Landmark received a rather large patch yesterday which introduced the Tundra and Old Growth Forest biomes. Â I’ve been waiting to finally be able to have a real forest rather than a jungle-like area.
My group relocated to Liberation -> Channel to the east of the spires. Â We found a nice valley of snow with two flatter shelves of old growth. Â We are also able to place two additional attached claims on to our master claim which triples our usable land.
Several quality of life improvements were added. Â We can now craft plants, rock, and trees from every biome. Â I noticed several new textures as well as new building materials like ice and snow which are in a new tab liquids tab.
The patch wasn’t without its issues. Â Sometimes my materials, like a wooden platform I built, appear all black until I log out or change my display mode. Â Sometimes those are the cause of the black textures. Â It feels random, but we replicated it last night for multiple people.
My building plans in Landmark keep changing. Â Now that I can make trees and have that old forest look I want, I’m going to make a tree village. Â Take a look at the humble beginnings. Â I only placed a few of these trees:
I plan to scale some of them up to be huge and create massive platforms like Kelethin. Â I’ll have rope bridges to different platforms each with their own buildings. Â I’m thinking something like a small pub on one, a living quarters, a garden, and an outdoor social area. Â Just a nice little village in the trees.
I’m hoping Landmark development turns toward the other avenues of gameplay now that building seems to have a lot more proprs and materials. Â I want to get out there and explore underground, find rare resources, and even have a little danger mixed in.
Overall a great leap forward for Landmark’s development. Â I hope they can continue to refine and polish performance, meet their road map goals, and be on track for beta. Â It’s going to be exciting to see a huge new wave of players join us in our adventure.
Looks really good, I will have to get back in and check it out, I haven’t been on in awhile as I have been playing a lot of D3 2.0 patch and banished but the news here for it makes me excited to get back in and try it again.
Graev and I plan to play a lot of D3 when the expansion launches. We want to savor it in all its goodness all at once. 🙂
It is a lot better. I wanted to get some of the new Lvl 60 legendaries to try out before they become obsolete because of everyone being lvl 70. I was glad to see they actually added game changing legendaries and moved away from stacking chc and cd being the only way to do DPS.
The D3 patch made D3 better, but it is far from a good ARPG still. Besides it looking like a Saturday morning cartoon, and the (paid) expansion making all prior time spent completely obsolete… it still suffers from terrible loot distribution and a real lack of depth as far as character customization is concerned. At least compared to other titles available at present.
But that is fairly off topic. I continue to keep an eye on EQN/L. But I don’t really hold any true interest in them as of yet.
you guys should try again marvel heroes. the game is 1000% better than when it was released.
@Drathmar: Yeah, the drive to find those game-changing items is what fueled me to keep going in Diablo 2. I hope they make a different in D3 now.
@Rawblin: D3 was an enjoyable 1 time playthrough for me because it lacked the replayability (mostly from loot and character building) that the other Diablo titles had. I hope this new gameplay mode and revised loot system improve my ejoyment.
@Piticlin I think we will now that Graev has a computer that can run it better. What has changed?
@Rawblin: It is a good ARPG people just refuse to give it a chance due to the initial response and how (admittedly) bad it was when it launched.
1) Besides it looking like a Saturday morning cartoon – This is untrue, at least to me, and even if it was this is something that is completely personal preference and does not have any bearing on whether it is a good ARPG or not.
2) and the (paid) expansion making all prior time spent completely obsolete – This is wrong. Your paragon levels are still completely 100% viable, you don’t have to level 1-60 on characters already 60. Only thing obsolete is the old loot which I don’t see a problem with…
3) it still suffers from terrible loot distribution – Wrong, once again fixed, with the 2.0 patch. Now not only are you roughly guaranteed 1 legendary every 2 hours (can be more or less or at once etc) but the legendaries you find are about 80% likely to be usable by your class, the stat ranges on them are much less extreme so almost all of them are at least useful, same goes for rares, the stat ranges are much less extreme and it’s much easier to get useful rares. Also a lot of the legendaries are game changing. Examples: Kridershot – bow that makes Elemental Arrow a hatred generator rather than spender for DH’s. Quiver (name forgotten) that makes bolas explode instantly. I know the DH stuff cause thats my main but other classes are supposed to be just as game changing if not more so and those are lvl 60 items the lvl 70’s are even better.
4) real lack of depth as far as character customization is concerned. At least compared to other titles available at present.- What other ARPG has character customization in it? PoE… not really, I would argue it has less as every class uses the exact same skills and can get the exact same skills. Torchlight 2… this one I will actually say does, but this one looks more like a saturday morning cartoon than D3 to me and I have other issues with it.
Anyway ya once I get home tomorrow I will be trying EQNL again to see the changes. It looks really nice from the updates.
As for Marvel Heroes: I can not speak about what has changed since I only started playing ~1 month ago but I am having a great time in that game. It is the perfect game to be able to log in for a short amount of time. There are plenty of times when I only have 20-30 minutes to play and this is perfect for that.
Topauz
What has changed in MH? I think the better question is what is the same since last time you played! That game has changed so much it is crazy. I have not logged in for about 3 weeks not but when I do I always seem to have power resets to manage and there seems to be either a new hero or some new mechanic I have to read about.
It can actually be a bit overwhelming if I do not log in frequently enough… god help me next time I log in. I think since my last session they have launched Moon Knight and from what I was reading Dr Strange is about ready to hit the test servers. They sure are adding heroes fast.
@Drathmar
Here goes:
The reason it looking like a Saturday morning cartoon is bad is because it is supposed to be DIABLO. There should be blood and guts and horribly mutilated corpses all over the place, dead babies and potential heroes shoving sharp crystals into their foreheads. Instead, you have a cartoon with mild gore and mildly horrifying ambiance. Not to mention the unicorn rainbow happy place, instead of the cow level (admittedly an inside joke, but still, wtf?)
The loot being obsolete on an expansion is of course a problem. This is an ARPG, people play it BECAUSE they want to farm loot, and make that character amazing. There are infinitely better ways to keep people grinding besides making their previous time spent a complete waste. Blizzard did not learn this in WoW, and it followed through to D3. Paragon levels are kept, sure… but their benefits are minimal. One piece of current gear outstrips the entire bonus you can get to a specific stat from those Paragon levels. Again, this is Blizzard thinking that just slowly increasing all of your stats up to a quadrillion is a really good idea. Why can’t Paragon levels do something fun, like allow you to become a different type of DH? Divergent paths for a class, with new variations of your old skills? Just something I came up with off the top of my head, but I hope it gets the point across… adding small stat increases is boring compared to almost anything else.
As for Itemization 2.0 yes, it is better than D3 was at launch. But so would literally anything be. After playing my old characters for a few moments, I had replaced all of my previous rare items with around +50 to stats, to new rares that gave me +400ish to stats. And thats great, but that was it. Plateau. For legendaries, sure they drop more now. Not a ton, which is fine, they are after all legendary… but the distribution is flawed like I said. Why doesn’t a boss drop them more than a minion? I played heavily for a week after the patch came out. Most legendary drops came from broken containers. I think literally one came from a boss. And there was a scattering from regular mobs. That is broken distribution. A boss is a boss because it is a BOSS. The hardest fights should bring the biggest rewards. The higher difficulty levels should do the same. We noticed no difference farming Torment 1 through 4. The last two legendaries I got on my monk, are right before I quit. The first was a quiver (admittedly a good one) for a DH, though we didn’t even have a DH in the party. The last was a 1H axe with +int on it. I stopped after that and reinstalled PoE for my ARPG needs.
Customization? What does D3 have really? An okay number of skills that can each be slightly modified. Other than that, it is your gear. My friend played a Barb, and was happy with the revamp they did to his abilities and runes. He said almost all of them were changed in some way. I must have lucked out, because both my Monk and Witch Doctor were almost exactly the same as prepatch.
So in summary, yes, I gave it a chance even after its horrendous launch and the completely bass-ackwards take on Diablo that it was. I tried out its patch. I gave it a fair shake. I enjoy ARPGs. D3 simply does not do it for me.
Am I trying to stop others from trying it out? No way, to each their own. People won’t know unless they try it. But I feel that I have taken an objective look at what it offers and found it lacking compared to other options.
@Rawblin: Again I honestly don’t see the Saturday morning cartoon thing. TO me the graphics look like an updated D2. Though once more that is just personal opinion.
You do have a couple of decent points though. Some are still meh though. As for plateauing on rares ya you can plateau on the core stats (vit/dex) but I have already replaces my old stuff once completely except a few really good legendaries and then have replaced 2-3 of those rares on both my Monk and DH.
I do agree Legendaries should drop more from bosses though. That is correct. Same with the torment level, I can agree there. However I have found it doesn’t make me want to play less because I am still chasing those legendaries to try… like kridershot, and bomadier quiver for 5 sentries, etc.
You have the runes for skills now, which they have made more of them viable now. Also you have the new paragon stat point system. To me it’s just as much as PoE because of the fact that in PoE everyone has access to the same “keystone” skills on the same tree and can use the exact same tree, to the point where when they released the scion it was like why be anything else because they can do anything any other class can and reach any area of the tree easily.
Honestly I feel just a difference of opinion here but it is a nice discussion.
Hey Keen, thanks for the update on Landmark. I went back in and moved my claim near yours just to keep tabs on the forest city you will be building. Its just to the east of you, up the hill. Don’t be scared that a crypt and graveyard is by your back door 🙂