Diablo III: Reaper of Souls Revealed

D:

I got werewolf druid back then and he kicked ass, up to Hell difficulty and very high levels. It was a good supplmenet to the party we had back then and ripped monsters to shreds. Cut the druids some slack

 

I would not be so sure about that. The shared paragorn system is nothing like the Synergies from D2.

How good or bad it will be is another question though.

 

To be honest, no matter how many promises this expansion provides, I really don't care. Diablo III was a thoroughly mediocre game and I don't believe a few loot tweaks can save its positively poor endgame, broken character building and terrible mockery of a story.

 

I think he meant that Loot 2.0 will be an equivalent quality improvement that Synergies were, which is quite possible. The crap drop rates were a major problem when I played and I know that they have been improved since. That said, all of Loot 2.0 (including the Loot Runs?) will be included to the base game so I would give it a shot before buying the expansion.

If Loot Runs are done correctly it should add an interesting endgame. The improved dropped item quality and increase of Legendary drops should make the gameplay more rewarding. There's no fixing the fan-fiction plot of the game but that's the least important problem.

I think it's pretty sad that it's taken them this long to realize that the core of their game, items, was designed incorrectly.

 

I think Blizzard defines the term "failing upward."

 

Thats a rather complex problem though. There is a magnitude of problems with the loot system of D3, and to be honest, what I have seen so far with the expansion doesn't impress me. Not even slightly. But to be fair, we don't know yet enough about "what" changes they really want to do, if any at all. Thats the point. We have to wait and see ...

As far as D3 goes for now, the game is in dire needs of changes. Its a very dull experience, a very unrewarding experience. Particularly when you reach a certain point where the finding of upgrades for your character becomes equal to playing the lottery. literally I mean, as far as the odds goes. Except when you start playing the "economy" of the game, which is either directly paying money on the real money auction house or if you start to look specifically for items that are under priced and sell them later for a higher price, also called "flipping". Then you can totally negate the effect of randomness on loot, since you can simply "buy" what you need. And this is so efficient that you can reach in maybe 1 or 2 months, if you're doing it seriously, what people with farming for 2 years cant achieve. A major problem in my eyes, because it makes Diablo 3 at the moment in its core a "pay 2 win" game. Even if its not really a competitive game, but you can buy directly power in the game with money.

With patch 1.04 they increased a few mechanics around drop rates, like for Legendary Items and Set items. but that didn't really helped at all, because the CHANCE to get a legendary item with the right stats is simply to low. Its absurd really. Its like 0.01% or something like that. What does it help to increase the drops here? Not much, if it is now 0,01 or 0.02%, what does it really matter in the end? You still spend years playing the game for nothing. And I love D3 even ... but it simply isn't motivating. God knows how many legendary items I found so far, 300? No clue. Yet most of them simply don't have the stats you need on them ... another issue with the loot hunt, as from the 20 stats that can be on items just a handful of those are REALLY useful in the end.

a lot of people hope for changes with the so called loot 2.0. But knowing Blizzards recent history, I would not get my hopes to high. Yes, I would be happy to see big and great changes. But I am also realistic.

this has yet to be proven. You are right, if it works like most people hope it does. But we have simply to wait and see. I like D3, a lot even. But nothing I have seen so far impressed me really. Yes, I am a very critical person, but I am usually not a person that gets a lot in to "hype". D3 is almost more then 1 and a half year old by now. They had plenty of time to fix the game, but instead they have spend time creating the console verison, now they are working on the expansion rather then fixing the current game. That somehow doesnt feel right for me as consumer.

 

For those that are interested in the D3 expansion:

Diablo 3 Expansion “Leaked” Feature List

http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/diablo-3-expansion-leaked-feature-list

There have been quite a lot of informations "leaked" to the public. Its shocking how much actually. Though, the game is not out yet, and everything should be taken with a grain of salt. It still is interesting though. There are even story spoilers, so watch out. I mean its really hard to fake thouse videos that show the lore of the new class.

Here is a complete list of all informations

http://www.diablofans.com/

 

Is Diablo III any good?

I've never played a Diablo game, but I played Torchlight (and I disliked it) and my friends said it was very similar to that.

 

I've not played 3, but Torchlight is very similar to Diablo 2, although I would say the Diablo games have a much darker, more intense milieu.

If you didn't like Torchlight, I'd say you might like Diablo 1 the best...if you like any of them. If you didn't like the entire game-style of Torchlight, you probably won't like any of the Diablos either. They're all definitely of a common genre.

I find them entertaining, but ultimately hollow. I would play for a couple of hours and then think, "wow, that was wasted time."

 

Yeah,that's pretty much my feeling on Torchlight, an addictive,repetitive grind that is ultimately shallow,which coincidentally is exactly the same way I feel about MMO's.

 

Don't touch the Diablos then.

Me, I have fun playing it with friends, and the atmosphere and music in the older diablo titles (especially 1) is very dark and gloomy, enjoyable.

 

If you can get Diablo 3 for lets say 20$ then its "ok". But it sure does not live up to the hype. If you play together with friends it can be very fun. But dont let the game fool you. Its pay to win right now ... there is a point in the game where you can not really upgrade your character anymore without spending money. You could in "theory" play the game farming the items, but on paper, its like playing the lottery with the target to win the jackpot. You might have a bigger chance in the lottery even ...

 

Let's not kid ourselves, Diablo 2 was exactly like that, except that rampant duping made the economy seem richer than it was (the legit droprates for BiS were similar to D3's, AKA very very low, don't get me started on runewords). And the pay2win was from unofficial sites rather than Blizzard getting a cut directly.

Now, don't get me wrong, the required connection and AH were bad ideas (even Blizz has ackowledged the latter), but apart from that I find D3 a great game. I prefer the skill system, the ressource management is better (mana bar for barbs in D2 was so silly), the bosses a bit more elaborate, and I prefer the overall gameplay feel (playing a D2 Barb seems... less visceral than D3, and the Amazon feels far more static than the DH). Story is terrible of course, however you don't play Diablo for the story, even if Blizzard seems to insist shoving it in your face every second.

 

im not sure why they didnt bring back multi-socketed gear with runewords.

it was great in D2.

 

It was pretty awesome yeah, but I think it needs a few changes here and there as some runewords have been rather overpowered. Particularly enigma was literaly made with bots in mind ...

sure, I agree. But I would not go so far to call D2 pay to win or even close to it. There are quite a few differences between D2 and D3 here. To many to list them really as I believe that we both somewhat agree anyway, but thats just a guess.

The point is, in my eyes, that D2 though is a game from the early/mid 1990s while D3 is a game from 2012/13. There are some 12 years difference between those games, yet D3 didn't even included the basics that D2 made a standard in gaming, like many of the social features, which they simply removed from Diablo 3. Maybe people bought items in D2 and the economy was pretty fucked up, but many of us had at least the expectation that D3 would continue where D2 LoD stoped and that it would improve on the game rather then being a downgrade in the series ...

well thats a very interesting point. Because I enjoyed the story in D2 a lot. But the story in D3 ... well its not very great yeah, and the stuff that is interesting gets somewhat killed by the fact that Blizzard is forcing it down your throat each time you start a game. I will never understand why they made it like that in a game where you have to play the same content a thousand times over and over again to get items ... making the farming process a chore. Even more then usual. Why have they not offered something like a farming mode? Or simply making it like in D2 where you had to play the "story" really only once.

 

D2's big advantage was it's better drop rates. You could beat the game on the hardest difficulty without having to grind for gear but you could also stall early on if you built your character wrong, which was easy to do. That said, there was a big "black market" for items and runes that was problematic.

D2 is flawed in a lot of ways but we all have good memories of it. I still think it's a great LAN game though, especially with the introduction of respecing outside of hacking.

• The AH wasn't a bad idea, the problem was the ridiculously craptastic drop rates that made the AH a mess.
• The skill system is better but is still extremely poorly balanced (or was last time I played).
• The bosses are a mixed bag, I like that they have more unique moves but they still aren't as interesting to fight as they could be. That said, more boss-like epic and unique mobs would be awesome and something I'd really like.
• The gameplay is again mixed, they need more enemy variety or at least more variety in AI. I feel like D3 might be a bit slower than D2.
• The story is crap and has never been fantastic but it was at least engaging before. D3's story is just plain awful and clearly written by different writers than D2. It lacks the hopelessness that Diablo and Diablo 2 had and all around just feels very WarCraft. I think the shift from monologues to conversations was honestly a part of the problem. The monologues in the previous games are really fun to listen to, the problem was that you couldn't do anything else at the same time.

 

Big news today, AH is gone in March : http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/diablo-3-auction-house-closing#more-370654

 

its a really good decision. Finally. But I have the feeling the issue isn't that people can "buy" stuff in the auction house, like the Gold auction house, as long if you actually found something in the game that was worth to be sold. I have the feeling the real reason to close it, is the flippers and wallet warriors, people that did nothing else but "play" the auction house by using it like a stock market, buying underpriced items and selling them for a profit, or simply buying the stuff directly with money.

Thats what REALLY undermined the gameplay of Diablo 3, because even if you used the auction house to buy the items but only with the gold you got from the game by selling the crap you found and collected you would still have to play the game for approx. 10-15 years before you could even get close to the people that just spend 2000$ or decided to play the auction house only ...

The auction house for it self is only ONE part of the problem.

 

It's a measure of how evil he is.

The larger and pointier the hat, the eviler he is.
This appears to be a common theme in fantasy.