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

[damicore]

You won't get a scene crack: the solo campaign is just make-up. It has nothing to do with what the game will develop into. It's not a diablo-clone at all, it's another thing. And I repeat it: it's not a RPG at all, not even an action one.

I'll wait for emulated servers if that's what it gets to play the campaign without lag. I don't give a fuck about multi-player.

Also what telengard said.

 

[Beautiful Clown Painting]

WoW PvP has nothing to do with what I believe Diablo 3 PvP will be. You'll have players farming the PvE game and selling their loot for real cash in the AH (Blizzard getting a hefty sum on each transaction) for crazy koreans battling on the PvP side for the first ranks on the ladder, earning money through e-sport tournaments broadcasted on korean TV. It's totally machiavellic. Blizzard saying that it's not supposed to be competitive is just a bunch of lies as evidenced by the first demon that you fight against in the campaign: The Lord of Deceit and Lies. Diablo 3 will have SC2 e-sport ladder, WoW co-op gameplay against bosses and elites, Diablo 2 addictive loot scheme, all of that to get to this place: much much cash generated and a happy player. They won't need subscriptions anymore.

 

[DraQ]

but it can't reasonnably be backtraced to Blizzard

Of course not.
It can be traced back to the masses of gullible clowns who made it possible.

And beautiful paintings depicting them.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

WoW PvP has nothing to do with what I believe Diablo 3 PvP will be. You'll have players farming the PvE game and selling their loot for real cash in the AH (Blizzard getting a hefty sum on each transaction) for crazy koreans battling on the PvP side for the first ranks on the ladder, earning money through e-sport tournaments broadcasted on korean TV. It's totally machiavellic. Blizzard saying that it's not supposed to be competitive is just a bunch of lies as evidenced by the first demon that you fight against in the campaign: The Lord of Deceit and Lies. Diablo 3 will have SC2 e-sport ladder, WoW co-op gameplay against bosses and elites, Diablo 2 addictive loot scheme, all of that to get to this place: much much cash generated and a happy player. They won't need subscriptions anymore.

8/10, almost fell for it.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

Blizzard isn't the only one who has switched to online only. Ubisoft did it awhile ago. The counter rage nearly killed them off, but apparently their sacrifice has made it more acceptable for other companies to do it, since this isn't the first time Blizzard has done it, and EA's busy expanding their use of the practice too.

Always online DRM isn't the future. It's the now.

As are incidental user-fees to use a portion of your game, such as user-fees to use the auction house. (Or user-fee purchases of DLC to complete your game, for that matter.)

Every purchase of Diablo III merely makes all that a more desirable practice for other companies to leap onto the already building trend.

Why do you have a problem with it to begin with? Considering that most people here find these games too far gone to even bother with in the first place.

There will always be smaller developers who will be willing to offer DRM-free products as an incentive to cater to a particular subset of gamers, and things like Kickstarter will empower them.

After the first wave of Kickstarter games is released and holds the attention of Codexers, and there is a second one, will they even care about whatever EA, Activision, Ubisoft, THQ and the like are doing?

Also, I agree in part with Painting. It involves maintaining servers, which is a big, ongoing expense. Considering that the vast majority of PC games for the big publishers don't make that much money, I don't think this is going to become anywhere close to a standard feature. PC games for them are just a mean to make a bit more money quickly and on the side to help recoup their investment. They're not that important to protect and not worth the hassle (except for the need to include some DRM as a smokescreen to comfort ignorant investors), this is just a matter of their Excel spreadsheets being positive. Consoles are where the money is for them, and considering that the core audience for consoles is made of more casual gamers and parents buying something for their kids/teens, this is not even close to happening.

 

[Gragt]

It's rather cool though. I was playing solo with my barbarian then a BRO came online and joined me with his monk. I guess it would have been nice to put an offline solo mode for those who really want it, but so far being online has advantages that make things a bit easier. Also I rarely play solo anymore now since I completed the game on Normal. I've met nice people online so far and jumping into a game is rather easy, plus you get to chose the part in the storyline. It also helps that everyone has his own loot drops to avoid fights over them.

 

[sea]

Beat the game. Last fight was annoying. Had to buy a bunch of gear and gems in the auction house to even stand a chance. This is a single-player game, is it? Seriously, it's like it's designed specifically with boss-farming in mind, otherwise you just have to get lucky enough with drops (and crafting never gave me anything worthwhile, plus was really expensive compared to using the auction house). The obvious downside of purely item-based gameplay shows itself and I am not especially amused.

 

[Black]

You beat it on hell or what?

 

[Wulfstand]

I'm curious, what happens with your character form Diablo 2? I vaguely remember that D1's protagonist is D2's antagonist, is there a connection between D2's heroes and D3?

 

[Gragt]

I hope you're talking of Nightmare, because Normal is a walk in the park. Sure the end requires you to be more careful than before but still. I didn't have to use the auction house a single, and certainly not for Normal.

 

[Gragt]

I'm curious, what happens with your character form Diablo 2? I vaguely remember that D1's protagonist is D2's antagonist, is there a connection between D2's heroes and D3?

It is said that the events of Diablo 2 were done by a group of heroes. Interestingly, the characters in D3 refer to you mostly as a lone hero and not a group, though some imply that you have follower, which could work both in multi and in solo since you get to chose one of 3 companions.

 

[felipepepe]

I hope you're talking of Nightmare, because Normal is a walk in the park. Sure the end requires you to be more careful than before but still. I didn't have to use the auction house a single, and certainly not for Normal.

Yeah, normal at the end was very easy. It's weird, because Act 2 and 3 put a challenge at some points, but Act 4 was just huge monsters dying one after another. But despite the dissapointing ending I enjoyed the game, and now I'll wait some real life bros to beat it and we'll all play Nightmare together...

Now the question is, what will be the plot excuse for the expansion? D2's end movie was almost a trailer to the next chapter, but this one doesn't leave it so...

Spoiler

Perhaps saving Leah's soul....the black soulstone seems to fall back on earthat the end...

Anyway they will have to pull a nice stunt and expand the world of the game so the expansion makes any sense...

 

[Gragt]

Adria, the Wicked Witch of Tristram, is still on the run so I guess there's that. Leah will also certainly come back because having her soul destroyed is just too heartless for Blizzard. Besides they already prepared it when they said that she was certainly able to protect herself with her Horadric training.

Be sure to enjoy Nightmare with bros. When I played with mine, we had fun discovering together the various new sorts of equipment and also the new properties of monsters, and there are quite a few surprises there.

 

[Telengard]

One can already rent server space. If the always online DRM becomes the standard, is it really so heard to conceive of an entity arising (like EA) who will host games so that smaller companies can have their Online DRM and user fees for their single-player games too, with the Visa/MC/Paypal logo proudly displayed on the main page.

Just because a company isn't one of the big boys doesn't mean they won't hop on that gravy train.

 

[Metro]

...it's like it's designed specifically with boss-farming in mind...

Isn't that basically the whole point of these hack-n-slash arpgs?

 

[DraQ]

...it's like it's designed specifically with boss-farming in mind...

Isn't that basically the whole point of these hack-n-slash arpgs?

Well, D1 definitely wasn't designed with boss farming in mind.

You could play it multiple times over with the same character, but the world was persistent in any given playthrough, meaning no farming at all, unique monsters were random, good loot was rare and the only big non-random boss aside from Lazarus and his entourage - Diablo - didn't even drop anything. sure, you could probably restart over and over again, then make a beeline for Lazarus, but that would be excruciatingly tedious and worthwhile loot drop probability would be shit anyway.

 

[Bruma Hobo]

So people here actually bought this? Thanks for being part of the problem.

This.

 

[Padre]

Now the question is, what will be the plot excuse for the expansion? D2's end movie was almost a trailer to the next chapter, but this one doesn't leave it so...

Spoiler

Perhaps saving Leah's soul....the black soulstone seems to fall back on earthat the end...

Anyway they will have to pull a nice stunt and expand the world of the game so the expansion makes any sense...

Spoiler

There is Adria and Black Soulstone but my bet is on Imperius who gets corrupted (he already kinda is) and him as the final boss

[/quote]

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

I don't know why Diablo 3 had to go down the CHOSEN ONE route that so many games has taken before. We went from "a gang of adventurers" in Diablo 2 to the CHOSEN ONE WITH A SPECIAL BIRTHRIGHT in Diablo 3...

I guess that's what you get when you let Chris Metzen fuck around with a game all by himself.

 

[General Maxson]

What do you guys think about randomization? Seem a bit lackluster and disappointing to me at least. Everything seems the same when you replay it, only different room and corridor placement, but it has that samey "been there done that feeling", very similar monsters, you practically know what monsters to expect in what part, and 2 - 3 random dungeons or mini "events" that you get, but after about 3 playthroughs, you've seen them all. I was expecting more randomization considering story's shit and unimportant, and that they have almost unlimited budget. The only thing random here is loot.

 

[Executer]

I'm totally at a loss as to why people are claiming it's incredibly easy. The 2nd half of Act 1, up to where I am now (first quarter of Act II), is significantly harder than in Diablo 2. The health orbs are no substitute for spamming potions (which is impossible now, with at least a 15-second cooldown), as they only spawn on a minority of kills after the early levels and only seem to activate if you actually move near them (even if you're essentially standing right where they spawned). Playing as a barbarian, there are regular enemies who take off something like 15% of my health per "charged" hit, which is dodgeable in an ideal scenario, but not really A: when you're surrounded, and B: have to deal with latency - which was definitely an issue, even on a 100% "green" connection throughout my experience. They're really just refills between fights, as opposed to something that you can realistically make tactical use of during combat (though a couple of the major bosses I've faced so far are built around slaughtering a bunch of trash mobs to replenish hp/energy).

Might be your class? I'm playing as a monk (now level 15) and haven't really felt any pressure so far, it's probably the combination of healing with nerfing/crowd control abilities and health leeching items (along with the templar providing regen/healing on top of that).

 

[General Maxson]

The randomization is why I'm still interested in Torchlight 2. All I really noticed in D3 so far is a slightly different map layout and objectives being placed in different rooms. But based on the achievements, it looks as if different dungeon entrances and side-quests/events can appear, so we'll see.

Yes, but it seems to me that there's a very limited number of that dungeons and side-quests/events in every area, and that the eventual differences are almost insignificant, so after a very low number of playthroughs you see 99% of the content... And that's dissapointing, I was expecting much more, especially as they hyped and advertised randomization and random events/side quests...

 

[sea]

Finished act 1 as a Barbarian. Now I know why everyone complains the game is too easy - because it is. It was a complete cakewalk and went by probably 2-3x as fast as it did my first time. Maybe I've just improved, but the Barbarian can literally cleave through mobs in seconds that took my other character a lot more time to deal with, so I doubt it's just a skill level thing.

I'm pretty sure the Wizard (and possibly Demon Hunter) are underpowered based on the messages I've read on the official forums. This isn't a big problem early on, and the challenge is actually more fair and fun, but late in the game's more an issue. Melee classes have more DPS, attack faster and more consistently, have a lot of health, and utility value the Wizard has isn't balanced out by the extra area-of-effect attacks.

On top of that, the Barbarian and other melee classes have skills that a) affect multiple enemies and b) do 120-150% DPS easily, with zero cost whatsoever, while Wizards are limited in total DPS output by Arcane Power. It's kind of shocking to me how the Barbarian is able to build up so much Fury and yet so few abilities actually cost any; in fact, most you'd expect to cost it actually generate it. How did that get past the beta?

 

[Metro]

Keep in mind that, for the most part, the only thing that's really randomized in Torchlight 2 are the tilesets. There are a few 'rare' side-dungeons or outdoor vignettes/tile chunks that can spawn but at least 80% of the time it's going to be the same side dungeons just with different locations and map layouts.

 

[General Maxson]

Keep in mind that, for the most part, the only thing that's really randomized in Torchlight 2 are the tilesets. There are a few 'rare' side-dungeons or outdoor vignettes/tile chunks that can spawn but at least 80% of the time it's going to be the same side dungeons just with different locations and map layouts.

Damn, I was hoping for some random love at least from Torchlight 2. Guess it just ain't gonna happen.

But at least seems like it will have a more interesting location randomization than Diablo 3.