D4 Feedback - It All Seems to Come Back to Items

General Discussion
61

Respec limits take care of that.
Also, make sure you cant share activity stuff between your characters. Like keys for key dungeons should be bound to th character who finds it.

Do you realize how problematic this whole line of argumentation is? Not just by you, it shows up quite often!
Blizzard need to just cancel D4, if the fact that math exists, is such an issue… They apparently cant do anything, since some people will dare to use math against it…
No. It doesn’t matter that some people will be able to calculate optimal choices. Just try to make as many different choices as possible, as close to each other as possible.
And as above, have different content to do, so the math ends up with different optimal choices for different content. With an inability to easily respec between those.
Aka. diversity.

It should not be taken away. The fact that a cooldown heavy build want CDR is good. Or a crit focused build want crit.
What needs to happen is merely that only a small subset of builds want CDR, and only a small subset of builds want crit. Etc. By making sure crit and cooldown skills/CDR are not overpowered.

As for classes, no class should ever need a specific affix/stat. If that happens, you designed it badly.

As said above, this behavior can be designed against too.
Another part of that is; do NOT make any end-game lvling system account wide. That way, if you jump between characters to do different activities, each of them will be lower lvl.

Oh, I know he has blocked me. But I refuse to let his posts stand without response, even if he cant read it (actually, that part is only positive :P). Arguing against it is still relevant for the overall discussion on whatever the topic might be.

I would like to believe he isnt trolling. And he probably didn’t start as one. But the way he always jumps into any discussion with “nuh uh, Diablo 2 is also bad!”, even in cases where nobody had mentioned or thought about either D2, or D3, makes it hard to believe that is not part of the goal. Just seems like an attempt to make any discussion be stuck in the past, as an endless D2 vs. D3 conflict. Which, at minimum is very troll-like.
I have nothing against his views. People are more than welcome to argue in favor of Diablo 3 and criticize Diablo 2/PoE etc. Only got an issue with his ways of “engaging” with people on the forum, which has destroyed plenty of interesting threads over time.
(and I know I am also derailing this thread, just wanted to clarify what I think the issue
is, luckily KM cant read it, so I’ll end it here :slight_smile: )

Agreed.
This might not be a “fun” solution, but honestly, just dont add sets to D4 imo. At least not for a long while. Giving Blizzard a chance to get other aspects right before adding something they have shown they clearly could not handle.

As for how I would design sets;
Smaller sets (as I agree about taking up too many slots), as in 2-3 part sets, with 1-2 set bonuses. We have quite a few of those in D3 as well, and they are mostly fine (although they too has become overpowered, in an attempt to make them relevant again).
The bonuses should of course be fairly small, with so few pieces. Make it about some “theme”.

As for sets giving a cohesive character look. Allowing cosmetic items somewhat solves that part.
But, one thing here could also be to design items as belonging to a set, in terms of its visual design, without it functioning as sets.

Like have 5 unique items that all is part of some “Tal Rasha” theme. Tal Rashas armor, boots and all that. They have a coherent look. And some of the unique affixes might even have stuff in common (like empowering magic). But, they are not a set. You can use whichever parts you want, and there are no bonuses for using all of them.
That also adresses the “lore feel”. And the completionism feel to a lesser degree.

That preserves one of the main issues with D3 sets. Blizzard pre-designing our builds.
Even if you would avoid spending a lot of item slots on it, you still risk all builds centering around those set bonuses.
Also, it is basically just power creep, allowing us both a set, and other items, without having to choose. Which might be okay, if the additional system is worth the power creep. But here it feels like it is just more power with no drawbacks.

To some degree. However runes are skill specific, and uniques very much should not be skill-specific. So a bit more generalized runes.
The direct D3 runes should mostly exist as skill upgrades in the skill tree (preferably individual skill trees).

62

This is just really bad Design !

Why should I try out my Cleric or even bother to Gear my Barb, if I´m only loosing out on my Rogue ?
Playing another Hero, should never resault a Punishment on my overall Progression into the Game.


As Beefhammer already stated.

Even if you have 10 Builds, that might be nearly on the same lvl.
As soon as one Build is a bit faster, more Fun to play or more divese on what it can do, it doesn´t matter, how many other choices you have.

The Players always will be opt in for the best solution, no matter how many other options there are.


As far as I have seen it, it´s pretty much based on specific Skills

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63

There should be no “overall progression”. It makes no sense in a game imo.
Each character is on its own journey.

Note, you can still share items etc. so your characters are still growing together to some degree.
But the journey and the stuff they do, should be their own.
That is also part of what makes it fun to make new characters.

Nah. If you have 10 builds that are within a few % of each other in efficiency, people will see them as similar. Which was also what Beefhammer argued.

They dont do that in D2, D3 or PoE.
There is something like ‘close enough’. Also, in PoE (and D2 to a lesser degree, and D3 to a much lesser degree), there is not a single solution to what is best, due to the more varied content and higher respec costs.

Yeah, hence, they should not be.

Reposting this image, one of the uniques here, the first one, is not based on specific skills. That is how they should design all (or at least 95%+) of the uniques. The third unique could be saved by removing Lacerate/Trash and just state “all single target spenders” or similar. While the second item is just bad.
And of course, non e of the should be limited to a single class.

64

Sure. I would also like, if there might be more varity.
I also would love if I could use Manalds Heal with an Ancient-Pillar Monk, instead that it is Bound to Paralysis.

But seeing all Items so far, I doubt that they will go this Route, because Players are by far better in finding unexpected Synergys, as the Dev´s could foresee and negate them.
So binding them to specific Skills is the best Way to get the Game balanced.

You are talking all the Way, that you want as much Builds as possible to be on paar.
And in the same Sentence, you bring up Ideas, wich makes this impossible.

65

I care a ton about game balance (as should be obvious in regard to wanting builds to be close to each other in power), but if you balance by ripping out the game part, then it is all quite pointless.
It would be the easiest thing in the world to make a perfectly balanced game, by making everything the same. Just no an interesting RPG then.

So, as much balance as possible, in as much diversity as possible. Don’t compromise on the latter.

How to do it? Well
step 1) Add as much diversity as possible
step 2) See the effects and act accordingly
step 3) Nerfhammer! Whenever something overpowered pops up, you hit it. Hard. A big problem in D3 was Blizzard being scared of nerfing stuff.

Trying to control the game through sets, or limited choices, yeah, sure, might be effective (well, not really, considering how terrible Blizzard was at balancing D3 despite using all those anti-diversity tools). But don’t.

Anyway, I would also oppose the idea that it is so much easier to balance individual skill synergies than broader synergies. Yes, you are creating more interactions with the broader synergies, which would sound harder. But designing a game with those broader synergies also means you design the underlying skills and affixes with that in mind, so they do not get as much out of control, just because you add an affix to the game that interacts with them.
Part of which is; keep those damn numbers small. You are going to do a lot less potential harm with a 10% increase than with a 10000% increase.

Another part is; make defensive stats important. Make death matter. That will make it harder for glass cannon builds to stack all the dmg synergies they can find.

And of course, do not have endless difficulty scaling. Which puts some limit on how much dmg matters. You can only oneshot enemies so much (not that we should be able to oneshot enemies, but if an overpowered build appears, that still limits how much more efficient it can get, when you do not have 150 GRift lvls of 133 trilliong % enemy HP increases).

66

Lool XD

Yea. Because you loose the Trust of your Players, if you always take away what was Fun.
And you wanne do this a few hundread Times, till you get it balanced ?


I tell you.
They do this as you descriped it just a few Times at the Start of Vanilla and 70% of the Players will be gone.

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67

Not a few hundred times no. An endless amount of time. Balancing never stops.
Heck, the more often you do it, the less severe each balance change has to be, instead of letting some build get more and more out of control.
If you want to lose the trust of your players, then give them an unbalanced mess.

You seem to imply that overpowered and fun is the same. Which I can only disagree strongly with. Balance is fun, overpowered is boring.
Builds getting hit by the nerfhammer is not taking away fun, but adding more of it. By increasing the diversity in viable build options.

68

LOL indeed, ridiculous nerfing especially for a PvE game is just silly at this point.

For PvE game, fun should always be prioritized over balance.

Balance only mattered for the game like PvP.

69

I agree with this and I think POE is one of the first ARPGs to do balance right. You’ll never get it 100% right, but with each new season you rebalance and you justify the rebalance. Then you promote other fun playstyles to take their place by reviving unoften used items. I think it’s the best you can do with playerbase mentality these days.

Granted, for this to work you have to constantly be releasing content - something Blizzard is not good at in Diablo historically. It’s why I really want the game to have MTX to incentivize this upgrade pace.

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70

Wich is, what you desired, with

Binding special Powers, as by Legendarys, to a Skill or Class, does greatly help to keep the Game balanced.


You mean … like SWK-Set of the Monk ?
With the Option to play it in 3 differant Ways, but in the End, the Players still only play on Variant out of it ?
:+1:

71

Indeed.

They also make a fun builds to play.

72

XD

Yea … Even though the Sound of the Ice-blasts are pretty statisfying ^^
But joop. It´s mostly just e hyper-rush, while everything explodes.


Than maybe more something in line with this.


73

Due to those 3 ways being unbalanced…
But yes, those 3 ways existing is still endlessly better than the alternative of them not existing. Even if they are not balanced. Add the build options. Then try to balance them.
Nobody is asking for all 5 trillion different theoretical builds in the game to be balanced. If we can get a few hundreds or thousands end-game builds (depending on where one separates builds as being distinct from each other), then it is pretty good. It is not a bad thing that some builds are trash. That is an important part of making a build; making something that rises above the mediocre.

The idea that simply not having build options is better than having them, even if they are unviable, is imo the wrong way to look at an RPG.
Again, it is the easiest thing in the world to design a perfectly balanced game, if you remove all choices.

Of course, a set like SWK should not exist to begin with. It is build around 4 specific skills.

Which btw has nothing to do with balance. Just bad combat gameplay.

If a thousand builds could do the exact same as what happens in that video, you have a 1000 balanced builds.
You also still have a bad game, but that is besides the point.

74

You need to nerf when things are obviously OP. If not, then you are constantly buffing others then you get to a D3 situation where power creep gets out of hand becasue it’s easier to just buff things up.

I’d do something like this, not sure how feasible it is, but you have normal, right out of the gate level capped gear, with maxed out stat points on a balanced build, being 1 ability from each category, baseline power is 85% of potential.

After a while through some endgame , say the equivalent of being at T10ish or so you have gear, and other system bonuses that get you to 100% of you power potential.

From there I would cap player power potential at 115%. From there if it’s just targeting gear, skills, paragon to nerf. But you still get a decent progression once you reach level cap. Every few weeks check logs and do you best to keep everything at that 115%

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75

A point I want to mention is, some people have argued that Blizzard should basically rebalance the game each night (through the magical use of AI…), which is not what I am arguing for. Balancing should happen in patches.
If you over night nerf builds, then sure, you annoy the players.
But in a patch every 1-2 month? That is only good. And you will have some warning through either PTR or pre-released patchnotes.

And of course, each of these balance patches should come with a free respec token, for each of your characters.

Note, and yeah, sure, once in a while, a build might be so broken that a nightly hotfix is needed. But that should not be the standard.

76

Right and then you will have to factor in that some builds will perform better but have deficiencies elswhere. Like glass cannon builds will have a harder time surviving but could perform at 120-125% of potential of someone capped at 115%. Likewise heavy defensive or utility builds may be at 100-105% of player potential of balanced builds at 115% but can survive better or have much more utility and/or self sustaining healing.

But yeah, balancing takes time. A lot of time. I have two side projects, that RPG maker WoW in a FF style RPG and my custom team league in Super Mega Baseball 3. Of course it’s just one guy on not the greatest of systems, but that is easily them most time consuming part outside of making the art/custom team logos. So daily, that’s frankly impossible. Bi-weekly? Ambitious. Every 3-5 weeks is a good time frame to see what is over performing and determine what needs to be adjusted.

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78

Sure.
But this wasn´t the Point :slight_smile:


If you give out a new Patch or a Game, with so many Options for the Players, that i might feel cool.
But than you crush nearly any Idea they come up with, for the next seven Month. The Players will loose trust in you, because you were not able to deliver a balanced Option first hand.

But if you give them instead of hundreds of Builds just five, and than you might maybe adjust one of them slightly, without crushing it. Than they can eccept it :slight_smile: :sunflower:


But Shadout wanted the first Option.
Giving the Players too many choices, wich would wind up with a lot of Problems and just hammering it down.
And no Community will take such thing for long, before they go to other Games, that are stable.


Sure

And the more complicated the Math it, the more it will take.
Or just as I posted this already in the other Thread.


As Travis Day sayed :

Make everything feel overpowered
Or how I learned to stop worrying about balance and start fokusing on the Fun

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79

Great. Except there is no game worth playing in that scenario, so acceptance becomes irrelevant.

Giving players too many choices is nearly impossible.

Yeah. He is wrong.

Anyway, that quote also seems to disagree with your argument of removing choices for the sake of balance.

80

That’s just one philosophy. The problem arises when you have MP and competitive aspects. Just because you play an OP spec/build/character and it gets nerfed doesn’t mean it can’t be fun. All this is moot if there was no online interactions at all or no type of competition. If D4 was a standalone SP offline experience only then sure. Make things OP and don’t worry about fun. I mean, that’s what most mods seem to do.

But the other problem is players themselves. They take things way too serious and personally. I mean there was a point in WoW where either al Warlocks or specific specs were ridiculously OP. Like easily performing 15% or more than every other DPS spec in the game. This went on for like 1.5 or 2.5 expansions. The finally nerfed them. Warlocks cried like newborns, yet, they were still top of the food chain but this time only by 3-5%.

No one is asking for nerfing the fun out of anything. Just bringing things in line with where they should be. Say you are playing the fifth, yet to be named Paladin class as a low damage super tanky shield build. And you discover that the combination of a buff and say a shield bash ability makes this known low damage build play at 145% of potential power as described earlier.

This was not intended and no way should a defensive build be king damage. Is the porper solution be to buff everything else up 40-45% or drop the damage the buff and shield bash combo is doing back to where it should be?

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