If "open b.net" is still supported you can play most mods together in private games. Failing that, if I'm right that they've barely touched the server code, hopefully the existing D2 private server software can be updated to support.
Gosh, this is so nostalgic; however, party chat being broken is kinda crummy.
PSN: DignifiedPauper
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KoopahTroopahThe koopas, the troopas.Philadelphia, PARegistered Userregular
I "watched" some streamers yesterday to get the early access and played a bit of act 1 as Zon. Definitely nostalgic feeling, there's some weird disconnect I'm having from the motion of the world while I'm running around. I have it on full screen, maxed out settings, 200% resolution scale. If I focus on my character it looks smooth, but the world around my character looks and feels jittery. I'm wondering if that's server delay or if there's something else happening with the frames.
Pressing the legacy button over and over again makes me respect the level of detail the visual artists went into. It looks really good.
This game is so aggressively anti player, its painful. Controller support is nice though.
Given I do not have the fond memories associated with the game that a lot of you do, probably a skip for me.
It was cool seeing how well they updated the graphics though. If only they could have actually updated the game itself to that level.
If you are reading this add me.
D3: HexDex#1281, PSN: DireOtter, Live: DireOtter
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KoopahTroopahThe koopas, the troopas.Philadelphia, PARegistered Userregular
edited August 2021
I'm actually unsure if there will be an Open Battle.net option on launch, the removal of TCP/IP really sucks and it doesn't look good for Open Battle.net.
That doesn't mean that the server files couldn't be patched to just route to a different master server, it is the same code & engine after all. My ultimate scenario would be a Project Diablo 2 Resurrected to be honest.
I feel like my timing is a month off! The remake looks great but I'm not really tempted to play a limited beta with such a long delay to full release. I love d2, I know I'll enjoy the remake as it's just prettier d2, but I want to get to the full thing.
So I rolled up a skellymancer in old d2 instead. It's either practice or will make me have my fill before the remaster launches; time will tell!
Played through act 1, verified the majority of concerns I had about the remake.
I honestly hope that, for the people who really wanted D2 with a semi decent coat of paint, this does it for you.
Because it is literally all you are getting. It is Diablo 2 with absolutely no improvements outside of visuals; and even the visuals are pretty meh, mostly static and are less what the game could have looked like; they are what you probably remember in your head it looking like anyway.
I had a lot of fun with the game, back in the day. But that time is past. Every thing about it now is just tedious. Inventory management is tedious. Movement is tedious. Skill usage is tedious. The vast areas with almost nothing in them is tedious. Potions are beyond tedious. Even back when D2 launched, some of the stuff was pretty questionable, but the gameplay was great and there just wasn't much else like it.
That was a couple decades ago. There are plenty of games that do everything D2 does, and does those things better.
This is not a remaster that is going to pull in new customers; at least not with any good will. I'm not sure how WC3 reforged got so much flack but people are still excited about this. Visuals are the only thing that is different, at all. I don't doubt it took work to get up and running with the graphics layered on the old game, but even then, I don't understand how when the game is functionally the same under the hood, and the new graphics aren't exactly groundbreaking and shouldn't take much horsepower, it's still pushing my GPU to rev up its fan like I'm playing a game that has substantially more complex visuals, why if I switch the visual engine more than twice it crashes the game, and prior to the crash will lose 75% of the framerate just having the inventory open.
Bleh. Again, if what you wanted was D2, with no changes whatsoever, a couple decades later, this is absolutely for you. If you're someone who never played D2 and are curious what all the fuss is about, I cannot recommend enough that you absolutely wait for a good sale, because this is absolutely a PC game from 21 years ago. If you've played virtually any ARPG in the last decade, you've played a better game. Yes, D2 was fantastic when it was new.
I'm sorry, but it just isn't anymore, and it doesn't hold up. The remaster is not worth $40, or the ethical conundrum of whether to support Blizzard at this particular moment. Even if everything there was puppy dogs and rainbows, I wouldn't advise anyone pick this up unless you just still absolutely adore D2 and still play it regularly.
Finished the beta with the amazon. Plays and feels great - I'm a little bummed that they didn't open up at least act 3 in this, but whatevs.
I am a little skeptical how the mod support will shake out, because I'm way too used to infinite shared stash and the like.
e: and I wonder if I can import my saves from modded D2 without breaking everything. Skullomania the necromancer needs some shiny new duds!
Diablo 4 exists as their best attempt to make a modern ARPG. That's not what this is, this is about nostalgia. It's not because people have forgotten what D2 was that this is getting a lot of buzz.
On a different side note they delivered what they said they would. And well. I would agree with general sentiment of above though. If you don’t want D2 then it’s not for you.
They did it. They made it with modern FPS, effects and clutter. What you want out of a remaster. The core gameplay isn’t for everyone but let’s not kid ourselves that modern ARPGs dont have limitations based off of some form of clutter management. The biggest arpg out now introduces new shards and currency every league still. Makes one it’s primary form of money spending based off of bank tabs to reduce that clutter impact. And they aren’t the only one. Making potion/inventory decisions is an old rpg mechanic. But it still exists in modern single player rpgs as well.
They did add shared stashes and increase bank size by about 4 times or so it looked like too.
It’s not all that bad and it is what was stated they would release. Don’t expect more than they said they would be doing. If don’t want to spend 40 bucks on a proper D2 remaster then don’t. /shrug.
The thing is, every time I went back to D2 over the years I thought "oh god that game is old and archaic and will not be fun". And the early-early game, like half of Act 1, feels like that, mostly because I run out of stamina and struggle, but *then* it gets going and ugh, it totally holds up. Aside from the potion management, I think it is still a fantastic game. And I suspect changing the potion management would futz with the overall difficulty a bit, or rather would be a little too far for a strict remaster, which is what they set out to do.
I disagree that the remaster won't pull in new customers. I actually agree with most of your criticisms and concerns!
But there's a market for brutal, even dated feeling stuff like this. It's a legendary game that a lot of younger people haven't played because of how dated it is graphically, and twitch streamers will be all about it and pull in a lot of people.
WoW classic is the best example I can think of. I played WoW at launch, and personally I found the design to be just complete garbage relative to other MMOs at the time. Amazing world, but terrible dated EverQuest class design and raiding mentality.
Yet it took over the entire world, again, and it wasn't just all old people with nostalgia despite my distaste for it personally. The mystique, word of mouth, and sheer presence everywhere in gaming corners drew in a ton of people.
I expect tons of people to hate the remaster for the reasons you describe, but I definitely think keeping it "pure" will attract people much like WoW classic (not THAT big of a scale, but successful for sure).
Also the story, or rather the storytelling in D2 is brilliant. I love that you are always one step behind Diablo, and get the story through Marius' telling of it.
Another thing it nails which imo D3 failed at is the striking, cohesive art direction, especially the architecture
Also the story, or rather the storytelling in D2 is brilliant. I love that you are always one step behind Diablo, and get the story through Marius' telling of it.
Another thing it nails which imo D3 failed at is the striking, cohesive art direction, especially the architecture
Exactly. The tone is just much better than D3 and every other ARPG I can think of. There really was reason for new people to try out WoW classic -- that feeling of a cohesive world was lost in newer versions, even if I think overall the design is much better after the expansions. D2 is similar -- there's a lot of jank that could be overhauled, but you're going to draw in the hardcore crowd as well as people who want to see what all of the fuss is about. The storytelling, music, and atmosphere are just awesome in D2, and the gameplay is a lot of fun if you can get over some of the dumb stuff (several of the dumb systems disappear entirely as the game goes on -- stamina is obsolete in like act 2, mana/life leech makes lots of the potion chugging go away).
There's really no game that does everything D2 does but better, because just about every ARPG skimps on the story really hard. PoE does the best job of recapturing the tone and feel, but has its own wide variety of impenetrable jank that turns off people in the same way.
Also the story, or rather the storytelling in D2 is brilliant. I love that you are always one step behind Diablo, and get the story through Marius' telling of it.
Another thing it nails which imo D3 failed at is the striking, cohesive art direction, especially the architecture
They also added to it. The act 1 end cinematic was longer and had more in it.
Did it? It's been a while since I've seen the original cutscenes, I thought they went shot-for shot, to time it with the original voice/music track. There's one shot in the opening cinematic where Marius loses some of his frailty of mind, an expression that they didn't quite translate, but those are really nitpicks. As with the rest of the art, they are mostly faithful and did a great job overall
Also the story, or rather the storytelling in D2 is brilliant. I love that you are always one step behind Diablo, and get the story through Marius' telling of it.
Another thing it nails which imo D3 failed at is the striking, cohesive art direction, especially the architecture
They also added to it. The act 1 end cinematic was longer and had more in it.
Did it? It's been a while since I've seen the original cutscenes, I thought they went shot-for shot, to time it with the original voice/music track. There's one shot in the opening cinematic where Marius loses some of his frailty of mind, an expression that they didn't quite translate, but those are really nitpicks. As with the rest of the art, they are mostly faithful and did a great job overall
Hmm I am probably misremembering actually. My bad.
In my perfect version of this game they would have a "modern" game mode where they go further with the QoL changes. Remove stamina and misses, add more inventory space, etc. That's why I'm excited for modding, even if it does end up being singleplayer only.
BTW the new game trick works as the game sits now. Will put your corpse by you in town when you load into new game. You just lose the gold on you but the bank is right there when you are doing town stuff heh.
In higher difficulties you lose some % of XP towards next level on death, recovering your corpse in the world (not town) returned like 75% of the loss. Also you lose whatever game progress if someone else isn't holding open the game. This has been fully accounted for in design for ages and I can't see it ever changing.
BTW the new game trick works as the game sits now. Will put your corpse by you in town when you load into new game. You just lose the gold on you but the bank is right there when you are doing town stuff heh.
It would have been insanely weird if it didn't work.
In higher difficulties you lose some % of XP towards next level on death, recovering your corpse in the world (not town) returned like 75% of the loss. Also you lose whatever game progress if someone else isn't holding open the game. This has been fully accounted for in design for ages and I can't see it ever changing.
It was (edit: I guess I should say is since obviously it's the same mechanic in D2R) 5% of the full XP bar in Nightmare and 10% in Hell.
Doing the season on the Switch the past couple days; I was Paragon 586 before I saw my first Ethereal drop. :rotate:
Gotta get a monk or whatever set up to gamble for puzzle rings and start doing the level 5 thing, because bleh.
Unlike doing the season on Monk on PC, where I just couldn't get the proper pieces for Uliana's, and moved to Inna's early, I had trouble on Switch getting Inna's pieces, and actually had a proper Uli's setup. It was super effective! But also super squishy.
Still, once I did get the Inna's, even really crappy stuff, no ethereal, not terribly useful weapons, it was dramatically more damage, and exponentially more tanky, out of the gate, than a moderately decent Uli, with all the proper gear and cube stuff.
I do wish they could have left the feature of having all the Mystic Ally elements out, instead of just a temporary army of a single element. I guess it would have probably been too hard to balance.
I really wish 1.10 or one of those other late major D2 patches had just removed Stamina so that the D2R team wouldn't have felt compelled to leave it in.
If this game is a big success I hope they feel empowered to continue development of the game rather than freezing it in time. Patch 2.13 added content in 2010, hell it added respecs which is a huge disruptive change.
btw if you haven't tried controller support for this game yet I recommend it. It plays quite well and you can freely bind skills to multiple buttons. PC has support for hotswapping controls if you want to do some mouse heavy inventory management now and then.
If this game is a big success I hope they feel empowered to continue development of the game rather than freezing it in time. Patch 2.13 added content in 2010, hell it added respecs which is a huge disruptive change.
I would be surprised if they didn't have plans for that. I suspect they acquired Vicarious Visions for that purpose. I wonder if they would go full-on Act VI - including assets that run in the old D2 engine?
That would be cool, so it probably won't happen
The D2R beta may have caused me to fire up classic D2 and level an Amazon to 40.
Maybe.
Can't confirm or deny.
The D2 mod scene is active and very fun. ProjectDiablo 2 is worth a look. It is a rebalance with added end game. Then there is like the Median. Which is a complete overhaul with new skills, full new end game etc.
It's debatable if the idea many of us have of Blizzard even exists now (*cough*itabsolutelydoesnot*cough*).
But if the current happenings results in major losses in revenue (or, in modern corporate behavior, could simply be a reduction in growth of revenue, which is viewed as just as evil as actual losses), I fully expect Blizzard as it currently exists to be gutted to the bare minimum required to continue development and maintenance on properties that are producing any amount of revenue, and aren't on a irreversible decline.
And, honestly, I expect D4, and probably Overwatch 2, to be pushed out in completely disastrous states, in an attempt to pull some profits out of a studio that, while in theory a major pillar of the corporation, isn't actually producing anything that is bringing in new customers or revenue sources, outside of squeezing current properties in increasingly abusive and manipulative ways.
Then again, it could be that Immortal just knocks it out of the park and makes bank. Who knows? I honestly hope it doesn't; maybe it's a decent game at its core, but I am beyond way past done with F2P fuckery on principal, and I wish it just go away forever, as I'm sick of so many things turning into slot machines or absolutely mind bogglingly shitty grinds to force you to spend money to make them not suck shit. But even if it does succeed, the consequences of it, I think, would bode very poorly for everything Blizzard might put out going forward, even if they got their moral and ethical shit together at a corporate level.
it seems like blizzard was rotten long before the activision merger anyway, given how a bunch of the named names are long time employees from early WoW
I don't get why people are treating Diablo Immortal like it represents the worst of new Blizzard. The only crime it ever committed was to be announced at a Blizzcon where people expected Diablo 4. But it looks pretty decent to me. I just wish it was coming to consoles, now that they've announced controller support. Yeah it's F2P but so is Path of Exile.
I don't get why people are treating Diablo Immortal like it represents the worst of new Blizzard. The only crime it ever committed was to be announced at a Blizzcon where people expected Diablo 4. But it looks pretty decent to me. I just wish it was coming to consoles, now that they've announced controller support. Yeah it's F2P but so is Path of Exile.
Edit: I think people have different opinions (often justifiably based on past experiences) on F2P mobile vs. PC games. For whatever reason, I think mobile games more often fall into the P2W gacha trappings than do PC games. Even if that's not the case, PoE being an example of "F2P done right" (I assume, I've never played it) shouldn't necessarily be sufficient to assuage people's fears about how they'll monetize Diablo Immortal.
Not sure how much it represents Blizzard when so much of the dev team is working for Tencent in mainland China.
Rhyker also put out some self-admittedly baseless speculation that the release delay being blamed on "controller support" could be about teeing it up for console/PC release, after seeing the success of Genshin across platforms. So maybe we can hope.
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one can hope that there will be a network -workaround.
unless they also removed singleplayer in which case I won't be getting the game
3DSFF: 5026-4429-6577
Pressing the legacy button over and over again makes me respect the level of detail the visual artists went into. It looks really good.
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
Played for a couple hours last night.
This game is so aggressively anti player, its painful. Controller support is nice though.
Given I do not have the fond memories associated with the game that a lot of you do, probably a skip for me.
It was cool seeing how well they updated the graphics though. If only they could have actually updated the game itself to that level.
D3: HexDex#1281, PSN: DireOtter, Live: DireOtter
That doesn't mean that the server files couldn't be patched to just route to a different master server, it is the same code & engine after all. My ultimate scenario would be a Project Diablo 2 Resurrected to be honest.
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
So I rolled up a skellymancer in old d2 instead. It's either practice or will make me have my fill before the remaster launches; time will tell!
I honestly hope that, for the people who really wanted D2 with a semi decent coat of paint, this does it for you.
Because it is literally all you are getting. It is Diablo 2 with absolutely no improvements outside of visuals; and even the visuals are pretty meh, mostly static and are less what the game could have looked like; they are what you probably remember in your head it looking like anyway.
I had a lot of fun with the game, back in the day. But that time is past. Every thing about it now is just tedious. Inventory management is tedious. Movement is tedious. Skill usage is tedious. The vast areas with almost nothing in them is tedious. Potions are beyond tedious. Even back when D2 launched, some of the stuff was pretty questionable, but the gameplay was great and there just wasn't much else like it.
That was a couple decades ago. There are plenty of games that do everything D2 does, and does those things better.
This is not a remaster that is going to pull in new customers; at least not with any good will. I'm not sure how WC3 reforged got so much flack but people are still excited about this. Visuals are the only thing that is different, at all. I don't doubt it took work to get up and running with the graphics layered on the old game, but even then, I don't understand how when the game is functionally the same under the hood, and the new graphics aren't exactly groundbreaking and shouldn't take much horsepower, it's still pushing my GPU to rev up its fan like I'm playing a game that has substantially more complex visuals, why if I switch the visual engine more than twice it crashes the game, and prior to the crash will lose 75% of the framerate just having the inventory open.
Bleh. Again, if what you wanted was D2, with no changes whatsoever, a couple decades later, this is absolutely for you. If you're someone who never played D2 and are curious what all the fuss is about, I cannot recommend enough that you absolutely wait for a good sale, because this is absolutely a PC game from 21 years ago. If you've played virtually any ARPG in the last decade, you've played a better game. Yes, D2 was fantastic when it was new.
I'm sorry, but it just isn't anymore, and it doesn't hold up. The remaster is not worth $40, or the ethical conundrum of whether to support Blizzard at this particular moment. Even if everything there was puppy dogs and rainbows, I wouldn't advise anyone pick this up unless you just still absolutely adore D2 and still play it regularly.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
I am a little skeptical how the mod support will shake out, because I'm way too used to infinite shared stash and the like.
e: and I wonder if I can import my saves from modded D2 without breaking everything. Skullomania the necromancer needs some shiny new duds!
They did it. They made it with modern FPS, effects and clutter. What you want out of a remaster. The core gameplay isn’t for everyone but let’s not kid ourselves that modern ARPGs dont have limitations based off of some form of clutter management. The biggest arpg out now introduces new shards and currency every league still. Makes one it’s primary form of money spending based off of bank tabs to reduce that clutter impact. And they aren’t the only one. Making potion/inventory decisions is an old rpg mechanic. But it still exists in modern single player rpgs as well.
They did add shared stashes and increase bank size by about 4 times or so it looked like too.
It’s not all that bad and it is what was stated they would release. Don’t expect more than they said they would be doing. If don’t want to spend 40 bucks on a proper D2 remaster then don’t. /shrug.
But there's a market for brutal, even dated feeling stuff like this. It's a legendary game that a lot of younger people haven't played because of how dated it is graphically, and twitch streamers will be all about it and pull in a lot of people.
WoW classic is the best example I can think of. I played WoW at launch, and personally I found the design to be just complete garbage relative to other MMOs at the time. Amazing world, but terrible dated EverQuest class design and raiding mentality.
Yet it took over the entire world, again, and it wasn't just all old people with nostalgia despite my distaste for it personally. The mystique, word of mouth, and sheer presence everywhere in gaming corners drew in a ton of people.
I expect tons of people to hate the remaster for the reasons you describe, but I definitely think keeping it "pure" will attract people much like WoW classic (not THAT big of a scale, but successful for sure).
Another thing it nails which imo D3 failed at is the striking, cohesive art direction, especially the architecture
Exactly. The tone is just much better than D3 and every other ARPG I can think of. There really was reason for new people to try out WoW classic -- that feeling of a cohesive world was lost in newer versions, even if I think overall the design is much better after the expansions. D2 is similar -- there's a lot of jank that could be overhauled, but you're going to draw in the hardcore crowd as well as people who want to see what all of the fuss is about. The storytelling, music, and atmosphere are just awesome in D2, and the gameplay is a lot of fun if you can get over some of the dumb stuff (several of the dumb systems disappear entirely as the game goes on -- stamina is obsolete in like act 2, mana/life leech makes lots of the potion chugging go away).
There's really no game that does everything D2 does but better, because just about every ARPG skimps on the story really hard. PoE does the best job of recapturing the tone and feel, but has its own wide variety of impenetrable jank that turns off people in the same way.
Did it? It's been a while since I've seen the original cutscenes, I thought they went shot-for shot, to time it with the original voice/music track. There's one shot in the opening cinematic where Marius loses some of his frailty of mind, an expression that they didn't quite translate, but those are really nitpicks. As with the rest of the art, they are mostly faithful and did a great job overall
that said I fully realize that inventory, corpse runs, and mana suck ass in diablo 2
Hmm I am probably misremembering actually. My bad.
multiplayer without a teleport-to-[party member] is rough to go back to
Gotta get a monk or whatever set up to gamble for puzzle rings and start doing the level 5 thing, because bleh.
Unlike doing the season on Monk on PC, where I just couldn't get the proper pieces for Uliana's, and moved to Inna's early, I had trouble on Switch getting Inna's pieces, and actually had a proper Uli's setup. It was super effective! But also super squishy.
Still, once I did get the Inna's, even really crappy stuff, no ethereal, not terribly useful weapons, it was dramatically more damage, and exponentially more tanky, out of the gate, than a moderately decent Uli, with all the proper gear and cube stuff.
I do wish they could have left the feature of having all the Mystic Ally elements out, instead of just a temporary army of a single element. I guess it would have probably been too hard to balance.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Maybe.
Can't confirm or deny.
I’m glad they put in auto gold pickup. I would like to see stamina removed too.
It would be cool if they did an ability pass to make some stuff more usable. Too many abilities fall off in the harder difficulties, it’s a bummer.
XBL - Foreverender | 3DS FC - 1418 6696 1012 | Steam ID | LoL
That would be cool, so it probably won't happen
The D2 mod scene is active and very fun. ProjectDiablo 2 is worth a look. It is a rebalance with added end game. Then there is like the Median. Which is a complete overhaul with new skills, full new end game etc.
it seems like blizzard was rotten long before the activision merger anyway, given how a bunch of the named names are long time employees from early WoW
Rhyker also put out some self-admittedly baseless speculation that the release delay being blamed on "controller support" could be about teeing it up for console/PC release, after seeing the success of Genshin across platforms. So maybe we can hope.