yeaaa grim dawn is an ok skill system i guess?
PoE is too much for most people
the passive tree is cool but too much
and the active skill system is a nice idea but it leads to…a stash full of skill gems and you have no idea what to do -> stress
Stealthy troll topic. Would read again.
Took bait.
+1
I dont like PoEs skill gem system. Their PoE 2.0 changes sounds like a big improvement (decoupling it from items).
So to be exact:
Passive tree inspiration from PoE (though yeah, less crazy than that. Maybe look at Wolcen instead). All classes should have their own passive tree however. A core aspect of Diablo is classes imo. That should remain. Which alone would drastically reduce the passive tree size. But D4s passive tree seems like a bad joke so far.
End-game: PoE (not saying it should be copied, just as inspiration), both the map system, but also just the extreme scope of different activities that has been added over time.
Skill modification: Last Epoch, and a little PoE. Hell, D3s skill modification is way better than what we see from D4 right now. (Base-skills themselves are fine as they are in both D3 and D4)
Itemization: Grim Dawn, imo it beats all the competition here. Their skill system is nothing special though. Their constellation passive/skill modifcation system is quite nice, but not that different from PoE. Could also be used as inspiration.
D4 should keep the gameplay changing legendary affixes. By itemization I only mean the normal gear affixes, and enchants.
Inspiration from all the above would be lovely imo. Does not need to be as complex as each of them, because if you offer something in all these areas, the game does not have to rely solely on being strong in one or few of these areas. More depth overall through the interactions, but each system would be less complex.
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Diablo series has enough depth, so I dont get why people talk about this. Big companies are facing much harder problems, how to make new and interesting stuff when players have seen it all already. Also Ive started to see big companies with awesome games with lots of depth and cool stuff but they fail in marketting.
Speaking of Replayability I think its old-school, Seasons are new cool. Yeah instead of going with replaybility I would go with Seasons and try to think clever ways how to get people back when new Season starts.
because it actually had pvp which is in itself an end game to many people
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It’s true that D1 created it.
But it was not so popular. D2 was the game that made ARPG a staple of gaming that is popular to this day.
Believe me, some people will play D4, and then go “Sure, it’s a good game. But D2 was better.”
Because they will remember the excitement and epiphany of playing D2 back in the day, and they will directly compare those feelings to feelings of playing D4. And they will find the latter lacking.
People will compare SUBJECTIVELY. Not Objectively. People will compare their enjoyment back when they were a teenager and their enjoyment today when they’ve already seen it all a dozen times over. And people WILL complain that D4 sucks because it isn’t as grandeur as D2, even if objectively it would beat D2 in every possible way.
That’s what I’m talking about.
That’s one of the problems PoE currently has - its systems are so much, so complex, so Math intense, so knowledge dependent that NOT A SINGLE player takes the optimal decisions all the time.
PoE really went as further as possible in the system’s depth direction. But once you unnecessary complicate a game so much people start looking at other games - that’s what happening now there. This is a mistake that’s hard to correct now. Maybe some of that unnecessary complications will drop off in PoE 2, but nevertheless having to invest hundreds of hours to learn what’s optimal in a game just to play a D2 type of game (with very simple gameplay) is an easy NO for many players.
I personally don’t want D4 to adopt any PoE system. PoE is bad in every aspect. D4 should aim to simplify Math as much as possible. I already presented an itemization that achieves this (heavy min-maxing with no complex Math at all) in the old forums. That’s what D4 has to do. And it looks like (from their philosophy: easy to learn, hard to master) that’s exactly what they aim and I am FULLY behind them on this one.
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Ye, one of the reasons I quit PoE is because… I sold some items for a crazy price and I had no idea why they cost so much. I looked at the affixes, looked for them in PoePedia… but still got no idea why. Sometimes I sold items for a cheap price and people literally laughted at me - so stupid was I, as it was very valuable. But I had no idea why. Then someone advised me to install ONE MORE stupid 3rd party programm that would calculate the price before I buy or sell using another 3rd party site. So I had like 3-4 3rd party applications installed to play this stupid game.
Agreed. iPhone 3 reveal was exciting, shocking and hyped at that time. Now, even a modern budget smartphone can easily destroy iPhone 3 but no one really cares about the modern budget smartphone.
Indeed. I always love to see how far my “well-equipped” character can push his limit.
Is that a bad thing? Sounds like a positive to me if there are no easy answers.
As long as it is possible to play it with reasonable success without going into all that.
Easy to learn, hard to master really is a good concept. Blizzard should relearn it.
(Which as I read on you mention too, though we draw different conclusions from it 
)
Take a look a Wolcen passive tree, I did not consider that particularly hard to figure out (if we ignore that everything was bugged, which does not have anything to do with the complexity of it).
Since D4 should not allow trading that would not be a problem 
I don’t really see the problem in items having value that is not immediately apparent. Maybe there are builds that can use a weird mix of stats etc.
In D3 everything is so simple, when you see an item you instantly knows how good the item is for everybody.
People still seem ridiculously hyped by the top iPhones releases every year, so apparently they can create excitement with the essentially same products again and again.
I don’t really see the problem in items having value that is not immediately apparent. Maybe there are builds that can use a weird mix of stats etc.
You should play PoE and you will see it. The stats and characteristics of items tell nothing before you (somewhere, but not in the game) learn all those hidden mechanics behind. This is just a bad design.
Not if you need to invest hundreds of hours only to solve specifically these. And if you don’t solve these you are simply making random decisions (and PoE forces you to make such since the complete information about its systems is intentionally hidden). You can progress with random decisions, but I personally don’t enjoy it. I want to be able to min-max in a friendly way independent of Math.
Complicating things for the sake of being complex is what should be avoided. In PoE however that’s made on purpose since the game is shallow gameplay wise and they need to put complex systems in it to look like a good game to the majority.
I want to see maximum two-digit numbers in D4, just as in HS. The more simple the Math is the better the game would be. And they already said we’ll have all the information present, so that’s a good start.
I dont like PoEs itemization (though mostly for the opposite reasons; it is a bit bland imo, and completely dominated by the sockets). And I am not saying mechanics should be hidden. All the math and how stuff works should be readily available, in game, A good stats screen can help with that. Equip the item and instantly see what it does (of course some affixes, especially legendary affixes might not be something you can show the effect of in a stat screen, but that seems fine too. That is certainly true for some D3 legendary affixes too).
Mechanics that are complex enough, where an item might seem mediocre for most builds, but have amazing potential for a single innovative build; that would indicate a really strong and deep itemization system imo.
As it should be. That doesn’t mean the interactions of the stats cant be complex.
D3 does that reasonably well with the toughness stat for example; giving some indication of your defenses, even though it cant take everything into account of course.
Again easy to learn hard to master. If you dont want to go deep into what stats does, you can look at the toughness stat and do reasonably fine. While later you might begin to focus on the actual affixes, and gain more value out of fine-tuning the different affixes for your build.
Nor does the math have to be particularly difficult. It is a matter of what the math tells you that add the complexity.
Like lets take a random PoE affix here: “Gain #% of Physical Damage as Extra Cold Damage”. Nothing complicated about it. No difficult math needed to understand what it does. But it is also not immediately apparent how good the stat is. For some builds it will do literally nothing. For others it might be build-enabling.
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They have to be complex in terms of min-maxing, but not in terms of Math.
Many people in D3 have no idea whether some damage is additive or multiplicative. PoE on the other side has a lot of stats doing basically the same thing, but with different Math formula (dodge, defense, block, evade for example).
Stats have to be there for the sake of gameplay, not for the sake of complications. If having 10 damage types does not offer new gameplay in relation to 9, we don’t need 10. And so on, with every stat.
Of course.
Having dodge, defense, block and evade can offer different things however (not saying a game should have all of them). If you can make a dodge barb and a block barb and they work and feel different from one another, interacting differently with other items, skills/passives and enemies, it is not complexity for the sake of complexity.
Still, if you have less than a few hundred item affixes, something is wrong imo. That obviously dont mean you can just throw in a few hundred affixes that all do the same thing. Everything should interact with the game in different ways and have meaningful consequences. Goes without saying.
And close to zero of those affixes should be universal. Different affixes for different builds. One of D3s biggest mistakes was how dominant a few stats are for all builds; crit etc.
Yes, that’s the case when the engine would allow for it.
When during combat the player is able to decide which hit to dodge, block or tank then these stats would be meaningful since they would lead to new gameplay.
For example, let’s take a barb with:
Dodge: 25% (no damage taken if successful), Block: 60% (half damage taken if successful), Counter-attack: 20 (ability that could be used when neither dodge nor block was used before that), Attack: 8 (could be used always), Hit points: 20
Our barb is faced with a potential hit from some mob that if successful would deal 2 damage to us. The mob has 20 hit points. We decide to tank the hit, lose 2 hit points ourselves and counter-attack deadly. The mob is dead.
Now our barb is faced with a potential hit that if successful would deal 10 damage to us. The mob has 5 hit points. We decide to block and attack after that to kill the mob.
That’s meaningful stats leading to different type of gameplay. At each stage the player is faced with a choice depending on his and enemies stats. We can say all the stats matter and the gameplay/combat is strengthen by the stats without any unnecessary complication to exist.
However, the above is not the case in PoE where the stats and Math are there to fill the gameplay void.
I want new gameplay in aRPGs, not getting +5 main stat to do the same thing on next level. That’s as boring as it could get.
Even if these are all passive things on items, it still leads to different builds. Not everything has to be a button you press… for example, resistances to different kinds of attacks (fire, lightning, cold, poison, etc). Finding an item that has amazing fire resist, knowing that you are going to encounter some fire type enemies, may make you forfeit a more powerful item in that slot.
Likewise, knowing you’ll be facing an enemy that has slower attacks may make you want to have higher dodge or evasion - knowing he is more likely to miss - as opposed to armor, because he hits super hard anyway. With the active dodging in D4, though, that may not make as much sense. But thinking about it this way, not every character should be super good at dodging perhaps. If you wear heavy items with lots of armor, maybe your dodge is slower than another player’s.
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Indeed.
Yeah, the D4 active dodge should certainly be affected by items etc. as well.
Could work. I am sure PoE could handle this as well if they wanted to. Just different skills you click; a block skill, a counterattack skill etc.
I very much want to see D4 get more tactical combat. At the same time, having active skills to use, doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be passive defensive stats.
Different builds do NOT always lead to different gameplay.
For a passive skill to lead to different gameplay it has to change the physical effect of some active skill or introduce a new mechanic itself.
Yes, they could at a very basic level, but because their engine lacks adequate physics this won’t be much fun thus they introduce a lot of unneeded stats to fill the game with allowing for millions of builds yet a few gameplay variations.
Actual stuff you click or see is not always required for added depth or gameplay mechanics. As an example that was already cited, having stats for elemental resistances can lead to people strategically managing their build based on different encounters.