I've been playing AH-free on my DH since launch. Well I sell but I don't buy (dunno if you consider that non-kosher :P). I'm only up to Inferno Act I, mostly due to playing other games and having to work late. It's not nearly as bad as people make out, I haven't had any real problems and my luck with drops have been nothing to brag about. Of course that will change when I get to Act II. I'm looking forward to having to work hard to gear up for that.
I'm playing mostly solo, I play with friends occasionally but because I don't play very much they quickly got ahead of me lol.
I wonder if anyone has done a "world first" Inferno clear with no AH purchases, trades with friends or gear donations from sponsors. I know I wouldn't be in the running, I don't play the game nearly enough for that
Apparently there is a loot bug in Act III and IV and they are fixing it in the next patch which is "soon". No you do not need AH items to beat the game, it has been done. It's supposed to be hard, Inferno is a bonus super hard difficulty that you are supposed to struggle to beat. The trouble is as soon as they created it people mentally made Inferno the new Hell and Hell then became worthless content you grind through and forget. I kind of wish they hadn't made Inferno and had just made Hell as hard as Inferno is.
For me the greatest thing about D2 was that I was able to create my character the way I wanted to, I could set up my stat points, my skill points, and my gear just the way I wanted in terms of my play style and the type of character I made. Cold sorceress were my favorite, they were so damn fun because they where difficult to make awesome because of the gear requirements; you had to get good gear to go through hell so I had something to look forward to at the very least the satisfaction you get watching "Cold immune" disappear because of the gear you just got and you ravage everything that was kicking the hell out of you before.
Yeah I just hope you didn't accidentally put a point somewhere bad because OOPS there goes the whole character.
There were only a handful of viable builds at any given time (varied patch to patch) and your stat points were just get enough STR to wear the BiS gear you traded off some duper then dump everything into your main damage stat. All of it was false choice. I mean you could get away with lots of suboptimal builds (anyone remember the guy who beat the whole game without killing any mobs? Remember naked level 1 no pots no skills?) because D2 was incredibly easy. D3 has a variety of skills and runes you can use, sure some are crappy (hopefully they'll retune them) but I'd still say there's a lot more real choice than D2 ever had.
P.S. That Cold Immune thing - pretty sure they eventually patched it so -resistance couldn't break immunity. Ever notice how only a Cold sorc could do that (and Necros with Curse of Elements)? If you were Fire or Lightning you were screwed. I don't know how anyone can consider being railroaded into an entire talent tree "fun" or "choice" it was clearly a design flaw that drastically limited your choices. Actually the real answer is you were never supposed to be able to break immunities on any class because D2 wasn't supposed to be soloable in Hell difficulty. They said as much.
So basically, while he's not exactly a nice guy, everything Zoltun Kulle says is correct and if we'd listened to him we'd have worked out that Adria was not to be trusted, Diablo would never have been released and Leah would probably still be alive. Consider:
1) He's constantly warning you not to trust the people egging you on in your quest
2) When he discovers the black soulstone has the lords of hell inside it he tries to explicitly warn you that you're being manipulated, which you interpret as a betrayal and kill him (doh). Notice that he actually DOES keep his word at least up to this point, the only reason he doesn't hand over the soulstone is because of what he realises your "friends" plan to use it for
3) He keeps telling you that neither angels nor demons can be trusted and humanity's destiny is to become Nephalem... ironically he was originally killed by the other Horadrim which were created by Tyrael, and Tyrael is responsible for the reemergence of Nephalem since he shattered the Worldstone. And the plot of Diablo 3 is basically all about humanity recovering their Nephalem birthright and defeating Hell (and forming an alliance with Heaven apparently, though we'll have to see how that works out)
4) Basically all of the incidental detail he gives you is correct, such as the Angiris Council's vote on Sanctuary's existence. I even saw him hint to the Templar that he knew the true origin of his order, I wonder if he has similar dialogue with the other companions
Now if we hadn't killed him he might still have run off with the soulstone or attacked us or in some other way required killing anyway - I mean, he's a selfish jerk - but he at least had the decency to warn us about what was going to happen so we could've avoided or mitigated it.
People who call for game developers to be fired (by name no less)... I don't know how they sleep at night being such worthless human beings. You don't like a game don't play it. That website the OP linked is a spoiled toddler throwing its toys around, it's disgusting to look at.
I love D3 but even if I hated it I wouldn't try to wheedle my way to a refund. When you buy a game you know you might or might not like it. I've bought heaps of games in my time that were TRULY terrible (honestly people QQing about D3 have no concept of how terrible a REAL bad game can be), you shake your head and move on. And even if I was such an incensed tightwad that I asked for a refund on a game, I sure as hell wouldn't start up a website bawling my eyes out over it and claiming that the company is the worst thing since Hitler. Just revolting behaviour.
You don't like D3? That's cool, different strokes. There's heaps of other games out there.
The sharpness feature is kind of cool but shading everything darker... I find it comical that people would install a mod just to shade the pixels a bit blacker. Why not turn down your monitor... or paint the screen with black nail polish...
Mmm, I don't think taking the gems from 3 to 2 really helps, I'd much rather they reduced or eliminated the gold cost of combining them. I nearly bankrupted myself upgrading all my gems until I decided it was a waste of gold. Same really goes for Blacksmithing. We already lose gold by salvaging for mats instead of selling or AHing, the cost of crafting seems a bit much. I'm sure when everyone's rich it won't matter anymore, but the mat cost will scale with the AH prices so there's always going to be a significant cost involved. The craft price just makes the smith unduly expensive for new players.
Completely doctored stats. They take ALL chars into account for their stats. Given that probably 50-60% of all characters are mules, or under level 5, it's complete BS.
I'd estimate about 30-40% of all players are in Inferno. Probably more.
Well I completely trust your statistics over Blizzard's. How did you extract this data from their servers? Was it SQL injection:
SELECT (Biased_Personal_Opinion) AS Fact
FROM My.Anus
WHERE Supports_Personal_Agenda = 'Y'
P.S. I have a job and didn't want to take a week off to level, and I'm only up to Act I Hell as a result. Also I'm taking the scenic route and enjoying the game at my own pace, doing side achievements, etc. I imagine I'm far from the only one.
I had about 30 chars on D2, never got above 80-something on any of them though. Normal and Nightmare were excruciatingly boring on multiple alts, I amused myself by collecting sets and uniques. Had nearly all of them
Well....Diablo 2 lasted 12 years and is still breathing....and leveling on D2 was extremely static. There were only two viable places to level, Baal and Chaos Sanctuary. If you ask me, the act of level and drop grinding in D3 already seems FAR more dynamic.
Yeah I couldn't stand grind leveling so I just refused to level alts like that. Sooooo boring. Hopefully nobody will find an "optimal" experience route in D3 and reduce it to the same thing. Also having a simple cap of 60 with no 80-99 "gouge your eyes out" XP grind should mitigate that problem.
1
I'm playing mostly solo, I play with friends occasionally but because I don't play very much they quickly got ahead of me lol.
I wonder if anyone has done a "world first" Inferno clear with no AH purchases, trades with friends or gear donations from sponsors. I know I wouldn't be in the running, I don't play the game nearly enough for that
3
1
If you don't like the AH don't use it. And then if you don't like grinding for rare drops WHY ARE YOU PLAYING DIABLO?
1
Yeah I just hope you didn't accidentally put a point somewhere bad because OOPS there goes the whole character.
There were only a handful of viable builds at any given time (varied patch to patch) and your stat points were just get enough STR to wear the BiS gear you traded off some duper then dump everything into your main damage stat. All of it was false choice. I mean you could get away with lots of suboptimal builds (anyone remember the guy who beat the whole game without killing any mobs? Remember naked level 1 no pots no skills?) because D2 was incredibly easy. D3 has a variety of skills and runes you can use, sure some are crappy (hopefully they'll retune them) but I'd still say there's a lot more real choice than D2 ever had.
P.S. That Cold Immune thing - pretty sure they eventually patched it so -resistance couldn't break immunity. Ever notice how only a Cold sorc could do that (and Necros with Curse of Elements)? If you were Fire or Lightning you were screwed. I don't know how anyone can consider being railroaded into an entire talent tree "fun" or "choice" it was clearly a design flaw that drastically limited your choices. Actually the real answer is you were never supposed to be able to break immunities on any class because D2 wasn't supposed to be soloable in Hell difficulty. They said as much.
1
2
1) He's constantly warning you not to trust the people egging you on in your quest
2) When he discovers the black soulstone has the lords of hell inside it he tries to explicitly warn you that you're being manipulated, which you interpret as a betrayal and kill him (doh). Notice that he actually DOES keep his word at least up to this point, the only reason he doesn't hand over the soulstone is because of what he realises your "friends" plan to use it for
3) He keeps telling you that neither angels nor demons can be trusted and humanity's destiny is to become Nephalem... ironically he was originally killed by the other Horadrim which were created by Tyrael, and Tyrael is responsible for the reemergence of Nephalem since he shattered the Worldstone. And the plot of Diablo 3 is basically all about humanity recovering their Nephalem birthright and defeating Hell (and forming an alliance with Heaven apparently, though we'll have to see how that works out)
4) Basically all of the incidental detail he gives you is correct, such as the Angiris Council's vote on Sanctuary's existence. I even saw him hint to the Templar that he knew the true origin of his order, I wonder if he has similar dialogue with the other companions
Now if we hadn't killed him he might still have run off with the soulstone or attacked us or in some other way required killing anyway - I mean, he's a selfish jerk - but he at least had the decency to warn us about what was going to happen so we could've avoided or mitigated it.
1
I love D3 but even if I hated it I wouldn't try to wheedle my way to a refund. When you buy a game you know you might or might not like it. I've bought heaps of games in my time that were TRULY terrible (honestly people QQing about D3 have no concept of how terrible a REAL bad game can be), you shake your head and move on. And even if I was such an incensed tightwad that I asked for a refund on a game, I sure as hell wouldn't start up a website bawling my eyes out over it and claiming that the company is the worst thing since Hitler. Just revolting behaviour.
You don't like D3? That's cool, different strokes. There's heaps of other games out there.
1
Well to get a D2 look you'd have to replace the graphics with pixels the size of your arm and badly compressed textures.
1
He says on a site called "Diablofans".
Well I completely trust your statistics over Blizzard's. How did you extract this data from their servers? Was it SQL injection:
SELECT (Biased_Personal_Opinion) AS Fact
FROM My.Anus
WHERE Supports_Personal_Agenda = 'Y'
P.S. I have a job and didn't want to take a week off to level, and I'm only up to Act I Hell as a result. Also I'm taking the scenic route and enjoying the game at my own pace, doing side achievements, etc. I imagine I'm far from the only one.
2
Yeah I couldn't stand grind leveling so I just refused to level alts like that. Sooooo boring. Hopefully nobody will find an "optimal" experience route in D3 and reduce it to the same thing. Also having a simple cap of 60 with no 80-99 "gouge your eyes out" XP grind should mitigate that problem.