DiabloFans

Another insightful piece of writing that will promptly be flushed down the tiolet. Golly gee wilikers.

Quote from Beechsack

The RMAH gives Blizzard a defined source of revenue to fun continued development work on addition content. A ladder system or reset isn't needed.

Correction:

WoW gave Blizzard a "defined" source of revenue to fund development on Diablo 3, and probably will continue to do so for D3 expansions. If Blizzard had your point of view, they wouldn't have bothered planning to make two more SC2 expansions.

You're missing the point he's making completely.

Quote from Vanhyo

You have some valid points

ladder resets and the need the have better items for PvP kept D2 going for so long


In diablo 3:
- You never have to worry about been smashed by stronger players - no need to improve
- Once you get some casual gear strong enough to solo inferno you are done - no need for better items
- Been a decent player or having very good items is of no significance, no one will know you ever existed.

Someone get this man a hooker. Good work.

Well it's good to know that the strike team that came to save them from their 6 year slog was primarily a WoW one.

I have no proof of that, but I don't care. It's not like the talent and skill system are the same flavor or anything. Call my bluff. I dare you.

Maybe Diablo 3's expansion will be better off now that they learned more about game design over 6 years. Who knows.

Quote from GenXCub

With the amount of Mandolin and 12-string guitar in the background, the D3 expansion should just use Battle of Evermore for its soundtrack..

Genius.

Although I thought you meant Secret of Evermore when I first read that. lol...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nug6wur2UH4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF0i55epJuY

Quote from Glowyrm

Quote from Dawn

Okay I haven't played Beta so I'm not 100% on any of this, it's just what I've read off the internet. But here's just some stuff I've noticed. In Diablo 3, you can't add attributes (strength, vitality, intelligence etc). The attributes just get added automatically, correct?

Correct. But that's fine because there was no choice in where to put the attributes in D2. There was a right way and a wrong way. Any variation served only to weaken your character. STR to wear the gear you need and VIT.

Some people are just plain dense. You guys act like Diablo 3 would be "poorly designed" if they allowed you to allocate points a second time around.

SPOILER ALERT! They COULD HAVE DESIGNED THE GAME to make so that there WASN'T a RIGHT choice or a WRONG choice when it came to attributes. They could have different types of scaling with skills, gear or monsters this time around to make it so, let's say, a barb wanting to build intellect to do make magical spell damage with his attacks. That's just one simple example. Just because it was stupid to, let's say, dump points into mana in Diablo 2, doesn't mean it had to be that way in Diablo 3.

Some of you guys act like the game should be as close to Diablo 2 as possible, but then you RELIGIOUSLY avoid certain aspects of Diablo 2 and treat them like they were the plague. Then when the developers tell you "Herp, we couldn't do that because it ended up being an issue in D2 so we felt it would be an issue in D3," you blindly defend them and allow them not to be creatively or think outside of the box. You then think that letting them dumb down the game or keep very old game mechanics is a stroke of genius. Really now? It just lets this dev team be lazy and keeps you blissfully ignorant to what the 3rd game in this series could have been. You're encouraging lazy game design.

It really blows my mind how some people think letting them automate health, skills or stats is somehow advanced game design. WoW only let itself automate the players stats while leveling and slightly automated what skills you got, but in the game there was still more customization and WoW was infinitely more complex as a world and in its gameplay as well. Diablo 3 is ONLY PvM (players versus monsters) or PvE if you want to see it that way. It's a hell of a lot more simple than WoW was. You grind waves of monsters and there's a little crafting on the side.

I mean, for goodness sake, they at least had 10 or so different types of faces you could select for each WoW race to slightly alter your appearance. All you have in D3 is a male and female version. That seems extremely lazy and I know a handful of people that randomly said to me "Uh... you can't change what your character looks likes? That's pretty dumb..." I'm not even expecting them to have 5 different sliders to change how your damn nose looks like. It just comes off as really lazy!

No skills will be the "be-all-end-all." I'm sure any skill combination will last you until Hell.

To make a long story short, you're right.

It just encourages you to play with close rl friends or guildmate types that can see the big picture and work as a team on several levels. They could have done a number of things to flesh out the teamplay aspect of the game, but they chose to do what they did with SC2. They decided to automate the entire online experience, not just game mechanics like stats and skill progression.

I blame the old casual gaming era and frat boys, because now Blizzard is still stuck in the past (console generation of the past 10 years.) They want to cater to people who want to click around two or three buttons to get into a game automatically, because some people are used to consoles. A lot of those people won't give a damn about your MF or their own MF. They just want to auto attack monsters. Some of them will even skip treasure goblins ffs. I made a joke thread about that regarding pug players, but of course the joke went over most people's heads.

The problem is that the casual gaming era is over. We're entering the Free to Play era, and it's perfectly alright to stick to the old Battle.net ways in this era. Things such as having proper lobby systems or "hosted" games with custom titles such as "Skeleton King Run" or "MF run Act 5" can and would work REALLY WELL in this new age of gaming. Blizzard still haven't gotten the memo yet, simply because they are still getting over how much success WoW has had and they haven't reached a point where they will think outside of the box. League of Legends and some other games with online lobbies kept this old system on the side for a reason. Riot games is making money hand over first, just by simply providing their customers the same freedom, along with content the players want, while also offering the same automation as well.

The bottom line is that this new automated quest progression system they have implemented has ruined the potential of you having a great experience with random players. It took away some of your freedom, it forces you to play with close friends (which is fine,) and it has also doomed you to playing a game with a strictly linear structure. Kiss any dreams you have about having an open-ended act or adventure good bye. Say hello to some SWEET Quest 64-like action where you run in a linear path for the next several years (or probably several months.)

Oh Cherub, did you enjoy Final Fantasy XIII? If so, you're going to LOVE Diablo 3!

Quote from Ducha

Quote from asfastasican

Quote from Ducha

My thoughts on the Beta: This is awesome.
My thoughts on my friends being able to play the Beta: oh god please no

What a jerkface!

Don't get me wrong I really don't mind that they're playing it, but it's the constant talking about it and how they know 'everything' about it that annoys me.

EDIT: I am a jerkface! but mainly only to them.

Don't worry. You're automatically better than everyone else for being one. Join the Club. I'm the Vice President and Bashiok is the President, because ironically he acts like he knows more than anyone else.

All I know if that one of my goofball friends got banned for using a simple maphack on D2 several years ago and we all laughed at him. We ended up having to go play some WC3 and DotA on the european battle.net server for a good week or so. But hey, we found a cool british guy and he become a good gamer friend.

The bottom line is that Blizzard will still be busting most script kiddies for using pre-canned bots and hacks in D3. I'm sure a few clever guys will use something on the AH but they will only do as much damage to the so-called economy that mods like Auctioneer or Auctionator did. Whether they will actually make money off of in-game items, gold or bots will depend on the game's popularity. WoW's chinas aren't making anywhere near as much as they used to. It's safe to say you're better off spending those endless hours towards a college degree, saving your money or trying to start your own business.

Of course, there's a pretty good chance that the D3 team will just simply be more lazy than the D2 team was all of these years. If that's the case then all of these new advantages they have will go to waste.

It's not worth it if you open the box.

As much negative crap as I post or some others post, I'm willing to give the full game one full honest try.

It's exactly how I felt when I played Final Fantasy 7 and I said to myself, "You know, I owe it to Final Fantasy 7 to play through Final Fantasy 8." Ironically, I clearly remember playing through 8 (not really enjoying the game, because of some really poorly designed game mechanics) and quitting RIGHT BEFORE the final boss. I simply didn't have the interest to finish the damn game.

I was pretty excited when D3 was announced, but that was like, what? 3 years ago? I was more excited about SC2's reveal, but meh. My excitement returned when they revealed the old rune system. It felt like the game was really coming along and that they had their crap together.

But then after 5 years of designing and playing their game, they suddenly just felt like they should redesign major systems over this past year. So now I'm just going to play it just to give it a shot. :/

People had fun in Diablo 2 making characters and figuring out how to spend roughly 100 skill points by allocating them into roughly 30 skill slots (per class), both active and passive. Some builds were serious business and some builds were just goofy builds where people had fun figuring out how to make them viable.

In Diablo 3, people will shift through different combinations of skills that have very little identity. They aren't builds, just combinations. When somebody says they are making a crit barb or an aoe barb or bash barb, you will have absolutely no way of knowing what the hell their build actually is. It's just another combination of skills that does the same crap as the next guy's.

Do all of the math you want. Go ahead. Slobber over a big passionless number that's at the end of an exponent equation. Big whoopidee doo. It's all generic combinations with very little identity. More doesn't mean better. Every Blizzard fan should know that by heart. Nobody gives a crap if your rogue build is different, They only care if your Combat rogue or your sublety rogue rips into flesh better than the other guy... or if you have the skills or rotation down pat to do so. Who would give a crap if your rogue build is skill combination #3450?

After 6+ years of development, we basically have the same situation where every build has the same purpose of killing crap, while having also having every build have less identity. We might as well just go back to Warcraft 2, where every one of our skills could be perfectly balanced, similar to have every unit in WC2 was a mirror matched unit and they did the exact same thing. Outside of making, let's say, an MF run Demon hunter or a PvM Demon Hunter, what else is there?

Diablo 2 Player: I'm leveling a whirlwind barb.

Diablo 3 Player: Cool. Well you see... my barb will have bash and leap and ignore pain and whirlwind and...

Diablo 2 Playter: Um... so that's a whirlwind barb then, right?

Diablo 3 Player: Well, yeah... but not really. There's more to it then that. You have to see my skills to understand how it all works Plus my runes are...

Diablo 2 Player: Sounds complicated and boring. Too long, didn't listen. Brb, pindleskin run.

Diablo 3 Player: Screw you, noobtrash!


Gems, gear sets and followers will have to be more in-depth to compensate. If not, you'll basically just have a maximum of five characters with an extended stash and maybe mule characters for extra storage. Why? Well every character can switch to another characters "build" simply by switching gear, at absolutely no cost. Almost 12 years have past and all we have done was go from a game where we could have multiple builds of each class (example. having a hurricane druid AND a shapeshifter druid) to a game we just have one character of each class (ex. having one druid that can just switch to any build whenever he wants just by switching skills and gear.)

Math does not make a game fun long-term. If it did, all of you guys and gals would be Actuaries in real life having a great time making a good living.

Entire server firsts on WoW were handed over to Euro guilds mostly due to them having early releases. Meanwhile, some of you guys are butthurt because Euros will be entering a non-competitive PvE grind slightly faster than you. OH NOES!!!!

I'm more worried about the people that will regret getting sick as early as May 16th. "Man! I could have been at work making money! If only I didn't come down with that cold and end up being disappointed.... er... i mean... sick!"

I remember having things I had to deal with the first few days SC2 was released, so I couldn't play the game immediately, nor really report any fansite news about it. Fortunately, I lived. Unfortunately, the ending was shit on spaghetti.

I hope Diablo 3's overall single player experience is as good as SC2's. I'm not expecting too much when it comes to story immersion though.

But every class is considered a DPS class in Blizzard's eyes and has been designed as such! How dare you ask these questions!?

Anybody remember D2's holy bolt? it was always a crappy spell, even in LoD. Hell, I think I used D1's holy bolt more often than D2's, even though that one didn't heal. It makes me wonder if whoever designed the Monk spells even played Diablo 1. Just because you can have healing spells doesn't mean you should have more than a healing aura in the game.

The Monk's healing seems too powerful in groups, even at a low level. Would be a shame if it helped trivialized the game later on.

There were plenty of jerks in the "nerd" communities, since... well forever.

Don't let nostalgia get in the way of reality. If you never encountered a nerd jerk, you probably didn't have a have a very fulfilling life as a gamer.

The camera distance is too low. Besides that, four players will be fine. Was there potential for something more? Yeah probably, but oh well.

At the end of his shift, I fired my bartender and told him it would be his last night at the bar. He then asked me why I was firing him. I replied, "Because you're just one of those guys that would skip a treasure goblin..."