OpenXcom Forum
OpenXcom => Offtopic => Topic started by: Nikita_Sadkov on February 01, 2020, 11:06:18 pm
-
I'm not a huge fan of RTS games, but I liked WC2. I have skipped WC3, because of its early 3d graphics, so I had high hopes for the WC3 remaster, especially after the really good looking demo. And now it came out...
Just WTF?!!! Have Blizzard caught that Coronavirus at the infamous Honk Kong show, and it killed the whole team? Because it there is not other excuse to fail that badly. It must have been aliens kidnapping all programmers and artists, together with that early demo.
WC3 Reforged is just a badly reskinned Warcraft 3 mod, on the same engine, with just a bit higher poly models (closer to SC2). They haven't bothered even to rescale the UI for widescreen resolution. What was their SC2 team doing this whole time, after SC2 got released?
I cant believe AAA company can fsckup that badly and just kill their single goldmaking franchise. How can such mismanagement be even possible in theory? Is that the Westwood story repeating all again? What are they thinking?
-
Probably biggest mistake is treating that any thing that Blizz doing as THE Blizzard. Right now it have pass 4,700 employees (by wiki).
Probably is too big to maintain same quality everywhere. And it very possible that most of they most skilled programmers never ever touch this WC3R mess.
Funny will be if mobile Diablo will be in long run better than WC3R :D
-
Probably biggest mistake is treating that any thing that Blizz doing as THE Blizzard. Right now it have pass 4,700 employees (by wiki).
Probably is too big to maintain same quality everywhere. And it very possible that most of they most skilled programmers never ever touch this WC3R mess.
Funny will be if mobile Diablo will be in long run better than WC3R :D
Large number of employees means you can handle large projects, or have several smaller project, and there are more talents. So there is just no excuse they botched the remake that badly. And you must have a skilled team lead on any project. Compare with Square-Enix: they first outsourced FF7 remake to some inexperienced company, but looking at the results, scrapped it and decided to do it properly, instead of damaging the franchise.
And it wasn't that a hard or expensive of a project to start with: just update the graphics engine to run in HD, redesign GUI for it and port it to smartphones and consoles. Compared to the massive FF7 remake, which totally overhauled everything. I.e. two skilled programmers and a several QA people could have handled the technical parts of it.
It required some special talent to mismanage such an easy project, when everything was already in place. And then management just approved releasing it. Is that some case of industrial sabotage?
(https://i.imgur.com/Bj2w3fB.jpg)
-
But WC3R is not that bad, it big meh but not crap that current score should suggest. This is perfect storm of bad decisions. Each on it own would not cause this uproar. This score is not quality of this remaster but number of people who lost fath in Blizzard, probably this is one rare case where critics score is more accurate than user ones, it cant be 0.6/10 or something because it still have most of WC3 inside and this was great game.
Best lesson form this should be that you should not preorder games (that TB said years ago) and do not get hyped.
-
But WC3R is not that bad, it big meh but not crap that current score should suggest. This is perfect storm of bad decisions. Each on it own would not cause this uproar. This score is not quality of this remaster but number of people who lost fath in Blizzard, probably this is one rare case where critics score is more accurate than user ones, it cant be 0.6/10 or something because it still have most of WC3 inside and this was great game.
Best lesson form this should be that you should not preorder games (that TB said years ago) and do not get hyped.
It is worse than the original. They removed features and botched some existing features. It also runs much slower than the original, and crashes, while original Blizzard games were recognized for being very stable (I never had a single WC3, SC or Diablo 2 crash). Even graphics at some parts became worse, despite being of higher resolution. I.e. people doing it either didn't care, had no direction or had no idea what they were doing.
Here a guy complains they botched tilesets, which are now just some blurry mess of textures (the video is age restricted for some crazy reason):
-
Also, if you look at their original demo footage, they had some totally different version of the engine running with actually HD user interface, and different more crisp looking tilesets. What they actually released uses the same WC3 engine, with a lot of stuff, like water waves, being out of place, and the water itself using some crazy looking quickly put together shader.
-
Large number of employees means you can handle large projects, or have several smaller project, and there are more talents. So there is just no excuse they botched the remake that badly. And you must have a skilled team lead on any project.
Having worked at a large company, I can provide some insight. Most employees at large companies are too far removed from the final product. Their job performance isn't graded by how good or bad the company's products are. For instance in a big company there are teams of people whose task it is to cut costs. Ideally they are supposed to do this without impacting quality. But in reality they are only graded on how much cost did they remove. Someone else will be graded on quality. On big complex projects, it is really hard for upper management to tell how well the project is going. However it is easy to tell if a project is behind schedule or over budget. Thus all the pressure on the project lead is hit the dates and keep costs down. If the project lead sees the coming trainwreck, he hits the dates and cuts the costs and takes another open position in the company or elsewhere before project launch. He then blames the guy who took his old position when anyone complains about the crappy product the company just launched.
Sad but more true than most people realize. This is why sometimes the small companies can beat the big ones despite having far fewer resources.
-
tangentially related:
I think the programmers who wrote the toolset ought to have had a person or small committee that was exclusively responsible for daily code review
everyone passes in their code for the day and this person or group refactors it into something straightforwardly sensible. Then dishes it back out before the next day’s coding shenanigans …
-
Most employees at large companies are too far removed from the final product. Their job performance isn't graded by how good or bad the company's products are.
That is solved by giving part of wages in company's shares, which cannot be sold immediately (i.e. futures). Now suddenly every employee is incentivized in the long term success of the company. IIRC, original Blizzard did exactly that.
Anyway, I hope fans could fix all the issues and make it closer to the original demo. Given that all the tools are there, including crowdfunding.
-
Blizzard just isn't the company it used to be. I remember the big stink raised after Diablo 3 came out. D2 was such a great game and people were expecting everything D2 was plus much more. Turns out the division Blizzard North that created the Diablo series wasn't around for D3. Read the wikipedia article on Blizzard North for another reason why big companies fail.
Or TLDR: When morale drops, the best employees tend to leave first.
There are plenty of examples of this in this industry going all the way back to Atari. By the late 70's several years before ET: the Extra-Terrestrial disaster, some of their talent had already left, and ironically for this discussion, founded Activision. The Activision games in the early 80's were generally much better than the competing Atari games of the time even though they needed the Atari 2600 console to play.
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T37a8y5SRz8
He mention rumor that it is even not Blizzard "product" but outsourced one.
-
Blizzard just isn't the company it used to be.
Blizzard has been doing this crap almost since they became big. World of Warcraft's sad decline involving one blatant mistake after another for more than five expansions, pooling their money into the blatant League of Legends rip-off Heroes of the Storm, letting their popularity sink so low that they had to bank on a cheap card game to bring themselves back from the brink of oblivion, doing almost everything in their power to ruin Diablo 3. They've done plenty of things so right it's mind-boggling, and then ruined it by doing plenty of things so wrong it's mind-boggling.
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T37a8y5SRz8
He mention rumor that it is even not Blizzard "product" but outsourced one.
Blizzard of the old also outsourced that Warcraft Adventure game to the infamous Russian studio, which did CDI Zelda games before. When quality turned out to be subpar (although it was much better these CDI Zeldas), Blizzard just scrapped the almost completed project to avoid damaging the franchise. Then Blizzard also scrapped Starcraft based The Ghost adventure for the same reasons. And that was much poorer Blizzard, with no money to waste.
-
Ok. Blizzard has patched some of the issues and enabled refunds. Unfortunately the reboot of the franchise has fallen short, and could follow Command & Conquer's fate. And that is not because of outsourcing, but because their core team didn't care. As I understand the only thing that was outsourced were these nice detailed character models, which ended up being unused, due to the lack of the promised ingame cinematics, while remastered unit portraits got botched angles, so all portraits are looking improperly. For some stupid reason they re-recorded voices, and these came out of much worse than in the original. And original Blizzard voices talents were just common company employees. It is like everything was done by people without any enthusiasm or love for the game, and the new team included no people from the original team, who could have pointed out the mistakes.
Even fans made better "remastered" cutscenes:
-
Even fans made better "remastered" cutscenes:
Well that's good news, since according to the EULA anything the fans do belongs to Blizzard. If the fans get busy maybe they'll have the game fixed in a few years... ;) ... :'(
Sorry, sometimes when things are so bad, the only thing left is humor.
-
Probably best balanced summary of this blizz fail:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQq8aB77VCI
(and the mention that Blizz will have couple of NEW mobile games...)
-
Blizz will have couple of NEW mobile games...
Here is an idea for Blizzard's CEO autobiography's title "How to go from AAA to shovelware in a single year"
-
Step 0: Listen to the bean counters.
Step 1: Only invest time, money, and talent on the highest ROI project.
Step 2: Put good manager in project lead position because only management matters everything else is a commodity.
Step 3: Shift low cost entry level employees to the number 1 project to keep costs down and thus boost ROI.
Step 4: Cut as much as possible out of the development cycle to be able to launch soon as possible. Time is money.
Step 5: If project lead complains or pushes back, replace him. Only acceptable answer from him is: "Yes, we can do that."
Step 6: Accept no delays. Minimize testing as much as possible. Besides, the customers will find the bugs faster than we can and they work for free.
Step 7: Lay off as many employees as possible especially the high salary non upper management ones.
Step 8: Outsource everything else to low cost over seas contract houses. Have them managed by the few employees left that aren't working on the number 1 project.
Step 9: Collect bonus for job well done!
-
Step 2: Put good manager in project lead position because only management matters everything else is a commodity.
Step 3: Shift low cost entry level employees to the number 1 project to keep costs down and thus boost ROI.
It is surprising how Microsoft and Sony (not video games companies) manage to run several successful AAA projects at the same time, while game companies, like EA, Ubisoft and Activision-Blizzard fail.
I.e. Microsoft produced a lot of really good games, as well as remasters for Fable and the Age of Empires. And most Sony's games are really well polished. They are released when they are ready. For example, both Ico and Last Guardian were delayed for years, when it was found that current hardware was not powerful enough to run them smoothly. Ico was originally developed for PS1, while Last Guardian was PS3 project. Then Sony made perfect remastering of Shadow of Colossus. Recently Larian made a nice Baldur's Gate remaster, which required them to reverse engineer the executable, because source code was lost. Resident Evil remasters are great. Square-Enix over the years made numerous remasters, mostly fine, with the exception of Final Fantasy VI, which was totally botched, but the remaster of the flagship FF VII appears to be the best example of how AAA games remasters should be done.
BTW, EA decided to remaster the original Command & Conquer. It is still 2d, but the upscaled graphics looks fine and the developers are actually the original Westwood people.
-
Years ago Ford had an advertising slogan: "Quality is job one." Unfortunately too many large companies seem to treat this idea as: "Quality is only one job"
They would do better with refining the theme from the movie Field of Dreams: "If you build it, he will come."
Refined to a business perspective: If we build it well, the customers will come and buy it.
-
I think there's a 'third episode curse' on most games, not just Blizzard games. Master of Orion 1&2 - great, MOO3 - sucked big time. Panzer General 1&2 - ok. Number three bombed. UFO: Aftermath & Aftershock - good, Afterlight was shit. Need I go on?
-
I think there's a 'third episode curse' on most games, not just Blizzard games. Master of Orion 1&2 - great, MOO3 - sucked big time. Panzer General 1&2 - ok. Number three bombed. UFO: Aftermath & Aftershock - good, Afterlight was shit. Need I go on?
I think it would be cool if they update the graphics for the original XCOM, but without changing the rules too much. Unfortunately they wont be able to use OpenXCOM engine, since it is GPL. Same way EA was unable to use OpenRA engine. That is why I believe BSD license is a much better alternative for game engine reverse engineering works, since BSD code can be used by everyone without much restrictions, beside the need to credit developers. And BSD also gives chances the company hires developers accustomed with the code, or developers themselves could approach the company with proposition. So GPL is really self defeating here.
-
Dosbox is GPL https://sourceforge.net/p/dosbox/code-0/HEAD/tree/dosbox/trunk/COPYING
And its sell by Steam or GoG, this mean they could use OpenXcom in same way.
This could be similar to Id did and releasing source code of Q1 or Doom as GPL.
(And I would be honored if my code was in official release. Publishers! please choose OXCE :D )
-
Dosbox is GPL https://sourceforge.net/p/dosbox/code-0/HEAD/tree/dosbox/trunk/COPYING
And its sell by Steam or GoG, this mean they could use OpenXcom in same way.
This could be similar to Id did and releasing source code of Q1 or Doom as GPL.
(And I would be honored if my code was in official release. Publishers! please choose OXCE :D )
They will be forced to publish back all the changes, and they can't easily link GPL code with proprietary code. For example, EA has their proprietary Frostbite engine, and they can't really integrate any GPL code with it. Same with Unreal and Unity. That leaves only open source 3d engines, which are just a mess and fall behind from commercial engines. Ideally you want some team to secure funding and license, then integrate OpenXCOM with Unreal or Cryengine, with modern graphics pack and improved UI to play on smartphones/tablets, but without touching any game logic.
-
They will be forced to publish back all the changes, and they can't easily link GPL code with proprietary code. For example, EA has their proprietary Frostbite engine, and they can't really integrate any GPL code with it. Same with Unreal and Unity. That leaves only open source 3d engines, which are just a mess and fall behind from commercial engines. Ideally you want some team to secure funding and license, then integrate OpenXCOM with Unreal or Cryengine, with modern graphics pack and improved UI to play on smartphones/tablets, but without touching any game logic.
What is point adding 3D engine to it? This would need doping half of source code to make it work, especially everything that touch `Suface` or `SDL_Surface` classes. Probably easier would be write it from scratch.
Overall my idea was simply they drop current dos exe and dosbox and use OXC exe instead. They even could use it verbatim without changing any thing.
I do not expect they would plan do lot of work for OXC to even consider that pushing upstream would be business loss in any way. If they would want do something bigger, better would be do it from scratch.
-
What is point adding 3D engine to it? This would need doping half of source code to make it work, especially everything that touch `Suface` or `SDL_Surface` classes. Probably easier would be write it from scratch.
In good software graphics subsystem is decoupled from the rest of the code. So you can change graphics engine without much effort, or run a batch test suite. OXC has years of effort put into developing and debugging it. It is impossible to rewrite complex from scratch in short time with any amount of budget, since programming cannot be easily split between many developers, like you can split say graphic asset creation.
-
That's assuming OpenXcom is a "good software"...
-
That's assuming OpenXcom is a "good software"...
I doubt original DOS XCOM code would have won any software design prizes.
Anyway, returning to the topic. I though about making a custom WC3 map, inspired by this whole virus hype, where one teams plays survivors and another - virus carriers, who escaped containment. That subject offers a lot of game design possibilities. Unfortunately due to Blizzard's new license I cant do that.
-
Unfortunately due to Blizzard's new license I cant do that.
You could do it (if you can get the new map editor to work, that is), but Blizzard will own your work.
-
I doubt original DOS XCOM code would have won any software design prizes.
Oh I don't know, back in those days and earlier, game developers had to employ a lot of ingenius methods to fit as much content as they did into their games and still get them to run on those limited resource machines. As a player, I remember trying to free up as much memory as possible out of the lower 640K by shifting things into the upper memory (I only had 1MB total) and disabling every optional TSR in order to get some of those games to even run. Good luck trying to port openxcom to an early 1990's DOS computer. :P
-
You could do it (if you can get the new map editor to work, that is), but Blizzard will own your work.
Definitely not an objective truth, as it depends on local laws. For example in Germany this would got laughed out of court, as creative rights are non-transferable (as they damn should be, because you know, reality ensues).
-
I wouldn't worry to much about ownership, Blizzard is just one company. There are whole countries with the mindset: "All your (creative works) are belong to us." :P
-
I wouldn't worry to much about ownership, Blizzard is just one company. There are whole countries with the mindset: "All your (creative works) are belong to us." :P
When a huge multibillion company steals ideas and user maps made by kids something is really wrong :o
-
When a huge multibillion company steals ideas and user maps made by kids something is really wrong :o
Yes, the law, duh.
-
The rich and powerful make the laws. If those that make the laws aren't rich and powerful, they soon will be. In some countries, they hold political office directly such as emperors, kings, lords, dukes, and whatnot. In other countries, they have their servants (read politicians) hold the office for them. All political systems in reality boil down to this, despite what you may have learned in school. :o
PS I am not cynical that's just an unsubstantiated rumor! :P
-
The rich and powerful make the laws. If those that make the laws aren't rich and powerful, they soon will be. In some countries, they hold political office directly such as emperors, kings, lords, dukes, and whatnot. In other countries, they have their servants (read politicians) hold the office for them. All political systems in reality boil down to this, despite what you may have learned in school. :o
When governments set up taxes too high, like taking everything people make and turning population into slaves, such governments historically always failed and ceased to exist. The most recent example is USSR. People were stripped of rights and taken everything they made, therefore they had no incentive to make anything, yet sabotaged heavily any government effort. Same is happening with corporations, which don't respect their customers and employees. That is like a law of physics, which they should teach in management classes.
-
Same is happening with corporations, which don't respect their customers and employees.
They don't really respect their shareholders either, when the CEO and his/her cronies can get away with it at least. Employees probably have it worst with customers and shareholders on the same level. But with one crucial difference: It is relatively hard to screw over a few shareholders without screwing them all. The opposite is true for customers. Few care if a few customers get the shaft, but they can't screw all the customers for long. Eventually that screws the shareholders too, and they wake up and replace the CEO. The former CEO's cronies get weeded out too. No guarantee that their replacements will be any better but the odds get better the crappier they were. Kind of like weeding out rookies! But the bad news is that those bad apples will find their way into upper management at another corporation shortly.
-
They don't really respect their shareholders either
That is the main problem: lack of work ethics.
-
While searching for what games recently got remasters, stumbled upon the near perfect Quake 2 remaster. The level geometry is intact, but they added modern light system and material info for textures. They actually put a lot of effort into these textures, compared to the blurry mess of WC3 remaster, which turned out looking worse than the original low res textures. Apparently Blizzard is the only one company having management and art troubles.
-
First time I've seen a 3 page thread where all but 3 contributors are currently online. :)
-
The only good thing about the reforged (character models), was done by a Malaysian company Lemon Sky Studios, which apparently did cinematics for previous Blizzard games:
https://www.lemonskystudios.com/
Should have outsourced the whole remaster I guess.
I think the main mismanagement is that Activision tried to enforce single corporate culture onto all its sub-parts and just throwing people between departments at random, which naturally led to a disaster, with key professionals, like Metzen, being fired or leaving on their own. That problem seems to be here since the Mythical Man Month book, about the disaster at IBM, when they tried to speedup project development by throwing at it irrelevant people from different departments or just hired newbies, without any training and team building. It sometimes works with football teams, where they play a game with well defined rules, but fails bad for software and art projects.
The right solution would have been diversifying like Google, which created Alphabet super company to avoid mixing one brand with another, and to limit PR disaster to just one brand, in case some "google car" crashes into a wall. And to also have separate well trained teams on each project. Blizzard was known for PC strategies and RPGs with very good multiplayer, and their whole fan following was mostly PC gamers, so using the same brand to diversify into smartphone and console market was just retarded since the beginning. But then they used that brand to address their original fan base with irrelevant smartphone games. Even to non-business people it would have been obvious what could have happened. That means modern Blizzard management is either detached from reality, having some mass psychosis, or that is some sabotage from competitors, who bribed management into destroying the company (it is rumored that say Amiga was destroyed by Microsoft by bribing one manger).
-
In the meantime fans used advances in AI interpolation to produce actually good remaster of the classic Blizzard's game:
https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/47670-diablo-2-fan-remaster-upscale-project/
Guess the future is here! AI has finally surpassed human abilities :D
Activision-Blizzard themselves said they can't remaster Diablo II, because they have thrown the assets (including the source code) into garbage. What surprised me is that they openly admitted that, without understanding that it would be very insulting to fans. It is like taking an art piece in museum and tarnishing it on camera, and then asking "what is wrong with that?" No doubt a PR stunt, but not the one bringing you much love and respect.
(https://i.imgur.com/vvB7RCb.jpg)
-
Guess the future is here! AI has finally surpassed human abilities :D
Activision-Blizzard themselves said they can't remaster Diablo II, because they have thrown the assets (including the source code) into garbage.
Another proof that overblown copyrights are harmful and should be seriously reconsidered (especially the part about full ownership rights being transferable from author to any entity). Apparently IP holders, such as Blizzard (but this is by far not a singular example) cannot be trusted to safeguard cultural goods which they arrogantly took responsibility for. This act puts them in the same category (even if guilt is smaller) that Nazi book burners and Taliban buddha statue destroyers.
-
The corporations are fully responsible for
bribing lobbying the politicians for those overblown copyright laws. See below for plagiarized fair use excerpt from https://www.theiplawblog.com/2016/02/articles/copyright-law/disneys-influence-on-united-states-copyright-law/ (https://www.theiplawblog.com/2016/02/articles/copyright-law/disneys-influence-on-united-states-copyright-law/)
"So, how, you might wonder, have companies like The Walt Disney Company managed to maintain copyrights on certain creations for almost 100 years? In the case of the Walt Disney Company, the answer is simple. It is powerful enough that it actually changed United States copyright law before its rights were going to expire."
-
A situation where a movie studio shapes a large country's law is totally outside my Overton window. In other words, the idea seems too absurd and abstract to even consider, or have an opinion on.
-
This kind of thing isn't new. Ever hear of the East India Company? It "...was an English and later British joint-stock company. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with Mughal India and the East Indies, and later with Qing China. The company ended up seizing control of large parts of the Indian subcontinent, colonised parts of Southeast Asia, and colonised Hong Kong after a war with Qing China." Quote from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company)
Mickey Mouse hasn't gone quite so far, yet. :o
-
The corporations are fully responsible for bribing lobbying the politicians for those overblown copyright laws. See below for plagiarized fair use excerpt from https://www.theiplawblog.com/2016/02/articles/copyright-law/disneys-influence-on-united-states-copyright-law/ (https://www.theiplawblog.com/2016/02/articles/copyright-law/disneys-influence-on-united-states-copyright-law/)
"So, how, you might wonder, have companies like The Walt Disney Company managed to maintain copyrights on certain creations for almost 100 years? In the case of the Walt Disney Company, the answer is simple. It is powerful enough that it actually changed United States copyright law before its rights were going to expire."
Blizzard did the equivalent of Disney taking a single surviving reel tape of early Mickey Mouse cartoon and throwing it into garbage. Then taking say Star Wars an re-voicing all characters, replacing Wookiee and Ewoks with 3d models, and releasing it on a badly mastered blu-ray, which crashes after 10 minutes of playback. In addition adding a license clause that viewers submit right to all fanart and fan fiction. And when customers complained, accusing them of setting expectations too high. That is what Blizzard basically did.
-
At least Nightdive Studios put System Shock Remake back on rails. They actually scrapped their early work, because it was not up to the standards. That enraged fans and backers. But they apparently found better a funding and now it looks much better than their original prototype.
-
Some fans remade the 1997 Fallout in Bethesda's 3d engine. I remember playing the original Fallout and it was more like reading Pick Your Own Adventure book, with occasional hex based battles, which offered little tactical choice. I'm not a huge RPG fan or a book worm, so I found it a bit boring. Then there was Fallout Tactics, it had little dialogue, but an expanded battle system, with vehicles, like tanks, and maps becoming actually 3d. It also had cool large robot bosses at later stages, and was generally a really difficult, even given its linear nature. Like XCOM Apocalypse it offered realtime mode as an additional challenge
Then Bathesda turned it all into a Morrowind game, but with reduced amount of text. I personally found it a bit better than the original 1997 Fallout, since RPGs naturally call for 1st person experience, but fans accused it of misunderstanding the original Fallout's narrative and retrofuturism in general. More recently Bathesda tried to diversify into MMORPGs with that online Fallout game, but without much QA it resulted into a buggy mess, although still less embarrassing than Blizzard's failure. Apparently now they have patched it into a playable state, early adopters were basically free beta testers :D
Anyway, with fanbase dedication now you can have a near perfect Fallout experience :D
-
I wouldn't worry to much about ownership, Blizzard is just one company. There are whole countries with the mindset: "All your (creative works) are belong to us." :P
What matters more is who backs them up. The USA government is often on the fence with these things, but they've been known to side with broken license agreements over common sense, previously existing laws, their own constitution, etc. If your own country won't defend you from a large corporation, then you have no defense against that corporation.
-
Modern Blizzard apparently also lost grasp of what Diablo is. Since in Diablo III they tried to implement item trading between players. The whole item trading idea is absolutely incompatible with the roguelike genre, which builds completely around player solving problem with limited resources, given randomly on each playthrough. Taken to absurdity, roguelikes are similar to point and click adventure games, but with randomly generated item puzzles and RPG elements, where player develops character around what is available. Diablo also added real-time action element, to make it appealing to wider audience. Beside that, roguelikes have repeating tropes, like cursed items and scrolls. Original Diablo omitted that "cursed" element, despite it being very important to the genre, because it forces player to consider trade offs and taking risks, instead of just identifying each item (identify scrolls are rare and valuable by design). But I guess you cant expect Bobby Kotick to play Nethack or even original Diablo.
-
Diablo 2 had quite a bit of item trading between players at least in the multiplayer games. Diablo 3 was done by a different team since the Blizzard North guys were gone. They tried changing how item trading was done with Diablo 3 which the player base didn't like. They also didn't care for the change in artistic style in D3 from 1 and 2. I have D1 and D2 and their expansions, but never got D3 as the playerbase was complaining loudly about it when it came out. The reason item trading was important in D2 was that many of the good and great items were only useful for a few character class builds. Also the player's item stash was quite small compared to the number of good finds a player came across during a game. Most of which his character couldn't use. It was a big problem for those that only played offline single player until item stash programs came along. They allowed a player to keep those finds for future character builds in future games.
Nethack is different in that there are much fewer great items, although there are more item types. And those great items are usable by most or all character classes. IIRC only a few of the named weapons cared about the character's alignment of which there were only 3 types. Rogue, the original, while relatively simple in comparison to Nethack and the Diablo games, might be the hardest one to win. I don't think I ever won it; it didn't help that I never figured out how to use the scare monster scroll correctly.
As for point and click adventure games, I generally much preferred the earlier text adventure games like the ones from Infocom.
West of House
You are standing in an open field west
of a white house, with a boarded front
door.
There is a small mailbox here.
>_
(from Zork 1)
-
The reason item trading was important in D2 was that many of the good and great items were only useful for a few character class builds. Also the player's item stash was quite small compared to the number of good finds a player came across during a game. Most of which his character couldn't use.
Well these items are meant for ingame trade with AI merchants, or used in cooperative multiplayer. Then again, even the AI merchant idea is broken, if it allows player to trigger the merchant into restocking with a new set of artifacts. Classical roguelikes usually have traders with non-restockable inventories, which player could have tried to rob. There was a Diablo II clone called Broken Land, which restocked merchants on reload, allowing player to buy rare runes to upgrade equipment. The game is so broken and quirky, it was never completed by any one until recently. Now it is played by speedrunners exploiting the glitch to max out everything at the beginning. No challenge in there.
As for point and click adventure games, I generally much preferred the earlier text adventure games like the ones from Infocom.
These had the same room graph as Diablo, just in a text form. But yeah, it is easy to implement rather complex stuff with pure text.
-
Modern Blizzard apparently also lost grasp of what Diablo is. Since in Diablo III they tried to implement item trading between players. The whole item trading idea is absolutely incompatible with the roguelike genre, which builds completely around player solving problem with limited resources, given randomly on each playthrough. Taken to absurdity, roguelikes are similar to point and click adventure games, but with randomly generated item puzzles and RPG elements, where player develops character around what is available. Diablo also added real-time action element, to make it appealing to wider audience.
But you do not understand D2 on BN, this was sole reason why they try implemented AH in D3. To any way play competitive with other you would need trade with others to get very rare runes of uniques to make your build work. Fun fact was that base currency was ring Sone of Jordan, it was in so demanded it was most duped item in game, because of that Blizz make some game mechanics that selling it to vendor could trigger spawn of UberDiablo.
In D3 blizz wanted to prevent most of this exploit and cheaters and create AH (D2 have it too but its unofficial).
Blizz succeeded in that, even too much because trading become so easy that is more effective to play AH than hardest difficulty.
Only real solution was simply ban trading all together, this mean now you can do less in that aspect in D3 than in D2.
-
Petroglyph guys managed to recover lost data used for original Command & Conquer movies. At first they believed everything was lost, and nobody at EA knew what happened to original data and it was believed they just thrown it into a dumpster. But it was actually stored, and some detective work was required to tack it down. Guess when companies become as big as EA they lose grasp as what is happening inside. Hope EA also have stored the source material for other classic games, and it wont get damaged by fire or flood.
-
Blizz succeeded in that, even too much because trading become so easy that is more effective to play AH than hardest difficulty.
They failed because they made drop rates way too high. Drop rates in Diablo 3, last I checked, are high enough for a solo player to get high-end gear without really grinding much. Diablo 2 drops were orders of magnitude lower. If you didn't have a high-MF character that could run bosses really fast, and you couldn't trade with anyone else who could, then you had to make do with a lot of cheap drops and maybe one or two good items if you were lucky. But there was a huge scaling of item qualities in both games, enabling such rarity to work. Diablo 3 devs shot themselves in the foot making drops so high. Also, Diablo 3 itemization is exceedingly boring compared to Diablo 2 itemization, and there's virtually no theorycrafting to do at all. Reaper of Souls improved theorycrafting significantly, but it's still absolute trash compared to Diablo 2.
-
Diablo 2 was great but a bit too grindy. Balance wise, power leveling, speed running, endless boss running shouldn't have been as effective as it was. Full clear needed to be buffed a bit. It might have been as simple as using a different drop algorithm for better drops for killing the last monster and popping the last chest between waypoints along with lowering the odds even more for top tier drops from repeat boss killing. Also quests should have changed from game to game like in Diablo 1 but from a much larger pool of quest options to help replayability. Top tier items could have been balanced better as a few of those items showed up as the best choice in too many character builds. There were also a couple of OP runeword items. But these are minor nitpicks compared to how good the rest of the game was. I only played self found single player with gomule to stash finds. I think I've come across only about 80% of the items.
-
They failed because they made drop rates way too high. Drop rates in Diablo 3, last I checked, are high enough for a solo player to get high-end gear without really grinding much. Diablo 2 drops were orders of magnitude lower. If you didn't have a high-MF character that could run bosses really fast, and you couldn't trade with anyone else who could, then you had to make do with a lot of cheap drops and maybe one or two good items if you were lucky. But there was a huge scaling of item qualities in both games, enabling such rarity to work. Diablo 3 devs shot themselves in the foot making drops so high. Also, Diablo 3 itemization is exceedingly boring compared to Diablo 2 itemization, and there's virtually no theorycrafting to do at all. Reaper of Souls improved theorycrafting significantly, but it's still absolute trash compared to Diablo 2.
a) Many people accused Blizzard that they LOWER drop rates in D3 because they tried "force" people to use AH. This mean dorp rates can be relative.
b) Drop are smart in D3, you do not get crap and items for other classes (one thing this that irritate me at first was that only last mob in champion pack drop loot).
c) True fail that Blizz did in D3 is not nerfig sets, right now you have 1000% damage bonuses as base line for main sets that make any other items combination obsolete.
d) If we would remove sets and use only legendaries then D3 could have more interesting selection of items because many change how you spells work, this mean if blizz at finally decide to nerf every set to ground then then D3 itemization will be 1000% more compelling :)
e) There is color shift in D3 compared to D2: D3 legendaries are D2 Rares, and Ancient & Primal Ancients are D3 Uniques. D3 Rares after 70lvl are vendor trash that is only used for mats (in basic D3 this was not always the case, some rares with 63ilvl was better than 60ilvl legendaries but people complain and blizz changed that).
-
Except for a couple of cases, sets were too weak in D2. That said having anything deliver 1000% damage bonus sounds OP. IMO, a top tier set should be the best choice for a particular build of a character class. But it shouldn't be the best or only build viable for that character class. There should be a dozen or so viable builds for a character class relying on different items and skills of which the set choice is only one build. I also think the best possible items should be randomly generated: magic, rare, and crafted. A unique should have fixed stats as it represents an item of lore. A magic item should be capable of being the best in a single attribute compared to any other item with that same attribute in the game. For example, if the best unique headgear item has +2 to all skills in addition to other attributes then it should be possible but low odds to find a simple magic headgear with +4 to all skills as its only magic attribute. A +3 to all skills magic headgear could have a second magic attribute of less than top tier value. A rare headgear with only 3 attributes could have +4 to all skills along with 2 lower tier attributes. A rare with 5 attributes wouldn't have any top tier attribute values. The player would have to choose between filling the head slot with 1 top tier attribute or 5 lesser tier attributes or something inbetween. Essentially choosing between quality vs quantity and where quantity isn't always the best choice. The reason the rare should have a chance to be to slightly better than a unique is simple: Why can't the player's character have a unique item named after him when his rare item is found a few hundred years later and his story has passed into legend? Isn't that where all the other uniques and sets come from; they do tend to be named after renowned people from the past. All this is based on a Diablo 2 perspective as I haven't played D3.
-
Except for a couple of cases, sets were too weak in D2. That said having anything deliver 1000% damage bonus sounds OP.
I bit miss represents ranges of bonuses in D3: https://us.diablo3.com/en/item/raekors-burden-Unique_Shoulder_Set_05_x1
1000% * 5500% * 5 for one hit :D
And this is not OP, simply when you get full set you skip multiple difficulty levels and continue paly on high difficulty.
Right now in D3 because of this power creep we have around base 20 "difficulty levels".
Aside from that it have up to 150 level of challenge in Greater Rifts that slowly scale exponentially.
If you trivialize one level you can always go up one in challenge.
This is way I said that other items become obsolete, even if it give you +500% damage, and it can be used only as support for main set.
On bright side of this, every class have 4 different sets plus each set can sometimes have some variations.
IMO, a top tier set should be the best choice for a particular build of a character class. But it shouldn't be the best or only build viable for that character class. There should be a dozen or so viable builds for a character class relying on different items and skills of which the set choice is only one build. I also think the best possible items should be randomly generated: magic, rare, and crafted. A unique should have fixed stats as it represents an item of lore. A magic item should be capable of being the best in a single attribute compared to any other item with that same attribute in the game. For example, if the best unique headgear item has +2 to all skills in addition to other attributes then it should be possible but low odds to find a simple magic headgear with +4 to all skills as its only magic attribute. A +3 to all skills magic headgear could have a second magic attribute of less than top tier value. A rare headgear with only 3 attributes could have +4 to all skills along with 2 lower tier attributes. A rare with 5 attributes wouldn't have any top tier attribute values. The player would have to choose between filling the head slot with 1 top tier attribute or 5 lesser tier attributes or something inbetween. Essentially choosing between quality vs quantity and where quantity isn't always the best choice. The reason the rare should have a chance to be to slightly better than a unique is simple: Why can't the player's character have a unique item named after him when his rare item is found a few hundred years later and his story has passed into legend? Isn't that where all the other uniques and sets come from; they do tend to be named after renowned people from the past. All this is based on a Diablo 2 perspective as I haven't played D3.
Overall they plan do something like this in D4, sets stop begin top tier and they will be only "introduction" level.
-
Diablo 2 was great but a bit too grindy. Balance wise, power leveling, speed running, endless boss running shouldn't have been as effective as it was. Full clear needed to be buffed a bit. It might have been as simple as using a different drop algorithm for better drops for killing the last monster and popping the last chest between waypoints along with lowering the odds even more for top tier drops from repeat boss killing. Also quests should have changed from game to game like in Diablo 1 but from a much larger pool of quest options to help replayability. Top tier items could have been balanced better as a few of those items showed up as the best choice in too many character builds. There were also a couple of OP runeword items. But these are minor nitpicks compared to how good the rest of the game was. I only played self found single player with gomule to stash finds. I think I've come across only about 80% of the items.
I wouldn't say the game was too grindy. The players chose to play it way beyond the content that it came with. It is to Blizzard North's credit that the post-game grind was as good as it was. What the game really needed was way more development on further story arcs, more quests, and other content. But it never got that and it did well with what little it had. Playing through normal difficulty wasn't much of a grind at all.
The drop balance needed work, but we would have been a lot better off if Blizzard North had made a Diablo 3 right then, complete with dupe-proof programming from the start, and built in the spirit of what Diablo 2 wanted to be. But they spent almost nothing on further development, and what we got was pretty decent for how much it cost.
The itemization needed a TON of work. Sets were trash, runewords were overpowered because they were cheap, class balance was always lacking, and barbarians were absolute trash in everything but pvp. That's all stuff that just takes time and experience to perfect. They spent like 2 years building the game, and maybe another 5 tweaking it down the road. What really saddens me is how new Blizzard has decided that fun and exciting itemization isn't worth the balance effort and instead goes for perfectly-balanced but extremely boring items, ignoring just how much of D2's arsenal already demonstrated that attributes don't have to be boring to be balanced. Sometimes you just have to make the cheaper goodies more niche. Take Andariel, for example. The boss can crush you with poison damage. Having Dracul's Grasp with Exile shield, Chains of Honor, and Vampire Gaze can see you making short work of her. But if you're poor you can wear a Venom Ward and get the job done. If you're really poor, you can just buy poison resist boots from Gheed or Elzix and then pop a poison resist potion. The game had so many ways to play it, and so many levels of gear, that there was always a way to get the job done. Having better items just made it easier.
In Diablo 3, the scaling is so absurd that you can start naked on expert difficulty and find the game slightly challenging, but then once you're wearing advanced sets with gems you're up to torment 10 like it's nothing. Forcing the player to try and set their own difficulty just removes all of the actual difficulty from the game. It's not at all like when I couldn't get into the Ancient Tunnels because Dark Elder and his minions had fanaticism and magic immunity. The game wasn't unplayable, but I had to make a choice: either find a clever way around the obstacle or go somewhere else. Now I went and whittled em down with a merc and off-skills because that's the kind of player I am, but I didn't need to get into Ancient Tunnels on hell difficulty. It sets a table for all players to compare themselves with others. Maybe you farm Eldritch the Rectifier on hell difficulty but your friend farms Uber Tristram. It's clear where you stand, and you know who to ask for tips. You can have a lot of fun getting over each hurdle. But not in Diablo 3. In Diablo 3, there's no sense of accomplishment, no real hurdles, and no way to rate your skill level.
-
In Diablo 3, the scaling is so absurd that you can start naked on expert difficulty and find the game slightly challenging, but then once you're wearing advanced sets with gems you're up to torment 10 like it's nothing. Forcing the player to try and set their own difficulty just removes all of the actual difficulty from the game.
But this is false, power curve is broken in D3 but this not mean there is no challenge in D3, simply put some difficulty ranges are useless because you nearly never play on them, if someone remove torments for 4 to 12 then probably 90% of players wound not notice. Remember that D3 endgame is in Greater Rifts that have 150 levels, and last one only couple people reach using bugs/exploits or "creative use of game mechanics". Biggest rift I reach was 100, and my gear was close to BiS.
-
The Diablo series had its origin in the early roguelikes Moria, Nethack and of course Rogue. I don't know if the Diablo developers had seen Omega by Laurence Brothers. Omega in turn was a significant influence on ADOM by Thomas Biskup. Omega came out in the mid to late 80's and I first come across it in college on one of the university's Unix mainframes. Omega didn't have character classes per se but instead had a relatively extensive guild and deity system that the player could choose from. The game also had multiple endings. The player started out as a level 1 nobody and by the end of the game could end up being the Duke of Rampart (the region's major town) or Leader of the Thieves Guild or High Priest of Odin, etc. There were something like 20 different titles the player could try to get his character's name on, many of them mutually exclusive. Kind of like a high score board but with 20 separate categories. There was a large countryside with various terrains which had multiple towns, caves/dungeons, temples, and other special places. Each guild/deity had a quest the player had to complete before the player could advance to the highest rank in the guild or religion. Like nethack, ADOM, and Rogue it is ASCII "graphics" although I think there is a tiled version out there. If you've never given these type of games a try because of lack of pretty graphics, no cool soundtrack, clunky UI, no mouse support, only runs on your grandmother's computer, etc, you really should try them for one reason: solid gameplay. It's literally the only feature they have going for them. If they were crap, nobody would hear about them 35 years later. Unfortunately, AAA game companies are very good at polishing turds of games with cool graphics and soundtracks. Or the promise of in the case of Warcraft Refunded. In earlier days, it was the cover art that lied about the game within. It's only after the gamer has spent his hard earned money on the game that he discovers after a couple of days that he bought a turd. Or worse, several months in the case of pre-orders.
The reason I bring this all up is that obscure relatively unknown gems like Omega (which I believe is open source) would be a good candidate for a remastering. So long as the gameplay is only balanced a bit and not redone or dumbed down.
-
Omega
Never heard about it before, but it looks cool. I will check it out.
Omega was authored by Laurence Brothers in the late 1980s. It was the first roguelike with a large countryside and extended plot development.
-
But this is false, power curve is broken in D3 but this not mean there is no challenge in D3,
Yeah, you're right. The game has difficulty. It's just that the difficulty it has isn't an experience. Granted, it's a heck of a lot more difficult to reach the top tier in Diablo 3 than in Diablo 2, but it's just a number. In Diablo 2 it's details. I remember when I used a teleport circlet to make my under-geared barbarian win a duel with an amazon shooting Buriza. I remember when I got my first 'Spirit' shield, and it enabled my paladin to get through Nightmare act 4 because it fixed my resistance hole without creating a new one. But in Diablo 3 my crusader just gets a new weapon with a higher DPS number, or a new wristband with a higher armor number. There are other numbers on the item, but they progress proportionally and effectively don't matter. The most interesting thing I saw in Diablo 3 was when I made a block build to go with Ivory Tower. I started the build only being able to get it through Torment 2, but when I finally gave up because it was boring, it was already competent in Torment 6. For those who don't play the game (and probably some who do), that's a damage and toughness increase of maybe 3x over. The attributes are incomprehensible and looking at the numbers is utterly meaningless. They even lie at times. An item can say it increases a number by 10%, and actually increase it by 45%. The game needs more items that are fun, less items that are just a number.
-
Yeah, you're right. The game has difficulty. It's just that the difficulty it has isn't an experience. Granted, it's a heck of a lot more difficult to reach the top tier in Diablo 3 than in Diablo 2, but it's just a number. In Diablo 2 it's details. I remember when I used a teleport circlet to make my under-geared barbarian win a duel with an amazon shooting Buriza. I remember when I got my first 'Spirit' shield, and it enabled my paladin to get through Nightmare act 4 because it fixed my resistance hole without creating a new one. But in Diablo 3 my crusader just gets a new weapon with a higher DPS number, or a new wristband with a higher armor number. There are other numbers on the item, but they progress proportionally and effectively don't matter. The most interesting thing I saw in Diablo 3 was when I made a block build to go with Ivory Tower. I started the build only being able to get it through Torment 2, but when I finally gave up because it was boring, it was already competent in Torment 6. For those who don't play the game (and probably some who do), that's a damage and toughness increase of maybe 3x over. The attributes are incomprehensible and looking at the numbers is utterly meaningless. They even lie at times. An item can say it increases a number by 10%, and actually increase it by 45%. The game needs more items that are fun, less items that are just a number.
D2 was a lot more unforgiving. I remember form my young years when changing difficulty was a "event". If you do not have caped resistances then you will be one hit by any mob (do you remember old good times when nightmare shops sells normal level items?).
This is big contrast to D3 where difficulty is simply choose based on effectivity (if you want challenge play over your standard level).
Probably D3 could benefic a lot if it would get backs some roughness from D2 because it was too much streamlined, but not too much because some elements from D2 was bad like useless talents (and whole trees. do you remember that sometimes was more beneficial to not spend your talent points until your each 30lvl?) and fully immune monsters.
-
...
do you remember that sometimes was more beneficial to not spend your talent points until your each 30lvl?
...
+1 to D2 instead of a knock against it because that sounds like an advanced or alternate strategy that wouldn't occur to a casual player. Many of the alternate viable builds depended heavily on finding the right items to make the build work. So it was sometimes better to wait until certain items were found and then spending the points to fit. But then respecing became a thing and saving points for allocating later wasn't as useful.
And IIRC, fully immune monsters on at most 3 out 6 damage types were only on the hardest difficulty. D2 probably could have been balanced a bit better for single player, since multiplayer shouldn't have a problem with this. But they called it Hell difficulty for a reason. :P
-
Yes it hell but it bad if only way to beat it is delete your character and start over.
btw I check my drive and I see that I still have my old D2 saves, and I did still have it.
Some are from 2006 and one from 2012, I probably check then if it still work, this was my "main", oldest character.
But not first, first one I played was in Internet Cafe, before I have PC. How much pocket money I spend there :)
-
In my youth, it was the pinball machines and then the early arcade games that took many of my quarters. Space Invaders, Asteroids, Pacman, Centipede to name a few. Arcades in the 80's were magical places for a kid. Similar to a Vegas casino for an adult.
-
Checked that Omega's source code. It has some interesting features, like when player digs too much ground the dungeon collapses, killing player, unless player has shadowform status. Diablo never had digging, because implementing digging requires more complex tiling and dungeon generation algorithms. Diablo also had no overworld, instead Diablo II broke game into chapters, each happening in a different biome. Omega also has hunger meter, requiring player to carry rations. That was the thing with some early commercial RPGs like Might & Magic, Realms of Arkania and Betrayal in Antara, where food was rather a gimmick. IIRC, D&D also had it, but all computer D&D games omitted it.
-
Food rations go at least all the way back to Rogue. In Rogue it was used to keep the player moving through the dungeons and facing the tougher monsters instead of leveling up on easier levels. Starvation was a serious risk in Rogue. Not so much in the games that followed such as Nethack. Players may not have liked the starvation mechanic, but it helped maintain game balance in Rogue. Without it, Rogue would have been much easier to win just by grinding earlier levels killing random spawns. Diablo 1 avoids this by not having random encounters or respawns, although players could start a new game with an existing character. Diablo 2 lets the player grind as much as he wants by respawning everything when the player reenters the game. As for random spawns, this mechanic prevents a player from retreating to a previously cleared level risk free to heal up or wait for blindness, confusion, etc to time out. In Diablo 2, if the player's character gets cursed, he could just step back into a cleared area and wait the 30 seconds or so for the curse to disperse.
-
Diablo 2 lets the player grind as much as he wants by respawning everything when the player reenters the game. As for random spawns, this mechanic prevents a player from retreating to a previously cleared level risk free to heal up or wait for blindness, confusion, etc to time out. In Diablo 2, if the player's character gets cursed, he could just step back into a cleared area and wait the 30 seconds or so for the curse to disperse.
Yeah. Diablo botched that basic concept. I remember playing Chocobo Dungeon, which is basically a solid Rogue clone with Final Fantasy characters. The game had no food, but instead of player spends too many time on the same level a ghost appears to chase the player. Ghost was basically a very powerful enemy, although it was possible it defeat it for some reason. IIRC, similar mechanics was used Lords of the Rings for GBA, where instead of ghost they had ring wraith. Surprisingly there were no full featured LoTR roguelike (beside these GBA games), despite the Tolkien's story naturally leaning towards being implemented as a cooperative roguelike.
-
D2 was a lot more unforgiving. I remember form my young years when changing difficulty was a "event". If you do not have caped resistances then you will be one hit by any mob (do you remember old good times when nightmare shops sells normal level items?).
This is big contrast to D3 where difficulty is simply choose based on effectivity (if you want challenge play over your standard level).
Probably D3 could benefic a lot if it would get backs some roughness from D2 because it was too much streamlined, but not too much because some elements from D2 was bad like useless talents (and whole trees. do you remember that sometimes was more beneficial to not spend your talent points until your each 30lvl?) and fully immune monsters.
Absolutely. D2 had some MAJOR problems that you really had to work to get around, and it wasn't fun to deal with those. D3 is WAY too streamlined though, to the point that D2 is far more fun to play, and I don't think D2 is really a very good game. It was great in a lot of ways but it made so many critical mistakes. It wouldn't have been that hard for Blizzard to get accustomed to their game and learn what's wrong with it, and make a truly better sequel. But when your sequel invents more problems than it fixes, and simultaneously ignores everything about the atmosphere that made the previous game fun, to the point that a game you spent a lot more money on, had a lot more wisdom when making it, had better technology, and it's a lot worse than before, that's sad.
-
Absolutely. D2 had some MAJOR problems that you really had to work to get around, and it wasn't fun to deal with those. D3 is WAY too streamlined though, to the point that D2 is far more fun to play, and I don't think D2 is really a very good game. It was great in a lot of ways but it made so many critical mistakes. It wouldn't have been that hard for Blizzard to get accustomed to their game and learn what's wrong with it, and make a truly better sequel. But when your sequel invents more problems than it fixes, and simultaneously ignores everything about the atmosphere that made the previous game fun, to the point that a game you spent a lot more money on, had a lot more wisdom when making it, had better technology, and it's a lot worse than before, that's sad.
D2 was just bigger D1 with more everything. Although it introduce hirelings (probably inspired by Nethack pets) and more RPG elements. I personally don't think RPG elements are the core feature or roguelikes and that important at all to the genre. Recently there were several rogue likes without experience based character development. And even back then before Diablo there was ToeJam & Earl, which had was in real time similarly to Diablo and even had coop multiplayer, and all the major roguelike elements like unidentified and cursed items. Recently it was remastered:
-
I personally don't think RPG elements are the core feature or roguelikes and that important at all to the genre.
Some people might call Diablo 2 a roguelike but that's not really what made it great to me, and I don't think it's what most people saw in it. There's plenty of people who are into roguelikes but plenty more who don't care or even hate roguelikes. Yet all of these people loved Diablo 2.
-
It has a lot of roguelike features and was inspired by roguelikes. But the biggest gameplay difference would be that it is not turn based. As for the sounds and graphics, that just means the player's imagination doesn't have to work as hard. Kind of like the difference between reading a good book vs seeing the movie made from that book.
-
It has a lot of roguelike features and was inspired by roguelikes. But the biggest gameplay difference would be that it is not turn based. As for the sounds and graphics, that just means the player's imagination doesn't have to work as hard. Kind of like the difference between reading a good book vs seeing the movie made from that book.
Yes but you don't have to hold it to those standards. Just because it was inspired by roguelikes or has roguelike elements doesn't mean that it should be a roguelike. When you judge a detail based upon how roguelike it is, you're ignoring how well it fits into the game. If upgrades to the game make it more or less roguelike, that's all fine and doesn't matter; the players can define it how they choose but what matters is a game should be good.
I judge the faults of Diablo 2 based on its own merits alone. It fails when I see a way it could have easily been better. Besides, the best games usually step freely outside of their own genre because the genre doesn't confine it, it only defines it, and only so in a transient manner.
-
Another classic game got remade - Resident Evil 3. Note how they re-imagined everything and used totally different engine, instead of just snapping a hastily made free 3d camera and a bunch of blurry textures onto the original. I think Blizzard should had done the same, instead of maintaining strict compatibility with the original (which had numerous issues). And adding the original game as a bonus. And it is not like Blizzard had no money - Warcraft the movie had a huge budget and was really good as far as video game based movies go. Maybe providing some standalone tool, so users could convert old maps to the new engine. Here is the comparison with the original:
-
+1 to D2 instead of a knock against it because that sounds like an advanced or alternate strategy that wouldn't occur to a casual player. Many of the alternate viable builds depended heavily on finding the right items to make the build work. So it was sometimes better to wait until certain items were found and then spending the points to fit. But then respecing became a thing and saving points for allocating later wasn't as useful.
And IIRC, fully immune monsters on at most 3 out 6 damage types were only on the hardest difficulty. D2 probably could have been balanced a bit better for single player, since multiplayer shouldn't have a problem with this. But they called it Hell difficulty for a reason. :P
There were quite a few hidden strategies to building your characters. Unfortunately a lot of the skills were actually so trash that they weren't worth spending the points, and it was stupid having to spend the points first in order to find out the hard way. Other skills just scaled really poorly, especially early spells. It could have been a really good skill system, it was halfway there, but it was really buggy and problematic and altogether unfinished.
It was great fun unlocking a super powerful nuke spell which obliterates the enemies as well as your mana pool. And a lot of times it was still pretty balanced, especially after they added skill synergies. Finally you weren't wrong to have spent so many points on firebolt. Might be a boring spell, but with enough synergy points it was plenty effective. Originally, if you spent 20 points on firebolt, it hit around as hard as a 1-point meteor, and that was without any items that boost skill levels. So the synergies were an enormous improvement, but the game still needed more work like that. It never got finished. Some skills seem like trash but are just tricky to use, like battle cry. Others are just plain trash no matter what you do, like slow missiles--worth having 1 point in it but useless to put in more. And telekinesis has seen use in scamming and harassing unskilled players but has no real constructive use.
-
I like roguelikes and roguelites but not ARPGs. Your health regens in ARPGs and you are super mobile so if you die it's because you didn't teleport out fast enough and didn't grind enough, i.e. you're lazy not bad. That's a massive gameplay difference.
-
Blizzard slowly fixes the whole mess. Still no ladder (i.e. no way to find a skilled players, forcing you to play with noobs). Still haven't fixed the UI to fit with modern wide-screen displays (compare to C&C remaster UI which was even redesigned). Then again, Blizzard haven't called it remake, but instead used the term "reforged", which could have meant anything. So no deceptive advertisement there :D Imagine Square releasing Final Fantasy VII "Reforged", instead of the remake. And still I'm puzzled how Blizzard managed to produe actually good Warcraft movie, but failed to do something as simple as porting the old game to the new hardware - you still cant play it on your phone or a console, despite the Blizzard's "you guys all have phones" attitude.
-
Some fans remade the 1997 Fallout in Bethesda's 3d engine. I remember playing the original Fallout and it was more like reading Pick Your Own Adventure book, with occasional hex based battles, which offered little tactical choice. I'm not a huge RPG fan or a book worm, so I found it a bit boring. Then there was Fallout Tactics, it had little dialogue, but an expanded battle system, with vehicles, like tanks, and maps becoming actually 3d. It also had cool large robot bosses at later stages, and was generally a really difficult, even given its linear nature. Like XCOM Apocalypse it offered realtime mode as an additional challenge
Then Bathesda turned it all into a Morrowind game, but with reduced amount of text. I personally found it a bit better than the original 1997 Fallout, since RPGs naturally call for 1st person experience, but fans accused it of misunderstanding the original Fallout's narrative and retrofuturism in general. More recently Bathesda tried to diversify into MMORPGs with that online Fallout game, but without much QA it resulted into a buggy mess, although still less embarrassing than Blizzard's failure. Apparently now they have patched it into a playable state, early adopters were basically free beta testers :D
Anyway, with fanbase dedication now you can have a near perfect Fallout experience :D
I swear, this post is made to trigger Fallout fans like me.
Fallout has turn-based combat because of X-COM. Tim Cain said so. I suspect combat was going to be more tactical, but things changed when they lost the GURPS License and had to improvise.
Tactics was nice, even CTB was nice, but its agreed that RT combat was a mistake and they should have focused on a deeper turn-based experience. Its also a very linear game and lacks environment destruction.
"RPGs naturally call for 1st person experience". Hundreds of isometric RPGs disagree. Please don't say this ever again.
Bethesda really fucked up with Fallout. They didn't get Fallout pretty much. They got a good grasp of the retro aesthetics tho, so it looks convincing but not really. Even their aesthetic is different from Trammel Isaac Ray's doorhickey aesthetic.
I think the biggest problem is that they turned a genre-defining game into something else. It would be like turning X-COM into a Rainbow Six clone. Because that's what the new Fallout games are: Fallout mods made for TES. Oblivion with guns.
Another problem is that Bethesda never realized Fallout is actually what we call post-post apocalyptic, not post-apoc. It was never about surviving in the wasteland and the aftermath of the war, but about the new world created after the bombs, new civilizations in the shadow of the old one. Bethesda's Fallout looks like the war happened two years ago, not two hundred. Everyone is still living out in bombed out ruins they don't even clean.
Fallout 3 was a boring, mediocre, soulless game, by the way. It had good graphical set-pieces and some interesting concepts, but that game reeked of unoriginality:
- Your characters is from a Vault, again.
- The Brotherhood of Steel packed to the other of the continent. Because of reasons. They're goodie-goodies now. They are also a bunch of incompetents, but no one ever tells them that in-game.
- There are Super Mutants. And these Super Mutants are all a bunch of stupid orcs who are pretty much irrelevant to the larger plot.
- The villains are the same villains of 2.
- The main plot is about going after your father in a boring, linear questline. Then an assine quest line involving a water purifier no one needs.
- A lot of reused old elements in general. Vaults, Water, GECK, Brotherhood of Steel, Super Mutants, Enclave.
Even the combat is boring. The game is only hard in the beginning. Armor is pure DR and there are no alternate ammo types. The combat itself is inferior to something like, say, the original Deus Ex.
When you compare 3 with FNV (by people who actually understand Fallout), you realize how mediocre 3 actually is.
Enviado de meu moto e5 play usando o Tapatalk
-
Realtalk about Diablo: First one is best. Tight, sinister Gothic atmosphere. Random quests, no skill tree, only skill books, scrolls and staves. Sinister, tight dark dungeons. Fewer, stronger monsters. Fewer magical items, more import. No respawns.
D2 had too monsters at once, most of them utterly banal. The player has the running ability of a Olympic athlete and can run for hours in heavy plate armor before tiring. The monsters mostly can't cope with that. Too much open ground everywhere. You are only in danger near bosses, super uniques, uniques or champions with odd stat combinations.
D2 was too grindy. Too much grinding to get super duper items. Practically an MMORPG.
Enviado de meu moto e5 play usando o Tapatalk
-
"FPP is perfect for conquering the outer space.
Isometric is perfect for exploring the inner space."
-
Ok. The C&C remaster has come out. Obviously no Dune 2000, but EA has lost the rights to IP. And Dune is unfortunately dead now.
-
There is also the source code for the remaster:
https://github.com/electronicarts/CnC_Remastered_Collection
Apparently the game was originally written in C++ back in 1994.
Watcom compiler was used.
Guess now people can easily port it to any platform.
-
The original Blizzard team has gathered at a different studio now:
-
The original Blizzard team has gathered at a different studio now:
Hard to say "original", for some original would be only people form '90, If I recall correctly most of them are "fresh" ex-blizz employers.
But beside this, this studio will be interesting if they truly continue old-blizzard approach.
-
Hard to say "original", for some original would be only people form '90, If I recall correctly most of them are "fresh" ex-blizz employers.
But beside this, this studio will be interesting if they truly continue old-blizzard approach.
Well lets hope they could get veterans back too.
-
In one year, fans have patched the campaign adding some of the stuff Blizzard has originally promised.
Unfortunately there is just so much one can do without the source code available. I.e. no way to fix that broken UI layout with text covering the middle of viewport, or add proper campaign menu.
Fans also made a Warcraft 1 remake in the engine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CkG40GpUuw
Something one would have expected Blizzard itself making.
-
wow
-
Fallout has turn-based combat because of X-COM. Tim Cain said so. I suspect combat was going to be more tactical, but things changed when they lost the GURPS License and had to improvise.
Tactics was nice, even CTB was nice, but its agreed that RT combat was a mistake and they should have focused on a deeper turn-based experience. Its also a very linear game and lacks environment destruction.
Fallout had turn-based combat...but it only has one controllable unit, so the meaningful benefits of turn-based combat were pretty much entirely lost. You picked your one move you had built into your character and you spammed it. That was basically it. Then you waited for all of the enemy units to take their turns one at a time. It wasn't actually great. Since you could not control ANYONE else, you were mostly twiddling your thumbs because turn-based combat is not actually a good fit for a single-unit game with relatively low action complexity.
Fallout Tactics apparently saw how the combat actually kinda flopped in the original, so they made it real-time, and thus it flopped for the entirely opposite reason now that you actually had multiple units to control.
-
wow
Not just WoW, but the general bureaucracy, wrong priorities and mismanagement, resulting in key talents leaving or just losing passion.
-
Not just WoW, but the general bureaucracy, wrong priorities and mismanagement, resulting in key talents leaving or just losing passion.
I think this "wow" not "WoW" and it was referring to Re-Re-Froged version :>
-
Blizzard is going down like a Titanic. Apparently replacing the original dev team with high libido rookies and young females was a bad idea, because the environment now creates drama, instead of high quality products (or any products at all):
R.I.P.
-
Latest leaks point it was Activision who killed the studio:
-
Fans remastered Warcraft II, completely with re-modelling, voice acting and cutscenes. And it looks orders of magnitude better compared to what Blizzard did to WC3.
They haven't just converted wc2 maps to wc3 engine, but made entirely new maps in the style of wc3 campaign and rebalanced every units to fit the WC3 mechanics.
-
Folks, this just goes to show how much better everything is when you DON'T pay the execs.
-
Folks, this just goes to show how much better everything is when you DON'T pay the execs.
Seems like that. Here is a fan remaster of the original DOS Duke 3d.
Somehow looks better than what the IP owners published so far.