Diablo 3 - Incoming

[Ultimate Life Form]

Passives: sharpshooter (gains 3 % crit per second that is reset on a crit), Cull the Weak (+15 % damage versus slowed enemies), Archery (+15 % bow damage).

Oh, I use exactly the same, what a coincidence!

The only difference is that I'm using Archery with double crossbows for higher crit and the Scoundrel's passive to gain a really insane crit rate, a combination I had been looking forward to for a long time.

I too used Entangling Shot for a very long time, however somewhere mid Nightmare I swapped it out for Bola Shot/Acid Strike for I felt it was better suited to deal with the insane monster hordes I encountered and just made the switch to Imminent Doom. My other attack has always been Chakram and set to Razor Disk ever since it became available.

My other abilitles are Vault/Action Shot, Marked for Death/Grim Reaper, Caltrops/Jagged Spikes and Rain of Vengeance/Stampede.

My strategy is to slowly crawl through the dungeon until I spot a monster group. I set up 3-4 Caltrops on the ground and Mark one enemy for Death. Then I throw half a dozen Chakrams/Bola Shots at the marked enemy. The Chakrams wreak extreme havoc among the group, which comes charging at me like mad, thereby triggering the Caltrops... all of them simultaneously. What I do now is Vault out of the way and watch the enemies entering the area of death an die in droves. If the enemy is very strong (like for example blue monsters), I additionally call down a Rain of Vengeance and watch the shadow beasts knockback my enemies into the death zone over and over again while I pelt them with Bola Shots - very fun.

Yes, it was actually very fun till hell difficulty where I got stuck at Belial, who has a nasty habit of one-shotting me. Since there's not much I can do any more in terms of leveling, I knew passing this test was about the gear - and therefore required either dozens of hours of mindless grinding or a trip to the Auction House ($_$). Neither prospect looked very appealing, so I left it at that for now. My backup plan was leveling the monk who seems to sport higher survivability and use him to farm the higher levels of hell for better equipment, but I ran out of steam in Nightmare and at the moment I feel absolutely no desire to touch this game again. Oh well, maybe time (and heavy patching) will heal the wounds...

[PierceC]

I was wondering if anyone has been able to find it for less then full price. I think its going to $45 on Amazon, but if there anywhere I can get it for $20-30 or £12-30? I wouldn't mind buying a used account even, just want to play it for laughs not get into it seriously.

[Still Standing]

Yes, it was actually very fun till hell difficulty where I got stuck at Belial, who has a nasty habit of one-shotting me. Since there's not much I can do any more in terms of leveling, I knew passing this test was about the gear - and therefore required either dozens of hours of mindless grinding or a trip to the Auction House ($_$). Neither prospect looked very appealing, so I left it at that for now. My backup plan was leveling the monk who seems to sport higher survivability and use him to farm the higher levels of hell for better equipment, but I ran out of steam in Nightmare and at the moment I feel absolutely no desire to touch this game again. Oh well, maybe time (and heavy patching) will heal the wounds...

Other option... The game was intended to be played with a party... So play with one. You'll find that you make it through Belial quite easily... After mentioning in your TL;DR (although I did) rant post how easy the game is... Several times...

[Tymell]

The game was intended to be played with a party... So play with one.

Actually, according to game designer Jay Wilson:

We didn't design Inferno to require co-operative play

So while party play is -a- way to play it, it wasn't intended to be -the- way to play it.

[Ultimate Life Form]

So while party play is -a- way to play it, it wasn't intended to be -the- way to play it.

Exactly.

After mentioning in your TL;DR (although I did) rant post how easy the game is... Several times...

I did fear that it might come across that way...

Actuall, personally I'm fine with the game's difficulty mostly (though Normal would definitely deserve the name Easy Mode). Whe I said "pushover bosses" I was more referring to the widefelt notion that in the later stages of the game the power of the bosses seems to drop significantly in comparison to the normal types of enemy one encounters during the game. Or, in other words, your common garden variety blue mob will be hell of a lot more scary (and loot-heavier) than the Act Boss. Which is a shame and makes absolutely no sense. But Blizzard in their infinite wisdom already replied they're not concerned about the issue, so I think that's another thing the world has to put up with.

About Belial; this is Hell difficulty so I would be absolutely disappointed if the bosses didn't pose at least something of a threat. However being one-shotted every time isn't difficult; it's cheap. And when the entire gaming experience shrinks down to mostly waiting for a 30 seconds resurrection timer, that's not my idea of fun. I know that it is possible to beat Belial, thousands of people have done it; however it's not my fault that the game has yet to drop any form of acceptable gear. In pretty much all forums I have read people were raging because a basic design principle of this game seems to be that the loot you get will be 15 levels below your current level, so I'm not alone with this problem. While it did suffice mostly through Normal and Nightmare, in Hell this stuff simply doesn't cut it anymore. General consensus is the goal is to "encourage" you to use the auction house (preferably the real money one). While I withhold my judgement on this matter, I stand by my vow to never use this thing. So I'm stuck. I'd rather not beat the game than betray my moral principles and sell my pride as a gamer to prostitute myself their petty money making machine. Some things are higher than beating Belial.

And even if I did, then what? Next is Inferno Mode. Inferno Mode is reportedly pretty much unbeatable. It's like an endgame mode for the really insane. It is designed to let only very few people pass. I know that I will not be one of those. Unlike those crazy fanboys on the Blizzard forum I have absolutely no problem admitting that I'm not good enough to beat Inferno Mode, especially if I'm not gonna use the auction house. It's because I have neither the time nor the patience or the obsession required to work my way through there. Seeing the many issues I have with the game, I don't even want to try. So this means I won't finish the game ever. And there is little point in wasting hundreds of hours on a task one knows one will never complete, right? What for even? Only to have this achievement that said I passed Inferno? No thanks, it's impossible to get a perfect achievement score anyway if you didn't buy the collector's edition or attend to their events on a regular basis, so this is also a moot point. I have better things to do with my life. So many unpainted models in the closet.

So now that I calmed down and have my feelings sorted out thanks to this thread, I think I'll take Diablo III as what it was: A nice distraction, but nothing more. This is exactly what I would expect from every other game. It's just an incredible tragedy that this game doesn't live up to the name of Diablo. It has been said here as well as elsewhere that Blizzard are trying to market their games to "everyone". Well then, if this is true I'm afraid I have found that I'm not everyone and in the future I shall look elsewhere to satisfy my desires. It's the principle law of market economy.

[Muad'Dib]

Exactly.
Actuall, personally I'm fine with the game's difficulty mostly (though Normal would definitely deserve the name Easy Mode). Whe I said "pushover bosses" I was more referring to the widefelt notion that in the later stages of the game the power of the bosses seems to drop significantly in comparison to the normal types of enemy one encounters during the game. Or, in other words, your common garden variety blue mob will be hell of a lot more scary (and loot-heavier) than the Act Boss. Which is a shame and makes absolutely no sense. But Blizzard in their infinite wisdom already replied they're not concerned about the issue, so I think that's another thing the world has to put up with....

I think the core problem is that Diablo's gameplay was never meant to be, for a lack of a better term, as sustainable and as deep, at it's core as both Blizzard and player's are assuming.

There's a reason that the genre that Diablo is, is called 'hack n slash' - because, literally, all you do is hack and slash through hordes of monsters. To make such a gameplay be able to last and have depth, either the combat, or the character development, or resources managment etc. have to be engaging and challenging. Diablo 3 are devoid of such qualities, partly because the isometric view tends towards making combat ultimately simplistic. More Blizzard's developers/designers seem not to be aware of the need to make the game more engaging. (not that they have to from their point of view, looking at the sales and activity of players) Also, there is no support for PvP (no dedicated PvP pre-created games, and no options to host your own games, AFAIK) Any investment towards characters is rendered void by the fact that skill runes are swapable at a whim.

Frankly, I considered it laughable when I read at Blizzard's sites few days ago that they consider "killing few champion packs, gathering full stack of Nephelem's blessing, and killing the boss, rinse and repeat" to be the core of Diablo gameplay, and will just be tunning it. Seriously ? That's what the managed to come up with 4+ years of development?

[Grimmeth]

There's an awful lot of negativity for Diablo III, so I'm going to go the other way and say I'm enjoying.
Granted I never played Diablo, and didn't get into Diablo II properly. So I don't have much to compare it to, but am finding the simplicity of the core mechanic (Kill mobs, loot stuff in the hope of getting better stuff, rinse-repeat) to be both a breath of fresh air compared to a lot of complicated stuff I've recently been playing and horribly addictive.
Not to say I can't see any flaws with it, but I've put about 25 hours in and I'm still finding myself want to play it. I've paid the same for games that have given me considerably less enjoyment.
So I give Diablo III a thumbs up

[x-esiv-4c]

So who else is making loltastic amounts of money on the real-currency AH?

[Satan]

So who else is making loltastic amounts of money on the real-currency AH?

Cool. Could you share an insight or two?

[Grimmeth]

So who else is making loltastic amounts of money on the real-currency AH?

I can't, because people who bought the digital version (you know, direct from Blizzard) have to wait another 3 days...

Not that I'd be in a position to use it, and don't really want to spend real money on the game, but you know...

[New Cult King]

So who else is making loltastic amounts of money on the real-currency AH?

I can see some people making a living from this...

[Ultimate Life Form]

Frankly, I considered it laughable when I read at Blizzard's sites few days ago that they consider "killing few champion packs, gathering full stack of Nephelem's blessing, and killing the boss, rinse and repeat" to be the core of Diablo gameplay, and will just be tunning it.

This was one of my favorites as well. If only they had told us before...

Not to say I can't see any flaws with it, but I've put about 25 hours in and I'm still finding myself want to play it.

Yes, at 25 hours, I too was enthusiastuc still. Play 250 hours and we'll talk again. Not to say you're wrong or something... it's just that I spent thousands of hours on Diablo II and it never got truly old, so I expected kinda the same here, whereas now I haven't as much as given it a look in over a week. Heartbroken...

I can see some people making a living from this...

I read a story (on the Blizzard forums, so the credibility is dubious at best) of a guy who has spent 6000$ on copies of Diablo III and now has 100 bots farming the heck out of the game for him to make an insane amount of cash. Reportedly it didn't take long for the business model to pay itself off. To me this pretty much sums up all that's wrong about Diablo III (and Blizzard and its so called community and PC gaming in general). Innocense lost...


By the way, here is something I just found:

obelisk: What Game Mechanics/Design Decisions do you think have been the most successful and the least successful now that we are three weeks past release?
Wyatt Cheng: Most Successful: Nephalem Valor. Skill System with runes and rune unlocking as you level up. Being limited to 6 skills and making tough choices. Jeweler and gem combining
Things that didn't work out as well as I had hoped: Dragging a skill by accident off your hotbar and losing your NV stack (grrr.... has happened to me twice so far). Blacksmith being tuned for a person who never uses the AH (even though everybody uses the AH). Skill diversity could be much better that it is now.
Most interesting Zone: The Rampart. Just sayin'
(PS - there's a lock action bar option coming in the future.)

Am I dreaming or is this more or less the exact opposite of what the rest of the world is feeling? At least he figured out that the skill 'diversity' sucks by now. Anyway, here's a link to the whole thing.

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/blog/5235...8_06_2012#blog

Might be worth a read. Well at least to those who still care.

[Shamutanti]

I proper um'd and ah'd about Diablo... really was tempted but held off because of the whole online thing and the price, but bits of me kept wanting to give it a go...

And after reading that interview I have no interest in touching the game one bit. Amusingly it sounds -really- like WoW ;s

[Still Standing]

It is really like wow. It's like a mini WoW raid, with all the long boring bits taken out.

[Eumerin]

it's just that I spent thousands of hours on Diablo II and it never got truly old

Now see, with me it was the exact opposite. In my experience, Diablo II was a horribly monotonous click-fest that put me to sleep. I lost count of the times that I put the game down and then picked up again weeks later just so that I could finally say that I'd finished the thing. I eventually got the expansion after it had been out for over a year for some inexplicable reason, and I ended up not finishing it. The game just wasn't fun.

I don't know why, but I'm having a lot more fun with Diablo III.