Diablo 3 Gameplay/Performance Impressions (NO SPOILERS ALLOWED)

Now I am getting scared to join public games

 

Blizzard has come out and said that they haven't had any reports of account hacking with authenticators in place on an account before a hacking incident. That suggests that it isn't a session hacking problem, but a weak password / phishing problem. Make sure your password is good, and get an authenticator if you're really worried. Undoubtedly, people are getting hacked. The *method* of session ID hacking is purely speculative, and it doesn't look very likely based on Blizzard's response. Of course, if you don't trust Blizzard, then you can't put any faith in the following statement. Of course, then you probably shouldn't have installed their software, either. In short, I trust Blizzard.

"We've been taking the situation extremely seriously from the start, and have done everything possible to verify how and in what circumstances these compromises are occurring. Despite the claims and theories being made, we have yet to find any situations in which a person's account was not compromised through traditional means of someone else logging into their account through the use of their password. While the authenticator isn't a 100% guarantee of account security, we have yet to investigate a compromise report in which an authenticator was attached beforehand.

If your account has been hacked, please view the previous post for information on contacting our support department."

 

They was atleast smart enough to make the packet traffic ssl, so that might account for some of the lag problems.

 

My 3 friends (entire SWTOR guild moved to D3) were hacked the same day after playing a public game with the same 4th player (Wizard pug). Stories like these are allover the forums, just spend 5 minutes and browse. I don't expect Blizzard to reveal this serious breach of security b/c it'll be a PR nightmare.

Just look at the 168-post thread and many others. You'll trying to tell me that thousands upon thousands of players all got hacked the same week (what about the one's that never posted?)? I don't think so.

The AH is also riddled with bugs. Just 2 hours ago, a friend in mumble said that someone bought his million-gold item from the AH and never received the gold or the item back. The real $ AH was pushed from the 23rd to the 29th because of these ridiculous bugs.

 

Well-worded video discussing hot topics debated extensively over D3 forums last week or so:

Issues With Diablo 3: Poor Implementation Of Difficulty - YouTube

 

All I have to say is that I did my research based on the cached threads courtesy of Google, and then made my assessment, in that order.

 

Is it raz#1337? It says that tag doesn't exist.

Edit:

Lol just soloed Belial without death in hell Poison Hydra did the job. All I did was run and throw in an arcane orb when I get a chance! I can't even kill him in a single try in normal and nightmare. I guess I got lucky

 

raz1337#1681 is the "battle tag"

My name is raz1337 on it, but my character's name is Munoki.

Sigh, I finally want to work really hard on gear from the AH, and it's down. Oh well, at least I'll have tons of gold when it comes back up.

I'm seriously disappointed by the people in the forums saying Diablo 3 is seriously messed up and they quit after a few days. They go in there saying this game "doesn't deserve to be Diablo." Who the heck cares what you think? What defines it as Diablo is whatever it is. Blizzard made the game. Their vision defines where the game goes.

These people are getting sick and tired of playing after several days and quitting. I've had the game a week and I can't get myself to stop playing. I'm intensely curious about a lot of stuff and I'm taking my time with it. I haven't even began to read the forums on each class and crafting. I want to see it for myself first.

It's like they don't know what a patch is or anything. It's been a week, I'm not expecting sweeping changes that fast. Input from players should not be taken that quickly and put into a patch.

 

I already invited you.

 

Just a quick question. For wizard, should I use 2H or 1H plus shield? Does having a shield make a huge difference?

 

Lots of people went into D3 expecting a very familiarizing sequel to D2, because the vast vast majority of people who actually bought D3 never actually followed the development updates and decisions and changes about the game the past 4 years. Instead they get a very different game with a different direction and approach in nearly every aspect. Of course it's gonna upset a lot of quitting players you are mentioning.

 

It actually depends on your current difficulty. In normal, you can finish it with a 2H weapon for more damage. I guess you can still use 2H in NM.

I used a 1H and shield from Act 2 of NM until now in Hell.

Right now I have Energy Armor/Force Armor which gives me 65% more armor. And magic weapon with venom for damage buff because I'm not using a 2-hander.

 

Oh crap, I can have a shield, too? I can be an even better tank!

 

Hey raz did you accept it? I cant see you yet on my friends' list.

 

Logging in now.

I played Diablo 2 very intensely back in the 1.09 patch. Everything was majorly screwed up, and the only things you could do in the game was either 1) Do MF runs on Hell Diablo/Baal 2) Do endless hell cow runs 3) PvP with people who went out and just 1-2 shotted everyone or 4) Twink other characters. There was no legit game content. People sold Stone of Jordan rings online for cash. The lack of balance reduced it to playground. However, lots of people found it fun, including me. I had a friend that I did very well playing together, and we were on the same wavelength. We had sorceresses that were very high level and spec'd to be all-around powerful. We had running lower level characters through normal to hell down to a science.

However, I went into Diablo 3 wanting Diablo 2, but better and enhanced. By that, I meant new features, a whole new level of game content. I didn't want the old Diablo 2. That's gone and over with. However, I wanted the good things of Diablo 2 taken, enhanced, and combined with new features. Diablo 3 has done that, and I'm having a ball right now, even if my character is undergeared.

 

Before reading any of the stuff below, this video really explains my thoughts much better than I can type it up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8CBbeSAjVo

Anyway here are my thoughts:

Look, your listed things to do 1), 2), and 4) are all about D2's loot, while 3) is both about D2's loot and its pvp aspect.

Why did the game last for the last 10 years despite the apparent lack of content? Because it did what it did right.

D3 itemization has been heavily criticized everywhere so I don't believe I need to get into explaining it (essentially only important things are DPS / vitality / 1 or 2 other affixes, rather than a plethora of balanced useful affixes, also the whole deal about how legendaries are useless); and D3 pvp is even less supported / open than D2's; it's just a restricted team deathmatch in an instanced tiny arena or two, because Blizzard claims no one cares about Diablo game pvp even though it was such an essential part of D2 endgame.

Also, instead of an eternal item/level-grind for endgame content, they put in Inferno difficulty, which on paper is fantastic, but in reality is just a numerically scaled up (in terms of damage / mob HP) difficulty where everything either 1-shots you, or are just a huge chore to kite and kill. Dying doesn't teach you anything either. You never quite get that "break-through" moment in twinking and leveling where you get the satisfaction of just crushing everything - a feeling quite valuable to many who invested lots of time into past games.

New features in D3 that do not exist in D2 or 1 are surely refreshing, but the core Diablo-style ARPG structure just isn't there.

 

Hit 58

Got some new upgrades on weapon and shield.
Here's my new stats. Buffed with Energy Armor and Magic Weapon.

 

Got "hacked" today.Same old password for my previous 20 D2 account that never have anything happened to them (even with cracked baal bot/redVex easy 10k+fg items). Only did less than 5 public game then duo with my bro.

As I mentioned before, the change of game room/public game is the biggest change from D2.
Add hacking on top of that, D3 become a singleplayer/lan game connected with a giant gold sink/real money maker. Maybe a stunning business model but a crappy MMO. (Oh and a singleplayer/lan game that require internet connection with crappy server)

On the game: Torchlight I combat with same silly item. Skill/Item balance = none.

Bliz did everything people don't want them to do. Owell, maybe a patch to lock the game @ 30fps and bring back the math ?

 

After Jinda gave me a weapon to give me a leg up, I went on the AH, got a much better weapon and new gear. My DPS went from 1100 to 3500. Now everything in nightmare is a serious bore. ><

 

Sadly, all it takes is one public game and you can lose everything.

It's best to shelve the game until Blizzard get's their act together unless you play strictly with friends/family only. The game is a complete mess.

 

I just watched that video and I can't believe I spent 4 minutes of my life listening to a guy talk about being one shotted in inferno.

I'm not debating any of the issues with this game as invalid. I'm debating the worth of the playerbase. They are extremely pessimistic, quick to cast judgment and declare that the sky is falling that second. This is why when I played World of Warcraft, I only read the Priest and Mage forums for information and avoided anything else.

The general consensus is that overall balance is completely off at higher difficulties. As long as you stay out of Inferno, you're good to go. Outside of inferno, itemization becomes the biggest issue, for example, what's happening with my and other people's wizards. We focus on high DPS weapons, intelligence and vitality, and ignore everything else.

I've experienced this same issue with other games as well, though, and it actually never got fixed in the correct way. In Star Wars Galaxies, everyone flocked to it out of being fans of Star Wars. The game had massive worlds to explore and you felt immersed in the world. However, the Jedi profession was treated like a warrior class and the enhancement buffs from doctors became required if you wanted to venture out into the worlds and not be bored to death being one shotted or waiting on regeneration.

How did SOE fix this? The combat upgrade. When it hit, it killed the player base that was left. It turned into more of a turn style system, and copied mechanics similar to WoW. The combat system lost its real time luster that was absolutely required in a universe like Star Wars.

However, seeing as I played WoW for several years and raided high end content, my opinion on patching and especially Blizzard is different. Granted, I played WoW before Burning Crusade came out. Blizzard was quick to identify balance issues change it, and release new content. However, World of Warcraft's core battle system was effective and for the most part stayed intact until the latter expansions.

My point? It's been a friggin' week. They hasn't even begun to fall yet. There is no way we can accurately predict what occurs with a game of this nature 1 month, 6 months or a year from now. Blizzard's attitude toward patches, time and word of mouth will tell, not these overly pessimistic "I want my Diablo 2, but with better graphics!" people.

 

Let's hope that the next expansion or two target a lot of these issues and make up for them. I doubt Blizzard would be willing to make a huge non-expansion content patch without monetizing it.

 

With the sales numbers that they had for the first week no one could had not had problems with the servers. 3.5 million copies in the first 24 hrs, throw in the wow people that is 4.7 million. Somewhere around 6.8 million copies in the first week. The problems with connection issues, itemization, and account problems all seem to be issues with some people.

I just hope it works out in the end and something is done for the long term growth of the game. I am just starting nightmare. So I will see how this goes for me.

 

I'm not worried about any early changes bliz is making about the game mechanics. We cant really say that since they had 12 years to prepare, this game will come out perfect. BUT they can always change it thru content patches.

I am more concern about the rampant hacking issues. They already have WOW and SC2 before they release D3. Although I know they have this problem before D3. They should have learnt something to avoid accounts to be compromised.

This is going to affect the RMAH when it is started on the 29th if they cant fix this hacking issues. Who is going to use their credit card buying or selling currencies if other people are just waiting for a good time to take advantage of that chance?

 

The D3 hacking issue is altogether different than the WoW hacking issue. The authenticator virtually eliminates WoWs compromise issue, but D3's cannot. They probably never even anticipated it as a potential backdoor.

 

That's what I was hoping they could have done since they already have this first 2 big games

I think you got a point there. I think they relaxed assuming that their authenticator in wow is foolproof and they could probably apply the same with D3.

Hacking is a profession, hackers feel challenged the more difficult the job is. Bliz shouldn't be taking that for granted.

 

Now that I've seen how to change my gear, nightmare is a joke at 50 with 3750 dps. This is crazy. It's like god mode walking around even with multiple people to scale the mob's hp.

 

the implication being that there is session hijacking going on in D3, which is just a speculative rumor. After having exposed myself to the body of evidence, my opinion is that the rumor is flat false. If you want to continue to sPread the rumor because you buy into it (hopefully after looking at the evidence), it would at least be nice to temper the statements as unconfirmed rather than accepted fact.

 

I'm not saying there's a serious problem going on. Frankly I think it's being overblown (as such things usually are). All I'm saying is that if there is, past experience with World of Warcraft doesn't really make much difference.

 

Yeah. NM can be easy if you have the gold. Mobs starts to hit harder when you get to Hell. Without energy armor/absorb I sometimes die from 1-2 shots with 30k HP.

Its gonna be harder to kite also due to teleporting, prison and mortar elites. I changed to arcane orb due to this because you can cast it and run not like other spell where you have to stay still to aim.

I read that in Inferno, no matter how high their HP and armor reduction is, they still get 1-shotted in Act 2.

 

Pretty mad right now. Loot on normal was great, on nightmare it was poor.. and now on hell... it is AWFUL.

Geo: *Kills champion*
D3: *Have a health potion lolz"

¬_¬

 

At 51, I have 17.7k hp and 5900 dps. Damn.

 

Inferno is just preposterous. I guess I'm making a new character instead

 

Sorry guys, another question:

If it is not so much of trouble, could you guys post what skills you use with their runes for your wizard class? Just want to see what's popular.

Edit:

I was looking through Google regarding the hacking and if what people posted are correct, it does seem like Blizzard's server has been compromised. How can people that have authenticator AND never played public games get hacked? They claim that they have never been to suspicious websites. I think I saw one person that said he got hacked on a computer that he just bought to play D3? I am getting confused lol.

 

Spectral Blade with Deep Cuts <- Melee coverage
Disintegrate with Convergence <- Ranged coverage including multi-target
Familiar with Sparkflint <- +12% dmg
Diamond Form with Crystal Shell <- 11k damage absorb
Ice Armor with Crystallize <- +45% armor
Hydra with Lightning <- Damage while I'm moving around

Passive skills:

Blur <- -20% melee dmg
Glass Cannon <- +15% dmg -10% armor/resist
Galvanizing Ward <- +150 health regen/sec

With this spec, I have every base covered.

Though I have been seeing some really interesting cold damage skills in the last 10 levels. I'm curious how others are using them. Cold Hydra + Frost Nova + Ice armor + Sleet Storm Ray of Frost could really reek some havoc. Just getting ranged coverage would be tricky.

 

Some of the hacked accounts are just from bad passwords and fishing sites. People don't pay attention to the link when they click on the Wow beta. One account for all 3 games means if it is fished they have access to all 3. I sat for almost an hour looking for what could be seen with the information coming from my computer. Most of the packet information was encrypted and in a ssl tunnel.


I think most of the hacks are really bad passwords and fishing. There could be something wrong with the servers and something with the session ids being tricked. And I could think of a couple ways to try to fake it, but if there is one the hackers have thought of something blizzard didn't think of.

The amount of work that goes into just the network part of the game is a lot of work. It is possible they over looked an exploit.

 

It's actually from hackers copying the D3 client while the players are grouped in a public games and then stripping everything they own once they log.

Weak passwords and phising are only a small fraction of the hack-fest that's been going on since last week.

 

How ironic that you can get hacked while playing single player campaign. Anyways, from what I've read, for those that have never played public games, after they got hacked, they had a player that the victim has never seen before in the 'recent players' list.

 

I use the following:

Magic Missile with Split
Arcane Orb with Obliteration
Disintegrate with Convergence
Diamond Skin with Prism
Familiar with Sparkflint
Magic Weapon with Force Weapon

Glass Cannon
Evocation
Prodigy

 

This simply is not happening. Nevertheless, every time you repeat it, it becomes a little bit more valid in the perception of the readers. That whole thing was just a rumor with no actual evidence, just suspicion.

 

Just killed Diablo with Jinda's help in nightmare. Tried hell and why does it let people do early act 1 with 4 people? It makes everyone get 2 shotted. My wizard was the only one who survived most encounters. I gave Jinda's 1h + shield idea a try. At 53, I have fully buffed 26.7k hp, 3100 armor and 4800 dps.

 

Lol nightmare is a walk in the park compared to some enemies in Hell. raz and jinda, please add me: Lollin#1977

 

It's really a big boost especially if you are using energy armor/force armor, it's 65% +armor if I'm not mistaken. Only negative is your dps will suffer a bit.

But like Geo said below, NM is a lot easier than hell. I think first thing you'll notice is mobs really hit a lot harder and elites are all around. I cant remember if we had teleporters and mortars in NM but they are quite a pain in Hell.

I'll add you later after work. What level are now? Class? Just hit 60 last night but I cant get past Rakanoth with a shield, 33k hp, 4.5k armor and 10k dps. I'm still getting 1 shot'ed. I changed to 2H for now for more damage but for farming. I need gold to gear up before I face him again.

What do you guys do with your rare loots? Do you still keep most of them? AH entry is limited to 10 so I have like 7 mule for rare items. I'm tempted to sell some to NPC for gold lol.

 

Played a little of Hell last night on my Monk.

Was in some cave and fought a group of champions and an elite. They are all vortex/molten. So they suck us all in, I pop BoH w/ shield, they run on either side of the group in a hallway and we're surrounded by lava. Couldn't heal through it and we died a few times.

Any other elites we fought in the open were a lot easier and could be healed through. Hell is a lot harder than NM that's for sure.

 

huh, my bro got hacked aswell and he never do public. Gold gone, now he just got authenticator ,hope he will be fine. We both didnt request rollback as gold so easy to comeby and the wait is total PITA.

He farming A4 inferno(corpse stacking style) but I think he getting bored soon. ~~

We play numerous game before and this is our first "getting hacked" experience, my bro so anticipated for D3 but thats what he get .

 

As far as I can tell, there's no set thing that the user is doing that leaves them open for hacking. It seems that Blizzard has some highly insecure servers and, from what I have read, a lot of the server-client communication is done in plain text .

 

Honestly, we aint even mad cause we can just buy all the stuff in AH. Just that it brothers me that if this is a MMO or single player/lan game.
If this is a MMO , why all the discussion is regarding to solo play(x class cant do x thing "SOLO") and public game is "unsafe".
If this is a single player/lan game, why do I need to risk my save. This is like running a game off a heavily bad sectored HDD?

 

Now that I have zombie bears, I can say that Hell = easy. I release 3 bears at once and each bear does 10k... 3 bears pretty much every 0.5 seconds.. unlimited mana thanks to vision quest Health globes boost my intelligence so I've seen each bear do 20k lol. Level 55 atm with 30k HP, half way through Act 2.

My Witch Doctor: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#fZURjX!UVY!caZabY

I think I kill things faster than I did in Normal

 

Without the authenticator you're really leaving yourself open to attack. I guess all of the people that never played WoW and never experienced those compromise issues are experiencing them now and realizing they should have an authenticator.

 

Why do you go around spouting this like you actually know. You don't know this is not happening any more than the people who are claiming it is.