Diablo 3 OPEN BETA

imo the difficulty is not a concern. the point is for it to get harder as you play, and this is a tutorial/intro chapter.

the simplicity is the concern.

it is an open beta u may get a key

First, I only played the barb (because everytime I tried to start/resume another character it wouldn't let me; and I can't get on now)

1. Trivial - The create/character screen looks cheesy - really it should snap and pop.
2. Agree with other comments about its skill simplicity and linearity
3. Not sure I care about the "mana" store/spend mechanism
4. Trivial - Your too powerful at the very beginning; I am sorry when walking to town and on the first quest enemies should not be chopped in half and thrown halfway across the screen. Save it until a bit later.
5. Trivial - I have found much of the knockback physics/animations annoying.
6. Really, 14 or whatever squares only in the shared stash and 10,000 gold to upgrade the shared stash. At least give us a full page. Sheesh.
7. The art style and general animations are good - a bit cartoony but that wouldn't stop me playing.
8. The chat system is just bad.
9. As others have said "no login queue" .. huh?

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ChoobinatoR wrote:

I beat the beta (and the SK boss) without using any potions. (accidentally used like 2 when i had full HP trying to push 1 for my skill.

1 shotting most monsters, health globes all over the place. SK was easy, tried him with 3 other people, still easy - just an insane amount of health.

I was going to buy D3 on release, but now I'll wait until some reviews come out for the later content. I am really not impressed so far, with the game play, multiplayer, and the content. Feels more like WoW then a diablo.

You're waiting for reviews on an Activision game?

No problem.

"The gameplay/graphics/music/artstyle were stellar, game of the year 11/10, brb buying new wife, car, house and retiring with the money i managed to accrue recently"

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Khodar wrote:

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ChoobinatoR wrote:

I beat the beta (and the SK boss) without using any potions. (accidentally used like 2 when i had full HP trying to push 1 for my skill.

1 shotting most monsters, health globes all over the place. SK was easy, tried him with 3 other people, still easy - just an insane amount of health.

I was going to buy D3 on release, but now I'll wait until some reviews come out for the later content. I am really not impressed so far, with the game play, multiplayer, and the content. Feels more like WoW then a diablo.

You're waiting for reviews on an Activision game?

No problem.

"The gameplay/graphics/music/artstyle were stellar, game of the year 11/10, brb buying new wife, car, house and retiring with the money i managed to accrue recently"

haha , good one ^^

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Khodar wrote:

The gameplay/graphics/music/artstyle were stellar, game of the year 11/10, brb buying new wife, car, house and retiring with the money i managed to accrue recently"

Especially a Blizzard game; Starcraft 2 seems to be good but flawed and it was treated like the second coming by reviewers. However, Reading reviews can glean info on some gameplay issues even if the summary is bogus and glowing.

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Beat wrote:

alco you spent a really long time defending the beta.

what i dont understand is why they released the first hour of gameplay for an open beta. it isnt really much of a beta, it feels more like a trial or a preview than a beta.

OK I'll bite.

They had several reasons. First there is a huge plot spoiler right after killing the SK. It has something to do with finding out what or who the falling star is. Blizzard didn't want to reveal that till the release. Some may not consider that a valid reason, but that is one of their reasons.

Second they don't need to beta test the entire game. The small D3 beta was meant only to test server side systems and load as well as to test new ideas with beta testers.

Over the course of 18 beta patches there's been a lot of changes to skills, when you unlock them, the rune system which is relatively new to the beta, the difficulty of monsters, champion affixes etc.

There's been lots of testing, you just haven't been part of it.

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i played through on a witchdoctor and a barbarian. the witchdoctor was fun but i absolutely hated having to wait for skill cooldowns when i switched between the two choices i had per space blizzard allowed me to use for my categorized skills.

game felt like babys first rpg. i can confidently say that at max "beta" level my witchdoctor is exactly the same as every other witchdoctor, except that at level 10 i chose to make some dead bodies turn into mobs when they die and other people chose to have their minions take 20% less damage. only difference, and i looked at the further passives down the road. its the exact same thing there too.

i dont know whose bright idea it was to make the skill progression as linear as possible, but it made what could have been exciting really boring. ding, level 11, now i get to go back to the same skill i was using earlier, except now it shoots one big bullet instead of several little bullets. how exciting.

i couldnt even use multiple skills at once. as a witchdoctor, i had a choice between the following skills

BASIC ATTACK - toss spiders at people, or shoot a dart
SECONDARY ATTACK - slow aoe, shoot a fireball made of bats

"DEFENSIVE" - summon 3 dogs
idk - i shoot out an aoe that does no damage and gives me an int buff apparently?

You're right, there is limited choice in the 13 levels of beta. You don't actually unlock all core skill still level 30 and then all runeskill options till 60. So yes, the first 1 hour of play has few choices. Did you expect differently? If so I'm not sure why.

If at level 60 every Witch Doctor is using the same 6 skills and 3 passives, then you have an argument.

The skill you are talking about gives you an Int buff based on the number of mobs in teh AOE area of the spell, max stack of 5. That Int buff is a HUGE dps boost. It doubles it or more in the beta at least.

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heres the kicker. i could only use one at a time from any of these categories. so at all times, even as a barbarian, i was really only using 3 skills. id summon dogs, then id slow stuff and shoot with a blow dart. that was the whole "beta".

This is due to them turnint on a guided approach for newbies. I'm not a fan of this idea either and had a hard time adjusting to their new skill UI. Basically, to solve your problem, go into the game options and enable Elective Mode. It allows you to put whatever skills wherever you want.

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and yeah ive gotta say the dialogue was cheesy as shit, didnt feel like diablo at all. i actually turned the sound off because my roommate was in the kitchen and i was kind of embarrassed because the dialogue was so fucking stupid. same with the story line so far.

Agree to disagree? I don't know what else to say. The sound work is top quality. I have no issues with the voice over work and the story so far. We've only seen a small fraction of the story so I can't comment.

Only a few class voices, like the Female Monk and Witch Doctor along with the male Demon Hunter I personal can't stand. I just play the other sex to solve that problem.

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id really just like to hear what you have to say about this, because yeah i realize i got to level 13 and i realize this is still a beta but the games coming out in less than a month and i feel like the game needs a total overhaul in a lot of areas.

Again, I'm not sure how to respond to this. Maybe you're expectations were not realistic? Like I've mentioned in another thread, I was able to take advantage of a beta bug a few patches ago and go to the next area. Let me tell you it's more open, has more points of interest. Longer mini dungeons and new champion affixes that make it more challenging.

I really think people are jumping to conclusions and thinking what's in the beta is going to stay that way for 4 difficulties. They couldn't be more wrong.

When you get owned by your first Champion pack in Nightmare, you'll be like "shit, didn't see that coming".

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ps. the crafting is total shit. i like that its shared among all my characters but its just called "crafting" and it uses "crafting material". god damn they dumbed this game down big time. heard they did the same thing with the wow skilltrees lmao.

Okay. What was the crafting in Diablo 2? Crafting in Diablo 3 is kind of like gambling in Diablo 2 except you have a bit more control.

Yes it's called Crafting. Actually it's called Blacksmithing and Jewel Crafting (which isn't in the beta). What do you propose to call it that would make it sound more acceptable?

honestly with this point I think you're just nit picking.

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Ragnar119 wrote:

. In d3 you can choose whatever skill you want, but are limited to 1 type of that skill.

False. it's only allowing you to choose one of each category per action slot per skill because you didn't turn on Elective Mode.

The game forces newbies to pick one of each to have a more balanced character so they don't end up with all resource generators or even worse, all resource spenders.

I'm not a fan of the dual system, but for everyone who's familiar with these kind of games, go into the Options and enable Elective Mode. This will allow you to choose any number of skills to go wherever you want on your action bar.

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alcovitch wrote:

This is due to them turnint on a guided approach for newbies. I'm not a fan of this idea either and had a hard time adjusting to their new skill UI. Basically, to solve your problem, go into the game options and enable Elective Mode. It allows you to put whatever skills wherever you want.

yo if this is true that's really good news! i feel a lot better about d3 after learning this, wish i found that out sooner.

and yes youre right i am nitpicking on crafting, i realize there was essentially no crafting other than the cube in D2, i was just surprised with how simplistic it was.

not all the voice work is terrible, i just thought a lot of the dialogue with deckard cain was really cheesy, and the story (so far) feels very friendly and fluffy and light. i mean hell, the game is rated T for teen, right? dont they already have enough lowest common denominator players with world of warcraft? the darkest thing in that game is green stink particle effects and horse skeletons.

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Beat wrote:

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alcovitch wrote:

This is due to them turnint on a guided approach for newbies. I'm not a fan of this idea either and had a hard time adjusting to their new skill UI. Basically, to solve your problem, go into the game options and enable Elective Mode. It allows you to put whatever skills wherever you want.

yo if this is true that's really good news! i feel a lot better about d3 after learning this, wish i found that out sooner.

and yes youre right i am nitpicking on crafting, i realize there was essentially no crafting other than the cube in D2, i was just surprised with how simplistic it was.

not all the voice work is terrible, i just thought a lot of the dialogue with deckard cain was really cheesy, and the story (so far) feels very friendly and fluffy and light. i mean hell, the game is rated T for teen, right? dont they already have enough lowest common denominator players with world of warcraft? the darkest thing in that game is green stink particle effects and horse skeletons.

People exploding into bloody pools, people hanging from trees etc, corpses everywhere. Not sure what you mean about it not being dark.