[D4 idea/suggestion] introduce/implement a Classification/Tag system for skills

General Discussion
1

The main benefit of this kind of system ?, 2 of them actually

1 - healthy affix diversity
2 - skill balance (by type/classification)

So, here are some examples:

Bash:
Rend:
Whirlwind:
Upheaval:

Ray of Frost:
Frost bolt:
Meteor:
Charged Bolt:

Now, let’s introduce/characterize those skills with certain tags which may be like

  • Weak (does low amount of damage per cost or per cast)
    • Bash, Frost Bolt, Charged Bolt
  • High Cost (costs a lot, prevents player to use it more than 3-4 times per full resource bar unless overly invested into higher resource pool)
    • Upheaval, Meteor, Ray of Frost (even though not entirely characterized by this, skill is still channelable)
  • Low cast radius (spell that’s designed to initially have low radius/reach but can be increased without feeling too out of place/unnatural)
    • Rend, Whirlwind, Upheaval, Frost Bolt
  • Devastatory (skill that does a heck ton of damage for it’s cost)
    • Upheaval, Meteor
  • Highly Repeatable (skills designed to be used in fast succession without overwhelming unbalanced effect)
    • Frenzy, Ray of Frost
  • HighProc (skills designed to have a proc-rate either by default or by talents/nodes but aren’t too repeatable/channeled)
    • Frenzy, Frost Bolt, Charged Bolt

So, having THAT tag system in mind, we can have affixes on gear be liiike:

    • 25% damage by Weak (+30%, +45% even)
    • 5% damage by Devastatory (+3%, +8%, whatever, anything below 10% seems acceptable)
    • +5% Proc-Rate by HighProc (could be +8%, +12% even)
    • 22% CastRange by LowCast range (could be as low as +10%, but also as high as +25%)
  • -10 Resource per cast by HighCost (could be as low as -5, but also as high as -15, -20 or whatever)
  • +15% by HighlyRepeatable (could be as low as 5% but also as high as 30%)

So THAT’s the idea in general… The Skill/TAG system would be “drawn” in the RARE affix pool most often. Blues would give most often things like +X to skill X (upgrading level of such skill, or skill group), but RARE affix system would affect certain TYPE of skills (affected by a Tag system)

Now the cool/weird part

Instead of “bothering” the user all the time with BS, the Affix could simply “translate” to the players’ current situation (who wants to read details for tags can hold the Alt button, but a simple affix could look like this)

  • 5% Damage to Meteor, Blades of Ice, Firewall and Fireball (assuming those are the 4 “devastatory” skills a player has learned)

OR

  • 15% radius/projectile-reach for Meteor, ChargedBolt (assuming those 2 were learned)

OR

  • 25% Radius to Rend, Whirlwind, Upheaval (assuming those are the 4 “low cast range” skills the player has learned)

This kind of “unique” affix pool for RARES should really diversify A LOT of builds down the line and allow the player to really focus/maximize on what they want

Want as much Meteors as possible ?, equip High-Cost reductions, want to focus on “Weak” skills and making them decent (with really decent late game affixes like 15%, 20%, 30% increases), equip as many gear pieces that do exactly that

There are 2 large benefits from such a system:

1 - Easy to Balance
2 - Really UNIQUE affix pools for each item “class”/category, a good way to “guarantee” different outcome but still usable outcome of gear

And one drawback

1 - Sometimes (on Rare items) gear affixes will feel “weird”… May even change with time if you learn some other/more skills down the line also

BUT, again, as long as the TOOLTIP doesn’t feel too overwhelming, think it’s a nice idea to consider/look-upon… It’s also easy to make a 25% increase of Cast speed on say Meteors or Blizzards but still not make Ray of Frost proc like 15 times a second (it’s really good balancing system that makes all things be viable, and can tweak down the line some more also)

2 Likes
2

I strongly agree with the concept of having tag systems for skills.
The details can always be discussed. But definitely, imo skill tags, interaction with gear, runes, skill upgrades etc. is a requirement in a modern A-RPG.

All the way from the simple, obvious tags;
“ranged skills” (which they probably already have), “projectile skills”, “fire skills”, “defensive skills”, “shapeshift skills”, “mobility skills” and so on. So you can have stuff like a rune that activates on using any of the shapeshift abilities, or any fire skill and so on. As well as making it much easier to design legendary and unique affixes, interacting with different types of skills.
More advanced tags could certainly exist as well. Though, not too specific. The goal should obviously be that each tag exists on many different skills. Otherwise the system does not serve its purpose.

1 Like
3

Yep, somewhere around 3-5 and 7-8 per class would work… 1 skill per class is too little, and more than 7-8 might be a bit too much tbh

That’s why I also kinda vouched for SOME Barb skills to change, for example don’t need 3 mobility skills and 3 shouts with no Tactical or Projectile whatsoever… They could easily make a Bone spear skill for the Barb that he literally rips off the spine of a dead mob and launches it to the foe… Skills like “Shield Wall”, “Iron Maiden” or even “Shackle” could also work, you know, some tactical/CC/battle-control stuff so that the Tag-system is more diverse :slight_smile:

4

Yeah, agreed.

Might be some cases where you go lower than that. Like, some classes might have very few summons/pets. Shouldnt shoehorn all kinds of skills in, just so everyone got 3+ of everything. There is a risk of making classes too much the same if they all have similar tools (although not a risk I worry too much about… since that is exactly what a respec cost can take care of ^^)

5

Hm
Except I don’t really like your tags and rather went with stuff like
“Projectile, fire, poison, melee, blunt, slash”
I have said many times it would be a good idea :slight_smile:

6

Well I don’t like the names, but was always bad at naming, so… didn’t bother about those :smiley: :thinking: :stuck_out_tongue:

7

well i think its more to it than just names like
having a theme
and “spamable” or “very high damage but expensive” are not very immsersive and fantasy friendly themes you can be creative with
“expensive skills that do a lot of damage gains certain bonus” isnt as engaging as “fire skills gain increased chance to burn targets” or “blunt attacks gain increased chance to stun enemies”

8

Well, the main idea is keep a nice balance

If an affix gives you a Frost bolt 5% damage increase you’ll probably not bother, if an affix gives you a 15% damage increase to Meteor you probably won’t even consider other options, so the idea is to have Affixes increase 15% damage to skills like Frost Bolt and 5% to skills like Meteor, that’s why I had things like

  • weak spells (these gain bonuses within the 15-30% percentile range or so)
  • devastative spells (these gain bonuses within the 5-8% percentile range or so)

As for the others, didn’t want to put Projectiles in a separate category cause didn’t want them to be useless for the Barb, otherwise a Projectile range increase by 15% is perfectly viable affix, BUT in order to have it work with Barb also “baked” in things like Upheaval, so the “mutual” thing between the two is that they are made in a certain way that their range/AoE can be severely improved

But agreed, would be quite confusing for a spell to be classified as “Low reach” for a lot of folk… :slight_smile:

9

well then the barb just wont be one to use these affixes
just like a druid wont use any affixes for fire skills
spreading the utility of affixes over the board with skills tags doesnt mean that EVERY character has to makes use of EVERY SINGLE affix

10

I do believe that all games do that in some way or another anyway. So you are talking about what game companies already do.

GGG’s PoE does just that and they tell players some of those things by the tags that are on the skill gems. Match the support gems with the tags of the active gems and you will have a powerful build.

Right now I am having a blast playing a Fireball Ignite Elementalist Witch in PoE’s Ritual League. Yes I do take breaks from playing this game.

11

Why people want to over-complicate this. Diablo has kickass concept. Almost zero competition. Diablo series should be built on its strenght, not treat it as some alternative to the genre.

12

because there is room for improvement
diablo 2 was great
diablo 3 was a backstep
diablo 4 can be better than diablo 2 and fix what wasnt perfect there

13

Theres no perfect games, it last as long you get bored.

Tried to tell it to Blizz, They should work on the entertainment value, add Celebrities for Seasons etc. Better music.

14

You have to take others into consideration, just cause you want “fanfares” blowing while murdering stuff left & right doesn’t mean it’s enough for others :stuck_out_tongue:

The goal to development is make a “good cut” value (i.e. insert everything that would give greater benefit than the cost to develop and vice versa, cut everything that will not “last” long enough). That’s like value basics 101, even a 2$ watch is expensive if you don’t use it, and a 1000$ one may not be if it’s your “partner in crime” for everything you do in life

Long-story-short, the goal isn’t to reduce the cost, the goal is to maximize the gain, and frankly that’s what all the discussions on the forum (or at least should be) are

15

Its devs choice in the end like it always is. I just dont think add more complexity to the series is the way to go. Its road to niche game, or like I said “alternative” game.

I read your post again. I see “balance and tweaking” is this what this game really needs? Average joes just wanna smash it through, get XP, cooler gears, kill bosses etc. I imagine.

16

It is exactly what it needs.

If you just want to ‘shoot things in the face’ there are “better” games out there than Diablo.
A-RPGs are definitely about killing enemies, sure, but they are also very much about building characters. That is kinda what sets them apart from most games. Rather than the kill stuff gameplay, since lots of genres got that.
“Average joe” is not going to play Diablo 4 no matter what Blizzard do, so it would be quite the mistake to design the game for them.

17

Depends on the “Joe” I guess… Not all “casual” players want to “breeze through” content like no biggie, some might want some challenge as well… Well I’ll admit that’s the case with me at least tbh, would even go further in the other direction, make the game more Doom-Eternal-esque where a good portion of mobs have their glaring/obvious strengths and weaknesses, for example the Drowned dude with the big log to have the AoE with knockback but also have a single attack that deals large amounts of damage but have his log “stuck” down on the ground for a couple of seconds and make it destructible so that a good/skilled player can make the fight easier earlier… IN FACT think that preventable buffs/ccs/summons is the best way (punch a summoning dude mid summon animation, silence a mage that channels a nasty buff on a nasty fighter, walls that can either be prevented during cast or destructible e.t…c)… Basically, have the mobs themselves have a “now is my 5 minutes to shine” moment and have players revolve around… (instead of just look different but do the same)

Regardless of my personal preference/s (which I believe might be the minority) the main point is the following: every game has to have it’s unique & complex identity otherwise will die off shortly… The only question to really ask is whether that complexity better be increasing gradually or in the form of a “brickwall” (i.e. thrown everything at once) at the end (i.e. post campaign content) to the player

I’ll have to admit that I prefer the former BY A VAST and I mean VERY VAST margain… The whole point and benefit of that approach is that makes the player feel engaged while leveling, and furthermore the “aftercontent” will still feel engaging (as opposed to “farm”) later

Besides, I’d imagine to be true that having people “grind” before they actually start playing the actual game is nothing but a really bad design. You want to have the player as engaged as early as possible, otherwise not only “average joes” that will stop playing after they beat the “basic” content but also the ones that want more challenge but don’t have the time to “grind forever” will not play

And believed it or not that’s exactly how games die, lesser amount of players = lesser amount of interactive gameplay, lesser amount of interactive gameplay = lesser activity, lesser activity = dead game

So then the question to ask is, was it really worth ?, all that development and energy and sittings on the “drawing board” and whatnot, was it really worth if ppl simply stop to play ? :thinking:

18

if skill A has lets say: Melee, AoE, Duration and Lightning tag on it. Then any affix on gear or passive tree or whatever else that affects any of those tags will work on that skill.

But lets be honest here, PoE uses this as the backbone of their game and how it functions as a whole.
D4 dev team probably think this is way too complicated for the player and creates too much options for interactions and creativity. I wont hold my breath for something like this to be in D4

19

Hack and slash and “kill stuff” is actually rare these days. Most modern game design is all about exploration and story these days. How much stuff you killed in Cyberpunk for example? Death Stranding? Pure “kill stuff” games are damn rare, and thats where Blizzard should head into. If anything make it more entertaining, add better music, celebrities, fun seasons etc.

20

There are like a hundred rogue-likes released each year these days, mostly focusing on killing stuff. Shooters of all kinds too.