It's blizzard. They know when the game is the way they like it, and only then will they release it, it's been true for years before, and I'm sure it'll be that way until they don't have the money to wait as long as they want.
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D3 going golden ?
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Lewwyn Wrote:Hmm those are some major game changes... who said that? http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz...02230.html Quote:The Game Rating Board, government agency responsible for approving and classifying video games, sees no end in sight for a decision an entire legion of fans anxiously awaits. So, like I said - they're stalling due to the RMAH. Have been for MONTHS. It's the only thing that's been holding this game back for this long, because it's their next cash cow and they can't afford NOT to have it go the way they want it. It looks as though they're not ever going to get to pass the GRB in South Korea while keeping the RMAH intact in any form, so either they'll have to completely drop that aspect of the game, or keep pushing off the release until they come to a compromise, though it's already been said that if they take out the RMAH now and add it in later they'll have to go before the board for a full review again, so I doubt that will be an option they pursue. At any rate, I have better games to play at present, and honestly I don't see D3 having anywhere near the lasting appeal D2 and D1 did for me. It's just too little advancement within the series, and I honestly feel as though I'm moving beyond enjoying such simple hack 'n' slash games as a whole. I know I'll buy it and play it for awhile, but at this point it just doesn't seem like it's going to be a huge hit with me. That's fine, though - there will be millions of drooling pre-teens lining up to spew off about how great and revolutionary the game is. :neenernee cb-13 Wrote:Do tell: What games are you playing and are they any good ? Well, I've been throwing myself back into World of Tanks more. It's a good game for what it is (tank-based tactical FPS), but as with any multiplayer game where you rely heavily on fellow humans it can be very hit or miss. Having good friends to "Platoon" (group up) is virtually essential, and even then it won't always save you from some very terrible matches. On the whole, though, it's enjoyable. Section 8: Prejudice has been a blast. Very fast-paced tactical FPS (with jetpacks!) Very much a micro-Planetside-esque game, complete with custom "classes" and objectives. Highly recommend it to anyone looking for a good adrenaline pusher. Space Pirates and Zombies is an interesting top-down 2D space shooter, with decent ship customizability. The campaign is... eh, it's not bad, but it's nothing stellar, either. The meat is in the gameplay, not the story. Vast number of worlds to "explore", although any actual exploration only takes a matter of minutes. Gameplay is repetitious, so it can get a bit boring at times, but overall I enjoy it. I'm eagerly awaiting Starfarer (bought into the alpha / beta), as it promises to be similar in some of the gameplay elements of SPAZ while expanding largely on the ship customization and story-driven missions. One's more arcadey, one's more tactical. Terraria has been sating me for a 2D side-scroller slash adventure title, with the latest (very large) content patch drawing me back in for more spelunking. Dabbled in Minecraft here and there, but overall it just doesn't grab me enough. I spend a bunch of time building something, but it never amounts to anything grandiose, and I can't help but feel I'm wasting my time. If I could find a good multiplayer server (like the Basin) it might hold my interest more, but otherwise it's a good time killer for when I get the itch. Dungeon Defenders was a blast. 1st/3rd-person FPS/RPG/Tower Defense game. Imagine Hexen (or Heretic) meets Torchlight meets Defense Grid: Awakening. Awesome, awesome indie game with huge multiplayer fun. If you don't have 3 friends to play this with it won't offer you near the enjoyment, I feel, but that's no different than most MP titles. Highly recommended. Skyrim has been on hiatus since about the second patch, but I deeply want to commit to this game to see it through. WoT has just been eating up all my time, but I definitely love the world they built with this game. Exploration is just damn fun, as is leveling, and since I play an Archer I never get tired of one-shotting enemies from afar with a bow.  Dogfighter's good for an arcadey flight shooter. Sky Drift is... a bit different take on the same genre, I suppose. Both are worth a look if that's your thing, but don't expect much in the multiplayer department. Much like Section 8, there just aren't many people playing (although S8 regularly fills up at least 1 whole server, and sometimes 2, which is plenty.) Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes is an interesting take on the series. I found the art style quite refreshing, and the tactical boardgame style gameplay equally engaging and rewarding. Certainly not for everyone, but if you're a fan of "tactics" style games it might suit you - if you don't expect too much complexity from it. Prototype was a fun one. Still need to go back and finish the campaign. Lots of fun jumping off tall buildings to smash, slice, and hurl my way through anything around me. Loads of fun, it's like a good sci-fi action film. There are others I'd like to get into (Deus Ex: Human Revolution, for example), but for now grinding my way up in World of Tanks and rolling (literally) with some of the Basin crew keeps my gaming time nicely filled. When I get tired of that, I'll often watch some TotalHalibut / TotalBiscuit videos on YouTube, just to keep me from getting too burned out, as well as keep me abreast of new, cheap games to try out. Gotten a lot of very enjoyable deals because of that, and avoided some games that I would have regretted purchasing. Honestly, it's not like D3 is going to be a bad game. It will be a solid Blizzard title. It's just more of D2, and frankly it's just not any fun without any actual advancement or good coop partners. Beside that, I really just have no ambition to sink literally hundreds of hours into that game, at least at present. Maybe I'll change my tune a bit upon release, but I really feel like it's going to be one of those things I play hardcore for about 6-8 months and then shelve, once I've gotten what I want from it. We'll see though. Much of it depends on how asinine they make the systems in the game. If they do to D3 out the door what they did to D2 between 1.07ish (basically LoD release) and - more importantly - 1.10 and beyond, I'll dump it in the recycle bin. I simply do not adhere to Blizzard's "goals" anymore. I flat out do not agree with many of their choices, their stances, and what I see as their blatant arrogance, so I'm really taking a cautious, cynical approach towards D3. Again though, if you liked D2, and want more of the same you will love D3. It simply hasn't advanced enough in enough meaningful ways to grab me the way D2 did and D1. D2 advanced D1 - whether in a direction some people wanted or not is a matter of taste - but D3 doesn't seem to be doing nearly the same. The graphics are sub-par at best, the gameplay is recycled, and the systems they're putting in place - while nice - fill more of a niche than a true advancement. I'm not even entirely sure what it is I'd want to see in terms of advancement, but really I can already see them moving BACKWARDS from where I think they should be (you wants us to make more frequent visits to town? Really? You really think you know best what my psyche wants? UGH! The fucking ARROGANCE of this company SICKENS me. I digress.) Torchlight, for example, took what made Diablo fun and expanded upon it. It tried bold new things while not completely gutting the core experience. Diablo 3 is just Diablo II, only "bigger" - and now with the option to constantly drain your wallet! Woohoo!  Sorry, I'm ranting. I'll stop.Needless to say, there are some really awesome (mostly Indie) games out there, and I'm doing my best to enjoy each one while I can. It's worth it to me to expand my horizons instead of gorging on the same game over and over and over. I feel... a return to my roots, where I had stacks of NES and SNES games that I would cycle through depending on my mood. That's where I'm at now, and it feels good. Roland Wrote:Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes is an interesting take on the series. I found the art style quite refreshing, and the tactical boardgame style gameplay equally engaging and rewarding. Certainly not for everyone, but if you're a fan of "tactics" style games it might suit you - if you don't expect too much complexity from it.I liked that one a lot too. It's really a puzzle game more than a "tactics" style game, you match colors like in Klax or Columns or something to move pieces around, except turn-based. The only "tactics" elements are that damage is dealt numerically and there's a few spells to cast. The army building/recruiting is trivial between campaign fights and nonexistent in single duels. I liked Heroes of Might and Magic 2 and 3 (never picked up the later ones) and it was a nice callback to that in the same setting. Lewwyn Wrote:Torchlight was boring. 1) I'm not a games designer. 2) It was late, and I was too tired to sit down and think about what I would actually want in terms of advancement. 3) Is there a point to this comment, or are you just trying to troll me? I suppose one big gripe I have is the graphics. After a decade you'd think they could have come up with a better graphical engine than they have. I mean, honestly, I think Starcraft II has better graphics than Diablo 3. It just seems like they didn't push the envelope nearly enough in that regard. I understand they're trying to enable a wide audience by keeping the system requirements low, but honestly - it's as if they finished the game engine... 5+ years ago? or more and just never updated any of it during the rest of the time. It simply looks dated, and I know that graphics have never been at the forefront of the Diablo franchise, but it simply doesn't seem acceptable to me to be launching a high-priced "AAA" title like Diablo 3 (after a decade!) with it looking dated before launch. Skills have been a somewhat major change from Diablo II, in that the trees (and I use that term loosely) are greatly condensed. Furthermore, they took a page out of Guild Wars and limited to active skills you can use - to 4 IIRC? Half of what Guild Wars allows. It's literally as though they borrowed that aspect from GW and cut it down / dumbed it down to appeal to a broader audience. For a hardcore gamer like myself, and the rest of the RB crowd, it's not liberating, or tactical, or anything positive. It's an artificial restriction put in place to remove complexity, and in the process removes a great deal of tactics. This whole "dumbing down" is evident in nearly every aspect of the game, and while they have taken steps to introduce complexity into the game in some areas (Runes, for example), the very limited beta does not grant access to those systems, so there's no way to assess how much of an impact they're going to make. I'm ok with there being smaller "trees," and I'm ok with there being a limit on the number of "active" skills (and passive, for that matter). I just think they went too far on the latter (if not necessarily the former), and that it detracts from the game instead of adding to it. Salvaging items I thought was a tremendous step forward in evolution of gameplay. I enjoyed the fact that I could scrap all the junk I found for items that would eventually become useful. Indeed, I never sold anything while I played - I junked it all and used those components to forge gear far better than I could find. Now, granted I'm sure this was a contributing factor to why they've introduced the changes to whites (no longer being salvageable), but it just goes to my grander overall point - Blizzard is very hamfisted in how it deals with perceived issues. Rather than make a subtler change, i.e. making salvage components a percentage chance from salvaging, rather than a guarantee, they could have limited the steep character growth early on without compromising the "flow" and convenience of the game. Instead, they want to force us into their "vision" for the game, which quite frankly (aside from being utterly arrogant, in my opinion) does not jive with what I want and expect from the game. They'd rather make whites useless, because it's too "difficult" to make everything "useful." They did away with Town Portal scrolls (awesome, BTW), and now are doing the same thing with ID scrolls (I'll miss the nostalgic value of them, but I'll enjoy the convenience of the change more). BUT! They're taking away the ability to salvage on-the-fly anywhere, forcing you to go back to town at regular intervals - or simply skip picking up half the crap that drops, just as we did in Diablo II. That's not advancement. That's not fun. That's what they want you to do, but it's not a positive thing in my mind, no matter how much they try to spin it as such. "We know what's better for you, even if you don't." Bullshit. They pulled that same attitude with D2, and it drove me nuts. It's worse now, as far as I can see, and it truly puts me off not just the game, but the company as a whole. I can understand the immersion reasons for having salvaging done at the Blacksmith, but don't try to pass it off as though it's an improvement to the game. It's not. I don't need a goddamn break from crawling through the dungeon - that's the whole POINT of the game! Act I in its entirety is so linear, with so little variation, as to be laughable. They say it's to take the place of a "tutorial." I never felt Diablo was complex enough to warrant a tutorial, and Diablo 3 is so far removed from whatever complexity existed in the original as to make this statement laughable as well, but there you go. They say it will get better in later acts, and I don't necessarily doubt them, but actions speak louder than words, and taken in the greater context I'm not as heartily confident in their word as I'd like to be. The beginning monster AI is poor as well, although again it's early monsters so I expect the challenge to be minimal, but even the Skeleton King is a simply click-fest - easy to avoid his hits, easy to kill, no skill nor challenge involved. A far, far cry from the first time you met the Butcher, or the Skeleton King in Diablo, or even the "resurrected" Butcher in Diablo II (or Andariel and Duriel, for that matter). The "destructable environments" are neat, and they do have places where it can be used to damage monsters, but those places are so scarce and feel so contrived that I almost never utilize them. Indeed, as fun as it is breaking things, the only reason I bother (and I go out of my way to do it) is for the "Achievements" system them have in place, one example being "Destroyed X Objects." The Achievements I think are an awesome addition. They're basically a mini-game inside the game, but even more they reward you with a small amount of XP for completing them. This won't mean jack much past Act I, but it makes a difference up until about Level 12 or so, and it's just a fun little addition to the game. It doesn't break immersion for me (much), and it's unique and fun enough on its own to be a very nice touch, IMO. Some people may find it silly, and maybe it is, but it's fun, and they reward you for it - win-win. This even pushes you to explore the entirety of dungeons, rather than just skip through half the content to find the best loot from the end monsters. It's not even remotely a requirement, but it does add just that little bit more incentive - a nice touch, as I said. Environments wise, the game is fairly atmospheric. I don't find the lighting and coloring effects to be off-putting, and indeed, I enjoy the artsy spell effects. If anything, I think some of them could be a bit more showy (mostly the Demon Hunter's skills, as some of the effects are lackluster in comparison to what others get). The sound effects for the most part are ok, and the music is good. The game overall feels like a Diablo game with a fresh coat of paint. I can see how some would be soured in comparison to Diablo's style, but honestly Diablo II was almost nothing like Diablo, and Diablo 3 is very similar to Diablo II, just prettier. Some of the voice acting is... pretty bad, and the one-liners spit out by the main character are pretty atrocious. Indeed, the dialogue overall is... fairly poor. I think 300 (the film) had better dialogue than this game, and it's really a shame - the story that they hint at grips me, and I want to know every little detail about it. I just don't like the voice acting nor the dialogue. It's not terrible enough to break the game for me, but it does break the immersion a bit, and certainly detracts from the overall experience of the game. A minor gripe for some, and definitely will vary by taste, but for me it's just another checkmark in a long list of them, however minor. Diablo 3 is not a bad game. It's just not a great game, and I think that's part of what bothers me so much. With all the potential they had, all the time, all the money, EVERYTHING - it just feels mediocre. It's like reading a good 8th-grade level novel when you're in college - it may be a good book, but it's not on the same level you are. You enjoy it, but you don't feel... completely fulfilled with its completion. As I said, overall the game just feels dated, much like Hellgate: London felt dated in certain aspects (piss poor randomization of levels, for example?) There've been plenty of games that have advanced the genre (Guild Wars, Torchlight), or even taken it to wholly new places (Dungeon Defenders). Diablo 3 stuck to its guns, its tried and true methods, only instead of delivering a "AAA" experience, it's more of an "A-". I feel it failed its pedigree, and that truly is a shame, especially considering all the hype that's surrounded this game, and for so long. The bottom line is this: if you liked Diablo II, you'll like Diablo 3. Just don't expect much more evolution in the series than Starcraft II had in comparison to Starcraft. I enjoyed Starcraft II for what it was. I enjoy Diablo 3 for what it is. I do not think either has, or will, live up to the hype surrounding them, and I especially don't think Diablo 3 has matured nearly enough (if at all; it's definitely taken a step backwards in many key aspects, IMO) given its development time. To each their own, and all that. Roland Wrote:are you just trying to troll me? *Tweak, Tweak* :neenernee A couple responses. I haven't gotten to play the beta yet. But I read D3 news everyday and I know what the changes are and such. You can have 6 active skills which is a good deal more than 4. You haven't even seen all the skill choices in action yet so you can't make a real assessment of whether its is being dumbed down. In D2 you couldn't put skills into everything. You had to make choices... That's exactly what this is doing. In D2 6 skills was about what you used near endgame. By that point you had a set of skills. Even now the active 6 you choose are not permanent so you can switch them out as you build your character around playstyle and loot you find. I just don't see how this is dumbed down. So you don't like going back to town. Then... don't? I mean they force you back to town by making you fill your inventory and having to sell or salvage what you've found? As long as you're picky about what you pick up seems like your inventory isn't going to fill up that fast. Act 1 is linear? It's the Beta. That's a third of Act 1. I'm sure it will not be so linear in the full game. D2 Beta was from the beginning to Blood Raven. That's not very far at all. And it certainly isn't a lot of room to be non linear. It's the Beta, are they supposed to give you the whole game to go wild in? Graphics, dialogue and voice acting. Maybe its just me but I don't care as much what the graphics are. Civ5 was all about graphics and it sucked. I prefer solid gameplay over wow me graphics. I don't play games for the videos. Playing D2 is as fun today as it was 10 years ago. Look, I'm not trying to troll you here, but you're very down on the game and really you've only seen the Beta. What seems to be your biggest gripe is this perception that Blizzard is arrogant and thinks they know whats best for you. I think you're letting this color your perspective. You're being really negative about a lot of little things that are in fact IMO subjective. I don't even think about what Blizzard wants to me to do, I just want to play the game. These meta-reasons have no bearing for me. Lets all be a little more optimistic! Simply put, I think you're a wolf, Roland. :neenernee
“The wind went mute and the trees in the forest stood still. It was time for the last tale.”
Lewwyn Wrote:You can have 6 active skills which is a good deal more than 4. You haven't even seen all the skill choices in action yet so you can't make a real assessment of whether its is being dumbed down. In D2 you couldn't put skills into everything. You had to make choices... That's exactly what this is doing.No it's not and that's the point especial when playing RB variants. In D2 you could do with 6 active skills and less but my average in D2 was 7 to 8 with some classes even hitting 12. With only 6 active skills to use which is few, no matter what size the pool is one can choose from, it's back to mainstream skill selections. Also the point them not being permanent is no point anymore since - you now have to visit town (or a special shrine?) to switch them and - you can't go to town when you're in combat. So when you run into a boss or monstergroup you can't get with your current skill set you have to run away, travel to town (or shrine) to reset the skills and then head back  Lewwyn Wrote:So you don't like going back to town. Then... don't? I mean they force you back to town by making you fill your inventory and having to sell or salvage what you've found? As long as you're picky about what you pick up seems like your inventory isn't going to fill up that fast.Actually this was one of the few features i liked since i did experience it's influence on gameplay in Torchlight. Got a full inventory? No prob, load up your pet and send it to town to do all the sale micro-management while you kept adventuring. Now it's back to the same old routine. Full inv means heading back to town to sell or salvage and then back to the action. Ok .. the hint not to pick up everything is valid .. but in a game where gaining gold is said to be hard and materials for crafting items is a large part this is simply not the way to go 
Arthur pulls tiles from the Scrabble bag which by random form into "What do you get when you multiply six by nine?"
Arthur: "Six by nine? 42?" Ford: "I always knew there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe." |
