a necromancer in the flayer jungle (hell difficulty) with maxed corpse explosion, amp damage and a skeletal army is a terrifying typhoon of blood. when a single flayer dies, in the next five seconds they ALL die in a chain reaction of exploding viscera and squeaks of agony.
it’s shocking how addicted i am to this game still. what is wrong with me?
You know, there’s help for people like you. And when you find that help, please pm me… I could use the help too.
(Oh God, I love my little Sorceress)
Ah, the sweet Bowazon. I’m amazed at how much ass she’s kicking, especially when she’s hardly put any skill points into anything really. I was able to get through Nightmare pretty easily without even touching the fire section, but now that she’s made it to hell, those fire exploding arrows sure have helped. Friggin’ stupid ghosts. And cold immunes. Damn them. Damn them all to hell…oh…yeah… :roll:
OK, I guess I’ve been living in a cave these last years, but what’s the appeal to the Diablo games? I’ve never ever played one second of them, but I know people swear by them like a religion. I never gave them a shot because the idea of clicking my mouse once for each attack sounded like it would break my finger.
Are they really that much fun? What’s the draw? Does a certain type of gamer only need apply (seems doubtful considering the 20 jillion copies sold)?
You don’t need to click once for each attack, FYI. Click and hold.
Damn, now I’m getting the urge to reinstall.
Yes, it’s that fun.
The draw (for me, at least) is finally coming across that sweet, sweet piece of equipment that you’ve been longing for that suddenly makes your character able to kick ass and take names twice as fast as before.
Yup. Good times, good times.
Well, click and hold if you just want to regular attack over and over again.
For a sorc or assassin(any class that uses a lot of different skills), it can get pretty click-happy.
The best part of the game is the synergy when your golem, merc, and his merc get high level Concentration from a Paladin… Sweet goodness.
Act II sucks, though. Crucial to have a higher level friend speed you along.
People are addicted to Diablo 2 for different reasons. Some of the draw is that even though there’s only 7 classes, there are actually many, many ways to build each class’s skills. So you could spend several months exploring how to build optimal characters easily. Then add in the fact that there is a tremendous amount of really interesting gear in the game. Then add in the fact that combining the gear and classes in different ways leads to synergistic improvements in your character (like the first time someone discovered that knockback with a bowazon allowed her to spray enemy hordes forever). Then add in the “just one more” factor. Then add in the fact that each new patch actually is a completely different game than before because the skills and classes have changed and there are new items. Then add in the fact that you don’t necessarily have to min-max your characters to have fun in the game (e.g. MongoJerry’s silly builds that actually beat 1.10 hell difficulty) … and I haven’t even touched on players who are fans of player vs. player.
And then you can do it all over again in hardcore mode, where dying is permanent and strategies have to be adjusted accordingly.
Suddenly three years have gone by.
Mainly Diablo 2 is addictive because there is just so much crap in the game that it all interacts synergistically in sometimes unpredictable ways, as Blizzard’s constant attempts at play-balancing the game have shown.
my latest joy was putting the honor runeword into a 5 socket war pike and seeing my merc’s max damage rise to 2100. that’s sick. and it’s not even a godlike item. stuff like that (and the hilarity of being able to cast 20 corpse explosions in a row on flayer hordes) keeps me coming back. in fact, i daresay diablo 2 is responsible for my video game buying to fall from 20 a year to maybe 3 or 4.
You have posited a fine question sir!
I think Diablo is that type of “you get it or you just do not” game, sort of like Thief. I played through the first one in about 12 hours or so, and probably won’t ever play any Diablo game or its clones again. I didn’t get it after the first level.
Although it sounds like D2 added a bunch of stuff that somewhat changes the calculus, the “click on a monster until it’s dead and then find another monster to click on until it’s dead” gameplay got a little monotonous after 2 monsters.
Oh, that and the fact that the game advertised itself as having 70 different monster types, when in reality it was only seven different monster types who wore 10 different colors of outfits (“ho hum, another zombie; OH NO WAIT, THIS ONE’S SHIRT IS PURPLE, IT’S A WHOLE NEW MONSTER WHEE!!1”).
Old man is completely correct. There shouldn’t be anything fun about the game. Well… not after the first couple hours, anyways. It should seem horribly monotonous, and just all around lame. This is the position that people who don’t “get it” hold, and I really can’t argue against them. It’s a lame game.
And yet… me, most of my friends, and countless other people play the game incessantly. Julius does a pretty good job of explaining its appeal, but even his description doesn’t really cut it. It’s just FUN. Every small portion of it is boring, in isolation, but the whole package kicks ass. I’d suggest you try it… the game should be cheap by now, and you’ll know pretty quickly if you like it or not. On second thought, maybe you shouldn’t. It’s kind of a lose/lose situation. You either waste money on a lousy game or you lose years of your life to the incessant, but enjoyable clicking.
Click. Click. Click.
Oddly enough, just a couple of days ago I reinstalled Diablo II for the expressed purpose of playing co-op with the wife. We’ve enjoyed Dungeon Siege together and I thought she’d get a kick out of it. Big Mistake.
I saw her eyes glaze over with the Diablo II addiction. She’s hooked and her constant cries of anguish are now drawing me away from other adventures (like my recently purchased Battle Pack of Medieval Total War). Suddenly, I’m going through it with my 4th character, a trap Assassin. It’s still great after all these years.
I think a lot of its draw comes from Blizzard’s great job of shearing off everything but the basics. Point. Click. Point. Click. The computer takes care of the bookkeeping. It’s not unlike the little Penguin game that’s being passed around the group – except with a story, a list of items a mile long, and - ahem - the devil.
What’s more, Blizz did with Diablo/D2 what Verant did with EverQuest – they took a great idea from console text games (NetHack in the former case and MUDs in the latter), made it pretty, and then completely failed to screw up what made the originals fun in the first place.
It’s a dungeon crawl like nethack, with different classes, each with their own strategies, randomly-created dungeons, basic plot points the same but always different in the details each time you play.
I like the fact that I can jump in and play and not worry too much about dying, or running out of ammo, or quick-saving every five seconds. As mindless games go, Diablo II is one of the best!
Pffft – only 4 characters? Wuss!
I’m about to play it for the first time.
I played AoK MP for the first time the other night as well.
It’s a week of firsts! Tomorrow is my first haircut in eight months.
I’m about to play it for the first time.
I played AoK MP for the first time the other night as well.
It’s a week of firsts! Tomorrow is my first haircut in eight months.
Might want to wait until after that haircut to start playing Diablo 2, if you plan to actually be at the appointment. :-)
As a single player game, Diablo 2 is pretty boring, which is an odd thing to admit, because I’ve spent more time with D2 multiplayer in the last few months (first with the QT3 Battle.net group and now with Jon and Sven with the Nezeramontias mod) than any other game I have ever played.
Normal mode is a cakewalk. It will never force you to make interesting character focus decisions - you can pretty much just spray skill points wherever you like and one or two points in any damage dealing skill will wipe out most enemies. Laughable gear is godly in Normal mode. It is just incredibly simple that gives Diablo 2 the illusion of really being a boring game, because immune monsters and elemental resistance penalties are not yet in effect and have not yet stressed to the breaking point your character choices or your equipment.
The real game is in Nightmare and Hell mode. Normal is an extended tutorial for these, but because of the way people play single player games, they never really try to continue into nightmare once they’ve beaten Baal. I certainly felt, in single player, that Nightmare would just be playing the same game again, which is just completely untrue.
Playing in Nightmare single player is untenable for the beginning player. It assumes a focused character design and some great equipment. The first is plausible (although you probably need to be really familiar with the game in multiplayer to make a good solo character for nightmare and hell) but the way drops work in Diablo 2 basically precludes the latter. Essentially, most characters on Battle.net get their killer equipment by playing in high volume player 8 games where the rate of rare and unique drops are exponentially increased. They also get cast off equipment from higher level friends. You can play in players 8 games single player and get this sort of equipment, but I don’t think there are many advanced players of D2 working over the single player game anymore, and your character would have to be godly to be able to handle Nightmare or Hell mode in single player with players set to 8. As an aside, the lack of decent drops in single player games robs Diablo 2 of a lot of its appeal: the thrill of an amazing item dropping from a monster that will make your character a lot less vulnerable is probably the most charming aspect of D2. Let aside the fact that no single player will ever complete a set or a rune word.
Nightmare and Hell modes really show Diablo 2 to be a team game at heart: with the amount of monster running around with resistances and the immense damage being dealt all over the place, every character (with the exception of a tri-focused, heavily twinked sorceress) is going to run up against entire packs of monsters that they are essentially powerless against. There aren’t enough skill points to make it plausible to deal with all possible combination of immunities. You need team members to make sure you’re not constantly running up against a wall, unable to advance. Also, considering the advantages in loot and xp of playing in high player volume games, it is pretty clear that Blizzard meant Diablo 2 to be mainly an online cooperative game.
All of this combines to make Diablo 2 just an immense game (even more incredible with the 1.10 patch), but I can see why people who have only played it single player would consider it to be boring. They are never seeing the core game and they are never being challenged. And then if they do decide to try Nightmare they end up getting obliterated almost immediately. All I can say to the “Diablo 2 is boring” crowd is that they should really do a multiplayer session sometime - D2 is at its worst as a single player game, but maybe the ultimate game as soon as you get yourself a decent group together.
What a terrific paean, not just to Diablo, but to gaming in general. Perfect tone, perfect description of much of my life. Great post, made my day! :D
That’s pretty funny… I might have to see if I can find this thing on a bargain rack somewheres, just to see what the fuss is about. Probably will hate it though, cause I don’t do multiplayer…
I couldn’t agree more…Diabo truly shines in multiplayer mode, with the camaraderie of team mates, the insane onslaught of enemies, and the benefit of decent drops. Advance to Nightmare as soon as possible for great mindless fun.