Diablo IV

[luj1]

The problem is that the early game is boring as fuck in 99% of hack and slash games.

D2 campaign is actually great. Especially if you play Hardcore and need to take it slower, walk instead of run, etc. You suddenly began noticing a bunch of stuff, intricate details in the story and environments, etc.

Yeah, hardcore is the only proper (not boring) way to play Diablo clones. Diablo itself was inspired by roguelikes:

The origin of the first Diablo came from David Brevik while at Condor Games around 1994. Brevik was heavily inspired by the roguelike genre with turn-based combat, but with simplified role-playing game elements and a more expansive loot system.

Yeah Condor Entertainment was actually the company that made Diablo II and Lord of Destruction (Blizzard North)

Btw both Diablos were supposed to be turn based...

 

[Kane]

Something that has been missing since shit diablo likes decided to make shit campaigns so they would force you to play shit endgames.

Completely irrational bullshit. If you want to "finish" Diablo IV that way, nobody is stopping you. Apart from that, the campaign of Diablo IV is objectively the best of any ARPG.

For all thats said and done, nothing still comes close to beating D4 in terms of actual combat FEEL, fluidity of combat, sound design, animation, graphics and so on, general presentation.
And that matters a fucking lot to me.

Precisely. Diablo IV is simply the superior game in all measurable dimensions of quality. All complains I have read so far are some "feels" about a thing some other game did 20 years ago which somehow makes that one "better".

I've still yet to hear why you think D2 is inferior to Diablo 4

You answered the question yourself already:

excluding the fact that it's "Old" which is true in a technical sense, in that yes the limited resolution options are annoying and the FPS-lock makes the game feel way more clunkier than if you played on 60 FPS with PlugY. But if the bulk of the problems with a game come down to technical issues that can be attributed to the limitations of the time?

Apart from the technical deficiencies there's lots of broken and nonsensical game design in Diablo 2.

For all thats said and done, nothing still comes close to beating D4 in terms of actual combat FEEL, fluidity of combat, sound design, animation, graphics and so on, general presentation.
And that matters a fucking lot to me.

Both D2 and D1 are way ahead of D4 in the above mentioned departments.

No they're not you bullshitter. Have you actually fired up even D2:R in recent years? Do you also flagellate yourself to sleep at night?

 

[Cohesion]

No, I only bought this recently. I don't buy on launch day and wait for a sale.

In that case, you don't know how bad it was previously. You'd get tons of boring items with shitty modifiers that completely killed the joy of finding new items. In a game based around... finding loot. Reading tooltips with a bunch of shitty flat bonuses makes you want to stop playing.

As for progression, it's the same problem that D3 had, artificial sense of progression through stat bloat, where you would see crazy numbers in endgame that didn't feel meaningful while playing.

When you're playing D2, you're constantly finding stuff that is useful and interesting, which keeps you want to play more, D4 gets boring very fast, even in its current state.

Agree, D4 is boring af, even more so than D3 which is a weird and difficult achievement.

D3 was fun until I found the public auction house.

Strangely have never played any Diablo since

My friend made a lot of real $$$ on AH. RMAH was a big mistake, which they eliminated, but doubled down on pigeonholing each class into 3 sets for each class granting over 1000% dmg increase. D2 runewords are mild compared to D3 sets (6 pieces, wtf?)

Fluid combat in D3 (animations, feedback) is the only good thing about game.

 

[Just Locus]

Apart from the technical deficiencies there's lots of broken and nonsensical game design in Diablo 2.

Such as?

 

[Cohesion]

GOTHIC HORROR!

 

[BlackAdderBG]

Apart from the technical deficiencies there's lots of broken and nonsensical game design in Diablo 2.

Such as?

Chugging potions, broken inventory coz of charms, retarded runewords, useless main attributes, retarded stamina system...

 

[Kane]

Apart from the technical deficiencies there's lots of broken and nonsensical game design in Diablo 2.

Such as?

https://thegamedesignforum.com/features/RD_D2_1.html

 

[Just Locus]

Apart from the technical deficiencies there's lots of broken and nonsensical game design in Diablo 2.

Such as?

Chugging potions, broken inventory coz of charms, retarded runewords, useless main attributes, retarded stamina system...

... I'm gonna have to ask for more elaboration than just "useless" and "retarded"

Chugging potions aren't bad because they heal you over time and only rejuvenation potions heal you instantly, the latter of which is uncommon.
Charms are usually big and thus, take up a large portion of a player's inventory, so the player is encouraged to pick the ones they feel are better, and run with it.

I don't know what you're referring to by "useless main attributes" They're 100% necessary for any build in the game. No clue what you mean about the stamina system too.

https://thegamedesignforum.com/features/RD_D2_1.html

You realize nothing in the book you just linked points to nonsensical or broken design, right? All it does is study the randomness within Diablo 2 and nothing points to it being broken. like how it uses randomness within a range for its various systems and doesn't make the player have to open an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of everything or how it increases the chance that no items will drop the more players are in a server.

Or how it uses randomness within a range to generate its maps, which is great because it makes every dungeon feel like an actual place while still retaining the replay value of each one is different, There is random and then there's too random and Diablo II intelligently chose to be in the former camp. This is not the epic own you think it is, but thank you for sharing it regardless, it made me gain some newfound appreciation for the level of care and passion that was put into the game.

 

[Kane]

You realize nothing in the book you just linked points to nonsensical or broken design, right?

It does. You're just too stupid to understand which you already demonstrated in your previous posts. ex.:

don't know what you're referring to by "useless main attributes" They're 100% necessary

Lawl.

'Sides, there's tons of useless abilities you can put a whopping 20 points in each.

 

[Just Locus]

You're just too stupid to understand which you already demonstrated in your previous posts.

I think it speaks volumes that instead of quoting the individual lines that prove how 'nonsensical' Diablo 2's game design is, you just chose to link the whole fucking book, almost like you know it doesn't actually point to anything in the game being broken.

Lawl.

Strength determines your base damage, and is necessary for being able to use certain weapons.
Dexterity determines how likely you are to hit your targeted enemy and your general defense.
I don't need to explain Vitality
Energy determines your overall Mana

This was also back when Vitality was a skill that was optional for the player to invest in, meaning you could play a complete glass cannon if you wanted, as opposed to the previous games which made your max HP increase automatically. The attributes do the busy work while the skill system does the heavy lifting of character progression, y'know, the one where you can make like, 20 separate builds for just one class alone? D2's skills reinforce what the game is best at, having endless amounts of replay value. Pointing to it as a gotcha to how "useless" they are is colossally retarded, they do their job and are simple enough to not be intrusive.

 

[Kane]

You're just too stupid to understand which you already demonstrated in your previous posts.

I think it speaks volumes that instead of quoting the individual lines that prove how 'nonsensical' Diablo 2's game design is, you just chose to link the whole fucking book, almost like you know it doesn't actually point to anything in the game being broken.

I think it speaks volumes that you come into this thread being stupid are told how to fix that and then instead of doing that you just continue to be stupid.

Lawl.

Strength determines your base damage, and is necessary for being able to use certain weapons.
Dexterity determines how likely you are to hit your targeted enemy and your general defense.
I don't need to explain Vitality
Energy determines your overall Mana

This was also back when Vitality was a skill that was optional for the player to invest in, meaning you could play a complete glass cannon if you wanted, as opposed to the previous games which made your max HP increase automatically. The attributes do the busy work while the skill system does the heavy lifting of character progression, y'know, the one where you can make like, 20 separate builds for just one class alone? D2's skills reinforce what the game is best at, having endless amounts of replay value. Pointing to it as a gotcha to how "useless" they are is colossally retarded, they do their job and are simple enough to not be intrusive.

Did you read the link I posted?
Wait. No, you didn't.

 

[Zlaja]

The problem is that the early game is boring as fuck in 99% of hack and slash games.

In today's games, yes, but in games like D1, D2, TQ and Sacred 1, I had loads of fun during early game.

Diablo II is just bad

Did you play D2R? It fixes some of those "technical" stuff you were whining about.

All complains I have read so far are some "feels" about a thing some other game did 20 years ago which somehow makes that one "better

I played D4 when it was new, and while I fairly enjoyed questing, exploring the map and the combat, the loot hunt was lackluster because of a lack of interesting unique items. All the legendary items got boring after awhile, thanks to their design.

 

[Kane]

Did you play D2R? It fixes some of those "technical" stuff you were whining about.

Yes. It's bad.

I played D4 when it was new, and while I fairly enjoyed questing, exploring the map and the combat, the loot hunt was lackluster because of a lack of interesting unique items. All the legendary items got boring after awhile, thanks to their design.

A fair point. Legendary items are not unique though. And the uniques are hardly any different from the one in D2. I like that you can temper them to your desires.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

Strength determines your base damage, and is necessary for being able to use certain weapons.
Dexterity determines how likely you are to hit your targeted enemy and your general defense.
I don't need to explain Vitality
Energy determines your overall Mana

Thanks Wikipedia

Strength- just enough to equip all of your gear
Dexterity- just enough to equip all of your gear (rarely to reach max block)
Energy- Don't put any points into Energy (unless you use energy shield)
Vitality- pump everything here

Here you are expert build maker in D2

Still even with some bad designs it's miles better than the level scaling, cooldown driven trash that is D4

 

[Zlaja]

Legendary items are not unique though

And that was part of the problem, IMO, considering that was almost everything you had to hunt for. Nothing wrong with them being customizable in itself (that was fun, actually), but only if you couple that with a fair amount of more rare and unique loot, on top of that.

And the uniques are hardly any different from the one in D2

There were far FAR less of them on release. Just a few, really, and they were only attainable later on in Tier 3-4 difficulty. Not sure how it is today.

 

[Kane]

Still even with some bad designs it's miles better than the level scaling, cooldown driven trash that is D4

D4 isn't even cooldown driven, wtf are you talking about.

And that was part of the problem, IMO, considering that was almost everything you had to hunt for. Nothing wrong with them being customizable in itself (that was fun, actually), but only if you couple that with a fair amount of more rare and unique loot, on top of that.

I don't get it. Are you complaining that not enough items are dropping in D4?

There were far FAR less of them on release. Just a few, really, and they were only attainable later on in Tier 3-4 difficulty.

And that's bad? I mean we can critique tiny minutae of game design here like 'uniques are not dropping early/frequently enough' but that's also extremely irrelevant. It isn't even true. Going from lvl 1 to 50 in WT2 will net you about 5-10 uniques.

 

[Yosharian]

Why the fuck would you actually argue with someone who thinks D4 has a good campaign

You might as well argue with a box of cereal

 

[ERYFKRAD]

You might as well argue with a box of cereal

Well the cereal box admits defeat very quickly in stunned silence.

 

[abija]

the gameplay has barely iterated on D3 I mean it's just D3 with a new coat of paint (nice paint admittedly)

You mean they jumped off a cliff and now are crawling back towards D3... they didn't iterate jack shit. Iterating on top of D3 would have been a huge improvement.

 

[Ryzer]

The problem is that the early game is boring as fuck in 99% of hack and slash games.

D2 campaign is actually great. Especially if you play Hardcore and need to take it slower, walk instead of run, etc. You suddenly began noticing a bunch of stuff, intricate details in the story and environments, etc.

I don't like Diablo 2, it is steep decline over everything Diablo 1 settled upon, including story and environments. Diablo 1 manages to look better than Diablo 2 released years later. Diablo 1 just feels more tense, more visceral, more brutal and overall better than Diablo 2.

 

[Yosharian]

the gameplay has barely iterated on D3 I mean it's just D3 with a new coat of paint (nice paint admittedly)

You mean they jumped off a cliff and now are crawling back towards D3... they didn't iterate jack shit. Iterating on top of D3 would have been a huge improvement.

Well yes, I was trying to summarise briefly

 

[Kane]

Why the fuck would you actually argue with someone who thinks D4 has a good campaign

You might as well argue with a box of cereal

D4 has the best story of all ARPGs ever released (not that this is a high bar; not a forte of that genre or computer games in general) but you are just a shitstain that should be banned.

I have reported you for being a moronic idiot, which is sadly tolerated here. Nonetheless the administration allowing irradiated ghouls like you to roam free here is exactly why this place is going to shit, so we need to begin somewhere.

 

[Skinwalker]

D4 has the best story of all ARPGs ever released

It's moronic woke trash. What's good about it? It's barely even a story.

Diablo 4 is the best-looking Diablo-clone ever released. The gameplay is ok. The story is trash. Overall, lots of wasted potential.

 

[Kane]

It's moronic woke trash. What's good about it? It's barely even a story.

Where is the story woke? I have not seen or heard a single woke thing during the entire campaign. Even D3's campaign was more woke than this. Do you even understand what the word means?

D4 is the best look ARPG, with the best game play (especially on the technical side) and the best story on the market.

 

[Peachcurl]

They replaced the main character with a girl.