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Originally posted by VowOfSilence
It seems that events like Kingsmouth happen in OUR world - right in front of everybody. These events have been happening for centuries, but nobody is aware of it, because the secret societies have kept it a secret.

Is that correct? Sounds incredibly far-fetched to me. Before playing the BWE, i though the secret world is actually sort of a  parallel dimension (like in Longest Journey, Dreamfall, or the anime Gantz). I liked that idea much more, makes more sense to me and sounds more mysterious.

 

What i don't understand is:

1) How the heck is it possible to keep all of that a secret for such a long time? And why even bother to keep it a secret?

2) Why are the player's "magic" abilites so important, if normal persons can see and interact with those events as well?

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Secret world IS different world from ours. The towns are different. Its a world VERY close to how ours is, but some things are different. Very different.

It has those shadowy organizations who do not want to just "Save" the world, but also to WIN. Gain power. Also there are more powers beyond the three blocks.

AS for anima, well it has an important reason for exis-
Hello. Council Of Venice now declares this thread as not existing. There's no secret world or conspiracies. Thank you very much and have a nice day.

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Originally posted by rpgalon
Only the guys that worked and are working to solve the ARGs know how much it can create a community.

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ARG pretty much BUILT the community :3 Everyone felt like they are IN the game even before it entered the betas.

The fac tthat arg will continue after game launch and affect gameplay itself is awesome too. Devs already said that some of puzzles are designed to be a group effort at solving - hard to craft but very rewarding for factions.

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Originally posted by ShakyMo
Environment and big ass monster wise they ate already there. Player characters need work though, less plastic skin and better animations especially that awful jump

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Animations and character creation screen are placeholders.

The "plastic skin" thing however won't go away. its a conscious design decision and part of world design in most of Ragnar Tornquist developed games like Dreamfall.

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Originally posted by SpottyGekko
Could well be that Funcom are hoping the 2 week delay will allow more of the gaming public to recover from the current high levels of "D3 Fever".

Given all the hype around the Tera and D3 launch, the TSW launch date really needed to be moved, otherwise it would have gone unnoticed by a great many possible players. The "shiny" needs to wear off of the current new launches.

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While I do agree that Tera still has some unreasonable ammounts of Hype, I'd say Diablo 3 has already killed its own hype by accidentally slipping and falling backwards into its own mess :/

Originally posted by Mors.Magne

Originally posted by Chopsticks

Originally posted by Vhaln

Originally posted by Mors.Magne

Originally posted by Kaocan

Originally posted by Mors.Magne

When Funcom first designed TSW, I bet the coversation went just like this:

 

Chief Game Designer: It will be an MMORPG in a modern setting inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecarft.

Chief Game Designer's Boss: We don't want to take any risks - the gameplay has to be modelled on World of Warcraft.

Chief Game Designer: Ok.

You should delete all of them, not just the repeats. TSW gameplay isnt like WoW at all, you're just making a troll comment which isnt needed.

 TSW's gameplay is exactly like WoW looking at the video.

It could even be worse than WoW's gameplay - the makers of the video felt they needed to speed up the gameplay several times and use pumping music to make it look exciting.

 

It is like WoW, compared to most games that involve shotguns and assault rifles.  I think the issue is that they might've dont better breaking away from traditional MMO combat more, to fit the modern setting.

Yeah the game has dungeons, therefore it's like WoW. It has hotbars too. Go figure another WoW clone right?

TSW is based on the books of H. P. Lovecraft with the addition of 3 factions.

Therefore, it should feel like a scary, creepy world.

Now look at the gameplay videos of TSW. Do they have the feel of WoW or the feel of an H. P. Lovecraft book?

 

Its scary enough, both in atmosphere and "shock scares" (stuff appearing). 

Even TotalBiscuit(who generally fails at mmos and puzzle games) noted that this is one of the most immersive and atmospheric mmos to be ever created. 

Originally posted by Mors.Magne

When Funcom first designed TSW, I bet the coversation went just like this:

 

Chief Game Designer: It will be an MMORPG in a modern setting inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecarft.

Chief Game Designer's Boss: We don't want to take any risks - the gameplay has to be modelled on World of Warcraft.

Chief Game Designer: Ok.

I am sorry but what the hell is this?

By tha tlogic Guild Wars II is also "modelled on World of Warcraft" (even though its as far from WOW as possible in terms of mmo design). This is a bit closer to GW II than WOW. 

. Nowadays "it has minimap" instantly equates with WOW for some people... Actually read stuff before assuming next time.

Originally posted by Terranah

KOA is a fun game.  I really enjoyed it.  I think if you stick to the main quest line it is a short game, but then I didn't stick to the main quest line all the time and allowed myself to veer off on tangents.  I enjoyed the combat, gameplay and world in general.  The art direction was nice and the world felt alive.

 

Overall the game felt very easy but I was playing on normal level.  But in my 20's I was already king of the hill.

 

I would have been interested to see what else this studio could do so it's a bummer they went under.  

 

Mostly agreed.

KOA was too easy sure, but I do not play RPG games for challenge. I paly them for stats and immersion and KOA provided both, considering it had one of the most detailed RPG worlds in a long time. 

well frack...

Amalur was fucking awesome game. Now apart from Witcher, there's no rpg game franchise to wait and root for left...

Originally posted by Aerowyn

Originally posted by FrodoFragins

Originally posted by Vutar

More interesting would be to see the number of people who continued playing it after the first hour of play. Everyone I know except one person uninstalled the game very quickly. The one guy who kept playing it is a diehard diablo fan who was still playing D2 on and off before D3's release.

I don't believe you for a second.

lol same if you enjoy these type of games I see no reason why you would dislike this game and if you bought it and hate these types of games well then that's your own fault. 

 

Because it is NOT the same kind of game as "these types of games"? Its heavily MMO-ized. They got rid of important stuff like skillpoints and statpoints. They essentially mmoized the item system too.  Its not a diablo-like game. Its part diablo-like and part wow-like now.

Originally posted by Resiakraw

Yeah it is pretty amusing. I remember when stuff started coming out about DRM from Ubisoft and this forum was filled with nothing but rage and absolute hate for Ubisoft. I dont remember a single person actually defending Ubisoft over it. Now Blizzard does it and its the complete opposite, not only do people accept it but they actively defend and try to justify it.

 

My favorite has got to be:

1. "hey it has always been online game and no one played singleplayer anyway so they removed stuff no one wanted!!111oneone   (yeah except that I will never believe that all the millions who bought it, played it solely online.)
2. "hurr durr we all are always connected to the internet anyway"  (except when traveling in a train, or plane, or in the mountains, or in the farm, or camping, or when blizz servers are down, or when your isp is tripping hard.)
3. "Blizz is awesome for adding it because it prevents Piracy and hacking! No one will ever hack this game now! NO ONE!" (cue the security fiasco of this week)
4. "They could not make the game singleplayer because they built it multiplayer!"  (mr.obvious strikes again, I guess? why did they not build it singleplayer then? Auction house.)
5. "give Blizzard a break! they will fix stuff!"  (I am sorry but blizz ran out of "breaks" after they took 10 years to release this mediocrity)

Originally posted by Vutar

More interesting would be to see the number of people who continued playing it after the first hour of play. Everyone I know except one person uninstalled the game very quickly. The one guy who kept playing it is a diehard diablo fan who was still playing D2 on and off before D3's release.

 

This so much. A friend of mine kept ASKING on why he could not "launch the game" while offline and genuinely could not understand what "always online drm" means, continously repeating that "but its a singleplayer game...".

A lot of people who bought it were unaware of what they are buying into. They expected diablo. They got World of Warcraft  reskin on isometric perspective. 

Those who were somewhat happy with that got driven away by error 37 and constnat lags. 

Originally posted by heartless

Originally posted by Zylaxx

I dont get it personally.  How does a game D3 get so many box sales and awesome games with way more meat barely register on anyones minds or playlist.

It's quite simple really. There was so much hype surrounding development and release of Diablo III than most people just got sucked into it. A few months before D3's release it was literally pasted all over the internet. Everyone and their mother knew about it.

The game had a great marketing campaign the likes of which which most publishers and developers either can't or are not willing to afford and it payed off. Good for Blizzard, bad for us. Why bad for us? Because  D3's success basically shows publishers that always online and RMT in a single player game is acceptable if you present it in a certain way.

Edit: it would be nice to see the numbers of active players about a month or so from now. There is no doubt that D3 is financially successful but is it successful as a game?

 

What is hilarious though is that PEOPLE ARE MAKING EXCUSES FOR BLIZZ. 

Excuses for DRM, excuses for streamlining of skill and stat systems, excusing for RMT auction house and etc. Through last week or so I heard some of the MOST outlandish excuses for it possible.

That is the scary thing. That company like Blizzard can get away with most outrageous and most underhanded business practices just because they sugarcoated it more than, let's say, Ubisoft does when ubi does EXACT SAME THING. 

Originally posted by Chrome1980

Originally posted by Yuui

Originally posted by Chrome1980

Originally posted by Yuui

Originally posted by thekid1

Originally posted by Zylaxx

I dont get it personally.  How does a game D3 get so many box sales and awesome games with way more meat barely register on anyones minds or playlist.

Marketing through game websites.

Look how much articles this website already made about Diablo 3.

 

Not to mention all the other little facts, like

 

ROFL...... ;)

 

Bought reviews have been factually proven by more than one incident.

Blizz fanbois and apologists also have a factual evidence of existing. 

The fact that D3 was not made by same developer team is also not something the general public knows or ha da way of knowing, as proven by both their reactions to Torchlight and comments on Diablo 3.

Please try to argue over the obvious truth that D3 is biggest target of gold sellers and hackers in last few years. Please do. The Account Hacking incident this week that was a huge fiasco on Blizz's part just reinforces it. 

The last point is pretty much supported by marketing theory.

 

So yeah. Facts.

Sure whatever you say..you think you are the first one to pass opinions as facts? honestly, i enjoyed the game a lot and i am one of those gamers who missed out on original game and the sequel. So i am far from fanboy.

But still i can't help but feel sorry for people like you..trying so hard to piss on the succes of D3, but it is like pissing in the wind..only you are going to get wet.

 

From how you talk, you do not really get on what a "fact" and what an "opinion" is

Opinion would be saying that Diablocraft III is an awfully mediocre game made purely as an excuse for RMT trading and the cuts blizz will get from it.  Thats debatable and can be supported or refuted with arguments. 

The fact that Diablo 3's sales are built up upon the misinformation, hype and marketing is not an opinion. Its a fact supported by factual evidence.  Thats not debatable. 

Also just a note but your second paragraph invalidates the conclusion of  first. :)

Originally posted by Chrome1980

Originally posted by Yuui

Originally posted by thekid1

Originally posted by Zylaxx

I dont get it personally.  How does a game D3 get so many box sales and awesome games with way more meat barely register on anyones minds or playlist.

Marketing through game websites.

Look how much articles this website already made about Diablo 3.

 

Not to mention all the other little facts, like

 

ROFL...... ;)

 

Bought reviews have been factually proven by more than one incident.

Blizz fanbois and apologists also have a factual evidence of existing. 

The fact that D3 was not made by same developer team is also not something the general public knows or ha da way of knowing, as proven by both their reactions to Torchlight and comments on Diablo 3.

Please try to argue over the obvious truth that D3 is biggest target of gold sellers and hackers in last few years. Please do. The Account Hacking incident this week that was a huge fiasco on Blizz's part just reinforces it. 

The last point is pretty much supported by marketing theory.

So yeah. Facts.

Originally posted by thekid1

Originally posted by Zylaxx

I dont get it personally.  How does a game D3 get so many box sales and awesome games with way more meat barely register on anyones minds or playlist.

Marketing through game websites.

Look how much articles this website already made about Diablo 3.

 

Not to mention all the other little facts, like:

1. Bought reviews - the disarray and difference between user reviews and critic reviews of D3 on metacritic proves that. Dragon age II had that situation. ME3 had that situation. This just proves that a lot of reviewers are blindly writing marketing texts about D3 instead of...well, reviewing. 
2. Blizzard apologists who will allow Blizz to do whatever they want with their games and find excuses for the horrible DRM D3 employs. As Totalbiscuit said in his stance on D3, its "frightening" that so many fanbois are DEFENDING those choices of Blizzard, as if it was any other company like Ubisoft or Activision, people would be burning and pillaging their HQ right now. 
3. Blizzard fanbois will try to prove that its a "great game" and find excuses for all the mess and everything that is wrong with it(like no statpoints and skillpoints).
4. Unaware general public has no idea at all that total whopping ONE person from original team is in this and pretty much none of people that matters are involved with Diablocraft 3. 
5. A lot of sales are gold sellers from china or other countries known for that activity. Which is ironic because with RMT Trading Blizz ENCOURAGED goldsellers and hackers to enter the game. 
6. Hype and marketing.

Originally posted by DarkPony

Crazy numbers and I didn't even buy it yet.

I wonder what Diablo 4 will do when it launches in 2036.

 

Chances are, with how much Blizzard has fallen and how far away from its roots Diablocraft 3 is, that Diablo 4 will be just a facebook game or console-only fps. 

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Originally posted by castamir11
In this game, can any class stand toe-to-toe with enemies at higher difficulties?  Or is it like Diablo 3 where you have to kite everything for fear of taking ridiculous damage?

 

Thanks!

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The combat requires you to move around. Not so much at starter enemies(even though first bosses already have things like charge attacks that take away half your health or more and thats not even at highest difficulty).

The latter part of Act I that is available in the beta introduces more difficulty stuff - most of enemy mages have aoe attacks you have to run away from(some of which can insta-kill you on Veteran).

Finished the final available Act I dungeon with five other people yesterday and it was basically...well, hell. Monsters that spam projectiles, summoners, things that drain your mana or slow you, things that throw bombs at you, things that evade your attacks by teleporting, etc. So yeah you HAVE to run around and have some actual tactics in the fight.

You have to use all the advantages you have (for example if you built a hammer-wielding character, you can deflect projectiles with your hammer attack) and play smart.

And then you get the final boss of that area...let's just say that unless you have top-notch teamwork or are VERY good player you will have to run away AND will die....A LOT.

Its certainly harder than Diablo3 and way less forgiving. And thats on Veteran. From what I heart, Elite is even more ridiculously hard.

Originally posted by JeroKane

Originally posted by Yuui

Originally posted by fiontar

KoA was a big dissapointment to me. If the game had been anything like Skyrim in scope and game play, I may have been able to forgive the WoW-like art style, but the game felt like it stepped out of the 90s. My hopes for the MMO were dashed by KoA and seeing this video does nothing to inspire confidence.

If KOA was anything like Skyrim(ala Oblivion: Dragon Grinding Edition), I would not have touched it with even a stick. 

KOA actually had an engaging COLORFUL world, good old-school lore, rpg systems and actually blended combat and rpg parts really well.

Coampred to Skyrims "skeltons, skeletons, lets bash skeletons by clicking mouse and jumping bakwards and then lets go back to that brown tundra~", KOA is miles above that. 

Skyrim was too cinematic. I would not even call it a real RPG. Bethesda has not created a good game since Morrowind(which was awesome.

 

KOA on other hand...have not enjoyed an rpg this much since the masterpiece that was Dragon Age Origins. 

Yeah you are absolutely right!

That's why Skyrim was a massive success! Won tons of prices world wide!

And that's why KOA-R flopped misserably and is 38 studios now in financial trouble!

So yup! You are absolutely right!

/sarcasm off

Twilight, Diablo 3 and Mass Effect 3 were also massive successes and won tons of prizes. Were those good things? nope.

38 Studios financial "troubles" have nothing to do with Reckoning and Reckoning selling around a million copies for a completely new ip, hardly can be said to be "flopped". IT was a massive success and a sleeper hit.  The financial troubles are from and because of MMO and the overall scheme on what the hell is going on in there is unclear due to sensantionalist nature of gaming journalism. 

Originally posted by Asamof

Originally posted by heartless

Originally posted by fivoroth

Originally posted by Yuui

Originally posted by fivoroth

Diablo 3 has a great new crafting system. Diablo 3 has a new skill system which is amazing. Diablo 3 has random events, random dungeons in it. Diablo 3 has an all max level difficulty. They introduced the banner system. They have a very extensive achievement system which I don't think any other action RPG did before it.

I fail to see how Torchlight 1 did anything new for the genre. 

Also Diablo 3 doesn't have to do anything new to be successful because Diablo 2 was damn near perfect. Blizzard CREATED this genre. Diablo 3 got pretty much everything right. It is a true Diablo 2 sequel. The same way SC2 was an amazing sequal to SC1. THose games were very similar too. I've played all the Diablo clones which came after Diablo 2 and none of them came even close to the awesomeness of Diablo. They just were not fun to play. Diablo 3 is fun to play.

 

Crafting has absolutely zero importance in ARPG games where the main idea is FINDING loot not creating it. If it was MMO, well great for crafting. 99% of arpg fanbase could not care less about crafting.

"New skill system"? Pretty much a copy of how they destroyed World oF Warcraft skill system.

random dungeons? Tl1 had it TL2 has it, hell, even original diablo games had it.

random events? Tl2 has it and half the genre has it too.

Difficulty? considering starter difficulties are a cakewalk and TL2 already has quite a challenging difficulty AND ability to mod it into more difficult, I don't see how that changes anything. 

Achievements? casualization yet again. No one seriously cares about "achievements". Next thing you know you will add a "facebook integration" as a pro for diablo3. 

 

Also, correction: 

ActivisionBlizzard DID NOT create the genre. Blizzard North(Condor Entertainment) did. And majority of folks responsible for that are guess where? Runic Games. 

Other stuff in your post...it seems you are more than likely trying to convince YOURSELF that Diablo 3 was "great". 

Diablo3 is heavily streamlined, heavily casualized "rpg" game with pay2win RMT auction house and invasive DRM. Not to mention the complaints of horrible pacing, linnear mmo-like progression, over-simplification and seriously short game length.

I was talking about what's new. Crafting is new. Doesn't matter if it is very important to action RPGs. Do you think that pets (aka the donkeys that carry and sell your stuff) and stupid fishing matters in action RPGs?

By random dungeons I meant that you can get a wide variety of different dungeons in one area and that some of them you will not see as they do not all spawn in the game. Not just one and the same template randomised which you see in Diablo 2.

Random events - Diablo 3 came out first so they introduced it first? Can you tell me which other action RPGs which are currently on the market have random events? I must've missed them.

Difficulty. I wouldn't say that normal is cake. It's on the same level as Diablo 2.

Do you know how many times I've heard this? STudio X was the original Diablo team. Lalalaala. It's all fancy words. There have been like what 3-5 action RPGS which were made by the "original Blizzard North"? Was Torchlight 1 created by these supposedly "Blizzard North" guys? Cause that game was horrible compared to Diablo and it came out 5-6 years (maybe more not sure) after Diablo 2. And boy was it cartoony. 

 

 

There is a lot more to the pet system in T2 and pets are a lot more than just pack mules but nice try though.

As far as your little anti Torchlight rant, that game has ratings almost as high at Diablo II. Metacritic has it at 8.3 critic and 8.4 user rating, compared to Diablo II's 8.8 critic and 8.5 user rating. You may not like the game but it's far from horrible. It's a solid ARPG, one of the best actually and it is true, some of the people who were responsible for Diablo II are responsible for Torchlight 1 and 2.

Personally, I can't wait for T2. I'm really looking forward to playing a single player game and not having to worry about lag or the servers being down.

are you seriously quoting metacritic as proof of a games quality? really?

 

What's so wrong about that? 

Metacritic is good indication of the user opinion in relation to (possibly paid) reviews.

Dragon age origins(an absolute masterpiece) holds both high critics rating and user rating.

Dragon age II(an absolute flop) holds huge critic rating and absolutely low user rating.

Mass Effect 3 holds huge critic rating and absolutely low user rating. 

Diablocraft 3 holds huge paid critic rating and absolutely low user rating.

Torchlight holds a huge critic rating abd huge user rating.

Its very efficient way at judging things :)

Originally posted by Nadia

Originally posted by Yuui

Also, correction: 

ActivisionBlizzard DID NOT create the genre. Blizzard North(Condor Entertainment) did. And majority of folks responsible for that are guess where? Runic Games.

Flagship Studios did have 6 people from Blizzard North

but only 3 of them did the transition to Runic Games

 

And that includes all the people that matter - lead designers and main composer. You know, the people with ideas who direct all the cogs in the machine to make those ideas?