Could Posi save Diablo 3

[Minotaur]

[TimtheEnchanter]

I was never able to get into the Diablo games AT ALL. There seemed to be about as much plot to it as Gauntlet. All hack&slash and no story or RP.

[Mister Bison]

I was never able to get into the Diablo games AT ALL. There seemed to be about as much plot to it as Gauntlet. All hack&slash and no story or RP.

Time for a U-turn for them, then ^^

[Knightslayer]

I was never able to get into the Diablo games AT ALL. There seemed to be about as much plot to it as Gauntlet. All hack&slash and no story or RP.

I've always enjoyed the Diablo lore & setting, which Diablo 3 expanded on nicely. I even have the Book of Caine, which is full of lore. 

[jbazzrea1]

D2 at least had the tools you expect to see in an ARPG. D3 much closer to world of diablocraft...and that was foolish. Unless they basically did a complete overhaul and ditched the RMAH I am out on my favorite PC franchise of all time. Those morons alienated the people who bought 24+ million copies of Diablo 2

[Primantis]

I've always enjoyed the Diablo lore & setting, which Diablo 3 expanded on nicely. I even have the Book of Caine, which is full of lore. 

Indeed, Diablo has a fair amount of lore if you dig deep enough.

A lot of it is pretty transparent if you only go about playing the game (especially if you're one of them folks who like to rush through the game), but it's there if you look.

Sure it aint Elder Scrolls or what have you, but for an ARPG it isn't shabby.

One thing that Blizzard used to do (Ended around WoW's release iirc??) Is provide huge game manuals, usually several hundred pages long. Within these manuals was lots of lore and other goodies for those who wanted to read them... I was so disappointed to open Starcraft II and see the crappy 3-page "booklet" that passes for a game manual these days..

I guess their excuse is probably "Well, its all online!" but meh...

[General Idiot]

D2 at least had the tools you expect to see in an ARPG. D3 much closer to world of diablocraft...and that was foolish. Unless they basically did a complete overhaul and ditched the RMAH I am out on my favorite PC franchise of all time. Those morons alienated the people who bought 24+ million copies of Diablo 2

Slightly off topic but personally I'm a big fan of Torchlight 2, which I've seen described as 'three times the Diablo for a third of the DRM.' Diablo 3 itself I found fun enough for a while but the fact that the best gear is always going to be on the auction house unless you win the lottery and against overwhelming odds actually find something usable kinda killed the appeal of it for me. That and the way you could have all these skills and maybe three of them were actually useful once you got into higher difficulties, though I hear they've made an effort to change that more recently.

[Knightslayer]

Indeed, Diablo has a fair amount of lore if you dig deep enough.

A lot of it is pretty transparent if you only go about playing the game (especially if you're one of them folks who like to rush through the game), but it's there if you look.

Sure it aint Elder Scrolls or what have you, but for an ARPG it isn't shabby.

One thing that Blizzard used to do (Ended around WoW's release iirc??) Is provide huge game manuals, usually several hundred pages long. Within these manuals was lots of lore and other goodies for those who wanted to read them... I was so disappointed to open Starcraft II and see the crappy 3-page "booklet" that passes for a game manual these days..

I guess their excuse is probably "Well, its all online!" but meh...

A lot of companies used to do that, part of the reason I prefered to buy the boxed game over a digital version - these days you'll be lucky if your box includes anything beyond a sheet that shows the layout of your keyboard with all the hotkeys... 
Ah well, at least it's better for the trees....

[Dollhouse]

Slightly off topic but personally I'm a big fan of Torchlight 2, which I've seen described as 'three times the Diablo for a third of the DRM.'

There's a very good reason Torchlight 1 and 2 are considered by many to be the "real Diablo 3." That's because Max and Erich Schaefer, who led development of the original Diablo games at Blizzard North, are its principal creators. I love Torchlight!

[Knightslayer]

There's a very good reason Torchlight 1 and 2 are considered by many to be the "real Diablo 3." That's because Max and Erich Schaefer, who led development of the original Diablo games at Blizzard North, are its principal creators. I love Torchlight!

Huh, I didn't know that... I might have to give them both a try.

[General Idiot]

I highly doubt you'll regret it, though I haven't played the first one personally.

[Illusionss]

Nobody could save Diablo 3, I tried that for about 15 minutes and logged out in disgust. I found absolutely nothing to like about it.

[Minotaur]

Nobody could save Diablo 3, I tried that for about 15 minutes and logged out in disgust. I found absolutely nothing to like about it.

I've just about played it through to 60 on all classes and am gathering some achievements, but can't be bothered with the endgame grind which is not fun, I got my money's worth off the box, but it's not something to play to death. I was disappointed. I'm amused by a whole load of posts on the forums which basically answer the question "How can D3 be improved" with "ditch everything except the graphics and add them to D2".

[SerialBeggar]

What's up with Diablo 3 negativity?  I haven't been following it.

[Primantis]

What's up with Diablo 3 negativity?  I haven't been following it.

It feels more like "WoW-Lite" then a Diablo game.

At least that was one of my major complaints..

and the real money action house, meaning anything worth trading for you'll have to end up spending real cash.

Imagine if CoH had two Wentworth's. One was the normal Wentworths, the other was a Wentworths where you could buy/sell IO's using real money.

[Minotaur]

and the real money action house, meaning anything worth trading for you'll have to end up spending real cash.

Imagine if CoH had two Wentworth's. One was the normal Wentworths, the other was a Wentworths where you could buy/sell IO's using real money.

It's worse than that actually due to the itemization system meaning that in CoH terms 99%+ of  rare recipes and 90%+ of purples you find are useless and almost worthless. Also your recipes will be more like +20-40% acc, +20-240% rech, +20-40% end rather than 33% to each so that if you happen to roll 3 40s the value is disproportionately large, plus the fact that most of the time your melee set will have +30% to sleep duration rather than any useful attribute as the abilities are pretty much random.

[Sailboat]

Another aspect of Diablo 3 that's been heavily criticized is the unlimited respecs.  Since you can rearrange the skill selection of any character at any time, there's only sense in making one of each class.  Unlike Diablo 2, where there were all sorts of variant builds you could make, each one a different alt, in D3 you'd just respec your lone character of a given class at any arbitrary time.

While that's flexible as hell and allows you to more easily experience the different skills without commitment, it also limits the replayability of the game and has a disastrous effect on players' emotional connections to their characters.  Not only is your character not unique, in that anyone could duplicate your skill layout at any time by respeccing, not only do you not have specialized alts, but also you haven't bonded with a character using unusual or suboptimal skills to level up.  Some say it makes the characters feel too generic.

[Minotaur]

Another aspect of Diablo 3 that's been heavily criticized is the unlimited respecs.  Since you can rearrange the skill selection of any character at any time, there's only sense in making one of each class.  Unlike Diablo 2, where there were all sorts of variant builds you could make, each one a different alt, in D3 you'd just respec your lone character of a given class at any arbitrary time.

While that's flexible as hell and allows you to more easily experience the different skills without commitment, it also limits the replayability of the game and has a disastrous effect on players' emotional connections to their characters.  Not only is your character not unique, in that anyone could duplicate your skill layout at any time by respeccing, not only do you not have specialized alts, but also you haven't bonded with a character using unusual or suboptimal skills to level up.  Some say it makes the characters feel too generic.

RIFT also had this problem, if you're a badge hunter of course you do need 2 of each class at 60.

[Primantis]

Another aspect of Diablo 3 that's been heavily criticized is the unlimited respecs.  Since you can rearrange the skill selection of any character at any time, there's only sense in making one of each class.  Unlike Diablo 2, where there were all sorts of variant builds you could make, each one a different alt, in D3 you'd just respec your lone character of a given class at any arbitrary time.

While that's flexible as hell and allows you to more easily experience the different skills without commitment, it also limits the replayability of the game and has a disastrous effect on players' emotional connections to their characters.  Not only is your character not unique, in that anyone could duplicate your skill layout at any time by respeccing, not only do you not have specialized alts, but also you haven't bonded with a character using unusual or suboptimal skills to level up.  Some say it makes the characters feel too generic.

Aye, that too.

It's one of those things that looks good on paper, but really tends to shaft longevity in practice.

The fact that you also had no control over your stat growth also bugged me. You gained specific stats at specific levels. Whereas in Diablo I/II you allocated stats points to attributes of your choice, resulting in more possible builds..

Sure, if you wanted to be competitive you pretty much had to follow one of a few certain "cookie cutter" stat allocation builds.. But at least you had the option of going crazy and making those funky builds.

One of the joys I had in Diablo II was coming up with funky ass builds and trying to make them Hell-viable.

[Mistress Urd]

They dumbed the game down. I felt like I was playing Diablo 1.5

Friends and I have been running a team on D2 once a week. After trying out MMOs which feel like single player game in persistant world with cash shop ads, we all decided to go back to old fun games.

[TimtheEnchanter]

A lot of companies used to do that, part of the reason I prefered to buy the boxed game over a digital version - these days you'll be lucky if your box includes anything beyond a sheet that shows the layout of your keyboard with all the hotkeys...  :-\Ah well, at least it's better for the trees....

Yeah, but there's no excuse for not putting all of that data onto a disk, or at least making it possible to access from within the game. I very rarely play anything at fullscreen, but I know a lot of people do. And they don't want to have to tab out all the time to open a resource-hog browser to get some background info. Some games will crash from even trying it, and some computers will hang for 10 minutes. All of that should be easily accessible from within the game, even if that means the game having to grab it from a web server.

[Primantis]

Yeah, but there's no excuse for not putting all of that data onto a disk, or at least making it possible to access from within the game. I very rarely play anything at fullscreen, but I know a lot of people do. And they don't want to have to tab out all the time to open a resource-hog browser to get some background info. Some games will crash from even trying it, and some computers will hang for 10 minutes. All of that should be easily accessible from within the game, even if that means the game having to grab it from a web server.

I'm guessing a big reason (aside from companies just being cheap asses) might be because how frequently games change these days via online patching and what not.. What might be accurate info during the initial disc printing might be sorely outdated a year later. Especially if said game has a major online component.

Still doesn't leave out a nice in-game help feature though.