So, Diablo III

[Ishal]

I'm getting that itch to play a dungeon crawler. I never did play Diablo III when it came out, or when Reaper of Souls was the new hotness. So, I'm wondering if it's worth it.

I like games where I can just right-click things to death, as is the way with these types of games. They're pretty relaxing when playing through casually. But I always like a sense of accomplishment, like what I'm doing is working toward something.

So I guess my first question is, is there an "endgame" of sorts once the game is over? Are there maps to grind for loot that aren't connected to the main game so I don't have to play through it again? Are there ladders or events that are held? What do you do once you're done?

Next question would be about complexity. Is there build variety with abilities and weapons?

And, I assume lots of stuff was added in Reaper of Souls. Is that a must buy if I'm going to get this game?


Depending on how I feel I might get this alongside Pillars of Eternity (yes I know they are two different types of games) but like I said, that dungeon crawler itch.

 

[DoPo]

I'm getting that itch to play a dungeon crawler. I never did play Diablo III when it came out, or when Reaper of Souls was the new hotness. So, I'm wondering if it's worth it.

I've plated D3 but only after RoS was released, and even then, I didn't play it that much - I got a couple of heroes to level 60 and then played a bit with one of them, so, overall, I didn't spend a massive amount of time. So, my answer may not be completely up to date (though to my knowledge, the game hasn't changed that much) or completely thorough (as I never did get into it that much, as I said)

I like games where I can just right-click things to death, as is the way with these types of games. They're pretty relaxing when playing through casually. But I always like a sense of accomplishment, like what I'm doing is working toward something.

Sure, you could do that. More or less. You probably need to use some skills, I don't think completely righ-click driven builds are possible, but then again, you only have a few skills to choose from, so you can make a pretty lazy one with only 2-3 actives or so.

However, Torchlight 2 and The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing are probably more suited to a more leisure play. Just mentioning this to keep in mind, if you were to ever look for something along those lines.

So I guess my first question is, is there an "endgame" of sorts once the game is over? Are there maps to grind for loot that aren't connected to the main game so I don't have to play through it again?

Yes, once you finish the main game, you can play...I think it was called "adventure mode" or something, which, basically, unlocks all the areas in the game and gives you some objectives in the world to accomplish (more or less, "go kill this dude").

There are also rifts, you can access. They are randomised dungeons with a few levels in them and the idea is to kill everything and get to the last boss. Collect the loot, then redo.

There are new types of rifts called Greater Rifts, which were introduced after I played but I think they have the same idea, but are just rarer and harder.

Are there ladders or events that are held? What do you do once you're done?

Ladders were introduced, but I don't know the specifics, unfortunately.

Next question would be about complexity. Is there build variety with abilities and weapons?

From my experience, it's less than the variety in D2 (even post 1.10) but there, nonetheless. All characters eventually get all of their skills. You customise them by adding modifications to the skills in the forms of runes, for example, one rune could makre your skill do less damage but slow, while another could make it do more damage. You could pick and repick your skill set at all times, but chances are, you'll gear and stick to one for one stretch of time. Nothing is stopping you from re-specialising your character into something else - you pretty much just need the gear, to go with your skills (so, a bit of grinding).

There are some sets that drastically change your skills actually work, however. You could definitely build around them, as well.

And, I assume lots of stuff was added in Reaper of Souls. Is that a must buy if I'm going to get this game?

I'm pretty sure rifts are RoS only. I'm fuzzy on the rest of the stuff. Even though I'm not sure which feature is in which version of the game, I'd advise you to get RoS. I don't really see much of a reason not to. Unless you're really strapped for cash, I suppose.

 

[shrekfan246]

So I guess my first question is, is there an "endgame" of sorts once the game is over? Are there maps to grind for loot that aren't connected to the main game so I don't have to play through it again? Are there ladders or events that are held?

Yes. There's a secondary leveling system that kicks in once you reach the "max" level, which allows greater fine-tuning of character stats. With Reaper of Souls they also put in the Adventure Mode and Nephalem Rifts (which I'll admit I haven't reached yet myself) that aren't tied to the main story mode of the game and have new and different combinations of dungeon sets and tiles and monster combinations, etc. There are seasonal ladders as well, though I haven't experimented with any of them.

What do you do once you're done?

Play some more!

It depends on how you define "done", I guess. The story is amusing for a single playthrough, but it's not particularly great and is even less so if you were really into the lore of Diablo II. But between the different classes and abilities, achievements, and the varied mix of enemies you can come across, as long as you enjoy the gameplay I feel like the game always has a reason to keep coming back to it.

Next question would be about complexity. Is there build variety with abilities and weapons?

Detractors will probably say no, but there is if you allow yourself to experiment. It unlocks slowly as you level up and get more runes for character abilities. Pieces of equipment will also have special effects that might provide bonuses to elemental damage or specific attacks, so if you get something that has a really good boost to a certain ability you might equip it and then want to completely reorganize the ability loadout you're using. Part of the beauty of Diablo III to me is the flexibility it allows; as long as you're not in combat you can change your abilities and runes at any time you want. You don't have to make difficult decisions while leveling up like in most other ARPGs, sure, but it allows you to mix and match until you find something you enjoy, and then mix and match further as you get legendary equipment.

And, I assume lots of stuff was added in Reaper of Souls. Is that a must buy if I'm going to get this game?

I don't recall if the Adventure Mode/Rifts are included in the base game, but if they are then I wouldn't say Reaper of Souls is a must have. I believe they are restricted to the expansion though. The base game has a decent enough amount of content, but it's pretty lacking in the "endgame" stuff.

EDIT: Edited the last bit.

 

[VoidOfOne]

Play Torchlight 2. As a veteran of the Diablo series, I say play Torchlight 2.

There is more build diversity with one character than with all 6 characters of Diablo 3 (and yes, I am being overly dramatic).

At least with Torchlight 2 you don't have to be online. Or suffer.

Diablo 3 is the only game I despise myself for playing.

 

[DoPo]

It unlocks slowly as you level up and get more runes for character abilities.

This reminded me of something I wanted to mention: levelling in D3 is actually quite fast. You can switch the difficulty at any time, which gives you more XP and loot, so you would most likely want to do that when enemies become too easy. You can happily hit max level when you've reached the end of the game - I'm even talking vanilla D3 here, if you hadn't hit it, you'd probably be in the 50's.

At least that's my experience with levelling.

 

[shrekfan246]

It unlocks slowly as you level up and get more runes for character abilities.

This reminded me of something I wanted to mention: levelling in D3 is actually quite fast. You can switch the difficulty at any time, which gives you more XP and loot, so you would most likely want to do that when enemies become too easy. You can happily hit max level when you've reached the end of the game - I'm even talking vanilla D3 here, if you hadn't hit it, you'd probably be in the 50's.

At least that's my experience with levelling.

Oh yeah, and once you know how the game works you can pretty safely crank up the difficulty even starting fresh with a new character.

I don't think I've played a character at lower than the "Torment" difficulty since they overhauled the difficulty settings in the first place.

 

[Ragnar47183]

Just start a monk or a demon hunter and youll have a decent time.

 

[shintakie10]

It unlocks slowly as you level up and get more runes for character abilities.

This reminded me of something I wanted to mention: levelling in D3 is actually quite fast. You can switch the difficulty at any time, which gives you more XP and loot, so you would most likely want to do that when enemies become too easy. You can happily hit max level when you've reached the end of the game - I'm even talking vanilla D3 here, if you hadn't hit it, you'd probably be in the 50's.

At least that's my experience with levelling.

Its ridiculously fast now actually. Between the nerfed xp requirements from 1-60 and 61-70, the incredibly high xp from increasin difficulty, and adventure mode xp (is adventure mode still locked until you beat the campaign?) the SO and I were able to hit 70 within 8-10 total hours of playtime.

 

[Prince of Ales]

It's definitely improved since RoS. I enjoyed the game a lot more since that came out. Can't really talk about the levelling experience because I was at max when the expansion came and I happened to level that character first (and once you've got one character levelled you've got short-cuts for any alts).

Endgame, it's basically trying to get set pieces. These offer different playstyles from the normal gear (e.g. a Barb gets to use Leap as a very offensive ability). After that, super endgame I guess is trying to get better set pieces? Dunno. Apparently since I last played they introduced a new standard of gear beyond legendary or something. Well whatever. There's rifts to run. The greater rifts are kind of a "see how far you can get" sort of deal, which adds a bit of a competitive edge.

Personally, if you want to fill that loot itch then the answer is Borderlands 2 by a massive margin. That might not tickle your fancy of a more mindless loot-fest though. Diablo 3 is, these days, pretty good. The big controversy surrounding that game was predominantly based on the real-money auction house, which has since gone, so don't let the naysayers put you off. It was always an extremely good game when it came to core gameplay, and that's not changed.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

I'm a big dungeon crawler fan myself. And I was itching for Diablo 3.

Then the always online thing came. And my interest faded.

I rarely like people. I don't want my experience tainted with the 'ability' to have other people join my game unless it's a fighting game. I don't want to listen to how someone else wants to complete a quest, I want to complete it by myself.

So the fact that I have a 'single player' option that requires an connection soured me.

And then, there was the free up to level twenty experience. So I played it.

And I found I had much more fun playing Torchlight. Torchlight 2 had really no end game to speak of, but what it did have is steam workshop.

Beautiful, Beautiful steam workshop.

I have levels and caverns and extra bonus stages that I haven't even played. I have characters upon characters and more are probably being thought up as I type this. I have an endless experience with Torchlight 2, with everything to new classes, monster mods, and levels for years.

Torchlight 2 is a good itch scratcher.

 

[Kotaro]

It's already been said three times, but I will recommend Torchlight and Torchlight 2 over Diablo III.
Torchlight was great for holding me over until Diablo III came out, and then Torchlight 2 ended up out-Diablo III-ing Diablo III.

 

[Olrod]

Torchlight 2 is better at Diablo than Diablo is.

I just wish there was a PS3, Vita or 3DS version of Torchlight 2.

 

[Signa]

Echoing Torchlight. Also, Titan Quest with the expansion is a worthy contender too.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Offline: Torchlight 2
Online: Path of Exile

I tried Diablo 3 on a dare this last January (Xbone version), and it just felt...boring.
Like Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, only blander.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

I'm not sure how much Diablo III has changed since the last time I played (prior to the expansion), but I can't say I was overly impressed by it. It was visually very pretty, and mechanically the game worked quite nicely... but the character builds were very cookie-cutter (many abilities/runes being outright useless or sometimes even detrimental to your survival in the upper difficulties), there was never any reason to ever roll another character of the same class (every character had access to all abilities/runes), most of the loot was poorly itemized (though I guess this has been somewhat rectified now that the auction house is gone), and Blizzard was frequently making sweeping balance changes that would gut the effectiveness of builds with no compensation (I'm pretty certain that the "Shocknadoshards" Wizard that I played prior to the expansion is no longer viable).

I'll probably give D3 another chance next time the expansion pack goes on sale. I don't think it's worth $40 to me right now at its current price. That said, in the meantime, I've been playing a lot of Path of Exile to get my Skinner Box fix. It has its flaws, sure, but it's actually quite good for a free-to-play game (that I've never felt pressured to spend any money on, and I've put like 300 hours into it to date according to Steam - I ended up donating to it just because I felt like it was good enough I would have paid to buy it anyway with how many hours I've gotten out of it).

 

[viranimus]

Admittedly I am no real big fan of isometric hack and slash dungeon crawlers, but my real big problem with the legitimate incarnations of D3 (IE: without always on & RMT) was it made for the most prolonged, drug out traffic gridlock simulator I have ever played. That is all I felt I was doing in the game. "Driving" narrow interlinked corridors, Stopping every 50 feet or second intersection to spam attacks till npc death. Once that light turns green, drive to the next bottlenecked stop, wash, rinse, repeat endlessly. To me it was literally like spending an afternoon stuck in gridlock traffic.

Which that in and of itself is not inherently bad on its own, but the total length of the game is ridiculously drawn out for no good reason. Rate of XP gain is low, XP per level is ridiculously high. All of it, ends up being padded content.

So in my personal estimation, the game is actually victim of a design flaw. The flaw being that it is designed to effectively be a psuedo MMO, rather than a stand alone single player game, and that presents with a game that reflects MMO style sensibilities designed to keep a player "entertained" for months on end, rather than an enjoyable single player experience.

Again, I am not the target demographic, because I its not my type of game. Plus being a long time early adopting jaded veteral of MMORPGs, Its design repulses my personal tastes as Ive seen enough MMORPGs to determined it is a failed and stagnant genre. So having what is effectively a psuedo MMORPG doing a poor impression of a single player game feels almost insulting.

It is great if that is the sort of thing that interests you. If it does, more power to you. However I cannot for the life of me fathom what manner of person that could find that amount of unending repetition enjoyable.

 

[sageoftruth]

Admittedly I am no real big fan of isometric hack and slash dungeon crawlers, but my real big problem with the legitimate incarnations of D3 (IE: without always on & RMT) was it made for the most prolonged, drug out traffic gridlock simulator I have ever played. That is all I felt I was doing in the game. "Driving" narrow interlinked corridors, Stopping every 50 feet or second intersection to spam attacks till npc death. Once that light turns green, drive to the next bottlenecked stop, wash, rinse, repeat endlessly. To me it was literally like spending an afternoon stuck in gridlock traffic.

Which that in and of itself is not inherently bad on its own, but the total length of the game is ridiculously drawn out for no good reason. Rate of XP gain is low, XP per level is ridiculously high. All of it, ends up being padded content.

So in my personal estimation, the game is actually victim of a design flaw. The flaw being that it is designed to effectively be a psuedo MMO, rather than a stand alone single player game, and that presents with a game that reflects MMO style sensibilities designed to keep a player "entertained" for months on end, rather than an enjoyable single player experience.

Again, I am not the target demographic, because I its not my type of game. Plus being a long time early adopting jaded veteral of MMORPGs, Its design repulses my personal tastes as Ive seen enough MMORPGs to determined it is a failed and stagnant genre. So having what is effectively a psuedo MMORPG doing a poor impression of a single player game feels almost insulting.

It is great if that is the sort of thing that interests you. If it does, more power to you. However I cannot for the life of me fathom what manner of person that could find that type of unending repetition enjoyable.

I would also add that the new leveling system feels a lot less personal. No choices are made when you level up, like choosing from a skill tree or deciding which stats to improve. You do have to choose which particular skills to use at any one time, but you can change them at any time, making it feel like much less of an investment than it used to be. As a result, once you've played through it with one character class, you've pretty much experienced everything that character class has to offer.
This was a deal-breaker for me, since the main draw of the Diablo series for me was the joy of slowly building up my own personalized character.

 

[Nazulu]

Go for Path Of Exile, it's free and it's skill tree is unique, plus I really love some of the stage art as it gets real creepy.

 

[Bombiz]

you should try going for other ARPG's like:
[ul]
[li]Path of Exile[/li]
[li]Torchlight 1 and 2[/li]
[li]Grim Dawn[/li]
[li]Titain Quest + Immortal throne expansion[/li]
[/ul]

Personally i'd like an ARPG that was a mix of Grim Dawn, Path of Exile, and Diablo 3.

 

[Rattja]

I actually picked up D3 again some weeks ago when a friend of mine started playing it again, and all I have to say about it is.. well, it is better than what it was but still not good.

It started out just fine, but I soon realized that 1-70 simply don't matter, like at all. You can more or less use anything that drops and do just fine. You could turn the difficulty up ofc, but that only make the leveling go by faster and that is about the only change you will notice as the items that drop is going to be swapped out at a high frequency anyways.
During leveling there really isn't much build to be had either, as you can more or less get by with whatever skills you enjoy using.

Then you get to 70 and as they say "The real game begins". That is just fancy talk for "get that set armor". Once you have that it's just about cranking the difficulty up and killing things faster and faster to the point that everything (including yourself) dies instantly.

That was the depressing part for me actually, that the goal is just to kill things incredibly fast with numbers ranging in the millions with no real difference between "builds". As long as you get the right items you basically just need to spam 1 thing and that's it. You can easily use one of the first skills you get the entire game, and several builds actually do just that. Just run in and blow shit up, then move on. Don't even worry too much about loot unless it is a legendary, so unless you see that orange beam of light you can just continue spamming away.
Once you start doing like 30-40-50 million damage per hit things start to just feel kinda meh as well no matter what skill you are using.

So if that sounds like something you would like, go for it.

If build diversity is something you desire then Path of Exile is quite awesome. However since it is online and has some VERY bad syncing problems it may not be worth it. Without that sync problem it would be the best game in the genere hands down.

Or you could just do as everyone else are suggesting, play Torchlight 2, as it is offline, have mod support and decent build options out of the box. It is basically diablo with a different art style and story.
Come to think of it, I really should get back into that and finish my "no potion challenge", that was rather fun.