Oh please. Adventure Mode was created because community asked for it. They were tired of running the campaign mode over and over like in D2 did.
Neither is D2 character’s skill is using character weapon. For example, Bone Spear, Blizzard, Hydra, and curses. If I not mistaken, even the weapon sprite is removed when you transformed into bear and werewolf.
Also, most of those Disney’s movies and animation made billions, while most of those so-called edgy and dark movies can’t even made billions.
And paragon is point allocations.
Also, there is no free gear as you need to complete the quests to get it.
You know what? Clearly you, the Mr Lv23 paragon monk player with no set item equipped should stop making lies to hate D3. Maybe you should try to equip your monk with a yellow item with some “free gear” first instead of keep trash-talking here.
You called D3 players a kid but in reality, you are the one who acts like the kid most at here.
P1. In Darkest Dungeon, the player does not level up a single character as he/she did not have a Main character. The additional characters in Darkest Dungeon are not Alts. Spoilers, you can’t take a given character into the Darkest Dungeon more than once, they refuse to go. Therefore, Darkest Dungeon becomes a game about gathering the resources you need to fully upgrade the Stage Coach and building that are prerequisites of the Stage Coach’s upgrades. You basically run the game like an uncaring HR representative. Here’s a guide on Darkest Dungeon that is timestamped to punctuate my point: ( Darkest Dungeon - New Players' Guide - Tips for Absolute Beginners! [No Spoilers] - YouTube ) Let’s look at the mechanical differences between the two games:
D2 revolves around a single character fighting with abilities the minions of evil. The character is of a given class, and this class gains access to skill that grant that character an extremely wide array of options through which to defeat enemies whom block forward progress. In the process of earning forward process, the character gains equipment for a great many slots. The character acquires gold that is only used to upgrade the character. The character fights monsters alone or with minions and mercs. The game is largely equipment dependent outside of specific builds. If the character dies, the character, assuming softcore, respawns and can be played again with no major consequences aside from money and/or experience loss. There isn’t much in the way of permanent issues that occur here.
Darkest Dungeon revolves around parties of characters. These parties consist of up to and usually 4 characters of various classes. Each class is extremely limited in what it can do. Parties have a marching order, and depending on each character’s position in that marching order, each character will increase or decrease in effectiveness. Equipment is bifurcated into upgrade and trinkets. Upgrades serve as the character’s effective level ups by increasing HP and attack damage. Trinkets serve as permanent buffs that allow a greater level of specialization. Skills serve as each character’s method of acting in combat, and these also serve as effective level ups since a level 1 character with level 0 skills and upgrades is effectively a level 0 character. Characters gather gold and heirlooms. Gold is used to upgrade characters, and heirlooms are used to upgrade the town, which should be prioritized above all else. Characters are expendable and will be killed and dismissed regularly in the meat-grinder that is the game’s core gameplay loop. Sacrifice characters to gain heirlooms. Use heirlooms to upgrade town. Recruit more characters. Do everything you can to keep your A-Team alive since it is your boss killer. All of your money goes into making your A-Team as powerful as possible. Repeat until your A-Team is maxed out. Start a B-Team. Repeat until B-Team is maxed out. Do the same with C, D, and maybe E team. Take on the Darkest Dungeon.
In short, the games are completely different in how they approach characters. The comparison between them is somewhat nonsensical because the games are so drastically different. I brought up Dark Souls 1 (DkS1) because the gameplay loops are similar despite the fact that the two handle classes differently. Mainstream games more readily allow you to respec a given character to fix errors. Alts are fine, but we’re talking a Fishymancer Main with a Bonemancer Alt instead of a Fishymancer Main that accidentally put two points into Fire Golem with a Fishymancer Alt (now Main) that didn’t make that mistake. World of Warcraft’s leveling speed is nothing. I played Everquest 1. Hell levels started at level 30, and you lost around 1/3 your current level’s XP on death. This could result into a level down. The standard MMORPG approach is to not have Alts until you max out your main because you gained absurd resources at max level that could then be used to make leveling an Alt extremely easy and painless.
There is no need to fix Alt and Main characters. Respec options ensure characters are not retired for build mistakes. However, there are games like Killing Floor 2, a FPS with RPG mechanics, which allows people to just change around class options before encountering enemies. This allows the game to stay fluid and fun for participants.
P2. I agree with you in part. While “suspension of disbelief” could be a factor, I think it is similar to Soundtrack Dissonance, or Contrapuntal Sound if we want to be fancy with the a being an au for “fauncy.” The game’s themes say that everything is horrible and dying. The game’s gameplay and characters say that everything is great. I think of the words “dissonance” and “discord” when I think of this. D3’s biggest problem is that its theme and gameplay are discordant, or inharmonious, with one another. You brought up Darkest Dungeon, so let’s examine using that.
In Darkest Dungeon, the theme and gameplay are in harmony with one another. The voice over constantly shoves theme in your face by painting everything in as cynical a stroke as possible. If something good happens, it is a !!momentary!! respite. Characters are expected to mentally break, and either be dismissed or die. Every ounce of benefit is wrung out of them until they are nothing more than worthless shells of their former selves. Worse still, all of these adventurers are all either naive or broken and desperate. When they learn the reality, they beg you not to send them on another mission, but they can’t usually refuse to go. They are at the whims of a cruel and seemingly evil overlord whom only cares about his bottom line (heirlooms). The characters are fated to either die, or be thrown in the trash after being mentally broken.
In D3, the theme should be that the world is absolutely doomed before the player characters (PCs) show up. Instead, the world at least appears to be doing just fine. The towns don’t appear to be at risk of being overrun or destroyed. While there is the argument that we see the devastation progress as we move forward in the acts with the last one having the High Heavens be completely overrun and beyond the brink, I think this weakens the presentation. I think we are in accord on the whole Marvel Avengers-esque introduction of comedy into dark fantasy. Black Comedy, as in gallows humor, can work extremely well for Dark Fantasy since it serves to punctuate how horrible things really are. The “cakewalk” gameplay really does hurt the game on the whole. There is an argument that the difficulty spice when beginning Nightmare is where D3’s gameplay interfaces with its theme, but that would mean that it takes the game 30–60+ hours for its theme and gameplay to align.
P3 in regards to OP’s P1, I can see that, but then he later goes on about fitting stuff into his inventory. It becomes somewhat nonsensical at times.
P4, you said “less often respeccing occurs,” which implies that respeccing would be a thing to begin with. I think of respeccing as being able to correct minor or major errors in the character’s build instead of rebuilding to a drastically different method of play. I wouldn’t rebuild my Fishymancer to a Bonemancer, I’d make an Alt Bonemancer since part of the fun is seeing how useful it is across levels. One fantastic compromise may be that the allocation of the most recent level’s rewards (e.g. skill points, attribute points) can be reset at will, which would allow someone to try out a bunch of skills before committing to one. This “soft respec” is inspired by They Are Billion’s tech tree. Perhaps someone can only respec once per character level. This locks the character into whatever the player has chosen for a decent chunk of time.
BONUS!!! I just thought up something that might be a good analogue comparison between D2 and D3’s themes. Devil May Cry 5 vs……. DARK SOULS 1! One is wacky and fun while people are literally being massacred by the hundreds of thousands, and the other is depressing and grounded in its dark fantasy theme. lol
There are definitely several player bases
And from what I have heard from the blizzcon, new players will feel like them, when they first played diablo and long time fans will get what they were waiting for. = not a game like D3 again, which scared away those long time fans
It’s irrefutable that there is a little “war” between D3 fans and D2 fans and I definitely want blizzard to make a game for D2 fans, which btw don’t have anything against fluent combat and modern graphics
But against too much convenience, shallow character development, too high droprates/promised drops, predicated gameplay and overall a game for a very young audience.
So I guess the only way this will work is to just have Blizzard shut the Diablo franchise down and no D4 that way everyone is happy no more Diablo period
Nah
D4 will definitely be a success. Its just a question, to which kind of audience it will be catered to. And of course, most people stand in between those 2 extremes. (Even me…very much on the D2 side tho :D)
D4 isn’t going to be a success
The D2 crowd won’t buy it because it’s not D2, and the D3 crowd won’t touch it because it’s running backwards instead of forward
And then there is the whole problem of what will the game evolve into
I bought D3 and RoS for the campaign, like I did for every other game and D3 has absolutely nothing to do with Diablo
So why would I want to line up to buy a game that isn’t going to end up being the game I bought originally
I for one would never of bought D3 if I knew that the game would be turned into a mockery of what it’s supposed to be and is just a LB R Us game
How do I know they aren’t going to do the same with D4 Make it so that the game means nothing and the LB is everything
So How is it going to be a success if no one buys it until after the 3rd expansion and know there isn’t going to be any wrecking of the game in between time
We are able to follow the development progress pretty closely.
So we will at least be able to make out if it’s a playable arpg before we buy it, I guess.
And when D3 released it was playable content
When RoS released it was still pretty much playable content
Then they added GR, LB and legendary gems and turned the game into the most difficult level into speed runs and from what I hear Top level GR are turning the same
So I can’t see how having a close eye on development before release is going to tell you that they aren’t going to ruin the experience a few years down the track and the reason you bought the game in the first place is made non existant
I didn’t like the skill system, I didn’t like the skill animations, I didn’t like the health balls and other conveniences. I didn’t like a few things. Endless paragon and this whole forced seasonal play just made me not coming back after leaving for a long time. I did play ros for the content, for the lore. I will play D4 for the lore, at least. I love the way, the lore is going. I accept, paying 60-70€ to maybe play the game for 2-3 months. And if I play it for years, its even better.
People doesn’t like the auction house.
People doesn’t like the terrible item drop rate
People doesn’t like how the rare item outperformed the legendary
People doesn’t like that once you reached Lv60, you have nothing to do.
People doesn’t like how Inferno one-shot almost everything
People doesn’t like the Enrage Timer for the Boss and Elite fight
People doesn’t like that Elite will recover to full HP after out of combat
People doesn’t like the insane repair cost
D3 Classic has a lot of issues that many people don’t like it at that time.
Perhaps you should stop worrying about endless paragon first because your monk doesn’t even have a proper and presentable gear at that moment.
Also, D2 has a ladder where there are few items and events you can’t access without playing ladder, and I see you have no problem with it. Double standard again.
David Kim has no experience in making ARPG game. The only experience that he had is responsible on the Starcraft 2 PVP balance patch, and even so it took him a year to remove the mothership core from the game despite that most of the SC2 players and pros think that mothership core ruined the SC2 scene.
So, I don’t know why do you have such a high hope on him.
