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If you enjoy the topic, try to take the time to read "Stay Awhile and Listen" by David L. Craddock ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07ZQQRWS9?notRedirectToSD... ). I was shocked to learn how little the dev team was financially rewarded (besides the owners).
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This is interesting to me, because I always figured the Diablo series was prized for its moment-to-moment gameplay, rather than for its story or cinematics.
Blizzard cinematics have always set a high bar. The WoW expansion teasers are always phenomenal.
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Couldn't disagree more. Played all of them, and the story in D4 is fantastic, not to mention the amazing cinematics. Well worth the asking price.
A game without actually fighting Diablo, that looks like an endless zone grind, based on what I saw on multiple Twitch streams. No thanks.
My favourite story of Diablo's development (as relayed by David Brevik in the Diablo Postmortem - see below) is the part where Diablo was made real-time. He passionately championed that it should be more like Rogue or Moria purely turn-based and permadeath. That was until he implemented real-time movement in an afternoon and attacked a skeleton. This was a directive from Blizzard, and it effectively created the ARPG…
I have no clue why, but the Diablo style dungeon-crawler ARPGs are literally the only subgenre of game that I have not found a single game from which I like. I keep trying examples because it's such a strange (and popular) hole in my tastes. Games I've tried: - Diablo - Diablo II - Nox - Dungeon Siege - Divinity - A few others I'm probably forgetting.
Diablo 3 (after all the changes of its first year) also plays very smoothly and is much easier to get into D2.
There are other titles too but they're mostly similar to the ones you've already disliked. Maybe it's just not your genre? No biggie
It was a different time: “Condor plans to spend one year in the development of Diablo. Personnel will consist of: one designer, one chief programmer, 2 junior programmer, 2 art director/artists, 1 illustrator/sculptor, 3 pixel artists, and 1 sound FX person” So, 11 people for a year for Diablo. Meanwhile Diablo 4 took 300+ people 6+ years. So over 150x the cost, not accounting for the fact that game developers are pa…
Yet I have to say this: Diablo was more fun. Diablo 2 is pretty great. My only complaints about it surround harder difficulties. Those of us with accessibility issues (like me with a gimped hand) found hell to be super challenging. Diablo 3 sucked when it launched, however, right now, it is absolutely amazing. Blizzard has absolute gold with the tiered difficulty/rift/season design. Unsure why they didn't improve upo…
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Not a player of it myself, but Path of Exile was pretty popular with my Diablo liking friends during the in between years of Diablo releases.
Diablo and PoE differ in tone and gameplay. One is darker and more story/world focused, which is what people tend to love about it, while the other is about management of extreme complexity. Path of Exile (and by extension the upcoming path of exile 2) is all about sinking thousands of hours into understanding game mechanics. The level of depth in that game is unmatched while the story is a complete clusterfuck. For…
But yeah it gets immensely complicated in the endgame. I've been playing for about a year now and am barely just starting to understand it.
That said, it's still a lot of fun. It took me a while to get over the frustration but once I did, it became one of my all time favorite ARPGs... and games, period.
It's totally free too. You only pay for cosmetics and optional extra bank (stash) space. A really fair monetization model that doesn't sacrifice the player experience, so on that front I totally support what they're hilding. (They are, however, owned by Tencent now sadly.)
An underrated choice of the original diablo is that it would only show you a subset of story quests and boss monsters in a single play-through. A few (like the butcher) would always show up, but for most others there'd be multiple options for which story quest would be in the game. A lot of games since include every quest in every playthrough (or change it based on what choices you make), and games like the Witcher 3…
But honestly, its a bit of a catch-22. No one wants to "roll a bad playthrough" and devs don't want to work on content that only a subset of players will be able to experience.
It was a different time: “Condor plans to spend one year in the development of Diablo. Personnel will consist of: one designer, one chief programmer, 2 junior programmer, 2 art director/artists, 1 illustrator/sculptor, 3 pixel artists, and 1 sound FX person” So, 11 people for a year for Diablo. Meanwhile Diablo 4 took 300+ people 6+ years. So over 150x the cost, not accounting for the fact that game developers are pa…
Yet I have to say this: Diablo was more fun. Diablo 2 is pretty great. My only complaints about it surround harder difficulties. Those of us with accessibility issues (like me with a gimped hand) found hell to be super challenging. Diablo 3 sucked when it launched, however, right now, it is absolutely amazing. Blizzard has absolute gold with the tiered difficulty/rift/season design. Unsure why they didn't improve upo…
Diablo 4 is unbelievable imo. Easily the pickup where Diablo 2 left off. It’s super complex while being simple. Really good game!