Sacred 3 - Already doomed or courageous new ways of H'n'S-Gameplay?

I don't know how many of you know or even love the Sacred Franchise after all the trouble it went through with it's first really great game that was unfairly called a Diablo II Clone which it absolutely wasn't, developed by Ascaron's Ruf, a german game developer that went bankrupcy a while after the games's release of it's Sequel, Sacred 2, which, in my opinion, wasn't as great anymore as the first Sacred, but anyways managed to live up to the franchise in some ways.

But now I've read the first few pieces of info about the development of Sacred 3, and some of them really seem to kill all the fun, as if the company who's in charge for Sacred now NEvER understood what Hack'n'Slay Games are about.

Some minor points:

- The lead developing platform now is the console, not the pc.
- No Stats anymore and also just 2 Skills at once, pretty much like Diablo III did it
- It's assumed that they still use a preset and not randomly generated world (though this for me isn't such a big thing, some games like Titan Quest for example executed this pretty well)

BUT...and here comes the BIG issue in my eyes:

- There will be NO Equip / Armor / Weapon Loot from Monsters, ALL they drop will be health & mana potions & Gold, you will ONLY be able to buy new equipment in cities and they haven't even decided yet how exactly it shall work.

The reasoning behind this is the most ridicolous I've EVER read so far, they said it's because "It is to uncomfortable to handle an inventory full of loot on a console"

I still have in mind how awesome Sacred 2 worked on the PS3, I also had never any problem with the inventory management there, so I think it's TOTAL BS to bring that up, especially when Diablo III & Torchlight II just have shown us that TOO MUCH change and "improvements" are NOT very welcome and we expect from an H'n'S-Game pretty much the same, just in it's unique phantasy universe!

So, what do you think about this so far planned gameplay changes to Sacred 3? At first, I was really happy that Sacred does return after so many years, but now I really don't want it anymore at all if they REALLY would do the stuff mentioned above.

i never played the first sacred but i did play through sacred 2 and i'd definitely be comfortable calling it a diablo clone, so it's weird that they'd take out the 2 biggest parts of the formula (stats and loot). i don't really have a problem with it because, while i think those sorts of things are a nice sort of comfort food of gaming, there are better ways to depict combat. it just seems like a hard transition to make after sacred 2, which i wouldn't even say was about the combat; it's really about the looting and leveling (and yes, there's a big difference between buying equipment at a shop and finding it randomly after battle).

am i optimistic or pessimistic about it? neither yet. i haven't really seen any gameplay yet and it sounds like a lot is liable to change anyway.

taking out loot in a loot-grind is a bit like taking out aiming in an FPS. Maybe they've figured out something that I'm just not seeing, but clearly they have no notion of the joy of seeing a loot rainbow erupt from the corpse of a defeated enemy.

Anyway, loved the first 2 sacred games. The second was a little unstable at times, but it was worth putting up with to enjoy what that game had to offer. I prefer the sequel, actually, as build options were deeper, including the ability to evolve class specific skills, and the overall exploration was better. Both of them, however, blow away Diablo 3, which is total garbage, imo.

Sacred 2 is such a terrible game. Reminded me of Two Worlds 1, but dumber.

Not interested in Sacred 3.

Sacred 2 is such a terrible game. Reminded me of Two Worlds 1, but dumber.

Not interested in Sacred 3.

ristactionjakso

Sounds like a 1/10 honestly.  Who the hell comes up with that loot system?

If the things remained as Justforvisit wrote ... I`m horrified right now, and perhaps I`ll need a new word to describe my increased state of dread. Platform instead of PC base is disgusting. More commersial than usual and less options for the gamer. No STATS??! What RPG game will that be, I dare to ask? Two skills? Just like Diablo? Diablo 2 was far more Action game than RPG and Diablo 3 was even less impressive than the 2. Impressive movies, yes, definitely, but this was supposed to be a game not ordinary movie. The common traits between both games become disturbing and I`m really afraid for Sacred 3. Since I spent months on Sacred 1 and 2 ,and enjoyed every single hour, the retreat from the good old PC for the benefit of the platforms is ... knife in the back, to say the least. No good will come from it for the game itself and furthermore for the players. No armor beyond the pre-definied one is just one of the cursed platform restrictions that I personally hate along with the strange camera turnings.
Someone really want to kill the PC game branch.