D2 Expansion pack...is this a ripoff??

[FlashG]

I got a bad feeling about this. I haven?t read this in detail but I wonder if they fixed the poor memory management system in D2 or the ridiculous save feature?

[L]http://www.blizzard.com/diablo2exp[/L]

Don?t get me wrong I am as addicted as anyone to D2 but this is just too much. It looks like Blizzard is trying to resurrect Cavedog?s old (failed) Kingdoms.

I?m hoping for the best but expecting the worst.

What do you guys think? I Blizzard going to fix D2?s glaring faults? Or can they even be fixed at this stage in the game?

 

[CyberSax]

What glaring faults? Diablo 2 runs OK for me.

 

[CyberSax]

.

 

[Gorgonzola]

i think it will be a waste of money. i think blizzard is just trying to cash in on their franchise. although i think it is a great and addictive game, i dont think i could handle much more of the same stuff over and over again.

also, which problems are you talking about? i haven't noticed either.

 

[CyberSax]

. i think blizzard is just trying to cash in on their franchise.

That could be said about any capitalist venture, from a kid selling lemonade on the street to the Red Cross. There's a lot of people who do nothing but play video games for 8-12 hours a day (I used to play EQ for 3-4 hours each day, and there were people who would play about 4 times as much as I did, judging from the rate that they leveled up at). I think this expansion pack is geared more towards them. I've had Diablo 2 since it came out, and I've barely scratched the surface of this game's depth :Q

 

[FlashG]

Before I retort please understand that love all of Blizzard's games. Especially Diablo II. I just have a hard time understanding on how a 4 year design cycle resulted in this final product. Maybe I anticipated too much.


Rant,

Glaring Faults?

OK

Gripe 1,

Well there is the so called Save feature that let's you start an area all over again with worse critters than you had to fight the first time. And not only that.. you get to loose all your neat stuff that you don't (or can't) stash away.

If you run out storage space, this sort of forces you to try and finish each level at once instead of in bite sized chunks.

D1 had a much better save feature and I miss it. You could play for 15 minutes or 15 hours and you didn't feel any pressure to fight on.


I know Blizzard says the (future*) expan$ion pack will attempt to fix the storage problem.... But they don't know exactly how yet.

* I wonder how long we actually will have to wait for this.


Gripe 2,

I have also noticed that D2 requires an extreme amount of memory resources. The problem (as I see it) is that the game program does not free resources fast enough (or at all). I believe that this poor resource design is causing the problems that people are having with stuttering character movement, slow downs in performance, etc.

Just visit Blizzard's Tech support and read how they recommend that you jury rig your system just to get their game to play decently. A well designed program should not make these types of demands on customers.

Blizzard knows that we have vastly different systems. So why didn't they design their game to accommodate for them?

End or rant.

I feel a little better now

 

[randypj]

It is pathetic that you have to finish to a waypoint before you save, or get to fight your way through the part you've already finished.

AND, why do you still have to rearrange the bleedin' backpack?
--Randy

 

[Sunner]

I think the game is great, but technically, its completely misserable.
I cant run in D3D mode on my GF-DDR since that cause extremely choppy gameplay, due to constant HD swapping.
TCP/IP is laggy, not very much so, but laggy nontheless, and this is on a switched 100 Mbit/sec network.

Im dissapointed in Blizzard for letting this slip through QA, this product just wasnt finnished hen it was released.

 

[Shudder]

I guess they didn't want the game to end up like Daikatana.

But memory usage is absurd. Load times of a few seconds in a new area is not a problem for me, but I have 192 megs of Ram. The Majority of the time 170 of that is used, plus another 150 at least in the swap file. Top it off with 25 frames skipped? Christ I"m running an Athlon 600. The game runs slightly slower on my k6-2 450 with only 128 mb of ram. that's weird also.

Now I see the real reason it's not in 800x600 and higher -- No one would have the memory resources or the speed to handle it. Nox runs fairly slow going from 640 to 800, and even unplayable going to 1024. Diablo II at 1024x768 on my 600mhz would probably run 2 fps and take up 192MB with 500 megs swap space.

And I have a problem with an expansion pack being THAT complete this soon after a product is released. THat basically says they held back on the regular product and tried to cash in later. Take a look at sims livin large.

It's a good game, but my god it sure makes your computer feel inadequate.

edit: I *love* the random map generation in Diablo. Not only is every creature reset when I start a new MP game, but my automap is reset. yay. I have most of act II mapped out and I really want my friend to join in, but I hate losing my maps when he does that. Storage space is a joke considering there's things like gems that weren't in the first one which you really can't just throw away.

 

[randypj]

Shudder, I just very seldom have stutters. You've got more pc than I do, and I'm only running 128MB. I'm using a static swap of 200, but, it is on a 2nd drive of equal speed, on a dedicated partition. I just have a CLTNT2Ultra with CL's old drivers. I am running the no-cd hack.

I just got out of it. NM ActII. I did have slomo when I entered the some kind of burrower worm lair (big mama sucker of the egg layer maggots). It didn't really stutter, just went to sort of slomo. But, there was a lot of action and were a lot of maggots. I have seen the stutter, and that can bag a death for you (if I know what you are referring to). But, this really didn't hurt anything, as it all went to slomo. Course, I was using a bow with a valkerie running interference for me, so, I didn't have to run any.

I don't have a problem with storage space. I kind of think it's more "realistic" than Diablo/HF where you just dropped it all on the ground and it was still there forever. In fact, I kind of like having to decide what I want to keep and what I want to trash. I've mostly ended up keeping unique items and trashing gems. Course, I only have one thing of several sets. I dunno if that's the way to go, but, the gems just don't give me as good return as magic items (I am stronger with magic items).

Am I the only crybaby about the ratty "I am overburdened" crape, just because Blizzard was too stupid to force the game to figure out how to reallocate backpack spaces? Geez, that gets old.

I also don't have a problem with an expansion pack. Maybe they got a few things fixed. I'll know before I buy it, though.

Hey, for $26 pricematch, considering I bought it the day it was out for $50, I figure I've gotten the value out of it. For me, Tiberian Sun was much more of a letdown. Geez, I'd rather play Red Alert.

Thanks again. My Dad just told me his USB/Mitsumi/W2K setup is still getting it done. BTW, Nero has a 5.0.2.2? update out.
--Randy

 

[Shudder]

New Nero? Thanks Randy. Glad to see his drive is working fine. I still don't trust Nero for my iso/bin files though. Actually I know for a fact my last one with Nero didn't work.

I don't really have "stutters" in D2.. I'd say once or twice in a couple hour session it has a few second stall because of loading or swap allocation, but other than that it's smooth. I'm talking 25 skips when I do the "fps" command. Don't know if it's really skipping 25 out of 60 frames (it would look like crap) but I'd rather it say 0

I didn't like the unlimited ground storage of D1, but maybe an extra 6-8 slots would have been nice. Barbarians with armor or polearms would be out of luck because 2/3 of their storage would be taken up already just from an item or 2. And I guess the backpack issue is "realistic" that you have to manage how you pack things in