I wanted to start a thread for gripes to keep the thread shitting to a minimum in other D3 threads.
So with that said here are my early gripes (FWIW I did not play the beta)
You can’t actually attack with weapons it appears. My witch doctor can equip all kinds of shit and you can see it in his hands, but he can only attack with “skills” like the blow dart. I thought I just didn’t know what I was doing but looking around online it seems that many other people also can’t attack with equipped weapons. If this is true its VERY disappointing.
The skill tree has been WAY dumbed down. There is no permanency to any of my decisions. It also doesn’t seem to be possible to find gear that boosts a specific skill like there was in D2. It’s all generic modifiers. Also disappointing. Is there even class specific gear? I can’t tell.
The loot, at least in the first act of normal mode, is VERY slow coming. I’m not finding SHIT even when I have the magic shrines active.
The graphics are good, but not great. They are about on par with Titan’s Quest, which is quite old now. I know they want it to be able to play on as many systems as possible but still…
Otherwise the game seems okay so far. It’s not sucking me in so far like D2 did just trying to “find the next piece of loot”.
I may restart the game with a Barbarian. Hopefully they can use all the gear as you pick it up.
ETA: Oh, opposite of a gripe, I haven’t had any connection issues at all so far.
Quite the contrary; all of your attacks are with your equipped weapon, it just doesn’t look like it. Your damage is based on the damage of the weapon you’re wielding. Yes, even when you’re throwing vortices of arcane energy or whatever.
There is some class specific gear, yes; I recall some Barb-only belts and things like that. Loot is so slow-coming so they can force people to use the auction house (I still ain’t doin’ it, though).
I also definitely felt like the witch doctor was too weird to be my first play character; that I wanted a more straightforward play in order to enjoy the story and surprises. About the graphics I must disagree; I think the game’s really beautiful. It’s not like the goal of every game should be extreme photorealism, right?
My gripe is of course that I saw this server nonsense coming from 5 million miles away, and that the Blizzard interviews about why they wouldn’t have offline play were insultingly BS-y. Yeah, we’re totally going to completely restrict you from having a server-aggravation-free experience because that’s something players want. Totally. People who don’t give a shit whether someone is duping items or making bots, and just want to enjoy their own game? Those people can’t possibly exist!
I wish they would just ADMIT it. DRM and RMAH moneygrubbing. Actually, no, I just wish for a single-player mode. I’m perfectly happy so far…when I’m actually able to play.
My biggest gripes with the graphics (then again my computer is “not good enough”, they say) are the stilettos on the female witch doctor and that the chars aren’t personalizable.
Had some fun with a barbarian chick (barbarian: your choice of “lass built like a mountain” or “dude who looks older than my grandma except for having biceps like rugby balls”… k…) the one time the servers were alive and not overloaded.
There doesn’t seem to be any point to walking back, ever, if you’ve been careful to poke into every little nook on the way - that’s standard for Diablo, right? Works for me, but it would drive my brothers crazy.
I knew things would suck midnight last night, but every time I’ve tried so far today there’s been a message about how systems are down for maintenance blah blah blah we suck at the internet blah back up for 45 seconds before they’re down again blah blah. Now it’s supposed to be back up again around midnight. I’m not falling for that one again.
No no, it has been working! I’ve been playing throughout the day between server downtime; it’s annoying, but they have been fairly accurate about their estimated restarts. Last time they said the servers would be up again at 11:45 PST, but I got in at 11:15. I’ve just got through playing and am going to sleep so I can start fresh on Act 2 tomorrow.
And Nava, yeah it was standard for D2 - I’m a ‘explore everything’ kinda gal too and if you do that then there is little point backtracking. But with your next character’s playthrough it still behooves you to search everything because they do switch up some cutscenes/events (as well as the usual map randomization) each game.
Not true. Things like fire or cold damage are not passed on to every attack. I have a fire sword equipped with my witch doctor. I’m attacking with blow darts and there is no added fire damage or graphic. With my barbarian I have lightning daggers equipped and he swings them when attacking and when they connect you can see lightning effects and zapping sounds. Maybe the baseline damage is passed on to your skills, which is completely idiotic and boring.
I twice ran into a glitch where my character couldn’t leave the spot he was on - he’d step away, then rubber-band back. I could still use skills, manipulate inventory, so it didn’t appear that it was just lag, and I gave it several minutes to clear - but the only thing that fixed it was exiting the game and coming back.
I’m playing a Demon Hunter, so the disconnect isn’t nearly as stark as what you are describing. My off hand attack is supposed to be throwing knives, but coming out of the bow it just looks like a different ranged attack, so no biggie.
There is class specific gear, though I’ve not found any for MY class yet. I have a stone knife that’s specific to the Witchdoctor, and a wand for the mage guy, plus a few pieces of barbarian gear so far.
Yeah, the skill tree is pretty dumbed down. As I level I see skills I previously had pop up with New on them, but selecting them is just a cool down, so it seems I can always go back and respec. I’ve read that you can gear up later on to enhance certain builds though, so that’s where the customization, such as it is, comes into play. There are builds for different types of each class you can read online (combinations of skills and gear).
Huh…that’s vastly different than my own experience so far. I’m not even through act 1 yet, and my character is fulling in magical arms and armor…and I’ve upgraded each piece multiple times. I actually have several pieces of gear that give me bonus to finding magical items and more gold now. And I had enough other magical gear that I’ve been able to deconstruct a ton of stuff for materials for crafting in the future.
They aren’t bad, but they aren’t great. I was hoping for more before I saw the beta, but now I’m ok with it. The game has always been about the play, not the scenery…that’s why Diablo II is still so popular despite the graphics being REALLY dated at this point.
My biggest bitch is having to be online and on their servers (and dependent to their servers being up) even when I’m playing a single player game. That really sucks, and even though I intellectually knew that was the deal, seeing the reality yesterday when the servers were up and down constantly and bugs were popping out was pretty frustrating. Why they didn’t make an offline mode is beyond me. I realize it probably has a lot to do with cheating and wanting to keep all the data on their servers, but they could have come up with a way to allow for offline play occasionally and then done checks of gear or level when players logged in or something.
D3 is just about unplayable on my PC, it seems. Setting the graphics settings to the lowest helps only slightly, but the lag is so bad that I can’t kill anything worth killing. It even lags on the menu screens.
Thanks for this thread. I was thinking of picking up D3 tonight, but after reading this thread, I think I’ll wait a few patches, if I ever buy it at all.
If that happens again, try Town Portaling-- That’ll probably fix it. What you’re describing is probably due to the client and server getting out of synch and disagreeing on where your character is (which, yes, is usually due to lag), and so moving your character to a fixed location, agreed on by the client and the server, should get them back in synch.
From this you can see that the number of possible combinations of skills far outnumbers those of D2, and that the skills and their runes are each by and large tactically unique. The limit of six skills at once makes decision-making about the skills (for solo but more especially for MP) a pretty satisfying activity from a cerebral viewpoint.
There is nothing about the skill point system in D2 which makes it “smarter” than the skill rune system in D3.
You get it at the end of the Blacksmith quest. I know this because I tried to figure out where town portals were right away and saw they weren’t there at all. Hitting T didn’t bring up the portal and the icon wasn’t there until after the end of the blacksmith quest.
About the graphics I must disagree; I think the game’s really beautiful. It’s not like the goal of every game should be extreme photorealism, right?
I’m perfectly happy so far…when I’m actually able to play.