Back to D2R from D4

General Discussion
141

I have not played D4 in 9 days now. None of my friends is playing any longer.
The itemization is horrible. Most builds are boring. There is zero teamplay in D4.
Also the trading in D2 is so much fun at ladder starts.

However, I must admit, that I fear for D2R. If the devs of D2R continue with this “mosaic” runeword introduction, that game will be over very quickly. I would even
vote to rework it at least. That kind of gameplay is not Diablo2.

D2R has huge potential, still after all these years. Just think, that the next patch would completely rework uniques and sets. How amazing would that be?

  • Tyraels might with teleport, Unique weapons that actually do some damage, introduction of new alternatives instead of cheap items that are BiS (spirit RW, etc.).
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142

You’ve been hit by. You’ve been struck by… fomo hype.

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143

unfortunately, i think the best we can do is imagine. this dev team has fixed things that didn’t need fixing, broke things that didn’t need breaking. took them 8 tries to patch -lit to work with assn traps. introduced TZ and never tweaked them. added sunder because HAMMER PALLIES are too strong (???). ummm… mosaic? what is that item even.

so yes. let’s continue to just IMAGINE what it would be like if this dev team had half a brain cell and listened to the community instead of doing whatever they eff they want and never looking back. they are useless if you ask me. more than. they took a masterpiece of a game and ruined it within 2 years.

144

Continually playing more D2R than D4. Yesterday I logged in and did a NMD in D4, then got bored and logged out. Played D2R for a couple of hours, had fun. Enjoyed myself.

I’m not even sure exactly what it is that makes D2R so much more appealing to me than D4. My buddy who’s known me since 2009 says it’s nostalgia. I said it’s got to more than that… Right?

I don’t want to dump on D4, but I think after some introspective analysis, the scaling itself coupled with loot feeling very industrial turns me off from D4 a lot.

Loot in D2, for better or worse, has character. The Bonecrusher Maul was a BAMF piece of gear early on, and still is for many melee 2h builds. Occy with its Occy warp just oozes character. Death Web? Well it’s arguably the BIS for poison necros right?

I just can’t get invested in the loot for d4 because frankly it bores me, which means I have little incentive to try to “increase” my power in D4 especially when leveling decreases it instead.

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145

There’s no way it’s just nostalgia. Blizzard North focuses on putting wooden beams down first. ActiBlizz starts tossing everything in at once, and when there’s a structural problem with the doors being 5 feet high, ActiBlizz says “hmm… I know, let’s try changing the carpets”.

I played Diablo 1 yesterday because D4 actually made me appreciate Diablo 1 and 2 a lot more for their itemization.

The games outdated, but there’s something rewarding about hack and slashing 1 monster at a time, you can feel the impact of each death from the death screams, the death animations, etc. D4 has no soul. The monsters just ragdoll away. The monsters are large for the sake of being “big and scary”.

Yeah Blizzard North actually put effort into their item design. Griffin’s Eye, Death’s Web, Mang Songs’ Lesson. Those are legit.

Meanwhile ActiBlizzard: Greaves Of The Empty Tomb, Staff Of Endless Rage, Fists Of Fate.

These guys aren’t even trying to create a Diablo game.

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146

:clap:

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147

The statement “it’s purely nostalgia” is commonly used by people who never played D2 or played it for 2 hours in 2012 for the first time as their friend tried to get them hyped for D3 launch.
The few memories I still have from playing pre LoD and further into LoD launch I will always cherish, but what has kept me playing D2R almost without break since it’s launch is amazing visuals on top of the perfect game for me.

Unique and interesting itemization, the concept of “oh shi- I found X item that makes me want to level up X class!”, how 1-2 item(s) can unlock a whole build and take it from C tier to S+, the slot machine aspect of loot: 1) finding the right base 2) having it roll desired rarity 3) getting optimal stat rolls 4) having it roll with eth/non eth 5) right amount of sockets… I mean just picture yourself picking up an unid eth Tomb Reaver and you already have a good example as to why this game is so gripping.

Skills aren’t super complex, rotations aren’t hard, your goal is either to play a C tier build on P1 and have fun challenging yourself or destroy P8 with one of the cookie cutters, depending on your preferred playstyle.
Point is you get to choose.
The game isn’t balanced and that’s how we like it served.

People who don’t understand how we keep sticking with this game are often from a younger generation, or simply players who’s taste in gaming has been shaped by other types of games where constant balancing, pruning, fairness in competition is essential. The same people usually scream “nerf grief/enigma” stating they’re too OP while they don’t seem to realize D2 isn’t a MMO or FPS. You don’t have to use these items.

Games have all gone in the same direction for a long time.
X class is broken, must fix. X class is unplayable, must fix.
X class doesn’t have X ability, which is unfair, so let’s give everyone X ability.
I played WoW for many years until I felt like I had the same toolkit on every class.
Now every game is like this.

Pewpew no damage builder ability into BOOM big spender much wow!
Can’t wait until the cooldown is gone and I can go boom again.
Oh great, the game made sure I found this item that is perfect for my build with no randomness on stats and when I level up I’ll get to find a better version again and again!
Can’t wait to reach lvl 80 so I can return to the same mobs I killed at lvl 30 and still have a challenge amirite.

Games today lack randomness, diversity, creativity in the player’s hands, the right kind of slot machine and rewards for actually becoming stronger as you level up.

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148

There are those who don’t know that they don’t know, and because they don’t know that they don’t know, they maintain their downward spiral of producing crap.

Who is Blizzard Entertainment?

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149

Well said.

I saw something absurd in the D4 forum today. Some guy wrote something along the lines of “D4 outsold D1, D2, and D3 combined” as if that insinuates that D4 is a masterpiece work of art, and instead not produced by a shady salesman selling cow manure as tooth paste.

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150

I heard from an IMDb paid user that Amazon sold 100 million copies of D2 and LoD.

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151

Most likely true. There’s no way it’s only 2-3 million like the paid Blizzard shills like to point out.

I like how Blizzard made cosmetics and horse armor from Oblivion the center piece of D4, and they gave these players no way to show them off.

A no brainer would have been to make a channel and lobby 2.0, and allow players to access their items in the channels and trade other players. Then people would be able to show off their cosmetics, and be inclined to buy more.

I believe games like Tarkov and that dark and darker game do taht.

Actually I just searched it up:

LOOK AT THIS S***.

That’s what people on the D4 forum are talking about when they say there’s 0 innovation in D4.

How could a Blizzard game not do this?

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152

That is terrible!

It’s like Blizzard and Disney are hell bent on intentionally destroying their once beloved franchises.

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153

I wonder if there will ever be a breaking point for Blizzard where they say “we can’t do this anymore. We need to fix our reputation, we need to do things the right way”.

They should reboot Diablo and actually make a Diablo game that people are excited to get off work and play. I would take it back to Tristram, expand on storylines like The Dark Riders, the birth of Azurewrath and Shadowfang, Bul Kathos, Arkaine the warrior, Lazuarus, Stone Of Jordan, etc.

At this point if they ever announced Diablo 5, my response would be “who cares?”. That’s why I say reboot it and do it the right way.

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I bet there are 3 million copies sold in Canada alone. Everyone I’ve met over the age of 25 who plays games on the regular has played D2 at some point in their life, and that’s just in one city of Western Canada. There are 100s of millions of PC gamers -Europe, Asia, Australia, the US and Central and South America - D2 easily sold over 100 million copies.

I agree with you. The type of creativity it took to develop D2 can’t exist within the walls of Blizzard anymore. The franchise died with Blizzard North. I use all 18 skill hot keys and could use 4 more for charged skills, but D3 and D4 there are no more than 4 or 5 skills that can be used at any given time.

Mash button, mash button, mash button, mash button - low IQ game development for low IQ game play. If a player doesn’t cheat, there is a high level of cognitive intelligence needed to excel at d2.

RTS games are on their way out simply because there are not enough intelligent people in the Americas that are capable of excelling at both making and playing them - “don’t develop and use your brain, use your feelings” - it’s an intentional generational genocide

/End Rant

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True, there are just too many Diablo players from many many countries.

:clap:
I’m assuming you use hotkeys for things like identify and teleport?

100%, I’ve seen Zastari play, he is probably the most tryhard D2 player I’ve watched (In a good way). I regret not downloading his Twitch vods.


What a work of art this game is. This is why I agree with the idea of SSF ladder, because people like Zastari, Mekalb, Teo, Llama, Bender, etc, would play this game every season and sweat hard for good placements. And i’m sure more people would be inspired to play like this and see where they can place on their character leaderboard, including myself.

D4 is literally a waste of peoples time.

And yeah, I doubt these younger generations will ever be interested in RTS unfortunately. If Blizzard made a WC4, but with intent to do their best, that would be great.

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156

Continuing the discussion from Do you even know how to Diablo?:

Thanks to this guy for pointing this out. D4 is a complete abomination of a Diablo game, I can’t believe some people can find the courage to defend that game lol.

The environmental composition of Diablo 1 and 2 is meticulously thought out. This is what I was paying attention to when I was playing Diablo 1 last night.

I’m telling you, these Blizzard guys made the monsters large in scale as a lazy cop out for “big and scary”, that’s amateur work.

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157

Teleport is allocated to mouse button 5, TPs are in my belt and IDs are manual from a tome.

The first vid all he needed was 1 point each on Sanctuary and Redemption, then quickly switch back and forth between them to be completely safe and easily kill everything. The second video all he need was 1 point on Salvation.

Judging by his casting speed he is using 2 Spirits, which would have given him 5 to each of these skills. He should be using these skills especially considering he doesn’t have a CtA, and allocating those few points on the defensive tree and into Sanctuary will not weaken his hammers that much. He should be tanking everything using his skills, even with junk gear. Not tanking slows him down - because he doesn’t use defensive skills to plow through everything. Where he further slows himself down over the duration of the game and in critical situations, is keeping his charms and cube on the left side of his inventory.

I really should upgrade my rig and start streaming and making D2 vids again.

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158

I’m afraid it’s not possible to fix broken reputation from certain levels. CD Projekt, as far as I know, was capable of doing that after releasing partially done Cyberpunk 2077…but current Blizzard seems to not care about their reputation at all if they release games like Diablo 3(although Reaper of Souls was good, as I heard), Diablo Immortal, Diablo 4, or infamous Warcraft 3 Remastered.

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159

:ok_hand:

Interesting, so you are better than he is I assume. He was #2 on SCL Season 2, and then completed hardcore to 99, and stopped streaming shortly after.

That would be cool, D2R definitely needs more content.

I was surprised to hear that they were still providing updates to WC3 Remastered, but I think it’s going at a snails pace.

You’re right though, most likely they won’t do anything, but I’m wondering if things will eventually ebb and flow to the opposite direction with quality taking priority again.

I started on this D2R board as completely neutral to Blizzard, but unfortunately I’ve turned heel and can’t support mediocrity to the game that is most likely the greatest PC game of all time.

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I wouldn’t say I’m better as his reaction times are pretty damn fast, however my knowledge of monsters and skill usage in random situations are elite. When I played ladder publicly, hardcore teammates were most often terrified to run through the game with me due to my ability to handle every situation fearlessly (not foolishly).

Being among those on the top of the ladder and 99ing is not very difficult for a streamer due to it being a job and the ease of 99ing with D2R. The first time I 99ed it took me over a year in the mid 2000s, today in D2 LoD it only takes me 3 months on ladder playing SSF with a barbarian. On single player without cheating (SSF) I can mathematically 99 a barb in 5-6 weeks playing 12 hours a day 6 days a week.

If there were no BO bots in D2R, and I didn’t have a loading screen problem, and whirlwind was not broken, and I had the time to play D2R full time, I could easily be in the top 10 of hardcore barbarians every ladder.

Try this for fun: kill Izual, Hephasto, Vizier, Infector, Diablo and Nihlathak with the same Experience Shrine.

I’m currently about to speedrun a whirlwind barbarian through nightmare on US West hardcore ladder only using a Stealth splint mail (93 def), a Nadir fanged helm (32 def), a Malice maul and a Strength maul, Hand of Broc, Death’s sash, Blood amulet and boots, a magic ring with 3 mana steal and a rare ring with life steal and 16 fire resist while in a game with 7 other characters sitting in the Rogue Encampment.

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