Diablo 3 review

[Silvergun X]

Hmmmmm, time for me to start being honest about this. It's losing it's attractiveness very quickly now.

There are some very fundamental flaws in the way the game works that are grinding my gears now that I'm playing on Inferno.

The game so far, thinking back, has felt like this:

Normal: Faceroll

Nightmare: Difficult until the auction house was discovered, then complete faceroll.

Hell: Auction House used throughout, difficulty was spot on with constantly upgraded top level gear.

Inferno: Ridiculous.

Here's my main irk at the moment - Gear that drops in your current level is 99% of the time for levels lower than you. Hands up how many people have managed to progress through Nightmare and Hell comfortably without using the Auction House?

I also feel like I powered my way through to Level 60 extremely quickly. As per the screenshot I previously posted, it took less than 40 hours to cap.

I'm currently grinding through some VERY tough challenges in Inferno mode, and level 55 gear is dropping with 5 stacks of NV... What the actual ****?

Would it not have made more sense to have a much higher difficulty curve throughout the game, but changed loot so it drops same/higher level stuff, not lower level stuff?

Instead of a power through to endgame like it currently is, Nightmare and Hell could've been far more challenging, rewarding the effort to find good gear and power yourself up enough to progress piece by piece. I feel that would've been much more of a fun structure.

At this point, it's definitely evident that WoW has had far too much of an influence, and the original Diablo crew aren't so involved with this. It was fun up to this point, but looking back I do see how it could've been far far better.

[dataDave]

I'm wondering how Hardcore mode is supposed to be anything other than a novelty. Maybe that's exactly what it is.

[Decider-VT]

My god, the end credits. So long that they actually ran out of music. I felt like I was slipping into a coma.

->Open Spoiler<-

Would've expected a decent loot drop from Diablo himself but it was really underwhelming. Blizzard really seem to have badly messed up the balance between loot drops, the auction house and in-game merchants.

Normal mode beaten in 31 hours, but I like to fill out every map and explore where possible. Have to say that it suffered too much from what I hated about WoW, in that it got very repetitive and predictable. I may head back for Nightmare difficulty in future but not for now.

[Silvergun X]

I'm wondering how Hardcore mode is supposed to be anything other than a novelty. Maybe that's exactly what it is.

Hardcore was worth doing on Diablo 2 because you had the level/experience ladder, and there were Hardcore-only items, runewords etc.

It doesn't appear to have a point in Diablo 3.

->Open Spoiler<-

Would've expected a decent loot drop from Diablo himself but it was really underwhelming. Blizzard really seem to have badly messed up the balance between loot drops, the auction house and in-game merchants.

->Open Spoiler<-

This is deliberate to stop people farming bosses over and over and over and over again for loot drops, like D2.

The main loot drops now either come from champion/elite mobs, or from gathering stacks of Nephalem Valour at Level 60, THEN taking out a boss.

This is actually a good way of doing it in my opinion, but my problem with the loot drops is everything that drops will be for levels lower than you, and only really fit for the auction house. Still very underwhelming.

[Dezm0nd]

Currently in Hell difficulty sitting at Level 55 in the middle of Act II. The game is brutal but once you've worked out a complete new set of abilities, runs and perks etc you find yourself coping (in solo play) but the fear from fighting a boss is immense and seeing a group of cheating bastard elites mobs with their Paladin-esque bubble shield is laughable and terrifying.

I have never run away from anything before until now.

[djtickle]

I have a friend that would like to start playing this but I already given my trial codes away, anyone else have one I could pinch please?

Thanks.

[Blaiz0r]

Blizzard have said that they don't expect people to be completing Inferno for months after release, it's still early days yet, and nobody has the top gear so we'll see how it goes.

My problem with the game mostly is how much is rehashed from D2, the whole of Act II was a disappointment to me, and Act III had the same damn quests that Act IV from D2 had.

That aside, I'm taking the game for what it is, and it's still fun.

BTW a nice tip I've found, which I've not noticed mentioned here yet is if you are trying to compare a ring to your equipped rings, holding Alt will show your offhand ring, it allows you to equip straight to that hand too, the same goes for offhand weapons also, and this even works in the Auction house.

I'm really interested in Hardcore, the only real difference I think there is, is that the Auction house is better, there's less fluff and items have their real value, so it could be an interesting challenge.

[Daragon]

I would not attempt hardcore mode atm with the way the servers are. A single lag spike could cost you literally everything

[Silvergun X]

Blizzard have said that they don't expect people to be completing Inferno for months after release, it's still early days yet, and nobody has the top gear so we'll see how it goes.

Yes, but this has been handled in COMPLETELY the wrong way. There's no gradual increase up to the complete annihilation that is Inferno Act 2.

There's no feeling of having to work for your gear, work your way up the difficulties piece by piece, work your way up the levels. 1-60 is very quick, Normal Act 1 to Inferno Act 1 is about a week, maybe two weeks worth of work.

Going from that level of progression, to spending months and months attempting to get the gear for Inferno Act 2-4 by grinding for gold and items on Act 1, isn't like a gradual slowdown in progression. It's like charging 200mph into a brick wall, crashing and burning, then trying to force your way through it over the course of hours and hours of gameplay.

All just in my opinion of course, but I just feel like the whole rush to endgame/brick wall effect has been done in completely the wrong way. It's not fun in the slightest, despite the fact that levelling up and going through that initial progression was really good. Showed a lot of hope.

[Cornflakes]

On which servers are you guys playing?

[mugetsu]

i really wanna play this, does it require a monster pc?

[Cornflakes]

You can find the required specs on here

If you want to try if it runs on your system, I still have one guest pass left. The guest pass allows you to run the starter edition, basically it allows you to play a section of the first act, with limitations, like level cap. More on starter edition here

[dataDave]

If you want constant v-sync 60fps it does need quite a hefty GPU. Loads of people at work having issues on the GTX460, and there are issues with the new GTX670s I believe.

I'm having to overclock my GTX560m up to 900mhz core for smooth gameplay. I'm hoping they can optimise things at some point as the game slows down at parts where it shouldn't.

Also, guest passes, people can simply download the starter edition off of battle.net - you only need to sign up. Anyone can do this. You don't need a guest pass, they are a complete waste of tree.

[dataDave]

On which servers are you guys playing?

Me and Daragon are on the US server, I suppose everyone else is on Euro.

Headshaker#1717

[Cornflakes]

Me and Daragon are on the US server, I suppose everyone else is on Euro.

Headshaker#1717

Are you guys getting high latency on the US server? Currently I am getting something from 180-1050ms on the US servers, besides getting kicked sometimes.