Campaign mode basically only saves checkpoint/quest/waypoint progress. It doesn't remember what mobs you killed or even what spawned. Assuming they aren't going through the work to implement full zone saving just because you complained about it, you can't really get much more than remembering which bounties you did towards completing an act. For example, saving rift progress wouldn't work because you could just farm the same rift mobs all day long minus the rift boss.
What would be more reasonable/likely is a reconnect feature. Keep a game alive for a short time if it would've ended due to disconnect, and let players rejoin it on login. Wasn't something like this eventually implemented in D2 even?
Game incentivizing people playing alone in parties is indeed a "problem." Simply because you aren't really cooperating if you aren't anywhere near each other, and there's no reason to reward that behavior over single player.It was a sorry state of affairs in Diablo 2, they tried hard to avoid it in D3 for a while, now its back but I doubt it will be around for ever.
With talks about ladder going on I think that this amazing thread once again needs some attention.
Okay.
No progression = Dead on Arrival.
The number of people willing to spend a lot of time on single-player competition will be very, very small if they can't progress during it. You check out a challenge every now and then, but then get back to farming 24/7 bored out of your mind till you get a substantial upgrade to test a challenge. And it's questionable spending a lot of dev time on something that only sees a little use.
By contrast the whole point of D2 ladder / PoE races, IS nothing but progression. The resets let you experience dramatic progression again that inevitably tapers off in the eternal endgames. Sure there's some similar cosmetic reward at the end, but you push towards that reward by progressing.
I liked this idea just to imagine the siliness of your existing characters retiring and you have to go fight them with new ones... but its exactly that which makes a D1->D2 repeat unfeasible. People expect to keep growing their existing toons in expansions.
But I imagine the point of the ending is more that, in general, the nephalem are an issue. Without the worldstone there will just be more and more of them getting powerful, and they have evil in their nature so can always be a threat. Therefore the real xp2 bad guy will be a nephalem making a bid to ascend to power, possibly even Kulle (who is notoriously hard to kill, even the crusader comments on it now).
Of course events might still be manipulated that your char ends up taking out a good portion of heaven for some reason.
A big part of the futility theme though has been ongoing sequelitis. Every previous ending was a cliffhanger, in part because the teams had in mind the sequel they were developing. (see what Blizzard North was doing on "their" D3.) If they aren't in any rush to push out a Diablo 4 that is basically more of the same (and I'm not sure they would be), then they might not choose that kind of ending for xpack2.
D3's ending was the first time we had some "finality" or even happiness, even if there was in fact unfinished business for the expansion to pick up. So if Xpack2 wants to pull something more "final" like D3 vanilla did, they certainly could. And they can just as easily make something up later to continue the series as well.
Even if Demons/Angels are not eradicated for eternity, I am expecting some kind of radical turn or change that significantly weakens them for a long time, with the implication that humanity now stands on their own. For how long who knows, and of course humans/nephalem by nature are not necessarily good, but it seems to be the conclusion we are driving for after having killed THE most powerful demon and angel. Again they can always twist it much later when they decide they want to exploit the franchise again.
The GAH is what "ruined" the game, because people went gold hunting and selling items to progress rather than finding anything for themselves. The real-money side has been a purely ideological issue that few actually playing the game ever gave a damn about. Some people surely "ruined" the game by buying their way out of upgrades, but I can't recall even seeing one person actually complain about that, whereas tons of people complained about the other situation I described. There's a reason that we're looking at a total AH shutdown, not just the RMAH side.
Every ARPG games you will play will have trading (PoE, Diablo, Dungeon Sieges, etc. - the list can go long).
There is no point in item binding for non-secure systems (I.E. lacking servers to store characters) because there are no real economies in such games. Legit trading never amounts to anything more than between friends or relatively small communities, and "black markets" never develop in the majority of ARPGs where you can train up anything you want instantly.
Scenario 1) Gold sellers, in particular the asian gold farmers realize they need to dump their stock while they can, cold prices plummet as the market is flooded.
If it drops to a certain point I bet the rest hold onto their gold to sell post-AH through third party sites. Gems still look like they can sink gold pretty nicely.
I suspect in Blizzards mind, the bounties and eventually rifts are the whole point of adventure mode. That is what gives you "guidance" and "direction" of where to go, rather than it truly being there for free roaming like D2 fans might see the feature. Blizzard likely see this as especially important for public games, so everyone is encouraged to play together instead of trying to solo somewhere, and all the more important to focus the much smaller number of D2 vanilla players together. Also consider that the public game pools are not separate, act I-IV vanilla and RoS toons will be playing together, so they would have to make separate vanilla and RoS games, public matchmaking would be split, you couldn't follow your buddies into RoS adventure mode, etc.So having decided to keep bounties out of vanilla, I see some justification for that decision.
Difficulty is a different story however. There ought to be something comprable to the existing MP10, and that's as simple as scaling torment down to lvl 60. Even if the balance baseline at 60 gets somewhat off kilter, there's still no justification for sending people back to the equivalent of MP1.
To say that RMAH was good because poor people could make some money is a bit ridiculous. Truly poor people can't afford broadband and a gaming PC, nor can they afford buying the game.
That's why their boss provides them such amenities at an office.
This is not a thing in subsistence living regions, but it is a real thing in urban China.
The names are "breaking with tradition" because the actually difficulty levels are as well. Hard or Expert is not going to be +30 ML like Nightmare was, nor will it require you to beat the previous mode. So the name change is likely there to reset expectations after D2/D3.
I don't know, man. I've shown Tristram Theme to a few people that never played Diablo, and all of them instantly recognised the greatness of that song.
But to be fair, that's just an amazing song. Not everything can be golden
This. All the action in Diablo 1 happened underground, but that isn't the music anyone remembers.
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What would be more reasonable/likely is a reconnect feature. Keep a game alive for a short time if it would've ended due to disconnect, and let players rejoin it on login. Wasn't something like this eventually implemented in D2 even?
No progression = Dead on Arrival.
The number of people willing to spend a lot of time on single-player competition will be very, very small if they can't progress during it. You check out a challenge every now and then, but then get back to farming 24/7 bored out of your mind till you get a substantial upgrade to test a challenge. And it's questionable spending a lot of dev time on something that only sees a little use.
By contrast the whole point of D2 ladder / PoE races, IS nothing but progression. The resets let you experience dramatic progression again that inevitably tapers off in the eternal endgames. Sure there's some similar cosmetic reward at the end, but you push towards that reward by progressing.
But I imagine the point of the ending is more that, in general, the nephalem are an issue. Without the worldstone there will just be more and more of them getting powerful, and they have evil in their nature so can always be a threat. Therefore the real xp2 bad guy will be a nephalem making a bid to ascend to power, possibly even Kulle (who is notoriously hard to kill, even the crusader comments on it now).
Of course events might still be manipulated that your char ends up taking out a good portion of heaven for some reason.
D3's ending was the first time we had some "finality" or even happiness, even if there was in fact unfinished business for the expansion to pick up. So if Xpack2 wants to pull something more "final" like D3 vanilla did, they certainly could. And they can just as easily make something up later to continue the series as well.
Even if Demons/Angels are not eradicated for eternity, I am expecting some kind of radical turn or change that significantly weakens them for a long time, with the implication that humanity now stands on their own. For how long who knows, and of course humans/nephalem by nature are not necessarily good, but it seems to be the conclusion we are driving for after having killed THE most powerful demon and angel. Again they can always twist it much later when they decide they want to exploit the franchise again.
Take a cue from "competitive" brick games: every monster you kill summons a fresh one on your opponent...
I suspect in Blizzards mind, the bounties and eventually rifts are the whole point of adventure mode. That is what gives you "guidance" and "direction" of where to go, rather than it truly being there for free roaming like D2 fans might see the feature. Blizzard likely see this as especially important for public games, so everyone is encouraged to play together instead of trying to solo somewhere, and all the more important to focus the much smaller number of D2 vanilla players together. Also consider that the public game pools are not separate, act I-IV vanilla and RoS toons will be playing together, so they would have to make separate vanilla and RoS games, public matchmaking would be split, you couldn't follow your buddies into RoS adventure mode, etc.So having decided to keep bounties out of vanilla, I see some justification for that decision.
Difficulty is a different story however. There ought to be something comprable to the existing MP10, and that's as simple as scaling torment down to lvl 60. Even if the balance baseline at 60 gets somewhat off kilter, there's still no justification for sending people back to the equivalent of MP1.
That's why their boss provides them such amenities at an office.
This is not a thing in subsistence living regions, but it is a real thing in urban China.
This. All the action in Diablo 1 happened underground, but that isn't the music anyone remembers.