[KKRT]

Originally Posted by Cyan

Single Player offline seems to be already working. I didn't test it yet though. They also automatically sync with the latest updates of Blizzard, that's amazing.

I am starting to like Diablo 3 a bit more now that I know of this. I got stuck at the very beginning of Act 3 Normal, because I was a bit disillusioned with Diablo 3 and its lack of SP.

First video is compilation of Blizzard footage and second video is footage from beta.

[Kaotik]

Indeed, and as big parts of the game happen on server end, there's just no possibility for "Offline patch" without making actual Battle.net server emulator running a server for you.
Considering how bad in general the World of Warcraft "private servers" still are according to reports, I doubt we'll be seeing anything worthwhile for Diablo either

[Grall]

Oh, so the "crack" was just a fake. Well, that figures, doesn't it?

Yeah, as Kaotik mentions, you need a full-blown b.net server emulator to run D3 offline. Just "cracking" the game won't be enough.

[RobertR1]

Originally Posted by AlphaWolf

http://www.diablofans.com/blizz-trac...esign-preview/

they are going to patch later this month. Easier coop, and better drops from act I.

Yeah I saw that earlier. Great news! I'm going to hold off on starting Inferno until the patch.

[Cyan]

Originally Posted by KKRT

First video is compilation of Blizzard footage and second video is footage from beta.

Yes, you are right. I tested it myself. Sadly, it is fake, unsurprisingly so.

I was afraid the files contained a virus or something but since it is a compressed file, as long as you don't run an executable you should be fine.

Once I downloaded them they asked for a password to be decompressed, sending you to different places where you can get the password. There you find some kind of quiz you must complete in order to get the password of the file. I replied all the questions and then they asked me about my mobile phone number.

I didn't give any info, but the thing is that in that kind of sites, if you give your actual telephone number they send you messages. You think it's all fine, but what you don't know is that they charge you for those messages and your phone bill goes overboard the next month.

It is even worse than that because you can get like 4 or 5 messages a month, or none, but after they send you those initial messages, they charge you for messages they never ever send and of course you never receive,but appear listed in your bill.

It's a real life case for quite a few people.

[Cyan]

I deleted Diablo 3. I decided to do this because the boredom got the best of me. It has been a week or so since I played the last time, and left the game in Act 3 Normal. I spent more time *watching the butterflies* than actually playing this ok game, but crappy Diablo.

I don't mind waiting for Blizzard to change some of the things in this game, watching the paltry story finally unfold, and so on. I am curious about the ending but there is enough time to view it one day.

I withdraw my objections about Diablo 3.

But Blizzard seems to be following closely this article and some of the great responses in this thread, I hope they take note.

It's an article by Brother Laz, the creator of Median XL mod, which is considered the best Diablo 2 mod to date, about the deficiencies in Diablo 3:

http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/com...is-legendaries

[Grall]

Only really fun way to play D3 is together with a friend/friends, IMO. It's somewhat entertaining to solo beyond normal IF you buy a bunch of stuff from the auction house every other act or so, but failing that the game becomes hard and frustrating and a slow, slow grind since almost all the gear that drops is so incredibly, painfully shitty.

Eventually you end up ten levels higher than most of your gear, and killing enemies start taking forever - especially random named mob packs. These are often much more lethal than actual bosses, which is fucked up to say the least.

Right now I'm soloing my demon hunter in act 3 nightmare where I have hit level 47, roughly halfway through, and my mate and I play wizard (myself) and barb (him). Coop is like...20 times more fun even though we're only like level 35ish or so, and still only just past skeleton king in nightmare.

I've now picked energy beam with split rune, electric sparks with explosions on death, familiar with extra damage, lightning hydra, meteor with lower cost and lightning with chaining rune. Also, glass cannon passive, the one that regens arcane power when you shoot signature spells and some third one which I can't remember now...

This setup's quite fun, I haven't tested it together with him yet; I had shock pulse and frost nova instead of meteor and familiar, which is a much safer setup. Running around with all offensive skills is exceedingly dangerous solo, I almost got killed several times against random elite packs since I had no defense... Lol. Not good maybe, but it's easier when my mate tanks for me. If I start doing poorly I'll just replace familiar with frost nova again, but the idea here is that most mobs shouldn't reach me, they should die to our overwhelming damage... We'll see how that works. With the cheaper meteors I can toss down four of them before I'm out of arcane power and I've got an OK staff I dredged up with my demon hunter from a later act.

The game's reliance on weapon damage makes wands+offhand quite ineffective for wizards, plus it's much harder to find two good items to put in each of my hands than it is to find just one decent staff. That's a real problem, IMO. Staves are easier to manage, and they hit WAY harder. Same thing with barb, my mate says. Twohander just kills much faster than two onehanders. Bad game design on top of bad game design equals BAD. But it's not a catastrophe, and we're having fun together.

[AlphaWolf]

Originally Posted by Grall

The game's reliance on weapon damage makes wands+offhand quite ineffective for wizards, plus it's much harder to find two good items to put in each of my hands than it is to find just one decent staff. That's a real problem, IMO. Staves are easier to manage, and they hit WAY harder. Same thing with barb, my mate says. Twohander just kills much faster than two onehanders. Bad game design on top of bad game design equals BAD. But it's not a catastrophe, and we're having fun together.

It's not bad game design it's a misconception on your part.

Offhands come with bonus damage. That plus the extra stats you can get from an offhand + mainhand. My offhand adds about 200 (it's +95-248 or something) just from its +damage then I gain another 95 int and 8.5% crit. It's hard to tell if that's exactly equal to a comparable 2h but the advantage is I can switch out for a shield if needed without completely gimping myself.

[pcchen]

Also, on higher difficulty levels (especially in inferno) it's almost mandatory to have a shield offhand to stay alive if your items are not "perfect" yet (even for casters).

[EDIT] The recent hotfix which reduces enemy damage in multiplayer games is also very important. Before this, higher difficulty (later Hell and Inferno) was almost unplayable in two or more players because the high damage spikes. This is very stupid considering the most fun way to play this game is, well, multiplayer.

[Grall]

Originally Posted by AlphaWolf

It's not bad game design it's a misconception on your part.

And yet I haven't found any main+offhands that give nearly the same killing power as this crappy staff that dropped for my demon hunter. It has no int on it, but high weapon damage, a socket and some other stats. Only good, or even decent wands I've found (statwise) have been ten levels or more below that of the staff, so obviously not comparable. And that's not many wands to begin with, and fewer still wizard offhands.

Also, shuddering at running around with my DH with a shield and just one hand crossbow. That would SUCK.

I'm still voting for bad game design. The drops are simply too crap.

[KKRT]

This fucking Blizzard! What a joke...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spMS3Hhk1FA

[Kaotik]

Originally Posted by KKRT

This fucking Blizzard! What a joke...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spMS3Hhk1FA

Lol, if something is a joke it's your attitude
When something is made by humans, there's bound to be some bugs here and there, and chances are someone will find them eventually.

[KKRT]

Originally Posted by Kaotik

Lol, if something is a joke it's your attitude
When something is made by humans, there's bound to be some bugs here and there, and chances are someone will find them eventually.

How is it a bug? It was programmed that way! You cant use local time, instead of server time by accident.

[Mize]

Originally Posted by KKRT

How is it a bug? It was programmed that way! You cant use local time, instead of server time by accident.

How's that? You mean someone, early on before the server code was running, couldn't have written a gettime routine for client time and forgotten to go back and change it once the server code was up and talking?

[KKRT]

Originally Posted by Mize

How's that? You mean someone, early on before the server code was running, couldn't have written a gettime routine for client time and forgotten to go back and change it once the server code was up and talking?

Why would anyone even write it client site in the first place? It is big system and main focus of online-only approach, so it shouldnt be written by one person and tested by one person, but whole team, so client based approach doesnt make sense.
Would You write it that way?

BTW it can also explain many bugs we had with auctions bidding, especially in last minutes.

[Mize]

So which is it then? Intentional or bug? As to why anyone would use a local time variable, I would imagine that then rendering engine and client app work was started well before the server code. That's pretty common, no? So if your team is working on the client and there is no server yet, where is your time variable going to come from?

[trinibwoy]

Originally Posted by KKRT

How is it a bug? It was programmed that way! You cant use local time, instead of server time by accident.

What makes you think a bug has to be an accident?

[Jedi2016]

Originally Posted by trinibwoy

What makes you think a bug has to be an accident?

By the name. Otherwise, it's called a "feature".

[Mize]

Okay, I decided to give Diablo 3 a try even though I won't be able to play it on long, international flights...

anyway, maybe (likely) it's because I'm playing on normal and my highest is a lowly 11th level Wizard, but I'm finding it quite fun and entertaining...here's hoping the imbalances are debugged before I get far enough along to experience them.

[AlphaWolf]

The gear issues and stuff really don't show up until later levels. (for me, not really until level 60)

1.03 is supposedly going to hit later this month which will address some of them, and they already hotfixed co-op scaling difficulty.

[Grall]

Wizard starts getting fun when you get to unlock all skills and some runes for them. Co-op with friends (or hell, kids...) is where this game's at though. Recruit your young spawn for some serious fun.

[Mize]

Might have to get the boy on it...or even the girl. Wonder how it runs on a laptop with a 540...?

[Grall]

It runs TERRIBLE on my Macbook with Sandybridge graphics, if that's any indication. Just...terrible. Which is strange, really, because there's hardly any overdraw most of the time so it really shouldn't be fillrate limited, and a dual core/four threads should be enough CPU grunt. It's an i7, so max turbo is 3.4GHz (not on all four threads though of course...) I guess it's all the transparent mist and such that swirls around everywhere that's killing the GPU. *shrug*

Wonder if you can turn that off somehow?

[Mize]

I wonder how it runs on the new MacBook pro with Quad Ivy, Kepler 650 and a 2880x1800 display...
[drool]

[ToTTenTranz]

Originally Posted by Grall

It runs TERRIBLE on my Macbook with Sandybridge graphics, if that's any indication. Just...terrible. Which is strange, really, because there's hardly any overdraw most of the time so it really shouldn't be fillrate limited, and a dual core/four threads should be enough CPU grunt. It's an i7, so max turbo is 3.4GHz (not on all four threads though of course...) I guess it's all the transparent mist and such that swirls around everywhere that's killing the GPU. *shrug*

Wonder if you can turn that off somehow?

That's not new:




Not that Diablo 3 ever set a benchmark for visual/performance efficiency, though.