Thoughts on Diablo III?

[GoodSarmatian]

I'm pretty much done with Blizzard too.
Btw, does anyone here play Path of Exile ? It's still in beta, but imho it's the game Diablo 3 should have been.

 

[tesb]

i played PoE, but the complexity is pretty much a sham. since secondary defense is terrible (armor, evasion) you are forced to stack up as much hp nodes from the passive tree as possible, with some keystones that define your build. the skill gems are nice, but they are unbalanced at the moment. also since skill gems and the skill tree is shared for all classes they feel less distinct. basically if you start the game you will be overwhelmed by the possible choices, but once you have some experience with the game, it becomes much less exiting. the actual combat itself does not even compare to d3, especially since you will end up with one or two primary skills that you spam all the time. in d3 you have 6 skills that are all important (you end up with some support skills in PoE, but the majority of the time you will spam an AoE or single target attack).

what i really liked is the currency items and trading (as opposed to the AH in D3).

edit: i also liked the graphic style in PoE and the unique items and itemization in general (d3 has serious issues with this)

 

[Disgustipated]

I didn't even care for the expansion of D2 all that much, so definitely passing on D3 expansion. I also passed on the D1 expansion (although I think it was made by a different company).

I'm not sure where D3 went wrong. I did enjoy the game for a few weeks. But now? I have no interest. But maybe I've just outgrown hack and slash games. I never played D2 for all that much either. The main difference is I tried all the character classes in D2, where is most of the character classes in D3 don't interest me.

 

[Matthew.]

Nah, but obviously heard about it 'cause it pops up often when discussions of D3 take place. I don't know if it is because I'm burned out on aRPG's or if it is just because there hasn't been anything great since Titan Quest, but I can't play any of them without falling asleep at the computer after playing for a half hour or so. Torchlight 2 wasn't a bad game, but it didn't manage to capture my interest on the D2/TQ level.

One [of the several] things I enjoyed about D2 was the way the classes played/felt completely different. A skeleton summoner necro played completely different than a blizzard sorc or a WW barb. Most of the replayability in aRPG's comes from experiencing the game with different classes. In Diablo 3 there was way too much overlap. Throw down area effect snare (blizzard, grasp of dead, caltraps) and spam generic AoE skill (which is tied to weapon damage, so weapon choice is largely pointless).

There are obviously more issues with D3 than just that, but combined with the boring itemization (+resist all and vit required on most items) there is zero reason to play any additional classes except for cosmetic reasons, since the gear/skills are essentially going to be the same.

It is also the reason I'm not waiting for them to "fix" the game, as most of my issues with it cannot be fixed unless they scrapped the whole thing and started over.

 

[Matthew.]

The main difference is I tried all the character classes in D2, where is most of the character classes in D3 don't interest me.

Ha. Posted while I was still typing mine. That is the same deal for me. First play-through, despite all the flaws (server issues, crap story, etc) was for the most part enjoyable. Additional play-throughs felt like a chore with no reward, since the experience was no different than the first.

 

[Maniacal]

Never bought a Blizzard game, never will.

 

[Matthew.]

Too bad, some of them were great fun. How old are you? When people talk of Blizzard's golden days they are typically referring to the older RTS's (Starcraft/Warcraft) and Diablo 1. Anything past Warcraft 3 vanilla and it starts to transition into Blizzard's new style.

 

[Maniacal]

Old enough to have played some of their older and best games in the 90s along with Civ2 when that came out, I just played them at friend's houses. All they make are competitive fast paced clickfest RTS games, a craptastic clickfest MMO that has lead to numerous other companies wasting hundreds of millions of dollars trying to rip it off, and ARPG clickfests. Diablo 2 was great, but way too much god damn clicking. Warcraft 2 was funny but not really a game I'd go back and buy with all these other games I have, plus its not really for sale anywhere anyway.

 

[Matthew.]

Hey, I had to ask. The younger generation is only old enough to have experienced WoW and beyond (sigh, getting old...)

Yeah, they are clickfests, but they were damn good at making them. Note how many games have tried to rip-off their RTS/aRPG systems and have failed. For whatever reason, they managed to combine all the elements just right to make them work.

I suppose on that note, WoW vanilla fell into the same category. Although it was largely EQ: repackaged.

No use in playing the older games now if you haven't. They are dated and it won't be the same as having played them back when they were new.

 

[Rub'Rum]

Old enough to have played some of their older and best games in the 90s along with Civ2 when that came out, I just played them at friend's houses.

You were what, 10 or 11 years old? You played it at a friend's house? woooooh.

Diablo I and II is pretty much something of its time. This was a time when playing with someone else over a modem or the internet was a huge excitement in itself. If you were a late teenager at the time, these were the games that were around, these were the games that were in the store too, you couldn't just go in a store a buy System Shock II or something like that, they most likely didn't have it, and you might not have heard of it if you weren't a subscriber to PC gamer or some magazine. When you were the same age, what was around? It was the mid 2000s already? You had the world available. A smaller variety of games were thus played back then, and the remaining games were experienced by millions who share that memory. THe difference between being 12 and being 17 at a specific time is rather huge. I'm surprised Diablo II has aged relatively well in the other aspects, even when you remove the "being there at the right time" moment. It wasn't hard making a similar game, a game that could have been Diablo III, and would have been awesome, it was entirely not a fantasy to imagine that they might succeed; it's not a complicated game. Also I'm not sure how the amount of clicking has any influence on the game, I'm not sure a player of Doom that used a mouse clicked any less. In Diablo II you can basically hold the click button to hit. Not that any of that matters because you don't like 99% of action rpgs (of course you can't say it like that, instead you have to proclaim that they objectively suck). Is this time moment you're gonna tell me you liked Titan Quest again? Let's hear how far you made it in that game.

Blizzard's RTS's were okay, I liked them to some extent because, again, they were the few games that were available at the time and I played it with my friends, but I generally dislike RTS in general. Age of Empires II was better than Warcraft or Starcraft.

 

[Maniacal]

I never said Diablo 2 was bad... I liked it, I just never ended up buying it for myself.

 

[Rub'Rum]

Never bought a Blizzard game, never will.

I'm putting this in perspective.

 

[Maniacal]

I don't recall saying all ARPGs suck, at least not seriously (most of them seem to be run of the mill clones though). I don't know why I didn't buy Diablo 2, but I just didn't end up ever buying it even though I liked it and there were plenty of chances (hell the Battlechest is STILL in stores). I'm not a big fan of the way you are supposed to play typical RTS games, but I don't have anything against Blizzard's RTS games (Warcraft, Starcraft).

Everyone already knows my views on MMOs.

In Diablo II you can basically hold the click button to hit.

I wish I had known that ~11 years ago.

 

[Matthew.]

Diablo I and II is pretty much something of its time. This was a time when playing with someone else over a modem or the internet was a huge excitement in itself. If you were a late teenager at the time, these were the games that were around, these were the games that were in the store too

Yep. The gaming market was much smaller then, and online play was just getting started (battle.net was one of the main reasons Blizzard managed to get its success; I doubt the games alone would have propelled them into the company they are today). Hell even today companies still struggle to put together a decent online service.

I don't think my expectations for Diablo 3 were unreasonable. I can recognize nostalgia and keep things in perspective. I can also enjoy a game even though it may not be the best in a series (e.g., Civ 5). But I swear it seems like the D3 devs went purposely out of their way to try and mess up D3. Some of their design decisions were so anti-Diablo it makes you wonder if the whole thing wasn't a joke.

And, as mentioned in this thread, people commented on such decisions yet they went on ahead assuring us "Nah, we know what we are doing!" Apparently Blizzard can do no wrong, yet all the [unpaid] reviews of Diablo 3 are...

 

[Double A]

Consoles ruin everything. Especially advancement of graphics.

I wish I had known that ~11 years ago.

I figured out that you only needed to press the attack button once halfway through my second playthrough of Dragon Age.

 

[Disgustipated]

you mean you can just hold the button down? I think I did discover that once, but forgot about it. I was already in the habit of clicking the attack button for each swing/skill or whatever.

 

[Double A]

Nope, you click it once and then you autoattack until the other guy's dead. Pretty sure all you need to do is target someone and then you screw up their healthbar.

 

[Heretic_Cata]

Wow - when Diablo 2 was announced that was basically what every magazine/stuff were talking about. Holding the mouse button for auto-attack.

 

[Maniacal]

Besides magazines there wasn't really any way to keep up on gaming news back then.

 

[Double A]

I heard about everything from other people before I realized the Internet was more than just ebay.