Diablo III Beta?

[Noodlestein]

Just curious if any of you got an invite.

Played through what is playable as the Wizard and I must say I was disappointed at how easy it was (beta is beta) and I hope that what I played was not all of act 1. (Last boss doesn't even compare to Andariel)

also:

[Vosskah]

<insert catering the the casuals comment here>

[Shaen]

I got in a while back and played through with every class. Well, except the witch doctor, which I didn't like at all. Maybe he gets better later on, but I hated him enough as to not even finish the small amount of beta content with him.

As for how hard it is, I don't expect the default difficulty to be very tough anyway in games like this. It seemed about right to me. It probably gets harder in later acts, but I don't really think there will be much challenge until your second playthrough.

Either way, I'm still super excited for this to come out. This is pretty much the perfect game for me.

[Noodlestein]

Shaen wrote:

I got in a while back and played through with every class. Well, except the witch doctor, which I didn't like at all. Maybe he gets better later on, but I hated him enough as to not even finish the small amount of beta content with him. As for how hard it is, I don't expect the default difficulty to be very tough anyway in games like this. It seemed about right to me. It probably gets harder in later acts, but I don't really think there will be much challenge until your second playthrough. Either way, I'm still super excited for this to come out. This is pretty much the perfect game for me.

Yeah, need that Hell/Nightmare modeage.

@Voss, the game does feel casual, lack of worrying about potions, no town portal scrolls, no skill tree just choose what you want to use at the time, etc.
Not a fan of the co-op OHAY everyone has a banner in town, use it to teleport to them.

[Rhius]

I'm not in the beta, but a friend of mine back in Chicago was/is and one Sunday I went over to his place and played for quite a bit.

Unless they've added anything (you ended with the Skeleton King, yes?), the content of the beta is roughly equivalent to Diablo 2 Act 1 through Blood Raven. AKA, perhaps 25-30% of Act I, so really not that much at all.

As for no potions, town portal or identify scrolls; is all that crap really necessary? I enjoyed the game without them. Red globes are a suitable replacement and no scrolls means more time to kill the hordes.

It's true that there are no skill trees, but the depth of skill and rune combinations should be enough to keep anyone busy. It certainly seems like there will be no end of different yet viable specs based on personal preference.

[Shaen]

Yeah, what appears on the surface to be fairly simple customization due to the small skill trees is actually a pretty robust system. It's true they've catered to the casual crowd, but what people often fail to recognize is how much of that is simply streamlining things. You can tell me until you're blue in the face about how awesome it was, for example, to be required to chug potions to succeed, but I don't buy it. Gamers often confuse tedium with being "hardcore".

[Sinpree]

I sort of like the new talent system for this game and what they are going to in WoW. Simple but yet enough complexity to make it interesting. Also seems to be more player style driven versus "this is what is best and you must play it" kind of direction that talent trees have. As Shaen was saying that while it is simple it has a ton of depth which is nice I think.

[Noodlestein]

Rius Aldregan wrote:

I'm not in the beta, but a friend of mine back in Chicago was/is and one Sunday I went over to his place and played for quite a bit. Unless they've added anything (you ended with the Skeleton King, yes?), the content of the beta is roughly equivalent to Diablo 2 Act 1 through Blood Raven. AKA, perhaps 25-30% of Act I, so really not that much at all. As for no potions, town portal or identify scrolls; is all that crap really necessary? I enjoyed the game without them. Red globes are a suitable replacement and no scrolls means more time to kill the hordes. It's true that there are no skill trees, but the depth of skill and rune combinations should be enough to keep anyone busy. It certainly seems like there will be no end of different yet viable specs based on personal preference.

The new skill system is growing on me, but I miss some things from D2, like Fulminating potions etc, sure you hardly ever used those but the fact is that if I wanted to I could.
And I think that they took TP/Id scrolls out so people wouldn't have to manage their books to keep them full (Not like it was hard). but I'd still would have liked to keep those that way.
That's just how I feel though of course.

[Shaen]

Blizzard Italy supposedly leaked the release date of April 17th. Jay Wilson was asked on Twitter whether he could confirm or deny that date and he basically said "no comment", which would seem to mean it's fairly accurate. They've been pretty swift up to this point in dispelling release date rumors with the "you'll know when we know" type statements, so the fact that they're not saying anything is probably a good sign. Also, OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG!!

[Millya]

Another game where I can be a mage/wizard?! Yes please. Although that's the week before our city's comic expo where I will be busy seeing the entire cast of TNG. (omgomgomgomg) so there's at least ONE weekend I won't be playing Diablo.

[Rhius]

I'm back in the Beta, having won a key from PCGamer.

Not terribly enthused about the changes made since I last played. They've completely abandoned the concept of runes dropping from mobs and being attachable to any skill you want; now runed versions of skills each unlock at a specific level and there's no rearranging this. Less customization as you level for the lose.

They've also completely abandoned town portal scrolls (yay; just press a button to town portal), identify scrolls (yay, with a "huh?"; right-click to identify any item rare or rarer), the ability to salvage items in the field (boo) and training scrolls for merchants/crafters (boo? Now you just pay them gold to level them up.)

The new skill UI completely sucks. Completely. The UI screenshot Noodle posted earlier in the thread has been replaced by a clunky pile of dog excrement. Instead of being divided up on one screen between resource generators, resource spenders and passives, you now pick the button you want a skill in then pick from a very small set of skills Blizzard has decided belong on that button. So you have offensive resource generators on left click, other stuff on right click, defensive moves on 1, utility moves on 2, etc etc.

It's possible to change to "elective mode" which allows you to put any skill on any button; in case you're insane and you want resource generators on both mouse keys or two defensive skills or three utility skills or whatever. BUT, the same skill cannot exist on two keys at once so you have to shuffle skills around and use placeholders if you want to rearrange your layout. Can't just drag and drop elements in the UI.

And if you want, say, a utility skill on right click, you have to do the following;

1) Open the skills menu
2) Click on the right-click button's skill slot, which opens a new page with whatever Blizzard thinks belongs there
3) Navigate from the default right-click available skill page to the utility skill page
4) Pick the utility skill you want
5) Pick the rune for said skill
6) Press Accept

Whereas, in Noodle's linked screenshot, you click a slot, you click a skill, you click a rune (if any are slotted for that skill) and you're done. There's just a ton of wasted space and wasted clicks and wasted design elements in the new skills menu.

Each class is like this. There are six buttons for skills, so there are six pages for skills. Demon Hunters have a whole screen-filling page each for (I am improvising here) hatred generators, hatred spenders, aoe moves, defensive reposition moves, utility moves and traps. With a whole 3-4 skills on each page, when there's room for 20.

It's just incredibly clunky and frustrating to navigate. It makes swapping skills mid-dungeon too complicated which is double aggravating because swapped skills take 10 seconds to come off cooldown.

[Shaen]

They've already said the UI is still very much a work-in-progress and they're aware of the issues.

As for the rune changes, I'm fine with having them just unlock instead of being random drops that fill up your inventory. There's still a ton of customization with the unlockable runes, you just have to wait until you hit certain levels instead of waiting for the right ones to drop.

[GDPR#2621198]

GDPR#2621198

[Shaen]

Woo!

[Noodlestein]

SuppliciumSC wrote:

May 15. Never. Forget. At least it came one week after my birthday so I didn't have to say: "Sorry family, you'll have to wait a couple... months."

Bah, beat me to it D:

But hell yes, even though pvp stuff wont be there I'm still going to enjoy the hell out of this game.