xkcd

by **Izawwlgood** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 4:23 pm UTC

Ah, that makes more sense.

Also, didn't mention it, but I think the crafting system is just pants.

by **Will** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 9:36 pm UTC

I haven't messed with the crafting system yet.

Also, are achievements not enabled yet? There are several achievements that specifically reference the beta, so I assume they'll be enabled at some point.

by **Izawwlgood** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 9:52 pm UTC

I'm fairly positive achievements aren't up yet.

The crafting system is really neat and simple; you pick up Pages of Training randomly, and every 5 lets you upgrade a crafter. The Nephalem Cube converts gear into components, which can be used to create gear that is often way better than the drops. Right now only the blacksmith is up, and most Journeyman level stuff is for level 17+.

by **Will** » Wed Jan 18, 2012 12:42 am UTC

Just finished my second playthrough, this time as a Wizard. Which I'm pretty sure are OP, because as soon as I got disintegrate I was able to melt entire roomfulls of enemies. It's a p good time, though. I'm also loving the crafting system. It also means that later in the game, there'll be a use for picking up every piece of trash that's dropped by enemies, because if you can't use it you can break it down for scrap.

by **Izawwlgood** » Wed Jan 18, 2012 1:39 am UTC

I think there's a difference in the way loot is handled in public games now. Instead of a chest dropping something(s) and it being a FFA to grab it, each individual gets a loot drop, that only they can pick up. Because the nephalem cube is in your inventory at all times, you might as well pick up everything and cube it. Coupled with Scroll of Companion (and doing away with Scroll of Town Portal!!!!!!111!!!!), which effectively improves your gold pick up radius by a lot, they've made looting strikingly easier.

I view this as a monumental improvement.

If you think Disintegrate is OP, wait till you see Electrocute in action. It's basically a multitarget Magic Missile.

by **Chen** » Wed Jan 18, 2012 12:48 pm UTC

Izawwlgood wrote:If you think Disintegrate is OP, wait till you see Electrocute in action. It's basically a multitarget Magic Missile.

Disintegrate still tends to kill things faster. Course Electrocute now costs no arcane power which is a huge buff to its original incarnation (which was still super powerful and gotten much earlier). I'd like to see the other baseline Wizard spells improved. There's almost no point to take magic missile over electrocute (or well anything over electrocute actually).

by **Izawwlgood** » Wed Jan 18, 2012 6:07 pm UTC

I thought Electrocute was always a signature spell?

Also, we haven't seen the effects of Relics on the skills. I can easily envision that even crappy spells (Poison Toads or Zombie Charger much) will have very potent variants.

by **Intrigued** » Wed Jan 18, 2012 6:26 pm UTC

While balancing a game with this much complexity isn't easy (perfect balance being pretty much impossible), changing the balance of a skill is. At this stage they should be focusing more on clearing out bugs and glitches and any showstoppers as opposed to working on small balance tweaks.

In reality, I'm sure they have separate people working on balance tweaks too, but the bugs take priority, and they will also push fixes out for those faster to have people test out the fix. Getting the game as bug-free as possible before going gold is generally more important than getting closer to perfect balance. On top of that, class viability would take priority over skill balance.

Either way, hopefully anyone with beta is submitting all these kinds of things through the proper channels.

by **Izawwlgood** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 5:36 am UTC

Ah, that reminds me: Anyone in the beta, how do I actually submit a bug report or such? I can't seem to find it on the forums or my account page.

by **rigwarl** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 4:54 pm UTC

Izawwlgood wrote:I think there's a difference in the way loot is handled in public games now. Instead of a chest dropping something(s) and it being a FFA to grab it, each individual gets a loot drop, that only they can pick up.

I agree this is a good change overall but seeing who could pick stuff up first was easily one of my favorite parts about the game when I played through Diablo2 on LAN with 4 of my suitemates.

For the "stand in place keybind" you mentioned awhile back, I think I used Shift in D2 and it was pretty easily accessible.

by **Izawwlgood** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 5:07 pm UTC

I've had shift set, but I think I need to replace it with R. Using 1, 2, or 3, while standing in place, can be kind of tricky.

rigwarl wrote:I agree this is a good change overall but seeing who could pick stuff up first was easily one of my favorite parts about the game when I played through Diablo2 on LAN with 4 of my suitemates.

Why? It was my experience that people simply grabbed everything.

by **Intrigued** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 6:42 pm UTC

I think that's the point. I also enjoyed a friendly game of "ninja the loot", especially on class specific stuff that other people are waiting for. It's all in good fun and we pass stuff around to whoever needs it, but it's definitely been part of the game for me.

On the other hand, I'll very much enjoy the separate loot because then I never have to feel like I'm being a real ninja looter and taking more than I should. I'm playing through d2 with some friends now and I've already had a handful of times just going through act 1 where people will stand near a piece of loot trying to figure out who should take it when neither needs it more than the other. Also when playing with strangers you don't have to worry, you'll always get your fair share. I think it gives more than it takes away.

by **rigwarl** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 7:01 pm UTC

Ya, I dunno I guess it's like a MarioParty-esque minigame to see who can grab everything the best though. Great times were had when bosses have a sliver of life and no one wants to be stuck doing the attack animation when it dies, and the boss is going around and killing people so you don't want to be the closest guy but but also not too far when it does actually die.

The reason I said it's a good change overall is for when you're playing with strangers. I imagine it could be frustrating to see something you need and someone else takes it.

by **Vaniver** » Fri Jan 20, 2012 2:56 am UTC

Remember how items are (potentially) worth real money now? Yeah. Ninja looting had to go.

by **Intrigued** » Fri Jan 20, 2012 12:34 pm UTC

Remember how items sold for real money in d2?

Again, I do think it's better to force split loot than not, but I'm just saying I agree that I had fun with the old system that will be lost.

by **Coin** » Fri Jan 20, 2012 9:13 pm UTC

I can't think I'll miss it much. It's not central to game play and only serves to complicate looting.
Your description of people pissing about instead of finishing the boss is exactly the kind of behaviour I would hate to see so I'm all for separate looting.

by **Izawwlgood** » Fri Jan 20, 2012 9:17 pm UTC

The only tweak I'd like to see to looting is displaying all the loot gathered, and by who, from a drop, to facilitate trading there and then. This is, of course, a rather moot point given the ubiquitous nature of the AH.

Does anyone in the beta know how to submit bugs or feedback?

by **mosc** » Fri Jan 20, 2012 9:20 pm UTC

My memory of Diablo 2 was rarely playing a game in public where I cared overly about the drops. Most public games were glorified trade negotiations, not actual gameplay. Most people paid for runs through the game and farmed cows to level up. Cow runs didn't have many valuable drops (runes only to 'um' I believe, ballista, the only good one was the very rare occy drop). In fact, one easy source of money for beginning players was to simply join a cow game and pick up the gold piles, chipped gems (or the flawless to make perfects with), nef runes for cubing, and other similar stuff advanced players just left on the ground. People who farmed for better items killed meph, pindle, or baal repeatedly and rarely did so in public. I don't think the unclaimed drops had that much of an economic effect in Diablo 2 and they facilitated garbage collectors making a damn good living from other people's cowpies.

by **Gelsamel** » Fri Jan 20, 2012 9:56 pm UTC

Actually Cow runs could easily net you some amazing loot. I often would clear cows over and over and over privately just so I could get all the loot. Why? Becuase it's the easiest place to search for high end socketed items for rune words that would trade really well.

by **Spambot5546** » Sat Jan 21, 2012 12:32 am UTC

Wow, it's like we were playing completely different games. I had never heard of farming or runs when I played D2 back in high-school. I just...played through the game. Straight through. I never repeated areas or bosses. I always wondered why I never had any good gear...

by **Izawwlgood** » Sat Jan 21, 2012 12:38 am UTC

Did you never bother leveling up? I wasn't bit on public games to farm items, but I played with friends, and I most certainly killed many an afternoon grinding boss runs solo.

by **Spambot5546** » Sat Jan 21, 2012 12:41 am UTC

Honestly, I had a shit internet connection (hooray, rural Ohio!) so I never played online. My method of leveling up was to play straight through with /players8 on.

by **mosc** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 10:00 pm UTC

Well, you probably didn't play D2 for thousands of hours then. Most people who did would start a new character and get run through the entire game though hell difficulty baal. An extra tip would be paid for killing the ancients for you, giving you about level 40 (I forget exactly) just from that process. You'd then use your fresh character to create the cow level for other more experienced players and stand near the portal as they killed cows for you. After a couple hours, you were level 70-something yourself, before ever killing anything, and could generally start contributing to cow farming. Another 10 levels or so and you'd wear all your spiffy gear. I many times would spend an evening, probably about 4 hours, starting by paying someone an SOJ for a run and then leech some cow games and by then end of the time I'd have myself a level 80-something character. That's why I say D2 was more about the loot than the game. It was a loot-grinding simulation and also a very good economic model of old fashioned bartering. Ingame currency and merchants were fairly useless so valuation varied all over the place and players would have varying types of accepted currency for any transaction.

EDIT: I do remember the value of socketed items skyrocketing when 1.10 came out with all it's fancy runewords. I remember I got a good bit of money for zero-socket ethereal colossus blades. After 1.10 you could make a zero-socket to a max socket (in this case 6) and ethereal colossus blades made BOTD insane. I do know these dropped from cows, but I don't think this added significant economic value. The largest money maker I found from cows was crafting loot and merc res money. I didn't play after 1.10 though (I really never forgave blizzard for deleting my .08 valors when 1.10 was released. I had level 99 barbs with zero health vitae specifically because of how much life the 08 valor gave and then they removed my LEGITIMATE items and made multiple level 99's useless, never forgave them)

by **Vaniver** » Tue Jan 24, 2012 11:35 pm UTC

mosc wrote:I didn't play after 1.10 though (I really never forgave blizzard for deleting my .08 valors when 1.10 was released. I had level 99 barbs with zero health vitae specifically because of how much life the 08 valor gave and then they removed my LEGITIMATE items and made multiple level 99's useless, never forgave them)

#fictionalworldproblems?

by **Obby** » Thu Feb 02, 2012 4:17 am UTC

Woo hoo! They must have sent out a larger wave of invites, because I finally got in!

/excited

by **Gelsamel** » Thu Feb 02, 2012 4:23 am UTC

mosc wrote:Well, you probably didn't play D2 for thousands of hours then. Most people who did would start a new character and get run through the entire game though hell difficulty baal. An extra tip would be paid for killing the ancients for you, giving you about level 40 (I forget exactly) just from that process. You'd then use your fresh character to create the cow level for other more experienced players and stand near the portal as they killed cows for you. After a couple hours, you were level 70-something yourself, before ever killing anything, and could generally start contributing to cow farming. Another 10 levels or so and you'd wear all your spiffy gear. I many times would spend an evening, probably about 4 hours, starting by paying someone an SOJ for a run and then leech some cow games and by then end of the time I'd have myself a level 80-something character. That's why I say D2 was more about the loot than the game. It was a loot-grinding simulation and also a very good economic model of old fashioned bartering. Ingame currency and merchants were fairly useless so valuation varied all over the place and players would have varying types of accepted currency for any transaction.

EDIT: I do remember the value of socketed items skyrocketing when 1.10 came out with all it's fancy runewords. I remember I got a good bit of money for zero-socket ethereal colossus blades. After 1.10 you could make a zero-socket to a max socket (in this case 6) and ethereal colossus blades made BOTD insane. I do know these dropped from cows, but I don't think this added significant economic value. The largest money maker I found from cows was crafting loot and merc res money. I didn't play after 1.10 though (I really never forgave blizzard for deleting my .08 valors when 1.10 was released. I had level 99 barbs with zero health vitae specifically because of how much life the 08 valor gave and then they removed my LEGITIMATE items and made multiple level 99's useless, never forgave them)

Actually now a days it's like this in D2:LoD.

Join Dclone IRC. Join Rushes Channel. Wait for group rush game to start up. Join Group Rush. Get rushed all the way to Hell for free. Join Ubers IRC Channel. Wait for Ubers game to start up. Join Ubers Game. Level from 1-80 in a few minutes. To about 90 or 96 in half an hour to an hour or so.

by **skeptical scientist** » Thu Feb 02, 2012 10:29 pm UTC

Gelsamel wrote:Join Dclone IRC. Join Rushes Channel. Wait for group rush game to start up. Join Group Rush. Get rushed all the way to Hell for free. Join Ubers IRC Channel. Wait for Ubers game to start up. Join Ubers Game. Level from 1-80 in a few minutes. To about 90 or 96 in half an hour to an hour or so.

I did that once or twice, but if you do it too much it really takes all the fun out of the game.

My favorite D2 experiences were all hardcore no-twink group games—no rushing, no items from friends/other characters, no safety net. There's nothing in D2 more satisfying than making guardian with a group of friends and no outside help.

by **Lucrece** » Fri Feb 03, 2012 4:20 am UTC

I know the game is called Diablo, but I feel like I'll be playing this game at intervals of 2 hours at most given the dreary environment. It's good environmental art in that it conveys what it should, but constantly placing you in tension because you're in some dimly lit dungeon/catacomb with undead/demons tires me out pretty quick. I'd like a wider range in palette.

Loving my Demon Hunter in the beta, level 8 now, but I'm starting to suspect a Witch Doctor might be a better fit for me since playing on the Demon Hunter I feel paranoid about being surrounded by mobs or having anything close to me, so I feel very spammy just shooting from even beyond the screen to screen out any random pop up mobs.

Plus, Entangling Shot>Rapid Fire+Vault/Evasive Shot is just stupid good.

by **Izawwlgood** » Fri Feb 03, 2012 5:43 am UTC

I would remind you that most mobs in the games aren't ZOMG ALPHA DIE. If anything, I think the games too similar to WoW in graphics.

The Witch Doctor is heaps o'fun, but Zombie Dogs will do the bulk of the work for you, leaving you to choose between a couple lackluster spells until Haunt. Haunt is fantastic, but means you'll be 'doing' even less in combat; dogs will run in, you'll haunt some stuff, and then just wait for it to die. Once you get the Firebomb thing, you just tear through things.

by **Gelsamel** » Fri Feb 03, 2012 7:00 am UTC

skeptical scientist wrote:
Gelsamel wrote:Join Dclone IRC. Join Rushes Channel. Wait for group rush game to start up. Join Group Rush. Get rushed all the way to Hell for free. Join Ubers IRC Channel. Wait for Ubers game to start up. Join Ubers Game. Level from 1-80 in a few minutes. To about 90 or 96 in half an hour to an hour or so.

I did that once or twice, but if you do it too much it really takes all the fun out of the game.

My favorite D2 experiences were all hardcore no-twink group games—no rushing, no items from friends/other characters, no safety net. There's nothing in D2 more satisfying than making guardian with a group of friends and no outside help.

Depends on what you look for in fun for the game. After doing hardcore no-twink group games, it can get boring and become fun to just quickly min/max or try out fun end-game character builds. Similarly after doing that for a while hardcore no-twink group games become fun.

by **Lucrece** » Sat Feb 04, 2012 5:32 am UTC

So, what do you do in the beta after killing the Skeleton King? I got carried by a lv13 Barbarian and DH as a lv9 DH myself, and upgraded my blacksmith to lv2 but can't find a guy who can identify a gold quality loot for me >_>;

Do I just repeat these same quests till 13 and then try it on another class?

by **Izawwlgood** » Sat Feb 04, 2012 6:12 am UTC

Yup. I spoke to a few people who had been grinding for gear for months; that seems entirely unappealing and ridiculous to me.

by **Will** » Sat Feb 04, 2012 9:33 pm UTC

To identify items you just right-click on them. Which is kind of nice, not having to carry around identify scrolls anymore.

by **Lucrece** » Sun Feb 05, 2012 1:21 am UTC

As fun as it has been, I'm gonna pass on this game, because I can see it's headed toward casino grind with shitty random loot. When I spent a huge amount of rare resources crafting a gold quality crossbow only to get +15 strength on it, a useless stat for my class, I know this is what made me quit WoW and all the bullshit RNG baked into the game in order to keep you playing longer for the sake of obtaining optimal gear despite already having beat a challenge.

by **Kag** » Sun Feb 05, 2012 2:10 am UTC

Lucrece wrote:As fun as it has been, I'm gonna pass on this game, because I can see it's headed toward casino grind with shitty random loot.

You mean Diablo.

by **The Utilitarian** » Sun Feb 05, 2012 2:12 am UTC

Just got into the beta, enjoying it. Although I was immediately sad that the portable disenchanting item was removed, it is quite the chore to have to manually do it all back at town

by **Lucrece** » Sun Feb 05, 2012 2:20 am UTC

Kag wrote:
Lucrece wrote:As fun as it has been, I'm gonna pass on this game, because I can see it's headed toward casino grind with shitty random loot.

You mean Diablo.

There's a point where previous "signature" features need innovation. WoW isn't hemorrhaging subscriptions just because new single players have come out. It's a problem I had with Zelda: Skyward Sword. Blatant recycling is not enough for me to fork over $60+ bucks.

by **Kag** » Sun Feb 05, 2012 6:28 am UTC

Lucrece wrote:There's a point where previous "signature" features need innovation. WoW isn't hemorrhaging subscriptions just because new single players have come out. It's a problem I had with Zelda: Skyward Sword. Blatant recycling is not enough for me to fork over $60+ bucks.

There's really no shortage of ways in which D3 is an evolution of its predecessor, and the loot system is very much fundamental to the design of the game. I mean, it's cool if that's not your thing, but it sort of raises the question of why you would be interested in this game at all to begin with.

Or, you know, you could just use the auction house to trade for the gear you want.

by **Lucrece** » Sun Feb 05, 2012 7:01 am UTC

Kag wrote:
Lucrece wrote:There's a point where previous "signature" features need innovation. WoW isn't hemorrhaging subscriptions just because new single players have come out. It's a problem I had with Zelda: Skyward Sword. Blatant recycling is not enough for me to fork over $60+ bucks.

There's really no shortage of ways in which D3 is an evolution of its predecessor, and the loot system is very much fundamental to the design of the game. I mean, it's cool if that's not your thing, but it sort of raises the question of why you would be interested in this game at all to begin with.

Or, you know, you could just use the auction house to trade for the gear you want.

How is random-generated stats loot fundamental to the gameplay experience other than to artificially enlongate gamelife? It's grind material.

There are plenty of reasons I can like the game, loot notwithstanding. The story. The setting. The class depth and rune system. The co-op. The combat. Loot-grinding roulette is not necessary for that.

Not interested in having to grind for hours or play mind-numbingly boring auction house app vulture to make enough money to afford the optimal weapons. Again, I don''t like grind. There's no reason for the game to deny me a weapon I already met crafting requirements for via ruining the weapon with atrocious itemization. I want to spend more time worrying about my gameplay decisions than on a fucking spreadsheet of idealized gear I must grind for in order to have the best possible gameplay experience. It's dated and korean grindfest games have already made an art form out of that in case I wanted to simulate being one of those losers wasting away at a casino for the off-chance of finally obtaining my desired goal.

by **Izawwlgood** » Sun Feb 05, 2012 7:19 am UTC

For starters, you're looking at an incredibly small slice of the beta, that is, the 13th level gear grind. Judging the came on that alone is, frankly, pretty short sighted. I put the game down as soon as I got my interested classes to max level in the beta, because I have no interest in the gear grind; I even pointed out how ludicrous such a notion is.

Diablo is about the gear, but complaining that there's a grind for Gold level stuff, at level 13, is a bit silly; if the game was released in full right now, it'd take most people less than 30m to replace everything they currently have equipped. That the game itself has facilitated the trading of items via an AH, and the crafting of items via account sharing of crafter upgrades mean that while yes, the gear grind is present, it's not the sole feature of the game.

And, like all games, fixating on a singular portion of it and deciding it's a deal breaker is your bag; claiming you hate WoW because you don't like the gear grind is forgetting there were 84 levels before you got to that point, with plenty of interesting stuff to see and do.

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