Forum »
Diablo 3 Beta Impressions

ioev

Starman DX
So I finally got my Diablo 3 beta key, and have played a few hours now. On the whole, it looks and feels just like a Diablo game, but once you get into it, you can really see how it's no longer Blizzard pulling the strings, but Activision.

Click through to read my main concerns.

ioev

Starman DX
#1. First off, there is no feeling of dread on tension.

Initially the game feels and looks great, nice atmosphere, great music, cool blood/magic effects, and overall had the potential to be very creepy. The problem arises in the modern features that have been applied to make Diablo feel more like... Call of Duty. Your characters are chatty, especially if you get a sidekick. Constantly taunting the enemies, toasting themselves with catchphrases that quickly get old. You'll notice right away that the characters that represent you obviously have no fear of the situation at all. Combined with the fact that there are checkpoints and warps all over the place, and that the game feels ridiculously easy, it pretty much removes any sense of satisfaction. Unless of course...

#2. The player is overly rewarded for trivial tasks.

If you're a fan of artificial satisfaction, then the Call of Duty inspirations will be right up your alley. Combo meters, lots of achievement pop-ups, pop-ups for beating your previous combo count, pop-up for breaking 6 inanimate objects quickly, for killing >6 enemies at a time. These things will come up ALL THE TIME. Combine this will the already numerous "IN YOUR FACE" catch phrases your characters are yelling at defeated enemies, and how could you possibly NOT feel like you're accomplishing anything?

#3. It's not your character anymore.

I'm a huge fan of the silent protagonist in games, especially RPGs with an open story like Diablo. So, of course, when my character opened up her mouth for the first time (she's Russian apparently) it completely broke any possible connection I had. She talks to characters in town, spills out her opinion, talks to herself often during fights and quests, and just overly spoils the idea of playing your own character.

Of course, it also doesn't help that there is also no skill tree, and not very many skills to speak of at all. I understand that with gems you'll be able to customize the skills you equip into the 6 slots you have available, but I can't see any particular Monk, for example, being any more unique than the next. Stat customization has also been removed and are just assigned automatically, thus really eliminating the need for stats altogether.

In the end, your customization is limited to class, gender, name, equipment, and what skills you are using out of the few you possess (It's also looking like there will be in game purchases to "paint" your armor set, ala Maple Story...). I guess the positive to this is that it will be easy for Activision to balance the gameplay.

Some other miscellaneous negative changes are removing collecting town portals (you have an infinite number of them, once you get "one"), no more identifying items, and no more mana potions. Basically just making the game a lot less work, and a lot less satisfying.

With these initial impressions, I've pretty much lost any real interest I had in Diablo 3. What I thought would be an extremely polished, complex, challenging and moody sequel to the fantastic Diablo 2, turned out to be a streamlined, simple, self-ridiculing mash up of modern gaming, with a Diablo facade. Would love to hear what others think.

sevex

Starman DX
Well if Blizzard is under direction from Activision to make the game like this, then the only way to see changes is to spur a large amount of negative player feedback. Maybe this is why they're making so many major changes to core systems this late, and delaying the game. They want to give players more time to comment?

I hope I get into the beta eventually so I can give it a shot.
"Hey, you! If you meet a beautiful, seductive woman who's looking for me, tell her 'hi.' Anyway, I don't think a woman like that would be looking for me." -Guy in Fourside Hotel



Atomsk

Starman Super
I can agree with pretty much all the things you've listed, the only one that I really like what they've done with is the Skill Tree and character progress.

Sure it was nice to build your character in a certain way where you were level 6 but really did so much damage you could take out a level 25 person, but I hated the sense of, "Oh, I allocated too many points to this skill/stat so I just screwed up my entire build."

That and with the way Runes effect spells(You should check out some of the videos), as in some cases Runes can outright change the entire nature of a smell, like changing it from a Missle attack into a solid Beam attack, or a beam/missle attack into an AoE spell.

Other than that, yeah, I wish the game was quite a bit more like Diablo 2, than its current state.
"We're not retreating, we're advancing towards future victory!" - Sarge, Red vs. Blue web series.



ioev

Starman DX
But even with that, there's still no actual commitment towards customization. The only thing that matters is which class you choose at the start, everything else can be changed in seconds.

sevex

Starman DX
That's so weird cause even Starcraft 2 had the player making somewhat tough, permanent customization decisions as they played through the campaign.

Where's my beta invite!?
"Hey, you! If you meet a beautiful, seductive woman who's looking for me, tell her 'hi.' Anyway, I don't think a woman like that would be looking for me." -Guy in Fourside Hotel



ioev

Starman DX
Actually, the sidekick customization is exactly like SC2. After a certain amount of exp, you get to choose one permanent skill out of 2.

sevex

Starman DX
I tried the Witchdoctor over at Nathan's place for a little bit tonight and found it wasn't too bad. It was a little strange that my poison blowgun darts made skeletons explode though.
"Hey, you! If you meet a beautiful, seductive woman who's looking for me, tell her 'hi.' Anyway, I don't think a woman like that would be looking for me." -Guy in Fourside Hotel



Moik

Starman Super
D3 is balanced in such a way that the Skeleton King can be beaten by a level 1 Witch Doctor who has no items. [Video]

It takes 20 minutes to do. People are getting bored with the beta.
Hyper-advanced aliens might not have to send their interstellar battle fleet to conquer Earth, it might only take three bored undergraduate aliens with borrowed lab equipment.



ioev

Starman DX
Apparently the entirety of the beta is the "tutorial". Personally, 10-12 exp levels of gameplay feels a little long for that purpose.

Just tried this out. A filter to make D3 looks a little grittier. Adds a little more processing power, but I LOVE what it does to the ground textures, and the colours. The sharpening adds quite a bit of edge distortion though.