D3 is even worse than that. I was having so much trouble with A2 inferno that I went and bought fantastic gear from A4 inferno on the AH.
Normal mobs still pretty much 4-shot me. I have to kite EVERYTHING. I'm pretty sure I could have the best gear possible in the game and still die in less than 10 hits, less for elites/champions.
You could easily beast D2 on hell difficulty without resorting to that, google for "d2 build hell cheap"
See: fishymancer, summonmancer, lightning sorc, windy druid, any barb, etc.
And yes, in D3 you cannot progress past inferno a2 without ah gear or exploit farming (goblins)
The only reason people have finished inferno is because people exploited their way past Act 2-4 inferno. Blizzard closed those exploits, but the people in A4 inferno then did non-combative farming (chests+goblins) which produced the gear you see on the AH and allows nonexploiting people to progress to A4 inferno.
If that's not totally broken, I don't know what is.
Haha, I can understand that the intersection of hardcore Diablo 2 players and startup enthusiasts is small ( I'm well aware games are fun, but are a completely unproductive use of time :) ).
I guess this really isn't the proper place to discuss this topic, as the longevity of Diablo 2 can only really be understood by players who contribute to that longevity, ie put in many, many hours.
I think the reason is a combination of different aspects, with varying proportions of each for different people.
I would agree that one of those aspects is surmounting obstacles.
For me, and I would argue for the majority of hardcore Diablo players, the main aspect is market manipulation. It feels GOOD to buy cheap and sell, or find some inefficiency in the market and exploit and profit.
Diablo is essentially the free market at its best and worst, and I find it amazingly addicting to go from rags to riches, and the power that comes with that. If you are rich enough, you can essentially create a niche market by yourself.
There was this insanely rich guy on d2jsp that offered large amounts of currency for the most ridiculously bad items. This "make people do stuff for me" power is even apparent at lower levels of the heirarchy. I remember finally reaching "middle-class" status and going into trade games and offering somewhat valuable items to new players in exchange for them doing inane things like bringing me tedious (unnecessary) quest items, or answering trivia.
Other aspects are pride in skill builds (I want to try this ridiculous skill build and show it's viable), showing off items ( through faster PvE, more wins in PvP, etc )... many more probably.
That was what was great about Diablo 2. The storyline was fairly subtle, but the whole time I felt like I was really a hero struggling against the forces of evil, following this path of destruction and being scared of actually finding hat I was looking for.
Yes I read the D3 storyline, and I think you're a bit mistaken in how it happens.
The humans (nephalem) are offpsring between angels and demons, but their potential power was too much, so the Worldstone was used so that each new generation of humans would be progressively weaker. Since you killed the Worldstone in D2, and some time has passed, some humans have regained nephalem powers.
The question becomes: how does every minor character know what a nephalem is? how do they know it's all powerful? why does everyone have so much faith in me to defeat the evil that has pretty much been uncontested forever?
D3's story makes me feel like I'm Superman, born to save the world and everyone knows.
I'm kind of sad that this was downvoted. I thought on hacker news downvotes were used for factually incorrect or trolling posts, and I don't think this post is either.
Can I get an explanation for the downvotes at least?
Your post would be true if not for 2 huge problems.
1) You cannot get gear good enough for progressing through Act 2 Inferno from Act 1.
2) Items are actually absurdly cheap. It's the combat that is annoying. Other than the super geared barbs, every character past Act 3 Inferno is a wizard or demon hunter, whose every fight is a 10 minute kite or a reset.
Inferno isn't a challenge, its a stupid chore. Kiting is really easy and boring, and there are certain affix combinations a class will NEVER be able to kill. Kite and reset is how people play inferno. Or corpse hopping to kill the super easy bosses.
Yeah, I think D3 nailed the social aspect of leveling. I only had one friend playing the game, but I ended playing regularly with over 10 other people that I just met in game randomly.
If you like being ( in the story ) some unrivaled being that everyone flatters and looks up to and expects you to defeat all evil, you'll love it.
Voice acting was superb, though. I guess I just found Diablo 2's ominous "good luck hero, you're gonna need it" atmosphere more realistic when going against the embodiment of all evil.
As both a scientist and avid Diablo 2 player, this blog post is laughable in its superficiality and its claims.
TL;DR: Diablo 3 was WoWified: broke itemization and skill builds, and thus replayability.
In D3, finding a rare item is "ID, does it have those stats? Yes: keep, No: salvage". Brainless.
In D2, finding a rare item is "ID, weird combination of stats, but I don't think anyone wants this so I'll throw it away, go to d2jsp and find some absurdly rich player wanting that ridiculous combination and kicking yourself for vendoring it".
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Background: thousands of hours manually farming and botting Diablo 2 since vanilla release, equivalent time spent trading/on d2jsp (most of this will refer to 1.09 since that is most fresh in my mind). Also lvl 60 demon hunter in Diablo 3 Inferno Act 3.
Please don't argue that D2 was just as broken on release. The D3 team had YEARS of experience to look back on.
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1) D2 was all about plowing through monsters. If you were underleveled or undergeared, bosses should be somewhat difficult. If you were reasonably prepared, bosses should be fairly easy. If you even had decent gear, bosses should be a joke.
D3, on the other hand, treats everything like a WoW raid. Hours of grinding to prepare for a fight, min-maxing forcing everyone into a single class or build (energy armor wizard or PMS demon hunter?), and even then, the fights are difficult( vs champions/elites).
Why is this important? Because D2 was so "easy", many many skill builds were viable. Wanted to roll a melee sorc? Go ahead. Fishymancer ( = pet wd in d3)? Works. Throwing barb? Surprisingly strong. Thorns + fire aura pally? Too good.
The proliferation of crazy builds is important, as it makes a MUCH larger proportion of items valuable. This will tie in with the next point.
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2) D3 itemization is broken. First, there are very, very few item stats that are important. Weapon DPS, main stat, vitality, resist all. Maybe atk speed, crit, crit dmg, move speed. Everything else is garbage. Health globe radius, seriously?
What made many D2 builds viable was the much larger variety of item effects, as well as lack of dependence on stats. Life tap wands made smiters useful, enigma was good for everyone, infinity runeward allowed lightning sorcs and javazons to fight lightning immune, etc.
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3) Rare items. The above 2 problems, when taken together, kill the D3 end-game. D2 was all about making a MF build, getting some money, then making a bunch of crazy characters, either min-maxing MF or PVP or Baal runs or something, but there was a ton of variety in what you could do. End game economy revolved around rare items.
In D3, finding a rare item is "ID, does it have those stats? Yes: keep, No: salvage". Brainless.
In D2, finding a rare item is "ID, weird combination of stats, but I don't think anyone wants this so I'll throw it away, go to d2jsp and find some absurdly rich player wanting that ridiculous combination and kicking yourself for vendoring it". This means that botting was difficult, because the really big $$ items are ones you wouldn't even recognize, and stash size was a limitation.
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Anyways, that's why I stopped playing D3. I really don't think they can fix these problems without very large patches, which seems unlikely coming from actiblizzard.
It is actually fun from 1 to 60 if you avoid the AH (though near the end of Hell you might need to). Replayability is totally down from Diablo 2 though.