OT - D2 Clones, why do they suck?

[TopHatCat64]

Re: OT - D2 Clones, why do they suck?

It's not even like comparing "apples to pears" as we'd say in good ol' germany (need to look up what the proper equivalent is for english speakers, likely it's nothing I should translate literally)

It's "apples to oranges" in the US, so it's actually fairly close.

 

[Trim]

Re: OT - D2 Clones, why do they suck?

I see your PoV, NF. Having never seen the PC version of Baldur's Gate I can't say what the differences are between it and the PS2 iteration. But you're right in that it's very story driven. There's no text persay, but there's god-awful amounts of voice acting (that's well done, admittedly) that drives the bulk of the story along. If you skip it you can check your quest notes to see what to do and not need to know the backstory, though, kind of like the quest screen of D2. Any classic RPG like Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy inundates you with so much text that if you forget the current plot point you're playing through you might have to restart.

But Low Key's right in that it is very much like Gauntlet + minimal skills and leveling up. Even if you skip all the speech, you can still progress through the linear areas and complete quests. Case in point: I didn't even talk to one NPC at the start of the game, came across a quest item, and then later when I saw him for the first time he gave me the reward without even explaining why he wanted the item in the first place. You can care about the story if you want, but it seems totally unnecessary, just like D2.

And while Champions of Norrath is basically the same exact game, it's a derivation of Everquest. EQ is a well known MMORPG time sink, but CoN is so much more simple. My lack of overall knowledge of PC games comes from always having computers that are years behind current technology. That, and having fun in MMOs means you need to play with other people, which is something that I can't deal with. If the game alone isn't enough to allow you to have fun, it's a broken game IMO.

 

[Nightfish]

Re: OT - D2 Clones, why do they suck?

The BG you played doesn't have much to do with the "real" thing, then. I doubt you have ever played much in the way of real RPGs. MMOs are something else again. Usually they won't have that much in common with what I would consider proper RPGs either. The focus there is, or should be, on team play and what not. Obviously you can't have very involved quests there as nobody has the patience to wait 20 minutes, or even 5, for someone to work his way through a text and if there's 5 ways to solve any given quest you will obviously have issues with party play.

That's one of the things or RPGs, they let you *choose* how to deal with problems. Typically there's a violent option, a diplomatic option, a good option and evil option, etc. If the game is just a set sequence of events on which you have no influence at all it's not really that much of an RPG. Doesn't mean it has to be a bad game, but true RPGs let you define your own character in some manner.

 

[Trim]

Re: OT - D2 Clones, why do they suck?

In the sense of a *true* RPG where you develop characters rather than pull the little levers in their head to make them do things, I assume you mean games like KOTOR or Mass Effect. Sadly, while I've dabbled a bit in KOTOR I've spent very little time with it. And strangely enough, I can't really think of other games where your actions define your character besides maybe Fable.

OT-ish: As for the generic RPGs, though, I've been around the block once or twice since the days of the NES. Turn-based games I've played (and often completed) include nearly half the Final Fantasies, Dragon Warrior, Shining in the Darkness, Super Mario RPG, Chrono Trigger & C. Cross, Earthbound, Xenogears & -saga. Some aRPGs include Star Ocean, Secret of Mana, and Tales of Symphonia. But in the sense of a *true* RPG, there's zero character development in any of these; the only decisions to make are which characters you take on your journey and which spells to cast on bosses.

After a little introspection, I thought of the game I'd consider the most comparable to D2 in my years of game playing, and that's Phantasy Star Online. Feel free to disagree with my sentiments, but I find them to be very similar. Whatever text exists is minimal (unless you count side quests, but it never interrupts the flow of actions in combat), it's combat oriented, multiple difficulty levels, there's crazy amounts of rushing online, and target running for specific items is very commonplace. Besides the lack of investable skills, I was surprised how comfortable the game felt to me after playing D2 for a few years. What's more, they came out at about the same time (iirc, PSO was released on the Dreamcast in 2000).

While I've put more than 200 hours into single player questing with three characters in PSO, there's two reasons I don't play it anymore. The biggest reason is that EVERYTHING in the game is an immensely gigantic grind-fest. Gaining levels takes forever, item hunting takes zillions of runs that usually last ten-plus minutes, and there's little variation to how the areas spawn so if you've played an area three times you've seen it all. The second is that I downloaded the PC version a few months ago so I could do some multiplayer action. I actually had a lot of fun playing with random people; there were some real ***hats, but there were some truly helpful and generous individuals on all the time. But when my intergrated graphics card would try to tackle the large boss fights, the game would lag like you've never seen, and if you can't tackle bosses there's no point in questing. Now that I've had a taste of MP, I don't really want to go back to playing alone. ...That's a really scary admission that I won't make about many other games. :scratchchin:

 

[Nightfish]

Re: OT - D2 Clones, why do they suck?

In the sense of a *true* RPG where you develop characters rather than pull the little levers in their head to make them do things, I assume you mean games like KOTOR or Mass Effect. Sadly, while I've dabbled a bit in KOTOR I've spent very little time with it. And strangely enough, I can't really think of other games where your actions define your character besides maybe Fable.

I guess that's because you (seem to) play mostly console games. There are few real RPGs for consoles. For whatever reasons, companies don't seem to think console players have the patience for these games. I guess that's true for the typical console gamer. Recently a few good RPGs made it to consoles or were even developed primarily for those platforms. Mass Effect and KotOR are good examples of true RPGs. I haven't played Fallout 3 yet (hard to get an uncensored verion in germany -.-) but that is probably another good example.

Interesting that you mention Fable, that one is actually exactly what I expect a console RPG to be like. It does have the RPG elements, but watered down so as not to overtax console gamers. Aside from the somewhat silly looking (oversized) weapons and armour it's quite focused on combat and the RPG part of it is quite primitive. It does have a story but it doesn't exactly swamp you with text and choices. Actually the biggest choice I remember was whether I'd do the quest of killing merchants (evil) or the version where you protect merchants (good). All in all the game feels rather primitive or simplified to me when it comes to that.

For the PC, there are many more, the best ones are older, though. Then again, a lot of the best games are older. D2 anyone?

While I do like the Japanese Style RPGs along the lines of final fantasy, they do lack character development that you can influence. I guess whether those are real RPGs or not is debateable. But they typically have a lot of story and you can follow the development of your character similar to a movie or a good book. So I guess you could make a case for these games bringing 2/3 of what makes an RPG.

 

[Asmodeous1]

Re: OT - D2 Clones, why do they suck?

Titan quest is the only clone that ever came close to D2.

It's biggest problem was it is now abandonware. The Dev packed up and abandoned the game right after releasing the expansion leaving the game full of bugs and performance issues. If the Dev's kept going with it and applied several patches (just like blizzard did), then TQ may well have become a real alternative to D2.
TQ's other shortcomings was the complicated character stats. Pierce, sleep, disruption, etc, about 10-12 different damage types to build your resistances against forcing each and every character to utilize the same items on every build just to overcome the penalties of the higher difficulties. And how many item variations where there? So many types of body armors you'd never remember them all. TQ was just too overly complicated.
It did have a lot going for it. Cool plot, great graphics and top theme. But the micromanagement was just too much.

Sacred. Pffft. I bought sacred 1 and could only ever play one character up to level 18. That was the only time the game ran on my system, in between patches the dev's where punching out trying to fix all the bugs. If a game gets a reputation of being a bug fest in the early days, then it will never recover and do well when they finally do get the game right. I am assuming they finally patched sacred 1 into a game that ran?
Just look at what happened to HGL. Bug fest. Died a miserable death.

 

[barren]

Re: OT - D2 Clones, why do they suck?

Nightfish, thanks for such an awesome topic!

I have searched for other dungeon crawlers, but nothing sucked up playtime quite like d2. Every d2 clone I played seemed to have a major blunder that either made me drop the game out right a few hours in, or if I actually did beat it, it had zero replay value so I'd never touch it again.

First up in my misadventures is dungeon siege 1 (never bothered with 2) made by the guy from cave dog entertainment who brought us the rts gem total annihilation, so it has be be good.. right? Before I rip into dungeon siege, to its credit, it's the only d2 clone that kept me interested long enough to actually finish. The game is easy to get into, you pick up loot, aquire party members with decent ai and run around using 2 attacks tops that all seem to be the same single target deal except with different numbers. The game fell flat on its face because it required so little interaction on the players part. Game play was non existant, just move your squad around and they'll auto attack/heal their way through the entire game. It's a pity because the game engine was great, amazing graphics, good old fashioned top down camera that didn't require any fiddling with. The only thing that kept me going was simply exploring the landscape to find out whats next.

I tried divine divinity because it had so many rave reviews but I could never get into the game. All reviews claimed it was a big graphic upgrade over d2, which at a technical level it is, but the artistic talent is really lacking which made d2 blow it out of the water in the graphic department. The controls were clunky and game play itself was boring, either you got swarmed and died in seconds or you accidently stumbled across a beasty that squashes you before you know what happened. Now, I'm probably a terrible divine divinity player, but I blame the terrible controls and interface. Divine divinity had old school rpg elements like quests going for it, but I could never figure out how to complete them, linking step A to B was incredibly unintuitive, you could only enjoy that side of the game with a guide sitting in your lap which completely ruined it for me.

What really seperates d2 from other action rpgs is the gameplay. There's a crap ton of wildly different skills that makes every run through a very unique experience. No other action rpg lets me reshape the landscape (bonewall, prison), use enemy corpses in such a fun and varied way, have actual fun with traps, teleport (or dragon flight) on a whim, use fun crazy fast attacks in conjuction with other fun play mechanics (fury, dragon talon, zeal, on hit effects) or implement area of effect skills so well. Most other action rpgs simply come down to whacking a target over and over again with the exact same skill, which makes it incredibly boring. The skills themselves in d2 are all pretty well balanced, or, in otherwords, it's possible to beat the game with whatever you choose and no 1 skill by itself is an answer to every possible situation, the game forces you to adapt and think to your enemies. Mind you, high end runewords break this rule but they're sort of a bonus for veterans who've already seen and done it all anyway.

 

[Sint Nikolaas]

Re: OT - D2 Clones, why do they suck?

This may raise some hairs by a few, but what I found to be a very good follow up to D2 is Guild Wars.

Ofcourse GW is a MMO and ofcourse if you look at the way the game is set up it focusses more on teamplay and a lot on PvP. However the PvE option was surprisingly much like D2. With the main difference being that you level up quicker by doing quests then actually doing the hack&slash work.
I picked up GW about 1.5 years ago looking for a game to play other then D2. I went with GW because WoW had monthly payments and GW had decent reviews. I started a character and basically started playing just as D2. Go out of town, find monsters and kill em. And it worked. It got me hooked trying out quests and getting better.
The thing that stood out to me was that even though it's an MMO (and if for instance you play a warrior, so you need a healer in your party) you can go out alone or pick up a party of henchmen that'll just follow you around and fight alongside you (so basically play solo). You don't have to wait for people to do things and the entire game is quite possible to finish using henchmen. Later on you can also get henchmen that you can control/use skills/equip etc. to your wishes so even that is like a merc.
The skill/attribute system is pretty good IMO. Every character has a crapload of skills (like really.. omg), but they are all dependable on how you divide your stat points. Every character can level up to 20 (which really is plenty..) giving 200 stat points to divide. The best part is that you can only take 8 skills with you and re-order your skill bar and stat point allocation every time you hit a town. This gives for very diverse play. You can alter your character to counter every part of the game, constantly changing it up, trying to find the best skill combination of your liking.
The monster/quest/dungeon stuff is good too. The game is challenging enough to keep you going, the quests are completely optional (you can just roam the world if you want), and there are mission and dungeons (if you have the Eye of the North campaign) which are fun to do. What I also like is that there's a lot of farming going on trying to get items or just plain gold to buy or trade things. You can make your character better by getting better armor and weapons and there's a lot of bragging rights in that department too.
I'm not going to discuss the PvP side of things, which are great but completely different from D2 (and probably not important in this thread), but I'd like to mention the replayability. Even though the gameplay for most characters is quite the same, getting all characters trough the game is still good. What's keeping the game PvE wise going though is the title track. For basically anything you do you can earn a title. If you finish all missions you get a title, if you do the same in Hard Mode you get a title, if you kill all foes in an area you get a title, if you don't die and get 1 mil exp you get a title, if you eat 1 mil sweets you get a title etc. There are now 38 titles that you can try to get maximum rank at (37 possible at a time because 2 titles exclude eachother). Currently I am at 27 max titles trying to go for 30 which will give you the title ''God walking amongst mere mortals''. It's really a great time sink which will require a lot of patience and game-gold to max.

I just hope I can get my 30 max and my hero rank 9(of 12) (so I get a nice emote) before D3 and GW2 come out..

Meh.. this turned into a GW promotion speach instead of why it would suck :whistling:

 

[Nightfish]

Re: OT - D2 Clones, why do they suck?

Titan quest is the only clone that ever came close to D2.

It's biggest problem was it is now abandonware. The Dev packed up and abandoned the game right after releasing the expansion leaving the game full of bugs and performance issues. If the Dev's kept going with it and applied several patches (just like blizzard did), then TQ may well have become a real alternative to D2.
TQ's other shortcomings was the complicated character stats. Pierce, sleep, disruption, etc, about 10-12 different damage types to build your resistances against forcing each and every character to utilize the same items on every build just to overcome the penalties of the higher difficulties. And how many item variations where there? So many types of body armors you'd never remember them all. TQ was just too overly complicated.
It did have a lot going for it. Cool plot, great graphics and top theme. But the micromanagement was just too much.

Yea, TQ was the best of the clones I played as well. True about the patches. Come to think of it, D2 never interested me much prior to 1.10. It was just too easy. Blizzard is awesome like that, to keep working on games ages after the release. Gotta respect them for that.

Not sure the complicated system is really the main downfall of TQ, D2 has loads of damage types and stuff as well. In some ways, I feel TQs skills aren't balanced nearly as well as D2's are. Not that D2 was perfect there, but it is better, imo.

Sacred. Pffft. I bought sacred 1 and could only ever play one character up to level 18. That was the only time the game ran on my system, in between patches the dev's where punching out trying to fix all the bugs. If a game gets a reputation of being a bug fest in the early days, then it will never recover and do well when they finally do get the game right. I am assuming they finally patched sacred 1 into a game that ran?
Just look at what happened to HGL. Bug fest. Died a miserable death.

True, but if we're honest, wasn't D2 bugged pretty badly at first as well. Then again, those bugs weren't showstoppers. I assume the sacred bugs you refer to are crashes? Yes, sacred 1 runs pretty stable by now, I suppose so does 2, but that's not the issue I have with these games.

I guess I'm weird that way, but if a game is awesome I forgive a lot of techncial problems. A lot of my favorite games run far from stable on my machine. Fallout 1 and 2, for example. Those are far from bug free, but I adore them anyway. Mass Effect... crashes every couple hours for me. Do I love it anyway? You bet.

If I get to pick either awesome gameplay or stabilty, I take awesome gameplay. Ideally I want both, but I can live with mediocre stabilty and still have a great time playing the game.

The game fell flat on its face because it required so little interaction on the players part. Game play was non existant, just move your squad around and they'll auto attack/heal their way through the entire game.

God, you're right! I had forgotten what my main beef with DS was, to the point of me almost installing it just now. That was it, I think.

This may raise some hairs by a few, but what I found to be a very good follow up to D2 is Guild Wars.

Ofcourse GW is a MMO and ofcourse if you look at the way the game is set up it focusses more on teamplay and a lot on PvP. However the PvE option was surprisingly much like D2. With the main difference being that you level up quicker by doing quests then actually doing the hack&slash work.

He, I suppose you are not far wrong, as far as MMOs go. I didn't play GW much, mostly because I am not really into PVP in MMOs. I always felt that trying to balance a game for PvE and PvP at the same time was doomed to fail from the start. Admitedly, GW does it better than any other MMO I have ever seen or heard of, but still...

If I want to play competitively I do so in games designed purely for that purpose. Actually I only play one competitive game, come to think of it...

 

[Sint Nikolaas]

Re: OT - D2 Clones, why do they suck?

Yeah, best part about balancing skills in PvP and PvE at the same time: They just implemented them twice, so they can make PvP updates (or PvE for that matter) without touching PvE (or PvP).
Hurray for easy solutions

Oh and on-topic: I never played any of the other games mentioned. Yep...

 

[Nightfish]

Re: OT - D2 Clones, why do they suck?

Well, good if it works out for Guild Wars ^^ Usually I saw that there were classes that are good for PvE and classes that are good for PvM in MMOs. The other half of my dislike for MMO PvP is that I prefer quick action when it comes to competitive games. What I play starts 5vs5 with a clean slate for everyone and is over after roughly one hour. I doubt I'd have the patience to level something just for the sake of PvPing. Different mentality, is all.

 

[Sint Nikolaas]

Re: OT - D2 Clones, why do they suck?

Same easy solutions, you unlock all skills and items you find, after which you can just make a pre-made pvp character (with base stats etc) and use pvp items/skills (everything you unlocked), which are bland but basically as strong as someone who went trough the trouble of looking good using a PvE char in PvP.
Anyway.. enough offroad I guess.. I'm gone for the weekend

 

[Friiser1]

Re: OT - D2 Clones, why do they suck?

My younger brother has for years been trying to get me to stop playing D2 and move on to (pick any of the above titles). I've thought about it, but (being a cheap b@stard) never bought any of them. I did try Guild Wars a bit, as that was free to download, but after playing it for a while, I would think to myself "why am I wasting my time on this game when I could be working on my next mat/pat/goal in D2".

So, Nightfish, does this mean we will be reading more from you and your D2 exploits in the near future? I hope so - as this forum and its members are truly the should not miss experience of D2, IMHO.

I do enjoy the building aspect of some games (Age of Empires II, I play that from time to time), and I've only played Fallout 1 (which I also thoroughly enjoy and is still installed on my PC at home). But since I've not played any other D2 clones, I'd have to second what Muzzz had said up above.

 

[Asmodeous1]

Re: OT - D2 Clones, why do they suck?

Yea, TQ was the best of the clones I played as well. True about the patches. Come to think of it, D2 never interested me much prior to 1.10. It was just too easy. Blizzard is awesome like that, to keep working on games ages after the release. Gotta respect them for that.

Not sure the complicated system is really the main downfall of TQ, D2 has loads of damage types and stuff as well. In some ways, I feel TQs skills aren't balanced nearly as well as D2's are. Not that D2 was perfect there, but it is better, imo.

Well, I found TQ to be too complicated and I struggled to work out the difference between all the different facets of the game. I guess that my brain is too D2 orientated and I was biased against it.
But I still perservered with it, building 4 characters to over level 50 each.
Like you said though, it's a bit hard to put your finger on exactly why TQ wasn't a classic. It was something, but what?

True, but if we're honest, wasn't D2 bugged pretty badly at first as well. Then again, those bugs weren't showstoppers. I assume the sacred bugs you refer to are crashes? Yes, sacred 1 runs pretty stable by now, I suppose so does 2, but that's not the issue I have with these games.

Mostly the game wouldn't even start up, just freeze 90% into the "loading" of the game. I wrote a rather humorous post on the official forums about how the real game of Sacred 1 was mucking around with patches, drivers and system settings with the real aim of the game being able to run a second hidden game as your reward for working out how to make it run. The forum admins loved it and I think it got stickied for a while!

As far as show stoppers go, the only one I remember with D2 was the initial expansion release where you couldn't see/select any of your carry over characters, a problem fixed with V1.07b, released only days after the initial release of LoD. D2 runs on pretty much any system apart from the odd network (freeze them turbo game play) or video card problems usually fixed by running the games video card tester.

 

[Coolle]

Re: OT - D2 Clones, why do they suck?

Dungeon Siege 2 rocks! Great feeling and better character building than Diablo.

BG is a real favorite, but because of the diversity between the games I have room for both DS2 and DII

 

[dontdisagree]

Re: OT - D2 Clones, why do they suck?

I have been happy with other RPGs
some say it just copied D2, some say D2 just copied DnD...who cares really

What's important to finding new games, is not comparing it to what you played and enjoyed before; but keeping an open mind


Oh and yes, Im always skeptical about "eye candy" games too


The only games I kept coming back to were:
DII, WCIII:FT (I mainly just watch pro gamers play ) Ragnarok Online, and..... chess

Curse of Monkey Island too, but thats way off topic

 

[joeyjonson]

Re: OT - D2 Clones, why do they suck?

The clone i like best was probably TQ. The item system was great (not as great as D2 though) and the graphics really worked out well for me. The big issue with TQ must've been the classes... or were there any classes at all? I played 4-5 different characters but they all seemed to work the same way. Really. The creators of the game bragged about having created 36 class options.
(http://titanquestvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Guides.Detail&id=9)
But to me there were only 3 different classes. Melee, ranged and caster. -Yes you could say that about d2, wow, NWN, Oblivion etc. etc. too, but in TQ all casters, tanks and rangers played the same way! In d2 they all play differently - they are unique. Barbs can dual wield, assassins too - but with claws only. Paladins have their auras, Necromancers have curses.. etc.
Of the ones that have been mentioned i must say - despite my complaints - TQ was the best of the clones.

 

[linkato1]

Re: OT - D2 Clones, why do they suck?

I'll turn this around.

Way back when D1 came out almost everybody in NetHack community, including me, started to play it, because we saw that it was influnced by NetHack. Eventually we returned to NetHack.

D2 came out and we noticed it and strated to play, but all the time we played NetHack also.

NetHack just is the best dungeon crawl there is. It has everything including the kitchen sink.

Topi

 

[jamesixgun]

Re: OT - D2 Clones, why do they suck?

My 2 cents: Diablo franchise rules all because of randomness: random maps, random drops, and random characters. Randomness = virtually infinite replayability. The only boring part is rescuing Cain 1337 times.

I played Baldur's Gate on the PS2: no randomess, same drops from the same chests in the same place after killing the same monsters on the same map as the last 37 times I played it. BORING. I beat it once and traded it in (with some other games) for GTA Vice City.

I played another turn-based PC game but don't remember the name. It was kinda fun. I'm pretty sure it was a D&D based game, and you could play up to 8 characters at a time. The character variety was fun, but the static maps and monster packs got really boring really fast.

 

[Vang]

Re: OT - D2 Clones, why do they suck?

I think the problem with D2 clones is the fact that most of them are more geared for Multiplayer.

I love playing Dungeon Siege with my wife and a buddy. Its fun as hell to simply put it. But solo, gets old fast.

Like you said, I wouldn't classify any of the RPG classic(BG2) as Diablo, as they are totally different end of the spectrum, one requires a great use of tactics almost always, versus diablo which only really achieves tactics during Hardcore play.

Jamessixgun, play Baldur's Gate 2, any of the horrible BG spinoffs on consoles are absolute garbage compared to BlackIsle/Bioware classic.