vanilla D2 still better than MXL in some areas?

[Cheno]

its just 1 opinion, i wanted to know what others think.
i must not be the only guy who feels mxl could improve here and there?

Cause you didn't bring any thought-out arguments and practically based the entire post on your own vague opinions.
I have my problems with the mod too but Median wouldn't be Median if your only reasoning is to say "but vanilla did x".
Making something like Median is hard and as it has been proven time and time again, most people who give feedback don't know what actually works, from a gameplay perspective.

[MagnuS]

I agree with you about PVP system. Dev team should add it so I can watch a game with full of retard trinity paladin killing each others.

We need it now! Also nerf bowzon :kappa:

[huangyunshy]

I think MXL is very interesting, especially for all kinds of boss. It will be very interesting to challenge them. At the same time, there are many bosses so far. I haven't successfully challenged them. This is very attractive to me. Moreover, even ordinary mobs can kill me at once, which makes me excited all the time.

[ParticuLarry]

Let me phrase it like this: Median XL surely has its issues. But none of the ones you mentioned are on my list.

Most skilltrees are very well thought-out aside from a few, like spearzon with its clunky buff mechanic or batstrike as a skill. But that doesn't change that the overall feel is pretty good compared to all other hack'n'slay titles there are.

The game pace isn't that bad either. The only thing that actually can't keep up is poison imho, since you can't stack it on bosses, which leads to awefully long killing times (not counting the new throwbarb skill and arachnomancy since they are designed to be boss killer poison skills) and a rather unsafe killing speed in general, since you have to wait for the damage to kick in. That also leads to ridiculous high numbers on poison skills. I'd rather have the max duration of any poison skill be around 0,5 seconds so you actually need to hit again and again, making it more similar to other spells, which allows the damage per second to be higher than it currently is while you need to wait less for poison to run out. But maybe that wouldn't work and take away the very feeling of poison as something unique, which is why I didn't suggest it yet. But from what I saw, the team is working on reducing the duration of poison skills already, so I'm not complaining.

The runes - It's just a quality of life part for single players and a little player base. It's fine.

Without those powerful charms you would have a clunkier progression. Though I think it already is clunky since you have to face duncraig so early. I almost always have troubles with that level, and to be honest, I really hate it, even if I don't die in this place even once. But aside from that, I think that charms being powerful/meaningful adds to the experience of progression, which is as good as it should be.

For the rest I don't care since those are not options in single player.

[Wasp]

ITT one lost dude that wished he played vanilla, and complain about a total conversion mod in a total conversion mod forum.
Just play vanilla Einstein

[RequiemLux]

i'm curious of your opinions. What you miss from vanilla D2 that MXL doesn't have?

Nothing in particular comes to mind. Maybe Blizzard North.

some class trees and skills are better in vanilla, they were more polished, and they fit the characters more, felt better to use.
Like in MXL, bow amazon's main skill is wyrmshot, where the char shoots minidragons out of a bow which than autoshoots fire arrows(wtf?). It feels too much like a 'mod', in vanilla d2 the skills are more "realistic" in the game's world. I dont understand why some cool vanilla skills were dumped while they had better vfx and felt better to use.

Let's agree first that anyone has personal tastes. That said, classic LoD and MXL are very different not only on a superficial level; many vanilla skills would simply be out of place in Median and vice versa, gameplay-wise different calibrations might just not be enough to make a classic skill relevant while trying to maintain its core concept/execution. Take also in consideration that many of the playable characters in MXL have a lore of their own that often deviates from the classic one, and the skills reflects this, the wyrms from Wyrmshot for example symbolize Hefaetrus and are thus related to the Askari pantheon.

D2's slower pace felt better somewhy. MXL endgame is sped up like POE where you run around in rocketspeed nuking everything. Now at endgame you kill 3000 mobs in fautzen over and over, while in vanilla, an MF run in ancient tunnels you killed only like 300, and you actually saw what monster you're hitting.

Believe it or not, since Sigma, MXL has an overall slower pace than most of the versions that came before. Keep also in mind that the content of the mod is balanced around that and, as said above, this project offers a very different experience compared to vanilla. It's an established point of the mod.

Vanilla rune system was better : Even lower runes like Lem,pul,um runes worth a lot because they were rare and needed, so even newbies could find them and slowly gather a little wealth. To find 1 high rune would need as much effort as like finding 6x Xis here. This created a cool economy. In MXL rune price system is wrong. Common runes are too frequent drop they have 0 value, while worthy runes are pain in an ass to farm. Why can't they be random world drop?

In my opinion it wasn't better at all. MXL has also a lot of additional runes and runewords to experiment with, so I'm not sure what you are reffering to when you say that "they have 0 value"... gameplay-wise surely is not the case. The "worthy" runes are restricted to specific areas, they can be targeted, if they happened to be a world drop it would turn into so much more of a pain to farm.

charms can be fun (once) but its veryvery bad that they are a must to have. If they had way less impact on char's overall strength, ppl would still farm them, but they won't feel like its always a must to do chore thing. These strong charms give big advantage to older players at ladder start, because they know how to easily get them, and they are instantly multiple times powerful than newer players who can't even put their feet inside good farm areas(fautzen or bremmtown) without charms. So these 30x medianxl charms shouldn't really have more effect than annihilus+hellfire torch combined.
Also charms are only good for trading at first weeks of ladder, but after that they don't have value. It also sucks that "cycles" only drop in triune, and also that they are mostly crap and there's no big variety in them. cycles should be world drop from lvl1 like diablo2's random charms

I'm not sure I get what you're saying here. Ofc charms have a tangible impact on the charcaters' power, why shouldn't they? the alternative would be to transfer those bonuses to random equip drops or runewords upsetting an established balance while obtaining nothing else in return: a big chunk of the endgame character's growth would simply be shifted to non-targetable drops that restrict even more your equip choices. The charm/trophy system is an important and needed part of the structure that creates the frame of balance that allows the player experience to break free from the vanilla limits extending so much beyond the storyline.
To your second point, I see no issue whatsoever in the fact that players can build a background of knowledge that allows them to compete more efficently compared to a newbie. This is not a gambling game, knowledge helps a lot, and, if you want to skip part of the grind and try/error process, there are several sources of information at your disposal: the forum, discord, the documentation and even a fan-made wiki.
Addressing your last point, charm still sell much deeper in the season and it's only logical that things lose value over time. Cycles in Median are not like the cycles in vanilla and would make no sense for them to be a world drop.

tg system is strange. at ladder reset there are ppl with 99999 tg which they collected from previous seasons. it would be nice if at reset, ppl could only use like 20 tg from their previous wealth. Their previous wealth would still show up as an achievement, like how much tg they collected in past seasons next to their "active" tg amount.

There's nothing strange in the system. Is not a p2w and there isn't a dev shop that affects the ladder climb. It incentivize players to play the game, setting also their sight to future content by building their fortune and knowing that it could potentially allow them to experiment and test more in the upcoming ladder, with the enjoiment that it brings. Having a backed up deposit is extremely useful especially for those that cannot play intensively, "one man's trash is another man's treasure". It's like a little parallel game that sinergize nicely with all the free content provided without trivializing any of it and, at the same time, allows the mod development and multiplayer experience to stay afloat over oblivion.

MXL has 0 ingame trading, while it is fun. MXL has 0 pvp, while it is fun.

PvP will eventually make its appearance in the future, at least that's the plan. For what concerns ingame trading, nothing prevents you from doing it, I've seen plenty of people trading items between eachother.

[Z0D42]

pvp is hard to balance in these mods, if you know path of diablo its the same issue there.
no one does pvp in pod even tho that mod is much much more close to vanilla than mxl.
one reason why people pvp in vanilla is because the pve is so boring that the only real endgame there is pvp, aside from holy grail which u gotta be really bored to do that. even vanilla pvp isnt really balanced that well.

as some people already pointed out: different games for different tastes. Im one of the ?few? people that played them all and all these versions have things about them which i like. (vanilla for pvp. pod for its awesome community and mxl mostly for the gameplay) overall i think mxl is the best d2 version out there for various reasons but i will still play pod or vanilla every now and then.

[SinClaire]

OP is viewing vanilla d2 through rose-tinted glasses. He's possibly reminiscing to back when he and his real-life friends actually played D2 together.

[Ekital]

I agree with you about PVP system. Dev team should add it so I can watch a game with full of retard trinity paladin killing each others.

Damn son not gonna lie you're really butthurt about trinity beam.

Vanilla rune system was better : Even lower runes like Lem,pul,um runes worth a lot because they were rare and needed, so even newbies could find them and slowly gather a little wealth. To find 1 high rune would need as much effort as like finding 6x Xis here. This created a cool economy. In MXL rune price system is wrong. Common runes are too frequent drop they have 0 value, while worthy runes are pain in an ass to farm. Why can't they be random world drop?

They are a random drop in Fauzt/Toraja and target farming specific runes for example (6x Ghal for a collector for example) by yourself would take quite while if you're playing SSF. What you're arguing about is the state of the market and how TG is killing it. When in reality D2 died for the same reason with d2jsp and RMT websites.

D2's slower pace felt better somewhy. MXL endgame is sped up like POE where you run around in rocketspeed nuking everything. Now at endgame you kill 3000 mobs in fautzen over and over, while in vanilla, an MF run in ancient tunnels you killed only like 300, and you actually saw what monster you're hitting.

That's really subjective to me Diablo 2 after so many years feels slow and boring.

charms can be fun (once) but its veryvery bad that they are a must to have. If they had way less impact on char's overall strength, ppl would still farm them, but they won't feel like its always a must to do chore thing. These strong charms give big advantage to older players at ladder start, because they know how to easily get them, and they are instantly multiple times powerful than newer players who can't even put their feet inside good farm areas(fautzen or bremmtown) without charms. So these 30x medianxl charms shouldn't really have more effect than annihilus+hellfire torch combined.

Charms and Ubers were the main content of Median until Sigma 1.1 when Dimensional Rifts came out. Ever since Sigma or maybe I would say even in Ultimative the game started being dumbed down to the point that none of the ubers except for Deimoss are a challenge now. (I'm also going to ignore the fact that the Lab which is used to get to Deimoss is content that is being ignored by a huge majority of players).

[ParticuLarry]

OP is viewing vanilla d2 through rose-tinted glasses. He's possibly reminiscing to back when he and his real-life friends actually played D2 together.

Well, that's pretty assumptious of you and doesn't add anything to the topic. The way I see it, OP just wanted to create a discussion where everyone can share what they feel the original made better than this mod, which somehow derailed into everyone disagreeing with his points instead of being on topic and adding their own opinions on what classic LoD excels at.