Sad that after those 4 years they haven’t really listened to anyone, then. 
Nah, I already skipped buying StarCraft II due to various reasons, not the least of which was what the reviews made of the single player story.
Diablo very much built on the success of roguelikes like NetHack and with 3 playing more like Bejewelled I’m not gonna drop the money. (That means no pirating either, for those wondering.) PoE’s price tag is free, can’t beat that.
[COLOR=‘Black’][21:14:05] Spooks: yeah im replying to brokenfridgehinge rite now
[21:14:22] Keresh: ye tell him he sucks dicks
I’ve always kind of felt blizzard’s art style was better suited to 2D. I mean, WarCraft 2 had a very similar art style to WarCraft 3, and WCII looked awesome but WC3 just looked meh.
If I get the game I’ll probably get that shader mod, but I hope there are sound mods but I’m afraid there might not be since Blizz says Diablo 3 will not support any modding
And god comparing that shader mod made me realize my main problems with D3’s graphical quality is that stupid blur - even the HUD looks clearer with sharpness on
As I predicted on my previous post, u’d present that argument, but still remains the fact that to have a single player experience, u’re at mercy of blizzard’s infrastructure, and ur ISP infrastructure, too many points for problems to happen IMO.
im not talking about graphic style only, im talking about everything that comprises the mood of the game… when I say it reminds me more of WC than diablo, is because of the feeling I get from playing the game, which is affected by graphics, sounds, music, dialogues, characters reactions, etc…
when I played D1 and D2, I felt terror, shock, became afraid, but now in D3 I feel like “I’m the mighty champion of justice who gonna wipe the evil scum”, a totally different emotion, which is more like a WC mood…
I felt the art not cartoonish, but too colorful, lacking dark tones, the blood, piles of carcasses and empaled bodies everywhere
the enemies lacked the evil intent compared from d2, for example, the satyrs or the mages… d3 act 1 was comprised of mostly zombies and skeletons… another example of bad enemy design was from the monk trailer, that thing at the end never looked like a diablo monster, more like a raid boss from WOW…
the way the characters dialog works, again, doesn’t pass the impression of terror, always talking how they’re really eager to kill creatures and stuff, specially the templar always saying “there’s a worthy foe” when there’s a magic enemy
the way enemies talked also didn’t help much… leoric in d3 sounded like a pussy compared to butcher’s “fresh meat” from d1, nor the infamous “not even death can save u now”
the music also didn’t pass the tension of the situation at all like in d1 and d2, it passed an heroic mood, just like WC music…
In general, the ppl that worked on D3 completelly missinterpreted the experience of playing d1 or d2…
first, u’r looking at numbers only, going like “LOL d3 has 172 and d2 has 30”… first of all, i dont consider runes like totally new skills, its just a variation of the same skill, just looking at numbers is like an e-peen comparison…
second, u completelly miss the concept of making a build, in D3 u don’t build ur character, u just earn it… when you build a character, u have to think, to plan ahead, things that average cod:mw player are not used to because they’re used to the game taking their hands and walking them through…
when u make a build, u make compromises, u can’t have everything, u make choices based on limited resources, and then u put it to test, u see how feasible this build is for leveling or for pvp… some builds are beast for pvp but are bad for pve, sometimes tweaking the order of the build alleviate it, sometimes working towards a specific gear, etc… even if u make a mistake, it doens’t matter, that’s the replay value, that’s the thing the more mature diablo audience likes instead of the cod:mw audience…
during ur leveling process, u have not only ur long term goal (reach high level), but those short term goals, like now i have to work on my str cause I lack damage or cause I need to wear certain gear, or invest in a certain skill path cause Im gonna need it soon for a boss battle, etc…
in D3, it doesn’t encourage u to level a character again, once u finish a class it’s over cause u have everything, and can always use the best skills available for leveling and then change it later, u don’t need to think at all, just keep hacking and slashing and profit at the end… u’re not compeled to make decisions that makes a compromise at all…
i think on d2 i’ve made at least 8 different characters for each class, and always had fun doing so, cause it was a completelly different experience each time, it was a hell of replay value if u ask me, not that bullshit 10 hours campaign for 60 bucks of nowadays games…
yeah, and it gonna be a totally retarded pvp with arena only and pay2win
yes, cause whatever info I could gather from beta was enough to notice the game is more aimed at a cod:mw audience than a diablo audience…
the game never felt hard nor challenging, I’ve never been below 70% hp, never used a single healing pot (the only use of those was earning gold), never felt threatened… unlike past diablo games where I died a few times during my first experiences with the game…
I’ve never had to think on how to shape my character, or how to reach certain goals, just keep hacking and slashing and follow the checkpoint markers
as I said before, this is not a character building, u dont have compromises, u have everything and can change anytime… no replay value at all
Lol, shaders - as if it is enough.
I made my points once already:
https://forums.blackmesasource.com/showpost.php?p=379654&postcount=36
https://forums.blackmesasource.com/showpost.php?p=379906&postcount=41
https://forums.blackmesasource.com/showpost.php?p=380101&postcount=42
And that Just Sums it up nicely.
Pretty sure no one’s gonna write ‘WHY. Can’t. I. QUIT?!’ in reviews like they did it for D2.
Or a classic like this: ‘A combination of crack cocaine and heroin that was chemically bonded and then distributed across the world on CDROMs in 1999.’
lolno, you twat 
Man ODB, your posts summarize pretty much everything I’m thinking
I saw someone post about D3 a while back saying “This art style is going back to their roots, they started off with stuff like this and now they are returning to it. It’s about damn time”
Reading that I just thought IT’S NOT ABOUT DAMN TIME BECAUSE THIS BLIZZARD DIDN’T CREATE DIABLO
I thought it would just be the art style that I had a problem with, but after playing it, like your quote says - I had no desire to go back and play the other classes, nor did any of the friends I played with.
And to everyone saying “OH ITS EASY BECUZ BLIZZ MADE THE BEGINNING ACT A TUTORIAL FOR NEW PLAYERS”
Why don’t you go back and play Diablo 1 and 2 without mods? THE START OF BOTH GAMES IS VERY EASY. As easy as those are, they are way more enjoyable to play then D3’s beginning. If my problem was the beginning was easy I probably wouldn’t have wanted to keep playing D1 and D2 like I did.
And I can’t believe they aren’t supporting mods for D3. I figured they would given SC2’s good support of them
True. They should have consulted you and based the game entirely on what you want.
This may sound crazy, but I think the art style works and is a nice move. If you think they didn’t test out a variety of styles then you clearly have zero understanding of the design process. They would have gone through dozens of different visual styles before settling upon this one. They would have spent a great amount of time considering each style and made very tough choices on which one to go with.
Why should they listen to you? Why should they listen to all the whiny kids who will bitch and moan no matter what they make?
If these ‘experts’ know best why aren’t they working in the industry? In fact, since you have such a keen eye for graphic design why aren’t you working as the lead designer for Blizzard? Seriously, send your CV with a cover letter stating, “I know design better than you. Give me a job”.
Judging by the way you deem yourself more knowledgeable than the design team of Blizzard (who have decades of experience) I would assume that you yourself are an expert on such matters.
Just because you and a vocal number of people don’t like it, it doesn’t mean that EVERYONE hates it.
You need to remember that for every 1 person bitching, there are 3 who are happy with it and not bitching. The loud BAWWWers are a minority, but create such a fuss that they believe that they are the majority.
Don’t buy the game if it’s bothering you this much. Boycott it.
Are you one of those people who gets hysterical every time a new patch is released for WoW?
“YOU HAS RUINED THE GAME! I ARE NEVER PLAYING THIS GAME AGAIN!”
In short, this is the most stupid comment I have seen anyone make this week. Well done.
lol at how you bash his non-hostile, short comment with several other people including myself having said much harsher words about the same topic
Also you don’t seem to realize it has nothing to do with the testing process. No shit they have gone through different styles, it’s what many games go through - but in the end they are going to go with the one they fucking want to use because it’s their game now and they can tailor it around that art style and make it work.
There’s no fucking definite line where you can say, OK THIS ART STYLE WILL MAKE THE GAME BETTER/WORSE - it’s an aesthetic, and it’s ultimately up to what the design team WANTS - and it appeals to different people.
Tell me, mister “the company’s always right”, if this is such a good move then why was blizzard north’s art style for Diablo so radically different, yet managed to work perfectly fine for the first two games? Because that’s what they wanted to make the game with, and it attracted certain people to the series.
They did what they are used to doing, what they wanted to do, and they know the fans of their other franchises like their style so they changed Diablo because they don’t care about what the series was like, they just want to appeal to other, new people and if it happens to appeal to some of the old fans, that’s a-ok for them too. The design team’s experience does not make them fucking intellectually superior gods who everyone should just agree with because they have done this stuff.
If you seriously believe that people who are fans of the original games have no right to complain about a series that is being changed dramatically by a company who’s only hand in developing the original games was battle.net, and gameplay suggestions for the original team to try, you are a fucking moron.
And honestly, I doubt the sincerity of blizzard in how seriously they take the Diablo series when the slogan they give the game is fucking “Evil is Back”
Who knows. Things just work this way. I’m nursing a serious hangover right now, so that’s my excuse for ranting at him.
You misunderstand my use of the word ‘test’. I wasn’t referring to game testing at all. If you would like me to clarify further I will.
Why shouldn’t they? Should a design team pander to every individual? These are professionals who have spent many years of their life training and working in the industry.
Lets say we have 100 people and they are shown 10 different styles.
12 of people like A
5 people like B
15 people like C
1 person likes D
2 people like E
27 people like F
21 people like G
3 people like H
8 people like I
6 people like J
So the majority of people like style F. They go for the majority, but that still leaves 73 people who don’t like F at all. So of course they simply have to go with their gut and chose the design THEY like. This is argument against Ibanez suggesting that they should have listened to the fans for the last 4 years.
Indeed, nice to see that you’re angrily agreeing with me.
Diablo1 and 2 had their own styles which were in part restricted by the technology of the time. With new graphical technology companies find new artistic avenues open to them. They are simply trying out new ones.
If artists were to just copy and repeat the same thing over and over again we would end up never progressing at all. Like China. 
So you’re saying that they are choosing an art style which fans from other franchises like…and this is bad how?
Quick! Call the police! They are trying to make the game appealing to a wide audience! Those bastards!
It sure is. I’m not sure what point you’re trying to argue. I agree with you entirely.
Nope, you’re right. But neither does it mean that you people can claim to be intellectually superior gods who know better than an experienced design team.
Phew, good thing I’m not a fucking moron. You have every right to complain, just don’t assume that what you say encapsulates how everyone else feels. I don’t like these blanket statements which suggest that just because you don’t like the style nobody else does.
Well that sucks. You’ll doubt the sincerity of a games company who continuously release great games just because they have a shitty slogan. Perhaps you should come up with a better one and send it to them.
I honestly never even notice a game’s slogan, so I can’t say that it upsets me as much as it does you. I think you need to chill and just enjoy the game.
nowadays game designers have so many credit, it’s not like 90% of today’s games are garbage way worse than games from 10 years ago, right?
the current game designers are such perfect entities that knows everything that gamers want, right?
who da fuck do gamers think they are to tell game designers what they want? game designers know better…
You are so full of shit, you know that?
You are so full of ice cream, you know that?
I’m going to assume that this incoherent post is a sarcastic response to what I wrote earlier.
Let me clarify.
Of course, game companies make mistakes. If none of them made mistakes we would live in a world of perfect games!
But we seem to be entering a world where people have gotten used to a high level of quality and expect more from designers than ever before.
In the older days a game like Sonic could produce sequels which essentially consisted of the same core mechanics with different zones and an extra ‘gimmick’ added each time.
People would react with, “OMG SONIC 2 IS THE SAME AS SONIC 1 BUT NOW WE HAVE A SPIN DASH ATTACK AND A FLYING FOX! AWWWESOME!”
Unfortunately for developers this just isn’t enough anymore. Now you are under intense scrutiny over every aspect of the game, from the mechanics, to the music and art design. This can be a great thing as it encourages devs to push the boundaries of what they have done before.
The down side to this is that many gamers take these criticisms too an unreasonable level. Should a dev team fail to produce a spotless and innovative, bug free, UI then the RAAAAGE created by the fans can be at times terrifying.
People will pick out the most absurd things (as we have seen even here with the BMS developmental history).
“I don’t like the speed at which Gordon swings a crowbar”.
These over the top reactions seem to snowball to the point where people start coming up with conspiracy theories to add to their irate rants.
Have you heard that Bioware apparently hates it’s fans and only cares about the money?
A slightly different graphical choice made by the Blizz team may not please you. But it does not make them money hungry madmen who care nothing for their fans. Lets keep all this in perspective.
Blizz is not some new two bit dev team who have no prior history making games. They are experienced and are passionate about making good games. So while they may still make mistakes, I think they should be cut a little slack. It’s not as though they are deliberately trying to destroy the Diablo IP and upset millions of fans.
Look boys, putting this all straight - the only problem I have with this game is that it’s called Diablo 3. If it had a different name, there wouldn’t be any posts from me regarding it.
Oh look haters hating.
Because I am in college, sir. I have every aspiration to apply to several game design companies once I am out of college. Until then, portfolio building is the name of my game. I didn’t say I know design better than Blizzard, I just said (amongst many agreeing voices) that their design decision for this particular game is very poor.
Karamazov, I would totally agree with you if this was a new game like Diablo from Blizzard, or a reboot, or even a spinoff - but it’s not, it’s a continuation of the series, and it is almost as different as a reboot - you could change the name of this game to something else and if nobody clicked the lore buttons that popped up they wouldn’t even know it was related to Diablo.
That’s not totally true - even back then many of blizzards games were radically different from North’s - look at Warcraft and Warcraft 2 compared to Diablo - completely different design styles. It has to do with the artists and what they were trying to accomplish, not just the tech of the time - this might have applied to 3D games but a 2D isometric game it doesn’t because it allows for much more creative freedom, even back then. If it’s so progressive to change the art style then why has Blizzard stuck with the same aesthetic for Warcraft the entire time its been around?
It’s not bad from a marketing standpoint - but it’s an established franchise, and that’s one of the things many people loved about the originals. Many of the people who don’t care are usually the ones who don’t even pay attention to those details and play it once over and forget the games even existed, but most of them are from other franchises.
Look at thief 2 vs thief - they listened to the fans in the sequel and made the game more thieving and overall better, when they just could’ve followed the masses and made it another action game.
When D3’s art style petition popped up nearly all of the active userbase for Diablo 1 and 2 signed the petition. That may not mean a lot to you, but these aren’t just fans of the Diablo name, they are fans of what Diablo is - and want to see the same absorbing style and gameplay that blizzard north created continued, but expanded. Ignoring fans just because there are less of them then there are fans of WoW isn’t a good thing no matter how you look at it, aside from money, which Blizzard definitely does not need to worry about.
The art style and slogan may annoy me, but that has nothing to do with me enjoying the game. I legitimately gave the game a chance and played through the beta disregarding my original problems with it because as I said, I always figured it would still feel great to play because most Blizzard games do - but I didn’t enjoy it at all when I played it. There was nothing about it that made me want to go out and buy this game.
I just didn’t have fun. Everything I was doing just lacked a rewarding feeling I got when I played through the old ones. If that somehow translates to me being butthurt about the art style and aesthetic and being some rampaging moron who refuses to play it because it’s colored wrong, you go ahead and think that but that’s not why I don’t want to play it.
Hell, my brother’s going to pick it up so I’ll give it another chance come may 15th when I get MP3, but as it is now I don’t feel I’m really missing out on anything if I don’t get it.
Just a quick note here, I’m pretty sick and tired of such thoughtless endorsements of bad behavior. I currently can’t think of any case where accommodating an art piece to a wider audience does any service to its artistic virtues. Think of your favorite band and that one album of theirs, where they went “Maybe we should cater to a wider audience here, and make our music more radio-friendly for this record.” What came of it? The music might be good, great even, but it doesn’t have soul. So it is with games.
Now this isn’t even about D3, I just felt like remarking it. Matter of fact, I don’t agree with Bloodshot on his assessment that the changes they did were to whore out the game. They don’t need to considering they’re Blizzard Entertainment, whatever they put out it’s going to sell.
Rob Liefeld has decades of experience too. :awesome: We both know that too is a shitty argument - any one soul that knows a thing or two about the craft they indulge in should and must criticize a work they feel needs criticizing. It’s called peer review, it’s common. God help us if Blizzard doesn’t take us fans as their peers.
Well, bscly. Me and Keresh joked; something along the lines of “Torchlight HD”. Yo yo, Blizz, nothing wrong with that, dawg, except it’s not what I signed up for when they told me there’s gonna be another Diablo sequel. I happen to own two of the Diablo novels, that’s how much of a Diablo fanboy I am, maybe you should read them too. There’s blood, piss and children’s bones on the floors of the dungeons in them, not coins scattered around by a frolicking goblin with a merry laugh on his way to a magic rainbow on the other side of his portal or something.
Good news - we still got D2.
Matter of fact - anyone wants to do a clean, slow, no-rushing closed D2 game from scratch after the ladder reset?
Well i also was very disappointed from the beta. I played Diablo II so often together with friends over LAN, that i was really exited to this.
Bought Torchlight some time ago and it was simple but absolutly addicting! So it kept me up while waitng for Diablo III. But now, after the weekend i was so dissapointed. Seriously, i missed so many good gameplay features which i had in Torchlight. Sounds weird but i will maybe stick to Torchlight II. It has LAN, costs 20 bucks (i get 2 - 3 Torchlight II games instead of one Diablo III for ~ 60 bucks?) and … aren’t some of the devs of Torchlight II some old Diablo II devs? Im confused now, which game i would buy. =(