Diablo III beta observations

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#1 Sat, 04/14/2012 - 12:46
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Diablo III beta observations

First impression- Beautiful game. Feels like Diablo, with a new fresh feel. Game kinda throws you into the action starting you a bit out of town. Town has a much different feel from Diablo II. Voice acting is very good, as expected.

Currently playing as Barbarian. Planning on giving each one a try- really looking forward to using Witch Doctor and Sorcerer. 

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Sun, 04/15/2012 - 19:42
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I am really enjoying it so far. It's everything I remember liking about Diablo II and have refined it and made it better.. so far. 

Have played a little of Witch Doctor and Wizard as well. 

Witch Doctor class is really unique- Mostly ranged. Start with a poison attack. that drains life. Pretty cool skill that you get later allows you to haul pots of poisonous spiders.

Wizard has been the most difficult for me so far. Been at risk the most. Been too early to have any kind of mana problems. Mana seems to regenerate quite fast.

Have not played with monk or demon hunter.

Auction house is accessible in character screen- different but like it. Not sure how I feel yet about lack of warping scrolls. Goes more off of a waypoint system so far.

Sun, 04/15/2012 - 19:42
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I am really enjoying it so far. It's everything I remember liking about Diablo II and have refined it and made it better.. so far. 

Have played a little of Witch Doctor and Wizard as well. 

Witch Doctor class is really unique- Mostly ranged. Start with a poison attack. that drains life. Pretty cool skill that you get later allows you to haul pots of poisonous spiders.

Wizard has been the most difficult for me so far. Been at risk the most. Been too early to have any kind of mana problems. Mana seems to regenerate quite fast.

Have not played with monk or demon hunter.

Auction house is accessible in character screen- different but like it. Not sure how I feel yet about lack of warping scrolls. Goes more off of a waypoint system so far.

Mon, 04/16/2012 - 10:20
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Thanks Pulsaris... 

 

After finding out you can't play the game offline, i'm on the fence now about picking it up.  But keep it coming, something might sway me :lol:

Mon, 04/16/2012 - 15:38
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I've been trying to get in the beta since they started it. I guess I can wait another few weeks though. I am still bummed about the drop from 8-player to 4 player.

Mon, 04/16/2012 - 18:10
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While that is a bummer, I understand it. 8 player would just be way too cluttered. Beta experienced some downtime yesterday night for a short while.. no big deal.

Tank, I hope you don't use the internet requirement as an end-all to getting it or not. You may be missing out big time especially if you loved D2.

First "area" has been very expansive. A lot more traveling outside of dungeons than I remember. Also been a few small caves with an "elite" monster or two. Seems like different classes have different layouts to the not as important caves and structures you enter. There's a Cathedral into the first part of the game that is very expansive. Maps all have the same idea as previous, when you explore an area, it is revealed on the map. There are still healh pools like D2, but no mana, as it is not needed. There are also random blessing artifacts that you can activate and get a random attribute increased for 2 mins. Anything from more gold per kill, to speed upgrade, strength, etc. There are waypoints inside the more expansive dungeons, so you dont have to walk all the way out. I like that feature a lot. Quests seem to move you around the world a bit... not linearly. In order to move further along the Cathedral, you have to do a quest, and that quest leads into another cave, which leads you to another new area.

The drops between characters has been really good to some chars I've had and extremely stingy with others. I had four blue items on my witch doctor and only 1 on my barbarian at the same part of the game. 

 

Still enjoying the hell out of this game (pun intended?). Going to feel sad when I hit the end of the beta, but so far has not been too short. Thankfully the game comes out in less than a month, so cheers to that.

Planning on trying out monk or demon hunter class next.

Tue, 04/17/2012 - 17:27
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The main aspect I dislike about no offline play is that when you played any sort of multiplayer the map would reset the areas explored, as the map would like be a new map.  This was a pain when mrs.plato and I used to play Diablo2, at least until I learned that you could use command line extensions when starting the game; -seed "some random number".  This would keep the map the same in all games you played offline or via LAN, which is how we played. 

This made it much quicker to jump into a game and continue where we left off.  I'd hate to lose that bit of convience because we'd be forced to be logged into Battlenet to play.

Also, I'm guessing that commands such as "/players x" aren't valid.  Not that it's a big deal, I've read enough about D3 now to know that it's supposed to be much harder than D2 was; likely no reason to start off every game typing in "/players 8". 

And remember, there's no NDA on the D3 beta, in fact there never was one.  Diablofans (I think that's the MMO-Champ one) has been posting screenshots, videos and even patch notes for each build since the beta started. 

Have fun playing the beta, we'll be joining you soon™

Wed, 04/18/2012 - 14:47
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Latest update:

Played as the monk class. Was going into it thinking I would not like it. So far it is probably my favorite. The martial art attacks are sweet. It works more like a Barbarian than wizard or witch doctor. You replenish by using abilites and other abilites spend spirit. 

Watching corpses fly across the screen with a flying roundhouse kick makes me giddy.

Wed, 04/18/2012 - 14:47
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Latest update:

Played as the monk class. Was going into it thinking I would not like it. So far it is probably my favorite. The martial art attacks are sweet. It works more like a Barbarian than wizard or witch doctor. You replenish by using abilites and other abilites spend spirit. 

Watching corpses fly across the screen with a flying roundhouse kick makes me giddy.

Wed, 04/18/2012 - 14:47
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Latest update:

Played as the monk class. Was going into it thinking I would not like it. So far it is probably my favorite. The martial art attacks are sweet. It works more like a Barbarian than wizard or witch doctor. You replenish by using abilites and other abilites spend spirit. 

Watching corpses fly across the screen with a flying roundhouse kick makes me giddy.

Wed, 04/18/2012 - 14:47
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Latest update:

Played as the monk class. Was going into it thinking I would not like it. So far it is probably my favorite. The martial art attacks are sweet. It works more like a Barbarian than wizard or witch doctor. You replenish by using abilites and other abilites spend spirit. 

Watching corpses fly across the screen with a flying roundhouse kick makes me giddy.

Wed, 04/18/2012 - 19:18
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Are you going to try the Demon Hunter class? That is the one I've been looking at starting with.

Thu, 04/19/2012 - 12:50 (Reply to #12)
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cmandingo wrote:

Are you going to try the Demon Hunter class? That is the one I've been looking at starting with.

 

Yes, I'm actually planning on doing that class next. I'm hoping to make my Demon Hunter tonight. I should have at least some initial impressions by late tomorrow sometime.

Thu, 04/19/2012 - 12:50 (Reply to #13)
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cmandingo wrote:

Are you going to try the Demon Hunter class? That is the one I've been looking at starting with.

 

Yes, I'm actually planning on doing that class next. I'm hoping to make my Demon Hunter tonight. I should have at least some initial impressions by late tomorrow sometime.

Fri, 04/20/2012 - 11:42
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The beta is open for everyone this weekend. Check out the article for the link to DL the Beta

Tue, 04/24/2012 - 18:43 (Reply to #15)
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lbsutke wrote:

The beta is open for everyone this weekend. Check out the article for the link to DL the Beta

 

 

:)

Fri, 04/20/2012 - 16:04
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Looks like they're doing a stress test and working on some logging and stability issues. I believe they started doing that last night. Have not been able to log in since they've put a cap on users. Definitely appreciate the updates they use on the login page. They seem to really be using the beta for its purpose and look forward to playing the finished product.

Fri, 04/20/2012 - 16:05
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double post

Fri, 04/20/2012 - 21:16
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The new update definitely made a big improvement to speed of game. Running much faster. 

Tried out the Demon Hunter class.... very cool. Most classes have health bar and one other bar- Demon Hunters have 2 others- one focuses on offensive abilites and can be reloaded with certain abilites, the other is used for traps. It's definitely a long range class, but a lot of fun. The first trap slows down enemies and is extremely helpful. Found my first gold item, but it was an axe.. bummer. 

 

Sat, 04/21/2012 - 08:38
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beat the beta last night with a couple of guys - good times.  Kinda running through the same part a couple of time (re-hashed) and it was way easy but it is just the intro part showing you how to use stuff etc. so I'm sure it ramps up the difficulty (or the difficulty could be set to some higher setting in retail).  Looked great and played great.

Sat, 04/21/2012 - 09:10 (Reply to #20)
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BlowMonkey wrote:

beat the beta last night with a couple of guys - good times.  Kinda running through the same part a couple of time (re-hashed) and it was way easy but it is just the intro part showing you how to use stuff etc. so I'm sure it ramps up the difficulty (or the difficulty could be set to some higher setting in retail).  Looked great and played great.

Yeah I think your skill xp will be lower (or at a lower rate) and a higher difficulty.

Sat, 04/21/2012 - 09:09
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Finished the beta up with LB last night, I went as Barb he was Sorc. Took all of 3.5 hours. Had some good rapport between a few of his skills and mine. He'd freeze em up, I'd leap in and stun them some more, then HULK SMASH away.

Very fun.

Plan to take a crack at some other class going today, I did want to max out my Barb since I only got to lvl 10, but thinking I'd rather play another class as well. Most likely will do Witch Doctor since he doesn't look much fun. Figure this will be a good place to try.

 

Sat, 04/21/2012 - 16:18
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Wizard is a lot of fun to play. mid to longer range, awesome secondary slow ability that does nice damage and the push back ability really comes in handy when you get surrounded.

 

Was able to train the blacksmith to lvl 2, but did not have enough of the "white stuff in the jar" to get the shield I wanted.

 

It was a lot of fun!

Sun, 04/22/2012 - 12:37
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I tried the demon hunter and the monk....the monk is win and it will def be my first char

 

Sun, 04/22/2012 - 22:14
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After hating the ghost recon demo and deciding the game is NFT (not for tank) i went and pre-ordered Diablo 3 today @ gamestop. 

How does multiplayer communications work, does it support a headset thru the PC or do you have to text communicate?  I'll be hooking up to the same TV and stuff the xbox hooks up to so i'm thinking XboxLive party for the chat if it's not built in.

Mon, 04/23/2012 - 09:10
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If it's anything like WoW / SC2 you'd be better to use the 2old2play Mumble server or a TS / Vent or even Skype because there previous in game voip offerings haven't been very good quality.  Doodi's mumble server is awesome and works great.

Mon, 04/23/2012 - 16:56
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Another really nice feature I've noticed is that once you upgrade your blacksmith, it seems to apply to all characters. In addition, the storage chest outside the cavern applies to all characters as well. Was very pleased to discover that.

Tue, 04/24/2012 - 11:40 (Reply to #27)
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Pulsaris wrote:

Another really nice feature I've noticed is that once you upgrade your blacksmith, it seems to apply to all characters. In addition, the storage chest outside the cavern applies to all characters as well. Was very pleased to discover that.

 

Sound slike they took a hint from other dungeron crawlers like Torchlight that had a communal chest that you could dump stuff in and other characters you had could pick it up.

Tue, 04/24/2012 - 18:16
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Ahhh shit i just found out they had an open beta this past weekend .....  shiiit.  Would have been all over that if i hada known/remembered.

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