Over the last two weeks I’ve created a few threads on the board trying to test some of my ideas for D4 against the community feedback so I can give a good summary of my feedback for D4 devs. Your helpful feedback let me focus on what I value at the core of an ARPG and helped me simplify some things while still maintaining the depth I want this game to embrace. The following list represents the result of those discussions. Some of my initial thoughts on systems were changed by my discussions with others on the board and I thank them for their perspectives. All my feedback is trying to work within what we’ve seen from D4 so far. I didn’t try to reinvent the wheel, but add depth through things that feel very Diablo while taking the best features from other games that can enhance the Diablo experience.
Design Space For Stats / Skills / Talents
When you level up you get stat points, skill points and talent points.
- Stat Points - Stat points can go into the four primary stats the D4 devs have already shown and have an interesting design for unlocking skill rune bonuses at certain thresholds. Not much I would change about this system.
- Skill Points - Bring back the original spellbook with skill ranks. A single skill can have up to 20 points added to it manually, but you can go beyond this with +skills on items. As skills rank up there are certain skill point thresholds that add modifications to the skills. (Quick example: Hydra (skill ranks 1-9 just increase dmg, but skill rank 10 spawns an additional hydra, at skill rank 20 you spawn a third hydra)) I’m thinking 80 skill points for manual allocation (2 per level), so that you could have 3 skills maxed and a few points here and there for other skills. You can have more than 6 skills you spend points in, but you can only change your skill loadout in town, so if you invest in 10 skills you can only ever have 6 of them active at one time. Spreading yourself thinner with the number of skills you acquire means you cannot boost them as much. There are +skills on items and +all skills unlocked as a legendary affix.
- Talent Points - Remove skills from the current skills tree and just add a bunch of runes with ranks for skills (similar to how D3 runes change skills). Talent points can be spent on the top of the tree or on the bottom of the tree in passives. Items can roll with +skill rune rank or +passive skill rank. Aiming for 30%-40% of the nodes able to be maxed at endgame seems reasonable as you suggested in your quarterly update.
Design Space For Items in the Game
Every item that drops in the game should fulfill a purpose. The following is a summary of the design space each item type that drops in the game might serve.
Wearable Items
All wearable items in the game drop with an item quality. This item quality can be augmented by the blacksmith (see crafting section).
- White Items - All white items have attack/defense and implicits. +skills can appear on white bases. These values are determined by item level and item quality. White items serve as bases for all other items and can be used in the imbue system.
- Blue Items - What magic items add to white items are magical affixes. Magic items can roll up to 3 affixes and these affixes have wider deltas than affixes that can roll on any other item type.
- Yellow Items - What rare items add to blue items are potentially more magical affixes. Rare items can roll up to 5 affixes and these affixes have slightly narrower deltas than affixes that can roll on blue items.
- Orange Items - What legendary items add to yellow items are the possibility for a legendary affix to spawn. Legendary affixes cannot stack and should not in general buff single skills for single classes so they don’t overlap with the purpose of the skill talent system (see skill section).
- Unique Items - Unique items are build around items that can be very build specific, or can fundamentally change the way itemization works (i.e. what stats you value can be determined by such items). Limit players to only have 1 unique item equipped so that you can make these very memorable items that don’t have to be in every slot at endgame.
- Set Items - Sets as items is a very limiting design space to me since it takes up precious item slots and is impossible to balance against other items. Either the bonus is so good you have to take it, or the bonus doesn’t matter and there are better items elsewhere. Set bonuses as we know them can be added to any item type through unveiling. The design space I envision for sets is endgame collection and crafting in D4. (see crafting section for more details on unveiling and set collection)
Consumable Items
- Potions - With potion/flask consumables I’m trying to strike a balance between D2/D3 and POE. Basic potions for health recovery and resource recovery drop in the world. You can only have two potion slots on your character. Potions can be crafted from drops in the world by a new artisan - the alchemist (see crafting section).
- Runes - The condition and effect system with up to 2 sockets in an item so you have more space to explore creating custom on hit, on crit, on stun etc… You only need 2 sockets because you are able to combine condition runes and effect runes to create more interesting combinations. This is how rune progression will work in the game.
- Gems - Modify base stats only to help you more easily make certain stat thresholds for skill rune bonus unlocking. Base stats from stat point allocation should represent approximately 80% of the base stats players have for endgame. 20% of base stats come from gear/gems in gear.
- Relics - Droppable lore items that must be identified by the artificer artisan. Relics can be lore specific collectible pieces like archaeology from WoW. Relics can be disenchanted to retrieve essences necessary for endgame crafting. There are various essence qualities related to the rarity of artifacts found.
- Salvage - Can drop like in D3, but also can be obtained from salvaging/bounties/etc… These are used to upgrade the item quality on items via the blacksmith, and reroll certain affixes at the mystic.
- Jewels - These occupy the same design space as in D2 - allow players to use sockets for affixes rather than for gems or runes.
Runes, Gems, Essences from Relics, Salvage, Jewels can all be involved in cube crafting recipes.
Crafting Systems
For crafting there is design space for 5 artisans:
- Jeweler - similar to D3, combines gems, unsockets gems
- Mystic - similar to D3, rerolls a single affix, transmog, dyes
- Blacksmith - changed from D3, cannot craft any items outright, but can fortify items upgrading their item quality, can also salvage items
- Alchemist - can craft potions from flasks/reagents/potions that drop in the game world. Potions can fall into either a health recovery slot or a resource slot. Potions created by the alchemist can be imbued with interesting effects or change how they restore life/resource. Maybe a potion shields you instead of restores life, etc… lots of design space to explore here. I don’t want to do flasks as I believe a player that is overusing potions should be able to run out of them and have a resource cost associated with getting them back. The potions that drop in the game world should be ok, but you will always be better off using them as reagents for potion crafting. There is a cooldown on potion use in each slot to avoid spamming.
-
Artificer - Artificers can identify relics (player cannot), disenchant relics, and use the essences from relics to imbue an item (think Charsi in D2) you roll a rare that has a nice base you like. Artificers can also use essence from relics to unveil an item. Unveiling an item results in uncovering a hidden power it might possess. Unveiling results in 3 potential outcomes.
* The item cannot handle the unveiling and the item loses an affix.- The item gains a new affix. This new affix gained can increase the max number of rollable affixes on items by 1.
- The item once belonged to an ancient and powerful set and you unlock progress toward obtaining set bonuses on your character.
Once an item is unveiled it cannot be unveiled again. This approach to endgame crafting gives players the ability to turn any group of items into set items by unveiling their hidden set potential. You take a moderate amount of risk to do this. To be able to unveil a given set players must find recipes for the sets as drops and have the artificer learn them. You can increase your chances to target a certain set bonus through increased reagents but it’s never a certainty.
The best thing about this approach to sets is that you don’t lock the player into certain items. You can have set bonuses occur on any item in the game if unveiled properly. When the player unlocks a full set bonus on their gear they earn the corresponding transmog / aura / player character effect to go with it. The artificer starts out with a few sets that are known to him so players can try to craft some sets that are helpful for leveling.
Endgame Progression
For endgame there are 4 design spaces I want to explore:
Endgame Housing
Garrison, siege system - Instanced outdoor zones in the world that consist of abandoned garrisons. You clear out the monsters inhabiting the garrison and you can claim it as your own. Think of the D4 garrison like the garrison in WoW. You can build and upgrade components of it over time. You can house all your artisans/stash/stables for mounts here. This becomes your endgame town, since going throughout the game’s campaign you don’t really have a town like in D2/D3 that’s your base of operations. Friends can invite friends to their garrison and there are clan garrisons.
After building up your garrison to a certain level you can trigger monster sieges. Monster sieges can be scaled in difficulty by paying higher costs. This can be a group or solo activity. Some sieges have you protect important control points, while other sieges have goals like keeping townsfolk in your garrison from dying. The final boss of a siege is an ubers boss type encounter and can drop high level endgame gear.
You can have clan vs clan pvp sieges as well with a system like this.
Endgame Difficulty Progression
Keyed dungeons can fill this design space. You can unlock more rare item tiers by advancing further in keyed dungeons. The progression should not be uncapped though and I’m not suggesting dropping the same items with better item tiers, I’m suggesting using keyed dungeon level + character level as the basis for how difficulty progresses in the game. For example, if you have cleared a lvl 15 keyed dungeon, then the item level of items that drop in the world can go up to lvl 40 + 15 = 55. I argue for item drop level banding like we saw in D2. This should be long term progression focused with a max keyed dungeon being level 60, so that we up to 100 item levels in the game.
Endgame Continued Character Progression
You can call this paragon if you want, but it’s quite different from D3. I’m imagining a repeatable dungeon (I called it the Descent into Hell) with something like 60 floors where bosses occur every 5 levels and it gets progressively harder. The dungeon is static in layout but dynamic in monster types/placements etc… You gain paragon xp by progressing in this dungeon. If you finish the dungeon you can restart it with a new dungeon + mechanic.
The paragon XP you gain in this dungeon goes toward endgame character progression skill trees similar to those designed for Diablo Immortal. There are various trees you can invest in, but you can only have one tree at a time applied to your character. You can swap which tree you use in game as some trees will be better suited to some activities than others.
Endgame Factions/Reputation/Bounties
I’m not a fan of dailies, but I think having the bounty system return for shared world at endgame, but having them be highly rewarding and reset each week would be a good compromise on the system. I also think with the advent of camps the D4 designers could implement a faction reputation system with cosmetic rewards for players - mounts, transmogs, aura effects etc… World bosses would always be bounties at endgame. Followers could be unlocked through factions as well. Followers should have full itemization and skills as well similar to D3.
Social Features / PVP / Collections
I’ve loved everything you’ve shown us about PVP so far and I feel like clan vs clan garrison sieges could be epic experiences. One clan sieges the other protects. Equal numbers of players are involved on both sides. Players that die get increasing respawn timers. Each side scores points by killing players and controlling command points. Siege ends after a certain amount of time and the winning side gets a significant reward. Maybe both sides have to put up a certain amount of gold or items etc… and it’s winner take all.
PVP fields of hatred looks like a lot of fun. Don’t have much to add here other than letting there be items that can drop in these zones from monsters that players can steal in addition to shards of hatred.
Descent into hell leaderboards - Since you can repeat the 60 level dungeon, you can show how far people have delved. Theoretically this could be endless and you earn paragon experience by doing it, but there aren’t better item drops just because you go further than level 60. Only the social competition of seeing how far people have gone.
Since the layout of the descent is static, the more you play it the better you learn it. There is still some variety in monster spawns, pylon spawns, etc… but otherwise it is learnable. Every so often we could have community events that revolve around speed running the descent and have speed running descent leaderboards as well.
There could also be leaderboards for speed running the campaign on a fresh character that are part of the achievement / talent system in the game.
Another social aspect of the game is showing off your collections. Have an armory where you can see if a certain player has collected every unique in the game, unlocked every set transmog in the game. How many mounts have they acquired, etc…
In addition to the features above character portraits for in-game chat could be customized based on achievements or challenges earned like in D3, but also please introduce titles - some should be especially hard to get.
Monetization and Content Updating
I have no problem with the game having an initial box cost and expansions that cost, but in addition I think it should have MTX (cosmetic only). I do not agree with locking stash tabs or collection tabs behind monetization. Please include those in the base game, but make expanding them cost a ton of gold. With the ideas I’ve laid out above there are many hooks for MTX that can continue to fund development with frequent content updates. Potential MTX hooks:
- Garrison decorations
- Garrison music player - could have the ability to make custom music soundtracks from past diablo games
- Mounts
- Transmog (i’d make sure to not make these the best looking sets in the game)
- Character effects (sets earned in game can have these as well)
- Pets
- Wings
- Follower transmogs, or just flat out new followers.
I want a monetization system like this in place because I want the game to get quarterly updates. I don’t think every quarterly update should be a season as in D3, but I think they should alternate seasons (with impactful season mechanics) with balancing updates where new items/features are introduced. This gives players time to plan builds in between seasons. This cadence to updates seems like it would make the game better going forward.
Thanks to everyone who helped contribute to these ideas and I still welcome additional feedback from the community 
