Ike asked me the other day if I was at all interested in forming a regular hardcore group in Diablo III. I'd been thinking of starting a hardcore character in order to get more achievements, so the answer was yes! The last hardcore group fell apart mostly I think because most of the people involved got bored of Diablo III in general and not because of an issue with playing hardcore. It didn't help that I kept dying, but I figure that was mostly a problem with choosing the squishy class and having never played it in normal. As such, I figure I'm going to play the only class I've really played before, wizard, and see what happens.
So, the question is, does anyone else want to come along? The plan is likely to play a couple hours on the same night each week. Maybe something like 9pm-12pm EST on Thursday? I'm certainly open to suggestions one way or the other. Let me know!
Showing posts with label HARDCORE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HARDCORE. Show all posts
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Diablo III: Hardcore Day 2
When last we left our hero BuffyIV was level 11 and needed to get up to level 20 by the next Wednesday. She had a wide selection of banked gear from following people around in Act II and was seemingly positioned well to make it to 20. BuffyIV even started off light by taking on the Skeleton King quest at level 11 and easily smashed all the way through Butcher and into Act II.
Once in Act II BuffyIV decided to get revenge on the achievement which killed off the original Buffy. Not by charging ahead blindly but by quickly and efficiently mowing everything down between the two cultist lairs. No problem! Achievement earned! BuffyIV was up to level 18 and sailing smoothly when disaster struck!
Wandering into an open area a large number of monsters crested the horizon. BuffyIV knew the situation was going to be dicey so she implemented the brave plan 'run away and shoot backwards'. Or at least, she tried to. Hit tumble, no movement. Shoot forward, no arrows. Hit invisible, stay visible. The monsters had stopped moving at this point and it was clear that some sort of time warp was going on. BuffyIV quickly tried to take the blue pill and leave the world behind but it takes 10 seconds to digest and alas it was too late. The monsters suddenly came to life, teleported beside BuffyIV, and obliterated her in an instant. *sad trombone*
Ok, whatever. That sucked, but it's only a minor setback. I still had three days to go. So BuffyV started off with no gear set aside and no initial free levels. I did have a stockpile of crafting materials and made liberal use of my blacksmith training to stay reasonably geared. I ended up getting to level 17 by yesterday which is within 5 levels of the rest of the team so I was fine as far as staying away from the xp penalty. I also found a good weapon so I was able to contribute positively to the fighting. Hurray!
We got to Belial and I screwed up yet again. I decided the right way to try to live through his meteors was to use tumble to dodge around them instead of trying to time my invisible ability to ignore the damage. I ended up tumbling through multiple meteors that were landing at once. (I just missed diving from the one landing on me and ended up just rolling into another one as it was landing. And maybe eating a third in the process.) Kaboom! BuffyV was dead. Everyone else survived and killed Belial. Rejoining now seemed like a waste of time, so I headed out with the plan of tagging back in once they got closer to level 40. Monks are tougher than demon hunters anyway, right?
I was annoyed with D3, so I decided to go play some League of Legends instead. I waited in a log-in queue for about 45 minutes (playing some Pilotwings while I waited) and when I finally got in decided to check if the Megaman Ezreal skin was live yet. Turns out no. And oddly enough it wouldn't let me buy the existing skins either as it had them labeled with a 'need to own champion' icon, which is weird because I've owned Ezreal for months now.
Ok, whatever. Time to play a solo queue ranked game. Nope, can't sign up. I don't own 16 champions so I can't participate in the draft. Juh? Check out my profile. All my champions are gone. All my masteries are gone. Grrr!
I played a quick normal Dominion game with one of the free champions (Fiora) and then Brent suggested logging out to see if that would make my champions appear. Instead it made the server disappear as I wasn't able to reconnect. Grr!
Ok, no LoL. Back to D3 I guess? It turned out Ike and Snuggles had just started hardcore characters so BuffyVI came to life to join them. I think I got up around level 8 before we broke for the night. I believe Tom, Robb, and Adam are around level 30... Can I catch back up I wonder...
Once in Act II BuffyIV decided to get revenge on the achievement which killed off the original Buffy. Not by charging ahead blindly but by quickly and efficiently mowing everything down between the two cultist lairs. No problem! Achievement earned! BuffyIV was up to level 18 and sailing smoothly when disaster struck!
Wandering into an open area a large number of monsters crested the horizon. BuffyIV knew the situation was going to be dicey so she implemented the brave plan 'run away and shoot backwards'. Or at least, she tried to. Hit tumble, no movement. Shoot forward, no arrows. Hit invisible, stay visible. The monsters had stopped moving at this point and it was clear that some sort of time warp was going on. BuffyIV quickly tried to take the blue pill and leave the world behind but it takes 10 seconds to digest and alas it was too late. The monsters suddenly came to life, teleported beside BuffyIV, and obliterated her in an instant. *sad trombone*
Ok, whatever. That sucked, but it's only a minor setback. I still had three days to go. So BuffyV started off with no gear set aside and no initial free levels. I did have a stockpile of crafting materials and made liberal use of my blacksmith training to stay reasonably geared. I ended up getting to level 17 by yesterday which is within 5 levels of the rest of the team so I was fine as far as staying away from the xp penalty. I also found a good weapon so I was able to contribute positively to the fighting. Hurray!
We got to Belial and I screwed up yet again. I decided the right way to try to live through his meteors was to use tumble to dodge around them instead of trying to time my invisible ability to ignore the damage. I ended up tumbling through multiple meteors that were landing at once. (I just missed diving from the one landing on me and ended up just rolling into another one as it was landing. And maybe eating a third in the process.) Kaboom! BuffyV was dead. Everyone else survived and killed Belial. Rejoining now seemed like a waste of time, so I headed out with the plan of tagging back in once they got closer to level 40. Monks are tougher than demon hunters anyway, right?
I was annoyed with D3, so I decided to go play some League of Legends instead. I waited in a log-in queue for about 45 minutes (playing some Pilotwings while I waited) and when I finally got in decided to check if the Megaman Ezreal skin was live yet. Turns out no. And oddly enough it wouldn't let me buy the existing skins either as it had them labeled with a 'need to own champion' icon, which is weird because I've owned Ezreal for months now.
Ok, whatever. Time to play a solo queue ranked game. Nope, can't sign up. I don't own 16 champions so I can't participate in the draft. Juh? Check out my profile. All my champions are gone. All my masteries are gone. Grrr!
I played a quick normal Dominion game with one of the free champions (Fiora) and then Brent suggested logging out to see if that would make my champions appear. Instead it made the server disappear as I wasn't able to reconnect. Grr!
Ok, no LoL. Back to D3 I guess? It turned out Ike and Snuggles had just started hardcore characters so BuffyVI came to life to join them. I think I got up around level 8 before we broke for the night. I believe Tom, Robb, and Adam are around level 30... Can I catch back up I wonder...
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Diablo III: Hardcore Day 1
We got 4 people on last night to start hardcore characters which is a perfect number since that's the maximum party size. We ended up with a barbarian, a demon hunter, a wizard, and a witch doctor. Robb, Tom, Adam, and I smashed a bunch of monsters and had some good fun. We got into Act 2 when insanity took over. In a misguided attempt to get a speed achievement I took off on a frantic search for the second cultist dungeon in the desert. One bad tumble got me stuck in a dead end with no discipline and completely surrounded by dudes. I did get out of that with a potion chug and finally pooling up enough for a tumble but I was one hit from dead with an army chasing me. I found the entrance to a dungeon which would save me from the masses chasing me down. I jumped in only to discover 5 monsters right at the entrance who killed me before I had a chance to hit a button.
Let's have a moment of silence for poor Buffy the demon hunter. We only knew her for 3 hours and 15 levels but she will be missed.
Losing a party member leaves me wondering what should be done in such a situation for a hardcore team. There are five options that I can see...
I took the fifth option last night. I pretty much died immediately on respawning to terrain (the wall spit poison at me and killed me). I restarted again and died when a lacuni huntress thing jumped on me and one-shot me at level 3. BuffyIV played super carefully and actually managed to survive. Leveling up seemed slower than I expected and I ended up at level 11 with everyone else at 19 or 20. I'm going to (hopefully) get the last 7 levels on my own before next week.
One thing I noticed was I seemed to be getting a lot less experience than other people. I had Robb track his experience gain for a period of time and he'd gained 9k while I'd gained 3.3k. He had some +xp on his gear and I was naked so I thought he should be getting a little more than me but not that much more. I did some poking around and it seems that while you get an xp bonus for fighting higher level things you also get a massive penalty for having a high level friend helping you out. I found an interesting post detailing the level vs mob bonus/penalty. It turns out if you're 6 or more levels higher than the enemies your +xp from gear turns off which is certainly good to know, but it doesn't go into the grouping penalty. In fact there doesn't seem to be any concrete data for that penalty anywhere. Supposedly it kicks in with a 5 level difference and hits a -95% penalty at 10 level difference but I can't find anything verifying that. I certainly believe that something like that is going on since I was getting substantially less than Robb was. Note that quest reward experience isn't penalized and I didn't know about that last night so it's entirely possible most of that 3.3k came from quests.
Given that information I think the option I chose where a new level 1 dude tags in is very flawed. I can see it working if you're still in Act 1 normal but even where we were at the start of Act 2 normal it didn't seem to work terribly well. I was of no use to the rest of the party while causing the enemies to have an extra 75% of base health. The only plus side really is I'd get my share of drops which could then be split to the people who could use them. Catching up is pretty hard and that gap will only widen as the group gains levels. Not to mention that it will be harder and harder to stay alive as a low level hardcore character in higher zones. I believe eventually there's even a minimum level for zoning into higher difficulties so there's no way it would work once the group is in nightmare mode.
That said, what is the better alternative? I like the idea of subs but since there is no effective group communication in the game it actually seems really impractical. Thoughts?
Let's have a moment of silence for poor Buffy the demon hunter. We only knew her for 3 hours and 15 levels but she will be missed.
Losing a party member leaves me wondering what should be done in such a situation for a hardcore team. There are five options that I can see...
- Dead guy is kicked out of the party. Other three people keep playing without him until they eventually die off and then restart everyone from scratch.
- Dead guy is kicked out of the party and someone with an appropriate level hardcore character tags in permanently.
- Stop playing for the night. Dead guy has a week to level a replacement character when everyone will resume.
- Other three people keep playing for the rest of the night. Dead guy has a week to level up a replacement character to tag in next week.
- Dead guy makes a new character immediately and rejoins the party at level 1.
I took the fifth option last night. I pretty much died immediately on respawning to terrain (the wall spit poison at me and killed me). I restarted again and died when a lacuni huntress thing jumped on me and one-shot me at level 3. BuffyIV played super carefully and actually managed to survive. Leveling up seemed slower than I expected and I ended up at level 11 with everyone else at 19 or 20. I'm going to (hopefully) get the last 7 levels on my own before next week.
One thing I noticed was I seemed to be getting a lot less experience than other people. I had Robb track his experience gain for a period of time and he'd gained 9k while I'd gained 3.3k. He had some +xp on his gear and I was naked so I thought he should be getting a little more than me but not that much more. I did some poking around and it seems that while you get an xp bonus for fighting higher level things you also get a massive penalty for having a high level friend helping you out. I found an interesting post detailing the level vs mob bonus/penalty. It turns out if you're 6 or more levels higher than the enemies your +xp from gear turns off which is certainly good to know, but it doesn't go into the grouping penalty. In fact there doesn't seem to be any concrete data for that penalty anywhere. Supposedly it kicks in with a 5 level difference and hits a -95% penalty at 10 level difference but I can't find anything verifying that. I certainly believe that something like that is going on since I was getting substantially less than Robb was. Note that quest reward experience isn't penalized and I didn't know about that last night so it's entirely possible most of that 3.3k came from quests.
Given that information I think the option I chose where a new level 1 dude tags in is very flawed. I can see it working if you're still in Act 1 normal but even where we were at the start of Act 2 normal it didn't seem to work terribly well. I was of no use to the rest of the party while causing the enemies to have an extra 75% of base health. The only plus side really is I'd get my share of drops which could then be split to the people who could use them. Catching up is pretty hard and that gap will only widen as the group gains levels. Not to mention that it will be harder and harder to stay alive as a low level hardcore character in higher zones. I believe eventually there's even a minimum level for zoning into higher difficulties so there's no way it would work once the group is in nightmare mode.
That said, what is the better alternative? I like the idea of subs but since there is no effective group communication in the game it actually seems really impractical. Thoughts?
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Diablo III: Hardcore Night
Ok, Blizzard won't give us communication tools in order to actually communicate with people in game. So I'm just going to throw a plan out there and maybe it'll stick. Who knows...
Wednesday at 8pm eastern I'm going to get on Diablo III and create a level 1 hardcore demon hunter. My intention is to ignore the auction house with this character and just use gear I find/build with the blacksmith. If other people should happen to also create level 1 hardcore characters at the same time and join my game that would be just fine by me. Preferably a barb and a caster so we can use all the stats!
Wednesday at 8pm eastern I'm going to get on Diablo III and create a level 1 hardcore demon hunter. My intention is to ignore the auction house with this character and just use gear I find/build with the blacksmith. If other people should happen to also create level 1 hardcore characters at the same time and join my game that would be just fine by me. Preferably a barb and a caster so we can use all the stats!
Friday, May 11, 2012
Diablo III Hardcore!
I was talking to a guy at work yesterday who was really eager about hardcore mode for Diablo III. He was going to plow through normal mode to unlock hardcore mode and then wasn't going to play any more normal mode at all. I looked into how hardcore mode works this time around compared to Diablo II and found a couple interesting differences...
- You can't set your corpse to lootable by party members. If you die then everything on your body is blown out. This feels more in tune with how I feel hardcore mode should work so I like it. I never liked that playing in a team was so much more powerful than alone.
- Your stash is shared between characters on the same account (making it easier to transfer items) and these are _not_ cleared out on death. So you can store good items you're not currently using and get them in your next life. I like this.
- PvP doesn't result in permanent death. It's not clear if that's all PvP or just the arena stuff. Either way, I like that it's feasible to take a high level hardcore character into a PvP arena.
- You can't sell hardcore loot for real money, sadly. I would think this would be a thriving market since gear actually leaves the game and there's a real reason to twink out.
I don't think I'm going to main a hardcore character but once I get comfortable with the game I suspect I'll dabble in it like I did in Diablo II. Probably even a little more since I really like a lot of the changes.
- You can't set your corpse to lootable by party members. If you die then everything on your body is blown out. This feels more in tune with how I feel hardcore mode should work so I like it. I never liked that playing in a team was so much more powerful than alone.
- Your stash is shared between characters on the same account (making it easier to transfer items) and these are _not_ cleared out on death. So you can store good items you're not currently using and get them in your next life. I like this.
- PvP doesn't result in permanent death. It's not clear if that's all PvP or just the arena stuff. Either way, I like that it's feasible to take a high level hardcore character into a PvP arena.
- You can't sell hardcore loot for real money, sadly. I would think this would be a thriving market since gear actually leaves the game and there's a real reason to twink out.
I don't think I'm going to main a hardcore character but once I get comfortable with the game I suspect I'll dabble in it like I did in Diablo II. Probably even a little more since I really like a lot of the changes.
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