OT: Diablo 3

[Kerensky]

After so many years, it's finally here! My presence around here might be diminished for a while.
Absolutely looking forward to Afrika Corps and possibly more Panzer Corps content in the future though. Until then, enjoy the current game, mods, and of course the DLCs; DLC 45 East is due out soon so be sure to keep and eye on that!

[flakfernrohr]

I haven't seen you around for a while on the Mod forum, thought you were gone already somewhere.

[OmegaMan1]

Have fun, Kerensky... my daughters are getting me D3 as a birthday present, so I'll be in the same boat. Can't wait to suit up as the barbarian, grab Deckard Cain and plunge once more into the hordes of Hell!

[alex0809]

I am playing it too and I am absolutely loving it but honestly... I also think it is a bit overhyped. I don't mean it is not a great game, but some people seem to make it out as THE ONE game of the decade.

[VPaulus]

I'm going to pass this one.
But I hope all of you enjoyed it, specially Kerensky. Maybe it will bring new ideas for Panzer Corps.
Hope you folk don't find too many nasty pandas... only cute ones. We all know by now that Blizzard like pandas.

[Tarrak]

I am playing it too and I am absolutely loving it but honestly... I also think it is a bit overhyped. I don't mean it is not a great game, but some people seem to make it out as THE ONE game of the decade.

I totally agree. On the internet there seems to be two groups: One is making of it the game of the decade, the other are condemning it to hell (pun intended ). In reality it's a solid game you can have fun with if you like ARPG's but nothing of the two extremes really.

[huertgenwald]

Saw the first couple of "Let's play ..." videos on YouTube from Act 1. So far i'm rather unimpressed. No customization of your character in spite of runes.

[Tarrak]

Saw the first couple of "Let's play ..." videos on YouTube from Act 1. So far i'm rather unimpressed. No customization of your character in spite of runes.

Actually there is. The new ability system is one of the most misunderstood things at the moment. I at first wasn't impressed with it as well but with time i learned to love it.

Instead of being able to only get a few abilities available to you by spending points you can learn them all if you level far enough but you can only deploy a few of them at same time. There are 7 different ability families. 6 activated and 1 passive. You can only have one activated ability from each family "loaded" at same time. They are assigned to keys 1 to 4 and left and right mouse button. Each family of the activated abilities got 4 different skills. The passive ability works a bit different. You choose up to 3 from the available 14 to be active.

So you are virtually choosing your "spec" by choosing which of the abilities you want to have active. You can further customize each of the chosen abilities by attaching one of the 7 runes which modify them slightly. Instead of your spec being set in stone you get tho the advantage you can change it every time you like (outside of combat tho as doing so take some time) to customize to your current situation for example playing solo or coop with some friends or even to certain situation like fighting a certain boss. This gives the system a very nice flexibility and allows interesting approaches. For example i met a boss which had INSANE life drain. I could not kill it with my monk being a melee character as he was gaining HP faster then i could beat them out of him. I changed my spec to an extremely defensive one with shit loads of dodge and short time invulnerability and beat him that way. After that i went back to my damage oriented set up to plow faster through the masses of trash mobs.

[pipfromslitherine]

I'm enjoying it, but it needs a proper save. This Checkpoint nonsense must mean none of the devs have kids or other things that can come along at any point and require that you stop...

Cheers

Pip

[boredatwork]

Somewhat dissapointed. Not sure what I was expecting but given that WoW has become a virtually single player game I guess I was expecting something more along the lines of that - something that felt like a living world to quest in. Instead, having played to Act II so far it feels more like a big long tunnel. Kinda wishing I hadn't spent money on it. Oh well, hopefully HotS will be better.

[deducter]

Somewhat dissapointed. Not sure what I was expecting but given that WoW has become a virtually single player game I guess I was expecting something more along the lines of that - something that felt like a living world to quest in. Instead, having played to Act II so far it feels more like a big long tunnel. Kinda wishing I hadn't spent money on it. Oh well, hopefully HotS will be better.

I think the game is quite good so far. There are quite a few events peppered throughout the wide open maps. Some of they are very exciting.

The game is significantly more difficult the more you progress. Act 3 is quite a bit harder than Act 2, and so on. You start to see some interesting champion/elite monster combinations in nightmare. I am playing mostly solo or with random people, and Act 2 NM is very hard.

The entire normal mode seems to be a tutorial difficulty. Only in NM will you start to run into things that you repeatedly wipe on.

The game is also much more fun if you can find some competent people to group with.

[boredatwork]

wide open maps.

Wide open maps? I find the maps so far very claustrophobic - New/Old Tristram for example - it's not a map of a village and it's surrounding areas - it's a series of independent zones whose only connection is via single narrow paths. Even then, compared to many MMOs the "zones" feel lifeless. The mobs are, as far as I've seen static until approached - there are no roaming monsters to avoid or NPCs to bring the "towns" to life. The are no villages or towns of actual buildings to explore, just a "tunnel" of building fronts. I can't check out the "back" of new Tristam for example, or walk around the entire perimeter of the cathedral.

The quests also appear to be utterly linear - making it feel more like I'm reading a book than playing a game, with the downside that I can't just turn the pages without alot of mindless clicking.

[VPaulus]

[joking]
Now I know why Kerensky is playing it:


[/joking]

[huertgenwald]

Not really representative, but anyway: Marks from customers on german Amazon:

5 stars: 267
4 stars: 54
3 stars: 39
2 stars: 55
1 star : 550 !!

[alex0809]

Yeah but those are 99 % people upset about the always-online DRM thing not the game itself
It's because the servers were pretty much down the release day (which I absolutely KNEW would happen) so since many people couldn't play it at all that day they used the time and wrote some mean mean 1-star reviews.

[jaggy]

A friend who bought the game told me that even in the single-player campaign mode, you still need to log-in to their server ie. it can never be played in offline mode?!

[Tarrak]

A friend who bought the game told me that even in the single-player campaign mode, you still need to log-in to their server ie. it can never be played in offline mode?!

Yes that's right.

[bebro]

So if Kerensky has time to play other games does it mean AK is nearly finished and out soon?

[airbornemongo101]

So if Kerensky has time to play other games does it mean AK is nearly finished and out soon?

[deducter]

After playing this game a lot since release, my feelings are somewhat mixed. In many ways this is an excellent game, but there are some obvious problems.

The game feels very nice and polished on normal difficulty. Fights are much more tactically interesting than D2, the skill choices are good and have interesting/fun effects, your character feels appropriately like an "epic hero." The game gets reasonably challenging for most players in Acts 3 and 4, elite/champion packs have fun mods, the boss fights are cool and fun, the storyline and voice acting is also pretty good for a ARPG.

The problem is that it seems, despite Blizzard's claims, that anything beyond normal difficulty had at most a cursory inspection by the development team. The game could've really benefited from a closed beta. Just off the top of my head, these are things I would change:

1. Unique bosses (purple) need to have extra mods in Nightmare-Inferno, I'd do one mod per difficulty. Alternatively they could have some extra preset abilities. Right now the bosses are complete jokes compared with champion/elite packs. Blizzard even has a precedent for this (D2 players might be familiar with Uber Tristam). This would make the bosses real roadblocks, as they should be. Also the various unique mini-bosses would be more interesting to fight.

2. Elite mod combinations are poorly balanced. For instance, invulnerable minion has obviously not been tested. The concept is fine, but it should be so that the minions themselves don't have any of the boss's abilities. Invulnerable minion/mortar for instance is nigh unkillable in hell. Also Health Link seems to do nothing currently, making it a useless ability. Mortar should probably not spawn on creatures that split up and run all over the place, since the idea seems to be that the player should stay in melee range.

3. Skill permanence should matter to some degree. I think changing skills beyond level 30 should incur a gold cost that is dependent on character level and frequency of change. It should be a fairly minor cost (couple hundred/thousand gold) until about level 50ish, then it can start to ramp up significantly, especially if the player changes his skills every few minutes. This combines the flexibility to allow the player to experiment through most of the game, but towards the endgame the player should have a decent idea of what type of skills he wants. Right now the only reason not to change skills is at level 60 and only after you get the MF buff stacked up a few times.

4. In Nightmare and beyond, the areas for the acts should be much larger and even more randomized. The best randomization occurs in places like the dungeons in Act 1 and Act 3, very D1-esque. Some other areas like the Desolate Sands in Act 2 are also pretty good. But lots of the area in Act 1 are too small for Nightmare and above, and the caves are too small, which can be very bad if a champion pack spawns right at the entrance. Act 4 also suffers from a serious lack of randomization, D2's Act 4 was pretty good in that respect compared with D3. This fits nicely with the philosophy that the player should be rewarded for exploring each act, so having a massive area where it would take 5 min just to run from end to end would be great.

So in conclusion, the D3's endgame has some issues. It's still much better than the endless D2 Meph or Pindleskin runs, but given sky-high expectations and 12 years of development, Blizzard could've done much much better. The PzC closed beta system is very good. It certainly ensures a higher quality product at the end of the day. Blizzard could learn from that.