The elements that keeps D2 going.

[Malrenn]

What makes D2 such an enduring game? If and when D3 comes, which do you want to see implemented? Ill get this started by naming a few off the top of my head.I am mainly talking PvM here.

• Viabilty of different builds.
  
  Sure theres plenty of cookie cutter builds. One can try and be successful with non standard builds though. The talent system in D2 is one of the best in gaming hands down IMO.It adds so much replayability.
• Viability of different armors and weapons.
  
  Self explanatory. You dont HAVE to wear the same crap as everyone else. IE T1 T2 T3 gears etc etc. Add runes in and it really gets interesting. I love the rare/unique item system.
• The great story and atmosphere.
  
  People say Diablo had a darker feel to it. I played thru the game once, and I guess i see it. I think D2 is right up there with it though. I hope they stick with that feel and an M rating.
• Crafting.
  
  The Horadric cube is one of the simplest yet most versatile crafting systems I have ever seen. Will it fit in D3 lorewise? I hope so cause its friggin awesome
• World Events
  
  Came into play much later in D2s life. I hope this type thing continues in D3.
• Scaling difficulty for soloers/groups.
  
  You wanna solo mf, group run its all there.

These are some of the things that has kept me playing D2 off and on for 6 years now. I dont want a rehash of D2 with souped up graphics. It would be a mistake for Blizz to ignore these great aspects of D2 though.

Announce D3 already arggggh!

[sicilian]

To me it was the way it shot you right into the gameplay. You talk to two people who have brief introductions, and all of the sudden you're out in the field doing your thing.

It starts off simple, and because your character is essentially naked to start the game, almost everything that drops early is exciting because it's an automatic upgrade.

Then, as you move on and those things become less exciting, the game starts to ramp up and become more difficult and complex.

It's hard to really put a finger on it, but to me that all speaks to a perfect scaling system where you never feel like the game is too difficult too soon and then too easy later on. Blizzard seems to have a nice touch for that.

[stillman]

I'd say it's the player-friendly aspects such as:

-With bone spear, the monsters don't have to line up perfectly; rather, it's designed so the spear hits as many monsters as possible without looking too unrealistic.

-The fcr breakpoints make it so we don't have to fret over losing/gaining 10% increments of fcr. You just have to worry about the breakpoint.

-The overall speed at which you can access stash, pick things up, etc.

-It seems you don't have to click on monsters and items perfectly, there is plenty of room for error.

-The life orb seems to be designed so that even when it appears near empty, you still have a good 15% of your health left. This increases the intensity of the game. You think you're going to die more often, as your chr keeps getting hit with an "empty" life orb.

The game is just really easy to play for hours on end. It's a well oiled machine. Also, the ladder system is great, and would be taken more seriously if there wasn't so much cheating (Baal bots, duped runes, mh, etc).

[Angel_of_Wrath]

I'd say it's the player-friendly aspects such as:

-The fcr breakpoints make it so we don't have to fret over losing/gaining 10% increments of fcr. You just have to worry about the breakpoint.

To expand on this:

It is also related to the readily available documentation or statistics for the technical details of the formulae and such. This is why we know all the breakpoints of fcr, fhr or ww... or how blocking works with each class.

Blizzard enabled the player to take their char that much farther so if you plan ahead on all your stats, skills and gear based on your previous experiences... you can almost have a perfect setup. I say almost because there's always something a tiny bit better, which is what keeps people going.

[Jednowlosy]

I agree with pretty much everything, except for atmosphere (imho D2 has no atmosphere, sorry). It's a nice, enjoyable hack and slash, and the competitiveness (look what cool stuff I have x]) and general success of battle.net makes the game still going.

[Erwwwd]

-The fcr breakpoints make it so we don't have to fret over losing/gaining 10% increments of fcr. You just have to worry about the breakpoint.

I think this is one of the parts that needs to be changed as it is completely the opposite of user friendly.

Make us know IN THE GAME what the breakpoints are and if we hit any with our current equipment. It is absurd that we had to plow through the gamefiles to get that info that we have at the moment. It should have been in the game itself.

[stillman]

Yes, I agree. I was basically trying to come up with more ideas on how player friendly the game is, so I should not have really mentioned the breakpoints.

Even worse is the way the game lies about your mf. Gull dagger doesn't really give you 100 mf at all. There are the diminishing return formulas which we have to look up outside of the game. Even though the mf given in-game is correct for blue magic items, most people use mf for finding uniques and they might be horrified to learn that having 1000 mf only roughly doubles your chance to find a unique from monsters.

I'd like to see more increments of speeds in d3. Simply put, there aren't enough breakpoints in d2. I hope to see extreme attack speed that makes your regular arrow shot to look like strafe! Of course, the damage would be low since all your gear would be dedicated to ias.

[Jednowlosy]

I think it would be interesting if they gave up on breakpoints. Who needs them anyway.. +63% should be equal to +63% IAS, not 50% because some stupid breakpoint sets it that way.

[Kiroptus]

I actually think that Diablo3 needs more simplicity and less numbers.

ARPGs are already about casuals anyway and it took a long time to get all the info wrapped up in a page (Arreat Summit). And just because it gains simplicity doesnt mean it needs to lose depth. It just needs to take out some burocracies like having to know that you actually need 1100 % fast hit recovery to have 2 frames of animation and all that.

[Booner]

I guess for me, the things that make Diablo better than all of the other, more current Diablo knock-offs (Titan Quest, WoW, ect) is the speed and the violence. No action RPG has really captured these things like Diablo has.