A Journey Into Hell: The Diablo III Beta
Oh “soul orbs” then.
The beta is easy, like, you’re practically playing in God Mode. For the entire duration, my main attack two-shotted most basic enemies, and even the “gold” ones never got my health below half due to all the red orbs they kept handing me. Now, I do not think that this will translate into the final product, as assuredly once you get to Nightmare, Hell and Inferno mode, the game will do its best to destroy you. As it was so easy, I didn’t get the chance to die, so I don’t know if the “find your corpse while naked” idiotic respawn system is still in place. I just tried to log in to purposefully kill myself to find out, but lo and behold, Error 37 greeted me. Fantastic.
Graphically the game is definitely an upgrade over the decade old Diablo II, but it’s nothing jaw dropping either. I was running it on max settings just fine on my non-supercomputer, but I suspect once the actual game is out there will be even higher levels that I won’t be able to handle. There are cool new touches like destructible environments, and I love how enemies ragdoll across the screen when you kill them.
My biggest visual complaint is the opposite of a criticism being leveled against the game long time ago. Some said from sample screenshots that the game was that the game was too bright and colorful. But now? It’s like they’ve coated the thing in darkness, and every environment I wandered through was the same shade of foggy black and gray, sometimes so much that I had to shut all my blinds to even see what was going on. I’m hoping for a more crisp and clear environment once we get to wander elsewhere, as it really is just TOO dark at this point.
In addition to my Witch Doctor, I did a run through with my old friend the Barbarian. It’s very cool how many of the items are specifically crafted for your class. The same helmet or chestplate will look different depending on if it’s on a Barbarian, Monk, Wizard, etc. It’s a cool visual touch that makes for more realistic character models. My Barb was my favorite character I played with, and I wasn’t a huge Demon Hunter fan as she was the only one who came close to dying with no ability to take damage, and very little crowd control. The monk seems like a strange choice of a class for a game so reliant on armor and weapons, as it seems like at his max level, he’s still ideally only be wearing a robe and using his bare fists.
But the Monk’s robes get a higher…threadcount?
There is a LOT more to be discussed about Diablo 3 and its relationship to the last game, and though I’m a big fan of the series, I’m not the most qualified person to walk you through it all. For devoted fans, I HIGHLY recommend that you read this entire forum post which explains every change and why most of them appear like they’re going to make the game better than D2 in a lot of ways. I was sort of iffy on a lot of the changes I saw while playing, but once I read this, it really helped to explain them better, and now I too believe that D3 will improve over D2 in many ways.
See you back here in a month for a real review.
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.