Hard to pick up some loot.
Hold down Z to see everything on the ground, Alt only shows some things like non broken items I think.
Yeah you can set it up to a few ways to view dropped items. Having never played a Diablo game I thought it was decently fun. The demo only chugged for me a tad when I ran into a cave to save a shepard from some goblin types. I’m guessing that was from the torch light being cast from my character.
I just finished the first quest. I like it.
What i liked best was after defeating said evil attacking the villiage, there was a chest to loot. Unlike WoW there was loot I could use, armor, a weapon, stuff, and no food.
I so love looting treasure chests…it’s the reason I play RPG games(mmo or single player). Fight the monster and loot his treasure from treasure chests.
This demo has taught me that Diablo-alikes get even better when they add absurd knockback. The “Hunter” class/skillset has a truly amusing charging super spear attack in the first tier that sends satyrs flying halfway across the screen. This is a good thing.
Greetings:
Finally! I’ve been waiting months for someone to start a thread on this; since I’ve been working with the Iron Lore guys on it, I didn’t want to get into the whole pimping thing.
On the performance side, the hitching that you’re seeing in the undergrounds is actually a memory load; it’s gotten much better, but we had to finalize the demo last month to get it out this early. Considering that the engine was essentially at beta at that point, I think it holds up fairly well. My biggest concern is that we may see some compatibility issues now that it’s in the wild, but better to catch those prior to release than after.
On the item visibility, magic and better items have a little sparkle that goes off (and it’s even color-coded to the rarity of the item), but I’m not sure if that made it into the demo. Items also now highlight when you mouse over them or hold down one of the item-showing keys, so they’re much easier to spot; I know that wasn’t in the demo.
The ambient music has been pumped up a bit, so it’s more noticeable. Again, some of it you just can’t hear at this stage, like the custom themes for certain key areas.
How much the delay timers affect your build depends a lot on what masteries and skills you choose. It was a useful way to give people some really uber-powerful abilities without risking blowing the whole balance of play, but some people may well disagree with that choice.
The Diablo comparisons are inevitable, I suppose, but I think people will get the differences more in the full game. One of the biggest things is the character-development system, which is much more dynamic and allows for some very creative combinations. Since you only get to have one mastery in the demo, and only have access to the first few tiers of skills, you don’t really get the whole picture on how the skills and masteries build off each other.
Glad to hear some people are enjoying it. I know it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but I’m very happy about the way it’s turning out.
Best,
Michael.
P.S. If you’re at E3, stop by the booth. I’ve already seen a handful of Qt3’ers there, but I’m always up for meeting more.
I get the impression from the demo that the game essentially wants to be an action RPG with a flexible, classless character development system, but as soon as I pick one of the skill masteries, I can’t pick any skills from any of the other masteries. This is a simply a demo limitation, then?
Yeah, you can pick two masteries in the full game.
Michael, is the demo the first level of final, or is it separate content?
Greetings:
We don’t really measure things in levels, but yes, the demo is the opening of the game.
In the final version, you can choose any two of the eight masteries (one at level 2 and one at level 8), but you can only choose skills within those masteries. It’s not a classless system so much as a system that lets you choose “classic” or hybridized classes depending on your mastery selections.
Best,
Michael.
Good stuff so far, Michael. Super, super slick. I’m liking what I’ve seen of the character building options, and there certainly has never been a more beautiful looking action-RPG on the PC.
I agree with this. The game pulls out all the stops visually, but the audio side of things doesn’t rise to the same level, at least in the demo. Fighting through mobs of crazed satyrs with a bronze cleaver should sound more… “crunchy” is exactly the word.
All in all, it’s enough to make me take a look at the release version. What’s up with the “Custom Quest” option? Will there be an editor, and if so, how extensive is it?
TQ’s masteries system sounds similar to the dual-class system in Guild Wars. It’s not as neat and flexible as a classless system, but I can have an idea of why limiting characters to two masteries is necessary.
Interesting… Gonna try it out… as soon as I’m done in BWL. :-)
No Starforce on the demo download I hope?
Great demo! Actually this is the first demo I played this year that I was immediately hooked on… wasn’t too impressed with all those critically acclaimed RTS releases. Guess I have simple tastes.
There’s a bit of stuttering at 1920x1200 but that’s not unexpected, and besides the final build may fix it. Otherwise this looks just like the improved Diablo that I always wanted and nobody ever made (on the PC that is).
I noticed that the demo is multilingual – will the full game also feature all languages in all versions? That would save me an import…
Have really been looking forward to the game and got some time in last night w/ the demo. It looks good, plays well and appreciate the lack of load times. Nice job so far! Pretty sure I’ll pick it up at release, especially if the multiplayer is well implemented.
A few issues though:
- It feels a bit sterile. I think the sound is a big part of this, as well as the lack of blood. Also the font, which makes me feel like I’m in Windows.
- Dialog/character text scrolls waaay too slowly and when you click it doesn’t show all text, but skips past it entirely. Almost immediately found myself just clicking through to get to the end and trigger the quest (if they have one).
- A different color exclamation mark for quest and non-quest NPCs would be nifty.
- Hard to tell apart rustry items from copper from bronze/etc.
- It’s easy to miss the chests and such that can be opened. The sparkle just needs to be exaggerated a little more.
- Arrows don’t stick into creatures or your character. Really felt this missing after Dungeon Siege and Oblivion.
- In the chaos of battle, it’d be nice to more easily tell which monster you have targetted. Simply giving them a light outline or changing their opacity slightly would help a lot.
- Along the same lines, doing that w/ items would help a lot too.
- Can’t spin the camera?
Also not to be entirely lazy, but what MP modes will it support? They are disabled in the demo, but i’d assume (hopefully) a nice co-op mode? I"m a sucker for good co-op gaming. Custom quests available in co-op mode would be damn cool as well.
Been looking forward to this game a lot myself; got the demo last night and enjoyed it. A few things:
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Seconded on the no spinny-camera. It /has/ to be there, maybe I just couldn’t figure out the keys for it.
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A “driving” mode - where the camera stays over my shoulder facing roughly forward, would be really awesome. Top-down is good, but since I can zoom in I’d like that to do something other than just reduce my range of vision.
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Second on the cooldowns also. I tried a pyromancer and it seemed silly. I’d cast my flame spell, then melee because I couldn’t zap the monsters again for 5 seconds or whatever. I still ended up killing most things in Hand to Hand despite me being a “mage”.
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Is there an easy way to cycle through RMB and LMB skills?
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Loot is doen awesome. The monsters actually use the equipment they have, so if you find a monster with an srtifact you can see the glowey-badass sword in his hand and he hits you with it, dealing all it’s artifacty effects. I love this better then the Diablo Random Loot.
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Additionally, the “beast” monsters (Board, Birds, Harpies, etc.) drop appropriate things that can be used to augment your armor (Boar Hide, Harpy Feathers, etc.) rather then a snake carrying a mace or other weirdness in Diablo.
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Looks really good. I loved getting a powerful weapon and high damage boosting skill to start tossing enemies around when I was fully “charged”. Knocking things over cliffs and whatnot is hot.
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More character creation options (Hair color, cut, etc.) would be really nice. I know they have to in-game effect, but that sort of stuff is just cool.
All in all, I will definitly get this. Been looking forward to it for a while and the demo does not dissappoint.
Chris Woods
I liked it quite a bit, but my one concern is the level of randomness. Other than the loot there really didn’t seem to be any. I played through a bit as each of the 3 classes included to get a feel for them. Is there any randomness to the game on a map level or a monster population level?
The apparent breadth and depth of the skill system makes me wonder if there’ll be any ingame “respec” option, or if that’ll just be a matter for waiting for third-party character hack tools. I can definitely see getting to a point a dozen-plus levels in when I’ll start second-guessing, I don’t know, going too heavily into one of the first tiers or whatnot.
One preview I read suggested that there will be limited “do over” options to correct or refocus your character.
Troy
No. No. No no no. No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no a trillion times no.
Well, it may be fun if YOU get knockback attacks. I guess I can’t really argue against that.
But try playing Throne Of Darkness’ latter stages. In that game, EVERY attack gets knockback, based on how much damage is inflicted. The end result? Near the end, one enemy spell will send your guys careeming halfway across the world.
It was one of the worst things about that game, and that game was pretty awful in general.