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Diablo 3 Beta

LeninGHOLA said:
I never considered Diablo2 to be hardcore, but I'll admit the players definitely can be.

I'm cautiously optimistic about Diablo 3.
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That's why I don't understand where some people are coming from in this thread. Did we all play the same Diablo 2? Were some of you 6 or 7 years old when you played it, causing you to remember the game as much more difficult than it actually was?

Diablo 2 was not a complicated game. It was not a game that required much thought, and required only a minimal amount of planning because you couldn't respec your skills. The gameplay itself was fun because it was almost mindless. Stat allocation wasn't some grand, complicated system where you had to work hard to min/max - you put enough in stats to equip gear and dumped the rest into vitality. The most popular runs for items were short and fairly easy. Strong characters were easy to build even if you were just starting (see skelly necromancer/meteorb sorc). The game was more or less linear despite having some large areas to explore - Act1->Act2->Act3->Act4->Act5, repeat.
 
Actuary said:
There are more casual gamers than "hardcore" gamers. There are more purchases by casual gamers. Blizzard is in the business of making money.

A game requiring a bit of math to min/max does not make you a serious gamer because you can do some basic addition and division, nor does removing it equate to dumbing it down.

Casual gamers would probably be MORE likely to buy items. "Hardcore" gamers would want to get the items themselves.
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Sure there are more casual gamers, however look how many units D2 sold overall. The game wasn't designed for casuals, but managed to sell many millions of copies because it was a great game. Casual players would start playing Diablo 2 and get hooked because the game was just great and they wanted to play more of it. I think designing specifically for a casual audience can compromise a game and that doesn't necessarily result in an increase of sales, and this is the fundamental problem. Designing WoW (or anything else) to be more appealing to women and children certainly doesn't guarantee they will actually come.

WoW reached it peak player counts when the game was hard, and there was little hand holding. There were attunements, resist gear, and difficult content that people had to *gasp* work together on. Guilds stuck together and people playing the game more consistently so they could work through whatever what in front of them. No matter where people were in the game, there was always a "next thing" to be working towards, and it took some effort and time that kept people playing. The new game design is a theme park where they want everyone to see everything, and everyone gets purple gear regardless of what they do or how poorly they play. Guild hopping is now the norm, while years ago, people didn't even want to play with known guild hoppers. The game doesn't promote much outside of being a whack-a-mole loot pinata and trying to appease to people with no attention span. Since the switch, they are losing customers, and many of them are the hardcore players. So did making the game more casual really work? Hard to be certain, but Blizzard keeps trying to appeal more to the same casual audience instead of focusing on core players.

Decent article here:

http://kotaku.com/game-difficulty/
 
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ocellaris said:
The game wasn't designed for casuals, but managed to sell many millions of copies because it was a great game.
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What exactly about Diablo 2 makes you think it was designed with the hardcore gamer in mind? It was not a difficult game, and the endless Chaos Sanctuary/Baal runs were easy to pick up and put down as a casual, even if you had 20 minutes to play.

Diablo 2 was extremely casual-friendly.
 
Actuary said:
What exactly about Diablo 2 makes you think it was designed with the hardcore gamer in mind? It was not a difficult game, and the endless Chaos Sanctuary/Baal runs were easy to pick up and put down as a casual, even if you had 20 minutes to play.

Diablo 2 was extremely casual-friendly.
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I didn't say it was designed for hardcore people, I simple said it wasn't designed for casual players like some new games are. I think they just tried to make the best damn game they could make.
 
ocellaris said:
I didn't say it was designed for hardcore people, I simple said it wasn't designed for casual players like some new games are. I think they just tried to make the best damn game they could make.
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It isn't really a good counter-point to use a casual-friendly game. And you can bet that "how many games can we sell"/"will this have mass appeal" is a factor considered every time a game is made.

And Diablo 2 was pretty much the same mindless loot search that you contend WoW is now, except that it took 5 minutes (max) to do a Diablo MF run, and good items were easy to come by because they were duped so often.
 
Actuary said:
It isn't really a good counter-point to use a casual-friendly game. And you can bet that "how many games can we sell"/"will this have mass appeal" is a factor considered every time a game is made.

And Diablo 2 was pretty much the same mindless loot search that you contend WoW is now, except that it took 5 minutes (max) to do a Diablo MF run, and good items were easy to come by because they were duped so often.
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Okay now i know i've played a different D2 than you... probably because i got into it long after it was 'hot', but gear was definitely not easy to attain. I played a shit-ton, but never really looked at guides, so stat-point allocation was not simple. I was always hoarding points because i was uncertain of what gear i would end up with.

Sure it could have been casual, but to be GOOD at the game you definitely had to put in your time and figure shit out.
 
chockomonkey said:
Okay now i know i've played a different D2 than you... probably because i got into it long after it was 'hot', but gear was definitely not easy to attain. I played a shit-ton, but never really looked at guides, so stat-point allocation was not simple. I was always hoarding points because i was uncertain of what gear i would end up with.

Sure it could have been casual, but to be GOOD at the game you definitely had to put in your time and figure shit out.
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About 4 months ago I started a sorc and within a week or two of a few hours a day of play had a full MF set (occulus, shako, war travs, some tal gear, etc.).

And I would contest that you had to put time in to figure things out. Using any number of sites, or simply sitting in the trade channel for a few minutes, made it easy to figure out what gear you should be aiming for, and since so many websites had full item descriptions - exactly what stats you needed to equip it. Further, hoarding points was never necessary because you could, as I said above, look up every piece of gear in the game and see what str/dex you needed to shoot for. Even if you didn't and wound up going over, having an extra 10 in str as opposed to vita is not a big deal.

The "putting your time in" factor you're describing takes about 5 minutes.

I'll say it again - Diablo 2 was a relatively easy game. People are romantacizing Diablo 2 to be a much more in-depth/complicated game than it ever was.
 
Actuary said:
About 4 months ago I started a sorc and within a week or two of a few hours a day of play had a full MF set (occulus, shako, war travs, some tal gear, etc.).

And I would contest that you had to put time in to figure things out. Using any number of sites, or simply sitting in the trade channel for a few minutes, made it easy to figure out what gear you should be aiming for, and since so many websites had full item descriptions - exactly what stats you needed to equip it. Further, hoarding points was never necessary because you could, as I said above, look up every piece of gear in the game and see what str/dex you needed to shoot for. Even if you didn't and wound up going over, having an extra 10 in str as opposed to vita is not a big deal.

The "putting your time in" factor you're describing takes about 5 minutes.

I'll say it again - Diablo 2 was a relatively easy game. People are romantacizing Diablo 2 to be a much more in-depth/complicated game than it ever was.
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Okay cool kid. Not sure what to say here. I can't count the number of MF runs i did, pindleskin, baal, (act 3 boss, can't remember his name)...

sure i had an idea of what the best gear in the game was, but that doesn't mean i was getting it. I always wanted to play the game, not sit around trading, so i never did any of that. Just countless MF runs, and barely had my end-game set.

good for you that you could do it quicker, you pro you.

Oh, and the last line -- It's less that people are romanticizing D2, and more than they want to see blizzard takes steps forward rather than backward in regards to sequel development. The most recent post made on those blizzard forums does give me some hope in this regard.
 
Actuary said:
About 4 months ago I started a sorc and within a week or two of a few hours a day of play had a full MF set (occulus, shako, war travs, some tal gear, etc.).

And I would contest that you had to put time in to figure things out. Using any number of sites, or simply sitting in the trade channel for a few minutes, made it easy to figure out what gear you should be aiming for, and since so many websites had full item descriptions - exactly what stats you needed to equip it. Further, hoarding points was never necessary because you could, as I said above, look up every piece of gear in the game and see what str/dex you needed to shoot for. Even if you didn't and wound up going over, having an extra 10 in str as opposed to vita is not a big deal.

The "putting your time in" factor you're describing takes about 5 minutes.

I'll say it again - Diablo 2 was a relatively easy game. People are romantacizing Diablo 2 to be a much more in-depth/complicated game than it ever was.
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See, as the forum post linked on the last page points out, the time you had to put in in order to be successful was not in game. You had to go look up stuff on the Arreat Summit, read up on what the "best" MF gear was, what the best builds were for each profession, how much stuff was worth when trolling the Trading Post, etc. All of that is out of game. The forum poster argues (no Blizz flair on his avatar, but he seems to be awfully "in the know" for an outsider) that much of the changes they made were done so that you never have to leave the game to be able to build a successful character. The "hardcore" players will still be able to tweak their builds, stats, and specialties through gemcrafting and socketing, customized gear spec'ing, skill rune tweaing, and blacksmithing.

Since you no longer have as much need to consult skill tables and stat damage algorithms, and since there is less opportunity to *break* your character irretrievably, the game has been "dumbed down" and whatnot.

 
chockomonkey said:
Okay cool kid. Not sure what to say here. I can't count the number of MF runs i did, pindleskin, baal, (act 3 boss, can't remember his name)...

sure i had an idea of what the best gear in the game was, but that doesn't mean i was getting it. I always wanted to play the game, not sit around trading, so i never did any of that. Just countless MF runs, and barely had my end-game set.

good for you that you could do it quicker, you pro you.

Oh, and the last line -- It's less that people are romanticizing D2, and more than they want to see blizzard takes steps forward rather than backward in regards to sequel development. The most recent post made on those blizzard forums does give me some hope in this regard.
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Has nothing to do with being "cool", this isn't a brag post (it's D2, why would I?), so you should probably get out of that mindset and accept it for what it is - a rebuttal to your argument that Diablo 2 required a time investment to be "good". It didn't. It required somewhat of a time investment to GET gear depending on how lucky you were, or whether or not you utilized trading (why wouldn't you?), but playing the game well was not difficult.

I'm glad, though, that you've backed off your "it required an investigative time element to be good" argument, because that holds no water. There were enough online resources available for Diablo 2 that getting enough of an understanding of the game to be good required very little investigation or time.

As far as your "steps forward and not backward" statement - I'm not even sure what you could be referencing. I hope it's not stat allocation, which was perhaps the most pointless character-related part of Diablo 2.

uzor said:
See, as the forum post linked on the last page points out, the time you had to put in in order to be successful was not in game. You had to go look up stuff on the Arreat Summit, read up on what the "best" MF gear was, what the best builds were for each profession, how much stuff was worth when trolling the Trading Post, etc. All of that is out of game. The forum poster argues (no Blizz flair on his avatar, but he seems to be awfully "in the know" for an outsider) that much of the changes they made were done so that you never have to leave the game to be able to build a successful character. The "hardcore" players will still be able to tweak their builds, stats, and specialties through gemcrafting and socketing, customized gear spec'ing, skill rune tweaing, and blacksmithing.

Since you no longer have as much need to consult skill tables and stat damage algorithms, and since there is less opportunity to *break* your character irretrievably, the game has been "dumbed down" and whatnot.
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Fair enough, there was an out-of-game aspect to Diablo 2. I wouldn't consider changing that "dumbing down" though. Something requiring time to do doesn't add much to the experience, and none of the concepts were hard to grasp. It was "did you do some very basic research and have a very rough, general plan for your character?"

Working with calculators to determine max damage wasn't really necessary. People may consider that "dumbing down", but your character was not going to be much better because your meteor did 12,000 damage a hit instead of 11,500.

I would consider many of the changes to be of the "removing borderline pointless mechanics of the game."
 
Actuary said:
I'll say it again - Diablo 2 was a relatively easy game. People are romantacizing Diablo 2 to be a much more in-depth/complicated game than it ever was.
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No they're not, you're just playing it with a complete understanding of every aspect of the game. Not everybody followed a detailed guide or played it for years on end to figure out every little detail.
 
Why did a thread about Diablo 3 become a Diablo 2 dick swinging contest?

On topic, the game needs much more customization if its going to cater to the hardcore player.
 
Teh_ZioN said:
Why did a thread about Diablo 3 become a Diablo 2 dick swinging contest?

On topic, the game needs much more customization if its going to cater to the hardcore player.
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Why would any company WANT to cater to the hardcore player? They are outnumbered by casuals. Nobody cares about the hardcore player (who is more likely to buy a more "casual" game than the casual is to buy a "hardcore" game.)

krameriffic said:
No they're not, you're just playing it with a complete understanding of every aspect of the game. Not everybody followed a detailed guide or played it for years on end to figure out every little detail.
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Diablo 2 was an easy game to play from the get-go, and an in-depth understanding of the game was not necessary to have a character capable of playing through the game. Further, given the tremendous amount of resources available for Diablo 2 (online guides, forums, detailed item descriptions, description of game mechanics) the game was made even easier. Lack of knowledge doesn't make the game hard or complicated, it makes the player uninformed.

What you're saying is analogous to saying that adding 2+2 is hard for someone who doesn't know any math. Of course it is, that doesn't mean it's hard, though.

The depth of the game was inversely correlated with your knowledge of the game. Given that "hardcore" gamers should strive to be pretty knowledgeable about the games they play in an effort to get better, and that everyone complaining about "dumbing down" professes to be a hardcore gamer while they bemoan the casual nature of the new game, then Diablo 2 should have had very little depth for any of you. What, exactly, are you complaining about, then? That it will be easier for someone not investing any time at all to plan their character to be on a level playing field with you? Essentially, you're complaining you've lost an advantage, as that's the only reason for the griping. You want your understanding of the game to factor into how good you can be at the game instead of just relying on how well you can play. It's all pretty lame.

I'll take "casualization" making the game more accessible to people over an artificial difficulty created by obscuring game mechanics. Understanding the "depth" of Diablo 2 didn't make any of us good players, all it meant is that we could read.
 
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krameriffic said:
No they're not, you're just playing it with a complete understanding of every aspect of the game. Not everybody followed a detailed guide or played it for years on end to figure out every little detail.
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Actuary -- this is what i was trying to say. Sorry for taking your post the wrong way.

Thanks krameriffic for saying in few words what i could not in several paragraphs.

My last statement was not about stat points, but about everything in a general way. Look at diablo 1, then 2. You could tally up the improvements to the game. Hopefully when 3 comes out, one will be able to make a similar tally of all the improvements to the game.

The link Krenum posts does give me hope in this regard.
 
Actuary said:
Fair enough, there was an out-of-game aspect to Diablo 2. I wouldn't consider changing that "dumbing down" though. Something requiring time to do doesn't add much to the experience, and none of the concepts were hard to grasp. It was "did you do some very basic research and have a very rough, general plan for your character?"

Working with calculators to determine max damage wasn't really necessary. People may consider that "dumbing down", but your character was not going to be much better because your meteor did 12,000 damage a hit instead of 11,500.

I would consider many of the changes to be of the "removing borderline pointless mechanics of the game."
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I agree as well, but a lot of the argument I've heard against the direction of Diablo 3 is that "dumbing down" is precisely what those changes/decisions are doing.

 
ocellaris said:
I didn't say it was designed for hardcore people, I simple said it wasn't designed for casual players like some new games are. I think they just tried to make the best damn game they could make.
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Actually, it started off super casual friendly. You could literally hack n slash your way through the first 3-4 acts on normal difficulty by yourself (provided you knew the bare basics like putting in your stats/skills and equipping gear). Most skills were very weak and virtually worthless early on because you didn't have the proper gear to support them. I replayed the game late last year and went straight down to whirlwind with the barb, as well as the weapon mastery of the weapon type that I was using. It was so weak and cost so much mana that I didn't bother carrying many mana pots rarely used it at all.
 
Diablo 2 was not really casual after normal mode. You had to know what you were going to max on a toon (and save points) and what gear would go with it BEFORE you did one allocation of a stat or skill point. Otherwise you had a toon that was useless in hell.

Oh and getting the gear legitamitly was NEAR FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE in D2. They need to change the drop rates so you actually find something for killing diablo.
 
In D1 and D2 I hardly ever got magical items and if I did it was almost always the wrong one for my class.

But in D3 with +%-to-find-magical-items gear on it's pretty crazy how often blues drop... from carrying nothing and rocking about 10% I end up with about half of my inventory being blue items after a single run from checkpoint to checkpoint. A few more %'s and they'd be dropping like rain.
 
XvMMvX said:
Diablo 2 was not really casual after normal mode. You had to know what you were going to max on a toon (and save points) and what gear would go with it BEFORE you did one allocation of a stat or skill point. Otherwise you had a toon that was useless in hell.

Oh and getting the gear legitamitly was NEAR FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE in D2. They need to change the drop rates so you actually find something for killing diablo.
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Eh? Since when? It's been a while since I last played the game in full. The last time I played was shortly after 1.10 when the ladder reset (so there was no way to cheese the game with good gear and high level rushes) and I went through Hell without a memorable issue. Of course, I had been playing for a while then and knew what I was doing for the most part. Once things stabilized, it was all ez mode. Considering that Hell Baal runs (killing the *final boss* of the game until your eyes bleed) was commonplace, the game wasn't hard at all.

As for the uber stuff, I had quit by the time that stuff happened.
 
maybe it was the builds i always went (i love ice orb)... hell was never easy with all those resistances. couldn't do shit solo, and teleporting places got pretty risky.
 
Oh yes. Admittedly solo was quite difficult and especially painful for sorcs when you run into those immunities.
 
XvMMvX said:
Diablo 2 was not really casual after normal mode. You had to know what you were going to max on a toon (and save points) and what gear would go with it BEFORE you did one allocation of a stat or skill point. Otherwise you had a toon that was useless in hell.

Oh and getting the gear legitamitly was NEAR FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE in D2. They need to change the drop rates so you actually find something for killing diablo.
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i agree with you on the not casual after normal mode part.

i will disagree with you on the gear. just like with the skill points and such, if you pay attention to what you need in certain areas you can get my with cheaper gear that's suited for certain areas, and swap depending on if you're running chaos sanctuary for xp, or baals minions for magic find, etc.

finding the perfect gear that maxed all of your resistances and hit all of your breakpoints at the same time was difficult, but it was supposed to be.
 
What are you all ranting about. I played the game as a game. (That may surprise some of you!) I didn't do mana find runs. I didn't do endless amounts of trading on the internet.

I played through it single player, then went through it a couple times during little LAN gatherings. I played limited amounts online, and if I did--I played it as a game, as the game it was intenteded to be, and not a giant mana find grind fest.
 
Loading said:
What are you all ranting about. I played the game as a game. (That may surprise some of you!) I didn't do mana find runs. I didn't do endless amounts of trading on the internet.

I played through it single player, then went through it a couple times during little LAN gatherings. I played limited amounts online, and if I did--I played it as a game, as the game it was intenteded to be, and not a giant mana find grind fest.
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this is a troll right? not real just to flame?
first they're magic find, not mana find. 2ndly, if you played through as you enjoyed it, why do you care how i played the game as i enjoyed it?
 
Loading said:
What are you all ranting about. I played the game as a game. (That may surprise some of you!) I didn't do mana find runs. I didn't do endless amounts of trading on the internet.

I played through it single player, then went through it a couple times during little LAN gatherings. I played limited amounts online, and if I did--I played it as a game, as the game it was intenteded to be, and not a giant mana find grind fest.
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got to be a troll post--mana find... awesome!
 
No, it's a serious post. I never did any item grinding, sorry magic find builds. I really don't have hours upon hours to do, well, nothing but run the same area over and over again. As I said, I played the game to enjoy the game, to play the story. I think a concept lots of you are missing, FOR FUN.

I haven't played the beta, but from what I'm seeing/reading, Diablo 3 will be quite fun for people that want to play the game for fun. I really haven't heard much about the story yet, but I'm hoping it will be good as blizzard usually tells a good story. I'm also thinking that D3 should be entertaining for people that will just play through it a few times.

I'll be able to experience all the potential skills of a class, without having to create new characters. Which for a casual player, I think will be good. That being said--I think it's a bad move on blizzards part. From a casual players stand point, I never looked at builds. To play a game for fun, I think it's important to allow players to make mistakes, allow them to pump 10 points into a beginning skill that may be worthless later down the road. I thought one of the fun aspects was deciding (For myself!) what skills I should invest in, and what stats I should boost.

I guess I can live without stat points, but skill points? If I wanted to build a melee shrug everything off barb, I could invest points in what I would think would be useful, and to get some of the skills I wanted, I had to spend points in skills lower in the tree. I had to make some actual plans. Now, I just get all the skills handed to me on a silver platter? Then I can just equip them on the fly? I think that's making the game much to casual. The blizzard recommend a skill in this box here thing looks absolutely abhorrent. To make a game fun, I want to make some decisions for myself, not have builds suggested to me in game.

And what's this shit about no stat requirements? Let me get this right, some 12 year old kid can go on the auction house with daddy's credit card buy 100 bucks worth of equipment for a level one character and just walk through the rest of the game? Who in the hell planned that out. (Sorry if that's not how it works, I admit, I haven't looked to close at it)

So, if you get no stat points from leveling up, you get no skill points from leveling up, all you get is predefined unlocks? That's lame. I was always savoring the next level up so I could put 3 more points into strength to equip the newest sword I got, and 1 skill so I could unlock that new skill I'd waited for, pumped points into the skills along that tree so I could actually get it. Now it just goes ding, blizzard tells me to equip my new skill in skill slot B and call it a day? That doesn't sound that great to a casual gamer, and it sounds like it'd be even more retarded for a serious player.

Diablo 3 might be a meh pass till cheap bin for me, unless it gets great reviews..
 
we're missing the fun aspect of diablo? i think it's obvious by now that we all enjoy video games, else why post on these forums? i was in college while i played most of my diablo 2, and the game was boring by the time i spent 3 or 4 years playing it. i had FUN item grinding with friends or joining random games and rushing newbies, whatever.

as far as the character builds, you're contradicting yourself. you say that the skill system is good for casual gaming but bad because you can't waste skill points. wasting skillpoints leads to rebuilding characters and grinding levels to catch back up. wasted skillpoints means getting to act 3 and realizing your character is broken and isn't fun to play.

furthermore your character can swap skills on the fly but they're subject to a cooldown, making it ineffective to switch skills in a fight. as someone who build dozens of characters in diablo 2, spent countless hours crunching numbers to make sure i didn't waste a single point of strength or dexterity, made sure i hit my breakpoints for attack speed, etc. i welcome this toned down system of stats and skills. how frustrating would it be for a casual player to find an incredible shield only to realize there's no way you can equip it because the strength requirement is too high? you'd have to rebuild. what about wanting to try a new set of skills only to realize it's awful?

as far as the system where blizzard recommends where to slot which skills, if you'd have read about it it tells you that you can disable that system and go to the free choice six skills system.

right now it seems like you're complaining just to complain: saying that you're a casual game who doesn't grind runs and crunch numbers but wants stats to crunch and skills to misplace, leading to rebuilt characters and grinding for experience to catch up to where they were.
 
Loading said:
And what's this shit about no stat requirements? Let me get this right, some 12 year old kid can go on the auction house with daddy's credit card buy 100 bucks worth of equipment for a level one character and just walk through the rest of the game? Who in the hell planned that out. (Sorry if that's not how it works, I admit, I haven't looked to close at it)
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There are still character specific items, and level requirements. So you can't equip a level 1 Monk with a late game item, but that's about it.
Loading said:
So, if you get no stat points from leveling up, you get no skill points from leveling up, all you get is predefined unlocks? That's lame. I was always savoring the next level up so I could put 3 more points into strength to equip the newest sword I got, and 1 skill so I could unlock that new skill I'd waited for, pumped points into the skills along that tree so I could actually get it. Now it just goes ding, blizzard tells me to equip my new skill in skill slot B and call it a day? That doesn't sound that great to a casual gamer, and it sounds like it'd be even more retarded for a serious player.
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That's pretty much how it works right now.

And holy hell, did this thread explode.
 
Dome said:
we're missing the fun aspect of diablo? i think it's obvious by now that we all enjoy video games, else why post on these forums? i was in college while i played most of my diablo 2, and the game was boring by the time i spent 3 or 4 years playing it. i had FUN item grinding with friends or joining random games and rushing newbies, whatever.

as far as the character builds, you're contradicting yourself. you say that the skill system is good for casual gaming but bad because you can't waste skill points. wasting skillpoints leads to rebuilding characters and grinding levels to catch back up. wasted skillpoints means getting to act 3 and realizing your character is broken and isn't fun to play.

furthermore your character can swap skills on the fly but they're subject to a cooldown, making it ineffective to switch skills in a fight. as someone who build dozens of characters in diablo 2, spent countless hours crunching numbers to make sure i didn't waste a single point of strength or dexterity, made sure i hit my breakpoints for attack speed, etc. i welcome this toned down system of stats and skills. how frustrating would it be for a casual player to find an incredible shield only to realize there's no way you can equip it because the strength requirement is too high? you'd have to rebuild. what about wanting to try a new set of skills only to realize it's awful?

as far as the system where blizzard recommends where to slot which skills, if you'd have read about it it tells you that you can disable that system and go to the free choice six skills system.

right now it seems like you're complaining just to complain: saying that you're a casual game who doesn't grind runs and crunch numbers but wants stats to crunch and skills to misplace, leading to rebuilt characters and grinding for experience to catch up to where they were.
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I think he's saying that it's the trial and error, the discovery, the learning for yourself what works and doesn't work, and the uncertainty due to the consequences of "getting it wrong" so to speak that is what he liked about D2. With the on the fly respec with little to no consequences in D3, I'm guessing he's worried that it'll be too easy, that there won't be any anticipation over whether he made a good choice or how he should have done it different/better.


 
Actuary said:
That's why I don't understand where some people are coming from in this thread. Did we all play the same Diablo 2? Were some of you 6 or 7 years old when you played it, causing you to remember the game as much more difficult than it actually was?

Diablo 2 was not a complicated game. It was not a game that required much thought, and required only a minimal amount of planning because you couldn't respec your skills. The gameplay itself was fun because it was almost mindless. Stat allocation wasn't some grand, complicated system where you had to work hard to min/max - you put enough in stats to equip gear and dumped the rest into vitality. The most popular runs for items were short and fairly easy. Strong characters were easy to build even if you were just starting (see skelly necromancer/meteorb sorc). The game was more or less linear despite having some large areas to explore - Act1->Act2->Act3->Act4->Act5, repeat.
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True, but the sad thing is, Diablo 3 is even less complex than that. Which makes it...kinda lame, IMO.

Loading said:
So, if you get no stat points from leveling up, you get no skill points from leveling up, all you get is predefined unlocks? That's lame. I was always savoring the next level up so I could put 3 more points into strength to equip the newest sword I got, and 1 skill so I could unlock that new skill I'd waited for, pumped points into the skills along that tree so I could actually get it. Now it just goes ding, blizzard tells me to equip my new skill in skill slot B and call it a day? That doesn't sound that great to a casual gamer, and it sounds like it'd be even more retarded for a serious player.
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A-yup. Pretty much how I feel about it as well.
 
The fact of the matter is for 'serious players' a character didn't become playable until level 75.

when i planned out a character, i allowed for 0 waste in terms of skill points, stat points, anything. i had the bare minimum and made the rest up with charms and gear. most times i couldn't use any items at all until level 42, and that didn't allow me to do too much. i'd get power leveled, i'd get rushed, and THEN i could play the game. this way, if i want to have 20 characters, i can use skills along the way, instead of a bunch of pre-requisite skills stuck at level 1 that were useless.

once i unlock my main skill with it's rune, then i can go to my stash, get out my good gear, and rock out however i want to. hopefully, for the tweakers, they can still find out ias breakpoints, blocking speeds and casting times,, chance to hit, crushing blow, bleed dmg etc.

maybe they'll just release the auto-skills as an option and let the tweakers pick and choose, who knows. until then, diablo 2 was as complicated as you wanted it to be, or as simple as point and click. everyone loved it. from what i've played of the beta, it's going to be very similar: from the outside it looks incredibly simple, but once you get into the game, into the items and the skills, it really opens up into something very complicated
 
I love min/maxing an rpg. With games like those in the Diablo series, I care slightly less about it. I think many many options to attain this goal should be included, but I doubt I'll ever spend 200 hours in D3 to find out. Not to say the game will be bad, but I spend much more of my time these days on heavy crpg to address this game in a harcore fashion.

Long story short; the game being a bit casual isn't terrible to me, but I really don't think they should go that route. There are too many core fans that take this seriously.
 
Cobalt35 said:
For anyone who might be interested, I've uploaded a few screenshots of the beta taken a few minutes ago. This is at 1900x1200 with every graphical setting on maximum.

http://i.imgur.com/Oarwr.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/88iPj.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/f9s8I.jpg

The graphical quality you see there is very true to how it is in the game, aside from a little bit of jpg artifacting.
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Thanks for posting this. I'm not a graphical snob but I think we all do expect a certain graphical standard in games coming out today. The art assets look bland, sloppy and lazy. How many polygons does each character have? Even consoles can handle better graphics than this.
 
Loading said:
So, if you get no stat points from leveling up, you get no skill points from leveling up, all you get is predefined unlocks? That's lame. I was always savoring the next level up so I could put 3 more points into strength to equip the newest sword I got, and 1 skill so I could unlock that new skill I'd waited for, pumped points into the skills along that tree so I could actually get it. Now it just goes ding, blizzard tells me to equip my new skill in skill slot B and call it a day? That doesn't sound that great to a casual gamer, and it sounds like it'd be even more retarded for a serious player.
Click to expand...

This is a really good point, it really does take the "Sweet I dinged!!" out of leveling. Of course, i still enjoyed leveling in WoW, and it wasn't the stat points, it was indeed the new skills that would be getting unlocked... so i guess we'll just have to wait and see.

hopefully there are still level requirements on gear. hopefully there will be enough variety in gems and gear that all the min/maxing can happen there. Hopefully spells get cool buffs from various stats to make things more complicated. Still, i can't help but love talent points, which they could have made casual ala wow via re-specs.

Krenum said:
Diablo III using Injector settings.

http://i206.photobucket.com/albums/bb137/krenum/DiabloIII2012-03-0211-26-29-07.jpg
http://i206.photobucket.com/albums/bb137/krenum/DiabloIII2012-03-0211-22-53-34.jpg
http://i206.photobucket.com/albums/bb137/krenum/DiabloIII2012-03-0211-22-31-34.jpg

Files can be found here.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/3967848172
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Sweet, at least that removes all that damned blur!
 
Wow that blur is awful. Why would they intentionally do that? I'm usually not one for those injector mods but unless something is done it looks like it'll be necessary for D3. The texture quality isn't bad once you get rid of the blur.
 
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