Diablo III - It's official

Take away the forced connection so the players can play the single-player campaign - if they desire so - and that issue is no more.

And face all the item duping, hacking etc we're all too used to by having possibility of playing offline & online?
 
It's a bullshit argument, having separate offline and online characters isn't hard ... they just didn't want to do it, which is fine ... it might make them more money than it loses, but it loses them my money.
 
Finally got some time to play. Normal is still extremely easy. I could probably sleepwalk through it. It's still fun however. But certainly an order of magnitude easier than D2 normal was at launch. IE - before you started twinking characters with items and runewords, etc.

But it is quite noticeable that unlike Diablo 2, they are going after an even more casual crowd with removing anything that could potentially make you think or work at it.

Removal of skill choices and state allocation choices from D2. Simplified jewels. Lowered level cap. And within D3 itself from inception to current product you have changes to crafting to make it more casual friendly. Removal of most recipe drops, instead making them all available as you pay to upgrade the artisans, for example. Simplifying and removing potential rune options between what was proposed and what we have. Etc...

The most infuriating aspect of this even more casual focus is the targetting system. In order to be more casual friendly, it features both auto-aim and enlarged hitboxes for enemies to make it easier to hit something if a casual doesn't actually click on a monster. The flip side of that is that there is almost no precision, almost no ability to choose what target you hit. Almost no ability to move through crowds of enemies without first moving your mouse away to click then hold it and move it back to where you want to go.

I just watched as I tried to click on a skeleton and instead I'm clicking on the gdamn pillar that is easly 30-50 pixels away because the GAME decides that it knows better than me what I should be attacking. Who the F is playing this game? Me or the gdamn computer? I wanted to see how how of a kill streak I could get, but instead the game thinking that the pillar is the greatest threat decided that it knows better than me what I should be attacking.

I just can't express how much that makes me absolutely hate the increased casual focus of the game.

I can't even imagine how even more infurating it will be in Hardcore mode when attacking something other than what you want to attack can and WILL get you killed. I can't believe they thought this was a good idea.

And that is a perfect example of what is wrong with Diablo 3 compared to Diablo 2. Everything comes across as we (Blizzard) know better than you do what you want to do. Automatic stat point allocation? Blizzard knows better. Monster targetting? Blizzard knows better. Skill choices? Blizzard knows better. Skill levels? Blizzard knows better. Ground targetting versus monster targetting? Blizzard knows better. Half the time I don't even feel like I'm involved in playing the game.

I certainly don't have any control over how my character levels up as I did in D2. I certainly have almost no control over what monsters I want to attack as I did in D2. All I can do is just point in the general direction of where I want to go or what I want to kill and hope and pray that the game agrees with me. I can't even do that with my character as the game knows better than I do how my character should level up.

/puke.

It all makes the game more accessible to casuals but in turn removes the long term playability for those that are into those things. Hence, I really don't see someone like me playing this for more than a few months. I'll be surprised if I'm still playing this a year from now, while on the other hand I played D2 for 10+ years.

Regards,
SB
 
They gave us forums for providing "feedback", but the only thing they were really interested in was bug reports. Whenever someone had any actual feedback on the design portions of the game, they were flat-out ignored. Patch 13 is a perfect example (with the Skill UI change). The forums erupted with feedback, all of it negative, and it got not a single blue response, and nothing at all changed between then and release.
Game design by committee is never a good idea, and game design by rabid, loud-mouthed, belligerent internet forum committee is an even worse one.

I wouldn't ever expect, much less DEMAND, that any game developer do as I say on an internet forum, that's just setting oneself up for disappointment!

They completely ignored the feedback that they asked for and did it anyway.
Wrong, the devs have repeatedly stated that areas of the game were improved after beta feedback.
 
Since I've actually played the game, I've no idea what you're talking about. There aren't any unrealistically proportioned humans in the game, they're all normally proportioned. There's a some areas that are brightly lit, overworld in act one it's pretty much only the area before Leoric's mansion in the highlands, the rest, including the outdoors areas - are overcast and dismal, foggy, smoky and so on.

Act two takes place largely in a desert just like in D2, and it is bright, and sand-colored. The city has lots of color, but they're not particularly saturated for the most part. I'm not sure what your standards are for saturation, but to me the city looks worn and dusty like you'd expect from something that has sat for hundreds of years in a desert.

D3 is exactly as D2 in this regard, there's virtually NO DIFFERENCE, so why don't you go on a ranting spree telling me how cartoonish that game is also and how you hate it for it. :rolleyes:

It's not saturated, excessively bright or cartoonish. Fact. End of story. You bringing up an internet controversy from 2008 (count on your fingers just how many years ago that was...) just goes to show how little you have to stand on here. :p
 
Since I've actually played the game, I've no idea what you're talking about.
(...)
D3 is exactly as D2 in this regard, there's virtually NO DIFFERENCE, so why don't you go on a ranting spree telling me how cartoonish that game is also and how you hate it for it. :rolleyes:

It's not saturated, excessively bright or cartoonish.

I don't hate the game. I'm not going to play it anytime soon but the cartoonish design isn't such a turn-off for me. I even enjoyed Zelda WW and there's no more cartoonish than that.

But if you think this is only in my head, why don't we take a look at the first page of most-helpful customer reviews in metascore?

The worst thing is the cartoon style of the game, thats not dark and creepy like Diablo 2, its some kind of WoW colorful rainbow game.
the gameplay is stagnated and boring, and is an overtly simplified version of the previous game, the graphics cartoonish and soulless.
The general feel of the game was still that of an horror action game, this cartoonish look developed to cater to the wow herd is appalling
unfinished with dumbed down customization and cartoon graphics.
very disappointing game for a hardcore D2 fan like me. Customization is very boring compared to D2, and the cartoony feel of the game is just horrible
Constant connection requirement, real money auction house, 4 player maximum, cartoonish art style, bans for using display sharpening software and 2 hour short game are only the tip of the iceberg.


If you like the design, good for you.
Just don't try to make it look like I invented the cartoonish criticism. I'm just a messenger here (even though the videos I've seen even in the game's webpage state the obvious).




Anyway, Torchlight?
 
I don't care about the random gibbering and nattering of clueless anonymous internet people. D3 is not a cartoonish game. Those people either don't recall what D2 looked like, or choose to not recall just to create controversy on purpose. There's no difference in art style, and the game hasn't been "WoWified" or anything like that.
 
Game design by committee is never a good idea, and game design by rabid, loud-mouthed, belligerent internet forum committee is an even worse one.

I wouldn't ever expect, much less DEMAND, that any game developer do as I say on an internet forum, that's just setting oneself up for disappointment!


Wrong, the devs have repeatedly stated that areas of the game were improved after beta feedback.
But not the areas that people were most vocal about.

I understand that they can't simply "cave" to what people say, but they didn't even acknowledge the issue, nor did they take five minutes to stop and tell us why they were doing things in a way that was pissing everybody off. Giving us their reasoning behind changes like that probably would have shut a lot of people up. Feedback that they don't agree with, or is against their intent, needs a response of some kind, not just the cold shoulder.

Another example: They never explained why they created weapon animations for a class that doesn't use weapons (the monk), or why he actually carries a weapon in his hand, but immediately puts it away once you enter combat. I'm going to assume it was poor design and wasted development time until they tell me differently. Which they won't.. this is one of those things that they probably can't really defend, and so they simply ignore the problem.

Just like they're ignoring all of the "I told you so" about the always-online requirement for a single player game, that's causing them all kind of headaches. I'm not complaining about the server issues, that's expected under the circumstances, but I am going to argue the point of why I can't play a single-player game on my computer when their servers are down.

And yes, D3 is a single-player game. Diablo has always been a single-player game, you just the option of multiplayer, but it was never designed around that.
 
And yes, D3 is a single-player game. Diablo has always been a single-player game, you just the option of multiplayer, but it was never designed around that.

I don't know, I always play Diablo and Diablo 2 with my friends. I almost never play it alone. It's boring.
Since the designers of this game think it's a multi-player game, I'll take their words for that. Even if you think Diablo and Diablo 2 are single player games, it doesn't mean that Diablo 3 have to be a single player game.
 
Nice of them to give us the choice, though, isn't it? Subsequent playthroughs may be online, but the first time I'm in it for the story, and to see every last inch of content, and for that I have to do it alone.

My point is that Blizzard is not without fault, and while I do enjoy the game immensely, it's not without it's flaws, many of which they knew about well in advance. They make a good, but not perfect, product, and I'm not going to leap to their defense anytime someone says something negative about them.
 
Nice of them to give us the choice, though, isn't it? Subsequent playthroughs may be online, but the first time I'm in it for the story, and to see every last inch of content, and for that I have to do it alone.

So it's more like a multi-player game with single player option.

My point is that Blizzard is not without fault, and while I do enjoy the game immensely, it's not without it's flaws, many of which they knew about well in advance. They make a good, but not perfect, product, and I'm not going to leap to their defense anytime someone says something negative about them.

You see, people have different opinions. There will be no "perfect" product because everyone have their own opinions. If you want to design a game, never try to satisfy everyone. It will fail. The same goes to most product designs.

I'm not saying Diablo 3 is in the best possible shape, but the way to improve it is probably not necessarily how you think it is.
 
The hell they couldn't. It's just a matter of not equipping for peak demand, they know that time will solve the issue.

Seriously, you think single company can just "equip up" for traffic which increased all net traffic by 14% worldwide, focusing on exactly where Blizz servers are? :rolleyes:
 
Seriously, you think single company can just "equip up" for traffic which increased all net traffic by 14% worldwide, focusing on exactly where Blizz servers are? :rolleyes:
It was never economically feasible for them to gear up for those few moments. We're talking a couple hours at most, more likely it was just a couple of minutes. At no other point in the game's lifespan will the server demand be as great as it was Monday night. By the next morning, traffic was down to manageable levels, and will remain that way for the life of the game.
 
my lvl 10 wizard owned everything until I ran into some champion goatmen who pretty much summoned me into thier midst there was like a hand animation that slaps you toward them.

Hardest fight so far.

Yea not much to do on lvl ups tho, more like borderlands than d2.
 
Finally got some time to play. Normal is still extremely easy. I could probably sleepwalk through it. It's still fun however. But certainly an order of magnitude easier than D2 normal was at launch. IE - before you started twinking characters with items and runewords, etc.

But it is quite noticeable that unlike Diablo 2, they are going after an even more casual crowd with removing anything that could potentially make you think or work at it.

Removal of skill choices and state allocation choices from D2. Simplified jewels. Lowered level cap. And within D3 itself from inception to current product you have changes to crafting to make it more casual friendly. Removal of most recipe drops, instead making them all available as you pay to upgrade the artisans, for example. Simplifying and removing potential rune options between what was proposed and what we have. Etc...

The most infuriating aspect of this even more casual focus is the targetting system. In order to be more casual friendly, it features both auto-aim and enlarged hitboxes for enemies to make it easier to hit something if a casual doesn't actually click on a monster. The flip side of that is that there is almost no precision, almost no ability to choose what target you hit. Almost no ability to move through crowds of enemies without first moving your mouse away to click then hold it and move it back to where you want to go.

I just watched as I tried to click on a skeleton and instead I'm clicking on the gdamn pillar that is easly 30-50 pixels away because the GAME decides that it knows better than me what I should be attacking. Who the F is playing this game? Me or the gdamn computer? I wanted to see how how of a kill streak I could get, but instead the game thinking that the pillar is the greatest threat decided that it knows better than me what I should be attacking.

I just can't express how much that makes me absolutely hate the increased casual focus of the game.

I can't even imagine how even more infurating it will be in Hardcore mode when attacking something other than what you want to attack can and WILL get you killed. I can't believe they thought this was a good idea.

And that is a perfect example of what is wrong with Diablo 3 compared to Diablo 2. Everything comes across as we (Blizzard) know better than you do what you want to do. Automatic stat point allocation? Blizzard knows better. Monster targetting? Blizzard knows better. Skill choices? Blizzard knows better. Skill levels? Blizzard knows better. Ground targetting versus monster targetting? Blizzard knows better. Half the time I don't even feel like I'm involved in playing the game.

I certainly don't have any control over how my character levels up as I did in D2. I certainly have almost no control over what monsters I want to attack as I did in D2. All I can do is just point in the general direction of where I want to go or what I want to kill and hope and pray that the game agrees with me. I can't even do that with my character as the game knows better than I do how my character should level up.

/puke.

It all makes the game more accessible to casuals but in turn removes the long term playability for those that are into those things. Hence, I really don't see someone like me playing this for more than a few months. I'll be surprised if I'm still playing this a year from now, while on the other hand I played D2 for 10+ years.

Regards,
SB
I am fine with Stats selection being gone. It was good in D2. But it got to a point where it was always the same, there was no variety save a few builds. If Stats really made a difference then I'd love them to be back. But you know how it was.

The legendary and well known advice about equipment/stats which followed that golden rule; raise x Statistic to "the necessary for your equipment" and then you maxed out your stat of choice, often Vitality. So no variety.

Now with runes and the new skill system you can have more than 2 billion character builds.

I am loving the game so far and it's obvious Blizzard put a lot of love into it.

Also the game is being hard for me. Sure it's an untwinked character build (Monk), but I died 4 times in normal, and I was a guy who used to write Diablo 2 guides...
 
I forgot to add that I expect Diablo 3 to have the same "end game" than Diablo 2, which means playing it for years. But not being able to play Single player might hurt this aspect of the game for many people who loved Diablo 2.

I am also glad they added a cooldown time for potions. Thus people aren't relying on a couple of belt lines and clobbering the keyboard all the time to save the day.

It's still early in the game for me, so I will find a lot more virtues and some flaws too, I think, but I am enjoying the game a lot for now.
 
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