PoE vs Diablo 2 - Why D2 is still better
" This is true. Non duped runewords were a huge time sink to make unless you got lucky. Played D2 for ten years off and on, only HW found was a Jah. BoTD or Enigma were supposed to be rare. If the duping never happened LoD would have been a much better game, as they wouldn't have had to ramp up the damage of Hell. Those items were more rare then anything in this game as far as I can tell. "Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right!" Henry Ford
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" great vision [url=http://dougleschan.com/the-recruitment-guru/branding-tips/why-personal-branding-is-critical-for-a-recruiter-aka-recruitment-consultant/] Recruitment
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" I really like what you are writing there. Exactly my feeling toward the comparison between D2 and POE. But its all back to the hardcore and softcore arguement which will affect the economy of the game. I like how level 66 dock to be low end uniques farming area.... but probably hardcore will farm through this area and we will be seeing those uniques become worthless in the trade windows. The point is to find a balance point between hardcore farming and softcore farming. However, this is not easy at all. |
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Diablo 2 was designed as a single/multiplayer standalone arpg from the get go. While PoE treated as "mmo lite" hence the dragged out leveling. This makes trying new builds very tedious and dull.
Also basic builds take too many points to function. In most cases you will need 80 or more points to make a build viable. This leaves very little room for playing around. Even if you level to 90 you won't have much points to customise because of the way passive tree designed. Basicly this current 3-in-1 (character hp/mana, attributes(Str,Dex,Int), passive nodes) system is too much of a trouble to make what you want. In many cases you need to waste points to travel around to get notables and such, at the same time you will find yourself getting the attributes you don't want. I hope GGG reconsiders their design on passive skill tree and seperates attributes from passive nodes. That way players will be able to build their characters exactly how they want. While I am happy with the open class building, classes need some kind of speciality. For example when you choose a class there should be a small "special path" available only for that class. Because playing with the exact same passive tree when trying a new class sounds bland and uninspired. I hope PoE gets enough tweaking and GGG takes time to iron out it's problems. D2=TQ>DS=TL2>DS2=D>TL=PoE>S>D3>S2
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Of course it was hard to find the higher runes to make the better rune words, as the drop rates were outrageous.
Even without bots and duping, the rune words would've started becoming commonplace not too long after their implementation regardless, because you have thousands upon thousands of people playing the game. This is where I get frustrated about people making the choice to play these arpgs in a "self-found" fashion. You can't both play self-found and expect to find or build the best, rarest items in the game in any practical amount of time...not even close. You are meant to pool and convert the wealth you do find into what you want through trading. Yes, you are supposed to be trading if you want GG items. That's how it's always been, ***even the botters*** had to trade for things. If you disagree with this then you're flat-out drunk on nostalgia. |
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I kind of agree with the OP in that building up a character takes too much time, however D2 seemed rediculous sometimes because someone would rush you to lvl 70 in a few hours.
I would like it very much if this game could find that balance, that would let me test out a lot of builds without sacrificing too much of my life. |
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Yeah, powerleveling is part of the gameplay.
NO matter D2. D3. TL1 or TL2 or even POE, we played it once in normal, get the difficulty up in cruel, then the hardest challenge in merciless, i think we get the point, the story and all the gameplay we like. The next char should be levelled fast so we get to the end point at a reasonable time, and start collecting our different built of characters. |
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" Why is this a bad thing? Finding (all of) the best, rarest items SHOULDN'T be doable in any practical amount of time. Rare items are special because they're rare - if the game is all about the item-hunt as several have suggested, why skip it? (Note I'm not arguing against trading outright - just trading in an economy where anyone could get anything with a little farming or a little RMT) It's not like there is any specific piece of gear or keystone skill or number of links that is needed to finish merciless - at least non-melee, I haven't explored high end melee enough to judge. That might not be true for high maps right now but that's more the inequality of solo map crafting, act 3x will hopefully fix a lot there. Part of what makes an ARPG fun is trying to make the most of a character with the limitations you have - including what equipment is available. Early in D2 most build discussions I saw were about what mods were useful and why. In the later years, most build guides became little more than "what unique/runeword is best in slot for this character off the Arreat Summit shopping list" despite that most builds could play end-game fine without a single best in slot item. Assuming the existence and availability of those items did not enhance the game - but the possibility of maybe randomly finding one did! |
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" You've misunderstood my point. What I was getting at is that a lot of people like to complain that drop rates are outrageous and that, whilst playing in a "self-found" fashion, it starts to become very difficult to find upgrades. My point is, of course it should be difficult if not virtually impossible to farm upgrades better than a certain tier on your own. Look at mirrors for example. I believe Chris has stated that a mirror drops in the game roughly once every 3 days or so. It doesn't take a mathematician to see that the odds of you getting a mirror to drop are extremely slim to basically none. And that's how the game should be. I'm not against trading at all, I'm actually extremely for it. You basically restated my post and acted as if my stance was flip-flopped. |
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The ugly side of D2:
- It was made to run at 14 inch monitors, 640 x 480 before expansion, 800 x 600 after expansion. I guess they never patched to 1024 x 768 and higher because the area of the maps was small, so a larger screen would make game feel smaller - It was made to run on voodoo 2/3 cards, they never added proper D3D support - The limited color pallete helped to make it harder: objects, players, enemies, blend too well (one of the reasons why D3 changed art direction competely compared to D2) - Horrible AI. Horrible path finding. Merc gets stuck everywhere, mobs don't go around corners - There was some graphical desync, you first die, then sees a flame / ice ball passing through - Damage overflow - Stats overflow (player drops or cannot join) - Act 2 was a boring repetition of sand - Act 3 was a boring repetition of dark forest maze - Maggot lair was horrible to play, only one player or mob can pass through its thight tunnels - You open cow level, somebody rushes to the king and steals the cow level from you forever - Ppl rush to bosses and steal quests - Sockets were pretty much hardcore farming, there was no free unsocket - It gets tiring to repair gear... - What's the point of ethereal? Once broken, lost forever - Muling requires monk-like patience, click'n'click to death - Glitches. Skip act 3 entirely, just go travincal and then mephisto. And then Cain is stuck in a "riding kurast..." chat bug. They never fixed some bugs - Command based social interaction, no graphical interface for that - Somebody summons + some ridiculous fast arrows skill = ubber server lag - Dupe - Bots Path -to- exile
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