EDIT: Not sure if you can even see this version of the post, since apparently the forum isn't bothering to make my edits visible to anyone else (and now it also seems to be interpreting edits as making new posts...)
Hammeroj said:
I am going to reply to your points, but I don't know why people think "Diablo 2 did this too!" is some sort of a pass for Diablo 3's fuck-ups
Because the fuck-ups in question were apparently ok when Diablo II did them, if people had been going "Diablo II's story sucks, the sequel should improve it!" I would agree with you. This is more "Diablo II's story sucks? Fine. Diablo III's story sucks? EVIL"
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Hammeroj said:
The reason that random guy followed the Wanderer is... Well, it's funny, he actually does say he does not know why he followed him. But the fact that he was the only one left alive in the tavern coupled with the fact that he kept seeing dreams of this wanderer might have had something to do with it. Not a plot-hole.
The reason the guy regularly loses control and summons demons is because... His soul is battling with the ruler of hell? Things like these aren't exactly hard to figure out. See what I mean when I say oversimplifying doesn't serve as criticism?
Now this is where my knowledge gets fuzzy, because the last time I checked the Diablo 2 wiki was about 4 years ago. Wasn't this whole soulstone business basically a ruse by the Prime Evils, given that one of the angels betrayed the others and told the Prime Evils how to corrupt the soulstones, and the Exile or whatever the "civil" war of demons was named was simply a part of it?
Expanding on the lore is not a plot hole. Hell, a MacGuffin is not even necessarily bad writing. It's just a plot device, and it can be used in ways good and bad. D2 implicitly sets it up by having a cliffhanger ending, and it doesn't come as a conflict to anything that was previously set up, so I fail, really, to see how it's a sign of bad writing.
a) Exactly, he doesn't know, because he has the Plot-induced stupidity, because he has to follow the Wanderer for the plot to happen, because without said Plot-induced stupidity he'd realize he should just be grateful he's still alive and choose not to follow the man who'd slaughtered about 30 people, summoned a horde of demons and burned down a tavern not 30 seconds ago.
b) I know who the Dark Wanderer is, but how does 'Lose control of Soul for a few seconds' apparently equaling 'Instant Demon Legion whom only last until Wanderer regains control' make any sense? That never happened with anyone else Diablo possessed.
c) To put it as basically as possible: The Lesser Evils betrayed the Prime Evils and exiled them to Sanctuary to try and distract the Angels so they could invade Heaven more easily, and when the Angels formed the Horadrim and gave them the Soulstones (and therefor looked like they might actually succeed in fending them off) the Lesser Evils corrupted Izual and influenced him to tell the Prime Evils how to corrupt the Soulstones so they'd be a distraction for longer. You'd think after spending years weakened and forced to wander and hide just to survive thanks to said betrayal the Prime Evils (one of whom is the literal manifestation of Hatred itself) would be at least a little bit pissed at and/or unwilling to work alongside those responsible.
d) The Worldstone was basically LoD's Black Soulstone, it came out of nowhere from dubious origins ('Inarius and Lilith brought this 10-story crystal to Sanctuary after somehow smuggling it out of a fortress that changes ownership almost constantly' and 'made by some Rogue Horadrim we've never heard of up until now' respectively), conflicted with several previous bits of lore (Now some sources say Sanctuary was made by the Worldstone, others say Sanctuary was made by Trag'Oul or Anu) and existed only to grant one side an arbitrary instant-win card (Baal corrupts the Worldstone? Doomed Forever! vs. We get every Demon Soul in the Black Soulstone? Win Forever!)
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Hammeroj said:
Now here's the kicker. Even if I granted you all these points and said "Yes! The writing in D2 was god-awful!", the game would still be far more enjoyable on that level than D3 because of the fact that the story isn't being shoved down the player's throat at every turn.
How so? In Diablo II story was given through mostly-skipped conversations and the occasional cutscene, in Diablo III it's given through mostly-skipped conversations, mostly ignored random dialogue and slightly more frequent cutscenes.
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Hammeroj said:
I wasn't talking about the vendors, although the vendors in D3 are far more useless than in D2, because in D2 you could buy immensely powerful caster weapons and actually gamble for good items.
I was talking about the crafting, which simply sucks balls. As a ballpark estimation, the Blacksmith artisan is about ten times less efficient (wouldn't be surprised if it's more) than buying something off the AH, not to mention nothing but frustrating given the minuscule chances of actually getting something good out of it, a problem which only gets worse as the game goes on because things require more and more materials.
And the gems are a complete failure. Seriously, I won't even elaborate.
Of course player-sold items have better value, they have to or otherwise nobody would buy them. The vendors now sell the odd bit of gear that a certain class might find useful (as opposed to the odd bit of gear that a certain caster class would find useful.) The gems were just slightly less varied (though more useful because they had better bonuses) versions of the Diablo II ones.
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Hammeroj said:
This, by the way, is the definition of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. What? The character building in D2 boiled down to several viable builds? Remove any and all character building. Remove instead of fix is a terrible design philosophy.
Unless the design in question is inherently flawed, in which case scrapping the whole thing is what you pretty much need to do if you want to create something that isn't.
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Hammeroj said:
No, that wouldn't have been the best thing to do. The best thing to do would've been to continue the story, except without any of the stupid bullshit.
But there was no story to continue. Where LoD left off 5 of the 7 Lords of Hell were dead and the surviving 2 were locked in a civil war with one another while Heaven had taken basically no losses whatsoever, any continuation of that story would basically have consisted of "And then Heaven and the Heroes both curb-stomped the last 2 Lords of Hell by virtue of both being much stronger and of having much greater numbers by this point. The End"
