Tech and Talk > Gaming > PC gaming GAMES > [D3] Savious' Diablo 3 Log

reply to Slydermv

Re: [D3] Savious' Diablo 3 Log

said by Slydermv:

said by Krisnatharok:

said by Savious:

The game is definitely not on par graphically with games like The Old Republic

ahahahahahahaha. And SWTOR is about 3-4 years behind the curve, too.

My comment about 2003 stands.

SW:TOR has also been in development for like...what did they say? Five? Six years? 2007 probably is about right.
--
Lore Nerd. Role Player. Raid Leader. Healing Priest. Slightly Annoying. Also Likes Kittens.

reply to Krisnatharok

said by Krisnatharok:

said by Savious:

Is it a grindfest? No, not at all. When I think of grinding I think of fighting a few mobs at a time, slowly leveling and doing quest and running back to town and getting new quest and training and blah blah blah.

This is not that game at all. I am running through a dungeon, disintegrating piles of creatures and getting bonus XP for killing 20 creatures in a row. Im AOEing massive groups of mobs and then finishing off the onesies twosies with a powerful magic missile.

So what do you call running the dungeon and killing the Skeleton King dozens of times to pick up the crafter pages and getting epic drops from the boss to DE into mats to craft better gear?

Haha. The thing about MFing is that its fun. Theres a difference. At least when your MFing for better gear, you can do it for all your characters at once, not just the one you are playing with.

Also, to be fair, people are grinding the skeleton king to death because there is nothing left to do. Its funny because he is not even one of the Lesser Evils like Andariel or Duriel from D2. He reminds me of Blood Raven, a weak boss from Act 1, the second quest you did in Diablo 2.

If this is any inclination at the length of D3, I think we will have 30+ hours of gameplay to get through the story in normal, thats if you explore most of the map intead of jumping to the next zone as soon as you find it.

I thought I would type a little more indepth about my beta experiences, with a little back log this time. Skip to the review below if you dont care about my life.

Like many of you, my Diablo experience began in 1997 when my grandfather gave me his copy of Diablo because he didnt like it very much.

I was immediately fascinated by the game, but had no clue how to play. I remembered a friend telling me about Hexen, where you through potions at people, so I thought this might be the same sort of deal. I kept picking up the potions off my belt and trying to throw them at monsters. I died. I respawned and read the potion. Well that makes more sense!

So I began making my way through the game with my Rogue. I made it all the way to Diablo by myself, but I could not beat him. My uncle who was also playing the game at the time told me to equip a sword and shield and just go beat on him, but that didnt really make sense to me, nor did it work.

We sat there for hours with my terrible character build with equipment that made no sense trying to beat him, and finally we did.

Afterwards, I decided to log onto battle.net and try my hand at multiplayer. Now, if you have ever played Diablo 1 on battle.net, you will be very familiar with the phrase "duping". I became a duping master, then a duping hater, leader of a group of players that played legit, then went back to duping because it was fun. Good times.

When Diablo 2 was announced, I visited diabloii.net everyday and poured over every bit of information that I could get my hands on. After the game finally came out, I made a Paladin and god he was terrible. The differences between Diablo 2 and 1 were that skills were no longer given to you by reading a book that all characters had access too, but rather a skill tree akin to WoW talents. Wanting to explore everything, I put 1 point in each skill so I could have every talent available to me.

Needless to say, had I not been playing on closed (characters were saved on Bnet servers to prevent as much cheating as possible) Bnet, I would never have beaten Diablo.

But I joined a game and got carried through the Chaos Sanctuary by a pair of corpse explosion necromancers and a sorceress.

Then I immediately made a jump to Hardcore mode. For the next 3 years, I would play nothing but Hardcore, losing countless characters and gear. Prior to the expansion, I never made it past level 44 out of 99 levels. Diablo 2 prior to expansion was really hard, especially on 56k internet and a computer that could use an upgrade. Any sort of delay or pause or blink of the eye could mean your character was dead. It was quite fun though.

After the expansion came out and unique items were handed out like candy, the game became 10 times easier, but was still just as fun, as now there was so many things to aquire and try. Lightning Fury Amazon, Hammerdin, WW Barb, Poison Nova Necro, Elemental Druid, Trapasin, Nova Sorc???!! Just to start with anyways.

Eventually in 2004 I switched back to normal because a close personal friend decided to pick the game up and play on Bnet. This was the last time that I played on Bnet heavily, and lasted until about 2006 when WoW became my new crack.

Since then I have played off and on while going to various training events for the Army in my free time and during my deployment to Iraq in 2010-2011.

-ACTUAL DIABLO 3 BETA REVIEW-

Yesterday was my first experience with D3, and I will have to say I was extremely impressed.

The game is downloaded and updated much the same as SC2 and WoW is now.

Once I logged in, I was given the option to make a private game or be auto matched with people on the same quest I was. I noticed their were only 3 games for level 1 characters, which didnt suprise me with how long the beta has been out, so I made a private game to go through the beta myself.

I chose the Wizard and began my journey to the skeleton king. I killed a few zombies and made it to the gates of New Tristram, where I found several guards under attack by a pile of zombies. We worked together and defeated them and I was granted access into New Tristram. I explored the town a bit, the transition from one building to the next is done seemlessly with a black screen for a second or so. The town itself is dreary and dark, as it should be. The townsfolk are all upset and depressed, as would you if your town was being attacked by zombies. Torches shimmer in the dark and there is a definent sense of dread. Loved it.

I made my way out into the wilderness, unimpressed so far with the linear path that I was forced on prior to entering New Tristram. I was rewarded with a wide open area to explore about, just like some areas in Diablo 2. I love dungeons, but I also liked all the areas to explore and random elite and rare monsters to fight in the large open areas.

I was sent out on a quest to find Cain again, and after rescuing him I was told to go find and kill the skeleton king. I headed into the Cathedral and began my descent into the depths of Hell. The Cathedral is beautiful in a abandoned bombed out sort of way. Long forgotten consturction projects and repairs lay strewn about, awaiting your character to smash through them. Hordes of creatures away your AoE spells to try and break your record for consecutive kills (27 for me!) and barrells and urns can be destroyed with spells and attacks.

Which is awesome, by the way, because the more destruction and havoc you cause, the more bonus experience you get. When I killed 27 monsters in a row I think I was rewarde with 500 bonus experience or something. If you ever played the Sercret Cow Level in Diablo 2, imagaine rounding all those up and getting the bonus for one Lightning Fury Javeline =D.

I came across a few packs of Champion like creatures with bonus modifiers like Frozen, Electrified and Plagued. When they die they release AoE spells or abilities that are really damaging. Those are going to be a bitch in later difficulties.

I picked up a follower (merc for D2 reference) and trained him to heal me. You get to pick a few skills for your followers, which is nice.

About then is when I found a sword with +14 max damage, and the game rewarded me with a massive damage bonus. All skills seem to be dependant on your weapon damage now, rather than how many points you have in the skill, a great trade off. I hated having the best equipment in the D2 be the stuff that gave you + to skills on caster characters. For example, the first AoE spell you get deals 225% weapon damage. So the higher damage your weapon or weapon and off hand item do, the better off you are.

I made my way to the skeleton king and after a lot of kiting I defeated him. Yes, the game was fairly easy up to this point. I wasn't expecting the 3rd quest in Normal mode to be a challenge for me, so that was fine. Inferno mode I imagine will be a whole other bag of tricks.

After that, I went to see how many games were available to kill the Skeleton King, and relieved to find over 100. I clicked join and within seconds I was in a public game. Upon arriving I was greeted with the Banners of everyone else in the game. Clicking the banner brought me down to that characters exact position in the dungeon. Think Town Portal except its always up and always right to the person rather than a random spot. It will be scary to jump down someones banner portal in Hardcore mode, I wouldnt do it unless it was someone I trusted.

Along the way I picked up some scorlls of training and was able to train the black smith in some new items. I was even able to make a rare item. I dont know what level of items drop from the Skeleton King, but I didnt see any uniques, just a rare. I havent pressed forward with the crafting or anyhting, but you can salvage any item to get crafting materials, create something, then salvage it again with your Nephalm Cube. Pretty neat, and really easy. Think of the Imbue quest in Diablo 2 and thats what crafting is now. Thankfully, you can do it as many times as you have supplies, instead of once per difficulty.

I joined a few more multiplayer games and noticed that a lot of the people I was playing with had three times as much HP as I did, so I imagine they have been farming the skeleton king for quite some time now. I dont think I will go that deep into the rabbit hole, not with such a small portion of the game available, but I will definently run through the game with each class. I have seen very few monks, I think only 2, 5-6 witch doctors and demon hunters, most everyone else is either a barbarian or wizard, for those of you wanting to play the less popular classes when the game comes out.

I didnt come across any bugs or features that were annoying. I do like the new system for skills, where they are unlocked automatically rather than placing points in various skills to get other skills, ala talent trees or skill trees. Its very intuitive and easy to play with, and a smaller hot bar for potions and now they are stackable!!! Woo!

Shared stash is cool, I found some stuff for monks and barbarians and through it in my stash, made a new character and pulled out the gear just like that.

So, the down and dirty here.

Props - New skill system, ease of jumping in a game, crafting, followers, "feel" of the game, destructible terrain, bonus XP for killing and desctrution sprees, bonus xp for finding lore items, shrine timers!!!!

Slops - Graphics, only 4 players in a game (8 in D2), too short for the beta!!!, no runes to play with (yet)

Overall - This will be epic!
--
DSLR's #1 Diablo 3 Fan.

reply to Krisnatharok
So that is that, as they say.
--
DSLR's #1 Diablo 3 Fan.

reply to Savious
So in other words more of the same. If you liked D1 or D2 you'll like D3. But nothing much that is really innovative and the game hits the grinding fpr loot after just 30 hours, or about $2 per hour.

reply to Savious
One question? If people can't assume a game will be bad based on a beta, how can they assume it will be "EPIC" based on a beta?

reply to Goodmongo

reply to Slydermv

reply to Slydermv
I invite you to look at the history of D2 on the wikipedia page, with this table as a frame of refernce for what we are dealing with.

Entity Award
Guinness Book of World Records Fastest Selling Computer Game Ever Sold (2000)[30]

Interactive Achievement Awards Computer Game of the Year (2001)[31]

Interactive Achievement Awards Computer Role Playing Game of the Year (2001)[31]

Interactive Achievement Awards Game of the Year (2001)[31]

PC Gamer #16 "50 Best Games of All Time" (2005)[32]

PC Gamer #82 "Top 100 Games" (2007)[33]

Computer and Video Games #25 "The 101 Best PC Games Ever"
(2005)[34]

GamePro #11 "The 32 Best PC Games" (2008)[35]

Destructoid #7 "Top Video Games of the Decade" (2009)[36]
--
DSLR's #1 Diablo 3 Fan.

Re: [D3] Savious' Diablo 3 Log

reply to Savious
Ahh.. also becasue you know I've never played either game in the diablo series... thhanks again.

I have not seen your credentials, sir. There is a difference between playing Diablo, and PLAYING Diablo. Please, enlighten me as to what your experiences with are Diablo and I will judge whether you are worthy or not.
--
DSLR's #1 Diablo 3 Fan.

reply to Slydermv
I also recall you posting in the D3 coming to consoles thread about how the gameplay is shit poor? So I did a quick hunt through all your post from the last 90 days, and noticed you post mainly in ToR and WoW threads, with a dash of Skyrim.

I challenge you to explain why D3 has shit poor game play, at least validate your opinion with something, so I can atleast attempt to respect it.

Have you even played the beta?
--
DSLR's #1 Diablo 3 Fan.

reply to Savious
Difference is caps lock? Seriously, you can't dismiss anyone's opinions even if they are playing the series for the first time, we are all gamers here and we have our opinions on what is a good or a bad game.

Open your mind a little it helps.
--
"Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."

reply to Savious
So it was a big deal in 2001, in 2005 was 16 out of 50, (bad sadly dropped to 82 out of 100 by 2007) according to PC gamer, and made a couple other top X lists (breaking the top 10 in 1 of them) and this is impressive? lolol

I'm sure there are hardcore pokemon players out there that think that game is the hottest shit since sliced bread as well. I reserve the right not to be intrested, regardless of how many hours you put into the game. You don't sell the game very well either, and I still think your opinion don't mean jack regardless of how much you played, not more then my opinion in any case... since you know, I'm the one that will be playing it

reply to Jobbie
Im totally for being open minded, in fact, thats what my whole argument is based upon.

Ignore the graphics. The beta is such a small portion of what this game has to offer. Play the full game, come back, say you dont like it, and I will accept that.
--
DSLR's #1 Diablo 3 Fan.

This beta has gone for so long i wish more content to be added like runes to see how everything is going to add up.
--
"Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."

reply to Slydermv
Notice also that it was the fastest selling PC game of all time, compatre that to WoW, which didnt sell better until its first expansion came out.

Claiming 16th for a game that is 5 years old is pretty good, considering how much the market has expanded with the release of WoW. People forget, have newer games much fresher in their memory, etc..

I find it humurous that you would disregard my opinion on something that I am far more versed in then you are, thats being ignorant and foolish.

I have played many many PC games, console games, TCG's and even tried my hand at DnD. I love digital entertainment, mainly video games.

I have a lot to compare the Diablo series to. Ive put hours into WoW, ToR, Counter-Strike, obv Diablo, Oblvion, Star Wars Galaxies, Quake series, Duke Nukem Series, Call of Duty, Battlefield 2 and 3, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Grand Theft Auto, Descent, Starcraft, Warcraft the list goes on and on. None of these games provided the enjoyment and fun that Diablo 2 has.

Does this make me bias, yes, but it also goes to show that I am a seasoned veteran of PC games, as a matter of fact Ive probably played more video games than most people on this forum.

Take some advice from me and play this game, read all you can about it and be informed when you play, you will not regret it.
--
DSLR's #1 Diablo 3 Fan.