Missunderstanding - What is actually "The Authentic Diablo 2 Experience"?

General Discussion
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hello reader, i saw so many controverse discussions about the archaic game mechanics that are obviously frustrating alot people - here is my opinion:

what is the original or authentic diablo 2 experience?
back in the days there was so much stuff about this game that was just very annoying and now it seems that its missunderstood as “authentic”.
discouraging people to play and farm together because somewhat slower and/or ranged players will never get the good drops is just what the game ever was - is that authentic though? definitely NOT.
imagine hosting a game for a relaxed playthrough on hell, you hope for nice players to join that dont just want to rush and grab everything they can. sometimes you are lucky and have really joyful hours - maybe even get a new friend for your list to enjoy hundreds of more hours in the upcoming ladders. very authentic.

my point should be clear, authentic doesnt mean keeping everything like it was because im a lazy but greedy “developer” (sorry blizzard, but that is simply exactly what this remaster right now looks for me), pimping the graphics and taking 40bucks again for a 20years old game. there are even spam bots in the chat like back in the old days. THAT IS NOT AUTHENTIC, THAT IS JUST BULLSHIT!
authentic are these moments when u can enjoy the game between moments of total frustration and anger about doing the 1000th pit run alone because u dont want to play with public players or about botter/hackers/dupers and spambots (and hell yeah, diablo 2 can be incredibly enjoyable).

a remaster is defined by keeping the game original - but that is really no barrier to get rid of all these things that were annoying from the first moments untill now, tho ofcourse some people wanna complain that this is part of the game - just a shitty one.

this goes @blizzard: open your eyes and see how you can really enhance the game to bring the REAL authentic diablo 2 experience, while keeping the game very original - its not that hard if u put the care that it deserves into it.

Add: to “shorten” this post, i took the loot system as the major example for everything that is wrong with that game - there is alot more that has nothing to do with authenticity, its just crippling D2R.

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They have to be really very careful what they touch. Maybe they should leave D2R as is, no more changes, and then develop “D2RR” where they make balancing changes, resets of skills, larger personal inventory, many more stash tabs, personal loot option for public games, perhaps even a new act :slight_smile:

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Stuff like more stash tabs - sure, good quality of life change that we need.

Changing core game mechanics like loot distribution - no, that would suck and make the game easier.

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i dont agree, it just needs some creativity. add personal loot while removing bonus from player count could be an option - or, my personal favourite, simply force a roll for all kind of high tier loot (surely both options cause problems with mf obviously, stronger chars with low mf increase kill speed while being less rewarded - how to even involve mf into a rolling system. still nothing that cant be solved). just an example how to encourage co-op in the competitive ladder, there are plenty options.

EDIT: yea, touch core mechanics is a tough step for sure - but i see so many good solutions that could seriously work and enhance or at least get the best out of the diablo experience, while keeping the ladder and other sensitive aspects intact - damn i wish i was a D2R lead developer :smiley:

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The problem here is that you don’t want authentic experience. You want good experience. Authentic experience does not automatically assume good experience. And D2R is actually very authentic indeed, with swap item scams, chat scam spam, stupid inconvenient lobby, etc.

I would argue that the devs did an amazing job bringing a truly authentic experience back. The question you should be asking is: Do we really need this authentic experience again in 2021?

I, for example, don’t care. I have seen all possible dupe/glitch bugs, scams, PK/loot ninjas and got so used to it that it does not bother me one bit. I take it as part of what Diablo 2 is as a game.

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An interesting topic that I have thought about a lot when WoW Classic came out. And many thoughts translate very well to Diablo.

There is one thing that people need to realize. “Frustration” isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But I hear you screaming already. So let me clarify.

By “frustration” I don’t mean the berserker rage that makes one throw their mouse straight through their monitor. That is just too much. But there needs to be something that serves as a punishment for making mistakes. If we don’t fear the punishment anymore, we start to play reckless. We don’t care anymore. We lose that sense of danger.

Example: If we would not respawn back at the city without our equipment after dying, but rather on the last position we were that has currently no enemies within a certain range, in other words: A safe location, and with our Items on us, we can just jump back into battle without much frustration.
But if that would happen, we would no longer fear death as much. We would just run in again and not learn. We would not adapt and just throw ourselves at the enemy until it works. And with our Equipment on us, it usually works, because everytime we run in, we kill a few enemies until none are left. Respawning becomes a viable tactic and dying not much of a punishment. But if we know we will have to run back from the city and then try to get to our corpse before we can effectively fight again, we want to prevent that. We try not to die. And similar things are true for other game mechanics.

My favorite topic in this regard is personal loot. Because it reminds me of the “common goods game”. Those poeple that loot everything and share nothing, even though they know that the sorceress might want that Cathan’s staff and they themself don’t need it, are outing themselves as selfish. On the other hand, that guy that DOES pick up that staff and gives it to a sorceress, is showing that he does care about other players. This is a good reason to invest some effort into playing with him again and returning the favor. This creates a community. A reason to talk to other players. A reason to bond with them and remember them. Personal Loot will take away from that. It makes everything more “fair” (at least if you’d ask Harvey “Two Face” Dent) but it takes away from player interaction. The selfish people now have a legitimate claim to the Item. Personal Loot takes away from the opportunity to show yourself to be selfish or a team player and therefore from opportunities to build a community.

That’s why I think personal loot is a bad Idea. I think we should try to build connections with other gamers and find hunting partners and trading partners in them while locking the selfish ones out. Let them play with each other and have THEIR way of playing, while us team players are playing this game more cooperatively.

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This is an excellent summary.

I have read a lot of discussions here, and one thing that grabs my attention is how people perceive the game. Very few actually think about the game as a whole when they want improvements. People usually want some immediately beneficial aspect, without thinking about the potential effects on the larger scale.

For me personally, what makes Diablo 2 the game I love, is the certain roughness around the edges, certain imbalance and unusual mechanics. Diablo 2 reminds me of a music band that is very young and full of ideas, recording their first album. Its raw, uncut, but it has a soul, it doesnt have good production, but music on it is interesting. As the band gets more popular, the sound gets more refined, songs become more streamlined, and the album is overall very polished… But it starts missing this “funness”, this daring attitude, soul of the early albums.

I think that it is extremely difficult to capture the “soul” of a game, and what makes it what it is. I myself would sometimes ponder and think “gee, I wonder if we could make melee asn not total shit again…” or “gee, I wonder if we could nerf elementals for sorc, so that lobbies would stop being 95% sorc characters”… But then, what if this affects D2 as a game we all love? :slight_smile:

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hmm, you both have your points…a good experience is indeed what i want. and i have no problem with edges, 99% of these soft-washed games nowadays cannot satisfy me at all.
i love diablo 2 and i wanna see it become glorious once again - im just full of doubts if this will work in 2021+ with the current build.

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Most of the complaints about the loot system is people regarding the game as just joining in multiplayers without trying to play as a group. If you do that, then you are just in for the XP and gold and maybe some loots but if you’re with some people who are stupidly selfish then you can’t complain. This game can’t be judged simply by looking at one feature or another without thinking about the community aspect. If you want to hunt for loot, then try to build a group with some people and share it. If you’re willing to play multiplayer this isn’t your nowadays fast food online experience where you just join a game and get rewards just spamming some buttons.

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You can play HC if you want to get your fear of dying thrills. It’s already in the game.

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True. But that is maybe already a little too extreme, especially when you are constantly at risk of dying because of some technical difficulties.

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For someone like me, who really just wants the same experience, but prettier, D2R is almost there, I would change just few little things like:

  • I find font lackluster in places and the game should have the option to make it even bigger (some ui elements like skills could be bigger too).
  • new location of menu bar is less convenient when you have muscle memory, we should have the option to leave it as it was
  • pentagrams in menu, you might find them silly but they do have their charm
  • teleporting could be a bit faster… I know I can put the game on ssd but its not like its throwing terrabytes of data, right? Overall performance should be far less demanding
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It is hard knowing what to touch or not… I like the extra stash space, but I dislike that you can now respec. Rather than having to play through to level 30 in ridiculous specs to not waste points in wrong skills, you can now just pick a cookie cutter spec and respec later. To test, I used to play each class through normal without picking any skills at all, to be able to backup the offline savegame and test out different specs ;D

It’s impossible to recreate the original experience. Back then the game was new, there was not much of a community online and you tested, theorycrafted and created your own specs. I guess now most people are just checking online for a good one. A lot of the replayability came from having to start over to try and find a better spec.

I typically just play solo, so I don’t have an opinion of personal loot or not. But I assume at least now I can play online without getting toons deleted if I don’t play them in 90 days. No point in playing hardcore offline where I can backup the savegame, but annoying to lose my toons online too.

I’ve played D2 a ton… But only with gear I found myself and specs I created myself, and I never made it past level ~80 and never managed to make myself a build to solo hell actV after they upped the difficulty, until I found the skelemancer… But having lots of gear to find I don’t have and having challenges still in the game is what keeps me coming back.

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Dont worry changes will come , keeping the authentic experience was the selling point to get ppl , the game wont hold by today stanards, and the forums are filled with small minded dinosaurs who like old ppl afraid to make changes, The devs already sent surveys asking for changes ( dinos ignore that point like it didnt happened) 70-85% of ppl in those surveys ask for changes that those vocal dinos battle ( again they try to make it like we are the minority), Devs said they will continue to support the game (again they dont even know what that means since they played the same abandoned game 20 years)
If you speak against the game you are new player, i played the game when i was 16, back then it was good but my interest in d2 later in the years came with mods that fixed the game and made it more modern, what i want is an official bliz mod and they can also introduce it in a d2rplus experience even tho i dont think dinos diserve it anymore since they are vocal and rude and they dont want their fun they want to ruin your fun , but i hope they get it

There are 2 routes you can go in this game , either a cash grab b4 d4 then abandon it and modders keep it alive again for 20 years (median xl is already out and gain popularity and it shouldnt) Or Support it with changes , find ways as a company to make money even and devs can keep their jobs, forum moderators can keep their jobs, old d2 vanilla was a really small community, other games that standed for 20 years or more have bigger communities, plus most of us (either they want to accept it or not) who played the game as kids and kept a hype through the years have been played modded .

Now the dinos will attack us and bite , but lets all w8 either next blizcon or a year when they will announce the first changes and the form of them , and we will have the last laugh, and Dont feed the dinos

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For a real authentic experience we need to make cows great again, bring back cow and trade channels. Also builds prior to 1.10 need to be buffed back to its former glory, especially physical builds but also FO and Nova sorc.

Also make it again so that you only need to be in the same area to receive EXP, this was soooo much better.

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Who cares about personal loot , when most of us ask for changes , we ask for charm inventory, maybe a skill buff so another build can be viable, maybe an new endgame goal like ubbers (pd2 map system was nice smthing like that) , adjust some runewords maybe or add new middle and early runewords ,
For me i dont care about ploot but i would love to use /players 2-8 command online , not cause suddently i will be drown in jah’s and ber’s for the difficulty alone and maybe the slight chance to get smthing better, also b4 you battle that doing solo p8 at hell means you already dont need anything , you cant go even p3 undergear just to get some more loot

Why ploot is such a topic that make all changes look bad makes me mad

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What do you have against in keeping this mode as it is and they bring a new experience in a d2rplus mode , will it hurt you?

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The authentic is the Progress System. Each time u play u have progress. When u want to be so strong like the srongest party member u have to reach their game-experience. Without it (around months or years playing d2) u shouldn’t excpect that u are fast so strong like them.

New Players without d2 knowledge plays in nightmare a long time till they discover how to optimize their gameplay.

And yes, for to be rich / buy the high-end equip u need to invest much time and do many many runs. It’s not done in a week. Not even when u playing 31, because in d2 it’s not raining items. We talk about month till years to have all thegood stuff u see in youtube videos.

When u are to weak (or without the knowledge how to farm with low budget) on hell go a step back and play on nm.

D2 is not done in a week. Not done in a month. Of course, today there are enough experienced players who do it rly fast. But i would bet, that most of them played the old d2 some years before. And that they invest very much time in d2r till now.

So u see, d2 is not braindead easy like d3. That is what we like, the old- (but gold) school progress and the item-hunt. :metal:t4:

Short:
U want items? Play solo.
U want much exp? Play in a group.

Just don’t expect that u will get both (much exp & items) and all will be okay.

Edit:
Another authentic point is to,decide what u want. Do u want a strong ranged char who kill many monsters rly fast but like u said - ranged chars has a lesser chance to grab the dropped items, or do u want to play a melee char, which has bettet chance to grab items but a much lesser killing speed.

Same with mf and power.
More mf but less power.
Or
More power but less mf.

And so on.

At least, that is the goal, u have from all of it enough. But till u reached the point, that is the game. The progress item hunt with meaningfull decisions.

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Define easy? D2 is easy to beat , kill baal and just takes forever and trades to kill baal even easier, D3 is easier to get gear, but some builds require skill coordination and they are hard to play or even master and greater rifts above 131 require skill. I beaten d2 hell baal solo in 10 days without trades with a sorceress, yeah it takes me 75 secs to kill him but after anddariel runs mephisto runs i can make it 20 sec , maybe a trade (even tho i like getting my own staff) I play both d2 and d3 but i am not mindless fan boy of d2, d2 is not hard, its actuallyy easy, d2 is endless farm to maybe get an upgrade hard

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Go try ubers. And with it i mean the full process. Farming keys,farming organs and last kill the ubers. When u got all of it by urself u could go to do pvp.

To kill baal solo on hell is not bad, but there are bigger goals as this.

And yes, comparing d2 with other games maybe it isn’t a hard game (but to understand the whole synergies of stats, skills,items, runes etc. / item drop chances / brain-map ways / and so on it is a long way). To doing ubers as a smiter is not hard too. But comparing with mushroom-colourfull d3 it still is. dIII is easy enough for braindeads. Just same (g)rifts and bountys with raining items from the sky. Rly boring!

Maybe u are right that u need a lil bit skill to farm the gr 131+ but i don’t like to play that colourfull game anymore so i can’t say. But the last times i played it was rly ez. And d2r is a way more complex at all.

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