Diablo with Hellfire vs Diablo 2 with LOD

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Am I crazy, or does your character in Diablo 1 moves faster if you walk diagonally instead of in a straight line?

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

Am I crazy, or does your character in Diablo 1 moves faster if you walk diagonally instead of in a straight line?

i've noticed this in other games as well, i think it was Doom or Turok 1, anyway:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DiagonalSpeedBoost

 

[agris]

Is Hellfire bad?

No. I honestly don't understand the hate for Hellfire, all they did was add additional classes and content, and they didn't dumb the game down in any way. The gog version of Diablo 1 allows you to play Hellfire or the original, you be the judge.

This. I don't see much reason to play D1 without Hellfire, even if it's just for some of the QoL stuff. The faster run speed in Tristram, bigger gold stacks (with the Auric Amulet) and the spell that highlights items on the ground in dungeons are all great changes/additions Don't like the new dungeons? It's optional. There will be new Oil items that you can use to improve your weapons in various ways and Runes which are basically traps. Fairly easy to ignore, but I think Oils help the Warrior and Rogue be just a little bit more competitive with the Sorcerer, though ultimately the Warrior suffers the most due to mobility issues that are difficult to overcome through sheer statistical supremacy. The biggest change in Hellfire that you could contest if it's for better or for worse is the Sorcerer starting with a really good Staff now that lets him rip through enemies with spells right from the get go, which shifts the balance from him being a late game bloomer to being more potent right away. Personally I'm also a fan of the dungeons. The Hive especially has a pretty cool soundtrack.

I agree the QoL of faster town walking and larger gold piles are quite nice, but all the actual content of the expansion is a discordant note to the OG Diablo 1 in my experience.

Btw, using DevilutionX, you can enable faster town walk, larger told piles (without the amulet, even), and the Hellfire classes without the hellfire dungeons/quests and reworked spell costs / new spells / manashield changes.

 

[Aemar]

The first. Its just better and harder. Diablo II has too much trash-mob action, while the first one requires more finesse and strategy. Plus the first one has a better atmosphere.

I also like learning magic from books more than a skill tree.

The definitive answer.

 

[Lafrontier]

Diablo 2 is not that bad, with all the different classes and builds and whatnot, but the one thing where they really messed up is the ever respawning enemies whenever you reload your game. Really, what were they thinking?? And, maybe even more baffling, nearly noone (neither here nor anywhere else on the net) seems to be bothered about this "feature". Then again, it has been really long since i last played D2 so not sure if i mix up something
Basically, just because of this, D1 is better

I have in fact complained about this on this site, citing it as one of the reasons D1 is underrated.
The change makes complete sense when you consider that D1 is supposed to be an RPG/Roguelike hybrid, while D2 is just an ARPG.

I don't know where this weird distinction of genres between D1 and D2 originated from, but it should be crystal clear that both games are of exactly the very same genre.

Both of you are right in a sense.

A lot of Diablo 1 was inspired by roguelikes, rogue and nethack iirc. Diablo 1 was also intended to be turn based and have permadeath. Technically Diablo can retroactively be called a rogue-lite, roguelike-like or whatever not rogue term you come up with. A lot of people have called Diablo a roguelike over the years and more than a bit of that stems to the lack of another term for highlighting how it had "roguelike inspired" mechanics.

From the perspective of when Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 were released - ARPG/Roguelike hybrid sounds about right, (RPG/Roguelike hybrid is technically redundant since Roguelike is literally a subgenre of RPG.) Meanwhile Diablo 2 just straight up inherited ARPG classification.

It might seem unimportant but it really is important from a development standpoint.

From a consumer perspective though? All that matters is: No roguelikes? Well no huge list of games. Said list includes games like Diablo, Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld, Minecraft and Terraria.

Another way to look at it is if we had opted to call traditional roguelikes first gen roguelikes and then drew a family tree, Diablo 1 would be a second gen and Diablo 2 would be third gen.

They where both called Hack & Slash games when they were new. Diablo 1 also got called a dungeon crawler when it was new, but by the time of Diablo 2 it seemed most people had just settled on Hack & Slash. Rogue would get mentioned with both of them too because of the randomization, but it was never seen as Roguelike like those Mystery Dungeon games coming out of Japan every year around the same time. It was more like: This is a Hack & Slash with randomly generated levels.

I don’t really get the first persons thing about Diablo 1 being a roguelike, but not bringing that up with regard to Diablo 2 given randomized level layouts is part of both games. Hell, Blizzard made more of the randomly generated maps during the run up to Diablo 2 coming out than they did with Diablo; and because it was part of Diablo it was something people were expecting in 2 anyways.

Yep, you're right about it being called Hack & Slash and dungeon crawler. Personally I used dungeon crawler myself. I'm still talking in a retrospective sense with terminology that requires current knowledge so I didn't mention hack & slash more to make the conversation easier to comprehend. The discussion of a shift to classification of ARPG involves it's own headaches and even as a roguelike dev it's already an incredibly difficult topic to discuss the aspects relating to roguelikes. Considering Hack&Slash and dungeon crawler are used interchangeably with Action RPG - it doesn't help clarify anything to focus on that.

Anyway Diablo is definitely not a roguelike at all by todays standards and by todays definition it shouldn't be called a roguelike hybrid either. It wasn't back then either, if anything it was considered a roguelike even less than it is now. For a game to be called a roguelike hybrid nowadays it would have to first remain a roguelike then implement features from another genre. So that isn't my intended context.

Whenever roguelikes are mentioned nowadays people associate it with procedural generation and permadeath. Procedural generation is a trait of roguelikes but it isn't an exclusive feature. This is a very common feature of things like arcade games. Permadeath isn't even always included either. Particularly in Japanese console roguelikes. The complexity of Diablo 2 (further into Action RPG/Hack & Slash specifically) and the move away from isometric grid based movement is a lot of what separates Diablo 2 further from it's roguelike roots.

Diablo 1 was directly inspired by roguelikes and because of that contains everything needed to be a traditional roguelike until they changed the game from a few crucial features such as from turn based to real time. Diablo 2 strays further from this no matter how you look at it.

So from a consumer classification perspective, neither should be called a roguelike in any form except "maybe" roguelite. From a design/educational perspective however, Diablo is a historic "branch off" from the roguelike genre. It did branch to the point where it is no longer a roguelike but both how the roguelike genre can influence the evolution in other genre's and retroactive historical tracking of this are both important.

If it helps understand the perspective - roguelikes have often been called a developer genre, from my perspective - the biggest success of the genre for a long time has been when developers take and move to another genre with heavy inspiration from the roguelike genre.

Also genre classification often involves tagging a game with several genre classifications to increase visibility. This is actually a huge part of why roguelites often tag roguelike as well. Often you can clearly see that the dev either doesn't consider the game a roguelike or doesn't even care if their game is tagged wrong. It's not malicious or anything and both has it's pro's and cons. One of the cons is you have players who see it written online and take it as gospel without the context of why that game was tagged like this. So since genre doubles as marketing, we could go into evolution of genre and alternate tags all day and get literally nowhere.

It's still a good observation mind you, personally my love of dungeon crawlers is what got me into Diablo as well as roguelikes. I also played Wizardry before I played Rogue. The fact that all three of you make sense just goes to show how convoluted a genre term roguelike is.

 

[Dramart]

Am I crazy, or does your character in Diablo 1 moves faster if you walk diagonally instead of in a straight line?

What character? I noticed the same with the rogue recently, but I don't remember that happeningplaying as a warrior.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Am I crazy, or does your character in Diablo 1 moves faster if you walk diagonally instead of in a straight line?

What character? I noticed the same with the rogue recently, but I don't remember that happeningplaying as a warrior.

I am using a warrior actually. And not in Hellfire.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Yeah, we all knew diagonal was the way to go.

 

[Glop_dweller]

1 is an RPG
2 is an action RPG with heavier emphasis on grinding, less story and more roguelike shit.

Of course we'll prefer 1. The cattle likes D2 more.

What are your distinctions between RPG and Action RPG?
(Aside from, 'heavier emphasis on grinding, less story and more roguelike shit'.)

 

[Namutree]

In Diablo 2, being good at the 'action' aspect of the game is more important than in Diablo 1.

Your movement in D1 is more limited, so tactics, strategy, and your statistics primarily determine if you win or lose.

In D2, your character can be total shit, and you can still do well against everything but Durial because you're good at using the run skill to dodge attacks. You could have great stat set ups and good tactics, but still get bodied because you're not good at the twitch gameplay of dealing with enemy attack patterns.

 

[Namutree]

Is Hellfire bad?

No. I honestly don't understand the hate for Hellfire, all they did was add additional classes and content, and they didn't dumb the game down in any way. The gog version of Diablo 1 allows you to play Hellfire or the original, you be the judge.

How can you not understand it, when it's been explained in this thread? You may or may not agree, but I find it bizarre that you don't understand.

It fugged up game balance and undermined the atmosphere (one of D1's greatest strengths) with low quality content. More is not always better.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

As far as I remember Duriel can be beaten easily provided you have the gold to keep hiring the Act II Spear Mercs. Just keep buying 'em, go down, let the Merc get a couple hits, when it dies TP out and buy another. Tedious, but gets the job done. Bosses don't regenerate health in D2, so it's only a matter of time before he goes down.

 

[somerandomdude]

How can you not understand it, when it's been explained in this thread? You may or may not agree, but I find it bizarre that you don't understand.

It fugged up game balance and undermined the atmosphere (one of D1's greatest strengths) with low quality content. More is not always better.

Case and point, you say the balanced was fugged, but D1's balance was shit, because Sorcerer is objectively the best class by huge leaps and bounds, and some of the classes added in Hellfire narrowed the gap a little bit. Therefore, I'd argue that Hellfire is better balanced than vanilla. Come at me.

Some people prefer to mod the original D1 to get the best stuff from Hellfire without the stuff they don't like like, and that's the fairest point I've heard.

Undermined the atmosphere? Retarded opinion. The added areas are optional, some have stated they like them, some people like me don't have a strong opinion one way or another about the added areas. But nobody can argue that it takes away from the original content in any way.

 

[somerandomdude]

Hellfire spells:

https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Hellfire_Spells

Most of them are meh, at best. Reflect and search are good, and so is the mana spell on staves, early on. I dropped using a mana staff pretty quick on sorcerer, because I found that I had plenty of mana pool, and 8 belt slots for full mana potions was good enough. You're better off using a bountiful chain lightning, fireball or apocalypse staff, IMO. Apocalypse was also added as a spell that can be learned, but it's mana cost is not very efficient, better off using fire or lightning depending on resists. Nothing here that really breaks game balance.

 

[e-mailio estevez]

Am I crazy, or does your character in Diablo 1 moves faster if you walk diagonally instead of in a straight line?

i've noticed this in other games as well, i think it was Doom or Turok 1, anyway:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DiagonalSpeedBoost

Wow, I'm amazed to see mention of Trichording from Descent 1 and 2 in that article. In the Khan / Kali deathmatching days this was arcane knowledge.

 

[cretin]

I'm surprised at how hard I'm finding it to pirate the og D2/LOD. Everywhere seems to have dumped it in favor of the remake.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I don't recall having persistsnt issues with duriel. First few times yeah. Later he seemed meh. Maybe LOD ruins him.

 

[octavius]

In Diablo 2, being good at the 'action' aspect of the game is more important than in Diablo 1.

Your movement in D1 is more limited, so tactics, strategy, and your statistics primarily determine if you win or lose.

In D2, your character can be total shit, and you can still do well against everything but Durial because you're good at using the run skill to dodge attacks. You could have great stat set ups and good tactics, but still get bodied because you're not good at the twitch gameplay of dealing with enemy attack patterns.

I never found D2 especially twitchy, and I'm old enough to notice decreasing skill/reaction when playing FPS games. I can't play them on Hard anymore (Serious Sam I even had to play on Easy), but D2 I completed with all classes on Hell difficulty.

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

I'm old enough to notice decreasing skill/reaction when playing FPS games. I can't play them on Hard anymore (Serious Sam I even had to play on Easy)

Serious Sam is hard as shit, i can get through most FPS games on hard difficulty without much problem(except for Doom Nightmare) but in Serious Sam even on normal is a struggle, unlike other FPS the skill you need in SS is less about level and enemy placement memorization, and more about dodging, maneuvering and memorizing the enemy waves.

 

[Snufkin]

Play Far Cry1 on realistic difficulty for maximum ragequit.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

You don't like act 3 gateway to hell?

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Diablo 2 is like an autists wet dream. Completely mind numbing game that doubles as a garbage collecting simulator. Kill million enemies, pick up and sell garbage, gamble.

This seems to be a vogue opinion here. I don't get it. This isn't fundamentally different from D1. In D1 you kill untold legions, collect their drops, and sell it. I think the biggest difference in this loop is that D1 didn't have gambling nor Magic Find properties. D2 had far more unique items to find (including sets), and they were hyper-powered by comparison to D1 uniques. Most of the unique items weren't even that great in D1. I remember mostly using magic items with better affixes, like "Archangels ring of the Zodiac".

D2 also had much more interesting hordes to slay. The enemy variety and quality was simply better. I think some elite/unique enemies went a bit overboard, but for the most part enemies were strictly better. This also applies to environments. In D1 the Caverns with their limited walls and lava streams to navigate was the only place different. I'm also surprised by how much flack Act V (LoD) gets. It looked great, and had interesting enemy combinations that worked together. Fighting them while dealing with siege attacks felt more like dealing with a demon army, rather than murder-hoboing a bunch of loitering monsters.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I wish you could have led better barbarian soldiers in that part. It is funny, I tried to make sure none of those clowns died.

 

[agris]

worst diablo clones: harbinger

fight me

but for real, have you tried CYBERMERCS? It's Harbinger turned up to 11, it's great.

 

[Namutree]

In Diablo 2, being good at the 'action' aspect of the game is more important than in Diablo 1.

Your movement in D1 is more limited, so tactics, strategy, and your statistics primarily determine if you win or lose.

In D2, your character can be total shit, and you can still do well against everything but Durial because you're good at using the run skill to dodge attacks. You could have great stat set ups and good tactics, but still get bodied because you're not good at the twitch gameplay of dealing with enemy attack patterns.

I never found D2 especially twitchy, and I'm old enough to notice decreasing skill/reaction when playing FPS games. I can't play them on Hard anymore (Serious Sam I even had to play on Easy), but D2 I completed with all classes on Hell difficulty.

I didn't say it was hard.