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[Gfted1]

Finished Witch Doctor and have moved on to Monk. Im really enjoying how differently each one plays. Naturally the Monk is a melee brawler and I currently have my Primary set to a punch and my Secondary set to a roundhouse kick. By level seven you will have one Rune for each your Primary and Secondary and I have selected for my Primary a Rune that instantly teleports you to your target and delivers an electrified punch and for my Secondary it turns my roundhouse into a flaming roundhouse. My new favorite tactic is to target one of the mooks in the middle of a crowd, teleport in and punch his eye, then bust out a flaming roundhouse to get all the mooks around him. Its great fun. I may have giggled.

[Monte Carlo]

I am jealous. That is all.

[Morgoth]

I am jealous. That is all.

 

Enjoy it while it lasts. Because the disappointment (anti-nostalgia-shock) will kick in immediately after you played a bit and sober you up like my grandma's Gulasch-cannon, and remind you how sucky Diablo 3 actually is. Then you'll go into the pub and get drunk, meet people who feel the same way as you, and then you decide to play together and have fun with the game again.

[Monte Carlo]

I have the money sitting on a loyalty card I found in my wallet, so I can only spend it on games anyway...

 

And I think it looks great, and I love the idea of some old-fashioned mouse-mashing goodness.

[Sargallath Abraxium]

...since when did ya git soo jaded, Morgoth??...ya used ta be such a ray o' sunshine...

 

 

...WHO LUVS YA, BABY!!...

[Gfted1]

Just had a bit of MP and its fun. No tether between players and all loot is individual to the players so you dont have to compete for what drops. The enemies actually scale up and down in numbers and strength depending on how many people are currently in the party. You continue to earn experience and level up, which I did not know, so Im looking forward to taking my level 10 toons higher.

[Tigranes]

I actually enjoyed the loot free-for-all. It made the pace of the game even more frantic, and you'd get fun things like people trying to kill the boss before the rest of the party arrives (and getting themselves killed, then frantically trying to get back to pick up some of the loot).

 

D2 also had the scaling depending on number of players, which is why you had all those 8-player mob runs.

[Gfted1]

Reached level 13 with my Monk (the highest you can go in beta) and I have to admit Im really surprised how much I like it. See, Im a ranged kinda guy. I dont like playing melee as I usually find it too hectic but the Monk is just so fun to play. At level 13 you unlock the Exploding Palm skill and hilarity ensues. Its basically a DoT (bleed damage) but if the target dies while under the effects of the Exploding Palm it explodes into a pile of gore. Its awesome. Ive also got my blacksmith trained up to Artisan and its pretty cool seeing the stuff you can craft. With only Barbarian and Demon Hunter left I suppose Ill try the Demon Hunter next. Im kinda bummed that all this effort will be wiped out once the game goes live.

[Monte Carlo]

Gfted, what are your views about character builds and customisation? Some folks have expressed concerns about the new system.

[kirottu]

Praise from Gfted1 and hate from Morgoth makes this a day 1 purchase for me.

[Gfted1]

Gfted, what are your views about character builds and customisation? Some folks have expressed concerns about the new system.

 

Well, I should first state that I never played D2 but I dont feel constrained by the available choices. You get to choose from 5 Primary, Secondary, Defensive and Force skills each of which you can apply one of 5 Runes to. Then there are two entire skill trees which you cant even look at (in beta) but I would assume they have the same number of Skills and Runes as the previous trees. So that offers the player 6 always active skills that can each be customized with Runes. Then you have the Passive Skill tree which has a large selection to choose from (I forgot to count the total number of Passive Skills but its pretty numerous) and by end game you will have three of these always "on". Tigranes stated that that is less than D2 but I dont know by how much.

[Morgoth]

Well, I should first state that I never played D2

Now I see why you're so excited about D3. First time's always the charm. Fair enough.

[Tigranes]

That actually does change your impressions quite a bit, I would think, if you've never played D2, since D2 is the game that every other hack and slash RPG is judged by. Still, glad you're having fun Gfted and let us know if you come across anything else.

[Gfted1]

So taking post 61 into account, how much more customizable was D2?

[Monte Carlo]

You assigned your own stat points and there were more skill trees, IIRC.

 

So technically there were more 'builds' available. I liked the Paladin, Barbarian and Assassin classes and played them as fairly vanilla builds myself so I'm not too concerned about the changes but some of the more stat-inclined might be.

 

Edit: For me Diablo 2 was all about exploring huge dungeons, loot and over-the-top, frenetic fighting. D3 has these things in abundance by the sound of it.

Edited April 17, 2012 by Monte Carlo

[Gfted1]

Ah, I see. In D2 you got less Skills but more "Runes" per se. How stats seem to be handled in D3 is they are attached to the loot. For example, I just picked up a helm that had +3 Dexterity and I added a two-handed sword with +10 Strength to my stash box for a later Barbarian run.

[Monte Carlo]

Yup, that's about it. A discrete but to some probably important difference.

[LadyCrimson]

So taking post 61 into account, how much more customizable was D2?

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.

[entrerix]

the problem with skills in D2 is that most classes only had 4-5 good ones. so in that respect, D3 might end up offering just as much variety if the smaller array on offer are all equally good.

 

and most builds in D2 didn't actually allow much customization: pump strength and dex at the begining until you meet your equipment requirements, then put the rest in vitalisty.

 

doing things other than that setup was pretty discouraged by the mechanics of the game

 

what bothers me is that there are no builds designed around weapon mechanics except the demon hunter pretty much has to use a ranged weapon. take spears for example, there does not seem to be any way to build a character to excel with them. in D2 you could make a spear wielding barbarian, OR a spear wielding amazon. and there would be skills to make using a spear the best choice for that build. nothing like that in D3, all weapons are interchangeable, and there is no way to specialize in one

[LadyCrimson]

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.

 

in D2 you could make a spear wielding barbarian, OR a spear wielding amazon.

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.

[Gfted1]

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.

 

Each class has a primary stat and pumping that stat increases dps. For example, pumping Dexterity increases my Monks dps.

 

nothing like that in D3, all weapons are interchangeable, and there is no way to specialize in one

 

Most weapons are interchangeable, there are no stat restrictions but there are some class restrictions. Nothing like mages cant use shields (they can), more like certain specific gear is used by certain classes. For example, only the Witch Doctor can use an offhand weapon that looks like a vodoo doll. And much to my embarrasment I just recently learned you can dual wield. Now my Monk is sporting some Vampiric brass knuckles in one hand and a magic dagger in the other.

[Big Bottom]

I don't have the beta but when the 15th hits I'll be on....oh yes!

[LadyCrimson]

Each class has a primary stat and pumping that stat increases dps. For example, pumping Dexterity increases my Monks dps.

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.

[entrerix]

nothing like that in D3, all weapons are interchangeable, and there is no way to specialize in one

 

Most weapons are interchangeable, there are no stat restrictions but there are some class restrictions. Nothing like mages cant use shields (they can), more like certain specific gear is used by certain classes. For example, only the Witch Doctor can use an offhand weapon that looks like a vodoo doll. And much to my embarrasment I just recently learned you can dual wield. Now my Monk is sporting some Vampiric brass knuckles in one hand and a magic dagger in the other.

 

the problem arises: every class has their 2-3 class specific weapons, the Witch Doctor for example has his class specific offhand voodoo dolls, and his class specific main hand ceremonial knives. every class has their specific items etc. but now look at whats left: swords, axes, hammers, spears etc etc - these weapons serve no purpose in the game anymore. there are no skills associated with any of them. they increase damage and thats it. in diablo 2 a spear using amazon had totally different skills than a bow using amazon, in this game they don't.

 

In diablo 2 i might want 3 different amazons on my account. A bowazon, a javezon, and a spear using amazon. all of them using different skills tailored to their chosen weapons

 

so what we are left with now is a game where there would be no point in having 3 different Witch Doctors. because all witch doctors use the same weapons and builds because no skills are weapon dependent. every witch doctor will just use whatever random weapon they have which has the highest dps.

 

I have a hard time seeing how the game will still be fun in a few years, diablo 2 had 5 characters, and each had 3-4 different good viable builds you could make. diablo 3 has 5 characters, but no builds. so it will have only 5 instead of 15-20 "character types"

 

and im only talking about good builds, diablo 2 allowed plenty of terrible ones too (too much customization, allowing you to make bad choices)

 

 

edit: of course diablo 1 had no weapon specific skills either, so weapons in diablo 3 will be similar to how they were in D1.

Edited April 17, 2012 by entrerix

[Tigranes]

Loot has always played a hugely important role in Diablo - in D2 you could more than double your stats or weapon skills with loot. But you could do that as well as, you know, choose where to put your stats & skills. Admittedly, it was often clear how you should distribute your stats, but instead of making the choice more varied, they got rid of choice altogether, which is rather silly.

 

D2 had strict class restrictions on weapons, shields and certain set items, but everything else was fair game. I thought that worked well, given each class had different needs anyway.