Differences between diablo 2 and 3

[ghostomc]

Talent trees.

Why did I make 10 amazons and loved each of them. Talent trreeeeee.

One thing I always hated about d3.

Becuz they choose the lazy route gear had to be our Talents and its feels lazy

[TheRabidDeer]

I think people find D2 fun because of the few really cool items that are hard to get but truly define your build. D2 also has the benefit of a pretty well established dupe scene (otherwise nobody would ever get some of those runewords) and trade scene to go with it. D3 doesn't really have the same thing. Honestly, D2 and D3 are different games really. Same core, but the differences make them unique.

As for people saying people play the first few weeks of D3 ladder then quit... didn't people do the same in d2? I know I usually started sorc to get gear for a hammerdin then after I finished those two I didn't do much.

[Coldkil]

As for people saying people play the first few weeks of D3 ladder then quit... didn't people do the same in d2? I know I usually started sorc to get gear for a hammerdin then after I finished those two I didn't do much.

Hm, actually not. Ladders were/are in both games stuff for a small minority - in D2 you had the race between RUSBarb and GERBarb, in D3 you have the GR pushing with the "meta" and all that, which is dominated by a handful of clans and mostly active in Europe.

The difference lies in what you did in seasons.
D2 didn't have much variety, but gathering all the gear for your build could take a lot of time with most players not even reaching the maximum because it simply was hard to get those nice rolls especially without trading. Getting to 99 wasn't mandatory but it was a goal to pursue and again it would take quite a long time, with the concrete possibility of not reaching it before the end of season (but you could farm easily even without it).

D3 has a completely different structure. Gearing at a decent level takes no time, and Journey doesn't require huge gear or Paragon (usually i clock out around 600 because i passively get them doing the objectives basically - never actively farmed them). Since Ladders are all about the time investment (after certain GRs levels thoise +5 mainstat get extremely valuable since power from gear reaches a plateau fast) and since they're just about farming GRs and fishing for the right one, most people just "get the job done" and leave.

TL;DR: in D2 you could play all season for the sake of improving your character and ladders were very marginal. In D3 if you're not interested in ladders you can do the rest really fast and then you're left with nothing.

[TheRabidDeer]

Hm, actually not. Ladders were/are in both games stuff for a small minority - in D2 you had the race between RUSBarb and GERBarb, in D3 you have the GR pushing with the "meta" and all that, which is dominated by a handful of clans and mostly active in Europe.

The difference lies in what you did in seasons.
D2 didn't have much variety, but gathering all the gear for your build could take a lot of time with most players not even reaching the maximum because it simply was hard to get those nice rolls especially without trading. Getting to 99 wasn't mandatory but it was a goal to pursue and again it would take quite a long time, with the concrete possibility of not reaching it before the end of season (but you could farm easily even without it).

D3 has a completely different structure. Gearing at a decent level takes no time, and Journey doesn't require huge gear or Paragon (usually i clock out around 600 because i passively get them doing the objectives basically - never actively farmed them). Since Ladders are all about the time investment (after certain GRs levels thoise +5 mainstat get extremely valuable since power from gear reaches a plateau fast) and since they're just about farming GRs and fishing for the right one, most people just "get the job done" and leave.

TL;DR: in D2 you could play all season for the sake of improving your character and ladders were very marginal. In D3 if you're not interested in ladders you can do the rest really fast and then you're left with nothing.

I don't recall having much issue with gearing in D2 ladders thanks to the prevalence of all the duped runes and the power of runewords in 1.09 (or 1.10?) and beyond. Though later in my D2 life I was maybe considered more well off than most since I used out-of-game trading like d2jsp. I only ever got 1 char to 99 in my entire D2 life, I usually stopped in the early 90s and from what I remember I usually had almost all the gear I needed by the time my sorc was in her 90s for a fully geared hammerdin. It took more time to get gear than D3 maybe but not significantly so. It took significantly less time than trying to get perfect gear in D3, that is for sure. I think you underestimate how difficult and how long it takes to get really great gear in D3, or you for some reason consider the rolls in D2 to be more important/harder to get than the rolls in D3.

Also, I don't see how you are debunking my idea that the people that play beyond the first few weeks of ladder are more of a minority (in both D2 and in D3). People tend to build a char or two then generally call it quits for a while. Also kind of confusing that you are only talking about classic D2 (with gerbarb/rusbarb) rather than LoD.

[Coldkil]

I don't recall having much issue with gearing in D2 ladders thanks to the prevalence of all the duped runes and the power of runewords in 1.09 (or 1.10?) and beyond. Though later in my D2 life I was maybe considered more well off than most since I used out-of-game trading like d2jsp. I only ever got 1 char to 99 in my entire D2 life, I usually stopped in the early 90s and from what I remember I usually had almost all the gear I needed by the time my sorc was in her 90s for a fully geared hammerdin. It took more time to get gear than D3 maybe but not significantly so. It took significantly less time than trying to get perfect gear in D3, that is for sure. I think you underestimate how difficult and how long it takes to get really great gear in D3, or you for some reason consider the rolls in D2 to be more important/harder to get than the rolls in D3.

Also, I don't see how you are debunking my idea that the people that play beyond the first few weeks of ladder are more of a minority (in both D2 and in D3). People tend to build a char or two then generally call it quits for a while. Also kind of confusing that you are only talking about classic D2 (with gerbarb/rusbarb) rather than LoD.

So you're basically saying you would get done with D2 fast because you bought all the gear with good rolls? Then guess why season didn't laast that long for you I'm not debunking your argument, just stating that D2 seasons were fast if you basically "cheated" the item hunt. Trading duped items while being the norm is still trading duped items. Which simply wasn't the way Blizzard intended the game to turn out to be. Playing "legit" or self-found would definitely take way more time.

In D3 the opposite happens. The game is fast by itself and those good rolls, while still hard to get, are way less important than in D2. You don't need perfect gear at all - you reach a certain point where Paragon matters more and if you're into ladders you care only about that. If you don't care about ladders you don't need good rolls at all other than a full set of gear to do everything. In D3 the item hunt is next to zero. There is a reason why the top teams farmed ultra high GRs and left it when guardian spawned because it maxed out the XP/hour ratio; Blizzard has since changed it shifting most of the XP come from actually closing the rift.

This basically means that reached a certain plateau, loot is next to useless. You can still hunt for those perfect rolls for sure, and it will take time. But in terms of actual relevance and content completion, loot is rained upon you and thus loses a lot of its meaning.

EDIT: i'm not diasgreeing with you. Just stating that given the different gameplay structure, D2 season had a reason to last longer while D3 is more and more tailored as a "hit'n'run" game.

[TheRabidDeer]

So you're basically saying you would get done with D2 fast because you bought all the gear with good rolls? Then guess why season didn't laast that long for you I'm not debunking your argument, just stating that D2 seasons were fast if you basically "cheated" the item hunt. Trading duped items while being the norm is still trading duped items. Which simply wasn't the way Blizzard intended the game to turn out to be. Playing "legit" or self-found would definitely take way more time.

In D3 the opposite happens. The game is fast by itself and those good rolls, while still hard to get, are way less important than in D2. You don't need perfect gear at all - you reach a certain point where Paragon matters more and if you're into ladders you care only about that. If you don't care about ladders you don't need good rolls at all other than a full set of gear to do everything. In D3 the item hunt is next to zero. There is a reason why the top teams farmed ultra high GRs and left it when guardian spawned because it maxed out the XP/hour ratio; Blizzard has since changed it shifting most of the XP come from actually closing the rift.

This basically means that reached a certain plateau, loot is next to useless. You can still hunt for those perfect rolls for sure, and it will take time. But in terms of actual relevance and content completion, loot is rained upon you and thus loses a lot of its meaning.

EDIT: i'm not diasgreeing with you. Just stating that given the different gameplay structure, D2 season had a reason to last longer while D3 is more and more tailored as a "hit'n'run" game.

I didn't buy the gear straight up, I wasn't rich. I also don't really remember rolls being all that important in D2 generally, especially for a hammerdin. HOTO, SoJ, Shako, Enigma, Silkeaves/Travelers/Treks, Magefist, Spirit shield, Mara's, CTA... all were pretty similar and easy to get (the only outlier being the CTA). The hardest thing to get was an inventory full of charms but I never really bothered with those.

And yes, playing without trading would obviously take much longer especially if you want to get runewords. But, the runewords were almost designed with dupes in mind. I mean a single Zod rune was a 0.00003% chance from a suitably high level monster. Also, it wouldn't be the first thing that Blizzard put into D2 because of dupes (uber diablo spawning from selling SoJ?).

Also you definitely still need good rolls in D3. The difference in stats between legendary and ancient legendary is MASSIVE. In Legendary gear you are sitting at 500k-1m damage but in ancient legendary you hit over 2 million (and the roll from the bottom of ancient legendary to the top is also pretty big, particularly for weapons). Aside from that, you can still play the game for character building and not care about the ladder too. Saying if you don't care about ladder then you don't need good rolls is ridiculous. That's like saying if you don't mythic raid in WoW then you don't need better than regular mythic dungeon gear. Even if it is technically true that you don't NEED it for your level of content you still want it because it is progression that you want.

So yea, personally I just don't really see it. Both games are definitely different but I still think that for the general population they both play out about the same in terms of playing. In both games I tend to see that people would play and complete a couple of characters then call it quits for a while then maybe start again next season. It's just how people play games with a focus on character progression these days.

[Coldkil]

Saying if you don't care about ladder then you don't need good rolls is ridiculous.

No you don't. Just check ladder profiles - there are people who have perfect pieces but they are also 1500 and above paragon. Check my Armory in sig with my seasonal toons all with Guardian done and i'm at 870 paragon non season.

Only thing i agree is the Ancient weapon - it is a massive upgrade in damage. For the rest, leveling your legendary gem trumps over a bad roll on a piece. Set bonuses and synergies give you way more power than a missing 10% crit.

I'm not saying that you can run really far with no crit/critdmg rolls - i'm saying that for most pieces is pretty easy to get 2 good affixes (also many of them have guaranteed ones) hence the item hunt is next to zero.

Using your WoW <-> D3 comparison, it's like that in WoW you get raiod gear after clearing some mythic dungeons, and then the only thing left is AP.

[TheRabidDeer]

No you don't. Just check ladder profiles - there are people who have perfect pieces but they are also 1500 and above paragon. Check my Armory in sig with my seasonal toons all with Guardian done and i'm at 870 paragon non season.

Only thing i agree is the Ancient weapon - it is a massive upgrade in damage. For the rest, leveling your legendary gem trumps over a bad roll on a piece. Set bonuses and synergies give you way more power than a missing 10% crit.

I'm not saying that you can run really far with no crit/critdmg rolls - i'm saying that for most pieces is pretty easy to get 2 good affixes (also many of them have guaranteed ones) hence the item hunt is next to zero.

Using your WoW <-> D3 comparison, it's like that in WoW you get raiod gear after clearing some mythic dungeons, and then the only thing left is AP.

I am confused on why you picked that part of my post for the quote and why "No you don't. Just check ladder profiles - there are people who have perfect pieces but they are also 1500 and above paragon. Check my Armory in sig with my seasonal toons all with Guardian done and i'm at 870 paragon non season." is relevant for what I said?

Let me rephrase what you quoted, because maybe it was misunderstood. You said that people who don't care about ladder don't need good items. Right? I am saying that just because they don't care about ladder does not mean they don't care about their character.

As for the difference between ancient and non-ancient (for non-weapons) I just logged in and tested it on my Wizard. The difference between non-ancient and ancient is around 600k damage and 5 million toughness. For the people that care about their character and not ladder, that is still pretty huge. I never cared much about ladder, I didn't play enough to compete and I knew that. But that doesn't mean I didn't care about my character and want to get better gear and paragon.

As for your WoW and D3 comparison that is not the comparison I am making on drops. I am talking about what you want for your character. Even if you are only doing heroic dungeons you don't need that 895 raid gear, but you want it.

EDIT: I am talking about motivations for wanting to play, not on the rate of acquisition. I personally feel that the rate of acquisition between D2 and D3 to be fairly similar now. But that may just be me.

[Coldkil]

-snip-

Ok, this explains a lot. I clearly misunderstood one part so the whole discussion is much clearer now.

I completely agree with you with the "caring about your character part". I suppose everyone plays for the ultimate goal of making their character stronger - which was/is in both game what drives players to continue playing.

As for the rate of getting stuff, well, i can agree that rates are pretty similar between the two games. I still don't believe Blizzard had dupes and trading through external sites in mind when making D2 so the argument "dupes are good because drop rates are low" imho falls on itself - but on this it's a personal opinion. I played D2 as self found only as i felt trading was basically cheating because of said dupes. Again, personal opinion - game is made to get fun and trading or not no one was affected by what the others did.

Point is, that either D2 with trading and current D3 have a way too high rate of getting stuff. Thare are also other issues that concur, like sets being crucial and build defining - but all in all i feel seasons are just too fast. There needs to be some kind of progression optional content different from GRs that makes people who want it to play more for making their character stronger. +5 mainstat is not exactly what i think it's interesting.

Everyone has different motivation and goals for sure. What i'm saying is that after 8 seasons in which most people have had the chance to try basically all classes and builds/sets, there's a stagnation ingam ethat needs to be addressed. Season keep the game fresh up to a certain point.

Hope i've clarified myself.

[Orangetai420]

I see a lot of posts about "Make diablo 4!! to fix the problems with 3 especially the boring endgame!" while at the same time people still circle jerk over Diablo 2. Can someone please explain the difference because while I was admittedly younger I don't remember Diablo 2 endgame to really be much of anything besides killing the same stuff again and again which is not much different than 3 mind you. Is it just the difference in classes? or a case of rose tinted nostalgia goggles.?

The item system was much better in my opinion. Runewords, crafting, jewels, charms. The endgame wasn't much different, instead of farming GR we farmed high level areas like The Pit and Chaos Sant. D2 had better RPG elements, character building actually mattered. (Eventually they added respec thou.) Torch runs were more enjoyable than hellfire ring building.

The game also was more immersive - enemies had immunities (until you had enough -res to break them and even then, some couldn't be broken). The world feels more connected in D2, waypoints matter. Items didn't all take the same inventory space, a large weapon took up a huge chunk of your inventory (which was already limited with charms).

D3 is a better arcade style action game, it is more like a Gauntlet Legends than it is a successor to D2. D2 was a better ARPG.

EDIT: Forgot about D2 pvp, it wasn't great but somehow it's still miles ahead of D3. Another HUGE factor was battle.net - being able to create games and search for trade, pvp, boss run games, etc. is 100x better than the garbage social system we have in D3.

- - - Updated - - -

I think that Diablo 2 was so long ago, people remember it by reputation more than the actual mechanics of the game.

That was from a time before "endgame" really existed.

Rose tinted glasses will skew opinion, no doubt there.

That being said, I still play D2 from time to time and enjoy it. The beginning of the game can drag but once you get into NM it's still very enjoyable.

[Mormolyce]

Rose tinted glasses will skew opinion, no doubt there.

That being said, I still play D2 from time to time and enjoy it. The beginning of the game can drag but once you get into NM it's still very enjoyable.

I remember being bored to death every time I started a new character until I got to at least mid to late NM. I gave up on my Assassin and Druid because of that :P

Replacing the Norm/NM/Hell system (eventually) was one of the best things D3 ever did IMO.

To be clear, I had like 6 accounts in D2 (mostly mules because of the ridiculous stash system but still), played it for years, loved it... but games have marched on and so many improvements have been made it's hard to go back. Also some aspects of D2 were shitty even for the time. Like how you couldn't respec even a single point (they added that after I stopped playing I think), so one misclick could leave you with a busted character forever. And how I used to have to move items between characters by opening a game, dropping them on the ground, swapping over and hoping the game stayed open :P

[grom33]

It has been a while since I havent seen one of these D2 vs D3 threads.
It always surprises me, D2 is a different game than D3.
D2 is a hack&slash RPG, the pinnacle of the genre and still played after 17 years.
D3 is....., I dont know really, it really looks like a bastard child of WoW without much content.

Back at release, I really was expecting Diablo 2.5, keep the great stuff, fix bots and dupes, add some quests, characters, skills, overhaul graphics.....
Instead I got D3 . I played it for 3 weeks, I stopped until last year, that I bought RoS after reading repeatedly that the game has improved a lot.

Well, it might have, but is still a boring WoW wanna-be.