Great thread. Diablo 2 went to shit in 98 when people discovered how powerful a Sorcerer was at high levels with mana shield, chain lightning, and teleport.
I don't think the sorcerer was intended to have screen clearing power but that mistake has informed the design of every ARPG since.
Warrior kino where you beat individual monsters to death has never come back since.

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>>12881078
I don't know, I've picked up Dark Stone, Lord of the Rings: Two Towers and Return of the King (GBA) and Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (GBA) and those games aren't focused on blasting a screen with a single spell to clear it.

I like Diablo 1, but could never get into the sequel. The first game's simplicity was its genius.

>>12881078
>in 98
diablo 2 came out in 2000

>chain lightning
lolwut? no one was using the shitty lightning spells. all you used from there was teleport, static field and mana shield. i think thunderstorm was kind of popular for a little bit. i remember using it once. but the real damaging spells were frozen orb and meteor

>>12881019
All I remember is that being able to purchase mana pots from the start was easy-street. Completely made socketing sapphires into helms and body armor unnecessary when rolling a new character.

But I also prefer Classic to LoD. The expansion added a lot of cool ideas, but in practice none of it really adds anything noteworthy. And it also blurs the delineation between classes by giving them all access to previously character specific abilities.

>>12881096
I didn't know there was baldurs gate for GBA, thanks anon!

>>12881154
retard

>>12881169
>All I remember is that being able to purchase mana pots from the start was easy-street. Completely made socketing sapphires into helms and body armor unnecessary when rolling a new character.
wtf
you know, I played the remaster recently and I was having a difficult time reconciling that experience my own memories of playing diablo 2 at launch
part of it is the difficulty. I remembered it being harder. but maybe I was a dumb kid
another was definitely the potions. I remember struggling to get them
but one thing I remember clearly is getting to a new act and actually buying new weapons and armor because they would make a real difference to damage until I got a version of it with better effects through drops later
I wonder if they just slowly but surely tweaked and "balanced" it from an actual action adventure role playing game into a mind numbing baal run end game on-ramp (I guess there's the weird ultra diablo spawns or whatever they call it now). maybe it used to be a better game. now I want to try the original without any patches

>>12881276
>part of it is the difficulty. I remembered it being harder. but maybe I was a dumb kid
it's definitely harder if you play single player, in online with all the duping and shit it's probably easier
>another was definitely the potions. I remember struggling to get them
yep starting on 1.10 you could buy infinite mana pots, stupid
>but one thing I remember clearly is getting to a new act and actually buying new weapons and armor because they would make a real difference to damage until I got a version of it with better effects through drops later
you can definitely get decent stuff from vendors in early versions, then the runeword wankery started and you could only use stuff like grief and whatnot

>>12881019
If by going to shit you mean became an absolute marvel then, yes, I agree.

why has no one RE'd Diablo 2 using AI? it should be a breeze, no?

>>12881276
It's not just that 1.10 added mana pots to vendors, but LoD itself made mana pots drop more often (eg. uniques and champions always drop 2-4x pots on death). And if you're a meta fag, 1.08 added all the power leveling runewords, and then 1.10 made them easily farmable off Countess. Play 1.05b for the real Diablo 2.

>>12882172
Having mana become so accessible was the death of the Normal Attack. It is no different than stamina now, an inconvenience at the start and completely irrelevant by the mid game.
Runewords are also not great because early patches the best gear was in weird rare finds and not getting the same Enigma armor as everyone else. Teleport is cool when it's the unique advantage of the Sorc but it's lame when everyone is telestomping wearing the same gear.
Third worlders love shit like that though because they obsess over prestige and having 0.0001% drop rates to get the Popular Item is a thrill for peabrains.
If you look at D2 modding communities 90% of projects obsess over adding more speed, more power, and ultra impossible drops as if anyone will farm for years in the New Delhi-ablo Mod. Hate to see it go this way, I miss Diablo 1 griefing people online.

>>12881019
>Diablo 2 went to shit when 1.10
pretty sure it became "unbalanced" for singleplayer once Lord of Destruction was released. i forgot when. maybe patch 1.08 and above? basically made the single player game really grindy after Act 1 unless you play online with friends or whatever, to help you grind for strong uniques or sets.

>>12881019
Diablo 2 went to shit at 1.13c
it was fine at 1.12, but came the 1.13 patch and hammerdin was nerf

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>>12881078
>Warrior kino where you beat individual monsters to death has never come back since.
There's many games that did this after D2 like picrel.

>>12884898
Damn 3d games just don't hold up. This looks worse than Diablo 1 despite releasing 7 or 8 years later.

>>12884924
I think this game held up a lot better than most eurotrash ARPG's from that time period. Like Sacred 2 came out after this game and I think it looks even worse.

>>12881546
There is a Diablo 2 port for Vita

was that when they killed guided arrow?
yeah

>>12881078
>I don't think the sorcerer was intended to have screen clearing power but that mistake has informed the design of every ARPG since.

For what it's worth, the sorcerer has the the exact same problem in Diablo 1, except the the screen-clearing powers emerge barely even half way through the game.

The second you get fire wall, mana shield, and a decent mana pool, pretty much nothing can touch you.

>>12885141
You are the second poster that seems to have misunderstood my post *is* referring to the Diablo 1 sorcerer.
The Diablo 1 sorcerer is the origin of all modern ARPG design woes because his power spike has informed everything that came after. The warrior and rogue experience have largely been discarded. In D2, even melee and ranged characters play like a sorcerer because you always use spells (ex a Paladin will not be hitting an enemy with a normal attack midway through the game, they're using a Zeal spell to hit them several times faster. More likely than that though they are teleporting and shooting hammers)
By LOD every character is working towards having teleport since it is so powerful of an ability, like the original mana shield, it has no disadvantages.
The end game of all character classes is nearly identical because you want to be surrounded by mobs and then activate your nuclear skill to clear the screen and then run at 600% frw to do it once more.
The great critique of the Diablo 1 warrior is that you have to chase enemies that can run as fast as you, which means the sorcerer-route is the only correct choice for future games. I don't really like that though, because it could have also been solved by giving kiting monsters an AI delay between actions, making them walk 5% faster, or giving melee characters some way to move slightly faster, lunge forward, etc. otherwise even the warrior is better off teleporting. Teleport really fucks everything up.

>>12881117
Fuck Succubi. not literally.

>>12886165
>The warrior and rogue experience have largely been discarded

almost every fan module made for Neverwinter Nights 1 seem to be optimised for Fighter-Rogue multiclass though.

>>12881019
No.

>>12881078
I beat the game, legit, with a Bow/Spear-mazon.

>>12881243
W-why am I a retard? :(

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D2 feels like I need to find better gear, just so I can find better gear. I haven't played in a long time, hardcore could be fun.

I prefer D1 ironman runs.

>>12889671
I think they meant that stuff was discovered in Diablo 1 and preemptively ruined D2.

>>12889679
>D2 feels like I need to find better gear, just so I can find better gear.
This became more of a thing after LoD. Before that, everything was a bit simpler and simpler items were more useful. The gear system was still expanded compared to D1 but D2 before LoD was still more familiar to D1.

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>LOD 1.09d
>unlock frame rate
>unlock resolution
>unlock aspect ratio
>unlock players 64 (like 1.09b)
>chance to cast bug fixed (like 1.09b)
just tested, first zombie gave 239xp and nothing crashed so far
yep it's gaming time

>>12881078
Yeah but Barbarians can get a bunch of stamina and even better odds of finding potions!

Does that mana burn bug exist in all versions? Makes my ES sorc cry.

>>12884807
Patch 1.12 kicked ass. It made the game ez to pirate and play on LAN.

>>12881117
The two games are almost different genres. D1 is an arguable roguelite, while D2 is a straight action RPG.

>>12881019
No

I rolled an amazon. Should I avoid putting any point into dodge avoid evade? I don't know if them triggering will fuck me more than not putting any point into them

>>12881154
He's saying that Diablo 2 went downhill when people realized how powerful Diablo 1 Sorcerer was. He's saying it was dead on arrival.

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Diablo 1 warrior is kino because even though enemies in Hell are annoying, you are meant to be switching between multiple tools in real time to deal with them. You may have spells, a bow, a staff, scrolls, but you are expected to use whatever you find. Modern ARPG's go all in on pre-defined builds where you just dump points into the build assigned stats and abilities and power through everything. Or you get the Diablo 2 martial characters who can't do shit and are dependent on hand-me-downs from a Sorceress who can flash farm entire zones with impunity.

>>12891050
>Modern ARPG's go all in on pre-defined builds where you just dump points into the build assigned stats and abilities and power through everything.
Yeah this sums up my thoughts pretty well, they feel very mindless wave clearing until you get one shot by some random mob you didn't manage to oneshot yourself.

anyone who ACTUALLY cares about d2 plays pd2 today. you are a poser if you dont know what that is.

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for me it's 1.09 at 60 fps and higher resolution

>>12891942
Are they still banning accounts that use cracked LOD?

>>12891018
>dodge avoid evade?
that's the only way to make the amazon almost as tanky as the barbie.

>>12893482
i never play Bnet for D2 so i don't care.

>>12893473
>higher resolution
homosexual behavior