Diablo 3 first impressions

I know I'm late with this one, but see, I've had my eye on this fantastic rare in the Auction House and can't quite get my Act III gold runs past 130k/hr. So, busy. Soon.

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Gary mack

Diablo III is BORING !!!!!!!!!!!!!
- MichaelDalin
  
  Agreed! It was lame. They dumbed it down. I enjoyed act 2, which was the only act that felt anything like diable 2. Only one boss managed to kill me the entire game (I died a couple of other times as well). I beat act 5 in about 2 hours and didn’t die once, not even on the final boss. Diablo 2 was pretty intense and scary. I remember the hell level taking forever, and being frustrated and loving it!
  - http://twitter.com/Nyzaris Nizaris
    
    Act 5, huh?
    
    And you one-shot Inferno??
    
    Something sounds fishy. *ponders*
    - MichaelDalin
      
      I played it one time through on the normal difficultly level. I’m sure it gets much harder on nightmare level, etc. My point was more comparing the difficulty of diablo 2 to diablo 3. It seemed pretty clear to me that they made it a lot easier. Acts 4 & 5 were minuscule and the bosses were a joke. The boss on act 2 did take some time and pleasant effort.
      
      edit — ohhh, I mean act 4, not 5 in diablo 3. Whatever. The game was okay, but it was worth about $10-15.
      - wizardru
        
        They didn’t make it easier, they added a difficulty level and re-calibrated accordingly. Diablo 2 had 3 difficulty levels, Diablo 3 has 4. Additional content appears as the difficulty increases.
      - MichaelDalin
        
        They made it easier by not having you lose your body and gear when you die and have to go back and find it. And they made it much easier by having those health things drop everywhere in the middle of battle. Those were big changes imo
franko

pfft – haters gonna.
i’m loving it, and i was hooked on D2 for ages.
- Gary mack
  
  I was hooked on Diablo I and II played both over and over for years. Waited with anticipation for III. What a waste. I am waiting now for Grim dawn. It would appear to be what Diablo III should have been. The worst part of III is the fact that you have to be connected to play even in single mode.
  - SeattlePete
    
    Ok, going to have to correct you before others do – there is no single player game in D3. There is online coop with other human players and there is online coop alone. No single player game, only multiplayer and multiplayer alone (which I admit is a brand new gameplay type which Blizzard invented to distract us from a horrible DRM scheme).
    - DeargDoom
      
      There is no single player game in D3… there is online coop alone
      
      Nice. But satire should be distinguishable from reality in my opinion.
  - Nikolaj Mariager
    
    >The worst part of III is the fact that you have to be connected to play even in single mode.
    It’s interesting how often people miss the point of this. It’s the only way to ensure people aren’t cheating and duping items. I think it’s safe to assume that Blizzard wouldn’t have much luck with their cash auction house, if everyone could just use an inventory editor to get the items they want. I agree it’s annoying, but calling it the “worst part” is a bit dramatic, especially considering there’s a reason for it, from a consumers view point.
    - Christopher Houser
      
      There was a separate offline mode and online mode. You could only play your online characters while logged onto the Internet and the save data is not locally stored. But, in addition to that, you could play in offline mode in which, yes, you could cheat. But you could also run through the single player campaign. And, most importantly, you could game on your laptop in the middle of the nowhere while you’re on a family visit. Or maybe on a plane, or some other long and boring sit-down.
      
      Diablo 3 gave it up for exclusively bullshit reasons.
      - Nikolaj Mariager
        
        Again, if people are to pay money, they don’t want cheaters. People pay for the experience of awesome loot. Why should they pay when they could just cheat and get the same experience?
      - ryuthrowsstuff
        
        Not everyone cheats in single player games. Chiefly because cheating in single player offers no competitive advantage, since there’s no one to compete with. So most people tend to you know play the games as is because they want to experienced as intended. “Cheating” as its broadly defined in an online environment also encompasses a lot of stuff that’s not conventionally cheating. Mods, hacks, bugs, exploits, basically a lot of it (yeah even more clear cheating) are basically done because they’re fun and interesting. There’s no human competitor you’re screwing over or real world reward your unfairly gaining. Exploring the limits of the game, expanding game play possibilities, working around bugs in legacy games, and just generally screwing around are all worthwhile and entertaining uses for cheats. “Getting loot” (or paying for it as that optional anyway) is besides the point.
        
        And guess what? If a true single player where these are possible is completely sequestered from online aspects its not a problem. If I’m screwing around with a locally saved game that cannot be converted to a server side save, cannot access the auction houses, leader boards etc. What possible effect can that have on other players or the game’s economy and balance systems?
ikelleigh

Can’t wait for Torchlight 2 (original Diablo 2 team).
- whatebahw
  
  I was hoping someone would bring this up. I never finished the first one due to owning too many games and not enough time but I thoroughly enjoyed Torchlight for several hours.
  - wizardru
    
    I never finished the first one due to inventory management seeming to be a bigger hassle than Diablo. Or at least, it felt like it was a lot of work after a certain point. I’m still interested in Torchlight II, but Diablo 3 has kind of stolen a lot of it’s thunder. If it works on weaker hardware, the way Torchlight did, that might be a factor, though.
    - ikelleigh
      
      One of the coolest parts of Torchlight was your pet holding shit items, and sending it back to town to sell them off. And then there is the modding system. There are mods out there to help with some inventory management issues (like potion and scroll stacks) as well as adding new vendors that sell different things like fish and spells. Some mods are outrageous while others help build on the game without it feeling like you cheating.
      
      Torchlight 2 will be a lot of the same as well as adding new classes and multi-player, and it is only $20.
http://theladyfingers.blogspot.com/ Ladyfingers

It’s the prettiest version of Excel yet.
http://twitter.com/Nyzaris Nizaris

Shame that the end-game focuses more on your need to shop than it does on actually playing the game.
- ikelleigh
  
  Yeah, in Diablo II the end-game was more about doing endless boss runs to collect loot for PvP. But the loot drops were much better, where you could easily get high level Uniques or set items in just a few runs. Didn’t like it? Trade them across for other gear you do want. There is no reason to farm anything end-game in III. They hired a team to build Diablo III with very little experience on how a dungeon crawler should work, and instead build a money printing machine for Activision.
  - whatebahw
    
    Activision…..
    - ikelleigh
      
      Yeah, edited.
- phor11
  
  And even then the shopping search interface is completely terrible.
  : /
http://twitter.com/scottfeldstein scott d. feldstein

I’m glad there’s no “offline” mode so as to prevent cheating. I’m glad they put in the auction house so you don’t have to “farm.” The only disappointing things about it is that the story is weak (even by Diablo standards) and the game doesn’t seem quite long enough. I have minor quibbles, too–better auction house searching, for example–but those are the big ones.
- ryuthrowsstuff
  
  Again if an offline mode were completely sequestered from online play. No auctions, no server side saves, no converting to online, no leader boards etc. How could my cheating (should I decide to) possible effect anyone else? That’s what most people looking for offline play are looking for. I’ve yet to hear a person demand an offline mode that still lets them use the auction house or any other variation. The only kind of cheating that could possible cross over with a split like this is the kind that’s possible online anyway.
  - http://twitter.com/scottfeldstein scott d. feldstein
    
    In previous versions of the game single-player mode was always a source of frustration. If I put time into a character in that mode, I’d always grow to regret that I’d done it because I couldn’t play it on battle.net. I get that your mileage varies, but I don’t miss it at all.