Diablo III Improvements (hopefully?)

So, Blizzard has finally released patch 1.0.4 for Diablo III, and the fans are finally back again to play the game.

And about damn time too.

While my initial impressions of the game were good, that disappeared pretty quickly the moment we reached Inferno mode.

No endgame, ridiculously tough enemies, over-reliability on the Auction House, shitty loot drops and the list goes on and on. I won't bore you with the details.

The game really went to hell when I died huh? -Deckard Cain RIP

The most important thing is that Blizzard has managed to bring back some of the fans with the newest patch: A huge list of buffs to skills (especially the Witch Doctor), modified Legendary drop rates and unique affixes, a new Paragon system for some sense of achievement, and buffed item affixes.

Frankly though, there is still a lot of work to be done to improve Diablo III.

So, here are some improvements that I propose:

Make Nephalem's Valor more flexible

Now, the concept behind this is really good. For every elite mob you kill, you gain this buff which increases your magic find, gold find, and experience gain which lasts for 30 minutes, and gets refreshed with every elite kill. And it stacks up to 5 times.

I died for your greed...and you call us monsters....

Which is awesome, and encourages players to continue to go from mob to mob and get better loot in the progress.

In theory anyways.

The quality of the loot aside (more on that later), there is a limitation on the buff: you cannot change your skills, active nor passive, or you will lose ALL your Nephalem Valor stacks.

Now, the new skill system is different from Diablo II, in that you get access to all your skills, so you can swap your skills to suit the situation, or just for fun or you need some single target spells for bosses instead of mobs....

And, I think you should be able to see the problem here.

A lot of people say that the fun starts in Inferno, which I agree, but the way Nephalem's Valor works, makes it a bit of a pain in the ass, instead of being flexible, now most players have to use similar loadouts, so that they can take on mobs and tough bosses.

Which kinda defeats the purpose of having a flexible skill system in the first place. Though I understand the reasoning behind it, it still feels like its limiting the players' fun.

Why should players be punished for trying out new and fun builds?

Suggestions:

1. Take away only one stack for every skill change, it's less punishing that way.
2. Give us the ability to swap skillsets, that does not compromise the valor stacks.

Fix the Loot

This is quite a biggie, as the loot drop is still a huge problem. The latest patch is just a small step.

I would really like to have this.

There are simply not enough Set/Legendary items to go around all 60 character levels, and most of any good ones are at very high levels only. Hell, even low level Set/Legendary/Unique items in Diablo II still had plenty of uses at high levels due to their unique abilities.

White/Normal items are completely useless as well, they can't even sell for a decent price. At least in Diablo II, the high tier white items could be sold as vendor trash for a high price and can be used in crafting: Charsi the blacksmith could imbue the normal item to turn it into a Rare/Yellow item; a socketed Normal/White is the basis for powerful Runewords and so forth.

Let's not even get into the Gray/Utter-Rubbish-Shit items. I'm not even sure why they're even in the game.

And the complete random-ness of the generated affixes do not help. Diablo III is very gear-intensive, having superior gear is vital for survival and combat effectiveness for all classes. With that as the case, for some reason, class-based gear will roll stats that are completely useless for that class (IE: a Wizard-only hat for some God-forsaken reason will sometimes roll Strength or Dexterity and no Intelligence just to spite you).

And if you were lucky enough to get the exact amount of affixes that were completely suited to your character...you might just find that the numbers are pathetic. Like a level 60 Monk who finds a fist-weapon with 1.5k damage, but only 50 Dexterity, 40 Vitality, 30 Life-on-Hit and Reduced Level Requirement.

Worse still is in Inferno mode. A mode that is ONLY accessible by level 60 characters (mind you, level 60 is currently the maximum level), but for some reason, the level of the item drops for ALL of Inferno mode Act I till IV is ranged from level 51 to level 63.

The Treasure Goblin mocks me because he knows that I will try my best to kill him only to find shit loot.
FUCK YOU TREASURE GOBLIN.

Understandably, you can't make every drop epic, or the game will be too easy (and break their precious Auction House economies), but the range of the numbers and affixes is still ridiculous.

This one probably requires the most fixing, and will be the most difficult to balance, so it will take time to fix. So, here are my thoughts on it.

Suggestions:

1. Find a new system for the White items, such as salvaging or the Blacksmith (who is still Goddamn useless). If Blizzard had time to come up with the Paragon system (which I think was already being planned, but they rushed it out in order to help save the game), they could surely come up with something simple for the White items.
2. Either remove the low range items from Inferno mode, or put a higher minimum value for the affixes for the items. It's damn frustrating to find an epic level 63 item, only to find that it gives you shit values; or finding two level 55 items after defeating the Goddamn Lord of Terror.
3. Remove some of the affixes which are totally useless: Gold/Health globe pick up range, Health Globe, Thorns (only useful for Barbarians and a very specific Witch Doctor build).
4. Give some personalities to the weapon! In Diablo II, elemental damage did something (Frost slows, Poison leaves damage over time, Fire was consistent damage, Lightning has extreme ranges of damage); In Diablo III, they mean nothing, no different from a vanilla +damage modifier.
5. Class specific-items should have class-specific bonuses!! That's the reason the items in Diablo II felt much more powerful. As of now, class-specific items are 90% trash items: can't be used by other classes and the class that can use them won't because of the shit values.

Make the Death Timer Consistent

When you die, a timer pops up before you can revive. Now, this is not a problem usually if you only die say every 10 minutes or so. The timer is usually only 3 seconds long.

However, if a player dies consistently to say...a tough elite mob with really nasty affixes (Demonic Tremors with Horde, Knockback, Mortar and Desecrator)

Nasty doesn't even begin to count it.

But, as you die within a short amount of time, the timer gets longer and longer. Until it can reach a ridiculous 30 second wait.

Which is fucking pointless, as elite mobs now had no more enrage timers and does not auto-heal anymore (thank God for that). So, the point of the death timer is now moot.

Just keep the timer at consistently 3 seconds and players will be happy.

Witch Doctors Need Some Love!

Patch 1.0.4 was a great patch for Witch Doctor players everywhere: pets were buffed to be actually viable again past Normal mode, a lot of skills were given some much needed buffs and base Mana regeneration was increased greatly.

I finally felt like I was having fun playing my Witch Doctor, instead of being punished.

Although I would like to play and/or punish her, if you know what I mean...

This one is on a more personal experience, since I'm playing the Witch Doctor. The Witch Doctor class is a Jack-of-all-trades, with both close-ranged and ranged magic, tank/caster hybrid, and really crazy spells (zombie charging bears, anyone?).

Still, even with the buffs, the Witch Doctor is still a rather tough class to play with due to their design.

First off, they're the only class to NOT have resource generating primary skills, as compared to the other four classes. And, they in fact, COST Mana (the Witch Doctor's resource). To generate Mana, only two runes out of the TWENTY runes for Primary skills can do so, and their damage output is not higher than the other classes. In fact, due to the animation, its usually WORSE. There are other skills which can help with recovering mana, but generally cost more than they can recover, or barely covers the cost.

It really is, in fact, a shitty version of Arcane Power.

You can make an argument for the Wizard, as their Signature spells do not cost them Arcane Power, but does not generate them either. AND Wizards get special affixes which recovers AP with critical hits (provided that you can find them on the right gear). They also have a passive which lets them gain AP when they deal damage with their Signature spells. 

In addition, while the Mana pool increases with every level up, the Mana cost for their spells also increases, so increasing Mana pool sizes does jackshit. And the Mana regeneration is still barely enough for a heavy caster class, though the buff has made the game slightly better.

The Witch Doctor has ridiculously long cooldowns on a lot of their skills, especially the two minute cooldown on the Flayers and Big Bad Voodoo spell. Other classes also suffer from that, but those spells are generally extremely powerful, and is balanced that way. The Witch Doctors....not so much.

Which leads to the next point for the Witch Doctors: their skills still need a large damage buff. Currently, only  the Zombie Charger - Zombie Bear rune does the damage and justifies its high Mana cost. Everything else does rather pitiful damage, or is just too damn situational to use properly.

Some are just utter crap.

I'm looking at you, Toad of Hugeness Rune!!!

So here are a few suggestions for improving the Witch Doctor: 

1. The Mana resource needs improvement. Either the regeneration rate goes up, or the Mana pool increases at a slower rate per character level while the Mana costs stay constant. Or at the very least make their Primary skills cost no Mana or generates Mana.
2. Buff the damage for Witch Doctor skills. It does not have to be a huge increase (although that would be great), simply adding like 20% extra damage would help immensely.
3. Alternatively, reduce or remove the cooldown for some of the skills. Grasp of the Dead comes to mind, it's a decent crowd control skill, but the cooldown and low damage is just too long to warrant a place in the limited skillbar.
4. Some skills really require complete redesigns to be considered viable: Toad of Hugeness is honestly complete crap; most of the Hex runes are quite useless; and some of the passives are rather lacklustre as well (although the passive issue is hardly unique to the Witch Doctor I must admit)
5. Pets are awesome now, although they're not perfect yet, as certain spells still kill them instantly, despite the new patch, and if the enemies has the Reflect Damage affix, the damage gets reflected onto  the Witch Doctor for a world of hurt.

Future Content?

I'm hoping that in the future, whether via patches or expansions, Blizzard will release some of the following, old and new concepts:

1. Runewords: I enjoyed the Runes and Runeword system in Diablo II, it gave a sense of accomplishment whenever I finished building one after finding the runes.
2. Charms: Perhaps they can be given special slots in the inventory page. Having them fill up the backpack with the other items would just make things messy, as there is much more loot in Diablo III.
3. The Mystic Artisan: She was dummied out in the end, but was suppose to be an Artisan to craft amulets and rings, apparently she could also add sockets to equipment.
4. Buff the Blacksmith: He's still damn useless except for early levels. Completely random affixes for bloody ridiculous prices. Either lower the price, or give us more control over what kind of affixes that could come up, even if it means increasing the price or requiring more crafting material. At least we won't feel as frustrated.
5. More dungeons: This one should be obvious, more special events or dungeons for variety.
6. More randomized and larger maps: Currently the maps does not really feel that big, save for a few specific maps, and it's not really as randomized as we would like to think.
7. Necromancer!! : Well, I loved playing the Necromancer in Diablo II, so I would like to see him come back in some form for Diablo III.
8. More Acts and new classes: Comes with the territory of new expansions.
9. Waypoints: Put. More. Goddam. Waypoints. Sometimes I find myself spawning literally half a world away after I die, because the Waypoint did not trigger, or because there was no Waypoint while on the way to my destination.
10. Auction House in-game NPC or function: While I do not use the Auction House for buying gear, I do sell gear on it, but currently once you are in-game, you cannot access it at all. So, I think it would make things a lot easier for players (and not lose our precious Nephalem Valor stacks...).
11. PvP: A lot of people want this, though personally I do not care much for it. But if it makes people happy, then it should be implemented soon. 
12. Offline mode: I hate the fucking lag.

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Currently, I'm happy to say that Diablo III is starting to be better, lots more work to be done of course, but the direction is getting somewhere.

Let's face it, Blizzard fucked up with Diablo III initially, it was fun at first, but it soon became apparent that a lot of things just weren't designed properly, or lacked foresight.

I blame the Auction House actually. It seems that the game was designed centered around it, and as it turns out, a lot of people are not happy about being forced to use it.

I believe that Blizzard should start providing options that does not translate to "spend money on the Auction House to progress". They don't have to eliminate it, but they definitely need to provide much better alternatives.

At any rate, we will have to see what Blizzard does for Diablo III in the future.

In the meantime, I have 95 more Paragon levels to catch up.

Time to boot up Diablo III....

SON OF A BITCH.

The Expendables 2 review

Guns. Explosions. Action. Big names.

Yea, that's about it.

My PC almost exploded from sheer awesomeness.

Some of the greatest action stars ever, in one movie. And it's awesome!!!

Here's a tip: Don't go in expecting much of a storyline, just watch it as it is, a fanservice video for those who love the 80s and 90s action movies.

This is after all, a throwback to that era.

An all-star cast, too bad there just ain't enough time to concentrate on all of them. Most of the screentime is dedicated to Sylvester Stallone, well, it IS his screenplay afterall.

SLYVESTER STALLONE aka Barney Ross

Awesome use of a revolver, and sonofabitch, that guy is buff for his age. Has really good chemistry with Jason Statham.

JASON STATHAM aka Lee Christmas

This man is a KNIFE NUT. I mean, seriously. Most of his scenes involves him shoving or driving his knife into really, really nasty places. For some reason, he keeps threatening to kill Slyvester, and its usually played for laughs.

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER aka Trench

The legend himself. He shares most of his scenes with Bruce Willis, and its a lot of fun. Especially when they start poking fun at each others signature lines.

BRUCE WILLIS aka Church

Still kicking ass. Has an active role this time around, shooting up bad guys alongside Arnold. AND ITS AWESOME.

DOLPH LUNDGREN aka Gunner Jensen

He was quite the baddie in the first movie if you remember, but seems to have mellowed down finally, and is surprisingly funny, in a bit of a gentle (relatively speaking) simple-minded giant sorta way. Turns out he has a degree in chemical engineering.

RANDY COUTURE aka Toll Road

The demolitions expert, the relatively sane man of the Expendables that keeps the team together.

JET LI aka Yin Yang

Has a really really small role in this movie, reportedly because he asked for it, which is kinda sad. His short fight scene was really excellent.

TERRY CREWS aka Hale Caesar

Still has his AA-12 shotgun, a really fucking loud shotgun.

YU NAN aka Maggie

Finally, a girl who can kick ass with the rest of the team. Is brutally efficient.

LIAM HEMSWORTH aka Billy the Kid

Not sure why everyone was against him being placed in the movie, he was pretty cool. A kick-ass former soldier who got sick of the military life. His sniper skills are GODLIKE, he uses an anti-material sniper rifle, and uses it to headshot people on fast moving boats. Wow.

CHUCK NORRIS aka Booker

His introduction scene is epic, and...did he just quote a Chuck Norris Fact??? HOLY SHIT.

JEAN-CLAUDE VAN DAMME aka Jean Vilain

Jean Vilain. A villain. What a convenient name. His performance is surprisingly good, I thought he would go really overboard with his acting, but its actually quite memorable as a monstrous villain.

There isn't much of a storyline of course, but pretty much this movie took the action setpieces in the first movie, and DOUBLED it.

Just the opening scene alone is worth the admission price.

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I watched Total Recall and The Expendables 2 on the same day, but truthfully, I had much more fun watching this than the other.

This is a movie for the fans.

The movie knows that its awesome, and just goes with it. It is corny. It is self-parodying in many ways.

But the movie knows how to have fun, and that makes it a great entertaining watch.

It's not going to win any awards for sure, but hell, it sure is fun.

They love putting skulls on everything.

Total Recall review

Another remake, this time of the classic Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, Total Recall.

Truth be told, they should've just stuck to making an original premise instead of remaking one.

Now the premise of the movie is loosely adapted from the 1990 Total Recall, which in turn was adapted loosely from a Phillip K. Dick novel titled We can Remember It For You Wholesale.

So, in essence, the movie has absolutely nothing to do with the book anymore.

You may be wondering why I'm bringing this up. Well, truth be told, I did enjoy the movie at its core: a sci-fi action movie.

The problem is that the whole movie kinda takes itself so seriously, and the whole movie would have worked WITHOUT the whole secretly-a-double-agent-pretending-to-be-mindwiped-secret-agent angle.

It has a lot of interesting/awesome/cool ideas: The Fall, which connects The Colony (formerly Australia) to the United Federation of Britain (all of Europe apparently), which somehow goes through the Earth's core, I wonder how that works; the synthetic armed forces!!; handphones which are now taken quite literally.

I have a soft spot for mecha.

Colin Farrell is alright as Douglas Quaid, Kate Beckinsale is hot and deadly as Douglas' wife, Lori (DIBS), and Jessica Biel is a pretty face to look at as Melina, a member of the resistance and Douglas' love interest (DIBS AGAIN).

She will probably shoot you and break your limbs after a sexy session.
Totally worth it

Fuck you, Justin Timberlake, you lucky son of a bitch.

I also enjoyed Bryan Cranston (you might remember him as Hal from Malcolm in the Middle) as Chancellor Cohaagen, every scene he was in was a joy to watch.

Oh yea, Bill Nighy was in the movie as well. For like a total of 5 minutes, then he was killed off. What a waste.

While I did enjoy this movie, I felt like:

1. It's a completely unnecessary remake, it brought nothing new to the table. The premise may have changed, but the storyline sequence is EXACTLY the same, which actually made the movie boring for me.
2. It had a very interesting premise, with the two territories on Earth left habitable; The Fall being seen as an economic and sociological symbol of oppression etc etc. The problem was that none of it were really ever explained properly nor given time to shine.

In my opinion, the movie is rather disappointing, I was hoping for something new, some twist in the storyline or a new angle to look at the whole "it's all in his mind" debate, or lack thereof, since its played straight that it's NOT a fabricated memory at all.

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So, what can I say about the movie? Well, frankly, it's a disappointment, and a bit boring at times.

It has plenty of action scenes, some cool gadgets, and a potentially good premise, but ultimately its all wasted because they're trying to force in the storyline of Total Recall.

If this movie were given a different, more original storyline that makes better use of the premise, it probably would've turned out a lot better than this jumbled up mess that we currently have, running in the cinemas.

On the other hand, THREE BOOBIES!!!!