Beta not going too well for Reaper of Souls

As somebody who has been following the development of Diablo 3 for quite a while now, I feel that I can confidently say that Reaper of Souls will not be a very good expansion, and apparently many on the Diablo 3 BNet forum posters agree with me on this.

Apparently the beta is so bad, that MVP posters (Blizzard appointed "super posters") on the Battle.net forums are publicly cancelling pre-orders and giving lots of well thought out critiques of the current Reaper of Souls experience. My advice to anybody looking to buy this game is that you NOT buy it on release and wait at least a couple months. This expansion, as of right now, has a LOT of problems that will never be fixed for release, and doesn't really fix the flawed, core Diablo 3 experience.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/1vq61m/reaper_of_souls_in_trouble_mvps_would_not_even/

I don't have much experience with the Diablo games, I know they are for the most part highly regarded. Jeff played a bit of this expansion during the last stream and it didn't exactly give me any reason to check it out at this point, but looked completely serviceable, I mean it seemed to function just like the gameplay footage I saw of Diablo 3 at release, but I know that the subtleties will be more recognizable to fans such as the MVP posters. Hopefully blizzard gets it worked out so Diablo 3 fans can enjoy a quality expansion.

After 7 years of WoW, I can confidently say I will never listen to what the hyperbolic BNet forum community says. They've always been awful.

Is it just buggy, or is the gameplay of the expansion significantly worse than that of Diablo III?

Like @mariachimacabre said, the battlenet forums have been awful almost as far back as the World of Warcraft beta. I trust nothing that comes from that place. I am 100% sure the stability of the product will be fine when the game comes out.

Can anyone post a tl;dr version of the criticism? My biggest gripe was the AH, and i don't really care for PVP, so RoS still sounds good to me.

i wonder how opinion changed on the diablo 3 always online "debacle" after the disaster that was simcity.

i didn't play it for a terribly long time, but i only remember one time i couldn't connect the day it came out, and it was nbd.

The one thing I would definately not be 100% sure about when it comes to diablo 3 is stability on release

You know who's not vocal? Those who are enjoying something and are happily plugging away at it. I have no idea if this expansion is/will be good but that's just something I always keep in the back of my mind.

@davec524: As you're someone whose who has been following the development of Diablo 3 for quite a while now, would you mind elaborating on the problems that the expansion has? Because Diablo 3 itself has a lot of problems and it may actually be a good thing for the "core fanbase" to be all upset.

That's way too much to fully read, but most of what I'm seeing complained about is legendary drop rates. So, now being a console convert, my enthusiasm is not particularly affected.

Also, an interesting bit from that Reddit thread you linked:

A quick heads up, MVP posts on the official forum are not to be fully trusted. A couple of these guys have fought against very important changes in the past; some dude named DrothVader [nb: the same person from the linked source] made it his personal mission to try to fight against monster density in Act 1 when it was in beta.

That really pissed me off; every normal poster was fighting the sentiment of 2 MVPs, and the blue poster was giving both sides equal sway. It's basically the equivalent of people who "play the forum game" dominating the discussion of something they don't have direct influence upon.

Aw ma, this is gonna turn out to be Activision's Battlefield 4... XP

@ripelivejam: I would still put it as a bad launch, though not as bad as SimCity obviously. I had problems for some time with my game randomly disconnecting due to some error, which wouldn't have been a problem if it didn't depend solely on an autosave that was bunk and only worked at certain moments/places. I remember loosing an hour to hours of gameplay at a time because I kept playing it like Diablo 1 and 2 and trying to uncover the whole map instead of racing from checkpoint to checkpoint and missing content along the way. That sucked. It didn't help that people were trying to pin these errors on the people playing instead of actually admitting that there was an issue in the first place. So, yeah, I still see the launch of Diablo 3 as an issue. Just because more games are having problems doesn't absolve it of it's issues at launch.

I honestly don't know whether to trust this information or not. If it plays like more Diablo 3 than I will like it. I love the game, even if it has issues. Maybe I won't pre-order, but we'll see. I need to read a lot more before I make up my mind either way.

Oh, the hyperbole of BNet Forums. I'll buy the game regardless. I enjoyed Diablo 3 at launch as probably one of the few and I have no reason to think that RoS will be the "trainwreck" that OP is claiming.

I like what TheTias posted there. The inflation of numbers in D3 is just out of control and making a mess of everything.

I'm surprised in how little I've grown to care about Diablo 3. I beat it three times, upping the difficulty each time - then came a moment where I didn't want to play a single minute more.

i've been playing the beta version of the patch that's set to go live with this expansion and that alone makes Diablo 3 a more enjoyable game. IMHO, anyone with a high post count in a game developer's forum usually either has an axe to grind with the developer, is intent on proving that their opinion is the only correct one, or both. They should be taken with several grains of salt, maybe even an entire shaker.

Also, i just checked my battle.net profile for d3, i have over 137,000 life kills playing that game (and i'm pretty sure this doesn't account for my time playing in PTR) and i don't think i've ever posted in their forums. Just food for thought, vocal minorities don't account for people like me.

I just took a look around and there doesn't seem to be that much complaining.

These.

The sad truth is that even with the awful forum posters and loudmouths of the internet - it will still do well.

Something about the whole, "let's rally against this game on the internet" thing is very off-putting.

Is this the same BNet forums that flipped shit when the StarCraft II beta came out? I seem to remember them complaining that it "bastardized" the original StarCraft and would never have the worldwide renown the original had. Yeah, screw those guys.

Yup, adding to the chorus. Those forums are the worst, and absolutely not to be trusted.

Haha! YES, I completely agree with you! Browsing those forums for more than ten minutes makes your brain cells die. They complain about every single tiny little thing, and it's just constant whining.

100% agree, damned if you do , damned if you don't is the mentality over there. I enjoyed Diablo 3 so more of that is just fine by me.

So what's wrong with it then? Somebody summarize, I can't bothered enough to go to reddit or BNet.

Perhaps some of you guys should actually read the thread linked in the OP instead of dismissing it without knowing anything. There are no whining and empty complaints in there and instead a lot of very detailed feedback. You don't become an MVP by posting garbage constantly.

Wonder what's more useful, that particular bnet thread filled with detailed feedback or this GB thread where half the people complain about bnet posters?

@humanity: is that a bad thing? It was good enough for you to beat 3 TIMES.

Sorry, but the D3 bnet forums have just about zero credibility with me. I learned my lesson after D3 was released. That place is a hell hole filled with nonconstructive, hateful, immature, and unintelligent negativity. Every once in a blue moon a constructive poster would pop up, but it was the exception rather than the rule. Since you didn't actually bother to list of anything wrong with the expansion itself, I can't take you that seriously either. That isn't to say that I'm going to rush out and pre purchase it, but you'll have to excuse me if I don't join the D3 hate-train.

Don't forget the people who try to convince the ones in this thread that that thread is worthwhile but don't provide a single example of a reasonable argument.

@yi_orange: People like you are the reason these forums need an ignore button.

@pr1mus said:

Asking people to educate themselves is an exercise in futility. You'll be a lot happier if you just ignore the ignorant.

@oldirtybearon: If one person reads the feedback then its a win! But yeah i'm not holding my breath, especially with the kind of response i got 2-3 posts above.

@humanity: that was my experience exactly. I got to feeling like a lab rat going after pellets and decided to uninstall.

@pr1mus: Well, the bnet forums have a bad reputation for a reason. My experience is that the loud majority on those forums have fought against change time and time again, even when it proved positive. Exp packs to WoW is a good example, SC II beta an even better one.

That's not to say that the complaints in that thread isn't valid though, but I understand people dismissing the forum because of that reputation.

Reaper of Souls looks okay, it's still miles away from Titan Quest and D2 (neither of which is close to perfect) but they're gradually making steps in the right direction. I feel confident that 5 more expansions down the line Diablo 3 will be a good game.

I am reading through the thread at the moment. I am no D3 expert by any stretch, but I do have a lvl 60 DH with maybe 12-15 prestige lvls, so I have played it a lot. I understand some of the complaints I have read so far, but some of the hyperbole is taxing me. Saying Blizzard games are "marginally better than the bs that EA shovels out" is ridiculous to me considering how much time and care you can tell are put into their games, including D3. Yes, some of their choices may have been poor, but it appears those choices are being corrected. Really, the game is not going to be Diablo 2, and it seems like a lot of gripes go back to comparing and contrasting D3 to D2. But what was changed are fundamental design choices, and while some are being amended (like the auction house) others are staying no matter how loud the internet talk gets. If the expansion is anything like the expansion to D2, then I will be a happy camper. If it is severely lacking, then it will be disappointing. Given Blizzard's track record, though, I would say that they deserve my good faith. One sub-par launch is a small drop in the bucket compared to some other companies mistakes. Bioware, I am looking at you...

Diablo 3 turned me off of ARPGs altogether, and I played Diablo 2 for years. I still can't believe that they dropped the ball so hard on that game.

These type of continued forum posts are tired. For now on can you all just start every post, "Whaaaaaaaaa"

I think I might finally give it a shot on PS4. The fact that it's getting forum nerd rage is like a gold seal of approval.

Yeah I think I'm going to finally give it a go on PS4 as well. Hopefully it's super polished and fleshed the fuck out for the PS4 version.

Apologies I suppose for being dismissive of the original OP.

I admit I didn't read it. I didn't really want too.

In fact, I don't really WANT to write this right now. But I got this keyboaaaaard maaaaaaayne!

<3

It's not bad. Certainly had my fair share of fun with it. It was just surprising how instantly the charm turned off, but then again as I said, did play the same thing over 3 times in a row.

My feelings on ROS are a little mixed right now (now this is based purely on my experience with the PTR, I don't have a beta key). I will be playing day one but I agree that it has a lot of issues that likely will not be fixed at launch. Still I have 2500+ hours invested in D3 and I'm definitely itching to play the new content.

Diablo 3 was a fantastic game up until Inferno(which was a horrible experience) and with the auction house gone, I can't see how any expansion could be that bad, it'll just be more areas to explore with the same well designed combat system.

So it is more of the same then, huh? Didn't really look all that promising to begin with.

Blizzard just aren't what they used to be. You can see it in every one of their franchises. They are trying to be all things to all people, and that just doesn't work. Won't be surprised when Reaper of Souls doesn't fix much of anything.

I played ~50 hours of Diablo 3 (in Korean) so I wasn't able to really follow the story super well until after I watched some videos on YouTube. The story was so bad! Like, Saturday morning cartoons bad. On top of that, the whole AH-based progress kinda bummed me out. I wanted good, relevant drops to my character to show up at least a few times in 1 playthrough. I don't want to grind for it or pay gold for them.

~50 hours is decent for a full-price game, but it definitely felt like a lesser experience than Diablo 2. I'll be skipping the expansion. Just like I skipped the Starcraft 2 expansion.

For someone who has not played Diablo i will still probably get the PS4 version. Hope the Expansion pack end up being decent.

Regardless of how the expansion turns out, I recently bought D3 on console and I'm quite enjoying myself (while can still acknowledge its flaws), so I think I'm good for a while anywhoo. Now if only I could just stop creating new characters...

blizzard has been releasing sub-blizzard quality games for a while now, i wish they would stop doing that and make games up to their own high standards instead