[PC] Diablo 3 - Deel 6

[psychoclown]

Diablo.incgamers - BlizzCon 2010 Mega PvM Witch Doctor Report

I was curious to try out the Witch Doctor this year since I can’t make up my mind about the class. I know I love playing mages and archers in the Diablo games, and I know I like playing warriors once they’re well-equipped and have high level skills. My enjoyment of the hybrids and summoners varies though, so I’m still not sure if I like the WD or not. I still haven’t, but at least I now have more information to base my indecision upon.

Cast back your mind, if you will, to Diablo II.

I liked the idea of the Necromancer in D2, and I played him a fair amount in D2C and early D2X, but he was never able to do what I wanted him to do.

Prior to v1.10, his skeleton summoning skills were very weak, and the class was mostly useful for tanking Golems, flocks of Revives, Iron Maiden + patience, or Amplify Damage + Corpse Explosion. The power of CE varied a lot between patches; there was an early D2C version when it scaled with monster hit points in big games and was the strongest spell in the entire game, capable of emptying whole screens in one or two pops. Later it was changed to not scale up with hit points and seemed useless for a bit, until new Necro players who hadn’t experienced it in the overpowered days started using it and found it quite capable, when paired with Amplify Damage.

Other early Necromancer builds were less interesting to me; I never found any joy in using Thorns + Iron Maiden and watching monsters beat themselves to death against my minions. It was functional, but it bored me. I like to play where I’m attacking and dealing out the damage, not where I’m just watching pets do it for me. Therefore, my ideal Necromancer build was one that combined curses with minions and direct spell damage.

I tried for that; I remember playing well-equipped Necros in early D2X that put the “No one uses more than seven hotkeys.” argument to lie. My usual style put more than a dozen hotkeys to regular use; 2 or 3 kinds of golem, Bone Spear/Spirit, 5 or 6 Curses, Revive, Bone Armor, Corpse Explosion, and Town Portal pretty well filled up the keyboard.

Such a build was fine then since there weren’t skill synergies, and with +10 or so from equipment most of the Curses were very effective without putting more than a single point into them. The main problem with that build was the lack of killing power from the Necromancer’s bone skills. Corpse Explosion was good, but its power came from getting a bunch of monsters into one place. That meant limited minions and a more focused game style. I did that sometimes, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do. What did I want? Glad you asked.

I wanted to use a variety of minions, Curse a lot, fire off a lot of spells, and have things die. Ideally my spells would do most of the killing and my minions could finish them off. It was fun to play that way; I remember enjoying the moment when I’d machine gunned a dozen Bone Spirits after a single enemy, and they all arrived in rapid succession. It was especially fun against mobile targets, like Leapers or the Demon Imps in Act Five. The Imps would wander around, plinging their annoying sperm-looking missiles at my minions, and if they teleported once or twice after I locked on and started shooting, I’d often have more than a dozen Bone Spirits homing in on the same target from multiple directions. It was fun to see them all hit almost simultaneously, as the Imp went down never knowing what had happened.

(Not that any of the monsters ever know what hit them; they’re like Hef’s girlfriends; Diablo doesn’t exactly keep them around for the conversation.)

But those moments of amusement or joy didn’t obscure the fact that I was playing a high level character with very good equipment, boosting my damage with appropriate curses, and still using a dozen casts of a mana-expensive Clvl 30 skill to kill a monster that a Barbarian could have done with a single WW or a Bowazon with a single Guided Arrow.

There were (and are) effective Necromancer builds. That’s not the point. The point is that the class was not effective playing in the style I wanted to play. I like moving fast and shooting a lot of spells and keeping active; waiting and watching monsters Thorns + Iron Maiden themselves to death against my minions or Bone Wall, or cluster around an Iron Golem so I can CE them, bores me. I’m not a big fan of super strong minions either. It seems silly that one revived or skeletonized monster is stronger than hundreds of brand new ones.

Sadly, as birthdays and first dates teach us, want does not equal have.

I never went on a crusade to get the Necromancer rebalanced, or got into modding to tweak the damage values on my own and make him work how I wanted to. I didn’t care that much; there were other characters I liked better, and even if the Necro’s spells had been more effective I’d still have gotten bored with the limited variety. I liked Sorcs better back in the pre-synergy days, since three-tree builds were quite effective. Static + Frozen Orb + Hydra, for instance. Three spells that complimented each other and worked wonderfully together if you used them properly. Hence I wanted a Necro where I had to use multiple spells at once, combining them for maximum effect, and was vexed that no such build existed due to the Necro’s lacking attack spells.

I never thought all that through back in 2000-2003, when I was playing a ton of Diablo II and regularly inciting the easily-riled Necro fans with “Curse Bitch” jokes in my columns and fan fiction. I knew I was dissatisfied with the Necro, but wasn’t exactly sure why. That I’ve now retconned my way to a subjective and probably inaccurate reason is due almost entirely to the Witch Doctor, who is, at least superficially, a fairly-good incarnation of the style of Necromancer play I wanted back before I knew I wanted it.

The Witch Doctor’s Prescription
I didn’t love the WD at first sight. I still don’t. The class design is interestingly indigenous, and I like a lot of the armor/mask looks, but the facial appearance of the male and female Witch Doctor is pretty tame. You can see bored suburban white kids any day at the mall food court with more weirdness going on in their personal fashion and facial piercings, and National Geographic style photos of actual tribal witch doctors from around the world make the D3 designs look bland. (It is ironic and perhaps unfortunate that the Barbarian got the animal-themed armors, since Witch Doctors have always worn amazing animal costumes.)

This isn’t meant as an indictment of the class design; obviously Blizzard’s artists have access to Google Images, and the ability to look up medicine man, shaman, and witch doctor for artistic inspiration. They could have made the class wildly-exotic, throwing in cultural things from all over the world. Imagine a WD with extensive facial piercings, a lower lip stretched to his clavicle, metal rings to elongate his neck, etc. The class doesn’t look like that since the developers felt it would be too weird or off-putting to players. And they were probably right.

As I occasionally realize, it’s silly to expect every aspect of Diablo III’s look, feel, and play style to exactly match my personal preferences. Fortunately, most fans don’t let that inconvenient fact slow them down, which is what keeps the forums full of lively debate.

Besides, I don’t really care what the character looks like. Especially not “naked,” since I’ll always have armor on them anyway.

Digression #1: The Diablo 2 Necromancer’s face and hair looks stupid. There was a big fan outcry back in about 1998, when the game model of the character was revealed and it looked nothing like the concept art. Necromancer fans were not at all pleased by the bony face and half-mullet, proto-Lucius Malfoy hairstyle.

Digression #2: An anime/manga version of Harry Potter would be very cool. The series is already all about dramatic moments and big pay offs, and it has a very strong sense of design and style, great costumes, and distinctive, iconic-looking characters. Those are all elements that Anime really plays up, plus there’s flight, magic, monsters, scheming bad guys and lots of high school drama and romance. It’s a perfect fit. How was it not Anime in the first place?

I intentionally did not check to see if a manga of Harry Potter has already been licensed or begun production, since I didn’t want to risk having facts interrupt my theorizing. Now that I have looked… apparently not. There’s a digital river of HP Anime-style fan art, and various April Fool’s jokes, but nothing more than that, as of yet. (BTW, you might not want to scroll too far down that Harry Potter Anime image search page, because Rule #34, and things that can not be unseen.)

Back on topic… while I wasn’t drawn in on the WD right from the start, as more info about the class has been revealed, I’ve grown steadily more interested in playing one. And I’ve done so, at the last three Blizzcons. My verdict? Undecided, due to insufficient evidence.

The WD has a variety of pets, but none of them are designed to last forever and tank the world. He’s got a bunch of different offensive spells, which do a wide variety of different things and seem like they’ll need to be combined to work at their most effective. And he’s got some miscellaneous support abilities that must be combined with his normal attacks to maximize the class’ potential.

However, while his attack skills seem fairly self-evident, the same can’t be said for his pets and support skills. Only Mongrels have been available to test out so far, and he doesn’t (yet?) have enough support skills to say how important they’ll be. With the Necromancer you knew you’d be using skills from the minions, attack spells, and curses. With the WD that’s not yet clear, and besides, with only 7 skills possible to use at once, hard choices will have to be made.

Witch Doctor Skills
Like all of the characters in the Blizzcon 2010 PvM demo, the Witch Doctor started out at level 9, with 8 points invested in 3 skills. His main starting attack was Poison Dart. He also had Summon Zombie Dog for a pet/tank, and Zombie Charger as his second attack spell. At level 10 I spent a point in Firebats, which, once runed, became by far my most effective attack.

* Witch Doctor skills
* Witch Doctor traits

The most important thing I learned from playing the WDs 4 low level sklls? That Runestones rule.

Summon Zombie Dog
Tier One
Description: The Witch Doctor summons a zombie dog to aid him. Can have up to X zombie dogs out at a time.

The WD’s Mongrels have been seen in every gameplay movie, including the Arena footage from this year, so there’s not too much mystery about them. They do move oddly; they’re not very dog-like, except in the shape of their heads. They’re actually more like bipeds walking on all fours; they seem to have four arms, rather than four legs, and they lurch and creep along, sort of spider-like, rather than bouncing up and down like a quadruped. They move much more quickly than you expect also, in a sort of speed-walker way. They don’t look like they’re running, or trying very hard, but they get there quickly.

Not that their appearance of gait is of any real game importance, but it gives them a weird, unnatural vibe, which is nice. They look skinned; like they’ve been turned inside out.

I did not note the number of points in each of the WD’s 3 starting skills, but it’s possible that this one had 5, since there were three dogs available, just like there were for the WD in the Arena demo. And since the skill description lists the number of dogs as a variable based on skill points, and the Arena WD had 5 points in all of his skills… could be. Poison Dart and Zombie Charger were both quite weak un-runed, so if either of those had five skill points in it, they weren’t doing anything real impressive.

There’s no telling how the Mongrel stats have changed (or not) since last year. I can say that they were more effective, offensively. Last year they couldn’t kill anything, and I was regularly annoyed by their tendency to get locked into combat with some last, lone, unimportant enemy, like a Desert Wasp. “A” for effort and all, but I often found my WD without minions as he ran forward to the next battle, because all 3 of my dogs were back two screens, scratching uselessly at some monster I hadn’t cared enough about to go back to finish off.

It was often faster to summon new ones than to run back to find the current batch. Bad dogs. Bad dogs! You are all very bad dogs!

This year that never happened. The mongrels were more able to damage enemies, and their AI seemed to have been tweaked to prioritize proximity to the Witch Doctor over endlessly swiping at irrelevant monsters. I saw them finish off the last zombie on screen a number of times, and I don’t recall ever having to summon new ones simply because the old ones had gotten stuck or lost around some corner of the dungeon. That speaks to their pathfinding as well, since the dungeons in this year’s Blizzcon PvM demo were made largely from narrow corridors and were quite windy and full of sharp corners and obstacles.

As for their durability, they died pretty often. I had to summon up new dogs pretty often, and during an early boss battle I went through maybe 8 or 10 dogs. That was partially my fault; I’d run forward as soon as the demo loaded, rather than taking the time to sort my inventory and try runestones in my starting skills. Thus when I rounded the first corner and came to a small room that was in the starting layout of the Halls of Agony every time, but with different/random contents, and it turned out to hold a nest of Unburied, I was not prepared for a boss battle. So it was largely the dogs holding off the half dozen massive Unburied, while I spit my puny un-runed Poison Darts and tried to use the very short range Zombie Chargers.

The runestone effects I had available on Mongrels weren’t real impressive. I could add to their damage or up their hit points with the runes in my possession. I went with the +damage, and it made a difference, but they weren’t exactly murderous; more like “slightly less reluctant to land the killing hit on enemies my spells had already slivered.”

Zombie Charger
Tier Two
Description: A reckless, suicidal zombie deals X-X poison damage to all enemies in its way.

This skill has a cool concept, but that’s largely window dressing. The skill could be described as “short range poison plume” and it would work exactly the same. You summon the Zombie, which runs straight forward 2 or 3 steps, dissolving as it moves and leaving a sort of AoE cloud of gas. Anything in its path gets bathed in poison, but it doesn’t go very far, the poison isn’t a gas that lingers to infect other monsters, and there’s nothing about the zombie delivery system that has any real game effect.

It’s hard to use, since it has so little range; it’s hardly more than melee distance, and doesn’t work at the usual range a player assumes, a few paces behind the front line where the Mongrels are tanking. You have to learn to stand closer, almost at melee range to get any real effect from the skill. It’s not like a poison bolt, where as long as it gets to the enemy the full damage is done. The zombie doesn’t actually hit anything; it’s not a projectile. It’s just passes through them, trailing poison. So enemies it passes over and through take a lot of damage. Enemies it just barely gets to only receive a little splash of damage that hardly registers.

I didn’t rune this one since I didn’t like it, and since my rune options weren’t very good. I did not have the rune that yielded the infamous Zombie Bears, though that one sounds like fun.

I could imagine this skill becoming fairly useful with much increased range (it would basically be a slow-motion version of the Amazon’s Poison Javelin, minus the javelin and the lingering clouds of poison). Or if it had a homing property, or if the zombie itself had an attack, like it grabbed the targeted enemy and dealt huge poison damage. At the starting state, it was nearly useless, though. Easily the least helpful of the skills on any starting PvM character.

Poison Dart
Tier Three
Description: Fires a deadly poison dart that deals X-X poison damage and an additional X-X poison damage over X seconds.

The main attack skill that the WD started with, this one was also disappointing while un-runed. It’s pretty much what you’d think; a tiny green projectile that deals impact damage and some DoT to the target. The dart moves quickly through the air so it’s got good accuracy, but the casting (blowing) animation is very slow. Lift the pipe, squat down into the shooting stance, fire, stand back up again, repeat. This results in a poor DPS, even though the actual dart isn’t terrible.

This one was greatly improved by the runestone, as much as any skill I used at Blizzcon. I had two runes (don’t remember which ones). One would up the damage of the dart. I didn’t use that one. The other gave me multiple darts per blow, and I went with it and was greatly impressed. Just the level 2 rune gave me 4 shots, which were fired in rapid succession. It wasn’t like Strafe from D2; all 4 darts went at the same target, and they were fired one after the other, considerably extending the time my WD spent down in that crouching, blowing position *cough* But the darts were (apparently) the same damage, and since it had been taking me 2 or 3 shots each to kill monsters, with the runestone the skill was able to kill everything below a boss in a single “shot.”

The DoT wasn’t much changed, but the actual dart hits were the majority of the damage, and with the rune they were quadrupled. I soon learned to fire at monsters that had another monster behind them, if possible. The first 2 or 3 would almost always get me the kill, which meant that the 3rd and/or 4th shot would hit something behind the initial target. This skill was awesome in narrow hallways against crowds or lines of monsters, and I much enjoyed mowing them down, machine gun style.

This one could be really fun with a lvl 7 skill rune, assuming that granted 8+ darts right in a row. It would be kind of risky to use in some situations, because the Witch Doctor would be motionless for a second or two, like a Bowazon with high level Strafe back in the D2C twenty-shot days. But the damage to the target would be awesome. This one looked like a quality boss-killer, and the full-screen range was another big selling point, since most of the WD’s spells have fairly short range.

Firebats
Tier Four
Description: A swarm of fiery bats burn enemies in front of you for X fire damage per second.

At level 10 I surveyed the skills, and since I’d pretty well tested out Poison Dart, I went for another attack skill. In retrospect I wish I’d tried one I haven’t seen in action.

* Haunt is supposed to be all new graphically.
* Corpse Spiders is improved with new rune effects (Bashiok said that one makes a giant spider that protects the baby spiders).
* Sacrifice I’d only tried in the Arena, and was curious to see how well it worked against monsters.
* Soul Harvest was changed from a nova-like mana stealing spell to a buff that boosts damage based on the number of enemies in range, and I’d like to see how the visual for that works and how the spell improvement was conveyed to the player.
* And most of all… what do the Fetish summoned by Hex look like? And can they really turn enemies into chickens?

Sadly, I didn’t try any of those. Instead I put a point into Firebats, a spell that’s very easy to understand and that I’d used extensively in the last two demos. Fail. (I blame the demo time limit. The 15 minute timer contributes to rash, thoughtless decisions since you know you’ve got so little time to experiment that you don’t want to waste any of that time reading hover descriptions.)

Firebats was informative, at least. The spell’s range and damage were both much less than when I used it last. The bats hardly flew further than Zombie Charger could run, and the damage was not very good. Even when I moved close enough for the winged rats to reach the enemy, not a whole lot happened. Happily, I had a rune left, it promised to add damage and range to the bats, and did it ever. To the point that I’ll put Firebats in with Poison Dart and Magic Missile as the skills that were most improved by skill runes.

There are limitations on that statement. I could only try 3 or 4 skills per character, there were no runes enabled for the DH or Monk, and I could only try the 2 or 3 runes I had/found on each character. But that said, Firebats was greatly improved by the rune. The range more than doubled, to a bit more than half the screen. The damage looked like it at least doubled also, though the much greater range was far more useful since it put multiple more enemies in range of the constant DoT damage.

It even looked better with the rune; more bats flew our, giving it a fuller, thicker, more lustrous visual effect. I could call it the Pantene rune, at least for Firebats.

The other interesting thing about this skill was the firing mechanism. You couldn’t click it. If you did nothing would happen. Literally; sometimes one bat would squeak out, but usually not even that. The spell dealt very good DoT, but you had to hold down the mouse button to let the bats flow forth. It took a second or two for the full flow to get going, and once it did the damage was great, but you had to commit to using it.

This made the skill not so good against single targets, since it was slow to start dealing damage, and when it did the damage was spread over a wide area. Sledgehammer for an ant.

It was awesome against big groups, though. Easily the most powerful skill I used in the entire demo, in terms of total damage dealt. Once I had it with the rune effect the demo became almost pointless, it was so easy. I’d just follow my Mongrels, get into position once they found some monsters, and start hosing out the bats. The shape of the flock is like a slice of pie (mmm, tasty bat pie!) and anything in that area takes heavy DoT.

The damage seemed to be evenly-spread over the whole area; I was able to kill 10 monsters as quickly as 2, and I was soon doing some herding; running past the Mongrels once they locked up with the first targets, to try to lure in a few more monsters. Once I took up my firing position behind the Mongrels it was all over in a few seconds, no matter how many monsters were in range.

The bats didn’t chew through bosses quite as quickly, of course, but they didn’t take much longer. The WD was one of the characters that I finished the whole demo with, and with Firebats and Mongrels even the ending battle against The Warden was easy. I ran to the center of the dungeon to get him to spawn, and when I heard his voice and the quest icon went off, I ran back down one of the four paths, let my Mongrels cover the approach of the Ghouls, and just stood behind them, decimating the enemy horde as soon as they drew into range. Even The Warden didn’t last long, and I don’t think I even had to summon any more dogs, though one or two of my pack of three died before the fight ended.

Witch Doctor Tactics and Gameplay
Though I found the WD a very powerful and effective character in the Blizzcon 2010 PvM demo, I don’t feel like this gives me much insight into how he’ll be in the game. The early levels and monsters were too easy, and the variety of skills was too limited to project much long term info from. I don’t think a Witch Doctor will just be able to sit back and slaughter everything from safely behind his Mongrels, come the final game.

At least I certainly hope not. That would be boring.

That said… what else does he have? You can look over all of the Witch Doctor skills, and other than Horrify, Grasp of the Dead, and Mass Confusion, what else is there? He’s got a ton of cool attack skills, and various interesting pets about which we know nothing. But regarding all of those curse-like mind control spells we kept assuming he’d have… they ain’t there.

There were 23 WD skills in the Blizzcon demo. Quick count: 11 attack spells and 7 minion skills (including some that are attacks, like Sacrifice and Wall of Zombies). That’s 18, which leaves just 5 to do other things. The aforementioned Horrify, GotD, and Mass Confusion, plus the movement/escape skill Spirit Walk and the spell-damage buff Soul Harvest. That’s it. There may be more skills added, and we know nothing about his higher level summoning skills, but from the current tally it seems safe to predict the Witch Doctor’s play style; mini-mage, with spells cast from behind minions.

The variety of spells is huge, especially when you factor in skillrunes, but I guess I was expecting more curse-like modifier spells. Ones that would make the monsters more susceptible to various types of damage, or do more to change their behavior. And maybe we’ll get some; the class isn’t final at this point, and more than 23 skills are expected. But we’ll have to wait and see.

[FloydRaalte]

Psycho, ik waardeer jouw inzet in de Spielerij formsectie altijd enorm dus begrijp me niet verkeerd. Maar misschien is het een idee om zulke lappen tekst samen te vatten in een paar regels? Met een linkje naar het artikel? Ik bedoel je doet toch al veel te veel hier dus dat kan er ook nog wel bij Ik lees zulke ellen lange artikelen in ieder geval nooit en ik vermoed nog wel meer mensen

[Jochem Boom]

^Daar sluit ik mij ten volle bij aan. Uit de filmpjes vind ik de Witch Doctor nog niet echt boeiend, maar ik ben sowieso altijd een meleen speler geweest. Doe mij maar gewoon een Barbarian.

[Verwijderd]

je hoeft het ook niet te lezen?

[Verwijderd]

FloydRaalte schreef op woensdag 08 december 2010 @ 16:19:
Psycho, ik waardeer jouw inzet in de Spielerij formsectie altijd enorm dus begrijp me niet verkeerd. Maar misschien is het een idee om zulke lappen tekst samen te vatten in een paar regels? Met een linkje naar het artikel? Ik bedoel je doet toch al veel te veel hier dus dat kan er ook nog wel bij Ik lees zulke ellen lange artikelen in ieder geval nooit en ik vermoed nog wel meer mensen

of een link naar orginele artikel idd, vooral als ik 3 van die lappe tekst achter elkaar zie, probeer ik de "leukste" stukken eruit te kiezen, maar meestal stop ik vrij snel omdat ik nog zo'n elle lange tekst zie.

Verwijderd schreef op woensdag 08 december 2010 @ 19:01:
je hoeft het ook niet te lezen?

Ik moet zeggen dat ik het niet heel fijn vind als ik de reacties van mensen eruit moet pikken tussen de hele lappen tekst.

[ Voor 16% gewijzigd door Verwijderd op 08-12-2010 19:04 ]

[Bulls]

Ik vind interlaced (of hoe dat ook heet die schuine letters) onprettig lezen. Dus ik sla ze ook over.
Ik ben trouwens sowieso al aan het minderen met nuttigen van Diablo 3 info, want als je teveel weet haalt het ook de spanning eraf, en als het eindelijk zover is, dan is het eerder "been there done that" omdat je alles al weet.

[Verwijderd]

ja ik ben juist wel blij als ik dat soort sources direct op GoT kan lezen, zo kan ik ook direct comments vergelijken met de source als dat nodig is etc..

[Verwijderd]

Af en toe zo'n lap tekst is oke, maar nu staan er 4 stuks achter elkaar. Beetje teveel van het goede

[Verwijderd]

dan moeten er meer mensen posten he ^_^

[Verwijderd]

Ik ben zeer benieuwd naar hoe Blizzard de economie zo puur mogelijk gaat houden.
Belachelijke dingen als 'forumgold' of Gold/item selling companies moeten naar mijn mening geen kans krijgen in diablo 3.

Maar het zal niet lang duren, vrees ik, voordat spullen voor echt geld verkocht worden

[FloydRaalte]

Verwijderd schreef op donderdag 09 december 2010 @ 13:10:
Ik ben zeer benieuwd naar hoe Blizzard de economie zo puur mogelijk gaat houden.
Belachelijke dingen als 'forumgold' of Gold/item selling companies moeten naar mijn mening geen kans krijgen in diablo 3.

Maar het zal niet lang duren, vrees ik, voordat spullen voor echt geld verkocht worden

Helemaal mee eens. Aan dat DJSP geleuter voor Diablo2 heb ik nooit meegedaan. Wel een geprobeerd maar ik vondt het maar omslachtig. Hopelijk wordt dat voor Diablo 3 d.m.v. ingame auctionhouse achtige technieken opgelost.

[psychoclown]

Ach het komt ook niet zo heel erg vaak voor dat er zulke grote stukken zijn die ik achter elkaar post, nu dan met die PvM reports van flux. Als de meerderheid het niet leuk of interessant vindt kan ik het ook wel niet posten
Overigens staat er altijd een link naar het originele artikel bij

Verwijderd schreef op donderdag 09 december 2010 @ 13:10:
Ik ben zeer benieuwd naar hoe Blizzard de economie zo puur mogelijk gaat houden.
Belachelijke dingen als 'forumgold' of Gold/item selling companies moeten naar mijn mening geen kans krijgen in diablo 3.

Maar het zal niet lang duren, vrees ik, voordat spullen voor echt geld verkocht worden

Zolang ze botten echt weten te weten en daar streng op toe blijven zien zal het al een stuk minder zijn. Daarnaast zal er ingame een soort van Auction House komen waardoor heel het traden ingame onwijs verbeterd zal worden tov Diablo 2.. dat was ook echt bar en bar slecht.

FloydRaalte schreef op donderdag 09 december 2010 @ 13:18:
[...]


Helemaal mee eens. Aan dat DJSP geleuter voor Diablo2 heb ik nooit meegedaan. Wel een geprobeerd maar ik vondt het maar omslachtig. Hopelijk wordt dat voor Diablo 3 d.m.v. ingame auctionhouse achtige technieken opgelost.

Jsp vond ik altijd wel heel erg fijn werken moet ik zeggen en geeft ook tenminste een gevoel dat er getrade kan worden. Alleen niet heel ideaal inderdaad

[Verwijderd]

Verwijderd schreef op donderdag 09 december 2010 @ 13:10:
Ik ben zeer benieuwd naar hoe Blizzard de economie zo puur mogelijk gaat houden.
Belachelijke dingen als 'forumgold' of Gold/item selling companies moeten naar mijn mening geen kans krijgen in diablo 3.

Maar het zal niet lang duren, vrees ik, voordat spullen voor echt geld verkocht worden

Tegenhouden doe je het toch nooit. Denk er maar eens over na - hoe zou jij zoiets willen aanpakken? Een trefzekere wijze om te voorkomen dat mensen ingame items gaan verkopen voor real world geld. Serieus, kom maar eens met een voorstel.

Je zult er vanzelf wel achter komen dat er altijd wel een omweg is om alsnog te gaan lopen handelen.

[Mystery]

Niets aan veranderen psychoclown. Ik vindt het juist leuk om zulke ontwikkelingen met betrekking tot DiabloIII direct in het topic te lezen. Linken naar een andere pagina vindt ik juist weer vervelend.

[tollo71]

Mystery schreef op donderdag 09 december 2010 @ 13:35:
Niets aan veranderen psychoclown. Ik vindt het juist leuk om zulke ontwikkelingen met betrekking tot DiabloIII direct in het topic te lezen. Linken naar een andere pagina vindt ik juist weer vervelend.

Vouch, hier nog een. Lekker posten wat mij betreft.

Wat betreft het traden: ik vind aan beide methodes (auction house en jsp) voor- en nadelen zitten.
Met traden @jsp heb je wel een echt "handel" gevoel. Je kunt bieden / overbeiden etc. en je trade het echt persoonlijk. Nadeel is het wachten tot iemand weer online is en de mogelijke kans op scams.
Een auction house is wat dat betreft veiliger en "sneller", alleen mis je het echte bieden en handelen.

[Verwijderd]

Het feit dat er een random gozer die ooit een forum heeft opgezet de baas is over die currency forumgold en daar stinkend rijk van wordt met een spel wat iemand anders heeft gemaakt, gaan bij mij de haren een beetje overeind staan.

Ik doneer liever mijn geld aan Blizzard.

@Kharay197, ik heb geen idee, daarom zeg ik ook dat ik hoop dat Blizzard iets slims verzint.

Toen ik vroeger (jaren geleden) diablo 2 speelde, en al die gold/items company's er nog niet waren (of iig ik er niet van bewust was) werd er getrade in het trade channel van battlenet, met soj's Dat vond ik opzich wel een leuke manier, maargoed...

[ Voor 39% gewijzigd door Verwijderd op 09-12-2010 13:47 ]

[psychoclown]

tollo71 schreef op donderdag 09 december 2010 @ 13:39:
[...]


Vouch, hier nog een. Lekker posten wat mij betreft.

Wat betreft het traden: ik vind aan beide methodes (auction house en jsp) voor- en nadelen zitten.
Met traden @jsp heb je wel een echt "handel" gevoel. Je kunt bieden / overbeiden etc. en je trade het echt persoonlijk. Nadeel is het wachten tot iemand weer online is en de mogelijke kans op scams.
Een auction house is wat dat betreft veiliger en "sneller", alleen mis je het echte bieden en handelen.

Als ze het een beetje maken zoals in WoW dan kun je wel degelijk biedingen houden
Grootste nadeel bij jsp is inderdaad het persoonlijk moeten afleveren en kans op scams maar als je daar een beetje op let overkomt het je nauwelijks.

Verwijderd schreef op donderdag 09 december 2010 @ 13:44:
Het feit dat er een random gozer die ooit een forum heeft opgezet de baas is over die currency forumgold en daar stinkend rijk van wordt met een spel wat iemand anders heeft gemaakt, gaan bij mij de haren een beetje overeind staan.

Ik doneer liever mijn geld aan Blizzard.

@Kharay197, ik heb geen idee, daarom zeg ik ook dat ik hoop dat Blizzard iets slims verzint

Ach het is nog altijd beter dan itemshops die tig bots hebben lopen draaien
D2jsp is opgezet met de gedachte om beter te kunnen traden met Diablo 2 en dat heeft voor mij toch zeker wel een hoop Diablo 2 speeluren extra doen beleven.

[Verwijderd]

Om beter te kunnen traden als bijzaak denk ik, die maker van JSP heeft dezelfde machtpositie als een gelddrukkerij in een afrikaans land. Want als je bij JSP niet met echt geld Forumgold zou kunnen kopen, dan was het een goed en eerlijk concept geweest.

[ Voor 3% gewijzigd door Verwijderd op 09-12-2010 14:16 ]

[Verwijderd]

Het belangrijkste aan waarom D2JSP werkt voor D2 is dat D2 gewoon heel erg onwerkbaar is anders. Stel je zou het helemaal zelf willen doen, ingame. Dan zou je zoveel items moeten gaan verzamelen op mules dat je te zijner tijd veel meer mule accounts hebt dan character accounts.

Omdat inventory/stash ruimte zo beperkt is in D2. Dus, alvorens D2JSP te gaan zitten bashen of wat dan ook, vergeet niet dat Blizzard enigszins verwijtbaar is in het geval van D2. Nou ga ik er zondermeer vanuit dat D3 beter wordt op dat gebied. Maar, goed... we shall see.

[Bulls]

Verwijderd schreef op donderdag 09 december 2010 @ 14:15:
Om beter te kunnen traden als bijzaak denk ik, die maker van JSP heeft dezelfde machtpositie als een gelddrukkerij in een afrikaans land. Want als je bij JSP niet met echt geld Forumgold zou kunnen kopen, dan was het een goed en eerlijk concept geweest.

Het is gewoon weer een manier om er zelf beter van te worden, dat is tegenwoordig het concept op internet:
Mensen doen geloven dan je het hun makkelijker maakt, of rijk te kunnen maken, om dan vervolgens juist zelf er geld aan te verdienen. Net als die handleidingen "how to make money on the internet" Beloven bergen en hoe simpel het wel niet is, maar dan moet je wel zn boek kopen. En ondertussen krijg je een boek met een hoop onzin erin over affiliaties etc. en hoe je dus dergelijke sites kan opzetten waar je net zn boek vandaan hebt. En hij is juist de gene die rijk word aan jou omdat je zn boek koopt.

Echt pure oplichterij. (ben er nog niet ingetrapt maar had me wel wat sceptisch in verdiept)
Ik heb een hekel aan zulke dingen.

[ Voor 3% gewijzigd door Bulls op 09-12-2010 14:39 ]

[Verwijderd]

Je hoeft niet perse forumgold te kopen op D2JSP. Je kan zondermeer prima gear verzamelen zonder ook maar een eurocent uit te geven, met behulp van D2JSP dus.

Daar bovenop - in nagenoeg iedere situatie, zowel online als in real life geldt - meer geld betekent meer luxe. Dus, laten we dat gewoon even met rust laten. Als we dat pad gaan bewandelen, hetgeen ik zondermeer graag zou doen, moeten we een topic starten genaamd: Zin en onzin van kapitalisme.

[ Voor 48% gewijzigd door Verwijderd op 09-12-2010 14:44 ]

[psychoclown]

Verwijderd schreef op donderdag 09 december 2010 @ 14:21:
Het belangrijkste aan waarom D2JSP werkt voor D2 is dat D2 gewoon heel erg onwerkbaar is anders. Stel je zou het helemaal zelf willen doen, ingame. Dan zou je zoveel items moeten gaan verzamelen op mules dat je te zijner tijd veel meer mule accounts hebt dan character accounts.

Omdat inventory/stash ruimte zo beperkt is in D2. Dus, alvorens D2JSP te gaan zitten bashen of wat dan ook, vergeet niet dat Blizzard enigszins verwijtbaar is in het geval van D2. Nou ga ik er zondermeer vanuit dat D3 beter wordt op dat gebied. Maar, goed... we shall see.

Ik heb standaard meer mule accounts dan character accounts.. ook al gebruik ik jsp
Gelukkig is dat in Diablo 3 niet meer nodig

Verwijderd schreef op donderdag 09 december 2010 @ 14:42:
Je hoeft niet perse forumgold te kopen op D2JSP. Je kan zondermeer prima gear verzamelen zonder ook maar een eurocent uit te geven, met behulp van D2JSP dus.

Precies

[ Voor 15% gewijzigd door psychoclown op 09-12-2010 14:43 ]

[Bulls]

Had ik nou ook iets gelezen over dat ze geen ladderreset inbouwen? (er komt alleen pvp ranking)
Dus alle items die ooit geloot worden blijven ingame? Dan vraag ik me af of de waarde niet steeds verder gaat dalen, ik weet dat ze gold sinks willen maken door crafting en salvagen etc, en dat er op hogere levels Bind on Equip items droppen, maar zelfs dan nog denk ik dat er teveel set items en uniques in omloop komen per realm.

[Verwijderd]

Bulls schreef op donderdag 09 december 2010 @ 14:50:
maar zelfs dan nog denk ik dat er teveel set items en uniques in omloop komen per realm.

Mwah, ik denk dat dat wel mee zal vallen. Dat heeft in, bijvoorbeeld, WoW ook nooit tot problemen geleid. Er zijn altijd mensen die alts willen, en nog meer alts, en nog meer alts, etc. Of mensen die stoppen met spelen, en beginnen met spelen.

Nee, dat komt wel goed.

[psychoclown]

Ja dat klopt en daarvoor is er zoiets als BoE wat ook te vinden is in de TS
Denk dat dat toch wel een groot deel zal helpen want na verloop van tijd zullen mensen hun low rares uniques die ze toch al tig keer hebben en al tig keer hebben getrade gaan salvagen zodat er gecraft kan worden. Overigens weten we niet waar ze de grens leggen van BoE, misschien is dat al bij lvl 30+ items dan zal de markt niet zo snel overspoelen gok ik zo

[Bulls]

Verwijderd schreef op donderdag 09 december 2010 @ 14:54:
[...]

Mwah, ik denk dat dat wel mee zal vallen. Dat heeft in, bijvoorbeeld, WoW ook nooit tot problemen geleid. Er zijn altijd mensen die alts willen, en nog meer alts, en nog meer alts, etc. Of mensen die stoppen met spelen, en beginnen met spelen.

Nee, dat komt wel goed.

Bij WoW zijn bijna alle items BoE of BoA. Plus dat door de Goldfarmers de prijzen geëxplodeerd zijn, Alles is mega duur, en zonder zelf te farmen of gold te kopen kun je het beste spul nooit krijgen.

In Diablo 2 plunderde ik altijd een oude char als ik een nieuwe had die de items aan kan. En het werd gelijk een mule. Ik ging er toch nooit meer mee verder.

Maar ik ben niet zo weg van BoE, omdat je dus wel vaker een item wilt uitwisselen tussen je vrienden of andere characters. Maargoed we zullen zien

[ Voor 20% gewijzigd door Bulls op 09-12-2010 15:03 ]

[psychoclown]

Tja maar dat is dus de afweging die je moet maken, wil je high end items altijd en overal kunnen uitwisselen dan kunnen ze niet BoE zijn maar anderzijds moet de markt niet overspoelen. Dan is de keuze wat mij betreft best netjes want BoP zou mijn inziens te 'streng' zijn en BoA weer te losjes gezien het feit je xx chars per account kunt hebben in Diablo 3

[Verwijderd]

Er zijn ook genoeg mensen die ladder resets en dergelijke juist spuugzat zijn. De resets zaten er nooit in om te voorkomen dat het aantal exemplaren van item <x> uit de hand loopt. Ze zaten er in om andere redenen.

[psychoclown]

Precies maar daarna toch wel gebruikt als marktstabilisator want het botten en dupen maakt de economie kapot

[kaluro2]

Bulls schreef op donderdag 09 december 2010 @ 15:00:
[...]


Bij WoW zijn bijna alle items BoP.

Fixed

[Bulls]

kaluro2 schreef op donderdag 09 december 2010 @ 16:04:
[...]


Fixed

Quest items zijn BoP maar gewone loot items hoger dan wit zijn BoE voor zover ik gezien heb.
Kan zijn dat bepaalde raid loot epics enzo wel BoP zijn, zoveel heb ik het nog niet gespeeld. (en ben er eigenlijk al weer zat van, al dat trage gedoe en overballanced, MMO's zijn gewoon niets voor mij)

[Kapoen]

Verwijderd schreef op donderdag 09 december 2010 @ 13:44:
Toen ik vroeger (jaren geleden) diablo 2 speelde, en al die gold/items company's er nog niet waren (of iig ik er niet van bewust was) werd er getrade in het trade channel van battlenet, met soj's Dat vond ik opzich wel een leuke manier, maargoed...

*insert random curseword* SoJ's Ik ken niemand die die dingen eerlijk verkreeg. Zelf heb ik er nooit ééntje weten droppen, en ik heb toch redelijk wat uurtjes op closed b.net gespendeerd.

Dat hele SoJ/Forum gold gedoe komt gewoon door het feit dat men maar beperkt gold kon oprapen in het spel zelf, grote fout van Blizzard uiteraard.

Bulls schreef op vrijdag 10 december 2010 @ 02:32:
[...]
Quest items zijn BoP maar gewone loot items hoger dan wit zijn BoE voor zover ik gezien heb.
Kan zijn dat bepaalde raid loot epics enzo wel BoP zijn, zoveel heb ik het nog niet gespeeld. (en ben er eigenlijk al weer zat van, al dat trage gedoe en overballanced, MMO's zijn gewoon niets voor mij)

De meeste items zijn echt wel BoP. BoE's zijn meestal minder sterk en verdwijnen sowieso uit de economie zodra ze equipped zijn (duh ).

Sowieso is WoW en D2 itemization niet 1-op-1 te vergelijken:
- in D2 kon in principe elk item eender welke stat hebben en equipped worden door alle klasses
- in WoW voorziet vele typische caster, melee, ranged,... items die niet uitwisselbaar zijn onder de klasses (een warrior gaat geen cloth items equippen en een caster kan überhaupt geen plate items gebruiken)

[Dakreal]

Kapoen schreef op vrijdag 10 december 2010 @ 10:13:
[...]

*insert random curseword* SoJ's Ik ken niemand die die dingen eerlijk verkreeg. Zelf heb ik er nooit ééntje weten droppen, en ik heb toch redelijk wat uurtjes op closed b.net gespendeerd.

Dat hele SoJ/Forum gold gedoe komt gewoon door het feit dat men maar beperkt gold kon oprapen in het spel zelf, grote fout van Blizzard uiteraard.


[...]

De meeste items zijn echt wel BoP. BoE's zijn meestal minder sterk en verdwijnen sowieso uit de economie zodra ze equipped zijn (duh ).

Sowieso is WoW en D2 itemization niet 1-op-1 te vergelijken:
- in D2 kon in principe elk item eender welke stat hebben en equipped worden door alle klasses
- in WoW voorziet vele typische caster, melee, ranged,... items die niet uitwisselbaar zijn onder de klasses (een warrior gaat geen cloth items equippen en een caster kan überhaupt geen plate items gebruiken)

In Diablo 2 heb ik in totaal een stuk of 15 sojs gevonden _legit_

Andy Nightmare was een erg goeie bron hiervoor. Tevens heb ik ook 2x een perfect raven gevonden

[psychoclown]

Kapoen schreef op vrijdag 10 december 2010 @ 10:13:
[...]

Dat hele SoJ/Forum gold gedoe komt gewoon door het feit dat men maar beperkt gold kon oprapen in het spel zelf, grote fout van Blizzard uiteraard.

Dat niet zozeer want gold is in Diablo 2 ook geen reet waard, duurste dingen om te repairen zijn enigma's en ander leuk runeword spul en voor de rest voor gamblen maar dat is niet zo duur. Dus ook al hadden ze de max 100x hoger dan nog kon je er geen economie op baseren

Dakreal schreef op vrijdag 10 december 2010 @ 10:21:
[...]


In Diablo 2 heb ik in totaal een stuk of 15 sojs gevonden _legit_

Andy Nightmare was een erg goeie bron hiervoor. Tevens heb ik ook 2x een perfect raven gevonden

Ik heb toch zeker wel heel erg lang gespeeld maar ik heb maar 1x een soj gevonden in al die jaren en ik mf juist erg veel. Met patch 1.13 hebben sommigen ook tig highrunes gevonden maar ik na xxx mfruns helemaal niks hoor
Anyways we dwalen af..

[ Voor 33% gewijzigd door psychoclown op 10-12-2010 10:41 ]

[Bulls]

Beetje leven in de thread en wat discussie is nooit verkeerd toch?

Kapoen schreef op vrijdag 10 december 2010 @ 10:13:


De meeste items zijn echt wel BoP. BoE's zijn meestal minder sterk en verdwijnen sowieso uit de economie zodra ze equipped zijn (duh ).

Sowieso is WoW en D2 itemization niet 1-op-1 te vergelijken:
- in D2 kon in principe elk item eender welke stat hebben en equipped worden door alle klasses
- in WoW voorziet vele typische caster, melee, ranged,... items die niet uitwisselbaar zijn onder de klasses (een warrior gaat geen cloth items equippen en een caster kan überhaupt geen plate items gebruiken)

Ging mij ook niet om de vergelijking met WoW items, maar er werd gezegd dat de economie in WoW ook nooit een probleem was met overspoelen. Maar dat komt omdat bijna alles soulbound wordt. En dat zal bij Diablo 3 niet het geval zijn vandaar. Probleem bij WoW is dat er teveel gold in omloop is.

Maargoed salvagen zou een goede itemsink kunnen worden, alleen worden de echte leuke items zoals runes, set-items en unique's natuurlijk nooit gesalvaged.

[ Voor 42% gewijzigd door Bulls op 10-12-2010 12:05 ]

[psychoclown]

Bulls schreef op vrijdag 10 december 2010 @ 12:03:
Beetje leven in de thread en wat discussie is nooit verkeerd toch?

Tuurlijk niet maar ik doelde dan ook over wie hoeveel sojs gevonden had in Diablo 2

Ging mij ook niet om de vergelijking met WoW items, maar er werd gezegd dat de economie in WoW ook nooit een probleem was met overspoelen. Maar dat komt omdat bijna alles soulbound wordt. En dat zal bij Diablo 3 niet het geval zijn vandaar. Probleem bij WoW is dat er teveel gold in omloop is.

Maargoed salvagen zou een goede itemsink kunnen worden, alleen worden de echte leuke items zoals runes, set-items en unique's natuurlijk nooit gesalvaged.

Waarom zou je die niet salvagen? Daar kunnen ze juist leuke dingen mee uithalen zoals ik eerder wel eens gezegd heb. Ze zouden bijv. speciale ingrediënten kunnen maken die enkel uit uniques/runes/set-items kunnen komen. Wedden dat veel mensen die gaan salvagen. Sowieso wanneer het spel al tig maanden gespeeld wordt en je 3x dezelfde low unique hebt gevonden dan zou ik er zeker eentje van salvagen, misschien wel meer. Het ligt er natuurlijk ook aan hoe duur de items zijn en of je ze al gebruikt hebt ja of nee (in het geval dat ze BoE zijn). Ik zie in ieder geval heel veel opties en ik ga ook zeker hard aan de slag met craften dus ik weet nu al zeker dat ik veel salvagen

[Bulls]

Items die BoE zijn en afgedankt worden uiteraard gesalvaged (tenzij ze zo flauw gaan zijn dat bound items niet meer gesalvaged kunnen worden) Maar natuurlijk ga je uniques salvaged, alleen de echte bruikbare items die je met elke class kan gebruiken niet zoals een skullders ofzo.

Ik zag dat je speciale salvaged resources stack plekjes hebt in de inventory? Valt daaruit niet al op te maken dat er maar 3 soorten zullen zijn?

[psychoclown]

Dat was afgelopen BlizzCon nog niet het geval en daarvoor, in 2009, ook niet. Waar heb je dit gezien?

[Bulls]

psychoclown schreef op vrijdag 10 december 2010 @ 12:25:
Dat was afgelopen BlizzCon nog niet het geval en daarvoor, in 2009, ook niet. Waar heb je dit gezien?

Ik meende dat gezien te hebben in dat Artizan/Crafting filmpje, maar na nogmaals bekeken te hebben blijkt dus dat ze wel gewoon in een inventory slot zitten. My bad

Daar zijn maar 3 soorten materials te zien, maar dat zullen er dan vast meer worden.

[psychoclown]

@Diablo on Crafted Sets and Toad Licking

Will artisans compete for materials? Will salvaging crafted items refund their ingredients? Any craft only set?—Limiate
Salvaging crafted items won’t return the full amount it takes to craft it. Crafted sets are a distinct possibility.—Diablo

True end game recipes? Will our all recipes match at L60? Wirt?—Limiate
The general idea is that crafted items will rival the best drops, but you have to find the recipes/reagents. You’ll wear a mix.—Diablo

How will the Giant Toad rune variation function against monsters that it can’t 1 hit?—tleemors
Lick them to death?—Diablo

[heuveltje]

Zucht eigenlijk ben ik het met die poster van een paar pagina's terug eens !
Bliz kom eens op met dat spel !!!!!!
Of beter, had nog een paar jaar doorontworpen, en had pas gezegd dat het bestond een halfjaar voordat je het uitbrengt.

* heuveltje wil iets doen met al de informatie die hij oppikt

[hellfighter87]

Meh, eigenlijk vervangen ze rune words met recepies. laten we hopen dat ze dan teminste een wat betere droprate hebben.

[psychoclown]

Runewords zijn niet te vergelijken met crafts als je het mij vraagt.
Sowieso heb je voor het craften in Diablo 3 , voor zover we weten, geen runes nodig die droppen maar ingrediënten uit items die je salvaged (of misschien wel koopt van de market). Dat de recipes van de verschillende crafts dan droppen vind ik alleen maar een leuke toevoeging. Hiermee kunnen ze, net als met de ingrediënten, ook weer leuke dingen mee uithalen zoals bijv. unique recipes ed.

Overigens waren recipes al aangekondigd en was ook al in de TS te lezen

[ Voor 7% gewijzigd door psychoclown op 12-12-2010 11:12 ]

[psychoclown]

Off-screen foto's van de verschillende character schermen.

By far the best shot shows the newly-redesigned skills menu. Clck through to see it with point by point descriptions of the new stuff visible in it, courtesy of my Blizzcon demo memories.

This big view of Diablo III’s newly-redesigned skills menu is awesome. The “Purchase New Skill” icon only shows up when you have a skill point and an open skill slot. Which this player does since they just reached Clvl 10. Note the unlocked 4th tier skill icon, while the 5th, 6th, and 7th tiers are locked until the levels displayed in red. This player clicked that icon, or the “View Skills List’ icon, and that opened the list of skills on the right. There the skills are arranged by Tier, just like on our Monk skills page. This Monk can use her new skill point to purchase and begin using any skill in the first four tiers, or could save the point, or spend it in one of her three current skills.

To learn a new skill, you have to click it. When you do the skill lights up, and the “Learn Skill” button at the bottom of the menu becomes active. If you click that, then you learn the skill and it’s moved from the skill listing on the right and added to your known skills on the left. It’s also instantly added to an open slot on your 1234 hotkeys. You can click and drag that icon to move it to a different number, or put it on the LMB, RMB, or Tab icons once you’ve learned it.

The three (soon to be 4) known skills, shown on the left, are NOT included in the full skills list menu to the right. If the Monk respeced out of one, it would go back into the list on the right, in the appropriate tier. Note also that the runestone sockets are open; skill runes were only available for the Wiz, WD, and Barb in the Blizzcon 2010 build.

[Bulls]

heuveltje schreef op zondag 12 december 2010 @ 10:39:
Zucht eigenlijk ben ik het met die poster van een paar pagina's terug eens !
Bliz kom eens op met dat spel !!!!!!
Of beter, had nog een paar jaar doorontworpen, en had pas gezegd dat het bestond een halfjaar voordat je het uitbrengt.

* heuveltje wil iets doen met al de informatie die hij oppikt

Als hij bugvrij kan draaien vind ik het al best, de content kunnen ze dan wel stapsgewijs via updates toevoegen Maar ik denk niet dat ze dat doen, het is geen EA.

[hellfighter87]

zelfs als ze dat zouden doen. je zou binne no time lvl 15/20 act1 uitspelen en dan moet je wachten op een update . denk niet dat je daar veel vrolijker van word

[Joarie]

Had Titan Quest ook niet zo'n euvel in het begin van de lancering?

Dat brandende pad de berg omhoog was een ondoenlijke zaak voor een normale pc destijds.

[Dakreal]

Psycho, je plaatjes werken niet (meer).

Helaas had m'n weekend update nodig ;-)

[DeepSeven]

Hier staan de screenshots ook:
http://www.4gamer.net/games/008/G000817/20101025040/

Vind die nieuwe skill interface helemaal niet 'awesome', geef maar gewoon de skilltree, veel overzichtelijker. Dit lijkt meer op wow waar je nieuwe skills ook koopt.

[Verwijderd]

Elke keer als ik zie dat er nieuwe posts zijn in dit topic, hoop ik op een bekendmaking van de releasedate Maar eigenlijk weet ik al dat het niet zo zal zijn als ik de laatste posts ga bekijken

[hellfighter87]

eerlijk gezegd snap ik nog steeds niet hoe die interface werkt lol. links een aantal skills staan en rechts ook links zijn dan de al reeds geleerde skills en rechts de nieuwe skills ofzow?

in iedergeval wazig

[Verwijderd]

psychoclown schreef op donderdag 09 december 2010 @ 15:37:
Precies maar daarna toch wel gebruikt als marktstabilisator want het botten en dupen maakt de economie kapot

ik wist dat er geduped werdt maar nooit op welke schaal. in diablo 1 was dat echt veel heb zelf ook het een en ander geduped voor fun builds.

maar in diablo 2 was het wel moeilijk want het is mij nooit gelukt te achterhalen hoe. niemand die ik kende overigens.

hoop wel dat ze diablo 3 dupe vrij kunnen houden

[psychoclown]

De meest simpele oplossingen zoals de servers laten crashen door een constante stroom packets te sturen zijn allemaal vrij snel gebanned maar andere geavanceerdere werden geheim gehouden door de itemshops en hun vrienden.

In Diablo 3 zullen ze diezelfde fouten nooit maken gok ik zo

[pstalman]

psychoclown schreef op maandag 13 december 2010 @ 12:50:
De meest simpele oplossingen zoals de servers laten crashen door een constante stroom packets te sturen zijn allemaal vrij snel gebanned maar andere geavanceerdere werden geheim gehouden door de itemshops en hun vrienden.

In Diablo 3 zullen ze diezelfde fouten nooit maken gok ik zo

idd, alleen de charsi dupe is volgens mij ooit public gemaakt... was best kloten. omdat ik het weekend ervoor net mijn eerste WF gevonden had en die toen nog 40sojs waard was.

Maar D3 zal wel beter beveiligd worden. Ik hoop dat ze iets doen met item ID's.

[psychoclown]

Raad eens, dat gebeurde in Diablo 2 al met runes maar dat weerhield de mensen niet ze te dupen en een manier te vinden om ze een nieuw id te geven. Namelijk door een runeword te maken werd er een nieuw id gerolled

[Cthulhu]

Ik heb 1x een hack gebruikt in D2, de gamblehack, kon je uniques gamblen, altijd prijs

[Dakreal]

Nooit hacks gebruikt afgezien van maphack. Wel een keer een bugged game (ge)(mis)bruikt om wat sojs te maken

[Verwijderd]

Ik heb ook geduped in 1.09. Maar dit was meer lucky dat ik iemand kende die een 'bugged game' had waar ik in mocht, maar ik wist niet de techniek er niet achter.

Je kon dan een game joinen, je items droppen en weer weggaan. Dan werd het niet opgeslagen en dus had je alles nog. Maar op de een of andere manier kon je wel de dingen oprapen, en dat werd dan wel gesaved. Toen was ik ineens stinkend rijk. Maar kort daarna gestopt met spelen en die accounts zijn een stille dood gestorven:P

Bugvrij programmeren bestaat niet, vooral in de early moments van zo'n game zullen er altijd wel wat gasten zijn die iets vinden wat te exploiten valt, het is alleen hopen dat de economie er niet zal onder lijden.

Bots zijn denk ik het moeilijkst om tegen te gaan. Tegenwoordig zijn die bots zo geadvanceerd.
Vroeger had je een Pindlebot, was wel lachen opzich, nachtje aan laten en de volgende dag had je een windforce Maargoed, diablo 2 was toen al kapot gegrind en geduped/hackt door jan & alle man.

Zodra het eenvoudig wordt voor de modale speler om te cheaten om hun eigen character beter te maken, of rijker te worden, zal het gros het niet laten.

Maar ik heb wel vertrouwen in Blizzard dat ze genoeg geleerd hebben van hun games, en daarom bij Diablo 3 het wel tot een minimum proberen te beperken.

[psychoclown]

Diablo.incgamers - BlizzCon10 Quests and Dungeons Report

There were three dungeons in the PvM demo at Blizzcon 2010, The Halls of Agony, the Highlands Passage, and King Leoric’s Torture Chambers, each of which had one quest contained within it. There were no random events (as far as I noticed) and no variety in the quests; the same ones were in the same place every time you played through the demo, though the location of the quest objects in the first and third dungeon varied each game along with the randomized dungeon layout.

This was a surprise to me, since the Blizzcon 2008 demo had several quests/random events spread throughout the upper two levels of the dungeon, mixed in with the main plot line quest which culminated in a battle against the Skeleton King on the third level, which was entirely scripted and non-random. The Blizzcon 2009 demo had one main quest but lots of random events/mini-quests spread throughout the desert, before the anticlimax of reaching Alcarnus.

The quests in those past two demos were not the same as they’ll be in the final game (all were simplified for the demos, and stripped of their story/plot elements to preserve secrets), but they gave a representative preview of the sorts of random events, NPC escort missions, adventures, and various randomly occurring and located mini-quests we’ll see in the final game. This year’s demo did not.

Why not? There’s no telling; none of the Blizzard devs talked about the contents of this year’s PvM demo in any interviews or panel discussions. My guess is that with so much new stuff—redesigned skill trees, traits, five playable classes, functional runestones, the talisman and charms, many more item types, new boss monster abilities—plus a shorter play time per session (15 minutes rather than 20 as in the past two years) they thought that lots of quests and random events would overstuff the demo with content. This way players were more concentrated on the combat and action and dungeons, rather than distracted by having to run errands on top of everything else.

As for the quests that were in the demo, they were very simple. The first dungeon’s quest was simply to exit the level, with a bonus non-quest goal of killing a SuperUnique boss. The second dungeon was tiny, and the escort mission quest was impossible not to complete within about two minutes. Only the third dungeon had a proper quest; in it you had to find six prisoner ghost, click to free them, then find the dungeon boss and take the key he dropped to open a magical gate which granted you access to… a black room that was a dead end and the end of the dungeon.

Much more detail on all of those quests later in this article, but the point is that the Blizzcon 2010 demo was not about solving quests or completing complicated missions. The quest were very short/simple missions stripped down from the full versions in the final game, inserted into the demo just to give players some overarching objective while 99% of our attention was focused on the simple (and yet glorious) acts of killing monsters and scoring loot.

Demo Details
Some general demo details.

When you began the demo, you were at the class selection screen. All five classes were available; you clicked the male/female icon to see them sorted by gender, with every option available except for the male Demon Hunter. Once you made your selection and entered a name, the game screen went black, and your next sight was of your character in the Burning Halls of Agony.

There was no town to start in or return to, no NPCs to speak with, no Waypoint, and the only Checkpoints were at the start of the three dungeons and inside the final demo-end bonus room. Like the other Blizzcon PvM demos, this was not a portion of the game; not a chunk scooped out and presented as was. It was an area specially-constructed for the demo, using some levels and quests we’ll see in the final game, but all with numerous modifications made. This differs a lot from the demos presented of Diablo II, back at E3 in 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001. Those demos featured entire acts, presented almost exactly as theywere in the final game. Players began each demo at the start of the act with a pre-made character, and worked through it just like playing the game.

I still remember playing furiously on a demo machine with a Bowazon in 2000 and nearly making it through all of Act 3 at Blizzcon 2000, giving a couple of the devs who were watching the booth a thrill/worry. (Nothing of Act Four had ever been revealed, at that point.) I made it all the way to Travincal and killed off the Council, but had missed one part of Khalim, so couldn’t break the Compelling Orb with the Will. I probably wouldn’t have had time to get through the entire Durance anyway, since I was racing to finish before the show closed for the day and the machines got turned off.

The Horadric Dumpster Salvage Cube was usable in the demo, but with no Caravan/Artisans to return to, there was nothing to do with the materials you created. Which made salvaging pretty pointless.

Finally, this demo seemed to be a very recent build, showing pretty well how far along the development was. Evidence/examples:

The Demon Hunter was very newly added to the game. The male DH’s graphics weren’t done yet. There were only nine Demon Hunter skills, eight attacks plus Vault.

There were only five Demon Hunter traits, and one of them (Lightning Reflexes) was identical in function to Quickness, which the other four characters have. (Making me think Lightning Reflexes is the new name for the trait and it hadn’t been migrated through the game to the other class trait lists yet.)

The Monk still isn’t done; the class only had 20 skills, compared to more than 25 for the WD, Wiz, and Barb, and only 21 traits, compared to more than 30 for the other three classes.

Runestones were not enabled for the Monk or Demon Hunter yet, since their skills aren’t really finalized yet, and the devs don’t want to start tinkering with skill runes too much until they know exactly what the skills will do.

Lots of skills and traits still have old descriptions that make reference to removed skills or traits, or other skills as prerequisites.

Graphics for inventory items weren’t very polished yet, with the small items; charms, gems, materials, jewelry, etc, still quite rough and hard to tell apart from just the icon.

The Lore window was brand new and almost unpopulated except for very brief blurbs about the demo quests.

These and many other things show that the game is still under heavy development and what we were playing at Blizzcon was a very recent build. Either that or the devs went to a ton of effort to make the demo *look* like it was brand new, including putting in errors and old skill/trait descriptions. A possibility I find very unlikely.

I’m not offering this as a complaint; I think it’s great that they showed us something as recent as they did. I just bring it up since I’ve seen occasional comments along the lines of, “The game’s almost done and they’re just showing early areas in demos to fool us!” I’m sure they could have give us a demo from anywhere in Act Two, and maybe even some early portions of Act Three, but they didn’t want to show later game content, or give players higher level characters to play with, or make the demo too hard. So we got another chunk of the early Act One, pre-Skeleton King dungeons. The characters in this demo were actually the lowest level yet, of an Blizzcon demo; a fact that I think pairs nicely with my theory that they kept quests and other complications out of this demo to avoid overcomplicating things for players.

The Halls of Agony
The first dungeon in the demo, where new characters appeared immediately after the character selection screen, was called the Halls of Agony. Though I’ve typed the name of the level about 500 times since Blizzcon, I continue to want to write “Burning Halls” each time, since the main visual of the level, and my main memory from playing it is the blood-red lighting and the BBQ grates set in the floor, through which burning coals and flames were constantly glowing. (That and “Halls of Agony” sounds like one of the levels in Nihlathak’s dungeon in Act Five of D2, so I think I’m having a prequel flashback.)

The Halls technically had a quest, but not really. You can see the full in-game description in the image to the right. Here’s what it said:

The Torture Chambers of the Mad King

* Battle through Leoric’s Halls of Agony.
* Bonus: Kill the Cultist Grand Inquisitor.

There’s some level name confusion there, since the third level in the demo was actually called “The Torture Chambers of the Mad King.” I won’t be surprised if these dungeons have different names and locations in the the final game, since the “Halls” was full of torture devices, while the “Torture Chambers” had no torture; just jail cells and lots of skeletons. Probably this whole section of the game, the multi-level expanse of dungeons, will be called The Torture Chambers of the Mad King, and these will be two levels from within the complex.

The Halls of Agony lived up to their name. The entire large dungeon was like a scene from a horror movie set during the Inquisition. You can instantly recognize shots from this area (vs. the other two) in our Act One Screenshots gallery or in the Gameplay Movie gallery, since they are so color coded, compared to the bluish outdoor Highlands Passage, and the greenish jail level. That’s what it was like to play through this area too; you constantly saw fire or blood, and felt scalded and ensanguined as you worked through the level.

I don’t mean that purely as a metaphor, either. Thinking about the levels in the demo on Friday night, after the first day of Blizzcon, I had very strong mental impressions of them. The Halls were red and bloody. They felt hot and crowded and gruesome, with fire and zombies and blood and torture. I enjoyed the breakables there, since there are dozens of torture devices to smash apart, including ones still in use and others with hunks of rotting bodies strapped to them.

Since there wasn’t really a quest in the Halls, playing through it was all about exploration. You can see a lot of the dungeon in the gameplay movie and the screenshots, though the action is chopped up into short sequences which deny you a sense of the size or flow of events. The theme of the dungeon was that of a huge torture chamber, and aside from various small stone-walled rooms like something out of a castle, and a few winding or zig-zagging narrow hallways, most of the level was comprised of large torture rooms, or areas of flame.

The fires raging below the floors and inside the walls are unpleasant to behold or contemplate, and though none of the monsters were really torture-specific (It needed a Butcher!), they felt appropriate to the area. They had cleavers, sort of. Three of them in a row along one long hallway (this was always towards the end of the dungeon, so I was always happy to locate it) for a nifty chopping dodge and duck obstacle. They were more a cool visual than an actual danger, since getting chopped didn’t even one-hit the monsters, much less imperil your character.

The bonus quest in the Halls of Agony was to kill the Cultist Grand Inquisitor, who was just a regular Cultist mage, with a different colored cloak. I killed him three times and didn’t even realize I was fighting him twice, when I was playing a Demon Hunter and it seemed like another ranged attack battle against some Cultists.

Beside the numerous Cultists (there were no Berserkers in the Halls of Agony; just the mage-type Vessels and Summoners) there were huge Unburied (boss packs of Unburied were the most dangerous monsters in the demo), Razorbacks, and lots and lots of zombies. Undead galore, often emerging from various monster generators, which was a nice touch.

Iron Maidens issued forth a steady stream of zombies, flaming zombies staggered out of fiery alcoves in the walls (imagine what they must smell like?), other zombies were standing around the burning braziers in the floor and often catching on fire from them (they lost DoT from the flames), and plenty more zombies climbing out of spike pits and blood pits.

The spike pits were fun; they were basically a bed of nails hung on a chain, with the sharp ends down. Like bloody spiky chandeliers. You clicked the wall switch and they descended with a creak and a rattle, smashing shut and closing off the pit the zombies were climbing out of. The blood pit was a huge red well, out of which fat zombies climbed perpetually. There was no way to close it off, and though I never lingered near one for too long, on several occasions I was there long enough to see four or five zombies emerge, with no signs that the flow would cease.

The only other curiosity encountered in the Halls of Agony was a new monster, the Treasure Seeker. See the wiki article for more details, but this guy was basically a running transcendent chest with a steady leak.

He was found somewhere in the Halls, and once sighted he started making amusing goblin-like noises, and dropping gleaming stacks of gold. When describing him in one of the panels, Jay Wilson advised players to “beat the candy out of him.” That about sums it up; when you hit him he dropped gold and ran very quickly, but he’d always stop once he was off the screen to let you catch up. He took a fair amount of damage, and was hard to kill for melee characters, (since he always led you into more monsters, and then tended to scurry away while you were busy) but easy enough for the Demon Hunter or Wizard to cut down from afar.

The Highlands Passage
The second area in the demo was a small one, included simply to give some outdoor scenery as a palate-cleanser between the two large dungeons. About 95% of it is shown in a minute of action during the the gameplay movie, and clicking here will show you a jigsaw image of the entire area, taken from that movie.

It’s set entirely outdoors, in a pretty, sun-dappled stretch of wilderness, over which a long stone walkway has been constructed. Much of the length is comprised by two narrow bridges over pretty, rainbow-intensive waterfalls, and if not for the constant intrusion of monstrous demons intent of unzipping your viscera, it would be a scenic spot for a picnic. Like most (all?) outdoor areas in Diablo III, the look doesn’t translate well through screenshots, since the atmospheric disturbances make the shot look blurry. There seems to always be blowing dust or fog or smoke or hazy sun-dappled light, and while these elements work nicely in the game, adding mood and atmosphere, they just make screenshots look fuzzy.

I continue to expect that most players will be pleasantly surprised by how much they like the look and graphics of Diablo III, when they finally get to play it themselves, rather than just seeing it in screenshots and gameplay movies. Unless you’re the type who just doesn’t get, at all, the analogies made in this article, you will find Diablo III very visually-pleasing.

So the Highlands Passage was pretty, but what about the gameplay? Less impressive, but that’s because the level was clearly created just for the Blizzcon demo. I say “clearly” since it was so small, without any branches or forks at all. There was a quest in the level, one given by a wandering NPC who was waiting for you right at the start. You can hear his whole (very brief) speech in the gameplay movie. Here’s a quote:

“I will make an example of Dargon, that traitorous cur. Help me hunt him, and I will sell to you, instead of those Zealots.”

As he tells you this you’re running along the bridge, towards the first group of Cultists. They’re quickly dispatched, and then you find a larger bunch in the alcove at the end of the first bridge, before running down some stairs to the right, going through a few more monsters, and reaching the clearing at the end of the level, where the Weaponmaker you were escorting triggers a speech from Dargon, the aforementioned NPC.


Dargon: “Master, help me. The crazed weapon-maker wants my head!”
The Cultist Master: “What makes you think I care for your life? Kill them, my pets.”

The Cultist leader was not named in the demo, and he was clearly not in finished form in the demo, since he hardly had time to finish his little speech before dying. He didn’t fight back, just stood there in his pretty red robe and died as soon as you hit him. I’m sure he’ll be a more interesting character in the final game; one who fights back viciously, and who is built up more before the encounter. The abbreviated nature of things in this demo was just due to the time constraints.

While he didn’t fight, his “pets” certainly did, and they were an interesting development. They were Cultist Berserkers, a monster type seen often enough previously, but now much changed in size. In earlier demos they were basically human-sized; muscular brawlers, but not nearly as large and powerful as the Barbarian. The three in this year’s BlizzCon demo were huge, ogre-sized, and much larger than any of the player characters.

This might have been entirely due to them being Champions, who are larger than normal monsters of their size, but not usually *that* much larger. I’ll guess that all Berserkers have been increased in size since they were last seen, and that the increase was multiplied by this bunch being Champions. They were nasty, too. Some games worse than others, depending on which Boss Modifers they spawned with.

I only died (to monsters) three times in the demo, and two of them were to these guys, both times when they had the Vortex property and kept yanking my Wizard or Demon Hunter back into their midst.

That said, they weren’t *that* dangerous. I’d have been fine if I’d been playing normally, rather than rushing through recklessly thanks to the 15-minute demo time limit. If I’d stayed back on the narrow bridge leading to the Berserkers and attacked more cautiously, taking advantage of the Weaponmaker who was there to tank, I’d have been fine. But I was always in a hurry so I always raced past him and took on two of the Berserkers while the other one pounded away at the Weaponmaker. Who fought back, but did negligible damage with his sword.

When the Berserkers, Dargon, and the Cultist leader were dead, the Weaponmaker gave a little speech and a reward, of sorts.

“Now that Dargon is dead, no one shall question my reputation or my resolve. Now for my goods. You’ll find none better!”

This led to the first NPC merchant interface seen in a playable version of Diablo III, with the Weaponmaker opening up to buy or sell your character items right then and there. The sales prices were very low, in keeping with the D3 Team’s design goal of making monster-dropped gold the most important source of player wealth, but the Weaponmaker had a decent variety of weapons for sale. I never bought anything or spent much time looking over his goods, not with the clock ticking and the huge jail-style final dungeon waiting for me on the other side of that glowing portal, but it was a useful example of how the game will give players various options to dispose of their items without returning to town.

The Torture Chambers of the Mad King
This level, which was entirely free of torture or chambers, but not mad kings, began once players moved through the glowing doorway at the end of the Highlands Passage. The very different vibe was visible at once, with the hellish red lightning of the Halls of Agony replaced by a cold greenish hue. This worked very well with the layout (open, spacious, barren) and the monster types (almost exclusively skeletons), plus the sound effects and various set decorations, to give the dungeon the feel of being cold, bleak, ancient, and abandoned.

I didn’t entirely notice this while playing, but in the weeks since Blizzcon, whenever I’ve thought back on the dungeons I’ve had very clear emotional impressions of the differences between them. This is a credit to the developers, since I’m sure it was exactly the mood they were shooting for. I don’t know how much of that will translate into the final game, though. The dungeons will still be nicely-designed, of course, but they were especially effective in the Blizzcon demo, since there were only two of them, with the short, mind-resetting Highlands Passage in between.

Players thus spent 7 or 8 minutes (or all 15, if you didn’t hurry to find the exit) in the red-lit, bloody, gruesome torture chamber of the Halls of Agony. Long enough to grow used to the hellish theme. Your eyes were then dazzled by the outdoors, wide spaces, sunlight, running water, and nature sounds of the Highlands Passage. Thus refreshed, the black, green-lit, alien, hopeless jail of the third dungeon was doubly shocking.

The player appeared in a narrow hallway, immediately before the spectral form of Queen Alyssa. Talk to the hand, Baby!

Well, listen to the hand, since she talked from her head. Her body remained immobile and floating, like a post, but as you walked past her she turned, always holding the head towards you, while she gave her little quest speech.

“Finally, someone to help my people. Guilty of nothing, save being loyal to me, they were cursed to be held in these cells beyond their natural lives. My blessing will allow you to free them from their long torment.”

The quest was simple; you had to move through the fairly huge dungeon and find the six prisoners, then click them to set them free. The only difficulty for this was the size of the dungeon. It was quite large, but easy to move around since the passages were wide, straight, and regular.

The whole dungeon was shaped like a square, with clusters of jail cells in each corner, and paths along the perimeter, with two crossing straight through the center. That’s where the final battle of the demo took place, where the Warden appeared. Prior to fighting the Warden (who spawned once you reached the center of the dungeon, after freeing all six ghosts) players had to find the ghosts, which required you to run through pretty much the whole dungeon. I did that level 8 or 10 times, though I only had time to finish it 4 or 5 of those, and there was no predictability to the location of the ghosts. Sometimes you’d get 2 or 3 in the lower right corner, where you started off the level; other times there were none nearby, and the others were scattered through all the rest of the huge level. IOW, the random ghost location program was working very well.

The spirits were easy to spot, since they showed up on the mini-map. You see one to the right, and a larger view can be seen here. Actually getting to them once you’d spotted them wasn’t always easy; the cell blocks were miniature mazes, with bars you could see and shoot through on all sides (this area was very easy for the Demon Hunter and Wizard), but with only one doorway per cell. So you’d spot the green circle (or two right beside each other; I guess that way the ghosts of Alyssa’s servants had each other to complain to through all eternity) but still have to spend some time running around to the other side of the cell block, then winding through two or three cells to reach the ghostly servant.

Naturally, there were monsters in the way, almost all skeletons, which sets up some interesting theological debates about the cosmology and afterlife of Diablo.

What is the difference between a zombie, or a skeleton, or a ghost, in Diablo? The servant ghosts to rescue for this quest had skeletons, lying in the middle of the green circles. Their ghosts paced endlessly around the circumference of the circle, mumbling sadly until you “freed them from their long torment,” per the Queen’s request. But why were they ghosts walking around skeletons, while there were evil skeletons (without ghosts) there to fight you? Skeletons guarding ghosts who are chained to skeletons? So who are the evil skeletons? Why do they have free movement and will? Are their ghosts inside of them, or do demonic spirits get called up to animate human bones?

Also, what are zombies? They’re basically skeletons with a little more meat on their bones. Oddly, they’re much slower and more clumsy than skeletons, as if having some flesh and muscle were a drawback to manual dexterity? And I haven’t even mentioned Wraiths and other evil ghostly spirits. (And no, there aren’t really any answers to this, since it’s not meant to be logical or consistent in the game. It’s just for the sake of the silly argument.)


That nonsense aside, the jail level was fairly lightly-defended, with just scattered bunches of skeletons and lots of leathery ghouls. Their strength, such as it was, came from numbers. There were some Boss and Champion packs, but they weren’t too dangerous, especially not with the endless long hallways in the jail. The chief enemy in the demo was time, since I was always aware that it had been at least 12 minutes since I’d started playing, and I really wanted to finish the level and fight the Warden before the 15 minute timer ran out. (The timer did not display in the PvM demo; there was no top of the screen count down as in the Arena.)

The main skeletons of interest were the mages, who had a glowing circle around them. They hurled projectiles of some sort, possibly arcane, but not very frequently or dangerously. I mostly remember them as annoying nuisances, since they usually spawned in a pair, had fairly quick movement, and liked to retreat during the battle. So while you were wiping out the last of their melee troops and archers (who did some damage, but didn’t really retreat, so were easy to kill) they were backing away, and by the time you chased after them they often ran into another pack. Which meant you now had a dozen melee skeletons, plus 4 skeleton mages doing their artillery support thing.

A player without a time limit would have chopped them all up, and cleared out the jail systematically. Or had some fun herding all of the skeleton mages into one huge bunch in the middle of the jail area, then running around dodging 10 or 12 of their harmless projectiles at a time. I did not do either of those things.

Quite often I just left the skeletons to do their thing and ran right past them while looking for the quest ghosts, since the skeletons weren’t dangerous to ignore or valuable to kill. They needed a damage upgrade or more aggressive AI; something to make them dangerous enough that you needed to deal with them, since they were far easier to ignore than fight, in the Blizzcon demo.


One other interesting thing in the jail was the line of sight issues it demonstrated. Lots of the jail cells had a big solid door set into the bars. I’m not sure of the architectural logic of this, but it mde for interesting visuals, as you can see in the two part shot to the right. While running past the cells, towards the doors, you’d see a bunch of skeletons in the cell. Yet when you got to the door you’d only see one or two of them; the ones standing far enough to the sides that they were visible through the bars. Then as soon as you blasted through the doorway, all of them would again be visible.

The Warden
The big boss of the jail level was The Warden. He was a real SuperUnique; he had dialogue, original graphics, and lots of minions.

Finding his location was easy; once you freed the last of the six ghosts, a pointing arrow appeared on the minimap, directing you to the right spot. When you were far from it, the arrow pointed off the side of the minimap in whatever direction you had to go. As you got closer the arrow moved on the map and pointed right to the location. Which was helpful, since there was nothing about the location to indicate that it was propitious. Nothing until you arrived there, and the fun began.

The Warden wasn’t hard; I never struggled to kill him off, or to stay alive while doing so, but he was fun. The battle is shown in the gameplay movie, which you should watch now if you have somehow not yet done so. The location is the crossroads in the center of the level, and once you reached it, after freeing all of the ghosts, hordes of ghouls can scrambling up the sides of the platform, and the Warden bellowed his powerful dialogue, before appearing, ready to smash.

“Am I alone here? Must I do this myself? So be it! Face me. And repent.

The battle was best fought from one side, and a wise player stayed in the center only long enough for the spawn to begin, then retreated down one of the four paths. I did that with a Demon Hunter, Vaulting through the ghouls, and had a very easy time with it. All of the enemies had to come along the narrow path towards me, which made Entangling Shot very effective at hopelessly clogging their advance, while Multishot pierced through the mob, dealing damage to dozens of enemies per blast.

The Warden himself had a big stick and liked to hammer with it, but even when he whacked my Monk it wasn’t very heavy damage, and I had no real trouble punching the rest of his puny minions to bits.

Bonus Plot Stuff
The defeated Warden dropped The Black Key (or Skeleton Key? I can’t remember.) This was used to unlock a long gateway along one side of the level, that could not be passed otherwise. Beyond it were several large chests full of mega loot, and then a narrow causeway that led around a corner, through a huge mob of ghouls (who seemed to be there largely to let you rack up your highest Kill Streak bonus of the demo), and then down a stairway through the door that ended the demo.

I’d trod down that path a couple of times before I noticed a detour away from the chests. It led into a small side room, where the Tristram Ghostly Players reenacted a scene from plot events that took place prior to Diablo I. As King Leoric descended into madness, he was spurred on by his corrupted ArchBishop Lazarus. Leoric distrusted everyone, including his queen, and in the ghostly flashback (shown in the gamplay movie) Lazarus beheaded her, after convincing Leoric of her wicked intent.

Here’s the dialogue from that short scene:

Lazarus: My Lord, the prisoner is ready, as you requested.
King Leoric: Thank you, Lazarus. Your loyalty is invaluable in the midst of all these traitors. And you my queen, conspiring against me.
Queen Asylla: My love, I swear. I have never betrayed you.
*Lazarus drops the guillotine, her head rolls over to Leoric.*
Lazarus: Lies, to the very end.

It was an anti-wedding. Lazarus now pronounced them Man and Ghost.

On a stand near the scene of that historical event there was a Lore Book written by Lazarus, which I listened to a couple of times. It was basically retelling of events from the Diablo I lore/manual, with Lazarus talking about his allegiance to Diablo and how he was going to kidnap the Prince, etc. I don’t have a direct quote from that one, but we do from another book, by King Leoric. There were three books by him that could be found throughout the dungeons, and an excerpt from one was played during the gameplay movie.

I am convinced that some malevolent being is attempting to wrest control of my thoughts away from me. I hear voices urging me to horrendous acts. There are times when I seem unable to control myself. Lazarus knows, I’m certain of this.

What’s a lore book? Let’s quote Kevin Martens, from one of the Blizzcon panels.


Lore books are items that fall as treasure. When you click on them they automatically start playing an audio file. In it you hear the narrator, the person who wrote the book that you found. They have a little bit of voice acting, they’re interesting, and it takes no more time than clicking on it to pick it up. And you can keep running along killing monsters while you listen to it.

None of the books by Leoric or Lazarus (or another by Queen Alyssa found in a chest right beside her ghost at the start of the demo) told me anything I didn’t already know from the Diablo I story. But lots of people who play D3 won’t know anything about D1 (sad to say) and they’ll surely appreciate the backstory imparted by the books. And even those of us who aren’t new to the series will enjoy the lore books we find elsewhere, with background info on all sorts of game stuff we don’t know a bit about. Yet.

Dungeons and Quests Conclusion
As long as this article is, there’s no point in summarizing it here. I was impressed by the two big dungeons that made up the bulk of the Blizzcon 2010 PvM demo. They had very distinct themes and atmospheres, and were both very effective at conveying them through visuals, monsters, sound effects, and music. I’m not sure how much of that focus was granted by the fact that I played through those two dungeons a dozen times in two days, without any other areas of the game to dilute the strength of the impression they gave to me, but it was there.

The quests in the dungeons were a lot less impressive. There wasn’t really a quest at all in the Burning Halls, and the escort mission in the Highlands Passage was abbreviated to the point of absurdity. The ghostly servants quest in the jail level was the only one that felt like a real quest, and it was nothing special; just a FedEx sort of “find the object” mission.

That said, I’m not real worried about the quality of quests in the final game, since the levels for this demo were so clearly modified. No random events, most of the plot details removed, the layout and structure tweaked to remove waypoints or any need to talk to NPCs in town about the quests, etc. And besides, even if the quests are as simplistic as those in every other RPG, (like D1 and D2) it’s the gameplay and item hunting that makes Diablo so fun, and so far Diablo III’s doing a great job on that front. This year’s demo was the best the game’s looked, and I’m pretty much on board with most of the game feature changes and development. It won’t be until we get to try out the demo that we can really get a sense for how the game plays over an extended period and multiple levels, but I’m as eager as anyone for that day to come.

[tollo71]

Zo hoort dat Thijs, een flinke lap tekst. Laat maar l*lllen, ik lees het graag

[psychoclown]

Ik wil zeker niet een tweedeling tussen de (vaste) lezers want ik doe het voor iedereen en een beetje voor mezelf. Wat ik ook niet wil is de discussie opnieuw voeren tenminste niet via het topic voor suggesties, op- en aanmerkingen sta ik altijd op maar weliswaar via DM. Wel zal ik wanneer ik zulke grote posts hebt, die mijn inziens de moeite waard zijn anders post ik ze niet, geen italic meer gebruiken

---

De lore books feature weet me nog steeds te intrigeren, toegegeven het verre van een nieuw concept maar ik ben zo benieuwd naar hoeveel boeken er zijn en wat er allemaal in te lezen is!

[MLM]

Ik ga ze zeker allemaal lezen/luisteren als ik D3 speel (maar misschien niet op de eerste run )
Voor de mensen die ze nog niet gelezen hebben, er zijn ook wat echte boeken in de diablo-setting (wel engels) verkrijgbaar, zeker wel de moeite waards om eens te lezen

Vandaag is mijn verjaardag, hopelijk kan ik op mijn volgende verjaardag D3 als cadeau verwachten

[Pheno79]

tollo71 schreef op zaterdag 18 december 2010 @ 18:22:
Zo hoort dat Thijs, een flinke lap tekst. Laat maar l*lllen, ik lees het graag

En anders gebruiken we maphack om snel er doorheen te lezen!

[Verwijderd]

Pheno79 schreef op zondag 19 december 2010 @ 17:22:
En anders gebruiken we maphack om snel er doorheen te lezen!

[heuveltje]

Redelijk offtopic

Voor iedereen die iets te doen zoekt terwijl we op d3 wachten.
Titanquest nu voor E2,50 op steam, incl uitbreiding.

Leuk d2 achtig spel in griekse sfeer !

[Angeloonie]

Ik heb ze beide al tig keer uitgespeeld, maar toch heb ik hem nog even besteld, voor die €2,50 kan ik het niet laten, scheelt me weer CD's opzoeken en CD-keys invoeren de volgende keer, de versies die ik heb kunenn niet aan Steam toegevoegd worden

[psychoclown]

Bashiok on Huge Attribute Changes

Not too long ago we decided to make some changes to how our core player character attributes work. We wanted to share with all of you what problems we ran into, how we want to fix them, and what our new attributes are.

This is a fairly info-heavy write up and takes into account that you’re well versed in core attributes of Diablo II, as well as what has been previously shown in Diablo III. If you’re not, you’ll still get some good information, just keep in mind that this isn’t intended as a comprehensive guide, but a design-heavy explanation for those already following the game very closely. (And if you’re one of those people you just got real excited.)

Attribute Problems

Damage increase confusion:
Willpower increased damage for casters (wizard, witch doctor), and Strength increased damage for weapon users (monk, barb, demon hunter). This is inherently confusing, because many monk abilities, and some barb abilities, look like spells, and the demon hunter seems like she should be affected by Dexterity instead of Strength - - at least logically.

Build diversity:
It’s always been our goal that the core attributes were valuable for all classes in an effort to encourage a broad set of builds. The method we used for this, and the attributes we chose, accomplished this goal under the hood (more or less), but perception was that certain attributes were much more desirable depending on your class. Ultimately the split of damage between willpower and strength meant that despite those abilities having secondary functions that were useful, most ignored the stat that did not apply to their class for damage purposes. This meant each class really only had three attributes they cared about, at best, which was a bit narrow.

Resource (Fury/Mana/Spirit/etc.) tuning and progression:
Diablo is a progression focused game, all about getting more powerful. This makes us want to design systems like resources to scale over time. However, we had no resource attribute. So as a player if you are frustrated by the amount of resource available to you, there wasn’t an obvious enough and analog enough method for making your situation better. Regardless of Diablo II balance issues (i.e. energy not being effective relative to other stats, mostly due to mana steal), if you wanted more mana you knew that energy was the place to fix this. Without something like this resources are difficult to tune, especially given that our goal is to tune them so that it’s a nice progression from start to end.

So, to solve these issues we’re changing our core attributes from Strength, Dexterity, Vitality, and Willpower to:

Attack: Increases damage
- This stat will be a universal damage increasing stat for all classes to prevent confusion about what you should increase to do more damage.
- We realize that ‘Attack’ is less flavorful than ‘Strength’ and ‘Willpower’, but we feel the pros of understanding clearly how to build your character outweigh that con.
- This stat has no secondary effects.

Precision: Increases critical chance
- This will be tuned to be comparable in power to Attack increases for the most part.
- So why have Precision? Mainly so we can play into it with affixes, runes, and traits. Linking effects to crits gives us another hook for designing skills and gives the player options to create ‘crit builds’ that play different than normal attack builds. Examples of the kind of crit effects we ‘could’ do (not saying we are, these are examples):
- - Cleave crits cause monsters to explode and do damage to those around them.
- - Lifesteal could be an ‘on crit only’ affix.
- This is a more finesse stat, and we’re fine with that. Most people will want Attack by default, but they won’t mind getting precision.
- This stat has no secondary effect.

Vitality: Increases health
- And it’s staying that way!
- This stat has no secondary effect (seeing the pattern here?).

Defense: Decreases all damage taken
- This stat is separate from armor and resistances, each of which effects different damage types. This stat effects ‘all’ damage.
- This stat will allow players to control incoming damage rather than increasing health capacity, which is useful to reduce the need for health globes and pots, and allows players to double down on defense for survival focused builds.
- This stat is also useful for PVP, and likely will be valued in the arenas, but isn’t tuned to be a ‘PVP’ only stat.
- This stat has no secondary effects.

Willpower: Affects resource in class-specific ways
- The effects of this stat will change from class to class. It will be our goal to make it roughly equivalently valuable across classes and versus other attributes.
- Basically this stat will give you more access to whatever restricts your resource by default: capacity, regen rate, degeneration rate, generation rate, etc.

This will change and affect several item affixes, but specifically we’ll be making the following changes to address issues with casters under-valuing gear (more below in Q&A), and to clear out attributes that are going away:
- Removing +spell damage affixes
- Adding Bonus % damage for wizard skills (wizard only)
- Adding Bonus % damage for witch doctor skills (witch doctor only)
- Removing Strength
- Removing Dexterity

Q&A
Q: Why do none of the core stats have secondary effects?
A: To focus their intent, making them simple and straightforward to understand. Your core attributes boil down to: damage, crit, health, damage mitigation, and resource.

Q: Since the attributes mostly only have one effect why not name them for that effect? Why not have ‘Damage’, ‘Crit Chance’, ‘Health’, etc.?
A: The main reason is so that we can value the attributes against one another. If you see one item with +15 health and another item with +3 Damage, and those are both core attributes, the general assumption is that the health is the better choice, because the number is bigger. But that may not be the case. By having representational core attributes we can play with the math under the hood so that +3 Vitality is roughly equal to +3 Attack, which makes assessing loot more straight forward.

Also, because common terms like ‘damage’ and ‘health’ are used in a variety of ways, re-using them for core attributes is potentially more confusing than going with symbolic attributes.

And finally, it sounds cooler to make a ‘Vitality’ barbarian than a ‘Health’ barbarian. wink

Q: Why is +spell damage going away as an affix?
A: Same reason we combined Strength and Willpower into Attack, it was inherently confusing as an attribute.

Q: Why add wizard and witch doctor only damage increase affixes?
A: Casters who don’t rely on weapons need a reason to care about their weapons. The monk, barb, and demon hunter all have the DPS stat that has a big impact on their damage. This was the purpose of +spell damage, so without it the wizard and witch doctor will be missing a damage modifier stat to make up for their lack of need for weapon DPS. We’re adding these stats as weapon focused affixes that will make wizard’s and witch doctor’s care about their weapons. This specifically addresses issues that Diablo II had where some classes could more effectively stack magic find gear than others without hurting their damage output or survivability.

This is one of many, many possible solutions we considered. This one ultimately felt the cleanest and most straightforward.

Q: How will items work that get these new wizard and witch doctor affixes? Will only class specific items get them? In general what’s the philosophy behind class specific items?
A: It is not our intent that classes always use their class specific items, specifically in the weapon department. But, class specific items will be predictable sources for stats good for your class, as we’ll restrict them to only carry affixes your class could want.

However, all affixes you could want will still appear on any weapon your class can use. So Wizards can get swords with ‘+% to Wizard Skills’. Such items will be more rare, so more melee oriented classes aren’t always getting their weapons ruined by wizard only stats, but it will happen.

Q: But I hate getting items that say ‘Wizard Only’, or ‘Witch Doctor Only’ on them when I could have used them otherwise!
A: Please re-phrase in the form of a question. wink

Nobody likes getting items that aren’t for them, but it’s the core of the game. Lots of class specific, weird, or flat out crappy items drop in Diablo. That’s part of what makes the really good items, good. Yes, seeing ‘this item is not for you’ effectively written on an item sucks, but it’s a con worth the pro of the class balance it promotes.

Q: Isn’t this a big scary change to make so late in development?
A: It’s not as scary as it sounds, assuming you, gentle reader, aren’t frightened. smile The core of game balance is going to happen approaching the final stages of development. Most of this is a re-structuring of how things work, not a reinvention, so impact is somewhat predictable. Many of these changes actually make the balance process easier and more straightforward. We had also already been planning to go over, tune, or improve many of the parts and pieces that this change affects.

Don’t misunderstand, this is a fairly big change, but it’s work worth doing for the most important reason of all: we believe it will make the game better.

[Dakreal]

Als ze nu al dit aan het finetunen zijn dan zit er echt wel een goeie vaart in!

[heuveltje]

Dit is juist niet finetunen. dit is nog steeds grofweg uitzoeken wat ze precies willen.
Op het moment dat ze zich druk gaan maken over hoeveel er van iets opkomt schiet het enigzins op.

[Dalyxia]

hulde, nog even en we hebben dat de wizard alleen cloth kan dragen, witchdocter en monk mail en de barbarian kan plate dragen en een talent tree waar je de eerste 31 points in 1 bepaalde tree moet stoppen.

oh wacht

begint bij mij steeds meer als singleplayer WoW te voelen

maar misschien heb ik dat wel heul mis

[JohnnyV76]

Dalyxia schreef op dinsdag 21 december 2010 @ 22:37:

begint bij mij steeds meer als singleplayer WoW te voelen

Ga jij maar even beginnen je mond te spoelen met zeep!

[psychoclown]

Dat je nog niet helemaal zeker bent of Diablo 3 de kant op gaat die jij zou willen dat ze op zouden is prima maar je bent alleen maar vergelijkingen maken met WoW en hoe slecht dat wel niet is. Doe het dan goed en zeg wat je echt niks vindt of lijkt en onderbouw het. Posts als deze kunnen we niks mee behalve afdoen als een zeikpost gewoon om het zeiken..

Ik vind het in ieder geval een zeer interessante ontwikkeling en moet zeggen dat ik het gebruik van de stats voorheen wel onduidelijk vond. Nu is het gewoon lekker recht-toe recht-aan net als in de vorige delen! Zal deze week de topicstart ook dan even bijwerken

[psychoclown]

“Encounters” Page on the Official Site + New Screenshots

Blizzard has added an Encounters page to the official Diablo III website. It’s good page for the Basics type of info, with general discussion about monster battles and some specifics about the variety of monsters you’ll find in the Act II deserts. There are a 9 nice new screenshots as well, and though none of them show any new monsters/areas, they’re certainly worth a click. A quote:

...we’ve categorized every monster in Diablo III, regardless of type, by its behaviors. By behaviors, we mean how it emerges onto the battlefield and how it engages you in the moments before you send it to a bloody grave. For example, “big hit” is the internal name for an interesting, classic monster behavior that you’ll encounter in various forms. “Big hit” monsters make very telegraphed, obvious, and often slow attacks that do a great deal of damage if they hit you. These attacks can be simple to avoid, but when dealing with tight quarters or other mobility-affecting variables, avoidance isn’t always easy.

“Frenzied” monsters enter a temporary state where their damage, hit points, defense, or other attributes are increased. It’s in your best interest to avoid engaging them while they’re frenzied—but they also pose a greater threat in this state, meaning that if they’re left unchecked, they can dish out swift, fatal blows. As you grow increasingly familiar with the timing and scope of straightforward behaviors, you’ll learn to avoid and counter them—only to run into new, increasingly complex monsters as you progress through Diablo III’s acts.

[Angeloonie]

Bogen

[psychoclown]

Nice find, daar had ik niet eens bij stil gestaan!

[Angeloonie]

psychoclown schreef op woensdag 22 december 2010 @ 23:36:
Nice find, daar had ik niet eens bij stil gestaan!

Staat in je intro 9 new screenshots

[Dalyxia]

psychoclown schreef op woensdag 22 december 2010 @ 10:55:
Dat je nog niet helemaal zeker bent of Diablo 3 de kant op gaat die jij zou willen dat ze op zouden is prima maar je bent alleen maar vergelijkingen maken met WoW en hoe slecht dat wel niet is. Doe het dan goed en zeg wat je echt niks vind of lijkt en onderbouw het. Posts als deze kunnen we niks mee behalve afdoen als een zeikpost geeoon om het zeiken..

Het is iets wat mij opviel, het hoeft ook niet negatief te zijn, maar het lijkt mij niet de bedoeling van D3, dit is ook iets waar er direct in het begin al een petitie over is geweest die voor mijn gevoel steeds meer gelijk krijgt. Dat zie ik in de enorme shoulder armor, de kleuren, alles ziet er naar uit dat er veel WoW ontwikkelaars en artist naar Group Diablo3 verhuisd zijn. Het was iig niet als zeikerige post bedoeld maar meer om een discussie te starten hoe mensen de grafische vergelijking met WoW zien.

[psychoclown]

Angeloonie schreef op woensdag 22 december 2010 @ 23:37:
[...]


Staat in je intro 9 new screenshots

Nee ik doelde op de boog, heb niet alle screenshots bekeken maar ik had ook niet door dat er een boog te zien was

Dalyxia schreef op donderdag 23 december 2010 @ 19:37:
[...]


Het is iets wat mij opviel, het hoeft ook niet negatief te zijn, maar het lijkt mij niet de bedoeling van D3, dit is ook iets waar er direct in het begin al een petitie over is geweest die voor mijn gevoel steeds meer gelijk krijgt. Dat zie ik in de enorme shoulder armor, de kleuren, alles ziet er naar uit dat er veel WoW ontwikkelaars en artist naar Group Diablo3 verhuisd zijn. Het was iig niet als zeikerige post bedoeld maar meer om een discussie te starten hoe mensen de grafische vergelijking met WoW zien.

Ok duidelijk maar begrijp me niet verkeerd, je post kwam wel degelijk zo over. Als je het anders brengt wordt het ook heel anders opgevat denk ik en wordt het wel gezien als start van een discussie

[ Voor 59% gewijzigd door psychoclown op 23-12-2010 19:43 ]

[psychoclown]

Wat denken jullie eigenlijk van de attribute veranderingen? Ik ben namelijk wel heel erg benieuwd naar de meningen van een ieder omtrent deze, mijn inziens, grote veranderingen.

[Dakreal]

psychoclown schreef op vrijdag 24 december 2010 @ 12:33:
Wat denken jullie eigenlijk van de attribute veranderingen? Ik ben namelijk wel heel erg benieuwd naar de meningen van een ieder omtrent deze, mijn inziens, grote veranderingen.

Ik ben voor verduidelijking, maar op zich maakt het mij niet zo heel veel uit Ik wil dat Diablo 3 een nieuwe game wordt, en niet een herhaling van 2

Maar ze hebben wel een punt, 15 hp kun je niet vergelijken met bv 3 ap, als het bws 10 vitality is en 10 str, is zoiets al wat duidelijker.

[psychoclown]

Maar ik bedoelde vooral ook, naar wat ze gaan doen, als je dit vergelijkt met de eerdere attributes.
Daar zou je als caster voornamelijk Willpower nemen en als melee strenght, de mogelijkheden zijn volgens mij alleen maar meer toegenomen en daarmee ook de complexiteit wat erg leuk is voor de doorgewinterde diablo fans

[Dakreal]

psychoclown schreef op vrijdag 24 december 2010 @ 14:04:
Maar ik bedoelde vooral ook, naar wat ze gaan doen, als je dit vergelijkt met de eerdere attributes.
Daar zou je als caster voornamelijk Willpower nemen en als melee strenght, de mogelijkheden zijn volgens mij alleen maar meer toegenomen en daarmee ook de complexiteit wat erg leuk is voor de doorgewinterde diablo fans

Naja, uit ervaring zou ik genoeg str nemen voor gear en de rest in vit. dus dat zal ik met mijn barb met d3 ook zeker doen.

[MLM]

Aan de ene kant klinkt het allemaal leuk en aardig, en de namen zijn duidelijk, en als die puntenverdeling ook goed gaat werken (zoals ze hopen, voor vergelijkbaarheid), verlies je dan niet een hoeveelheid nuttige items. Waar je eerst een "natuurlijke verdeling" had in items over classes (+str/+will/+dex), gaan nu items sneller nuttig zijn voor iedereen.
Bijvoorbeeld, 1h mace met +attack gaat voor iedere class bruikbaar zijn, ookal ga je er nooit mee meppen, immers, +attack voor een wizard gaat meer spelldamage doen. Klinkt een beetje krom.

Om +def daadwerkelijk nuttig te laten zijn moet het ook magic damage mitigaten (bijvoorbeeld een wizard zal prolly weinig geraakt worden met physical, maar mogelijk wel door spells), komt dat dan niet in het geding met +xresist gear?

Ik geloof zo dat het prima opgelost kan worden, maar ik denk dat het itemsysteem behoorlijk versimpelt gaat zijn, mogelijk tot het punt dat je straks gewoon niets meer voorstelt. Als je toch al cijfers direct kan vergelijken, hebben we dan niet straks een item met maar 1 stat erop, namelijk "+awesome"? (Ja tuurlijk, dan trek je het wel erg ver door, maar het mag best een beetje ingewikkeld zijn).

[psychoclown]

Hmm je snijdt een aantal goede punten aan zoals over het bruikbaar zijn voor iedere class en ik ben benieuwd hoe ze dit beperken anders dan wapen limitatie want attribute requirements zitten er allang niet meer in.

Wat betreft de defense, tja als melee neem je veel meer melee hits dan caster hits, daarnaast werkt defense op alle damage types in tegenstelling tot armor en resistances. Vergeet niet dat resistances veelal single zijn

[MLM]

psychoclown schreef op vrijdag 24 december 2010 @ 14:35:
Hmm je snijdt een aantal goede punten aan zoals over het bruikbaar zijn voor iedere class en ik ben benieuwd hoe ze dit beperken anders dan wapen limitatie want attribute requirements zitten er allang niet meer in.

Wat betreft de defense, tja als melee neem je veel meer melee hits dan caster hits, daarnaast werkt defense op alle damage types in tegenstelling tot armor en resistances. Vergeet niet dat resistances veelal single zijn

Ik neem aan dat er ook attributes op items kunnen zitten voor andere classes. Wellicht een D2-stijl (+X skillpunten voor skill(tree) Y), wat dan toch een item "beter" kan maken voor een class (of dat hoop ik dan). Het item is dan niet onbruikbaar voor een andere class, maar wel niet-optimaal (immers, datzelfde item met jouw skills erop is beter).

Ik hoop dat er ook andere duidelijk class-preferende items zijn, dan kan je die traden of disenchanten (of hoe het ook gaat werken in D3).

+def is nogal tricky, misschien is het mogelijk met wat skill om veel damage te dodgen als ranged class, en dan zou +vit en +def misschien niet zo waardevol zijn (hardcore buiten beschouwing latend), en dan heb je mogelijk een rush op alles met veel +att

Maar goed, dit is allemaal op te lossen met balancing, en er zijn vast designers dagen mee bezig geweest om dit verder uit te werken dan wat er vrijgegeven is qua informatie, dus ik heb er wel vertrouwen in dat het gaat werken. Waar ik bang voor ben is een te ver "dumbed down" systeem, ik denk dat de diablo series toch (gedeeltelijk) draaien om item-finding, en dus mag er best wat complexiteit in zitten om het intressant te houden

[psychoclown]

MLM schreef op vrijdag 24 december 2010 @ 16:36:
[...]


Ik neem aan dat er ook attributes op items kunnen zitten voor andere classes. Wellicht een D2-stijl (+X skillpunten voor skill(tree) Y), wat dan toch een item "beter" kan maken voor een class (of dat hoop ik dan). Het item is dan niet onbruikbaar voor een andere class, maar wel niet-optimaal (immers, datzelfde item met jouw skills erop is beter).

Dat is het punt inderdaad want de rush voor attributes op items zal groter zijn omdat je een per class een fixed aantal attributes per level erbij krijgt.

Ik hoop dat er ook andere duidelijk class-preferende items zijn, dan kan je die traden of disenchanten (of hoe het ook gaat werken in D3).

Class specific bedoel je? Die zullen zeker van de partij zijn en ook class specific sets zijn aanwezig

+def is nogal tricky, misschien is het mogelijk met wat skill om veel damage te dodgen als ranged class, en dan zou +vit en +def misschien niet zo waardevol zijn (hardcore buiten beschouwing latend), en dan heb je mogelijk een rush op alles met veel +att

Maar goed, dit is allemaal op te lossen met balancing, en er zijn vast designers dagen mee bezig geweest om dit verder uit te werken dan wat er vrijgegeven is qua informatie, dus ik heb er wel vertrouwen in dat het gaat werken. Waar ik bang voor ben is een te ver "dumbed down" systeem, ik denk dat de diablo series toch (gedeeltelijk) draaien om item-finding, en dus mag er best wat complexiteit in zitten om het intressant te houden

Tja je kan niet alles ondervangen maar het grootste gedeelte zal duidelijk worden met balancen en beta testen want hardcore diablo fans gaan zeker weten op zoek naar hoe ze het beste hun chars kunnen finetunen

[Dalyxia]

psychoclown schreef op donderdag 23 december 2010 @ 19:40:

Ok duidelijk maar begrijp me niet verkeerd, je post kwam wel degelijk zo over. Als je het anders brengt wordt het ook heel anders opgevat denk ik en wordt het wel gezien als start van een discussie

Ik ben de laatste tijd wat chaotisch en dan kom ik niet over zoals ik bedoel


ontopic:
Attribute changes kan je naar mijn mening alleen over oordelen als je ermee gespeeld hebt, en +3 life of +3 attack power, welke beter is ligt maar net aan de onderliggende formule en tussen de ratio tussen damage en life
(bijvoorbeeld: in D2 doe jij zelf veel meer damage dan dat je zelf leven hebt, heb je 3k life, doe je 52k damage, maar een ai mob heeft meer life dan damage bijv 1000 life met 15 damage, opzich is dan +3 ap beter als +3 life)

als je begrijpt wat ik bedoel

[psychoclown]

Diablo.incgamers - Blizzcon 2010 Mega Demon Hunter PvM Report

The Demon Hunter
Like most fans, I was certain that the fifth class would be an archer of some kind. Blizzard had given enough hints of that, and it was logical, with the ranged attacker archetype not filled by the first four classes. So I was expecting an archer, and expecting that the class would be called the Rogue, but that expectation was streaked through by anticipation and dread. Anticipation since ranged attacking characters are among my favorite types in games like Diablo, and dread for the same reason. I wanted the class to be an archer, but since I really like archers, I knew I’d be very disappointed if I didn’t like Diablo 3’s version of the archer.

I didn’t feel this way about the other characters. Well, I’d have been pretty bummed if I’d hated the mage, but I had every confidence that the D3 mage would be cool. The game developers’ design goals, emphasizing fast action and skill variety pretty much guaranteed the Wizard would be to my liking, since those are design goals I share. And she was. But I didn’t have much weight of expectation for the summoner or the melee fighters. I liked but didn’t love those type of characters in D2, so I felt there was plenty of room for improvement on their char designs, just from my personal preferences of play style. I was hoping for a lot from the archer though, and happily… the DH delivers. Mostly.

I’m not a huge fan of the character design or backstory, but those details are pretty much irrelevant to me, compared to the playability. The DH could look like two guys in a horse suit wearing a shako and I’d be willing to overlook that, if the gameplay was right. And it was. The DH moved fast, shot fast, packed a nice variety of skills, and required some skill, or at least varied strategy, to succeed. This is a good sign for the final character design, though it’s far from conclusive, since we know so little of the final character design at this point. Only 9 Demon Hunter skills and 5 very generic Demon Hunter traits have thus far been revealed, so it’s possible the final character design will be quite different in focus.

I don’t expect that though. After all, none of the other classes have changed much in play style from their first debut. It could happen with the DH, but from what I’ve seen so far, I’m pretty optimistic that she’ll be one of my favorite classes in the final game. Even if the support skills (none of which have yet been revealed) aren’t to my liking, or the class’ resource isn’t my favorite, I expect the gamplay style to remain much the same, and that I liked, even while maintaining criticisms of how some of the individual skills worked.

Relative Class Strength and Runestones
Runestones were not enabled in the Demon Hunter’s skills (or the Monk’s) at Blizzcon, so her attacks could only be used in their default form. This was a mixed blessing. It would have been fun to experiment with runes, but since her skills weren’t yet runestone enabled, they were very powerful. In contrast, the vanilla versions of the Wizard and Witch Doctor skills (though not so much the Barbarian’s) were very weak, and required runes to become kick ass. My theory is that the skills are all quite strong when they’re first worked into the game, and only as Runestones are enabled do the base skills get turned down to more reasonable levels. This makes the runes valuable/useful/essential. Also, strong skills plus runestone effects would be overpowered. Also #2, runestone effects wouldn’t seem very special if they didn’t add damage/effectiveness, on top of cool graphics.

Whether or not it was due to her overpowered skills, DH was one of the more powerful characters in the PvM demo—she was able to kill quickly and efficiently, and never in any danger of dying when played competently. The monk was the strongest, by far. For reasons (OP skills) I wrote about extensively in the Monk report. I’d put the Barbarian third, simply because he was such a tank and did such good damage with Cleave.

That said… I actually had the easiest time of all with the Witch Doctor, but only once I got a good rune into Firebats. The Wizard was definitely the most difficult, and I often had to use Frost Nova fairly to slow down larger bunches of attackers. It was a useful debuff skill, but in no way as effective as Entangling Arrow. The biggest difference between the efficiency of the Wizard vs. DH though, , was that the Clvl 9 Demon Hunter had Vault, while the Clvl 9 Wizard did not have teleport or any other movement skill. Vault let the DH move so quickly and safely that I never felt endangered by any amount of attackers. (More on how radically Vault changed the DH’s play style below.)

That said, the Demon Hunter was very strong, but had to be played with some tactics to kill quickly. The Monk and Barb required no such skill; each had a melee attack that was kick ass, and could be used endlessly, in every situation. The WD required some skill, or at least a skill rune in his spells, to kill quickly, but any button masher who knew enough to recast Mongrels and stay behind them could do okay with the WD. The Wizard and WD had to mix it up though, using defensive skills as well as offensive.

I’d put the DH as the more challenging of the two though, since she needed to vary her offensive skills, mixing Entangling Arrow with Bolo Shot, plus adding a third skill for situational use, to be really effective. The Wiz had to use Frost Nova and retreat sometimes, but for offense she could spam Magic Missile in all situations, especially once the skill had been rune’d. (See the play style in this shaky-cam movie for a lesson in how not to play an effective DH; just using Bolo over and over again was not the way to win.)

Honestly, calling the DH “hard” or her required tactics “skillful” is stretching it. Here’s the secret formula, using just her 3 starting skills: Entangling Arrow to slow groups, 1-2 Bolos per monster to kill, Vault to maintain a safe distance. Not exactly rocket surgery, and yet from that video, you see that it was beyond the abilities of some.

Demon Hunter vs. Bowazon
It might be illustrative to compare the Demon Hunter to the D2 Bowazon.

Bowazons are largely about crowd control and grouping the monsters into a killing box around the Valkyrie, where they can be controlled/slowed by chilling damage, and perforated by repeated piercing Multishots or Strafes, ideally with the aid of Amp Damage. Elemental damage can also be mixed in, via Freezing Arrow or Immolation Arrow, but whatever the attacks used, the general tactic, of getting all the monsters in a bunch around the tanking Valkyrie, then killing them with a payload of arrows, is pretty much universal.

That style was not an option for the Demon Hunter in the Blizzcon demo, since there was no tank, and since the basic attack, Bolo Shot, didn’t pierce. Molten Arrow and Multishot did, but both were very mana-expensive, and in any event, shelling large mobs wasn’t a necessary tactic, since the monsters would die from 2 or 3 shots each, at least in a solo game. As a result, the DH was much more about taking on small groups coming from multiple directions, and killing them quickly. And Vault worked perfectly for this, letting you keep on the move and lead monsters where you wanted them, even without the ability to tank them chill them with cold damage.

Vault facilitated a quick clicking, always moving, hit-and-run style of DH play that was much more like that of a high level mage (D1 Sorcerer style) than of the D2 Bowazon. The DH could have been played without Vault, but players would have had to be more cautious, use a lot more Entangling Shot, and her killing speed (and fun factor) would have suffered accordingly.

I should note that I only played the DH solo, never in a group, so I don’t know how different it might have been if I’d had someone to tank for me (and monsters with enough hit points to take more than two shots to kill). Playing solo wasn’t a hindrance, mostly because Bolo Shot was quite damaging to single targets, Entangling Arrow was an awesomely-effective monster-slowing debuff, Vault was a near-miraculous escape skill, and mana regenerated quickly enough that I could almost always use my skills. I didn’t need other characters, for support or tanking, but it would have been interesting to see how the class felt different when I had them.

Demon Hunter Skills
One key note: the DH’s resource has not yet been revealed or even hinted at. The character used mana at Blizzcon, but this was a temporary measure, just to have something functional. The Barbarian and Wizard used mana at Blizzcon 2008 and so did the Monk at Blizzcon 2009, so there was nothing unusual about the DH using it this time. I regularly refer to the relative mana costs of the various Demon Hunter skills in this report, and while it’s not a guarantee that the same skills will still be relatively expensive (or not) in the final game, it’s a fairly safe bet.

Like all of the characters in the Blizzcon 2010 PvM demo, the Demon Hunter started out at level 9, with 8 skill points invested in 3 skills. She had two arrow skills, Entangling Arrow and Bolo Shot, plus the movement skill Vault. Characters leveled up to 10 fairly quickly into the demo, at which point they unlocked the Fourth Tier and gained a fourth skill, plus a skill point to spend.

The Demon Hunter had 9 skills listed, in the Blizzcon build. Of those 8 were accessible, with only the 5th tier skill Shock Spike unattainable, due to its Clvl 14 requirement. (There wasn’t enough dungeon to level up that high, even with unlimited time to play.) I played the Demon Hunter four times, and was able to experiment with all of her skills save for Spike Trap. I would have tried that one if I’d taken a fifth run, but I would have needed a third day of Blizzcon or an invisibility cloak for that, since I would have put a higher priority on playing the other classes for a second or third time than the DH for a fifth.

Entangling Shot
Tier Two
Description: Release a sticky adhesive that deals X% weapon damage and entangles up to X enemies, slowing their movement speed by X% for X seconds.

A very effective debuff, this skill dealt good damage to the targeted monster, as well as slowing it down considerably. More than 50%. The chain could leap to enshare other nearby monsters as well, chaining them all together by a slightly-elastic connection. I didn’t note the exact number of potential entangles at the skill level, but I was able to snare 3 or 4 with a single shot all the time. (The others snared were slowed, but not damaged.) Not a lot more, though. It wouldn’t jump to 8 monsters in a big crowd. You needed two or more chains to do that which you could have easily; while the same enemy could not be snared by two different chains, it was possible to have multiple chained enemies in the same area, with the chains appearing to overlap pass through each other.

The chains lasted for a decent amount of time, at least 8 or 10 seconds, and were usually dispelled by the deaths of the chained monsters, rather than by the duration expiring. From what I saw, the monster you shot first remained slowed even if others in the chain died, but if you killed the original target, the chain would vanish from any others it had snagged. I wouldn’t swear to that though, and it might be changed during further dev anyway.

Since another chain could be launched out at any time, replacing or supplementing the original one, and since the chain shot did nearly as much damage as Bolo Shot (to the target only), I didn’t find it necessary to prioritize the target elimination. It wasn’t like I hit one monster, saw the chain jump to three others, and then focused my attacks on the 4th, 3rd, and 2nd, in that order, just so the original chain wouldn’t break with the death of #1. I’d shoot whichever ones were available to shoot, and throw in another chain after a few Bolos, if I thought I’d need it.

Another key aspect of this skill was the physical space monsters took up. The enemies have mass; they can’t just pass through each other in Diablo III, so when you chain a bunch in the front, the other demons behind them are blocked or at least slowed down. The chain itself doesn’t seem to provide a clothesline-like barrier, but in the narrow hallways that filled the Halls of Agony and Torture Chambers of the Mad King, chaining 3 or 4 monsters in a bunch was almost always enough to block the movement of any number of others crowded in behind them.

Of course that barrier only lasted as long as the monsters and the chain; when I killed one of the slowed ones in front, the others would come swarming through the opening from behind. I learned to alternate entangling with Bolo Shot so I’d have a fresh slowing debuff set up as soon as the previous one vanished. This could be hard to time though, thanks to the delayed damage of Bolo Shot. I wanted to have my Entangling on the way as soon as the previous bottleneck was killed off by Bolo explosions, but if the Entanging got there too soon, it would just resnare the already slowed monster with the rope bomb around its neck. And thus vanish as soon as the Bolo went off and killed the victim.

Another cool design issue was the stretchiness of the chains between monsters. I really noticed this with monsters of varying speed, most clearly with an extra fast bunch of champion Ghouls. Even Entangled they were much faster than any other monster in the dungeon, and when I managed to chain a regular zombie to one of the Speedy Ghouzales, the ghoul raced after me, leaping and seeming to strain against the elastic chain, which was soon stretched out nearly a full visible screen from the zombie anchor on the other end. I never noticed normal, slower monsters being pulled along at a faster rate when chained to something quick, but that would be a pretty cool effect if it existed. I’d also love to see some small monsters chained to a big one; imagine a few Fallen Imps being dragged along behind Thousand Pounder or Siegebreaker like tin cans behind a “Just Married” limo?

Runestone Speculation
Entangling Shot is another skill that’s fun to think about. More damage to the shot, more potential chained victims, and slower movement for those chained are obvious options. I’d like to see the chain itself become damaging; it could be electrified and zap the monsters like a taser, or it could convey poison between them, or just generally hurt like something worn by the Ghost of Christmas Past, dealing DoT to everything chained, for the duration.

Spike Trap
Tier Two
Description: Lay a trap that arms after X seconds and triggers when an enemy approaches. The explosion does X-X damage per second to all enemies within X feet for X seconds. You can have a maximum for X traps active at one time.

The only available Demon Hunter skill I didn’t get a chance to try out, this one is pretty simple in concept. The DH throws down the gizmo on the ground where it waits, motionless, until an enemy comes into range. At that point it blows up like a multi-stage landmine, spinning around and shooting out spikes and flames that deal damage to anything standing over them.

It’s unlike the D2 Assassin’s traps in that it doesn’t fire projectiles or otherwise seek out enemies. The damage is dealt entirely to enemies who stand right on top of it or move past it.

It’s hard to see how this would work very well for the Demon Hunter, as we currently know her. It would pair very well with a melee attack, or in support of a minion or tank, since the enemies would stand still during that battle. You’d love to stick this under the belly of a big boss that your Monk friend was banging away at. But for the Demon Hunter by herself, the utility is limited since she’s always moving and so are her enemies.

Wyatt Cheng spoke about the Demon Hunter’s traps during the character panel at Blizzcon.
One of her themes is going to be traps and gadgets. This is not unlike some of the Assassin gameplay you might have seen in Diablo 2. In this case we want to sell again the shadow theme and the gadgets theme. We just take an ordinary trap spell, weave in some Shadow themes and the art kind of brings out the flavour, differentiates her from the other characters. Another thing I really like about Spike Trap is it has that sense of preparation. We want the player to know that the Demon Hunter is somebody that goes to sleep at night and dreams about killing demons. She wakes up in the middle of the night and goes “Oh, I have this great idea for a trap that will be awesome for killing demons”, goes back to sleep, wakes up and kills a lot of demons. That’s her thing.

It’s hard to predict the long term viability of this trap since we don’t know enough about the DH’s other skills. If she gets a big Valkyrie-style minion, or shorter duration weaker minions, or perhaps some kind of mechanical minion, like a clockwork golem or even just a Bone Wall-like trap that monsters can target and attack, Spike Trap would be a great skill to pair with it. Basically anything that makes the monsters stand still and get their feet chewed off. If none of those skills come in, then this one seems doomed to irrelevance, except perhaps in party games.

Her other trap, Shock Spike, which was too high of a level to use at Blizzcon, sounds more suited to her gameplay style. That one works better when you cast more of them, as they start shooting saw blades back and forth. The Demon Hunter could put down a nice batch of those, especially along a hallway, and turn it into something of a sawmill which the monsters had to advance over. Or she’d put down 3 or 4 in a triangle or parallelogram and Vault around the outside, getting the monsters to cluster in the middle of the grinder.

Runestone Speculation
Runestones could make Spike Trap more viable, of course. Bigger damage, a cold or stunning effect so that monsters who passed over it were slowed or held still, a wider area of effect, etc.

Rest van de skills: Bolo Shot / Grenades / Vault / Fan of Knives / Molten Arrow / Multishot

Final Thoughts
Prior to Blizzcon 2010, I had high expectations for Diablo III’s archer. The DH met most of them, while giving me more than I wanted or expected in some ways, if a bit less in others. It’s foolish to try and judge the class with only a third of her skills revealed, but she was a lot of fun to play, rewarded player skill and accuracy, and appealed to my personal preference in archer tactics.

I’m eager to see more of the class’ abilities, and even though I find the class story pretty blah, and the traps skills don’t excite me, I have to give the archer a plus grade, on the whole.

[Dakreal]

Dit jaar wordt het Diablo 3 jaar! het enige wat nog afwachten is, is of het 3 of 12 maanden zijn

[psychoclown]

Reken er maar niet op dat het nog maar 3 maanden duurt, de beta zal 6 maanden voor release starten of aangekondigd worden dus dat wordt hem sowieso niet

[Dakreal]

psychoclown schreef op maandag 03 januari 2011 @ 12:34:
Reken er maar niet op dat het nog maar 3 maanden duurt, de beta zal 6 maanden voor release starten of aangekondigd worden dus dat wordt hem sowieso niet

A man can dream right? ;-) Maar inderdaad, tis idd hopen dat de beta en op tijd begint, en dat ik mee mag doen met de beta!

Maar waarschijnlijk komt het spel dit jaar wel uit Dus er is licht aan het einde van de tunnel!

[heuveltje]

Dakreal schreef op maandag 03 januari 2011 @ 12:24:
Dit jaar wordt het Diablo 3 jaar! het enige wat nog afwachten is, is of het 3 of 12 maanden zijn

Ik denk dat dit het jaar van mythos of torchlight 2 word !
* heuveltje verwacht dan weer wel dat 2012 het jaar van d3 word

[psychoclown]

Mits ze Diablo 3 uitstellen want volgens de uitgelekte officiële roadmap zou Diablo 3 eind 2011 uitkomen

[Verwijderd]

Ik hoop net voor de kerst, zou erg gunstig zijn

[heuveltje]

Das de planning, maar "when its done". dus ik heb er een hard hoofd in

Doe trouwens maar niet net voor kerst, want ik heb al aangegeven dat ik 2 weken vrij oppak als ie uitkomt, en dat kan dan niet

* heuveltje die altijd al wat pessimistisch was ingesteld.

[ Voor 31% gewijzigd door heuveltje op 03-01-2011 15:24 ]

[psychoclown]

Uiteraard dat is nog altijd de insteek, I'ts done when it's done.. maar het is gebleken dat de roadmap wel een officiële is dus mogelijk is het een accurate leidraad

[Verwijderd]

psychoclown schreef op maandag 03 januari 2011 @ 15:31:
Uiteraard dat is nog altijd de insteek, I'ts done when it's done.. maar het is gebleken dat de roadmap wel een officiële is dus mogelijk is het een accurate leidraad

Plus daarbij 2 uitbreidingen in Q2-3 2013 en Q4 2014.

Dan zou binnen nu en 4 maanden de beta's moeten worden aangekondigd om een timelapse van 6 maanden aan te houden tot dat de game officieel in de schappen ligt (als je de roadmap bekijkt).

We hebben nu een indicatie, voor zover. Als het aan Blizzard ligt zullen ze dit zo nodig 3 maanden later verplaatsen. Maar ik denk niet dat ze dit zullen doen, aangezien ze hun personeel dan 3 maanden onnodig moeten uitbetalen voor een product wat al klaar is.

Just my 2 cents

[psychoclown]

Of het daadwerkelijk dan ook klaar is of kan zijn weet je natuurlijk niet maar alles wees erop dat ze al aardig ver waren afgelopen BlizzCon dus dat is al een stap in de goede richting

[Dalyxia]

psychoclown schreef op dinsdag 04 januari 2011 @ 00:20:
Of het daadwerkelijk dan ook klaar is of kan zijn weet je natuurlijk niet maar alles wees erop dat ze al aardig ver waren afgelopen BlizzCon dus dat is al een stap in de goede richting

maar Blizzard kennende gooien ze zo de hele boel helemaal om en zijn ze nog een jaar extra bezig


iemand moet pessimistisch zijn he

[Dakreal]

Dalyxia schreef op dinsdag 04 januari 2011 @ 21:44:
[...]


maar Blizzard kennende gooien ze zo de hele boel helemaal om en zijn ze nog een jaar extra bezig


iemand moet pessimistisch zijn he

De info komt de laatste tijd wel mondjesmaat binnen van Blizzard, is er nog een site netzoals MMo-Champion voor Diablo 3 ofzo? Heb me er lekker van afgehouden de laatste 2 jaar omdat ik anders erg ongeduldig werd maar 1 jaar voor *waarschijnlijke* launch, wil ik me toch wel ff aardig inlezen ;-)

En ja ik ben positief over eind van dit jaar liever eerder, maarja.. heb nog genoeg te doen op prive gebied, dus dat komt gunstig uit.