D2, D3, D4 - Depth vs Replayability misconceptions

General Discussion
1

So, I see a lot of people talking about “Depth” of the games. I see even more people mistaking their subjective memories of 20 years ago for D2 being deeper than D3.

Here’s the thing.
Depth - is not the number of things. It’s the number of levels those things INTERACT.

For example, if you have 20 skills that do different kinds of damage and have different debuffs/effects, different forms (AOE, Projectile, ETC) - that’s not Depth. That’s diversity.
What would be Depth is when 1 skill causes chill effect on target, and another skill deals more damage on chilled targets. That - is one level deeper interaction than simply having a lot of spells.

A game with 10 spells that interact with each other will be the one that has more DEPTH than a game with 20 spells that do not interact or interact less.

Now let’s look at D2. It is a game with a very simple, not very deep stat system, lots of spells aquired through talent trees - but those spells don’t really interact. It has additional things like runewords that are a bit deeper as a mechanic, but at the same time it has gear that is very baseline and pretty much boring.

Let’s compare this to D3. It once again has a very simple stat system with less stats - but that doesn’t make the game less deep. Some mechanics like potion belts are removed, and other mechanics like spell runes are added. In addition, you get lots of legendaries and set items that interact with spells, runes and passives of the character.

When you compare the two objectively, D3 has more DEPTH than D2.

So why do people insist on saying that D2 was better and deeper? There’re many answers to that question. Most of them boil to release date and the state of the game market in general.

When people played D2 back in 2000, the amount of goods that it offered was phenomenal. The gameplay was fresh (In fact, it’s a de-facto genre father), the amount of stats was great compared to other games releasing around that time. Finally, it featured a simple, addictive and infinitely replayable gameplay loop.

D3 has all of those things, and more, actually. Rifts are much more diverse than farming BAAL. Characters and their builds are more unique, the gear system has more depth, the customization and build systems have more variety.
What D3 Doens’t have - is the same environment. It came out in 2012, and by then we have looked at all those things as a norm. In fact, we grew to expect even more.

D3 is Deeper. But it is not as exciting for its time.
The time that you spent playing D2 20 years ago will never go away. Your enjoyment and fun will never go away. But the thing is - in 2020, a game needs to give you WAAAAAY more to generate as much fun and excitement. In fact, I even doubt that any game can do that, because it became really hard to invent new genres that will stay popular for a decades - the very thing that D2 did.

So you’re sitting here and comparing your subjective feelings and not the objective reality.
I see A LOT of threads and posts on this forum that claim that D2 was better, deeped, more fun, more interesting… And there’s very little substance between those.

Imagine yourself going to a moon tomorrow. It will be an exciting adventure. Now imagine if you had to go to the moon every day as part of your work routine. Would that be just as exciting? No. It will be dull.
That’s exactly the pitfall that people are falling when comparing D2 and D3.

Finally, this brings us to replayability.
Arguably, D3 has more of that, because while D2 offered infinite Baal runs - D3 offers diverse and more challenging content. And D4 will follow due, and offer new, probably more diverse, more challenging and randomized content. Which should be even more exciting, on paper.

The problem here is the competition for your time.
Back in 2000, gaming market had very little competition in that regard. You just played the games you wanted to play, and there was PLENTY of time left that you could dedicate to Diablo or CS 1.6 or whatever. There were very few players who offered continuous gameplay like that, and there were also fewer one-time games that were worth playing.
Today, just look around you. There are DOZENS of project to chose from, where you can spend hours and hours on end. WoW, MOBA games, Autochess, CCG, Valorant, Battlefield, COD, Mobile games, other online games…
Did I say dozens? There are hundreds. Including several direct D3-4 competitions in form of POE and other ARPG’s.
If that was all, but it isn’t! There are much more single-player story-driven games that are worth playing. There are much more worthwhile games that are coming out each year - in fact, there’re so many that I am falling behind and never getting to play some of the stuff that I want to play.

As a result, the competition for your time is much more severe. It is much easier to get distracted from D3 (or in the future - D4) and spend time on something else.

And the sad thing is that some people then look back and say that D3 is worse than D2, because they spent only 1000 hours in D3, and they played D2 for YEARS.
Which is true.
But you did it because there wasn’t anything better to play.

If you remove 95% of online games today, and 90% of flashy AAA releases, bringing the market to approximately the level of saturation that we had in 2000-2005, then you will find that Diabo 3 will once again be an enjoyable tool to spend your time in.

You like Diablo 3 less IN RELATION to the modern market. And your memories of D2 are far greater IN RELATION to the market of 2000 that was much poorer and less exciting than today.
This statement is true for the vast majority of people comparing D3 and D2 favorably. But I’m sure there’re all 50 of you who actually play D2 and enjoy it currently. Your enjoyment doesn’t change the way it still applies to the majority of others.

And the sad thing here - is that D4 will face the same problem. It simply can not evolve enough to be as innovative and exciting as D2 was back in the day, and it faces much higher competition.

So when the release time comes, and Diablo 4 will not become your Most Greatest Thing Evah - remember that D2 had to climb a small hill to be above everyone else.
D3 needed to climb a small mountain, and it didn’t make it to the top, even if it did make it above D2 relatively speaking.
But D4 needs to climb Everest to do the same. And chances that it reaches the peak are SLIM.

22 Likes
2

D2 and PoE are games without gameplay depth. Heck, even in Bastion there is more skill involved than D2/PoE. But D2/PoE are still fun for many, because of the replayability/grind they offer.

D4 on the other side has gameplay depth. It has very good engine stepping on top of D3 in that regard. And with the regular content (which D2/D3 lack), it will offer much replayability too.

People are blind in many regards and that helps with getting a fanboy of D2/PoE. The truth is that gameplay wise D2/PoE are shallow. Such games could gain more player base if they offer AUTO-CHESS format since they are more Math-RPGs than Action-RPGs.

2 Likes
3

  1. Because they are 100% clueless as to what different words mean, so they just parrot what the minority says, thinking it’s the cool thing to do.

  2. Because they are salty their favorite game is barely younger than the dinosaurs (and looks + plays like it was made by dinosaurs), and they hate that other people are having fun within a newer game which has far more satisfying gameplay. So they set out to spite the other camp. But in the process, they smear egg all over their own face.

6 Likes
4

I would say that POE isn’t shallow, in fact I would argue that it’s a bit deeper than D3.
The reason why it’s played more - is because

  1. RMT attracts people that like to make money on gaming
  2. It offers more diversity in form or league themes and MUCH more content updates since launch than D3.
1 Like
5

PoE is extremely shallow in terms of gameplay options due to its crap engine. It has millions of builds, yet a few gameplay variations.

3 Likes
6

most of the skills do interact with each other, because they buff each other. if you look in the talent tree most of them have buffs for each other depending on what build you are going.

d3 has fewer legendaries than d2 has uniques and that is not even including runewords…… also d2 has more sets than d3…….

listen I like d3 but you are going for the wrong examples here. let me try to help.

d2 and d3 both suffer from incredibly boring end game, d2 essentially has none. you either push for level 99 or you try to collect every item in the game. some people have fun with it but a lot of people get bored.

d3 you run rift after rift after rift, sure the difficulty increases but the repetition remains the same.

so what is it that d2 has that d3 doesn’t to make all these ppl come in and go on and on about it? well that is very simple… nostalgia, that’s it that’s all. the game is no better it just feels better to people who remember it fondly from their younger years. I play both games pretty evenly and I can tell you that the only reason I prefer d2 to d3 is all the memories I have growing up with the game.

1 Like
7

may actually not have more sets anymore I haven’t checked in quite a while and they have added several since… so not actually sure on that one.

8

I wouldn’t call synergies “skills interacting with each other”. The skills themselves don’t actually interact during gameplay. Synergies were just a bandaid to get players to spend skill points on other stuff besides their main damage dealer, passives and buffs/debuffs.

2 Likes
9

Actually, no. I spent thousands of hours in D3 and not less in D2 and for the last 5-6 months I’ve been playing only D2 getting bored with D3 seasons and I like it (D2). Why? Well, I like building chars. It is fun. Bowazon, Cold Bowazon, Firewall sorc, Kick Assa, Bone Spear Necro, etc etc. You make lvl 1 and go untwinked through all 3 difficulties, gearing them on the way. Then, finding items is much, much more satisfying than in D3. When even 1 crappy useless unique falls on the ground - it gives a small “wow” effect. Just a couple of days ago I found BER rune, it was Waw WAw WAW. Nothing like that exists in D3. Then again, I like the combat. In many ways it again is more satisfying than in present state D3 (inferno times combat was also fun, though). I like less colorful visual effects and I think sounds there are better too (though the best sounds are still in Diablo-1). So no, this has nothing to do with nostalgia. If it is fun, if I like it, I play. If I get bored, I quit. Just that simple.

Though I admit, there are those who cry about D2 only because of nostalgia. But these people don’t play D2 NOW (and probably never will). That’s the difference.

8 Likes
10

that’s fair the drops are much more satisfying when they are muh rarer. some of those builds you listed are really bad though so no wonder it takes you a while to play through the game :joy:

11

I wouldn’t entirely agree with your definition of what makes for depth in games, so everything that follows isn’t really objective. All it takes is about 30 seconds on Google and you’ll quickly find: Depth is one of those terms in gaming that everybody seems to have a slightly different idea as to just what it means.

I would argue depth is more about important decision making in the game. A set bonus in Diablo 3 that simply adds +50000% damage adds no depth because it has not changed my decision making process in the game.

Arguably sets in Diablo 3 were hurting depth because they limited the choices you could make about character builds since they only buffed very specific spells to do worthwhile damage. Thankfully, LoD/LoN has undone much of that but even those don’t really add depth as much as they just return it to the default setting it always should have been at before sets messed everything up.

Venom in Diablo 2 has more depth than that because once I understand that it caps poison duration across the board for me, it changes my decision making about poison damage on gear. I want the highest damage over the shortest duration.

I’ve been playing Pillars of Eternity 2 and it has depth in the form of only being able to use your abilities a limited number of times in combat. That makes it very important to decide when the best time to use those abilities are.

It’s not just about things changing decision making, but also how important your decisions actually are. Everything from positioning to what abilities you’re using when to what stats you’re aiming for on gear.

and personally, I find Diablo 3 to be lacking in that area.

5 Likes
12

I don’t really understand the fascination with D2 vs D3 pissing contests in general. It should be about D4 and what it can be.

Yep that is certainly part of what depth is.

Though diversity is also extremely important, so that separation, while useful for discussions, probably won’t change any conclusions.

If you only have two skills total, and those two skills interact with each other, that is not a whole lot of depth either. They go hand in hand.

Better is subjective. But no, Diablo 2 was not very deep. D3 is also not very deep.
D3 offers exactly what you say is not depth imo. More stuff, but not really more interactions. Everything is quite limited into a few sets that determines which interactions are allowed. Depth is only depth if it involves meaningful choices.
Not to mention how extremely shallow D3 itemization is outside of legendary affixes. Which does not mean D2 did great either of course.

D4 should aim much higher than both D2 and D3 when it comes to depth.

D2s endgame was horribly bad. D3’s endgame is a step above it, but still quite bad.
One area that gave D2 its replayability was not its endgame activities. It was making new characters to try new builds. D3 killed that by allowing free respecs.
That type of replay ability should return in D4. Combined with more varied end-game of course. Though not a threadmill like it is in D3. PoE is the clear king of end-game these days. No harm in learning a bit from it. Although even PoE is flawed here. The campaign itself should represent one type of end-game activity.

Sure it can. PoE has been quite innovative. Certainly seems to excite a lot of people too.
Blizzard just seems afraid of innovation. And they sadly also seem afraid of depth.

Edit: and as seems to be a trend, I agree with pretty much everything cyonan said above.

5 Likes
13

If a game fails to reach the feelings of playing it has no depth. Both in the year 2000 and in 2020.

Diablo 2 has more depth to this day because people still play it.

It is not about subjectivity. Subjectivity resides in the player’s taste, but it ceases to be subjective and becomes objective when it becomes a physical or mental reaction (hormones and emotion), so in the year 2000 or in 2020 the game is expected to cause emotions in the player, and in that Diablo II was and is much more successful.

Diablo III even achieved something like that at launch, but failed to adopt this modern gameplay system where everyone has everything all the time. This is a modern and temporal option for a modern game in its time, so it is correct, it is fair, it is objective to compare Diablo II with Diablo III, as well as the conclusion that Diablo II had much more depth, because used the resources of the time much more efficiently than Diablo III.

The fault of Diablo III being bad when compared to Diablo II is not the lack of depth in the analysis of the players, it is the developers who bet on a type of development that does not cause emotions, just keeps you playing to collect cosmetics.

Diablo II had much more synergy between the elements that made it up, that is depth.

Edit:

I love D2 versus D3 topics. S2

10 Likes
14

I disagree that D3V (can’t speak on RoS) had the same “simple, addictive and infinitely replayable gameplay loop” as D2, particularly when starting a new character. First they removed the link between “leveling up” and customization, why? Now Hardcore Mode is infinitely less appealing. Then they give us “skill runes” which eventually offers roughly 6x6 choices in your chosen active skills (but you will never choose “No Rune”)…a far-cry from D2 where I can make a Necromancer shoot 10 Teeth at a time if I want. Moreover you are constantly reevaluating your current +elemental damage, and cycling through your 6 schools, with every level-up. It feels like a damn chore before long. These kinds of small details are why D2/D3 are like “night and day” to me.

3 Likes
15

Necromancer D2:

Summon any Golem
→ use attract/confuse on enemies, make enemies fight against each other and die killing each other
→ creates corpses as ressource
→ use lower resistance
→ use corpse explosion (yes corpse explosion is actually fire damage) to kill and create even more corpses to
→ revive army of: skelleton warriors/mages and timed resurrections
→ use amplify damage/lower resistance to increase enemy damage taken (be it either physical or elemental damage)
→ wear items like beast granting fanactism that for a necro itself as melee is probably not worth it but it works loads if you are a summon necromancer to buff your army.
I see way more depth and synergies here than the numbers of summons and spells you can have at once in D2 than in D3 compared to the necromancer, since you see…

You would know this if you actually ever played D2.

Your subjective opinion.

So wait, Hydra transforming from fire into arcane or frozen does add any meaning besides mostly damage at all to it? And no, dont tell me that adding more AoE or area of range is any depth for most rune modifications for this spell.

You dont have status effects like slowing enemies if you choose cold Hydra, you dont have burn damage if you choose fire, you dont have shocking enemies if you choose lightning hydra (wew enemies cannot dodge your hit if you choose lightning).
I call that rather depth instead of showing a different range of colors with basically the average same damage increase.
If the modification had any meaning, it would be much cooler.
If Arcane Hydra had a side effect that regains for example Arcane power on hit for your character, then that choice would have a meaning.

Sure, you see different monsters and all in GR’s, but its the same thing all over and there is no loot-hunt in D3 so there is no reason to enjoy killing monsters over and over.
Because the itemization in D3 is just mediocre (yes im looking at you D3 Affixes list). You dont even mind doing endless Baal Runs in D2 because you are aiming/looking for a build with those specific affixes from either a rare or that specific unique item mods that you require for your build, since gear is not guaranteed for each run it motivates the player to repeat those runs.
In D3 everytime you find an item its mainly about stats or just trash them away/salvage.
You never keep low level items because its a waste right?
Its much more interesting to keep gear that you can use for your other characters because the affixes in that unique or rare item are interesting.
You can even decide to create a new character if you found the desired stats for that gear, or else just trade it.

A pure power creep increase with GR’s is challenging content? No thats just maths and nothing else.

Complete BS. All other ARPGs offer much more build diversity, Affixes and character progression than the fake simplified diversity of meta builds and mass main stat stack that D3 has to offer.
Grinding thousands of paragon levels is not a motivation for the player to keep on playing, just a forced monotone endgame activity with the lack of creativity for a better endgame.

16 Likes
16

This is a really poor form of replayability. Forcing players to restart to experience different builds in a single class is always bad.

1 Like
17

Think the problem is sometimes people get too “literal” at labeling stuff. Depth/Complexity/Diversity, doesn’t really matter, what matters is whether or not the final “product” does the trick (or not)

The problem of D3 is the fact that leveling up feels useless, even though can be fun at times when not using the “extra OP” stuff. Even now D3 might be cool if there was an ACTUAL commital toward the skills you choose, but since there aren’t any, at lvl70 you’re basically a chameleon. And since all the skills are basically a WD-multilpier, there’s (sadly) no way to get out of that “trap”

I can easily see that is a cruicial mistake if you want to create leveling up useful. It’s like D3 was designed to START when reaching max level, and THAT’s where the problem lies, not the fact whether or not you can use a skill in 2, 3 or 5 ways or whatever, the problem is leveling has no cause, and since the leveling has no cause people feel like playing the same game over and over

Imagine having a Barb in D4 where once you can make a spear deal 2k damage and pierce, and another time make him overpower/in-ground stuff and deal % HP damage and stunning giant mobs… Those would feel VASTLY different characters despite playing the same class, there’s simply no such thing in D3 and there are more than one reason

1 - the game is designed upon “Sustain no matter what”, every build you run has to have an enormous amount of lifesteal, cause you don’t have pierce/linear damage, you don’t have mobs that punish extra from standing and fighting them in melee (or ranged), everything is linear
2 - SAME with the ranged classes. Dodge as much stuff as you can, don’t get hit by melee stuff, kite forever. Except Wallers, Vortex, Jailor, and a few other things, there are no ways to play other than kill before get hit and kite forever

So the “borningness” from D3 doesn’t come specifically just by level progression, but ALSO how the classes are FORCED into two vastly (diametrically opposed) roles and can’t afford any combination

I’d say main “guilt-factor” for that is the 1/0 binary attribute system, a stat that’s not primary for your class is either 1 or 0, there’s no 0.3, 0.5 usage & such, everything is 1/0, either you GET the power or you DON’T, there’s nothing in between. D2 wasn’t really good in this regard either, BUT since the level-up doesn’t play a role in D3 the attribute system becomes the PRIMARY CONCERN and primary impact for your character’s power source, and guess what ? - (again) it’ LINEAR AF

Don’t care if people “label-define” it as depth, diversity, build, you name it, the problem is still the same - everything your character builds up into is LINEAR and everything your character uses is SWAPPABLE at all times

THAT is the D3’s character problem. D2 had problems of a different nature (more related to cheesiness in combat) kind, but the character buildup was actually THERE and could’ve been felt replaying a class with different skill investment/s tbh

3 Likes
18

I disagree. I think creating new characters is a fundamental aspect of A-RPG gameplay. And honestly, the reason a lot of A-RPGs have seasons these days seems to be because the devs know it too. Some of them are just too afraid to take the obvious consequence and put limits on respecs.
But people should not be forced. Respecs should be available, just with a cost/cooldown. That way there are both benefits to making new characters, and benefits to not do so.

Indeed.

Yep. And that is certainly the antithesis of depth.

4 Likes
19

some of those builds you listed are really bad though so no wonder it takes you a while to play through the game

Fastest builds are boring, because essentially D2 has no endgame to use them there.

1 Like
20

The only cost should be having to be in a hub to respec.