Choosing which way you went in the skill tree and how effective you distributed the points in D2 was much more rewarding. You had control on what build to choose, even a hybrid build, there was so many choices. If it was so easy and granny-friendly, why in the hell did people create tutorials and instructions on how to get your favorite build? And it wasn't just skills. Many other in-game factors contributed to bettering your build, like the item variety: Runes, charms, torches, gems(that were actually rewarding and effective). The barter system allowed for a fun way to socialize and better your equipment, same goes to PVP. All those things intertwined into the great complexity that made D2 FUN, not an illusion.
You needed build guides to warn new players of all the skills that were a total waste of points (until they released synergies almost every skill was a waste! And that took them 3 years!). But you could build heaps of different builds because Hell difficulty was piss easy and you could beat it without any "grinding" at all. Everything is viable when nothing is difficult. Remember the pacifist? Beat the whole game without killing anything lol. People used to do runs to see how far they could get with no gear or skill points used.
Runes pretty much replaced gems, making them junk. Charms were horrible, you'd have to lose all your bag space to carry all this junk which each had a pitiful amount of stats on it but it added up so you had to carry them anyway. Runewords made items so strong that everything else you found was junk. Bartering social? LOL, about as much as you socialise with your local crack dealer. You join the game make the trade and leave, that's not social.
If you like D2 so much, guess what its servers are still up, go play it. Me I'm going to go back to enjoying all the things they made better in D3. It's not perfect but I can't think of a single thing I preferred about D2.
D2 did the same, but a meph ( pindle, baal WHATEVER ) run took >a minute or two, so you didn't notice, it was anticipated loot after anticipated loot.
D3 however, it forces 30-45 mins runs through NV stacks. AND YOU FEEL IT.
The only farming these days is goblin farming.
Anything else is yawn.
Blah blah blah bring back meph pindle and Sorc-port Baal runs? NTY.
You're basically complaining about being forced to actually play the game for more than 20 seconds to get a boss drop. Guess what that's the point.
Man Blizzard could make you 100% happy if they just put a webpage up on BNet that generated a picture of a random loot drop and just let you spam click the "reroll" button until you got a perfect rare/legendary. And maybe a little message saying "you're an awesome player, nice work!" underneath.
If you want me to give you the laundry list of reasons why this game has very little longevity and replay value, I will.
Don't worry man, going on forums and bitching about a game has almost infinite replay value. Blizzard should charge you a sub to do it! They'd make millions!
Incidentally all these "D2 lasted 11 years" arguments are kind of ridiculous. I remember playing D2 for 3 years plus? Wasn't really counting. And in that time absolutely everyone I knew who played it stopped, I made new friends then they stopped, then I made new friends... VERY few people actually played it for anything remotely like 11 years. And logging in every now and then to refresh your toons or go on a couple of Baal runs before getting bored and leaving again doesn't count.
D2 didn't "last" 11 years for the vast majority of players. People came and went in that time, the only thing you can accurately say is that Blizzard kept the servers running for 11 years. And remember this isn't an MMO, it's free to play - hell I still boot up TIE Fighter when the mood strikes me, so did that game "last" 18 years?
If so, I just want to give a big fat "well played" kudos to left-wing parties around the world for such a highly successful power grab tactic! Wonder what will happen now...
Why even phrase this thread as a question if you've already picked a team to join and are busy waving their flag around?
I think a big part of the people who played D2 and loved it expected far more from D3. I guess the long wait just fueled that fire and it got overhyped to a degree that expectations couldn't be met.
From what I've seen most of the haters have either never played Diablo before or have very, very hazy memories of D2.
Trust me, the end-game in Diablo 2 was much richer. And only because it is not a MMO doesn't mean it can contain end-game content.
LOL, I played D2 for years, I don't trust you. WHAT END GAME??? Diablo 2 DIDN'T HAVE ANY END GAME!!! AT ALL!!!
Maybe they should've added a new difficulty after you finished Hell in D2 which was super hard yeah? That you had to grind a really long time at to get anywhere. They could've called it, like, Inferno or something.
The problem is that in the previous games the item hunt had a purpose, even if the character you were playing was already top notch. And that purpose was alts.
I don't know about you guys, but I made dozens of characters over my years with Diablo 2, and it was fun to farm items for these budding heroes! But now, who's gonna level a 2nd Barbarian? What's the point? Yeah, you can respecc the skills of your current Barb and change his equipment set with another set you farmed, therefore making him a different Barb, but it's not nearly the same thing. Not only that, but you'd have to keep doing this every time you wanted to play a different build, which is annoying. And let's not forget about the very limited stash space. There's no way you'd be able to keep tens of equipment sets in there, in addition to things like gems, mats, pages/tomes, AH-related stuff, etc.
So, yeah.....farming definitely has less of a purpose in D3 than it had in other games, I'd say.
Thank god they removed the old set-in-stone talent tree, that was horrible. Why the hell would you want Blizzard to force you to re-level a class just to change a few talent points? Especially when levelling to 99 in D2 took damn near forever?
This argument makes no sense anyway, what the hell was the point of farming gear for leveling alts in D2? You could do D2 up to at least Hell with just your own drops with your eyes closed, Normal and Nightmare were such a boring pushover. I used to play solo in 8-player games just to stay awake. If you wanted to gear alts you could just as easily do it on the alts themselves. And let's not forget what a horrible pain it was to transfer gear between your characters - Blizzard stated that's because they DIDN'T WANT YOU TO DO IT!
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Haven't noticed yet that there is nothing else in the game to do?
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Sprechen sie statistics?
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You needed build guides to warn new players of all the skills that were a total waste of points (until they released synergies almost every skill was a waste! And that took them 3 years!). But you could build heaps of different builds because Hell difficulty was piss easy and you could beat it without any "grinding" at all. Everything is viable when nothing is difficult. Remember the pacifist? Beat the whole game without killing anything lol. People used to do runs to see how far they could get with no gear or skill points used.
Runes pretty much replaced gems, making them junk. Charms were horrible, you'd have to lose all your bag space to carry all this junk which each had a pitiful amount of stats on it but it added up so you had to carry them anyway. Runewords made items so strong that everything else you found was junk. Bartering social? LOL, about as much as you socialise with your local crack dealer. You join the game make the trade and leave, that's not social.
If you like D2 so much, guess what its servers are still up, go play it. Me I'm going to go back to enjoying all the things they made better in D3. It's not perfect but I can't think of a single thing I preferred about D2.
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Awesome to hear, man! See, the forums can be a force for good.
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Blah blah blah bring back meph pindle and Sorc-port Baal runs? NTY.
You're basically complaining about being forced to actually play the game for more than 20 seconds to get a boss drop. Guess what that's the point.
Man Blizzard could make you 100% happy if they just put a webpage up on BNet that generated a picture of a random loot drop and just let you spam click the "reroll" button until you got a perfect rare/legendary. And maybe a little message saying "you're an awesome player, nice work!" underneath.
1
Don't worry man, going on forums and bitching about a game has almost infinite replay value. Blizzard should charge you a sub to do it! They'd make millions!
1
D2 didn't "last" 11 years for the vast majority of players. People came and went in that time, the only thing you can accurately say is that Blizzard kept the servers running for 11 years. And remember this isn't an MMO, it's free to play - hell I still boot up TIE Fighter when the mood strikes me, so did that game "last" 18 years?
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Pro tip: when assessing how biased a source is on the internet, try typing the name into wikipedia and see what comes up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Republic
Gee, I THINK Freep may have a slight ideological bias. And probably is not staffed by professional meteorologists. Just a thought.
Why even phrase this thread as a question if you've already picked a team to join and are busy waving their flag around?
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From what I've seen most of the haters have either never played Diablo before or have very, very hazy memories of D2.
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LOL, I played D2 for years, I don't trust you. WHAT END GAME??? Diablo 2 DIDN'T HAVE ANY END GAME!!! AT ALL!!!
Maybe they should've added a new difficulty after you finished Hell in D2 which was super hard yeah? That you had to grind a really long time at to get anywhere. They could've called it, like, Inferno or something.
Thank god they removed the old set-in-stone talent tree, that was horrible. Why the hell would you want Blizzard to force you to re-level a class just to change a few talent points? Especially when levelling to 99 in D2 took damn near forever?
This argument makes no sense anyway, what the hell was the point of farming gear for leveling alts in D2? You could do D2 up to at least Hell with just your own drops with your eyes closed, Normal and Nightmare were such a boring pushover. I used to play solo in 8-player games just to stay awake. If you wanted to gear alts you could just as easily do it on the alts themselves. And let's not forget what a horrible pain it was to transfer gear between your characters - Blizzard stated that's because they DIDN'T WANT YOU TO DO IT!