hey op

+1

game is not bad and not a waste of money  (well at least for me)

combat is fun and atmosphere is better then expected. grafix are ok, not great but ok.

but .... char customisation is a bad, bad joke or  i would say almost non-existent. shame on blizzard in this category!

difficulty is ok for me after act 2, depends a bit on the team.

no reason for me to play it again.  ~20 -25  hrs of fun for 60 bucks is ok, i don't expect more from simplified mainstream games these days

god old games with customisation/variety RIP

Not sure what you guys are looking for in customization.. there isn't a single character on battle.net like mine. My character is tailored to my needs.

The lack of increased difficulty on the first go round is a problem for me too. I've also found it too easy, which detracts from my enjoyment (The only time I die now is if I'm not paying attention which I'm likely to do because it's so easy. Silly, no?). If want to play on a harder setting I have to replay, which of course will also detract from my enjoyment since a given percentage of the gameplay and story will be a repeat.

Did Blizz give a justification for this?  I think I know why they did it, just curious as to what Blizz says, if anything.

Originally posted by Paradigm68

The lack of increased difficulty on the first go round is a problem for me too. I've also found it too easy, which detracts from my enjoyment (The only time I die now is if I'm not paying attention which I'm likely to do because it's so easy. Silly, no?). If want to play on a harder setting I have to replay, which of course will also detract from my enjoyment since a given percentage of the gameplay and story will be a repeat.

Did Blizz give a justification for this?  I think I know why they did it, just curious as to what Blizz says, if anything.

I me and my friends just suck at this game, running 4 player coop we've had a few casualities along the road and we're only at the end of act 2 normal.

As for the difficulty setting, it is there.. you play with more players. Having the option to choose your difficulty straight out the gate is fine in singleplayer only games.

OP, you may want to check out Path of Exile if you're looking for a Diablo style game with more challenge.  It's in beta now, but you can get in for a whopping $10.

It has tons of character customization, better graphics than D3, I have found it to be more difficult so far, and weapons actually matter and aren't just stat blocks.

On the downside though, it hardly has any VO, no real cutscenes, and the map function is pretty terrible thus far.  Personally, I feel that the positives outweigh these negatives though.

Originally posted by Aori

Originally posted by Paradigm68

The lack of increased difficulty on the first go round is a problem for me too. I've also found it too easy, which detracts from my enjoyment (The only time I die now is if I'm not paying attention which I'm likely to do because it's so easy. Silly, no?). If want to play on a harder setting I have to replay, which of course will also detract from my enjoyment since a given percentage of the gameplay and story will be a repeat.

Did Blizz give a justification for this?  I think I know why they did it, just curious as to what Blizz says, if anything.

I me and my friends just suck at this game, running 4 player coop we've had a few casualities along the road and we're only at the end of act 2 normal.

As for the difficulty setting, it is there.. you play with more players. Having the option to choose your difficulty straight out the gate is fine in singleplayer only games.

I'm a singleplayer. I prefer to play solo. I cannot play solo at a harder setting without repeating the game.

Originally posted by Creslin321

OP, you may want to check out Path of Exile if you're looking for a Diablo style game with more challenge.  It's in beta now, but you can get in for a whopping $10.

It has tons of character customization, better graphics than D3, I have found it to be more difficult so far, and weapons actually matter and aren't just stat blocks.

On the downside though, it hardly has any VO, no real cutscenes, and the map function is pretty terrible thus far.  Personally, I feel that the positives outweigh these negatives though.

^ ^  This.  Path of Exile is a diamond in the rough, and I'm very happy I stumbled upon it and threw the devs $10 for beta access (absolutely worth it).

In another news:  Belial pawnd me and a friend.  Died 5 times before I said f'this and called a higher-level friend for help :p

Originally posted by wewter

Originally posted by Creslin321

OP, you may want to check out Path of Exile if you're looking for a Diablo style game with more challenge.  It's in beta now, but you can get in for a whopping $10.

It has tons of character customization, better graphics than D3, I have found it to be more difficult so far, and weapons actually matter and aren't just stat blocks.

On the downside though, it hardly has any VO, no real cutscenes, and the map function is pretty terrible thus far.  Personally, I feel that the positives outweigh these negatives though.

^ ^  This.  Path of Exile is a diamond in the rough, and I'm very happy I stumbled upon it and threw the devs $10 for beta access (absolutely worth it).

 

In another news:  Belial pawnd me and a friend.  Died 5 times before I said f'this and called a higher-level friend for help :p

Actually we supported path of exile and are looking forward to torchlight 2 as well.

OP If you and your wife played Diablo 2 for years then you already knew you had to play through harder difficulties for more challenge. I don't see how you two didn't know this from your previous experience in D2. I do understand where some of the things you might of been use to in the prior game are now stripped away and more simplified but if you both haven't taken the time to get through Normal and then take on Nightmare to at least see what actually changes then I can't put much levity behind your post here..

Not to insult you, but with someone who claims to have the knowledge about the series your first few points left with me with some wavering trust in what you were trying to bring up. The game mechanics change some and the difficulty definately ramps up some. You'll find some surprisinlg devistating combos that mobs can have and it only takes one person in the party to panic to make it worse.

I'd like to see someone attempt to "Two button" it through out all the harder settings if they claim this to be so easy. Because with cooldowns on skills, that would make for a very interesting tactic when you're getting swarmed. Sitting around kitting one and two mobs at a time and claiming the game is cake is not really legit..

Nothing personal but I'm just sayin..

op without dissing you too much i will say: try playing the game on hell or inferno, THEN talk. the story in D3 is just a bonus. the game, like D2, was created for maximum replayability.

im halfway through nightmare and there are already certain sections in which ive died a lot on my tanky monk.

Originally posted by Lucioon

If i remember D2 correctly, their Normal Mode is also extremely easy, I still have to beat it to unlock the Hard and then after beating Hard, Nightmare mode.

Because your level gets carried over in D1 and D2 from one difficulities to another, that was the whole Diablo gaming mechanic.

I believe everyone that is saying how D3 is too easy should go back and restart D2 with a brand new install and then you will realize that D3 is pretty much the same.

The one thing that I did realize is your characters have more AOE attacks than D2, thats probably why it feels easier. Because you actually wanted to get swamped by mobs, just so you can kill them that much quicker.

 

Overall, D3 to me feels just like the previous Diablo games, just more brainless hack and slash.

 

That doesn't exactly work because for most of us, we could do it in our sleep after having played it through hundreds of times already.  We'd just be blowing the dust off skills that we'd been honing over years of play.  I doubt many people even remember what it was like to play through D2 for the very first time.  I doubt I'm the only one to have been sliced into micro-cutlets by the Butcher in those early days.  But by the time I quit, I was running a mod or tweak that let me ramp up the difficulty to what it would be with full on multiplayer, but still play it solo.  It was only on Hell difficulty that I had to crank to back down.

I think most of us better remember how the game played when we stopped playing it, than when we started.

Originally posted by Aori

Not sure what you guys are looking for in customization.. there isn't a single character on battle.net like mine. My character is tailored to my needs.

That's a nice bold unverifiable claim. You are probably gimping yourself on purpose too.

Originally posted by sonoggi

op without dissing you too much i will say: try playing the game on hell or inferno, THEN talk. the story in D3 is just a bonus. the game, like D2, was created for maximum replayability.

im halfway through nightmare and there are already certain sections in which ive died a lot on my tanky monk.

Yeah that was one point.

My wife and I don't really enjoy having to beat the game on easy-mode to be able to play it on hell or inferno. I'll likely play it through and try the higher difficulties, but for her, why does she have to play the same thing again and listen to the same story. We paid 60$ why can't we just have a simple option to select 1 mode harder.

Don't you think 60$ would cover allowing you to choose above normal first?

Originally posted by dubyahite

If you want a challenge in this game, it's there. Sure you have to beat normal, but that doesn't take long.

Yeah and we'll keep repeating what we said. Why do we have to "beat" and play through the story content to get somewhat a challenge? My wife was kind of like "What the heck is up with that, we can set it on a harder difficulty can't we?" Then we found out we couldn't. Now you couldn't do that in d2, but d2 had more difficulty for us then d3.

Why when we paid 60$ can we not just select a difficulty level above normal?

Don't you find it odd you paid 60$ and that feature isn't present in a game that's pretty nicely developed. Like we said, good game, but something is up with the design choices.

Originally posted by porkybuns

Originally posted by dubyahite

If you want a challenge in this game, it's there. Sure you have to beat normal, but that doesn't take long.

 

Yeah and we'll keep repeating what we said. Why do we have to "beat" and play through the story content to get somewhat a challenge? My wife was kind of like "What the heck is up with that, we can set it on a harder difficulty can't we?" Then we found out we couldn't. Now you couldn't do that in d2, but d2 had more difficulty for us then d3.

Why when we paid 60$ can we not just select a difficulty level above normal?

Don't you find it odd you paid 60$ and that feature isn't present in a game that's pretty nicely developed. Like we said, good game, but something is up with the design choices.

 

You are serious aren't you? 

D2 normal mode was not more difficult than D3 normal. 

The design choice on difficulties was obviously made to stick with the traidition of previous diablo games. If you played D2 like you say then you know that.

The difficulty is not just designed to be harder. It is also gear based. If you could go into nightmare on normal with a level 1 character, you wouldn't have the gear to get very far. Not only are there more mobs with more abilities, but they also have lots more health and do lots more damage. 

My monk has over 15k health and there are some abilities in nightmare that just rip right through that in a couple shots like it's nothing. How much health do your characters have in normal? 2k? 3k?

The difficulties in Diablo are not just designed to provide a harder challenge (which they do provide), but they also require better gear.

If you don't understand that, then I don't believe that you played D2 like you say. 

So they couldn't have just started us with some decent gear at the higher level, and made our chars based on the next level of difficulty instead, and let us select our attributes?

Because then that would be bad, since we'd have the freedom to design our own character rather then having the abilities preset for us.

Fun game but like I said, you're on a railroad to do the same activity over and over.

If you had played D2 then you know how this works.  It's not really a mystery.  This isn't a play once at your chosen difficulty type of game.

Yeah to be honest I am a little surprised at this post.  I am starting to suspect either a troll or a pretty cleverly disguised attempt to bash the game.  If it's a real post let me pose a few questions to you.  You played Diablo 2 so I assume you remember what that game was like....were you expecting Diablo 3 to be different?  When the game was in development did you follow any of the development life cycle?  The game follows the previous two editions exactly, and nobody really expected that it would do anything differently. 

Think of it like this...if they made a new Star Wars movie (please don't George Lucas) it would be safe to assume that it would have Jedi, lightsabers, spaceships, and aliens.  I might want it to have sharks with laser beams and pirates fighting ninjas, but it probably won't, and I really can't be upset because George Lucas never said he wants those in his movies.  What really needs to happen is I need to go find a movie that has those things, and not blame the new Star Wars movie for not having it.  To apply this to your situation it sounds like you are looking for a different type of game (and that's fine), but it's not Diablo 3's fault because they never said they were going to deliver that, and they never will because that's not what they were making.

Originally posted by dais

Yeah to be honest I am a little surprised at this post.  I am starting to suspect either a troll or a pretty cleverly disguised attempt to bash the game.  If it's a real post let me pose a few questions to you.  You played Diablo 2 so I assume you remember what that game was like....were you expecting Diablo 3 to be different?  When the game was in development did you follow any of the development life cycle?  The game follows the previous two editions exactly, and nobody really expected that it would do anything differently. 

 

Think of it like this...if they made a new Star Wars movie (please don't George Lucas) it would be safe to assume that it would have Jedi, lightsabers, spaceships, and aliens.  I might want it to have sharks with laser beams and pirates fighting ninjas, but it probably won't, and I really can't be upset because George Lucas never said he wants those in his movies.  What really needs to happen is I need to go find a movie that has those things, and not blame the new Star Wars movie for not having it.  To apply this to your situation it sounds like you are looking for a different type of game (and that's fine), but it's not Diablo 3's fault because they never said they were going to deliver that, and they never will because that's not what they were making.

^This. +1