I just replayed diablo 2 a month ago, but since I don't have a windows computer, I went for the Path of Diablo[1] mod. This is an excellent mod that stays pretty close to the original experience, but makes the game a bit faster and more comfortable for the 2022 gamer.
Why is this guy torturing himself like this? He picks about the hardest way to do everything he does. He breaks his back trying to build his setup around Thunderbolt and fails, like it has failed him on his previous peripheral-sharing post. He uses a silly $150 workbench intended for component reviewers instead of a $50 mini-itx case. Instead of getting a slightly larger case he spends probably over a grand on a different GPU.
At this point, I don't know what to do with desktop machines. USB is a mess and Thunderbolt motherboards either don't support video or have stability issues.
You use the video output on your GPU like a sane person.
Streacom design at its finest.
The best Streacom can do is a Power Mac G5 with achondroplasia?
Yeah, the only real changes in the initial Resurrection release were the obvious graphical improvements, and some fairly minor quality-of-life improvements to the stash system.
The game changes in dimensions beyond synergies and quests. For instance, there are new runewords. D2 is the pinnacle ARPG with a die-hard community, so even minor changes to area levels, runewords, or skill attributes can open up all sorts of new possibilities.
I’d personally prefer if the gaming community wasn’t so monoculturally driven to a prescribed set of game attributes (e.g. end game content, DLC, battle royale, loot boxes, skins, sandbox, open world). D2 isn’t for everyone nor should it be :)
> "Maybe Diablo 2 difficulty and savageness belong to another era."
The popularity of the dark souls series would indicate otherwise. I feel the invisible hand of upper management here, using words like "casual" and "accessible" to justify the decision to make games "easier".
Dark Souls lacks permadeath. People are fine with hard but ultimately fair, die and learn the patterns then eventually win.
Diablo 2 could erase weeks of work by one monster spawning an unfair combination. Practically nobody is truly looking to bring that back. Though, people are fine with that work improving further runs with rogue-likes.
Have you even played Path of Exile? People LOVE that shit. Endgame bosses hit you for integer multiple of your HP, the only way you survive is through theorycrafting how to mitigate it (or be one of those losers who has to follow a guide)
Hell regular bosses LOVE massive damage spikes. I'm with you that it pisses me off and I since left for greener pastures (Grim Dawn)
Path of Exile doesn't have perma-death. There is a hardcore league, but dying simply drops your character to the softcore league (rather than deleting it).
This is incorrect. Dying drops your character to Standard league, which is a league that almost no one plays. It's mostly used for testing mechanics/interactions/bugs, etc. Hardcore PoE _is_ permadeath.
It’s not even just endgame bosses that can wreck your day in PoE, a few unlucky rolls and even the first boss you encounter is going to be a tough one to beat.
Hardcore mode adds huge amounts of fun to the experience. You feel so invested into what's going on, calculating how much risk you can safely manage, etc. Leaderboards are more interesting. Finding secondary gear for when your main eventually dies.
Dying because I was being stupid is just part of the fun. Re-role. Use some saved resources to skip the early grind.
Dying because server crashed, internet lagged for 6 seconds, etc. Those hurt. They are the vast majority of deaths.
Getting to level 99 or playing hardcore mode isn’t the objective for 99+% of players.
Diablo 2 is a fairly forgiving and moderately casual game imo. Most builds require only one skill for damage, and respeccing and how easy it is to get a character rushed means it’s easy to experiment or fix builds.
I played D2 pretty obsessively for a few years during my teens and never bothered going higher than 92, rolling new builds was always more fun than endless baal runs for me.
>>> Diablo 2 could erase weeks of work by one monster spawning an unfair combination.
But more than that, even Rogue itself didn't have permadeath if you didn't want it. My dad taught me to shut off the computer just as you died. Turn it back on and your save is preserved. Other roguelikes will just let you turn on a cheat option.
A lot of games list nvidia something or AMD something as "minimum" requirements, but I haven't had a dedicated video card in about 8 years and many games I want to play actually work just fine (I don't play many 3D shooters and the like obviously), and my laptop is five years old.
> It also made me reflect about Diablo III and how I felt about it. While it was a fun game, I found it too safe to be enjoyable. Players have separate loot, loots always matching their character class, items bound to the account, and no trading. People were siloed, making it a game played side by side, not together.
Very much agree with this. It is true for basically all games today. I remember Ultima Online in the early days where you could basically do anything. It just made every discovery and achievement more valuable and exciting. I miss the risk in today's games. Maybe I am old but games these days rarely can excite me at all while I still like to play old games from time to time.
Grim Dawn(kinda gritty) and Torchlight II(kinda cartoony) were also a good time for myself and friends. I only bother to play with friends though, I'm not really into singleplayer.
[1] https://pathofdiablo.com/