A Critique of Diablo 2-Style Skills & Trees

[luj1]

Please read what I wrote, moron

It wasn't that hard (mostly)

Regardless 1.09 was much easier than 1.10

 

[Just Locus]

I only ever replay games once or twice, but D2 I replayed endless times simply because of the joy of discovery that Faarbaute touched on, finding gems, socketed items, or weapons with attribute bonuses, just items that suited your build was a completely fun experience in it of itself, Diablo III would gut the skill system, and Diablo IV would stack so many stats into basic items that keeping track of anything was a nightmare, not to mention that text wasn't colored based off the equipped item you have, meaning you have to spend 5 minutes comparing each stat instead of the game just telling you through red or green text, the former meaning it's worse than your current item, and the latter meaning its better.

Both games after Diablo II would gut identifying items which was another source of joy as you never knew what this new, shiny item would be right away unless you had an "Identify item" scroll or spell. I've been replaying Diablo III (through the PS3 no less) and every time I get bored of it which is quite fast, I always get the urge to just play its superior predecessor and abandon whatever homogenized design Blizzard went with, for the later Diablo games.

 

[PlanHex]

Hmm, I played quite a bit of D3 fairly recently (after I got bored with D2R, so not more than a few years ago I think) and found the experience very different from how D3 was at launch when I first played it, and actually very enjoyable.
Maybe it's different on PS3, hasn't got the patches and changes from the expansion?

It felt better as a solo experience where you are almost guaranteed to find stuff you can use and need, rather than grinding for 1000 hours without finding any rune higher than Um or getting a drop you could trade for something higher than Um.

 

[Just Locus]

Maybe it's different on PS3, hasn't got the patches and changes from the expansion?

The one I have is vanilla (no expansions or anything) and it's quite bare-bones, a lot of the gear is extremely crap, there are no seasons and no vault, no adventure mode, and little to no End-game content, although the game is a tad bit more punishing due to the aforementioned bad gear.
It hasn't been updated since 2014 if memory serves.

 

[Faarbaute]

At the time I also didn't have access to any meta guides or anything - the only other source of info was what my friends who could run the game were doing.

This touches on what I think is perhaps the main issue with games like Diablo 2 these days, namely that it is a solved game.

That, combined with the attitude of most contemporary gamers, where, first and foremost, they're looking to be entertained in an efficient and expedient manner and ideally, along the way, to get to creatively express themselves without judgement. While, at the same time, expecting to effortlessly partake of the game in its entirety, which was previously reserved for a very small, absolute elite.

Having to figure things out through exploration and engagement with the game's systems just amount to frustration, and represent an unnecessary obstacle in the way of their other pursuits since now, you can just look things up on the internet anyway.

In other words, they want to consume content, and anything that gets in the way of that (you must be this tall to ride) is now not only a source of frustration, but also an unnecessary one, since you can just falsify your credentials anyway.

None of this would have mattered previously since there was, realistically, no other way to engage with the game, than to personally attempt to overcome it. (Which, not incidentally, included figuring out how to build your character.)

 

[Just Locus]

One of the reasons I feel like I enjoyed D2 as much as I did, is the fact that I choose to play games completely blind, I never google unless I spend 30+ minutes on a certain section which is rare.

I feel like with games that are experimentation-heavy, you are doing yourself a disservice by constantly googling every little mechanic to optimize your build before you've even started the playthrough, You can only play a game for the first time once, why waste it pre-planning everything and ruin the sense of accomplishment for yourself?

 

[Faarbaute]

So many people can't understand this. Even some devs such as Sawyer.

In this context, I am reminded of an anecdote shared by Josh Sawyer relating to (I think?) the discussion of prebuffing's to be, or not to be, in Pillars of Eternity.

Anyway, he mentioned how exciting and how much fun it was figuring out the system (D&D) as a youth, then proceeded to his concluding remark that he (now a grown ass man, having achieved complete mastery) in retrospect, thought that the system was, in fact, shit. (presumably because it was unbalanced)

He then set out to personally deconstruct that kind of game's philosophy that had brought himself such joy, in his past. (no prebuffing, no xp from kills, you know the story) Utterly baffling.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

PlanHex D3 will heavily tilt your odds of finding higher order items if you haven't logged in for awhile. It's to lure you back in. It's kind of crazy the drops you will get after only a few minutes of play if it's been awhile.

 

[PlanHex]

PlanHex D3 will heavily tilt your odds of finding higher order items if you haven't logged in for awhile. It's to lure you back in. It's kind of crazy the drops you will get after only a few minutes of play if it's been awhile.

Don't remember hearing about that.
Is that still the case?
Seems a bit unnecessary with the way the difficulties and drops work.
Just work your way up to the highest difficulties and rift levels, then unique and set items drop constantly. And it doesn't take that long to get a character up there as I recall. Could basically start ladder and finish all the ladder challenges in maybe 10 hours or something?

Or maybe that's why I found it easy to grind up good items. Full time job and wife and all that, so would get the "gone a long time" bonus every time I log in for those 2 hours per week or whatever I get these days. Those 2 hours per week are not worth much with the D2 drop rate at least.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Niche skills can be a thing, and balancing everything perfectly is a pipe dream, but there's no excuse for skills that are just strictly inferior to other skills. That\s just a waste of design space that could have been spent making another interesting niche skill instead, or better yet, making an existing niche skill more useful and complex.

1 point wonder skills are also dumb.

These are both examples of no-brainer options that give the player zero satisfaction, whether they made the right choice or not.

It's possible to make a system where player builds matter and can be better or worse than each other without making half the choices obvious traps meant to only frustrate new players.

 

[luj1]

This touches on what I think is perhaps the main issue with games like Diablo 2 these days, namely that it is a solved game.

You have loads of options though, private servers, version switchers, mods, etc.

I did a Classic HC run a few years back, it was incredibly refreshing.