D4 How long should dungeons be? Co-op gameplay loop

General Discussion
1

I bring this point up because the co-op experience in D2 and D3 wasn’t good imo. I haven’t got much experience with D3 but reading some recent posts about D3 end game, I’ve heard runs can be completed in under 5 mins.

I think this would make a terrible experience in end game.

In D2 it’s basically impossible to co-op well with anyone because you can teleport into a game and kill Pindleskin, Eldritch and Shenk before they’ve even entered the lobby name and password.

I think the main issue here is too much scroll teleporting, and runs are way too short. Also Sorc teleports too fast.

I think mounts, despite knowing Blizz love selling them to us, were actually implemented to give everyone a way of travelling slightly faster like we did with Sorcs in D2, but without splitting up from someone you are co-op’ing with. And to have a travelling mechanic that is equal for every class. While also reducing the amount of teleport scroll portalling around which splits you up when co-op’ing and can be very annoying if you have to do it often when playing in a group.

When playing co-op I believe the way the devs have set it up is: portal to the stronghold, stronghold has perhaps 3-5 dungeons and/or points of interest near it. Mount up with your friend after portal and ride by each others side for the next 30min to hours+ completing content in the area. If you only came for one dungeon, you would still have the travel time of 5-10 minutes from the stronghold portal + the length of the dungeon. Say it’s short, about 10 minutes. So you get a good 15-20 minutes of playtime after portalling, before having to jump through another portal.

I applaud this gameplay loop. It sounds extremely fulfilling both for solo and co-op. Fundamentally, it gives the foundation for co-op to exist in a satisfactory way.

I think Dungeons should range from 15-30mins on average. Some 40. And even longer for really special hard dungeons. I don’t see an issue having a few out of the 150 being delivered, that took 45mins to an hour to complete. Say 30-50 dungeons that were really long and more epic. Ofc there should be plenty (plenty being the priority word here) of 15-20 min dungeons. But I’m all for having some take longer, but perhaps have more bosses in them to compensate for the extra length, so the drops always feel somewhat equal no matter the length.

What I’m absolutely against is any dungeon being able to be completed in under 5 or 10 minutes. I really like the immersion travelling creates and appreciate having mounts to travel faster at times, while like I said above, providing a really good foundation for co-op gameplay.

What does everyone think about the co-op gameplay loop as it’s designed right now?

2

I think Diablo 3 has a decent idea that makes running past all the mobs not really viable because the rift boss simply wont appear until you’ve killed a certain amount of trash mobs in the rift.

With Diablo 4 I hope that it doesn’t take 5-10 minutes to get to a dungeon. It was nice in WoW to give the world a sense of size(and it was fine cause the game expected longer play sessions in general back then), but Diablo isn’t World of Warcraft and it shouldn’t be trying to be that game. Even then, modern WoW has cut down drastically on travel time too.

With Diablo I would rather just be able to hop into the dungeon really quickly with my friends. At that point, I think 15-30 minutes per dungeon is about good.

Rather than seeing dungeons longer than that, I think I’d rather just see ones more dedicated to being epic boss fights that still don’t take longer than about 15-30 minutes to clear but more of that is fighting the boss while other dungeons is more about clearing out packs of monsters.

1 Like
3

I really hope D4 dungeons are more purposeful and immersive. I don’t ever want to refer to mobs as “trash mobs”.

I don’t think Diablo should try to be WOW but I actually really like that D4 has a sense of world. D2 felt good to play, despite being really quick travel times and lots of portalling, because of the sense of world for me.

I felt like it was an important aspect that made the world feel like a real place imo.

I’m really glad they enhanced this in D4 without going too far.

Seeing random events happen in the overworld will also make it feel really alive and immersive and like I’m actually a wandering adventurer travelling across a real land.

4

I feel like instead of just killing X amount of rando mobs in the dungeon it should have fixed goals. Such as kill X elite group and loot the map, then follow the map to war camp and kill Y elite group which summons the wrath of Boss encounter.

1 Like
5

I’m used to calling it that from MMOs so I’ll probably never not call the non-boss enemies “trash mobs”.

I think Diablo 2 wasn’t bad so long as you replace the fact that you needed an Enigma for teleport with everybody simply being given a mount to get to the dungeon. That’s not really 5-10 minute travel times, though.

5-10 minutes with 15-30 minute dungeons would absolutely be too far in my opinion.

That’s about 1/3 of your total playtime being travel time.

Maybe, but I feel like more often than not world event features are interesting for about a week until people just start skipping them because the dungeons are what you want to farm to get loot.

At which point it kind of just gets in the way of travel, unfortunately.

6

I’d prefer dungeons that can be warped to after unlock, not totally dissimilar to how D:I does it, actually. This way, you need to explore the map, find the things, and then use them before you can just get there through a portal… but when you can, it is immediate.

Regarding their size/play time, I would hope they are somewhat random, honestly. Knowing “the rat warrens” are only 2 levels deep is less fun, especially if those levels are not wide/sprawling.

7

This wasn’t the case in D2. It was actually worth stopping for a group of mobs that had spawned as champions or unique’s. I feel like world events are a homage and improvement to this.

Given that we can upgrade the world tiers to keep the difficulty up for end game, I would hope that when these random events spawn they also spawn high level mobs like D2 randomly did in Hell in the overworld.

For this reason I welcome this gameplay loop and would probably always stop to do them for another chance on a good roll.

I guess we can agree to disagree on this one. I really like travel and am looking forward to the immersion and world building it will bring and always feeling like a travelling adventurer. I really don’t like instant teleporting to places it just feels like I’m in a menu choosing maps not a real place.

8

I hope there are waypoints at dungeon entrances only after discovering them. So you have to at least explore to find them first.

2 Likes
9

I don’t. Having to discover things first yeah that’s fine, but some sort of fast travel, preferably instantly is definitely preferred. Saying I have literally days spent watching my chars travel from A-B in WoW would not be an overestimation. It gets old quite fast.

10

Just made a super long post and decided to TL-DR it with only the important points

1 - there should be 3 types of dungeons

  • Passages
  • Dungeons
  • Keyed dungeons

The first ones are bit more of a “Den of evil” type thing where players have something of a “minimal but not bad” reward that helps with perhaps getting “on par with everybody” at least, or maybe some semi-rare utility based things (Scrolls or an item that is mostly utility-based as opposed to power-increase)

The second ones should BY DEFAULT be difficult but not too lengthly (say 8-10 minutes optimal gameplay, 15-20 non-optimally), BUT should have mechanisms that prevent content skipping:

  • Levers
  • Floors
  • Chests that require channeling to open, or even
  • A super highly enraged mob here and there that doesn’t let you pass unless killed… :stuck_out_tongue:

Things like that, be slightly themed but not too strongly, have a mini-boss of some kind with some kind of specific item potential maybe

The third ones should be EXTREMELY DIFFICULT and HIGHLY-THEMED, but should have some “mercy” at the beginning, i.e. at the entrance where you give the key to a vendor you can choose some kind of an “easening bonus” (at the cost of reducing the chance to gain the ultimate prize in it), those can be:

  • Some kind of a buff (permanent for one run only)
  • Item that’s really good in the dungeon that has a “special affix” on it which isn’t usable while outside
  • “Pitstop” or “Cheat code” type help, say a few TP scrolls that don’t reset the Dungeon when leaving (but say after 2 minutes teleports back in the dungeon automatically if not done by then), maybe a shrine of self/resurrection which can be placed only once and procs only if die within a certain range, or maybe even simpler
  • Training round (i.e. fight a bit weakened version of the guardian before entering so can feel the difficulty before getting in)
  • A couple or few potions of invulnerabilities that last a few sec maybe

OR, as mentioned above already:

Be the “I’m a seasoned veteran” and “kindly” refuse all those things in order to get a much higher chance of the Dungeon’s ultimate prize :slight_smile:

AND lastly but not the least, think that “farming dungeons” can be represented not only by “Passages” as mentioned above but also even Arenas :slight_smile: (sometimes the arena or brawl corner or whatever will be placed inside the passage)

Doesn’t have to be colloseum or anything grandeous but you know - place a bet at each round and if survive the round gain the prize you bet (higher bet higher prize for each round), say if bet 10k gold can get only a dozen Scrolls but if bet 100k then can get a really nice Wand or Staff by the “arena master” as an offer for winning the round maybe)

And an extra “side note”, think Arenas in co-op would be a huge thing for a lot of “casuals” or semi-pros in general, and even at certain conditions and circumstances those could be a nice place for scheduled fights for PvP :stuck_out_tongue:

Overall here’s a “nice” guideline:

1 - Passages should probably have around 150-300 mobs, about 5 elite groups inside and either an arena inside or a bunch of chests… The “final boss” in these is some kind of a veteran elite (upgraded/modified elite in some ways)

2 - Dungeons (i.e. Regular Dungeons) should have probably at least 400 mobs but not more than 600, most of the non-swarmer mobs have some slight themed buff, and the boss is a mini-boss of some kind (imagine Chaos Sanctuary but not with Diablo but rather with Blood Raven as a boss, that’s what the Regular Dungeons would/should feel like most of the time)

3 - Keyed Dungeons (endgame ones that make a greater impact not only for you but broader), should have at least 1.5k mobs (probably not more than 3k though) and most of them should feel like “Uruk hai” trained… In other words fighting a faction in a Keyed Dungeon should feel like fighting an Army, getting inside a keyed dungeon and “cleansing” should feel like going inside Isengard and killing everything (including Saruman), I mean it is the “ultimate experience” (or at least one of the forms) the game should be offering… I was also thinking on a “Growth rate” if they really want to feel the game has it’s own “life cycle”, i.e. the longer the dungeon’s not defeated the more and stronger mobs inside (but that would be a bit too much I think :thinking:)

11

I understand what you mean but doing the same path over and over for several minutes every time you want to run that dungeon gets old really fast. I don’t think it should be more than 30-60s to go from portal to dungeon entrance with the mount, in a video game it’s already a significant amount of time.

For dungeons themselves, 10-20mn feels like a good number to me. They’re supposed to be relatively fast, intense activities.
What I agree with is the need for longer types of activities, maybe a series of random dungeons tied with a theme, that would last 1 hour. But it doesn’t make sense to have regular dungeons require twice more time to complete than other.

Ideed, but I hope they will be part of the Tree of Whispers’ activities, so there will be reason for them to exist in the endgame.

12

That is a good length imo. Not more than 30 min though. And also okay if some are a bit shorter.

In general, the game should incentivize exploring the dungeons. So maybe you can kill the boss or whatever the endgoal is, in 10 minutes if you rush, but skipping all the side-stuff in the dungeon should then be very inefficient. Have chests, locked doors, secret chambers, optional bosses etc. in the dungeons. Exploring the dungeon should be as rewarding as merely “completing” the dungeon, if not more.
This way, players also have a fair amount of freedom in deciding how long they want the dungeon to be, based on how much of it they explore.

Also hope it takes some minutes to run to a dungeon, like 2-4 minutes, with random overworld events spawning on your way, that might make it take way longer, if you decide to do those first. Like, on your way to the dungeon a world boss spawns, and you decide to spend 5 minuntes on it first. Or a quest spawns, and your group follows that quest for 10 minutes before moving on to the dungeon. So the travel time itself should not be huge. It should however be quite inefficient (in terms of XP and loot) to beeline to the dungeon, ignoring the stuff that spawns on the way.

Heck, some dungeon runs take like a minute :confused: and it is indeed quite sad gameplay. Especially for groups, who might barely play together, because everything just dies too fast.

:100:

Yeah. As long as they dont actually feel like trash fights, it is fine. I mean, in some MMOs, the trash fights in raids can be a major part of the challenge.

Imo each dungeon should have random goals based on the dungeon key (during campaign some dungeons would of course have goals related to the story). Sometimes to kill a boss, other times to kill X enemies, or free 5 prisoners spread throughout the dungeon etc. And yeah, those goals could be evolving throughout the dungeon. Free prisoners, then hunt down some summoners, ending with a big boss fight.
As well as having optional side-objectives sometimes. “Stop the summonung ritual. Optional; free the prisoners before the ritual begins”, with extra rewards for doing the latter, even if the former is enough to get the boss fight.

That is what should change imo. The events should be just as rewarding (aka. loot), and challenging, as the dungeons. In the end, they should function much the same way. Getting a quest in the overworld should be pretty similar to doing an objective in a dungeon. Except for the location.

Or simple stuff like running into a “super unique” etc. along the way.

The whole thing should be based on; you have the option to ignore everything and just do a dungeon, if you want to. But you would get more loot over time, if you do the events that spawns along the way to the dungeon. Making it an efficiency loss to only do the dungeon.

2 Likes
13

Here’s an idea and curious to what you think… In HoMM (yes, Heroes of Might and Magic :smiley: ) the castles, towns, and basically everything has a natural “Growth rate” (Castles having highest ofc.) where the longer you delay your fight/s the higher the numbers of dwellings

I was thinking on something like - Greater/Keyed/Raid/Instance dungeons (name as you like) should have a Growth Rate of their own as well, and right when the Growth is above a certain threshold (say above 75%) is when the Boss fully recovers and it’s “open for raid” i.e. only while well-populated and well “recovered” should offer the prize

It’s kind of a both “anti-farm” as well as “reward first winner the most” mechanic at the same time… :thinking: (people would get pissed if someone “cleanses” it at 74% and delays the run/s further though :P)

14

If it were intended to be optional, then it should be about equal efficiency to simply beeline to the dungeon and get more time in on the dungeon as it would be to stop and do the world quest.

Once you make one or the other more effective, many people will stop considering it optional even if by the technical definition of the word it is. A choice between +20% and +5% isn’t much of a choice, after all.

Making world events feel like a chore that you need to do in order to keep up on progression is something that went over disastrously in World of Warcraft. Diablo should not be rushing to make the same mistake.

1 Like
15

I don’t want to be punished or rewarded for wanting to play more. I like the rotation idea they have mentioned with targeted farming.

It’s this kind of stuff that will make doing the same journeys interesting. The overworld is apparently also being procedurally generated. So the overworld and its different biomes will be constantly changing, mixing up your journey and making it feel more like a natural adventure that is ever changing and less repetitive.

I’m really looking forward to this about the overworld. It’s a shame for it to might as well not exist once you’ve got all the portals, but luckily so far it seems like there will only be waypoints at strongholds. Strongly agree with Blizzards decision here and it’s nice to let them know as so many posts criticize instead of praise.

I love how with world tiers, dungeon keys and less waypoints they are really using all the areas over and over again right up to end game.

Diablo 2’s level 85 areas were a great way to have more areas to farm and more content to use at end game than just end game dungeons.

D4 really made the right call and it’s a huge innovation I think all ARPGs and MMOs can benefit from. Reusing all the areas in the game all the way till end game is a breath of fresh air this genre of games needed.

I want the entire map to always be fun to journey round.

I think people are worried they’ll get bored but from what I’ve seen of the overworld so far it looks just as exciting as the dungeons do for biomes and mob variety. I think people will be pleasantly surprised.

16

Interesting mechanism for sure. Wouldnt want it in every dungeon. But something like

Main objective: Kill boss - boss is strengthened by each summoner killed
Optional: Kill 5 summoners
With better rewards from the boss the stronger it is/the more summoners killed. Could be nice for sure.

It shouldn’t be optional in an efficiency sense, only in a “we dont literally force you at gunpoint to do them”.

Agreed. I am one of them. And it should not feel optional. It should be how the game was meant to be played. Hence the rewards should be significantly better if you do those events along with dungeons.
Only saying people should have the option (bad as it might be) to not do them. I mean, split bounties at this point is clearly how you are supposed to do bounties in D3. People can still decide not to do them that way. It is just very inefficient.

They should just not feel like a chore.
Do you also think it should not be more efficient to do dungeons, than to not do dungeons?
At some point, the game has to reward people for playing the game?
Reward people for doing the content you want them to do (and disincentivize them from doing other stuff; like mindlessly farming the same dungeon, or the same area, over and over)

Because the world content in WoW is unfortunately terrible.
It should just be similar to the dungeon content. If the overworld content is still a chore then, it means the dungeons are also a chore, and then nothing really matters anymore.

Fighting a group of enemies, or a boss, can feel completely identical inside and outside a dungeon.
Each type of place have their differences, like the dungeons will be procedurally generated and have randomized rules etc. allowing for one type of exploration (what might be in the next room/behind the corner), and gameplay altering effects, such as those shown by Blizzard so far (dmg effect following you around etc.).
The overworld has a sense of place, where directions can create another type of exploration than when everything is random (“Find the camp at the top of the hill near the white tree”, or something), and without the random key modifiers, monsters can just be their default selves, dialed up to 11 to compensate for the lower randomness.

:100:

17

This is fine the first time you play through the world and are exploring, but it becomes an increasing drag if you have to spend 5-10 minutes running through a ghost town to get to the objective. I have played MMO’s where this is the case and it gets very boring very fast. If the journey to the objective is well populated and has interesting rewards along the way, I would be fine with long travel times. I just don’t want to feel like travel time is filler to get their MAU hours/month up.

In D2, you could run from the Black Marsh to the Outer Cloister and run into a ton of mobs/elites/champions/chests etc. It gave you the option of clearing the area if you wanted immersion or running the gauntlet and trying to scramble to the end if you only cared about the objective.

In D3V on release and the couple of MMO’s I have played, you run through a barren wasteland playing hide and go seek with any monsters/chests/events to finally reach what you want to do. I’ll hard pass if D4 is designed like this.

2 Likes
18

Yeah. The point of the journey should exactly be to let players run into the interesting stuff. If the game has no interesting stuff to offer in the overworld, the travel time is just a time waster.

This is more like how it should be. Just with random events etc. thrown in, to make the journey more varied and dynamic.

1 Like
19

There’s going to be a group of people who just don’t want to do world events. There will be nothing you can really do to make it not feel like a chore to those people.

I think there should be a variety of endgame activities but one should not be more efficient than the other. The game should let the player decide what they want to do to get loot rather than punishing the player for not playing a certain way.

There is no good that will come of forcing players to do content they don’t enjoy, and it is impossible to make content that everybody will enjoy. That’s the entire point of having variety in the first place.

Well WoW has world bosses that are like raid bosses but they’re easy because they have to be. When the content is designed to be done by any random group of idiots that show up while you’re fighting it, it can’t be even remotely hard otherwise the success rate drops to less than 1% and nobody will have fun with it.

If you’re going to make them identical then there really isn’t any reason to force people to do it.

20

Very much agree with that. It should not be more rewarding to do world events instead of dungeons.
But doing all of these activities combined should be more rewarding than only doing some of them. Reward doing diverse content. Also since doing diverse content will be harder than doing specialized content only (easier to build for specialization).

Just to be sure, you also think it should be just as efficient to never do a single key dungeon in D4 then? Only doing overworld content.
I would definitely prefer that over dungeons being the optimal/forced content (like it clearly is in D3). Still seems worse than rewarding people for diversifying though.

I agree. The world bosses is a bit of a mistake imo.
I am more thinking of the other world content, where it is just you, and maybe your group, vs. the content. With no other players around. That content can be tuned exactly like dungeons. Both for solo and group play.

Incentivizing doing diverse content it the reason. Creating a better gameplay experience, and rewarding people for playing it. Rather than what too often happens; rewarding people for playing the most mindless, grindy way imaginable.