/sarcasm
It seems like a ton of people wish D3 was a D2 clone, because "it was better".
This brings me to a couple of comments...
-I remember Arctic gear dropping from hell Baal, and 99% of rares in the game being junk..
-I remember having to carry around a tome of tps and id scrolls(or talk to cain) to identify these crappy items just to find out that they are only valuable as ground decorations or gold... which had only 2 purposes in the game...(repairs and resurrecting mercs)
-I remember the only story for D2 (other than the cut-scenes), occurred if you manually listened to each npc, during which you could do NOTHING.
-I remember only a handful of viable end-game builds
-I remember having to farm for HR's which were rare as !@#% just to trade for gear that made your cookie-cutter build efficient.
-I remember much less dynamic combat.
-etc..
How can people say that this game sucks in comparison?
I can't explain why really, it's kind of weird. All I remember is that D2 consumed me for a very, very long time. It must've done something right.
D3 on the other hand, got me just over 100 or so hours before I got bored of it. I don't even log on anymore, nor do any of my friends. I check the forums every once in a while for updates or to see if anything has changed that might interest me.
But as far as modern day games go, 60 bucks for just over 100 hours of gameplay is good, so I'm not really complaining. I do wish that it would have kept me hooked for a bit longer, though.
-I remember Arctic gear dropping from hell Baal, and 99% of rares in the game being junk..
Same could be said for D3. Might not be level 5 items but most of the stuff you find is shit either way.
-I remember having to carry around a tome of tps and id scrolls(or talk to cain) to identify these crappy items just to find out that they are only valuable as ground decorations or gold... which had only 2 purposes in the game...(repairs and resurrecting mercs)
Give me that back please. At least that was alot faster than what is currently in D3 where you manually have to click EVERY single item -.-
At the first point, I think he's saying "if it wasn't so bad in D2, why's it so bad in D3?"
At the 2nd point, I don't want the item back, I just want the actual IDing process to be faster.
Some people really enjoyed "inventory Tetris" in D1 and D2. I, personally, didn't, so I'm glad that tomes of TP/Identify are gone, I just don't like the 3s (?) cast time on the identify in D3. It actually reminds me a LOT of Surveying for Archaeology in WoW. Why it needs to have a semi-lengthy cast time is beyond me.
I remember a lot of viable end game builds and quite abit good end game builds (read every class had alteast 4 good end game specs and even more viable specs).
I remember bosses dropping cool uniques and set items while lvling.
I remember having to carry around 2 books to identify and tp (not a big fucking deal)
And no I'm not saying thats my biggest issue but thinking that your opinnion is better than everyone else is just as much bs as you thinking d3 is better than d2
A. Lets name those 4 builds per class that are end game viable without awesome gear. These are what I can remember that didn't require a bunch of HR's. help me finish please. I'm calling viable "able to solo hell without relying on expensive runeworded gear/ minimally twinked"
Paladin - hammerdin (w/o enigma), avenger
Necromancer - summoner
Sorc - dual tree
Amazon - not sure if it is gear independent
Druid - hurricane, werebear
Assasin - traps
Barbarian - again im not sure if it is dependent on expensive gear to do hell either.
B. Before the game came out, blizzard said something to the effect that they wanted to make the whole act viable for running, not just one or two bosses. They did this. In D2 you might do a few baal runs and find a couple uniques that were worth something. Not always an upgrade. In D3, you do a couple of your act runs, and you find a couple rares that are worth something. Not always an upgrade. I will agree with you, though, that the legendary items are not op in D3.
C. My main point there was the fact that gold was near worthless, but thanks for your feedback
D. I didn't say D3>D2. I said how can people constantly come to the forums to bitch about how it isn't the same. It's been 10 years or so since the last game. Things have progressed. D2 was awesome for its time. that doesn't make it worse.
-I remember having to carry around a tome of tps and id scrolls(or talk to cain) to identify these crappy items just to find out that they are only valuable as ground decorations or gold... which had only 2 purposes in the game...(repairs and resurrecting mercs)
Give me that back please. At least that was alot faster than what is currently in D3 where you manually have to click EVERY single item -.-
Wait what? You had to click the id scroll an then the item in d2 how is that different? or use a hotkey then choose the item.
I guess unless you used Cain, I could never wait to get back there though.
-I remember having to carry around a tome of tps and id scrolls(or talk to cain) to identify these crappy items just to find out that they are only valuable as ground decorations or gold... which had only 2 purposes in the game...(repairs and resurrecting mercs)
Give me that back please. At least that was alot faster than what is currently in D3 where you manually have to click EVERY single item -.-
Wait what? You had to click the id scroll an then the item in d2 how is that different? or use a hotkey then choose the item.
I guess unless you used Cain, I could never wait to get back there though.
Using ID scrolls was a lot faster than the id system in D3....
But required you to have an item with you that you constantly need to replenish.
-I remember having to carry around a tome of tps and id scrolls(or talk to cain) to identify these crappy items just to find out that they are only valuable as ground decorations or gold... which had only 2 purposes in the game...(repairs and resurrecting mercs)
Give me that back please. At least that was alot faster than what is currently in D3 where you manually have to click EVERY single item -.-
Wait what? You had to click the id scroll an then the item in d2 how is that different? or use a hotkey then choose the item.
I guess unless you used Cain, I could never wait to get back there though.
Using ID scrolls was a lot faster than the id system in D3....
They also took up 10% of your inventory space, and items were a lot bigger back then, and everything needed to be identified, not just rares. you'd also have to run to the merchant that sells them to replenish every so often. but again, the worthlessness of gold was my main point there, but thanks for the feedback.
Well my point was its the same amount of clicks, actually one extra click. I don't mind waiting to ID, it could stand to be a little quicker but I'm okay with it.
/sarcasm
It seems like a ton of people wish D3 was a D2 clone, because "it was better".
This brings me to a couple of comments...
-I remember Arctic gear dropping from hell Baal, and 99% of rares in the game being junk..
-I remember having to carry around a tome of tps and id scrolls(or talk to cain) to identify these crappy items just to find out that they are only valuable as ground decorations or gold... which had only 2 purposes in the game...(repairs and resurrecting mercs)
-I remember the only story for D2 (other than the cut-scenes), occurred if you manually listened to each npc, during which you could do NOTHING.
-I remember only a handful of viable end-game builds
-I remember having to farm for HR's which were rare as !@#% just to trade for gear that made your cookie-cutter build efficient.
-I remember much less dynamic combat.
-etc..
How can people say that this game sucks in comparison?
-Because Arctic gear was good for something. It had something that most gear pieces of that level didn't have, so if you happened to want to use it to an easy legit play through, it was available to you. Sure what the boss dropped was junk for you, but it wasn't always junk to everybody else.
-So now you don't have to carry around tomes of tp/id but in a regular run in Diablo 3 you most likely aresalvaging or selling over 100 pieces of loot just to keep up with repairs and make a tiny bit of side gold, which in this current economy is completely useless seeing as the most you'll come out with is 60-100K. What's different here?
-This is personal preference, but I enjoyed the story of Diablo 2 a lot more. Sure it was less convenient to listen, but at least it wasn't chocked full of predictable cliche's which makes the convenience of D3's story telling a lot less impressive.
-You remember wrong. The pally alone had Hammerdin, Auradin, FoHer, Smiter, Zealer, and charger, all playing much different then the rest. The amount of viable builds a paladin could go alone not to mention the less-viable but still workable builds almost surpasses the TOTAL amount of viable (very unique) builds that Diablo 3 players have options to. (And I'm not talking about changing Arcane Orb for Blizzard and calling it a new spec either).
I'll take time on this one since I really want to remind players how much variety D2 really had. I've already listed off the major Pally builds.. so.
so by my count you've got over 29 different builds that play completely different from each other and that's just from memory... Now I don't know how big your 'handfuls' are but I'm fairly sure there are only about a 'handful' (9 at best) viable builds in D3.
-Atleast the high runes were there and not there in mass. Apart from duping, if you got something as rare as jah, or bur, or god forbid you even got a ZOD or a Vex you felt GOOD. you KNEW you just struck gold but at the same time it could only net you 2 maybe 3 top tier items that didn't use those runes as runewords. You didn't find a 1900 DPS 2 hander just to sell it for 200 million gold just to look at the pretty numbers.
- Combat may have been less dynamic but the focus of Diablo 2 was on how you built your characters and what they could do. In Diablo 3 all you have is the dynamic combat and it stops there. The items are boring and generic ( Main stat, vit, resist all, IAS, CRIT, crit dmg on EVERY SINGLE ITEM YOU COULD GET IT ON), and the character development stops at the skill system.
To put it into perspective, lets look at shields. In Diablo 3, if you're going to use a shield it's going to be stormshield.. and that's about it - if you're using much else it's pretty subpar and there are thousands of shields similar to compare. In Diablo 2, Stormshield was a staple piece of gear for those in melee, the DR it provided was unparallelled with any other shield, but apart from its small bonuses and fast block rates that's all it was good for. Depending on your spec, you didn't always WANT Stormshield. You wanted HoZ, Spirit runeword, or lidless eye, exile, a specific rare shield or a few others.
To someone who is a veteran to the ARPG genre you could introduce them to Diablo 3 and I can confidently say that in less than 100 hours you could fully understand the scope of the game. you could understand what affixes you want on every character you play, you could understand the play style of every single build in the game and what items you want. Put that same player in Diablo 2 and I can guarantee that in the same 100 hours they could maybe learn 2 builds and what items to get on those builds to optimize them. I can almost guarantee that most players who play Diablo 3 or browse the forums couldn't even name me one D2 build gearset in completion without looking it up.
I love the improvements, and they are many. The skill system is inventive and straight up A++. No more id/tp scrolls, shared stash, replayability by way of dynamic farming from very challenging and constantly changing elite/champ packs...the list goes on. I would even add the GAH as a great vehicle for trades.
BUT.......
Overshadowing the many additions are the numerous and puzzling subtractions. I am getting to the point now that some of these missing parts are rather bothersome.
I'll start with mercs/followers. When I first heard that they would now be able to wear jewelry....I was stoked. BUT...wait....they don't have armor or helms. Another addition is combated by the subtractions. Wait....they have skills you can set, AWESOME, right? Well....not so much. They seem to hit like nerf bats and they use their skills with the AI of a Commodore 64. Ill timed and poorly executed, their skills are funky at best.
Loot drops. This is where I'm having huge issue. The dynamic quality of loot drops has been hacked into a linear and minuscule offering. Pretty much, all we're looking for are iLvL 60-63 rares with the occasional and exceedingly rare hope of getting one of the few set/legendary items that doesn't blow chud. The diversity of drops is pathetic...period. No one could successfully argue that. In D2, some of the best items were 30-40 levels below maximum. Now, the ilvl has to be at or above the max char level, which HEAVILY restricts the diversity of drops.
Add to that we had charms, jewels, runes, soc shells, torches, annihilus and a wide range of ilvl's for potential godlies. This has ALL been hacked from the game.
PvP...I know....it's coming, but what's coming? A restrictive arena format? Maybe it will be good, but what bothers me is that me and my friends could be dueling each other outside of town while breaking from the rigors of farming. A mutual hosteling feature SHOULD be already in game....but one of the greatest aspects of end-game fun is utterly missing. All this talk about end-game...what about the now-game...as in ...I want to friggin duel NOW. It would take one short Tuesday patch to give us this huge improvement in end-game.
My impression as of now is; Having fun for now....a little monotonous, but overall a sense of disappointment looms heavy.
I wouldn't go so far to say either was better, they're both very alluring to me in different ways. D2 had a lot more feeling of gratification when loot dropped, not that it was necessarily better though it was just that feeling, it had a more social feeling to it (for the better, trading/making friends, or for the worse, people being able to freely join your game and grief etc). Edit: I do miss gambling some.
D3 though in my opinion has a lot of much more appealing mechanics, more challenge (in my opinion), and an economy and trading system that is in the midst of stabilizing and I feel will turn out to be useful and more fun in the end.
They're pretty different games besides the genre, the overall style of the loot system, and the story line.
Im gonna number your responses 1-6
1. "Sure what the boss dropped was junk for you, but it wasn't always junk to everybody else." thanks for giving me my response. just because it isn't an upgrade for your current character, doesn't mean you can't pass it down, or sell it to someone else in D3.
2. the difference is that however inflated it is right now gold is worth items: gems, crafted items, or AH items, even if you only earn it 60-100k at a time.
3. Do I remember wrong? Or is it typical to, as your only character, raise up a single element sorc to clear hell without badass gear? so, by your definition, tweaked out with items, almost every build is viable in d2. and I would agree. but, in D3, if you have the same tier of badass gear... almost every build is viable.
4. I'm responding to topics like "when is the last time you FOUND an upgrade" when I say this. In D2, once you got to a certain point, you find upgrades very very rarely, or you find a rune to trade for an upgrade you still found really good items, but they were not upgrades for you, so you had to use them to trade for items that were. In D3, the same exact thing is true, sans the runes. "Sure what the boss dropped was junk for you, but it wasn't always junk to everybody else."
5. you can't be argued with here about the builds. the reason this is, is because you can swap skills. It is a mechanic for someone to be able to have the equivilant of a hammerdin and a zealot without having to raise a second character, and it does impact the game. I'm not sure it hurts or helps more. it makes the game a lot more accessible to casual gamers, but takes some depth out at the same time.
But i think you are less concretely correct about the specs. I don't have time to bring them all up for you right now because I have to go to work, but I will later.
Im gonna number your responses 1-6
1. "Sure what the boss dropped was junk for you, but it wasn't always junk to everybody else." thanks for giving me my response. just because it isn't an upgrade for your current character, doesn't mean you can't pass it down, or sell it to someone else in D3.
2. the difference is that however inflated it is right now gold is worth items: gems, crafted items, or AH items, even if you only earn it 60-100k at a time.
3. Do I remember wrong? Or is it typical to, as your only character, raise up a single element sorc to clear hell without badass gear? so, by your definition, tweaked out with items, almost every build is viable in d2. and I would agree. but, in D3, if you have the same tier of badass gear... almost every build is viable.
4. I'm responding to topics like "when is the last time you FOUND an upgrade" when I say this. In D2, once you got to a certain point, you find upgrades very very rarely, or you find a rune to trade for an upgrade you still found really good items, but they were not upgrades for you, so you had to use them to trade for items that were. In D3, the same exact thing is true, sans the runes. "Sure what the boss dropped was junk for you, but it wasn't always junk to everybody else."
5. you can't be argued with here about the builds. the reason this is, is because you can swap skills. It is a mechanic for someone to be able to have the equivilant of a hammerdin and a zealot without having to raise a second character, and it does impact the game. I'm not sure it hurts or helps more. it makes the game a lot more accessible to casual gamers, but takes some depth out at the same time.
But i think you are less concretely correct about the specs. I don't have time to bring them all up for you right now because I have to go to work, but I will later.
Thanks for taking the time to reply to my post.
1. What I meant by useful gear like the arctic set being useable at lower levels is that it offers something average gear of the same level does not. For example, Arctic Mitts gave you 20 life and 10% IAS. At a low level where your stat distribution is very stretched it offers a good amount of health, (4 points worth) and IAS.. which you'll never find on a normal rare, or magic set of gloves. combine that with the bow and the belt and you've got yourself an above average bow that offers cold damage, a large boost in your attack rating, and 2 levels worth of stat points in Dex. So not only are these pieces individually a large upgrade comparatively, but together they give you something extra.
Diablo 3's equivalents are quite different, and while you may find a low level rare or unique to put on the AH for 20-50K the bonuses they provide are minimal and are (for the most part) bought out just for the simple fact of the legendary name. Magefists, for example, are a lvl 16 unique pair of gloves that give you 4% IAS, 2 LPS, 10 Monster Experience, 27-35 Int and 2 random affixes. Sure these gloves have a lot of affixes attached to them, but lets face it, 2 life per second when your character is rocking 500-700 life at level 16 is not even worth considering, the 10 mon exp is available on almost every single magic piece of gear since level 7, and 35 INT is an average amount of INT provided comparable to similar level gear pieces, if not a little lacking. The only thing that it provides is the 3-4% IAS, and the luck of the draw for 2 random affixes (all of which are available from magic or rare pieces anyways).. I'm fairly sure you can get 3% IAS on normal gloves as well. So lets say you roll two garbage affixes like gold / MF, now you're looking at gloves that give you (usable useful stats) 10 Mon XP, 3% IAS, and 27-35 INT.. You seriously don't think you could find the EXACT same gloves or much better of the same level on a rare piece of gear?
That is what makes low 'garbage' pieces you find worth something to someone for a REASON in Diablo 2.. not just for the novelty of having legendary gear.
2. I'll agree with you on that one, as no matter how little gold you earn if you add it all together after a long time you can buy something out of it, but the problem is that as inflation continues to increase you're fighting an uphill battle to make that gold useful. You may make 1 million gold in change for a full day of farming, and your next upgrade is 6-10 million, but given a week at the rate inflation is going that 6-10 million gold upgrade is all of a sudden now 11-15 million, and you're still getting the same rate of gold (hopefully). Its a system that the Diablo 2 bartering system never had to deal with because you were always looking at items as tangable useable goods, whereas gold acts as a volatile middleman to exchanging one piece of loot for another.
3. As a general rule if you were going to have a full solo play through in Diablo 2 it was almost impossible to consider only a single element simply because a lot of area's you are forced to clear through have generic immunities. Getting rushed through to level 80 baal runs is a different story though. At any rate no sorc who knew what they were doing would ever go a single element as a rushing character anyways. In D3 you can go any spec and with insane gear you can manage to clear everything without a problem but in Diablo 2 it doesn't matter how geared you were if you could only deal cold damage (for example) and you were put up against a cold immune monster you wouldn't be able to advance without the help of other players or another element.. so to answer your question, no, gear wasn't always the end-all-be-all answer to all your problems in D2.
4. I agree with you to a point on this, but the difference here is the term 'upgrade' is defined very differently. In Diablo 2 if you were building a MF sorc you would normally start off using a gull dagger or Alibaba's. After that, you would work your way up to an oculus, which while providing you with less magic find properties found on gulls or ali's it also gave you sorc skills, faster casting rates, resistances and stat points, which could not be previously found on the aforementioned items. It wasn't a linear system and changed your characters ability to performance quite drastically comparatively.
In Diablo 3 however, there is none of this difference. Right from the get go you're ideal 'low tier' weapon would include (for a wizard), Crit Dmg, a Socket, some INT and a 700~ DPS. a Medium tier weapon would include Crit Dmg, a Socket, some INT and a 850~ DPS. A high tier weapon would include Crit Dmg, a Socket, some INT and a 900-100 DPS. You see where I'm getting with this? although you trade up items just like in Diablo 2, the difference is non comparable. One changes the fundamental capabilities of your character through skill damage, cast rates, survivability all the while increasing your goal of faster magic finding, while the other provides you with a nominal increase to the "damage" section of your character sheet... and that's it. While the basic idea is the same, the systems that drive it are significantly different and one is a lot more complex then the other in terms of specific goal setting.
Sorry for the long winded responses, but I can't think of an easy, short way to really explain it without losing important detail.
The short and simple way to explain the differential in loot between the two titles; In Diablo 2 we had an overwhelming plethora of different items ranging from armors to weapons (blues, yellows and Uniques), runes (which were usable for both RW's and single mods for sockets, mods that added extreme customization that far surpass the 4 choices gems give us in D3), charms, jewels and socketed whites, all with a vast range of iLvL's.
In D3....we're basically only looking for one thing; a scant, narrow, 4 level range of rares. That's fuggin pathetic as shit.
d2 didn't have inferno. you could get away with crazy builds and gear choices because the content was so easy. this was amplified by having the option to join a game with 7 other people who would carry the weight of your bad choices.
there was nothing better about items in d2. if hell was the end of d3 with no inferno then it would be the same thing.
d2 didn't have inferno. you could get away with crazy builds and gear choices because the content was so easy. this was amplified by having the option to join a game with 7 other people who would carry the weight of your bad choices.
there was nothing better about items in d2. if hell was the end of d3 with no inferno then it would be the same thing.
I'm curious, if Hell was the end of D3 what item affixes would you see players looking to get other than their main stat, vitality, crit, crit damage and IAS?
I have over 400 hours logged into the game and I can't think of a single affix that is more useful at the end of hell then at the end of Inferno, and this is coming from a guy who's killed inferno D.
I think you're wrong. Diablo 2's item affixes were much more diverse not to mention there were over 160 more uniques in the game to compare to. Difficulty doesn't change the way people gear when there is no other choices to make. Sure specs would be different, but items would not.
d2 didn't have inferno. you could get away with crazy builds and gear choices because the content was so easy. this was amplified by having the option to join a game with 7 other people who would carry the weight of your bad choices.
there was nothing better about items in d2. if hell was the end of d3 with no inferno then it would be the same thing.
I'm curious, if Hell was the end of D3 what item affixes would you see players looking to get other than their main stat, vitality, crit, crit damage and IAS?
I have over 400 hours logged into the game and I can't think of a single affix that is more useful at the end of hell then at the end of Inferno, and this is coming from a guy who's killed inferno D.
I think you're wrong. Diablo 2's item affixes were much more diverse not to mention there were over 160 more uniques in the game to compare to. Difficulty doesn't change the way people gear when there is no other choices to make. Sure specs would be different, but items would not.
You absolutely missed his point.
His point was that many builds value stats differently. However, many builds are simply invalidated in Inferno as suboptimal. Making those builds viable (in this case, by not having Inferno) would, by default, have some effect on gearing too. It may not be pronounced, but you'd see some affixes getting some more love. You'd probably see barbs/monks trying thorns builds, WDs going for pet builds, and more than just 1 in 10,000.
I don't know how gear in D2 was more exicitng though. Get enough Life Leech (and Mana Leech/Mana Regen) to be able to survive and cast your spells. Get enough +skills to own stuff. Everything else is basically extra. That's not exactly the most thrilling scenario.
Also, as one of the mods hinted at, the rate at which information spreads is far faster now than it was back then. We are all more hyper-aware of what works and what doesn't at the cutting edge. Just look at Athene as an example. If he went and did some weird build the number of people who would mimic it "just because Athene did it" is staggering. We, by and large, didn't have that in D2.
In essence you're trying to compare the internet culture in 1999 with the internet culture in 2012. It's such a different world that you can't do that.
When you started caring about just farming for items in D2, you had finished the game and you could do anything you wanted. You could just play the game.
In D3 it's pretty much impossible for many classes to get the gear that would be needed to just do the kind of mindless efficient farming that was done in D2. And by the time you got to the point that you had enough gear to do that kind of farming, there's no more gear that you actually want, since you've got the best there is.
In D2, the majority of the play happened after you'd finished everything the game had to offer and you could just screw around and see how powerful you could make your character. D3 has been designed so that you can never screw around, at least not at the end of the game. And if there's any time you'll ever be able to screw around, all of a sudden there's no reward for doing so. You already have the best gear, and there's no new levels to grind.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
It seems like a ton of people wish D3 was a D2 clone, because "it was better".
This brings me to a couple of comments...
-I remember Arctic gear dropping from hell Baal, and 99% of rares in the game being junk..
-I remember having to carry around a tome of tps and id scrolls(or talk to cain) to identify these crappy items just to find out that they are only valuable as ground decorations or gold... which had only 2 purposes in the game...(repairs and resurrecting mercs)
-I remember the only story for D2 (other than the cut-scenes), occurred if you manually listened to each npc, during which you could do NOTHING.
-I remember only a handful of viable end-game builds
-I remember having to farm for HR's which were rare as !@#% just to trade for gear that made your cookie-cutter build efficient.
-I remember much less dynamic combat.
-etc..
How can people say that this game sucks in comparison?
D3 on the other hand, got me just over 100 or so hours before I got bored of it. I don't even log on anymore, nor do any of my friends. I check the forums every once in a while for updates or to see if anything has changed that might interest me.
But as far as modern day games go, 60 bucks for just over 100 hours of gameplay is good, so I'm not really complaining. I do wish that it would have kept me hooked for a bit longer, though.
Ha. Bagstone.
At the first point, I think he's saying "if it wasn't so bad in D2, why's it so bad in D3?"
At the 2nd point, I don't want the item back, I just want the actual IDing process to be faster.
Some people really enjoyed "inventory Tetris" in D1 and D2. I, personally, didn't, so I'm glad that tomes of TP/Identify are gone, I just don't like the 3s (?) cast time on the identify in D3. It actually reminds me a LOT of Surveying for Archaeology in WoW. Why it needs to have a semi-lengthy cast time is beyond me.
A. Lets name those 4 builds per class that are end game viable without awesome gear. These are what I can remember that didn't require a bunch of HR's. help me finish please. I'm calling viable "able to solo hell without relying on expensive runeworded gear/ minimally twinked"
Paladin - hammerdin (w/o enigma), avenger
Necromancer - summoner
Sorc - dual tree
Amazon - not sure if it is gear independent
Druid - hurricane, werebear
Assasin - traps
Barbarian - again im not sure if it is dependent on expensive gear to do hell either.
B. Before the game came out, blizzard said something to the effect that they wanted to make the whole act viable for running, not just one or two bosses. They did this. In D2 you might do a few baal runs and find a couple uniques that were worth something. Not always an upgrade. In D3, you do a couple of your act runs, and you find a couple rares that are worth something. Not always an upgrade. I will agree with you, though, that the legendary items are not op in D3.
C. My main point there was the fact that gold was near worthless, but thanks for your feedback
D. I didn't say D3>D2. I said how can people constantly come to the forums to bitch about how it isn't the same. It's been 10 years or so since the last game. Things have progressed. D2 was awesome for its time. that doesn't make it worse.
Wait what? You had to click the id scroll an then the item in d2 how is that different? or use a hotkey then choose the item.
I guess unless you used Cain, I could never wait to get back there though.
Some like one some the other.
Ha. Bagstone.
They also took up 10% of your inventory space, and items were a lot bigger back then, and everything needed to be identified, not just rares. you'd also have to run to the merchant that sells them to replenish every so often. but again, the worthlessness of gold was my main point there, but thanks for the feedback.
-Because Arctic gear was good for something. It had something that most gear pieces of that level didn't have, so if you happened to want to use it to an easy legit play through, it was available to you. Sure what the boss dropped was junk for you, but it wasn't always junk to everybody else.
-So now you don't have to carry around tomes of tp/id but in a regular run in Diablo 3 you most likely aresalvaging or selling over 100 pieces of loot just to keep up with repairs and make a tiny bit of side gold, which in this current economy is completely useless seeing as the most you'll come out with is 60-100K. What's different here?
-This is personal preference, but I enjoyed the story of Diablo 2 a lot more. Sure it was less convenient to listen, but at least it wasn't chocked full of predictable cliche's which makes the convenience of D3's story telling a lot less impressive.
-You remember wrong. The pally alone had Hammerdin, Auradin, FoHer, Smiter, Zealer, and charger, all playing much different then the rest. The amount of viable builds a paladin could go alone not to mention the less-viable but still workable builds almost surpasses the TOTAL amount of viable (very unique) builds that Diablo 3 players have options to. (And I'm not talking about changing Arcane Orb for Blizzard and calling it a new spec either).
I'll take time on this one since I really want to remind players how much variety D2 really had. I've already listed off the major Pally builds.. so.
Sorc: Blizzard Sorc, Meteorb Sorc, Chain Lightning Sorc, Fireorb sorc, Enchantress.
Druid: Wind druid, Arma druid, rabies werewolf, fireclaw werebear, fury werewolf.
Assassin: Monks, Kicksins, WWsins, Trappers
Barb: Bard, Thrower, WW, Frenzy, conc, zerkers.
Zons: Bowazons, Javazons, Jabazons
so by my count you've got over 29 different builds that play completely different from each other and that's just from memory... Now I don't know how big your 'handfuls' are but I'm fairly sure there are only about a 'handful' (9 at best) viable builds in D3.
-Atleast the high runes were there and not there in mass. Apart from duping, if you got something as rare as jah, or bur, or god forbid you even got a ZOD or a Vex you felt GOOD. you KNEW you just struck gold but at the same time it could only net you 2 maybe 3 top tier items that didn't use those runes as runewords. You didn't find a 1900 DPS 2 hander just to sell it for 200 million gold just to look at the pretty numbers.
- Combat may have been less dynamic but the focus of Diablo 2 was on how you built your characters and what they could do. In Diablo 3 all you have is the dynamic combat and it stops there. The items are boring and generic ( Main stat, vit, resist all, IAS, CRIT, crit dmg on EVERY SINGLE ITEM YOU COULD GET IT ON), and the character development stops at the skill system.
To put it into perspective, lets look at shields. In Diablo 3, if you're going to use a shield it's going to be stormshield.. and that's about it - if you're using much else it's pretty subpar and there are thousands of shields similar to compare. In Diablo 2, Stormshield was a staple piece of gear for those in melee, the DR it provided was unparallelled with any other shield, but apart from its small bonuses and fast block rates that's all it was good for. Depending on your spec, you didn't always WANT Stormshield. You wanted HoZ, Spirit runeword, or lidless eye, exile, a specific rare shield or a few others.
To someone who is a veteran to the ARPG genre you could introduce them to Diablo 3 and I can confidently say that in less than 100 hours you could fully understand the scope of the game. you could understand what affixes you want on every character you play, you could understand the play style of every single build in the game and what items you want. Put that same player in Diablo 2 and I can guarantee that in the same 100 hours they could maybe learn 2 builds and what items to get on those builds to optimize them. I can almost guarantee that most players who play Diablo 3 or browse the forums couldn't even name me one D2 build gearset in completion without looking it up.
That is what makes Diablo 2.. SO much better.
BUT.......
Overshadowing the many additions are the numerous and puzzling subtractions. I am getting to the point now that some of these missing parts are rather bothersome.
I'll start with mercs/followers. When I first heard that they would now be able to wear jewelry....I was stoked. BUT...wait....they don't have armor or helms. Another addition is combated by the subtractions. Wait....they have skills you can set, AWESOME, right? Well....not so much. They seem to hit like nerf bats and they use their skills with the AI of a Commodore 64. Ill timed and poorly executed, their skills are funky at best.
Loot drops. This is where I'm having huge issue. The dynamic quality of loot drops has been hacked into a linear and minuscule offering. Pretty much, all we're looking for are iLvL 60-63 rares with the occasional and exceedingly rare hope of getting one of the few set/legendary items that doesn't blow chud. The diversity of drops is pathetic...period. No one could successfully argue that. In D2, some of the best items were 30-40 levels below maximum. Now, the ilvl has to be at or above the max char level, which HEAVILY restricts the diversity of drops.
Add to that we had charms, jewels, runes, soc shells, torches, annihilus and a wide range of ilvl's for potential godlies. This has ALL been hacked from the game.
PvP...I know....it's coming, but what's coming? A restrictive arena format? Maybe it will be good, but what bothers me is that me and my friends could be dueling each other outside of town while breaking from the rigors of farming. A mutual hosteling feature SHOULD be already in game....but one of the greatest aspects of end-game fun is utterly missing. All this talk about end-game...what about the now-game...as in ...I want to friggin duel NOW. It would take one short Tuesday patch to give us this huge improvement in end-game.
My impression as of now is; Having fun for now....a little monotonous, but overall a sense of disappointment looms heavy.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
D3 though in my opinion has a lot of much more appealing mechanics, more challenge (in my opinion), and an economy and trading system that is in the midst of stabilizing and I feel will turn out to be useful and more fun in the end.
They're pretty different games besides the genre, the overall style of the loot system, and the story line.
1. "Sure what the boss dropped was junk for you, but it wasn't always junk to everybody else." thanks for giving me my response. just because it isn't an upgrade for your current character, doesn't mean you can't pass it down, or sell it to someone else in D3.
2. the difference is that however inflated it is right now gold is worth items: gems, crafted items, or AH items, even if you only earn it 60-100k at a time.
3. Do I remember wrong? Or is it typical to, as your only character, raise up a single element sorc to clear hell without badass gear? so, by your definition, tweaked out with items, almost every build is viable in d2. and I would agree. but, in D3, if you have the same tier of badass gear... almost every build is viable.
4. I'm responding to topics like "when is the last time you FOUND an upgrade" when I say this. In D2, once you got to a certain point, you find upgrades very very rarely, or you find a rune to trade for an upgrade you still found really good items, but they were not upgrades for you, so you had to use them to trade for items that were. In D3, the same exact thing is true, sans the runes. "Sure what the boss dropped was junk for you, but it wasn't always junk to everybody else."
5. you can't be argued with here about the builds. the reason this is, is because you can swap skills. It is a mechanic for someone to be able to have the equivilant of a hammerdin and a zealot without having to raise a second character, and it does impact the game. I'm not sure it hurts or helps more. it makes the game a lot more accessible to casual gamers, but takes some depth out at the same time.
But i think you are less concretely correct about the specs. I don't have time to bring them all up for you right now because I have to go to work, but I will later.
Thanks for taking the time to reply to my post.
1. What I meant by useful gear like the arctic set being useable at lower levels is that it offers something average gear of the same level does not. For example, Arctic Mitts gave you 20 life and 10% IAS. At a low level where your stat distribution is very stretched it offers a good amount of health, (4 points worth) and IAS.. which you'll never find on a normal rare, or magic set of gloves. combine that with the bow and the belt and you've got yourself an above average bow that offers cold damage, a large boost in your attack rating, and 2 levels worth of stat points in Dex. So not only are these pieces individually a large upgrade comparatively, but together they give you something extra.
Diablo 3's equivalents are quite different, and while you may find a low level rare or unique to put on the AH for 20-50K the bonuses they provide are minimal and are (for the most part) bought out just for the simple fact of the legendary name. Magefists, for example, are a lvl 16 unique pair of gloves that give you 4% IAS, 2 LPS, 10 Monster Experience, 27-35 Int and 2 random affixes. Sure these gloves have a lot of affixes attached to them, but lets face it, 2 life per second when your character is rocking 500-700 life at level 16 is not even worth considering, the 10 mon exp is available on almost every single magic piece of gear since level 7, and 35 INT is an average amount of INT provided comparable to similar level gear pieces, if not a little lacking. The only thing that it provides is the 3-4% IAS, and the luck of the draw for 2 random affixes (all of which are available from magic or rare pieces anyways).. I'm fairly sure you can get 3% IAS on normal gloves as well. So lets say you roll two garbage affixes like gold / MF, now you're looking at gloves that give you (usable useful stats) 10 Mon XP, 3% IAS, and 27-35 INT.. You seriously don't think you could find the EXACT same gloves or much better of the same level on a rare piece of gear?
That is what makes low 'garbage' pieces you find worth something to someone for a REASON in Diablo 2.. not just for the novelty of having legendary gear.
2. I'll agree with you on that one, as no matter how little gold you earn if you add it all together after a long time you can buy something out of it, but the problem is that as inflation continues to increase you're fighting an uphill battle to make that gold useful. You may make 1 million gold in change for a full day of farming, and your next upgrade is 6-10 million, but given a week at the rate inflation is going that 6-10 million gold upgrade is all of a sudden now 11-15 million, and you're still getting the same rate of gold (hopefully). Its a system that the Diablo 2 bartering system never had to deal with because you were always looking at items as tangable useable goods, whereas gold acts as a volatile middleman to exchanging one piece of loot for another.
3. As a general rule if you were going to have a full solo play through in Diablo 2 it was almost impossible to consider only a single element simply because a lot of area's you are forced to clear through have generic immunities. Getting rushed through to level 80 baal runs is a different story though. At any rate no sorc who knew what they were doing would ever go a single element as a rushing character anyways. In D3 you can go any spec and with insane gear you can manage to clear everything without a problem but in Diablo 2 it doesn't matter how geared you were if you could only deal cold damage (for example) and you were put up against a cold immune monster you wouldn't be able to advance without the help of other players or another element.. so to answer your question, no, gear wasn't always the end-all-be-all answer to all your problems in D2.
4. I agree with you to a point on this, but the difference here is the term 'upgrade' is defined very differently. In Diablo 2 if you were building a MF sorc you would normally start off using a gull dagger or Alibaba's. After that, you would work your way up to an oculus, which while providing you with less magic find properties found on gulls or ali's it also gave you sorc skills, faster casting rates, resistances and stat points, which could not be previously found on the aforementioned items. It wasn't a linear system and changed your characters ability to performance quite drastically comparatively.
In Diablo 3 however, there is none of this difference. Right from the get go you're ideal 'low tier' weapon would include (for a wizard), Crit Dmg, a Socket, some INT and a 700~ DPS. a Medium tier weapon would include Crit Dmg, a Socket, some INT and a 850~ DPS. A high tier weapon would include Crit Dmg, a Socket, some INT and a 900-100 DPS. You see where I'm getting with this? although you trade up items just like in Diablo 2, the difference is non comparable. One changes the fundamental capabilities of your character through skill damage, cast rates, survivability all the while increasing your goal of faster magic finding, while the other provides you with a nominal increase to the "damage" section of your character sheet... and that's it. While the basic idea is the same, the systems that drive it are significantly different and one is a lot more complex then the other in terms of specific goal setting.
Sorry for the long winded responses, but I can't think of an easy, short way to really explain it without losing important detail.
In D3....we're basically only looking for one thing; a scant, narrow, 4 level range of rares. That's fuggin pathetic as shit.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
there was nothing better about items in d2. if hell was the end of d3 with no inferno then it would be the same thing.
I'm curious, if Hell was the end of D3 what item affixes would you see players looking to get other than their main stat, vitality, crit, crit damage and IAS?
I have over 400 hours logged into the game and I can't think of a single affix that is more useful at the end of hell then at the end of Inferno, and this is coming from a guy who's killed inferno D.
I think you're wrong. Diablo 2's item affixes were much more diverse not to mention there were over 160 more uniques in the game to compare to. Difficulty doesn't change the way people gear when there is no other choices to make. Sure specs would be different, but items would not.
You absolutely missed his point.
His point was that many builds value stats differently. However, many builds are simply invalidated in Inferno as suboptimal. Making those builds viable (in this case, by not having Inferno) would, by default, have some effect on gearing too. It may not be pronounced, but you'd see some affixes getting some more love. You'd probably see barbs/monks trying thorns builds, WDs going for pet builds, and more than just 1 in 10,000.
I don't know how gear in D2 was more exicitng though. Get enough Life Leech (and Mana Leech/Mana Regen) to be able to survive and cast your spells. Get enough +skills to own stuff. Everything else is basically extra. That's not exactly the most thrilling scenario.
Also, as one of the mods hinted at, the rate at which information spreads is far faster now than it was back then. We are all more hyper-aware of what works and what doesn't at the cutting edge. Just look at Athene as an example. If he went and did some weird build the number of people who would mimic it "just because Athene did it" is staggering. We, by and large, didn't have that in D2.
In essence you're trying to compare the internet culture in 1999 with the internet culture in 2012. It's such a different world that you can't do that.
In D3 it's pretty much impossible for many classes to get the gear that would be needed to just do the kind of mindless efficient farming that was done in D2. And by the time you got to the point that you had enough gear to do that kind of farming, there's no more gear that you actually want, since you've got the best there is.
In D2, the majority of the play happened after you'd finished everything the game had to offer and you could just screw around and see how powerful you could make your character. D3 has been designed so that you can never screw around, at least not at the end of the game. And if there's any time you'll ever be able to screw around, all of a sudden there's no reward for doing so. You already have the best gear, and there's no new levels to grind.