DiabloFans

Quote from xaimx

Cains death...

The butcher could have used some hyping up in the buildup to the final boss of act 1. In all the other acts, you knew who you were gunning for, but the Butcher kinda comes out of nowhere with a pitiful introduction from Mahgda. How did the butcher come back after he was defeated in Diablo 1? I wanna know. Dont need anything super detailed, but at least some mention of it would be cool.

As has been mentioned, "The Butcher" is apparently a type of demon. Like, if their was a boss called "the succubus."

As for giving the Butcher some hype, I just thought of an idea. It would make the Butcher better, and maybe make Cain's death better.

So, after you get the third sword piece, you head back to town, and you find the Butcher rampaging through it. He popped up out of nowhere, took down Tyreal in a single hit (without his sword or memories, he's not a great fighter), but before he could kill him, Cain and Leah fend off the Butcher, who runs off with Tyreal. Cain was mortaling wounded, and the last of his strength is used to repair the sword.

Quote from Azjenco

Belial is supposed to be a liar and manipulator, but his entire act was paper thin. I don't know if Blizzard imagines that they're making games for kids who'll be put off by complex plots, or if they just think we are dumb, but come on. If your hero couldn't point at Prince Hakan by the time you went into the sewers, then Sanctuary must be filled with gullible idiots if this eluded them. Act 2 should have been a complex "whodunit" story, where you couldn't trust anyone, and even started suspecting your own allies.

Agreed. I think all they really needed is an "evil" vizier to be the blind. That would at least throw the scent off of Hakan. As for making it a complex whodunit, they would have had to have more conversation with more NPCs. Yeah, they had Leah, Adria, Tyreal, Hakan, and Kulle who interact with you on a somewhat regular basis, but you knew Leah and Tyreal weren't it, and Kulle most likely wasn't either. That left Adria and Hakan, but only Hakan was in a position to actually do something. There are enough named NPCs, but their interactions are not mandatory, which would be needed to make it work.

Quote from Azjenco

Diablo, proved so sad in the end, it just mad heaven look pathetic. Iskatu, Rakanoth, Izual, these were the guys responsible for bringing the angelic host to its knees. Now I know the PC is a Nephalem, but come on. You single-handedly take out the force that beat the angels? How did the High Heavens wage the eternal war, exactly? There should have been more camaraderie between you and the sympathizing angels. Why didn't Act 4 get its own town? That was just lazy, real lazy, Blizzard. How about a High Heaven outpost where they could have clued you in and created a sense of resistance to the player. Iskatu, Rakanoth and Izual should also have been given a bit more of a presence, make them "worthy" of being hell's champions berating Heaven's best. And Diablo was just ... meh. The breaking the seals part in D2 had a great impact in setting up the magnitude of Diablo. In D3 they should have had a similar opening. Many you having to activate angelic braziers that would have blocked some of Diablo's influence in Heaven, which in turn anger him enough to turn his ire onto you. And less talking! Why pause mid fight to give an speech about his feelings and explain how angry he is. Again, show, don't tell.

Well, really, Diablo was only strong enough to take down the gate and beat Imperius. He took down the Angels with use of a united Burning Hells. I believe it has been mentioned that one of the reasons why the angels have lasted this long is that the Hells tend to fight amongst themselves. In this case, they didn't.

Plus, the High Heavens were already weak. They were missing two Council members from the get go, and with Imperius's wounds, they were down another. Then you had the demon army distract the angel army, and Diablo just wanders around, with no one even close to strong enough to stop him. Personally, I thought it made sense that the Heavens fell. Course, it could have been better done, but overall, I thought it worked (aside from the constant video chat).

Yeah, I think BoA is an item sink. Personally, I think it's something they needed from the get go, even if BoA isn't the best.

Now that they're dropping the AH (which is a pity, IMO, as other trading method is...terrible), I don't think they really need a BoA or something to denote self found. Even if you do trade for it, that probably means you found something of near equal value.

Quote from maka

Quote from ruksak

Quote from Mini641

I really loved the D2 mod scene so it kind of bothers me when Blizzard says D2 offline was a mistake. I think maybe they should have held their tongue because a lot of people really loved playing offline and with mods. Also third party programs like the one sthat let you share stash space were awesome.

Like i said, they should just stop talking about D2 because they are coming off like they dont like the game at all. Its just bad PR in general.

It's important to note; The same avenues that made mods possible is exactly what made hero-editors, pic-it, insta TP'ing and a hundred other game-breaking hacks that spoiled the fun for many online.

You can't point out the good without pointing out the bad.

Your post reminds me of a very nice quote by your own Ben Franklin....

People forget the full quote wasn't just "give up liberty for security," it was: "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Notice ESSENTIAL and TEMPORARY? I don't think online only gave up anything essential in this game (if it were single player only, I might say different, in fact it's a big reason why I refused to use Steam for 5+ years), nor do I think what we gained was temporary. If this was an ubisoft online only, then it would have been, because their online only tends to just be a server check, you can't run the game without connecting to the server, but the server doesn't do anything useful. Whereas here, it does do something useful - reducing hacks and dupes.

And for the OP, at the time, being online only would have been foolish. But, I don't think the guy was saying they were wrong to allow offline play. He said it's wasn't some perfect utopia, and that it upset a number of people. Which is true.

Quote from DesmondTiny

I'll probably start HC off with crusader Although I'm not entirely sure yet.

This is my plan. It will absorb any DC's without risking a character I've put in a lot more time on. Plus it will fit with my long term goal of finally getting a lvl 60 (now 70?) in each class in HC. I currently need to get the Wiz, Monk, and Barb up. Hopefully I'll have at least the Wiz and Monk there by the time RoS comes out.

Obviously, these are my opinions of the biggest issues that are the most easy to change.

The biggest thing is cut out the monologuing. It didn't add anything to have Azmodan on Diablo constantly taunt us.

The next biggest flaw is to rewrite Belial/Hekan to make it less obvious that Hekan is Belial. I'm not sure how we could do that, though.

Finally, I think it would be better if we could give Cain's death more impact. All it does is give us another reason to chase Maghda into Act 2, as Leah immediately accepts Cain's prophecies as soon as Tyreal shows her that Angels do exist. I mean, we would have chased Maghda into Act 2 anyway, given what she did to Wistram, and what she wanted to do to Tyreal. It is necessary, given that the Book of Tyreal shows us that Cain knew Adria was once the co-leader of the Coven, so we either change that part (but then you still have to deal with him being more likely to spot Adria's evil then anyone else), or come up with another way to kill him. While I don't have a problem with his death, I just think it didn't improve the story.

I really enjoyed this.

This is actually the kind of thing I miss from the older Blizzard games. I remember when the games came with a manual that was a bloody text book, stuffed full of random lore. Now we get tiny little things.

I like your idea Jinshin.

Maybe he hasn't actually become the Aspect of Death, but maybe he's aligned himself with Trang'Oul, and he seeks to remove the Angiris Council to balance out the loss of the Prime Evils.

I mean, lets face it, if you're concerned with seeking balance between High Heavens and Burning Hells, then the last three games have tilted the scales a long way out of balance. The 7 evils destroyed and who knows how many lesser named demons killed, including important ones, like Hephaestus. The angels have sort of lost Tyreal and Maltheal. That's it.

Another idea is he wants to recreate Anu before he split himself in two, so he needs the souls of the seven evils to represent Tathemet.

Although it's probably more likely he really has taken on the Aspect of Death, and believes that since all things end in death, the point of creation is to die, and he wants to do that.

I like this idea, a lot. Of course, I generally dislike MF on items for various reasons.

However, I think the "per game" idea isn't a good idea. Not only is it heavily weighted towards those who can play for several hours in a sitting, but it forces people to run through areas they don't like. While I like the idea of getting away from real short runs, like the Baal or Pindleskin runs everyone did in D2, I don't like the idea of forcing people through sections of the game they don't want to go through either.

Perhaps, instead of it being per game, it's per day, or per week? For someone who plays a lot, and can play for several hours in a sitting, all it means is that each sitting skips the level up period. So it is an increase, but likely isn't a massive increase (because most of the time would be at lvl 10 anyway). But for someone who can only play 20 minutes to an hour at a time, they can still benefit.

Also, that exp meter is too big. I'd make it a green bar just above the normal lvl bar, then put a small number in the middle (dividing the bar in half).

Awesome news. Thanks.

Why wouldn't you pick up instant brimstone legendarys? Are the crafting just that bad that they don't even sell? It's not like it would fill up much space in the stash/

Well? I haven't seen this anywhere, so I'm not sure about it.

I tried to get into PoE, but it just was not my cup of tea. Granted, I tried it a long time ago, so perhaps it's been fixed since...I also only played up to part way through Act 2, so maybe it gets super awesome later on?

Anyway, I stopped playing because:

I disliked the art style. It looked, to me, to be a crappy HD version of D2, in terms of art/graphics.

I really didn't like the penchant the game had for having a tiny light radius. It felt like I was stumbling around in the dark. That works, imo, for atmosphere in first person games (like System Shock. Holy crap that game could be scary), but not so much for 3rd person.

The combat felt weak. It was like I swinging a stick. Even when I could kill in one hit, it didn't feel like I was hitting anything.

The combat wasn't visually interesting. Maybe later on, it is, but early on, it wasn't. I can remember my young self laughing at the Necro's corpse explosion. That's the kind of thing I want in combat, and I think D3 does that WAAAYY better than PoE does (or did).

Loot. It was boring. I can't say that D3 does it really well, but I just never felt like I was getting anything good, and I think that's because of how the skills worked (being items you socket). I could see this being good later, but it just seemed like it was unnecessarily complicated.

Lore. Not that it was bad, I was lost. I'm a lore geek. I listen to and try and find everything. I didn't know who was doing what, why they were doing it, or even where I was. Why were prisoners being treated that way? Who locked up the gates? What was with this or that. It felt like I was missing something. Maybe I was, what with it being beta and all, but I don't think a game's lore should require any outside reading to have a basic understanding, and it felt like I needed that.

I DID think it had a lot of good ideas (the barter system instead of money, the "skill" tree, the runes), I just felt that the set up was fundamentally sub-optimal. Again, it may have changed, but I didn't see anything then that made me want to try it again now.

Quote from shaggy

Just remember, this is a game. If you find an item that you truly don't want to use, you shouldn't think "Wow, I'd like to trade this for something more useful but trading makes me want to stick my testicles in a blender so I'll just put it in my stash and hope RNG is better for me." That's decidedly NOT fun. And games should be fun.

This is why I like the AH. Not because I think it was 100% successful, but it was because it was an attempt to fix a major flaw (IMO) with D2. Of the 10+ characters I maxed in the game, I think I made...2 trades?

Quote from maka

Quote from Kblavkalash

I don't understand... they remove AHs so people play the game itself more, but with in-game trade being the only trade option people will spend days and days just looking for items they want. I am not even mentioning that trading sites will shine and a lot of people will just spend their time their.

Yeah I may have spent hundreds of hours in AH in Diablo 3, but I spent just as much or more hours in trading sites in Diablo 2.

That said, I see a lot of advantages of removing AHs.

Why not substitute those "AH hours" for "in-game hours" instead of "3rd party site hours"?

Because 1 hour of AH/3rd party site is like 20+ hours in game? And that's probably a massive low ball. A lot of people play the game for the sense of progression. I, personally, do not. I stop playing when it's not fun, and getting new gear is only a small percentage of that. But others do.



Anyway, I really hope they come up with something to replace the AH. And by replace, I mean something that makes it so you can barter in ways other than a stupid amount of threads/named games (which you couldn't do when I played last spring, and I assume you still can't do).

Perhaps it's a barter house, where you post what items you want to trade, and what items you want to trade for, and you can search by items you want, items others want, and specific trades (this for that). If they did this, they would have to make it anonymous, and it would still be painful, because you have to hope that someone, somewhere, wants what you have, has what you want, AND is using the trade system.

I also hope they have a good alternate to trading. Perhaps increase the value you can get by selling/salvaging? The idea is "I have this legendary that I won't, and I don't want to bother trading, therefore, howerver, I can get something useful from vendors, so that is what I'll do." That would be my guess at what brimstone is for, it is just that the AH combined with not so good crafting made it not so useful.

Quote from ruksak

Quote from overneathe

Quote from Hiderius

Yep this is why many D3 players abandoned it. The quests, small linear world is too repetitive!

There's been no significant Blizzard post which addresses this issue. All they talk about is itemization, drop rates, auction house, difficulty settings lol.

Because that's what the huge majority want right now. Thus why the majority right now is happy. At least semi happy. Can't satisfy every single one.

Agreed.

Anyone whom is adverse to heavy repetition has no business playing a Diablo game.

I always love the complaints that the quest are too repetitive, and the world is too linear. Cause everyone used the random maps in D2, and didn't just run Baal and a few other bosses. And they totally didn't just power level past every single quest, which was totally not just "go here, kill this, except get this item first."

Don't get me wrong, the quest are repetitive, and the worlds are somewhat non-random (not "linear"), but that's pretty close to par for the course (yes, slightly less random than D2, but at least everything isn't a big box with something randomly inside, or a long slog through a jungle).

Quote from TianZi

The thing is in ActionRPGs gear plays a major role in the game. IMO the best thing that could have been done is to make the most difficult content REQUIRE BiS gear and a very high level of skill, maybe like a GM level in StarCraft. At the same time that high difficulty content can not drop gear that impacts gameplay. rewards in it should have been simply cosmetic items, effects, and dyes.

In such a situation there will be content difficult enough to be challenging for everyone, yet players can always farm the best stat items without having to play near-impossible content.

I thought inferno was that, more or less, with the exception of a few OP'ed skills? I never really got very far in Inferno, so I don't know for sure.