I played Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 in around 2000-2002 and I did go far with it (Level 80 Druid elementalist after Hell difficulty being my best) but now I kind of abandoned the Diablo world as I made my choice with SC2, don't think I will ever play Diablo 3 or its expansion. It was nice I did for Diablo 3 beta one day when it was free and already felt fed up. All the problems of the game that you speak about, I've heard them and I guess I am not missing much, Diablo 2 was truly that great and epic and D3 I heard lost this continuous epicness.
Partially, I think I don't like doing things with Angels and Demons stories anymore, so this may be the reason as well as me liking Space and Futuristic Sci Fi much more.
However, they make great cinematics, looks even better than HotS cinematics, no? Is this the graphics you wanted to see in SC2 to not be cartoony? To be movie-like?
Say what you want about Blizzard, but man, they make the best cinimatics :P
Anyways, I'm really hoping they get this right. It seems, at least from what they've announced so far, that they've learned from their mistakes. And from what I understand the item system 2.0 will be coming to vanilla D3 as a patch (sort of like the updates for HotS). I'm really happy they're doing that. I never played D2, but from what I've heard, it was significantly worse before the expansion came out. My fingers are crossed that this turns out great! If not, at least we'll have more gorgeous cutscenes to watch :P
Indeed they do make the most worked of cinematics yet. And by those I mean the CGI, not the frapsed stuff they put in HotS, where they only blurred a bit and stuff to avoid fps lagging with poor performance machines. Something that doesn't make sense, since SC II itself, to run on max, requires a high-performance piece of equipment.
I don't think the changes are enough to win me over. Path of Exile still seems the better game and it's free. If they can have a separate league with no AH's then it might be worth playing. From what we know of the game the items aren't much improved, and the AH will still offer better gear than what you have unless they make ALL high end gear bind on acquire. The cinematics team is amazing though, I agree.
I'm going to inform you guys of one big point you are missing.
World of Tanks has left a serious impression in my mind. It does not target younger audiences. It requires patience and timing.
And yet last year, Wargaming (the maker) was pretty much able to match the revenue of Blizzard. Now there are a lot of things that were done wrong, especially later.
But one fact must be faced. The older gaming group, although smaller, also has more money to spend. Since World of Tanks averaged 16.00 USD per active player (that is, greater than pay to play rates) in 2012, targeting the older group is certainly a viable option.
As a game I considered Diablo to be quite pleasant. I never really played D2 or D1, so I knew basically nothing about Diablo when I got to D3. The story line, while it was predictable, it was fun, it was nice to play through, the visual style was not convincing for some, but it sure made some pretty scenarios while playing the storyline that FITTED. Though, I was a little disappointed of the sewers in D3 since I remeber them from D2 to be a complete maze where I died multiple times.
For a casual gamer like me this game was fun, had a decent storyline, I can only play so few hours a day so it gave me almosta month of fun, then a little bit more when I got a little bit into getting itemsand figuring out the auction house. All I am saying is that it was fun.
ONCE.
I recently installed it again only to realise it was basically pointless.There are no "goals" in a game like this, you never finish playing it per se, and the only thing that item hunts or having the best equipment and better build and msot levels are worth for is not even there :/
So I got bored after around 7 days of replaying it (Did not even get past azmodan) and even in a different class it was just not worth it for me to feel like I was going nowhere and achieve nothing.
That said, I think that as a game it was whatever you could expect from any other title. Except with INCREDIBLE cinematics and a not too retarded storyline and playthrough.
Second thing I can say is that HoTS is pretty much even more messed up than Diablo. If it was just, like Diablo, a single playthrough of the same thing it would be DEAD. Which is why multiplayer and arcade have done a decent job and add great replayability to the game since no match is ever the same. But seriously if you just looked at hots as a single player game it'd suck more than D3. The storyline was poor and weak and LEAKED so you already knew what was going to happen, and even if you did not see the leaked video you pretty much could have guessed what was going to happen right after mission 2. Cinematics are replaced by in game cinematics and only a tad few are actual real rendered cinematics. Which are impressive in someway but not THAT impressive. But overall I do consider hots to be an improvement over wol, it had a far superior mission design, the missions in hots were just really fun to complete.
Both games have their mistakes and both have their greatness, but they're both games, decent and entertain to some point.
That said, I'd probably get the D3 expansion just for the storyline and play through it once, but the price has to be right, not $40, definitely not $60.
And that said, I'd probably get LotV but not as much for its campaign but for the multiplayer and strategies.
That's kind of funny. I fully agree with you about Diablo, and what you're saying might be the main reason I've stopped playing - something which was never a conscious decision; I just... stopped playing. There are no goals in Diablo. Once you've completed the storyline once, the only goal is improving your character. And this cannot even been done in a reliable way. There are no specific drops you can go for or quests you can complete for specific gear. All there is is grinding. It is basically the worst part of WoW with everything else removed. No community, no raiding, no PvP, no PvP goals, no exploring, no interesting max level quests... just grinding.
And while I agree with you there, I completely disagree with everything you said about HotS. For one, even though everybody keeps yelling that 'the story was leaked', I had no idea how it would end - and I'm not the most inattentive member of the StarCraft community. While it is probably my fault for missing it, I'm saying like the whole thing wasn't exactly 'predictable as hell'. Some parts were, but it's not like my entire story experience was void already.
Secondly, I still think WoL was better in many ways. The whole feeling of the story and the loneliness of Jim's uphill battle was portrayed in a pretty good way by allowing the player to walk around the Hyperion and do 'side' quests to improve his army. The levels per se were less engaging than those of HotS, but that can really mostly be blamed on the relative inexperience of the team back then - if they were to go back to recreate the WoL campaign now I'm sure this wouldn't be an issue. And even with the WoL levels being less engaging than the HotS levels, they are still a damn amount more engaging than most RTS's.
Third and last, while HotS singleplayer doesn't allow for a great amount of replayability, the story and experience in itself I definitely view as better than a single playthrough of Diablo 3. HotS has the worst and most unbelievable storyline of all Blizzard games to date (along with a number of stupid plotholes), but there's just so much more interesting gameplay to go around. Even if replayability was ruined. Which in part was the fault of the non-existant hard mode achievements that made WoL interesting; in HotS, 95% of the hard mode achievements are 'complete the level within X time'.
I really dislike that they killed off Deckard Cain. He is too iconic and a central part of the game to just be removed. That I think was a huge mistake on their part.
I played Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 in around 2000-2002 and I did go far with it (Level 80 Druid elementalist after Hell difficulty being my best) but now I kind of abandoned the Diablo world as I made my choice with SC2, don't think I will ever play Diablo 3 or its expansion. It was nice I did for Diablo 3 beta one day when it was free and already felt fed up. All the problems of the game that you speak about, I've heard them and I guess I am not missing much, Diablo 2 was truly that great and epic and D3 I heard lost this continuous epicness.
Partially, I think I don't like doing things with Angels and Demons stories anymore, so this may be the reason as well as me liking Space and Futuristic Sci Fi much more.
However, they make great cinematics, looks even better than HotS cinematics, no? Is this the graphics you wanted to see in SC2 to not be cartoony? To be movie-like?
Respect for playing Druid Elementalist to hell difficulty. Was definitely one of the harder paths. Bonus points if it was hardcore mode.
@Mozared: Go
Agreed man! I too noticed a lot of people saying they disliked HotS story, but I think it wasn't that bad. Definitely not too interesting either, but the idea they came up with for the Zerg and the Primal seemed good. I admit that I found the characters they introduced the poorest of all. Dahaka wouldn't shut up about the essence, Izsha was monotonous, maybe because of her voice (HotS voices seemed even worse than in WoL), and Stukov's appearance just felt random overall. Still, the overall plot was decent, I just think Blizzard has grown a bad habit of unveiling entire plots during trailers.
I really dislike that they killed off Deckard Cain. He is too iconic and a central part of the game to just be removed. That I think was a huge mistake on their part.
Respect for playing Druid Elementalist to hell difficulty. Was definitely one of the harder paths. Bonus points if it was hardcore mode.
Ill admit, Deckard Cains death irritated me badly, but maybe since the next game is ABOUT death, just maybe, he will come back. The story might even be about bringing him back. :), thats all I can hope, I loved the first act of D3, the 2nd act was... decent(albeit just a replay for act 2 from d2) I think my biggest problem was all 4 acts felt like stuff you already did in Diablo 2. the 3rd and fourth act LOOK different but they were the same as well. Heaven and hell had nearly identical layouts :P
I was never a huge fan of Diablo 2( Diablo 1 was much better in my opinion), But at-least it was original feeling(dont get me wrong I LOVED ACT 1 in D3, I thought it was AMAZING, the other 3 fell short though).
Though what REALLY irritated me was 2 things. 1. Deckard Cain, and 2. Tyreal becoming/staying human -_-
As for end game, I enjoyed it until Inferno, While I like difficult, I hate 1 hit TKO unless you have the items that go for max price on the AH. -_-.
New replacement nobodies are soon sent through the grinder, too. And that's the demarcation, the line once crossed where one must completely cease to give a shit.
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@DuckyTheDuck: Go
I feel exactly the same.
I played Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 in around 2000-2002 and I did go far with it (Level 80 Druid elementalist after Hell difficulty being my best) but now I kind of abandoned the Diablo world as I made my choice with SC2, don't think I will ever play Diablo 3 or its expansion. It was nice I did for Diablo 3 beta one day when it was free and already felt fed up. All the problems of the game that you speak about, I've heard them and I guess I am not missing much, Diablo 2 was truly that great and epic and D3 I heard lost this continuous epicness.
Partially, I think I don't like doing things with Angels and Demons stories anymore, so this may be the reason as well as me liking Space and Futuristic Sci Fi much more.
However, they make great cinematics, looks even better than HotS cinematics, no? Is this the graphics you wanted to see in SC2 to not be cartoony? To be movie-like?
Say what you want about Blizzard, but man, they make the best cinimatics :P
Anyways, I'm really hoping they get this right. It seems, at least from what they've announced so far, that they've learned from their mistakes. And from what I understand the item system 2.0 will be coming to vanilla D3 as a patch (sort of like the updates for HotS). I'm really happy they're doing that. I never played D2, but from what I've heard, it was significantly worse before the expansion came out. My fingers are crossed that this turns out great! If not, at least we'll have more gorgeous cutscenes to watch :P
i am sooo close to quote Zeldarules!
@zeldarules28: Go
Indeed they do make the most worked of cinematics yet. And by those I mean the CGI, not the frapsed stuff they put in HotS, where they only blurred a bit and stuff to avoid fps lagging with poor performance machines. Something that doesn't make sense, since SC II itself, to run on max, requires a high-performance piece of equipment.
I don't think the changes are enough to win me over. Path of Exile still seems the better game and it's free. If they can have a separate league with no AH's then it might be worth playing. From what we know of the game the items aren't much improved, and the AH will still offer better gear than what you have unless they make ALL high end gear bind on acquire. The cinematics team is amazing though, I agree.
I'm going to inform you guys of one big point you are missing.
World of Tanks has left a serious impression in my mind. It does not target younger audiences. It requires patience and timing.
And yet last year, Wargaming (the maker) was pretty much able to match the revenue of Blizzard. Now there are a lot of things that were done wrong, especially later.
But one fact must be faced. The older gaming group, although smaller, also has more money to spend. Since World of Tanks averaged 16.00 USD per active player (that is, greater than pay to play rates) in 2012, targeting the older group is certainly a viable option.
Two things:
As a game I considered Diablo to be quite pleasant. I never really played D2 or D1, so I knew basically nothing about Diablo when I got to D3. The story line, while it was predictable, it was fun, it was nice to play through, the visual style was not convincing for some, but it sure made some pretty scenarios while playing the storyline that FITTED. Though, I was a little disappointed of the sewers in D3 since I remeber them from D2 to be a complete maze where I died multiple times.
For a casual gamer like me this game was fun, had a decent storyline, I can only play so few hours a day so it gave me almosta month of fun, then a little bit more when I got a little bit into getting itemsand figuring out the auction house. All I am saying is that it was fun.
ONCE.
I recently installed it again only to realise it was basically pointless.There are no "goals" in a game like this, you never finish playing it per se, and the only thing that item hunts or having the best equipment and better build and msot levels are worth for is not even there :/
So I got bored after around 7 days of replaying it (Did not even get past azmodan) and even in a different class it was just not worth it for me to feel like I was going nowhere and achieve nothing.
That said, I think that as a game it was whatever you could expect from any other title. Except with INCREDIBLE cinematics and a not too retarded storyline and playthrough.
Second thing I can say is that HoTS is pretty much even more messed up than Diablo. If it was just, like Diablo, a single playthrough of the same thing it would be DEAD. Which is why multiplayer and arcade have done a decent job and add great replayability to the game since no match is ever the same. But seriously if you just looked at hots as a single player game it'd suck more than D3. The storyline was poor and weak and LEAKED so you already knew what was going to happen, and even if you did not see the leaked video you pretty much could have guessed what was going to happen right after mission 2. Cinematics are replaced by in game cinematics and only a tad few are actual real rendered cinematics. Which are impressive in someway but not THAT impressive. But overall I do consider hots to be an improvement over wol, it had a far superior mission design, the missions in hots were just really fun to complete.
Both games have their mistakes and both have their greatness, but they're both games, decent and entertain to some point.
That said, I'd probably get the D3 expansion just for the storyline and play through it once, but the price has to be right, not $40, definitely not $60.
And that said, I'd probably get LotV but not as much for its campaign but for the multiplayer and strategies.
@xcorbo: Go
That's kind of funny. I fully agree with you about Diablo, and what you're saying might be the main reason I've stopped playing - something which was never a conscious decision; I just... stopped playing. There are no goals in Diablo. Once you've completed the storyline once, the only goal is improving your character. And this cannot even been done in a reliable way. There are no specific drops you can go for or quests you can complete for specific gear. All there is is grinding. It is basically the worst part of WoW with everything else removed. No community, no raiding, no PvP, no PvP goals, no exploring, no interesting max level quests... just grinding.
And while I agree with you there, I completely disagree with everything you said about HotS. For one, even though everybody keeps yelling that 'the story was leaked', I had no idea how it would end - and I'm not the most inattentive member of the StarCraft community. While it is probably my fault for missing it, I'm saying like the whole thing wasn't exactly 'predictable as hell'. Some parts were, but it's not like my entire story experience was void already.
Secondly, I still think WoL was better in many ways. The whole feeling of the story and the loneliness of Jim's uphill battle was portrayed in a pretty good way by allowing the player to walk around the Hyperion and do 'side' quests to improve his army. The levels per se were less engaging than those of HotS, but that can really mostly be blamed on the relative inexperience of the team back then - if they were to go back to recreate the WoL campaign now I'm sure this wouldn't be an issue. And even with the WoL levels being less engaging than the HotS levels, they are still a damn amount more engaging than most RTS's.
Third and last, while HotS singleplayer doesn't allow for a great amount of replayability, the story and experience in itself I definitely view as better than a single playthrough of Diablo 3. HotS has the worst and most unbelievable storyline of all Blizzard games to date (along with a number of stupid plotholes), but there's just so much more interesting gameplay to go around. Even if replayability was ruined. Which in part was the fault of the non-existant hard mode achievements that made WoL interesting; in HotS, 95% of the hard mode achievements are 'complete the level within X time'.
I really dislike that they killed off Deckard Cain. He is too iconic and a central part of the game to just be removed. That I think was a huge mistake on their part.
Respect for playing Druid Elementalist to hell difficulty. Was definitely one of the harder paths. Bonus points if it was hardcore mode.
@Mozared: Go Agreed man! I too noticed a lot of people saying they disliked HotS story, but I think it wasn't that bad. Definitely not too interesting either, but the idea they came up with for the Zerg and the Primal seemed good. I admit that I found the characters they introduced the poorest of all. Dahaka wouldn't shut up about the essence, Izsha was monotonous, maybe because of her voice (HotS voices seemed even worse than in WoL), and Stukov's appearance just felt random overall. Still, the overall plot was decent, I just think Blizzard has grown a bad habit of unveiling entire plots during trailers.
Ill admit, Deckard Cains death irritated me badly, but maybe since the next game is ABOUT death, just maybe, he will come back. The story might even be about bringing him back. :), thats all I can hope, I loved the first act of D3, the 2nd act was... decent(albeit just a replay for act 2 from d2) I think my biggest problem was all 4 acts felt like stuff you already did in Diablo 2. the 3rd and fourth act LOOK different but they were the same as well. Heaven and hell had nearly identical layouts :P
I was never a huge fan of Diablo 2( Diablo 1 was much better in my opinion), But at-least it was original feeling(dont get me wrong I LOVED ACT 1 in D3, I thought it was AMAZING, the other 3 fell short though).
Though what REALLY irritated me was 2 things. 1. Deckard Cain, and 2. Tyreal becoming/staying human -_-
As for end game, I enjoyed it until Inferno, While I like difficult, I hate 1 hit TKO unless you have the items that go for max price on the AH. -_-.
@SearingChicken: Go
Diablo 1 probably had the best atmosphere from all Diablo games. It felt really authentic. I can agree with you on that point.
Difficult to care about a narrative when the franchise cycle is driven by directorial pretense and its misguided ambition to be cinematic, hoping to take credit for all the face-twisting dramatic feels, the aspiration requires devouring the drama fodder which consists entirely of kill-murdering the few well-known characters in a course of stiffly-choreographed death sequences garnished with long-lasting last words demonstrating the emotional breadth and insight of a pre-teen power fantasy.
New replacement nobodies are soon sent through the grinder, too. And that's the demarcation, the line once crossed where one must completely cease to give a shit.