Journal RogueyWon's Journal: Early thoughts on Diablo 3
Diablo 3 is now released and TEH INTERWEBS DRAMA is in full flow. I posted some early thoughts specifically on the controversial "always on" feature in a discission thread here and here. From what I've seen, connection and login issues are continuing to occur, though compared to Asia and the US, those of in Europe appear to be getting a fairly mild dose of them.
However, I don't want to dwell too long on the DRM/always-on issues here. Objectionable though they may be, the lesson of WoW shows that login issues will diminish over time. Ever since the launch of Wrath of the Lich King (the second WoW expansion), I've believed that Blizzard deliberately provides less capacity than it knows is needed for new game and expansion releases. After all, its choices are:
1) Buy expensive server capacity that won't be needed once the game has been out a fortnight.
2) Lease short-term capacity and worry about leaving valuable server-side intellectual property on somebody else's machines.
3) Accept that launch is going to get a bit FUBAR but that it will settle down quickly enough and mostly be forgotten within a week or two.
From a business point of view, 3) makes a lot of sense. In all likelihood, most of those complaining loudest about the login issues at the moment will have forgotten them in a week or two. I thought, therefore, that I'd actually talk about some early thoughts on the game itself.
I'm not actually what you'd call a hardcore Diablo fan. I didn't like the first game in the series. It came out at a time when Bioware and Squaresoft were starting to do really interesting things with the RPG genre and, to be honest, I couldn't get all that excited about what was, by comparison, a shallow click-fest. I got into Diablo 2 a bit more; I preferred its more open world design and played a bit of co-op with friends. But it didn't hold my interest for all that long. Baldur's Gate 2 came out a few months later and, when it did, I largely forgot about Diablo 2.
Since then, the action-RPG genre that Diablo pioneered has evolved apace, with various companies offering different takes on it. The Dungeon Siege series spent its first two installments pitching itself as the "thinking man's Diablo", with full party control and a semblance of tactics (though this was abandoned for a badly dumbed down third installment). The PS2 got some highly-polished Diablo-inspired games, such as the Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance titles and Champions of Norrath. And the genre continued to be developed in its spiritual home on the PC, perhaps most notably through the highly-polished Torchlight. Against this backdrop, I had to wonder whether, barring its huge brand-recognition, Diablo 3 would manage to remain at the cutting edge, or even remain relevant.
After a few hours of gameplay, I'm still undecided. Being firmly outside of the series's hardcore fanbase, I was able to shrug off many of the changes to tradition that caused such shrill outcry. I was never wedded to Diablo 2's talent system or class balance. I regard having visible outlines around enemies and gold that gets automatically picked up as welcome developments, rather than betrayals of trust. And I don't much care about whether the game looks sufficiently dark and gritty. My impression is that Blizzard have, over recent years, developed a cartoony style for their in-game graphics, as evidenced by World of Warcraft and Starcraft 3. It's a distinctive style, I associate it with Blizzard and if they want to carry it over into the Diablo series (which it seems they have) then that's fine with me. This particular stylistic choice has two direct consequences - a relative lack of detail and relatively high performance.
I'll start with the second of those. I have what is, by any standards, a high end gaming PC; a water-cooled i7 3.4ghz, with 24 gigs of RAM and an Nvidia 590. It runs anything I've thrown at it in 1080p full detail quite happily, but the margin by which it does so varies. In Diablo 3, I was able to lock the framerate at 140fps without it even flickering in big fights with lots of spell effects flying around. Testing it on a much lower end laptop (a 2ghz Core 2 Duo with 3 gigs of RAM and a fairly basic graphics card) still yielded highly acceptable performance. Both machines managed substantially higher and (perhaps critically) more stable framerates than they do running version 4.3 of World of Warcraft, despite the fact that the venerable MMO is running on what is, at heart, an old engine. It's clear that Diablo 3 has been optimised to provide as smooth and (in framerate terms) stable an experience as possible. It's the same philosophy that has seen the Call of Duty series, with its locked 60fps norm, become the preferred fps platform on the consoles.
But there's inevitably a price to be paid in terms of detail. And there's no denying that Diablo 3 makes sacrifices in terms of visual impact. While the cutscenes are every bit as pretty as we've come to expect from Blizzard, in game graphics tend more towards the "smooth and functional" than the "impressive and atmospheric". Enemies are well designed, but environments tend towards the spartan. Spell effects tend to underwhelm and to be over very quickly. There are undoubtedly some benefits to this in terms of accessibility, but at times, even Torchlight has more visual impact. What's particularly noticable is that the slight vagueness that added to the sense of dread in Diablo 2 is absent now. The game looks a little bit too clinical.
In gameplay terms, the basic Diablo formula hasn't changed much. Areas perhaps seem to channel the player more directly towards his goal than those in earlier installments. There's been a welcome retilting of the balance between randomly generated areas and pre-designed ones, with the latter getting more prominence, allowing for some occasionally clever level design. In terms of character building, things are clearly highly simplified - perhaps too much so. Despite being around 4 hours in, I don't feel like I've yet had to make an actual choice about how to develop my character. Beyond that, this is a game that is altering its basic formula very little.
And therein, for me, lies the biggest problem. It feels like Blizzard have ignored much of what's happened in this busy genre since Diablo 2 was released. Most of the new features are imported from WoW, such as the auction house (the real money version of which just feels exploitative). Other than that, this lacks the tactical depth of the first two Dungeon Siege games, the visual flights of fancy of the Dark Alliance series and the slightly crazy sense of fun of Torchlight, with its myriad side-quests and optional dungeons.
Starcraft 2 still felt relevant when its first installment, Wings of Liberty, was released in 2010. The RTS genre was by no means dead, but it was a genre which had largely fragmented to the extremes, with Dawn of War 2 and its ilk focussing on small-scale squad tactics while Supreme Commander pursued a more macro-strategic game. Starcraft 2 managed to advance the genre by returning defiantly to a middle ground and driving it forward with an extra degree of polish and small-scale innovation around mission design and storytelling (as well as through its highly polished multiplayer and skirmish modes). Starcraft 2's only real direct competitors were the Command & Conquer games, which it was able to defeat on a straight up fight on quality.
By contrast, while I'm still relatively early in Diablo 3, I can't help but feel that it's failed to establish itself decisively within its own genre against fresher, hungrier (and often cheaper) competitors.
However, I don't want to dwell too long on the DRM/always-on issues here. Objectionable though they may be, the lesson of WoW shows that login issues will diminish over time. Ever since the launch of Wrath of the Lich King (the second WoW expansion), I've believed that Blizzard deliberately provides less capacity than it knows is needed for new game and expansion releases. After all, its choices are:
1) Buy expensive server capacity that won't be needed once the game has been out a fortnight.
2) Lease short-term capacity and worry about leaving valuable server-side intellectual property on somebody else's machines.
3) Accept that launch is going to get a bit FUBAR but that it will settle down quickly enough and mostly be forgotten within a week or two.
From a business point of view, 3) makes a lot of sense. In all likelihood, most of those complaining loudest about the login issues at the moment will have forgotten them in a week or two. I thought, therefore, that I'd actually talk about some early thoughts on the game itself.
I'm not actually what you'd call a hardcore Diablo fan. I didn't like the first game in the series. It came out at a time when Bioware and Squaresoft were starting to do really interesting things with the RPG genre and, to be honest, I couldn't get all that excited about what was, by comparison, a shallow click-fest. I got into Diablo 2 a bit more; I preferred its more open world design and played a bit of co-op with friends. But it didn't hold my interest for all that long. Baldur's Gate 2 came out a few months later and, when it did, I largely forgot about Diablo 2.
Since then, the action-RPG genre that Diablo pioneered has evolved apace, with various companies offering different takes on it. The Dungeon Siege series spent its first two installments pitching itself as the "thinking man's Diablo", with full party control and a semblance of tactics (though this was abandoned for a badly dumbed down third installment). The PS2 got some highly-polished Diablo-inspired games, such as the Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance titles and Champions of Norrath. And the genre continued to be developed in its spiritual home on the PC, perhaps most notably through the highly-polished Torchlight. Against this backdrop, I had to wonder whether, barring its huge brand-recognition, Diablo 3 would manage to remain at the cutting edge, or even remain relevant.
After a few hours of gameplay, I'm still undecided. Being firmly outside of the series's hardcore fanbase, I was able to shrug off many of the changes to tradition that caused such shrill outcry. I was never wedded to Diablo 2's talent system or class balance. I regard having visible outlines around enemies and gold that gets automatically picked up as welcome developments, rather than betrayals of trust. And I don't much care about whether the game looks sufficiently dark and gritty. My impression is that Blizzard have, over recent years, developed a cartoony style for their in-game graphics, as evidenced by World of Warcraft and Starcraft 3. It's a distinctive style, I associate it with Blizzard and if they want to carry it over into the Diablo series (which it seems they have) then that's fine with me. This particular stylistic choice has two direct consequences - a relative lack of detail and relatively high performance.
I'll start with the second of those. I have what is, by any standards, a high end gaming PC; a water-cooled i7 3.4ghz, with 24 gigs of RAM and an Nvidia 590. It runs anything I've thrown at it in 1080p full detail quite happily, but the margin by which it does so varies. In Diablo 3, I was able to lock the framerate at 140fps without it even flickering in big fights with lots of spell effects flying around. Testing it on a much lower end laptop (a 2ghz Core 2 Duo with 3 gigs of RAM and a fairly basic graphics card) still yielded highly acceptable performance. Both machines managed substantially higher and (perhaps critically) more stable framerates than they do running version 4.3 of World of Warcraft, despite the fact that the venerable MMO is running on what is, at heart, an old engine. It's clear that Diablo 3 has been optimised to provide as smooth and (in framerate terms) stable an experience as possible. It's the same philosophy that has seen the Call of Duty series, with its locked 60fps norm, become the preferred fps platform on the consoles.
But there's inevitably a price to be paid in terms of detail. And there's no denying that Diablo 3 makes sacrifices in terms of visual impact. While the cutscenes are every bit as pretty as we've come to expect from Blizzard, in game graphics tend more towards the "smooth and functional" than the "impressive and atmospheric". Enemies are well designed, but environments tend towards the spartan. Spell effects tend to underwhelm and to be over very quickly. There are undoubtedly some benefits to this in terms of accessibility, but at times, even Torchlight has more visual impact. What's particularly noticable is that the slight vagueness that added to the sense of dread in Diablo 2 is absent now. The game looks a little bit too clinical.
In gameplay terms, the basic Diablo formula hasn't changed much. Areas perhaps seem to channel the player more directly towards his goal than those in earlier installments. There's been a welcome retilting of the balance between randomly generated areas and pre-designed ones, with the latter getting more prominence, allowing for some occasionally clever level design. In terms of character building, things are clearly highly simplified - perhaps too much so. Despite being around 4 hours in, I don't feel like I've yet had to make an actual choice about how to develop my character. Beyond that, this is a game that is altering its basic formula very little.
And therein, for me, lies the biggest problem. It feels like Blizzard have ignored much of what's happened in this busy genre since Diablo 2 was released. Most of the new features are imported from WoW, such as the auction house (the real money version of which just feels exploitative). Other than that, this lacks the tactical depth of the first two Dungeon Siege games, the visual flights of fancy of the Dark Alliance series and the slightly crazy sense of fun of Torchlight, with its myriad side-quests and optional dungeons.
Starcraft 2 still felt relevant when its first installment, Wings of Liberty, was released in 2010. The RTS genre was by no means dead, but it was a genre which had largely fragmented to the extremes, with Dawn of War 2 and its ilk focussing on small-scale squad tactics while Supreme Commander pursued a more macro-strategic game. Starcraft 2 managed to advance the genre by returning defiantly to a middle ground and driving it forward with an extra degree of polish and small-scale innovation around mission design and storytelling (as well as through its highly polished multiplayer and skirmish modes). Starcraft 2's only real direct competitors were the Command & Conquer games, which it was able to defeat on a straight up fight on quality.
By contrast, while I'm still relatively early in Diablo 3, I can't help but feel that it's failed to establish itself decisively within its own genre against fresher, hungrier (and often cheaper) competitors.
Early thoughts on Diablo 3 More Login
Early thoughts on Diablo 3
Slashdot Top Deals