DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

When a Blizzard game launches, the hivemind is in full swing behind it. You can't say anything bad about it or your stupid or trolling for doing so. It was the way with WoW and SC2 and they'll even go so far to maintain them as gold standards for their genre.

As I've said in the past, Blizzard and Bioware - along with their fanbases - are like peas in a pod. Its just a matter of time before the bubble bursts and Blizzard faces the wrath of an entire fanbase rather than having the majority play the white knight for them. You can only ride a name for so long without stepping up your game.

[Taskmage]

Re: DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

You clearly weren't around for the D3 launch. Never in the life of the product was the majority batting for Blizzard even on their own forums.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

I don't go there for obvious reasons. Namely, it being a Blizzard forum. That and no new Lost Vikings games means no love from me.

I've seen the bile WoW gets now. Its the same love/hate FFXI gets, essentially a bunch of hope-starved gamers celebrating what small updates they get before they go back to berating Blizzard for everything under the sun. I just see plenty of token asskissers popping up in other forums and comment sections regarding D3 who don't really get that people like me aren't complaining about D3's features so much as gloating about what we knew wouldn't work.

The landscape of the genre has changed a great deal since D2, but Blizzard took what still worked and tossed it out, then streamlined without really improving anything.

I don't get why people play these games for story, either, they're generic as hell in that regard. It anything its mostly about the grind and the atmosphere. If those things aren't fun why play?

[DakAttack]

Re: DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

For a while, the game is pretty deep and easy to lose yourself in. The narrative is from the point of the character you're playing, you, and it's easy to feel that you are the Barbarian or Monk, tearing your way through hordes of demons to face down one of the prime evils. Each companion has their own story, although they're all formulaic and have lack-luster endings, but you're still responsible for giving them better gear and selecting which skills would best compliment your play-style.

But then you find yourself surrounded by impassable walls, with spinning lasers shooting through them effortlessly, while invincible minions toss firebombs at you from a distance. They're sitting on the bridge you NEED to take to continue down into the next level, but not only can they stand shoulder-to-shoulder and block it purely by presence, those walls aren't making it any easier. Every death pulls you away from the game you enjoyed into the reality of a game developed by formulaic designers that lack any amount of foresight.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

So Diablo's "hardcore" is not even Dark Soul's standard difficulty, its just bullshit traps, instakills and zerg rush design.

[DakAttack]

Re: DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

Yep. The difficulty has always been in the rare spawns, which come with random abilities. At Normal difficulty they have only one, and they gain another with each subsequent level of difficulty. Eventually it becomes a boatload of bullshit. Even the loot goblins become impossible to kill. The chance of interrupting their escape portal lessens and lessens until killing them becomes a matter of luck. On Nightmare I would hound loot goblins, even if they ran through multiple groups of rare spawns, just to stop them from escaping. It was a bit of thrill taking a risk like that, creating a huge mess of rare spawns and trash minions, but it's all taken away.

[cidbahamut]

Re: DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

So Diablo's "hardcore" is not even Dark Soul's standard difficulty, its just bullshit traps, instakills and zerg rush design.

I thought bullshit insta-kills were the core appeal of that franchise.

[DakAttack]

Re: DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

I thought bullshit insta-kills were the core appeal of that franchise.

Demon's/Dark Souls is about learning and mastering your environment. You make a lot of mistakes in the beginning, some more bullshit than others, but you learn to avoid them. The only one that comes to mind that's truly bullshit is the first encounter with the Kite dragon on the bridge. It pretty much spawns above you when you reach a certain distance across the bridge to breath fire on the player, and deals enough damage to be outright fatal to most players. There's no way to dodge it.

[Firewind]

Re: DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

Demon's/Dark Souls is about learning and mastering your environment. You make a lot of mistakes in the beginning, some more bullshit than others, but you learn to avoid them. The only one that comes to mind that's truly bullshit is the first encounter with the Kite dragon on the bridge. It pretty much spawns above you when you reach a certain distance across the bridge to breath fire on the player, and deals enough damage to be outright fatal to most players. There's no way to dodge it.

Until you get an animation glitch that flings you into a pit, or mobs all rush you during a backstab/instant kill animation.

[Taskmage]

Re: DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

The advice that's been given by D3's designers and community managers for randomly unbeatable packs right in your critical path is to leave the game, start a new one and hope for a better random roll. I'm not even joking. Quitting the game is literally an endorsed strategy, whereas actually attempting to fight them is heavily discouraged by punitive repair costs.

[cidbahamut]

Re: DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

The advice that's been given by D3's designers and community managers for randomly unbeatable packs right in your critical path is to leave the game, start a new one and hope for a better random roll. I'm not even joking. Quitting the game is literally an endorsed strategy, whereas actually attempting to fight them is heavily discouraged by punitive repair costs.

That's some pretty bottom shelf game design right there.

[Malacite]

Re: DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

And it's a big part of why I gave up on the game.

I swear D3 is more trolly than IWBTG. There are just certain combinations of affixes that honestly should not be possible, like invincible minions, arcane enchanted illusionist - good luck ever getting even remotely close to the unique mob.

[Taskmage]

Re: DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

Wyatt Cheng posted this 1.0.4 Systems Preview - Diablo III developer blog today, outlining many, many of the changes that are upcoming in the 1.04 patch. Far too much to paste. It covers almost every single gameplay issue players commonly complain about.

I haven't played in a few weeks, myself, and while all these changes sound nice, none of them on their own or in combination make me think if I came back to the game now I'd suddenly love it again. Maybe I'm wrong and some of the yet-to-be-announced item changes will make the loot hunt feel rewarding again, but I'm doubtful. The AH is still there, gear standards will regress to the mean, all these buffs are going to erode the little remaining challenge in the game, there's zero incentive to reroll softcore characters, and hardcore still feels like too much of a gamble with latency issues as they are.

[Malacite]

Re: DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

It's a bit too late in all honesty, and they still aren't addressing the major crafting issues.

All the same, it's a good list of long overdue changes (like removing Invincible affix!) and I'll probably check it out when it hits, but atm I'm too engaged with the Mass Effect series & FFXIV.

[DakAttack]

Re: DIABLO III - J9's thread of infernal enthusiasm!

I'll give it another try. There's still a lot of stuff to do, and I wouldn't mind a maxed out character before PvP arrives.