Diablo III - Opinions, pros and cons, reviews etc.

[Laurrrr]

I am not updated with the gaming world anymore but from what I can see people started to play it and as such I opened this thread for opinions on the game, a few reviews maybe(yeah right...)and so forth...

So come on, enlighten me with your opinions.

[jowshie]

My take on this is that people are too fast to compare a fresh game to games that have had years and years (In the case of D2 over a decade) of development and patching. If anyone here remembers the release of d2 it was waaaay worse than anything we are seeing now.

Blizz has said in the past that their goal at release is not a balanced or perfect or complete game, but a fundamentally playable game that at low levels feels reasonably balanced.

Their philosophy is that they will not be able to completely balance the game till the hordes of players get their hands on it.

I fully believe that the two main complaints that people have been having (lack of balance and lack of interesting high end items) will counteract one another, in a suspiciously pre-calculated sort of way.

Take as an example the many threads complaining about the difficulty of inferno. They never are complaining that Inferno is too hard, it is supposed to be hard. They are complaining that Wizards are able to exploit and solo farm it, while their barb cannot, or something of the sort.

The issue is not the difficulty of inferno, it is that the classes are not well balanced. In order to make this not completely suck forever, there are no real gamebreaking or truly high-end worthy legendaries or craftables enabled at this time.

I believe that shortly after we see the game settle down and perform closely to how it is intended (Inferno is for groups of high level and highly geared characters working as a team, and is balanced to be a challange even then) we will see a roll out of the true top tier gear (legendaries that deserve the name, craftables that count for anything, basically rares will no longer be king of all loot in every slot).

I also believe that with the addition of new and more interesting affixes on items the main stats will play a smaller role in gear, though they will still be important. Right now people complain frequently that various affixes are useless when compared to your class' stat and vitality, and this is largely true. There are good affixes and bad affixes, in order for there to be good items there must also be bad items to compare them to. The issue is that to date there are not many interesting affixes, it very much feels like a bare bones system that is just enough to let people get at the whole game and really experience it.

I also find it interesting that the Real Money Auction House is not active yet, which would be the biggest issue with this type of a bare bones approach, letting people pay real money for items that in a couple months are rendered useless when the full complement is rolled out would be kind of a dick move.

Anyway, this is just my hopeful and I believe plausible theory, it is entirely possible that things just are not as great as they wanted it to be. I do hold true to my statement at the beginning of the wall of text that it is not fair to compare a game at release to a game with a full expansion and a decade of development and I have confidence that the game will get deeper, better, and more compelling as time goes on.

[ASYLUM101]

I haven't played it but from what I've heard - people have already found the godmode build for the wizard.

If you remember from Guild Wars, there was a monk build that made the monk unkillable - the notorious 55 monk build.

Well the same one exists (skills are almost exactly the same) for D3, it took them a WEEK to find that build.

That's kinda sad. A week to find the PERFECT gear and skill setup to become god. LOL

[Veji]

I have to agree with Jowshie on many things he/she has stated here.

I am currently halfway through Act III on normal mode and I am having a blast with this game.

I'm the kinda person that works full time and has a life, so no, i'm not already farming Inferno, but from what i've done so far, its really a pretty nice game and alot of that is do to Blizzard's way of polishing.

Is it the greatest ARPG to date, oh no. Is it something I am going to play and enjoy with (or without friends)? You bet.

It does feel 'dumbed down' a little bit. I have to agree with stats, other than vitality and your character's main stat, just seem to be distractions - even a lowbie level. Its almost like they tried to overall simplify an already simple system and just had all these "other" random stats that they figured would add more of an rpg element to them.

As far as the skill "trees" (or lack thereof), its neat, but not clear and cut. You might get a rune or skill at low level that beats any rune or skill after it and therefore, makes it more of gimmick. In WoW, they've done several revisions to trim gimmick skills, so why are we seeing them here?

I think Jowshie hit the nail on the head by stating that this game can't be compared to any other game thats had "x" amount of years of development and has been live for quite some time. When Blizzard begins balancing and fine-tuning things, i thing D3 will be a rich and rewarding experience at the level cap and for any expansions that come out. For right now though, I feel that D3 is a nice distraction between games like Guild Wars 2, Torchlight 2, and Grim Dawn.

I would also like to add, don't believe the hype - good or bad.

[CrocMagnum]

Jeez! another DIII thread!

As a hack’n’slash DIII is a great game, no doubt about it. There are some problems with DIII but they have nothing to do with gameplay :

It is clear that game was a bit rushed, and to be honest it has nothing to do with Blizzard!

You see in the world of videogames the Diablo Community is one of the strongest. And like every Community it has its share of whiners.

But lately (2011-2012) this bunch of whiners wanted DIII so badly that they started to ‘pollute’ the Internet with their endless claims (blogs, boards, Youtube,…). To reflect this 'unbearable wait' a talented singer even sang an excellent parody. His name is Terrence Jay and the song is called It Will Rain Diablo III :



Note: it’s even on itunes.

You know this reminds me of the Mass Effect 3 Ending Scandal. ME 3 was a good game, but the 'Biggest Shitstorm in the History of Gaming' (as I call it) started with a single post written by a Bioware Forum member, EL_Spiko, who decided to fill an FTC complaint [Note: FTC = Federal Trade Commission] against Electronic Art for 'False Advertising'! To be honest an FTC judgement has no 'legal validity', but isn't it a shame for a gamer to go legal for a frigging videogame ending? Come on! Get a life, pal! Nonetheless things went so high that Bioware had to release a DLC with a reworked ending:

Bioware Issues Third Response To Mass Effect 3 Ending Scandal

Hem! What's the point with DIII? The thing is: Whiners are not the majority but it's amazing how loud they can bark sometimes...

DIII was rushed because of those fans:

- they wanted a Barbarian again, they got it,

- they wanted their game fast, they got it, but all this rushing came with a price:

- PVP delayed,

- Auction House delayed, etc...

Now you can count on Blizzard to patch the game to death and releases new classes one day, but the balancing will take more time, I guess.

Note: now concerning my opinion on DIII: If you need to be permantly connected to the Internet and can't mod your game, you can't possibly sell your soft for 60 bucks. But they did it nonetheless. Of course that's just my two cent, but the no-modding thingy is what pretty much sealed it for me (much more than the permanent internet connection).

[jowshie]

I would say that most of my predictions seem to have been confirmed in the most recent post regarding the planned updates.

While they do not come right out and say that they were intentionally holding back the higher end content, it is clear from the portion on changing legendaries accross the board that what we have so far is intended to play the role of placeholders.

I think that despite the bad press (asuming that my suspicions are borne out) Blizzard has done a good job of allowing the early imbalanced builds to be found and fixed before allowing truly economy- or game- breaking things to occur.

[Ttandc]

If someone could compare it to titanquest that would be great I'd be interested to know what the size of the levels are like when compared to the size of the levels in titanquest.

I recently heard more bad news about D3 and if it's true I would really be worried about the online auction house when using real money.

Here's the link to the news

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/goodgame/stories/s3513644.htm

but it just says

Diablo 3 accounts are getting hacked

There have been a growing number of reports of Diablo 3 accounts being hacked. In many cases the affected accounts have been stripped of all in game items and gold. Blizzard has stated that so far all cases investigated were hacked through “traditional means”, adding that no accounts protected by authenticators were breached. However several victims of the hack have claimed they were using the authenticators.

More news here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84jkqt-exyk

And check out this vid for full details from a victum

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=hcEhuSyMhPU

Looks like players might have to shell out more money to get the authenticator but some people are saying they had the authenticator and they still got hacked. All I can say is please my gaming brothers and sisters be VERY VERY careful if you are going to connect your paypal account or similar to the battle.net for the auction house.

Actually this is really important info so I might make a thread on it.

[Medea Fleecestealer]

Yet another reason never to play online. How could this game possibly have been rushed. CrocMagnum? It was what, 3-4 years behind original release date? And how many years before that did they decide to make it?

There is a sort of comparison thread Ttandc, but it more what people like/don't like about the two games. Personally, having never played a Diablo in any of its incarnations I think comparing the new one to one that's been out for 6 six years is a little unfair to both. Better to wait until next year (hopefully) and compare D3 to Grim Dawn. That will be a better comparison, given how things have moved on in gaming design.

[Shalie]

I have bought the game and have been enjoying it whenever my free time allowed it. Which hasn't been often sadly, I'm still only in Act 2 Normal.

One thing that has disappointed me is the lack of a singleplayer mode. I don't mind having to be online all the time to play, except that there have been 2 evenings already that the servers were overloaded/down for maintenance and you're just locked out of playing. Very frustrating if that happens during your only free time of the day

The game itself is fun though, and I think I'll like the item drop system. It seems to promote farming for good rares, kind of like TQ promotes farming for good MI's.

[jowshie]

Medea, I totally agree that GD and D3 will be a more fair comparison.

@Ttandc -- I got my account hacked actually, and I spoke with a representative about how it happened in a great deal of depth. I for one am not concerned at all about linking my paypal account because they would still need to crack paypal's security, which they could do anyway. The most that a hacker could do through BNet is take your blizzbucks, and Blizzard will be able to restore those at no cost to you.

Essentially what he said is that there are a variety of proxy servers right now that are skimming information, in addition to the typical (semi-bogus) lines about phishing, keyloggers, etc. In my opinion people with Authenticators should be safe by in large, the only danger is from a man-in-the-middle type malware since the password is generated new every 30 seconds. In addition for those with a smartphone you can get the free mobile authenticator which does not use a data plan either.

I realize that my comments may come off a bit fanboyish, but I assure you I am as frustrated as anyone that the endgame is currently very thin, that there are balance issues, and that there have been hacking vulnurabilities, but I think you will find that the main issue is a jmajor case of the squeaky wheel.

The majority of posters are people who are dissatisfied, if this were not the case it would defy logic. If you love a game, and it just came out, and everyone who is posting about it is hating on it, why would you bother arguing instead of playing the game?

I think that the complaints people have are largely shortsighted, the balance and endgame issues will be dealt with in early patches and frankly it would have been unreasonable to expect a fully balanced game at release.

The hacking is not on a scale different from other big releases, such as WoW expansions. It is just the RMAH that is getting people concerned, and that is why the RMAH is not released yet. They are working to enhance the security, but to think that any untested security can be relied on is silly.

The cookie cutter nature of builds that people complain about is A) not true (the most popular spec, even if you allow people to have different passives, is only used by 0.7% of lvl 60 toons of the relevant class) B) based around exploits that will or have been fixed.

I personally hate that you have to be online to play, I think there is no reason not to allow solo play offline, if people want to edit/hack/w/e their game then go for it. I know that the intention is to keep the code as secret as possible so that people cannot find ways to hack it, but I think that eliminating the ability to play when their servers are down is a dick move.