Obviously no one can argue with an opinion, but 3-6 seem wildly subjective. I think the Engineer is much more interesting than Barbarian, in fact I've always groaned at Diablo's slavish implementation of the classic Wizard/Fighter/Rogue trope. While TL2's story was sort of hand-wavy, it doesn't sink to the level of D3's narrative fail.
And why is "adult minions" listed as a plus for D3? I like my ferret far more than I ever liked my Paladin, but more importantly my ferret is a viable combat partner without a thousand dollars of gear festooning it. No comparision between the two games minions should ever end up with D3 ahead.
I think
Barb > Berserker
DH > outlander
Wizard > embermage
WD & Monk > Engineer
I think the three classes with real counterparts are just more enjoyable in D3.
I realize you do, which is why I said I can't argue with an opinion. I still disagree.
1) offline mode (and lan mode, for me this is a real plus for playing in Hardcore modes with friend without the internet lag.)
2) sending pets to town
He can buy potion and scroll too and you can give him magic scroll. Skill and attribute customization could have beed good for choosing what kind of role you want it to be tough.
3) $20
4) actual stat allocation
5) skill tree with actual skill upgrades
6) D2-like soundtrack
7) Better loot drop at my opinion.
8) You can choose your difficullties right from the start, you are not forced to play normal mode.
9)You can create mod
10) The mapworks ,for me this is a big features, in D3 you do the story over and over. With the mapworks you do dungeons when ever you want.
11) The class are not lock into one play style, the engineer can be a tank, a dps with two hand sword, a ranged with canon etc.. In D3 you can only choose what skill you will use but that doesnt change the play style much if not at all.
12) Weapon animations, what i mean by that is if i use claws, my character fight with claws style animation or if i use 2 hands weapon, he will swings his weapons with is two hands. In D3 my monk for example put his weapon in his back and fight only with his fist, no matter what weapons he use always the same animation. This is very lame, i really dont know why blizzard did such stupid things, i mean come on such lazy move.
D3 pluses over TL2:
1) closed servers - HUGE advantage in multiplayer
2) much better graphics and monsters, non blocky models and terrain
Yes i prefer D3 but i dont think there are much better, Textures are more details and there are more poly in D3, still this is a matter of taste, some prefer more cartoonish graphics.
3) More interesting classes
Cant agree there since in TL2 you can actually customize your class, for me this is more interesting. No matter the name of the classe for me this is the style play who change everything. Even the personality of the class in D3 are statics, again my monk is such a rightfull and holy pricks when he talk. So there is no imagination there you play a pre-define role.
4) More D2 like leveling grind (paragon)
Im not sure what you mean here by comparing paragon and D2, maibe im missing something.
5) More interesting universe and story
The story in D3 is more alive that truth, but if you compare D1 with TL1 and D2 with TL2, the story are almost the same except from the name and the lore. And yeah cinematics in Diablo 2 and 3 are better. Now we will need TL3 to compare the story with D3.
6) More adult oriented minions
Dont know what you mean by that? Did you mean more horror and gore monster? If so than yes in D3 this is more dark and gritty than TL2 but again this is a matter of tatse.
7) Developer dedicated to expanding/improving the game with a team large enough to do it in a reasonable amount of time (Runic is uber casual with their games and updates).
Blizzard are not known for the fast release.. even with all the ressources they have im not expect an expension fro a long time, 1 years if we are lucky 2 or 3 if we are not.
Again i will not be surprise if they selling the expension for 60$ or so.. for 1 or 2 more class and 1 more Act..
Runics has already state that all DLC will be free, so now lets just see who will be fast to release new content.
Neither game implemented runewords, charms or many other things that made D2 special.
Right now I'm playing TL2. It's a great single player game but full of hackers that are already able to cheat without having a flag.
I dont care about the Hacker, it's not like the game was pvp oriented. I dont play with them. I play D3 and TL2 with real friends mostly or so. And who know maibe runics will decided to open a closed server in the future.
You said TL2 is a great single player game, i will respond to that TL2 is a single and a multi player game, you can do both just like D3.
I played TL1 for about two weeks and got bored. They totally borked item drops in that game somewhere around level 40. I did keep up with checking out the multiplayer mods people were proposing but they never beared fruit.
I pass TL1 only once, not because the game was bad but because there where no multi player otion. In any case i enjoy it.
I expect to play a little longer in TL2, but it will likely be a very niche game a few months from now. And you'll never know if someone hacked their character.
D3 is a nich game too, a lots of people bought the game play it and pass it once and probably never touch it again. or they will replay in somesof months or years. Not everyone like grinding for months just for items in these kind of games.
You see for me TL2 has way more features that i like than D3, but that doesnt mean i dont enjoy D3 either.
Just wanted to say my BF and I are playing Torchlight 2 and loving it. Of course I knew it would be a good game because these are the same guys that made the FATE games (and I think at least a few also worked on Diablo 2 before that). The pet who fights for you, can send to town with a shopping list, acts as an extra backpack, etc. All of that was first in the FATE games.
Other good Diablo 2-esque games:
1. Titan Quest
(loved this game! It sucks the Dev was shut down)
2. Both FATE games.
3. Original Torchlight
Also looking forward to Path of Exile.
I think the market is big enough for many kinds of D2-ish games to survive and thrive. There's going to be something for everybody.
I've now got my engineer to 30 and my other classes to 6-8.
The TL2 art style has really grown on me. It is cartoony, but that is neither good or bad in itself, to me. I love how colorful it is compared to D3. Also, I'm really happy that I could start on veteran difficulty and not have to play through almost the exact same maps over and over to get here.
When I play my other characters, the randomization really shows another strong point of TL2. I don't feel like I am playing the exact same maps again. The D3 randomization doesn't seem to have so much variation to it. Combine that with being forced to go through all of the difficulty levels every time you play a character and that makes for the perception of a real grind.
I love that I don't have to use the AH to progress my character. I understand that a lot of people like the AH and RMAH in D3, so that's a feature that works for them. I don't enjoy buying, trading, or selling in ARPGs.
Finally, I know that a lot people like to show off their progress. You can do that in TL2 if you play with your friends, I guess. I just play single-player. I have a couple of friends, but our playtimes haven't matched up yet. For me, mmorpgs are ideal for showing off your stuff. In D3, you can show off your progression. If you don't "cheat" then you can just go to the RMAH and buy all your stuff with cash if you want to show off. I don't see how that is much different from cheating.
To each his own. For me the $20 I have spent on TL is well worth it. It's the best value I've gotten from a game in years. I felt a lot of frustration and irritiation from D3 and I don't feel that money $60 (or the time I put into that game waiting for it to become fun for me) was well spent.
EDIT: Difficulty level -- The TL2 difficulty level on veteran seems a little strange to me. I don't know what it is, exactly. My experience is that I am having fun killing mobs and it seems incredibly face roll easy, but if i lose my concentration for just a fraction of a second in a pack of mobs, I could suddenly be dead. I mean, it seems really sudden.
In D3, I think I had some time to know if I was going to be dead or not. I could see, "this isn't going well." In that sense, I like some aspects of D3's difficulty on the last two levels. But like a lot of people, I hated some of those affixes that were just frustrating. And I hated the days of the kiting barbarian. I guess that stuff has been fixed.
Full Respecs: Feature of D3, TL2 allows it but flags you as a cheater. Vocal parts of the community won't play with you.
# classes: 5 for D3, 4 for TL2
Combat: D3 in my opinion and it's not close. Potion spamming is an artifact of the past.
Amount of content: D3 but TL2 has quite a bit
Modability: TL2 only
Single Player Value: TL2 by a lot due to mods and offline mode
Multiplayer Value: D3 due to closed servers
Resistance to hacks: D3 obviously due to only closed servers
Graphics: D3 due to a much better engine and a LOT more polys
PVP: Currently TL2 but that's because it has duels and D3 doesn't. D3 will deliver arenas in the future though.
Innovation: D3. Only innovation in TL2 is pet going to town which was in their first game and other games.
Story: D3 by a ton.
Itemization: TL2 but not by a lot. Both D3 and TL2 dumbed down itemization from D2. I have no idea why other than to save time and effort.
Group finding for leveling: It's very easy to find groups in D3 with their auto-group finder, but only based on quest. There is no game naming.
Group finding for anything other than leveling: The ability to name games allows for you to find groups for other things
Chat/Friend functionality: D3 by a ton
Trading: D3 provides it via the gold AH, TL2 by game name I assume. I like D3's way a lot better
D2-like Exponential Leveling: D3 didn't have this at launch, but they added paragon levels to provide a more D2 like end game level grind.
Custom stat allocation: TL2 only. D3 missed the boat here. It's definitely fun to allocate stats where you want to.
D2 like Skill Tree: TL2 comes the closest, although it's no exactly a tree. While leveling, the TL2 tree is far more fun than getting skills in D3.
End Game Item Finding: No clue. Haven't gotten there in TL2 yet. D3 was pretty bad the with how Inferno was designed.
Music: If you're looking for something close to D2's music then TL2 wins hands down. D3 has some great music at times but a lot of it doesn't fit in the Diablo world. In the end, I'd probably just listen to D2 music while playing either game.
I could give you a wall of text explaining the nuances of my reasoning but I will keep it simple.
I bought Diablo 3 at launch and am struggling to even spend 20 hours in game. I got so bored after the first 8-10 hours in game during the first week that I havent been back and really never plan to.
On the other hand major work and real life things have gotten in the way of the TL2 launch but the 3-5 free days I have had to play it I find myself constantly legitimizing why I can plant that tree in my backyard until tomorrow because I just need another hour or two to do x (augment a weapon, hit next lvl and pump all 5 points into vit for new armor or all 5 into str for new weapon etc).
Thats is all I need to say which is better. After a few hours in D3 I can not force myself to log in. After over 20 hours in TL2 I am still making excuses to avoid real life duties.
Full Respecs: Feature of D3, TL2 allows it but flags you as a cheater. Vocal parts of the community won't play with you.
# classes: 5 for D3, 4 for TL2
Combat: D3 in my opinion and it's not close. Potion spamming is an artifact of the past.
Amount of content: D3 but TL2 has quite a bit
Modability: TL2 only
Single Player Value: TL2 by a lot due to mods and offline mode
Multiplayer Value: D3 due to closed servers
Resistance to hacks: D3 obviously due to only closed servers
Graphics: D3 due to a much better engine and a LOT more polys
PVP: Currently TL2 but that's because it has duels and D3 doesn't. D3 will deliver arenas in the future though.
Innovation: D3. Only innovation in TL2 is pet going to town which was in their first game and other games.
Story: D3 by a ton.
Itemization: TL2 but not by a lot. Both D3 and TL2 dumbed down itemization from D2. I have no idea why other than to save time and effort.
Group finding for leveling: It's very easy to find groups in D3 with their auto-group finder, but only based on quest. There is no game naming.
Group finding for anything other than leveling: The ability to name games allows for you to find groups for other things
Chat/Friend functionality: D3 by a ton
Trading: D3 provides it via the gold AH, TL2 by game name I assume. I like D3's way a lot better
D2-like Exponential Leveling: D3 didn't have this at launch, but they added paragon levels to provide a more D2 like end game level grind.
Custom stat allocation: TL2 only. D3 missed the boat here. It's definitely fun to allocate stats where you want to.
D2 like Skill Tree: TL2 comes the closest, although it's no exactly a tree. While leveling, the TL2 tree is far more fun than getting skills in D3.
End Game Item Finding: No clue. Haven't gotten there in TL2 yet. D3 was pretty bad the with how Inferno was designed.
Music: If you're looking for something close to D2's music then TL2 wins hands down. D3 has some great music at times but a lot of it doesn't fit in the Diablo world. In the end, I'd probably just listen to D2 music while playing either game.
Gameplay: Diablo3 wins hands down. Combat is simply more fun. You feel the impact of combat , the physics. And all the abilities are simply fun and varied.
Disagree, combat is much better in.torchlight2, loads of impact, mobs flying everywhere, faster paced, not having to teleport back to town every 10 minutes, more mob variety, bigger packs of mobs etc..
I've now played a good 60 hours or so in TL2. I'm pretty bored at this point. I lasted about 150 hours in D3 so hours per dollar actually favor TL2. But I don't expect to go back to TL2 unless runic actually adds content. Mods don't interest me and it totally fractures the player base that is already dwindling rapidly, especially at higher levels in elite difficulty.
The steam cloud totally borked the save on my first character and he lost 27 levels. Steam didn't even ask me if I wanted to keep the local save or download the cloud version. Runic can deal with this to an extent, by at least keeping plenty of backups and asking the player if they want to recover the character with a higher level. In my case i play on one machine and the problem seemed to occur when I played offline for a long period of time. It wasn't catastrophic because it was only normal diffiuclty and I had already started a new character on the next difficulty.
D3 definitely has better combat and longevity. TL2 is a great game to have around for when you lose internet.
I've now played a good 60 hours or so in TL2. I'm pretty bored at this point. I lasted about 150 hours in D3 so hours per dollar actually favor TL2. But I don't expect to go back to TL2 unless runic actually adds content. Mods don't interest me and it totally fractures the player base that is already dwindling rapidly, especially at higher levels in elite difficulty.
Mods are one of TL2's big selling points. Someone who doesn't like mods probably doesn't "get" TL2. I do appreciate you pointing out your aversion, so people can factor it into your review.
D3 definitely has better combat and longevity. TL2 is a great game to have around for when you lose internet.
You are forgetting that many if not most TL2 fans are looking forward to mods. We will be enjoying new classes, spells and gameplay for a long time to come. To be fair, D3 will probably provide some small number of players a nice chunk of change for grinding Inferno with the same character.
D3 is a better job long term, TL2 is a better game.
Originally posted by ShakyMo Disagree, combat is much better in.torchlight2, loads of impact, mobs flying everywhere, faster paced, not having to teleport back to town every 10 minutes, more mob variety, bigger packs of mobs etc..
Depends on class and playstyle, as a embermage my experience was:
- spells have limited range, much shorter than ranged mob attacks, have fun dying from projectiles off the screen (that is probably why most of the mobs just "vanish" at the edge of the screen, becoming inactive and untargetable)
- spells get stopped by chairs, tables, vases, mob ranged attacks dont, it gets quite hilarious in act 2 sand dunes
- player character pathfing and targeting is extremely simplistic, it is nearly impossible to play the game without continuous use of the shift key, otherwise you would spend most of the time running towards a mob instead of attacking it, because it stepped behind a vase momentarily while running towards you
I am not saying that d3 is better, just saying that your mileage may vary
They both have merits, even though both games are bad.
If you want something that closely mirrors D2, then TL2 is probably your game. The problem is that it not only mirrors the good, but also the bad of D2. D2 was a pretty bad game (if you actually went ahead and played it, instead of just talking about 'how good it was' on MMORPG.com, you'd understand why) and there are some design decisions that should have been left in the past and not brought into new games. Runic innovates on the formula, but unlike Blizzard, they don't attempt to strike out the bad design already inherent in the formula (not that they were successful - read on).
If you want a game that went away from the D2 path, D3 is for you. Of course, deviating from D2 brings its own set of problems (which aren't just rose-tinted glasses - quite a few 'evolutions' of the concept didn't get realized right in D3). Blizzard is pretty good at removing the bad from previous iterations (see how WoW was developed and the design decisions that went into vanilla), and they proved it here. However, they introduced a whole new set of bad that polarized the community (who were admittedly D2 fanboys). Blizzard innovates like Runic did, but they really need to weigh out each decision before they go full-speed with it. They learned their mistake - see paragon levels. Let's hope they continue to get it right.
I gotta say, from a pure cost/benefit analysis, TL2 wins hands down. It is as good a game as D3 is (and D3 is a good game, make no mistake about that), yet it costs 1/3 the price, does not require an always-on connection, and encourages modding. Yes, the graphics are cartoony, but so are WoW's graphics, and people seem to like that game. Yes, local saves mean it will be easy to hack and edit your character, which pretty much makes PvP a ridiculous proposition, but really, who plays point-and-click games for the PvP? If I want some tasty PvP I'm going to load up some GW2 or some FPS title, not a point-and-click loot party. The bottom line is that they are both fun games, they are both good games, but you just get more for TL2's $20 than you do for D3's $60.
Personally I have not yet purchased D3, although I have played it quite a bit. I will purchase it when the price inevitably drops, which may take awhile. But then again, I still have like a dozen games on STEAM I bought in the last big sale that I haven't even opened up yet, so I think I can afford to bide my time.
It's not just the price. Diablo 3 is set up in such a way to encourage players to use the rmah. This is to the detriment of the game and makes it less fun. You either have to use the rmah or grind the same areas over and over and over if you want to progress. Another ball ache with d3 is the amount of time you have to waste going back and forth to sell stuff.
So I disagree its a good game. It's too much driven by the bloody auction house.
Originally posted by ShakyMo It's not just the price. Diablo 3 is set up in such a way to encourage players to use the rmah. This is to the detriment of the game and makes it less fun. You either have to use the rmah or grind the same areas over and over and over if you want to progress. Another ball ache with d3 is the amount of time you have to waste going back and forth to sell stuff.
So I disagree its a good game. It's too much driven by the bloody auction house.
Ya the gear grind was what made D1 and D2 fun. It was exciting getting new loot and hoping for something amazing. The AH did kinda ruin that for me. Even without the real money you still just went and found the item you want and paid gold for it.
I actually found the RMAH to be disappointing. Not disappointing in the aspect that the RMAH wasn't well done, but disappointing in the aspect that Blizz went for such a blatant money-grab in the first place. I actually rolled my eyes at the screen when I first read about it, turned to my friend, and said "Are these the same people who have a problem with gold sellers and account traders?" It seems in the end that Blizz only has a problem with people selling in-game items for real money when they don't get a cut. What's next, a pay-for-gold option in WoW?
There's a reason Vegas casinos don't charge you a fee to sit at a poker table. They will be getting a cut out of every pot. If Blizz wanted to institute a RMAH, they should have just made the game F2P.
I have a plus to give to Terraria but since the post is about TL2 vs. D3, I'll have a word about it :
Diablo 3 : Monsters have the same patterns, react the same way, have the same mechanics and somehow, with abilities that stays equivalent one to each other, the game feels flat (the hype is plain).
The loots are hard to find and bring the Collector type of player into frustrating hopeless searches. Once you find a rare item, it somehow is worth less than the magical item you had. Also, being an item centered game (all gravitate around your gear and not your talent to choose the right skills), the options are ordinary.
Torchlight 2 : each monster reacts in dirrefent reactions, alter your status binds, some are fearful with precise classes, the abilities you have might affect one each other and complete themselves in some ways your do not figure out before experimenting them. It goes beyond regular mecanics and it makes the choices brought to a second degree (considering the effects you have on weapons and gear that can attach to your abilities, this brings a 3rd level to the main game mechanics.)
For what is about the loots... nothing to say. It pops everywhere and you never get frustrated since rares and uniques pop out from time to time and the lenght of time you're using a precise gear is adequate for and hack and slash type of RPG.
I think the three classes with real counterparts are just more enjoyable in D3.
I find your argument flawed there. Sure, there are some similarities between those classes, but actually really really only superficially. So far, I have played the Engineer, Embermage, and Outlander extensively in TL2, and I have played the WD and DH extensively in D3. I can tell you that there is actually very little in common between the Outlander and DH (can't say about the Wizard because I utterly hated that class and gave up on mine towards the end of Normal).
The Outlander is a bit of WD and DH and can be set up in many different ways that you can't do with just the DH alone.
I like the classes in both games, but they handle completely differently. The DH was one of my favorites along with the WD in D3, but I find that there is little customization I can really do with them and there are definitely skills to choose and skills not to choose, whereas in TL2 I have been experimenting and coming up with very different builds that seem viable.
Comments
I realize you do, which is why I said I can't argue with an opinion. I still disagree.
You see for me TL2 has way more features that i like than D3, but that doesnt mean i dont enjoy D3 either.
Ever tried to reach level 99 in D2? D3 paragon levels mimic this. I don't believe TL2 has a long grind to 100
Ha ok i understand now, well TL2 the leveling is fairly quick, well for now im lvl 59 i think but i dont know yet if the remain 41 lvl will be quick.
Just wanted to say my BF and I are playing Torchlight 2 and loving it. Of course I knew it would be a good game because these are the same guys that made the FATE games (and I think at least a few also worked on Diablo 2 before that). The pet who fights for you, can send to town with a shopping list, acts as an extra backpack, etc. All of that was first in the FATE games.
Other good Diablo 2-esque games:
1. Titan Quest
(loved this game! It sucks the Dev was shut down)
2. Both FATE games.
3. Original Torchlight
Also looking forward to Path of Exile.
I think the market is big enough for many kinds of D2-ish games to survive and thrive. There's going to be something for everybody.
I've now got my engineer to 30 and my other classes to 6-8.
The TL2 art style has really grown on me. It is cartoony, but that is neither good or bad in itself, to me. I love how colorful it is compared to D3. Also, I'm really happy that I could start on veteran difficulty and not have to play through almost the exact same maps over and over to get here.
When I play my other characters, the randomization really shows another strong point of TL2. I don't feel like I am playing the exact same maps again. The D3 randomization doesn't seem to have so much variation to it. Combine that with being forced to go through all of the difficulty levels every time you play a character and that makes for the perception of a real grind.
I love that I don't have to use the AH to progress my character. I understand that a lot of people like the AH and RMAH in D3, so that's a feature that works for them. I don't enjoy buying, trading, or selling in ARPGs.
Finally, I know that a lot people like to show off their progress. You can do that in TL2 if you play with your friends, I guess. I just play single-player. I have a couple of friends, but our playtimes haven't matched up yet. For me, mmorpgs are ideal for showing off your stuff. In D3, you can show off your progression. If you don't "cheat" then you can just go to the RMAH and buy all your stuff with cash if you want to show off. I don't see how that is much different from cheating.
To each his own. For me the $20 I have spent on TL is well worth it. It's the best value I've gotten from a game in years. I felt a lot of frustration and irritiation from D3 and I don't feel that money $60 (or the time I put into that game waiting for it to become fun for me) was well spent.
EDIT: Difficulty level -- The TL2 difficulty level on veteran seems a little strange to me. I don't know what it is, exactly. My experience is that I am having fun killing mobs and it seems incredibly face roll easy, but if i lose my concentration for just a fraction of a second in a pack of mobs, I could suddenly be dead. I mean, it seems really sudden.
In D3, I think I had some time to know if I was going to be dead or not. I could see, "this isn't going well." In that sense, I like some aspects of D3's difficulty on the last two levels. But like a lot of people, I hated some of those affixes that were just frustrating. And I hated the days of the kiting barbarian. I guess that stuff has been fixed.
Here's how the two games match up:
Offline Mode: TL2 only
Closed servers: D3 only
Full Respecs: Feature of D3, TL2 allows it but flags you as a cheater. Vocal parts of the community won't play with you.
# classes: 5 for D3, 4 for TL2
Combat: D3 in my opinion and it's not close. Potion spamming is an artifact of the past.
Amount of content: D3 but TL2 has quite a bit
Modability: TL2 only
Single Player Value: TL2 by a lot due to mods and offline mode
Multiplayer Value: D3 due to closed servers
Resistance to hacks: D3 obviously due to only closed servers
Graphics: D3 due to a much better engine and a LOT more polys
PVP: Currently TL2 but that's because it has duels and D3 doesn't. D3 will deliver arenas in the future though.
Innovation: D3. Only innovation in TL2 is pet going to town which was in their first game and other games.
Story: D3 by a ton.
Itemization: TL2 but not by a lot. Both D3 and TL2 dumbed down itemization from D2. I have no idea why other than to save time and effort.
Group finding for leveling: It's very easy to find groups in D3 with their auto-group finder, but only based on quest. There is no game naming.
Group finding for anything other than leveling: The ability to name games allows for you to find groups for other things
Chat/Friend functionality: D3 by a ton
Trading: D3 provides it via the gold AH, TL2 by game name I assume. I like D3's way a lot better
D2-like Exponential Leveling: D3 didn't have this at launch, but they added paragon levels to provide a more D2 like end game level grind.
Custom stat allocation: TL2 only. D3 missed the boat here. It's definitely fun to allocate stats where you want to.
D2 like Skill Tree: TL2 comes the closest, although it's no exactly a tree. While leveling, the TL2 tree is far more fun than getting skills in D3.
End Game Item Finding: No clue. Haven't gotten there in TL2 yet. D3 was pretty bad the with how Inferno was designed.
Music: If you're looking for something close to D2's music then TL2 wins hands down. D3 has some great music at times but a lot of it doesn't fit in the Diablo world. In the end, I'd probably just listen to D2 music while playing either game.
I could give you a wall of text explaining the nuances of my reasoning but I will keep it simple.
I bought Diablo 3 at launch and am struggling to even spend 20 hours in game. I got so bored after the first 8-10 hours in game during the first week that I havent been back and really never plan to.
On the other hand major work and real life things have gotten in the way of the TL2 launch but the 3-5 free days I have had to play it I find myself constantly legitimizing why I can plant that tree in my backyard until tomorrow because I just need another hour or two to do x (augment a weapon, hit next lvl and pump all 5 points into vit for new armor or all 5 into str for new weapon etc).
Thats is all I need to say which is better. After a few hours in D3 I can not force myself to log in. After over 20 hours in TL2 I am still making excuses to avoid real life duties.
Gameplay: Diablo3 wins hands down. Combat is simply more fun. You feel the impact of combat , the physics. And all the abilities are simply fun and varied.
And I guess that after all , this is what counts.
I've now played a good 60 hours or so in TL2. I'm pretty bored at this point. I lasted about 150 hours in D3 so hours per dollar actually favor TL2. But I don't expect to go back to TL2 unless runic actually adds content. Mods don't interest me and it totally fractures the player base that is already dwindling rapidly, especially at higher levels in elite difficulty.
The steam cloud totally borked the save on my first character and he lost 27 levels. Steam didn't even ask me if I wanted to keep the local save or download the cloud version. Runic can deal with this to an extent, by at least keeping plenty of backups and asking the player if they want to recover the character with a higher level. In my case i play on one machine and the problem seemed to occur when I played offline for a long period of time. It wasn't catastrophic because it was only normal diffiuclty and I had already started a new character on the next difficulty.
D3 definitely has better combat and longevity. TL2 is a great game to have around for when you lose internet.
Depends on class and playstyle, as a embermage my experience was:
- spells have limited range, much shorter than ranged mob attacks, have fun dying from projectiles off the screen (that is probably why most of the mobs just "vanish" at the edge of the screen, becoming inactive and untargetable)
- spells get stopped by chairs, tables, vases, mob ranged attacks dont, it gets quite hilarious in act 2 sand dunes
- player character pathfing and targeting is extremely simplistic, it is nearly impossible to play the game without continuous use of the shift key, otherwise you would spend most of the time running towards a mob instead of attacking it, because it stepped behind a vase momentarily while running towards you
I am not saying that d3 is better, just saying that your mileage may vary
Flame on!
They both have merits, even though both games are bad.
If you want something that closely mirrors D2, then TL2 is probably your game. The problem is that it not only mirrors the good, but also the bad of D2. D2 was a pretty bad game (if you actually went ahead and played it, instead of just talking about 'how good it was' on MMORPG.com, you'd understand why) and there are some design decisions that should have been left in the past and not brought into new games. Runic innovates on the formula, but unlike Blizzard, they don't attempt to strike out the bad design already inherent in the formula (not that they were successful - read on).
If you want a game that went away from the D2 path, D3 is for you. Of course, deviating from D2 brings its own set of problems (which aren't just rose-tinted glasses - quite a few 'evolutions' of the concept didn't get realized right in D3). Blizzard is pretty good at removing the bad from previous iterations (see how WoW was developed and the design decisions that went into vanilla), and they proved it here. However, they introduced a whole new set of bad that polarized the community (who were admittedly D2 fanboys). Blizzard innovates like Runic did, but they really need to weigh out each decision before they go full-speed with it. They learned their mistake - see paragon levels. Let's hope they continue to get it right.
My vote goes for Terraria.
Only cost me 4 dollars and I have over 350 hours before I started to burn out.
I gotta say, from a pure cost/benefit analysis, TL2 wins hands down. It is as good a game as D3 is (and D3 is a good game, make no mistake about that), yet it costs 1/3 the price, does not require an always-on connection, and encourages modding. Yes, the graphics are cartoony, but so are WoW's graphics, and people seem to like that game. Yes, local saves mean it will be easy to hack and edit your character, which pretty much makes PvP a ridiculous proposition, but really, who plays point-and-click games for the PvP? If I want some tasty PvP I'm going to load up some GW2 or some FPS title, not a point-and-click loot party. The bottom line is that they are both fun games, they are both good games, but you just get more for TL2's $20 than you do for D3's $60.
Personally I have not yet purchased D3, although I have played it quite a bit. I will purchase it when the price inevitably drops, which may take awhile. But then again, I still have like a dozen games on STEAM I bought in the last big sale that I haven't even opened up yet, so I think I can afford to bide my time.
So I disagree its a good game. It's too much driven by the bloody auction house.
Ya the gear grind was what made D1 and D2 fun. It was exciting getting new loot and hoping for something amazing. The AH did kinda ruin that for me. Even without the real money you still just went and found the item you want and paid gold for it.
I actually found the RMAH to be disappointing. Not disappointing in the aspect that the RMAH wasn't well done, but disappointing in the aspect that Blizz went for such a blatant money-grab in the first place. I actually rolled my eyes at the screen when I first read about it, turned to my friend, and said "Are these the same people who have a problem with gold sellers and account traders?" It seems in the end that Blizz only has a problem with people selling in-game items for real money when they don't get a cut. What's next, a pay-for-gold option in WoW?
There's a reason Vegas casinos don't charge you a fee to sit at a poker table. They will be getting a cut out of every pot. If Blizz wanted to institute a RMAH, they should have just made the game F2P.
Wow that looks great thanks for the tip.
I have a plus to give to Terraria but since the post is about TL2 vs. D3, I'll have a word about it :
Diablo 3 : Monsters have the same patterns, react the same way, have the same mechanics and somehow, with abilities that stays equivalent one to each other, the game feels flat (the hype is plain).
The loots are hard to find and bring the Collector type of player into frustrating hopeless searches. Once you find a rare item, it somehow is worth less than the magical item you had. Also, being an item centered game (all gravitate around your gear and not your talent to choose the right skills), the options are ordinary.
Torchlight 2 : each monster reacts in dirrefent reactions, alter your status binds, some are fearful with precise classes, the abilities you have might affect one each other and complete themselves in some ways your do not figure out before experimenting them. It goes beyond regular mecanics and it makes the choices brought to a second degree (considering the effects you have on weapons and gear that can attach to your abilities, this brings a 3rd level to the main game mechanics.)
For what is about the loots... nothing to say. It pops everywhere and you never get frustrated since rares and uniques pop out from time to time and the lenght of time you're using a precise gear is adequate for and hack and slash type of RPG.
Somehow it is my point of view.
Thanks,
Zemard
I find your argument flawed there. Sure, there are some similarities between those classes, but actually really really only superficially. So far, I have played the Engineer, Embermage, and Outlander extensively in TL2, and I have played the WD and DH extensively in D3. I can tell you that there is actually very little in common between the Outlander and DH (can't say about the Wizard because I utterly hated that class and gave up on mine towards the end of Normal).
The Outlander is a bit of WD and DH and can be set up in many different ways that you can't do with just the DH alone.
I like the classes in both games, but they handle completely differently. The DH was one of my favorites along with the WD in D3, but I find that there is little customization I can really do with them and there are definitely skills to choose and skills not to choose, whereas in TL2 I have been experimenting and coming up with very different builds that seem viable.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.