Review "A Promise Never Fulfilled": Gamebanshee Reviews Diablo III

[Black]

I grow tired of Mr Black's non-confrontational, please everybody reviews.

Fuck off, would you?

 

[commie]

I grow tired of Mr Black's non-confrontational, please everybody reviews.

Fuck off, would you?

I see what ya did thar....

 

[Oriental European]

N-no, no commie, i think that wasn't a joke, he just don't like you.

 

[Claw]

I remember Diablo 2 before the 1.10 patch and wondering why they didn't think of skill synergy before that. It's really such a good idea, smoothing out difficulty in the beginning game versus point placement in the end game.

Care to elaborate? I always thought synergies were a shoddy patch for less useful skills and potentially wasted skillpoints.

 

[LeStryfe79]

Another fun aspect of D3 is the added difficulty of hackers which require buying a Blizzard authentication key to defend against. I only thought these things happened to people I didn't know until I saw my roommate's character selling off all his gems and whatnot while the poor bastard was fast asleep down the hall! Lol, good one King Kotick! I didn't see this one coming... The funniest part is how instead of apologizing, Blizzard has chosen to blame their own security holes on us customers. Megacorporations are the fucking coolest.

 

[DraQ]

I remember Diablo 2 before the 1.10 patch and wondering why they didn't think of skill synergy before that. It's really such a good idea, smoothing out difficulty in the beginning game versus point placement in the end game.

Care to elaborate? I always thought synergies were a shoddy patch for less useful skills and potentially wasted skillpoints.

Well, the problem with trees or any system unlocking skills at different levels (hi Divinity 2!) is that it requires you to put points in skills you won't use in order to get to those you will (either because it's explicitly required by skilltree or because you'll need tools to survive before you get what you want).

An obvious solution is to break the trees down in such way that it is impossible to not find prerequisite skills useful even after getting the higher level stuff. This can be accomplished by either explicit inheritance - for example instead of having separate firebolt and fireball, you'd have firebolt and fireball would be a modifier giving your firebolts AoE and boosting it (bigger radius, higher percentage of impact damage inflicted in radius, blast knocking back enemies) instead of boosting projectile's speed and impact damage) - or by making those skills strongly tied on the gameplay grounds (meaning any style requiring certain skills will also rely on prerequisites).

Synergies are simply ass-backwards attempt to do the former by patching it over an already existing system.

 

[zerotol]

I was looking forward to D3...until I heard about no offline mode. Online required? Not gonna buy it. Sorry. I want to play a game, on my terms not on yours.

Yes we have heard it before, however guess what: Blizzard does not care, they sold massive amounts. This is how future games are going to be played. Don't like it? Play diablo 2.

 

[Metro]

Eh, I always preferred the tree system -- just seems absurd you could hoard skill points until a certain level when you can then sink them into talents you do want.

 

[Gragt]

Already? Isn't the game only out for over a bit more than a week?

 

[J_C]

I grow tired of Mr Black's non-confrontational, please everybody reviews. Just call it out for the overhyped, overpriced piece of archaic crap that it is! A decade's work on this, a reskinned D2?

So... it's not good enough that I say it's got bullshit DRM that significantly harms the game experience (both solo and multi), got mixed mechanics changes that I don't think are an improvement over Diablo II, the item game has been made weaker, gameplay is simpler than Diablo II due to focus on MMO-style cooldown management, that classic Diablo atmosphere is gone for good, that the story completely sucks, and that ultimately it wasn't worth the 10 year wait, is not as good as the competition and isn't a worthy Diablo title? I can't in good faith call the game bad, because it's not. It's just completely disappointing.

No, it is not enough. You should have bashed and teared down the game. Call it a piece of shit, ranting for 6 pages and hurting Gamebanshee as a quality magazine as a result. We don't want to read a balanced review. We want you to make Gamebanshee the new RPG Codex. :D

 

[Claw]

Synergies are simply ass-backwards attempt to do the former by patching it over an already existing system.

That is how I see it, and I was wondering if Saint could offer an alternative view. I don't really mind a few wasted points, I just wished lower level skills scaled better.

I'm not sure if it warrants any discussion, but I can't quite get over the fact that the synergies from Bone Wall and Prison seem to benefit Bone Armor more than actually putting skillpoints into Bone Armor directly. WTF?

This is how future games are going to be played. Don't like it? Play diablo 2.

You know, that actually sounds like a great idea. I like the Necro better than the Witch Doctor anyway, and I wasn't impressed by the frogs and spiders during the stress test weekend.

Eh, I always preferred the tree system -- just seems absurd you could hoard skill points until a certain level when you can then sink them into talents you do want.

I'm not sure what you're saying here, but that is p. much how I played Diablo 2. Survive with 1 point in prerequisite skills, then start pumping two or three skills at the same time with the saved up skillpoints.