Diablo III Open Beta Weekend

H

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
I was without internet access yesterday so I totally missed this Diablo III open beta weekend announcement. I might not have posted this...except for the 1,382,447 of you that let me know I am an idiot for not posting this and I'd better do it now! :D

We're pleased to announce the Diablo III open beta weekend, which offers open access to all players with a valid Battle.net account! Beginning this Friday everyone is invited to log in and help us put the game and servers through their paces in this three day stress test as we march toward the game's release on May 15. You can begin downloading the Diablo III client right now!
Click to expand...
 
Don't worry Steve, you're hardly breaking the news on this ;) Everyone with a blog, eZine, news forum wants to say LOOK FREE DIABLO!!!!!!

I'll pass though, no need to download all that crap just to play for a 13 levels worth only to have to do it all over again when the game came out.
 
I'm also waiting for release... though my excitement for the game died long ago. I REALLY REALLY want this game not to suck... but this is Blizzard of 2012, not 2002. There are just so many "design choices" that scream "cash in" over "good game play" that my cynicism feels more than justified.

I hope I'm wrong...if not, I'll be playing path of exile, torchlight 2, or that-other-title-which-escapes-me-but-is-similar-to-diablo
 
lilbabycat said:
I'm also waiting for release... though my excitement for the game died long ago. I REALLY REALLY want this game not to suck... but this is Blizzard of 2012, not 2002. There are just so many "design choices" that scream "cash in" over "good game play" that my cynicism feels more than justified.

I hope I'm wrong...if not, I'll be playing path of exile, torchlight 2, or that-other-title-which-escapes-me-but-is-similar-to-diablo
Click to expand...

It remains to be seen, but that is my feeling as well.
 
i think the big to remember is.... remember, blizzard north is NOT making diablo 3...

i think it was very telling that my friend (who was really hardcore into diablo 2) got into the beta... played the entire beta and then went and cancelled his preorder. Considering how much he loved diablo 2 and how much he hated the beta... it makes me wonder....

i'm also looking at path of exile and torchlight 2 though.
 
I've had a few friends playing the Beta and 'suck' was not a word mentioned in their discussions. I think it achieved 'good'
 
I've been in the beta since near the beginning and every patch I will play again for about 5 or 6 hours.

I've probably put about 30 hours into the game....with max level 13...

I think the game is going to be fine.
 
IMO, the beta is good, but not fantastic. The graphics overall seem like they are two or three years outdated, but the effects and art compensate. Act I was also incredibly short; I really hope the retail SP isn't too short overall.
 
Cruiza said:
IMO, the beta is good, but not fantastic. The graphics overall seem like they are two or three years outdated, but the effects and art compensate. Act I was also incredibly short; I really hope the retail SP isn't too short overall.
Click to expand...

The beta is not the complete Act 1, only a small portion.
 
1) The beta isn't all of act 1 - it's only a small piece.
2) Blizzard games graphics are ALWAYS 2-3 years behind, it's always been this way. Why do people fail to recognize this?
3) D3 is very different than diablo 2 - yes. Dumbed down, on rails, whatever. Sure... It's just different. But it's still pretty good.

There really isn't a lot to do in the beta, but like mentioned earlier - it's still fun to play. I've put more time into the beta than some other full blown games I've bought...

I think it's premature to judge based on the beta.
 
Path of Exile is pretty good, I bought into the beta:

-Gameplay / Mechanics are VERY polished.
--Take the leveling system from FF10, which is basically a gigantic grid of small skill / stat increases with peppered in major ones. Allows for very diverse speccing player to player.
--All actual skills are gems, put into the sockets of armor, actually very similar to the system D3 had but got rid of just a few months ago. There are also support gems, which modify the skill gems if they are put into adjacent sockets and are linked. Gems are colored and so are sockets, so that must match. As well, gems gain XP and level, but also increase in stat requirements to use them. A pure caster might be able to use a gem that has low strength requirements for example, but wouldn't be able to level the gem up due to not having the higher strength requirement.

----What I really like about this system is that your standard gearing is modified by the want/need for certain color, linking and # of sockets. You could have a rare with great stats but only 1 socket, making it near worthless. A 6 socket, all linked chestpiece is basically the best thing to get in game (and nigh impossible to get).

--There is no gold. "Currency" is in the form of orbs and scrolls. At lower levels, ID scrolls are a hot commody, they are your lowest form of "currency". Moving up the scale, you have orbs that (randomly) modify socket color, # of sockets, rarity, stats, etc. The majority of them are random though, so you could use an orb that changes the # of sockets and actually end with LESS than what you ended up with. All the orbs/scrolls drop randomly, but some can be "crafted" by selling items in a particular order/combination, just like the cube from Diablo. Sell 3 rares of the same type, make an orb of chance ((turns a non-magic item into either a magic(high), rare (low), or unique (super low))
----What I like about this that you can "farm" specific junk items to get the orb you want, or you can NOT and not have to worry about gathering money for repairs. Also, every item you get has a potential of becoming something great... that 6 socket armor might have junk stats, but you can trade/save/wait for an orb that randomizes it's stats and you have a chance at making it even better.
-The game gets hard

Now, those are the good points, there are def. some negatives:
-very incomplete story / content, only 2 acts so far, pvp being tested for the first time this weekend
-The angle of the camera is extremely zoomed, and at a weird tilt, which isn't a huge issue, but it bothers me
-The chat ui is horrid. Just plain bad. Weird stuff like adding % or # to the beginning of your chat to make it party or global. (I hear D3's isn't any better though)
-No translucency when the camera is blocked by terrain / dungeon walls
-Low end items drop VERY often even at higher levels, just a behavior of the item drop system, but its annoying as well and seems like they could add some sort of min-level modifier to the item drop chance (even if it were 30 levels under the mob's level would be an improvement)
-The player inventory is slightly too small. Many items are 2x3 in size, and your inventory is only 5 tall...so you can't stack 2 of those sized items in a column...If they added another row it would literally halve the amount of trips to the vendor needed.
-Since the level up / stat system is a giant grid ala FF10, and since all classes are on that grid (albeit in different places), players tend to spec themselves similarly, even between classes, which if they don't balance will turn into the game having less variety rather than more

TLDR: So yeah...this post got lengthy, but the game is what a "fan" sequel to Diablo would be, for better or worse. Its needs more content, but the gameplay + item system is DEEP and FUN.

I haven't played D3 in it's current incarnation, so I can't really say much about it, other than it sounds like it has way too much influence from wow.
 
lilbabycat said:
Path of Exile is pretty good, I bought into the beta:
Click to expand...

I agree with your post on the whole. Thought I'd comment on some of the negatives:

lilbabycat said:
Now, those are the good points, there are def. some negatives:
-very incomplete story / content, only 2 acts so far, pvp being tested for the first time this weekend
Click to expand...

Well...it is still in beta. :cool: Content is still being made.

lilbabycat said:
-The chat ui is horrid. Just plain bad. Weird stuff like adding % or # to the beginning of your chat to make it party or global. (I hear D3's isn't any better though)
Click to expand...

Agreed, plus the chat is constantly flooded with people stroking their ePeen by posting all their rare loot.

lilbabycat said:
-Low end items drop VERY often even at higher levels, just a behavior of the item drop system, but its annoying as well and seems like they could add some sort of min-level modifier to the item drop chance (even if it were 30 levels under the mob's level would be an improvement)
Click to expand...

I'm not even that high of a level (15 or something? Haven't had much time to play) but with some gear that adds a better chance of rare loot I have already found almost a full set worth of rare gear. Can't speak for higher levels but it does seem like I get a lot of good stuff. Plus, from what I hear, sockets are what you really want to look for more than white/blue/yellow status (since you can use orbs to create magic/rare items anyway)

lilbabycat said:
-The player inventory is slightly too small. Many items are 2x3 in size, and your inventory is only 5 tall...so you can't stack 2 of those sized items in a column...If they added another row it would literally halve the amount of trips to the vendor needed.
Click to expand...

I agree, they should definitely give you more inventory, or be able to buy/find an item that gives you more or something. Some of the items are fucking huge (4x2).

lilbabycat said:
-Since the level up / stat system is a giant grid ala FF10, and since all classes are on that grid (albeit in different places), players tend to spec themselves similarly, even between classes, which if they don't balance will turn into the game having less variety rather than more
Click to expand...

Kind of true, but you can go any way you want really, and there are always at least 3-4 different paths you can take from what I've seen so far.

In any case, it is F2P ($10 for beta access + microtransaction points) and still being developed, so I have no doubt we will see more and more content from PoE.

lilbabycat said:
I haven't played D3 in it's current incarnation, so I can't really say much about it, other than it sounds like it has way too much influence from wow.
Click to expand...

A lot of people will say it doesn't, but...it does. Of course it does. WoW was incredibly popular for Blizzard so they want to draw in that crowd. However, as a Diablo fan and not really a WoW fan, this disappoints me.
 
I'm downloading and installing this game just to see if it is infact too dumbed down to be worth playing as I 'suspect'....
 
lilbabycat said:
I'm also waiting for release... though my excitement for the game died long ago. I REALLY REALLY want this game not to suck... but this is Blizzard of 2012, not 2002. There are just so many "design choices" that scream "cash in" over "good game play" that my cynicism feels more than justified.
Click to expand...

My thoughts exactly. Its sad to see a company that really defined quality game development shift so drastically to a short-term cash collection machine.
 
I love when people call the system "dumbed down" then automatically dismiss it. Your right, When I was playing D2 I had so much more choice with a skill tree. I could either put 1 point into a skill I was never going to use for the first 20 levels until I got something that matters, or I could but 5 points into another skill I was never going to use so that it increased the skill I will get at level 30 by 5%. There were very little viable builds on each character.

And speaking of skill trees, I love how people say that Blizzard isn't staying true to the series by not having them. D1 didn't have skill trees either, you found your skills from books and a warrior could get fireball spells if he had enough magic. When D2 came out people were all up in arms that each character couldn't have the same skills. It was good that D2 changed because Blizzard didn't want to just make a clone of D1, they wanted to progress the gameplay. It's the same here, It's a different kind of gameplay because they are not making D2 "Enhanced Edition" they are making D3, a different game with different mechanics and just playing the first 13 levels does not give you a good feel of how the mechanics are going to work.

The game does fell very "Diablo" with it's gameplay and I think it's nice that at such a low level I can actually feeling like I'm doing something. Go back and play D2 up to Blood Raven and tell me how awesome and hard the gameplay is because that is about the same portion of game as the beta.

Sorry, I just get annoyed by the "LOL ITS EASY AND DUMB, UNINSTALL" comments.
 
Played through the beta several times and am still not impressed. I think a lot of people are excited for the game because of the nostalgia left by Diablo 2.

I'm going to let that sleeping dog lie.
 
Scooty Puff Sr. said:
It's the same here, It's a different kind of gameplay because they are not making D2 "Enhanced Edition" they are making D3, a different game with different mechanics and just playing the first 13 levels does not give you a good feel of how the mechanics are going to work.
Click to expand...

Fair enough, though I think a lot of people who were really into Diablo 2 actually did want an "Enhanced Edition", and that's where a lot of the animosity is coming from.
 
Having played both path of exile (only for a first few hours this week) and d3 beta. Path of exile is the winner hands down
 
Ah yes, the final stress test before retail. Surprised Anon hasn't talked about downing Blizzard's network because the 3 year old graphics and lack of skill tree mechanics are making basement dwellers around the world seethe with nerdy rage and angst.
 
Glad I'm not the only person with an overwhelming feeling of "MEH" after playing D3. I thought I was the only gamer with taste left. Thanks for restoring my faith in the gaming community. :)
 
D3 is looking good. Its been fun enough to keep me re-rolling characters after every beta wipe.
 
I played the beta about a month ago and it was pretty awesome. I have no idea what you guys are bitching about.

Game played smooth, looked awesome (compared to the other diablos) and the co-op was really easy to work with and fun. Sure it was short but its a beta.

I think its awesome of blizzard to give this demo of the game to people that have been waiting to play it so long. More companies should do this sort of thing.
 
Morphes said:
I think its awesome of blizzard to give this demo of the game to people that have been waiting to play it so long. More companies should do this sort of thing.
Click to expand...

I at first scoffed at this statement, as the idea of having betas/demos/etc. is nothing new, and for the longest time was almost a staple in the industry - how else would companies get people to buy into their titles unless they proved it worthwhile. Unfortunately, this really isn't the case anymore, and companies throw out recycled garbage on a semi-annual basis. So, I guess blizzard can be commended for doing this, although that fact alone points out how much blizzard has changed over the years, where this is now something to point out.

While D3 won't be a failure I'm sure, where many people find fault is the general ideology that permeates their design process now. A decade ago, blizzard aimed to give customers a full experience for the sheer sake of good gameplay, but more importantly realized that customers don't always "know" what they want - i.e., despite many people saying something was exceptionally hard, this didn't justify dumbing it down in the name of "accessibility." However, that concept doesn't always jive with short term revenue models and integration of direct-cash add-ons (please don't even get started on the myriad of tithes and restrictions implemented to legitimize the real-money auction house in D3), and it seems since most of the seasoned developers left, the philosophy that made the company what is was also departed in many ways.

Is it any different than what many developers do now days? Unfortunately not. And I'm sure it will make money, and be proclaimed a success. This has become all too much the standard in the industry, and there doesn't appear to be any reason for a change. However, for many of us, there's a certain aspect missing - not that everything needs to be overly-complex, but it doesn't need to be made so simple that there isn't even a learning curve for a three-year-old.

I recall a video I saw a year or so ago that compared the original mega-man to more recent releases - while not a terribly great video, the one interesting fact that was pointed out was how older releases would have anywhere from medium level to rather complex ideas that would never need the game pause/pop-up/instruction/10-paragraph novel explaining that an enemy appeared with a gun shooting at you, and you should therefore try to not die, or that you shouldn't jump into a bottomless pit filled with chainsaws; rather, the design itself was aimed at an overall experience where you weren't treated as if you weren't brain-dead and could use some amount of intuition and thought to rationalize what was happening and achieve the goal, and even some possibly use some creativeness to find different solutions.

In any case, that was entirely too long of a rant, and I'll return you to your regularly scheduled thread.
 
Farkle said:
Ah yes, the final stress test before retail. Surprised Anon hasn't talked about downing Blizzard's network because the 3 year old graphics and lack of skill tree mechanics are making basement dwellers around the world seethe with nerdy rage and angst.
Click to expand...

The problem is that basement dwellers who nerd rage are never happy with any sequels to something they idolized (Star Wars, Matrix, Final Fantasy after 7, etc). Nostalgia is a very strong form of bias. Our minds are set up to remember all the good stuff and forget the crappy stuff because otherwise it'd be depressing for us. I'm nostalgic about vanilla WoW, but I realize that most class specs were useless, PvP required hour-long waits, and I spent most of my time not PvPing or raiding and just farming herbs to eventually get enough money for an epic mount. I realize going back to vanilla would be stupid and I would hate it, but it's hard not to get nostalgic about it.

I suggest people actually play both D3 and D2 again before dismissing it. I am currently playing both D2 and the D3 beta.

In D2, we spend all our talent points making one skill maxed, and then we go and spam it until our left mouse button dies. I have yet to see anyone try to explain to me how that is a superior system to the D3 skill/rune system. But I can give you some more reasons the talent tree system sucked. First of all, to maximize a spec, you had to put 1 point into each prereq and clear Normal (often painfully, or just get rushed). By the time you're ready for Nightmare, you have a skill maxed, and Nightmare is a laughably easy clear since there's almost no immunities. Then you hit Hell, where 90% of skills then become nonviable. If you didn't know to save your points in Normal and max one skill, you just hit your head against a wall in Nightmare and either had to start a new character after someone condescendingly told you the "correct" way to play, or you just quit outright. D3 has a skill system with many balanced and viable skills that can each be customized with runes. The difficulty in Inferno should be sufficient that you have to rely on more than just a single hard hitting skill. If the difficulty of D3 actually gets people to use more than two skills, I don't see how that's a "dumbed down" version of D2. If anything the combat in D3 is deeper and there is more strategy available.

Most people got rushed to the end of Hell, then spent countless hours killing cows or doing diablo/baal runs with no variation whatsoever. Why? I really don't know why, because leveling eventually becomes pointless, since 99 was out of reach of almost everyone's patience. So I start a new char with a different spec. Why? Because it was the only way to even try out other specs for about the first 7 years of the game. I had several accounts of characters I leveled to about 50 and never played again. And worst of all, the leveling was often painful and required rushing since the desired skills couldn't be maxed until around 40 or 50. The talent tree skill system resulted in a painful Normal playthrough, a laughably easy Nightmare clear, and then a challenging Hell clear (which was usually avoided by rushing).

There was of course PvP, and that will be back in D3 in a few months. I know some people miss the old hostility system, but I'm thankful the asshats can no longer join low level games and grief people. One person's enjoyment at the cost of ruining the fun for up to 7 other people is hardly a good feature. I hope deathmatches will be fast and fun. I don't see how the PvP delay matters at all, since everyone will spend the first few months leveling and gearing up.

Not everyone who loved Diablo 2 is going to love Diablo 3, but I wish people would actually give it a chance before dismissing it, because it's really a lot of fun so far. Sorry about the length of the post; I tried to condense it.
 
2lkpvdw.jpg


Don't get me wrong, the talent/skill system is better and the PvP arena will probably be great but I'm not sure what the hell that has to do with looking like World of Warcraft and feeling like a kid's title.
 
pelo said:
2lkpvdw.jpg


Don't get me wrong, the talent/skill system is better and the PvP arena will probably be great but I'm not sure what the hell that has to do with looking like World of Warcraft and feeling like a kid's title.
Click to expand...

Doesn't look like WoW and it doesn't feel like a kids tittle.
 
CryingGod said:
I beg to differ. It does look like WoW, and does feel like a kids title. It felt like I was playing Dungeon Hunter Alliances.
Click to expand...

The visual design of Diablo 3 is totally different than the one in WoW.

And what makes it feel like a kids title? I mean, from some perspectives I could say the same about Diablo 1 and 2.
 
CryingGod said:
The graphics have a cartoony feel, much like Torchlight did. WoW graphics have a cartoony feel. Hence the comparison.
Click to expand...

The graphics are not cartoony. Look up the definition of the word cartoon.

But yes, the graphics are not realistic, but that doesn't mean it's for kids. And saying that both visual styles are the same because they are both "cartoony" is the same as saying that Intel CPU's, AMD CPU's, NVIDIA GPU's and AMD GPU's are the same, because you know, they are all build from Silicon, thus there is no difference.

It's a childish argument. It's art, you might not like it, but that is in the eye of the individual observer.
 
Noctifer said:
Doesn't look like WoW and it doesn't feel like a kids tittle.
Click to expand...

First two diablo games had gritty gothic art styles. D3 has the same water color looking shit that WoW does with similar aesthetics.

Also this isn't a beta, this is a demo. The game is done.
 
Valshistixol said:
First two diablo games had gritty gothic art styles. D3 has the same water color looking shit that WoW does with similar aesthetics.
Click to expand...

You haven't played nor seen WoW or Diablo 3. I have played both, they feel and don't look alike.
 
I was a huge fan of Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 (2003 d2jsp :p) and just played Diablo 3 for the first time tonight. My very first thought when the game loaded was it looks kind of weird. I think it's because it's being rendered entirely in Direct3D whereas Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 had a more gritty feel because they were rendered in DirectDraw. I soon got over that though after about 10 or 15 mins of playing the addiction kicked in, and I knew what my goal was. Before I knew it 3 hours passed by. Ah, good times.
 
Incidentally, it's been a huge clusterfu*k today. I have been part of the closed beta and today's server issues are mind numbing. :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top