02-25-2003, 09:17 AM
Quote:A dim place, ancient beyond knowledge. Ages of rain and wind have rounded the granite, and the sun is feeble and red. A million cities have fallen to dust... Earth is dying..
...here are a few random comments about the problems with how D2 worked out, mostly from a perspective of what I had hoped for coming from D1, all those years ago. It may, of course, be a long twilight for 1.09 until 1.10, and quite probably a false dawn, but that would not be the first (or the last) one. And lest my comments sound too negative, I should say that I've warmed to D2 over the years, in part because it's still better than anything else out there, although I still firmly believe that D1 has been the best computer game I've ever played. :)
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Blizzard's lack of enforcement of legit play on the realms. (Or, as Pete would say 'Buzzard', probably conditioned by posting for too long on Bliz's word-filtered forums. Or 'fora'.) D2 was a slow train wreck compared with D1, but a train wreck it was, nevertheless. Bliz has been much more active post LoD in cracking down on hacks/dupes than before, but they were much too late in doing it, and they only got serious long past the point where it made a difference. I don't blame them for leaving open exploits (no code is completely secure); but the whole point of realms is that you can take action against those who cheat. Unfortunately, I think that, at first, Bliz decided not to do this (presumably because they didn't want to alienate their overall customer demographics -- hint not the "M" demographics, although I don't automatically equate below M-demographics with lack of maturity) until things had got completely out of control. Big mistake. (And why hasn't Bliz long ago fixed some seriously harmful hacks like the drop/trigger hacks?).
Single player vs large mp games. Bliz's efforts to encourage coop play didn't work. Instead, their system virtually created two different games: single player (realm or not), regular D2; and multiplayer rush/level-up/kill-with-uber-itmez-in-large-gamez/cow-levelz/etz. Well I think you can tell where my own preferences lie, and of course there are a few people that play meaningful co-op games, but by-and-large, the idea of players having to band together to defeat the worst enemies was a total and utter failure. In part, the fact that more players did nothing more than increase the hps of the monsters (with a few dreaded exceptions, like stygian dolls), together with their xp and loot, was responsible for this.
Bliz games are too popular for their own good. (Whatever Occhi's said about Bliz giving players their own noose to hang themselvez and them taking it). One of my pet peeves is people who want to know if their traded item is a dupe just because they don't want it to disappear. They wouldn't care one jot if it was a dupe or not if they were guaranteed that it wouldn't vanish. IMO Bliz should delete every single duped item, both the original and the dupe (not that you can distinguish between them electronically), and people should be glad of it. I despise the "But I traded legit items for my dupe" whiners -- I'd rather get typhoid than use a dupe (ok -- well maybe not). Bliz is doing them a favor. In D2 (unlike D1, where your items could be duped without your knowledge) nothing can be duped without the complicity of the person who found it. Caveat emptor, and have Bliz enforce absolute compliance of legit items. (It's unbelievable to me that, after D1, Bliz did not implement unique item codes before 1.07, or whatever version it was.) How they will manage this in WoW when there are no private games to retreat to, I don't know. As Jean-Paul Satre remarked:
Quote:L'enfer, c'est les autres dans votre jeu privé.
Effect of server side play in reducing immediacy of combat. This turned out to be one of the worst changes from D1. I recall arguing strongly in favor of the server side model before D2 came out, unlike say Pete and maybe Jarulf and others. I also expessed confidence that this would provide a legit environment to play the game. :( But one of the side-effects of the server-side model is that it reduced the directness of combat from D1 (despite the desync problems in mp D1) , and made D2 "mushy". Part of this loss of precision is the transition from the one-on-one combat of D1 to the mass slaughter of D2. I guess WoW will go to the "click-on-enemy-and-watch-the-encounter-resolve-itself" MMORPG model (yah, yah, there will be all those strategic choices you can make too).
Some other random combat comments. Melee characters got the shaft in D2 -- ranged characters (which are what I prefer to play, more powerful or not) have a much easier time. There are almost no dangerous ranged attackers at all (just abyss/oblivion knights -- what happened to monster randomization? -- and mslebs, and maybe one or two I forgot off the top of my head, or maybe not). In fact, there is almost no danger in combat (stunlock in D2 is nothing, especially since it's all the more easily avoided because it depends on life instead of clvl), aside from a few monsters. The extreme difference in difficulty between the vast majority of monsters and a very few nasty ones doesn't really make sense (make 'em all harder -- but don't destroy that sense of character omnipotence ;) ).
Skills, characters, and equipment. I never really like the skill system in D2. It didn't promote variety -- instead there were a few cookie-cutter builds, and those that were different were the ones that chose to be. I preferred the D1 system where all classes had access to all spells; and I always resented the fact that my 'zons couldn't learn teleport (though my main 'zon -- now PNF -- wore a teleport ammy for just this purpose, and kept lots of gold in her stash.) The game is also too equipment dependent: the D1 systems where clvl was much more important was better IMO. I'm afraid 1.10 will just exacerbate this with a ton ofnew uniques, though clearly the general D2 b.net dupe/hack/ith/white using population has already voted with their feet on this question, as did the general D1 population.
Atmosphere. The D2 game was too large -- often it feels like you're just getting through places -- more concentrated would have been better; and the graphics (or, perhaps, the artists) were just not as good as the hex-based graphics in D1.
Well, I could ramble on for a while longer, but that's enough. I do hope 1.10 will be good (whenever it finally appears).