It's interesting looking at vanilla D2 and comparing it to D1. It's that slightly slower pace that I loved about ARPGs. Modern games are a rush-fest where you don't get to know the enemies you kill, so the monster sounds never become iconic, their animations never really sticking to my memory, unlike zombies in D1 or Fallen in D2. I also preferred being rewarded for looking over the entirety of a map or level instead of just b-lining to the next exit or set of stairs or whatever. Scarcity makes you look for stuff, and makes it feel more "real". Iunno.
I agree with you. I’d wish there was a modern option for this. I dont think it’s really the game’s fault. The modern arpgs are like that because it’s how most people tried play the old ones. The new games are rush fest a in an attempt to cater to gamer behaviour.
@@ragerontilt4778 Yeah, agree. I am really guessing that there are some things that are caused by gamers themselves. I really prefer [very] long games than short games. You CAN put SO MANY ups and downs on your long content, and if I am impressed and is satisfied at the end, it will feel like a journey. For short games, it has to strike on every accounts. Otherwise, I am not going to be satisfied and makes me want more of this. This one, not sure if it's true at all, can be one of the causes of sequel-baiting on its worse. Usually, my minimum estimated total game time for a game is roughly 8 hours to 15 hours (enough for budget games), and maximum can be anywhere above 15 hours, but usually up to 200 hours, but I dunno? It can be more than that, but then, again? I don't know. No wonder if it can really be a Meta line for Deckard Cain? "Hello, my friend! Stay awhile and listen."
Yeah. D3 suffers from this and PoE is the same, maybe even worse in the endgame. It fairly quickly switches in scale from killing a few monsters to clearing screens full of monsters so fast that you barely register what is happening. It's just a slideshow of full screen explosions. You don't think "Oh! There's a lot of monsters here. Better be careful", instead you're thinking "Ah! There's something to kill but where is the next group?"
Watching your 1.0 playthroughs made me want to go back and play 1.0 and I love it. The difficulty and the amount of engagement the game asks of you is amazing, encouraging you to explore every corner of the game because you are so gold, xp, and resource starved makes things way more exciting. I really wish games were still being made like this today
I just want 2 things from D4. 1 .Dont make builds for the players. Give us a game we can theory craft, get rid of mandatory set builds. 2. Greater rift should not be the main part of end game content. When the goal is endless dungeon that rises infinitely, you reduce viability of 99% of builds and this brings us back to point #1 that everyone is playing that one mandatory build.
I dont think the game should focus too much at "end game" at all. I just want a solid experience in the main playthrough from the start till the last boss. Preferably hell difficulty should be hard and require gear to clear certain bosses, hences motivating the player to get out in the world and do some grinding untill they hope or think they are ready to tackle a big main boss.
Greater rifts can be a main part of endgame, but then skills have to be balanced not around mandatory set builds as you mentioned. Path of Exile does this very well, where every skill is technically viable (Some are obviously way better than others just due to the nature of how they work) and the best gear is and or at least used to be rare items, with a few uniques here and there depending on your build.
@@urlond9371 any game that employs asymmetrical balance will always have a metagame. It will always have a build or builds that are objectively better than others. For something to be good, something else has to be worse.
I watched your 1.0 runs, great idea! I really feel with you when you talk about difficulty in games nowdays. I have been playing through d2 again recently and have been thinking to myself "damn, I must have been so bad" while thinking back to myself playing as a kid, never getting past act II arcane sanctuary on my first character. However, now I realize that i was playing 1.0 and that it was quite a feat! Esp. With the fact that I knew almost no English. Trial and error my friends, trial and error.
This is what we old timers call a *dungeon crawl* ... where you literally crawled on your hands and knees through every step of the game to survive, or else you would die in a heartbeat. That is the definition of *Diablo 1* and the definition of *dungeon crawl* ... If you want to experience a true *dungeon crawl* , then load up Diablo 1 (GOG.com has it for sale for modern computers) and play the Warrior. Don't worry about what Carbot says, you can definitely make it through the game with a Warrior, if you crawl through it... I call it the *Diablo two-step* (i.e. take two steps and wait to see what you aggro, then slaughter it.
i found you a few months ago and i was blown away at how fast you speedrunners could play diablo 2, my memories of playing it were rough and i was amazed at how fast it could be done. then i realized i had always been playing 1.0 and i felt better about myself.
I agree with most of what you said, but I have to say that although the monsters could stand to be harder to compensate, the ability to have semideterministic progress via runewords was also vastly superior. The game should've been balanced so that in the absence of lucky unique item drops, you need to craft things like Stealth, Lore, and Spirit to meaningfully progress past the levels where those become available to you. It's not just the mana pots that made the game easier for casters. The monsters in LoD were just as strong as in vanilla, but they could've stood to be much stronger because of the extremely powerful crafts made available to us. If horadric cube recipes were made more obvious in-game, then even actual orange "crafted items" could've been seen as mandatory to progress. But even though the power creep did make the game, by some standards, "too easy", it's still good as a system. I don't think the system of just relying on rare and unique drops in D2 to progress your character made as much sense by comparison.
You're like the only person I go to to learn things about d2. You know so much about the game, and yet you can condense such complex stuff into simple enough terms that noobs can understand. I honestly forgot about this game, but watching your stream reminded me of whan I was 8 years old and first played it with my brothers. It's that passion we need to remind us what a good game can be like, a artfully crafted deep game like diablo 2 should be a shining example of proper video game design for other developers to emulate.
It so great that people like you, who have a following, express these thoughts and feelings. This have been my opinion for the last 10 years about all games that are being produced. They are all too easy and meaningless. I have some other hardcore classic gamer friends who say the same thing. But online...I always get brigaded by people who say things they don't understand. They find entertainment in not being challenged. But that's the opposite goal of any game, computer or not. Games should be hard, that's the essence of the game. That's how you get the feeling of adventure and immersion. By overcoming obstacles and finding new ways of beating the game. Not having mana potions does sounds horrendous, but that the price you've gotta pay to play a sorc that has other benefits. It's really great. Even if you don't like a character and you don't play him it's still matters that all characters are equally balanced. It creates suspension, makes game really dark and hard. And by the way, you can make a game really dark without it being hard. You can't fool yourself with dark colors and music if you're literally not afraid of the monsters and the world. If it's not harsh it's not dark no matter how you paint it.
Your thoughts on the resource management and particularly the point where you need to be careful moving forward with risk of being surrounded really hit the spot for me. I want that in D4. That's when the scary element comes in, and every monster becomes so much more "real" and just not something you throw dps on to see the numbers or to get you through to the next area. I believe that D3 just wasn't having that element because eventually you barely even see that monsters anymore. Immersion will be their success or downfall.
One thing not being able to buy mana potions does is make Energy not a complete joke of a skill. Having a deep mana pool actually matters, but you have to balance that between the need for Vitality for more health, and the other stats for equipment.
You know, I am thinking about recording a full 1.00 playthrough for RUclips some day - not as a speedrun, but a thorough playthrough. More importantly, I would focus on the differences in this old version, especially things that were removed in later versions (e.g. the thunder & lightning effect during rain, or Flamespike the Crawler - the super-uniquer monster that used to be in Inner Cloister). Another idea for such a playthrough would be Lord of Destruction 1.07, i.e. the original unpatched version.
@@metastase895 It's a flash of light that occurs during rain + a thunder sound effect. I suppose it was eventually removed because it could be seizure-induzing... who knows. Some hirelings also had additional running animations in older versions, I've also seen Rogue mercs wearing helmets.
Llama, I am 100% on the grid with how hard 1.0 was. It is something that I was into just like old Everquest Pre Planes of Power. The one thing that sucks is people wont change out of the "I need instant gratification". I have more fun and it looks like you also enjoy games with harder challenges that make getting the item's or whatever they may be WAY more enjoyable. I HOPE D4 makes it hard almost to the point you need to put in a hour or two to get a nice item rather then 50 unique items that are trash and you just break them down for materials.
ilvl generated items just doesnt make it for me. I cant stand it anymore. I dont get how its admitted that scamfest Gacha phone games are shit and that you can spot them at the moment they tell you about Power Level, but somehow ilvl-based random generators are fine.
I've been enjoying 1.09 LOD lately, good balance of difficulty and QoL stuff. Still can't buy mana potions, but they seem to drop a little more often than vanilla. Also the lack of synergies is WONDERFUL.
Talking about difficult games and not mentioning dark souls, I just began playing ds1 for the first time and it's a blast. Rarely has a game made me stop in game for a while to consider my options
My problem with dark souls is it's super easy to cheese if you just grind an area for an hour or two. The games goes from hard to a joke if you do that.
Can you PLEASE make a full on design analysis and comparison of SYNERGY before and after? I think strongly that the game is better without synergies because synergy reduces the number of top viable builds. (hammerdin for example)
It's great to see some commentary about 1.00. I gave up on D2 back in the day because it was challenging and I didn't understand some of its mechanics. Fast forward to today and I'm trying it again (1.00, nearing the halfway point of Act IV as I type). While by this point I have been dying for some QOL improvements, I also have felt right at home having previously mainly playing a ton of Diablo 1 (it's one of those games I fire up at least once a year). Knowing all of the differences now in LoD, in a way I'm appreciating that I decided to do this completely vanilla to start. It gives perspective to the grand scheme of things, and like you mentioned, it has also been a challenge and that is something I need in my games. I had started Diablo 3 a few years back, played a few hours, enjoyed myself enough, but never went back because I couldn't even force myself to die. On its default difficulty it was ridiculously easy, whereas D1 and D2 (1.00) you can get wrecked right from the start. They are very different beasts it seems.
multishot lightning enchanced aura enchanced aura just so happens to be conviction oblivion knight in chaos sanctuary and their iron maiden curse. as whirlwind barb or zeal paladin extra fast extra strong aura enchanced (decrepify) death lord & co. only escape route is guarded by group of whatever with cold enchant and might aura. And they will join in on the fun in just a sec. Last one might still be posible. I haven't got very far since I started playing again.
@@sergeysmyshlyaev9716 i never heard/read "LEMB", and since you usually see MLEBs by their lightning balls and don't have time to read the description, i don't think anybody made a difference. at least in 1.09 classic EU we didn't.
If Diablo gets easier, we might end up getting a movie, which was once a video game in 1.0. And the new players are like:" Hey, I watched this awesome movie called Diablo...", while you responde:" Yea, I played it a couple of times back in 1.0."
I've been watching you for years man, and I gotta say you have the right attitudes towards what makes a game good. You inspired me to go back to play Diablo 1 v 1.00 for a quick run through. There's some other personalities out there pushing information and strats, but I find myself nodding and saying "yup. Mhm, yeah. EXACTLY!' when you go off on your philosophies.
This is how I actually remember the game in my childhood. I played it about a month after release and I didn’t have internet. So I had to play base game and beat it all the way through. I remember it being so challenging and the excitement of the first time I got my first rare, set and unique items. The dopamine rush from how rewarding that was to earn
Also, you touching on the gold side. Man I remember picking up every item including the crappiest crude items for every ounce of gold I could earn from it. Was so fun. I miss games being crazy difficult like tbat
I wanna point out that a lot of what you are talking about is not really only about 1.0. It is about pre-1.10 Give 1.09 a try, it's a great middle ground between modern D2 and 1.0
This was a great suggestion. I just booted up 1.09 (thank you D2SE!) and was delighted to see mana potions weren't at the vendors yet. I was going to try and get 1.0 working but this might scratch that itch.
@@sergeysmyshlyaev9716 i came to the comments to point out that 1.09 was the tipping point of the hard difficulty/fun playing. synergies killed the game for alot of people, and enigma just killed every class other than the pally. it really is the height of diablo 2s existence
Like I mentioned in the sorc stream, modern games seem to have lost sight of the fact that in a video game, the journey IS the destination. Racing to the end game means that the game is over very quickly and you don't get to appreciate all of the effort they put in everything until then.
When I started playing LOD from previously completing 1.0x with a barbarian, I created a sorceress and pumped warmth like 10 points because I knew mana was scarce and I think also no mana pots at vendors but I guy who knew the game better then told me to just delete it and start over, I think more mana started dropping at that point.
I think not being able to buy mana potions makes sense. I never really felt mana/resource management was D2s strong point. Would love to see some D2 mods that make the game harder instead of just making it easier. I went back and played D1 recently and and no action RPG has really captured the difficulty, atmosphere and strain for resources as well as that game did.
Everything needs to be available in bite-sized chunks in the eyes of Blizzard now, I see no scenario where D4 becomes a difficult game. And slight critique: D3 was difficult at start but in all of the wrong ways.
D3 wasn't difficult until you hit Act 2 inferno. The problem with vanilla d3 was that they tiered gear drops by Item levels like in World of Warcraft in inferno to where you needed rares from act 1 to do act 2 and rares from act 2 to do act 3 and by act 3 pretty much only shield barbs could survive it beyond characters with 1000$ in gear. It was pretty much impossible to do act 3 with act 1 inferno ilvl gear. Gear from the previous difficulties could not drop gear that was useful for inferno. Unlike in d2, Nightmare Meph was a incredibly valuable source for uniques that were great in hell. On the topic of uniques. Uniques were absolute dogshit in vanilla D3. They were utterly useless when they should have been ameans to bridge the gap from hell to inferno.
Man classic d2 was so awesome. I remember the rare items were where it was at like a Max def ornate plate with some nice attributes. That loot system got me so hooked.
I’ve played 1.06b religiously. I have played since 1.00. Hardcore (after the first sir) Yea I’ve gone through all the patches and changes and done all content. But that’s my favorite. 1.06b. Major bugs fixed but still classic. All is well. Then d2r. The new graphics are hard to pass up. And hard to return to the old. Even if the game is better in older version. Would love a way to switch versions in d2r. Love to see you run this content and your take on it is the same as mine.
Please listen to this man Blizzard! For the first time in years I was finally able to get modern d2 to run on my windows 10 PC, and although it's still great fun, it most certainly is sooo much easier to just plow on through it then it used to be. I would have spent weeks to get a fresh toon as geared (and leveled) as I have done just playing through today solo. D2 Version 1.0 is the ARPG gold standard in its overall design and underlying gameplay mechanics. It's overall challenge and ability to engage the player has yet to be topped. The difficulty and time required to overcome those challenges, are directly related to how engaging the game is; moreso, a great challenge often evokes similarly powerful emotion which causes the experience/memories of it to endure long-term. When these elements are streamlined and a game becomes more and more 'casual' (perhaps convenient is a better adjective), the less longevity a game will have from user loss-of-interest. I do fully agree with ease-of-life changes, such as Hoykey and UI improvments, as well as some other things Mr. Llama mentioned in regards to class balance, but I would caution against gameplay changes aimed at reducing tedium if doing so would upset an underlying balance/gameplay (Ie: Potions stacking at the vendor is great, but making them infinite because finding them 'is really just a time sink anyways', thus upsetting the underlying scarcity mechanic )
I love this introspective because this is the reason I currently only play Classic wow/Ironman OSRS. The feeling of having all these things that hinder you at first, but become easier as you put in the effort, thats the best feeling. If its easy as pie from the beginning, it feels like I just booted up a mobile app game.
They just added something like 500% health AND 500% damage to enemies at the launch of D3. And on top of that they just added cheap and boring ground effects to make enemies ''different''. We did not have any good items at the launch either so it made the game really boring to play. Today they add difficulty the same way, but they added easy to get items to make the stupidity playable.
@@Hiferus You are playing D2 wrong if you are out of mana easily. There is a mercenary weapon runeword ''Insight'' that gives a level 12-17 Meditation aura which is 575-700% mana regen. Insight is really good starter weapon and your mana will always be full, even without Warmth. One thing that made D2 far superior over D3 is that you can build your mercenary in to a godlike support or a brutal slayer. In D3 you just have that annoying dude running after you doing close to nothing at all.
@@Hiferus You talk about D3 "+X% to HP" and I talk about D2:LOD, what is your problem? Please tell me what is hard in current D2:LOD compared to D3. Your main concern was mana problem even with level 20 warmth and I can tell you that there is absolute 0 mana problem in D2:LOD, warmth is not even needed for a sorceress. Try to understand what a conversation is all about before raging. D2 1.0 was annoying for mana, there is no deny in that but D2:LOD is far superior over D3 which only add "+X% to HP" and damage and pretends it is hard.
You should try 1.07 next. Maybe that's the best patch- LOD, vendors still have no mana pots, but kinda decent drop of items and pots(incl. mana) from monsters.
I had a great time watching your runs in Diablo 2 1.0. And this was great video. I agree with everything you said, especially about the balance between melee and caster characters. There's one point though I think "1.0" didn't get right: As mana was a rare and valuable item, casters would go too often to town ONLY to regenerate mana. It was a constant "open a portal, spend your mana, go into town, talk to healer, go back to map and repeat". That was a terrible gameplay design and they had to do something about it. What they chose was making mana potions a lot more accesible, when the solution IMO would be to make healers in town NOT regenerate mana.
Another one not good design would be the repair and sell weapon that gives you more money, they could have done like a real RPG and make Charsi sell hammers to repair.
I think it would be cool to have ladder seasons themed around this. Imagine a version 1.0 ladder season. Or even a ladder season without a character class, or other restrictions or challenges that are throughout the game for the season. It would definitely bring life to the game.
The fact that even beyond WoW classic you have an incredibly active Everquest Classic scene, it tells you that you're completely fucking right. Difficult is good. You don't need everything spoon fed to you.
I realised this when playing OG D2 so many years ago always thought the game was harder compared to looking at it now, when watching your play throughs of 1.0 I didn't feel alone and less nooby
Coming from a speed runner this is an interesting take. There's so many more options for speed running and routing in 1.14 than could ever exist in 1.0, creating a much bigger gap between the peeps who put the time in learning mechanics and practicing them vs newer speed runners. 1.0 would literally come down to rare/epic drops determining speed runs... even the little things like early mana on kill.
I think you have a solid point. However, even in 1.14 the best strategy eventually gets figured out, removing a lot of those options. At that point it too becomes mostly about random factors. So possibly it is at that point very similar to 1.0 from a speed running perspective? I am not a D2 player though, so feel free to explain further.
That's fair. I just think the added elements gives players more options on adapting strategies, such as what slimo pulled off this year. Which he couldn't have done without lots of map knowledge, mechanics, etc. Biggest thing really is the minion group xp vs having to kill and loot trash. Minion groups make for routing options and skipping content, instead of just "forward" Would it be fair to say it's more engaging to *watch* the choices of 1.14, even if 1.0 seems like more decision-making and adjusting constantly?
Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 1.0 are the reasons why in any ARPG I play I always try to kill everything on my screen, regardless of if it's optimal or not. It's just so ingrained into me at this point. When Diablo 2 first came out I managed to get my hands on a copy the day it launched. I mean I was only like somewhere between 10 and 13 at the time, don't feel like doing the math atm. A co-worker of my mothers had sold her a copy that she had yoinked from her own son because it wasn't christian enough for him. But I played the ever-living hell out of it, and didn't even bother going on bnet until around the time of patch 1.05 when one of my friends at school said they had been playing the hell out of it too. It's not like today where everything auto-updates. If you wanted to update your game you had to either manually go looking for the update link, or in Diablo's case, connect to B.Net and then it would download one.
Dude! I miss the good old days when you were building up your char and if you messed up your skill tree you either had to deal with it or start a new char haha so many times I had to restart my amazon haha
Great video. Is it possible to get version 1.0 without the original cd? If it is, could you give some tips on how to do it? I'd really, really like to try it again, sounds super fun
Have you played much 1.07 MrLlama? I really enjoyed the grind on that version, as well as all of the silly bugs..dual wield wands, purchasing rejuves from vendors to combat no mana, triumphant ring of the apprentice (10FCR + 37 mana per kill) , increase life40% shako, rack farming for unique items because bosses can't drop them, crafting items being able to get magic/rare affixes... it's a whole different experience than 1.13 and was great fun
I remember the school yard talk about Diablo 2. Our metric for how powerful our casters where was their mana pool size. That was out E-peen haha. Playing the old versions kinda does confirm that mana and mana regen where really important :)
Indeed. Games are fun when there is a challenge to it. What's the point to play a game without any struggle or not much. You'r right the struggle is the fun part in the end.
Difficult achievements(I'm not about ingame "achievements" but any achievement during in life, game, hobby, etc) are more memorable and precious than easier ones.
MrLlamaSC this video was extremely informative! I have a theory that power creep is a way of keeping players coming back. I know it worked really well at keeping my hooked on D3. Every season I would think how ridiculous the power creep was, but I still wanted to try the new build. Yeah, it does cheapen the game in a way, but yet adds replayability. It's a trade-off. Maybe a game should have certain seasons where you have extra power, but then other seasons where you are either back to standard difficulty, or maybe even have to deal with INCREASED difficulty, that way you have power oscillating up and down over time rather than creeping upward only. If I ever make an arpg someday I may do it like this
When every resource is scarce, every resource matters, which forces you to extract the most value out of it. That's what was the most fun aspect, instead of just rushing by killing everything with unlimited Mana, you need to actually position your character so the skill you will use has the maximum impact. That's why before you shoot your frost nova you need to think and analyze and decide, instead of just tapping the hotkey whenever.
You should take note of some of these differences, hopefully with video clips to compare, and then see if Schaefer is willing to sit down again and discuss what he remembers about those changes. An example, you freaked when you saw the Merc could run in 1.0, but maybe was there a technical reason they took it out? It could be an interesting discussion of game design.
I still play LoD and Resurrected like I was in 1.0. Killing every monster, collecting every coin, picking up useless items and selling it to vendors, using as few potions as possible.
Hey LLama ! Just so you stop saying you forgot clicking on the hardcore check for your barbarian, back in the days, you needed to have completed the game once to have the choice of creating a hc char or not.
1.0 Normal playthroughs are super fun once in a while. However, it can get really tedious and grindy after you enter nightmare on most builds. XP gain is really slow in 1 player SSF mode and you end up just farming the bugged Cow King for loot or infinitely-spawning worms in act 4, which is when I start to lose interest. Some builds can just blaze through the whole thing tho, especially if you start trading and swapping items between your characters.
I really liked this video!!! It’s weird that it’s was sooo hard yet they tried to make “slightly” better whatever as a way to make it more casual. But it’s cool to look back to see what they were thinking with a game that was so new in many ways. They didn’t know what was going to stick. They just did what they thought would work and they liked.
Exactly my thoughts. Many times games come out a little rough but still solid and really challenging and engaging. Then some DLC or xpack arrives and the rough edges get smooth and things get added here and there.. Suddenly the difficulty disappears and things become less engaging and boring. Some examples from LoD: Party Bonus xp. Yes it made party playing more fun since the XP penalty was not so bad but on the other hand it allowed low levels to stand in cow and bloody foothills to leech XP. Didn't work in Classic Mercenary equippable with gear and all that. Well its nice addition in some ways but makes gameplay much easier. If we look at the struggles you had with all those monsters following.. get an Act2 with holy freeze merc and it would be soo easy. More items'n stuff.. more powerful items. Great in a way but makes the game easier. About mana potions and items and all that. I'm not sure but I feel like it was balanced for multiplayer. They definately left single player drops too low. I read that in 1 player game a monster has a 20% chance to drop some item. each player more is 20% more and it will cap out at 5 players to 90%. So already 3 player game should give you much more drops which means more mana potions too. It's also more XP so you progress easily to 25 or so till you hit Act4. Also about items. Shopping some good magic items is a thing in this patch early on. There are some pretty good ones. Just have to spend some time. And yes get gold .. gambling amazing rares is possible already at level 20+. Imbue quest also gives you amazing items. Best weapon stats can be imbued already at level 29. My first ever battle.net Barb I imbued a Lance at level 29 and it rolled 330 damage :)
I completely agree. Harder and more meaningful experiences in games are the best, but they have to have a purpose. What I really liked about this analysis is that all the things that made V1.0 harder had a purpose to it, which makes the world richer.
Agree with you so much! Live your streams and the way you think about games like diablo, that's what we need - a difficult game. Not broken difficult but so that I could explore and enjoy the game while giving thought to all things I do withing that game.
@John Wick Unfunded, lmfao they don't need to be "funded" to work the same as they have for almost 20 years. This is a recent change to how things are functioning. If they can change how they function to put in queue times, which have never happened at obviously higher populations than today, then they can fucking fix it too... "Buddy".
I have had this intuition for a while that D4 will be the best when it's first released. It will be tough, it will take time to gain levels, individual fights with low level monsters will be challenging, and then slowly over time to please the players, things will get easier and easier and the focus will be put more and more on "endgame content".
I hope they revert D2:Remake to no mana potions at stores (keep synergies tho, that was pure win). Or at least call it "game mode plus" compensate by dropping slightly better item for caster classes (like MPK, MP regen items and skulls). I lived thru 1.0 to until they changed it, and it was not a problem, just needed the proper strategies, or a friend with those Paladin auras that rejuvenate your mana (even better with synergies).
@@Yurple88 And most of the one shot moves are very fair if you're familiarized yourself with the mechanics, such that getting hit by them is your fault. Usually if there's an unfair one shot move they balance it out.
I actually prefer Vanilla's item tiers to LoD, with some caveats. With runes and elite uniques, LoD is just much more cookie cutter. BiS items actually exist and there's thousands of people all with the exact same thing, playing the same way. And the game intends that. I'm not a fan of that. I liked that Vanilla's best items were rares and were generally unique to each character. Now, the caveat is with duping the exact same thing occurred and there were thousands of people with all the same rares. And duping was pretty important to the economy because MF/drop rates were so bad. So my ideal system would be Vanilla's truly unique rares, where you would settle for suboptimal items and you were forced to trade with other people with actual bartering, instead of standard currencies. But also duping would be corrected and MF/drop rates would probably have to be improved. Finding/trading for a -40% req, IAS bow or lance or whatever felt so much more meaningful than just getting the millionth version of a Windforce or some runes.
First grind is pretty rough, but once you're capable of running the Cow King, you can re-run him infinitely. This was changed with patch 1.02 which added restrictions on the cow level. Also, RNG is not very well implemented until LoD, so you can often find chests etc which drop the same item every game, as long as you don't change the map or take a different route to reach said chest. Oh, and WW barb with rare pike, preferrably dropped as a failed unique, since it will normally just have 25 durability, but as failed unique it has 125 instead!
This strugling was my biggest problem in D3. It's now a game that you have to get out of your way to see any dificult. When I first played Diablo 1, was a game that really tested you mettle, when every death made me think about what went wrong and how to make better. Similar events happened in D2 at first. Then, slowly the game became more forgiving. Still a pretty game. D3 on other hand... could be a walking simulator.
Battlenet was a different beast at release of diablo 2! Perfect Skulls was the most valuable item, everyone one loved life steal! Cow games was the place to be!
I play 1.0 when i don't have access to internet, on hardcore, and i agree with every thing you've said. I tried to skip stuff and have to farm and go into those random dungeons lol
I think design that promotes gameplay centered around pack density and clear speed (like PoE mapping) is just worse than design that forces you to take care during every encounter (Dark Souls, or v1.0). PoE gives me way too many opportunities to optimize the fun out of the gameplay, so I do.
seeing how Llama got so cheerful about not having mana potions to spam spells, I wonder if he'd like all the D&D games where the mage needs to sleep to replenish his limited casts of spells per day.
The Point is, the older a game gets, the more people want something new, so they add tons of items, skill buffs, nerfs and more content and since balancing everything is a horrible thing, the games get easier to compete, at least if you go for the new stuff or playstyle. I personally like the way how Path of Exile does. It gives you at beginning a quite challenging road to act 10. Yeah, i know, there are skills and character combinations that really can do the content faster and smarter then others, but still its more challenging to get pass act 10 on Hardcore alive alone then doing it in Diablo 3 for example. I have a lot of fun playing ssf hc on PoE, cause you must make smart decisions and its always a challenge. In Diablo 2 LoD you reach quite fast a very stable playstyle and its less challenging after all. I hope they consider how many people love to watch those streams where people failed on diablo 3 due to many heavy mechanics at the beginning, like immortal minions, enrage timer or heavy poison damage. I remember how hard playing hardcore on diablo 3 was. I still remember those cool times. Since they added this second life passive and damage boosts, the game is a joke today. Funny for some days but then you are asking yourself, wtf i am doing here. Hope Diablo 4 gets the right point to be more challenging then diablo 3 and looks how much fun a game makes if its hard as nuts.
I was really engaged in the beginning. Playing in a group made the game a lot easier, so there was a lot of teams running around who were dependent of each other. Then came lod and teams just meant you could kill faster. Leveling was superhard past level 84. The gerbarb channel had easily fifty people helping out to get him to 99 and it still took us month. Lod ruined the game for me, the coordination was unnecessary, the difficulty went down significantly. D3 started at the same difficulty lod had and it went further downhill. And the last thing that 1.0 did so much better than lod and d3 is the colours and effects in multiplayer. The whole screen is blue, orange and green all the time as there is constantly some area spells being cast. To the point where it is impossible to find orientation.
a lot of teams? idk, all i remember was amapala... barbs just solo-farmed their urds (highest mlvl after diablo) for xp or travi to gamble sojs. also, more than 2 people in a team wasn't that helpful, because there was no group xp bonus. with 1.08 (or 1.07; it was lod, but very short-lived), you could idle anywhere in the area and everyone got more xp. 1.09 perfected this and stacked leechers at a certain red tp. 1.10 significantly increased the difficulty again, but it also made hammadin op.
Llama can you please do a tutorial video how to get 1.0 running. I really want to play that patch and I can't be the only one (have the original cds btw)
How many times they had to nerf Necromancer's "corpse explosion" since 1.0? :D But god damn it was good. Playing with your friends on LAN, bringing your entire computer with you only to call out for your necrobuddy - "ВЗРЫВАЙ ИХ НАХУЙ"! And he did that... amazing times.
He talks about how hard 1.00 is but it’s really just the inverse of 1.14 LoD, the beginning is a slow crawl but once you get to level 30 the right character build can absolutely dominate. Hell difficulty can be completed in the 40s, and is much easier than Hell difficulty in 1.14 LoD
1.0 was ok but the latest version of the game is just vastly superior even if it is easier. No-one looks back at 1.0 with fond memories and nostalgia wishing they could play it again like they do with classic WOW. Even with the lower difficulty it hasn't reached the state that retail WOW has. It still retains just enough "hardness" to keep players coming back again and again even decades later.
Fast forward today and the verdict for D4's difficulty is.......... 0 / 10. Can't wait for season 9 when they will introduce official bots to play the game for us.
i just reinstalled my 1.00 cd. Gotta say... the no mana and difficulty (cause trying to use spells can be kinda annoyin wit no mana)... but im re-enjoyin all the broken mechanics and getting to play all the pre-nerf stuff (no cooldown frozen orb... gamblin uniques haha... and rekillable cow king who is droppin me lot of uniqs and a bunch of stamina pots 😀). Already gambled lennymo, tarn helm and hotspurs 🤣🤣🤣. Trynna get me soj and that uniq boneshield with mana per kill. My current weapon is laughable in 1.14d standards ... a magical wand of apprentice that has 24 mana . That mana feels like god gift to earth lols
Cow king can't drop a unique which was already dropped that game, or is held anywhere by a character... BUT! The ground doesn't count, so you can bring your SoJ with you, drop it, then kill king, and he will drop another if he tries. Then just pick up both sojs. Holding unique items he usually drops can make him drop up to 5 rares. He always drops one magical item too.
Back in the day the barbarians battle orders [people wrongly thought they were about to die when used, their life stayed the same i.e. 340 current and max to 340 current 700 max] but the same barb using find potion to keep your friends supplied with rejuvs when there weren't even manna pots made for great teamwork [-: kids these days have no clue
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It's interesting looking at vanilla D2 and comparing it to D1. It's that slightly slower pace that I loved about ARPGs. Modern games are a rush-fest where you don't get to know the enemies you kill, so the monster sounds never become iconic, their animations never really sticking to my memory, unlike zombies in D1 or Fallen in D2.
I also preferred being rewarded for looking over the entirety of a map or level instead of just b-lining to the next exit or set of stairs or whatever. Scarcity makes you look for stuff, and makes it feel more "real". Iunno.
You managed to put into words the reason why I keep coming back to diablo 1, even more than d2.
I agree with you. I’d wish there was a modern option for this. I dont think it’s really the game’s fault. The modern arpgs are like that because it’s how most people tried play the old ones. The new games are rush fest a in an attempt to cater to gamer behaviour.
@@ragerontilt4778 Yeah, agree. I am really guessing that there are some things that are caused by gamers themselves.
I really prefer [very] long games than short games. You CAN put SO MANY ups and downs on your long content, and if I am impressed and is satisfied at the end, it will feel like a journey. For short games, it has to strike on every accounts. Otherwise, I am not going to be satisfied and makes me want more of this. This one, not sure if it's true at all, can be one of the causes of sequel-baiting on its worse.
Usually, my minimum estimated total game time for a game is roughly 8 hours to 15 hours (enough for budget games), and maximum can be anywhere above 15 hours, but usually up to 200 hours, but I dunno? It can be more than that, but then, again? I don't know.
No wonder if it can really be a Meta line for Deckard Cain? "Hello, my friend! Stay awhile and listen."
Plague bearer suck noise
Yeah. D3 suffers from this and PoE is the same, maybe even worse in the endgame. It fairly quickly switches in scale from killing a few monsters to clearing screens full of monsters so fast that you barely register what is happening. It's just a slideshow of full screen explosions. You don't think "Oh! There's a lot of monsters here. Better be careful", instead you're thinking "Ah! There's something to kill but where is the next group?"
Watching your 1.0 playthroughs made me want to go back and play 1.0 and I love it. The difficulty and the amount of engagement the game asks of you is amazing, encouraging you to explore every corner of the game because you are so gold, xp, and resource starved makes things way more exciting. I really wish games were still being made like this today
i remember my first diablo kill with my vengence pally, i think got killed around 20 times atleast and got caught in bone prison too !
@@jaysahup6563 lol I forgot about his bone prison! Shame they took it out. Diablo is a pushover now
I just want 2 things from D4.
1 .Dont make builds for the players. Give us a game we can theory craft, get rid of mandatory set builds.
2. Greater rift should not be the main part of end game content. When the goal is endless dungeon that rises infinitely, you reduce viability of 99% of builds and this brings us back to point #1 that everyone is playing that one mandatory build.
This so much, you should be able to play how you wanna play, not how a meta should tell you how to play.
I also want character skin DLC's and Fortnite dancing
I dont think the game should focus too much at "end game" at all. I just want a solid experience in the main playthrough from the start till the last boss. Preferably hell difficulty should be hard and require gear to clear certain bosses, hences motivating the player to get out in the world and do some grinding untill they hope or think they are ready to tackle a big main boss.
Greater rifts can be a main part of endgame, but then skills have to be balanced not around mandatory set builds as you mentioned. Path of Exile does this very well, where every skill is technically viable (Some are obviously way better than others just due to the nature of how they work) and the best gear is and or at least used to be rare items, with a few uniques here and there depending on your build.
@@urlond9371 any game that employs asymmetrical balance will always have a metagame. It will always have a build or builds that are objectively better than others. For something to be good, something else has to be worse.
I watched your 1.0 runs, great idea! I really feel with you when you talk about difficulty in games nowdays. I have been playing through d2 again recently and have been thinking to myself "damn, I must have been so bad" while thinking back to myself playing as a kid, never getting past act II arcane sanctuary on my first character. However, now I realize that i was playing 1.0 and that it was quite a feat! Esp. With the fact that I knew almost no English. Trial and error my friends, trial and error.
Yep. Diablo 2 makes you feel that adventuring is difficult and fighting evil is brutal and dark
This is what we old timers call a *dungeon crawl* ... where you literally crawled on your hands and knees through every step of the game to survive, or else you would die in a heartbeat. That is the definition of *Diablo 1* and the definition of *dungeon crawl* ... If you want to experience a true *dungeon crawl* , then load up Diablo 1 (GOG.com has it for sale for modern computers) and play the Warrior. Don't worry about what Carbot says, you can definitely make it through the game with a Warrior, if you crawl through it... I call it the *Diablo two-step* (i.e. take two steps and wait to see what you aggro, then slaughter it.
Ps1 diablo 1 if you want even more challenge
i found you a few months ago and i was blown away at how fast you speedrunners could play diablo 2, my memories of playing it were rough and i was amazed at how fast it could be done. then i realized i had always been playing 1.0 and i felt better about myself.
I agree with most of what you said, but I have to say that although the monsters could stand to be harder to compensate, the ability to have semideterministic progress via runewords was also vastly superior. The game should've been balanced so that in the absence of lucky unique item drops, you need to craft things like Stealth, Lore, and Spirit to meaningfully progress past the levels where those become available to you. It's not just the mana pots that made the game easier for casters. The monsters in LoD were just as strong as in vanilla, but they could've stood to be much stronger because of the extremely powerful crafts made available to us. If horadric cube recipes were made more obvious in-game, then even actual orange "crafted items" could've been seen as mandatory to progress. But even though the power creep did make the game, by some standards, "too easy", it's still good as a system. I don't think the system of just relying on rare and unique drops in D2 to progress your character made as much sense by comparison.
You're like the only person I go to to learn things about d2. You know so much about the game, and yet you can condense such complex stuff into simple enough terms that noobs can understand. I honestly forgot about this game, but watching your stream reminded me of whan I was 8 years old and first played it with my brothers. It's that passion we need to remind us what a good game can be like, a artfully crafted deep game like diablo 2 should be a shining example of proper video game design for other developers to emulate.
It so great that people like you, who have a following, express these thoughts and feelings. This have been my opinion for the last 10 years about all games that are being produced. They are all too easy and meaningless. I have some other hardcore classic gamer friends who say the same thing. But online...I always get brigaded by people who say things they don't understand. They find entertainment in not being challenged. But that's the opposite goal of any game, computer or not. Games should be hard, that's the essence of the game. That's how you get the feeling of adventure and immersion. By overcoming obstacles and finding new ways of beating the game. Not having mana potions does sounds horrendous, but that the price you've gotta pay to play a sorc that has other benefits. It's really great. Even if you don't like a character and you don't play him it's still matters that all characters are equally balanced. It creates suspension, makes game really dark and hard. And by the way, you can make a game really dark without it being hard. You can't fool yourself with dark colors and music if you're literally not afraid of the monsters and the world. If it's not harsh it's not dark no matter how you paint it.
Your thoughts on the resource management and particularly the point where you need to be careful moving forward with risk of being surrounded really hit the spot for me. I want that in D4. That's when the scary element comes in, and every monster becomes so much more "real" and just not something you throw dps on to see the numbers or to get you through to the next area. I believe that D3 just wasn't having that element because eventually you barely even see that monsters anymore. Immersion will be their success or downfall.
I barely look at monsters. I watch my buffs and cool downs most of the time and just navigate the map through peripheral.
One thing not being able to buy mana potions does is make Energy not a complete joke of a skill. Having a deep mana pool actually matters, but you have to balance that between the need for Vitality for more health, and the other stats for equipment.
You know, I am thinking about recording a full 1.00 playthrough for RUclips some day - not as a speedrun, but a thorough playthrough. More importantly, I would focus on the differences in this old version, especially things that were removed in later versions (e.g. the thunder & lightning effect during rain, or Flamespike the Crawler - the super-uniquer monster that used to be in Inner Cloister).
Another idea for such a playthrough would be Lord of Destruction 1.07, i.e. the original unpatched version.
That would be really cool to watch man. What is this thunder effect during rain you speak of?
@@metastase895 It's a flash of light that occurs during rain + a thunder sound effect. I suppose it was eventually removed because it could be seizure-induzing... who knows. Some hirelings also had additional running animations in older versions, I've also seen Rogue mercs wearing helmets.
Llama, I am 100% on the grid with how hard 1.0 was. It is something that I was into just like old Everquest Pre Planes of Power. The one thing that sucks is people wont change out of the "I need instant gratification". I have more fun and it looks like you also enjoy games with harder challenges that make getting the item's or whatever they may be WAY more enjoyable. I HOPE D4 makes it hard almost to the point you need to put in a hour or two to get a nice item rather then 50 unique items that are trash and you just break them down for materials.
ilvl generated items just doesnt make it for me. I cant stand it anymore. I dont get how its admitted that scamfest Gacha phone games are shit and that you can spot them at the moment they tell you about Power Level, but somehow ilvl-based random generators are fine.
@@NoFutureForG0uda Agreed!
I've been enjoying 1.09 LOD lately, good balance of difficulty and QoL stuff. Still can't buy mana potions, but they seem to drop a little more often than vanilla.
Also the lack of synergies is WONDERFUL.
The best part of 1.0 was that we got to see so much of Llama's smile :)
Um gay
Damn male simping is really a thing
Just kidding king
@@crxo7106 Hella
Talking about difficult games and not mentioning dark souls, I just began playing ds1 for the first time and it's a blast. Rarely has a game made me stop in game for a while to consider my options
My problem with dark souls is it's super easy to cheese if you just grind an area for an hour or two. The games goes from hard to a joke if you do that.
Can you PLEASE make a full on design analysis and comparison of SYNERGY before and after?
I think strongly that the game is better without synergies because synergy reduces the number of top viable builds. (hammerdin for example)
It's great to see some commentary about 1.00. I gave up on D2 back in the day because it was challenging and I didn't understand some of its mechanics. Fast forward to today and I'm trying it again (1.00, nearing the halfway point of Act IV as I type). While by this point I have been dying for some QOL improvements, I also have felt right at home having previously mainly playing a ton of Diablo 1 (it's one of those games I fire up at least once a year). Knowing all of the differences now in LoD, in a way I'm appreciating that I decided to do this completely vanilla to start. It gives perspective to the grand scheme of things, and like you mentioned, it has also been a challenge and that is something I need in my games. I had started Diablo 3 a few years back, played a few hours, enjoyed myself enough, but never went back because I couldn't even force myself to die. On its default difficulty it was ridiculously easy, whereas D1 and D2 (1.00) you can get wrecked right from the start. They are very different beasts it seems.
I got two 2 words for D2 1.0
Lightning enchanted - Multiple shots
That was sentence of death!!
That is 4 words.
multishot lightning enchanced aura enchanced
aura just so happens to be conviction
oblivion knight in chaos sanctuary and their iron maiden curse.
as whirlwind barb or zeal paladin
extra fast extra strong aura enchanced (decrepify) death lord & co.
only escape route is guarded by group of whatever with cold enchant and might aura.
And they will join in on the fun in just a sec.
Last one might still be posible. I haven't got very far since I started playing again.
@@adamcarr4989 two 2 words
AFAIR when Multiple shot came first it was much worse, they were called MLEBs (as opposed to LEMBs)
@@sergeysmyshlyaev9716 i never heard/read "LEMB", and since you usually see MLEBs by their lightning balls and don't have time to read the description, i don't think anybody made a difference. at least in 1.09 classic EU we didn't.
Love your content! Im starting D2 over and you have shown my allot of things I had forgotten or even know in the first place~ Good good stuff!!
If Diablo gets easier, we might end up getting a movie, which was once a video game in 1.0.
And the new players are like:" Hey, I watched this awesome movie called Diablo...", while you responde:" Yea, I played it a couple of times back in 1.0."
9:48 - When Llama finally goes on his honeymoon.
I've been watching you for years man, and I gotta say you have the right attitudes towards what makes a game good. You inspired me to go back to play Diablo 1 v 1.00 for a quick run through.
There's some other personalities out there pushing information and strats, but I find myself nodding and saying "yup. Mhm, yeah. EXACTLY!' when you go off on your philosophies.
This is how I actually remember the game in my childhood. I played it about a month after release and I didn’t have internet. So I had to play base game and beat it all the way through. I remember it being so challenging and the excitement of the first time I got my first rare, set and unique items. The dopamine rush from how rewarding that was to earn
Also, you touching on the gold side. Man I remember picking up every item including the crappiest crude items for every ounce of gold I could earn from it. Was so fun. I miss games being crazy difficult like tbat
I wanna point out that a lot of what you are talking about is not really only about 1.0. It is about pre-1.10
Give 1.09 a try, it's a great middle ground between modern D2 and 1.0
Diablo09.com can help with that
Yeah, 1.09 LOD is the best.
This was a great suggestion. I just booted up 1.09 (thank you D2SE!) and was delighted to see mana potions weren't at the vendors yet. I was going to try and get 1.0 working but this might scratch that itch.
1.09 is too easy though.
@@sergeysmyshlyaev9716 i came to the comments to point out that 1.09 was the tipping point of the hard difficulty/fun playing. synergies killed the game for alot of people, and enigma just killed every class other than the pally. it really is the height of diablo 2s existence
Like I mentioned in the sorc stream, modern games seem to have lost sight of the fact that in a video game, the journey IS the destination. Racing to the end game means that the game is over very quickly and you don't get to appreciate all of the effort they put in everything until then.
When I started playing LOD from previously completing 1.0x with a barbarian, I created a sorceress and pumped warmth like 10 points because I knew mana was scarce and I think also no mana pots at vendors but I guy who knew the game better then told me to just delete it and start over, I think more mana started dropping at that point.
I think not being able to buy mana potions makes sense. I never really felt mana/resource management was D2s strong point.
Would love to see some D2 mods that make the game harder instead of just making it easier.
I went back and played D1 recently and and no action RPG has really captured the difficulty, atmosphere and strain for resources as well as that game did.
Everything needs to be available in bite-sized chunks in the eyes of Blizzard now, I see no scenario where D4 becomes a difficult game.
And slight critique: D3 was difficult at start but in all of the wrong ways.
D3 wasn't difficult until you hit Act 2 inferno. The problem with vanilla d3 was that they tiered gear drops by Item levels like in World of Warcraft in inferno to where you needed rares from act 1 to do act 2 and rares from act 2 to do act 3 and by act 3 pretty much only shield barbs could survive it beyond characters with 1000$ in gear. It was pretty much impossible to do act 3 with act 1 inferno ilvl gear.
Gear from the previous difficulties could not drop gear that was useful for inferno. Unlike in d2, Nightmare Meph was a incredibly valuable source for uniques that were great in hell. On the topic of uniques. Uniques were absolute dogshit in vanilla D3. They were utterly useless when they should have been ameans to bridge the gap from hell to inferno.
Mana potions weren't available from vendors until 1.10. I played mostly LoD 1.08 and 1.09, which was a bit more balanced and polished than 1.0
Man classic d2 was so awesome. I remember the rare items were where it was at like a Max def ornate plate with some nice attributes. That loot system got me so hooked.
Scarcity is the best thing in D2.
I’ve played 1.06b religiously. I have played since 1.00. Hardcore (after the first sir) Yea I’ve gone through all the patches and changes and done all content. But that’s my favorite. 1.06b. Major bugs fixed but still classic.
All is well. Then d2r. The new graphics are hard to pass up. And hard to return to the old. Even if the game is better in older version. Would love a way to switch versions in d2r.
Love to see you run this content and your take on it is the same as mine.
Please listen to this man Blizzard! For the first time in years I was finally able to get modern d2 to run on my windows 10 PC, and although it's still great fun, it most certainly is sooo much easier to just plow on through it then it used to be. I would have spent weeks to get a fresh toon as geared (and leveled) as I have done just playing through today solo.
D2 Version 1.0 is the ARPG gold standard in its overall design and underlying gameplay mechanics. It's overall challenge and ability to engage the player has yet to be topped. The difficulty and time required to overcome those challenges, are directly related to how engaging the game is; moreso, a great challenge often evokes similarly powerful emotion which causes the experience/memories of it to endure long-term. When these elements are streamlined and a game becomes more and more 'casual' (perhaps convenient is a better adjective), the less longevity a game will have from user loss-of-interest.
I do fully agree with ease-of-life changes, such as Hoykey and UI improvments, as well as some other things Mr. Llama mentioned in regards to class balance, but I would caution against gameplay changes aimed at reducing tedium if doing so would upset an underlying balance/gameplay (Ie: Potions stacking at the vendor is great, but making them infinite because finding them 'is really just a time sink anyways', thus upsetting the underlying scarcity mechanic )
I love this introspective because this is the reason I currently only play Classic wow/Ironman OSRS.
The feeling of having all these things that hinder you at first, but become easier as you put in the effort, thats the best feeling.
If its easy as pie from the beginning, it feels like I just booted up a mobile app game.
Blizzard's definition of "hard" is just giving bosses a trillion life. Just look at vanilla D3. Don't expect D4 to be any different or "skillful".
They just added something like 500% health AND 500% damage to enemies at the launch of D3.
And on top of that they just added cheap and boring ground effects to make enemies ''different''.
We did not have any good items at the launch either so it made the game really boring to play.
Today they add difficulty the same way, but they added easy to get items to make the stupidity playable.
Yep, D4 will be trash... Nu-Blizz is a trash company.
@@Hiferus You might be playing D2 wrong if you're having massive mana problems with Sorceress in Hell
@@Hiferus You are playing D2 wrong if you are out of mana easily. There is a mercenary weapon runeword ''Insight'' that gives a level 12-17 Meditation aura which is 575-700% mana regen. Insight is really good starter weapon and your mana will always be full, even without Warmth. One thing that made D2 far superior over D3 is that you can build your mercenary in to a godlike support or a brutal slayer. In D3 you just have that annoying dude running after you doing close to nothing at all.
@@Hiferus You talk about D3 "+X% to HP" and I talk about D2:LOD, what is your problem? Please tell me what is hard in current D2:LOD compared to D3. Your main concern was mana problem even with level 20 warmth and I can tell you that there is absolute 0 mana problem in D2:LOD, warmth is not even needed for a sorceress. Try to understand what a conversation is all about before raging. D2 1.0 was annoying for mana, there is no deny in that but D2:LOD is far superior over D3 which only add "+X% to HP" and damage and pretends it is hard.
You should try 1.07 next. Maybe that's the best patch- LOD, vendors still have no mana pots, but kinda decent drop of items and pots(incl. mana) from monsters.
Nice video ! And I love 1.0 speedruns, feel free to do more of those ;)
I hadn’t watched the 1.0 runs til you posted this. They are reaaaaally interesting.
Make sroy’s dreams come true and do a necro
I had a great time watching your runs in Diablo 2 1.0. And this was great video. I agree with everything you said, especially about the balance between melee and caster characters.
There's one point though I think "1.0" didn't get right: As mana was a rare and valuable item, casters would go too often to town ONLY to regenerate mana. It was a constant "open a portal, spend your mana, go into town, talk to healer, go back to map and repeat". That was a terrible gameplay design and they had to do something about it.
What they chose was making mana potions a lot more accesible, when the solution IMO would be to make healers in town NOT regenerate mana.
Another one not good design would be the repair and sell weapon that gives you more money, they could have done like a real RPG and make Charsi sell hammers to repair.
I think it would be cool to have ladder seasons themed around this. Imagine a version 1.0 ladder season. Or even a ladder season without a character class, or other restrictions or challenges that are throughout the game for the season. It would definitely bring life to the game.
The fact that even beyond WoW classic you have an incredibly active Everquest Classic scene, it tells you that you're completely fucking right. Difficult is good. You don't need everything spoon fed to you.
I often see u drink water from well while having shrine active. Did you know that it reduces the duration just like it does for curses?
WHAT
@@TrollAxeThrower makes sense if it does reduce curse duration because fade does the same
@@kipz This is totally new information for me
Holy shit
I realised this when playing OG D2 so many years ago always thought the game was harder compared to looking at it now, when watching your play throughs of 1.0 I didn't feel alone and less nooby
Back in the day, I felt that my summons de-spawning when out of screen, was just too much though, making the class unplayable (necro)
I've been playing some D3 lately and had some fun, but it's basically Dynasty Warriors, plus even more of a grindfest.
Dynasty Warriors is a really good way to put it. I heard Llama compare it to Gauntlet Legends as well.
I've never been so early to a video where it released 3 seconds ago
Me too.
@@chris5240 ah another chris
@@Chris-cf1hs There can only be one.
Coming from a speed runner this is an interesting take. There's so many more options for speed running and routing in 1.14 than could ever exist in 1.0, creating a much bigger gap between the peeps who put the time in learning mechanics and practicing them vs newer speed runners.
1.0 would literally come down to rare/epic drops determining speed runs... even the little things like early mana on kill.
I think you have a solid point. However, even in 1.14 the best strategy eventually gets figured out, removing a lot of those options. At that point it too becomes mostly about random factors. So possibly it is at that point very similar to 1.0 from a speed running perspective?
I am not a D2 player though, so feel free to explain further.
That's fair. I just think the added elements gives players more options on adapting strategies, such as what slimo pulled off this year. Which he couldn't have done without lots of map knowledge, mechanics, etc.
Biggest thing really is the minion group xp vs having to kill and loot trash. Minion groups make for routing options and skipping content, instead of just "forward"
Would it be fair to say it's more engaging to *watch* the choices of 1.14, even if 1.0 seems like more decision-making and adjusting constantly?
The same experience as locking a door to face enemies in a line. Miss that stuff
Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 1.0 are the reasons why in any ARPG I play I always try to kill everything on my screen, regardless of if it's optimal or not. It's just so ingrained into me at this point. When Diablo 2 first came out I managed to get my hands on a copy the day it launched. I mean I was only like somewhere between 10 and 13 at the time, don't feel like doing the math atm. A co-worker of my mothers had sold her a copy that she had yoinked from her own son because it wasn't christian enough for him. But I played the ever-living hell out of it, and didn't even bother going on bnet until around the time of patch 1.05 when one of my friends at school said they had been playing the hell out of it too. It's not like today where everything auto-updates. If you wanted to update your game you had to either manually go looking for the update link, or in Diablo's case, connect to B.Net and then it would download one.
pretty sure that minions *did* give extra XP compared to their white (i.e. non-special) monster types...
I found my old D2 CDs, printed at 2003. It's 1.0 😝
Dude! I miss the good old days when you were building up your char and if you messed up your skill tree you either had to deal with it or start a new char haha so many times I had to restart my amazon haha
I love this discussion. Would be amazing if you could get David Brevik on this to talk more about all this stuff, like when you got Max Schaefer on.
The best part of 1.0 was that we got to hear so much of Llama's RUclips voice :)
I still have the manual guidance for diablo II 1.0 it shows the names of all creatures with a description for each one of them 😅
Great video. Is it possible to get version 1.0 without the original cd? If it is, could you give some tips on how to do it? I'd really, really like to try it again, sounds super fun
Have you played much 1.07 MrLlama? I really enjoyed the grind on that version, as well as all of the silly bugs..dual wield wands, purchasing rejuves from vendors to combat no mana, triumphant ring of the apprentice (10FCR + 37 mana per kill) , increase life40% shako, rack farming for unique items because bosses can't drop them, crafting items being able to get magic/rare affixes... it's a whole different experience than 1.13 and was great fun
I remember the school yard talk about Diablo 2. Our metric for how powerful our casters where was their mana pool size. That was out E-peen haha. Playing the old versions kinda does confirm that mana and mana regen where really important :)
Indeed. Games are fun when there is a challenge to it. What's the point to play a game without any struggle or not much. You'r right the struggle is the fun part in the end.
Difficult achievements(I'm not about ingame "achievements" but any achievement during in life, game, hobby, etc) are more memorable and precious than easier ones.
MrLlamaSC this video was extremely informative! I have a theory that power creep is a way of keeping players coming back. I know it worked really well at keeping my hooked on D3. Every season I would think how ridiculous the power creep was, but I still wanted to try the new build. Yeah, it does cheapen the game in a way, but yet adds replayability. It's a trade-off. Maybe a game should have certain seasons where you have extra power, but then other seasons where you are either back to standard difficulty, or maybe even have to deal with INCREASED difficulty, that way you have power oscillating up and down over time rather than creeping upward only. If I ever make an arpg someday I may do it like this
When every resource is scarce, every resource matters, which forces you to extract the most value out of it. That's what was the most fun aspect, instead of just rushing by killing everything with unlimited Mana, you need to actually position your character so the skill you will use has the maximum impact. That's why before you shoot your frost nova you need to think and analyze and decide, instead of just tapping the hotkey whenever.
You should take note of some of these differences, hopefully with video clips to compare, and then see if Schaefer is willing to sit down again and discuss what he remembers about those changes. An example, you freaked when you saw the Merc could run in 1.0, but maybe was there a technical reason they took it out? It could be an interesting discussion of game design.
I still play LoD and Resurrected like I was in 1.0. Killing every monster, collecting every coin, picking up useless items and selling it to vendors, using as few potions as possible.
Hey LLama ! Just so you stop saying you forgot clicking on the hardcore check for your barbarian, back in the days, you needed to have completed the game once to have the choice of creating a hc char or not.
1.0 Normal playthroughs are super fun once in a while. However, it can get really tedious and grindy after you enter nightmare on most builds. XP gain is really slow in 1 player SSF mode and you end up just farming the bugged Cow King for loot or infinitely-spawning worms in act 4, which is when I start to lose interest. Some builds can just blaze through the whole thing tho, especially if you start trading and swapping items between your characters.
I really liked this video!!! It’s weird that it’s was sooo hard yet they tried to make “slightly” better whatever as a way to make it more casual. But it’s cool to look back to see what they were thinking with a game that was so new in many ways. They didn’t know what was going to stick. They just did what they thought would work and they liked.
Exactly my thoughts.
Many times games come out a little rough but still solid and really challenging and engaging. Then some DLC or xpack arrives and the rough edges get smooth and things get added here and there.. Suddenly the difficulty disappears and things become less engaging and boring.
Some examples from LoD:
Party Bonus xp. Yes it made party playing more fun since the XP penalty was not so bad but on the other hand it allowed low levels to stand in cow and bloody foothills to leech XP. Didn't work in Classic
Mercenary equippable with gear and all that. Well its nice addition in some ways but makes gameplay much easier. If we look at the struggles you had with all those monsters following.. get an Act2 with holy freeze merc and it would be soo easy.
More items'n stuff.. more powerful items. Great in a way but makes the game easier.
About mana potions and items and all that. I'm not sure but I feel like it was balanced for multiplayer. They definately left single player drops too low.
I read that in 1 player game a monster has a 20% chance to drop some item.
each player more is 20% more and it will cap out at 5 players to 90%.
So already 3 player game should give you much more drops which means more mana potions too.
It's also more XP so you progress easily to 25 or so till you hit Act4.
Also about items. Shopping some good magic items is a thing in this patch early on. There are some pretty good ones. Just have to spend some time.
And yes get gold .. gambling amazing rares is possible already at level 20+.
Imbue quest also gives you amazing items. Best weapon stats can be imbued already at level 29. My first ever battle.net Barb I imbued a Lance at level 29 and it rolled 330 damage :)
I completely agree. Harder and more meaningful experiences in games are the best, but they have to have a purpose. What I really liked about this analysis is that all the things that made V1.0 harder had a purpose to it, which makes the world richer.
Agree with you so much! Live your streams and the way you think about games like diablo, that's what we need - a difficult game. Not broken difficult but so that I could explore and enjoy the game while giving thought to all things I do withing that game.
No mana potions is exactly why a lot of sorcs invested 20 points into warmth! Good memories.
What do you think of these "queues" hitting US east ladder atm?
@John Wick 2010? i think you mean 2002.
@John Wick Unfunded, lmfao they don't need to be "funded" to work the same as they have for almost 20 years. This is a recent change to how things are functioning. If they can change how they function to put in queue times, which have never happened at obviously higher populations than today, then they can fucking fix it too... "Buddy".
I have had this intuition for a while that D4 will be the best when it's first released. It will be tough, it will take time to gain levels, individual fights with low level monsters will be challenging, and then slowly over time to please the players, things will get easier and easier and the focus will be put more and more on "endgame content".
I hope they revert D2:Remake to no mana potions at stores (keep synergies tho, that was pure win).
Or at least call it "game mode plus" compensate by dropping slightly better item for caster classes (like MPK, MP regen items and skulls).
I lived thru 1.0 to until they changed it, and it was not a problem, just needed the proper strategies, or a friend with those Paladin auras that rejuvenate your mana (even better with synergies).
To be fair, I think PoE can still be quite difficult at points and in some endgame tasks to this day.
yea the "one shots" can be nuts, even if you got the mechanics down fully there is no guarantee
@@Yurple88 And most of the one shot moves are very fair if you're familiarized yourself with the mechanics, such that getting hit by them is your fault. Usually if there's an unfair one shot move they balance it out.
Thanks for all your D2 content Llama!
They should make D4 hard, and have a "casual" mode for noobs. (no ladder, no pvp, etc...)
And what exactly is "hard" in your opinion?
I actually prefer Vanilla's item tiers to LoD, with some caveats. With runes and elite uniques, LoD is just much more cookie cutter. BiS items actually exist and there's thousands of people all with the exact same thing, playing the same way. And the game intends that. I'm not a fan of that. I liked that Vanilla's best items were rares and were generally unique to each character. Now, the caveat is with duping the exact same thing occurred and there were thousands of people with all the same rares. And duping was pretty important to the economy because MF/drop rates were so bad.
So my ideal system would be Vanilla's truly unique rares, where you would settle for suboptimal items and you were forced to trade with other people with actual bartering, instead of standard currencies. But also duping would be corrected and MF/drop rates would probably have to be improved. Finding/trading for a -40% req, IAS bow or lance or whatever felt so much more meaningful than just getting the millionth version of a Windforce or some runes.
1.0 is extremely satisfying. I have the original big box diablo 2 v1.0 in MINT condition here. So good on my retro rig!
First grind is pretty rough, but once you're capable of running the Cow King, you can re-run him infinitely. This was changed with patch 1.02 which added restrictions on the cow level.
Also, RNG is not very well implemented until LoD, so you can often find chests etc which drop the same item every game, as long as you don't change the map or take a different route to reach said chest. Oh, and WW barb with rare pike, preferrably dropped as a failed unique, since it will normally just have 25 durability, but as failed unique it has 125 instead!
And GL getting into the high 90's with you char... Highest I got is lvl 92 I think, and I grinded a LOT of champion urdars....
i never played 1.0 but very interesting how this got evolved. i only play single player classic and like to kill all and complete all quests.
This strugling was my biggest problem in D3. It's now a game that you have to get out of your way to see any dificult. When I first played Diablo 1, was a game that really tested you mettle, when every death made me think about what went wrong and how to make better. Similar events happened in D2 at first. Then, slowly the game became more forgiving. Still a pretty game. D3 on other hand... could be a walking simulator.
Battlenet was a different beast at release of diablo 2! Perfect Skulls was the most valuable item, everyone one loved life steal! Cow games was the place to be!
I play 1.0 when i don't have access to internet, on hardcore, and i agree with every thing you've said. I tried to skip stuff and have to farm and go into those random dungeons lol
I also miss raising unlimited skeletons, but I do not miss them jamming up the doorways.
I think design that promotes gameplay centered around pack density and clear speed (like PoE mapping) is just worse than design that forces you to take care during every encounter (Dark Souls, or v1.0). PoE gives me way too many opportunities to optimize the fun out of the gameplay, so I do.
seeing how Llama got so cheerful about not having mana potions to spam spells, I wonder if he'd like all the D&D games where the mage needs to sleep to replenish his limited casts of spells per day.
The Point is, the older a game gets, the more people want something new, so they add tons of items, skill buffs, nerfs and more content and since balancing everything is a horrible thing, the games get easier to compete, at least if you go for the new stuff or playstyle. I personally like the way how Path of Exile does. It gives you at beginning a quite challenging road to act 10. Yeah, i know, there are skills and character combinations that really can do the content faster and smarter then others, but still its more challenging to get pass act 10 on Hardcore alive alone then doing it in Diablo 3 for example. I have a lot of fun playing ssf hc on PoE, cause you must make smart decisions and its always a challenge. In Diablo 2 LoD you reach quite fast a very stable playstyle and its less challenging after all. I hope they consider how many people love to watch those streams where people failed on diablo 3 due to many heavy mechanics at the beginning, like immortal minions, enrage timer or heavy poison damage. I remember how hard playing hardcore on diablo 3 was. I still remember those cool times. Since they added this second life passive and damage boosts, the game is a joke today. Funny for some days but then you are asking yourself, wtf i am doing here. Hope Diablo 4 gets the right point to be more challenging then diablo 3 and looks how much fun a game makes if its hard as nuts.
Hell Duriel and Hefasto with critical strikes above 1000 are hilarious :)
meh duriel is only hard on normal. "his dam charge attack" :D after u done him and have some gear hes a pussy
I was really engaged in the beginning. Playing in a group made the game a lot easier, so there was a lot of teams running around who were dependent of each other. Then came lod and teams just meant you could kill faster. Leveling was superhard past level 84. The gerbarb channel had easily fifty people helping out to get him to 99 and it still took us month. Lod ruined the game for me, the coordination was unnecessary, the difficulty went down significantly. D3 started at the same difficulty lod had and it went further downhill. And the last thing that 1.0 did so much better than lod and d3 is the colours and effects in multiplayer. The whole screen is blue, orange and green all the time as there is constantly some area spells being cast. To the point where it is impossible to find orientation.
a lot of teams? idk, all i remember was amapala... barbs just solo-farmed their urds (highest mlvl after diablo) for xp or travi to gamble sojs. also, more than 2 people in a team wasn't that helpful, because there was no group xp bonus.
with 1.08 (or 1.07; it was lod, but very short-lived), you could idle anywhere in the area and everyone got more xp. 1.09 perfected this and stacked leechers at a certain red tp.
1.10 significantly increased the difficulty again, but it also made hammadin op.
Llama can you please do a tutorial video how to get 1.0 running. I really want to play that patch and I can't be the only one (have the original cds btw)
How many times they had to nerf Necromancer's "corpse explosion" since 1.0? :D
But god damn it was good. Playing with your friends on LAN, bringing your entire computer with you only to call out for your necrobuddy - "ВЗРЫВАЙ ИХ НАХУЙ"! And he did that... amazing times.
The king has spoken!
He talks about how hard 1.00 is but it’s really just the inverse of 1.14 LoD, the beginning is a slow crawl but once you get to level 30 the right character build can absolutely dominate. Hell difficulty can be completed in the 40s, and is much easier than Hell difficulty in 1.14 LoD
1.0 was ok but the latest version of the game is just vastly superior even if it is easier.
No-one looks back at 1.0 with fond memories and nostalgia wishing they could play it again like they do with classic WOW.
Even with the lower difficulty it hasn't reached the state that retail WOW has. It still retains just enough "hardness" to keep players coming back again and again even decades later.
Fast forward today and the verdict for D4's difficulty is.......... 0 / 10. Can't wait for season 9 when they will introduce official bots to play the game for us.
i just reinstalled my 1.00 cd. Gotta say... the no mana and difficulty (cause trying to use spells can be kinda annoyin wit no mana)... but im re-enjoyin all the broken mechanics and getting to play all the pre-nerf stuff (no cooldown frozen orb... gamblin uniques haha... and rekillable cow king who is droppin me lot of uniqs and a bunch of stamina pots 😀). Already gambled lennymo, tarn helm and hotspurs 🤣🤣🤣. Trynna get me soj and that uniq boneshield with mana per kill. My current weapon is laughable in 1.14d standards ... a magical wand of apprentice that has 24 mana . That mana feels like god gift to earth lols
Cow king can't drop a unique which was already dropped that game, or is held anywhere by a character... BUT! The ground doesn't count, so you can bring your SoJ with you, drop it, then kill king, and he will drop another if he tries. Then just pick up both sojs. Holding unique items he usually drops can make him drop up to 5 rares. He always drops one magical item too.
Back in the day the barbarians battle orders [people wrongly thought they were about to die when used, their life stayed the same i.e. 340 current and max to 340 current 700 max] but the same barb using find potion to keep your friends supplied with rejuvs when there weren't even manna pots made for great teamwork [-: kids these days have no clue