by Magistrate - 3 years ago     show comments

Despite a rocky month under its belt, Diablo II: Resurrected faced no shortage of troubles despite positive overall reviews. With Diablo IV now delayed until at least 2023, I believe it would be good for the franchise to capitalize on Diablo II: Resurrected by developing it like other recent remasters on the market. Key to this will be preserving gameplay modes that allow players to continue to play Diablo II like it was originally designed, while offering new gear and gameplay experiences that refresh, delight, and provide new goals for longterm success and playability.

I now have dozens of hours and hundreds of MF runs under my belt for Resurrected. I found my first SoJ, cleared Hell mode, reached a respectable level on my main, and am maxing out more storage of runes, gems, and gear.

But when I consider what I want to be doing a couple months from now in Resurrected, I think that whatever team is now working on the remake post-launch should focus on a serious question: is Resurrected only meant to be a quick cash grab, possibly fixing stability and then leaving it as a museum curiosity for the next decade? Or is there a possibility of something more?

The obvious and well-discussed caveat here is that Resurrected clearly needs improvements to server stability, game crashes, modern UI updates, and maybe we should stop shadow-banning players for using a seemingly random selection of no-no characters in game titles.

I think of recent remakes like Age of Empires II and Age of Empires III, both of which have seen plenty of post-remaster content including expansions, seasonal cosmetics, and gameplay features. With that in mind, a couple of core ideas repeat in my mind lately, and here’s my word vomit.

I. New content should be ladder-only.

I am strongly for the idea of new and interesting content for the remaster, but it should not overshadow part of the remaster’s purpose, which is to return to the original game.

While the continuing delay of the first ladder season is probably going to burn some folks out on nonladder, it would be disingenuous to not allow us to experience the first ladder season with the content and rules of Diablo II‘s last patch before the remaster.

After this, I think new content (such as gear, areas, or events) should only be available on new ladder seasons. I believe this is in line with the original game locking some items, like select Runewords, to ladder-only, so it is in line with the original vision.

I think another possible solution is to have each ladder season split into two options: classic ladder and resurrected ladder.

Classic ladder would be a continued rehash of Diablo II‘s content as ladder experience, whereas resurrected ladder would include any new content that would change the meta. Classic ladder characters would then be carried into a classic nonladder after season, and resurrected ladder characters would go to a resurrected nonladder. This would keep the content separate for any that choose not to play it.

II. New content should focus on multiplayer-centric events and rewards.

After dozens of hours revisiting the original game which defined my childhood, I realize one painfully obvious fact: despite its revolutionary approach to online ARPG gameplay, Diablo II is a very lonely game.

Indeed, nearly every activity that most experience is carried out by a passive party to an overpowered and geared active party. Rushing, Baal runs, Chaos runs, MF runs, and Cow runs are all either run by one overpowered character that kills everything to the benefit of the rest of the group, or are singularly run by one character.

I initially wanted to talk about how this game should have clans, but realistically speaking every activity one would even do in this game is with the goal of single-player efficiency despite an 8-player game cap.

However, I don’t think any content should require the full 8 players to complete. Firstly, we’ve learned from many other online games that this can really gate people from being able to participate or form groups, especially on a niche game. Secondly, Diablo III had it right when they reduced the player cap to 4–while I don’t think they should alter the game cap for Resurrected, I do think planning around a 4-player expectation is reasonable in terms of likely to participate players, the amount of on-screen visual noise, and the practicalities of coordinating more than 4 players in a game of this format.

So, just to spitball some ideas:

• New bosses which have mechanics requiring more than 1 player to finish. I am thinking bosses that spawn sets of locations to break damage immunity, decrease damage output, to soak abilities, or to progress onto another phase. It is important that it is impossible to do on one character, as I strongly feel the possibility of single-player efficiency will just further contribute to cookie cutter builds. This gameplay must also be tested with the assumption of no Barbarian Leap or Sorceress Teleport, although I think it would be cool to use Paladin Fanaticism or passive speed buffs from gear, or maybe other things spawn which players can absorb to temporarily increase speed to reach POIs.
• New timed events to break multiple seals. Something like Chaos Sanctuary with seals that spawn randomized or fixed bosses with special abilities and immunities, but which need to all be finished within x amount of time between seals, or with x amount of time overall. Teleport wouldn’t work in these events, or if used it would automatically apply the in-game Blood Mana cursed that does damage on spell use. I say this as a Sorceress main, but Teleport breaks so many gameplay possibilities and stigmatizes not having an Enigma. Nothing would drop in this event like in Diablo III greater rifts (except maybe potions), but the final reward (either a chest or a final boss kill after all are broken) would increase according to remaining time.
• New leveling-only maps or modes which have either a level cap or forbidden gear. These modes would have massively increased XP rates up to a certain level (let’s say 80-85) but would effectively prevent the group from being carried. I’d further add to this with obstacles and monster types that are more easily countered by multiple class types being present–switches to extra bosses that can only be leapt or teleported to, or monsters with armor effects that need to be broken by certain skill trees (not outright immunity). As a treat, a final boss/set of bosses have a chance to drop gear with either XP passive buffs which turn off after the level cap of the zone (and/or don’t work outside of it).
• Jewels that grant passive bonuses when more characters of approximately equal level are present within a screen’s radius. If a gear score was implemented, it could require a certain gear score minimum.
• New events (similar to Cow levels) which require each character to use a consumable key. Yeah, basically just rifts. I really liked rifts, although there is plenty of room for improvement/iteration.
• A zone with chests which only open for certain players in a given game. Something like a magic-find zone with chests which can only open for a specific player character in the event instance. The drops can be grabbed by anyone, but only that character can open it.

And, if you’re not sick of my bad ideas, here’s a couple more not revolving around teams:

• New chest types which can only drop a type of item, like Uniques, socketed gear, Gems, Jewels, Charms, or Runes. The rareness of the drop is tied to your magic find % (including the rune drop, just for the chest’s sake), with gold as the substituting reward when nothing rolls.
• New events with craftables that lead to new boss summons or maps. There are many excellent mods out there that add things like this, but I’ve always thought it would be cool if we had an in-game event where you go to a unique map for each of the lore-friendly elemental planes, gather some McGuffin there, and then combine them for a boss summon/event with a unique drop.

III. New gear should change the meta.

Enigma must die.

The ability to use Teleport on any character is cool, and it really opens up MFing, rushing, etc., to a lot of characters, but it’s also really pigeon-holed builds for most activities.

This is a single example of what I would like to see for new ladder-only gear: gear which somehow strategically makes Enigma no longer as useful, or outright cycling it out of future ladder seasons (after the first official ladder season of Resurrected). I honestly have no idea how to make this happen unless the activities Teleport is so obviously more useful for are trivialized–such as nerfing boss loots and buffing mob loots. I’m not necessarily saying to do this, though.

It could be interesting to do things like:

• Create new seasonal gear based around new focus elements. For instance, a Fire season with gear that really makes Elemental Druids, Fire Trapsins, Fire Sorceresses, etc., shine, making it easier to break Fire immunity and adding fire-damage type bonuses to rare gear rolls, charm drops, and new gear like Runewords and Charms.
• Low-level sets and jewels with XP bonuses that cap at a certain level, like 80-85. I mentioned this above in my diatribe on multiplayer experiences as a possible loot drop from special leveling instances which block high-level or highly geared characters.
• Gear which changes the fundamental mechanics of a certain skill, such as adding a DOT, extra projectiles, turns it into a defensive skill, etc.
• Gear which increases drop chances for certain bosses, especially ones not typically farmed.

IV. Ladder progress cosmetic and vanity rewards should be added that endure into nonladder.

To steal from some other games, reaching certain level markers by end-of-ladder could grant things like vanity player portraits for in-game display, or special effects for viewing your character model in chat channels. We also DO have a title system that is awarded (and cannot be altered) after completing each difficulty–making this toggleable and expanding on it from ladder progress could be a quick, simple little thing to do.

So, those are my quick and dirty ideas. Regardless of specifics, I strongly feel that Diablo II: Resurrected needs to plan for the next couple years to, perhaps, earn back some small measure of faith in the company, as well as keep up the hype for the franchise ahead of future releases. I have no doubt that we’ll all have our hands busy with Diablo: Immortal soon, but I would like to see the game that defined so many of our childhoods give just a little bit more before the gaming discourse moves on.