Diablo 3

[Dog Pants]

Oh no, I didn't do anything. At first I thought it was D3 looking like D2, then when you said it was D2 I thought 'ahhh, I get it'. Then I thought it must have looked similar for me to have half mistaken it in the first place. I'm bored of beating up Diablo 3, I think everyone has an opinion on it by now.

[spoodie]

So has everyone one turned their back in disgust at Diablo now?

I'm still really enjoying it. Working my way through Hell, Act II now, with random people from the Internet. They're mostly fine and the system for teaming up is marvellous. My goal is to max out my level with the wizard, then I don't know. I think it helps that I've managed to put together a strong wizard build, not super damaging, but I'm frequently surprised that I survive encounters. With lots of running away of course.

[Roman Totale]

I got bored of it a while ago - nothing to do with any of the oft criticised features, rather I just found it getting very samey. Even playing through it with another character class (which I usually enjoy in games as it adds another dimension) became a chore.

As it stands I don't think it's a bad game - I just don't think it's anything special either.

[Pnut]

I surprised myself and enjoyed my first play through, I have just started nightmare with a Lvl 33 demon hunter. Is D2 better than 3? If it is its £14 on blizzard with the addons, is it worth it?

[spoodie]

How many finished normal and started playing on harder levels? It's not something I've ever done before, but in this game is really makes sense and seems to be how the game was designed. I soon realised how easy it was on normal, which was fine for the first go. Although on the higher difficulties I don't have a hope without other players.

Also the comparisons to D2 are lost of me as I didn't play it in any meaningful sense.

[Thompy]

I've played a lot and have two characters in Inferno, but it's hard to progress. Through Nightmare to Inferno I had to buy stuff off the AH as drops are mostly useless. I wasn't going to farm earlier parts of the game to get gear, that doesn't appeal to me. So then when something dropped that might have been an upgrade, I'd already bought something superior anyway. That's one of the major complaints of the game right now, but they have drastically increased drop rates since then.

I also realised that in the same way that I didn't want to farm for gear to progress, I definitely don't want to farm Inferno after completing the game just to kill things a bit more easily.

People used to say (and some still will) that that is how the series has always been so if you don't enjoy it it's just not for you. However I've noticed several high profile YouTubers who devoted their life to Diablo 2, and intended to do so with Diablo 3, have quit already. Perhaps gameplay from 12 years ago doesn't satisfy now, or there is something missing. To my mind it lacks severe depth, which is a shame because the fundamentals are there, especially the combat which has a great feel to it.

[FatherJack]

I played a fair bit of Diablo 2, but at the time gravitated to Dungeon Siege which I found superior - it had a few pretty good expansions, too. D2's persistent world was it's only selling point over DS in my view.

Since then Dungeon Siege 2 has been and gone, and while it tried to involve the player a little more with the power attacks, even then I began to get a little tired of the clickety-click spamming the same attacks.

I thought the days of simple top-down isometric dungeon-crawlers were dead with games like Neverwinter and WoW coming out, where you had to juggle a huge arsenal of abilities to stay alive and could actually look down the damn corridors, but games like Titan Quest, Torchlight and Magicka showed they could still be fun, if given a new twist.

To my eyes, Dungeon Siege 3 and Diablo 3 harked back more to their previous incarnations than providing new twists in the genre like other games had done. Diablo 3 disappointed me with how similar it was to Diablo 2 - it is slick and the effects are wonderful, but the basic gameplay just feels mechnical. I had hoped they would take some of what made WoW so engaging, such as the way you had to make each attack count - there is some of that, as there was as you progressed in D2 - but it just feels limiting, both in the hotkey selection and the fixed-view.

I don't know how long I played Diablo 2 for, but I was never anywhere near completing it. My interest was briefly rekindled when we used to play it at work at lunchtimes and do dungeon runs together, then spend all afternoon arguing about who had gotten the best loot (or magic wellies as we called them), then WoW came out and lunchtimes turned into dungeon runs in that, instead. I didn't play Diablo 3 for long enough to judge its depth, but the fact that many are on at least their second playthrough speak volumes to me.

Diablo 2 still stands up as a good game (you need the Lord of Destruction expansion to increase the resolution from laughable to poor, IIRC) which has great longevity if you have people to play it with. Sadly the cheaters pretty much ruined the online components unless you play solely with friends.

[HereComesPete]

There's a full fat high resolution doodad out for d2. It offers more in th way of individuality in character build as you can assign points to attributes. It's ugly though.

D3 is a polish and simplify of the older ones. My great bug bear is that the first run through is piss easy. You see the major areas at a steady trot. If you could start in nightmare it would be a bigger challenge and be more rewarding. The loot tables need a fucking good poke as nearly every blue that drops is shitter than one you got 4 levels ago except it has a bit more armour on.

Even playing it with others is a bit disconnected.

I'm giving it some time off, same as dayZ so I can appreciate it more in a couple weeks.

[Mr. Johnson]

I got bored of it a while ago - nothing to do with any of the oft criticised features, rather I just found it getting very samey. Even playing through it with another character class (which I usually enjoy in games as it adds another dimension) became a chore.

As it stands I don't think it's a bad game - I just don't think it's anything special either.

Same here, I got to the oasis bit and after that I had to horse myself to start it up again. Mind you, I have that with a lot of games recently.

[Dog Pants]

Well here's a thing. Blizzard admit most players prefer solo. Do I feel vindicated? Yes I fucking do.

[spoodie]

I still don't understand all the hate in the comments.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQvb2Oy0ph8[/media]

My personal preference is joining public games, most people are fine. And if not, it's easy enough to join a different game. There's some interesting stuff related to that type of play in the update as well. It sounds like the elite enemies won't be so rock hard on the 3rd difficult level. So now I can continue getting my wizard up to L60 without dying so much, hopefully.

[Dog Pants]

I didn't read the comments, pretty much everything there is to say about D3 has been said. I felt vindicated by this, though, because Blizzard insisted that most people wanted to play multiplayer and used it to justify their DRM, and this weakens that justification.

[deject]

I didn't read the comments, pretty much everything there is to say about D3 has been said. I felt vindicated by this, though, because Blizzard insisted that most people wanted to play multiplayer and used it to justify their DRM, and this weakens that justification.

The RMAH is a blatant money grab, and their assertion that they're doing the always online thing for multiplayer purposes is a load of shit. They're doing that to try and control the rampant item duping and hacking that went on in D2 so that the game economy isn't all fucked up. All this is is Blizzard trying to squeeze more money out of their games and to do so has a tangible negative impact on the players.