DiabloFans

This is a nice change, and will allow more variability to defensive skills rather than the one or two top ones.

Sigh, I shouldn't be doing this now but here it goes and I will make this quick. The idea that WoW is easier is actually, false. Follow me here I've raided since vanilla as a healer, and tank. As a healer, I was a paladin for the longest time, still am, as well as a shaman. For tanks I use Warrior since Vanilla, I've added a Paladin and DK tank. The actual mechanics for each of these classes has increased in difficulty, movement is far more prevalent than in the past, controlling your CDs are mandatory, for healers this was a yawn aspect.

For a pally healer I had 3 buttons I needed, that number has gone up, along with moving. For my Shaman, my main healer this xpac I have, I think, 5 heals, and multiple CDs I use. Again Movement is damn essential for longer portions of the fight, in Vanilla it was almost non-existent.

Tanks, this would be a joke to really go over the amount of positioning needed in the game now than in the past, my warrior went from 5 button rotation two something close to twelve. My DK is at about 17 buttons, thank the gods of NAGA and Nostromo. Paladin is a cake walk by comparison but still more than 10 buttons.

The reason WoW "seems" easier is that the knowledge base has grown, substantially. Back in the day it was Thottbot and Elitist-Jerks, while EJ is still damn relevant due to it's forum community, the resources are just fantastically more plentiful. WoW is actually more complex in its end-game and even its 5 man dungeon design. Please go look at UBRS and or Undead Strat timed run, those were the top of casual difficulty and mechanic wise they are childish in comparison. The difference that people have seen is giving more power, and importance to the tanks, and healers, and removing some from the DPS. CC has died but now DPS has to worry about their performance more. If your DPS doesn't have the numbers you're dead on Spine.

My point is to say that WoW is dumbed down for the reason you have brought up is to say that Calculas is dumbed down for having better tools to help students learn the material. That isn't dumbing down, it is making the learning experience more efficient.

Edit: and on a note, to get me an Equinox to agree on something, that is like a sign to the end of all things. Thanks you've caused the end of the world.

Sigh, really disappointed with how this post went down. Listen people me and Maka don't agree very much, heck I think there is some sort of prophecy of the End Times if we do, that said I think calling him a whiner is inappropriate. He does have a legitimate concern and I went through some effort to look at what the other video did and even run some test myself. I didn't call him a whiner, and I would appreciate it if people would respect other people's point of view, he is one of the good posters on this place.

Anyhow down to what I came across, in the previous video showing lag hit it showed Diablo II, III, and Torchlight. Two in an offline setup and one with an online only, and we know which one that is. So I did my own test because I know that Torchlight and Diablo II work fine.

My test was using the Monk against an Unburied.

Test run one: Hit and hug - This was the one you see in the video, Hit and hug is the concept that you run and impact a mob rolling off them to pass. Most of the time the gargantuan would swing and hit me while I was still on him, yet there were times when he would just look at me as I rolled on him and then swing. He has a long reach so usually it looked like I was in range but two times I got a bit more distance from him and then still go hit.

Test run two: Drive by - This involves going right past the enemy, not a single stop, not a single touch, well maybe a sight brushing. Anyhow whenever I did this one I didn't get hit once, not a time. The Unburied response time varied but even at his fastest I was just out of range.

Test run three: Run and Gun - This involves running up to the mob and gunning it, like a game of chicken. So lets say that I'm running up to a mob and realize I don't have enough health to survive the hit, well I gun it and right before he is on me he swings and I get out of the way. Well that is the scenario and he never hit me except...

Test run four: Run and Hug - This time I run till I'm basically hugging the mob then I get out of the way. The Unburied's response time varied, usually I was in range when he hit, sometimes I was out of the way, all times it registered a hit.

Test run five: NOOOOOOOO - After Luke Skywalker, the Unburied gets ready to hit me almost hitting me, and I Blinding Flash him, no hit is received.

With all these test done I can say this much for the system, the monster's attack is based on the server, that is where the hit is occurring. Now how does the server know you're in range to be hit, well based on your position at the start of the attack and present rate of motion. This means that if you are in close proximity, touch the mob, the server is now attacking your character even if your PC doesn't show this at that at moment. The reason you don't see the hit is because your computer hasn't received the attack message yet, not that you've not been hit.

Now then why did he miss when I passed right by? The answer is easy if a body is in motion when it passes a mob on the attack, then the server says it will stay in motion. There was a Sixth test which proved this, I would run past the unburied and stop when it was half way through its attack, it would look like it hit me but didn't register one. That is because the server assumed I would keep running till the attack was done.

So what does this all mean? Well actually it means that there is an Uncanny Valley if you want there to be. For the most part this system is seamless. Hit registers are really well timed with ping slow or not, this is because every hit from the computer has to send a "I got the message" to the server. Beyond the whole, the guy is dead, the server has to have some ability to calculate survivability to stop abuse of the system and that is what we saw in the first example of lag in HC.

What does this mean for people like Maka, well I don't honestly know too much. I at least respect his unhappiness with the situation and would be unhappy if Blizzard didn't treat me like a targeted audience member. Still I think with all this they have a lot of contingencies that basically say, if you can live an encounter you likely will unless your judgement in your actions state otherwise. Sure you can fool the server a little but for the most part it is pretty good about knowing your movement patterns and so on.

Thanks KageKaze I do appreciate. This is me trying to understand everyone's point of view a little, which I always do. Got to think how these games are built to respond to our cognitive process. Most people would be lost if everything in Diablo 2 were in the game right now. Having played the Beta I've had to learn to think about concepts I didn't even consider in Diablo 2.

Like should I disenchant this item or save it for my Witchdoctor? It sounds like a simple process but woah, that is a totally new dilemma, if I were a new player in the proprosed complex item theory and had to then also think about what Charms I want to keep as well... @.@ dizzying. My thought is that they wiped the slate clean to, to get people back into basic management concepts. Like that Megaman X video and how it helped you learn all the mechanics, just way more so.

People will not really be getting the hang of this game till about level 60 when they truly start to balance out gear for benefit sake. When you can still level up, an upgrade is an upgrade. When all gear is random and level 60, dang now you got some thinking to do. Now, lets put people in a group with 3 other people and ask them to deal with Charm itemization and pick up rune words, or just the new rune system.

Yeah, screw it, I will play something a bit more basic thanks. <- I'm saying this as a new player

Maka, I do apologize but my previous post got lost in the series of tubes that exist right now.

My point was more that the game is a decade apart. Here is the thing, you, me, and everyone in this little Diablofans community know about all things Diablo. Diablo 2 is a fresh piece in our minds. This is a very accurate fact that we all know that complex space management. My point was that this game is going to sell to a lot more than just our little community.

For them to jump into a new game, or jump in after having not played for a decade, Diablo 3 can't just go around and give you too much to play around with. They originally were going to have a lot of inventory management the reason they cut this back, I believe, was to keep the game from getting too complex. People who haven't been playing Diablo 2 within the past year aren't going to be ready for complicated space management.

I'm sure this is what they saw in play testing, that people new to the game experience and concept of Diablo found it daunting to manage so many different variables in the game. So they've gone back and said, lets easy people into this game, crafting items, that will be complicated. Managing gear with a shared stash for your toons, that is going to be complicated, not to mention different item sets for different rune configurations. For a new game, well over a decade since the last one, you can't just have a sequel act like the collective consciousness still remembers it freshly. This isn't a Modern War sequel, it is a Diablo sequel and decade can cause a hard reset to the way the mind will process all the complex mechanics that built up over the previous installment in the series.

Sigh, I'm slightly annoyed I wrote a nice little article and somehow didn't get posted.

That said the point in a very short note is that the game we are playing is new, and the concepts of complex space management are just not ready for the game at this time. Usually I would put more work into a post like this but I just lost literally 45 minutes of typing and really disgruntled about that.

It was weird too because my Copy button didn't work either. Sigh.

Anyhow you can't expect a game which is very New to be very complex out of the gate with tons of management systems. It has been over a decade since Diablo 2 and a lot has changed in the gaming environment, so Diablo 3 shouldn't have those complex mechanics.

Druid.

Which class do you wish they brought from the D2 but didn't.

I think there will be a good deal of attrition since the content is fairly limited and can be finished quickly. For others, like myself, it will be something I will likely go to all the time. I can live with limited content, I just need my fix.

Quote from FelReaver

With the 1K exapple i mean it'll take too long even for a quick glimpse over each item. No i'm not talking about uniques. That search may return some legendaries too, but lets say i don't have gold,so i'm stuck with just rares and blues. Now in this lvl range 35-40 there could be better blues because of their higher tier than some rares, which are included because of more affixes they have. And i'll get a nice soup of say blue and yellow rows in my search query.
Then how can i know what is the highest ED affix in this level range. If i search for 200 % ED i may skip unintentionally 35-39 range, cause it's no possible bellow ilvl 40. This is valid for other affixes. I have to make some pretty educated search to find optimal gear.
And i may end up searching in a price range.

I don't see the issue here. First you want a certain type of item, then find there are quite a few available with your simple definition. You bump up the initial variable and find that items within the the higher value is now too high. So you now know that 40 is overshooting . Well let's apply a limiter to the formula, you don't want anything above blues. Ok with that set and if 40 is too high let's set the ratio to 35-39. Your search query should look like this:
Search: weapon
Lvl range: 35-39
Quality: blue
Affix: ED 100%

Your results are now 600. Now let's browse through the first two pages, you see affixes that offer fire damage and another that has a proc spell. Lets make a new search:

Search: weapon
Lvl range: 35-39
Quality: blue
Affix: ED 100%
Affix: fire dmg
Affix: spell proc

Now my guess is you have 100 items of blues and greens. Please browse and see what you can afford.

Quote from Equinox

What people seem to be missing is how much this limits build choices. The presence of OP skills, limitations of one skill per tier, and cooldowns, will lead to lines, e.g., builds will compose of a set of skills from 1-2-3-4-5-6-7, with careful balance of the line, removing builds within tier or multiples of tiers, thus drastically lowering build diversity to each tier x number of skills x number of tiers - side effect of balancing, vs a permutation of # of skills per class.

I am not sure why we're coming back to DII really...

I honestly never liked the tiered system that much to begin with, but they seemed to have wanted to genuinely balance them this time around. Now, why does Locust Swarm even exist? To spam something before I get my tier 7's? Disgusting.

What exactly is wrong with limits? I like Chess you know but I really wish I could just move every piece like the queen. All these limits are holding back my ability to play thhe game the way I want to.

Hope you saw what I just did there.

On a totally unrelated note, you do realize that we left the original purpose of this conversation back some where in Alaska. Right now we're arguing about how Tier systems depreciate the value of entry level skills when we are suppose to be talking about the introduction of massive CDs in the Diablo game system.

I played a new class, the only class I haven't played significantly already, to level 19. By level 15 I was forcing myself to continue. Seasons was a good idea, and that's about it. It wasn't thought through and executed well. I've thought about picking it up again, but games are supposed to be fun and I wasn't having fun. There are too many other more enjoyable options out there and only so much of my time. I doubt I'll play through the season again. It would just result in me dropping the game all together and I don't want that to happen. If you like playing seasons that's great. It's just not worth it to me.

Having fun with seasons, so i'm still playing. The only thing i'm hating again is the useless normal bounties until i get a RoRG. Starting a new char from time to time is fun, gearing the char is fun, having to complete a1 bounties for just 1 drop is not fun for me.

Quote from dousie

Rapid fire and Distintegrate are compared because rapid fire hits a ton of times and enemies die so fast anyway that its almost as if it were a pierce, it also does double the damage disintegrate does.

Aaaaand, all credibility is lost.

I think that the closest thing to a "scientific" measurement of which skills are best, is Blizzard's data about which skills are used the most, and which ones are used the least. With millions of highly-motivated "testers" playing the game for hours on end, the "wisdom of crowds" will tend to drive the aggregate toward the skills that are the most efficient and have the best synergies with other skills. Having said that, objective cross-comparisons of skills from one class to another are nearly impossible (If they weren't, Blizzard wouldn't keep nerfing and buffing the skills with every patch.)

On a side note, Is it just me, or does anyone else find it annoying when people refer to individual monsters as a "mob"?

Quote from Slayardarklaws

Rares in D3 are incoherent ( class items with everything but stats for the class it's designed) way more random ( the damage range on a 60 lv weapon can be as bad as a lv 25 weapon). Caracters are much more stuff relient and stuff is much more affixes relient. And you have to add that customisation is really poor and half of what was promised was cut just before release ( mystic and other gems ).

An offline /auction house less mode would have been, and still would be the decent thing to do.

Snipping your quote a bit to save space.

My D2 experience is probably different from yours since I only played Classic - I didn't like LoD for various reasons. I'm assuming you played LoD because probably 99% of D2 players did. In classic, I do remember most rares being crap. Weapons especially needed dual +dmg mods (eg. kings + merciless) to be good. In countless hours of playing D2 I think I only ever found one truly godly item, a chu ko nu which was within 3-4 of its maximum theoretical damage - no +skills or leech though.

As for an offline mode, I support that request even though I wouldn't use it. But I see no reason why you shouldn't have the option, it wouldn't harm my experience in any way. I like the idea of options, because we all want something a bit different. One size doesn't fit all, and so the only realistic way to satisfy a broad range of customers is to allow them to customize the experience by giving them options.

I'm in agreement with you on this - Blizzard didn't give us very many options with this game. It seems to be their philosophy lately, they're actually getting to be a lot like Apple The mentality is basically "This is what you should like, and if you don't then there's something wrong with you". I see this in WoW with forced guilding, and I've seen it in D3 patches where they've specifically outlined how they want players to play the game (eg. "we want players hunting down elite packs", when justifying the MF nerf in regards to chests and the general nerf on the contents of chests, barrels, bone piles, etc.) Right, right... forget what we like, we're playing *their* game... -.-

Quote from Indimix

Now, if you bought your way to your goal, sure, the result is the same, in less time, with less effort, but the emptiness that it leaves behind already destroyed that experience for you. It is just not the same.

And, this is not an opinion, this is human behavior.

I'd have to disagree with that, I think it is opinion. You find enjoyment in finding your gear, which is fine. I find enjoyment in online economies; in trading, buying, selling, etc., and also in having the best gear I can get, no matter how I get it. In fact, what drew me so powerfully to D2 was that it was the first game I played with an online economy.

This is how sometimes i feel about this game

Everyone and their dog is making posts about trying to get world's first 60. I'm here to tell you why its not a big deal, and suggest an alternative!

1.) No one remembers who gets the first level capped character, it will not bring you fame or E-peen. There will be many people at level 60 within days of release, and no one will give a shit about it by the end of the month.
2.) No one person will get first 60, because at least a dozen people will claim that they did it. AFAIK there's no way to prove it short of screenshots/video/other easily faked methods.
3.) Thousands of people will hit level cap within a few hours of the first person who manages it. You aren't special, you merely had the free time and perhaps a little more than your fair share of luck (IE XP shrines, finding the right path on your first try in a lot of places, etc)

Being able to invest the kind of time to reach 60 in a few days isn't an accomplishment. This is from someone who took time off work for release--I, like you, could be doing this exact thing. However, my first level 60 will probably be my slowest, since this will be my first time playing the game and I want to experience it fully. If I were to race to level 60, I would ruin the game for myself, enjoying it less in the name of a worthless goal.

Not everyone has to agree with me, but I hope some of you will be dissuaded from this stupidity and avoid ruining your first play through.

If you are looking for something more worthwhile, the first person/group to beat Inferno will probably be much more prominent, seeing as its actually a skill challenge instead of a time investment. Unlike the race to 60, Inferno is something that not everyone can do, and is a real accomplishment.

One component of that WILL be hitting level 60 quickly, but that is not THE goal, and it doesn't require that you do it first--only that you do it in a timely fashion. Skill will be the biggest component beyond that point, and the best individuals and groups will get ahead not by crunching (well, not entirely) but by being tactical and coordinating.

As an example of how this might appeal to people who ARE only interested in e-peen, its worth noting that the important and memorable "world firsts" of games like WoW were not hitting level caps, but defeating big tough raid bosses.

*Prepares for onslaught of hatred for mentioning WOW*

The point is that this leveling mentality is an artifact from the silly ladder system in Diablo 2, and the broken way the level cap operated (IE being far higher than anyone ever had any need to attain). Don't let the flaws of D2 corrupt your first experience of D3!

I must be in the extreme minority here, but I actually LIKED the story in Starcraft 2.

Not only does Diablo III not have a sub, the whole game is the game so it's not like you're missing out unless you're in Inferno, while in WoW, all the content is concentrated in the raids.

This thread could be a lot more productive if the OP could speak like a normal person...