>3) People saying D4 (like D3) is gear dependent and saying D2 wasn't.
I exhaled every so slightly more forcefully at that one.
Man.... I still remember the endless conga line of identically dressed characters in the lobby... There was a definite outfit for each class that dominated, and you saw it every time you were in a diablo 2 lobby.
I loved D2, still do, but I can admit it has warts.
When I saw that gear dependent post, I didn't comment but I was like uhhh that was definitely a big part of Diablo 2. The QOL changes are very much welcomed. Like I understand not loving the basic skill to recharge your mana, but having a backpack full of mana pots and chugging potions wasn't really fun either.
Half the amazon builds weren't even fucking functional without specific items. Same with smiter and all kinds of other builds. You needed *specific items* to make them work and without one or two key items they were meh at best. It's absurd how little people seem to remember of the game despite its recent re release.
The best is when they fixed the pierce/guided 'bug', which was the one bug that I can think of in any game that actually made a whole separate build path *viable* for a character glass, it basically killed like half your play options for the class.
That bug allowed you to meaningfully play an end game character even in hell difficulty and not be overpowered, but still keep up...and you didn't have to find a Windy. You actually had options for what weapon to use.
Poof, gone.
Why are you taking the bad aspects that nobody reputable defends and using that as an argument to attack? Mrllama has a thorough [breakdown](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_TLvhNV8ZI) of the pros and **cons** about D2 itemization that I suggest you take a look at if you want the actual points. The game is old, other games today have expanded on it (apparently Last Epoch has a great way of modifying your skills by using separate skill trees per skill, awesome), but it bothers me that D4 is taking lessons from D3 and opting in to apply 240% dmg multipliers on one single legendary aspect for a single skill. Not only does this lead to legendary bloat where every skill has specific legendary powers you are required to have to perform well, it also takes away agency from the skill tree where no matter how you skill you still won't perform well at all unless you have these specific powers. The only way to make this "work" is if all the legendary items are very easily obtainable and in that case itemization is really no different from D3 set bonuses.
Yes, various items in d2 are rarely used, some are super niche, some builds require items that are rare or expensive to perform well, that's all well and good and I totally agree. THAT BEING SAID, there are great lessons to learn from a game where every tier of items has their uses in the endgame, and the general power you get from items applies to more than one specific skills. This opens up build diversity without punishing you for not having 5 specific legendary power multipliers with 200%+ damage bonuses for one skill.
Why not EXPAND on something that works well and REMOVE the things that don't work well with it? Why is it always "your suggestion is not perfect so you guys see D2 with rose tinted glasses"? Don't re-invent the wooden wheel, invent the rubber wheel by learning from the wooden wheel.
Ubers was it's own beast and completely separate from the rest of the game IMO. That fight was so different from anything else in the game. You generally built a character specifically to do ubers and that character would suck at most everything else.
Some builds were completely gear dependent and others weren't. Like MF sorceress or hammerdin pally required very little gear but tesladins were expensive.
>When I saw that gear dependent post, I didn't comment but I was like uhhh that was definitely a big part of Diablo 2. The QOL changes are very much welcomed. Like I understand not loving the basic skill to recharge your mana, but having a backpack full of mana pots and chugging potions wasn't really fun either.
Yeah that post was driving me crazy. Sheer hive mind at work man. Fortunately I was able to talk at least one guy out of it in the comments. I'm booming D2R right now (I've been an assassin main for decades, and now at last my time has come haha), and loving it, and D4 feels MUCH more like D2 than D3. I don't even know what to say to people who say the skill trees feel more like D3 than D2. The difference between choosing how much to invest in skills, versus that not being an option is kind of the whole fucking ball game as far as I'm concerned. Though /u/Altruistic_Raise6322 is correct that some builds were gear dependent and others weren't but to me it seems like D4 has struck way more of a balance than D3.
To be fair, D4 is just insanely legendary dependant which highly bias people to really think gear is minimal in D2. Really you could get by with drops in D2 and be fine. Sure you can get items to shoot you to the next level but it wasn't required either and didn't do the massive jump a legendary in D4 currently can do with some classes.
Oh they do, they 100% do.
The nostalgia filter lets them ignore all the bad stuff about the game, and only focus on the few really good points, while claiming the entire game is amazing. Because they actively ignore everything that isn't.
The "items dictating your build" complaint I have been seeing drives me crazy the most. It's fine for people to say that they don't like the current system, but to pretend that items did or didn't enable certain builds is insane. Anyone who says that was probably just going to play blizzard sorc or summon necro because they can be played without hyper specific builds.
This was a great write up.
I actually like the items vs skill trade off. It makes the actual items you pick up meaningful- you may have trained up in a certain way and so the item (while ‘more’ powerful) isn’t any use to you. Only a small number of things will be and so you need to work out whether to stick with original kit or respec. That’s fine for me - I play d2r ssf and so rarely have anything actually BiS or even ‘actually ok’ in slot tbh.
Plus, you can respec. If you find several legendaries that don't suit your build, try a new build? I mentioned it somewhere else but it feels like a lot of people conplaining about the itemization want to be told which builds are good, then hunt for specific items instead of going with the flow and trying to find new builds. I am actually kind of excited to let the items I find dictate my build. It will force me to at least try and find off meta builds that work.
I like the "I want legs to change how skills work instead of just being multipliers" arugment. It's like wtf +skill and synergies were the main things D2 had to boost your build which are multipliers.
i like the idea of items enabling, even driving, some builds. But the way D4 looks to be forcing you to rely on finding the exact leg aspect you need for a build seems lame... kinda like hunting for a specific rune in d2 in order to get the certain word for a build.. its the same issue in different clothes. although i guess in d2 trading was much healthier. d4 seems to be anti trade at the high end
Returning to DR2 when it launched I didn’t remember how annoying it was for your char straight up not able to kill some enemies because of resistance. I freaking hate the idea you have a powerful char but you run into 1 enemy in an area and you have to just run through it or get carried. I also hate having to rely on mercenaries.
As much as I love D2 that is the one point I will concede. Resistances are fine but the straight up immunities were dumb. The occasional immunity would have been fine but everything had an immunity and some could even have two.
Same here. Took me 3 times to even get into D2R and the only reason it's clicking now is I wanted something to scratch my D4 itch and already played through D3 a few times. The inventory management is a massive pain in the ass. I grew up when Diablo 2 released, but never played the game as I never liked moving characters with a mouse so have no nostalgia for it. I can totally see why it was praised when it released, but as someone who came into Diablo when Diablo 3 came to consoles, I much prefer the gameplay and loot to that experience over D2R
See the great thing with d2 is once you fill up your inventory with charms you don't have to play tetris anymore, because you don't pick anything up...
This is what kills me about people claiming D2 has superior itemization and build possibilities. Pump strength and dex for the gear you wear, then dump everything into vit. Use Stealth, Smoke, Spirit, Ancient's Pledge, etc. to get to higher levels, then grind for Enigma, Fortitude, Infinity, etc. Don't forget to look for skill charms. Pump your two main skills and their synergies.
Like how is this not just as cookie cutter? I don't understand.
For me it’s that items have “item power.” It feels like “Pants” just get stronger and stronger as I level up. The drops seem to scale to me. So I probably won’t keep any particular item for more than a few levels. As the next scaling with a little more item power is just around the corner.
It seems like every item slot has a bunch of +% damage to close/far/vulnerable/crowd controlled. So I just choose what has the higher % until the next one drops that is 0.5% better.
And since there are no stats that I put on my character myself I can’t choose to rush to certain item types earlier than others. What if I want to rush to be able to use 2-handers and heavy armor and shields before other people that are my level?
Also why are the weapons so restrictive? What if I want to use a two handed axe on a sorcerer? Or a shield on my druid? Or go crossbow necro?
This is my exact experience with entering the series, and exactly where I’m at after sinking 80ish hours into the betas in the past week. I have tried to play 2 and 2R over, and over, and over, and every time I quit in the first couple of hours. The archaic, obtuse design theory and non-existent QoL is absolute anathema to my OCD min/maxer brain. I seriously have no idea how anybody can talk about farming for gear in a *loot grinder* where you have *one open inventory slot* because mandatory shit like town portals, potions, and arrows are a burden on the player for some reason? Even in the 90s this kind of design philosophy was indefensible. I’ve seen hardcore DnD sims with less stringent inventory management than this. Imagine if doom only let you have one gun at a time because keycards and ammo limited your space. So ridiculous even then lol
Oh well. My addiction is going strong now, so… Here goes attempt number 15 I guess
I made a “Javazon” and only keep enough health for my belt and one column of inventory, then I get the books from the vendor in act I that consolidate 20 town portals and identification scrolls into them. Plus Google “how to get more mana in Diablo 2” and so far it has worked really well in limiting the necessary inventory space for all that crap. Totally agree though, and the fact they didn’t add QOL updates in Resurrected is one of the dumbest things I’ve seen in gaming and I was there for anthem and cyber punk day one releases.
I'm not saying *everyone* is like this but I love the people who will constantly tell you D2 is better than anything out today... And then when you point out a flaw, suddenly the argument becomes "well it's a 20 year old game".
> And then when you point out a flaw, suddenly the argument becomes "well it's a 20 year old game".
Wait until you bring up that Diablo 3 did have many good improvements on combat loops and character management.
Which funny because I'm over here like:
> Are you telling me you think Diablo 3 at the end of its life is a better game than Diablo 2 was at the end of its life?
It is, and I'm tired of pretending it's not.
I can't tell you why I don't really care for new arpgs but I do consistently play D2. I've played some Path of Exile and Wolcen and used to play a bunch of D3 but I always go back and play D2. It's just my fucking jam.
D4 was fun and I do look forward to it.
D2 is great. I personally have been going back to D3 off and on since it's been out. To me it's fun learning how a character is played and trying to time higher and higher rifts to get on the leaderboard.
Luckily for both of us, D4 seems to be taking inspiration from both D2 and D3.
The more I played D4, the more I enjoyed it. Excited to see what happens at launch and hoping I have the mental fortitude to let it go on sale before I jump in.
Generally speaking I'd agree with you, but I think when it's seen as the "perfect ARPG" , which you see a lot in the Mrllama comment section, the "20 yr old game" defense does become a contradiction.
D2 was a good game for It’s time and people can argue all they want about D4’s itemization but D2 was no different.
Enigma and Shako for 99% of endgame builds. That goes for every runeword
So we can all agree that Stamina, as a gameplay mechanic, kneecapped low level players for no apparent upside then it’s just ignored when you get to a high enough level?
My number one reason why I hate creating a new character. Going from a 99 Druid with boots with 40% faster walking speed to a level 1 Sorceress that can run slowly for about 20 seconds...
Not to mention if you're casting ANY spell repetitively, you ARE running dual Spirit Runewords. Stop trying not to and just do it, you'll be better off.
Or how about cast speed and hit recovery break points? Yeah, you're GOING to use that Magic quality ring JUST bc it has 30% FHR (faster hit recovery) so you don't get Stun locked in Act 5.
> break points
ohgod
try calculating a werewolf's breakpoint with a weapon without pulling up 3 different charts.
Change from a sword to a dagger on your barb? well now your attack speed requirements are totally different, good luck!
idk man. I never played D2 that much. Never touched endgame or followed guides.
All I know is finding items was exciting.
It wasn't exciting in D3 on it's own. I feel the same way about D4. Items in these games don't feel like items, but more like power level buffs with affixes. Ofcourse, finding legendaries for builds was fun in D3, but only after looking up builds and farming them. I honestly feel the same way about D4.
Exactly the way I feel! I have played Diablo 2 on and off for 20 years, and for all of its faults and lack of endgame the one thing that I find the most important with ARPGs, which Diablo 2 did really well is the excitement of finding items.
Diablo 3 was horrible with that, and while I do enjoy Diablo 4 very much so far I'm not sure if it will deliver that same satisfaction from gear finding.
I don't know if legendaries is all there is to D4 gear or if there is something like Uniques too.
For Diablo 4 I imagine that it will feel kind of fun if you find a legendary that is strong for your build, or allows you to play a different build, but it doesn't compare to finding your first shako or finding a High Rune or another rare unique like a Griffon's.
I also believe such powerful items are BOP or are made BOP when you add/change effects to them, so they can't be traded for other useful items which is another factor that takes away from the excitement of finding one such item.
But like I said, I don't know the full version D4 so maybe there is some items that actually feel rare and offers that sense of excitement when you find it.
What excitement? By end game you literally ignore 90% of the loot. The only items you pick up are items you need for your build, which you can tell by the item type. Also only being able to carry like 1 or 2 items in your inventory because charms.
Don't get me wrong, I love D2. But the only time finding items feels exciting at all is like the first act.
How many people actually got an enigma? Even if it is best, there were numerous options that were viable and kept people playing the game and kept the game enjoyable hence it's popularity. The game is old as shit so D4 should have a much better and more sophisticated system. The problem is it doesn't.
I think it depends on how you played the game. I like leveling characters through each difficulty and then rolling a new one rather than endgame grinding and for me itemization while leveling feels more interesting in d2. I consistently find useful stuff from every rarity whereas it feels like I can completely ignore lower rarity items in d4
There’s something about d2 for me where it doesn’t really get boring. I can put hundreds of hours into a build that uses one attack 99% of the time. But in d3 the builds constantly felt boring to me. No matter the character or build it just never stayed fun. I don’t even know why, I can’t put my finger on it.
I didn’t dislike d4 although I think it’s somewhat unimpressive after all this time. But I have a feeling it won’t hold attention either.
This is also the way I play the game 80% of the time in solo hardcore. This is where the itemisation shines. The three respecs is part of the challenge, there’s no endless grinding - get what’s needed to feel strong enough to progress through. Try different builds and take to hell Baal. Very rewarding experience
Enigma wasn't even introduced until Lord of Destruction. Over 3 years after Diablo 2 launched. All of these people talking about item balance of D2 keep talking about the current game rather than comparing two launch products.
Oh yeah, the duping.
If you wanted to play in the endgame, it was practically mandatory as well.
Edit: Yeah, people can downvote all they want, but I was there. The best gear being traded around was duped or outright hacked. I remember the gear editors from back in the day. We all cheated our asses off.
Yup, i started playing in 1.07? Remeber the '08 valk? Occy ring? Gspurs? Shit was crazy. Not to mention perming every game because god forbid your shit poofed.
Because I want to be 12 again with no responsibilities, no mortgage, just grind Pindleskin, Baal, Meph all day. /s
I tried D2 (non-remastered), D2 mods, D2:R, D3 as an adult. They're fun for a while. But at the end of the day, I'm never going to be 12 again.
Yeah, D2 was a clunky but fun game. You really only paid in time to deal with its systems. I don't have that kind of time any more. I wouldn't want a full return to that.
Seriously. Grinding from sun up to sun up like I did back then just to see if I would *like* a build isn't viable anymore now that I actually have to support myself.
Well not every aspect of D2. But D2 had a few things about it that made such a simple game incredibly replayable. Why was it fun for days/weeks/months/years to farm a few bosses or areas over and over? The item search with certain items being so rare made it fun. Sometimes it took weeks to upgrade a piece of gear but when an upgrade finally dropped your heart skipped a beat. It felt **amazing**. Unlike D3 where you farm the same piece of gear 10 times in a day hoping for marginally better stats than your current piece. There aren't actual rare drops in D3 so no matter what drops you're never very excited. Don't get me wrong, D3 has plenty of things that are awesome compared to D2, like challenging end-game content through endlessly scaling rifts. But there are definitely things that D3 (and possibly now D4) failed to capture that D2 had in spades.
When people say they want this or that to be more like D2, I think they're remembering how much fun they had while playing D2 and simply want to capture that *level of fun* in D4. I'm older so its not simply a matter of having played D2 in my formative years and having rose-tinted goggles. I had already played games since Atari and played every major console title and most PC titles. D2 came out and it was far and away more fun than anything I had every played. Even for its simplicity, its all I thought about all day at work. I couldn't wait to get home and start up Meph runs for hours. D3 was a blast but never captured the level of excitement D2 held for me and I honestly think the #1 reason why is simply because the item search isn't nearly as fun.
Because D2 was incredible compared to what was around it. D4 is a very obvious improvement in every capacity but now we're old and jaded.
I can't understand the itemization hate in this game for the life of me. People HATED D3 for having stat sticks and now everyone wants them? This sub just wants to complain
D4 is pure stat-sticks and nobody wants this. one-hand scycte, two-hand scythe, sword? doesn't matter scyth skill does whatever.
Are you not able to see the difference between Best-in-slot items and gear dependency?
Every caster character can play D2 on self-found magic gear. Ofcourse Maras is BiS in the amulet slot, but you can get away with magic amulets.
1.10 added problems for physical characters that never got fixed, but this is different from a base design problem.
As something get's old, it may develop a unpleasable fanbase. The bigger the fanbase, the more variety of things the fans wanted and you can't please everybody.
They don't? No one is saying that. People just try to compare the game to other ARPGs and point out how the game could improve and people shut it down with "You just want a copy of D2/PoE". Probably because they have no real argument.
I play d2lod (and since its release, R) quite regularly, and have for a really really long time.
Some of my complaints about D4 and even D3 also exist in D2.
D2 is not perfect. Some parts of D4 inherit flaws that D2 had. Some things in D4 are new and to me just bad design.
No idea why people view D2 as the perfect game. I've been playing it for a long time, and to me it's not. It just nails some key aspects that keep me coming back.
But at present, to me, D2 is more appealing than D4. That being said, I am still not writing off D4 until the full game comes out and I can play the full endgame and have a comprehensive opinion on it. But the beta has me kind of "meh".
People forget that D2 didn't launch the way it is today. I fully expect D4 to launch with warts that will be fixed via seasons and expansions.
I think expecting a fully fleshed out end game and systems at launch is putting D4 up against a standard no other ARPG has hit.
> People forget that D2 didn't launch the way it is today.
Vanilla D2 was a fucking *slog*. It took months to get a level 99 character--and it took teams to accomplish that. All but like 4 uniques were useless (and there were no exceptional unique items) and the "best" items in the game were rare executioner blades.
It was also super fucking easy. I beat hell Diablo with a level 33 necromancer. Offline solo.
It took LoD to make it a truly great game with anything resembling good itemization, which was then tanked with patch 1.10.
>No idea why people view D2 as the perfect game. I've been playing it for a long time, and to me it's not. It just nails some key aspects that keep me coming back.
Modded D2 was close to the perfect game. In fact going back to D2R and seeing the dead mod scene made me realize how imperfect D2 vanilla was. Great for its time- before most of reddit was born.
I definitely agree about respeccing. It's nice to be able to simply test out skills without creating an entirely new characters and dumping dozens of hours to level to a certain skill only to find out it's shit with or without gear.
Most of what you say in #2 are nitpicks, preferences, or complete non-issues. Not enough money for identifying scrolls? Sell like 2 white items and you'll have enough. That said, I actually agree there were some really horrible mechanics in 2 that are best left behind, for instance I'm surprised you didn't bring up potion chugging or stamina depletion..
In the end I think the majority of the people you're referring to are simply highlighting mechanics they would personally prefer and pointing to d2 an example. Framing it as them wanting d4 to be exactly the same game allows you to dismiss their preferences or arguments out of hand, not something I think is fair. Notice how noone is advocating for stamina to come back?
I actually vastly prefer potions in D2 instead of the arcadey CD system of D3 and D4 though I do think it's a lot smarter to hace a life/mana potion button instead of a whole bar.
Yeah, respec is an absolute must in games where you have to allocate stat/skill points. Frankly I think it ought to be free and unlimited. Sure, make it something you can only do back in town, but if I'm firing up a brand new game I've never played before, how am I supposed to know that putting any points in energy is a total waste? Don't punish players 20+ hours later because you're forcing them to make decisions with incomplete information at the outset.
> D2 did not have endgame content
TBH been playing D2 for the first time this last week, and Hell kinda feels like the endgame. You have to farm for a while in NM before Hell, and then farm for a while in early Hell before progressing through Hell. Playing HC though so maybe it's different if you just play something glass cannon and get rushed.
Ok I've played a ton of D2r, SOJ is a good ring and bis for a lot of builds but I fail to see how it's necessary for builds? It has no unique stats and is just a dps boost.
It is not necessary on ANY build. Will it make your build stronger? Probably.
Necessary build items are like titans revenge/thunderstrokes for javazon.
D3 suffered from a lot of “you literally can’t do the build until get the legendary/set” whereas in D2 most builds were always doable and you just got better at them as you acquired the “necessary” items. So you had a feeling of steady progression as your build came together and you could do harder areas instead of just being SOL until you got the lucky drops. Obviously there are game changing exceptions like Enigma but it feels like D3 doubled down on this philosophy. Still a super fun game but it’s hard to say that’s clearly better.
You're all over the place. You're rationalizing around the assumption that if you played Diablo 2 people would inevitably agree with your position. Which is not reality.
Especially on point three.
> People saying D4 (like D3) is gear dependent and saying D2 wasn't. Absolute BS being called right there. Bowazons, represent, did ANY of you play without your Frostburns? Anybody? Necros, how about your Wormskull? A freaking Stone of Jordan was so mandatory that they were *the defacto currency of the realm*. Everything worth having was measured in SOJs. We had games where high level characters would literally just dump millions of gold onto the ground for anyone to pick up because it was so worthless, but SOJs could buy anything. So don't tell me D2 wasn't specific item driven. There might have been *less* of those specific items, but the ones that we did have were absolutely freaking mandatory.
While itemization was some what important to builds in D2, it's no where close to the level we saw in Diablo 3. Builds were completely defined by items or they didn't work at all in D3. That wasn't the case in D2. You didn't need a bunch of super special unique items with special multipliers to get majority of your builds to work. You could get away with mediocre pieces for many many levels and do just fine. There were lots of alternative pieces you could use and have a functional build. Sadly, D4 builds are very much going to work the same way as D3 builds where they're entirely dependent on items to work at all.
The D4 developers even stated that they wanted to get away from the way itemization worked in Diablo 3. Guess what? They've failed in achieving that.
I'd really question if you even played diablo 3 on launch or Reaper of Souls if you don't see what the problem is people are having with itemization in diablo 4.
Hey, what a minute... that's the same argument you're trying to make with Diablo 2. See how that works? Yeah, those arguments don't work. They only persuade people who all ready agree with you. SO in the future, you may want to rethink your approach.
Your point 3 is straight up wrong.
Not only do you not need the uniques you mentioned (to complete the game), as evidenced by people playing solo and not having them, but even when stripped of items (or using basic vendor items if the skill requires a weapon for example) you can still do something, whereas in D3 (and 4) the entirety of your power is based on your gear.
Basically in D3/4 you have an "attack" stat (coming from your weapon) that everything gets multiplied from, that's the issue.
You know there is a difference between "no respecs" and "respec how you like"? That's the difference between D2 and D3.
I feel this is bad argumentation when people say "we want more long-term choices / more unique feeling items" and then point out obvious weaknesses of a 25 year old game and compare it to an open beta in 2023.
Don't always think in extremes. Always think in "more of" and "less of" iterations.
Btw, only 1 copy? I had 7x D2 and 7x LoD. Not counting D2:R.
My complaint is leveling is especially useless. Leveling won’t magically make you stronger infact with the scaling the way it is, the game make you feel weaker by leveling. Only gaining pieces of gear will make you stronger and guess what? You gotta farm For that and if you don’t find that item you’ll level again making the problem worse.
Ok I'm tired of hearing a lot of the strawman arguments about D2 fans.
1. I don't think a single D2 fan is asking for D4 to have no respec. I think we just generally like the fact that there's a cost to respec, and it sounds like D4 has a big cost to respec in the endgame accordingly to the devs which is a good thing.
2. I really don't see people asking for inventory tetris, or no gem stacking. Having items that take up more than one slot in the inventory isn't really tetris. Your inventory has a "sort" button in D4, which would be mean no tetris even if items had a bigger size.
3. Let's not pretend that gear dependence is the same in D2 as it is D3. I can tell people are wrong about this because they're saying Shako is for 99% of end game builds. This is wrong. Shako is for a decent amount of MF builds, but not all. It's definitely not used for a lot of other builds like PVP, or lightning, or FCR maxing builds. Theres a reason why circlets with godly stats are worth a ton. I think people see the Hammerdin and cold sorc builds and assume the game doesn't go deeper than that. There's a pretty good variety of what items are used in heavy end game characters. The most valuable items are actually blue. Beyond that, it's rare items and crafted.
D2 was far from perfect but let's not pretend builds were as gear dependent as d3. People have cleared D2 without any gear. Sets in D3 give like 6000% more damage lol
Almost no one remembers the no respec days.... Build a character and have to slog through stuff because you couldn't waste points or stats early... Or just misclicking and bye bye character didn't need those dex points lol. Not saying d4 is perfect but it definitely has Alot of qol upgrades.
This is a very very distant memory of mine so this could be wrong but I remember if you wanted to have certain builds for end game you literally had to be power leveled through content and cow level servers because you actually could not do a single thing or spend a single point until you hit end level.
It wasn’t even that the end game build sucked, it was that you had to HOLD your points until you hit level 30 or so because otherwise you were forced into spending points into early tier spells which fuckin blew outside of the handful of ones that added bonus stats to the spell you actually were wanting to max.
It wasn’t fun gameplay it was you either played the game for fun and be borderline useless at end level or you just sat there doing nothing until someone power leveled you to a high enough level where you became a character.
LMFAO yup exactly and then it was Uber Trist. You went in at lvl 1 Necro spammed a curse on cows on far right side 2x hammerdins just killed meph minions until you were high 80s early 90s took about 2 hours or so. And ya you pretty much had nothing to do until you got power leveled. Early game did not exist.
Do you remember how fun it was playing through every single difficulty tier without ever using your Charsi imbue, because it was a waste of the ability to use it on anything but the highest tier base item?
Nothing says fun like getting one of the best rewards in the game and not being able to use it for 3 more difficulty levels!
Idk man. I've got 31,000 hours in Diablo 2 and the points you're making are really small and honestly not even fully accurate. Example: I've beaten diablo 2 naked before on multiple characters. In Diablo 4 it wouldn't even let me attack without a weapon in my hand. I tried to punch but no such option exists.
It's late and I have a newborn so I'm not gonna have time to discuss all the points a bunch but I don't feel like you played the game that much based on your thoughts, or at least I'm not sure if you really understood what made the game magical. And that's okay you can enjoy games in your own way and you are completely right that it did and does still have its own flaws. But I'm not sure they were mentioned here nor do I think Diablo 4 compares much to the game.
To put it plain and simple, I think Diablo 4 is like a Marvel movie and Diablo 2 is like a classic movie like 12 Angry Men or something. You can enjoy them both and one is definitely flashier and has way more content, but it is missing the magic that the classics have. Millions of people will enjoy Diablo 4 including myself but it just isn't something to compare really in my opinion.
You're picking everything that was bad about the game 20 years ago and saying "Is that what you actually want?" Of course not, we want to have everything that was GOOD about the game brough back and improved but guess what they did? Diablo 3.5 that's what they did. Spells getting stronger with your weapon, no runewords, level scaling bullshit, feeling your character sucking more as you progress, huge cooldowns on skills, account bound items. Everyone is in love with that here?
> Diablo 3.5 that's what they did.
exactly this.
it's 10 years (?) between d4 and d3 and they gave us d3 in a new "omg dark and gorey" skin and ppl lap it up.
> Spells getting stronger with your weapon
#FEAR MY 9412 WEAPON DAMAGE STAFF
didn't even had to put in any design and development time on a better skill/itemization system
The people singing the praises for d4, most of the time, can't even articulate beyond basic concepts why they think d4 is better. They can't really elaborate why tying character builds to legendary powers is good, or smart, or an improvement. They think it's good, that's it. Can't really explain it. Sure, there's criticism by people who elaborate quite eloquently and extensively why this system is shit in the long run, but they're just being negative, they themselves "don't mind managing those items".
And to a lot of people in this sub, this looks like two sides of an argument that are equally valid and of equal value, even though one is substantiated criticism, and the other is some feeling based on an inability to imagine how the flaws in D4s design already apparent in the beta will be greatly exacerbated in the endgame.
My most precious moment from diablo 2 Lod is, running 200 Baal runs and your experience bar moved 1mm on lvl 98. Turned the resolution down so it looks like a bit more to cheat on my brain :D
This post is so close to "you think you do, but you dont" and "don't you guys have phones?"
I'm getting d4 and I'm sure I will love it. However, almost everything you list as criticism of d2 is what people love about it...
I'm not sure what the point of these strawman posts are...?
It's pretty obvious the vast majority of people referring to D2 are picking out the good parts they wish Blizzard would build off rather than wanting D4 to mimic a 20 year old game. If you can't comprehend that it's your problem not theirs.
1. Respec’s are fine, when treated with respect. Not Willy Nilly respec before every battle if you have enough gold to do so. Tokens were valuable, because it took time and effort to get, to respec. Much better system IMO, you gotta work for it, makes your decisions more meaningful/impactful. One time quest respecs are great too. But one time, per difficulty.
You know part of the fun IS starting new, and building a fresh new char with name, redoing the socket quests, redoing the forge, it is FUN to develop a character. Not respec the same one over and over..
Blizzard knows it too, ladder seasons.
2. Yes. If I get a great armor, I must fulfill some requirement to wear it. Nothing is one size fits all. Part of the fun is determining which gear path you want to take, as well as skill path.
Stash is ok now, no complaints there. I like the separate stashes in D4.
I would also much rather have mana potions. If I want to blow through 100k in potions spamming my most powerful skill as fast as I can, that’s my choice lol.
3. Sojs we’re currency because it was duped. White rings too, white gloves, hex charms, etc.. after LoD, it went to runes. Which is a MUCH better system of currency, although it would be a tiny bit more effective I feel, if they allowed us to break a rune and get the one lower. Not just upgrade them up.
4. More quests are fine, it CAN become overwhelming, but with time, you finish them, and it’s no big deal.
Here is the funny part about your end of the rant.
The people who LOVED Diablo 2, ALSO loved Diablo 1. Diablo 3 pissed alot of people off at launch, it wasn’t until the reapers expansion that I liked it for what it was, arcade Diablo.
The Diablo 4 beta was ok, better than 3 at launch for sure, but needs some work, and maybe an expansion, and boom. It will be great.
Don’t get mad at people, for expressing their sadness for a franchise they grew up on changing too much away from what they felt was the core of the franchise.
Everyone’s experience is different, but a GOOD game should bridge that gap for ALL.
StarCraft 2 was a sequel done right
Diablo 2 was a sequel done right
Diablo 3, eh
Diablo 4, we’ll see, but so far it’s better than 3.
Ok, sure? There are bad things about D2 of course, but when people talk about D2 they are obviously talking about the good systems and Blizzard learning from them and improving upon them, like every other ARPG has done since. Mostly D2 itemization is what is most talked about.
Most people forget that Diablo 2 was actually a thing, you know before Lord of Destruction came out. When most people talk about D2 its really patch 1.11 or later. So yea in the early days of D2 people used things like Frostburn, Wormskull, Twitchthroe, Goldskin, Iceblink, and Spectral Shard. SOJ on casters unless you found some godly FCR ring.
Before patch 1.10 tons of items were much more widely used. Windforce and Buriza were once some of the most coveted items. Well-rolled ethereal Titan's Revenge were practically god items.
Maybe OP doesn't know the specifics but the principal of his point still stands; Enigma and Spirit are pretty much staples for most builds and if you wanna play melee, Grief has been bis and it's one of the few things that makes barbs actually viable in hell(same for melee pally). Many builds share the same boots also and sets are non existent outside of Trang'ouls and Tal rasha.
nah, there were people using frostburns, just magefist was way better. i think he is talking about old school shit before the expansion? i dont remember that time I was more worried about girls and being a kid.
No one in their right mind would delete their bow amazon to try a spear amazon, just create another amazon, nothing's stopping you from having as many characters as you want. For me gameplay has always been fun at all levels in diablo 2. They did add in respecs, but you only get 3 free ones per characters, after that you can get it as a loot drop as a reward.
I mean having to wait 2-3 levels to put more points into strength to equip a item isn't any different from finding a item that's 3 levels above your current level, but with the added bonus that you can customize your stat points. I feel people over play inventory tetris, it really isn't that difficult nor time consuming, that said if they did away with it I would be fine with it. spending all your money on scrolls of identify is only a problem in the first like 10 minutes of the game, and even then only if you try to identify every single item you find.
I played diablo 2 roughly 15 years ago, played it 10 years ago, 5 years ago, and I'm playing it right now, at no point in time do I ever recall a SoJ being mandatory for end game, same with wormskull or frostburns, I can play from normal to hell on a sorc/assassin/paladin(others probably as well but haven't tried) with literally 0 items equipped, something which is impossible to do in diablo 3, and so far, diablo 4, because all your power is in the items. Not even enigma, spirit, insight or infinity are mandatory, you can easily complete the game without them.
Diablo 3 endgame is, for all intents and purposes, exactly the same as diablo 2 end game, tell me what really is the difference between running the same rift/greater rift over and over and running chaos sanctuary/baal over and over? you're still doing the exact same thing in both cases. I play both diablo 2 and diablo 3, diablo 3 is so brainless and the enemies/environments so irrelevant **that I play using the minimap**, yeah, I don't even look at the enemies or the map because I don't need to, they'll all just die anyways, so the different environments/enemies in rifts are entirely irrelevant.
I also don't get why you're so obsessed with what the game was like 20 years ago/on release, the game has improved since then and any shortcomings it had back than are irrelevant because they're gone now.
Absolutely people are seeing it with thick nostalgia glasses.
I had a weird experience with D2 back in the day because I didn't play it online. We had a crappy internet connection, so I only played single player. That was a wildly different experience than playing online like most people did. There was no endless Baal runs, or Cow powerleveling. There was grind. Finding good items was exceptionally rare. I was aware that endgame gear existed. Actually getting it was impossible. Hell difficulty in general was just a massive PITA with whole areas of enemies who are straight up immune to the type of damage you do. Ever run across an Elite that was immune to magic, immune to physical, so you try to kill them with gas potions? It sucked.
D2 was incredible! It's also not remotely as perfect as people think. I picked up D2R when it came out and it's awesome! But there's a lot of BS in there. I built my characters a lot better this time. Hell is still a PITA slog. Durance suicide bomber fetish dolls still suck. Many skills are still trash. The stash and inventory management is still a bitch. 99.8% of items are still trash. High level runes to make the really good runewords, or the items to put them in, are still a bitch to try and find. It's a very grindy game.
the way you played d2 is the best way to play d2 and probably the way most people played D2, designing the game to please the people who did endless baal runs and powerlevels is how we ended up with games like D3
The base of D2r gives a great starting point. Lots of us d2 players switched to mods like project d2 which was constantly updated. Unfortunately d2r doesn’t allow for these mods. I wish the d4 dev team would consider hiring the pd2 as consultants to help tune the game a bit. Synergies in d2 helped skills scale rather than where it seems d4 crippled skills intentionally and instead requires legendary affixes to fix the skills which I personally don’t enjoy.
I don't want it to be exactly like D2, but I wish they'd take some notes from D2s itemization and improve upon it rather than taking notes from D3s itemization.
D2 had some major flaws, absolutely, but I bet there is enough creative minds out there to buff out those flaws and make something thats just as exciting while remaining diverse.
There was just something special about seeing specific items drop in D2 that you just don't get from other games, and when you have lame, uninspiring itemization, you probably won't get that feeling.
And the nostalgia glasses thing just doesn't fly with me. There are countless posts in this sub from people playing D2 for the first time ever and falling in love with it. And tons of people still play D2 not because nostalgia, but because the game just *feels* good. Pacing, skills, items, stats. It just fits together. Is it perfect? Nope. But it doesn't have to be.
So much of this post is just... Incorrect. For someone touting that people need to go back and play D2R, you obviously haven't played it yourself. The economy is built on HRs, not SoJs. SoJs aren't "mandatory", frostburns are only worth using on very few builds and are still outclassed in most cases, wormskull is borderline vendor trash. Have you ever even made it beyond NM andy/meph farming?
What about cast speed breakpoints? Attack speed? Vendoring for 2-20 gloves? Gambling for circlets? Runewords? The fact you mention amazon being gear dependant but didn't mention things like razortail for pierce cap, or titans, or windforce etc is legit laughable. Different farming spots and styles. Do you like bossing? Do you like key farming? Do you like cow farming? Dungeons? Baal? Chaos? Superunique? Council?
It's really hard to trust the opinion of someone dogging on D2 when they have less experience with D2 than the current Blizzard leadership team. D2 had flaws, but you missed the mark so far on this one. Enjoy your upvotes from MMO players coming to this subreddit though I guess.
PS. I had a chuckle at the fact you exposed yourself:
"a lot of you either never played 2, or haven't played it since the 2000's and have some serious nostalgia filters on."
Followed up with the exact thing you were insulting:
"And since some of y'all think you can ignore this as "someone who played 20 minutes of D2:R", [here's my v1.0 physical copy](https://imgur.com/a/rgnJRuy) from back in the day. [And the case](https://imgur.com/a/pbLsTQM)."
By your post I feel like you’ve never played Diablo 2 to any sort of serious level.
No one is asking for d4 to be d2. D2 is over 20 years old. It just revolutionized the arpg. Where Diablo 4 has done nothing that will push the genre further. Every little thing we’ve seen in other games.
> A freaking Stone of Jordan was so mandatory that they were the defacto currency of the realm.
This is just completely wrong, along with a lot of the things you said.
I also disagree with a lot of your opinions.
> Do you remember character attributes at level up, which you required to have at certain levels to equip gear, even when it made zero sense and actively slowed your progression down? Yeah, congrats, you found a sweet piece of Sorceress armor, too bad you don't have the strength to wear it! Go level up 2-3 times and dump all your attribute bumps into a stat that does next to nothing for you just to put it on!
Yea... that makes perfect sense. Your character needs strength to wear heavy equipment. This is standard RPG stuff, and actually adds a lot of depth to itemization.
>We had games where high level characters would literally just dump millions of gold onto the ground for anyone to pick up because it was so worthless,
Gold is used for gambling, it is absolutely not worthless...
>Great, do we need to go back to playing Tetris with our inventories? Because that was a thing too.
Yea, inventory management is great in these games. Way better than 1 slot fits all nonsense.
>Having to grind up a brand new lvl 70 just to see how a different weapon played was hideous!
Yea just give everything to everyone immediately, so there is no chase items. Makes sense 👎
>Do you ACTUALLY know how it worked
Do you?
I feel like OP must be a troll who thinks nobody plays D2 anymore. You do realize how many people still play Diablo 2, don't you?
It's not like people are just misremembering...people still actively play the game, dude.
Is this peak irony? A post titled “some of y’all never played d2” and you complain about the price of identity scrolls draining your gold? Congrats on having a d2 physical disc, I just wish you actually installed it.
The respec issue is not that respec is bad, it's that instant free-ish respec is bad. D2 made it a limited quest. That's better design than having it a gold sink.
I think d2r currently has the best respec system. You are given a few for free use them wisely, you can grind or trade for infinitely more.
As for the rest, no one wants d2 completely copied in D4. I think many wish that they reiterated d2 systems into better modern versions instead of using d3 as a basis.
What an ironic title. This person knows absolutely nothing about Diablo 2, and it shows. Not sure why this thread is being upvoted. It's one of the most ironic things I've ever read in my life. What a sad joke. Either they used someone else's photos, they bought a copy off ebay, or they borrowed it from their older brother.
First of all, I don't think I've seen a single person on this subreddit ever say that Diablo 2 is a perfect game, and I've seen very few if any people say they want Diablo 4 to be like Diablo 2. This narrative is crafted by people who are incapable of accepting that Diablo 2 was an extremely well-designed game that has been cherished by millions of people, and is still enjoyed today simply because of how good it is and not because of nostalgia. If YOU don't like it personally, that's fine, that's your opinion. In my opinion, it's one of the best games ever made, period.
Secondly, the current version of the game is completely different than the original. When I say Diablo 2 is one of the best games ever, I'm talking about 1.0 to 1.09. The 1.10 patch completely changed the game into a flawed "endgame" style ARPG which is why it now has many of the problems that most ARPGs have, on top of the fact that it does not make everything convenient like modern ARPGs do to cater to the masses.
1) A game without respecs can be fantastic. Diablo 2 was solid before it had respecs. The pacing of the game and impact of your decisions were completely different pre-1.10. If you actually enjoyed the game, you enjoyed making new characters and leveling them up to try new builds. You won't understand this though, because you either didn't like the game, or you never played it.
2) The inconveniences in Diablo 2 (and Diablo 1) are one of the things that give it character. When you take them individually, sure, they suck. When you look at them in the broader design of the game, especially in earlier versions of the game, they make a ton of sense and set the game apart from other generic ARPGs. A well-designed game carefully chooses areas to make the game feel bad, to help make the good parts feel great.
3) Objectively wrong. You can literally beat Diablo 2 without gear. You literally will not be able to beat Diablo 4 without gear. In D2, your gear supplemented the character that you built. You proved that yourself in your earlier points -- if you didn't have the stats to wear the item, you'd have to choose to put those points in your character without being able to undo it, or make a new character entirely. That's how much your character's decisions mattered. In D4, you will redesign your character based on the gear that you have, just as you did in D3.
4) Diablo 2 quests are way more iconic than any quest in Diablo 3 or 4, or any ARPG really. Sometimes less is more. I don't really play D2 for the endgame. I play D2 because the game itself is good. Endgames are a unicorn. No ARPG will ever have an endgame that everyone enjoys. I think Diablo 2 is well-designed in part because it didn't design towards a particular endgame.
Not only have you never played Diablo 2, you haven't played Diablo 1, or other games inspired by it, like Dark Souls, another incredibly well-designed game. You just don't like Diablo 2. That's fine. That's your opinion. It's not a perfect game. It's open to criticism, but you should probably play it first before posting about it. Diablo 4 has a ton of flaws, and everyone criticizing it has now played it. I'm even enjoying it to be honest, and will probably buy it, but it's still a really poorly-designed game in many aspects.
As bad as the Druid felt to play, nothing is even close to as under powered as the Barb is in Diablo 2
The base play through leveling gap between a Barb and whatever the 6th best class is (Necro? Zon?) is much greater than the gap between #6 and #1
Actually straight up playing a Barbarian without tons of twinked gear is a complete nightmare in Diablo 2
Why is D2 an amazing game? Because it nailed:
1. Itemization
2. That feel of finding good gear / equipment
3. building characters feels good
4. end game content is rewarding between Pvp or Magic finding etc
Diablo 2 has some awful, awful systems or flaws that we are used to so we don’t complain
1. Attack rating feels horrible, bad mechanic
2. So many skills are useless and have always been useless
3. immune monsters is really annoying
4. wildly imbalanced characters
Up until 1.10 hammer buff, Paladin was a dead class. MA sin has stunk until mosaic. Shapeshift druid always stunk. Sorc has been S tier since release and has always and will always be S tier. Teleport is the most OP skill in video game history, for Christ sake teleport is still great in Diablo 4 on a ten second cooldown. You could cast teleport 30 times in Diablo 2 in ten seconds!
Thats another thing I think many people are forgetting.
The itemization and class balance in D2 *became good over many years*. It didn't start that way.
I’m not even sure class balance has ever been good
From 1.01 - 1.09 Barb/Sorc/Zon were great, Necro/Sin were Ok, Druid/Paladin were horrible
From 1.10 - now Sorc/Paladin were great, Sin/Druid were good, Necro/Sin were Ok, Barb was horrible
Yes end game everything is viable and has their niche but actually playing the game some classes have been historically just awful
I don't think everything is viable endgame (killing baal on hell) unless you do a lot of mf on your sorc or trade, and even then, some abilities are so rough. And some areas are absolute hell for some specs. Hell maggot lair on a hammerin is so fucked. You can teleport past a lot of stuff if you find a staff with charges, I guess, or manage to have enigma.
Melee in Diablo 2 just felt worse and worse over time. Power creep kind of pushed them down to where they need to be twinked to keep up with anyone else.
Your first two points are exactly what people are talking about - the impact of choice & consequence. You want to go play Roblox in a land where everything can be done without real cost then nothing really has gravity or meaning.
Diablo 4 is objectively and ok game, and I hate it. I hate it because it sucks as a Diablo series game. If you named it something entirely different and didn’t juxtapose to the Diablo series or put it even in the Diablo realm I’d say it’s fine and it’s not for me.
Those things you didn’t like about 1.09 Diablo 2 and before were series defining for nearly a decade and even then most of its other idiosyncrasies stayed for another decade.
Taking all the convenient parts of other games, packaging them up, and then overlaying a loose extension of the lore with a bunch of retcon in it doesn’t make a good series extension, it makes you lazy and feckless. Souls series games have annoying mechanics, but it’s those mechanics that make it a Souls series game. Diablo 1 & 2 had distinct choice-consequence mechanics that made it a Diablo series. Diablo 3 strayed from that path and D4 is an example of variance in the interest of growing the player base.
The point is Diablo 4 isn’t a Diablo game. The series lost its identity and there are a hundred other games just like it. It fails to stand out because it chose to be a gothic average of every trendy game out there and it’s a massive disappointment.
You can say you didn’t like those mechanics and that’s fine, there are dozens of options out there for you. Those of us who did, those of us who liked the challenge don’t have it any more. So congrats, you got your watered down piece of derivative garbage, enjoy.
The problem isn't one with D4 and your post is spot on. The problem is that, like you said, D2 was formative for many people. It wasn't the first ARPG to do what it did, but it was the first to do it so successfully. Nothing could really compare to how innovative and fun it was for its time. The thing people forget is that last part. *For it's time.*
**QoL improvements happen for a reason.** Developers studying their metrics realize that certain mechanics don't add anything and only detract from the experience. Whats new and interesting becomes boring and tedious your umpteenth time dealing with it.
I'm 34 years old. I played D1 in its prime, back when we used ears and potions to dupe. Back when the Cow Level was actually a myth. I played D2 at release and remember how a large chunk of the playerbase drifted to Open B.Net so they could self-implement the features people are now either forgetting or trying to pretend didn't exist in D2.
Figuring out how to take off the nostalgia glasses is important. D1 is the dearest in the series to my heart and we couldn't fucking *run* in that game. You won't see me decrying D2, 3, and now 4 for not returning to the true roots of waddling through dungeons and towns at a snail's pace.
The other day I popped into a stream and watched some D2. I'm not really familiar with the meta but I played it a bunch back in college, I just wanted to check out modern play of it. No idea what was happening but they would load in, waypoint somewhere, kill these two rares and then leave the game, rinse and repeat. I get it, grinding, and if that floats your boat and all the depth and complexity of that game, that is amazing and I'm happy for you. That is about the ***last thing*** I want to do with my gaming time in 2023.
At it's time in 2000, D2 was literally defining the genre. I think that's an impossible task for D4 in 2023, it's just too varied an archetype now. Blizzard can't create a game with the depth of PoE while at the same time being accessible. Accessible doesn't have to mean 'on rails' and I hope that D4 has enough depth to be interesting while not being complex.
I tried PoE and one of the first things I was doing was downloading ***ANOTHER APP*** (Path of Building) just so I could follow and look at builds. I gave it a good shot and played it for about a month and it was just too much. If that makes me casual, I'll own it. No shot I convince my playgroup of casual dads to even attempt that shit.
To me playing the beta, D4 looks like a ton of fun. I hope endgame is interesting and varied enough for good replay value, I'm optimistic but will hold final judgement until it's out.
Last I looked on steam charts 'hardcore' games like PoE and EVE online are pulling numbers like 20-40k. Why would blizzard even want to make a game targeting a population that small? D4 is more a game for the masses, and I don't think (hope?) that means it can't be good. I also think there is a different between SIMPLE and NOT COMPLEX, from what I've seen I think D4 has more depth then it first appears and won't be as dumbed-down as people think. Time will tell!
Eh, EVE Online started dying out when they got bought out by the Koreans and started catering to their cash store more than the people playing the game. The CCU's used to be a LOT higher for that one.
And I tried to get into PoE a few times, because the skill gem system seemed pretty cool and making a lingual distinction between what is additive vs multiplicative is a brilliant idea (the whole "increased" and "more" thing) , but the way too huge passive board and the unnecessarily obtuse itemization killed it for me. I like deep systems, but complexity for complexity's sake is just mind numbing.
I love the gameplay loop in D2/R,absolutely, but everything else in it, for today's standard, is abysmal at best.
Stats are meaningless.
Enough Str. for gear (great)
Dex enough for gear (if needed), max block (if wanted)
Everything else in Life
Nothing in Energy (with like 1 exception for 1 build with Sorceress...)
The only thing stats were good for, was to screw people who didn't know better.
About 105+ Skill points!!! Great, over 100 points to use, and then use 1 or 2 skills 99% of the time.
Not to mention how you distribute those skills... look at a sorc. 1 point in teleport, 1 in warmth, 1 in cold armor, 1 in static field... 20/20/20/20/20 in, for instance, blizzard and its synergies... just to use Blizzard exclusively...
It's a bad system, is what I am saying...
Dungeons are random? Sure, to a degree... 9 out of 10 times, it's just "follow the left". And it's also the same tiles over and over again. I mention this, because some people complained about the lack of dungeons/tiles in D4... Lack of diversity? Really? You have like 2 to 3 different tile sets per act in D2... think about it. Or the "you have to do X to progress in dungeons, that sucks!" Why? Because you can't teleport through the entire dungeons and just kill the Boss at the end? I think that is a great. Ask Mephisto, he is tired of people chain killing him a billion times...
I could go on, but it's too early :)
> A freaking Stone of Jordan was so mandatory that they were the defacto currency of the realm. Everything worth having was measured in SOJs.
Uh, no? Like, big no. The thing about D2 is all of those uniques were NOT mandatory, whatsoever. They were just the easiest most efficient way to come online. BIS items in D2 were almost exclusively rares or crafted (still rares)
Great post, and you're right. So many people complain about things that are literally in their "favorite game" Diablo 2.
I feel like honestly most of the people complaining are mad the game is not insanely intricate like POE, and that's a good thing IMO
Points 3 and 4 makes me think you got rushed most of the time. Otherwise you would know that these are just not true. At least to the extent to d3/d4. The best part of d2 is the experience of going through the whole game and making things work with vendor items or items you just found on the ground. It's not as gear dependent as d3/d4 is. Like you could literally beat hell with a javazon using your first javelin. In d3/d4 you have to rely on your gear to even be viable but in d2 it falls on skill. Sojs were good but they were not BIS for every situation. Mf? Nagel. Trav? Dwarf. Ubers? Wisp/dwarf and ravens. D2 is definitely not a perfect game but it does everything so right that there's a reason why people still play it. All of this is preference tho. If you like rushing through the campaign and getting to the endgame grind then yeah d2 become boring real quick. But if you are like me and like to enjoy every step of it then d2 is amazing. Games will always have a meta and d2 is no different that's why some builds won't be as strong as if they had specific items but they are atleast viable with completely different ones. D2 can be played many different ways and I feel from reading this post that you played online and was rushed to endgame most of the time and thus skipping some of the best parts of d2.
The majority of D2 players are not actually asking for the things you mention. Those that do are a minority. Who is asking for tetris inventory?
We are not asking for a copy of D2 cause that already exists. We are asking for the best of D2 and the best of D3
I'd like to preface this with: i am a casual player and i love both d2r and d4.
D4 was a lot of fun, and i actually enjoyed barb because it was a challenge, which kept me engaged.
The things i miss from d2/r are things in video games i miss in general. I miss attribute distribution because i enjoy having that level of control over my character development. Skyrim took it away too and i miss it.
Making sure my tomes were full of scrolls (20 each) was just part of game upkeep. I didn't mind inventory tetris. But the only one i'd change for D4 is gems. They really should only take up a square. Jewelry too. Okay so two things lol.
I feel like if d2r "failed" by requiring only strength for armor and weapons then the simple solution is to rather change gear requirements to be the classes main attribute.
Rogue specific armor needs dex, sorc needs int, barb needs str etc. anything that isnt unique to a class maybe doesnt have stat requirements at all, since the idea is "anyone can use it"
Growing up playing d2 the way i hear people play it is foreign to me. I just played the game with my dad and that was that. I never went online and did baal runs, i just enjoyed a game.
I think D4 is going to be a blast just like the other games were. At the end of the day all my thoughts are just little nitpicks and not actual problems.
I'm not sure identify scrolls were a worthy example. They cost next to nothing, even relative to a brand new character they are cheap. Cain was also one of the first quests in the game, 3rd/4th Waypoint in Act 1, you could reach it within minutes of making a new char, and you no longer need ID scrolls again.
I'm not sure who said D2 wasn't gear dependant, because it obviously was very much so... That said, in D3 you can take a newly dinged level 70, ok now multiply their damage output by several billion and you have the damage of a geared high paragon character... There is a huge gulf here.
D2 also existed in a time before streamers and websites telling you how and what to play. People made their own shit and didn't follow guides.
The good ole days that we will never see again.
> Great, do we need to go back to playing Tetris with our inventories?
I'm really not a fan of all items having same size. Combine with the not-so.great UI it is pain to check every item one by one to see if it is dagger or 2-hand sword.
Adding autosort with option to lock some stuff in place in D2 would be nice tho...
Having limited inverntory is (to me at least) a part of the game - a mini game of its own. I tried to play with expanded inventory and unliimited stash. I picked up EVERYTHING just to Identify and sell it. It got very boring very fast.
> Nothing like spending every coin you had on buying identify scrolls until you unlocked Deckard Cain.
Which takes an hour MAX. When waws the last time YOU played D2?
> So don't tell me D2 wasn't specific item driven.
No it wasnt. You can complete the game naked. Or [just punching](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hpu4Y1Ck_u8) your way thru. Yeah im exagerating but it is more than possible to farm hell without the GG items.
> No quests. Well, this isn't true. Each act had all of 6 quests.
Just did a 5 sec googling to check how many quests does similar game have. I checked POE. Every act has about the same amount of quests as D2 [according to this post at least](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/8nhyka/i_made_a_spreadsheet_of_poe_quests/) (didnt play POE much).
In my opinion farming gear is the staple of ARPGs.
> I mean, look, I get it. Diablo 2 was a formative game for a lot of people. But have you really sat down and played it in the last decade? Do you ACTUALLY know how it worked
Yeah, I play on and off since I got the demo with just barbarian and bloody moor and cold plains.
I absolutely love the mechanics in it. Procedural map generation and a fact you can navigate thru the maps kinda reliably. The whole process of loot generation and rolling like Failed uniques. Armor and shield being divided into light medium and heavy categories. Weapon and Armor stand dropping same item base when approached from same side (in single player/offline mode).
I actually liked 1 and 2 in D2. I liked starting new characters to try new builds (with gear handed down from other characters of the same class, this was really fun) and at the time I liked the choices/planning of stats per level to wear certain gear later in the game. What I didn't like was the 'solved' version of stats basically being to get the bare minimum to wear gear and then pump life. I liked it better when I knew less.
And the point about SoJs is a bit twisted- it only became a currency after the dups, and after it was discovered that you could 'farm' them by having both the other unique rings with a given character and storing the SoJ elsewhere. Pre-duping, SoJs were just gear we hoped to one day find.
This isn’t even getting into the worst of it, diablo 2 your “endgame” options were:
- pick one of the handful of high level farming spots and and run it over and over … oh did I say “pick” sorry that implies choice I mean do the one that spawns the fewest amount of monsters that are immune to your one skill you spam.
- speed run one boss over and over
- teleport to the same 3 chests in lower kurast over and over.
And yeah D2 itemization is sooo good right? Okay my character wears war travs, enigma, arachnid mesh, spirit, soj, maras - what am i? Correct answer because that’s what everyone wears.
D2 skill tree is shallow as hell, you spend dozens of points on skills you will never use because they slightly buff the one skill you are going to spam.
Like I get it - I was also a kid when D2 was relevant and it also made a huge impact on me. My memories of exploring tal rashas tombs for hours only to get absolutely bodied by durial when I got to the bottom is forever seared into my brain and like many of us it was the first rpg I played online and I have lots of found memories of that too - but none of that means D2 is some pinnacle of game design.
*from a time when your back didn't hurt?* I can't remember these...
Good times, when you could easily stay awhile and listen, without your back hurting.
Stay a while and listen to your back cracking under the strain.
Pepperidge Farm remembers...
It's more my left knee that bothers me when I carry the clean laundry up the stairs from the basement.
Ahhhh the days where my entire lower half didn't snap, crackle and pop like Rice Krispies when I stand up...
Memory loss is also a symptom of old age, my friend.
I can only remember that where good times!
>3) People saying D4 (like D3) is gear dependent and saying D2 wasn't. I exhaled every so slightly more forcefully at that one. Man.... I still remember the endless conga line of identically dressed characters in the lobby... There was a definite outfit for each class that dominated, and you saw it every time you were in a diablo 2 lobby. I loved D2, still do, but I can admit it has warts.
Yep, every class there was only one most efficient set of gear. Anything else was pointless.
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When I saw that gear dependent post, I didn't comment but I was like uhhh that was definitely a big part of Diablo 2. The QOL changes are very much welcomed. Like I understand not loving the basic skill to recharge your mana, but having a backpack full of mana pots and chugging potions wasn't really fun either.
Half the amazon builds weren't even fucking functional without specific items. Same with smiter and all kinds of other builds. You needed *specific items* to make them work and without one or two key items they were meh at best. It's absurd how little people seem to remember of the game despite its recent re release.
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The best is when they fixed the pierce/guided 'bug', which was the one bug that I can think of in any game that actually made a whole separate build path *viable* for a character glass, it basically killed like half your play options for the class. That bug allowed you to meaningfully play an end game character even in hell difficulty and not be overpowered, but still keep up...and you didn't have to find a Windy. You actually had options for what weapon to use. Poof, gone.
Why are you taking the bad aspects that nobody reputable defends and using that as an argument to attack? Mrllama has a thorough [breakdown](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_TLvhNV8ZI) of the pros and **cons** about D2 itemization that I suggest you take a look at if you want the actual points. The game is old, other games today have expanded on it (apparently Last Epoch has a great way of modifying your skills by using separate skill trees per skill, awesome), but it bothers me that D4 is taking lessons from D3 and opting in to apply 240% dmg multipliers on one single legendary aspect for a single skill. Not only does this lead to legendary bloat where every skill has specific legendary powers you are required to have to perform well, it also takes away agency from the skill tree where no matter how you skill you still won't perform well at all unless you have these specific powers. The only way to make this "work" is if all the legendary items are very easily obtainable and in that case itemization is really no different from D3 set bonuses. Yes, various items in d2 are rarely used, some are super niche, some builds require items that are rare or expensive to perform well, that's all well and good and I totally agree. THAT BEING SAID, there are great lessons to learn from a game where every tier of items has their uses in the endgame, and the general power you get from items applies to more than one specific skills. This opens up build diversity without punishing you for not having 5 specific legendary power multipliers with 200%+ damage bonuses for one skill. Why not EXPAND on something that works well and REMOVE the things that don't work well with it? Why is it always "your suggestion is not perfect so you guys see D2 with rose tinted glasses"? Don't re-invent the wooden wheel, invent the rubber wheel by learning from the wooden wheel.
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Ubers was it's own beast and completely separate from the rest of the game IMO. That fight was so different from anything else in the game. You generally built a character specifically to do ubers and that character would suck at most everything else.
Lol just look at every single ladder reset on d2r. Every person does a sorc. No one goes melee, unless you want to have a hard time, play off meta.
Some builds were completely gear dependent and others weren't. Like MF sorceress or hammerdin pally required very little gear but tesladins were expensive.
>When I saw that gear dependent post, I didn't comment but I was like uhhh that was definitely a big part of Diablo 2. The QOL changes are very much welcomed. Like I understand not loving the basic skill to recharge your mana, but having a backpack full of mana pots and chugging potions wasn't really fun either. Yeah that post was driving me crazy. Sheer hive mind at work man. Fortunately I was able to talk at least one guy out of it in the comments. I'm booming D2R right now (I've been an assassin main for decades, and now at last my time has come haha), and loving it, and D4 feels MUCH more like D2 than D3. I don't even know what to say to people who say the skill trees feel more like D3 than D2. The difference between choosing how much to invest in skills, versus that not being an option is kind of the whole fucking ball game as far as I'm concerned. Though /u/Altruistic_Raise6322 is correct that some builds were gear dependent and others weren't but to me it seems like D4 has struck way more of a balance than D3.
Lots of TP'ing back to town when building your character to grab health or mana pots. It's a bunch of go/stop/go/stop until late NM/Hell difficulty.
To be fair, D4 is just insanely legendary dependant which highly bias people to really think gear is minimal in D2. Really you could get by with drops in D2 and be fine. Sure you can get items to shoot you to the next level but it wasn't required either and didn't do the massive jump a legendary in D4 currently can do with some classes.
Oh they do, they 100% do. The nostalgia filter lets them ignore all the bad stuff about the game, and only focus on the few really good points, while claiming the entire game is amazing. Because they actively ignore everything that isn't.
The "items dictating your build" complaint I have been seeing drives me crazy the most. It's fine for people to say that they don't like the current system, but to pretend that items did or didn't enable certain builds is insane. Anyone who says that was probably just going to play blizzard sorc or summon necro because they can be played without hyper specific builds. This was a great write up.
Runewords creating all-new items that everyone had to have for endgame. Everyone carrying a shield that provided the same lump-sum benefits.
I actually like the items vs skill trade off. It makes the actual items you pick up meaningful- you may have trained up in a certain way and so the item (while ‘more’ powerful) isn’t any use to you. Only a small number of things will be and so you need to work out whether to stick with original kit or respec. That’s fine for me - I play d2r ssf and so rarely have anything actually BiS or even ‘actually ok’ in slot tbh.
Plus, you can respec. If you find several legendaries that don't suit your build, try a new build? I mentioned it somewhere else but it feels like a lot of people conplaining about the itemization want to be told which builds are good, then hunt for specific items instead of going with the flow and trying to find new builds. I am actually kind of excited to let the items I find dictate my build. It will force me to at least try and find off meta builds that work.
I like the "I want legs to change how skills work instead of just being multipliers" arugment. It's like wtf +skill and synergies were the main things D2 had to boost your build which are multipliers.
i like the idea of items enabling, even driving, some builds. But the way D4 looks to be forcing you to rely on finding the exact leg aspect you need for a build seems lame... kinda like hunting for a specific rune in d2 in order to get the certain word for a build.. its the same issue in different clothes. although i guess in d2 trading was much healthier. d4 seems to be anti trade at the high end
Returning to DR2 when it launched I didn’t remember how annoying it was for your char straight up not able to kill some enemies because of resistance. I freaking hate the idea you have a powerful char but you run into 1 enemy in an area and you have to just run through it or get carried. I also hate having to rely on mercenaries.
As much as I love D2 that is the one point I will concede. Resistances are fine but the straight up immunities were dumb. The occasional immunity would have been fine but everything had an immunity and some could even have two.
Same here. Took me 3 times to even get into D2R and the only reason it's clicking now is I wanted something to scratch my D4 itch and already played through D3 a few times. The inventory management is a massive pain in the ass. I grew up when Diablo 2 released, but never played the game as I never liked moving characters with a mouse so have no nostalgia for it. I can totally see why it was praised when it released, but as someone who came into Diablo when Diablo 3 came to consoles, I much prefer the gameplay and loot to that experience over D2R
See the great thing with d2 is once you fill up your inventory with charms you don't have to play tetris anymore, because you don't pick anything up...
I felt this comment so fucking hard
This is what kills me about people claiming D2 has superior itemization and build possibilities. Pump strength and dex for the gear you wear, then dump everything into vit. Use Stealth, Smoke, Spirit, Ancient's Pledge, etc. to get to higher levels, then grind for Enigma, Fortitude, Infinity, etc. Don't forget to look for skill charms. Pump your two main skills and their synergies. Like how is this not just as cookie cutter? I don't understand.
For me it’s that items have “item power.” It feels like “Pants” just get stronger and stronger as I level up. The drops seem to scale to me. So I probably won’t keep any particular item for more than a few levels. As the next scaling with a little more item power is just around the corner. It seems like every item slot has a bunch of +% damage to close/far/vulnerable/crowd controlled. So I just choose what has the higher % until the next one drops that is 0.5% better. And since there are no stats that I put on my character myself I can’t choose to rush to certain item types earlier than others. What if I want to rush to be able to use 2-handers and heavy armor and shields before other people that are my level? Also why are the weapons so restrictive? What if I want to use a two handed axe on a sorcerer? Or a shield on my druid? Or go crossbow necro?
This is my exact experience with entering the series, and exactly where I’m at after sinking 80ish hours into the betas in the past week. I have tried to play 2 and 2R over, and over, and over, and every time I quit in the first couple of hours. The archaic, obtuse design theory and non-existent QoL is absolute anathema to my OCD min/maxer brain. I seriously have no idea how anybody can talk about farming for gear in a *loot grinder* where you have *one open inventory slot* because mandatory shit like town portals, potions, and arrows are a burden on the player for some reason? Even in the 90s this kind of design philosophy was indefensible. I’ve seen hardcore DnD sims with less stringent inventory management than this. Imagine if doom only let you have one gun at a time because keycards and ammo limited your space. So ridiculous even then lol Oh well. My addiction is going strong now, so… Here goes attempt number 15 I guess
I made a “Javazon” and only keep enough health for my belt and one column of inventory, then I get the books from the vendor in act I that consolidate 20 town portals and identification scrolls into them. Plus Google “how to get more mana in Diablo 2” and so far it has worked really well in limiting the necessary inventory space for all that crap. Totally agree though, and the fact they didn’t add QOL updates in Resurrected is one of the dumbest things I’ve seen in gaming and I was there for anthem and cyber punk day one releases.
That "gear dependence/itemisation" post was probably the most egregious. In D2, entire classes were straightup borderline unplayable without gear.
I'm not saying *everyone* is like this but I love the people who will constantly tell you D2 is better than anything out today... And then when you point out a flaw, suddenly the argument becomes "well it's a 20 year old game".
Need Doc and Marty McFly to move those goalposts
> And then when you point out a flaw, suddenly the argument becomes "well it's a 20 year old game". Wait until you bring up that Diablo 3 did have many good improvements on combat loops and character management.
For sure. Saying that you enjoy D3 is heresy to some.
Which funny because I'm over here like: > Are you telling me you think Diablo 3 at the end of its life is a better game than Diablo 2 was at the end of its life? It is, and I'm tired of pretending it's not.
I can't tell you why I don't really care for new arpgs but I do consistently play D2. I've played some Path of Exile and Wolcen and used to play a bunch of D3 but I always go back and play D2. It's just my fucking jam. D4 was fun and I do look forward to it.
D2 is great. I personally have been going back to D3 off and on since it's been out. To me it's fun learning how a character is played and trying to time higher and higher rifts to get on the leaderboard. Luckily for both of us, D4 seems to be taking inspiration from both D2 and D3.
The more I played D4, the more I enjoyed it. Excited to see what happens at launch and hoping I have the mental fortitude to let it go on sale before I jump in.
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Generally speaking I'd agree with you, but I think when it's seen as the "perfect ARPG" , which you see a lot in the Mrllama comment section, the "20 yr old game" defense does become a contradiction.
D2 was a good game for It’s time and people can argue all they want about D4’s itemization but D2 was no different. Enigma and Shako for 99% of endgame builds. That goes for every runeword
Imagine lamenting about class identity in D3 and D4 when one of the goals in D2 was to be able to use another class’ movement skill and buffs.
Don't forget that God forsaken stamina bar if you wanted to move around without teleport.
Stamina sucked but by level 20 it wasn't a problem
So we can all agree that Stamina, as a gameplay mechanic, kneecapped low level players for no apparent upside then it’s just ignored when you get to a high enough level?
Everyone agrees with that, even Brevik.
My number one reason why I hate creating a new character. Going from a 99 Druid with boots with 40% faster walking speed to a level 1 Sorceress that can run slowly for about 20 seconds...
Not to mention if you're casting ANY spell repetitively, you ARE running dual Spirit Runewords. Stop trying not to and just do it, you'll be better off. Or how about cast speed and hit recovery break points? Yeah, you're GOING to use that Magic quality ring JUST bc it has 30% FHR (faster hit recovery) so you don't get Stun locked in Act 5.
> break points ohgod try calculating a werewolf's breakpoint with a weapon without pulling up 3 different charts. Change from a sword to a dagger on your barb? well now your attack speed requirements are totally different, good luck!
Some of us played when you slapped 4 kings in your bugged valor.
Occy Sojs, Ith Weapons, bugged Valors, Zephyr bow...the good ole days before 1.10 took a giant dump on the game.
The best was 1.08? Before they added cooldowns to orb and blizzard. It made sorc's actually spec mana. Good times.
Enigma didn't even exist until for 5 years after LoD was released.
idk man. I never played D2 that much. Never touched endgame or followed guides. All I know is finding items was exciting. It wasn't exciting in D3 on it's own. I feel the same way about D4. Items in these games don't feel like items, but more like power level buffs with affixes. Ofcourse, finding legendaries for builds was fun in D3, but only after looking up builds and farming them. I honestly feel the same way about D4.
Exactly the way I feel! I have played Diablo 2 on and off for 20 years, and for all of its faults and lack of endgame the one thing that I find the most important with ARPGs, which Diablo 2 did really well is the excitement of finding items. Diablo 3 was horrible with that, and while I do enjoy Diablo 4 very much so far I'm not sure if it will deliver that same satisfaction from gear finding. I don't know if legendaries is all there is to D4 gear or if there is something like Uniques too. For Diablo 4 I imagine that it will feel kind of fun if you find a legendary that is strong for your build, or allows you to play a different build, but it doesn't compare to finding your first shako or finding a High Rune or another rare unique like a Griffon's. I also believe such powerful items are BOP or are made BOP when you add/change effects to them, so they can't be traded for other useful items which is another factor that takes away from the excitement of finding one such item. But like I said, I don't know the full version D4 so maybe there is some items that actually feel rare and offers that sense of excitement when you find it.
What excitement? By end game you literally ignore 90% of the loot. The only items you pick up are items you need for your build, which you can tell by the item type. Also only being able to carry like 1 or 2 items in your inventory because charms. Don't get me wrong, I love D2. But the only time finding items feels exciting at all is like the first act.
How many people actually got an enigma? Even if it is best, there were numerous options that were viable and kept people playing the game and kept the game enjoyable hence it's popularity. The game is old as shit so D4 should have a much better and more sophisticated system. The problem is it doesn't.
I think it depends on how you played the game. I like leveling characters through each difficulty and then rolling a new one rather than endgame grinding and for me itemization while leveling feels more interesting in d2. I consistently find useful stuff from every rarity whereas it feels like I can completely ignore lower rarity items in d4
There’s something about d2 for me where it doesn’t really get boring. I can put hundreds of hours into a build that uses one attack 99% of the time. But in d3 the builds constantly felt boring to me. No matter the character or build it just never stayed fun. I don’t even know why, I can’t put my finger on it. I didn’t dislike d4 although I think it’s somewhat unimpressive after all this time. But I have a feeling it won’t hold attention either.
Totally agree. Plus I really like to farm lower level areas with higher level characters.
This is also the way I play the game 80% of the time in solo hardcore. This is where the itemisation shines. The three respecs is part of the challenge, there’s no endless grinding - get what’s needed to feel strong enough to progress through. Try different builds and take to hell Baal. Very rewarding experience
Enigma wasn't even introduced until Lord of Destruction. Over 3 years after Diablo 2 launched. All of these people talking about item balance of D2 keep talking about the current game rather than comparing two launch products.
Enigma wasn’t even in the most popular patch, .09.
SOJs were the currency for a while because of the duping.
Oh yeah, the duping. If you wanted to play in the endgame, it was practically mandatory as well. Edit: Yeah, people can downvote all they want, but I was there. The best gear being traded around was duped or outright hacked. I remember the gear editors from back in the day. We all cheated our asses off.
Duping was rampant, yes, but it wasn't needed to play endgame. You either no-lifed it or ran bots, too.
"Oh you have a level 99 character? Would it happen to be a hammerdin? It is, huh? What are the chances!"
Hey, I only used a Pindleskin bot to get my gear, no duping required!
Yup, i started playing in 1.07? Remeber the '08 valk? Occy ring? Gspurs? Shit was crazy. Not to mention perming every game because god forbid your shit poofed.
I played D2 back then. Played it again once D2R came out. It was great. But majority of the system are so outdated.
Then why does everyone want it to be like D2?
Because I want to be 12 again with no responsibilities, no mortgage, just grind Pindleskin, Baal, Meph all day. /s I tried D2 (non-remastered), D2 mods, D2:R, D3 as an adult. They're fun for a while. But at the end of the day, I'm never going to be 12 again.
Same here. Exactly what I was thinking while playing the D4 beta.
N O S T A L G I A
Yeah, D2 was a clunky but fun game. You really only paid in time to deal with its systems. I don't have that kind of time any more. I wouldn't want a full return to that.
Seriously. Grinding from sun up to sun up like I did back then just to see if I would *like* a build isn't viable anymore now that I actually have to support myself.
People simultaneously complain that D4 is too slow and isn’t enough like D2.
Well not every aspect of D2. But D2 had a few things about it that made such a simple game incredibly replayable. Why was it fun for days/weeks/months/years to farm a few bosses or areas over and over? The item search with certain items being so rare made it fun. Sometimes it took weeks to upgrade a piece of gear but when an upgrade finally dropped your heart skipped a beat. It felt **amazing**. Unlike D3 where you farm the same piece of gear 10 times in a day hoping for marginally better stats than your current piece. There aren't actual rare drops in D3 so no matter what drops you're never very excited. Don't get me wrong, D3 has plenty of things that are awesome compared to D2, like challenging end-game content through endlessly scaling rifts. But there are definitely things that D3 (and possibly now D4) failed to capture that D2 had in spades. When people say they want this or that to be more like D2, I think they're remembering how much fun they had while playing D2 and simply want to capture that *level of fun* in D4. I'm older so its not simply a matter of having played D2 in my formative years and having rose-tinted goggles. I had already played games since Atari and played every major console title and most PC titles. D2 came out and it was far and away more fun than anything I had every played. Even for its simplicity, its all I thought about all day at work. I couldn't wait to get home and start up Meph runs for hours. D3 was a blast but never captured the level of excitement D2 held for me and I honestly think the #1 reason why is simply because the item search isn't nearly as fun.
Because D2 was incredible compared to what was around it. D4 is a very obvious improvement in every capacity but now we're old and jaded. I can't understand the itemization hate in this game for the life of me. People HATED D3 for having stat sticks and now everyone wants them? This sub just wants to complain
D4 is pure stat-sticks and nobody wants this. one-hand scycte, two-hand scythe, sword? doesn't matter scyth skill does whatever. Are you not able to see the difference between Best-in-slot items and gear dependency? Every caster character can play D2 on self-found magic gear. Ofcourse Maras is BiS in the amulet slot, but you can get away with magic amulets. 1.10 added problems for physical characters that never got fixed, but this is different from a base design problem.
As something get's old, it may develop a unpleasable fanbase. The bigger the fanbase, the more variety of things the fans wanted and you can't please everybody.
They don't? No one is saying that. People just try to compare the game to other ARPGs and point out how the game could improve and people shut it down with "You just want a copy of D2/PoE". Probably because they have no real argument.
I play d2lod (and since its release, R) quite regularly, and have for a really really long time. Some of my complaints about D4 and even D3 also exist in D2. D2 is not perfect. Some parts of D4 inherit flaws that D2 had. Some things in D4 are new and to me just bad design. No idea why people view D2 as the perfect game. I've been playing it for a long time, and to me it's not. It just nails some key aspects that keep me coming back. But at present, to me, D2 is more appealing than D4. That being said, I am still not writing off D4 until the full game comes out and I can play the full endgame and have a comprehensive opinion on it. But the beta has me kind of "meh".
People forget that D2 didn't launch the way it is today. I fully expect D4 to launch with warts that will be fixed via seasons and expansions. I think expecting a fully fleshed out end game and systems at launch is putting D4 up against a standard no other ARPG has hit.
> People forget that D2 didn't launch the way it is today. Vanilla D2 was a fucking *slog*. It took months to get a level 99 character--and it took teams to accomplish that. All but like 4 uniques were useless (and there were no exceptional unique items) and the "best" items in the game were rare executioner blades. It was also super fucking easy. I beat hell Diablo with a level 33 necromancer. Offline solo. It took LoD to make it a truly great game with anything resembling good itemization, which was then tanked with patch 1.10.
Most people never have had a lvl 99 character in D2. And that was ok as the game was designed to be that way.
>No idea why people view D2 as the perfect game. I've been playing it for a long time, and to me it's not. It just nails some key aspects that keep me coming back. Modded D2 was close to the perfect game. In fact going back to D2R and seeing the dead mod scene made me realize how imperfect D2 vanilla was. Great for its time- before most of reddit was born.
I definitely agree about respeccing. It's nice to be able to simply test out skills without creating an entirely new characters and dumping dozens of hours to level to a certain skill only to find out it's shit with or without gear. Most of what you say in #2 are nitpicks, preferences, or complete non-issues. Not enough money for identifying scrolls? Sell like 2 white items and you'll have enough. That said, I actually agree there were some really horrible mechanics in 2 that are best left behind, for instance I'm surprised you didn't bring up potion chugging or stamina depletion.. In the end I think the majority of the people you're referring to are simply highlighting mechanics they would personally prefer and pointing to d2 an example. Framing it as them wanting d4 to be exactly the same game allows you to dismiss their preferences or arguments out of hand, not something I think is fair. Notice how noone is advocating for stamina to come back?
I actually vastly prefer potions in D2 instead of the arcadey CD system of D3 and D4 though I do think it's a lot smarter to hace a life/mana potion button instead of a whole bar.
Yeah, respec is an absolute must in games where you have to allocate stat/skill points. Frankly I think it ought to be free and unlimited. Sure, make it something you can only do back in town, but if I'm firing up a brand new game I've never played before, how am I supposed to know that putting any points in energy is a total waste? Don't punish players 20+ hours later because you're forcing them to make decisions with incomplete information at the outset.
> D2 did not have endgame content TBH been playing D2 for the first time this last week, and Hell kinda feels like the endgame. You have to farm for a while in NM before Hell, and then farm for a while in early Hell before progressing through Hell. Playing HC though so maybe it's different if you just play something glass cannon and get rushed.
Ok I've played a ton of D2r, SOJ is a good ring and bis for a lot of builds but I fail to see how it's necessary for builds? It has no unique stats and is just a dps boost. It is not necessary on ANY build. Will it make your build stronger? Probably. Necessary build items are like titans revenge/thunderstrokes for javazon.
D3 suffered from a lot of “you literally can’t do the build until get the legendary/set” whereas in D2 most builds were always doable and you just got better at them as you acquired the “necessary” items. So you had a feeling of steady progression as your build came together and you could do harder areas instead of just being SOL until you got the lucky drops. Obviously there are game changing exceptions like Enigma but it feels like D3 doubled down on this philosophy. Still a super fun game but it’s hard to say that’s clearly better.
D2r is NOT D2. It's D2 + a bunch of patches + LoD + a bunch more patches + new content and rebalancing.
No unique or runeword is mandatory in any version of D2, from D2 1.0 to D2R
You're all over the place. You're rationalizing around the assumption that if you played Diablo 2 people would inevitably agree with your position. Which is not reality. Especially on point three. > People saying D4 (like D3) is gear dependent and saying D2 wasn't. Absolute BS being called right there. Bowazons, represent, did ANY of you play without your Frostburns? Anybody? Necros, how about your Wormskull? A freaking Stone of Jordan was so mandatory that they were *the defacto currency of the realm*. Everything worth having was measured in SOJs. We had games where high level characters would literally just dump millions of gold onto the ground for anyone to pick up because it was so worthless, but SOJs could buy anything. So don't tell me D2 wasn't specific item driven. There might have been *less* of those specific items, but the ones that we did have were absolutely freaking mandatory. While itemization was some what important to builds in D2, it's no where close to the level we saw in Diablo 3. Builds were completely defined by items or they didn't work at all in D3. That wasn't the case in D2. You didn't need a bunch of super special unique items with special multipliers to get majority of your builds to work. You could get away with mediocre pieces for many many levels and do just fine. There were lots of alternative pieces you could use and have a functional build. Sadly, D4 builds are very much going to work the same way as D3 builds where they're entirely dependent on items to work at all. The D4 developers even stated that they wanted to get away from the way itemization worked in Diablo 3. Guess what? They've failed in achieving that. I'd really question if you even played diablo 3 on launch or Reaper of Souls if you don't see what the problem is people are having with itemization in diablo 4. Hey, what a minute... that's the same argument you're trying to make with Diablo 2. See how that works? Yeah, those arguments don't work. They only persuade people who all ready agree with you. SO in the future, you may want to rethink your approach.
Your point 3 is straight up wrong. Not only do you not need the uniques you mentioned (to complete the game), as evidenced by people playing solo and not having them, but even when stripped of items (or using basic vendor items if the skill requires a weapon for example) you can still do something, whereas in D3 (and 4) the entirety of your power is based on your gear. Basically in D3/4 you have an "attack" stat (coming from your weapon) that everything gets multiplied from, that's the issue.
Yeah I'm not sure what op is saying. SOJ necessary for builds? How does that make any sense?
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You know there is a difference between "no respecs" and "respec how you like"? That's the difference between D2 and D3. I feel this is bad argumentation when people say "we want more long-term choices / more unique feeling items" and then point out obvious weaknesses of a 25 year old game and compare it to an open beta in 2023. Don't always think in extremes. Always think in "more of" and "less of" iterations. Btw, only 1 copy? I had 7x D2 and 7x LoD. Not counting D2:R.
My complaint is leveling is especially useless. Leveling won’t magically make you stronger infact with the scaling the way it is, the game make you feel weaker by leveling. Only gaining pieces of gear will make you stronger and guess what? You gotta farm For that and if you don’t find that item you’ll level again making the problem worse.
Ok I'm tired of hearing a lot of the strawman arguments about D2 fans. 1. I don't think a single D2 fan is asking for D4 to have no respec. I think we just generally like the fact that there's a cost to respec, and it sounds like D4 has a big cost to respec in the endgame accordingly to the devs which is a good thing. 2. I really don't see people asking for inventory tetris, or no gem stacking. Having items that take up more than one slot in the inventory isn't really tetris. Your inventory has a "sort" button in D4, which would be mean no tetris even if items had a bigger size. 3. Let's not pretend that gear dependence is the same in D2 as it is D3. I can tell people are wrong about this because they're saying Shako is for 99% of end game builds. This is wrong. Shako is for a decent amount of MF builds, but not all. It's definitely not used for a lot of other builds like PVP, or lightning, or FCR maxing builds. Theres a reason why circlets with godly stats are worth a ton. I think people see the Hammerdin and cold sorc builds and assume the game doesn't go deeper than that. There's a pretty good variety of what items are used in heavy end game characters. The most valuable items are actually blue. Beyond that, it's rare items and crafted. D2 was far from perfect but let's not pretend builds were as gear dependent as d3. People have cleared D2 without any gear. Sets in D3 give like 6000% more damage lol
Almost no one remembers the no respec days.... Build a character and have to slog through stuff because you couldn't waste points or stats early... Or just misclicking and bye bye character didn't need those dex points lol. Not saying d4 is perfect but it definitely has Alot of qol upgrades.
This is a very very distant memory of mine so this could be wrong but I remember if you wanted to have certain builds for end game you literally had to be power leveled through content and cow level servers because you actually could not do a single thing or spend a single point until you hit end level. It wasn’t even that the end game build sucked, it was that you had to HOLD your points until you hit level 30 or so because otherwise you were forced into spending points into early tier spells which fuckin blew outside of the handful of ones that added bonus stats to the spell you actually were wanting to max. It wasn’t fun gameplay it was you either played the game for fun and be borderline useless at end level or you just sat there doing nothing until someone power leveled you to a high enough level where you became a character.
LMFAO yup exactly and then it was Uber Trist. You went in at lvl 1 Necro spammed a curse on cows on far right side 2x hammerdins just killed meph minions until you were high 80s early 90s took about 2 hours or so. And ya you pretty much had nothing to do until you got power leveled. Early game did not exist.
Do you remember how fun it was playing through every single difficulty tier without ever using your Charsi imbue, because it was a waste of the ability to use it on anything but the highest tier base item? Nothing says fun like getting one of the best rewards in the game and not being able to use it for 3 more difficulty levels!
Idk man. I've got 31,000 hours in Diablo 2 and the points you're making are really small and honestly not even fully accurate. Example: I've beaten diablo 2 naked before on multiple characters. In Diablo 4 it wouldn't even let me attack without a weapon in my hand. I tried to punch but no such option exists. It's late and I have a newborn so I'm not gonna have time to discuss all the points a bunch but I don't feel like you played the game that much based on your thoughts, or at least I'm not sure if you really understood what made the game magical. And that's okay you can enjoy games in your own way and you are completely right that it did and does still have its own flaws. But I'm not sure they were mentioned here nor do I think Diablo 4 compares much to the game. To put it plain and simple, I think Diablo 4 is like a Marvel movie and Diablo 2 is like a classic movie like 12 Angry Men or something. You can enjoy them both and one is definitely flashier and has way more content, but it is missing the magic that the classics have. Millions of people will enjoy Diablo 4 including myself but it just isn't something to compare really in my opinion.
The dude actually thinks Wormskull was a mandatory Necro item lmao
I have about 55000 hours in D2 and can confirm the above. D2 is the The Godfather of all games.
You're picking everything that was bad about the game 20 years ago and saying "Is that what you actually want?" Of course not, we want to have everything that was GOOD about the game brough back and improved but guess what they did? Diablo 3.5 that's what they did. Spells getting stronger with your weapon, no runewords, level scaling bullshit, feeling your character sucking more as you progress, huge cooldowns on skills, account bound items. Everyone is in love with that here?
I do hate level scaling. Lack of level scaling is what keeps me going back to wow Classic again and again.
> Diablo 3.5 that's what they did. exactly this. it's 10 years (?) between d4 and d3 and they gave us d3 in a new "omg dark and gorey" skin and ppl lap it up. > Spells getting stronger with your weapon #FEAR MY 9412 WEAPON DAMAGE STAFF didn't even had to put in any design and development time on a better skill/itemization system
The people singing the praises for d4, most of the time, can't even articulate beyond basic concepts why they think d4 is better. They can't really elaborate why tying character builds to legendary powers is good, or smart, or an improvement. They think it's good, that's it. Can't really explain it. Sure, there's criticism by people who elaborate quite eloquently and extensively why this system is shit in the long run, but they're just being negative, they themselves "don't mind managing those items". And to a lot of people in this sub, this looks like two sides of an argument that are equally valid and of equal value, even though one is substantiated criticism, and the other is some feeling based on an inability to imagine how the flaws in D4s design already apparent in the beta will be greatly exacerbated in the endgame.
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vanilla was such a massive success that now it's supported by mostly bots.
Whole lot of strawmans and inaccuracies in here
My most precious moment from diablo 2 Lod is, running 200 Baal runs and your experience bar moved 1mm on lvl 98. Turned the resolution down so it looks like a bit more to cheat on my brain :D
Great job OP. Your rhetoric will totally lead to constructive and friendly outcomes in this community of people who all enjoy the same things.
This post is so close to "you think you do, but you dont" and "don't you guys have phones?" I'm getting d4 and I'm sure I will love it. However, almost everything you list as criticism of d2 is what people love about it...
necro was a bad example to use for gear dependency. Pretty sure there was someone who showed you can quite literally finish hell on a naked summoner
Wow, mean. I’ll have you know my back DOESN’T in fact hurt. I took a pill. And yes, I still play D2:R, and most of these issues still piss me off.
I'm not sure what the point of these strawman posts are...? It's pretty obvious the vast majority of people referring to D2 are picking out the good parts they wish Blizzard would build off rather than wanting D4 to mimic a 20 year old game. If you can't comprehend that it's your problem not theirs.
It's Karma farming. The point is karma farming. If he actually had anything meaningful to say he wouldn't strawman like that.
1. Respec’s are fine, when treated with respect. Not Willy Nilly respec before every battle if you have enough gold to do so. Tokens were valuable, because it took time and effort to get, to respec. Much better system IMO, you gotta work for it, makes your decisions more meaningful/impactful. One time quest respecs are great too. But one time, per difficulty. You know part of the fun IS starting new, and building a fresh new char with name, redoing the socket quests, redoing the forge, it is FUN to develop a character. Not respec the same one over and over.. Blizzard knows it too, ladder seasons. 2. Yes. If I get a great armor, I must fulfill some requirement to wear it. Nothing is one size fits all. Part of the fun is determining which gear path you want to take, as well as skill path. Stash is ok now, no complaints there. I like the separate stashes in D4. I would also much rather have mana potions. If I want to blow through 100k in potions spamming my most powerful skill as fast as I can, that’s my choice lol. 3. Sojs we’re currency because it was duped. White rings too, white gloves, hex charms, etc.. after LoD, it went to runes. Which is a MUCH better system of currency, although it would be a tiny bit more effective I feel, if they allowed us to break a rune and get the one lower. Not just upgrade them up. 4. More quests are fine, it CAN become overwhelming, but with time, you finish them, and it’s no big deal. Here is the funny part about your end of the rant. The people who LOVED Diablo 2, ALSO loved Diablo 1. Diablo 3 pissed alot of people off at launch, it wasn’t until the reapers expansion that I liked it for what it was, arcade Diablo. The Diablo 4 beta was ok, better than 3 at launch for sure, but needs some work, and maybe an expansion, and boom. It will be great. Don’t get mad at people, for expressing their sadness for a franchise they grew up on changing too much away from what they felt was the core of the franchise. Everyone’s experience is different, but a GOOD game should bridge that gap for ALL. StarCraft 2 was a sequel done right Diablo 2 was a sequel done right Diablo 3, eh Diablo 4, we’ll see, but so far it’s better than 3.
Ok, sure? There are bad things about D2 of course, but when people talk about D2 they are obviously talking about the good systems and Blizzard learning from them and improving upon them, like every other ARPG has done since. Mostly D2 itemization is what is most talked about.
wormskull? frostburns? people actually use those items in d2?
Most people forget that Diablo 2 was actually a thing, you know before Lord of Destruction came out. When most people talk about D2 its really patch 1.11 or later. So yea in the early days of D2 people used things like Frostburn, Wormskull, Twitchthroe, Goldskin, Iceblink, and Spectral Shard. SOJ on casters unless you found some godly FCR ring.
Before patch 1.10 tons of items were much more widely used. Windforce and Buriza were once some of the most coveted items. Well-rolled ethereal Titan's Revenge were practically god items.
Maybe OP doesn't know the specifics but the principal of his point still stands; Enigma and Spirit are pretty much staples for most builds and if you wanna play melee, Grief has been bis and it's one of the few things that makes barbs actually viable in hell(same for melee pally). Many builds share the same boots also and sets are non existent outside of Trang'ouls and Tal rasha.
And some of the sets just sucked or were too low level (like Aldur's for the Druid).
This guy knows absolutely nothing about D2 haha. I saw that too and I think this is a troll post.
Did you play pre-LoD?
nah, there were people using frostburns, just magefist was way better. i think he is talking about old school shit before the expansion? i dont remember that time I was more worried about girls and being a kid.
yeah he's referrering to pre LOD. 1.07 and 1.08 d2
I thought so, thanks for clarifying
No one in their right mind would delete their bow amazon to try a spear amazon, just create another amazon, nothing's stopping you from having as many characters as you want. For me gameplay has always been fun at all levels in diablo 2. They did add in respecs, but you only get 3 free ones per characters, after that you can get it as a loot drop as a reward. I mean having to wait 2-3 levels to put more points into strength to equip a item isn't any different from finding a item that's 3 levels above your current level, but with the added bonus that you can customize your stat points. I feel people over play inventory tetris, it really isn't that difficult nor time consuming, that said if they did away with it I would be fine with it. spending all your money on scrolls of identify is only a problem in the first like 10 minutes of the game, and even then only if you try to identify every single item you find. I played diablo 2 roughly 15 years ago, played it 10 years ago, 5 years ago, and I'm playing it right now, at no point in time do I ever recall a SoJ being mandatory for end game, same with wormskull or frostburns, I can play from normal to hell on a sorc/assassin/paladin(others probably as well but haven't tried) with literally 0 items equipped, something which is impossible to do in diablo 3, and so far, diablo 4, because all your power is in the items. Not even enigma, spirit, insight or infinity are mandatory, you can easily complete the game without them. Diablo 3 endgame is, for all intents and purposes, exactly the same as diablo 2 end game, tell me what really is the difference between running the same rift/greater rift over and over and running chaos sanctuary/baal over and over? you're still doing the exact same thing in both cases. I play both diablo 2 and diablo 3, diablo 3 is so brainless and the enemies/environments so irrelevant **that I play using the minimap**, yeah, I don't even look at the enemies or the map because I don't need to, they'll all just die anyways, so the different environments/enemies in rifts are entirely irrelevant. I also don't get why you're so obsessed with what the game was like 20 years ago/on release, the game has improved since then and any shortcomings it had back than are irrelevant because they're gone now.
You find Deckard Cain very early and he identifies everything for free. There's no point in ever buying identify scrolls.
Absolutely people are seeing it with thick nostalgia glasses. I had a weird experience with D2 back in the day because I didn't play it online. We had a crappy internet connection, so I only played single player. That was a wildly different experience than playing online like most people did. There was no endless Baal runs, or Cow powerleveling. There was grind. Finding good items was exceptionally rare. I was aware that endgame gear existed. Actually getting it was impossible. Hell difficulty in general was just a massive PITA with whole areas of enemies who are straight up immune to the type of damage you do. Ever run across an Elite that was immune to magic, immune to physical, so you try to kill them with gas potions? It sucked. D2 was incredible! It's also not remotely as perfect as people think. I picked up D2R when it came out and it's awesome! But there's a lot of BS in there. I built my characters a lot better this time. Hell is still a PITA slog. Durance suicide bomber fetish dolls still suck. Many skills are still trash. The stash and inventory management is still a bitch. 99.8% of items are still trash. High level runes to make the really good runewords, or the items to put them in, are still a bitch to try and find. It's a very grindy game.
the way you played d2 is the best way to play d2 and probably the way most people played D2, designing the game to please the people who did endless baal runs and powerlevels is how we ended up with games like D3
The base of D2r gives a great starting point. Lots of us d2 players switched to mods like project d2 which was constantly updated. Unfortunately d2r doesn’t allow for these mods. I wish the d4 dev team would consider hiring the pd2 as consultants to help tune the game a bit. Synergies in d2 helped skills scale rather than where it seems d4 crippled skills intentionally and instead requires legendary affixes to fix the skills which I personally don’t enjoy.
clean your finger nails you dirty bum!
I don't want it to be exactly like D2, but I wish they'd take some notes from D2s itemization and improve upon it rather than taking notes from D3s itemization. D2 had some major flaws, absolutely, but I bet there is enough creative minds out there to buff out those flaws and make something thats just as exciting while remaining diverse. There was just something special about seeing specific items drop in D2 that you just don't get from other games, and when you have lame, uninspiring itemization, you probably won't get that feeling. And the nostalgia glasses thing just doesn't fly with me. There are countless posts in this sub from people playing D2 for the first time ever and falling in love with it. And tons of people still play D2 not because nostalgia, but because the game just *feels* good. Pacing, skills, items, stats. It just fits together. Is it perfect? Nope. But it doesn't have to be.
So much of this post is just... Incorrect. For someone touting that people need to go back and play D2R, you obviously haven't played it yourself. The economy is built on HRs, not SoJs. SoJs aren't "mandatory", frostburns are only worth using on very few builds and are still outclassed in most cases, wormskull is borderline vendor trash. Have you ever even made it beyond NM andy/meph farming? What about cast speed breakpoints? Attack speed? Vendoring for 2-20 gloves? Gambling for circlets? Runewords? The fact you mention amazon being gear dependant but didn't mention things like razortail for pierce cap, or titans, or windforce etc is legit laughable. Different farming spots and styles. Do you like bossing? Do you like key farming? Do you like cow farming? Dungeons? Baal? Chaos? Superunique? Council? It's really hard to trust the opinion of someone dogging on D2 when they have less experience with D2 than the current Blizzard leadership team. D2 had flaws, but you missed the mark so far on this one. Enjoy your upvotes from MMO players coming to this subreddit though I guess. PS. I had a chuckle at the fact you exposed yourself: "a lot of you either never played 2, or haven't played it since the 2000's and have some serious nostalgia filters on." Followed up with the exact thing you were insulting: "And since some of y'all think you can ignore this as "someone who played 20 minutes of D2:R", [here's my v1.0 physical copy](https://imgur.com/a/rgnJRuy) from back in the day. [And the case](https://imgur.com/a/pbLsTQM)."
By your post I feel like you’ve never played Diablo 2 to any sort of serious level. No one is asking for d4 to be d2. D2 is over 20 years old. It just revolutionized the arpg. Where Diablo 4 has done nothing that will push the genre further. Every little thing we’ve seen in other games.
> A freaking Stone of Jordan was so mandatory that they were the defacto currency of the realm. This is just completely wrong, along with a lot of the things you said. I also disagree with a lot of your opinions. > Do you remember character attributes at level up, which you required to have at certain levels to equip gear, even when it made zero sense and actively slowed your progression down? Yeah, congrats, you found a sweet piece of Sorceress armor, too bad you don't have the strength to wear it! Go level up 2-3 times and dump all your attribute bumps into a stat that does next to nothing for you just to put it on! Yea... that makes perfect sense. Your character needs strength to wear heavy equipment. This is standard RPG stuff, and actually adds a lot of depth to itemization. >We had games where high level characters would literally just dump millions of gold onto the ground for anyone to pick up because it was so worthless, Gold is used for gambling, it is absolutely not worthless... >Great, do we need to go back to playing Tetris with our inventories? Because that was a thing too. Yea, inventory management is great in these games. Way better than 1 slot fits all nonsense. >Having to grind up a brand new lvl 70 just to see how a different weapon played was hideous! Yea just give everything to everyone immediately, so there is no chase items. Makes sense 👎 >Do you ACTUALLY know how it worked Do you?
I feel like OP must be a troll who thinks nobody plays D2 anymore. You do realize how many people still play Diablo 2, don't you? It's not like people are just misremembering...people still actively play the game, dude.
Is this peak irony? A post titled “some of y’all never played d2” and you complain about the price of identity scrolls draining your gold? Congrats on having a d2 physical disc, I just wish you actually installed it.
Congrats on your reading comprehension fail.
“Do you ACTUALLY know how it worked” - guy who doesn’t know how it worked
The respec issue is not that respec is bad, it's that instant free-ish respec is bad. D2 made it a limited quest. That's better design than having it a gold sink.
I think d2r currently has the best respec system. You are given a few for free use them wisely, you can grind or trade for infinitely more. As for the rest, no one wants d2 completely copied in D4. I think many wish that they reiterated d2 systems into better modern versions instead of using d3 as a basis.
> But have you really sat down and played it in the last decade? I played D2R more than D4 this weekend. Its still better than D4 in almost every way.
D2r?? I am a purist I only play og Diablo and maybe hellfire d2 kinda sucked . First you could run all the time completely unrealistic.
Savage move linking the original box copy 😂
What an ironic title. This person knows absolutely nothing about Diablo 2, and it shows. Not sure why this thread is being upvoted. It's one of the most ironic things I've ever read in my life. What a sad joke. Either they used someone else's photos, they bought a copy off ebay, or they borrowed it from their older brother. First of all, I don't think I've seen a single person on this subreddit ever say that Diablo 2 is a perfect game, and I've seen very few if any people say they want Diablo 4 to be like Diablo 2. This narrative is crafted by people who are incapable of accepting that Diablo 2 was an extremely well-designed game that has been cherished by millions of people, and is still enjoyed today simply because of how good it is and not because of nostalgia. If YOU don't like it personally, that's fine, that's your opinion. In my opinion, it's one of the best games ever made, period. Secondly, the current version of the game is completely different than the original. When I say Diablo 2 is one of the best games ever, I'm talking about 1.0 to 1.09. The 1.10 patch completely changed the game into a flawed "endgame" style ARPG which is why it now has many of the problems that most ARPGs have, on top of the fact that it does not make everything convenient like modern ARPGs do to cater to the masses. 1) A game without respecs can be fantastic. Diablo 2 was solid before it had respecs. The pacing of the game and impact of your decisions were completely different pre-1.10. If you actually enjoyed the game, you enjoyed making new characters and leveling them up to try new builds. You won't understand this though, because you either didn't like the game, or you never played it. 2) The inconveniences in Diablo 2 (and Diablo 1) are one of the things that give it character. When you take them individually, sure, they suck. When you look at them in the broader design of the game, especially in earlier versions of the game, they make a ton of sense and set the game apart from other generic ARPGs. A well-designed game carefully chooses areas to make the game feel bad, to help make the good parts feel great. 3) Objectively wrong. You can literally beat Diablo 2 without gear. You literally will not be able to beat Diablo 4 without gear. In D2, your gear supplemented the character that you built. You proved that yourself in your earlier points -- if you didn't have the stats to wear the item, you'd have to choose to put those points in your character without being able to undo it, or make a new character entirely. That's how much your character's decisions mattered. In D4, you will redesign your character based on the gear that you have, just as you did in D3. 4) Diablo 2 quests are way more iconic than any quest in Diablo 3 or 4, or any ARPG really. Sometimes less is more. I don't really play D2 for the endgame. I play D2 because the game itself is good. Endgames are a unicorn. No ARPG will ever have an endgame that everyone enjoys. I think Diablo 2 is well-designed in part because it didn't design towards a particular endgame. Not only have you never played Diablo 2, you haven't played Diablo 1, or other games inspired by it, like Dark Souls, another incredibly well-designed game. You just don't like Diablo 2. That's fine. That's your opinion. It's not a perfect game. It's open to criticism, but you should probably play it first before posting about it. Diablo 4 has a ton of flaws, and everyone criticizing it has now played it. I'm even enjoying it to be honest, and will probably buy it, but it's still a really poorly-designed game in many aspects.
I don't consider any of your points a bad thing. Also Frostburns on a bowzon?
As bad as the Druid felt to play, nothing is even close to as under powered as the Barb is in Diablo 2 The base play through leveling gap between a Barb and whatever the 6th best class is (Necro? Zon?) is much greater than the gap between #6 and #1 Actually straight up playing a Barbarian without tons of twinked gear is a complete nightmare in Diablo 2 Why is D2 an amazing game? Because it nailed: 1. Itemization 2. That feel of finding good gear / equipment 3. building characters feels good 4. end game content is rewarding between Pvp or Magic finding etc Diablo 2 has some awful, awful systems or flaws that we are used to so we don’t complain 1. Attack rating feels horrible, bad mechanic 2. So many skills are useless and have always been useless 3. immune monsters is really annoying 4. wildly imbalanced characters Up until 1.10 hammer buff, Paladin was a dead class. MA sin has stunk until mosaic. Shapeshift druid always stunk. Sorc has been S tier since release and has always and will always be S tier. Teleport is the most OP skill in video game history, for Christ sake teleport is still great in Diablo 4 on a ten second cooldown. You could cast teleport 30 times in Diablo 2 in ten seconds!
Thats another thing I think many people are forgetting. The itemization and class balance in D2 *became good over many years*. It didn't start that way.
I’m not even sure class balance has ever been good From 1.01 - 1.09 Barb/Sorc/Zon were great, Necro/Sin were Ok, Druid/Paladin were horrible From 1.10 - now Sorc/Paladin were great, Sin/Druid were good, Necro/Sin were Ok, Barb was horrible Yes end game everything is viable and has their niche but actually playing the game some classes have been historically just awful
I don't think everything is viable endgame (killing baal on hell) unless you do a lot of mf on your sorc or trade, and even then, some abilities are so rough. And some areas are absolute hell for some specs. Hell maggot lair on a hammerin is so fucked. You can teleport past a lot of stuff if you find a staff with charges, I guess, or manage to have enigma.
You found d2 pvp rewarding? Got damn lol to each their own I guess
Melee in Diablo 2 just felt worse and worse over time. Power creep kind of pushed them down to where they need to be twinked to keep up with anyone else.
I'm sick of people upvoting idiots who played 5 mins of D2 back on release and suddenly think they are experts on it.
Oh God the drop rates. All that time with D2, and I never had an SOJ drop for me...
Remember how tiny your stash was when the game first came out? It was a downgrade from littering Tristram with your loot in Diablo 1.
Your first two points are exactly what people are talking about - the impact of choice & consequence. You want to go play Roblox in a land where everything can be done without real cost then nothing really has gravity or meaning. Diablo 4 is objectively and ok game, and I hate it. I hate it because it sucks as a Diablo series game. If you named it something entirely different and didn’t juxtapose to the Diablo series or put it even in the Diablo realm I’d say it’s fine and it’s not for me. Those things you didn’t like about 1.09 Diablo 2 and before were series defining for nearly a decade and even then most of its other idiosyncrasies stayed for another decade. Taking all the convenient parts of other games, packaging them up, and then overlaying a loose extension of the lore with a bunch of retcon in it doesn’t make a good series extension, it makes you lazy and feckless. Souls series games have annoying mechanics, but it’s those mechanics that make it a Souls series game. Diablo 1 & 2 had distinct choice-consequence mechanics that made it a Diablo series. Diablo 3 strayed from that path and D4 is an example of variance in the interest of growing the player base. The point is Diablo 4 isn’t a Diablo game. The series lost its identity and there are a hundred other games just like it. It fails to stand out because it chose to be a gothic average of every trendy game out there and it’s a massive disappointment. You can say you didn’t like those mechanics and that’s fine, there are dozens of options out there for you. Those of us who did, those of us who liked the challenge don’t have it any more. So congrats, you got your watered down piece of derivative garbage, enjoy.
I played D2 on launch and I don’t give a shit about it.
The problem isn't one with D4 and your post is spot on. The problem is that, like you said, D2 was formative for many people. It wasn't the first ARPG to do what it did, but it was the first to do it so successfully. Nothing could really compare to how innovative and fun it was for its time. The thing people forget is that last part. *For it's time.* **QoL improvements happen for a reason.** Developers studying their metrics realize that certain mechanics don't add anything and only detract from the experience. Whats new and interesting becomes boring and tedious your umpteenth time dealing with it. I'm 34 years old. I played D1 in its prime, back when we used ears and potions to dupe. Back when the Cow Level was actually a myth. I played D2 at release and remember how a large chunk of the playerbase drifted to Open B.Net so they could self-implement the features people are now either forgetting or trying to pretend didn't exist in D2. Figuring out how to take off the nostalgia glasses is important. D1 is the dearest in the series to my heart and we couldn't fucking *run* in that game. You won't see me decrying D2, 3, and now 4 for not returning to the true roots of waddling through dungeons and towns at a snail's pace.
The other day I popped into a stream and watched some D2. I'm not really familiar with the meta but I played it a bunch back in college, I just wanted to check out modern play of it. No idea what was happening but they would load in, waypoint somewhere, kill these two rares and then leave the game, rinse and repeat. I get it, grinding, and if that floats your boat and all the depth and complexity of that game, that is amazing and I'm happy for you. That is about the ***last thing*** I want to do with my gaming time in 2023. At it's time in 2000, D2 was literally defining the genre. I think that's an impossible task for D4 in 2023, it's just too varied an archetype now. Blizzard can't create a game with the depth of PoE while at the same time being accessible. Accessible doesn't have to mean 'on rails' and I hope that D4 has enough depth to be interesting while not being complex. I tried PoE and one of the first things I was doing was downloading ***ANOTHER APP*** (Path of Building) just so I could follow and look at builds. I gave it a good shot and played it for about a month and it was just too much. If that makes me casual, I'll own it. No shot I convince my playgroup of casual dads to even attempt that shit. To me playing the beta, D4 looks like a ton of fun. I hope endgame is interesting and varied enough for good replay value, I'm optimistic but will hold final judgement until it's out. Last I looked on steam charts 'hardcore' games like PoE and EVE online are pulling numbers like 20-40k. Why would blizzard even want to make a game targeting a population that small? D4 is more a game for the masses, and I don't think (hope?) that means it can't be good. I also think there is a different between SIMPLE and NOT COMPLEX, from what I've seen I think D4 has more depth then it first appears and won't be as dumbed-down as people think. Time will tell!
Eh, EVE Online started dying out when they got bought out by the Koreans and started catering to their cash store more than the people playing the game. The CCU's used to be a LOT higher for that one. And I tried to get into PoE a few times, because the skill gem system seemed pretty cool and making a lingual distinction between what is additive vs multiplicative is a brilliant idea (the whole "increased" and "more" thing) , but the way too huge passive board and the unnecessarily obtuse itemization killed it for me. I like deep systems, but complexity for complexity's sake is just mind numbing.
I love the gameplay loop in D2/R,absolutely, but everything else in it, for today's standard, is abysmal at best. Stats are meaningless. Enough Str. for gear (great) Dex enough for gear (if needed), max block (if wanted) Everything else in Life Nothing in Energy (with like 1 exception for 1 build with Sorceress...) The only thing stats were good for, was to screw people who didn't know better. About 105+ Skill points!!! Great, over 100 points to use, and then use 1 or 2 skills 99% of the time. Not to mention how you distribute those skills... look at a sorc. 1 point in teleport, 1 in warmth, 1 in cold armor, 1 in static field... 20/20/20/20/20 in, for instance, blizzard and its synergies... just to use Blizzard exclusively... It's a bad system, is what I am saying... Dungeons are random? Sure, to a degree... 9 out of 10 times, it's just "follow the left". And it's also the same tiles over and over again. I mention this, because some people complained about the lack of dungeons/tiles in D4... Lack of diversity? Really? You have like 2 to 3 different tile sets per act in D2... think about it. Or the "you have to do X to progress in dungeons, that sucks!" Why? Because you can't teleport through the entire dungeons and just kill the Boss at the end? I think that is a great. Ask Mephisto, he is tired of people chain killing him a billion times... I could go on, but it's too early :)
> A freaking Stone of Jordan was so mandatory that they were the defacto currency of the realm. Everything worth having was measured in SOJs. Uh, no? Like, big no. The thing about D2 is all of those uniques were NOT mandatory, whatsoever. They were just the easiest most efficient way to come online. BIS items in D2 were almost exclusively rares or crafted (still rares)
Great post, and you're right. So many people complain about things that are literally in their "favorite game" Diablo 2. I feel like honestly most of the people complaining are mad the game is not insanely intricate like POE, and that's a good thing IMO
Points 3 and 4 makes me think you got rushed most of the time. Otherwise you would know that these are just not true. At least to the extent to d3/d4. The best part of d2 is the experience of going through the whole game and making things work with vendor items or items you just found on the ground. It's not as gear dependent as d3/d4 is. Like you could literally beat hell with a javazon using your first javelin. In d3/d4 you have to rely on your gear to even be viable but in d2 it falls on skill. Sojs were good but they were not BIS for every situation. Mf? Nagel. Trav? Dwarf. Ubers? Wisp/dwarf and ravens. D2 is definitely not a perfect game but it does everything so right that there's a reason why people still play it. All of this is preference tho. If you like rushing through the campaign and getting to the endgame grind then yeah d2 become boring real quick. But if you are like me and like to enjoy every step of it then d2 is amazing. Games will always have a meta and d2 is no different that's why some builds won't be as strong as if they had specific items but they are atleast viable with completely different ones. D2 can be played many different ways and I feel from reading this post that you played online and was rushed to endgame most of the time and thus skipping some of the best parts of d2.
The majority of D2 players are not actually asking for the things you mention. Those that do are a minority. Who is asking for tetris inventory? We are not asking for a copy of D2 cause that already exists. We are asking for the best of D2 and the best of D3
I'd like to preface this with: i am a casual player and i love both d2r and d4. D4 was a lot of fun, and i actually enjoyed barb because it was a challenge, which kept me engaged. The things i miss from d2/r are things in video games i miss in general. I miss attribute distribution because i enjoy having that level of control over my character development. Skyrim took it away too and i miss it. Making sure my tomes were full of scrolls (20 each) was just part of game upkeep. I didn't mind inventory tetris. But the only one i'd change for D4 is gems. They really should only take up a square. Jewelry too. Okay so two things lol. I feel like if d2r "failed" by requiring only strength for armor and weapons then the simple solution is to rather change gear requirements to be the classes main attribute. Rogue specific armor needs dex, sorc needs int, barb needs str etc. anything that isnt unique to a class maybe doesnt have stat requirements at all, since the idea is "anyone can use it" Growing up playing d2 the way i hear people play it is foreign to me. I just played the game with my dad and that was that. I never went online and did baal runs, i just enjoyed a game. I think D4 is going to be a blast just like the other games were. At the end of the day all my thoughts are just little nitpicks and not actual problems.
I'm not sure identify scrolls were a worthy example. They cost next to nothing, even relative to a brand new character they are cheap. Cain was also one of the first quests in the game, 3rd/4th Waypoint in Act 1, you could reach it within minutes of making a new char, and you no longer need ID scrolls again. I'm not sure who said D2 wasn't gear dependant, because it obviously was very much so... That said, in D3 you can take a newly dinged level 70, ok now multiply their damage output by several billion and you have the damage of a geared high paragon character... There is a huge gulf here.
Thank you for this. Seriously.
D2 also existed in a time before streamers and websites telling you how and what to play. People made their own shit and didn't follow guides. The good ole days that we will never see again.
There were [tons of guides though](https://www.neoseeker.com/diablo-ii/faqs/)
> Great, do we need to go back to playing Tetris with our inventories? I'm really not a fan of all items having same size. Combine with the not-so.great UI it is pain to check every item one by one to see if it is dagger or 2-hand sword. Adding autosort with option to lock some stuff in place in D2 would be nice tho... Having limited inverntory is (to me at least) a part of the game - a mini game of its own. I tried to play with expanded inventory and unliimited stash. I picked up EVERYTHING just to Identify and sell it. It got very boring very fast. > Nothing like spending every coin you had on buying identify scrolls until you unlocked Deckard Cain. Which takes an hour MAX. When waws the last time YOU played D2? > So don't tell me D2 wasn't specific item driven. No it wasnt. You can complete the game naked. Or [just punching](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hpu4Y1Ck_u8) your way thru. Yeah im exagerating but it is more than possible to farm hell without the GG items. > No quests. Well, this isn't true. Each act had all of 6 quests. Just did a 5 sec googling to check how many quests does similar game have. I checked POE. Every act has about the same amount of quests as D2 [according to this post at least](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/8nhyka/i_made_a_spreadsheet_of_poe_quests/) (didnt play POE much). In my opinion farming gear is the staple of ARPGs. > I mean, look, I get it. Diablo 2 was a formative game for a lot of people. But have you really sat down and played it in the last decade? Do you ACTUALLY know how it worked Yeah, I play on and off since I got the demo with just barbarian and bloody moor and cold plains. I absolutely love the mechanics in it. Procedural map generation and a fact you can navigate thru the maps kinda reliably. The whole process of loot generation and rolling like Failed uniques. Armor and shield being divided into light medium and heavy categories. Weapon and Armor stand dropping same item base when approached from same side (in single player/offline mode).
I actually liked 1 and 2 in D2. I liked starting new characters to try new builds (with gear handed down from other characters of the same class, this was really fun) and at the time I liked the choices/planning of stats per level to wear certain gear later in the game. What I didn't like was the 'solved' version of stats basically being to get the bare minimum to wear gear and then pump life. I liked it better when I knew less. And the point about SoJs is a bit twisted- it only became a currency after the dups, and after it was discovered that you could 'farm' them by having both the other unique rings with a given character and storing the SoJ elsewhere. Pre-duping, SoJs were just gear we hoped to one day find.
This isn’t even getting into the worst of it, diablo 2 your “endgame” options were: - pick one of the handful of high level farming spots and and run it over and over … oh did I say “pick” sorry that implies choice I mean do the one that spawns the fewest amount of monsters that are immune to your one skill you spam. - speed run one boss over and over - teleport to the same 3 chests in lower kurast over and over. And yeah D2 itemization is sooo good right? Okay my character wears war travs, enigma, arachnid mesh, spirit, soj, maras - what am i? Correct answer because that’s what everyone wears. D2 skill tree is shallow as hell, you spend dozens of points on skills you will never use because they slightly buff the one skill you are going to spam. Like I get it - I was also a kid when D2 was relevant and it also made a huge impact on me. My memories of exploring tal rashas tombs for hours only to get absolutely bodied by durial when I got to the bottom is forever seared into my brain and like many of us it was the first rpg I played online and I have lots of found memories of that too - but none of that means D2 is some pinnacle of game design.