Diablo III

1. I've got characters in all the classes, and the most fun to play is the dual-crossbow wielding witch doctor.

2. No one is saying that you can't do it. If anything, the sooner you complete a full quest and can get to adventure mode, the better.

Did you mean the dual-crossbow-wielding demon hunter? Far as I can tell the witch doctor can only dual-wield different kinds of frogs and such and any weapon is purely ornamental.

doh! Yes I meant demon hunter.

This is still really good! It is interesting that Blizzard seem to have determined that any long-term problems with a game are basically a matter of economics.

I've almost beaten the game, but am tied up in late Act V slog and switched to the Witcher for a while

Oral history of Diablo II: http://www.usgamer.net/articles/in-their-own-words-an-oral-history-of-diablo-ii-with-david-brevik-max-schaefer-and-erich-schaefer

xp lol @ "almost beaten the game"

story mode is the training level dude

Nah, it's perfectly fine to play it for the story then you're done - you get to see the vast majority of what Blizzard put into it, and insisting that you get down with hours upon hours of grinding isn't for everyone.

so i've been playing this seasonal on normal difficulty. i just finished the second act and it's really too easy. i haven't died once and the only challenge has been seeing how many kills i can chain. but i can't change difficulty mid game. should i just finish the game as normal or does it make sense to start over from scratch at the harder difficulty?

you should be able to change difficulty midgame. or if not, go out to the main menu and up it from there?

nah you have to finish the game / start a new one to change the difficulty. i powered through it and now i'm playing adventure mode which is a++++. regular campaign on normal was way too easy - didn't die once. it was only in the final levels that i was even taking significant damage. so i ramped it up to hardcore now and i'm thinking i should probably make it harder once i finish my adventure playthrough.

i've been playing witch doctor and it's a lot of fun - tho maybe the pets are partially responsible for the game being a cakewalk.

Had fun playing this with friends for the social arcade aspect, but pretty sure you could just sit on the controller to beat this thing. Don't see the deep appeal. Skinner box. Cool lights and the occasional thrills of drops and such but it's so mindless and unsatisfying. Kind of a good example of what makes video games boring for me these days.

Modern day Blizzard in general just isn't my style at all, but I get the appeal even if I resent it.

I'm still in - maybe one multi-hour night per month, but really dgaf about the regular campaign. Usually there's some folks rifting in torment 3 or 4 and that's where attention vs. boredom ratios work in my favor. Interested in playing the necromancer whenever 2.6 rolls.

In the meantime...

https://static.turbosquid.com/Preview/2014/07/09__09_02_02/1.pngb4fc0325-f305-4237-b581-bf63e26b0224Original.jpg

Totally Gauntlet style arcade fun. Similarly requires friends to make it a good time.

on torment iv trying to complete the seasonal set and the difficulty is legit now

just got this after not playing any of these games since diablo 1 back in the 90s lol ... i loved that game, it was genuinely scary & i felt invested in the story. cant tell if i was just an idiot teenager of d3 is genuinely worse

had the same issue as mordy upthread where it was insanely easy to play as witchdoctor & just watch teh dogs kill everything

I played 10 hours or so when it came out but didn't finish it

i feel like a sucker i shouldn't be spending $30 on this kind of thing, that could go to a couple of Cold Ones with The Guys

I also hadn't played any since the first, thought this was much less atmospheric and regretted spending the money

Sometimes have the feeling I should revisit and get my money's worth. I think I paid the full $60

I tried to look up some reviews to see why ppl liked this, pro and con reviews were terribly written. Say what you will about music criticism but at least it's not quite as intellectually bankrupt

The main reason I like this game is because I normally play it while talking shit with friends; it's easy enough that you don't really need to concentrate on what you're doing but engaging enough that if you decide to actually play as opposed to stacking your primary stat and holding down the A button, you can do some ridiculous damage in a short amount of time.

i might not be giving it enough of a shot. Gonna try again without using a trackpad, lol

it's a completely different game than it was when originally released, can't really speak to the fresh from nothing experience. maybe some reviews of the game as-is are out there, but the release ones aren't for what you can play in 2017

playing the early part of the game is probably pretty easy, even on the harder difficulties

the actual game begins when you finish the plot and can either play in a group or solo in adventure mode. then it's either a fun grind similar to diablo 1/2 that gets insane if you want to do the highest difficulties and get the best gear, or kind of a fun scavenger hunt and challenge mode where you have to figure out what actually makes a character/build effective. not what gear to use, but what aspects of that gear you need to change (there's a ridiculous "re-roll" option where you enchant things and use resources to modify one aspect of an item) to make things work

I guess what I'm saying is, if your character isn't level 60, you're still playing the intro? if you have the expansion it's level 70.

I picked it up a couple months ago again when they added the necromancer and it's kind of ridiculous how powerful people get in the seasons

(seasonal characters are this thing where you start fresh, there are a bunch of bonus things you can do, and at the end of the 'season' you can roll the character, gear, and experience points back to your main account)

The post game is fun but you'd have to be much more enamored with the gameplay than I am to keep maxxing and outfitting different classes after the first [two maybe].

In a lot of ways Blizzard created a type of game 21 years ago and, being Blizzard, they have been refining and honing the experience since then, only to have their thunder stolen by the release last year of the fidget spinner.

Gonna try again without using a trackpad, lol

this is a new world version of diablo where it's much better with a gamepad

every day I wake up hoping that Blizzard has surprise-ported this game to the Switch

I think Overwatch would be more likely.

I’m enjoying this mess.

Blizzard going straight up Zynga was always the logical endpoint of their trajectory, glad they’re finally getting roasted for it.

i don't know, i haven't followed the trajectory of the company that closely but it doesn't seem like they deserve this much hatred for announcing the release of a mediocre mobile game. especially when diablo III ruled and they're working on multiple diablo-projects for the future, beyond this little mobile game.

https://kotaku.com/blizzard-says-it-wasnt-expecting-fans-to-be-this-angry-1830204721

i generally sympathize with people yelling at corporations about how they suck, but often videogame communities take things to a bizarre length that's pathetic, like they think they're citizens of a videogame country that owes them something

was pretty tone deaf of them to have it be the headlining announcement at blizzcon though, where people are expecting the announce of a new pc game

the whole f2p mobile game thing is tricky to navigate, on the one hand they do provide this different bite sized gaming experience that's nice for a lot of people, especially people outside the Core Gamer demographic, which makes pushback against these games look a bit like gatekeeping, but on the other hand they are often transparently cash grabby i.e. poorly made or IP reskins of existing games (i think this diablo one is basically a diablo reskin of a chinese mobile game that was already in development, not something made by blizzard in house) and have borderline predatory monetization schemes where the actual business strategy is to cast a wide net by being on this platform that everyone has access to and find the handful of people who will dump their entire disposable income into your game

oh yeah, i mean f2p games are generally garbage, and i agree they're predatory. that's a problem that goes way beyond blizzard, though.

the reactions that i find pathetic are the people that feel betrayed by blizzard and are talking about boycotting. i mean, i really didn't like the direction that Westworld went in after the first handful of episodes, but i just stopped watching. i didn't try to organize a boycott. that's just weird.

generally i think that for some people it's going to be a slow process of adjusting to

it’s going to be really something to see gamers entering their mid to late 30s realize that they’re aging out of industry demographics and that fortnite, pokémon go and mobile games etc are where things are headed

— merritt k (@merrittk) November 4, 2018

i dont think aging out is accurate, theres just different slices now. theres been a huge wave of big budget Dad Games starring sullen middle aged dudes this generation, who do you think those are for

for sure. as long as dad games make money they'll keep making them (and i will buy 2 to 3 each year, like the old 'i buy 12 CDs a year' marketing demographic).

i'm talking about the reaction of betrayal to games that are aimed more at the young whippersnappers

also mobile games aren't aimed at the younger generation, theres tons of older folks playing them on their commutes etc. i see middle aged ppl playing pokemon go at the train station like every week. a lot of the 'whales' are middle aged

I read that mobile games like this are big in Asia, so isn't this latest reaction partly a cultural one?

kinda. they're big in asia partly because more people there have public transit commutes rather than driving everywhere, partly just because there are more people there in general and theres less cultural pushback against these games as a 'lesser' form of gaming

wow, yeah i just looked at some mobile gamer surveys and the 65+ crowd is huge.

anyway the only thing i wanted to say in this thread is that a reasonable reaction to a disappointing game announcement is...disappointment. not entitled anger, certainly not righteous betrayal. doesn't seem like that should be that controversial but i have always been out of step with whatever the "gamer" community is

FWIW I agree with you in principle, Karl. I think the gaming community is childishly entitled and they fundamentally don’t understand what goes into making a game and they generally have bad ideas.

But, y’know... maybe I’m OK with it in this instance?

hahaha, i mean i was pretty disappointed with the details of the mobile game too, especially because when it was first announced (several hours earlier) i was excited to try it!

maybe a good compromise is that everyone is allowed one total freakout about a gaming franchise, per year

"Do you guys not have phones?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqjVdPtB9lU

Accuracy gonna be an issue unless you don’t mind just mashing your finger on a bunch of enemies

Which sounds like something a 6 yo could do better than me

why are all the people who hate the game angry that they can't play it on PC?

It's worth pointing out that Diablo stans* are generally found complaining about the low level of new shit in a game that they bought five years ago, with no subscription fee. They are, by and large, a whiny bunch of bastards, the absolute picture of people demanding a barter economy where what they bring to the counter is a big jingling bag of their loyalty.

was pretty tone deaf of them to have it be the headlining announcement at blizzcon though, where people are expecting the announce of a new pc game

Eh, they posted last week saying basically "We have a lot of stuff to show but no Diablo 4". A problem is that people knew that what they had on the go was Diablo on Switch, and Diablo 4, and something else - obviously Blizzard would have loved to have had D4 available, but instead it's this sad trombone.

*and I say this as someone who just finished the Season 15 'Journey'