Diablo III: What even are numbers

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Dameius: Apr 3, 2006

You've not played D1 to its fullest until you spam teleport around in hell and end up soft locking your character to death because you teleported into the middle of a huge pack that stunlocks you to death.

# ? Jan 6, 2023 04:16

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# ? Jun 4, 2024 22:07

Mailer: Nov 4, 2009; Have you accepted The Void as your lord and savior?

Real men played it on the hardest mode possible...

# ? Jan 6, 2023 04:46

DarkMatt: Nov 3, 2010

Diablo 2 is definitely a game to remember that you do not have to play it 3 times to say you've beaten it. Also yeah man getting uniques suck. It's not that uniques never drop. It's that, good, uniques, never drop, all because there is no floor to how bad of an item can drop at any point in the game. If the game decides to drop a unique it can be something appropriate for your level, or, it can just be something you can find at the very beginning of the game. It rules.

I bring this up because if I had to name any one thing that makes me not want to grind in Diablo 2 and nod at people saying it's a game of its time, it's if I have to do a lot of grinding for an elite base anything. (TL note: Exceptionals and Elites are the same item as normal difficulty, but adjusted for Nightmare/Hell. Elites have their own sets/uniques.)

That and charms were a mistake.

# ? Jan 6, 2023 08:46

kliras: Mar 27, 2021

ironically, d3 as basically just a d2 with all the necessary qol would have been perfectly fine for someone like me, but it just won't cut it as a d4

# ? Jan 6, 2023 17:31

External Organs: Mar 3, 2006; One time i prank called a bear buildin workshop and said I wanted my mamaws ashes put in a teddy from where she loved them things so well... The woman on the phone did not skip a beat. She just said, "Brang her on down here. We've did it before."

I want cool sci Fi Diablo but no one ever gives me what I want

# ? Jan 6, 2023 17:37

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

They keep trying except it's Warhammer 40k, the most boringest of sci-fis next to Star Wars.

# ? Jan 6, 2023 17:40

External Organs: Mar 3, 2006; One time i prank called a bear buildin workshop and said I wanted my mamaws ashes put in a teddy from where she loved them things so well... The woman on the phone did not skip a beat. She just said, "Brang her on down here. We've did it before."

True but I also don't usually like first person games. I keep meaning to try Riftbreaker but I just let gamepass lapse so oh well.

I missed that marvel game that everyone is sad about being shut down.

# ? Jan 6, 2023 17:42

Khorne: May 1, 2002

kliras posted:

ironically, d3 as basically just a d2 with all the necessary qol would have been perfectly fine for someone like me, but it just won't cut it as a d4

The biggest problem is D2 & D2R exist if you want "diablo2". If someone made a game with the good parts of d2 no one would say it was like diablo2, because to be like diablo2 you have to be some fictional combination of things and/or emulate the bad parts. In a way, most of the non-gaas arpgs that release are like diablo2, but no one spins it that way.

D3 on the other hand, you could be like d3 and be extremely good. D3's main failing is the lack of support from Blizzard. There's a lot of room in the genre for a diablo3-like.

External Organs posted:

I keep meaning to try Riftbreaker but I just let gamepass lapse so oh well.

The Riftbreaker is a game that seems good and has no particular bad thing but the core loop just isn't that engaging. It's the best executed game entirely in genres I really enjoy that fails to capture my attention.

Khorne fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Jan 6, 2023

# ? Jan 6, 2023 18:18

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

External Organs posted:

I want cool sci Fi Diablo but no one ever gives me what I want

Try The Ascent

# ? Jan 6, 2023 18:40

External Organs: Mar 3, 2006; One time i prank called a bear buildin workshop and said I wanted my mamaws ashes put in a teddy from where she loved them things so well... The woman on the phone did not skip a beat. She just said, "Brang her on down here. We've did it before."

gradenko_2000 posted:

Try The Ascent

Have you played it? It's not terrible but it's a secret cover shooter. Gorgeous game though.

# ? Jan 6, 2023 18:46

Dameius: Apr 3, 2006

Khorne posted:

The biggest problem is D2 & D2R exist if you want "diablo2". If someone made a game with the good parts of d2 no one would say it was like diablo2, because to be like diablo2 you have to be some fictional combination of things and/or emulate the bad parts. In a way, most of the non-gaas arpgs that release are like diablo2, but no one spins it that way.

D3 on the other hand, you could be like d3 and be extremely good. D3's main failing is the lack of support from Blizzard. There's a lot of room in the genre for a diablo3-like.

The Riftbreaker is a game that seems good and has no particular bad thing but the core loop just isn't that engaging. It's the best executed game entirely in genres I really enjoy that fails to capture my attention.

Is there even a single d3-like out there? Everything I've played or looked seems to start at d2, and then some of them iterate from there.

# ? Jan 6, 2023 20:18

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Last Epoch is more D3-like, haven�t had the chance to play much of it though. Wolcen also but unfortunately, it is not very good.

# ? Jan 6, 2023 20:28

Phosphine: May 30, 2011; WHY, JUDY?! WHY?!
🤰🐰🆚🥪🦊

I think the biggest problem with D2 is that it simply has mechanics that aren't explained properly or at all in the game.

Faster cast rate/block rate have breakpoints where partial progress makes no difference. Faster run/walk, to my knowledge, does not.

Armor affects stamina drain, with heavier armor impacting it more. As far as I know this isn't mentioned at all anywhere, and even if you know it, armors are not actually tagged as light/medium/heavy.

Item level is important, and not possible to see.

Runewords. The actual runewords are not hinted at whatsoever, and I'm not sure them existing at all is information that exists in the game.

A mod that just added all the stuff you actually need to know to play it into the game would be fantastic.

Phosphine fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Jan 6, 2023

# ? Jan 6, 2023 22:01

DarkMatt: Nov 3, 2010

External Organs posted:

I want cool sci Fi Diablo but no one ever gives me what I want

There is Warhammer 40k Inquisitor, but the last time I tried playing it it wasn't stable. Might've been my PC. Might've been the game. I wouldn't know, there wasn't a lot of tech support about it. Maybe I'm just cursed.

# ? Jan 6, 2023 22:18

Bobfromsales: Apr 2, 2010

To me Vampire Survivors and it's Ilk feel very close to everything that makes d3 fun.

# ? Jan 7, 2023 00:23

Herstory Begins Now: Aug 5, 2003; SOME REALLY TEDIOUS DUMB SHIT THAT SUCKS ASS TO READ ->>

exquisite tea posted:

Last Epoch is more D3-like, haven�t had the chance to play much of it though. Wolcen also but unfortunately, it is not very good.

last epoch is really a bit of everything, though I'd say it is comparably approachable to D3, which is probably one of the biggest selling points of each.

Khorne posted:

The biggest problem is D2 & D2R exist if you want "diablo2". If someone made a game with the good parts of d2 no one would say it was like diablo2, because to be like diablo2 you have to be some fictional combination of things and/or emulate the bad parts. In a way, most of the non-gaas arpgs that release are like diablo2, but no one spins it that way.

D3 on the other hand, you could be like d3 and be extremely good. D3's main failing is the lack of support from Blizzard. There's a lot of room in the genre for a diablo3-like.

The Riftbreaker is a game that seems good and has no particular bad thing but the core loop just isn't that engaging. It's the best executed game entirely in genres I really enjoy that fails to capture my attention.

Path of exile has basically ended up as the successor of d2 for people who want 'D2 but iterated upon for years.' the playerbase is basically a circular venn diagram with people who played the hell out of D2 but ultimately bounced off of D3.

For blizzard, d2r existing and being good is a real dilemma for trying to release a game that is ostensibly meant to scratch that same itch. D4 looks considerably less substantively derivative of D2 than they're trying to market it as, but even then it's weird to go back to a 20 year old game as your reference point or baseline.

Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Jan 7, 2023

# ? Jan 7, 2023 00:40

Suburban Dad: Jan 10, 2007; Well what's attached to a leash that it made itself?
The punchline is the way that you've been fuckin' yourself

Dameius posted:

Is there even a single d3-like out there? Everything I've played or looked seems to start at d2, and then some of them iterate from there.

Chronicon but it's 2d. And great

# ? Jan 7, 2023 00:48

Snacksmaniac: Jan 12, 2008

Bobfromsales posted:

To me Vampire Survivors and it's Ilk feel very close to everything that makes d3 fun.

This is pretty accurate.

# ? Jan 7, 2023 03:18

DarkMatt: Nov 3, 2010

Bobfromsales posted:

To me Vampire Survivors and it's Ilk feel very close to everything that makes d3 fun.

I have made the joke before that Vampire Survivors is the final form of Diablo 2/3.

Also VS was game of the year for me last year.

# ? Jan 7, 2023 09:46

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

VS is fun although it lacks the kind of character planning and GG drops that make ARPGs truly addictive.

# ? Jan 7, 2023 10:18

Phosphine: May 30, 2011; WHY, JUDY?! WHY?!
🤰🐰🆚🥪🦊

One of the biggest issue with d3, to me, is the focus on time.

The set dungeons are timed, and greater rifts, the main measure and path to progress are based on time.

This eliminates every playstyle and build that isn't "gotta go fast". Going fast is already the best even when not required, as doing stuff faster means more grinding per hour of grind.

In D2, sorc and hammerdin top the meta because they move and kill the fastest, but you can still do all the stuff with a slow methodical build. In d3, a safe, defensive, methodical build isn't just "you progress slower", it's actively barred from progressing. You can use it to grind at the level you are, but to push the difficulty you're allowed to even attempt you first have to be fast.

I understand beating it fast letting you skip ahead, but beating it slowly should still let you go up one? And upgrade gems? It doesn't feel like allowing slow builds would allow for any degenerate behaviour, and it would allow more builds to matter at all.

In vanilla d3, which was crap in many ways, one of the ways to progress was barb with 1h+shield, with almost every defensive skill and passive, geared for res and armor, making it so you could actually survive one hit from a laser or bug and therefore possibly get anywhere. This was fine, imho.

# ? Jan 7, 2023 10:23

Incoherence: May 22, 2004; POYO AND TEAR

Phosphine posted:

One of the biggest issue with d3, to me, is the focus on time.

The set dungeons are timed, and greater rifts, the main measure and path to progress are based on time.

This eliminates every playstyle and build that isn't "gotta go fast". Going fast is already the best even when not required, as doing stuff faster means more grinding per hour of grind.

In D2, sorc and hammerdin top the meta because they move and kill the fastest, but you can still do all the stuff with a slow methodical build. In d3, a safe, defensive, methodical build isn't just "you progress slower", it's actively barred from progressing. You can use it to grind at the level you are, but to push the difficulty you're allowed to even attempt you first have to be fast.

I understand beating it fast letting you skip ahead, but beating it slowly should still let you go up one? And upgrade gems? It doesn't feel like allowing slow builds would allow for any degenerate behaviour, and it would allow more builds to matter at all.

In vanilla d3, which was crap in many ways, one of the ways to progress was barb with 1h+shield, with almost every defensive skill and passive, geared for res and armor, making it so you could actually survive one hit from a laser or bug and therefore possibly get anywhere. This was fine, imho.

The issue is in determining "failure". You do want it to be possible to fail a GR, because otherwise the difficulty is even more meaningless than it already is. Set dungeons fail instantly if you die, but they're also free to re-attempt; GRs aren't. The current system provides for escalating penalties if you die more (more time removed from the timer). You also want to avoid people just TPing out to recover cooldowns before every pack, or blowing all their cooldowns and dying and repeating, because this feels awful to play and makes cooldowns less meaningful. You could do something like the PoE model where you get to enter each rift-equivalent a total of X times (X=6 for PoE), counting both TPs and deaths (and disconnects), but I honestly think that's harder up until the bleeding edge of progression where you actually need all 15 minutes, and that bleeding edge has gotten farther and farther away over time based on D3's balance model of just buffing the worst builds. (GR75 is attainable with a fairly wide variety of builds nowadays, and that's the highest level that gives any reward other than more of the same drops, gem levels, and e-peen.)

What are you considering "all the stuff" here? Hell Baal in D2 is a higher bar than, say, GR75 in D3.

# ? Jan 7, 2023 11:57

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Phosphine posted:

One of the biggest issue with d3, to me, is the focus on time.

The set dungeons are timed, and greater rifts, the main measure and path to progress are based on time.

This eliminates every playstyle and build that isn't "gotta go fast". Going fast is already the best even when not required, as doing stuff faster means more grinding per hour of grind.

In D2, sorc and hammerdin top the meta because they move and kill the fastest, but you can still do all the stuff with a slow methodical build. In d3, a safe, defensive, methodical build isn't just "you progress slower", it's actively barred from progressing. You can use it to grind at the level you are, but to push the difficulty you're allowed to even attempt you first have to be fast.

I understand beating it fast letting you skip ahead, but beating it slowly should still let you go up one? And upgrade gems? It doesn't feel like allowing slow builds would allow for any degenerate behaviour, and it would allow more builds to matter at all.

In vanilla d3, which was crap in many ways, one of the ways to progress was barb with 1h+shield, with almost every defensive skill and passive, geared for res and armor, making it so you could actually survive one hit from a laser or bug and therefore possibly get anywhere. This was fine, imho.

The only reason it seems that way in D2 is because there are no real leaderboards, no ways to superficially compare, and therefore that information is effectively hidden from you. But rest assured, it is an illusion. Sorcs and Hammerdins are on such a different level from every other possible build in the game that they have their own economy specifically for them. See how much you can get for even a 10/10 Sorc torch versus 20/20 Druid and you'll quickly understand why. There is just simply no way for a non-teleporting class to compete and farm endgame drops in a reasonable amount of time, full stop. If there were leaderboards for D2R then the issue would be 100% evident. You can argue that players just looking to complete Hell difficulty can do so with any class no matter how slow, and that's true, but that's also true of D3, even moreso since there are no immunities and no way to screw yourself over with skills.

Even at its absolute worst, D3 has always had a lot more parity between builds, and now that leaderboards are differentiated by set there is some further enjoyment to be had taking an off-meta build into solo GR. Almost any set is capable of clearing at least GR120 these days, which is quite remarkable for like 35+ possible combinations among classes. D3 has its own problems but that's more to do with the effect of mass Paragon leading to 24/7 farm bots with 11k Paragon making competition for top GR clears virtually impossible unless you have your own team.

exquisite tea fucked around with this message at 12:12 on Jan 7, 2023

# ? Jan 7, 2023 12:07

Mailer: Nov 4, 2009; Have you accepted The Void as your lord and savior?

exquisite tea posted:

If there were leaderboards for D2R

D2 having a "ladder" always seemed confusing to me. Like D3's season stuff is pretty well-defined in rank/time, but what the hell is a season in D2? Aside from just an arbitrary game reset what are you competing for? I tried to google this a while back and aside from a dozen articles copypasted from the same source about times and the reset I couldn't find anything.

# ? Jan 7, 2023 17:44

mmkay: Oct 21, 2010

Race who bots the fastest to 99.

# ? Jan 7, 2023 18:10

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Diablo 2 arguably invented the concept of a season as it pertains to video games, but they never reset seasons often enough for it to catch on until it was picked up as a way to facilitate GAAS designs

# ? Jan 7, 2023 18:21

Mailer: Nov 4, 2009; Have you accepted The Void as your lord and savior?

mmkay posted:

Race who bots the fastest to 99.

Hah that would be really idiotic and completely ignorant of technology even in 1999. No, seriously, what was the competition for?

# ? Jan 7, 2023 18:34

Bobfromsales: Apr 2, 2010

Ladder resets were introduced just to fix the economy from millions of pindlebots flooding the market with everything.

Of course d2jsp exists, and they couldn't really stop the bots so it didn't matter. But here we are.

# ? Jan 7, 2023 18:39

External Organs: Mar 3, 2006; One time i prank called a bear buildin workshop and said I wanted my mamaws ashes put in a teddy from where she loved them things so well... The woman on the phone did not skip a beat. She just said, "Brang her on down here. We've did it before."

I can't believe you can run pindlebot on your Tesla!

# ? Jan 7, 2023 19:17

mmkay: Oct 21, 2010

Mailer posted:

Hah that would be really idiotic and completely ignorant of technology even in 1999. No, seriously, what was the competition for?

https://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=77291134&f=21 posted:

After seeing how the first season went down, Blizzard decided to perform its first ladder reset on July 7th, 2004 with a promotional contest called "When Worlds Collide," as World of Warcraft was scheduled to be released the following year. The contest began for all users that had a legitimate registered account (for recovery) for all 5 Realms, and it was a ladder race to be the first to reach level 99. The first character to reach level 99 on the ladder, regardless of being on classic or expansion, hardcore or not, would be awarded a prize containing a Blizzard T-Shirt, a signed copy of World of Warcraft Collector's Edition, a toy statue, and a Blizzard North CD Wallet. The Ruststorm program was run during this season once, and several users complained that their items had been erased unfairly. This season also introduced several new exclusive "ladder-only" Rune Words later after the ladder race had come to an end just before 2005.

I started playing around this time (before the runewords like Spirit and Insight came online) and I vaguely remember seeing this contest on either Arreat Summit or Battle.net .
EDIT: I think I got into some botting like within a year and it was fairly straightforward, even for a dumb teenager. Setting up public Baalruns with multiple bots, or just MFing, etc. Especially the former was really common, the vast majority of baalrun games in Hell were hosted by bots.

mmkay fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Jan 7, 2023

# ? Jan 7, 2023 22:00

RodShaft: Jul 31, 2003; Like an evil horny Santa Claus.

Did something happen to the Hellish Holiday event today? I got zero gifts this afternoon from a dozen or so rifts. And I swear I had one in my stash and it's just gone. I thought it was going on until Feb 4th.

I'm on switch if that matters.

# ? Jan 9, 2023 19:25

AlbertFlasher: Feb 14, 2006; Hulk Hogan and the Wrestling Boot Band

RodShaft posted:

Did something happen to the Hellish Holiday event today? I got zero gifts this afternoon from a dozen or so rifts. And I swear I had one in my stash and it's just gone. I thought it was going on until Feb 4th.

I'm on switch if that matters.

That's weird. Ya its supposed to run until Feb 5th so I am not sure what happened.

# ? Jan 9, 2023 19:28

Mymla: Aug 12, 2010

Tbh I think dungeon siege 3 is the best diablo-like I've played, but I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who's played it.

# ? Jan 9, 2023 20:51

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

I played Dungeon Siege III and liked it for what it was. I think there are two things that really killed its potential: Co-op being limited to 2 players, and you couldn't move off the same screen, even when playing online.

# ? Jan 9, 2023 20:55

DarkMatt: Nov 3, 2010

I recall playing Dungeon Siege III and the camera being adversarial was something I could not get over.

# ? Jan 9, 2023 23:59

Suburban Dad: Jan 10, 2007; Well what's attached to a leash that it made itself?
The punchline is the way that you've been fuckin' yourself

I played the first one in the early 2000s and remember liking it. I was trying to find other Diablo likes, not much has changed.

# ? Jan 10, 2023 00:19

Big Mad Drongo: Nov 10, 2006

Suburban Dad posted:

Chronicon but it's 2d. And great

Chronicon is excellent and its DLC with a fifth class is due out this month. Great time to hop on board.

# ? Jan 10, 2023 02:28

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

something with the party management of Dungeon Siege 2 but with the procedural generation of a full ARPG would be the bee's knees

imagine having a Barbarian, a Necromancer, a Crusader AND a Monk all at the same time

# ? Jan 10, 2023 03:54

Herstory Begins Now: Aug 5, 2003; SOME REALLY TEDIOUS DUMB SHIT THAT SUCKS ASS TO READ ->>

dungeon siege was entirely under-rated imo

# ? Jan 10, 2023 04:04

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# ? Jun 4, 2024 22:07

istewart: Apr 13, 2005; Still contemplating why I didn't register here under a clever pseudonym

xZAOx posted:

Tin foil hat theory: they stop doing seasons for D3 to try to get more people playing D4.

I hate to say it, but I have the same fear. The only counterpoint for me is that a relatively ethical, intelligent company wouldn't want to abandon the huge player base and remaining long-tail sales on Switch, since that re-release gave the game a huge shot in the arm and Diablo 4 won't be coming to that platform. But Blizzard is neither intelligent nor ethical. It's too bad my Switch died, because all my progress was on there, and I haven't been able to convince myself to adapt to the PC version and start over. The holiday gift-bomb of all the rare cosmetic drops definitely feels like something of a sayonara.

Side note, I guess Diablo 4 is coming to base PS4/XB1? It's a bit shocking, but I guess they won't pass up that money no matter what, even if they don't want to attempt cramming it onto OG Switch. Wouldn't be surprised if it's a trumpeted launch title for next-gen Switch, tho.

# ? Jan 10, 2023 05:12

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