Diablo III Beta

Another review on a game.

I've been playing the Diablo III Beta since December (shortly before the release of SWTOR).  I have had a very pleasant experience over the last six months; almost every patch has improved the game, except for maybe one thing with which I'm still uncomfortable.  I'll get to that last, otherwise none of what I describe about the one thing I don't like won't make sense.

First off, here's a good screen shot of the current UI:

Skill selection page and hot bar with health globe on the left, resource globe on the right.  This fucker is out of Fury.

Inventory and details window.  Paper doll shows items equipped.  You can also see the energy globe.  This dude is a Wizard.

So you can see the major layout of the UI.  Influenced by World of Warcraft, to a degree, but still very true to Diablo.  I mean, Diablo did come out before WoW did.  It had the Paper Doll and Inventory screens before WoW did.  But the enhancements and refining of these windows has been influenced by improvements that were made in WoW.  Nothing wrong with that.

I really like the hot bar.  I like that potions are one slot, but I need to find a button to map it to.  Default is Q.  Why?  Well, most people will play using their left hand up at the number row for hotkeys 1-4.  So Q is readily accessible there.

In the second screen shot, you can see it used to be bound to 5, but they changed that.  I don't know why, they just did.  Probably a good reason, I just don't know it.

My problem is that I use a mouse with 12 hotkeys on it.  I never touch the keyboard when I play Diablo III. And I like it that way.  Only time I touch the keyboard is when I want to see my inventory.  I'm probably going to change that so other hot keys on my mouse (the 8 I'm not using thus far) are bound to buttons like B for Inventory/Paper Doll, M for Map, Esc for Game Menu, and I think P for skills.  I think skills are P.

Anyway, that's not my one grip with the game.  That I can fix binding keys easily.

What I don't like is that first screen shot.  The Skill Page UI.  Most of my friends that played over the open beta weekend didn't see a problem with it because it's the only iteration of the skill page they've seen.

Well, I've seen a very different one:

Beta Patch 8 or 9.  This is a Demon Hunter.  They have two resources.  I thought it was pretty dumb at first, but the DH is very fun to play.

That was the old Skill selection page.  I miss it, and I like it better than the other page that takes up the whole screen.

I suppose the reason why they went with the new UI is to be more intuitive.  The new one displays what buttons you're selecting a skill for.  There are two methods of using the new page: default and elective mode.

Default is exactly what it sounds like: default.  It's the setting that the game will start with.  In default mode, only certain skills can be placed on certain hotkeys, including right and left mouse buttons.

Sure.  That makes sense.  Diablo II only let you use certain skills on the left and right mouse buttons.  As a Zeal paladin, I could only have Fanatacism on the right mouse button, so then my main attack, Zeal, had to be on the left.  So they took that concept and refined it for Diablo III and, with the introduction of skills that can be used on hotkeys, restricted what skills can be used, per class, on which hotkeys.

Well, if you turn Elective Mode on, all that goes out the window.  You can put any skills on any of your six hotkeys.  I usually play with Elective Mode on, but I forget about it and just pick skills as they become available.  I think this is merely a symptom of Beta.  You max a character out at level 13, and there's really only about 8-9 levels of true content.

Other than that clunky UI for Skills, the game is amazing.  Look at this stuff:

Brains.

It's beautiful.  I love the fact that they didn't go all realistic on the graphics.  This type of "painting"-like graphics are timeless.  They hold up so well against time that they rarely look dated.  I'm in love with the graphics in this game, even though it's not all high-end crazy realistic looking.  That was actually one of the things I didn't like about Path of Exile.

I'd also like to clarify how much more I enjoy this game than Diablo II.  What I hated most about Diablo II was not being allowed to experiment without sinking a bajillion hours into the game.  Let's say I have my Zeal Pally (Mortifas).  He's all bad-ass, crunchin' mobs five smacks at a time with his hammer.  Rockin' out. But I'd really like to try him out as a Hammerdin.

Tough shit.  The only way to do that is to start an entirely different Paladin all over again and level him up to build out a Hammerdin.

Fuck that shit.  I am way too busy for that crap.  So what did I end up doing with Diablo II after Mortifas hit 90?

Stopped playing.

I found that, having to start over from level 1 to be beastly again, was boring as shit, as well as time consuming.  This discouraged me from replaying the game again.  If anything, I feel that it took away from the game's replayability.

Others disagree with me.  Many people are very vocal about the fact that any Monk can use any skills in Diablo III and so there's no replayability.

What they took as replayability in Diablo II was forced replayability.  It wasn't player-driven.  The great thing about Diablo III is that it promotes player creativity and experimentation on builds.  And it takes away that pesky time sink of having to play 100 hours to get to 90 again.

Diablo II was a great game when it came out.  It's still a really fun game to play and thoroughly enjoyable.  But it had its flaws.  It wasn't perfect.  Some people, I think, are looking back on the game with a bit of nostalgia and some rose-tinted glasses.

The one, single, glaring problem with Diablo II caused several issues with the game that I found made it almost not fun to play.  It was the fact that there were only a handful of builds you could play, per class, that were required to beat the game or remain a contributing player on Battle.net.

You couldn't experiment.  You couldn't be like "Oh I want to use these skills, they sound fun."  Worse than that though, was the fact that you couldn't just start putting skills points wherever you wanted when you first started playing.  The most common question first-time players I've introduced to the game have asked me is "How do I spend my skill point I just got from leveling to level 2?"  (Read: RPG's in the 90s used to punish you for making uneducated decisions and now this mentality is ingrained in our brains so we'll never make a choice without asking questions or doing research first.)

And then I say "Go to Google, and look up a [insert class/spec here] build and follow it."  They then look at me like ... "You mean I can't just read the skills and pick the ones I like?"

"Nope."

"Well ... that's not fun."

They've promptly stopped playing after that experience.  Gamers today, the ones that have been playing for the majority of their lives, are realizing that there are places where they want choice, and there are places where they don't want choice.  Stats are a prime example of a place where a portion of gamers do not want choice anymore.  Why?  Because when you're given the choice, then there is a mathematical "best" option; soon, once players have all caught on to this best stat block, everyone will use it, the game will become lame, and the developers will have to balance for that stat black.  This results in 1.) People must use that stat block otherwise the game will kick their ass and 2.) what used to be a choice becomes the illusion of choice.

You've actually inadvertently taken choice away from the player.  I like what Blizzard did with Diablo III: fuck stats.  We're going to assign stats the way we see fit.  This will allow us to balance the game and release expansions much easier and fluidly.  Nobody has to worry about not knowing what to do because they don't have to do it anymore.

Now, I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking, "Why didn't they come up with a stat block system that prevented a mathematical "best" build?  Why didn't they make the stats equally important so people had to make difficult decisions?"

That still leaves the fact that, regardless of if there is a best build, there is a right way and a wrong way to say, allocate stats for a Wizard.  Even if Strength was somewhat important to say, a melee Wizard, Intellect is still going to be far superior and any Wizard that doesn't take a sufficient amount of Intellect will suck balls.

No matter what you do, it's simple math.  There is a right and wrong way to do it.  We're not talking about differential equations here.  You're looking at a flat number that provides a percentage to other class features.  There's a finite number of solutions to that equation, and if you try to be ... creative or try to customize your character to be a snowflake because you have an individuality complex, your character will suck.

Blizzard saw this and took the choice away.  There.  No more problem.  Again, a lot of hardcore gamers don't like this; they think players should be punished for making bad choices.  Problem is, it's not a choice if there's a right and wrong way and punishment for picking wrongly.  It's a guessing game then and you're looking at a 50/50 shot of getting it right without doing any research.

That's my last point.  I am sick of having to do research on how to play a video game outside of the fucking game itself.  I did this for five years with World of Warcraft, reading up on Elitist Jerks of how to play a fucking Holy Priest, no wait Disc Priest, no now Holy agian, oh wait you can play Shadow now, we've got enough healers, oh wait one of them isn't showing up regularly enough, we need Disc again, oh shit now we've got 3 disc priests, we need a holy priest, go Holy.

Fuck that noise, I'm done with that shit.  Amallia is going to be a Holy priest forever now.

You can play Diablo III any way you want.  The game will teach you through the first Act on Normal difficulty how to play.  There is a sufficient amount of hand-holding, but not too much.  Granted this is all opinion only based off of the first 13 levels of the game, but I'm trusting Blizzard, who makes truly fantastic games, on this one.

I can take my monk and give her all sorts of crazy spirit building powers so that she always has a crap ton of spirit to spend on the big powers that do a ton of AoE damage.  I can also change that same monk into a mobile unit of demon slaying, dashing between mobs and striking each one.  I could also make her a healer, a great supporting character that, while her damage my not be great, she still keeps the party alive while helping out with the slaughtering of evil forces.

That's what Diablo should be about and always was about.  Destroying wave upon wave of enemies and rummaging through their mangled corpses for sweet phat lewtz.  Not math.  Not time spent out of game researching means prowess in game.

Needless to say I'm excited.  I'm stoked for this game to come out in two and half weeks.  Holy crap I can't believe we're only two and a half weeks away.  SO EXCITED!

Path of Exile

I was going to perform a review on some games I recently play tested (either in beta or live) and forgot to do so.  So I'm doing it now.

I play tested Path of Exile in March over an open beta weekend.  I am no longer in that beta.  I wish I was.

Path of Exile is a very Diablo-esque game.  In fact, it echos Diablo I quite loudly in one key feature: your character does not have it's own spells/skills.  You only obtain skills/spells by obtaining gems which you socket in to gear.

There are red, green, and blue gems.  The gems, once socketed, being gaining experience and can level up, which levels up the skill they grant.  This then makes the skill more powerful.

Pretty simple right?  Well, it gets complicated.  You can build "builds" or "specs" based on a set of skills; so then you have to find certain gems to obtain those skills.  You're at the mercy of drop chance and quest random reward results to obtain the gems you require to have the skills you want.

Lame.

You also need the gear that will allow you to socket the gems you require; each color has specific color sockets in gear.  They're randomly generated, so one piece of gear might have one blue socket, another piece might have 3 red sockets, and yet another piece might have a green and blue socket.  Some have one of each.

Yucky.

It seems like people are most often determining what bonuses they want out of the sphere grid before deciding on skills they may want from gems.  The sphere grid is exactly what it sounds like: a grid of spheres that are connected together in a very whimsical and complicated pattern.  To obtain a certain sphere, you may have to first obtain spheres around it to "unlock" it.  Each of the classes (Ranger, Templar, Duelist, Marauder, and Witch) starts at a different spot on the grid, causing them to never be able to access far reaching areas of the grid intentionally.

However, the grid has 177 nodes.  That's a lot of effing nodes.  Here I'll show you:

Wtf?  I didn't know I was playing Final Fantasy X.  How did this get on my computer?

So yeah.  You can see how complicated this can get.  You can see the six "starting" areas.  Each class starts in said area.  And in this image you can see this person did make it from one end to the polar opposite of the sphere for this build.  But that's as far as he's going.  He's used almost all of his skill points here.

Imagine having to read all of those nodes and go, alright I want to use just "these" for my Templar or Ranger or [insert class here].

That's a lot of fucking free time I don't have.  Sorry, Path of Exile.  I'm not buying you.

I'm a casual gamer.  I have been for the last four years.  I haven't spent more than ten hours a week gaming since I left Whitewater.  I just can't do it anymore.  I fall asleep, I get burnt out on a game, and then I don't want to play it anymore.

Now, I'm busy doing normal people shit; like going to work, going to the grocery store, cooking dinner, and exercising.

While Path of Exile might be a well designed game, it's not for casual players who have little to no free time to commit to a video game.  You'll quickly lag behind and find it incredibly boring to play by yourself.  Especially if, like me, you just go to Google, search for an "end-game" build for the class you're playing, and just use that.

I give the game 4/5, simply because it's a game that has limited its audience (and thus, its market), so it probably won't be around long.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

I finished Chamber of Secrets two nights ago and already started in on Prisoner of Azkaban.  I couldn't help it, I just had to keep reading.

Sadly, as I was rereading Chamber of Secrets, I forgot to keep a notebook nearby for note-taking.  I'm a little upset that I didn't do this because there are so many things I wanted to be able to talk about in this post, but I probably won't remember them all.  What I might try to do is flip through the book as I go along here to find bits that I found important elements of fiction (Rowling's prose, foreshadowing, irony, etc.)

If there's anything I must say about the book, it's how much Rowling's prose improved from Sorcerer's Stone.  That book lacked a lot of the detail her later books possess, but it's evident that Chamber of Secrets was worked on heavily before being published.  The book feels as though it was written for a slightly more mature audience.

All that aside, the book was a thrill to reread.  What I really enjoyed most was knowing what was going on as Harry, Ron and Hermione experienced their second year at Hogwarts, especially as all the pieces start falling together.  Harry hears a disembodied voice; shortly there after, Mrs. Norris is Petrified and the message on the wall daubed in red pain claims that the Chamber of Secrets has been opened, enemies of the heir beware; the whole school finds out Harry's a Parsletongue as he calls a snake off of Justin Finch-Fletchly; Colin Creevy is Petrified; Nearly Headless Nick and Justin-Finch-Fletchly are Petrified; Harry and Ron find out Malfoy has no idea what's going on; Ginny is acting strange the entire book; Hermione puts all the pieces together and dash to the library, only to find herself and Penelopy Clearwater Petrified moments later.

And Harry and Ron turn out to be brilliant young detectives after finding the piece of paper stuck in Hermione's Petrified hand.  They piece together everything that happened, down to Moaning Myrtle's possible cause of death.

It was exhilarating to read these parts again.  I got goosebumps as I read about the Basilisk in Hermione's notes.

What I loved most was knowing that the diary was a Horcrux, and that Nagini the snake had yet to be turned in to a Horcrux.  I also loved knowing that Tom Riddle used the Basilisk to kill Myrtle to turn his diary into his second Horcrux.  I always wondered if, while writing the first book, she came up with the entire plot for the rest of the series.  There are a lot of plot holes.  For instance, Voldemort is described as being the most feared dark wizard "for" (as opposed to "in", which I think was what she meant) a hundred years (in Prisoner of Azkaban, right at the start) but a mere fifty years ago, as of Harry's second year at Hogwarts, Tom Riddle was a 16 year old boy attending his last years at the same school.  Still, it doesn't  make sense because only about 35 to 40 years prior to Voldemort's rise to power, Dumbledore had defeated the evil wizard Grindelwald in 1945.  The first book starts in 1991, 11 years after Harry's birth in 1980.

So a mere 48 years prior to Prisoner of Azkaban puts Grindelwald at the top of his power, where Dumbledore "defeats" Grindelwald in what is described as an amazing duel (he really just sat down and talked to Grindelwald, convincing him to hand over the Elder Wand, which Grindelwald did).  Go back another 40 years, and you're looking at Grindelwald and Dumbledore as teens.  She probably should have said "the most feared Dark wizard in fifty years".  Would have made much more sense, especially since Grindelwald was claimed to be the most feared dark wizard of his time as well.  So "in" a hundred years doesn't make sense either.

Moving on ...

A name popped up in the beginning of the book that I recognized immediately.  Mafalda Hopkirk is the woman that sends the letter to Harry's house after Dobby levitates Petunia's dessert, letting it crash to the floor.  In Deathly Hallows, Mafalda Hopkirk is the woman Hermione transforms in to using Polyjuice Potion.

Later on in Chamber of Secrets, I realized there was a bit of a ... mess up.  Madam Pomfrey talks about the Mandrake plants, stating that they're getting moody and secretive.  Wouldn't Professor Sprout be reporting this?  I suppose either one could, but I just assumed Professor Sprout would report the growth of the Mandrake plants since she's taking care of them (and not Madam Pomfrey, the school nurse).

Anyway, there were a few comical part I enjoyed, such as Fred and George Weasley escorting Harry from class to class, clearing a path in the halls saying, "Out of the way, seriously evil wizard, coming through, on serious dark wizarding business" or something like that.  Always gets me each time.  Wish that would have made it in to the movie.

Anyway there were many more things that I very much enjoyed about the book but I can't think of them off the top of my head.  I promise I'll try to keep a journal of my read through Prisoner of Azkaban.  I'm going to recommend that Google implements Margin Notes in to their Google Play Book application.

A Single Look

Fair warning, this will be a rant and an ugly one at that.

I'm convinced there are three reason why I no longer have any close female friends (my sister doesn't count, because she's my frackin' sister).  Listed below are the reasons:

1.)  As I get older, the more women I meet are married and have kids.
2.)  I scare most women; my hobbies are that of the typical male, so most women do not understand me.
3.)  I dislike most women; I find most of their hobbies to be boring as shit, and their speech patterns annoy the hell out of me.

Number 3 has to be the biggest kicker here.  I've mentioned in the past how I know what it's like for a guy trying to find a cool girl.  It's difficult.  Of all the women I've met since moving to Minnesota, only a handful have been nice enough to continue to want to hang out with me.  And almost all of them are outside of the workplace.  The two women I do know in the work place that are pretty freakin' awesome have babies.  Not that that is a bad thing (I will join their ranks in a few years time).  Babies just take up all of your private life.  It's all about the baby once you have one.  Friends, you-time, spouse-time, it all takes a backseat once there's a baby in the picture.  And I'm okay with that.  I'm looking forward to it.  But it does make it difficult to find a close female friend, especially as I get older.

All that was a preamble to the point of this rant:  Women are mean.  Like I said, most I've met (except for a a handful and they know who they are because I still talk to them) fall in to group Number 3 (and have Number 2 as part of their problem too).

This all stems from an experience I had last week.  I have this dress.  It's got 3/4 sleeves, a high scoop neck, and a waist band.  It's primarily purple, with some black and white.  The pattern is vertical braids of each color by itself. (So it's a purple braid, black lining in between, and a white braid, black lining, repeat).  The waist band is a different shade of purple with a different pattern, as are the last two inches of the sleeves.  My aunt in California bought it for me.  It's one of a kind, made by a designer in a small boutique shop.  I've found a few pieces of clothing this way, and they're some of my favorites.

I really like this dress.  I usually wear it with black stockings and either knee-high boots (winter) or ballet "flats" that have about a one inch wedge heal.  It's funny, I'm talking about how I accessorize my dress and I claim to not be girly at all.  I really am, it's just not outwardly apparent.  I don't often wear make-up or do much with my hair.

So I'm wearing it last week and I decided to stop at Starbucks for a coffee and a fruit/yogurt parfait (tasty).  It's my staple order at Starbucks.  I was standing in line behind a young woman, maybe slightly younger than me, but no older.  She had very long (to her butt), soft black hair.  Looked like it was freshly washed (sort of wet, but mostly dry).  She was also very tan, naturally, not the fake n' bake orange look.  Sandals on her feet, white pants, a light tan colored top, and a thin white long-sleeve shirt on top.  She was very petite, about as tall as I am, but narrower hips, waist, bust, and shoulders (which was why I figured she was younger).  She looked fit.  I admired her appearance.  She looked well-groomed and also looked as though she cared about her appearance.  She didn't have on much make up, looked very natural.  Maybe some eye-liner but I didn't pay that much attention because when I looked at her face, she had this nasty single-eyebrow raised look when she saw my dress.

It was that face that asks "Really?  Are you really going out in public like that?"

That's when my opinion of her changed.  I thought her white pants were dumb, and that they were ridiculously skin tight.  I also felt she was too skinny to be healthy.  Her legs became twigs, her arms spindly branches and her body the narrow wisp of a birch tree.

I no longer admired her because she couldn't give me the common courtesy of anonymous respect that I had given her.

This is why I hate women.  They immediately judge other women on sight, and typically judge negatively.  I've had this look cast upon me in the past; that look of "Seriously?  You need help in the fashion department, girl.  Poor thing doesn't even know how to dress herself."

I give every woman I see or meet the benefit of the doubt, regardless of appearance (unless it's Snooki, then I just want to punch her).  I will assume they are intelligent, nice, and funny until they open their mouths and prove me wrong.  This one didn't even have to do that.  With a single look, she reduced me to a level of ugly, uncomfortable, immaturity I've not felt in a long time.

It was then that I figured she was also no older than 18 and had a high school mentality about others' appearances.

I bet she's a wonderful person.  But I lost the respect I initially gave her after she failed to give me any at all simply because she didn't like my outfit.  Maybe I give too much and expect too much in return.  Maybe what I'm thinking of isn't respect but just the common courtesy of mind-your-own-god-damn-business-I'll-dress-however-I-want.  Maybe I'm also still insecure and worried about recent weight gain.  Maybe I shouldn't give a fuck.

But I do.  If I didn't, I wouldn't care to dress nicely at all.  I do care about my appearance and when some snotty bitch doesn't approve, I immediately go on the defensive.  Who is she to disapprove of my choice, especially when I did nothing to her to deserve such judgement?  (While I might have "judged" her appearance, I made sure I did so in a neutral fashion without her noticing, and the end result was also a positive one, which I often do for almost all women I meet until they do something, like this woman did, to piss me off).

I've come to the conclusion that I will never have a super close female friend ever again.  Not unless I find someone who isn't stuck up, catty, absorbed in materialistic superficial bullshit, and can develop a fully thought-out opinion on some kind of social issue without using the word "like" once.

/rantoff

I apologize to any women who read this and felt bad about their hobbies of shopping and spending their s.o.'s money.  Truly, I hate you.  You give women a bad name, but I'm still giving you the decency of an apology for ranting about you because I feel sorry for you at the same time.  Just like how you feel sorry for me and my poor fashion habits, I feel sorry your lacking of the capacity to develop an opinion on anything outside of reality t.v. and the fashion industry.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

So I've cheated a bit in my reading habits.  While on vacation last weekend, I learned that all seven harry potter books are available as eBooks for most eReaders.  I bought all seven.  Couldn't resist.

For whatever reason, The Shadow Rising has gotten slow and boring.  I remember this happening the first time I read The Wheel of Time; around book 4 or 5, I took a break and read a few other things.

While in the hotel, I began reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.  I made some astonishing discoveries as I read through this book.

First of all, I noticed Rowling's writing style was very simple.  The entire book was a very simple read.  I think it only took me a total of eight hours over the last week  to read it.  I'm a fairly slow reader but, because I'm familiar with the story and Rowling's writing was fairly simple at this stage starting out, it was a quick read.

This is the first time I've reread Sorcerer's Stone.  And it was wonderful!  I thoroughly enjoyed reading it again.  It was very fun to think of all the little bits that were left out of the movie, and then there's so much foreshadowing of things that don't occur until the very last book.  When I read through Chamber of Secrets, I'm going to keep a little written journal near by to jot down notes of things as I go along.  I didn't have the chance to do that much with  Sorcerer's Stone.


I liked seeing how much more involved Harry was in the progression of the story.  He wasn't just reacting to things going on around him, he instigated a lot of things as well.  He also seems to have more lines in the book than the first movie (this changes over the course of the movies).  Harry's discoveries all through he book, as he learns about the true world to which he belongs is thrilling and heartwarming.  I love his courageousness and bravery and intellect.  Hermione's character, while bossy and somewhat obnoxious, is my favorite female character in the series.  And I very much enjoyed reading Fred and George's goofy scenes.  I'm very much looking forward to reading about them again.

It will be interesting to read each book, one after the other; when I first read them, only Sorcerer's Stone, Chamber of Secrets, and Prisoner of Azkaban were available.  Rowling was in the process of writing Goblet of Fire and waiting a year for that book was agony.  And then waiting for each book following was downright torture.  I remember reading the last book, 3 days straight, the summer after I moved in with Luke.

This book was so great to read again and I'm very excited to continue reading the rest of the series.  I will probably stop reading Wheel of Time after I complete Shadow Rising and write its review, so I can go straight through Harry Potter.  The best part is that Luke is reading them as well and I'm going to try to catch up with him.  He's on Prisoner of Azkaban so it shouldn't be too difficult.

See you on the flip-side.