DIABLO II Resurrected - Personal Feedback

Diablo II: Resurrected General Discussion
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Hey, this is my personal feedback to Diablo II Resurrected and to the content and features we have seen so far.

Please let me emphasize, this is just my personal opinion, nothing more, nothing less.

I am someone that has played every ladder season starting with the first one at the end of 2003 along patch 1.10. My total D2 playtime is about 12’000 to 15’000 hours over the last 21 years. 99.99% of that time is on battle.net. My Single-player offline experience is limited to testing builds and various game mechanics utilizing Hero-Editor etc. (There is also some LAN party fun in there but that is also very little compared to online battle.net time). Before Ladders were introduced, I have also played extensively in the first two years after launch (1 year classic, 1 year LOD), and then taking a break around the end of 2002 until the first ladder was launched in 2003.

This is my opinion on current Diablo II Resurrected Status:

Positive changes:

  • Listening to people like MrLamaSC for feedback. Thank you.

  • New 3D Graphics Mode, they went with 3D physically based rendering (looks nice, very atmospheric) They used the base game, and “mounted” the new 3D Engine on top. I could be wrong, but I think its either a home-grown engine or something like Unreal Engine (my bet).

  • New Remastered Sound (with new situational environmental effects, remains to be seen if good or bad, but hopefully good)

  • New Shared Stash (great improvement, no more muling, great for MF-ing)

  • New Character Stats Window. This is amazing, does not affect anyone, except maybe makes it easier for new players to verify their stats. Previously players had to calculate certain stats manually, and in some cases even consider diminishing returns in their calculations. Great new feature.

  • Control-Click (or whatever) to move items automatically from inventory to stash and vice versa. (Great new feature, improves the feel of the game significantly, despite appearing as very trivial). Hopefully the same works to sell/buy items to/from vendors, as well as trading windows etc.

  • 16:9 Support is obvious, but still worth mentioning. I wonder if the toggle to switch between old and new graphics mode keeps the 16:9 aspect ratio in both modes. I hope it does, because that would be awesome and give a true alternative to keep playing in Glide or Direct3D, yet still see as much as the new 3D mode. If this however is not the case, it will be a much much less useful feature to have this toggle.

  • MOD support is absolutely amazing feature. I am really thankful that this will come to D2R, as it will allow people unhappy with how D2 is today, to create their own mods like “Personal Loot”, “Charm Stashes”, “Loot-Filter”, “Loot-Rains-From-the-Sky-Mod” etc. as well as enable actual MODs to emerge such as PathOfDiablo, MedianXL, etc. Thanks to MOD Support, we can focus on keeping D2 as the game we know, so people like me and millions of players across the globe get to enjoy D2 Remastered for another 20+ years. Thank you.

  • Battlenet 2.0 integration - This is great because it will hopefully be more responsive, less rubber-banding, less cheating, less botting, less duping etc. (its not impossible to be bot free or cheat free, but at least much more contained than currently in D2). Battlenet 2.0 integration also means great friend-list features, comfortable joining games of friends, new chat features etc.

  • Shorter Ladders - Great Feature. My Ideal Ladder-Length would be 3-4 Months. 6 Months was and is WAY too long. The majority of D2 players are done with D2 2-4 weeks after Ladder Start. The remaining players are either PVP focused, or noobs and casuals zerging away at finishing the Nightmare and Hell Difficulties, 3-4 weeks into the Ladder Season for whatever reason.

  • Color-Blind mode. Love it, opens the game to gamers with color-blindness (hopefully various kinds) and improves their competitiveness against people without that “handicap”, yet doesnt affect anyone else, just evens out the playing field. WIN-WIN. Love it.

  • Bug-Fixing that fixes a handful of issues that should have been fixed a long time ago, yet keeping iconic “bugs” like E-Bugged Items, Andy-Bugging, etc. to stay in D2. This understanding and desire to keep D2 as awesome as it grew to be over 21 years like a good wine is amazing. Thank you.

  • New Remade Cut Scenes - Could be good or bad, depending on how it is done. That being said, even if its bad, its something you will only have to endure once. Hopefully they are good, atmospheric and as grim and hopeless as the originals.

Negative changes (might also have positive sides to it)

  • Because of Consoles and cross-progression, Gold-Auto-Pickup came like cancer to the PC version (Very bad change, affects game difficulty in early ladder, affects economy, destroys builds (ie gold find barb). I can live with this, well because consoles NEED this and because of cross-progression its not going away so there is no point in arguing about it. (having a toggle option is not an argument at all, since everyone else will have it on, thus turning it off would be gimping myself so yeah…)

  • New UI, looks good on first glance, but doesn’t feel like D2 at all. This change is most likely happening because they want to force the perception that “Even D2 has a similar UI like D3 and D4”, when in fact that’s not true at all. I can live with this change, because there is at least the benefit of having more visible world on the bottom corners thanks to a shorter UI, and also health and mana Orbs are theoretically “easier” to monitor. (I got no issues monitoring Life and Mana orbs in D2 or POE so yeah…)

  • Cross-Progression. If hacked and modified items would make their way to the PC realm, the game is pure garbage and dead. Also Cross-Progression opens a can-of-worms with console features potentially creeping into the PC version down the road, and thus ruining D2R. On the positive side, more people will be playing D2, but that also means more moaning, whining, and begging for D2 to be easier and more casual friendly, which could turn D2 into D3 down the road, which means the game is dead and useless again.

  • Auto-Party when someone joins. I am not a fan of this, because there are trolls that sabotage games etc and they could previously be simply not invited to the group, but now will be enabled automatically. However, since those occasions are rare, the benefits outweigh the negative aspects so its ok.

  • PC Controller support - I feel this will cause issues, because controller players playing on PC will either have an advantage (vacuum pickup everything, or they will have a disadvantage against naturally faster controls of a PC player with mouse/keyboard). Either way, this will cause justifiably some moaning and whining, simply because D2 has a VERY competitive nature in public games, which is also one of the great things about Loot in D2. I feel either Mouse/Keyboard or Controller players will have advantages when playing with others on the PC-Only Servers.

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Mod support will not do what you think it does.

Mod support will likely be offline ONLY. So if you want to play with friends, you will probably not be able to use mods.

Think about it, if you could, that means I could join your game and turn on my maphack mod, autoloot mod, and godmode mod on and totally screw your game up. Maybe I’ll even use my autokill mod to mess with you in PvP! Terrible. That’s why I am 99% certain mods will be offline only.

People are asking for personal loot and other convenience updates so they can play online with strangers or their friends in a more friendly environment, without the prospect of ninjalooting and other issues.

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I am not 100% sure but I think they said MOD support is coming to D2R, because servers, just like in D2, can be hosted outside of Blizzard, just like MedianXL or PathOfDiablo.

Also, you can act as your own Server, and invite friends that want to play “personal loot” version of D2 etc. No Battlenet 2.0 Needed.

MODs like “Personal Loot Mod” or “PathOfDiablo” for example, will of course not work on Blizzard’s official servers for obvious reasons.

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At least your heard from open Battle.net.
" What is an Open Character?
Open Characters are stored locally on your own computer and, while you can set up games and chat over Battle.net, you cannot play these characters on a Diablo II Realm. In an Open Game, one player’s computer is the game server, while the other players connect to it. Since Blizzard cannot be responsible for the locally stored characters, or the servers upon which the games are played, Open Games are more vulnerable than Realm Games to certain forms of manipulation and abuses by other players. The big advantage of Open Games, however, is that you can bring your Single-Player Characters onto Battle.net. You can play with your friends over Battle.net and then continue playing that character in Single Player as often as you want."

Looks like i find another. The list of D2 experts here are getting bigger and bigger.

You can have fun on open Battle.net any time

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LOL clearly none of you understand that people want to be able to play a better more fun game online and not exclusively with friends on private servers.

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We clearly understand that casuals wants to make d2 easier. I have a bad news for you.
Classic gameplay—the same Diablo II you know and love, preserved.

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I agree, millions of D2 fans that have been playing D2 for the past 21 years were waiting for a Successor to D2 and never got one (Except POE, but different universe). Then they were waiting for a Remaster to D2, and now we are getting one.

Just because a few casuals and noobs want to turn D2 upside down to kill some time until Diablo Immortal and D4 come along, doesn’t mean Blizzard will destroy a Diablo 2 Remaster for millions of actual D2 fans.

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Do you mean at launch/early days or that millions have played D2 continuously to this day?

How many people played D2 in 2020?

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The “legit” known sales to Blizzard are only the tip of the ice-berg of actual D2 Copies on the world market.

Around 4 million sales of D2 were made in like the first couple years. This was record-breaking in those times.

Very soon after this, the Algorithm of creating “functional” D2 CD codes was hacked, and flooded the “black market”. The amount of “non-legit” or “generated” CD keys that were accepted on Bnet is absolutely massive.

This is why at some point, Blizzard announced the old CD keys would not be working anymore.

It is true that millions of players, with both legit and non-legit cd keys have been playing D2 on and off throughout the past 21 years with larger gaps in between. The amount of further sales picking up significantly with every ladder reset over the past 21 years is also massive, and was never really publicized by blizzard.

The player numbers visible on official Blizzard battlenet and its asia/useast/uswest/eu realms is only a fraction of actual games played across the globes. Private-Servers, direct-connection games, etc.

D2 has absolute cult status because of these factors in the gaming world, along games like half-life, counterstrike, doom, starcraft 1, etc.

Long Story Short, D2 fans are excited to finally getting a Remaster of Diablo 2, after being “betrayed with Diablo III”.

Based on the past history of blizzard north and the dynamics within blizzard irvine and blizzard north and then later the involvement of activision, I think we are fortunate we get a Remaster of D2 at all. These issues are probably the reason why we had to wait that long. incompetence and lack of vision sensing the emerging market of “Remasters” as well as ignoring franchises other than World of Warcraft for a very long period of time, are probably also reasons for why it took Blizzard so long to remaster their most iconic games.

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I stop reading when someone compares something they don’t like to cancer or AIDS. I suffer from cancer. It’s no where near that bad. You’re not going to lose your life over a game feature you don’t like.

It’s classless and offensive.

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yes, MrLlamaSC enjoys mods like PD2 and for sure got alot of suggested changes to diablo 2 resurrected that the team has not made yet, so im wery positive to that they teamed up with him.

Maybe he will have that little extra for more QoL and other updates thats wery well needed to make this more then an amazing game.

i have not checked in more on this, will people with controller and keyboard + mouse play together on the same server? i dont see that as a huge problem but still curious how it will be done.
From what i understood as soon as you chose controller on pc your UI will switch?

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the funny part is, i would bet a majority of those who has stoped playing from back in the day and might want to pick D2R up again would all want more changes to make it better.
there is alot more people these days playing mod servers for D2 then original.
everyone i personally knows want more changes and hopefuly get it.
when looking on forums and in game, there is alot more positivity for changes aswell, yes there is people that dont want any changes at all…but for what it looks like its more people who wants changes.

Just because someone wants stuff fixed that could otherwise have been a normal patch for d2, does not make them noob casuals that waits for immortal and d4, nothing wrong with waiting for immortal or d4 either.

But a huge amount of people who has played diablo 2 for a long time would wery much welcome changes to make it even more enjoyable to play for many years to come. Big streamers talk about it all the time aswell, IMO there is a small part that actively stalks the forums and yell that they are true fans and nobody else.

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You sound like the kind of person who says “D2 had 4 million sales MAJOR SUCCESS” and then also says “D3 only sold 20 million copies? MAJOR FAIL”.

Millions of people still play D2? LOL. LOOOOOOOL.

More like 1k. Maybe 10k. Tops.

Meanwhile D3 is still one of Blizzard’s most successful and daily-played game. And it’s 9 years old already!

Goes to show… maybe you don’t know what people want.

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I think that 20 million was the sales number stated in June 2014. By August 2015, it had jumped to 30 million. Also, these sales figures will miss Diablo III: Eternal Collection for the Nintendo Switch that was released in November 2018.

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I know I bought D3 because I had hopes it was a shred of what D2 was, we were all wrong. I know 8 friends on my list right now who will say the same thing. Do they enjoy D3 for a week or so every couple of resets? sure, but none are under the delusion what we got with D3 was a Diablo game.

Even D4 looks cartoony still but at least went darker.

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I mean, that’s fair, but it’s still important to know that:

  1. D3 is a massive commercial success beyond anything D2 ever was,
    and
  2. D3 is still played by hundreds of thousands of players every season.

So any and all argument centering around sales numbers or implying that D3 “failed” is as invalid as it could ever be. Maybe it failed to hold YOUR interest, or your friends’ interest, and that’s fine, you are allowed to dislike D3. But saying it failed period? As wrong as any statement could ever be.

This also means that any argument claiming that D3 “did things wrong” needs to be reevaluated. If it did, nobody would play it anymore.

The reason people don’t play D2 anymore isn’t just because of the graphics. TBH, I think D2’s graphics look okay still and if it was a fun game I would play it regardless. Graphics are NOT the reason people don’t play D2 anymore.

D2 is the reason people don’t play D2 anymore.

So it would be foolish for D2R to not implement little fixes here and there to make a better, smoother and more popular experience.

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We are speaking 12 years later, Internet and PCs are more easy to get. The game is sold to other platforms too.

Comparing solds is somewhat unbalanced.

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I agree, but if you’re going to brag about how many units D2 sold, then you better be ready to acknowledge that D3 sold about 5x to 10x as many copies. It is, by no measure whatsoever, a failure.

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In that regard I can agree, with advancements in connections we have a lot larger population base after the games, languages allowed, tons of factors.

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D2 - 2000
World population in 2000 - 6,143,494,000

D3 - 2011
World population in 2011 - 7,041,194,000

Either way they both sold well in their own time. I started out playing D2, and I played D3 as well. I love each of them in their own way, but I’m still more D2 leaning. I love how D2 is shared loot, drop chances are low and not reigning from the sky, inventory and stash management, etc. D2 is not supposed to be an easy game, and you find every item in 1 day. D2 is centered around you may never find a certain item at least from yourself. You could get all the items you want from trading, but as far as self found it’s much more difficult. That’s the beauty of D2! Stands out from among the other arpg’s with it’s own core mechanics that differ from other arpg’s. I want D2: R to be unique, and not like all the other arpg’s around.

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