Blizzard Games died yesterday!

Firstly, that was a really good reply, Tommerbob. :)

Unfortunately, Lord of the Rings doesn't quite count because I am almost certain it would not be published today in its current form. Editors would be all over it for its pacing issues, its complete lack of 'hook', preference for song over sword-swinging...everything. Consider the movies (which I consider superior as movies, while the books are not really very good books): the introduction was not Bilbo's party but an incredible prologue full of action and intrigue.

Had the trailer to LOTR been just Bilbo's party, I'm not sure we'd have been QUITE so excited. A trailer does have to sell something, after all. I appreciate your own personal method of judgment. I'm quite the same way...

(I may post more re: current trailers.)

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Avireyn wrote:

Curiously, I find the first difficulty in PoE far more engaging than its counterpart in Diablo III. I must have played through Normal twenty times at least. I still find it okay.
I was bored with Diablo III's normal difficulty while on my first playthrough.

PoE normal is pretty brainless. You spam 1 ability over and over. The only "challenge" comes from the never ending clusterfuck of enemies running at you from all directions with no apparent design behind it.

I didn't even know I killed the act 1 boss till the game told me I had unlocked a passage to Act 2.

"

Why doesn't it make sense? A lot of other games manage making the tutorial section optional. Why not Diablo III?
That doesn't mean I want to start in Nightmare. I don't even get how you'd think that (other than you thinking that I have no clue about game design).
But it's certainly not the best design to make the "tutorial" a)apparently take so much of the game and b)make you play through it with every single character.

Like it or not, they incorporated the first 45-1h of story, quest and game play as the "tutorial" section. It's really not that painful to complete and it's a non issue.

So what do you want exactly? to start a new character and end up in the Fields of Misery as a level 1 with a 3 dps weapon being owned by level 10-13 mobs? If you understand game design you'll understand that they can't just pop you into the game past the first hour just to suit you.

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You're making things awfully easy for you. I'm not passing a fully fledged judgement. I'm inferring from what I've seen so far of D3 and from the way Blizzard shapes its games. Had you read my posting completely, you'd have noticed that I even kept open the possibility that difficulty might ramp up gradually, and that this would be a good thing.

So what's the problem exactly?

It is a good thing. It turns the casual players into hardcore players down the road, instead of it being a hardcore game giving the middle finger to everyone else from the get go.

"

I think the fact that you have to point out that "something can kill me [later] if I'm not paying attention" rather corroborates my view on D3's first difficulty setting.

Having to pay attention is usually something that's a given in any game.

This is taking what I said out of context. The POINT was, you'll die and there will be dangerous mobs. Not that if you're looking at the screen, you'll have no way of being killed.

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

That link gives me a 404. I feel like a dummy. I guess it works.

...as for the topic, PFFFFFFFTTT. What is with people and such untenable hyperbole?

Blizzard Games didn't die yesterday. It had a little indigestion and farted a few times; what seemed gargantuan to us was barely a slight shift in Blizzard's engorged breast to anyone else. The majority of people sucking at its myriad teets barely even noticed. They just kept crowding in, mouths puckered in desperate eagerness, constantly seeking one of those swollen nipples around which to latch their needy lips, utterly dismissing the delays, the hesitant spurts of fatty milk, moving on if one teet didn't work at all, there were after all so many others, and finally they find a willing nib, slurp slurp slurp...more more more...ah, this, this is bliss!!!!!

...See, that's how you do hyperbole.

*Applauds professionally-rendered hyperbole!* =^[.]^=

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alcovitch wrote:

...Those of you judging the game from this single tutorial section insofar as difficulty haven't got a clue, sorry....

The closed beta of D3 has been declared as the first third of the first act of four acts.

If the first third of the first act of four acts is the 'tutorial' section then, that's exactly one twelfth of the game devoted to a tutorial.

The tutorial. Is. One. Twelfth. Of. The. Game.

Think about that.

And then remember that there are four difficulty levels. That makes the tutorial one 48th of the game, IF you consider finishing Inferno to be 'finishing' the game. Most of us don't.

Now this would be a VERY big problem if Diablo III didn't allow for such flexible 'respeccing' -- replays through the first third of the first act on 'alts' would be agonising. This is not something I can say for any other action rpg, where alts presented new challenges almost immediately.

...So are you going to continue justifying the ridiculous easiness of the closed beta as a 'tutorial' that takes up ONE TWELFTH of the first difficulty level, given that the other three difficulty levels are just tougher iterations of the same monsters, the same levels?

...Really?

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

The closed beta of D3 has been declared as the first third of the first act of four acts.

If the first third of the first act of four acts is the 'tutorial' section then, that's exactly one twelfth of the game devoted to a tutorial.

The tutorial. Is. One. Twelfth. Of. The. Game.

Think about that.

You are making the assumption that each act is of equal size & length so that you can divide the entire game in 12 equal divisions. this gives the illusion of inflating the problem you see as the tutorial section.

The fact is, your first play through to the Skeleton King is about 1 hour. Subsequent play throughs are probably 40 mins or less (if you skip all the cellers etc).

So do I think there's a problem spending roughly 40min - 1 hour doing SK compared to the countless hundreds people will have played in the later sections of the game? Not in the slightest.

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And then remember that there are four difficulty levels. That makes the tutorial one 48th of the game, IF you consider finishing Inferno to be 'finishing' the game. Most of us don't.

Who's "most of us"?. The game is designed for you to do multiple play throughs on different difficulties. The story ends after Normal. The game does not.

"

Now this would be a VERY big problem if Diablo III didn't allow for such flexible 'respeccing' -- replays through the first third of the first act on 'alts' would be agonising. This is not something I can say for any other action rpg, where alts presented new challenges almost immediately.

Agonizing why? While the content to the SK is not super challenging, it's still enjoyable.

"

...So are you going to continue justifying the ridiculous easiness of the closed beta as a 'tutorial' that takes up ONE TWELFTH of the first difficulty level, given that the other three difficulty levels are just tougher iterations of the same monsters, the same levels?

...Really?

Yes, I will.

Was it super difficult to make your way to Blood Raven in Diablo 2??

I find the entire first Act of PoE agonizingly dull. Thats one HALF the entire game (thus far)...

Sorry but later difficulties aren't just tougher iterations. There are new item tiers, new item affixes, new champion and elite modifiers & runeskills introduced in each subsequent difficulty (some of which are reserved for Inferno)

Hate to break it to you, but entertainment is a business first and foremost and they will make an obscene amount of money with D3 and more wow expans so they aren't going anywhere. For every one that complains about one of their games not being up to standard, or calls them out for cutting corners there are 10 more than would blindly pre-order any box with their name on it.

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NotSorry wrote:

Hate to break it to you, but entertainment is a business first and foremost and they will make an obscene amount of money with D3 and more wow expans so they aren't going anywhere. For every one that complains about one of their games not being up to standard, or calls them out for cutting corners there are 10 more than would blindly pre-order any box with their name on it.

its people thinking like you, feeding this money hungry bitches, that have no heart and soul. just a big black hole sucking money!

its not about money. life is not about money!!!!
its about experience!!

and games are not about money!

GAMES ARE SUPPOSED TO BE " FUN "!


If you can make a living out of it, or make money from making games, you must be humble.


And i saw it whit some of my friends just saying d3 will be better than poe.

i asked why. one said, cause its from blizzard.
but blizzard is dead. and people trust them,
giving them money for shit. not wanting to realize that d3 is total crap. 2+2 is 5. and some people want to belive that, or else their tiny world would cruble like a cookie in warm milk.

Games are not about money? Lol.
Your ignorance surpasses anything I've seen before.

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Tagek wrote:

Games are not about money? Lol.
Your ignorance surpasses anything I've seen before.

you call me ignorant. you have no philosophy in life.
its time you start to see the world whit new eyes and to wake up from your matrix you life in-

"

lord_dash2 wrote:

"

NotSorry wrote:

Hate to break it to you, but entertainment is a business first and foremost and they will make an obscene amount of money with D3 and more wow expans so they aren't going anywhere. For every one that complains about one of their games not being up to standard, or calls them out for cutting corners there are 10 more than would blindly pre-order any box with their name on it.

its people thinking like you, feeding this money hungry bitches, that have no heart and soul. just a big black hole sucking money!

its not about money. life is not about money!!!!
its about experience!!

and games are not about money!

GAMES ARE SUPPOSED TO BE " FUN "!


If you can make a living out of it, or make money from making games, you must be humble.


And i saw it whit some of my friends just saying d3 will be better than poe.

i asked why. one said, cause its from blizzard.
but blizzard is dead. and people trust them,
giving them money for shit. not wanting to realize that d3 is total crap. 2+2 is 5. and some people want to belive that, or else their tiny world would cruble like a cookie in warm milk.

And I hate to break it to you but Blizzard has changed over the years. Notice this game isn't being made by the same division, Blizzard North? They've merged with Activision, and not only that, have different agendas than, oh, 12 or so years ago. 11 if you start from LoD.

Making a fun game, as you said, was what they should do, right? Well, that's what they're trying to do and as there's a MUCH bigger market for gaming these days, with millions of more people in it, they'll need to account for that and try to make a game the most people can enjoy. You can say they owe it to us D2 fans to make a game worthy of being its successor but what is that exactly? If you can throw together a detailed game design for it, you should have done so many years ago because it took them over a decade to get this far so obviously they've been working on their idea QUITE A BIT.

As for classes, they're trying to make the most viable builds, not the most optimal builds this time around. This is so that "cookie cutter" builds aren't the norm. This will allow people to create a build to their taste and not just a build that can kill everything 50% faster than the others, making it the only viable build. In theory, this should allow the most amount of players to play to their liking instead of having to stick with only a single build that can make it through Inferno. That's quite the dedication because think about it: how many games have you played that have optimal builds floating around that if you didn't pick them, you were crazy? Answer? Quite a few. I'm not going to name any besides D2 as that can be debated but I'm sure if you've played a couple RPGs, you've encountered this.

An example in D2 is with sorcerers in Hell mode. If you were ungeared to the extreme, the only way in hell you have a chance at making it through until you can get gear is with a blizzard sorc or a meteorb. Lightning? Didn't do nearly enough damage without an ABSURD amount of +skills. Any other spells? Underpowered. Until you could farm some gear and only 'til then, you were limited to a very small list of choices. And in the grand scheme of game design, that's pretty shitty. Then again, this game came out in 1999. Even with all the patches over the years, it still follows cookie cutter builds.

As for the tutorial being "one twelfth of the game", someone's already addressed this bit of propaganda, so I'll just say that not all the acts are going to be the same length. That would be weird.

I think PoE is going to be a game that will have more original thought as to the gameplay and such because it's being tailored by the community, with a great group of people open to ideas as to how to make their game better. From what I've seen (and will see soon, just got a beta key :3), this game already has tremendous potential in how it deals with character development. Compared to D3, it is already blowing it out of the water and this is not only taking into account the two open and closed beta sessions but everything else Blizzard has promised will be included.

I think it's a shame that Blizzard took away many of the RPG aspects that made D1 and D2 get so many unoriginal clones made after them in their vision. Skill trees, fucktastic loot, everything, it's been copied and redone a million times since now. Although it would have been hard to revolutionized such a worked-on system, I think they could have done it as they have had 12 years or so to do it. Instead, they went a different route and as I've yet to experience the whole vision they're weaving, I'll hold my opinion on their new direction until I get a chance to fully explore the game.

Hopefully, in the years following its release, they manage to perfect it (to a point, you can't make a perfect game for millions of people obviously) so that both fans of the series and new comers can experience that which is Diablo in its prime. I still play D2:LoD, on the ladder servers even and it's fun and how many years has it taken them to get it to where it's at? They're still patching the game. So don't expect your minds to be blown on release day.

One thing that personally pissed me off was their decision to make it so that people MUST have an internet connection to play, even with single player. I have dial-up back at home. True, I won't be living there after I get out of college, but every summer (especially THIS one when the game COMES OUT) I'm there, I'm not going to be able to play D3 most likely, even in single player. In an effort to combat pirates and such, they did this, but that's like a slap to the face of their fans as people that are going to pirate it are probably NOT going to change that decision if they make it pirate-proof. It's a huge problem though, so it is understandable.

In any event, do your research and keep your hopes up, people. And in the meantime and even after, play some PoE because it looks like it's definitely going places, amazing, incredible places at that.