I agree D2 is a masterpiece but giving the new iteration of a beloved series a good chance and criticize D4 fairly should be the baseline for players. To make the game better. I like yours points generally here is my reply:
Some form of lobby is surely missing or at least lfp features there are a lot of MMO like features which I like but the social aspect is lacking. Bring leaderboards back please.
Playing around lvl 40 right now itemisation and drops still seem okay to me. Weapons and armor have interesting stats given how DMG scales it might get boring after a while though (need vulnerable and crit) jewelry feels bleak right now. However I do like the idea with aspects.
There is trading and the system is safer (thus fairer ) than D2 because you have to lock in your stuff first. Makes scamming much harder which is good. Maybe restricted trading will also do some good to the game.
Bosses on wt2 feel fine right now. Some of them are really well designed and need some strategizing to take on. Some are too easy some too hard. D2 had quite simple boss design imo. They were hard the first few times then the fight itself became meaningless.
Too high numbers are indeed ridiculous.
This seems to be the biggest issue right now and should be addressed. Lvl 10 to 40 makes no difference in how the game feels. Not good.
I don’t find that sinking 20 Points into your main skills was the best system ever. After a while I just wanted to skip that. Five could be just fine especially when you get the boards later. This could be in line with keeping those numbers low. Progress fast in early to mid game than have a long plateau. As you already mentioned that this collides with the scaling model. Even if you could sink 30 points into your skills you would still feel not stronger if everything levels with you all the time.
Also wrote this during lunch brake.
What is the “spirit of Diablo 2”, without mentioning any specific mechanic?
I mean if you boil away the nitty gritty and look at the game as a whole I see D4 as continuation of the Diablo DNA.
I’d really love for you to try to tell me what makes a game like D2 without mentioning potions belts, rune words, or any one specific D2 mechanic. Runewords weren’t even in D2 prior to LOD for instance and most casuals never even interacted with them.
Many of you are talking about the bad itemization of d4, essentially the same as d3.
However, it seems to me that many of you overlook the fact that it is impossible to build a good itemization on combat mechanics of D3, no matter how hard you try. Why?
I liked D3 vanilla itemization much much more than ROS one, or absolutely terrible D4. And D3 vanilla was built on D2 itemization with some tweaks. It was good - they just had to rebalance actual drops, not stats/affixes. But they casualized everything,
Bro, the game has at least 150hrs to reach lvl 100 what do you mean it lacks content? Relative to what? Games that have been out for years?
The content expectations for some people are literally the work of other dimensional beings who think that games should launch with 10 years worth of content.
I’m feel like you’re making my point for me. To 99+% of players, Diablo is not “potion belts”. It’s a dark atmosphere, killing demons, fast-paced action combat with an isometric style, and getting phat loots.
You can’t say D4 doesn’t follow the D2 formula in these ways.
It’s just sad that they own possibly the best item system in the world, and they try their best to run away from it, rather than expand on it. Diablo 3 and 4 items are awful attempts at items.
If you think it’s good in any way, just remember that the most common items in the game are called “Rare” items. It’s just dumb. This stuff does not exist in D2, it actually makes sense.
Same. I much prefer the skill rune system from D3. I think the D4 system we got now was their (poor) attempt at combining D3 and D2’s skill systems, which ultimately made D4 have it’s own sort of thing but… Idk. It just feels so limited. Maybe they can fix some of the game’s other issues, but I don’t think they’ll expand skill trees. I think this is one problem we’re stuck with in this game, and that’s disappointing.
I think the reason why I dislike the skill tree in D4 is that while it appears like there are more choices than say, D3, it’s all an illusion. In D4 each skill has one required upgrade and then two optional nodes to choose from, right? But in D3 that required upgrade would be baseline baked into the skill, and instead of having 2 node choices, we had 5 rune options (6 technically, but only niche builds ever used base runes so I won’t even count that). So instead of adding depth and choice w/ skills, they’ve managed to remove a majority of all skill choices while giving the illusion of more choice by using a tree-system and making players put multiple points into skills.
Same thing with the passives. Most seem directly tied to certain builds/playstyles meaning there’s no real option to choose different passives if you’re playing certain builds. In D3, passive choice is more limited, as you could only pick 4 passive skills. But the passives you could choose from felt much more impactful as a result.
D4’s system feels so much more limited compared to previous games, wrapped in an illusion of choice. If they added more “end-node” (sorry idk what else to call it) options to skills, I feel like I’d be fine with it. But instead it feels like we actually lost content, and the game regressed in some way.
Doom and Doom 2016 / Doom Eternal share the same DNA even though the mechanics are not the same.
Things like BFG tracers don’t define the doom DNA. Most people likely couldn’t even tell you how that BFG actually worked in Doom but they liked shooting in it Doom and in Doom 2016.
What, in the DNA/Soul of the game do you suggest makes D4 not the descendant of D2? As far as I can see it is a pretty faithful successor in terms of soul/vibe. Again, don’t describe specific mechanics, what in the heart/soul of the game is different? I doubt you could say.