No it didn’t. Not even WoW reached that peak.
Stop pulling numbers out of your… Pocket.
Diablo III + RoS is the 14th best selling game of all time with over 30 million copies across 6 platforms, very close to Skyrim which was a massive success.
Diablo II doesn’t even show up in that list, and it was only available for PC, thus limiting even more it’s demographic.
LOL did you just get 4 million copies sold from WikiPedia?
LOL I remember playing with 14 million people bro… there were bots but still… numbers are solid, 100% true story
Diablo II sold 17 million copies and the Lord of Destruction expansion pack sold for Diablo II sold an amazing 17.5 million.
Even though I’m not form the US, I still thank you for your service.
With that said, a lot of what you say in regards to how “smooth” D3 is in comparison to D2 is nonsensical. Allow me to explain.
I’ll never understand what’s not smooth about D2 gameplay and combat. It might be because you lacked cast rate/attack speed, hit recovery and things like that.
If anything, D2 is more responsive and smooth game, that D3 was back between 2012 and 2014. On torment 10 (back then known as Monster Power 10), the game was stuttering. I had one of the best machines at the time. To get a signifficantly better one, I would have to travel into the future.
I purchased 2 SSDs. One for the operational system and video drivers, and a separate one for the game itself. The game was still stuttering.
And in Reaper of Souls lag in Greater Rifts was a thing for years (and maybe it’s still a thing, since I’m not playign actively and I wouldn’t know).
The game didn’t have a 64bit client. This is a relatively recent addition, I think in late 2016 or early 2017 (if I am not mistaking)… And the game would still be laggy in later patches with a 64 bit client.
I did see your video. All that clicking is competely useless and excessive. If this was actually necessary for the game to be played properly, it would have most likely alienated me from D3 even more.
APM is completely irrelevant in a Diablo game. But if for some reason, those numbers matter to you, you can buy a mouse with a momentum scroll wheel and you can do the following:
bind Multishot to a button on your keyboard.
bind Force Move to NWgeelUp or Down (or both)
press and hold the keyboard key for Multishot
spin the scroll and your character will stutter step in between attacks, and you would be issueing waaay more commands per second, than you do now. Locked scroll allows for more precise movements, fee one allows you to issue so many commands, that you can leave the scroll spinnign and walk without having to press a button:
Yeah, because in D2 my character didn’t run up to where I clicked, or didn’t teleport where I clicked.
Source: your memory
ok boomer
your Source is WikiPedia
LOL OK DUMBDUMB
First, where’re your stats coning from?
Second, are you implying that about 10 million of those pirated it?
Third, in its time, d2 was a masterpiece and no question. But directly compared to d3, it has some features done better - but many more of them are objectively inferior. I dont know if you can claim that d2 is better because it gets 10 things right and a 100 things wrong.
The 14.5 million are the number of unique players (and therefore copies D3 sold) over the first year.
xxhttps://us.diablo3.com/en/game/anniversary-infographic/
As to whether or not all those players played every day is a subject to debate. I would argue, that many of the fans of the series quit shortly after release and didn’t come back for RoS and there are indications, that I’m correct.
In comparison, RoS sold poorly on release. Merely 2.7 million. I’m not gonna post linksthat are not on battle net, but you can google multiple articles confirming that number.
However, what those articles are not telling you is, that 2.7 million is less than 20% of the original sales, and as such is considered a failure in the industry.
This is what most likely lead to the cancellation of the planned 2nd expansion pack for the game.
Its 2015 Activision-Blizzard annual financial report.
BOOOM!
This
20 chars
Still play D2. D3 is a better game.
This comment was absolutely genius lol. D2>D3 personally. Doesn’t mean D3 was bad to people that like it. It just means D2 had better systems and was designed by the father of the ARPG Genre.
Talk about taking things out of context
He did say
And the piece you decided to take out of context is inferring that all players in D2 are bots and not all players in D3 are bots
Diablo II was proportionally better.
This should not even be under discussion. Haha ha
^this, I still play D2, I don’t even desire to hop onto D3 right now because no trading, no people will even play with me except for rifts… it’s very limiting
When I talk about smooth gameplay, I’m referring to character animations, animation canceling, release points, and skills without animations that can be cast during the same set of frames being used for a separate attack animation. The graphics engine and stuttering is a separate topic. I don’t know how well D3’s graphics engine was at launch because I was gaming on a laptop at the time. I have since built a really nice PC and have great performance now, though I, and a friend, did experience some bad stuttering about 2 years ago. I was able to fix my issue by changing some settings in windows. As for performance in 4 man GRs, I don’t how it is right now because I mainly run solo but it’s immaterial because I’m talking about skill mechanics, character animations, and how they come together to form the core gameplay loop.
Regarding D2 gameplay, I certainly had plently of FCR (I liked to use Wizard Spike on my poisonancer sometimes to teleport and blow up corpses really fast). The reason I like D3’s gameplay more is because I can achieve so much in terms of skill usage, tactics, and movement. With my poisonancer, I would start by hitting W and casting my shouts, BO and BC, and raising my clay golem. I would then teleport to a pack of trash mobs and cast LR and PN to kill them and quickly revive them. Once I had a little Revive army, I would start teleporting through the level, casting Confuse curse on a pack of mobs and maybe a Bone wall to agro nearby mobs and herd them together all while casting PN. I would then change the curse to LR because corpses were available and blow up the screen with CE. The core gameplay loop was teleport>curse>poison>corpse explosion>refresh buffs. This was very fun gameplay and spent hundreds if not thousands of hours on my poisonancer alone.
My D3 gameplay with MD UE is more complex. I start by first building up 15 stacks of Gogok before activating Vengeance because I rely on the 15% CDR to get my Vengeance downtime to about 1.5 seconds. I’m already in my 4:1 rhythm and as I move through the map I’m doing the following:
Maintaining my 4:1 Multishot to Freezing Strike rate of fire (4 multishots to every 1 generator cast);
Maintaining 100% DPS and 100% uptime on Hexing Pants;
Monitoring FnR/WoC buffs (the 4:1 ratio should take care of this);
Monitoring the COE cycle relative to the 4:1 ratio and my hatred pool;
Maximizing the amount of time spent in Occulus circle;
Monitoring Hatred and Discipline levels relative to COE and Preparation cooldown;
Monitoring time left on Vengeance and timing it with Gogok stacks;
Marking enemies that are closest to my character with <60% life with Mortal Enemy at the node of my attacks to: a) maximize the hatred return from ME, and b) not interrupt the movement of my mouse while stutter-stepping.
Tracking enemy movement and maintaining separation to maximize the effectiveness of the Multishot cone and Steady Aim and Zei’s buffs;
Tracking enemy attacks and maneuvering/evading accordingly all while maintaining 100% DPS;
Tracking ranged enemies and using combat geometry to begin dodging their projectiles before they’re even thrown.
There’s more, but you get the idea. There are many more elements to my gameplay experience in D3 that I am engaged with than in D2. There are simply more systems and mechanics that translate actual gameplay. D2 items mainly gave the player more stats and/or access to skills they didn’t have such as teleport and battle orders.
Second, regarding your comment about my stutter-stepping being useless. I already addressed this before in thread but I will do so again. Stutter-stepping is required to A) maintain the buff from Hexing Pants and B) to maintain 100% DPS while evading projectiles and elite affixes. For example, last night while playing a GR some Hell Witches cast 4 Blood Stars at me down a corridor; instead of vaulting, I kept attacking at my APS and did a perfect half figure-eight loop around, between, and outside of them all while hitting the hell witches with a hail of Freezing Bolas and Multishots. It just felt so good pulling that off even after 4000 hours. Stutter-stepping certainly isn’t required for all builds but to say it’s useless is to ignore math.
Regarding your comment about using mousewheel to do the same thing I do more efficiently. 1. my freehand stepping is just as efficient from an APS and DPS perspective. 2. There are 4 or 5 stutter-stepping methods of which the mousewheel is. The mousewheel methos is easy to use but severely limits lateral and backwards movement, which makes evading attacks and maintaining range very hard in high difficulty. For this reason, I use mousewheel when speed running TVI and switch to freehand stutter-stepping when doing GR 100+.
Finally, smooth and responsive is far more nuanced than click to move here and click to teleport there. I can only imagine how many hours developers agonsize how to fine tune a single skills animation and responsiveness, not to mention the work required to get the skill queuing and hierarchy system right so it feels natural (D2 didn’t have a queuing system IIRC). There’s a very good reason that Blizzard created both D3’s and D4’s engines from the ground up.
You can’t really compare them directly since they were made so far apart. Comparing graphics or gameplay when the available technology was so different would just be pointless.
D2 was a genre defining game that has inspired many other game’s design. If you’re designing an ARPG, Diablo 2 is a game you talk about and think about as a positive source of inspiration.
D3 will likely never have as large or as lasting of an impact. In some cases it actually had a very negative impact on other games as other games cite D3’s failed AH as a reason not to have a better/modern in-game trade system without really looking at the bigger picture (IE: Marvel Heroes used not having decent trade as a selling point when it was released and the Path of Exile devs seem afraid to add better in-game trade and have mentioned the D3 AH when talking about it, despite the fact that it would fit with their crafting/currency systems and mapping very well). Even with D4 discussions, the scapegoating of D3’s AH is used as an argument against more accessible trade still.
In theory. In practive, if you were to actually watch the video itself, you would see that not everything you’re describing matches whats actually happening on the screen.
For example.
At so many points throughout the video, this is simply false and here is why:
You let minions stay near you for long periods of time, which disables Steady Aim (back in beta there was actually a buff icon, not sure why they even removed it).
You’re not maximizing Zei’s buff… due to the reason mentioned above…
And if the Unhallowed Essence buff wasn’t so forgiving, you wouldn’t have maintained that buff also.
Just for referrence:
xxhttps://i.imgur.com/a20Ae1t.jpg
All, because of that excessive clicking due to the ridiculous choice of hexing pants, which probably didn’t contribute and most likely cost you dmg, as you sacrificed a lot of maximizing Zei’s effect.
Mind you, I’m really not judging by the GR number. I really don’t recall whether GR95 was a good solo clear at the time and for the specific spec.
You didn’t. you skipped many of those. I would have to watch it again, but in the first few minutes alone you barely made any use of it.
You shot all the time. That’s not managing CoE cycle.
Actual management would be to time it with some cooldown, like a Necro can time his Frozen Land.
And having more health and mana, or ability such as teleport doesn’t affect gameplay? Hmmmm…
I didn’t say stutter stepping is useless itself. I said, that your excessive clicking is kinda useless and I gave you an example how a similar effect can be achieved more easily.
As to the stutter stepping itself, I havea theory about it. I think it messes badly the monster AI in D3, and sometimes it’s not so much the act of dodging, but the fact that you’re moving constantly, that increases survivability.
In any case. I woud argue, that those are gimmicks, and they don’t really improve upon the Diablo experience. Besides, even if it was skill, it’s rather pointless considering the randomness when it comes to the quasi-competition called GRs.
I have been in top 100 on a solo leader board (and that was before the ban waves in 2016, so it would be safe for me to assume, that I could have been in top 20 if the ban waves had happened earlier). Point being, I do have an idea about high difficulty.
D2 was better in my opinion the way the bosses died in each act were over the top and they fit boss perfectly and the lines that each boss had minus the giant beetle in act 2 gave you a sense of fear where D3 didn’t give you that it just fell flat and they didn’t capture that dark sinister appeal that D2 had however,D3 did have some good things about it the treasure goblins were good the cursed chest and shrines were good nice to see they are getting an upgrade in D4 .Greyhallow island, leorics manner, and the ruins of sescheron where awesome
At the time of the clear, GR 95 was good for farming at 5 minutes. I was running an off meta build without vault and COE because there was a discussion in the DH forum about the effectiveness of non-COE builds for everyday play, so I made the vid for that discussion.
As for getting too close to mobs, it’s a balancing act. In order to progress through a GR fast, you need to play aggressively, which puts you in danger but pays off with time. As for my experience with clearing high GRs using my UE Gogok and ME build, in Season 5 or 6 I reached rank 32 and finished the season at rank 116 (I think I cleared a 106, not sure).
During play, I could stay ranged all day but you need scout ahead. With stutter-stepping I can be aggressive and then work at dodging and getting separation when needed. I’m definitely not perfect in my execution all the time but I’m always trying to achieve perfection, which is where I derive my enjoyment from D3. If I was just here for the shiny items, I’d be gone like a shot.
The gameplay video was of build that wasn’t using COE so there was no cycle to manage. I normally run with COE.
As for for the occulus circles, like I said above, I’m not perfect and sometimes standing in them will get a DH killed.