Let us post BattleTags

[kandrathe]

At the risk of derailing RTM's thread, the blacksmith is not exactly Charsi. And the beta felt more like Gilneas on a bad day than Sanctuary. Gloomy is fine. I've nothing against gloomy. It is, after all, Diablo, not Candy Land. But the D2 beta was a thrill, the D3 beta was not.

What's worse, other than the snazzy graphics, I didn't find the beta much of an improvement over playing Demon Stalkers on the Commodore twenty five years ago. Demon Stalkers had nice music too, and a level editor to design your own levels. And the ghosts would attack through walls. I don't see a quarter century of progress.

Charles Addams's work is well drawn, gloomy, and charming. D3 needs his input.

Perhaps it is a phenomenon known to artists. Consider the Dutch masters versus the impressionists. With higher powered graphics cards, more detail is possible. The prior "bad" graphics left more for the brain to fill in the blanks, and created the mood our brains wanted.

But, on game play, I'm not familiar enough yet to comment. My first impression for PVE was that the game seemed to have a bit more control over the action than I did. My foray was as a ranged char using rooting traps and attempting to CC groups. I felt marginally able to control the game flow. I think in games there is a happy balance between predictability (e.g. the ability to use skills and get a sense of mastery), and unpredictability (no two game experiences are quite the same). Too much of the former, and the game become boring quickly. Too much of the later and game skill masteries are trumped by human gamer twitch reflexes (e.g. it doesn't matter how "skilled" your char is, its the humans skill that really matters -- see Doom3). I got that feeling in a couple places, when the fat guys explode and a bunch of "worms/eels" come rushing at you. Or, when you open a door and suddenly face a rush of 10 or so mobs who quickly overwhelm any attempt to keep them at range. Eventually, you pick up on the games visual clues of places that are potential "gotcha" sites and can prepare mentally for the "surprise". But, I'll stand by my prior comment. I've only played it during open beta for about 4 hours, so I'm still a DIII newb. I own it, so I'll save my final verdict on the game for sometime after the release and I've invested more time in attempting to master it. Sorry for the OT.

Oh, and Kandrathe#1364

P.S. The ONE thing they probably should have changed was the 2D isometric pseudo 3D graphics being the ONLY camera view. I remember Gauntlet for it's time was cool, but bad camera angles got really old even by DII standards. With the power of todays graphics processors, players should have more control over camera angles. How cool would it be to do DIII in first person?