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.
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!
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