DiabloFans

I'm gonna echo what Blizzard said... I doubt you'll be able to do this legitimately (and exploits are really not that interesting).

As an SP player DII is generally difficult. Especially if, say, you do not use runewords (I used to not know runes do anything besides the bonuses on them, haha). If DIII is as difficult as DII I'll be pretty happy, as long as it's more balanced because DII was full of random difficulty spikes everywhere.

WTF formatting.

Quote from DGen

Edit: Equinox, saying gold league SC2 players "excel" is just as wrong as saying they are "incredibly bad" if you ask me

I never said they excel. Just saying they're not incredibly bad. There's always some low-life who manages to say that an NFL football player sucks because they are not terribly good among NFL players in general, but that's still an idiotic statement to make. (I suppose an NFL player would be equivalent to a grandmaster player, but I definitely heard SCII players put down various grandmaster players. It's pathetic)

Quote from Sythrasz

implying that being in the middle of a curve means you're in the middle of the skill spectrum.

Gold players are above the curve (I know that's hard for you to believe), and, yes, statistical distribution does inform you of the relative skill level, and ladders work on relative skill level.

The differences between Masters players do not really matter. Masters are already in some tiny percentage of the entire playerbase. Nobody cares.

Quote from Sythrasz

Also, gold players do not have "decent" macro, they have absolutely horrid macro. Neither do they have a good understanding of build orders or a good ability to execute them.

Can a gold player's macro be improved by anything besides playing time? Not really. Same goes for build orders.

Again, you're judging "good" against a standard of a master/grandmaster. I'm judging against normal people. Most normal people are far, far, far, far worse than Gold players. That's why calling Gold players incredibly bad makes no sense. Yeah, they're not professional StarCraft players, why would they be? I know a guy in Masters, he has 3k games per season. That's insane.

Quote from Sythrasz

Let's not derail this thread.

I wouldn't call it derailment because it's quite relevant to a lot of stuff discussed in this thread in regards to player skill and the like.

Under normal circumstances, professional players out of the picture. And they should be. Always. Especially in a game like Diablo. You're using professional SCII players to compare normal players to, and that leads you to call anyone who's not a professional player an "incredibly bad" player when that's not really reflective of their contribution.

And this goes into the thinking of Diablo and difficulty. There are very big perception differences between a normal player and a professional player (i.e., player with time). Often high-time players try to adjust the game to their enjoyment, but high-time players are a tiny segment of the population. They do not want to realize that or something and resort to calling everyone else "incredibly bad". Fuck your attitude.

Quote from Sythrasz

Sorry, but this is all kinds of wrong. Gold league players are incredibly bad.

Being "incredibly bad" requires some degree of putting special effort into being purposefully bad or something. That's not what Gold players are, you have to realize there's a LOT more players in Bronze/Silver, which makes Gold players pretty good. Gold players typically have decent macro and an understanding of build orders involved, and mostly they're busy building up macro, aka APM, which doesn't come from much except just plain playing.

You need to learn to use terms the way that actually makes sense. Saying everyone who's below Grandmaster is "incredibly bad" is just stupid and shows you have no understanding of simple statistics and where the Gold players are on the normal distribution.

Taking it easy.

Waking up at whenever BB opens and driving there.

As a solo player, fuck no.

It seems your complaints are specific to assumptions on boss design. Boss design that doesn't make much sense. Even DS doesn't do this. In DS you can die 30 times a day to the same guy over and over again...

I kinda don't see them making a boss that penalizes pet classes or penalizes them that much that you're bound to lose. And I believe skeletons exist specifically to provide health globes. You can make your build more rounded, though, with lifesteal or whatever.

Nevertheless, if all bosses are just boringly safe that would be lame and HC won't mean shit.

No, I'm against the retreat option, and I'll probably be the first person to die to some boss like that.

I'll try it on first playthrough, not sure if I'll stick with it.

Quote from Hans

During the open beta my internet was quite laggy so I doubt that I can play HC. 95% of the time it was red and often it was in the 3k to 5k range. It did get better later in the weekend. I might still try it if it is that laggy.

Assuming this is not on your side you probably shouldn't judge connection by the beta.

Granted, I had ~100 ping and little issues. My ping got worse later for some reason.

Well, I can't really agree with anything you're saying... including your experience with Duriel, whom I have definitely killed on many characters without TPing. Besides, Duriel is a badly balanced boss, like many things in DII, which were never fixed or rebalanced specifically due to the TP exploit anyway, so the comparison is invalid.

I really don't see how escape is relevant.

Your survivability with a boss has very little to do with how fast you move (aside from dodging attacks or what not), because you need to kill the boss, not avoid him. Your survivability is directly dependent on the rate of getting health globes out of the boss compared to how quickly you are losing health. OK, sure, you avoid damage and you are almost dead, there are no health globes anywhere, what are you going to do? I suppose if you're a Monk you can use one of your healing spells that have a cooldown, but you need Spirit for that anyway...

This is just encouraging lvling none stop just before a boss to make sure you are completely outgearing and lvling him before you try him. This goes against the general design idea, run around explore, have fun, kill shit.

Hardcore typically goes against the general idea of "play like an idiot", yes. That's the point.

I PREFER HC because I do not "run around" and mindlessly kill shit. I turtle, poke things, and run away like a little bitch. The appeal of this is that getting shut in a room with a boss you can't kill is pretty terrifying.

I was pretty happy with how everything looked in-game... *shrugs*

Strategy guides made more sense when our family lacked a decent internet connection, so we'd usually still have version 1.0 and the strategy guide for that version. I actually really loved strategy guides back in the day, many of them were very extensive talking about all sorts of random stuff, and with pictures. My AoE II guide explained good starting build orders and stuff, and had some history stuff along the way. The StarCraft guide was pretty cool, too. When you have no clue what to do and you have no internet they're stupidly nice to have.

A lot of games back then were also highly counter intuitive.

I did use my Demon's Souls manual extensively, mostly because I think the game didn't get patched much and the Wiki on it was horrid (although the manual lacked tons of info...). A lot of those are good for an overview of keys, as well.

I'm not really against owning a guide, just for the sake of having a book, having something to just look through initially, and look back on later and be like "this is what it was 4 years ago, whoa".

I wouldn't mind if there was some way to sort of enlarge the item icons. I don't particularly mind how they look on the website. But, I think DIII is kinda more oriented towards seeing stuff on your actual char, and I think in that way they did a good job.

My exams are next week.

*ahem*

So, about Save & Exit.

I'm playing DII on HC right now and it's funny how different the mentality is.

You can definitely rely on S&E to get you out of any situation that's a bit awkward. Say, for instance, you got surrounded or something. In DII, you may not necessarily particularly care about certain situations where you are not hit very quickly but you are sort of dying. In DII, you mostly worry about bursts of damage that will kill you before you can react, you don't think about anything else.

The other thing is potions. First of all, you can get yourself a belt full of rejuv potions that fill you up instantly. Second of all, you can keep your health orb full just by drinking the normal potions whenever it's slightly less than full.

In DIII, you can't really do that. Sure, you can spend that potion but then you basically robbed yourself of the only rejuv you had. That's really not going to happen. You're going to have to use those health globes (outside of certain skills, that is). And that itself generates a bit of a problem because the logistics of getting health globes is a whole other issue that will probably influence a lot of builds.

DIII will be really punishing in terms of "trying" new areas. You don't want to be where you do not belong, because there are really no easy exits. Bosses completely lock you down iirc. A bit different from DII where you can barge into w/e and test the waters and be like "hmm, no, I can't do this" and TP the fuck away.

To me, S&E and TP's are some of the most egregious exploits in a video game, and they're so essential to the game at this point that they really water a lot of it down. I think my Diablo gaming history would look VERY different without TPs, rofl.

Relatively. I'm in that stupid "I'm bored of everything" stage, and my exam schedule is nowhere near as heavy as it needs to be to occupy me.

Quote from asfastasican

In Diablo 3, people will shift through different combinations of skills that have very little identity. They aren't builds, just combinations. When somebody says they are making a crit barb or an aoe barb or bash barb, you will have absolutely no way of knowing what the hell their build actually is. It's just another combination of skills that does the same crap as the next guy's.

I don't quite agree...

Sure, there will be some shifting. But I played Diablo II with free respecs (plugY) most of the time, and continual shifting doesn't make sense and not something I did often.

Sure, I started a Shock Zealer, and I can probably switch to a Frozen Zealer, heck, maybe even to a Vengeance Pally. But say I switch to an Avenger, I'll need quite different gear even at middle levels. I prioritize really fast attack speed with low damage on Zealers. I need a somewhat fast weapon for an Avenger but damage is far more important. I need a tiny bit of mana leech and I'm set for my Zealer. I need a shitload of mana recharge/leech/add for an Avenger.

Knowing my typical layout, I could probably get to middle of Nightmare on a Zealot. Say I switch to Avenger there... well, tbh, I'd probably just like not be able to do anything just because of my gear. I'd have to go to like early Nightmare or late Normal and farm for a damage weapon. And these are fairly similar builds. The more similar two builds are, the more shifting you'll see. But gear will regulate that.

What you WOULD probably see is people possibly switching when they find new gear that doesn't fit their current build. And that'll only work so far. Closer to Inferno builds will get more stagnant, and then you have Nephalem Buff on top of that.