Diablo III Wild Speculation and Rumor Mongering Abounds

[Fabricated]

Yeah, I'd like to see more actual content and get to middling levels before judging it but this is the "beta" and all I have to go on.

Personally, I'd like to see the following:
1. More map modes like a centered overlay; I don't play the game like that but when I'm trying to backtrack or find friends who're too close to ask for a portal but too far away to easily find it's handy and why I used it in D2.
2. UI Scaling like in WoW. I wouldn't shrink it much, but it eats screen real estate and since I can no longer pause the game I'd like to be able to see while juggling my inventory.
3. More purpose for merchants. They occasionally sell yellow quality items but for the most part they now are of no use for anything but selling shit; artisans have rendered them pointless.

[Malakili]

I agree with the merchants thing.  On the one hand, I think artisans were in a way supposed to replace them.  On the other hand, they are there, so they should be worth something, iirc the cauldron will allow us to melt things directly to gold, so even selling shit off isn't going to matter once we get that.  Maybe their inventory will be more interesting later in the game.

[Ingmar]

This is basically the beginning of the game, and I'm betting its designed to be easy enough for completion by total Diablo newbies

They've openly stated that is going to be true of the entirety of Normal difficulty more or less.

[Malakili]

This is basically the beginning of the game, and I'm betting its designed to be easy enough for completion by total Diablo newbies

They've openly stated that is going to be true of the entirety of Normal difficulty more or less.

Yeah, I recall hearing that now.  The beta/demo all the more so I imagine.  Actually, come to think of it, I think I'm going to get myself killed tonight when playing so I can see what happens when you die, since none of the three characters I've made have been close to it yet  


EDIT

Just tried Wizard for the first time.  I guess as is usual with casters, he started out slow.  But got better around level 6 when I got arcane orb.  One really counter-intuitive thing is my damage increased with my weapon, which I guess makes a certain kind of sense now that skill levels are out.  But I was thinking my spells were crappy, until I equiped a crossbow I found and then realized all my spells got its base attack 

[Ragnoros]

Yeah, that's their new thing to make casters 'care' about weapons. Gut reaction is I don't like it. Casters are supposed to be good without having to find a good weapon, that's like half their point.

[kildorn]

Yeah, that's their new thing to make casters 'care' about weapons. Gut reaction is I don't like it. Casters are supposed to be good without having to find a good weapon, that's like half their point.

But the usual complaint is that causes them to rock out the low levels while weapon based characters are hunting down drops, and suuuuuuck at the high levels where weapon based characters are still finding awesome upgrades.

Putting +magic damage on castery weapons is pretty much the only way to make casters not scale in a really fucked up manner. Plus having a character that doesn't give a fuck about gear drops in a loot fest game is.. amusing to say the least.

The d3 item page seems useless right now with no stats displayed. But last time I played it, they were using dps on the weapon and a magic damage increase stat. I wouldn't be shocked if they had ditched the stat though, and just used a generic "damage increase" stat for all damage types.

[Ironwood]

That's retarded.

There should be ways for casters to upgrade without resorting to that kinda crap.  Hell, having caster drops that get absorbed or some shit. 

[Hawkbit]

Maybe like being able to "transmogrify" the stats of one weapon onto the art of another. 

[Ratman_tf]

That's retarded.

There should be ways for casters to upgrade without resorting to that kinda crap.  Hell, having caster drops that get absorbed or some shit. 

[Ironwood]

Well, yeah.  Exactly.

[Soulflame]

... damn you, now I want to play Diablo.  And I haven't been able to find that disc for years.  ><

[Ingmar]

You can download it straight from Blizzard. 

[Yegolev]

You can download it straight from Blizzard. 

[Soulflame]

Do you need a CD key?  Although, oddly enough, I still have that.   

[proudft]

Yep, I just did this the other day myself.  You go to Add New Game to Account or something like that, type in your CD key, and bam, commence downloading.

Oh wait, I did this for Diablo 2.   Diablo The First, I dunno.

[Ratman_tf]

D1 doesn't use a key. Though patched up you still have to have a cd in the drive. (Unless you use a crack.)
D2 has the download if you have a key feature.

[Yegolev]

When people say "Diablo", I do not assume they mean "Diablo II".

[Teleku]

Yeah, sadly, there doesn't seem to be any option download/buy Diablo from Blizzard.  Shouldn't be to hard to torrent though.  I still enjoy starting up games and playing through, glad I still have my disk.

[Ingmar]

Yeah I was confused, I thought they were both up there.

[Xanthippe]

I had decided not to buy D3 but continued to read this thread. Now I'm back to thinking about buying it.

I'd be really happy with just an updated graphics D2, though.

[Malakili]

I had decided not to buy D3 but continued to read this thread. Now I'm back to thinking about buying it.

I'd be really happy with just an updated graphics D2, though.

It definitely *feels* diablo like.  For the first 5 minutes my Diablo 2 brain was a little unhappy about it, but the there were all these little moments where it was just...yup, this is Diablo, and I've fallen right back into it.  The changes on paper sound bigger than they really are in my opinion.  When you get down to playing, you are playing Diablo, no doubt about it.

[Paelos]

I'm testing it some this weekend, mostly tonight and tomorrow. I'll weigh in as I go.

[Paelos]

I played through it as a lady barb. She's pretty awesome. I love the voice and the look. She will break you, but in a large bulky Russian way. Somehow it comes off as tough and sexy. Great design.

I think the minimap in the top right sort of detracts from my enjoyment of the scenery a bit. I'm constantly looking at it instead of actually looking at the screen. The beginning of the game also makes you think it's going to be too railsy, but it opens up a lot. It's still too on rails for me with the unlocking of stuff currently like the hearthstone and the companions.

I like the destructible environments from a look standpoint, but didn't really see much point to them other than several obvious places where the designers wanted you to dump a wall on somebody. It's not tactical or anything. It still looks better and the reactions to your attacks are great. Shit is flying all over the place when you unload some major attacks.

The crafting thing by artisans is a great addition. It's much more involved with loot and your decisions on sell or breakdown. Plus I like crafting in general, so this is a nod to people like me. The system obviously needs tweaking with merchants, but I think that's a value per item issue. They need to make you want to sell things for the gold to keep you from just cracking everything. That probably involves some spreadsheeting.

[schild]

The game is exceptional. There's really nothing else to say about it. If it doesn't fill the Diablo-sized hole in your heart, then you simply don't like Diablo.

[Sand]

The game is exceptional. There's really nothing else to say about it. If it doesn't fill the Diablo-sized hole in your heart, then you simply don't like Diablo.

     

[Paelos]

The game is exceptional. There's really nothing else to say about it. If it doesn't fill the Diablo-sized hole in your heart, then you simply don't like Diablo.

Yes, the game is very fun. That being said, I'm glad they have a little time to tweak the small economic things and the UI a bit.

[Sheepherder]

That's retarded.

There should be ways for casters to upgrade without resorting to that kinda crap.  Hell, having caster drops that get absorbed or some shit.

Why break a fairly simple and straightforward solution that's working to replace it with a kludge that's in the end functionally identical?

[Xanthippe]

The game is exceptional. There's really nothing else to say about it. If it doesn't fill the Diablo-sized hole in your heart, then you simply don't like Diablo.

That's high praise coming from you.  Seals it for me, even though I hate the whole buying/selling for real dollars idea. Who am I kidding, it's not like I'm going to participate in that sort of end game anyway.  I find that I mostly play these games alone or with friends just for fun.  The elite ultimate weapons/armor chase holds about as much interest for me as raiding in WoW did.

[Sand]

The game is exceptional. There's really nothing else to say about it. If it doesn't fill the Diablo-sized hole in your heart, then you simply don't like Diablo.

That's high praise coming from you.  Seals it for me, even though I hate the whole buying/selling for real dollars idea. Who am I kidding, it's not like I'm going to participate in that sort of end game anyway.  I find that I mostly play these games alone or with friends just for fun.  The elite ultimate weapons/armor chase holds about as much interest for me as raiding in WoW did.

Thats what made getting the "utlimate weapons/armor" in Diablo so much fun! It was completely random!
No having to get together with 24 of your guildmates, save your raid points, deal with guild politics, in order to get a shot at that final head piece you need to complete your armor set.

In Diablo you could jump into a PUG, do Mephisto, and have an equal random a chance of getting something cool and awesome.

[Furiously]

The game is exceptional. There's really nothing else to say about it. If it doesn't fill the Diablo-sized hole in your heart, then you simply don't like Diablo.

That's high praise coming from you.  Seals it for me, even though I hate the whole buying/selling for real dollars idea. Who am I kidding, it's not like I'm going to participate in that sort of end game anyway.  I find that I mostly play these games alone or with friends just for fun.  The elite ultimate weapons/armor chase holds about as much interest for me as raiding in WoW did.

Thats what made getting the "utlimate weapons/armor" in Diablo so much fun! It was completely random!
No having to get together with 24 of your guildmates, save your raid points, deal with guild politics, in order to get a shot at that final head piece you need to complete your armor set.

In Diablo you could jump into a PUG, do Mephisto, and have an equal random a chance of getting something cool and awesome.

By an equal chance you mean have someone loot all the loot and then log once they got something good?

[Malakili]

In Diablo you could jump into a PUG, do solo farm Mephisto, and have an equal random a chance of getting something cool and awesome.

[Amaron]

Playing Diablo solo is still wrong.

[Malakili]

Playing Diablo solo is still wrong.

*shrugs* You wake up in the morning, want to run Mephisto a handful of times, you do it and then whatever drops you get also enable social stuff later (like trading, which I did a hell o fa lot of in D2). 

[JWIV]

Playing Diablo solo is still wrong.

Piss on that.   Some of us do like blowing through the campaign solo or with someone in the same room at best, since playing with pubbie loot whores is fucking annoying as hell.

[Furiously]

Well... that isn't an issue in III is it now?