Diablo 3

[HereComesPete]

Diablo 2 suffered from item duping and latency abuse to the extent that they created special events to try and tackle it years after initial release. Duped items turned to rusty ruin in people inventory/stash and the b.net servers started to reset peoples progress once latency was deemed to high for too long. Plus private server use meant perma-ban on b.net. None of it worked perfectly but before their attempts at control it ruined the game except for those who stayed truly single-player. Given the vast majority of long term players were multi-playing because it's pretty much impossible to defeat the game alone on the hardest difficulty I think they delivered a well above average service to the customer but it took them a long time and a lot of patches.

With D3 I think their aim like Joose says is to get control of any issues like they had in the previous games from launch as opposed to having to fix it all later and they're not just doing a ubi and slapping a bloody annoying DRM feature on that they then can't deliver on.

Yes it does give actiblizz a cut of sales in the AH, yes there will be a real money AH where you can buy gold and yes since launch there have been a lot of problems with lag, achievements, progress etc but if D3 is going to have even half the longevity of D2 then all that will be ironed out and what they've put in place will dampen the gold farming and allow a player stabilized economy to work.

The AH isn't too bad, it's got the obvious ridiculous sales attempts on there but I've sold a few rare items at about 3-5 times their vend price and bought some at around that too. And as gold literally shits itself out of every dead body, chest and tree stump it doesn't take long to get money. I've just hit 20 and I'd guess at I've picked up around 25k in drop gold so far, unsure of how much quest reward gold I've got.

[spoodie]

I've had a good experience so far. Bought this online when I got in from work yesterday and I was at the character creation screen within 2.5 - 3 hours, but it was a bit late to start a game by then. Was up early this morning to give it a go. I think the wizard may be a little too squishy for me, I've almost died twice in the first hour or so.

Some interesting things I've heard:
- Your character progress is not lost even if you're booted out and lose progress in a dungeon, ie. items and XP are lost.
- Around 70% of the nice items are not accessible in normal mode.

[Dog Pants]

The multiplayer argument, jumping into a game with a mate using the same character, and being able to do that without levels being a problem, is what I was looking for. A reasonable justification. I like the sound of the game, you see, but I have to be convinced by the multiplayer. I'll see how I get on with the demo.

[Grimmie]

Mnngh.

Region-swapping only works when you log off and on, much to my frustration. It only tells you this on the tooltip you get when you hover over the drop-down menu's title. Roman and I now have characters on the American server (as that's what we were set to in the beta).

Arses!

[Joose]

muppets.

[Dog Pants]

I played through chapter one as the monk with the following observations:

It's definitely Diablo. The look and feel was unmistakeable, but I'm not yet convinced it brings anything particularly new - at least not to single player.

The always online requirement was barely noticeable - I had one or two stutters, but for the most part it was only noticeable when waiting to connect at logon.

The monk was quite fun with his machinegun fighting style.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

There's not a huge amount different with the MP, it's just slick as fuck and works incredibly well.

[Thompy]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/05 ... llow-game/

Ouch.

I'm a bit tired of RPS's coverage of this now, which is a first. They sum up the good points quickly before bashing as much as possible. Every article brings up the DRM in depth. Yeah we get it. I of course agree with the negatives of the online component, but they (and most people) are judging the entire game on a patchy launch. I'm not defending that bad launch, but it's hardly the best thing to form an entire opinion around.

Aside from that I disagree almost completely with his negative views of the game. Maybe because he's complaining about nothing new being added, but for me this is my first aRPG, so it's all new. But really, this is Blizzard, they've never done anything massively innovative, they polish the shit out of proven forumlas, as shown with Starcraft 2. Was he expecting much else? For the difficulty, he dismisses that the game "starts" when you play the next difficulty level. I agree mostly, because a lot of people won't want to play the game several times, so maybe a difficulty slider should be there. But again, they didn't set out to innovate from D2, and that's exactly how D2 worked and what fans of the franchise/genre love. Lastly, he says enemies are boring with nothing to them, which is just completely false. There are stun, roots, slows, walls, charges etc, they are harder to notice because it's easy and things die so quickly, but in the higher difficulties they will play a huge role. Lastly lastly, vendor gear is mostly pointless, but again again, higher difficulties reap greater rewards, including vendor stuff.

I can see and understand a lot of the complaints people have, but they're just not an issue for me, and I'm enjoying it immensely.

[Joose]

Yeah, the "it's nothing new" argument is a bit daft. WoW didn't really do anything new either. It just did old things really, really well. Same with Warcraft and Starcraft. To much gets put on innovation nowadays. I would rather have an unoriginal but really good game to a new idea done badly.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

Yeah, the "it's nothing new" argument is a bit daft. WoW didn't really do anything new either. It just did old things really, really well. Same with Warcraft and Starcraft. To much gets put on innovation nowadays. I would rather have an unoriginal but really good game to a new idea done badly.

this.

[mrbobbins]

Does anyone have any Starter Edition Keys lying around?
I fancy seeing what this is like after reading about it on every website on the internet for the past few days.

Or I could finish Torchlight, hmm... nah I'll get around to that before Torchlight 2.

[Thompy]

Sure, will PM.

[mrbobbins]

Sure, will PM.

WOOP, thanks!

[Thompy]

26 hours later (minus afk) and I've finished it. I won't talk about the mechanics and gameplay, that's been said. I want to mention the story and overall satisfaction with completing it.

Well, it was lacking. I guess aRPGs are not meant to be much about story, but contrary to what I hear a lot of people saying, having read the lore and story of the first two games and the general history of the world, I thought it was very solid with some unique ideas. D3 started off well, unravelling story, nice pacing, but it fell into that trap of picking up the pace at the end, throwing dungeon after dungeon at you with little respite. There were some significant events which touched me almost, but a lot of it, especially the boss fights, felt underwhelming in terms of my character's story accomplishment. What is probably the most significant event, at the start of Act IV, lacked emotional and story gravitas and I felt a little angry for it.

But anyway, Nightmare time...

[Thompy]

Killed Skeleton King on nightmare now. I was worried that I would get bored, given that I was struggling to muster any desire to play through again on another character, but it was great. The monsters are just as hard as at the end of normal, and have new abilities. The added challenge (and loot) is really fun.

[Anery]

This sinkhole of my time has lost my progression twice now. It saved the gear I got but I am forced to trawl through the content yet again.
If this were a normal product I would be asking for my money back, as it is a game I am shafted. Well, on with my trogging through the same shit on the same difficulty again, might as well get my money out of it.

*EDIT* appears that the game decided to switch quest I was on. Still want my money back

[Thompy]

So anyone have thoughts to share yet?

I've started Hell on my DH now. I'm finding it one of those games which is fun while playing but leaves me unsatisfied once I stop. And I can't get my head around the whole farming for gear for years thing. It's not like WoW where you always have the next boss or raid to progress to, in this you've already killed everything, so you're farming to... kill the same things slightly more easily? There's also nothing else to do unlike in WoW. Maybe Diablo 1/2 were just so revolutionary in their day that doing that was awesome.

My best moment in the game so far was killing Belial on Nightmare solo. Took me over ten tries while I tried to find a good build. Once I did it it was a great feeling, took me back to finally killing a hard Final Fantasy boss when I wasn't quite high enough level by nailing down a good strategy and with a bit of luck. Unfortunately most of it is quite easy, with the hardest thing being the elite/champion mob packs. But they're just stupidly difficult, especially on Hell and Inferno. As a DH I want to stay at range while I control and slow my enemy, but they just move too fast and shut you down so much so that it's not long until you're out of resources and smacked to death in a couple of seconds while only getting through 10% of their health.

I'm also sick of the negativity and boycotting. RPS comments are awash with people being self righteous, over inflaming the problems, and blaming anyone who bought it as contributing the death of offline games. Maybe I'm weak but I find it hard to keep up my enjoyment of a game when I read so many negative opinions. This goes for the official forums too, but extends to the gameplay and mechanics. Things I wouldn't have even noticed suddenly become problems once they're pointed out.

So I'm torn I guess. Many blehs and yays.

[mrbobbins]

I played through the Starter Edition which was fairly enjoyable but I did get a bit bored, I knew there wasn't much left so carried on to finish but didn't particularly strive for more. There isn't the opportunity to explore it in much depth but I didn't like the default unlocks for every level with hardly any choice to customise.

It seems a bit pointless to restrict it, what's the reasoning?, that it makes it more accessible and less complicated for newcomers?. It's a pretty basic format so dumbing it down and restricting choice rendered it rather dull.

Although saying that is this the thing that is on by default and you can turn it off to give you more choice?!,

I like Titan Quest and Torchlight so not sure why this didn't really grab me, maybe the areas at the start are all a bit too long and similar. I should probably give it another go when it's cheaper.

(No dropouts/crashes, maybe they give extra oomph to the Starter Edition server to persuade you to buy it?!)

[Joose]

This sinkhole of my time has lost my progression twice now.

Its just occured to me why the game sometimes seems to lose your progression. Thats just what Diablo does when you exit. If you were to quit the game halfway through a dungeon (as in between two checkpoints/doors/whatever) and reload it repopulates the world with gribblies again. D3 isnt the first one to do this, D2 and 1 were exactly the same. Of course, D1 & 2 didnt have the risk of server hiccups dumping you out of a game against your will.

Im not saying that makes it ok, obviously. It does explain why a game where everything is supposed to be server side seemed to have the server not knowing where you had got to. So it probably is mostly server side calculations and not just verifying what your computer is saying. Which means the likelyhood of them (or haxxors, for that matter) making an offline mode is almost certainly nill.

I'm also sick of the negativity and boycotting. RPS comments are awash with people being self righteous, over inflaming the problems, and blaming anyone who bought it as contributing the death of offline games.

Oh so very this. I saw someone on RPS earlier saying "I guess I'm lucky I boycotted the game then! Ha!" Lucky? If you are boycotting something it has nothing to do with luck. I don't see intentionally keeping yourself away from something that you might like as lucky. If anything, people like me are "lucky"; I've risked buying the game even knowing about the problems with the servers and not counting the first couple of days if not had drop outs or log in problems once.

That, plus I think most of the things to be said about the always on connection have been said now. It sucks when it doesn't work. It would have been better without it, as long as they could get rid of it and keep the super slick multiplayer functionality. Most people would be quite happy if they had to get rid of the auction house for that to happen. Its probably never going to happen though.

[Dog Pants]

I've been reading the RPS articles. I'm getting kind of sick of reading about Diablo III too, but everything they're reporting is newsworthy. Avoid the comments though, because it's just a war of 'fanboys'; and 'haters'. It's an important game, it has tried something potentially industry changing, for better or worse, some people like it and some don't. Personally, the demo didn't really grab me. The DRM thing and the repeat loot grind that Thompy mentioned loomed over the purchase, so in the end I saved my money. PC Gamer have given it 90%.