Season 13

JARY wrote: 4 hours ago

And the biggest issue I see with the Loot is the same curse that's been lingering over this game since 20 years ago, the Runewords literally destroyed 99% of the Set Item and Unique potential, (...)
It's so bad... just take Isenharts's Armory for example, even if you had the ENTIRE set and had the strength to run full set by Act 2, by the time you even hit Act 3 the damage and stats have already

Fallen off, the stats are so measily just getting a 'Steel' or 'Malice' and 'Stealth' and maybe a Rhyme shield later on for some low runes is already far superior.

I slightly disagree: runewords aren't bad per se. 1.10 and later ones are.

If Expansion was limited to the original runewords, the itemization wouldn't have been so bad. Look at them. Some are mediocre. Some are good, like Ancients' Pledge, Leaf or Lore. Almost too good, but there are non-RW alternatives, like

The Ward,

The Salamander or

Peasant Crown respectively, and for most of them endgame sets/uniques are better, even taking into account the RW's flexibility of minmaxing the base.
White is the only endgame-viable original RW, I suppose; some other are also used, but somehow limited: Black (solely because of CB), Memory (solely for pre-buff) or Wealth (solely for GF).

Also, there were no oskills nor auras when equipped! When you wanted a

Teleport, you needed a Sorceress. When you wanted

Battle Orders, you needed a Barbarian. When you encountered an immune monster, you either needed a Paladin with

Conviction, a Necromancer with

Lower Resist, or another player using a different damage type. No Infinities, no Sunders, just teamplay.

JARY wrote: 4 hours ago

And now for the gameplay. The

Terror zones is a nice touch, but let's be honest, people still basically just Chaos run and

Baal run, that's never really changed. The game was literally more entertaining back in the days 20 years ago when it was centered more around Hell Cows, there was better teamwork and more fun killing them than the meta now. That's why I said: Uber Cow Level perhaps? WOuld be kind of sweet... a Cow Level with tougher and faster cows with Ubers surrounding it, maybe even throw in different terrain like rivers and new surprises. The players want to try creative builds, but we also need a challenge that requires teamwork to beat. No single task should be able to be solo'd by just going Hammerdin or Mosaic sin, give us a task that requires a Shockwave bear to

Stun, someone to heal and Pally to provide

Salvation so party doesn't die, and multiple damage dealers to take out, give ppl something that borderline seems impossible unless they have a coordinated effort to conquer that's what the ppl want and deserve with this game is more challenge. Ubers aren't a challenge, ppl realized long ago just get crushing blow and lifetap and stack some resist for one part and you're set, we need a new challenge.

I wholeheartedly agree. The cows are too easy - especially given their loot. They are slow, they have no ranged attacks, they use no skills, they have no immunities, ... A perfect area for mindless AoE farming. Given no danger and a massive advantage of AoE against tight monster packs, there is no place there for melee builds, yet alone for support ones.

I wish we had an uberlevel like in Median XL. Look at how cow level looks there. Cows don't walk, they charge at you. Some shoot. Some are invisible. Some summon more cows. And the king... Those immunities and MASSIVE AoEs. I know it's a mod, and player characters are also tremendously buffed, but the core design (not health/damage numbers) could be ported to D2.

But to make teamplay worthy, one thing must be done: GET RID OF MONSTER SCALING. Otherwise someone would quickly figure out the optimal team (most likely a single player), and the rest of the party would be to leave the game not to increase the difficulty. This is what happened with UT.

Also, a single

Hellfire Torch as a reward regardless of the party size made it not worthy to invite other players. Even worse, random players could simply snatch the reward and leave you with nothing. If teamplay is to be incentivized, it'd need to be fixed somehow so each player gets a fair share. And it'd need to be done carefully - so no one could make a game with 7 mules to get multiple rewards.