[D4] Unavoidable attacks (one-shot mechanics)

General Discussion
41

Back in Diablo 3 classic Subjugators, Dark Berserkers and Fallen Overseers were packing few highest one tick burst damage in one attack but they were so slow and telegraphed; at least for Berserkers and Overseers. This can add a thrill to allow high damage bursts to any mediocre rank enemy but making them avoidable is the key.
Alas, hit registering back in classic D3 was so bad (I think once I heard it had something to do with textures flowing away from models but can’t be sure, it doesn’t make sense) this somewhat made the game nearly unplayable unless you can tank everything by buying items from Auction House. If developers don’t wanna get into the same loop, then they better make things arrayed nicely this time.

Similarly some high grade bosses can gear check when they hit certain maximum health thresholds. It can be a room sweeping attack just like Malthael and Azmodan did back in Diablo 3, these aren’t only gear checks but skill checks to see if you are juggling the cooldowns of the defensive skills just right as well. Bosses can even gets you dreaded by inflicting a debuff on every player character around them and either invulnerability frames, cleanse, an interrupt or a manual dodge might save you against the oncoming attack.
On the subject of interrupt, you can not really interrupt Diablo 3 elites with crowd control as they’re not the one casting those spells but a tied entity does it for them. This still makes the crowd control important but makes them frustrating to fight against when your effects work on them half baked.

If player don’t wanna abuse crowd control, developers supposed to give other ways of approach for the substitute of crowd control or pull restrictions but make it accessible and effective. It could be increased block chance or thorns when they lack to deal damage or need to prioritize targets. Else a strong crowd control such as manually cast stun supposed to stop the monster dead in their tracks and silence them.
They thought the ARPG gameflow as a trinity after they decided to preserve class characteristics but most people don’t see it that way, neither they play tabletop RPGs with pure class fantasies.

I appreciated their design back in D3 vanilla, where every class has their own thing for mass crowd control and shift through as they upgrade equipment but it was too jarring. Perhaps my opinion is a rare one but they should’ve get the memo along these years hopefully, when angry reviews rolled in. Diablo 3 was too original for its own good. Jarring effect that doesn’t really allow you to be flexible, was there from the start; hidden behind dice rolls and power from items.
Luckily they promised on not keeping all the character power on items but I can’t entirely be sure of that because if anything goes wrong they will retreat back to treadmill only controllable environment design. I still have question about how they plan on diminishing the items’ impact on character power when they give really low stats for leveling up.

tl;dr: Developers will figure gear checks depending on combat flow. We should ask more questions about itemization if we want answers.

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So you just made a boss that is impossible for all builds, according to your logic? Great game.

No, but immunities is one of the ways to design content that some builds are not meant to do.

43

So how does skill help you miss an unavoidable one-shot? :thinking:

1 Like
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It helps you survive the unavoidable dmg. By being properly geared or using a good combination of abilities.
I argued against oneshots. Neither unavoidable, nor avoidable hits should oneshot a reasonably geared character. But that avoidable dmg might still kill you, if you fail to mitigate it over time.
But yeah, if you are only talking unavoidable oneshots, then agreed, should never happen.

45

Unavoidable oneshot might work if there was two health bars, one for health maybe second for xp? It actually sounds fun. You have two bars. And one of them might get 1-shotted down if you dont play right.

Cyberpunk had tons of 1-shot stuff, man it was annoying.

OOR. They could turn the game into 1 extra life game.

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46

I think what others are telling you is that if every attack that a monster has in D4 is easily avoidable as if you are not really engaging with the monster at all. It would be like the monster can never hit you. So it would be better for it to stand and place doing nothing letting you kill it.

So what they are saying is that going total glass cannon should have its own consequences. Otherwise you are saying you want glass cannon builds to rule D4. Trust me if glass cannon builds could easily go through D4’s content players wouldn’t choose any defensive abilities or stats. It would be all damage and nothing else. That would get real boring really fast.

Using defensive abilities and stats along with offensive ones and offensive stats are what makes good builds.

So you can see why it wouldn’t be a good idea to have D4 be a Glass Cannon’s paradise.

I guess then you are looking at a game that would say okay you could have an EHP of 10 at endgame and be just fine.

Oh so make D4 a glass cannon’s paradise where they those builds don’t need any mitigation abilities or stats at all. Where at max level you could have EHP of 10 and be just fine. Where every stat on the gear is all about damage. Where all abilities are all about damage.

Agreed, I know that there are plenty of places in PoE prior to endgame it is recommended to have a certain amount of life in order to safely handle the content.

I think that all builds should have the potential to clear all content. The only difference is that some builds will do it better than others. I might struggle with WW barb on dungeons X, Y, Z and you might have a Wolf summoning Druid that struggles on dungeons A, B, C. Where both of us can clear them but it is a struggle to do so.

Even the endgame that is long after the campaign is over and you are at max level players will see that content as part of the game and will mean that they should be able to do it even if it is a struggle to do so.

What don’t you think that players would have fun finding ways of beating content with builds where the content is a struggle to complete.

Also being impossible is as bad as being immune. It means you won’t be able to kill it.

Build experimentation shouldn’t be based on needing a different build to go through certain parts of the game. It should be encouraged by having good skills and gear choices that would want the player to find out if the build is fun to play. Instead of oh well build A can’t clear X, Y, Z. Now I will need a new build to clear it.

1 Like
47

Everyone who creates a character should be able to do 100% of a game with that character. That’s just my opinion yours stinks xD.

2 Likes
48

Yes, if he techs with everything he’s capable of, but that won’t be the case. In certain zones he’d tech in certain ways.

You can also have Demonic Shapeshifter influenced endgame maps in which some of the monsters get the tech.

The game should offer the player a real choice regarding skills and item properties (only stacking offensive or defensive stats should be viable). If the player is good enough to not die with minimum EHP, he should be able to push his glass cannon build in most areas.

This simply leads to boring, more narrow and less skilled game, in which the practice of copy/pasting meta builds is rewarded and build experimentation is not needed.

A good aRPG is one that stimulates the player to try and learn more class and build mechanics. Making the content in the game 100% doable by all meta builds goes against this.

Let’s say we have 30 endgame bosses in D4. If you can kill all of these with a single character there won’t be much initiative to experiment. The majority of players would simply copy/paste the most optimal build they can complete.

But if a single character can do at most 10 of these then we’ve just given more goals to our players - create more characters if you want to do all 30 bosses. If not - there’s no problem, you’d still be able to find 100% of the items from these 10 bosses and you can keep farming them as long as you want. However, if you want to achieve killing all 30 bosses you’d have to use the whole spectrum of Diablo potential that is in the game. Now, that’s fun.

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Go play PoE. Get into the endgame. Marvel at the sheer amount of OHKOs. Then come back and tell me it’s “fun” and should be in D4. Even their campaign bosses have OHKOs that on many class and spec combos are almost unavoidable unless you use up a gem slot for a Dash gem. Kitava in both incarnations is a prime example of this. Both the boss and its minions can OHKO you.

No, we don’t want that in D4. Ever.

50

Well, if you play a glass cannon and you don’t manage to avoid a boss attack you have to accept the consequence. One-shotting should very well be a possibility in D4.

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Um, I’ve been OHKO’d by Kitava and many endgame mechanics whilst doing my best to keep as many +HP nodes as possible on my passive tree and on my gear. It’s a complaint that is mirrored even by players that have extremely tanky builds. When the tankiest build can be one shot, you have design problems. Big ones.

52

Exactly. Immunities are bad for build diversity since they require a player to balanced in their selection as opposed to just doing what they want.

We agree that if I want to build a 100% ice damage dealing sorcerer, I should be able to beat the game but struggle with ice based enemies. And God forbid we get that Ice King expansion/season. I might it beat it until the next expansion/season comes out. But, I could still do it. With immunities that would be impossible.

2 Likes
53

It still depends on where this happens.

Certain bosses having the ability to one shot very tanky builds would be okay if the attack is avoidable by the player. For example, if the boss debuffs your movement speed, and then defense and then one shots you with an attack you could have avoided theoretically, then it would be an okay design. If however any basic minion can one shot a tank then it’s bad design when not strictly applied in a competetive nature.

When I played the Endless Delve event a few months ago I easily made the Duelist top 50 with playing 4 days out of 7 exactly because after certain Delve depth you’d get one shotted at many spots thus the majority of players simply couldn’t proceed further.

54

So out of the millions that play D4 a lot will be like… oh i can’t do these bosses with this char because he is incapable and i need to make a new char… forget it then bye bye D4… NEXT GAME.

1 Like
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More like: Forget it, I’ll farm those I can.
Or: Yes, I could actually roll a new char. Oh, wow!

56

But there are players that only like playing one char so no your idea is self centered.

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There’s nothing wrong with that. If we however make a game, which content can be 100% completed by dozens of meta builds, our game isn’t actually punishing the weaknesses of those builds, which isn’t of great motivation for the players to put more time in the game and learn the different game mechanics.

Now, you can go and say that each class should be able to complete 100% of the game content, and that would be valid, but having characters doing it isn’t optimal design.

If you are one of those players that stick to a single class - fine, if you can really master everything the class offers you, you should be able to achieve 100% completion, but that should follow from you playing with different characters/builds.

58

Yes every character should be able to 100% a game let’s stick to this idea instead of pushing people out of a game. I am not saying make a game easy.
It should be optional to play every character/build.

1 Like
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You have to argument yourself why you think “pushing people out of a game” would happen.

Diablo 4 is planned to be a non-kids game (at least endless paragon should not make it). What would be such of big trouble to a grown up person that he won’t be able to achieve 100% completion with 1 character? You’d still won’t be locked of builds, items etc due to farming the content your character is able to.

Yes, it is. Achieving 100% completion is not mandatory too.

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i would say theres a difference between “every character” or even “every serious build” and “ANY build”

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