MrBrown

8 classes is a bit smaller than standard, but... Some of the basic ones are a bit boring. Barbarians, for instance, don't have much else to do than put rage on, basic attack, basic attack etc. Rangers also don't really have any interesting unique things, being just a mix of Druid and Fighter really. So those two are ones I'd drop first. I'd drop Warlock too, but if that's confirmed, then probably Sorcerer. Not sure what the 4th one is, but probably Bard, Paladin or Monk. Not sure if I'm that excited about it being Turn-based. Modern RPG design tends to include so much fights, turn-based can make the game really slow to play. So, hopefully they don't put too much fights in.

Isn't being a Civ clone the point? Civ games vary their mechanics too, so this really looks just like another variation of it.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/diablo-2-devs-recount-almost-losing-the-game-expla/1100-6471517/

https://pathofexile.com/poe2 Also, a mobile version. Watch the announcement video, it's funny:

If you want to follow Diablo4, apparently they're going to be dropping info etc regularly: https://us.diablo3.com/en/blog/23220969/a-letter-from-our-game-director-blizzcon-2019-11-13-2019

Wasn't that one of the big complaints about D3? That, because re-speccing was so easy, your character didn't really feel yours.

I don't think most players care about it that much anymore, it seems to me that most people who are interested in stuff like Diablo play lots of online games anyway. I can relate to the old crowd here not liking it though.

One of the reasons D1/2 might have seemed darker etc is also just worse graphics. More details makes stuff less scary, but you can't really make an AAA game with bad graphics.

Reading that article and some others, it seems like that's exactly what they're doing.

While other publishers are busy building up their own services, the first one to get off Steam is apparently coming back... https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/29/20937055/ea-games-steam-access-subscription-service-pc-storefront-jedi-fallen-order-sales

Blizzard made a remake of SC1 and WC3, D2 is just a question of time. And, well, quality.

PDXcon going on, so lots of announcement for their games. See https://twitter.com/PdxInteractive, not gonna list everything. One morsel: Crusader Kings II is free-to-play from now on (base game, not DLCs), III coming out next year. EDIT: Actually, a summary here: https://www.reddit.com/r/paradoxplaza/comments/dk0s4a/pdx_con_is_now_live_on_twitch/

https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/blizzard/23185888/regarding-last-weekend-s-hearthstone-grandmasters-tournament

So now they're dropping the number from the official English title, and using a direct translation of the Japanese name of the series as a subtitle just for this game? This is never going to confuse anyone at all.

I only have the cat, but to use it, you have to equip it on your belt, and then activate it from your abilities.

I kinda agree with cokane, in the sense that I always build parties, not individual characters in these types of games, and tend to separate them to more passive auto-attack guys who do nothing else, and active ability-using characters who do that more than attacks. And I usually fill my parties with the passive types, with as little active types as possible. I don't see a problem with games like PoE2 though, since you can pretty much let the AI do most of the talent usage, or just pick mostly passive talents. So I think these games cater easily to this type of playing, provided you're willing to learn and configure the AI.

As long as you don't multiclass very stupidly, or distribute your ability scores badly for your class, yeah, I guess. And you can always lower the difficulty.

It's very unfinished and buggy.

I seem to have about 400 hours played, I'm sure about 200 of that is character creation.

There's a subquest with Tenebrous Depths about killing some boss monsters in there, and there's some writing on items you can find there. But that's all there is, AFAIK. This is from playing it during the main campaign, completed 2nd tier. It's different if you just play it rogue-like, but I haven't tried.

I think it's genuinely just bad. BTW, a word of warning, when you get to chapter 2, don't put mercs as advisors. This can lead to a common game-ending bug in the current version.

The word is that it's a bit annoying, because it doesn't tell you that you can still fail by waiting on the main quests too much. But it doesn't make your kingdom fail in other ways.

On my 2nd playthrough, hit a game ending bug, my last safe save is about 10 hours away. Very motivating.

Sure, but they will probably eventually start putting in code to prevent that, or sue them for something or other.