|
Talking about the hero thing, that's one thing I like about the Quest for Glory series. You start out as an adventurer who took a correspondence course, do some small jobs around a small town, and then get famous for saving some local royalty. Nobody treats you poorly, but they tend to think of you as just another schmuck until you actually start proving yourself. The second game has your reputation precede you, with some characters who have some local connections talking you up before you arrive. Most people start with a decent opinion of you, but there are people who, for various good reasons, do not. The third game is similar, with an NPC that you helped introducing you to everyone and talking you up, but with mixed reactions based on the society that you encounter. There's also one isolated society who hates you by default because their enemies like you. The fourth game sees you teleported to a foreign land where very few NPCs know of you, and the villagers have a number of exceptionally good reasons to mistrust you. And then the fifth game brings back lots of NPCs who interacted with you throughout your journey, which is a nice capstone to the tale. Overall the reputation makes sense - when you have a powerful/influential figure speaking in your favor, you start off, generally, well liked (unless that influential figure has enemies/rivals/etc.). Otherwise they're likely to be a lot less compliant, especially if you show up when the outside passes are closed off, monsters are on the hunt at night, and you traveled to town from the direction of an evil cave that is affiliated with an evil cult. I think Diablo II has a lot of those elements as well, but it's worth noting that if you're following the wanderer, you're going to an area where an unknown stranger just showed up and brought the apocalypse with them. Not only is all literal hell breaking loose, but here's another powerful stranger who has showed up and said that they'll help. Your allies burn a lot of their political capital just to get you to the next region, and the people there don't really have the time to figure out if they can trust you until the immediate fires are put out. And I think it's worth noting that most of the towns trust you more or less immediately after the first quest or two, usually right around the time the mercenary unlocks. That's usually once you've wiped out whatever immediately threatens the town.
|
#
¿
Oct 18, 2022 08:57
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 8, 2024 13:02 |
|
|
I know we talked about the heroism thing earlier, but I want to point out the beginning of Act II now that we've seen it. Our goal is to follow the dark wanderer. We couldn't do that in the beginning because the caravans were stopped. We killed Andariel, and now the caravans are free to go east to Lut Gholein. Theoretically, the Dark Wanderer is in Lut Gholein. Even if he is not, there's really nowhere that we could proceed to because the port is closed. The city's Lord greets us as we arrive and welcomes us into his city. He directs us to someone who could potentially tell us more about the Wanderer, but declines to invite us into his palace for reasons that cannot yet be elaborated on. It's honestly a pretty warm welcome, and we can hire mercs right off the bat. We aren't the saviors of the land (yet?), but not every traveler gets a personal greeting from the ruler of the city. Our efforts in Act 1 were rewarded, and we definitely start with a leg up in reputation here in Act 2. As much as I generally don't like sewer levels, this particular sewer level isn't nearly as bad. The corridors are decently wide and it's more on the tier of the caves in Act 1 than what a traditional video game sewer level would be.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 22, 2022 19:45
|
|
|
Simply Simon posted:Hey Drognan, you happen to have a wand with +3 Bone Spear for sale? No? 's cool That's a really odd way to spell Raise Skeleton and Skeleton Mastery, but to each their own.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 25, 2022 01:28
|
|
|
To me, Act 2's biggest sins are (as someone who loves to play summoning necro): Maggot Lair. Too small, minions barely work, very frustrating. Giant desert with nothing in it, which makes it irritating to find whatever is relevant Leapers and birds, solely because killing them is annoying. Never really cared about the greater mummies, but that's because it was a race between us to see who could use the corpse first.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 1, 2022 21:24
|
|
|
I think the other thing with lightning is that (at least for player spells) it tends to have massive damage ranges, like 1-500 or something silly. I think that ends up being true for enemies as well, and it can result in some hilariously scary damage numbers if you get unlucky. And as with most games of this type, it's the big unexpected hits that kill you much more frequently than sustained damage, even if the sustained damage is more dps (losing 50% of your health all at once after 30 seconds of combat is much scarier than slowly losing 100% of your health over 30 seconds).
|
|
#
¿
Nov 4, 2022 19:18
|
|
|
Spoggerific posted:As I've mentioned before, I played Diablo 2 almost exclusively online with friends. This is the act that the people I played with hated; so much, in fact, that they had a high level character rush us through it every single time. The first time I played through Act 3 normally was probably a year or two after I started playing the game, and... yeah, they were right to skip it every time. I'm sorry, what's Act 3? I recall a jungle section where you get 20 health and then teleporting straight to the act boss because gently caress this entire act sideways with a rusty spoon. I do remember it not being absolutely terrible for a summoner necromancer (at least not yet), but it's a slog, a pain in the rear end to navigate, and incredibly boring.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 12, 2022 05:40
|
|
|
Yeah, just more evidence that the best part of Act 3 is that you can just teleport straight to the end and skip the whole damned thing. I've gone through it a few times in full and it's an exercise in tedium and frustration each time. There's too many mazes, and they're all filled with some of the most irritating monsters in the game. Thankfully they're not the Maggot Lair, but they're still awful in their own right.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 15, 2022 16:11
|
|
|
And don't forget that the sewers are dark, the little exploding dolls are also dark, and you're basically navigating by minimap, which makes it even harder to see when the little fuckers run up to you to explode. But yeah, Act 3 is just awful. I don't mind the desert as much because at least it's open and well lit. It's also just a bit more sprawling than Act 1's areas, and isn't a maze. Act 3 hides things in buildings, has enemies that are incredibly irritating, makes a bunch of areas dark and hidden behind buildings/foliage, and just generally makes everything somewhere between horrible and godawful. It's telling that I had completely forgotten about the +5 stat points quest because gently caress act 3.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 20, 2022 01:50
|
|
|
I think you're a little hard on Izual there. Izual didn't mastermind everything - what he did is get captured and tortured by the prime evils. The prime evils used the knowledge they got from him to get the whole soulstone scheme started so that they'd be able to influence the world outside of hell. I feel like it's a nice twist that the prime evils are more competent than we had thought, and that their imprisonment was what they planned for all along. Izual doesn't matter here - he's just a tool and a means to an end. And that's fine. The game is a saturday morning cartoon where you're romping through hell killing demons and evil things. There's no ambiguity, there's no shades of grey. You're good, the enemies are evil, go splatter them against the walls and steal their poo poo to get stronger. And if the game were story driven, it'd be poo poo, because the story is not strong. But many people, myself included, put hundreds or thousands of hours into the game because the core gameplay loop was amazingly fun. The story is just set dressing and a way to get you to new and interesting locales to kill the locals and take their stuff. I get the frustration - there's a lot of neat potential for the story of the series to be more interesting, more involved, and more well developed. The character backgrounds hint at neat ideas. The corrupting influence of the prime evils has done fascinating things to the world and to its people. Hell, many of the heroes themselves are somewhat non-traditional, especially the necromancer. But in the end, this is Diablo. You hack, you slash, you pillage, and then you reload the area and do it all over again.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 28, 2022 08:08
|
|
|
DarkMatt posted:I think this goes down to the way it's written. It isn't just the Primes captured and got a lot of mileage out of an angel. The way Izual phrases this, you can be lead to believe he's acting like all of this was his idea. It isn't just Izual either, there's a couple other characters that elude my memory at the moment that act like they are the mastermind behind everything. I will say I did miss the possibility that Izual told them everything after getting captured, but the way he's written make it sounds like even him getting captured was on purpose. Not to mention I find the concept of the Primes getting banished into Sanctuary by the Lessers a very cool idea that is shut down completely by Izual. Izual definitely isn't a good character - he's just a MacGuffin. He's there to explain how and why the prime evils took what appeared to be a losing position and turned it around into a winning position - they wanted to be imprisoned because that would let them influence the world until they could be free to walk around in it unimpeded. Here's what Tyrael has to say about him: quote:Despite his valor and strength, Izual was captured by the Prime Evils and twisted by their perverse power. They forced him to betray his own kind and give up Heaven's most guarded secrets. And Izual: quote:Tyrael was a fool to have trusted me! And then Tyrael again: quote:Izual helped Diablo and his Brothers trick me into using the Soulstones against them... Now the Stones' powers are corrupted. I don't read this as Izual masterminding the scheme. He "helped," and we know from Tyrael that his "help" was coerced via presumably torture and demonic power. Izual is consumed with guilt for his role in all of this. He's not gloating to the player about his great triumph - he's lamenting his actions, even though he was arguably not responsible for them. And yes, he is trying to get you to go away and not waste time helping him because he feels that he deserves his fate. And to be clear, it's not a good story, it's just not nearly as bad as you seem to think it is.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 29, 2022 04:12
|
|
|
DarkMatt posted:Do you know how much an edge case like that causes my eye to twitch? Because I can't even prove that in the LP mods because the only curse I use is Terror aaaaaaaa! Isn't Amp Damage still a thing? Is it just not worth it at one point or is it just not in the same spot on the tree?
|
|
#
¿
Dec 18, 2022 14:33
|
|
|
If I just want to sit back and summon all of the skeletons/golems/whatever and blend my way through enemies with my own horde of minions, what would be the best of these mods to look into?
|
|
#
¿
Dec 21, 2022 17:06
|
|
|
Would it have been better or worse if it were 5 tomes of TP?
|
|
#
¿
Dec 24, 2022 18:43
|
|
|
Yeah, but like 5 TP scrolls might just be a mod conflict or oversight with someone leaving a default in place. 5 tomes of TP means someone specifically chose to make 5 tomes of TP drop just as an extra specific gently caress you.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 25, 2022 02:17
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 8, 2024 13:02 |
|
|
Also worth noting that "there is no cow level" is a cheat code in Starcraft.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 25, 2022 19:42
|
|