Posts by Taylor

60fps?

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no

I don’t know if I agree with your reasons for liking Quick Time Events. They are rarely (never?) used to add interactivity to story cutscenes, and instead for interactions that could be handled through actual gameplay like “boss dies” or “Chris punches rock.” QTE’s are predominately feel like a band-aid fix for when people notice the main character is cooler in cutscenes than in the actual game. This can be improved in many ways better than a Simon Says sequence.

I think the point of letting players initate QTE’s (unless it’s blatantly obvious) is a good one. Bayonetta was really bad for this despite doing almost everything else right. I remember I lost a Platinum rating on one section because the bridge I was on collapsed and I instinctively jumped to save myself. What I was supposed to do was let the bridge collapse enough that a QTE prompt came up to press jump and do a bespoke jump that makes me not die. No please. Actually the "hidden QTE" of pressing the corresponding button colour each time you saw a lollipop in a cutscene was probably more fun than the real QTE's.

The Nephalem Difference changes seem to suggest people will just chain kill rares/champions now rather than wasting their time on boss encounters.

Hopefully next year E3 will focus on video games.

It looks really cool. One of my favourite games shown by far.

I also wonder how scripted it is - obviously it's scripted for E3 but the game in general. There was that whole gunfight at the traffic lights and cutscene of him pulling him through the window and being badass before executing him... but it's never implied you have to leave the art gallery (I got the opposite impression - he's coming here so haul up). I hope there's not a load of potential fisson mailed prompts surrounding the finale.

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":xjxo1ruq]Tomb Raider e3 demo was a scripted uncharted like rollercoaster. Would like to see more gameplay and less wow in-game cinematics tbh

You already know exactly how it's going to play, though.

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I propose that if you were to generate 100 sets of loot from the Butcher in Act 1 then, on average, any character that's not a wizard would be undergeared to tackle Act 2. And I mean die-in-4-hits undergeared. You literally need to grind or use the RMAH to progress. Even the bosses in Act 4 drop shitty level 56-59 blues of no use to anyone. The carrot-on-a-stick of finding incremental upgrades is completely gone.

Ouch, trailer is DmC-levels of missing the point.

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Nice music. Funny that only now consoles can run a cutting edge PC title from 2006.

I wonder how long they'll have to wait for Rage.

I remember his DMC4 review was 99% cutscenes and 1% "the combat is fun." All the points he made were valid, but the impression you got by him selectively only talking about the bad stuff was rather different.

I don’t want to be overtly negative. I still think this game does a lot of things right and I stand that being able to shuffle skills around without remaking a character is a good thing

I also don’t really get how this is World of Warcraft dressed up like Diablo when it fundamentally plays like Diablo 2 and, on Hell, is actually a more difficult game even if that is all relative and Inferno is cheap as chips.

I watched the rest of those videos and agreed with them all. I think every time one of the bosses appeared and said something I facepalmed... Everyone getting kidnapped and Azmodan/Diablo giving constant status reports and pro-tips. Act 2 was fairly sensible even though it was predictable.

Blizzard have a financial interest in making the itemisation screw you over. I know I need 3 pieces of gear on my Monk before I can start act 2 (decent String of Ears, life on hit +500 weapon, helm with vit +dex + poison resist + socket) and these all cost millions.

I also found the amount of environments pretty lacklustre. The Cathedral being gigantic for no reason was okay because it was filled with some nice interactive objects and monster spawners, but when you're just doing miles of sewer, ruins, ramparts and cellars you get bored pretty fast. I honestly can't remember what Diablo 2 was like in this regard, but I know I dread playing through act 3 again.

Most of the legendaries and sets are crap, though.

Just done a few butcher runs. Not entirely sure how I'm supposed to gear up for Act 2 Inferno when the Act 1 boss drops level 54 blues and 90dps daggers. Total waste of time. I could leech more skeleton king runs for gold. Or I could play somehing else.

I think all they really need to do to Inferno, though bare in mind I am only at Act 2, is fix the elite packs. If they want to make a gear hurdle for each act to pad the game out then that's okay, but the elite packs in their relative content are insane.

I can beat every boss on Inferno Act 1 solo reasonably easy now. I can also take down most elite packs solo, but sometimes you just meet the most stupid stuff. For instance going through the Cathedral, where the Skeleton King is a non-threat, I encountered this lovely room:

Unburied champion: horde, knockback, frozen, molten

Skeleton rares: Vortex, molten, avenger, arcane

The whole screen is fire, lasers and ice. Knockback, vortex and frozen mean I don't even get to control my character half the time. After a death I managed to pull one of the champion minions away and they followed without the skeletons, but everything has so much health I got bored and left. If Blizzard's algorithm made sure you didn't encounter multiple mods that remove control and multiple mods that force you to move there wouldn't be a problem. As it stands I don't see how someone geared for this level of content could cope with this.

I do agree that there is little incentive to make multiple of the same class anymore since your first version of that character can always swap skills and gear around to be whatever you want. It's also possible they went too far in this regard. Originally you could only respec at obelisk things (in town and at the start of dungeons) and runes had to be found.

Also, now I'm on Inferno, I think you’re pretty much locked into something like this anyway.

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/m ... TUX!ZYcYbc

Going close is suicide, if only because of the crap everywhere fighting elites, so Deadly Reach is essential even though all its runes are crap. Seven Sided Strike, Breath of Heaven (with fear), Blinding Flash and Serenity are all basically "oh shit" buttons you will have to pop constantly against anything but normal enemies. Mantra of Healing is terrible but the 20% resistance boost is better than any other Mantra combination. Passives seem like a no-brainer too, especially One With Everything.

I can see ways of changing this, for instance using Dashing Strike to get around easily (I miss being able to zoom out of packs or into health orbs) or swapping out Breath of Heaven for Lashing Tail Kick for better CC but no heal. But eitherway your Inferno character cannot piss about. You're not going to pull some wacky Combination Strike based build and expect to last 2 steps towards New Tristram.

Shallow means lacking possibility, outcomes or experimentation which the skill system is not. It’s lacking in long-term punishment for making a bad decision sixty hours previously. Most characters in Diablo 2 were running the same build because of this. If you want to give your character the wrong stats I guess you could use gems? There are item sets. Story gets weaker with each act.

Oh sure, I stand by my comments about normal being easy and late-hell/inferno being difficult but not in a fair way (especially if you're melee). But your specific complaints like how you’ve “broken the game” because you can hit an enemy 2-3 times (or 9) and pop a Mantra for a significant heal are not issues for long. My best dedicated heal at 60 is nowhere near half and Transcendence (the spirit into health passive) does not scale well.

Everyone else is saying how unfairly hard it is and you're saying how easy it is. You also haven't unlocked half your skills. And blues outclass yellows mainly due to ilvl scaling (which is an inferno thing).

Normal difficulty is a non-event. This isn't a good thing, but a lot of your complaints are addressed on harder difficulties. Then there are the real problems.