Quote:Apologies. Been working 20 hour days for awhile now trying to catch up with school. I always feel I have to come across strongly on any point that is viewed in a different light by the masses than by myself. When I'm wound this tight, any commentary looks like a personal attack, so I tend to get a little defensive.
Not to worry --- I rarely take stuff personally, and certainly not your comments. But I did find it strange that you responded so strongly to a post about my impression of how TQ compared with DII, when you had never played TQ. (And sorry if my other post was a little snippy in places -- it was before I saw this one.)
Quote:I do feel pretty strongly about how Diablo II has gone to hell, and wasn't that much fun to begin with (addictions aside), though.
Well, while it's tangential to the topic of my original post, I do understand your post was really about the problems you see with DII (and I'm not especially trying to defend DII here) rather than anything about TQ.
Quote:-If random map spawns create more replayability/fun, why do so many people use Maphack?
I suggest you ask them, since I've never used maphack in my life. (I have also gone through the flayer jungles on my own many more times than I care to think about.)
Quote:-Where is the infinite replayability of Diablo II?
I nowhere said infinite replayability. But I have played many, many computer games --- mostly RPGs of various different kinds --- and have spent far and away more hours playing both the original Diablo and Diablo II than any other game.
Quote:-Why are enemies that follow you all the way around the world preferable to those who camp spawn points? There is no extra level of difficulty involved in this placement; they merely must be treated differently. For example, look how easy it is in Diablo II to pull some particularly vicious, but moderately slow-moving enemies out of a chokepoint or entrance to a new zone just by running in a large circle.
Here you simply have to play TQ to understand the broken nature of the AI involved in the limited range of monsters from their spawn points. It is as if they're tied to a piece of stretched elastic.
Once they reach that limit they turn around and start to run back. You can then attack them, and move forward. The monsters turn around and run back toward you (unlike what happens in Guild Wars, where as far as I remember from my time playing it, the monsters scuttle away completely, and regenerate health fairly fast), you move back, they run away, you attack them, you move forward, they turn around, you move back, they run away, you attack them...It's truly silly. Now you can say don't use it then, but that kind of self-imposed limitation on admissible tactics is also really silly IMO, unless you are aiming for some sort of variant play.
There are some slightly similar things in DII -- e.g. Diablo won't leave the area of his pentagram, and you can use that to kill him from range, but I think that's fine. You still have to deal with his fire attacks, his lightning breath, his bone cages, and his tendency to run away out of distance. It is nothing like the way it works in TQ.
Quote:-I don't understand your logic in saying that Diablo II does not follow the "Monsters either destroy you and light your mangled corpse on fire or fall over with a good stiff breeze" policy. Obscene boss packs aside, how much can really kill a properly built tank? Just the snakes, the ghosts, and the exploding.
Well, that also depends a lot on your level relative to the monsters --- at some point almost nothing can kill you. But for example, the amazon I recently started in DII (and I don't expect to continue playing DII for too long at this point) was lvl 59 when she got to act I/hell and maybe lvl 61 when I got to the outer cloister and did a few hell/pit runs (with lvl 85 odd monsters). Just about anything in there was capable of killing her, and did on a couple of occasions.
Quote:Why do you feel the progression of Diablo II drops makes more sense than the allegedly uneven progression of Titan Quest? Do you honestly feel that 99% of what falls on the ground isn't utter chaff?
Again, you have to play TQ and see how it works before you suggest DII is no different. Yes a lot of what falls on the ground in DII is utter chaff. But, yes the item progression and drops in DII make infinitely more sense to me than anything I saw in TQ. Perhaps an expert TQ player would find the reverse. I just giving you my opinion on how it looked to me.
Quote:You stated most of these factors as if they point clearly favorably in the direction of Diablo II. I'm not seeing it.
As far as DII itself goes, I have no problem with your opinions on its strengths or weaknesses, but as far as what features point in favor of DII over TQ, you are simply not in a position to argue one way or the other if you have never played TQ and don't know what it's like. Of course that doesn't mean you'll agree with me should you ever play TQ, but at least you'll have some basis for an opinion.
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Edit: p.s. While I'm on this (probably long and boring) DII/TQ topic, here are a few more thoughts. Despite my criticisms of TQ, I am not saying it's a bad game --- it's very well produced, has great graphics and I enjoyed playing it while I did. I'm just trying to figure out why it doesn't succeed (IMO) nearly as well as the rapidly aging DII, despite the basic similarities in their overall game-type and design.
I guess the point is: What makes a good action RPG (assuming you like that genre in the first place)?
(a ) Difficulty. Yes, quill rats in the DII's normal blood moor are easy, but the whole of the normal difficulty level of TQ, up to and including the end boss (the Titan Typhon) is pretty much like that. You can get through the entire normal game with one thing: the ability to drink a health potion. I did, nevertheless, succeed in dying a few times, but always because I was stingy with potions and let my health get too low. On one occasion, I died fighting and act end boss. You get locked in a room with the act end bosses, to avoid the cheesy kiting, I assume. I didn't take down enough health potions and ran out of life before he did. It only occurred to me later that all I had to do was portal back to town and buy some more potions. Doh!
The monsters hit harder starting around the middle of epic, which increases the chance of actually dying (again depending or your lvl related to them), but I never got any sense of a learning curve or a progression in skills --- for the most part it's pretty much the same. (I never played the legendary difficulty game, where monsters apparently do a lot of damage.)
You can say DII is easy too -- but, for example, I still remember the very first character I played in the original DII. She was a sorceress who breezed through the game (well, I'm pretty sure Duriel must have killed her a few times), until she hit Travincal and got slaughtered. Now I would have no problem of course, but part of the charm of Diablo is that though it's an easy game and everyone can learn to play it, there is actually something there to learn. I wish every sense of accomplishment could be acquired in such a cheap and easy fashion.;)
(b ) Bosses. In TQ on normal difficulty, and for many bosses in epic difficulty, the main thing the bosses have is lots of hit points. Some bosses create minions that are irritating and get in your way --- in one case, the minions heal the boss, so you need to notice that and dispose of them first, but otherwise it's entirely a matter of patience and potion drinking to kill them, and maybe managing not to stand in the same place for 5 mins -- nothing more.
In epic difficulty you suddenly start to encounter the isolated nastier boss who has one-hit kills. In some cases, it's an elemental attack that is deadly if you don't have resists (there are resistance penalties in epic/legendary' wonder where that came from;)), and if you go buy some appropriate resistance items you no longer have any worries. (In fact, I suspect a lot of TQ may be more equipment dependent than tactic-dependent, and even more so than in DII, for example.)
Some other epic bosses (e.g. The Manticore) just one-hit kill you whatever. Now no doubt there are ways to recognize their attacks and hopefully avoid them, and perhaps my complaint stems from not knowing the game well enough, but it seems to me like a bit of a silly way to make the game 'difficult'.
(c ) Character classes. TQ has a dual class system, like Guild wars. You pick a primary profession from 8 and a secondary profession from the same 8, giving a total of -- wow -- 36 unique character classes. Each profession has their own set of skill trees, entirely similar to the skill trees of a DII character (I tried a hunter/nature combo, called a "ranger").
Personally, I don't like this approach, either in TQ or GW (even though its skill system has a different purpose which is ultimately more PvP/mission directed) . First, many professions don't mesh well together, but beyond that I much prefer 3 or 6, say, unique, different, and well-constructed character classes over the smorgasbord approach.
It's as if you go to a restaurant that offers 4 veggies, 4 sauces, and 4 meats (for 64 menu choices!) and lets you mix and match them. I'd rather have the choice of 4 different unique entrees.
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Certainly, DII has it's cheesy points too --- for example, the way in which a bowazon can trap meph across this moat and kill him from range with zero risk (though once you have a high lvl valk, it can tank meph just as easily; the near indestructibility of the valk in 1.10/1.11 is also a bit cheesy IMO) --- but I really think the combat, the monster variety and AI, the bosses, the item system, and the character classes are all just better done and more polished, for all their lack of graphical perfection, in DII than in TQ.