You cannot get Jah or Ber from countess.
You can get to 80 in a few hours if you rush to hell and just do chaos there
People are not too bright now a days âŚ
Instead of grinding levels, you grind duriel, instead of grinding nm 100 you grind the pit .
Once you get max stats, 6 hours or less for 100, good chance you have found gear enough to crush duriel at lvl 80ish. You grind him for ubers, nightmare dungeons for glyphs ( to level up glyphs ).
You legitimately trade a straight up level grind, for one that is dependent on if youre flavor the month, which is dependent on a few streamers.
Now that its easier to lvl, the chances of you spending money to look cooler , goes up.
The only thing you canât grind is micro transactions, and battle passes.
Diablo 2, many builds and gear peices were viable. But again it was all about that enigma, a challenge to find the right parts. Infinity , again another challenge to find the right parts. Both of which make a huge difference ( especially infinity on a pet necro, CB for merc and no defense ment skele warriors hit 100% of the time and did well over 20k dps.) But there was no challenge for the gear level, it as well, turned into being the right class and build.
But at least diablo 2 had alot more group mechanics, was easier to group up , synergies between classes. Remember when CtA wasnt a thing and you were happy to have that bubba in the group, or a paladin uses conviction or phanta . Had no micro transactions.
End game in diablo 4 will always be compressed content , making it quicker to grind to newer content, adding layers of what was some crispy tater chips, into layers of soggy watered down chips growing mold.
Every d4 season
Multiple builds die for each class
We have math fails that make all group content trival
They intentionally add some slot machine/timesink cycle in that is anti fun, (why does reverting mastercrafts cost millions of gold? Like whyâŚ)
slot machines arent bad as long as you win a bit each time. There is so many people wanting the same thing you are that you will never get it unless it comes down perfect. Then you can still brick it. They do not understand how bad the level scaling actually brings that game down. They only understand easy programming and content to make money.
D4/D2 comparison topics always devolve into heresy lol.
Oh⌠donât you remember?
You accused the developers of blaming the players.
A developer blaming a player is often strongly associated with a developer not listening to their community and saying that players are wrong.
The interviews point to the opposite. Point out that they listened.
Thatâs why your thread was misinformation. You literally said that the sky is green.
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Not the regular one, but you can get Tal, Eth
Yes, I see it exactly the same way, only that this 1% of Last Epoch is even worse implemented. Using forge potential to get random rolls. I just find it pathetic.
In Diablo 3, they had already gradually rolled back everything that was originally planned and ultimately turned D3 into more of a beat 'em up than a hack ânâ slay. That was just as wrong as favoring group play. That has nothing to do with the original idea of Diablo 1 + 2.
The Immortal nonsense was then another nail in the coffin. And because of this well-deserved sh1tstorm, they released Diablo 4 way too early.
Now theyâre doing the same nonsense 1 to 1 in Diablo 4 that we already saw in Diablo 3. Even the same mechanics, just with prettier graphics. What Rod writes⌠doesnât he feel ashamed? This is just as much a fairy tale as back then with the Warcraft 3 remake. âYes, the old fans preferred to keep the old graphics and videos.â
And then the addon with a new class. I think new classes are cool, but add them in addition to the already beloved ones, not instead. How can you release Diablo 4 and the first addon without a Paladin or a Holy class in the game? They have no idea what theyâre doing. And the hypocritical talk and excuses for the past 15 years, I canât stand it anymore.
A shame what theyâve done to my once-worshipped game studio. Chris Metzen is the first glimmer of hope in years, at least for the WoW franchise.
3 Likes
One thing I would like to add to your list is the crafted items. Many players no longer have them on their radar, but they are still worth mentioning, and the mechanics further enhance the whole hunter-gatherer and item crafting experience, compared to Diablo 4. They still work in D2R as well.
classic . battle . net / diablo2exp / items / crafteditems.shtml
or search for
gear-crafting-recipes-horadric-cube
The interview, as this thread also helps demonstrate, was an attempt to throw D2 and its players under the bus for how bad D4 is. Thatâs what I said, thatâs what this thread is saying.
Clearly, Iâm not the only one saying this. Look at this thread with thousands of views, hundreds of messages and hundreds of likes of supporting members of the community basically saying youâre wrong.
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Dude, most people who play these games do it solo. They dont care about trading or interacting with others. Itâs fast for you because you know the game inside and out.When you first played the game that was not the case and you know it. Glad you enjoy D2 and think it isnt grindy. But for the rest of us its a boring grindy game best left in the past. Most players donât want a long grind in a seasonal game, which is basically what Rob said. I know that fact hits some of you in the feels because you think D2 is gods gift to gaming, but that is the truth. We donât want to play that game anymore. Period.
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I have read some of the stuff Rod said over the past couple of months/years and i realy do no think he is willing to move the game in the diretion i would like to see it.
Under his command this game will never be a dark and Brutal horror game, it will be unicorns and powercreep as much as possible. Until the gameplay feels like âlawnmowerâ simulator.
Abandon all hopeâŚ
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To be honest, I donât want any ARPG to be like Diablo 2 anymore. It hasnât aged well. This is definitely not the game to be taking inspiration from when it comes to loot or mechanics.
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Why did real money black markets exist in D2? Because it lacked smart drops and loot tables that respected your time. It was easier to just pay for the items.
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The stamina mechanic just frustrated players, especially from level 1 through 15. Was it fun? No. Did David Brevik want it out of the game? Yes, and the remaster didnât remove it, which boggles my mind.
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The potion system is terrible. Not only is the potion belt a complete nightmare to manage in real-time on a controller (putting a controller at a distinct disadvantage over a mouse and keyboard in the remastered edition), but the idea that you even have to mess with this at all is asinine. Literally every ARPG after this solved this. I never want to go back to such a tedious system.
On top of this, the potion spam altered the design in D2 so that so many things had to one-shot you in order to kill you, which just created really frustrating gameplay. And you had to constantly go back to town to reload potions. None of this was fun, especially if you played with someone that just took all the potions off the ground and you didnât have any for yourself. Again, health globes fixed all of this.
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The loot in D2 is garbage. You can play from level 1 through 60-70 and probably not find anything of use. If not for shopping for dual-affix boots and easily accessible runewords (which you basically use for 2.5 difficulty levels), youâd probably have to grind for weeks just to find any items worth equipping. Itâs a terrible system, not to mention itâs also hostile to play with other players since all the loot is shared.
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The mouse/keyboard control scheme is terrible. Again, thereâs a reason no other ARPG uses it.
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Stats and skill trees are bad. Not only is there a 100% correct formula to use to deal with your stats, which makes for poor customization, but the skill tree design incentivizes squatting points and weakening your character in the early game to save your points for more end-game viable skills. This system is terrible for experimentation or playing blind, and basically forces people to follow guides rather than learn the game organically by doing without being punished for not having perfect information before you start.
The hell difficulty immunities also really affect the skill tree system too, because if you didnât know about the immunities, and you ran out of respecs, youâre probably restarting your character - i.e. wasting the playerâs time. I have no idea why the respecs in Diablo 2 require a functioning character that can kill Hell bosses when the reality is that the people who need these items the most are people who cannot kill the hell bosses. Nice chicken and egg design there.
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Was leveling and creating new characters fun? NO! If it was fun, why did rushes exist so much for? They were everywhere. An entire economy revolved around rushes. Nobody wanted to play the game! They had the items from a MF Sorc and just wanted to get to hell and equip their stuff. This isnât good game design, to make leveling so tedious and unfun that players donât even want to engage with it.
All in all, instead of copying Diablo 2, we should be learning to avoid all the problems we learned with Diablo 2. Letâs stop putting it on a pedestal. It is a classic game and has contributed a ton to gaming legacy, but it is not a well-designed game by 2024 standards.
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Kinda agree with most of those points about D2.
Except the lvling part. It was fun, tbh. still one of the best lvling experiences in an A-RPG so far. Some people wanting to rush it does not mean it isnât fun, they just want to skip everything.
Now, it certainly wasnt perfect. A requirement to play through the same campaign 3 times to lvl up, is something that should not return.
Well, also point 1, I agree that black market was bad. But the solution is not âsmart lootâ imo. It is better itemization design, with broader affixes that are more likely to be usable.
âSmart lootâ just goes against a main pillar in A-RPG design tbh; finding loot that makes you want to start a new character/build.
Also mixed on respecs; completely agree that is it backward logic that respecs (in newer D2, not original D2) requires you to kill endgame bosses. That is regressive cost design.
The people who struggle the most, should have the easiest access to respecs.
On the flipside, I think one of D2s strengths was limiting respecs. So it is a balancing act.
As for not finding loot from 1-70, tbh, that is kinda wrong. One of the things that sets D2 apart from most A-RPGs is exactly that you could find endgame quality items before endgame. But more than that, plenty of items you find while lvling are useful for lvling.
Overpowered runewords sadly ruined this somewhat, late in D2s lifecycle. But early on, it was quite decent.
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Yeah it was a nice levelling experience now all devs care about is getting you to endgame fast as possible
What?!?! Did we played the same game?
Through the entire game you will find items that give you a good boost and that stay on your champ for many hours. The exact opposite of D4.
This behavior wasted D3 and is now wasting D4. It seems a huge chunk of the âplayersâ do not even enjoy the game that much, they just wanna pad themself on the shoulder for their equipment. The massiv abuse of the AH in D3 was proof of that.
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LOL 100âs of players complaining until they made uber uniques a joke says you are wrong. These people think if you pay for a game you are entitled to everything in the game.
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Yes, from 1-70, that is exactly right. Even with dedicated farming, drops are rare and there is no smart drop feature, making SSF a total pain. Donât deny it. Letâs not pretend that people donât just make Ancientâs Pledge or Stealth or Leaf to get through through these levels.
Yes, some of the ultra ilevel 87 stuff is nice, outside of runewords, but most of the stuff that drops is pure junk. D2 doesnât even remotely compare to D3 or D4 when it comes to loot from 1 through 70.
I just donât see the appeal of making a Spirit shield with basic runes from countess and invalidating 99.9999999999% of the shields that drop in the game. Thatâs a bad loot system.
3 Likes
What truly disappoints me personally in recent Diablo games is the complete abandonment of RP post campaign were the game is designed as a spreadsheet simulation.
Adding to that, thereâs a relatively chunky crowd that seemingly dislikes RP elements, which is baffling to me since this is an A-RPG. Another reason why D3 really screwed up the franchise.
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