That wasn’t a problem in Diablo 2 because under leveled gear still offered utility, they can be upgraded in Horadric Cube and can be traded away to alt characters. Low grade (magical and rare) items in Diablo 4 gonna offer higher stats in Diablo 4 regarding the quarterly updates also.
It was not about finding the highest item level legendary or unique back then, neither now. When I was talking about rewards, I was more or less concerned about experience points.
If there’s level scaling item system in D4, then redeeming the corrupted towns to gain a waypoint doesn’t exactly reward you as you can farm anywhere you’d like and odds for drops are always same.
Idea must be redeeming those towns so player can have easy access to the lower level areas that doesn’t scale with character level so they can eliminate some of the randomization from the loot table and target items in a game with free market. I don’t think an MMO-lite where you can raid with 25 players would work with level scaling. Even most standard MMOs have static areas or servers that doesn’t scale up. It’s up to developers in the end but I don’t expect it.
What I mean is the scaling, if there are 20 different difficulty levels and monster deals 10% max health damage at the first one, how much damage do you expect it to deal at 20th scale? Even if there are only 4-5, then still the same question stands. You may say, this is not Diablo 3 and I’d indeed agree.
It’s what they said and a level scaling item system is pretty much the norm outside of diablo 2
I guess rescuing camps is simply a way of enriching the world aspect and rewards the player with an activity and a new safe zone to chill out while doing the main story
Not for anything item related outside of cosmetics
I have never heard of quests that help you access an area that let’s you speed farm level 5 trash mobs when you are level 30
Just not very modern
I know the director changed 2 times since then but David Kim said you would be able to find the strongest item in a barrel so…
Let’s hope they don’t as it’s killing the progression feel of the game. It would be much better if monster level gets fixed for a region when you enter it, like if you are level 10 it goes from 9-10 in the starting area then progressively scales up to 20-21 in the final dungeon. It would feel more like a real world instead of a procedural program.
Also, I don’t know how they would manage the overworld’s shared monsters if they are supposed to change level with the player.
However, I fully expect everything in the game to be scaled level 40 once we finish the campaign, as you said it would be a waste if most of the world is uselessly underleveled.
That wasn’t a problem in D2 because of Hell mode, where you could find end game items anywhere. I don’t think anyone went back to Nightmare to farm, unless they were stuck in early Act 1.
That’s true, however there are still the Attack and Defense stats which seem to increase much faster. I don’t think the developpers’ intent is to send players back to farm lower levels anyway.
Some build guides on Diablo 2 mentions upgraded very low grade items. Can you find a better alternative at Hell? Sure, but what are the chances in a very large pool? You either buy them or go that mile and look for them yourself at lower level areas. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Everyone may want a Harlequin’s Crest or Guillame’s Face, but upgraded Vampire Gaze is also a popular helm. You may never see that in a public game or on a server but believe it or not, people hunt such items at solo play. Game is not consist of five boss battles over and over.
Then I have no idea. At least I can’t tell the gist of implementing a system such as corrupt towns when they’re completely optional and doesn’t reward player if items scale with character level.
Also you can sell such low level items to others, as no character spawns in the middle of Act 5 as a level 99. When Diablo 3 started back at 2012 as classic release, I remember such low level items like Leoric’s Signet, Homunculus and few other legendary items selling for really high amount of gold if they’re decently rolled. I wonder if they want a lively market place or not.
Diablo 4 will have an item trading system and level scaling means you’ll find nothing to sell to lower levels unless you start a character yourself. This also goes for your lower level alt character. It doesn’t make sense to me, but if you like the idea of finding level 40 items only without ever needing to trade a lower level item that’s your ideal system.
Perhaps they’d implement smart roll system where you only get your own main stat items and even as a low level character you’d still get nothing reliable to sell to others for emphasizing first day profits.
Yes, but you could also find them in Hell. Most of the time, you would keep a Ward shield or some well-doted item quite far into Hell mode, but you wouldn’t go back to Normal just to farm them. Unless it was in the purpose of trading a specific item.
D4 will use a very different system anyway, as any item can be found in a different version depending of the monster’s level, same as in D3. So even if affixes don’t scale immensely as in D3, you will still find a better Stormwalker’s Cudgel at level 40 than level 20.
Yeah, you usually buy them. From who though? People have to farm and find them first. Some budget build guides you may find out there also suggests sticking to upgraded normal grade uniques in Diablo 2.
To me, you’re confusing Diablo 4 with Diablo 3 but we’ll see anyway. It doesn’t make sense for me that they block your chances of finding a low level item because it’s always forward progressing.
This doesn’t exactly bode well with active trading. If such thing exists, then at the first release they supposed to give you a very quick leveling system where you hit level 40 in a matter of a hour at most. Otherwise, they’re simply leaving item farming out to slow it down to a notch, as a result lower level item prices would spike up due scarcity.
Supply and demand. I wouldn’t like to pay a lvl20 Stormwalker Cudgel or whatever low level legendary item more than the lvl40 counterpart but if system blocks the player from targeting low level items, that’s what gonna happen. Sustain in the trading must be ensured and what you suggested is far off from it for me. Perhaps designers are such genius people and figure out a way to not make prices spike up at low supply, but I can’t figure it out.
That’s already stated by the team, they will scale Legendary items, and probably Uniques too from what we’ve seen.
To be honnest I kind of regret this design too but I also understand the logic of giving all items a chance to be BiS at max level. Maybe there will be a way to scale up lower items with recipes, that would reduce the trading issue.
This problem must be resolved in a way regardless of how the rest of it is made
It’s TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE to make the game “lag friendly” at the cost of having it downplayed. Don’t “downplay” the game, just make it forgiving towards each punishment instead (some greater some less, instead of all same)
And that “false forgiveness” is BY FAR the worst possible thing a developer can make, hey you won’t make many mistakes but the ones you do we make sure you end up dead
SUPER TERRIBLE by any notion, each death must feel deserved, not surprised or “cornered” cause couldn’t get out in time of some grater thing that’s gonna happen, that kind of approach downplays the “realtimeness” of a game
The problem with Rakanoth was that he didn’t “launch” 3 things at a time (or 5), instead he launched 15… They may have just reduced the traveling speed of those blades by some 15-20% anyway… IT ALSO goes ON PAR with the suggestion as well, only the “center” of those blades would do 100% damage, the rest would do a portion instead
Play as you like the decision stands:
Forgiveness over laggyness
Real-time direct combat instead of “simulating battle” on a platform that has waves of stuff that need to evade
It’s simply MUCH better, leagues and bounds, and not even a question to ask
Not really, it’s quite a subtle system that can be fine tuned to achieve best in both worlds at all times as much as possible
Can make a super simple form like the following:
Lvl1: no bonuses
Each 5 levels mobs gain a minimal-damage boost of say 5
Each 10 levels mobs gain (per type) HP% bonuses
Archers gain 0.5%, melee gains 1%, casters and ogres gain 2%. These values are doubled (or say 50% more) when it’s an elite pack
That way at lvl40 (max lvl) you have a “baseline” of:
Melee attackers do 4% Max HP in addition to what their attack would be, if your resist is too high or Max HP too low then you take the minimal amount (40 per hit) instead (let’s say not possible but still, have a minimal threshold there)
Archers would do 2% Max HP in addition to what their attack would be, if your resist = again, (40 damage per hit suffered)
Casters would do 6% in addition to what the attack would be, (again if res too high or HP too low then 80)
For Elites those numbers would respectively be something along the lines of: 6% per melee, 4% per archer, 9% per caster & ogre
Think that’s quite fine/fair, but AGAIN, it’s super subtle and super easy to control system, if someone thinks that the “fluctuations” between good and bad gear aren’t that much noticeable - can adjust either sides of the problem
And overall - the pros are greater than cons, pretty sure anyone would agree:
The only “real” Con is that Ego-feed at “look at me, these guys can’t even scratch”, but frankly that’s a MUCH BETTER outcome (and lesser of a price to pay) than having games be like: hurr durr, killing everything until… one-shotted, cause damn 66% resistance instead of 75% (I mean that’s not only weird but dumb as well, pretty sure anyone would agree with that)
Gee IDK, use some Math ?, how about 550 less HP, would (X - 550 * 10/11) result in 500 less HP therefore death, ?
I mean WHO in their right mind would measure, ahaaa, you see ?, that attack should’ve killed me but I survived on 20HP instead (I mean, you’re gonna get killed by any wind that blows right after that), what you want to avoid is the “hard cap” of 75% or bust, which is just terribad
The problem with Ghom is like fighting 1v1 in a diminishing space, you’re time-conditioned (kill X before there’s no room to breathe in there), might’ve just made him summon more stuff but eventually have the “farts” disappear after a while ffs. And one more thing - Ghom wasn’t Telegraphed fight, so your argument goes against your point in this case… Here’s another - Siegebreaker, wasn’t that fight great ?, he didn’t have telegraphed attacks either
In the best world there was only one, perfect difficulty setting. Probably not realistic. But then keep it to very few (5-10 at most), and with a scaling like:
Diff 1: 100% (start difficulty in endgame - how much higher that is than the lvling difficulty depends on the scaling from lvl 1 to endgame lvl of course, so keeping that one out)
Diff 2: 130%
Diff 3: 160%
Diff 4: 190%
Diff 5: 220%
Diff 6: 250%
Diff 7: 300%
Diff 8: 400% - no additional rewards, only for challenge
Diff 9: 500% - no additional rewards, only for challenge
(numbers are just some averaged measure of difficulty, which should come from many different sources, HP and dmg from monsters of course, but even better; from new monster skills/affixes and such)
Then balance gear around similar scaling; average starter gear in endgame at 100% base (whatever that means in actual dmg etc), and BIS at around 250%, making the last few difficulties something that gear can’t keep up with, and hence more of a challenge mode (leaderboards, achievements, cosmetic rewards and all that shizzle), with no additional power rewards (as in no more gear droprates, XP etc.).
Also all the same difficulty settings should be used everywhere. Same ones in both the overworld and in Key dungeons etc.
Imo items should only come in 2 versions, the lvling one, having one exact lvl it drops at, and a max lvl one. And there should be a crafting recipe to upgrade items to their max lvl versions, so finding items during lvling feels rewarding, throughout the game.
I sure hope they dropped that after Kim left.
Honestly doubt I’ll buy D4 if legendaries scale during end-game. Only scale should be from lvling, and preferably only once as mentioned above, as making sure all legendaries/uniques are viable in endgame is a good goal to have.
If there is a Legendary Staff Of Whatever +1, +2, +3 etc. in endgame, I am out. That is just too crazy a way to design an A-RPG. D3 did it with Ancients, representing +1 and 2, only 2 versions, and that was already immensely stupid.
You don’t know about his teleport dash attack? That thing was one of the highest burst attacks in the game back at Diablo 3 classic times. It still is I believe; Perdition is still a scary Rift Guardian. The subject attack of his has no direct telegraph but a visual cue of him raising his elbows slightly readying a stinging flight.
Makes sense actually.
I mean it you can visually see the area of effect for the attack and damage is dealt over many ticks. If that isn’t a clear cue then I don’t know what. There’s also the audial “noises”, telling you to move before getting overwhelmed. Not all telegraphed attack has to include long wind ups.
Where can I read that statement, can you direct me somewhere or give a frame of reference? It was back when David Kim was the director? It really doesn’t make sense for me that items actively scale up with character level with active trading.
I mean, Diablo 3 classic and Diablo 2 has/had active trading but didn’t have auto-scaling items for character level; it’s a really strange concept for me. Perhaps they figured a way or it’s only about cube recipe upgrades.
Me too but again, I don’t wanna talk so sure without having any proper knowledge on itemization.
I’m somewhat fine with “scaling” of items but to a certain degree
The thing is that THAT logarithmic design increase must be “dictated” by a Gauss principle
i.e.
Can’t afford increases of constant pace all the time and hope things end well
That’s as far as items/gear/player-power goes tbh… Say something like this: first 3 levels each level is 8% stronger than previous (some initial boost let’s say), then next 5 levels that number goes down to 5%, then next 10 levels that number is about 3%, then next 10 again about 5%, and the last 5 levels differ minimal again (i.e. 3%), i.e. something like this:
1-5 - “growth rate” 8%
5- 10 - “growth rate” = 5%
10-15 - “growth rate” = 3%
20-25 - “growth rate” = 5%
25-30 - “growth rate” = 8%
30-35 - “growth rate” = 5%
35-40 - “growth rate” = 2% [this ALLOWS almost every item that is between levels 35 and 40 to be VIABLE in endgame]
As for monsters, here’s the thing:
The way how difficulty is “scaled” well is by having basic “whatabouts” and “thresholds” of types of damage done/taken, and “pacing” death (from around 7-8 seconds to die under “average fire” with “average” survival/resistance/dodge rates to somewhere around 2 secs at near the end)
i.e.
Monsters’ power progression should approached at in a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT manner
Yes, you have to think of ways of how to make that happen but the real key is that you NEVER end up with mobs that you can ignore, or attacks that you can near-survive only if you have MAX resist/dodge rates
i.e. “monster power” rates should be defined around another concept of “player response time awareness” - i.e. a rough “estimate” to how long a player can afford “taking unmonitored damage” before a reaction becomes imminent (i.e. the time a reaction cannot make up for a taken damage and it becomes “permanent” over the players’s defensive capabilities and recovery rate)
A “metric” which is obviously high at lesser difficulties and lower levels, and obviously low at high difficulty/levels… i.e. say that a player (on average) take “unmonitored” damage of 3-5 sec on average before it becomes “unavailable” to make up for, that’s kinda/about where the “average” should be
The “easy parts” (i.e. lower levels) can increase that to around 6-8 seconds, and the hard parts can “increase that tempo” a couple notches, up to somewhere around 2 - 2.5 sec
Think having that “metric” measured that way is what makes a good well-balanced “endgame” design, it’s not about “logarythmic” progression of damage on mobs, or linear, or fibonacci, or reverse-fibonacci, whatever the scale, simply put what’s important is that the “amount of time to get 100%HP to say 25%HP on average with decent gear without any reactions made”
And ofc, that “metric” should never be under some “absurd value” (like say under 1 sec)
I would be ok with just two difficulties, one at 200% and the other at 350%. For the endgame of endgame, there are still keyed dungeons.
I highly doubt this was Kim’s decision. This is more of a global design philosophy interwined with other systems like endgame dungeons, max level or monster scaling.
The huge increase in Attack/Defense itself is enough to make lower level items mostly irrelevant (maybe not as fast as in D3 let’s hope) so there’s only two possibilities : lower level Unique designs get useless, or they can scale to level 40.
That’s the best solution imo. The upgrade recipe should also come with a few restrictions, like impossibility to recraft the item and bound to account.
That was back then I think but I didn’t find a quote so that may be me assuming things. ^^’ Probably because D4 seems to be reusing D3 systems unless specifically stated otherwise. The logic behind D2’s Uniques is quite different from Legendaries since they have specific affixes which are morer powerful than there Rare counterparts (back when there weren’t Uniques in D4, now things are different I agree).
Can’t say if it would be inadequate for trading but I don’t think they are designing items with that in mind, even though they stated it will be a feature. They seem to rely on using BoA to ajust once they are fixed with itemization.
And that’s just a detail, but Kim wasn’t director, just lead system designer.
That’s just no possible. You have to consider that 5 levels comprise :
10 item slots
25 Attribute points
10 Skill points
Diluting +8% between all these systems would just make them completely worthless. It’s more like +8% each, and not just at the beginning of the game where it should be even more. That would make a total leveling increase of +400% power, which is probably even lower than D2. Keep in mind that in D3 it’s litteraly over +10 000%…
I was also talking key dungeons. They should not have more difficulties than anything else in the game, or you replicate D3 where only key dungeons matter.
I dont have an issue with all items being able to drop at lvl 40. I want that to happen.
I have an issue if they can scale to 40+1, 40+2, 40+3 etc. Which is what Kim seemed to claim back then.
Hehe, yeah well, imo that restriction should come with ALL items. And definitely all legendaries and uniques.
There should be no item recrafting/rerolling in general imo. Let us enhance items through crafting (like adding an extra affix), but standing in town, making 100 of the same item through a cube is one of the silliest things I have seen in an A-RPG. If you want a new version of an item, you should go out and find one.
Of course I then also want to dramatically reduce item RNG, like getting rid of most affix range, making all affixes useful across classes etc. so when an item drops it is likely to be useful for something, maybe not what you wanted, but also not useless (unlike in D3 if an item rolls low-end on its affixes is just pointless).
These 9 difficulties would be perfect for keyed dungeons, what I meant was for some kind of Nightmare and Hell difficulties for the campaign/overworld once you’ve reached 40. I’d prefer to have a few significant increases instead of many like D3’s Torments.
Oh, ok, then I totally agree !
I don’t think that’s what Naksiloth wants however.
I agree D3 crafting was complete BS but I kind of liked the enchantment. Far too simple though, and far too easy to collect lots of crafting mats. Less randomized but more costly please.
So, do you REALLY want your character to become 22 times stronger JUST BY AFFIXES IN GEAR alone ?
IDK what D2 had in this regard, pretty sure they used much more of a linear scale than an exponential one but even that put aside, there’s that simple fact that D2 is a game that has 99 levels and this has (projected so far) to have 40
The concept wasn’t about EXACT numbers, make the first 8% be 10%s, and make the next 5% be 8%s if need be, the MAIN IDEA is to time the “progression power” right where it “minimalizes” at the last few levels (as opposed to maximizing like D3 did, lvl60 is 10-15% stronger than lvl59, and lvl70 15-20% stronger than lvl69), that was the main/approx. idea behind…
Been thinking a little, so this is not a very well rounded idea, but it might be interesting if skills themselves could be specialized to a degree like, when you level, you get X points. You can then spend these to individualize your selected skills to do things like decrease its cost, decrease its cooldown, increase its range, increase its damage, get a secondary effect, etc. There’d have to be a cap, or not, which sort of makes skills like Paragon is now. It is much more complex though and would require a lot of balance but would lead to the feeling that you can make whatever you want…
Oops… did you mean +X% every level ? I understood a total +8% from lvl 25 to 30, then +5% 31-35 etc.
In that case that would make a total of about +700%, totally fine for me.
I think D2 has to be something like +2000/3000% for 80+ levels, not including endgame stuff. Progression also slowed down significantly once in Hell, so I would be more than OK if that would be the same with D4 for the last 5 levels (especially since the endgame system will add another layer of power after reaching 40).
I’ve been thinking about that kind of skill customization for some time. Could be Skill rank points you collect in the Skill tree and spend on individual skill. When reaching certain breakpoints (3, 6, 10…) you get to choose a modifier.
What you’re proposing would be more precise though, kind of like skillgems from PoE but with points to spend into instead of auto-leveling.
?
