In D2 it is assumed that from the beginning you are capable of mass slaughter. You go through the hordes of imps, zombies and everything else easily. Even as the game progresses it's not particularly difficult or time consuming to kill any one particular monster. Whole herds yes but not any one monster. Exceptions being the champions or bosses and they're supposed to be significantly harder to kill.
In HG:L it's the opposite. There aren't legions of monsters that you carve apart and slaughter. You're not able to leave bloody bodies in heaps and piles behind you. The monsters take time to kill. Too much time. It's nowhere near as fun playing a MM where it seems like EVERY time you come across even a small group you have to backpedal and do a tactical retreat. And that's the problem.
HG:L assumes from the start that your weapons are inferior. That you're NOT a badass killing machine. You're not laying waste to everything in sight. There is no deep gut level satisfaction of knowing that you're able to kill everything in sight and not really be in any danger of being killed. Instead of it being a merry romp through the legions of evil it's a tough and dangerous slog where you can find yourself easily overwhelmed and wind up dead. Sometimes killed over and over and over 10 or more times before you're finally able to get that particular pack whittled down enough so taht you may resume your slog. That's not much fun. Fun is seeing your foes melt like ice before a flamethrower.
There is one monster type in HG:L though that does die like that. The zombies. They fall easily but are in typically large herds. Often they're found with those highly annoying monsters that keep summoning more of them. That makes it fun though, the zombies die easily but you have to find ways to put an end to the constant stream of them. D2 had that all over the place.
To address this I think what should be done is to nerf most of the monsters hit points and balance that with there being many more of them. After all, we're the good guys and we're smart. We should have much more effective weapons. They're demons, they have virtually unlimited numbers. Take advantage of that. I think it'd be a great improvement in how much fun the game is.
What do you think? Am I off my rocker or did I strike at the source of the problem?|||i think you didnt change your equip when u completed Normal and you're trying to go through nightmare now... i was using a 130 splash dmg sword at normal, and since lvl 32 i'm using a 210 fire direct damage dragon blade.
Doing solo i do fine.. i kill really fast... anything...
anyway.. what class are u playing?|||I think you have a few points there, but in general I disagree. Depending upon your character, when you start off you can cause mass destruction in HG:L. I enjoy playing the Guardians because of that. And in DII, playing a sorceress, you have to be really careful not to die. I gave up on the Evoker at level 5 because, frankly, it was just too much like work and I wanted to have fun. My Marksman kept being mobbed and dying all the time too. But I've had fun with the Blademaster and Guardian - just basic hack and slash.
What I don't like about the game is the extra stuff that's thrown in. I don't play RTS, so the RTS section was rather annoying to me. And sometimes the quest isn't clear. "Take this sedative and use it on the bad guy" - I kept trying to equip the dang thing, and finally just stuck it in a quickslot which worked. All that said, I know some people love RTS and the FPS view you get with the Marksmen. And some people love figuring out puzzles. So the game has things that appeal to a wide variety of people. I do agree that some areas are too hard - like the Beast of Abbadon which has me stuck right now. But if it's all easy mass slaughter then a lot of people are going to be upset that's is so easy there's no point playing it.
Also, has anyone else noticed a difference in the scaling of creatures depending upon class? I'd swear that the Marksmen get more critters than the Guardians, and the Evokers get less than the Guardians. Is that just me?|||Quote:
i think you didnt change your equip when u completed Normal and you're trying to go through nightmare now... i was using a 130 splash dmg sword at normal, and since lvl 32 i'm using a 210 fire direct damage dragon blade.
I've only reached Shulgoth in NM so far. My gear for where I"m at is fine. Waht I'm getting at is things like the Frozen Nightmares aren't easily swatted aside individually like so many monsters were in D2. It takes time to kill them and it's quite possible for a MM to be overwhelmed. In D2 how often was a character in real danger of being killed when you first got into NM? It didn't happen. Yet in HG:L the danger of being easily overwhelmed is there. It's not nearly as much fun having to do a tactical retreat as it is to surge forward and slaughter everything in sight.
HG:L doesn't lend itself to a shoot and scoot type fighting. You're not so much ripping apart hordes of enemies as you are just trying to stay alive. In D2 there was more a sense of reckless and joyful slaughter of everything. HG:L doesn't have that. And that's the problem. Easily fixed though.
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anyway.. what class are u playing?
A Marksman.|||D2 is better because there was more to do, simple.
Some variety goes a long way.|||Diablo 2.. agreed, is currently a better game. I have played it actively for 4 to 5 years. Several things that make it better, imo, are:
- Dia had more variety in environment. This compensated for the recurring enemy types, and made it feel bigger (even though it isn’t). It didn’t bother me that I came across the same type of monster because the setting was different anyway and therefore I didn’t have that "seen that, killed it" feeling I experience in Hellgate. Its pretty boring game world overall, which to me is amplified by the fact that every area is like an instance.
- Customization. You could really tweak your characters to compliment your build. This was done by the dozen uniques that the game (eventually) offered, charms and even more important; runewords! Hellgate doesn’t have that, at least not yet. Although very nice features of HGL are the mods that you can insert into weapons and, although currently limited, the nano forge (pls allow mod upgrading!). Yet you are limited in tweak all your gear due to the crappy way the augmentrix 3000 works. I don’t mind gambling for effects for a sick amount of money, but currently it also demands that you put your item on the line. Useless stats screw up the item, they increase feeds and take up stat slots. This needs to get fixed, which is easy, just give the option to accept or deny the rolled special stat. they may even increase the cost for additional augmentations for all I care.
- There is more skill focusing in Dia as well, which made characters more specialized and distinctive. In HGL you are allowed to spread your points more. I personally don’t like that. Others may, of course, disagree.
Although, with my evoker, I rip through everything in my path in a matter of second, I do understand what has been said earlier. You are kind of vulnerable. Before NM I did have experience really tough parts with my evoker. Wait a second, now that I think of it... NM is easier then normal was... wtf.. Anyway I agree that more hordes and a bit more power tanking/slashing would be nice. Also I miss the life drain Dia offered. I don’t like the way health functions in Hellgate overall.
Give a Normal, Nightmare and Hell like in Dia, and I’m more then happy. Normal and Nightmare were easy, but hell was nasty at times, yet fun. You could still storm in and slash/blast/hammer or whatever you did out of everything. Just needed to play a bit smarter and everything was fine. Also give the /players X command. That was fun aswell. I remember good times soloing Hell with /players 8 on.
Just realize that Dia wasn’t born like that, it did improve greatly over the years. So hellgate deserves some time before we seriously start to compare it with such a milestone of a game that Dia is.|||"Just realize that Dia wasn’t born like that, it did improve greatly over the years."
I agree. It took a number of patches and then some expansions to make DII the way it is. So let's wait a bit longer on HG:L.|||I fully intend to. HG:L will evolve into a fantastic game. I just think that one major improvement would be to make the slaughter less of a slog and more of something that a merry band of murdering marauders would do. A trail of death and destruction and pain and misery and blood and guts and gore and and and... it'd be glorious|||Quote:
I fully intend to. HG:L will evolve into a fantastic game.
My opinion too =)|||
Must have been 100 of them waiting for me (though it's hard to see in the fog, that's the best SS I could get).
I actually went through them like butter, regardless of being in a 4 player group, and me being a gaurd. If we get more of this it'll be a means to that end, at least.
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