Mrawskrad wrote:
HU was most popular from 1.21 to 1.5. This may have been because it was a newer mod back then or because those were better patches. 1.6 ran a lot of people off and 1.7 finished most of the survivors off. 1.8 saw a return of a lot of older players, but it has some issues due to 1.7 base files that I used that I overlooked. I should have never used 1.7 files to make 1.8. That's my biggest HU modding regret and I'm fixing that mistake now.
The initial almost unplayable 1.4 was the patch that drove the majority of people off and a lack of anything new/interesting to explore or do being added to most patches. I thought I read that 1.9 was pretty much perfect until Ensley edited it, what happened to the original 1.9 if that was the case?
What were the issues with 1.7 that you overlooked? I've been modding it since it was released Mostly with the code features listed further below but I haven't found any issue with the text files that couldn't be fixed in a matter of minutes mainly because it's extremely user friendly text file wise. Less time required to make text edits, means more time to work on the code base and add neat stuff like the list further below. If there's an issue with them I overlooked I'd be glad to hear of it though so I can fix it in my own version. Not that 1.7 was perfect, far from it, I wasn't a fan of the upgrading item mechanic, fewer number of unique items or trash to boss hp ratio, but that only took an evening and a bit to rectify.
The mod gets rebalanced every single patch and it's never "right" because being right is subjective when it comes to game design. The only things that have survived from patch to patch are new areas & bosses, the warp tome, high res, new stat screen and QoL code edits. The mod hasn't been difficult since 1.2 (1.21 onwards it's been faceroll by at least 1 class, lets be honest) Discovering that a mod which uses difficulty as a main drawing point is actually easy and has very little in the way of new things to experience, is obviously going to be off putting. The ONLY thing HU ever had over other mods was it's difficulty and that's what drew people in, but that's not enough any more.
The quality of mods recently has been going up and up. HU is competing with mods that have features far in advance of anything in the past. Daily and weekly realm events, entire sub quest and class quest systems built into the UI just like regular quests. 16+ players in same game, custom skill functions, independent skill cooldowns, on screen item comparisons, quick shift items between stash/cube/inv, new item slots, charm slots/charm section inventory. The list goes on, and those are the default expectation, as most mods have some/all those features as standard now as they aren't too difficult to implement, just time consuming.
Many of them stick to the classic D2 feel through the game too so that's another HU USP gone.
No amount of rebalancing is going to draw any significant number of people for longer than 1 play through if the mod is stuck in neutral being "balanced" every patch with nothing new or innovative and little to no difficulty. To be honest, I don't even think being difficult is enough to attract any decent number of players from what they have to choose from currently. There are more difficult mods around now than ever.
I've been saying this for years, hence every time I help out, I try to add something new to explore/experience or make improvements to the core itself. Those are the things that tend to stick.
TL;DR, if you want to compete in 2018 you need to be innovative. "9th balance patch in 7 years, pretty much the same game you played last year, and the year before, and the year before, just balanced (subjectively)" isn't going to excite people when there are so many mods that have continued to advance with the times.
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Bron wrote:
There's no cure for being a cunt.