Diablo IV

[BlackAdderBG]

I vaguely recall D3 being ruined by online Auction House? D2 was pure incline.

AH was unintentionally the only thing that actually enforced somewhat decent itemization, after they dropped it with "loot 2.0" it went to complete shit.

 

[Cryomancer]

Not sure why D2 is supposed to be decline. To me it's the best Diablo game (never played D3 but let's be honest...).

On RPG and atmosphere is a SMALL(tinny) decline.

A sorcerer becoming better at thowing fireballs by reading tomes is better than him becoming better by investing skill points. Anyway, both systems are far superior to him becoming better by finding a bigger and sharper axe.

But in longevity, action combat, etc improved a lot.

PS : You are not missing anything with "never played D3"

Here is why

 

[HarveyBirdman]

in the unholy (pun intended) abortion those trailers revealed.

Care to explain why the trailers were bad? At least it will spice the thread.

The non-gameplay trailer indicates the target audience, i.e. people who actually like those kinds of cornball trailers.
The gameplay trailer was a lame clickfest. Isometric action combat is a relic of an era where there wasn't a better way to do action combat, and it rightfully died. Diabo should've been a one-off.

 

[flushfire]

I don't think that constant watch your skill bars for cooldowns is "fun", D1 and D2 had much better combat IMO.

PVP was especially amazing in D2. I mean sure at first the massive imbalance was there (I dunno how it is now), some things weren't as responsive as they should have been, latency/sync issues were common, it was all pretty chaotic but damn, brewing builds with friends trying to counter the more OP classes, that was the shit. We didn't have access to completely detailed guides like we do now, and we mostly played LAN... There was a time we went around cyber cafes challenging teams to PVP with money on the line (was a thing in my country back then, mostly CS though, D2 was rare) That's something I'll never forget. And D3 went on for a long time without PVP, it required internet connection, there isn't as much freedom in everything... I made much more money off of D3's AH than what I did with D2, but I can definitely say I had more fun with D2.

 

[S.torch]

people who actually like those kinds of cornball trailers.

Common, thats all you have? almost every AAA company have one of these cinematic trailers. Some of them are good because they comply their objective, which is making you interested in the game.
Also, in all isometric games you have to "clic".

 

[Desiderius]

Not sure why D2 is supposed to be decline. To me it's the best Diablo game (never played D3 but let's be honest...).

On RPG and atmosphere is a SMALL(tinny) decline.

A sorcerer becoming better at thowing fireballs by reading tomes is better than him becoming better by investing skill points. Anyway, both systems are far superior to him becoming better by finding a bigger and sharper axe.

But in longevity, action combat, etc improved a lot.

PS : You are not missing anything with "never played D3"

Here is why

Sounds like D:OS2. Updating all your gear every level was fun for about 15 levels or so, but then got pretty old fast.

 

[Desiderius]

I vaguely recall D3 being ruined by online Auction House? D2 was pure incline.

AH was unintentionally the only thing that actually enforced somewhat decent itemization, after they dropped it with "loot 2.0" it went to complete shit.

I got to the point where drops didn’t matter because all the uniques were dirt cheap in the AH so predictably lost interest soon after. Not sure how to be worse than that.

Also felt a little underpopulated compared to D2, especially later acts.

 

[HarveyBirdman]

people who actually like those kinds of cornball trailers.

Common, thats all you have? almost every AAA company have one of these cinematic trailers. Some of them are good because they comply their objective, which is making you interested in the game.
Also, in all isometric games you have to "clic".

>unable to differentiate between isometric and isometric clickfests

 

[Cryomancer]

Sounds like D:OS2. Updating all your gear every level was fun for about 15 levels or so, but then got pretty old fast.

DOS2 had most things that i hate on modern games. Unfortunately few modern game devs makes interesting living breathing virtual world...

Same with Diablo 3 and probably 4...

 

[Shadenuat]

Was I seeing millions of points of damage for diablo 3? Good grief talk about inflation.

diablo 1 endgame fighter

Spoiler

diablo 2 midlevel barb

diablo 2 high level barb

some Diablo 3 screenshot (I have no idea how D3 works)

some screenshot I don't know what it is

How roleplaying systems die: illustrated.

750 Life. I don't understand why I die so fast

Your life seems a bit low...

 

[Cryomancer]

Damage numbers and Stats should works as a measurement. Eg, a 8 STR guy in D&D has bellow average physical strength. I can't expect him to be able to fully draw a warbow. If they become too inflated, they lose his meaning. Like currency and D3 numbers are more inflated than Zimbabwe currency and Weimar republic combined not that Diablo 3 din't already have killed all meaning of stats by making you muscle mass an IQ scales with how "shine" your boots are...

 

[Shadenuat]

TBH D2 is also badly inflated, especially itemization.
I reached level 50 with my necro on NM. I have +3-4 all skills and some items with +3 on some other skills. Amu, dagger, OrtSol, shield, that kind of thing.
The runes are plenty, and runewords are absurd.

I began playing this game on release, when levels beyond 80 and high end uniques were beyond reach of non-clan players; I've seen it go to late LoD (aka enigma retardo era) and I see that inflation reached even higher propotion after I stopped playing (before uber stuff happened).

Good for single player/ssf (no mules), but with trading between characters, itemization is a farce, sadly.
Still, a very powerful character constructor; lots of fine tuning from inventory and beyond (charms). But they should have drawn a line somewhere.

Also nerf magic. I just wanted to say that spells that attack multiple enemies should have some flaw; and then realised something: in D1 firewall hurts the caster. In D2 FF is off on everything. Multiplayer issue I guess. Otherwise you basically have 2 roads: either melee sucks, or melee behaves like magic.
Modern action RPGs follow the second one.

 

[Damned Registrations]

So what you're saying is you want the difference between playing for 1 hour and 50 hours to be not quite doubling your stats.

 

[Cryomancer]

TBH D2 is also badly inflated, especially itemization.
I reached level 50 with my necro on NM. I have +3-4 all skills and some items with +3 on some other skills. Amu, dagger, OrtSol, shield, that kind of thing.

There are a HUGE difference between D2 post runewords inflation to D3 inflation. D2 inflation is more akin to modern Argentina, D3 inflation is more akin to Weimar Republic or maybe Zimbabwe inflation. Even with all OP runewords of D2, i never saw a build dealing more than 30k damage while on D3, you complete a set and start to do dozens of millions of damage

So what you're saying is you want the difference between playing for 1 hour and 50 hours to be not quite doubling your stats.

See dark souls, is the ARPG with best character progression that i saw. Most stats has diminishing returns and leveling up becomes much more expensive.

 

[luj1]

TBH D2 is also badly inflated, especially itemization.

Nothing like D3 and D4 though...

 

[Shadenuat]

Well you realise there's no practical reason to start system with 1-6 shotswords and end with 30000 spells right?

Nevertheless, I must say D2 itemization still retains that feeling of overall usefulness where you can find good things, viable things from early to endgame. A belt +resist +health is good for many hours; shitty leather gloves with +50% poison res -75% poison duration allow just facetanking Andariel; perfect Diamond is perfect Diamond be it normal or hell, Stealth is as good 1 hour into the game as 30 hours later etc. +extra loot goes on Mercenary.
That's what I find is missing in POE: loot there just always feels like it fucking sucks in comparison. Especially since instead of measuring monsters in packs it measures them in high resolution screens.

It's just that super runewords and 6-8+ effects per item is where things begin to break down into retardo territory. Half of the effects don't even have any practical use.

Nothing like D3 and D4 though...

I never got past vomiting artstyle so no idea how these games work; I only know D1, 2, TQ, GD & PoE.

 

[Cryomancer]

I never got past vomiting artstyle so no idea how these games work; I only know D1, 2, TQ, GD & PoE.

Did you played Darkstone? One of the best

 

[Shadenuat]

Judging by google check yes, game with pretty song in the beginning area?

 

[Damned Registrations]

Well you realise there's no practical reason to start system with 1-6 shotswords and end with 30000 spells right?

Diablo 3 doesn't 'end' anywhere. It reaches those insane numbers because it has no hard level cap and keeps giving you steady progression. The reason it's so inflated is because of those two things. Diablo 1 wasn't designed to be played for more than a single run through the dungeon so it's progression falls off very quickly and there's no reason to keep playing unless you start a new character.

I can agree the spam of trivial effects on items is bad design (nobody cares about +5% resist poison or whatever the fuck is tacked on to the stats that matter) but there's no real reason to put any sort of cap on basic stats. If progression doesn't actually make you stronger there's no reason to actually kill or loot anything, you may as well just walk past everything and kill only the bosses.

 

[Shadenuat]

Sounds awful. If there's no beginning and end, then there is no actual progress. You're just in numbers limbo at that point.

 

[luj1]

Diablo 3 doesn't 'end' anywhere. It reaches those insane numbers because it has no hard level cap and keeps giving you steady progression. The reason it's so inflated is because of those two things.

Don't forget Asia.

 

[Cryomancer]

The game has power creep but not number inflation. If you wanna see number inflation

Diablo 3 doesn't 'end' anywhere. It reaches those insane numbers because it has no hard level cap and keeps

Not true. The level cap is 70 and there are no way to pass GR 150



And yes, that is the end game of D3, doing the same thing over and over with bigger numbers.

Dark Souls has a ludicrous high level cap(i believe that is around 900) but most people play around lv 120 on DS1 and 150 on DS2 and the difference of someone with 99 STR and 50 STR is not big as the difference 40 to 50 STR... A a guy capable of clearing GR 100 doesn't have a fraction of the """power""" of someone capable of clearing GR 105...

Each 2 levels of GR the enemy health and damage doubles. That is ludicrous inflation.

 

[Desiderius]

It's just that super runewords and 6-8+ effects per item is where things begin to break down into retardo territory. Half of the effects don't even have any practical use.

I enjoyed trying to get the most out of the uniques and their odd effects. P:K relics remind me of those.

 

[Shadenuat]

I found on NM the shittiest dagger ever (Diggler), but since my attack rating does not rely on weapon I ran with it for a while due to total +50% resists. Then I switched it for +1 necro skills blue dagger bought from a shop.
So a shittiest weapon in existance somewhat viable and then you can buy something viable from NPC. Crazy stuff.
Obviously terrible design, player has to grind 200 hours for new weapon that does more dps than previous one instead of beating endgame monsters with some shoddily constructed equipment. Otherwise how do you make them replay your game?? ...wait.

While there are many awful uniques in D2, most of them do seem to have some use and seem to be fine tuned for time you find them. +some can go on your Mercenary.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I mean, at that point you're actually competitively speedrunning the game and have been playing for probably like 200+ hours. But sure, I didn't think there was actually a cap on GR. There isn't one on paragon levels, which is your character as opposed to enemy levels.

The end of diablo 1 is holy bolting diablo 50 times while he flinches helplessly to your cheapass level 3 spell you learned before reaching the second tileset. The end of diablo 2 was reloading a map over and over to kill some piss weak miniboss that dropped the best loot in the game... for no reason since you could already do that pretty much instantly. Eventually they added some other shit but it still came down to killing the same exact enemy over and over. Diablo 3 at least has an endgame that involves fighting random monsters in random maps that can actually hurt you.