One more thing about good itemization

About a week ago Ginger Gaming Mentor released a video in which he reminded me of a very important aspect of well designed (i.e. motivating and fun) itemization in RPGs – arguably the most important one, in fact – that I completely forgot to address in my own recent post on the subject.

Actually I didn’t so much “forget” to include it, I just didn’t have this particular design philosophy on my radar as something worth mentioning, because it absolutely feels like a no-brainer to me, one that any RPG worth its salt should adhere to.

I’m talking about the (supposedly) simple concept of item power not being dictated by item level.

What do I mean by that?

Well, let’s have a look at this pretty well known Diablo II item. These are the Magefist unique light gauntlets, a very good pair of gloves for many caster-type builds in the game. As you can see a character needs to be only level 23 or higher in order to equip them.

This is not to be confused with the level of the item itself however. Each piece of gear in D2 has one, but it isn’t actually displayed anywhere. If you really want to know a certain thing’s item level you have to take note of what kind of monster it dropped from, and where.

Let’s say you find a pair of Magefists in early Act III on Normal difficulty, which is the earliest where they can drop due to their treasure class (another stat the game hides from us). If a normal monster drops them in the Great Marsh, for example, the item level will be 21.

Now let’s look at the exact same scenario, only on Hell difficulty. This time around the gauntlets will have an item level of 80. Quite the difference, no?

Aaaaaaaayy have some gloves for youuuuuuuuu…

Here’s the thing though: for all intents and purposes there will be absolutely no difference between the two. This is because an item’s level has no effect whatsoever on its stats. Magical affixes, defense, and in the case of weapons even damage – none of this is determined by item level.

In my earlier post linked above I said about D2:

There’s always something to feel good about. […] You find useful stuff all the time and at all levels.

I believe the detachment of item level and item power is the main reason for this, because whenever you find a good item, it really is a good item. You will never have to feel disappointed and say to yourself “Why oh why did I not find this on my max level character, it’s no good to me at this ilvl!”.

Goblin toes are always great to have, believe it or not

If a game lets you level your characters up to, say, 100, but is designed in a way that only loot dropped by level 90+ monsters can potentially be good enough to actually use at late game…what’s the point of the 90 levels that came before? Why even bother?

For me personally that’s really the biggest turn-off any kind of RPG can have – an itemization that’s completely item level (or, to use the more modern term, gear score) focused, because it eliminates almost any chance to hit big jackpots along the way. Sure, you’ll find items that are good at and around that particular level, but you’ll always know that you’ll have to replace them sooner rather than later. I don’t know about you, but I can’t derive any joy from that.

I’ll rather take my…err…chances…with these

It gets even worse when the power of items you find isn’t just dependent on monster levels, but also capped by the gear you’re currently wearing.

New World has (or had, I don’t keep myself informed about the game) such a system at endgame, and while I didn’t experience it myself because I didn’t play long enough I almost threw up in my mouth when I read about it over at Belghast’s.

In a nutshell, if you had an item with a gear score of 600 equipped in a specific slot, let’s say the headgear, whenever another helmet dropped it could only have a maximum GS of 602 (I’m making up these numbers, but you get the picture), no matter how high level a monster or chest you got it from.

This is stupid on so many levels that I can’t for the life of me imagine why anyone would think this was a good system. Unless “good” means “players need to grind for a bazillion hours to get the gear they want”, then, yeah, I get it.

Only that it doesn’t just cause gearing up to take a buttload of time. It also forces you to completely screw up your gear choices along the way, because you always have to wear the items with the highest gear score available to you, even if the stats are utter garbage for the build you’re playing. Where’s the fun in that?

Now, even in Diablo II item level isn’t completely meaningless. When stats for magic and rare items are rolled their ilvl determines which affixes are available and how high the bonuses can go – you wouldn’t find a circlet like the one above at level 20, for example. The maximum number of sockets non-magic items can have is determined by ilvl too. Also, quite a few high-end unique and set items just can’t drop at low levels because of their aforementioned treasure class.

And I’m fine with that. I mean, of course levelling up should enable you to find better and better gear, right? I’ve never suggested this shouldn’t be the case. What I am saying is that accumulating your dream gear should be a process that’s stretched out more or less evenly over the whole levelling process, from start to finish, so there’s always something to rejoice at.

Which brings me back to the Magefist gloves. I believe I got these when my sorceress was somewhere around level 30 or 40, and she’s still wearing them at 91. I was happy to find them then, and I’m still happy to have them now. Her weapon, on the other hand, is a Death’s Fathom, which I got when she was already 88 or so, and I’m still waiting for Tal Rasha’s Adjudication to finally drop, so her gear isn’t even finished yet.

In my opinion that’s how a character’s gear curve should look like, and that’s only possible if the level of an item doesn’t determine (all of) its power.

Spin for the win!

Well, that didn’t take long. Just a few days after talking about the Barbarian being a hot candidate for my next Diablo II Resurrected character I indeed started playing one. Or more precisely, I dusted one off that had been lying around at level 24, unused, for quite some time.

My initial plan for him, shortly after D2R’s release, was to use Frenzy as his main skill. However, I then decided that I wanted to level a buffbot-Barb on my second account first and use Frenzy as a means to get him through the game quickly. In doing so I had to realize that I don’t actually like the skill all that much.

First off, you basically have to clobber each single enemy one by one, and for my taste that’s never been a recipe for success in an ARPG. Sure, D2 doesn’t throw nearly as many mobs at you as, say, Path of Exile, but it’s still too damn many to deal with them more or less individually. A Frenzy Barb compensates for that with speed, but therein lies the second problem: he moves too damn fast for me to be able to control him properly. I’m not getting any younger, you know.

So after the buffbot-to-be had beaten Nightmare difficulty – and given me motion sickness in the process a couple of times, I kid you not – I immediately respecced him into his warcry-build and didn’t touch the other Barb again for almost two years.

A look fit for a king – especially an immortal one I guess

I’ve always been a big fan of the game’s class-specific elite sets though, and since I now had a complete Immortal King set at my disposal – yet another “first” for me – it felt about time to give that Barbarian another shot.

The set’s centerpiece is a two-handed hammer, so using Frenzy or any other dual-wield skill doesn’t work with it, which suits me just fine. Some other skills, like Concentrate and Berserk, are purely single-target and thus out of the question for the aforementioned reasons.

Which leaves Whirlwind.

“Wheeeeeeee!!”…unfortunately it doesn’t look impressive at all on screenshots

I’d never played a WW-Barb before, and to be honest, I didn’t expect much. But boy, have I missed out! I respecced into it at around level 40, and it’s so much fun!

The skill works like this: you point at a certain spot with your mouse; then, when you activate WW, your character starts spinning around in circles and attacking a couple of times per second, depending on weapon speed, while continuously moving towards the target spot at the character’s normal walking pace.

I didn’t think about it before, but what’s really remarkable about this is that you actually deal damage while moving. Usually you can either attack/cast or move in D2, but not both at the same time. It’s hard to describe how very different Whirlwind feels due to this, but it’s totally awesome. It’s especially great against weaker monsters – you don’t even slow down, you basically run them over and keep moving.

Now, technically speaking it’s also a single-target skill, as each individual attack hits only one enemy in range. You can get that speed up to about five attacks per second though, and coupled with a hard hitting weapon this shreds normal packs in a heartbeat. Even uniques and their minions don’t take very long to kill, and while it’s not the most efficient build to farm act bosses it can do even that pretty stress-free, albeit more slowly.

Look, mom, I glow in the dark now!

Speaking of stress-free, holy crap, dude is tanky!

His passive skills, which increase armor and resistances, combined with the massive HP and armor buffs from his warcries Battle Orders and Shout as well as a good amount of life leech make him a tough nut to crack indeed, even though he’s not wearing a shield. Aside from the Annihilus he also has no resistance charms whatsoever in his inventory, and they still all hit the maximum of 75% in Hell difficulty.

This is of course mainly due to the IK set itself giving a good deal of bonuses on that front. As it occupies a whopping seven of the ten available gear slots it kind of has to though, so it’s pretty well thought out in that regard. Also, all pieces except for the hammer sport pretty high armor values. Enhanced by the aforementioned buffs the total thus reaches a magnitude where it’s actually worth a damn, which is not something many D2 characters can achieve.

As I’m writing this he’s just spun his way through the first two acts on Hell difficulty, and I didn’t need to use a single potion of any kind! As a matter of fact I’m pretty sure his health never dipped below half, not even when surrounded by enemies while also being poisoned and/or cursed, which just…doesn’t happen! It’s a completely new experience to play the game like this.

It’s written in green, so it must be good!

The IK set brings two more features to the table that I really dig.

One, with the full array of set bonuses active the hammer deals all kinds of damage. Literally. There are six types of damage in the game, and it deals a good amount of each and every one, as seen above. Consequently he pretty much doesn’t care about immunities, another luxury not many characters have. Sure, he can’t leech off physical immunes, and those take a bit longer to kill too as that’s the only part of the hammer’s damage that gets increased further by his Whirlwind skill and Mace Mastery, but I feel that’s a small price to pay for not needing a sunder charm, a way to cast Necromancer curses and stuff like that.

The second “special feature” is that the gauntlets also get a bonus for wearing the full set which reads Freezes Target +2. I don’t know exactly how the game calculates this, but from experience I’d say that the corpses of normal monsters shatter at least 80% of the time now. Champions shatter less commonly and uniques only rarely or not at all, I’m not sure on that.

What this means in practice is that, for example, Fallen Shamans don’t keep resurrecting their foot soldiers all the time anymore, because there’s nothing left to resurrect. I’ve always found those to be quite annoying when playing melee characters, so I like this a lot. The downside is that the usual practice of Barbarians using the Find Item skill to loot corpses a second time doesn’t work with this set, and Necromancers won’t like grouping up with you either, but I can live with that.

In addition to all of the above playing a Barbarian also has some more universal perks, regardless of the gear and main skill you’re using.

Two of his passive skills increase run/walk speed and stamina, respectively, so he’s generally pretty fast (which also benefits Whirlwind move speed) and can sprint basically forever.

Furthermore, his skill Leap Attack is the only movement ability in the game aside from Teleport that can actually cross non-traversable terrain like rivers and sewers in Act 3 or lava in Act 4, which is obviously super practical.

Lastly, since his warcries are AoE effects his mercenary is tremendously tanky too. Unfortunately my mercs are chronically undergeared (and I’m usually too lazy to log in my buffbot just for that), so I’m used to them dying regularly, especially on my Sorceresses who actually use them to tank stuff. Well, this one just refuses to go down, which is another very welcome side effect of playing this big hunk of meat and muscles.

And there you have it, the IK Whirlwind Barbarian in Diablo II Resurrected. Highly recommended.

This is what good itemization looks like

About two weeks ago I celebrated yet another “first” in my long Diablo II career: the Windforce unique bow finally dropped for me.

This immediately prompted me to create and level up my first D2 Amazon in well over a decade, and just three days later she’d aleady reached the required level to wield this illustrious and mighty item. Yeah, I kinda couldn’t wait.

She’s really fun to play and absolutely shreds places like the Chaos Sanctuary, which, incredibly, she already clears almost twice as fast at level 83 as my level 91 Sorceress does.

What’s remarkable about this, however, isn’t just that I’ve looted a strong item and use it to good effect now. Stuff like that happens all the time in any kind of RPG, and for ARPGs in particular it’s basically the whole raison d’être, isn’t it?

What this really does exemplify is why Diablo II’s itemization is, in my opinion, still the best out there, with nothing else I’ve played even coming close.

Arrows are really hard to see with D2R graphics, so here’s the classic version

D2’s item design wasn’t perfect right from the get-go, mind you. At launch the majority of unique and set items in the game were garbage compared to even mediocre magic and rare items, and pretty much unusable.

In case you don’t know, uniques and sets mostly have a fixed selection of stats, while magic and rare items are rolled completely at random, only limited somewhat by item type. While rares can be extremely good, the chances to ever find a specific base item with the exact stats you want are basically zero.

This, of course, wasn’t a very motivating or satisfying state of affairs, because seeing stuff with a green or golden name drop (set and unique items, respectively) usually wasn’t a cause for celebration at all, and picking up something yellow (rare) more often than not led to disappointment too once you identified it.

“What the heck is this craaaaaaaaap???” he seems to say

Thankfully the dev team must have realized that this was a problem, because during the following year they put a lot of work – and, more importantly, thought – into it. With the game’s first and only expansion, Lord of Destruction, and some subsequent patches they added lots and lots of new unique and set items, as well as runes, runewords, jewels and charms to the game. They also beefed up the vanilla sets, which made at least some of them very usable.

While great, this still doesn’t explain why the whole thing works so damn well though. After all, more doesn’t necessarily mean better, right?

Well, they somehow managed to design and balance all that stuff in a way that’s really, really satisfying to engage with. At all levels I regularly find items that push my account-progress forward in a noticeable way – there’s always something to feel good about. Also, there are so many rare and powerful items in the game now that it’s not very hard to find at least some of those along the way, despite their rarity.

Even if you get one that your current character doesn’t need you’ll at the very least have increased your wealth, so to speak. Trading is pretty easy and always an option, but even if you don’t fancy doing that, chances are the item won’t be worthless to you. Maybe your mercenary or one of your other characters can make good use of it. Or, as finding Windforce did in my case, you might even feel encouraged to create a brand new one because you just can’t hit the jackpot like that and not take such a legendary item out for a spin.

Hell yeah, that’s what I’m talking about!

This is actually the most incredible feat they’ve accomplished – several of the game’s items are not only good – they’re basically famous!

If you’ve ever played Diablo II and maybe also engaged at least a little bit with the subject matter outside of the game, like reading forums or build guides, it’s more than likely that you’ve heard of Harlequin Crest (or Shako, as many just call it), Stone of Jordan, Enigma, Windforce and others, even if you were never lucky enough to find them yourself. Not only that, you probably also know, more or less, what they do, and what you’d use them for should you ever get your hands on them.

Hell, just look at what I’m up to at the moment: right after levelling the Amazon (a process that isn’t even finished yet of course) I also got another Sorceress going – I’d never had a lightning sorc before, and my Griffon’s Eye just begged to be used, you see. While playing her through Nightmare difficulty, electrocuting monsters left and right, yet another treasure fell into my lap: the last missing piece of the Immortal King set. I guess a Whirlwind Barbarian is next on the list now.

Too bad he can’t actually wield both hammers at the same time

So, the items are really strong, and that’s the whole secret to good itemization? No, definitely not.

I mean, sure, if the overwhelming majority of stuff you find isn’t good enough to even use that’s obviously not satisfying or fun at all. So, yeah, a game like this absolutely should have lots of items on its loot tables that are guaranteed to be strong and of use to you. But there’s way more to it.

In D2 it’s also pretty easy to see whether an item is actually good or not, because the amount of possible stats, while not small, is still manageable, and most bonuses you can get are applicable all the time, not just under specific circumstances.

Additionally, many set items, uniques and runewords are, well, unique, in that they have bonuses on them that you’d not normally get on that type of item – or at all. This enables imaginative players to create amazing effects and synergies. However, only very few individual items offer stuff that you absolutely can’t get any other way, so if the one specific shiny you’re looking for just won’t drop there’s usually a way to work around that too.

Which highlights one more virtue D2’s itemization has up its sleeve: giving players options.

Sounds like something a chiropractor would use

Let’s use my Bowzon as an example. Her signature skills are Multiple Shot and Strafe, the latter being the main damage dealer. In order for Strafe to reach an acceptably high attack speed with the Windforce I need a total of 80% Increased Attack Speed, IAS for short. The bow itself already has 20% on it, where the rest comes from is up to me.

I decided to socket a Shael rune into the bow for another 20%, use a Highlord’s Wrath amulet for 20% more, and Laying of Hands gloves for the last 20%. There would have been lots of other options, like the Treachery body armor, which alone sports a whopping 45% IAS, but the amulet and gloves have additional stats that are beneficial to my build, as has the Lionheart body armor when compared to Treachery, so I went with that combination.

The build’s one limitation is that both main skills dish out pretty much purely physical damage, so dealing with enemies immune to that was another problem to be solved. Fortunately Sunder Charms aren’t “Ladder-Only” anymore, and I’ve already found the one that breaks physical immunities, as seen above. However, what these things do is set the monster’s resistance to exactly 95%, which means that you do deal damage to them, only it’s not exactly a whole lot.

The two Necromancer curses Amplify Damage and Decrepify are both capable of lowering physical resistance, and luckily there are a few ways the other classes can also add these to their arsenals. The recommended item for a Bowzon in particular is the Atma’s Scarab amulet, which has a 5% chance to cast AD on striking. Since I don’t have it and also think that Highlord’s is overall better I instead chose to equip my mercenary with The Reaper’s Toll, a unique polearm that has a 33% chance to cast Decrepify on striking. Socketed with another Shael rune it attacks relatively fast, making the curse proc regularly. With the Sunder Charm in my inventory and Decrepify on them even enemies that are immune by default melt just as fast as all the others.

To recap, I think Diablo II’s itemization is awesome because it’s (mostly) easy to understand, you find useful stuff all the time and at all levels (which you can use right away without having to upgrade/level/link it first or some such), you have lots of options to make your characters really strong and to think outside the box if you so desire, and many of its items are so recognizable (and good) that you already know you want them even if you don’t need them yet, and actually finding them feels like Christmas has come early and it’s your birthday.

I believe this is one of the main reasons why the game has always had a strong following and is still played by many, almost a quarter of a century down the road.

Since we’re living in times where “Players are having fun” doesn’t seem to be the main goal of big development studios anymore – unicorns like Larian Studios being the notable exception – I doubt we’ll ever see something like this in AAA-space again, but if someone building a new title asked me which game’s itemization to use as a role model if they want to make players happy, this would be my answer.

Diablo II – 23 years, and it’s still got new stuff for me in store

A couple of weeks ago I decided to dip back into Diablo II Resurrected after about a year-long break. I’d been without a game that managed to really grip and excite me for quite a few months, and I was definitely missing something. Since D2 has never failed me in that regard it seemed like the perfect time for another comeback.

Sure enough, it has delivered once again. Right now I play whenever I can, and think about playing when I can’t.

Of course it helps that they’ve really done an outstanding job with Resurrected, and still continue to improve it on a regular basis without messing up the basic formula.

Robocop can shoot around corners, and so can I

For example, I’m still having a tremendously great time with my Frozen Orb / Hydra sorceress, which only exists because Hydra, along with a couple other hitherto underused skills, was reworked in patch 2.4 and is really good now.

The build is fun, and also relatively safe to play, because both skills can deal damage from quite a ways away. The hydras in particular can easily reach enemies off screen or behind corners, which makes fighting dangerous opponents like Nihlathak much less perilous.

I hope the FBI won’t mind me using the word “terror” so much…

I’ve also come to really dig Terror Zones. I mean, I liked the idea behind it right from the start, but didn’t actually enjoy them all that much in practice at first.

What bothered me was the game setting an arbitrary schedule for my gameplay. Zones in D2 aren’t created equal in terms of layout, enemy types and -density as well as various other factors, so I naturally prefer some over others for farming or levelling.

However, by now I’ve come to terms with the hourly rotation. Playing in different areas does make for a more varied experience after all, and whenever one of the few zones that really aren’t worth running come up I just do something else for a while, like playing an alt.

The main thing that’s won me over though is the loot. Within a matter of about two weeks I’ve found many awesome items scattered across various different terror zones, some of which so rare that they’d never dropped for me before, and I didn’t think it was ever going to happen either.

These are “just” my personal highlights. Click to enlarge

The Griffon’s Eye, for example, dropped in Nihlathak’s Temple, though not from the boss himself, but from a random monster on the way. That’s the magic of terror zones for you.

In addition to better loot the mobs also give lots of XP. A couple of years ago I talked about level 89 having been the highest any of my Diablo II characters had ever reached, and at that point Baal runs were pretty much the only thing that moved the bar at all anymore. Well, my current sorceress hit 90 a week ago and is now well on her way to 91.

I will say though that I still enjoy boss runs the most. Andariel, Mephisto, Baal and the Uber-key bosses retain their status as my favourite targets. But even those benefit greatly from the new(ish) system, because whenever their lairs are terrorized they seem to drop even better loot, and every monster I kill on the way has the chance to do the same and also gives noticeable amounts of XP to boot.

What’s this, a cage fight where the cage’s made of fire? Bring it on, bro!

Speaking of bosses, the event I’m most happy about right now is getting my first ever Annihilus charm.

Interestingly, this item only exists because the game had a massive duping problem back in the day (duping being the illegal duplication of items by utilizing bugs or glitches). The most-duped item by far was the Stone of Jordan ring, and to get those out of the economy again Blizz devised a system where players realmwide needed to sell large amounts to NPC vendors in order to spawn Uber Diablo in every Hell difficulty game on that realm. Killing this pretty strong foe guaranteed a unique small charm to drop, the Annihilus.

It is a strange fate that we should suffer so much toil and loss over so small a thing

As far as I know the rampant duping has long been a thing of the past, but they decided to keep the whole system in place. They may have reduced the number of SoJs that need to be sold, but other than that nothing’s changed.

Which means that we can still get our hands on this powerful charm, but it also means that every ring that’s ought to be sold has to be acquired the hard way. It’s not a common drop either. Personally, I’ve yet to find my first SoJ in Resurrected – and I’ll definitely keep the first one or two, should they eventually drop, as it’s quite a good item (it wasn’t duped that much just for the hell of it).

There are websites that try to keep track of every realm’s status – the approximate number of SoJs that have already been sold can be displayed ingame – but still, at the end of the day only the player(s) that sell the last batch know the exact point in time when Uber Diablo will spawn. If you don’t have a Hell difficulty game open at that exact moment you’ve missed the opportunity.

About a week ago my time had finally come. I was farming with my sorceress when the message “Diablo has invaded Sanctuary” appeared. My heart skipped a beat, and I may or may not have screamed out loud “Hell yeah, finally!!!”.

However, my second thought was, damn, I need my Paladin for this. The sorc might be able to kill the bugger too, but it would be a lot harder and probably cost me quite a few XP due to deaths. Fortunately I always use password-protected lobby games to play, specifically because I can join those with a character from my second account. Usually I use this to mule stuff around or to buff my main character with an Enchant sorceress (great for levelling up alts), but this time around I just logged her in to keep the game open safely and then switched my main account to the Paladin.

Really, I can take this now? Don’t mind if I do!

The rest, as the saying goes, is history.

So, yeah, for over 23 years now I keep coming back to D2, mainly because it’s just an overall awesome game that holds a special place in my heart, but also because it still has, after all this time, new experiences and huge endorphine rushes up its sleeve. At least for me.

Uber Tristram’s next. Great Evils, beware!

Diablo II Resurrected – Now with extra terror!

When Blizzard released Diablo II Resurrected almost exactly a year ago I assumed that they’d only do a couple rounds of bugfixes after that, if needed, and then leave the game as is for good.

This seemed likely to me because a) they’d made abundantly clear that they intended to give us the original, basically untouched gameplay experience of DII – a few minor QoL-improvements being the exception – just with a fresh coat of paint, and b) since they have no means to monetize the game beyond the initial box price (yet?) I just couldn’t imagine any ActiBlizz-exec greenlighting more work being done on the project than absolutely necessary.

Well, color me surprised, as the team has been working on the game continuously since then. Until a few days ago patches mostly contained fixes, more QoL improvements, the revival of the ladder system and a handful of new runewords.

The update we received just now however is one of the biggest game-changers the game has ever seen, probably only surpassed by the introduction of runewords and the implementation of skill synergies, which happened all the way back in June 2001 and October 2003, respectively.

Click here for full patch notes

The update’s main feature is the introduction of Terror Zones.

Until now no area in the game had a higher level than 85. That’s important because the level of a zone also determines the levels of the monsters in it. A higher monster level means more XP, and it also affects which items they can and cannot potentially drop. Since most players always want to get the most XP as well as the best items and zone levels never used to change this naturally led to the same areas being farmed over and over for many years. Also, as characters have a maximum level of 99 this also meant that getting there was a painfully slow process as monsters more than 5 levels below you give less XP, significantly so the bigger the gap becomes.

Enter Terror Zones. A whole range of areas throughout all of the game’s five acts can now become terrorized, always one main zone and the adjacent dungeon(s) – with some exceptions – for an hour at a time on a rotating schedule. The monster levels here will scale with the level of the character that created the game, like so:

Normal difficulty

• • Base: +2 levels up to level 45
  • Champion: +4 levels up to level 47
  • Unique: +5 levels up to level 48

Nightmare difficulty

• • Base: +2 levels up to level 71
  • Champion: +4 levels up to level 73
  • Unique: +5 levels up to level 74

Hell difficulty

• • Base: +2 levels up to level 96
  • Champion: +4 levels up to level 98
  • Unique: +5 levels up to level 99

As you need to have beaten Baal on the respective difficulty level for the terrorizing to even happen I’m not sure whether this will have a big effect – or any at all – on playing through Normal and Nightmare, but for levelling and farming on Hell this is obviously a huge deal. More XP, more gameplay variety and potentially more high-level item drops; what’s not to like?

Apparently not being content with having only one ground-breaking feature up their sleeves they’re also adding a new type of unique charm when ladder season 2 starts on October 6th: Sundering Charms.

For a very long time encountering and dealing with monsters that are immune to at least one type of damage has been a big part of playing the game on Hell difficulty. You pretty much had to choose between either playing a build that can dish out more than one damage type, or just accepting the fact that some areas are not meant for your character to farm in solo.

Now, there always were a few ways to break immunities, but those didn’t necessarily work for every class and/or in every situation and were mostly rather cumbersome to utilize as well.

From October 6th onward you’ll “just” need to get your hands on the appropriate sundering charm, put it in your inventoy and boom, no monster will ever be immune again if you deal that type of damage to it.

“Immune to Fire”, my ass!

So why did I put “just” in quotation marks? Well, there’s a whole bunch of caveats to getting and using these things.

The biggest one for me personally is that they will only drop for ladder characters. I’ve never owned a ladder-only item in Diablo II and I probably never will, because, well, I simply don’t play on ladder. It’s not that I dislike levelling new characters, quite the contrary, but I absolutely don’t fancy having to start over from scratch without being able to make use of the stashed treasures I’ve spent so much time collecting. Having good items to deck out new characters with is actually one of the things I like the most about ARPGs.

Of course once a ladder season ends those items do become part of the non-ladder ecosystem, but as you can imagine the good and thus sought after ones tend to be outrageously expensive to trade for, and I’m fairly certain that these charms will be even costlier than most ladder items that came before.

The second obstacle is that they’ll exclusively drop in terror zones, and only from Champion monsters and upwards, meaning that they’ll probably be pretty rare even if you are playing ladder.

If you do manage to get one you’ll then have to somehow compensate for the hefty debuff to your character’s resistance against the very damage type the charms sunder, which they all have as part of their “bonuses”. You can’t kill the monsters if they kill you first, right?

Lastly, they require a character level of 75 to use and you also need to make room for them in your inventory, but after all of the above this should be barely an inconvenience.

Despite all these hurdles sundering charms totally are game-changers though, make no mistake – which is why it’s probably a good thing that they aren’t too easy to get.

Want to play a maxed out Blizzard Sorceress or fire Druid without having to dump skill points into anything else and still be able to farm any area in the game? Get the appropriate sundering charm and you can! Too poor to trade for the runes to build Infinity but still want to play lightning only? Equip The Crack of the Heavens and you’re good to go (what a hilarious name is that, anyway?)!

I won’t even try to count the builds that haven’t been viable to solo Hell difficulty or were at least severely restricted in where they could farm for the longest time now, but there are quite a few. With the help of a sundering charm many of these will become very viable all of a sudden, and who knows, maybe some of them will even turn out to be proper powerhouses.

So yeah, these are massive – and in my opinion pretty great – changes to a game that’s almost a quarter of a century old now. I kinda hate to say it, but…not bad, Blizzard. Not bad at all.

Keep your monetization out of my gameplay, ffs!

So, Diablo Immortal is out. What a shitshow, eh? Yeah, this is going to be a rant, however a slightly different one than you might think right now.

I wish I could truthfully say that I’m not at all surprised by the game’s nefarious monetization schemes, but the reality is so much worse than even the most cynical of us were expecting that it boggles the mind. Turns out that in exchange for not needing a phone to play after all one needs a humongous credit limit instead.

Here’s the thing though. In my personal opinion the fact that players can spend bazillions of dollars on a game if they so desire is not a problem in and of itself.* When the entire game is designed to incentivise said spending as aggressively as humanly possible – that’s a problem, because that kind of design unavoidably makes the gameplay experience worse, more often than not even if you are spending.

* Of course spending lots of money on a video game can become a huge problem for some people, and it’s not my intention to downplay things like gambling addiction and debt. However, in this piece I’d like to focus solely on whether or not a game’s monetization has negative ramifications for its gameplay.

Here’s just one little example. Black Desert Online has an elaborate system for taming, breeding and training horses. It’s pretty fun if you’re into that kind of thing, and I’ve spent a lot of hours with it. However, it’s also one of the game’s many systems that not-so-subtly try to make you spend some money.

If you’re lucky (or you’ve spent a couple bucks already to help make it happen) and your horse learns one of the more desired skills like Sprint you might assume that you’ll be riding like the wind right away. Alas, you’d be mistaken.

You see, your steed will need to become proficient with the skill first, which means that for the next couple of hours your gameplay loop will consist of repeatedly playing an annoying minigame which either stops you dead in your tracks (the best possible outcome, believe it or not) or outright throws you off the horse every few yards. It’s completely unfun, and it undoubtedly only exists so they can sell you a ticket that instantly trains a horse’s skill to 100%. Or all of its skills, which is the more expensive option of course.

Stuff like that I can just barely stomach in a F2P or cheap B2P game – it’s terrifying how much bullshit we can somehow get used to, isn’t it? – but I’m going to draw a line now, and that line is where a game tries to a) make me pay money and additionally do specific things at specific times to actually get what I’ve already paid for, or b) make me pay money in order to get something that’s actually supposed to be an integral part of the gameplay experience.

I’ll start with the latter as it applies more to Diablo Immortal than any other game I’ve ever seen, and I also feel it’s not even the slightest bit debatable. A no-brainer, as they say.

What we have here is a game series that’s always been about killing monsters to get shiny loot, so we can kill even more monsters for even shinier loot. Only now the loot is going to be complete crap 99,9% of the time unless you spend real money to “enhance” your dungeon runs. Let me think about that for a second…yeah, fuck the hell off!

I know this is something where opinions will differ, but I for one despise the other scourge I alluded to, namely stuff like “Premium Battle Passes” and their ilk, almost just as much.

I’m not a fan of login-rewards and battle passes at the best of times because I don’t like the feeling of pressure they induce – either log in and do stuff every day or miss out on rewards you could be getting. And there’s even more to it than that, which I think is what many folks fail to realize.

Because if those login- and battle pass-rewards are to make people log in and do stuff even if they weren’t going to anyway, they need to be rather generous. They need to make sure you really don’t want to miss out on them. Which in practice means that they often shower you with more power/wealth/glamour than you could possibly gain by just playing the game whenever you want and doing whatever you want. In other words, the game’s designers need to keep much of that stuff off the game’s normal loot tables, or at the very least be pretty stingy with it. See the problem?

By the way, I consider login-rewards and free-of-charge battle passes as part of a game’s monetization scheme because they’re basically there to keep you logging in and interacting with the game, thus increasing your “opportunities” to part with your money. In this sense they are another case of monetization impacting gameplay in a negative way, even if it doesn’t feel like it right away.

As for “premium” battle passes…let’s see, I pay for something up front, but only if I log in and do specific stuff every day for weeks on end I’ll actually get the stuff I’ve paid for? Yeah, thanks, but no thanks.

Which is why, although I was moderately interested before and will even get access to it for free as I own its predecessor, I have absolutely no intention to play Overwatch 2 anymore. The other day I got an email informing me about the opportunity to buy the Watchpoint Pack. For “just” 40 bucks I would get (emphasis mine):

• • Two all-new Overwatch 2 Legendary skins: Space Raider Soldier:76 and Cassidy
  • The Season 1 Premium Battle Pass
  • An exclusive Overwatch 2 Player Icon
  • 2000 Overwatch 2 Virtual Currency

So what’s the problem? I don’t need to buy this, nor the individual premium battle passes (plural because after a Season 1 more will surely follow), right? Well, as I said, the mere existence of this crap turns me off, because it does have a negative impact on the gameplay experience. On my gameplay experience, anyway.

All the talk about Diablo Immortal was good for one thing though: it made me feel like playing Diablo II Resurrected again, which I’m totally hooked on right now. And the best part: this is a game that couldn’t care less whether I actually play it or not, and it doesn’t try to dictate my course of action when I do play it either.

How do I know what to do then? Well, I just do whatever the hell I feel like at any given moment. You know, whatever I deem the most fun.

Just having fun playing a video game, fancy that!

Games I’ve played for 500+ hours

The other day Wilhelm had a post up about games he has played for at least as long as the developers of Dying Light II claim it takes to play their game to 100% completion. It’s a good read, and thinking about it I realized that it might be interesting to have a look at my own gaming history from this angle too.

The difficulty here is that I’ve never actively tracked how much time I’ve spent with any particular game, so if I haven’t launched it through Steam and the game itself doesn’t have a /played function either I can basically only guess. Hence I will sort them into categories of differing certainty, like Wilhelm did.

So let’s see…

Definitely have played for 500+ hours

• • Everquest II

This one is a no-brainer. EQII is easily my most played game of all time. I was the most active between 2006 and 2008, when it was pretty much the only game I touched, and I tended to play very, very long hours more often than not. Additionally, even before and after that particular time period I’ve spent a lot of time with this game over the years, and I can prove it: EQ2U says I have clocked 1,959 hours on my Warlock alone, so…yeah.

• • EVE Online

I created my first account and main character in December 2005, and while I’ve taken numerous breaks over the years only one of those was actually long enough to say “I’m not playing that game anymore” – and even then I eventually returned to have my longest and most active streak yet. Consequently, even without having any hard evidence, I’m absolutely certain that I’ve played a lot more than 500 hours of EVE.

Most likely have played for 500+ hours

• • Diablo II

As I’ve said numerous times Diablo II is one of my all time favourite games period. I actually wasn’t quite as hooked and therefore didn’t play as extensively as I’d expected right at launch, but by the time I’d burned out on Ultima Online towards the end of 2001 the Lord of Destruction expansion had come out and improved the game in every respect. This time there was no stopping me. It then became and remained one of my most-played games up until about 2010 – in fact it’s one of the very few non-MMORPGs I’ve played at all during that time period. The recent release of Diablo II Resurrected added at least another 30-40 hours to the tally, so yeah, it’s highly likely that I’ve crossed the threshold here.

• • Ultima Online

Speaking of UO, hoo boy, was that game a revelation. My gateway drug into MMORPGs, if you will. Starting in June 2001 I was late to the party, but I more than made up for that by playing every waking moment (literally, except when I was at work) for the next six months or so. Unfortunately I was so into it that I couldn’t stop myself from trying to level up dozens of skills on multiple characters each and every day, so I burned out and bounced off of it pretty hard. I returned after a thorough break and played on and off until a little game called Star Wars Galaxies came out, and that was that. Regardless, in total I should be over 500 hours of playing time, though maybe not by much.

• • Star Wars: The Old Republic

Weirldy enough I almost forgot to include this, although I’ve assuredly played it for more than 500 hours. The thing about this game is, my itinial enthusiasm waned pretty quickly, and I most likely would have quit much sooner had it not been for the great guild we were in. Except for some really well designed and fun raids all good memories I have about the game have almost nothing to do with the game itself and everything with this group of people. Anyway, it makes the list easily.

Probably have played for 500+ hours

• • Star Wars Galaxies

Like UO this is another game I really loved but still didn’t play for as long as I initially thought I would. As much as I like sandbox MMOs, turns out activities like gathering, crafting, housing or (light) roleplaying alone can only entertain me for so long, and unfortunately SWG didn’t have much else to offer at the time (at least to me). Again, just like with UO I played very extensively during the first few months though, so I assume it just about makes the cut.

• • ArcheAge & ArcheAge Unchained

I’m lumping these together because, well, they’re basically the same game with different business models. I’ve played each iteration quite a lot for the better part of a year, so I’m actually pretty certain that it’s been well over 500 hours in total. However, in this case I have next to no “feel” for how long I’ve really played for some reason, and no way to verify it either, hence its appearance in this category.

• • The Secret World

One of the truly great and unique MMORPGs, unfortunately underappreciated by many players and mishandled by Funcom, it never had a chance to reach its full potential. I loved it exactly like it was however, and consequently played it an awful lot.

• • Genshin Impact

My most played game from fall 2020 to summer 2021 by a wide margin, so yeah, pretty sure it’s been over 500 hours.

And there you have it. Which games did you ever play for 500+ hours?

What I’ve been up to lately

As you might have noticed I haven’t been posting a whole lot as of late. Or more precisely, even less than in previous months.

The main reason is that I’ve been looking for a new home. In real life, that is. Finding a place in Cologne – or any other major city, really – that’s nice, located somewhat conveniently and affordable is quite a challenge, and it took about six weeks and almost a hundred applications just to get viewing appointments for a mere handful of places that weren’t complete crap.

In the end I found the perfect apartment though. Still a bit more expensive than I would have liked, but I feel it’s worth it. I’ll definitely show off some pictures once it’s all done.

Which it isn’t yet, of course. Far from it. Tomorrow the keys will be handed over to me, then the real work begins. Out with the flooring and wallpapers, new wallpapers in, painting the ceilings and walls (maybe also the doors and/or radiators), replacing part of the kitchen, in with the new flooring. Oh yeah, and let’s not forget shopping for furniture and of course the move itself. Le sigh…

No, this is not it. Despite what you may have heard we have actual buildings and stuff in Germany

In between all of that I still got a bit of gaming done though, because of course I have.

My main game right now is Arknights, which I stumbled upon a while ago when I went through my favourite Genshin Impact content creator’s backlog.

It’s a tower defense Gacha game for mobile platforms, and it’s surprisingly great.

Why are we beating up a giant tentacled flower, you ask? It’s evil, that’s why!

It’s by far the most complex and motivating tower defense game I’ve played. Not that I’ve played many. Anyhow, I’ll go into more detail in another post; for now all I’ll say is that it’s a lot of fun and also fits my current schedule perfectly because it doesn’t require a big time commitment.

For the record: No, I technically still don’t play mobile games, I use the Android emulator BlueStacks to play it on PC. 😉

The one time we both weren’t dressed like complete lunatics

I initially didn’t intend to buy New World because not much of what I’d seen and heard about the game up until launch made me feel like it’s a game I’d enjoy.

Lakisa and a couple of our friends were pretty keen on playing it though, and once Amazon Game Studios had assured us that we’d eventually all be able to transfer our characters to our friends’ servers I ultimately got on board so Lakisa didn’t have to play on her own until then.

Well, let’s just say it’s a good thing that the server transfers indeed worked out as planned for our whole group, because otherwise Lakisa would now be playing on her own regardless.

It’s not the queues, bugs and exploits that bother me. I mean, sure, those were/are huge problems, but stuff like that can and hopefully will be fixed. The game just doesn’t manage to make me want to play it, is all. Which is kinda weird since, on paper, many of its individual design aspects do seem right up my alley after all. Only, as it turns out, it doesn’t do any of them in a way that appeals to me.

As you know I’m a huge fan of virtual worlds. Having to get to places on foot never bothered me in other games – it even enhanced the experience more often than not – but in New World I got sick of running back and forth while questing well before reaching level 20. I like action combat, but here it feels clunky and cooldowns are too long for the few abilities we have. I like tanking, but aggro management in this game is a complete clusterfuck. I like gathering, but the long gathering times and severe weight restrictions suck the fun out of it. I like the idea of players fighting over towns or regions, but being at the mercy of other players regarding whether or not I can craft certain stuff in “my” hometown and how much taxes and rent I have to pay isn’t something I appreciate.

This could almost be a real photograph though, couldn’t it?

The world of Aeternum looks exceptionally good, I’ll give it that. However, right now that’s pretty much the only nice thing I have to say about it, and that’s obviously not nearly enough. Lakisa and our buddies are having a blast, and I’m happy for them, but I’ve called it quits for now.

Behold the Argonath! Err…no, sorry, wrong game

The title I would be playing the most right now had its launch not been delayed is, of course, Lost Ark.

I didn’t want to spoil the actual launch experience by playing last week’s beta too extensively, but at the same time I was too curious to not play at all. In total I got seven hours in and played two characters to about level 14 or so, the Striker and…err…a gal with two pistols, a shotgun and a sniper rifle. I can’t remember most of the classes’ names, now that I think about it. There’s a Bard on offer though, should you be so inclined.

To be honest, my first hour playing the Striker was rather boring. After that the game fortunately picked up the pace and I started to have quite a lot of fun. Combat, obviously the heart and soul of any ARPG-like, felt pretty good once I’d gotten used to it, and had me coming back for more. I chose to skip the prologue with the second character and consequently had fun with her from the get-go.

Strangely zoom levels are either very far out or very close, nothing inbetween

Had it not been for the fact that all progress was going to be wiped after the beta ended I certainly would’ve tried to get some more hours in, so I was clearly enjoying myself a lot. Can’t wait for the actual launch.

At the end of the day nothing beats the classics

Lastly, we’re also still playing Diablo II Resurrected from time to time. Our duo of Fireclaw-Druid and Frozen Orb Sorceress has just defeated Baal on normal difficulty, and my solo Skellymancer has arrived in Act II on Nightmare, which means that he now finally has a mercenary with the damage-boosting Might aura under his command.

Baal kicking the bucket never looked this good

And there you have it.

As I said in the beginning, posts will most likely continue to be thin on the ground around here for the forseeable future, but once things have settled down a bit I’ll not only be the annoying acquaintance who can’t shut up about his fancy new place with the great view, I’ll probably also have ample time for gaming and thus more stuff to talk about again.

‘Voting with my wallet’ works both ways

It’s no secret that I’d been hoping for and then looking forward to a Diablo II remaster for ages. Again, it is and always will be one of my favourite games period. Even so, with Blizzard being the trainwreck of a company that we now know it to be I initially wasn’t quite sure how to deal with the release of Resurrected.

After the Warcraft III Reforged debacle I definitely wasn’t going to preorder or buy on launch day, no matter how good people’s beta-impressions had been. That much was certain, and I wasn’t tempted to relent for even a second.

But now it’s been officially live for a while and, some server issues during the first few days aside, all reviews I’ve read since then pretty much boil down to “It’s exactly what you wanted, mate. Buy, you fool!!”

So Lakisa and I did just that a couple of days ago. And what can I say, I don’t regret the purchase in the slightest because it is exactly what I wanted.

Which means, the way I see it, that I did in fact vote with my wallet and that, despite rather not wanting to support a company like ActiBlizz for numerous well-known reasons, it still was the right thing to do – maybe not from a moral standpoint, but certainly from a gamer’s standpoint. Not that these are mutually exclusive, mind you, but in this case there’s a big difference in my opinion.

Let me try to explain.

The act of “voting with one’s wallet”, when proposed by gamers to other gamers, usually means not to spend any (or any more) money on a product, thus sending a message of discontent to the developers or publishers – the assumption being that this is the only kind of message that will actually be heard.

For the most part I can’t disagree with this, and I went with that approach myself in some cases, not the least of which when I decided not to give Blizzard – yes, the same Blizzard – any more money unless they’d finally manage to deliver a product again that I’m really, genuinely happy with. That was almost three years ago, right after the infamous Diablo Immortal Blizzcon, and at that point I already hadn’t bought anything with the Blizzard logo on it for at least a year, probably longer. Which means that the forty bucks I paid for Resurrected just now marked the first time in over four years that they made any kind of profit from me.

Of course I could have gone without buying it, thereby not breaking that streak. The original’s still there to play after all, and touched-up graphics, or lack thereof, don’t make or break a great game for me.

But here’s the thing. By not buying any of their stuff for so long I basically told them “You’ll only get my money if you make exactly the game I want”. Now, much to my surprise, they actually went and did just that.

So had I refused to buy this product now, not only would I’ve denied myself the pleasure of playing one of my most beloved games with a really great-looking fresh coat of paint, I’d also have made a mockery of the stance I’ve been taking for years: that I’ll not spend money on their games if I don’t like them, but that I will if I do.

If there’s any hope at all that publishers will continue (or start again) to greenlight and fund the development of games that I want to play, I feel that I’ve got no choice but proving to them that it’s profitable to do so by, well, voting with my wallet.

Here’s hoping that it really does work both ways.

This fall is going to be (a) killer

It’s been almost two years since I stumbled across Lost Ark and wondered when the heck I might be able to get my hands on it. Well, it looks like the wait is almost over now.

Turns out the mysterious-but-not-really publishing deal between Smilegate, the game’s Korean developer, and Amazon was indeed about Lost Ark, and now we know that it’s slated to release in the NA and EU regions “this fall”.

Which is great. Of course my personal hype for the game had waned considerably after hearing a whole lot of nothing about a western release for so long, but I’d still very much like to play it, for all the reasons I’ve talked about in the post linked above. So, yeah, bring it!

Only that…

… just yesterday we learned that Diablo II Resurrected will launch very soon too, on September 23rd to be precise.

Half a decade ago this would have been a must-buy no questions asked for Lakisa and myself. However, given how much goodwill Blizzard has managed to squander in recent years, especially when it comes to remastering their old classics, we’re taking a much more cautious stance. In other words, we’ll wait for the launch, see how it goes and what people have to say about it, and then decide.

What we’ve seen until now looks promising though, and if they indeed get it right this time we’ll sure as hell play it. Diablo II is nothing less than one of our all time favourite games after all, and even gems like Path of Exile or Grim Dawn, superior as they are content- and mechanics-wise, haven’t quite managed to recapture its magic.

Which basically leaves just one question: with not one but two great games I’ve been looking forward to for years launching almost simultaneously, how will I find the time to actually play them both as extensively as I intend to? All those monsters aren’t gonna kill themselves, you know.

On the other hand, if that’s my main worry right now things are really looking up, aren’t they?