What happened to Blizzard?

[Rubber Cannonball]

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.

[The Reaver of Darkness]

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.

[Nikita_Sadkov]

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:

[The Reaver of Darkness]

+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. 

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.

[Bobit]

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.

[NancyGold]

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 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.

[Slaughter]

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

Anyway, with fanbase dedication now you can have a near perfect Fallout experience

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

[Slaughter]

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

[Solarius Scorch]

"FPP is perfect for conquering the outer space.
Isometric is perfect for exploring the inner space."

[NancyGold]

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.

[NancyGold]

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.

[NancyGold]

The original Blizzard team has gathered at a different studio now:

[Yankes]

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.

[NancyGold]

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.

[NancyGold]

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.