Quick Look: Diablo III Beta

@Wandrecanada said:

I'm still kinda sad this game looks like a homogenized reskin of D2 with less custom options than before. While I'll grant that the game is more complex and hard to pick up it strikes me that this game was never destined for console and that most PC gamers who choose to buy this game will be a little experienced already. Much of what I've seen is nothing new and/or a less complicated version of the original Diablo mechanics.

It's pretty disappointing to see another Blizzard franchise hit hard by the loss of talent after the Vivendi takeover. It seems just one more proof that Activision is leveraging the brand name of a company that no longer employs the people who made that brand great. I suppose I can't blame them for consumer partisan buying practices but I can lament the loss of what might have been.

I think it actually has more custom options when you take things like skill runes into account. I don't really consider putting another point into a skill to bring it up to the appropriate level to be very interesting in terms of "customization." I mean, putting a point into a new (non-passive) skill in Diablo II was always kind of like, "All right, awesome." Putting more points into them to keep them up to level wasn't really that interesting, though. It was just more like, "Yep, guess I have to do that."

I don't think all of that granularity of skill points really added much to the game. Most of the time, either you were going to focus on a particular skill until the diminishing returns (for skills that had them) got too dumb or you weren't. It was never like, "Yeah, I'm totally just going to put one point into Whirlwind! That'll be great, right?" (I do realize that some select skills were plenty useful at high levels even with only point in them, but then that's kind of really just the opposite end of the same problem.)

@Forum_User said:

I think it actually has more custom options when you take things like skill runes into account. I don't really consider putting another point into a skill to bring it up to the appropriate level to be very interesting in terms of "customization." I mean, putting a point into a new (non-passive) skill in Diablo II was always kind of like, "All right, awesome." Putting more points into them to keep them up to level wasn't really that interesting, though. It was just more like, "Yep, guess I have to do that."

I don't think all of that granularity of skill points really added much to the game. Most of the time, either you were going to focus on a particular skill until the diminishing returns (for skills that had them) got too dumb or you weren't. It was never like, "Yeah, I'm totally just going to put one point into Whirlwind! That'll be great, right?" (I do realize that some select skills were plenty useful at high levels even with only point in them, but then that's kind of really just the opposite end of the same problem.)

^^

Especially when you consider that stat point allocation became so uniform, that it ceased to be a choice. For every build other than ES sorc, it was 'enough str/dex to eq your gear, all other points into vit, nothing into energy'. There was no real choice to be made in that area because vitality dominated the other attributes in usefulness, especially energy which was effectively useless, even for casters(aside from the previously mentioned ES sorcs).

Likewise with skills, you'd pick the couple of skills the build was centered around, and max those, otherwise you'd only put 1 point in prerequisites, and you'd maybe find an alternate skill to max in case of immunes. It's not as those each skill point allocation represented an actual choice. You start out and say 'I'm making a meteorb sorceress', and basically all your skill and stat allocations follow from that one choice. You aren't going to make a meteorb sorc and go 'you know what, I think I'll skip frozen orb this level', you put a point into it every level from the time you unlock it till you max it. Those 20 skill allocations were not choices, you made one choice, that you were builing a meteorb sorc, so obviously you are going to max frozen orb. there are a handful, maybe a dozen or so actual decisions that you can make in building an actual viable build different from any other version of the same build in diablo II, and most of the choices revolve around what to do with the last handful of skill points, like whether you want more utility or an extra damage spell for immune or double immune monsters.

The runestone system, in theory at least, allows the potential for actual choice, choice that fundamentally alters playstyle, like adding knockback or stuns to spells instead of more damage. You can customize your build around your playstyle, not the 1 or 2 effective skills that you like the most. Since the runestones actually change the gameplay, it can't just be decided by a spreadsheet that you would obviously want to take X synergy skill instead of Y because X adds 15% to the damage output of your main ability and Y only adds 10%. A spreadsheet can't mathematically determine whether a slowing rune or a knockback rune or a stun rune is better, it depends on your individual playstyle.

It will be interesting to see how well the runestone system is balanced in reality, but on paper is does seem to offer more actual choices than DII's skill and stat systems ever did.

Damn, can we get the volume of the Dead Island trailer equalized? It's like 10x louder than normal volume, blows out my speakers when the actual video is at normal volume.

It looks like they learned a lot from WoW and used that here...

I was afraid they'd do that.

Somewhere along the way all the little annoyances with the direction of this game has cooled me completely on it. I doubt I'll even end up buying it.

Oh, and what the fuck is up with the voice acting? Sound was a big thing in D1 & D2. Matt Uelmen's awesome soundtrack and the awesome (and slightly over the top) voice acting mattered a lot. Judging by the video, the beta has me worried in that regard. They're in Tristram and we aren't hearing an awesome new version of the Tristram theme and most of the voices are dreadful.

I'm still hoping I've got it totally wrong.

The first cave in Diablo 2 was the Den of Evil.

Yeah, looks cool. I'll get into it eventually.

@Mumrik said:

It looks like they learned a lot from WoW and used that here...

I was afraid they'd do that.

Somewhere along the way all the little annoyances with the direction of this game has cooled me completely on it. I doubt I'll even end up buying it.

Oh, and what the fuck is up with the voice acting? Sound was a big thing in D1 & D2. Matt Uelmen's awesome soundtrack and the awesome (and slightly over the top) voice acting mattered a lot. Judging by the video, the beta has me worried in that regard. They're in Tristram and we aren't hearing an awesome new version of the Tristram theme and most of the voices are dreadful.

I'm still hoping I've got it totally wrong.

I have the same thoughts. But I will probably end up buying it and playing it through with a friend or two. After that I'll probably leave it with a bitter taste on my tongue.

This game doesn't look satanic enough at this point.

I liked the end.

"Why does that guy use a mac is he retarded"

This will be the best game ever.

Does anyone have a link to the Diablo 3 requirements analyzer they talked about at the end? I can't find it for the life of me.

Oh my god...................... Want.....

What a cute collection of Diablo nerds doing this QL!

This game doesn't look satanic enough at this point.

Never played Diablo before but this looks pretty good

@Chrjz: This is just Act I though, it will get worse the further you get ;) Just like Diablo 2.

Click Count FTW.

@Chrjz said:

@MrKlorox

This game doesn't look satanic enough at this point.

I feel the same way. For a game called Diablo and a successor to D2 it needs more of that satanic feel... Everything else seems pretty awesome

Added to Blizzard dev notes: "Forums say needs more pentagrams."

@ultimatepunchrod said:

ive never played diablo online. does anyone know if you have to/its encouraged?

EDIT: so witch doctor=druid im fine with that

You don't have to in the older games, but this game will require you to always be connected, yes. (I would definitely recommend playing Diablo II online peronsally, though!)

As for the Witch Doctor, he/she is much more similar to the Necromancer than the Druid. I WISH it was more like the Druid. The Druid was my favorite class from Diablo II. I hope we will see him (or something similar) return in an expansion again this time around.

Dave should've sat in on this QL.

I don't get it... game looks boring -__-

@deadmanforking said:

Only Diablo style game I've played was Torchlight, and didn't like it....So I guess I wont like this.

I'm not trying to argue with you over your own tastes here and say that you will, but I wouldn't discount it just because of Torchlight. Torchlight was offline, single-player only. Bringing other players into the mix to interact and cooperate with changes things greatly. I love these types of games and even I found the classes and the skills in Torchlight pretty bland and not fun to use compared to others in the genre.

Man o man cant wait! Really hope the beta gets increased real fast, this looks great. Old school awesomeness, still looking forward to Torchlight 2 also though.

Yay!

Yay! PC.

Do the dogs get heath when you do?

Maybe they should have waited another decade before getting rid of the sprite based graphics, because as far as I can tell, these polygonal graphics still don't hold up to the pre-rendered sprites of the first two games.

And with a static camera, it's not like polygons add a lot anyway, at least not to the character graphics.

Lovin' Matt Rorie's commentary!

I'm only buying this game if it includes some TF2 hats

@iamblades said:

@Forum_User said:

I think it actually has more custom options when you take things like skill runes into account. I don't really consider putting another point into a skill to bring it up to the appropriate level to be very interesting in terms of "customization." I mean, putting a point into a new (non-passive) skill in Diablo II was always kind of like, "All right, awesome." Putting more points into them to keep them up to level wasn't really that interesting, though. It was just more like, "Yep, guess I have to do that."

I don't think all of that granularity of skill points really added much to the game. Most of the time, either you were going to focus on a particular skill until the diminishing returns (for skills that had them) got too dumb or you weren't. It was never like, "Yeah, I'm totally just going to put one point into Whirlwind! That'll be great, right?" (I do realize that some select skills were plenty useful at high levels even with only point in them, but then that's kind of really just the opposite end of the same problem.)

^^

Especially when you consider that stat point allocation became so uniform, that it ceased to be a choice. For every build other than ES sorc, it was 'enough str/dex to eq your gear, all other points into vit, nothing into energy'. There was no real choice to be made in that area because vitality dominated the other attributes in usefulness, especially energy which was effectively useless, even for casters(aside from the previously mentioned ES sorcs).

Likewise with skills, you'd pick the couple of skills the build was centered around, and max those, otherwise you'd only put 1 point in prerequisites, and you'd maybe find an alternate skill to max in case of immunes. It's not as those each skill point allocation represented an actual choice. You start out and say 'I'm making a meteorb sorceress', and basically all your skill and stat allocations follow from that one choice. You aren't going to make a meteorb sorc and go 'you know what, I think I'll skip frozen orb this level', you put a point into it every level from the time you unlock it till you max it. Those 20 skill allocations were not choices, you made one choice, that you were builing a meteorb sorc, so obviously you are going to max frozen orb. there are a handful, maybe a dozen or so actual decisions that you can make in building an actual viable build different from any other version of the same build in diablo II, and most of the choices revolve around what to do with the last handful of skill points, like whether you want more utility or an extra damage spell for immune or double immune monsters.

The runestone system, in theory at least, allows the potential for actual choice, choice that fundamentally alters playstyle, like adding knockback or stuns to spells instead of more damage. You can customize your build around your playstyle, not the 1 or 2 effective skills that you like the most. Since the runestones actually change the gameplay, it can't just be decided by a spreadsheet that you would obviously want to take X synergy skill instead of Y because X adds 15% to the damage output of your main ability and Y only adds 10%. A spreadsheet can't mathematically determine whether a slowing rune or a knockback rune or a stun rune is better, it depends on your individual playstyle.

It will be interesting to see how well the runestone system is balanced in reality, but on paper is does seem to offer more actual choices than DII's skill and stat systems ever did.

This is a superb post and captures exactly why I'm excited about D3 (and why I was a bit disappointed in the QL for not showing off any runes).

Every time I see the thumbnail that barb chick gets bigger and bigger.

Brad: Those arent dogs...
Matt:  Theyre puppies!  
 
Matt Rorie is amazing

"Stay a while and Horadric Cube" may be the best thing that I've heard on this site in a while.

@IkariNoTekken said:

Die-ab-low within the first 20 seconds, this is gonna be really hard for me to watch.

It's Dee-ab-low, people!!

You have harshly missed the point, good sir.

NIce

"As you level up, you don't drop points into any of this stuff."
 
"Good"
 
No, BAD. Man does not live by dopamine alone!
 
"A bit of a min-maxxer"
 
Everyone and their grandmother is that; a min-maxer puts the same value in the effort as in the rewards.

This brings back hours and hours of lost time. This is the one time I really wish I was in a Beta. Also this is a day one buy, obviously.

@sissylion said:

"Stay a while and Horadric Cube" may be the best thing that I've heard on this site in a while.

Agreed x1000, I went back just to watch that part.

@iamblades said:

@Forum_User said:

I think it actually has more custom options when you take things like skill runes into account. I don't really consider putting another point into a skill to bring it up to the appropriate level to be very interesting in terms of "customization." I mean, putting a point into a new (non-passive) skill in Diablo II was always kind of like, "All right, awesome." Putting more points into them to keep them up to level wasn't really that interesting, though. It was just more like, "Yep, guess I have to do that."

I don't think all of that granularity of skill points really added much to the game. Most of the time, either you were going to focus on a particular skill until the diminishing returns (for skills that had them) got too dumb or you weren't. It was never like, "Yeah, I'm totally just going to put one point into Whirlwind! That'll be great, right?" (I do realize that some select skills were plenty useful at high levels even with only point in them, but then that's kind of really just the opposite end of the same problem.)

^^

Especially when you consider that stat point allocation became so uniform, that it ceased to be a choice. For every build other than ES sorc, it was 'enough str/dex to eq your gear, all other points into vit, nothing into energy'. There was no real choice to be made in that area because vitality dominated the other attributes in usefulness, especially energy which was effectively useless, even for casters(aside from the previously mentioned ES sorcs).

Likewise with skills, you'd pick the couple of skills the build was centered around, and max those, otherwise you'd only put 1 point in prerequisites, and you'd maybe find an alternate skill to max in case of immunes. It's not as those each skill point allocation represented an actual choice. You start out and say 'I'm making a meteorb sorceress', and basically all your skill and stat allocations follow from that one choice. You aren't going to make a meteorb sorc and go 'you know what, I think I'll skip frozen orb this level', you put a point into it every level from the time you unlock it till you max it. Those 20 skill allocations were not choices, you made one choice, that you were builing a meteorb sorc, so obviously you are going to max frozen orb. there are a handful, maybe a dozen or so actual decisions that you can make in building an actual viable build different from any other version of the same build in diablo II, and most of the choices revolve around what to do with the last handful of skill points, like whether you want more utility or an extra damage spell for immune or double immune monsters.

The runestone system, in theory at least, allows the potential for actual choice, choice that fundamentally alters playstyle, like adding knockback or stuns to spells instead of more damage. You can customize your build around your playstyle, not the 1 or 2 effective skills that you like the most. Since the runestones actually change the gameplay, it can't just be decided by a spreadsheet that you would obviously want to take X synergy skill instead of Y because X adds 15% to the damage output of your main ability and Y only adds 10%. A spreadsheet can't mathematically determine whether a slowing rune or a knockback rune or a stun rune is better, it depends on your individual playstyle.

It will be interesting to see how well the runestone system is balanced in reality, but on paper is does seem to offer more actual choices than DII's skill and stat systems ever did.

I actually never thought about it like that. I was a little upset about the way they're handling spells, but this makes a lot of sense....... maybe I won't rage just yet. Good post, both quotes.

Er..hopefully this is easier than the final release? You know for the beta. Because I don't see any kind of challenge whatsoever which makes me not want to play...

@advkow: ...It's the very beginning of the game. Have you played Diablo before? The first quest is never challenging.

Well yeah..but I mean I was saying I hope that the characters are just buffed a little for stress tests? It seems to be easy to regen your health and fight the enemies, a single charcter is tearing through mobs in single hits?

@advkow said:

Well yeah..but I mean I was saying I hope that the characters are just buffed a little for stress tests? It seems to be easy to regen your health and fight the enemies, a single charcter is tearing through mobs in single hits?

Looks to be the same difficulty level as Act I normal in D II, basically meaning you should not die unless you are careless or clueless. Start a character in DII and stuff dies in like 1-2 hits as well. The only thing that possibly makes it easier is that the resources regen fast enough so you never have to go up and beat on something with your staff like you occasionally had to as a low level sorc in DII, which I see as a clear improvement. Nothing is fun about playing a squishy ranged class and have to go beat on stuff with your staff because you ran out of mana. Likewise it's not really fun to sit around waiting on regen in between battles or chugging potions so you can keep making progress. Those changes don't seem to make the combat easier exactly, just way less tedious.

The difficulty of diablo was never about fighting individual mobs, the difficulty came from large groups of mobs with certain attributes/abilities, such as the arcane enchanted mobs that wrecked vinny in this QL or the corpse worms that spawned and ate him, or large groups of ranged enemies that you can't reach because there is other stuff in your way etc. Any normal mob by itself should die pretty much instantly, the difficulty comes from tactics created by the random groupings of mobs with different abilities in different randomized parts of the levels when means you have to approach every fight differently.

The spiky difficulty level is what makes diablo so exciting. You can absolute wreck stuff and clear massive groups of mobs in seconds and feel super powerful, but if you aren't careful and run up into a certain groups of mobs and start hacking away, you will die FAST. It's all about the pace of play, having to hit some crappy mob a bunch to kill it does not make it more difficult, it just makes it boring, and it makes you feel weak. A giant barbarian with a giant 2 handed maul should crush some crappy little skeleton warrior or zombie in 1 hit.

As a hardcore d2 fan, hearing "straight out of WOW" started to get pretty annoying lol.

That ice armor spell is only "straight out of WOW" because WOW stole it from d2!

Roll the dice to see if I'm drunk.

I almost got kicked out of highschool my freshmen year because of Diablo II.

Let's see if I almost get kicked out of college because of Diablo III.

Get your third D!

Such a Torchlight rip off

/troll

Every noise in this game sounds squishy.

Props to the Imoen character in the public game.

Right when he said, "Cathedral dungeon is when things get hard" I was so excited. I want a challenge! Some dungeon crawlers are too damn easy.