Diablo III

I've been irritating my friend by repeatedly messaging him variations of
COME, PLAY AWHILE AND LISTEN
for the last couple weeks.

I'm happy they killed Cain off, but it's funny that his notes on stuff keep showing up regardless.

well that serves me right for coming onto this thread after playing for 2 hours

;_; sorry Dan

But that doesn't spoil much, he dies like 2.5 hours into the game!

lol so basically I'm like 20 minutes away from that

It strikes me that they got rid of a lot of the things that would glitch the multiplayer experience or otherwise make it difficult. I don't think there are any quest-specific items that you pick up, loot now appears separately for each player so it doesn't have to do any checking between clients to see if it's been picked up yet, and the gem merging is now a town person when it appears. Also, you can remove gems from items! I don't think you ever could in D2, could you?

Yeah, it's like "Come, stay awhile and.. AHH, I'm dyiiiing!"

loot now appears separately for each player

i'm fine with that! the last thing i want to do is race for loot with some 15 year old after every kill

No kidding. It also solves a lot of game lag and synchronization issues! I'd imagine there's still a lot of logic involving what monsters are alive/killed and the player's actions, but keeping track of a lot of the on-screen objects can now be ignored.

(sorry, thinking like a programmer all the time at work)

Also, could the reveal at the end of Act II be *more* telegraphed? Christ. At least have the Rogue acknowledge how totally obvious it is.

plot IS hella dopey here

Diablo II was very well-served by being so spare in terms of dialog. The incidental stuff in D3 just makes me cringe, it's such boilerplate fantasy BS. We're killing undead and Leah starts talking about how she wants to OPEN AN INN after this is all over? FUCK OFF. Also I suppose Blizzard North might have just had better writers.

it's also repetitive. i've heard the same bit of dialogue six times already. can you turn that off?

"bt dubs, why did you leave kingsport, since we're about to descend into hell and slay one of the prime evils?"

COME STAY AWHILE AND LISTEN

This game is so much more fun when you have a good online co-op partner or partners. i must have lucked out when i first started, because everyone was great to play with, but the last two sessions have been an endless parade of people so bad that i feel the need to taunt them (normally something i avoid at all costs) 6th grade style

great job back there

not

not bad in the sense that they're not using their skills properly or something, but bad in the sense that for some reason i'm always fighting alone while they spend an extra 30 seconds aimlessly wandering around the site of a battle that took place 5 minutes earlier, across the map.

i did play with a nice young man from thailand who told me early on that his english wasn't very good, but typed "looooool!!" everytime i said something like "wait just a second, i need to level up my skills"

Yes, or the dude who is like "I just want to get to the end of this quest!" and tries to run all the way across the level and gets killed horribly by demons. Which is just kind of comical for a while, until you forget he does this and use his banner to teleport to wherever he is which is IN THE MIDDLE OF A HUNDRED DUDES

thai dude otm

looooooooooool.

I don't want to join any public games with people I don't already know at least tangentially. XBL and dungeon finder on WoW have long soured me on that.

/misanthropic

I'm right with you Matt. I'd rather solo than play with randoms.

I sent friend requests to everyone on this thread, but no one likes me

http://www.sadtrombone.com/

I have had good luck joining public games for the most part! Dude I just described was kind of ridiculous in that aspect, but was pretty good overall. He was very complimentary, although maybe he was used to playing with morons.

I am your friend Z S!

I have been playing around 8pm central time

I didn't get a friend request Z S (or at least I haven't seen one). Send me another!

Oh! Hmm, it always says "0" next to the friends icon in the lower left, I guess that means number of friends online, duh. I was thinking it was like "you have zero friends". which reminds me, when i first started up the game i took this screenshot because it's a useful reminder:
http://i49.tinypic.com/1zfmy4y.png

sad old man, died alone and unloved.

Helped a friend with a low-level character yesterday and I forgot how you can just steamroll through things when there's a huge level disparity. I wished for a pair of boots to make me super-fast more than anything.

i will post my name and friend everybody here next time i log in

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-05-23-going-hardcore-in-diablo-3

The fact that I haven't died yet should also tell you something about Hardcore mode: it's not that hardcore. Which is actually a wonderful discovery. This isn't Dark Souls or some roguelike, where punishment is inevitable. Instead, the only inevitability is fear and rigorous engagement of the player (which is to say, the best part of Dark Souls).

Currently trying to collect items for the XXXXXX XXXXX. Some are very easy, some are quite annoying.

I am friends with you Z S! It just seems we've never been on at the same time. :(

hey there, i am still hoping for a guest pass code so i can try before i buy. mh? anyone? thnx

Sending via ilx now.

awwwwwwesome, received. thanks so much dude.

np

Why is Diablo III still a work in progress?

If you were one of the 6.5 million purchasers that made Diablo III the fastest-selling PC game of all time last week, you should know that Blizzard now admits the game you were playing was broken in some significant ways. I don't just mean broken in ways that prevent you from playing the game (though the company is still fixing many server and programming issues that continue to cause connection problems), but broken in ways that made certain character skills unintentionally powerful.

Blizzard has now posted a list of hotfixes that were applied to the game yesterday, and aside from a few obvious usability bugs, all of them significantly scale back the power of certain key class abilities. Basically, if you were using any of these abilities before the patch, you were unintentionally taking advantage of skills that made the game much easier than Blizzard apparently intended.

Take the Monk class's Boon of Protection rune, which let a player's party absorb a good deal of damage for ten seconds. Community Manager Bashiok admits on the forums that this ability "was approximately ten times over its budget on the benefits it provided" and has now been "nerfed to the point of obsolescence until we can implement a new rune in its place in a future patch.

"We don't intend to take these quick and drastic measures often, but considering the severity of the issue, we felt it important to correct it swiftly," he continued.

Players on the forums have been quick to complain that the newly downgraded abilities will make it practically impossible to beat the game on the highest difficulties, where the enemies are downright ferocious. I can't comment on the substance of those complaints, as I'm still slowly working my way through Normal difficulty and finding it almost insultingly easy for my Demon Hunter.

(article continues at link)

Ars Technica used to write relevant, interesting things.

And Slashdot used to be worth looking at!

man fuck the "GAMERS DESERVE BETTER THAN THIS" it's a free market system; if we deserve better than this we can vote with our wallets. stop buying blizzard product in the future if this bugs you so much!
"SPORTS FANS DESERVE BETTER THAN THIS" "RESTAURANT PATRONS DESERVE BETTER THAN THIS" "STRIP CLUB VISITORS DESERVE BETTER THAN THIS"

Pretty weak article. If there is one skill that makes it possible to beat the game more than any other, and people can't get through at a certain character level without using that one particular skill, then it stands to reason that the skill is broken.

Nothing broken has ever gotten through Blizzard's QA department ever. And it never gets patched.

NEVER

Man, even with a healthy beta, it is hard to figure out how millions of people hammering the shit out of your game will break it in strange new ways.

Not sure how healthy the beta can be when you can only do the first third/half of the first act and have NO IDEA how later-game mechanics will get worked. I know, they have internal teams for that, but they don't have a testbed of several thousand hardcore and competitive players all fishing for bragging rights any way possible.

finished on normal. The story is SO BAD. Stupidly so.

I remember the funny old days of last week when I'd get annoyed in a public game that someone was skipping dialog or cinematics. Now, I am the one pushing the button.

Does finishing on normal unlock any character classes? Or should I just ditch normal in late Act III and go for Hardcore?