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derFunkenstein
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Re: Diablo III

Mon Sep 15, 2014 8:50 am

Oh I like the story of SC2, although it's kind of a rush job and doesn't compare to SC1/Brood War.

Blizzard also does really nice in-game and pre-rendered cinematics.
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Aphasia
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Re: Diablo III

Mon Sep 15, 2014 9:00 am

PetMiceRnice wrote:
From time to time, I do dig out my copies of Diablo 1 and 2 LoD, but I also find it hard to seriously get back into either game. But I would definitely give D2 a whirl if you've never played before.

I don't have the time unless the story is top notch, but from the other posters, I might be better off reading up on the story again. Speaking of stories, the short stories that is the character back stories on battle.net is actually quite good, at least the ones I've read so far. Had a nice read on the wizard for instance.



PetMiceRnice wrote:
I elected to also not participate in Season play in Diablo 3, to be honest I did not want to start a new character from scratch and people are just way too competitive and have more time and inclination than I do to level up and stay in the top 1000.

I thought so at first, but decided to try it out, mostly because of the Aether Walker actually. But in hindsight, me and a few people from England started a season and actually found it quite enjoyable. We never bothered about ladders, but took our leisurely time to level the chars, took an even 15 hours to get to lvl 70. What I found surprising was that it was actually quite fun. I don't regret it at all. It gave a fair bit of freshness into the game reusing older builds, trying out various stuff in the journey to lvl 70.

And to be honest, I might have been lucky, because in the first day after hitting lvl 70, both me and Batz picket up Aether Walkers, and after a reroll on dmg of mine, both were within 0.5 DPS within each other. Looking at Diablo3ladders, they seemed to have rolled equal dps to place no3 and no4 in EU of the importet profiles. And reading battle.net forums, some haven't gotten the drop at all. RNG is still RNG, but sometimes it works out quite well.

But if you play for keeps, don't let the 15 hours of leveling time be a hindrance, that said, I have what, 300-400 hours on my vanilla wizard alone and have 1 of each char at lvl 70. So 15 hours more wasn't bad, especially if you have RoS, adventure mode and bounties is nice. And the enchantress of course. Being able to reroll abilities on items basically took away the reason for the AH with regards to leveling and getting those perfect items.

If you have friends within season at higher levels, ask them nicely to join a game of the highest level you can do without dying and powerlevel you. That'll be a few hours and you're done. If you need to do it solo, or from the start, it's 15 hours. Bounties, especially cursed event's are good XP, as is several other runs.



Meadows wrote:
PetMiceRnice wrote:
people are just way too competitive and have more time and inclination than I do to level up and stay in the top 1000.

Speaking of which, in Europe, the first player to hit level 70 this season has managed it in under 2 hours.

Probably found a shortcut despite the fact that they patched out some of the ultra high XP bounties like Misers Will, Matriarchs Bones and Miners Gold. I know I ran a bunch of those to get my chars from 60 to 70. Each of those bounties is easily a level by themselves. Misers will actually gave you 45M XP or something without ever touching an enemy. That is, until they instituted full scaling so any char only get his own relative T6 XP level not the full 45M.
 
Aphasia
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Re: Diablo III

Mon Sep 15, 2014 9:05 am

As for stories, I wish Blizzard had a bit of the Bioware magic that made Mass Effect such a hit...
 
kamikaziechameleon
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Re: Diablo III

Mon Sep 15, 2014 9:21 am

All the money that flows into production for diablo 3 and they couldn't grab a decent writing team. :^/ Just like a hollywood blockbuster, too busy saving 5 bucks on a script to realize how it will taint your half billion dollar development budget.
 
derFunkenstein
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Re: Diablo III

Mon Sep 15, 2014 9:58 am

They probably realized they didn't need the great story to sell a hojillion copies. It surpassed 20 million units in August, and in September it was the only second to Madden for the month.

Doesn't stop the story from sucking, but I understand why. Also people don't play this series for the story.
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Aphasia
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Re: Diablo III

Mon Sep 15, 2014 10:55 am

..... It's all bout the looting, it's all bout the dum dum da da dum....

*best sung to meja - all bout the money*
 
Meadows
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Re: Diablo III

Mon Sep 15, 2014 12:53 pm

Hawkwing74 wrote:
Blizzard's strength has rarely been stories. WoW and D3 have dimestore fantasy trash stories at best. But their gamplay and interface is why they shine.

The last time I enjoyed a Blizzard story was the first Starcraft.

Even considering that, D3's story is still marketable, so it can/could be saved, but I've definitely experienced better pacing and dramatic tension elsewhere.

While we're at it, excuse me while I rant a little to get this out of my system.

The ways the storytelling of Diablo 3 has disappointed me are manifold.

For example, the way your hero ruins the end of D3 with their goddamn spoilers in Act 2(!) of 4 was despicable, although then again, Act 2 is pretty much the worst the game has to offer in other ways too. Act 3 follows it very closely.
(For those inclined, the spoiler in question is in Caldeum Sewers. Leah is all excited about finally meeting her mother, then your hero moans a completely unnecessary "But you never knew her. Be wary, Leah. Things are not always as they seem sometimes." This pretty much guarantees that anyone who uses 10% of their brain's potential will figure out, hours before the fact, that Adria is the bad guy. Had your hero just shut the **** up the story might have been that much more interesting for longer.)

Next are the vaguely explained characters that randomly pop up in the story. Principally, Leah. Originally designed as an attachment figure, much like Alyx in Half-Life 2, she has failed in every way such a character can fail. It's little wonder then that if/when players happen to lose her, they will feel neither sad nor outraged, regardless of how much all the sobbing NPCs claim or suggest otherwise.

Moving on, a lot of the dialogue is either cheesy or nonchalant, and some voice actors seem to have found difficulty in getting a feel for their characters or even just in stressing the right words at the right time.
Examples:
Cheesy with bad pacing: Adria: "Leah. My daughter. Are you all right."
Nonchalant: Lorath: "You're not going anywhere without me."
Improper stress: Female wizard meowing irritatingly in a descending pitch: "if only they could see me neow!" - Contrast that with the proper stressing of the Male wizard: "If -only- they could see me now." (And that comes repeatedly from your own goddamn hero! You have to put up with that meowing voice acting for as long as you play as her!)

The only saving grace, literally the only one, comes in the form of your Scoundrel follower. He is by far the best supporting NPC I've listened to in years and I thoroughly enjoyed his company in story mode despite the fact that sometimes the Templar or the Enchantress might have given me better advantages. He is *that* good. Contrast that with failed attempts at comedic relief, for example Claptrap in Borderlands.


The game has hundreds and hundreds of little issues all adding up to a constant weird naggy feeling, but the combat is still the smoothest and best experience I've had in a hack&slash, so it's little wonder why it's one of the fastest selling PC games of all time.
This goes back to you, LoneWolf15: despite all that, I still recommend the game. Your call.
 
Meadows
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Re: Diablo III

Mon Sep 15, 2014 12:54 pm

Aphasia wrote:
Probably found a shortcut despite the fact that they patched out some of the ultra high XP bounties like Misers Will, Matriarchs Bones and Miners Gold. I know I ran a bunch of those to get my chars from 60 to 70. Each of those bounties is easily a level by themselves. Misers will actually gave you 45M XP or something without ever touching an enemy. That is, until they instituted full scaling so any char only get his own relative T6 XP level not the full 45M.

Yes, yes, but how did they reach adventure mode in the first place? Everyone started from level 1.
 
kamikaziechameleon
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Re: Diablo III

Mon Sep 15, 2014 1:28 pm

derFunkenstein wrote:
They probably realized they didn't need the great story to sell a hojillion copies. It surpassed 20 million units in August, and in September it was the only second to Madden for the month.

Doesn't stop the story from sucking, but I understand why. Also people don't play this series for the story.



Its so cheap to resolve writing level issues. In cinema and games its persistently one of the cheapest thing to improve the quality of. Yet they spend big money on cinematics jam packed with garbage. There is no reason not to do it cause bad story takes almost the same about of time and money as good story. There is no excuse.
 
derFunkenstein
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Re: Diablo III

Mon Sep 15, 2014 2:39 pm

Meadows, your complaint about the female wizard had me rolling. My wife has the exact same complaint. And it's not like they skimped on the voice actress, it was just bad direction. I have the same issue in StarCraft II with a lot of Kerrigan's lines - again, this is apparently how Blizzard's directors wanted it because her voice actress isn't talentless, either.

And the scoundrel is great. Troy Baker was also really good as Delsin in inFamous Second Son. Unfortunately the nature of his ranged attacks means he's engaging treasure goblins at the least opportune times. He's also one of those guys (like Nolan North) that's in a ton of stuff, so once you recognize his voice it's hard not to be distracted. I really hated his character in Disgaea 4, so for a long while I wouldn't take him with me because all I heard was Valvatorez. I'm over that now.
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Meadows
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Re: Diablo III

Mon Sep 15, 2014 2:49 pm

derFunkenstein wrote:
Meadows, your complaint about the female wizard had me rolling. My wife has the exact same complaint. And it's not like they skimped on the voice actress, it was just bad direction. I have the same issue in StarCraft II with a lot of Kerrigan's lines - again, this is apparently how Blizzard's directors wanted it because her voice actress isn't talentless, either.

Good voice acting makes or breaks immersion in a game. I'm particularly anal about that, despite the fact I do tolerate bad games from time to time.

Some of the other voice actors in D3 are also weird or downright annoying too, especially with the exaggerated fake accents business. The female witch doctor and female barbarian come to mind in particular. I swear the designers must've hated all of the female options in there.
 
derFunkenstein
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Re: Diablo III

Mon Sep 15, 2014 3:04 pm

What's weirder about the female Barb is that the male doesn't even have an accent. I don't know where the hell the other followers are supposed to be from. But the worst offender to me is the child emperor Hakkan. I'm so glad he's entirely missing from adventure mode.
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Meadows
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Re: Diablo III

Mon Sep 15, 2014 4:12 pm

derFunkenstein wrote:
But the worst offender to me is the child emperor Hakkan.

He's not so bad, but I hate him because he reminds me of Star Wars with that makeup.
 
Aphasia
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Re: Diablo III

Wed Sep 17, 2014 1:57 pm

Meadows wrote:
Yes, yes, but how did they reach adventure mode in the first place? Everyone started from level 1.

Any new character has access to adventure mode is you have it unlocked before. Even with 15 hours of gametime, we mainly used bounties and rifts. I leveled most of my chars from 60-70 by doing double xp cursed events, and yes, several of the mentioned bounties. The last new char, I leveled from 1-70 by just switching to it before speaking to orek after a rift. But that is taken away as well. Read about it yesterday, it was some of the "bugged" doublexp bounties that people used, that's essentially why they took away those out of rotation until fix.

Except for season's I've hated leveleing characters just for the sake of leveling, its the loot that is the purpose, not the leveling basically.
 
derFunkenstein
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Re: Diablo III

Wed Sep 17, 2014 3:37 pm

You're either ignoring Meadows' point or missing it or....I don't know, I'm not allowing for any other possibilities. :lol: How did you get to play Act V the VERY FIRST time you played it? You had to (at some point, whether 2 years ago or recently) finish Act I - IV. You had to play through the entire story once. New characters, yes, but brand new accounts have to play the story, or had to play the game's story when they were new.
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tanker27
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Re: Diablo III

Wed Sep 17, 2014 5:54 pm

Meadows wrote:
Good voice acting makes or breaks immersion in a game. I'm particularly anal about that, despite the fact I do tolerate bad games from time to time.


You've haven't heard bad voice acting unless you hear Peter Dinklage phone it in in Destiny. But yes, Meadows I have to agree with you.
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Aphasia
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Re: Diablo III

Wed Sep 17, 2014 8:23 pm

derFunkenstein wrote:
You're either ignoring Meadows' point or missing it or....I don't know, I'm not allowing for any other possibilities. :lol: How did you get to play Act V the VERY FIRST time you played it? You had to (at some point, whether 2 years ago or recently) finish Act I - IV. You had to play through the entire story once. New characters, yes, but brand new accounts have to play the story, or had to play the game's story when they were new.

This aren't brand new accounts, these are brand new SEASONAL characters on old accounts. And if you haven't played, it basically means you start a new character with new stash, no achievments, etc. After the season is over it rolls back into your main characters with items, gold, etc. You do however have access to adventure mode if you finished a character to lvl 70 and the Act V with one of your other characters before the season. Then you have no use trudging through the campaign. And before they patched em out, you could use above mentioned bounties in T6 even with new characters with the bugged bounties to be able to take the highest points on the ladders.

The other way if you actually want to slodge through the campaign is to have friends powerlevel you. We took 1, perhaps 1,5 hours to get another guy that just came back to lvl 40-50 something from a new char and through the whole campaign, but that was in Master. But then, since he never finished the game to lvl 70 anc Act V in the first place, we had to do it in the campaign. After that, bounties and certain dungeon runs and tag along in high end rifting is what you want.
 
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Re: Diablo III

Fri Sep 19, 2014 1:29 am

Yes i agree W/that sir this is not so bad cause this game is nice and really challenging for me,,
 
Meadows
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Re: Diablo III

Fri Sep 19, 2014 3:53 am

Aphasia wrote:
You do however have access to adventure mode if you finished a character to lvl 70 and the Act V with one of your other characters before the season.

My seasonal character has already finished the campaign, so I have no way to verify this anymore, but I don't remember it to be so.

Regardless, I've come to a realisation about the game some time this year. Adventure mode is nice and everything, but you should re-do the full campaign from time to time, because it's not that bad and helps fight off the "mental repetitive strain injury" that adventure mode and the constant rift after rift after rift after rift after rift will eventually do to you.
Resetting the campaign also guarantees some legendaries, but on Torment you'll get a buttload of those either way anyway.
 
Aphasia
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Re: Diablo III

Fri Sep 19, 2014 6:56 am

I actually thought the same thing at first, then realized that I don't remember actually running through the campaign in seasons. And I can't remember that I ever took on diablo and malathael in seasons at all except for bounties before running bounties. And I can't see any other way for people to get through the campaign, into lvl 70 and into adventure in less then 2 hours. I did speedrun the campaign with perma vault on normal with my infero DH on normal back in the day, and once again with a full party of 2 aether walker wizards in seaonsal to powerlevel a friend. And despite doing everything straight through, I basically expect an hour just for the events and teleporting through the whole game. With 2 aethers it took like 1.5 hours from act 1-5 straight through split questing and teleporting to each other to get through.

Guess well have to wait for next season to see. I don't know if I'm going to do it though. First season I did solely for Aether Walker, but I kindof liked the 15 hours of leveling. As you said with the campaign, stadily getting new gear going forward, perhaps through a different part was a fresh breeze into the grinding.

In vanilla I've gone up to T5 for solo play with my WD, did my first proper T6 rifts co op with a newly minted DH maruaders that a guy has. Up to T4 on my Wiz both in vanilla and seasonal, although bit squishy in seasonal because I don't have all the goodies yet. Gonna switch over to level the crusader at some point though since I got a few really good STR items in seasonal that's gonna roll over.

Whatever happens, my wizard is going to be decently bad ass when the new one rolls back into vanilla. Because there I have great items that I lack in seasons, and some of the new item's that I've got has been quite good and even quite an upgrade vs. vanilla. Like Amulets with Int, Elemental, CC, CD on them, and not just one either.
 
derFunkenstein
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Re: Diablo III

Fri Sep 19, 2014 8:22 am

I just confirmed - you do NOT have to play the campaign with your first seasonal character. I have never played one and just created a level 1 guy. Once he's created, go to Game Settings and pick Adventure Mode.
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Aphasia
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Re: Diablo III

Fri Sep 19, 2014 12:55 pm

Thanks for doing that, that's pretty much settles the argument over that ;)
 
derFunkenstein
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Re: Diablo III

Fri Sep 19, 2014 1:55 pm

You're welcome. But like Meadows said, it's good to do something different from time to time. I haven't replayed the full campaign since RoS launched and I finished Act V a few days later, and it might be a good idea to do something different.
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derFunkenstein
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Re: Diablo III

Thu Sep 25, 2014 8:54 am

What do you all think of 2.1.1? I think overall it's an improvement. Yes Kadala's prices went WAY up, but I've gotten more legendaries from her since Tuesday than I had since 2.0 dropped in March. The lack of crafting mats seems to be covered well by rift guardians. So overall I'm going to call it a net gain. The changes to Witch Doctor pet survivability has helped me greatly, and now I'm soloing Torment IV fairly easily since my FA lasts a lot longer.
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tanker27
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Re: Diablo III

Thu Sep 25, 2014 9:09 am

I really need to level a WD. I think mine is currently in the mid 20's.
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derFunkenstein
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Re: Diablo III

Thu Sep 25, 2014 10:44 am

It takes a lot of gear to get the WD to higher levels. Just a butt-load of grinding. Grinding that is in part mitigated by Kadala - I got 3 parts of the Akkhan set from her yesterday so my Crusader can start doing useful stuff. For my WD what I really need yet is Tasker and Theo. I'm still trying to figure out the best options to proc the Fetish Sycophant passive. The max Fetish army is 8, plus up to 15 Sycophants. I rarely go above 7-8. if I could add the rest reliably I'm sure I'd be better off.
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tanker27
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Re: Diablo III

Thu Sep 25, 2014 12:42 pm

Kaddala is a B*tch. Unless she has had an attitude change since the last patch. (I havent plead for a couple of weeks)
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Meadows
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Re: Diablo III

Thu Sep 25, 2014 1:07 pm

tanker27 wrote:
Kaddala is a B*tch. Unless she has had an attitude change since the last patch. (I havent plead for a couple of weeks)

That was the point of the patch. The new patch increased the cost of her wares 5 times over, but also increased legendary rate tenfold. (Ballpark estimate there.)
 
derFunkenstein
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Re: Diablo III

Thu Sep 25, 2014 1:45 pm

Yeah, despite the cost increase I'm getting 3-5 legendaries per 500 sharts, best I can tell.

BTW I played some at lunch using Plague of Toads/Rain of Toads and I'd often have 23 fetishes. I think I'm set to bump the difficulty up to V.
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Meadows
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Re: Diablo III

Thu Sep 25, 2014 1:50 pm

derFunkenstein wrote:
I'd often have 23 fetishes.

There's a furry joke in here somewhere but I'll let someone else take it.

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