07-27-2003, 04:15 PM
I do agree on the party-makes-the-game-too-easy point. However, it can also be incredibly hard at some points. Sirian used to call this game breakers.
In D2C, it was heal-a-port bosses with endless healing. You could work around those (Durance lvl III used to be quite a parking lot (pun intended)), but this was poor game design. Some classes had zero difficulties while it was really impossible to others; I remember Sirian's story about clearing the whole Act III just to fill his inventory with mana pots. He used them all up (30+ IIrc) to summon hydras and it still was not enough to kill a heal-a-port council member.
Other things were similar, like Duriel. Zap your speed with holy freeze, offer no place to run or hide and toss you into the box with a one-hit-killing machine. Your character had to be able to pass this extreme situation to continue the game. Often it meant collecting equipment or spending many skill points just to overcome this one battle (as often as not; my first sorceress died 18 times to nm Duriel for not having teleport).
Some of this has changed, some not.
It all adds to the "two different games" point of view since even half a party makes this
BUT: All this is only half true.
Different classes offer different possibilities; strengths and weaknesses.
Take BO. I will not go into overpowered-whining, but this skill makes life for barbarians really easy. Or rather: Used to. That it no longer affects certain hp boni helps a lot. A lvl 60 Barb at the start of hell had a nice ride most of the time.
I have a lvl 62 spearazon in act I hell. She is dead meat when she has to confront more than two zombies at once. Her life drops faster than I can drink rejuvs; almost every boss is able to one-hit-kill her. Being a higher level would definetely help, but this was as high as I could get in 1.09 NM without dying of boredom caused by endlessly repeating areas.
The above paragraphs are only semi-connected, but they aim at making a final point:
Blizzard will not make different patches for single/LAN and BattleNet. That's up to the mod makers. Some things considered game breakers in single player are not even noticable in multiplayer. But with 1.10, they offered a great deal of new tools. I cannot recall who used to say "You cannot achieve balance by adding a new variable." (in spirit this was what he said). He is quite right, but balance could not really be achieved with only the old variables, and not even for a given value of "balance". :)
Hopefully, Blizzard will offer a new server, clean of dupes. After a ladder season, the ladder characters get tranfered to a new realm; it should be this clear one. The reason why blance-by-rarity did not work was in the system, since everything will be found sooner or later, but dupes extremely shortened the time frame.
This feels like washing old clothes, since most of it is nearly as old as D2 itself. It just never changed.
In D2C, it was heal-a-port bosses with endless healing. You could work around those (Durance lvl III used to be quite a parking lot (pun intended)), but this was poor game design. Some classes had zero difficulties while it was really impossible to others; I remember Sirian's story about clearing the whole Act III just to fill his inventory with mana pots. He used them all up (30+ IIrc) to summon hydras and it still was not enough to kill a heal-a-port council member.
Other things were similar, like Duriel. Zap your speed with holy freeze, offer no place to run or hide and toss you into the box with a one-hit-killing machine. Your character had to be able to pass this extreme situation to continue the game. Often it meant collecting equipment or spending many skill points just to overcome this one battle (as often as not; my first sorceress died 18 times to nm Duriel for not having teleport).
Some of this has changed, some not.
It all adds to the "two different games" point of view since even half a party makes this
BUT: All this is only half true.
Different classes offer different possibilities; strengths and weaknesses.
Take BO. I will not go into overpowered-whining, but this skill makes life for barbarians really easy. Or rather: Used to. That it no longer affects certain hp boni helps a lot. A lvl 60 Barb at the start of hell had a nice ride most of the time.
I have a lvl 62 spearazon in act I hell. She is dead meat when she has to confront more than two zombies at once. Her life drops faster than I can drink rejuvs; almost every boss is able to one-hit-kill her. Being a higher level would definetely help, but this was as high as I could get in 1.09 NM without dying of boredom caused by endlessly repeating areas.
The above paragraphs are only semi-connected, but they aim at making a final point:
Blizzard will not make different patches for single/LAN and BattleNet. That's up to the mod makers. Some things considered game breakers in single player are not even noticable in multiplayer. But with 1.10, they offered a great deal of new tools. I cannot recall who used to say "You cannot achieve balance by adding a new variable." (in spirit this was what he said). He is quite right, but balance could not really be achieved with only the old variables, and not even for a given value of "balance". :)
Hopefully, Blizzard will offer a new server, clean of dupes. After a ladder season, the ladder characters get tranfered to a new realm; it should be this clear one. The reason why blance-by-rarity did not work was in the system, since everything will be found sooner or later, but dupes extremely shortened the time frame.
This feels like washing old clothes, since most of it is nearly as old as D2 itself. It just never changed.
"Ignoring is also a kind of understanding." - Christian Mai