It's been a few years, Some questions.

Hi, glad to see this is still alive... I guess?

I played this a while back, can't quite remember when, or what version it was last time, it was either 2013, or 2012, they seemed to have added 5 skills per class since I played last.

The reason I quit at the time was I did not feel like the game was balanced, I think I was struggling with my paladin, while other classes were just mowing things down. And the argument I got was ""well if paladin has top gear he is balanced"" oh well, in that case

.

So I am wondering if the skills have had much work since then, and if the new skills are balanced, and how the game is doing these days.

Also, do a lot of people still play? back in 2013 or so it had a pretty decent player base, and you could just play like normal battle net, no LAN or tungle BS. You could pretty much always find people to play with, no matter what difficulty, or act you were in, maybe it would be kind of dead sometimes, but most of the time you could find at least 2 other players or so. It was surprisingly active for a mod 10 years after the fact.

so long story short, are the skills balanced, and how is the player base?

a looot changed from 2012. classes are probably more balanced than before, skills also (many skills have been changed to not be op or so they can't be used to cheese some uberbosses). ubers are probably a bit harder, and there's many new ubers and features. Laz stopped modding after 2012, and Marco took over and released the MXL: Ultimative versions.

the playerbase is still here, we have our own servers across the world thanks to some awesome people.

with paladin, for example, you can probably pwn most of the game with just simple Crafts, RWs or TUs.

change log (look at the ultimative patches, they're after/above MXL 2012):
http://docs.median-xl.com/MXLU_vXVc_Doc_v2.94/log.html

there's also an even newer realm-only patch that adds levels 121-125 and a bunch of powerful runewords/items, etc. for the benefit of the players that play multiplayer, as an incentive to draw players from SP to MP.

you can click on the "Documentation" link in the menu above the forum and browse a bit to see the ubers or other things.

Yes, every class had an entire skill tree added and other skills were otherwise rebalanced. If you last played in 2013 then a lot has changed. And I mean a lot

Many skills have been removed, added, changed, rebalanced etc.
The paladin has been completely rebalanced / reworked.
There are many new uberquests, and some of the old ones have been changed / reworked / rebalanced.
There are many new items in the form of sets, uniques, runes and runewords
And the list goes on.

The player base is still great, a lot of people play on the sin war.

Balancing stuff is always a work in progress, especially since with every new patch old bugs get squashed, things get rebalanced but also new stuff gets added. And obviously that new stuff may not be as polished or balanced or as bug free as the rest of the game. But Marco (the mod is no longer actively developed by BrotherLaz) is always trying to make things as balanced as possible.

So, I suggest you try the new version of the mod, because it's great. If you do, please check the documentation. f you have question, you can check out the short questions thread.

Also please note that to play on realm you need D2 version 1.13c (not 1.13d) and MXL:U version XVc (the one I linked). The patch on realm is called XVr, but that's a realm-only patch, so you don't have to worry about downloading it.

Thanks for the quick reply.
Yeah I played ultimative version, but it was before the 5 new skills for each class, so some where in there.

It occurred to me after looking at some skills that the other aspect I did not like was the fact that you kind of had to specialize, for example with paladin elemental type spells you needed appropriate gear for that, making you weaker in melee or some balogna, forcing certain builds, and making you have less customization over how you build your character. So is this still the case?

Also, what is with the sin war? Is there more than 1 server to choose from now? >_>

Yes, well... That's true of every game is it not? Obviously a caster is not going to fare too well in melee.
The paladin has access to holy and unholy melee trees, holy and unholy casting trees, a neutral tree and a dragon tree, which can be used to great effect in building an hybrid melee / caster.

Barbarian has a summoner / caster tree, a dual-wield tree, a throwing tree, a melee tree.
Amazon has spear / javelin / bow tree, blood magic tree, storm tree (which can be either melee or caster AFAIK) and a neutral tree.
Sorc has poison, cold, light and fire trees, plus a melee tree. The elemental trees can be used for casting but their passives / summons / buffs are central in the role of a melee sorc.

Same goes fo every other class... You get the idea. You have a lot of choice, but it's pretty obvious if you decide to build a caster paladin he's not going to be good in melee. If you change your mind about the build you chose, you can always respec at akara or by crafting a special potion, so you are pretty much able to screw around as much as you like.

edit: ninja'd by Food, lol we have the same response XD

well, it's pretty much like that in any game... so yes, it's still like that in mxlu.
why would you melee when your spells are waaay stronger if you specialized for them?
you can make a hybrid caster/melee build, but they're usually weaker than pure builds I think (except in a few cases).

what's nice about mxlu is that you can reset and change your skills and stats as many times as you want, so if you get bored of a caster build, you switch to a melee one, or a throw one, etc. you only need to get the gear for those builds, which in the start isn't that hard.

Right, hybrids are weaker, this is an outdated, and not very open minded concept. In an ideal ARPG you would simply build the character you want, none of this "you can't use these skills because you used those skills" nonsense.
But I am just nitpicking now I suppose, considering this is an old game/mod XD.

Well thanks for the replies, that covered most of what I want to know.

it's not nonsense. it's real life, it's how everything works. if you want to be very good at something, you have to actually adapt to that exact thing. if you don't, you might be decent at it, even if you're into something else, but you'll not be the best.

if anything worked, why have skills at all? it doesn't make sense that you can just mash buttons on the skill tab, choose random skills and expect to do similar to someone who knows what's important and chooses accordingly. less specifics, less choice = less difference, low skill cap, more boredom.

not all hybrids are weak, some classes have some good options to build hybrids.

also, if you build smart, you can play almost anything in mxl and do well, that's what's always been emphasized. just don't expect to be the best. HELL, even 2-h sword amazon works, and everyone jokes that that's the worst thing ever.

anyways. have fun.

Like I said, it is an outdated concept by people who cant think outside of the box.
These separations of skills that make a character a ''hybrid'' are arbitrary.
But are we talking about what the game IS? or game theory, and what a hack and slash game SHOULD be?
I don't want to derail my own thread XD, and I didn't come here to start a fight.

Ninja'd, but I'll still put my 2c forth.

I guess you're talking about the fact that if you put points into an holy skill you then can't put points into unholy ones, and similar examples of that mechanic in other classes. That's made to balance things out and because it wouldn't make much sense to have a paladin be both a warrior of the light and a warrior of shadow. Besides, even if things could be balanced removing that mechanic, it would make it much more difficult to do.

And I don't really know what you're talking about saying it's an outdated concept, it's just how things work. And I don't really know of any game that lets you / your char be everything and to be able to do anything, except maybe FFX if you're serious about completing the game 100%.

And even then, it is balanced. To slay der richter the developers take for granted the fact that you grinded like a madman to complete the spherography and collect whatever items it is you need (zanmato notwithstanding).

So yeah, every other game --- RPG, ARPG, board game, strategy game, whatever --- is made up of explicit or implicit limits to balance things.

In real life, too, this happens. You can build a dragster, but you can bet your ass it's not gonna be "green" or consume small amounts of fuel.

By the way, I don't think we're fighting. We are debating and expressing our opinions (in my opinion, at least).

Edit: I think you take hybrid to be a derogatory term. To me, it just means that a character is not specialized in one of the "disciplines" the game supports (melee, caster, thrower, ranged, summoner, reanimator, maybe others) but instead forgoes mastering one to be good at two or more. This doesn't make them intrinsically weaker, it's just that for the very nature of things a char that is not as specialized in melee as another one will be less proficient at it. Same goes for the caster part. But a hybrid char will be able to, at least to a degree, do both things.

It's like the specialized vs jack of all trades thing in D&D. If you have 5+ players a jack of all trades won't be very useful because you'll have the melee hitter / tank, the caster, the healer, the sneaky guy etc. But if you separate your group almost everyone (except maybe mages and rogues because they're op) will have difficulties, while the jack of all trades may be able to survive thanks to that bit of skill with the bow, that little telekinesis trick he has under his sleeve, that sneaky nature of his etc.

Compromises, life is made of those.