Free Diablo 3 open beta this weekend.

To the people knocking it for being too easy , just think.

Was act 1 normal in d2 really that tough? People assuming this game won't have complex math/character strategy within a year probably shouldn't be buying this game or playing d2 anyway.

 

Oh that's the least of my worries. The difficulty was actually ok, I even died once (bear in mind I got multiple hardcore characters to close to level 90 in Diablo II without ever dying) to a bunch of teleporting "abomination" monsters.

The issues are much more complex and fundamental than that if you read the reports in the last 2 or 3 pages.

 

Playing right now on my Sony vpcf133fx runs it just fine.
barbs are OP

 

I dont understand why the graphics are so awful...Titan Quest has better graphics and was made 8 years ago.

It goes without saying that it is plenty of fun though.


On that note, when the beta ends I will probably reinstall Titan Quest

 

I hate to keep referring back to d2, but d2 was a locked 25fps game where high end graphic card almost(edit: not almost, it mean nothing) mean nothing.

 

Same with any of the million other sprite-based games from that era of gaming.

Not sure what you're trying to say there...?

 

people are complaining the about the graphic of D3, but d2 graphic not good compare to mmorpg at that time. (EQ,Lineage)

 

Well, although I said graphics was a bit disappointing, I just want the attribute point and skill tree systems back. And what is up with those instant health pickups? Not sure if those suit diablo series well.

 

It's called Diablo 3 for a reason. I think a lot of people in this thread were expecting Diablo 2 with Diablo 3 graphics. Although there are things I wish that were changed, my main gripes being the 4 player party, I was hoping for more than 6-8 players in a game at once, and the skill trees, also kind of wish stats were back. But having played D2 for a long time, as someone already said, the "customization" wasn't really there anymore once the best possible stats builds for every class were figured out. No one would do anything else because you had a disadvantage if you didn't follow the best possible builds (i.e barbs and pallys just dumped everything into vitality). I'm sure there will be a lot of post launch content especially when the expansions come out (obviously there will be at least one expansion).

 

Tonight I ended up playing and finishing the BETA with all 5 characters. Can't say I was impressed, but if I had to make a top list of all 5 characters, it would be:

Classes I Enjoyed the Most:
1. Monk (teleports, AoE heals, CC, AoE melee)
2. Witch Doctor (CC, pets, strong AoE dmg, DoT's)
3. Wizard (mildly entertaining)
4. Barbarian (copy & paste WoW warrior abilities much?)
5. Demon Hunter (dreadfully boring in PvE)

Last 3 classes feel cheap ...like some of the abilities were duplicated but with different colours and different damage numbers.

Demon Hunter feels like it's aimed mostly to PvP - It has very strong tools and I think it will be the top PvP class based on my experience with all 5.

But then again, who wants to PvP with 6 abilities and no custom keybindings? It'll be a spam-fest with no skill.

Overall, I'm looking forward to Guild Wars 2, Civilization V Expansion Pack (spies/religion), Phantasy Star Online 2 more than D3 this year.

Prior to the BETA, D3 was the top of my list.

(my second look at the game - remember, it's an opinion )

 

Aw man, GW2 (proper...cough) beta next weekend is gonna be sick.

 

pvp will be the turning point for me. I dont expect leveling or farming to be super fun, nor killing diablo multiple times over and over or increase mobs hp by x100 just for the sake of making them hard.

Will it be like wow arena?
Or maybe even like LoL with moba elements?
How competitive it would be?

Cant rly answer those questions atm, but i am definitely buying.
Had a feeling that the game is dumbed down at times but by the level 13 you have enough kinda fun game mechanics on every class to get it rolling.

Prolly gonna be playing DH just because i always played assassin / hunters, most of the times. Althought his pve doesnt really feel too fun. Arrows flying around the corner and through mobs make you feel meh — just go in, press shift+lmb and drink your coffee. Kiting skeleton king was slightly more fun. Even had to use traps and stuns.

 

I just played it on my Xps and it ran great. 1920 x 1080 Maxed except for shadows and no slow downs. They really didn't go all out in the graphic department like I thought they would.

 

I thought the essence of D2 was mfing + trading. And killing meph/P for around 1k times and more.

Now with auction house, can't lowball or rip ppl off ne more...

 

Well in truth the essence of D2 was a progression.

Start off with nothing -> making an ok MFing char (e.g. summon necro or something) -> sourcing the semi-ok MF'd items into making the core MFing sorceress -> MFing with the sorc -> getting enough good stuff (e.g. enigma, torch) to build cookie cutter e.g. hammerdin / windruid -> hell baalruns with hammerdin to get uber items -> trade trade trade get ripped off, rip people off -> get enough end-game stuff (botd, last wish, high runes etc etc) to build pvp-capable characters -> pvp.

Of course different people investing different amounts of time into D2 tend to stop at any point in the middle.

 

haha true enough

 

Smoke screen is gonna be so OP in PvP

 

To be quantitative, at least few million players currently on League of Legends (that's not counting the incoming DotA2).

Yeah totally no skill whatsoever, that's probably why moba games appear on so many tournaments, together with Starcraft. Total spam-fest. Yep.

 

I've never played LoL or DotA 2.

25-30 keybindings in WoW / Swtor > 6 keybindings in D3.

I'm used to a wide range and variety of abilities in competitive PvP and find that the incredibly limited abilities offered in D3 is going to turn into spam spam spam.

6 abilities is not even good enough in PvE, why do you think it would be in a PvP arena which they're implementing?

At least in LoL/DotA2 you get a big open world PvP right? In D3, competitive PvP will be aimed at a small sandbox.

<param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ej-rEJvRYps?version=3&amp;hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ej-rEJvRYps?version=3&amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width='560' height="315" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object>

...Everyone is spamming the same thing over and over again.

Another point is that in LoL/DotA2, you get a big variety of hero's to select from every match. In D3, you're stuck with the same "hero" forever, unless you reroll completely.

Also, why would you compare SC2, which is a completely different genre? Closest comparison to SC2 is Command & Conquer if talking about competitive PvP.

(just my opinion )

 

I got a few hours in beat the game with the Demon Hunter

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL63EC9C34CE4B156E

 

I laugh at comparing LoL/moba and D3 pvp to WoW and that bad star wars game. I played WoW arena too. I play league of legends a ton. They are both fun and both require knowledge and skill. It's not even close to an apples to apples comparison.

 

Well, I have to admit D3 was a little entertaining... but its going to grow old fast unless they modify the skills with some sort of specilization.

The beta was FAR too easy. I finished the entire beta with wizard without upgrading my equipment at all. I tried all the classes and monk and barbarian are brainless. Spam left click is good enough to get you throught he entire beta. No resource management, no need to retreat ever.

I very much like the witch doctor... but I miss having to actually manage resources and build around what would actually work. Now anything works and you just charge ahead spamming the button.

The dumbing down severely hurt D3... even in D2 first act, you occasionally had to retreat to keep from dying when you did something stupid. Now, there is no such thing as pulling to much. Losing is almost impossible unless afk.

D3 will require much patching and large rules changes to make it anywhere near the game D2 still is. Think of this release as "Diablo for dummies".

 

A large chunk of the WoW player base will be going to D3 - especially since you get the game for free if you commit to a 12-month WoW subscription. The WoW player base (along with other MMO players, which D3 appeals to) is used to a wealth of abilities and that's one of the selling points with the game - lots of abilities.

When you take that away and give people 6 keybound abilities instead of what they're used to (25-30), it feels like a cheap/rushed made game.

Also, as mentioned:

Think of how dreadfully boring it will be playing with 6 keybindings for 100 levels.

Hundreds of hours grinding both PvE and PvP with 6 keybound abilities in an MMO setting ... 1-2-3-4-Right Click-Left Click from level 1 to 100.

A Possible Fix?
- Reduce health globe drops by 75%
- Reduce potion drops by 50%
- Keybindings unlocked (movement, abilities - everything)
- Increase trash mob damage by 75%
- Increase trash mob health by 50%
- Summoners spawn skeletons rate increase 100% (limit 20 skeletons)
- Boss damage increased by 100%
- Boss health increased by 100%
- Spell Change: Players can now bind every single spell to a keybinding of their choice. Balance fix will follow.
- Attribute points are now customizable
- Increased difficulty mode is now available for new characters without any pre-prerequisite needed
- All player crowd control now has diminishing returns in PvE (Example: 4sec/2sec/1sec/immune)

...this is just a few ideas.

(and again, this is just my opinion)

 

well , 5 often used active skill is unusual in D2, dun't even mention 6

usually 2-3 skill max. But it was fun for yearss

I don't see how more key binding = better game though.

typical mind set nowadays for mmorpg is to adjust "numbers", but i thought it had been proven numerous time it doesn't increase difficulty. Instead it just waste time.

 

It was good for that time/era, but since then, games have evolved and the market has been flooded with MMO's offering 25-30 usable abilities bound to the keys of your choice, so people coming from MMO's are used to that and most I've spoken to want that Plus, I believe it's a better overall experience (more skill; more decisions, etc.).

The PvP arena videos I've watched for example has 4 people in a 2v2 spamming a couple dps abilities each from start to finish.

 

I could prove you so wrong lol but I won't bother typing up the huge tl;dr list of skills for various D2 builds again.

(was arguing about this in another forum earlier when someone raised the exact same point about how D2 builds don't even use 6 skills)

The point is that most D2 end-game classes use at least 6 skills regularly, usually more like 8 and in certain cases 10, to be effective. That is added on top of the fact that Pvp generally requires changes to which skills are used which could +/- a skill or two further more.

Edit: heck I'll give you one simple example

Say...cookie cutter hammerdin, right?

Obviously 1) concentration aura, 2) blessed hammer.

3) holy shield.

4) charge (for mobility / pvp)

5) vigor (for mobility / group play speed buff)

6) redemption (for rapid heal in any PvM runs)

7) cleansing (for recovering from nasty curses / poisons especially from the Act 2 type summon guys)

8) smite (for killing magic-immune mobs)

9) salvation (for rare mob packs with conviction aura / lower resistance curse / Uber tristram)

10) teleportation (from enigma)

11) battle order (from call to arms, buff)

12) battle command (from call to arms, buff)

And that is just a typical build. Certain builds like particular necromancers will scramble to conserve the total number of available skill key-binding slots to perform at max.

All I'm saying is, Diablo II OFFERS the potential for extremely in-depth / complex / high-level gameplay, if the player deems it so.

 

D2 definitely offered more player creativity and character customization.

D3 its just cookie cutter stuff, there will be 2 or 3 "best builds" for each hero type and thats all everybody will use, not much room for personal creativity.

Id totally get & play D3 but when/if its about $30... its not worth a $50+ price tag for me as I would only casually play it. Trying to play it serious/hardcore style would get me bored incredibly quickly I think.

Guild Wars 2 is definitely going to give a ton more to do

The only thing D3 really has that appeals to me is loot hunting/farming.

 

Depends on the format of pvp. If it will be like the video of arena on previous page i really doubt DH will succeed. Not much space to kite and tons of los.

I d say WD + Barb / monk will own faces if arena will go through as is. Smoke screen doesnt really kill people for you. Barb will jump on you, unload and run around the pillar waiting for cooldowns. Been there, done that in wow, with more then 5000 arena games under the belt. So i am undecided between WD and DH now. WD is great for versatility but i am not a great fan of pet classes. Although i was smurfing warlock in wow, i liked how his pet is mostly a mobile CC tool and nothing more.

As for sorc — gotto see what will be the tools of regening hp. Potentially sorc doesnt have enough CC to escape monk with his no cooldown teleport and with some magic resist it may get brutal kinda fast for a sorc.

I would love a more open world pvp like a BG or capture the flag sort of things. There DH would really shine. Also its more fun then arenas in general.

 

by "often used" I mean "often used" ~~

active skill as in well "active skill" not buff and aura. so in a hammerdin
bh/charge/tele/smith
bvc for example
leap/tele/ww/maybe brezerk
javazon hybird is 1 that use more
cs/tele/ls/decoy/ga/jab/valk maybe
necro
bs/bs/bp(rare in general)/tele/amp(rare unless team)
when voodoo suggest 25-30 key binding, my impression is of course well, 25-30 "often spamed" key.

 

No, in MMO's like WoW 90% of the skills are conditionally used, mostly it's using 3 or 4 main skills.

And aura's do count as active skills since they greatly affect your character; think of them as "stance skills" as opposed to defensive or offensive skills.

Saying that because D3 will have 6 slots that they will all be active is absurd, you will be using your lmb/rmb, and maybe your '1' and sometimes your '2' most of the time, the last two will invariably be conditional. The issue is where are the 10 extra hotkeys for the rest of the conditional skills? I guess there aren't none.

 

I just love all you "Elitist" here going on about how D3 is so easy. You do realize that you were only playing the tutorial pretty much. What you played in the Beta was supposed to be easy. Blizzard actually implemented the tutorial very well. They are teaching you how to play the game while playing the game. Your not supposed to die during a tutorial.

Fact of the matter is, not everyone played D2. Blizzard isn't just going to throw players into Hell.

 

^
Imagine creating a Beta that was extremely difficult and scared people away from buying the final product

 

Depends on how people define difficult,

kiting a mob with enormous hp/dmg is not difficult, but just a boring time sink.

Maybe they should make D3 darksoul/monster hunter like so people stop complaining?

Regarding # of keybinding/active skill (pally and sin are the only 2 I feel i need f13~~), I just try to show number of key to use is not a correct measurement of how good, or how well made a mmorpg is.

 

Thats true but I think that the Beta should be fun and entertaining hence create more buyers instead of catering for the 10% (I made that up) that want daunting quests that lead to ripping out their hairs. Diablo have never been difficult anyways. Only in Hell mode or in the Cow level.

 

Role-playing is about making choices.

The choices in D2 were simplified as is typical of the Diablo series but included:
-Which path do I take? do I make a fire sorc or cold sorc?
-Resource management: Do I burn mana to use my damage skills or save mana for another opponent? Do I burn a little mana to make this easier?
-What do I do if mob abilities block my best? (there were indeed fire-immune mobs in normal mode act 1!)
-Equipment: which equipment best complements the skills I chose? Do I have a backup plan? (Staff with cold skills, sword with cold damage, javelins, etc)

D3 is too easy because you don't need to manage anything... just click one button and win. You don't even need a second skill, and with the case of the wizard you don't even need equipment at all! (I suspect the barb and monk are the same way)

How is it a good tutorial for the game to not have to use any tactics at all?
(Click mob it dies, click a second time if it doesn't die, next mob...)

In D2, act1 was very easy... but you learned to manage Mana and HP and when to retreat. You also learned to use different skills to get the job done as fireballs did you no good on fire immunes and stoneskin mobs made melee less useful and elemental weapons or gems much better.

In D3, you learn only that you are unkillable and don't even need potions, equipment, or frankly anything but click=win.

This isn't about a billion HP or the mobs hitting for a ton.

There aren't any choices.

D3 is more like the old Gauntlet "green elf needs food badly" game than role-playing. I miss the choices.

 

Difficulty of the game has never arose as a valid argument in this case simply cuz of the nature of the demo. What pisses off a lot of vet D2 players (not just here ofc, everywhere on other D2 forums / game forums) is the streamlining and "you shouldn't X, therefore X is removed instead of refined" iteration philosophy behind a lot of the game design.

Perfectly valid decisions, of course. Makes the game more accessible, as Cloudfire mentions above, to a larger more "modern"-oriented audience. But the depth and replayability takes a blow from this conversion. Diablo 3 becomes more of an action button-smasher than a thought-out RPG requiring some actual thought and planning like its prequels, so it's not quite a sequel in spirit, more of a different take but based on the same lore.

 

Playing on normal makes the game too easy. Yeah, ok. Sound logic.

Hey lets play Skyrim on easy and complain the Dragons are too easy. Also how can you even be so ignorant and say that you don't need equipment to kill mobs? Hello, you're playing on freaking normal. Can we wait until you get to Hell/Inferno and then talk. If anything, Diablo 2 was the game that was too easy. Look what happened at the endgame. You had paladins and sorcs just teleporting around and romping every mob like it was nothing in Hell.

 

Wait.. wait.. did you make all those choices in d2 till level 10?!
I played d2 through all acts on normal and i dont even know what you are talking about, i was just mashing few random skills and things died.

 

I will agree though that the lack of keybindings makes me a sad panda. I wish I could use any skill I chose to rather than having 1-4 set to a single skill of a specific type. How to solve this? Well one thing they could do is make a bunch of different lists of 1-4 skills. For example when I was playing barb I could only either use Leap or war stomp as #1. So what they could do is make a scrollable list that you can scroll through during combat using hotkeys.

so for example your first list of 1234 might be

leap, ancient spear, throw weapon, earthquake

and you should be able to create another list of 1234 that you can switch to during combat that might look like

war stomp, furious charge, war cry, summon ancients

That way you dont have to keep going back to the skill menu and changing which skill you have assigned to 1234. I feel making lists of skills like this might be better and offer you more variety to use skills since everyone will have access to all of their skills by the end anyway.

 

Like I said, D3's differences to D2 aren't flaws, they just make D3 a different type of game than D2 that's aimed at a different audience. The upset from many past D2 players is exactly that.

 

I can just see you standing there firebolting that fire immune with all your might.... blowing every mana potion you can find. 20 minutes later, Lieto finally kills it with melee accidentally exclaiming "I can do it!"

The rest of us pulled out a staff with icebolt on it and were done in seconds.

Sure, you can beat it with /faceroll tactics... but for some of us it was better to make decisions that made us more effective in game.

The point was, D2 both allowed and rewarded those choices.
For some players it won't matter its gone I suppose...

 

Diablo 3 OB was the best I have ever played, even though it is only 1/16th of the game. Normal mode is always the casual mode, the game really starts at Nightmare. Definitely going to preorder.

 

Or you could just make a go-to class for PvE (i.e. the hammerdin) and just teleport around killing everything in seconds, finish a meph run in less than a minute and start again. The point is PvE in Diablo 2 does not even compare at all to Diablo 3. Diablo 2's PvE ended up being a joke by the end. Everyone and their dog had a hammerdin and they were dirt cheap to gear up.
There are many valid complaints about Diablo 3 but seriously, PvE being too easy should not be one of them. Diablo 2's endgame was all about PvP. PvE was a complete and utter joke.

Remember when they patched in the Uber Tristram and made them so bloody hard that no one could figure out how to kill them for about a week? Hammerdins got destroyed, full parties of casters couldn't do anything against them. Then someone figured out that a bunch of ber runes in a weapon destroyed them like it was nothing once again. Go figure. I am looking forward to the hard boss battles in Hell/Inferno in D3. Yeah it's a bit WoWish but at least it's not as braindead as Diablo 2's PvE.

 

Not really WoW-ish, but I'm looking forward to the PvE in Hell/Inferno in softcore and hardcore as well. In Diablo 2, I didn't really enjoy the PvP, I enjoyed the occasional rushes with other players as well as exploring the unseen regions that people usually skip through.

 

i am glad you understood my point ><
which is:
Level... 10... normal... difficulty... pve.

 

I still laugh at these people comparing WoW to Diablo. Diablo is not the same type of game. It is not even close. If you want another WoW Arena... JUST keep playing WoW.

Diablo will not suffer from the changes they made. There are a lot more new people who weren't around for diablo 2 that will like it just fine, and a lot less angry veterans who won't play because they changed things.

However, I do agree that it sucks they took away a lot of character customization. Hopefully that is in some way addressed down the line.

 

There were rumors that the first expansion might take 2-3 years. That's an AWFUL long time for a single expansion. I really hope that's not true, and if it is, then we need a lot of post launch patches with new content to keep this game going. But hey who knows. Day one for me for sure.

 

Not sure if this is posted before but I found a few interesting interviews...

skill points: Diablo 3 - Why Skill Points Were Removed - Jay Wilson Interview - YouTube
manual stat allocation: Diablo 3 - Why We Can't Pick Attribute Points - Jay Wilson Interview - YouTube
difficulty: Difficulty Levels & Builds - Diablo III Gameplay & Auction House - YouTube

 

Watched those a long time ago. Their philosophy that "if X was not working as intended in D2, we remove it in D3" is frankly idiotic, instead they should have revamped / refined the systems. But what's done is done.

 

Frankly I'm just pinning my hopes on a lot of post launch content that adds new skills/items and an overall better experience than right now.