this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2025
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Diablo creator David Brevik doesn't vibe with today's rapid ARPGs - "You've cheapened the entire experience" (www.videogamer.com)
submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Meh Soldak Studios has utterly schooled this fool at bringing interesting depth and richness to ARPGs without betraying or losing focus of the core gameplay loop and I doubt he has ever even heard of Soldak or any of their games

Din's Legacy

https://store.steampowered.com/app/911550/Dins_Legacy/?curator_clanid=33045705

Zombasite

https://store.steampowered.com/app/408960/Zombasite/?curator_clanid=33045705

Drox Operative 2

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1305310/Drox_Operative_2/?curator_clanid=33045705

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The original Diablo I remember being more thoughtful and slower paced. I liked it. Diablo3 turned into just a brainless light show without much tactics. Less rewarding.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm two evenings into a D1 (DevilutionX) single player story run though. Can confirm. Definitely much slower and more deliberate, and not just because they hadn't invented running yet. Nothing respawns, the world is fixed from the start, so everything is a limited resource. Do I really need to buy this sword now or should I try to hold out for something to drop? Much more strategic gameplay... Slow forward exploration, hiding behind doors and corners letting monsters come to you one by one, stuff like that.

In the later games I'd just whirlwind through everything (spin2win, baby!) and hope for the best. If I need more gold or whatever I can always just save and exit and come back in and run through the area one more time. Definitely not doing that here. Every choice matters, so slow down and make it count.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I agree with most of it, but most players generally would just save and respawn a new map in D1 to get more resources?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago

Shit, you're right, I forgot all about that, it'd been so long since I've played it. Starting a new game with an existing character keeps your stats/inventory but resets the rest of the world.

I guess I'll go ahead and buy that sword now.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Brevik explains that the hordes of enemies take away the personal nature of the ARPG journey. While the enemy count of the original Diablo games were high for their time, the modern takes on the genre have taken the wrong lesson from those originals.

I have to say that that's a bit of a turn-off for me in roguelikes, too. Like, mowing through hordes of "explosive breeders" -- a property that Moria and some child roguelikes, like Angband, had on some enemies -- is mind-numbing.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I was thinking that roguelikes are kind of the antithesis to what he proposes, as you've got rapid character progression (paired with rapidly rising difficulty) and you certainly don't want to get attached to your character. Didn't know there was roguelikes with cannon fodder, though. 🙃

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

It varies within the genre. Some games try hard to take steps to minimize the ability to sit around and grind, such as by a food clock or lack of respawns. Sil, which is a *band game that tries to be closer to the original style has an XP system that grants XP for seeing an enemy the first time, and the same for killing it, and then 1/n times that XP the nth time you see that same kind of enemy thereafter. Sixth orc you see is worth 1/6 the XP, so it's not worth farming an area hard, and still rewards exploring a lot. It also eventually just forces you deeper as the desire for a silmaril becomes more irresistible as you become stronger. Seeing 6 orcs and killing 2 is worth 3.95x an orc's stated XP, seeing 30 and killing them all gets up to almost 8x the stated XP.

Others like most Angband variants or Tales of Maj'eyal made the decision to just let the player grind. Many of the games in that style have more open-ended progression and aren't necessarily trying to force the player into constantly dangerous situations. The very popular Caves of Qud would fit this category.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

Very interesting, thanks. I kind of got stuck on Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, which used to have a food clock until a few versions ago, now it's just no respawns. They also scale XP amounts up for higher levels, so when there are more low-level enemies around than needed, they won't give you a ton of extra XP.

I've played around with Angband and ToME a few years ago, and I tried to like Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead multiple times, but yeah, I feel like that's probably the reason then why they never clicked for me quite like DCSS. I am absolutely the worst for optimizing the fun out of games, if given the opportunity.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

David "don't make Diablo real-time" Brevik?

I mean, I agree with him on Diablo 3 and 4. But perhaps he's not the best authority.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 week ago (2 children)

What are you talking about? He was opposed making Diablo real-time, but he personally implemented real-time combat and tried it out, and then changed his mind. It's not fair to say "perhaps he's not the best authority" when is the one who actually made the change from it being fantasy X-COM to a real-time ARPG, and did it using the platinum standard of the fair shake.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

Way better authority than you hands down