DiabloFans

Quote from xFerengi»

Quote from Bagstone»

I'd kill the fun for all my friends if I'd just hand them full sets and ancients when they come online....

I wonder what you think of the season gift?? After all, it's never been that hard to get, since co-opt games are organized.

Wasn't a fan of Haedrig's Gift at first. Also thought that the old installment of S4-S6 was a bit too easy. With S7 it's going into the right direction; on PTR, due to the legendary buff, you have your set(s) complete before you get Haedrig's. We have to accept that Diablo 3 is catered more towards casuals (let's be honest, in the beginning D1+D2 were, too, it's just that all the casuals left). From testing S7 I feel that Haedrig's is okay and in a good spot. Btw: Haedrig has nothing to do with co-op, a good solo player gets it as fast (if not faster) than most groups. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if some solo players might be the first to farm T6 in S7. The constant complaining about group play has led Blizzard to do their usual over-tuning and in S7 a solo player will be better off than a semi-good coordinated group. (Of course awful players will still compare themselves to the top groups and cry that they're behind...)

Quote from xFerengi»

As for D2 vs D3, D2 had more possibilities, since the sets were weak.

Yeah, that argument I don't buy. In S7, many classes have multiple sets that are really good high-end. In fact, except Crusader (who's overall in a bad spot) most classes will be able to get very good results and go quite high with 3-4 of their class sets plus LoN. It looks like the monk is extremely well-balanced with all 4 sets and LoN builds within a few GR tiers. And then for some of those sets you have different builds.

In D2 you had diversity... but that's like saying you have a lot of different TX builds for the Angry Chicken WD. Of course you can create 20 different builds, but there's probably only 1-2 that are viable, the rest is terrible. Same in D2 - of course you had potentially 100 different Necro builds, but I remember one patch where anything but Corpse Explosion was completely useless, very much similar to the Twister meta in S6.

Quote from xFerengi»

D3 has a clearly superior player interface (but a bit short on '5 & 6' keys).

Disagree, the UI in Diablo 3 is lackluster in many ways. Just consider the mess-up of paragon levels unreadable for many seasons, the toast overlay preventing you to click on chat, chat preventing you to click on your lower stash contents, the interface being static and have no customization option (in 2016 that is nothing but laughable), the stash page implementation which is unbelievable clumsy, cumbersome, and disappointing, the buff numbers not readable, no cooldown timers, no buffs for so many spells, right-click/left-click being fixed, the paragon button covering up buffs, for over a year half the buffs being invisible due to a static limit, ... should I go on? For each of those points I can tell you UI development guidelines and measures to prevent this. Either D3 has no UX expert who he didn't get a say in the development, but I've noticed this in many Blizzard games and the jobs pages - they seem to not pay the necessary attention to UI design. So yeah, on this one: D2's interface might not have been perfect, but was okay for 2000. D3's interface is not acceptable to my expectations of AAA games and especially Blizzard in 2016.

Quote from xFerengi»

D2 seemed to always have something more to do

End-game in D2 was very interesting. Go to Baal, kill him. Rinse, repeat. People even counted the number (1300 times from level 98 to 99). That was similar to D3V (Crater scorpion farming/Crypt farming), which is why rifts were introduced. I personally think rifts are an AMAZING change over the constant "same old same old" runs one did in D2. And before you start telling me that there were "so many interesting builds to discover": 99.9% of people who complain "there's nothing to do in D3" just play the cookie cutter build and then throw the game away. Almost no one actually plays the game as intended/hoped by Blizzard: pick up items and think about potential builds. I can't even tell you how many sub-par builds I've tested. There are, I think just by math, 3 billion different builds in D3. Good luck getting to a point where there's "nothing to do" in D3.

Quote from xFerengi»

D3 has grinding for paragons, ancients, and caldesans...

D2 had grinding for XP, high-level runes, and some elusive super rare drops...

Yes, both D2 and D3 (and D1) are grinding games.

Quote from xFerengi»

D2/D1 was written in the days of programming giants, D3 in the era of pretty pictures and screen flashes.

Okay, this really makes me wonder where you got this from. As a software developer this is just cringe. You aren't really comparing a 1996 game to a 2013 release? We're talking orders of magnitude in code complexity here. D3 has a complex engine just for the combat mechanics (which makes its combat feel so great, btw). D2 has... sprites. Also, D1/D2 were/are full of bugs, whereas D3 has not seen any hacks or engine-based exploits yet (also thanks to online only). Yeah, those times (the 90s) were the times of "programming giants", but basically only due to one name: John Carmack. Without a doubt, the Q3 engine was probably one of the masterpieces of code. But D1 doesn't count in that category. What was awesome was the storyline and (back then) novel concept. However, none of the core members have been able to showcase their ability in the past 15 years.


Look, I'm not saying D3 is better than D2 or vice versa. They're entirely different games. But in all those comparisons I see so much nostalgia - false nostalgia, especially coming from people who just have other preferences. For example, people who loved D2 for their trading or PvP. Both are aspects that are not present in D2, so of course you're not liking the game. It's like the people who love FIFA 1998 because it had indoor football - yes, awesome - but of course FIFA 2016 is better, no one with a sane mind can argue with that. I personally love Fallout 1+2 and strongly dislike Fallout 3+ (and can't play it, I started 5 times but everytime just stop because it doesn't work for me). Yet, I admit that Fallout 3 is probably better in many ways (also more appealing to many people), but not for me. Same with the D2 lovers: It's a different game, it doesn't work for you, but don't "trashtalk" it, because it makes you look ignorant. That's all.

Quote from Angry_Roleplayer»

on a side note. what are the good d2 twitch/youtube channels to check?

I recently watched a lot of Ryu: https://www.twitch.tv/ryuquezacotl

He's been running hell any% HC sorceress lately. The nice thing is that he just plays to play - he doesn't reset but just keeps going, trying to finish the run (getting the record is less about being faster but more about staying alive for 6h+).

There's also Teo (https://www.twitch.tv/teo1904) who holds the speed records in all 4 brackets (!), but recently he's doing normal runs which is quite spammy and repetitive and reminds me of D3 GR runs ;-)

@sick4slayer: Arguments are okay, but I also just uttered my opinion and you took it to a personal level by calling me a "D3 fanatic". I'll just call you a D2 fanatic once here and then we're settled, okay ;-)

Quote from sick4slayer»

Diablo 2 is and will always be the best game of the 3 for me. And no speech of D3 fanatic like bagstone is never going to change that

I recently thought about starting D2 again, because of SDGQ (watching Lama) and more recently watching Ryu a lot. I'm a fan of Diablo, because this website is called Diablofans. What turns me off about D2 though is that many of the D2 players are toxic and have nothing but hatred. If you love D2 that's fine, but recently you've posted ~5 comments on the Diablo 3 section of our forums to stress how much you dislike D3 and how much better D2 and PoE is. You know, that is fine, but you don't need to go around and make everyone's life miserable just because of disliking a game. I don't go around to CoD or other FPS reddits and tell them how shit their game is. We enjoy D3, you enjoy D2/PoE. I'd ask you to think positive - post your positive comments in our legacy games section, or even in some other PoE forum. But please don't just make it a habit to tell everyone how "fanatic" they are just because they like a different game than you. That doesn't bode well and is the same kind of criticism I have towards Brevik: Lately he's on a "D3 sucks so much" interview tour and spills nothing but hatred, but in 16 years he has not managed to deliver any positive outcome of his grand vision of what D2's legacy would be by actually developing a game that lives up to his promises of "I could do better than Blizzard".


Enjoy your stay at Diablofans, but please make it not un-enjoyable for others. Thanks.

I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with almost everything in there.

First of all, what he doesn't say in his "OMG they closed Blizzard North" statement is that the "3 key people", Brevik and both Schaefers, had left Blizzard North in 2003 already (yes, just one year after the development started - though it conceptually even started a bit earlier). So Blizzard North was already sort of dismantled for two years and Diablo 3 going nowhere when they closed it.

Second, the video starts by telling us that Diablo 1+2 sold 6.5 million copies and then quotes Brevik that his idea would've sold well. To be honest, Diablo 3 already has a cumulative number of 30m sold copies, almost 5 times as many as "his" earlier games. He, on the other hand, has produced basically nothing since leaving Blizzard. I worship him for the amazing games he created, but I don't like that he's just going around and giving interviews everywhere, trashtalking Diablo, but if he would've done such a better job, why in those 13 years since he left hasn't he created anything like it? Anything at all that recreates the feeling he's missing from D3? It's not really good style to talk about your former employer like that, and it's especially strange to do it when you have nothing to show to back up the claim that you would've done a better job.

The rest of the video is pretty much the typical story and "darkness" rant. He's comparing random D3 campaign areas to CS and the Throne Room... really? Please compare Westmarch to Lut Gholein and tell me which is darker. Also, he's complaining about the lack of Tyrael's post-Diablo speech, but probably forgot that that was moved into the cut scene. I'm not saying it's better, but it's really comparing apples and oranges. I agree overall that the story of D3 wasn't as good as D2/D1 (actually, I think it was really rather weak), and of course I agree like everyone that the way Cain was killed off was ridiculous. It might've as well been an accident while cooking pasta. Nevertheless, his assessment is very subjective and oftentimes not fair.

Another thing that makes me rage is the class comparison. "A wizard is just a wizard and casts spells. A paladin in Diablo 2 has a variety of different playstyles, such as being a smiter tank or casting holy spells." Holy crap, what a piece of BS? Let me turn this around: "A sorcerer is just a sorcerer and casts spells. A crusader in Diablo 3 has a variety of different playstyles, such as being a thorns tank or casting lightning spells. Or having an army of Bowmen. Or searing the enemies with holy fire from above. Or ride to Valhalla on his horse. Or pulling mobs together in a group." Seriously, are you kidding me?

And of course I expected the "no trading, boo-hoo" rant. This is just so ignorant of the history of trading in Diablo, and all the explanations of Jay Wilson, Josh Mosqueira, and others. We've been there, done that, the AH killed the game, and it's good that it's gone. And trading with it. I'd kill the fun for all my friends if I'd just hand them full sets and ancients when they come online.

I'm gonna have to watch some cat videos now to calm down. What a piece of....