Diablo III Open Beta April 20th thru 23rd

[Asquiol]

- The game is just damn easy right now. Apparently this gets better by the end of normal and especially on the higher difficulties, but it rubs me the wrong way that I'll be at the end of the story before I'm challenged. Do we really need a 15+ hour story mode that we're all forced to go through before we start fighting more difficult enemies? Not to mention that the second time through on Nightmare, you won't have many (if any) surprises waiting for you. You'll have seen all the tilesets, all the bosses, and all the major enemies. The only new content will be unique rare modifiers and the loot. I'm not sure that's enough to keep anyone but the most hardcore happy.

Actually from what Blizzard has said most of the mobs will not be shown until later difficulties and the elite mobs will have different abilities than they did in normal. Blizzard has said that they felt many of them were too hard for normal so they put them in nightmare, hell, and inferno.

There are also random quests/events that pop up on subsequent play throughs so each time should be different. An example is that I went into the defiled crypt and the ghost of some lady wanted me to return her bones to her crypt, each time I gathered some of her bones the ghost of her husband attacked me cause he was unable to rest in peace until she was at his side. Another was a guy who gave me a quest, he had been hiding under some dead bodies pretending he was dead. Not just the items and levels are randomly generated anymore, a lot of the content is now randomly generated to make each play through of the game different than the one before it.

[Valec]

Also, I wish morons would stop claiming that the game is too easy. I've been hearing this since beta invites went out. You're playing the first third of the first act or normal difficulty. What the fuck are you expecting?

I think the main reason people are saying that is because the difficulty of the first 1/3 of the first act in diablo 2(normal) was significantly harder. Fire it up, it's quite noticeable. Things that hit you actually hurt and you might actually need to use a potion or two.

I have no idea what button the potion key is because I never had to use one.

The difficulty complaint is perfectly valid and we shouldn't assume it just gets better. It's not like these are the same people who made Diablo 2.

Actually from what Blizzard has said most of the mobs will not be shown until later difficulties and the elite mobs will have different abilities than they did in normal. Blizzard has said that they felt many of them were too hard for normal so they put them in nightmare, hell, and inferno.

I'm not sure i'm excited about this because I don't generally feel the urge to play through the entire game again (on the same character) just on a different difficulty.

[Zoobi]

I'm not sure i'm excited about this because I don't generally feel the urge to play through the entire game again (on the same character) just on a different difficulty.

Err, what? That's what Diablo has been about since the beginning.

[alliens]

Damn it. GW2 will also open Beta recently. I don't enough time for playing games. I have to give up one of them.

[NAH Grahm Cracker]

I played for like 3-4 hours and beat the beta on the witch doctor, didn't try anything else cause I wasn't interested in the other classes.

It's pretty much exactly what I thought it would be - a sold game, I'll keep my collector's edition preorder.
I'm enthusiastic to buy & play the full game, but here's some of my thoughts:

The witch doctor is a poor excuse for a replacement to the necromancer as far as pets are concerned - the loss of skeletons & skelemages really sucks.
- 3 zombie dogs and they are on a minute cooldown, and they really suck. Maybe one of the later runes or passives will solve this, but nothing on the character builder really stands out as a 'wow' factor.
- I didn't get to see the gargantuan in the beta but it sounds like it will be a golem from D2, probably better, we'll see.
- 2 or 3 other abilities I didn't get to see but they are on ridiculous cooldowns (fetish army for 20 seconds, cooldown for 2 minutes, wtf).

Everything is a bit more cartoony than diablo 2, but everyone should know to expect that.

The artisan system is simple enough, I think it's silly for a hack and slash game. Gambling in diablo 2 fit in better I think, but this is a reasonable, it reminds me of WoW crafting.

I didn't see any bind on equip or bind on pickup indicator like I thought I heard was going to be in, but now I read this http://www.diablowiki.net/Bind_on_Equip so that's good (and apparently I'm a year late to the party).

Drop pickup range increases? Does that really need to be an effect on items?

I am off put by Blizzard's choice to do 'queues' for specific game types as opposed to generic 'games'/lobbies. It wasn't great for SC2 custom maps (as far as diversity of maps), but it has a better place in this game. Sometimes I would queue for the bottom thing and I would get a bunch of level 1s so I would quit and rejoin, I'm not sure if I'm doing it wrong or if it's bugged.

I didn't see any set items which is dissappointing.

[Valec]

Err, what? That's what Diablo has been about since the beginning.

Yep, never really grabbed me, the idea of repeating the same content over and over.

[VKhaun]

Yep, never really grabbed me, the idea of repeating the same content over and over.

That's because you play it like an MMO. The D3 forums make me want to vomit with D2 vets telling other people to 'go back to WoW' when D2 vets have always played it like an MMO just trying to tank the bosses on the builds that were OP enough to ignore incoming damage and rape everything through it's defenses.

D3 is designed to be more engaging according to the dev blogs and vids I've seen. Enemy design is made around having to actually do things to win and not die. Dodge, choose when to attack, prioritize, etc.

The beta doesn't do that justice since it's essentially the tutorial area on the easiest setting but saying you don't like D3 because it has you playing the same content over and over is like saying you hate KF because you play the same few maps over and over. That has nothing to do with gameplay. Sure variation is still nice and I probably wouldn't play it if it was only one map, but when the gameplay itself is compelling it becomes more than a content push.

[VKhaun]

Drop pickup range increases? Does that really need to be an effect on items?

Luckily pick up range doesn't need much help. With one item on that has the stat just coincidentally I really don't feel like gold pickup is that bad. I remember the chore of cleaning up areas of gold in lots of other ARPG's and so even close range auto gold pick-up is welcome. Base feels a little too close, but with upper level crafting adding 5-7 random properties I expect to always have some degree of a bonus, and if my gear was so perfect I didn't have that bonus I wouldn't expect to miss it.

My barb hit 13 just before work and gold pick up felt just fine with I think two items with minimum bonus on him. Later on with larger bonuses I expect it will be luxurious compared to other ARPG's.


Still, I agree it's classic Blizzard repeating a really stupid game mechanic needlessly. Not gold pickup, but having gold be a drop at all that I take issue with. Why not just have our gold count go up as things are done? Why must we go pick it up at all? Maybe you could argue about leeches or something, but even then you make it a CRAZY large raidus for auto pickup and be done with it. No reason to throw a wasteful bonus into the random generator when we're already trying to get combos of 7+ properties.

[Valec]

That's because you play it like an MMO. The D3 forums make me want to vomit with D2 vets telling other people to 'go back to WoW' when D2 vets have always played it like an MMO just trying to tank the bosses on the builds that were OP enough to ignore incoming damage and rape everything through it's defenses.

No I don't?

[Sillywilly]

No I don't?

Do I need to say something religious so you two faggots don't end up in a fight?

I ended up playing a wizard a little before the beta expired. That class was killtacular. I can really see this class genociding some massive numbers later on in the game.

My wife has been looking forward to D3 so I'll probably be getting it if for no other reason than to play with her. It has alot of good points, and not necessarily bad points but maybe not up to BLizzards potential points.

[NAH Grahm Cracker]

Not gold pickup, but having gold be a drop at all that I take issue with. Why not just have our gold count go up as things are done? Why must we go pick it up at all?

I like gold dropping as opposed to just ticking another number upwards, every game does the same thing and I don't get bothered by it. It gives a little bit of personality and makes it visually obvious that you are gaining something.
I think it's similar to white/useless items dropping - I read that blizzard did some focus groups and people preferred to play a game where crap was popping out of every other corpse even if they couldn't be arsed to look at any of it.
Auto gold pickup makes it much better than Diablo 2, though. I remember wasting a minutes picking up all the gold in that one tower in act 1 of diablo 2, it would be a cinch in diablo 3, just run in a circle once.

[Zavon]

Do I need to say something religious so you two faggots don't end up in a fight?

I ended up playing a wizard a little before the beta expired. That class was killtacular. I can really see this class genociding some massive numbers later on in the game.

My wife has been looking forward to D3 so I'll probably be getting it if for no other reason than to play with her. It has alot of good points, and not necessarily bad points but maybe not up to BLizzards potential points.

I lol'd

[Sillywilly]

I lol'd

lol faggot and it's variants have made a comeback in my vocabulary for some reason lately. It's like I rediscovered the word or something.

I like gold dropping as opposed to just ticking another number upwards, every game does the same thing and I don't get bothered by it. It gives a little bit of personality and makes it visually obvious that you are gaining something.
I think it's similar to white/useless items dropping - I read that blizzard did some focus groups and people preferred to play a game where crap was popping out of every other corpse even if they couldn't be arsed to look at any of it.
Auto gold pickup makes it much better than Diablo 2, though. I remember wasting a minutes picking up all the gold in that one tower in act 1 of diablo 2, it would be a cinch in diablo 3, just run in a circle once.

I agree. There's a thin line somewhere in between convienence and playing the game for you. For example in TOR I like the AoE looting thing, especially in that game with so many ranged mobs being spread out. However auto pick up would be taking it too far and I would feel like too much of the game is being played for me.

One also has to remember though that I'm old school when it comes to games, I prefer travel time, death penalties and less instancing.

[Draconian]

lol faggot and it's variants have made a comeback in my vocabulary for some reason lately. It's like I rediscovered the word or something.

Amazing. Tell us more.

[NAH Grahm Cracker]

One also has to remember though that I'm old school when it comes to games, I prefer travel time, death penalties and less instancing.

I agree with those things.

When I play Just Cause 2 I never use the extraction (instant travel), and when I play Skyrim I only fast travel between the big cities and run the rest of the way.
It gets me into the game more than trying to do everything immediately.

Death penalties are a sticky situation - I think DAoC's death penalties were good - xp penalty (no losing levels), teleported to your bind point, pay healer like 20 gold to heal constitution, and a 5 minute debuff.
Diablo 3's death penalty is kinda crappy - apparently nothing but an item durability hit? http://www.diablowiki.net/Death

I hate instancing with a passion in MMOs, but it doesn't really apply to Diablo 3 unless you consider each game a separate instance. That's just how Diablo games work, though.

[Zavon]

I'm pretty sure you can't die in diablo 3.

[VKhaun]

I'm pretty sure you can't die in diablo 3.

The trick is, most people didn't 'live or die' in D2. After it had been out a while and figured out, people just out leveled everything. I remember the first few times I fought Andarial before LoD came out, and I FOUGHT her. I dodged between poison cloud things (because they fucked my life bar over), ducked in and out of melee range of her swipes (because they fucked my life bar over), and I dealt with minions first. But no one PLAYS THAT WAY after one or two runs unless they have to. They just out level the content by a decent margin, or farm a bit and out gear/potion the content. Then they can tank her and her poison while they take their team killing her.

I'm hoping that Inferno mode is hard enough that you can never do that. That you will always need to duck, dodge, dash, and adjust your skills to the situation so it's an action game. I have city of heroes now and TSW later for when I want to out math some NPC's. D3 is supposed to be an ACTIONrpg.

[Sillywilly]

The trick is, most people didn't 'live or die' in D2. After it had been out a while and figured out, people just out leveled everything.

That is 100% true. There came a point when the chore of mindless killing just became more economical by slashing through content you had out leveled. I could get more experience by killing harder enemies but one death due to lag or inattention could undo so much of my effort that it was just plain more sensible to wade through massive amounts of lesser enemies at a faster rate for the low low chance of dying. I was going to go into zombie mode anyway after a certain point because it was all so monatenous so why not pick a difficulty range that wouldn't shit on my progress with one unlucky slip up.

[VKhaun]

I was going to go into zombie mode anyway after a certain point because it was all so monatenous so why not pick a difficulty range that wouldn't shit on my progress with one unlucky slip up.

Exactly. Thank you.

And that is not the way the game is supposed to be.
The Hope for D3 is that it hits both marks:

1) It doesn't ALLOW you to just out-level/gear content, you will have to avoid that slip up.

2) It won't make that gameplay so monotonous that the one slip up felt unlucky or random, but like you actually messed up in an action game.



I think #2 is in the bag. I tried playing through the D3 beta never getting hit (Which, interestingly, suddenly makes the WD on an even pacing with the rest and not super slow...) and it was already more interesting than any previous ARPG, and they say they have more enemy types and more abilities on existing enemies in the later difficulties. I mostly worry about #1. Even though inferno mode is leveled out, nothing says Blizzard won't make end game armor and weapons be able to just roflstomp the whole thing.