What happened to Blizzard?

[The Reaver of Darkness]

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.

[Yankes]

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.

[Rubber Cannonball]

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.

[Nikita_Sadkov]

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.

[The Reaver of Darkness]

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.

[Yankes]

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.

[Rubber Cannonball]

...
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. 

[Yankes]

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

[Rubber Cannonball]

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.

[Nikita_Sadkov]

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.

[Rubber Cannonball]

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.

[Nikita_Sadkov]

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.

[The Reaver of Darkness]

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.

[Nikita_Sadkov]

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:

[The Reaver of Darkness]

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.