Diablo vs Diablo II

[Elwro]

The first Diablo, while inferior to most roguelikes, had style and atmosphere. The second didn't seem to have them, at least not in the few hours I devoted to it. So for me Diablo 1 wins hands down.

 

[DraQ]

Not that the thread needs it, but I remembered a few more things... Azrael impersonation incoming, paragraph breaks deleted

Shrines in general. In D1, they had interesting (and sometimes permanent) effects, mixing good and bad ones. Clicking on a random shrine without knowing what it does (or clicking a cauldron) was generally a bad idea (in multiplayer, singleplayer obviously had save/load, but even then you had to know what happened based on the cryptic message shown), because you could permanently lose mana points etc. There were some cosmetic ones, but even they were nice - like Eldritch shrine turning all your potions into Rejuvenation potions, or that one that fires a nova at your ass and tells you to get lost. Anyone remember finding a Thinking Cap, and then having to find a Hidden shrine to permanently increase its durability (at the cost of another item) so you could actually use it (because it had 1 durability by default, and would get destroyed permanently as soon it got damaged at all otherwise)? Or as I mentioned already, to access spell levels normally unavailable to a Warrior? D2 shrines? Either generate useless items (Poison shrine wtf?), provide a short-term buff, or upgrade a monster to a fatter loot bag - no permanent effects, no trade-offs whatsoever, slight-to-nonexistent consequences for just mindlessly clicking any shrine you come upon. Gone were the "larpy" names and cryptic messages, replaced with Obvious Labels of Obviousness. Not to mention that one of the buffs was a XP gain buff, which is just lazy MMO-ish meta crap. Just like Magic Find on D2 items - instead of using items to increase monster killing capacity, it makes a character kill monsters slower but pushes the OCD addiction button of "dropping shinier loot" - it makes sense in an MMO (where the company wants you to play longer), but what the hell is it doing in a "buy once, play as much as you want" game? Or stats like "increase maximum resistances" - I'm not a fan. As somebody mentioned, D1 loot had a clear item progression and it was easy to say what is better. Finding it was another matter completely. Yes, a bastard sword "King's Sword of Haste" was the best weapon for a Warrior, but good luck finding one with the randomization (I knew one guy who found one of them once...) And guess what? That best killing machine weapon ever? It lost durability so fast you wouldn't believe it, and cost a crapload of gold to repair - it was easy to go completely broke (and have to use a backup weapon on easier levels just to make the gold to repair it and go back to the harder monsters). Yes, Wirt usually had the really insane item modifiers in his shop, but that's why he only ever had one item at a time. And even when you got the highly desired modifiers, they would be on low-tier items and completely useless. But you were also screwed if you got them on a too good of a base item - because they could easily cost more gold than could fit in your inventory. No, really. Armor? You generally wanted "Awesome plate of X" (+130-150% armor), but those cost a lot and getting one with a good base armor took time. Sure, there was "Godly" armor (+150-200% armor), but it was completely impractical and nobody used it - because you could only get it on rags or it would cost too much. of the Whale? Nobody used that, for the same reason. D2? Infinite gold in a stash, a million different base items, even more modifiers and meta-stats... It just got watered down. (and the sprites man, the gorgeous D1 item sprites were gone). Character classes? D1 had the very basics: a fighter, a thief, a mage. D2 had "cool" fancy classes - a "good" necromancer, amazons, druids... hell, even the barbarians used face-palmy abilities like "shout really loud and gain +100% to defense". The gloomy and simple dungeon crawl with the most classic archetypes was replaced with "everything and the kitchen sink" taken from completely unrelated mythologies and contexts. Shit, I could go on

Btw, attackfighter, perhaps you were using a weapon with knockback (like the Butcher's cleaver, anything "of the Bear")? Really a bad idea with archers, and generally unnecessary in melee as well. You also might want to look into attack speed and monster hit recovery times, if it ever crosses your mind again

EDIT: To be fair, D1 also had insta-trouble monsters that were hated more than Diablo himself: poison spitters. Running into a pack of those with the boss? You better have "of Harmony" gear giving you fastest hit recovery, or things will get... interesting fast.

EDIT2: Also, I second moving the thread to GG; but if we are to be logical about it, Skyrim threads should be moved too. If not, might as well leave Diablo in RPG Discussion :whistle:

Fully agreed. While the amount of different item types and properties, as well as general item system was better in D2, abundance of good drops and ability to just farm bosses repeatedly killed all the fun, plus I'm also not a fan of stupid meta shit.

In D1 you couldn't pre-plan your character. You had to grab whatever the game gave you and make lemonade out of proverbial lemons. There were no guaranteed drops, and spells came in random spellbooks.
I remember reaching caves with a warrior once and encountering hordes of lightning throwing demons. I had no items with lightning resistance, couldn't withstand the ranged not-so-tasteful rape for even a split second and if I got ganged upon in melee I was still dead. I had to resort to guerilla tactic of popping out of cover, blind casting firebolt in the general direction of demonic horde, listening if it hit anyone, waiting and desperately hacking at the demon in melee.
It might have been repetitive and not particularly fast, but it was the only way to survive and surviving shit this unfair was deeply satisfying.

I also loved how in D1 you never got to see all possible monsters during a single playthrough. You couldn't build your character for fire resistance knowing you'd soon face balrogs, because they could turn out to be stormlords instead.

Also, while I think it was nice that D2 provided class specific skill trees, it wasn't worth the loss of generic, randomized spellbooks. Maybe a more limited skill trees, with class specific skills combined with spellbooks would combine the best of both worlds, or maybe the way to go would be spellbook analogues for different archetypes, requiring different stats to learn, but as it was Diablo 2 system was much worse than the one used in Diablo 1. Certainty of your build provided by the skill tree was most unwelcome in this type of game.

Plus, as you already said, kitchensink aspect sucked. Diablo was built around narrow and very specific set of aesthetics and mythology, expanding it into kitchensink killed all the atmosphere.

Ok, I won't lie, I enjoyed playing Druid in LoD, but only because of furfag factor.

BTW: I'm pretty sure Butcher's Cleaver doesn't have knockback. Besides, goatmen archers tend to run away on their own, and knockback is useful in most cases, especially with bows, but in melee it may be immensely helpful against monsters who try to go full contact with you. I once whacked Diablo and two hell knights this way with a warrior in Hellfire. I was using Griswold's edge plus shield, and it was fucking awesome.

Also, rarity of certain modifiers made it all the more rewarding when they dropped. Once in Hellfire I was playing as Bard (hidden, slightly unfinished class that can dual wield) and found two good swords with "crystalline" modifier (Hellfire only, massive damage, really shitty durability).
The modifiers stacked.
I was all fucking .

The first Diablo, while inferior to most roguelikes, had style and atmosphere. The second didn't seem to have them, at least not in the few hours I devoted to it. So for me Diablo 1 wins hands down.

: x :brotato:

 

[thexspr]

Griswold's Edge had built-in knockback, and it wasn't awesome at all in melee.

 

[DraQ]

Griswold's Edge had built-in knockback, and it wasn't awesome at all in melee.

That depends on how you used it.

Repeatedly interrupting a melee attacker trying to enter the adjacent tile = win.

 

[Mrowak]

@sea
@DraQ
@CappenVarra



Whatever those gentlemen said is true.

Diablo 2 was as popamole clusterfuck as you could get. Sure, it was fun in multiplayer and all, and I guess it was a good game in the end.

But it was Diablo I that had all character, focus and charm that only true soul-devouring Demon Lord of Hell can have.

 

[Malakal]

Oh please, I played D1 first then D2 and find D2 better and more memorable.

First of all D1 had only one location I remember until today and thats the Butcher. And its because of the audio not because it was truly unique. Level design was simply bad.

D2 on the other hand had a lot of varied and interesting locations, with good themes (ancient Egypt, lost jungle cities, hell...) and charming art direction. I especially loved cities in D2, with Travincal being number one for me. Granted, first act before Monastery was boring, and generally interior locations were better, but at least you had a lot to choose from (not only one huge dungeon, yes, very roguelike but thats not what I asked for).

From mechanical point of view D2 wins hands down. Skill system was way better in D1, synergies were nice, you had summons and debuffs/buffs. All varied and working in different ways. Also more classes, each different enough, good themes too. Items were the same (for me) in both games but D2 had more to chose from and introduced sets/crafting/gems (not that playing SP I used those).

Cant comment on grinding, never played through Hell difficulty or in MP, in SP I just rushed through revisiting fun locations from time to time (I like Durance of Hate and Travincal).

I enjoyed both games, but D2 is better as a GAME. D1 is better roguelike, quicker and more compressed. Some people like that. Sometimes I agree (when my hand dies from clicking...).

 

[Johnny the Mule]

jlashgpo4k

wow
removed from nonretard list
added to dumbass list
i knew the assburger furry and fps-story-tldr-faggot are two imbecile morons but theyve got company

Keep your shit in GD.

Suck my dick.

 

[Evilhyde]

Damn, sea. I'm going to have to go home and load up Diablo I now just based on your extended post.

 

[St. Toxic]

It was possibly the first RPG I ever played.

Scary stuff.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Regarding spellbooks vs class, I always liked the way Nethack did it a lot: Different classes had different aptitudes for different spell schools. A Wizard could cast everything at full potential, a Barbarian could cast fuck all, Rogues could cast movement magic at full power and some other stuff moderately, etc. 10 playthrough with a Wizard felt different because of finding different books and items, and 10 playthroughs where you find the same books with a different class felt different because they couldn't use them equally.

 

[Renegen]

Anyone remember finding a Thinking Cap, and then having to find a Hidden shrine to permanently increase its durability (at the cost of another item) so you could actually use it (because it had 1 durability by default, and would get destroyed permanently as soon it got damaged at all otherwise)? Or as I mentioned already, to access spell levels normally unavailable to a Warrior

Heh, I remember the Thinking Cap and durability shrines in Diablo 1 multiplayer. I think I got one up to 51 or so durability. We'd play in the legit channel, as 95% of Diablo 1 consisted of cheaters, good times.

Diablo 1 did have that roguelike quality about it I guess. I saw a Diablo video the other day and it instantly brought me back, god those poison splitters!

Though Diablo 2 was different I never found it a full decline however, the character customization was miles head. Here's some more nostalgia for you, anyone remember a website called Celestial Heaven or something? A huge community, and among them there was this guy named Syrian who did LPs much like on the playground before LPs existed. His thing though was that each week he'll try a completely original character build, like a firebolt-only sorceress, or a throwing mastery barbarian, and he'd do them all in hardcore difficulty. He really inspired me. Hardcore difficulty was where the pros really hung out.

For some extra fun, go see the Giant Bomb video of Diablo 3, god that game is a disgrace. You can only have 6 skills maximum FOREVER and skills don't even have ranks, corridors everywhere, everyone dies in 1 shot, no stat allocation, very fast health and mana regen. The game even tells you how crappy it is as the status bar only goes from 1 to 5!

 

[Terpsichore]

Diablo 2 was a solid online game thanks to its item system, the game was pretty much about trading. The singleplayer part was extremely boring and unfun.

Diablo 1 had a nice atmosphere and some singleplayer value.


MMO devs should learn from D2's and Ragnarok Online item systems.

 

[Desmodus Rotundus]

D1 might not have been memorable to you but I still remember pretty much all the set pieces and much of the dungeon monologues as well.

butcher, inn sign, king leorics tomb. the poisoned well dungeon, that unique medium armor place(remember layout not the name), tomb of the eyeless or whatever it was called, the place you got the guardian spell from, the bishops chamber.

What I remember fondly from lan play were the friendly fire incidents(fondly because I was the only one playing sorcerer) when a friendly player got between a group of enemies and me casting chain lightning, was pretty much a certain death. So D2 turning off friendly fire felt like a

 

[Satan]

In terms of atmosphere, Diablo wins, but regarding combat and overall fun, Diablo 2 is the better game.

 

[Castanova]

For some extra fun, go see the Giant Bomb video of Diablo 3, god that game is a disgrace. You can only have 6 skills maximum FOREVER and skills don't even have ranks, corridors everywhere, everyone dies in 1 shot, no stat allocation, very fast health and mana regen. The game even tells you how crappy it is as the status bar only goes from 1 to 5!

If you want to feel edgy without doing any work, do it on your own time. If you're going to make everyone read your faux edginess, at least be informed first.

 

[CappenVarra]

@DraQ: Yeah, you're right about the Butcher's Cleaver. I also seemed to have forgotten another tier of armor between Awesome and Godly (Holy), etc. Time flies And I meant that if you manage to catch up to / lure a kiting archer to range (e.g. wait behind a corner when their line of sight is broken), having knockback give them a running start in getting away again gets old fast... Then again, you can always herd them to inescapable corners etc. Anyways,

@Mrowak:

@Desmodus:
- "that unique medium armor place(remember layout not the name)": Arkaine's Valor ("may the spirit of our king protect me"...)
- "tomb of the eyeless or whatever it was called" - Halls of the Blind ("I see what you see not / Vision milky and then eyes rot...")
- "the place you got the guardian spell from" - The Chamber of Bone (and that room absolutely overcrowded with Horrors...)

...

 

[octavius]

I've found out that "Ah! Fresh meat!" is not a good pick up line to use on young interns...

 

[Renegen]

For some extra fun, go see the Giant Bomb video of Diablo 3, god that game is a disgrace. You can only have 6 skills maximum FOREVER and skills don't even have ranks, corridors everywhere, everyone dies in 1 shot, no stat allocation, very fast health and mana regen. The game even tells you how crappy it is as the status bar only goes from 1 to 5!

If you want to feel edgy without doing any work, do it on your own time. If you're going to make everyone read your faux edginess, at least be informed first.

What does that even mean? Everything I said there is true and verifiable.

 

[DraQ]

king leorics tomb. the poisoned well dungeon, that unique medium armor place(remember layout not the name), tomb of the eyeless or whatever it was called, the place you got the guardian spell from, the bishops chamber.

I could recite the monologues from memory.

Regarding spellbooks vs class, I always liked the way Nethack did it a lot: Different classes had different aptitudes for different spell schools. A Wizard could cast everything at full potential, a Barbarian could cast fuck all, Rogues could cast movement magic at full power and some other stuff moderately, etc. 10 playthrough with a Wizard felt different because of finding different books and items, and 10 playthroughs where you find the same books with a different class felt different because they couldn't use them equally.

Well this is essentially a more expanded version of what D1 did. Different classes had different max stats, different attack/cast rates with different weapons and different gain of stuff like health mana and so on.

This determined what whether given class could use certain items at all and what kind of tactics was effective with it.

@sea
@DraQ
@CappenVarra



Whatever those gentlemen said is true.

Diablo 2 was as popamole clusterfuck as you could get. Sure, it was fun in multiplayer and all, and I guess it was a good game in the end.

But it was Diablo I that had all character, focus and charm that only true soul-devouring Demon Lord of Hell can have.

Diablo 2 might have been the most disappointing game I've ever bought*. True story.

Ok, one of the reasons might be that I've been "try before you buy" guy long before it was trendy, rather than D2 being so horrible, as I simply avoided buying vast majority of actual turds, no matter the hype, but bad Diablo seemed an oxymoron back then, like bad caffeine or something (not that I ever considered it to be an RPG ), and it was hyped to high heavans by CDA, then still fairly prestigious gaming rag known for giving 10/10s only to legendary games like Deus Ex, System Shock 2 and Homeworld.

I bought the shiny new box, en version, , given that it was available as well, popped it into my 'puter and...

Green grass. Whore in black apron pretending that she was a blacksmith. Derpy text. Derpy exclamation marks. Soulless tile-based encampment. Running around hordes of slow and essentially harmless zombies and fallen, prancing around some sort of humongous featureless lawn in broad daylight. No saves. No spellbooks. No persistency. No atmosphere. Derpy resurrection.

Where is my fucking Diablo?
Who took it?
Who took my fucking Daiblo?
Answer you pieces of shit! Who has it?
Whotoathfghwarglagh!


I was so butthurt I tried to actually return this disgrace of a game.

Much later, when the expansion came out and I found it to actually incline the game quite a bit, I found out that, unlike original, the expansion was only available in Polish, and compatible only with PL version.


I ended up playing it a bit, original EN Diablo 2, seven seas PL LoD, fair amount of questionably sane hacks and tweaks to make both think they were proper versions. Lulzy mixed language dialogue. Derpy PL dubbing.


Much, much latter I actually bought some large-ish collector box, with all stuff and, IIRC starcraft and D1, but that was with the intent of using D2 for multiplayer purposes, but that's another story.

Back when it was new I hated so very much.

Oh please, I played D1 first then D2 and find D2 better and more memorable.

First of all D1 had only one location I remember until today and thats the Butcher. And its because of the audio not because it was truly unique. Level design was simply bad.

If you haven't noticed, there was hardly any level design, because most of the stuff, apart from fixed specific locations was generated randomly.

Still, different sections of the dungeon had a lot of specific traits - you couldn't mistake catacombs for caves, or hell for cathedral's dungeons, even when looking only at minimap.

OTOH D2, had more handmade locations and most were derpy as hell. Generated outdoors were also shitty, because they were simply large and empty areas, devoid of any sort of obstacles that could significantly affect the gameplay.

If I wanted to run around fucking lawn whacking zombies, I'd get myself a gazrurka and wait till moher grannies start to pour out of church on Sunday.

D2 on the other hand had a lot of varied and interesting locations, with good themes (ancient Egypt, lost jungle cities, hell...) and charming art direction. I especially loved cities in D2, with Travincal being number one for me. Granted, first act before Monastery was boring, and generally interior locations were better, but at least you had a lot to choose from (not only one huge dungeon, yes, very roguelike but thats not what I asked for).

Yes, a lot of themes. If only it had cyberpunk, ghetto and wild west themes D2 would have been an absolute perfection, I tell you. I was also disappointed by the lack of underwater theme. Steampunk and retrofuturistic themes would also be nice.

In terms of atmosphere, Diablo wins, but regarding combat and overall fun, Diablo 2 is the better game.

Faggots. You're all faggots.

 

[octavius]

I can't help it, but I thought both Diablo 1 and 2 were great fun, and I completed both of them several times.

 

[Gregz]

Faggots. You're all faggots.

Dude, you got some issues. :/

But in all fairness, I do remember being so disappointed after buying Diablo II that I didn't play it again for about 3 years or so. The main source of my inital butthurt was probably my love for Diablo I...although I forget exactly why...probably college, anyway, when I tried it again a few years later there were lots of awesome mods, runewords, etc. For some reason I then completely changed my mind about Diablo II and played the hell out of it. I spent quite a while playing Laz's Median XL mod off and on too. That is a single-player masterpiece.

 

[Serious_Business]

Diablo is shit because I'm twenty something angry youth that identifies himself with his critical thinking and has no other way to use it other than applying it to video games because I don't know shit about any other subject and I have no education because I think I'm above academia so I judge video games with a lot of anger to the point that I think I've proven my intelligence to the world by being radical about not enjoying video games

Wait this isn't 2007 anymore, is it.

Guess I've become a parody by now, it's time to be ironic about the fact that I was ironic about something that was ironic. Argluahgluahgluah

 

[Jaesun]

I've played Diablo dozens of times.

I have never finished Chapter 1 of Diablo II....

 

[Castanova]

What does that even mean? Everything I said there is true and verifiable.

Your second sentence was (only partially) true of the Diablo 3 Beta. However, your first sentence linked your second sentence to the entirety of Diablo 3, which is false and unverifiable. Hence why you should be inform yourself before making statements for Kodex points.

 

[shihonage]

Diablo1 had great atmosphere but environments were too samey after a while.

Diablo2 brought on some derp but I had a ton of fun with its gameplay mechanics. There was a lot more going on under the surface. My favorite was Necromancer because Bone Wall temporarly altered maze layout and allowed for rudimentary strategy of the moment. So did choosing ranged skeletons in act 3.
Outdoor areas were a cool idea even though they could use more mazey qualities.

Diablo3 is Bobby Kotick's endgame. Streamlined, overprocessed, Wardened-in, server-dependent. The sum of all fears.