Diablo 3 To Be Released On May 15th 246
Blizzard announced today that Diablo 3 has finally gotten a release date: May 15th. "After many years of hard work by our development team and months of beta testing by hundreds of thousands of dedicated players around the world, we’re now in the homestretch," said Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime. This comes after significant changes to the skill and rune systems in the beta, and news that the PvP system would be delayed so that they could focus on finishing the campaign. The game will be available for Windows and Macs, either via a DVD or as a direct download through Battle.net. For those interested, a skill calculator is available to get a feel for what different abilities do, and many of the skills have videos showing how they work.
So PvP delay and a new skill and rune systems (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So PvP delay and a new skill and rune systems (Score:4, Insightful)
they have to appease the spreadsheet warriors who will spend weeks learning this crap
Worthy successor? (Score:5, Insightful)
I spent countless hours playing the first two games in the series, but I'm not so sure D3 is shaping up to be a worthy successor. D2 got annoying when they began tweaking things every patch so an awesome character with an amazing set in one patch is suddenly next to useless a patch or two later. Rather than just balancing, they mixed it up far too much. Hopefully the demo (I'm assuming there's a demo) will help me decide whether or not to buy it now or wait for the price to drop in a few years.
Re:will solo force you to be online all the time? (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:will solo force you to be online all the time? (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:So PvP delay and a new skill and rune systems (Score:0, Insightful)
Silly me. And here I thought D3 would be another mindless but extremely enjoyable click-through game. That's the whole point of the Diablo series. Why does everyone have to take a winning formula and fuck it all up with extra complexity?!
Your comment is stupid. I could just as easily say:
"Just because some players can't think doesn't mean they should release a piece of over-simplified easy crap for those of us with a brain."
To address your point though:
If it's done right the extra complexity won't fuck it up. Like any good computer rpg, it should be simple to beat on lower difficulty levels without worrying about all that stuff but have the added complexity for those min/maxers and hardcore/nightmare mode players who want it.
Re:So PvP delay and a new skill and rune systems (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Worthy successor? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been playing D2/D2X off and on for 10+ years. Have to agree about their attitude towards patching breaking [cookie] cutter builds / templates...
* First they nerfed the cow level because they didn't want people leveling up to 99 so fast. So basically the bots win, and the legit players get screwed. Real nice.
* Then they added "synergies" in their lame attempt to re-balance skills that no one ever used. Idea: How about "fixing" the useless skills so they are actually _usefull_. When was the last time you actually say a barb use 'Grim Ward'? Yeah me neither.
* The "high-end" sets are a joke, except for Tal Rasha's.
* Meanwhile, they completely ignored all the hammerdins they made godly with Engima. I am still miffed that an pure Martial Artist assassin can't do shit in Hell even with Godly Gear compared to a hammerdin spamming hammers.
* Thanks for fixing the charge-stun-lock after all these years. NOT.
Other non gameplay issues:
* Blizzard has done fuck all with all the spammers in the channels. Why the hell can't I report a spammer? If 500 people reported a spammer he should be either muted, or banned.
* If I make a game why the fuck can't the host decide if PK'ing is allowed or not?? What, encourage people to play _together_ in hard-core mode? What a concept!!
Runewords are gone in D3. The fact that we had 3 separate currencies in D2/X: pgems, runes, and rares, was a GOOD thing.
Blizzard just doesn't give a fuck about its customers -- especially after the bnetd and WOW glider incidents. it remains to be seen if the game design of D3 is any good, or if Blizzard jumped the shark by trying to making everything into a dumbed down WoW.
Re:So... DRM laden constant-connection bullshit? (Score:3, Insightful)
What reading are we getting from the Rape-Your-Customers-O-Meter?
The needle seems to be pegged on "incessant whining but still a roaring success".
Re:My beta impressions, as a major fanboy... (Score:5, Insightful)
The (very simple) skill system doesn't require/allow you to make any hard choices
The stat system doesn't allow you to make ANY choices
The rune system provides the illusion of skill choices in the form of yet another item hunt
Gear is the only way to differentiate from one player of the same class to another (since you don't really controll stat or skill.
-Neither did previous games. If you made the "wrong" choice, your character was gimped and you had to delete him and start the game all over.
-This was the case with every previous game as well. If you made your stats "wrong", your character was gimped and you had to delete him and start the game all over. The only real differentiation between characters was who had the better items. Nothing has changed.
-Runes are not items any more. It is now just a method of selecting different skill abilities.
If you think Diablo 2 (the multiplayer community anyway) was anything more than a perpetual item grind then you are kidding yourself. There was no building or experimenting in D2 because there was no respeccing period.
Re:will solo force you to be online all the time? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:My beta impressions, as a major fanboy... (Score:3, Insightful)
br> Technically there is a billion possible combinations of skills and stats to suit the need of every roleplayer. But as soon as you face someone, you realise that your two options are:
1-Be a weakling and die trying. 2-Be a powergamer with the best combination and have a chance of winning (Ignoring items and such). This is what killed UO PVP for me, everyone was Dex-Warrior or Tank-Mage. This is what killed NWN for me, everyone was Fighter-Mage. This is what will kill D3 for me, everyone will be
You can't propose a free skilling/runing system and tell people that they have all the freedom they wan if, one week later, 50% of your players gravitate towards a single winning combination.
Re:will solo force you to be online all the time? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm truly sad to say that Diablo III just doesn't have me very excited. I put countless hours into both of the previous games, though I never did get much out of Battle.net in Diablo II for whatever reason. For me, it was all about LAN play. The first Diablo made this especially appealing due to its Spawn Installs. Diablo III has no local multiplayer, which is ridiculous in itself. If you want to play by yourself in singleplayer, it requires the internet. So much for playing while you're on the road. The various changes to mechanics, art style, and addition of things like a trading area make it seem like little more than a shadow of World of Warcraft.
Honestly, I'm much more excited for Torchlight 2. I like the first game well enough while on the road, but the non-existent story couldn't hold my interest for much more than that. Thankfully the sequel will have multiplayer (local and online!) and seems to be expanding to overworld areas much like Diablo II did in comparison to the first Diablo. I imagine it's no coincidence that the Torchlight series is spearheaded by all of the major players from the first two Diablo games' development.
Re:will solo force you to be online all the time? (Score:5, Insightful)
ProTIP: When you type 'Derp' in a post, your post does not automatically achieve any sort of edgy or cool factor and undermines any credibility you may have otherwise brought to the discussion. Thanks for playing.
Re:will solo force you to be online all the time? (Score:2, Insightful)
They selected their target market as different from the target markets of Diablo and Diablo II. Rather than trying to make the best gaming experience they can, they're looking to maximize profits through real money item trading. So their current target markets are the players who want to buy success, and the professional item farmers who supply them. I do not want to play with either type of person, and even having them around takes all the fun out of the game for me.
You've got a serious case of head in sand. Massive hordes of Diablo II players purchased items from third party sites. You played with many of them. You can't fault Blizzard for wanting to make safe an activity that is guaranteed to occur anyway. Nor can you fault them for choosing to appropriate the profit for themselves rather than let some Croatian fly-by-night website have it.
Re:Played the beta... going to pass.. (Score:2, Insightful)
More likely that you simply are one of the original fans that helped make Blizzard great, and that company no longer exists.
Nah, the company still exists. You just had the wrong idea/expectation of them (or what most companies do)
See, companies only have loyalty to their "customers". They don't actually have a loyalty to *you* specifically.
In 11 years, their "customers" have gone from you, to the people who are 11 years younger than you (and I).
These people (who are 11 years younger than you and I) do not value LAN support as much as you do
These people would have no skill and are lazy in your eyes
These people actually think having a friends list and frills like medals and achievements tied to a single online profile is great for "customer experience", and the concept of DRM is probably beyond them.
You may think they're total idiots for liking any of these stuff, but that's Bliz's "customer" now.
Do you remember a time when you bought/liked something, but your parents or grandparents think there's something wrong with you to spend money on it?
Welcome to their side.