Diablo 3 Beta

[KriiEiter]

So, who else is excited? I doubt I'll get a key, or an invite to play it, but I'm just darn happy that it's getting closer to release.

[Whisp]

Didn't even know about the beta until now.

Theoretically I'm a huge fan of the diablo series, I still fire up Diablo 2 from time to time, either with the Median XL mod or to play on LAN with a few friends.
And that's where the theoretically comes into play. I'm not sure what to make of the new decisions of Blizzard. T've no problem with the real money auction house as long as there are no items which can only be bought with real money. But I hate the requirement of a persistent internet connection. It would be okay, if you could choose between online play for a character which you can use in battlenet and offline for a singleplayer only char, but everything online sucks.
Another fact I hate is that there's probably no LAN mode as already done in Starcraft 2. I tried battlenet for a while, but the real fun for me lies in coop with a few good friends in a LAN game. Since the internet connection at my parents is crappy, a LAN game via internet is not a viable alternative when I host a LAN party and therefore Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 are not possible.

In conclusion I bet that Diablo 3 will be top notch regarding the game itself, but because of said reasons I'm probably going to pass like I did with Starcraft 2, at least until it is released as a budget version.

[logorouge]

I was excited. Then I learned you couldn't play the game offline. To the void goes my interest.
I'll just stick to Median XL.

[KriiEiter]

I'm sure it won't be long after that someone will have a hack to make it playable offline, just a matter of time.

As to the AH, I'm kinda disappointed that you can use real money to buy items, but people would have done it anyways with the trading feature and I guess it would be stupid of Blizzard not to cash in on it.

[FaceFoiled]

I am really looking forward to it, avid diablo fan. :)

Regarding the online only thing: well, that is just how games go these days. In order for Blizzard to offer the best game experience, updates and whatnot, they need you to connect to their battle.net system. Internet is becomming very common these days so I personally don't see a problem with that.

Regarding the Auction House: I love it! I really do. I might not use real money to buy stuff, as well, I can just farm gold or items myself :P, but it really cuts down the amount of third party stuff which means less intention to bot or use unsafe webshops and whatnot. This will just keep players accounts and computers safe. I don't think it is "blizzard cashing in on something that would have happened anyway" - but more of a "blizzard ensuring account security by implementing a legit/secure way of doing something that would have happened anyway". =)

[Urian]

I can't really be bothered one way or the other. I've played Diablo 1 & 2 but neither have been anything special. If we're talking about random loot generating game sequels, then I'm much more interested in Borderlands 2!

[KriiEiter]

I can't really be bothered one way or the other. I've played Diablo 1 & 2 but neither have been anything special. If we're talking about random loot generating game sequels, then I'm much more interested in Borderlands 2!

God, don't even remind about Borderlands. When the first one came out my friend and I would play from the moment we got out of class til about a few hours before class the next day. Add Smirnoff and homework and those were some of the best/worst days of my life (probably best :D ).

And with Skyrim coming out soon, I don't know how I'm going to get any of my class work done, haha.

[FaceFoiled]

For those interested:

Diablo 3 - LIVE DiabloCast: Beta Announcement & Media Event Recap

Force Strategy Gaming presents: LIVE DiabloCast

A special Live DiabloCast during the Blizzard Activision Investor Conference Call. We will be there for the Diablo 3 Beta announcement as well as recapping last weeks Media Event. Should be a great, un-edited, blast!

[Danyo]

I was interested, now I'm hoping to get a beta key, because so far what I've seen from the gameplay footage, it looks rather slow and boring. I don't care about the RMAH etc, but if the gameplay doesn't feel like diablo, I probably wont get it...

[ilovekintoki]

TB was quite negative about it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBrESZJl ... ideo_title

[Whisp]

Since the open beta weekend is at the moment and I got the chance to waste a few hours trying it out, I decided to dig up this old topic again.
I have to say I'm disappointed and the chances are very slim that I'll buy it on release.
While the gameplay is very smooth and fast paced , I hate how much they have watered down the skill system. Things like synergies or multiple skills working together that made you think about how to develop your character are gone. As far as I can tell there's absolutely no reason to level different skilled characters, you just need one max level character per class and then you can choose your skills depending on the area you want to play.
I can guess and understand the reasons behind this, but I really dislike that it makes the equipment way more important than in D2 and therefore makes the auction house a rather important element in the game. (Because of that I doubt the statement in the "Diablo Fans?" thread that the developers dislike the auction house and only implemented it to prevent illegal gold farming and equipment auctions like in D2.)
Also am I the only one that thinks the normal mode is ridiculously easy? I played alone and with two friends with a wizard and was always in close combat with the enemies except for the very last boss and needed a healing potion exactly twice in 5 hours playing time. It had in general a rather casual feeling to it. :/
Anyone else tried the game this weekend for the first time? And what are the opinions of those who had already beta access before, was the game always this way or did it change much since last August when this threas was started?

[HavokSCOUT]

Nice knowing you, Whisp

[Horizon]

I call necro

[walker_boh_65]

He added something meaningful to the topic, there is no necro here.

[HavokSCOUT]

Good an opportunity as ever, but what defines a necro? I thought it was just an update on a "dead" thread, but if it adds meanigful info, it makes more sense than having many threads saying the same thing because people are afraid of necro'ing.

[Battosay]

This necro thing is crap, if I may.
That's ridiculous. There's no reason to make a new topic for everything, everytime.
Let it be.

[DreamsofFury]

D3 is crap....as I havent seen a way to quick swap skills without opening a bloody dam menu I aint gonna bother after the beta.

What am I supposed to do....be single targeting a boss when he spawns a buncha stuff and kill them off individually or open a menu and click multiple times while i get beat on....bad enough I have to wait that "cooldown" after switching...

Otherwise, great game, looks nice, runs good on my crappy system, my only real complaint besides hotkey spell switching is its TOO EASY.

[Tsugumi Henduluin]

my only real complaint besides hotkey spell switching is its TOO EASY.

Gee, maybe because it's the goddamn first half of the first act of the lowest difficulty?

Try booting up Diablo 2, then play Act 1 normal up to, I dunno, the Outer Cloister on player 1. Then try getting yourself killed. Good luck with that.
Of course it's going to be easy, Bashiok and co said it would be. It's supposed to be an introduction to the game's mechanics and skills. Then, once you hit Nightmare, the real fun begins... then there is Hell and lastly Inferno, which will be almost impossible to do alone.

Seriously, if I didn't know better, I'd think some people just want to bash on the game no matter what because it's the cool thing to do.

As for your other complaint... that's what the damn hotkeys are for. You have more buttons than the two on your mouse, you know.


@Whisp
Again, the game is intentionally "easy" at normal... and don't forget you've been picking up health orbs left and right while playing, rather than chugging potions constantly. The effect is the same, without needless inventory micro-management.

As for your concerns regarding skill complexity: I disagree. Like with stats, 95% of the builds for Diablo 2 involved skipping pretty much every single skill until you hit 30, then putting all your points in one or two level 30 active skills, and everything else in passives or synergy skills you never used.
D3 instead gives you a bunch of skills you will *have* to use in order to survive on higher difficulties, and adds even more flavor to the through the use of skill runes. Add to that the various passives you can pick and the immense amount of customizing you will be able to due to being able to enchant and socket *everything*... Yeah, much more fun and varied than D2 ever was.

As for equipment... it has always been important. *always*. In fact, loot is the entire damn point of the game, as it was in 2. Every single character in the game was dependent on it, especially on higher levels, with maybe the exception of the sorceress. But even she needed her resistance gear.


But yeah. Never had access to any of the betas until now, but I'm having the time of my life. Ignoring the log-in problems for a bit (those *should* be solved once the other servers are up I'd imagine), the game is everything I hoped for and more. It looks great, it sounds great and it plays exactly like a Diablo game, just much more streamlined. And that is a good thing, not casualization, because let's be honest: Some aspects of Diablo 2 were downright clunky and annoying. Juggling your town portal scrolls back and forth between your inventory and horadric cube, because your entire inventory is filled with charms? Yeah...

[whitechaos35]

I'm with you on every point but the skill system Tsugumi Henduluin. I completely agree with Whisp on that. The beauty of previous Diablo skill systems was that you spent a LONG time playing each character, and you had to decide how to build the character from the start. As such, you grew attached to your character. Even though the build you did was one of the 20 or so popular builds, it was still your build and you had to work for it.

I will admit, the skill system of Diablo 3 will definitely lead to fun gameplay. But there are a lot of people, such as myself, who consider character building the most important aspect of gameplay. There is a difference between customization and character building, and Diablo 3 hits the mark with customization, but has zero character building. :/

[Graphite]

I'm still not quite sure what to think of D3. The skill-system does hopefully lessen the need for cookie-cutter builds, as can be seen in D2. For each class there used to be several optimal specs and well... that was it. I'm hoping that there may be a reason to swap out skills in D3 from time to time, though in the beta I seem to be using two skill exclusively so far (might be the difficulty level though).

I am a bit disappointed in the rune system. Instead of them being drops, you now just get them whenever you hit a certain level. Part of Diablo was the "Squee, I found some awesome item" effect and I had hoped the runes would be part of that. I'm hoping they'll atleast compensate that with other interesting drops.

What really annoys me is the fact that it requires online play. I'm aware they have to protect characters from hacking because of the real-money auctionhouse, but that could've been solved easily enough by making single-player characters purely single-player. No online play possible at all with them. Then people can hack them all they want without affecting D3's auction-house. As it stands now, it just makes D3 one of those games you can't play when your internet connection is screwing up.

On a lesser note, another thing that pisses me off is the fact that their social menu has no "invisible" option. Sometimes I just want to play a game in peace and quiet without even having to worry about people bothering me... sure I can set it to afk, but that's hardly going to stop anyone who knows me. Funnily enough, a dedicated single-player mode would've solved this one just fine, too.

One thing I have missed in D2 and from what I can see am still missing in D3 is items with negative impacts. Things like Gotterdamerung come to mind. Sure, you can have an uber helmet, but it comes at the price of dropping your resistances to 0. This made even gear a situational thing, as sometimes you really couldn't afford dropping all your resistances.


On the necro thing: on the one hand I agree that making a new thread is a bit pointless if you have new things to add. On the other hand, I just had to read through half a page of ancient thread to get to the new parts.

As for all the "omg! necro!" posts. All you're doing is bumping a possibly-already-necrod thread back up the list. I'm sure that, if the mods consider it a necro, it'll be locked and dealt with just fine without anyone else needing to point it out.

[DreamsofFury]

Gee, maybe because it's the goddamn first half of the first act of the lowest difficulty?

Try booting up Diablo 2, then play Act 1 normal up to, I dunno, the Outer Cloister on player 1. Then try getting yourself killed. Good luck with that.
Of course it's going to be easy, Bashiok and co said it would be. It's supposed to be an introduction to the game's mechanics and skills. Then, once you hit Nightmare, the real fun begins... then there is Hell and lastly Inferno, which will be almost impossible to do alone.

Seriously, if I didn't know better, I'd think some people just want to bash on the game no matter what because it's the cool thing to do.

Actually I think my "too easy" comment might be left overs from my VERY early pc gaming days from trying to understand a few of my dads SSI RTS games and my early Diablo and Diablo 2 experiences, I remember even after playing Diablo for almost a year and then getting D2 it was HARD....and that being almost 13 years ago since games were innately hard for me I keep forgetting games with the same systems carry my previous experiences into them thus making them easier for me to start out in......gosh...I remember dieing in the den of evil with my first paladin.....that was so long ago...


I do take back my too easy comment but I'm still gonna complain about as of yet not being able to hotkey skills though.

Wheres my D2 disks....I have an urge...specially as I just realized I still have my old single player saves on my external still....either that or I'll play hellgate if I cant find the disks....close enough...

[Tsugumi Henduluin]

I'm still gonna complain about as of yet not being able to hotkey skills though.

You can. There's an option for that somewhere under the gameplay tab, forgot what it was called.

Part of Diablo was the "Squee, I found some awesome item" effect and I had hoped the runes would be part of that.

I think the current system might actually be for the best. Can you imagine the frustration of being stuck with some crappy skills because the game simply won't drop the runes you're looking for?
Sure, you could trade for them, but that also goes against that "squee!" feeling.

I agree with you on the negative affixes, though. I believe D2 had some, but very few. They do make for interesting builds, however. But yeah, it'll be a while before we know whether or not those are in. The beta is very limited in terms of drops and affixes, so god knows what Blizz has in store. (Seriously, has anyone had a gem drop yet? I get the feeling those aren't in yet...)

Even though the build you did was one of the 20 or so popular builds, it was still your build and you had to work for it.

And one miss-click and you could start over from scratch... No thank you, I'll take the current system over the old one any day. Might be the age starting to show though, I simply do not have the time to spend on games as I used to back in the D2 days.



By the way, on the difficulty thing: I just did a playthrough with the barbarian and got into a very interesting situation. Had just used a potion, then got overconfident and jumped into the middle of a group of champs and summoners >.> Got overwhelmed quickly and had to run around trying to keep myself from getting surrounded as my health was down to 5% or so. Had to pick off mobs one at a time in the hopes of getting an orb because my potion was still on CD. Fun stuff. In D2 I could've just spammed rejuv pots and not worry about a thing. Very challenging indeed.

[DreamsofFury]

I'm still gonna complain about as of yet not being able to hotkey skills though.

You can. There's an option for that somewhere under the gameplay tab, forgot what it was called.

Found it YAY, I looked too......now WTB Elite mode like they did for hellgate....best concept ever....the permadeath of hardcore doesn't appeal to me yet I want it harder. I mean its the SAME people that made the game....so I shall sit and wait...and hope...and dream....

[Urian]

After having played the beta (completed it with all classes) I'm still undecided if I like it or not. Some classes are very fun (Witch Doctor, who wouldn't love a guy who keeps zombie dogs as pets and throws jars full of spiders at people) but some classes are just incredibly boring (e.g. wizards who are just the standard type of wizard that has been done to death, resurrected and then done to death ad nauseum). I enjoyed multiplayer with friend, that might have been because we were on skype and had had a few beers earlier in the evening of course but it was still much more enjoyable than just giving yourself carpal syndrome on your own.

[FaceFoiled]

now WTB Elite mode like they did for hellgate....best concept ever....the permadeath of hardcore doesn't appeal to me yet I want it harder. I mean its the SAME people that made the game....so I shall sit and wait...and hope...and dream....

What is the elite mode of hellgate? Also, how did those people make diablo 3? :P If I am not mistaken, staff from the Diablo 2 teams left and worked on Hellgate, but they did not return to Blizzard to work on Diablo 3 :P.