Araya @ US East: I am torn between getting online and havin fun and playing single player...i mean i looove multiplayer, but if one of those guys has any lead time in game play he better not rush through and spoil the boss fights and areas...
I started d2 backup havent played it in like 2 years and i joined a game and some idiot just waypointed through and beat the bosses and left the rest of us stuck with nothing to do... I would tend to play with a group of friends over random people i guess... i found d2 to be irritating because whoever started the game the quests revolved around them so if they had beat some then you cant get them even though you can defeat the bosses, etc.
Bashiok: One thing that seems to be a fairly consistent experience for a lot of people when they first picked up Diablo II was their introduction to Battle.net. And it wasn't generally a positive one.
Most people, including myself, went home and installed the game and started playing. Over maybe a few weeks or months they've finished the game maybe a few times, they had a ton of fun, but they keep playing and trying to find more items.
One day while loading up the game they notice the "Battle.net" button and decide to click it... and, their characters aren't there. They have to start over. Any of us would have gladly played on Battle.net (in passworded games if necessary) just to have that online/trading option for their character available to them. It felt like a lot of wasted time to find the actual game, which was on Battle.net.
While "starting over" is something almost every Diablo II player is going to do any way, the lack of on-screen instruction or indication as to what the different systems meant left a bad taste.
To help avoid that type of situation we're going to try to find ways to encourage Battle.net character creation first and foremost
I don't think it'll be too hard to avoid those mainstream games where everyones just doing their thing, especially since games probably won't hold more then 4-5 people. Just make some friends and stick with them. My 5.1 speakers and 24" monitor are all I'll really need to enjoy my first play through D3.
I dont know why people are so angry about this news.
As mentioned many times... Diablo (or warcraft & starcraft) isn't a successful game because of single-player portion. Again, blizzard should develop a system like Guildwars. Locked instance based systems. Party up in a town and then go, or just go alone. Everyone is happy! You can then play through either single or in a party, and don't have to worry about someone popping in to spoil the fun.
Again... it would be awful to remove or not support the multiplayer faction that made the blizzard games great to begin with.
Dislikes
-*mainly applies to online* first and foremost, repetition was the biggest downside to the diablo franchise. Now yes I do realize its a hack and slash game and therefore you will be doing a lot of it (hacking and slashing) however thats not exactly what im talking about. My pet peeve with the diablo games is when you beat it online you then start it over again on the next difficulty. In the beginning when the game still has its novelty and your new to the lore it may be fun however it gets boring FAST. Also you are restricted from being able to view games in a lower difficulty then you. I don't find the inability to join random games of lower difficulty hinder some to the game play but rather limiting. Say im in hell and id like to slay some cows and im not doing it for items or experience but mainly because i like the sounds of cows dieing beneath my blows and there are no games up in hell. I also cannot make cows because i unfortunately forgot to spare the cow kings feeble life and am now bared from opening a portal onto their soil. Without the ability to scan night mare and normal for any games im forced to do something else, wait or leave diablo and come back later.
- *multiplayer only* Second on my list WAS the loot system. The reason why i hated it was well, i could never get any loot :(. Fortunately im pretty sure i read somewhere that in diablo3 each player will get his own boss drop. Very good if done right, very bad if not.
(explained later)
- The last thing *because my list is already getting long :P* are cheaters of all kind. This includes but is not limited to; item spammers, item buyers, dupers, hackers, bug rushers, scammers and map hackers. They all kinda suck.
suggestions & ideas
- For the first dislike I suggest breaking the story up. (requires a longer story but i dont think anyone would complain about that ^_^) What I mean by this is that you take the whole story and split it into 3 parts the first part IS the game in normal then you beat normal and you move on to the second part of the game which is in nightmare and so on basically to get rid of repedativeness and at same time allows the difficulty of the game to scale with the progression of the story. Mind you it will most likely not happen like that but it would defiantly be awesome. Oh and then they would be forced to let you see normal and nm games :P.
- The reason why the second issue may become horrifically bad is when you are faced with the possibility of a full game of players in a clan farming bosses and collectively massing their drops and even worse just general economic catastrophe. On the other hand it can also be done very well. I believe this can be achieved by greatly lowering the amount of drops you get per person and making the more rare items even harder to find. The reason why items need to be alot more rare in this situation then in d2 (and many would argue they arn't rare enough in d2) is because bosses could be downed much faster with a group of 8 then singularily therefore more drop chances. Everything is pretty much obvious, problem and solution and i have faith that if each player does get a seperate drop from bosses that blizzard will accuretly take measures to assure it doesn't mess up the game.
- I don't really have any advice on how to solve the problem, my advice is however is to do what ever is needed to be done to solve this problem.
Impression of Diablo3
My first impression is that this game is looking to be a nice addition to the diablo franchise. I do however worry about the health globe system and other things but I have confidence in blizzards ability to make awsome games.
-EnragedMaNg
Item rarity in diablo 2 was rediculous. making the items harder to find would be horrifying. Ive played diablo 2 for several, several years. I have yet to find a High Rune. thats not saying i never acquired a high rune, i probably held hundreds. To enhance the bartering system of trading and to put diversity in gear, i have a solution. End duping. Somehow some people found out how to inflate the high rune economy via duping and they made enough runes for them to be the currency of diablo 2. Diablo 3 needs a new currency, or it needs to just rely on barter. Gold would not qualify as a viable currency in diablo 3 because it would be too WoWish...(sarcasm on the wow part but still no gold for currency!!!)
No point in going into all the reasons why, I've posted on this topic before. still, though, different people have different ideas about a comfortable playing environment and NOBODY has to justify their ideas.
If the game doesn't fit you, don't buy it. At least Blizzard will confirm if it is LAN capable or not before the cash is on the counter.
For those who haven't tried a LAN game well it's my opinion that with a few of the boys (and occasionally girls), a few beers, pizza and munchies close handy you've got a damn good way of unwinding with all the comforts of down-home socialising with people you know, trust and like.
You can keep Battle.net thanks.