Diablo 3 Open Beta weekend

The Game Room
81

Most of the skills do damage as x% of your weapon damage. So yes, the sword will make the spells do more damage. You’ll probably attack slower though. (I haven’t played spellcasters yet, so I’m not sure, but my monk definitely attacks slower with a staff equipped than with a dagger, even though it’s still punch/kicks).

You can assign skills to your left click, right click, and 1, 2, 3, 4. If you press S it opens up the skill menu where you can assign the skills. By default you’re limited to one per category, but if you turn on “Elective Mode” in the gameplay options you can assign any category’s skills to any slot.

82

Baldur’s Gate with training wheels. Add a glowing breadcrumb trail to the quest goal instead of just a big yellow arrow and a pulsing beacon and it will make a fine console game.

Phooey.

83

So am I the only one who has fps problems? I just bought a new computer, benchmark software gives me good points and Witcher 2 works fine at high graphics settings, but this screeches to a halt every time I toss a spider attack with my witch doc at the enemies. Even when resigning myself to use only the poison dart attack the game jerks and stops at times. I just updated my drivers, too. I guess it’s a beta, but Blizzard’s games have usually worked fine this close to launch.

84

Apparently it was just the fact I tried to play before finishing the download process properly, now it works fine.

85

Turble, you appear to have mistaken this for an RPG. While that’s a fairly common mistake to make, it’s actually a dungeon-crawl game, a completely different genre.

And I figured out why I was having trouble with Leoric. It turns out that the weapon I was using just sucked (even though it was the best I’d found to that point). I went and explored some more, found a sickle, and came back and suddenly he was a breeze.

Are they going to give the followers names before the full release? It seems kind of odd that you can carry on full conversations with them now, but they don’t even have names any more.

And I presume that beta characters won’t carry over to the full release?

86

It may still happen–there’s an acknowledged issue involving loading up game assets for the first time.

I had to do the spider thing about fifteen times, getting several seconds of freeze each time–but after that, it caused no problem.

Similar events occur for many new skills/spells/etc.

87

We’re in the middle of a realm down, guess they are updating something. So far, I like the game, I’ve been playing for about 3 hours, and have just gotten to the royal crypt way point. So far, I like the game, and I will be buying it come may 15th (thank god it comes out the day after my anniversary, or my wife might divorce me!).

One thing I’ve noticed while listening to the dialog, I don’t understand some of the references. I never played Diablo one (well, I played the demo, but I was too poor at the time to buy the game), but I’ve played the hell out of Diablo II. I hear some references to people (Zakurum, etc), but nothing to events… So far at least… But then, we’re only in the first act, who knows what they have saved for the following acts.

I’m going to be playing as long as I can stay awake, sleep till my wife wakes me, then will play all day tomorrow (that’s the plan at least), I haven’t tried multiplayer yet, my battle tag is Hirka#1677. Friend me if y’all are around.

88

Yeah, there are definitely a lot of references to D1 specifically. You’ll end up meeting someone who you’ve previously only seen the arm of.

By the way: I’ve found a Black Mushroom, which says it can’t be sold or traded, but doesn’t seem to have any use. I know that that was a quest item in D1, but what’s it for in D3? Is it part of some quest or achievement? Can you craft something with it? Or is it just an odd little trophy with no use?

89

Tomscud#1970 for me, btw.

90

And now, 37 has become my new least favorite number.

91

Playing some more, I think my problem is that it feels too much like a mashup between Gauntlet and Torchlight. Namely, it has the easy “go kill hordes of monsters holding down the left mouse button” feel of Gauntlet. I’m not saying Diablo 2 was a great strategic game, but it was hard in a lot of places, and you couldn’t just left-click everything unless you were fully geared. I’ve done lots of runthroughs of the beta where I haven’t needed to use a single health potion or play defensively or anything. Just left-click everything to death. And as for Torchlight, it seems to have similar map design, which I don’t really like. I’m definitely hoping there’s some larger, bigger areas to explore in the real game. (And it would be nice if it got rid of the stupid GO HERE STUPID quest marker)

The other big drawback is the lack of feeling you progress. I can understand why they changed the stats/skills system, but the fact remains that when I level, I don’t feel like I’ve progressed. I don’t get stat points to spend and I don’t get skill points. Sometimes I unlock a new skill, but usually it’s something I don’t care about. Once you get the skills you like there’s really no good feeling to leveling up. Sure you get some stats but its largely invisible. I liked Diablo 2’s mix of random progression with the loot and guaranteed progression with the stat points. Now it feels like half of that is gone.

92

I can’t say I ever felt challenged by any part of the first half of Act 1 Normal in Diablo 2, or the equivalent first hour of the default difficulty on almost any non-arcade game ever made, for that matter.

As for the feeling of progress, I never felt it in D2, either, except in broad terms. Most of the time, a level gain meant a tiny amount more HP and an imperceptibly small increase in damage or duration on an ability. Huzzah? Going from 20 to 21 is essentially meaningless. I much prefer the new system. “Oh hey, now I can make this ability stun monsters!” is a tactical addition and something I’m almost certainly going to immediately try out and play around with for a while. The change from a skill point system to a skill array seems tailored specifically to the tastes of people like me. So many more toys to play with!

93

Totally feeling this, my beta experiance so far has taken me from Diablo 3 to being a day one buy to ‘Eh, i think i’m going to have to hold on a while and see what happens’.

Not to harp on about it but i find the whole you can wield any weapon you like and it determines your spell damage totally immersion breaking.

I can see why they did it. So there’s no such thing as a weapon drop that your character can’t use. I just don’t see the problem in the first place. Part of the fun of Diablo2 for me (and the whole point of a loot game) was questing for that awesome wand for my sorceress or claws for my assassin.

In addition for a game where they are implementing an auction system so you can take your mighty weapon that you can’t use and trade it for something cool that you can. It just seems a really odd descision.

94

I remember when I first heard about the release of Diablo 3 (around a decade ago) I said to my D2 friends “I’ll be on board, just so long as they don’t do anything truly and utterly stupid. Like, for example, getting rid of runewords, hehe”.

I was just having a laugh, but in the end that was exactly what they did. WTF? No runewords? Really?

Seriously, they got rid of the best part of the game. I was an avid D2 player, but I have absolutely zero interest in ever playing D3.

95

Ok, so i’ve just completes the sorceress quest. Apparently their are unique class weapons as the end boss dropped a monk only weapon.

I don’t know though, i’m still not feeling the love.

96

Perhaps naively, I think that a lot of the trouble people are mentioning here will be solved in the actual game, because the actual game will not be set to easy mode (as the beta is–it’s not actually “normal” though it says it is, according to the devs) and the actual game will have more… game… in it.

As the difficulty ramps up, I believe we will find you typically can’t just pick a set of six skills and roll through the entire game with it. (BTW it’s been a while since I played D2 but I don’t remember ever using more than four skills max on a regular basis so to me at least six skills doesn’t seem like a serious limitation). Rather, we’ll find that specific situations will call for changes to skillset. Moreover, in multiplayer, different skillsets will need to be picked in coordination with those of others. Diablo has always had a twitchy action element and a cerebral element. In D2 and D1, the cerebral element had the problem that if you screwed it up, you’re entire character was boned forever. You had to start from scratch. Meh, that’s no fun.* In D3, the cerebral element (I predict) will be a necessary and very interesting component of the game, but will not lead to the possibility that days or weeks of effort is completely wasted.

Regarding the auto-leveling of attributes, see above, but also, I don’t see why they didn’t simply get rid of them if the player is unable to affect them. Well–the player can affect them by selecting gear, so that may have something to do with it. But then why have any auto-leveling of them if the player can’t affect that?

Regarding the thing where skill effects are often based on weapon damage, even when said weapon would seem to have nothing to do with said skill, I agree it’s immersion breaking. It’s a mechanic imported, I think, from World of Warcraft via DotA. I can fanwank it though. Having a weapon on hand, in itself, gives you some kind of magical mojo which most people express through hacking at things with the weapon, but which someone in contact with magical mystical forces can express by other means…

*(“Living with the consequences of your actions” is not a consideration here, since, it being a game and all, there’s no “living” with any of these “consequences” at all… There are consequences in both cases, but I can think of no reason why “permanent character non-viability” should be preferred as a consequence.)

97

I know you said it’s been a long time since you played Diablo, so FYI, in the later updates of D2 you were able to fully reset your character once per difficulty (Norm, NM, Hell) and then an infinite amount of times through the use of special items you could collect from killing bosses (or trade for), transmute them together, and use to fully reset your character. (but keep your levels, of course)

98

Runewords weren’t in the original Diablo 2 either–they came later in the expansion.

You’re mistaken: in WoW there are separate weapons for casters and melee characters that have different stats that increase damage. Equipping a rogue dagger on a mage, for instance, does nothing to increase his spell damage. And this only came much later–when the game shipped, weapons didn’t increase caster damage at all. All they were good for were stats.

People really need to take off their rose-colored glasses before nitpicking the game. Sure, the beta is pretty easy, but then so was Act 1 in Diablo 2. Having your spell dmg tied to your weapon dmg is a good thing. It means now you’ll have meaningful scaling throughout the game as you find better weapons. In Diablo 2 the only way to increase your damage as a caster was to find items with +skill prefixes, which weren’t all that common.

99

I totally don’t mind spell damage being tied to the damage your weapon does if this only applyed to thematically appropriate items. Wands and staves for the sorceress, bows and xbows for the demonhunter, gloves and brass knuckles for the monk etc etc. More powerful item, more damage, makes sense.

It’s having your Sorceresses spell damage go up when you equip her with a two-handed battle axe that seems so crazy and triggers my :dubious: reflexes.

100

Sorry, I meant Warcraft III!