I’m quite sure you share Magic Find and Gold Find among the party now. I’m not sure if it is being averaged out though.
And, of course, there are the advantages that emergently come from being in a party: Different characters will be able to do different things, which will complement each other. Some monsters will be resistant or immune to some elements, some characters will be better for a few big monsters vs. swarms of smaller ones, etc.
I got a Beta invite; installed it this morning and played it for a couple of hours this afternoon. I’m enjoying it, but I’m finding the skill system a little puzzling. As far as I can tell, there are six categories of abilities: primary attacks (bound to left mouse button), secondary attacks (bound to right mouse button), a defensive ability (bound to the 1 key), and three other classes of abilities that I haven’t acquired yet, but apparently are going to be bound to the 2-4 number keys. What stinks is that you can only have one ability in each category “available” at one time, so you can’t bind another primary attack to the #3 key, for example. I foresee a lot of abilities that I’ll never be using, just ecause they’re situational and therefore won’t be bound to my mouse or the 1-4 keys.
Although they can’t all be bound to keys, can’t you at least use the mouse wheel to scroll through them?
I got the Beta invite as well. I played through the whole game to the end. There’s just the one campaign available at the moment. I only got to level 9 before finishing, so I don’t know what it might be like at higher levels. I played as Barbarian first, and I am now trying at Demon Hunter.
I agree with Runestar about the skills and having them bound to only 6 keys and you may not bind more than one skill from any category at the same time.
I would also like it if you could direct your character to run using arrow keys, but it wasn’t really a problem for me.
I played on my laptop using a the touch pad, so I didn’t try this. As I am playing it over again with the other character, I will find a mouse and see if I can do this.
I did notice some pathing problems. If my character was on the lower floor of the cathedral and I wanted her to go up stairs, she would not automatically run up the stairs to where I pointed her. I had to track her up the stairs. Or if she was behind a desk, I had to direct her around the desk and then to where I wanted her to go or she would just try to run into the desk. This was awkward and time consuming. I didn’t play earlier versions of this game so I don’t know if this is new or just something this game does.
That’s just the way the game works. Clicking on a point means “move in this direction”, not “move to this point”. Usually, folks just hold the mouse button down while moving, and move the mouse around to change direction. You get used to it.
And no pathing is far better than bad pathing, like some games have, that takes you places you don’t intend to go. At least this is completely controllable.
That’s cool. Now I know. It’s far less of an issue since I switched to using a mouse instead of my touchpad.
I could be wrong but I believe there is an option under game-play called “elective mode” that allows you to bind more than one skill from a single category as well as just move skills around.
This is correct. You can still only have six skills active at any given time, but you can choose them freely if you want, and swap them out (with a brief cooldown on the new skill). You can also swap runes whenever you want.
It reminds me a bit of Guild Wars, where you can have many skills but only 8 active at any given time.
My girlfriend will be pleased about that. She’s playing in the beta as well and was disappointed that she couldn’t do that.
Is everyone aware of the D3 character builder?
Was everyone aware that there was a free Beta weekend? I found that out Friday night. Busy on Friday night…server crashes on Saturday, but by the time Saturday night rolled around I actually was able to start up a couple of toons, a Monk and a Demon Hunter…liked the Monk…loved the Demon Hunter…got both of them to lvl 12 with some decent gear for their level and pretty much facerolled through the Beta. Gold accumulation was ridiculous easy.
As Chronos was saying, movement is a little different but you can get used to it after about 3 minutes…the only problem I had was trying to target while still moving…as the Demon Hunter is a ranged character, I found myself at times running up to the mob before attacking it which is not the ideal for a Demon Hunter.
Overall, I did enjoy the Beta…once I actually got on and played.
Using the shift key while clicking with the mouse would keep you from moving to your target.
Ok, I will give that a try next time…thanks.
3 more days:D
how are people offering guides already when the game isn’t out yet? from my understanding the beta test was a stripped down version so even if the guides are based on the beta, the information is incomplete or comprimised.
will the beta testers keep their characters or do they start from zero like the rest of us?
sooo excited!
Someone probably already answered this, but what time zone does the ‘midnight launch’ start? Is it EST? Or is it a rolling launch with basically ‘midnight’ being determined by whatever time zone you are in?
Wish I could take tomorrow off. 
-XT
Same here. I got a Beta Invite but didn’t really get into it until thi free Beta weekend when some friends were doing it too. Gold was easy to get and it was fun. It kinda too easy.
“The Americas (U.S., Canada, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, and South East Asia) servers open at: 12:01 a.m. PDT, May 15”
they had actually prepared an entire ‘Launch Day Preparation Guide’, no doubt to forewarn players like me who would be mighty pissed if they cannot play the ‘single player’ portion of the game on launch day.
Well, at least you can install it as of 8am PDT this morning, so I guess that’s something. I’ll install the game when I get home, but doubt I’ll be able to stay up until 1am tonight to play, not an have to be at work at 6am tomorrow morning (it sucks getting old).
-XT