Diablo III - why are they torturing us?!

[jwcarlson]

So has anyone played this yet? Im considering buying a computer that can play this game because it looks/sounds pretty fun.

Blary54... let me know if you are interested in a "guest pass" to D3. I think three of them came with the standard edition and I will never find anyone to give them to. Otherwise my suggestion to play D or D2 first remains. They are both great games. If you like gritty/creepy the original Diablo is great.

Man, I lost like 2 years of my life with Diablo II. Do I even want to get started on this????

Haven't been a gamer for a long time, but this is tempting. I think I'll wait until people have the best paths down to maximizing the skills of each player (Is this similar to DII???). I just remember having a lance barbarian that could destroy anything on DII. Whirlwind was awesome.

You need to start doing some reading. The skill system is nothing like D2, for all intents and purposes... there's no permanent skill choices. You can move between each skill as you please (there's some cool downs and stuff associated). I hated the system when it was announced but having used it a bit I appreciated it. I'm not 16 any more... I don't have summer vacations... if I'm going to play a game it's nice to be able to not "waste time" on a bad build. Blizzard doesn't make a bunch of money appealing to 14-17 year olds who can play endlessly. They need casual gamers to buy the game (and items) to make this a financial success. I think they've done well with this iteration. They took SC2 in an entirely different direction. SC was such a phenominal game... SC2... eh. I guess actions per minute isn't my cup of tea, I think they mishandled the SC franchise but I understand why. They weren't making it to keep the people who played the original happy... they were building a monsterous esport. They succeeded there.

This game (much like D2) will be driven primarily by items/loot... the crafting system is a big item sink and the whole economy of D3 developing has me very interested. Can't wait to see if play out.

[Arcadies]

Man, I lost like 2 years of my life with Diablo II. Do I even want to get started on this????

Haven't been a gamer for a long time, but this is tempting. I think I'll wait until people have the best paths down to maximizing the skills of each player (Is this similar to DII???). I just remember having a lance barbarian that could destroy anything on DII. Whirlwind was awesome.

It's a great game but it doesn't have the same life sucking gravity well effect that D2 had, for me anyway. Maybe it's because I am older and not as hardcore into gaming as I used to be. I spent insane hours on D2, I couldn't stop, when possible I'd play 12+ hours a day. So far with D3 I really enjoy it, but I can only do 2-3 hours at most and I gotta log and do something else. In D3 you do not get to choose how you spend your attribute points (str/dex/int/etc) it automatically does that and like jwcarlson pointed out, the skills are given to you automatically along with "runes" to augment the skills making them more powerful. Both skills and runes can be changed/swapped on the fly with only a short cooldown (like 10 seconds) as a penalty before you can use the new arrangement, which is a HUGE improvement over how it was in beta, where you were only able to change your skills while in town.

[Arcadies]

I'm not 16 any more... I don't have summer vacations... if I'm going to play a game it's nice to be able to not "waste time" on a bad build. Blizzard doesn't make a bunch of money appealing to 14-17 year olds who can play endlessly. They need casual gamers to buy the game (and items) to make this a financial success. I think they've done well with this iteration. They took SC2 in an entirely different direction. SC was such a phenominal game... SC2... eh. I guess actions per minute isn't my cup of tea, I think they mishandled the SC franchise but I understand why. They weren't making it to keep the people who played the original happy... they were building a monsterous esport. They succeeded there.

This game (much like D2) will be driven primarily by items/loot... the crafting system is a big item sink and the whole economy of D3 developing has me very interested. Can't wait to see if play out.

This is the route they've gone with WoW as well, they figured out the old ways with super hard "elite only" raids that take multiple 3-5 hour sessions to complete, requiring months to level up your character, and making a large portion of the game inaccessible to a large portion of your subscribers, was a bad idea. I look forward to the crafting as well, I am sorry to see they've changed it so only magical items can be salvaged though, that was a great use for all of the low value "white" junk loot. I am also sad to see they removed personal/portable salvaging and only allowing the blacksmith to do it, I enjoyed being able to "crunch" loot while in a dungeon when my bags were full and make room for more loot lol.

[jwcarlson]

This is the route they've gone with WoW as well, they figured out the old ways with super hard "elite only" raids that take multiple 3-5 hour sessions to complete, requiring months to level up your character, and making a large portion of the game inaccessible to a large portion of your subscribers, was a bad idea. I look forward to the crafting as well, I am sorry to see they've changed it so only magical items can be salvaged though, that was a great use for all of the low value "white" junk loot. I am also sad to see they removed personal/portable salvaging and only allowing the blacksmith to do it, I enjoyed being able to "crunch" loot while in a dungeon when my bags were full and make room for more loot lol.

I agree... I thought the portable selling/salvaging was a good deal. However, I have only gone to town on rare occasion so far. Would be nice to be able to pick up and sell all the white stuff to help accumulate gold... but removing that really easy way of doing it is probably yet another "gold sink". I think the D3 economy will be complex and very interesting to watch develop.

[blary54]

Blary54... let me know if you are interested in a "guest pass" to D3. I think three of them came with the standard edition and I will never find anyone to give them to. Otherwise my suggestion to play D or D2 first remains. They are both great games. If you like gritty/creepy the original Diablo is great.
.

Oh thanks for the offer...but I don't have a computer that could even remotely handle this game. If I do get/build one Id probably just buy the game because I have some friends that have it. Might have to check out D or D2 first.

[HydroWVU]

Servers are down... I got home around 8pm tonight, managed to play for about an hour and a half then servers went down... So it is off to bed and catch up on the forum...

[jwcarlson]

They were doing rolling restarts and seem to have been. Took about 15-20 minutes and they were back up. Gave me an opportunity to clean the fish tank that hasn't been getting much attention. ;)

Act II is a pretty big step-up in difficulty. Love it!

[Arcadies]

They were doing rolling restarts and seem to have been. Took about 15-20 minutes and they were back up. Gave me an opportunity to clean the fish tank that hasn't been getting much attention. ;)

Act II is a pretty big step-up in difficulty. Love it!

Once I was finally able to log in it was so late I could only get in about 1.5 hours of playing. I noticed the step up in difficulty as well, I had to actually use brains a little and not just rush in and mindlessly punch stuff (Monk). I lured tons of monsters to all the traps they have setup in that one area, can't remember the name of it but it's like farm land and has the giant trees that spew those nasty poison blossoms everywhere. Anyway, the traps helped soften them up nicely. I also happily dumped the Templar for the Scoundrel, who seems to do a lot more damage and backup with his archery.

Anyone else notice the Templar does total crap for damage? So far he seems useless to me, I will literally kill a whole room of monsters and he's still trying to kill the ONE mob I leave him, I've upgraded his weapon and shield so I dunno what the problem is.

[jwcarlson]

Once I was finally able to log in it was so late I could only get in about 1.5 hours of playing. I noticed the step up in difficulty as well, I had to actually use brains a little and not just rush in and mindlessly punch stuff (Monk). I lured tons of monsters to all the traps they have setup in that one area, can't remember the name of it but it's like farm land and has the giant trees that spew those nasty poison blossoms everywhere. Anyway, the traps helped soften them up nicely. I also happily dumped the Templar for the Scoundrel, who seems to do a lot more damage and backup with his archery.

Anyone else notice the Templar does total crap for damage? So far he seems useless to me, I will literally kill a whole room of monsters and he's still trying to kill the ONE mob I leave him, I've upgraded his weapon and shield so I dunno what the problem is.

I've been using the Templar since the beginning. He might not do much damage, I'd rather do most of the killing. I'm a DH and I just need a guy to block for me while I destroy them. The Templar does some decent healing and once he's level 18 he gets a "destruction" type spell and does a lot more damage. But there are trade-offs I suppose. The templar has helped me quite a bit with his healing abilities.

Oh thanks for the offer...but I don't have a computer that could even remotely handle this game. If I do get/build one Id probably just buy the game because I have some friends that have it. Might have to check out D or D2 first.

I would! Diablo should run on anything newer than the very early 90s. :)

[OldSchoolYoungin]

So is anyone going through late Hell or Inferno yet? What class are you playing and what do you think about it all?

I'm seeing lots of disappointment about the game on various online forums, especially when it comes to late game. Apparently, it will be a very, very, very long time before any Barb finishes Inferno; his end-game is just plain bad. Monks are sort of in the same boat. Even with an epic build and seemingly great gear, they can't survive past the first couple hits. That's after farming Hell difficulty for hours and spending millions of gold in the Auction House for the best stuff. Ranged attackers supposedly have a much easier time.

From reading and watching, I have a lot of opinions on the gameplay and other aspects but am not quite audacious enough to discuss them without having played the game, myself. Just curious to know what the rest of you may think and your honest criticisms

[Arcadies]

So is anyone going through late Hell or Inferno yet? What class are you playing and what do you think about it all?

I'm seeing lots of disappointment about the game on various online forums, especially when it comes to late game. Apparently, it will be a very, very, very long time before any Barb finishes Inferno; his end-game is just plain bad. Monks are sort of in the same boat. Even with an epic build and seemingly great gear, they can't survive past the first couple hits. That's after farming Hell difficulty for hours and spending millions of gold in the Auction House for the best stuff. Ranged attackers supposedly have a much easier time.

From reading and watching, I have a lot of opinions on the gameplay and other aspects but am not quite audacious enough to discuss them without having played the game, myself. Just curious to know what the rest of you may think and your honest criticisms

Honestly I haven't played it enough to really give much of an opinion, which in itself might say quite a lot. I dunno, so far it just seems more of the same, not really much innovation. I've had the game 6 days now and my monk is only level 19 in act II normal and my demon hunter is level 10 in act I. D2 I was living and breathing it, I couldn't put it down and always looked forward to playing it again. With D3 I just don't have much desire to play it really, it just bores the hell out of me, it's D2 with better graphics and new maps pretty much. now don't get me wrong, I loved D2, but I was hoping for more with D3 to be honest. I had more fun with Torchlight when it was released, it packed as much if not more game play and was 1/3 of Diablo 3's price on their respective launch dates. I can sort of see now why they had so little of the actual game in the beta, if people would of known how little innovation there was I believe their sales would of been much lower. My opinion may change as I play more but right now it just feels like a rehashed, prettier D2, wrapped around a auction house, which is their main focus.

[jwcarlson]

I really like it. Is there something "missing"? Absolutely. I don't know exactly what it is... I think it's designed too much to be casual. In one sense that's a possitive. I'm a casual gamer now, afterall. But there's some missing element that D2 had and this game does not. I can't put my finger on it, but something is missing. Just beat Normal with my brother and cousin this weekend (we played Act 4 together, but Acts I-III separately). I thought the Act II boss was the toughest of the four.

My Demon Hunter is currently level 37 towards the end of Act I NM. What I do really enjoy about D3 compared to D2 is the combat challenge. D2 seemed to have pretty much no stategy but in D3 I have to actively think about what spells and attacks I'm using and when. With cool downs and resource spending (hatred/discipline) it really effects the way I play.

And on a side note, I think when everyone thinks of "Diablo II" they really think "Diablo II: LoD" which is a decidedly better iteration of D2. D2 Classic wasn't nearly as awesome as the expansion (and subsequent patches). We're six days into a game that is following up a game that was insanely popular for YEARS.
Let's give it a little time.

Obviously the auction house is where games are going (cash cows for developers/investors). I have absolutely no problem with the business model. Blizzard makes amazing games. As long as they keep doing so I will probably keep buying them. Thankfully you don't HAVE to buy anything but the game to play. No monthly subscription costs... no required purchasing beyond the $60 game. For the number of hours I'll end up playing D3 $60 will be a bargain. I really doubt I'll purchase anything in the RMAH.

[Arcadies]

Obviously the auction house is where games are going (cash cows for developers/investors). I have absolutely no problem with the business model. Blizzard makes amazing games. As long as they keep doing so I will probably keep buying them. Thankfully you don't HAVE to buy anything but the game to play. No monthly subscription costs... no required purchasing beyond the $60 game. For the number of hours I'll end up playing D3 $60 will be a bargain. I really doubt I'll purchase anything in the RMAH.

I some what agree, they do need a consistent income over time, otherwise they would most likely charge monthly access or allow battle.net to spiral into the mediocre buggy, lag and spam filled service it was 10 years ago. I still have a bone to pick with online only play though, no matter how stable your access is, there will be times it's down or maybe you want to play on a laptop in an area with no wifi. Like Saturday for me, I use Comcast and usually they're very reliable and have great speeds/ping, but for whatever reason I lost connection around 12pm and couldn't play. I go mow the lawn and do some other yard work and haul off some trash, I come home, shower and eat a late lunch and was actually in a rare mood and wanted to really play D3..it was 3pm and my internet was still down. I didn't get my connection back until around 8pm that night and by then I didn't even want to play, with offline play (limited non-bnet characters of course like D2 closed characters) I could of at least played D3 in some form.

Anyway, I did play it more late last night, I enjoyed it a bit more than previous sessions but as you said, there is just something missing and I can't quite put my finger on it. I also enjoy the fact that combat is a bit more involved, my fav class in D2 was the sorceress and quite often it was a bit too "faceroll" I admit. I'm curious how they will increase the difficulty in later stages. I hope they actually make it difficult and not some faux difficulty crap like the insane resists that were prevalent in D2 Hell mode. In my opinion that didn't really increase difficulty, it just made it more annoying and tedious.

[jwcarlson]

I some what agree, they do need a consistent income over time, otherwise they would most likely charge monthly access or allow battle.net to spiral into the mediocre buggy, lag and spam filled service it was 10 years ago. I still have a bone to pick with online only play though, no matter how stable your access is, there will be times it's down or maybe you want to play on a laptop in an area with no wifi. Like Saturday for me, I use Comcast and usually they're very reliable and have great speeds/ping, but for whatever reason I lost connection around 12pm and couldn't play. I go mow the lawn and do some other yard work and haul off some trash, I come home, shower and eat a late lunch and was actually in a rare mood and wanted to really play D3..it was 3pm and my internet was still down. I didn't get my connection back until around 8pm that night and by then I didn't even want to play, with offline play (limited non-bnet characters of course like D2 closed characters) I could of at least played D3 in some form.

Anyway, I did play it more late last night, I enjoyed it a bit more than previous sessions but as you said, there is just something missing and I can't quite put my finger on it. I also enjoy the fact that combat is a bit more involved, my fav class in D2 was the sorceress and quite often it was a bit too "faceroll" I admit. I'm curious how they will increase the difficulty in later stages. I hope they actually make it difficult and not some faux difficulty crap like the insane resists that were prevalent in D2 Hell mode. In my opinion that didn't really increase difficulty, it just made it more annoying and tedious.

I think you'll be happy with the increase in difficulty for NM mode.

Regarding the online only mode, I completely agree. Too bad I think... but again... this is what gaming is going to become. D3 will be a console game at some point, not sure how much longer large scale PC games are going to be around. We may see a shift towards console games that end up being ported to PC, which don't seem to work well. :(

[OldSchoolYoungin]

I'm curious how they will increase the difficulty in later stages. I hope they actually make it difficult and not some faux difficulty crap like the insane resists that were prevalent in D2 Hell mode. In my opinion that didn't really increase difficulty, it just made it more annoying and tedious.

From what I hear, virtually all they did was increase HP and damage monsters could inflict.

Speaking of insane D2 resists, I can totally relate to that one; especially if you played any of the mods like Eastern Sun. I can't remember if this was on ES or not, but I clearly remember when I met Lister the Destroyer (right name?) in the Worldstone Keep. Immune to magic (lightning, fire, cold), Immune to Elemental, Immune to Physical I was playing a high-level Whirlwind Barb with some pretty epic gear and never could get his health down by more than 5% or so. Oh, and he had Teleport and Static Charge (is that the name?), too.

Finally, after dying I forget how many times, I figured out a way to beat him...

[jwcarlson]

From what I hear, virtually all they did was increase HP and damage monsters could inflict.

Speaking of insane D2 resists, I can totally relate to that one; especially if you played any of the mods like Eastern Sun. I can't remember if this was on ES or not, but I clearly remember when I met Lister the Destroyer (right name?) in the Worldstone Keep. Immune to magic (lightning, fire, cold), Immune to Elemental, Immune to Physical I was playing a high-level Whirlwind Barb with some pretty epic gear and never could get his health down by more than 5% or so. Oh, and he had Teleport and Static Charge (is that the name?), too.

Finally, after dying I forget how many times, I figured out a way to beat him...

Well, I haven't played through all of NM or Hell modes yet (I'm about half way through Act II NM) but there's been no monsters that are impossible to kill. There are some that have those little arcane purple spinning beams that kill you in a hurry if you're not paying attention.

Regarding difficulty... how exactly do you want them to make it more difficult? Increasing health and damage inflicted seems the only applicable way. How does your character get better? More health and more damage. Pretty simple.
The Diablo series has never been something ultra complex. It's hack and slash and loot.

[jwcarlson]

Well, yesterday after I logged on to my account I found all but a few of my items had been stolen from my account. This is apparently very widespread on battle.net. If you haven't already, sign up for the authenticator for your account! I did it right before logging on yesterday (about two minutes before I hopped on) only to find all of my items stripped. They took all my gold, items, gems, etc... and even my health potions (really?). Pretty disappointing.

[Arcadies]

Well, yesterday after I logged on to my account I found all but a few of my items had been stolen from my account. This is apparently very widespread on battle.net. If you haven't already, sign up for the authenticator for your account! I did it right before logging on yesterday (about two minutes before I hopped on) only to find all of my items stripped. They took all my gold, items, gems, etc... and even my health potions (really?). Pretty disappointing.

Wow, I'm sorry man, that totally sucks. I can't say I'm surprised though, World of Warcraft is the same...hell any online game with a nice large, juicy population of players is a hack-fest anymore. The real money auction house just makes it worse imo as it's a easier way to convert items to cash, then again it also gives Blizzard a better way to track it, so account hackers may still use outside means to sell items/gold. I bought a authenticator back about 3-4 years ago when they first came out and it's been on my account ever since, best $6 I ever spent on gaming. I also have mobile security alerts enabled so I get text messages if anything suspicious is happening on my account.

[OldSchoolYoungin]

That sucks big time, dude. There are a ton of people going through the same thing right now.

Just curious, but did you have an authenticator? There's a lot of controversy whether people using authenticators were hacked or not; many individuals say they were, yet Blizzard denies it.

[Arcadies]

That sucks big time, dude. There are a ton of people going through the same thing right now.

Just curious, but did you have an authenticator? There's a lot of controversy whether people using authenticators were hacked or not; many individuals say they were, yet Blizzard denies it.

Hmm, I haven't logged on since about 7pm last night. I guess I should pop on and check my account.

**edit**
Nope, it's all still there.