Yes! This is what I want. This is what drew me in to Diablo and what made me stay. The hope of getting to play something close to what is described here is why I read and write on this forum.
If Blizzard takes enough inspiration from this thread and makes Diablo 4 this good, I will be playing and supporting D4 for the rest of my life, (or until D5 comes out).
I don’t care if I get all I want, but please read this great summary of what makes Diablos gameplay so engaging!
Even the soup du’jour over on Steam right now, Valheim, is INSANELY difficult and extremely punishing. Yet it sold 3,000,000 copies in 2 weeks. When will companies wake up and understand that a game doesn’t have to be casual-friendly, to appear to the masses. It just has to be SPECIAL. People will buy it, and die, and love it the whole time.
I think some developers are under the impression that they need to make the game so that all players of all skill levels and time spent can enjoy every little piece of content they created, when in fact, that really is not the case. If you have a massive game, especially build based RPGs, you will have a ton of content that most people will never touch or succeed in beating/acquiring, and that can be a good thing sometimes. The Elder Scrolls, Diablo II, even games like Breath of the Wild, have so much in them, that most people, especially causal players will not do it all. They won’t understand certain in depth elements that they didn’t need to to beat the game. They won’t get every item or do every quest. They won’t make all the builds there are to make. That is okay. They don’t need to and quite frankly, most don’t care to or even know that those things are there. They put in the 50 or so hours and had a ball. They will come back when an expansion is released and give you more money. Having depth so that everyone can have a fresh and interesting experience while offering tons for the core player, is really key here.
I never found a ZOD Rune, I never reached level 99 in Softcore, I came close in Hardcore, I never did several Runewords, Diablo II, 20 years later, there is so much to try that it still cheers me up.
But the philosophy is different now …
Let’s see where it’s at after a few years. D3 sold over 31M.
I’d even argue that Valheim isn’t appealing to the masses rather the niche survival market.
Agreed. Granted when I was younger I was stupid (also didn’t have the internet as soon as some others) and didn’t play the game optimally. But I still had a fantastic time regardless (which is my point). I have been able to snag some high runes in the past couple years and make some pretty good runewords, but still no Zod, no Death’s Fathom, no Enigma, etc. But I have found a lot of high end stuff too. I like that I still have exciting things to find when I bust back into Resurrected. It’s not like I was weak and couldn’t beat hell.
I, like many others, bought Diablo III because I wanted the Action House (free trade), also the PVP System with rewards and arenas (as it was announced even after the launch), among other things.
If the game sold at the time was the current game I would not buy it. Just like I don’t buy anything else in the pre-order, including Diablo II: R.
I felt and I feel cheated about Diablo III.
What is really funny is what Diablo III was like when it was announced. I really wish we had gotten that version of it. It looked a bit less cartoony, had skill trees, and eventually turned to runes that drop as skill modifiers which had tiers and differing effects. It really changed over development. Which could happen to DIV as well, for better or for worse.
Wait, are you saying you feel cheated for a purchase you made based many years later after a game went through changes that were very publicly talked about and tested?
I mean you knew what you were buying in 2012, I assume you were entertained based on why you bought it. Nothing about it’s current stat changes what you experienced or your initial reasoning for purchasing it. Got to let it go.
You better leave it alone because you’re not saying anything meaningful here.
The PVP was announced BEFORE and AFTER the official launch.
The game economy was announced BEFORE, DURING and AFTER the launch, and was interrupted for reasons unrelated to the game. So far so good, but it has NEVER been restored, they copied WOW and that’s it, everything was fine for them.
Those who do not know or do not understand this, who did not participate in the forums at the time and did not provide almost daily feedback should leave it alone.
Oh please. The game was fine and sold as advertised besides PvP, which they were upfront about the entire time. The economy was there and fine and lasted for almost 2 years. If you feel duped that is on you. All changes were announced, tested, and documented. Nothing just changed out of the blue.
This looks like a joke.
There is a topic in this forum where this issue was dealt with in detail, all pre and post launch announcements were posted and it was clear that they did not keep their promise.
And the worst thing is that you say that the PVP has always been open. hahahaha
You better let it go.
Never claimed they didn’t keep gameplay or system promises. I said they were upfront about it. They said they just couldn’t get PvP to a good state so ended up scrapping it. Being duped would be they advertise PvP, then never work on it, never add it, or talk about it. Which is not the case.
They said that many months after the launch, and not before.
I didn’t buy sincerity, I bought PVP.
I’m so worried that the combat in D4 will be all about affix pinball stealing the love from the monsters themself…
You guys realize the game is not out yet…and that none of you have played it…right?
I’m worried because I have reasons to worry… You don’t see a problem with the devs showing gameplay that seems to detract from not just the intricacies of combat, but from the horror fantasy aesthetics and design that they have worked so hard to realize elsewhere in the game?
Or are you suggesting we should all entirely stop expressing our opinions about what we’re shown of the game? On the forum that the devs have stated we should, btw.
Hire this man Blizzard!
I hate the Attack and Defense numbers on the items, They say they are trying to simplify it when really 2374 attack on a weapon means nothing to me and my girlfriend its so confusing.
Does 2374 add that amount to my current damage? Or is that my base damage? where does all this “attack” come from, Attack speed again?? Please no.
Give me
Sword
75-89 damage please and with just that equipped thats what damage my basic attack does with no extra stats affixes legendary powers skills etc.
This is kind of a question if anyone knows what “Attack” numbers mean in D4 ty 
Zefre You realise you also didn’t need to jump into the thread to tell people that?
…
Good post OP and well thought out. I don’t think it needs to go quite to the extent of D1 with open skills across the board, but certainly being able to combine a large variety of skills adds to the depth and replayability (i.e. Grim Dawn’s dual classes and item skills).
I think the key takeaway is that Blizzard has sacrificed strong, core gothic game design for accessibility and more ‘addictive’ gameplay loops (gem levelling, GR’s, Paragon scaling, etc), to broaden their audience as much as possible. I in some respects see D3 as more a 3D scolling beat-em-up with a side game to unlock builds than ARPG.
So how do they now balance this arcade fun with serious ARPG? I would also strip away much of the arcade style repetitive content and revisit as per the OP, but for Blizzard to do so they then need to be clear with their audience that newer gameplay loops may not reappear and lose a portion of the playerbase, with the obvious hope that the returned strong gothic game design is attractive to many new players anyway.
Absolutely agree about the core weapon sandbox, the game should stand up on it’s own without the skills, the core combat should feel visceral. This also plays into how Blizzard provides defined characters in D3 (DH, Monk etc) rather than a somewhat blank slate (warrior/mage/rogue) that the player builds on towards their own definition, evidenced most strongly by the focus around sets and accompanying items reinforcing Blizzard’s character designs over the players’.
They’re changing how the damage and damage-type works… It’s no longer “static” (i.e. what you read on your item) but rather dynamic toward the stats of the opponent (same attack does different things to different target)
So it’s more like “yu-gi-oh” (or insert any card game) of that matter… Only in card-games the numbers substract and the differential goes towards the player’s HP in damage number, these ones divide instead… Long-story-short, here’s how I think they envisioned/works:
Damage = Skill-Damage * totalATK / targetTotalDEF, and for elemental damage types I’d assume it be:
Damage = Skill-Damage * totalATK / targetTotalDEF * ((1 + ElementAmp%) / (1 + ElementRes%))
And yes, EACH mob/type (regardless how skinny or how insignificant) would also have their own ATK & DEF ratings as well :P, and even more so clear than before they’re “ditching” the Auto-Attack as damage source and placing it on Generators instead (even generators have their own Skill-Damage amount), hence the assumption that base-damage (without ATK/DEF or Amp/Res or Trigger modyfiers) is the damage of the skill itself
It’s an assumption at this point (after all we all forgot to ask in the Q&A), and tbt the devs have kept it a vague-info/secret in a large portion, or at least something they didn’t feel the need/urge to talk about… So maybe even if we asked probably wouldn’t have given a thorough answer but would’ve gotten some basic info about the ATK and DEF
And yes, I based that assumption (nothing that’s been confirmed) based upon the “common” ratio between items (weapon and armor pieces), because Weapon always seems to have just above the ATK rating that the totals of DEF ratings on the armor pieces would be… For ex. Weapon ATK was in the 8k range, and the chest armor was below 3k… As you can see they also re-added ATK/DEF to the jewelry as well (at first didn’t look right, probably still not but it’s nice to know that you can have 2 types of jewelry, those that increase your ATK, and those that increase your DEF)
But yes, one thing you can be sure of, the ATK and DEF are ratings, not “pure” damage numbers 