Diablo2

[Enforcer Talen]

So, Red and I finally hit infinite city sprawl in SMAC, and decided that was that. So we went to walmart, bought D2, and tried it out. Keep in mind we are heavily into the WoW scene, but never really did diablo.

First impressions; I like the grimdark aspects. I like the brass and steel of the Durance, and the bodies stacked here there everywhere is a nice touch. Im glad they brought back the light radius from D1; its a different thing from wow then just upping your settings and seeing to the horizon. The plot is a *little* bit hard to follow, something, something, worldstone, but the cinematics with Marius are fantastic.

Red is playing a level 59 paly, and Im a 61 necro. We've cleared normal mode, and are about halfway up the mountain to baal in nightmare. Im enjoying it so far, although I havent really liked playing the other characters. I guess Im just a necromancer at heart. I dont like paying a quarter million everytime I die though. It makes me sad.

Anyone else here play D2, or are excited about D3? Red and I have been discussing how D3 will have to try hard not to be just another WoW expansion pack, gear, talent trees, etc. Id almost like to see wow become more diabloesque; Im a fan of the grimdark, although Im told that would change the maturity settings they sell at.

[Stark]

I'm not sure how making WoW more Diablo-style would primarily be the hilarious 'grimdark'. Most people are more concerned with how the game plays than the meaningless furniture they put over their combat mechanics.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Heh, I just reinstalled D2. Then I foolishly thought playing Hardcore would take some of the tedium out of playing yet another paladin (god damn I just can't seem to play anything else)... then promptly got instakilled by a random spawn in Act 2.

I just don't have the time to sink into these things anymore.

[Highlord Laan]

Playing Diablo makes me wish WoW wasn't so cartoony and (in many cases) kid friendly. It'd be hard to get Diablo's atmosphere into an MMO, but I'd like to see Blizzard at least try. I'd love more dark, endless and baroque hellscapes piled with bones and the bodies of fallen heroes and slaughtered innocents like we see when storming hell in D2 in WoW, but Blizzard would never do it.

I'm already wishing D3 was out already. There are few games I really look forward to playing, but thats one of them. It's strange, because I'm so sick of swords and sorcery in the classic high-fantasy sense that I can barely play WoW for even an hour before getting bored, but the dark, grinding horror and despair that is D2's atmosphere can still keep me playing far longer than I should really allow. It's fantasy with all the sparking towers, shining heroes and quirky elf girls stripped away and replaced with mud, blood, and hard fought battles that are often more pyrrhic than glorious.

I think it's just the entire feel of the game that I enjoy more. In WoW, we play the great and stupendous heroes that overcome everything in the name of everything right, good and cute (ha-HA!) *glinting armor.*

In Diablo, we're the battered, tired and scarred veterans that have to take one more hill. Clear one more trench. Fight the demons off one more time. Theres no end in sight, and all thats left is defiance and spite, and it's likely that if you don't die in the attempt, you'll be driven insane after the victory. If you don't get dragged down into hell as the price for driving the three off for a few more decades. Diablo has a definite Warhammer/WH40K feel to it.

Kinda sad, really. Warcraft had that feel once too, but then everything got bright and shiney, and stomping on Dragon Aspects and Archdemons got to be Tuesday.

[Stark]

Even if they took a D2 art style (which would be pretty boring) it'd be bland as hell after a week. Nobody looks at the terrain in an MMO.

The amount of nonsense people read into the 'style' of Diablo is ludicrous. In Diablo you're a typical faceless nobody killing everything; I have no idea where this BATTLE SCARRED NEVER ENDING WAR stuff comes from. Sounds like a personal problem to me.

[Stofsk]

I still play Diablo 2. It's still a fun game, which really hasn't been supplanted since it came out. Games like Titan Quest are prettier and have a similar gameplay, but the atmosphere and setting are hugely different.

I'm still keen to see more of Diablo 3, I just wish Blizzard would give more updates and a date for release.

[Stark]

D3 steals a lot of good ideas from the later q Diabls, but since people don't actually like that game but the 'setting' or whatever, they'll all whinge that Blizzard doesn't care about that shit. I expect it to be a technically proficient and mechanically interesting game.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

For those that like the Diablo 2 gameplay, but are sorta bored with playing it repeatedly, there's something pretty cool I was pointed to by a friend with a similar problem.

Median Diablo is pretty much the most awesome thing I've ever seen done with the game. It pretty much strips a majority of the game down and completely rebuilds is that you have the same characters, somewhat same story, but everything else is different. Every character has completely new skill sets, all the monsters are re-vamped, the weapon system is re-vamped. You can now essentially create and customize your own weapons. There are new 'challenges' which will unlock unique skills for each character.

On top of that the level cap's raised to 125, there about fifty or so new monster graphics, the history/setting of Diablo is actually delved into a LOT more, and there are a couple dozen new quests from 'tough' to 'insanely high end' ranging from rematches with bosses from the original Diablo to taking on robots from the future to an alternate-history fight where you actually take on the role of Ba'al fighting Tal-Rasha.

Currently I've got a necro specializing in totem and minion summoning, the minions are all new, including lich kings which raise the monsters they kill and void archons that have an AE slow, and the totems which spawn on enemy corpses, boost your own parties stats, and cast elemental attacks on the enemy. I've also got an ice/poison sorceress summons ice elementals and can spawn expanding waves of poisonous spiders on the enemy.

[Stofsk]

Back to Hellfire is another mod that uses Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction and changes the gameplay and classes so that it feels more like Diablo 1 and its expansion pack Hellfire (for example, you get skills by reading skill books rather than leveling up as you do in vanilla Diablo 2 LoD, which has its pros and cons). I disliked some of the design choices though, like using Diablo 1 animations when Diablo 2 has perfectly good animations already, but a lot of the gameplay ideas are better.

[Stark]

The use of loot to get skills is a pretty contentious issue; but since the Diablo community is basically 100% hardcore obsessives, it doesn't surprise me that they don't mind.

[Stofsk]

The use of loot to get skills is a pretty contentious issue; but since the Diablo community is basically 100% hardcore obsessives, it doesn't surprise me that they don't mind.

You're right. Book drops are effectively random, which means getting a skill raised is hard to do. Not every skill book that drops is guaranteed to be for your class, and while you can transmute two books for one guaranteed for you, a rate of 2:1 means it can be quite a grind to level up.

The developers of this mod forgot that you could actually buy skill books in Diablo 1, which made things easier. You could have replicated that by having certain areas or levels where book drops are higher-than-usual, or keep the 'you can buy them in shops' but have the costs skyrocket for increasing levels. The mod actually seems to be the personal project of one dude, so I think a lot of the problems in it can be attributed to the fact it was a solo effort. Decisions-by-committee aren't always the best, but collaborative projects can refine ideas especially when you're talking about gameplay and design mechanics (as opposed to say, creative discussions or writing a story, where sometimes the collaborative process isn't that great).

[wautd]

I didn't feel like starting all over with D2 untill 3 comes out, but I'm going to give those mods a try if I can find those damn CD's again

[Crossroads Inc.]

As an avid "Collector" I enjoyed Diablo-2 right from the get go in terms of harvesting "gold items"

For me, the story itself was rather flat, the game play obviously repetitive, and for those long time Diablo gamers, several monsters HOPELESSLY Bugged.
I mean, really, how many lvl 80+ heros wound up being Insta killed by either Multi-shot, lightning enhanced Mob or an exploding stygian doll (Act3 durance of hate)

For me the game is just mindless fun, You can wade through countless monsters and slaughter them in vast numbers. Harvesting "+to finding magical items" charms and other things was also a great way to get kick ass drops later on. Between sharing and giving something one guy finds to another, I have a lvl80+ Paldin decked out totally in Gold items with a min lvl requirement of 60.
One of the best things I ever found was a three socketed Superior "Sacred Plate" armor that I put the "Shael + Um + Thul" into.. Quite nice.

Really I look forward to Diablo II if and when it ever comes out, But I don't pretend the previous games were any great testament to deep stories or thoughtful play. The visuals were stunning, the play was fun (if repetitive) and team play always made things interesting.

By the by, One of the funniest times I ever had was when both my brothers, and my elder brothers wife had a LAN party and brought each of our best, highest characters for a team game.
One Paladin 82
One Sorceress 78
One Druid 77
One Necromancer 83
One 'Javason' 78

Those five together make for a LOT of fun.

[DudeGuyMan]

I mean, really, how many lvl 80+ heros wound up being Insta killed by either Multi-shot, lightning enhanced Mob or an exploding stygian doll (Act3 durance of hate)

That's not a bug, that's a feature. You gotta be careful, because Godzilla is out there and he could be around the next corner.

[Korvan]

I played the hell out of Diablo II. What kept me going for a long time were some of the insane (and in some cases broken) skill combos you could come up with. My favourite was my poison dagger Necro, which until the poison nerf could stab any monster in the game once and simply wait around for it to die, end bosses included. It's not as slow as it sounds as you run through the entire level stabbing everything, then double back and follow the loot trail till the end. The end bosses did take a while to die tho.

My 2nd favorite was my defensive built Paladin. He had all immunities stacked to 95% and was able to solo down UberDiablo after a couple hours. I also tried out many sub-optimal builds just for fun and built a few characters around the low-level Green item sets to see how far you could get with them.

[Stofsk]

I mean, really, how many lvl 80+ heros wound up being Insta killed by either Multi-shot, lightning enhanced Mob or an exploding stygian doll (Act3 durance of hate)

That's not a bug, that's a feature. You gotta be careful, because Godzilla is out there and he could be around the next corner.

This is actually a pretty stupid feature. Diablo is supposed to be the toughest bastard in the game, the first game ends when you slay him, and he's the toughest in Diablo 1 by far.

In Diablo 2, especially in Hell, you can come across boss packs that are more dangerous than Diablo could ever be. Hell when I was taking my level 86 sorceress through the Chaos Sanctuary recently, it took me well over half an hour to clear it, but killing Diablo took less than a minute. Even my mercenary survived, which really says something.

This is such a problem that they 're-released' Diablo by having uberDiablo and uberTristram.

[Vympel]

I hear they're planning to patch D2 to play in superior, 320x480 resolution. Wow.

[Vendetta]

I mean, really, how many lvl 80+ heros wound up being Insta killed by either Multi-shot, lightning enhanced Mob or an exploding stygian doll (Act3 durance of hate)

That's not a bug, that's a feature. You gotta be careful, because Godzilla is out there and he could be around the next corner.

This is actually a pretty stupid feature. Diablo is supposed to be the toughest bastard in the game, the first game ends when you slay him, and he's the toughest in Diablo 1 by far.

It's a "feature". Multi-shot lightning enchant killed many a hardy warrior because it would spawn so many lightning bolts that the game engine couldn't render them all, so there was no sure way to avoid them.

[wautd]

It may look like crap but it was still fun to play last night. I was suprised such an old game still had plenty of players and there are even still patches coming out. Appearantly I wasn't the only one who started playing again and I found a nice party to click & bash evil pixels for a while.

Spambots are a pest though. Don't remember it being so bad in the past.

[Stark]

Dude, most of those people didn't 'start playing again'; they never STOPPED. There are obsessives playing all kinds of games and Diablo was huge.

Shame it sucks so bad, really. Most of them won't stop when D3 comes out either.

[Stofsk]

It's a "feature". Multi-shot lightning enchant killed many a hardy warrior because it would spawn so many lightning bolts that the game engine couldn't render them all, so there was no sure way to avoid them.

Actually I'm pretty sure that in particular is a bug. I know that the fire enchanted causing insta-death is fixed in the latest patch. As for lightning enchanted monsters, you can avoid the bolts. Don't know about multi-shot LE though, I haven't noticed any lately. Although my sorc has lightning resistance maxed.

I noticed that gloam's bugged lightning attack causing stupid damage has been fixed too. Then again, that might also be due to the lightning resist being maxed too.

[Aratech]

Does playing the Requiem of Sorrow mod count?

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Actually I'm pretty sure that in particular is a bug. I know that the fire enchanted causing insta-death is fixed in the latest patch. As for lightning enchanted monsters, you can avoid the bolts. Don't know about multi-shot LE though, I haven't noticed any lately. Although my sorc has lightning resistance maxed.

I noticed that gloam's bugged lightning attack causing stupid damage has been fixed too. Then again, that might also be due to the lightning resist being maxed too.

The problem with lightning-enchanted multi-shot wasn't invisible charges. Sometimes those happened in other occasions too, you could tell because they produced a light source, but there was nothing visible there. The problem with multi-shot is that you'd get four to seven charges sitting right on top of each other. You get hit by one, you get hit by all of them, and for a melee in Hell difficulty where resistances are already handicapped, it could often spell unavoidable instant death. Even more so if the unique also had the extra-strong and/or extra-fast properties.

But from what I've heard, one of the latest patches removes the possibility of lightning-enchanted and multi-shot spawning on the same unique, as well as the random chance of "Immune to everything but x" popping up.

I'm not certain, though, I've been rather hooked on the Median XL mod, which did away with that problem, and the problem of randomly-placed uniques at its conception.

[The_Saint]

Like SMAC I was a D and D2 player "in the day" and occasionally since...

Was curious about D3 until I saw lots of shinyness and started to worry about WoW slipping in... since then haven't heard a thing and to tell the truth had practically forgotten there was a third instalment in the works...

[Stark]

Since D3 (I expect) will be a fundamentally modern game, I doubt the people who still play Diablo will like it. The normal population might, depending on the decisions made.

At least the UI won't be crippled and the builds might be more interesting; about the only thing worth keeping from Diablo is the very synergy-heavy skill trees. Everything else is done better in other q Diabls.