That's to make the already fun experience more difficult. That's not the same as pretending basic core gameplay elements are there which are not.

I would have thought that stopping yourself from changing skills would make the "already fun experience more difficult". You're also arguing in the wrong direction: those play styles are *voluntarily restricting* the way in which the game is played, in EXACTLY the same manner as *voluntarily restricting* yourself from changing skills on the fly is.

But continue to dance on the head of a pin about how these cases are somehow different if you like.

Except the experience isn't already fun because its core gameplay is too casual.

Right, so now you concede that actually you can play the game the way you would like (no changing skills) and now your complaint is that the rest of the gameplay is too casual.

I've already pointed out that the game will require a lot more skill than D2 where you could just pick 1 or 2 skills and spam them over and over again. In D3 you're going to want and need all 6 of your skills, and Inferno is claimed to be very difficult (and they promised that if it isn't, they'll make it harder).

I guess the game is still too casual for you though. I'd like to see some specific arguments about how it is "too casual" and what they need to do to make it less "casual".

No, because I want to play in a setting without instant respecs.

Ok, so lets analyse your logic, then, shall we?

Variants as I described have long been enjoyed by many hardcore Diablo fans because they voluntarily add limitations to the game to make it more fun. You claim this is different from voluntarily choosing not to change your skills because the game as it exists is not fun. You say the reason it is not fun is because there is no option in which the game prevents you from being able to change your skills.

This is circular logic: the game doesn't offer a way to prevent you from changing your skills, therefore you claim the game is not fun. Although you are entirely capable and fully able to voluntarily stop yourself from changing your skills, you will refrain from doing this because the game is not fun.

So, do you have any *actual* reason for why the game is "too casual"? I noticed you conveniently ignored that part of my post. I must assume this means you don't have any actual logical reason for thinking the game is too casual, other then the already mentioned ability to change your skills at any point, which you are in full control of but for some reason insist that Blizzard are forcing you to change your skills and somehow robbing the fun out of the game.

Ignoring the pissing contest going on in the last few pages, I was in the D3 beta. Before it started I was kind of interested in the game. Now I am 100% for sure not buying it. I could go into details but everyone who is interested has seen my videos anyways.

Also, I wouldn't call instant respeccing a "casual" ability, but hey, I only played d2 from 1.00 to 1.12. I would, however, call the multi-second delays between monster actions casual. The AI was bad enough in d2, but in d3 it descends to a new low of bad.

Iskatu, as I stated a few posts ago, recently there was a bug in the beta where people could play in the Festering Woods and further. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive, saying the combat was a lot more interesting and varied (and difficult) than what had been in the beta up to that point. You can see videos of the gameplay on youtube - it looks a lot more frenetic than the official Beta content. And it's still only Act 1, Normal difficulty.

Instant respecs.

Okay. I'm too lazy/busy to look so I'll just take your word for it.

Now, the thing that bugs me the most is "It's still just act1!" I remember hearing that the reason there's next to no randomization in Act 1 is because it might confuse casuals. Yet Diablo 1 and to a much lesser extent Diablo 2 had little hesitation in throwing full randomization and (as I discovered personally), some very difficult monsters your way very fast. I don't like the mindset that it "has to be easy because it's early". I'd prefer the monsters to, you know, be somewhat challenging early on. I went through the beta as a Demonhunter with nothing but damage reflect on my gear, and the health orbs alone kept me alive through all of the content up to Leoric. I never had to attack. Ever.

Normal difficulty should be challenging to that gear level, Nightmare or whatever challenging to that gear level... it shouldn't just be piss easy just because it's normal. Then your first experience of the game is, like mine, extremely poor.

I'll take that as a "no". You're clearly unwilling to engage in any sort of logical debate as evidenced by your complete inability to reply to any of my salient points. I declare victory in this debate and that you are simply trolling.

Well, more importantly, it's the first third of Act 1. This part is effectively the "tutorial" part. D1 and D2 never really had a comparable section.

The above-ground parts in D3 will generally have less randomization than was in Diablo 2. Basically you get a skeleton outline and different puzzle pieces can be slotted into the various sections; as you've played the Beta I'm sure you know what I mean. It is said that there are more random puzzle pieces farther into the game; Act 1, particularly the beginning, is quite straight forward. Note that the above-ground areas in Diablo 2, while being randomized, weren't actually very interesting. The blood moor, cold plains, stony field, tamoe highlands were all basically big empty boxes with a few "themed" terrain pieces repeated over and over again.

As for the dungeons, hopefully they'll be a lot better as it progresses, as the dungeons we see in the Beta really do leave a lot to be desired.

Yes, the difficulty ramp up is definitely slower than Diablo 2 and Diablo 1 in particular, which is unfortunate. But really the opening of the game is just the opening; the extra difficulty levels are where you spend most of your time.

Not sure when you did this playthrough, but the balance in the beta has see-sawed around quite a bit. Apparently it is quite a bit more difficult now than it was initially.

Yes, although as they're dead-set in having this 'tutorial' style section of the game so I think we just have to accept it. There's good reason for them to have it and while I'd prefer going back to Diablo 1 where from clvl 1 through 8 or so you had to really scrounge for all the gold you could, ultimately I don't think this is a huge cost to bear.

Now if it's a cake-walk through all of Act 2 as well, then I'll be upset.

Likewise!

Also, I have simple facts.

Instant respecs are so casual it hurts

The whole game is a big mess of generic softcore casual easy mode.

Thank god for Path of Exile.

And when you say "whole game" you mean "instant-respecs" as that's the only example you could come up with.

I can't say much about path of exile because I haven't really tried it, just been too busy. But I can tell you it doesn't like certain ATI drivers. I'll get to it some day and share my thoughts; I've had a key for the longest time.


Well, this is more or less the fault of the horrific randomization code. A lot more could have been done with it.. But yeah.

Did they fix any of the writing at all? Because the writing was horrific in the beta.

I'm late to the beta, but there is nothing wrong and plenty right with the writing. Is there something specific you can remember?

Also, are you saying there was something wrong with syntax, or the content? (we're they taking like this, or was the dialogue just not convincing enough for you)

The scenario that occurs in a game like Diablo is that a player reaches a certain level, and the build they've chosen is not effective. A good player realizes this, and will reroll/respec. A bad player is not capable of realizing this, and continues to fail until they quit the game. Respeccing eliminates the timesink penalty for choosing a bad build. Eliminating time sinks is always good game design.

There is a certain personality type that suffers from chronic insecurity. They need those timesinks in games in order to eliminate otherwise good players from the competition. As a general rule, skilled players are going to prefer to spend their time playing games with a greater fun:time ratio.

The dialogue was the same cliche trash they used in wc/sc2. Everything Cain said made my brain hurt. The game started with "OMG PROPHECY". Pretty much every red flag for bad Western writing went off by 1/2 way through the beta content.

MMMmmm yeh I agree about the prophecy thing. It is trite bs, they shoehorned it into starcraft, now they are shoehorning it into diablo. It is what destroyed the Star Wars prequels too. "Prophecy." Pfffft.

Here is picture of default 'noobified' tooltip:

Here is the advanced tooltip, hold CTRL to view:

Here is the option to make advanced tooltip default:


They have made Elective Mode slightly less shit as well, thankfully. You can now drag and drop. Everything seems ready to go for the release of the game. W000t.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Mar 19 2012, 8:00 am by Oh_Man.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E452S_fJwA
They actually SAY they are trying to make the game non-competitive and casual. The only competition they want, as such, is the player vs the environment rather than PvP rankings and ability etc.

PvP isn't going to be in the game at release anyway, so they may end up adding more features than they had initially anticipated. Also, even if PvP isn't amazing when it's first released, there's always time for them to update it in free patches or as part of an expansion - in fact this is very likely to be a "new feature" added in an expansion, much as they did with WoW. Also Diablo 2 had no PvP ranking scoreboards or anything either, so you can't really say Diablo 3 is "more casual" when it also doesn't have them. Diablo 3 is in fact going to be more competitive because it comes with a slew of achievements, some of which will be quite difficult to get, whereas all D2 had was the EXP ladder ranking that wasn't very interesting anyway.

Anyway, patch 15 is out and dataminers have found an interesting feature that Blizzard have been working on.

When you kill elite bosses and mobs, your gold find and magic find will go up, so when you eventually kill the act boss (or other boss) you'll get better rewards. Except if you re-spec your skills, then you will lose the bonus. Presumably you'll lose it if you die, as well. They're also adding +skill affixes to items (buff for specific skills). So all of this means that actually, while you're free to re-spec whenever you want, there will be some cost to it and this will help drive your character to be unique from others.