Diablo III

[Risso]

Finding the life of a squishie hard going to be honest. My templar is shite at tanking as well!

[Phumfeinz]

I like playing this with other people but the vast majority of them are crap. I'm on Act 2 in Hell with 30k health and 6k dps yet nearly everyone I team with is hovering around 10k hp and god knows what their dps is but they sure have trouble killing one mob whilst I'm taking down three at a time. Makes everything a lot harder than it needs to be.

[The_Rev]

Finding the life of a squishie hard going to be honest. My templar is shite at tanking as well!

Time to start kiting!

[Risso]

Finding the life of a squishie hard going to be honest. My templar is shite at tanking as well!

Time to start kiting!

I am trying, but I normally run into another pack of mobs!

[The_Rev]

You should usually be able to retreat back from where you came. It seems the class in Diablo is very similar to how the Mage plays in WoW, and that is all about just stopping things getting anywhere near you when there is no tank about. I've seen versions of Frostbolt, Frost Nova and Blizzard in Diablo. I presume you get Blink sooner or later too?

[Czechlad]

My friend had his account hacked and had all his gold and items taken from him. He recently sold a legendary item and had well over 2000000 gold plus he had 2 legendary items and a lot of good gear. Blizzard is restoring his account to what it was 24 hours prior to him getting hacked but that was around 30 levels ago. He is to say the least pretty crossed.

[The_Rev]

He should get an authenticator. If he is playing so much he is levelling up 30 times in 24 hours and has 2 million gold in the bank then it is probably worth his time getting one.

[Designer1]

Yeah, I bought one a while ago for Warcraft - well worth 8-9 quid for peace of mind.

[Ginko]

Ha, I love that your character is called Mellberg. I've been thinking of getting this, although first I need a new laptop. I'm not much of a PC gamer though. I had a stint on WoW but got bored and frankly I don't play enough games to ever be really good. D3 does look a lot of fun though.

[The_Rev]

Yeah, I bought one a while ago for Warcraft - well worth 8-9 quid for peace of mind.

You can get one for free on iPhone/Android. That's what I use.

Ha, I love that your character is called Mellberg. I've been thinking of getting this, although first I need a new laptop. I'm not much of a PC gamer though. I had a stint on WoW but got bored and frankly I don't play enough games to ever be really good. D3 does look a lot of fun though.

It will run on that laptop if WoW ran on it. Blizzard are very good at making their games run on anything, they can look **** awesome at insane resolutions on high end PCs or they will still look pretty good on a fairly basic laptop. It wouldnt surprise me if this game came out on 360 though, four buttons and left and right click on mouse and keys should translate to a controller pretty easily.

[Designer1]

Yeah, I bought one a while ago for Warcraft - well worth 8-9 quid for peace of mind.

You can get one for free on iPhone/Android. Tat's what I use.

Yeah, I know mate but daughter number one has a high level Lock on my account so she has to be able to log in from home while I'm at work. Hence the physical version.

[The_Rev]

I wonder how far away my daughter is from that. She loves games now, but is very much into browser based games and things on my phone. I dont think it will be long before she will want something a bit more complex though (well, either that or access to an iPad!)

[GasGasGas]

Still undecided on D3. One of the impressions I'm getting is that the game appears to have been dumbed down to appeal to a greater mass or something?

From what I can see it appears that some players are playing at an incredible rate and even completing the game within a day itself. It's only nearly 2 weeks since the game has been launched but already people are in Hell or Inferno difficulty and at reached the maximum level 60 (what's with the low cap?).

I don't remember it being the case for Diablo 2. A fair bit of time went into character planning etc. for that game but this seems to have been removed as from what I read skills are automatically unlocked and there isn't a need to distribute skill or attribute stats? It's like all linear and mapped out for you and all you have to do is to just click and get walked through.

Gameplay wise, I tend to agree it looks beautiful but therein the dark, gothic and gloomy feel of Diablo is lost to these spectacular, pretty, colourful effects and all. Definitely not a fan of all those numbers and words explictly explaining to the players the damage done or status like Stunned! or Dodged! as well. It's yet another reason why the game looks like it's been dumbed down to me.

A couple of questions:

- For the Guest Passes in the physical version, is there a limit to the number of people that can use it? Or is it merely like a CD Key, so if someone plays the game using this Guest Pass then you can't log in until he stops?

- I haven't seen the game menu yet but seeing the game is online only, can you use your Single Player character to play on Multiplayer? For Diablo 2, your Single Player characters are playable only in this mode not available on multiplayer. Have they changed it now?

[The_Rev]

Dumbed down is such a bullshit term though. It's like the talent trees in WoW when people bitch and complain there aren't 812 individual talents in each tree. How it works now is very much like Guild Wars, or to a lesser extent Call of Duty. Skills unlock at certain levels and you can equip them as you see fit and you can swap them on the fly. This means you can experiment with builds and not be punished for picking the wrong thing, it means you can spec for survival or for maximum damage, it means you can switch roles in a group if you are a Barb and get asked to tank. Quite why this is seen as worse by some people than going onto the forums and copying the best cookie cutter spec that the community have decided on is beyond me.

Graphically the game is gloomy I feel. There are areas with rainbows and bright colours, but the majority of the game I have played through has been in through Gothic architecture, in swamps, in dark catacombs (etc) so Sanctuary feels like a **** shithole. It's not a my little pony simulator. The UI is great, you can have the scrolling combat text on or off, its just changing an option in the menus. Again, this must have came from World of Warcraft where Blizzard saw how many people were using scrolling combat text mods and decided to include it in the default UI as it was so popular. The level cap too, I presume it is "low" because there will be an expansion where the cap is raised, and that the game really is about gear as opposed to a level so as long as you can always find better gear than you had before then what level you are is not a problem.

Cant answer the guest pass question as I bought the game online.

Single or multiplayer is the same character. It's drop in/drop out multiplayer so you can just join your mates mid session. I actually think its the best implementation of drop in/drop out I have ever seen.

[DiegoD]

If you haven't got it yet I'd wait to see what they do with the first couple of patches. Blizzard have previously always patched games well and this game definitely needs some patching.

Also the reason people think the current system is worse than copying the best cookie cutter spec is because with that system you committed to a style of hero and went through the game trying to find the best loot for that style. Each hero had at least 5 different styles and if I remember correctly the Paladin had about 10. With the current skills there are really only 1 or 2 ways to build each hero to survive hell and inferno. I am sure they will fix this but it will take months of tinkering to get the balance right as they can't over correct because they'll have problems like they did with diamond skin and smokescreen where people were getting top inferno loot and cashing in big time.

[briggaman]

Dumbed down is such a bullshit term though. It's like the talent trees in WoW when people bitch and complain there aren't 812 individual talents in each tree. How it works now is very much like Guild Wars, or to a lesser extent Call of Duty. Skills unlock at certain levels and you can equip them as you see fit and you can swap them on the fly. This means you can experiment with builds and not be punished for picking the wrong thing, it means you can spec for survival or for maximum damage, it means you can switch roles in a group if you are a Barb and get asked to tank. Quite why this is seen as worse by some people than going onto the forums and copying the best cookie cutter spec that the community have decided on is beyond me.

Graphically the game is gloomy I feel. There are areas with rainbows and bright colours, but the majority of the game I have played through has been in through Gothic architecture, in swamps, in dark catacombs (etc) so Sanctuary feels like a **** shithole. It's not a my little pony simulator. The UI is great, you can have the scrolling combat text on or off, its just changing an option in the menus. Again, this must have came from World of Warcraft where Blizzard saw how many people were using scrolling combat text mods and decided to include it in the default UI as it was so popular. The level cap too, I presume it is "low" because there will be an expansion where the cap is raised, and that the game really is about gear as opposed to a level so as long as you can always find better gear than you had before then what level you are is not a problem.

Cant answer the guest pass question as I bought the game online.

Single or multiplayer is the same character. It's drop in/drop out multiplayer so you can just join your mates mid session. I actually think its the best implementation of drop in/drop out I have ever seen.

This.

I'm currently level 44 on my Barbarian and am working my way through nightmare mode. The game goes as fast or slow as you want it to really. I have already pumped in quite a few hours and haven't even reached the cap yet, although I'm in no rush to do so. Some people enjoy playing at a faster pace so it's all really personal preference.

On the difficulty, I wouldn't say it's too easy. Parts can be challenging when the difficulty is ramped up and I have died a few times.

Anyway, I'm still really enjoying it and am sure I'll be playing this game throughout the year. It's just really addictive and I want to beat all of the modes eventually. Plus I will be playing other classes too.

[The_Rev]

Also the reason people think the current system is worse than copying the best cookie cutter spec is because with that system you committed to a style of hero and went through the game trying to find the best loot for that style. Each hero had at least 5 different styles and if I remember correctly the Paladin had about 10. With the current skills there are really only 1 or 2 ways to build each hero to survive hell and inferno.

See, I can't agree with that at all. I'm posting from my phone at the moment so I can't really go into an epic argument as to why, but committing yourself to be locked in to a build which some guy with a spreadsheet has decided was the best so he posted it on a forum seems archaic to me. You can still do that if you want, but this system allows for creativity and therefore people will experement. In six months there will be a ton of viable builds and you won't be bound to one.

[DiegoD]

Well I found investing in a style interesting and then grinding for the gear to make that build work fun. I know not everyone liked it but that was a big part of d2 and a lot of us enjoyed ourselves doing it. After putting in all that time and effort you had a hero that was great at a particular style and you could vs other heroes of the same class who has invested in another style and have great fun.

The system does allow for creativity but basically I think it just puts more emphasis on the loot that we are going to have to buy from the AH. What will separate me from other heroes is my class will only be the items as I can just up and change skills at any time. I'm not saying that this is bad but just that I enjoyed the old system and am a little skeptical about it being done to reduce forum builds or to promote the real money auction house.

[The_Rev]

And now all they hear are complaints. Did any of you people really play Diablo II, before the Lord of Destruction expansion?

They've been listening to players complain for years about how Uniques, Sets, and then Runewords made the game bland, because everyone was searching for and wearing the same items, and how it put such a final goal on the game. People have been asking for Blizzard to make high-rolled Rares better than Uniques for a long time. So that's what they did, and now people complain. What gives? Listening to the playerbase just seems like damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't.

People wanted Inferno to be hard. It was supposed to be an 'endgame' mode, something that would take months, if not years, to develop the skills and farm the gear to be able to beat it. That's what people asked for, that's what Blizzard delivered, and what do we hear? People expect to just cruise on through it, just equipping whatever they find on the first run like normal mode and beat it within a week.

People complained that the most efficient farming method in Diablo II was running bosses over and over, and that there was no reason to go explore the rest of the game. It was boring and repetitive, with little chance for what you wanted to drop, because you were looking for a specific item, and it had less than 0.01% chance to drop. So what does Blizzard do? Make random, challenging fights in random places through the game. Elite monsters and events, so you wouldn't get bored. And now people complain that scripted boss fights (while cool) should drop lots of good stuff every time you beat them? They want to just mindlessly farm the same thing for hours on end?

While you may disagree with the exact details on how Blizzard designed Diablo III or accomplished those goals, I don't see how anyone can complain that they haven't listened to their fans. If you've been paying any attention to the Diablo community over the past couple years, there should be no question as to why they did what they did: it's what people asked them to do.

(link)

[The_Rev]

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