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Monday 14 January, 2008
GAMEPLAY
I played online for this session, and I must admit, it has a completely different feel to it. I like it, but at the same time, it can be unsatisfying. I can't seem to duel anybody because everybody who still plays is a lot better than me. Also, the game is very unbalanced in terms of dueling. The game is really just all about "boss runs" where you and a team of players fight a boss and collect his loot, which doesn't really make that much sense, come to think of it. I mean, loot is first come first serve. So if you don't click fast enough, you might get nothing (except the experience). Another bad thing about multiplayer is the arguments. When under a different identity, people figure they're free to do/say whatever they want with no consequences. I've seen people get into some pretty nasty fights online before, and it's not pretty.
There are two types of multiplayer modes - closed battle.net and open battle.net. Closed battle.net is fun to a degree, but it can be repetitive, as I have mentioned before. Closed battle.net doesn't allow cheating in any form, but it does have more powerful items and uber diablo, a special super-boss. In open battle.net, anything goes. You can find some really crazy stuff on open battle.net. I just saw a guy who had a charm that created uber diablo whenever he killed an opponent. This version of the game can be fun...if you get into a game. In this mode, you aren't guaranteed to get into a game because of "hackers" who have set up their games in such a way that if you don't have a special patch (like an add-on program), you can't join. Hacked stuff is pretty awesome, though, and great for laughs.
DESIGN
There are a few major design characteristics that I see in Diablo II.
1. LOOT - The only way you get loot is to kill monsters, which each have only a small percentage chance of dropping a good item. What you get depends on some unknown combination of the level of the monster you killed (and there is no way of knowing what level a monster is during gameplay), your level, and whatever items you have that increase the percentage chance of finding such items. Personally, I don't like how this is set up. You never know what to expect because you can never know how the game works in this regard. All you know is that you need more levels and more items with +%magic find. In terms of loot and reward, I prefer games like World of Warcraft that have set rewards for certain quests and actual displays of monster stats. Either way, you would still have to play with another computer on so that you could refer to the item/monster database...
2. ITEMS - The items in the game are awesome. They have many categories. There are different levels of items. Basically, they come in mundane, magical, rare, crafted, set, unique, socketed, and ethereal, and that's only scraping the surface. This game has a huge assortment of items, but there is a drawback -- the game is heavily item-based. In other words, you are your equipment, which is painful because loot is random. So, if you're playing single player, you will be hard put to find anything that really suits your character...But when you do get that item you've been searching for, it's a party.
3. SKILLS - This is a pretty good system, but it is incomplete. There are many items that can enhance your skills beyond the maximum that your hero can train them. Other than that, they're pretty cool. Each class is fairly self-sufficient, with a broad range of skills that have amazing effects. Also, there are enough skills worth having for each class that it makes every class highly customizable.
4. COMBAT - Hectic, to say the least. You'll find yourself mashing the keyboard, using all the quick-key shortcuts (pressing one assigns a different skill to either your primary or secondary attack), and constantly, CONSTANTLY pressing the 1-4 keys. Those are your potions, which can heal your health or mana or both. The potions makes the game pretty unrealistic. I'll run through about 25-50 potions every game. Sometimes more. It feels like a bit of a cop-out on the designers' part to just put in a million potions, drinkable instantly, and at any time. Another thing I've noticed about this game is Attack Rating and Defense. What is that? I have no idea what it does, or how much more attack rating would help me hit what. The best the game comes up with is how likely it was for you to hit the last thing you were trying to hit. For example, if I was trying to hit Diablo, I can go back and check how likely it was for me to hit Diablo and how likely it was for Diablo to hit me. It just bothers me how little one gets to know about these things.
5. QUESTS/STORY - This is where the Diablo series really stands out for me. It's just an epic tale of one hero's battle against all the evil in the world. It's a very satisfying story that keeps me coming back. I mean, who doesn't like the sound of defeating the devil? Of course, doing the same quests three times (once for each difficulty) is tedious, but not without its benefits.
To sum it all up, this game would be a lot better if you could see the inner-workings of it all. Also, there are a lot of things that were implemented as a cheap way of adding to the game (like different difficulty settings). The game becomes repetitive, but before any of that becomes apparent, it is an unbelievably awesome game full of challenges with an engaging storyline. Overall, this is one of my favorite games.
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