A Journey Into Hell: The Diablo III Beta
This weekend, I got the chance to spend a few hours with the Diablo II beta, which was opened up to the public for one weekend only ahead of its May 15th release. But by a few hours, I really do mean a few hours, despite the fact that I was prepared to devote most of my weekend to the experience.
Part of this has to do with the length of the beta being rather short. It’s an hour long if you play it normally, two if you’re the type to search every nook and cranny. I ran through it three times with three different characters to try them out, but by the end I didn’t think I could handle the same level for the fourth and fifth time.
But the other reason so little time was spent is that the “stress” test beta lived up to its name, and much of the weekend was spent sampling Blizzard’s collection of error messages. There was Error 37, Error 33 and who could ever forget Error 3004? These connection problems had the beta servers offline for much of Friday and Saturday, and Sunday I was only able to get into a game by spamming the start button about fifty times per login .
Hello, my old friend.
I’m told Blizzard betas are always like this, so I won’t make too much of it. Suffice to say, they better have their shit squared away by launch day, as it’s different when you’re pissing off beta testers as opposed to paying customers.
So what of the game itself? It’s definitely Diablo, that’s for sure. My mouse almost exploded from the amount of clicking, and I can only imagine what will happen when the game comes out.
First I tried my hand at the Witch Doctor, the replacement for the Necromancer which has bits of druid elements as well. He summons the undead, but often the undead are in dog, bat or spider form. I didn’t get to see all his higher level spells (the beta maxes out at level 13), but I enjoyed shooting people with his blowgun, and summoning zombie dogs to tank damage for me.
The beta has you doing typical Diablo quests like going to rescue Decard Cain (how old is he by now?) and finding some mystical artifact (a crown) that is a means to defeat a boss (the Skeleton King). Yes, much is the same, but there is a LOT different from the last game as well. Some of it might upset longtime fans, but I’m not convinced the creative decisions were made for the better.
Only six skills available at a time, and that’s fine with me,
The most obvious place where D3 diverges from D2 is the skill system. Yes, there are stat points, but they are now automatically allocated into the different categories of strength, dexterity, vitality and intelligence. The good news is that none of these have to leveled to equip certain items, meaning no skill points will be wasted in categories you don’t absolutely need them in.
Also different are skill trees, which are no longer trees at all. You only get to use six skills, but each skill have five or so “runes” with them. No, not Zod, Mal, Ber, Ist, etc, but rather modifiers that make each skill quite a bit different, giving each attack or move a lot of variety. In short, all of this adds up to way MORE possible builds than ever, and almost all of them are item dependent, meaning no need to respec. That of course wasn’t possible in the last game, and it’s nice to know you can shift the style of your character around here, rather than committing points in areas that turn out to be useless later.
Another change is the fact that there is no mana. Well, there is for wizards and witch doctors, but it’s a fast recharging orb that might as well just be a cooldown, as there are no potions to reset it. Barbarians use “fury,” monks use “focus” and demon hunters use “hate/disclipine” all of which are either recharging by themselves, or fill when you attack. In short, mana is one less thing to worry about from a potion perspective.
As is health, at least in these early stages. There are still potions, yes, but now enemies will randomly drop “health orbs” like it’s God of War, and your health refills that way much of the time during battle. It’s a change used to make the game more accessible for new players, but it seemed sort of strange to me. Things like health regen and lifesteal don’t really mean anything when at any given moment an orb will plop down next to you and fill your health to the brim. I expect these will disappear in harder difficulties.
Corpse running is gone. You respawn in town now and can take a portal to your last checkpoint. I played the crap out of the beta this weekend and came away incredibly excited. I fully expect to lose days of my life to my Demon Hunter.
Paul,
I played as a monk and can say that u use weapons normally. Like, swords, clubs, maces, whatever. He cant use ranged weapons (like crossbows) and the only two-handed i got was a spear-like (with a different name i dont remember).
Even though he uses a weapon ha can use the fist-combo-spells, as if he was bare handed. When he attacks, the animation “forgets” he was with a weapon in hand and just shows the bare hand attack. The bonus damage of the weapon does count (i tested it with and without the weapon).
The wizard works the same. If u equip a dagger or a club and uses the spell, he casts it and the damage of the weapon modifies it accordingly.
Hope it helps.
monk f*king rocks!!!
too bad you had to play Diablo II beta:)
Was it just me or were there not many items in the shops? Maybe it’s a beta thing, but there were only ever two weapons and maybe six pieces of armor at the various vendors.
Also, there weren’t any “normal” (non magical, unique, rare, etc.) items for sale. I played the entire beta without a helmet or shoulder armor, not even a ratty 1 armor skullcap.
@Bakakyo Interesting! I was wondering how that worked since there was no way to plain “attack”, i.e. it was all skills, left and right mouse button. So if I have a dagger equipped, and I’m doing a ranged magic attack, the dagger increases the damage of my spell/skill? Huh. That seems weird that they made that choice.
I enjoyed it a lot – four and a half hours disappearing in the blink of an eye a lot – and will buy it, but I was wondering if anyone else had the same experience/concern?
@Bakakyo
All the classes work like this.
It’s one of the things i’d have to say I dislike about d3, in regards to the changes they made (one complaint of many.) Basically the best weapon you’ll have to use will have everything to do with DPS and nothing to do with your class. DPS is king.
I’d also have to say the skill restrictions (which I would venture has everything to do with making it more viable to port 1:1 to consoles.) is pretty silly.
It’s also a little stupid how it ‘locks in’ your skills to what you can choose (unless you go into the options and choose otherwise) just points to more desire to casualize.
I’m quite disappointed with the changes they made, but its clear d3 was made in mind for mass/casual appeal and lots of profit (via rmt.) Customization for your character is nigh non-existent until it comes to runes, but even then the variety won’t be great enough to keep things interesting for long. I don’t expect many people to play diablo 3 for half as long as they played diablo 2…
@Paul
There will be health globes throughout the game. There are skills, which affects them. The overabundancy of globes relates to the “I two shotted everything” problem. The first act acts as a tutorial, so everything is supereasy.
Beta servers being unaccessible is nothing to worry about, it’s normal. Blizzard has a lot of experience about huge user amounts in their servers.
@James David
You could’ve created the helmet yourself with the help of artisan. I created couple armors exactly because I couldn’t find anything to those slots.
The “skill damage based on weapon damage” is there because you can’t level up skills anymore. This also makes the skills to scale better. Once you had your spell at level 20 (and mastery to that spell level 20, if you’re sorceress) that was it on D2. Later on there were synergies, I give you that. But now you can increase the damage of the spell as long as you find better and better item. And maxing a skill in D2 was faster than finding the ultimate weapon. When Blizzard makes expansion, they will create more endgame content. Then you can battle those harder monsters with better weapons, which comes along that explansion, even as a mage.
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When I heard about the skill system long time ago, I thought it would be boring and stupid. Now that I played open beta I have to say that it is a lot better than D2 skill tree. Actually, D2 skill tree is awful. Skill tree in general is okayish, but not ideal. D3 system gives you something new at every level. At first only one thing, but on later levels they give you three, four or even five new things to test out. And most often than not, those things are truly new, not just more damage or less cooldown.
As I clicked around the skill calculator (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian) I really really wanted to level up the character and see what kind of synergies I could utilize. And I think I will enjoy the leveling process more now. The D2 skill tree gave two options: 1) Save skill points for later and make a cookie cutter build or 2) Use the skill points now and have useless skills later on. Synergies fixed this a bit but at the same time they limited you even more how to build a good character.
I really like the lack of identify and town portal scrolls/tomes. Those just took inventory space and added nothing to the game once you had your gold income fixed (very very early in the game). Now you have infinite amount of them and they take couple seconds to “cast”. This also prevents the TP abuse.
Really looking forward to this game.
Gosh I loved the Beta. I was invited pre-weekend, and played only the Monk (I didn’t want to tire out of the game before its release). I didn’t enjoy Diablo II as much as Diablo III. I found the gameplay quite interesting. You’re right about the darkness though. I was having trouble seeing things. Still, I can’t wait!
D2 attribute and skill-tree implementation was horribad. The whole point of each stat (str, dex and int) is only to equip gears at a point that vitality is only what mattered. D3 system on the other hand even though it may look simplified makes focusing on building your own “perfect character” more engaging. You don’t have to waste your time weighing if you need points to allocate on strength cause that sweet, sweet cuirass mail armor is useless cause you didn’t meet the STR requirement cause that armor gives you nuff protection to plow through that horde of fetishes.
The skill-tree only gives you the sense of accomplishment when you’re level is high nuff. In D3 you can see changes right away even when you’re in the low lv.10s. It gives you the option of playstyle too on the fly so you can adjust you strategy anytime you want or when it seems that things are not working out for you at the moment.
Thank god they revised the TP mechanic cause I don’t like being trolled wit it lol.