LadyCrimson

@Tigranes - it'll have harder difficulties, like all the Diablo's. Nightmare/Hell after Normal...but you have to slog through Normal first. Whether they'll feel harder when you get there with high lvls/skills and high gear...who knows. It's easier to just not join into any MP games. Not that huge on MP anyway. Open beta's almost over and I'm already bored enough that I don't feel like finishing with the Demon Hunter or Witch so ... that's it for me.

Not to mention, know where they're from to begin with. With the anonymous nature of most of the internet, that doesn't happen (at least initially) all that often anymore....except in a few places/circumstances.

I think originally (way back when) the friends type listings showed your real name by default, which is what I strenuously objected to. If it requires some kind of easy-to-monitor approval (on my end, not dependent on the other person) before that occurs, now - email address, permission checkbox, whatever - that might be tolerable. But it sounds like, generally speaking, if I ever buy this game, I won't be having a Friends list.

Yeah....I read the stuff about the battletag, which sounded like the tag would be used to ID you to other players and thought that was fine. Then when I saw my real name in the Profile I was highly annoyed - there should be no reason to see/list my real name in-game only for my "benefit" (I know who I am already) if no one's going to be able to see it anyway, right? So...I haven't entered a MP game because of it. I've asked this question in a few places and no one has answered yet. Maybe no one knows for sure or they all think I'm stupid for asking and won't respond.

And many of those still have lowish speed internet and/or fairly severe bandwidth limits. I see ppl in forums constantly saying things like "everyone has 'net/highspeed/unlimited bandwidth nowadays" and laugh. I don't know if more will change the world that much tho, outside of better/faster access to the news/events and perhaps more physical sloth - assuming an area's internet isn't censored. Mostly seems like it'll change bandwidth/true speed capability (vs. advertised speeds ) for a while as companies fall more and more behind on keeping infrastructure up with demand. That's about it. And yeah, the 'net hasn't been a majority domain of science/computer geeks for ages now.

Question before I ramble on: In my Profile I see my "battletag" and my real name (hate that...). I assume others can only see my battletag and not my real name? I see no setting that assures me this is so, like "don't let ppl see name" and I don't know how/what the realID stuff does these days. Rambling: Tried the Monk. Even more powerful/easier than the Wizard. Enough that I killed Skelie King a few times for LOL's. I thought she was a lot more fun to play in that powering-gaming w/out having to actually power-game kick-butt way. Plus her skills were noisy and visually entertaining, unlike Wizzie. For those that don't like that, I'm sure Blizz will quickly over-nerf the Monk to the point of useless. This is Blizzard, after all, and they like to change their game constantly and over-reactively with patches. I do miss mobs like the zillion Fallen in Act1 of D2, for entertainment. I guess some of the Events sort of do that but meh. And yes I'm sure in MP it's a bit tougher so it'll be more challenge/fun enemy wise, but Blizzard has always been terrible with balancing classes and difficulty. Started a Demon-Hunter. She's a bit tougher but still kinda dull, like the Wizzie. I usually like ranged classes vs. melee but opposite this time. Love the treasure hunter enemy imp things. Hilarious. The new hirelings seem more useful. Also, with Wizzie, I entered a few side areas (cellars and a cavern) and they were tiny, one or several room affairs. With the Monk, I entered a side area and it was pretty big. Emptyish, but big. I don't know if I missed it with the Wizzie or if it's part of their random generation placement, but the total difference was weird. ....one big GUI complaint I have is the constant giant event popup messages. I don't mean tutorials, I turned those off. They show up in the middle of the screen blocking view and are huge icons. Plus they can stack on top of each other making it even worse. In the screenie, the "massacre" msg is blocked behind the other ones. It's too much.

*thinks a moment* *ROFL's some more* I keep hearing how awesome the game looks graphically, and some of the dungeon stuff that's brightly lit/brick does look very nice considering the low stress it puts on the system, but yeah...those landscapes, imo, are lacking. I kept thinking it was like a muddy watercolor painting or that my contact lenses were cloudy. The MP part is a good thing to note, as well. I personally loved the single-player of D1 and D2 but it definitely becomes a different game during MP. I don't like that it limits you to 4 players (instead of 8 ) now, tho. That feels like potential for less fun. Even tho random MP was always iffy, it was still often nutty fun to just jump into a game and run around with 7 strangers causing chaos. Maybe less is better for playing with only friends tho. (vs. PUG's). The DS3 comparisons are valid too, imo. That game popped into my head a few times while playing this beta.

Finished Botanicula. The ending came very abruptly, to me...felt sudden. Like, "oh, is that it?" Thought there would be one or two more little parts or something. Anyway....I still prefer the first third to first half of the game. It's a fine short romp however (6-8 hours 'blind'). And every time your little characters jump up and down and shout in glee or cowered in fright, I grinned from ear to ear. That never got old. Only got 104 of 123 creatures cards...still got two extras gifts however.

Played the Wizard, will play the Monk later (seems most interesting). Here's my reaction to playing the short beta in a nutshell: "Ok, but underwhelming." Longer: Negative: --dungeons/areas feel small and not complicated. Didn't even need the map. I was kinda bored/slogging thru to "see" it, mostly. Maybe that improves in later acts. --the auto-skills system does mean you can focus more on the "fight fun" but..yeah just don't like it. I wouldn't have minded some "simplifying" changes but don't like how they've done it. --Normal difficulty (playing solo at least) is a joke even compared to D2 (which wasn't hard either, to be fair). --Items = zzzz. --don't like the forced primary/secondary skill mouse button thing... --still not seeing any reason to replay the game more than once per chr. class. Less, if not interested in all chr. classes. Then it becomes "wait for DLC" or "wait for ladder reset" or whatever. --Can't play offline when servers are busy. Positive: --Combat is overall fine/fun...same ol' Diablo feel. Clicky clicky...nothing wrong with that. --still love all the nods to the previous games. Black mushroom etc. --technically sound for me --no lag/desync for me either...but I was playing at 2am PST and alone. --potential big stash! --bigger inventory and most gear seems same size. I like that. If you're going to make a game simpler, make inventory fiddling less of an issue. Fine with me. --character stat info is a lot better, GUI overall is fine. --rune effects (what I could use) worked fine at increasing effectiveness/coolness factor I guess. So I did more than watch some let's play videos....I still won't be buying. Playing this beta only makes me want to play some Diablo1. heh.

Warm and summery, which I like. High ambient room temperature making the PC temps go up...don't like. It regularly gets 80F-85F by noon in here, most days. Time to put the A/C in the window. Might need a new unit this summer... Played some Diablo3 beta (meh). Did some yard work between bouts of sitting in the shade drinking cold water. Thinking about dinner. Mellowness.

Oh, all right...since it's a stress beta for free and I still have a bnet account from when I played WoW (not touched for 2 years, heh). At least I can judge those early levels for myself. ...it's doing the Updating setup files routine now. And yeah, I heard a lot of ppl were having problems getting on for a while. It's a stress test for a wildly anticipated title. Tho it does make you wonder if release size/number of servers will be up to the task. I remember when D2 was released...couldn't get on half the time for ages felt like.

Think I'm getting close to done with Botanicula. The first 1/3 was wonderful...art-wise, humor, cutenees. sound effects and music. then you hit this "town" (in a manner of speaking) area and it starts to feel a bit too random/tedious. Still some great stuff/humor in there, but I spent a couple hours being stuck on a couple of the huts/rooms, running around clicking everything, looking for some part that would let me collect what I needed. Then the area after that, similar thing. Now I'm stuck at the halfway point in some almost all-black levels. Time for a break. The puzzles aren't terribly puzzly, with most being more of an item hunt with random clicking around to figure out how to activate things. Some of it's just random click until you find the right order for something. They're puzzles of a type, but not exactly mind-bending/thinking man sort, if you know what I mean. Controls are simple (mouse clicks) but occasionally trying to control movement of an object w/the cursor movement feels wonky/lagged/buggy. Slighty better if you're in windowed mode. Those quibbles aside, still a fun and artistic game....and for $10 I have no complaints. So far I'd give the first third of the game 9/10 and the latter two thirds maybe 6.5-7/10.

I have got to get off my butt and go buy a different SB audio card...this one has that funky thing where it doesn't record internal sound in most program use (no 'what u hear'). Fraps works fine (it's own recorder/format?) but nothing else does. Annoying when I can't use Fraps, haha. Spent the afternoon playing games and enjoying the sunny day. It's almost hot in my office/gaming room! Roast beef for dinner then...uh...more video gaming! Most don't notice when I change either, but that's because I usually try to get ones that look very similar to my old ones. heh

Eh, I was impatient, bought GoG's version. Loving the game so far. All the cute sound effects, humorous little bits and pieces, artwork, everything. Except now I'm stuck trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do in one spot (creature who spits out various bubbles+black bat-like thingie). Adorable game.

Nope, haven't bought it yet. I noticed that GoG's version doesn't include the full soundtrack, either, which is a bummer because I normally like to support GoG. But I don't understand the charity bundle thing... (edit: oh...nvm...I'm dense...got it.) ...bah. I need PayPal, Amazon, or Google to pay. No likey. Can I remove the CC info from Google after I've added it, or do they have it forever.

That sort of thing happens to me all the time with certain things, like TV's. Usually it's because I bring it home and I hate the color tones once it's in my house, or something. Or the stand is garbage, or whatever. Today I sat in the sun, petting a cat. It's quite meditative. But now it's time to do a store run. Me:Anything you need, dear? Hubs:Coffee, I'm out of coffee. Me:Nothing else? Hubs:The question was what do I need.

Ah. That sounds slightly better. Perhaps what he meant (the person I heard from) was more that the increase in the beta levels wasn't more/better than just picking the highest dps weapon you could lay your hands on. He went thru the beta w/all classes using nothing but "white" items because the blue/other items were all worse than the whites he found. Again, when you reach high/max levels, which you can't in the beta, very large primary stat bonus on an item may play more of a role then. The Diablo's, for me, were very much about the building of the chr. from the very beginning...not reaching the end/max level. I'd often get bored long before max level and start over because that initial struggle was more fun. I'm doubting that D3 will be like that. But won't really know until we get more data/opinions from the full game.

My totally random guess is that Blizzard is going to try to make D3 a bit like WoW ... by that I mean, where the important aspect to the game will be the END game, and mulitplayer. And of course the probable never ending DLC's/addons to entice people to keep playing with those high level toons. Yeah, that's kind of what I was trying to get across...D2's skills/stats/items allowed for pre-planning of atypical builds on any of the classes. Yes most people would pump certain stats all the time, and there were always the "power" builds that everyone wanted to have at least one of etc, but that's true in any RPG, not just action-RPG's/Diablos. You didn't have to do it that way. I can kind of see/understand Blizzard wanting to get away from the min/max trap of stat allocation, but if they don't replace that with something else - like what you mentioned - character building become too homogenized/there's little reason to replay, once you've tried each class once. imo, of course.

Ah, I think I understand. Some of this (for me) probably boils down the reason why we play games, again. Stuff like lore & politics perse doesn't mean much to me most of the time, but that's a different thing. In terms of place/time settings, I would still like to see more RPG's that are in what you might call "real" settings, with perhaps alternative history changes (like FNV). I'd also like to see more cultures explored/used as the backdrop, hence Edo period. Kind of tired of the futuristic dark urban punk-city look, fantasy forest, etc. Asian, Roman, ancient European (non-medieval/castle) themed/influence settings I would enjoy seeing. You could still have magic and/or oddball stuff in them. There are plenty of magical/monster legends in Asian/other cultures, for example. I might even like something like "Asian culture on a Mars colony" setting. Especially if the RPG was more of a mystery than the save the world theme. Like...something similar to some of the Earth colonies from Asimov's Robot mystery novels (Elijah Bailey)...that sort of setting might be cool. Anyway.... I don't watch enough anime or read enough comics to give a good list of specific examples I like from those sources, I'm afraid.

People made things like melee-mages, high-strength (to carry a shield) for high-block mages, necros based almost entirely on a particular bone spell or poison nova, sword Amazons, "singing Barbarians" 9war cry builds)...builds that were part stat. and part specific gear based. Not all of those were viable through every difficulty, mind you...or at least not in MP, maybe SP. Point was, you could do a whole lotta different things if you felt like it. What I'm hearing is that in D3, your skill damage is based on weapon damage, making stat/other bonuses on the weapons unimportant until much much later. The skills may seem like a bit of chr. customization but nothing like in D2. So....I think D3 will be a very fun ARPG...it just won't have the crazy longevity that D2 had.

I think for most it's less that combat is a "problem" and more that it's repetitive. Even way back when it was repetitive. Would have been nice if they could have found a way to alter that a bit while still retaining the old feel. Taking a break from Grimrock for a few days I think...going to play some Casear3 maps instead. Something less combat oriented for variation. Oh...this weekend I also tried playing FNV on the big TV using a controller. Complete with all my mods. I eventually got used to the xbox controller for Borderlands but for FNV...I think I'll pass. Too bad, would have been nice to play it a little on the huge screen.

No, it's not rude per se, just an opinion, but I guess maybe it's a sore spot with you. Of course settings can be important or influential to a work, I never said they weren't. In reality you often need both things (chrs. + environment) to work well together for it to be a success (imo). I find it rare that a lot of film/game/tv etc. work can stand alone entirely on just one or the other. But between Majek's "Champloo is just Edo period with rap" and your comment, it sounded as tho some kind of atypical variation (eg, "original") of the commonly known settings was taking a higher value place in terms of RPG, and I don't think that's true at all. Also, originally I was taking "setting" to mean more the actual setting - the period, the time, the place, the architecture and perhaps known social structure of said period that the story of the characters is woven through - not so much the story thematic setting (political struggle, moralistic struggle). "Just another castle/serf setting." "Just another city in space setting....." "Just another dull historical period setting" and so on and so forth. While it's true there are some more common settings that may become mundane or whatever to some people, to others those settings are still not necessarily "easily replaceable" just because it's a common/not unusual setting. Does everything have to be chock full of "lore", weird and unusual variations of a theme/setting, in order to be "not replaceable," interesting, or worthy of RPG? I'd much rather have interesting characters that I can relate to than a cool-looking setting, vs. the other way around. Guess that's just me tho?

I'm sure. It's not so much shocking or unexpected as it is just...disheartening.

Avatar : The Last Airbender, the cartoon series, not the Cameron movie Your point still stands, obviously, but this is a confusion that should always be corrected . Oh....I did it again. My sig gets more apt every year. I tried watching that anime once, because I heard such good things about it. It was a little too...youthful in execution for me, couldn't get into it. But yes, my point still stands.

But chr. driven narratives are all there really are anymore. No setting is really original. It's the story and characters within that setting that give it spark. Game of Thrones would be just another medieval setting with kings and princes if it weren't for the characters and the fact the author likes to kill them off willy nilly, unlike most authors. Avatar's setting isn't original. Far from it. Adding sci-fi space props and CGI humanistic aliens to such a setting does not make it original.