i dont think anyone was surprised by the announcement of diablo 4. it has been quite a while since diablo 3 (2012) and the announcement was leaked before blizzcon. great news right? well i dont know about that. i will get to my own opinion/impression later but first lets look at what the fans say about it.
if you have been keeping up with diablo games at all, you will know that apparently diablo 2 players hate diablo 3. most diablo "fans" did not like the changes that were made from 2 to 3. even after the expansion overhauled the loot system, added more areas, difficulties, characters, pvp and endgame content. the "fans" still werent happy. they say things like the graphics are too cartoony, no skill points, no stats points, loot is not rewarding enough, my character is not unique enough and diablo 2 was so much better. why did you have to change things?
there is this flood of people making it sound like diablo 2 was the best arpg and diablo game. that d4 should just do what d2 did and walk back the changes from d3. they say d3 is such a bad game and they just stuck with d2 instead etc.
look, i'm not a huge diablo 3 fan but i think most of these people have forgotten that d2 had some really bad/annoying issues and that d3 made A LOT of improvements over d2. i know because after i played d3 for a while not too long ago, i went back and played some d2 for a few days. it is also worth noting that i did play quite a lot of d2 "back in the day" and did enjoy it. my conclusion from my recent excursion though is that i simply cannot play d2 anymore after playing d3, it is waaaaaaay too annoying and cumbersome. and i really like playing old games. i played through red faction 2 a few weeks ago and it was really fun.
anyway, here are some really crappy and annoying things in diablo 2 that diablo 3 does not have or does much better:
- no proper minimap. yes there is a map but it takes up way too much screen space, even in minimap mode.
- near impossible to reach max level 99. gaining character levels in d2 is slow, especially past lvl 60. it takes a really long time. and when you go past 80 or 90, it could take weeks of play just to go up one level. at some point, it will simply not be worth the time and effort to reach the next level since the benefit to your character is so minuscule.
- character experience loss when you die. when your character dies on nightmare or hell difficulty, you lose xp. at lvl 70+ you could lose DAYS worth of playing progress. not cool
- no revive at body and body fetch when you die. so never mind that you just lost a ton of xp and gold when you died, now you also cannot revive at your current location, only in town and without any gear. nice so i have to do a naked run into the area where i just got killed by some badass monsters in order to retrieve my body/gear. there is a VERY good chance you will die again and lose more xp. good times.
- very small inventory and stash space. honestly, you dont really have much space to store anything. even the amount of gold you can stash is really limited.
- no auto gold pickup. click click click click...
- charms. they give you some nice stats and bonuses but they take up inventory space. nice, another way to fill up my already tiny inventory.
- no shared stash. that means there is no way for you to give your barbarian character this amazing legendary axe you just found with your necro. really lame. no i have no friends.
- no smart loot. all drops are seemingly random so if a legendary item magically happens to drop, chances are really high it will be something you cant even use for the character you are playing.
- potion management. ugh, i have to make sure i have enough potions and that they are properly organized in my belt. i really do not miss this. oh did i mention you can get poisoned unavoidably and usually if you dont have an antidote potion on hand in your tiny inventory, no amount of health potions can save you. oh and some monsters can freeze you in your tracks, leaving you to stand there helplessly while the eat your face while you are trying to find a thawing potion in your inventory.
- scrolls suck. in d2 you have to carry town portal and item identify scrolls with you all the time. they take up inventory space and you better remember to refill your tp scrolls otherwise you will have to take a long walk back to the waypoint or spend time finding one.
- random loot rewards. sometimes you get loot as a quest reward. these can be really powerful but since it is random, some players will hugely benefit from this but others will get trash. as an example, charsi will imbue an item for you with magic powers. lets say two equivalent characters both give her a circlet to imbue. one player could get a +2 to all skills version and another one +30 mana. that is a big difference and is unfair and pisses people off. d3 has random loot rewards too but will it never be anything significant.
- extremely low drop rates for high level loot. sure if you are really geared up, playing in a group and do baal runs or whatever over and over you can get nice loot. but for us plebs, trying to find something like a zod rune is simply impossible. nevermind all the hidden information about area levels and level requirements for certain loot to drop. you basically need to no-life d2 for months to find anything good, f*** that.
- stamina. runs out if you run too much, especially at low character levels. super annoying since it takes quite while to recover.
- permanent stat/skill points. ok apparently they have added a way to respec but i couldnt figure it out. but it pretty much still comes down to if you spent points on the many many useless skills or stats for your character, tough shit. you will probably be too weak to beat the higher difficulties and will have to make a new character from scratch.
- attack rating was bad. ar is a stat in d2 that determines what chance you have of hitting your intended target. do you have any idea how annoying and weird it is to dual wield axes with frenzy and have insane damage stats, but for some magical reason you are only able to land every 10th slash you do. or how about firing a wall of hundreds of arrows towards a whole group of monsters and only 3 of them actually hurts anything. wtf?
- curses. if you have ever tried to whirlwind your barbarian through a pack of knights and suddenly they cast an iron maiden curse on you, you will know the pain of curses. i hate them.
- resistance penalties for nightmare and hell difficulties. why is this needed? it can be quite hard to overcome the massive 100 resistance penalty on hell difficulty and the resistances even cap out.
- monster damage immunity. so pretty much every monster on hell difficulty is immune to at least one type of damage, often 2 or more. if you dont have a proper "backup" attack that uses a different damage type or the monster is immune to your primary and secondary attacks... then you are screwed, you cannot kill it. what makes things worse, this is true for (some) bosses as well!
- hireling cost too high and they die easy. hirelings are pretty much useless later in the game since they die too easily and cost a lot of gold to revive.
- game only runs in low resolution. you can only run the game in 640x480 or 800x600 resolution. this is really low and was very low even back when d2 was first released (only 640x480 back then). the game looks like crap. sure you get mods/hacks to increase it but there are drawbacks with these and they dont always work. higher resolutions are not officially supported.
- character movement in blocks. this is kinda hard to describe but it is very noticeable to me in d2. imagine that the world "floor" is made up of a big grid of blocks, like a chess board. when you click a point to move to, your character will only move in discrete directions in order to get there and he/she wont stop exactly where you clicked but rather on the center of the nearest block. this makes it feel like your character often does not move in the exact direction or stop in the correct position that you want them to.
there you have it. i could actually add more to this list but those would be even more subjective and i had technical difficulties getting the game to work properly which wont be everyone's experience. for example, every time i have tried to play the game online it lagged SUPER bad. but it could be just because i'm in south africa. however, d3 is absolutely fine online, even on crappy 3g. i'm not saying d3 is better in every way. they did f***up the story, the arts style is not great, it is online only, characters are less unique and pvp is limited.
what i am saying is that right now d3 is a much more enjoyable game with actual endgame content, a lot of quality of life upgrades and it feels much more rewarding to more casual players like me. i dont know what is going to happen with diablo 4 but i just hope the devs dont listen to these bitter old fans and make the game like d2. thing all fans should be wary of though are how they are planning to monetize this game. it is activision after all. looks like d4 might just be another game i will be skipping due to corporate greed.
if you have been keeping up with diablo games at all, you will know that apparently diablo 2 players hate diablo 3. most diablo "fans" did not like the changes that were made from 2 to 3. even after the expansion overhauled the loot system, added more areas, difficulties, characters, pvp and endgame content. the "fans" still werent happy. they say things like the graphics are too cartoony, no skill points, no stats points, loot is not rewarding enough, my character is not unique enough and diablo 2 was so much better. why did you have to change things?
there is this flood of people making it sound like diablo 2 was the best arpg and diablo game. that d4 should just do what d2 did and walk back the changes from d3. they say d3 is such a bad game and they just stuck with d2 instead etc.
look, i'm not a huge diablo 3 fan but i think most of these people have forgotten that d2 had some really bad/annoying issues and that d3 made A LOT of improvements over d2. i know because after i played d3 for a while not too long ago, i went back and played some d2 for a few days. it is also worth noting that i did play quite a lot of d2 "back in the day" and did enjoy it. my conclusion from my recent excursion though is that i simply cannot play d2 anymore after playing d3, it is waaaaaaay too annoying and cumbersome. and i really like playing old games. i played through red faction 2 a few weeks ago and it was really fun.
anyway, here are some really crappy and annoying things in diablo 2 that diablo 3 does not have or does much better:
- no proper minimap. yes there is a map but it takes up way too much screen space, even in minimap mode.
- near impossible to reach max level 99. gaining character levels in d2 is slow, especially past lvl 60. it takes a really long time. and when you go past 80 or 90, it could take weeks of play just to go up one level. at some point, it will simply not be worth the time and effort to reach the next level since the benefit to your character is so minuscule.
- character experience loss when you die. when your character dies on nightmare or hell difficulty, you lose xp. at lvl 70+ you could lose DAYS worth of playing progress. not cool
- no revive at body and body fetch when you die. so never mind that you just lost a ton of xp and gold when you died, now you also cannot revive at your current location, only in town and without any gear. nice so i have to do a naked run into the area where i just got killed by some badass monsters in order to retrieve my body/gear. there is a VERY good chance you will die again and lose more xp. good times.
- very small inventory and stash space. honestly, you dont really have much space to store anything. even the amount of gold you can stash is really limited.
- no auto gold pickup. click click click click...
- charms. they give you some nice stats and bonuses but they take up inventory space. nice, another way to fill up my already tiny inventory.
- no shared stash. that means there is no way for you to give your barbarian character this amazing legendary axe you just found with your necro. really lame. no i have no friends.
- no smart loot. all drops are seemingly random so if a legendary item magically happens to drop, chances are really high it will be something you cant even use for the character you are playing.
- potion management. ugh, i have to make sure i have enough potions and that they are properly organized in my belt. i really do not miss this. oh did i mention you can get poisoned unavoidably and usually if you dont have an antidote potion on hand in your tiny inventory, no amount of health potions can save you. oh and some monsters can freeze you in your tracks, leaving you to stand there helplessly while the eat your face while you are trying to find a thawing potion in your inventory.
- scrolls suck. in d2 you have to carry town portal and item identify scrolls with you all the time. they take up inventory space and you better remember to refill your tp scrolls otherwise you will have to take a long walk back to the waypoint or spend time finding one.
- random loot rewards. sometimes you get loot as a quest reward. these can be really powerful but since it is random, some players will hugely benefit from this but others will get trash. as an example, charsi will imbue an item for you with magic powers. lets say two equivalent characters both give her a circlet to imbue. one player could get a +2 to all skills version and another one +30 mana. that is a big difference and is unfair and pisses people off. d3 has random loot rewards too but will it never be anything significant.
- extremely low drop rates for high level loot. sure if you are really geared up, playing in a group and do baal runs or whatever over and over you can get nice loot. but for us plebs, trying to find something like a zod rune is simply impossible. nevermind all the hidden information about area levels and level requirements for certain loot to drop. you basically need to no-life d2 for months to find anything good, f*** that.
- stamina. runs out if you run too much, especially at low character levels. super annoying since it takes quite while to recover.
- permanent stat/skill points. ok apparently they have added a way to respec but i couldnt figure it out. but it pretty much still comes down to if you spent points on the many many useless skills or stats for your character, tough shit. you will probably be too weak to beat the higher difficulties and will have to make a new character from scratch.
- attack rating was bad. ar is a stat in d2 that determines what chance you have of hitting your intended target. do you have any idea how annoying and weird it is to dual wield axes with frenzy and have insane damage stats, but for some magical reason you are only able to land every 10th slash you do. or how about firing a wall of hundreds of arrows towards a whole group of monsters and only 3 of them actually hurts anything. wtf?
- curses. if you have ever tried to whirlwind your barbarian through a pack of knights and suddenly they cast an iron maiden curse on you, you will know the pain of curses. i hate them.
- resistance penalties for nightmare and hell difficulties. why is this needed? it can be quite hard to overcome the massive 100 resistance penalty on hell difficulty and the resistances even cap out.
- monster damage immunity. so pretty much every monster on hell difficulty is immune to at least one type of damage, often 2 or more. if you dont have a proper "backup" attack that uses a different damage type or the monster is immune to your primary and secondary attacks... then you are screwed, you cannot kill it. what makes things worse, this is true for (some) bosses as well!
- hireling cost too high and they die easy. hirelings are pretty much useless later in the game since they die too easily and cost a lot of gold to revive.
- game only runs in low resolution. you can only run the game in 640x480 or 800x600 resolution. this is really low and was very low even back when d2 was first released (only 640x480 back then). the game looks like crap. sure you get mods/hacks to increase it but there are drawbacks with these and they dont always work. higher resolutions are not officially supported.
- character movement in blocks. this is kinda hard to describe but it is very noticeable to me in d2. imagine that the world "floor" is made up of a big grid of blocks, like a chess board. when you click a point to move to, your character will only move in discrete directions in order to get there and he/she wont stop exactly where you clicked but rather on the center of the nearest block. this makes it feel like your character often does not move in the exact direction or stop in the correct position that you want them to.
there you have it. i could actually add more to this list but those would be even more subjective and i had technical difficulties getting the game to work properly which wont be everyone's experience. for example, every time i have tried to play the game online it lagged SUPER bad. but it could be just because i'm in south africa. however, d3 is absolutely fine online, even on crappy 3g. i'm not saying d3 is better in every way. they did f***up the story, the arts style is not great, it is online only, characters are less unique and pvp is limited.
what i am saying is that right now d3 is a much more enjoyable game with actual endgame content, a lot of quality of life upgrades and it feels much more rewarding to more casual players like me. i dont know what is going to happen with diablo 4 but i just hope the devs dont listen to these bitter old fans and make the game like d2. thing all fans should be wary of though are how they are planning to monetize this game. it is activision after all. looks like d4 might just be another game i will be skipping due to corporate greed.
