Diablo III - It's official

They listened to Kripp. Shame they did not listen him fully [they did not implement random quirky bonuses for those paragon levels].
 
I approve of that vamping. Seems a good direction to go. Of course, I haven't even hit 60 yet - I'm again spending most of my time in WoW, trying to build a death knight PvP set.
 
I'm still playing quite regularly, 1.04 really hit the sweet spot for me and it's a shame the game didn't launch in the shape it's now in.

Finally, after 4 months, I realized I could use my shared chest and thus avoid having two sets of gear baseda round int/vit/mf for my two spellcasters. Takes seconds to drop non-class specific gear into the chest and then log out. Wonder will never cease. Huge costings though.

Upgraded my barb to a Schaeffer's Hammer with a 50% proc and 107% crit dmg, and swapped out all gear for lower str and vit and more crit % and dmg, ending up with maybe 1200 str and around 40k health, but 40% crit and 250% crit dmg (paper dps is still close to 40k with battle cry). Using Rend with Blood Lust and Ignore Pain to keep myself alive during heavy fights, but with that hammer Act 1 and 2 elite groups melt like butter. Act 3 groups take me a few seconds to devastate, but they still go down amazingly fast.

Gold has also dropped in price, I bought 4m for $2.80 USD for that hammer a few days ago. Well worth, turned my entire barb, who'd previously been useless outside of Act 1, into a new toon I enjoy playing again.
 
Are there any players left here?
I came back to the game after a break and read about the change Blizzard is making to the game and I've to say that they are building something in fact quiet solid with it.
Just to give credits when it is deserved, I feel like I may play the game for quiet some years (not in a hardcore manner I'm finishing nightmare with my five classes) they are making a lot of good balancing acts when it comes to skills and runes.
They added quiet some option for the end game with the paragorn system and the "monster level" selection screen.
 
The game is still stupidly slow to give you the legendaries that let you survive the harder difficulty levels. Paragon 'levels' is just pure grinding with the one saving grace that it gives you more magic find so you start to not have to have a set of gear with insane magic find on it and can concentrate on sets that have high survivability and damage output.

Don't get me wrong I am still playing this off and on. It just seems they have designed the game with the dedicated fan base alone in mind and forgot to make it sensibly fun for the rest of us.
 
Er you don't need any legendaries to complete inferno. In fact after 1.05 I'd call inferno easy. And legendaries now drop at a pretty decent pace, that doesn't mean a legendary item is good (I've got a stack of brimstone as a testament), but they do drop. You can probably buy the necessary gear to complete inferno for a couple of million gold (money you'll make on your way quite easily).
 
The game plays better than it did at launch, the difficulty isn't as stupidly spiky, but I still don't like that champ packs are so much harder and more dangerous than regular monsters.

I've still not been able to reach 60, in part because I deleted my characters and started over lol, but even so, leveling is hella tedious. Especially on more than one character. I'd really REALLY prefer if we could just pick the skills and runes ourselves when gaining a new level, instead of being handed them by blizzard in a fixed order that is the same eeevvery god damn time we start a new character.
 
Are there any players left here?
I came back to the game after a break and read about the change Blizzard is making to the game and I've to say that they are building something in fact quiet solid with it.
Just to give credits when it is deserved, I feel like I may play the game for quiet some years (not in a hardcore manner I'm finishing nightmare with my five classes) they are making a lot of good balancing acts when it comes to skills and runes.
They added quiet some option for the end game with the paragorn system and the "monster level" selection screen.

I haven't played it in months. And probably won't.

Just as I predicted prior to launch. Due to the lack of character customization (no skill points, no ability points, nothing to do when leveling up, nothing to differentiate your character from everyone else, etc.) I just grew bored with the game.

Diablo 2 kept me interested and playing for over 10 years. Diablo 3 couldn't keep me interested for more than 2 months.

Perhaps if they release an expansion pack with skill trees (that use skill points) and allow me to at least somewhat customize my character with ability points at each level up, I'll get interested again. Part of the fun is playing with non-optimal builds, wacky builds, theme builds, etc. and living with the consequences of your choices.

Regards,
SB
 
Their desire to monetize the game led to the online requirement, the AH, and truly fucked up itemization. They also knowingly restricted legendary drops at launch to inflate their monetary value on the AH, IMO. And while Blizz has improved the game, they still screw shit up so badly now it's not even funny. The 1.05 patch added these infernal rings that aren't anything great, but the grinding to get one is so ridiculously broken it's not even funny. Blizz has stated that each monster power level adds 10% to the drop rate, but you can literally do 10-15 runs at a keywarden at MP4-5 and not see a key drop. Which is so statistically unlikely it's not even funny. And it's not just me, it's everyone on my friend's list complaining about this. Today's Blizz just can't seem to get its act together for shit.
 
I haven't played it in months. And probably won't.

Just as I predicted prior to launch. Due to the lack of character customization (no skill points, no ability points, nothing to do when leveling up, nothing to differentiate your character from everyone else, etc.) I just grew bored with the game.

Diablo 2 kept me interested and playing for over 10 years. Diablo 3 couldn't keep me interested for more than 2 months.

Perhaps if they release an expansion pack with skill trees (that use skill points) and allow me to at least somewhat customize my character with ability points at each level up, I'll get interested again. Part of the fun is playing with non-optimal builds, wacky builds, theme builds, etc. and living with the consequences of your choices.

Regards,
SB
Well I'm not a good player, thought love H&S. Having invest some time in Torchlight 2 I would give credits to the choice Blizzard teams made.
Itemization is a good system. Their skill and runes system is good too. I like the fact that they keep it simple with only 6 active skills, in fact it enforces choices.
The real issue to me is indeed item drop. I do not use the AH, and you can't really build toons, it's more the gear you find define the toon you are building.
Though, they are making it a tad better, bit still not there for people that think that playing and blacksmithing should allow them to find reasonably good items.
One may also wonder if more overall it would be better to have access to more skills and runes from scratch, as it is choices come late (too late) into your character life.

Even if they maintain their position about free "respecs", I wonder if they could allow all skills, runes and passives to be accessible from scratch, and introducing "tiers" when you reach a given level. I'm not speaking of attributing points into a skill/rune as in most H&S.
I'm thinking of something like, giving player a way to make some of their skills/runes passive more powerful or having access to extra bonuses. I the game you chose 9 skills (with a matching runes for the active) you may gain, let say every 10 lvl, a skill slot (active or passive) that will grant further benefit. Something like tw obronze, two silver and two gold skill slots (to be used either on passive or active+runes), with those slot providing more advantage depending on their grade.

Overall I would say that the game is far from sucking, I've no idea how good was diablo II for example only a few month after release but Blizzard is giving a fair trial at improving the game, fast. Not all skills+runes are equally tempting but they are balancing things fast, still not there but we only got to the patch 1.05. I mean, it's a game I may play on and off for a while, I feel no emergency for them to make it perfect just now, in one go.

My take is that it is heading in the good direction. Itemization was a good choice, it allows customization, it is not punishing for the players (the pb is drop and AH, the concept is a good one for me). Now they got to make every skill runes equally tempting, it is even truer for passive.
As I said they may add, bonuses to the system. I would welcome the introduction of runes for the passive skills.
For drop rate, it gets better but my belief is that as the community of gamers consolidates, Blizzard may realized that the monetization effort is going nowhere. Ultimately I would not be surprised if ultimately the real money AH goes mostly unused and the other one is mostly a trading place.
The game sold +10 millions but I don't expect that kind of game to sustain that kind of user base. As the game evolves and find its public, the use of the AH may become less of a bother:
less users, ultimately drop rates will go up, so it will be about trading only top of the line items.

I've an idea that could make life a bit easier for the devs, might be a bad idea though, it comes to weapons. Weapon type in the games are mostly irrelevant as you can't (or never do anyway) auto attack. I think they could restrict more heavily the type of weapons usable by one class.
I find nonsensical to have my wizard wielding an halberd to cast for example magic missiles.
It may be a misconception but by restricting the weapon type they would have a greater and easier control of what is dropped. I mean if wands, staffs are only useable by wizard (wands already are) they may restrict a tad the kind of benefits they come with to make drop a bit more relevant.
In the time wizard could only use wands, staffs, sources and shields (shield would be the only items useable by every classes). (In the same way monks would wear only claws, daibo and shields, WD ceremonial knifes, mojo, shields, Blizzard may introduce some ceremonial staffs to avoid over lap with wizzard gear and so on).

That would makes plenty of weapon type obsolete for most classes/ restricted to Barbarian but as I see it as the benefits will be a tad more focused the difference would be mostly cosmetic. (already barbarian are the only one that get benefit from weapon type through I don't remember which passive.

Down the line, once expansion launches some weapons used by barbarian now may be the weapon of choice for some others classes (the game being online it would be trivial for blizzard to restrict the items accessible to the barb and replace you gear with an item which matching properties but in the "good' weapon classe. As an example barb may be restricted to Axes (1H and 2H and mighty weapons, freeing the other type for others classes).

EDIT
I'm lying wrt shields, as it stands I think it makes sense for no classes, it should be a dedicated item for a shield wielding class.
 
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Er you don't need any legendaries to complete inferno. In fact after 1.05 I'd call inferno easy. And legendaries now drop at a pretty decent pace, that doesn't mean a legendary item is good (I've got a stack of brimstone as a testament), but they do drop. You can probably buy the necessary gear to complete inferno for a couple of million gold (money you'll make on your way quite easily).

Depends on the class. I play Wizard and Witch Doctor, I have a friend who plays Demon Hunter and our experience is that without some insanely well specced gear these classes tend to get slaughtered. Witch Doctor is particular bad because he has few escape skills like teleport or Diamond Skin to let him weather particularly nasty pack attacks. (Oh and for Wizards the fast mortar with reflect damage packs are just insane to deal with.)

Barbarian and Monk, both with high resists, on the other hand don't need quite such insane gear to work through Inferno.

Making it worse the game scales the monsters based on the gear/levels of all the party members. So if, as in my case, I have two friends with highly tweaked out gear and I have regular gear I have scavanged from drops then I tend to get killed a lot. Which sucks away any money I might make which means I can't use the auction house to fix things.

The stupid thing is with voice comms and friends the game can be stupidly fun. Now that, after putting something like 160 hours in, I got my fourth legendary drop of an axe which gives me both strong damage and high life on hit and the game has shifted around. It puts my damage output on an equal footing with my friends and we are starting to carve the place up. The difference was literally just the one item.
 
You might want to look into speccing those classes, my wiz finished inferno (with like 32k dps, I run over 80 now) in gear I couldn't sell on the ah now for vendor values. (and I finished it pre 1.05, it's much easier now)

You're giving legendaries way too much credit they still range from absolute trash to really good. I have dozens of legendary items that are worse than what I use.
 
the game is now all about DPS to MF to kill rate. with max dmg items im arround 110k DPS with a barb and can do MP6 easy. but right now im doing MP2 with 60k DPS to get my MF upto around 400.

MP is broken because health scaling is insane. its boring WW on a boss for 10/15 mintues in MP6 while he has 72 million HP. Also the Hp gained from greater then 2 players kills the experience when playing multilayer.
 
Itemization is a good system.

Actually itemization is the thing that is killing Diablo 3, because its awful. There is good interview about it with Brother Laz
http://www.incgamers.com/2012/11/pa...s-work-his-diablo-median-xl-mod-and-diablo-3/

Diablo 3 would be really good game if they change and add features like:
- You can choose what skill You want to pick when You level up, because starting new char is a chore and i feel like its insulting my intelligence sometimes why i level up
- rebalance skills to make them more useful [they've changed some, but most still are useless]
- give two/three more skill slots, explained below
- give normal enemies skills from champs/elites
- spawn enemies from other acts in zones on higher difficulties
- make new dungeons and mode, like infinite dungeon or dungeon where You fight champs
- eliminite technical issues ffs, how long i have to wait for patch that fixes stuttering issue? It was pointed in beta 1.5 years ago and it still not fixed
- launch pvp with ability to set up private matches and options [like limit level, dps level, scaling etc]
- make stash bigger finally
- add gems and make every type of item to have different property like in it was in D2
- add monsters and champs skills
- fix goddamn hitboxes and give us ability to turn off aim assist
- add more skills, seriously they've bragged about how awesome their rune system is and in the end of the it end up as a buff/debuff situation, what is even funnier that for Monk all spirit generators have almost the same effects on runes just with different values, where is diversity here? Also they look almost exactly the same, except for particle effect color ..., so what stops them to add more?

But if they would want to make this game amazing, they would have to rework items and stats systems completely, because its not only broken, its boring too. Stats should be more meaningful and give You ability to make interesting and strange builds, but now its only damage + hp and its boring, it would also give them ability to make new passives that would enhance stats or change their behavior etc.
Add synergies again and not only for Your character skills, but add skill synergies with other classes skills to make group better and more interesting [like skill combos in Guild Wars 2 for example].
Itemization would need completely overhaul, because now, not only they are boring to lvl 50+, but useless, because Your uber rare roll will be useless in comparison to blue in next 3-5 levels.
Rework dps and health of all monsters, so fighting them would require skill, not dps and tank check, more arcane orb, plague, desecrator based skills, less one hit deaths.


About skill slots, if You think that 6 is enough, play as a Monk, You basically have to have one spirit generator skill [autoattack], one aura skill, one escape skill, one tank skill [CC or serenity], which leaves You with two real skills to choice to define Your 'build' or more fitting 'playstyle', because You cant really make builds in D3.
We need more skills that You use for different situations, not slot restrictions. For example You bind 3 different skill generators, with different effects, attack speeds, range etc, for different situations and mobs, and You need use them efficiently in combat to survive. Thats the real choice in terms of gameplay, not that You get one and You are stuck with it for the rest of the session.

They've got tons of work to do with Diablo 3 and they havent even started it yet and half of year after launch already passed.
 
Actually itemization is the thing that is killing Diablo 3, because its awful. There is good interview about it with Brother Laz
http://www.incgamers.com/2012/11/pa...s-work-his-diablo-median-xl-mod-and-diablo-3/

Well I don't agree it is itemization as it is for now that is hurting (not killing) Diablo 3, not the concept of itemization.
Diablo 3 would be really good game if they change and add features like:
- You can choose what skill You want to pick when You level up, because starting new char is a chore and i feel like its insulting my intelligence sometimes why i level up
I don't agree with that. Starting a new character makes no sense in the game, the people I know who more than one character per classe use them them as mule. I jump to your point about the stash, indeed they have to make the stash bigger, way bigger. As having multiple characters is useless you need to keep gear for multiple builds. As it is, it's impossible the stash got filled way too fast.
I think my idea of introducing skill slots that provide extra benefits is not bad and would not break the arbitration they made while designing the game (ie you don't need to reroll a classe).
I think that as it is, the game could grant access to most skills from scratch. Ultimately (and balancing issues aside) the late skills/runes/passive are not supposed to be better (I mean following the line of thinking of the creators of the game) so why grant access late and kill diversity while leveling? I don't know, for now there are still balancing issues.

- rebalance skills to make them more useful [they've changed some, but most still are useless]
I agree, it is getting better though.
- give two/three more skill slots, explained below
I don't agree, that is not for me the issue. 6 skills keep thing easily playable. The lacking of the system are tied to the balacing issues we both agree on.
- give normal enemies skills from champs/elites
- spawn enemies from other acts in zones on higher difficulties
Why not, but overall I would prefer this to happen in the mode you are speaking about in the point below ;)
- make new dungeons and mode, like infinite dungeon or dungeon where You fight champs
Agreed. Actually I wonder if they could make a fast leveling mode where skills choices are definitive. Let call that a builder mode.
- eliminite technical issues ffs, how long i have to wait for patch that fixes stuttering issue? It was pointed in beta 1.5 years ago and it still not fixed
How disagree with that ;)
- launch pvp with ability to set up private matches and options [like limit level, dps level, scaling etc]
Not my stuff but after such a long development I wasamazed pvp was not there at launch 8O

- make stash bigger finally
Agreed. see above.
- add gems and make every type of item to have different property like in it was in D2
Agreed, either way you limit the weapon useable per classes as for now weapon type are irrelevant cosmetic. I will go back to that and itemization at the end of the post.
- add monsters and champs skills
Why not, that would make trivial encounters more entertaining.
- fix goddamn hitboxes and give us ability to turn off aim assist
Agreed.
- add more skills, seriously they've bragged about how awesome their rune system is and in the end of the it end up as a buff/debuff situation, what is even funnier that for Monk all spirit generators have almost the same effects on runes just with different values, where is diversity here? Also they look almost exactly the same, except for particle effect color ..., so what stops them to add more?
I disagree, I would still say that the issue here is balancing. The benefit of mantra are greater than using extra active skills that is the issue.
Though as I said in my previous post, they should add more passive or introduce runes for the passive. you can have six active skills, there are 3 passive, in my opinion the choices available for passive should ~half what is available for active. Done right it could may be enable choices that are not efficient now (for monks let say a mantra less monk). I agree that it is a massive rework.

But if they would want to make this game amazing, they would have to rework items and stats systems completely, because its not only broken, its boring too. Stats should be more meaningful and give You ability to make interesting and strange builds, but now its only damage + hp and its boring, it would also give them ability to make new passives that would enhance stats or change their behavior etc.
Going back to itemization. I read comments from the devs where they explained why they reworked the attribute system (from attack, defense, etc. to strength, etc.). They did not wanted item to be good for every classes. That was imho a mistake. The system depends on gear, I've no issue with that (I mean playing or searching for five minutes, how high you need the dex to be to hit the dodge cap, how much hit points you need and so imo add nothing. They are right about that), the issue is that for the sake of either having a lot of diversity or enforce AH use they created too much diversity, plenty of drop are crap. How could you design a "sane" model about drop rates when the pool of "goodies" that can comes with any item is that big? The end result is that load of stuffs are plain crap.
Either way as it is now, I wonder where they can go to improve that significantly. Reworking the attribute system is not an option I would say, That is why I thought that their could could be more classe specific items (I though of weapons primarily but could be extend to one or two pieces of the clothes) that comes with bonuses that are relevant to the class. I like your idea of giving each weapon type benefit but as the game is designed it would not make that much sense. I mean say axes have a usual "+x% to crit damages, would it make sense for wizard casting magic missiles to use them?
They got to find a way to limit the "pool of bonuses" that can spam on a least some items. Right now the issue is too much diversity which translate for players into mostly crap.
Keeping the game as it is I wonder if they could remove actually "attribute" from the list of those bonuses (/I can find the more proper word for some reason, sorry) and let attribute modding to be handled only through Gems (and so increasing the bonuses granted by gems).

Add synergies again and not only for Your character skills, but add skill synergies with other classes skills to make group better and more interesting [like skill combos in Guild Wars 2 for example].
I haven't play mp because I'm lagging behind my friends slowly leveling all the classes at the same time (and not playing that much ). Are you sure that the synergy are not there already but it is more a remain of balancing issues for example?
Itemization would need completely overhaul, because now, not only they are boring to lvl 50+, but useless, because Your uber rare roll will be useless in comparison to blue in next 3-5 levels.
Rework dps and health of all monsters, so fighting them would require skill, not dps and tank check, more arcane orb, plague, desecrator based skills, less one hit deaths.
I do agree it needs to get better, I believe that Blizzard will come to the conclusion that the real money AH is ultimately going nowhere, they want to sell expansions to a 10 millions buyers of the game, I would suspect that even though the game does less money as expected (real money AH failure) they won't spit on a 10 millions owners (whether they play the game or not) so they have to make things better.

About skill slots, if You think that 6 is enough, play as a Monk, You basically have to have one spirit generator skill [autoattack], one aura skill, one escape skill, one tank skill [CC or serenity], which leaves You with two real skills to choice to define Your 'build' or more fitting 'playstyle', because You cant really make builds in D3.
We need more skills that You use for different situations, not slot restrictions. For example You bind 3 different skill generators, with different effects, attack speeds, range etc, for different situations and mobs, and You need use them efficiently in combat to survive. That's the real choice in terms of gameplay, not that You get one and You are stuck with it for the rest of the session.

They've got tons of work to do with Diablo 3 and they havent even started it yet and half of year after launch already passed.
Well I've a different opinion on the number of active skills. For me the issue is more in balancing things out. I still agree that they need more passive skills choices.
I agree that you better items as for not the most hardcore players willing to waste time on the AH, farm gold and so on, you can't build anything but what the few items worth it you find allow you to build.

I still think that no matter all the criticism the game is far from bad and I expect it to get significantly better, given time that is it (and I can't disagree that sooner is better than latter).
I've played Torchlight 2, and I'm already bored of it and that only after having play it for a fraction of the time I invested in diablo3. I find my self more attracted to D3 nowadays.
 
@liolio
Just quick post before i go to sleep, i'll probably write more tomorrow :)

I disagree, I would still say that the issue here is balancing. The benefit of mantra are greater than using extra active skills that is the issue.
Though as I said in my previous post, they should add more passive or introduce runes for the passive. you can have six active skills, there are 3 passive, in my opinion the choices available for passive should ~half what is available for active. Done right it could may be enable choices that are not efficient now (for monks let say a mantra less monk). I agree that it is a massive rework.

Do You remember this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=GR1LTYsGM9U#t=251s

God, what have they done to this game. You dont even know how pissed i am about current game in comparison to what they've talked on panels or even had implemented on the floor [like event with cave that was collapsing and was full of loot, and You had only little time to take what You find and escape before death]

I haven't play mp because I'm lagging behind my friends slowly leveling all the classes at the same time (and not playing that much ). Are you sure that the synergy are not there already but it is more a remain of balancing issues for example?
No synergies at all, there is no extra damage runes/passives/items for chilled enemies for example, or casting spells in flame circle of other player wont affect any spell outcome and so on. Of course global buffs like mantras or shouts still affects party, but thats not a synergy.
 
Jay Wilson steps down as game director of D3; moves to a different project at Blizzard (doesn't say which project, or what his new role will be; Titan, possibly? Something unannounced? Probably not WoW or Heart-of-swarm-related, as those are already public projects and wouldn't be too sensitive for mentioning.)

No idea what this might mean to D3 moving forward, not sure I really give a shit either way. I deleted my character a second time last week, after hitting level 53. This time I threw out everything I'd kept in my stash (which they lied about and said would be "nearly impossible" to fill) including all my gems, blacksmith pages and so on. Also blew all my money, all 1.1 million, wow. I saw crappy yellow junk listed for more regularly on the AH; good job there on NOT making gold completely worthless, blizzard...

I just can't stand the absolutely shit-awful random-but-always-shitty-random drops and the idiotic difficulty difference between regular monsters and champs. I hate to be sent running all over the place in the wrong direction by a pack of glowing random elite monsters in a game that's all about killing monsters. I think it sucks ass, tbh. Also hating the way skills are fixed in the order you acquire them during leveling. I don't think I'll ever come back to the game unless they truly fix these things. I've had it up over my head with the bad difficulty curve, randomly awarded 99.9%+ shit drops and no choices in skills during leveling.
 
It's clear the gameplay designers of Diablo 3 didn't have much of an idea as to what they were doing.

In the end, the best summery for Diablo 3 is this: they put a man who has no experience with Diablo style games in charge of it. If this was any other Diablo-a-like it'd be one thing, but this is fucking Diablo itself. You don't do that kind of amateur level shit. It's embarrassing at best.
 
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