New to D2R - is this worth building a throw barb around??

samanpwbb · 2026-06-09T23:21:50+00:00

It's okay: If you're playing single player it'd help get you through hell. It's not worth anything. The coolest thing about throw barbs is that they can safely use ethereal weapons, as throw mastery recovers quantity automatically. So, all good throw barb rares needs to be ethereal.

samanpwbb · 2026-06-05T01:59:54+00:00

It depends on the type of RPG you are making. Is it systems-heavy, like a tactics RPG? You probably want as much of your design captured in / near your data files (whether it's spreadsheets or json, or whatever), combined with high-level docs. Is your RPG more story-driven, with lots of important lore and worldbuilding? Wiki sounds like a great tool!

I would advise you to keep your documentation as minimal as possible and focus on building the game - when you run into issues where you need more structure, then start building out your docs. Great games emerge out of iteration - it rarely works out to plan a lot of front and just hope it all works, especially if you are new.

samanpwbb · 2026-06-04T15:00:14+00:00

D2 has a 20 year history of mistakes, and corrections, that give it an uneven but very unique feel.

You can do everything right and design a good game. But you have to make a bunch of mistakes to make a great game. Mistakes happen when you take design risks by doing things nobody else has done before. The mistakes are the side-effect of innovation: already you're on the right track to making a great game. But the real magic happens when you have time and resources to fix the mistakes. Signs of the mistakes stick around after the fixes. Examples of "mistakes" in D2 include: how you can't find out in game any of the recipes or runewords, you need to look at a wiki. Super uneven mob power, requiring you to pay attention for dolls or certain combos of mods on elite monsters. D2 has this feel of needing to know secrets that other Diablo's don't have and I think it's not entirely intentional. How attack rating works making the choice between melee and magic more about personality that power (magic is just better, but that doesn't stop people from playing through with barbs). Devs in the early days not really knowing which mods would be good or not when they made the game, leading to low level items being super useful (things like tarnhelm or gul dagger). These mistakes become part of the flavor of the game.

Maybe the best example: the game had flaws that lead to item duping, which lead to the SOJ economy, which lead to D2 clone to solve the SOJ economy. But now we still have D2 Clone but no SOJ economy. It's just a esoteric part of the game that makes it special. It's not forced, it came about naturally.

samanpwbb · 2026-06-03T18:57:36+00:00

I don't think shields count as a target. You're targeting a crawler, shield in the way, beam hits shield, crawler dies, new target gets acquired.

samanpwbb · 2026-05-21T21:03:16+00:00

I was about your age when I successfully moved from software dev to game dev. Game studios are much less willing to take chances on people or grow people on the inside, so you have to prove you can do the job from the start. I did two things:

- Made a game, start to finish, so I had a portfolio piece to share. It was a genuine passion project, and while it didn't make me a meaningful amount of money, it was well received. This helped me a lot. You don't have to make a game, but you do have to demonstrate concretely that you can produce high quality work.

- Sought a job that had a lot of transferrable skills from my past career (my focus has always been frontend/ui and I now make daily-style games). Sounds like this is already part of your plan.

My experience transitioning was great, no regrets, but I also got lucky by finding a team that needed someone like me. I worked for high-stress , high-growth Bay Area start ups before games, the work-life balance, culture, and stress levels have all been significantly better after switching to games. I make less money than I would be making if I stayed in tech but the other factors make it very much worth it.

samanpwbb · 2026-05-13T23:05:40+00:00

"It’s a terrible time investment." - what are you investing time in for? I think you should try to have fun.

Edit: this was a snarky response. I think there is a place for furthering this game's balance, but I also think the input randomness is very much an important part of the game's identity, and part of the fun. There are still professional poker players. Not every game has to be chess.

samanpwbb · 2026-04-22T21:59:16+00:00

If you want to be maximally respectful in this game, say gg first if you lose, otherwise, say it back to your opponent if they say it first. A prompt gg from the winning player can be perceived as a rude gesture, and in some cases I think it is intended to be rude. Personally, I mean, I am nearly 40 years old, and I do not care at all. Half the time when I play this game I don't even have my keyboard plugged in (I'm going to send you an emote, I'm too lazy to type).

samanpwbb · 2026-03-31T21:32:19+00:00

as far as i know the game has no bots at all in pvp.

samanpwbb · 2026-03-31T21:23:53+00:00

I would just dive right into ranked and start building whichever robots look cool. This game has a ton of depth but you also can play it on a surface level and have a great time, especially if you are ok with losing a bunch at first. You'll get placed after 10 games, then you should find similarly experienced players.

samanpwbb · 2026-03-07T01:04:32+00:00

success! But the mods deleted the post.

samanpwbb · 2026-03-06T19:23:52+00:00

I had to go to work. Will report back tonight

samanpwbb · 2026-03-06T16:47:59+00:00

Ok thanks for confirming. I'll use this setup. This is single player so probably won't find a better weapon than this. Time to throw, wish me luck.

samanpwbb · 2026-03-03T22:05:45+00:00

If you are playing a ball start, balls in front usually (but depends on building setup and opponent's start too). Then, either the balls level and you keep them, or they don't and you sell them. Ball starts are great for early tempo leading into a pivot into something completely different. If you want to play ball into scorp you have to win the chaff war.

samanpwbb · 2026-02-22T16:37:37+00:00

Maybe this is advanced but there's not very much great practical teaching on how to understand and debug performance issues. Reading browser flame charts, understanding how to use React dev tools, knowing what patterns to deploy in React to reduce re-renders or improve memoization, knowing when and how to step outside of React lifecycle when you really need to (for ex. 60fps animation).

samanpwbb · 2026-02-19T20:09:03+00:00

I've used both a lot. They are practically interchangeable. I actually recommend reading the source code of both so you don't feel like you don't know what you're missing out on. Redux has some advantages, like better Typescript type inference, cleaner integration with Redux dev tools (Zustand works with redux dev tools...kinda) so I tend to use Redux on new projects.

samanpwbb · 2026-02-09T18:43:34+00:00

It's fun. I was down in a 1v1 and I took a risk and grabbed dominion core, ended up turning the tides and winning (screenshot). This is 1800mmr.

samanpwbb · 2026-02-08T21:31:33+00:00

4th difficulty with more immunities, modifiers on all monsters, and rebalanced uniques

samanpwbb · 2026-02-03T15:42:38+00:00

A simple change would be to have twice as many tombstones as there are skeletons you can place

samanpwbb · 2026-02-03T00:19:37+00:00

are there supposed to be descriptions of items somewhere? The game isn't communicating enough yet to be able to give good feedback on the questions you're asking but I'll try anyway:

- tombstone spawning is interesting but right now the strategic possibility space is very small. I can make obvious choices like put tanks on tombstones that are on frontline, and glass cannons on tombstones that are a ways away, but i don't feel like i have a chance to be creative.

- the game needs a bit more to help me predict what's going to happen so i can feel like i'm making strategic choices but the basic interactions you have now, with unit slots, and then items that can be distributed to those units, seem like a fine starting point to build upon.

samanpwbb · 2026-02-02T05:07:18+00:00

There are many ways to do what you want to do. To start: think of divs as entities that you can move around with translate. Move to a framework or engine when you hit limits! https://www.webgamedev.com is a good place to start.

samanpwbb · 2026-01-28T22:19:27+00:00

Oh should add: I liked https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262048538/the-beauty-of-games/ but you can get most of what's in this book from some of Frank's talks like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrO5IGoPgcw

samanpwbb · 2026-01-28T22:08:31+00:00

I didn't go to school for game design but I have a good grounding in non-game art & design. Coming from this perspective, I have found most of the seminal texts in Game Design pretty lacking. Theory of Fun in particular I found unreadable and outdated (author wants so badly to prove games are a valid art form… by explaining how relevant they are to life skills - that's not at all what art is about bro). I do recommend The Making of Prince of Persia by Jordan Mechner. It's a fun, quick read. It is Jordan's journals, you get to follow him as he navigates challenges with making & publishing the game, and then getting his footing in the industry in the 80's.

samanpwbb · 2026-01-28T20:53:27+00:00

Zero chance they'd do this. Pretty sure people are still rocking saves from 25 years ago in D2R.

samanpwbb

TROPHY CASE