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[rofif]

your logic is fucked up. in order to remaster old assets they'd need to make all new assets...right?

you said a remaster is improved resolution/fps. it also includes new models/textures. a remake is remaking the game. if you actually bothered to play the beta you'd see that the original game is still there and you can toggle between it and new visuals with the press of a button. so it's basically the same game but with a new visual layer over it. so it's a remaster.

anyway, we can argue all the live long day but if you take a look at the official diablo 2 site you can see that Blizzard (y'know the studio that made it) call it a remaster.

Diablo II: Resurrected

Evil is resurrected in the timeless action RPG classic Diablo II, and its acclaimed expansion Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, now remastered and upgraded.

diablo2.blizzard.com

so...case closed. you're wrong. enjoy your day.

yeah it's like Halo. You can switch between original and remake.

"in order to remaster old assets they'd need to make all new assets...right?"
WHAT ? No. wtf
You use original assets. When You remake all assets, then it's remake like Shadow of the Colossus or Demons Souls... there is original code running udnerneath but all assets are remade.
I don't give a crap how blizzard describes it. They are wrong. They made all new assets and 3d at that.
It is absolutely a remake. 110%. Original "art vision" is lost.

Remaster would be if they added widescreen and rerendered or upscaled the original sprites for higher resolution. Maybe modernized the controls

 

[Skifi28]

This is getting stupid from both sides. As far as games go, there is no clear distinction between "remake" and "remaster". The line separating them is rather thin and publishers/developers call their games what they like regardless of what you personally feel it should be called. Does it matter enough to completely derail this thread over semantics? Especially when one of the people proudly announced he/she/they isn't interested in the game at all and just watched it for 10 seconds....

 

[Antwix]

Played this on Xbox series x today.

The controls in the menus, and the inventory system just does not work with a controller. Not being able to have your inventory open while being able to run around will make the challenging sections and difficulty levels of this game much much harder. Looting is hard, comparing loot is hard, targeting enemies is hard. The graphics and feel are really nice, still feels like the original. But after playing Diablo 3 this is a hard pill to swallow unfortunately.

Will probably pick it up on pc though.

The game (imo) is gimped on console. PC is great though.

 

[NT80]

Why is this 30fps on base PS4? Surely it can handle this easily at 60fps.

 

[rofif]

This is getting stupid from both sides. As far as games go, there is no clear distinction between "remake" and "remaster". The line separating them is rather thin and publishers/developers call their games what they like regardless of what you personally feel it should be called. Does it matter enough to completely derail this thread over semantics? Especially when one of the people proudly announced he/she/they isn't interested in the game at all and just watched it for 10 seconds....

If the game is the same because it is indeed a "remaster" then what else there is to discuss ? You all played this exact game.
Unles.. wait.. it is a REMAKE, so You are all curious to reexperience your fav game with new graphics and models.
badum-tsss

 

[nightmare-slain]

yeah it's like Halo. You can switch between original and remake.

"in order to remaster old assets they'd need to make all new assets...right?"
WHAT ? No. wtf
You use original assets. When You remake all assets, then it's remake like Shadow of the Colossus or Demons Souls... there is original code running udnerneath but all assets are remade.
I don't give a crap how blizzard describes it. They are wrong. They made all new assets and 3d at that.
It is absolutely a remake. 110%. Original "art vision" is lost.

Remaster would be if they added widescreen and rerendered or upscaled the original sprites for higher resolution. Maybe modernized the controls

omg shut up lol. it's a remaster. take it up with Blizzard.

 

[Malakhov]

Never played a sorceress before. Got my ass handed to me by duriel end of act 2 haha. Never died as a paladin back then

 

[Skifi28]

Why is this 30fps on base PS4? Surely it can handle this easily at 60fps.

For whatever reason it seems really heavy on the GPU side, I can't do consistent 60fps with a 1060. The PS4 doesn't stand a chance unless they dropped it to like 720p. It looks nice, but not THAT nice or demanding. It's really odd.

 

[treemk]

Played on ps4 and pc, also played the original LoD again to compare. Find myself liking the original more.

The new graphics are fine, but they look like generic blizzard graphics and lost the D2 feel. Clarity is also more of a problem with the new graphics. I wish it matched the old art better, or just had widescreen support in the old graphics mode.

The stash is huge and being shared is great, hard to pass that up. Ultimately multiplayer and trading make the game more fun, so if thers is a good community on PC resurrected I will play it. I had some good parties on PC but ps4 was dead, I got more activity on old LoD than ps4.

 

[The_Mike]

It's l nice to see they removed Willem Dafoes face on amazon and gave her a proper face.

 

[balt1kr1s]

Guys, your argument about remaster/remake reminds me of those about definition of rogue like/lites where developers themselves have no fucking idea and tend to ignore it haha.

Just killed Duriel who made me curse a lot. A serious bastard when you play with Bowazon, but other than that was an enjoyable breeze.

I was just thinking about economy of the game and will be interesting to see this game not run by duping and bots for years and years which made a lot of end game items much cheaper than they should be.

A lot of items will be extremely hard to obtain, like high level rune words etc.
I mean bots still could be a thing, but hopefully any sort of duping is sorted because this is what made d2 online what is is today.

 

[TheDarkPhantom]

Spent a few hours with the "beta", tried every single class (PS5). I've been a console gamer my whole life, loved Diablo on PS1 and played the hell out of D3 on PS3, first time experiencing D2 and... I've got some thoughts.

First off, this game *feels* archaic. Combat feels imprecise and stiff, was especially weird coming off Hades which I've been playing like crazy recently. I understand Blizzard wanted to keep it as "pure" and faithful to the original as possible, that's cool but time has moved on. Visually it's gorgeous (with one BIG caveat). Characters, enemies, lighting, spell effects are all top tier. However, every time I move it looks like a layer of Vaseline has been smeared on the screen, some type of filtering technique perhaps? Could be chromatic aberration, immediately checked options and there was no option to turn it off. Super distracting and ugly, don't know why this is a thing.

Combat feels clunky, I'll often be swinging right in a zombies face and it's not connecting (no, not "miss"). For this reason I found playing as the sorceress the most satisfying since you're mostly slinging spells from a distance. Love the atmosphere and the music is god-tier. Inventory management and sifting through loot is tedious af, menu nav could be smoother too.

Having said all that all I felt it getting it's hooks into me as Diablo always does, just not sure it's a day 1, we'll see.

 

[Lanrutcon]

Nah, I don't wanna burn out so I'm just trying out the classes in act I at the moment. Unlocking a few skills etc. I've been told necromancer struggles with act ii though for a specific reason lol

Act 2 is brilliant, but yes: there's an infamous part where you'll look back at your previous post and go "Oh, little did I know!".

 

[Perfo]

Is the game server sometimes laggy? I can't understand if it's my connection or blizzard

 

[G-Bus]

Is the game server sometimes laggy? I can't understand if it's my connection or blizzard

Yea this stood out to me a bit. Definitely lags in the same way it did 20 years ago or what ever hah.

Playing this with a controller doesn't feel right. The nostalgia might be enough to get me to overlook it.

 

[MrS]

I still don't agree.
Remaster is when you re master your current assets. Like scan old movie tape in 8k.
This is clearly a remake (not a reboot) as it's using all new assets

Your opinion is irrelevant when the devs themselves are referring to it as a remaster.

 

[rofif]

Your opinion is irrelevant when the devs themselves are referring to it as a remaster.

Of course my opinion is irrelevant.
But that still does not mean the devs are right just because they say so. If they were selling a car but in fact it was a monocycle... they would still be wrong

 

[I_D]

Of course my opinion is irrelevant.
But that still does not mean the devs are right just because they say so. If they were selling a car but in fact it was a monocycle... they would still be wrong

The remaster is far more akin to a texture-mod or animation-mod than a remake.
All of the original code is running underneath, so the game has not been remade from scratch. Nothing in terms of gameplay has been re-made. The only thing new is the presentation.
Admittedly, they changed a very minor amount of coding, such as the inclusion of auto-pick-up for gold; and the menus are a lot different, but that's pretty minor stuff. I would not argue it is enough to warrant the term "remake."

Using the car analogy, this is basically putting a new coat of paint on an old car. The car has not been remade, but it has been remastered.

 

[Nico_D]

D3 was not easy on release day. Champions and Elites were a big deal before - some affixes were hell. It got easy because people complained.

That may explain it. I played it pretty late.

 

[Nico_D]

I'm finding swarms a pain in the ass. And the environment itself like gravestones and puddles also a bastard to navigate

The worst are swarms with elemental attacks, particularly lightning. Or ice.

 

[drotahorror]

D2 was godtier at the time but D2R is boring. Last Epoch and PoE shit on this.

 

[Xenon]

Metal gear sold

The remaster is far more akin to a texture-mod or animation-mod than a remake.
All of the original code is running underneath, so the game has not been remade from scratch. Nothing in terms of gameplay has been re-made. The only thing new is the presentation.
Admittedly, they changed a very minor amount of coding, such as the inclusion of auto-pick-up for gold; and the menus are a lot different, but that's pretty minor stuff. I would not argue it is enough to warrant the term "remake."

Using the car analogy, this is basically putting a new coat of paint on an old car. The car has not been remade, but it has been remastered.

This is a good take.

A good example of a game that is closer to a remake than a remaster is Metal Gear Solid Twin Snakes. D2 is a 3D remaster. If you can switch between the old version and the new version on the fly, it's not a remake.

 

[DavidGzz]

On vacation

The game looks great! But the combat doesn't feel that good. It seems like the character's swing animation is practically finished when the hit registers, and it feels laggy because of that. Just pathetic! A thing you do 99% in this game feels lame to me

That's why I'll be doing single player on release.

 

[Malakhov]

D2 was godtier at the time but D2R is boring. Last Epoch and PoE shit on this.

Isn't last epoch still in dev?

Never got into PoE though

 

[Hellmaker]

On vacation

That's why I'll be doing single player on release.

I hope offline makes it better

 

[I collect VHS tapes]

Never got into PoE though

I couldn’t get into PoE either.

 

[Luipadre]

Tried it on PS5. Imo the console port is not the greatest. The 60 fps mode looks to be running around 1080p maybe a bit more. Also yeah... this game was great 20 years ago, but today? Not so much.

 

[treemk]

The remaster is far more akin to a texture-mod or animation-mod than a remake.
All of the original code is running underneath, so the game has not been remade from scratch. Nothing in terms of gameplay has been re-made. The only thing new is the presentation.
Admittedly, they changed a very minor amount of coding, such as the inclusion of auto-pick-up for gold; and the menus are a lot different, but that's pretty minor stuff. I would not argue it is enough to warrant the term "remake."

Using the car analogy, this is basically putting a new coat of paint on an old car. The car has not been remade, but it has been remastered.

Yep, I would have liked them to pick one direction or another.
If you want to keep the same 2D sprite gameplay, make higher res sprites with widescreen.
If you want a 3d game with better graphics then smooth out the gameplay and animations.
I really don't like this trend of better graphics running on top of the original layer.

 

[amigastar]

I couldn’t get into PoE either.

yep, me too but Path of Exile 2 looks more promising.

 

[manfestival]

For whatever reason it seems really heavy on the GPU side, I can't do consistent 60fps with a 1060. The PS4 doesn't stand a chance unless they dropped it to like 720p. It looks nice, but not THAT nice or demanding. It's really odd.

Oh that is very interesting... probably explains why I was getting around 120fps on my 6800xt. Figured it was an earlier build and thus the performance is just trash but it seems it might just be poor optimization

 

[chonga]

Gave it a go. Played like D2. I guess you can compliment it for that, but the problem is it felt so much like D2 that I just left thinking, 'I could just boot up D2 and save my money'.

Rubber banding that others have highlighted, especially when large numbers of enemies on screen was annoying too. But, OK, fine beta.

It also seems to consume a disproportionate amount of resources for how it looks, even in legacy. I can only assume they concurrently render both...

 

[I collect VHS tapes]

Yep, I would have liked them to pick one direction or another.
If you want to keep the same 2D sprite gameplay, make higher res sprites with widescreen.
If you want a 3d game with better graphics then smooth out the gameplay and animations.
I really don't like this trend of better graphics running on top of the original layer.

It's intentional to preserve the original experience. I posted it earlier in this thread but here it is again (taken from https://www.tweaktown.com/news/7796...oint-builds-even-with-uncapped-fps/index.html)

The new Diablo II Resurrected remaster may look like a new game, but it's really not. The old-school classic Diablo II experience is still running underneath, complete with bugs, quirks, and frame timings. That means breakpoints are still in the game, and players can still stack faster cast rate or increased attack speed and technically break past animation limitations.

Diablo II's breakpoints can be pretty fun to manipulate. The game runs at 25 FPS, and the new Resurrected remaster will also be sourced on the 25FPS timings of the original despite running at higher frame rates on consoles and PC (it can hit uncapped FPS at 8K resolution on PC). The underpinning core logic remains the same, though, allowing breakpoint builds.

Although the game ran at 25FPS, gamers could stack boosted upgrades like IAS (increased attack speed), FBR (faster block rate), FCR (faster cast rate), and others like FHR (faster hit recovery) to "break" the animation barrier; the characters animations could technically go past their limitations. This lead to some pretty godly builds, and breakpoints are kind of a science for high-level D2 play.

Luckily, the remaster will preserve the breakpoint system. D2 Resurrected's principal designer Rob Gallerani explains:

"There is a lot about the old game's feel. The original game, like a lot of older games, ran on frames and not time. And so if you imagine the game running like a bicycle wheel with the spokes, if something happened in between a spoke, it wouldn't really click over. So that's what the breakpoints are; breakpoints in the game are you've upped your stats so much that it would go faster and fall in between a frame so you don't get credit for it," Gallerani said in a recent Q&A stream.

"So there were builds made that would hit certain breakpoints. Now we have to preserve that. So our modern game still runs with all the spokes. All we're doing is we're adding a much smoother tire around the outside so we're throwing a lot more visual frames in.

"So the animations that you see can run very very smoothly, but these moments when the game is checking to see what happens are still in the exact same spot as they used to be."

Having said all that, I'm playing on the XSX and the game is running extremely smooth. Zero complaitns in this arena for me.

 

[drotahorror]

Isn't last epoch still in dev?

Never got into PoE though

It is, but there's an insane amount of depth and content already. It's lacking in optimization though that's for sure.

 

[dDoc]

Seems like more improvements are needed. A remaster should provide a better mechanical experience not emulate to the dot a 20 year old game.

 

[I collect VHS tapes]

A remaster should provide a better mechanical experience not emulate to the dot a 20 year old game.

Hard disagree.

 

[DavidGzz]

I hope offline makes it better

Of course it will, it's 1:1 most of the time online for me but I can tell when the lag kicks in cause the enemies die a split second after my swing. Offline it will be tight. Hopefully the online gets closer to D3 cause that shit is great.

 

[dDoc]

Hard disagree.

Fair enough, but if one wants nothing changed there's always the original available.

Seems a missed opportunity not to make it play better.

 

[I collect VHS tapes]

Fair enough, but if one wants nothing changed there's always the original available.

Seems a missed opportunity not to make it play better.

I enjoy the improved graphics. What I enjoy even more is the fact that they left the mechanics intact.

This is a remaster of a 20 year old game. Diablo 3 is still there for people who prefer a more modern game.

 

[xpresstuning]

Spent a few hours with the "beta", tried every single class (PS5). I've been a console gamer my whole life, loved Diablo on PS1 and played the hell out of D3 on PS3, first time experiencing D2 and... I've got some thoughts.

First off, this game *feels* archaic. Combat feels imprecise and stiff, was especially weird coming off Hades which I've been playing like crazy recently. I understand Blizzard wanted to keep it as "pure" and faithful to the original as possible, that's cool but time has moved on. Visually it's gorgeous (with one BIG caveat). Characters, enemies, lighting, spell effects are all top tier. However, every time I move it looks like a layer of Vaseline has been smeared on the screen, some type of filtering technique perhaps? Could be chromatic aberration, immediately checked options and there was no option to turn it off. Super distracting and ugly, don't know why this is a thing.

Combat feels clunky, I'll often be swinging right in a zombies face and it's not connecting (no, not "miss"). For this reason I found playing as the sorceress the most satisfying since you're mostly slinging spells from a distance. Love the atmosphere and the music is god-tier. Inventory management and sifting through loot is tedious af, menu nav could be smoother too.

Having said all that all I felt it getting it's hooks into me as Diablo always does, just not sure it's a day 1, we'll see.

Are you sure that isn't just missing a hit because of early low accuracy?

If that's not it then that sounds like the hit doesn't register on time, or there's some lag between the actual hit and the kill. Which shouldn't be the case because the original D2: LoD doesn't have that problem. Neither does the original Diablo for that matter.

And that would mean that the remaster has one shitty bug that needs to get fixed.

Oh wait, i forgot that melee combat at lower levels is bad. The beta was just until Act 2 normal, right? Well that's low level. It's been like 10 years since i last touched Diablo 2, that memory just came back. No wonder that people are complaining, especially that from what i've seen of the user interface which doesn't look like something i'd feel comfortable with on a console with a controller.

 

[Yoshichan]

Lvl 25 fire sorc
Lvl 26 cold sorc
Lvl 25 light sorc
lvl 25 hammerdin
lv 25 ele druid

Yeah over to the next class I guess, but I wish they had fucking unlocked assassin and necro because I don't want to waste my time with amazon and barbarian

 

[I collect VHS tapes]

Lvl 25 fire sorc
Lvl 26 cold sorc
Lvl 25 light sorc
lvl 25 hammerdin
lv 25 ele druid

Yeah over to the next class I guess, but I wish they had fucking unlocked assassin and necro because I don't want to waste my time with amazon and barbarian

Fwiw I had more fun than I expected with my poison javazon.

 

[Lanrutcon]

Fair enough, but if one wants nothing changed there's always the original available.

Seems a missed opportunity not to make it play better.

But there isn't. The original doesn't have the graphical improvements of D2R, so if one wants nothing changed there's...D2R.

I remember during last time people asked for D2 improvements, btw. It was during the development of Diablo 3, and we all know how that turned out. So if you have ideas how to make the game better: e-mail the D4 devs. I'm sure history won't repeat itself.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

For those of you who never played D2 (whether or not your played D3), the new D2 game is heavily based on the 20 year old original game.

They improved the graphics, frame rate, and made some quality of life improvements like auto-pick up gold (and probably some other things I didn't notice). But the core game is still going to be clunky and old school compared to D3 which is a very smooth playing game. Even on 360 D3 was butter smooth. The UI on console is clunky too and moving around a cursor to manipulate inventory slots is going to be slow. The inventory slots are fucked too (on console at least) because anytime you have an item that is more than one single slot its a pain in the ass to put it where you want as you got to press the button with the item probably a half to full slot BELOW where you want it to actually go. Weird. Also, you got to always have Town Portal scrolls or tomes to go back to town (or use a waypoint) instead of D3's auto-portal ability. Same goes for Identify item. There is no self identify item ability. You use a scroll, tome or get geezer Cain to do it.

So you can see the game is more archaic in terms of everything. You arent going to get super splashy graphics like D3 with enemies getting hit into bits and flying all over the screen or falling over dungeon cavaren pits.

But If any of you think D3 is too bright, colurful and easy, D2 is different. The graphics are more gritty, the dungeons can be really dark (even with some light radius items), and I've got killed 7-8 times in Act 1 (which I completed before bed last night). This default difficulty is 10x harder than D3. I don't think I got killed 7-8 times in D3 out of the probably 50+ hours I played that game. I think I ended the game level 200+ where I scaled up the difficulty to a tolerable level. Of course in D3 you can always scale up the difficulty yourself way higher than you can handle, but I'm talking the starting difficulty level which everyone plays first.

Also, the rare items you get in D2 are much more rare (yellows) as yellows were the uber items at the time (though someone said in the expansion there's gold coloured better items.... I never played it). In D3, yellows are worthless and everywhere while the better orange and ancient items come out way too often. In D2, when a yellow drops its worth a look. Also, it seems yellows in D2 are more random in terms of class usage. In D3, they seemed to cater most orange item drop to your class. In D2 beta, I got many yellows which I couldnt use due to class restrictions. Only a couple were worth keeping and usable by my amazon.

 

[treemk]

It's intentional to preserve the original experience. I posted it earlier in this thread but here it is again (taken from https://www.tweaktown.com/news/7796...oint-builds-even-with-uncapped-fps/index.html)

Ok but the preservation is a non-issue considering the original exists with an offline installer. This is just a slightly new experience that doesn't chance very much, feels more like a Diablo 3 skin for Diablo 2, and the only real notable upgrade is the stash, probably at the cost of downgraded social features. I would have preferred the actual original graphics or something much closer to them if they are willing to change so little. Just IMO.

Kind of like an overly modded Morrowind, the gap between the graphics and gameplay feels weird and doesn't jive with me.

Also when you play in original graphics mode, it looks worse and doesn't run as smooth as LoD does.

 

[Yoshichan]

fuck it

i'm buying a new comp for this game

 

[Lanrutcon]

Ok but the preservation is a non-issue considering the original exists with an offline installer. This is just a slightly new experience that doesn't chance very much, feels more like a Diablo 3 skin for Diablo 2, and the only real notable upgrade is the stash, probably at the cost of downgraded social features. I would have preferred the actual original graphics or something much closer to them if they are willing to change so little. Just IMO.

Kind of like an overly modded Morrowind, the gap between the graphics and gameplay feels weird and doesn't jive with me.

Also when you play in original graphics mode, it looks worse and doesn't run as smooth as LoD does.

Ok, but you're in the minority. People have been begging for a 60 fps/modern resolution version of Diablo 2 for ages. The third party attempts have gotten close, but D2R is the best attempt so far.

I feel like some people in this thread haven't been part of the D2 community since D3 released. D2R is literally, as it is right now, what the people who have been playing D2 over the last decade have been asking for. Hell, it's actually a bit better than we expected.

 

[Tg89]

Fair enough, but if one wants nothing changed there's always the original available.

Seems a missed opportunity not to make it play better.

Nah. It's perfect imo. They changed the things that need changing (mainly making it accessible and run well on modern pcs).

 

[I collect VHS tapes]

Ok but the preservation is a non-issue considering the original exists with an offline installer. This is just a slightly new experience that doesn't chance very much, feels more like a Diablo 3 skin for Diablo 2, and the only real notable upgrade is the stash, probably at the cost of downgraded social features. I would have preferred the actual original graphics or something much closer to them if they are willing to change so little. Just IMO.

Kind of like an overly modded Morrowind, the gap between the graphics and gameplay feels weird and doesn't jive with me.

Also when you play in original graphics mode, it looks worse and doesn't run as smooth as LoD does.

The game is clearly not for you, nor was it intended to be.

 

[Tg89]

Ok but the preservation is a non-issue considering the original exists with an offline installer. This is just a slightly new experience that doesn't chance very much, feels more like a Diablo 3 skin for Diablo 2, and the only real notable upgrade is the stash, probably at the cost of downgraded social features. I would have preferred the actual original graphics or something much closer to them if they are willing to change so little. Just IMO.

Kind of like an overly modded Morrowind, the gap between the graphics and gameplay feels weird and doesn't jive with me.

Also when you play in original graphics mode, it looks worse and doesn't run as smooth as LoD does.

Meh, there's plenty of new ARPGs trying different things with "modern" gameplay.

The gameplay/systems are what make Diablo II what they are. It's the reason a ton of people still play it despite there being a Diablo 3 available.

 

[cormack12]

So is the ladder based on speed or XP? Or both?