Diablo 2: Resurrected remaster

[Drakortha]

Diablo II Ressurected is on sale until end of the day btw, if you feel like getting it, now's the time.

I got it, It's pretty neat, very beautiful game.

Yeah yeah, I already had it in my shopping cart for the Switch. Thanks for pushing me over the line

 

[Just Locus]

Fire, Lightning and Poison, don't really do anything fancy or cool.

I'd argue that lightning is both fancy and cool because of what it does. Having a lighting chain an entire horde is cool visually and enemies who do lightning damage are the bane of HC because lightning can kill you quickly if you're not careful. I also enjoy doing poison builds because draining bosses' health is a good survivability method.

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

The only way to play a balanced, good version of Diablo 2 is to play PD2 or some other big balance/overhaul mod. Blizzard has no interest in fixing the balance, and in fact are incentivised not to, because players will complain, because they like the game in it's broken state.

 

[Just Locus]

I've actually started playing Project Diablo II recently and it is fucking fantastic. I couldn't return to Vanilla/Resurrected afterward.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

I think the gayest thing about Resurrected is the lack of LAN and TCP/IP. Blizz does not seem interested in accommodating modders at all, which is very lame in a world where you can play many games multiplayer with mods.

Fire, Lightning and Poison, don't really do anything fancy or cool.

I'd argue that lightning is both fancy and cool because of what it does. Having a lighting chain an entire horde is cool visually and enemies who do lightning damage are the bane of HC because lightning can kill you quickly if you're not careful. I also enjoy doing poison builds because draining bosses' health is a good survivability method.

My point is that Cold can chill, freeze AND shatter. There's a reason Coldsorc is best Sorc. Cold attacks don't merely kill your enemies, they outright gimp/stop them, and destroy bodies, fucking over reanimators and necros.

Poison is good because it drains enemy health over time? Ok nice, but usually, more damage instantly is better, unless your build is oriented that way.

For example, imagine if Poison weakened enemies, or Fire scared them away, or Lightning had a chance to stun them.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Cold attacks don't merely kill your enemies, they outright gimp/stop them

You mixed those words up

 

[Average Manatee]

In general CC is overpowered in Diablo 2, the reason people don't use it is because its so easy for most builds to output huge damage numbers and kill whole screens in seconds. Cold is good because its one of the few abilities that attaches CC onto AoE damage.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Cold attacks don't merely kill your enemies, they outright gimp/stop them

You mixed those words up

I didn't

 

[HeatEXTEND]

I see where you're comming from, just looks funny

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Wow I didn't know that. Definitively explains why Act IV is so weird compared to the rest of the game:
- Few NPCs with little dialogue
- Three quests only
- Why Act IV has such a cool appearance and so many interesting monsters which pretty much only pop up on that act and then later as Guest Monsters in Act V
- Why there are portals to Act IV-like dungeons in Act V (its like a Act IV re-do)
- Why Diablo is not the final boss of DIABLO II

Seems like the original ACT IV was what became ACT V (Snowy Mountains) and the OG Act V was Act IV (Hell).

I wonder if the original design doc of the OG HELL ACT survived, now there's something that DII:R could do, but I suspect that's one sacred cow that might spook too many people to change.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Been playing DII:R with a few different characters. So far I did Barbarian, two Necros and a Sorceress.

Got farther with my second Hardcore Ladder Necro (we don't talk about what happened to the first one). Just finished the Ancient Lair on Lost City on Normal right now.

I did surprisingly well vs Andariel. Clay Golem is a surprisingly good tarpit vs Andariel, and once it dies, you can just summon another one. My Rogue actually did pretty well and only died close to the end, when most of Andariel's health was taken out. I then fled Andariel and lured her to some corpses I exploded, and that was it for the Demon Queen.

Nice build so far, a pretty eclectic mix of Summons, Bone Spells and Curses.
Bone Spear and Corpse Explosion are my main offensive tools, with a Blood Golem, two trios of Skeletons and Skeleton Mages, and an Act II merc.
Using Amplify Damage and Dim Vision as my main curses - Amplify Damage to make the monsters near my melee guys get more damage, Dim Vision to blind incoming enemy mobs, especially massed ranged mfers.

Currently, saving skill points for lvl24 spells.

I'm sooooooooooooo gonna get folded like a deck chair by Duriel.

My current plan is Bone Prison + Golem-Merc Tarpit + Iron Maiden (Or Decreptify), with skellies serving as extra canonfodder and damagers. Gonna have to go to other zones to get bodies for more skellies. Duriel is one hell of a hard costumer because you fight the mfer in a closet, he's the only unkiteable boss in the game. It's like Blizzard North said "Fuck your kiting" when designing that fight.

 

[Lacrymas]

Every boss dies to Clay Golem spam + Iron Maiden.

 

[Ippolit]

I'm sooooooooooooo gonna get folded like a deck chair by Duriel.

Probably; a mercenary can help but he usually dies in under 10 seconds. If you can get to lvl24 in the stony tombs, decrepify and clay golem together will indeed render almost any boss useless. Bring mana pots ;--)

The real hurdle is Diablo norm. The hardest enemy for a summoner necro. Your skellies have way too little health to withstand his fire waves - your bone spells and decrepify/clay will probably the best way to deal with him. You can shop a staff with teleport charges later at Ormus in act 3 btw, if you did not know. Who needs Enigma anyways? :--)

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Its funny, from memory, I think the two Diablo classes I played less were Necro and Assassin. Pretty sure I finished at least up to Act I with everyone else.

Funny fact: My first char was a Sacrifice Paladin. Pre-LoD, even. I only got LoD later from my cousin. That build was SOOO bad lol. Still beat Baal lol.

I ought to try SacrificeDin sometime for the meme, I think it's actually viable if built right (Lots of Life Steal, Prayer/Redemption Aura, lots of Vitality, HP Regen items and Life Potions)

Every boss dies to Clay Golem spam + Iron Maiden.

Is Clay Golem even the best choice? Seems kinda cucked HP/dmg wise compared to Blood Golem,

I'm sooooooooooooo gonna get folded like a deck chair by Duriel.

Probably; a mercenary can help but he usually dies in under 10 seconds. If you can get to lvl24 in the stony tombs, decrepify and clay golem together will indeed render almost any boss useless. Bring mana pots ;--)

The real hurdle is Diablo norm. The hardest enemy for a summoner necro. Your skellies have way too little health to withstand his fire waves - your bone spells and decrepify/clay will probably the best way to deal with him. You can shop a staff with teleport charges later at Ormus in act 3 btw, if you did not know. Who needs Enigma anyways? :--)

10 seconds is a LOT to me. 10 seconds is enough to heal with a few handy potions while casting the right curses.

Oh man I didn't even think how Diablo was going to be. Diablo is a fucking nightmare even for tankier classes. Skellies are definitively going to get instarekt either by his Fire Nova. And then there's the Red Lightning Hose, there's no way any summon can survive that one.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

What's the KKK about the Mechanical changes from resurrected?

Top of my head, I think one of the most notable ones is how Druid can now go around with all his summons, instead of the one summon limit from the OG. I definitively want to try a Summon Druid in the future.

I'm not sure what to think of Sunder Charms, seems to me like the OG had enough means to break immunities, like Elemental Masteries and Lower Resistance curse.

Haven't been in a Terror Zone yet, can't give an opinion.

 

[what am i doing]

What's the KKK about the Mechanical changes from resurrected?

Top of my head, I think one of the most notable ones is how Druid can now go around with all his summons, instead of the one summon limit from the OG. I definitively want to try a Summon Druid in the future.

I'm not sure what to think of Sunder Charms, seems to me like the OG had enough means to break immunities, like Elemental Masteries and Lower Resistance curse.

Haven't been in a Terror Zone yet, can't give an opinion.

I think sunder charms are the gayest shit since the American Revolution.
Immunes were a good thing, they made it so you sometimes had to switch tactics and couldn't just faceroll everything.

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

I think sunder charms are the gayest shit since the American Revolution.
Immunes were a good thing, they made it so you sometimes had to switch tactics and couldn't just faceroll everything.

D2 is, at the end of the day, a glorified item slot machine.

They are going to remove/change anything that adds any sort of independent thought or gameplay to an otherwise mindless item grind.

 

[what am i doing]

I think sunder charms are the gayest shit since the American Revolution.
Immunes were a good thing, they made it so you sometimes had to switch tactics and couldn't just faceroll everything.

D2 is, at the end of the day, a glorified item slot machine.

They are going to remove/change anything that adds any sort of independent thought or gameplay to an otherwise mindless item grind.

That's really not true, Diablo 2 had fun gameplay and fantastic music, visuals, and overall atmosphere, and a reasonably engaging story/world. People played it for that first and foremost, and then stuck around for farming rare stuff after. But if Diablo 2 had just tried to jump straight into item slot machine gameplay, it would have failed. Whereas if it had no item slot machine gameplay and its equipment system was more like Nox, it would still have been a big success.

Did the item grind contribute to its popularity and staying power? Absolutely. Was it the core of what the game was about? Absolutely not.

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

That's really not true, Diablo 2 had fun gameplay and fantastic music, visuals, and overall atmosphere, and a reasonably engaging story/world. People played it for that first and foremost, and then stuck around for farming rare stuff after.

True, but all of Blizzard's decision making surrounding the game is going to focus exclusively on the power-gamers who play the item farming, those are their core player base. I know there are people who like to play Hardcore challenge runs, and people who play it multiple times for the story, but they are the minority, most people seem interested in going straight into the farming grind as soon as they finish the story. Blizzard is absolutely going to make decisions around making their life more convenient, even if it actually undermines the gameplay itself or makes the game worse for people who are playing it for the challenge/gameplay.

But if Diablo 2 had just tried to jump straight into item slot machine gameplay, it would have failed. Whereas if it had no item slot machine gameplay and its equipment system was more like Nox, it would still have been a big success.

Did the item grind contribute to its popularity and staying power? Absolutely. Was it the core of what the game was about? Absolutely not.

I highly doubt it would have failed. It's a well known psychological fact that item grinding (or really, gambling of any form) can have a very powerful effect on the brain and can essentially pull in players. PoE is almost entirely an item grind simulator and it was highly successful from the get go.

But I would argue the game IS designed from the ground up to be around multiplayer, party-based item grinding. This is especially evident if you compare it to Diablo 1, which was designed more as a standalone action game.

- Save/Load system replaced with cost-based respawning and waypoints, clearly designed around MP party play
- Deemphasis on quest rewards and more emphasis on rolling for good items at Gheed or farming (Yes I know there are exceptions, like the Horadric Cube)
- Enemies completely respawning between each game quit/restart
- Locations with a lot of extraneous dungeons/locations that always end with a randomised gold chest, rather than coherent progression from start to finish or more specialised/unique area rewards.
- Much more

The item farming and endlessly-repeatable play informed nearly every aspect of the gameplay and world design in D2. It was very clearly their focus.

Probably the most telling thing is how they make this whole big puzzle quest about finding the right Horadric Tomb, but it makes the most sense just to clear all of them anyway for the experience. Long gone are Arkanes Valor and other puzzle quests, now it's all just about fighting, grinding, and finding good loot.

All of this combined is also why D1 is the superior game, and it saddens me greatly that it's design philosophy has largely been abandoned in favor of the instance-based multiplayer-focused design of D2, to the point where there are a lot of D2 clones and almost no D1 clones.

 

[Jermu]

why play lod or d2r when you can play project diablo 2

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

why play lod or d2r when you can play project diablo 2

Exactly. It's literally superior in every possible way.

 

[what am i doing]

That's really not true, Diablo 2 had fun gameplay and fantastic music, visuals, and overall atmosphere, and a reasonably engaging story/world. People played it for that first and foremost, and then stuck around for farming rare stuff after.

True, but all of Blizzard's decision making surrounding the game is going to focus exclusively on the power-gamers who play the item farming, those are their core player base. I know there are people who like to play Hardcore challenge runs, and people who play it multiple times for the story, but they are the minority, most people seem interested in going straight into the farming grind as soon as they finish the story. Blizzard is absolutely going to make decisions around making their life more convenient, even if it actually undermines the gameplay itself or makes the game worse for people who are playing it for the challenge/gameplay.

But if Diablo 2 had just tried to jump straight into item slot machine gameplay, it would have failed. Whereas if it had no item slot machine gameplay and its equipment system was more like Nox, it would still have been a big success.

Did the item grind contribute to its popularity and staying power? Absolutely. Was it the core of what the game was about? Absolutely not.

I highly doubt it would have failed. It's a well known psychological fact that item grinding (or really, gambling of any form) can have a very powerful effect on the brain and can essentially pull in players. PoE is almost entirely an item grind simulator and it was highly successful from the get go.

But I would argue the game IS designed from the ground up to be around multiplayer, party-based item grinding. This is especially evident if you compare it to Diablo 1, which was designed more as a standalone action game.

- Save/Load system replaced with cost-based respawning and waypoints, clearly designed around MP party play
- Deemphasis on quest rewards and more emphasis on rolling for good items at Gheed or farming
- Enemies completely respawning between each game quit/restart
- Locations with a lot of extraneous dungeons/locations that always end with a randomised gold chest, rather than coherent progression from start to finish.
- Much more

The item farming and endlessly-repeatable play informed nearly every aspect of the gameplay and world design in D2. It was very clearly their focus.

Probably the most telling thing is how they make this whole big puzzle quest about finding the right Horadric Tomb, but it makes the most sense just to clear all of them anyway for the experience. Long gone are Arkanes Valor and other puzzle quests, now it's all just about fighting, grinding, and finding good loot.

All of this combined is also why D1 is the superior game, and it saddens me greatly that it's design philosophy has largely been abandoned in favor of the instance-based multiplayer-focused design of D2, to the point where there are a lot of D2 clones and almost no D1 clones.

Well, I agree with you on Blizzard's current decision-making process. But I disagree with regards to whether it would have failed if it targeted slots first. I don't know how much of an effort PoE put into its story and so on because I haven't played it, but I do know a game that did prioritize slots first and included story basically as an afterthought (to the point that after you completed the story once, you could just make fresh characters that went straight into the item grind mode, and on existing characters you couldn't even go back and replay acts that you'd already completed in story mode), that being Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem, and it was an abject failure.* I don't think Diablo 2 having the addition of the loot grind gameplay means that's what it's based around because I've seen what a game looks like when it's designed like that and it's quite different from what Diablo 2 is. Diablo 2 was pretty clearly designed as a narrative-driven experience first, with the item grind gameplay added in as a bonus, rather than an item grind system with a story wrapped around it afterwards.

*Off on a bit of a tangent here - there's a recurring issue in the gaming industry where developers make the mistake of thinking players don't care that much about story. Players, being human beings, actually care a great deal about story. Games can succeed without story, just like they can succeed without music, but it's a massive handicap.

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

I fundamentally disagree on players caring about story. Many players do, but you can absolutely be hyper-successful even without one.

https://steamcharts.com/

Steam Top games by player numbers:

1. Counter-Strike 2: No story
2. Marvel Rivals: No Story
3. Dota 2: No Story
4. Banana (wtf): No Story
5. Path of Exile 2: Okay, this one has a story
6. PUBG: Battlegrounds: No Story
7. Rust: No Story
8. Grand Theft Auto V: Okay, a story driven game
9. Balders Gate 3: Okay, a story driven game
10: Call of Duty: Okay, this is ALSO story driven, but let's be honest, the reason this is at #10 is because people are playing the MP, which has no story

I doubt that Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem failed due to it's story integration. PoE has an unimportant, almost meaningless story and yet it does fine. Maybe the game just wasn't very good?

 

[what am i doing]

I fundamentally disagree on players caring about story. Many players do, but you can absolutely be hyper-successful even without one.

https://steamcharts.com/

Steam Top games by player numbers:

1. Counter-Strike 2: No story
2. Marvel Rivals: No Story
3. Dota 2: No Story
4. Banana (wtf): No Story
5. Path of Exile 2: Okay, this one has a story
6. PUBG: Battlegrounds: No Story
7. Rust: No Story
8. Grand Theft Auto V: Okay, a story driven game
9. Balders Gate 3: Okay, a story driven game
10: Call of Duty: Okay, this is ALSO story driven, but let's be honest, the reason this is at #10 is because people are playing the MP, which has no story

I don't think looking at the top ten games on Steam really tells you anything other than "which genres are prone to high levels of player concentration into a small number of games", which is pretty much always going to be dominated by a small handful of multiplayer games, typically either perennial favourites with enduring communities, or the flavour of the month. There's not room for a lot of such games and a very heavy player preference for "yes, that thing I've been playing for the last twenty years, or its sequels", so any publisher that banks on their game being the next one on that list is really just engaging in high-stakes gambling; it's not a sensible business strategy.

I doubt that Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem failed due to it's story integration. PoE has an unimportant, almost meaningless story and yet it does fine. Maybe the game just wasn't very good?

Path of Exile was simply well timed. It was a reasonably high-polish Diablo clone at a time when there weren't many Diablo clones while the market still wanted them, and the ones that existed (like Titan Quest) kind of sucked. Wolcen wasn't very good: because they designed it as a slots game and then slapped on a shitty campaign as a technicality. Diablo 2 had the opposite approach and became a beloved classic.

 

[ArchAngel]

What's the KKK about the Mechanical changes from resurrected?

Top of my head, I think one of the most notable ones is how Druid can now go around with all his summons, instead of the one summon limit from the OG. I definitively want to try a Summon Druid in the future.

I'm not sure what to think of Sunder Charms, seems to me like the OG had enough means to break immunities, like Elemental Masteries and Lower Resistance curse.

Haven't been in a Terror Zone yet, can't give an opinion.

I think sunder charms are the gayest shit since the American Revolution.
Immunes were a good thing, they made it so you sometimes had to switch tactics and couldn't just faceroll everything.

No immunes are not, at least not in a game where you need to spend 80 points into one skill and its synergies and you got nothing left for other elements.
So called tactics was running past enemies immune to your element and only farming areas where there are none of those. That is terrible gameplay.