Diablo - 20 years later

[Neanderthal]

I think what might have changed industry were if Diablo were released (as originally planned I think) with turn based combat, they said it was a bit shitty but if it had been improved to something like ToEE levels I wonder if the IE games and countless Diablo clones would have followed that trend, and would it have been an incline or just delayed RTwP. As I remember all gamer mags back in day had a right hard on for despising turn based combat, you know usual buzzwords, archaic, backwards and all that shit being tossed around.

 

[DeepOcean]

People, Diablo 1 didn't ruin anything, I'm a skeptic of this idea that a single game can change anything, sure, Diablo was successful but the market for Diablo and Diablo clones isn't the same market as "serious" RPGs, alot of the people who play Diablo clones wouldn't play serious cRPG even if their life depended on it. Diablo created a new market, millions of people played it, where those millions of people were when Fallout and Torment were released? When someone says, "TB combat is boring, why those boring cRPG can't be more like Diablo?" it is because they couldn't care less for cRPG and aren't even willing to give cRPGs a chance, they aren't on the cRPG market, they are on th Diablo clone market, but some like games "journos" love to look pretentious and try hard to make their shitty tastes look like some intellectual analysis.

Another point, the simplistic nature of a game isn't a problem, if the game managed to do what it set out to do, it succeeded, the simplistic nature or complex nature of games has nothing to do with the quality of a game. The problem nowdays is that simplicity is sold as some form of marketing mantra that can make any game widely successful even when that type of game needed some complexity to be fun in the first place, combine this mentality that dominates AAA publishers (and some kickstarter companies by the way) with a mass audience brought by the Xbox 360 and PS 3 where people that don't like to play games entered on the market after "cinematic", multiplayer and simplistic skinner box experiences and you have the recipoe for the AAA market of today. If you somehow forced all this market to play Fallout 1, the result wouldn't be millions of Fallout fans, they really just don't care.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Went to the thread and talk about Diablo after years. Seems like everyone here said what I wanted to say.
What else? I still play it from time to time in Diablo: The Hell, which encourage (not used in original game) system, where you could start the game with leveled up character.
It killed cRPGs? Heh, nope. They did it without help of Blizzard's title.

 

[Florian Gheorghe]

The dense and gloomy atmosphere of D1 still is almost uncontested in rpgs. The soundtrack and sound fx is superb. I still get the shivers when the drumrolls of the menu music begin or someone says 'the sanctity of this place has been fowled'. I still practise the tristram music on guitar, which is one of my favourite guitar tunes of all time. Gameplay was slick and not bloated at all.
Diablo 2 sucked for me because no atmosphere was to be found when fighting 'cold drool the cold' and gameplay started to primarily focus on getting more epic loot.

I still play D1 every now and then with the fantastic Beelzebub mod.

Thank you for this! I read Blizzard will release a HD version but didn't think we have that already. It's wonderful!

Trimis de pe al meu Galaxy Nexus folosind Tapatalk

 

[kwanzabot]

idk why people act like there were dozens and dozens of diablo clones, there were maybe like 12 before 2005 and doesnt seem like there were many after either but IDK



i thought D1 was pretty fun when i was a kid, didn't like D2 all that much and most of the diablo clones sucked c0ck

 

[Jick Magger]

Blaming Diablo for creating the modern CRPG environment is like blaming Nietzsche for National Socialism.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Just going to leave this here because it's the only thing you need to know about Diablo.



I played the shit out of this fucking thing in the summer of '96 like a manboon in a cave. I didn't care about 'phat lewtz', nobody cared at the time. I cared about going down, deep down into a fucking dark dungeon and killing stuff. I didn't see the time outside pass for 2 or 3 days until I finished it. This song and a lot of other passages in that game are etched into my brain.

I played D2 when it came out too, but it was nothing compared to that, and I never cared about the neverending loot runs. The rest is history.

 

[skyst]

Confession: I never killed Diablo without a somehow cheated character. Not that I've played the thing in ~15 years at least, but I still have some kind of dumb hang up over it.

 

[e-mailio estevez]

Part of the reason both games were so fun to play were the death animations. Everything was so satisfying to kill. The way things chunked when you had a few points of +cold damage in d2? Marvelous.

The Diablos manage to stand out in a Golden Era of death animations. I'd put them on par with the the Quakes, Fallouts, Dooms or Baldur's Gates when it comes to that, at least.

 

[Sykar]

They were great mindless fun bashing monsters 24/7 and collecting loot. The atmosphere of Diablo 1 is still unmatched for me to this day in these types of games. Also I do not call them cRPG. I prefer the term Hack&Slash, more fitting.

 

[SilentBoB]

First Diablo for me was a Game Changer! I remember all lan games with my friends!

 

[groke]

Diablo was the edgiest game I had on my Power Macintosh 6100/66.

 

[Florian Gheorghe]

I don't know if this is due to the modding community or not but it seems the prices do vary from vendor to vendor in D1. The creepy atmosphere is still there and sense of exploration. Just look at the character sheet : so many basic things had been lost into making D3 a mindless game : no need to stay focus and prepare for next battle , just click and click...
That sense of exploration and difficulty in the early game is also found in Underrail.

 

[octavius]

So how do you beat The Butcher with a Sorceror?
I retreated to a room with bars, closed the door and spent all my mana, mana potions, rejuv potions and spammed him with Firebolt (only damage spell I've got so far), but to no avail. As a last resort I tried the Reflect spell while gulping Healing Potions like mad, but still no dice.
I assume I've got to get some better spells fire, like Holy Bolt?

 

[Snorkack]

just leave him in his room and get a few levels. Explore floor 3 first. Afaik Holy Bolt doesn't work on him. Firebolt is your best bet at low level.
Edit: you can cheese him with wall of fire if you already got this spell. Open door, cast Wall on him, close door.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Firebolt damage per mana scales crazily well as you level it up and add points to magic. Pretty sure it eventually gets to 1 or even 0 mana cost. Though by then you probably have tons of mana anyways, my point is that while lvl 1 firebolt is shitty, level 3 or 4 firebolt is amazing. Ditto for holy boly.

idk why people act like there were dozens and dozens of diablo clones, there were maybe like 12 before 2005 and doesnt seem like there were many after either but IDK



i thought D1 was pretty fun when i was a kid, didn't like D2 all that much and most of the diablo clones sucked c0ck

There were definitely more than 12. I could probably name 12 just on consoles.

 

[skyst]

just leave him in his room and get a few levels. Explore floor 3 first. Afaik Holy Bolt doesn't work on him. Firebolt is your best bet at low level.
Edit: you can cheese him with wall of fire if you already got this spell. Open door, cast Wall on him, close door.

We're discussing butcher strategies in 2016?

 

[Reinhardt]

Part of the reason both games were so fun to play were the death animations.

And death sounds.

 

[octavius]

just leave him in his room and get a few levels. Explore floor 3 first. Afaik Holy Bolt doesn't work on him. Firebolt is your best bet at low level.
Edit: you can cheese him with wall of fire if you already got this spell. Open door, cast Wall on him, close door.

We're discussing butcher strategies in 2016?

Not everybody has played Diablo with all classes.
There may even be a few people in the Amazon rainforest or some Amish people who has not played it.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Ah the early days of Battle.net. Diablo Co-Op was fun, as was PvP ganking for ears.

 

[DeepOcean]

So how do you beat The Butcher with a Sorceror?
I retreated to a room with bars, closed the door and spent all my mana, mana potions, rejuv potions and spammed him with Firebolt (only damage spell I've got so far), but to no avail. As a last resort I tried the Reflect spell while gulping Healing Potions like mad, but still no dice.
I assume I've got to get some better spells fire, like Holy Bolt?

I killed him with inferno once but I got some levels first.

 

[DeepOcean]

Confession: I never killed Diablo without a somehow cheated character. Not that I've played the thing in ~15 years at least, but I still have some kind of dumb hang up over it.

Wot? Lightining nova or apocalypse staff and he doesn't know what hit him.

 

[likaq]

bg1 contributed to the decline of crpg much more than diablo 1.

 

[Hobo Elf]

So how do you beat The Butcher with a Sorceror?
I retreated to a room with bars, closed the door and spent all my mana, mana potions, rejuv potions and spammed him with Firebolt (only damage spell I've got so far), but to no avail. As a last resort I tried the Reflect spell while gulping Healing Potions like mad, but still no dice.
I assume I've got to get some better spells fire, like Holy Bolt?

If you can grab a Fire Wall scroll you can just wreck him with it.

 

[Invictus]

I honestly respect the opinion of users who love it but I simply dont see the appeal of clickfest games at all. I did play and finish the game in the PS and to be honest the only feeling I felt was relief that it was over, the same way Dungeon Siege made me feel years later. Maybe because I play games to be entertained, challenged or simply relaxing and Diablo felt like none of those things to me...It felt like the equivalent of grinding and since item hoarding isnt my thing at all I rather play something else.
I recognize its importance and appeal to some but couldnt really get into it at all or understand its appeal