Please, please don't be a terrible and shitty game

As I mentioned in one of my other updates, I’ve been reading a LOT about Diablo III lately, and figured I would post an entry detailing why exactly I’m so excited about it.

Diablo & Diablo II

Both Diablo and Diablo II were amazing games with a lot of replay value, meaning I played the absolute shit out of them.  That being said there were a lot of annoyances that will hopefully be removed in Diablo III.  Of the few I can remember, these ones stick out the most:

• No ability to “link” items to others in multiplayer, meaning you have to manually type out the stats, or drop it for the player to check out themselves.  Neither is really very convenient.
• ‘Tetris-style’ inventory resulting in constant juggling of inconsistently sized items to free up more space.
• Skills & stats are set in stone and all changes are permanent making it very easy to completely ruin a character.
• Resolution permanently set to a maximum of 800×600 (or 640×480 in the case of Diablo).
• No real incentive to apply stat points and/or skill points as you get them.  The player can effectively hoard their points and them place them all into some really high skill.
• No real indication of whether an item is worth keeping to sell or not.  Picking up a magic item, then identifying it and selling it can often leave you at a loss, if you had to purchase a Scroll of Identify.  Gay.

As you can see I whine a lot, but I really do love both the games.  The good news is ALL except one of the above points have been confirmed as solved in the newest Diablo.

Skill Points and Stat Points

Current word on this is that the game will allow you to reset your skill points and stat points will no longer be configurable.  The exact mechanic for resetting skill points has not been decided upon.

Regarding the stat points, a lot of people were very upset by the decision to up stats by set amounts every level instead of allowing the player to distribute them as was the case in the other two Diablo games.  Personally I haven’t made up my mind whether I like the decision or not, but I definitely don’t share the same level of concern as the fans who are raging about it.

Inventory Changes

One of the biggest frustrations in Diablo and Diablo II is the juggling of variously shaped items in order to cram that latest drop into your inventory.  The creators said they didn’t want to remove the differently sized icons as they felt it provided depth (it did).  What they’ve done is separated the bag space into three sections – big items, small items, and quest items.  This allows things like scrolls, potions etc to take up less space than a shield or y’know, a great big fucking poleaxe, while still removing the need to constantly shuffle items around at the breakneck battle.net pace.

Resolution

I don’t know if this has been confirmed now that I think about it, but it can safely be said that the resolution will be able to scale right down for lower end systems, or scale right up to a beautiful maximum for the top end systems.  If I looked around I’m sure that’s confirmed somewhere, but I’m so positive it will be possible I haven’t even bothered to check.

Item Value

While there have been plenty of screenshots showing item tooltips with sell value included, I haven’t found any conclusive evidence that this is intended to remain in the final version.  The fact it’s in there now is a good sign however, and if it stays will provide a LOT of help when deciding whether you should sacrifice that spear to pick up that axe.

Item Linking?

No word on this as yet, as far as I can tell.  Battle.net is getting a complete revamp into what will become Battle.net 2.0, so I would hope that the feature will be supported and included after the reworking.  So again, no official word to my knowledge, but it’s highly likely you’ll be able to link items to people so they can see the stats without having to own the item.

Conclusion

It seems highly likely that all the major issues with the past two games have been seized upon and removed, but only time will really tell whether the new solutions are any better than the old problems.  The game looks incredibly good from what has been seen so far and if the web site is anything to go by, the lore involved will be deep and thorough (though apparently skippable if that’s not your thing).

All I can say is at least Starcraft II is due this year, so I have something to hold me over while I await Diablo III.