yes and no, 1.10 was a one man patch made by Peter Hu, the rest of Blizzard North was not involved in that patch beside testing
1 Like
Eh, I think we would need some really good sourcing for such a claim.
Yeah David Brevik isnt a good source… you are right
1 Like
The video literally dispute it. One guy programmed most of the patch, but Brevik stated that design was not only by that one guy. And I hope we can agree design is a fairly significant part.
pretty sure that when he talks about other doing designs, hes talking about graphic design
Pretty sure peter hu is a great developer, great at coding but doesnt make him great at Designing Black Diablo CLone or the model of the 100 new items that came with that patch
Yeah I’ve watched this before. That’s looking at it with some obvious bias. A good chunk of it was done by Hu he says, but it wasn’t a solo project without any outside feedback. Regardless, there isn’t anything controversial about this. Balance and maintenance patches during this era of Blizzard were often done by one person, under the lead producer’s direction and testers to help. StarCraft 1 and 2 were like this for a long time. That said, David Hu was a very talented part of the original D2/LoD development team and worked under the creators, Brevik, and the Schaefers. Ultimately the patch came from a legitimate source and that’s the main point of importance, which you conveniently forget. Hu headed the programming of 1.10, and contributed to the design, but there were others too that contributed to the design and testing as stated. He isn’t specific about who contributed to what design exactly so you can’t make any assumptions.
You also conveniently forget (this seems to be a habit of yours) that Brevik gives a very positive endorsement of the patch and the work that was done, praising Hu’s work as it pertained to their ongoing vision of the game:
“This brought Diablo 2 into the modern era and it became the game that we know and love at this point, but this took literally three and a half years to get to this point.”
It was a patch that contained ideas that were intended for the game for a long time but the team didn’t have the time to implement them yet. They were also at that time primarily working on Blizzard North’s version of Diablo 3, and shortly after, Blizzard North was shut down. So Hu’s work was instrumental considering what was going on internally at that time. I’m not understanding why you’re upset and trying to prove the illegitimacy of 1.10. You just posted proof from one of the three original creators of Diablo, very positively endorsing the work that was done in 1.10 and it’s legitimacy. D2 has been this way since 2003 and it hasn’t caused the game to implode, but rather has achieved critical success and long term popularity.
I would still prefer to live in a world where you could choose which patch you play online, with all of the later bug fixes, in D2R of course. More options can sometimes be better and 1.08 and 1.09 are good, but I doubt modern blizzard would consider that. D2R is likely stuck at 1.14 for now, and will receive ongoing bug fix patches for the foreseeable future. Beyond that is unknown and up to VV.
Obviously 1.10 had lots of good ideas but it would have needed some more iterations to iron out certain problems that always occur on larger changes. Especially a remaster could be used to iron out those things. But we do not want each skill equally viable and fun. This is what we got in D3 and it appears very generic to me. But most of the skills should make sense to have for some use cases.
I think one large problem of the synergy system is that (as I remember) it came together with immunities. Without immunities, the build diversity would be probably better.
Another problem that the game has is that because of their auras only Act 2 mercenaries are considered useful (only might and holy frost by the way).
And the existence of teleport makes the sorceress practically without alternative for farming good items except if you already posses some crazy difficult to get items. It shouldnt be removed but if it had a slight cast delay (like half a second) then it would be less op for certain runs but still a great and useful skill.
If those tip points were be improved D2 could be a better game without killing the D2 experience. But it is very important for the game that you can do more wrong than right if you dont care where to put your skill points.
I think it is not very easy to grasp what problems really need improvements. E.g., I remember that in early D3 development the devs talked about the drawbacks of the statting system of D2 which they tried to improve since they thought it was boring in D2. I also think that it is a bit dull, but I never found it annoying since it is not very important, but still it is a bit sad. However, I dont think that the stat point system in D3 is better.
So it is difficult to say if something makes the game better or worse beforehand without trying. But the fear that the devs make things worse for the sake of changing is by all means justified as have lots of other failures shown us in the gaming industry.
That’s correct. Changing D2 is not something that should be taken lightly, and these ideas need to be really thought through, even seemingly minor QoL additions. They can have significant negative effects on the game.
Your example of putting a casting delay on teleport is a good example of “good intentions” but a bad outcome. You’re just going to make the game much less fun for the majority of players. That’s also a lot to ask players to adjust to, after playing the game this way for 20 years. Rebalancing should never take away fun or make the game feel more clunky or like more of a chore. Casting delay is kind of a crap mechanic forced into certain abilities so they can’t be spammed. Putting that on teleport would literally make a huge portion of players just not play the game anymore.
People just throw out bad ideas here without carefully considering all of the implications.
This thinking is what power creep is made of imo. If something “fun” is OP, then a nerf is still justified.
(Not saying a casting delay would be the right solution for teleport though)
Power creep is more to do with damage/health scaling out of control. The Torment system in D3 is the prime example.
Changing powerful abilities to be mechanically annoying to use isn’t working against power creep, that’s working against a game’s inherent fun and fluidity and ultimately it’s long term health.
I agree they shouldn’t make it mechanically annoying. But some people would find it less fun, even if you manage to nerf teleport in a way that doesn’t make it annoying to use. Just because they wanted to be able to spam it. Just like some people claim they find it less fun to deal 1000 dmg instead of 10000 dmg. Only saying that it is bad not to nerf stuff because some people find it less fun.
and another thread from that guy who wants to change the WHOLE game with his ideas.
DIDNT EVEN READ THAT.
no to all.
1 Like
Yes, the casting delay for teleport would be a radical solution for a problem that is also a feature which is very central for the current way to play the game on higher levels. But for me to just teleport through to mephisto or the countess feels like a cheat. I cannot imagine that this was intended by the devs in the beginning. Maybe it would have been better if the casting delay had always existed. And then I dont like that only the sorceress has the ability for teleport and all other classes have nothing comparable. It makes her without alternative.
On the other hand, it is really very cool to just teleport to mephisto. Perhaps there are other solution which make these thinks less attractive but still viable and cool. Maybe if it would be more risky for the sorce to die if done wrong. I dont know…
Yeah some mods have teleport unable to teleport through walls
Also teleport should have a cooldown that can be reduced through inversement in the skill
No more 1 skill wonder
Want to reduce that 2 second cooldown? Need to spec 20poonts in it to get 0
1 Like
I don’t hate your idea for a new synergy system and I definitely agree with the argument the current synergy system hurts build diversity. I personally wouldn’t mind synergies to be more based on character level and/or stat points rather than other skills to simplify the balancing of early skills to make them viable in late game, PVP, or special purpose…or maybe even increase the maximum amount of skill points you can apply past level 20.
Also, I do think over the years the game remained interesting when they were still patching it because different builds were OP at different times. For those of us that have been around since the early days of D2 you might remember a poison bug that made socketed bows filled with Perfect Emeralds actually viable and interesting, or there was a time when everyone had a firewall sorc. I think as long as new re-balancing occurs, that’s ok for some skills to be viable for one season while others for the next as they try to work it out and doesn’t really need to be perfect. The imperfection could possibly be part of what made the game interesting for so long compared to something like PoE where you are basically min-maxing your character non-stop with very little gains no matter what you do.
Synergies could be fine they are just unbalanced because they were added after they built the skill tree. This is why we need a remastered and original version. I think a lot of abilities are a bit bland too, they could rework the skill trees and through this have more balanced synergies.
I agree there is a problem and it feels dated. Even as somebody that will still enjoy the nostalgia of the original, the fun will wear off because we’ve been there and done that. Modern gameplay has progressed too far in Action RPG’s for the original gameplay to hold peoples attention for a long.
I also thought that, but I would remove the cooldown earlier like level 10 or 12. So it would be possible to stay a one-point wonder and with +10 to skills so you would still get the teleport to mephisto experience rather easily because you will have +10 eventually, but it would be much later and you probably could not wear as much magic find stuff.
I wouldnt make teleport unable to get through walls though. This is a key feature of teleport that makes it different from leap.
People think I want to change the whole game cause in don’t like it, it’s quite the opposite I want to shake some things up to make this game I love a bit more balanced and fresh
A new skill meta won’t make it less Diablo 2, afaik 1.09 is as much D2 as 1.10 and both were different metas
Yeah, my intention wasn’t to say it shouldn’t be able to get through wall, just to mention some mods do it
But without prevent it from getting through walls… we know he game knows when you get through walls… what about increasing the mana cost of it for getting through walls?
I find that idea interesting but I think skills should also work in a simple way. If it gets too complicated it will be difficult to understand. I think there is no skill so far which has varying mana costs.
I was going to suggest another teleport change. How about that there is a time window of say 3 seconds where you can teleport as you like but 3 seconds after your first teleport you cant cast it anymore for a say 2 seconds. With increasing skill level this time could be extended so you can teleport for 10 sec or more later. But I didnt say that because I think it would be too complicated. Things should stay easy. Reduced mana costs for increased skill level is something that is already in the game (e.g. double swing).
Yeah balance cannot be achieved with just value tweaking because some skills are not just underperforming but simply bad
with my system you get perks from your synergies
ie: Slows monsters that walk in firewall&blaze which makes them take more damage
ie: Vengeance has a CTC firestorm/shock field/frost nova on striking
this improve the mechanic of the skills, something +50% damage will never do
i completely agree
what it took the original 20 years to lose in playerbase will take a year to D2R with no nolvelty to the game beside the graphics