I have played many many many RPGs. Most of them were terrible, but the gems of the genre are among the very best games I ever played.
I played D2 for about 10 years with a couple more months of playing around with mods. I played D3 for 5 years, but stopped after a while.
Among the games I enjoyed recently were Grim Dawn, PoE and FF14.
Here are some of my suggestions and criticism of D4, knowing that most of it is probably irrelevant at this point in the development of the game.
-
There was an interview where they hinted at infinite scalling of item’s stats based on the difficulty being played. This is a terrible idea, because you want your progression to matter in the sense that if you find a SoJ you want that “rare” item to be good forever. Getting it should be a small achievement, not a temporary boost.
-
They were too vague when talking about trade. If trade is limited on certain type of items, then you need to find a way to make the items you can’t trade valuable even if you found the same one twice. One way to do it would be with crafting. Say I have twice the same mythical item, what if I could break that item down and get crafting material to make another random mythical item (something like 1 mythical item gives you 50% of the crafting material needed to make another)
-
Progression. The max level doesn’t matter much to me, but I do not like how D3 handles it… Items you find should have fixed level requirements that do not scale as you lvl up. The whole “no drops matter until you are max lvl” is one of the worst aspects of D3.
-
Too much endgame content is not a thing. There is no such thing as too much choice in a RPG. I understand that it makes the game intimidating at first, but having a variety of things you can do is important… people who stick around and play the game fully will aways want something to break the routine.
-
Events. If there’s one thing I don’t dislike about some mobile games is the small events that break the routine. A small thing every 1-2 months goes a long way to keep people interested. Simple changes to the game like “-50% crafting material needed” or “Lilith can spawn anywhere on the map”. Just to keep things fresh.
-
Crafting. If magic and rare items are not going to be part of anyone’s final build, I would like to see crafted items fill that role. I want it to be possible for me to craft some badass gloves with mods that I wouldn’t necessarily get from a legendary.
-
Stats. It doesn’t matter if the stats revolve around mods like “+5% damage reduction” or “+5% defense” or “+1000 life”, what matters is that those stats feel meaningful. So far it seems like the stats will not be random on legendaries, so please keep that mindset! Let us make build not only based on the special power the items gives, but also based on the stats on those items.
-
Elemental affinity. I want my choice of build to matter more than simply changing the way I play the game. What I never saw in a ARPG that I always wanted was elemental affinity, in the sense that a fire sorc build should be weak/fragile against cold enemies. I want to be in an area with cold monsters and being forced to be more vigilant or to simply temporarily modify my build. I don’t want immune monsters, I think that’s a lazy way to go about it.
I could go on for hours, but I wanted to make this short to avoid transforming this post into a huge wish list.