Auction House Online: The Game (Diablo 3) is a MASSIVE decline

[Clockwork Knight]

It's just so horrible. I can't think of a bigger Fuck You than single player queues.

In before the next Great Video Game Crash.

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

Spoiler

Okay, so Adria is clearly going to be the antagonist of the expansion... What a let-down that is! Maghda (or however you spell it) served as the escalation of the plot. From cultists, to demons, to lesser evils, to prime evil(s). Suddenly switching back to a human witch seems like a huge step backward. How the hell could Adria pose a bigger threat than Diablo did with all of the prime evils inside of him? What the fuck...

Oh well, at least the game is fun.

 

[circ]

Made it to Act 3 so far with my Monk. Still in Act 1 with a DH and a Wizard.

Game is lots of fun so far. Lots of fun.

Astroturfing like a BOSS!

 

[Whisper]

The always online shit is indefensible

Making "idiot mode" default is defencible?
Plenty of people dont even know of Elective mode.

Proof:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5151266660

just one comment
"LOL! a friend of mine hit level 52 last night as a monk and did not know about elective mode."

And Blizzard reply to beta-testers asking to make Elective mode default.

"Yeah, we complained about it a lot in Beta, but Blizz said they wanted their grandmother to be able to play the game and not have to worry about the complexity of managing abilities".

 

[Regvard]

I wonder why would they give less graphics options in Diablo 3 than they did in Starcraft 2. Isn't it the same engine?

It's really awful that they have no option to disable BLOOM. WoW had plenty of options, this game is clearly a branch off WoW codebase, and they hid 75% of them.

More settings confuse the target audience.

 

[Eyeball]

The always online shit is indefensible, but I'm not sure why people keep bringing it up over and over as though it's some new and horrible discovery about the game.

Oh wait, it's just Whisper, still parroting the same shit a month later.

Because it is so beyond the pale it defies comprehension. I mean, it's like buying a new electric toothbrush and finding that it not only doesn't work, it also breaks your legs, rapes your wife and burns your house down. Blizzard had to be really creative to come up with an idea this fucking moronic.

 

[evdk]

Spoiler

Okay, so Adria is clearly going to be the antagonist of the expansion... What a let-down that is! Maghda (or however you spell it) served as the escalation of the plot. From cultists, to demons, to lesser evils, to prime evil(s). Suddenly switching back to a human witch seems like a huge step backward. How the hell could Adria pose a bigger threat than Diablo did with all of the prime evils inside of him? What the fuck...

Oh well, at least the game is fun.

Spoiler

It clearly was all ploy by Adria. Now that all the Evils are dead she will absorb their power and become even more powerful that they could ever imagine. Moohoohawhaw.
MUHUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Blizzard can send me the money now.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Ok, that IS just plain retarded.

 

[Menckenstein]

Spoiler

Okay, so Adria is clearly going to be the antagonist of the expansion... What a let-down that is! Maghda (or however you spell it) served as the escalation of the plot. From cultists, to demons, to lesser evils, to prime evil(s). Suddenly switching back to a human witch seems like a huge step backward. How the hell could Adria pose a bigger threat than Diablo did with all of the prime evils inside of him? What the fuck...

Oh well, at least the game is fun.

Spoiler

It clearly was all ploy by Adria. Now that all the Evils are dead she will absorb their power and become even more powerful that they could ever imagine. Moohoohawhaw.
MUHUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Blizzard can send me the money now.

Gaider'd.

 

[Stabwound]

Making "idiot mode" default is defencible?
Plenty of people dont even know of Elective mode.

Proof:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5151266660

just one comment
"LOL! a friend of mine hit level 52 last night as a monk and did not know about elective mode."

And Blizzard reply to beta-testers asking to make Elective mode default.

"Yeah, we complained about it a lot in Beta, but Blizz said they wanted their grandmother to be able to play the game and not have to worry about the complexity of managing abilities".

No, I didn't say it was defensible either. I agree that making idiot mode the default is stupid but I never said that it wasn't. It's not like managing abilities is much harder with "elective mode" on than without it. It makes absolutely no sense.

The game is flawed, but I went in expecting most of the flaws. If you like the Diablo-like series it's pretty damn fun with friends, despite the numerous flaws. I think that it's the best Diablo-like game there is since D2, maybe rivalled only by Divine Divinity, although that's a different take on the subgenre.

 

[Raapys]

It's okay. The only thing I really like better in Diablo3 than D2 is the more dynamic world/dungeons/quests. Basically the way the random game world works. D2 either equals or wins in pretty much all other areas for me, even more so when modded.

But of course, once you've played something for hundreds of hours, something 'new' is refreshing even if it's overall a poorer version of the same thing.

 

[damicore]

The always online shit is indefensible, but I'm not sure why people keep bringing it up over and over as though it's some new and horrible discovery about the game.

Oh wait, it's just Whisper, still parroting the same shit a month later.

Because nobody wants to see always online DRM in any other game I guess. Or any other sort of DRM for that matter.

 

[DraQ]

You have to go in queue for SINGLE player in Diablo3?

Trolling by Blizzard?

How subfuckinghuman do you have to be to bend over that far?

My previous dog had more honour than that.

It's just so horrible. I can't think of a bigger Fuck You than single player queues.

In before the next Great Video Game Crash.

Not a moment too soon.

Heh, that's what i told my friends who asked me to get the game "SO WE CAN PLAY TOGETHER"

-JOIN ME, HUMAN, SO WE CAN PLAa4@aA%Y SO WE CAN PLAY TOGETHER.
-Nah. *blam*

Of course that's a bad example; you don't go see a Michael Bay movie at all.

Precisely.

 

[Raghar]

You know, when you force 20 mil monkeys to connect to your servers even though it's in no way relevant to the gameplay model your game uses, then you shouldn't be surprised when they do.

They wanted a real money auction house, thus they were forced to generate all items on server to prevent problems with FTC. If theirs management decided on the real money auction house, they didn't have much choice. Creating a special offline setting for a single player would have it's own problems. Can you imagine the shitstorm that would be caused when someone would get an item worth of 1000 $ in singleplayer and would be unable to sell it in auction house?

Both you and Sea are unable to grasp a fact they were limited by physical laws, and that relatively understaffed beta.

Unability to troughfully look through options. -2 points for being dubm.

I'm "dubm" for expecting a game that claims itself is an RPG to allow for character customization without having to turn on "not-an-idiot mode"?

A lot of games are allowing a choice between simplified options and full options. For example NWN2 and FO:NV had hardcore modes. D3 should be accessible to masses, yet it should allow fine control for advanced players. As a reviewer you should try to find something like that. Any game developer with a brain would expect similar feature, because it flows from a correct game design.

When the game gives a billion stats (most of them useless), shouldn't it be expected that it also lists something as basic as the damage your spells and skills does?

When I'd activate advanced tooltips I would expect to see all information. When advanced tootips are not active, and the game don't provide information like that, I would expect it's my fault for not activating advanced tooltips. Sometimes game developer falls into idea of hiding certain stats to enforce RPG feeling, aka numbers would distract from roleplaying, you probably heard that in PnP RPG. When they hide these numbers it's theirs choice, and it's a laziness of a player when he will not activate it when he needs it.

instead of one that changes as your attributes go up.

It's a reasonable expectation stats would affect the damage. A lot of RPG does that, and it's rather exception when stats will not affect damage at all.

Have done multiple game launches like this in the past and have had more than enough chances to work out the kinks

MMOs, which are irrelevant in this case.

Specifically did a lengthy beta test and a stress test in order to determine how many servers to allocate and work out bugs

Undersized betas are not uncommon. Some people like surprises, and the beta character was deleted anyway.

Have been making Diablo III for over ten years

Irrelevant. Connection flooding isn't something they would need more than few days to solve at least partially.

Apparently also have done this solely out of penny-pinching as not renting some extra server space for a few days would cut into their undoubtedly mass profits

Your only valid point if correct. But it has also its downsizes. Renting these servers might increase a chance someone would copy theirs server at launch time... This means crack would be withing 3 days of release and the real money auction house would explode.

Have a reputation for being one of the best if not the best PC developers in business (reputation, not necessarily truth)

I guess they would keep that reputation. From what I seen D3 is a quality game.

Seem content to contribute negatively to that reputation, without making attempts to change those perceptions even though if it keeps up it could have ramifications to their bottom line down the road (since Blizzard are a company whose entire business model only works because they can expect to sell millions on reputation alone)
But yeah, I'm a moron for expecting Diablo III to, you know, actually fucking work when it comes out. How silly of me.

It worked isn't it? (With small exception of a few hours.) There is a bigger problem with a route between PC and Blizzard. What would happen when your ISP would have a hiccup?

 

[Jasede]

You have to go in queue for SINGLE player in Diablo3?

Trolling by Blizzard?

How subfuckinghuman do you have to be to bend over that far?

My previous dog had more honour than that.

 

[taxalot]

Sooooo....

First of all, I am not a hater of Diablo 1 & 2. I strongly believe they are good games "for what they are". Diablo 1 is a fun fast paced "light" rogue-like in real time. Diablo 2 is... just Diablo 2. A faster paced and more complexed Diablo 1.

After 5 hours or so of playing a wizard, I can safely say Diablo 3 is just fucking ridiculous.

I will not come back on the complete absurdity of the online single player. TotalBiscuit made a much stronger and better worded point than I could and summed up my thoughts completely.

However, the whole fucking game is absolutely retarded. And "retarded" is not a word I like to use, but there is absolutely no other word for that :
-The game has de-facto autoregen. Yes, autoregen in a RPG. Mana always regens, and very quickly you do find items that replenish your health. What the fuck. Hopefully, at the very least you cannot drink 10 potions a second.
-I wanted the game to be hard from the get go. I like it rough. I was shocked to see that the only difficulty level you can pick at the start of the game is "normal", which actually means "easy". In 5 hours or so, I died once... because of lag, in a single player game. YUP ! Oh shit, I said I wouldn't talk about that. How fucking retarded is the fact that I am not allowed to pick my difficulty level for my own single player experience, hey? If the problem would be fear of unskilled players going multiplayer and joining party in a too difficult game for them, why not letting me choose a hard difficulty and and forbid me to go multiplayer? Oh wait, that'd be retarded too !
-No. Customisation. Whatsoever. A level 30 mage is the same than another level 30 mage, minus small minor differences with the runes and the gear. If you had to select skills and sacrifice some forever when you level up and want a new one instead of the upgrade of an old one, yeah, that would be nice. But NOPE. You can't.
I whined about this online, on some forums which appear to be retarded also : I was told that Blizzard made a fine decision because hey ! Now you can't screw up anymore ! And skill trees sucked because if you play with a FAQ you can easily jump to the section with the most optimal settings ! And at least you do not have to choose between Ice and Fire magic specialty ! (but it's apparently still vital to keep both, even if it was rendered useless). WHAT THE FUCK, Blizzboys ?!

I feel angry and ripped off. I guess Diablo 3 is "fine for what it is too" : however, it's nothing more than Gauntlet on crack, or a play-by-mouse beat-them-all. This is a fucking ridiculous game and as the name of the thread implies, yes, I would like to call it a major decline.

Now, where's Torchlight II....

 

[DraQ]

They wanted a real money auction house

Choices and consequences are a bitch.

Both you and Sea are unable to grasp a fact they were limited by physical laws, and that relatively understaffed beta.

No, you are unable to grasp the concept of C&C, then again, given your JPG background it doesn't come off as a surprise.

 

[Revenant]

Am I missing something or do items now have no stat requirements to equip them? I was playing the wizard and was able to equip a two-handed sword.

 

[DraQ]

You need to lay off the furry for a while, I think.

 

[Menckenstein]

Am I missing something or do items now have no stat requirements to equip them? I was playing the wizard and was able to equip a two-handed sword.

Not really outside of level restrictions. I think there's a few that each class can't equip and that's about it.

 

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

Its kinda sad, really.

D1, SC1, Warcraft 2 and 3.

Masterpieces. True classics.

Oh Blizzard, what have you become... ;/

 

[Revenant]

Sadly, the decline has spred far wider than I have suspected... After playing the starter edition I have grasped how dumbed down d3 really is. Really, there is NOTHING LEFT. I'm very glad I didn't buy the game.

 

[Futile Rhetoric]

Can you imagine the shitstorm that would be caused when someone would get an item worth of 1000 $ in singleplayer and would be unable to sell it in auction house?

Are you trolling?

 

[Stabwound]

I would honestly say that they made a mistake of stopping the starter edition at the SK rather than extending it to the end of Act 1 or at least a quest or two past that point, because you barely get a taste of the character system or crafting etc.

It is definitely dumbed down, there's no denying that, but I think the skill system is more fun than D2. I don't understand why they completely removed allocating your own stats, though. They could have even left stats as they were in D2 but let you reassign them at will like the skill system, and even that would have been vastly better than auto allocation.

 

[Tigranes]

Playing up to the SK on your own trying to figure out the skill system, and playing with 4 buddies in Act 2 and 3 or further, is a very, very different story. Just about a different game.