Ah, an intelligent reply.
The lack of Balrog AI has been mentioned multiple times by players on the forums, as well as the removal of Drakes completely. Labiri has said that he will do his best to incorporate both into future versions. You just named as many monster types, if not more, than regular Diablo 1, though. Obviously, the mod is a Public Beta, not a final version. The Beta of D1 was a Turn-Based RPG, to compare.
The incredible magic drop rate is an unfortunate byproduct of the use of the Thief's skill, which unintentionally makes any drop magical for its duration. If you had played another character as well, you would have noticed the lack of magic drop. This has been commented on in about 10 different threads on the ReX forums, and is most certainly expected to change. The item drop rate on 16 has been mentioned frequently, as well, and will definitely be lowered. Apart from this, the IMF and IEG items are sacrifices for efficiency. If you want to take off your armor to use a Plate of Experience, you will suffer. Add in that when you die you lose a good deal of experience, (a welcome change inviting skillful play,) the compromise is a choice.
I had the same problem, initially. Within maybe 10 hours of playtime, though I didn't really notice the changes. There truly aren't that many items, and I even created this thread as a fun way of helping. Honestly though, are you supposed to know what each item is by it's name? This was likely only a problem due to the fact that you wanted to leave some magical items behind, also related the the thief's bug.
I myself have commented on this TP blockage to Labiri (along with the problems of being able to circumvent this). The TP's are put in a more accessible area, to be fair, but yes, they are definitely annoying at times, especially P1's. It obviously sucks to go to Wirt's equivilant, but is navigating the maze not the same as walking crosstown and over a river and into a corner? I think that this was intentional.
I look at the town as being huge to incorporate future expansions. You may have noticed that in the town there are four or five areas that are entrances, but which are inaccessible. 16 levels, for the moment...
Fair enough. The twinking is a problem, admittedly, and there's not much that can be done to remedy this. However, it seems a bit hypocritical to complain about a problem while adding to it. I'm sure if you've played D1 legitimately on Battle.net you've certainly encouraged players not to take GPOTW's and other items. Are you not doing nearly the exact same thing? If you chose to accept the items, then you've just done the equivilant of taking dupes. I haven't accepted any items from others except what I thought to be a fair trade (or in my benefit. -.-). My thief is doing 75-95 damage at level 27, to put in a perspective. By the way, the bow you have (Cat's Wind) is considered "complete equipment," as is the helm (Viking's Helm) by some. I'm rather suprised that a player would give either of these up. Your high offense strategy, which you mentioned earlier in your paragraph about level 16, is mandated by your equipment. With fitting equipment for your level, you would have had a much harder time. If I gave a level 17 sorcerer a 36 charge BSOApoc, would he notice much of a difference between Normal and Hell?
I haven't had any problems with PK's, myself, but for some reason I seem to be the only one who doesn't. I can't discount this issue, but I really don't have any experience with players PK'ing just for the sake of PK'ing. I had one player who tried to MK me while we were co-oping, and after he fireball-equivilanted me while I was being shot by ranged monsters, I just quickly rejoined and cussed him out. That's in about 3 months of playing.
What I've done a lot of in this post was suggest that more is on the way. Judging from the popularity of the mod, albeit shunned here, I expect Labiri to do a good job making the changes, because he listens and acknowledges many of the complaints made on the forums. Perhaps he won't fix any of the bug issues, but that's just an issue of trust. I'll continue to enjoy the game as an alternative to basic D1, and hope that in the future it changes for the better. I trust that it will.
Quote:Hell is virtually the same every level, every game. You'll run into two types of melee mummy's (one with knight attack type, the other with drake attack type), and one blood star shooting type. There's gargoyle one-hit killers (named Death's touch) with only 1 hp each. Then there are the boar class melee. I think also some blood star shooting bats. MAYBE one fire-shooter, can't quite recall. Occasionally you get some charging Leoric-looking knights that are pretty brawny. There are also fat scythe-weilding enemies which remind me of a cross between an overloard and balrog as far as looks go. They have knight AI, but are slower and pretty easy.
The lack of Balrog AI has been mentioned multiple times by players on the forums, as well as the removal of Drakes completely. Labiri has said that he will do his best to incorporate both into future versions. You just named as many monster types, if not more, than regular Diablo 1, though. Obviously, the mod is a Public Beta, not a final version. The Beta of D1 was a Turn-Based RPG, to compare.
Quote:Combine that with tons of Uber-items, and it is much more of a hack-n-slash than D1. In fact, it seems to be heavily influenced by D2. There's new item mods for "Increase magic find" and "Increased experience gained". There might also be one for more gold IIRC. Additionally, on levels 1 and 16, EVERY monster drops a magical item. Sixteen gets so bad that if you don't start sorting through the items half way through, you will reach the item drop limit and miss out on some boss drops. Then it is a real chore to truck items to town for ID. To make it more bearable, there is a skill that will show you the identified attributes on the ground (but it isn't actually ID'd), so you at least only have to drag back the best items for use or money. If you really want to bog yourself down, there is a spell (Ransack) that will make monsters drop 2 items eash. For normal monster it just means they just get two normal drops, meaning that you're most likely to get gold or nothing, so two items will probably not drop, BUT two could. For bosses you get twice the good booty.
The incredible magic drop rate is an unfortunate byproduct of the use of the Thief's skill, which unintentionally makes any drop magical for its duration. If you had played another character as well, you would have noticed the lack of magic drop. This has been commented on in about 10 different threads on the ReX forums, and is most certainly expected to change. The item drop rate on 16 has been mentioned frequently, as well, and will definitely be lowered. Apart from this, the IMF and IEG items are sacrifices for efficiency. If you want to take off your armor to use a Plate of Experience, you will suffer. Add in that when you die you lose a good deal of experience, (a welcome change inviting skillful play,) the compromise is a choice.
Quote:I found that with all the new affixes, it was quite time intensive on 16 trying to remember/figure out what the good affixes are. For example, obsidian/zodiac is equivalent to something like warding/universe, but with virtually every affix changed you really have to pay attention to the items so you know what to bring to town.
I had the same problem, initially. Within maybe 10 hours of playtime, though I didn't really notice the changes. There truly aren't that many items, and I even created this thread as a fun way of helping. Honestly though, are you supposed to know what each item is by it's name? This was likely only a problem due to the fact that you wanted to leave some magical items behind, also related the the thief's bug.
Quote:As far as town is concerned, I think it is terrible. You can run, but not like you can run in Hellfire. You pause for a split second every tile, so initially it is ackward, but you will get used to it. The NPC's have borrowed graphics from other games, which really aren't bad, just different. The voices aren't quite diabloesque though. Worst of all, however, is the town layout. There is so much crap crowed in it is difficult to navigate. MANY places have 1x1 through high traffic areas. There are alternate routes, but usually around obstcales like homes. For examples, "Pepins" new home is moddified and surrounded by a wall with 2 tiles clearance max between the house and wall. An NPC obstructs one whole side; it is even worse when players are in town and talking to that NPC. To get to the crack in hell, you have to go completely around the wall one way, around the wall PLUS another wall the other way, or squeeze yourself around and behind the house. The are so many unnecessary walls and rocks, trees and general obstacles it is terrible. There is actually a "maze" to get the the wirt-like character. It is just so completely congested it is agonizing. Finally, TP placement is very bad. The 4 TP spawns are no longer close together and are roughly located at the four corners of the town square. When you are visiting town vendors, you almost have to dodge them to avoid accidentily clicking on them. There is even a bigger problem with this. There are level restrictions to entering TP's so often with a lower level character, if you try to enter a TP, it will automatically move your character one sqaure south and give you a "can not enter" message. The problem is that this doesn't just happen when you step on the actual tile with the TP, but even when you just get near. The effect it has is when you get 2-3 tiles within range, your character is kicked back. Now, with TP placement being as it is - right the in the middle of everything in town - they make this barrier right through town that you can't cross because "you can't enter this TP yet" - even though you were clicking on the NPC across the way. Town is terrible.
I myself have commented on this TP blockage to Labiri (along with the problems of being able to circumvent this). The TP's are put in a more accessible area, to be fair, but yes, they are definitely annoying at times, especially P1's. It obviously sucks to go to Wirt's equivilant, but is navigating the maze not the same as walking crosstown and over a river and into a corner? I think that this was intentional.
I look at the town as being huge to incorporate future expansions. You may have noticed that in the town there are four or five areas that are entrances, but which are inaccessible. 16 levels, for the moment...
Quote:By far, the worst and really the most suprising thing about it is how much like b.net it is. Just because people are playing legit (which actually not all are), it makes no difference. Probably the worst thing about b.net is how easy it is to dupe elite gear and twink new players. Well, so many items are so common in REX that even without duping it is practially the same effect. IMO, the "legit" of b.net would be the players that don't twink - the rest are no different than standard b.net hackers. Not to mention it is hard to find players that won't PK you for no reason. My first night on, someone gave my thief [rogue] a unique bow that added 100 to damage with swiftness and a helm that added 50 to damage. Immediately I could stun kill anything in Hell without effort. At level 24 my thief was doing 200-250 swifted damage. I moved from normal/hell to nightmare/hell, and noticed almost no difference. I did have to be careful with the magic ranged as they would stun and do a lot of damage for where I was at. My damage was still so much that I could decimate large mobs before melee enemies had any chance to get to me. Combined with good wall and corner tactics, nothing could touch me. I can't imagine what another 20 levels and complete equipment will do.
Fair enough. The twinking is a problem, admittedly, and there's not much that can be done to remedy this. However, it seems a bit hypocritical to complain about a problem while adding to it. I'm sure if you've played D1 legitimately on Battle.net you've certainly encouraged players not to take GPOTW's and other items. Are you not doing nearly the exact same thing? If you chose to accept the items, then you've just done the equivilant of taking dupes. I haven't accepted any items from others except what I thought to be a fair trade (or in my benefit. -.-). My thief is doing 75-95 damage at level 27, to put in a perspective. By the way, the bow you have (Cat's Wind) is considered "complete equipment," as is the helm (Viking's Helm) by some. I'm rather suprised that a player would give either of these up. Your high offense strategy, which you mentioned earlier in your paragraph about level 16, is mandated by your equipment. With fitting equipment for your level, you would have had a much harder time. If I gave a level 17 sorcerer a 36 charge BSOApoc, would he notice much of a difference between Normal and Hell?
I haven't had any problems with PK's, myself, but for some reason I seem to be the only one who doesn't. I can't discount this issue, but I really don't have any experience with players PK'ing just for the sake of PK'ing. I had one player who tried to MK me while we were co-oping, and after he fireball-equivilanted me while I was being shot by ranged monsters, I just quickly rejoined and cussed him out. That's in about 3 months of playing.
What I've done a lot of in this post was suggest that more is on the way. Judging from the popularity of the mod, albeit shunned here, I expect Labiri to do a good job making the changes, because he listens and acknowledges many of the complaints made on the forums. Perhaps he won't fix any of the bug issues, but that's just an issue of trust. I'll continue to enjoy the game as an alternative to basic D1, and hope that in the future it changes for the better. I trust that it will.