[PainfullyNormal]

> "Maybe Diablo 2 difficulty and savageness belong to another era."

The popularity of the dark souls series would indicate otherwise. I feel the invisible hand of upper management here, using words like "casual" and "accessible" to justify the decision to make games "easier".

[boomboomsubban]

Dark Souls lacks permadeath. People are fine with hard but ultimately fair, die and learn the patterns then eventually win.

Diablo 2 could erase weeks of work by one monster spawning an unfair combination. Practically nobody is truly looking to bring that back. Though, people are fine with that work improving further runs with rogue-likes.

[tomc1985]

Have you even played Path of Exile? People LOVE that shit. Endgame bosses hit you for integer multiple of your HP, the only way you survive is through theorycrafting how to mitigate it (or be one of those losers who has to follow a guide)

Hell regular bosses LOVE massive damage spikes. I'm with you that it pisses me off and I since left for greener pastures (Grim Dawn)

[cmeacham98]

Path of Exile doesn't have perma-death. There is a hardcore league, but dying simply drops your character to the softcore league (rather than deleting it).

[nilaykumar]

This is incorrect. Dying drops your character to Standard league, which is a league that almost no one plays. It's mostly used for testing mechanics/interactions/bugs, etc. Hardcore PoE _is_ permadeath.

[tomc1985]

Standard isn't so much a 'league' as it is a dumping ground for all the stuff you did in past leagues

[setr]

Which is effectively the same for anyone playing hardcore, because otherwise what’s the point

[iamacyborg]

It’s not even just endgame bosses that can wreck your day in PoE, a few unlucky rolls and even the first boss you encounter is going to be a tough one to beat.

[ar_lan]

> Diablo 2 could erase weeks of work by one monster spawning an unfair combination.

Only if you play Hardcore mode, which is entirely optional.

[worker_person]

Hardcore mode adds huge amounts of fun to the experience. You feel so invested into what's going on, calculating how much risk you can safely manage, etc. Leaderboards are more interesting. Finding secondary gear for when your main eventually dies.

Dying because I was being stupid is just part of the fun. Re-role. Use some saved resources to skip the early grind.

Dying because server crashed, internet lagged for 6 seconds, etc. Those hurt. They are the vast majority of deaths.

[Eldandan]

Taught me not to open Evil Urns in the Crystalline Passage without proper preparation. >:(

[selbyk]

There is also an experience penalty on softcore in hell. 10% experience at lvl 98 is a few weeks of work for me.

[whiskyant]

Getting to level 99 or playing hardcore mode isn’t the objective for 99+% of players.

Diablo 2 is a fairly forgiving and moderately casual game imo. Most builds require only one skill for damage, and respeccing and how easy it is to get a character rushed means it’s easy to experiment or fix builds.

[seanp2k2]

Where is Jamella Editor Resurrected? D2 was a great into to memory and hex editing as a kid :)

Edit: wouldja look at that https://github.com/dschu012/d2s

Also fun: https://d2esr.fandom.com/wiki/Eastern_Sun_Rises_Wiki

[iamacyborg]

I played D2 pretty obsessively for a few years during my teens and never bothered going higher than 92, rolling new builds was always more fun than endless baal runs for me.

[thaumasiotes]

> Though, people are fine with that work improving further runs with rogue-likes.

Sad to see people contrasting Diablo II, an actual roguelike, with "rogue-likes".

[anthk]

Diablo II is not a roguelike. Diablo 1 it's based on a Roguelike, Moria, but with real time features and no permadeath.

[thaumasiotes]

> but with real time features and no permadeath

No permadeath? Compare the parent comment:

>>> Dark Souls lacks permadeath.

>>> Diablo 2 could erase weeks of work by one monster spawning an unfair combination.

But more than that, even Rogue itself didn't have permadeath if you didn't want it. My dad taught me to shut off the computer just as you died. Turn it back on and your save is preserved. Other roguelikes will just let you turn on a cheat option.

[anthk]

That's cheating. On Nethack and derivates, there's the wizard mode but just for exploring.

[thaumasiotes]

It's a one-player game. What does "cheating" mean?

[thriftwy]

Diablo II is a real-time game so it is, with all due respect, a rogue-like.

[TillE]

Diablo 1 is probably the only notable game you could legitimately describe as a real-time roguelike.

Diablo 2 drifts pretty far from the formula, to the extent that it largely defines the "action RPG" genre as we still know it.

[thriftwy]

Diablo 2 has hardcode mode which actually pushes it closer to roguelike than Diablo 1. I'm not sure what other differences do you have in mind.

[thaumasiotes]

I'll take your word for it; I'm not familiar with the differences between I and II.

[syngrog66]

Rogue-likes were turn/tick-based engines, played in a terminal, using the curses lib (or equiv). Diablo is no Rogue-like, good sir

my credentials: I'm the creator of what I think was the world's first commercial-only, traditional Rogue-like game (AFAIK)

[scambier]

Roguelikes, in the traditional sense, are definitely turn-based games.

[syngrog66]

bingo

Rogue and then its Rogue-like descendents: Hack, NetHack, Angband, Dwarf Fortress, DCSS etc