Diablo III Wild Speculation and Rumor Mongering Abounds

[MuffinMan]

Enrage timers is just to avoid cheesing out bosses, something I'm ok with. It's a lot more palpable palatable than some other alternatives.

[Phred]

Mehhh.  I don't like the idea of enrage timers on Diablo bosses, hard or soft.  It is only on Inferno, so it isn't a big deal, but it just gives me a moment of pause in terms of their design.

When the best loot comes from boss packs who cares?

[Malakili]

Enrage timers is just to avoid cheesing out bosses, something I'm ok with. It's a lot more palpable than some other alternatives.

NNNNNNNNNNNNNT. Sorry that's the old bullshit excuse they give you. It always starts off as "Well we don't want to have 30m fights" and ends up with "Kill this boss in 5m or he wipes you out."

Especially when I saw a thing yesterday where Inferno Skeleton King has like 17 million health.   Granted, that is in comparison to some amount of DPS characters will be doing that I don't know, but it just sounds all very Patchwerky to me.

[schild]

I'm back from Chile. We will get our precious Diablo 3 forum in due time. Unstickying this silly thread.

[Azazel]

I'm gonna have to click stuff?    The old wound (joint damage from UO beta, smithing in Minoc for the guild with a shitty hard to click mouse)  throbs at the thought of this.

One thing that seemed to help reduce the strain on my mouse left button finger was to set the move command to also work with the "E" key, reduced the clicky more than half I think. Any other such tips/ interface stuff?

Do they make mice that have auto-fire? Like what yo can get on some 3rd-party joypads since forever? That might work for you. Or if you can set something up like that from a logitech mouse UI remap thing.

[Ingmar]

Icewind Dale was ok.

If nothing else it had a much better soundtrack than D2.

No really, science fact. I'm not saying that D2's soundtrack was bad, I'm saying that IWD is one of the best 2 or 3 game soundtracks of all time. SCIENCE FACT.

[trias_e]

Yeah, the Icewind Dale sountrack is a great one.   But I don't even think it is in the top 3 of Soule's soundtracks alone.

And D2 has an amazing ambient soundtrack.  I adore the way they build off of the soundtrack of the original.  This is just gorgeous:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BODYxesJLVo   I might have to give it the edge. 

[Phred]

Do they make mice that have auto-fire?

Yes I found one in 20 seconds on google.  http://ncix.com/products/?sku=69207
 I've dealt with these guys a lot and they are very reliable. However you can just hold down the mouse button in diablo 2 and 3 to get the same effect.

[Sjofn]

Sometimes I want to airlift Blizzard's music people and drop them onto a game with a story worthy of their talents, just for the awesomeness that might produce.

That said:  IWD's soundrack

[Thrawn]

Don't think any of these have been posted yet, pages out of the official strategy guide.  Pay particular attention to the hell vs inferno health and damage.


I don't know what I'm looking forward to more; the challenge of inferno, or reading the crying of people saying it's too hard and Blizzard is denying content to "casual players".

[amiable]

Ha!  And it drains mana/arcane power!  I wonder if it drains the barb/monk resource, because being unable to use your escapes/cc/healing would really suck.

[Xuri]

"Armaddon"? Will we encounter the Apolypse too, or maybe the Ragnok? 

[Lakov_Sanite]

I can taste the bitter tears of those crying "too easy" already

[Paelos]

"Armaddon"? Will we encounter the Apolypse too, or maybe the Ragnok? 

Yep, also we will see the much-feared Caclysm, Revation, and Propecy,

[schild]

I'm just going to assume it's a tribute to Primal Rage.

[Rokal]

NNNNNNNNNNNNNT. Sorry that's the old bullshit excuse they give you. It always starts off as "Well we don't want to have 30m fights" and ends up with "Kill this boss in 5m or he wipes you out."

I'm fine with soft enrages, which is what the quote is describing. Vael was always a fun fight because after a certain amount of time, half the raid is guaranteed to be dead and you're missing your important resource buff, but you could still pull it off. Insta-wipe enrage mechanics are another matter.

I'm gonna have to click stuff?    The old wound (joint damage from UO beta, smithing in Minoc for the guild with a shitty hard to click mouse)  throbs at the thought of this.

I also had this concern. I had to put down Titan Quest a few months ago because if I played for more than an hour my hand would start to ache. I didn't have any problems with the Diablo 3 beta, but we'll see once the game is our and I'm playing for more than ~30 minutes at a time.

It certainly helped that they moved a lot of abilities to number keys, rather than having 100% of the gameplay being clicking

[Paelos]

I'm not really ok with soft enrages either. They are tolerable if used on a few fights.

I prefer boss fights to have tactical decisions or tradeoffs. An extension of a boss fight can sometimes be a tactical decision rather than what people call "cheesing" it.

[Merusk]

Enrage timers provide a nice forced "take a break" as well as a defense against accusations of forcing people to remain online for extended periods.  Something that's going to be a concern as places other than China begin enacting laws against long stretches of online time.

[Malakili]

I'm not really ok with soft enrages either. They are tolerable if used on a few fights.

I prefer boss fights to have tactical decisions or tradeoffs. An extension of a boss fight can sometimes be a tactical decision rather than what people call "cheesing" it.

It is a fine line, but I agree more or less.  I know that my guild in Vanilla WoW had what I consider a really exceptional group of healers, it was by far our strongest set of players as far as a role was concerned.  We'd often just say fuck it and bring an extra 1-2 really high quality healers and just kill things a bit more slowly instead of trying to shoe horn in some sub par DPS into those slots.  On the other hand, we always had a lot of trouble with the DPS race fights (until Burning Crusade when we started actively denying people who weren't good enough in the DPS department the right to come on raids).  I know people around here hate guilds that do that, but the point is that we felt like if we wanted progress with the heavy focus on enrage timers (soft OR hard) that our DPS just wasn't good enough as it stood.  We were always a top end guild on our server even before this change, but we had to make the change to keep it up.  The DPS requirements of those early Burning Crusade bosses were in a large part the reason we felt we had to make this change.

Of course, it is different in Diablo 3, but I can easily see at least 1 of my normal Diablo group not being up to the task of Inferno fights if they have enrage timers.  We'll see what happens when we actually come to it though.

[Llyse]

I was about to prepurchase my digital D3 copy and found out I would be arse raped for $80 AUD compared to other regions...

It looks like you can purchase a physical copy from another region and add it to your Battlenet account without problem...

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/4427703565?page=1

[Azazel]

www.ozsave.com/pc-mac/games/diablo-3-iii-pc-mac-dvd

Or try www.ozbargain.com.au for other options.

[Paelos]

Is that just your government or the company not understanding the exchange rates?

[Kageru]

It's either "because we can" or protecting the equivalent retail mark up "because they can". There's no tax or duty reason for it, and a government commission is currently asking why this practice is so common with 40% markups on digital products being typical.

[KallDrexx]

Is that just your government or the company not understanding the exchange rates?

It's game companies taking advantage that many years ago $80 AUD was equivalent to $60 US, and not adjusting their prices even though the exchange rate has equalized.  When I lived down there I found it cheaper to ship games from the UK rather than purchase them in the country.

[Azazel]

Which is what I still do, incidentally. 



Games Workshop does something similar to the local game company's distribution arms, and about a year ago instituted an embargo on UK retailers shipping to the Southern Hemisphere or Japan so that consumers can't sidestep the hugely exaggerated local prices.

So it's just corporate greed, essentially. Local retailers get screwed both ways, as the local wholesale prices are often the same or higher than overseas retail, but they have distribution chains to protect. One chain (Gametraders) now imports most of their stock from the UK/Europe and then sells it for close to or just under other local retail prices in their B&M stores.

[Ironwood]

Strange, I can't for the life of me remember the Diablo II music.  Whereas the Diablo tune still haunts my dreams.  Using that scale alone, I'd have to say that IWDII had better music because, well, I remember it.

Odd that. 

[Ironwood]

Wow, how did that happen ?

[luckton]

I recall in the months leading up to D2's release that Bliz made a big to-do about their music; posting weekly blog posts about individual tracks, their history/origins, and the work that went into making them.  They don't seem to have them up the their 'classic' site anymore, but I recall liking the insight greatly.

[Sir Fodder]

I like that some of the D3 music seemed familiar, like it was redone from the other games or just using some of those themes;  the guitar arpeggio thing gave me a good vibe.

I'm semi-OK with the idea of soft enrage timers but it seems like a clunky way to achieve the objective of preventing drawn-out timewaster gameplay. Bam! timer on! Bam! timer off! It should be more natural somehow with feedback apparent.

[Setanta]

I was about to prepurchase my digital D3 copy and found out I would be arse raped for $80 AUD compared to other regions...

It looks like you can purchase a physical copy from another region and add it to your Battlenet account without problem...

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/4427703565?page=1

I saw the Aussie arse-raping too and decided to resub to WoW instead for a year. Fuck the greedy Aussie distributors of games.

[Ratman_tf]

I'm semi-OK with the idea of soft enrage timers but it seems like a clunky way to achieve the objective of preventing drawn-out timewaster gameplay. Bam! timer on! Bam! timer off! It should be more natural somehow with feedback apparent.

It's veering too close to scripted fights for my comfort. I understand they don't want people spending 8 hours on Butcher II, but goddamn it was fun kiting the Butcher's fat ass around the dungeon.
"Ohshitohshitohshit!!!"

Blizz needs to reinject some spontenaeity into their gameplay, and let go of the goddamn reins once in a while.

[Fabricated]

Arguably the only two pieces of music I recall from Diablo 2 is the arabic chant that plays in the harem/basement in Act 2, and the jungle theme in Act 3.

The first because I loved it, the second because Act 3 was a pile of shit that I despised with the essence of my being.

[Samprimary]

The DII outdoor desert music was pretty awesome. I would listen to it whenever I wasn't getting instagibbed by lightning-spewing beetles.

[Fabricated]

That's why I always played a paladin. Just pop the proper resist aura and go to town.

[luckton]

Bah, I always favored the Druid wolf build of "one click = slapping the shit out of everything around you"