Time Capsule from PoE Closed Beta -- a classic PoE vs D3 thread circa 2012

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Reznorz wrote:

Yeah diablo was great before they made it am arcade pay to win albatross to satisfy wall street. POE wins in every possible way, including my own personal moral philosophy of pay to win games. From ban hammers for third party pay to win to openly supporting pay to win in the ui and from dark and gritty to pastel water colors and 1980s gauntlet arcade combat to console streamlining diablo 3 simply lost me along the way as a supporter and buyer.

Having said that... Without an option as top notch as POE I might have fallen victim to the hype machine...

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

Re The Tristram theme: give 'Echoes of War' a look, if you haven't already. It's very good, but their take on Tristram, and indeed, Diablo 1-2 all up, is a highlight. The orchestra that recorded it also did the Diablo 3 overture/trailer music. The two cd product was an official venture between the Eminence Symphony Orchestra and Blizzard, but was poorly released. Shame, it's very good music.

I LOVED the caves music from the original. I'd never heard electric guitar used so wildly in a game before, so piercingly. And the moans. Wow. It's HOT down there.

re last act in Heaven: that's nice. D2's last act was supposed to be in Hell. Look how that turned out.

re this topic: all aspects of D3 and PoE and any other related games should be welcome for discussion. I made it VERY clear in my first few posts that I cared about the story of Diablo, and by extension I believe the game wouldn't have been good without it.

After all that, I'm still not convinced there isn't some generic hollywoodisation, if we can use such a term, of Diablo, just as there was some of Starcraft, which dramatically changed course story-wise between Brood War and Wings of Liberty's conclusion.

EDIT: I recall now that my time with Diablo 1 was before the mp2/mp3 explosion, and I always, always had the music on. Any wonder it affects me like this. Still, I always leave the PoE music on too...strange, that. Starcraft I typically muted and listened to my own music, and the same with Wc3 and some MMOs. Path of Exile might not be Uelman, but...there's something going on there.

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

Let me address point 2, without completely vindicating Diablo 2 either.

Diablo 1 had a fairly young but not exactly attractive warrior. I got the impression he'd seen his share of battle, but wasn't exactly a 'knight'. The sorcerer was bald and frail, enough said there. And the rogue was probably the youngest, but even she had a certain seasoned, weathered look. Especially if you go back and look in the old D1 manual. She had angular cheekbones, narrowed eyes. You did not want to mess with her at all.

Diablo 2 gave us the paladin, who wasn't that young but certainly idealistic. Then came the necromancer -- oh, you wonderful pasty-faced loser, you. Hard to tell his age, but again, I didn't get 'cool' or 'hot' from him. The barbarian was youngish, and possibly younger than the D3 counterpart, but he was also pretty threadbare and ragged. The sorceress is the hardest to defend -- definitely scantily clad, arrogant, a bit of an uppity pup whom I felt Akara always wanted to slap around a bit. The druid was ugly, period. And the assassin was the beginning of the fan-service. We wanted Natalya as a playable character, we got her. Although the assassin did have a terrible haircut and a deep voice.

Equally important is that at no point did any of the armor these 5-7 wear really become all that visually impressive. We can put that down to the graphics of the day, yes, but even the concept art was more 'creative' than fan-pleasing.

Diablo 3 requires twice the analysis, because it has gender switching. So here goes:

Barbarian, male: older than D2's? Absolutely. But let me tell you who he reminds me of more than anything: Edge Master from the Soul Calibur series. If you're not aware of who this is, Edge Master was and is an impossibly old warrior with the face of a 60 year old on speed and the body of a 30 year old on steroids. It's a very COOL design.

Barbarian, female: pretty ugly, all told, but acceptably so. Better looking than Brienne of Tarth in Game of Thrones, at any rate, so it's clear the current generation has no trouble with fairly unsightly women playing the role of the party's muscle.

Wizard, male: Oh dear. Now it's started. More than slightly Asian in appearance, with that silly haircut straight out of a Chinese wu-xia flick. From the character description, the wizard is a rebel, eschewing study and lore (which the Sorcerer of D1 Vizjerei venerated) for raw ability. The wizard is to other spell-casters of Sanctuary 'what a lion is to a kitten'. Goodness, that's *cool*. He's fairly good looking and his armor progression goes from unwizardly to extremely unwizardly and ending up at, oh what a surprise, very shiny indeed. Plate and flowing capes. Pffft.

Wizard, female: quite like the above, only with even more skin revealed and even more arrogance. Cue hot young protagonist number 2: now with 100% more rebellious attitude and scorn for tradition. As if this hasn't been an old way of appealing to the younger generation for...generations.

Demon hunter, male: Firstly, I actually had a hard time finding good screenshots of the demon hunter male because everyone screenshots the female. Go figure. Okay. So. Hood? Check. Young? Check. Mysterious, slightly omniscient expression? Check. Glowing eyes? Check. TWO CROSSBOWS AT ONCE? CHECK. Ladies and gentlemen, we have COOL. I used to joke that John Woo's 'Red Cliff' epic about an ancient chinese battle would feature someone dual-wielding crossbows, because the man makes *everyone* dual wield guns, but that didn't happen. Thankfully, Blizzard 2.0 took up the challenge of dual crossbows, spat in the face of all realism and made it happen. Excellent. Armour progression for the male demon hunter goes from scant to fairly functional to stupidly heavy and spiky. Cool.

Demon hunter, female: All of the above with tits and an exposed midriff. Cool, and then some. Armor progression much the same, equally illogical, equally cool. She's going to be flipping around in full plate. Of course.

Witch Doctor, male and female: I give Blizzard 2.0 a break here, because although I despised Kurast and Kehhistan with a passion, these two are well-designed homages to the flayer shamans. The armor progression even makes sense, gaining animal skulls and other primal adornments. Thumbs up, Blizzard. That's cool..and not a bad cool, either.

Monk, male: bit of an anomaly, this one. Admittedly, that beard is a big not-cool. Big. But damnit, he's fists, mystical power and...more fists. That's cool. Fighting the hordes of Hell...with your bare knuckles. Sort of. Lots of projected damage and waves of force and stuff. COOOOOL. Armor progression is acceptable. But only because he gets prayer beads.

Monk, female: The biggest failure of them all. First of all, she's blonde and pretty hot. Seriously? A hot female monk? Not even the female monks in Guild Wars were that attractive. Some were cute, but HOT? Naturally, she has all the skills of the male, so no need to examine that other than to say such martial and supernatural prowess only makes her much, much cooler.

...So there you have it. Point number 2, explored in-depth. Diablo 1 gave us three pretty unattractive would-be heroes, cut from a rough cloth but hey, looks don't slay demons. Diablo 2 went for a bit of variety and for the most part managed not to stray too far from the series' core aesthetic of rag-tag wannabes turned world-saviours. Diablo 3, in my most humble of opinions, spits all over that with its rather attractive, almost perfect offering of either young, hot-headed rebels with flawless skin and super powers or impossibly well-built old men who don't even have the balls to let their balls hang on. And the witch doctor, who is very nicely designed but reminds me of the jungle in D2, and seriously, fuck that place.

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Erevos wrote:

all this criticism...

The thing that really bothers me is that you found only WD as a positive and in the end you don't like even that cause it reminds you the jungle of D2...

And that thing bothered me because you like PoE that has: a Templar an old man that can become a super sorcerer or a brutal killing machine, or a bow expert,
a Ranger a Blondie short female that can become a bow expert, a brutal killing machine or a super magician,
a Witch a bloody young girly with a rag for clothes that can become a super sorcerers, or a brutal killing machine, or a bow expert
a Marauder a tainted brutal figure that reminds big guys killers from movies that can become a brutal killing machine, or a super sorcerer, or a bow expert
and lastly we have the Duelist a young red shirt guy that can become everything too.

GREAT deep chars!!

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

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Erevos wrote:

all this criticism...

The thing that really bothers me is that you found only WD as a positive and in the end you don't like even that cause it reminds you the jungle of D2...

And that thing bothered me because you like PoE that has: a Templar an old man that can become a super sorcerer or a brutal killing machine, or a bow expert,
a Ranger a Blondie short female that can become a bow expert, a brutal killing machine or a super magician,
a Witch a bloody young girly with a rag for clothes that can become a super sorcerers, or a brutal killing machine, or a bow expert
a Marauder a tainted brutal figure that reminds big guys killers from movies that can become a brutal killing machine, or a super sorcerer, or a bow expert
and lastly we have the Duelist a young red shirt guy that can become everything too.

GREAT deep chars!!

Sorry if my opinion of the Diablo 3 characters bothers you. I was merely elaborating on something else I'd said earlier, namely that I feel the basic character design/personality has changed drastically since D1 and has become more hollywoodised, as Tagek put it.

You missed the point (People seem to be very good at that sometimes) because I never once said that the Path of Exile characters were a) deep or b) underpowered. I fully acknowledge that they're shallow and crazily overpowered.

But they are not COOL.

Thank you.

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Tagek wrote:

First of all: Game of thrones is the best series ever made.

Now that that's out of the way:

The sorceress the assassin and the amazon are all 'pretty girls' in tightly dressed / revealing clothes. Maybe diablo 1 didn't have these types per se, but that was only because of the limited tech / classes at the time.
As for some of the other classes, you are right, the demon hunter especially has been made very 'cool' and hot.
At the same time though, every game does this these days.
It's simply how things work.
Take path of exile for example. The ranger is a hot young lady, not some rugged survivor covered in scars.
The best example in POE is the witch.
When I think of a witch I think about an incredibly old, hunch-backed lady with an ugly pointy nose.
POE's witch is a young woman who could just as well star in a L'oréal commercial.

As for the armor sets. I'll talk about these per class.

The barbarian ones are awesome, big, bulky and tough looking.

The demon hunter has some cool ones and some bad ones.
For example, the female version wearing the Tier 15 armor
which you can see here at 2:50 simply looks really really awesome. Imo they should just make that one the final tier for DH.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z783Ttu2BU&list=FLz65V9RZGPtI5zbmaFt3Gow&index=18&feature=plpp_video

The wizard has the ugliest sets of them all, but regardless of armor sets I would like to give blizzard some credit for making her asian, as for 'hotness' in mind, a blond or brunette wouldve done miles better among the younger crowd.

The monk. This is the guy I will be playing (that or barb) when the game comes out. His armor looks kind of cool and monk-ish, but not everywhere. I'd say this is the hardest class to make armor for because it has to be relatively simple, but also badass. Which is very hard to achieve given that he'll be viewed from a zoomed-out top-down perspective.

And finally the witch doctor. Like you said, he's just.. epic. His armor matches his class perfectly and also manages to look really really sweet in almost every single tier. Great job on this one.

Overall I think blizzard did what needed to be done.
I'd attribute the lack of true badass endgame gear in diablo 2 more to lack of time / effort than to an idea of roughness really. This time they wanted to give each character their own feel and identity through armor.
I also think if blizzard had made all the armors very rough and wild looking, people would have complained that there aren't more badass looking armor types available.

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Erevos wrote:

you are trying to say something that is just for the show, i mean in D2 Paladin was wearing green pants, Amazon had her butchicks out, Druid was like Tarzan and assasin was like a leather mistress plus in D3 we have the addition of genders and this can not be compareable cause previous games didnt have them.

yes in PoE they arent COOL (ranger & duelist looks COOL) they just forgot to wear pants

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

Monk, female: The biggest failure of them all. First of all, she's blonde and pretty hot. Seriously? A hot female monk? Not even the female monks in Guild Wars were that attractive.