Diablo II balance question

O

.oO

n00b
Joined
Apr 27, 2013
Messages
55
So I just started playing Diablo II for the first time :-O

To my surprise it seems incredibly imbalanced, vs the original Diablo or similar genera games (not played D3), to the degree of feeling pointless to play.

Besides feeling too easy otherwise, its mainly because of the frequency and type of drops that are happening so early: like numerous items with multiple special attributes, and things like wands that can be sold for 5000 gold... In the first Diablo if I remember, you were lucky to find about 1-2 items with one minor special ability before the 3rd level?

Ive tried patches 1.14b and 1.10 sofar. And the install went smoothly although the install disc has one bad (non-concentric) scratch.

Wondering about others experience and thoughts about it, and if there are there mods that specifically address this?
 
The game is definitely easy since players have had 18 years to perfect it.

That was my experience playing the game, it was very easy once you got all the right items that could be reused between new characters of the same class.

The crazy thing is there's still a sizable amount of people still actively playing it... why? It's because they enjoy trying new builds, new characters, weird stuff like... would X + Y + Z be efficient? Has anyone even ever tried this? etc...
 
Haven't played it in years, couldn't tell you. Best advice would be to play it from the original disk without all the updates.
 
slurm,
Im talking about playng it single player - the basis of how the game plays right from the start (installed from a disc, then patched)...

Krenum,
I tried that but it wont even run with no patch used (in win 7).
 
D2 LoD 1.10 patch onwards, have shifted the imbalance around, but ended up making the most overpowered class in the entire game relative to others.

1 Thing about playing without patch: the game with and without 1.10 patch are two very different games. Before 1.10, the game barely had any immunities in Hell, in 1.10 onwards, you will barely find one WITHOUT at least one immunity.

The patches from 1.10 onwards are very minor compared to the differences between 1.09d and 1.10, mostly small nerfs, fixes etc.
 
Off topic, but I bought A Perfect Circle's Mer de Noms when D2 came out and played both obsessively.

Now every time I hear APC I think of the forests in act 3
 
Are you playing on Hell difficulty?

Granted, you can beat the entire game on Hell with a Necro without any gear, but still, Hell should provide some sort of challenge, especially if you just unlocked it.
 
There's some rumors online about a Diablo remaster coming. Everyone seems to think it's going to be Diablo 2, but I don't think so. Why would they remaster a game that's still for sale? I think the original Diablo would make a far better candidate because 1) It's not for sale anymore and 2) Doesn't have modern OS compatibility.
 
bigdogchris said:
There's some rumors online about a Diablo remaster coming. Everyone seems to think it's going to be Diablo 2, but I don't think so. Why would they remaster a game that's still for sale? I think the original Diablo would make a far better candidate because 1) It's not for sale anymore and 2) Doesn't have modern OS compatibility.
Click to expand...

I believe they already essentially remade D1 with The Darkening Of Tristram event in D3. The market for a D2 remaster would be much much bigger than anything for D1 as there are many people still playing D2 today in one form or another, be it official or something like Path of Diablo. Depending on the level of support and the implementation I'd be intrigued by a D2 remaster, although it seems about 4 years too late honestly since we have D3, PoE and Grim Dawn to choose from now. A D1 remaster would not interest me in the slightest.
 
bigdogchris said:
There's some rumors online about a Diablo remaster coming. Everyone seems to think it's going to be Diablo 2, but I don't think so. Why would they remaster a game that's still for sale? I think the original Diablo would make a far better candidate because 1) It's not for sale anymore and 2) Doesn't have modern OS compatibility.
Click to expand...
The original Starcraft was still for sale and they remastered that, shortly after making the original free to play.

I agree with you on your points about the original Diablo, though. The event in D3 wasn't the same. But I'd take a remaster of both, so long as they don't have the color palette of D3.
 
I'm curious how they address runewords if they do end up remastering. Playing without HRs is an entirely different experience than with.

Ditto when it comes to torches/annis. Imo how they handle that it the most significant decision when it comes to the remaster.
 
Mav451 said:
I'm curious how they address runewords if they do end up remastering. Playing without HRs is an entirely different experience than with.

Ditto when it comes to torches/annis. Imo how they handle that it the most significant decision when it comes to the remaster.
Click to expand...

Were balance issues addressed when they remastered StarCraft? A remaster would be pointless if the intent is to just let the game rot with 1.13/1.14 balance (is it still just Hammerdins?). Apparently Blizz made some adjustments to the Bnet server/hosting side of things back in December and patched out bots (https://www.projectetal.com/forums/threads/battle-net-shut-bots-out-with-ninja-patch.35284/). That's a step in the right direction for sure.
 
I think people would argue that balance issues have not been a problem for BW for quite some time.
Obviously for non-pros, there's always an open discussion (because APM required for mechanics varies), but there was no reason to touch that for Brood War.

"Balancing" D2 is an entirely different animal.
Are we just talking PvE? This isn't like D3, where patching is actively reshaping the meta. I don't think we should be applying the D3 methodology to D2.
 
Mav451 said:
I think people would argue that balance issues have not been a problem for BW for quite some time.
Obviously for non-pros, there's always an open discussion (because APM required for mechanics varies), but there was no reason to touch that for Brood War.

"Balancing" D2 is an entirely different animal.
Are we just talking PvE? This isn't like D3, where patching is actively reshaping the meta. I don't think we should be applying the D3 methodology to D2.
Click to expand...

I haven't played the remastered SC so I honestly wanted to know whether they touched anything balance-wise or whether the goal was simply to update the graphics and call it a day (wasn't commenting on whether it needed balancing).

D2 did receive significant reworks over the years - compare what happened with 1.09 to 1.10, where 1.10 introduced synergies and basically reworked the entire game. I wouldn't agree that the game was from some different era where balance was untouched - they just simply stopped giving it significant updates after a while. There was a pretty lousy period between 2005 and 2012 where it seemed like the series was all but dead support-wise.

Fundamental architecture changes/improvements
  • The skill and monster systems are now completely data-driven. Skill balancing is simpler and quicker. Monster control/populating/creation is simpler. Although done for our needs, mod-makers should like these changes, too. A major result is that nearly any skill can be used by any character class.
  • A skill now may have synergy Bonuses (similar to masteries) applied by putting points into other skills.
  • The player stats and inventory system has been completely redone to run more efficiently, improving server performance and stability.
Click to expand...
I know of many people - including me to a certain extent - who stopped playing D2 because the game just got so long in the tooth from a technical perspective that it was time to move on. The game is still fun and I play it from time to time in short bursts, but that 800x600 is so brutal.
 
I've been playing since D2C hard launch, so I'm well aware of when the game was pushed forward by significant balance patches and reworks in the D2:LOD era. The real funny thing is that I played the most D2:LOD during your supposed "lousy period" of 2005 - 2012.

I've played enough that I can still hear the lobby music in my sleep lol, or that people thought the clicking the chat gem did something.
 
Mav451 said:
I've been playing since D2C hard launch, so I'm well aware of when the game was pushed forward by significant balance patches and reworks in the D2:LOD era. The real funny thing is that I played the most D2:LOD during your supposed "lousy period" of 2005 - 2012.

I've played enough that I can still hear the lobby music in my sleep lol, or that people thought the clicking the chat gem did something.
Click to expand...

That lousy period involved a game overrun by botters, duped items, and Enigma-wearing Hammerdins. Why Hammerdins? Oh, because the devs neglected to add any enemy immunity to magic damage so Hammerdins could simply cheese through the game while everyone else had to plan for dual-element builds...and since they stopped updating the game it just stayed in that unbalanced state for years. I'm not here to argue that the game wasn't fun - I played until sometime in 2008 - but your implication that it wouldn't benefit from balancing is laughable. Would they ever fix the Fend bug or will that too get included in a remaster? The game would need plenty of sprucing up.

It's tough to gauge what people actually thought of the drop rates in the game since botters kept the trading markets in supply of high runes and other things most legit players never ever saw drop. Personally, I feel players have more fun when they find good stuff, and the availability of powerful runewords extended the life of the game even if they were only available because of bots/dupes. Trading for and building around HR's, 40/15's, 3/20/20's, and various other things was a blast, but most of it wasn't really supposed to be accessible or even in the game at all.
 
Agreed, which is why my first post in this thread was asking about runewords (and really HRs).
Now I do remember this remaster discussion coming up from Rhyker's video series with the D2 creator. And if I'm remembering correctly, it cast a lot of doubt on a remaster, which is probably why I wasn't even considering it until this thread came up.

But now that I recall that, I don't believe a remaster is happening at all.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top