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My Main concern was Difficulty
Heres what Blizzard had to say:
Bashiok
Blue Poster
#65 - 2012/04/22 12:09:00 AM
I think it's a symptom of the beta where you're in the part of the game where we're very deliberately guiding players by handing out a skill here, a rune there. It's really a crafted and linear experience to start (both in system introduction and environment) because the first couple hours are the most crucial to a successful and long term experience. We're not in the mindset to drop all of the game systems on you and say "Good luck, sucker!"
To some the approach we're taking is likely a turnoff because they want to feel like they're part of an elite group able to figure out complex and obtuse game systems, and be challenged the second the game begins. I think if they stick with it they'll find that there is a ton of depth and complexity to the game. We put the depth into the gameplay, skill, and decision making itself and not the requirement to overcome the UI or understand how the game even works.
If you're one of those players you're going to blaze through Normal, hit Nightmare, and things are going to start feeling really good for you. You just have to understand that not everyone is like you, and we're making the game so a wide range of people can enjoy it.
Bashiok
Blue Poster
#69 - 2012/04/22 12:18:00 AM
Honestly many people here find the later acts of Normal very challenging (like they can't beat the last boss for weeks on end challenging), but I don't want encourage someone to pull up my words later and say "You said it would be difficult!" 
I'm not sure what additional balancing could happen before release.
This is what Im holding out on. I find it surprising that normal is 'challenging' for most people. I may buy it if it turns out to be more difficult and more open at later levels. Still kind of on the fence at this point. After a few levels on multiple characters and leveling some crafting. I had a bit of fun. Im hoping that after Act1, it gets a little more difficult.
I also looked at the runs a bit. They really do start changing the effects of your abilities. With the dagger-throw ability on demonhunter I was able to stunlock skeleton king. Made it REAL easy to defeat him. Hopefully on harder difficulties hell be immune.
Comments
Watch this also:
Another good explanation of difficulty.
Whenever i step outside, somebody claims to see the light
It seems to me that all of us have lost our patience.
'cause everyone thinks they're right,
And nobody thinks that there just might
Be more than one road to our final destination--
It will be difficult. They have a huge focus on this. Already in the courst of the last 3 builds of beta they have doubled the dps of all demons, increased mob density, added affixes and skills to bosses, and done other difficulty tweaks.
Originally Act 1 was meant to ease players into the game and be incredibly easy. The problem was Act 2 was too high of a difficulty curve and it was like hitting a wall for those who just barely did enough or rushed through Act 1. So they increased the difficulty greatly in Act 1 and made it so it scaled closer to Act 2. There are rare/elite spawns that can kill you quite easily with a standard geared equal leveled char (first play through) and this is a matter of randomness.
Then there are 3 more difficulty levels. People playing the game as their jobs have stated they expect the final difficulty to take months for someone to legitimately beat. It will get hard, and this is a major focus for them so I wouldn't worry about it.
normal mode is not meant to be "hard" ^^
wait till you enter nightmare or inferno or what they call the last one
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
my issue with the linear choice is there wasnt much exploring in the outdoor world in ACT1
maybe I was spoiled by what a "level one" could do in Diablo2
- maps were much more open for exploring in D2
EQ2 fan sites
When you do multiple play throughs you notice how random generated content effects the world. There is a lot of randomness, one playthrough you could have 5 different dungeons/random bosses/events than another. It adds a lot to the game world to take away that linear feel with multiple chars.
So yeah. I guess I finally figured I would buy it. After playing around I noticed that runes do make alot of a difference. And once the abilities/runes level up they add more gameplay. With my demon hunter and the 'chain-gang' skill I was hitting multiple people at once and slowing them.
Im probably going to buy it. Thanks.
As far as i can remember D2 on normal was never hard for me, but then on hard and inferno... thas another story, i hope its the same for D3. About the random generated maps in my first 10 runs i was kinda disapointed because i couldnt find caves or tombs or something to explore rather than cellars or wells, and then on my 11 run i found a cave called den of the fallen or something like that, it was full of bats, zombies and bat spawners and it was just like the D2 random caves.