Diablo 4 is Great!
But…
I am about to tear into it, so if you are on the hype train, and don’t want to fall off, I suggest you stop reading now. The game is good and if you are enjoying the hype, I suggest not reading this thread. Just turn back now.
If you are a Dev… just wear a helmet and you are good to go.
TLDR if you don’t want to read the whole thing. Here is the issue I have with the game -
Vanilla, Strawberry and Chocolate are all delicious flavours of ice-cream. Some are missing here.
Table of Contents
1. Nailed Horror
2. Impaled for 7 Years
3. Meaningless Death
4. Skills like Pile On
5. Legendary Buttcrack
6. Strawberry, Vanilla and Chocolate
7. Solution
8. Conclusion
Alright now let’s get into it.
1. Nailed Horror
As always we gotta start off with the positives, to let the Devs know all the things and all the work we appreciate.
Visuals 9/10
Story-Telling 10/10
Atmosphere 10/10
Sounds 10/10
Seriously impressed with the visuals here. The story-telling is… 10/10 Horror. The atmosphere is there. The ambient sounds are as great as I remember them in D3. The sound effects are punchy and BANG on! D3 nailed the sounds and so does D4.
Everyone and their mom has made a video about these. I have prasied them in my previous threads e.g. 益 What I HATE about Diablo IV Gameplay . So I am not going to go in much detail.
I think the game is worth buying just for these four.
I think the campaign is going to be awesome and I am looking foward to it. I am looking forward to clicking on all the characters and hearing their dialogue and learning about their story and lore of this universe. I spent hours in the beta, literally doing that.
And these are things I have never even cared about in D2 and D3. But in Diablo 4, they are on another level! Diablo 4 is making me care about it.
Anyway let’s get into the juicy stuff now.
2. Impaled for 7 Years
Difficulty
Hot take - I liked how difficult the game was as a Melee class. I played with a pure Werebear build and enjoyed the difficulty a lot. This might be an unpopular opinion but… this is how the Veteran difficulty should be for ALL classes.
But…
Bosses
At one point I encountered a boss that was too difficult. I died to it three times. I decided to get Wolves to take the pressure off me a little bit…
I ruined it.
I straight up ruined it.
All the boss did was attack my unkillable wolf pair. By the time he killed one the other would respawn. The fight went from - 10/10 Dark Souls would play again - to - Checkers with my nephew.
I felt so bad afterwards, that I had completely ruined this otherwise challenging boss fight for myself.
Normal Monsters
There are these guys that just impale you and just stun for 7 years. They stun you and as you are standing there impaled on their sword, you get hit by all other monsters. During this time, you are unable to do anything.
Then there are guys who knock you down and you just lie on the floor thinking “This is my life now”.
Devs, early on you said you did not like when small monsters did micro-stuns on the player. I argued back that micro-stuns along with chip damage is better for player experience and that long stuns and burst damage are frustrating - 益 What I HATE about Diablo IV Gameplay (see: Letter to Joe Shely)
In Diablo 4 we have this exact problem of long stuns and burst damage.
If you want to do stuns correctly, study Fighting Games. The Fighting game genre is the master of how to do stuns correctly (and how to mess up really badly also). The whole genre is based on stun mechanic and seeing how long you can chain your stun… otherwise known as a Combo.
Monsters need to be behave like a fighting game character. Where they combo you. But the combo should not be long. It should be a short combo, then release. Then short combo, then release.
I would say if the player gets stunned and thereafter is able to get hit by more than 3 attacks by surrounding monsters, your stun is probably too long.
Scaling Difficulty
The monsters always scale up with you, so they feel difficult but… at no point do you feel you have overcome them. This is an issue in the game. I much prefer the Inferno difficulty in Original D3… yea remember those impossible to kill elites? It felt just right.
I’m kidding…
sort of…
D3’s Hell difficulty did not drop the gear required to help you in Inferno so Inferno felt terrible when you first enetered. But as a fixed difficulty, where you try to gear up to overcome impossible odds and eventually overcame them, Inferno was perfect! I enjoyed it for that reason.
3. Meaningless Death
The biggest issue with Diablo 4’s difficulty is this -
It never never scares you.
Diablo 4 has went back to the its Horror roots with the visuals and story-telling… but… in the game, dying has no consequence. It does not feel scary at all.
In fact, I was try-harding so much that the first time I was about to die to a boss, I actually was scared to die. But then I died… and nothing happened. I spawned right next to the boss room. I lost nothing. I felt nothing. I eventually learned that dying is meaningless.
The game drilled it into me that dying doesn’t matter.
This is not good for a Horror game. A Horror game should not be teaching the player that death is meaningless.
Dying should have some serious consequences. Somewhere between what we have now, where there are no conseuquences, and hardcore mode, where you lose your character. Somewhere between that, where death actually means something and is more than an mere inconvenience.
I think D2 was in that middle-ground where you dropped all the items, and you had to run back through dangerous territory wearing nothing but your underpants. There, death felt like it had consequences. But that’s not going to work for Diablo 4 as areas are always renewing and repopulating. Or maybe it might work. I don’t know. Devs need to test it or they need to come up with something else.
I also liked Runescape’s Wilderness, which not only gave your death dire consequences, i.e. losing all your equipped and carried items, but the consequences were so dire, that the wilderness legimately felt scary to be in. The wilderness had the most precious mines, dungeons and other loot, but it was an area with the most powerful monsters, and where other players could fight and kill you, at any moment without warning! It was truly a terrifying place.
I think Diablo 4 needs to have more consequences attached to player death. And Diablo 4 needs to have areas like the Wilderness in Runescape, where valuable items drop but where death means you lose all your gear. You risk everything for the best drops. That is what Horror is about.
The OG D3 Inferno area would be perfect as well!
So that was the Good (Visuals, Atmosphere, Story-Telling, Sounds), and the Bad (long stuns, lack of Difficult areas, lack of meaningful consequences when you die)…
Now let’s talk about the Ugly!
4. Skills like Pile On
Where is the skill tree? Why are there so few skills? - many people are asking this question.
You know what? There are 30 levels and you unlock about the same amount of skills as you did in D2 and D3. It’s fine.
But man D3 had sooo many runes! Now many runes felt similar but you also had crazy runes like the Giant Toad, which transformed your smaller explosive toads into a big one that swallowed enemies. Smaller spiders into a Giant walking spider that did damage over time.
D3’s Zombie wall rune that had these Zombies run up and stack up on one another only to collapse down on enemies. This skill was awesome because it had a long wind-up (the Zombie’s stacking up) and big damage (when they crashed down). It was called Pile On and it was all about timing their crash.
D3 also had a rune that made your Zombie Charger summon Zombie Bears! Zombie Bears is 10/10 skill design, one of the best skills I have seen in an arpg. Its visuals were good but the way it played and the ways you could move and stack the Bear rows… the skill changed with how you positioned yourself… brilliant!
Pile On and Zombie Bears is how you design your big damage skills, and D3 Skills Runes is how to you diversify your skills. I don’t know why D4 didn’t do this.
Let’s look at an example of where this would be useful -
Diablo 4 Druid -
Enhanced Pulverize
Your next Pulverize will Overpower every 10 seconds while you remain Healthy.
I enjoyed using the Druid’s Pulverize, I really did.
But I couldn’t help myself constantly counting the seconds on the UI, looking away from monsters and waiting for it to say 10, instead of looking at monsters and timing the skill like Pile On.
The type of design that makes you stare at UI, while being in active combat, totally ruins the skill… it’s just gross.
You never want the player to stare at UI elements instead of active combat.
(And there was a passive where every 25 seconds you remained in Werebear form your next attack dealt Overpower… same issue. You are making us stare at UI elements instead of focusing on moment to moment Combat.)
And that Healthy requirement was sooo bad to play with. You’d get hit by a monster and instantly lose your build-up 10s.
Devs! There is already 1 condition of having the resource required. Then there is another of building up to 10 seconds. Then you add another condition of being Healthy!
This is mental!
Devs I like the idea behind it but please look at how Pile On plays in D3.
Druid’s Pulverize changed to have Wind-up -
Enhanced Pulverize
Hold the button () to do a Pulverize that will Overpower.
If the player taps the button, it just does a regular Pulverize.
If the Player presses and holds the button then they trigger Enhanced Pulverize. The Bear lifts his claws, there is a build up, then he smashes after 0.4 seconds dealing Pulverize with Overpower.
So it’s turns Pulverize into something like Pile On, into an attack with a wind-up (with a lot of start-up frames as we would say in fighting games).
And if you want you can keep both -
Enhanced Pulverize
Active - Hold the button () to do a Pulverize that will Overpower.
Passive - Your next Pulverize will Overpower every 10 seconds while you remain Healthy.
In D2 the Hurricane had an interesting Donut-shaped hitbox where monsters that were too close or too far didn’t take damage. In Diablo 4, it’s just a small area around you like the D3 Monk’s Sweeping Wind. That’s not Hurricane!
I don’t care about having more skills, it’s things like this that need to be improved with Diablo 4’s skill system. The skills need to be interesting and well designed.
5. Legendary Buttcrack
I could also go on about the Necromancer’s Neon Numbskulls, and the Same 5 Laptop Dungeon Mechanics, and the Generic UI, etc etc. Yea they are all ugly as pretty much everyone has stated. But in an arpg it all comes down to…
Itemization
and bloody Petals, Devs really dropped the ball here on this one.
Where are the wide variety of Item Flavours the Devs showed us? Diablo IV Quarterly Update—December 2020 — Diablo IV — Blizzard News
https://imgur.com/6nmq1qD
Rant incoming…
The whole item game seems to be to funnel every player into using Legendary items.
I asked around what Sacred and Ancestral items were, they are the same Legendaries, just higher stats. The Devs showed us some Uniques… what’s the difference? They are just more Legendary items.
“Hello? Rare items are actually worth picking up you know? Just tack on a Legendary affix. Boom it’s a Legendary.”
Yea that’s the problem, it’s all Legendary.
Everything is a Legendary just tack on Legendary affixes to it and you have T H E ... L E G E N D A R Y ... I T E M ... O F ... T H E.. G O D S.
You know what? Your buttcrack is Legendary but your wife probably doesn’t want to see it all the time.
But maybe she is in to that or maybe it’s…
The whole loot hunt seems to be find Legendary items. Then find better Legendary items. Then find better Legendary items. Then find better Legendary items… Someone called it D3’s Set Items with extra steps.
It’s as if it’s Christmas and Santa is hell bent on feeding you Chocolate cake and more chocolate cake and more chocolate cake and blood petals… wait where was I?
Iosef - We need to find the key to open this gate…
Oh yeah, Itemization.
Where are the specialist, buff your strengths or weakness, but not both, but to an insane degree, Blue items?
Where are the standard, buff both your strengths and weaknesses (without a Legendary affix), Rare items?
Where are the creative, craft your own spicy, delicious and hallucinatory hot stew… I mean… White items?
They are there in the game. They just do not compete with Legendary items. They cannot compete with Legendary items because the Devs have gone out of there way to make Legendary items the only items worth wearing. Hell, they have gone out of their way to help you make other items into Legendary items.
If other Item Flavours cannot compete with Legendary items without being Legendary items then they cannot offer their unique Item Flavour in the end game.
See Legendary items are great because they change how your skills function. They do wacky sh*t. But I don’t always want to change how my skills function. Sometimes I just want to buff a skill, sometimes I like the original skill. What do I wear then?
Where are the item flavours that just buff my skills without changing how they function?
Where are the Item Flavours where I choose the Way in which I buff my skills?
The Devs have completely forgotten the other Item Flavours, and the purposes they serve.
And in the case of Rare items, they have betrayed their original purpose.
No Magics, no Rares, no normal Affixes can compete with 50%, 100%, 300%, 500%, etc bonuses of Legendary affixes. You think “no way those numbers are real.” Let me tell you, there are items with affixes like “additional 250% damage to Pulverize”, for example.
https://imgur.com/AbVuKtM
Let’s go with 50% damage… seems reasonable right?
How much damage did your +1 to skill add to your skill?
It was minuscule.
Now consider that one Legendary makes it do 50% more!
Tell me how is + to skills supposed to compete with this? How is a normal affix supposed to compete with these legendary modifiers?
So everyone is forced onto Legendaries. Want to use a skill in the endgame? There is a Legendary for that, and if you don’t use that Legendary you have garbage damage, and progression is non-existent for you.
-
If you are min-maxer and you are hyper-focused on meticulously crafting your build and tweaking and tuning it with all these knobs and levers. Hey hey hey, stop. You can’t do that in our game. Just use this Legendary and this and this… to deal 1000% more damage. Just take your Legendaries and be happy.
-
If you are casual player and you don’t want to mix-max anything. You are the type of play a fantasy role you have in mind. You want to use Wolves as a Druid, because ever since you were a kid you liked Wolves. You were fascinated by how they looked and how they ran and attacked. And you wana see your Wolves shred enemies. Well you can’t because outside of these Legendaries that make your wolves into Werewolves, there is nothing for you. You want to see Wolves shred enemies? Go watch the Discovery channel.
-
If you are just someone playing the game, and you don’t care about fantasy or min-maxing, and you just want to make a build or use a skill. Nope can’t unless you have this particular Legendary item. “Hey we have all these Blue and Yellow items in the game. Let me make a cool build with that. Let me use my skills. Let me progress my character by collecting these items.” No. Stop it. How dare you do that in our game?
Not only are other item flavours terrible when compared to Legendary items, your class’s Normal skills also feel garbage in comparison to Legendary boosted skills. Because Legendary affix buffs it so much that it feels useless without the Legendary affix.
The item that adds 250% damage to Pulverize… ask yourself this - What are the underlying issues in the game that caused a Dev to buff this %damage so much?
There’s an item that makes Druid’s Minions do 300% Damage… ask - Why are the minions so bad in the first place that they need this big buff from an item?
We went from having forced into Sets to point where people started hating on Sets… to the point where Devs said “Hey we are not going to have Set items in Diablo 4”… to having Legendaries shoved down our throat.
It shuts down creativity.
No matter the type of item, if you force it, it will shut down player expression.
Look, Sets have their place and belong in Diablo and Legendaries have a place in Diablo. But Rares, Magics, White, Crafted, etc, any new Item Flavours you can think of, also have a place in Diablo. They have a role they can fill, which Legendaries cannot.
So…
How about having good functional skills that don’t require 300% damage buff from a Legendary affix?
How about dropping fewer but quality items, making each item flavour (White, Magic, Rare, Legendary, Unique) more meaningful to the player, with each offering something different from the other, in the endgame gearing?
How about naming your items in a way that is more descriptive than “sword” so that the player can decide whether they need that particular type of sword or not, just by glancing at an unidentified item on the ground?
6. Strawberry, Vanilla and Chocolate
Let’s clear up somethings first.
Character Building is how you advance your stats and skills. In other games, there are certain Specializations. In D4 for example, the Barb has skills, weapon masteries and paragon board.
These things are Character Building.
Finding Legendaries (and Uniques) that change your skills and have so much damage and mitigation attached that they become mandatory, is the exact opposite of character building. It undermines Character Building, and makes it pointless, since you are forced into wearing the Legendary item for a skill if you want to get any use out of that skill. Or you end up feeling forced into the taking the skills for which you found this OP Legendary items. What I HATE about Diablo IV Skill System - A Case for Character Building
Collecting items and crafting them, this is gearing. This is Itemization.
Having different types of Items that you are hunting for in the end game. This is Item Flavour.
Not to transform them into all Legendary with aspects but to use their particular flavour to your advantage.
When your Legendary affixes are so strong that every other other item becomes useless, until you make it into a Legendary, then this undermines Item Flavours.
What is the difference between Legendaries and Uniques? How are these two different Item Flavours? Diablo IV Quarterly Update—December 2020 — Diablo IV — Blizzard News
https://imgur.com/EImdFgo
Is it just me or these Unique affixes look identical to any Legendary affix in the game?
The Role of Different Item Flavours
Magic Item
- rolls fewer affixes
- can roll higher affix rolls than other items
This allows the player to buff specific things to the max at the cost of losing other crucial affixes. It allows you to buff your strengths even more as your weaknesses become even weaker. Or the opposite. Whatever you choose to do with it, is up to you.
Rare Item
- rolls extra number of affixes
This is your standard item, that gives you a lot of stats, and you can use these to even out your character. To buff many areas and cover your weaknesses. Whatever affixes you decide to get on it is up to you.
If you have played the old Runescape, there used to be two styles of character. The Pures and the Standard. The Pure style was all about levelling 1 skill to the max, and not touching the other skill at all. Whereas the Standard would be levelling all their skills. The Pures had the benefit of having that really high skill at a lower level, at the detriment of, usually, defensive capibility.
This is kind of what Magic (Strawberry) and Rare (Vanilla) items can do in Diablo 4. These are the roles that they can fulfill in the endgame.
Now, both of these Item Flavours buff your skills. They do not undermine your skills or your character building. They just make them stronger.
Then there is a third Item Flavour which throws a wrench in the gears and shifts them in wacky ways. It throws your skills in completely different directions.
Epic Item
- rolls fewer affixes
- rolls a unique affix that transforms a skill
Epic Item (Chocolate) is like Legendary but not mandatory. It does not roll an affix that buffs a skill beyond what a Magic and Rare can, ie no 50%+ damage modifiers like what Diablo 4 is currently doing.
Epic Item transforms skills. This is something that D3’s skill rune system did well. In D3 the WD could summon little toads that moved forward and exploded on enemies. But the WD had a rune that instead of summoning 3 little toads, he summoned a big one that swallowed enemies for a duration. This big toad was not a better choice than little toads. It was a not a worse choice than little toads. It was a different choice. One that you could opt for. It was not mandatory.
That Giant Toad item doesn’t make your little toad build obsolete because it’s not more or less powerful, so it gives you an option to play a different playstyle, if you wish.
This type of Item Flavour only works if it can pull that off. If it is too strong, it will undermine your character building. It will undermine your other skills and item flavours. If it is too weak, then no one will use it, which is not good either.
These type of Item Flavours are avenues for player expression and creativity. They do not invalidate your pre-existing Character Build.
Now that such a system is in place. The player is chasing items from a bigger pool of different Item Flavours. You have different types and different variety of items that you chase in the endgame, depending on what you are going for. Instead of being handed a Dev-approved Legendary, you have choice in how you build your character. This makes the endgame more interesting.
The Devs already showed us something like this and promised to give us a variety of Item Flavours back in 2020 - Diablo IV Quarterly Update—December 2020 — Diablo IV — Blizzard News
https://imgur.com/ueIiwt7
But even in their image, you can see that there is no way a normal affix is going to compete with that 46% additional damage. The first two item flavour are not competing at all with the third.
This is just terrible design in my view and it needs to change.
But what I am seeing is the Devs have invested all their cards into Legendary items. I like there is an item in the game that as has cool game-changing effects. I just wish that it wasn’t the only way to gear my character.
I don’t know if this can be changed at this point. But here are somethings they can do to bring back the Item Flavours.
7. Solution
Here’s a list of my proposed solutions for the Devs -
1. Legendary Affixes
Nerf the modifiers on Legendary Affixes. Smash 'em with the Hammer of the Ancients with 100% crit chance.
- Bring the Legendary Affixes back down to earth and make them similar in power level to Normal Affixes like + to Skill.
- Make it so that Legendary affixes ONLY change functionality. Remember the example of little frogs that deal damage vs giant toad that swallows.
- Make them Optional, that’s the key.
2. Rare Items
So there is a huge system in the game for collecting Legendary powers and converting your Rares into Legendaries.
I say leave it in. There is value in having such a system.
Introduce a new item type. Let’s call it Mystic Item.
- Mystic Item fulfills the original role of Rare items.
- Mystic Items roll many affixes, more than Rares and Legendary items.
- Make it so Mystic Items can never be implanted with a Legendary affix.
- Make it so Mystics items can compete with the best Rare-Legendary items.
3. Magic Items
Buff the affix roles on Magic Items. Allow them to roll higher base stats like Weapon Damage and Armour, higher item-specific affixes like Overpower Damage, and higher rolls on other regular affixes e.g. 20% damage to Crowd Controlled enemies.
Again -
- Allow them to compete with your best Legendary items.
- Make it so Magic Items can never be implanted with a Legendary affix.
Remember the downside with Magic items is that they roll fewer affixes than Rare, Legendary and Mystic. They are Specialist Items for people looking to strongly buff specific things.
4. Unique items
Currently Unique items are not really offering anything different from Legendary affixes, which is tragic. But if Unique items offered new skills to the Classes, that would be perfect.
Like in D2 Assassin getting Whirlwind skill from Chaos Runeword or the Barbarian getting Werewolf skill from Wolfhowl.
You don’t have to give classes any skills from other classes if you are not comfortable with that. But what you can do is design new skills, and put these on your Unique items. Maybe take some D2 and D3 favourites and bring them back like Summon Bear or Armageddon or Zombie Bears!
Rework your Unique Items. Take the bland ones, and make those into Legendary affixes. Design new skills for them.
I mean Legendary items when they are good, already offer, what are essentially, new skills. So your Unique Items have to be really out of the world. You really have to knock them out of park for them to be something different from Legendary items.
- Either capitalize on the nostalgia of previous games
or - Give them skills from other clases
or - Do something with them that the players just never expect you to do on an item
Otherwise, there is no point in having Uniques, there’s plenty of Legendary items filling that role.
5. Normal Items/ White Items
With these items, you’d have to create interesting Doodads, like Gems (fixed affixes, which you currently have in-game), Jewels (randomized affixes), Runes (that link into Runewords)… as these items are meant to be the base items for crafting.
- Increase the number of Sockets they can roll like 1-8 sockets.
- Allow players to stack a whole bunch of doodads in these items to create any kind of item they want
In Diablo 4 early development, Runes worked like player-created If-Then statements.
E.g.
Rune 1 - After using Potion, you get…
Rune 2 - … 10% more Crit Chance.
You’d fit the Runes together in that order to get the effect.
Pretty neat mechanic.
In these hyper-socketed White Items, allow players to fit a bunch of Gems, Jewels, and Runes to create their desired item.
Longsword
5 SocketsSocket 1 is Gem (Amethyst) -
- 10% damage over time
Socket 2 is Jewel of the Serpent -
- +1 to Poison skills
- 30% more poison damage to slowed enemies
Socket 3 is Jewel of Infection -
- +1 to Rabies
- +2 seconds to Damage over Time duration
Socket 4 - Potion Rune
Socket 5 - Burst Rune
- After drinking a potion, your damage over time effects deal their full damage instantly
Bam! You’ve allowed the player to create a crafted item from a bunch of Doodads in your game that are easy to understand in themselves.
By the way… if you balance your Legendary affixes correctly to where other Item Flavours are still viable, then you can even make these Legendary Aspects into socketable Doodads to be fitted in Normal Items, allowing players to stack multiple Legendary affixes in the same item!.. at the cost of regular affixes of course. But note - your regular affixes have to be good and able to compete with Legendary affixes for this to work!
You might be thinking this is too complex. This is too overwhelimg.
Here’s the thing…
Gems like Ruby, Sapphire, etc teach the players about Sockets, Socketed items and that whole process of socketing and unsocketing them. Have the players mess around with Gems during levelling. Save the rest of these Doodads for the endgame so that your new players won’t be overwhelmed by this system.
Rather than shying away from complexity and depth in favour of dumbing everything down for new players, just create a game where you ease people into these systems slowly over time. So that they can learn about them at a comfortable pace. You are already doing that with Paragon boards unlocking at certain levels, and that’s perfect!
8. Conclusion
Look, I like what Diablo 4 is doing with its MMO design.
I like where Diablo 4 is going with the story and visuals.
I like the vibes.
I am seeing a Druid… after 20 years! :.)
I am seeing dead people… in the quests I mean, with super sad stories, and it’s perfect. It makes me want to explore the world.
I am seeing well-hung tortured souls and the attention to detail…
https://i.redd.it/7w644ppm45qa1.jpg
It’s not actually what it looks like but it made me do a double take when I saw it in-game.
I like all of that. I just don’t like some of the systems. And I think they should be changed, especially the Itemization.
I mean we all have a severe case of blue balls for Diablo 4 at this point but I would still be willing to wait and have the Devs improve and perfect their systems before releasing. I’d rather Diablo 4 be delayed than Diablo 4 be bad.
Thanks for reading!
