marksman in demo = super simple fps?

[Karazax]

I know the demo is very limited to what you see in the early levels, but I found it to be pretty boring honestly, and this was a game I was looking forward to. There was next to no challenge as you could strafe any thing fired at you and easily kite any group of monsters while shooting. I kited one of the "boss" mobs around a table until he died. No ammo to worry about, no real aim required, and most of the meelee mobs moved so slow there was no real threat of them reaching me. In fact I never needed to even use the class skills to kill mobs and in many cases they were worse than the default attack because they force you to stand still.


Anyway in comparison to diablo 2 for example, ranged classes have to stop to fire at all instead of being able to run backwards and fire at the mobs or strafe and fire. In addition classes like amazon had to get arrows, which while not a huge deal, did cut into inventory for other things. My initial feeling playing the demo was one of playing thru Doom on super easy mode.

Oh and if the brightness is not properly lowered it gets even easier as a marksman to see enemies at range, which may be besides the point in enjoying the game, but will have an effect on the ease of farming loot with this class.


I was really hoping to enjoy this, but I will have to see alot more positive reviews to consider it now.

[KellionBane]

Its the first few stages its supposed to be easy. Later you come across lizards that pounce on you, flying squids that teleport on you... And of course there's always "ELITE" mode if you pay for it.

The stances are a big boost as well once you get some decent weapons; they often let you mow thru a level much faster than if you didn't bother to use'em.

[Credge]

Since you're comparing D2 to Hellgate, lets examine the type of monsters we fought in both.

The first thing you probably fought were zombies. You know, slow moving, brain dead, one hit kills. Then, we moved on to those jumpy things you find in Act 2 of Diablo. Still brain dead, still one hit kills.

This doesn't change in the demo much like it didn't change in D2 until Act 2 (sometimes earlier, sometimes later depending on the gear you found). If you're going to make a comparison why don't you fully make the comparison?

Come on people. It's a demo. This isn't like a demo for peggle where you know exactly what the gameplay is going to be like on each level. Demo's are simply there to give you an idea of things, not to show you the big picture.

Is this hard to grasp?

[Mendax]

Of course it's easy, it's the demo. The demo only encompasses the very beginning content designed to be easy while you're learning the game. It does get harder.

[Karazax]

no i fully realise that it is the demo and that things are supposed to be fairly easy on the first levels of most games. That being said the first level of the average first person shooter or diablo 2 is easy, but still presents some level of challenge or threat of dieing for the average player who has never touched the game before. I rarely even got hit by a mob, and it wasnt like I was playing at some uber skill level or doing anything special other than strafe shooting ranged mobs and running backwards while firing vs meelee mobs (if even necessary, most could be easily taken out from max range without moving).

[Eckos]

Marksman in the demo is overpowered. Simple as that. I upgraded one of those rifles, and have never died. I'm still going to get the game, but all games are super easy in the beginning, with the exception of a few like the Call of Duty series on Veteran difficulty.

[VON]

it's like saying d2 is supereasy because you got to play in Blood Moor & Cold Plains and you never died, so the rest is probably easy aswell.

Ofcourse it's easy, you just started out, same thing in most other games( take lvl1-5 in wow for example, booooring)

What i paid most attention to in the demo was the atmosphere and items and such, already spent 10+ hours playing this demo looking for better loot and trying different skills.....enough said.

btw first post! :p

[Syko-Samuri]

The demo stops basically after the tutorial (right when you get to Convent Garden Station).... it is really EASY.... it gets progressively harder as a game should and can get REALLY difficult.... at about level 15 sometimes you'll walk into a room that looks empty, then get zerged from the sides, and die all within a few seconds but that was me playing as an evoker...

[Karazax]

it's like saying d2 is supereasy because you got to play in Blood Moor & Cold Plains and you never died, so the rest is probably easy aswell.

Ofcourse it's easy, you just started out, same thing in most other games( take lvl1-5 in wow for example, booooring)

What i paid most attention to in the demo was the atmosphere and items and such, already spent 10+ hours playing this demo looking for better loot and trying different skills.....enough said.

btw first post! :p

Actually it isn't the same because you actually had reason to use class skills at early levels in D2 and the first time you every played D2 running in the Cave had some risk of dieing if you weren't careful or didnt know what you were doing. D2 and WoW are easy early on, but they aren't nearly as easy as this demo because you had to stop to shoot if you were a ranged class, rather than being able to shoot while simultaneously running from mobs. Imagine how over powered amazons would be if you could run backwards away from mobs while shooting and you get an idea of what the marksman in the demo is like.

I am open to the idea (and even hoping) that the game will improve significantly at later levels, but that doesn't change the fact that the demo was boring as a marksman.

[Blaze]

WHAT?!?!

When was the last time you played an RPg, its called LEVEL 4! You cant do much at level 4 but the FPS mode is great. Yes its simple because you only have a couple skills.

I LOVED the Marksman demo, buying the game oct 31!

[Blaze]

Also skills are very useful, even the lv 4 ones.

Grenade (ricochet them off walls to kill enemies in adjacent rooms).

Sniper Stance (or w/e its called) Hello +7% (level 2?) crit on both weapons, also more accurate shooting. If they get to you you stand up obviously and run back.

Napalm - Only tried it once but it seemed pretty cool

Escape - Nearly dead? Use Escape and run back to gain some ground

Rapid fire (or w/e) Enter a room FULL of mobs? Well accuract wont matter much because you will always be hitting 1 of the mobs or another. Use Rapid Fire!


Maybe we are playing different games?

[Godzilla3232]

Ummm, no. In the Diablo 2 demo there was pretty much absolutely no risk of dying. I found this games demo to be far more difficult then the Diablo 2 one. I died twice in this demo because I wasn't paying attention to kiting the bosses as I should have. Bag of Bones was actually pretty fast, and difficult to kite in those narrow hallways and small rooms.

Diablo 2's demo I could have finished while in a coma.

[Karazax]

Also skills are very useful, even the lv 4 ones.

Grenade (ricochet them off walls to kill enemies in adjacent rooms).

Sniper Stance (or w/e its called) Hello +7% (level 2?) crit on both weapons, also more accurate shooting. If they get to you you stand up obviously and run back.

Napalm - Only tried it once but it seemed pretty cool

Escape - Nearly dead? Use Escape and run back to gain some ground

Rapid fire (or w/e) Enter a room FULL of mobs? Well accuract wont matter much because you will always be hitting 1 of the mobs or another. Use Rapid Fire!


Maybe we are playing different games?

I'm not saying they had no effect, im saying I was able to beat any encounter easily without using one of them. I only used them to see what they do, there is no need to escape when the risk of death is zero. there is no need for increased accuracy when you can kill every enemy at range without it. there is no need for increased crit when every enemy dies at range without it. Enter a room full of mobs? Strafe and shoot, run backwards and shoot if needed and they will all die without needing rapid fire. Anyway I hope the full game is better, but the demo was boring.

I died twice in this demo because I wasn't paying attention to kiting the bosses as I should have. Bag of Bones was actually pretty fast, and difficult to kite in those narrow hallways and small rooms.
Try kiting him in circles around a table, it's pretty easy.

[Pernicious]

First few levels and demos in general are supposed to be easy, so as not to frustrate. You'll notice the blademaster is just as easy.

[bobfish]

Better comparison...

Marksmen in demo to Blade Master in demo!

Well? Is it super easy as a BM too? Of course it is.

I don't envision the game being very difficult for anyone with a few brain cells, Diablo 2 wasn't hard until you up'd the difficulty and the same applies to 99% of FPS games and RPGs.

Want a challenge, subscribe, get a group together and hit it on Elite.

Want a realy challenge, do the above and no have a Guardian.

[chakkerz]

The marksman is overpowered. Playing that class i never once died. And once you get that grenade launcher rifle (the one with an area effect of fire ... sorry i didn't catch the name) its a pure cakewalk. As the other class after having finished the demo three times, i managed to get myself killed ... twice (at the very end). Although i agree, as blade master it was hideously simple as well. but Diablo 2 doesn't get difficult until the end of act 1 (say three quarters) and act 2 isn't that hard to start with either....

This game is soooo much fun. I can't wait to play it proper.

[pighunter101]

wow, your amazing. you can play the demo and already make huge jugements on the games difficulty, and the usefullness of skills. please next time lets think before we talk. and actually use some game time to provide proff for these cut downs.

[ty1134]

Even if you got through the whole game and it was easy, and it is not, there is hardcore and elite mode, for the ultimate challange, you die once you are dead forever, and all the enemies are a lot tougher and a lot more of them.

[Bells]

I know the demo is very limited to what you see in the early levels, but I found it to be pretty boring honestly, and this was a game I was looking forward to. There was next to no challenge as you could strafe any thing fired at you and easily kite any group of monsters while shooting. I kited one of the "boss" mobs around a table until he died. No ammo to worry about, no real aim required, and most of the meelee mobs moved so slow there was no real threat of them reaching me. In fact I never needed to even use the class skills to kill mobs and in many cases they were worse than the default attack because they force you to stand still.


Anyway in comparison to diablo 2 for example, ranged classes have to stop to fire at all instead of being able to run backwards and fire at the mobs or strafe and fire. In addition classes like amazon had to get arrows, which while not a huge deal, did cut into inventory for other things. My initial feeling playing the demo was one of playing thru Doom on super easy mode.

Oh and if the brightness is not properly lowered it gets even easier as a marksman to see enemies at range, which may be besides the point in enjoying the game, but will have an effect on the ease of farming loot with this class.


I was really hoping to enjoy this, but I will have to see alot more positive reviews to consider it now.

Ever played the D2 demo?

[TSS]

well of course you can finisht he demo without using skills. show me a MMO where you can't level 5 levels *without using skills*

fact of the matter is that using skills i can half the time i need to clear a room of regular mobs. doesn't matter that i can do the same without it, thats just slower and boring.

i can kill everybody in cs with a pistol, i can finish diablo without ever using a single skill, and it's not hard to try and not die in battlefield. point is i'm going to die alot, be frustrated alot, and the game sucks from my oppinion. now you tell me, did you have any fun at all using the skills, when you did? yes? well the game must suck then!.. oh wait...

[Ydiss]

I'm not saying they had no effect, im saying I was able to beat any encounter easily without using one of them. I only used them to see what they do, there is no need to escape when the risk of death is zero. there is no need for increased accuracy when you can kill every enemy at range without it. there is no need for increased crit when every enemy dies at range without it. Enter a room full of mobs? Strafe and shoot, run backwards and shoot if needed and they will all die without needing rapid fire.

Anyway I hope the full game is better, but the demo was boring.


Try kiting him in circles around a table, it's pretty easy.It's possible to smash the first 10 levels of D2 without using a single skill, too. What's your point?

I recall spending the first few levels of my D2 career basically bludgeoning every single mob into dust and I only really used my left mouse button. Even once I had a huge grasp on the game and knew the exact build I was aiming for, I still needed only to use one type of attack for about 12 levels, as my skill points were being spent to cater for my future build.

I think you're being incredibly naiive if you think that strafing around a table, backing off and simply using one attack type will get you anywhere near the end of this game as a marksman.

Just for a moment consider how much damage your primary attack does in D2 in Act I. Quite a lot huh? Well then consider how much damage your primary attack does in Act V Hell with no assistance from other skills...

Now you're getting the picture. Leveling curves are the basic bread and butter of any RPG game. It's actually the core element of almost all story-based games ever created.

To base the potential difficulty of the game on your uncovering of these tactics to simplify the game into a mundane exercise, across only a tiny portion of the entire game as a whole, is showing an extreme level of short-sightedness.

You might be right; kiting might well require tweaking later on to prevent making the marksman too easy to play. I'm almost certain that there will be things like slower backwards running added in at a later date.

But until we have played the game we don't know if that will be required. I mean come on! What happens when you are faced with a set of mobs that can fire off extremely rapid ballistics at you? What happens when they can root you in place? What happens when they make you run slower with their abilities, or any other effect we have yet to encounter?

You need to think outside of the box a little.

[Hannibal]

By the way, I heard the summoner and engineer is even more "easy". As the pets can do most of the work for you. You have little risk of dying as the mobs go for your pets.

[Tetris L]

I, too, was disapointed by how easy the demo was.

Its the first few stages its supposed to be easy.

Yes, the first few steps are supposed to be easy. But nobody postulated that the demo must comprise (only) of the first few steps. A demo is meant to be a teaser, to water people's mouthes, to get them hooked and interested for more. And as such it should offer at least a preview of what is ahead in the more advanced areas of the game. A glimpse of the "real" game. Therefore, the demo should offer a bit more than just "the first few steps", and at least a little bit of a challenge.

[Sp3tSnAz]

By the way, I heard the summoner and engineer is even more "easy". As the pets can do most of the work for you. You have little risk of dying as the mobs go for your pets.

That's how it usually is with pet classes though... where they find it hard is more near the end of the game where while they can solo it takes them a bit longer than the other classes...

However it mite be different in HGL for the sheer fact that the Summoner and Engineer can use guns to help their pets so they can keep getting better even when skills are maxed...

[Ave]

Hmm it seems many on this forum have become master theorists, who can, from playing a level 5 cap demo postulate as to the difficulty and challenge level of the entire game including hardcore, elite and nightmare...

Thats impressive ;)

Seriously though im not saying we all have to like the demo, i did personally but i totally
agree it is too short and and should give a third class to play with.
But to judge the whole game on the first five levels of play is utterly ridiculous
I cannot think of one rpg game ive ever played that wasnt outrageously easy up to lvl 5 and in
many cases beyond, seriously i cant.

To use D2 as an example some acts were much easier/harder for different classes.
Act 3 on nightmare and above was a bugger for barbarians.
Hell level bone doll bosses anyone.. ouch :(
Where as early act 5 (the expansion) was easy for melee characters

Back to HG:L, i think you are being rather naive if you believe that it will be easy as
a marksman.
Of course its widely accepted any ranged class is generally 'easier' to play than pure melee
but they have the donwside of once swamped they tend to break rather easily as their skills
arent good at close quarters..
So i urge you, don't judge the whole game from 5 levels of play... come back in a few weeks
and ifs its still easy then we can talk about this.

[Shayera]

*snip* ... 5 levels of play... *snip*

5 level? Beta goes up to 22 (and some are rumored to have managed more than that). ;)

[Ave]

5 level? Beta goes up to 22 (and some are rumored to have managed more than that). ;)

Yeah thats as maybe but i believe the op was commenting on the demo... hence the
title "marksman in demo = super simple fps?"

And anyway even if the Beta was easy (which from what ive read it isnt, as every
beta tester has said its much harder) that isnt the final build of the game anyway

The thing to remember for all is the word DEMO

As i say if in two weeks we are all playing hardcore elites and never dieing, then
im sure a patch of death will be applied post haste :)
But frankly i cant see that happening, D1 and 2 had great pacing in terms of difficulty
so im hopeing HG:L will to

[Shayera]

Yeah thats as maybe but i believe the op was commenting on the demo... hence the
title "marksman in demo = super simple fps?"

... and i was thinking about the 'master theorists'. :rolleyes:

The demo is more like a walk in the park, and i understand this thread more like a question if the game itself will stay this way... It doesn't, as (almost) everyone can find out in the Beta.

So the referrals to the Beta are not so wrong here... ;)

[Jelek]

I liked the earlier comparison to the blood moore in DII. It definitely felt exactly like that to me on both of my demo toons. Basically everything is a cake walk then you get to Blood Raven (in this case bag of bones or w/e his name is) and you actually have to move around but still, no real challenge.

Not too long afterward you start running into things that require a bit of thinking and or movement/strategy to defeat but once again, you're still very early in the game and at this point, you could well be saving all your skill points and just melee things to death or shoot them, depending on your class.

Now, I've heard good and bad from Beta testers and I'm not one to truly pass judgment until I've played myself but I feel like Flagship deserves the benefit of the doubt here. The game has promise at the least and (imo) it's certainly worth buying just to play through yourself. I won't be subscribing right away as I'm still on the fence (both about replayability and my own monetary situation IRL) but I will know for sure come release whether or not HGL is deserving of the fee.

My advice to everyone else who is really in doubt, unless you've sunk a lot of time into the beta already, pick up a copy and see for yourself what the game is like before you decide it's just some ezmode fps. After all, no matter how convincing someone else's opinion is, it's just that, an opinion of theirs. Your results may vary.

[afotch]

/agree with OP

For those in the Beta what game level would you say the Demo is....certainly not Elite Nightmare...Normal?

Afotch

[Karazax]

To update I got in the beta, and while it is more entertaining than the demo, that isn't hard to accomplish :P

Now I "only" got to level 10 with a summoner and at least I had skills that were worth using, but the game is still insanely easy. To put it in perspective I have a skill called blood link that takes some of my life and gives it to my pets... The problem with it is that using the skill once takes away more life from me than enemy mobs do clearing entire quest lines.

In comparison I just picked up both Titan Quest and it's expansion for $30 and I have died quite a few times, and find the need to use potions pretty frequently going from level 1 to level 8 as an Oracle. I also have found the Titan Quest skills to be more consequential than the Hellgate skill tree so far, with different skills making for significantly different play styles. I'm not saying Titan Quest is hard, but there is an appropriate level of challenge even at the very beginning created by the fact that your gear is absolute garbage. There is a reasonable challenge and threat of death, where so far in hellgate I have found none. I can't even imagine how easy it would be if I had twinked gear and an optimal skill tree in Hellgate.

Hellgate does offer some entertainment, but feels more like a user made mod or a $20 discount title rather than something Blizzard would release, much less consider charging a monthly fee to access features that other games provide for free.

That isn't even considering the memory leak bug if you play on Vista, which would be easier to dismiss as a beta problem if the game wasn't going to be on retail shelves in 5 days.

[Ave]

I wont sit and defend the Beta cause i havent played it, but the Demo is ok tbh
It's great gameplay wise, just far too short. I personally don't see what all the dissapointment is about from people, its pretty much exactly what i expected (the game not the demo)

And while i respect everyone's opinion, the fact you liked Titan Quest leads me to believe we are not singing from the same page in terms of what we like.
I loved Diablo 2, played it an unhealthy amount.
Titan Quest was ok at best, had no depth or originality to it though and the skills sucked imo.

As for D2 i (and this is no boast or me thinking im special) me and many others no doubt, got through the whole of Normal with skill points unspent, working with only found gear, and more importantly without dieing except for occasionally against Diablo himself cause of that silly lightning ability and lag.

In D2 i saw normal difficulty as a an exercise in weapon and skill point gathering to be ready for the real game on Nightmare and Hell levels.
And i think HG:L could be the same
Also bear in mind you have probably seen less than half the game, and remember the ramp up in difficulty from Act3 D2 to Act4..!

Anyway just my opinions, i'll certainly be buying it