Quote:Lack of customization and, yeah, more like WoW.
This is from a friend in beta.
I ran a barbarian up to level 9 last night. Every couple of levels you unlock a new ability, but you only start out with two active ability "slots". So while you might have access to 6 or so abilities, you can only have 2 available. Eventually, you'll have 6 actives and 3 passives. The active skills can be assigned to keyboard keys 1-5, the left mouse button, or the right mouse button. Every 6 levels or so you unlock another active ability slot, and every 10 levels you unlock a passive slot. So, at level 9 I have 3 active ability slots, and 0 passive available.
As far as skills go, there are no points to assign. Well, at least so far. Certain abilities unlock at certain levels, and once they're unlocked you can assign them to a slot. I haven't found any gear that boosts skills. I have found gear that boosts your stats, which are Attack, Precision, Defense, and Vitality.
It seems customization is limited to filling your ability slots, and picking through the equipment you find. There is a crafting system, but I haven't explored it too much yet. I've made one item, and it's equivalent to the best pieces of gear I'd found. So it seems that the crafting system will be useful, at least at lower levels. Crafting is interesting in that you don't do the actual crafting. You go talk to "artisans" (jeweler, blacksmith, etc.) and browse their recipes. If you find something interesting, you "buy" the item with crafting materials and a bit of gold. During your adventures, you find pages of training books that you can combine into a full book that raises an artisan's level by 1, giving them (and thereby you) access to better recipes. So far as I can tell, the books aren't specific to a specific artisan; you can choose to apply any book to any artisan. Crafting materials are gained by using the "Nephalem's cube", which sunders an item into scraps and essences. The cube fits into it's own slot on your inventory page, so you can break shit down anytime, anywhere. Much easier inventory management than I and II. The junk I found gave me "common scrap" and "subtle essences", so I assume better gear will give higher level materials.
On the cosmetic side, the game looks pretty cool. I don't get a WoW feel at all. Humans are pretty human looking; nothing really cartoony about them, and monsters still have that Diablo II feel. The blood splatter from melee attacks is just shy of ridiculous, so you get giblets all over the place but it's not obnoxious. It's just about right. At least in my opinion. YMMV.
My opinion so far is it's a fun game that sticks pretty closely to its origins. I haven't seen it try anything really new, but it updates the Diablo franchise in a fun and interesting way. I'll have to see how they treat multiplayer before I really decide how much I like it though.
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Diablo III Beta (Read 1592 times)
