Diablo 3 Gameplay/Performance Impressions (NO SPOILERS ALLOWED)

Just got my 7770 and I am getting equal or slightly better performance on my desktop than I did on my M17x before it died.

Intel e2180 overclocked to 3.0 GHz with stock Radeon 7770 = 30-60 fps at 1080p with max settings and AA on.

 

Hey guys. I am already level 25 last night on my wizard. When I log on just now, I'm back to create a new character and my wiz is gone.

What just happened?

Edit:

Lol I got an error and game shut down. When I log back its back to normal. That was scary. What was that?

 

The game came out yesterday, I'd expect everything to be extremely funky for a week.

 

I'm just playing on the Starter Edition. I'm not sure how to describe what it feels like, being disconnected from a singleplayer game, for server downtime. Especially when I'm in the middle of a dungeon, and I'm only given five minutes to make peace with the fact that I'm about to lose all of my current progress.

For right now, I'm holding on to my $60, and will be waiting to see how Torchlight 2 turns out. A $20 game with an offline mode and optional multiplayer sounds really nice.

As far as impressions go, I've only been playing Wizard. Seven levels in, I'm really enjoying the class and think this is a good game. It has a feeling of polish which makes it very relaxing.

Hopefully there's enough complaints to force Blizzard to implement the option to create a completely segregated offline character.

 

I think they're making it 100% multiplayer because that's really where the core of diablo 2 players were. They give you single player options but then you can take that same character into multiplayer. I think I'll try multiplayer soon.

However, even though this game has lower end graphics, the backdrops can sometimes be friggin gorgeous:





I'm a level 15 wizard, and I have the templar merc that's a fantastic meat shield. I gave him a blue 16 dps 1 hander and a 100 def shield and 2 rings. My skill set is spectral blade / ray of frost, frost nova / wave of force / frost armor. It suits my playstyle from playing Mage in WoW well.

My attack method is gather a bunch of mobs, frost nova, wave of force, then go to town with ray of frost or spectral blade depending on range. Only few times I've died were from being 1HKO'd or a really dumb decision.

I just beat the Butcherer and sheesh, he was tough. I had to completely change my skill set to magic missile, arcane torrent, diamond skin, energy twister. It was the only way to keep taking all that damage.

Fun game now that I've figured out my FPS issues.

I just can't figure out where to identify rare items.

 

Since the "Can my laptop run this" thread seemed to have disappeared, I apologize if my question appears obtrusive here, but I just want to know if my 3 year old HP DB7t can run this game at high settings at 1600X900.

Here are my relevant stats:

CPU: Intel T6500 2.1 Ghz
GPU: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650 1GB
RAM: 4 GB DDR2
HD: 500 GB 5400 rpm
OS: Windows 7 Home 64 bit

Thank you

 

No, they did it to channel everyone toward the Real Money Auction House. That's undebatable.

It's cool, this is also a performance thread.

The answer to your query is NO, high @ 900p will not net you a fr above 30fps. You'll need to drop the resolution or settings to achieve smooth playability.

Try it with the textures on High but everything else lowered.

 

You really think that is the only reason to make it totally online experience? I could think of a couple reasons besides just the auction house. Being able to use the same chars. for single player and multiplayer and no bittoretted versions until someone makes a private server comes to mind.

 

2 reasons. #1 is the real money AH mentioned earlier (15% cut on all transactions and another 15% cut when you cash out). #2 to keep everything on the server side to prevent duping/cheating/etc. as long as possible.

 

What do you mean? You just have to right click it to identify it.

There's one thing that I dont like so far, I was playing on a level 20-25 quest/zone and I'm getting rare item level 9/10???

Now I am playing on Act 4 Quest 4 @ level 31 and I'm still getting rare items for level 15~20.

How am I going to use those drops if it's way below my current level?

 

So I take it I'm the only one who got rollbacked?

That sucks I made the gold back anyways, but that's 100k gone and 2 hours of progress rolledback that I had to redo. Still waiting on a ticket reply...

Anyways, level 35 Monk (Tank Spec) with my friend 35 Witch Doctor (AoE Spec) on Nightmare Act 2. Still, quite easy - feels slightly under what I would expect as normal difficulty. The difference between both is in Nightmare the mobs gets a ridiculous amount of HP which is an annoyance rather than a challenge (means I only have to spam attack 10-30s more per pull) and bosses are still dumb as a rock. Hope it gets challenging in Hell.

Based on what my friends said that are in Hell and my experience in Nightmare, it seems the D3 difficulty is like this:
D3 Normal = Very Easy
D3 Nightmare = Easy
D3 Hell = Normal
D3 Inferno = Hard

Monk and the WD are excellent partners.

I'd recommend melee/caster over caster/caster if you're playing 2 players since casters can sometimes get overwhelmed.

What we do is:
- I teleport in to massive amounts of mobs
- Use my AoE pull
- Debuff them all and aoe tank them
- Friend AoE's them all

*I have the use-spirit regen-health passive thing on
*Health regen buff
*Heal (improved; the one that heals us both full HP)
*Friend uses his healing pet

So we never, ever die Finger is killing me from clicking so much.

 

That was the biggest issue with d2 after all, many things that should have been kept server side were kept on the client side instead, resulting in a hoard of problems and cheats. Altering character breakpoints and various forms of auto aim come to mind

 

The hearthsto....errr, portal animation prompted this:



But, then I got to act 2, and I just wanted to slap my forehead



Seriously?

This game seems more influenced by World of Warcraft than Diablo 1/2/LoD. At least Starcraft 2 kept its Starcraft-ness.

 

Played for around an hour with the game last night. Tried out the Witch Doctor solo and had a blast. I cranked up the settings to everything max (minus the AA) and performance was pretty smooth - granted I was playing only in Act 1 normal so it's possible performance could drop when hordes of enemies show up. Didn't experience any lag at all (knock on wood ).

Can't wait to meet up with my buds for coop play tonight.

 

I am playing demon hunter closing to level 50.
There is really not much to tell about the game since its kinda straightforward but still fun.

As far as champions effectiveness go i d say DH is stupidly overpowered in hell and above for now. Solely because you can spam smoke screen and prep for up to a minute of invincibility and then you get gear with discipline and spam it some more. You are invincible, mobs dont target you, you dont suffer from crowd control etc.
WD — just as effective as hiring 3 companions in the city. For me its lacking flavor for now. Its great pve champ though, great tanking capabilities, aoe, dps etc. Will still play it most likely.
Barb — on current level of gear and from what i seen on streams it doesnt seem good. He cant tank and if he is trying he isnt doing much damage.
Sorc — like DH but not broken.
Monk — so far most underplayed champ, at least i didnt see many of those.

All in all i ll tell my opinion while i get to endgame. Leveling really doesnt tell you much about such game.

 

For those who finished normal, anyone of you played alone? I've been playing alone so far because I want to enjoy the story. In the beta, I played so many multiplayer co-op and it feels like they are always in a hurry running wild.

So I really plan to finish the story alone first before going with groups. Just asking because I want to know if its not so hard beating Diablo alone. Because so far, I died many times against Belial although Azmodan is easier for me.

I am so far in Act 4 Quest 4 almost near the end.

Edit: my fault, spoiler alert.

 

I plan to play through Normal alone for the same reason, but I'm not really starting until tonight so can't help with high level experience.

 

deleted lol:

troyguitar - I thought I was PM'ing you about your R4 but was actually posting it here. Deleted it as I dont want to derail this thread.

 

Didn't know Diablo was back in D3. Wow.

 

Sh|t! Sorry guys. I didn't mean to spoil things up

 

At this point I can say Diablo3 is a fun game, but its a lesser game overall than Diablo2.

-Too little RPG element... the skillsets are varied, but you make no real decisions and the truth is a lot of the skills are completely worthless as they are eclipsed by massively overpowered ones that no one of that class should ever be without. The result is less variation than D2 had.

-Normal is WAY too easy. Diablo3 did not need that long of a tutorial.

-Health globes are a very sucky mechanic. As bad as potion spam was in D2, they are better than health globes. Just tune the encounters right and get rid of health globes. Health refill shrines are fine. Leave potions with a timer.

-Itemization sucks... 2H weapons are bleh... 1H+offhand or dual wield currently results in better overall results in almost every case. "Unique" items are pretty much pointless compared to rares, and even those aren't really make or break.

-Glaring show-stopper bugs. Transferring a readied shield from a player character to an NPC causing semi-perma kick and the like are the type of bugs that should not have made it through beta.

-Repeated server problems - if you are going to force us all to play online, you'd think with 12+ years to develop and a previous similar product you could make a stable server farm.

D3 has potential... it needs glaring bugs fixed and server issues fixed ASAP and then a serious balancing run on both skills and equipment.

D3 was released unfinished and unpolished and it shows.

 

The worst is the auto game joining imo, so little interaction between people. At least people say "pp" in D2.

The item scaling kill the early game levels, as some one else mentioned.

 

Damn if you accidentally post spoilers, at least edit your post and delete that bit before everyone else click on the thread and sees them.

 

If its me you are pointing at I'm really sorry about that. A follow-up post was already posted about it when I noticed it so its really pointless to edit my post but I still did.

 

I mean, the game is Diablo 3, so I'm not that bothered by spoilers.

I'm about halfway through act 2, and now that I've entered into multiplayer, I have almost no reason to go back to single player. The interface for partying isn't that intuitive. I was with a guy I was cool with clearing act 2, and then his game dc'd and I couldn't get him back in the game.

The multiplayer needs more to it than randomly joining a game and relying on opening/closing games and friends list. The lobby in D2 was perfect, and I was expecting something like that again, but it's just not there.

As someone else said with skills, I'm noticing the same thing. I've pretty much created a grinding spec and a boss/survival spec. There's little variation needed.

Right now I'm a 21 Wizard. My spec is Spectral Blade / Disintegration, Frost Nova / Wave of Force / Electric armor (forgot name) Explosive Blast. Passive skills are -20% melee and +15% damage. There's little reason to do anything else. My 1-4 keys handle aoe dps, and spectral blade handles melee while disintegration handles ranged. I'm covered on each front.

My Wizard is basically a walking melee/aoe glass cannon, which is what any Diablo game promotes. I run into a group, prime explosive blast, frost nova, blast hits, knockdown, prime blast, and spam spectral blade/disintegration and aoe as situation asks. I'm at ~40 +exp gear. It's making grinding much faster.

 

I can see how 8 players could finish normal mode in 6 hours then, especially if they played the beta to death and can run the quests through rote.

No RPG in the market ever gets released perfectly balanced, even the predecessor took over 10 different patches before the game balance resembled something like a level playing field.

The server problems are a given, to be honest any game which breaks records for presale orders must surely be set for an online fall.

Don't have the game yet, but this "always online" mechanic leaves one important question: If I really couldn't give a damn about the rest of the players online can't I at the very least start my own 1 player game and kick every other spare out of the session with a password?!

You might not care about spoilers, but many others do. Even if you don't give a damn about online etiquette, plenty more would disagree.

The developers have the very nice online skill calculator for reference, but it seems a bit lacking. By the looks of things, playing with help cheapens the experience for skilled players since there's almost no challenge.

 

Anyone else got lag problems? I have no problems with any other online game but d3 feels like (and shows) anything between 150 to 500 ms latency.
Its kinda impossible to dodge spells with this kind of latency ><

 

My point was that the spoiler he gave is in the title of the game. It's not really a spoiler. I'm not sure why I was even surprised to find out. I had forgotten the story of Diablo 2 surrounding what happened at the end of act 4. By the time I played hardcore, everyone was hacking and duping their way through LoD in 1.09.

I never got into single player much in Diablo 2, except only when I downloaded a character editing program and then it was fun messing around with different skill sets. It just comes down to playstyle, I guess. Some people don't want to be online all the time and some do. However, we're playing a game where the predecessor made its name from its online world.

 

The "always online" isn't what you think it is. Yes you are always online but only your friends can join your game. You have to make your game public in order to well, open it to the public. This is disabled by default for every time you start playing. But yes, if you make it public and some idiot joins you can kick them easily.

 

Sounds good, if I get the game I'll be careful not to make up my games public.

For those who have finished the story, how long on average would a character take to finish normal?

 

Just as fun as D2 if it didn't have all the server bugs worked out yet.

Performance is a big issue though.. my i3-2310m can barely handle large fights with lot's of physics. I mean i everything drops down to about 20 fps then sometimes 10 fps, gpu only using 20% usage at this point. is this really a bug or is it really just my cpu? set physics to low doesn't seem to do anything. Forcing the game to run on physical cores only seems to help but that might just be a placebo effect.

The game itself is awesome though, like D2 where you don't have to editor every time you make a mistake in your build. (Yeah I used to editor a lot to try different builds)

32 Wizard
-magic missile + inc damage rune
-blizzard
-crystal armor + dec ap cost rune
-familiar + fire rune
-magic weapon + lightning rune
-desintegrate + 40% damage to nearby rune

familiar and magic weapon bonus damages stack apparently, that plus shield equals ultra lagfest

 

Exactly.

Honestly everyone saying this is still a single player game is driving my slightly crazy. D3 has been marketed as an online game for almost a year now, simply put the series has evolved. For better or worse is a subjective matter, and an entirely different topic of discussion.

As already said, the core experience of D2 was the online play through Battle.net. No one would still be playing D2 over a decade later if it wasn't for Battle.net, and that can't be denied. Did some people only play offline, yes I am sure they did. Was the the full D2 experience? Not at all, in my opinion, as well as in Blizzad's as well.

What made D2 special was the online community and environment. What ruined that experience was all of the hacks and glitches that people took advantage of because Blizzard couldn't properly monitor their game. I think that the online only play is a fantastic thing, and only benefits the series and the experience.

I'm going into this game knowing that it is an online game. Whether or not it used to be optional to play offline isn't up for debate. Blizzard cast the hammer, and the decision has been made. Diablo is now an online franchise.

With that said, of course the RMAH had a big part in their decision to make this an online only game, however so did all of the aforementioned points Do I care that Blizzard is earning money from players through the auction house? Not at all. In fact, it would seem logical that the revenue earned through this will be put forward to developing new content and more constant patch updates for gameplay tweaks, etcetera.

This is just the way things are now. Complaining about being forced to be always online to play a single player game quite frankly has no bearing in any discussion with D3 anymore.

 

This is the way things are now, because we let it. So we should stop complaining about gas prices too then? And poverty? And abuse? Although yes those are a huge disparity in importance, the point is there. Complaining doesn't do much I give you that, but voting with your wallet and letting Blizzard know is the best way about it, so "they" always say. Although I don't buy that either. A franchise as big as Diablo would survive by the existing fanbase alone. Even if Blizzard lost 10% of their sales due to users boycotting, do you think it would really hurt them one bit? No. So I guess if it helps people to vent, complain, whine, let them.

I do find it annoying that single player games require an internet connection. Dumb, just dumb. For this very reason I will not be buying Diablo 3, same reason I did not buy the last several Ubisoft games even though I would love some Hawx 2 and Splinter Cell.

As ViciousXUSMC pointed out, Torchlight II will be a good alternative, and at $20, or $60 for a four pack, significantly cheaper.

 

I find Nightmare difficulty to be plenty difficult as of now. Maybe just because my gear sucks and I keep teleporting due to latency issues. Don't know how I'll get through Hell like this. I wish the game offered more graphical options because even on lowest the water and fog effects lag my notebook (1920x1080 on a Radeon HD 4650M can be a lag fest at times).

 

This is the way things are because of a design decision, and that's it. Gas prices going up are not subjectively better or worse for the consumer, that is a one-way thing. Poverty and abuse don't even have a place in this discussion, these are moral and economic issues that aren't in the same context of the discussion of design choices and how they impact players of a leisure activity.

In my opinion, these design choices enhance the final experience. They reduce people gaining an unfair advantage in the community due to hacking and glitches. Since I exclusively played Diablo 2 online, and only planned to play Diablo 3 online, in my view these are beneficial decisions made by Blizzard.

Obviously people are going to disagree with my point of view, and that is fine. That is why the whole topic of liking or disliking Diablo 3 now being an online only game is a subjective topic.

My main point being that since the design choice was made to make this an online-only experience, that is played with a community of players, there is no single player experience anymore, and people should stop saying that their single player experience was ruined. If you can't play online or don't want to, you just simply won't play the game, that is all there is to it.I understand previous iterations of the franchise allowed for a single player campaign, but that isn't the case anymore. It makes just as much sense to complain that you cannot play FFXI offline. The franchise has evolved, for better or worse, and that's just the way things are now.

 

I'm all for taking personal responsibility for things, but I'm not sure about this. How much personal responsibility is reasonable for this decision? I feel like consumers can basically give feedback, and Blizzard decided to swallow a lot of negative feedback regarding this. Is that really your (our) fault? Even if you buy the game, you're only contributing retroactively.

Or, maybe, you contributed to the financial success of other games which use a similar system, and that was a model for Blizzard. Still, D3 has a unique set of design goals (secure the auction house, secure the community from hackers, secure the game from pirates, join in with friends, keep your character data in the cloud) that motivated the choice to make the game online only. I don't think it's your fault that it turned out this way.

 

I'm not upset at all. Just take it as a note for the future.

 

Oh well. I've been hearing enough negative feedback about D3 that I'm probably going to just skip it and watch YouTube videos of the highlights now. It is unacceptable for them to sell a product with this many problems out of the gate. Maybe if it is significantly discounted I'll try it (waiting for the free trial stuff next month) but I won't buy it at $60. Maybe $20.

At this point D3 is only of any value if you plan on playing multiplayer. Single player content, as always, should be local content that doesn't require to you maintain an always-on-DRM internet connection.

D3 has a whole lot of nice things going for it with multiplayer, but the fact that the single player content does not give you an option for an offline build tells me all I need to know about Blizzard's position on DRM. Its a good thing to that there are so many problems -- it might wake people up to what always-on-DRM really means.

 

Actually you are right, the game is named Diablo so it should be stupid if Diablo himself is not in the game. So I guess what I mentioned about facing Diablo is not a spoiler anyway.

If you are at normal mode, its not really needed to be in a group. I finished the normal in about 20 hours alone.

I haven't died once against any monster with blue or yellow name (I dont know how you guys call them, elite?). Against Diablo, I only died once. My spec is not suited for him 1st time I faced him. I can say I'm not really a bad player. BUT now that I'm at Nightmare Mode, I have been dying everytime I'm facing even just a blue named mob.

It is starting to get harder for someone to play this game alone @ nightmare.

 

I meant I have no reason to go back to single player because playing in a group is just more fun. Like I've reiterated multiple times, I'm more into the multiplayer aspect of this game.

I'm just not in a huge rush to get through the game. There are some fights that are just fun to re-do and going back and grinding just means more levels for me in the long run.

I'm at 16-17 hours played and several hours of that was going back and redoing quests I've already done. I love that you can do that. I just need to figure out the party and online system more.

If I played alone more, I'd just be popping more potions and kiting more stuff. With another person I can spec out for full aoe/melee dps and make it ultra boom time on every set of mobs. Just makes it fun.

 

I will spend 90% of my time playing multiplayer but plan to run through Normal solo just so I can have time to actually stop and follow the story. Whenever I've played multiplayer everyone moves too quickly through everything to really pay attention.

 

damn this game is addictive!

 

Finish the normal mode in 22 hours level 32

Spoiler

didn't die when i was fighting diablo

Poor leah though.. I just wish blizzard resurrected her.. The traitor witch aint dead yet.. I think the story is little incomplete

 

I want to find a map of the Diablo world and see where each game takes place.

 

Lol! Now that's a spoiler. Edit your post before people gets mad lol!

Sent from my HTC Glacier using Tapatalk 2

 

I'm on quest 3 of act 3 at 29, and I stopped working on it to do runs through the beginning of act 3 instead with other people. I'm using it to get xp and gold to train up blacksmithing. I hear nightmare is a good challenge, so won't hurt being a bit overleveled by the time I reach it. The thing about playing in most games is most people leave the blues and most yellow items. That's gold and material for blacksmithing. I guess other people are too busy getting through the quests. My Diablo 2 experience is telling me to overlevel to get the edge in higher level stuff while the lower levels come by easily.

Is there a way to allow yourself into lower level quests or are we not able to skip other people through lower level stuff anymore?

I'm going through potions at a decent pace due to my aoe spec, but my wizard is a beast, and in 1 level I'll have 3 passive skills.

I've stopped really caring how often I die because I tend to go on suicide runs into mobs to see how much I can aoe to death.

I also looked through the options and found out you can show the health bars above everyone and damage/healing above everyone too. That suddenly made aoe a lot easier. I could see which groups of mobs had low health and use the right attack.

Just got a 42 kill streak. God I love AOE

 

Apparently I am absolutely horrible at the game, I'm level 13 and have died half a dozen times already playing alone on normal.

 

So my WD keeps getting face rolled in Nightmare (think I'm undergeared / underleveled since I just powered through normal) so I'm rolling a Monk right now. I like the Monk a little less right now than I did my WD but it seems like Monks get OP pretty quick.

I noticed a lot of the people I started playing with, I had my 34 WD and they were just starting, now they have 50-60 level toons. I feel so left out now haha.

 

Im using Monk lvl 50 right now. In normal and nightmare Monks are slightly OP. Hell difficulty is a different matter. In hell diff Most low-lowmid level enemies use elementals such as pestilence,freeze, fire -- which makes Monk tanking with melee almost impossible.

In Hell difficulty the Monk is rather weak and is better played as a kiting healer for groups/teams.

 

i reached 60 yesterday, oh well. off to inferno, way too hard.... on my demon hunter. i can solo everything wiht my 20000 dps lmao.