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Diablo 3 To Be Released On May 15th
Blizzard announced today that Diablo 3 has finally gotten a release date: May 15th. "After many years of hard work by our development team and months of beta testing by hundreds of thousands of dedicated players around the world, we’re now in the homestretch," said Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime. This comes after significant changes to the skill and rune systems in the beta, and news that the PvP system would be delayed so that they could focus on finishing the campaign. The game will be available for Windows and Macs, either via a DVD or as a direct download through Battle.net. For those interested, a skill calculator is available to get a feel for what different abilities do, and many of the skills have videos showing how they work.
So am I the only one who read this as the PvP won't be ready at launch and the skill and rune system is so fucking annoying you have to watch a video and use a calculator to figure out how the damn thing works?
ACK
yes
I spent countless hours playing the first two games in the series, but I'm not so sure D3 is shaping up to be a worthy successor. D2 got annoying when they began tweaking things every patch so an awesome character with an amazing set in one patch is suddenly next to useless a patch or two later. Rather than just balancing, they mixed it up far too much. Hopefully the demo (I'm assuming there's a demo) will help me decide whether or not to buy it now or wait for the price to drop in a few years.
They selected their target market as different from the target markets of Diablo and Diablo II. Rather than trying to make the best gaming experience they can, they're looking to maximize profits through real money item trading. So their current target markets are the players who want to buy success, and the professional item farmers who supply them. I do not want to play with either type of person, and even having them around takes all the fun out of the game for me.
Please note: nowhere in the press release does it say may 15th 2012. :)
Just saying
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God, I'm so glad I've got my own place now. Two of my previous roommates played Diablo II, and it's easily the most fucking annoying thing on the planet to listen to. Then you go look at it to see if maybe there's some depth there to explain why they're playing. Nope! Click click click. Then, you try it out to see if maybe there's something not apparent just watching over their shoulder. After all, they've been playing it all day every day for the past month, must be something Nope! Click click click click click.
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Torchlight 1 scratched my Diablo itch in such a perfectly and satisfactory way that I now find myself looking forward to its sequel more than Diablo 3. And I'm not the only one. I doubt the makers of Torchlight will require me to have a constant internet connection just to play a single player, offline game.
The (very simple) skill system doesn't require/allow you to make any hard choices
The stat system doesn't allow you to make ANY choices
The rune system provides the illusion of skill choices in the form of yet another item hunt
Gear is the only way to differentiate from one player of the same class to another (since you don't really controll stat or skill.
-Neither did previous games. If you made the "wrong" choice, your character was gimped and you had to delete him and start the game all over.
-This was the case with every previous game as well. If you made your stats "wrong", your character was gimped and you had to delete him and start the game all over. The only real differentiation between characters was who had the better items. Nothing has changed.
-Runes are not items any more. It is now just a method of selecting different skill abilities.
If you think Diablo 2 (the multiplayer community anyway) was anything more than a perpetual item grind then you are kidding yourself. There was no building or experimenting in D2 because there was no respeccing period.
Newsflash: Activision bought blizzard. The company focus has changed. MONEY is now the reason to make new games, not FUN.
"The (very simple) skill system doesn't require/allow you to make any hard choices
The stat system doesn't allow you to make ANY choices"
The only result of the "choices" in D2 was being penalized for making an error. Players knew in advance, through extra-game research, what builds they wanted to create. The only option you had was to screw it up and be forced to re-roll, or not. This is not meaningful, and not fun.
"The rune system provides the illusion of skill choices in the form of yet another item hunt"
Your info is outdated. Runes are no longer dropped items, but unlock as you level.
"So basically you are left with the late game of DIablo 2 from day 1: Constant item hunt/grind."
Diablo games are by design a giant slot machine. Many people find this entertaining. Perhaps this genre is not for you.
I'm truly sad to say that Diablo III just doesn't have me very excited. I put countless hours into both of the previous games, though I never did get much out of Battle.net in Diablo II for whatever reason. For me, it was all about LAN play. The first Diablo made this especially appealing due to its Spawn Installs. Diablo III has no local multiplayer, which is ridiculous in itself. If you want to play by yourself in singleplayer, it requires the internet. So much for playing while you're on the road. The various changes to mechanics, art style, and addition of things like a trading area make it seem like little more than a shadow of World of Warcraft.
Honestly, I'm much more excited for Torchlight 2. I like the first game well enough while on the road, but the non-existent story couldn't hold my interest for much more than that. Thankfully the sequel will have multiplayer (local and online!) and seems to be expanding to overworld areas much like Diablo II did in comparison to the first Diablo. I imagine it's no coincidence that the Torchlight series is spearheaded by all of the major players from the first two Diablo games' development.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
ProTIP: When you type 'Derp' in a post, your post does not automatically achieve any sort of edgy or cool factor and undermines any credibility you may have otherwise brought to the discussion. Thanks for playing.
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
Much the same can be said of a post starting with ProTIP:
Adding "Thanks for playing" falls into the same category.