Complaints, gripes, kvetches...

[Lantyssa]

If you were finding sets and uniques in D2 without MF then you were the luckiest man alive. Drop rate was MUCH lower in D2 because you could stack MF to ridiculous levels, far higher than D3. Without MF even the Lord of Shopping Trolleys dropped crap.

I found tons of both without any purposeful stacking of Magic Find, including a SoJ.

[Typhon]

I agree, I found many legendaries and set pieces without ever stacking MF.  I have found two legendaries in D3, one of which was usable, for 235 hours played across 5 chars.

That said, the game is fun, 235 hours played says I got my monies worth.

[MuffinMan]

235 hours played

[Phred]

I know for a fact that if this game wasn't by Blizzard, everyone would be talking about how some upstart game company managed to make the best action rpg of all time.

Really ?  Really ??

(and, no, Phred, not offended.  Don't use magic find, but didnt in D2 either, so...)

Ya but it actually works in D3. It sucked ass in D2.

[Ratman_tf]

2nd night in a row I've quit due to 1500+ms lag made the game unplayable.

Good job, Blizzard.

[Soulflame]

Yeah, I got booted from a game after a horrible lag death.  Glad I wasn't playing my HC barb.   

[rk47]

As I remember it, LE was fairly lethal, mostly due to the fact that you couldn't see the bolts.

But at least they weren't vampiric, jailer, walling, arcane, LE's.  I mean, seriously ?  Why are we even arguing the toss on this one ?

Most likely just not cynical enough for this place. I'm feeling vindicated now when most of my friends gave up playing 'for fun' :X while I've yet to buy it.
Rerun of Hellgate scenario all over again.

[Setanta]

I know for a fact that if this game wasn't by Blizzard, everyone would be talking about how some upstart game company managed to make the best action rpg of all time.

Really ?  Really ??

(and, no, Phred, not offended.  Don't use magic find, but didnt in D2 either, so...)

If you were finding sets and uniques in D2 without MF then you were the luckiest man alive. Drop rate was MUCH lower in D2 because you could stack MF to ridiculous levels, far higher than D3. Without MF even the Lord of Shopping Trolleys dropped crap.

I pulled in sets and uniques in D2. Then again, I was younger and played the hell out of it with characters into the 80s and one into the 90s, both local and server-side. I did some trading for uniques but a lot of the time it was just that moment of "omg it dropped" that made my night. My Bowazon was just lucky I guess. I'll admit in D1 it wasn't that easy to ignore duping etc of gear, D2 on US West was different as it was Pokemon time.

In 60 hours of game time, I've had 3 legendaries drop including level 16 boots. Not high level stuff, but no MF on my gear either.

[Job601]

As I remember it, LE was fairly lethal, mostly due to the fact that you couldn't see the bolts.

But at least they weren't vampiric, jailer, walling, arcane, LE's.  I mean, seriously ?  Why are we even arguing the toss on this one ?

With Arcane Enchanted you get a big purple ball to tell you to run away.  With Jailer you get a column on yourself so you can see that you can't move.  Walling makes a big wall.  With MSLE's, you would run up to a relatively normal looking guy, whack him once, and die instantly, unless you happened to notice the tiny letters at the top of the screen.  It's not necessarily a bad thing when mobs are difficult -- I guarantee you if none of the mods were dangerous people would complain even more about that -- but it's a bad thing when they're unfair.

[Murgos]

Rerun of Hellgate scenario all over again.

Not even close.

[JRave]

As I remember it, LE was fairly lethal, mostly due to the fact that you couldn't see the bolts.

But at least they weren't vampiric, jailer, walling, arcane, LE's.  I mean, seriously ?  Why are we even arguing the toss on this one ?

With Arcane Enchanted you get a big purple ball to tell you to run away.  With Jailer you get a column on yourself so you can see that you can't move.  Walling makes a big wall.  With MSLE's, you would run up to a relatively normal looking guy, whack him once, and die instantly, unless you happened to notice the tiny letters at the top of the screen.  It's not necessarily a bad thing when mobs are difficult -- I guarantee you if none of the mods were dangerous people would complain even more about that -- but it's a bad thing when they're unfair.

You ran up to the mob, you had the chance to mouse over before dieing that way, and there were certain "unique" named mobs that always had that combo or a high chance of it.  I'm thinking the council guy on the Floor with Meph, but I know there were more that either had MS or LE with a chance of the other.

I'll give you one setup that normally makes me switch areas when doing Siegebreaker runs in Inferno.  Jailer, Vampiric, + any other 2 mods you might want on Soul Lashers. (The tongue guys)  If they don't instantly kill you before you even see them on screen, you'll die before the jail wears off.

Oh how about LE + Knockback.  All those little sparks on the ground can juggle you around a room with that combo if you get unlucky.  Adding Vamp to it means while you are being juggled through their sparks they are also healing up from that damage.

[Mrbloodworth]

I emphatically do think this.  There's no game in the genre that has as many different interesting skills that can be combined in so many interesting ways, which different kinds of builds being viable at different player power levels and for different kinds of enemies.

Uh........ *Cough*

[Murgos]

You do realize you're linking to an unreleased game right?  You can't say someone else does something when they don't actually do it yet.

[Mrbloodworth]

Semantics?

[Ice Cream Emperor]

You think the skills and the range of same beat others in the genre ?

I emphatically do think this.  There's no game in the genre that has as many different interesting skills that can be combined in so many interesting ways, which different kinds of builds being viable at different player power levels and for different kinds of enemies.

My god this is just insane. Have you played Titan Quest? Or, like, Diablo 2?

[Paelos]

Titan Quest had too many skills. The problem with that setup is that so much of it was filler crap.

I think many of you guys overestimate how much the average player enjoys the "Build" concept of an ARPG like this. I believe Diablo has done a good job balancing the accessibility of the "build" by runes and such without weighing it down with stats, percentages, and overall spreadsheeting. I think a small percentage of players enjoy that crap, and the rest of them go to sites to bottom line their findings.

[Ironwood]

Titan Quest had too many skills. The problem with that setup is that so much of it was filler crap.

I agree entirely.  That's why I made the comparison.  There are skills on my Main barb that I simply won't touch again unless Blizzard changes it in some way;  They're not worth putting on your 6 hotkeys.

And since you only have 6 hotkeys, it makes the rest of it a fucking waste of time.  At least in Diablo II, if I had a skill I MIGHT use, I could put it on a high hotkey and swap it out when I needed it.

[Paelos]

Well I think we can agree the Barb needs the most work out of all the classes. There's simply not much there in terms of the way to play it. You have a couple viable options for skills and the rest is just gearing. That's completely different than the other classes and the way they play.

[Ironwood]

If you say so.

[01101010]

There are some very useless skills in the Barbie set. And then there are some REQUIRED skills in the set. IMHO that is.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

It's really surprising to me that anyone who has played D3, D2 and Titan Quest could think that D3 has the largest number of viable, interesting builds. Especially in terms of actual playstyle -- I feel like there is only really one playstyle, with a melee- and ranged-character version. It's possible that once everyone is geared to the absolute teeth, the variety will increase somewhat, and more skills and rune combinations will become viable, but given the overwhelming primacy of certain stats and the whitewashing of gear in terms of unique-affixes, I just don't see it ever really getting to the same point as the earlier games.

The importance of the shift from skill levels to weapon-dps-is-the-only-way-to-kill-things is remarkable. There is almost nothing you can do to make a preferred skill- or rune-combo more effective than average -- the gear goals for every class are borderline-identical across all builds, and with a few seemingly niche cases involving critical hit triggers, all you can do is buy a bigger DPS weapon. No focus on damage types, no crazy defensive modifier stacking, no lockdown or cc-based gear builds, no breakpoints after which a skill suddenly becomes effective, no interesting gear-to-skill synergy, in fact no unexpected synergy to speak of because there is nothing to synergize with -- the whole system is made up entirely of obvious surfaces. There just aren't enough moving parts.

[statisticalfool]

^^ That, so much. They got really scared of anything other than DPS in, DPS out. So all of the actually interesting affixes will never show up more than one slot, and in such small percentages.

I mean, this on top of that most classes have 2-3 mandatory to almost mandatory skills out of 6.

[Ingmar]

It's really surprising to me that anyone who has played D3, D2 and Titan Quest could think that D3 has the largest number of viable, interesting builds.

Considering that the bolded part of your statement is entirely subjective, I'm surprised you're surprised.  Viability is an issue for a number of skills, but it is pretty difficult to predict what other people will find fun or interesting with any kind of accuracy.

[Slayerik]

My friend and I are both HC Witch Doctors and he has a completely different build and playstyle from me (besides spirit walk and spirit vessel). He uses mad CC and poison darts for damage. I run a vision quest build with little CC (besides Gargantuan and Wall of Zombies) but crazy sustained AoE DPS. With my VQ build I could use a number of different damage spells (I use Dire bats but there are probably 2-3 other ones that are viable), CC abilities (Wall of Zombies could be replaced by Hex, Grasp, Zombie Dogs, etc). My initial build was nothing like either of these, using darts and locust swarm and stuff. He's in Inferno HC and I'm in Hell HC, so I'd say that's a pretty good display of viability.

I've never looked at the forums for builds, but I'm going to guess there are a couple more viable endgame builds for the WD. That's pretty good, right?

[Ingmar]

The forums are a cesspit as usual, they think there are only 2ish "viable" builds for WD last I looked.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

In my brief experience I actually feel like the WD is far and away the most variable class in terms of playstyle and build. I am looking forward to levelling my WD for that reason -- and also because its the only class whose personality is actually remotely palatable, racism aside. Sad to say, the same thing is not true of any of the other classes. The Demon Hunter is probably the most uniform, playstyle-wise, but it's a pretty close race with the Barbarian, Monk, and Wizard.

Random example: my roomate did his best to formulate a tanking wizard spec, only to find out that there is a totally invisible 30% damage reduction given to Monks/Barbarians that makes it impossible (or, you know, 30% harder) for other classes to actually tank, even if you are imaginative enough to gear and rune-spec appropriately.

Also the idea that each class having a unique resource to manage makes the game more varied is precisely the sort of bizarro-world thinking that has me scratching my head. What this means is that there is absolutely zero chance of the unexpected cross-class synergies that would arise out of generic 'mana'-related bonuses/penalties/affixes/gear. Ghetto-izing each class' mechanics does not add depth to a game's systems.

[Malakili]

Random example: my roomate did his best to formulate a tanking wizard spec, only to find out that there is a totally invisible 30% damage reduction given to Monks/Barbarians that makes it impossible (or, you know, 30% harder) for other classes to actually tank, even if you are imaginative enough to gear and rune-spec appropriately.

In beta there was a long time when damage across the board was a lot lower, and people complained non stop that the game was trivially easy.  In response to this (and probably to internal testing - I hope) they increased damage across the board in one of the patches, and added a passive damage reduction to monks and barbarians because with the increased damage they were getting crushed the same way the ranged classes to now when trying to tank.  So, they added the passive bonus so melee characters could survive AND it wasn't trivially easy for ranged characters.  Maybe they could have come up with a more elegant solution though.

[Trippy]

Random example: my roomate did his best to formulate a tanking wizard spec, only to find out that there is a totally invisible 30% damage reduction given to Monks/Barbarians that makes it impossible (or, you know, 30% harder) for other classes to actually tank, even if you are imaginative enough to gear and rune-spec appropriately.

That's one of the tips on the loading screens

[Ingmar]

I'm also pretty sure that by the time you get to Inferno the resists you get from stacking intelligence because it is your main stat probably beat out that 30% (or come close).

[Merusk]

Random example: my roomate did his best to formulate a tanking wizard spec, only to find out that there is a totally invisible 30% damage reduction given to Monks/Barbarians that makes it impossible (or, you know, 30% harder) for other classes to actually tank, even if you are imaginative enough to gear and rune-spec appropriately.

In beta there was a long time when damage across the board was a lot lower, and people complained non stop that the game was trivially easy.  In response to this (and probably to internal testing - I hope) they increased damage across the board in one of the patches, and added a passive damage reduction to monks and barbarians because with the increased damage they were getting crushed the same way the ranged classes to now when trying to tank.  So, they added the passive bonus so melee characters could survive AND it wasn't trivially easy for ranged characters.  Maybe they could have come up with a more elegant solution though.

Or maybe, just maybe, they could have listened to the section of beta saying "No, assholes, this is NORMAL MODE act 1 and you've outleveled the Skeleton King almost 2x if you're at cap. It's GOING TO BE EASY."

But that would have taken understanding of your own damn game on the devs part and Blizzard hasn't been good at that in 5 years.

[Llyse]

Yeah, I'm pretty disappointed with all the niggling issues Diablo3 has had considering how stable WoW has been for the last few years.

Forcing me to manually update config files because of language patching regions, the terrible patching loop when servers are down instead of just saying no to logins is just piss poor.

I won't be spending any money on Blizzard products for a while after this. (Good thing the expansion isn't due till 2013  )

[Threash]

Lag has made the game unplayable since this afternoon.

[Lightstalker]

I lost two low level HC barbs last night due to lag; better than losing characters I'd invested into though. 

Why I have lag in my single player game... 

[Shatter]

They put a cap on the number of games you can create, they said that would help stability, etc.  I had no issues tonight

[KallDrexx]

cap on the number of games you can create?