Haven't played in 4 years, how's the game these days?

Last time I played it was laggy, lacking content, and they were constantly changing things from bad to worse.

How is it these days? Worth coming back to?

6 hours ago, MasterworkStone said:

Last time I played it was laggy, lacking content, and they were constantly changing things from bad to worse.

How is it these days? Worth coming back to?

Elemental Combos have made the game far more easier than it should be, even allowing a person who doesn't invest in Chaos 8 or AP resetting can get to high onslaught floors or even do Prime Incursions.

It really depends. I took a small break from the game and came back to it later.

As above. Elemental combos makes the build fun. New game modes and weapons in Prime Incursions. Mods in your gear helps and it’s fun playing and finding the mods for certain heroes.

Welcome back! 

It's fun. Super grindy, but fun. There's generally several approaches to a lane depending on your preference, you can buy shards with currency you earn in game now, there's a lot of content, generally it runs smoothly.

4 years? Is DD2 even that old? 

Well...its not an MMO anymore, 😆

Thank you to @ChrisH36 for the information.

I won't be returning any time soon.

On 9/20/2019 at 3:31 AM, DashingSonic23 said:

As above. Elemental combos makes the build fun. New game modes and weapons in Prime Incursions. Mods in your gear helps and it’s fun playing and finding the mods for certain heroes.

Welcome back! 

Well played.

Edited September 21, 2019 by ChrisH36

Hey there! By 4 years I'd assume you would still be in the Nightmare difficulty days in Early Access 2015 or 2016. The game have tremendously changed from that period. Though I saw you saying that you won't be returning anything soon, still, let me take you on a walkthrough on the differences since I would guess your knowledge would only be from the Nightmare days.

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Gearing - 

-  You would no longer have to deal with needing the right passives in gear as you now have then ability to swap and interchange passives (there are two types of passive now - shards and M.O.D.S.) to your liking for a piece of gear. However skill spheres do not exist anymore as most of them has been turned into shards.

-  There is also a material system to give gear upgrading and tinkering a tad bit depth.

-  Gear is able to be leveled to the next difficulty with the right materials if you want to climb into the next difficulty but couldn't find one with a higher stat.

-  Your hero is able to be a hybrid hero now as in being able to DPS and build defenses with the same hero rather than duplicates. Armor and Weapons having hero stats while relics are now having defense stats.

-  Item Pwr is now revamped into Gear Score since the stat progression has increased quite a bit since the transition into Chaos.

Difficulty - 

• The Nightmare difficulty has being replaced by Chaos which has 7 tiers rather than 4.
• Instead of each difficulty being just being a stat increase like Nightmare, Each new difficulty adds a new enemy that makes you use a different strategy to counter them.
• Difficulties past Chaos 7 are only in Chaos 8 Onslaught and Prime Incursions.

Gamemodes - 

As you probably remembered the gamemode in the Nightmare days are Campaign, Defense, Incursions and Onslaught.

There are major changes in those. The roster now is Campaign, Adventures, Onslaught, Expeditions, Incursions and Mastery.

-  Campaign is broken into two gamemodes, hence Adventures.

-  Defense has been revamped into Expeditions which is where you farm materials to tinker with your gear. It's also where the Chaos Difficulty starts. And It is still the classic way of progressing.

-  There is another way of progressing and that is Onslaught. It is no longer a survival gamemode. Instead, it is a alternate progression gamemode option if you don't want to climb Expeditions however it becomes your main progression gamemode once you get past Chaos 7. To go into how you progress, it has a level by level (floor by floor) "endless"progression with each level getting incrementally harder the more you clear them rather than jumping into the next difficulty and every certain level there is a unique milestone map that is only exclusive to this mode.. It also has chaos difficulty tiers to compare with expeditions progression however rather than having a fixed enemy schedule for each map, each lane would have a different enemy schedule with unique twist applied to it instead and that's where you'll see more different new enemies & more twist pops up in some lanes as your progress higher in levels/floors. Levels/ Floors that's in Chaos 8 difficulty onwards will only be incremental in stats though.

-  Incursions Chaos 1 to 7 is just a one and done thing now to unlock weapons to buy from the wayfarer. Because of that each difficulty only has two/three different incursions as it's just something for you to do if you want to take a break from Expeditions or Onslaught. You might remember most of the incursion weapons in the wayfarer and loot pool however you're not going to see all of them from NM days in there since some of them get their passive turned into shards which results in them just being weapons for looks so they now just drop somewhere else. Prime Incursions are the next difficulty (mostly harder than Chaos 7 and certain incursions having a little twist) as an option for the higher tiered players if they don't want play expeditions and onslaught and they just want some new weapons for the looks and hyper shards which are more powerful version of some shards.

-  Mastery is also another one and done gamemode that you can do for golden pets, certain cosmetics and a second copies of Hyper Shards to help you in your climb of Onslaught. It's similar to expeditions but you have to complete each map with certain criterias met to earn stars to progress in the gamemode to earn the rewards.

Leveling Progressions - 

• Ascension levels 

After you hit level 50, you enter Ascension. Each Ascension levels gives you an Ascension point. They are an expanded version of SAS points and the talents are even more personalized to each type of hero. Instead of a very fixed limited points to juggle around, you can gain enough points to fill some talent caps and more as Ascension level has no cap like lvl 50 because the leveling is infinite.

Also Ascension lvl is tied to your account so if you deleted your hero and start another, after releveling to lvl 50, you still have access to all the asc points.

• Ancient Power 

This is a leveling that's tied to Onslaught. It is an interesting leveling that needs to be properly done and not taken lightly. When you invoke Ancient Power you'll lose your progression of the gamemodes (except Mastery) and gear will be devolved to campaign level and shard being un-upgraded (aka a reset) so doing it during early endgame period is never recommended. And keep in mind that each reset only gains an Ancient Power level. However, If you prepped enough (as in saving materials to relevel gear when you're done invoking Ancient Pwr, Gilding shards and Climbing as high as you can in Onslaught), the benefit of invoking Ancient Power might be appealing though you must invoke it multiple times to actually benefit so it still have to depend on you. (It's still not appealing to some and you still can enjoy the game without it.) 

-Here's the benefits for information's sake

1. The higher you climb Onslaught, the higher your minimum ascension level is. Min asc lvl means that subsequent resets will leave you with that fixed amount of asc lvl unless it's altered by climbing even higher in Onslaught. Invoking Ancient Pwr in higher lvl/floor Onslaught results in you getting a major boost in your ascension lvl while invoking at a very low level for the first time will just result you in losing those lvls. So it is heavily recommended that if you want to invoke Ancient Power, you'll have to climb as high as you can to accumulate the numbers before invoking to maximize the benefits.)

2. Each time you invoke Ancients Pwr, adds 5% increase in XP and gold. So if you keep invoking AP, it'll keep adding another 5% and the accumulation will help a lot with Asc leveling and going broke on gold. 

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TLDR -

The game has massively changed since Nightmare

• Gear system has massively changed from the days of Nightmare. 
• Nightmare difficulty has been replaced with Chaos Difficulty which adds a new enemy per tier.
• The gamemodes has changed so progression more linear than the days of Nightmare.
• The leveling system has gotten beyond lvl 50 and it's tied to your account. 

It's a very different game from 4 years ago so I'd recommend giving it a try.

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I hope this wall of text is helpful and bearable too but that shows how tremendous the change is this game has gone through. Though regardless of this, I'd still recommend you to give this game one more try to see what you yourself actually thinks. :)

Cheers!

Edited September 22, 2019 by Paloverde zfogshooterz

On 9/20/2019 at 1:12 AM, MasterworkStone said:

Last time I played it was laggy, lacking content, and they were constantly changing things from bad to worse.

How is it these days? Worth coming back to?

Imho it's worth coming back, do campaign and chaos till c7. When you get to c7 stop there - don't get into endgame (or the lack there of), it's lacking content and very grindy, not worth getting into that part of the game.

Great post Palo.

I think there are 2 kinds of rpg players. Those who play the story straight through, and are always just barely strong enough to make it to the next plateau. And then there are those who check every chest, talk to every npc, do every side mission, and run in a circle for 3 hours killing 1 hp rabbits because that one extra level will make the next boss a joke. 

of course there are more, but this is my overgeneralization. 

For those who are in the latter category, DD2 shines for you. Those in the fomer will likely not have their attention held for too long.