Diablo III, Reaper of Souls

so D3:RoS is coming out this month. I was wondering if I should get it now or wait until it inevitably gets cheaper. I really liked D3 but stopped playing after completing with every class on Nightmare, which was about 5 months after release.

I played D2:LoD for much longer, came back to it several times as it improved over time. What made me stop comming back to D3 is that it is not actually as random as Blizzard claimed: in almost every dungeon I intrinsically knew what direction to go and how big the area would be. what only changed were the placements of some prebuilt dungeons sections, the monsters and the loot. Compare this to D2, where randomization meant a really completely different map in every dungeon except a couple of boss dungeons. In D1, it was even more random.

In RoS Blizzard claims that randomness is back, specifically in the Act V addition and in the new sandbox game more called Adventure Mode. While I welcome this whole heartedly, I am wondering if this means that the existing acts will also benefit form some random dungeon scripting. If so, I wouldn't mind going through them all again. If not, I think I will stick to Adventure Mode.

I will certainly hold back because of the current price tag.

While I enjoy the changes from 2.0 for the base game (which I basicially got for free due to my WOW subscription), I am not convinced that the changes are big enough to justify that cost.

40$ would be okay-ish, but 40€ for an expansion is just overprized.

I went back to D2 recently and was disappointed at the lack of randomness - it seems that the Cold Plains, for instance, has basically two layouts (both of which I remember from playing it years ago) and, unlike D3, monster identities and locations seem to be fixed on each one. I faced the same layout and unique monsters in Den of Evil and I think in The Cave as two different characters.

As far as Reaper of Souls is concerned, the randomness is supposed to be very limited - in Adventure Mode you will occasionally get special bonus levels, and these are the ones that are randomised - the rest of the existing Acts are unchanged, and do not get new maps (random or otherwise). I haven't heard anything to the effect that Act V will be randomised; I expect it to just add more map locations and story just like Acts I-IV.

In D2 randomness was in any case more pronounced with loot drops than with maps - if the new patch is anything to go by, this has taken a step back in D3. Although many more abilities are now available for items, the 'smart loot' drops predictable primary stat, damage and life regen boosters again and again and again, which doesn't take long to get boring.

As far as pricing is concerned, it basically boils down to how long you want to wait vs. how much you'll save by doing so, since it seems you've decided you want the expansion ("not buying at all" not being one of your suggested options). Blizzard doesn't have sales and four years after release Starcraft II has only had its price cut by a third. $40 (which is the price in the US - evidently there's a problem with their exchange rate calculations in the EU) now is more attractive to me than waiting several years for a $13 discount on a game I'll likely have forgotten by then.

I'll be reminded of startcraft2 when the third chapter gets released.... whenever.

I remember that the rooms layout in places like the monastery, and the land layout outside in the jungle and dessert were quite random, but you are right that certain sections were not random at all, like specific dungeons. Thinking back, I do remember when playing D2 that I thought it was less random than D1. I liked in D1 the fact that you had no idea how a layout might be and even quests were a roll of the dice. I miss that.

besides the new class, adventure mode and a new story act (I actually really like the story from the beginning of this series, except for the choice not to join Zoltun Kulle. wtf?), possibly the only other thing I am interested in is the Mystic which would allow you to retool your armor/weapons to look different.

I don't expect to get it at 10$ or anything, but indeed 40$ is a bit steep for a add-on.

Yes, D1 was for me the pinnacle of the series because of that randomness - though it still had a few fixed elements, and of course all the levels used the same basic pieces because there was only a single "Act" (beneath the Cathedral).

The price is a bit too high, but as I say the choices seem to be either to take it and grumble, or not get the expansion. Blizzard's stated justification for the price point is that Adventure Mode changes the game substantially, plus it gives you an Act's-worth of new maps to add to the Adventure Mode game once you've run through the story once.

As others have said on another thread, though, Diablo III's monsters don't vary a lot functionally between maps and acts, so it's not clear that a mode which boils down to just unlocking waypoints will have that substantial an effect on the way the game plays, and I find it disappointing that they're adding no new maps or even quests to the existing acts (the "Bounties" that you complete to open the random levels appear to be taken from the existing story quests, such as kill Queen Areanae, or clearing existing dungeons).

PhilBowles said:

$40 (which is the price in the US - evidently there's a problem with their exchange rate calculations in the EU)

Click to expand...

That isn't a "problem", it is business practice. Most companies will just swap the $ for a € and call it a day if they can get away with it.
And apparently, they do.

...one of the reasons why I love GOG: Unlike Steam they always calculate prices in $, which has tempted me to buy a lot of games from them.

As far as pricing is concerned, it basically boils down to how long you want to wait vs. how much you'll save by doing so, since it seems you've decided you want the expansion ("not buying at all" not being one of your suggested options). Blizzard doesn't have sales and four years after release Starcraft II has only had its price cut by a third. $40 (which is the price in the US - evidently there's a problem with their exchange rate calculations in the EU) now is more attractive to me than waiting several years for a $13 discount on a game I'll likely have forgotten by then.

Click to expand...

Indeed one of the reasons why I dislike the battle.net shop.
The prices for their older titles are just insane: The last time I checked (I think that was a year ago, can't find it now in the new Bnet shop, though) they wanted 20€ for D2 vanilla and another 20€ for LoD.
My thought: WAIT WHAT?!

GAGA Extrem said:

That isn't a "problem", it is business practice. Most companies will just swap the $ for a € and call it a day if they can get away with it.
And apparently, they do.

...one of the reasons why I love GOG: Unlike Steam they always calculate prices in $, which has tempted me to buy a lot of games from them.

Click to expand...

I think you should be able to buy a game in dollars from Battle.net US and then change the region coding to play (in any case, you can play with foreign region coding - one of my friends in the US still plays Starcraft 2 with European region coding).

Indeed one of the reasons why I dislike the battle.net shop.
The prices for their older titles are just insane: The last time I checked (I think that was a year ago, can't find it now in the new Bnet shop, though) they wanted 20€ for D2 vanilla and another 20€ for LoD.
My thought: WAIT WHAT?!

Click to expand...

I actually picked up D2 on their site last week, and it was $10. With another $10 for the expansion.

I would have hopes that the bounties would be new quests. Hell I hoped that there would be many new quests to liven things up. After countless plays I only once came across a random.quest of a shipwreck in the dessert. I thought it was so cool! It would have been a lot more fun if there were more quests like that. I don't think they are too hard to make, right?

Fabio1701 said:

I would have hopes that the bounties would be new quests. Hell I hoped that there would be many new quests to liven things up. After countless plays I only once came across a random.quest of a shipwreck in the dessert. I thought it was so cool! It would have been a lot more fun if there were more quests like that. I don't think they are too hard to make, right?

Click to expand...

I've had a few random quests, but not many other than the fairly common ones like the necromancer, Jar of Souls etc, which seem to turn up around half the time. I haven't encountered a shipwreck in the desert.

The examples given of bounties by Blizzard were "kill Queen Areanae" and "Clear the Khazra Den" - it may be that these were given as examples because players already know about them, and there are new quests specifically available as bounties as well, but there's been nothing said to that effect. What we do know is that they're randomised of the available options - each Act seems to have a set number of bounties, but exactly which ones you get offered will vary each time you enter that Act.

I preordered D3 big mistake
Stopped playing in about 2 weeks, havent gone. Blizzards repeated patching and changes to fix Diablo3 problems were laughable.

I was extremely unimpressed with D3, and won't be buying any expansion.

GAGA Extrem said:

That isn't a "problem", it is business practice. Most companies will just swap the $ for a € and call it a day if they can get away with it.
And apparently, they do.

Click to expand...

Isn't it pretty much the same in most European countries when you include VAT (i.e., the
€40 is tax-inclusive while the $40 is tax-exclusive)?

DaviddesJ said:

Isn't it pretty much the same in most European countries when you include VAT (i.e., the
€40 is tax-inclusive while the $40 is tax-exclusive)?

Click to expand...

The US price quoted is the retail price. If you buy it in a store, because of the way US taxation is regionalised, you may get additional tax, but if you buy it on Steam (or in this case Battle.net), or otherwise internationally at US prices, you'll only ever pay $40. Moreover the euro is worth 1.5 dollars and upwards (a bit more at the moment, I think - it's edging close to the value of the pound) - I don't think there are many European countries with 33% VAT.

PhilBowles said:

The US price quoted is the retail price. If you buy it in a store, because of the way US taxation is regionalised, you may get additional tax, but if you buy it on Steam (or in this case Battle.net), or otherwise internationally at US prices, you'll only ever pay $40. Moreover the euro is worth 1.5 dollars and upwards (a bit more at the moment, I think - it's edging close to the value of the pound) - I don't think there are many European countries with 33% VAT.

Click to expand...

Currently €1.00 = $1.38. And the fact that you can evade VAT by buying online from US retailers doesn't help European retailers selling to European customers in Euros, who have to collect the tax, which is why the price is higher there.

I don't think the only reason it's higher is the VAT, it's just regional pricing. Regional pricing exists for pretty much every newer game.

And in the US, there is no Federal sales tax, it's done by state, and most states have laws that you only pay the tax if a retail store exists in the state. So if you buy something online from Target.com you pay tax cus there's a target down the street but you don't pay tax for steam stuff cus there is no physical steam retail store. A lot of states are looking into changing these laws however.

Back to the topic of the expansion, I've now played a bit with the Crusader (up to level 11 on Master). It's a fun character, moreso than I expected, and does have something of a nostalgic feel. It feels as though what you equip him with actually makes a difference - he has different sets of skills that work with or without a shield, that can make him either a tank or a damage dealer (although at level 10 he gets the passive ability to carry a two handed weapon and shield together at the cost of movement speed).

At least at this level, he seems slow to start and deal damage - his early abilities are utility skills rather than damage dealers and he has unusual approaches to both area effect abilities (which mostly affect a limited 'firing arc' rather than the usual circle) and ranged damage (which is short-range), but he definitely feels different from other characters (previously, D3 characters felt mostly the same with the same suite of basic ability types unlocked in different orders, though the patch changed this somewhat for the existing classes). There's a nostalgic feel to actually having shields as a meaningful item type, and there's a lot of synergy with the Crusader's abilities (a non-damaging ability that blinds enemies in pretty much the exact arc the Sweeping Attack can damage, for instance, and a Wrath-generating ability that provokes enemies to get close enough that you can spend all the wrath you just generated on the same sweeping attack).

PhilBowles said:

Back to the topic of the expansion, I've now played a bit with the Crusader (up to level 11 on Master). It's a fun character, moreso than I expected, and does have something of a nostalgic feel. It feels as though what you equip him with actually makes a difference - he has different sets of skills that work with or without a shield, that can make him either a tank or a damage dealer (although at level 10 he gets the passive ability to carry a two handed weapon and shield together at the cost of movement speed).

At least at this level, he seems slow to start and deal damage - his early abilities are utility skills rather than damage dealers and he has unusual approaches to both area effect abilities (which mostly affect a limited 'firing arc' rather than the usual circle) and ranged damage (which is short-range), but he definitely feels different from other characters (previously, D3 characters felt mostly the same with the same suite of basic ability types unlocked in different orders, though the patch changed this somewhat for the existing classes). There's a nostalgic feel to actually having shields as a meaningful item type, and there's a lot of synergy with the Crusader's abilities (a non-damaging ability that blinds enemies in pretty much the exact arc the Sweeping Attack can damage, for instance, and a Wrath-generating ability that provokes enemies to get close enough that you can spend all the wrath you just generated on the same sweeping attack).

Click to expand...

sounds promising. what is the dungeon randomization like? has that changed at all in the first acts, or will you have to wait until the final act to see increased randomization?

Have you encountered that new NPC that lets you change the look of weapons/armor?

Fabio1701 said:

sounds promising. what is the dungeon randomization like? has that changed at all in the first acts, or will you have to wait until the final act to see increased randomization?

Have you encountered that new NPC that lets you change the look of weapons/armor?

Click to expand...

There is no dungeon randomisation in the campaign that I'm aware of - as I understand it, Blizzard advertised randomisation as a feature of specific, occasional dungeon types called Nephalem Rifts that are exclusive to "Adventure Mode" (which itself is only unlocked after completing the fifth Act). Certainly up as far as the Cemetery of the Forsaken the maps are the same as usual.

It's possible there are new sub-dungeons or events, or I may just have run into one or two I hadn't previously encountered or at least remembered (The Cave Beneath the Well, and I think another one),

PhilBowles said:

There is no dungeon randomisation in the campaign that I'm aware of - as I understand it, Blizzard advertised randomisation as a feature of specific, occasional dungeon types called Nephalem Rifts that are exclusive to "Adventure Mode" (which itself is only unlocked after completing the fifth Act). Certainly up as far as the Cemetery of the Forsaken the maps are the same as usual.

It's possible there are new sub-dungeons or events, or I may just have run into one or two I hadn't previously encountered or at least remembered (The Cave Beneath the Well, and I think another one),

Click to expand...

lack of map randomization in D3 (at least compared to certain parts of D2 and all of D1) is what killed it for me in the end. I am looking forward to adventure mode, but was hoping that the acts' map scripting might improve as well.

Fabio1701 said:

lack of map randomization in D3 (at least compared to certain parts of D2 and all of D1) is what killed it for me in the end. I am looking forward to adventure mode, but was hoping that the acts' map scripting might improve as well.

Click to expand...

They've described Reaper of Souls as the game's first expansion, suggesting they have more planned. There aren't obviously any major new game modes they can use as a selling point for the next, so perhaps they're saving better randomisation for that. I understand that randomisation, at least in the form of procedural generation, is hard to do with most modern game engines, because their graphics tent to require lighting effects to be hardcoded into the base map (at least that's the excuse given with XCOM), so randomising D3 may require creating full alternative map designs for each dungeon.

Then again, if they manage it as promised with the Nephalem Rifts, it's not clear why they can't apply the same system to the rest of the game engine.