Hi guys, (some people might know me from the solo thread
)
well I just read all your complains about the mod patch and so on.
Some of them I can unterstand but to all the people who created this great mod I really have to say THANK YOU! I love the mod! You did a great job, it's definitely a new Diablo2 experience and the good thing about it it's not so overmodded like MedianXL!
But like these guys I also have some thoughts about this mod.
Well, I played this mod years before online when it was still at 1.2 or something with a friend of mine who had the nickname Relay or so I don't know if you guys from the old days still know him.
So, I played it online at that time and it really pissed me that there were no tp scrolls and that the only way was to win against bosses in a big group, but it still took hours to succeed in defeating the boss. The guys from the old days might now scream well your group might have been to unexperienced in defeating the bosses or had a too low level or the wrong chars in a party. The thing was I came then afterwards in games where the people wrote: "Mute can you leave we already have a tank and we are waiting for a Necro or a Pala, so that we have a chance to win or not to play for hours against Diablo." Well I often was pissed off when I read something like that and stayed in the game to piss these guys off as well.
The result of all that was that more private games started to exist than puplic games, because they all feared noobs like me would join their game.
I do not know how much the situation has changed but after reading that a lot of private games are actually existing and Convert had troubles finding people to play with seems to me that not so much has changed or even got worse because there are not that many people playing.
New players to this mod will have a more hard time than before because they cannot find people to play with.
I know someone wrote he has 3-4 friends in the game and when they are all online and have certain chars so they can defeat almost anything. This just troubles me because this means that a group of druids or amazones will never have a chance to defeat Bosses at hell. And increase those people who will write stuff like "please leave we need a necro". I mean there are people who just hate playing necro's like me because they hate being only in game because people need them only because of their curses or their summoned monsters. As a Necro you basically do not attack except if skills like poison nova is really effective. I mean I like the idea of having a group of different chars in a team but it still should be possible for people to win against bosses if they all have the same char.
Well these were my problems ages ago and are one of the reasons why I am playing singleplayer solo.
Now to your problems lets start with playing this mod solo online:
Well I think every char should have the possibility to get to act 5 and defeating Baal solo. Of course no wants that players get the best gear and level up only by playing solo, so you need to decrease the drop & exp rates drastically so that if you defeat the boss monsters solo then you will mostly only get crappy items and almost no exp. But you get into the next act.
So basically give 1-2 player games the classic 1 player rates of Diablo2 LoD or make the drop/exp rates even worse. I mean chance of no drop by Boss should be @ 90% or so. Also give the Boss monsters in 1 player games a hp table value of 0.
AoE MELEE CHAR ATTACKS:
Well I think its a good idea to give melee chars have acces to AoE attack skills but they should do 1/4 or 1/2 of your actual damage.
Another way to do this is in making it possible for chars to find weapons that increase the chance of releasing a very high level AoE spell after killing a monster. With this the melee chars would be able to kill faster a lot of monsters but the power of the spell shouldn't be as powerful as spells of a sorc with + X to all skills.
HYBRID CHARACTERS:
Well I also miss the hybrid characters of LoD 1.07-1.09. The main reason this was possible was that synergien did not exist so every skill only got more powerful by masteries and the points you have put into the skill.
I liked it very much because I had a nova/frozen orb sorc and it was a lot of fun combining these skills against the monsters. This is a thing that I really miss the most of this game. It gave the chars more possibilities to be unique or more options of playable chars throughout the game.
I also loved combining WW with Frenzy at one patch. Sadly double throw never did good damage at that time but if it would have done good damage you could even have made a Doublethrow/Frenzy barb or WW/Doublethrow barb or so. Simply loved combining two great attacks. So please get rid of synergien and hybrids are possible again. Or do it another way I right now cannot think of.
MY THOUGHTS ABOUT SET ITEMS & Rares
I liked Sets the way they were during Diablo2 classic. I mean it were the times where set items mostly were useless if you only had one piece of a set. I mean I loved it how the sets always got stronger with every next item you found and that it got the major bonus when you had it complete.
I mean I found Tal Rasha’s orb and mask in this mod yesterday, yes it is cool that they do +3 to all skills but as a old diablo2 classic player I would loved it more if you got the +3 with 4 items of 5 or as a major bonus in the end when you have it complete. I mean in classic diablo2 magic items sometimes were stronger than set items if you only had one piece of the set. And the set item only got interesting for you if you found 3 of 5 items of the set. I love all the +3s and so on and all the bonuses of all these great sets of this mod but in my opinion these bonuses should only appear if you have a lot of parts of the set.
RARES
In diablo 2 classic I really enjoyed that rare items were the best items of the game. I mean it gave the charsi quest a new meaning because you always had a chance to get a spectacular weapon, maybe even the best weapon you can get. And the cool thing was that there weren't many people that had the weapon you had found or imbued.
I mean your weapon was totally rare because no one else had a weapon with the same attributs/+skills/dmg% and so on.
Surely this made it simple to get a good wpn. But if you get rid of the charsi quest or make it totally hard so that you can only do the quest with max lvl and top gear it would make it a nice challange for you. Sure people might do the quest only in normal because they think it'll be easier, but if you give these monsters also the same attributes like in hell it also won't be possible for them to the quest in normal.
Surely by making rare items as good as perfect high level uniques the drop rate of rares must be decreased. With such kind of rare items I mean rare items for example with: increased of damage +100-600%, damage reduction of 10-30%, +2-5 to all skills, +5-20% fire /lighting/ice/absorb, or + 30 resistances +ias 10-100%...
Well something like that. I mean, so that you might have the chance to get the best weapon in the game but the chances are low to get the ideal weapon. But the possibillity to get something like +5 to all skills or +600%ed would give rare items in the game a new meaning.
I want rare items to be as powerful as runewords or even stronger that's the main idea behind it. But like I said this can only be done if you change the drop rates of rares.
+1 SKILL / POISON DAMAGE CHARMS:
I agree with the guy that these charms made you keep on playing the game. I would also agree to let them be found in this mod again but two things have to be changed for this to work. 1. Get rid of the rerolling of magical items with perfect gems or change it that it only can be done with high runes (zod+cham+ber+zod). Of course the drop rate of these runes must be increased again. 2. The charms that make +1 to all skills should only drop in act5 Hell or special areas.
Bring back high poison damage charms with like +25-1000 poison damage or maybe a bit less. Of course should the +500 or 1000 dmg charms also only drop in in act5 Hell or special areas.
Then I got a new item idea for this mod:
BAD DUPES OF RUNEWORDS
Create unique items that have all the attributes of a runeword but only are as half as strong. I mean like finding a unique weapons that are called "Bad Dupe of Unbending Will" and it only does for example:
+1 to all skills, +1 to summoning skills, 10% Resist all, +1-2 Fanaticsm, 10-20% fast cast rate, Not indestructable, +10-20 Vitality, + 25-50 life, 1% crushing Blow, +10-20 Engergy and + 25-50 mana.
This would give the game a lot new items.
Hm did I forgot something hm.. Well just wait for my next post.