[HN Gopher] Diablo
___________________________________________________________________
Diablo
Author : doppp
Score : 192 points
Date : 2023-07-21 16:25 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.filfre.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.filfre.net)
| anthk wrote:
| Diablo it's just a real time watered down Moria :). Get the real
| thing and play Nethack/Slashem. Moria feels repetitive in
| comparison. If you feel combat oriented instead of thinking out
| of the box a la NH/SLSM, play Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.
| haunter wrote:
| >Poor character-building choices or a general lack of skill can,
| in other words, always be compensated for with patient grinding.
|
| This is why I fell in love with JRPGs. Generally most of them
| allow endless grinding and for me, and for a lot of people,
| grinding itself is relaxing and on top of that it's fun being
| strong. It's fun being a demi-god and just kill every boss in 5
| seconds or less. And even better when you can exploit some janky
| game mechanic to become strong (which nowadays would be patched 1
| week later by the devs...)
| butlike wrote:
| [dead]
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| I played a lot of Diablo in high school while listening to Alice
| in Chains. For what it was, it was quality, different, and
| addictive. Modem and local IPX play with friends was interesting.
|
| D2 was a letdown IMO. D3 is pretty good overall but lacks the
| charm of D1. I haven't tried D4 because it's $$$ and I'll wait
| until it's sold on sale.
|
| During the pandemic, I bought CD copies of Diablo and Diablo:
| Hellfire because I wanted to patch, nocd, and mod them without
| intermediary tainting of modern distributions.
| strictnein wrote:
| Really a great, well written article. They've got the "Town" them
| embedded in the page and every time I hear that song it really
| brings me back. In Diablo 1, going deeper and deeper into the
| dungeon was meaningful. Coming back out of the dungeon, barely
| alive, to the peaceful yet gloomy music was impactful.
|
| I've played all the Diablo games when they were released. I'm sad
| about what they created for Diablo 4. It's obviously been really
| successful for them, but I have absolutely no want or need to
| play through the game again. It's a slog, running across the map,
| equipment with so many stats that I don't know what's actually
| better or worse, fighting monsters on the surface and in dungeons
| that all feel the same. There's hardly any time journeying into
| the depths of hell, or into deep, deep dungeons, but a lot of the
| plot instead revolves around the jungle for some reason and how
| the "jungle gives and takes". A big focus on builds and grinding
| as opposed to fun. It's been sacrificed on the altar of "live
| service" and, unlike Diablo 1, you won't be able to play it in 25
| years, nor will you really want to.
| belfalas wrote:
| _> They 've got the "Town" them embedded in the page and every
| time I hear that song it really brings me back._
|
| That Town theme music is just a lovely piece of music. Totally
| nostalgia inducing.
|
| 8-Bit music theory did a nice breakdown of why it's so good:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F_zsDWJyrM
| chrisdfrey wrote:
| This writer (Digital Antiquarian) has a lot of interesting
| articles on early computers and computer games.
| ecshafer wrote:
| I love Diablo 1 and Diablo 2, I don't care much for what the
| genre has become though (Diablo 3/4, Path of Exile, Grim Dawn,
| etc). The genre of loot focused ARPGs really took after the
| worst aspects of Diablo 2 LOD end game. An extreme focus on
| grinding and optimizing builds to maximize your ability to
| grind, so you can get gear to beat end game content that is
| otherwise impossible, to repeat the process. The genre took
| this and ran with the concept and brought it up, but also kind
| of killed the simple parts of the game. A lot of older 90s /
| early 2000s games had this game first, that then maybe had this
| end game aspect which some communities played towards. But now
| the industry plays towards the end game aspect, and neglects
| the person that just wants to sit down and fight into the
| dungeon for a while.
| giantrobot wrote:
| I'm in the same boat. I loved Diablo 1 and 3, but Diablo 3 is
| just meh and I haven't even bothered with 4. The first two
| games it could be fun going through loot you'd found and try
| to optimize your character. There were only a few dimensions
| to each piece of equipment so finding the "best" a relatively
| easy. Even if you didn't have the absolute best stuff you
| could still play the game. The character optimization was an
| emergent part of the game, not the core focus of the game.
|
| Diablo 3, especially with real money used to buy equipment,
| turned the CharOp into a core aspect of the game. If you
| didn't pay attention to that aspect the game could be
| mercilessly hard. So I couldn't just mindlessly play, I had
| to pause half way through the dungeon to go further tune all
| my gear across a dozen different dimensions.
|
| The extra cognitive load means there's more steps between me
| sitting down and engaging something fun. If I have an hour to
| play a game having to spend ten minutes out of that time
| dealing with loot is just a tax on fun. It's bad enough that
| unless I play every day I have to wait some unbounded amount
| of time waiting for updates because of the forced online
| component.
| troebr wrote:
| I think the loop that hooked me on game such as Diablo 1,
| Valheim, Subnautica, etc, is that cycle of safe place ->
| adventure -> "safe place, recharge, upgrade". The grindey
| aspect of Diablo 4 totally turned me off and if I buy the
| game it'll only be for the couch coop aspect.
| ohashi wrote:
| The latest patch is an abomination to make it even slower,
| grindier and less fun. Save your money.
| strictnein wrote:
| Just an fyi - the couch coop for Diablo 4 is a little more
| work to get going than Diablo 3. Requires that the second
| player sign into their own PSN/XBL account and have that
| account tied to a Battle.net account:
|
| https://www.dexerto.com/diablo/diablo-4-couch-co-op-
| platform...
| nntwozz wrote:
| And now you have "seasons" on top of that grindfest that
| reset every three months.
|
| Endlessly repeating one-armed bandit gameplay, throw battle
| passes on top and boom Bobby Kotick can show shareholders how
| successful the game is.
|
| Why gaming sucks in '23 ...it's the money.
| WaxProlix wrote:
| Site seems to be struggling. Archive doesn't have it yet, but
| it'll hopefully be at https://archive.li/wip/v3gsM when it does.
| imachine1980_ wrote:
| it does now :)
| whartung wrote:
| I caused physical damage to my hand with Diablo 1 and all the
| incessant clicking (vs the "hold to attack and keep attacking"
| mechanic in D2 and D3).
|
| I had some good times in D2, played it pretty deeply until I got
| to the Physical Immunes. That's when I gave up because I didn't
| want to have to level up, regear, and respec a new character.
|
| I played D3 when it first came out, the Real Money Auction House
| destroyed that game as it became a game of "gold", not gear. The
| "world wide" loot table just wrecked it. When you have a 1 in 10M
| chance of getting the right weapon drop, that's only "1 in 10"
| across a million players, but it's still 1 in 10M for you. You
| also had to become knowledgeable about not just your own class
| and gear, but every other class and gear so your Barbarian
| doesn't salvage some random Staff that may have been one of those
| 1 in 10M drops for a Sorcerer, and thus worth a heap of currency.
|
| D3 rewards time invested, especially later on. It rewards skill
| to a point, but in the end, it's determination to grind long
| enough to get enough gear and to get the right level to clear the
| content. You watch videos of someone clearing high level content,
| and it's almost always the same map they're clearing as some maps
| are outright impossible to succeed on compared to others. When
| it's all boiled down, it makes the end game pretty moot.
|
| That said, I like the dynamic playstyle of D3. An "ok" geared
| Demon Hunter is a cat on fire through the levels, obliterating
| everything and everyone, and it's just flat giggly fun. And I
| liked the story of D3, it was a great story.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/v3gsM
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| The sanctity of this place has been fouled.
| mbwgh wrote:
| I got a SSL_NO_CIPHER_OVERLAP for the archive.X links here, which
| was a first. Since curl worked, I configured Firefox to use
| NextDNS instead of Cloudflare for DNS over HTTPS, and it worked.
|
| So, is Cloudflare blocking archive.ph since today?
| Erwin wrote:
| The complex ARPGs have some unlikely competition: rogue-lite
| bullet-heaven games. The "rougue-lite" gives you short playing
| sessions where you die, but can still progress for the next game.
| The "bullet-heaven" turns your character into a source of
| powerful and explosive attacks, where your actions during the
| game may be limited to just moving around and selecting upgrade
| paths.
|
| These lo-fi 5 EUR games give a lot of the monster-slaying fun of
| Path of Exile, Diablo etc. but with less grind -- and extreme
| variety. Yet the same idea of killing thousands of monsters with
| visually and mechanically varied attacks remains. Vampire
| Survivors, Brotato, Bio-Prototype and Halls of Torment are some
| of the ugly-looking but addictive games which make me question
| returning to another only slightly different season of Path of
| Exile.
| hirundo wrote:
| This game murdered me. I discovered Diablo a few months after it
| came out and played obsessively for a few weeks. I had lots of
| cool stuff. Then one day wandering through a dungeon minding my
| own business, someone invisible killed me. Boom you're dead. Then
| they resurrected me. Then they killed me again. Then they
| resurrected me. Then they killed me again. Then they just went
| away.
|
| I really felt murdered. I read mystery books with murders in them
| all the time, but the punch never connected like that. Video
| games really are a uniquely expressive medium. I closed the game
| and never went back to it.
| butlike wrote:
| [dead]
| ghastmaster wrote:
| > They knew that multiplayer deathmatches had made DOOM what it
| was, and they knew that, long after players had finished Warcraft
| II's single-player campaign, it was multiplayer that kept them
| going there as well, turning the game into a veritable
| institution
|
| This is what kept me playing for so long. I eventually played
| solo trying to find better loot when bnet dried up. There is now
| an active community on discord and plenty of people playing
| devilutionx. If you have a hankering for Diablo 1 community
| nostalia, I have over 700 links to current and archived Diablo 1
| fanpages on my website https://mgpat-gm.github.io
| babblingfish wrote:
| I tried to leave a comment on the article but it's down due to
| the hacker news hug of death. I wonder if the author plays new
| games and what their opinion is on Diablo 4.
|
| It's interesting to me that hacker news has become a place for
| this kind of niche content about old video games. Who would have
| known there is such a large audience that is willing to pay for
| magazine length / quality articles about the history of games?
| lubujackson wrote:
| Speaking of, I subscribed to this magazine for a few years
| (yes, on paper!) and I highly recommend:
| https://www.retrogamer.net/ They have a lot online but there is
| something very enjoyable about getting an actual magazine in
| the mail. They have a ton of glossy images and in-depth, well-
| researched articles - a breakdown of how Pitfall! was
| constructed for the Atari 2600 is a memorable one.
|
| Bonus (or negative): it is from the UK and living in the U.S.
| there is a whole alternate dimension of retro games they
| feature that I've never heard of. But I enjoyed reading about
| those, too!
| baristavibes wrote:
| This story and many others are captured really well in the Game
| Developer Conference (GDC) post-mortem talks, heartily
| recommended if you want to know about the human aspect behind
| game dev!!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VscdPA6sUkc
| corysama wrote:
| And, if that's not enough for you :P
| https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/search?q=diablo&re...
| giobox wrote:
| Jimmy Maher's writing on old PC video games continues to be some
| of the best around, at least if you are of a similar age to Jim.
| When the site recovers, I highly recommend reading his back
| catalog - one of the best collections of articles on 90s PC
| gaming I've seen. The site is especially great because Jimmy
| writes so well and he has obvious passion for the period.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| He also covers a lot of 80s PC gaming. I find the periods I'm
| unfamiliar with as (or more) enjoyable than the periods I'm
| intimately familiar with.
| Paul_S wrote:
| Back when Diablo was released it wasn't uniformly praised like it
| is today. Aside from caricaturised RPG fans' scoffing there was a
| lot of criticism of its what we call today streamlining and what
| we used to call dumbing down. Interestingly back then there
| wasn't yet the research or even the vocabulary of addictive
| dopamine hit mechanics but there was already a not very well
| articulated feeling of a hamster wheel experience.
|
| But yes, I did play Diablo 1 to completion. With all 3
| characters.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| This quote resonates with my experience playing Diablo (though as
| a teenager I definitely couldn't put my finger on it):
|
| > One nice thing about getting older is that you learn what makes
| you feel good and bad. I've long since learned, for instance,
| that I'm happiest if I don't play games for more than a couple of
| hours per day, even on those rare occasions when I have time for
| more. But I want those hours to have substance -- to yield fun
| stories to tell, interesting decisions to remember, strategies or
| puzzle solutions to muse about while I'm cooking dinner or
| working out or taking a walk, accomplishments to feel good about.
| For me, Diablo is peculiarly flat; I went, I saw, I clicked on
| monsters. For me, it feels less like a time waster than a waste
| of time. I almost find myself wishing the game wasn't so superbly
| polished in every particular, just to relieve the monotony.
|
| [edit]
|
| And it's not due to an inherent grindy-ness of Diablo either (as
| one comment on TFA suggests). I have enjoyed other games that
| were about as grindy before and since.
| musha68k wrote:
| Diablo is the original "anti-souls" game.
|
| The slot machine mechanics, the lacking of significant strategic
| elements and sense of hollow progression have always been key
| factors for my dissatisfaction with it.
|
| That said, the beautiful / dreadful / horror vibe and simplicity
| of the first game to this day regularly pull me in - only to
| ultimately dissatisfy me greatly. Each time. To me there is just
| "no there there" - and that's probably the point?
|
| So I agree on many fronts with this article.
|
| Diablo could have been so much more but they turned it into a
| highly engineered form of drug that can potentially destroy you,
| with little to nothing to gain for it. Nicotine? For sure it's
| more gambling than gaming - again to me mostly timeless yet
| inherently toxic coating - down to the systems level. So in a
| way, it's the original "mobile game", the ultimate computer based
| life waster.
|
| So depending on the person and with the right .mpq file in hand
| this could either mean getting addicted to or maybe getting off
| of "cigarettes" completely:
|
| https://github.com/diasurgical/devilutionX/blob/master/docs/...
|
| (Devilution/X is amazing and maybe more interesting than playing
| the game itself, complete clean-room reverse engineered version
| of Diablo).
|
| Edit disclaimer: local / in-sync multiplayer is (probably?) not
| as life wasting
| ecshafer wrote:
| There is a lot of strategy in Diablo 1. Unlike Diablo 2, you
| are much less able to just wade into hordes of monsters. Your
| health doesn't restore, you have less mana, you have fewer
| abilities and they don't just upgrade. In Diablo 2, some
| characters get abilities that can clear a whole pack of
| monsters by level 6 or 12, which you get to relatively quick.
| Diablo 1 you are much weaker. If theres a pack of monsters,
| knowing where to position yourself to filter them, or what
| scrolls to use and when to use them, and rationing your potions
| is more important. Its closer to traditional roguelikes.
| musha68k wrote:
| True, D1 involves strategy and _resembles_ traditional
| roguelikes, yet its tactical breadth feels limited..
|
| So in absolute comparison to other roguelikes it's all mere
| coating, even on the tactics / strategy side - it tends to be
| more about positioning and resource management.
|
| This is a highly subjective take of course and its appeal
| varies player by player..
|
| I'd be in full agreement that Diablo 1 is the "most
| worthwhile" of the Diablo games and I do have a love / hate /
| on / off relationship with it (really glad that I'm not a
| smoker).
| Goronmon wrote:
| _There is a lot of strategy in Diablo 1. Unlike Diablo 2, you
| are much less able to just wade into hordes of monsters._
|
| Sure, you camped at doorways and killed monsters as they
| pathed in front of you individually.
|
| Though, I'm not sure I'd classify that as "a lot of
| strategy".
| ahartmetz wrote:
| I feel the same way about Diablo 1. I really like the art style
| and ambiance (the last Blizzard game for which that is true for
| me), but the gameplay is basically click on them until they're
| dead.
| xsmasher wrote:
| Thank you! I always felt that Diablo was a step backward in
| computer RPGs, and it never grabbed me the way that Baldur's
| Gate did; even though the vibe is great as you noted. The
| randomized dungeons just feel like a treadmill of same art and
| room layouts, no characters to talk to or memorable events.
|
| Somehow I WAS snared by "Book of Demons," which looks a lot
| like a diablo clone but with some card mechanics and a unique
| feature when you can choose the length of a dungeon (specify a
| number of minutes) to tailor the session length to the time you
| have.
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/449960/Book_of_Demons/
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| i really feel the need to object to calling some grindy trash
| as "anti souls" as if dark souls is the archetypal game that is
| not shallow. I like dark souls (and love sekiro, and shrug at
| elden ring).
|
| But there's a lot of games out there with depth. And frankly, a
| lot of people get through dark souls with luck and jank.
| Especially elden ring with its summons. That you can beat the
| game with sheer grit and dodges is a different thing.
| atum47 wrote:
| I made a post the other day about diablo being a clicker game
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36328358
| moribvndvs wrote:
| No joke, I just discovered Cookie Clicker a couple of weeks
| ago (sorry, I guess I've been under a rock) and it struck me
| that CC is a greatly distilled and simplified version of
| Diablo and pretty much all ARPGs. Perform some action to get
| resources to get a thing that will let you collect more
| resources that will let you get a better thing etc. A
| dopamine factory.
|
| The differences are just implementation details and
| art/style/setting.
| anthk wrote:
| That's why I prefer roguelikes. Hoarding and grinding won't
| save you. Lateral thinking, lots of times.
| Root_Denied wrote:
| Universal Paperclips is another game like this, although
| one with more of a clear "ending" than something like CC or
| Diablo.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| Sounds hellish to me.
| carlisle_ wrote:
| This is a strange post to me. You can immediately see that you
| value soulslike as a superior genre, yet to me I see those
| games are just as grindy. Die to a boss a million times to
| learn the timings -> finally you beat it. Not that much
| different than ARPGs where you kill lots of stuff and die
| infrequently. It's just two sides of the same coin.
|
| Really these posts that call one kind of game time wasting or
| drug-like but not another just miss the brutal irony.
| themagician wrote:
| You can find a balance. Diablo 3 tried. You had a game that
| you could make significantly hard, and because respecs were
| essentially unlimited you could reroll your character for any
| particular fight that was too hard to try and find a new way
| to beat it. I enjoyed that part.
| ohwellhere wrote:
| > Really these posts that call one kind of game time wasting
| or drug-like but not another just miss the brutal irony.
|
| I think you're spot on.
|
| > > To me there is just "no there there" - and that's
| probably the point?
|
| In some ways I've always felt Diablo is just more honest
| about what a video game is.
| Panoramix wrote:
| It's the difference between spending a lot of time at the
| slot machine vs becoming good at chess. It's s massive
| difference. You don't "grind" chess, you learn from your
| failures and get better at it. Sure, you can get lucky
| sometimes if your opponent blunders but the strategy to wait
| for that to happen is a failing one.
| kec wrote:
| In Diablo you click on things to increase your avatar power,
| eventually if you click on enough things your avatar power
| will have gone up enough you can complete the challenge of
| the day. There is skill in crafting a build, and some builds
| and abilities do require some thought to deploy well, but at
| the end of the day your personal skill level doesn't matter,
| its not like you'll need to hone your clicking ability.
|
| In soulslike games there is typically some amount of avatar
| power and it is possible to grind up such that your avatar
| power trivializes the game but that isn't actually necessary,
| its possible to beat the game with a naked level one avatar.
| The challenge is more about you the player getting better at
| the mechanics of the game, not your avatar.
|
| Both styles of game design can be enjoyable, but many find
| the latter more fulfilling.
| shultays wrote:
| I guess the difference is grinding against a challenge and
| grinding against RNG
| aflag wrote:
| How is that material in any way?
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| It feels very different and appeals to different crowds.
| I hate grinding against a challenge because I have to do
| a lot of that in real life, whereas blazing through the
| hell levels with my Diablo 1 Sorcerer was more like a
| relaxing stroll than much of a grind, with the occasional
| little reward from the RNG. Other people get a kick out
| of dying 83 times in front of the same boss, but that has
| never been me.
| nkjnlknlk wrote:
| Transferable skills. I don't die frequently to Souls or
| Monster Hunter bosses. I beat many of the Bloodborne
| bosses on the first try. Not because I'm a god gamer but
| because I played a LOT of Dark Souls and Monster Hunter
| as a kid.
|
| Every new ARPG (or ARPG league) requires many hours of
| grinding regardless of skill.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| In one of them you do a thing. In the other you just roll
| dice?
| dmonitor wrote:
| Consistently defeating the Dark Souls boss requires
| skill. You have to learn how to beat it. The improvement
| comes from within yourself, and your ability to recognize
| what you are doing wrong. Knowing how to beat a boss is
| like a puzzle or a skill, even if it's a trivial skill
| less useful than a party trick. You have to analyze the
| boss, form a strategy, and adjust your strategy until you
| reach the desired outcome.
|
| Diablo progression is just beating a pinata until it
| pops. You do the same thing over and over again until you
| get the outcome you want. It's about as intellectually
| engaging as cookie clicker.
| zanellato19 wrote:
| > You can immediately see that you value soulslike as a
| superior genre, yet to me I see those games are just as
| grindy. Die to a boss a million times to learn the timings ->
| finally you beat it. Not that much different than ARPGs where
| you kill lots of stuff and die infrequently. It's just two
| sides of the same coin.
|
| That's not the same at all. The grind is built into Diablo,
| there is no way to avoid it. I regularly play souslike, it
| has been years since I needed to grind out a boss.
| DarkNova6 wrote:
| I mostly agree.
|
| As a small-scale game-designer I sometimes ask myself: how I
| could create a Diablo given the right budget? But the problem
| is that you cannot recreate the magic of Diablo (2). There is
| nothing inherently magic about Diablo which sets it apart. It's
| all about the impeccable implementation of a simple idea. A
| perfect storm.
|
| I think a combination of Diablo and Souls-like would be a
| fascinating endeavour. You could take the core souls-gameplay,
| scale up the enemy count and turn it into an isometric game.
| High Stakes, high reward.
|
| Or you take a Souls-game and just make it a bit more
| casual/accessible. On top, Blizzard has the talent and manpower
| to create breathtaking environments that could shine even more
| in third-person.
|
| Blizzard should go back to formula. Because their original
| recipe is still stuck in the 90s.
| [deleted]
| themagician wrote:
| I've always loved this series.
|
| The problem, as I see it, is that the focus is always on
| tweaking the "endgame." I just find this to be silly. Once you
| get to the endgame it's pointless, and people basically blaze
| through the base game on purpose. And once you get there it
| really is no more than a slot machine that caters to people
| with serious gambling addictions. You run the same dungeons
| over and over again, sometimes thousands or even tens of
| thousands of times, all for an item with slightly different
| numbers. In Diablo 1 and 2 the item often doesn't even look
| different.
|
| But I've always found the base game to be excellent. Fun,
| exciting, and a blast with 4 people.
|
| I feel like, particularly with the new Diablo 4 they could make
| the leveling curve on the base game last MUCH, MUCH longer and
| it would actually be far more enjoyable for far more people. It
| would piss off the endgame crowd though, because all they want
| to do is get to max level as fast as possible so they can start
| farming.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > I feel like, particularly with the new Diablo 4 they could
| make the leveling curve on the base game last MUCH, MUCH
| longer and it would actually be far more enjoyable for far
| more people. It would piss off the endgame crowd though,
| because all they want to do is get to max level as fast as
| possible so they can start farming.
|
| Didn't all of this literally just happen?
| themagician wrote:
| Sort of, but not really. The real grind kicks in around
| level 50... so again, after you've already beat the game. I
| don't really care about the "endgame". I think this game
| would be much more fun if it was a bit more like am MMO,
| where you are maybe looking for a group to do a dungeon.
|
| Below 50 is, IMO, the best part of the game, especially
| because respecs are essentially unlimited.
| dleslie wrote:
| > I feel like, particularly with the new Diablo 4 they could
| make the leveling curve on the base game last MUCH, MUCH
| longer and it would actually be far more enjoyable for far
| more people. It would piss off the endgame crowd though,
| because all they want to do is get to max level as fast as
| possible so they can start farming.
|
| They just did this, and made the game much more of a slow
| grind.
|
| Diablo 4's greatest flaw, IMHO, is that they apply difficulty
| scaling across all areas. At level 1 it can take two or three
| single hits to kill a goat man, and at level 60+ it can take
| two or three hits to kill a goat man; because the mobs scale
| to your power level.
|
| If they'd simply allowed some areas to be level-restricted
| with difficult mobs, then there would always be a sense of
| reward and victory. A player tired of the grind need only hop
| over to a slightly easier zone to feel like a god among
| mortals. But you can't do that in Diablo 4, so it just
| remains a slog.
| tstrimple wrote:
| The latest updated tried to address this somewhat.
|
| > Level scaling inside dungeons and most overworld
| territories has been adjusted in World Tiers III and IV.
| Monsters will begin to trail behind the player in Level
| after a certain point (up to a maximum of 5 Levels behind).
| This change does not affect World Bosses, Legion Events,
| Fields of Hatred, Helltide, or Nightmare Dungeons.
|
| Due to the nature of level scaling, if you're 5 levels over
| an enemy you basically vaporize them. There is still level
| variance among the world zones as well. So with the
| combination of the two, you should always be able to find
| someplace a bit more challenging and when you're higher
| level you can find areas with lots of enemies lower than
| you. I haven't played enough post-patch to know if it's
| made the experience any better, but I'm not the type of
| Diablo player to seek out areas with weaker enemies.
|
| What Blizzard wanted to avoid is having 4/5ths of the map
| no longer relevant because you're so far above the area
| level that you no longer get usable XP, loot or gold. In D3
| there wasn't much to do at the high end other than run
| rifts. In D4 the entire world is a viable place to spend
| time during the late game.
| dleslie wrote:
| > What Blizzard wanted to avoid is having 4/5ths of the
| map no longer relevant because you're so far above the
| area level that you no longer get usable XP, loot or
| gold. In D3 there wasn't much to do at the high end other
| than run rifts.
|
| Alternatively, they could have:
|
| 1. Distributed high-level dungeons across the map
|
| 2. Unlocked high-level quests across the map
|
| They have an open world with dungeons and "caves", and an
| open world quest system; they could've leveraged that to
| get high level players to return.
| aprdm wrote:
| yes I totally agree.
| jerf wrote:
| After ~25 years of playing this sort of game, I am
| increasingly sympathetic to the idea that exponential-power
| leveling is just a busted mechanic. There's a variety of
| good ways to use it, but there isn't a _great_ way.
|
| You can lean into it, like Disgaea, which just embraces the
| brokenness and writes them into its mechanics. You can just
| sort of write a standard game, but then, in the end, the
| solution to all problems is grinding. You can scale the
| challenges with the level, but then, what's the point of
| leveling? In fact all you're doing is running the risk of
| showing just how busted the mechanic is when you have a
| hard time matching the levels correctly because of the
| exponential power gains; see Oblivion, for instance. And
| even after such a mismatch, the solution to all problems is
| _still_ grinding.
|
| Obviously many fine games have used this and I still play
| some to this day, so I'm not saying it's never ever fun.
| I'm just saying, the ways in which it's kinda broken seem
| fundamental and there seems to be only so much you can do
| with them. Were I designing a game today, rather than
| treating it as a default as so many designers still seem
| to, I'd want to take a careful look at the disadvantages
| and be sure I'm comfortable with them before proceeding.
| And as a gamer I do have to say more and more I'm starting
| to mark a game using level-based mechanics down a point
| when I'm figuring out what to play.
| chrchang523 wrote:
| There are games where the final score is primarily based
| on taking as little time as possible (e.g. the Heroes of
| Might and Magic series, which had its debut around the
| same time as Diablo); this tends to keep exponential
| leveling mechanics in check.
| bombcar wrote:
| I always thought HoMM single player kind of just played
| directly into the "comp stomp" play style and only a few
| levels punished it.
|
| The difference between single player and modern HoMM
| (it's a thing!) multiplayer is absolutely stark. Entirely
| different games, basically.
| dleslie wrote:
| > After ~25 years of playing this sort of game, I am
| increasingly sympathetic to the idea that exponential-
| power leveling is just a busted mechanic. There's a
| variety of good ways to use it, but there isn't a great
| way.
|
| Hero stories need to have a satisfying end, and I don't
| think many ARPGs acknowledge that this is even possible
| or design to allow it to coincide with the end of the
| story.
|
| I imagine an ARPG designed to _end_ characters would
| level-gate content in such a way that unlocking, and
| defeating, the final content would be a satisfying end to
| the character. You would certainly be encouraged to start
| afresh, NewGame+ style, with a new character but it would
| be made clear that the character at the _end_ is also
| _finished_. Completed. Over. Done. The hero has finished
| their journey.
|
| Ie, lock the character and have them just lounging around
| in a hub/town for your new characters to see.
| [deleted]
| themagician wrote:
| It be nice if they split the game. They already have a
| Hardcore mode, so they could just split the ruleset.
| "Normal" could have things like level-gated areas,
| unlimited respecs, and a stronger focus on group play and
| HC could remain an infinite grind... which I think HC
| players would enjoy, since it would give them more cred and
| let them look down on mere casuals.
| jorvi wrote:
| With Diablo 3 they added so much QoL and grind protection and
| then people flipped their shit. So for Diablo 4 they
| discarded _everything_ good from Diablo 3.
|
| By and large, Diablo players _want_ to be flagellated by the
| RNG.
| dleslie wrote:
| You can be god-tier in Diablo 3 with a simple autohotkey
| script. At least with Diablo 4 you have to _sometimes_
| evade. ;)
| tstrimple wrote:
| > Once you get to the endgame it's pointless, and people
| basically blaze through the base game on purpose. And once
| you get there it really is no more than a slot machine that
| caters to people with serious gambling addictions.
|
| Feels like you're missing the point of end-game players. It's
| not the slot machine. It's pushing further and further into
| end-game content. It's a race to see who can dive deeper into
| dungeons and what builds are necessary to push to the true
| "end game". Diablo, the campaign, is and has always been
| trivially easy. Super high levels of these dungeons stack up
| so many resistance penalties and the level difference adds so
| much damage reduction (for enemies) and increase (for you)
| that it becomes much more of a skill based game. This is what
| I play these games for. Not the campaign that you can sleep
| through.
|
| For my wife, the game ends when we kill the big baddie
| together on normal difficulties. For me that's when the
| content just starts getting interesting. There is a lot of
| grinding involved, but you're having to pay so much more
| attention to what abilities / upgrades / paragon selections
| you make none of which are important at all for the main
| campaign.
| themagician wrote:
| I don't know how you do it, but I'm actually fascinated by
| it. I like watching Diablo players rant on YouTube, but for
| me the game pretty much ends after the campaign too. I wish
| it didn't because I find the campaigns great. Even just
| exploring the map and all the different atmospheric
| elements. It just feels too short.
|
| I don't want to optimize my character. One thing I loved
| about D3 was that the entire skill tree was accessible to
| you. In D4 that's true right up until around 50 when it
| becomes cost prohibitive to respec.
| butlike wrote:
| [dead]
| proc0 wrote:
| The beauty of Diablo is the RNG dungeons and overall feeling of
| character progression. Souls games are effectively a static
| level layout with enemies respawning in the exact same place,
| however it gives the feeling of overcoming hard challenges
| (more or less by design). So yes it is "anti-souls" but it's
| because it attempts to deliver a unique experience with every
| playthrough, although I agree that this has been lost in the
| ARPG genre in favor of formulaic quests and slot machine
| mechanics since Diablo 3.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| > the lacking of significant strategic elements
|
| Planning for your gear and doing sims / optimizing are
| strategic elements, though potentially a meta-strategy?
| butlike wrote:
| [dead]
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| That was a thing in Diablo 2 and that's when the IP peaked,
| this got lost with Diablo 3 and, i believe even more so with
| Diablo 4.. all the builds are all discovered and in front of
| you, there is no tinkering with incredible skill interaction
| possible like we used to do in Diablo 2
|
| It's kinda similar to how Bethesda manages the Elder Scrolls
| IP, ~ a decade between titles and they casualize(? is it a
| word)/simplify mechanics that made them popular, they became
| a shadow of themselves, as a result their titles, while
| successful, doesn't give the same satisfaction, and I don't
| think it's due to nostalgia, there are specific design
| decisions that emphasis with my point, lvl-scaling and
| simplified damage/defense stats in D4 for example
|
| The story and world building are both nailed, hence the
| commercial success, but the gameplay... what a let down..
| exactly like Oblivion -> Skyrim transition
|
| I don't think the game would have been a success if "Diablo"
| wasn't attached to the name, I'm pretty sure it sold less
| than Diablo 3
|
| Hopefully they evolve the genre/IP with Diablo 5, perhaps
| focus as a single player game and explore new gameplay
| mechanics
|
| This "game as a service" ruins this IP
|
| Hopefully Bethesda don't fall into the same trap and actually
| move the IP forward, similar to how Fromsoftware evolved
| their Souls like genre
|
| Dark Souls -> Elden Ring, that's what I expect from both
| Blizzard / Bethesda, they both play too safe and ends up
| becoming the shadow of their past..
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I don't understand how people can praise the game design of
| Dark Souls and then say that Elden Ring is better. Elden
| Ring is the trashy mass appeal cousin.
|
| * Most major bosses are gimmicky
|
| * The open world encourages running past everything across
| pretty but boring fields and eschewing interesting level
| design
|
| * The platforming is goofy and bad and relies heavily on
| awkwardly not dying as you fall vague heights
|
| * There's a huge amount of tedious content. And you're
| highly likely to encounter enemies that are genuinely too
| strong for your character that just kind of shits on you
| for exploring the wrong way; or likewise content that you
| arrive at and are disappointed to find it's pointlessly
| easy.
|
| The game was still good but it would have been much better
| if they cut out 3/4 of the mini dungeons, chopped the map
| area in half, and put more love and effort into the legacy
| dungeons.
| lgeorget wrote:
| > It's kinda similar to how Bethesda manages the Elder
| Scrolls IP, ~ a decade between titles and they casualize(?
| is it a word)/simplify mechanics that made them popular,
| they became a shadow of themselves
|
| I felt that as well when I played Skyrim after Morrowind.
| The fact that you cannot sell or drop quest items (even
| quests you've not received yet), you cannot meet NPCs
| you've not been talked about, unkillable NPCs, the marker
| in the UI that tell you where to go... For sure, it's
| "convenient" and it alleviates a lot of frustration but it
| also makes the world feel less real.
| nullindividual wrote:
| > casualize(? is it a word)/simplify mechanics
|
| 'streamline the fun out of'
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| Yeah that sounds like a better word, thanks
| jnovek wrote:
| > all the builds are all discovered
|
| Isn't that more a feature of the community than the game
| itself, though? You're always free to experiment and roll
| your own builds. That's what I'm doing with Diablo 4 and
| I'm having a blast. I don't care if I push the highest
| nightmare dungeon or even reach max level. I just want to
| see what I can do with a build that I come up with out of
| my own head.
| foobazgt wrote:
| This. There's a lot of room to improve in terms of build
| variety, and yet my kids and I have been having a lot of
| fun theorycrafting and coming up with our own builds.
|
| There's a fun loop there in that finding new equipment
| let's you try new builds which helps you find better
| equipment. You're hunting enabling uniques, legendary
| aspects, critical mass of some necessary affix like
| thorns, crit, cdr, lucky hit, etc.
|
| For reference, I have 3 toons on eternal at about 80, 70,
| and 60 respectively, with the 80 pushing NM 50 before the
| nerfs.
|
| If your goal is to look up a meta build and rush Uber
| Lilith, the game will probably not be satisfying for you.
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| I think that's more of a side effect of them wanting it
| to be a "game as a service", they need everything to be
| streamlined and balanced.. wich removes a lot of the
| fun..
|
| I wish they'd have made D4 a proper single player game
| instead of an MMO, and let your community mod your game
|
| Look at D2 and the sheer amount of mods.. same for
| Warcraft 3..
| foobazgt wrote:
| I can see glimpses of what they were going for with
| online multiplayer in D4. There's some fun there, but I
| think it's currently a net negative.
|
| It forces them to balance tightly, but I don't need D4 to
| be perfectly balanced - just fun. Some of the best games
| I've ever played have had horribly broken balance - final
| fantasy 6 (3) and final fantasy tactics just to name two
| off the top of my head.
| tstrimple wrote:
| World events with online players have the potential to be
| much better. I'm hopeful it'll evolve over time. That
| being said, D4 is not even close to being balanced
| perfectly. There are orders of magnitude of power level
| in difference between classes and builds. At least if you
| measure them against "end game content" and not the
| campaign which can be completed with any class / skill
| selection.
| foobazgt wrote:
| Right, it's not currently balanced well, and the massive
| amount of nerfing in the last patch was to work to
| address that.
|
| Thankfully, it looks like they realized the patch was
| bad. They just announced in their fireside chat that they
| were wrong to prioritize balancing over fun, and they're
| working to fix it.
| imachine1980_ wrote:
| diablo Postmortem GDC 2016
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VscdPA6sUkc
| holografix wrote:
| The only way to play Diablo is on hardcore mode and multiplayer.
|
| Suddenly you are walking dungeons slowly, waiting for cooldowns
| to refresh in a corner, planning what area spells to combo with
| your party, exchanging items that were dropped.
|
| I don't know if HC players get rewarded in any way, with special
| dungeons or items but they should. It forces you to appreciate
| and think about the game much more.
|
| Otherwise it's just mindless click frenzy.
| wk_end wrote:
| Even Diablo 2 felt a little bloated to me - it's so much longer,
| and I burned out on all the click-click-click way sooner than
| most people. It felt like slog.
|
| But the original Diablo...man. What a game. It feels "perfect" to
| me, in the same way that Scheme (the programming language) feels
| "perfect". Tight, hugely playable and replayable, atmospheric,
| unbelievably compulsively addictive. I maintain an personal list
| of best games ever; it's unranked, but D1 would be near the top.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Diablo 2 is the only one I played deeply, it seems fresher
| since it has many acts/environments. Even though any single one
| of them could have boring parts.
| ecshafer wrote:
| Diablo 1 has a single town, but there is a similar "new
| environments" part of the gameplay since as you go into the
| dungeon it changes. So theres the church -> catacombs ->
| caves -> hell. Though the whole game is maybe just a little
| longer than Act 1 in Diablo 2 (but its tough to say because
| its a much slower paced game).
| duskwuff wrote:
| > Even though any single one of them could have boring parts.
|
| The jungle areas in Act 3 were a particularly weak section,
| IMO.
| butlike wrote:
| I really feel like they shot themselves in the foot making
| the Spider Forest so windy. I get it thematically-- getting
| lost in the forest fits, but not all sections of the act
| are like that and to make it the "first impression" is what
| makes everyone remember that they hate act 3.
|
| Once you get to Kurast it's ya pretty linear. I think they
| should have stuck the easy-to-get-lost-in Spider Forest
| between lower and upper Kurast, and eased the player in
| more.
| nullindividual wrote:
| Act 3 has a large difficulty spike and is frustrating
| (especially due to the dolls, etc.), but Kurask is a
| favorite farming area. Act 4 is boring, though easy to get
| rewards in due to how open the spaces are.
| fishtoaster wrote:
| That's what immediately sprang to mind when wk_end
| mentioned slogging. I was never a serious player, but
| played through it a number of times and that was always my
| least favorite section. So repetitive, and the river maps
| often included long sections of back-tracking if you got
| unlucky with the procedural generation.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| I remember playing the first demo as a kid[1] and almost falling
| off my chair when I accidentally triggered the healing spell (I
| had no idea that I triggered it). It was scarier than Butcher
| grunting "aaah fresh meat" from a cold dark room, deep in the
| dungeon.
|
| Then, for reasons not relevant here, to buy the full version of
| the game I had to drive 60 km to the nearest big city, get it at
| a shady bazaar, suspiciously only displaying CDROM covers at
| their stalls, but no disks. The game was so much better due to
| almost 2 years of anticipation!
|
| And then, a few days later the nanny robbed us (= disappeared),
| and it took my parents more than a day to come back. So we played
| D1 for 23 hours, changing seats with my brothers, one of us
| making tea, another one snacks, rotating every 30 minutes.
|
| The moral of this story is: Diablo was a wonderful game when it
| came out, but ffs never leave 3 kids at the age 7-10 alone for
| more than a few hours. xd
|
| [1] Two rednecks playing D1:
| https://days.sonnet.io/#:~:text=I%20play%20Diablo%20for%20th...
| (if not on chrome, search for "I play diablo")
| ralmidani wrote:
| I agree with the drug analogies.
|
| I bought Diablo in 1996, I stayed up about 40 hours playing it.
| To the point that I started to literally hallucinate and click on
| things that weren't actually there.
|
| I downloaded the relatively new iOS Diablo game a few months ago
| and sank tens of hours into the game before waking up and putting
| an end to the madness. I'm morally opposed to "pay to win" games
| and wasn't tempted to buy anything, so fortunately I escaped
| without financial damage (but the time I put into the grind can't
| be replaced).
|
| Granted, there are people who are more susceptible to addiction,
| and I appear to be one of them (thankfully, I was raised in an
| observant Muslim family). But that doesn't absolve Blizzard of
| responsibility for what they've unleashed.
| cwkoss wrote:
| typo? do you mean "pay to win"?
| ralmidani wrote:
| Thanks! Fixed.
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