So you disagree with me therefore I dont want to discuss anything and don't even know what I'm saying?
This statement that you made is saying "D2 was impossible to play unless you looked up strategy guides and leveling tables." Which is demonstrably false. Sure you wouldn't be able to beat the harder difficulties without at least a fair understanding of how the game worked, but beating it on normal difficulty, or hard? Not as impossible a task as you seem to think.
I'm going to repost this, since this is a thing we do now? You're basically arguing that every difficulty for every game should be as easy for someone who's never played it before as for someone who has played through the game on the previous difficulties and has an intimate knowledge of how the game works. Normal difficulty is the standard one, which is where you learn how the game works, how to play, etc. Hell difficulty is deliberatly supposed to be extremely punishing. I say punishing rather than rewarding (even though it's both usually) because it punishes lack of knowledge and skill with lack of progress. It's not that they aren't relevant, and I never said that, it's that they aren't relevant
concerning what you're complaining about. Maybe it's my fault for reading what you wrote at face value, and not filling in the bits you obviously meant to write but left out for some reason, like "D2 is the opposite; you look up a bunch of skills and figure out what works, and if you don't, you can't progress
on the hardest difficulty ." (bolded the parts you forgot, i guess?)
If you honestly don't think games have been getting easier, on average, then I don't know how to respond. Ever see that video of the COD level that plays itself? How many racing games have rewind functions incase you mess up taking a corner? Again (as I said this before) I don't know if Diablo 3 is simplified or dumbed down or streamlined. I made no claims to that as I've still not been able to play the game. But as a general trend in gaming? Definatly. They don't call it "nintendo hard" because they had detailed quest logs and magic arrows that pointed your way to the glowing object while the A button flashes up on the screen to tell you how to interact with it.
"Sure you can drive your car to the shops and back, but you can't drive in the Gran Prix, so we're going to put a 30mph speed limit on that so anyone can do it! If driving in the Gran Prix isn't relevant to you then neither is anything because driving is easy and you're going to drive however you want anyway"
I disagree. Entirely. I think there have been overall changes in the direction of game design. Those changes are not "dumbing down", they're a different approach that prioritises different areas of game design. This is why I made the Godwin comparison: "dumbing down" is used as a buzzword/phrase/whatever, spouted by people who don't want to actually discuss anything, just find something to criticize, and they just keep on repeating it without even trying to consider what it actually means.
This would make sense if I actually said the game was dumbed down, or haven't been actively discussing the topic with you (without resorting to thinly veiled ad hominems, thank you), or haven't shown an awareness of what it means, or have repeated it outside of this discussion, or haven't had actuall things to criticise about the game itself and your arguement to which I was initially responding without needing to make things up.
I never once used a cookie cutter build in D2 and I did great through all the difficulties. There were times I had to get help from a friend, but that's what made it more fun.
You are a liar. Noone has ever beaten D2 without at least taking the 4 year skill-tree 101 class at MIT, or the intro to clicking LMB studies course at Harvord!