Diablo General

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Snekposter said:
Any signs that they've learned from the Reforged debacle though?
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Nope. Not even a little bit. In fact we’re seeing a repeat of W3:R with them silent removing promised features - like LAN play, once again - and subsequently breaking several mods with the switch over to new Battle.net over “security risks”.

news.blizzard.com

Play Diablo® II: Resurrected™ During the Early Access & Open Beta

Learn more about the Diablo II: Resurrected Early Access & Open Beta. Get all the details and answers to your most pressing questions about these upcoming tests!
news.blizzard.com news.blizzard.com
A: TCP/IP support will not be available in the upcoming Beta or the final game. After careful deliberation, we will no longer be supporting this option as we identified potential security risks and are committed to safeguarding the player experience.
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Article where they promised LAN play: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-02-19-the-big-diablo-2-resurrected-interview

That article is full of juicy nuggets of new info about what’s happening with the game, by the way, if any of you are curious.

(On a related note: one of EA’s most recent patches to Command and Conquer: Remastered re-implemented LAN play with mod support simply because they’d already made art assets open-source already and thought it would be unfair if people couldn’t use mods that work completely fine on the old software. So: some food for thought.)

EDIT: Someone on r/Diablo contacted Blizzard due to concerns about seasons and ladder matches and again, just like W3:R, there will be no seasons or ladder matches at launch.
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Agent Abe Caprine said:
There's also mods for Diablo 2. Blizzard's updates for the game seem to focus on killing those.
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Many people recommend Median XL, I personally think that if you jsut want to play Diablo 2, except it's better, playing Path of Diablo, it has its own updater so you never even touch the original game's updating software and I believe it doesn't matter what version of the game you have so long as it's Lord of Destruction and at 1.12 or so since it literally just installs a full core of its own version of the game in a separate folder so you can still play LOD vanilla AND Path of Diablo.
Tanner Glass said:
Why on planet earth would anyone play Diablo 2/3 when Path of Exile exists?

Unless they drastically modify the game (they won't, hence "remaster") every man, woman, and child on earth knows how to beat Diablo 2. It's been completely solved for like 15 years - there's 0 challenge.
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1. no Offline
2. Not moddable.
3. Badly optimized, those cosmetics are not toggleable on my end, I can't choose to hide other players in towns and it runs at 4 fps in most towns.
4. I personally get disconnected form PoE servers every 1-60 minute(s) due to "Unexpected Connection Error" and so I literally have to endure the game's bullshit netcode in order to want to play the game.
Or I can just play Path of Diablo, Torchlight 1 or 2, Diablo 1 from the gog version, or the DevilutionX version, Grim Dawn, Titan Quest, I'd say games like Inquisitor, but my computer is a mid-ranger from 2012 with the CPU being a weak one for the time so my ability to play even Resurrected is beyond both it and my income.

Honestly My opinions on Resurrected are as such:
1. It's going to stutter, Starcraft Remastered stutters pretty bad at times, Reforged also stutters.
2. It's going to run badly, long load times, less ability to display as many things on screen, I expect that when a gigantic ton of items drops on the ground, the game's gonna chug.
3. Any bugs like Minions being despawned when trying to teleport to the player and failing to do so despite there being tons of empty space to fit them, which exist more often in multiplayer but also exist in vanilla singleplayer, will 100% still be in the game.
4. Classes will work differently. Skills will likely be changed or adjusted to decrease server load, expect this to more heavily affect minion builds with lower minion maximums.

I honestly don't think it's possible to justify re-releasing a game as a remaster and not say... it being an optional expansion pack, considering it's just an excuse to sell an ancient game for retail price, however that manifests going company to company.
Ultimately you're buying the same shit you played 5-20 years ago for way more than you'd otherwise be willing to. The people who buy remasters to start with aren't the type who embody the spirit of saving your money for shit that's actually worth it, they're more willing to play Genshin Impact and call it a good game because that's what everyone's doing.

Then again, I'm the type who believes that Diablo 1 is the high point in this genre and has a design that is functionally nearly perfect unlike most other games in it, and that graphics only matter to the point of the game being comprehensible, beyond that, it's just a worthless film I want to scrape off so it'll run better, but can't.

3D graphics are cheaper, but in my opinion they just look worse and any 3D game is always less readable than even games with sprites of the same 3D models. There's a certain aspect between the two examples that 3D almost always lacks, but is inherent to 2D that I can't quite explain properly that makes games more easily recognized or read so as to figure out what is what in the game.

Tl;DR - 3D yucky, Blizzard shitty, Play Path of Diablo if you want Diablo 2 with QoL additions. The Necromancer has a long-cooldown teleport spell in the summoning tab and the Sorceress has a level 1 cold-damage enchant skill, just to name two of many examples. Also huge super levels you do at max level, basically Path of Exile's Maps.

PS - I've also heard that D2:R's Open Beta is actually just "Preorder and get access to the game", told to me by a relative who literally preordered it.
 
OmnipotentStupidity said:
Nope. Not even a little bit. In fact we’re seeing a repeat of W3:R with them silent removing promised features - like LAN play, once again - and subsequently breaking several mods with the switch over to new Battle.net over “security risks”.

news.blizzard.com

Play Diablo® II: Resurrected™ During the Early Access & Open Beta

Learn more about the Diablo II: Resurrected Early Access & Open Beta. Get all the details and answers to your most pressing questions about these upcoming tests!
news.blizzard.com news.blizzard.com

Article where they promised LAN play: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-02-19-the-big-diablo-2-resurrected-interview

That article is full of juicy nuggets of new info about what’s happening with the game, by the way, if any of you are curious.

(On a related note: one of EA’s most recent patches to Command and Conquer: Remastered re-implemented LAN play with mod support simply because they’d already made art assets open-source already and thought it would be unfair if people couldn’t use mods that work completely fine on the old software. So: some food for thought.)

EDIT: Someone on r/Diablo contacted Blizzard due to concerns about seasons and ladder matches and again, just like W3:R, there will be no seasons or ladder matches at launch.
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But why? Any player that would use that feature knows exactly what they're getting in to.
 
There isn't a Diablo IV topic but I will say it here, the lead director Louis Barriga and the level designer Jesse McCree just left blizzard because of the lawsuit, oh booooooi.
 
Dumpster dived waifu said:
Did they work on Diablo 3? If so, nothing was of value was lost.
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From my sources so far:

Barriga worked on Reaper of Souls, but wow players would hate him for the level boost and garrison features he implemented.

And McCree was the level designer for D3 as well, and no one in Overwatch wants to say his name now.
 
Tanner Glass said:
Why on planet earth would anyone play Diablo 2/3 when Path of Exile exists?

Unless they drastically modify the game (they won't, hence "remaster") every man, woman, and child on earth knows how to beat Diablo 2. It's been completely solved for like 15 years - there's 0 challenge.
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Path of Exile is trash. Even Torchlight 2 or Titan Quest are better.
That being said there's about a 0% chance of me playing this re-release despite loving Diablo 2 way back when.

Dumpster dived waifu said:
So, nothing of value was lost. God D3 sucked.
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D3 with Reaper of Souls and all the patches since then is fine. Not great, but its reputation as shit is almost entirely a result of people hyping it up as the next masterpiece after D2 and the abysmal launch.

More importantly though, whichever diverty hires they're replacing these industry veterans with are almost guaranteed to do an even worse job.
 
Anything is moddable. When people say it's not they mean they're not making it easy for you, it's not hard to make any online game play over a "lan".
 
Anonymus Fluhre said:
Anything is moddable. When people say it's not they mean they're not making it easy for you, it's not hard to make any online game play over a "lan".
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Game is advertised as moddable:
Modkits are made available
An active modding scene
Thousands of mods to choose from
Bugfixes, total conversions, quality of life upgrades, anything you could wish for is just one click away

Game is not advertised as moddable:
No modkits
Requires server authentication to play
Well achtually any .exe file stored on your computer is technically moddable *snort*
Dead scene, nothing to download
Only "mod" is some janky 3rd party software that allows you to circumvent the server connection if you play on a specific patch of the game and doesn't add any new features
 
cummytummies said:
Game is advertised as moddable:
Modkits are made available
An active modding scene
Thousands of mods to choose from
Bugfixes, total conversions, quality of life upgrades, anything you could wish for is just one click away

Game is not advertised as moddable:
No modkits
Requires server authentication to play
Well achtually any .exe file stored on your computer is technically moddable *snort*
Dead scene, nothing to download
Only "mod" is some janky 3rd party software that allows you to circumvent the server connection if you play on a specific patch of the game and doesn't add any new features
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You must be new to PC gaming.
WULULULULU said:
Agreed. GGG being owned by Tencent only sealed the deal.
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They don't have 100% ownership, but close.
 
WULULULULU said:
Agreed. GGG being owned by Tencent only sealed the deal.
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Honestly there was a glimmer of a good game in POE. But the freemium model really fucked the game over. Between the ever-present power creep, the need to introduce a new gimmick each season to keep the playerbase, thereby unnecessarily bloating the mechanics and game, and the insane proliferation of uniques and suffix/affixes which really fucked any solo player...

Yeah. Game's trash.
 
Anonymus Fluhre said:
You must be new to PC gaming.
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Diablo 3 has millions more players than Diablo 2. Where are all the mods? Nexusmods seems to have a total of two (2) mods listed for Diablo 3. ModDB has a few more, but nothing like the vast variety of mods available for D2, and they're all for outdated versions of the game.

A game being designed around an always-online connection and the devs actively working to prohibit modding has a huge impact on the scene even if they can't fully prevent any mods from surfacing. Modders will just look elsewhere where they'll be more appreciated and don't have to fight the publisher to even get their shit running. Modern Blizzard treats modders the same way they treat cheats in online multiplayer, actively working to patch them out.
 
cummytummies said:
D3 with Reaper of Souls and all the patches since then is fine. Not great, but its reputation as shit is almost entirely a result of people hyping it up as the next masterpiece after D2 and the abysmal launch.
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I only got into D3 years later after the game was stable and the expansion was now bundled with every copy of the game. The story just felt stupid (oh no, Diablo is back again and this "remembered" character from the first game was secretly evil) and the gameplay for every character wasnt fun (use skill to burn resource, then use skill to refuel resource, repeat). I played through the game once as each character to see if there was one in particular that felt fun, and only the monk kind of fit. Then they nerfed the shit out of monk.
 
Dumpster dived waifu said:
I only got into D3 years later after the game was stable and the expansion was now bundled with every copy of the game. The story just felt stupid (oh no, Diablo is back again and this "remembered" character from the first game was secretly evil) and the gameplay for every character wasnt fun (use skill to burn resource, then use skill to refuel resource, repeat). I played through the game once as each character to see if there was one in particular that felt fun, and only the monk kind of fit. Then they nerfed the shit out of monk.
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Yeah, the story is absolute dogshit. I played through it at launch and ever since then set the speech volume to 0% completely ignoring everything.

But you haven't really been expected or encouraged to play the "through" game for years. The way the game is structured now is through Adventure Mode, Rifts and Greater Rifts. The Campaign mode is mostly there to serve as a reminder of 2012. If you start a new Seasonal character now and just play the game like it defaults to you don't even see the story and you don't play through the acts in order. Admittedly to a new player it's probably pretty confusing, but as an end game it beats the hell out of playing the story over and over again like the game originally was.

There are builds that require more resource management, but the experience you're describing (use M1 to gain resource, M2 to burn resource, repeat) is more of a leveling thing. By the time you make it to max level and get some decent gear you're usually past having to worry about resource and it becomes more about selecting a set of skills and equipment to maximize damage output and mobility, and the gameplay more about controlling herds to clear them as quickly as possible. There are some good things about D3: the way the loot is generated is (after 5+ years of patches including one complete overhaul) is pretty robust and there is an insane variety of possible builds. A single legendary item can completely overhaul your playstyle let alone a planned out combination of them. Any combination of skills, gear, set bonuses, runes, inherent abilities etc. you could imagine or accidentally come across simply works, and everything interacts the way you'd want it to. It's often surprising just how far you can push a the characters from their original "intended playstyle" without the game breaking. And it's not just a curiosity, if you look up the most popular builds (I never copy builds, but they're a thing) of any patch they're always a precise combination of items, skills and runes that all work to take advantage of every available slot to somehow bolster each other in tandem, often making even the experienced player go "well I didn't even know you could do that".

The procedurally generated content functions reliably and at least beats the competition. The skills typically feel good to use, visual feedback is very clear, all unnecessary busywork has been trimmed out (sometimes going a little too far with it), and while the whole game is basically a slot machine with extra steps the end game (again, after years of patches) never really runs out things to do or progression to achieve even if you don't care about leaderboards, something that is pretty hard to achieve in an aRPG.
 
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