Diablo III Wild Speculation and Rumor Mongering Abounds

[Yegolev]

No pause?

[Malakili]

This game needs an easy mode for noobz, a decent normal mode for experts, and a hard mode for Schilds, selectable out of the gate.
After that, you can unlock inferno, nightmare, etc.

Why would this be superior to the current way of doing it?

[Teugeus]

You can in fact pause if you're playing in a private game. As soon as you open it up to the public so other people can join you can't pause.

[Lakov_Sanite]

This game needs an easy mode for noobz, a decent normal mode for experts, and a hard mode for Schilds, selectable out of the gate.
After that, you can unlock inferno, nightmare, etc.

Stop being an idiot before it's too late.

[Merusk]

Honestly, the thing that annoys me about multi-only isn't even the fact that I can't play while offline or I can't play when my wireless decides to shit itself (which unfortunately happens more than I'd like).  

It's the fact that I can't press escape and pause the fucking game.  If someone comes at the door, my dog needs to go out, my phone rings, etc... I have to either 1) hope they can wait until I finish the area I am in or 2) die.

I had a couple of deaths like that this weekend.

Town Portal.

In fact, if I get behind in a group I'll TP and then catch-up via the banner system.  Use TP a lot, there's no Cooldown and no scrolls to manage.

Not that I don't want you all becoming my Facebook and Linkedin friends. Im sure some of you would love to cyberstalk a few people. But why the heck does it need to show my real name to anyone I friend?

It shouldn't be showing your real name unless you share your Real ID (aka e-mail address) if you are just friends via battletag is should not show your real name.

This.  Hoax added me via Battle-Tag. All I see is Hoax#<Whatever>  I don't see his real name. 

[Lantyssa]

I'm still not sure how any of you got to play.  I did finally get to make some characters at least.

[FieryBalrog]

Honestly, the thing that annoys me about multi-only isn't even the fact that I can't play while offline or I can't play when my wireless decides to shit itself (which unfortunately happens more than I'd like).  

It's the fact that I can't press escape and pause the fucking game.  If someone comes at the door, my dog needs to go out, my phone rings, etc... I have to either 1) hope they can wait until I finish the area I am in or 2) die.

I had a couple of deaths like that this weekend.

No pause?

Esc did pause the game for me, when I wasn't with other people.

[Phred]

I gave it a play through on Saturday.  The Witch Doctor was pretty fun I guess, but I see myself getting very bored with it.  

I hate the rune and skill system.  It just seems like I'm playing a Zynga game, but Diablo.  There doesn't appear to be any real character building things outside of gear.  Meh.

Check out this video, especially around 10:55 where they talk about builds for a petless witch doctor and a melee sorc for character building options.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzhoGX_7uFY&feature=related

[Phred]

Just look at it like GuildWars.  Nobody had a problem with that, right?* 

Why would you use Guildwars as an example? It is completely different from Diablo. Unless you think you could solo your way to max level on release, it was a multiplayer game from the get go. Diablo 2 had a solo component appearantly no one in the universe ever played.

[ezrast]

This game needs an easy mode for noobz, a decent normal mode for experts, and a hard mode for Schilds, selectable out of the gate.
After that, you can unlock inferno, nightmare, etc.

Stop being an idiot before it's too late.

Diablo 2 basically had this, via the /players command. I don't think it was in at launch though.

[Phred]

This game needs an easy mode for noobz, a decent normal mode for experts, and a hard mode for Schilds, selectable out of the gate.
After that, you can unlock inferno, nightmare, etc.

Stop being an idiot before it's too late.

Diablo 2 basically had this, via the /players command. I don't think it was in at launch though.

Ya they say they've changed how the dungeon scaling works so adding a /players command isnt feasably now.

[Rokal]

One thing that surprised me was how disappointing the monk and wizard were for me.  I usually enjoy the fast assassin type/tactical caster type, but the monk didn't feel agile or fluid enough, while the wizard was too straightforward.  Obviously we can't go too far with them, but the starting skills for those two classes really left me feeling meh.

I have to go with Demon Hunter as my first character.  Mobility options are much fun with DH.  Barbarian would be my second pick for similar reasons.  Leap is fucking awesome.  For some reason the Barb in D3 just feels more fun than the barb in D2 which I couldn't really get into.

Monk gets a lot better after he gets Dashing Strike (which is similar in function to the Demon Hunter's Vault skill).  He goes from being a squishier Barbarian to darting around the battlefield at high speeds to punch people in the face.  Definitely enjoyable.

Even before dashing strike you get some great mobility options. The first rune for your starter left-click ability (fists of thunder) lets you teleport a short distance to your target. It's pretty fun to use once you get used to it. If you get surrounded by enemies, you can just left click an enemy on the outside and you're instantly free. I had a lot of fun with the monk this weekend, which was the only class I tried besides barb.

Got my wife to try it & she died before rescuing Cain.  As I've said before, Normal was difficult enough for those not in the upper 10% of the gaming population.  It's probably too difficult now for most players to actually bother finishing the game on Normal.

I'm not advocating that normal mode be harder, but it's pretty incredible to hear that multiple people in this thread actually found the beta difficult. Aside from skeleton king, I just don't see any real opportunities to die in the beta unless you don't bother equipping any items.

[Redgiant]

Played a wizard Sun, beat Skeleton King around 2 hour mark.

Seemed way too easy, I don't think I even took damage until the Skeleton King fight. And this after many saying they made it harder.

Pretty game, interesting animations and effects but extremely boring palette and content.
Traistram didn't feel or look like 'town'.
Is the whole game played feeling too zoomed-in like this? Is this how they accomplish suspense, by not letting you see far?
Felt no real attachment to the skills or character, or freedom to choose ... well, anything.
Skill management succeeds in seeming a lot busier than D2, while doing absolutely nothing for me (used Elective Mode from the start).
Functional UI took steps backwards since D2; simple things were made more complex instead of the other way 'round.
Opened inventory just to sell everything and glance at blue stats maybe 4 times.
Badly needs autorun toggle for traveling around, backtracking in dungeons, etc. Holding down the mouse button is asking for CTS.


Nothing like the replayability and character-building anticipation for D2.

Pretty ban't see buying this, way too many console simplification concessions to be interesting to a PC gamer.

[Draegan]

I gave it a play through on Saturday.  The Witch Doctor was pretty fun I guess, but I see myself getting very bored with it.  

I hate the rune and skill system.  It just seems like I'm playing a Zynga game, but Diablo.  There doesn't appear to be any real character building things outside of gear.  Meh.

Check out this video, especially around 10:55 where they talk about builds for a petless witch doctor and a melee sorc for character building options.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzhoGX_7uFY&feature=related

Sounds like typical dev wankery.  "Viable vs. Optimal builds"  Yeah ok, it's a pretty way of saying, "Hey there are a few optimal builds, but we've you can be a unique snowflake but not be as good!!"  Sure you can fun and tweak around your own idea of fun, which isn't a bad thing, but it's pretty disheartening when you hear about a build that just does the same thing as yours but only needs to press 1 button and does it in half the time.

[Nightblade]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsK78R71Z1s&list=FLj8RK8fipWatq_1r5NKmFJQ&feature=mh_lolz

[Xanthippe]

I'm still not sure how any of you got to play.  I did finally get to make some characters at least.

It was mostly up yesterday. I played all day long.

I tried to play Saturday but it seemed mostly down. I played a couple of hours Sat.

[Hoax]

This game still has the potential to be the best game ever. So I really shouldn't complain, if they nail the Act bosses and there are some signature awesome dungeons (really small hallways plz) and some amazing mob ai/tricks sky is the limit really.

At the same time I think that D3 will probably end up being really fucking cool but will also be the marker that is the end of Blizzard as the maker of perfect games. They really fucking missed on one of the most core systems in this and when was the last time we could say that?

The character building in D3 is suck.

Apparently they designed themselves into a corner. They dropped stat points and ability levels. Neither of those were needed and both had some antifun to them. However once they did that they freaked out about us leveling up without getting any power to go with our DING!. So they changed the skill rune system into something that is suck. It sucks. There is no other way to put it. It went from being super exciting, visually cool (all black/white/red skills etc) magical and A NEW KIND OF EXCITING DROP OMFGZ. To a very tepid shit system that feels horrible at low levels and that doesn't even solve the problem. Reality is if I get a rune that I don't want to use I still got nothing with my DING this shit should be obvious and old Blizz wouldn't have made this kind of a fuckup.

We have free anytime respecs the fear of gimping with stat points is no more under a free anytime respec system. Why drop them? Or be good game devs and come up with a good solution. Scrapping the skill rune drop system was trying to fix a problem they created while trying to fix other problems and it has made the game that much weaker as a result.

But that's not enough to mean its possible that D3 will end up being a bad game. They also fucked up the loot side of things. The new loot changes appearance depending on who is looking at it system is stupid and bad and I hate it. There isn't even an excuse for this one that I can think of.

I'm still day1, all hardcore, 100% excited about this game. But if I'm mostly playing dota2 in September 2011 it'll be because of missteps that I'm really surprised Blizzard of all people are making typically you can count on them to get the basics perfect and I don't feel that way at all about this game.

[Merusk]

Not to mention the skill rune system was stupidly designed to begin with.  It hadn't even occurred to me until after their, "we'd have 600+ additional drops to manage!" explanation that there would be a rune per skill. 

Wait.. what? Why?!  That's asinine.  No no.. 6 runes. White, Red, Blue, etc.  Simple, elegant, logical.

No, instead they were going at it as:  White: Spider Jar; White: Magic Missile; White; Whirlwind.

Fucking bonkers, man.

Glad to see I wasn't the only one disappointed with the rune changes.  Still like the game but yeah, I can see how those who were hyped about D1 & D2 and enjoyed micro-managing builds have little to no interest here. 

[Ratman_tf]

This game needs an easy mode for noobz, a decent normal mode for experts, and a hard mode for Schilds, selectable out of the gate.
After that, you can unlock inferno, nightmare, etc.

Why would this be superior to the current way of doing it?

Some people don't want to start out with the nooby fodder, and for a lot of people, this will be their first Diablo. Blizz is clearly shooting to be more inclusive with this iteration of the franchise. Instead of making the Normal difficulty fit everyone, which it fucking well won't, put moar tiers in. Save the unlockable difficulties for after hard mode.

Unless that's how they're doing it, and it wasn't implemented in beta.

[Rasix]

Due to how permanent build choices in D1/D2 were.. I'm OK with the changes.   Still, this new system seems a bit pointless beyond picking your active skills.  Why even have the runes?  Are there meaningful choices to be made?

I didn't play too much, but I suppose I'll buy it.  I seems like it could be worth the money for me.  I wasn't a D2 fan at all, but I did enjoy D1 a lot.

[Malakili]

This game needs an easy mode for noobz, a decent normal mode for experts, and a hard mode for Schilds, selectable out of the gate.
After that, you can unlock inferno, nightmare, etc.

Why would this be superior to the current way of doing it?

Some people don't want to start out with the nooby fodder, and for a lot of people, this will be their first Diablo. Blizz is clearly shooting to be more inclusive with this iteration of the franchise. Instead of making the Normal difficulty fit everyone, which it fucking well won't, put moar tiers in. Save the unlockable difficulties for after hard mode.

Unless that's how they're doing it, and it wasn't implemented in beta.

Anyone that cares sufficiently about the difficulty of Diablo 3 isn't going to be phased by blasting through normal mode the first day the game comes out.

[Sjofn]

Not to mention the skill rune system was stupidly designed to begin with.  It hadn't even occurred to me until after their, "we'd have 600+ additional drops to manage!" explanation that there would be a rune per skill. 

Wait.. what? Why?!  That's asinine.  No no.. 6 runes. White, Red, Blue, etc.  Simple, elegant, logical.

No, instead they were going at it as:  White: Spider Jar; White: Magic Missile; White; Whirlwind.

Fucking bonkers, man.

Glad to see I wasn't the only one disappointed with the rune changes.  Still like the game but yeah, I can see how those who were hyped about D1 & D2 and enjoyed micro-managing builds have little to no interest here. 

What's odd there is at one point, at some BlizzCon or another, they kinda run together now, where I was under the impression it WAS supposed to just be white/red/blue/whatever, and you slotted them into whatever skill. I have NO IDEA why that wasn't what they wound up going with.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Spend some time with the skill calculator, the runes change up your abilities quite a lot.  As to making them drops, that was a bad idea from the start, even if you don't like the current system, having your powers be directly related to anything RNG is a mistake of EQ2 magnitude.

They could have kept the current system and added more depth but honestly I really don't see a downside to things as they are.

[K9]

This game still has the potential to be the best game ever. So I really shouldn't complain, if they nail the Act bosses and there are some signature awesome dungeons (really small hallways plz) and some amazing mob ai/tricks sky is the limit really.

At the same time I think that D3 will probably end up being really fucking cool but will also be the marker that is the end of Blizzard as the maker of perfect games. They really fucking missed on one of the most core systems in this and when was the last time we could say that?

The character building in D3 is suck.

Apparently they designed themselves into a corner. They dropped stat points and ability levels. Neither of those were needed and both had some antifun to them. However once they did that they freaked out about us leveling up without getting any power to go with our DING!. So they changed the skill rune system into something that is suck. It sucks. There is no other way to put it. It went from being super exciting, visually cool (all black/white/red skills etc) magical and A NEW KIND OF EXCITING DROP OMFGZ. To a very tepid shit system that feels horrible at low levels and that doesn't even solve the problem. Reality is if I get a rune that I don't want to use I still got nothing with my DING this shit should be obvious and old Blizz wouldn't have made this kind of a fuckup.

We have free anytime respecs the fear of gimping with stat points is no more under a free anytime respec system. Why drop them? Or be good game devs and come up with a good solution. Scrapping the skill rune drop system was trying to fix a problem they created while trying to fix other problems and it has made the game that much weaker as a result.

But that's not enough to mean its possible that D3 will end up being a bad game. They also fucked up the loot side of things. The new loot changes appearance depending on who is looking at it system is stupid and bad and I hate it. There isn't even an excuse for this one that I can think of.

I'm still day1, all hardcore, 100% excited about this game. But if I'm mostly playing dota2 in September 2011 it'll be because of missteps that I'm really surprised Blizzard of all people are making typically you can count on them to get the basics perfect and I don't feel that way at all about this game.

I agree with this totally, and it is a clear design decision that has been imported from WoW. I accept that a large part of Blizzard's success has been in making gheir games accessible to the widest possible audience, but I think we're seeing the floor on how simple you can make some games before you start to make key aspects of them dull. I still think Diablo will be great, I doubt it will be perfect though.

[Musashi]

The character building in D3 is suck.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/3811455085?page=1

I feel like a lot of the sentiment for people I've talked too boils down to this attitude.  I don't think the beta was really representative of how character building will actually be.  Mostly because a lot of customizing has been shifted to gems, among other things, and there weren't any gems in the open beta, at least.  A lot of D2 players, myself included, are skeptics when it comes to tinkering with systems that we understand, and are comfortable with.  After I read that article, my fears were almost all alleviated.

Warning - The very verbose article I just link leads to a post on the D3 forums.  It is a well written, and thoughtful post.  However if you did not play D2, you should just skip to the conclusion.

[Job601]

I don't think the game has really been made (much) simpler as much as it has been made less punishing.  I have very fond memories of spending 40 hours or so on my Elemental Druid right after the expansion to D2 came out, only to discover towards the end of nightmare difficulty that the build I had picked, even though it was carefully planned out to be focused on a few skills, sucked and would always suck.  That wasn't my fault, or not just my fault -- that was the designer's fault for making a whole tree that mathematically couldn't keep up.  Free respecs whenever you want doesn't just protect you from your own mistakes.  It also protects you from balancing errors.  Builds in Diablo III aren't simple -- experimenting with the skill calculator will tell you that -- what they are is forgiving of mistakes.

Cookie-cutter specs, to the extent that they're a problem, were a much worse problem in a system that prevented you from even trying a build without a massive time commitment.  With free instant respecs, you have the freedom to experiment and try different things without being punished for experimenting with the game's systems.  It's certainly true that there is some pride and sense of identity that's lost when you can change your character whenever you want, but the benefits far outweigh the costs.

Per-player loot is a brilliant idea that removes a ton of the agony of playing with god knows who on battle.net.  I got really tired of Baal runs where you couldn't loot anything because your hard disk loaded slower than everybody else's, to the point that it made you want to stop playing. I really like the stress-free drop in and drop out multi-player philosophy.

[kildorn]

Not to mention the skill rune system was stupidly designed to begin with.  It hadn't even occurred to me until after their, "we'd have 600+ additional drops to manage!" explanation that there would be a rune per skill. 

Wait.. what? Why?!  That's asinine.  No no.. 6 runes. White, Red, Blue, etc.  Simple, elegant, logical.

No, instead they were going at it as:  White: Spider Jar; White: Magic Missile; White; Whirlwind.

Fucking bonkers, man.

Glad to see I wasn't the only one disappointed with the rune changes.  Still like the game but yeah, I can see how those who were hyped about D1 & D2 and enjoyed micro-managing builds have little to no interest here. 

What's odd there is at one point, at some BlizzCon or another, they kinda run together now, where I was under the impression it WAS supposed to just be white/red/blue/whatever, and you slotted them into whatever skill. I have NO IDEA why that wasn't what they wound up going with.

Yeah, at blizzcon it was just 6 runes. I presumed the 600+ thing was "chipped white rune" "jagged white rune" etc for all the 15 or something levels of runes.

I really don't mind the idea of leveling up, getting all my stuff by level 20 or something, and then just leveling for the enjoyment of playing the game. I don't actually NEED a new fozzle appearing every ding. The sound effect is hard wired in my head enough.

[Rokal]

Per-player loot is a brilliant idea that removes a ton of the agony of playing with god knows who on battle.net.  I got really tired of Baal runs where you couldn't loot anything because your hard disk loaded slower than everybody else's, to the point that it made you want to stop playing. I really like the stress-free drop in and drop out multi-player philosophy.

Per-player loot will have been the best addition to the genre from D3. Torchlight 2 take note.

[Hoax]

I don't think the game has really been made (much) simpler as much as it has been made less punishing.  I have very fond memories of spending 40 hours or so on my Elemental Druid right after the expansion to D2 came out, only to discover towards the end of nightmare difficulty that the build I had picked, even though it was carefully planned out to be focused on a few skills, sucked and would always suck.  That wasn't my fault, or not just my fault -- that was the designer's fault for making a whole tree that mathematically couldn't keep up.  Free respecs whenever you want doesn't just protect you from your own mistakes.  It also protects you from balancing errors.  Builds in Diablo III aren't simple -- experimenting with the skill calculator will tell you that -- what they are is forgiving of mistakes.

Cookie-cutter specs, to the extent that they're a problem, were a much worse problem in a system that prevented you from even trying a build without a massive time commitment.  With free instant respecs, you have the freedom to experiment and try different things without being punished for experimenting with the game's systems.  It's certainly true that there is some pride and sense of identity that's lost when you can change your character whenever you want, but the benefits far outweigh the costs.

Per-player loot is a brilliant idea that removes a ton of the agony of playing with god knows who on battle.net.  I got really tired of Baal runs where you couldn't loot anything because your hard disk loaded slower than everybody else's, to the point that it made you want to stop playing. I really like the stress-free drop in and drop out multi-player philosophy.

Who are you talking to? Nobody disagrees with any of this strongly.

The fact that they added respecs invalidates the need to remove skill and attribute points in the first place. If they had kept those things they could have easily satisfied the character micromanagers and junkies AND newbies are still protected by the fact that they can look up a guide and respec to that guide whenever they feel underpowered. IN FACT if you look up the numbers attribute points really didn't mean dick in diablo2 you got your values from what was in your inventory with the customized points only making up a tiny % of your endgame totals.

Not that I'm saying they needed to do that. But when what they did instead was take arguably the coolest new system and turn it into shit. The new ability runes suck, getting them one at a time spread out over huge gaps of playtime means they feel shitty if they aren't straight up more powerful and if they are straight up more powerful then its not a decision anymore its just progression on rails.

They needed to find a way to reward players for leveling up without removing all character customization during the leveling process and preferably keeping the very cool and promising looking skill rune drop system they had.

As to making them drops, that was a bad idea from the start, even if you don't like the current system, having your powers be directly related to anything RNG is a mistake of EQ2 magnitude.

Feels like you don't understand how these games work.

They didn't need to be drops but it works with everything else in the game and you can't have too many drops.

Skill runes were supposed to replace the lack of skill points and skill trees and maintain character customization. Making skill runes be given out slowly over the level curve means you no longer have any character customization options. Yes you gain some over time and once you are up to the 3X's and 4X's you'll have a couple options for most skills but this is not a mmo. I don't expect it to feel shitty for the first 8 hours of gameplay just because. That's not how Diablo is supposed to work.

*edit* is nobody else deeply bothered by the drops transform to fit the "look" of your class thing they have going on? Pretty much doomed to have our characters looking like they are straight out of WoW which is not a good thing.

[Xanthippe]

*edit* is nobody else deeply bothered by the drops transform to fit the "look" of your class thing they have going on? Pretty much doomed to have our characters looking like they are straight out of WoW which is not a good thing.

I'm not bothered a bit. I like that some piece of loot looks different depending upon which class wears it.

It's not like I have much invested in character customization - I get to play a girl (which makes me happy), but I don't get to pick what she looks like. While I'd prefer more customization, I'm fine with not having it.

[Sir Fodder]

Yeah, wearable items morphing appearance strains credulity in a bad way; odd that somehow I find it acceptable for my witch doctor to get at the contents of barrels by throwing jars of spiders, that is a good straining of credulity I guess.

[Ratman_tf]

This game needs an easy mode for noobz, a decent normal mode for experts, and a hard mode for Schilds, selectable out of the gate.
After that, you can unlock inferno, nightmare, etc.

Why would this be superior to the current way of doing it?

Some people don't want to start out with the nooby fodder, and for a lot of people, this will be their first Diablo. Blizz is clearly shooting to be more inclusive with this iteration of the franchise. Instead of making the Normal difficulty fit everyone, which it fucking well won't, put moar tiers in. Save the unlockable difficulties for after hard mode.

Unless that's how they're doing it, and it wasn't implemented in beta.

Anyone that cares sufficiently about the difficulty of Diablo 3 isn't going to be phased by blasting through normal mode the first day the game comes out.

Bullshit. People bitched about the difficulty level in the beta!

The Beta.  

[Malakili]

Bullshit. People bitched about the difficulty level in the beta!

The Beta.  

Because its an hour long and after the 50th time its boring.  The same people who are complaining about  difficulty in the beta are the people who probably won't even stop playing for the first 3 days until they are far past the too easy part.

[FieryBalrog]

Not to mention the skill rune system was stupidly designed to begin with.  It hadn't even occurred to me until after their, "we'd have 600+ additional drops to manage!" explanation that there would be a rune per skill. 

Wait.. what? Why?!  That's asinine.  No no.. 6 runes. White, Red, Blue, etc.  Simple, elegant, logical.

No, instead they were going at it as:  White: Spider Jar; White: Magic Missile; White; Whirlwind.

Fucking bonkers, man.

Glad to see I wasn't the only one disappointed with the rune changes.  Still like the game but yeah, I can see how those who were hyped about D1 & D2 and enjoyed micro-managing builds have little to no interest here. 

I was/am upset about that very same change too, but I'm going to hold off on judgment till I play through the game.

[Nija]

Still, this new system seems a bit pointless beyond picking your active skills.  Why even have the runes?  Are there meaningful choices to be made?

In short, yes. They are play style choices.