What made me stop playing D2

General Discussion
81

It certainly could have been better, but I don’t necessarily think, that the D3 solution of “generators and spenders” is much of a solution at all.
Considering, that on a multishot DH, I mostly spam Multishot and don’t run out of resource, and I only press my generator to get focus & restraint bonus, it’s basically the same thing as D2: you just spam with no actual regard for your resource.

I never claimed, that Mr Llama is playing the game how it’s meant to be played. I wasn’t the one who brought him up to the discussion.

In D2 spamming mana potions early on does make sense to a degree. Again, early on your character is weak and is compensating though consumables.

I am not opposed to better resource system for D4, but I just don’t think D3’s system is that much better.

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82

I didn’t exactly say D3 resources aren’t broken. Basically everything in D3 is broken due to the end-game gear.

That wasn’t a response to you in any way, just BigPimpins view on D2 based on a LLama video

83

Actually, it’s exactly what it is. You’ve clicked reply to a post of mine (probably unintentionally), instead of posting a general reply or reply to others.
Check the upper right angle of your post.

84

Fair enough. No idea why I did that. Still, I was quoting someone else :slight_smile:

Edit: actually, I remember now. I instantly clicked reply, when you criticized Dark Souls! Then never got around to saying anything more about it. Just speechless!

85

Is it? Looking for higher defense and damage stats shouldn’t be too hard to min-max at late game. Read the blogposts about it, they wanted a diluted experience.

No guarantees about D4. That’s it. As you can see from D3, a meta can last for months and years even.

Because D2 was not an MMO-lite that has uninterrupted environment shifts but a true ARPG and you didn’t need any min-max for an nigh endless PvE yardstick. You only min-max your PvP build in D2 by stat allocation and stuffing your inventory with more charms.

86

I’d stop playing too if i lost a last wish to a ridiculous anti-bot mechanic that clearly does nothing.

87

Dark Souls seems to be a holy cow to many. I don’t pretend to know much about that game. I just disagree with the notion, that it’s an evolution and a superior game than D2.

My criticism eisn’t even towards the game itself, but rather myths and nonsensical claims by it’s player base.

But when it comes to D2, I don’t defend it as a holy cow. I just give very specific examples and can talk in great detail about it. I am happy to agree it had some flaws.

It’s just, that many of the things people claim to be bad about D2 are… nonsensical, myths and D3 fanboy made up talking points. You can tell the person either misunderstood something, or you can even be left with the impression he never played the game (which is the case of people complaining about the minimap in D2 based on them watching a streamer, instead of actually playing the game and adjusting the options for themselves).

I hope D4 turns out to be a good game, but we’ll see.

88

That’d be Grim Dawn.

89

Same as my PoE response. Grim Dawn’s system is heavily inspired by D2, almost exactly the same as the one from D2, so to call it an evolution or a better system is kinda lame.

I did beat the base game on all 3 difficulies. However, I figured this game is not worth my time, mainly because of my issues with how the game was balanced.

I played a ranged character, Demolitionist + Shaman (I think that resulted into an elementalist). It worked really good for the purposes of what I was doing, which was, that I farmed for gear.
I got the full set for the demolitionist (ulzuin or something like that)… I tried playing with the rifle, I also tried to play with 2 pistols. I think I liked the 2 pistols better rathern than the set weapon itself.

But then I looked at how OP some of the melee builds were… they had insane damage, and at the same time more survivability. It was truly ridiculous and it pissed me off.

I purchased the first expansion, hoping things would be better… and I never played it. In fact, I removed the game from my steam account entirely, due to the fact, that people that purchased the expansion couldnt’ play with people that didn’t. Yes, that was the case with D2 and LoD, but that was back in 2001.
In current times, I’m not going to support such practices on top of crappy balance. I regret spending money on that game.

90

Maybe it was unfair for me to bring it up in the first place, because they’re so different.

The reason why we Soulsborne players consider those games to be the peak of the real time RPG ecosystem is because they’re games that reward player skill much more than it rewards character progression. You can have the most cookie cutter character possible, it will make the game slightly easier to beat in PvE (bosses will still wreck you if you suck though), but you will still be destroyed in the 1v1 duel PvP community if you don’t master the many different mechanics of the game that have nothing to do with stats or items, but with how the actual physics and movement of the games work. It’s almost more of a fighting game than an RPG when it comes to that part. Also because items actually change the way you play the game, as each weapon has their own weight, range, damage, leave you open for more or less time, etc. They have advantages and disadvantages. If you wear heavy armor, you sacrifice your fast roll, if you run light armor or naked you get fast roll but no defense. There’s a compromise. Overswinging can get you killed, etc. It just feels much more rewarding to me.

Another thing is that if you play a “meta” build in Dark Souls you won’t be very respected. People are encouraged to play in ways that increase the challenge or just make the game fun to them. Your average hammerdin player from D2 would get bullied by the DS community. Using a shield basically means admitting you’re not confident enough to play without one. That kind of mindset.

By the way, the people who claim Dark Souls is hard are the people who suck at the game. The game is not hard, it’s kinda like Castlevania: once you learn the patterns of the enemies and where all the traps are, you run the game effortlessly.

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91

Yeah, a little bit.

That sounds awesome.

But, I have a friend, that is really good at those games. His favorite is Boodbourne. He also shares my view, that games like DS2 are overrated, and the whole “unforgiving, but fair” claims about DS2 are false. And from what I’ve seen, some attacks there don’t match their animations. That’s my issue with the game.
And, like I said. It’s not even with the game itself, but more with the myths and legends and stupid talking points people are throwing around.

That’s most likely the case.

If you like the souls games so much, here’s another friend of mine from back in WoW. Check out his channel, see if you like the souls content:
xxhttps://www.youtube.com/user/saberXmachine/videos

92

This actually sounds bad, because everything they did in D2 to stop the “issues” they identified, they turned around and doubled the problem, making it an ever progressively worse game.

No sense of economy, no plateau to reach, no player choice in builds to complete top tiers of content…etc…

A lot of things Blizzard has done over the last 20 years across all genre’s is very contradictory to the overall message.

In the end, making decisions to change the game to hurt botting, but then doubling down and adding systems that promote botting, is mind boggling to me!

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93

My criticisms of D2 (which is one of my fav games ever):

  • Act 4 was small and dull without much going on, especially the early plains levels.
  • Synergy system destroyed build variety.
  • Ditto elemental resistances on monsters, introduced at the same time I believe. For so long the combat system was so simple you could win by spamming one spell, like frozen orb, so this was a bandaid solution.
  • Stat requirements also limited what you could do, and stats in general weren’t that interesting.
  • Dubious endgame, got a little better when they introduced ubers and lvl 85 areas, but still pretty lacking. Never thought PVP was that interesting – got my competitive fix from StarCraft and Counter-Strike.
  • Stamina was completely pointless, just there to annoy low level characters.
  • So many poorly implemented items. People remember the great ones, especially the insanely overpowered 1.10 runewords, but forget that many were dull stat sticks. If I remember right, the only cool themed set was Trangs, which turned you into a vampire.
  • Painfully small stash. No, it doesn’t force the player to make hard decisions, it’s just obnoxious.

A lot of these issues were fixed with mods, like the Median mod, which I’ve been playing through again recently and it’s great how it makes everything interesting, even formerly simple fights like Andariel, let alone crafting or uber dungeons. I’ve also heard good things about Path of Diablo, but haven’t tried it yet.

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94

The treasure class system was not a good thing. It isn’t communicated to you in game… that is why no one understands it. It allowed some control over the loot table, yes that is good if you knew how to exploit it but its done so much better in Grim Dawn or Titan Quest with the monster infrequent system.

95

That’s why it had an immunity-resistance system for monsters, so players can’t always win by spamming one spell and had to switch their skill according to their approach.

Isn’t that the point of a “requirement”? The whole gig is how semi-combat builds can put most stats to good use, bypass immunities and casters don’t really need too high yet need a proper debuff.

And annoy you further when you encounter a Drain Stamina monster forcing you to walk, while you supposed to be far away from unique monsters when they shrivel up die.
Even though I agree that stamina is largely useless at end game, it has its moments; just like immunity system when playing a single elemental based spec.

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96

One the one hand I agree, that it was bad the system wasn’t explained in-game. At the very least, they should have had item lvl displayed on both items and the arenas.
On the other hand, a big part of Diablo 2 was reading and sharing online, so the people that don’t know how it works don’t have much of an excuse.

This one of the very few legitimate criticisms towards D2. 1.10 did reduce some of the build variety for some classes.
But at the time I wanted Necromancer skeletons to be viable, as well as the bone skills. Prior to 1.10 those were kinda craptastic.
Also, from my experience, Wind Druid became really good.

Which were the builds that really suffered? Legit question, since past 1.10 I’ve played only my favorite builds and not all the classes.

97

I don’t think enigma was a bad idea honestly. The issues!
1: Hacks - Turned a rare item into everyone had it. Especially on softcore. It wasn’t meant to be had by everyone, yet alone the first few days of a season.
2: Game Balance: As you said, most classes lacked solid transportation skills.
Teleport was a 1 point wonder, combined with +skills. Absurdly effective. Just increasing mana cost or cast rate early on in the levels could have significantly altered this. *Static field was another biggy 1 point wonder.
Vigor, frenzy, and the others just took so much more investment.
3: Mostly random dungeons, loot tables, and waypoint balance often made it better to be able to teleport, since you could move through walls.

98

It’s definitely an evolution AND a better system. If I didn’t think that, I’d have been playing D2 instead.

Because D2 didn’t have balance issues?

Did you try the Crucible?

There are plenty of ranged builds that have survivability and damage and there always have been. I don’t think you looked far enough.

I’m reading this particular set of paragraphs and… are you serious here? As if D2 didn’t have its own set of OP builds and a bunch of builds that sucked wind.

Or builds that failed, as apparently yours did. But you know what you could have done in GD that you can’t do in D2? Fixed it without rerolling.

It sounds like you got pissed off over a couple small things - that can happen in D2 as well, no less! - and didn’t bother to look further.

I mean, just looking at the current Build Compendium on the forum for Forgotten Gods has a load of caster builds capable of beating the most difficult content.

Unfortunately, I can’t post links. But if you go to GD’s forum and the current Compendium, in the Elementalist build section there’s one capable of clearing the toughest content in the game… and it uses dual wielding pistols and the Ulzuin set.

99

This is the most irrelevant topic I’ve ever skimmed through.

You hated Diablo II because you were addicted to it and the quality of life was terrible by today’s standards… yes, we know, we all played it.

It’s the main reason I stopped playing it because I had no one to help rush me / mule me any more. All my friends grew up and moved on from it, like most normal people did.

I’ll admit, Diablo II was a great game at the time because online gaming was a rare thing to see, everyone wanted to be a part of it and it was easy to find groups of people at your school who played it…

Now a days, forget it, no one has time for that crap any more. The shared stash was one of the best ideas implemented in to Diablo III and is an idea that should stay.

If Diablo II had the same quality of life features like auto-gold pick up and a shared stash, I wouldn’t even have bothered with Diablo III after I finished it the first time. The end game was abysmal on vanilla D3 and it isn’t much better on RoS.

Also, how are you going to complain about a game you loved so much you killed it for yourself? Reading your thread was like drinking pure liquefied entitlement.

What you just wrote was the equivalent of saying “Man, I really wanted a dog my entire life, and I finally got one, and I loved him, I loved him so much, and played with him every day for 3 hours a day. But after 3 years of constantly playing with him, I grew tired of him. I still loved him but he just wasn’t as fun to play with any more, he got older and didn’t have as much energy. I started to notice things about him I never noticed before, like he sniffed his butt too much. I eventually had to just put him up for adoption because he just wasn’t doing it for me anymore, I think about him fondly and the time I spent playing with him, but I just couldn’t get over him always sniffing his own butt.”

Give me a break man… you’re complaining about a game you were clearly addicted to like crack. I love Diablo II and I only ever had 1 account and always used the best builds… why bother wasting your energy on builds that don’t work?.. You did that to yourself.

D2 was a good game at the time.
It’s still a great game, better than Diablo III, it just needs some quality of life improvements and it would have surpassed DIII in every way.

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100

Personally, even D3 is more enjoyable to me than Grim Dawn.
The system is more or less the same. It’s not a grand evolution or anything.
You still spend stats and skill points.

I did. I didn’t like it all that much.

In D2 you can respec without rerolling too. Den of Evil grants a free respec on each difficulty. There’s also Token of Absolution.

In GD you can’t respec the points you’ve spent on raw stats (or at least you couldn’t with the base game, not sure about the first or subsequent expansions)

My issue with the balance is mostly, that I had stacked as much life as I possibly could and it was still pretty low in comparison to some other builds.

I no longer remember all the details, but I figured the game is not worth my time.

I also disliked how ugly the characters were.

Not a bad game or anything, but not for me. I deffinitely don’t hold a deep disdain for it (the way how some people here seem to feel about D2), but it really didn’t redefine the genre.