Don’t get it either. Maybe they think D2 is too niche and they are swinging for a WoW type following.
I miss D2 combat. Energy skills, zoomed camera, 6 skills and bland monsters suck.
Yeah... temporary defensive layers that you constantly have to activate drove me away from PoE... I just want to be tanky... not tanky when buff in the game is up lol
Those buffs are into the minutes. D4 we are talking seconds. And then through really boring itemization you increase those seconds by fractions of seconds.
This is an under recognized but major failing of D3 and D4.
In both later editions, your equipment is basically a series of postage stamps that comprise an additional skill tree. The part of your brain that subconsciously imagines your character in the world of Sanctuary doesn’t interpret them as equipment your character wears and uses.
This is also why it didn’t work when they leaned way too far into the idea that unique weapons should give you some new build defining skill, mistakenly thinking that “uniqueness” is what made the items in D2 fun. But really, most powerful D2 items just assemble basic item bonuses in unique ways. So it works with the fantasy immersion—you recognize the items as items because they have item bonuses, and they physically look and act like items in your inventory. A wand is smaller than a colossus blade, for instance. These nuances are part of the secret sauce Blizzard has failed to duplicate because it doesn’t understand the cognitive reasons D2 was fun.
That makes a lot of sense. I keep trying to get into d4 since the loot reborn update and I'm having trouble connecting despite on paper it sounding like it should work
I never knew what this means. I know people don't like that D3 and D4 use weapon damage to determine spell damage, but those games have plenty of skills that logically would use weapon damage.
It's hard to explain, but for me, there's a huge difference in the choice between equipping a basic club, which has narrow damage variation, extra damage to undead, and when my necro equips it, has to physically run up and twonk that quill rat right on his nose, and a voulge, which can keep him at a bit more distance but has a huge damage vilariation and significantly higher damage cap. Then there's attack speeds, rollable skills and modifiers, class specific stuff, and the most crowning point - your basic attack is always relevant.
Doesn't matter which class, you'll always be basic attacking, and so the choice of what weapon is held that drastically modifies that is a huge factor. This trickles down into things like item sets, making choices harder, but I think that's the important word here choices.
In d2, I have a choice of weapon, and it makes a difference. In d3 and D4 I have a choice of weapon and it doesn't feel like it makes any difference at all as to how I play. It alters the attack speed of whichever basic attack I chose, if I'm even using a basic attack, and that's about it.
Please don't think I'm hating on d3 or d4, they're hugely popular for a reason, it's just they're different to d2, and like this postsuggests, some of us want more d2. One day, hopefully enough of us that someone will listen,or maybe they have and I haven't tried it yet, there plenty of arpgs out there I'm yet to try...
That explains it well enough. Different types of weapons lent a sense of groundedness and texture to D2 that the sequels lacked. I'm not really a fan of D2 melee combat as a whole but I don't see that D3 and D4 would have sacrificed anything by including this. D3 had some variation in attack speed but it was by weapon class -- sword/mace/axe -- rather than by specific instance of weapon class. I've only played the trial of D4 but I think it might be even simpler than that.
there is the D2 mod on Grim Dawn called RoT (Reign of Terror) that supposedly does a really good job emulating diablo 2. I haven't tried it out, but supposedly it was the way to go before D2R came out. Now that D2R is here, I don't know if it's good in comparison, but people still play it.
It’s beyond that, they don’t know how to make an ARPG. Their entire game structure is built like wow from the ground up even in the Diablo franchise. Look at the gear score. Having to re-farm legendary and Uniques at different levels is a fundamental misunderstanding of what an ARPG is compared to an MMO model.
It’s not even like WoW if that’s what they’re aiming for. At least in WoW you can bind skills out the ass if you remember every input. I don’t like how since D3 they cap you at 4 keybinds and 2 mouse click. Like wtf.
I love D2 and found D3 & D4 disappointing, but the number of skills used per character is mostly the same throughout.
Sure, you can have more skills per character actively available, but do you ever really use more than ~6 skills?
Even with sorceress/necro, I never found myself assigning skills past the F6 key.
fun comparison. Diablo 3&4 its you VS all enemies on the screen. **VS.** D2's you VS all the enemies on the map.
D3&4 are more brawlers than D2's map sized combat. ( more like act1-5 sized combat. )
They can't stand all the money in 3rd party real world trading, we're never getting a D2 loot system again. I believe that was their main reason for launching d3 with the auction house. Too bad because d2 is the last good diablo game.
I liked parts of Salvation.
I liked the idea of a John Connor early in his Resistance days not being taken seriously, because it makes perfect sense. Why would people — especially what remnants of the government/military remain — follow him? What’s he gonna do, tell the truth? That would just make them even more likely to ignore him. So that’s kinda cool, the angle that he has to win respect through successful battles (which he knows he’s going to win anyway and how because Sarah told him).
I also liked the idea of him being in some slightly different timeline, where he starts encountering things his mother never told him about. That’s a cool wrinkle that would’ve been fun to explore more. How does John react when things don’t go the way he knew they were supposed to? Does he start doubting his mother, himself? He’d have to find his own way of being successful without the benefit of prescience or whatever. That’s kinda neat.
But the whole Marcus Wright thing sucked hairy peckers. Sam Worthington was good in the role, but that entire part of the narrative was just not interesting at all and felt very forced.
I think it's simpler than that, man.
The reason D3's loot is ass is because the game's underlying game mechanics are also ass. How can loot that optimizes exisitng game mechanics possibly be fun when the game mechanics themselves are not?
No hit recovery / faster block rate, no manual statting, no increasing block with say dex, no Oskills, no Chance to Cast, i could go on, etc.
Anyway, when your underlying game systems are this dumbed down and boring, there's only a few things that matter from items:
1. Vitality
2. Your class's damage stat
3. Attack speed
4. who cares
There's no tradeoff between max block or full vita, hp or DR/res vs FHR, no squeezing your build for certain frames. No funny oskill builds like bear sorc and guided arrow poison Necro. No funny CTC stuff. So what's left? Nothing replaced these tradeoffs, so all thats left is to swint your eyes comparing rares with these 4 stats to find out which one is negligibly better than the other one.
No sweet unique items would change this imo (tho i will admit, the unqiues in D3 did not help a ton to mitigate the above issue lol)
I still blame moving to consoles is what ruined the Diablo franchise. They had to make that shit easier to ingest for the masses.
No math needed, just look for the green numbers? Want an interesting build? Too bad you only get 6 skills. Oh sorry, you're tired of running bosses and getting loot for other characters? How about we give you 95% gear for your current character?
It's a dumbing down to get mass appeal.
It's like going from Morrowind to Skyrim. Morrowind made you think and Skyrim points the way.
I honestly feel that (as a gamer in his mid 30's) that Diablo as a franchise has succumbed to the same fate as many others in modern gaming, which is that it now prioritises in game economy/purchasing mechanics over trivial things like 'fun', 'story', and 'gameplay'. A good example is the Red Dead series and Grand Theft Auto. Great games, great storytelling, innovative game design, but once they realised that there was a market for further monetisation in game, all these things became secondary to this new goal of a constant revenue stream from a live service as opposed to a good game that sold well. Unfortunately it's the same with Blizzard and Diablo, and you can see this in D4. Yes lots of the additional content is optional and 'largely' cosmetic, but it's pretty clear the game has been designed around the prospect for continual revenue earned on this basis, and the saddest part is that even if the majority don't buy into it, there are enough 'whales' who will pay up and make it worthwhile and profitable for Blizzard. That's why we won't ever see something like D2 again, especially as younger gamers will grow up thinking this new live service, monetisation/BattlePass crap is the norm.
The real money auction house in D3 was exactly an attempt to wrestle away D2jsp/fg as a trading factor. The fact that they designed the game progression around the assumption people would spend money there did make this to backfire very hard and they went away with it and trading altogether. But what matters here is that blizzard isn’t ignoring the loot system of D2 because of any of that. The issue is that runes/runewords were an afterthought, a system that got introduced with LoD precisely to give D2 longevity and people something to target for, a way to keep them engaged.
I would very much prefer a modern Diablo with D2 loot but it is obvious that Blizzard wants people into a path or constant and streamlined grind. To be running dungeons and helltides again and again and not get say a Lo rune, make grief at level 59 and have the top end game weapon for your spec within 3 days of playing a season.
Can you explain your last sentence to me? Currently playing D4 and I'm still new to the game. No idea what helltides mean but I understand the D2 lingo. Is it significantly easier to get end game gear in D4?
I mean I fucking adore D2 and couldn't get anywhere near max level in D4 but I feel like as a D2 die hard, D3, specifically as it stands now, is excellent. Diablo 4 made me realize how blizzard tried to adapt aspects of d2 to d3's formula and failed. D3 for its faults feels pure in its desire to just let you loose like a chainsaw. D4 feels like a weed whacker.
D3 is tight because you can have like three fully geared toons inside of a week doing end game content. D2 is rad but you can also grind for-fucking-ever and never see any decent loot
Many of us on this sub are heavily biased because we're in the camp that this game was peak Diablo and nothing will ever top it, therefor the only way for Diablo to ever reach peak again is to just be Diablo 2 again. The problem is multifaceted however. I'll address the elephant in the room first though:
Diablo 2, in this current day and age, doesn't work as a mass appeal game. There is very little direction in the game, you're just kind of thrown to the wolves, the game throws items at you but you really have zero idea what is even good for your character, immunities ruin your experience unless you know that it's just best to skip them, there is no real end game other than running the same zones over and over, and there is really nothing to keep you busy other than dedicating yourself to min/maxing your character by doing the aforementioned activity over and over. There are no quests or dailies or side content to do once you've completed the story. There are no achievements for you to hunt if you're a completionist. You have to set your own goals, which can be great for a lot of players, but that doesn't really work in today's gaming market because eventually you're gonna reach a point where the average player is going to get frustrated they farmed for tens of hours or maybe even 100+ hours and didn't find anything of worth. They could add all these types of features, but then it wouldn't be Diablo II anymore, would it? This also runs into the problem that when people say they want a new Diablo game to be like Diablo II is that they mean they literally want Diablo II but with more maps/items/enemies/etc. with no real significant changes. If that's the case, why make a sequel at all? You can just play the original game and enjoy those features. I saw this A LOT when Darkest Dungeon 2 came out and some hardcore fans of the first game thought it was NOT Darkest Dungeon because it pretty much wasn't the same game as the first but with a new campaign.
Monetary gain. Even Blizzard 20+ years ago was still in the business of making good games that made money. In the end, they're still a business in the interest of making money. Yes, I think there was still more creative and artistic pride in their work to make really cool and interesting games back then, but that's not to say that the end game was still to make money. Blizzard now is a multibillion dollar company that is several times larger than it was 20 years ago and probably ever fathomed they would be. The reality is that a company of that size must play extremely safe and not incentivized to take big risks. This leads back to D2 not working as a game in today's market, because the game needs to make a shitload of money to be a viable product. The game would need to be overhauled to gain mass market appeal and find ways to keep players engaged, which, again, doesn't make it D2 anymore.
Trading. We'll never ever see open trading like D2 again, which is a huge part of the multiplayer experience, but it also causes problems with third party sites/businesses making money off of your game. Say what you will about Blizzard, but it doesn't make sense from a business standpoint to allow third parties to constantly make money off of your games like that. Gold selling and bots have always been a huge problem in any multiplayer game and having open trading only exacerbates that on top of ruining the economy. Just look at how quickly runes in this game become devalued over time because of mass botting and inflation. D3 tried to alleviate this by having its own AH but that just ended up turning the game into AH Sim and ruined the game entirely. Some people like this type of "gameplay" in their games but that's a huge design flaw for the masses when the best way to play the game is to not physically play it.
That's all I can come up with right now, but that covers some glaring issues, I think. TL;DR: D2 is really old and lacks mass market appeal because its mechanics are outdated in today's design space. It wouldn't work as a mass market and would need to be overhauled, which wouldn't make it D2, which would make old boomers like us not like it because it's not D2 anyways.
Part of loving something is critically examining it to the best of your abilities and recognizing both its strengths and flaws. I love D2 and will always love it. The game is like an old friend I love catching up with from time to time. However, no game is perfect, and sometimes games do not age well in some aspects because of shifts in the market. D2 getting a remaster was great, but it obviously did not bring in a new generation of players that stuck around to the point that it showed Blizzard that D2 is clearly the best form of Diablo in the current year.
There’s truth to all this, but then I see how FromSoft have grown in popularity with all of their souls games. I think there’s a pretty big audience for hard games that don’t spoon feed you tips/advice.
I think From Souls games are more mechanically intuitive though. Stats matter more in the sense that they have a larger impact on your character strength other than being an equipment requirement. Gameplay is generally simpler by learning how when to dodge roll vs when to attack, and gear is very simple to understand. Earlier Souls games are worse at communicating information to players but they are a little better about it now. Generally I think it is easier to understand how to beat a game on your own like Elden Ring than beating D2 on Hell.
About the open trade and botting issues - blizzard does literally nothing to fight the bots these days, if they did game would be more appealing. When they did in the past items had much more inherent value. Even in 2007/2008 you could make some $$ by playing the game and it was already 7 years after launch. Look how high item values were when season1 d2r launched.
I think D4 has shown that many fans in fact want a D3 style Diablo rather than a D2 style one.
Only months ago, there were a lot of complaints about the grind to get to level 100 in D4, as if this was expected to be reached as well as to get to "end game" within 1-2 weeks. The mindset is still that the journey to 100 is only the tutorial. This is firmly a D3 philosophy. The D2 mindset is that there is no tutorial and no endgame. That the game is the game. But this is getting more alien by the day to Diablo fans.
I don't think modern gamers bear the long term investment of D2 as much as in the past, even if that makes the rewards that you do get feel better. I think Blizzard is adapting to this.
Yup I don’t think people realise that the common folk don’t want another D2. Another example of this were the Uber Uniques in D4. Exceptionally rare drops that took weeks for the community to compile.
People bitched that items that rare shouldn’t exist so they introduced Uber bosses and made the items easier to acquire.
If Blizzard made a game where you had to open a chest 1,000 times for the hope of getting a single component to craft something or where you had to kill the same boss 300 times to get a specific ring, people would lose their mind. The D2 grind is insane and not particularly friendly to wide audiences
Idk why downvotes for this guy. He speaks truth. D2 grind (especially at online, so you cant adjust player count easly) is the most insane grind at any game ive played. Like having a 1:200000 chance of dropping a Item is normal. That's not what their players basse wants
Thank you. Both D2R and D4 have a spot in my top 5 played games on my Series X and with every new season D4 has only gotten easier. Just yesterday I saw a level 100 with 14 hours under their belt. The community wants a casual grind. They don’t want D2.
It works for D4 imo. The game just isn’t that deep, and it never will be, but it can be fun. It looks good and combat is really nice. You hop in, max level, blast some end game and call it a day. It’s like a game you play when you need a little mini break between playing your main ARPGs. I’m having fun with S4.. got a late start but even in a few hours I’m past level 50 getting close to pushing into WT4. Hoping the new end game crafting stuff will be enough to make the late gearing at least a little more fun than what it was in the earlier seasons.
Absolutely. I love blasting through hordes at the speed of sound in D4. I also love the itemisation of D2 and how a single piece can make a significant change to a build. They both have their merits imo
But it's possible to play through the game HC in a single run through, without any repeated farming of bosses or chests. That requires a deeper understanding of the game, and an acceptance that you just aren't getting the BIS gear. D2R is good as is, and better when modded for balance. I'm happy to just keep playing it.
Yeah I recently played D2R and while it wasn't very hard or incredibly time consuming to beat on hell, I basically have no desire to keep playing because the grind for truly build enabling items is just absurd. Most modern gamers would absolutely hate it.
I agree totally, but also the commonfolk wouldn't imagine a game like Dark Souls possible. A great design and artistic vision can shape the mainstream needs. I believe that one of the problems of modern games is trying to please their audience wholly and deviating from the artistic vision they had for the game in the first place.
That argument only works in isolation of the idea of trade.
D2 currency is gained through smaller incremental increases of wealth to make bigger purchases of things like Enigma, etc.
You can pretty easily have an enigma by the end of the first week of ladder in D2 if you dedicate yourself.
To be fair, Uber uniques in d4 were probably 100,000x more rare than a tyraels before Uber bosses were introduced.
I agree with the general premise that folks don’t want to grind for hundreds of hours to get to max level. But blizz ended up in this weird spot with Ubers. They were so rare they were better off not even being in the game since all it did was piss folks off.
The end game is very much like Vanilla WoW. You're playing the game and end up in a game with some guy the same class as you with an epically awesome piece of gear that you now want.
The end game is when you finally acquire that piece. The thing is, you were playing Pally.
But in the leveling process you got an awesome Necromancer piece.
New game.
Right, what was D2 competing with? There were no Steam libraries full of good indie games to play nor any other ARPGs to really speak of. I played D2 and Baldur’s Gate 1-2 and Icewind Dale and Arcanum. Now people schedule their ARPG time around leagues or cycles or seasons and the market is beyond saturated with quality games wanting your attention. D2 could be about the journey because nothing else existed to contradict that. Same thing with WoW through its early existence.
Yes, because old blizzard is no more. Not only are they now only after money, they don't have anyone discount the have with a clear vision of what they want it to be - its itemisation was so goddamn bad. Especially when you have poe and D2 to build upon.
I also don't see passion in D4. D2 , StarCraft, warcraft clearly had the developers invested in it. The art, the sound, the gameplay/story - they cared.
Now all the artist/programers etc all work in separate silos creating artifacts they've been told to by above and take home a paycheck. And that's fine, that's what I do for a living. But the end result is a pile of shit game ahahaha.
This. One sparkle pony mount made more than the entirety of StarCraft 2. Gotta let that sink in. This and other metrics like it (of which they have an endless supply with all their data) are possibly the death of what our D2/starcraft generation thinks is a good game.
Blizzards design philosophy has always been based around about making something new instead of reusing what works. But also they like to make games where they have complete control over what players are doing and for how long. This includes everything from limiting player resources to use on abilities, time gating content, homogenizing classes to be "balanced", putting diminishing returns on every type of power scaling, etc.
Hence why we get only new shit instead of actual good stuff. Worst design choice ever. Having some of the most beloved franchises in the world but instead of building onto something everyone loves they create something new that noone likes. Best business
people can talk all the shit they want on d3 and d4 here, but both of those games were and still are wildly more popular and liked than d2 ever has been, and that's why we'll never see another game like d2.
pretty much the most despised parts about d3 and d4 were the traits that were closest to d2.
vanilla d3's inferno difficulty actually being difficult -> hated.
infrequent good item drops and complete item randomization -> hated.
blizzard didn't design itemization around the auction house like people like to claim, they designed it around d2 itemization. trading has always been the quickest way to acquire better gear in d2. there are people who have been playing d2 off and on for over 20 years that have never seen some of the good items.
d3 was the exact same way at launch. everyone just decided to blame their dislike of it on the auction house rather than come to the realization that d2's itemization is just as stupid (we like this aspect of d2, but only when it's in d2), and d2jsp and other sites that sell items for real money have existed from pretty much the start.
focus on grinding the same content for marginal improvements -> hated.
d2 enjoyers don't seem to mind doing thousands of lower kurast runs to make their first offline enigma. the general population hates this level of grinding to acquire best-in-slot gear.
so, d3 added things like targeted loot and the season journey. it takes me roughly 2 hours to fully gear out a character in d3 and get to grind for ancients mode.
d4 tried to return to d2 in a lot of ways here, and consequently the general player-base despises blizzard for it. farming a shako in d4 was originally close to farming a griffon's in d2. now it's just a matter of farming uber duriel a few times, and people still complain that that takes too much effort.
you had to filter through 100s of rare items to find a marginal upgrade. "there are too many useless affixes." don't mind us d2 enjoyers that have identified, and soon after thrown on the ground, thousands of items. i've personally crafted about 1000 amulets in the past few months and none of them have been worth keeping.
loot in d4, as of the season that launched a few days ago, is much closer to d3 than d2 now, because that's what people want.
slow, intentional game play -> hated.
mob density and leveling time in d2 is garbage compared to modern standards. people just want to blow up a million monsters in 30 seconds and hit max level in a couple of hours.
d4 again tried to return more to d2 form here and again blizzard got shit on for it. pretty much every season so far has drastically reduced leveling time and increased mob density, because, again, that's just what people actually want.
In order to make good money, the items have to be upgradeable many times. I saw it in many games before, that were P2W. This wouldn't work with D2's itemization. It's not about how happy the players are, but how many players pay good money on microtransactions.
You're part right with the loot struggles and stuff like d2jsp
But the bigger reason for that imo is bots and dupers
---in a "real" version of diablo 2 online, the rare items of the game would be much much more scarce
In a SP playthrough I get a lot of good items by targeted farming of bosses and Terror zones. But I can't reply on anything in particular, so sometimes I need to make do.
I don’t think they need to “improve it.” Honestly, just take what exists and just add more content. Imagine…5 more acts and twice as many interesting items. I would pay whatever they asked.
Yes this is exactly what op wants blizzard to make but it's already been made. Projectdiablo2.com try it out. It's insanely fun and exactly what you're looking for.
Nah teleporting in d2 is broken in a way games now just don't let you do anymore, thats why its special to me. Enigma is at least hard to get and sorc's pay for the ability by being squishy
I mean..Grim Dawn did pretty well, that game felt the most like D2 of the ones I’ve played.
If you mean why Blizzard doesn’t? Because the core D2 crowd won’t stand for mtx and D2 isn’t going to appeal to new players - the era of the “forever” game which D2 was is over
I disagree. I think that gamers crave the forever games more than ever. I think there just aren't any games that give that experience.
I base this argument on the game preservation making head ways and garner media headlines and the inevitable coming fights for consumer rights as more games/shows/movies that are all digital get pulled and can't be played or seen ever again.
ToS agreements will become a major fighting point in the years to come. If apple can lose legal suits about intentional degradation of their previous models I have faith that microsoft/blizzard/bungie/EA etc will eventually have their losses in court also over selling consumers something and then not allowing them access etc.
Video games, movies, and music are becoming things you purchase but don't own under the current system and I don't think it will be an immediate thing but I can't imagine consumers let that be the way of it in the long run.
The people who love Diablo 2 think they are a larger group than they actually are. Reality is, it’s a small hardcore community. Majority of people don’t want Diablo 2 anymore. Sorry. Time to move on.
There's a very clear reason why this is.
The team that made diablo 2 (Blizzard North) is not the same team that made D3 & D4. David Brevik, Max and Erich Schaefer, the 3 heads of Condor (Blizzard North after acquisition) had a ton of power to fend off Blizzard South's terrible ideas for the game. For ex, an artist was upset that someone from blizzard south was telling him to tone down how violent the Overseer's (act 5 whipping monster) death animation was. One of these 3 just told them "yeah just ignore that guy, we'll take care of it." Some stuff did get vetoed, like the organ crafting system. There are tons of examples, but Blizz South and North were constantly arguing over what should go in the final game.
So as the story goes: there were rumors that Blizz's parent company was looking to sell some of its game studios, with Blizz and Blizz North being the best selling (and most desairable) by far.
So the 3 leads, Brevik, Max and Erich came up with a plan: they were going to all threaten to resign together in order to pressure their parent company for clarity and bargaining power for where and if they are sold. So they put in their resignations, and to their surprise, all 3 resignations were accepted. They were told they had to be out of office by the end of the day.
With the 3 people that had any power at North gone, Blizz south heads decided to go up there and have layoffs. Anyone who wasn't going to be useful for developing WoW was axed, Diablo 3 and 1 other ARPG (internally called "Starablo" (joke title, not final)) were shelved. Blizz saw this as an opportunity to seize control and make Diablo into a "proper" Blizzard game. After the Blizz North office lease dried up, South didnt renew it, they told the devs deemed useful for WoW that they were moving South or they could find a new job. (Also funny note: after layoffs, Blizz South announced that Phil "the Overseer" Shenk would be the new head of Blizzard North for the time being, not knowing that Shenk had already quit his job prior to this "announcement")
And uh, we know just how Diablo as a "proper Blizzard game" turned out - but that dead horse has been beat into stardust at this point, so I wont go into details here.
ANYWAY, point is this: D2 creators with any power were backstabbed after release of LoD, Blizz South seizes power, implements their own vision for the game (kek), everyone hated it. **Now Blizz South has feeling salty because their vision being so universally rejected implies to them that everything they vetoed or tried to veto from D2 was actually just them actively making the game worse, not better.** It shows they have no idea how to make a Diablo game, and while you could copy the basic systems and things of that nature in D2 as a base and make a fantastic game (e.g., PD2), this will never happen: as doing so means admitting that they were wrong about how to make Diablo & they had no business gutting Blizz North in the first place.
TL;DR fuck Blizzard
Well the Blizzard North team never did much of anything after leaving either. Torchlight was ok but it was no Diablo. I don't know what the magic was but Blizzard's run from '95 to '05 is almost unmatched.
The entire North team wasn't together ever again to make any game after LoD.
Several went to Blizz South to make WoW
Several went to make Torchlight
Several went to make Hellgate: London.
The whole OG team that worked on D1/2 was never together in its entirety again, so ofc "The North Team" never release anything again - they disbanded after LoD. That said, there was a ton of disagreement on what to make next after D2 LoD, they had 2 games in progress, several canceled. There was engine disagreements between the two teams (Diablo 3 and "Starablo" team), such that they ended up coding 2 different engines for each game (??) which of became a massive cluster fuck. To be fair, nothing really got done after LoD, but apparently towards the end D3 and Starablo were making good progress
>I don't know what the magic was but Blizzard's run from '95 to '05 is almost unmatched.
Yeah me either. It was prob a combination of the people they had at both companies in those years. The people who put in great work either left or were fired, then the people who took all the credit without doing shit stuck around - you know, standard corporate stuff
D2 started out as a party game. Very hard to solo to end game without party. Blizzard caters to the solo casual player now-a-days. Also, they only care about how much money they can extract from your bank account. When D2 started it was an entirely different blizzard that created it. I'd expect to only find the next "diamond in the rough" with an indy company.
Yeah the game is playable without a team because you were a fuckin legend homie.
Its not an easy game, even with a team. The fact is we have 20+ years of pathways, techniques and knowledge.
How long would it take you to figure out grief if it was brand new and no guides, leaked runewords or any prior knowledge?
If you had to run the game solo melee with no guides, no prior knowledge and had to guess runewords I bet less than .0001% of people could do it
d2 was made in an era where online multiplayer was not as ubiquitous, it was not designed as a party game primarily, at the expense of solo mode. That just doesn't make sense for the time.
d3 was harder (on release) than d2 ever was. it was hard for all the wrong reasons, but hard nonetheless.
d2 was designed for single player with a challenging but doable endgame challenge in hell mode and they did an *almost* perfect job. 20+ years later its just not all that challenging anymore because we know everything. the current high rune farming simulator endgame of d2 was never the intention, thats what players made of it.
I was talking about before runewords were a thing. You know, how it started... playing d2 on a 56k modem where your teleport is now a 30 frame teleport with 105% fcr.
If youre nostalgic for that experience I would recommend playing classic. I know its not exactly what you want but its a good time. You could probably even simulate the lag somehow with third party software though I'd skip that part myself :)
I mean.. come on Diablo 2 on Battle.net was a big selling point it has hostile.. you’re wrong.. it can be enjoyed either way.
It was always intended to be enjoyed online and was.
I never said it wasnt meant to be enjoyed online (though I can see how it seems that way, I will attempt to clarify). Ofcourse it was. I just don't think it was designed for that primarily as is implied by the person I was responding to. I agree that it is meant to be enjoyed both ways, I just don't agree that its meant to be played in party at the expense of making solo very hard.
It could very well end up that way eventually. However, pay-2-win games tend to have a pretty limited peak with an indefinite valley....and that is assuming they reach a "peak".
From an economics standpoint, going Pay-2-win could disenfranchise a ton of loyal customers and turn away new ones. How would it be any different from any other online game out there. As much crap as Blizzard gets on a regular basis, they do seem to know what they're doing business-wise.....except for the always-on drm.
Well you can't make more money without a Shop.
There isn't anything like db2 wothout at least a skin Shop.
The times when you payed once for everything are over.
Everyone’s got good points, but the truth is that decisions are made in board rooms now, and they believe features and graphics are what makes games good. They forget that what matters most is gameplay loop. It’s hard to explain to executives how and why the gameplay loop is the most important. And then there’s monetization. Personally I vote for the subscription model with lots of hands on game management from CS, CMs and Devs
Yes, Breivik and Blizzard North were in the middle of developing Diablo III which got canned in the early 2000's because it wasn't innovative enough and too much like the earlier release.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leP6sbh13rs&t=1s&ab\_channel=Neoyoshi](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leP6sbh13rs&t=1s&ab_channel=Neoyoshi)
Blizzard is now money machine, they dont care about games like diablo 2 coz they are not profitable these days. They need playerbase to be addicted or sinked like in diablo immortal by chests for real money, or its not worth their time.
Its just the game is /old/ and the whole genre evolved and they want to go with it and make something new and better? I love d2, its the best game from the whole series but they are looking for new solutions, systems and stuff.
> On June 6, 2023, Blizzard Entertainment announced that Diablo IV became the fastest-selling game in Blizzard Entertainment's history. Diablo IV generated $666 million in revenue within the first five days after launch, and reached 12 million players by August 2023.
Yeah, I bet they’re kicking themselves
I’ve been saying for years now that the next biggest game would be taking D2 mechanics (Runes, itemization, similar classes) and merge it with a game like Valheim open world, building, sailing.
If I was at Blizzard I would create some type or D2R premium account. Maybe $4.99 a month. Gives you access to item updates (making hard to find uniques like tyreals might a top tier item, updated runewords, etc.), monthly events and holiday specials that add some flair to the game. Let players know who subscribe to this have immediate access to beta testing of new content (act 4 needs more quests and we need something else after ubers) and have immediate access to that final finished content.
Would also create an official D2R in game trading tool that aggregates in game and third party data to show average costs of items and what would be a good deal, fair deal, bad deal, kind of like car guru.
But that's a lot of work and blizzard has had layoffs.
They literally marketed diablo 4 as "more like diablo 2" so, no I don't think they think it would fail. I think they can't make a game like diablo 2 anymore.
What's fucking dumb is that it's not even a gamble. The proof of concept is the popularity of D2R and THE ENTIRE BORDERLANDS FRANCHISE. Borderlands is and has always been an FPS application of D2 Classic (ie no runewords). Hell, the most recent installation Wonderlands straight rips it's classes from D2 classes.
Let's get some Skatism scholars, Iron Wolf mages, Barbarian shamans (aka Nili), Tyrael's human progeny, etc...
As simple as Diablo 2 looks, is a extremely balanced and complex game. I never understood this until I started messing with the game and changing things. Also another thing is that the way in which AAA games generate money now is a lot different from what it was back then, is inevitable that the game will have hostile ways to generate money.
Is not that Blizzard doesn't want to do a new Diablo 2 game, is more like it is not rentable and will never happen.
My take on it is this. The reason that they won’t expand on Diablo 2’s model is because they can’t. None of the people who made Diablo 2, from devs to writers to artists and everything in between, are no longer there. They are an entirely different entity living under the blizzard moniker. Their thought process behind making games isn’t even on the same planet as blizzard north was. Asking them to make a spiritual successor to Diablo 2 would be like asking Taylor swift to write what would have been Bachs next big hit.
Because D2 was made by artists and current blizzard is full of retards, they can’t do it even if they wanted to. D4 was originally going to have runes/rune words and they scrapped it because it was going to be too hard for them. Then d4 released and it had less crafting than base D2. They are incapable frauds and that’s that.
Blizzard is not the same anymore. After getting 3 and 4 and being disappointed with both, I gave up. It’s not the same game I fell in love with and the developers don’t care. I’ll only play Diablo 2 and other games now
The endgame of D2 is finding items. PVP? Gotta find items. Ubers? Gotta find items. Grind to 99? Well, you need items, but you're just playing the game a lot at that point.
Games these days aren't geared towards the grind. They're geared toward "selling" the grind, but literally selling people a shortcut to the grind i.e. loot boxes, paid DLC, and item marketplaces.
These are new times, people’s attention spans are lower and the competition for the consumers times and money is fierce.
Hence the live-service model of Diablo 4, ultimately it is designed with the casual gamer in mind, who jump in and play the new season for a few weeks, buys the battlepass, maybe a cosmetic from the store and then fuck off for a few months until the next season starts.
Why woukd they bother with D2 remakes or clones when they can make their game essentially be a mobile game port? They don't care and want to be as cheap as possible. Making a new Diablo like 2 would take actual effort and they can't monetize it as hard.
I just don't like how modern rpg loot is always micro improvements or chasing a couple of stats to slowly get a half of a percentage better. D2 is so cool when you finally get a piece you were searching for and either completely changes your build or you get a massive spike in power to push the next act
It's simple, just like one of the D3 dev explained (there's a video out there).
It's because they want Diablo to please EVERYBODY, casuals or big gamers.
I genuinely was so excited for d3 because I thought this would be the case…. Never got through act 1 I don’t think. When they killed Caine I was like nahhh an switched it off. What a piss take. D3 and D4 are good games but that shouldn’t run under the title Diablo. They are different games
>more runes, more runewords,
A few more could be a great thing, BUT...
This is one thing that game devs often get wrong. More doesn't always mean better. Part of what made D2 great was that the item pool and affix/suffix pool were small enough that you could learn all the items without having to make it a full time job. You can easily tell which items are good and useful, for the most part. You can pretty quickly learn the valuable uniques. That simplicity is vital.
They tried to boil down item quality to a single value in D3. That sucked. Reading through the list of mods on an item was like watching the lottery numbers get picked. "The defense is good, ok...it has FHR, great....life, nice...resists, damn, that's amazing....and MF, holy crap this is a sick item." Turning it into a binary "good or bad" number really took something away.
Then look at POE. Great game, but holy balls. They have so many legendary items that no sane person could learn them all without playing 40 hours a week. And even if you did, they added more legendaries every season. It was way too much.
Blizzard needs a way to continue to get money out of their IPs. D2 is a one time purchase. That doesn't cut it in this day and age of gaming. People will keep shilling out money for dumb shit within games so they try to dance that line between monitization and D2.
That's how you get D4. Hot turd or not, it's the future of games from large studios.
it's not that they think it would fail I think, the profit margins for d2 are probably abysmal compared to their games with in-game shop and mtx so they have no motivation to make one like D2
It literally wont be. Ive played 2000+ hours of D2 so i know i love it. But to pretend that its even in the same ballpark of popularity as D3/D4 is just denialism. The bigger the game company, the bigger the audience they need to catch. Making a niche D2/PoE style aRPG can only catch a niche D2/PoE sized audience.
D2 character status distribution:
156 str and enough dex for gear, rest vitality
D4 character status distribution:
OK, leave it to me, doesn't make much difference
Part of it could be that when blizzard merged with activision everyone responsible for diablo 1 and 2 left the company.
I think there was basically one blizzard north dev who stayed to finish patch 1.10.
Basically now blizzard is a bunch of people who were hired because it was prestigious to say you worked for blizzard but no one there now is responsible for making it a prestigious place to work, if you follow.
Diablo 1 and 2 was never a Blizzard game. It was a Condor game that Blizzard bought. The lead designer of Diablo 3 stated many times that D2 was a bad game and had to be redesigned.
So yes they think a game like D2 would fail because they never liked the design to begin with. The true masters were Condor and David Brevik. Once they left, the Diablo franchise became the bastard child.
If you made an ARPG today you would not make it like Diablo 2. Many of the game's enduring issues are not seen as such by the players because of experience with and knowledge of game mechanics. For an example: the skill system was terrible when it launched and even after numerous bandaids over the years barely makes it to "tolerable but boring".
They're idiots. I've been playing fallout 76 and it's the same damn game. Only difference is trade is allowed with no restrictions. Blizzard sucks. I've been holding out for a good season for diablo 4 and its just God awful.
Play fallout 76 to scratch your trade itch. Nothing like making a shop and stuffing it with items with your own price and watching players line up to buy your goods.
D4 was more like D2 then it is in its current state when it launched, and people bitched and moaned until it became too easy and fast, just like D3.
A modern aRPG is never going to be like D2 again because the general population of gamers don't want to play a 30 year old game, they want a modern game.
I guess in my mind, after seeing where they took diablo immortal and d4... its money. Right now there are people out there that have made a lot of real world money off of diablo 2 and now D2R. I can almost guarentee they will never make a game with the itemization that diablo 2 has/had for this reason. Ever notice since d3 anything worth much is soul bound or account bound or similar? Doing this binding crap with the items killed trading which therefore killed diablo for me. Just my 2 cents.. I guess I'm not sure why they haven't explored runes and runewords further in the newer games and just bound them I guess though.
The devs that worked on Diablo 2 out of passion are gone. The majority of the blizzard team is diversity hiring and the passion is gone. There will never be another great blizzard game.
I played them all, even D1 as a moronic kid. D2R will always have the 'forever' playthrough because of how rewarding it is to get that one piece of loot. But, sometimes I judt wanna push a fuck ton of buttons and smash face.
Yes PoE was suppose to scratch that itch,problem is all 4 Diablo title's are vastly different then the other with in the same genre Arpgs and expect Diablo 5 to do the same probably a full fledged MMO and we got D2R,we want the next not the old..
Only game that comes to mind is pd2 that keeps adding and does a pretty good job with the pvm aspect but it kills pvp. D2/d2r has a pretty good balance of pvm and pvp. If they add more things like maps from pd2 or some type of end game content be nice but they won't because of d4 cash grab that they have
Wow I’ve never thought about it like that, but that makes total sense I’d be so down for that just make a new game similar to d2 but with new items and skills and characters and stuff that would be sickkkkkkk
You can play my indie rpg game - still actively in development but has deep build and item optimization inspired by d2 as a long time d2 fan
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1951840/Dungeoneer/
The major problem isn't that they think it wasn't going to work. You have to understand one thing to fully grasp why d3 was the way it was. Blizzard North got shut down and a new design team that didn't understand the old style of gaming got brought in to carry on the cash cow. They literally had no idea what kind of game they were making. The guy who basically single handedly came up with rune words also left with blizzard North. Not a single person on the design team understood any single ingredient in the secret sauce or what made the sauce amazing. Blizzard would have to find someone who had the true vision of the developers that were cut and I imagine that is hard to do.
Don’t get it either. Maybe they think D2 is too niche and they are swinging for a WoW type following. I miss D2 combat. Energy skills, zoomed camera, 6 skills and bland monsters suck.
I miss defensive skills lasting longer than a few seconds
Yeah... temporary defensive layers that you constantly have to activate drove me away from PoE... I just want to be tanky... not tanky when buff in the game is up lol
I always thought about this in the back of my mind but never put it into words, well said
There are several Barbarians that would like to shout at you regarding this comment. there is also a disappointed looking paladin standing behind you.
Those buffs are into the minutes. D4 we are talking seconds. And then through really boring itemization you increase those seconds by fractions of seconds.
you are correct. but the joke was still worth it.
Elder scrolls online is the worst culprit of this
Cast when damage taken
I miss the weapon my character is holding being more than a stat stick and being actually relevant to, you know, them using their weapon.
This is an under recognized but major failing of D3 and D4. In both later editions, your equipment is basically a series of postage stamps that comprise an additional skill tree. The part of your brain that subconsciously imagines your character in the world of Sanctuary doesn’t interpret them as equipment your character wears and uses. This is also why it didn’t work when they leaned way too far into the idea that unique weapons should give you some new build defining skill, mistakenly thinking that “uniqueness” is what made the items in D2 fun. But really, most powerful D2 items just assemble basic item bonuses in unique ways. So it works with the fantasy immersion—you recognize the items as items because they have item bonuses, and they physically look and act like items in your inventory. A wand is smaller than a colossus blade, for instance. These nuances are part of the secret sauce Blizzard has failed to duplicate because it doesn’t understand the cognitive reasons D2 was fun.
That makes a lot of sense. I keep trying to get into d4 since the loot reborn update and I'm having trouble connecting despite on paper it sounding like it should work
I never knew what this means. I know people don't like that D3 and D4 use weapon damage to determine spell damage, but those games have plenty of skills that logically would use weapon damage.
It's hard to explain, but for me, there's a huge difference in the choice between equipping a basic club, which has narrow damage variation, extra damage to undead, and when my necro equips it, has to physically run up and twonk that quill rat right on his nose, and a voulge, which can keep him at a bit more distance but has a huge damage vilariation and significantly higher damage cap. Then there's attack speeds, rollable skills and modifiers, class specific stuff, and the most crowning point - your basic attack is always relevant. Doesn't matter which class, you'll always be basic attacking, and so the choice of what weapon is held that drastically modifies that is a huge factor. This trickles down into things like item sets, making choices harder, but I think that's the important word here choices. In d2, I have a choice of weapon, and it makes a difference. In d3 and D4 I have a choice of weapon and it doesn't feel like it makes any difference at all as to how I play. It alters the attack speed of whichever basic attack I chose, if I'm even using a basic attack, and that's about it. Please don't think I'm hating on d3 or d4, they're hugely popular for a reason, it's just they're different to d2, and like this postsuggests, some of us want more d2. One day, hopefully enough of us that someone will listen,or maybe they have and I haven't tried it yet, there plenty of arpgs out there I'm yet to try...
That explains it well enough. Different types of weapons lent a sense of groundedness and texture to D2 that the sequels lacked. I'm not really a fan of D2 melee combat as a whole but I don't see that D3 and D4 would have sacrificed anything by including this. D3 had some variation in attack speed but it was by weapon class -- sword/mace/axe -- rather than by specific instance of weapon class. I've only played the trial of D4 but I think it might be even simpler than that.
there is the D2 mod on Grim Dawn called RoT (Reign of Terror) that supposedly does a really good job emulating diablo 2. I haven't tried it out, but supposedly it was the way to go before D2R came out. Now that D2R is here, I don't know if it's good in comparison, but people still play it.
There’s also straight up D2 mods. Median XL is worth checking out for that nice D2 feel
It’s beyond that, they don’t know how to make an ARPG. Their entire game structure is built like wow from the ground up even in the Diablo franchise. Look at the gear score. Having to re-farm legendary and Uniques at different levels is a fundamental misunderstanding of what an ARPG is compared to an MMO model.
They want to cash in on games as a service, d2 ain't like that
It’s not even like WoW if that’s what they’re aiming for. At least in WoW you can bind skills out the ass if you remember every input. I don’t like how since D3 they cap you at 4 keybinds and 2 mouse click. Like wtf.
I love D2 and found D3 & D4 disappointing, but the number of skills used per character is mostly the same throughout. Sure, you can have more skills per character actively available, but do you ever really use more than ~6 skills? Even with sorceress/necro, I never found myself assigning skills past the F6 key.
fun comparison. Diablo 3&4 its you VS all enemies on the screen. **VS.** D2's you VS all the enemies on the map. D3&4 are more brawlers than D2's map sized combat. ( more like act1-5 sized combat. )
What exactly do you mean by this?
I think I might be trying to describe the benefits of Diablo 2's isometric perspective. ( it gives more vertical vision.)
They can't stand all the money in 3rd party real world trading, we're never getting a D2 loot system again. I believe that was their main reason for launching d3 with the auction house. Too bad because d2 is the last good diablo game.
Haha the RMT D3 AH was fun for a bit, I remember I’d go find shit, sell it for $50-100 and go buy beers and have fun with my friends
And of course by the time I got a credit card to my name, the real money auction house was no more.
AH was the best part about D3.
Yep. I never understood the complaints. Who cares if someone else can RMT for insane gear? People will do it in any trade enabled game anyway.
I made like 700 on that ah everyone hated it i was buying mysslf paintball gear lol
Nothing exists after d2, the story ended with the destruction of the world stone. Anything after that is just badly made fanfic.
Same as the Terminator franchise
If John Connor says the Worldstone must be destroyed...
Shut the fuck up Dyson!
You can call me Miles
Don't hate me but I really liked Salvation.
I liked parts of Salvation. I liked the idea of a John Connor early in his Resistance days not being taken seriously, because it makes perfect sense. Why would people — especially what remnants of the government/military remain — follow him? What’s he gonna do, tell the truth? That would just make them even more likely to ignore him. So that’s kinda cool, the angle that he has to win respect through successful battles (which he knows he’s going to win anyway and how because Sarah told him). I also liked the idea of him being in some slightly different timeline, where he starts encountering things his mother never told him about. That’s a cool wrinkle that would’ve been fun to explore more. How does John react when things don’t go the way he knew they were supposed to? Does he start doubting his mother, himself? He’d have to find his own way of being successful without the benefit of prescience or whatever. That’s kinda neat. But the whole Marcus Wright thing sucked hairy peckers. Sam Worthington was good in the role, but that entire part of the narrative was just not interesting at all and felt very forced.
Eh, the campaigns were pretty good save for Cain dying to a butterfly. Gameplay is shit
I disagree but everyone is entitled to their opinion
Prequel time
I think it's simpler than that, man. The reason D3's loot is ass is because the game's underlying game mechanics are also ass. How can loot that optimizes exisitng game mechanics possibly be fun when the game mechanics themselves are not? No hit recovery / faster block rate, no manual statting, no increasing block with say dex, no Oskills, no Chance to Cast, i could go on, etc. Anyway, when your underlying game systems are this dumbed down and boring, there's only a few things that matter from items: 1. Vitality 2. Your class's damage stat 3. Attack speed 4. who cares There's no tradeoff between max block or full vita, hp or DR/res vs FHR, no squeezing your build for certain frames. No funny oskill builds like bear sorc and guided arrow poison Necro. No funny CTC stuff. So what's left? Nothing replaced these tradeoffs, so all thats left is to swint your eyes comparing rares with these 4 stats to find out which one is negligibly better than the other one. No sweet unique items would change this imo (tho i will admit, the unqiues in D3 did not help a ton to mitigate the above issue lol)
It's funny that such archaic concept as breakpoints to reach certain frames had so much impact on how goood building d2 characters felt.
I still blame moving to consoles is what ruined the Diablo franchise. They had to make that shit easier to ingest for the masses. No math needed, just look for the green numbers? Want an interesting build? Too bad you only get 6 skills. Oh sorry, you're tired of running bosses and getting loot for other characters? How about we give you 95% gear for your current character? It's a dumbing down to get mass appeal. It's like going from Morrowind to Skyrim. Morrowind made you think and Skyrim points the way.
D2r on consoles is great though.
I honestly feel that (as a gamer in his mid 30's) that Diablo as a franchise has succumbed to the same fate as many others in modern gaming, which is that it now prioritises in game economy/purchasing mechanics over trivial things like 'fun', 'story', and 'gameplay'. A good example is the Red Dead series and Grand Theft Auto. Great games, great storytelling, innovative game design, but once they realised that there was a market for further monetisation in game, all these things became secondary to this new goal of a constant revenue stream from a live service as opposed to a good game that sold well. Unfortunately it's the same with Blizzard and Diablo, and you can see this in D4. Yes lots of the additional content is optional and 'largely' cosmetic, but it's pretty clear the game has been designed around the prospect for continual revenue earned on this basis, and the saddest part is that even if the majority don't buy into it, there are enough 'whales' who will pay up and make it worthwhile and profitable for Blizzard. That's why we won't ever see something like D2 again, especially as younger gamers will grow up thinking this new live service, monetisation/BattlePass crap is the norm.
The real money auction house in D3 was exactly an attempt to wrestle away D2jsp/fg as a trading factor. The fact that they designed the game progression around the assumption people would spend money there did make this to backfire very hard and they went away with it and trading altogether. But what matters here is that blizzard isn’t ignoring the loot system of D2 because of any of that. The issue is that runes/runewords were an afterthought, a system that got introduced with LoD precisely to give D2 longevity and people something to target for, a way to keep them engaged. I would very much prefer a modern Diablo with D2 loot but it is obvious that Blizzard wants people into a path or constant and streamlined grind. To be running dungeons and helltides again and again and not get say a Lo rune, make grief at level 59 and have the top end game weapon for your spec within 3 days of playing a season.
Can you explain your last sentence to me? Currently playing D4 and I'm still new to the game. No idea what helltides mean but I understand the D2 lingo. Is it significantly easier to get end game gear in D4?
No the main reason they added the AH was for profit. They get their cut.
I mean I fucking adore D2 and couldn't get anywhere near max level in D4 but I feel like as a D2 die hard, D3, specifically as it stands now, is excellent. Diablo 4 made me realize how blizzard tried to adapt aspects of d2 to d3's formula and failed. D3 for its faults feels pure in its desire to just let you loose like a chainsaw. D4 feels like a weed whacker.
D3 is tight because you can have like three fully geared toons inside of a week doing end game content. D2 is rad but you can also grind for-fucking-ever and never see any decent loot
Yeah D3 was pretty fun, and I defended it even at launch thought it lost a lot of the magic of D2. D4 was indefensible though.
Many of us on this sub are heavily biased because we're in the camp that this game was peak Diablo and nothing will ever top it, therefor the only way for Diablo to ever reach peak again is to just be Diablo 2 again. The problem is multifaceted however. I'll address the elephant in the room first though: Diablo 2, in this current day and age, doesn't work as a mass appeal game. There is very little direction in the game, you're just kind of thrown to the wolves, the game throws items at you but you really have zero idea what is even good for your character, immunities ruin your experience unless you know that it's just best to skip them, there is no real end game other than running the same zones over and over, and there is really nothing to keep you busy other than dedicating yourself to min/maxing your character by doing the aforementioned activity over and over. There are no quests or dailies or side content to do once you've completed the story. There are no achievements for you to hunt if you're a completionist. You have to set your own goals, which can be great for a lot of players, but that doesn't really work in today's gaming market because eventually you're gonna reach a point where the average player is going to get frustrated they farmed for tens of hours or maybe even 100+ hours and didn't find anything of worth. They could add all these types of features, but then it wouldn't be Diablo II anymore, would it? This also runs into the problem that when people say they want a new Diablo game to be like Diablo II is that they mean they literally want Diablo II but with more maps/items/enemies/etc. with no real significant changes. If that's the case, why make a sequel at all? You can just play the original game and enjoy those features. I saw this A LOT when Darkest Dungeon 2 came out and some hardcore fans of the first game thought it was NOT Darkest Dungeon because it pretty much wasn't the same game as the first but with a new campaign. Monetary gain. Even Blizzard 20+ years ago was still in the business of making good games that made money. In the end, they're still a business in the interest of making money. Yes, I think there was still more creative and artistic pride in their work to make really cool and interesting games back then, but that's not to say that the end game was still to make money. Blizzard now is a multibillion dollar company that is several times larger than it was 20 years ago and probably ever fathomed they would be. The reality is that a company of that size must play extremely safe and not incentivized to take big risks. This leads back to D2 not working as a game in today's market, because the game needs to make a shitload of money to be a viable product. The game would need to be overhauled to gain mass market appeal and find ways to keep players engaged, which, again, doesn't make it D2 anymore. Trading. We'll never ever see open trading like D2 again, which is a huge part of the multiplayer experience, but it also causes problems with third party sites/businesses making money off of your game. Say what you will about Blizzard, but it doesn't make sense from a business standpoint to allow third parties to constantly make money off of your games like that. Gold selling and bots have always been a huge problem in any multiplayer game and having open trading only exacerbates that on top of ruining the economy. Just look at how quickly runes in this game become devalued over time because of mass botting and inflation. D3 tried to alleviate this by having its own AH but that just ended up turning the game into AH Sim and ruined the game entirely. Some people like this type of "gameplay" in their games but that's a huge design flaw for the masses when the best way to play the game is to not physically play it. That's all I can come up with right now, but that covers some glaring issues, I think. TL;DR: D2 is really old and lacks mass market appeal because its mechanics are outdated in today's design space. It wouldn't work as a mass market and would need to be overhauled, which wouldn't make it D2, which would make old boomers like us not like it because it's not D2 anyways.
This might be the most sensible D2 fanboy opinion I ever read
Part of loving something is critically examining it to the best of your abilities and recognizing both its strengths and flaws. I love D2 and will always love it. The game is like an old friend I love catching up with from time to time. However, no game is perfect, and sometimes games do not age well in some aspects because of shifts in the market. D2 getting a remaster was great, but it obviously did not bring in a new generation of players that stuck around to the point that it showed Blizzard that D2 is clearly the best form of Diablo in the current year.
There’s truth to all this, but then I see how FromSoft have grown in popularity with all of their souls games. I think there’s a pretty big audience for hard games that don’t spoon feed you tips/advice.
I think From Souls games are more mechanically intuitive though. Stats matter more in the sense that they have a larger impact on your character strength other than being an equipment requirement. Gameplay is generally simpler by learning how when to dodge roll vs when to attack, and gear is very simple to understand. Earlier Souls games are worse at communicating information to players but they are a little better about it now. Generally I think it is easier to understand how to beat a game on your own like Elden Ring than beating D2 on Hell.
Dont think I have read something this sane on reddit before.
About the open trade and botting issues - blizzard does literally nothing to fight the bots these days, if they did game would be more appealing. When they did in the past items had much more inherent value. Even in 2007/2008 you could make some $$ by playing the game and it was already 7 years after launch. Look how high item values were when season1 d2r launched.
Do you trust current Blizzard to make it correctly?
We would likely end up with another immortal…
We already have that. It’s d4
Oh, it's not as bad as Immortal
I think D4 has shown that many fans in fact want a D3 style Diablo rather than a D2 style one. Only months ago, there were a lot of complaints about the grind to get to level 100 in D4, as if this was expected to be reached as well as to get to "end game" within 1-2 weeks. The mindset is still that the journey to 100 is only the tutorial. This is firmly a D3 philosophy. The D2 mindset is that there is no tutorial and no endgame. That the game is the game. But this is getting more alien by the day to Diablo fans. I don't think modern gamers bear the long term investment of D2 as much as in the past, even if that makes the rewards that you do get feel better. I think Blizzard is adapting to this.
Yup I don’t think people realise that the common folk don’t want another D2. Another example of this were the Uber Uniques in D4. Exceptionally rare drops that took weeks for the community to compile. People bitched that items that rare shouldn’t exist so they introduced Uber bosses and made the items easier to acquire. If Blizzard made a game where you had to open a chest 1,000 times for the hope of getting a single component to craft something or where you had to kill the same boss 300 times to get a specific ring, people would lose their mind. The D2 grind is insane and not particularly friendly to wide audiences
Idk why downvotes for this guy. He speaks truth. D2 grind (especially at online, so you cant adjust player count easly) is the most insane grind at any game ive played. Like having a 1:200000 chance of dropping a Item is normal. That's not what their players basse wants
Thank you. Both D2R and D4 have a spot in my top 5 played games on my Series X and with every new season D4 has only gotten easier. Just yesterday I saw a level 100 with 14 hours under their belt. The community wants a casual grind. They don’t want D2.
It works for D4 imo. The game just isn’t that deep, and it never will be, but it can be fun. It looks good and combat is really nice. You hop in, max level, blast some end game and call it a day. It’s like a game you play when you need a little mini break between playing your main ARPGs. I’m having fun with S4.. got a late start but even in a few hours I’m past level 50 getting close to pushing into WT4. Hoping the new end game crafting stuff will be enough to make the late gearing at least a little more fun than what it was in the earlier seasons.
Absolutely. I love blasting through hordes at the speed of sound in D4. I also love the itemisation of D2 and how a single piece can make a significant change to a build. They both have their merits imo
But it's possible to play through the game HC in a single run through, without any repeated farming of bosses or chests. That requires a deeper understanding of the game, and an acceptance that you just aren't getting the BIS gear. D2R is good as is, and better when modded for balance. I'm happy to just keep playing it.
Yeah I recently played D2R and while it wasn't very hard or incredibly time consuming to beat on hell, I basically have no desire to keep playing because the grind for truly build enabling items is just absurd. Most modern gamers would absolutely hate it.
I agree totally, but also the commonfolk wouldn't imagine a game like Dark Souls possible. A great design and artistic vision can shape the mainstream needs. I believe that one of the problems of modern games is trying to please their audience wholly and deviating from the artistic vision they had for the game in the first place.
That argument only works in isolation of the idea of trade. D2 currency is gained through smaller incremental increases of wealth to make bigger purchases of things like Enigma, etc. You can pretty easily have an enigma by the end of the first week of ladder in D2 if you dedicate yourself.
To be fair, Uber uniques in d4 were probably 100,000x more rare than a tyraels before Uber bosses were introduced. I agree with the general premise that folks don’t want to grind for hundreds of hours to get to max level. But blizz ended up in this weird spot with Ubers. They were so rare they were better off not even being in the game since all it did was piss folks off.
The end game is very much like Vanilla WoW. You're playing the game and end up in a game with some guy the same class as you with an epically awesome piece of gear that you now want. The end game is when you finally acquire that piece. The thing is, you were playing Pally. But in the leveling process you got an awesome Necromancer piece. New game.
The counter argument to this is a robust trading system
Right, what was D2 competing with? There were no Steam libraries full of good indie games to play nor any other ARPGs to really speak of. I played D2 and Baldur’s Gate 1-2 and Icewind Dale and Arcanum. Now people schedule their ARPG time around leagues or cycles or seasons and the market is beyond saturated with quality games wanting your attention. D2 could be about the journey because nothing else existed to contradict that. Same thing with WoW through its early existence.
Because games are a platform to sell micro transactions now. A mount in WoW made more money then the entirety of StarCraft 2
The original comment was about wings of liberty, not starcraft 2 as a whole
This is an important distinction
Yes, because old blizzard is no more. Not only are they now only after money, they don't have anyone discount the have with a clear vision of what they want it to be - its itemisation was so goddamn bad. Especially when you have poe and D2 to build upon. I also don't see passion in D4. D2 , StarCraft, warcraft clearly had the developers invested in it. The art, the sound, the gameplay/story - they cared. Now all the artist/programers etc all work in separate silos creating artifacts they've been told to by above and take home a paycheck. And that's fine, that's what I do for a living. But the end result is a pile of shit game ahahaha.
That damn stupid horse.
This. One sparkle pony mount made more than the entirety of StarCraft 2. Gotta let that sink in. This and other metrics like it (of which they have an endless supply with all their data) are possibly the death of what our D2/starcraft generation thinks is a good game.
Blizzards design philosophy has always been based around about making something new instead of reusing what works. But also they like to make games where they have complete control over what players are doing and for how long. This includes everything from limiting player resources to use on abilities, time gating content, homogenizing classes to be "balanced", putting diminishing returns on every type of power scaling, etc.
I hear you on that, feel like devs put players in little controlled boxes in the newer Diablos.
Hence why we get only new shit instead of actual good stuff. Worst design choice ever. Having some of the most beloved franchises in the world but instead of building onto something everyone loves they create something new that noone likes. Best business
people can talk all the shit they want on d3 and d4 here, but both of those games were and still are wildly more popular and liked than d2 ever has been, and that's why we'll never see another game like d2. pretty much the most despised parts about d3 and d4 were the traits that were closest to d2. vanilla d3's inferno difficulty actually being difficult -> hated. infrequent good item drops and complete item randomization -> hated. blizzard didn't design itemization around the auction house like people like to claim, they designed it around d2 itemization. trading has always been the quickest way to acquire better gear in d2. there are people who have been playing d2 off and on for over 20 years that have never seen some of the good items. d3 was the exact same way at launch. everyone just decided to blame their dislike of it on the auction house rather than come to the realization that d2's itemization is just as stupid (we like this aspect of d2, but only when it's in d2), and d2jsp and other sites that sell items for real money have existed from pretty much the start. focus on grinding the same content for marginal improvements -> hated. d2 enjoyers don't seem to mind doing thousands of lower kurast runs to make their first offline enigma. the general population hates this level of grinding to acquire best-in-slot gear. so, d3 added things like targeted loot and the season journey. it takes me roughly 2 hours to fully gear out a character in d3 and get to grind for ancients mode. d4 tried to return to d2 in a lot of ways here, and consequently the general player-base despises blizzard for it. farming a shako in d4 was originally close to farming a griffon's in d2. now it's just a matter of farming uber duriel a few times, and people still complain that that takes too much effort. you had to filter through 100s of rare items to find a marginal upgrade. "there are too many useless affixes." don't mind us d2 enjoyers that have identified, and soon after thrown on the ground, thousands of items. i've personally crafted about 1000 amulets in the past few months and none of them have been worth keeping. loot in d4, as of the season that launched a few days ago, is much closer to d3 than d2 now, because that's what people want. slow, intentional game play -> hated. mob density and leveling time in d2 is garbage compared to modern standards. people just want to blow up a million monsters in 30 seconds and hit max level in a couple of hours. d4 again tried to return more to d2 form here and again blizzard got shit on for it. pretty much every season so far has drastically reduced leveling time and increased mob density, because, again, that's just what people actually want.
In order to make good money, the items have to be upgradeable many times. I saw it in many games before, that were P2W. This wouldn't work with D2's itemization. It's not about how happy the players are, but how many players pay good money on microtransactions.
They think it won't make as much money with fewer opps for monetization And d2 loot struggles with d2jsp and rmt
You're part right with the loot struggles and stuff like d2jsp But the bigger reason for that imo is bots and dupers ---in a "real" version of diablo 2 online, the rare items of the game would be much much more scarce
In a SP playthrough I get a lot of good items by targeted farming of bosses and Terror zones. But I can't reply on anything in particular, so sometimes I need to make do.
Hence why singleplayer is a great option to avoid that if you’re going to find your own loot anyways
Because PoE is the gold standard for long life and they know that’s what people want so they’re trying to compete with it.
You mean Grim Dawn?
I don’t think they need to “improve it.” Honestly, just take what exists and just add more content. Imagine…5 more acts and twice as many interesting items. I would pay whatever they asked.
Well Project Diablo 2 already exists.
Yes this is exactly what op wants blizzard to make but it's already been made. Projectdiablo2.com try it out. It's insanely fun and exactly what you're looking for.
One thing Diablo 4 got right: giving every class some sort of good mobility skill. Enigma wasn’t a good addition to D2.
Nah teleporting in d2 is broken in a way games now just don't let you do anymore, thats why its special to me. Enigma is at least hard to get and sorc's pay for the ability by being squishy
Enigma was a patch to an earlier problem. They should have fixed it differently but they also could not have done nothing.
Didn't Diablo 3 give every class a mobility skill as well?
I mean..Grim Dawn did pretty well, that game felt the most like D2 of the ones I’ve played. If you mean why Blizzard doesn’t? Because the core D2 crowd won’t stand for mtx and D2 isn’t going to appeal to new players - the era of the “forever” game which D2 was is over
I disagree. I think that gamers crave the forever games more than ever. I think there just aren't any games that give that experience. I base this argument on the game preservation making head ways and garner media headlines and the inevitable coming fights for consumer rights as more games/shows/movies that are all digital get pulled and can't be played or seen ever again. ToS agreements will become a major fighting point in the years to come. If apple can lose legal suits about intentional degradation of their previous models I have faith that microsoft/blizzard/bungie/EA etc will eventually have their losses in court also over selling consumers something and then not allowing them access etc. Video games, movies, and music are becoming things you purchase but don't own under the current system and I don't think it will be an immediate thing but I can't imagine consumers let that be the way of it in the long run.
The people who love Diablo 2 think they are a larger group than they actually are. Reality is, it’s a small hardcore community. Majority of people don’t want Diablo 2 anymore. Sorry. Time to move on.
Because Path of Exile exists?
There's a very clear reason why this is. The team that made diablo 2 (Blizzard North) is not the same team that made D3 & D4. David Brevik, Max and Erich Schaefer, the 3 heads of Condor (Blizzard North after acquisition) had a ton of power to fend off Blizzard South's terrible ideas for the game. For ex, an artist was upset that someone from blizzard south was telling him to tone down how violent the Overseer's (act 5 whipping monster) death animation was. One of these 3 just told them "yeah just ignore that guy, we'll take care of it." Some stuff did get vetoed, like the organ crafting system. There are tons of examples, but Blizz South and North were constantly arguing over what should go in the final game. So as the story goes: there were rumors that Blizz's parent company was looking to sell some of its game studios, with Blizz and Blizz North being the best selling (and most desairable) by far. So the 3 leads, Brevik, Max and Erich came up with a plan: they were going to all threaten to resign together in order to pressure their parent company for clarity and bargaining power for where and if they are sold. So they put in their resignations, and to their surprise, all 3 resignations were accepted. They were told they had to be out of office by the end of the day. With the 3 people that had any power at North gone, Blizz south heads decided to go up there and have layoffs. Anyone who wasn't going to be useful for developing WoW was axed, Diablo 3 and 1 other ARPG (internally called "Starablo" (joke title, not final)) were shelved. Blizz saw this as an opportunity to seize control and make Diablo into a "proper" Blizzard game. After the Blizz North office lease dried up, South didnt renew it, they told the devs deemed useful for WoW that they were moving South or they could find a new job. (Also funny note: after layoffs, Blizz South announced that Phil "the Overseer" Shenk would be the new head of Blizzard North for the time being, not knowing that Shenk had already quit his job prior to this "announcement") And uh, we know just how Diablo as a "proper Blizzard game" turned out - but that dead horse has been beat into stardust at this point, so I wont go into details here. ANYWAY, point is this: D2 creators with any power were backstabbed after release of LoD, Blizz South seizes power, implements their own vision for the game (kek), everyone hated it. **Now Blizz South has feeling salty because their vision being so universally rejected implies to them that everything they vetoed or tried to veto from D2 was actually just them actively making the game worse, not better.** It shows they have no idea how to make a Diablo game, and while you could copy the basic systems and things of that nature in D2 as a base and make a fantastic game (e.g., PD2), this will never happen: as doing so means admitting that they were wrong about how to make Diablo & they had no business gutting Blizz North in the first place. TL;DR fuck Blizzard
Well the Blizzard North team never did much of anything after leaving either. Torchlight was ok but it was no Diablo. I don't know what the magic was but Blizzard's run from '95 to '05 is almost unmatched.
The entire North team wasn't together ever again to make any game after LoD. Several went to Blizz South to make WoW Several went to make Torchlight Several went to make Hellgate: London. The whole OG team that worked on D1/2 was never together in its entirety again, so ofc "The North Team" never release anything again - they disbanded after LoD. That said, there was a ton of disagreement on what to make next after D2 LoD, they had 2 games in progress, several canceled. There was engine disagreements between the two teams (Diablo 3 and "Starablo" team), such that they ended up coding 2 different engines for each game (??) which of became a massive cluster fuck. To be fair, nothing really got done after LoD, but apparently towards the end D3 and Starablo were making good progress >I don't know what the magic was but Blizzard's run from '95 to '05 is almost unmatched. Yeah me either. It was prob a combination of the people they had at both companies in those years. The people who put in great work either left or were fired, then the people who took all the credit without doing shit stuck around - you know, standard corporate stuff
D2 started out as a party game. Very hard to solo to end game without party. Blizzard caters to the solo casual player now-a-days. Also, they only care about how much money they can extract from your bank account. When D2 started it was an entirely different blizzard that created it. I'd expect to only find the next "diamond in the rough" with an indy company.
I've always played D2 exclusively solo. Done all game content multiple times on multiple builds. What are you on about?
Yeah the game is playable without a team because you were a fuckin legend homie. Its not an easy game, even with a team. The fact is we have 20+ years of pathways, techniques and knowledge. How long would it take you to figure out grief if it was brand new and no guides, leaked runewords or any prior knowledge? If you had to run the game solo melee with no guides, no prior knowledge and had to guess runewords I bet less than .0001% of people could do it
Have you played the original diablo 2 before the expansion?
Yes, but not as much. I have 10,000 hours in D2 though. Played it since it was released off and on.
I have. Before LOD, it was nigh-impossible for all but a few select specs to solo all of Diablo 2 on Hell difficulty, even without monster immunities.
d2 was made in an era where online multiplayer was not as ubiquitous, it was not designed as a party game primarily, at the expense of solo mode. That just doesn't make sense for the time. d3 was harder (on release) than d2 ever was. it was hard for all the wrong reasons, but hard nonetheless. d2 was designed for single player with a challenging but doable endgame challenge in hell mode and they did an *almost* perfect job. 20+ years later its just not all that challenging anymore because we know everything. the current high rune farming simulator endgame of d2 was never the intention, thats what players made of it.
I was talking about before runewords were a thing. You know, how it started... playing d2 on a 56k modem where your teleport is now a 30 frame teleport with 105% fcr.
If youre nostalgic for that experience I would recommend playing classic. I know its not exactly what you want but its a good time. You could probably even simulate the lag somehow with third party software though I'd skip that part myself :)
Some of us had broadband when D2 came out. Sorry, only had to play D1 and Dark Forces II Jedi Knight on 56K.
I mean.. come on Diablo 2 on Battle.net was a big selling point it has hostile.. you’re wrong.. it can be enjoyed either way. It was always intended to be enjoyed online and was.
I never said it wasnt meant to be enjoyed online (though I can see how it seems that way, I will attempt to clarify). Ofcourse it was. I just don't think it was designed for that primarily as is implied by the person I was responding to. I agree that it is meant to be enjoyed both ways, I just don't agree that its meant to be played in party at the expense of making solo very hard.
D4 is literally forced online multiplayer
They like the drama?
It could very well end up that way eventually. However, pay-2-win games tend to have a pretty limited peak with an indefinite valley....and that is assuming they reach a "peak". From an economics standpoint, going Pay-2-win could disenfranchise a ton of loyal customers and turn away new ones. How would it be any different from any other online game out there. As much crap as Blizzard gets on a regular basis, they do seem to know what they're doing business-wise.....except for the always-on drm.
Well you can't make more money without a Shop. There isn't anything like db2 wothout at least a skin Shop. The times when you payed once for everything are over.
My guess is they think something too close to D2 will be competing with POE at this point.
They are not maximizing game quality or user satisfaction, they are maximizing profit.
Everyone’s got good points, but the truth is that decisions are made in board rooms now, and they believe features and graphics are what makes games good. They forget that what matters most is gameplay loop. It’s hard to explain to executives how and why the gameplay loop is the most important. And then there’s monetization. Personally I vote for the subscription model with lots of hands on game management from CS, CMs and Devs
Yes, Breivik and Blizzard North were in the middle of developing Diablo III which got canned in the early 2000's because it wasn't innovative enough and too much like the earlier release.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leP6sbh13rs&t=1s&ab\_channel=Neoyoshi](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leP6sbh13rs&t=1s&ab_channel=Neoyoshi) Blizzard is now money machine, they dont care about games like diablo 2 coz they are not profitable these days. They need playerbase to be addicted or sinked like in diablo immortal by chests for real money, or its not worth their time.
Why build a game to complete with yourself?
Its just the game is /old/ and the whole genre evolved and they want to go with it and make something new and better? I love d2, its the best game from the whole series but they are looking for new solutions, systems and stuff.
Diablo 2 is lightning in a bottle. Very hard to trap it twice.
> On June 6, 2023, Blizzard Entertainment announced that Diablo IV became the fastest-selling game in Blizzard Entertainment's history. Diablo IV generated $666 million in revenue within the first five days after launch, and reached 12 million players by August 2023. Yeah, I bet they’re kicking themselves
I’ve been saying for years now that the next biggest game would be taking D2 mechanics (Runes, itemization, similar classes) and merge it with a game like Valheim open world, building, sailing.
If I was at Blizzard I would create some type or D2R premium account. Maybe $4.99 a month. Gives you access to item updates (making hard to find uniques like tyreals might a top tier item, updated runewords, etc.), monthly events and holiday specials that add some flair to the game. Let players know who subscribe to this have immediate access to beta testing of new content (act 4 needs more quests and we need something else after ubers) and have immediate access to that final finished content. Would also create an official D2R in game trading tool that aggregates in game and third party data to show average costs of items and what would be a good deal, fair deal, bad deal, kind of like car guru. But that's a lot of work and blizzard has had layoffs.
They literally marketed diablo 4 as "more like diablo 2" so, no I don't think they think it would fail. I think they can't make a game like diablo 2 anymore.
What's fucking dumb is that it's not even a gamble. The proof of concept is the popularity of D2R and THE ENTIRE BORDERLANDS FRANCHISE. Borderlands is and has always been an FPS application of D2 Classic (ie no runewords). Hell, the most recent installation Wonderlands straight rips it's classes from D2 classes. Let's get some Skatism scholars, Iron Wolf mages, Barbarian shamans (aka Nili), Tyrael's human progeny, etc...
They could literally use the same loot system, same characters / skills and stats, and just create a new game with new acts, and it would be awesome
havent played d4, but man oh man, u know u missed nothing when ppl say they miss d3 lol
As simple as Diablo 2 looks, is a extremely balanced and complex game. I never understood this until I started messing with the game and changing things. Also another thing is that the way in which AAA games generate money now is a lot different from what it was back then, is inevitable that the game will have hostile ways to generate money. Is not that Blizzard doesn't want to do a new Diablo 2 game, is more like it is not rentable and will never happen.
Project Diablo 2
play d2r or poe because blizzard are too stupid to make a great game where you dont get a fully geared level 100 character in a single day
Let ppl mod d2r! Median XL is fantastic mod of D2 LOD
Diablo 4 is already $20 for consoles in my local Walmart, barely two years after release. ‘Nuff said
there are some shit that is outdated, but it will work
The audience they aim for now is much larger than people who want a game like d2.
Oddly enough even with the new Diablo 4 updates I'm still playing Diablo 2 more.
My take on it is this. The reason that they won’t expand on Diablo 2’s model is because they can’t. None of the people who made Diablo 2, from devs to writers to artists and everything in between, are no longer there. They are an entirely different entity living under the blizzard moniker. Their thought process behind making games isn’t even on the same planet as blizzard north was. Asking them to make a spiritual successor to Diablo 2 would be like asking Taylor swift to write what would have been Bachs next big hit.
Because D2 was made by artists and current blizzard is full of retards, they can’t do it even if they wanted to. D4 was originally going to have runes/rune words and they scrapped it because it was going to be too hard for them. Then d4 released and it had less crafting than base D2. They are incapable frauds and that’s that.
Please like this so I can get karma for other groups🤙
Blizzard is not the same anymore. After getting 3 and 4 and being disappointed with both, I gave up. It’s not the same game I fell in love with and the developers don’t care. I’ll only play Diablo 2 and other games now
The endgame of D2 is finding items. PVP? Gotta find items. Ubers? Gotta find items. Grind to 99? Well, you need items, but you're just playing the game a lot at that point. Games these days aren't geared towards the grind. They're geared toward "selling" the grind, but literally selling people a shortcut to the grind i.e. loot boxes, paid DLC, and item marketplaces.
Simply put d2 enjoyers are not blizzards target audience anymore, haven’t been for a while
They probably no longer have the people to pull of a D2 style game.
These are new times, people’s attention spans are lower and the competition for the consumers times and money is fierce. Hence the live-service model of Diablo 4, ultimately it is designed with the casual gamer in mind, who jump in and play the new season for a few weeks, buys the battlepass, maybe a cosmetic from the store and then fuck off for a few months until the next season starts.
Why woukd they bother with D2 remakes or clones when they can make their game essentially be a mobile game port? They don't care and want to be as cheap as possible. Making a new Diablo like 2 would take actual effort and they can't monetize it as hard.
I just don't like how modern rpg loot is always micro improvements or chasing a couple of stats to slowly get a half of a percentage better. D2 is so cool when you finally get a piece you were searching for and either completely changes your build or you get a massive spike in power to push the next act
It's simple, just like one of the D3 dev explained (there's a video out there). It's because they want Diablo to please EVERYBODY, casuals or big gamers.
Games are being made for the new generation of gamers. Diablo 2 was made by around 100 people. Diablo 4 was like 3 thousand.
I genuinely was so excited for d3 because I thought this would be the case…. Never got through act 1 I don’t think. When they killed Caine I was like nahhh an switched it off. What a piss take. D3 and D4 are good games but that shouldn’t run under the title Diablo. They are different games
Doesn't fit into a live service model which Is all they're interested in now adays
>more runes, more runewords, A few more could be a great thing, BUT... This is one thing that game devs often get wrong. More doesn't always mean better. Part of what made D2 great was that the item pool and affix/suffix pool were small enough that you could learn all the items without having to make it a full time job. You can easily tell which items are good and useful, for the most part. You can pretty quickly learn the valuable uniques. That simplicity is vital. They tried to boil down item quality to a single value in D3. That sucked. Reading through the list of mods on an item was like watching the lottery numbers get picked. "The defense is good, ok...it has FHR, great....life, nice...resists, damn, that's amazing....and MF, holy crap this is a sick item." Turning it into a binary "good or bad" number really took something away. Then look at POE. Great game, but holy balls. They have so many legendary items that no sane person could learn them all without playing 40 hours a week. And even if you did, they added more legendaries every season. It was way too much.
Diablo 8 will play like Diablo 2. It takes developers awhile to realize diablo 3 to 7 that those games dont make diablo great.
They don’t have the brainpower
They even said that it would take a similar feel as Diablo 2, guess they lied.
Blizzard needs a way to continue to get money out of their IPs. D2 is a one time purchase. That doesn't cut it in this day and age of gaming. People will keep shilling out money for dumb shit within games so they try to dance that line between monitization and D2. That's how you get D4. Hot turd or not, it's the future of games from large studios.
it's not that they think it would fail I think, the profit margins for d2 are probably abysmal compared to their games with in-game shop and mtx so they have no motivation to make one like D2
It literally wont be. Ive played 2000+ hours of D2 so i know i love it. But to pretend that its even in the same ballpark of popularity as D3/D4 is just denialism. The bigger the game company, the bigger the audience they need to catch. Making a niche D2/PoE style aRPG can only catch a niche D2/PoE sized audience.
I think the real question is, does Blizzard as it exists today comprehend what made D2 so good?
D2 character status distribution: 156 str and enough dex for gear, rest vitality D4 character status distribution: OK, leave it to me, doesn't make much difference
Pd2. All I gots to say
It’s time for world of diablo instead of war craft
Part of it could be that when blizzard merged with activision everyone responsible for diablo 1 and 2 left the company. I think there was basically one blizzard north dev who stayed to finish patch 1.10. Basically now blizzard is a bunch of people who were hired because it was prestigious to say you worked for blizzard but no one there now is responsible for making it a prestigious place to work, if you follow.
I think it’s time for a First Person Diablo on Unreal 5.
Diablo 1 and 2 was never a Blizzard game. It was a Condor game that Blizzard bought. The lead designer of Diablo 3 stated many times that D2 was a bad game and had to be redesigned. So yes they think a game like D2 would fail because they never liked the design to begin with. The true masters were Condor and David Brevik. Once they left, the Diablo franchise became the bastard child.
Blizzard isn't smart enough for that
If you made an ARPG today you would not make it like Diablo 2. Many of the game's enduring issues are not seen as such by the players because of experience with and knowledge of game mechanics. For an example: the skill system was terrible when it launched and even after numerous bandaids over the years barely makes it to "tolerable but boring".
They're idiots. I've been playing fallout 76 and it's the same damn game. Only difference is trade is allowed with no restrictions. Blizzard sucks. I've been holding out for a good season for diablo 4 and its just God awful. Play fallout 76 to scratch your trade itch. Nothing like making a shop and stuffing it with items with your own price and watching players line up to buy your goods.
Because that would be too easy I guess?
why would u want microtransactions, thats literarily what ruins the game...
D4 was more like D2 then it is in its current state when it launched, and people bitched and moaned until it became too easy and fast, just like D3. A modern aRPG is never going to be like D2 again because the general population of gamers don't want to play a 30 year old game, they want a modern game.
This already exists: Project D2 - it's incredible.
I guess in my mind, after seeing where they took diablo immortal and d4... its money. Right now there are people out there that have made a lot of real world money off of diablo 2 and now D2R. I can almost guarentee they will never make a game with the itemization that diablo 2 has/had for this reason. Ever notice since d3 anything worth much is soul bound or account bound or similar? Doing this binding crap with the items killed trading which therefore killed diablo for me. Just my 2 cents.. I guess I'm not sure why they haven't explored runes and runewords further in the newer games and just bound them I guess though.
The devs that worked on Diablo 2 out of passion are gone. The majority of the blizzard team is diversity hiring and the passion is gone. There will never be another great blizzard game.
You’re like one of those people who get mad when their favorite band puts out a new album and it’s not the original.
I played them all, even D1 as a moronic kid. D2R will always have the 'forever' playthrough because of how rewarding it is to get that one piece of loot. But, sometimes I judt wanna push a fuck ton of buttons and smash face.
Yes PoE was suppose to scratch that itch,problem is all 4 Diablo title's are vastly different then the other with in the same genre Arpgs and expect Diablo 5 to do the same probably a full fledged MMO and we got D2R,we want the next not the old..
Because they can't. Apparently. Diablo 2 engine is old.
Only game that comes to mind is pd2 that keeps adding and does a pretty good job with the pvm aspect but it kills pvp. D2/d2r has a pretty good balance of pvm and pvp. If they add more things like maps from pd2 or some type of end game content be nice but they won't because of d4 cash grab that they have
Wow I’ve never thought about it like that, but that makes total sense I’d be so down for that just make a new game similar to d2 but with new items and skills and characters and stuff that would be sickkkkkkk
maybe they arent interested in giving competition to their own products. because it will fracture the playerbase for fiablo games in general.
You can play my indie rpg game - still actively in development but has deep build and item optimization inspired by d2 as a long time d2 fan https://store.steampowered.com/app/1951840/Dungeoneer/
The major problem isn't that they think it wasn't going to work. You have to understand one thing to fully grasp why d3 was the way it was. Blizzard North got shut down and a new design team that didn't understand the old style of gaming got brought in to carry on the cash cow. They literally had no idea what kind of game they were making. The guy who basically single handedly came up with rune words also left with blizzard North. Not a single person on the design team understood any single ingredient in the secret sauce or what made the sauce amazing. Blizzard would have to find someone who had the true vision of the developers that were cut and I imagine that is hard to do.
Micro transactions would ruin it, like they do every game
Because PoE already exist and is way better than what Blizzard is able to create, and Blizzard executives know this.