Median XL 1.13-1.14 VS Sigma... Is it really better?

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obsideo666
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I was just wondering if some of the other long time Median players here are thoroughly unimpressed with Sigma. Here's just a few of my observations and concerns regarding Sigma.
Collecting Gold was much easier and more productive in past releases.

Monster pack sizes were HUUUGE. Now you can adventure all over the place and not even encounter ANY monsters in certain areas.

How will you be able to escape fast bosses like Kabraxis if you can only sprint for a second or 2? I remember that fight being pretty intense with a LOT of evasion needed.

Sigma could not of made it any easier to get your sunstone and class charm!! WOW too easy guys. Waaaay too easy. Part of the reason I have enjoyed Median for so many years is because of the ridiculous challenges and fights. Just because you have a influx of new players doens't mean you should completely dumb down the beginning of collecting these charms.

So yeah, the new interface. Cool i guess. Was it absolutely necessary? NO.

I know the devs worked REALLY hard on this release. I am just completely unsure why they decided to take a awesome version (1.13) and make a bunch of unnecessary changes. What are your thoughts? Are you guys enjoying it?
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Primarch
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obsideo666 wrote:I was just wondering if some of the other long time Median players here are thoroughly unimpressed with Sigma. Here's just a few of my observations and concerns regarding Sigma.
Collecting Gold was much easier and more productive in past releases.

Monster pack sizes were HUUUGE. Now you can adventure all over the place and not even encounter ANY monsters in certain areas.

How will you be able to escape fast bosses like Kabraxis if you can only sprint for a second or 2? I remember that fight being pretty intense with a LOT of evasion needed.

Sigma could not of made it any easier to get your sunstone and class charm!! WOW too easy guys. Waaaay too easy. Part of the reason I have enjoyed Median for so many years is because of the ridiculous challenges and fights. Just because you have a influx of new players doens't mean you should completely dumb down the beginning of collecting these charms.

So yeah, the new interface. Cool i guess. Was it absolutely necessary? NO.

I know the devs worked REALLY hard on this release. I am just completely unsure why they decided to take a awesome version (1.13) and make a bunch of unnecessary changes. What are your thoughts? Are you guys enjoying it?


You make a few valid points (i.e. the sprint and the removal of some of the level challenges for sure.) At first, I wasn’t that impressed during the leveling process. Just seemed like more of the same with a bunch of minor changes that weren’t necessarily all that welcome.

The game really starts to shine towards endgame. The itemization is 1,000,000% better in SIGMA. The new weapon skill modifiers/rune-activated modifiers are creative and unique. If they keep adding new items to the game each patch that fit this description, people are going to be able to create entirely new builds off of them (like in POE) and that would be a welcome addition, increasing the replay value tenfold.

Also, configuring glide with full-screen borderless window was a complete game changer. At first, sigma seemed washed out and dated but a few tweaks fixed that entirely.

One other thing to note: This is literally 1.0. This is the baseline. They completely gutted D2 and redesigned the core so that they can make alterations we previously didn’t know were possible. We can expect huge things in the future and this is just the start.

Have faith man. Sigma isn’t as polished as it could be but this is a huge milestone.
Manu300000
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Sigma is a realy nice mod, respect to the devs no doubt - but

There are 2 annoying things: the endless level grinding " you want to do duncraig? - nope - you need to grind to lvl 120 first ".
I keep finding interessting Sacred uniques but i wont create a new char cause im sick of grinding these levels. Median was so much better in this point. (at Trying out new charackters + items )
Aaaaand the rifts.
Running through torajan jungles to get to the legacy of blood quest - if you die? Np, just create a new game and start running again. :roll:

I hit lvl 118 today. I got all charms that i can get. What now? Right, ep grinding.
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Bardamu
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obsideo666 wrote:Collecting Gold was much easier and more productive in past releases.

Are you serious? All you have to do to collect gold is slain monsters. How can you make it any easier than that?
KratosTheAxeman
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I believe he was referring to how items are now basically worthless in terms of monetary value. When in 2017, you could sell most Rare Sacreds for 25k+ easily.
vulpine
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Primarch wrote:Also, configuring glide with full-screen borderless window was a complete game changer.


Were you able to get 16:9 without stretching? I've got pseudo full-screen vertically scaled 768p with black bars on the sides. I'd love to lose the bars without horizontal stretching.
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Im_a_ninja
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dead mechanisc, level grinding, quest lock , getting throw out of my game all the time, no CB against bosses '(seriously???) cb is useless now , no double mo bonus for crafts (seriously???) crafts are useless now .. is just some of the anoying sigma features... so many years of median xl balancing down the drain...

oh yearh and the summon barb buff... f.... dat
Edited by Im_a_ninja 5 years.
blankname
Prowler
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The QoL changes in Sigma are huge: buff bar, ctrl-click items, separate cooldowns per skill. The useless merc bug seems to have been fixed as well.

Removing the one shots is really nice as well. No more straining my eyes in act 5 to look for those insane fireballs.
obsideo666
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Bardamu wrote:
obsideo666 wrote:Collecting Gold was much easier and more productive in past releases.

Are you serious? All you have to do to collect gold is slain monsters. How can you make it any easier than that?

Selling a random sacred item for 35000 gold is pretty hard to beat.
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HechtHeftig
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Great stuff:
-Fast cubing
-new items (though some Tiered uniques still make me wonder what their raison d´être is)
-auto wp pickup
-auto ID stuff. Saves lots of time
-Immunity removal. Though I still use 2 different types of damage
-Uber reworks. So far I really like the changes to them.

Stuff I haven't decided yet whether it's good or bad:
-level locked areas (On one hand I feel it's nice to be given a guideline. On the other hand I wonder if it's really necessary and getting level is partly really annoying. I'm level 114 atm and Torajan Jungles don't give any exp at all. Cow level is much better for leveling til 115)

Bad stuff:
-sprint mechanic (It's not rewarding, it's punishing in every single case)
-5 second timer upon death starting only after you press esc. It should be vice versa that the countdown starts and then you can press esc to get back to town.
-the whole gold rework. It makes honorifics even worse then they were last patch.
-the part where you have to enter the gold value you want to stash, instead of just clicking once and press enter like it used to be
-Crafting is dead. Seriously, the only reason to shrine craft items is to reroll rares now. So crafting takes a lot more time now in order to get a decent item that can somewhat compete with the SU's
-Rerolling is dead. Or at least it's very tedious and expensive. If you want to reroll a magic item, you have to use 1 green elixier and then 1 blue. Total Cost: Around 13 k gold for a MAGIC ITEM. With how few gold you have nowadays, it's really annoying and doesn't guarantee a good, fast start and instead limits you a lot. Which leads me to my next point:
-Rares and magic items are nearly useless now. Unless you're really damn lucky, you can leave the items on the ground, else it's just pickup and instant inventory clearing again.
So in total: Honorific, rare, crafted and magic items are nearly useless now. Focus on Sets, RW's and SU's. Custom itemization is now dependant on luck again.

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Edited by HechtHeftig 5 years.