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Diablo vs Diablo II

Diablo vs Diablo II? Who wins?

  • Diablo

    Votes: 5 55.6%
  • Diablo II

    Votes: 1 11.1%
  • Diablo II: LoD (click this if you think LoD inclined D2)

    Votes: 2 22.2%
  • they're shit (but I secretly played and enjoyed them)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • they're shit (stupid clickfest game)

    Votes: 1 11.1%

  • Total voters
    9

sser

Arcane
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Diablo 1 for what sea said, but this in particular:

Third, Diablo was focused. Though it had less variety in environments and enemies, those that were in the game felt like natural extensions of one another, progressing in severity and getting darker and darker with each level down the hatch. You had one central goal and everything in the game revolved around it. Side-quests were minimal and incidental, and not necessary to slog through before the game decided to open its doors to the next chapter, unlike Diablo II, where the game would present a bunch of "optional" quests per act only to reveal later on that they were all actually mandatory. Its grab-bag "world tour" of locations also felt forced to me. Diablo was a game about claustrophobic tunnels and dark depths, not about jungles and deserts. It had its moments (the Mayan-style tombs were great) but it tried too hard to impress.
I could never really get into Diablo 2. I always wanted to do certain builds that just weren't viable. Everything was min-max dickery and that's just not really fun to me. I always preferred Titan Quest to D2 because no matter what you did you could make it work. Take a strange "experimental" build into D2 and you'll eventually get greased hard and not be able to continue at all. Just bad game design, to me anyway.
 

DraQ

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shihonage said:
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.
In D1 you could manage enemy movement using firewalls.
There was also more need to do stuff like using chokepoints, because the enemies weren't made of wet paper and you couldn't just sprint away if things went sour.

Outdoor areas were a cool idea even though they could use more mazey qualities.
The problem is that not really.

Outdoor areas are cool if you have very long range combat, or avoidance, or Z- axis, or lots of terrain influence.
They work well for FPS, tactical games, simulators and strategies.
They don't work at all if you're just running around featureless plains bonking zombies upside the head with a mace.
 

Xor

Arcane
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I really like Diablo II, but I'm fully willing to admit that it's a flawed game that focuses way too much on loot grinding. It does some things better than the original Diablo, most noteably UI and control improvements, but it rarely captures the same atmosphere that Diablo had. In spite of Diablo II's flaws, though, I enjoyed it more than the original.

Voted LoD because all the improvements it made to the game were worth it even if act V was boring.
 

sea

inXile Entertainment
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So I've been playing the Diablo III beta recently. A few thoughts on it, which are actually interesting when put in relation to my complaints about Diablo II:

1) Areas feel more condensed. Dungeons are still big, but outdoor areas are less sprawling, with a clear path to stick to if you want to just get to the end. You'll never get lost in them like you will in Diablo II; they are much more focused on being a hub for dungeons rather than most of the game in their own right.

2) Enemies know how to run. Not all can do it, like standard zombies, but many can move as fast or faster than you can, putting heavy emphasis on either killing them fast or using evasion skills (the Demon Hunter has a backwards backflip that's awesome for this, though a bit overpowered). As town portals are also gone, and your Stone of Recall takes time to use, you'll have a harder time fleeing from fights than before, and the cooldown on potions encourages you to keep going (though ideally I would have preferred much fewer potions without a cooldown).

3) Better use of environments and terrain. This is a hard one to pin down but I think it extends to a couple of things. The first is interactivity. Blizzard have made much of Diablo III's physics, and how you can collapse walls or drop chandeliers and other objects on enemies, but it really does make a difference to be able to lure enemies into traps that way. More variety in combat is always a good thing even if it feels a bit contrived at times.

4) Randomness is actually interesting. Maybe this is just because I've only put about 6 hours into the game, but I've come across a handful of interesting random events, from a Treasure Gnome (or something) that dropped gold whenever I hit it, to various minor dungeons scattered around the outdoor areas, to a "Jar of Souls" that initiated an optional survival challenge for extra loot, to random unique enemies with actual interesting properties that make a much bigger difference than the ones in Diablo II. I'm not sure how random story-related stuff is but it's definitely a step above Diablo II's copy-paste levels and guaranteed encounters.

5) Better loot balance. The way Diablo II worked is that you basically just waited until you got a rare or unique item that worked for you, and used it until the next one. Diablo III... I'm not even sure there are any rare items. Magical items are already fairly hard to come by, and drop rates are reduced slightly from Diablo II as well - you'll find a lot of gold, and some vendor trash, but not a ton else. Those items I've found have all either been trade-offs or substantial improvements, sometimes in unexpected ways (such as a ring which gave me +3-8 damage, a huge boost early on that let me keep my old weapons useful). Some items, I haven't even found yet... I have yet to see a hat or helm of any kind, or pants, and it took me a long time to get boots and a belt as well. The sense of progression in loot is far better than anything Diablo II managed.

6) Crafting is actually well-done for a loot-whoring game. You can break down items into standard components: common junk, magical essence and so on. The items you can craft are determined by your artisan skills, which in turn is determined by Tomes of Training you can create and use by combining Pages of Training. Though it seems grindy, consistently the items that I've been able to craft have been better than all my other gear. You don't always get the modifiers you might want, and the cost is right in that sweet spot where you might want to craft one or two extra times just to see if you get something better - at the same time I wasn't really disappointed with my choice. None of this "throw random items in the Horadric Cube and see what happens" crap that was in Diablo II and was almost never worth doing.

7) Enemies are actually fun and different to fight. Most of them have some sort of gimmick you need to learn and understand in order to fight effectively. Some enemies summon reinforcements and should be taken out first. Others create new enemies upon death. Some are extremely fast and just rush you. Yet others can use magic spells and even lay traps on the ground. Some can travel between terrain levels. This is all in the first act, so hopefully if things keep going there will be really crazy stuff in the later acts, like enemies that can pass through walls, or spawn mirror images of the player, or whatever.

Again, I'm still early in, and there are things I simply don't like (leveling is almost meaningless now, for one), but there are a lot of smart changes Blizzard have made that suggest they understand many of the flaws in Diablo II and have tried their best to improve them, either by significantly changing mechanics or through smaller-scale tweaks. It's this weird dichotomy of the game feeling both soulless, corporate and MMO-like (auction house, online-only, bland 3D graphics and sound), but also being extremely well-made in most other respects.
 

Xor

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Blizzard games always have extremely good production values, so it really doesn't surprise me that the gameplay is solid.
 

Elwro

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Thanks for the post, sea! How would you compare DIII to Torchlight? I almost decided to skip DIII and stick to Torchlight 2 instead because I enjoyed the 1st part, but who knows when any of these games will be released...
 

Haba

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To we even need to ask this question? Diablo was dark gothic roguelike, a simple one, but roguelike none the less. It was a coherent package that used it's simplicity to deliver a truly unique gaming experience.

Diablo II was... not.

I still regret buying my copy. Gave my legit CD key to some random guy on IRC.
 

DraQ

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Haba said:
To we even need to ask this question? Diablo was dark gothic roguelike, a simple one, but roguelike none the less. It was a coherent package that used it's simplicity to deliver a truly unique gaming experience.

Diablo II was... not.

I still regret buying my copy. Gave my legit CD key to some random guy on IRC.
:salute: :bro:

A bit of a shame, though, DII is still somewhat salvageable if you play coop ironman using \players 8.
 

Mrowak

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DraQ said:
Haba said:
To we even need to ask this question? Diablo was dark gothic roguelike, a simple one, but roguelike none the less. It was a coherent package that used it's simplicity to deliver a truly unique gaming experience.

Diablo II was... not.

I still regret buying my copy. Gave my legit CD key to some random guy on IRC.
:salute: :bro:

A bit of a shame, though, DII is still somewhat salvageable if you play coop ironman using \players 8.

So... when are we playing, guys? :smug:
 

Pika-Cthulhu

Arcane
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Messages
7,420
Diablo was great, II, less great, but still decent. LoDerp ended it for me. I did buy it eventually, played it, but it was dead to me when LoD was being released, couldnt get back into it the same way.

Played Diablo with a bro on PC and again on PS1, was a bit shitted off that I couldnt 'accidentally' Nova him to death, still, great times were had. Same with D2, many hours of fun had just dicking about killing shit in a mindless mousekilling clickfest, watching loot pop out of mobs and checking its stats to compare with what we had. You know, back when items you would wear would be rare and actually unique, unlike the ironically names 'Unique' items (Rattlecage/Tiitchthroe/Goblin Toes and Crushing Blow stacking still held merits for Javazons so not all Unique were pure garbage).

I dont expect much of D3, Blizzard sold it soul a long time ago to the MMOney gods, and the actual talent that made Diablo long since left.
 

Captain Shrek

Guest
Diablo 2.

It gives you more options to do stuff. Although Diablo has better music and horror, those elements are almost a bug than feature. At least they feel like that. Yes, I consider the perceived minimalism a bug for Diablo. But that could be just my gut.

In any case Diablo 2 has the same basic structure of gameplay, but more classes, feats and enemy types, better map design and graphics, better implementation of the loot system, fun multiplayer (as in more fun that D1), a better exposition in terms of the story and more fleshed out characters.


There's really nothing to complain unless you are Pablo Pickasshole.
 

sea

inXile Entertainment
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Elwro said:
Thanks for the post, sea! How would you compare DIII to Torchlight? I almost decided to skip DIII and stick to Torchlight 2 instead because I enjoyed the 1st part, but who knows when any of these games will be released...
Diablo III is a better game. No question, and I really enjoyed Torchlight. However, there's a few things that make me think Torchlight 2 will be more fun than Diablo III:

1) Potentially more players in co-op. Diablo III is limited to four, Torchlight might end up doing eight.

2) Balance. Runic took a lot of feedback from Torchlight's reception and fan community, and from what I know they've basically implemented all of it. Blizzard are nowhere near as responsive and I'm not sure that's a good thing for Diablo III.

3) Torchlight II will have actual skill trees and stats. Diablo III doesn't, instead it's all about selecting gear and using runes to modify your skills. Depending on your perspective, that is a major decline.
 

Shadenuat

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I remember how, when Diablo was a big hit, people cried how dumb it is, what a broken multiplayer it has, and how it murdered RPG genre by spawning dozens if not hundreds cloned games with RPG mechanics about red and blue potions and clicking.. how it dumbed RPGs down, basically. And now people like Sea overanalyze it to the extent that, overall more fun and addictive Diablo 2 is somehow inferior to Diablo 1, because the latter had better "atmosphere", "focus", and.. emm.. you can't run there?
Don't get me wrong, I really like Sea's posts, but they look almost like Diablo 1 was a good game, at least good enough to get so much effort by typing all that stuff.
I voted for Diablo 2. It has the most addictive skill-tree system I ever seen. Diablo 1 was scary, but Diablo 2 was fun. I kinda take both of them as isometric arcade games, not RPGs, however.
 

Xor

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Mrowak said:
DraQ said:
Haba said:
To we even need to ask this question? Diablo was dark gothic roguelike, a simple one, but roguelike none the less. It was a coherent package that used it's simplicity to deliver a truly unique gaming experience.

Diablo II was... not.

I still regret buying my copy. Gave my legit CD key to some random guy on IRC.
:salute: :bro:

A bit of a shame, though, DII is still somewhat salvageable if you play coop ironman using \players 8.

So... when are we playing, guys? :smug:

If we do start another Diablo 2 game I'm not playing on the euro servers again. Shit was ridiculous. 200+ ping bascially makes the game unplayable on hardcore.
 

Grimlorn

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I'd say Diablo 2 is probably better overall, but D1 had a better atmosphere and structure.
However, I don't really see how D2 is so popular especially with multiplayer. I mean all you do is spend the game clicking a button thousands of times. It's the very definition of awesome button. I played through the game with different classes, but I could never understand how someone could sit there and replay the game on harder difficulties or grind repeatedly for loot. The way you have to build your character to have 1 or 2 strong abilities and just spam them for hours on end is just so stupid.

I'll probably try D3 but unless the Prime Evils are involved or something I don't want to play it. I guess I'm invested in the setting, but looking at the way you build characters and only have 6 abilities to hotkey at max, I doubt it will hold my interest for more than a playthrough like the others.

Since D2 was so popular with 1 or 2 abilities I'm assuming people will love D3 and be able to grind the hell out of that game.
 

shihonage

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sea said:
However, there's a few things that make me think Torchlight 2 will be more fun than Diablo III:

1) Potentially more players in co-op. Diablo III is limited to four, Torchlight might end up doing eight.

2) Balance. Runic took a lot of feedback from Torchlight's reception and fan community, and from what I know they've basically implemented all of it. Blizzard are nowhere near as responsive and I'm not sure that's a good thing for Diablo III.

3) Torchlight II will have actual skill trees and stats. Diablo III doesn't, instead it's all about selecting gear and using runes to modify your skills. Depending on your perspective, that is a major decline.

That, and Torchlight 2 has town portals. Removing them from a Diablo game is like removing imps from Doom.

If they caused "quick bail" problem, they could've just simply made them take some time to cast. And remain largely awesome. But noooo, they had to go and Warcraftify shit.
 
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shihonage said:
That, and Torchlight 2 has town portals. Removing them from a Diablo game is like removing imps from Doom.

If they caused "quick bail" problem, they could've just simply made them take some time to cast. And remain largely awesome. But noooo, they had to go and Warcraftify shit.

Wait, Diablo 3 doesn't have town portals? WTF?

Warcraft 3 had town portals btw.
 

shihonage

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Warcraft 3 is so old, it practically slid off from the other end of existence :smug:

I meant WoW-ing. They replaced portals in D3 with a system that appears to mirror WoW's hearthstone.
 

Pika-Cthulhu

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shihonage said:
Warcraft 3 is so old, it practically slid off from the other end of existence :smug:

I meant WoW-ing. They replaced portals in D3 with a system that appears to mirror WoW's hearthstone.

No TP = SUCKS. One slight glimmer of hope is that there wont be any cheesy encounters like Duriel OHAIIMACHARGEYOUWHILELOADINGLOLOLOLOLOL motherfucker. Too many deeds on him, too many hardcorde toons levelling in the False Tombs and Arcane Sanc. Motherfucker.
 

sea

inXile Entertainment
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There's the Stone of Recall. It's a town portal, but with a long cast time (about 7-8 seconds) and infinite uses. Scrolls were always kind of a chore to use once Diablo II increased loot drop rates so much, so the only time you need identify scrolls in Diablo III is when you find rare and unique items (have yet to find any uniques, only found a couple rares and they were all drops from the beta's final boss). You find more Scrolls of Companion (summon a helper snake/centipede/etc. to pick up gold for you) than you do any other types.
 

Haba

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Shadenuat said:
I remember how, when Diablo was a big hit, people cried how dumb it is, what a broken multiplayer it has, and how it murdered RPG genre by spawning dozens if not hundreds cloned games with RPG mechanics about red and blue potions and clicking.. how it dumbed RPGs down, basically.

It is all true. Diablo finished off the (already dying) genre.

That is just the way the gaming industry is, it can only handle one truth at a time.

But yea, irrelevant for the topic of discussion. Even decline can decline, and the decline of declined decline can be measured.
 

shihonage

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sea said:
There's the Stone of Recall. It's a town portal, but with a long cast time (about 7-8 seconds) and infinite uses.

Does it create a shimmering blue town portal through which you and your party members can transport to safety?

Or does it disappear you, and only you, into thin air, like WoW's hearthstone?
 

sea

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shihonage said:
Does it create a shimmering blue town portal through which you and your party members can transport to safety?

Or does it disappear you, and only you, into thin air, like WoW's hearthstone?
It poofs you, but at least there's a portal left behind in town that you go through on your return trip. So I guess it's a town portal, but it forms around you rather than near you? I'm not sure if other players can use it though, haven't played enough co-op. My guess is not, but I don't really have a problem with that. The point is that you can't use portals to run from danger so easily unless you've already eliminated a threat in the area, so in that respect it works fine.
 

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