Came expecting a discusion about Titan quest and Diablo...
Arrived with a discusison about Path of Exile Vs Diablo. (srsly OP, I'd complain about users trying to de-rail your discussion)
Path of Exile is awful, it seriously doesnt compete with either Titan Quest 'Immortal Throne' or Diablo 3. Its more on the level of Torchlight. Which imo was just a joke, a studio that had some spare time to make a quick hack n slash.
---
TQ Vs D3
This is tough since we've only seen 1% of diablo, I do agree though TQ is awesome! The class combinations alone are mindboggling, the vast amount of items (you dont even realise how many items there are until you download TQCollector.
And yes, the graphics on TQ do seem better than D3, although I dont think the animations and the effects are quite as good.
Then of course there is TQ's biggest problem, client side items. This makes duping and modding easy, you wont see this in D3 and when you do find rare items in d3 it will be a lot more exciting than in TQ.. esp since you can sell items for real money.
Diablo is Diablo though, its a phenomena, a historical game that will set new records, I was never part of the Diablo 2 history making and Im sure as hell not going to miss out this time.
At the risk of de-railing it even further, what exactly makes PoE awful compared to the others? It's pointless saying sh*t like that without giving any reasoning behind it.
So what makes the game seem so terrible for you?
I can answer that one...
PoE has ugly graphics, just varying shades of red and grey. It has no story at all or if it had one, it was so shallow, i missed it altogether. The towns and npcs are lackluster at best, with no character at all. the monster fighting was 97% crabs and didnt change much from 1 zone to the next. bosses were just bigger crabs.
I bought a beta key for 5 bucks. worst 5 bucks i've ever spent. It would of been much better spent on hot pockets and a can of red bull to enjoy while i played the D3 beta.
I disagree.. POE has the best grahics of any of the Diablo clone games out there. gameplay, atmospshere and graphics its well ahead of D3s cartoon style graphics and schooby doo scary atmos.. only thing D3 has over POE at the moment is the story and lore but then again they have made 2 other diablo games so have a lot to fall back on...
I spend $15 on POE is its the best $15 i have spent in a long time.. I am not saying this because i hate D3 or anything infact i think its realyl fun as well but not as good as POE...
Now the TQ series was also fun adn i agree its better than D3 as well
This thread got me to reinstall TQ and I'm playing an hour or so a day until D3 comes out. It really should of been much more popular, and maybe would have if it was released a couple of years later. There were still lots of people playing D2 in 2006. TQ just slipped under my radar for years.
This thread got me to reinstall TQ and I'm playing an hour or so a day until D3 comes out. It really should of been much more popular, and maybe would have if it was released a couple of years later. There were still lots of people playing D2 in 2006. TQ just slipped under my radar for years.
I guess D2 was why I missed TQ too. I remember a lot of publicity about D2 but don't remember any real competitor to it. Blizz had a pretty successful marketing strategy apparently. TQ seems worth going back to though, even up against D3. I just know it is almost inevitable that Steam will have another 75% sale so I figure I can just wait till then and play PoE for now.
TQ is a very solid filler game when you are sick of D2 and most likely D3. I had more fun with TL combat than TQ but TQ has much more replayability and depth to TL. TL2 may surpass TQ though once the mods come out.
This was my experience with TQ as well. I found its skill trees, dual class speccing to be more in depth than the TL talent trees, but I actually had more fun with TL overall and ended up replaying it much more often than TQ. I am eagerly awaiting TL2.
The thing I really did not like about TQ was all of the hitching and stuttering of the game. I played it on several different computers, so did my brother, and it didn't matter. It stuttered no matter what I did to try to eleviate the problem. D2 had some quirky areas (like once Bhaal was killed) but usually the fps dropped for only a second or two consistantly in some areas. In TQ, it could hitch for quite some time and in random areas so you could not guess when it would happen.
Despite the very many class combos, I found most of the classes drabber to play than the D2 ones. Blizzard's strength is that it always seems to make really good, compelling classes. I don't know if D3 follows suit, but the ones in D1 and D2 were so much fun to play.
TQ is a very solid filler game when you are sick of D2 and most likely D3. I had more fun with TL combat than TQ but TQ has much more replayability and depth to TL. TL2 may surpass TQ though once the mods come out.
This was my experience with TQ as well. I found its skill trees, dual class speccing to be more in depth than the TL talent trees, but I actually had more fun with TL overall and ended up replaying it much more often than TQ. I am eagerly awaiting TL2.
The thing I really did not like about TQ was all of the hitching and stuttering of the game. I played it on several different computers, so did my brother, and it didn't matter. It stuttered no matter what I did to try to eleviate the problem. D2 had some quirky areas (like once Bhaal was killed) but usually the fps dropped for only a second or two consistantly in some areas. In TQ, it could hitch for quite some time and in random areas so you could not guess when it would happen.
Despite the very many class combos, I found most of the classes drabber to play than the D2 ones. Blizzard's strength is that it always seems to make really good, compelling classes. I don't know if D3 follows suit, but the ones in D1 and D2 were so much fun to play.
I definitely agree that Blizzard always makes sure the classes are really fun to play. TQ really dropped the ball there in many cases, but they were pretty ambitious with their dual class system.
PoE has ugly graphics, just varying shades of red and grey. It has no story at all or if it had one, it was so shallow, i missed it altogether. The towns and npcs are lackluster at best, with no character at all. the monster fighting was 97% crabs and didnt change much from 1 zone to the next. bosses were just bigger crabs.
I bought a beta key for 5 bucks. worst 5 bucks i've ever spent. It would of been much better spent on hot pockets and a can of red bull to enjoy while i played the D3 beta."
An absolutely laughable exaggeration, that hardly merits a reply. However, it appears that tens of thousands of people disagree with your ridiculous assessment of POE. They had an "Open Beta" stress test of the game over Easter, which had nearly 50,000 different people play it, despite it still being quite "in Beta" and not being that well known.
In the aftermath of that, they raised over $200,000 in donations in just five days of fund raising, and from what I hear, that total is closing in on $350,000. This is for a first title from a small, New Zealand-based indie studio
There is a deep story in POE, but right now it's communicated through NPCs, lore on Unique items, and on the website. Yes, I know that means you actually have to *read* your lore rather than just listen to it, but good news wrightstuf! They've promised the game will contain full voice overs when it releases. The game also has only two of three planned Acts currently, and Act 3 will contain a lot of those missing story elements. The entire point of the story is that you're abandoned on a desolate beach, without really initially knowing why you're there or where you're headed.
And seriously, can you actually say that you enjoyed the D3 Beta? A boring, repetitous slog through 45 minutes of shallow content with zero challenge or customization? The game has a handful of skills that are basically interchangeable, and all of them demolish your enemies instantly without a hint of danger. Oh yeah, and the loot system is a complete joke, basically a copy paste of WoW's green items, even down to the names of the prefixes and suffixes. As a hardcore ARPG player, there is nothing I like more than a big giant NUMBER on every weapon I find, so that I don't have to take even five seconds to actually figure out if it's an upgrade for me.
POE is a fantastic game, already astonishing in its ambitions and depth, that promises to be perhaps the best game ever made in the ARPG genre when it's done. It's also free, figured I'd mention that too.
This thread does a pretty good job of demonstrating I'm far from alone in my assessments:
PoE has ugly graphics, just varying shades of red and grey. It has no story at all or if it had one, it was so shallow, i missed it altogether. The towns and npcs are lackluster at best, with no character at all. the monster fighting was 97% crabs and didnt change much from 1 zone to the next. bosses were just bigger crabs.
I bought a beta key for 5 bucks. worst 5 bucks i've ever spent. It would of been much better spent on hot pockets and a can of red bull to enjoy while i played the D3 beta."
An absolutely laughable exaggeration, that hardly merits a reply. However, it appears that tens of thousands of people disagree with your ridiculous assessment of POE. They had an "Open Beta" stress test of the game over Easter, which had nearly 50,000 different people play it, despite it still being quite "in Beta" and not being that well known.
In the aftermath of that, they raised over $200,000 in donations in just five days of fund raising, and from what I hear, that total is closing in on $350,000. This is for a first title from a small, New Zealand-based indie studio
There is a deep story in POE, but right now it's communicated through NPCs, lore on Unique items, and on the website. Yes, I know that means you actually have to *read* your lore rather than just listen to it, but good news wrightstuf! They've promised the game will contain full voice overs when it releases. The game also has only two of three planned Acts currently, and Act 3 will contain a lot of those missing story elements. The entire point of the story is that you're abandoned on a desolate beach, without really initially knowing why you're there or where you're headed.
And seriously, can you actually say that you enjoyed the D3 Beta? A boring, repetitous slog through 45 minutes of shallow content with zero challenge or customization? The game has a handful of skills that are basically interchangeable, and all of them demolish your enemies instantly without a hint of danger. Oh yeah, and the loot system is a complete joke, basically a copy paste of WoW's green items, even down to the names of the prefixes and suffixes. As a hardcore ARPG player, there is nothing I like more than a big giant NUMBER on every weapon I find, so that I don't have to take even five seconds to actually figure out if it's an upgrade for me.
POE is a fantastic game, already astonishing in its ambitions and depth, that promises to be perhaps the best game ever made in the ARPG genre when it's done. It's also free, figured I'd mention that too.
This thread does a pretty good job of demonstrating I'm far from alone in my assessments:
Why must every other post be about POE? don't any one hang out in your own forums? I am sure POE is fine for what it want to achieve but itss painting by numbers when it come to game design and thats boring. my opinon.
As somoene who likes Titan Quest. No. No. And, no.
I'm very accepting of other Hack&Slashes but I really don't see how TQ (or PoE, for that matter) holds a candle to DIII. Even in terms of graphics I always hated how lifeless both of those games look. And there were tons of other issues. TQ skill system was really underwhelming. Drops were very strangely balanced with the whole dropping-in-specific-places thing. A lot of stuff felt very awkward and artificial in terms of affixes, such as attack speed. The knockback on enemies you killed didn't help, either.
I just got Titan Quest and after playing the D3 beta it seems Titan Quest has everything D3 has and it even looks better. The skill tress are immense and the game is fully voiced. Titan Quest came out how many years ago? and it can stand toe to toe with D3. Whats that say about D3.
I enjoy TQIT and I do think that the game was ahead of it's years, judging how you needed a pretty damn good computer in those days to play it well. You could make a lot of different characters with all those trees, but it took ages before your build was somewhat finished. I rather have fun from the beginning, then only after 20 hours of playtime.
That said, I really like TQIT. The areas that game has are all awesome. The mythical setting is also pretty damn cool, hell, even Leonidas is ingame There is also a suprising amount of voiceovers in the game, most civilians have 4-6 different sentences, which is pretty awesome.
That said, I don't believe it can stand toe-to-toe with Diablo 3. Aesthetics, gameplay and atmosphere wise I like Diablo 3 more then TQIT. Still I recommend TQIT to anyone who like action rpg's/dungeon crawlers.
i played tq and found it to be too slugish. nothing really made me want to play it further, weak items, weak skills, weak "story" overall mediocre. mages where op btw. As for PoE that some ppl are taunting as a alternative: for christ sake stop it. PoE is like the minecraft of arpg's, the bare minimum that needs to be there so it can be called a game. Oh, you mean that big "skilltree" is giving you freedom of choice? well too bad its a passive tree with no skills involved. Good luck on finding the skills you want cause they drop from monsters at random. its the same mistake sacred made back then. But then again they fixed that in sacred 2.
PoE has ugly graphics, just varying shades of red and grey. It has no story at all or if it had one, it was so shallow, i missed it altogether. The towns and npcs are lackluster at best, with no character at all. the monster fighting was 97% crabs and didnt change much from 1 zone to the next. bosses were just bigger crabs.
I bought a beta key for 5 bucks. worst 5 bucks i've ever spent. It would of been much better spent on hot pockets and a can of red bull to enjoy while i played the D3 beta."
An absolutely laughable exaggeration, that hardly merits a reply. However, it appears that tens of thousands of people disagree with your ridiculous assessment of POE. They had an "Open Beta" stress test of the game over Easter, which had nearly 50,000 different people play it, despite it still being quite "in Beta" and not being that well known.
In the aftermath of that, they raised over $200,000 in donations in just five days of fund raising, and from what I hear, that total is closing in on $350,000. This is for a first title from a small, New Zealand-based indie studio
There is a deep story in POE, but right now it's communicated through NPCs, lore on Unique items, and on the website. Yes, I know that means you actually have to *read* your lore rather than just listen to it, but good news wrightstuf! They've promised the game will contain full voice overs when it releases. The game also has only two of three planned Acts currently, and Act 3 will contain a lot of those missing story elements. The entire point of the story is that you're abandoned on a desolate beach, without really initially knowing why you're there or where you're headed.
And seriously, can you actually say that you enjoyed the D3 Beta? A boring, repetitous slog through 45 minutes of shallow content with zero challenge or customization? The game has a handful of skills that are basically interchangeable, and all of them demolish your enemies instantly without a hint of danger. Oh yeah, and the loot system is a complete joke, basically a copy paste of WoW's green items, even down to the names of the prefixes and suffixes. As a hardcore ARPG player, there is nothing I like more than a big giant NUMBER on every weapon I find, so that I don't have to take even five seconds to actually figure out if it's an upgrade for me.
POE is a fantastic game, already astonishing in its ambitions and depth, that promises to be perhaps the best game ever made in the ARPG genre when it's done. It's also free, figured I'd mention that too.
This thread does a pretty good job of demonstrating I'm far from alone in my assessments:
Why must every other post be about POE? don't any one hang out in your own forums? I am sure POE is fine for what it want to achieve but itss painting by numbers when it come to game design and thats boring. my opinon.
For a lot of true D2 veterans POE is the reference. What they think a new D2 sequel should be like 2012.
People can of course think D3 is good and fun enough to play anyway. Its just that maybe PoE deserves to be called Diablo3 more than Diablo3. And it would be better if Diablo 3 was called "World of Diablo, Small Multiplayer" or something like that.
Perhaps people plan to play both POE and D3? And want to discuss them both.
For a lot of true D2 veterans POE is the reference. What they think a new D2 sequel should be like 2012.
People can of course think D3 is good and fun enough to play anyway. Its just that maybe PoE deserves to be called Diablo3 more than Diablo3. And it would be better if Diablo 3 was called "World of Diablo, Small Multiplayer" or something like that.
Perhaps people plan to play both POE and D3? And want to discuss them both.
Thanks, you just blew my mind. Ppl critize d3 for not being like d2 and here you come and claim that a game like poe that has no skill trees and random skill drops is the real d3. you sir are without a doubt one of those "true d2 veterans". One of the veterans with brain damage.
For a lot of true D2 veterans POE is the reference. What they think a new D2 sequel should be like 2012.
People can of course think D3 is good and fun enough to play anyway. Its just that maybe PoE deserves to be called Diablo3 more than Diablo3. And it would be better if Diablo 3 was called "World of Diablo, Small Multiplayer" or something like that.
Perhaps people plan to play both POE and D3? And want to discuss them both.
BizkitNL posted pretty much above this post of mine what I think of these Diablo 2 "veterans" and "hardcore" players. They wanted a sequel to Diablo 2 so badly, but when it turned out that Diablo 3 would be more streamlined and different in some perspectives, what was the first thing they cried about:
It doesn't look like Diablo 2
It doesn't have talent/skill trees
You can't spend points on leveling up
It's easy.
Diablo 2 wasn't hard in Normal Mode, let alone in Act 1. Diablo 3 looks better then Diablo 2. You can actually *see* something now in dungeons/cave/crypts/etc. Personally I like the drawn/painted style and before people start throwing out the "cartoony" argument: Torchlight and it's sequel are cartoony. Diablo 3 looks more like Guild Wars 2 artstyle, more painted like.
Personally I think that Diablo 3 has a lot in common with Guild Wars 2. In both games you champion gets all the skills at the end. Guild Wars 2 goes a bit further perhaps, with even the endgame gear being the same for the champions. In the end, in both games you can just play the character in the way you want to, without being forced to level again. In no way is this "dumbing the game down".
The absence of skill trees is a logical follow up on this. When you have skill trees and you can just reset them at a small fee, why have them at all? It's just a hassle then. That's why i like the systems of Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2. In Guild Wars 2 you still need to reset you traits at the "trainer", but once your weapon skills and class skills are unlocked, they stay unlocked.
Diablo 3 let's you swith your skills when you want, at the cost of a short cooldown period to balance it out a bit. In the end this system let's me focus on one Barbarian, one Wizard, etc. instead of having to go through the content again and again with a fire sorceress, frost sorceress, etc.
Skill points are something of the past too. Pick out any Diablo 2 guide. Any Titan Quest guide. Put the points in str, dex, int till you can wear everything you want to wear, the rest goes in vitality, HP whatever. Hardly a challenge. I wish they would just removed it entirly, but lacking that, distributing it automatically is fine too.
I do agree with the bit that anyone should just play what they want, but I just get tired of these "veterans" and "hardcore" Diablo 2 players that seem to rage about nothing and concluding that Diablo 3 indeed, is not Diablo 2 Turbo.
People can of course think D3 is good and fun enough to play anyway. Its just that maybe PoE deserves to be called Diablo3 more than Diablo3. And it would be better if Diablo 3 was called "World of Diablo, Small Multiplayer" or something like that.
Perhaps people plan to play both POE and D3? And want to discuss them both.
If you really want a successor to DII of that nature, please play MedianXL or something. PoE is like a worse version of DII that only looks slightly better. If DIII is not a successor to DII (it may not be. I'm not sure I want it to be), DII most certainly was not a successor to DI. Seems to have worked out fine.
There's nothing WoW about DIII at all. It's most definitely a Hack&Slash. Graphics don't make that any different. TL looks very cartoonish but that doesn't magically make it an MMO. Nor is AoEO suddenly not an RTS.
Comments
I disagree.. POE has the best grahics of any of the Diablo clone games out there. gameplay, atmospshere and graphics its well ahead of D3s cartoon style graphics and schooby doo scary atmos.. only thing D3 has over POE at the moment is the story and lore but then again they have made 2 other diablo games so have a lot to fall back on...
I spend $15 on POE is its the best $15 i have spent in a long time.. I am not saying this because i hate D3 or anything infact i think its realyl fun as well but not as good as POE...
Now the TQ series was also fun adn i agree its better than D3 as well
Titan's Quest is an AMAZING game, but in my opinion, was just about as fun as D2 (although not quite as addictive), but isn't near the quality of D3.
Like I said, my opinion. I would HIGHLY recommend it to anyone to pass the time from now to D3 however. It's got an awesome storyline and is epic.
I guess D2 was why I missed TQ too. I remember a lot of publicity about D2 but don't remember any real competitor to it. Blizz had a pretty successful marketing strategy apparently. TQ seems worth going back to though, even up against D3. I just know it is almost inevitable that Steam will have another 75% sale so I figure I can just wait till then and play PoE for now.
Wrong, PoE is poor compared to both TQ and D3. Big fan of both games and PoE didn't last one day on my hard drive once I got into the beta.
Been in the works for a while now:
http://www.grimdawn.com/
I'll be playing D3 for sure, but this game does look a lot darker and grittier than D3 for sure. It looks great.
They just don't have the financial backing to do it justice.
This was my experience with TQ as well. I found its skill trees, dual class speccing to be more in depth than the TL talent trees, but I actually had more fun with TL overall and ended up replaying it much more often than TQ. I am eagerly awaiting TL2.
The thing I really did not like about TQ was all of the hitching and stuttering of the game. I played it on several different computers, so did my brother, and it didn't matter. It stuttered no matter what I did to try to eleviate the problem. D2 had some quirky areas (like once Bhaal was killed) but usually the fps dropped for only a second or two consistantly in some areas. In TQ, it could hitch for quite some time and in random areas so you could not guess when it would happen.
Despite the very many class combos, I found most of the classes drabber to play than the D2 ones. Blizzard's strength is that it always seems to make really good, compelling classes. I don't know if D3 follows suit, but the ones in D1 and D2 were so much fun to play.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
I definitely agree that Blizzard always makes sure the classes are really fun to play. TQ really dropped the ball there in many cases, but they were pretty ambitious with their dual class system.
An absolutely laughable exaggeration, that hardly merits a reply. However, it appears that tens of thousands of people disagree with your ridiculous assessment of POE. They had an "Open Beta" stress test of the game over Easter, which had nearly 50,000 different people play it, despite it still being quite "in Beta" and not being that well known.
In the aftermath of that, they raised over $200,000 in donations in just five days of fund raising, and from what I hear, that total is closing in on $350,000. This is for a first title from a small, New Zealand-based indie studio
There is a deep story in POE, but right now it's communicated through NPCs, lore on Unique items, and on the website. Yes, I know that means you actually have to *read* your lore rather than just listen to it, but good news wrightstuf! They've promised the game will contain full voice overs when it releases. The game also has only two of three planned Acts currently, and Act 3 will contain a lot of those missing story elements. The entire point of the story is that you're abandoned on a desolate beach, without really initially knowing why you're there or where you're headed.
And seriously, can you actually say that you enjoyed the D3 Beta? A boring, repetitous slog through 45 minutes of shallow content with zero challenge or customization? The game has a handful of skills that are basically interchangeable, and all of them demolish your enemies instantly without a hint of danger. Oh yeah, and the loot system is a complete joke, basically a copy paste of WoW's green items, even down to the names of the prefixes and suffixes. As a hardcore ARPG player, there is nothing I like more than a big giant NUMBER on every weapon I find, so that I don't have to take even five seconds to actually figure out if it's an upgrade for me.
POE is a fantastic game, already astonishing in its ambitions and depth, that promises to be perhaps the best game ever made in the ARPG genre when it's done. It's also free, figured I'd mention that too.
This thread does a pretty good job of demonstrating I'm far from alone in my assessments:
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/29092
Not true they will meet their goals through Kickstarter and finish the game in 2013. Can't wait to play it!
Grim Dawn, the next great action rpg!
http://www.grimdawn.com/
Why must every other post be about POE? don't any one hang out in your own forums? I am sure POE is fine for what it want to achieve but itss painting by numbers when it come to game design and thats boring. my opinon.
As somoene who likes Titan Quest. No. No. And, no.
I'm very accepting of other Hack&Slashes but I really don't see how TQ (or PoE, for that matter) holds a candle to DIII. Even in terms of graphics I always hated how lifeless both of those games look. And there were tons of other issues. TQ skill system was really underwhelming. Drops were very strangely balanced with the whole dropping-in-specific-places thing. A lot of stuff felt very awkward and artificial in terms of affixes, such as attack speed. The knockback on enemies you killed didn't help, either.
I enjoy TQIT and I do think that the game was ahead of it's years, judging how you needed a pretty damn good computer in those days to play it well. You could make a lot of different characters with all those trees, but it took ages before your build was somewhat finished. I rather have fun from the beginning, then only after 20 hours of playtime.
That said, I really like TQIT. The areas that game has are all awesome. The mythical setting is also pretty damn cool, hell, even Leonidas is ingame
There is also a suprising amount of voiceovers in the game, most civilians have 4-6 different sentences, which is pretty awesome.
That said, I don't believe it can stand toe-to-toe with Diablo 3. Aesthetics, gameplay and atmosphere wise I like Diablo 3 more then TQIT. Still I recommend TQIT to anyone who like action rpg's/dungeon crawlers.
Shadow's Hand Guild
Open recruitment for
The Secret World - Dragons
Planetside 2 - Terran Republic
Tera - Dragonfall Server
http://www.shadowshand.com
Titan Quest is a good game if u like diablo so be sure to give it a try.
Path of Exile looks good too but all the gameplay videos i saw looked kinda poor
The combat and skill just doesnt feel right, to slow bad animation compared with diablo 3 and titan quest
For a lot of true D2 veterans POE is the reference. What they think a new D2 sequel should be like 2012.
People can of course think D3 is good and fun enough to play anyway. Its just that maybe PoE deserves to be called Diablo3 more than Diablo3. And it would be better if Diablo 3 was called "World of Diablo, Small Multiplayer" or something like that.
Perhaps people plan to play both POE and D3? And want to discuss them both.
Thanks, you just blew my mind. Ppl critize d3 for not being like d2 and here you come and claim that a game like poe that has no skill trees and random skill drops is the real d3. you sir are without a doubt one of those "true d2 veterans". One of the veterans with brain damage.
But that can't be, right? I mean, Its made by Blizzard! Evil! WoWablo! Greed! Bladibla!
Get over yourselves already. Play PoE if you prefer it. I don't care. We'll see in a years time who's who and what's what.
BizkitNL posted pretty much above this post of mine what I think of these Diablo 2 "veterans" and "hardcore" players. They wanted a sequel to Diablo 2 so badly, but when it turned out that Diablo 3 would be more streamlined and different in some perspectives, what was the first thing they cried about:
It doesn't look like Diablo 2
It doesn't have talent/skill trees
You can't spend points on leveling up
It's easy.
Diablo 2 wasn't hard in Normal Mode, let alone in Act 1. Diablo 3 looks better then Diablo 2. You can actually *see* something now in dungeons/cave/crypts/etc. Personally I like the drawn/painted style and before people start throwing out the "cartoony" argument: Torchlight and it's sequel are cartoony. Diablo 3 looks more like Guild Wars 2 artstyle, more painted like.
Personally I think that Diablo 3 has a lot in common with Guild Wars 2. In both games you champion gets all the skills at the end. Guild Wars 2 goes a bit further perhaps, with even the endgame gear being the same for the champions. In the end, in both games you can just play the character in the way you want to, without being forced to level again. In no way is this "dumbing the game down".
The absence of skill trees is a logical follow up on this. When you have skill trees and you can just reset them at a small fee, why have them at all? It's just a hassle then. That's why i like the systems of Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2. In Guild Wars 2 you still need to reset you traits at the "trainer", but once your weapon skills and class skills are unlocked, they stay unlocked.
Diablo 3 let's you swith your skills when you want, at the cost of a short cooldown period to balance it out a bit. In the end this system let's me focus on one Barbarian, one Wizard, etc. instead of having to go through the content again and again with a fire sorceress, frost sorceress, etc.
Skill points are something of the past too. Pick out any Diablo 2 guide. Any Titan Quest guide. Put the points in str, dex, int till you can wear everything you want to wear, the rest goes in vitality, HP whatever. Hardly a challenge. I wish they would just removed it entirly, but lacking that, distributing it automatically is fine too.
I do agree with the bit that anyone should just play what they want, but I just get tired of these "veterans" and "hardcore" Diablo 2 players that seem to rage about nothing and concluding that Diablo 3 indeed, is not Diablo 2 Turbo.
If you really want a successor to DII of that nature, please play MedianXL or something. PoE is like a worse version of DII that only looks slightly better. If DIII is not a successor to DII (it may not be. I'm not sure I want it to be), DII most certainly was not a successor to DI. Seems to have worked out fine.
There's nothing WoW about DIII at all. It's most definitely a Hack&Slash. Graphics don't make that any different. TL looks very cartoonish but that doesn't magically make it an MMO. Nor is AoEO suddenly not an RTS.