How was it ever different? In what era of cRPG was a peasant with a stick not like that? Your nostalgia glasses are clouding your view of cRPG.
I am playing a 9/30 dagger with 800 gold equipment and that is viable.
Your build is not relative. As usual my point has been missed by someone having a knee-jerk reaction to something that person obviously felt threatened by.
And my nostalgia glasses are not clouding anything, obviously one of the main differences is that players have themselves improved. But the statistics of the weapons, the speed at which the game plays, the level your character can reach. These are all things that have been altered over the time of the game.
If you can deny that then im sorry, you are beyond reason or rationality. Also you forget, the christmas patch released last year? I went on to make sure it wasnt just nostalgia and guess what? It wasn't, I genuinely had a good time, I actually went in with an expectation of it being terrible.
I was surprised I enjoyed it. If anything im one of the more bitter and cynical people on here, I always was. And yeah the old patches could be slow, it could take yonks to level and the older system of xp and gold was diabolical.
But the freedom to simply look at a series of weapons and say to oneself "hmm...lets see what happens when I do this" was a choice most enticing. That has been taken away.
Now it's a case that you would have an idea and instead of simply pushing for the end goal and sticking to your build, instead you merely throw out any ideas that will not work when examined in the environment of the recent patches and most choices are not choices at all; as the current climate of weapons and system of levelling forces you to travel along certain fixed routes if you wish to have any choice at all.
You asked when wasnt it like that....it wasnt like that in the older patches. If I had a mind to I could level up to level 45 with perseverance, practise with my build intensely, become used to the style of combat and melee, then adapt my style of play accordingly.
Now I have either the choice of heirlooming what will essentially be a useless stick, as the mechanics and statistics of the weapons around me have changed, or try to aim for a higher level...which takes so long as to be essentially a none choice in the matter.
But that is what people seem to want...no choice, they want their specifics balanced, (read improved for their own comfort under the guise of being balanced for the community), at the cost of creativity. Which to be fair, is not much different to what goes on offline either.
In any case, save your projection of people with nostalgia for those who are actually deserving of it. It is not that I wish to go back to older patches, merely that some of that spirit and creativity be entwined with the new.