They didn’t say anything about trading; which determines if I even try the game or not. Free trade is a must.
Also looking at their items, with the colors and fonts…still feels way too much like D3.
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Comments to todays topic - IMO:
- Angelic, Demonic, Ancestral powers
- Good addition, should add a lot of variety.
- Might be a nightmare to balance, but if it’s done in a good way this will be perfect addition to game.
- Just curious why it’s not named Strengh, Dexterity, Energy, Vitality (
) . It’s a bit different, but in core - this works really simillar. I like it.
- Attack/Defense
- As long as weapon damage does not directly affect your spell damage this is good. It looks a bit stupid to have Attack on gloves if they are not somehow special.
- Ancient Legendary replaced - unnamed consumable
- Ancient legendary as it works in D3 is really bad thing. Thank you so much!
- Promoting rares is great, I think there should be also some overlap between item classes - take MRLlamaSC chart of items powers for a reference. Magic item should be able to be better than some legendary for certain build (magics in D2 has more powerful, but less affixes than rares), also rares should be “rare” so most of them are not better than legendaries, but for example 5 tornado 4 huricane Druid pelt in D2 was best item for him (if you count damage on item), even though there is a Shako Unique existing which is really powerful overall.
- overall I really like this idea in case that these are tradeable, and in case that you can make your character let’s say 30% rares and be competitive / better than with legendaries used instead. This would create cool variety in game.
What I beg you for (really):
- Trading made good
- Please, make 99% items tradeable. I know you are scared by bots, but Diablo II was so much loved also because trading was there and it was a way how to make your character better.
- Trading to be enabled just in hubs face to face should solve the problem, put a captcha there or something if you wish… but make it happen.
- No huge numbers
- please omit billion numbers of damage etc. There is no need to have more than 5 digits, and it looks way better like that.
- Crafting
- Please make crafting to be valid play style or a way how to gear up your character to be competitive. D2 crafting systems were cool, just make these items more viable to use.
- Please no class specific “smart loot”
- This is a game in gothic world, this is not a game in applestore environment. Don’t make it “smart”. Let people trade their drops to make profit and support turnover of items between players. Trade is an interaction. This leads people to communicate to each other, and play together, support each other.
- Music
- Please make more acoustic music and less orchestral. Also use uncommon instruments for that. Matt Uelmen is a hero, we missed him and his style in D3.
- Weird affixes
- Please don’t use % critical damage and % critical damage chance affixes… it’s just broken.
- Oh my gloves broken - I have no damage now
- Please do not repeat this mechanic from D3. There damaging one item or savaging that - whatever - not having that completely broken your character and you had no damage/survivability.
- Please split power over items and also naked character with 0 items should be able to survive at least few hits imo.
Thank you if you made it to here 
Kaleb
(Your lifetime Diablo fan since got my first PC as a child in 2001)
6 Likes
I love “based on character level” stats on items. Think it will good decision for some affix (for ex. some blue items and rares can be valuable for more time and you have choice to equip dropped rare item, or wait some time, because power of blue item increases each level. Of course this blue power not endless (e.g. only to level 30).
Thanks.
4 Likes
Totally agree with this. A linear increase between tiers with breakpoints (and possibly even overlaps) instead of huge jumps sounds like a solid foundation to avoid huge power creep on paper. I would venture to even say (like others have said before) that blues should actually still roll the highest affix values to keep them relevant for some time during the journey (since they can’t roll with as many affixes as the rares and legendaries), and have a tendency to roll on the higher end of the spectrum at some point towards the endgame. This should make them far more useful for some time while making your way towards the higher difficulties.
Just to further flesh it out with an example. Say you’re somewhere towards the end of the campaign/story, and have rare yellow gloves that you’ve had for a few levels with a crit rate affix, and a few other affixes. It is more compelling to have blue come around at some point during this time with a high or even max value crit rate value. This gives the player an actual impactful decision to make. Use the higher crit rate blue gloves, or use the yellow rare with lower crit rate but other useful affixes.
I think its these things about itemization, lost during D3 that makes the journey towards the endgame more compelling.
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The demonic/angelic/ancestral stats sound like a worse version of str/dex/int from diablo2 and other ARPGs. If I want the focus on damage over time, add a stat called “x% increased damage over time” and have the item have a higher int requirement to equip. It’s that simple.
3 Likes
like the ideas and the current development+communication approach!
kudos…
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They’re getting there with stat requirement but I don’t think they’re getting it. Strength, Dexterity, Vitality and Energy/Intelligence were all staple of the Diablo series. Stat system were not the problem but letting people stack that huge amounts were one.
Solely picking your items based on Attack and Defense will almost never be the optimal way to play ,
This will be a huge lie over two years when expansion pack hits and people demand stat growth and power creep. Do NOT set the system on such shallow base if you’re true to your word and don’t want a D3 clone. You’re asking for same fate for starters.
Same loop will apply to D4 as D3 with RoS, where recovery and utility lost their meaning in a fast paced combat. You lose the perception of time and burn out while playing a simulated clone of any mobile game with “Clicker” or “Idle” in the title.
Diablo series were good at giving an impression of interactive combat with recovery and adaptation, Diablo 3 ditched that model for the sake of mind numbingly fast dynamic combat where between life and death is just a split second. D3 did it by stat inflation and creating a jarring effect that no one asked for, because it was so plausible and easy to do so.
Why do you still insist on casual approach? Don’t you have statistical numbers on WoW Classic yet?
It’s important to reiterate here that items are just one part of a character’s overall power
What ensures that may I ask? Limited allocation talent tree with “3% more damage” and “4% more defense” nodes? What will happen when an expansion pack hits? Ask that to yourself first; why don’t you plan ahead?
When expansion pack hits, level cap will increase and new introduced skills will ditch everything; else you load every inch of power that character can fathom to gear and cut corners just like D3. Use some foresight, you get paid for it.
What’s the worst scenario of a stat growth where you need to wipe down the previous player progress? If you can not answer this properly, you can be sure you used a shallow base system as the core and need to work it up a little to be more complex.
Just 40 levels won’t keep forever with fan pressure and listening to echo chambers. Do you have any stand against that or at least a plan?
We don’t want to create an exact copy of Diablo II or Diablo III
That actually contradicts the evidence for me. You want a more diluted down D3 experience close to mobile. If Diablo Immortal is cancelled don’t use its system on Diablo 4, at least don’t call it Diablo 4. You’re the lore masters, right?
5 Likes
Love the angelic-demonic-ancestral flavor! Definitely adds an extra layer of relevant gearing up decisions to make the most out of the items you have. I love how it conditionally synergizes with what appears to be skills/talents in the D4 pool of abiities. A great step in making things extra interesting
Its something fresh to series and I can see the potential of these 3 gear aspects adding a lot of flavor/personalization and a step away from item sets being the only viable endgame route to take. Great!
I’m optimistic when it was said that “It’s important to reiterate here that items are just one part of a character’s overall power . Our goal is to spread out power across different sources, including skill ranks, your character’s level, talent trees, items, and the endgame character progression system (which, like everything else, is still in development).”
Its an indication that the D4 team is taking care not to introduce out of control power creep into the core game systems. I would just like to emphasize to the devs to please take great care with the endgame systems though. Now that you are laying solid foundations to keep character development interesting as we progress towards the endgame, not to make this pre-endgame power acquisition overshadowed by the endgame systems. (As was stated countless times in these forums about how Paragon was handled in D3 etc). Make the progression/journey through the campaign more than just an afterthought like it was in D3.
For the endgame, please consider the various horizontal upgrade systems proposed in other places in the forum that lead to small but meaningful power upgrades rather than vertical power gains like the D3 paragon system.
Thank you for getting rid of Ancient Legendaries as they are in D3. I’m thoroughly convinced now that you are taking well thought out feedback and discussions in the forum by making this move. Rare item improvements via farmable loot as a part of the endgame sounds so good since it can be made to be consistent with “meaningful but small upgrades over time”. Please don’t make these item upgrades too easy to obtain.
Overall, the blog post is a great follow up. Thank you Mr. David Kim and D4 team. Keep up the good work and can’t wait for more updates!
9 Likes
It is a more modern version able to reflect a more general name for its purpose. What it does is exactly what you described.
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I like the idea of ancestral angelic and demonic powers! Maybe there will even be cosmetics/transmogs that can only be equipped with certain levels of each so you can look evil or good or neutral depending on your character build
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I agree with the sentiment that the scaling of higher quality items should be mostly in the affixes that they hold, but it also makes me worry that the game will have me spending too much time evaluating gear instead of adventuring to find it.
Although, it’s all okay assuming the game won’t be the absolute loot-fest that is diablo 3 end game.
I think it’s important to maintain the route they’re going, where there are many different sources of power, items, character level, skill level, and talents each being one…
I think it’s fine to say that a skill attacks based on your total attack stat, as long as skill ranks are noticeably updating that damage.
for example with a fireball spell
if rank 1 does 115% attack damage
and rank 5 does 130% attack damage
then ranking up the skill is still significantly impacting the power. but we’re also not talking about the numbers d3 through around with most skills starting at 200% attack power and some of them doing over 2000%
2 Likes
It’d also be cool because it opens up the ability for even more possible builds, where maybe there are 2 legendary affixes you want for 2 different skills in your build, but they’re both on chest pieces. So you could wear one of the legendary chest pieces and hopefully find the other affix and put it on a helmet or something.
The biggest pain will be them balancing the drop rate of these consumables, but they have huge potential for adding build variety and allowing people to really run the builds that they want.
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What’s the whole point of introducing the angelic/demonic/ancestral powers in this way?
Why not just re-introducing the restrictions of main stats like it was in D2?
I really can’t see any difference between having an object (or affix in this case) requiring X Strength and having one requiring X Demonic power.
This whole " new mechanic" just makes no sense because it’s exactely the same thing of the one implemented in D2.
At this point reintroduce main stat talent points, too.
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Terrible writing by Kim, most is just filler stuff. Just saying.
Am I the only one with problems understanding
Demonic Power , which increases the duration of all negative effects (like debuffs or damage over time)
Now - is that supposed to mean it buffs your attacks (like Angelic buffs your defense)? Why call your attacks “negative effects”?
Or do you stay longer frozen with demonic power as it reads (“negative effects”)? If yes - is that supposed to create insta-salvage items or what?
Why make consumables with legendary powers instead of extracting the powers from legendary items and cubing them?
Removal of ancients - find a legendary, end of story. Ancients are exactly the “easy to learn” (find basic legendary), “hard to master” (find ancient with perfect stats) mechanic Kim says they want to have.
And crushing blow has been repeatedly proven as bad mechanics, but the Starcraft dev team probably never heard of that.
items are just one part of a character’s overall power
Well, that makes the whole post pretty irrelevant. “Slap on whatever you want, it has no great effect anyway” is what that means. People keep howling how baaad Paragon main stat is in D3, and here is more of it.
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I like the idea of cosmetics tied to this system. You can know at a glance what type of build someone is playing.
+1
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The idea, I think, is to have items grant bonuses if they’re ‘aligned’ to what your character does. Items in D2 were gated by a main stat but in this system not only is a ‘perk’ (when leveling this could matter) but the Angelic/Demonic/Ancestor system is granting bonuses to your spells and abilities it sounds like.
It is, basically, combining a couple of stats into a condensed version and giving them a flavor name. It is better than ‘just main stat gating’ or 'main stat = ALL DAMAGE type imho.
It creates an item hunt avenue instead of a “kill 10K more rares” issue that crafting, in D3 at least, causes
Not following.
The issue with Paragon main stat is that it creates an ‘infinite power scale’ which is what the detractors, or at least this one, dislikes about the Paragon concept the most. There is nothing here which is pointing to an infinite scaling issues.
Also…
Items should only be one aspect… you know skills and talents are also a thing >.>
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Just imagine the main stats doing the exact same thing of angelic/demonic powers.
If strength/dexterity etc. grant the same things of angelic/demonic powers it’s the same thing.
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That is very true but from the blog and from what the items showed it appears the idea is to use the ‘powers’ system to create specific skill improvements.
We need to see how the ‘powers’ system plays out but I’ll post what I said earlier in this thread the system can be fleshed out to add some benefits:
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This would end up forcing you to go a certain route with main stats, detracting from the other benefits of strength, dexterity, and intelligence…
This could make it so that a sorceress can’t easily attain the stats locked into strength without sacrificing mana pool or anything else that might be tied to intelligence…
It seems to makes more sense to clump things up to these new stat types and make them approachable for all classes instead of it becoming something that limits the classes
like barbarians maybe inherently have a ton of buff duration, but it’s hard for them to get the on-hit effects because it’s tied to intelligence, etc. etc.
3 Likes