Diablo 3 Beta [Beta withdrawal underway!]

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People don't remember stuff getting cut from older blizzard games because there wasn't as much transparency between development and the fans as there is now. After wow blizzard has really gone to the next level with giving information and inside looks into the development of there games which both is a great benefit and a huge pain in the ass for them. I can garuntee you that a TON of stuff got cut from diablo 2 and the warcraft rts games, they just never got people hyped for those features so far before launch.
 
Some people in this thread are insane. I was there for the Diablo 1 launch and the Diablo 2 launch, now I'm in the beta. People need to get their nostalgia goggles off.

Diablo 1 and 2 had many broken things and mechanics, yet they were great. Diablo 3 is so far the best one I played.
 
Are you guys equipping quivers into your offhand slot while using bows/crossbows?

Damn that was it,finally got some magical quivers that go in the offhand even when you have a 2 handed bow.

You use ALT, there is an option under Gameplay I think that lets you set how the items are displayed. They can display for 10 - 15 seconds after dropping and then vanish, you can toggle it on or off with ALT or you can hold ALT to reveal the items.

Thanks,that works,not exactly what I wanted but better(I want to see a little highlight for a loose stone on the floor for example for a second or 2,anything you can break or interact with).
 
Stop reminding me about this "No PvP on release"-bullshit. It's the biggest turn-off ever, especially considering that I had huge PvP-plans on release-week.
 
That's burning hot, man! Good job!
 
Stop reminding me about this "No PvP on release"-bullshit. It's the biggest turn-off ever, especially considering that I had huge PvP-plans on release-week.

Yea, I really don't know how I feel about them waiting to release pvp. On one hand, i'm glad they aren't holding off on the whole game just to perfect the arena. On the other hand, they've had what, 5 years to get their ducks in a row.

I'm sure this is a hard game to make...but 5 years + blizzard's hundreds of employees? Someone making decisions over there is either lazy, indecisive, or a perfectionist to an unhealthy degree. I have a difficult time going with the latter simply because of the way diablo looks, but I won't start that one up again.
 
No charms, no exceptional/elite uniques, no 'world event', a lazy pvp system (not nearly as in depth as the Diablo III pvp will be), no runes (or runewords for that matter). But who honestly cares about all of that when you had a broken game. I'd rather have a stable game with promise of an awesome new free feature a few months after launch than a broken game (that was still missing a lot!) with no promise of that super awesome feature down the road.

Not to mention, there is a SHIT TON more polish in this game than there was in Diablo II with the 'old blizzard'. Just saying.

well as a few posters mentioned, there's been more transparency recently which could cause more of a difference between "new blizzard" and "old blizzard". We don't know what was kept aside for an expansion and what stayed in. All I know is when I played D2 it felt like a complete game. A little buggy, sure, but complete. It had the classes, the skills, the horadric cube, 4 huge acts (okay, 3 huge acts and 1 small act), everything you expected from the successor to Diablo. Then the X-Pac came out and doubled down on everything. But that's not really the point I want to get at.

The point of me mentioning that they cut features to make a release date as a lamentation of "new blizzard" is because the public perception has always been that Blizzard will delay a game as long as is necessary to deliver their best work. That's not something that died back in the War2 days or the D2 days, that's a public perception that has been solidified over time. When it's done. Saying "when it's done", and then a few months out from release saying "oh whoops, it's not actually done...eh, fuck it, people are gonna buy it anyway, time to release" goes counter to that.

Blizzard unveiled Starcraft 2 years before it came out, and did something similar with the whole "Buy all three campaigns to get the full story" bit, but at least when you got wings of liberty it felt like a complete package, between all the teamplay options, the vs. AI options, and the training options. Now that I'm thinking of it more though, there was the chat channel debacle, and there still isn't LAN play yet, so maybe this is just that same trend? Release a mostly finished game now, and patch it up later?

Regardless of all this, I'm still a miserable sheeple with my Annual Pass so I can start playing day 1, then tie my CE key to the b.net account when it comes in the mail. At the end of the day, I guess I'm part of the problem but the game is so fun that I don't know how much I care.
 
Diablo 3 will be a fun game that I have the CE on pre-order.

That said, anyone who doesn't believe this game hasn't had a lot of noticable development issues needs to take off their rose-tinted glasses.

The nail in that coffin was the no pvp announcement after 5+ years of development. There is no excuse for that, especially with a company like Blizzard.
 
Yea, I really don't know how I feel about them waiting to release pvp. On one hand, i'm glad they aren't holding off on the whole game just to perfect the arena. On the other hand, they've had what, 5 years to get their ducks in a row.

I'm sure this is a hard game to make...but 5 years + blizzard's hundreds of employees? Someone making decisions over there is either lazy, indecisive, or a perfectionist to an unhealthy degree. I have a difficult time going with the latter simply because of the way diablo looks, but I won't start that one up again.

I do not really care, personally.

But, at the same time, I see only benefits for PVP this way...

1) Everyone gets to know their class through freedom, not through salt.
You get to level up characters, know all skills, get a glimpse of what you will plan on doing in PVP instead of going in and get blown up by day 1 builds.

2) The last batch of changes must have been devastating to any kind of "balance" (not e-sport level of balance, but still, some semblance of it...) that they had internally - and this will be solved by the time PVP gets introduced.

3) You will still need gear. Through PVE...so.
 
well as a few posters mentioned, there's been more transparency recently which could cause more of a difference between "new blizzard" and "old blizzard". We don't know what was kept aside for an expansion and what stayed in. All I know is when I played D2 it felt like a complete game. A little buggy, sure, but complete. It had the classes, the skills, the horadric cube, 4 huge acts (okay, 3 huge acts and 1 small act), everything you expected from the successor to Diablo. Then the X-Pac came out and doubled down on everything. But that's not really the point I want to get at.

The point of me mentioning that they cut features to make a release date as a lamentation of "new blizzard" is because the public perception has always been that Blizzard will delay a game as long as is necessary to deliver their best work. That's not something that died back in the War2 days or the D2 days, that's a public perception that has been solidified over time. When it's done. Saying "when it's done", and then a few months out from release saying "oh whoops, it's not actually done...eh, fuck it, people are gonna buy it anyway, time to release" goes counter to that.

Blizzard unveiled Starcraft 2 years before it came out, and did something similar with the whole "Buy all three campaigns to get the full story" bit, but at least when you got wings of liberty it felt like a complete package, between all the teamplay options, the vs. AI options, and the training options. Now that I'm thinking of it more though, there was the chat channel debacle, and there still isn't LAN play yet, so maybe this is just that same trend? Release a mostly finished game now, and patch it up later?

Regardless of all this, I'm still a miserable sheeple with my Annual Pass so I can start playing day 1, then tie my CE key to the b.net account when it comes in the mail. At the end of the day, I guess I'm part of the problem but the game is so fun that I don't know how much I care.

I understand where you are coming from here. The point I would like to make is that the reason these games are not 'finished' when they are released is because they are much more ambitious than their predecessors, which obviously takes a lot more time. I prefer a more over-the-top awesome product that gets released and then updated with more great stuff later than a product that is really cool and complete, but less ambitious.

Let me explain. You cite Starcraft 2 as an example of this mentallity. '3 campaigns over 3 games? Starcraft 1 had all 3 campaigns in one, plus another set of 3 in the expansion!'

Sure, but that's a bad metric to use. The campaign for Starcraft 2 is ENORMOUS, and map wise is easily comparable to the entire set of campaigns from Starcraft 1. Throw in a huge amount of cut-scenes, incredible polish for the 'hub', all the upgrades, etc. and you certainly have a full experience that is super cool and ambitious. To say Starcraft 1 had more in it than it's sequel is just flat out wrong in my opinion. B.net 2.0 and LAN support are another story, (I think simply they removed LAN for security reasons, and they put a lot of effort into B.net 2.0, but it feel kinda short) but the physical game itself is a lot grander than its predecessor.

The same lies true for Diablo 3. So much more stuff is being piled into this game, and while they could just give up and give us the broken pvp system from Diablo 2, they decided to be more awesome and develop something really super cool to give us. But since it will not be ready at launch, it seems to me that you guys would rather they phoned in the previous model instead, just because then it would be a 'complete' game. I disagree, and while I obviously wish that it was all ready to go at launch, I'd rather them be super ambitious and go for the coolest thing if it means a bit of a delay on their end (I mean, we've already waited 11 years for this game!).

Oh, and they definitely rushed out Diablo 2. I don't care what you tell me, that game was NOT finished at release and was rushed to stores after being pushed back for a long time. Be happy that the Diablo 3 team is focused on making a playable game at launch without a feature instead of a 'feature-full' game that is broken.

Just my two cents on the matter.
 
I understand where you are coming from here. The point I would like to make is that the reason these games are not 'finished' when they are released is because they are much more ambitious than their predecessors, which obviously takes a lot more time. I prefer a more over-the-top awesome product that gets released and then updated with more great stuff later than a product that is really cool and complete, but less ambitious.

Let me explain. You cite Starcraft 2 as an example of this mentallity. '3 campaigns over 3 games? Starcraft 1 had all 3 campaigns in one, plus another set of 3 in the expansion!'

Sure, but that's a bad metric to use. The campaign for Starcraft 2 is ENORMOUS, and map wise is easily comparable to the entire set of campaigns from Starcraft 1. Throw in a huge amount of cut-scenes, incredible polish for the 'hub', all the upgrades, etc. and you certainly have a full experience that is super cool and ambitious. To say Starcraft 1 had more in it than it's sequel is just flat out wrong in my opinion. B.net 2.0 and LAN support are another story, (I think simply they removed LAN for security reasons, and they put a lot of effort into B.net 2.0, but it feel kinda short) but the physical game itself is a lot grander than its predecessor.

The same lies true for Diablo 3. So much more stuff is being piled into this game, and while they could just give up and give us the broken pvp system from Diablo 2, they decided to be more awesome and develop something really super cool to give us. But since it will not be ready at launch, it seems to me that you guys would rather they phoned in the previous model instead, just because then it would be a 'complete' game. I disagree, and while I obviously wish that it was all ready to go at launch, I'd rather them be super ambitious and go for the coolest thing if it means a bit of a delay on their end (I mean, we've already waited 11 years for this game!).

Oh, and they definitely rushed out Diablo 2. I don't care what you tell me, that game was NOT finished at release and was rushed to stores after being pushed back for a long time. Be happy that the Diablo 3 team is focused on making a playable game at launch without a feature instead of a 'feature-full' game that is broken.

Just my two cents on the matter.

I think that we're really agreeing more than we're disagreeing here. I cited the "3 campaigns across 3 games" mentality but went on to say how I felt wings of liberty was still a complete package, aside from B.net idiocy. I never said I wanted them to phone in D2's pvp model, because frankly I got a chance to play the PvP arenas at blizzcon and it was AWESOME.

My main point was that by saying "PvP still needs some more time in the oven" it's a little grating, and I almost (ALMOST!) wish they just delayed D3 a couple months so PvP was ready to go in the product we're getting instead of getting us the game sooner, but without what many would find a key feature, although not a feature essential to the enjoyment of the game.

The closest analogue I can think of would be a what-if scenario of SC2 shipping without the editor, and the community going without Custom Games for a couple months. This is something we've seen with the editors in Bethesda games recently (I think, I remember the Fallout one wasn't ready for primetime and I don't think the Skyrim one was ready for release either) and while it hasn't impacted them sales-wise, I do think it has hurt their image a little to not have the tools ready on launch day.

Frankly, I wasn't too clued in to the development on D2 so I'll concede most of my "old blizzard" argument because back then I played War2 on PC, D1 on PSX, then D2 when it came out on PC, and didn't know the dev history of D2 at all...I just knew what the feature list was and I knew when it came out it was great fun (although sorely lacking in one or two areas....640x480 resolution was inexcusable even for that era).
 
What does this mean?

edit: read the link. Not liking this. I always loved the insane difficulty ramp just as you switch difficulty.
 
Makes sense... but then again, how is this any different from Diablo 2? Act 5 was much harder than act 1...
 
What does this mean?

edit: read the link. Not liking this. I always loved the insane difficulty ramp just as you switch difficulty.

I think this just makes it more like the existing difficulty bumps. Don't think it means it won't be a big jump on its own, only that it will continue to get harder through to the end.

Really what they need to do is make it as impossible as they can to just tank your way through Inferno. It should require actual skill and not just ubergear and a turbo button on your mouse.
 
I'm so excited by that blue posters posts. He says that Inferno is brutally hard, as in you'll be smashing your face in for the first few weeks.

Excellent.
 
Is Hell difficulty in this similar to D2 Hell difficulty? The problem with D2's Hell is that a lot of builds were rendered unplayable due to immunities. I know they've said that immunities have been toned down in D3 so I'm wondering where the difficulty is going to come from. Is it really possible to make a loot-based game like Diablo difficult just based on skill alone? Or do they mean that Inferno is difficult because you need to spend an obscene amount of time/money farming for the best gear just to survive?
 
hoooooly crap.... reading about Blizzard's internal testing makes me so JEALOUS! I want to play the damn game already! still 1 month and half to go :/
 
Was level 13 not the cap in previous patches? I'm finding videos of people with DPS's in the hundreds while my lvl 13 Demon Hunter is at more like 45 DPS.
 
Was level 13 not the cap in previous patches? I'm finding videos of people with DPS's in the hundreds while my lvl 13 Demon Hunter is at more like 45 DPS.

Level 13 has always been the cap, the past few patches have had major balance changes including reducing the stat gains on certain weapons and armor, pre-patch 13 I could get my DPS to 100 easily, nowadays I'm lucky to get 40.
 
Level 13 has always been the cap, the past few patches have had major balance changes including reducing the stat gains on certain weapons and armor, pre-patch 13 I could get my DPS to 100 easily, nowadays I'm lucky to get 40.

Makes sense. As long as I'm not doing it wrong.
 
Is Hell difficulty in this similar to D2 Hell difficulty? The problem with D2's Hell is that a lot of builds were rendered unplayable due to immunities. I know they've said that immunities have been toned down in D3 so I'm wondering where the difficulty is going to come from. Is it really possible to make a loot-based game like Diablo difficult just based on skill alone? Or do they mean that Inferno is difficult because you need to spend an obscene amount of time/money farming for the best gear just to survive?
One idea is to design encounters that require the intelligent use of defensive cooldowns. Anytime there is player choice involved is an opportunity to differentiate players by their skill. Theres also general mechanical requirements like the abilty to minimize damage through positioning, the efficient use of health globes and mouse speed/player reaction.
 
Can't wait to play this (haven't got into the beta yet and probably never will). The only thing I'm worried about is all the complaints about the lag. I hope it's just the beta servers or something.
 
Question:"In the new website database all gems only display “Head” and “Weapon” slot effect. Does this mean they can be no longer be placed in other slots? And this page only display 4 types of gems, were Diamond and Sapphire removed?"

Blizzard: "The website is currently incorrect, gems can still be placed in all the same slots as before (including Weapon). We did remove Diamond and Sapphire a while back. Their effects just weren’t very interesting. We can always bring them back later if we find some stat spots to fill."

Interesting, there are now only 4 types of gems.
 
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