User:Shard/D3

In an attempt to be more like Auron, I have decided to write a review of Diablo 3. I stopped after Auron's introductory paragraph so it wouldn't be possible for me to repeat anything he said unconsciously.

Like Auron (and probably many of you), I played Diablo 2 for many years, and I've also played the original (Diablo 1, for those who can't count backwards from 2). This review will mostly be a comparison between games in the franchise, and contrasted with the flaws of Titan Quest where applicable.

I would also like to preface this by saying that Diablo 3 is really good. Most of the things on this page are criticisms because there's no point in telling you all the good things about the game. You'll find out those when you start playing it. It's fun from the first minute you're in a game.

SPOILERS will be whited out. Highlight blank spaces to find out what they say.

Mood

Diablo 1 was a very grim, dark game. If you played it in the dark when it was new (the game had the best graphics of the time), it would probably scare the bejesus out of you. When you entered one of the dungeon levels, you had a feeling like you might never return. The dungeons were dark, littered with bones, bodies, and of course filled with living skeletons, zombies, and hellish creatures.

Diablo 2 ruined this mood by making you explore the world in broad daylight. While there were a few dark areas in the game (most of them in act 1), most of the game felt open and liberating. You never felt trapped in the middle of an army of nightmarish demons.

Diablo 3 is kind of in the middle, which disappointed many people (including myself). I was hoping for the franchise to return to a pale, troubled world where doom seemed inevitable, but instead I got characters who make cartoonish gestures during almost childish dialogue. The world isn't as bright as Diablo 2 (except in Whimsyshire, but that doesn't really count), but it's still not very dark. Once again, the game has us fighting monsters in broad daylight above ground most of the time.

Story

I understand that Diablo isn't about the story. It's about killing enemies to find better weapons to kill stronger enemies with. That being said, Diablo had a LOT of story in it, even though much of it is only mentioned in the manual. Diablo 2 followed pretty cleanly form the end of the first game, and didn't really deviate from the core feeling of the world: Sanctuary was in the middle of an epic struggle between good and evil, and the people of the world were suffering because of it. This was true of both Diablo and Diablo 2.

Diablo 3 picks up the story 20 years (I think) after the end of Lord of Destruction. The worldstone has been destroyed, and it seems like the armies of hell could just pour out into the world. That's the backstory between D2 and D3. Spoiler time!

Diablo 3 starts as Tyrael gives up his angelhood and looks like a meteor falling into Tristram Cathedral. You want to investigate it, so you kill Dead King Leoric from Diablo 1, who came back somehow. After you find human Tyrael, you look for his broken keyblade. After you find them, Cain dies, and you find out that Cain's niece Leah has superpowers. Then you kill The Butcher from Diablo 1 who came back somehow. Then you chase some fairy witch, cause that's what Diablo is all about. It turns out the only way to get rid of the remaining lesser evils (Belial and Azmodan) forever is to get the Black Soulstone, which was created by Vizier Khilbron Zoltun Kulle. He wants to use it to give humanity a chance for survival, so you kill him!?!?!?.

Nothing happens until the end of act 3, where Adria from the first game turns on you because... that's how Blizzard wrote it. Then, Diablo possesses Leah and becomes a chick Diablo with plated boobs and no hips. Then you kill Izual from D2, who came back somehow, and onto the final boss Diablo. I didn't spoil that last part. Think about it. The game's called DIABLO 3.

Here's my beef with the story, especially the last 2 acts. Apparently, Adria knew Diablo had to be destroyed, which is why SHE HELPS YOU KILL HIM IN THE FIRST GAME. Then after Diablo's dead, she's like "I'll be his servant." She did nothing when the heroes of D2 were hunting him down. She did nothing when the heroes destroyed his soulstone. She just pops up in D3 and is like "BTW I'm evil". What. The. Fuck.

Quests and Game Flow

The quest content in D3 takes the game back to how Diablo 1 did it. Randomly generated quests in fixed areas. Every time you go through an area, you'll find everything in a slightly different place, along with some things that might have not been there the last time you visited. Most of the quests are engaging, you feel like you have a reason to do it (other than getting a quest reward). So it's not like D2 where half of each act could be skipped completely.

Speaking of runners, running is technically impossible in D3. In order to create a game at a certain point, you have to have completed every quest up to that point. Difficulties also have a level requirement now. The best way to level up is to do quests, rather than do tombs runs and baal runs all day. The level cap is also much more accessible, as you don't lose XP for dying anymore, and the total XP to reach the cap is much lower. Instead of having the endgame being a grindfest to 99, instead, it's a grindfest for awesome gear (which is what Diablo is all about!)

The main problem I have with questing is the dialogue. The dialogue for most of the game's cast is absolutely horrible. It's like the Trial of Zinn. It's like Blizzard just tried infusing jokes into every line of dialogue, and failed miserably. The villain dialogue is cartoonish to say the least. Every time you start a quest, the act boss is like "You'll never stop my X" and when you stop his X he says "You may have stopped my X, but you'll never overcome my Y!" just before you proceed to destroy his Y, and so on.

Also, Leah's dialogue contradicts itself throughout the entirety of the game. In the beginning of the game you find out that she has never believed any of Cain's stories about demons and stuff, then literally 5 minutes later, she's telling you a story about having to drag Cain away from a mob of skeletons when she was a child. She has a line of dialogue that goes like "My mother died when I was very young" and in the next act she's like "I always knew my mother was alive!" Pretty lazy writing TBH.

On the flipside, the follower dialogues (and those of many of the town NPCs) are quite good. I actually listened to all of them and found most of them pretty interesting. Someone put a lot of thought into the minor characters, but apparently no thought into Leah and the villains. By the way, Belial, the "lord of lies" is a terrible liar. The first time I saw it, I knew the kid is Belial. Pretty obvious.

Enemies

The enemy design is pretty good. Most enemies, as well as their abilities, are very readable. You can tell how strong an enemy is based on its appearance, something Blizzard has always been very good at doing. The champion and Elite mobs in D3 are also way more fun (usually). In D2, the mods an enemy could have were

• Immune to X
• Extra Fast
• Extra Strong
• Teleporter
• (Element) enchanted

and that was pretty much it. In D3, there are some really interesting elite mobs, including

• Plagued/Desecrator (spreads AOEs around the map)
• Fire Chains (elites are connected by a chain that hurts a lot)
• Waller (the mob spawns walls around the battlefield)
• Health link (the mob shares health, so you can't focus any one of them, they all take damage equally)
• Invulnerable minions (The elite can take damage, but his minions are unkillable. Pain in the ass for casters)

There are some others, but they're more annoying than they are interesting. In short, the elite mobs in D3 are way cooler (and usually more challenging) than the mobs in D2.

Classes

Onto the good stuff! Unlike the pile of crap that was Titan Quest's class system, each class in Diablo 3 can actually do stuff, and each is specialized (or at least can be).

Unlike the previous games, you don't get skill points to dump into your skills. Instead, you unlock skills at certain levels, and can only have up to 6 equipped at a time. Offensive skills do things based on your weapon damage, and other skills do things based on your level. Yes, this means casters use one-handed swords and axes sometimes. I find it ironic that Blizzard stole the skill bar idea (which was really good) from GW1, and ArenaNet's getting rid of it in place of everybody having the same build in GW2. So basically, the badness of Wow's homogeneous endgame and the greatness of GW's skill system got switched.

People have been complaining that the ranged/melee dps to survivability roles are horrible, and I partially agree with that. In the higher difficulties, ranged classes are far superior to melee classes. Elite mobs (the ones with special abilities) are generally far easier to kill if you don't have to be planted on their face. Since inferno (the highest difficulty) monsters kill every class in 1 hit, it's very hard for monks and barbarians to get anywhere (at least past act 1, which is manageable).

In other words, the risk:reward factors are backwards. Ranged classes have less risky battles and way more damage (in some cases tenfold) than melee classes, which die as soon as their defensive skills are down.

The obvious counter to this is that it's supposed to be a coop game, which would be cool, except in 4 player games, enemies are 16 times stronger, not 4 times stronger (Blizzard is fixing this in the next patch, but I still hate it).

Barbarian

What is there to say about the barbarian. You pick up a weapon and you hit things. I will say that Barb in D3 is much more fun than Barb in D2, and I can't figure out why. Maybe it's because they have less useless skills (find potion was pretty bad). Sometime within the next month they will nerf Revenge because it's dumb. Basically, when you're fighting more than 1 enemy at a time, you just win because of Revenge.

Demon Hunter

This is the only class I haven't played yet. All of my friends have one,and they're pretty much what I expected. It's a ranged physical class. It's like a BowaZon and a Trap Assassin combined, or as people here might call it, a ranger. However, Demon Hunters are not better with melee weapons than with ranged weapons, so they're not really rangers, are they?

Monk

Monks are the tanky support class of the game. Rather than having high life and armor like the barbarian, they have high dodge chance and skills to help them avoid enemies. They also have mantras (auras) and some healing spells. They're basically paladins, but with decent healing skills.

Witch Doctor

This is the Minion Master of D3. His direct damage skills suck ass, get a wizard for that. Instead, the WD just spawns tons of minions and afks while enemies around him die. I'm not into minion classes, but if you are, the WD can be amazing.

Wizard

Wizards are pretty much what you'd expect, except Blizzard probably went a little too far with the "let's let people make melee wizards" idea. In fact, I find that the optimal way to play Wizard solo is to use all melee skills. They just do way more damage than everything else. In games with other players, though, the Wizard plays exactly like you'd expect. Someone else tanks, and you bring the hurt.

Items

Sadly, Diablo 3 doesn't quite fulfill the needs of its itemization... umm... needs. The best items are NOT uniques (renamed Legendaries in D3) as they were in D2, and there's nothing like runewords in D3. The best items are actually magics and rares. If you can find a magic or rare that spawned with perfect mods, it's better than any unique in the game. There isn't a coolness factor to uniques anymore. Every time someone finds a unique, they're like "oh, look, I got a legendary. Auction House fodder" because they know its mods will suck. Luckily, not everybody has figured this out, and legendaries sell for a ton of money on the AH.

The reason for this is because ALL of your offensive skills are based on your weapon damage and your attack speed, which makes damage mods and attack speed mods the best things to get. Each class also uses only one of the three primary attributes to increase their damage (Barbs use strength, Monks and Demon Hunters use dexterity, Wizards and Witch Doctors use intelligence), and they all use vitality to avoid dying in one hit. Therefore, one can make a chart detailing the best possible items in the game:

Barbarian	DH / Monk	WD / Wizard
+Damage	+Damage	+Damage
+Attack Speed	+Attack Speed	+Attack Speed
+Strength	+Dexterity	+Intelligence
+Vitality	+Vitality	+Vitality

Crafting is too expensive to be worth it. The higher level craftables (the only ones good enough for a level 60 to use) cost more than 20,000 gold a piece to make, and their mods are random, so there's no guarantee you'll even keep it. Items you find on the ground only sell for 100-400 gold, and quests give anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand. It's just way more efficient to farm gold and buy something nice from the auction house than it is to craft items over and over again. You might spend 100K and only get something mediocre at best, then end up either salvaging the rest for crafting materials or selling them for 500 a piece at a merchant.

Gems are mostly worthless in this game. For any given character class, there is a correct gem choice for a given piece of armor. There is no real choice. You put rubies in weapons for the damage, you put your main stat or vitality in everything else. Then if you don't need a stat in your helm, you use a topaz for the magic find bonus. There's just no customization with gems anymore. Gem upgrading is also hella expensive. I did it for awhile, but now it costs me 20,000+ to upgrade each tier. No thanks. 20K can buy me a nice ring on the AH instead.

Longevity / Replay value

I expect D3 to have a long life. However, given its current state, I don't expect it to last as long as D2 has. There are some major issues in D3 that cripple it fundamentally.

The number of viable skills is pretty big, because Blizzard actually playtests and balances skills before release, rather than three years after release. In fact, it took Blizzard a whopping 4 days to patch some skills people were abusing (like becoming invincible 99% of the time). It's like they don't want their economy to be a joke like it is in a game I used to play.

None of the base skills in D3 are useless, though some are clearly worse than others. There are a few skill runes (variations on a base skill) that are worthless (like extending the duration on an almost-free skill that has no recharge), but since you're not forced to use them, it mostly doesn't matter.

There are a few skills that are unfortunately required to play your class. Barbarians need Revenge or they die. Demon Hunters need Smokescreen (shadow form but for 1 second instead of a million) or they die. Wizards need Diamond Skin or they die. Monks need Serenity (Shadow Form but for 2 seconds) or they die. Witch Doctors just die, or hide behind their minions.

The Auction House is now saturated with so many high-DPS items that getting to a high damage output is really cheap. The cause of this, as I mentioned above, is the shitty item property design. Likewise, skill damage for some skills should be based on something other than having a high DPS weapon. The item customization is just really low right now, unless you're a monk (they're the tank/support class).

More coming, I'm gonna play D3 a lil bit. ~Shard 06:22, 27 May 2012 (UTC)