[crAzerk]

Hey guys, I've had the privilege of getting the beta key for D3 recently, and since I can't stream(I can't figure it out) I thought it may be interesting for the community to read a blog about it?

I'm not sure if this is what people want to read, if there's no interest or it's just boring then I'll stop doing it. So... let me know if you want this via rep/comments please! Then I'll decide whether to have future instalments!

Enjoy!

+ [Blog 1 - First Impressions (Levels 1-7)] +

First Impressions

This was my first playthrough, about 1hour+. I decided to play the Wizard because the beta streams that I've seen are always Monk / Witchdoctor or something. As with all my RPGs, I picked the female character cos they're better looking


Me using Frost Nova skill on mobs

It's kinda hard to get decent screenshots as there seems to be some lag when I hit Pr Scr. But I try. I'll intersperse this post with the screenshots to make it less dry and wall-of-text-ish.

I didn't exactly have very high expectations for D3, because after playing WoW and seeing other great MMORPGs like the one Dox (? or someone else) tried to convince me to play in my WoW thread a while ago, Diablo 3 just seems like a step backwards in terms of graphics and gameplay.

I mean, it still retains is 2-dimensional camera view (which can't be adjusted or zoomed) which I guess retains its 'classic' style but hardly any new games nowadays are like that (I am probably entirely wrong. So sue me)
The graphics are slightly more realistic I suppose. But the difference is not immense - not like from SC1 to SC2 which you have to admit was a huge leap. (Then again, the time gap was bigger for SC1-SC2)


Shooting purple bolts at monsters

Gameplay-wise, it's still a point and click thing, with up to 5 hotkeys (can I set more? no idea) for spells. Left click for your normal attack, right click for your spammable spell.

Golden Tip: I figured this out only after awhile of spam clicking my mouse to move and shoot - There's no need to spam click. Just click and hold, and it'll spam for you.

How Skills work (AFAIK)
The game kept telling me 'You have discovered a new skill!' when I gained levels but I couldn't find where to add skills and was frustrated to no end, until I hit level 6 and figured out how it all worked (I never quite understood from reading the threads so yeah yeah you can laugh at me )

You basically discover skills every 1 or 2 levels, but you can only learn skills at regular intervals (6, 12, 18, 24). So at every 6th level, you get to choose ONE skill to learn.

(For Wizard)
There are 3 types of Active skills - the Rapid Cast, Offensive, and Utility, otherwise known as 'What-you-put-on-right-click-and-just-spam', the 'AoE-the-shit-out-of-everything' and the 'useless' (my personal names)


Electrocute is one of the spammable skills in Diablo 3.


Ice Armor is one of the Utility spells

Ok the 'useless' spells aren't exactly useless, it's just doesn't really help in blowing stuff up. There are things like Blink (called Teleport), Mirror Image, etc.

I decided to learn 'Wave of Force' which is under the AoE category, and it's awesome fun

Just run into a big group of mobs... and hit it.


You get these mini-achievement thingys when you do fancy stuff like kill 17 mobs at once.


Me owning some big dude


From what I recall, you're supposed to be able to 'modify' each of these skills that you learn with some other item, to bring out special properties of each item... but so far I haven't seen this modifier yet. Maybe I will see it later... or perhaps it's not in beta yet. Who knows.


Other stuff

One new feature is the Forge Armor feature - basically 'Blacksmithing' profession for those who play WoW.


With certain raw materials (which you get by smelting your items) you can forge new armor/weapons that are more powerful than what you have.

There are also certain 'special items' that you always possess in your inventory - so far I've seen one that is basically a mobile shop (letting you sell your items to clear up bag space), one that is a mobile smelting thing, one that is a town portal (teleport back to town from whereever you are)


General thoughts

1) Gameplay too simple
(Before you argue 'But Diablo is meant to be a hack n slash game!', I know that, but making it challenging doesn't take away anything from that! And in this day and age with mass competition from other games, I do hope Diablo3 doesn't just rely on its brand name to gain popularity but improve their gameplay to match or better current games)

Perhaps it is because I'm only at a low level, or perhaps it's because I'm only playing 'Normal' difficulty (didn't see any option to change it... but if it's the same as Diablo 2 you have to complete the game on Normal before you can play the next one? May have remembered wrongly)
But the gameplay just seems ridiculously simple!

Monsters drop like flies, even the tougher ones just need minimum scoot and shoot micro. And with my CC abilities I don't even need to do that. (CC means Crowd Control, or abilities that slow/snare/freeze monsters to let you kite them)
You don't typically regenerate HP after losing it, BUT the thing is about 50% of monsters drop these red health orbs which when you walk over, regen your HP. So I was basically at 100% most of the time despite me running wildly into big packs of mobs just to use my big AoE for fun.

I hope they do tweak it to make it harder... and if it's only on higher difficulties (e.g. Insane) that it's challenging, let it be accessible before completing the game once on ez-mode. Perhaps make CC a requirement to clear certain areas... and make elite mobs harder to kill besides just having to spam your spammable. And in general just make gameplay more challenging

It's more than just increasing the mob's HP (which only means I have to hold down right click/left click for a longer time to kill mobs, it doesn't make it harder), I hope they realize this.

Examples of more challenge would be - more booby traps, making running into a big pack of mobs = death (right now I keep doing that to use my gay AOE spell), more CC required,some multitasking, etc.

2) Much of Diablo 1/2 still remains
This is a good/bad thing depending on what you feel about it, for me I like it.
What this means is they have retained much of the core concepts of Diablo 2 (and 1) such as having random barrels/stuff that you can shoot to break for fun (or gold that drops out of them). They still have the Shrines from D2 that when you click you get a particular boost (e.g. 20% armor for 2 minutes)

The world map is still a big open explorable area, levels all look like classic-Diablo style. The sound effects and music is classic-Diablo too, which is nice.

3) What is Gold for?
I don't know if any of you watched PsyStarcraft's D3 beta playthrough where he plays another guy's account which had 1982731293 gold or something.
If you're wondering how the guy ended up with so much gold, it's because there's virtually nothing to spend on.

Well the only thing I've seen that requires substantial amount of money is levelling Blacksmithing... and perhaps purchasing items from vendors. But from past experience in RPGs, vendor items are seldom better than items you get from quest rewards / random drops. So there's no need to waste money buying from vendors!

I hope they have more gold sinks such as more professions besides just Blacksmithing, or something more that you can invest gold in. I may be speaking waaay prematurely considering I've only played 7 levels, let's hope I'm proven wrong.


Yup so that's all I have for now. Once again I know I may be speaking prematurely and basing all my comments on way too little, but these are just my initial thoughts. Hopefully as I gain levels the game becomes more interesting and tougher, so it'll be more than just a major patch of D2.

Once again, do let me know if you like reading this sorta things and maybe what you want to hear about/see. If there isn't interest in this then I prob won't do future ones. :/ Thanks for reading!

+ [Blog 2 - Game complete amidst laggg] +

'Congratulations! You have completed the Diablo 3 beta!'
What? Already?

Yea well the beta lets you fight up to The Skeleton King, but before we talk about that, more about the rest of my gameplay experience.

Roflstomping through
I played level 7-8 (the rest of the game, the game ended while I was lv8) in school, and basically the WiFi sucked so I was experiencing tremendous lag, D/Cing constantly initially.

After awhile, the connection 'stabilized', with the ping being about 1second (I click a spell it takes 1s to respond), interspersed with random lag spikes that have been suddenly blinking forward 10 yards, etc.
The most annoying is when I start fighting monsters and then I am right clicking but I'm not casting, I can't loot stuff, etc, indicating lag. This made me die a couple of times when I supposedly run into a big mob of strong monsters (those fatties) (I don't know what's happening cos I'm lagging) and then 15 seconds later BAM it teleports me forward and says I'm dead.

After awhile more this stabilized more and I was just having the random lag spikes + 1-2s delay in casting. I was just spamming my AoE whenever I started lagging and Electrocute (awesome for clearing packs of mobs) and hoped not to die.


And so I fought Leoric, which for those of you who have watched streams, will know it goes something like Leoric spawns a pack of skeletons around you periodically while he chases you and tries to hack your head off.
For me it was more like Leoric blinking up to me constantly (Not sure if he actually has a blink or I was lagging) and the mobs were somehow dying because I was spamming my AoE ability too during the lag. So the whole fight involved me running in a circle around the area kiting him with the lag and popping HP pots when after a lag spike I'm suddenly low.

And... after like 2 minutes of this, Leoric died. I wasn't sure what I was doing the whole way, I was just spamming right click (the spells are pretty much autoaim) and my AoE + shield. Hope to try this again without lag!


SOOO the point is, I'm glad they introduced some sort of complexity to the boss (having to kite and kill the mobs simultaneously). Would love to see the difficulty ramp up when the mobs hit harder and perhaps will require On-The-Fly Spell switching? THAT'll be fun

And yea it is easy enough to complete even when on the amount of lag I was experiencing.

And as Dox has mentioned - HEY CHILL, it's just the first round of beta, it's not meant to be too challenging, etc.
Yea yea, I know. I'm just looking forward to a difficulty ramp-up and more content!

New things I've discovered
Just got my first 'Companion'.. this Warrior-like guy who just follows me around helping me kill mobs after I helped rescue him and find his armor or something. I think he tanked most of the damage and healed me throughout the Leoric fight if not I'd be dead from the lag.

Found these scrolls of training (Random drop), which require 5 to combine into a tome, which is necessary to level Blacksmithing! Only managed to get 4 scrolls damn it haha still stuck at BS level 1.

~~~~~

What's next? I'm abit lazy to grind the character so I may just use a new one to play around with the skills. We'll see! Thanks for reading!

I hope you don't hate me for being too critical, but hey, it's the beta, it's when you're supposed to point out stuff like that and so they make improvements before the actual game is released on retail.

[crAzerk]

Reserved for future posts.

[Dox]

Originally Posted by crAzerk

I didn't exactly have very high expectations for D3, because after playing WoW and seeing other great MMORPGs like the one Dox (? or someone else) tried to convince me to play in my WoW thread a while ago, Diablo 3 just seems like a step backwards in terms of graphics and gameplay.

Diablo 3 isn't an MMO, it's a Hack'n'Slash. :P

I mean, it still retains is 2-dimensional camera view (which can't be adjusted or zoomed) which I guess retains its 'classic' style but hardly any new games nowadays are like that (I am probably entirely wrong. So sue me)

Games like TorchLight and Dungeon Siege 3 are immensely popular and successful!

You basically discover skills every 1 or 2 levels, but you can only learn skills at regular intervals (6, 12, 18, 24). So at every 6th level, you get to choose ONE skill to learn.

You can swap in any of the skills you have learned any time you want, by pressing S to open the Spells menu and clicking on any of your equipped abilities, and replacing it with the one you'd prefer to use. For example, I use Bola/Grenades/Chakram when dungeon crawling, but Marked for Death/Evasive Shot/Entangling Shot when fighting Leoric. All of your abilities are circumstantial. Obviously there are abilities that are specifically designed for PvP/Arena, too.

From what I recall, you're supposed to be able to 'modify' each of these skills that you learn with some other item, to bring out special properties of each item... but so far I haven't seen this modifier yet. Maybe I will see it later... or perhaps it's not in beta yet. Who knows.

There are 6 different types of runes, and depending on which one you equip, it changes the properties of an equipped ability tremendously. Runes aren't introduced until Act 2 though, so you won't see them at this stage of the beta.

With certain raw materials (which you get by smelting your items) you can forge new armor/weapons that are more powerful than what you have.

There are also two other NPC's which can be enhanced (separately) to create Rings, Necklaces, etc.

(Before you argue 'But Diablo is meant to be a hack n slash game!', I know that, but making it challenging doesn't take away anything from that! And in this day and age with mass competition from other games, I do hope Diablo3 doesn't just rely on its brand name to gain popularity but improve their gameplay to match or better current games)

You're playing Easy Mode, Act 1 in the first phase of the beta. It's a hardware test! Wait until HC/Inferno if you're wanting a challenge.

I hope they do tweak it to make it harder... and if it's only on higher difficulties (e.g. Insane) that it's challenging, let it be accessible before completing the game once on ez-mode. Perhaps make CC a requirement to clear certain areas... and make elite mobs harder to kill besides just having to spam your spammable. And in general just make gameplay more challenging

It's more than just increasing the mob's HP (which only means I have to hold down right click/left click for a longer time to kill mobs, it doesn't make it harder), I hope they realize this.

This information is all available in existing threads! :P

3) What is Gold for?
I don't know if any of you watched PsyStarcraft's D3 beta playthrough where he plays another guy's account which had 1982731293 gold or something.
If you're wondering how the guy ended up with so much gold, it's because there's virtually nothing to spend on.

I've actually grinded the blacksmith to level 3 and every single increment in skill costs over 2000 gold. It really adds up. When you're grinding 3 vendors and spending money on Auctions/Crafting, it's gonna be a huge gold sink.

Well the only thing I've seen that requires substantial amount of money is levelling Blacksmithing... and perhaps purchasing items from vendors. But from past experience in RPGs, vendor items are seldom better than items you get from quest rewards / random drops. So there's no need to waste money buying from vendors!

The crafted items are better than anything else that drops in the game currently.

[Dox]

Just for the record, I've levelled 2 chars to the cap, got the Blacksmith to level ~3.5, farmed rares for every slot and stockpiled a huge stash of rare/legendary crafting materials and I'm still able to keep my gold below 10,000. :P

If the other two crafting vendors were actually in the game, I'd be forced to choose which one to spend my money on as I wouldn't have enough.

Keep in mind that I don't vendor anything except recipe books (have all of them), so my gold income would be a lot higher if I chose to sell instead of disenchant.

[crAzerk]

Ah that makes more sense now, thanks Dox (the skills part)
But more questions:
'that info is available in other threads!' what information?

'crafted items are better...' I was talking abt vendor items, not crafted ones. Are they still better?

Regarding gameplay:
Yea I already acknowledged that it was probably too premature to say what I've said, but it's just my thoughts. Perhaps I actually had too HIGH expectations instead and wasn't even aware of this heh

[Dox]

Originally Posted by crAzerk

Ah that makes more sense now, thanks Dox (the skills part)
But more questions:
'that info is available in other threads!' what information?

"I hope it becomes challenging" - http://www.sc2sea.com/showthread.php?t=2134

'crafted items are better...' I was talking abt vendor items, not crafted ones. Are they still better?

No, Vendor items will always be rubbish. They can be good in your first ~4 levels, but after that you should be using drops and crafted items.

[Paroxysm]

On the graphics, I personally see the difference between each game (DIablo 2 and 3) as a reasonable advancement. I played through Diablo 2 several times and the graphics were..bland I guess you could call it. From the streams, screenshots and VODs i've seen, the graphics in Diablo 3 seem to be far better than Diablo 2, giving the game a little bit more suspense in dungeons, and leaving players in awe of the spells and whatnot. This being said, a game should not be judged merely on graphics, and you have pointed out a lot of other faults that the game has in your opinion. Good review!

[crAzerk]

@Dox
I know about the difficulties, but as I said, I hope it's more than just increasing of mob's HP.
And yup I was referring to vendor items, not crafted items. Crafted items are always either on par on better in other games too!

@Paroxysm
I think something like graphics should be compared relative to the current state. D3 looks ALRIGHT I guess, maybe I need to set the graphics on higher settings or something. Blowing up things looks pretty cool and all.
Heh wasn't really intended to be a review, but I guess that's what it looks like. I'll probably post my future thoughts too as I kinda enjoyed writing it (even if most of it wasn't quite accurate as pointed out by Dox ) Thanks !

[Azure]

Nice updates Dox any idea when they releasing public beta?

[Bugalugs McScruffin]

Are Blizzard doing an open beta? As far as I was aware they've only announced closed beta, same as SC2.

[crAzerk]

Posted Blog 2, for anyone who's interested

[Next_rim]

Crazerk,

As a D2 high-lvl trapassin, I can tell you - hell D2 on 8 ppl was very apm and skill-intensive, comparable to frost mage pvp in 1v5 situation. Entire diablo series grows in difficulty exponentially. Advancement from normal to nightmare in D2 was like suddenly cranking up Tetris speed from 1 to 10. You go like - "ah, same shit again, o, wait, wtf...dead"

About gold, idk how it will be in D3, but in D2 high-level items required stupid amounts of gold for repair. When I was playing zerker barb in classic, max you could carry was 800k afair, one lvl 80+armor set could easily add up to 300+k for full repair every 8-10 minutes for a mele char. That means, every 8-10 mins it was necessary to grind 5-6 high level armor or grand weapon items just to cover repair expenses. Not very hard, rather annoying, but kept my gold levels at minimum most of the time.

[crAzerk]

Sounds great I can't remember what difficulty I played it till, back when I played D2 I was like in sec sch and didn't really care about game difficulty and all yet (Only played vs AI in SC1+BW , etc)
But I do remember that I sold the D2 acct for about SGD$20+ though haha. Had the best chestpiece of that time, Shaftstop, along with stuff like.. ok can't remember what my bow was called. Windforce?

[Dox]

Just to touch on your second blog post - your blacksmith will be at level 1 for a while. Each tome (5 pages) increases your nominated craftsmen EXP bar by 20%, requiring 5 tomes and a buttload of cash per level. Each tome will teach you a handful of recipes along the way. I'm 1 tome away from level 4 now, and it costs 3000g per skill-up.

[crAzerk]

oh god ure such a farmer! lol. i'm lazy to even go beyond level 8 (char level) HA. trying out all the classes. just completed on barbarian, may blog about that soon

[Next_rim]

The interface looks a lot like WoW. In fact, there used to be a wow addon with a diablo 2-themed skin for entire interface, looks very much like it.

[JacziE]

Looks like fun wish I had time to play!

[Dox]

Hmm, I submitted a post before I walked out the door this morning but didn't stick around to check if it actually posted. Looks like it didn't. Essentially said something along the lines of:

Why do you say it's a WoW interface? It's the same old Diablo 2 interface with a few menu buttons at the bottom of the screen.

[Azure]

if anything wow used diablo 2 interface.

[Benji]

I'm a MASSIVE D2 and even D1 fan, but reading about the timesink in professions is making me raise an eyebrow. I want to kill stuff, and then kill more stuff, then get items from killing stuff. If i wanted a MMO, i'd play a MMO.

Obv I havent played it yet, Its a Blizzard game so i'll obv buy it, but I really hope the whole profession thing isnt their attempt and turning it into a more MMO type of game.