Diablo III open beta weekend

[Trustingsoup]

As part of a server stress test, Blizzard will be having an open beta of Diablo 3 this weekend. Blizzard

[SleepyHe4d]

Cool, thanks, downloading now.

Edit: Can't log in because of too much traffic.

[ambershee]

I guess they successfully stressed their servers...

[Mozi]

Already played the beta last month. It was good fun

[Capt.Toilet]

Error code 37... blizzard capped the amount of logins so they could fix their ****. Stress test is a success

I am loving the tears that people are producing over this. Give me more you impatient cows!!!

[SlayerDragon]

Maybe they're just seeing how many idiot basement dwellers they can stress out.

[Godfrey.Payans]

It looks like D3 isn't going to be sold on Steam. Is the Blizzard digital store, battle.net, considered reasonable, or does it have a bad reputation like Microsoft's and EA's?

[SleepyHe4d]

So I ended up playing a decent amount and agree with some of the complaints I've read on the forums. This is based on playing the demon hunter just so you know, since the other classes have different skill systems afaik, but my complaints probably count for those classes too.

1. WAY too easy.

2. Inventory too big and WoW-like.

3. I don't really like the skill system for a variety of reasons, such as how it's modularized and simplified and doesn't allow uniqueness or personalization, everyone will have the same skills. I didn't really look at it much or mess around with it, but that's how it seems and that was one of the common complaints on the forum.

4. Your basic attack is a special ability that you can just spam forever, and it regenerates your "energy" for every shot. It's overkill imo, it would be nice if you had to strategically use basic attacks along with special abilities like in League of Legends or other MOBA's.

5. The regenerating energy for every shot part seems unbalanced towards weapons with higher attack speed and it encourages spamming the special ability even if there's nothing, basically "attacking the darkness".

Can't really think of anything else ATM, but I'm sure there was more. On a positive note, I love the graphics, has a nice painterly look to it. More realistic would have been cool too though, also darker.

Originally Posted by Godfrey.Payans

It looks like D3 isn't going to be sold on Steam. Is the Blizzard digital store, battle.net, considered reasonable, or does it have a bad reputation like Microsoft's and EA's?

looooool

/facepalm

[Capt.Toilet]

Just finished it with the Barbarian - I love me my melee classes

-As above the game was rather easy and I didn't even have to keep track of my health till I got to the Skeleton King.

-Graphics are pretty nice and textures seem to be clean and crisp. FPS is 60 constant unless physics start going like multiple pots being destroyed. This might be down to my processor being kinda crap.

-Being that I never played the past Diablo's, I can't comment on the leveling system, though I would imagine it would be similar to Titan Quest or even Torchlight. For the Barbarian at least I found myself only using Rend for Primary and the Hammer for secondary. Everything else just kinda sucked, but higher levels might yield better skills.

-Not sure if it was because it was beta, but I had ALOT of blues drop. A shield that gave me 50 armor before the crypt even, and a double handed axe that just tore through **** like butter.

-Didn't see anything wrong with the inventory and I am not sure how it was "wow" like? It might have been a bit too big, but you know I really wouldn't want to portal to town every dungeon or so just because I ran out of room prematurely.

[SleepyHe4d]

Originally Posted by Capt.Toilet

-Being that I never played the past Diablo's, I can't comment on the leveling system, though I would imagine it would be similar to Titan Quest or even Torchlight. For the Barbarian at least I found myself only using Rend for Primary and the Hammer for secondary. Everything else just kinda sucked, but higher levels might yield better skills.

-Not sure if it was because it was beta, but I had ALOT of blues drop. A shield that gave me 50 armor before the crypt even, and a double handed axe that just tore through **** like butter.

-Didn't see anything wrong with the inventory and I am not sure how it was "wow" like? It might have been a bit too big, but you know I really wouldn't want to portal to town every dungeon or so just because I ran out of room prematurely.

Yeah, like I said, the skill system seems so simplified that everyone will end up being a cookie cutter clone.

About the magic items, it's normal for a Diablo game. In fact, it seems like the drops are waaaay less than Diablo 2. Did you find any rares? (yellow)

On the inventory, if you haven't played the other Diablo games then you're not used to how it used to be. I meant WoW-like as in everything is the exact same size (besides belts) and there's 100 slots. The inventory being big isn't the root of the problem though, being able to teleport to town at any time is, they might as well just give us infinite inventory space. Meh.

These things are minor complaints though, my main one would be the cookie cutter character builds and silly skill system. I hope that it's better at final release.


Edit: I happened to go read up on Torchlight 2 just now, and now I'm starting to have hopes for that game as a replacement. Made by former Blizzard North employees and people are saying their games such as Torchlight have more of a Diablo feel than Diablo 3. I never played it though.

[Capt.Toilet]

Originally Posted by SleepyHe4d

Yeah, like I said, the skill system seems so simplified that everyone will end up being a cookie cutter clone.

About the magic items, it's normal for a Diablo game. In fact, it seems like the drops are waaaay less than Diablo 2. Did you find any rares? (yellow)

On the inventory, if you haven't played the other Diablo games then you're not used to how it used to be. I meant WoW-like as in everything is the exact same size (besides belts) and there's 100 slots. The inventory being big isn't the root of the problem though, being able to teleport to town at any time is, they might as well just give us infinite inventory space. Meh.

These things are minor complaints though, my main one would be the cookie cutter character builds and silly skill system. I hope that it's better at final release.

Never got any yellows, but my entire inventory was comprised of blues, sans the ring slots and shoulder pads.

As for the warp, I appreciated that in Titan Quest and I appreciate it in this game. Having to backtrack through a 4 level dungeon plus whatever land is between you and the nearest town would be god ****ing awful. Get to town, sell your **** or whatever, and get back into the action.

[Bi()ha2arD]

Originally Posted by Godfrey.Payans

It looks like D3 isn't going to be sold on Steam. Is the Blizzard digital store, battle.net, considered reasonable, or does it have a bad reputation like Microsoft's and EA's?

I have no idea about the store but battle.net as a service seems to be rather mature and working rather well in SC2.

[ilkman]

The whole "require internet to play" thing is complete horse ****.

My experience thus far: download 14%: error : download 11% : corrupt : download 12%: error : download 10% : corrupt : download 14%: error : download 13% : corrupt : etc etc etc all god damn day. Can you imagine client patch/update days?

I finally get it downloaded only to get...yes! error 3004 or something stupid, when I click play! I click it again..and again...and again...and again for who knows how long. Finally I log in. By the way this is at 6am. How many people are going to be on at that time to really stress things out? Enough to mess my game up apparently.

I play the game for a minute or two and find my way to the Inn to talk to that chick and then everything stops moving. A minute or two later the game catches up and boom! I'm dead. Restart at nearest checkpoint. It does this a couple more times and I say F that and quit.

This experience better be because of the stress test. If it's like this at final release than LOL! Blizzard can kiss my ass.

[Capt.Toilet]

Originally Posted by ilkman

I play the game for a minute or two and find my way to the Inn to talk to that chick and then everything stops moving. A minute or two later the game catches up and boom! I'm dead. Restart at nearest checkpoint. It does this a couple more times and I say F that and quit.

This experience better be because of the stress test. If it's like this at final release than LOL! Blizzard can kiss my ass.

Did you happen to check your latency when that happened? I had a few times where I would start walking and then instantly warp back a few feet. Kinda like the rubberbanding in Titan Quest, but this was more like a lag spike.

[Vaskadar]

WHACKTIVISION I TRUSTED YOUUUUUUUUUU!U!!!!U!!!!

*feigned drama*

[d3tox]

I had some fun with this. I too, went with a demon hunter, but am also looking to give the witch doctor a whirl.

Looking forward to release.

[SlayerDragon]

Eh, I like the skill system. Why should it need to be complicated? You pick your skills and your runes from the available set for your level. No big deal.

Really disappointed that it's not only that you need to connect to play but that you're actually playing online. Just seems wrong to me.

I also miss having two weapon sets. And I wish you could have some keys to swap between equipped left/right click skills.

As far as difficulty goes, I am pretty sure it's on a low setting. I didn't check the difficulty.

Anyway, overall it was a pretty cool experience. I got to the Skeleton King and I almost killed him before the servers shut down.

[Capt.Toilet]

Originally Posted by SlayerDragon

As far as difficulty goes, I am pretty sure it's on a low setting. I didn't check the difficulty.

Difficulty was on normal. Granted it is the first Act after all. I am sure as the game progresses even normal might get a tad rough.

[SleepyHe4d]

Originally Posted by SlayerDragon

Eh, I like the skill system. Why should it need to be complicated? You pick your skills and your runes from the available set for your level. No big deal.

Really disappointed that it's not only that you need to connect to play but that you're actually playing online. Just seems wrong to me.

I also miss having two weapon sets. And I wish you could have some keys to swap between equipped left/right click skills.

As far as difficulty goes, I am pretty sure it's on a low setting. I didn't check the difficulty.

Anyway, overall it was a pretty cool experience. I got to the Skeleton King and I almost killed him before the servers shut down.

Let me guess, another person who's never played Diablo?

Edit: Nevermind, you mentioned the two weapon sets thing so I guess you have played Diablo 2, but your difficulty comment made it seem like you hadn't. I don't really miss the 2 sets thing since it was basically just used to buff your stats in Diablo 2. Also you can customize your skill slot placement by check marking "elective skills" or something in the options menu.

The always online thing is their new style of DRM, but it doesn't cause any problems and actually has a use. Diablo and Diablo 2 ended up being played primarily online, especially after first playthroughs, so why not just give people the ability to use your 'offline' character online so they don't have to remake one?

With Diablo games, the difficulty has always worked as you have to beat Normal mode before you get to replay the game in Nightmare, then finally Hell. Normal is level 1-30, Nightmare like 30-60 and Hell 60+. Yeah, it definitely gets harder starting from Nightmare, but it's lame that you have to beat the game once to get to a challenge.

Originally Posted by Capt.Toilet

Difficulty was on normal. Granted it is the first Act after all. I am sure as the game progresses even normal might get a tad rough.

Yeah, it probably will, but I hope that's not all of Act 1, that felt really meh. Also the monastery has really changed since Diablo. And the wanderer had smex with Adria the Bitch (overpriced gold-digger), bahahahaha.


Two more complaints:
-Dungeons and outdoor areas are really linear and really short, I can't even tell if they were randomized despite playing through the beta 3 times.

-The skills show NO information at all about damage, range, radius, and stuff, how the hell am I supposed to know what anything does?! This is one major area where you can tell one purpose of the overall game design is to be carebear-ified or casualized for WoW players.

Adding on to previous complaints:
-No leveling up skills, just unlocking new ones. No more upping certain statistics either. Every person has the exact same skills as everyone else, being a cookie cutter character is so lame in an RPG. The only thing that will be different will be the items. Even then, I was playing with another demon hunter that looked exactly the same as me, helm color, weapon, and everything.


Overall, I think they are taking all the things from MOBAs that wouldn't work in Diablo and ignoring all the things in MOBAs that would be good for Diablo.

[Sjosz]

Played a bit so far, will be playing more this evening when the servers are back up. So far gotten to part of the first Cathedral floor. It definitely looks pretty, with some clever stuff going on as far as players/enemies versus environment looks are concerned.
It feels like it should be the tutorial area, and it seems fine so far. Hoping the skill trees and skill selection are a bit more varied/open with the full game, always liked that about Titan Quest. That, and double set weapons you can switch between. We'll see what happens I guess.