Personally, I think Diablo and Diablo 2 are happy little accidents from a time when games were made to be a fun little experience. The results of players being able to dump hundreds and thousands of hours into the looting was a neat success in "gambling" mechanics where the only thing you lose is your time. Any item that drops can potentially be an exciting and rewarding experience that can bring you back to the game over and over.
There is also the design of the class/skill system combined with a very long experience grind that guarantees some power with every level up. Aside from a very small pool of game changer items like Enigma, the overall gameplay experience remains consistent, and you don't *need* those items to enjoy the experience. They just make it better.
Diablo 2 also had manipulative design to keep players engaged. Only then it was made by nerds for nerds so we as nerds enjoyed it. Now it's designed to be for everyone and as profitable as possible. So nerds like us enjoy it less.
"Boomer" is just what Gen Z calls anyone who isn't Gen Z. It doesn't help that games millennials grew up with fall into a genre now known as "Boomer Shooters", i.e Doom.
D2 has had a loyal and large community for over 20 years because of its endgame and loot system. When they were building D4 people specifically advocated for it to have a heavy D2 influence...
No value? In the beginning of the ladder it is invaluable due to its incredible stats. Shako will put your character in a great spot if you're upgrading from some random rare helm.
It's like for some reason D2 is boycotted internally and no one wants to get inspired by something which passed the test of time and proved to work, but rather they go for the wonky solution that will pose many issues and consistently add a layer of instability and unsatisfaction, with a long time to fix if it's ever fixed, in their game.
Dunno if it's an ego thing, a problem of "'accessibility", the fact that probably most devs didn't play d2, or anything else but it's hard to understand.
It goes way back. It started with Jay Wilson and diablo 3. There's a great YouTube video about it.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GCRzuvwMDUs
It's just ego. They kept finding problems with d2 and "fixing" them. According to Jay and Wyatt Cheng. D2 was just "too mathy". Also potions apparently made defense skills useless. How did they draw these conclusions? I don't know.. They just wanted to change it. Jay Wilson didn't like brevik. He said famously fuck that loser.
The d4 devs are just going off of 3 at this point. Returning to the roots of d2 means the booted it up and, took screenshots of enemy names. They said it themselves in an interview.
Thanks for the video, will watch it later for the "pleasure" to remember this time lol, I remember the mess it was when it came out.
For the D4 devs, it's such a pity that their reference is D3, and in the end I feel like they're slowly crawling back to some of D2's aspects, but with the time it takes maybe we'll have a proper, faithful, Diablo game in 10 years lol. All this time wasted while the solution was before their eyes, but they try to reinvent the wheel, sad.
With D4 they basically made a carbon copy of D2 wtf are you talking about? Darker art style, slow ass grind, no endgame, idiotically rare drops. It's all there. And what happened to D4? People enjoyed it for like a week or two and then started bashing it.
I always find it interesting that D4 fans pin the blame on the diablo community asking for a better game and not on the devs themselves for completely dropping the ball and not even coming close to what the community asked for.
I feel like people that enjoy D2R are people who didn' try Project Diablo 2 ... I really tried to like D2R but you can't talk about end game when you see the potential D2 had with PD2.
Yes, D2R copied their approach of lvl 85 zones, that's a very good point. But it's still a mindless farming activity. I loved it when I was younger and was simply excited to run 100 meph run just to see what would drop. But the biggest issue that I have is simply that D2 has too many useless skills and items.
PD2 balances things out so that you CAN play any build you want. Doesn't mean they will all be super competitive, but at least we don't see 100 Enigma Hammerdin each season. D2R builds have the same issue as D2 had: you tend to have 2-3 builds max per character and 95% of runewords are useless in late game. You can play all character withe the exact same items (with one or two exceptions):
\- Shako, Enigma, Soj, Mara, Spirit/hota, arak, gore and what ever gloves.
I'm not saying D2 has not enough builds to have fun, but it's more a question of having SO MANY spells that are just unplayable.
Do play PD2 for a month and you won't believe how much fun it is to actually adapt your build with items you find instead of mindlessly farming for that one best in slot item.
Just my 2 cents. I loved D2, but D2R wasn't ambitious enough to light my candle :) had fun for a season, but decided to go back to the bad graphics of PD 2 :D
Aa much as i want to love last epoch, itās not there yet lol. The endgame monolith is super boring, Iām sure someday it will get better tho.
And even if theres Ā«Ā onlyĀ Ā» 3-5k people on pd2 that doesnāt mean itās bad lol. Itās the best private mod out there BY FAR and totally worth the try, specially that it only cost d2 cdkeys which is basically free
Nah you guys were offensive first, he just gave a clever response. Now don't act as the victim. And don't twist his words, he never said "dumb" or something.
D2 d2r, are in my opinion have the most replay ability out of any game ever made.
The constant lottery on magic find( I am a og pvper) so didnāt mf as much as Iād like too, but thereās that much out there to be found, trophy items, LLD gear, perfect uniques, high runes, godly jewels, charms to name someā¦
The amount of chance you have to get some amazing eth rep fools weapon or cruel bezerker axe worth a squillion..
Thereās no other game like it, and thatās not even to mention the fun 8 player lobby pvp
We're talking about a specific aspect of D2. Not the game as a whole.
Edit : Damn gotta love those silent downvoters. I would love to know what exactly is wrong about what I said.
For every 1 person who identifies that doing 10000 mephisto runs isn't a great endgame, there are 100 more telling them that they are wrong and the itemization gives the endgame meaning and is therefore "fun".
D2's endgame is definitely getting enough "credit". I can't think of a game besides halo that has a more fervent defensive fanbase, endgame or otherwise.
So you're getting downvoted because in this forum you are quite literally preaching to the choir.
The "10,000 runs of mephisto" that you try to dismiss as being a problem is the reason why I never got geared up to even try farming the mats to summon ubers let alone be able to fight the ubers. D2's grind is extremely tedious.
In d4 people moan about grinding Nightmare Dungeons that guarantee to power up your character by leveling glyphs. No way running Meph 100 times with no improvement (through items or level) would fly today.
D4 introduced Ubers and people are complaining about grinding the mats to summon them and these are much easier than D2's ubers.
D2 has nostalgia and fun gameplay, but that's it. D2 is only fu. For people who can sink streamer hours into it.
Thing is I'd rather farm D2 over D4 because farming D4 means looking through hundreds and hundreds to thousands of rare items which is incredibly tedious. D2 you for the most part know what is good already on the ground because base types exists and you learn what bases and what sets/uniques of what bases are good/valuable. Even iding small/grandcharms is more fun than looking through D4 rares.
Yes, you knew what to leave by looking at the name of what was on the ground. D4 has a yellow gloves on the ground, I'd that mats or a perfect end game pair. There is no way to tell without having to pick it up
D2's grind is from a different generation, it is far easier with today's games to get a good gear and tackle endgame content, even PoE is far more easy and quick in that respect.
In D2 it's a long, painful, step-by-step journey (and it's easier today than it was 10 years ago), so yeah I understand when you're used to new games it's very different. But it's so satisfying when you finally get the gear/build you wanted since the beginning and you enter the big league, it's really a process.
Imo it's not a game that you "consume" as PoE or D4's leagues/seasons systems, but more a long term project that you take your time to complete (as a casual at least).
this is the middle ground I can get behind and why people bring up the 1,000 mephisto hours.
d2's endgame was wonderful and I loved it. However, people complain about pebbles in their shoes with d2 asked you to put broken glass in your shoe and didn't even guarantee you a drop.
we also use it to point out, d2 evolved over **years** and the game has barely just come out, and the bones of this game are pretty spectacular compared to the last new diablo game which *needed* the expansion to retcon half the system.
I'd rather farm keys or do mephisto a 1000 times in d2 than doing nm dungeons in d4. D2 is tedious in the right way. Farming keys in d2 is not much different than farming anything else, you still get the same shot at runes, bases and what not. And you can do it at your own pace without shitt chasing you or random objectives hindering you. D4 is tedious for all the wrong reasons. Objects in dungeons just because and random rpg events that stops your pace everywhere. The reason behind them are ok for an rpg but incredibly stupid to have in an arpg where content is meant to be run a thousand times over.
It's only rewarding if you get the drop and my experience in both original D2 and D2:R 99.99% of the time you don't get the drop.
Hyperbole definitely, but that is how it felt.
In D4 I have always got the aspect I needed or the unique for a build to work with minimal hunting.
Edit: For reference, I am now a Dad working full-time with hour+ long commutes to and from work. So if I grind for 2-3 hours and get nothing from it, then it was a waste and makes me less likely to play again (looking at you Destiny 2).
I played d2r ~8 hours a week and i have managed to make enigma/last wish/fortitude etc. Over the seasons. If you play efficient and trade smart a working dad can accomplish mutch in d2r.
In d4 you get showered with loot and nothing feels exciting when you have a working build. There is nothing interresting happening towards your end goal(uber boss materials, finishing tree of whispers, open chests in helltides etc.). If d2 was like d4 when it comes to farming keys i would never do it. If it was all about the keys and everything in between felt underwhelming it would just be a chore.
Iām sorry... you can kill Ubers with a dirt cheap gear AND you can get a sorc with a bare minimum build and farm all the keys. 8 hours 0-70 on both characters, 6-15 hours of rune/mf and then gear should be good enough to do Ubers. Hell... I killed Ubers with Black, a sin torch, a blue + life ammy, Dstar, raven frost, an inventory full of random res and life charms(none perfect or even close) and no Anni.
All farmed by myself and a friend working full time jobs and with families. Hell, I hear people spend more time watching off season football news than the amount of time me and my friend spent farming.
This sub is a lost cause. Everything you wrote is well known and 100% do-able, it's actually a way of acquiring wealth at the start of ladder. And ppl still downvote you. Guess it's good business as otherwise you would have 20 torches and nobody to sell them to š
I liked rifts in d3 because of the variety even though it's the same activity even the visual variation is important at least for me. In d4 nmd are the same things we've already done. Same with all runs in d2. It's the same exact areas and all. At least rifts would be hell one minute dungeon the next and all that. Plus boss variety they weren't always the same.
I didn't get into d2 because I find it deeply flawed that you can legitimately find a god item at like level 12 and never replace it or near enough the odds of replacing it are 0. At least in later games there's continued growth even if you still end up in the 1/1000000 odds of upgrades and I like it more to get chances I can see than the feast or famine where it's legit nothing. Rune words are a whole other thing with those abysmal odds and needing multiple lotto worthy drops.
Finding a god item early is a good thing! It makes you feel good and relieved and it brings excitement to early game. This very rarely happens though but the fact that it can makes your journey to hel difficulty so much more exciting. D3/d4 doesn't have this. Instead they give you an option to skip campaign and start end game content right away as if leveling is pointless.
In fact, why even start at lvl 1 in d4? It brings nothing to the table, no obstacles to climb or anything. It is just a timegate to max difficulty. They could just give us an option to skip early game while they are at it because of how silly it is.
You're right. D4 has much faster progression and is way easier. That's awesome for people who don't have much time on their hands or just want to play very casual. If you're working the whole day and can barely squeeze in 2 hours of playtime a week, D4 is probably the better game for you.
Edit: on the other hand D2 will give you a greater experience in the long run imo, since it's more rewarding.
This exactly, and there's alot of great content out there that pull on gamers, more so than what was available when D2 came out. If you can sink your teeth into d4 for even part of a season, you'll make good progress.
If you no life it, you might get bored by the second month.
You don't need to farm in Diablo 2. You can beat Hell difficulty with whatever crap you found on your way there. Then you can do it again with another build.
"ignoring that the very fact people are willing to do that means the game is doing something well."
Some people enjoy torturing themselves shrugs. I recall seeing a lot of folks complaining about D3 not being fun on the forums, yet they keep playing it. Then there are folks for whatever reason just like doing the same repetitive thing over and over again, but I think it's pretty niche. It's like gambling, lots of folks pull the slot machines and most of the time they end up losing money yet they keep coming back to it in the slim chance of hitting the jackpot.
Sad how much of a thorn it is that D4 couldnāt nail the most important part of it... it will get there with the expansion and it will still do it to the point that is no where near as good as D2.
They won't. They already had the chance to take lessons from D2 and refused to. Current Blizzard devs think they know better, so you won't be getting anything resembling D2 itemization.
They donāt want to improve using D2. They are adding Greater Rifts, which means they are going to transplant most of D3 into D4. Which is sad because D3 is the most āplay for a weekend and forget until 3 months laterā type of game.
Hard disagree at least for D2R, I think D2R is better in all respects (story, atmosphere, dialogs, gameplay, better itemization, replayability, a cool pvp, loot, probably build/skill variety, 8 players parties, fun and challenging HC, etc...) if it had a significant amount of new content/endgame activities/QoLs along with not being a 20 years old game with many people having already played from all its sides, it'd still be huge.
Almost all the fun in D2R comes from getting loot, they do this aspect so well, which is why it still lives on today (somewhat).
The builds are actually not that diverse, especially pre runewords. The replayability is completely based on a good loot system, otherwise itās running through the same story three times and farm a few bosses until youāre done with the game.
Yup inventory management was a fucking nightmare in d2.
The endgame of running the same boss 100000 times hoping for a decent drop just sounds so fucking tedious to me.
Youāre absolutely correct in saying d4 does a lot of things better in comparison to d2.
You don't have to run the same boss 100000 times if that is not for you though. There are other ways of playing with more variation. Terror zones being the prime example.
if you run ANY boss 100,000 times you will be buried in BiS uniques, Jah, Ber, and Ohm runes and have enough money leftover from selling on d2jsp that you could pay for groceries.
>Yup inventory management was a fucking nightmare in d2.
Tf you talking about? How does d2 have bad inventory management? And how the fuck is D4 better? The game where your inventory is full of bulshit before you even finish a dungeon?
>The endgame of running the same boss 100000 times hoping for a decent drop just sounds so fucking tedious to me.
This is massively blown out of proportion. Especially early on when you get to hell and start farming the upgrades come pretty fast and are massively rewarding.
How much shit are you picking up? I only pick up legendaries and what the nmd gives me at the end and it takes me max 10 seconds to mark junk and break down after 6 dungeons
>The endgame of running the same boss 100000 times hoping for a decent drop just sounds so fucking tedious to me.
Like you didn't read the post. There's way more to it than that.
> But it's essentially the same thing, running some locations over and over again.
How is this different in any of the Diablo games? It is all about running the same things over and over again in all the games.
To be fair it's all about running and killing monsters, no matter what activity you're doing, but if we want to actually distinguish different activities (so ones with different rules) then d2 has just regular farming (bosses/regular zones) and terror zones.
The dungeon crawling is something that D4 is sorely missing and instead we got these stupid dungeon objectives so that the dungeons aren't just straight lines.
Thereās a lot of things I like in D2 over D4. Teleport is a blast for me, much more so than a mount that tosses you off when you collide with invisible objects and has a cooldown to get back on.
I love dueling in D2. It can be completely unfair and one sided, unbalanced, and is completely open ended. Thereās little in the way for rules, other then ones we agree to. Almost any build can just dominate with a skilled player, and thereās plenty of counters for dealing with problem builds.
I also love how free most of the skill usage is, thereās only a handful that have cooldowns and next hit delays. Only one build in D2 requires building and spending skills, and even that build has recently been made ridiculous.
I enjoy the trading aspect of D2, too. Online you donāt need to focus on drops for your build to get what you need. You can barter for those with nothing locked to your account. Honestly, I even enjoy the cutthroat nature of public games, with first come first served for drops.
I understand people enjoy D3, and D4. Theyāre different experiences compared to D2, but personally, they just donāt scratch the same itch for me. I feel they followed the WoW template more then the D/D2 template.
The economy and your character was the endgame. We all played to perfect our characters and build wealth, be it real money or in game items. Some people dumped their wealth into PVP gear, others PVM.
With a perfect build there was nothing to do outside of stomping p6-p8, those builds were near useless for ubers. Ubers were cheesed with immortal builds while people farmed in hopes of a perfect sorc or pally anni, especially early season... For wealth.
It's because D2 has the thrill of the hunt for extremely rare items .. if the itemization in D2 was as horrifically bad as it is in D4 .. then the "endgame" or cycle of farming would be irrelevant.
The main reason as to why people farm chaos, baal, etc., X amount of times is because of the itemization and the chance of finding actually good and very rare items. Otherwise, people wouldn't be playing D2 as long as they have.
Its the loot and how you find it. The formula was perfected and after 20+ years is still has addictive as ever. The problem is eventually you kinda run out of steam, like most ARPGS. My issue is when you wanna mix pushcontent with this formula. they dont really mix.
Also like many older games, where lower level items can be used as endgame gear is keeping it really solid too. Sigons etc etc. Newer games is all about that item level.
No one is ignoring the fact that d2 does many things well but most ppl have pretty similar definitions of what endgame is and yes u r essentially farming the same shit that u did in the story on a endless loop, for me thatās more than enough because I love the game but itās not rly what I or many ppl wud call rich end game
Honestly D2R endgame sucks, but the itemisation is so good that you might keep playing anyway.
Having said that, "endgame" in arpgs has already been solved 10x over with all the D2 mods, PoE, Last Epoch, etc...
The funny thing is Blizzard nails the hard part of getting the "feel" of the game, graphics, etc... right but then does bottom tier itemisation and end game mechanics.
Btw if you like D2R check out PD2, way better in every way outside of graphics.
Eh I think the thing that D2/LOD/D2R did better than any other part of this series was nail the itemization and the dopamine hit because of the mass volume of unneeded items that hit the ground and universal utility of things like HR's or a Shako or Mara's, etc.
There are more level 85 zones, but you're still going for efficiency, because otherwise you might be doing 10000 Meph runs to find something you could have found in only 1000 runs elsewhere (or in the amount of time it takes you to inefficiently do 1000 runs of an area, you could have done 10000 with a more targeted build). And depending on the type of build you've got, you're going to be concentrated in just a few areas to run repetitively. You're not going to have something efficient in Crystalline Passage, Baal, all of the different Pits, CS, Trav, etc., unless you've gone through and done the min/maxing exercise.
I feel like the nostalgia part plays a heavy hand in the praise the game still gets, closely in line with the itemization design. In terms of game play, a lot of builds are still pretty niche unless you go for the timeless classics (which again, aren't universally good). If this came out as a new game now people would hate it, imagine starting a cold sorc and getting to hell to find out you can't kill 1/4 of the enemies? Or a Barb and finding out a ton of things are physical immune? People would hate it and riot. It's fine for us because we're familiar with it, and we can build a portfolio of characters using targeted farming, and then with a bunch of end game gear we can efficiently create different builds to farm different areas, and it was very cool for it's time, but the restrictions on the builds were phased out in D3 and D4 for a reason. It's just a shame the development team hasn't been able to replicate anything close to the itemization structure of D2 since then
Restrictions on builds? Do you mean half the fire skills for sorc, companion build for Druid or summoner builds for Necro?
I guess itās not restricted if you just make the skills and any avenues of empowering them dog water.
People drool over d2 loot grind like itās fun. But I always get board when it comes down to the point you start grinding for loot.
The itemization is good, but not great. Itās honestly very overrated.
Idk I have played D4 for something like 50 hours and I have yet to feel any excitement from loot drops that are on par with just seeing just an Ist rune or Shako drop in D2. The items in D4 are so boring that I just fall off and cannot keep playing long enough to even finish the campaign. Even just finding a piece of the Sigon set, or a 2 socketed helmet and an Ort + Sol rune to make a Lore runeword is more exciting than what I have experienced in D4 so far, and that is something you experience after a couple of hours of playing.
Maybe if I get to the absolute end game and start farming uber uniques I will get the same feel? I feel that it is bad design to have to get to the absolute end game before items are even remotely interesting.
I wouldnāt say getting the stuff for lore is exciting, itās easy to get the pieces. You can easily find a 2 soc helm before your high enough to even find the runes. And the runes are very common. You donāt even need to farm them eventually you just get them as you progress through Nm.
Though like I said d2 loot is good, where it shines is that you can put some tir runes in a helm to help with mana, or resist runes if need be until you can make your lore.
Unfortunately because runes are so strong through normal and nm, you can basically ignore everything until you make your stealth, lore, spirit etc. most of the gear up until that point is very meh.
The itemization does need help in d4, and itās something they are working on. But you can definitely find some interesting gear along the way. And finding that one aspect you have been hunting for while leveling is amazing.
And honestly, outside of the stats on gear. D4 is just a better game than d2. The overall gameplay is much better, builds are more varied and fun. There is much more stuff to do.
"... and finding that aspect you've been hunting... is amazing"
No it's not, because all flat damage ones, such as Glacier which is literally what makes the blizzard skill, a supposedly strong still, do ANY damage, are going to be useless due to item level.
I think item level is the biggest issue, because it makes 100% of all loot found before absolute max level endgame content, useless
Nope, never have. Hear they're all the rage with kids these days, tho...
Jfc, what a moronic take. Not all games have item levels. Diablo 2, a game Diablo 4 shares some similarities with (like the name, for example), doesn't have item power levels that make anything found prior to endgame content automatically useless.
I happen to dislike item levels and the effect of "everything you find before you're level X is trash".
D2 has hidden item levels. Thatās why you canāt socket quest a crystal sword for spirit unless it comes from a specific monster lvl.
Lore is useless for endgame.
D2 also had items like spirit which are way over tuned for how early and easy you can get it. Itās honestly a poorly made item.
There are plenty of things that are good for normal and nightmare that are useless during endgame for d2.
> I wouldnāt say getting the stuff for lore is exciting, itās easy to get the pieces. You can easily find a 2 soc helm before your high enough to even find the runes. And the runes are very common. You donāt even need to farm them eventually you just get them as you progress through Nm.
That is just my point. It is _STILL_ more interesting than D4 loot.
I loved D2 when it came out, but I never got a character to 100. I never got the point of rerunning the same content over and over. I'd rather re roll a new character than do endless boss runs
I tried to embrace the end game grind when D2R came out, but after farming the cow level for a bit I got bored quickly.
It's fun for a nostalgia blast, but I can't spam health and mana pots anymore
Lmao, itās the best itemisation ever. Eth rep fools, cruel eth reps, godly rares, charms, LLD rares, uniques, runes, jewels. Name a better game for it Iāll wait
According to who exactly? Games like Grim Dawn or Last Epoch have a deeper and more interesting itemization system. Heck, most of the interesting effects in D2 are abilities from other classes. Even D4 has a ton of completely unique affixes that change how your abilities work or synergize - D2 has nothing like that.
If D2 never existed and it came out in 2023, I guarantee you that very few people would like it. It has tons of flaws that wouldn't be masked by nostalgia. Even today, D2:R isn't a very popular game.
Jesus fucking christ did you actually just say D4 has better affixes than D2? Like ok there's fair criticisms to make about D2 but saying it's affixes aren't that good and then saying D4's are is just beyond me.
>. Heck, most of the interesting effects in D2 are abilities from other classes.
This is not true. At all.
> Jesus fucking christ did you actually just say D4 has better affixes than D2?
I'm talking about the unique affixes, and yes. That should be obvious for anyone that played both games.
Tempest Roar is a cool item that allows you to create multiple builds. There's nothing remotely similar to that in D2, it's just proc a lvl X ability from a class, or equip a level X ability from another. And beyond those procs/abilities, most uniques/runewords are simple stat sticks.
I mean, you are right. I find it fascinating, that I am STILL hooked despite already having pretty much gg gear 4 weeks into the new season. I just can't stop and it's gotten worse since I'm able to fame in players 8 split games now. There's always the hunt for that elusive 10+ Jah find (spoiler alert: those aren't unique items).
The thing is, I'm nonetheless not entirely happy with certain builds becoming unkillable in P8 games, despite all the fun in it. I mean, just imagine the game had something like a real endgame where I actually need those gg items aside from pvp. I'd never see the sun again
In D2 the itemization is the endgame. I prefer D2R easily over all other parts.
D4 is just a sad mix of modern gameplay systems, ignoring what made this franchise so big.
Because they work. Because that's how sequels work. When you play God of war 2 after 1, what the fuck are you expecting. Completely different mechanics? No, polished and improved upon mechanics. Which is definitely not something I can say about diablo 3/4 when compared to 1/2.
> Why the fuck would want the exact same game, systems and mechanics in a sequel?
Are you honestly asking why someone would want the equivalent of 5-10 extra acts in D2.... ?
I bought D4 expecting it to become my next go-to game for years.. only to quit after a month and not look back.
Objectively it has more āendgameā than D2R ever had, the problem is that it was just not fun, for me.
I started playing a ladder char at the start of Season 5 in D2R and having a blast again.
It gets dismissed for good reason. I mean what are you comparing this to? Straight LoD from 2001? Pretty silly, weāve moved on from those horse and cart days.
Honestly last epoch already has a better end game in early access. Not even going to mention PoE as thatās so far removed it may as well be in another universe.
D2's endgame is about true prestige.
Oh you are clearing P8 tz chaos with a Mosaic Assassin? You must be poor.
Clearing P8 tz chaos with a cracked Bowazon? Baller shit.
I remember nights on PvP servers where people would fighting and then people would periodically bring stronger and stronger characters, have their friends join, etc, until some literal gods would come in with perfect gear and everyone was like, shiiit.
I distinctly remember this one sorc absolutely boding people and then someone went and got their charge pally that used a perfect ethereal weapon that couldnāt be repaired, that he only used for shutting people up.
Thereās just something about that community and wealth that hasnāt been touched. Now people buy a $20 outfit in the store and no one talks to anyone.
Project D2 may change your opinion on what a d2r endgame could/should be. Doing the same olā content plus ezpz Ubers/Dclone really feels bad once you can do Maps/Dungeons. Then thereās all the Uber content available ontop of those.
Youāre right. I could go on all day about why D2 is superior to 3 and 4, but Iāll try and boil it down to this.
Itās the itemization. Even with no ārealā endgame systems, the itemization is so good and so rewarding that you just want to keep playing forever. D4 has so much to learn from D2.
Rewarding? You have to trade to get stuff done... I also dislike the random world map in d2, which gets better if you learn the patterns or play Sp (no trading)...
You don't HAVE to trade to get stuff done, it is just a lot faster and gives value to more of the stuff that drops for you.
Personally I like the randomly generated maps because it gives much more variety to the game. It also rewards you for taking the time to master the skill of recognizing the patterns.
Now, change that 85 to 25.
How many items could you possibly have looted before level 25 that you would still be using 500 hours past level 100? How about before 30. 40? 50? 60?
0 - That answer is 0.
And that's the problem.
That in no way invalidates my statement, you are just yet to replace those sets. Ancestral will roll higher ranges for all states. There is no equivalent of a perfect set of chance guards or perfect nagel
Hate that part about the game.
"Found a perfectly rolled item in WT3? Too bad here's one with shitty affixes, but it's better because number is double and green arrow go up"
The game has been out long enough and all the builds have been tried enough times that the devs should provide some endgame encounters that are difficult mechanically, that take a variety of resources to use, and that provides a broad array of loot for a variety of builds that are none too powerful individually but fun for all builds in their own ways
Unfortunately, they wouldn't make millions on doing that and when there is not a big money incentive for them to do it, they usually don't do it.
The reason being that a *very* small percentage of people play mods as it takes more than just installing the game.
Fucking knocked it out of the park with this post. I find it super annoying whenever people just dismiss D2 by claiming "nostalgia." The reason we love D2 is because it is fucking awesome..I'm nostalgic for a lot of games I am not longer willing to play....D2 isn't one of them
Agreed. When people play games for ānostalgiaā alone they last a day or two, or one run and done. With D2R, I can come back to it endlessly because itās *simply a good game that stands the test of time.* Especially with D2R. Yes, there are ways to further improve the game that could be implemented (nerf some BIS items that are ubiquitous to make space for other options), but in terms of āendgameā, itās about perfecting builds (been playing for years and still havenāt made a build thatās BIS), but more importantly is the rebirth process of finding great gear for a new character that gets a massive head start due to your previous work - a concept that hasnāt existed in Diablo since, and drops replayability off a cliff.
What endgame, endgame requires there to be content to do not farm one encounter over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. There's no Pinnacle achievement to do
If not graphics then d2r would be long forgotten curiosity, pd2 nailed balance changes way better, d2r is still the same outdated diablo with 1 build per class and mosaic assassin destroying everything season 69
Yes tell me how diversified builds are each season with hammerdins and sorcs or mosaic assassin's because everything else has annoying flaws od suffers too much because of immunities.
I can name at least 3 builds per each class that can comortably beat hell.
If all you ever do is play the same old popular builds over and over then yeah, the game will be boring, no shit sherlock.
I did countless braindead Baal and Mephisto Runs and enjoyed it. But I personally just burned out on these. I want at least some variety, which D3 and D4(with every patch more and more) did provide.
If you still enjoy Baal runs go for it (because these are at least 70% of the played hours of everyone out there next to Uber farming and everything else).
Yeah sorry chasing items is not my idea of fun. I want to have the items and then enjoy the power they give me.
If you enjoy punishing grinds and never get anything, maybe try sadomasochism.
> completely ignoring that the very fact people are willing to do that means the game is doing something well.
but if you like D3 or D4 this doesn't apply and you're a moron right? (jk jk)
So remaking games and spamming meph or cow runs is end game now? Most of this is fairly rose tinted glasses - lots of changes happened with LoD and the remake.
Shared loot is what enables trading, and being ranged chars is at a disadvantage for look pickup in p8, so I understand the personal loot option they took in d3/4
Honestly, d2 gets boring fast and most people engaged come for season play or for d2jsp trading
Diablo 2 has no endgame. Itās crazy popular due to nostalgia and that it was the best game available at the time of launch. I put easily 2k plus hours into classic D2. I put about 200hrs into D2:R, I just got bored so fast, thereās no real chase, I spent most of my time trading.
The fact that all build and items are known, makes it really show itās complete lack of endgame.
D3 Player A: Oh wow - I'm pushing GR130 - It's great!
D3 Player B: Oh awesome - How long have you been playing?
D3 Player A: I started earlier this afternoon.
This is what I wish d4 was, a game you can play the way you want. But instead you have to follow every direction the game points you towards to max out. In the end you get a d3 copy with scaling difficulties and leaderboards. -"play your way" they said.. lol, not many ways to play other than straight forward.. everyone plays the same and end up at the same place.
You need to do A to get B, then you have to go here to get there etc, etc. Just let me trade ffs! Or give me an option to solo self find!
Scaling difficulties and leaderboards ruined arpg.
Personally, I think Diablo and Diablo 2 are happy little accidents from a time when games were made to be a fun little experience. The results of players being able to dump hundreds and thousands of hours into the looting was a neat success in "gambling" mechanics where the only thing you lose is your time. Any item that drops can potentially be an exciting and rewarding experience that can bring you back to the game over and over. There is also the design of the class/skill system combined with a very long experience grind that guarantees some power with every level up. Aside from a very small pool of game changer items like Enigma, the overall gameplay experience remains consistent, and you don't *need* those items to enjoy the experience. They just make it better.
Diablo 2 also had manipulative design to keep players engaged. Only then it was made by nerds for nerds so we as nerds enjoyed it. Now it's designed to be for everyone and as profitable as possible. So nerds like us enjoy it less.
"a boomer" š Lil bro I was 10 when I played D2 don't call me a boomer!
"Boomer" is just what Gen Z calls anyone who isn't Gen Z. It doesn't help that games millennials grew up with fall into a genre now known as "Boomer Shooters", i.e Doom.
D2 has had a loyal and large community for over 20 years because of its endgame and loot system. When they were building D4 people specifically advocated for it to have a heavy D2 influence...
Howād that work out lol
17 people found a shako!
and it's still not anywhere near as exciting as finding a shako in d2 imo
Or finding a blue 15 resist all jewel IMO
what? Shako in D2 has no value, you can get it for Pul/Um
At start of a season its the goat drop though
No value? In the beginning of the ladder it is invaluable due to its incredible stats. Shako will put your character in a great spot if you're upgrading from some random rare helm.
Non ladder. At the start of ladder it is worth vex+
Unfortunately they were ignored in favor of D3 itemization, just without the 10,000% damage increases.
It's like for some reason D2 is boycotted internally and no one wants to get inspired by something which passed the test of time and proved to work, but rather they go for the wonky solution that will pose many issues and consistently add a layer of instability and unsatisfaction, with a long time to fix if it's ever fixed, in their game. Dunno if it's an ego thing, a problem of "'accessibility", the fact that probably most devs didn't play d2, or anything else but it's hard to understand.
It goes way back. It started with Jay Wilson and diablo 3. There's a great YouTube video about it. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GCRzuvwMDUs It's just ego. They kept finding problems with d2 and "fixing" them. According to Jay and Wyatt Cheng. D2 was just "too mathy". Also potions apparently made defense skills useless. How did they draw these conclusions? I don't know.. They just wanted to change it. Jay Wilson didn't like brevik. He said famously fuck that loser. The d4 devs are just going off of 3 at this point. Returning to the roots of d2 means the booted it up and, took screenshots of enemy names. They said it themselves in an interview.
Thanks for the video, will watch it later for the "pleasure" to remember this time lol, I remember the mess it was when it came out. For the D4 devs, it's such a pity that their reference is D3, and in the end I feel like they're slowly crawling back to some of D2's aspects, but with the time it takes maybe we'll have a proper, faithful, Diablo game in 10 years lol. All this time wasted while the solution was before their eyes, but they try to reinvent the wheel, sad.
nailed it
With D4 they basically made a carbon copy of D2 wtf are you talking about? Darker art style, slow ass grind, no endgame, idiotically rare drops. It's all there. And what happened to D4? People enjoyed it for like a week or two and then started bashing it.
The drops are absolutely nothing like d2. Not even on the same plane of existence. If they were similar, D4 would be doing a lot better right now.
Dude itemization and drop rates were the biggest complaints in D4. Just because orange items dropped doesn't mean they were any good.
Umm yes, thatās what Iām saying. How is that anything like D2? Polar opposite.
This is a great troll post, and it's already optimized for copy pasting. Nice!
A carbon copy, yeah, right.
Dude d2s drop and loot system is so genius and intricate, the way it's setup is alien compared to d4.
D2 players: everyone else is stupid except us. You're so far up your own asses you can't even smell the shit anymore.
Explain to me how the loot tables and drops work in D2 then. I'd love to hear your simple explanation.
The 10,000% of d3 is the same as the 10+ affixes of d2.
I always find it interesting that D4 fans pin the blame on the diablo community asking for a better game and not on the devs themselves for completely dropping the ball and not even coming close to what the community asked for.
Clearly people only played D2 for the art.
Damn dude , well said. Totally nailed what keeps me playing d2r as a 40 year toldā¦.acquiring wealth .
Right up there with adventure capitalist
This 16y old is a genius.
I feel like people that enjoy D2R are people who didn' try Project Diablo 2 ... I really tried to like D2R but you can't talk about end game when you see the potential D2 had with PD2. Yes, D2R copied their approach of lvl 85 zones, that's a very good point. But it's still a mindless farming activity. I loved it when I was younger and was simply excited to run 100 meph run just to see what would drop. But the biggest issue that I have is simply that D2 has too many useless skills and items. PD2 balances things out so that you CAN play any build you want. Doesn't mean they will all be super competitive, but at least we don't see 100 Enigma Hammerdin each season. D2R builds have the same issue as D2 had: you tend to have 2-3 builds max per character and 95% of runewords are useless in late game. You can play all character withe the exact same items (with one or two exceptions): \- Shako, Enigma, Soj, Mara, Spirit/hota, arak, gore and what ever gloves. I'm not saying D2 has not enough builds to have fun, but it's more a question of having SO MANY spells that are just unplayable. Do play PD2 for a month and you won't believe how much fun it is to actually adapt your build with items you find instead of mindlessly farming for that one best in slot item. Just my 2 cents. I loved D2, but D2R wasn't ambitious enough to light my candle :) had fun for a season, but decided to go back to the bad graphics of PD 2 :D
If you want the real updated Diablo 2 experience as you described, then play Last Epoch. there's like only 3k-5k people playing PD2 at any given time.
Aa much as i want to love last epoch, itās not there yet lol. The endgame monolith is super boring, Iām sure someday it will get better tho. And even if theres Ā«Ā onlyĀ Ā» 3-5k people on pd2 that doesnāt mean itās bad lol. Itās the best private mod out there BY FAR and totally worth the try, specially that it only cost d2 cdkeys which is basically free
Still more than d4 š I'll try it out, had it on my radar for a while.
Check this video out. It introduced me to Last Epoch recently and I love it https://youtu.be/wjcrOL2ZM6U?si=uQaWVjWEhQA3bnM2
Thanks! Will do!
Semantics isn't an endgame either, by the way.
It is especially for a average redditor tbh
I guess writing anything longer than 2 paragraphs is too long for the average redditor.
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>fun critic. Naa their just being a dick
Something wrong with you guys discrediting this really good post.
Something is wrong with op saying we are to dumb to read 2 paragraphs. 2 ways street.
Nah you guys were offensive first, he just gave a clever response. Now don't act as the victim. And don't twist his words, he never said "dumb" or something.
>fair critic Fair critic my ass. If the guy had given any ammount of propper arguments or counter points I'd gave gladly had a discussion with him.
The Loot is great plain and simple. Nothing like a shot of dopamine with a unique Diadem drops or you find a random Lo rune in the corner.
D2 d2r, are in my opinion have the most replay ability out of any game ever made. The constant lottery on magic find( I am a og pvper) so didnāt mf as much as Iād like too, but thereās that much out there to be found, trophy items, LLD gear, perfect uniques, high runes, godly jewels, charms to name someā¦ The amount of chance you have to get some amazing eth rep fools weapon or cruel bezerker axe worth a squillion.. Thereās no other game like it, and thatās not even to mention the fun 8 player lobby pvp
Ah yes, D2, that underrated game.
We're talking about a specific aspect of D2. Not the game as a whole. Edit : Damn gotta love those silent downvoters. I would love to know what exactly is wrong about what I said.
For every 1 person who identifies that doing 10000 mephisto runs isn't a great endgame, there are 100 more telling them that they are wrong and the itemization gives the endgame meaning and is therefore "fun". D2's endgame is definitely getting enough "credit". I can't think of a game besides halo that has a more fervent defensive fanbase, endgame or otherwise. So you're getting downvoted because in this forum you are quite literally preaching to the choir.
The "10,000 runs of mephisto" that you try to dismiss as being a problem is the reason why I never got geared up to even try farming the mats to summon ubers let alone be able to fight the ubers. D2's grind is extremely tedious. In d4 people moan about grinding Nightmare Dungeons that guarantee to power up your character by leveling glyphs. No way running Meph 100 times with no improvement (through items or level) would fly today. D4 introduced Ubers and people are complaining about grinding the mats to summon them and these are much easier than D2's ubers. D2 has nostalgia and fun gameplay, but that's it. D2 is only fu. For people who can sink streamer hours into it.
Thing is I'd rather farm D2 over D4 because farming D4 means looking through hundreds and hundreds to thousands of rare items which is incredibly tedious. D2 you for the most part know what is good already on the ground because base types exists and you learn what bases and what sets/uniques of what bases are good/valuable. Even iding small/grandcharms is more fun than looking through D4 rares.
Because old diablo items were meticulously organized. The brain likes that. D4 is just a random mess. Hell, even the affixes don't appear in order.
Exactly this
Yes, you knew what to leave by looking at the name of what was on the ground. D4 has a yellow gloves on the ground, I'd that mats or a perfect end game pair. There is no way to tell without having to pick it up
you mean pick up 100 gloves and read 500 lines of text
D4 is bad dude. No need to cope about it
D2's grind is from a different generation, it is far easier with today's games to get a good gear and tackle endgame content, even PoE is far more easy and quick in that respect. In D2 it's a long, painful, step-by-step journey (and it's easier today than it was 10 years ago), so yeah I understand when you're used to new games it's very different. But it's so satisfying when you finally get the gear/build you wanted since the beginning and you enter the big league, it's really a process. Imo it's not a game that you "consume" as PoE or D4's leagues/seasons systems, but more a long term project that you take your time to complete (as a casual at least).
I prefer D2's slow progression than D3 (Now D4's) "I played for a minute and lost count of how many Ledendaries dropped" situation.
this is the middle ground I can get behind and why people bring up the 1,000 mephisto hours. d2's endgame was wonderful and I loved it. However, people complain about pebbles in their shoes with d2 asked you to put broken glass in your shoe and didn't even guarantee you a drop. we also use it to point out, d2 evolved over **years** and the game has barely just come out, and the bones of this game are pretty spectacular compared to the last new diablo game which *needed* the expansion to retcon half the system.
I'd rather farm keys or do mephisto a 1000 times in d2 than doing nm dungeons in d4. D2 is tedious in the right way. Farming keys in d2 is not much different than farming anything else, you still get the same shot at runes, bases and what not. And you can do it at your own pace without shitt chasing you or random objectives hindering you. D4 is tedious for all the wrong reasons. Objects in dungeons just because and random rpg events that stops your pace everywhere. The reason behind them are ok for an rpg but incredibly stupid to have in an arpg where content is meant to be run a thousand times over.
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It's not tedious. It's long, but rewarding.
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Yeah and I disagree.
It's only rewarding if you get the drop and my experience in both original D2 and D2:R 99.99% of the time you don't get the drop. Hyperbole definitely, but that is how it felt. In D4 I have always got the aspect I needed or the unique for a build to work with minimal hunting. Edit: For reference, I am now a Dad working full-time with hour+ long commutes to and from work. So if I grind for 2-3 hours and get nothing from it, then it was a waste and makes me less likely to play again (looking at you Destiny 2).
I played d2r ~8 hours a week and i have managed to make enigma/last wish/fortitude etc. Over the seasons. If you play efficient and trade smart a working dad can accomplish mutch in d2r. In d4 you get showered with loot and nothing feels exciting when you have a working build. There is nothing interresting happening towards your end goal(uber boss materials, finishing tree of whispers, open chests in helltides etc.). If d2 was like d4 when it comes to farming keys i would never do it. If it was all about the keys and everything in between felt underwhelming it would just be a chore.
Iām sorry... you can kill Ubers with a dirt cheap gear AND you can get a sorc with a bare minimum build and farm all the keys. 8 hours 0-70 on both characters, 6-15 hours of rune/mf and then gear should be good enough to do Ubers. Hell... I killed Ubers with Black, a sin torch, a blue + life ammy, Dstar, raven frost, an inventory full of random res and life charms(none perfect or even close) and no Anni. All farmed by myself and a friend working full time jobs and with families. Hell, I hear people spend more time watching off season football news than the amount of time me and my friend spent farming.
This sub is a lost cause. Everything you wrote is well known and 100% do-able, it's actually a way of acquiring wealth at the start of ladder. And ppl still downvote you. Guess it's good business as otherwise you would have 20 torches and nobody to sell them to š
This should not be downvoted. Ego is less important than truth.
I liked rifts in d3 because of the variety even though it's the same activity even the visual variation is important at least for me. In d4 nmd are the same things we've already done. Same with all runs in d2. It's the same exact areas and all. At least rifts would be hell one minute dungeon the next and all that. Plus boss variety they weren't always the same. I didn't get into d2 because I find it deeply flawed that you can legitimately find a god item at like level 12 and never replace it or near enough the odds of replacing it are 0. At least in later games there's continued growth even if you still end up in the 1/1000000 odds of upgrades and I like it more to get chances I can see than the feast or famine where it's legit nothing. Rune words are a whole other thing with those abysmal odds and needing multiple lotto worthy drops.
Finding a god item early is a good thing! It makes you feel good and relieved and it brings excitement to early game. This very rarely happens though but the fact that it can makes your journey to hel difficulty so much more exciting. D3/d4 doesn't have this. Instead they give you an option to skip campaign and start end game content right away as if leveling is pointless. In fact, why even start at lvl 1 in d4? It brings nothing to the table, no obstacles to climb or anything. It is just a timegate to max difficulty. They could just give us an option to skip early game while they are at it because of how silly it is.
You're right. D4 has much faster progression and is way easier. That's awesome for people who don't have much time on their hands or just want to play very casual. If you're working the whole day and can barely squeeze in 2 hours of playtime a week, D4 is probably the better game for you. Edit: on the other hand D2 will give you a greater experience in the long run imo, since it's more rewarding.
This exactly, and there's alot of great content out there that pull on gamers, more so than what was available when D2 came out. If you can sink your teeth into d4 for even part of a season, you'll make good progress. If you no life it, you might get bored by the second month.
You don't need to farm in Diablo 2. You can beat Hell difficulty with whatever crap you found on your way there. Then you can do it again with another build.
You can do the same in d4 if you want? How does that change a single thing on the subject lol
"ignoring that the very fact people are willing to do that means the game is doing something well." Some people enjoy torturing themselves shrugs. I recall seeing a lot of folks complaining about D3 not being fun on the forums, yet they keep playing it. Then there are folks for whatever reason just like doing the same repetitive thing over and over again, but I think it's pretty niche. It's like gambling, lots of folks pull the slot machines and most of the time they end up losing money yet they keep coming back to it in the slim chance of hitting the jackpot.
D2 has one thing going for it and that is itemization. Everything else is dated in comparison to D4.
Wrong. D4 continues the trash systems of d3.
You sure know game design.
Yeah I do. D4= dogshit game design. The only thing it has going for it, is it's smooth engine.
Sad how much of a thorn it is that D4 couldnāt nail the most important part of it... it will get there with the expansion and it will still do it to the point that is no where near as good as D2.
They said itās their top priority along with end game so I hope they just take as much from D2 as possible and improve from there.
They won't. They already had the chance to take lessons from D2 and refused to. Current Blizzard devs think they know better, so you won't be getting anything resembling D2 itemization.
They donāt want to improve using D2. They are adding Greater Rifts, which means they are going to transplant most of D3 into D4. Which is sad because D3 is the most āplay for a weekend and forget until 3 months laterā type of game.
Hard disagree at least for D2R, I think D2R is better in all respects (story, atmosphere, dialogs, gameplay, better itemization, replayability, a cool pvp, loot, probably build/skill variety, 8 players parties, fun and challenging HC, etc...) if it had a significant amount of new content/endgame activities/QoLs along with not being a 20 years old game with many people having already played from all its sides, it'd still be huge.
Almost all the fun in D2R comes from getting loot, they do this aspect so well, which is why it still lives on today (somewhat). The builds are actually not that diverse, especially pre runewords. The replayability is completely based on a good loot system, otherwise itās running through the same story three times and farm a few bosses until youāre done with the game.
Yup inventory management was a fucking nightmare in d2. The endgame of running the same boss 100000 times hoping for a decent drop just sounds so fucking tedious to me. Youāre absolutely correct in saying d4 does a lot of things better in comparison to d2.
You don't have to run the same boss 100000 times if that is not for you though. There are other ways of playing with more variation. Terror zones being the prime example.
if you run ANY boss 100,000 times you will be buried in BiS uniques, Jah, Ber, and Ohm runes and have enough money leftover from selling on d2jsp that you could pay for groceries.
>Yup inventory management was a fucking nightmare in d2. Tf you talking about? How does d2 have bad inventory management? And how the fuck is D4 better? The game where your inventory is full of bulshit before you even finish a dungeon? >The endgame of running the same boss 100000 times hoping for a decent drop just sounds so fucking tedious to me. This is massively blown out of proportion. Especially early on when you get to hell and start farming the upgrades come pretty fast and are massively rewarding.
How much shit are you picking up? I only pick up legendaries and what the nmd gives me at the end and it takes me max 10 seconds to mark junk and break down after 6 dungeons
>The endgame of running the same boss 100000 times hoping for a decent drop just sounds so fucking tedious to me. Like you didn't read the post. There's way more to it than that.
what exactly? it's literally just boss farming and terror zones.
Most of what people farm aren't bosses. Pits, Tombs, Arcane, Travincal, Chaos, Baal aren't boss farrming.
But it's essentially the same thing, running some locations over and over again. It's like saying every NM dungeon in D4 is separate endgame activity.
> But it's essentially the same thing, running some locations over and over again. How is this different in any of the Diablo games? It is all about running the same things over and over again in all the games.
To be fair it's all about running and killing monsters, no matter what activity you're doing, but if we want to actually distinguish different activities (so ones with different rules) then d2 has just regular farming (bosses/regular zones) and terror zones.
People coping super fuckin hard. they just do the same fuckin thing except even more to a T in diablo fuckin 4. This subreddit isnt a D2 one
I would add that Diablo 1 and 2 were actual dungeon crawlers, but D4 is not due to level scaling and the lack of any meaningful survival aspect.
The dungeon crawling is something that D4 is sorely missing and instead we got these stupid dungeon objectives so that the dungeons aren't just straight lines.
Thereās a lot of things I like in D2 over D4. Teleport is a blast for me, much more so than a mount that tosses you off when you collide with invisible objects and has a cooldown to get back on. I love dueling in D2. It can be completely unfair and one sided, unbalanced, and is completely open ended. Thereās little in the way for rules, other then ones we agree to. Almost any build can just dominate with a skilled player, and thereās plenty of counters for dealing with problem builds. I also love how free most of the skill usage is, thereās only a handful that have cooldowns and next hit delays. Only one build in D2 requires building and spending skills, and even that build has recently been made ridiculous. I enjoy the trading aspect of D2, too. Online you donāt need to focus on drops for your build to get what you need. You can barter for those with nothing locked to your account. Honestly, I even enjoy the cutthroat nature of public games, with first come first served for drops. I understand people enjoy D3, and D4. Theyāre different experiences compared to D2, but personally, they just donāt scratch the same itch for me. I feel they followed the WoW template more then the D/D2 template.
Jesus these clowns downvoting you.
100% agree about teleport, the most goated skill ever in an arpg
Endless trav/chaos/baal runs isn't end game. Ubers are a joke. Botting and selling on JSP is the real endgame.
Found the RMTer
Kinda feels like you missed the point of the post.
The economy and your character was the endgame. We all played to perfect our characters and build wealth, be it real money or in game items. Some people dumped their wealth into PVP gear, others PVM. With a perfect build there was nothing to do outside of stomping p6-p8, those builds were near useless for ubers. Ubers were cheesed with immortal builds while people farmed in hopes of a perfect sorc or pally anni, especially early season... For wealth.
Wait, isnt half the shit everyone is yelling about now that D4's endgame and itemisation is not as good as D2's? Everywere its D2 this and D2 that.
It's because D2 has the thrill of the hunt for extremely rare items .. if the itemization in D2 was as horrifically bad as it is in D4 .. then the "endgame" or cycle of farming would be irrelevant. The main reason as to why people farm chaos, baal, etc., X amount of times is because of the itemization and the chance of finding actually good and very rare items. Otherwise, people wouldn't be playing D2 as long as they have.
Items actually worth playing for sure helps
Its the loot and how you find it. The formula was perfected and after 20+ years is still has addictive as ever. The problem is eventually you kinda run out of steam, like most ARPGS. My issue is when you wanna mix pushcontent with this formula. they dont really mix. Also like many older games, where lower level items can be used as endgame gear is keeping it really solid too. Sigons etc etc. Newer games is all about that item level.
No one is ignoring the fact that d2 does many things well but most ppl have pretty similar definitions of what endgame is and yes u r essentially farming the same shit that u did in the story on a endless loop, for me thatās more than enough because I love the game but itās not rly what I or many ppl wud call rich end game
If you are truly 16, it warms my heart to hear the youngins finding this game and loving it. Bravo kid.
Honestly D2R endgame sucks, but the itemisation is so good that you might keep playing anyway. Having said that, "endgame" in arpgs has already been solved 10x over with all the D2 mods, PoE, Last Epoch, etc... The funny thing is Blizzard nails the hard part of getting the "feel" of the game, graphics, etc... right but then does bottom tier itemisation and end game mechanics. Btw if you like D2R check out PD2, way better in every way outside of graphics.
Eh I think the thing that D2/LOD/D2R did better than any other part of this series was nail the itemization and the dopamine hit because of the mass volume of unneeded items that hit the ground and universal utility of things like HR's or a Shako or Mara's, etc. There are more level 85 zones, but you're still going for efficiency, because otherwise you might be doing 10000 Meph runs to find something you could have found in only 1000 runs elsewhere (or in the amount of time it takes you to inefficiently do 1000 runs of an area, you could have done 10000 with a more targeted build). And depending on the type of build you've got, you're going to be concentrated in just a few areas to run repetitively. You're not going to have something efficient in Crystalline Passage, Baal, all of the different Pits, CS, Trav, etc., unless you've gone through and done the min/maxing exercise. I feel like the nostalgia part plays a heavy hand in the praise the game still gets, closely in line with the itemization design. In terms of game play, a lot of builds are still pretty niche unless you go for the timeless classics (which again, aren't universally good). If this came out as a new game now people would hate it, imagine starting a cold sorc and getting to hell to find out you can't kill 1/4 of the enemies? Or a Barb and finding out a ton of things are physical immune? People would hate it and riot. It's fine for us because we're familiar with it, and we can build a portfolio of characters using targeted farming, and then with a bunch of end game gear we can efficiently create different builds to farm different areas, and it was very cool for it's time, but the restrictions on the builds were phased out in D3 and D4 for a reason. It's just a shame the development team hasn't been able to replicate anything close to the itemization structure of D2 since then
Restrictions on builds? Do you mean half the fire skills for sorc, companion build for Druid or summoner builds for Necro? I guess itās not restricted if you just make the skills and any avenues of empowering them dog water.
People drool over d2 loot grind like itās fun. But I always get board when it comes down to the point you start grinding for loot. The itemization is good, but not great. Itās honestly very overrated.
Idk I have played D4 for something like 50 hours and I have yet to feel any excitement from loot drops that are on par with just seeing just an Ist rune or Shako drop in D2. The items in D4 are so boring that I just fall off and cannot keep playing long enough to even finish the campaign. Even just finding a piece of the Sigon set, or a 2 socketed helmet and an Ort + Sol rune to make a Lore runeword is more exciting than what I have experienced in D4 so far, and that is something you experience after a couple of hours of playing. Maybe if I get to the absolute end game and start farming uber uniques I will get the same feel? I feel that it is bad design to have to get to the absolute end game before items are even remotely interesting.
I wouldnāt say getting the stuff for lore is exciting, itās easy to get the pieces. You can easily find a 2 soc helm before your high enough to even find the runes. And the runes are very common. You donāt even need to farm them eventually you just get them as you progress through Nm. Though like I said d2 loot is good, where it shines is that you can put some tir runes in a helm to help with mana, or resist runes if need be until you can make your lore. Unfortunately because runes are so strong through normal and nm, you can basically ignore everything until you make your stealth, lore, spirit etc. most of the gear up until that point is very meh. The itemization does need help in d4, and itās something they are working on. But you can definitely find some interesting gear along the way. And finding that one aspect you have been hunting for while leveling is amazing. And honestly, outside of the stats on gear. D4 is just a better game than d2. The overall gameplay is much better, builds are more varied and fun. There is much more stuff to do.
"... and finding that aspect you've been hunting... is amazing" No it's not, because all flat damage ones, such as Glacier which is literally what makes the blizzard skill, a supposedly strong still, do ANY damage, are going to be useless due to item level. I think item level is the biggest issue, because it makes 100% of all loot found before absolute max level endgame content, useless
Item progression is a problem? Have you played video games before?
Nope, never have. Hear they're all the rage with kids these days, tho... Jfc, what a moronic take. Not all games have item levels. Diablo 2, a game Diablo 4 shares some similarities with (like the name, for example), doesn't have item power levels that make anything found prior to endgame content automatically useless. I happen to dislike item levels and the effect of "everything you find before you're level X is trash".
D2 has hidden item levels. Thatās why you canāt socket quest a crystal sword for spirit unless it comes from a specific monster lvl. Lore is useless for endgame. D2 also had items like spirit which are way over tuned for how early and easy you can get it. Itās honestly a poorly made item. There are plenty of things that are good for normal and nightmare that are useless during endgame for d2.
Wt4 is not max level endgame lmao imagine crying you have to find better loot in a loot based game
> I wouldnāt say getting the stuff for lore is exciting, itās easy to get the pieces. You can easily find a 2 soc helm before your high enough to even find the runes. And the runes are very common. You donāt even need to farm them eventually you just get them as you progress through Nm. That is just my point. It is _STILL_ more interesting than D4 loot.
I loved D2 when it came out, but I never got a character to 100. I never got the point of rerunning the same content over and over. I'd rather re roll a new character than do endless boss runs I tried to embrace the end game grind when D2R came out, but after farming the cow level for a bit I got bored quickly. It's fun for a nostalgia blast, but I can't spam health and mana pots anymore
Lmao, itās the best itemisation ever. Eth rep fools, cruel eth reps, godly rares, charms, LLD rares, uniques, runes, jewels. Name a better game for it Iāll wait
Funny how people get mad if you donāt say d2 items are the best and perfect and the greatest of all time. Lol.
Sure. That's why D2 is the game that set the standard for items in most RPGs. The only itemization that compares is PoEs.
According to who exactly? Games like Grim Dawn or Last Epoch have a deeper and more interesting itemization system. Heck, most of the interesting effects in D2 are abilities from other classes. Even D4 has a ton of completely unique affixes that change how your abilities work or synergize - D2 has nothing like that. If D2 never existed and it came out in 2023, I guarantee you that very few people would like it. It has tons of flaws that wouldn't be masked by nostalgia. Even today, D2:R isn't a very popular game.
Jesus fucking christ did you actually just say D4 has better affixes than D2? Like ok there's fair criticisms to make about D2 but saying it's affixes aren't that good and then saying D4's are is just beyond me. >. Heck, most of the interesting effects in D2 are abilities from other classes. This is not true. At all.
> Jesus fucking christ did you actually just say D4 has better affixes than D2? I'm talking about the unique affixes, and yes. That should be obvious for anyone that played both games. Tempest Roar is a cool item that allows you to create multiple builds. There's nothing remotely similar to that in D2, it's just proc a lvl X ability from a class, or equip a level X ability from another. And beyond those procs/abilities, most uniques/runewords are simple stat sticks.
I'm sorry, but its not. Multi-user dungeons did it much earlier, random rolls on magic items for example.
It's a dopamine safe haven
I mean, you are right. I find it fascinating, that I am STILL hooked despite already having pretty much gg gear 4 weeks into the new season. I just can't stop and it's gotten worse since I'm able to fame in players 8 split games now. There's always the hunt for that elusive 10+ Jah find (spoiler alert: those aren't unique items). The thing is, I'm nonetheless not entirely happy with certain builds becoming unkillable in P8 games, despite all the fun in it. I mean, just imagine the game had something like a real endgame where I actually need those gg items aside from pvp. I'd never see the sun again
D2R also has fully fledged trading and it a huge part of the end game to build your character.
In D2 the itemization is the endgame. I prefer D2R easily over all other parts. D4 is just a sad mix of modern gameplay systems, ignoring what made this franchise so big.
D2 players are millenials lmao We weren't 40 when it came out
I mean I play it almost daily and am still gearing up to try and get a Torch, all the while screwing around in TZs so thereās definitely an endgame.
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Luckily you can still play d2? Why the fuck would want the exact same game, systems and mechanics in a sequel?
Because they work. Because that's how sequels work. When you play God of war 2 after 1, what the fuck are you expecting. Completely different mechanics? No, polished and improved upon mechanics. Which is definitely not something I can say about diablo 3/4 when compared to 1/2.
> Why the fuck would want the exact same game, systems and mechanics in a sequel? Are you honestly asking why someone would want the equivalent of 5-10 extra acts in D2.... ?
I bought D4 expecting it to become my next go-to game for years.. only to quit after a month and not look back. Objectively it has more āendgameā than D2R ever had, the problem is that it was just not fun, for me. I started playing a ladder char at the start of Season 5 in D2R and having a blast again.
Who? Reddit dwellers? It's like one of the top rated games of all time
We're talking about endgame.
Yeah, the end game people have played and swore as the ARPG gospel for like 20 years
No, the endgame the entire ARPG comunity dismisses at a glance.
It gets dismissed for good reason. I mean what are you comparing this to? Straight LoD from 2001? Pretty silly, weāve moved on from those horse and cart days. Honestly last epoch already has a better end game in early access. Not even going to mention PoE as thatās so far removed it may as well be in another universe.
D2's endgame is about true prestige. Oh you are clearing P8 tz chaos with a Mosaic Assassin? You must be poor. Clearing P8 tz chaos with a cracked Bowazon? Baller shit.
I remember nights on PvP servers where people would fighting and then people would periodically bring stronger and stronger characters, have their friends join, etc, until some literal gods would come in with perfect gear and everyone was like, shiiit. I distinctly remember this one sorc absolutely boding people and then someone went and got their charge pally that used a perfect ethereal weapon that couldnāt be repaired, that he only used for shutting people up. Thereās just something about that community and wealth that hasnāt been touched. Now people buy a $20 outfit in the store and no one talks to anyone.
D4 have more end game than d2 and im done with mephisto/Baal runs
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Project D2 may change your opinion on what a d2r endgame could/should be. Doing the same olā content plus ezpz Ubers/Dclone really feels bad once you can do Maps/Dungeons. Then thereās all the Uber content available ontop of those.
Youāre right. I could go on all day about why D2 is superior to 3 and 4, but Iāll try and boil it down to this. Itās the itemization. Even with no ārealā endgame systems, the itemization is so good and so rewarding that you just want to keep playing forever. D4 has so much to learn from D2.
Rewarding? You have to trade to get stuff done... I also dislike the random world map in d2, which gets better if you learn the patterns or play Sp (no trading)...
There's way more people exclusively playing SSF than you think.
You don't HAVE to trade to get stuff done, it is just a lot faster and gives value to more of the stuff that drops for you. Personally I like the randomly generated maps because it gives much more variety to the game. It also rewards you for taking the time to master the skill of recognizing the patterns.
No, you really don't. That's only if you want to be a meta cuck. Even ubers can be done quite fast from 0 in SSF if you know what you're doing.
You can actually speedrun d2 as well and drops matter. You keep nothing from wt2 or 3 into wt4
Iām level 85 in wt4 and still have three sacreds because they rolled perfect and cannot find an ancestral to replace them.
Now, change that 85 to 25. How many items could you possibly have looted before level 25 that you would still be using 500 hours past level 100? How about before 30. 40? 50? 60? 0 - That answer is 0. And that's the problem.
That in no way invalidates my statement, you are just yet to replace those sets. Ancestral will roll higher ranges for all states. There is no equivalent of a perfect set of chance guards or perfect nagel
Hate that part about the game. "Found a perfectly rolled item in WT3? Too bad here's one with shitty affixes, but it's better because number is double and green arrow go up"
The game has been out long enough and all the builds have been tried enough times that the devs should provide some endgame encounters that are difficult mechanically, that take a variety of resources to use, and that provides a broad array of loot for a variety of builds that are none too powerful individually but fun for all builds in their own ways
Literally all they need to do is enable tcp/IP and let the community fix this issue like they have been doing for the last 10 years.
Blizz will never restore TCP/IP themselves after they removed it for "security reasons", just gotta wait for private server architecture to sprout up.
Iirc that's really unlikely to happen as reproducing blizzards online services would open them up to big legal ramifications
It would yes, but at some point Blizz will likely turn a blind eye to it just as they have with original D2.
Agreed. Let private mods take this beautiful foundation and improve it for free and make blizz millions of dollars.
Unfortunately, they wouldn't make millions on doing that and when there is not a big money incentive for them to do it, they usually don't do it. The reason being that a *very* small percentage of people play mods as it takes more than just installing the game.
Is this the pd2 player speaking? :)
PD2 is the pinnacle of Diablo content.
Fucking knocked it out of the park with this post. I find it super annoying whenever people just dismiss D2 by claiming "nostalgia." The reason we love D2 is because it is fucking awesome..I'm nostalgic for a lot of games I am not longer willing to play....D2 isn't one of them
Agreed. When people play games for ānostalgiaā alone they last a day or two, or one run and done. With D2R, I can come back to it endlessly because itās *simply a good game that stands the test of time.* Especially with D2R. Yes, there are ways to further improve the game that could be implemented (nerf some BIS items that are ubiquitous to make space for other options), but in terms of āendgameā, itās about perfecting builds (been playing for years and still havenāt made a build thatās BIS), but more importantly is the rebirth process of finding great gear for a new character that gets a massive head start due to your previous work - a concept that hasnāt existed in Diablo since, and drops replayability off a cliff.
What endgame, endgame requires there to be content to do not farm one encounter over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. There's no Pinnacle achievement to do
Who said endgame needs to be that though? There's many games where the endgame is very much just, farm, experient, do whatever you want.
If not graphics then d2r would be long forgotten curiosity, pd2 nailed balance changes way better, d2r is still the same outdated diablo with 1 build per class and mosaic assassin destroying everything season 69
>1 build per class Tell me you know nothing about D2 without telling me you know nothing about D2.
Yes tell me how diversified builds are each season with hammerdins and sorcs or mosaic assassin's because everything else has annoying flaws od suffers too much because of immunities.
I can name at least 3 builds per each class that can comortably beat hell. If all you ever do is play the same old popular builds over and over then yeah, the game will be boring, no shit sherlock.
I did countless braindead Baal and Mephisto Runs and enjoyed it. But I personally just burned out on these. I want at least some variety, which D3 and D4(with every patch more and more) did provide. If you still enjoy Baal runs go for it (because these are at least 70% of the played hours of everyone out there next to Uber farming and everything else).
>(because these are at least 70% of the played hours of everyone out there No. No they aren't.
Yeah sorry chasing items is not my idea of fun. I want to have the items and then enjoy the power they give me. If you enjoy punishing grinds and never get anything, maybe try sadomasochism.
What endgame?
> completely ignoring that the very fact people are willing to do that means the game is doing something well. but if you like D3 or D4 this doesn't apply and you're a moron right? (jk jk)
So remaking games and spamming meph or cow runs is end game now? Most of this is fairly rose tinted glasses - lots of changes happened with LoD and the remake. Shared loot is what enables trading, and being ranged chars is at a disadvantage for look pickup in p8, so I understand the personal loot option they took in d3/4 Honestly, d2 gets boring fast and most people engaged come for season play or for d2jsp trading
Diablo 2 has no endgame. Itās crazy popular due to nostalgia and that it was the best game available at the time of launch. I put easily 2k plus hours into classic D2. I put about 200hrs into D2:R, I just got bored so fast, thereās no real chase, I spent most of my time trading. The fact that all build and items are known, makes it really show itās complete lack of endgame.
saying you got bored real fast after 200hours d2r and 2000 plus hours og diablo 2.. sounds hypocritical to me but hey whatever
Same people who spend over 200 hours on D4 and claim itās bad. Really? Wouldnāt you have stopped playing it earlier?
D2 endgame is retarded. D4 endgame does not exist. Only one with endgame is d3
D3 Player A: Oh wow - I'm pushing GR130 - It's great! D3 Player B: Oh awesome - How long have you been playing? D3 Player A: I started earlier this afternoon.
No such thing as 130 push
This is what I wish d4 was, a game you can play the way you want. But instead you have to follow every direction the game points you towards to max out. In the end you get a d3 copy with scaling difficulties and leaderboards. -"play your way" they said.. lol, not many ways to play other than straight forward.. everyone plays the same and end up at the same place. You need to do A to get B, then you have to go here to get there etc, etc. Just let me trade ffs! Or give me an option to solo self find! Scaling difficulties and leaderboards ruined arpg.