Reaper of Souls goes live at 9pm PDT tonight (3/24). I’ll be starting a new Crusader character and playing through the campaign, if anyone would like to join. The last patch implemented social features, so it’s actually possible to have a SDMB clan now.
Just putting it out there.
Man, I can’t believe a diablo expansion is coming out with such a whimper. I’m not getting it right away anyway. Shows how far D3 damaged the brand IMHO. I’ll be watching this thread closely. Though I probably won’t go back to the PC version. I’ll likely just wait for the ps4 version to release before I start over. Really liked the 360 version.
I can. D3 was basically D2 with prettier graphics. There were a LOT of people who were pretty disappointed with that- it took them what… 10-12 years to come out with what amounts to exactly the same game?
I think that people also had unrealistically high expectations for D3. I remember more than one WoW player, anticipating D3’s release, declaring that they’d switch from WoW to D3. That’s a pretty high bar to set for a game that isn’t an MMO.
You know, I was in the same boat. I boycotted it for the first few years until they announced that they were going to shut down the real money auction house. Then I played it, and wow, it’s a phenomenally well-balanced game. It’s not the clickfest that D2 was; it’s much more tactical (you only have a few skills to choose from at any given time, and you can modify them in slight ways) and much better-paced in general. I expected to hate it, but the more I played it, the more I thought wow – I wish more RPGs played like this.
Make no mistake: There is absolutely no story. The voice acting is atrocious. The plot is pathetic. But the combat is endless fun.
Also, the latest patch (“2.0”) fixed a lot of the balance issues that had previously plagued the game. If you’re willing to give it a chance again, it’s a good time to download the trial version (up to level 10) since a bunch of people will be starting new characters for the new class.
I’m gonna wait a bit. Most of it is that I’m having fun with Dark Souls 2, but part of it is that I’m fairly sure the servers are going to die tonight. Maybe not as bad as release, but I’m not optimistic.
No harm in waiting. It’ll only get cheaper. The new class is kinda underpowered right now. Haven’t played the other new content yet.
Surprisingly, servers were fine… no lag or queues at all. But they launched it at 9pm PDT. Let’s see how they do tomorrow after work.
And strictly IMHO: I played D1, D2, Torchlight 1&2, Darkstone, Beyond Divinity, Path of Exile, Dungeon Siege 1-3, Lionheart, and a bit of Titan Quest. I think D3 has the best class balance out of those games. Combat is superbly paced and feels, looks, and sounds substantial. (Much to my surprise)
When it first came out I totally pooh-poohed the limited skills system, and in the starter edition I got a character to level 8 and got bored and didn’t give it another chance for years. Turns out that same limited skills systems makes for very interesting tactical choices later on, and it’s lovely.
I lied, I’m co-oping in Dark Souls 2 and my friend doesn’t want me to get ahead so we can face a few areas together blind so I picked it up. For some reason it thought I preordered so I got the wings, not complaining.
I love the Crusader so much. So so much. I normally hate tanky characters, I normally hate paladin-type characters. Crusader? Crusader defeats all of that somehow. There’s something satisfying about disintegrating a bunch of enemies with your shield.
I don’t know or care if I’m shallow, but I like Diablo 3 more than Path of Exile, Titan Quest, and all other similar games no matter how more or less deep because it’s satisfying. So many ways enemies can die. The sound and visual design just makes it feel better.
Loot 2.0 is also great, I can finally gear my character. Since crusader is the first I’m played since 2.0 that may contribute to me liking it so much, but overall I like the new changes. I’ll be doing Act 2 on Hard when I have downtime in between Dark Souls. I’m on hardcore so I hope it doesn’t eat me. I don’t care though, Normal is way too easy. I facetanked The Butcher. While standing in the fire. No potions. Yeah…
We have a pretty active little clan going - feel free to look up “SDMB”. There’s usually someone online. My expansion arrives tomorrow, so look for “NoPepper”.
I know this is shallow, but I tend to play games right before bed, and a big part of what I like is purty pictures. Diablo’s art style is a bit too dark for me, compared to Path of Exile’s second and third acts and especially Titan Quest’s beautiful lush scenery. I really enjoy the way combat works in the game, and I think the switch to skill-change-on-the-fly was a great change, but the dark horror scenery is too depressing for the game to really be fun.
I greatly enjoyed D3. I enjoyed the AH’s. Now I could actually use gold for something.I sold a ring in the Real money AH and paid for Christmas. The game was hard as hell at some points. Their was a real rush from seeing a legendary drop since it was so rare.
It wasn’t an MMO so who TF cares of people paid real money to gear their characters.
NOW…my 60 level geared amazon is blasting through, 2 legs fell in 5 minutes. Both upgrades even though I was already blasting through. 1 of the Legs was made obsolete 5 minutes later by a level 61 yellow.
(sigh)
You will find the bulk of us current players here in this thread, IIRC we are 20+ members in the SDMB clan.
Once I get back online tomorrow (you will see the reason why at the bottom of the other thread), I can invite any Doper to the clan that Rucksinator created.
I had an obnoxious bug last night. Usually mobility and teleport spells break jail, but there seems to be a bug with the Crusader’s fall from the sky move. I tried to use it while jailed and got permanently rooted in one spot. Luckily I’m a tank so I could leave the game mid battle without dying. It reset my progress in part of act 2, but oh well. I’m just happy I wasn’t playing a squishy because my hardcore run would have ended right there.
Actually, the problem was that D3 WASN’T D2 with prettier graphics. They changed a lot of the design elements, for the worse. Itemization was terrible, and the stat/skill system was bland and removed the idea of personalized builds.
I didn’t really play D2, but I had friends that did. I heard a lot about their builds and they described and showed the game to me in some detail. It was a lot like the old WoW talent system.
The problem with these systems is, generally, clear optimality, and irrelevant alternatives/filler skills. There usually is 1-3 (maybe 1-6 if you’re lucky) clear best builds. This tends to be true even if you discard the completely broken builds that will be patched out.
The choices also tend to be less meaningful, often it really doesn’t matter whether I take one tier 2 passive vs another. Oftentimes points are taken in a tree just to get further in the tree and not because the skills are actually desirable. So you end up with maybe one or two viable builds whose variations are either irrelevant or only meaningful in very narrow situations (one specific boss etc).
Focusing on just a couple of skills allows the developers more freedom to really differentiate play styles. When you only have 4 primary attack abilities, the developers can really intentionally provide a meaningful alternative between playstyles.
Now did D3, in particular, solve that problem? I don’t know. I usually DO get into a rut with my characters and find that after maybe Act 1 I’m comfortable with my skills and don’t really want to change them. I do shake them up sometimes if I get a really, really cool or good ability that I want to try and make work, but generally I do have a single build I stick with. There do seem to be “known optimal” builds in D3, so it’s possible they failed, but I don’t think that reducing options inherently means reducing choice like people tend to say. I think it worked in WoW, for instance.
Now, there is a downside to reducing choice and that’s that it does inherently kill gimmick runs, where you use some insane themed skillset that sucks and try to win. Whether that’s a good thing or bad thing depends on taste.
I agree with Jragon. If anything, D3’s skill system promotes personalized builds far more than D2 ever did. I absolutely loved D2, and I do think it’s better than D3, but not because of the skill system. D2’s skill system was only flexible if you played Normal and stopped. Nightmare and Hell difficulty were damn near impossible if you picked a non-optimal build. It became a game of going online and looking up the optimal builds for whatever class you were playing. D3 fixes that problem by letting you customize on the fly, and achieving balance by simply limiting the skill loadout you can use at one time. Sure, some combinations are much more effective than others, but there’s a lot more variability and flexibility to accommodate your desired play-style.
One thing I really like about D3’s skill system (though this may be an addition from 2.0), is that even the item drops encourage branching out. Your wizard might get really comfortable with using Disintegrate and Hydra, but then you get an amulet that’s way better, but also has a +20% cold damage effect, so you switch up your loadout to emphasize cold skills, and find a new effective strategy. I got an interesting staff that caused enemies to be drawn to meteor castings, so I started using meteor, and it ended up being fantastic crowd control for solo runs. I kept using it until I got a better weapon, and then mixed my skills up again to optimize again.
The skill flexibility also really helps when you’re jumping around difficulties. I’ve been doing an Arcane focus for the main game, and I was able to solo on T1 with little difficulty. Then Act V came up and the monsters became much more difficult, so I switched to a cold focus so I could slow enemies and whittle down their health. That helped me get a lot farther in Act V T1 than I could have if I had stuck to an Arcane focus.
It’s even better for group vs. solo play, and uber vs. campaign runs. When I’ve been going on uber runs with the SDMB, I often pick different skills than I would if playing solo, to maximize my synergy with the group.
Yeah - I got a legendary hat the other day for my wizard that promotes Mirror Image, a skill I’d never even used before. I just installed the expansion last night - but you should definitely see what sort of hilarity ensues next time you party with me.
I LOVE the 2.0 loot. In addition to my new fancy hat, I have bracers that spawn an elite pack every time I hit a shrine, and a belt that releases a swarm of ghosts onto enemies every time I open a chest/corpse. The belt is fantastically fun, and I’m going to miss it when I have to abandon it for upper-level gear.
This might have been true at release, but the game is very different now.
I dusted off my account last weekend in anticipation of the release. Played through some of the new difficulty settings in the first few acts with a couple of my level 60 characters, relearning how to play them and looking at some of the new skills. Was pleased by the new difficulty settings and how you can scale difficulty…and change it on the fly if you run into something too difficult. I like the new loot drop system as well…I never had much luck getting green or orange items before, now they drop reasonably often enough to make the AH unnecessary. I still think the crafting system is a bit weak…so far I’ve yet to be able to build items on par with anything I can just go out and find.
As for the expansion, I rolled up a new crusader and am finding him reasonably fun to play. I’m only up to the second act with him. I also have played through the first two, I guess, zones in the fifth act. I had to basically turn down the difficulty from torment 1 to expert, since neither my demon hunter nor my monk could survive the final boss fights on torment…was just too hard. Even at expert it’s pretty difficult…the boss fight with Adrian literally took me half an hour of non-stop dodging and rolling and shooting with my demon hunter (the monk did a bit better). So far I’ve liked the new act pretty well…it’s been relatively fun.
No question that D3 fell short of expectations, primarily due to the horrible (and now reversed) decision to add a real money auction house.
However to anyone that had interest but is no longer playing, patch 2.01 is pretty amazing and makes the game what it should have been at launch.