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I think the most obvious thing for anybody who's played more recent games (i.e. WoW) is how difficult it is to make full use of your abilities. The two skills you've got bound to your mouse buttons are *very* easily accessible, and it's pretty easy to swap those to another skill you intend to use for awhile. But for skills that you use only occasionally, typically in between your normal attack rotation, it's a pain to have to switch one of your mouse buttons to that skill, use it, and then switch back, when really you should be able to use that skill directly from a key press. Already fixed in Diablo 3!
In terms of other issues that are obviously detrimental to the minute-by-minute gameplay experience... there aren't a whole lot. D2 is generally a fast-paced, fun game. But I would argue that the monsters tend to be a little too obvious most of the time, mostly consistenting of basic variations on running at the player or standing around shooting him at range. D3 seems to be working on this one too, with, for example, monsters that have a "big attack" after which they're vulnerable, monsters that transform into something much worse if you don't murder them in time, monsters with shields that can potentially block your melee attacks, and so on. Seems like great fun. But because D2 still generally remains fairly fast-paced with "pretty good" monster variety, it still works. It certainly doesn't work as well in Titan Quest, which somehow had even less variety than D2 in spite of having an extra six years to progress the formula.
So then there's the leveling system, with two parts: Points allocated over four stats, and "talents" structured into trees. Though WoW's trees seem quite obviously derived from this idea, the implementation is drastically different: You can invest anywhere from 1 to 20 points in any of these talents, and only one point is required for any prerequisite (and there aren't really that many prerequisites). So the basic formula becomes sinking one point into skills that you find helpful, as many points as possible into the skills you use all the time, and rely on gear to boost the one-point skills into something more useful. It works reasonably well, and there are some synergies, but oftentimes the synergies end up forcing you to sink many points into skills you don't particularly care for or ever use. You're essentially at the mercy of the developers choosing their synergies carefully.
Of course, the most important aspect of the leveling system is that all decisions are final, with no option for respecs. This is the one that everybody remembers and continues to bitch about, and for good reason: It's got far-reaching and damaging consequences to the D2 leveling experience and end game. It forces players to make hard decisions early on, before they're comfortable with their character, and it discourages them from experimenting with that character later. For those players who already know exactly what their final build is going to look like, it's a little less damaging, but even then players are faced with the prospect of dealing with a suboptimal build for most of their leveling experience (for example, barbarians speccing into Polearm Mastery without actually having a decent polearm). Of course, since the D2 end game quickly devolves into having a high-level player power-level a character that has no real purpose except to serve as a mount point for your spec and equipment, it's all kind of works itself out (albeit in a kind of crappy way). Obvious solution: Allow resetting your stat and talent arrangements... and that's what Blizzard is doing in Diablo 3, and it's even planned in the D2 1.13 patch! However, they have noted that the cost should be substantial, and I think that conflicts with some of the aspects listed here; I'd recommend giving the player an opportunity at some point or points in the game to do it for free, to enable players to play around a bit early on.
Now, there are some other minor issues with the stat points and the talent arrangements. Stat points are picky, in that players are stuck trying to allocate exactly as many of them as they require for their end-game equipment. Less of an issue with respecs. However, it does affect some classes more than others, since casters, for example, get stuck pouring points into the Strength stat which otherwise does nothing for them.
Talents have their own issues. Since the system really doesn't encourage investment of anything other than zero, one, or twenty points, characters tend to get a little bit pigeon-holed into a small number of skills. This is especially true when you consider that some skills may warrant maxing out entirely due to synergies, and then never actually get used. It's also the case that some skills tend to scale pointlessly with more investment. Examples: Increasing the duration on shouts by 10 seconds per point, or talents with very sharply diminishing returns. The fact of the matter is that not all talents deserve point investment, and pretending that they do is kind of silly. I'd expect this to be addressed with something like the WoW system.
But this does hint at one of the other big design problems with Diablo 2: The gameplay experience varies widely based on gear and level, which doesn't bode particularly well for people who don't have the advantage of others handing them equipment or power-leveling runs. Some examples: the aforementioned case of specs that penalize players until they're able to start fleshing out their expected talent tree or gear loadout. Or the fact that mana and even life tend to be a drastic issue for melee classes until they've acquired a great deal of leech equipment. Or the problem that putting just one talent point in many skills is plenty once you've got hefty +Skill gear available to you, but typically pretty cumbersome when you've got none. Early, even things like a lack of belt slots and crappy stamina put you at great inconvenience.
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