To add a little bit more to this discussion, I think Cahoots has raised a good point.
Although d3 has only been out for a month, It seems as though the game is going in the right direction, as Blizzard intended it.
To claify this I'd like to point out some scenarios.
As a barbarian, one of the easiest ways to progress through inferno is to sword and board and play defensivley. Naturally people have min/maxed this and various cooki cutter specs are in good use. But that's not to say that this is the only way to play. There is a good argument for playing with a 2 hander. Of course this does usually mean you need superior gear (farmed using a sword/board spec) but the point still stands. Furthermore there is a RANGED barb spec that utileses a barbarians throwing abilites, and in some situations seems to be viable!
I think this is a key point in teh argument of replayabilty: D2 vs D3. D2 was replayable as you had to replay it to farm for that best in slot piece.
In D3, you can play the same content again, with the same character, using a completey different playstyle! The ability to adapt to situations, and be creative with the WAY you play your character is vastly different and improved to that of D2
I put forth that D3 still has a lot to offer. the game has only been out a month after an incredibly long development. There is more to come yet.
I don't agree about your thoughts on d3 game play "adapting to the situation". From what I've seen you either go as far as you can into defensive and healing abilities, or stack so much damage that things don't get to hit you. Maybe the only thing that I've seen out side of that consists of kiting for ages, or relies so heavily on gear that you had to use one of main ways to play before that even works. The only thing that progresses you forward is buying better gear, and switching skills and losing your NV hinders that.
Stats do not increase your damage by %. It's % over a certain smaller base so it's not as powerful as you think. 1% damage reduction easilly outdo +30~40 DPs imo (provided by something like +100 in your main stat stats). To survive in Inferno you need like 1kk effective HP which means every 1% damage reduction you get is extremely important.
I'm not sure on the specific's and I know it's not a flat out 50% increase in your damage, I worded it pretty badly. I think it's each point of your primary stat increases the damage based on your weapon by 1%. So if were talking about later game here and you have a weapon with high dps like 1000. So 50 of that primary stat would be like another 500 added to your damage. I'm not sure how defense scales at 60, but I doubt that 50 armor from str points would be even close then .1% reduction. 1% damage reduction is defiantly better then like 30-40 damage, but I feel like the damage gain would out weigh what defense you would get from other stats, and lets not forget your primary stat has smaller bonuses of its own just making it better. Either way I still dislike the idea of primary stats in a game like diablo, its just not fun to find items that aren't good for you because your not the right class, especially in single player.
But the OP just wanted to let people know that those stats existed, and I thought he was trying to say they were just as good as primary stats so my mistake
They add bonuses, but they are so minuscule that it's hard to justify using that instead of your primary stat. If your a monk and you have an item with 50 str (50 armor) and 50 dex, and an item with 100 dex the difference is like .5% damage reducing or 50% increase in damage and the choice is obvious.
You can't say people are complaining that a wizard is using an item with strength on it, because it may very well be an item with vit, int, and str. If the wizard is using an item with just str on it then they are either a very low level and have no other option, or they are just using bad gear.
I feel like the idea of a primary stat doesn't work well with diablo, because half the time your finding an item that isn't useful to you just because that stat is designed for another class and it just takes away from the fun of loot hunt. Maybe its superficial, but i'd rather say this item is bad then this item is good for another class.
I wouldn't complain about quest linearity, because you can just leave and remake. However when I think of linearity I think of all the outdoors and dungeons. Dungeons are a straight line most of the time, and the out doors barely have any randomization that I hardly even notice it. Walking around and knowing exactly what I'm about to see 90% of the time defiantly kills replayability.
I liked act 4, it just felt like they threw so much at you at once. The plot does a 360 that you have to sum up in a short act. It sucks that all the monsters in act 4 were awesome because you don't get to see them much. I was hoping later difficulties would mix up the kinds of monsters you run into during acts so you could see more of them.
I think the difficulty of the game works nicely. I think the very small amount of outdoor randomization and items being incredibly dull is where blizzard missed the mark.
crafting was good at the start of the game to quickly replace blues for a small cost. Latter in the game is costs a fortune to level and make anything useful, that you can get things better things from the ah with out spending half the money.
Even if the damage is good you basically wait 60 seconds per nuke, and the only way to keep using it consistently is the rune that gives 35% chance res on the sacrifice, which really limits any rune choice to the skill. If you could just sacrifice one you could use the slow one or something to cc and still have a couple dogs, if you sacrifice all of them just get a slow that will probably overlap a lot and no dogs. I can understand how timing the dog res is cool and all but I feel like the skill is really restricted by making all the dogs die at once. You could do the same thing when you could single sacrifice dogs, like sacrificing them right when the dogs come off cool down, but it would allow you to make smart choices about sacrificing between that, that wouldn't rely so heavily on making sure you have every possible rune and passive that summons more dogs.
I don't understand why the ability has to sacrifice all dogs at once, in previous videos of the game scroll over specific dogs allowed one to be blown up a time. Once I finally got to play the game I never really thought about this, but once I got sacrifice on the witch doctor I decided to try it out. The skill feels very awkward because when you first get it you suicide all dogs on a 60 second cool down, which just gives good damage, but then your out of dogs for the remainder of the cool down and two skills doing absolutely nothing. I started getting abilities like the passive that summons dogs from enemies dying, but it's not consistent to use for sacrifices.
The sacrifice skill would make a lot more sense to just kill one at a time wouldn't it? You could actually choose the dogs that are already in a good position to sacrifice instead of waiting for them all to run into something. Also this would allow you to sacrifice consistently while still having dogs around to do some tanking. Maybe this becomes negligible once you get just about every ability and rune and passive that summons more dogs, but I find that unlikely because all of them seem to very chance based. If this is true then why wouldn't they introduce the sacrifice skill later in the game when you can use it consistently with out being with out dogs half the time.
Besides my ramblings about why this skill feels awkward, I really want to know why did they change the sacrifice skill from single targeting dogs to killing all of your dogs at once?
if I posted my release party check list you all would think Im crazy...
#1. Eggnog ( i flash freeze some in winter for my birthday in the summer , this counts)
#2. Arizona drinks+vitamin water
#3. fresh homemade scones
#4. " mauled apple cider " ( so good)
#5. some kind of chips ? have not decided on that one .
#6. im thinking bacon or pizza... or pizza with bacon on it >_>
I didn't mind the voicing and much as just when the dialog is used. Back and forth banter and one liners every once and a while started to annoy me. The talking between your character and the who ever you are talking too seems so rushed like they can only describe everything in one sentence. I preferred the longer more detailed dialog of just one person talking at you.
Having your own character talk doesn't add anything more then that class adding some quick remark that sounds like something they would say. Like a witch doctor adding in "May the spirits look upon you friendly" or something as a good bye because a witch doctor might say that. I think I really just don't like having your character talk on his own, imagine playing Zelda where Link always has a witty remark or battle cry when playing or talking to people.
I understand that it's really hard to let go of one's vision of what Hardcore is supposed to be...but even with the Gold AH, your vision no longer exists.
Imagine someone creates a HC character and goes through normal, saving his or her gold. Now that person is really good at the AH- just like a lot of WoW players are fantastic at the AH. That person can take that gold and make profit off of it, and eventually buy items best for his level. Now imagine they are so good at profiting, that throughout their HC levelling experience, he always has the best item set for that Act. Not only that, but because he has to farm less in the game, there is a much lower chance of encountering death.
That HC character is not achieving "HC status" by playing the way you intended. He is achieving that status by making a profit off of the AH.
I really think you're just going to have to let go of what makes a "HC" character "really HC".
How is this any different then being good at trading in D2? In one situation you take advantage of what you have in the game to get more things in the game by knowing what is valuable and what is not. In the other you take something from outside of the game to get more things.
I've been trying to get onto the diablo 3 open beta weekend, however every time I attempt to download it, it comes up with a message saying requires a newer operating system to run (I use windows XP). After pressing 'ok' to this message the downloader remains at 0% and upon exiting the installer it asks if I want to end the installation even though no progress has been made. The only two suggestions I've found about this where to change the compatability under properties, and to try ending the process Agent.exe when trying to install. Neither of those have worked for me and I'm wondering if anyone else has found a way around this, I'm not very good with computers so any help is appreciated.
I'd take blizzards scaling of difficulty with a grain of salt, because its all perspective of the player. I can't tell if the difficulty is going to be needing lots of gear, or that you need a mix of gear and ability to react quickly to boss moves that become quicker through the difficulties.
The thing he said that threw me off is that in some other answer I recall bashiok saying that players will need to tweak their builds in inferno when answering a question about high level runes unlocks. But didn't blizzard also say that the builds will be balanced so that one will might barely be better then another? I mean if that's true there isn't much to mess up in a build besides taking like all generating or signature attacks. Contradicting stuff like that always makes we wondering when blizzard says somethings "hard" if its actually hard.
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I don't agree about your thoughts on d3 game play "adapting to the situation". From what I've seen you either go as far as you can into defensive and healing abilities, or stack so much damage that things don't get to hit you. Maybe the only thing that I've seen out side of that consists of kiting for ages, or relies so heavily on gear that you had to use one of main ways to play before that even works. The only thing that progresses you forward is buying better gear, and switching skills and losing your NV hinders that.
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I'm not sure on the specific's and I know it's not a flat out 50% increase in your damage, I worded it pretty badly. I think it's each point of your primary stat increases the damage based on your weapon by 1%. So if were talking about later game here and you have a weapon with high dps like 1000. So 50 of that primary stat would be like another 500 added to your damage. I'm not sure how defense scales at 60, but I doubt that 50 armor from str points would be even close then .1% reduction. 1% damage reduction is defiantly better then like 30-40 damage, but I feel like the damage gain would out weigh what defense you would get from other stats, and lets not forget your primary stat has smaller bonuses of its own just making it better. Either way I still dislike the idea of primary stats in a game like diablo, its just not fun to find items that aren't good for you because your not the right class, especially in single player.
But the OP just wanted to let people know that those stats existed, and I thought he was trying to say they were just as good as primary stats so my mistake
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You can't say people are complaining that a wizard is using an item with strength on it, because it may very well be an item with vit, int, and str. If the wizard is using an item with just str on it then they are either a very low level and have no other option, or they are just using bad gear.
I feel like the idea of a primary stat doesn't work well with diablo, because half the time your finding an item that isn't useful to you just because that stat is designed for another class and it just takes away from the fun of loot hunt. Maybe its superficial, but i'd rather say this item is bad then this item is good for another class.
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The sacrifice skill would make a lot more sense to just kill one at a time wouldn't it? You could actually choose the dogs that are already in a good position to sacrifice instead of waiting for them all to run into something. Also this would allow you to sacrifice consistently while still having dogs around to do some tanking. Maybe this becomes negligible once you get just about every ability and rune and passive that summons more dogs, but I find that unlikely because all of them seem to very chance based. If this is true then why wouldn't they introduce the sacrifice skill later in the game when you can use it consistently with out being with out dogs half the time.
Besides my ramblings about why this skill feels awkward, I really want to know why did they change the sacrifice skill from single targeting dogs to killing all of your dogs at once?
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Or bacon with pizza on it?
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Having your own character talk doesn't add anything more then that class adding some quick remark that sounds like something they would say. Like a witch doctor adding in "May the spirits look upon you friendly" or something as a good bye because a witch doctor might say that. I think I really just don't like having your character talk on his own, imagine playing Zelda where Link always has a witty remark or battle cry when playing or talking to people.
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How is this any different then being good at trading in D2? In one situation you take advantage of what you have in the game to get more things in the game by knowing what is valuable and what is not. In the other you take something from outside of the game to get more things.
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The thing he said that threw me off is that in some other answer I recall bashiok saying that players will need to tweak their builds in inferno when answering a question about high level runes unlocks. But didn't blizzard also say that the builds will be balanced so that one will might barely be better then another? I mean if that's true there isn't much to mess up in a build besides taking like all generating or signature attacks. Contradicting stuff like that always makes we wondering when blizzard says somethings "hard" if its actually hard.