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[twillight]

I had access to Doom1 too, but that was a piece of garbage. It was segmented, and you couldn't carry your stuff to the next segment, so fuck that.





It was the 2nd successful FPS as far as I can tell, and the first which kicked in the genre. The first wave was Wolfenstein. Nowdays everything is FPS, and they are a piece of shit. On the sidenote, they are made using a 3rd game's engine in the core, Quake. Quake was a piece of shit, because a) you tended to die by 1 hit b) the enemy friggin jumped away from your shots, trolling you. Doom had a much better concept if you ask me. Unfortunately Doom seemed kinda limited what the engine could do, because Duke Nukem used that engine, and it sucked, because it was just a cardboard copy of Doom 2. The nudity wasn't much either, as we had kinda good still pictures around for the porn-industry. The swearing was just obnoxious.



Not to mention these games introduced a new thing to humankind: COMPUTER SICKNESS. You could now get sea-sick on dry land! wooo!
Quake had a worse issue in this field too.

[twillight]

I'd focus on builds that are not just possible, but feasible. Also, the builds should not be behind a paywall.


Amazon is the proverbial medical horse:
- spearzon is your typical broken build. Its skills don't work with the other skills (Jab/Fend's extra strikes get crossed if dodge/avoid/evade kicks in), and the damage is laughable.
- poison javelin is not feasible with its single element, which is either way broken on the engine-level. And its damage is pathetic.
- the bow ama is borken. Too low damage, the skills even lower it. the synergies are pathetic. Costs way too much mana. The synergies broke it even further, preventing multielement usage. Strafe is suicide because plants to to spot, without HP, and the enemies are fast to run on you. Using Magic Arrow is not entirely impossible, but darn lacking behind.
- lightning java has the problem again being single-element. It can be worked arund - if you have a very deep pocket and ready tospend $$$.
- there's also passivezon, but better not talk about that.
0 build, 1 behind paywall.



Assassin is of the extremes. Either broken massively, or too strong (with problems). Shows very well a serious design-flow in the game's difficulty design.

- martial arts assa is... Well, half the skills are broken, and is too problematic and sluggish.

- shadow skills are useful, but none constitute a build.
- fire traps are suxxxor
- the only feasible assassin skill is the Death Sentry trap, which is so strong it can kill Nihlatak offscreen, failing the quest! The problem is, it is single-element, and relies on corpses to be real effective - which makes the character almost broken against Hell Ancients. There (in solo gameplay) you need some heavy investments in Shadow Master or Warrior for meatshield. Fortunately a shop sells assa spec items - most classes don't have this feature, resulting in imbalance.
1 build.



Necromancer looks cool on the character choice, but...:
-skeletons are "fun", but don't try them online, because it chrashes other people's game.
- skeleton mages are scum of the earth, weakling scums.
- revive was a good skill until they changed the game. Since then, they suck.
- golems suck entirely. To make a feasible golem-centered character you'd need more skillpoints than a god. To add to the fun: a) clay golems won't ever have damage b) blood golem can kill you c) iron golem costs $$$ d) fire golem has worse damage than clay golem!

- curses are useful, but don't constitute a build
- Bone Armor is possible build, if you want a meleemancer. The problem with that is the extremly low HP, slow gameplay, and either punishingly slow gameplay, or cost of $$$.
- poison necro costs $$$
- before the synergie the Poison Dagger necro was possible, albeit curiotsity. Since then it equals to every other poison necro, just you're playing it wrong.
- Bone Spear/Spirit necro are possible.
1 build, 1 behind paywall.



paladin offers a wide variety, most of them will die by Real Life Luck for low HP.
- sacrifice + prayer + cleansing is a fun-build. Its far behind a regular build, but for single player it is ok. Also interesting to put online as utility for group. It is a melee build though, so will likely 1HKO by a strong monster.
- zeal + holy shock is a cheap, but effective melee build. Will likely 1HKO by a strong monster, but there are less threat with its incrised resistance (so glows andlightning enchanteds are not a threat).
- holy fire/freeze are behind a paywall (freeze not?), and are melee builds.
- spirit hammer + concentration was originaly a bug, but they started to call ita feature. It is a ranged build, so it works.
- in theory Vengeance can also be base for a build, but there's a reason why none uses that.
3-4 builds, 2 behind paywall.

barbarian is the face of False Advertising. Although the character choice suggests axes, its the worst weapon class for it.
- concentration is a general all-around solo build
- berserk is mostly only possible online, because the source of mana for it is the Insight runeword
- WarCry is dumb, and behind a paywall
- you last seen a Whirlwind baba before the expansion (too risky, cost of mana is insane, Act 4 is just suicide)

- frenzy is a theoretical build, it is so fast none can control it (that's why you don't see any online)
- throwing is a possible build, but heavily item-dependent, meaning it is online-only

- mostly used online to cast BO on the party,and that's it.

3-4 builds, 2 are online, 1 behind paywall

sorceress is probably the only build who benefitted from the synergie-system, as from almighty all-element went to specialised versions.
- forget any armor-skills,starting with Energy Shield, becaiuse of the ManaBurn Bug.
- meteor is used to farm actbosses, for general PvM Fireball is the choice. Previously you went for Fireball.

- from lightning Static Field is a 1-pont wonder, like teleport, the later being very unfair when it comes to farming. Also, previously you could invest into Thunderstorm, but since expension that's not feasible. If any electric attack spell is used, that's Charged Bolt, and that's single player only for all-clear runs.
- from cold you go for the almighty Frozen Orb,and that's it. It kills everything,and doesn't require synergies.
- both of the nova-spells were dead fish from the start.
- and there's ranged enchantress, but that's behind a paywall.

Dual-triple element builds, 1 behind paywall.



druid was a fun-build when it came out. Sincs the synergie-system it is not a viable class.

- forget the summoning tab, that sucks. The damage is crap, the cost is high, demand in skillpoint is too high, physical damage only, wolves/bear gets rected by cold damage enemies.
- the vines are entirely useless. The life-leech is only good you think you're good, but then you forget to rise your JP, get hit big time, and you die.
- in theory you could make a shockwave bear or something, but it'll be either sluggish, or is behind a paywall.
- theoreticaly you could do a FireClaw druid, but be honest: have you ever seen it in real life? Point proven.
- feral rage is possible, but sluggish
- fury is both behind a paywall (needs ribcracker), and plants you to a spot which is suicidal.
- the fire skills are crap
- hurricane was good before synergies. Since then it suxx.
- there's the tornado-druid, but that's very unreliable, so let's say it is behind a paywall.
2 behind paywall.

So there wasn't ever many builds for D2.

[twillight]

It was ugly as shit.






And half the puzzles were hamerd by Sierra's method of nonsense, but you could karate the stuff away, so none cared that much.
Sodespite the ugly look, the crappy control, the bogus puzzles, it still warned its name. If for nothing else, you could pass it w/o puzzle-solving, and the puzzles made sense at least when you retroengineered them.


It lacked bugs to be honest, and the controls proved not to be gamebreaking (unlike for AitD 3), and time proved 3D to not just be a waste of time from the developers, so duh, that's likely it got famous.

[twillight]

The first insalment sucked ass. Most of us had to settle for MK2 because we didn't have the hardware for 3.





By any standard back then, it was Outstanding. The wide variety of characters, the casual violence, all the moves, the visuals were all top-notch.
Unfortunately MK3 only worked on a very sepcific hardware.
And all original MK-games suffered in the 2-player department, because it turned out if one player pressed a button, the other player could not use the same attack on its part. Eg. you press low punch, the other player could not dolow punch, or any special move which required low punch within the combination.
And the AI was punishingly hard, no advancement from "I loose" (begginer) to "you die" (any other difficulty).


But at least it wasn't all-bad as Street Fighter 2. Which didn't have a Street Fighter 1 stricktly speaking.

[twillight]

3D, but not as guly as Alone in the Dark, clunky controls, but if you're not stuck with the asian version you had autoaim which helped immensly.





Face it, if there was a Golden Age for computer games, those were the late-nineties/early-2K.


This game didn't just was a good experience with all the mutants and zombies, and lore-documents, and puzzles-along-the-way (but you only needed the manual for the herb-drugs, maybe not even for that), but everyone knew we were ripping off the company with this sale.
The game came on 2 CDs, which was a good sign of actual content, but also:
- you didn't just got skin-choice of characters, but the whole game actualy got transformed according to that. I think there'd be more efficient way to code this, and this isn't in hugh demand to be honest, the skin-choice is already ok.
- there were a crapton of hidden lore-documents, and fan-service photos (nothing sexual) hidden around, which did worth looting everything
- there were hidden outfits and weapons during playthrough, and they were useful
- the game gave you a "cheat code" of infinite ammo. And it did not punish you for using it.
- there were 3 entire minigames as unlockable. One if you want a fixed path, one if you like randomly generated environment, and one for the hardcore (ToFu).

[twillight]

Then there was Fallout 2.





It's not the racist-nacionalist-fascist "kill everything that's not pureblood huiman" Fallout 3-4-76,but the Fallout 1-2.


It is neither the carppy Ultima-Oblivion-Elder Scroll bullshit, but an open world game, which actualy works.
Although letting you finish the game in 30 minutes is maybe overdoing it.
But at least there's no artificial difficulty-wall to prevent you going somewhere (there's SNEAK for all sake to circumgo hard enemies), and the game has an actual story, and isn't just a "let's fool around, the engine is working, duh" crap.
This fucking bullshit is the pinacle of failing being a game:





And Bethesda (and others) has this kind of nonsense for full price, not that garbage-bin-wannabe I just showed you.


Fallout 1 ye, did technicaly exist, but was so SMALL, and had sucha thin time-limit, and rly wasn't that different from F2, that I consider it a very sophisticated demo.


F2 on the other hand had everything. Mindless world-fooling, story-decisions, laying around with everyone, tiolets, more toilets, high-tech factions, aliens (no, I'm not speaking of the specialencounters, I'm talkin' 'bout the main game), animal protecion movement, human rights movement, slavery, fascism, terrorism, boxing, staring in a porn-movie, breaking down clans of the maffia, riding a car around, overdosing people, diggin up graves, digging up people burried alive in graves, and this guy:





Oh, ye, by the way, you, a Shake Spear Villager just repaired an atomic power plant. How more c00l you can do? Maybe serving a top secretdata-disc to a superintelligent mutated rat with the intention of conquering the world? Because you can.

[twillight]

Not a perfect game, I accept. Be honest, nothing can beat Fallout 2 in sum. But it can be beaten in certain aspect.
And by concepts, P:T wins. The Lady of Pain, the modrons, meeting the Letter O embodiment, traveling with a companion who has two portals to elemental planes open inside him and is around thousands of years since - it's just mindblowing.


The problem is, it is a very text-heavy game, and lacks sufficient action.


F2 had some bugs, P:T practicaly had none atleast. And F2's bugs were only theoretical. The main issue there was related to the car, where stupid people touched the car when it spawned in a different location they left it. I say they deserved what they got for that. Aside from that, there were some specialperks youshouldn't click on to see the description else the game crashed - not rly meaningful -, or if you friendly-fired Vic his AI broken down permanently (which could be annoying, as Vic was one of the best companions, but there were enough replacements, or you could just save&reload).

[twillight]

The first rogue-like game of major sucess, so early in case, the term wasn't even invented for years to come.





Actualy, this is the story of Blizzard, and the game we actualy talking about is Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction, meaning the basic game with the expansion, and all the patches.


The story started with the firstgame, which looked ass, and was a mediocre, ass-ugly, slow paced dungeon-crawler, which for obvious reasons didn't get much attention.





You couldn't run, everything mashed together, and it was a very slow, be cautious progress, one of the very last "defense is the bestoffense" style game. Ye, the new wave "the glass cannon is the best build" thing wasn't the original style.
The game had another problem: you either could not access to the higher difficulties, or you could not get all the quests.The multiplayer option was also badly coded, so your could transport your character between the two, hack your character very easily (no hex-code was peresent even to hide your stats), and was generaly mediocre,
The game was also heavily marketed for competitive gameplay, so despite the easy customisation of the characters, soon appeared "best build", and I mean exactly 1 or 2 builds, considering skills, stats and equipments, independent from starting class.


Even D2 didn't stirr much water, because initialy it sucked ass just like D1.
The game got released unplayable, so much it got a patch BEFORE RELEASE.
Then there was the issue of trading. The game was heavily marketed to exchange loot between players - but failed to allow that in single player mode, and evenworse, gave no storage-space to contain extra items! And given the amount of collectibles (gems, runes, quest items, jewels, loot, base items for runeword etc.) even the doubled stash-size is still not enough! Far from it!


The next problem was the level-gap between difficulties. The game works this way: the monsters have levels, you have levels, and based on the difference the monsters give certain amount of exp. If you have too many (or too few) levels, the monsters did not give you many exp.
this issue got somewhat cared of by the expansion given new act (Act 5), but that brought new issues with itself...


And there were the ever-incrising list of bugs, the online gameplay, the single player gameplay, the balance issues... So D2 was full of promise, but failed miserably in every way - and it starts to show in Blizzard ever-declining reputation. They don't even come up with new titles anymore to deceive the customers again and again...



Let's take a look on the elements of the game, and see how many fails!
- single player gameplay sucksm because the drop-rates are too low
- multiplayer gameplay sucks, because the drop-rates are still too low. SOME items getaccessible IF you WERE on ladder, but nowdays there aren't any people there anymore, so fuck you. this means the majority of items were behind a paywall. Or were dupes.
Add to this, Blizzard was heavily against "muling", aka. characters existing just to store extra itemsfor future plays, or simply to auction them not-at-the-moment. See where this leads?
- and there were the bots. Blizzard CLAIMED they do everything to get rid of them, but the majority were sold BY BLIZZARD. Spam-bots were the basic issue, filling the WHOLE screenwith their advertisings, leading many players' death. And to prevent squelching them, Blizzzard regularly made you "lost connection".
Example.

- and there was the hardcore gameplay. The prime issue was/is the player killers, because Blizzard was so dumb that if someone declared waragainst you you could not hurt them, but they could hurt you! Fuck yeah! There goes 5 months of legit work on a character.


Now look at gaming features:
- poison damage just worked strange, so you shouldn't rely it too much. It also ruined your character sheet's data. Many things did that.
- any skill which did per frame damage: the engine works counting per hit, so per frame skills resulted in negligable damage.
- fire damage: too many things are immun to it to rely on this element (and with the synergie-system you have to specialize!)
- cold damage: because it slows the target (negligable feature on hell difficulty) the amount of damage from this are many times negligable
- prevent monster heal: why this thing exists, none knows. The reason none knows is, any amount of poison damage does the same, and lasts longer.
- runes: far too infrequent anything above Lem, and the exponential requirement in runes and gems made the rune-upping system a joke.
- runewords: you couldn't know ANY of these w/o a walkthrough,most demand too high runes to be accessible, and the base items fall very infrequent
- set items: finding these are very hard, and cano nly be found on a level only higher then they are useful. You can't upp them either like uniques or rares.
- magical (blue) items: they are simply too weak for lategame.
- rare (yellow) items: there are too many possible attributes to ever find anything useful here. They can cover your resist-needs self-find, but that's it.
- crafted items: need to many stuff to make them work, and result in a very random item, because of the too big attribute-pool. Usualy in 20-50 tries you can end up something semi-useful for a single-player game, but imagine if you'd try that legit. Also, you need to know the recipe for them, which is impossible w/o the official guide.

- skulls: a sepcial type of gems, which are entirely useless. they provide too weak bonuses themselves, not used in any good recipe. One patch for a short period used them for "deadly crafted" recipes, but those were "too strong", aka. customers no longer bought hordes of duped items from Blizzard's spambot, so got removed.
- unique items got too strong and obvious to let any other type of items get intp focus.
- gold is both too frequent and too infrequent to have any use. It doesn't work as ingame currency because too easy to access, but can't use them at vendors either, because those prices are too high (gambling, or even buying stuff from the normal shop-window).
- stamina is an annoyance until lvl 10 maybe, then becomes a non-issue
- certain skills (eg. incrised stamina), or even entire character classes are entirely useless
- exceptional, and especialy elite items are way too infrequent to drop for their own good. Like 10-20%.
- hireling were a problem initialy because you couldn't even resurrect them. And their stats were too low to have any use anyway, so it seemed a blessing to be able to give them items and resurrect them. Ye, until the first corpse-eater in Act 4 ate it with its items permanently destroying it. Because of a bug. Though thatgot fixed, there's still the issue of the AI braking down after a while, neglecting the merc entirely (monsters are supposed to aim that instead of the player first).
- exp and character level: the game was designed to be able to overlevel the monsters in the hand of a weaker player. Then Blizzard said fuck you, we want more of your money, so if you want to be max. level you have to pay $$$, and skip all the playing the same time, welcome at the top of the leaderboard!
So now days you reach like lvl 45-50 on Normal (single player, p8, allclear), lvl 72-75 on nightmare, and lvl 75-80 on hell. And fuck you.
- guest monsters are buggedly strong. They simply don't work as intended. Especialy Nihlatak's snakes. Those rect you in the ass.
- stats: it is a dumb system. This should provide chance for customization, but big no. Mana: 0. Str/Dex: according to equipment, see a guide to learn what you must wear. Vitality: the rest.
- respec: the option was given only in 1.13d. enough said.
- quests: most of them are lies. They are not quests. They don't give you reward, story, sometimes there isn't even anyone to give you the "quest". Let's run through them:

[twillight]

Act 1:

Den of evil:
task: go to some dungeon and kill all monsters
reward: +1 skillpoint, 1 respec, better prices in the town

problem: 0

Sisters' Burial Grounds:
task: go to some place, kill miniboss
reward: free merc if you don't have one. Not even a dead merc. You can't get rid of a merc w/o buying a new one. So this got rected by the option of reviving mercs.
problem: acceptable, but obviously bugged
The Search for Cain:
task: go through some dungeon, get to special place, get special item, bring special item to special place 2, find NPC
reward: free identification for the rest of the game (every difficulty demands this quest), random rare ring

problem: the ring is RANDOM, and not relates to your level, need, or anything.
The Forgotten Tower:
task: go to special place, kill miniboss
reward: small amount of gold
problem: obviously, gold is ignored for obvious reasons, especialy in such small amount. The real reward comes from killing the boss (free semi-ok runes), but that's unrelated to the actual questing. Oh, and you can loose even this pathetic reward, if you keep pressing the "show items on the ground" button when the cloud from the Countess flies to the chest! But technicaly ye, we can call this a quest. Let's be generous this time.
Tools of the Trade:
task: go to dungeon, kill miniboss, get special item
reward: random rare item
problem: it is RANDOM item. That means 99.666 percent itwon't even worth gold! But be generous,and count this in too.
Sisters to the Slaughter:
task: go to dungeon, kill actboss
reward: unlock new act


number of quests in the act: 6 out of 6 (let's be generous. Otherwise 2 out of 6)

------

Act 2 - here start the real problems:
Radament's Lair:
task: go to dungeon, kill miniboss
reward: better prices in the town, +1 skill point
The Horadric Staff:
task: go to Dungeon A, get Special Item A, go to Dungeon B, get Special Item B, go to Dungeon C, get Special Item C, combine Special Item B and C in Special Item A. (special item A is preserved in all difficulties), bring Combined Item to Dungeon D

reward: you keep the Horadric Cube for crafting purposes, and as extra stash size, also obviously in Dungeon D is the Actboss, so unlocks new act
The Tainted Sun:
task: nothing
reward: nothing
problem: this "quest" is "solved" the same time as The Horadric Staff. Has absolutly zero consequence, unavoidable, includes no special items or lore, and although you just removed permanent night from the world, you'll be just sent into a casamate,so fuck that too.
The Arcane Sanctuary:
task: go to dungeon, get clue on how to continue
reward: none

problem: this is a horrendous cheat from the developer. First, you can't avoid this place at all. Second, the info is useless, because in a legit playthrough you'll need the exp, thus you'll visit all fake tombs. This just encourages leeching exp and rushing low level characters. There's also no reward whatsoever.
The Summoner:
task: none. You'd have to kill the bugger anyway.
reward: none
problem: this is the same "quest"as The Arcane Sanctuary pretending to be another quest. It is not. It is not even given by a questor, it just activates itself. You won't even know what's the Summoner until you find it. this is obviously not a quest.
The Seven Tombs:
task: nothing new
reward: nothing new
problem: basicaly this is the same quest as The Horadric Staff, only this only tells the end of that quest. Obviously a developer scam.


Quests in the act: 2 out of 6
--------------
Act 3 - things don't get better
The Golden Bird:
task: kill random unique monster, get special item, talk a lot in town
reward: +20 Hp
problem: you start the act without any quest, and the unique can sometimes be hidden in the fuck away
Blade of the Old Religion:
task: go to wherever, get special item
reward: free merc (if you don't have one, which is pretty unlikely), random rare ring
problem: the merc option obviously nolonger work, and the chance to get anything decent as the item is negligable. But I'll be generous again.
Khalim's Will:
task: go to places, get parts of equipment, cube them
reward: unlock new area
problem: i could use some actual reward here...
Lam Esen's Tome:
task go to place, get special item
reward: +5 stat point (equals 1 clvl in that regard)
The Blackened Temple:
task: nothing new
reward: absolutely nothing
The Guardian:
task: kill actboss
reward: unlock new act


Quests during the Act: 5 out of 6 (I'm VERY generous here, the actual numbers are 2 out of 6)

--------------
Act 4 - the developers obviously gave up
The Fallen Angel:
task: kill miniboss
reward: +2 skill point (equals 2 clvl in that regard)
problem: 0
The Hellforge:
task kill special boss, get to specialplace, use special item
reward: random rune, and high quality gems

problem: RANDOM rune. Only 1. And the highest possible rune is even very low rune. And you could piss on those gems at this point.
Terror's End:
task kill actboss
reward: unlock new act
problem: I rly could use some realreward for these act-boss-killings...


Quests during Act: 3out of 3 out of 6. I mean why don't we get 6 quests, even by name?
-------------
Act 5
Siege on Harrogath:
task: kill miniboss
reward: socketing item
problem: you can't tell how many sockets it'll give you, soyou can't use this to make a runeward base. Also, I'm getting tired of the "kill stuff" tasks.
Rescue on Mount Arreat:
task: resque 3*5 prisoner
reward: ral, ort and tal runes
problem: even on normal difficulty I could piss napalm on these runes by my ghostrider dick. You can easily fail this quest for no reason (have to restart the level and kill all boring stuff again to get the specified locations).
Prison of Ice:
task: rescue NPC
reward: better prices in town, +10resist all, random rare random class specific item
problem: again the random factors for the item. And gold is likely no lomger an issue at this point ever.
Betrayal of Harrogath:
task: kill miniboss
reward: rename item
problem: entirely trophy.purpose reward. But at this point i'mtoo let down to no grab for straws.
Rite of Passage:
task: kill 3 "mini"boss
reward: chunk of exp

problem: these buggers are simply said, too strong for their own good,especialy on Hell diff. And I could do with some REAL reward, thank you.
Eve of Destruction
task: kill actboss

reward: unlocknew difficulty, trophy title
problem: again,could do with some actual reward...



Quests during Act: 6 of 6 if I'm generous. 2 out of 6 if I'm not.



---------------------------------------


There's also the case of the Cow lvl, and Uber Tristram, but those suck hilariously, so fuck you.



Also, this piece of garbage tried to sell itself as "RPG" just for the stat-/skillpoint-system existing, and when that failed miserably they invented the "cRPG" title.
It was and is actualy a "rogue like" game, with:
- randomly generated areas
- randomly generated monsters from pool
- randomly generated items
- the fact you can't actualy get anywhere w/o the official wiki. When that wiki'll be gone, you won't be able to play this pile of crapany more. It is a very real possibility, happened with another rogue-like, Dungeons of Dredmore. One day the official wiki just been gone, and since then it's practial impossibility to play.

[twillight]

Actualy, I despised the series for whatever reason. But The Room (3rd game) got even my attention.
If you watch the video you cann otice how much the series was just a Resident Evil ripoff... Still, it managed to be its own thing for a while.
Unfortunately that part declined by later instalments, and they didn't find new audience with their first movie, for what none cared for the 2nd movie, which was a good movie actualy if you forget about the 1st movie, and according to the players, the games. So that didn't earn anything either.


These horror-survival-FPSs were actualy pretty widespread, and pretty close in quality as far as I'm concerned. The 1st Blair Witch Project game for example was pretty ok too, although far from being popular (likely because the movie was a cheap crap). But there were plenty of others too.






Resident Evil survived. The others not so much.