Diablo III
Could've sworn there was a topic already, but couldn't find it.
So, anyone here try the new patch? Loot 2.0 is so good, 30 mins of playing and I've already replaced all my gear with better, found a legendary or two, and generally enjoyed playing. Skills feel more balanced, I've been using some that I just passed over earlier.
The game wasn't bad IMO before, but now it's just so much better. It even runs more smoothly, at least for me. New monster affixes, some of them very annoying (in a good way), increased monster density, champions might have minions of different monster class...
Simply put, Diablo 3 is better than it has ever been. It is still the mindless hack'n'slash, the plot is laughable, but most importantly, the game is enjoyable and fun. And with Reaper of Souls coming this month, I don't see how I'm able to continue with my studies.
For those who haven't dl'd the patch yet, watch out, it's huge! 6 gb huge.
So, anyone here try the new patch? Loot 2.0 is so good, 30 mins of playing and I've already replaced all my gear with better, found a legendary or two, and generally enjoyed playing. Skills feel more balanced, I've been using some that I just passed over earlier.
The game wasn't bad IMO before, but now it's just so much better. It even runs more smoothly, at least for me. New monster affixes, some of them very annoying (in a good way), increased monster density, champions might have minions of different monster class...
Simply put, Diablo 3 is better than it has ever been. It is still the mindless hack'n'slash, the plot is laughable, but most importantly, the game is enjoyable and fun. And with Reaper of Souls coming this month, I don't see how I'm able to continue with my studies.
For those who haven't dl'd the patch yet, watch out, it's huge! 6 gb huge.
2
Comments
I'm still not buying the $40 expansion; but for the first time i am considering it, which is a dramatic and very surprising turnaround, and speaks to the amount of hard work they put into improving the game.
First of all, loot 2.0 is like thousand times better than before. You can find some good loot and upgrades just by playing, and I don't mean by that playing few hours a day. Even casual player will be finding some nice items. Action House in my opinion is useless now and no wonder it will be closed soon. In short, the new loot system is finally rewarding. And some legendaries have really some crazy properties now.
Second, improved paragon level system. Not only there is no cap to it anymore, but also your paragon level is shared by all of your characters (but not between softcore and hardcore characters). The new system encourage creating more characters for your account, while the old one rather discouraged it. And now, instead of gaining flat +3%MF +3%GF per paragon level, you get your paragon points which you can distribute however you like, in a similar way to Diablo 1 and 2.
The game balance and overall combat system have been improved in my opinion. First of all, enemies have level scalling now. But, that's not all. If you find the enemies too easy (and you will pretty soon if you played this game at it's current state), you can raise the difficulty using the new system. And since life steal efficenty is greatly reduced (90%) for "legacy items" and that you won't find any items with life steal in loot 2.0, you cannot just rely on instant healing thanks to your insane DPS. You have actually to use another methods for surviving on the higher tiers of Torment Difficulty. And it's fun when fight is actually challenging and you can die. Thanks to level scalling and the new difficulty system, you don't have to beat the story mode 4 times just to get to the endgame.
Now, for fun-killers:
*Auction House. This thing shouldn't have existed in the first place. The game ought to reward you by playing it, not buying and reselling items. Plus, Diablo is a game in which you are supposed to earn a loot by killing hordes of enemies. And AH always was destroying that. Bluntly, I consider people who were buying things from AH for a real money as a idiots.
*Putting too much attention on roleplaying elements - Diablo never was a true cRPG game. It will never be, so it's pointless to treat it as a such.
*Relying too much on informations you found in the internet regarding the gameplay - Sure, you can find some good ideas and technical information, but I think that experimenting with your character is a very important fun factor in this game, especially after recent update. If you are going to blindly following guides regarding builds and such, then you're stripping away fun from the game. Instead, just make character you want and after finishing story mode, go where you want and slay what you want.
*Exploits. Often when exploits are found in this game, the're basically repeatable actions that provides you great profit. But you're going to be bored very soon.
Now, I want to say something about the story. It's not like the story of this game is terribly bad. It has a good potential, I'll say. The problem is the way the story is told. Throught rather stiff and sometimes ridiculous cutscenes (aside from cinematics, which are awesome), optional dialogues (!) and journals you can easily ignore or miss (!). This is pretty weak, and "thanks" to that, many important elements aren't ephasized at all (like Angels being divided and Demons being united). Additionally, while some characters like Zoltun Kulle are generally well-writen, some like Azmodan are written just terribly. Story is one of the game's problems that isn't going to be resolved anytime soon, I'm afraid. Not when Blizzard focuses too much on feedback from streamers, who never gave a damn about the story.
The other problem is the music. It is pretty weak in comparison to Diablo 2. This, again, is something that isn't going to be resolved soon.
Diablo III gave me pretty good time, after it's recent update. It's better in almost every aspect from before, and I have an impression that's not the end of the after-release development. If you are looking for an rpg game, then you'll be obviously dissapointed. But if you are looking for a action game with some rpg elements, then Diablo III is currently doing good on this.
So what's the point, I told myself, and put the game back to the shelf. Seriously, the core fun of the game is collecting cool items that drop from the monsters, not buying them from other players.
But...if this Loot 2.0 really changes things, maybe this game is salvageable after all.
Personally, I think patch 2.0 is a wee bit incomplete without the Reaper of Souls expansion, but its better than what we had to say the least, and it can somewhat compete with Path of Exile now.
They seem to be trying to bring back customers like me, who saw D3 as a betrayal, so I'll at least give them credit for that.
The pitiful thing is that every time I get screwed by Blizz, I take an oath never to give them another red cent, and yet, the next time they say "bend over", I wind up doing it! I have a love-hate relationship with Blizz. Mostly "hate", but then, why do I keep giving them my money? I'm already pretty sure I'm about to do it again, just so I can try the Crusader class in D3. I am hopelessly addicted to hack-n-slash swords and sorcery games, as well as "true" cRPG's like BG, unfortunately.
Beamdog can also get me to "bend over" at this point, but they still haven't gotten the hang of being "masters" at the level of Blizz; not just yet, anyway.
Now, lets be honest. D2 was a P2W game way before D3 was even thought of. Why? People used eBay or third party sites like d2jsp, and basically bought whole accounts, and gear. Basically, people were violating the ToS by using third party sites. So, Blizzard made the AH, so then people didn't have to go to third party sites to get things.
When it came to D3, the PC players got screwed. PC gamers basically paid $60 to beta test the console version of the game. However, this was repaid when console gamers had to basically beta loot 1.5, and this would become loot 2.0.
Another thing that the console version got that the PC version didn't get was offline mode, and I'm fine with it. People don't seem to realize is that the offline mode is what got D2 in it's current state. People hacked, botted, modded, and what have you to D2. Nowadays, if you log onto D2, and make a public game, you're going to get ambushed by a bunch of bots.
Ehh...back to the shelf, then...again.
Edit: Err...umm...there may have been some crazy magic involved for a mage who is well over 1000 years old to play Diablo 2 at 13.
@Cahir - There are certain points in D3's plot that are a wee bit weak. I hate A2, and to this very day I don't know which A2 is worse, D2's or D3's. That being said, A1 and A3 are my two favorite acts in D3. I've heard that Act 5 is going to be awesome when Reaper of Souls comes out.
Personally, I'm currently burnt out from D3. Mostly because I've spent the week or two after patch 2.0.1 getting all the way up to Paragon 92.
Zoltun Kulle was the best character in the game imho. He has a lot of depth available for Blizzard to play with in the expansions, we'll see if they manage to squeeze some good juice out of him.
Good point about the music. I can still hear the opening few chords of D2 in my head and remember the thrill i felt and how they sent me straight into monster slaying fantasy mode.
The music from D3 left me with... nothing. literally i had no feeling either way: it was like the music wasn't even present during the game. I think they posted a link to some new music from Act 5 on the main site, it seems to have potential, although i only listened for a few seconds. Def. agree that the story isn't the end all, but the story of D2 was compelling to me. Some of the cutscenes were actually a bit scary (Diablo bursting out of the body of the wanderer), and the idea of going down to hell to fight demons was exciting and an unexpected twist for me. I would sometimes re-watch the cut scenes in between acts. In contrast, in D3 I found myself mostly thinking how stupid the demonlords were acting and how juvenile the intended audience must have been. Maybe i paid too much attention to the forums but i didn't find any interesting twists and called most of them beforehand. I haven't watched a cutscene since the first time for each. I agree the graphics are cool, but the words make me hit esc as fast as i can. D3 is the only Blizzard game that i disliked, and i played most of them. you didn't like the star and warcrafts? not an RTS guy? I never played WOW but that game was obviously very popular for a time.
As for concerns about D3's story, I called most of the twists as well, like Leah, Adria, and Hakan. Still, the cutscene where Tyrael shows Leah exactly what he knows of sacrifice always has me tear up a little and gives me chills. And, of course, Diablo's inevitable transformation sequence is glorious in every iteration of the series. Diablo looks best in D3, as well. Dangerous, a little seductive, and full of swagger. Dat "I'm blowing up Heaven" strut.
I much prefer the previous incarnation. Much scarier looking to me.
But really you can't see anything that could be interpreted as boobs in this picture?
I hadn't even made to Diablo by the time i started seeing posts about it on the forums, but once i saw them, i couldn't unsee.
@SapphireIce101 in the first Diablo i don't remember Diablo being a small child size demon when it possessed Leoric's son, do i just not remember correctly? I thought the form of the demons did not change based on small things like gender or appearance of the host.
And about his "breasts", the only thing these "things" have in common with breasts is that they are attached to his shoulders, if I'm not mistaken. They were always looking as some plates for me. If I was to make fun of Diablo's femine appereance, I would pick on his waist instead.
http://diablo.wikia.com/wiki/Diablo#Physical_Appearance
I liked D2 diablo the best.
I'm still having fun playing the new patch. I've gotten more useful legendaries in the last few days than in my whole previous playing experience.
Here are the two retcons that I currently don't like:
1. The Warrior from D1 is now 'Prince Aidan.'
2. The Male Barbarian and Cain not knowing each other at all.
Little trivia: The Female's Wizard mentor was the Sorceress from Diablo 2.
In fact, even the Diablo Wiki on both The Warrior's page, and Prince Aidan's page say that he wasn't Prince Aidan until Blizzard retconned it in at Diablo 3.
http://diablo.wikia.com/wiki/Warrior
http://diablo.wikia.com/wiki/Aidan
Come Diablo II, it was established that the warrior class was the hero to canonically slay Diablo, and was given the title of the Dark Wanderer. However, his backstory remained the same as the warrior class, that he was a nameless hero foreign to Tristram. This was also added to in the game's manual, as written by Deckard Cain. A warrior/thief character named Qarak appears in The Awakening as a possible take on giving the Wanderer a name, but can still conceptually exist as his own character.
By Diablo III, and the warrior's background had been altered/added to, being given the name of "Aidan" with the backstory that he was Leoric's elder son. This is effectively a retcon, as previous lore had stated that Leoric only had one son (Albrecht) not to mention that the people of Tristram knew who he was the whole time, a contrast to the "nameless hero" spoken of previously. This is slightly amended in Book of Cain, where Deckard explains that he used the term "Dark Wanderer" to describe Aidan because he could not bring himself to use his name after his fall. Marius and other characters used the term "Dark Wanderer" as well, likely because only a handful of people outside of Tristram knew the truth of the Wanderer's identity .
Spoiler tags are for the wall of text, basically copied from the wiki pages, and obvious spoilers.
So, yeah, The Warrior/Dark Wanderer, from D1 and D2 respectively, wasn't known as Aidan until Blizzard made it so in D3.
In much better news, the Male Crusader in RoS is voiced by Gideon Emery, and the Female Crusader is voiced by Mary Elizabeth McGlynn.
Still, seems like a harmless retcon that breathes some life into an otherwise bland character. All the other classes are tied into the lore in some way either in the manual or in later games. Why would the Warrior be the only guy who has no actual reason to go fight Diablo?
So, the warrior had plenty of reasons to fight Diablo. Ranging from "He corrupted my hometown!" to "I need to find out what happened to Albrecht!".
Or at least that's what I remember from playing D1. May need to play D1 again someday.