Preview Diablo III Hands-On Impressions

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Tags: Blizzard Entertainment; Diablo III

<p>Slashdot had some <a href="http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/10/28/1613240/emDiablo-3em-Hands-On?from=rss&amp;utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2FslashdotGames+%28Slashdot%3A+Games%29" target="_blank">hands-on time</a> at this year's BlizzCon.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The demo started me off at with a level 9 character and dropped me into a dungeon, offering up two objectives: fight my way through and, as a bonus, find and destroy a particular boss. From the start, it had a very familiar feel. I took a few steps down the hall and got rushed by a group of monsters, which I quickly mowed down by mashing the buttons on my mouse. It's <em>Diablo</em>, alright. Here I paused to actually read my abilities and see how the UI worked. If you've followed along with the game's development at all, you're probably aware of the fact that the <em>Diablo 2</em> potion belt is gone. The 1-5 keys are now used to activate skills displayed on an action bar at the bottom of the screen. The right and left mouse buttons also activate skills (ostensibly the most-used ones), and pressing tab will swap back and forth between two skills bound to the right mouse button. Subtract one of those slots for health potions and you've got seven easily-accessible skills.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But will it have enough bedazzling particle effects? Oh wait... mouse-button mashing is in. Groovy.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Spotted at: <a href="http://www.rpgwatch.com/#16057">I've found that all by myself in the depths of the internet</a></p>

 

[1eyedking]

Moar liek Diablo Turd.

 

[treave]

Sounds suspiciously similar to Titan Quest.

 

[Needles]

All of the passive, math-y talents that were prevalent in Diablo 2 are dealt with through a different system, called Traits.

It won't take long until some genius gamedesigner decides that damage represented by the numbers 1-100 (where 100 is more than 1) is too complex to grasp. Than you'll just get sounds... something like "uuuh" for some damage and "DUUUUUUUUUUURGH" for more and "WWWWUUUUAAAAAARGH for max.


*edit
Now that I think of it, it'll probably be Molyneux.

 

[Chefe]

http://grimdawn.com/

 

[DalekFlay]

I like how they said recently Diablo 3 could work on a console, as if that is some kind of fucking revelation. Button mashing mindless combat works on a console? Who knew?

 

[Xor]

I had about 30 keys bound for Diablo 2 that I would use regularly, and I'd say about 20 of those would be absolutely essential, those being some ability bindings, weapon swap, potions, run, and loot highlight. With the frantic pace of the diablo games, you don't really have time to open the ability screen and select the next ability to use - you need it active now.

Diablo 2 wouldn't work well on a console. Players would be gimped by the limited control options. I would hope diablo 3 is the same, simply because I that level of complexity is part of what made the game fun and I would hate to see that taken away to make the game accessible for console players.

 

[Xor]

http://grimdawn.com/

Chefe wry do you have title "Chefe's Alt"? Is it because you don't often youse main acct?

Alt detected.

 

[AlaCarcuss]

http://grimdawn.com/

Chefe wry do you have title "Chefe's Alt"? Is it because you don't often youse main acct?

Alt detected.

 

[racofer]

 

[DalekFlay]

I had about 30 keys bound for Diablo 2 that I would use regularly, and I'd say about 20 of those would be absolutely essential, those being some ability bindings, weapon swap, potions, run, and loot highlight. With the frantic pace of the diablo games, you don't really have time to open the ability screen and select the next ability to use - you need it active now.

Diablo 2 wouldn't work well on a console. Players would be gimped by the limited control options. I would hope diablo 3 is the same, simply because I that level of complexity is part of what made the game fun and I would hate to see that taken away to make the game accessible for console players.

I don't think I ever used a hotkey in Diablo, to be honest. I never had problems beating the game, either. Click, click, click on enemies and sometimes click on potion belt.

 

[racofer]

I had about 30 keys bound for Diablo 2 that I would use regularly, and I'd say about 20 of those would be absolutely essential, those being some ability bindings, weapon swap, potions, run, and loot highlight. With the frantic pace of the diablo games, you don't really have time to open the ability screen and select the next ability to use - you need it active now.

Diablo 2 wouldn't work well on a console. Players would be gimped by the limited control options. I would hope diablo 3 is the same, simply because I that level of complexity is part of what made the game fun and I would hate to see that taken away to make the game accessible for console players.

I don't think I ever used a hotkey in Diablo, to be honest. I never had problems beating the game, either. Click, click, click on enemies and sometimes click on potion belt.

I had a similar experience, to be honest. I never had problems beating the game using my arrow keys to navigate through the game. Space, space, space on enemies and sometimes scroll to the potion belt and hit space again.

 

[Chefe]

http://grimdawn.com/

Chefe wry do you have title "Chefe's Alt"? Is it because you don't often youse main acct?

Wry? Because fuck youse, that's wry.

Anyways, I usually use my "Dirk Seaweed" account, natch.

 

[Yeesh]

I don't think I ever used a hotkey in Diablo, to be honest. I never had problems beating the game, either. Click, click, click on enemies and sometimes click on potion belt.

Fascinating. Did you just waltz through hell difficulty in this manner? The more current one with the -100% to each resistance? With no particular set of gear, right? Which skill did you just click, click, click? I can't believe the rest of us were just been playing the game wrong. Silly us!

(Unless you're talking about playing a decked-out hammerdin. That really did need tweaking.)

I had a similar experience, to be honest. I never had problems beating the game using my arrow keys to navigate through the game. Space, space, space on enemies and sometimes scroll to the potion belt and hit space again.

You lovable rascal.

 

[Xor]

I don't think I ever used a hotkey in Diablo, to be honest. I never had problems beating the game, either. Click, click, click on enemies and sometimes click on potion belt.

Fascinating. Did you just waltz through hell difficulty in this manner? The more current one with the -100% to each resistance? With no particular set of gear, right? Which skill did you just click, click, click? I can't believe the rest of us were just been playing the game wrong. Silly us!

Actually to be completely fair he could have been playing a 1.11+ skelemancer. Most boring build I've ever played, but scary effective untwinked.

That's the only build I can think of where that would fly, though. Even hammerdins had to move out of the way sometimes or they'd get raped by a random unique oblivion knight or something.

 

[DalekFlay]

Fascinating. Did you just waltz through hell difficulty in this manner? The more current one with the -100% to each resistance? With no particular set of gear, right? Which skill did you just click, click, click? I can't believe the rest of us were just been playing the game wrong. Silly us!

I didn't play it on "hell difficulty" if that was a choice. I didn't know that was a requirement to play the game. I thought mistakenly I guess that you could play a game on normal and it still counted as playing it.

As for my build if I recall correctly I was a Necromancer and had summon whatever on my right click, attack on left click and all health potions on my belt thing. It was 10 years ago so maybe I hotkeyed something and don't remember, but I know for fucking certain I didn't use some 20 button insanity.

 

[MicoSelva]

Actually to be completely fair he could have been playing a 1.11+ skelemancer. Most boring build I've ever played, but scary effective untwinked.

Even then he would have to switch between various curses, C.E., clay golem and others. I've played a skelemancer like that and had about 12 custom hotkeys, 8 of which were regularly used.

EDIT:

I didn't play it on "hell difficulty"

Ok, sorry, wrong assumption.

 

[commie]

I had about 30 keys bound for Diablo 2 that I would use regularly, and I'd say about 20 of those would be absolutely essential, those being some ability bindings, weapon swap, potions, run, and loot highlight. With the frantic pace of the diablo games, you don't really have time to open the ability screen and select the next ability to use - you need it active now.

Diablo 2 wouldn't work well on a console. Players would be gimped by the limited control options. I would hope diablo 3 is the same, simply because I that level of complexity is part of what made the game fun and I would hate to see that taken away to make the game accessible for console players.

I used 'left click' and 'right click'.

 

[xemous]

why are you guys being cynical about diablo. what were you expecting. blizzard doesn't even refer to it as an rpg, they called it an action game at the blizzcon.

 

[hiver]

I think you guys shoud actually read the whole article.
Might find it surprising.

 

[Topher]

I had about 30 keys bound for Diablo 2 that I would use regularly, and I'd say about 20 of those would be absolutely essential, those being some ability bindings, weapon swap, potions, run, and loot highlight. With the frantic pace of the diablo games, you don't really have time to open the ability screen and select the next ability to use - you need it active now.

Diablo 2 wouldn't work well on a console. Players would be gimped by the limited control options. I would hope diablo 3 is the same, simply because I that level of complexity is part of what made the game fun and I would hate to see that taken away to make the game accessible for console players.

I don't think I ever used a hotkey in Diablo, to be honest. I never had problems beating the game, either. Click, click, click on enemies and sometimes click on potion belt.

Same here but what I want to know is if there's no potion belt how do I get my potions?

 

[Merkwürdigliebe]

I had about 30 keys bound for Diablo 2 that I would use regularly, and I'd say about 20 of those would be absolutely essential, those being some ability bindings, weapon swap, potions, run, and loot highlight. With the frantic pace of the diablo games, you don't really have time to open the ability screen and select the next ability to use - you need it active now.

Diablo 2 wouldn't work well on a console. Players would be gimped by the limited control options. I would hope diablo 3 is the same, simply because I that level of complexity is part of what made the game fun and I would hate to see that taken away to make the game accessible for console players.

I don't think I ever used a hotkey in Diablo, to be honest. I never had problems beating the game, either. Click, click, click on enemies and sometimes click on potion belt.

Same here but what I want to know is if there's no potion belt how do I get my potions?

The entire thing will obviously be streamlined™ meaning that potions will automagically be used for you when you have low health.

 

[relootz]

VOD this is the wrong forum. Please move to Tacticular Cancer.

 

[spectre]

It won't take long until some genius gamedesigner decides that damage represented by the numbers 1-100 (where 100 is more than 1) is too complex to grasp. Than you'll just get sounds... something like "uuuh" for some damage and "DUUUUUUUUUUURGH" for more and "WWWWUUUUAAAAAARGH for max.

Made my day here.

 

[Topher]

I had about 30 keys bound for Diablo 2 that I would use regularly, and I'd say about 20 of those would be absolutely essential, those being some ability bindings, weapon swap, potions, run, and loot highlight. With the frantic pace of the diablo games, you don't really have time to open the ability screen and select the next ability to use - you need it active now.

Diablo 2 wouldn't work well on a console. Players would be gimped by the limited control options. I would hope diablo 3 is the same, simply because I that level of complexity is part of what made the game fun and I would hate to see that taken away to make the game accessible for console players.

I don't think I ever used a hotkey in Diablo, to be honest. I never had problems beating the game, either. Click, click, click on enemies and sometimes click on potion belt.

Same here but what I want to know is if there's no potion belt how do I get my potions?

The entire thing will obviously be streamlined™ meaning that potions will automagically be used for you when you have low health.

I'm afraid that I will find this to be quite upsetting.