D2 Classic Players Won't Like D3

[the V]

Re: D2 Classic Players Won't Like D3

I've played D2 classic even more than I've played LOD, mainly because I wasn't interested in playing it (my favourite game was Alpha Centauri at that moment), and I played Hell dificulty with a spear amazon, and though I don't think that any example should break the rule, in my case the only rare item that I needed was the spear, which talks about the relatively of your statement.
Also, saying that the Diablo 2 classic players won't be pleased with D3 because of the lack of that variety (of the characters based on their items) its quite pessimist, as you'll probably will find much more ways of creating an unique class that you were on D2.

Popeye:
The statement in your quote that I bolded basically tells me you probably played the game a little more casually than hardcore. For casual players it won't make that much of a difference because you'll likely never be after the absolute best items on the realm. Sure, you can get by with uniques and sets just fine. You can get by with whites and magic items if you chug enough pots. My argument is based on end-end-game.

Pimpsanator:
Yeah, rares definitely were great in a couple slots in LOD, but you can't tell me they were the best thing around when it comes to the big stuff, like weapons and armor - the stuff that really defines your character. Also, it's not about copying builds. Two players in LOD would never have to see each other and they'd still end up with the same general items in end-end-game, because there's only a few choices at the very top of the game. Whereas with rares, the options are endless. Their gear may be similar, but quite far from identical. Not to mention, as CBK has pointed out, they'd look much different too, because rares come in all types and color.

CBK:
Yeah, BVBs in the later patches would use twitch/swordback, but that's only post 1.10. Before that you'd use a rare ornate plate and a rare grim shield or pavise. That's just to further my point that classic was built off rares (at the end-end-game level).

For the record, the title is really just an attention grabber. Of course classic players will still get something out of D3, I feel like I'm addicted to it already and its not even out yet. It's just to say that D3 will likely pick up where LOD left off, which probably means the same sort of itemization.

 

[knightmawko]

Re: D2 Classic Players Won't Like D3

What if I played them both and liked both of them equally.
I played Diablo I, great game, then I threw Hell Fire in and played again, earily similar game. I played D2, great game, then I put in the expansion and played that, equally great game, still. Still a great game I suppose I should be saying.

 

[stillman]

Re: D2 Classic Players Won't Like D3

This is a bit complex but here it is:

I like how Blizzard makes us think that the order of greatness goes: magic, rare, unique.

But then we all find out after a while that it really goes: unique, rare, magic. That's right; we've been tricked! Blue magic items are the godliest possible things, at least for helm and armor (which are the most important item slots next to weapon).

Can anything really top an artisan's tiara of BLANK where you get the high mod you want (like 30 dex with nirvana, 100 life with whale, or 30% FRW) and you get 3 sockets to add almost whatever other mods you want! Same with jeweler's armor. These blue magic items make uniques look cheap.

With the jeweler's armor, you get: def (of your choice), look (of your choice) VERY high mod of your choice, four more exact mods of your choice (actually 8 mods of your choice because jewels can have 2 mods each). So that's specific 10 mods on one item. Compare this to rare where you get: a bunch of random mods, nothing is for certain. I can understand the thrill mentioned how it is possible to get a godly rare, but at the end of the day, you want specific stuff for your chr.

There may even be some blue rings and ammys for certain builds that are better than any rare or unique ring you would use. For instance, the best mf rings and ammy's are going to be simple blue magic items. I'm currently experimenting trying to get a ring of performance (14 to damage) with an all res mod or some other mod which I think will technically yield my glass cannon zon more damage than with your typical raven frost or rare ring.

So imo, blues are superior to rares at least for helm, armor, and jewelry. And I kind of like how it is. For some item slots, rares are your best end game bet. For some builds and some slots, blue magic items can not be beat. It's all over the place, so nothing can really be said to come out on top. Maybe nothing should be able to claim top place. How does that sound?

Note: I agree that "uniques" should live up to their name of being a little more unique somehow becasue we all know there are a million copies of each one. Maybe they should just add more varrying mods like 150-250 AR, 100-300 def, for example.

 

[Krugar]

Re: D2 Classic Players Won't Like D3

Dunno, Stillman.

You are talking of specific needs, specific builds and specific purposes. I fear you are taking the part for the whole. The bottom line is that if you go into Hell with just rares, or blues, you will die often. Unless of course, we are talking HC and the way the game is played is vastly different. I know, I know; You mentioned only some item slots. Not all. But again the problem here is that one can't really grade items like you are trying to do based only on a few possible scenarios.

Meanwhile, my opinion:

Artisan's Tiara of [Buffed mod here]. Certainly a great find. But what great rare mods you expect to find on rare jewels that can't be matched with Unique headgear? You are compounding your findings to 4 items. 3 exceptionally interesting jewels and the tiara itself. Certainly something eventually could be achieved. But does it beat a Crown of Ages with 2 sockets? Or an Harlequin Crest socketed with the Act V quest? Certainly it will for some very specific cases... but you know what I think of "very specific cases"

jeweler's armor. I concede here since elite unique armors are pretty much useless under most cases, I reckon. Not even mentioning Rares. Ignoring runewords which is eventually where everyone will want to go, IDing all elite blue armors is a smart maneuver, I'd gather.

ring of performance. I dunno... 14 damage seems good. But at the expense of what? look at stats on the ravenfrost again. Or the dwarf star, or a BKWB? I'd be happy with a +10 damage grand charm and stick to the unique rings. Would this seriously hamper my amazon from delivering damage?

 

[RGValdearg]

Re: D2 Classic Players Won't Like D3

I'll put my 2 cents in here, just cuse I can

Honestly, I enjoy LOD a lot, LOT more than classic because of the exact reason you are complaining about. I LIKE the idea that sets/uniques are generally more powerful than rares. Note that there are certain godly rares that can certainly surpass some sets/uniques in that regard.

These unique and set items also add a certain lore to the game, as well. They have a history. Each of the class specific sets, "Immortal King," "Tal Rasha's," "Trang Oul's," have a history and story that could be told about them. They were the legendary items worn by their namesakes, items that truly set their namesakes above the rest. These items of legend are part of the reason why Tal Rasha became the leader of the Horadrim, or the Immortal King was Immortal. It makes sense that these items would be more powerful than a random item with a random smattering of mods that might just happen to be pretty sweet.

I can see your argument about how there really isn't any customization going on, but, if you think about it, it takes a lot of work and effort to find the most powerful of the unique and set items. (When you aren't on dupe.net, anyways)

Honestly, I like the way the items are spread out in LOD, and hope that they don't change too much around. Keep Sets/Uniques on top, add more history to them, and every so often, on an epic roll, let a rare win out.

 

[MooCQ]

Re: D2 Classic Players Won't Like D3

I'd tend to disagree with the op each of the games hold the same concept (grab the best item you can find) .. Whether or not an item is yellow, green, gold.. or pink... makes no difference. I think after a gazillion years of waiting, I'll enjoy D3 just fine. Remember now, we went thru several stages of transition from D2 classic to LOD.. there was a period everyone was in search of Magic Cruel's of quickness... that orange items were the coolest thing that could be..

Speaking of DiabloII classic.. I remember this hilarious moment, I had finally found a decent pike, dual leech rings, and ICEBLINK!! So yea, I was happilly mowing down fetishes in the flayer jungle.. when gee.. I die! I go back to pick up my body.. but accidentally click on a sword.. and that mass of flayer fries me twice.. next thing I know KER-PLOP! WHAA! lol all my items popped off.. then right after that the game decides to konk out~ haha! Some memory of DII CLASSIC!!

Theres no doubt I'll enjoy DIII!!!

 

[xxdeadxx]

Re: D2 Classic Players Won't Like D3

um i played diablo 2 from the day it came out to the day LoD came out.
rare items were the best?? funny i remember rare gloves, boots and dule leach rings but every zon had or wanted a windforce and every barbarian had or wanted a grandfather

yes yes i know there were some bows out there better then wf but most people went for it

so rare has always been good

 

[stillman]

Re: D2 Classic Players Won't Like D3

MooCQ, ha ha, I think you will like d3 very much because that will likely never happen to you again. There were so many ways we kept having the broken game screw us over and Blizzard, imo, is doing a great job to fix all that stuff. Just thinking back to stuff I lost too...

So anyway, I think Blizzard will mess with our heads again. I think they did a good thing in d2 by making uniques have some mods that rares can never have (ex: absorb, dam red, max resist, enhanced dam on gloves like steelrends), and by making rares have combos of super mods you would never find on uniques. It seems like they ballance out somehow. Getting those perfect mods to be selected for a rare find seems like winning the lottory, but finding a perfect, eth, max socket elite unique seems astronomical too...mf drops more rares than uniques so maybe that evens things out a bit.

So I figgure they will throw this at us again and let us figgure it out for ten years only to find it can't be figgured out.

Even grey socketed items could come out on top like druid pelts that had a bunch of nado skills that you could turn into dream to add another 2 skills. I know Blizzard said they didn't like the runeword system, but there is still the possibility of these grey, or heck, even white items somehow being the best in some cases. Blizzard did say all items will be socketable. That alone is mind numbing.

They also said in the gameplay video that there will be a near endless array of items to find, so that might make it even harder to figgure out. Looking at the stickied showoff threads in the statistics forum makes it pretty hard to discern what item type is better overall.

 

[rahnnyboy]

Re: D2 Classic Players Won't Like D3

I'm no expert, but I feel that Uniques should carry with them some mod that is UNATTAINABLE in any random roll (i.e. for rares or magical) and is something that is just interesting...

Amphibian gills (helm): x% of the time, your enemies turn into frogs.
The Guillatine (sword): enemies are decapitated

stuff like that would truly fit the definition of "unique", not just incredible mods...

just my opinion.

 

[FracturedFairy]

Re: D2 Classic Players Won't Like D3

The good part of all this is that D3 is just a new game. We can play any of the Diablo games when ever we like, true you may not be able to play on line but you can chose which Diablo game to play.

 

[Thorham]

Re: D2 Classic Players Won't Like D3

This may be a bit besides the point, but...

...I play LOD exclusively, but I don't care much for the best uniques, and I always play untwinked (because I haven't finished the game in hell difficulty with each class yet), and never do any magic find runs at all. Good rare items are very rewarding when they drop, and they're really all you need anyway.

If I would want to play classic style, I'd just sell all the runes/sets/uniques I'd find and use only rares, except for good sets/uniques that are available in classic, and get the extra Act (Act 4 is too short, Act 5 is a welcome addition).

The point is that you can play RPGs such as Diablo 1/2/3 in any way you want (more or less). In other words, if Diablo 3 has too many uniques, etc, just don't use them and don't bother with trying to find them.

 

[ptitbob]

Re: D2 Classic Players Won't Like D3

The best items in the game should not be set/uniques/rune words (or at least not in every slot), but items that are truly one of a kind and randomly generated.

If the item of your dreams is something that you can find on the Blizzard website, it's not much of a dream. It's there, you just have to grind for it.

Ammmmmmmmmmmmmmmmen brother :thumbup:

I wrote something similar in another thread. I completely agree with this.

 

[the V]

Re: D2 Classic Players Won't Like D3

Ammmmmmmmmmmmmmmmen brother :thumbup:

I wrote something similar in another thread. I completely agree with this.

Good to hear, good to hear.

 

[Akse]

Re: D2 Classic Players Won't Like D3

There's a reason we played classic over LOD, and since the game is going from D2 Classic -> D2 LOD -> D3, we can assume that most of the things about LOD will be included in the first version of D3.

I agree with you classic rules being more interesting than LOD, mostly due no Hirelings, Rares are top items and Act5 being quite boring.

But they already decided to throw out Runewords completely and also things like cow level exping which came around with LOD.

I think the gameplay will be completely different than in D2, they keep the diablo feeling in the game but improve the gameplay by a lot.

 

[the V]

Re: D2 Classic Players Won't Like D3

I agree with you classic rules being more interesting than LOD, mostly due no Hirelings, Rares are top items and Act5 being quite boring.

But they already decided to throw out Runewords completely and also things like cow level exping which came around with LOD.

I think the gameplay will be completely different than in D2, they keep the diablo feeling in the game but improve the gameplay by a lot.

Sounds pretty good, I don't really keep up with all the announcements because it changes so much. If it's a lot different from D2, that's cool, let's just hope it's not a lot like WoW. That would be far worse than LOD.

 

[Nektu]

Re: D2 Classic Players Won't Like D3

I've seen pictures of the skill tree, and IMO, it looks like the skill tree from WoW.

 

[Krugar]

Re: D2 Classic Players Won't Like D3

I've seen pictures of the skill tree, and IMO, it looks like the skill tree from WoW.

And your point is?

 

[Nektu]

Re: D2 Classic Players Won't Like D3

, let's just hope it's not a lot like WoW. That would be far worse than LOD.

I was reffering to what the V said at the end of his post.

But, my point would be that I don't like the way the skill tree is set up on WoW. Would it be something that would make me not want to buy D3? Probably not. there are probably many reasons as to why they set it up like that. After all, both are done by blizzard, so they can do whatever they want with the game.

 

[shakaka]

Re: D2 Classic Players Won't Like D3

I agree with the TS. One of my issues with D2 lod was that EVERYBODY used the same items, this transformed the game in a very very boring one without any kind of variety.

Unique items should correspond to their name, they should be one of a kind.

Unique items of D2 were not unique, they were rare, and the rares were uniques.

In my game all items would be random generated.

 

[Gonzo]

Re: D2 Classic Players Won't Like D3

The key is to make uniques really UNIQUE, not just powerful with a bunch of preselected mods that you can find anywhere.

In D1 many uniques were very powerful, but they also had some sort of negative affect like reducing stats/resistances, constant life drain, more damage from enemies, low durability, etc. Uniques should have a profound affect on your playstyle or other gear choices as you work to counteract the negative effects. I believe Andariel's Visage is one of the only items that existed in D2 that worked by the same principle - by giving a substantial penalty to a rather important resistance.

Then there are the uniques that fill some niche role but not much else of worth, so you would have to make up the slack elsewhere. Nature's Peace ring is a good example of this in D2 (off the top of my head.)