DiabloFans

Quote from "SFJake" »

"Lets dumb down an unique mechanic because we can't deal with it, instead of trying to improve it and fix its flaws."

Thats all I saw there.

That's all I saw as well.

There are several ways to make the mechanic unique and interesting. For example, a flaming zombie dog could lose health over time (have a dot for the duration of the buff) while doing increased damage. This would make the witch doctor have to be a bit careful with where he casts his fire spell, increasing the strategy involved.

Because the game is still about strategy, right? Wasn't that something they drilled in to us at last years Blizzcon? Remember the skeletons with the shields?

Really, all this says is that "We don't want things to get all that interesting with this class. We don't want another Necromancer on our hands." Which, ironically, they already said =\.

Yay at the inventory! While the one item takes one spot formula works for MMO's, it doesn't seem right in an action-rpg, especially when it's been a staple in the other two games.

That would be like removing peons from Warcraft 4.

Quote from "Dauroth" »

I always wondered: Is Hell going to be randomized, or is it going to be static like the outdoor environments?

It was both in Diablo 2, right? I mean, I sorta remember taking a very similar path through all of Hell in D2 but I can't really remember.

Random can work very well if it's done right. I don't particularly care about over world stuff not being random as I'd rather be spending most of my time underground in a random area where random actually works.

Because, I enjoy exploring. Unless it's Act 3 in Diablo 2.

Edit:

I'd like to add that nothing in TQ was randomized and it was very enjoyable. It only got stale when you made a new character, got him through Act 1, and then had another character on a higher difficulty traverse through the same area. In that way, random is really good.

Random can also set up for some absolutely amazing non-random content. While Hellgate: London had atrocious looking and playing random areas (for the most part it was all the same), it had some very, very, very well made content. I suppose the reason I feel this way is because of the randomness.

I'm currently playing through Sacred 2 and I've found the games MMO like world size to be stunning. It's so huge for an action-rpg.

So, I guess what I'm saying is that action-rpgs are pretty solid no matter how you piece it together. Either a complete random mess (I use mess in a good way), a completely linear never-changing path, or an open world approach... it's all good. This must mean that Diablo 3 will be good, right?

None of those pictures are colorful. They have color, but they're still not colorful.

You're confusing definitions for the same word.

1. Full of color; abounding in colors: colorful leaves in the fall.

2. Characterized by rich variety; vividly distinctive: colorful language.

Diablo 2 had color, but it wasn't ABOUNDING in colors. Each act had a specific color pallete that is reached from. Act 1 had light greens and greys. Act 2 had Yellows, Oranges, and Browns. Act 3 had dark browns, dark greens, and dark greys. Act 4 had lava colors (red, yellow, brown, orange) and grey. Act 5 had blues, greens, and greys.

So, to summarize, the scenery in the game had:

Greens, greys, yellows, oranges, browns, reds, and blues.

If all of those things happened in one act of the game, like we're seeing in Diablo 3, then sure, that would be colorful.

Color was used in Diablo 1 and 2 to signify status and power. A bright colored Fallen One was always more powerful than his more muted colored compatriots just like a brightly colored Barbarian was more powerful than his more muted colored self earlier in the game. Spells did the same thing.

The other impact color had on the game was to quickly inform the player of status ailments on either him or the enemy.

To summarize:

Diablo 1 and 2 used color to signify things. It was tasteful and had a dramatic impact on the world. A touch of red in a grey hallway had much more impact than smothering the entire thing in a red light.

Which is what people complain about.

Quick Edit:

The filters used to show that YOU had an ailment were subtle. Showing a screen shot of it is bullocks. That would be like saying that motion blur isn't subtle in TF2 when you present a screen shot of it.

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/pc/2007/10/10/team_fortress_2/5

"Caves are still awesome, but you probably don't want magical purple and green lighting in a cave, it's probably going to have a much different feel."

You're right.

I also don't want to see 'magical purple and green lighting' anywhere. I'd rather see a pale yellow light with shadows and then add those colors from a stained glass window in small amounts.

I mean, magical purple and green lighting has a place. That place isn't the Tristram Cathedral. Maybe, like... The Magic Forest or something. You can fight some unicorns and happy smiley clouds and rainbows there.

Quote from "Trouble" »

I have to disagree right, there...

That's precisely the point I disagree with as well.

As I stated earlier, it sounds more like they want to force me to look at the world they created instead of the world they created with a bunch of bodies and corpses on top of it.

I'm sure you can guess which I'd prefer.

Sounds like they don't want blood to muck up the world they've created more than anything else. You know, instead of giving players the option to have different amounts of blood decal and corpse time like other games have.

How about just having them disappear after they move off screen?

I really think they're not thinking outside the box on this. There are ways around it. There's always a away around it.

Edit: It's really as simple as having "Corpse decay time: Slow/Medium/Fast/None" and "Blood decal decay time: Slow/Medium/Fast/None". Leave it up to the user so those with high end computers can enjoy the extra money we spent (on a computer) while playing a game we waited eons to play.

I don't think I like the inventory system very much. Seems largely confusing. Three separate bags for different kinds of items is kinda... =\.

With TQ we had multiple bags that we could do what we wanted with. Most split what the bags were used for (equipment, those rune stuffs, selling items) but if I needed some more selling room I could put an item in my rune bag or my equipment bag. Here, I don't see the choice. Seems too strict.

Also, I kind of laughed at the "Some people like tetris, some people don't. To make both groups happy we removed tetris altogether while giving people different bags that only fit certain kinds of items!" That just seems like it made those that don't like tetris happy and not both groups.

Indifferent to the system though.

I'm indifferent to the skill trees, although seeing some of those icons before is kind of... disheartening? I hope they're placeholders for something a bit different. Less IN YOUR FACE with the art.

I like the rage system.

But... I thought we were promised some sort of new info? I didn't get anything new out of it aside from the updated UI stuff. That's not that great =\. Was hoping for more info on where we would be adventuring or maybe something special about a new class... or something about that new type of item.

Nadda though.

Quote from "PhrozenDragon" »

I'm one of them. While the intention of steam is wondeful, I hate the fact that I have to have it on to play, and that I HAVE to have it patched to the latest version. Plus it's slow as hell to start, which doesn't make any sense.

I hope Blizzard releases Battle-net 2 with the intent of making it a complimentary software for online play, and not necessary for Singleplayer action.

Well, the only thing you need with Steam is to have it on. That doesn't mean you have to have it online, though in order to play offline you need to get online once every two weeks. I don't understand the patched to the latest version complaint.

However, I agree that it shouldn't be required.

Quote from "Daemaro" »

True Kenzai but like I said in my second post (I think). There is virtually no way they could have rounded up the whole team. Nor would it have probably went over well, they left for a reason I'm sure.

So I think they're doing the best they can without having much if any of the old team and I still feel like it looks like a very solid game. So far.

I think they could have tried a bit harder to match the Diablo style instead of just saying "WELP, IT'S HARD DOING SOMETHING DIFFERENT THAN WHAT WE ARE USED TO DOING" and just going along with it. At least, that's what it comes off as to me. They have all the source material they need. Two games worth of content to look at and examine what made Diablo 1 and 2 Diablo instead of Warcraft or Starcraft.

The entire Blizzard North deal was that they had to relocate or get lost. Many chose to get lost, some chose to relocate. I don't think there was much hostility there so I don't see how some commission work would have been such a big deal, especially with WoW being the juggernaut cash cow that it is.

Mainly, it seems like Blizzard has a bunch of fresher blood working on the game and, with something as big as Diablo (really, this is Blizzard we are talking about... there should be absolutely no excuses made on their behalf) it's not looking like a very good idea.

Mainly, going back and reading the Jay Wilson interviews show his inexperience with the game. There are gems like:

If you look at Diablo II, it's a far more colorful game than people give it credit for -- especially in their creatures.

No, they really aren't. Creatures that are not under the effect of an ailment, or are not special/stronger than their normal counterparts were not that colorful. At the time, and especially with 2D, it's hard to show that an enemy is poisoned, or if they are frozen, or if this guy is stronger than another. In a game like Diablo, that's pretty important stuff.

Things like that weren't a major issue in Diablo 1 because of the lack of ailments and special creatures. In 3D, though, it's much easier to show that an enemy is frozen (have them in a block of ice, as an example, or glow green for poisoned, or on fire for... fire). Which is funny because...

What we found was a lot of the art design in Diablo II does not translate well into 3-D. An example that I like to use is if you take a comic book hero and put him into a movie and you translate their costume exactly, they look ridiculous because the art style is so much more simplistic in a 2-D drawing than when you up-res it and put it in 3-D.

Which is pretty bogus.

Examine Hellgate: London. That game had Diablo written all over it graphically. It looked good in the places that weren't random. It looked like Diablo should look in 3D.

Even further, Watchmen. It has nothing to do with super hero costumes looking ridiculous when you change the medium from 2D to 3D. It has everything to do with the costume looking ridiculous to begin with. Does Spiderman look stupid in 3D? What about Superman?

No, they don't.

Going back to Hellgate: London, there are TONS of monsters that were straight copies from Diablo 2 baddies. The leapers in the desert are a prime example. Those translated very well to 3D.

But his statement also doesn't make sense. Unless I can move the camera around then, regardless of the world and units being 3D, it's still isometric. Last time I checked, this means the below is redundant.

We try to make garish monsters on a more drab background, and it didn't come out most of the time because the lighting itself would gray everything down. So we found that we had to make the general background more vibrant.

Like in other isometric games? What? It doesn't seem like there is much in terms of lighting going on in the game anyway. Everything is roughly the same amount of light in entire areas, except for around torches and the like which are slightly lighter.

Isn't that exactly how Diablo 2 was minus the pallet and the light that exists in all parts of everything?

But isn't that the point? To be scared? To not be able to see your enemies very well? That was the entire point of the lighting in Diablo 1 and 2, right? Not knowing exactly what the thing that you can vaguely see is until it gets in to your light radius (or a light). That was chilling the first time through.

The big thing that I would say is that there are people who just don't like colors, and they love the current trend of photorealistic gray/brown games which I personally don't care for.

The irony here is that he came from Relic, the guys who made DoW and Company of Heroes, both fairly photorealistic gray/brown (especially for DoW seeing as how the source material is pretty vivid and wild).

He then goes on to say:

...where I can't tell them apart. I don't want to make a game that I can't tell apart from another game. I want a game that I work on to be original, and that's the way our team feels. They want everyone to see the art that they make and know that's a Blizzard game -- that it's something no one else would make.

And then you have games like:

Mythos
Battleforge
The Maw
Spore
Age of Booty
Free Worlds
Civilization Revolutions
Red Alert 3
Almost every single Wii game

... Really, the color is coming back and it's because of WoW and it's been like this for some time now. Instead of banking on that and knowing that developers would cash in on it, they just went with the trend. Now, when I look at a sea of games that look awful lot like Blizzard made them I don't really see anything special in the game. Yeah, it looks like a painting. So did Valkyria Chronicles and Okami. There's nothing special there either.

And yeah, I know this Jay Wilson guy is new to the team, but it also seems like he doesn't really know what he's talking about. He seems really sheltered gaming wise. He also seems like he's only seen screenshots of level 80 characters in Diablo fighting monsters in Act 5 Hell.

Mainly, what I'm saying with all of this is that I don't believe that they actually tried to do what North did with the game. I also don't think they've been working on the game 'for years'. I think this is particularly true with the pace they have set so far with this game. I feel that if they had been working on it for years they would, at the least, have more 'fleshed' out area wise and simply be able to work that content faster. So far there haven't been much in the area of updates. Take away the rune stuff (awesome!) and the few monsters they've added and the majority of these updates are simply just pictures of the same classes we've seen fighting in the same areas we've seen.

But this isn't to say I'm not grateful they are working on the game or appreciative of the work they have done and are doing OR find the game to be ugly or anything like that. I'm just skeptical that they aren't pulling the confidence card and spreading a good bit of misinformation to save face.

Quote from "loesr" »

Look, argumentation aside, Roper's statements really vindicate my continuing thoughts on the art style. What we've seen of DIII to date just is not gothic fantasy.

It's not that it's not dark enough, it's not that there's too much color, and it's not that it's bad. It's just not the same gritty gothic art style. I still think it looks great, and I will still buy it. It's just that it feels like switching from listening to Tool to hearing Weezer. I truly love both bands, but in completely different ways.

Frankly, for all those who thought folks in my camp were completely insane, it's nice to have a somewhat authoritative source with the same opinion.

Wow, someone actually gets it! That's exactly what it feels like as well. It's not that I don't like the way it looks, it's just that it doesn't feel dark, spooky, or gothic. It feels very much like the Haunted Mansion at Disney World. Similar colors, similar spooky feel, but not frightful, scary, or believable.

In other words, it feels less like Diablo and more like you're playing as a human in WC3 and fighting against undead on a user created map. It's kind of jolting and that was where most of the fuss came from.

Admittedly, they have been changing it so the game is more dark (lighting wise), but I don't think they understand, like most of the people saying "Not dark?" and posting a screenshot of something at night, what dark in the context of scary is. Yeah, we've only seen a bit, but this seems awfully weird showing us a world that looks bright and colorful, coupled with bright and colorful monsters... it doesn't fit.

Yeah, Diablo 2 had brightly colored enemies and weapons, but only to denote a status (frozen, poisoned, special). It looked terrible when an enemy was poisoned or frozen and it using similar colors just isn't cutting it for me.

This isn't to say that the game doesn't look fun ~ it's Diablo. I still play it every now and then. It simply looks less like Diablo and more like Warcraft like Roper said and like what everyone who was icky about the art said as well.

Quote from "Daemaro" »

True Kenzai but like I said in my second post (I think). There is virtually no way they could have rounded up the whole team. Nor would it have probably went over well, they left for a reason I'm sure.

So I think they're doing the best they can without having much if any of the old team and I still feel like it looks like a very solid game. So far.

I think they could have tried a bit harder to match the Diablo style instead of just saying "WELP, IT'S HARD DOING SOMETHING DIFFERENT THAN WHAT WE ARE USED TO DOING" and just going along with it. At least, that's what it comes off as to me. They have all the source material they need. Two games worth of content to look at and examine what made Diablo 1 and 2 Diablo instead of Warcraft or Starcraft.

The entire Blizzard North deal was that they had to relocate or get lost. Many chose to get lost, some chose to relocate. I don't think there was much hostility there so I don't see how some commission work would have been such a big deal, especially with WoW being the juggernaut cash cow that it is.

Mainly, it seems like Blizzard has a bunch of fresher blood working on the game and, with something as big as Diablo (really, this is Blizzard we are talking about... there should be absolutely no excuses made on their behalf) it's not looking like a very good idea.

Mainly, going back and reading the Jay Wilson interviews show his inexperience with the game. There are gems like:

If you look at Diablo II, it's a far more colorful game than people give it credit for -- especially in their creatures.

No, they really aren't. Creatures that are not under the effect of an ailment, or are not special/stronger than their normal counterparts were not that colorful. At the time, and especially with 2D, it's hard to show that an enemy is poisoned, or if they are frozen, or if this guy is stronger than another. In a game like Diablo, that's pretty important stuff.

Things like that weren't a major issue in Diablo 1 because of the lack of ailments and special creatures. In 3D, though, it's much easier to show that an enemy is frozen (have them in a block of ice, as an example, or glow green for poisoned, or on fire for... fire). Which is funny because...

What we found was a lot of the art design in Diablo II does not translate well into 3-D. An example that I like to use is if you take a comic book hero and put him into a movie and you translate their costume exactly, they look ridiculous because the art style is so much more simplistic in a 2-D drawing than when you up-res it and put it in 3-D.

Which is pretty bogus.

Examine Hellgate: London. That game had Diablo written all over it graphically. It looked good in the places that weren't random. It looked like Diablo should look in 3D.

Even further, Watchmen. It has nothing to do with super hero costumes looking ridiculous when you change the medium from 2D to 3D. It has everything to do with the costume looking ridiculous to begin with. Does Spiderman look stupid in 3D? What about Superman?

No, they don't.

Going back to Hellgate: London, there are TONS of monsters that were straight copies from Diablo 2 baddies. The leapers in the desert are a prime example. Those translated very well to 3D.

But his statement also doesn't make sense. Unless I can move the camera around then, regardless of the world and units being 3D, it's still isometric. Last time I checked, this means the below is redundant.

We try to make garish monsters on a more drab background, and it didn't come out most of the time because the lighting itself would gray everything down. So we found that we had to make the general background more vibrant.

Like in other isometric games? What? It doesn't seem like there is much in terms of lighting going on in the game anyway. Everything is roughly the same amount of light in entire areas, except for around torches and the like which are slightly lighter.

Isn't that exactly how Diablo 2 was minus the pallet and the light that exists in all parts of everything?

But isn't that the point? To be scared? To not be able to see your enemies very well? That was the entire point of the lighting in Diablo 1 and 2, right? Not knowing exactly what the thing that you can vaguely see is until it gets in to your light radius (or a light). That was chilling the first time through.

The big thing that I would say is that there are people who just don't like colors, and they love the current trend of photorealistic gray/brown games which I personally don't care for.

The irony here is that he came from Relic, the guys who made DoW and Company of Heroes, both fairly photorealistic gray/brown (especially for DoW seeing as how the source material is pretty vivid and wild).

He then goes on to say:

...where I can't tell them apart. I don't want to make a game that I can't tell apart from another game. I want a game that I work on to be original, and that's the way our team feels. They want everyone to see the art that they make and know that's a Blizzard game -- that it's something no one else would make.

And then you have games like:

Mythos
Battleforge
The Maw
Spore
Age of Booty
Free Worlds
Civilization Revolutions
Red Alert 3
Almost every single Wii game

... Really, the color is coming back and it's because of WoW and it's been like this for some time now. Instead of banking on that and knowing that developers would cash in on it, they just went with the trend. Now, when I look at a sea of games that look awful lot like Blizzard made them I don't really see anything special in the game. Yeah, it looks like a painting. So did Valkyria Chronicles and Okami. There's nothing special there either.

And yeah, I know this Jay Wilson guy is new to the team, but it also seems like he doesn't really know what he's talking about. He seems really sheltered gaming wise. He also seems like he's only seen screenshots of level 80 characters in Diablo fighting monsters in Act 5 Hell.

Mainly, what I'm saying with all of this is that I don't believe that they actually tried to do what North did with the game. I also don't think they've been working on the game 'for years'. I think this is particularly true with the pace they have set so far with this game. I feel that if they had been working on it for years they would, at the least, have more 'fleshed' out area wise and simply be able to work that content faster. So far there haven't been much in the area of updates. Take away the rune stuff (awesome!) and the few monsters they've added and the majority of these updates are simply just pictures of the same classes we've seen fighting in the same areas we've seen.

But this isn't to say I'm not grateful they are working on the game or appreciative of the work they have done and are doing OR find the game to be ugly or anything like that. I'm just skeptical that they aren't pulling the confidence card and spreading a good bit of misinformation to save face.

Quote from "Murderface" »

Bill is stating that the art style of Blizz North differs from Irvine. People with preconceived notions think that Irvine=WoWish. That is clearly a false assumption in my eyes.

I don't think so.

You can easily see the difference between the studios. The Irvine Studio has a very distinct visual style. Sharp, crisp lines with vivid colors for models and more subdued, passive colors (except for purple) for the landscape.

This is what we see in D3. Exactly what we see. It's Diablo but without the gritty gothic psuedo-realism.

This looks like a Blizzard game. The thing is, though, is that Diablo wasn't a Blizzard game, it was a Blizzard North game. The distinct difference in the art styles found between the two studios is striking.

If anything, Hellgate: London looks more like Diablo than Diablo 3 does. Roper took the art style from North and put it in that game. Visually, Hellgate was amazing. Where it failed was the tedious and boring nature of the gameplay coupled with the reliance on monthly fees.

It didn't fail because of the art style.

Diablo 3, so far, doesn't feel like Diablo. It feels more like a Craft game put in to the gameplay of Diablo. The gameplay is very Diablo but the world, so far, doesn't remotely look like it. It appears more like Titan Quest or Mythos than Diablo.

The game looks good, but it doesn't look like Diablo. It may play like it, it may have the same story, but it looks more like Warcraft than Diablo.

Quote from "Daemaro" »

Let's just see how much of a success the games he puts out lately are.

Then maybe I'll care what he has to say.


It just really sounds like he's eating sour grapes lately.

What on Earth does his success with non-Diablo related games have anything to do with it looking more like a "Craft" game (it does, I.E. the chief complaint the majority of the graphic complainers had) and less like a Diablo game?

I find it more than just coincedental that my complaints with the way the game looks are exactly the same as the Ex-Vice Pres. of Blizzard Norths complaints. They aren't hitting on the gothic feel. It looks like a "Craft" game.

I agree with Roper entirely, despite thinking he's a terrible lead designer and president.

Quote from "Dauroth" »

Not dark and gritty? Then how do you call this:

Spooky.

Not dark.

Not gritty.

That's Halloween level spook, not demon ripping scared.

Quote from "kefka666333abc123" »

Its blizzard. chances are most everything is done right. Looking at there track record no amount of bitching from ultra picky fans will convince me otherwise, at the very least I wont worry about it until I play the game myself.

See, if WoW did not exist then I would agree. Everything about WoW, for me, was a major failure. It's got nothing to do with how it looks and everything to do with gameplay. Every expansion has been a major failure. Every new addition showed me a complete lack of competence.

Remove WoW and I would agree entirely. Blizzard has a great track record. From Rock and Roll Racing to The Lost Vikings to WC3. Everything has been great. Really well made, high production values, well designed, etc. Of course there have been patches to things I disagree with, but nothing as completely horrible as WoW was (again, for me).

However, I see the influences that WoW has had on Diablo 3 and some of those things are not good... primarily in the art style that is slowly turning itself in to what I feel Diablo looks like (compared to the release video and screen shots, the game already looks fourteen times more like Diablo than it originally did!).

The skill system looks repulsive. Way too many passive abilities, especially for the wizard. Just bring back synergies, but instead of hastily making it to try an attempt at balance, think them through. Build the game around them. More is better, and so far I'm not impressed with the number of ACTUAL spells the wizard has.

For things I feel they've done right...

Character design. Spot on with the Witch Doctor. From the shaking hands to the armor, so far... awesome.

The lighting needs some work, primarily with removing the blue-green tint that plagues an area of the game but the lighting that some spells give off is awesome.

The rune system is probably the best aspect of the game thus far. Absolutely loving the idea.

So far, that's really it. I'm indifferent about the majority of other changes.