BlizzConline 2021 Pre-Show Welcome

General Discussion
68

Ohh, that is really a good question.

The pace of combat in D3 is great until you get sets or one of the items that make Movement Skills spammable (e.g. via large amounts of RCR or CDR). It is neither too fast nor too slow, it is just that power creep ruined that.

What we have seen so far from D4 also only seems to be the midgame or early-game and so far the pace is okay, but imo in the endgame it should be faster, though not so far that it becomes like D3, so it would be really great to know about what their plans are for the combat pace in the endgame.

I asked one of the devs on twitter a somewhat related question on cooldowns, and his response was that they are trying to be careful to not to put too much CDR on items to make certain skills perma-active, and maybe the same applies to RCR as well…

… which means that would not have something like a perma-Whirlwind Barbarian or a DH with infinite Vaults or Strafe, LeapQuake Barb, etc , unless there would be legendaries that for some reason remove or reset the Resource Costs or the Cooldown from a skill.

So I guess that chances are somewhat high that the combat pace in the endgame is not gonna be like in D3 (unless they have the idea to let uniques / legendaries reset the RC or the CD of movement skills).

I have the question I asked in the tweet in my list as well, and although it has already been answered, I wounder if I shall ask again in the hope to convince the devs to let certain skills (like Wrath of the Berserker) first start their cooldown until after their effects have expired, to make 100% uptime impossible from the get-go and to make balance easier…

… but that could also be a bit too pushy, dunno.

I also would prefer if both Legendaries and Unqiues have pre-determined affixes.

It also would be great to know how they determine what makes a special affixes to fit on a legendary and not on a unique and vice versa.

3 Charges on Health Potions would be the best imo a very good middle ground.

If that is what you want (or if you have another idea that you rather would what to see), why imply that in the question?

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Oh yes, plz.

Remember the D3 Gameplay Trailer from the 2008 Announcement?
Weapons weapons with Elemental Damage where freezing and stunning enemies.

It would be great if a weapon with Fire Damage on it would cause enemies to burn.

As far as I understood the current Skill Tree, you can unlock Passive Skill Points (or at least additional Skill Points) by putting Aktive Skill Points into specific parts of the Active Skill Tree… which imo is weird.

That question has already been answered by several of the devs, even at the day they announced D4. They wanna keep the numbers much lower than in D3.

oof, maybe that is because of how I phrase the questions by often starting with “What do you think about / What are your thoughts and feeling about …”, instead of just “Will something in D4 be like this or that?”.

The latter way of phrasing the question can be answered with Yes or No, while the first way is more open ended and leaves much more space for saying something.

It is like what you as a superior ask your team “What are possible solutions to this issue?”, rather than “What is THE solution to this issue?”, because the first question leaves more space for ideas to come up and to be spoken out, while the latter question asks for “the one and only correct answer” so to speak.

69

Nothing wrong with that.

A good question is one that extracts most valuable information, such that haven’t been shared until that moment, which then leads to the conclusion that both those who ask questions and those who approve them have to have good knowledge of what has already been revealed.

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70

A problem with asking that way is they can easily respond with “Sounds cool!”. Without answering if it is something they would actually do. We saw that non-answer a lot at the previous Blizzcon.

Imo it seems better to ask if X is going to be in the game, or even better How.

Like, instead of asking Will combat be slower and more tactical? Where they can just answering yes, without really saying anything at all, might be How will you ensure combat is slower and more tactical?

Definitely worth asking again.

Not that I expect any of these detailed questions to be answered :frowning:

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71

Interesting. Spontaneously I can’t remember that. Do you have a link / or timestamp to something like that in a video?

If so I would like to see that (and if it is not too much effort for you).

Ah, that is interesting! That indeed is even better than my current way of phrasing the questions. I will adjust them accordingly, so thanks very much for that! I appreciate that!

72

The problem is they can always “dodge” a question to a degree of their liking, no matter how asked.

I mean, if we ask them a straight Y/N question, for example “Would we be able to turn off other players’ customizations/MTXs?”, they can always mumbo-jumbo stuff and dodge it.

The process of question selection has to make sure those unpleasant questions that are to be dodged aren’t mentioned at all.

Don’t you guys have phones questionnaire.

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73

These are more suggestions than questions. ^^

74

I know, right?! :smile: :laughing:
However, I would say that a lot of the community would also be interested in hearing their thoughts on some of these, like the Last Epoch Skill System, which very renowned within the ARPG community as the best Skill System that every existed so far, so it would be interesting why Blizzard is not taking inspiration from that.

75

Well, anything that makes them talk about the way they think is interesting. ^^

I don’t have many questions right now, mostly because they still have much to reveal. Things like “will there be charms ?” or other unannounced feature is not very relevant at the moment since they will only talk about what they are ready to show.

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76

Of course.
Just really easy if you come with “wouldn’t this thing be cool?”. The easy answer is yes. Doesn’t mean they think it is good for their game.

I just want them to work a bit for the dodge, instead of “sounds cool!” :stuck_out_tongue:

Sorry, not going to rewatch the interviews :slight_smile: but in the interviews from Rhykker and that PoE streamer guy I can’t remember, I recall some “yeah that sound cool” or “we might think about that” when asked about specific features. Always feels like a dodge.

Yeah. I have no hope for these Q&As. While I am not a fan of streamers in general, at least their interviews offers somewhat better information.

Yeah that should be the goal with most questions. And in a better world that is also how Blizzard should try to answer questions.
Showing a new class is not very interesting, I want their thoughts on why they are doing the things they are doing.
That gives us much more information.

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77

That’s understandable. With so little info that we know, most of my questions would likely be generic, or suggestions that hint at things that I would want in the game.

Pretty much, it would be:

  • Would you, the creators, consider granting players the option to create private rooms, so they could play and fight enemies, including World Events, by themselves or with a select few of friends?
  • One of Diablo 4 endgame activities will be running Key Dungeons, when can players begin this and how often would they be able to do this?
  • Diablo 3 vanilla made running Campaign mode multiple times an endgame by having a legendary item always drop at Diablo’s death. Is there plans on bringing this back to Diablo 4 by either having the campaign repeatable with updated rewards, or having a special campaign mode, that’s available upon finishing the campaign, where players will be able to play and repeat the campaign at a much higher difficulty than normal along with great rewards (rewards comparable to key dungeons)?
  • Diablo 4 promises to the a larger world than it’s predecessors. As such are there plans on having massive quests for players that require players to gather certain ingredients and perform certain actions in order to improve their chances at success? You could even allow players the opportunity to ignore the preparations portion and immediately tackle the massive quest, but have them face a considerably harder time completing it.
  • You mentioned seasons returning for Diablo 4. While seasons are great (the starting over portion), would it be possible to do away with the seasonal theme and rewards and instead make server wide events, whose start and duration correlates with season? These events would be available to both seasonal and non-seasonal players with both of them having their own set of objectives that they would need to complete to get their rewards.
  • The number of skills that the classes have seem underwhelming, are there plans to add more skills? For example, playing as a sorceress, there doesn’t seem to be a chance for me to play using only a single element as there’s not enough skills. Druids are also lacking in the summons aspect, it seems like I won’t be able to make a build that relies mostly on my summons for damage.
  • Speaking of Druids, is there any plans of introducing a passive, or something akin to that, that allows them to stay transformed longer outside of combat? The ability to seamlessly switch forms in combat is indeed a great thing, however the lack of ability to actually retain a transformed state doesn’t really fit their theme of Warriors who mastered their wild side.
78

This means less appropriate answers since the time is limited. Just scrap the dodge questions completely.

There’s also the indirect way to ask a question, but it has to bypass both the approval process and the developer’s knowledge, which is very hard to achieve in most cases, but is doable. Here’s an example:

I am indirectly asking them what is their stand on set dungeons as a whole and I use a “stupid” (or as the dev qualified it himself as “simple”) question to achieve this.

79

Agreed :+1:
That’s why I’m a bit concerned Blizzcon will focus around this big reveal and not much else…

80

A few questions I would love answers to.

  • Will items scale in end-game such as key dungeons? As in, can you find better versions of the same uniques and legendaries at higher key dungeon lvls.
    (need to find a way to frame the question to show my extreme contempt against the concept…)

  • What are the consequences of your character dying, in softcore mode? And do you think it is important for the gameplay, to have consequences for dying?

  • What is the cost for respecs going to be, and how do you plan to make sure the cost stays relevant throughout the game?

  • Why are you, on purpose, making 1 of the 4 attributes weaker for each class? Such as Strength for Sorceress.

  • The attribute requirements on skill upgrades are interesting, but why not have different bonuses on the same skill upgrades, for each attribute? The current concept seems like it could limit, rather than increase, build choices.

  • What is your opinion about builds that goes against the ‘standard’ class builds; like a melee sorceress, ranged barbarian, shout barbarian etc. Do you plan to support such builds through skill and item design?

  • Have you considered having more than 6 skill buttons? What is your reasoning for 6 skill buttons?

  • Will monsters have resistances in Diablo 4? If not, why? To emphasize, resistances, not immunities.

  • How do you plan to make enemies, and the challenges they offer, feel varied in combat?

  • Will followers/mercenaries return, and if not, why?

  • Do skills still have multiple skill lvls in the new skill trees? If not, why?

  • What are your thoughts on how universal or specialized item affixes should be? For example; +1 Fireball skills vs. +1 Fire skills vs. +1 Projectile skills. With the first being class/skill specific, while the others might work for many skills and classes.

  • What are your thoughts on zDPS support builds in Diablo 3, and what they did to the gameplay?

  • Do you plan to make solo and multiplayer more balanced than in Diablo 3, and how?

  • How do you plan to avoid the extreme power creep of Diablo 3?

  • Do you still think endless power growth through something like paragon is good for the game?
    (guess it could be asked in a less confrontational way, but not sure it should, since it is one of those topics we already have heard their thoughts on…)

  • Will replaying the campaign be a viable activity for end-game characters?

  • Which end-game activities will exist other than key-dungeons. What gameplay role do each end-game activity fulfill?

  • How do you plan to offer gameplay progression in end-game? Giving players more to do, than merely watching numbers go up. An example could be the Atlas system in Path of Exile.

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81

is this not what you are doing? changing your fireball skill into frost and now it wont burn anymore, but instead chill them.

82

In Diablo 3, yes.
In Diablo 4, so far, no.

A related question is:

  • “Will the overworld be a part of the endgame, or will the endgame only/mostly take part outside of the overworld, like in dungeons?”

Another related question is:

  • "Will it be possible to adjust the difficulty in the overworld (aside from the world scaling to your level), or will that just be possible in dungeons. If if the difficulty of the overworld is able to be adjusted, to which degree that that be possible?

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A few different question that also comes to my mind are:

  • Do you plan to increase the maximum character level with additional expansions, or do you think that seasons enough to provide a sense of progression, so that increasing the Level Cap would be unnecessary?
  • Will there be “Keystone” Passives like in Path of Exile, that drastically changes how your build or a mechanic works, that you have to spend several points at once into to unlock it instead of incrementally upgrading it?

Oh, this is an important question.
If you ask that question, maybe also mention that during the development of D3, there actually were 7 Skill slots and that players felt that 6 is not enough.

These questions are very interesting for me as well.
I would encourage you to ask them as well in addition to your other ones.

83

you kinda do, if we say you were a sorceress in real life and casting fireballs, but now you want to cast something that chills and instead changing your magic ball from fire to frost, thats what we are doing in game with two different attacks named frost and fireball, pretty much altering your magic spell.

84

There is Fire Bolt and Frost Bolt in D4, which work very similar, however, there currently is only Fireball, but no Frostball or Lightning Ball in D4 that work exactly like Fireball.

My suggestion was kinda based on the idea that there could be Unique Class Feature that works similar to runes in D3, but only for the Sorc, which would allow her to choose the element of a skill.

85

im just lost why there would be a need to change the frostbolt into fire, when we got fireball already? we most likely will get a generator that is fire aswell, im not bashing just not following the idea.

The meteor i get it, if it changes into a ice meteor or something

86

Definitely great questions! I would love for the exploration of the overworld to be made into an alternate endgame activity with rewards and challenge comparable to the dungeons like Key Dungeons. This wish also extends to the Campaign (assuming that the Campaign is repeatable, which I’m hoping it is) and side Quests of the game as well.

Some ways that this could be done could be either:

  1. Allow players to create private games with a few additional difficulties (like 2 or 3 more) that would affect monsters fought in the Campaign, the Overworld, and certain dungeons. The additional difficulties would have monsters stronger than when their faced in public or the normal difficulty in private games. Each difficulty would grant monsters new abilities (not just more elite group affixes, but actual new individual abilities for certain monsters).
  2. Have two game difficulties. Normal difficulty, where monsters stats are scaled to the player’s level as well as the number of players that are in the area. As well as Hell difficulty, where monsters level are set some levels higher than player cap (like 10 levels or so), as well as scaling to the number of players. Monsters in Hell difficulty have additional abilities as well.

There’s probably some more ways to do it, but that’s the most I could think of as of right now.

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87

If there would be different elemental versions for skills like Meteor, Hydra, Firewall, etc, and there is no way to change the element via a Unique Class Mechanic, then there would need to be a Fire Hydra skill, a Lightning Hydra skill, a Frost Hydra skill, a Fire Meteor skill, a Lightning Meteor skill, a Frost Meteor skill, a Fire-Wall skill, a Lightning-Wall skills and a Frost-Wall skill etc on the Skill Tree / the Skill List, so basically 3 times the amount of skills than what would be required.

So if this way of choosing your element is already done for most skills, then why leave out things like the Generators? The existing Frost Bolt would be incorporated into the Frost version of Fire Bolt that you can choose.

Choosing the element would be one of the Sorcs unique class mechanics, because she is the master of elements.

Yes, definitely.
I very much would like that the overworld is useful in the endgame as well.
Otherwise it would just be a waste.

Yeah, that is one way to do it, and there are likely others, but it just shows that the overworld can (and should) be relevant in the endgame as well.

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