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Thursday 25 January, 2007
I have very mixed feelings about this game. On the one hand it has incredibly simplistic and repetitive gameplay that wouldn't interest me in other games. On the other hand, D2 has managed to keep me entertained off-and-on for years. I'm still working through how it succeeds where others of its kind fail, but there are several mechanics that I think are key.
The core mechanics of Diablo II are very simple. You run around and use your abilities on monsters, while trying to dodge the abilities they use - it's fairly fast-paced, but on a 2D field there isn't a lot of room to play in so these mechanics wouldn't stand on their own. The way the abilities in Diablo II are set up is what has always struck me - basically, every class gets a set of abilities with a wide range of usefulness, and a few classes get abilities that are retardedly overpowered in the context of the game.
For example, one of the most important mechanics of the game is hit points, and the toughest enemies in the game are almost all defined by their hit points. A chapter boss is different from a normal monster largely because he's harder to kill, plus a few special abilities and a bit of extra damage. However, the Sorceress class gets a spammable ability called Static Field which takes 1/3rd of the hitpoints from everything in the area (regardless of how many they have). This largely invalidates the hitpoint mechanic for that class, since you can drain massive amounts of HP chain-casting static field and then finish enemies off with...well... anything.
And that's fine. It's a PvE game, and a lot of the fun of PvE games is ripping through hordes of enemies without a lot of trouble. For the first two 'levels' of the game ('Normal' and 'Nightmare') this is pretty much what happens no matter who you play. Every enemy type has some special abilities that differentiate it from others, but it really doesn't matter at all. Even if you do get into trouble, you can always open a portal to return to town instantly, escaping whatever monsters were chasing you. This encourages a lot of carelessness on the early difficulties. What kinds of spells does this next enemy cast? How are 'Stygian Bone Dolls' different from 'Oblivion Knights'? Who cares? I'm killing everything instantly with whirlwind attacks and ridiculous 10,000 damage assassin combos. I think I'm good at this game!
When you get to the final difficulty level (aptly titled 'Hell'), the monsters get major damage buffs and a lot more abilities at their disposal, some of which absolutely destroy players. As an example - players in D2 tend to have low hit points and deal massive damage, while monsters tend to have high hitpoints and deal low damage. This is fine until you run across monsters with a curse called Iron Maiden that returns the damage you deal onto your own health total. This curse is famous for one-shotting players who use physical attacks, and as a melee character your only real option against Iron Maiden is to run in circles until it wears off, or just avoid the enemies that use it entirely. The monsters on hell difficulty have skills and immunities specifically designed such that they're almost impossible for certain classes to kill. Running into hordes of high-damage monsters that are immune to all of your attacks is commonplace towards the end of the game.
This, in turn, creates a really weird situation. By the time you get to Hell, the core gameplay itself has grown pretty stale, but its kept interesting by these stupidly overpowered abilities that insta-kill you if you're not constantly on your toes. This manages to keep the gameplay itself interesting, combined with some other factors which I'll describe in another entry.
It's an interesting lesson in game design. Imbalanced skills aren't necessarily bad for the game. If the overpowered skills were removed from Diablo II, I doubt nearly as many people would still be playing it or enjoying the gameplay. They really are what keeps it interesting.
Peace,
-Squidget
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