DiabloFans

Quote from slumlord

The design is much more in tone with the Diablo series than Diablo III, at least in that photo.

If by "more in tone with the Diablo series" you mean "looks like it's from the 1990's" then you'd be correct.

The OP is putting WAY to much thought into a game that isn't even in Beta. TBH this is the exact same BS that went around during the period I was an active member of these forums... about 2 years ago >.<...

Thankfully someone else has answered each of your points.

I do not believe that castlevania image is good at all, in fact I think it's terrible. It looks ok static, but it's so grainy and try hard "gritty" that moving around on it would make your eyes bleed.



Is a more accurate representation of the game.

Also, comparing it to wow, is automatic fail.

TBH I think this photoshopped image is bad. It's so overly grainy, it looks like 90's era tryhard "girtty" graphics. I bet it would would be pretty hard to get a grasp on what's going on, and where, especially during fights.

This one is meh, and the other examples of D3 images are meh... but the official examples linked are usually from ~2 years ago when it was in very early development.

When you look at examples from more recent in development the case doesn't look so grim



In fact, that image is a direct cut and paste from the Castlevania cinematic trailer, with a D3 Barb cropped in.

Quote from "Lord_Jaroh" »

So then everyone has the same melee Wizard wearing the same +Strength gear? How silly is that?

So your implying that in the diablo 2 system, everyone had differing stat point distributions? As in they some people put melee sorcs into Energy without putting points in Strength/Dexterity?
Even if they did you can still gear for more energy... it's the same sort of thing.

It's more or less the same except for you aren't penalised as much if you screw up, replacing a piece of gear isn't as frustrating as re levelling the same character the same way.

Think of the "base stats" a sorc has are similar to how an assassin got 3 points of life per vitality compared to other classes getting 1, 1.5 or 2 etc....
It's a similar system in that regards transfered into another one

Quote from "Lord_Jaroh" »

I prefer customization. I would like a Melee Wizard to stand a chance against a Barbarian, since they gave us the option to make one. Otherwise why bother? Give different reasons for upping the stats and you have stopped "dump stats"

I believe stat allocation gives the ILLUSION of customisation, really there is all ways an optimal way to spend those attribute points and you are penalised for not following that distribution and you can not undo that distribution. Even then your particular class is still limited by A) their starting attributes and the rate they scale in life/mana/regeneration and in the case of strength/dexterity how much damage/block bonus you get per point allocated.

Have you seen the wizards skill tree's, I had a breif glance and saw there was a special armour, a special weapon enchant and if you gear yourself with vitality/strength items, use the appropriate runes (btw the skill rune system is a far more diverse and interesting/entertaining form of customisation that stat point allocation) and spells, you can still most likely be a melee caster.

Over all I think the most important thing to mention is that these crazy off specs were very rare and not overly powerful... I saw "shout barbs" and they were pathetic, I attempted to make one and it wasn't powerful or fun. I'm not saying you shouldn't have the right to make these crazy off spec characters... But they were a minority and making the game worse for the majority to benefit the minority is a pretty bad business logic.

Quote from "loesr" »

Please...
Of course it looks darker/creepier now. Just look at some of the original... oh, nevermind. if you don't see the change by now, your head is so far up the blizzsphincter you would never admit anything was changed.

For those of us who are happy with the way things have progressed, the quiet smug satisfaction of helping the game progress is reward enough.

Thanks for listening to your mad fanbase; great work Blizzard!

No nothing was changed, Blizzard stated multiple times they were not changing the art direction and also that many other area's of the game were Dark and gritty.

Of course it's typical for the people who demanded the changes, who also ignored/did not accept those statements from blizzard, to claim they were the ones that influenced the change instead of realising that what blizzard said was true

Quote from "Dimebog" »

He said they will charge for the new content that they develop. Wtf did you think?? That they would just give it to you for free??

Note the word 'CONTENT'.

It could mean things such as a large content patch, think in the way of wow where you get patches that add entire new dungeons/zones/quests/raids...

Maybe with D3 they will have patches that increase the game quality in that sort of way, so there will be area's that initially lead to closed dungeons that are opened up through patches that you may have to pay for online.

The problem with that sort of thing is that it essentially becomes "pay to play" unless they allow you to interact online (battle.net 2) in the same area as others who can use new content that you can't.

Quote from "Majpain" »

I think the Bat skills needs to be redesigned. just awful looking.

I have to be in the minority in loving the animation for the firebats....

I was also in the minority for hating on the zombie wall....

WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME


But in seriousness I think the fire bats are an awesome idea, I can imagine the sound effects would be brutal, high pitched bat screaming, flapping of leathery wings, mixed with the sound of an inferno/flame thrower...

And how can people call them cheesy when looking at the zombie wall.

Jesus settle down Keleban.

For starters you are using a lot of anecdotal evidence, and a lot of your "counter points" are based off your opinion, where as mine are based of comments by blizzard employees and the Diablo 3 Dev team...

Who's more likely to have a better understanding of the game and where it's heading... someone who hasn't even played it, or the people making it?

All I see is people looking for a new thing to bitch about, "waahh it's too colourful", "waahhh no potions", "waahhh new inventory system", "waahh it's just like wow", "waahh no runewords", "waahh auto stat allocation".

You're allowed your opinion and you're allowed to disagree/complain, but the fact is you are being completely biased in these opinions and anyone elses opinion that doesn't agree with yours is invalid, because they are "fan boys" or "brown nosers"... It reeks of hypocracy and is quite frankly pathetic.

Anyway, enjoy stressing out over a game, that has years of development ahead of it, that you will have no real impact upon it's design process....
I hope those extra years taken off your life are worth it.

TBH a lot of your points are very narrow minded/backwards thinking.



1) Firstly 4 players per game

-Easier to get a full game
-Makes balancing difficulties on no. of players easier
-limits spam/add bots effectiveness (hopefully remove them all together)
-Reduced Lag
-With the massive graphics upgrade on a lot of abilities it would make for some intense system requirements with 8 players.

Depends how it plays out, but atm it looks like win, win, win, WIN.

I do admit it might remove a little bit of the epicness feel of it.... but from what i've seen/heard the starting environment is very dark and feels like Diablo 1 with a massive graphics upgrade (<3 D1 forever) D1 also only had 4 players per game.



2) No stat allocation.

I'm personally for as much customisability as possible and at first this sounded like a downer... but seriously think about how stat allocation went in Diablo 2...

Strength: - Enough to wear the "best" gear
Dexterity: - None, or enough to wear gear/max block
Vitality: - Every point that wasn't needed in Strength/Dexterity
Energy: - None ever....

And don't try to say otherwise because most serious players this was exactly how the points were spent, and because of this, hell difficulty was tuned based on the assumption that all players there had a similar stat distribution. This is not customisation, this is pigeon holing.
I never liked the stat allocation system in D2 except for the one class where it mattered, the dragon tail Kick Assassin.
The one positive thing was that it allowed for creative random builds like melee casters etc.... but even some of those (such as energy shield sorcs) were over powered.

Overall it just makes balancing easier, and is less harsh on beginners.



3) Potions/Life Leech.

Again Blizzard have stated multiple times why they wanted these two things to go, basically you get anout potions and life leech and you are invincible... you gain life faster than you lose it and it's a never ending resource. THEREFORE the only way to challenge you is to make monsters/bosses that can one shot you... and how fun is being invincible 90% of the time and then killed in one hit?

This also adds strategy to how you move in combat, if you need a heal and there are multiple zombies in between you and the orb you have to get around them (or kill them) some how instead of mindlesly charging to the next area.


4) Runewords

Subject to personal opinion, however these were the single worst thing to happen to Diablo 2.
They started out rediculously underpowered, or average, but requiring expensive/rare runes, and ended up being completely over powered, to the point where everyone had teleport, 5 aura's, and multiple rediculous runewords....
Once again the game became balanced around this and makes it impossible for the casual gamer to enjoy, because the game is set to "runeword difficulty"


5) In regards to the "suspense/horror" being taken away because characters are too powerful....

There was a post from a D3 dev mentioning that normal mode would be very easy and nightmare/hell would be the challenging area's. This is so that the new players are not immediately put off by a steep learning curve, it also makes leveling multiple alternate characters less painful (at least in the early stage)

I also don't recall Diablo 2 ever being that challenging in normal unless you got rushed...




Massive conclusion... I've seen far too many posts, bagging something they haven't tried, something that isn't finished and claiming "they are never going to play D3 now". Please stop with the ignorant/narrow minded postings and if the game that is far from completion upsets you that much... go for a bike ride, listen to some music... do something else and don't worry about it.
It isn't even in Alpha and people are treating it as if it's about to be released tomorrow and is finalised.

I fully approve of this...

-Easier to get a full game
-Makes balancing difficulties on no. of players easier
-limits spam/add bots effectiveness (hopefully remove them all together)
-Reduced Lag
-With the massive graphics upgrade on a lot of abilities it would make for some intense system requirements with 8 players.

Depends how it plays out, but atm it looks like win, win, win, WIN.

I do admit it might remove a little bit of the epicness feel of it.... but from what i've seen/heard the starting environment is very dark and feels like Diablo 1 with a massive graphics upgrade (<3 D1 forever)

Could we really just have one thread that didn't divulge into "omg d3 is not wow"...

I thought most of the punks that threw up arguments over nothing were gone now?


Anyway Those abilities look great, thanks for the list. Curious at one rank of charged bolt with a fixed damage total, I'm assuming passive abilities will buff it to usefulness?

I like the feel of the new caster, slow time looks particularly sweet, if not exactly the same as the mother ship from SC2.... however that ability looked so good I'm glad it's going to be in D3... I always like having interesting options of things to cast, other than "hmmm do i blow them up with a fire ball, or with this lightning, or with this glacial spike"

Simply?... I came

Quote from "Ivaron" »

What, like runes? If they do runewords again, I'd hope for there to be a wiki inside the game, or maybe even a *suggestion* system, that says "with your current skill setup, we suggest you farm for the runewords [...], [...] and [...]". Would make it alot less confusing to casual gamers. It took me a while to get into rune words in D2, because I didn't like the idea of looking up stuff online and finding all of that out yourself is kinda impossible. But, that might be a discussion for another thread..

No not like runewords... like crafted. Instead of a new socketing mechanic i meant an actual new type of item... like sets or something.

Quote from "Ivaron" »

It would also require a new level cap.. maybe even a new tier of skills :/

Thats why I said they should add that >.<, also a new quality of item, like how there was the normal version of an item in its white status then there was the exceptional version in NM and the elite version in hell... most with unique equivalents.

Quote from "Karjalan" »

Second expansion - A whole new difficulty past hell (maybe, depends on how replayable it is), new tier of items (normal, exceptional, elite etc.) and new skills for the remaning classes maybe take another 2 tiers in the skill trees (more powerful than level 40 ones obviously). Also add in at least one more entirely new item type that has significant impact on the game.

Quote from "backstreetboy-n-" »

I suggest a (one act + 2 more char's) every one Exp...

If they had two I wouldn't want the second to be a carbon copy of the first ones structure... to me.

Assuming the game is wildly successful/popular

First expansion - 1 act, 2 new classes

Second expansion - A whole new difficulty past hell (maybe, depends on how replayable it is), new tier of items (normal, exceptional, elite etc.) and new skills for the remaning classes maybe take another 2 tiers in the skill trees (more powerful than level 40 ones obviously). Also add in at least one more entirely new item type that has significant impact on the game.

Expecting? Like every other blizzard game... just one. However I would hope it would get 2, an action RPG is the perfect type of title for more than one expansion...
but bilzzards game format is pretty familiar by now... make a game, adjust its balance with multiple patches (this is great), make an expansion pack that greatly changes/lengthens the original, anything else unique that could go into a second expansion is patched in amongst further balance changes...