I played a lot of Diablo 2 back in the day and felt that the formula had been essentially perfected by Blizzard after the release of the expansion and a few balancing patches.
I deliberately avoided Diablo 3 after the shitstorm it garnered on release. Recently I felt like trying pic related to scratch the itch.
I chose the engineer class and started to play the game, but after a few hours I was finding it laborious rather than fun (playing on hardest difficulty to around level 20). Loot drops are ridiculously common and almost every minute I picked up a piece of equipment that would improve my character (music seems to have been ripped off from Diablo too).
This basically meant that nothing was really valuable since I could ignore drops for 10 minutes and reliably be able to find something that would work better. I found that contantly comparing equipment and swapping it out got tedious quickly and actively ignored better equipment in my inventory knowing that something better would drop soon. I cannot imagine playing Diablo 2 like that.
Loot is the core of a game like this, but funnelling so much of it towards the player means that equipment comparison can take up too much time. Diablo 2 drops were rare enough that it was a big deal when yellow / gold equipment dropped, and runewords gave you long term equipment builds to focus on.
The loading screen text even said at one point "don't worry about using socketables immediately, something better will come along soon".
I died for the first time at a boss fight and was surprised that you can just respawn at the cost of some gold right next to the fight with all your gear. Given gold only seems to be useful for potions (no point spending on equipment if I'll find something better in minutes), there's not even the challenge of getting back to your body like in diablo.
Seems like an ARPG for the ADHD generation. Maybe I'm just too old for this shit.
Is Path of Exile any better? I think I'll try that out and abandon Torchlight if so.
Path of Exile is pretty neat if you enjoy grinding and re-rolling. You're not meant to have just one character to play through the game with. You find some currency or a new item, and test out new builds with it.
There's also a big update coming on with loads of new acts and removes PoEs arguably worst aspect of having to go through the game three times through three difficulties before you get to the good part.
Download a lootfilter, watch a few youtube videos if you're unsure about stuff.
Jayden Price
The music should sound similar, as it was the same composer as Diablo. I agree with the loot not being special enough for you to care. Even carries on up to late game.
Enjoyable enough for me to finish the game.. but I really understand your issues with it
Eli King
Torchlight 2 gets much better with mods.
Charles Wilson
This. The gold you use it for gambling (to ease the RNG loot) and for enchants.
With the proper mods it's better than Diablo 2, however vanilla is pretty "meh". If you want to test out some mods I can give you a small list on what I have been using lately since I still play TL2 with some friends, keep in mind however that the online with SOME mods (not all) can be a bit of a bugfest, it's better for you to read the author's comments about their mods if they work well on multiplayer or not. There are many mods that fix the vitality stat, the armor stat, the skill level requirement on certain things, improve the transmutator etc. I won't bother to post a list unless you're interested.
Path of Exile is just fucking awful, ignore it.
John Nelson
I find Xanadu Next to be far better than the Diablo games honestly. Better story, gameplay and no retarded grinding/drop system.
Joseph Cooper
Can you post the list?
Andrew Richardson
This is the list I am using right now, there are some others as well that are worth mentioning but I'll go first with pic related.
Now, from mods to consider as well I can recommend:
There are as well some other mods to fix as I said previously VIT and the likes but I am not carrying them since those "corrupt" the character, AKA forces you to create a new character after applying the mod. Since I do not inted to restart I did not implement them, I always forget to be honest and I already made two new characters last week.
About the difficulty, do not play on Elite, play on Veteran if you insist on a challenge. Difficulty does not give you ANYTHING extra, it's just "fun" factor. Elite is just bullshit: you get oneshotted and everything has way too much HP. Veteran has the perfect balance.
