How modern aRPG's would be if Diablo "organs" din't had replaced??

SorcererV1ct0r

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipO7-yQ6dv4

On pre alfa version of D2, instead of dropping random items, monsters drop organs and you use it to craft items. Unfortunately was considered "too creepy"(in a game with skills like corpse explosion) and was replaced by an worst version of looting, aka monsters drop weapons and armor that they are not wearing. Something that makes no sense. I an not saying that is bad, a lot of people love this "mechanism", but if you look to more traditional RPG's, on VtMB, if you kill someone using an shotgun, he will drop the shotgun, not an baton or an revolver. The same happens on Fallout New Vegas, no deathclaw or similar high level non humanoid enemy would ever drop an anti materiel rifle or explosive .50 ammo. And in medieval RPG's too, On Morrowind is possible to get the best medium armor in the game easily at lv 1 with spellcrafting and a little strategy. On non isometric aRPG's like Dark Souls, certain weapons are obtained by "challenges" like cutting an boss tail.

We all know that Diablo popularized the loot hunt games. i usually prefer RPG's more focused on characters, never found try farm enigma runes that interesting, but create an new char and go on normal, nightmare and hell, was an amazing experience. My question is, how it will affect the gaming industry, if D2 had maintained the "organs" system?

would an new game popularized the same concept? would mmo's be different? And similar to pre wow mmos? More "ultima clones" and less wow clones? would exist games like borderlands exist? And other "diablo clones"? Like Path of Exile?

Honestly i don't know how the game market would be today. But is interesting to discuss this "Butterfly Effect"

jjstraka34

ARPGs that dropped the loot the monsters were using (which is a staple of truer RPGs like Baldur's Gate) simply would not work. They aren't supposed to be THAT immersive. They are power simulators that work off that part of our brain that wants to progress, see numbers go higher, get gear that is better quality, and use that gear to defeat tougher and tougher monsters, ad infinitum.

And frankly, I don't think having these organ (as interesting as they MAY have been) would have shaped the gameplay as a plus or minus in any direction. There are already a myriad of things you can craft in the Horadric Cube (check out the Arreat Summit Diablo 2 site to see just how many) and having organs replace certain runes or gems would be nothing more than cosmetic.

As for what MMOs were before WoW, that definition is basically "impossible to progress in" unless you have 18 hours a day to dedicate to them. Now it's VERY true that after Burning Crusade, WoW became something very much worse than it was in the beginning, but there is a reason I (and many others) can barely wait for August 27th and the launch of Classic. Because it is simply the absolute best example of straddling the line between things like Everquest and something accessible to normal people.

Ammar

RPGs dropping items that the monster were not using is just as old and traditional, as drops being limited to items the monsters actually had. Even if drops are limited to used items, gold was often an exception to that.

Here are some old, classical RPGs with monsters dropping items they would not use:

Ultima 5 (also Ultima 4 but for gold only)
Several M&M parts
Wizardry (mostly gold, but also some random items, with Demons randomly dropping Excalibur)

More critical for D2, it was the same in D1. Usually I prefer drops that fit what the enemies were actually carrying and using, but for an aRPG I think random drops are perfectly fine. It is not as if making super powerful items out of random organs makes much more sense.

Ardanis

I think treasure chests with random loot predate Diablo by many, many years. There is, quite frankly, little difference whether you get predetermined drop from mobs and random loot from chests or vice versa.

Ammar

Ardanis wrote: »

I think treasure chests with random loot predate Diablo by many, many years. There is, quite frankly, little difference whether you get predetermined drop from mobs and random loot from chests or vice versa.

I don't that is quite true. Ad hoc, a chest containing gold or a magical sword is a priori plausible, while a giant rat dropping a sack of gold is weird, same as a naked barbarian (think Morrowind) dropping a plate armor be. There is a difference between loot being random and it being placed where it makes no sense for it to realistically be.

E.g. WoW while being mostly very random loot, had one neat feature where humanoid enemies who spawned with a specific random weapon drop actually had that weapon visually equipped. This seems perfectly fine for me.

Or, if Layene (Twisted Rune) randomly has and drops Robe of Vecna OR Staff of Magi, that would be perfectly plausible. Her dropping a magic halberd would be a lot more implausible.

SorcererV1ct0r

jjstraka34 wrote: »

ARPGs that dropped the loot the monsters were using (which is a staple of truer RPGs like Baldur's Gate) simply would not work. They aren't supposed to be THAT immersive. They are power simulators that work off that part of our brain that wants to progress, see numbers go higher, get gear that is better quality, and use that gear to defeat tougher and tougher monsters, ad infinitum. (...)

Dragon's Dogma and Dark Souls are very action focused and the enemies drop things on their inventory. But i disagree that see numbers growing higher and higher is good. IMO should be diminishing returns for character progression. In fact, this was an thing that most people criticized about D3.

"This game is just too dumbed down and too badly designed to have enough replayability to support it for the years to come in the same way D2 did. This isn't an action "RPG", this is an action beat-em-up - this is Gauntlet Legends online. And don't you dare think that any of these issues are because "an ARPG can't do well in modern times". It can. And it's a darn shame that it very well could have, had Blizzard not hired that clown of a director Jay Wilson who ran the series into the ground. I'm done with D3, and my respect for Blizzard has suffered a large blow. " https://us.battle.net/forums/en/d3/topic/5835775092

Ammar wrote: »

(...)
More critical for D2, it was the same in D1. Usually I prefer drops that fit what the enemies were actually carrying and using, but for an aRPG I think random drops are perfectly fine. It is not as if making super powerful items out of random organs makes much more sense.

From organs and crafting. Combining an horn and an wood to make an demoniac spear soulds cool IMO. An sword is much more hard to craft IRL(and much less effective against armor and large creatures), but random chests should exist IMO.

jjstraka34 wrote: »

As for what MMOs were before WoW, that definition is basically "impossible to progress in" unless you have 18 hours a day to dedicate to them. Now it's VERY true that after Burning Crusade, WoW became something very much worse than it was in the beginning, but there is a reason I (and many others) can barely wait for August 27th and the launch of Classic. Because it is simply the absolute best example of straddling the line between things like Everquest and something accessible to normal people.

That is personally an problem that i have with mmos. They are not hard and immersive, they are just time consuming.

I mentioned MMOs because most of then has mechanics that makes no sense. Like attributes linked towards gear. If loot had maintained like in old RPG's, do you think that people will try make an true rpg??

Ammar

WoW can be quite hard, certainly more so than BG, and not in the grinding sense. Completing the Green Fire quest in MoP was one of the challenging fights I ever completed in a game. Any raid after MC required high levels of coordination and individual skill to complete (lfr excepted). That you also had to grind potions and reputation does not change that.

Thing is that everybody gets good at games if they play them a long time, so WoW looks easy as there are so many good players and some of them are rather dull outside the game.

I look forward to playing a bit of Classic, but I do not except much. The magic about it was that everything was fresh and new, and that it was more about the journey instead of end level content. I doubt that this can be recaptured. Other things like the long corpse runs, the class imbalance, the grindiness? Not so hot.

Ardanis

Honestly, I find realism more counter-immersive than anything. Like, what's the fun in playing a group of dressed in sweat-soaked rags vagabonds who haven't seen a bath in weeks trudging through a swamp and checking every nook and cranny. It is a definite must in strategy genre, though, since it's more about pure mechanics than a personal adventure.

SorcererV1ct0r

Ardanis wrote: »

Honestly, I find realism more counter-immersive than anything. Like, what's the fun in playing a group of dressed in sweat-soaked rags vagabonds who haven't seen a bath in weeks trudging through a swamp and checking every nook and cranny. It is a definite must in strategy genre, though, since it's more about pure mechanics than a personal adventure.

I think that more realistic mechanics without being too complex and making your spend more time applying rules than playing the game is bad. But is the extreme opposite than what is happening with modern games. D&D 3.5e and miost RPG's that i've mentioned here has IMO simpler and rules that makes sense.

I think that realism can help a lot. I mean, compare Borderlands with fallout new vegas. On Borderlands every sniper uses the same ammo, and by some unknown reason, they range a lot in "damage" while on FNV, you can use .308 win on "battle rifles" or "sniper rifles", but can't use .308 win on a anti materiel rifle(needs 50 bmg), also, you can use tons of different types of ammo. An .357 magnum revolver can use 38 special ammo and there are tons of ammo types, like armor piercing, hollow point, explosive, incendiary, hand loaded, only for 12 gauge shotgun, you can use

Standard
4/0 buck
4/0 buck mag. (Hand Loader)
Bean bag
Coin shot
Dragon's Breath
Flechette
Magnum
Pulse slug
Slug.

There are also, shotguns in different calibers, like 20 gauge. Shotguns on new vegas fells much more like real shotguns than on borderlands for eg.

Ammar wrote: »

WoW can be quite hard, certainly more so than BG, and not in the grinding sense. Completing the Green Fire quest in MoP was one of the challenging fights I ever completed in a game. Any raid after MC required high levels of coordination and individual skill to complete (lfr excepted). That you also had to grind potions and reputation does not change that.

Thing is that everybody gets good at games if they play them a long time, so WoW looks easy as there are so many good players and some of them are rather dull outside the game.

I look forward to playing a bit of Classic, but I do not except much. The magic about it was that everything was fresh and new, and that it was more about the journey instead of end level content. I doubt that this can be recaptured. Other things like the long corpse runs, the class imbalance, the grindiness? Not so hot.

I tried WoW + with 5x XP long time ago. Will not say how cuz promote it is against this forum rules. Only that at the beginning, was amazing. Then i become too bored an uninstalled the game. Is always the same thing. Always the same "rotation", my character don't fell unique. All "uniqueness" of my character can easily be respected and transfered in a trade window, no gear means that i an no different than all other 6543763765 warlocks in the server...

This "gear and attributes linked" is something that makes no sense.Levels and attributes fells much more like they are to force you into an specific journey and gearing than to represent anything about your character. Cooldowns are an really bad mechanic. I love the casts/rest because it can limit powerful spells without taking off artificially player agency. On NWN, if i trow Wail of Banshee, is less 1 tier 9 spell to cast. Forbidden Sun on DkS 2 is insane deadly but has few casts/rest.

MMOs always tends to have this mechanics. Examples?

Kotor 1/2 = no stat and gear linked and no cooldown. Swtor = cooldown and gear/stats linked
Neverwinter nights 1/2 = D&D like. neverwinter mmo = generic mmo like

The unique mmo without cooldowns that i know and some degree of character attributes(very dumbed down) is ESO and even ESO is extremely lackluster compared to previous ES games, even compared to Skyrim that is the weakest ES game. MMOs tends to be just time sinks without depth or challenge. I enjoy hard games, but Artorias of Dark Souls is a hard boss. Bosses on MMOs tends to be just artificially time consuming. Aka spam the same rotation over and over for 200 minutes until the boss is dead. I only reached level cap on one mmo, Age of Conan and even AoC, become bored on end game since is always the same thing.

jjstraka34

Ammar wrote: »

WoW can be quite hard, certainly more so than BG, and not in the grinding sense. Completing the Green Fire quest in MoP was one of the challenging fights I ever completed in a game. Any raid after MC required high levels of coordination and individual skill to complete (lfr excepted). That you also had to grind potions and reputation does not change that.

Thing is that everybody gets good at games if they play them a long time, so WoW looks easy as there are so many good players and some of them are rather dull outside the game.

I look forward to playing a bit of Classic, but I do not except much. The magic about it was that everything was fresh and new, and that it was more about the journey instead of end level content. I doubt that this can be recaptured. Other things like the long corpse runs, the class imbalance, the grindiness? Not so hot.

The Green Fire quest was probably the most ridiculously overtuned fight of all time when it came out. Not only did it require near perfection, but it could ONLY be done in the Destruction spec with the use Havoc and Rain of Fire. For the record, I got my tome and got to Karenthad, and I'm sure by the end of Siege of Ogrimmar I could have beaten it, but I went into one of my lapses and when I came back, I leveled a Shaman. Not getting the "of the Black Harvest" title still eats at me. But, again, I long for the simplicity and immersion of Classic, where your professions (even First Aid and Cooking) can be massively important.