I have been wanting to put a well thought out post on these forums for since the D3 launch. I however did not want to put a post 1-2 weeks into the game without fully exploring it first. After getting two characters to 60 and checked out inferno with both, I wanted to post my thoughts and see if what others think. I am a long time lurker here and post very little as I try to stay away from the internet trollies^^. This could be a long post, as I want to talk about a lot within the game and see what others think of my thoughts.
First though, do I think D3 is a bad game? Well, my answer is no. I think they strayed away from the formula that made the last two games very popular. Normal through Hell was a ton of fun. I enjoyed leveling and seeing what my class could do against a totally new variety of mobs. Inferno is another story and I will get into that later.
Character classes.
For me these types of games can always benefit from more classes. I feel as if five is not enough with how fast you can progress in this game. The story did not really tell what happened to the other classes. I know there were short stories out on the Diablo3 site but they never freally tied into the lore that drops a lot with the books ingame. i would of loved to see how they could of implemented the other classes from D2 into the game. Titan Quest had a lot of classes I wish D3 went this route. However I do feel that to many is bad but we could use 3-5 more perhaps.
As for the skills, I like what they did with the rune system. To be honest i was a little skeptical at first. It felt cheapened. As I progressed it was nice to be able to change on the fly and see what the new skills could do. I however do feel at the time that cookie cutter classes are all over the place and that kind of saddens me. Blizzard did state they wanted all skills to be viable. I think they came pretty close as I have seen a lot of different builds that do ok in the harder difficulites. However they still fell a little short and have a lot of tweaking to do.
An example for me is my Demon Hunter. Leveling up I fell in love with grenade+firebomb and shooting cluster arrows+cluster bombs. It was awesome, being able to run around with a mini crossbow and shield thinking I was an awesome bomb tank had me laughing. When I got to inferno this soon stopped. It was way to hard to get mobs lined up for big explosions as I was always kiting. Very shortly I switchd to elemental arrow+nether tentacles with the pierce arrow. The same cookie cutter build I have seen most people use in public games with very little difference in our builds. This is a prime example for me on where they fell short in that regard.
My final conclusion is ranged have it much easier atm with progression. Melee feels a lot tougher as you have to get up in their faces. It gets hard to see with all the stuff going on the ground at once on top of player spells.
Difficulty
So here is where I perhaps feel your cups with internet tears of sadness.
First off let me state I have played D1, D2 and now D3 all at launch and continue to play the,. I will use D2 as I played that a ton more, for most of my examples.
Ok so I am just going to state that anyone that played D2 from the launch will realize just how hard that game was when it first came out. I remember clearly the only thing melee classes used in hell were high damage pikes. They were one of the very very very few items that put out enough damage to kill things in the later acts in hell. I remember people running around in low tier uniques because THAT is all there was. I do not think the game at that stage was as hard as D3 though. It was a challenge however.
Now to inferno. Yes I have followed D3 from its very first announcement. I knew it was going to be hard, and I was perfect ok with that. D2 got to be way to easy and the difficulty would be welcomed in D3. I was however not prepared for the most infuriating or frustrating game I think I have ever played. I do not think I was ever that frustrated in Heroic WoW raids. ( I could be lieing here, there were some bad raid nights^^)
Look I know there is a lot of hate out there on this. I have progressed to Act3 on my DH and Act2 on my monk in inferno. Spending a lot of time there to get money for gear or looking for drops. I think what frustrates me the most with grinding gear is items under level 60 dropping in a level 60 only mode. Not only inferno though its like this for all difficulties. Now I am not saying 1200-1500 dps items should be dropping in act1 inferno. I do think though that anything below 500-600dps in act 1 is useless and stupid. I mean sweet, I found a rare golden fist with 362.1 dps and 92 dex. Excuse me while I go pummel this elite pack for the next 30 minutes. Doable yes, is that fun? I do not think so.
Now as far as mobs go, once you obtain some gear act1 is gets easier. My problem is the spikes in Act2 and up. My monk tank spec I was sitting on 44k hp, 7k armor, 581 resists,68% dodge and 12k dps without buffs. He is nothing fancy or super killer elite. I thought though he would be able to survive act2, and stuggle in act 3. Nope, 30k, 60k shots of damage with no chance to get life on hit or heal. Tad frustrating!!! Maybe I am wrong.
So Ok my monk, sucks I will make a Demon hunter. couple days later40k+ dps. Sweet I can burn these guys down but if i take a hit (glass cannon!!!!!!) it is over! Rinse and repeat.
Items
Love the items in this game. First off the visual displays are much cooler to look at then any other previous game. I do think there are to many of them to worry about at one time. Right now most people need, Vit, Mainclass stat, resists, ias, critical hit, armor, loh, asi whatever. Just so much to worry about at one time.
Rares are cool, and I do not mind that they are the main focus right now. Some of the best items in D2 were rares or crafter items. I however do feel that legendaries are lacking and they do not have that specific thing that makes them stand out. My favorite example is Schaeffers hammer and Atmas Scarab amulet from d2. Loved these items on my zealer(paladin). I really do not have to much to say about items as it is pretty much what I expected.
Auction House
Love it!! Great for leveling and finding a quick upgrade. Though it does show the other side of gaming and that is greed. Really good items are hard to come by. If you arent one of the lucky ones you fall behind and it is hard to progress and make up the cash needed or find the items yourself. The gold Ah can fall off the face of the earth though! However I do not blame Blizzard for trying to make a little side cash. Most games are doing it in some way.
Well that is my summary of thoughts. Here is a list of some things I wish were in the game.
-more classes
-horadric cube type item
-make whites worth it(imbue crafter maybe?)
-open up the acts once you beat them
-legendaries that mean something
Finally, these are my thoughts, flame them, like them. Whatever discuss, and enjoy D3!!
Patch 1.03 is supposed to shore up the disparity between ranged and melee classes somewhat, with 1.1 containing a major rebalance where I'd expect it to be addressed more fully. 1.03 is also supposed to make defense-oriented ranged characters (besides Force Armor wizards) more of an option, but I doubt the incoming damage nerf will be big enough to support that based on the info they've put out so far, but I imagine they'll improve that over time.
As far as general difficulty, in addition to nerfing A2+ mob damage, they're also making higher level gear drop in A4 hell through A3 inferno in 1.03 and giving a major buff to legendaries in 1.1 (which is supposed to include adding gear similar to Schaeffer's Hammer according to the recent Reddit AMAA), so gearing up will be easier which will decrease difficulty across the board. I'm guessing that this, coupled with the major rebalancing in 1.1 will open up a lot more builds as viable options. It should also decrease the value of armor and resists for melee and eventually probably raise their value for ranged classes which is a win in my opinion. As for increased attack speed, it's getting nerfed in 1.03 so that it won't be such a required stat.
-- D2 also launched with 5 classes. I'm sure we'll get more in the first expansion and probably more in follow-up expansions.
-- The horadric cube was annoying. It was cool because it let them add some cool crafting, but that's handled by the blacksmith and jeweller now. The extra space was kind of cool, but it would have been less annoying if we just had the extra inventory in the first place so you didn't have to move stuff in and out of the cube or if stuff just didn't take up so many slots.
-- Supposedly, we'll be getting an option at some point to hide all white item drops (important white items like potions and pages will be getting their own color), which imho is as good or better than making whites useful.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
...and if you disagree with me, you're probably <insert random ad hominem attack here>.
Yeah, I forgot to add at the end alot of stuff that I mentioned was getting either fixed or balanced.
I also forgot to add this! After I founda mob in act 3 with it.
Dear Blizzard,
Do you remember Iron maiden and how frustrating it was for my super uber zealer to get one shotted for no reason? Please remove reflect damage. <3 Forever.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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First though, do I think D3 is a bad game? Well, my answer is no. I think they strayed away from the formula that made the last two games very popular. Normal through Hell was a ton of fun. I enjoyed leveling and seeing what my class could do against a totally new variety of mobs. Inferno is another story and I will get into that later.
Character classes.
For me these types of games can always benefit from more classes. I feel as if five is not enough with how fast you can progress in this game. The story did not really tell what happened to the other classes. I know there were short stories out on the Diablo3 site but they never freally tied into the lore that drops a lot with the books ingame. i would of loved to see how they could of implemented the other classes from D2 into the game. Titan Quest had a lot of classes I wish D3 went this route. However I do feel that to many is bad but we could use 3-5 more perhaps.
As for the skills, I like what they did with the rune system. To be honest i was a little skeptical at first. It felt cheapened. As I progressed it was nice to be able to change on the fly and see what the new skills could do. I however do feel at the time that cookie cutter classes are all over the place and that kind of saddens me. Blizzard did state they wanted all skills to be viable. I think they came pretty close as I have seen a lot of different builds that do ok in the harder difficulites. However they still fell a little short and have a lot of tweaking to do.
An example for me is my Demon Hunter. Leveling up I fell in love with grenade+firebomb and shooting cluster arrows+cluster bombs. It was awesome, being able to run around with a mini crossbow and shield thinking I was an awesome bomb tank had me laughing. When I got to inferno this soon stopped. It was way to hard to get mobs lined up for big explosions as I was always kiting. Very shortly I switchd to elemental arrow+nether tentacles with the pierce arrow. The same cookie cutter build I have seen most people use in public games with very little difference in our builds. This is a prime example for me on where they fell short in that regard.
My final conclusion is ranged have it much easier atm with progression. Melee feels a lot tougher as you have to get up in their faces. It gets hard to see with all the stuff going on the ground at once on top of player spells.
Difficulty
So here is where I perhaps feel your cups with internet tears of sadness.
First off let me state I have played D1, D2 and now D3 all at launch and continue to play the,. I will use D2 as I played that a ton more, for most of my examples.
Ok so I am just going to state that anyone that played D2 from the launch will realize just how hard that game was when it first came out. I remember clearly the only thing melee classes used in hell were high damage pikes. They were one of the very very very few items that put out enough damage to kill things in the later acts in hell. I remember people running around in low tier uniques because THAT is all there was. I do not think the game at that stage was as hard as D3 though. It was a challenge however.
Now to inferno. Yes I have followed D3 from its very first announcement. I knew it was going to be hard, and I was perfect ok with that. D2 got to be way to easy and the difficulty would be welcomed in D3. I was however not prepared for the most infuriating or frustrating game I think I have ever played. I do not think I was ever that frustrated in Heroic WoW raids. ( I could be lieing here, there were some bad raid nights^^)
Look I know there is a lot of hate out there on this. I have progressed to Act3 on my DH and Act2 on my monk in inferno. Spending a lot of time there to get money for gear or looking for drops. I think what frustrates me the most with grinding gear is items under level 60 dropping in a level 60 only mode. Not only inferno though its like this for all difficulties. Now I am not saying 1200-1500 dps items should be dropping in act1 inferno. I do think though that anything below 500-600dps in act 1 is useless and stupid. I mean sweet, I found a rare golden fist with 362.1 dps and 92 dex. Excuse me while I go pummel this elite pack for the next 30 minutes. Doable yes, is that fun? I do not think so.
Now as far as mobs go, once you obtain some gear act1 is gets easier. My problem is the spikes in Act2 and up. My monk tank spec I was sitting on 44k hp, 7k armor, 581 resists,68% dodge and 12k dps without buffs. He is nothing fancy or super killer elite. I thought though he would be able to survive act2, and stuggle in act 3. Nope, 30k, 60k shots of damage with no chance to get life on hit or heal. Tad frustrating!!! Maybe I am wrong.
So Ok my monk, sucks I will make a Demon hunter. couple days later40k+ dps. Sweet I can burn these guys down but if i take a hit (glass cannon!!!!!!) it is over! Rinse and repeat.
Items
Love the items in this game. First off the visual displays are much cooler to look at then any other previous game. I do think there are to many of them to worry about at one time. Right now most people need, Vit, Mainclass stat, resists, ias, critical hit, armor, loh, asi whatever. Just so much to worry about at one time.
Rares are cool, and I do not mind that they are the main focus right now. Some of the best items in D2 were rares or crafter items. I however do feel that legendaries are lacking and they do not have that specific thing that makes them stand out. My favorite example is Schaeffers hammer and Atmas Scarab amulet from d2. Loved these items on my zealer(paladin). I really do not have to much to say about items as it is pretty much what I expected.
Auction House
Love it!! Great for leveling and finding a quick upgrade. Though it does show the other side of gaming and that is greed. Really good items are hard to come by. If you arent one of the lucky ones you fall behind and it is hard to progress and make up the cash needed or find the items yourself. The gold Ah can fall off the face of the earth though! However I do not blame Blizzard for trying to make a little side cash. Most games are doing it in some way.
Well that is my summary of thoughts. Here is a list of some things I wish were in the game.
-more classes
-horadric cube type item
-make whites worth it(imbue crafter maybe?)
-open up the acts once you beat them
-legendaries that mean something
Finally, these are my thoughts, flame them, like them. Whatever discuss, and enjoy D3!!
As far as general difficulty, in addition to nerfing A2+ mob damage, they're also making higher level gear drop in A4 hell through A3 inferno in 1.03 and giving a major buff to legendaries in 1.1 (which is supposed to include adding gear similar to Schaeffer's Hammer according to the recent Reddit AMAA), so gearing up will be easier which will decrease difficulty across the board. I'm guessing that this, coupled with the major rebalancing in 1.1 will open up a lot more builds as viable options. It should also decrease the value of armor and resists for melee and eventually probably raise their value for ranged classes which is a win in my opinion. As for increased attack speed, it's getting nerfed in 1.03 so that it won't be such a required stat.
-- D2 also launched with 5 classes. I'm sure we'll get more in the first expansion and probably more in follow-up expansions.
-- The horadric cube was annoying. It was cool because it let them add some cool crafting, but that's handled by the blacksmith and jeweller now. The extra space was kind of cool, but it would have been less annoying if we just had the extra inventory in the first place so you didn't have to move stuff in and out of the cube or if stuff just didn't take up so many slots.
-- Supposedly, we'll be getting an option at some point to hide all white item drops (important white items like potions and pages will be getting their own color), which imho is as good or better than making whites useful.
I also forgot to add this! After I founda mob in act 3 with it.
Dear Blizzard,
Do you remember Iron maiden and how frustrating it was for my super uber zealer to get one shotted for no reason? Please remove reflect damage. <3 Forever.