Arcade Dad

Diablo 3 Beta

So opposite of the SWToR beta I was in this weekend, I was actually excited for this one. I loved the Diablo and Diablo 2. I still play Diablo 2 and I jump on any clone games that come out for it.

Well a mud hole was stomped in my excitement for this game fairly quickly.

I’m going to go ahead and get the good things out of the way, and then hit the neutral, and then the bad.

Good:

Each class does play differently and has a unique feel to it.

Graphics were nice.

Sounds were pretty awesome.

They kept the random terrain and random dungeon layout.

You get a Horadric Cube wannabe that breaks down crap gear into crafting materials, this way you can avoid heading back to town every few minutes to offload loot.

Neutral (Yes we are here that fast):

Crafting, I have no idea why this was added to the game. I made a few items (mainly daggers and armor for my Witch Doctor), and then promptly forgot about it.

Auction House, I have no idea why this was there, but hey, whatever! Folks were using it, and I bought something to test it out

Breakable/ collapsible terrain- I found myself trying, hard, to use this to my advantage, most often the mobs would wander out of range of falling walls before I could crush them with it. I eventually started destroying it purely for the XP bonus it was giving me and that’s it

Storyline, I might just be nitpicking here but the first chapter revolves around killing the undead prince of a fallen kingdom that’s raising undead hordes to burn your town. (Sound familiar?)

Achievements

Quest tracking

Bad:

Talents, Diablo 3 should serve as a warning to everyone willing to put money down for any future Blizzard products. You have no choice other than do I use X spell at this time. You can’t create unique characters, because all characters get the same abilities at the same level. The talent tree is purely there for you to mark what level you have made.

This is horrible in my opinion, what if I want super huge angry Zombie dogs? Too bad, gone are the days of dropping more points into an ability to make it better more powerful

Why am I fighting regurgitated Diablo 2 mobs? Yes Blizzard in a few cases you gave them new names….. but that doesn’t change a thing and you know it

Zero competitiveness – I entered a few group sections and was underwhelmed, with all of us being cookie cutter examples of each other it was simple a Q&A session of “I’ll run X if you run Y” and then Bam! everything dies.  There is no more tweaking of ridiculous builds, or talent trees to create the perfect Necro/ paladin combo duo (My favorite duo from D2)

It felt like I was doing the exact same thing as I did in the previous Diablo’s, there was nothing new.

UI – why can I only use 1-5 and then my mouse buttons for abilities, spells, potions, etc… And why do they each unlock at different levels? (Yes that’s right you have to level up to unlock them….) Was this an attempt to cover up the shitty skill progression?

TL; DR version:

If the final product looks anything like what I tested, everyone would be better served dropping $20 on Torchlight 2 and enjoying a vastly superior game.

Additional thoughts since I wrote this:
(Just general thoughts, you can view than as positive, neutral, or negative)

More so than any other the others, this version caters to Ranged combat, in a big way.

With the Witch Doctor I was able to use Zombie Dogs, and the With Doctors version of the Death Knights “Death And Decay” (Called Grasp of the Dead)ability to kill everything. Note: I didn’t use any other abilities purely summoned my dogs and then cast Grasp of the dead everywhere.

Once I got the Cleric/ paladin dude following me around, then I stopped casting Grasp, set the pallie to heal and just looted everything

Monks are far better starting out than Barbarians

the “Talent Tree” is here for each class:
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian

This Holiday weekend I spent a few days playing around in the SWTOR Beta.

I’ll be honest here; I’m not excited for this game. I haven’t followed it, or pretended to look forward to it. It was something off on the periphery of my gaming area that I knew was happening but I genuinely just didn’t’ care about it.

The BETA invite shocked me when it came, I don’t’ remember signing up for it, and I first thought it was a hoax or spam letter that Gmail missed. So color me surprised when it turned out to be legitimate and I was able to start playing on Saturday morning.

I started off jumping onto a low population server, “The Promenade”, I did what any self-respecting person would do when given a choice between “The Republic” and the “Sith empire”, I chose Sith. There are four classes for each faction, so 8 classes total. This shocked me as ridiculously small, but after a few minutes I honestly didn’t care. I next chose a Bounty Hunter and I think Chiss for my race.

I loaded into a Hutt Tournament and hit a wall. I can’t really define this wall, it was there, it was impenetrable, and I didn’t waste much time on this character selection. I managed to get out of the first quest line, talk to a few droids for more quests, and then stated farming npc’s belonging to a rival Hutt moving into the area. I picked up some gear…. Upgraded some skills…..

Yea, sounds exciting, I know….

So after I deleted this abortion of a character I rolled a Republic Jedi Knight….

Right from the outset of entering the Training grounds over run by Flesh Farmers, it was a different sort of game.

I first noticed this huge bizarre looking antenna sitting on my characters back, I was hoping this wasn’t some sort of training Saber, but it was. I let out a sigh, expecting to have my brief flash of excitement dropped on its head. Okay so first series of quest revolved around finding some padawans that were lost, and they need my help because I am one of the few Combat trained Padawan in the area, and no Jedi have popped up yet. (Going to ignore the 200 other combat trained Jedi running around with me, the quest line made my character appear to be a badass, and that was AWESOME in my opinion).

I ran around the area smiting flesh dudes with my training saber for about 5 minutes before I started getting weird loot drop for me. I don’t believe this is the norm, but I had a run of loot drops that would make any experienced MMO gamer envious. First I picked up a Vibro Sword, then some pretty wicked boots, gloves, Pants, and a chest piece. My Jedi looked like what I hoped my, now deleted, Bounty hunter would have looked like!

I really wish I had taken pictures of all this.

Anyway, you all don’t care what my guy looked like.

The Jedi Starting area played out nicely, I rescued the kids, made it to the temple, got some training, met some badasses, and then moved into a Twi’lek village to help them. The demo took an odd turn for me here. This section wasn’t as fun to play, I did a few quests but soon found myself not caring again about the plight of the Twi’lek people and their illegal settlement. I still helped them, but I did it for typical MMO reasons, not out of any sense of emotional investment.

I next rolled a Mirialan Trooper, and had the same problem that I had with the Bounty hunter.

I dabbled with the rest of the classes for a few more hours, but just couldn’t bring myself to continue playing.

I will say this though, I do feel that it is a good game. Its solid and reminds me allot of Dark Age of Camelot.

The quests were laid out nicely and there was a sense of accomplishment when doing them, however I think mentally that I was unprepared to enjoy this Beta/ Demo period.

The voice acting, while unneeded, was pretty awesome, and helped to immerse me in what I was supposed to be doing. The Zones are large and travel was quick and easy.

I like the ability you have to go back over quest dialogue or even end, skip it.

I actually didn’t have a single issue with the game the entire weekend other than one horrendous lag spike that ended with my Knight getting gutted. No crashes, no horrible tears or falling through the world, etc…

I “think” this will be a solid game, and popular. It certainly lends itself towards that. I just wish they had more classes, races to play with. I hope Bioware/ Mythic succeeds with this, anything they can do to get closer to releasing Imperator  or DAoC 2 is a win in my book

So Last Monday night I went to Best Buy in Malbis, Alabama and stood in line with some pretty decent folks for a while. It was the first time I had done this for anything really but thats just how excited I was for MW3 to be released.

Bought the game, ran home and tried to get some matches in, no real luck (Problem was on my end, my ISP was down at the time.), so I crashed. I had a few Doctors appointments scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, so everything was set for me to play for the next two days.

Campaign came first, I was frigging excited to know what was going on with Soap, Price, and Nikolai. (Not to mention the entire Eastern Seaboard of the US)

I loaded it up, ran around till I got to Prague, and hitting Makarov and his “cabinet” in a hotel, and then just stopped. I can’t even really explain why, the campaign is interesting but I don’t feel engaged with it, I can’t bring myself to really care at this point about anything thats happening. There are a few emotional hooks, but they never came across as anything but really bizarre attempts to force the player to be emotionally invested.

I backed out and jumped into Multiplayer. This was a little better but still something was missing from it. The weapon selection is superb, the perks, the progression, the unlocking…… virtually 99% of multiplayer is perfect, but something is off, and I don’t know what that is.

I have held off on posting this for over a week now because I have been trying to define what is “wrong” with the game.

The Multiplayer maps look amazing, but the layout could be far better on a few of them, or graphics toned down a bit, they are a shade “too busy”. However there is nothing really “Wrong” with them, they work well, and appear balanced

The Weapons are all solid, each feels and behaves differently, there is a noticeable difference when you put new attachments on each, or perks, or proficiencies.

The new “Streak” system is a ton of fun, and allows for allot of customization, although I do foresee allot of changes coming soon to the Support Streaks, everyone seems to be using only that setup.

I do feel the game is better than Call of Duty: Black Ops, but I am not sure if its better or equal to Modern Warfare 2, and this really bothers me.

I “want” to like this game…. I should “like” this game, but I am slightly indifferent to it, and after a week I don’t see this indifference going away at all

From CoD: Elite
Level 49
Kill confirmed for 6 hours
Domination for 5 hours
TDM for 2 hours
and then a few others for about another hour

496 of 2230 challenges completed