Alright, bought “expansion” last night and have played a few hours, wanted to voice my thoughts for the devs:
-First of all, I’ll get a major point of criticism out of the way:
- While I have no problem paying for a new class/expansion, and understand that devs need paid as well as the fear of upsetting the die hard older anti-change players (hence why this is on it’s own fork), I do find it off putting that there had been radio silence on updates since the months leading to D4. Especially since this was promoted through the media as a live service game, with communication between devs and community driving the future of the game. To have that silence, then the first meaningful update for years is a paid feature pack “expansion” is a bit scummy.
- I do hope that this paid content is a road to the future with meaningful update cycles before the next possible paid entry and not just an annual expansion monetization cycle with no content patch cycles between, because if the only meaningful updates will now be paywalled, then I would rather they be monetized by selling stash tabs and/or cosmetics.
Now with that out of the way:
- Stash tab rework
- Love it. Now take it a step further and add a functional in-game marketplace for trade to funnel through instead of being relegated primarily through 3rd party methods/third party currencies. We now have means with stacking runes/gems/materials to make a functioning marketplace interesting and improve on the lessons learned from the D3 Auction House.
- Only suggestion here is allow tooltip to display rune/gem etc effects when you have 0 in the tab.
- Chronicles
- Great feature. However, needs improvement.
- Runeword/Cube recipe encyclopedia has been an ask since D2R was announced. Chronicle should have been this feature as well as a tracker. Instead of greyed out ??? it should be greyed out, but display what the item is as well as stats.
- A big pillar of the original development was giving the player more information. This does that, and lessens need for outside resources such as Arreat Summit.
- Loot Filter
- Too complicated/complex for my taste. Would have been better as a simple feature to hide displays for the consumables you check, which is most of the clutter loot.
- Does not synergize with multiplayer loot system. We’ve taken a loot drop system that is already on an unfair playing field, and multiplied that unfair nature 10 fold. We’ve now drastically changed how players see loot drops in multiplayer, thus conflicting with the nature of “competitive loot.” Personal Loot needs to be re-evaluated to co-exist with now having highly customizable filters.
- “We don’t want to bring more reasons for players not to play together.” - Cederquist, 2022 Season 1 devstream in answer to players x online. This is another reason for players not to want to play together, and benefits the players 8 split farmers even more.
-Warlock
- I’m only just beginning to really play with this class. However, looking through the skill tree, I’m finding it hard to see which path I want to go for a few reasons.
- This class looks developed with the flaws and understandings of D2 class design from a modern lens.
- This class looks to have more ways to make viable builds than any other class, and is an amalgamation of hybrid advantages - a teleport skill, Sorc Enchant + Pally Zeal build in one, Sorc mass AOE skills, Necro/Druid summoning but fixes a flaw to able to target a clicked foe, etc.
- I barely see anything that resembles a dead skill; everything has a purpose and synergy paths have builds in mind.
- The other classes sorely need a revisit beyond just basic numbers tuning. We need more of what 2.4 did in functionality, such as Druids summoning all pets or Fist of the Heavens having piercing holy bolts. We need actual, meaningful skill tree updates and not the D3/D4 itemization method such as how Mosaic and Metamorphis work - More ways through items to bring Oskills that multiple classes can synergize with is fine, but default class skills need a rework.
-Sunder Charms
- Watched the Llama video. No issue with crafting path for them. However, the design space that these were introduced were because Hammerdins complained Terror Zones were too easy, and instead of nerfing hammers, Sunders were introduced to level the playing field to give builds the ability to play more Terror Zones. Making the cost of entry to these now more rare (I’ve experimented around in Hell for 2-3 hours last night, did not see a single Herald which these now drop from), opposes the original design space of introduction, especially now that Terror Zones roll with mods that can give more immunities.
- I think this needs revisited. Add back into loot pool of elites, but at a lower drop rate, with a greater drop rate for Heralds.
Anyways, my thoughts from the first few hours of play and messing with some of these new systems.