Diablo III: Reaper of Souls

Discussion in 'Games, Gaming & Game-demos' started by MrH, Feb 14, 2014.

  1. MrH

    MrH Guest

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    After Diablo's defeat, Tyrael recovers the Black Soulstone that contains the essence of all seven of the Great Evils. Knowing it is too dangerous to leave it in the hands of mortals or angels, he and six Horadrim take the Black Soulstone back to Sanctuary and attempt to seal it away where it can never be found. However, the group is ambushed by Malthael, former Archangel of Wisdom and member of the Angiris Council, who had disappeared after the destruction of the Worldstone twenty years earlier (at the end of Diablo II: Lord of Destruction). Now calling himself the "Angel of Death", Malthael kills all but one of the Horadrim and incapacitates Tyrael, and takes the Black Soulstone in order to end the Eternal Conflict (the war between Heaven and Hell) once and for all by destroying humanity, which Malthael views as a race of demons (in light of their combined angelic/demonic origins).

    What's new?

    The Mystic - This frumpy old lady adds a considerable amount of customization to your hero. Her primary function is "Enchanting", enchanting allows you to re-roll one stat into another, you can re-roll the stat as many times as you want, but you can only re-roll one stat per item. Her secondary function is "Transmogrification" this allows you to change the appearance of your items, anyone who has played WoW will be familiar with this feature. As you level up The Mystic she will automatically unlock white items which you can use for transmog, but to unlock the "coolest" looking items you must loot them first to use their appearance, once you've unlocked the appearance you can sell or salvage the item, you do not need to keep it in your stash.

    Increased storage - Reaper of Souls adds one new stash slot which you can purchase with gold, hoarders and squirrels rejoice!

    Adventure mode - This mode is separate from the campaign and is where you'll spend 99.9% of your time in RoS. Adventure mode allows you to travel freely across the world, in adventure mode you'll also have access to "Bounties", bounties are side quests with specific goals that earn you gold, Blood shards (more on those later) and experience for completing them, you also earn "Rift Fragments", these fragments are used to open "Rifts". Rifts are completely randomized dungeons, with a random boss at the end that has a chance to drop a Forgotten Soul (which is used to enchant legendary items), Blood shards and if you're lucky, a legendary item. Rifts provide a truly unique experience every time.

    The Crusader - Reaper of Souls adds a new class, The Crusader. He is a holy warrior, much like a Paladin. He must use a shield and can use either a 1H or 2H weapon with it, to use a 2H he must use the Heavenly Strength passive, which allows The Crusader to use a 2H + shield at the cost of 15% movement speed. With a mix of mele and ranged attacks, The Crusader is a versatile powerhouse.

    Act 5 - Reaper of Souls also adds a new act. Act 5 is said to be the same length as act 2. When playing through act 5 you'll notice a much darker and more "Diablo like" feel to it, the developers have made a big effort to bring the feeling of previous Diablo games back and they've done a great job. The overall design of this act is quite possibly the best so far.

    Gambling - Gambling returns to Diablo with the NPC "Kadala", she will trade you unidentified mystery items in exchange for Blood Shards, which you collect from completing Bounties and Rifts. Most of the time you will get magic and rare items, but there is a small chance to get a legendary item from her.

    Guilds - Guilds have been added to the game. Guilds currently have a limit of 120 players and are meant to be small and close nit affairs. Whenever someone in your guild finds a legendary item it is posted in guild chat, which is a pretty cool feature IMO and will no doubt spark conversations when someone finds a perfect item.

    Communities - Communities have also been added to the game, unlike guilds communities have no player limit. I'm sure you will see Guru3D, Reddit and NeoGAF communities on day one.

    What's changed?

    The Auction House - Both the Real Money Auction House and Gold Auction House have been removed from the game.

    BoA - All items of worth are now bind on account, which means you can't trade them to anyone. The items currently set as BoA are gold, legendaries, gems and crafting mats. This effectively kills free trading, the only exception to this is if you're in a party with a friend and an item drops you can trade it to them for up to 2 hours.

    Loot 2.0 - Possibly the biggest change in RoS is the loot system. "Smart loot" is now active, this caters drops to the class you're currently playing, while it's not applied to every drop it is applied often enough that you shouldn't find too many items that aren't meant for your class. The quantity of drops has been reduced, while the quality of drops has been greatly increased. Now when a legendary item drops you should get excited, because there's a good chance it'll be an upgrade, as opposed to being worthless 99.9% of the time like in Diablo III Vanilla.

    Paragon 2.0 - Another major change is the Paragon system, no longer is it capped at 100 but instead you can earn an infinite amount of Paragon levels, plus Paragon levels are now account wide. Also, instead of earning a mixture of primary stats, MF and GF every time you gain a Paragon level you instead earn a Paragon point which can be spent in one of four categories (core, offensive, defensive and utility), this allows you to customize your hero however you like, need more crit? No problem. Need more life on hit? Done.

    Media:

    Reaper of Souls opening cinematic
    Reaper of Souls gameplay teaser
    Reaper of Souls features trailer
    Reaper of Souls adventure mode teaser

    Collector's edition:

    The collector's edition comes in two flavours, boxed and digital. The boxed edition comes with everything offered by the digital edition, plus a few extras.

    Diablo III: Reaper of Souls PC/Mac Game DVD ROM [Boxed]
    Behind the Scenes Blu-ray/DVD Two-Disc Set [Boxed]
    Reaper of Souls Soundtrack [Boxed]
    The Art of Reaper of Souls [Boxed]
    Malthael Mouse Pad [Boxed]
    Diablo III: Spectral Hound Minion & Aesthetic Artifacts [Both]
    World of Warcraft: Treasure Goblin Pet [Both]
    StarCraft II: Crusader Portraits & Malthael Decals [Both]

    Where to buy?

    Amazon EU - Standard edition | Collector's edition
    Amazon US - Standard edition | Collector's edition
    Blizzard store EU - Standard edition & Digital deluxe
    Blizzard store US - Standard edition & Digital deluxe

    Release date: March 25th 2014

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    Last edited: Feb 14, 2014
  2. JonasBeckman

    JonasBeckman Ancient Guru

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    Looking forward to this and the update to the base game shortly before the expansion is released, I'm no hardcore player though and am mostly interested in story and lore so I've played pretty casually, always online isn't helping either though I play it solo much like I do with Path of Exile.

    Stopped playing after beating the game once (normal difficulty of course.) which was after a few weeks and I didn't play the game that often so I'm still only around level 41 - 42 in Nightmare which I'm only doing to get some better equipment.
    (Getting better loot is nice, had to use the gold auction house a few times however due to the low drop rate of good gear though now that is being closed alongside the real money auction house though loot is apparently improved in this upcoming update.)

    (Also when last I resumed I pretty much breezed through the area I was in so the game must have become much easier since my original play through of the game.)

    Might try the crusader as well if I have the time for it, going through the game again isn't very attractive though but it might be fun to try this new class at least.


    EDIT: That said seeing the beta screenshots and such I'm very impressed by those that can take a new character from first level to sixty in ten to fifteen hours.
    (Or stand grinding the same annoying boss for hours just to get that 0.1% drop chance unique or set item, though as I understood it that usually happens with a full team of players and muling or trading or what it's called.)
     
    Last edited: Feb 14, 2014
  3. MrH

    MrH Guest

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    I didn't really touch on this in the OP but levelling is very different now. Mobs will now scale with your level, which means you can level wherever you like. The biggest change is you don't need to complete the campaign four times now. To unlock adventure mode you need to play through the campaign once (then it opens up for every character). Doing Rifts and Bounties in adventure mode will be 100% more fun than replying the story over and over, or farming the same area until your fingers bleed.
     
  4. JonasBeckman

    JonasBeckman Ancient Guru

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    That's a relief for more casual players like myself then, great! :)
    (A year or so more of playing and I would probably have reached hell difficulty, maybe. :p)
     
    Last edited: Feb 14, 2014

  5. MrH

    MrH Guest

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    Damn, when you said causal you weren't messing around :D
     
  6. eclap

    eclap Banned

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    Nice thread mate, really looking forward to this!
     
  7. MrH

    MrH Guest

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    Thanks. I was hoping to add a little RoS hype to the forum. For me Blizzard have done a fanatic job with RoS, they've fixed all the issues I had with D3V and then some.

    Just a reminder, Blizzard will be doing another wave of beta invites in the next few days, so keep an eye on your inbox (and spam folder).
     
  8. MrH

    MrH Guest

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    There have been a couple of updates from Blizzard:

    Patch 2.01 is "around the corner": Click me!

    Reaper of Souls Clans and Communities: Click me!

    It's nice to see that the Blizzard launcher is out of beta and will be mandatory from patch 2.01 onwards, if you haven't used it yet you'll love it, it's really great.

    With these updates RoS is starting to feel real, only 5 weeks to go!
     
  9. MrH

    MrH Guest

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    Wings of Valor confirmed as a pre-order bonus: Twitter

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  10. Darren Hodgson

    Darren Hodgson Ancient Guru

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    Same here. I never played the first two Diablo games but I really enjoyed the third even though I played it entirely solo and have no interesting in playing it with it with others. Ever.

    What irritated me the most about Diablo III though was the laggy, jittery framerate as a result of it being constantly online. Even now the game still isn't as smooth as it would be had it used an offline mode. Diablo III certainly doesn't run as smoothly as Path of Exile on my setup. I never once used the Auction House either; absolutely hated everything that stood for and refused to use it to "cheat" my way through the game. Everything I've used in the game to finish it three times has been what I've found myself and I just reallocated it amongst my characters.

    I am very much looking forward to Diablo III on my PS4; having played the PS3 demo, I actually prefer playing the game with the controller as the direct control gives it a more action-RPG feel akin to the superb Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance games on the PS2 and Xbox.

    I wil also get Reaper of Souls for my PC as well but it's a shame the developers didn't put more effort into the game in terms of content. I was hoping for a new four Act storyline not just one that adds 25% more content. :(
     

  11. MrH

    MrH Guest

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    I don't want to chew you out but I really hate it when people say something like this. They have basically rebuilt the game from the ground up and improved it in every way possible, while also including a lot of new content. There's only so many hours in the day and I for one feel they've done an amazing job with RoS. You can't just look at what's new, you also need to think about what's changed. The story mode plays such a little role in RoS, you do it once and that's it, so 1 new act is fine, especially when you look at how beautiful it is, it's by far the best designed act so far.
     
  12. eclap

    eclap Banned

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    They never add more than 1 act. Anyway, any news on patch 2.0 release date?
     
  13. MrH

    MrH Guest

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    2 weeks
     
  14. Repo Man

    Repo Man Ancient Guru

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    I got a Wizard, Barbarian and a Demon Hunter at level 60 but for the life of me can't decide which to play when RoS comes out. Pretty sure the Wiz is out because I was never overly keen on the playstyle personally. I like the DH but it being a ranged class its always gonna be a bit of a glass cannon to some extent. This makes the Barb a strong contender but I always play the warrior type in rpg's which is getting a bit boring :p
     
  15. eclap

    eclap Banned

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    Crusader, surely
     

  16. Repo Man

    Repo Man Ancient Guru

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    There is that ofcourse but that would mean levelling from scratch again and I think I'd prefer to dive straight into the new act with one of my "mains".
     
  17. Darren Hodgson

    Darren Hodgson Ancient Guru

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    Sorry but if you've played the original game for 160 hours like I have then new levels take priority over anything else. And many of the changes are to make the game what it should have been in the first place!!! If it had then RoS might actually have been a decent expansion with at least two new Acts or even three.
     
  18. eclap

    eclap Banned

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    You can go 60 in a few hours, I'm definitely going with crusader, also because whirlwind barb just won't work anymore.
     
  19. eclap

    eclap Banned

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    D2 also only had one new act. Nothing new here.
     
  20. MrH

    MrH Guest

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    I've played D3V for over 600 hours and I feel one new act is perfectly fine, we were never going to get more than that.
     

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