Heh, still has more depth and content than d3 , witch is funny really as it is cheaper. The thing is, it is closes to d2 than any other arpg out there from gameplay/character customization and loot (not art style).
I really hate d3 dumb down character customization and itemization (that is now ok after all the patches).
See, this is the main beef I have with the game. TL2 looks shiny and all on the surface, but if you dig into the actual mechanics it mirrors the major downsides of D2's system but manages to get them even worse in some cases.
At the time I played, there were useless skills that underperformed so badly or scaled so poorly that they were basically newbie traps that you couldn't fix once you'd irrevocably spent points in them. Sure, the company added respec potions, but as a mod, so you get flagged as a mod character by using their own fix. Some of them were just broken and didn't scale with anything, so at a certain point your character is fixed in power level regardless of gear, and even if you keep leveling, the skill just stops.
Conversely, some abilities were so overpowered as to be mandatory, like the shield on the engineer that quadrupled your effective health or more (with 100% uptime). You're forced to decide how many points to put into passive abilities instead of more skills you can actively use in a fight, so your points get dumped into boring invisible stuff. Ranged attacks still only reach halfway across the screen. Stat points once again yielded an "optimal" setup, where you put points into X for crit cap and Y for damage, vitality scales so poorly relative to gear that putting a single point into it for anything other than shield block is a complete waste.
Skills on a point-buy system are the exact same thing as "watching numbers rise on a sheet" except for the breakpoint levels that... you guessed it... pigeonhole builds and lower customization potential.
There's plenty more problems on the list, that's just what I could think of off the top of my head. Never mind widely available and accepted cheat mods making multiplayer boring (oh and multiplayer connections are crap, like 1990's era internet crap). But hey, it's not D3, so it has that going for it, I suppose.
I see from your comments that you do not understand the game that much because there are a lot of wrong and not correct statements from you
The actual mechanics in its cores are really good, much better than d3 (witch core game mechanics are bad and very simple, but because they are trying to balance the game easier and streamline it). The problem with tl2 skills is they are not balanced all that good, and as they are not interested in MMO type of game balance, they are not fine tuning it and nerfing the shit of things.
But i will tell you this, there are no skills in game that do not work (and all skills scale, there is none that do not scale, the ones with flat dmg scale with level and items). Some are better some not, but depending on type of skills you can scale them with different items (is it directly from weapon dps, or indirectly with special buffs like fire dmg and similar for skills that dont scale with dps). There are OP broking skills and there are some less so.
The thing is I have a choice. Attribute points where you can invest in different builds have a optimal setup, but it depends from build you wanna make not class you take (that is a beauty of it). Every class depending from what type of build you gonna make will have different attributes that suits him more and where he has the most optimal attribute points spent. Its not perfectly balanced, but its 10 times better than d3 where you dont have any choice,where the core is shallow, and computer think players are dumb as shit and they will fail so it needs to level their character for them.
Same thing is with skill points, one more layer of additional customization that is in player hands, and not automated. Not only that but you can chose to make a 100% passive character, or go for a lot of active ones. Some will be more item depending to make them work some less, but you have it all in your hands
Multiplayer is problematic for some, as there is no secured servers (so you are hosting it on your comp), but thankfully there is no lag if you play alone, no dumb down mechanism because of it, and things like mod that only improve the game, that adds new class, monsters and acts, for free.
Hack looking now, the game is still played, around 1300 people on steam only, a game that did not had any updates for year now, with no secured servers. Shame there will not be a expansion for it, as there are a lot of things they can improve.
But hey, there is a reason why it got so many positive reviews both from the press and the players. And I actually did not talk about most positive things about it, and why I like it more than d3, but it is offtopic, and I do not hate d3. D3 now is a ok game, but that is the problem, its ok, and it is very expensive for it to be only ok when some indy games like PoE or TL2 did so much right, where blizz did so much wrong.