Author Topic: Diablo 3  (Read 14581 times)

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Offline Mikes

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Oh, you mean the parts of the game that people already do?  You know, the parts that until now got them banned and they did it anyway?  The implications for gameplay that have already been realized for the better part of a decade?

Still not seeing the downsides.

So basically your argument goes along the lines of "theft happens", let's "legalize" theft for profit?
Do you really want to argue that the fact that "(illegal) real money transfers happen" is in any way or form a reason or justification for officialy promoting "real money transfers" and turning RMT into an integral part of the game?


For me it's simple: I don't gamble. And I will not buy or play so called "games" that incorporate real $$$ into gameplay. Voting with my wallet has never been that easy.


People were already joking that WoW often felt like a 2nd job.... ;) I guess that is what Blizzard is into nowadays.
« Last Edit: May 15, 2012, 08:19:02 pm by Mikes »

 

Offline Scotty

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Ah, I see.  You've decided to qualify an entire industry (although I do use that word loosely) as theft because you don't like and/or understand it.  Clearly, this means Blizzard is stupid for wanting to be able to actually get something out of something that goes on whether they do this or not.

EDIT: I also really don't get how you're equating "Hey, this exists" with "You cannot play without using this feature".  It's optional.

 

Offline Polpolion

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Oh, you mean the parts of the game that people already do?  You know, the parts that until now got them banned and they did it anyway?  The implications for gameplay that have already been realized for the better part of a decade?

Still not seeing the downsides.

the hell are you smoking? I just told you. There is no skill tree.  It is a skill stick. They took out character creation and added more items because they want you to buy them. If people want to spend more of their own money on extra crap in games that's fine and dandy, but when developers start cutting basic features to coral you into shoveling extra money into their pockets that's when I stop playing those games altogether.

and yes, character generation is an essential feature of an RPG. The fact that you don't think it is demonstrates why I'm mad because it means Blizzard can get away with this ****.

 

Offline Mikes

  • 29
Ah, I see.  You've decided to qualify an entire industry (although I do use that word loosely) as theft because you don't like and/or understand it.  Clearly, this means Blizzard is stupid for wanting to be able to actually get something out of something that goes on whether they do this or not.

No. Theft/crimes in general was merely used as an example for the flawed logic in your argument: You proposed that the fact that illegal activities (gold selling/real money transfers in this case) happen... supposedly meant that there would be nothing wrong with legalizing them, promoting them... and profiting from them. (And sorry... but rarely do I  hear arguments more stupid than that.)

Of course "theft" as such, has nothing to do with companies who make games, even exploitive ones. Don't try to put words in my mouth that I neither said nor meant.


And nope, Blizzard isn't stupid. When exploiting your customers clearly works, then there is no business reason not to do it.
« Last Edit: May 15, 2012, 08:46:24 pm by Mikes »

 

Offline BloodEagle

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illegal

You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means.

Not unless I missed something major.

 

Offline Scotty

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Your argument still makes very little sense.  It has nothing to do with legal/illegal activities.  Trading outside of the game has never been "illegal" in the traditional meaning of the word, merely against the in-game rules.  This trading persists despite the implementation of penalties for such trading.  This trading is not an insignificant amount of money.  This trading would persist regardless of rules against it in the new game as evidenced by every game with item trading between players ever.

Seriously, the only changes to come out of this is that Blizzard makes money off of it, and players don't get banned for it. 

 

Offline Flipside

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To be honest, the onward selling of goods isn't too much of a problem for me, since I have no interest in it and would not use the site, but I genuinely don't see it as all that different to something like the Sims 3 'store', where you pay money for post-release items and goods. I don't use that either, but as long as it is not required to pay extra, it's not really a problem.

In truth, I remember Diablo 2 threw out so many magic weapons by the late levels that I didn't have space to store the interesting ones, so why someone would want to go buy more is beyond me.

 

Offline Liberator

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Oh, you mean the parts of the game that people already do?  You know, the parts that until now got them banned and they did it anyway?  The implications for gameplay that have already been realized for the better part of a decade?

Still not seeing the downsides.

the hell are you smoking? I just told you. There is no skill tree.  It is a skill stick. They took out character creation and added more items because they want you to buy them. If people want to spend more of their own money on extra crap in games that's fine and dandy, but when developers start cutting basic features to coral you into shoveling extra money into their pockets that's when I stop playing those games altogether.

and yes, character generation is an essential feature of an RPG. The fact that you don't think it is demonstrates why I'm mad because it means Blizzard can get away with this ****.
Umm, this is Diablo, there was NEVER character creation where you spent an hour crafting your perfect digital persona.  Also, I don't understand what part of the real money AH is like a casino.  It gives people with less time than money the option of having Inferno ready gear the same as people with more time than money that can grind it out.  The only thing even remotely "casinoish" is the random way loot drops and that's been standard in RPGs as long as there have been RPGs, if you don't like it, tough noogies.

The AH system exists in Diablo in the first place to combat cheating by figuring out how to do Duplicate items and virtually defeats gold farmers trying to sell their ****.  Blizzard is like the Soviets, they don't take a dump without a plan.  I can guarantee you this was WAY more thought out than you seem to think it was.  Also, I don't know about you, but I've never heard of an auction where the company processing the auction of goods doesnt' take a cut.

I also don't see what you mean about a talent stick.  There are a huge variety of talents that cater to a variety of play styles.  Yes you can only have 6 active skills available at once, but that's all you really need anyway.  I never played D2 multi, but I've heard about running around and juggling a dozen skills to be considered viable, and that just screams "gamey" to me and not fun at all.

From the way you talk, it sounds like you haven't tried it or at least watched someone playing it for more than 5 minutes.
So as through a glass, and darkly
The age long strife I see
Where I fought in many guises,
Many names, but always me.

There are only 10 types of people in the world , those that understand binary and those that don't.

 

Offline mxlm

  • 29
This is what's wrong with it. They neutered the leveling system to nudge you into buying better items. I'd rather play games designed by people that enjoy making games, not by producers that want to get rich at the expense of the community.
If "neutered" means "it's no longer possible to permanently **** your character" then yes, that's true*. If that's not what neutered means then no, that's not true at all.

I hadn't realized how much I liked D3's skill system until I gained my first level in the Torchlight II beta. The glacially slow, incremental gains from DII and its clones are deadly dull in comparison with D3's loadout system.

*Except not really. They abandoned D2's system because it sucked, not to nudge you into buying items.
I will ask that you explain yourself. Please do so with the clear understanding that I may decide I am angry enough to destroy all of you and raze this sickening mausoleum of fraud down to the naked rock it stands on.

 

Offline TrashMan

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you know what I find funny?

That the Metacritic score for Diablo III is lover than ME3.
Nobody dies as a virgin - the life ****s us all!

You're a wrongularity from which no right can escape!

 

Offline Gloriano

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Diablo 3 is such a fun game, even trough it's basically same as diablo 2 but with better graphics and slightly diffrent story
You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.- Nietzsche

When in despair I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won; there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall.- Mahatma Gandhi

  

Offline Polpolion

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From the way you talk, it sounds like you haven't tried it or at least watched someone playing it for more than 5 minutes.

Funny you should say this, because when I posted I didn't have Diablo 3 and had no intention of buying it. But then my brother bought me a copy. Guess what? My fears were correct. It's babby's first diablo. I'm willing to say that it's a fun game, but seriously, I was hoping for a little more depth because the skill stick is totally stupid. If you disagree then we'll have to agree to disagree because I have completely different expectations for a Diablo game and I'm not going to change them just because people don't want to have to pick their own skills and attributes as they level up. And don't get me started on this all online all the time bull****. All in all I'm glad I wasn't the one that paid the $60 for it, but I'm also glad I'll have something to do for the next few days.

 

Offline Unknown Target

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Polpolion; the skill system will grow on you, as well the being online all the time (well.. if you have any friends :P)
"Neutrality means that you don't really care, cuz the struggle goes on even when you're not there: Blind and unaware."

"We still believe in all the things that we stood by before,
and after everything we've seen here maybe even more.
I know we're not the only ones, and we were not the first,
and unapologetically we'll stand behind each word."

 

Offline Flipside

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From an article on the online character saving feature..

Quote
While your "character" progress is saved, all the maps, mobs, side quests, and dungeons reset every time you load and not only that but their locations change (they are server generated too). This means that if you are disconnected in the middle of a dungeon, not only can you not resume and finish, but you may not even find the dungeon again as it can instead be replaced with a merchant house or who knows what else. Only quest related dungeons are consistently placed on the map (albeit in varying locations) but what lies inside also resets with the rest of the map so you'll be starting on the first floor yet again.

I find that extremely worrying, because if these things are generated at server level, then the server is not only a form of DRM, but a noose around the players neck making them reliant on the Blizzard servers always being available, I can pull out Diablo 2 and play it now, I wonder if the same will be true of Diablo 3 in a decades' time?

 

Offline Polpolion

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You can imagine how pissed my brother was when he got home yesterday expecting to play his hundred dollar collector's edition but couldn't because the servers were down. If you think I'm mad about what Diablo 3 is you clearly have never run across either of my older sibliings. :p

 

Offline Dark RevenantX

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Quote
I find that extremely worrying, because if these things are generated at server level, then the server is not only a form of DRM, but a noose around the players neck making them reliant on the Blizzard servers always being available, I can pull out Diablo 2 and play it now, I wonder if the same will be true of Diablo 3 in a decades' time?
Same argument goes for Steam as a whole.  Also, the original Diablo servers still work today, 15½ years after release.


A quick little review of Diablo 3:

Collector's Edition: Overall, Blizzard probably makes more profit off of a regular copy of the game than the Collector's Edition.  It's not perfect, but it's still one of the best CEs I've seen in a long time.  ★★★★★.

Polish: The launch was temporarily disastrous, but was largely fixed on the launch day (albeit 20 hours into the day).  There are a couple rare (but severe) bugs, but beyond that the game is very well-presented and free of noticeable issues.  Blizzard-quality release (both good and bad), as always.  ★★★★.

Gameplay: Lack of character customization is not so much of a downgrade but rather a sidegrade.  I can't fault the game nor praise it for its choice here.  Diablo 2's character creation caused you to have a single build which would be difficult to change from (and a single set of correct stats for whichever build you picked), and Diablo 3 obviously avoids this issue.  However, the lack of being able to choose the order in which you learn abilities can be aggravating at times.  Beyond that, the combat is simplistic but gets more complicated when the difficulty levels go up, and has a real challenge to it in Nightmare and beyond.  The act of killing is intensely satisfying for many reasons, and it's overall a very fun game to play, even though it's a very classic, been-there formula.  ★★★★.

Sound and Visuals: The game looks like a moving painting.  When stuff happens, it's clear and doesn't get in the way of the gameplay, yet it looks very good.  There is a lot of blood, gore, and explosions, as expected of a Diablo game.  The fidelity of the art and technical prowess of the game are not top-of-the-line, but the art design is excellent overall.  The sound effects are crisp, meaty, and highly varied, overall exuding quality.  The music is also pretty good, easily one of the better tracks Blizzard has made.  ★★★★★.

Content: If you explore everything, talk to everyone, and listen to all the lore, this game has a respectable length to it.  If you set out to do everything, you probably won't finish in one day.  In a group of friends who seek to see everything, the normal difficulty alone will be a 20-30 hour experience.  The later difficulties are longer.  Beyond that, every class has as many skills as their Diablo 2 counterparts, but the rune-enhanced versions of those skills bring the variety much higher than the previous game (different artwork for runed skills, too).  There are fewer items than LoD, but more than vanilla Diablo 2, though each armor piece now has 16 tiers which go all the way up through the last difficulty level.  There is enough item content via random drops, crafting, sets and legendaries, gems, etc. that the game will last a long time for any interested player.  Almost every area of the game is randomized as well, containing random events, dungeons, and layouts.  You will not see every possibility on one playthrough, by any means.  ★★★★★.

Story: Fleshed out way more than previous Diablo games, but still fairly cheesy/badly-written.  The voice acting is good, but the lines are not.  Still, I have to chalk it up as something of an improvement.  The cinematics are wonderful, though.  ★★★.

Online: Bad launch aside, the Battle.net service could use some improvements.  I won't list them here, but suffice it to say that it needs some work.  This is especially troubling considering that this is an online-only game.  It's usually not laggy, though, so that's good.  The Real-Money Auction House is fairly disturbing, but I can't fairly judge it until I see it in action next week.  It could end up being beneficial for the title, rather than a detractor.  Who knows?  ★★★.

DRM: Online-only.  This is advertised reasonably well, but ought to have a larger warning on the box/website/etc.  There are reasons for doing this, but more reasons against doing it.  ★★.


For this type of game (Co-op Action RPG), the score weights are as follows: Collector's Edition - 0.2, Polish - 1, Gameplay - 2, Sound and Visuals - 1, Content - 1.5, Story - 1, Online - 1.5, DRM - 1.

Overall Rating: ★★★★

 

Offline Flipside

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Actually, most Steam games would continue to work perfectly well without Steam so long as just the login server is functioning. It's content-dependent servers, such as the ones run by Ubisoft, and now Blizzard that require far more investment and server-power are the ones that worry me.

For example, as long as the system accepts my password, I could play Skyrim, Supreme Commander etc, but I could not play Anno 2070 if their own private servers went down, because my data is stored there, rather than on my system. If that data goes, then the game loses about 40% of its functionality.

That's where my concern lay, not the question of whether simple multi-player servers are working, but ones that rely instead on storing and generating user-data in an external location.

 

Offline Ace

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Overall agree, but... well I'd knock the art down one star a bit mostly for this one big issue that's been cropping up:
Generic Blizzard design and some enemies that art direction wise make no sense. WoW is the worst culprit for this being an issue. Oddly enough Starcraft 2 avoided much of this. (minus the retroactive Draenei-Protoss similarities due to their ripping off Protoss art direction for the space goats...)

For instance
Spoiler:
Magdha doesn't work as a Diablo character design. She looks like something out of WoW. The fairy demon shoulderpads just don't work and it's hard to take her seriously as the head of an evil witch's coven.

The second bad one is:
Spoiler:
Azmodan, who simply looks like a Mannoroth re-hash.

Oddly enough Diablo's own design works:
Spoiler:
Since it incorporates elements of the other evils from the game and has a few quasi-feminine features from Leah
.

Some of the boss-fights being more or less WoW raids was a bit disappointing too. There's a few moments that simply reeked of "yup it's a Blizzard product" instead of outright always screaming that "no this is Diablo and not every other blizzard game from the past 10 years."
Ace
Self-plagiarism is style.
-Alfred Hitchcock

 

Offline Dark RevenantX

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I would give the art, if it were a separate score, a 4/5, yes.  But the score included sound and music as well.

Also the part I meant to quote on my OP was the part of "what if XYZ went down?"  Steam going down would have a similar concern as battle.net going down.