I’ve played a lot of d2 over the years and after 330 hours in d4 I went back to d2 to gut check some things and I believe the rune word chase is what keeps d2 so fun to replay over and over again. It gives such a deep soul to d2. It isn’t about finding items it’s about making them and trading them.
It also made gray/white items useful.
Put runes into d4 and it’ll take on a life of its item and the game will live far longer than it can imagine.
Runes are a truly magical engine.
I’ll still play d4 regardless but those are what’s missing. That’s the one chase item and it’s effect you’ll never match the feeling of any other way.
If they are too strong like Enigma then game could become boring.
But in general they added not enough stuff to farm for.
We went from D2 having small, large, grand charms, PGMs (what we currently only have in D4 lol), Uber farming (Keys, Organs, Torches), Anni, Runes (EL to Zod), midgame unique and runeword items (Shako, Occu, Viper, Spirits, Lidless (weapon and shield)), lategame items (Griffon, NWs, DFs, DWs) and very uber items like JMOD…
We are currently farming the 3/4 yellow to reroll to 4/4 and if you don’t roll the right stat you gotta find another 3/4 or else it will be too expensive. Very horrible design, dunno if they even played D2.
D3 was a huge downgrade from D2 and D4 another huge downgrade from D3 and I didn’t think that is possible.
The currently correct rating of Diablos should be as followed:
D2R
D2LOD
D2
D3 (beginning release was good, sucked a few years and now it’s okayish after addon and 28 seasons)
D1 (immersion probably best, but sorry it’s hard to play it again so old)
D4
Immortal
Everyone else is not lying to us, but themselves.
Immortal is always the last place in case they bring a new Diablo.
I don’t get how D2 is better after all thoses years. When I tried to get back to it, I did not enjoy it as much as I thought I would. There’s a lot of old mechanics bloating this title a bit, including a not really good inventory management, a subpar progression system where sometimes you have to level up without investing your points, and a kinda repetitive very endgame farm in the same location.
While the items are more exciting than in D4, because there are more to it.
I think D3 did casualize a lot of thoses properly (but the endgame was bad), then did get good only with the expansion release (and after some seasons it became better).
D4 striving to be a mix of the two without getting the best parts of both is kinda intriguing to me.
True, common and magic needs to be revitalized by some mechanic. But tbh, let’s not do the D2 way. Where every slot you can equip a runeword, you’ll only want to put a runeword, because they are always BiS, makeing majority of items obsolite.
They could fall somewhere between legendarys and uniques, or uniques and super uniques.
Yeah it was until they nerfed inferno after krip and a few others clearly had no problems.
I’m not even a good arpg player and even I managed to clear it without AH.
It was a skill issue and not a game issue.
Right after the nerf quit cause it was too easy then.
After years ROS came, game was better but still bad duo to horrible item design etc. and somehow with s28 it seems decent. Not good, but decent. D3 ROS S28 should be the game D3 actually had to be at release.
Maybe we will get runewords in expansion. But dont hold much to it, it will be shallow console version runewords, items has 2 sockets max. There is no stash space for runes anyway.
D3 vanila was good due to auction, Ros killed itemization with sets 50000% dmg and legs with 1000% dmg. Devs forced you to build and killed the game. The graphics are awful anyway so who cares.
Sure you had to kite a little bit but wasn’t hard at all, especially cause the projectiles were so slow (wasps a2 for example).
But I can’t really judge since I grew up playing brood war and wc3 so yeah if you have 1 apm might be hard and needed a nerf. My bad I forgot most arpg players are either gozu or extremely bad players.
D3 at release was fine. It was a skill issue and not a game issue.
It’s not hard, but needed atleast a bit more micro management with heroes.
We are currently in the same state btw.
I killed Uber Lilith day 8 with no problem as rogue, druid and barb so far and we already have peoeple asking for a nerf.
Uber Lilith is also fine as it is. Doesn’t need a nerf it’s a skill issue and not a game issue. If people can’t dodge one hit mechanics they might as well just not try UL?
At this point people like me are asking for more challenges and 90% asking for nerfs etc. even though we have guides everywhere already. Thats why games are getting worse and worse.
Lol why do you think forum users are bad? Casuals dont go on forums or care about the game, they just play their 1 hour a day and dont have time to read forums.
Forum users are mainly the 1% of hardcore players, check the numbers game sold several milions and big topics here are like 200 replies max, pathetic and lame, only like 0.1 % of D4 players visit the forums if even that.
Was just explaining him why D3 was good and then turned bad because of people crying to much how hard things are.
If Diablo 4 actually had decent/ hard content it would follow the same path. At this point we should be happy for uber lilith being a short good challenge.
A lot of folk who claim that the runewords ruin the itemization in D2, seem to forget that the game is perfectly playable without them. Yeah, grinding is faster with enigma, but it’s not necessary. Also considering the insane rarity of high runes, the endgame RWs have reason to be godlike.
I still greatly prefer D2/R over the later titles overall.
D2 lod had many problems vanilla d2 was the best version. LOD made the game way to easy by adding op rune words and charms. D2 was alot like d4 and nobody remembers that. A good rolled rare in vanilla D2 was BiS for all classes which is the same in D4 the biggest difference in d4 vs d2 are the number of affixes d2 had maybe 12 total while d4 has about 50.
Ranking all diablo games its probably like this:
Diablo 2 (vanilla)
Diablo 1 (nostalgia probably fits here even though it’s still a decent game)
Diablo 4
Diablo 2 LoD
Diablo immortal (remove the obvious p2w and the game itself is actually good
they actually showed runes in gameplay teaser for d4 way back in 2019 so hyped the whole d2 community making us think they were comming just to not get them lol
I’d say trading makes the game too easy, instead of the op runewords. Playing the game offline, thus SSF, for the most part. It’s a whole another experience when you are forced to use what you find. getting to the late mid - endgame runewords feels like a massive achievement.
After all, once you get the best in slot gear, the game is finished.
Blizzard can you please SKIP the whole part between releasing the game and the add-on / expansion / DLC.
Why not start from having the game changer already in game and THEN expand it.
I don’t agree with this. It should be:
Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction
empty
empty
Just kidding, Diablo 1 was also great, I played it again a few months ago.
D2 LoD had such an deeply constructed and senseful item system.
Not lying, first time I played D4 in beta I felt like having some kind of mobile game inventory and items.
Damn, there are so many mobile games which look like D4.
So true.
D3 player won’t understand, but the vast majority of D2 player feel this way.
