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Anyone else playing Diablo III?

By clover kicker (Sun May 27, 2012 at 09:36:22 AM EST) (all tags)

My initial impression was "how the hell did they spend 10 years making this", and then I realized...

they spent the time animating exploding chicken coops and falling bookshelves and the other gazillion destructable terrain features.

I'm having fun, but holy diminishing returns Batman, nothing in this game justifies 10 years of development.

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Anyone else playing Diablo III? | 14 comments (14 topical, 0 hidden)

that was my impression too by the mariner (4.00 / 1) #1 Sun May 27, 2012 at 10:13:12 AM EST

from what i've heard from friends and what i've seen of it from various youtube channels, it seems pretty schlocky.

the core mechanics of diablo iii, as far as i can tell, -- dungeon diving, boss fights, class/skill based character building, and looting -- are not fundamentally different from what you see in multiplayer roguelikes (e.g. tomenet -- n.b. i definitely do not recommend playing that game), except the boss fights, which look to me to be fairly schlocky and reminiscent of WoW (which i also would never recommend playing). the amount of graphics they layer on top of what is basically a d&d simulator doesn't appear to help. you can have just as much fun, i'm betting, killing monsters, exploring dungeons, and collecting loot that's represented by ASCII characters as by animated fantasy art with particle effects.

there seems to be a change happening in video games. the major companies continue to work on complex long term projects whose complexity is really about 3d animation, rather than game logic or design, which really rely on the reputation they've built since the late 90s for sales. it seems to me a minority of these live up to expectations (i'd say starcraft ii is an example from blizzard). in the meantime, people working on mods (like the wildly successful dota) or completely off-beat, lo-fi stuff like minecraft and terraria are doing much better than i think they have in the past. i suspect this do-it yourself style game will become increasingly prominent in the market as traditional marketing is supplanted by social media.

graphical sweet spot by clover kicker (2.00 / 0) #5 Sun May 27, 2012 at 02:04:08 PM EST

I'm old-school but not completely stuck in the past, I consider graphical roguelikes an upgrade. I can never remember what the damn Q was supposed to be.

The Diablo series nicely captures the addictive dungeon diving of ASCII roguelikes with a solid loot system to keep you grinding. They're fun games.

Personally, I'd have been happy to buy a Diablo game with D2 graphics but running at modern screen resolutions.

But I recognize that the big publishers don't give a flying fuck about old-school gamers, it's all about the consoletard generation. The Elder Scrolls series gets sequels, and people think they're deep RPGs with solid mechanics.

The one glimmer of hope is Kickstarter, I'm hoping the Wasteland sequel is well executed and makes a buttload of money.

[ Parent ]

: Torchlight by ucblockhead (4.00 / 2) #10 Sun May 27, 2012 at 07:33:13 PM EST

Cheap, decent graphics, and very similar gameplay to Diablo.
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[ucblockhead is] useless and subhuman
[ Parent ]

(Comment Deleted) by anonimouse (2.00 / 0) #2 Sun May 27, 2012 at 10:39:04 AM EST

This comment has been deleted by anonimouse

WIPO by anonimouse (4.00 / 1) #3 Sun May 27, 2012 at 10:41:01 AM EST

Needs an OK between pretty good and hate it

Got free due to WoW subscription

Perhaps one likes it because it's not much different from D2 or even D1

Girls come and go but a mortgage is for 25 years -- JtL

Not me by ucblockhead (4.00 / 2) #4 Sun May 27, 2012 at 12:39:35 PM EST

Between the stupid always online garbage and still needing to get around to finishing Torchlight, I don't see the point.

So many games are getting deep discounts so fast. I've got a ton of unplayed games I got from Steam for < $5 each. I'm mostly just not buying games full price these days.
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[ucblockhead is] useless and subhuman

not blizzard games, i think by the mariner (4.00 / 1) #7 Sun May 27, 2012 at 04:22:36 PM EST

scII was at the same price for over a year. why bother waiting a year for 20 usd?

[ Parent ]

: Too many other games to play (nt) by ucblockhead (4.00 / 1) #9 Sun May 27, 2012 at 07:32:14 PM EST

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[ucblockhead is] useless and subhuman
[ Parent ]

hrumph (wouldn't post without a subject) by wumpus (4.00 / 1) #6 Sun May 27, 2012 at 02:46:24 PM EST

Either they kept changing the spec or wouldn't write one. Also I suspect that there was massive NIH syndrome and they spent the first 5-7 years writing a custom engine.

I'm sure that the conclusion management has is that it needs more DRM (somebody actually played it the last few weeks) and more studios shut down.

Wumpus

Blizzard by MillMan

(4.00 / 1) #8 Sun May 27, 2012 at 06:39:14 PM EST

I think they just spent the past 7 years on the WoW money printing machine.

"Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there are no libertarians in financial crises." -Krugman

Don't know how much there is to this by jayhawk88 (4.00 / 1) #11 Mon May 28, 2012 at 08:45:16 AM EST

...but the story I've read is that Blizz pretty much chucked a good portion of development that would have been Diablo 3 way back in like '03 or '04, as apparently the game was shaping up to be Diablo 2.5. Plus they lost all those guys that ended up doing Torchlight in, what, '07?

Like Starcraft 2, though, I do think that D3 is a game kind of past it's time. The arc here seems very familiar: Long wait, people are all hyped about it, telling you how many hours they played the game "back in the day", game is finally released, and it's fun and all, but it just doesn't hold quite the same magic.

Blizz will churn out two more SC2's and at least a couple D3 expansions of course, and sell a butt-load of course, but it's going to be very interesting to see what happens from here. It seems ridiculous to think, but seems like they might be a company on the way down. WoW has to lose steam eventually, and it doesn't seem like either SC2 or D3 are going to just completely set the world on fire. That Titan project they have in development I think is a lot more important to them than maybe any of us realize. We all thought that we really wanted a new Starcraft and Diablo, but I wonder if nostalgia glasses weren't getting in the way a bit.

i'd say blizzard is least likely to go down by the mariner (4.00 / 1) #12 Mon May 28, 2012 at 09:17:49 AM EST

of the major game companies. they get competitive gaming, which gives their titles ridiculous longevity. players don't have to form a league to get a fairly consistent pvp experience suited to their skill level, but they always can if they want. (here i refer to their in-game ladder systems, which actually work reasonably well -- vs. say valve that can't do a matchmaking system to save its life). this creates a larger hardcore following and therefore longevity. the only thing that makes me think blizzard might be in trouble is the way they allowed dota to get away from them. dota was golden and all they needed to do is make a cheap hire and it would be theirs, but valve did it instead.

[ Parent ]

: True by jayhawk88 (4.00 / 1) #13 Mon May 28, 2012 at 10:44:46 AM EST

And I suppose that a person could argue that pvp is the future of PC gaming anyway (even more so than now), and the single player model is becoming somewhat antiquated.
But I do think they're going to need to create a new IP to "survive" (I use the term loosely, not like Blizz as a company is going to disappear overnight of course) long term. Anything you try to do with Warcraft/SC/Diablo at this point is going to be burdened by the expectations of past glories. It's possible to overcome this, Warcraft 3 certainly did with Warcraft 2, but it's incredibly difficult and fraught with peril.
I think you're right: DOTA was the next big thing that Blizz could have easily been dominant in had they not had a brain fart. I think they probably just underestimated how popular this style of game really was, and didn't see the potential in the free-to-play model, which it seems is really a driving force for people to play these kinds of games (earning points to get new characters/skins being a sort of way of "leveling up").

[ Parent ]

animated exploding chicken coops by BadDoggie (4.00 / 1) #14 Mon May 28, 2012 at 03:21:45 PM EST

Dungeon Keeper II did that and it was funny. And DK came out around two decades ago... and didn't root you or require you to be on-line to run single-player.

Oh, and it also required you to do more than mash your mouse and three number keys forever.

woof.

Jesus Christ you're a tool -- Dr Thrustgood

Anyone else playing Diablo III? | 14 comments (14 topical, 0 hidden)

-	luv	0%
-	pretty good	75%
-	hate	0%
-	didn't buy	25%
-	am boycotting because of bullshit DRM dumbfuckery	0%


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