So...about the recent Diablo3 news

Nightwing said:
I'm guilty of being a bit unconvinced by the new skill system, but am totally keen to try it out and see for myself. Thing that really bugs me about it is: They've made a big deal about how you can socket any of the 5 runes into any skill and thus customize the effect to your liking. Also, the higher level runes (from what I understand there are 7 ranks or levels of rune) will naturally increase the potency of the effect, so I imagine if you want a super powerful character at max level you'd want the max level rune. Problem is, we have no idea of the frequency of rune drops, and how hard they will be to find, so unless they drop often, it means their much-touted character customizability is subject to the RNG and drop rates, *OR* it could be a Cunning Plan (in Baldric voice) to drive activity on their RMAH. If lvl 7 runes are rare, then players wanting to max their char will kinda be forced to buy them with real money or tolerate the RNG until they get what they want.

Just thinking out loud really, not saying this is the way it will be :)
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I think it's up to people to completely ignore the real money auction house. Speaking for myself, I think it'll really ruin the Diablo experience to buy items there because you don't feel like revisiting areas and slashing away until you find good items. I could imagine it could be slightly tempting if you've been searching for an item for ages and you see it for cheap in the auction house, but I'd just compare it to downloading item-hacking programs and giving your char amazing items when you couldn't find them yourself. :)

As much as people are worried about the auction house, I think it's great. If I find items that I'm finished using or if I find amazing items that I'm not going to use, I can put that up for sale in the auction house, maybe make myself a quick buck and move on. Hopefully I'll never ever purchase anything from there.

On a different topic with regards to the battle.net service... There aren't any local battle.net servers, but will this make any difference? Are battle.net servers just used for authentication and the hosting of games p2p? I'd like to think I won't have European ping time, rather local ping time if I'm connecting to a South African host.
 
I definitely plan to avoid the RMAH, in fact I doubt I'd even use the in-game gold AH. I've a group of 5-6 close friends who I'll play and trade with. Couple of years playing WoW has totally turned me off the general battle.net population.

As for the actual gameplay. I'm afraid it looks like we'd have to play on the European servers and incur the latency that goes with it. I'd love it if, assuming they don't back down on this "no offline singleplayer" stance, if they would let us authenticate our CD key and for the rest, just play locally (on our pc/mac). I know SC2 used to require players to log onto battle.net at least once every 30 days to authenticate, and for the rest we could play offline, albeit without achievements and stuff. I'd be happy if D3 had a similar model, because it seems a bit silly to me to force us all to play on Euro servers even if we want to play solo.

Lots of complaints from Oceanic players as well.
 
Here is the main reason for Blizzard's creation of a real money auction house. They needed to provide a safe service for trading to replace the unsafe 3rd party service.

"D2JSP was really easy to scam in (since you had to do the trade in-game and giving the currency in the forums) if you weren't careful. The site was also corrupt (they gave gold to their friends who didn't pay for them) and so forth." - source

About the skill points... given Blizzard's track record at making kickass fun games and providing tons and tons of support for those games, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt until I've actually played the game.

Regarding Euro server latency: I have a shit shit shitty internet connection and I can play SC2 multiplayer on Euro battle.net with hardly any notice of lag. Do you think you'll get groups of players playing Diablo 3 for fun with over 100 APM each?
 
I think having an official AH would ruin some online gameplay because it would now make buying anything you really wanted really easy to those who had the spare cash to splash.

What the fanboys (myself included) must remember is that D3 is less like a sequel to Diablo II and more like what Far Cry 2 was to the original Far Cry. They are completely different games.

If Mweb were to host a Battle.net server in SA for D3 it would be insanely epic but what I really am sad to heaar about is the whole offline thing. This kinda ruins the vibe where you'd get together at a lanparty and play Diablo. I guess you could still do it but just need a solid internet connection to do it, which isn't readily available at someplace like OC.

EDIT: I see there is allowance for AH e-currency to go into your credit card once you've completed a sale. Does this not open it to mindless bots playing the game for some sort of reward? If one could earn items in Diablo then get them sold and the balance transferred to your credit card, what's to stop hundreds of these things logging on and doing just this? I've seen the same happen with RuneScape.
 
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By mindless bots do you mean Chinese gold farmers/prison inmates or do you mean automated programs which play the game?

As for the CGFs there is nothing to stop them playing and selling their stuff online except perhaps geoIP filters. But that fact that BoB1337Xxx bought all his items and can kill people just by looking in their direction doesn't really affect people in a game like Diablo 3 as much as it would in an MMO.
 
I do want to try find a pirate version or a patch that removes the always online requirement when I get hold of this game. I will buy it but if I can't play it due to its always online requirement then I see no harm in getting this if I own the original?
 
Well since I'm near 100% certain that your character will be stored online it'll be a little more complicated than just removing online requirement, you would need some sort of battle.net emulation.
 
MOnk said:
Well since I'm near 100% certain that your character will be stored online it'll be a little more complicated than just removing online requirement, you would need some sort of battle.net emulation.
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To be honest, I don't think it will take long for a pirated copy where it is offline will take long to release. I mean they can hack into pretty much anything. I give it about 3 days before its all over the torrent sites.
I will still buy the game, I just don't trust my 384kb line
 
simon said:
To be honest, I don't think it will take long for a pirated copy where it is offline will take long to release. I mean they can hack into pretty much anything. I give it about 3 days before its all over the torrent sites.
I will still buy the game, I just don't trust my 384kb line
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Your 384k will do fine. At most it will 1-5KB/s of bandwidth. Pretty much same as WoW.
The highest my WoW-usage ever peaks is 6KB/s while in the really big Battlegrounds.
 
wheunis said:
Your 384k will do fine. At most it will 1-5KB/s of bandwidth. Pretty much same as WoW.
The highest my WoW-usage ever peaks is 6KB/s while in the really big Battlegrounds.
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Its not so much the bandwidth. I am just a bit skeptical about lag in game. I will give it a try before I rush out and go for a pirated copy but I just don't want to get my hopes up as i don't think I will be able to get a faster connection.
 
the fact that u can sell ur game items for real money totally sold me on diablo III, its the only descent game that u can do that cause Project entropia and Second life sucks :/ its gonna be awesome :3

EDIT: srly, -rep for a late night spelling error? :/
 
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Both the perm online and using real money is a no go for me - have been looking forward to the game for ages and now it's scratched off my list :( oh well cest la vie
 
People ranting about the skill system and everything, I suppose I can understand that. It is, however, important to remember the big difference between Diablo 1 and Diablo 2. Diablo 1 was all about picking up or buying books to gain/level spells. In D2 there was nothing of that. All spells were learned via the skill tree. Also, not all spells would be available to you (not if you wanted to survive) on one character class. You might have had 2 Sorcerers, one Fire and one Frost (just an example).

In D1, all classes had access to all spells (although a warrior usually didn't use them and sucked at using magic, Town Portal was still handy though), but they were available to you nonetheless. In D2, each class was specific and unique, with no cross overs. This was way different than D1.

I'm sure a lot of people who first played D2 thought what the hell has Blizzard done to their beloved game. How could they do this?
And yet, spending a few hours playing D2 would surely have won you over, as it was simply awesome!

The same might just apply to D3. It sounds as if it will be way different than D2, and I'm fine with that, because history showed me that even though Blizzard changed the setup of the game, it still remained a really cool game. So I can't wait for D3 to be released. The sooner, the better.
 
to be honest the new skill system looks rad. I completely agree that the old D2 method was waay to restrictive and one was always posed with that "what is the ultimate X char" question. I mean I spent many a free minute planning a new skill tree progression to maximise points. Obviously, this added it's own fun to the game, struggling through early levels with a lvl 1 firebolt with the ultimate payoff of kicking diablos ass soooo easily. However, this was extremely limitting. This new system, seems much more friendly people who don't want to spend those hours and also just makes the game different.

Lol, I think the funny thing is, that if the skill system was EXACTLY like D2, people would complain its the same game with new GFX. If they change the system, the die hard fans bicker. Seems to me that when you're a gaming company you just need to develop the ebst game you can and hope it satisfies everyone.

That being said, and although it is not part of this discussion, I really don't like the route that Blizzard are taking with the real gold auction house. Seems disgustingly capitalistic to me.
 
simon said:
Its not so much the bandwidth. I am just a bit skeptical about lag in game. I will give it a try before I rush out and go for a pirated copy but I just don't want to get my hopes up as i don't think I will be able to get a faster connection.
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Again, you should not be concerned.
The 384k holds itself VERY well to latency.
All I can recommend in that area specifically is get away from Telkom and MWEB as ISP. GO to OpenWeb of something alike.
I can personally recommend OpenWeb's Gold Uncapped 384k (shaped) for really REALLY stable gaming.
WoW, BF:BC2, EVE, SC2, Crysis2 - i have run this line through every game I have and she performs admirably every time...
 
What would you consider an acceptable latency for these games? In League of Legends I get 250 ms pretty much all the time and it seems to be good enough. Whilst its true that 0,2 seconds might make a difference in a fast paced, reflex based shooter (Q3A etc), will the latency really be an issue?
 
Well as far as I understand it, your game will still be local. It's not like you are connecting to a Diablo world like WoW. So you would have 0 lag if you are playing alone.
 
I expect zero latency in a singleplayer game. It's singelplayer FFS, how the hell can they expect you to have to put up with a latency? It's ridiculous.
 
Graal said:
I expect zero latency in a singleplayer game. It's singelplayer FFS, how the hell can they expect you to have to put up with a latency? It's ridiculous.
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I doubt this will be the case. It makes no sense financially or technically. I could be wrong, but i really hope i am not.

Where latency is going to affect you is MP and even then, in PvP much more than PvE.
 
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