Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Zangi]

I find the reduction of enemy health bar a more satisfying indication.  Cause critting 100k and only seeing the bar go down a sliver?  Yea, not as great.

[Mech#4]

How many 0's could they shave off stats?

[Sirian]

So, I haven't actually played Diablo III but I've been watching my roommate play it rather prodigiously the last few weeks since the expansion came out.

One of the things that just bugs me to no end is that he's not even that uber-powered, and he's regularly hitting for hundreds of thousands of points of damage. Occasionally critting for like 2.8 MILLION damage.

That is some straight-up gratuitous bullshit. Masturbatory, even. We've had arguments over it. My stance is that it's the "this one goes to 11" trope writ large.

It's not exactly gratuitous, damage starts pretty low, but it ramps up steadily to make you chase for upgrades constantly. If it didn't increase as much, gear would be less relevant, but in diablo games, gear is at the center of gameplay, so they have to make it this way. The effect is amplified by the fact that every piece of gear contributes to damage (even armor). And when the expansion came out, they clearly tried to make old gear obsolete, meaning that entry level 61 gear competes with previously top notch lvl 60 gear (and lvl 70 is another order of magnitude above). So yea, you end up with numbers in the millions.

[nyulzsiraf]

Should i reinstall diablo 3? It is much better than it was at the release?

[DJ]

I guess they were watching too much Dragonball.

[Sirian]

Should i reinstall diablo 3? It is much better than it was at the release?

It's much better, but be careful : it will make you want to buy reaper of souls (it is designed for this exact purpose).

[nenjin]

Should i reinstall diablo 3? It is much better than it was at the release?

I'd at least reinstall it and see how it flows. (Lots of people have already described why they think it's better above.)

But yes, buying the expansion is a significant risk of playing D3 now.

[Ivefan]

the expansion basically got obligatory because every item added is just so much stronger.
half regret buying it. The fun was to have a game to play with friends and the bad was that its basically just mmo grind lite, after you hit 70 you just farm for the same items but with slightly better stats that the RNG deign to give you.

[Wiles]

How does this compare to the other hack&slash games that are popular right now? I'm thinking of buying, but the price is pretty high compared to Torchlight 2 or Path of Exile.

[nenjin]

How does this compare to the other hack&slash games that are popular right now? I'm thinking of buying, but the price is pretty high compared to Torchlight 2 or Path of Exile.

Prior to the expac, I would have said PoE has a better end-game grind.

Post-expac though, Diablo 3 has done quite a bit to make the end-game bearable. It's true, you'll only be grinding for better gear, that is the thrust of playing after 70.

But Adventure Mode strips out the story so you don't have to fuck around with dialog and cutscenes. The Nephalim Rifts are zany sort of random dungeons that can pull monsters and tilesets from anywhere. Quirky things can happen in them like running up on a Treasure Goblin Convention where there are 12 of them hanging out in one spot.

I can't comment on Torchlight 2 since I haven't played it, but I don't hear it mentioned a lot next to PoE and D3.

If you've got money to burn, I'd say the expansion is worth it. If you don't, PoE is more than a match for D3 in everything except desyncs (which PoE is still regularly plagued by.)

[Darkmere]

How does this compare to the other hack&slash games that are popular right now? I'm thinking of buying, but the price is pretty high compared to Torchlight 2 or Path of Exile.

I haven't played PoE, so I can't comment on it.

TL2's gear is completely random, to the point of +bow skills on an axe. The combat is stiff, environments feel samey, the art is cartoony. The stats system presents the exact same problem they always do: each class has one ideal setup that's better than everything else by a mile, so pick that one or suffer. Fishing is a thing, if you love stopping in the middle of a level to stare at a cursor for a few minutes.

D3's combat is more fast-paced and fluid, with no pigeonholing enforced by stats and point-buy skills. Most of the gear is intelligently rolled, so you don't find much int gear on a strength class, or whatever. It's reasonably efficient to gear up a character via crafting if you wish to do so. There's no longer enforced thrice-over campaign grinding to level up a character.

However, the story in vanilla's pretty bad; if you expect hack n slash titles to be some kind of literary masterpiece you'll be disappointed. It's much better in Reaper of Souls, though.

From what I gather among the three games,

If you don't give a damn about quality or longevity and want something cheap, TL2 seems to satisfy for a single playthrough, as long as you don't look too deep under the hood to see what's broken.

If you thought D2 was the pinnacle of gaming despite its myriad errors and unresolved problems, PoE gets pretty close to that, though the skill tree looked painfully clunky to me, enough to turn me off the game entirely.

If you like hacking and stabbing for some mindless entertainment, D3 fits the bill. It costs more than TL2, but is far more polished mechanics-wise. It's also a magnet for everyone's bitching whether they've played the game or not, and nothing at all about the game can be right, ever. So there's a shit community attached to it, but the game itself is lots of fun.

I can't comment on Torchlight 2 since I haven't played it, but I don't hear it mentioned a lot next to PoE and D3.

The thread for it on this forums should tell you all you need to know. The reaction was something like "omfg this isn't D3 at all! How amazing and magical!" and then the thread died after about 15 pages because the game lacks depth or a soul.

[Wiles]

Thanks for the thoughtful recommendations. The base game and xpack were in a bundle sale so I went ahead and picked it up. I'm liking it so far!

[Neonivek]

The thread for it on this forums should tell you all you need to know. The reaction was something like "omfg this isn't D3 at all! How amazing and magical!" and then the thread died after about 15 pages because the game lacks depth or a soul

Yep that is pretty accurate.

[Ivefan]

I can't comment on Torchlight 2 since I haven't played it, but I don't hear it mentioned a lot next to PoE and D3.

The thread for it on this forums should tell you all you need to know. The reaction was something like "omfg this isn't D3 at all! How amazing and magical!" and then the thread died after about 15 pages because the game lacks depth or a soul.

This sounds like d3 too. You run through a crappy story and then farm monsters to see the numbers on your items grow.
What is fun is to play with friends.

[nenjin]

The thread for it on this forums should tell you all you need to know. The reaction was something like "omfg this isn't D3 at all! How amazing and magical!" and then the thread died after about 15 pages because the game lacks depth or a soul.

That's kinda what I figured, but I wanted someone else to say it.

If you thought D2 was the pinnacle of gaming despite its myriad errors and unresolved problems, PoE gets pretty close to that, though the skill tree looked painfully clunky to me, enough to turn me off the game entirely.

Here's the difference. D3 very clearly plots out what you can do, 1 to 70. You've got skills you get at regular intervals, and runes that unlock at regular intervals that modify those skills. Also you get to pick a couple passive abilities. Creating a build is basically a working a jigsaw puzzle using very large pieces. Regardless of how you put them together, the end result pretty much "works." After 70 you get Paragon points to spend as you will, but they represent very slight buffs to core character mechanics, rather than something totally new.

PoE is the opposite. Nothing is mapped out for you, not after the tutorial area. What skills you use, what gems you put in them to alter those skills, where you spend your skill tree points: entirely up to you. D3 has never given me that "Aha!" moment of putting together a build that felt unique. PoE has given me that several times over. If PoE played as fluidly as D3, I probably would never go back to D3. But because PoE plays a little wooden compared to D3 (and because desyncs are frustrating as hell), I feel there's room for both games for me. PoE plays like Diablo 2, has the same sort of gritty aesthetis and has a wealth of customization options. Diablo 3 is D2's prettier, slightly more mindless cousin. Your end game accomplishment in D3 is clicking a mouse button and watching the entire screen fill up with death.