Is this diablo 3 all over again?

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Destructodave wrote:

D2 was not hard.

D2 was piss easy compared to PoE or D3. It just was, and is.

I'd agree in the context of PvE. But for PvP, Diablo 2 still reigns the most challenging. Especially when you find someone very good. The experience of PvPing for hours in The Blood Moor, or just in general, is lost nowadays. Diablo 3 hyped it up to be something incredible, but never delivered. I hope D4 can.

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girng wrote:

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Destructodave wrote:

D2 was not hard.

D2 was piss easy compared to PoE or D3. It just was, and is.

I'd agree in the context of PvE. But for PvP, Diablo 2 still reigns the most challenging. Especially when you find someone very good. The experience of PvPing for hours in The Blood Moor, or just in general, is lost nowadays. Diablo 3 hyped it up to be something incredible, but never delivered. I hope D4 can.

PvP was good in D2: Classic. I still remember early duels between RainyCloud and D2Queen. Sorcs dominated but other classes had a decent shot (DR SnB Barbs, GA Amazons etc).

Things however went to hell after they introduced Runewords with the main culprit being Enigma. PvP is fun when a class has unique abilities. Having teleport being open to all classes killed the concept.

D3 PvP (Brawling lol) was actually ok during its initial launch as things was quite well balanced. Ultimately though, PvE games seldom make for good PvP games unless there is massive scaling involved.

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DAKKONx wrote:

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girng wrote:

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Destructodave wrote:

D2 was not hard.

D2 was piss easy compared to PoE or D3. It just was, and is.

I'd agree in the context of PvE. But for PvP, Diablo 2 still reigns the most challenging. Especially when you find someone very good. The experience of PvPing for hours in The Blood Moor, or just in general, is lost nowadays. Diablo 3 hyped it up to be something incredible, but never delivered. I hope D4 can.

PvP was good in D2: Classic. I still remember early duels between RainyCloud and D2Queen. Sorcs dominated but other classes had a decent shot (DR SnB Barbs, GA Amazons etc).

Things however went to hell after they introduced Runewords with the main culprit being Enigma. PvP is fun when a class has unique abilities. Having teleport being open to all classes killed the concept.

D3 PvP (Brawling lol) was actually ok during its initial launch as things was quite well balanced. Ultimately though, PvE games seldom make for good PvP games unless there is massive scaling involved.

Yeah. Even after a decade+ later, I still remember the names of people I PvP'd with. Heck, I used to look up to certain players cause they were so good, and received tips and tricks from some to become a better player. D2 was such a great experience when I was growing up.


I remember one time when I was 12 or so, I tricked this one player with a fortitude armor. When I was doing it I thought it was hilarious. I couldn't sleep that night because I felt so bad for what I did, I cried in my mom's bed, told her why and eventually logged back on D2 and gave him the armor back and apologized to him. My mom didn't really understand but was super supportive and urged me to do the right thing.

A lot of memories with Diablo 2, that's for sure!

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girng wrote:

Yeah. Even after a decade+ later, I still remember the names of people I PvP'd with. Heck, I used to look up to certain players cause they were so good, and received tips and tricks from some to become a better player. D2 was such a great experience when I was growing up.


I remember one time when I was 12 or so, I tricked this one player with a fortitude armor. When I was doing it I thought it was hilarious. I couldn't sleep that night because I felt so bad for what I did, I cried in my mom's bed, told her why and eventually logged back on D2 and gave him the armor back and apologized to him. My mom didn't really understand but was super supportive and urged me to do the right thing.

A lot of memories with Diablo 2, that's for sure!

Hahahaha.

Most of the scams that we see in POE these days actually originated from D2. I still remember the first scam I fell for was the "SoJ for Frostburn switcheroo trade". This was before they implemented the timer for moved items so you can Green Tick the check box immediately without having the grey out period.

That was the first and last time I was scammed. It's almost impossible to be scammed in POE since you have to cursor over the item.

Another popular scam in D2 was throwing random items around the corpse during PvP. Hilarity ensued when they auto-equipped one of the items by accident prior to clicking their corpse. What followed was a christmas tree explosion of all your hard earned items upon getting killed again since you can only have 1 corpse at any point in time.

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DAKKONx wrote:

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girng wrote:

Yeah. Even after a decade+ later, I still remember the names of people I PvP'd with. Heck, I used to look up to certain players cause they were so good, and received tips and tricks from some to become a better player. D2 was such a great experience when I was growing up.


I remember one time when I was 12 or so, I tricked this one player with a fortitude armor. When I was doing it I thought it was hilarious. I couldn't sleep that night because I felt so bad for what I did, I cried in my mom's bed, told her why and eventually logged back on D2 and gave him the armor back and apologized to him. My mom didn't really understand but was super supportive and urged me to do the right thing.

A lot of memories with Diablo 2, that's for sure!

Hahahaha.

Most of the scams that we see in POE these days actually originated from D2. I still remember the first scam I fell for was the "SoJ for Frostburn switcheroo trade". This was before they implemented the timer for moved items so you can Green Tick the check box immediately without having the grey out period.

That was the first and last time I was scammed. It's almost impossible to be scammed in POE since you have to cursor over the item.

Another popular scam in D2 was throwing random items around the corpse during PvP. Hilarity ensued when they auto-equipped one of the items by accident prior to clicking their corpse. What followed was a christmas tree explosion of all your hard earned items upon getting killed again since you can only have 1 corpse at any point in time.

LOL yeah. I remember those.

Another dirty little scam I vehemently remember was the Anni drop trade in Harrogath. I especially remember the moment he was like "okay i'll start counting down from 3 2 1 and when it's 1, make sure you drop it and we both start walking to the other side, ok??"

Now looking back, I was such an i-word (still am), but omg D2 taught me a lot honestly. Values that stuck with me throughout my entire life.

D2 only became easy once runewords were introduced, or rather once mass botting and duping of high runes was a thing and became the currency of the game's economy. Godly runewords are certainly powerful but gated by extremely low drop rates of the required runes. They would be perfectly fine endgame chase items if not for the cheap dupes.

I started a fresh D2 file a few years ago (with the PlugY mod) which I still revisit every now and then, and the game's difficulty is deceptively hard once you remove the easy access to things like high runes, skiller charms, torches, anni charm, etc.

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Destructodave wrote:

D2 was not hard.

It depends on how you played. If you tried to progress through story difficulties, Hell could easily impede your progress based on the random gear you had while trying to deal with both monster immunities and your own lacking resistance.

Now on the other hand, if you could manage to get rushed through all the acts and just join (often bot lead) baal runs you could essentially level well past the 70s without ever spending an actual point and essentially running naked.

Getting through SSF PoE story arc can be done relatively painlessly, despite junky gear. D2 Hell difficulty was not nearly so forgiving, so if you didn't have the luxury of skipping through it and getting carried, then yeah it was actually a lot harder - even taking ssf out of the equation, d2 economics were ugly and trading was far more inconvenient than that of what people in PoE complain about regularly.

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Is this diablo 3 all over again?

From the perspective of end-game-challenges, absolutely correct indeed. In D3, many played GR as end-game but equally, many played the end-game Blizz forums. We can observe a similar pattern with our holy grail of ARPGs.

Games used to be harder in general. That is why D2 is harder than D3. If this keeps up, D5 will be a game for preschoolers.

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SeCKSEgai wrote:

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Destructodave wrote:

D2 was not hard.

It depends on how you played. If you tried to progress through story difficulties, Hell could easily impede your progress based on the random gear you had while trying to deal with both monster immunities and your own lacking resistance.

Now on the other hand, if you could manage to get rushed through all the acts and just join (often bot lead) baal runs you could essentially level well past the 70s without ever spending an actual point and essentially running naked.

Getting through SSF PoE story arc can be done relatively painlessly, despite junky gear. D2 Hell difficulty was not nearly so forgiving, so if you didn't have the luxury of skipping through it and getting carried, then yeah it was actually a lot harder - even taking ssf out of the equation, d2 economics were ugly and trading was far more inconvenient than that of what people in PoE complain about regularly.

The real issue is what people base their perception of "hard" on. I feel like most people, when talking about old games, have theirs based on choices, or time commitment, or logistics(like WoW raids), punishments, etc. Very few base it on actual gameplay.

But these sorta get blended in when people talk about how hard a game is to play. D2 had more choices than D3. You were punished for misclicking skills in. Etc.But D3 is harder to play. Anyone who says D3 is some easier game I just cant see them ever really pushing a GR and having to dodge arcane beam/mortar/waller/horde packs while also doing their correct skill rotation and using every skill on their bar to hopefully beat the GR in time. I dunno how anyone can say mashing mouse 2 is harder than that. And I'm not some D3 player. But I know managing all that and at the speed the game throws it at your or requires you to is far harder than spamming multishot or hammers or whirlwind.

Just like WoW Classic had more time commitment and more logistic nightmares, but there is no one who is gonna tell me half the stuff in classic measures up in any way to a decently high mythic+ run in a normal dungeon in current wow. The twitch-factor and actual gameplay ability just far surpass older titles. Thats not even taking into account raiding. Just comparing what it requires for people to do mythic+ dungeons, compared to 90% tank and spank vanilla WoW.

Your definition of hard in D2 is really just tedium. Bad trading, bad RNG, punished skill builds, etc. The act of pressing mouse 2 in the direction of a pack of monsters is was not hard. Just like a dps parse of a vanilla mage doing its rotation. Was 98 frostbolts and 2 cone of colds. lol.

I dunno. I"ve just never been sucked into nostalgia or looking back through rose-tinted glasses, which is what a lot of people do when they relive their glory days in old games. They wre good for their time, probably difficult at the time, because I believe overall average gamer skill has risen tremendously. Even your basic WoW player binds almost all their keys nowadays, where a lot of those hardcore raiders were clickers. The main thing older games have on newer ones, and where a lot of people look to when talking about hard, is no hand holding. Builds you can screw up, no strategy guides, or addons, or vids, impactful choices. Thats about the only way you can realistically say any of the older games people talk about are harder by today's standards. Because they are not harder in the actual gameplay department.