So, on PS3 RoS UEE, EP used to do 1179% over 9s (as you'd expect for 2.0.6, which consoles are on), had a patch two days ago, now it does 1685%, is that normal? Was there ever a live patch with that value? I see the 2.1.0 PTR had it for a while, but it didn't go live. EP still does 50% monster health damage.
If you want to view it from a story standpoint. 20 years have past since D2, you can't just make the same music for a different world setting two decades later...
I don't want the SAME music.
I've said this three times now.
If I wanted the same music, do you know what I could do? Turn off the music, and play the D2 music.
That is NOT my complaint.
My complaint is that the music in question is not very exciting. It's not bad either (apart from Borderlands - my ears still hurt from that), but it's not like "WOW HOLY SHIT!" like D2's music was.
I think it's just your old D1/D2 nostalgic mindset. You'll get over it eventually.
And besides the game needs to evolve, the music along side it too, it needs something fresh added. With that said, the sound departament assured us that they will pay a homage to the previous games, but they just can't play the same music on different intruments all over again with some slight rearrangements . Imagine how restricting this is for a composer...
You're really clueless if you think you know what music I like better than me! I mean, wtf? I suppose I only like oranges because I had them when I was a kid, I should learn to enjoy durians, they're the fruit of the future!
???!!?!!?!
It's nothing to do with "D2 nostalgic mindset", it's to do with grindy industrial music overlayed with vague D2-style riffs vs. orchestral music and spanish guitar. The one called Borderlands is actually unpleasant to listen to. I mean, whilst the other three tracks are all decent "background music to a scary game", none of them are like D2's "I have them in my playlist"-material.
I don't like grindy-sounding industrial or wobbly atmospheric-style music as much as I like orchestral music. I never have. Next you'll be telling me I should prefer Metallica to Mozart because Metallic is more modern and "music has to evolve". Bollocks to that. 400 years and Mozart is still Just Plain Better than Metallica (I think Metallica would actually agree, tbh). Maybe I should like Lady Gaga better than Within Temptation because she's newer?
I don't want the SAME music as D2, either, I want music that's as GOOD as D2. It's not like it doesn't exist! ME1/2 had music that good. DA:O and DA2 weren't as good but were decent. Morrowind/Oblivion had music that good. Skyrim looks like it's going to have music just as good as those to. ME3 might even have better music than ME1/2.
So please don't try to tell me why I have to like one kind of music better than another. It's bloody silly.
Thanks for the links. I don't know how I feel about those tracks.
On the one hand, they've got a nice atmospheric quasi-industrial feel to them, and none of them are annoying or bad.
On the other hand, none of are as good as well, any D2 tracks. They seem really "generic" by comparison, more like an industrial musician doing a re-mix of the existing Diablo tracks than anything new or awesome. I hope they're saving "the good stuff" for nearer release.
I wish Blizzard hadn't managed to scare D2's composer (Matt Uelman) away - which is what I hear happened from someone who actually knows him very well.
I don't think the amount of time has anything to do with it really. Also, if you compare Diablo and Diablo 2, there were quite a number of large changes in the game systems between those games as well.
It's not unreasonable for people to expect Diablo 3 to be similar to Diablo 2, but it's also not unreasonable for them to make changes.
I'm not the one arguing that, Zombie, it's HunterSCtv arguing that because it's ten years, it's unreasonable to expect D2 to be much like D3, even though he's playing SC2, which is amazingly similar to SC1, really a direct sequel despite the fact that it's been twelve years.
If you want to play D2/LOD with better graphics you should play Torchlight, honestly. I'm very excited for every Diablo 3 aspect that has been revealed so far.. a little nervous about some, but excited. You can't really expect some tremendous resemblance between the two games, their release dates are over 10 years apart and RPGs have changed.
I think it's totally and utterly bizarre that someone with StarCraft in their name and logo is making this argument.
You should know better.
SC1 came out in 1998.
SC2 came out in 2010.
12 years. Yet SC2 is REMARKABLY similar to SC1! Some reviewers even openly criticised it for that! It's definitely the same visual style, the same audio style, the same sort of plot, and most importantly, the gameplay is virtually identical. There are no changes as big as removing skillpoints and stat points, or adding an RMAH.
Yet you are arguing that because D3 is coming out 11 years after it D2, it's totally unreasonable to expect it to be similar, and we're all big jerks who should go play Torchlight (which is actually more like Diablo 1 with no bugs and WoW-style graphics).
I mean what? 12 years is fine for SC, but 11 is too long for Diablo... And don't try and tell me it's because RTSes haven't changed. DoW1/2 and CoH totally changed RTSes forever in the period in-between SC1 and SC2. Whereas isometric ARPGs are still imitating D2.
For me, I am holding my judgement for when I can sit down and actually play it.
The problem is that you won't be allowed to do that without spending $60, unless you happen to go to the right convention (in which case you will get to play it very briefly). So in the end you'll either be giving Blizzard $60 because the game is called "D3", or going by what you read/watch online.
So that's not a particularly rational position. I rather hope D3 has some kind of demo or trial version - SC2 did (well, I got a trial of SC2 with my graphics card), so it's possible.
At this point I'm personally in the "Not pre-ordering, will wait for reviews" boat myself. Which is funny, because a few weeks ago I was in the "Will pre-order as soon as the various editions are in the appropriate store!".
Diablo 3 isn't WoWablo, it's true, but I have to say, I think the D3 version of "dark", has, so far seemed somehow more juvenile and silly than that in D2. Maybe that's because I've not heard the sound FX, of course. D2 had a lot of it's darkness in it's really distinctive and alarming sound FX - the monsters made some genuinely scary noises. Plus, the Demon Hunter is apparently supposed to be some sort of "Dark Hero", when she actually seemed like a posing '90s-comic-book-style idiot in her trailer, so that worries me a little.
We'll see as more information comes out, but D2 was a genuinely creepy game, even after you'd played it for years (particularly as it was so damn easy to die if you messed up). I hope D3 is.
As for all these people saying things like "I'm sure you will all love it!", well, I've heard that before about so many games that turned out to only be "decent" that you'll forgive me if I disregard it. If I had a penny for every person who told me Civ III was going to be a totally worthy and awesome successor to Civ II, well, I'd have a few pounds at least. In actuality it's now forgotten and ignored.
Bashiok is a fairly nice and reasonable guy with a sense of humour. I think bashing him personally is generally either very short-sighted (not realizing he doesn't get to choose what info to give out, and is just a mouthpiece), or just childish rage striking the nearest available target.
Blizzard, though, as a whole are a valid target for criticism. Trying to suggest that they aren't is simply a matter of trying to stifle debate and discussion.
Mindless stuff like "BLIZZ U SUX!" is pathetic and pointless, sure.
However things like "I don't think Blizzard have our best interests at heart" or "I believe Blizzard's judgement has been clouded by their profit motive" are perfectly reasonable.
Similarly, the OP claims Blizzard have played games like Sacred, Risen, Divine Divinity, Torchlight and so on, and I do not believe that that is true in any meaningful way, unless a senior designer or official PR guy (like Bashiok) has specifically asserted it. Blizzard don't seem to play every other game on the market, and I've seen senior Blizzard designers publicly express extreme surprise at features that have been in competing products for a long time.
A good example is Alex Afrasiabi, one of WoW's senior designers (possibly THE senior designer right now?), aka Furor, who whilst generally a smart guy, expressed extreme surprise after WAR came out about a number of features that WAR possessed - but they were features that many non-WoW MMORPGs possessed, and not unique to WAR, so it was clear that this senior designer had no only not really played most of the competitors to WoW in the preceding years, but none of his staff or the people under him had introduced him to these ideas.
Another example would be Blizzard's lead PvP designer for WoW, whose name escapes me. He expressed disbelief re: the PvP features of a couple of other MMOs (despite the fact that they were out and he could just have gone and played them!), and made a statement suggesting that it wasn't ever worth looking at competitors, because they didn't have millions of customers, did they? - Not something all Blizzard designers think, I'm sure.
This has nothing to do with Blizzard having balls. Guild Wars did the exact same thing and it proved to be a successful formula - in that kind of gameplay, which is completely different from Diablo.
in guild wars correct me if im wrong, you still put points in to stats which effected your skills yes? like ''fire magic'' you increase would increase all fire spells, so its not really the same.
You have a fixed number of points which you can re-arrange for free every time you go into town, so it's actually more similar than you would think, because you basically max the couple of skills/stats you need, so it's not like the numbers vary a whole lot.
As a piece of background, I'm old enough to have played D1, though I was a child at the time and so I don't remember following the development of D2.
As I have followed the development of D3, I have had the same feelings of hesitation as many Diablo fans in regards to some of the changes that have been made. Resistance to change is natural, but we must remember that change in and of itself does not bring about disaster. If that were the case, then Diablo 2 would have been a total failure. D2's skill system was a radical departure from the spell system used in D1. There were no trees in D1. There was no choosing of spells. There weren't even different skill sets for different characters. Huge changes were made between the first two games, and yet both games defined the ARPG market in their time.
Until this point in the development of D3, I have had this nagging feeling that D3 was really just D2 reskinned. That like SC2, there would be nothing to set D3 apart from the rest of the ARPG market other than its Blizzard polish. I was shocked and not at all pleased when I heard that there would be no skill points in D3, and then I realized that my nagging feeling of mediocrity had finally gone away.
None of us know what the system will really feel like to play, but it is my opinion that Blizzard has finally hit on something big enough to turn Diablo 3 into the next genre defining game, and I'm glad that some developer had the balls to throw out one of the most core elements to traditional RPG's because they thought it would make a better game.
TLDR; It's crazy enough, it just might work.
Blizzard's innovations have never been particularly successful, so I'm pretty leery of this. Every system Blizzard have had success with has been a system that other people worked on for years, that Blizzard then copied and improved, and most importantly - POLISHED! That's true of every Blizzard game, from Diablo through to WoW.
You say that D2 defined the ARPG market - but it didn't, not really. Most of the ARPGs that came after it had their own systems, or were inspired directly by Diablo 1 (which itself lifted all the most important gameplay elements except online multiplayer from roguelikes such as Angband and Moria).
You say "So crazy is might just work!".
I would agree with that, but it's a big "might". Blizzard's recent track records on innovations is not a strong one. Real ID-type systems, for example, are not becoming more common, in fact, after Blizzard found how much people disliked them, several companies quietly shut down projects to set up their own "Real ID"-type systems.
I think the skill system will work, because it's essentially a rip-off/refinement of the Guild Wars system (or so it seems), but I don't expect to see it copied. Online-only, no mods, well that's par for the course since Guild Wars, again. The cash AH? It's likely to make Blizzard a lot of money, but to give D3 something of a "buy 2 win" reputation, even if it's not deserved. Which will actually ATTRACT some players, but they're not the sort of players I enjoy playing with (not because they're wankers, necessarily - but because they're more interested in either making or spending money than having fun in the game).
your right there are 6 active skills and you can swap them out when you want. But the point is there are only three choices(passives) you can make as the player to specialize your skill in an attempt to make that build more viable. When you level all skills will level with you or scale with you, that means with out customizing there will be only a couple of builds that are Quote Un-quote "the best"
Hmmmmm.
If there are really 6 active SLOTS, each of which could have any of 12-24 different actual SKILLS in, then I don't think agree that it's that limited.
Because you have so many choices:
First off you're choosing which PARTICULAR six skills to be using right now - and EACH of those could have one of five different runes in, making it act quite differently.
That's a TON of choice right there.
Then you've got three passive SLOTS, and presumably a bunch of passive skills to choose from, too? Maybe they can have runes in too?
So to me that looks like there is pretty good customization. It's the same way of doing customization that's been done before, exactly, but if it's true that there are way more active skills than skill-slots, and same with passive, then, no customization is not in ruin, it's really different to how it was.
You can't really complain about "a couple of builds which are quote unquote 'the best'", because that's exactly what D2 had! Maybe it was three, maybe for some classes it hit six at some points, but the fact is, Diablo 2 had a very limited number of "viable builds". So long as Diablo 3 at least MATCHES that, so at least three totally different viable builds/class at release, and hopefully more like six+, then I'll think the customization is fine.
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I don't want the SAME music.
I've said this three times now.
If I wanted the same music, do you know what I could do? Turn off the music, and play the D2 music.
That is NOT my complaint.
My complaint is that the music in question is not very exciting. It's not bad either (apart from Borderlands - my ears still hurt from that), but it's not like "WOW HOLY SHIT!" like D2's music was.
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You're really clueless if you think you know what music I like better than me! I mean, wtf? I suppose I only like oranges because I had them when I was a kid, I should learn to enjoy durians, they're the fruit of the future!
???!!?!!?!
It's nothing to do with "D2 nostalgic mindset", it's to do with grindy industrial music overlayed with vague D2-style riffs vs. orchestral music and spanish guitar. The one called Borderlands is actually unpleasant to listen to. I mean, whilst the other three tracks are all decent "background music to a scary game", none of them are like D2's "I have them in my playlist"-material.
I don't like grindy-sounding industrial or wobbly atmospheric-style music as much as I like orchestral music. I never have. Next you'll be telling me I should prefer Metallica to Mozart because Metallic is more modern and "music has to evolve". Bollocks to that. 400 years and Mozart is still Just Plain Better than Metallica (I think Metallica would actually agree, tbh). Maybe I should like Lady Gaga better than Within Temptation because she's newer?
I don't want the SAME music as D2, either, I want music that's as GOOD as D2. It's not like it doesn't exist! ME1/2 had music that good. DA:O and DA2 weren't as good but were decent. Morrowind/Oblivion had music that good. Skyrim looks like it's going to have music just as good as those to. ME3 might even have better music than ME1/2.
So please don't try to tell me why I have to like one kind of music better than another. It's bloody silly.
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Thanks for the links. I don't know how I feel about those tracks.
On the one hand, they've got a nice atmospheric quasi-industrial feel to them, and none of them are annoying or bad.
On the other hand, none of are as good as well, any D2 tracks. They seem really "generic" by comparison, more like an industrial musician doing a re-mix of the existing Diablo tracks than anything new or awesome. I hope they're saving "the good stuff" for nearer release.
I wish Blizzard hadn't managed to scare D2's composer (Matt Uelman) away - which is what I hear happened from someone who actually knows him very well.
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I'm not the one arguing that, Zombie, it's HunterSCtv arguing that because it's ten years, it's unreasonable to expect D2 to be much like D3, even though he's playing SC2, which is amazingly similar to SC1, really a direct sequel despite the fact that it's been twelve years.
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I think it's totally and utterly bizarre that someone with StarCraft in their name and logo is making this argument.
You should know better.
SC1 came out in 1998.
SC2 came out in 2010.
12 years. Yet SC2 is REMARKABLY similar to SC1! Some reviewers even openly criticised it for that! It's definitely the same visual style, the same audio style, the same sort of plot, and most importantly, the gameplay is virtually identical. There are no changes as big as removing skillpoints and stat points, or adding an RMAH.
Yet you are arguing that because D3 is coming out 11 years after it D2, it's totally unreasonable to expect it to be similar, and we're all big jerks who should go play Torchlight (which is actually more like Diablo 1 with no bugs and WoW-style graphics).
I mean what? 12 years is fine for SC, but 11 is too long for Diablo... And don't try and tell me it's because RTSes haven't changed. DoW1/2 and CoH totally changed RTSes forever in the period in-between SC1 and SC2. Whereas isometric ARPGs are still imitating D2.
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The problem is that you won't be allowed to do that without spending $60, unless you happen to go to the right convention (in which case you will get to play it very briefly). So in the end you'll either be giving Blizzard $60 because the game is called "D3", or going by what you read/watch online.
So that's not a particularly rational position. I rather hope D3 has some kind of demo or trial version - SC2 did (well, I got a trial of SC2 with my graphics card), so it's possible.
At this point I'm personally in the "Not pre-ordering, will wait for reviews" boat myself. Which is funny, because a few weeks ago I was in the "Will pre-order as soon as the various editions are in the appropriate store!".
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We'll see as more information comes out, but D2 was a genuinely creepy game, even after you'd played it for years (particularly as it was so damn easy to die if you messed up). I hope D3 is.
As for all these people saying things like "I'm sure you will all love it!", well, I've heard that before about so many games that turned out to only be "decent" that you'll forgive me if I disregard it. If I had a penny for every person who told me Civ III was going to be a totally worthy and awesome successor to Civ II, well, I'd have a few pounds at least. In actuality it's now forgotten and ignored.
0
Blizzard, though, as a whole are a valid target for criticism. Trying to suggest that they aren't is simply a matter of trying to stifle debate and discussion.
Mindless stuff like "BLIZZ U SUX!" is pathetic and pointless, sure.
However things like "I don't think Blizzard have our best interests at heart" or "I believe Blizzard's judgement has been clouded by their profit motive" are perfectly reasonable.
Similarly, the OP claims Blizzard have played games like Sacred, Risen, Divine Divinity, Torchlight and so on, and I do not believe that that is true in any meaningful way, unless a senior designer or official PR guy (like Bashiok) has specifically asserted it. Blizzard don't seem to play every other game on the market, and I've seen senior Blizzard designers publicly express extreme surprise at features that have been in competing products for a long time.
A good example is Alex Afrasiabi, one of WoW's senior designers (possibly THE senior designer right now?), aka Furor, who whilst generally a smart guy, expressed extreme surprise after WAR came out about a number of features that WAR possessed - but they were features that many non-WoW MMORPGs possessed, and not unique to WAR, so it was clear that this senior designer had no only not really played most of the competitors to WoW in the preceding years, but none of his staff or the people under him had introduced him to these ideas.
Another example would be Blizzard's lead PvP designer for WoW, whose name escapes me. He expressed disbelief re: the PvP features of a couple of other MMOs (despite the fact that they were out and he could just have gone and played them!), and made a statement suggesting that it wasn't ever worth looking at competitors, because they didn't have millions of customers, did they? - Not something all Blizzard designers think, I'm sure.
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It's not in Blizzard's financial interest for that to be viable for most players.
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Seriously people think that because it's online-only, no-one will bot/hack? I guess no-one bots or hacks in WoW, lol!
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You have a fixed number of points which you can re-arrange for free every time you go into town, so it's actually more similar than you would think, because you basically max the couple of skills/stats you need, so it's not like the numbers vary a whole lot.
0
Blizzard's innovations have never been particularly successful, so I'm pretty leery of this. Every system Blizzard have had success with has been a system that other people worked on for years, that Blizzard then copied and improved, and most importantly - POLISHED! That's true of every Blizzard game, from Diablo through to WoW.
You say that D2 defined the ARPG market - but it didn't, not really. Most of the ARPGs that came after it had their own systems, or were inspired directly by Diablo 1 (which itself lifted all the most important gameplay elements except online multiplayer from roguelikes such as Angband and Moria).
You say "So crazy is might just work!".
I would agree with that, but it's a big "might". Blizzard's recent track records on innovations is not a strong one. Real ID-type systems, for example, are not becoming more common, in fact, after Blizzard found how much people disliked them, several companies quietly shut down projects to set up their own "Real ID"-type systems.
I think the skill system will work, because it's essentially a rip-off/refinement of the Guild Wars system (or so it seems), but I don't expect to see it copied. Online-only, no mods, well that's par for the course since Guild Wars, again. The cash AH? It's likely to make Blizzard a lot of money, but to give D3 something of a "buy 2 win" reputation, even if it's not deserved. Which will actually ATTRACT some players, but they're not the sort of players I enjoy playing with (not because they're wankers, necessarily - but because they're more interested in either making or spending money than having fun in the game).
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Everyone who disagrees with you is talking "a bunch of babbling bullshit".
Wow... that's some sad shit.
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Hmmmmm.
If there are really 6 active SLOTS, each of which could have any of 12-24 different actual SKILLS in, then I don't think agree that it's that limited.
Because you have so many choices:
First off you're choosing which PARTICULAR six skills to be using right now - and EACH of those could have one of five different runes in, making it act quite differently.
That's a TON of choice right there.
Then you've got three passive SLOTS, and presumably a bunch of passive skills to choose from, too? Maybe they can have runes in too?
So to me that looks like there is pretty good customization. It's the same way of doing customization that's been done before, exactly, but if it's true that there are way more active skills than skill-slots, and same with passive, then, no customization is not in ruin, it's really different to how it was.
You can't really complain about "a couple of builds which are quote unquote 'the best'", because that's exactly what D2 had! Maybe it was three, maybe for some classes it hit six at some points, but the fact is, Diablo 2 had a very limited number of "viable builds". So long as Diablo 3 at least MATCHES that, so at least three totally different viable builds/class at release, and hopefully more like six+, then I'll think the customization is fine.