Suggestions for upcoming patch

'member when games used to just drop you into the world and you just had to figure shit out for yourself--no tutorials, no documentation, no hand-holding--just a muffled voice saying "good luck out there, kid" before a size 12 boot kicked you square in the ass out of a plane flying at 35,000 ft.?

I agree with very few points here, but I mean no disrespect by it. I'm just stating perspective that may help realize how non problematic that these "problems" are.

As I like to help any newcomer I experienced how big these issues really are. As a more experienced player you are, and most forum users are more like experienced and veterans, they seem to underestimate the effect of the very beginning of the game.

The very first minutes count towards YES or NO for Median.

Why would it hurt to improve somethng that would lead to people enjoy Median right from the beginning of their Median-Career?

Hope you'll understand my point.

Well, for me, when I first used frostwave Totem on Necro, and watched it wreck shit and reanimate the one servant dudes, who then blasted forward in all directions, annihilating every single enemy in Blood Moor, and watching my experience bar soaring, I would have learned quantum physics to keep playing that build.

For me, there's a difference between quality of life and bad design. And the truest boons to the success of MXL isn't to the people who have played it for a brief amusement and quit, but the people who stay and become part of the community.

Tbh, Im among person who want median to be more casualized at early games.
But I also aware that d2 engine have alot of limitation, thus a lot of reason why tedious stuff are still in the game since 2007.

Last time there was character orb to help new player, but now it got removed.
There are still a tons of gear that help newbie, but again.... it required them to read specific guide.
But sadly most of guide are focused on late game.

I just hope sigma will have more hand holding, so we can have more people / player on realm and SP.
Not every new player is d2 veteran player, especially new generation that expected game at least have some tutorial.
That was among the reason why I wrote "MedianXL for dummies" in the past, to give that knowledge to new player (I admitted it was kinda too complex as well back then)

*My early median (median 2008) experience was fun because I kinda like to discover new stuff. I think there was couple of huge difficulty spike in hatred that it became knowledge check. Lately, I only have joy in discovering new patch stuff, and stop when it reached grinding part.

Point is, I see it the very same way as you both. If there is no effort, or no difficulty, there's also no learning curve. So you need difficulty. But what we don't need is unnecessary information, unnecessary items, unnecessary level- & game-progression, and so on. We need a simple system, which leads do infinte possibilites, but is still simple to comprehend.

But my point is to let hatred be a pool for learning, and then let nightmare be "thougher" to experience, and then, after completing Hell, you start to learn how ubers work. Let Ubers be Ubers - no need for LC ubers. Ubers belong to End and Mid-game.

The steep learnng curve is what I love about Median so much. Just not right at the beginning smashing into your face with 10000 Mystic orbs. Confusing over confusion. Just saying: Keep it simple. Like Starcraft says it "Easy to learn - hard to master"

Hopefully Marco understands my points

Here what I can recalled that cause difficulty spike in hatred

1. Tons of elites - It kinda hard to tone down the damage in hatred since it was intended for player to gear up their resist for specific act. One of quick solutions Laz wanted to do in past was to give player innate resist at hatred (between 15% to 40%) then remove it drastically to current destruction value.

2. Density - MedianXL have been designed with tons of different monster to give unique encounter experience. However, since the time veteran abuse some of the map (act 2 sewer) that lead to Laz slightly buffed the area with more random Elite and dangerous encounter. There are probably couple other area as well, but mainly because elite seem to populate 50% of each areas that made it is difficult.

3. Difficult side quest area - Quest in old d2 still give decent rewards for player in MedianXL. Thus, it is more sense to make it much more difficult since it is rewarding in end game. However, assuming new player know how to do the quest, they will face with difficulty because of the reason 1 and 2 above.

4. Boss encounter - I forgot if Median 2008 back then have difficult boss or not, but I definitely remember struggle against act boss because lack of knowledge on improving your gears. I think median ultimative did increased difficulty some of the quest miniboss, I remembered died to countess / blood raven death proc.

Challenges is still fun side quest for player to tackle, it reward player that read documentation. There arent many way to help newbie in game because of the engine limitation (hopefully sigma fixed this). Mainly challenges to give veteran something to do at low level. Removing of them will cause hatred and terror is just a long corridor for player to go through before reaching juicy endgame stuff.

Give barb a caster tree. No oskill or rw crap he needs a tree.

Ama or sin for example have two caster trees barb none? Its discrimination on his bests, fix it pls

kiki22vu wrote:Give barb a caster tree. No oskill or rw crap he needs a tree.

Ama or sin for example have two caster trees barb none? Its discrimination on his bests, fix it pls

Yes! ES did it right and had this Thor feeling on barbs.

Summons fixed, Runemaster removed and a new caster tree. Maybe then I can finally enjoy playing a barb.

I read Tybxx7 suggestions and agree with the general idea of introducing concepts gradually, with less overload for new players, even though I mostly disagree with his / her / its specific suggestions. One of those suggestions though made me realize what I think would imho greatly improve the playing experience: an in-game encyclopaedia system, not unlike civilopedia (from the civilization games).

This would give players access to the official docs (formatted in an encyclopaedia-like way obviously) from within the game. This would also enable cool things like opening the specific sigmapedia page of an item (reagent, unique, etc) directly from the item itself (don't know how exactly, right click is already used for some items) or even add an icon in a corner when the player picks up an item worth knowing more about (reagent, shrine, boss charm / trophy etc) that when clicked opens the relevant page.

Well, maybe such a system doesn't lend itself to the fast-paced nature of median, and it surely would not be easy to implement with all the custom GUI elements and interactions and stuff, but never the less maybe something good can still come out of this suggestion.

Make goodberry a passive skill. Keeping up a supply of goodberries takes no skill, it is just tedious. Also sometimes I fuck up my rare items and turn them into berries.