Diablo 2: Median XL Ultimative

[DraQ]

Yes it did

Protip:
If you're trying to argue that D2 had atmosphere, then Act 3 will probably not be your friend.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The only part of Diablo 2 that had decent atmosphere was act 4... which was basically cribbed right off of diablo 1. Everywhere else is catgirls and tittymonsters and giant mosquitos.

You know what had real atmosphere? Leoric's tomb.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISEtsryyJP4

Now compare that to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISEtsryyJP4

Yeah, hearing the same voiceclip repeated 10 times a minute (a voice clip of of a squeeky harmless midget at that) really not setting the mood for me.

 

[DraQ]

The only part of Diablo 2 that had decent atmosphere was act 4... which was basically cribbed right off of diablo 1. Everywhere else is catgirls and tittymonsters and giant mosquitos.

You know what had real atmosphere? Leoric's tomb.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISEtsryyJP4

Now compare that to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISEtsryyJP4

Yeah, hearing the same voiceclip repeated 10 times a minute (a voice clip of of a squeeky harmless midget at that) really not setting the mood for me.

Act 2 *could* have had atmosphere if they cut down on catgirls, demonchickensvultures and assorted bullshit - it was what D1 outro was supposed to foreshadow, after all.

In general, D2 should have had pretty much no obvious supernaturals outside, apart from special circumstances, like epic shit finally hitting the fan.
Outside there should have been animals and some cloaked brigands with maybe some subtle hints that some of them may actually not be fully human. That's it. No zombies, demons or catgirls.
Maybe some eldritch (mostly elemental) shit in deep desert.
Shit should only get real in dank dungeons.

Hilariously, Diablo, of all games, was pretty fucking subtle, with both angels and demons engaging in full blown masquerade (explicitly stated multiple times in D1 - fuck off D2tards).

Overall the game should have consisted of:

• Mountainous and dreary Act 1 (with some dungeons, towers and desacrated churches, maybe plague struck village or two - good if you want you undead) - as pictured in trailers and intro - more like Act 5 than current Act 1, except without burr barrians and demonic sieges.
• Possibly a number of intermediate locations (for example something involving war or plague ravaged country, maybe a plague ravaged city), maybe some - non-mezoamerican - swamp
  
• Desert later Act, like in actual game but without derp.
  
• Dungeons progressing to hell - Act 4 was adequate.

Alternatively Act 2 could have remained Act 2 and later acts (prior to hell) could have you backtrack from The East through the additional locations mentioned before, to end up in honestly-not-Vatican ravaged or infiltrated by evil, and then descend to hell.
Diablo made a decent shot at faux-medieval atmosphere, despite magic and boobrogues, inspired by actual RL religions and mysticism - it had no interest dragging the player around aztec shit that's supposedly also the church, or pitting the player against catgirls and ents.
D2 was pure fail in that regard.

 

[Luka-boy]

I'm still working my way through the D1 The Hell mod and I'd highly recommend it.

I haven't played that one in about two years, but I really liked it back in the day and had a blast playing it with friends.

How are those restored quests that have been added since then?

 

[Ranselknulf]

The restored quests haven't caused any problems for me at all. They are a lot of fun as well.

My main issue is fighting through windows 8 to make The Hell mod run smoothly. I think I've finally got all my settings right to where the game doesn't randomly crash. It's definitely a good idea to back up your save file so it doesn't get corrupted.

 

[Lilura]

Each Diablo 2 Act has atmosphere, they just don't sustain it for long periods with the same or similar motif as in Diablo 1.

The Flayer Dungeon as linked to by Revenant is pretty precarious to delve into, untwinked. The corridors are fairly tight, and the flayers swarm in from the shadows. Unless you're decked out with good gear with some +Light Radius and/or over-leveled, you keep an ear open for them and take it slow. Flayers get upgraded into dolls in Durance, in Hell difficulty swarms can insta-pwn the squishier builds who don't have very high FCR/FHR teleporting.

For atmosphere I absolutely love and adore the Act 1 segment stretching from Monastery Gate -> Outer Cloister -> Barracks -> 3x Jail lvls -> Inner Cloister -> Cathedral -> 4x Catacombs lvls and ANDARIEL.

The cramped Maggot Lair in Act2 was generally hated in Rushes but even the haters admit it oozed atmosphere, and ofc the brilliant Arcane Sanctuary can't be denied.

Atmospheric highlight of Act3 was build-up of Lower Kurast -> Travincal and Durance leading down to Mephisto. Music here is amazing.

Act4 as everyone knows is where it's at for traditional Diablo 1 atmosphere. Most brilliant are the twisted River of Flame and Chaos Sanctuary.

Harrogath musical theme alone ensures Act5 is remembered, the highlight for atmosphere imho is Nihlathak's Temple and the lethal Halls of Anguish, Pain and Vaught topped off by corpse-exploding Nith himself, and I thought the calm before the storm Arreat Summit was pretty striking.

(DraQ is a funny fanboy blinded by Diablo 1 nostalgia goggles, but that's nothing a little sunshine and fresh air won't cure.)

 

[Siobhan]

I have to side with DraQ here, at least for single-player D2. I guess in Battlenet you can just rush through the boring sections with a higher-level group in order to quickly get to the few cool pieces (although I honestly don't remember any of your examples as particularly noteworthy, a case of ymmv I suppose), but in single-player you have to slog through long stretches of incredibly dull plains, fields, deserts and jungles with zero atmosphere, otherwise you end up underleveled and underequipped. And just from personal experience, me and my friends can still quote almost every single line of dialog in D1, including the entire Hall of the Blind poem, whereas I don't remember any lines from D2. And it's not like D2 is too recent to feel nostalgic about.

Damn, why am I even writing all this, the atmosphere question is settled by three words: Ah, fresh meat!

 

[DraQ]

Each Diablo 2 Act has atmosphere, they just don't sustain it for long periods with the same or similar motif as in Diablo 1.

The Flayer Dungeon as linked to by Revenant is pretty precarious to delve into, untwinked. The corridors are fairly tight, and the flayers swarm in from the shadows. Unless you're decked out with good gear with some +Light Radius and/or over-leveled, you keep an ear open for them and take it slow. Flayers get upgraded into dolls in Durance, in Hell difficulty swarms can insta-pwn the squishier builds who don't have very high FCR/FHR teleporting.

For atmosphere I absolutely love and adore the Act 1 segment stretching from Monastery Gate -> Outer Cloister -> Barracks -> 3x Jail lvls -> Inner Cloister -> Cathedral -> 4x Catacombs lvls and ANDARIEL.

The cramped Maggot Lair in Act2 was generally hated in Rushes but even the haters admit it oozed atmosphere, and ofc the brilliant Arcane Sanctuary can't be denied.

Atmospheric highlight of Act3 was build-up of Lower Kurast -> Travincal and Durance leading down to Mephisto. Music here is amazing.

Act4 as everyone knows is where it's at for traditional Diablo 1 atmosphere. Most brilliant are the twisted River of Flame and Chaos Sanctuary.

You know what all of those have in common? They finally move you away from bland outdoor derp and individual acts' idiotic and incongruent themes.
So yeah, I pretty much agree.


Even then they still suffered from plowing through throngs of mobs. In D1 (when not playing overleveled) you had to be cautious - just going in the open when there were ranged attackers raped you, getting swarmed raped you, getting charged by a horny raped you, etc.
In D2 you just run around hacking corridiors for yourself and if shit goes bad you can just sprint-disengage.

As for Act 5, it's outdoors were pretty much the only interesting ones, but they were not really Diablo any more.

 

[Lilura]

You know what all of those have in common? They finally move you away from bland outdoor derp and individual acts' idiotic and incongruent themes.
So yeah, I pretty much agree.

Lower Kurast, Kurast Bazaar and Upper Kurast are all open atmospheric areas that build up to Kurast Causeway and the Council showdown at Travincal, so are the Outer Steppes, Plains of Despair and City of the Damned of Act4. You'd know these were indirectly cited by me in my previous post if you actually had even basic knowledge of Diablo 2...

You also admit later in your post that Act5 open areas are "interesting", too.

So yeah, you are indeed agreeing.

Even then they still suffered from plowing through throngs of mobs. In D1 (when not playing overleveled) you had to be cautious - just going in the open when there were ranged attackers raped you, getting swarmed raped you, getting charged by a horny raped you, etc.

In D2 you just run around hacking corridiors for yourself and if shit goes bad you can just sprint-disengage.

Most of this is based on your delusions/false memories of D1 as compared to D2. I mean, "ranged weapons"? Pretty lethal in D2, actually, especially at the start and in Hell difficulty. And "sprint-disengage?" Probably not recommended in most cases as you lose as a rule lots of defense in run-mode, which can easily result in stunlock/rape. Walking is safer, and since you can get stacks of +FRW fairly easily then that means running at all is pretty much reserved for the noobs, like yourself.

Lastly, it's pretty fucking easy to outwalk most monsters in D1 and draw out mobs in ones and twos, breaking the combat down into nice little bite-sized chunks. Getting swarmed all the time in D1 just means you're a bad player, in the vast majority of cases you really have to work hard at losing your positioning to get swarmed. When you see the first member of a faster pack, you simply immediately walk away to reduce pursuer numbers and stand in a corner to limit angles of attack.

Nostalgia goggles, ftw.

 

[DraQ]

Lower Kurast, Kurast Bazaar and Upper Kurast are all open atmospheric areas that build up to Kurast Causeway and the Council showdown at Travincal

Hence move.
And then you go down below, at which mezoamerican hurr stops being noticeable altogether.
Travincal, although much blander than you're trying to paint it, is at least fully urban (again, lessening the derp of the jungle), causeway is an impressive structure, and Kurast is also less jungled being a city (not to mention sewers that, again, let you go underground and away from derp).

so are the Outer Steppes, Plains of Despair and City of the Damned of Act4.

Hell doesn't exactly qualify as "outdoors". At least not as in "there shouldn't be overtly demonic or otherwise strongly unnatural shit roaming outdoors" which the way it's been used in this discussion.
Get your shit together.

You also admit later in your post that Act5 open areas are "interesting", too.

Compare exterior areas of Act I with anything in Act V.
One is just grassland with rectangular waist-high walls for no reason, repeated over and over. The other is gradation of much more diverse environments, with much more structure and even some fake z-axis.
Act V may not feel like Diablo but at least it doesn't feel like stabbing yourself in the eyeballs would be a step up as it would at least relieve boredom.

Most of this is based on your delusions/false memories of D1 as compared to D2. I mean, "ranged weapons"? Pretty lethal in D2, actually, especially at the start and in Hell difficulty.

Doesn't change the fact that sprinting gave you a decent way to bail out of the way of incoming rape.

And "sprint-disengage?" Probably not recommended in most cases as you lose as a rule lots of defense in run-mode, which can easily result in stunlock/rape.

Getting surrounded can also result in stunlock/rape and not being in the same place as incoming projectile or melee attacker can make up for a lot of lost defence.

In D1 you have only mild mobility advantage over most mobs and none over some of them, in D2 sprinting means you can pretty much always dictate the terms of the battle.
Not implying that D1 was perfect (duh) but at least you had to exercise some caution in it *prior* to engaging in combat.

 

[Coriolanus]

SP Diablo 2 (vanilla) wasn't a good game, at least I didn't find it fun enough to play past Normal difficulty or replay it with a different character class. I admit MP felt really fun in the few hours that I managed to pull off with my crappy modem connection that I had back in 2000. A shame. It really felt like the game was meant for MP.

Median XL was a huge improvement on the formula, for sure. Abilities were fun to use. It was fast, flashy and there were now literally mountains of loot. Sort of like ToME4. Still, something was amiss.

Diablo 1 was in a different league entirely. It was, above all, consistent - you were alone, descending into a labyrinth of what turned out to be essentially hell. The lore bits had horror, mystery and intrigue. It was short but it packed quite a punch - sort of like Doom 1's first episode. D2 felt just uh, like... a more or less generic fantasy adventure? Act 1 was decent enough with a promise of more to come and hopes that got crushed by a forgettable boss fight (who was Andarial again? why should I care?). Acts 2 and 3 simply felt out of place. Quests felt little more than 'do this - get reward'. Replacing horror with fantasy was fine, replacing a unique, personal adventure with what felt like you were just going through the motions really wasn't. Act 4 was a return to form but too little and too late.

As you can see, I couldn't bring myself to care for any of Diablo 2's stuff - ridiculous, given that I was already a Diablo fanboy who bought the D2 collector's box and re-read the D2 manual (and the lore tidbits) many, many times before I actually got the chance to play.

I've had far more fun in Single Player with D1 + 'The Hell' mod (highly recommended, btw) than I did with D2 with or without Median XL. No clue how D2 feels or plays competitively and I do respect the possibility that low-level dueling and stuff could be fun enough for people who got into it via the MP scene (of which I am still 100% oblivious).

 

[dnf]

The only part of Diablo 2 that had decent atmosphere was act 4... which was basically cribbed right off of diablo 1. Everywhere else is catgirls and tittymonsters and giant mosquitos.

You know what had real atmosphere? Leoric's tomb.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISEtsryyJP4

Now compare that to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISEtsryyJP4

Yeah, hearing the same voiceclip repeated 10 times a minute (a voice clip of of a squeeky harmless midget at that) really not setting the mood for me.

Both videos are the same, what are you supposed to compare?

 

[DraQ]

...

I agree...

Replacing horror with fantasy was fine

...except for this part.

 

[Coriolanus]

...

I agree...

Replacing horror with fantasy was fine

...except for this part.

Fantasy done right can be good, though. Nox, for instance. Not that a total change of theme was viable in D2's case, so you're right probably.

 

[DraQ]

Fantasy done right can be good, though.

True, but the atmosphere and the setting, rudimentary as the latter might be, pretty much made Diablo, just like it made Doom or Quake.

Unfortunately, apart from Act 4 and some bits and pieces across the remaining acts, cutscenes are the only vestige of Diablo's atmosphere in D2,
and the atmosphere in actual gameplay is further demolished by derpy design decisions (like combat dynamics and MMO-lite).

 

[Lilura]

(not to mention sewers that, again, let you go underground and away from derp).

Most of the Acts intersperse the overworld areas with underground zones to mix things up. These Acts aren't and Diablo 2 isn't as consistently "bland outdoor derp" as you falsely think.

Check it out:

Spoiler

A1: Den, Cave, Hole, Crypt, Mausoleum, Forgotten Tower, Pit, then the whole Monastery area and catacombs.
A2: Sewers, Stony Tomb, Halls of the Dead, Maggot Lair, Viper Temple, Ancients Tunnels, Palace, Arcane Sanctuary, then all the Tal Rasha tombs
A3: Arachnid Lair, Spider Cavern, Swampy Pit, Flayer Dungeon, Ruined Temple, Forgotten Relinquary, Disused Fane, and lastly Durance.
A5: Abaddon, Pit of Acheron, Crystalline Passage, Frozen River, Nihlathak's Temple, Drifter Cavern, Infernal Pit, Icy Cellar, and finally Worldstone.

Some of these are multiple-leveled, some have a few or several map variations. In higher difficulties, some zones like Durance are massively enlarged.

So yeah, you oversell the "bland outdoor derp".

Hell doesn't exactly qualify as "outdoors".

My point was that they're open, atmospheric overworld areas and are certainly considered such by the game, and it makes sense since there's fortresses, plains, cities and steppes in Act4.

Compare exterior areas of Act I with anything in Act V.
One is just grassland with rectangular waist-high walls for no reason, repeated over and over. The other is gradation of much more diverse environments, with much more structure and even some fake z-axis.

Act 1 is the only overworld with no z-axis, actually. Act5 overworld is great, though. The siege warfare was a fairly epic spectacle, and the ability to destroy segments of structure to progress was a sweet addition.

Act V may not feel like Diablo but at least it doesn't feel like stabbing yourself in the eyeballs would be a step up as it would at least relieve boredom.

You know, I have to wonder just how slow you play D2 to say this. This isn't the slow, methodical plod D1 presents you with, just sayin'.

Doesn't change the fact that sprinting gave you a decent way to bail out of the way of incoming rape.

Because arrows are a blockable attack, walking is wiser in the face of arrow hail to maintain maxblock lest one become a pincushion. This is especially important in dueling, Hardcore mode or Hell difficulty, which are the modes of play skilled players prefer.

Getting surrounded can also result in stunlock/rape and not being in the same place as incoming projectile or melee attacker can make up for a lot of lost defence.

As I said, you'll walk most of the time with stacked +FRW for decent walk-speed. Only in the initial stages of Normal can run help somewhat, and only for clumsy players who might stumble in too far, which probably happens because they're running in the first place...

You generalize too much when you say "if shit goes bad you can just sprint-disengage", that just isn't the case unless you only played Normal difficulty (and I begin to suspect that's the limit of your xp with D2).

In D1 you have only mild mobility advantage over most mobs and none over some of them, in D2 sprinting means you can pretty much always dictate the terms of the battle.

I dictated combat terms from beginning to end in D1 using my aforementioned tactic you conveniently ignored, probably because you know I'm right and can't admit it. The only time I got in trouble was when the game unfairly threw a mob at me just as I descended the level, and we all know that's just shit design.

Not implying that D1 was perfect (duh) but at least you had to exercise some caution in it *prior* to engaging in combat.

I'm not implying D2 or MXL:U is perfect either, I just find many of your comments to be rooted in varying degrees of ignorance on D2. If you don't like the game, fine. I happen to like both of them, and agree D1 has superior atmosphere as a result of sustained motif, sort of like staring at a brick wall seems more cohesive than looking at a building. But I like that D2 mixed up the motifs, and I maintain D2 still has atmosphere and is the better (multi-faceted) game overall, whereas you paint it in a false light or use too broad a brush overall, here and in other topics.

 

[dnf]

Act 4 could use more time.

 

[DraQ]

(not to mention sewers that, again, let you go underground and away from derp).

Most of the Acts intersperse the overworld areas with underground zones to mix things up. These Acts aren't and Diablo 2 isn't as consistently "bland outdoor derp" as you falsely think.

They are mostly outdoor, bland (Act1 outdoors are pretty much the textbook definition of bland) and consistently derp.
I don't see any problems?

Check it out:

Spoiler

A1: Den, Cave, Hole, Crypt, Mausoleum, Forgotten Tower, Pit, then the whole Monastery area and catacombs.
A2: Sewers, Stony Tomb, Halls of the Dead, Maggot Lair, Viper Temple, Ancients Tunnels, Palace, Arcane Sanctuary, then all the Tal Rasha tombs
A3: Arachnid Lair, Spider Cavern, Swampy Pit, Flayer Dungeon, Ruined Temple, Forgotten Relinquary, Disused Fane, and lastly Durance.
A5: Abaddon, Pit of Acheron, Crystalline Passage, Frozen River, Nihlathak's Temple, Drifter Cavern, Infernal Pit, Icy Cellar, and finally Worldstone.

Some of these are multiple-leveled, some have a few or several map variations. In higher difficulties, some zones like Durance are massively enlarged.

So? It isn't fucking TES, with sprawling overworld dotted with dungeons.
Having places like A1 Den or some other obvious My First Dungeon (TM) without something genuinely bad at the bottom in Diablo just undermines the whole point.

Hell doesn't exactly qualify as "outdoors".

My point was that they're open, atmospheric overworld areas and are certainly considered such by the game, and it makes sense since there's fortresses, plains, cities and steppes in Act4.

It also makes sense to have fucking Hell crawling if all sorts of demonic nasties - in stark contrast with *all* the other acts and their respective outdoors.

Act 1 is the only overworld with no z-axis, actually. Act5 overworld is great, though. The siege warfare was a fairly epic spectacle, and the ability to destroy segments of structure to progress was a sweet addition.

Siege warfare was not fitting what Diablo was supposed to BE according to the original, but the environments themselves, sans massive demon invasion and burr-barians were pretty much what the Act 1 should (and could) have been.

Because arrows are a blockable attack, walking is wiser in the face of arrow hail to maintain maxblock lest one become a pincushion. This is especially important in dueling, Hardcore mode or Hell difficulty, which are the modes of play skilled players prefer.

Blockable or not it won't hit you if you aren't there.
Sure, at close range, or when the area is literally saturated with projectiles, or against homing arrows/live player it might be better to maximize your defence instead, but other than that sprinting does pretty good job allowing you to engage and disengage at will and a very good job at letting you GTFO when in over your head.

You generalize too much when you say "if shit goes bad you can just sprint-disengage", that just isn't the case unless you only played Normal difficulty (and I begin to suspect that's the limit of your xp with D2).

Wrong. Played on all three difficulties (granted, it's been years since I last fired it up), including /players # to boost both the challenge and drops, some friendly coop with developed characters and a bit of hardcore before losing interest (haven't been killed off prior to that point).

I'm not terribly well versed on mechanical minutiae and definitely not into pro competitive playing, but I've played enough to judge.

But I like that D2 mixed up the motif

Mismatched ones and badly.

 

[Lilura]

They are mostly outdoor, bland (Act1 outdoors are pretty much the textbook definition of bland) and consistently derp.
I don't see any problems?

I do, you're repeating yourself and unable to evolve on a position when faced with facts that prove you're inaccurate. I just fucking showed you that much of the game isn't overworld in that spoiler. I'm not sure what the ratio is, but its reasonable. I also suspect your clumsy caricature of Act1 as "bland outdoor derp" that makes you feel like "stabbing yourself in the eyeballs" is a result of you just being a player who plods. Maybe you insist on killing every last mook on the maps? Maybe you can't pattern recognize a map to find your way? Maybe you don't know how to occasionally bee-line? But nobody cares about the plights of plodders, they get left behind in Battle.net to pick up the scraps of loot everyone else left behind and to moan and bitch about blandness and derp, the source of which is really only themselves.

So? It isn't fucking TES, with sprawling overworld dotted with dungeons.
Having places like A1 Den or some other obvious My First Dungeon (TM) without something genuinely bad at the bottom in Diablo just undermines the whole point.

Thankfully this isn't TES, Morrowind is fucking shit. You speak of "My First Dungeon". Well, we all know Morrowind is Baby's First RPG jam-packed with My First Dungeons, from beginning to end. And you obviously never went through the sprawling Den of Evil in Nightmare, let alone Hell, in which Diablo 2 hits its high point, where players end up spending 95% of the time, and where you can't just derp around in run-mode and expect to survive.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Yeah, all those side dungeons felt like shit in D2. Get to the bottom of The Pit, find giant golden chest after killing unique mob, open chest and...

magic sword with +6 to energy and 12% resist poison. WOW SO ATMOSPHERIC.

I think this was the other video I tried to link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHZOTQSWemI

Even with all the extra shit afforded by a better engine, it just comes off as tacky. Voice clips being spammed too often, totally harmless fire everywhere, crappily written one liners from both the boss and the PC. Not to mention the fight itself being a snore. The part where he casually walks away from ANDARIEL; PRIME EVIL OF TITS (which is the theme of the entire act, starting in tit fortress, the quest to stop blood tits, going through the underground passage filled with titty warrior... so dark, so ominous) to sit in a corner and heal up while she stands around doing nothing was really thrilling. I recall it being even more exciting if you quaff an antidote potion and she's just totally harmless.

 

[Average Manatee]

Diablo 2 isn't bad if you ignore the parts that are bad

Diablo 2 isn't bad the 3rd time you play it

heh

 

[Lilura]

Never said either of those things, derp.

 

[Untermensch]

I hadn't played vanilla Diablo 2 in so long, I'd forgotten how piss easy and dull it was.

Just wanted to comment on this since I've also been replaying D2 recently, for the first time since 2003 and I really don't remember the game being this easy.

I basically obliterated everything in my path. Not only that, but I've also had a ton of money, and those yellow items are much frequent now. I also don't remember repairing items being this cheap.

 

[Average Manatee]

Never said either of those things, derp.

You defending boring areas by saying you can run past them and that they are better after you've already beaten the game twice. Try again.

 

[Siobhan]

But nobody cares about the plights of plodders, they get left behind in Battle.net to pick up the scraps of loot everyone else left behind and to moan and bitch about blandness and derp, the source of which is really only themselves.

This is the money quote. You're looking at D2 from the perspective of a competitive Battlenet player, and that's not really representative of how most people play the game, in particular single-player. What you're doing is comparable to the people who defend COD for its multiplayer and go "lol why are you even playing the shitty SP campaign?". SP Diablo incentivizes plodding because drops are rare and you need to grind XP, and the game doesn't signal to you that some areas are better for building XP and getting good drops. That's something the Battlenet crew figured out through trial and error. It's not something you know the first time you're playing the game, and possibly not even the second or third time around. Also, if those areas are pointless, why the hell are they in the game? As DraQ said, it's not TES.

But since we're already talking about TES, here's a nice TES analogy. I really like Daggerfall, it's given me hundreds of hours of fun. But that's because I know how to meta-game the fuck out of it. I know how to level up my character quickly, I know how get daedric equipment very early on, I know how the dungeons are built up from modules so I can quickly get to the quest location, I know which quests to take and which ones to skip, I know the locations of the secret witch covens, I know the shortcuts for the main quest dungeons if I don't feel like exploring or if I'm way too overleveled. Basically, I've taken the game and molded it into exactly the game I like. Still, if somebody points out how most of Daggerfall's random dungeons are monotonous, convoluted, needlessly drawn out, and incredibly repetitive (how often are they gonna recycle the Orsinium pyramid?), I can't just go "lol why are you even playing these dungeons, just stick with the good ones".