AFAICT the 1.08 patch does not add 800x600 for D2 classic.. or am i missing something?

You're missing something, or I'm hallucinating. :) If ya don't believe me, use the Print Screen and take a screenshot. Compare it to some older shots of D2 (not the expansion, since screenies of it are almost all 800X600), and look closely at the characters (which are no longer scraggly VGA pixelized and which are noticeably but not terribly smaller) and the field of view.

I think you have to run the "video test" from the automenu to change modes, but I haven't gotten to test that yet. I don't think the patch implements the slimmer 800X600 toolbar yet, or the recent move that put the add-points red squares down in the toolbar.

Other proof is that fan sites are geting complaints that "my resolution seems different, and my character moves slower [the effect of having a larger viewing area] and it looks more like Diablo 'I'" :) [which most people feel looks less pixelized than D2 did, despite both being 640X480]

I should add, mine started up in 800X600 mode right after patching. There's no video option in the Video Options menu, so I assume it's in the "video test" feature like with the choice of "2D vs. 3D-enhanced."

Another way to prove it is to use a barb in Act I (which at times looked truly awful in 640X480 mode). If it's working, you should appreciate the difference. :)

And no, I'm not in the expansion beta in any way, shape or form.

Geo, I have looked around all over the place and no one seems to know about this 800x600 resolution in 1.08. I even went to an irc diablo 2 channel and even the most 31337 d00dZ couldn't tell me how to do this and said it it won't work until the expansion.

You do know that the initial screens before you go in game are in 800x600 right? You didn't check your monitor res there then did you? I really want to figure out how to do this but neither myself or my son can get it to work and you are the only person I have seen that makes this claim. Please go in game and check your resolution and let me know what you find.

Thanks.

-- Xaroc

Ah, I'm waiting for a contact to tell me if I'm full of it or not. :) Mark should remove my 800X600 ballyhooing from the news age if so. Apologies to him and anyone else for getting anyone's hopes up, if I'm wrong.

But yeah, I haven't seen anything to support my claim, except over on Diabloii.com, a player was complaining the post-patched game was in a different resolution, the characters looked more like in Diablo and he wasn't running as fast as before. There's a possibility the patch changed "fast/faster/fastest run" shoes to percentages, and maybe that's what's causing the slowdown.

Someone should run HyperSnapDX and take a screen capture - that will tell you straight away if it is running in 800x600 mode.

I would... but I'm running the expansion... so it wouldn't do much good.

D2 has built-in screen capture... just hit Print Screen and check it in your D2 directory.

In the expansion, you go into the VIDEO OPTIONS menu, and you'll see "Resolution: 640x480" - tap right or left cursor, and the screen blacks out while it switches to 800x600.

Someone with Diablo 2 1.08, simply go in VIDEO OPTIONS and see if you can do this.

Oye vey this patch is killing my amazon... strife REALLY sucks now... and I have a pretty credible Zon for solo (with nice Gothic Bow). The 10 arrow max has severely put the Strife skill to uselesness, and monsters in Hell, in solo mode, are near impossible (im usually in sanctuary with a level 60 zon...). I like the extra difficulty but they should have just added another difficulty level for after Hell instead of just upping the difficulty for both NM and Hell. And in Nightmare my level 34 spearazon is getting buttkicked easy, whereas prepatch it wasnt so hard. the monsters are MUCH harder post normal mode... its good but it changes the gameplay too much imo... it wasnt incremental, just slammed and changed in one patch... at least for a bowazon player.

kinda reminds me of verant, and based on the messageboards for D2 hardcore players are pissed! oh well, nerfed up beyond all recognition NUBAR!

oh i like the patch... just need to get used to it i guess...

etc

>The 10 arrow max has severely put the Strife skill to uselesness

I think this is like the Sorceress' static field, where they figured (and probably rightly so) that if 99% of all Sorceresses use static field to do 99% of their damage, maybe it's not balanced. =)

If you're having major trouble soloing through nightmare and hell on battle.net, then you're probably actually balanced properly. It was always Blizzard's intent that nightmare would be very difficult to complete solo, and hell would be a challenge even with a group.

When they "nerfed" my necromancer way back when I thought I was just this total wuss now and they ruined my character. But I just had to stop relying on all the skills that were TOO useful (hence why they nerfed 'em) and start using others. You might find some use in the freezing and ice arrows and whatnot now, which were supposed to have been improved by the patch.

In fact, looking at the patch changes list it seems like they improved more skills and game attributes than they nerfed.

oh no mistake, i like the patch, just that its a big differnce.. i really havent touched diablo 2 since late last year really. walking into hell and having my 1500 hp valk (beefed up with patch!) die in less than 10 seconds in the Sanctuary was a bit jarring! Still though, there is still a feeling that Diablo 2 still isn't as tough as Diablo 1... yeah the 1.08 patch made NM and Hell with high hp hard to hit monsters... but somwhow i have a feeling that Diablo 1 Hell mode was still harder... one had to really pay attention to your items more in diablo 1 in hell difficulty. i think the patch is trying to capture the difficulty of diablo 1 but the thing is diablo 2 has its own feel, and even the 1.08 patch just seems to make it more tedious instead of challenging... though i've only played it less than a day so i can't really be a judge of it ...

btw, yes i have stopped using strafe, i now use ice arrow more. it still doesnt have the cheeze factor my strafe used to have... sheesh the prepatch strafe... i didnt even have to look at the monitor and id still clear the sanctuary! yeah a patch was needed.

etc

oh, none of my playing comes from battle.net...i play solo... im a recluse!

etc

My big question is why are they bothering changing anything about character abilities? Who cares if one ability is better than another? This isn't EQ, there isn't a persistant world where it matters if you can level faster than someone else and therefore get an unfair advantage. There are no prizes for being high up on the ladder. Leave the damn game alone unless you are fixing bugs.

People spend real time working on these characters and sinking points into abilities they find useful. Suddenly taking them away after months of having them (especially with no way to reallocate them) is just plain wrong.

I like whirlwind, but they just knocked it down again. It wasn't like I was breezing through monsters before, I was dying usually once or so per session. It still took a lot of strategy to use right. Now it is just that much harder to use. Plus since they made my prime pike worth 25k the repair costs on it are astronomical! I guess that is balanced by most things being worth more but it is annoying to spend 15k to repair a weapon after a single foray.

I don't mind if they add things just don't take them away. I play single player mostly and never on Battle.net. I wish they would leave the non-Battle.net part of the game alone. That would be ideal. Let the online power gamer d00ds argue about all this crap and leave me the hell alone.

-- Xaroc

I think, Xaroc, you've hit on why they change things: Battle.net. Contrary to what you imply, it does affect other people when you play a character with skills that are poorly balanced or implemented. At least, it affects other players when you play on Battle.net. WW/lance Barbs going into Hell games and soloing Diablo to shut down the game for everyone else, folks who used overpowered one-trick-pony characters to clean out levels and in effect steal kills from everyone else, folks who exploited the imbalances in the character system to create uber-characters, who then wracked up dozens of Stones of Jordan and upset the entire trade economy--this sort of stuff is IMO well within Blizzard's purview to deal with, and they should deal with it.

The two big problems with all of this IMO are 1) Blizzard's approach/attitude, and 2) the divide between solo and Battle.net players. These two issues are related, because it's very clear that Blizzard cares 90% for Bnet players and 10% for solo jockeys. From the save system to the frequent nerfings, it's very clear that their main interest is tweaking multiplayer on Bnet, and solo gamers be damned. That's regretable. Blizzard also has shown zero sensitivity (note I say "shown." I have no idea what they "feel") to people who simply followed Blizzard's rules and built characters that later turned out to be nerf candidates. While I don't agree with a lot of the complaining, I do think Blizzard should have spent some time figuring out a way to at least educate people to the fact that EVERYTHING you do in Diablo II is subject to being tossed out later on.

Doesn't bother me much because I pretty much only play in small passworded games, and with very multipurpose, non-uber characters of moderate level. But I can see how power gamers might be far more miffed than I.

"I do think Blizzard should have spent some time figuring out a way to at least educate people to the fact that EVERYTHING you do in Diablo II is subject to being tossed out later on."

It's a learning process for these game companies. D2 is much closer to a MMORPG than D1, and the skills in D2 are much harder to balance than the classes in D1. Blizzard didn't really know what they were getting into with this game.

I think Blizzard's quite sensitive to its customers. It's just that you can't tweak game balance without pissing off players, and if you don't tweak game balance you'll still piss off players who want it balanced. It's a no-win situation in a lot of ways.

If you like the way the game plays in its current format and don't play on battle.net, why upgrade at all?

Personally, I don't mind Blizzard adjusting the skills. Balancing play by adjusting skill values can make the game more fun and challanging. With the number of skills available for each character class, it seems a waste to be able to beef up on 1 or 2 skills and blow through the game.

Though Diablo 2 is not an EQ-like persistant world, it gets new players each month (as evidenced by its yearlong top 10 sales rank) who deserve the best play experience possible.

I say patch away and challange players to beat the game straight up rather than exploit an unbalanced skill/item that QA has missed till now.

One man's opinion.

-DavidCPA

The problem is you take months to set up a character that does something well then they turn around and make it much less effective. How are you supposed to plan for that? What they should do is have a skill point pool and you can change your points around at will, or at least in a one time shot after a patch. I could just hack my points into something else with a trainer but I shouldn't have to. Also, I don't know about uber level barbarians but my 38th level Barbarian really didn't have it that easy. Compared to my son's 38th level necro I think I have it harder. I was hardly breezing through nightmare. I was having fun but now it is frustrating.

Also, you have to update because the expansion is coming and will force you to update if you want to play it. So maybe you can stick with the version right after the expansion but that is about it.

-- Xaroc

Xaroc, I think the problem is that you care about your Diablo character. Diablo is only one step away from the olden days of text MUDs, with their infinite cycles of adding items/toning down items/bringing them back up in power due to complaints/occasional p-wipes. People who became attached to the "work" they put into their online avatar would scream, mailbomb, and then eventually give up on the MUD in disgust, throwing themselves into their full-time jobs at 7-11. People who just played for the sociability and gameplay experience, not the meta-game of "leaving a incredibly powerful character to posterity," tended to last a lot longer.

You can't "lose" Diablo. Your character is just a function of the time you put into the game. This is a big problem with the current crop of MMORPG players, too; they seriously care about .5% differences in xp-gathering time efficiency between the classes, as if it's the point of the game to be the BESTEST EVAR friggin' archer/monk/whatever the hell. The point of the game is to have fun, and deriving your fun by some sort of pissing match vs. the power of the playerbase in general isn't even a nonzero transaction. It's negative sum game for everyone involved.

I could be missing something, but the entire thing brings to mind people who can't stand to be passed on the highway, or people whose blood pressure goes up when they find out someone else got a better return on their retirement fund last year than them. Gah.

Well, I tend to be a bit more sympathetic to Xaroc than that, Jason M. :-) Even with a game like Diablo II you end up investing a bit of yourself in your character. In the original D2 I got my Barb up to 53 I think, before I ignored the game for so long that he went away. I certainly "cared" something for him--the difference was I guess that I cared for the character in general rather than any particular set of abilities. Of course, I built him so poorly that the nerfings didn't hurt!

The idea of a skill point pool has been brought up before, and I tend to oppose it, though I can see how it's attractive. And in some cases probably deserved, perhaps. If they give you that option after very patch, though, soon there will be no reason to make choices, as you'll always be able to recover from bad decisions after the next round of patching and reallocating. Every character, in effect, will eventually be fine-tuned to perfection. Maybe that's not a bad thing, though. I dunno.

I guess I just don't get all that worked up about the nerfs. I have some sympathy for folks who feel their work has been devalued, but I can't really work up much anger It's a matter of how you approach the game I guess, and in some respects Blizzard's approach mirror's mine. Build a balanced character and the nerfs don't hurt you. Build a one-trick pony and you will live to regret it. Not fair, maybe, arbitrary, yes, but as it coincides with how I play, it's ok :-).

Now, Blizzard's nasty views on PKers and cheating, well, that's another story....

Hey it looks like Blizzard is going to reverse some of the 1.08 patch changes. You can see them here.

Maybe toning down the monsters hitpoints will help my WW skill. I swear I made 100 passes at Arzeal<sp?> the guy on nightmare in act 4. It was ridiculous. I eventually killed him but the costs in repairs to my pike were out of hand!

I don't know what the answer is, and I really feel for the amazons who got their strafe hampered. It sounds like if you had 25 levels of it you basically wasted 15 skill points once they changed it.

It is interesting one of the things that they mentioned on that page about the patch. Diablo and the other big names drop better items now. I think I will hop back to normal and do a few Diablo runs to restore my faith in Blizzard. All I can say is he better not drop a ring +1 to brightness when I do. :)

-- Xaroc

"People who became attached to the "work" they put into their online avatar would scream, mailbomb, and then eventually give up on the MUD in disgust, throwing themselves into their full-time jobs at 7-11."

I just love this line.
I don't play persistent world anything, so I don't find anything about it offensive. I just love this line.

-Andrew

Yeah, apparently some of the D2 expansion stuff leaked into the patch. And nothing good, either--it all had to do with making monsters tougher because of the extra act and the crapload of cool new items in the expansion.

I spoke with Lisa Bucek over at Blizzard today (she was calling me back re: the 800x600 thing, which I was trying to confirm yesterday). The reason she called today and not yesterday is because of the flood of stuff since the patch. Anyway, the mails and stuff they've gotten that are absolutely spitting FIRE about the skill balance changes are staggering. Which was expected, of course, but nonetheless--man do people love to bitch about it.

I said, "hey, it could be worse. Your game couldn't have sold 2 million copies and nobody would care."

That line about the attached people going back to their jobs reminded me of another part of our conversation:

the people who bitch and moan the loudest about how they've ruined the game and "I'm never going to buy another Blizzard product ever!" are just so full of shit. These are exactly the people who still play 4 hours a day, so obviously the terrible Nerfing Injustice must not have made the game unfun for them.

And they'll be the first ones in line to pick up Warcraft III. They'll swear they won't, but those names will pop up on the War3 message boards as well. They'll play it for hours a day, complain about how one of the races is unbalanced, and then three weeks later when Blizzard "nerfs" that race to even it up, they'll be there bitching about how Blizzard screwed up their favorite race. And they'll still play it for hours a day.

According to Blizzard's releases, worldwide sales of Diablo II have topped four million. That's a whole hell of a lot of copies. And the expansion is shipping simultaneously in a zillion languages, so I guess a lot of their business is overeas too. Hell, they just added another big Asia server on the realms. Maybe Diablo II is replacing Esperanto as the universal language?

>And the expansion is shipping simultaneously in a zillion languages, so I guess a lot of their business is overeas too

Over a million copies were sold in Korea alone.

Stefan

Those Koreans are game crazy. It's only a matter of time before their internal game economy starts producing superior games.

Blizzard's smart about how they release now. The simultaneous worldwide release cuts down on piracy.

I hope Blizzard's got another D2 expansion on the drawing boards as well. We know it will be at least three years before we see a new Diablo, if even that soon.

I'm pretty psyched about the expansion. I didn't read that much about it and I didn't get a beta, so it's all fresh to me. I haven't played D2 in some time either.

Mark, if you like D2, you'll like the expansion I'm betting. For me, it completely rekindled my love for the game.

D2 is a lot like golf for me. When I just think of the mechanics of the game, what you actually do when playing, it sounds pretty repetitive and boring and I'm not all that motivated to play. But once I start playing, I'm hooked.

Diablo 2 had no real appeal to me, particularly with all of the great games around here that I keep trying to find time to get into (and the great games on the HD that I don't have time to play.) But a copy showed up in the mail, I installed it, and it was like a double snort of crack. If I don't play for a while (and I haven't lately) I forget how addictive the damned thing is, but once I crank it back up it's all she wrote.

"If I don't play for a while (and I haven't lately) I forget how addictive the damned thing is, but once I crank it back up it's all she wrote."

That is exactly the way it is for me too, and not just D2 but EverQuest as well.

I really like the hardcore option in D2 also, but playing that way on Bnet is tough. Dying due to lag is really hard to take. They need some kind of modified hardcore option for bnet play.

"If I don't play for a while (and I haven't lately) I forget how addictive the damned thing is, but once I crank it back up it's all she wrote."

That is exactly the way it is for me too, and not just D2 but EverQuest as well.

I really like the hardcore option in D2 also, but playing that way on Bnet is tough. Dying due to lag is really hard to take. They need some kind of modified hardcore option for bnet play.

Heh. It just makes me feel so much better to see the board admin. having problems posting...Heh. J

Hey, maybe I posted twice for emphasis!

My DSL provider got switched on me and the new one's having problems. I probably clicked the submit button twice because it looked like it wasn't working.

Yeah, I've had that problem here at work, too. It's just good to know that I'm not the only one!

Now you guys if you had just stuck with a good old reliable 28.8Kbps modem connection (like me) you wouldn't be having these problems. laugh

Heh heh. Man, you can't even get a 56k connection going? That's pretty sad.

I have to say that once you get a taste of DSL or something equivalent, you can't go back. I still hit plenty of websites that are slow to load for whatever reason, but online gaming and downloads are so much better with a broadband connection.

I hear you Mark. I had modem access for free through school for about a year after moving out of my Ethernet equipped dorms and into an apartment in St. Louis. It was ok for being free, but actually getting through during the day was rare, and it was pretty slow too. We got DSL last year and I absolutely love it. I swear that when I go shopping for a house, I'm going to ask how close it is to the central office so that I can be sure I can get DSL.

This is just painful to read I'm a bit multiplay gamer and I have to put up with a 56k modem its good anough to live with for rts's but have any of you ever tried to play a shooter with one? Whats more I live twenty miles away from the worlds most active valcano and every two weeks someone else on my street moves away so the chances of dsl/cable provider setting up shop anywhere near me isnt very good. I'm actually considering moving just so I can get a better connection

"You can't "lose" Diablo."

Not in the single-player portion, no. Online? You can't lose, true, but online play isn't a win/lose/game-over type of situation. Two of the dynamics that MMOGs bring are persistence and the "other person" factor, and those bring with them a whole host of balancing issues that simply do not apply when there is no one else around.

Problem is, I haven't seen an MMOG yet that's designed with this in mind. Every single one that I've seen, in my opinion, has a single-player-game mindset to it during design... which is why they all have such nasty balancing issues, day in and day out.

"Your character is just a function of the time you put into the game."

Semi-true. Your character is a function of the time you've put into the game, yes. It's also a function of how you've used that time, the choices you've made during development, the loot/gear you've acquired and used during that period... and, somewhat significantly, it's also a function of how everyone around you has used their time, made their choices, and used their gear. (Tangentially, any changes to the game system during this period are hugely significant, simply because they're totally out of your control. That's another whole topic, though.)

"This is a big problem with the current crop of MMORPG players, too; they seriously care about .5% differences in xp-gathering time efficiency between the classes, as if it's the point of the game to be the BESTEST EVAR friggin' archer/monk/whatever the hell. The point of the game is to have fun, and deriving your fun by some sort of pissing match vs. the power of the playerbase in general isn't even a nonzero transaction. It's negative sum game for everyone involved."

It's also the nature of the beast in MMOGs. Why? Because you're not alone. Let's use D2 as an example. In offline mode, you can hammer away at an end boss as much as you want--if you die, you restart, and hit him again. If it takes you all day, so what? You're alone. You can take whatever time you like, as many chances as you want, and as many deaths as it takes to get the job done.

But online, your ability to and efficiency in taking down that boss is critical, simply because you're not alone. If someone else wanders along and can do the job better than you can, why, YOU LOSE. You don't have the luxury of time. You don't have the luxury of restarting, strolling back, checking out the situation, whatever. If you want to play the game the way you want to play it, why, you have to make sure you CAN. And if someone's created a better template/model than you have, or has developed it better, they can and do directly impact your gameplay.

So. If you want to sit around town using D2 as a chat client, character development, choices, skills, and abilities don't matter. However, if you actually want to play the game, they do.

It's not about powerleveling, or making min/maxers, or making uber whatevers. It's about making a character in such a way that you can actually play the way you want.

And that's why skill nerfs and changes are such a huge deal. The time invested in a char to make it "just right" is completely negated when the company changes the skills you use... and that directly impacts your character's effectiveness, and thus your ability to do what you want.

Time invested is fine; players expect to invest a lot of time in an MMOG character. But time wasted? That's a whole different story.

"Time invested is fine; players expect to invest a lot of time in an MMOG character. But time wasted? That's a whole different story. "

I can kind of understand the gripes with the d2 1.08 patch. Its exaclty what you stated... theres a sense of wasted time when you play your character to what you expected. Minor nerfs are fine, but a major nerf like (25+ arrows in strafe limited to 10 arrows, or the mana leech nerf) does seem like a waste to me, after spending a month of playing Diablo 2 expecting to have a friggin mana leeching sub machine gun of an Archer! but anyway, i think its better that they upped the dificulty in Diablo 2, so really its one of those you can't have one without the other deals.

I think after a month or so, we'll really see how the expansion changes are taken by the "hardcore" players. at least in how they develop the characters and if its balanced or whatnut.

So whens the next Diablo? will it be another expansion? i think they'd be stupid NOT to make at least one more... this expansion looks to be a best seller no doubt.

etc

I think after every major patch that has a nerf in it, the affected class should be allowed to reassign a number of skill points. It might be a programming nightmare, though. I have no idea.

At least D2's quite a bit more benign than EQ. It takes months and months to get a high level character in EQ, so nerfs there are even more significant. In D2 you can get a high level character in a month. Or less. UO is pretty nerf-friendly for the same reason.