I was struck again by the replayability and enjoyability factor of DII
What? Wherein lies the replayability? Building wealth? It certainly isn't in playing the game (bots exist), leveling to 99 (after the initial rush of the competitive coffee junkies, virtually nobody bothers without aforementioned bots), or "discovering" new stuff, regardless of how random the maps and spawns may be. I find myself (and a lot of other people) playing increasingly weird variants just to keep the game interesting. And I'm pretty sure that if replayability exists only because we force it to, it can exist on another game which allegedly has MORE item mods/skill components.
even if it is perhaps a bit of a cotton-candy version of DI
Sounds about right, but then, why is the Diablo I forum so dead?
a) Random environments
This is the most crucial difference, I think. Playing through epic TQ with exactly the same maps, quests etc. (the addition of one or two new bosses in epic hardly counts) as normal became stultifying even on my second time through the game. Doing it again on legendary difficulty would seem almost inconceivable.
Erm...I point to maphack here. Though I (and I expect all of you) avoid it like the plague, the sheer number of people that do not suggests something about the random nature of the spawns. Perhaps we're taking a bad sample there, but don't tell me you haven't been frustrated running through the jungles of act three and always grabbing the wrong path (before you learned to see the patterns). Indeed, many players who consider themselves legitimate often elect to skip this entire portion of the game. Now I could be wrong, and perhaps we all really enjoy the random factor, and these maphackers only use it to spot items and far-away enemies, but I've always been a fan of Ockham's Razor.
B)Combat
TQ had some really weird combat AI --- for example, monsters had a certain max range, and once they reached it they bounced back as if they were on elastic strings making kiting them easy (and, often, this was the only reasonable way to kill them).
Sounds a bit contradictory there. The only reasonable way to kill them is ridiculously easy? Sounds like a huge programming oversight, or games are just becoming far too Mickey Mouse for my taste. But I don't know that "weird combat AI" is the right terminology. I think you're just using Diablo II as your comparison instead of being objective. If you'd come from, say, Guild Wars, this type of combat is pretty close to the norm, and yet there are enemy packs that you would MUCH rather have follow you to hell and back.
The game was too easy early on
Were normal Quill Rats hard?
but it definitely got tougher in the middle of epic difficulty --- but often this was a 1%/99% difficulty choice, where almost everything was very easy, and the odd boss (e.g. the Manticore) would have almost unavoidable one-hit kills. Or you would get one-hit without 0 resistance to some attack form, and have no worries at all if you maxed it for that encounter.
Assuming you haven't built a paper tiger, Diablo II follows exactly the same system. Gloams, Tomb Vipers, occasionally Dolls or Minotaurs are really the only threatening enemies. I guess Vortex Lords are a bit cumbersome with a speed mod, but realistically, the only places you can even die are the 80+ areas that contain one or more of about six different types of enemies, some of them requiring specific aurae. Easiest example to point to here is the Blessed Hammer paladin. What gives him trouble? Conviction Gloams, possibly Tomb Vipers, MAYBE some extra fast Fanaticized Minotaurs or Dolls. And of course Wailing Beasts (assuming no mercenary). Which constitutes...not a lot of the game's enemies.
I think your polarized view here arises from the fact that you have played Diablo II so much that the easy monsters are now basically ignorable. Eat a meal while talking on the phone as long as there aren't any Gloams or Vipers around. You probably won't even remember them later unless they drop you a Jah.
DII pre 1.10 had a little bit of that 1%/99% flavor with almost everthing no danger, and then the odd MSLEB/lagged Duriel/hell ancient etc. being deadly, but still you always felt much more in control.
Exactly which non-bugged monsters did you have problems with pre-1.10?
Being in control is not where I ideally want to be on a primarily single player game (say what you will, how many non-Baal runs are public?). Control leads to boredom very quickly. I'd rather have enemies that can one-hit me, that I need to use tactics like retreating to defeat than to just mow enemies down like weeds in my front yard.
As one tiny example, if used correctly, the Amazon's decoy in DII was and is a wonderful and incredibly powerful skill for safe scouting, protection, and crowd control. TQ has a version called monster lure. But the lure can't be placed --- it always appears in exactly the same position relative to your character (at 2 o'clock a few yards away), so woe betide if you happen to be going in the opposite direction. I don't know what they were thinking when they designed the skill this way.
Perhaps they wanted players to use a retreat tactic more than the forge blindly ahead no matter what's there used in Diablo II? When someone is overmatched in Diablo II, what is the characteristic response? Run past the difficult enemy until you find something else (like an act boss).
c) Itemization
TQ has lots and lots of items and mods (many more than DII I would guess). But they honestly still make no sense to me. The progression of drops as you go through the game is really uneven. You get the feeling that every time you clear an area, a huge garbage bag of stuff is being dropped on the ground, and probably every single thing is going to be useless.
I NEVER feel that way in Diablo II.
Now perhaps I'm just not as familiar with the mods in TQ as I am in DII, but having lots of random items is not enough on its own, they have to be part of a well-thought out progression that is appropriate to the character level and monster difficulty.
I don't recall seeing that in Diablo II. I guess there is technically a progression, but the stuff at the top is all basically class specific (we all know Windforce is an Amazon item, at least for non-variant players), so you don't generally get anywhere via the progression. This is exactly why the majority of players start new ladder seasons with casters; they are not item dependent.
You can't complete any sets (without mind-numbing quantities of normal boss runs) until Nightmare at least, by which point you should be finding something slightly more usable. So essentially the only sets worth using in the normal game progression are those that you will never actually find all of the pieces for; the class-specifics. Since Lord of Destruction was released, I think I've found one Immortal King's Soul Cage (over three ladder seasons), one Tal Rasha's Guardianship, one full set of Trang-Oul's Avatar, NO Griswold's (Valor?--the Corona)...I'm sure you get the point.
The Titan Quest item system sounds like it is more customizable, which is always a plus in my opinion. Diablo II's progression is based more on random chance than anything. I've had characters that are more powerful by mid-Nightmare, equipment-wise, than others who have finished Hell.
d) DII has a much stronger multiplayer component (with its "secure, cheat-free servers";)) than TQ.
And this is one of the two factors that promote the replayability which you praise. Except no one really utilizes this anymore. The majority of public games are either for trading, rushing, or leveling in Baal runs. Rushing leads to private boss-killing games. Trading is facilitated by the same, and Baal runs are representative of a small portion of the population (beyond those needed to level high enough to kill Mephisto and friends).
One thing I was a bit shocked by on trying DII for the first time in a long while is that the lag on the realms is as bad or worse than ever. I would've thought they'd have fixed that eventually, especially since I suppose there are far fewer players now than before. I guess there must be some fundamental issues with their implementation of server-side games.
That or they can no longer afford to devote as much server space to Diablo II. WoW MUST run smoothely. It is income. It is new. It is everything. Diablo II is eight (?) years old. The only thing Blizzard is reaping from it is company loyalty. The number of players has not decreased THAT much. There are still six digits of people in certain peak hours. I don't think I've seen it fall below 40,000. Ever.
Anyway, I'm hopeful that Hellgate:London will be a worthy DII succesor --- TQ was fun to try but it isn't there for the long haul IMO.
Doesn't really seem to be the same genre. First person MMO RPG shooter as opposed to a hack-n'-slash barely capable of being called an RPG. What exactly is it about Diablo II that appeals to you so much? I know it may well be the most addictive game ever made, but that hardly makes it a GOOD game (at least from a non-business standpoint). I can spend an hour playing many other games, and feel like I've accomplished something, or get up and feel good about what I did, or any number of other positive factors. But all an hour of Diablo II gives me is some vague sensation that I need to play another hour, find another item, and I always feel like garbage when I turn it off.
Diablo II has exactly one real factor still going for it; nostalgia. I think this is literally the only reason it compares favorably to so many newer games. I probably shouldn't be talking this severely about it, having wasted so much of my time killing hellish minions, but really, what is it that keeps us playing? The game is not even "fun" anymore. When's the last time you laughed while playing, friends aside? Even smiled? Felt satisfied? Ever find a Zod rune? You feel elation for about ten minutes. Then realize you don't really have anyone to tell, and unless you just found 1-5 other ridiculously rare runes, you have nothing to do with it but stick it in a frame and hang it on the wall. And I'm pretty sure that's the ultimate in a treasure hunt; finding the treasure. But ten minutes later, you're back to slogging away, looking for another one. What's the deal?
--me
Edit: Confound it. Error in all that quoting somewhere, and I can't for the life of me find it. Switching to Italics.
What? Wherein lies the replayability? Building wealth? It certainly isn't in playing the game (bots exist), leveling to 99 (after the initial rush of the competitive coffee junkies, virtually nobody bothers without aforementioned bots), or "discovering" new stuff, regardless of how random the maps and spawns may be. I find myself (and a lot of other people) playing increasingly weird variants just to keep the game interesting. And I'm pretty sure that if replayability exists only because we force it to, it can exist on another game which allegedly has MORE item mods/skill components.
even if it is perhaps a bit of a cotton-candy version of DI
Sounds about right, but then, why is the Diablo I forum so dead?
a) Random environments
This is the most crucial difference, I think. Playing through epic TQ with exactly the same maps, quests etc. (the addition of one or two new bosses in epic hardly counts) as normal became stultifying even on my second time through the game. Doing it again on legendary difficulty would seem almost inconceivable.
Erm...I point to maphack here. Though I (and I expect all of you) avoid it like the plague, the sheer number of people that do not suggests something about the random nature of the spawns. Perhaps we're taking a bad sample there, but don't tell me you haven't been frustrated running through the jungles of act three and always grabbing the wrong path (before you learned to see the patterns). Indeed, many players who consider themselves legitimate often elect to skip this entire portion of the game. Now I could be wrong, and perhaps we all really enjoy the random factor, and these maphackers only use it to spot items and far-away enemies, but I've always been a fan of Ockham's Razor.
B)Combat
TQ had some really weird combat AI --- for example, monsters had a certain max range, and once they reached it they bounced back as if they were on elastic strings making kiting them easy (and, often, this was the only reasonable way to kill them).
Sounds a bit contradictory there. The only reasonable way to kill them is ridiculously easy? Sounds like a huge programming oversight, or games are just becoming far too Mickey Mouse for my taste. But I don't know that "weird combat AI" is the right terminology. I think you're just using Diablo II as your comparison instead of being objective. If you'd come from, say, Guild Wars, this type of combat is pretty close to the norm, and yet there are enemy packs that you would MUCH rather have follow you to hell and back.
The game was too easy early on
Were normal Quill Rats hard?
but it definitely got tougher in the middle of epic difficulty --- but often this was a 1%/99% difficulty choice, where almost everything was very easy, and the odd boss (e.g. the Manticore) would have almost unavoidable one-hit kills. Or you would get one-hit without 0 resistance to some attack form, and have no worries at all if you maxed it for that encounter.
Assuming you haven't built a paper tiger, Diablo II follows exactly the same system. Gloams, Tomb Vipers, occasionally Dolls or Minotaurs are really the only threatening enemies. I guess Vortex Lords are a bit cumbersome with a speed mod, but realistically, the only places you can even die are the 80+ areas that contain one or more of about six different types of enemies, some of them requiring specific aurae. Easiest example to point to here is the Blessed Hammer paladin. What gives him trouble? Conviction Gloams, possibly Tomb Vipers, MAYBE some extra fast Fanaticized Minotaurs or Dolls. And of course Wailing Beasts (assuming no mercenary). Which constitutes...not a lot of the game's enemies.
I think your polarized view here arises from the fact that you have played Diablo II so much that the easy monsters are now basically ignorable. Eat a meal while talking on the phone as long as there aren't any Gloams or Vipers around. You probably won't even remember them later unless they drop you a Jah.
DII pre 1.10 had a little bit of that 1%/99% flavor with almost everthing no danger, and then the odd MSLEB/lagged Duriel/hell ancient etc. being deadly, but still you always felt much more in control.
Exactly which non-bugged monsters did you have problems with pre-1.10?
Being in control is not where I ideally want to be on a primarily single player game (say what you will, how many non-Baal runs are public?). Control leads to boredom very quickly. I'd rather have enemies that can one-hit me, that I need to use tactics like retreating to defeat than to just mow enemies down like weeds in my front yard.
As one tiny example, if used correctly, the Amazon's decoy in DII was and is a wonderful and incredibly powerful skill for safe scouting, protection, and crowd control. TQ has a version called monster lure. But the lure can't be placed --- it always appears in exactly the same position relative to your character (at 2 o'clock a few yards away), so woe betide if you happen to be going in the opposite direction. I don't know what they were thinking when they designed the skill this way.
Perhaps they wanted players to use a retreat tactic more than the forge blindly ahead no matter what's there used in Diablo II? When someone is overmatched in Diablo II, what is the characteristic response? Run past the difficult enemy until you find something else (like an act boss).
c) Itemization
TQ has lots and lots of items and mods (many more than DII I would guess). But they honestly still make no sense to me. The progression of drops as you go through the game is really uneven. You get the feeling that every time you clear an area, a huge garbage bag of stuff is being dropped on the ground, and probably every single thing is going to be useless.
I NEVER feel that way in Diablo II.
Now perhaps I'm just not as familiar with the mods in TQ as I am in DII, but having lots of random items is not enough on its own, they have to be part of a well-thought out progression that is appropriate to the character level and monster difficulty.
I don't recall seeing that in Diablo II. I guess there is technically a progression, but the stuff at the top is all basically class specific (we all know Windforce is an Amazon item, at least for non-variant players), so you don't generally get anywhere via the progression. This is exactly why the majority of players start new ladder seasons with casters; they are not item dependent.
You can't complete any sets (without mind-numbing quantities of normal boss runs) until Nightmare at least, by which point you should be finding something slightly more usable. So essentially the only sets worth using in the normal game progression are those that you will never actually find all of the pieces for; the class-specifics. Since Lord of Destruction was released, I think I've found one Immortal King's Soul Cage (over three ladder seasons), one Tal Rasha's Guardianship, one full set of Trang-Oul's Avatar, NO Griswold's (Valor?--the Corona)...I'm sure you get the point.
The Titan Quest item system sounds like it is more customizable, which is always a plus in my opinion. Diablo II's progression is based more on random chance than anything. I've had characters that are more powerful by mid-Nightmare, equipment-wise, than others who have finished Hell.
d) DII has a much stronger multiplayer component (with its "secure, cheat-free servers";)) than TQ.
And this is one of the two factors that promote the replayability which you praise. Except no one really utilizes this anymore. The majority of public games are either for trading, rushing, or leveling in Baal runs. Rushing leads to private boss-killing games. Trading is facilitated by the same, and Baal runs are representative of a small portion of the population (beyond those needed to level high enough to kill Mephisto and friends).
One thing I was a bit shocked by on trying DII for the first time in a long while is that the lag on the realms is as bad or worse than ever. I would've thought they'd have fixed that eventually, especially since I suppose there are far fewer players now than before. I guess there must be some fundamental issues with their implementation of server-side games.
That or they can no longer afford to devote as much server space to Diablo II. WoW MUST run smoothely. It is income. It is new. It is everything. Diablo II is eight (?) years old. The only thing Blizzard is reaping from it is company loyalty. The number of players has not decreased THAT much. There are still six digits of people in certain peak hours. I don't think I've seen it fall below 40,000. Ever.
Anyway, I'm hopeful that Hellgate:London will be a worthy DII succesor --- TQ was fun to try but it isn't there for the long haul IMO.
Doesn't really seem to be the same genre. First person MMO RPG shooter as opposed to a hack-n'-slash barely capable of being called an RPG. What exactly is it about Diablo II that appeals to you so much? I know it may well be the most addictive game ever made, but that hardly makes it a GOOD game (at least from a non-business standpoint). I can spend an hour playing many other games, and feel like I've accomplished something, or get up and feel good about what I did, or any number of other positive factors. But all an hour of Diablo II gives me is some vague sensation that I need to play another hour, find another item, and I always feel like garbage when I turn it off.
Diablo II has exactly one real factor still going for it; nostalgia. I think this is literally the only reason it compares favorably to so many newer games. I probably shouldn't be talking this severely about it, having wasted so much of my time killing hellish minions, but really, what is it that keeps us playing? The game is not even "fun" anymore. When's the last time you laughed while playing, friends aside? Even smiled? Felt satisfied? Ever find a Zod rune? You feel elation for about ten minutes. Then realize you don't really have anyone to tell, and unless you just found 1-5 other ridiculously rare runes, you have nothing to do with it but stick it in a frame and hang it on the wall. And I'm pretty sure that's the ultimate in a treasure hunt; finding the treasure. But ten minutes later, you're back to slogging away, looking for another one. What's the deal?
--me
Edit: Confound it. Error in all that quoting somewhere, and I can't for the life of me find it. Switching to Italics.