Do you like Diablo 3?

[zespri]

On topic of Diablo. I'm not quite sure I understand the closure of AH. The argument is "players buy top gear and then they have no reason to play since best gear IS the goal and they've reached it" I mean they spend money to buy the gear and Blizzard takes the cut, (and the game does not have subscription). So what's wrong? Blizz still get their money. And without AH, how are they going to profit from the game? (I mean in the long run)

[Mick]

I'm sure they will profit just fine from expansions.

I was actually a big advocate of the auction house at first because of how it facilitated trading of items.

The thing is though, I've found it pretty much removed all the magic of finding items out of the game. Things that dropped were only there to get me gold so I could buy the items I wanted, and it just didn't have the feeling of the game that D1 and D2 did (where in those I didn't trade, but simply relied on only the items I found). Not to mention, I was super excited about the crafting system in this game, but the AH by design made crafting useless.

So in the end I think getting rid of the AH is the right choice, and I'm glad Blizzard is willing to take extreme measures in order to improve the longevity of the game.

I should clarify that I'm talking about the gold AH. I'm completely indifferent about the real-money version because when I play Diablo I only play in hardcore mode.

[orzelek]

...
The thing is though, I've found it pretty much removed all the magic of finding items out of the game. Things that dropped were only there to get me gold so I could buy the items I wanted, and it just didn't have the feeling of the game that D1 and D2 did (where in those I didn't trade, but simply relied on only the items I found). Not to mention, I was super excited about the crafting system in this game, but the AH by design made crafting useless.
...

This is one and only required reason to remove AH.
I haven't played for some time but when I reached Inferno there was only one way - go to AH and buy yourself a kit or get murdered insane amount of times until you find stuff yourself that can match AH or at least come close. Amount of grind to gather items by yourself is to much.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Because it was so easy to find items via auction house, Blizzard saw no need to give, say, rare or legendary items a reasonable drop rate. I'd heard and seen firsthand accounts of people getting no such items after 4-6 full playthroughs. I'm not even talking GOOD items, I'm just talking any item of decent rarity at all. However, because of how easy it is to actually trade and sell items on the auction house, if the drop rate were the same as it should be in a single player game, the auction house would be absolutely flooded with the stuff.

Me, I generally prefer to abstain from anything that will take away fun from a game. I see no need to do something as efficiently as possible if that takes the fun out. The auction house removed fun from the idea of finding your own items, but it was impossible for me to find items on my own. So, I got to act 2, and then gave up on the game. My skills were crap (I was a wizard, I had like 2 good attacks), all the items were either terrible or things I couldn't use, everything was just pretty garbage. And, I tried this game when Torchlight 2 wasn't even out yet. I'd rather play Torchlight 1 of all things than Diablo 3, because that at least was fun. Not hard, but god, you at least got places in it without everybody else's garbage helping you out.

[zespri]

Those who played it recently, can you explain wtf is adventure mode. Internet says "Adventure Mode is a game mode for Diablo III that was introduced with Reaper of Souls.[1] Here, all the game's waypoints are unlocked, and players can access any waypoint at any time" But all waypoints is unlocked anyway if you select a scene at the end of a game act, that always has been the case. So why Adventure Mode?

Also with no AH, is there any kind of trade between players still possible? Like swapping gear within a party?

[Castruccio]

Adventure mode is a mode in which you can travel anywhere in any of the acts whenever you want and in whatever way you want.  Instead of completing the story line  featured in the acts (i.e. story mode), you complete randomly generated quests in the same game world that the story took place in.  You get special rewards for adventure mode which, when accumulated, will get you access to special randomly generated dungeons with very good rewards. Adventure mode only becomes available once you've beaten story mode.  Adventure mode also features blood shard drops, which will allow you to buy mystery items from the gambler in town.

As for trading, it is no longer possible unless you are trading with a player who was in the game with you when the traded item drops.  I think you have up to 2 hours to trade with anyone who was in game with you for a drop.  Other than that, there is no trading between players and absolutely no trading between strangers.

[madcow]

I've actually been playing diablo a lot lately. Reaper of souls, the new greater rifts from the latest patch, and the item-drop rebalance has really made it a different game from when it was first released. I've been having a blast playing it.

Basically "adventure" mode is a way to play the meat of the game (killing guys/beating bosses) without having to go through the campaign. It lets you teleport around the campaign map and do "bounties" for rewards. You can also fight any of the bosses and just explore if you want to. It doesn't change enemy spawn rules or anything though. So if you go to an act 1 location, you still fight act 1 enemies - they're just scaled to your level and game difficulty (which you can thankfully now adjust from the get go).

A new feature is rifts - which are basically randomized dungeons where unlike the other modes, the enemy pool of each level is randomized. So you might be on a tile set from act 2, but you'll have a mix of enemies from all the different acts (it's typically like 4-5 enemy types per a dungeon floor). Boss and enemy density tends to be a lot greater than in regular play as well.

Recently they added greater rifts. Which are basically the same concept as rifts, except with a time trial added to it. If you finish a greater rift in a certain amount of time, you can advance to a harder rift, and repeat the challenge. These feel really tense and it does a good job pushing you to the limit in a way that's exciting (especially if you do it on hardcore mode). The rewards from greater rifts are incredibly nice items as well.


The above post pretty well summarizes trading. There isn't any except with people playing with you at that given time.  Gear drops have been massively retuned since the days of the auction house. I never got any gear worth a damn in those days, (I didn't use the auction house either). Now good gear drops more frequently, and it's smart about dropping stuff that works with your stats. So you don't end up with a ton of useless INT gear as a STR class. There's also some interesting affects you can get from gear and not just boring stat increasers. That's pretty rare to find though.

All in all, I would say the diablo of today is completely different from where it was a year ago and it is very much worth a second look.

It still has the online only thing though, which is a downer. But other than that, it's been greatly improved - provided you have both the base game and the expansion that is.

[zespri]

Thank you. There used to be shared stash, and private character stash. Did they do away with it?

[Castruccio]

There is still one stash and it is shared among all characters. They added an additional tab in the expansion, but you have to buy it using gold.

If there are any big arpg fans around here might I recommend Grim Dawn?  It is still early access but it is already great and has a ton of content and characters already. It is scheduled for full release early next year, but so far I am liking it better than D3.  It has a much grittier world and huge skill trees on which you have to spend points.  It is much more like D2 and you can play offline too.

[Pepisolo]

If there are any big arpg fans around here might I recommend Grim Dawn?  It is still early access but it is already great and has a ton of content and characters already. It is scheduled for full release early next year, but so far I am liking it better than D3.  It has a much grittier world and huge skill trees on which you have to spend points.  It is much more like D2 and you can play offline too.

I'm definitely keeping an eye on Grim Dawn. Probably gonna be picking that up some time after full release. At the moment, though, I'm well into Path of Exile. Tremendous ARPG. The skilltree is insane, check out https://poebuilder.com/ to see the full scope. There are so many ways to creatively customize your character abilities. Pretty good free-to-play model, too. Online only, but you can still play solo. The latest Forsaken Masters free expansion has added a lot of content, too. You can now customize your own hideout! The one major downside is that desync can be a problem, particularly for Hardcore mode. Other than that, a very impressive title.

[orzelek]

I've got suck in recently by Path of Exile

I do have Grim Dawn but mostly waiting for Arcanist there atm. It has quite a bit of content currently and I played it a bit - keeps with Titan quest mechanics with a new theme.

[Hearteater]

POE is much more enjoyable to me that D3. It isn't perfect, but it is more fun and the updates have been keeping it much fresher. Especially playing in the leagues is a ton of fun. The depth to the game just keeps increasing so much.

[zespri]

I duuno, I like Diablo 3, tried POE, not so much.

So anyway I've done the first ACT again now after a big break with a new char. and it's even easier than before. I remember dying a few times by Butcher the first time around, and this time, the whole fight was like 1 minute and I did not even have to heal. I thought it was easy the first time, but now I think 3yo can play it and succeed. Thankfully there is a difficulty setting, so I'm not going to complain.

Now what I would like to know is: does it matter what to do with loot for new heroes?  I'm just selling everything because I don't think all this loot is going to be any value for any other char of mine, they will get their own. Right? Also selling vs scraping, does it matter at this stage?

Cheers!

[Castruccio]

Yeah if this is your first playthrough then you can totally sell everything.  As for the difficulty sliders, you'll get better rewards for playing on a higher difficulty so it's always worth it to crank it up when you think you can.

[madcow]

I salvage instead of selling items. That way you can craft some potentially nice gear. This is a great way to speed up another character through the ranks.  It's basically a gamble, but it's a nice way to get decent gear when you level faster than you can get gear.