Diablo III - It's official
- Thread starter N00b
- Start date
The open beta is really frustrating. Now that I've gotten a small taste of power, I find myself unable to continue due to the low capacity of the beta realms! 
I just got booted out of my game and now I can't get back in again.
There seriously needs to be a queue system when there's a capacity issue, so you don't have to watch getting a damn error message slapped in your face time and time again.
Edit:
Damn, this game's addictive. Racking up huge killscores is FUN, seeing everything blowing up on the screen at once is even more so.
Pressing Ctrl-R reveals the framerate counter. There is the reason for the juddering screen updates; the game's locked at 50FPS for whatever reason. It won't go above that.
I'd REALLY like to see Blizzard letting us hotkey the skills. That absolutely needs to happen, otherwise you just use the same skills all the time, and that's no fun. Having the click through a cumbersome interface every time we switch spells/skills (remembering to re-pick our desired rune each time as well, since previous selections aren't remembered), and then have a cooldown too before our new skill becomes active is a very strange choice in an action game. This absolutely should be possible to do on-the-fly, in the heat of battle. It's not much of an issue for me right now since I don't really have any other choices - the runed sparks and the orb is so clearly superior to all the other spells that are avalable right now, in every situation, but this will probably change later into the game.
I just got booted out of my game and now I can't get back in again.There seriously needs to be a queue system when there's a capacity issue, so you don't have to watch getting a damn error message slapped in your face time and time again.
Edit:
Damn, this game's addictive. Racking up huge killscores is FUN, seeing everything blowing up on the screen at once is even more so.
Pressing Ctrl-R reveals the framerate counter. There is the reason for the juddering screen updates; the game's locked at 50FPS for whatever reason. It won't go above that.
I'd REALLY like to see Blizzard letting us hotkey the skills. That absolutely needs to happen, otherwise you just use the same skills all the time, and that's no fun. Having the click through a cumbersome interface every time we switch spells/skills (remembering to re-pick our desired rune each time as well, since previous selections aren't remembered), and then have a cooldown too before our new skill becomes active is a very strange choice in an action game. This absolutely should be possible to do on-the-fly, in the heat of battle. It's not much of an issue for me right now since I don't really have any other choices - the runed sparks and the orb is so clearly superior to all the other spells that are avalable right now, in every situation, but this will probably change later into the game.
Last edited by a moderator:
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Yeah, I don't particularly like the new skill assignment interface, but it's friendlier to the casuals who aren't able to determine what skills are used for what, I suppose.
As to the skill changes. That was a deliberate and, IMO, needed change. When I first got into the beta you could swap skills in and out on the fly. Felt really horrible to me, with skill choice being almost meaningless going into a level. Character builds are already pretty generic with no skill progression and no player controled ability progression beyond gear drops.
When they changed it so you could only swap in town, I thought that was fantastic. It suddenly gave the player at least ONE meaningful choice in the BETA when going into a level. Rather than everyone being just a jack of all trades running through levels, you suddenly had to think about your build and its potential to make it through a level.
IMO, they are going backwards with cutting down the time skills are in cooldown after swapping for normal. I'm assuming that at higher difficulties we'll get back to the 30 second cooldown between skill swaps.
Additionally, at least in higher difficulties you'll rack up +magic find and +gold drop when killing bosses. But those bonuses get reset to 0 if you swap a skill. So I suppose that's an OK compromise. At least there's a bit of incentive there for people to actually think about their character builds.
Regards,
SB
I'd prefer if the thinking about char builds were regarding OTHER things than which skills I use to kill monsters with. In a game that relies upon ONE thing and one thing ONLY: killing monsters, then it's essential that does not get tedious.
Having variety in the ways which one accomplishes that is therefore essential, and limiting the usefulness of switching skills is entirely counterproductive IMO. It just doesn't make sense punishing the player for wanting to do that. In D2, I was switching skills all the time, especially as Amazon, Druid and Necromancer.
While skill switching worked differently in D2 (you only had left and right click attacks, no number key attacks like in D3), I still had a much larger variety of abilities at my disposal. D2LoD brought 16 hotkeys, and I doubt too many people really were all that confused about that. Sure, most people never used that many, but at least you COULD use them, if you wanted to.
Having variety in the ways which one accomplishes that is therefore essential, and limiting the usefulness of switching skills is entirely counterproductive IMO. It just doesn't make sense punishing the player for wanting to do that. In D2, I was switching skills all the time, especially as Amazon, Druid and Necromancer.
While skill switching worked differently in D2 (you only had left and right click attacks, no number key attacks like in D3), I still had a much larger variety of abilities at my disposal. D2LoD brought 16 hotkeys, and I doubt too many people really were all that confused about that. Sure, most people never used that many, but at least you COULD use them, if you wanted to.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
And that right there is exactly why skill selection screen is setup the way it is. Also, exactly why skill slots are unlocked in order, etc.
Why think about that kind of boring stuff that gets in the way when you should only have to worry about killing?
All those things that you and I would like as more variety and more choice are absolutely unnecessary to monster killing. Hell, we're lucky they even give us multiple characters, as that too is unnecessary to monster killing.
I mean holy carpe, they even give us skills which are defiitely not needed for monster killing. It's all unnecessary variety. Ah, I see. Removing variety is good when it doesn't affect what you think is important. But removing variety is bad if it affects what you think is important.
Obviously, you have a different and more limited vision of what kind of variety is good.
And Blizzard has an even more restricted/different vision of what type of variety gets in the way of what they think is a streamlined monster killing experience.
Hence, we have large bounding boxes/auto-aim removing the ability to choose which monsters we want to attack when there is a large group.
Hence, we have no character customization at all beyond equipment and skill choice. No character attribute choices, no character skill level choices, etc. And what limited choices remain don't affect character builds much since they are so easily swapped.
Hence, we have no on the fly skill switching without penalties. Which would remove what little choices remained in character builds as you could then swap things willy nilly at a whim making character builds rather pointless.
Absolutely I'd love the D2 method of skill management. I'd also love the D2 method of character advancement and character customization.
Unfortunately for you and me, neither of those are returning in D3. Those are things that are deemed to be unnecessary to the streamlined version of monster killing that Blizzard envisions for D3.
It certainly makes me a sad panda, but at the end of the day, I'm still going to play the hell out of the game even if I don't end up playing it for 10+ years like I did with D2.
Regards,
SB
Worst part of the beta is I can't decide which class I like best: wizard, monk, or barb. Haven't tried the doctor or hunter yet, but neither of those archetypes appeal to me very much.
Got a witch doctor to 9th tonight, a no-pet build that I enjoyed a little.
Forgot the beta ends tomorrow so I out some hours into it.
Played mage and it was ok. Never really had to worry about dying. I got upto level 7 and then stopped.
Still on the fence about it. I wish it controlled like a Dota for your hero and was hoping there would be a 360 version.
Played mage and it was ok. Never really had to worry about dying. I got upto level 7 and then stopped.
Still on the fence about it. I wish it controlled like a Dota for your hero and was hoping there would be a 360 version.
It controls like Diablo has always controlled. Not sure why you'd want anything else in a Diablo game. A full 360 degree camera would require entirely different art for starters (no flat trees and such for starters), also, would complicate controls a lot. It would play like a shooter, not like a point-an-click game.
I remapped the 1-4 keys to the WASD group; found it works a lot better that way on my Corsair Vengeance K60; especially as the potion key is already mapped to Q.
I remapped the 1-4 keys to the WASD group; found it works a lot better that way on my Corsair Vengeance K60; especially as the potion key is already mapped to Q.
Monk and Demon Hunter, however I only played them low level.
That's the biggest problem I have with games like that, how am I supposed to know what I'll like at high level ?
Is low level representative to high level gameplay ?
It would be unreasonable to ask me to invest a significant amount of time before I find something I like...
Maybe we could just have a high level trial mode or something to get a clue...
That's the biggest problem I have with games like that, how am I supposed to know what I'll like at high level ?
Is low level representative to high level gameplay ?
It would be unreasonable to ask me to invest a significant amount of time before I find something I like...
Maybe we could just have a high level trial mode or something to get a clue...
I really dislike how everything is bound to your weapon's dps. Played a monk first, never saw better cestus drop, went to a wizard, didn't see a better wand (a friend threw one at me), so i went from the starter 3.0 dps wand to a 11.x dps bow. And watched my wizard run around with a bow in his hand, but doing much greater damage. Just very off-putting to this old RPG geek.
So I think when teh game releases I'll play barb first since they can use just about anything that drops in terms of melee weapons, build up the blacksmith, build up gold and crafting materials, store any monk or wizard drops the barb sees, and go from there. Because I wasn't enjoying the monk or wizard at all once they hit levels 5-7 without better weapons.
The four-man teams were a lot of fun though, especially with a good mix of different classes.
So I think when teh game releases I'll play barb first since they can use just about anything that drops in terms of melee weapons, build up the blacksmith, build up gold and crafting materials, store any monk or wizard drops the barb sees, and go from there. Because I wasn't enjoying the monk or wizard at all once they hit levels 5-7 without better weapons.
The four-man teams were a lot of fun though, especially with a good mix of different classes.
Yeah, that must have been why I was doing so crap DPS; I remember I trained my blacksmith and crafted a new wand at the end of my first play session and after that I did much much more damage; never could figure out why!
I guess once live hits I'll have to run around with an axe or a dagger or some shit like that until I can get a better wand. It's really off-putting, but what can one do? I only saw a tiny handful of class-specific weapons; I'm not entirely sure but I think I saw ONE wand drop; an inferior-quality weapon which probably had no better stats than the starter wand!
Going barb might not be such a bad idea, because the introduction video Blizzard released a week or two back made the barb look GREAT. Really seems like a super fun class I must say.
One problem is that some types of weapons (such as daggers, swords, clubs, etc.) are much more common than other types (wands, knuckles, etc.), so it would be very problematic if some classes are restricted to certain weapon types.
Armors, on the other hand, seem to be shared by all classes and automatically transform to class specific shapes. Although I can see the problems if weapons go this way.
Armors, on the other hand, seem to be shared by all classes and automatically transform to class specific shapes. Although I can see the problems if weapons go this way.
First time my barb helped kill the skellie king two high-dps scythes dropped, which turned her into a dual-wielding inferno of destruction. Very fun class to play.
Heh, I never actually got to finish the beta as I was busy this weekend but I liked what I tried.
The same annoyance as I posted earlier about multi-display setups where the other screen goes blank ... that's just not good.
I played the Demon Hunter (like the ranged style a lot). but only ever managed to get to level 5.
The same annoyance as I posted earlier about multi-display setups where the other screen goes blank ... that's just not good.
I played the Demon Hunter (like the ranged style a lot). but only ever managed to get to level 5.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
All the "common" weapon drops are useable by all classes. Only the class restricted weapons drop less frequently.
So, for example, for a Monk. While Fist weapons are monk only, the monk itself can use any weapon that isn't restricted to another classes. The only thing you'd be missing out on with a non-fist weapon would be monk specific modifiers like life heal per spirit spent for example.
Hence in that example above, a Monk with a 10 DPS sword and a 10 DPS fist weapon will do the same damage assuming both weapons have the same attribute mods, etc.
The same goes for all of the other classes. The only real exception is that the Wizard and Witchdoctor can only use a limited set of items in their off-hand which makes "fast casting" versions of those somewhat tricky to gear as in that case you really do need to find a Wizard specific or Witchdoctor specific offhand in order to do max damage. 2h slow but powerful mages don't have that issue. The Demon Hunter I suppose also has that issue when going with 2h ranged as they require a quiver for max potential in that case.
Regards,
SB
I know, I just think it's weird that some classes use some weapons. e.g. a monk uses, say, a sword, but not using it when actually fighting, but keep wielding that sword when running! That's very odd. It's even weirder for a demon hunter.
How would you have preferred it to be handled? If multi-screen users got a really wide playfield that would give them a perhaps greatly unfair advantage, while if the game just stretched to cover any extra screens the playfield would be ridiculously letterboxed and actually handicap you.
Also, the monster updates on the far screen(s) might get wonky, depending on from how far away the game actually sends you monster updates.
It's alright they do this.
