Diablo 3 - What's Going On?

[TarionzCousin]

I heard that the beta goes live this weekend. The game is due out in May.

Has anyone played this yet? My friend's wife played the alpha (?) for a while but her comments were uninformative.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I've played it some. In summary: Click, click, click, loot, click, click, click, click, loot, click, click, click, level up, click, click, click, loot, click, click, click, die, respawn.

It's very much Diablo, despite all the doom and gloom about team members moving on over the years. It's very pretty, very tied to the Diablo I storyline (which is good, IMO).

 

[GSHamster]

It's pretty much Diablo.

Gameplay is pretty much the exact same. About the only new element is monsters sometimes drop health globes. It's an interesting mechanic because it sort of shifts your relationship with health potions a little bit.

There's also no real mana potions anymore. Resources either regenerate with time, or specific attacks build resources and other attacks spend them.

A lot of stuff got streamlined. Town Portal is now an ability (with a long cast time) instead of scrolls. Items are automatically identified. You pick up gold automatically. All your characters share gold, the stash, and crafting professions.

The major area of change is how abilities are given out. There are no talent trees any more. Instead you get a series of exclusive choices. I.e. you choose one of 5 primary attacks (left-mouse button), 1 of 5 secondary attacks (right-mouse button), 1 of 5 defensive abilities, etc. You can also modify each attack with different runes that alter the attack.

Like the monk has a spinning kick secondary attack. The first rune adds some fire and a knockback, and the animation changes a bit.

All of these choices are unlocked as you level, and changing your spec up is painless.

There's also some interesting innovations in multiplayer. For example, loot is generated separately for each player, so there's no ninja'ing.

But really, it's Diablo. It looks, feels, sounds, and plays like Diablo. It has the classic Blizzard polish, attention to detail, and excellent performance on even somewhat older systems.

 

[Kzach]

It's pretty much Diablo.

Unfortunately this is the reason why I won't buy it. It would've been nice if it 'grew up' a bit and became a bit more involved than a click-fest. Then again, that would probably just piss everyone else off.

 

[Jhaelen]

It's pretty much Diablo.

Yup, after this weekend's open beta, I was quickly as addicted to it as I've been to Diablo 2 and decided to preorder it via amazon.co.uk.

Most of beta content is super-easy, but since it only covers part of the first act that's understandable.

High points for me include the painless respec, being able to port to other players by clicking their banners in town, being automatically invited to join in crucial quests, crafting, and the return of random quests (called events).

Graphics are quite enjoyable (though not stunning), particularly in areas with '3d terrain'. It's running smoothly most of the time even on my ancient machine which doesn't even meet the minimum system requirements (Pentium® 4 CPU 2.66GHz; NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT)!
It only started to go slo-mo when lots of objects are exploding shortly after another which I find acceptable.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

I finally got round to beating Diablo II only a few weeks ago. Had the game since it first came out but just never put enough time/effort into it. I'd get a character all the way through and then bounce half a dozen times off Diablo and just get bored with trying.

 

[TarionzCousin]

Thanks for the replies. It sounds like fun to me, in a click-click-clickety-click kind of way.

If there are no scrolls of Town Portal, the old trick of throwing up a portal in the rearguard and running into it when fleeing won't work. Is there an equivalent? Or is there no quick way to escape?

 

[GSHamster]

If there are no scrolls of Town Portal, the old trick of throwing up a portal in the rearguard and running into it when fleeing won't work. Is there an equivalent? Or is there no quick way to escape?

You do get a line of "defensive" abilities. Some of them are movement abilities, like the Demon Hunter has a move where she cartwheels away. So I suppose you could use those and just run away.

Not really sure what else there will be.

 

[LightPhoenix]

If there are no scrolls of Town Portal, the old trick of throwing up a portal in the rearguard and running into it when fleeing won't work. Is there an equivalent? Or is there no quick way to escape?

Not in the same metric of the D2/TP cheese. If you're in a position where the only way out would be the D2/TP trick in D3, you're probably dead. All of the classes have skills that can help defensively/evasively, but D3 requires you to play more tactically than D2 did. Crowd control is going to be an essential part of any build, especially in higher difficulties.

 

[SkidAce]

There may not be scrolls of town portal....but I used that ability several times during the beta.

It seemed to work just like the scrolls did. Not sure about how often I could use it or how to regain the ability. I failed to take notice of those details.