Diablo 3 - Beta thread

In this thread alone, there are so many comments from people who are so sure of Blizzard's intentions that I guess I should just listen to what they say and not be interested in the game. I mean hell, they are talking like they developed the game and was in the meetings! Gee whiz!

Oh, but then I realize I played at Blizzcon and loved the game. I played D2, and a little bit of D1. Diablo 3 is very fun, engaging gameplay compared to D2/D1, and has aged well in terms of mechanics. Every single time my group of 4 played Diablo 3 in Blizzcon, we begged the PC operators to not let us stop playing. We loved it that much. 1 of them (my girlfriend) never played D2. She enjoyed it! That's all that matters to me anyway.

So I continue giggling at those pessimists and hope they stay out of my game, and just on the forums trolling away. ;) To each their own I guess.
 
sparks said:
diablo II and LOD were classics and great graphics for their time.
best game play and spells/skills that are still awesome.

Really after seeing III I wish someone would have just redone II with upgraded graphics.
III just doesn't look that good. Game play, classes and spell graphics.
Looks like a console game.

I bet we will see that sooner they you can say money.
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The gameplay looks like typical low-level D2 gameplay. Honestly, I replayed D2 a few weeks ago and spent Act I holding the mouse button down while my Barb auto-attacked enemies. Thank goodness they aren't trying too hard to impress people in early Act I with overly flashy gameplay.
 
krameriffic said:
The removal of things like no CD teleport is an example of why they can't keep the difficulty on the level that they did before; players won't have the tools to handle it like they did in D2. They've subscribed to a different school of game balance, one based on limiting everything into a carefully carved out role.
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Wait. Are you saying D2 was balanced?

There were so many broken mechanics in D2. No CD teleport was like the most broken thing ever (teleport all the way to boss, kill, loot, repeat). I don't think fixing or removing these things means they cannot make D3 difficult. The F&F beta is from the first 1/3 of the first Act of the game on the lowest difficulty level, so I don't see how anyone can claim the game will be easy or hard.
 
sparks said:
diablo II and LOD were classics and great graphics for their time.
best game play and spells/skills that are still awesome.

Really after seeing III I wish someone would have just redone II with upgraded graphics.
III just doesn't look that good. Game play, classes and spell graphics.
Looks like a console game.

I bet we will see that sooner they you can say money.
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No, D2 didn't ever have great graphics. Nor did it have great art direction. BG/BG2 were 5x prettier at the time.
 
Katalysis said:
Wait. Are you saying D2 was balanced?

There were so many broken mechanics in D2. No CD teleport was like the most broken thing ever (teleport all the way to boss, kill, loot, repeat). I don't think fixing or removing these things means they cannot make D3 difficult. The F&F beta is from the first 1/3 of the first Act of the game on the lowest difficulty level, so I don't see how anyone can claim the game will be easy or hard.
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I'm not speaking to anything from the beta when I comment on difficulty, I'm speaking to the general trends of mainstream gaming. What I am saying about D2 is that it was structured in such a way that a really dedicated player (or a bot, as it turns out) could build a really, really strong character. Progression feels more meaningful when it isn't just based on getting a slightly higher item level item with more of the two stats with the highest weighting according to that thread on the Elitist Jerks forum that tells you how to optimally build your character.

This is WoW era design, and while I cannot say for sure that Diablo 3 has gone down that road in the endgame, I can virtually guarantee that interesting items like Enigma and HOTO that totally reshape the way the game plays for every class in D2 will not exist in D3. To me, it sounds nothing short of boring. Item progression in WoW ever since they standardized the stats for each class and whittled down the ratings to just a few core ones has been remarkably uninteresting. It's all for the sake of a different notion of balance where they limit everything rather than allowing everything. There's so much interesting shit that comes out of creatively built characters, hence my references to Median XL.

illybang said:
couldn't this just be the fact that as gamers, we are sort of desensitized to many horror or scary elements in games? while i'm not disagreeing about the differences in art style and color choices possibly creating some of the negative criticism or worries of diablo 1 and 2 fans, i believe that a lot of that "OH FUCK'" feeling you're talking about could have just been a direct result of never having played something like it before. diablo was a first of it's kind, right? i think that if somehow, you could somehow send diablo 3 back in time to take diablo 1's place (of course in a graphically dumbed down form to fit with the time period technologically), you probably would still have those "OH FUCK" moments, and possibly even MORE. you have to consider how old you were when you played diablo. that's definitely a factor.

also, who knows what we'll be seeing in later levels? i'm in the beta, and what they show us is pretty damn short. it's pretty damn awesome to me though. i can't wait to see what else will be in the full version.
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Diablo did it's thing very well for its time, and that was what made it a classic. Perhaps I'm expecting too much, but for Diablo 3 to be the same kind of classic game in my eyes, it needs to blow my mind in the same way even in an era when I think I've seen and done everything. Riding the wave of Diablo fame will carry it only so far. To be a truly classic game of it's era, it needs to pull something out of its hat, which will admittedly be much more difficult.
 
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krameriffic said:
I'm not speaking to anything from the beta when I comment on difficulty, I'm speaking to the general trends of mainstream gaming. What I am saying about D2 is that it was structured in such a way that a really dedicated player (or a bot, as it turns out) could build a really, really strong character. Progression feels more meaningful when it isn't just based on getting a slightly higher item level item with more of the two stats with the highest weighting according to that thread on the Elitist Jerks forum that tells you how to optimally build your character.
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By "more meaningful," what are you referencing? Skill points or the fact that you could get an Enigma and get teleport on any character? Diablo 2 was just the false sense of meaningful, as far as skill points were concerned. Dumping points into my health pool every level doesn't really do anything for me.

Diablo 2 is the exact same game your described, though. People would look up the optimal build, and they may do the same now (if you are using skills X, Y, and Z, you need drops 1, 2, and 3, etc.). The thrill of the game is slaughtering enemies and hoping for slightly better items to drop. It's the same gambler's high that exists in many games, both video and otherwise. It was not different in D1, D2, D3, WoW, or a million other games.

People see it as a major change, but I really feel like it got in the way of what I wanted to do--have fun by killing stuff and looting, not save up skill points.
 
Katalysis said:
By "more meaningful," what are you referencing? Skill points or the fact that you could get an Enigma and get teleport on any character? Diablo 2 was just the false sense of meaningful, as far as skill points were concerned. Dumping points into my health pool every level doesn't really do anything for me.

Diablo 2 is the exact same game your described, though. People would look up the optimal build, and they may do the same now (if you are using skills X, Y, and Z, you need drops 1, 2, and 3, etc.). The thrill of the game is slaughtering enemies and hoping for slightly better items to drop. It's the same gambler's high that exists in many games, both video and otherwise. It was not different in D1, D2, D3, WoW, or a million other games.

People see it as a major change, but I really feel like it got in the way of what I wanted to do--have fun by killing stuff and looting, not save up skill points.
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This. Especially the last sentence.

I've played through D2 quite a few times after 1.13 and even after they implemented respecs, I still don't wanna waste one of my respecs because of wasting skill points on fun low level skills that I know are gonna suck in the end game. I end up saving all my skill points and playing till lvl 25 or so becomes a boring chore. So instead of having fun killing the fuck out of demons with skills like frost nova or inferno, you end up leeching off Trist/Tomb/Cow runs until you hit 24 and can start dumping all your points into a couple skills.

And enough with this fucking "customization" nonsense. Are you kidding me? Almost every single build in D2 is the same....enough strength to equip items, enough dex for max block, no points in energy, the rest dumped into vitality. Let's not forget most players running around with the same exact gear as well. Customization my ass.
 
Look through this page: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian

Look at all the runestone effects for every skill for every class and then come back here and tell me D3 has less customization than D1/D2. You will be blatantly lying if you do so. Each skill can be drastically altered in its functionality depending on your play style and which runestone you choose to put in it, not to mention you can also drastically alter your character's play style based on which passive skills you choose.
 
krameriffic said:
Diablo did it's thing very well for its time, and that was what made it a classic. Perhaps I'm expecting too much, but for Diablo 3 to be the same kind of classic game in my eyes, it needs to blow my mind in the same way even in an era when I think I've seen and done everything. Riding the wave of Diablo fame will carry it only so far. To be a truly classic game of it's era, it needs to pull something out of its hat, which will admittedly be much more difficult.
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To be honest, I'm not confident in Blizzard's storytelling lore these days. SC2 was the first major example of over-plot-twisting the lore to the point that it's unbelievable even when it's logically viable/consistent to pull off. Next thing you know, Diablo was a good guy the entire time haha. I'm going into this with pretty low expectations from a story/lore standpoint.
 
yea and those high end runes will be about as plentiful as a zod was in d2.

And if you could prove it they will be $100 on their cash cow sold by the devs thru paypal....until the dupers get a chance at it.
 
sparks said:
yea and those high end runes will be about as plentiful as a zod was in d2.

And if you could prove it they will be $100 on their cash cow sold by the devs thru paypal....until the dupers get a chance at it.
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Duping should not be a problem. And props to blizzard for that btw. Definitely worth staying online for if you care the least bit about online play.
 
CryingGod said:
I highly doubt that, the kind of fear the Butcher instilled in you is sort of like that which Amnesia leaves you with. Diablo 3 will NEVER scare you, it's not made to. It is being made to cash in on the genre.
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hmm, i don't personally agree with that. i guess this is because i was never really SCARED while playing Diablo 1. the only reason i ever had an OH FUCK moment was because something was beating me down and i realized i was close to dying.

like i said though, i have no idea what else is in store in the later levels. what kind of bosses we'll be facing and how hard they will be. also, no idea how "dark" the levels will be as well.
 
I'm waiting for this game to come out. Meanwhile, I will kill time with some lovely D1/D2 gameplay :)
 
Smallville said:
I'm waiting for this game to come out. Meanwhile, I will kill time with some lovely D1/D2 gameplay :)
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Ha ha, I did the same thing, just for fun... reinstalled D2 and played a bit over a week. Was a blast to go back, since I played the game for 5+ years.

Seriously, hardcore looking forward to D3, and don't feel that neither the visuals or mechanics with skill changing detract anything from the game.

Quite the opposite, I think the visuals are fantastic, and the ability to change skills is balanced well in the game, from what I've seen, so that being able to change-out and enjoy using the various creative, visually appealing skills, will simply make it all-the-more enjoyable.

Also, while the mood certainly might be a bit different, it's definitely a dark atmosphere. Watched some vids from Yogscast from a couple days back, and one of the dungeons they entered had an extremely dark, even claustrophobic atmosphere, bathed in dark green light, filled with fog... it looks/felt fantastic.
 
hfk said:
Duping should not be a problem. And props to blizzard for that btw. Definitely worth staying online for if you care the least bit about online play.
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Don't care the least bit for online play and duping will be a problem.
 
If their servers are like WoW, duping shouldn't be a problem. Or is there mass duping in WoW now? Correct me if I'm wrong.
 
Instead you get chinese farmers, rampant bots, and a crapton of spam. Atleast with dupes prices will go down a bit on the best items.
 
krameriffic said:
If Diablo 3 EVER achieves the level of "OH FUCK" that I felt the first time I ever heard the Butcher say "AHH FRESH MEAT" and proceed to chop my balls off, I will eat my own ass.

It's just not gonna happen.
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I will agree with this. The reason being that you are a lot older than you were for Diablo and that does and will have a huge impact on how things affect you.

I was somewhere around 10 when I first played Diablo, and it was amazing. Things just don't impact me the same way now that i'm 26 as they did when I was so much younger. Another good example would be Everquest/UO. Spent a lot of time playing UO and it was an amazing game to me, and it still ranks as my favorite MMO of all time. With Everquest, I didn't spend as much time playing it but when I started it it seemed incredible. I can still remember the barbarian newbie zone, the trains in whichever dungeon was right there for lower level chars, being out at night near qeynos when it got pitch black and the 'boss' wolf chars came out to play, etc.

Games just don't have the same effects/impacts on me now that i'm 26 as they did when I was 7-15 years old.
 
Katalysis said:
How do you figure? All of the items are created server side. No one will be duping shit, just like WoW.
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In terms of item distribution, Diablo 2 on battle.net works similar to how instances in WoW work. The game world is created, items are generated, and the server waits for you to kill monsters/bosses until it sends you the loot. You can't modify what actually drops while on battle.net in D2 because your client is at the mercy of the server, who is in charge of determining that.

The reason so many dupes exist on battle.net in Diablo 2 is because of the way the game itself and the servers were designed. For example, Diablo 2 servers aren't designed to handle 1000 piles of 1 gold piece sitting on the ground at once, hence it lags. Example:

2hqukn8.jpg


This is one method to lag the server. Another way was with mass Bonewalls/Meteor spam. Dozens of ways have existed and been discovered over the years. With enough lag you can "rollback" the server, which essentially means crashing it via DoS, in this case with so many gold pieces sitting on the ground the engine and server wasn't designed to handle. When the server crashes it doesn't save the characters in the game. This opens up the ability to identify an item and then "rollback" it to its previously unidentified state. Maybe you own an item shop and want to sell only the best items, so if it's not a perfect helm or whatever, you can simply sell it unidentified for more money. You can create runewords and roll them back too if they don't have perfect stats.

Much of the dupes in Diablo 2 involve rollbacks. They involve lagging out individual servers the character itself resides on in the battle.net server pool, which severs the connection between that server and the battle.net pool itself, which leads to dupe methods.

Why isn't it possible in WoW? Well for one I think it's much harder to crash a server at will.
 
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PornoSatan said:
In terms of item distribution, Diablo 2 on battle.net works similar to how instances in WoW work. The game world is created, items are generated, and the server waits for you to kill monsters/bosses until it sends you the loot. You can't modify what actually drops while on battle.net in D2 because your client is at the mercy of the server, who is in charge of determining that.

The reason so many dupes exist on battle.net in Diablo 2 is because of the way the game itself and the servers were designed. For example, Diablo 2 servers aren't designed to handle 1000 piles of 1 gold piece sitting on the ground at once, hence it lags. Example:

2hqukn8.jpg


This is one method to lag the server. Another way was with mass Bonewalls/Meteor spam. Dozens of ways have existed and been discovered over the years. With enough lag you can "rollback" the server, which essentially means crashing it via DoS, in this case with so many gold pieces sitting on the ground the engine and server wasn't designed to handle. When the server crashes it doesn't save the characters in the game. This opens up the ability to identify an item and then "rollback" it to its previously unidentified state. Maybe you own an item shop and want to sell only the best items, so if it's not a perfect helm or whatever, you can simply sell it unidentified for more money. You can create runewords and roll them back too if they don't have perfect stats.

Much of the dupes in Diablo 2 involve rollbacks. They involve lagging out individual servers the character itself resides on in the battle.net server pool, which severs the connection between that server and the battle.net pool itself, which leads to dupe methods.

Why isn't it possible in WoW? Well for one I think it's much harder to crash a server at will.
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These are very simple shitty dupe methods... the best ones involve packet manipulation.

Things like god mode - using a bugged belt socket with a potion and having unlimited charges.
Ith / Dupe method - Selling things via the sell packet which I think was 18 then buying it back. IE finding the unique ID of a rune then selling that rune out of the item instead of the actual item allowing you to rerune etc. This method also lead to a dupe.
Bugged item dupe - Telekinesis spam an item (so it keeps bouncing in the air) and click it and it goes down. This causes the item to be bugged and locked in your inventory and on the ground. Once bugged in your inventory send the sell command and buy back the item over and over.

There are all kinds of cool dupes/hacks that did not involve the shitty GS but were simply creative people manipulating packets.
 
PornoSatan said:
SNIP

Why isn't it possible in WoW? Well for one I think it's much harder to crash a server at will.
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I know it was possible in a 10 year old game, but it will not be possible in D3. There was no financial incentive in D2 to stop it--once you bought the game, that was all the money Blizzard was getting. In WoW and D3, keeping up a player base increases their revenue stream, and duping will decrease that stream, and cripple it entirely in the case of D3.

Blizzard will eradicate duping in D3 because they have no choice.
 
Yoshiyuki Blade said:
To be honest, I'm not confident in Blizzard's storytelling lore these days. SC2 was the first major example of over-plot-twisting the lore to the point that it's unbelievable even when it's logically viable/consistent to pull off. Next thing you know, Diablo was a good guy the entire time haha. I'm going into this with pretty low expectations from a story/lore standpoint.
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This is one of the reasons why I thought Starcraft 2 was grossly overrated. Part of the reasons I believe was the stupid decision to strip the original 10-missions-a-side campaign to three separate games. Going through the whole story in the SC2 wiki proved to me this was correct based on the amounts of story filler and nonsense padded in.

Here's hoping that Leonard Boyarsky doesn't ruin Diablo 3 like how Chris Metzen regurgitated all his ideas from WC3/WoW into SC2.
 
I think diablo 3 seems alright. It didnt seem as crazy as the old diablo 2 in the mob sizes.
 
if your a big diablo fan i think you need to wait for the final game. the only missions it has in this one doesnt have crazy huge mobs.
 
Here's a Blizzard statement in 2000

There are many other precautions that have been taken to prevent cheating (more so in multi-player than in single player), but the game can basically be considered unhackable. The code is very sound. So as a word to the wise to all you hackers out there, don't waste your time trying to hack Diablo II
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LOL!
 
I don't think they've started sending out the invites yet. No one on the official forums has gotten one yet. I'd give it a couple hours until people start seeing invites.
 
well friends and family invite went out already now the close beta testers invites.


I doubt the game is unhackable. Most likely they will make a grinder bot to level up for you.
 
Katalysis said:
I know it was possible in a 10 year old game, but it will not be possible in D3. There was no financial incentive in D2 to stop it--once you bought the game, that was all the money Blizzard was getting. In WoW and D3, keeping up a player base increases their revenue stream, and duping will decrease that stream, and cripple it entirely in the case of D3.

Blizzard will eradicate duping in D3 because they have no choice.
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There are probably more hacks in WoW than ever was in Diablo 2. The reason it doesn't seem like a big deal is because the game is so big, and the hacks don't involve dupes or impossibly good items. There's still bots of just about every possible variety that exploit the game in crazy ways. Sgather bots which use speed hack and noclip to gather herbs in a super fast automated way is a good one. The level bots which have custom "paths" for leveling up to max without any interaction. The PVP bots which emulate players and try their best not to look like bots. Auction house bots. If they can't stop it in WoW, which DOES have a steady revenue stream, then they won't stop it in Diablo 3.

The best we can hope for is that the game doesn't allow for dupes/hacked items. But there will always be bots.

Kenjiwing said:
These are very simple shitty dupe methods... the best ones involve packet manipulation.

Things like god mode - using a bugged belt socket with a potion and having unlimited charges.
Ith / Dupe method - Selling things via the sell packet which I think was 18 then buying it back. IE finding the unique ID of a rune then selling that rune out of the item instead of the actual item allowing you to rerune etc. This method also lead to a dupe.
Bugged item dupe - Telekinesis spam an item (so it keeps bouncing in the air) and click it and it goes down. This causes the item to be bugged and locked in your inventory and on the ground. Once bugged in your inventory send the sell command and buy back the item over and over.

There are all kinds of cool dupes/hacks that did not involve the shitty GS but were simply creative people manipulating packets.
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Dropping that much gold was a waste of time without packet manipulation. I remember making a macro which spammed the drop gold packet D2Hackit, which I then bound to a key. When I would press it a massive amount of gold similar to what's in the screenshot would fall on the ground almost instantly. It was fun, though I didn't go much further than that with it.

But I know what you're talking about, doing things with packets that the GUI doesn't allow. Like what would happen if you put something in the trade screen but then also tried dropping it on the ground via packets. The trade gui filled the whole screen, which made it impossible to drop it on the ground, so it was "interesting" to see what would happen (probably would get connection interrupted).
 
TheBuzzer said:
well friends and family invite went out already now the close beta testers invites.
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Yeah, no one on the forums seem to have one yet. I logged into my account to make sure my SSD had enough space on it, but for some reason the system checker reported my storage drive, so I can fill up 700GB with Diablo 3.
 
make sure u dont look at the login page. it doesnt show anything but your account profilo page does

If you have it, it will say


Your Game Accounts

- Diablo III

Diablo III® Beta
[DIII-1] (Beta)
Public Test Realm (PTR)
 
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