D2R or not?

Excalibur

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Jul 3, 2012
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So just wondering, how many of you are still playing 1.14d? What's the main reason for not playing D2R?
Personally, I though I would be playing both but ever since D2R was released I haven't touched 1.14d. Once you get used to the QoL changes I think it's hard to go back.

Aesthetically, D2R is also very polished and I think they did a good job on the remaster so the only thing that would basically prevent someone from playing it are perhaps some of the balance changes that you can always argue on.
 
what are the QoL changes? You can kill cow king how many times you want?

I play 90% D2R, mostly because it runs smoother and is nicer to play and there is more build variation. The addition of terror zones and übers is nice too.
 
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Still at LoD.

- It starts up ridiculously fast so good for “just to next waypoint” games.
- It just works: changes do not break GoMule (as there are none).
- “Everything” is documented. I feel (ymmv) changes D2R are not yet well available in one place.

Also I think I fear the qol changes. In the sense that if I’d jump over to D2R and could then not ever go back even though I’d find reasons to do so. :)

Even so, I will migrate any year now.
 
I only play D2:R. For better or worse, I prefer to play games on console (Switch specifically). Also, Blizzard stopped supporting macOS for LoD a few years back and my only computers are Macs (MacBook Air and Mac Mini)... I could of course play LoD inside Wine, which I used to do back when I was Linux-only... but that's a nuisance.
 
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  1. I don't have a computer that can play d2r 😅.
  2. I don't like a lot of the "fixes" they made (it was cool pdr was an awesome stat for nihla running for example)
  3. I liked how I thought d2 would never change again so I went deep on the game mechanics understanding/theory crafting
  4. I absolutely hate terror zones. Lets make grail and 98-99 take 10% of the time. Makes these previously grindy (and totally unnecessary to have great characters and play the game) achievements much less cool. Also having to play on an external schedule to get good mf efficiency sounds so terrible to me. Very anti single player mindset imo.
  5. Broke the game in at lease 3 ways I know of: tzs 97-99 broken, tzs act bosses break grailing, sunder charms you can run any char anywhere, and mosaic sin too op
All that being said, since I recently learned you can turn off tz's at character creation, and that sunder charms only drop in tzs, I've been much more open to the idea of trying out moving to d2r, and it's sounding more and more fun. Can you turn off tzs on a character you're forwarding from 1.14?
 
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@Luhkoh

2. It was a fix because their poison cloud was bugged. Heck, I bet there are still guys playing patches where lord de seis casts iron maiden curse :)

3. It is like the advent of quantum mechanics, one has to adapt. Still, the changes are relative small compared to what other changes the game has brought us in earlier patches.

4. How long time does it take to make an UT99er in LoD? 300h? You seriously think you can do that in D2R in 30 hours? I think it can be done in 60h (I am about to try this myself, an UT99 speed run). Do you think people cried out when they introcuded p8 settings in single player back in the day? 🐮
TZ's are just broken for act bosses imo, and I see TZ andy and meph like "a small boost" because if you do not align and adapt your life to that schedule (as you mentioned) you will still effectively "just" run pits/AT again but in other areas like stony field etc. So, in principle yes you can reduce holy grail time A LOT on average, but perhaps not in reality. The holy grail is also a superficial endgame goal, it does not exist in the game itself. Same with efficiency etc. Those are just numbers that we as a community has invented.

Never saw an option on how to disable TZ's at character creation screen. I know in game you can turn of TZ notifications but they are still there.

yeah mosaic-sin is the new Hammerdin (which became a broken build made real by a bug in concentration aura).
 
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@drmalawi your arguments make complete sense from a philosophical or historical standpoint. I don't care so much about about the philosophy behind it as compared to the fact that I think 1.14 is an S-tier game, and several of the changes make it less good in my personal opinion. The nihla example being a perfect one. I acknowledge the physical dmg is a bug as judged by developer intent. I still the game is better with the bug in (this particular example being an extremely minor one to be clear).

I said 1/10th the time for 98-99. Not from 1-99. And I think that's relatively accurate. ~10 hrs vs ~100. Yes ofc holy grail and lvl 99 and runeword grail are arbitrary goals. They're just the arbitrary goals that made me love d2. And I just happen to think that ~300hrs to achieve the arbitrary goal of 99 is a lot more satisfying than 60 (d2r) or 2000 (whatever it would've taken pre p8). Not to mention the fact that if you join any of the old 99er or grail challenges here on the forum, your efforts can't really be compared at all to those from before.

So yes I'm very much not a fan of tzs. I'm not saying I wouldn't play them for some side project or something, but none of my long term d2 efforts will include them. Feels like playing a mod made to make the game easier.

I edited my post to mention it, but i forgot to say sunder charms. I think one of the appealing things about d2 is how different characters are good at different things. I hate how sunder charms make it to where you can just play any build anywhere more or less.

I just am a huge huge fan of 1.14, which is not surprising considering I joined here and played it a ton. Is it perfect? No ofc not, but D2R with terror zones is strictly inferior to my taste. Without tzs though? d2r may be the better game despite some complaints (mosaic sin, buffed find item... like why?). But extra content with ubers, new alvl 85 areas, better fohdin and fire druid sound fun, better graphics. All sound awesome.
 
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@Luhkoh First, we are all different, which is part of the draw to Diablo as there are so many ways to play. I started with 1.09 and moved through the changes till 1.12. Then I took a 10 year break and it was 1.14 when I came back. Played that for over a year before switching to D2R. I'm not sure that I like all of the changes, but I'm staying with D2R.

10 hours to go from 98 to 99. Maybe, but I doubt it. I took my Wolfbarb to 99 and was at 95.5 before TZs started. Did they shorten the time, absolutely, but what I found more important was that I wasn't locked in to running Baal and Nihlathak. I ran the MFO last year at players 5 and it took me 30 hours to go from 98.4 to 98.75.
 
@drmalawi your arguments make complete sense from a philosophical or historical standpoint. I don't care so much about about the philosophy behind it as compared to the fact that I think 1.14 is an S-tier game, and several of the changes make it less good in my personal opinion. The nihla example being a perfect one. I acknowledge the physical dmg is a bug as judged by developer intent. I still the game is better with the bug in (this particular example being an extremely minor one to be clear).

I said 1/10th the time for 98-99. Not from 1-99. And I think that's relatively accurate. ~10 hrs vs ~100. Yes ofc holy grail and lvl 99 and runeword grail are arbitrary goals. They're just the arbitrary goals that made me love d2. And I just happen to think that ~300hrs to achieve the arbitrary goal of 99 is a lot more satisfying than 60 (d2r) or 2000 (whatever it would've taken pre p8). Not to mention the fact that if you join any of the old 99er or grail challenges here on the forum, your efforts can't really be compared at all to those from before.

So yes I'm very much not a fan of tzs. I'm not saying I wouldn't play them for some side project or something, but none of my long term d2 efforts will include them. Feels like playing a mod made to make the game easier.

I edited my post to mention it, but i forgot to say sunder charms. I think one of the appealing things about d2 is how different characters are good at different things. I hate how sunder charms make it to where you can just play any build anywhere more or less.

I just am a huge huge fan of 1.14, which is not surprising considering I joined here and played it a ton. Is it perfect? No ofc not, but D2R with terror zones is strictly inferior to my taste. Without tzs though? d2r may be the better game despite some complaints (mosaic sin, buffed find item... like why?). But extra content with ubers, new alvl 85 areas, better fohdin and fire druid sound fun, better graphics. All sound awesome.

Gottcha, why we play a certain game is based on feelings. Like love - I can not give you any philosophical arguments why I love my wife. D2(R) is still a mediocre ARPG in modern standards. Bad build diversity, bad itemization (all builds use more or less the same core items), bad endgame (we have to make our own end-game goals and post them on a forum) and so on. But hey, even I who have played Diablo 3 for 3k hours, Grim Dawn for 4k hours and Path of Exile for 700 hours, I still enjoy playing D2 for what it's worth - it is just something about it that makes me wanna grind more, level up another char, try another build (even if it is something that has been dome over and over again, nothing "new" to be discovered).

True, I misread that. Yeah about 1/10 time level 98-99 that is more or less correct. But in the UT99er compendium, we do include game version and "TZ" to indicate how one could "judge" the acheivement. I guess same could be done in the grail compendium too. But it is not like there are 1000 people posting here on a weakly basis, so it "fame" among a couple of dozen people at most... "who cares" its not World of Warcraft you know.

You could and "should" play the game the way you think its fun. It is just a game, a small game, an old game. For instance on some of my chars which I forwarded to D2R I never play TZ's etc, I just wanted to play with them with better graphics and smoother control, or use a new runeword etc. Maybe you could just skip TZ act bosses, like we did in the MFO? Or play HC?
 
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I've addressed this a few times, most recently here: A lot of it boils down to:
  • changing the game engine
  • lack of timetravel
  • unwanted additions
 
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I sort of switched to HC along with D2R (except for 2 SC chars that I had forwarded to D2R and played for no more than 2 hours) so initially it was basically a fresh – and more challenging – restart for me more than anything else.

I was highly skeptical of many of the changes in D2R ay first but by now I actually don’t even have an issue with any of them and honestly think D2R is fantastic. Even TZ Andy cheese etc I’m ultimately OK with, at the end of the day who cares, and why not spend only 100 instead of 1000 hours for Tyraels or whatnot… To me the biggest drawbacks are (1) terrible loading times for me at least and (2) no TCP/IP for PvP, which is what I was mostly interested in the last few years when it came to D2 generally. I've still been farming 1.14 quite a bit since D2R released just with PvP gear in mind.

But that’s the thing maybe, my perspective is that of a player who was totally bored with PvM in LoD, I really couldn’t think of things I wanted to do that I hadn’t done already or characters to build that I hadn’t built already, except for the odd niche build mat/pat playthrough.

So for me the changes and new viable builds in D2R, along with the HC restart, made it a new and still exciting way to enjoy (PvM) D2. Just wish it had SP PvP. :) But even PoE doesn’t have that (which is the greatest ARPG ever in my book) so I guess no double standards and I can’t really complain. ;)
 
I really miss the look of LOD but I can't bring myself to play it anymore unless I'm time traveling for specific items. There's just so much QOL that after a while it really hurts going back to LOD.

Reasons I play D2R
  1. Controller support - nice to sit back every now and again
  2. Class and skill rebalance - make huge difference for untwinked playthroughs and make many classes/playthroughs more enjoyable
  3. Runewords - I don't care about endgame runewords, the mid-game runeword additions make playing through the midgame much more fun imo, and they provide many more "outs" to push those less conventional builds through hell. More ways to circumvent rng and a long grind.
  4. Anni and hellfire torch? Like obviously these are just so huge. They give a ton of build flexibility plus they add more endgame activities to do
  5. Framerate - big.

I used to be really tied to the long-term aspect of my account, and I'll always have my long term characters, but I'm not nearly so connected with my stashes anymore because I've already done it all and made everything, if I lose something I don't care because I will get it again. If they update the stashes, I don't care. I enjoy playing the game because the game is fun to play.

Edit: lol so funny I made basically exactly this list 3 years ago https://www.purediablo.com/forums/threads/upgrade-characters-to-d2r-or.4695/post-52789

I forgot about:
  1. ctrl+clicking items for cubing quickly
  2. toggling show items (this alone might be enough for me to switch even if there were no other changes)
 
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1.14

1. My laptop would burn a hole in the desk if I try to run anything resource intensive.
2. I hate the "QoL" changes which make a game that was previously easy, easier.
3. I'm honestly not big on the "improved" graphics, I like the old school dark pixelated feel.
4. Nostalgia.
5. I'll probably play D2R at some point, but we're not there yet.
 
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I stick to LOD for mainly two reasons.

The first is that I own the game completely, there is no account mixed in that a third party even could interfere with. A significant factor for my inner well-being.

The second is that while I greatly appreciate the vast majority of the graphical reinterpretations and the increased detail of armours and the like, the characters are not the same. They are not remodelled, they are replaced. It is remarkable how so many monsters (except the fetishes who no one dared to keep as I understand it?) could be so close to the original and the heroes so far.

The new rune words (would be a lot for me since I've always played D2 vanilla) and upgrading set items ARE attractive though, no question about it. If D2R ever gets a character graphics mod, or patch for the sake of very theoretical discussion, that reintroduces the real D2 characters I will seriously consider getting it.
 
what are the QoL changes? You can kill cow king how many times you want?
These are the ones I can think of now.
I know there are some QoL for multiplayer too.
  • It keeps the player settings even when you quit the game.
  • Whenever you start a game, the player settings message pops up so you always know what Players you are on.
  • Bigger Stash
  • Shared Stash
  • Visible Skill Hotbar
  • Quick Cast
  • Auto-Gold Pick up
  • Advanced Player and Mercenary screen stats
  • More Details for Mercenary skills
  • Gamble Refresh Button
  • Items do not disappear on Gamble
  • Hold shift to compare items
  • Loot always visible
  • Ctrl drops items instantly or moves them to cube/stash if open
  • Added In-Game Clock !
  • Increased Quantity on projectiles
  • Quantity is visible on the Skill Icon
  • Character equipment appearance
Gameplay Changes
  • Organs and Ubers (as an area to actually play)
  • Torch / Anni
  • Cow King
  • Upgrading Set Items
  • More lvl85 Areas
  • Terror Zones
  • Character Balance Changes
  • Mercenary changes
  • Revert to Legacy graphics with just one button

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I really miss the look of LOD but I can't bring myself to play it anymore unless I'm time traveling for specific items. There's just so much QOL that after a while it really hurts going back to LOD.
Sometimes I have the same feeling when I join 1.14d to check something but to be honest it's just because I've been away from it. If I stick to Lod for a couple of hours I won't miss it anymore and then I will start missing D2R. This is why the "G" button pretty much solves the nostalgia for me. Even though it's not that updated it's enough to switch for a while and know that you have everything you need in D2R.
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2. I hate the "QoL" changes which make a game that was previously easy, easier.
But QoL features do not make the game easier in terms of difficulty but mainly in a way to handle things easier. These changes are meant to make the game less tedius and prevent you from wasting time for no reason. I assume you are reffering to something else because I can't imagine anyone not being in favor of changes such as the ones I posted above.
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I stick to LOD for mainly two reasons.

The first is that I own the game completely, there is no account mixed in that a third party even could interfere with. A significant factor for my inner well-being.

The second is that while I greatly appreciate the vast majority of the graphical reinterpretations and the increased detail of armours and the like, the characters are not the same. They are not remodelled, they are replaced. It is remarkable how so many monsters (except the fetishes who no one dared to keep as I understand it?) could be so close to the original and the heroes so far.
Your first point is something that was quite bothering me as well (and a bit now till this day) but in the end I saw it doesn't affect my in-game progress at all. Even if something goes wrong, I can still back up my save files easily any time I want so it kind of adds a sense of relief.

The Characters look indeed different which is quite lame but it really only matters on the Character select screen. In-game, you won't notice much especially when start equiping anything.

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Regarding the posts about Terror Zones, from my experience not much has changed except obviously Andariel since she keeps that Quest Bug enabled. Memphisto still needs a lot of grinding to pay off and regular monsters from Terror Zones won't drop you uniques in a noticeable rate, not even close.

In my opinion, the drop rates in LoD were basically based on the multiplayer part of the game where hundreds of players were playing so basically all the items could be found and traded in a short period of time. The SP was definetely not a priority, proven by the fact of the extremely limited stash.
 
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Yes, the characters in D2R look different and at first I didn't like them. However, I've come to the conclusion that they are more believable - at least from an end of game perspective. After battling through Normal, Nightmare and Hell and taking all the time learning all of those skills wouldn't you look much older?
 
@drmalawi i was thinking the same thing 😅.
@Excalibur it looks to me like tz andy is like 60 hours per tyraels, and tz meph is like 90 hours per tyraels. For context my best set of 100 runs with my AT sorc were just under 600 hours per tyraels.
 
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