yonder wrote on Nov 30, 2016, 21:39:
Except for the 70 billion or so spent on television commercials, your comment is completely true and not pompous at all!

Traditional TV is going extinct. That's why there is now a shitton of product placement inside the TV shows, as well as giant half-the-screen animated banners obscuring the screen after commercial breaks.

Because commercials are cut out by Internet pirates, but placement and banners cannot be, so even when pirated, the shows still reach some kind of ad audience.

I tried to read that article and it was both confusing and pompous. AdBlock was a blessing to the Internet poisoned with ads, some of which contain exploits.

Paywalls are garbage too.

Learn to integrate ads into your content, Internet. Product placement. TV has done it, radio shows have done it. It's the only chance you have.

Mr. Tact wrote on Nov 15, 2016, 09:23:

shiho wrote on Nov 15, 2016, 02:06:
They mapped out 5 seasons already, which is always a bad sign,

Not always. When JMS mapped the full five seasons of Babylon 5 it was great. Well, except for the fact that the network gave up on it and made him cut it short. But having story arcs that cover entire seasons or entire series can be a strong plus. Another good example is Star Trek DS9. Excellent long story arcs that really tied the show together over seven seasons.

Season 3 of Babylon 5 was one of the best things I've seen on television. The rest were not so good. Season 1 was an atrocity.

Both DS9 and Babylon 5 were very drawn out shows with lots of filler. DS9 didn't even get good until season 3.

Westworld is a meandering tale which loses its focus 85% of the time. Very much LOST. They mapped out 5 seasons already, which is always a bad sign, and always results in tons of filler, which this show mostly consists of.

"Humans" is a better show, which better develops similar concepts.

descender wrote on Nov 8, 2016, 10:55:
So you want to grind the midgame instead? Now I'm wondering if you actually even played D2. The only thing you could do to advance in D2 after you finished Nightmare was the "end game" of act 4/5. The only mobs that dropped any meaningful items were the bosses.

You are the one asking for more randomization so you can keep playing the game ad infinitum. You don't need perfectly random dungeons unless your intention is to grind the game forever...

You're intentionally mixing the idea of "playing the game" with "grinding". One of those terms involves actual enjoyment. That way of playing the game is clearly alien to you. You're not used to having fun. Which would explain why you're so blind to deficiencies in Diablo3 which take said fun out of it.

It all makes sense!

Actually, no. That allows more people to be able to play the game, which is the goal of all games. No one cares how cool you think you are that you can figure games out on your own.

Reductio ad absurdum. What I was talking about is a game that teaches you without straitjacketing you into a separate "tutorial". That does not mean it's somehow harder to learn. It IS however, a superior design, which is harder to DESIGN. Requires more THINKING, is all.

There are class specific items all throughout the game. You literally have no idea what you are talking about.

Did they remove the part where my plain old axe changes my magic powers? If they have not, then you know exactly what I am talking about. This retardation cannot stand in an AAA title. Those non-mage items should've been replaced with mage-specific items.

Yeah, this complaint is just mind numbing. You like that they added "re-speccing" but somehow think that means they also removed "builds". It's clear now that you have absolutely no idea how D3 actually plays and just ride the hate train with petty semantic complaints. Good times.

I got up to level 26 or so before the boredom became intolerable. I always felt alone, even in company of other players - something that rarely happened in D2. The kills didn't feel like they had any impact. The game was ugly, washed out, generic, and creatively bankrupt.

Oh, and there's a reason why there are builds in RPGs/ARPGs, and why you can't just mess with your builds with no penalty whatsoever. It's one of those things... gameplay things... that you clearly won't understand.

All in all, to quote a far better Blizzard title... take us into orbit, Mr. Malmsteen. I've seen enough.

Short version is that Elon Musk is insane. When government pays your wages, you are no longer in America, but in some Statist shithole.

Competition is an inherent human quality. As long as it is embraced via some sort of capitalism - be it some kind of Futuristic Evolved Capitalism or whatnot - it will still have to be capitalism - the society will be healthy.

Humans will always find something to pursue and excel at. Now they just won't have to do construction or mop toilets. But the businesses will still be created, and people will still pursue the opportunity to gain more wealth and resulting higher quality of life.

descender wrote on Nov 7, 2016, 23:29:
Even if D2's dungeons were more random, no one cleared dungeons more than once anyway, you would just bumrush the bosses.

Unlike you, some of us actually play the game to enjoy the experience of playing it. People like you always baffle me. You rush through the games as fast and efficiently as possible, never stopping to actually enjoy them, and then grind the endgame.

I really don't understand that at all. Having spent 12+ years in cubicle jobs, I really don't need another grind like that.

And by the way, randomization is CRUCIAL to REPLAYABILITY. A pretty simple concept to get.

Maybe the story is stupid, most video game stories are stupid. It's a game about demons and hell. It's not Shakespeare and it never was in the first place (or the second place). I played D2 for thousands of hours and I couldn't tell you what most of the story was, it's simply not important.

The cutscenes in D2 were magnificent, memorable, and integrated perfectly into the changes of scenery. A lost art, as apparent in D3.

"To the East... always into the East".

The tutorial level and story being integrated into the game better in D3 is a direct result of both technological and design progress, to think otherwise is absurd.

Actually no. When your game needs a "tutorial", instead of simply letting you play it and slowly learn, it is REGRESSIVE in design.

Diablo2 started you off right in the game, and eased you into the gameplay regardless, without straitjacketing you at the start. It was an EVOLVED design.

Next thing you're gonna tell me is that Dead Space is a more evolved design than Half-Life, because it's newer. Meanwhile back in the real world, Half-Life actually gave you some freedom of movement, while Dead Space is just another cinematic straitjacket.

D3 by the way fails the old Blizzard "mom rule", where your mom is supposed to be able to get a hang of the gameplay basics. The UI is pointlessly convoluted; the art of clean design has been lost.

Why in the flying fuck does it matter what particular stat scales the spell damage? If it's a damage stat or a modifier or the color of the armor? You can't possibly care that much where this stat comes from and it absolutely does not matter in any way.

I care about class-specific items. I want mage to carry items that a fucking MAGE WOULD CARRY to enhance his MAGE POWERS.

I don't go to WoW and expect to open portals with a fucking hammer, now do I?

Did Gandalf and Saruman battle with axes?

Do I really have to explain the absolute axioms?

It is pretty amazing the purposeful obtuseness you'll go to in order to defend this horrible, lazy design decision, made by company that used to create amazing games with care and attention put into them.

Tons of design changes in D3 are for the better, and when they steal some ideas from their competition (like PoE) for D4, it will get even better.

The only design decision in D3 which wasn't a failure, was the ability to respec. No respec, that was the one major flaw Diablo2 had.

But then D3 went and fucked it up, by removing the notion of builds entirely.

I don't have to fool anyone. 30+million people bought and played the game.

I'm sure just as many people watched Jersey Shore.

I have played with thousands of people online and had lots of fun doing it. It's much better now than the last time you (maybe) played it. It's Diablo 3. You aren't getting anything else. It's been 4 years, how many more posts about how much you don't like D3 have to be made? Some people are rather enjoying it. Calling them names and ridiculing the game doesn't make you a bigger person

I don't care about taking a high road. It's all pretense on the Internet, anyway. I am not trying to ruin people's enjoyment of games directly - but in a way I am, by trying to poke their heads into the Matrix, so the thin veneer of the game falls before their very eyes, the make-up melts, and they see that they have settled for mediocrity.

And then, maybe, people like you will actually start to demand something BETTER. But first, you have to stop calling dog food like Diablo3, a quality game.

descender wrote on Nov 7, 2016, 19:30:
The designs of D2 you are clinging to seem to have more to do with technical limitations at the time than anything else.

D2 was absolutely the king of ARPGs

I don't disagree with this at all, I just don't believe that is climbing a very tall hill.

The "technical limitations" argument is something I've run into many times when arguing with Fallout 3 fans, too. It is, of course, nonsense.

There's no such thing as "technical limitations" when it comes to ARPG/roguelike designs. It's an absurd notion. D2 was very deliberately designed in certain ways.

It was not perfect, but unlike any of the endless Diablo clones that followed over the next decade, it actually lasted for a long long time.

Why? Because it got many more things right than any of the imitators.

And as far as I see it, Diablo3 with its lazy retarded designs, where a mage's spell is powered by the physical damage of the axe he is holding... it's just full-on retardation through-and-through.

Poorly randomized dungeons, no reason to spend any time in town, no control over town portal placement, no custom stat controls, inferior system of elemental damages, muddy/confused characters created by a pretentious 7th grader, moronic/incomprehensible plot, generic music, washed-out graphics with no sense of taste or direction...

Please. You are not fooling anyone.

descender wrote on Nov 7, 2016, 16:42:
Diablo 3 plays almost exactly like Diablo 2. There is practically zero gameplay difference between the games aside from D2 being incredibly easier. The only real difference is the character development, and the only real difference there is the skills you have access to on the player you are playing. Oh, that and there is about 10 times the amount of content in D3 to keep higher level players busy.

Maybe you didn't play D2 much, or recently... I don't know... but your assessment of the gameplay available in the two games is bonkers. D2 was absolutely not any more difficult or "strategically played" than D3. Map positioning and player movement in D2 wasn't nearly as prevalent for all classes as it is now. The skill ceiling in D3 is MUCH higher than D2 was. It is considerably harder to stay alive in D3. Class synergies exist in D3 (literally the only way to get through higher torment levels and rifts for some classes), item identifying is possibly the single stupidest gameplay "mechanic" ever... literally the only complaint that makes any sense is the character building and progreassion.

The problem here is that D2 (and ARPG's in general) simply was not as good as people want to claim it was, and D3 is being judged against something that never existed. It's rose-colored glasses all the way.

D2 was absolutely the king of ARPGs, and I spent so much time with it not because I was a young idiot (I was not even that young BACK THEN), but because it pulled me in.

Everything in that game was made with care. It did not start off with a retarded railroaded path and scripted sequences. It did not lock small bosses with you in a separate room. It did not force you to listen to them yammer forever. Brevity being the soul of wit and all that.

D2 had atmosphere up the wazoo. It had a real sense of impact when you killed something. Town portals DID matter, and so did player stats, and so did identifying of items, because they were pieces of player agency that are now removed.

It's funny how everyone bitches about item identification, and yet nobody bitches about how they put inane crafting shit into Alien: Isolation and Far Cry.

It has been my observation that the rose-colored glasses excuse is oft-employed by those defending mediocrity.

christheshitter wrote on Nov 7, 2016, 05:56:
I agree with you and as bad as the cartoonish graphics is the awful story. The gameplay sucks too! It's if the game constantly is serving you things on a silver platter. So the graphics is not the only thingthat make Diablo 3 a very dull and boring game.

Oh don't get me started Diablo3 gameplay is this arrogant view of Jay Wilson of Diablo fans as just people who like to randomly click stuff. He never "got" Diablo. Diablo1 and 2 were so fundamentally different from Diablo3 in so many ways, and yet he managed to sabotage the core concept on which the franchise was built - roguelike concepts, including RANDOM DUNGEONS.

Diablo3 dungeon randomization is woeful. They are plonked together with these large pieces. The fact is, the coding in Diablo2, when it comes to dungeon generation algorithms, loot drops, gameplay synergies between players - it was EXQUISITE compared to Diablo3.

In D3 you're just two rockstars throwing out piles of disposable monsters next to each other, instead of cooperating in any meaningful way. Everything has been reduced, streamlined into just one playstyle, reducing player agency dramatically.

Really the whole thing felt like a spit in the face. They killed Deckard Cain, because they neutered one of the core mechanics, which is item identification. So now your actio rockstar has the intellect of an old wise sage who can identify items.

Everything can be "streamlined" in a game. Everything is pretend. It doesn't mean everything SHOULD be streamlined.

eRe4s3r wrote on Nov 6, 2016, 11:12:
But then it wouldn't have run on (back then) low end hardware. You can still play D3 just fine on an i3 with intel gpu... in the end it is something inherent to Blizzard though, Warcraft 3, WoW, Overwatch, Diablo 3 and HOTS, all look visually alike to me. And that is not a good thing. Diablo 3 in some ways actually looks worse than Warcraft 3

It's true, it does. WC3 started that visual style and managed to actually make it a style. In WoW it was also a style.

In Diablo3 it's like the kid who went to mom's (WoW's) closet and is trying on her wardrobe at random. Its only style is "low-poly washout".

descender wrote on Nov 6, 2016, 00:28:
How many developers should be bowing to the concerns of 0.2% of their users? It's time to get over that.

The people who actually bothered to file the petition, do not represent all the people who dislike the graphics style.

Plus, it's objectively terrible. The ground is blurry. The characters look like overdressed flamingoes. My male mage looked like an Asian woman.

Just changing the colors would not really fix the visuals of this game. That is the one misconception that petition had. First, they'd have to give it an actual visual style. Make things look not like they're made out of carton. Carton swords, carton shields. Just no. Give characters and monsters a memorable visual identity.

When I think what Diablo3 COULD'VE looked like with the Diablo2 team recreating that style in 3D, with full use of normal mapping to create solid-looking surfaces made out of metal, wood, etc, detailed environments... fleshed-out character archetypes that are easy to visually identify (like they were in Diablo2)...man, I can only dream.

Yifes wrote on Nov 4, 2016, 21:27:
And anyone complaining about the art direction of D3 must have forgotten just how colorful and cartoonish Diablo 2 can look.

First link is showing that Diablo2 has colors. Congratulations.
Second link shows promo art. Congratulations once again.

Meanwhile back in the real world, there was a 50000+ people petition to Blizzard to make Diablo3 look like an actual Diablo game. A similar petition was done when they tried to pull the same shit with Starcraft 2, and they listened.

With Diablo 3, they ignored the petition, and it is one of the least visually appealing games I've ever seen. It looks like a rainbow was gutted violently, its innards spilled onto a paper-mache world, and then someone generously covered it with a thick layer of piss.

And let's face it, that someone was Jay Wilson.

Videogames are now better than Aikido - a commercial for America's obesity crisis.

It's ok folks, just the tube between us and Myanmar got clogged

... without their consent

I'm still waiting for outrage about all the other Silicon Valley companies which are backing the most thoroughly corrupt, inept, and criminal presidential candidate in American history.

What *I* am outraged about, is that Hillary Clinton should be in jail, according to multiple FBI sources, the Wikileaks evidence is absolutely damning in every single respect, and I just wonder when the Democrat Party brainwashing will actually wear off.

Apparently, never.

I am also tremendously outraged about how nobody dares compare Donald Trump's terrible terrible offenses of "being rude, greedy and racist and groping women", to the disasters Hillary wrecked on the world scale, lives lost, cover-ups, destroying evidence, giving false testimony, creating a future nuclear wasteland in proximity of Iran (as admitted by her own inner circle)... how come nobody is outraged that she has corrupted the FBI? That she is above the law?

Oh no... Trump groped someone back in 1923. He's misogynist!

Meanwhile, Hillary has driven dozens of Secret Service agents off their job by being intolerable, and harassed Bill's "girls" into silence.

Hillary is importing thousands of unvetted Syrians, a good deal of whom are violent homophobes and women-haters. Not a peep about that, though.

Hillary's State Department under Obama played a role in perpetuating his policies which directly resulted in the Orlando gay club shooting. Why? Because Obama castrated the FBI training manuals, and that Muslim Extremist, who was being closely tracked, stopped getting tracked, because he no longer met the new uber-PC requirements.

By the way, the Boston marathon bombers were also being tracked by the FBI until the training manuals were changed.

San Bernandino shooters? Were not reported by neighbors because of their fear of not being politically correct. The PC stench from the highest ranks of our government, infected the body politic, and killed all those people.

"Islamic terrorism" is not a concept in this government, and that's the kind of government that Mrs. Clinton will gladly perpetuate, guided by her close friend Huma Abedin.

Jesus Christ, the stupidity of this country is overwhelming.

Hillary Clinton is a warmongering imbecile who called Putin "Hitler", and is now proposing a no-fly zone above Syria, which will likely result in armed conflict with Russian planes. This is how actual wars start.

She is perpetuating "Nobel Peace Prize Winner" Obama's demolition of friendly relations with the world's second largest nuclear superpower. This is after bragging about the Iran "deal", which easily gives them a nuclear bomb.

You literally have the choice between the only hope America has, and the closest we have got to a totalitarian, power-hungry, 100% corrupt TYRANT.

Make no mistake about it. Trump respects the 1st Amendment, and not just when it comes to "conservatives". He understands that the purpose of the 1st Amendment is not to protect nice speech, but to protect offensive speech.

Hillary has shown in many ways that she hates the 1st Amendment. Under her administration, she will appoint Supreme Court judges which will forever change this country into a banana republic. She wanted Fairness Doctrine, and she wants Obama's proposed media control, which is one of the scariest things I've ever heard from a supposed leader of a supposed free country.

The freedoms you take for granted here, will soon be GONE, and you won't find them anywhere else in the world. First she will come for conservatives, and then there will be nobody to stand with you.

I didn't come from the Soviet Union to experience the Soviet-style state media brainwashing completely eat away the brains of half of America. It is absolutely devastating to witness history come full-circle thanks to a completely brainwashed populace, in the same way as it was in Soviet academia.

This is truly going to be a historic election, which will show whether America has breached the critical threshold of clueless, incubated Eloi, who will be forever destined to be eaten by Morlocs.

Yes, vote Hillary and not Trump. Sure, Trump understands negotiation about 10x better, sure he is actually patriotic and far less corrupt, sure he can identify our enemies, secure our borders, stop China from robbing us blind, and PREVENT WAR WITH RUSSIA - but hey, guys, he has funny hair and he's crude. Conan O'Brien told me so guys!

Fuck you, half of America. You know who you are.

When this type of shit starts to happen for no explicable reason, it's time to leave the forum. There are better gaming forums out there. If Blue doesn't want the activity, then he won't get it. Simple.

Wraith wrote on Oct 18, 2016, 11:06:
What the fuck? Who went on a tear deleting comments overnight? Mine simply said this wasn't going to be RDR for PC and I was right.

Seriously? Someone got all butthurt and deleted my comment because I was smarter than some people?

* REMOVED *
This comment was deleted on Oct 18, 2016, 09:44.

I still can't believe we let a country as oppressive as China to scam us this much. And their pollution is off the fucking scale, too.

There's a documentary they made in China, which was then banned... in China... called "Under The Dome". They are probably the biggest force on the planet that's ruining the planet. And we are supporting their careless, exploitative-of-workers, ultra-pollutive, industrial expansion.

It's time to enforce some fucking standards, bring our jobs back, and stop treating China like the manufacturing center of the world.