Gamasutra - What RPGs can learn from Diablo Original

Over at Gamasutra writer Joshua McDonald has penned a piece on his blog about what rpgs (action) can learn from the original Diablo. A quote about fighting an enemy type:

You fight an enemy type. Not an enemy level:

In my opinion, one of the worst trends in RPGs is representing power by a little number next to the enemy's health bar. A skeleton that looks and acts just like one from earlier in the game will literally be 100 times as powerful. And it will be the same power as the giant you just fought that happened to be the same level. Sure, Diablo did some reskinning, but it carefully limited how powerful each model could get. The automatic argument most people make against this is that you need too much art to keep changing enemy types, but this isn't true. In fact, it's one place where the limitation actually leads to better game design.