Achievements

Hardcore, Level 10

Posted by Peter (Devee) on June 5, 2012
Posted in: Achievements, Diablo III, Journal. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

gem and I have been playing a bit of hardcore mode after finishing our first playthrough of normal. It’s a little dangerous to be doing that with four roommates who may begin to download at any time, but I try to keep an eye on my latency. We reached level 10 recently, which honestly surprised me a bit. Don’t get me wrong; I’m relieved. I just figured our Internet would have dropped or something by now.

We’ve killed Leoric twice now I think. After defeating him, we reloaded at the previous quest to allow us to farm a little before proceeding. Better safe than sorry. I think we might play up to the Butcher and then restart before actually fighting him. I’m also anxious to try out other characters and to push into nightmare on my demon hunter, so who knows what we’ll end up doing.

Good Achievements, Bad Achievements

Posted by Peter (Devee) on May 23, 2012
Posted in: Achievements, Achievements, Blizzard and Battle.net, Diablo III, World of Warcraft. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Achievements offer the chance to look at content in different ways and track progress. Sometimes they’re boring, but often they’re quite fun. Boring achievements might track progress or simply track something that you were going to do anyways. However, fun achievements task you with going about something in a different way than you might have previously or acknowledge that you did something difficult.

World of Warcraft has some boring achievements – Level 10, Explore Durotar, Northern Barrens Quests, An Honorable Kill, etc. These are achievements that really don’t warrant a “grats” in guild chat. There are also some good achievements. Explore Kalimdor, Disgracin’ The Basin, and More Skills to Pay the Bills are a couple examples. There are also achievements that mean you did something very difficult like The Loremaster, 100000 Honorable Kills, Battlemaster, and The Light of Dawn. These are achievements that pretty much require a quick “grats.” Unexpected ones like Going Down? can be fun as can the Glory of the Hero and Glory of the Raider achievements that task you with doing special things during boss fights. Then, of course, there are Feats of Strength, which are not available to all players.

There needs to be a balance between these types of achievements. There should be far less of the boring achievements because they just clutter up the system. It’s nice to be able to check how progressed in the game someone is, and for people who aren’t at endgame, checking their level via achievements could work. However, many of these boring achievements are hardly achievements. They shouldn’t be taken out of the game, but they should be the minority. Achievements should track the cool things you did. They’re things to show off. Feats of Strength are a great aspect to the achievement system in Blizzard’s games. They’re something special even if they’re not particularly hard.

Right now, I see a lot of the boring achievements in Diablo III. This is likely because I’m just beginning. However, it just seems strange to see achievements pop up when I’ve yet to even complete Act I. Let’s be honest here; I haven’t really achieved much. Also, I don’t care when a friend gets an achievement that’s hardly an achievement. Maybe a single progression achievement for each difficulty would be better? That might be going too far. However, boss-by-boss seems a bit much.

I think a better system is to push the profile we see in Diablo III and on the Web for World of Warcraft. There only needs to be an achievement for everything if the achievements are the only way you show off your accomplishments. If they were just one part, along a raid progression graphic like the one above, some of the boring achievements don’t need to exist.

Another thing I’d love to see are custom achievements. The logistics are difficult, but what if they weren’t worth any points and were in their own section? Basically, a little notepad area that’s part of your profile. These could be used to track personal memories you’ve made in the game.

No Longer Languishing in Ulduar

Convinced Lang to go back to Ulduar since I never saw it!

Where’s the Flag?

Played in a Warsong Gulch match over 12 hours after the flag disappeared and never respawned!

Those would be two of mine!

Initial Weekend with Diablo III

Posted by Peter (Devee) on May 21, 2012
Posted in: Achievements, Blizzard and Battle.net, Diablo III. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

On Saturday, gem and I started playing Diablo III. She was going to create a witch doctor but ended up rolling a monk.  I played a demon hunter in the beta, planned on playing a demon hunter, and, well, did play a demon hunter. So far we’re really enjoying the game. The story is much more intricate, and the skill system is different than both Diablo 2 and World of Warcraft. Currently we’re maybe halfway (or so?) through Act I. For those of you playing, we’ve fought the spider queen boss. The screenshot above was taken right after killing King Leoric.

I think the most important thing to consider is whether or not the game is fun, and it has been. I enjoy the visual style, which has a hand-painted look to it. Although different, it reminds me of the background of Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood. Giving Town Portal as a spell that can be cast as often as needed is very cool change. Being able to identify items at will without using a scroll of identification (or something similar) is a cool change, but it makes me wonder why some items need to be identified at all. Is it because unidentified items can be sold (providing a sort of gamble)? I have no idea.

The skill system is odd. As you level, you unlock new skills and runes, which modify skills. Basically, talents and glyphs from World of Warcraft. However, you don’t really make permanent choices. You can make changes at any time with a short cooldown to prevent, I’m guessing, changing choices during combat. You have a maximum of six skills in use at a time once all slots are unlocked. I have some mixed feelings on the skill system, which I’ll talk about in another post.

There were some big improvements to the general social system. Achievements are a cool addition to the Diablo series. While a lot of them are boring, there are some fun ones. I haven’t actually counted or anything, but I hope there are a decent number of ones that are actually achievements. I like achievements that task you with performing a task a certain way as opposed to ones like “Reach Level 10.” Having achievements be account-based rather than character-based seems to work well. I’m sure it’ll be similar in Mists of Pandaria, so I’m glad to find that I’m happy with them. I do kind of wish that we’ll eventually be able to see achievements across games though. I’ve been meaning to post about achievements in general, which, who knows, maybe I’ll get around to doing. Battle Tags are an improvement over the Real ID system but are still fundamentally flawed. I actually have a post on this already written, and it’ll get posted soon. I like that in addition to large toasts acknowledging earned achievements for a player, there are now smaller toasts above the chat window for achievements earned by party members. Achievements are also broadcast to your friends now I believe, which is a cool addition.

While we’ve only played a rather small chunk of the game, I’ve enjoyed it so far. It’s interesting to see Blizzard’s knowledge from World of Warcraft added to the mix and bits and pieces of things to expect in Mists of Pandaria. I’m anxious to try hardcore mode, and I can’t wait to try PVP when they release it!