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D2R looks better than 4. Discuss.

Immortal looks like a shit sandwich.

Saw the trailer with the archer character, and it reminded me alot about POE. Seems like they have taken some lessons from that game.

I will try out both. But the darker story and setting in D1 and D2 will always appeal more to me than D3.

Very excited about D2R. Not at all excited about D4.

D4 "looks" better than D2R but it's impossible to say at this point if it plays better or worse.

what the fuck does this even mean

I mean sure, we can't say for certain that D4 won't somehow be better than what is still the best game in the genre.

Have you looked at the D2 4k press kit stuff?

D4 and D2 are a spit apart and we know what we're getting with D2 sooooooo

No I haven't but static images are only part of the story. Resurrection is keeping the underlying 25 FPS engine from D2 and keeping the exact same animations (you can toggle between the legacy sprite mode and updated 3D models at will) so it's never going to look as good in motion as D3 or D4.

To be clear, the 25 FPS cycle is more of a behind the scenes thing tied to the mechanics at this point. Graphically the game can run at 60 or higher, and while I don't think they've changed any animations, they've added more frames to them to make it look smoother.

We have video of Diablo 4 and D2R at max framerates for each. Yes, the D2 animations are Old World so to speak, but sometimes that old pasta sauce is better than the shit at your local pizza joint.

We’ll see.

To be clear, I think all of us would kill for D4 to be better.

This conversation is about two separate things. I know D2R will be an amazing nostalgia trip, tech limitations or not. At the same time I really want D4 to be better, like Schild says.

These things are not mutually exclusive.

It’s kinda two separate things, but really it’s about how by announcing D2r a lot of us suddenly care quite a bit less about D4. Insert meme of couple with the guy turning to look at the other woman walking by.

I'll play both, if only to see if I still have the reflexes to do the Sorceress teleport hydra spam 20 years later.

Except that the other woman walking by is an ex we left, uh, 15-20 years ago.

But you parted on pretty good terms and she somehow looks even better now than 20 years ago.

Blizzard fouled up the Warcraft 3 remaster so I'm going to reserve a LOT of judgement on how they are going to remaster Diablo 2.

It would be fun watching everything dropping dead from my Sorceress lightning spam again if they get it right. IF.

Vicarious Visions is working on this one, and they just did the well received Tony Hawk remake which is a lot harder to get right than Diablo.

A care a lot about D2r and D4. I care more about D4 only because I want to see the genre get better/updated.

I think D2r is going to kick ass.

I do not think D4 is going to be amazing long term because Blizzard seems to run away from complexity in any fashion.

I was in the beta test for immortal. I don't think you are giving it enough credit. It was fun, good tablet/phone controls and I had a blast with it. It felt like diablo every step of the test.

Like you, I was incredibly skeptical of it, but was won over quickly. Admittedly the battlepass was only running the FTP element and the storyline wasn't the whole game, but I had fun with it.

I will reserve judgement on D2R. I didn't refund WC3R as self-punishment for believing in the current iteration of Blizzard. I know it's a different team, but it really is the same message they proposed with WC3R. I will treat it like immortal and be pleasantly surprised if they get it right.

D4 - I just don't care enough yet. I also don't think that the current Blizzard is innovative enough to make it work.

I don't want to think about how much I played D2 and I'm not excited about it being remade. I realise I'm probably an exception here, but I played D3 (late) and thought it was more fun as an appropriate, modern take on the ARPG genre. Story was god awful though.

I'm also wondering whether they'll be making the remake based on the latest patch? I think it was 1.10 that pretty fundamentally changed how the game's skill system worked. The animations also look a bit janky to me - not sure if that's from D2R or a faithful recreation of D2.

Since D3, I want all ARPGs to have Adventure mode as an option so I don't have to level 2nd/3rd/4th chars via Story mode and some sort of end game.  I especially am not keen on returning to D2 Normal/Nightmare/Hell story progression (I assume that is not changing, but I'm not sure).  Everything else about D2R is making me smile though.

the fun thing about the diablo 2 remaster is that i played the original d2 as a kid and haven't actually seen it in a while and watching that video is like what my brain wants to remember the graphics as. if i were to go look at the actual original d2 i'd be like "ahh holy shit was it really like this"

D2R is better than perfect.

I remember how good it felt when I treated myself to an Eizo CRT and upped the screen size.
Is it really that many years ago?

The first PC upgrade I ever did was buying a Voodoo 3 GPU to play Diablo 2.

bought the same item for the same game and Baldur's Gate 2, but of course Diablo 2 was the main reason.

Praying 4 is good as I skipped 3 altogether. Had a feeling it was hype and it seems I was right.

D3 is a better game than 80% of the drek out there, but it could have been (should have been) A LOT better.

Again a bit off topic, but I just watched a video of the Diablo 2 remake and when the music started it sent a chill right down my spine. Not many games have done that recently.

D2R release date September 23, 2021.

three Diablo 4 lead whoevers got spontaneously released from blizzard

"Diablo 4 game director Luis Barriga, lead designer Jesse McCree, and World of Warcraft designer Jonathan LeCraft were let go from Blizzard on Wednesday"

The game got cosby suite'd

I'm going to still snag it, all problems with the company aside. I have a sneaking suspicion this will be the last thing of importance from Blizzard; everything else will collapse into a series of half-releases. I just don't see them being able to right the ship after this in any meaningful fashion.

D2R that is, not D4 which will disappint. I want to be wrong.

I can't wait until this turns into WC3 reforged, electric bugaloo.

They recently announced that they're removing TCP/IP multiplayer, which effectively kills modded multiplayer entirely. I had been pretty hopeful, but now I am a little worried.

To be clear that’s peer-to-peer multiplayer. Almost all the headlines have it wrong since the dedicated server multiplayer is “TCP/IP multiplayer” too.

Right, that's just the term they used in the original game. Basically its battle.net or nothing for multiplayer now, which means your online characters can only be played online.

+1 and platform if you bought into this.

+1 PS5 (i know, i know)

it's gonna be fuckin great it's not 1999 we don't need tcpip

Beta is active now. Watch a Twitch drops-enabled stream, link your accounts, and get a beta access key.

this runs like complete dogshit

Haven’t had any issues with it during either beta. Tried it on PS5 during open beta also and it ran fine there as well.

Blood Moor/Cold Plains lags to all shit.  It's almost unplayable.

it's your connection (and possibly theirs since they were forcing everyone online for the beta), rendakor I believe had some issues on day one but for a lot of us its been nothing but flawless

the single player alpha was absolutely silk

Den of Evil was fine so it might be just server being hammered.  I guess that zone is on a different machine maybe.

I don't -think- it's my connection, I connect to other online games without issue.

I only played for a bit, but yea it was really bad. I did not want to tarnish the game in my mind, so I just walked away and will come back for launch.

Got as far as Radament, thought i best stop there as my zons bow was at that stage where you plink away forever to kill stuff and only a farm/grind will help me through some of the upcoming harder bits and thats pointless in beta. Not sure its worth the full price, I had forgotten inven and ui was a bit clunky and stuff i take for granted in ARPGs was missing, but had preordered anyway

its simple! diablo 2 re will be the shit, now step off!

Or it'll be a rose colored glasses falling from the face moment as people smash into the grind of "I have to farm Mephisto HOW many times before I move into hell diff?!"

It's high.

It's very high.

Or filling your entire inventory with charms so that you don't have negative resists.  Or how people can tell tales of farming for a set in D2 for 3+ years and never getting the whole thing.  With an optimized magic find frozen orb sorceress that could do a meph/diablo/baal run in like a couple of minutes.  Or runes.  Dear god, the rune farming.

Hell I was nonplussed as I walked over gold and it didn't go into my pack.  Just imagining the QoL improvements we're all used to in games now, I think it's going to be something of a shock to people experiencing what was admittedly a gold standard 20+ years ago.

I think all of what you said is true, Soulflame.  On the other hand, in the back of my head, I'm already cutting the game a lot of slack because it's 20 years old.  The lighting/atmosphere of the maps... I had forgot how creepy/tense they were.  That has aged really well.

And at least part of me is hoping that, post release, they do some tweaking to make it less grindy.  Off the top of my head;
-Up the drop rate (leagues are gonna suck without this). 
-Up exp.
-Let runes of the same type stack. 
-Ditto for gems. 
-Do a little predicting of intended target if I don't click exactly on the mob. 
-Improve the max stats of the charms so not as many are needed in the backpack
-Do we really need immune mobs?
-Does hit rating have to suck so much?  This hasn't aged well at all.  Hate this fucking mechanic

Not just immune mobs, mobs that are immune to three fucking elements (lumping physical in fight me.)

They definitely could make the game a lot more 2020s friendly, but I haven't gotten the impression they were going to do that.

I'll be interested in seeing how people feel, though I'm definitely watching from the sidelines. Is Diablo 2R based on the latest verison of Lord of Destruction? There were big changes between D2 and LoD, and some pretty big changes in some of the patches, I think 1.10 was the biggest one.

Latest, includes LoD (which is when runes came in, if I'm not just making up memories.  D2:R has runes)

Not sure its very latest v1.14 (Uber levels/Den of Evil respec/Pandemonium event etc) tbh cant find anything about it either.

edit: might well be. here is a list from forums. "Endgame" events i will assume to be 1.12-1.14 additions.

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d3/t/every-change-in-d2r-so-far-more-coming-post-launch/42973

Auto Gold Pick-up

Advanced Stats Screen

Gamble Refresh + item no longer dissapears when buying mutliple of the same type.

Stash size increased to 10x10 + Added 3 more Shared Tabs.

Cow King Lock-out Removed

New upgraded Bnet system. (consoles need lobbies still)

No character expiration. (20 character limit *hopefully* won't be max on launch)

Ladder-Only Unique Items Unlocked for Single Player + Non-ladder

Ladder-Only Runewords + Cube Recipes Unlocked for Single Player + Non-ladder

"Endgame" Events Unlocked in Single Player + Non-ladder

Playable on Xbox, PS, Switch *with* cross-progression.

Global servers (don't have to switch servers to play with others)

More Details for Merc abilities

WSG and Ebug Removed (if these are changed there is going to be a huge list of everything they did)

Appearance of specific items now show on your character when equipped.

Character selection screen has ultra close-up of your character + a detailed back-drop of current Act.

Wide-screen support up to 19:9 (removal of black-bars while zoomed-in possible compromise)

More Accessibility options (controller support, change text size, colorblindness, etc)

TCP/IP removal (lame. maybe brought back in a future patch?)

More Changes likely coming post-launch.

It's not just the latest, they're patching all that shit into SP.

edit: which is in the middle of your post

I keep telling you bitches D2 RE > all, anyone that wants to hook up, DM me your bnet id.

Launching in about 8 hours.

(https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/We3Ar7kZV3DbRfqYek6u5V-970-80.jpg)

Still not launching for 8 hours from what I've heard, a hyuk hyuk hyuk.

Of course there's not enough server capacity at launch :facepalm:

Edit: and multiple character rollbacks...

Online servers got smashed, so I loaded up my old level 87 Barbarian with werewolf helm into single player, went into the highest difficulty and promptly got slaughtered as I'd forgotten how much button mashing is required :D

It seems to be a good remaster, and I love the fact that duplicate names are a thing, and that online characters are global across all 3 servers.

Im up to Kurast. Playing by muscle memory basically, its like slipping into an old comfy jumper, but its brand new. Even though ive put a gazillion hours into Grim Dawn, Torchlight, PoE, Van Helsing, D3, and Sacred since D2 I still love it and it still does certain things better than its successors.

Duriel on Normal first time with a zon and sorc was brutally tough. Zap Branigan suicide wave tough. Had to get my 20 pally who did it fairly easily solo and even then the 2p version of Duriel kicked us about for a bit.

All my online chars are gone. Had the druid to Pandemonium.  Went to open a ticket and no variation of "all my chars are gone" was available.  Are the people that design online ticketing systems just that fucking stupid, or is there some reason for not having ANY option that basically says, "Blizzard, you shit the bed"

EDIT: I see they are doing maintenance today, hopefully that is the issue.
EDIT 2: they are back now, hopefully if this happens to anyone else they'll come here as part of the "WTH?!".  Just log out and log back in (a bit of waiting may be required as well)