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Why'd party-based Diablo clones never become a thing?

Outmind

Augur
Joined
May 22, 2011
Messages
211
Dungeon Siege 2 is one of my favorite hack & slash games. Party management was its most intriguing aspect - you had four characters + pets to equip, assign skills & spells to, and specialize. You could go fighter / ranger / nature mage / destruction mage, or have the characters specialize in different fields of the same archetype. You could jump from character to character and play as the frontline tank at one moment and switch over to the summoner whenever you got bored...

Why didn't this type of Diablo clone ever catch on? I don't even know if there are other examples besides DS, at least not ones that rose to any kind of prominence.
 

Gregz

Arcane
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How could you possibly manage a party in real time?

I remember the Dungeon Siege games, but I was very unimpressed by the gameplay.

The closest thing to what you're asking for might be DA:O, where you can script the actions of your party members, but even that is still RTWP.
 

Outmind

Augur
Joined
May 22, 2011
Messages
211
How could you possibly manage a party in real time?

You couldn't completely, that's why the AI has to be at least somewhat competent. What you could do in DS2 is assign spells to characters and some of them would be autocast to buff or heal the party, summon monsters, or curse your enemies. All characters also had a unique skill you could fire off if it was ready to affect the battlefield in a way, either by providing additional firepower or introducing mechanics like gravity wells.

It wasn't the best system ever and could become chaotic at times, but it did work.
 

Gregz

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How could you possibly manage a party in real time?

You couldn't completely, that's why the AI has to be at least somewhat competent. What you could do in DS2 is assign spells to characters and some of them would be autocast to buff or heal the party, summon monsters, or curse your enemies. All characters also had a unique skill you could fire off if it was ready to affect the battlefield in a way, either by providing additional firepower or introducing mechanics like gravity wells.

It wasn't the best system ever and could become chaotic at times, but it did work.

For some reason this reminds me of the old arcade game Gauntlet. It features up to 4 players, each player had a 'power' they could use which mostly just cleared the screen without damaging the other players. Coordination was almost non-existent. If you take away coordination and strategy there isn't much reason to have a party. That said, I think it would be cool to have a deep custom scripting system to try this. Diablo II had hirelings of different types which made for some interesting build synergies, but here again, friendly fire was disabled. I'm not totally opposed to the idea, but it's impossible for the player to have agency over more than one actor in real time.

Systems like these also make friendly fire AOE spells almost impossible to include, I've never seen AI that knew how to herd your opponent into an area so you can bomb AOEs.
 

Chippy

Arcane
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6,037
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
>Insert meme about autists, broken fingers, and repetitive strain injuries from clicking<

If I could be bothered to do memes or post images.
 

Modron

Arcane
Joined
May 5, 2012
Messages
9,939
Prince of Qin has hack and slash combat with a full party and is an actual RPG; it also had a sequel in Seal of Evil.
 

Mustawd

Guest
Dungeon Siege wasn’t really all that fun. I’m guessing that’s why. Also, I agree with a lot of what Gregz said.

EDIT: The fact that DS came out during a time when the RTS genre was still popular and it still didn’t catch on should be an indicator of what people thought of it as a game.
 

smaug

Secular Koranism with Israeli Characteristics
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I can’t imagine trying to manage a party in RT.
 

Rahdulan

Omnibus
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I don't even know if there are other examples besides DS, at least not ones that rose to any kind of prominence.

Throne of Darkness

Seconding. Great game. Such a shame about the resolution hard lock making it unappealing to players today who may otherwise be willing to give it a try. Not even the GOG release had changed that last time I checked.
 

Neanderthal

Arcane
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Jul 7, 2015
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Granbretan
Dungeon Siege wasn’t really all that fun. I’m guessing that’s why. Also, I agree with a lot of what Gregz said.

EDIT: The fact that DS came out during a time when the RTS genre was still popular and it still didn’t catch on should be an indicator of what people thought of it as a game.

DS was popular at time as I remember, million plus seller. Fuck knows why.
 

Modron

Arcane
Joined
May 5, 2012
Messages
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Dungeon Siege also came out at a time when rpgs were becoming increasingly rare, but yeah its success is still a mystery to this very day; however, it did pave the way for two pretty decent ultima total conversions.
 

InD_ImaginE

Arcane
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Pathfinder: Wrath
Prince of Qin has hack and slash combat with a full party and is an actual RPG; it also had a sequel in Seal of Evil.

Prince of Qin is more of RTWP though. IIRC you can pause and switch part members just like RTWP in general.

What Outmind think off is more off Diablo with party members, something like mercenaries in Diablo 3?
 

Modron

Arcane
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May 5, 2012
Messages
9,939
A hack and slasher having a pause does not mean it's like IE games round based real time with pause where characters can do x amount of actions per round then sit their fidgeting until another round begins. Sure Prince of Qin has a pause you can issue commands with but it's full real time combat not some weird bastardized combat system. Maybe it's been too long since I played but didn't Throne of Darkness also have a pause where you could issue commands?
 

mondblut

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Ingrija
diablow audience wants the intense viscerality of manually clicking hordes of enemies to death. having a party do it on their own without the player's input must be very unsatisfying experience.

i mean, the third part of dung siege was developed by the company most famous for being utterly incompetent at designing combat gameplay. for all the contempt i have for diablow players, that speaks volumes even to them.
 
Joined
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The Present
DS1 got old fairly quickly. Party size of 6 was a bit difficult to manage unless you went all mages with summons.

DS2 was a far superior game, and I enjoyed it. The smaller party size, better enemy composition, better skills, items, well, everything really. By that time MMOs had really taken over though, so single player RPGs were simply yesterdays games.
 

Lonely Vazdru

Pimp my Title
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the intense viscerality of manually clicking hordes of enemies to death. having a party do it on their own without the player's input must be very unsatisfying experience.
That's actually the reason why I replay DS from time to time. I find it extremely satisfying to equip my party members as best as I can and watch them beat the crap out of everything on their own.

This video sums DS pretty well IMO :
 

vota DC

Augur
Joined
Aug 23, 2016
Messages
2,259
I actually think a party based RTS where you explore dungeons could be fun. I think where dungeon siege went wrong is not making it a larger army you roll around with. Something more like Myth but with equipment and stats and stuff. Something with more like 12-24 as the max party size.
Armies of exigo but focused on Heroes?
 

Tweed

Professional Kobold
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Pathfinder: Wrath
Liked the first one, hated the second. Why the hell do people feel the need to constantly click in order to feel like they're accomplishing something?
 

Icewater

Artisanal Shitposting™
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I actually think a party based RTS where you explore dungeons could be fun.
There's a lot of old Warcraft 3 custom campaigns that were mostly this, and they were a lot of fun because of it. It's a shame that type of gameplay didn't become a craze like DotA did.
 

Maggot

Arcane
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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire
There's a lot of old Warcraft 3 custom campaigns that were mostly this, and they were a lot of fun because of it. It's a shame that type of gameplay didn't become a craze like DotA did.
I loved doing dungeon crawl maps for WC3 the combat was way better than something like NWN and if the map supported things like summons you could actually control them unlike Diablo 2.
 

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