Diablo 3 Beta First Impressions and a brief tirade on statistics

[Roland]

The graphics are beautiful. The sounds and music are right on key. The controls are smooth and responsive. But there's something missing.

What? Randomness.

Personally, I find the graphics to be a piss-poor rendition in this modern age, but to each his/her own. I don't find them unappealing, I just think they stopped developing them about... 6 years ago, and never bothered to update them given the advances in hardware. I've ranted about this (and several other things) over at Realms Beyond, but I'll spare you all that for now.

Randomness in the beta is, according to Blizzard, absolutely NOT indicative of the final game. The Beta is akin to the run up through the Den of Evil, and maybe Blood Raven. They've kept the earlier portions of Act 1 (although I have my suspicions that the entirety of Act 1 is going to be like this) non-random to help introduce players to the game.

. . .

Just take a moment to let that sink in. Then imagine me grinding my face off with a belt-sander. That should give you an idea of how much I value Blizzard's "goals" for this game.

MOVING ON!

Two: Skills. Granted, I haven't leveled up that much, but from what I'm seeing, the skill system automatically unlocks a predefined selection of skills. Equipping these skills causes them to go into a cooldown mode and they aren't available for use OR swapping out for about 20-30 seconds.

Belt-sander still in full swing!

Anyway, yeah - no skill points. What you see in Beta is what you get, with the (possible) exception of Runes (if they ever make up their mind as to which "system" they want to use.) Welcome to the cookie-cutter world of Diablo, now with more cookies! Diablo III will almost entirely be driven by items. This fits with their model for the RMAH. Don't you get it?

Yes. I'm a cynical old curmudgeon, to the point I feel the need to resurrect Pete's old name for Blizzard (Buzzard). Whatever hopes I had for DIII, the beta pretty much ended. I see the writing on the walls, and know its meaning. Diablo III will be a blast for me - for a little while. Then, it will be promptly shelved, and even more promptly forgotten

But I'll still be disappointed if the trends I'm noticing now stay in the final product.

YMMV
-Loki

I think we need to open up a tavern for all the old Lurkers, so we can sit around drinking and regaling one another of the "good old days of yore" regarding Diablo (and Diablo II).

I did note a graphical issue. There appears to be no Antialaising or Anisotropic filtering, which may be causing this issue.

Actually, there is an option for AF, IIRC. It's in the Graphics menu (limited though it is). Or maybe it was AA? I don't remember. I know it went up to 4x max IIRC, and it wasn't impressive, but then neither are the graphics as a whole. I don't recall seeing any graphical bugs like you're describing, but I'll check it out again tonight and see. Maybe it's new, or maybe I missed it? We'll see.