Now that I've dealt with the excess water seeping from my eyes and mouth, I can focus on steadying my hand to click that pre-purchase button... It's been one hell of a long ride!
Currently in the beta the WD starts with a pool of 200 mana, which increases by 30 each level. Outside of passives and gear, he'll have at least ~2000 mana by the time he reaches 60 if the devs keep things as-is.
I can't disagree with most of the points being made in this thread.
Blizzard is lucky to be in the position they're in, with all the resources and (apparently) time in the world to iterate, reiterate, wash, rinse and reiterate again. The guys who set out to form Flagship had the same approach and unfortunately could not keep up with their own ambitions.
...Not that the game won't sell millions of copies regardless. It's just that they have to get to a point where enough is enough. I mean, they do plan on supporting the game via patches and whatnot after it's released, right??
I wish them the best of luck with meeting the hype of the game, which will continue to grow with every passing day...
Do not want. Mainly because of the RMAH and the fact that it'll make Diablo players hungrier for loot than ever before. I definitely see hassling/begging being an issue for many players including myself. I'd rather have it kept private and simply ask about loot during breaks in town and not in the middle of the dungeon.
What I'd like to see instead is some sort of loot filter that will make your loot drop for everyone, based on quality. For example, I may want to keep all drops personal except for junk, normal and magical (blue) items.
I'll agree that the spider's visuals look a bit ... underwhelming. Hopefully it's not quite fully polished.
But - I will say that it does immediately attack nearby enemies, it's just that they're dying too soon. After that, it seems to head back to its origin point rather than the WD's side so it's definitely distinguished from the permanent pets.
I'll start by saying this: The idea of 2 min cooldowns in a fast-paced ARPG like Diablo seems odd. Frankly they'd have no place in D1 or D2. I'm trying to imagine how they'd work in D3 but it's, needless to say, difficult considering I haven't played it. We'll have to wait and see how it pans out at release. That said (and yes, I'm generalizing here), a lot of the arguments against 2 min cooldowns seem overblown.
I realize how easy it can be to have a negative knee-jerk reaction to all this, but I think I can see the direction Blizz is taking the concept. Keep in mind they've only confirmed 2-minute cooldowns for the Barb, specifically his tier 7 skills. Given that he only works with 3 or 4 (?) fury orbs and can gain fury with his abiilities, I can see how a longer-than-usual cooldown would make more sense as a "cost" rather than max fury. But...that's only if these abilities are as powerful as they're making them out to be. From the looks of it though, I think we can expect these skills to be pretty uber. We're talking about Mirror Image x3 (upwards of quadruple damage, easily), Steroid Shout (temporary demigodmode) and Earthquake (only name I can remember off the top of my head...and it speaks for itself). Sure, I may be exaggerating a bit but given the expected outcry over their long cooldowns, I'm sure Blizzard will make these skills worthwhile to say the least. Having the freedom to spam them at any given moment would be awesome from a player perspective, but infinite uptime wouldn't quite make sense balance-wise...Granted balance won't be perfect, but cooldowns can help keep vastly overpowered abilities in check.
As for the other classes, I don't think they'll have cooldown periods as steep for high-end abilities, if at all. Their resource systems are different enough to allow for more leverage between cooldown time and resource cost.
I don't know if I'm completely for or against long cooldowns but none of this is set in stone anyways. Who knows what they'll end up sticking with? I just hope this means they're really focusing on encouraging players to use all 7 skills rather than relying on 2-3, even if it means they'll have to put some limitations on the skills that are generally more effective. Even then, I think skills throughout all tiers for each class will be more or less on-par with one another as far as numbers go, even if some are mechanically "better" than others.
Great read. I may have to pick up those Sin War books.
With talks of D3 possibly being the last game of the series (expansions aside) I anticipate Heaven will have more involvement than the first two games combined, which admittedly is not saying much. I wonder if Tyrael will be banished and have his wings "clipped" at some point, only to regain his status once the heroes he's believed in thus far finally prove themselves once and for all.
Either way, I'll definitely be paying much more attention to the lore this time around!
To think some of us (yes, including myself) were hoping for new gameplay footage and/or beta screens... Don't get me wrong, it's great artwork but as others have said, it's nothing new.
I also feel that Blizzard offered some great pieces along the way as they used FB as a cheap marketing tool, but this milestone update is certainly a letdown. This is especially so considering that D3 is their first and only unreleased game to do it - that's gotta count for something right?
Oh well...I can't say I wasn't thrilled with the recent runestone update at least, things like that keep the morale up. Still, even some crappy quality, random over-the-shoulder footage of the internal beta would've sated my hunger quite nicely.
Somewhat of a passable update but it's all good since we'll hit 1,000,000 just in time for Memorial Day! I'm definitely hoping for a new gameplay video, showcasing additional rune effects or maybe skills we haven't seen much of or at all before... hell, some random footage of that internal beta will work for me...
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Great post, +1!
Blizzard is lucky to be in the position they're in, with all the resources and (apparently) time in the world to iterate, reiterate, wash, rinse and reiterate again. The guys who set out to form Flagship had the same approach and unfortunately could not keep up with their own ambitions.
...Not that the game won't sell millions of copies regardless. It's just that they have to get to a point where enough is enough. I mean, they do plan on supporting the game via patches and whatnot after it's released, right??
I wish them the best of luck with meeting the hype of the game, which will continue to grow with every passing day...
BTW, why does live stream chat always have to be so.... X(
What I'd like to see instead is some sort of loot filter that will make your loot drop for everyone, based on quality. For example, I may want to keep all drops personal except for junk, normal and magical (blue) items.
But - I will say that it does immediately attack nearby enemies, it's just that they're dying too soon. After that, it seems to head back to its origin point rather than the WD's side so it's definitely distinguished from the permanent pets.
I realize how easy it can be to have a negative knee-jerk reaction to all this, but I think I can see the direction Blizz is taking the concept. Keep in mind they've only confirmed 2-minute cooldowns for the Barb, specifically his tier 7 skills. Given that he only works with 3 or 4 (?) fury orbs and can gain fury with his abiilities, I can see how a longer-than-usual cooldown would make more sense as a "cost" rather than max fury. But...that's only if these abilities are as powerful as they're making them out to be. From the looks of it though, I think we can expect these skills to be pretty uber. We're talking about Mirror Image x3 (upwards of quadruple damage, easily), Steroid Shout (temporary demigodmode) and Earthquake (only name I can remember off the top of my head...and it speaks for itself). Sure, I may be exaggerating a bit but given the expected outcry over their long cooldowns, I'm sure Blizzard will make these skills worthwhile to say the least. Having the freedom to spam them at any given moment would be awesome from a player perspective, but infinite uptime wouldn't quite make sense balance-wise...Granted balance won't be perfect, but cooldowns can help keep vastly overpowered abilities in check.
As for the other classes, I don't think they'll have cooldown periods as steep for high-end abilities, if at all. Their resource systems are different enough to allow for more leverage between cooldown time and resource cost.
I don't know if I'm completely for or against long cooldowns but none of this is set in stone anyways. Who knows what they'll end up sticking with? I just hope this means they're really focusing on encouraging players to use all 7 skills rather than relying on 2-3, even if it means they'll have to put some limitations on the skills that are generally more effective. Even then, I think skills throughout all tiers for each class will be more or less on-par with one another as far as numbers go, even if some are mechanically "better" than others.
With talks of D3 possibly being the last game of the series (expansions aside) I anticipate Heaven will have more involvement than the first two games combined, which admittedly is not saying much. I wonder if Tyrael will be banished and have his wings "clipped" at some point, only to regain his status once the heroes he's believed in thus far finally prove themselves once and for all.
Either way, I'll definitely be paying much more attention to the lore this time around!
To think some of us (yes, including myself) were hoping for new gameplay footage and/or beta screens... Don't get me wrong, it's great artwork but as others have said, it's nothing new.
I also feel that Blizzard offered some great pieces along the way as they used FB as a cheap marketing tool, but this milestone update is certainly a letdown. This is especially so considering that D3 is their first and only unreleased game to do it - that's gotta count for something right?
Oh well...I can't say I wasn't thrilled with the recent runestone update at least, things like that keep the morale up. Still, even some crappy quality, random over-the-shoulder footage of the internal beta would've sated my hunger quite nicely.