that game was singleplayer! How can you say that a singleplayer game is better than a multiplyer game? I think that that must mean you are stupid for not wanting to play a multiplayer game more. Because everyone knows that people want to play these games with other people.

...Ok, screw it, I can't properly convey sarcasm over the internet so I'm just going to say that it was.

 

[Gardenia]

Spoiler

Titan Quest was better.

It really was.
Although, I have to say I'm enjoying D3 quite a bit, but where are all the good items? In normal, I had like 10 good items drop all together! Also: thank god they included elective mode, without it, I would have thrown it in the bin.

 

[Zeh Don]

Played this at a friend's house for less than ten minutes before I was booted from the server.

The menu is ripped straight from World of Warcraft.
Pre-rendered Cinematics look good, but are filled with terrible dialogue.
The artwork is more Torchlight than Diablo.
Spells and abilities are insanely flashy, considering I was level 1 I shouldn't be lighting up the screen like the Las Vegas strip on Acid.
Music is nice. Voice acting is fucking horrendous.
Constant Lag made the usual Diablo gameplay feel terrible, unpolished and frankly not very good.
The UI doesn't look like a Diablo game.

When it booted me, and my friend offered to let me keep playing, I said no thanks. I think that says it all, really. 10 minutes in and I had enough information.

I played Diablo 2 this evening, just to compare. And... there is no comparsion. Diablo 3 is, frankly, a pathetic WoW-themed Diablo clone.

The Torchlight 2 Beta Gameplay on Youtube is more interesting. And if my net goes down, at least YouTube buffered the fucking video.

 

[Brotherofwill]

I'm surpised that for something that was developed so long it's still so damn unbalanced. What have they done the last 12 years?

The barbarian is basically a crazy tanking killing machine and everyone else is weak compared to him. It's just like in the release of D2.

The game is mad fun though, I used a sorceress, who pretty much sucks I think, just to complement my team, but as far as I can tell my whole team should have consisted of 4 barbarians.

 

[Soopy]

I don't understand how anyone can think the art style is like Torchlight...

The Cinematics lag for me, the gameplay is meh.
The graphics and performance is poor considering the quality of the game and it brings nothing new to the table.

It's over price by a LONG way.

 

[krazykidd]

Had been having fun up until a little while ago.

Barbarian + hell difficulty = :/ I've been in act 1 most of the day, requires all competent people to do anything other than die every time you run into a pain in the ass ability combo like jailer desecrator, or frozen plagued, or arcane enchanted ANYTHING.

Occasionally you run into neato ones that are actually fun to fight and not frustrating though.

Edit: Also vampiric desecrator/plagued. I don't know how many times I've seen a barb summon the three stooges(or a witch doctor throw a bunch of pets at it) on that kind of group and make them all invincible for at least 15 seconds, usually longer with the duration increasing rune. I did it a few times in nightmare before I learned, but this is an entire play through later :/

Wait , you went up in difficulty and then stopped having fun? You do know what difficulty settings is for ... Right?

Also question about hell difficulty . Is it like diablo 2 where monsters have imunities or do they just do an insane amount of damage? The former makes it hard if not impossible to solo , where as the latter might just require thinking ahead .I'm only on normal With a barbarian , but the game so far is REALLY easy . See i like challenge so , i was wondering if i should just go an make a hardcore character or if i should just wait it out .

Also , anyone else curious what blizz is gonna nerf first?

 

[JadeWah]

The Torchlight 2 Beta Gameplay on Youtube is more interesting.

TL2 spells from lvl1 are flashy aswell, but even worse then just flashy; they are crap in terms of dmg. Why use a spell that does 30% weapon dmg, when i can just autoattack for 100% dmg?
And who's brainiac idea was it to make splash dmg on weapons anyway? Gah!!

The artworks is more cartoonish then D3, to the points it's hard to target mobs, cause they blend in too much.
The music in TL2 is nice, but voice acting is fucking horrendous aswell.

So if you think that pot-spamming, autoattacking your way through mobs is fun, then go TL2.

captcha: "that's enough" yeah, it is

 

[Snowbell]

Ahh, somewhere to voice my thoughts on Diablo 3!

First off, I'm disappointed that there's no character customisation, it reminds me of Dungeon Siege 3 with its non-customisation and samey looking armour. But I'm only in the first act so I'm still hopeful that there'll be a lot of interesting and unique armour sets later in the game.

As for combat, I'm having difficulties clicking on my target rather than walking towards it, and not being able to move the camera or zoom to my chosen level can get annoying.

Honestly, it's fun but it's a tad disappointing.

 

[Emiscary]

2 Steps down from Diablo II. Shitty DRM, always online horseshit, *less content* than D2 (which is astounding in and of itself), and yet another contrived excuse for publishers to charge money for jack shit (the Auction House! WOO!).

 

[Soopy]

I want to know how Blizzard can justify the price tag. Clearly its not production cost. Runic have proven that.

 

[black_knight1337]

So far I'm having a blast. The game play feels like a more flowing version of Diablo 2. The visuals look really good. They way they integrated the lore within the game is god damn awesome, I love the way my monk is always talking to my paladin or how I listen to people read out their journals. I've had no connection issues whatsoever. Pretty much anyone claiming lag is full of bs, I'm using an outdated PC and using internet that averages around 10Kb/s and some how I maintain a good connection to their servers (the bar is green most of the time) and there's very rarely any noticeable lag. Even when people join my game there no noticeable hit to my performance. I love the way they have made the transition from single player to multi-player seamless, it's literally 2 clicks and your teaming up with your friends. There's plenty of customisation with the skills system, I mean having a stack of skills plus each of them having a bunch of runes to further customise it plus having a heap of passive skills available. The great thing is though that the skills seem equal from what I've seen. You don't lose any effectiveness from picking a different skill or rune you just play it a bit differently. There's plenty of loot like you would expect from a Diablo game, can't wait to get on the higher difficulties for some of the legendary's. The auction house atm is just full of a few high end items. Pretty much everyone is selling the exact same thing. It should balance out a bit further down the track though. Overall I think Diablo 3 is a great game and definitely a must have for any self respecting PC gamer's collection.

 

[Vedrenne]

Everything about D3 is garbage, Blizzard is dead to me, I'm ragequitting gaming as a hobby.

it boggles my mind how this rainbow game with blurry crap graphics and a 5 yr happy disney plot can be praised. There's ZERO character customization. Aside from items (AKA SUPERFICIAL CRAP) every barbarian is the same as every other barbarian. Jesus christ so much handholding.

Sorry, but how can you complain about every barbarian being the same as every other barbarian, when it was the exact same thing in Diablo 2 (and Diablo 1, as far as i'm aware). There was never a point in the Diablo games where you could change the appearance of you character in any way without the aid of a mod (or changing your gear). Playing the Witch Doctor, there's plenty of customization available (do I focus on summoning an army of minions, or spamming fire attacks. Do I focus on Intelligence gear (to do more damage) or Vitality/Strength/Dexterity gear (so I don't die as easily)). Beeping and moaning about something that has been (or hasn't been) present in the Diablo series is kinda stupid.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Random thoughts:

1. Losing randomized levels is a real kick in the ass. It's probably my #1 complaint about the game, and it's going to murder the game play value. I remember thinking when I was first playing "Wow, this looks pretty damn good for a procedurally generated game!". Now I have to admit it looks kind of shabby. Not because it's ugly, or anything, just...it doesn't look good enough and doesn't feel handcrafted enough to justify the loss of randomly generated terrain.

2. I haven't had any server issues yet. Just luck of the draw as to when I logged in first and when I've played. There's been a tiny bit of snapping/elastic banding which is irritating, I suppose, but so far it's been fairly uneventful on the tech side of things. No bugs yet, either, that I've seen, but I'm early on.

3. Normal is WAY too fucking easy. This is not good difficulty tuning.

4. The classes are fun and have a good feeling of pop and power. The skills system doesn't have the sprawl of Diablo 2, and they really did a shit job advertising the existence of Elective Mode.

5. There are some curious/disappointing animation issues with Monks that speak to a lack of polish, which is inexcusable in a game with this kind of development time.

6. The little lore snippets are nice fluff. The voice acting is acceptable. If people think this voice acting is particularly bad I shudder to think how they're going to react to Guild Wars 2.

7. The game feels shallow, but Diablo has always been shallow. I imagine people will react very similarly to this as they did to Starcraft 2. It's a buffed up version of a game over a decade old. The intervening decade has seen MMOs take Diablo's loot/level paradigm and expand on it many times over. This distilled experience is feeling a little...quaint...by comparison.

 

[jehk]

I'm really enjoying the conversations and banter with my companions.

I like the rune and skill system. I was having trouble with a particular mini-boss and was able to change up my build to take it down.

The combat feels a bit slow and clunky but that might be because the game I last played was Tera.

 

[Exocet]

Why are people complaining about the skill system?
I think I infinitely better than D2's system, where you dumped points into crappy skills so you could focus on the two skills you were planning on using.
I agree that maybe allocating all your stat points for you is taking things a bit too far though.

On levels being shorter, well, I honestly don't know anyone who had fun wandering for 30 minutes in the deserts of act 2 in D2, only to fall on dead ends upon dead ends. Nor have I ever heard anyone say:" Oh boy, Act 3 is simply marvelous, I can't wait to muck around in the jungle!"
In my opinion, the levels are shorter, but more varied and actually enjoyable.

Lastly, graphics are too WoW-like? I don't even know where to begin with this one... Is it the colors? Because last I checked, the Necromancer in D2 wore a bright red shirt under his armor, and every magic spell popped out like Shaq at a midget convention.
IS it the character design? Not really, they all look rather sane, more so than the Amazon flaunting armor that accentuated her breasts as much as possible.


Is it a perfect game? No. Is it a disgrace to the Diablo franchise like some people are saying? Hell no. Stop it with the nostalgia, Diablo 2 wasn't as perfect, nor customizable as you are making it to be.

 

[Limecake]

It's fun so far, reminds me a lot of diablo 2. honestly though I'm still missing a lot of content, I haven't even come close to the 'cube' (I think it might be in act 2) or the jeweler to be able to craft sockets and such. But other than that it's really fun and enjoyable. I specifically noticed how much the damage ramps up after you get past the 'beta' part. Up until the skeleton king it's a cakewalk but after that things start to get tough (unless you are a barbarian in which case, difficulty?)

The demon hunter feels a lot different than my amazon did, I actually have to move away from enemies instead of running to a spot and unloading waves of multishot arrows to clear the screen then rinse and repeat. The combat is a huge step up in that regard.

I'd also like to point out it's unfair to judge Diablo 3 on the first 10 minutes, the rune system barely opens up until you're level 10 and you don't unlock any features like the blacksmith/jewler or 'cube' until you've progressed a bit. Also Diablo 2 (vanilla not LoD) was pretty bland/linear itself especially in the first act.

overall I like it! but the butcher is extremely difficult on solo with my demon hunter, I'll give it a couple more tries before just asking a barb to tank it for me.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Why are people complaining about the skill system?
I think I infinitely better than D2's system, where you dumped points into crappy skills so you could focus on the two skills you were planning on using.

I agree that maybe allocating all your stat points for you is taking things a bit too far though.

My only issue with it is that elective mode is completely tucked away. If I hadn't been told about it on a forum, I'd never have known it existed, and I ain't exactly new to the whole video gaming thing. Given that it defaults to off, and that when off the skill tree appears to be completely on rails, I can understand some of the howls of derision. I agree that Diablo 2's system was self-limiting through poor balance though.

Lastly, graphics are too WoW-like? I don't even know where to begin with this one... Is it the colors? Because last I checked, the Necromancer in D2 wore a bright red shirt under his armor, and every magic spell popped out like Shaq at a midget convention.

IS it the character design? Not really, they all look rather sane, more so than the Amazon flaunting armor that accentuated her breasts as much as possible.

Yeah I don't understand this. At all. Screenshots from Diablo 2 are freely available. If anything it was a lot brighter/more garish than Diablo 3. There's some serious cognitive dissonance at play when it comes to whining about Diablo 3's art style.

 

[shintakie10]

Lastly, graphics are too WoW-like? I don't even know where to begin with this one... Is it the colors? Because last I checked, the Necromancer in D2 wore a bright red shirt under his armor, and every magic spell popped out like Shaq at a midget convention.

IS it the character design? Not really, they all look rather sane, more so than the Amazon flaunting armor that accentuated her breasts as much as possible.

Yeah I don't understand this. At all. Screenshots from Diablo 2 are freely available. If anything it was a lot brighter/more garish than Diablo 3. There's some serious cognitive dissonance at play when it comes to whining about Diablo 3's art style.

I honestly think that the people who complain about D3 bein too bright and colorful only ever saw the first few screens and videos with the Witch Doctor out in that really open wooded area and never once looked at the game again. If that is someones only reference point, yeah it'd seem bright and colorful, but after havin played the actual game? Not even close.

On topic!

Lovin it so far, though as others have said Normal is seriously way too easy. At first it was fun to absolutely murder all the demons and whatnot, but I'm startin to get into Act 3 and I'm still one-two shottin mobs with a single chakram. It's makin it difficult to actually try out other stuff because it is just way too efficient to spam a cheap move that will absolutely murder everythin in front of me. The problem gets worse in multiplayer because the health of enemies may increase, but their damage doesn't until you go to nightmare.

That's not to say that I've never died on normal. I remember one really unfortunate time where I got trapped by a jailer and had 6 of those retarded bug things in Act 2 cream me because I completely ignored vitality up to that point and I think I nearly died to the Butcher the first time I saw him, but outside that? Meh. I'm hopin the difficulty picks up a bit in Act 3 or my parties goin to have a rough slog through to nightmare.

 

[WoW Killer]

My hard copy finally arrived today (I've been stuck on trial mode until now), so I've just got to the end of Act I and mucked about in Act II a tiny bit.

Very very good so far. I'm loving how often you get new skills to play around with. When I tried the beta briefly I had a setup with each character that seemed pretty solid and I wasn't intending to vary much, but now each time I get a new ability I give it a quick swing and I end up retuning my character into something completely different. There's clearly a lot of options, and it seems to be well balanced.

I'm not sure on the difficulty. Act I normal is pretty damn easy, but then so was Diablo 2 at that stage. The first fight I remember posing any kind of problems in D2 was the Act II boss, so we'll see how the rest of normal plays out.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I'm not sure on the difficulty. Act I normal is pretty damn easy, but then so was Diablo 2 at that stage. The first fight I remember posing any kind of problems in D2 was the Act II boss, so we'll see how the rest of normal plays out.

My main concern with the difficulty is the lack of random environments. Whether the randomization in D2 was earth shattering or not, it at least shook things up a LITTLE bit as you playing through to a decent difficulty level. Having to slog through ultra-casual to get to the same exact thing only moderately more difficult is feeling a little painful, and anachronistic to boot. This fixed difficulty is, alas, another thing Diablo shares with MMOs.