I'm not saying games don't have issues or that they should be given a pass for bugs. But this isn't a bug. This is a shitty decision on the part of a developer which creates problems that don't need to be there. I think there's a distinction between the two.
And if giving a shield to one of your followers causes your character to become unusable, that's what I would call a showstopper bug, so it's not like D3 doesn't have anything going on there. I just think they could have had a better launch than they did. I call it a clusterfuck not because it's that much worse than anything else, but it didn't really have to be like that.
Anyway, this is nothing to do with the game itself, only the online issue, and while you can't entirely distance one from the other, clearly we've discussed that to death. Perhaps it would be better to leave that for the other thread and leave this one to discuss the actual game. I think everyone has made every point possible from both sides as far as the online junk, and it's not going to change, so like it or not, it is what it is. Either you buy the game knowing these facts or you don't.
Me? I bought it.
WHAT? OMG, HYPOCRITE.
Yeah... kinda. I'm a tool.
Honestly, I couldn't take it anymore. I'd been waiting for this fucking game for so long, I was totally disappointed by basically everything surrounding it over the last year or so to the point where I didn't even like the looks of it or care about it, and then everything changed at launch. All of a sudden the stuff I was seeing didn't even look like the shit they'd been showing before. Turns out the art style isn't really that bad, and from what I can tell, the final product looks almost nothing like the stuff I was seeing before. I mean in practice. It's got some depth and nuance, it's dark, and even if things are a bit more caricatured, it almost works in the game's favor because the tech is pretty unimpressive. The artistry is there... things die and explode real nice, but the game doesn't push your system. I don't even get a hitch.
Except that's not true. I get a lot of hitching because I'm playing online. It's a bit obnoxious to watch the world skip around and stall when I'm not playing with anyone, but like X, I basically lie to myself and say... this is a whole system. It's Bnet. You've got a profile, tons of achievements, a robust framework there that works (I mean when the servers are up, obviously) and is compelling. It's a lie because obviously I'm not in favor of this whole thing going the way it did, but I just had to know if I was going to like the game or not. I watched videos and it looked so different from the stuff I'd seen before, I just had to know. And I had a really bad day yesterday, was bored as fuck, and I've been jonesing for a good action RPG for a while now. I'm still excited about Grim Dawn, but that's next year, and I just wanted something I could pick up, play for a bit, put down.
So I got it.
Yes, I feel like a tool, but I'm beyond the point where I feel like voting with my dollars means a fucking thing. I'm depressed with the state of the industry, depressed with the people who buy games, depressed with a lot of it... but god damn it, at least it's a high-profile PC game. And that's a total cop-out, I know, but I decided in the end I just wanted to know if this was really going to be a great game just beyond all the BS. It was driving me crazy not knowing if the legacy was alive or dead.
And it is great beyond the BS. It's sublime. It isn't perfect, and there are some rough spots, some things that feel cheap or rushed a little (like how you vanish from the world when loading a zone, and how cardboard and artificial zone-loading feels), and it's waaay the fuck too easy so far (I'm playing a monk primarily, though I also have a Demon Hunter and Wizard on Asia and Europe servers to avoid outages, which kept me playing last night), but the game just moves like butter, things die so nicely, and I love (as mentioned) the framework behind it. I'm not one on achievements and stuff to earn points, but I like them in individual games, an ongoing sense of accomplishment. This has that, and it doesn't seem tacked-on or lame. I like the changes from D2 also. Some might not, but I think a change was needed and this feels interesting. I'm curious to see how it will work out later in the game when I've got more options.
So yeah... I'm angry at myself for biting, but it had been distracting me to the point of preoccupation, so I decided to take the hit and be a douchebag. So here I am.
Am I glad I did it? Not really. I have no doubt that I'll enjoy most of my time with the game when there aren't outages or something stupid keeping me from playing it, and if I end up playing with Sy like we used to in the good old days that would be nostalgia city, but I feel guilty for supporting a direction I clearly don't agree with. Again, though, I don't think my contribution or lack thereof ultimately matters, and with nothing else filling this bill right now for me until Grim Dawn... it is what it is. I feel weak, and I guess I am. But so what, I guess. Not like anybody really gives a shit.
So yeah. Battletag Quemaqua1641. We should play and stuff.
