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Missing criticism:
OMG! Diablo 3 came out just before exams period for me
I havent played any of the Diablo games but I was excited as hell until the release date came out.
Great blog though Really enjoyed the humourous parts and made me more excited about when my exams finish...
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I think the best comparison for people complaining about the story in D3 is probably to ask what they thought about the story in the movie The Expendables. (I've heard people complain about that, too, sadly.)
If you came expecting the story to be more than the thematic gameplay elements held together with packing tape and cliche, you may have been in the wrong theater. D3's storytelling may be predictable, disjointed, and as neurotic as a hamster on speed, but the elements themselves aren't terrible. Just overused.
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Gheed, you speak my mind. Massive 5/5!!
LOL @ WTF Diablo has tits! Indeed why does Diablo, the Lord of Terror, the Prime Evil and the TITLE OF THE FRANCHISE look less intimidating, is smaller, and has the most lame skill set out of all the act bosses? At least Belial went huge and started dumping nasty goo all over the stage while swinging its massive hard-scale arms (pretty intimidating IMO), Azmodan had nothing but at least he was fat like a boss should be. Butcher was scary as fuck because of D1 memories and also he has nasty hooks and hooks are scary (hello Dota). Diablo... makes you fight shadow versions of yourselves, hurray!
I like the game so far, but inferno is sooo broken and shielding molten frozen waller damage reflect arcane vortex teleport extra fast plague elite mobs are so lame. huehuehuehue
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One criticism you missed is that yet again, Australians and anyone else with latency upwards of 300ms gets the big ol' fist. I'm a hardcore player and both of my hardcore characters have been killed in disconnect related accidents before I can even get into nightmare mode.
I understand the logistics about why Australia can't have a local server and I'm not demanding one, but its undeniable that we get fucked over this DRM thing.
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Moar complaints. NO GHEED IN D3!
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On May 23 2012 06:16 Gheed wrote: One would think that after a person reads the heading "Forum Index > Blogs" that said person would surmise that this was, in fact, a blog. As a blog, one would assume that anyone reading it would acknowledge that the opinions and thoughts contained therein were those solely of the creator of the blog. Further, when such a blog was entitled "polemical," and, in the very first paragraph, professed itself to contain a "series of straw man arguments" about how a group of people were "stupid," one would imagine that those people purported to be stupid would simply not read the blog. Instead, they choose to read the entire thing, become angered, and then feel obligated to post their dissent, rather than simply ignoring it in the first place, perhaps affirming the blog author's initial stance on their stupidity.
The major point of contention seems to be the story, but let's be honest. Were the people I was power trading with interested in the story? Did the crafters I traded sets of 40 perfect rubies or amethysts for Pul runes care about the story? Did high school me care about the story when I stocked up on Mountain Dew and leveled new characters with my friends? Did the people glitch rushing for hell forges worry about the story? Did the people who PK'd in Baal runs worry about how their actions would affect the demise of the Lord of Destruction?
No. The people who cared the most about Diablo 2 were the ones that cared least about its story. The ones that care about the story are transient. They play a few times and then they drift to another game with another story. The grinders, the farmers, the power traders, those are the ones that give the game its longevity, and they are the ones the game is designed to cater to.
Have my babies bud.
Seriously tho, everything you write is goldmine of win and own.
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On May 24 2012 02:15 TheDougler wrote: The major point of contention seems to be the story, but let's be honest. Were the people I was power trading with interested in the story? Did the crafters I traded sets of 40 perfect rubies or amethysts for Pul runes care about the story? Did high school me care about the story when I stocked up on Mountain Dew and leveled new characters with my friends? Did the people glitch rushing for hell forges worry about the story? Did the people who PK'd in Baal runs worry about how their actions would affect the demise of the Lord of Destruction?
No. The people who cared the most about Diablo 2 were the ones that cared least about its story. The ones that care about the story are transient. They play a few times and then they drift to another game with another story. The grinders, the farmers, the power traders, those are the ones that give the game its longevity, and they are the ones the game is designed to cater to.
What the hell, the fact that you spend ages grinding to get better gear, which is essentially just catering to your innate desire to make up for failures in your person by compensating with objects, automatically overrides the fact that someone else enjoys the story immensely?
Diablo 1 and 2 were religions for me, I played them very regularly, all the way through the story like 6 or 7 times for each game. I also did power grinding and had a 92 CS zon and 96 summon necro, and I can honestly say that the latter part was immensely inferior in terms of memorable gaming experiences. In many ways I feel ashamed for wasting time on the latter. I feel nothing but good ol' nostalgia for the experience of entering Andariel's lair for the first time and literally having to pause the game because I was shaking so much.
People who invested a lot of emotion into the story and the mystique of the dark atmosphere had just as much invested in the game as those who grinded for years not caring about the story at all. If Diablo 3 caters to the grinders, then good for you, but for people like me who only spend time on games like this if they have a good story and good visuals have a legitimate issue with the game if our desires are not met.
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Honestly, I just get bored with this game; really fast. Same thing happened with D2 as well--never even got past act II.
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On May 24 2012 06:10 CrazyF1r3f0x wrote: Honestly, I just get bored with this game; really fast. Same thing happened with D2 as well--never even got past act II. maybe it's just not your cup of tea, simple. I can understand if someone can get bored fast after hours of spamming your mouse.
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On May 24 2012 06:19 brachester wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2012 06:10 CrazyF1r3f0x wrote: Honestly, I just get bored with this game; really fast. Same thing happened with D2 as well--never even got past act II. maybe it's just not your cup of tea, simple. I can understand if someone can get bored fast after hours of spamming your mouse.
Its a completely different game lvls 50-60.
Edit: I felt like it was really easy until I got to Hell/Inferno mode, and then I wasn't just mindlessly clicking the shit out of my mouse.
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Just one thing to add to the whole "story sucks" discussion in D3 vs D2. In D2 the story wasn't outstanding, but it was minimal. Getting and finishing most quests required about two clicks + 2 escape key presses of interaction with the NPCs. This meant that when you did the quest again in NM and hell, you could just blaze through all the dialogue portions. So even if the story was downright horrendous, you could choose to be exposed to very little of it, and there were extremely few interruptions in gameplay on account of story.
The problem is twofold in D3. Let's first accept that the story is crap. This would be fine if two things weren't the case: 1) if grinding or clearing areas didn't require you to run through a bunch of cinematics or talk to three different NPCs to progress/get quest rewards, and 2) if quests were less tied to progressing through several parts and interacting with several NPCs to do so.
These two issues make it so that whenever you want to replay a portion to grind or farm some items/gold, you get bombarded with portions of bad story and bad writing via character dialogue in all the unskipable thought bubbles, which just makes it all the more aggravating.
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On May 24 2012 07:09 Vod.kaholic wrote: Just one thing to add to the whole "story sucks" discussion in D3 vs D2. In D2 the story wasn't outstanding, but it was minimal. Getting and finishing most quests required about two clicks + 2 escape key presses of interaction with the NPCs. This meant that when you did the quest again in NM and hell, you could just blaze through all the dialogue portions. So even if the story was downright horrendous, you could choose to be exposed to very little of it, and there were extremely few interruptions in gameplay on account of story.
The problem is twofold in D3. Let's first accept that the story is crap. This would be fine if two things weren't the case: 1) if grinding or clearing areas didn't require you to run through a bunch of cinematics or talk to three different NPCs to progress/get quest rewards, and 2) if quests were less tied to progressing through several parts and interacting with several NPCs to do so.
These two issues make it so that whenever you want to replay a portion to grind or farm some items/gold, you get bombarded with portions of bad story and bad writing via character dialogue in all the unskipable thought bubbles, which just makes it all the more aggravating.
I can esc skip through everything O.o
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Oh wait, I think I need to disable some settings. Damn. My bad :/
Story is still terrible.
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On May 24 2012 07:17 Vod.kaholic wrote: Oh wait, I think I need to disable some settings. Damn. My bad :/
Story is still terrible.
There's a story? I thought the dialogue was just Blizzard doing their part with unemployment rates. The rest was cutscenes I haven't watched and thematic elements that would probably have been pretty badass in context. Oh, and that one stupid blatantly obvious plot twist that I didn't hit escape for because I was grabbing food out of the microwave.
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4 person cap has to be the worsttt T___T Almost as bad as tits
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The 4 person party is still something I think about from time to time. I can't figure out why, really. There are 5 classes. And in today's age of gaming 5 is a popular number. DotA, quite a few other team based games like shooters, even their own WoW is five. Interesting choices....
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On May 24 2012 09:07 Duka08 wrote: The 4 person party is still something I think about from time to time. I can't figure out why, really. There are 5 classes. And in today's age of gaming 5 is a popular number. DotA, quite a few other team based games like shooters, even their own WoW is five. Interesting choices....
Maybe they're going to port it to the Wii
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I dunno wtf is up with blizzard thinking their "ingame cinematics" are good (death of cain). They have them in sc2 also and it's just freaking bad imo.
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Gheed, I fucking despise you, but you make entertaining blogs. 5/5
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I agree with almost everything, except for the story complaint. I really didn't like the story. There was no cameo of mephisto/baal, and Diablo looked terrible imo. In diablo 2, he had muscles, horns protruding all from his back, sick looking claws, bipedal walking but running on all fours etc. In Diablo 3, he looks more feminine and less badass than ever (and don't give me that "well he came from Leah" crap).
The relationship between the 3 brothers in Diablo 2 was great and was prime lore for the story. Now they come up with Azmodan and Belial, 2 other major evils who seemingly just happened to be bigger than everyone else, and so were thrown into the story. They have little to no relevance to Diablo himself. Diablo, though you know he will show up later in the game, isn't mentioned for 75% of it.
+ Show Spoiler + Diablo 3 gets rid of the illusion of choice and lets you exercise actual choice by allowing you to pick some skills you find to be your favorite or the most effective. By further allowing you to retrain your skills at any time, it eliminates the "noob trap" element that Diablo 2 had, where a character that appears to work in norm and NM becomes useless in Hell. How many sad saps did you see making windy druids only for them to realize that they suck absolute shit in Hell? If Diablo 2 had the same system Diablo 3 does, those poor druids could have run around with hurricane killing small packs of crappy monsters and then when they found a boss or a tough unique group, they could switch to werewolf form with some life leech to tank them down. Instead, the druid player was just left with a dogshit character and the person ended up just rerolling a meteorb sorc or a hammerdin like 90% of everyone else. If you have 1000 choices and 999 of them are bad, that is not customization.
I also disagree with your post about customization in D2 vs D3, and how you think that there is only 1 or so viable builds for a hell-built character; that every one was just a cookie-cutter build no different from everyone else. Idk how you can say this is any different than D3. You are restricted even less in D3 because the majority of the skills on the characters suck on hell and inferno mode. You are absolutely pidgeon-holed into a single build that everybody HAS to use because nothing else works. Demon Hunter has to rely on their smokescreen + preparation to survive in inferno (but that got nerfed anyways). Wizard had something too but idk what it was, just that it got nerfed as well. Hell, there aren't even any viable builds for the Barbarian on D3 in inferno mode. In D2, I realize that some of the skills weren't optimal to invest in, but there are even less ones in Diablo 3. Idk how you can say "If you have 1000 choices and 999 of them are bad, that is not customization." only applies to Diablo 2, when it certainly (and even more so imo) applies to Diablo 3.
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