Diablo III Wild Speculation and Rumor Mongering Abounds

[Soulflame]

For myself, Torchlight and Torchlight 2 are games I play while I wait for Diablo 3.  Even then, I still have more hours in Diablo 2 than anything other than DAoC or WoW.

... and I may have more hours in Diablo 2 than WoW, come to think on it.

[Malakili]

Oh, don't get me wrong.  As much as I sing the praises of Torchlight and will be getting Torchlight 2 on release, I'm still going to be getting Diablo 3 on release also.

[Paelos]

It's not like owning both somehow makes you a hypocrite.

I mean there are parts of Torchlight I really liked. The graphical style, music, and feel of the game was very good. Also they had fishing! I love fishing.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

I would rather see Titan Quest 2 than Diablo 3. The only thing that made Titan Quest worse than D2, as far as I can tell, is the lack of online play and managed servers -- and the fact that it wasn't first, which is certainly worth something. But Titan Quest basically got it right, mechanically -- I cannot believe someone is complaining about the game producing a wide variety of more or less optimizable class combinations, when it had built-in respeccing -- and the actual gameplay felt so, so much better than D2. Which is of course what you'd expect, given when they came out, and no slam against D2, which also played great.

But yeah, burn me at the stake but I'm pretty sure Titan Quest is the better game, and I wish those guys had stuck around. The dual-classing mechanic, the smooth gameplay, and knocking some beastman halfway across the screen... and nobody in heels.

[Ingmar]

I would rather see Titan Quest 2 than Diablo 3. The only thing that made Titan Quest worse than D2, as far as I can tell, is the lack of online play and managed servers -- and the fact that it wasn't first, which is certainly worth something. But Titan Quest basically got it right, mechanically -- I cannot believe someone is complaining about the game producing a wide variety of more or less optimizable class combinations, when it had built-in respeccing -- and the actual gameplay felt so, so much better than D2. Which is of course what you'd expect, given when they came out, and no slam against D2, which also played great.

But yeah, burn me at the stake but I'm pretty sure Titan Quest is the better game, and I wish those guys had stuck around. The dual-classing mechanic, the smooth gameplay, and knocking some beastman halfway across the screen... and nobody in heels.

The pacing was a bit too slow in TQ, and the lack of random maps *really* sucked. Otherwise it was pretty great, yeah.

EDIT: Also I never found anything in TQ that gave me the brainless joy of killing Pindleskin 50000 times.

[Fabricated]

Titan Quest did loot right (very important) and better than Torchlight, but no randomness outside of loot = no replay.

[Hoax]

I think using gamespy really did make it stillborn, I know many here see Diablo clones as single player affairs but I'm not one of them.

[Yegolev]

I do have a complaint about how you couldn't upgrade any item in TQ which was blue or better, but I suppose that was minor.

[Amaron]

I would rather see Titan Quest 2 than Diablo 3. The only thing that made Titan Quest worse than D2, as far as I can tell, is the lack of online play and managed servers -- and the fact that it wasn't first,

For me TQ also lacked the feel of really fighting off hordes of mobs.  I feel that was probably just an engine limitation for them but it still made a huge difference in gameplay.   I think they also had some stupid shit restricting you from getting phat lewts by killing bosses repeatedly.  As others said the static maps were a bit of a problem too.

[Arrrgh]

But yeah, burn me at the stake but I'm pretty sure Titan Quest is the better game, and I wish those guys had stuck around. The dual-classing mechanic, the smooth gameplay, and knocking some beastman halfway across the screen... and nobody in heels.

http://www.grimdawn.com/

[Job601]

The thing that has me most excited about Diablo III is that they've promised to try to solve the difficulty problem that Diablo II and Titan Quest both had, which is that every fight involves you insta-gibbing the enemies or them insta-gibbing you.  Whichever game fixes this will get my dollars (although having said that, I predict that hell difficulty in Diablo III will involve a bunch of chumps and boss monsters who can one-shot you.)

[Malakili]

The thing that has me most excited about Diablo III is that they've promised to try to solve the difficulty problem that Diablo II and Titan Quest both had, which is that every fight involves you insta-gibbing the enemies or them insta-gibbing you.  Whichever game fixes this will get my dollars (although having said that, I predict that hell difficulty in Diablo III will involve a bunch of chumps and boss monsters who can one-shot you.)

The good thing about it in a game like Diablo is that you can over level or over gear for a boss if you are having trouble with it.  I think people also tend not to gear enough for specific parts of games, but thats another issue. (for example, stalking resist against a fire boss).
On a similar topic - I think insta-gibbing enemies is one of the more satisfying parts of the game 

[Soulflame]

Diablo 2 also had a problem in that you would have to grind out some levels before you could face, for example, Duriel.  I'll run through every nook and cranny, every cave, everything I can before I hit the end of act 2, and Duriel will yell "LOOKING FOR B... oh.  Oh.  Sorry.  That was over quicker than I thought it would be.  Why don't you go gain, say, about three levels and we'll try this again?"

The difference between tackling Duriel at level 22, and at level 25 is that at 22, you die very quickly, with your only option being to level or grind away at his health while dying repeatedly, and at 25, it's a difficult but manageable fight that you can one-shot.  Getting from 22 to 25 involved running the areas around Duriel about 3-4 times.

I liked Titan Quest, but agree it did not have much in the way of repeat gameplay.  I'd start a new character, and realize that seeing the exact same mobs with the exact same map wasn't very fun.

[Malakili]

Diablo 2 also had a problem in that you would have to grind out some levels before you could face, for example, Duriel.  I'll run through every nook and cranny, every cave, everything I can before I hit the end of act 2, and Duriel will yell "LOOKING FOR B... oh.  Oh.  Sorry.  That was over quicker than I thought it would be.  Why don't you go gain, say, about three levels and we'll try this again?"

The difference between tackling Duriel at level 22, and at level 25 is that at 22, you die very quickly, with your only option being to level or grind away at his health while dying repeatedly, and at 25, it's a difficult but manageable fight that you can one-shot.  Getting from 22 to 25 involved running the areas around Duriel about 3-4 times.

I liked Titan Quest, but agree it did not have much in the way of repeat gameplay.  I'd start a new character, and realize that seeing the exact same mobs with the exact same map wasn't very fun.

Except back when D2 was new people would just say "oh man, I can't quite do this fight yet, I'll kill more stuff first, get some new loot, and come back"

Nowadays it would be
"Nerf Duriel, way too hard"
"What the fuck, why do I need to grind to beat Act 2, this game is shit I'm quitting"
"Dude, you guys just suck, I beat duriel naked at level 12, l2p"

[Paelos]

You're being ridiculous. Comparing a game where you can level up to an attitude in an max-level scenario isn't the same.

[Malakili]

You're being ridiculous. Comparing a game where you can level up to an attitude in an max-level scenario isn't the same.

Maybe. Have you ever seen the official blizzard forums?

[Paelos]

Sure, but honestly who cares what the forums have to say about in instanced multiplayer game?

[Malakili]

Sure, but honestly who cares what the forums have to say about in instanced multiplayer game?

I don't, I was just kind of using the situation to make a comment about the fact that people like to bitch about stuff now(or if not like to bitch about stuff more, have the opportunity to bitch about stuff more), I didn't really mean it seriously as a critique of the game, it was more snark than anything. 

[Paelos]

Ah. Well then. Don't I feel silly.

[Musashi]

I'm hoping one of them will be awesome.  If they're both awesome, I'm pretty sure I'll die in a spontaneous violent explosion.  And I'm taking every one of you fuckers in this thread with me.

[Slyfeind]

But yeah, burn me at the stake but I'm pretty sure Titan Quest is the better game, and I wish those guys had stuck around. The dual-classing mechanic, the smooth gameplay, and knocking some beastman halfway across the screen... and nobody in heels.

http://www.grimdawn.com/

At least one other Titan Quest person went on to Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning...which will likely bear little resemblance to TQ because a lot of them are Oblivion people. ANYWAY.

[FatuousTwat]

So why did sprites (like they used in D2) go out the window? I much prefer that look to the, IMO, shitty looking 3d models TQ and Torchlight had.


Seriously, is it just too much more work or something?

[Merusk]

Yes, lots. Why do you think Animation has taken off like it has now that 3d is acceptable vs hand-drawn & painted cells over static backgrounds. 

You have to draw every single frame of that sprite vs making a model and letting keyframe software do 90% of the heavy lifting.

[MuffinMan]

Yes, lots. Why do you think Animation has taken off like it has now that 3d is acceptable vs hand-drawn & painted cells over static backgrounds. 

Pixar made some great movies and all of the other studios started thinking as long as their movie was 3d it would be just as successful?

[Tarami]

Seriously, is it just too much more work or something?

2D becomes really, really cumbersome to work with if what you do want is a 3D world. You miss out on almost everything parameterized - that is, things like animation blending, volumetric (like fog) and lighting effects, proper physics, particle effects, camera movement and much more. Most of it can be hacked into a sprite-based game but it's an unreasonable amount of work compared to just doing it "right." Diablo 2's "3D perspective" is an example of one such hack.

2D works by baking everything into pre-rendered sprites, which once rendered are difficult to programmatically alter. For example, in 2D, every weapon, eventhough it's an inanimate object, needs to be animated and pre-rendered separately to match with every character's animations. With 3D, you just model the static weapon and attach it to the hand and an in-game animation system handles all the work. I would guess a Diablo 2 character has thousands of prerendered frames to cover all the combinations of helmets, shields, weapons and armours you can have.

Eventually all those prerendered frames become a logistical issue, too, because they end up taking up a lot of physical space. Diablo 2 had this issue, which is why it uses a global colour palette, only it swaps out a bunch of swatches for every act to liven things up a little. The palette meant the 2D art could be efficiently compressed (it's, essentially, GIF images) in order to fit onto two(?) CDs. The game actually runs in 16-bit colour, but each sprite is only 8-bit (which is why it looks grainy - it doesn't handle gradients well.)

The advantage that 2D has, even for 3D purposes, is that you can have a lot of sprite detail at no significant performance cost. This was an important advantage once, when 3D cards were still fairly uncommon and on top of that, fairly slow. Making a game that had the detail levels of Diablo in actual 3D would have been impossible at the time. Today, 3D cards are so hyperefficient at vomiting polygons at the screen that 2D will end up being slower than its 3D counterpart. That Torchlight had fairly low polygon count was a style and accessibility decision.

tl;dr: 2D is bad for 3D.

[Goreschach]

So why did sprites (like they used in D2) go out the window? I much prefer that look to the, IMO, shitty looking 3d models TQ and Torchlight had.


Seriously, is it just too much more work or something?

Yes, lots. Why do you think Animation has taken off like it has now that 3d is acceptable vs hand-drawn & painted cells over static backgrounds. 

You have to draw every single frame of that sprite vs making a model and letting keyframe software do 90% of the heavy lifting.

The D2 sprites were just pre-renders of 3d assets.

[Amaron]

The D2 sprites were just pre-renders of 3d assets.

Suppose you want to add a new attack animation for some ability.  Now you have to do a new set of pre-renders for every frame of that animation for every piece of armor and every weapon that can be used with said animation.   Now you have to do a new set of pre renders for every single attack/ability animation in the game.

It just becomes unmanageable.   Basically 2d creates a situation where adding variety creates exponential increases in art cost.

[Ratman_tf]

Fun fact. Intellivision had a library of game sprites that the games could call on, thus saving some storage space on cartidges.

[Kail]

tl;dr: 2D is bad for 3D.

Seems like it's being used for a lot of 2D games, too, though, which makes me sad (though understandable from a cost perspective, I guess).  I'm not pining for the graphics of DOOM 2 or anything, but seeing Street Fighter 4 or New Super Mario Bros. rendered in polygons makes me feel like something of the graphical style is lost.

I'm not following D3 closely enough to know if the game actually is 3D or if it's just as 2D as it's predecessor (the way Starcraft 2 is), nor am I really sure if the jump to 3D is a big loss for D3 because, as Goreschach notes, they were just static 3D renders before anyways, but I do miss sprites :(

[Amaron]

Slightly on topic didn't see this Torchlight e3 vid posted anywhere:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV-yjSUMSY8

That's why they use 3d these days.   No way you'd want to do sprites for that many armor sets.

[Fabricated]

Those armor sets would be awesome if I wasn't 100% sure I'll end up with a set of armor consisting of one piece of each because of how loot levels usually work in these games.

[Amaron]

Those armor sets would be awesome if I wasn't 100% sure I'll end up with a set of armor consisting of one piece of each because of how loot levels usually work in these games.

I read something somewhere that seemed to imply you had some control over your appearance in this one.

[rk47]

That's how much effort to make just to make....ONE creature.

[FatuousTwat]

Is that actually drawn, or are they still images taken from a 3d model?

[Kail]

Is that actually drawn, or are they still images taken from a 3d model?

In Hexen, they were drawn, I believe.  3D rendering was Rare in those days.

Though for some enemies in DOOM (like the Spider Mastermind and Mancubus) they used photos of models.