[D4] - Why not a immersive/classic mode? Like bugsoft's new mode for ghost recon?

General Discussion
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EDIT - i Change my suggestion to just offline mode and mode support

I know that is a suggestion that is extremely unlikely to happens by the cost of implementing completely different mechanics and animations, even if by some miracle this suggestion is taken, it will probably come as DLC.

Some things that immersive old school rpg’s has in common

  • No cooldowns
  • Powerful items are HARD to obtain
  • Itemization is more old school like
  • Characters are far more unique
  • You kill AND die fast
  • Mechanics of the game tends to be more a reflection of the game’s world lore.

To exemplify how a immersive mode would work, examples involving potions, ammo and spells in this mode.

Potions - new vs old

On most modern games, it just teleports to your belly, insta heal but can only be used once per X seconds.

Now how a potion works on old school games? In some like Diablo 1, it can be spammed BUT on others like Gothic 1, takes time to the potion and to it have a effect. there are a drinking animation longer than dark souls estus drinking, so isn’t usable on most fights. On Baldur’s Gate/NWN1, takes time to drink potions too AND it exposes you to attacks of opportunity. since your guard is down.

Ammo - new vs old

Ammo in many modern games is unlimited and used consequence free

On FNV, a modern game made with old school mindset, you need to manage a lot your ammo. If you are with a 12 gauge shotgun, buckshot can be amazing for CQB, slugs for long range, if the enemy is weak to fire, use dragon breath rounds(…) and explosive .50 bmg ammo is extremely heavy and expensive. A similar system could work for a medieval game, but instead of armor piercing, you can have bodkin and instead of hollow point, you can have broadhead.

MAgical enchanted arrows can exist and be rarer except in high level gameplay

Gear bonuses

Gear bonuses in this mode should be very like Diablo 1 and other old school RPG’s. In other words, no 5468165165154 times multipliers and items in old school games tends gives a minor bonus from certain builds instead of determining everything about your build.

On D&D a Halberd deals d10 damage. A ultra expensive and rare halberd deals d10 + 5 damage.

I an re playing pathfinder kingmaker at moment and found a amazing staff. “Necromancer’s Staff”. It deals almost no damage. (d6+1) but it enhances my skeletons created by animate dead and create undead with a +3 weapon, which increases the damage of each one by 3 points and make then far more likely to damage enemies with DR.

If you really wanna maintain huge +skil level bonuses from LoD or huge attribute bonus, please. Make then not stack or be subjected to diminishing returns

Diablo 1 unique bows are like 3x better than non magical ones. Windforce is a example of old school itemization
Damage: 1-14
+5 Strength
+200% Damage
Knocks Target Back
Durability: 60
Requirements: 45 strength, 80 dexterity
Qlvl: 17
https://diablo2.diablowiki.net/D1_Unique_Bows

The +5 STR is just a level worth of bonus. The 3x damage is the most OP thing and the knock down. With spells, the bonus from items can make a lv 15 spell become lv 20 and that is it.

Skills(and magic) should’t be learned from nothing

The idea that everyone learns skill A on lv X makes no sense. I an glad that the tomes are coming back. But if you look to Gothic for example, in order to learn magic on G1/G2, you need to find someone able and willing to teach magic to you. Corristo only takes you as a apprentice if you joined the old camp and answered rightfully his questionnaire. A circle 1 fire mage can throw firebolts. A circle 5 can make rain fire.

Make certain skills be only available by questing. Make you need to find some reagents to research how to make a spell.

On G1, the same applies to non magical skills. On the beginning of the game, your protagonist uses a weapon like a anime protagonist. Once he pays for someone to teach him how to handle a weapon, his stance and moveset changes to something that makes sense.

If the animation and stance changes on upgrading your barbarian, it will be a amazing detail. And if he needs to pay someone for tuition once he has enough XP.

2 Likes
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Cooldowns are all over the place in old school RPGs because so many of them use a D&D ruleset, which includes vancian casting systems and a lot of “once per day” abilities.

On top of the fact that in games where there aren’t cooldowns, abilities are balanced around it. You can’t just take a D4 spell powerful enough to be a 2 minute cooldown and remove the CD. That would be broken.

AD&D 2 which Baldur’s Gate uses doesn’t have AoOs. Using a potion is also instant, but you can only drink 1 per “round”(6 seconds). I’ve been playing a lot of BG lately, so I’m very familiar with how their mechanics work.

That said making it have a small animation where you can’t attack is not a bad idea.

For the most part I like what you’ve got here, but I would add if this is going to be a part of it there should be an ammo bag.

It’s really annoying in Baldur’s Gate that half my archer’s inventory is always bunch of arrows until I get to BG2 and can do the first few levels of Watcher’s Keep where you get the ammo pouch.

Windforce isn’t really that good of a bow in DIablo 1 because the mechanics behind bows is really wonky and it makes that +200% damage not actually a +200% damage.

Which regardless of an ‘immersion mode’ I would like to see consistency in the mechanics of the game. +200% damage should not behave differently on a bow than it does on a sword like in Diablo 1.

The underlying math of Diablo 1 isn’t really something they should be rushing to copy. It was really messy at times.

Like I’ve mentioned in one of your older thread, I would ideally prefer a system where the way you learn is more in tune with the lore of the class. Take the classes in the AD&D 2 system used by Baldur’s Gate:

  • Clerics simply know every spell once they can cast that level, because their power is derived from faith.
  • Mages need to seek out scrolls and scribe them to their spellbook, with a chance of failure.
  • Wild Mages are cheating bastards that can cast any spell they know as a 1st level spell, including spells of a level they can’t yet otherwise cast. Their magic is however, unstable.
  • Sorcerers simply just know a limited selection of spells. They can’t learn more from finding scrolls.

I don’t know as I’ve get into things like needing reagents or other limiting factors in how often they can cast spells.

Unless for very specific story reasons, your character should understand how to use their weapons.

Level 1 adventurers in DnD are not rookies on par with your average citizen that has never used a weapon before in their life.

Same goes for Diablo: Your characters are trained in their particular style of combat, they’re just not grand masters yet when you first roll them.

2 Likes
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Not cooldown. They are casts / rest. I can cast 6 time stops in a row on nwn1. 6 wishes, then i an tired and need to sleep.

Having a system like PoE’s VAal skills can work for ultimates.

IDK much about 2e BUT i believe that drinking a potion on 2e takes a action. Not a bonus action of a free action but a action. On BG, i rarely used potions.

D&D had reagents. Most games who adapt D&D don’t use it, but ToEE takes the reagent cost in gold. PfKM(Adapts pathfinder, not D&D 3.5e) only implemented reagent cost for few expensive spells like stoneskin(requires diamont dust)

You are right.

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Functionally it’s the same thing though as charges with a cooldown.

It’s still a waiting period before you can use your abilities again after those charges are expended.

and sometimes you only get 1 charge.

It’s not just ultimates but any spell balanced around having a cooldown.

Flame Shield for Sorceress in D4 right now is not an ultimate but it grants 2 seconds of damage immunity. That becomes broken without its cooldown.

I don’t know about the tabletop rules for 2e(I’m more familiar with Pathfinder when talking about tabletop), but I know in Baldur’s Gate potions are instant with a limitation of 1 per round.

I’d have to double check, but I don’t believe it prevents normal actions in the round like attacking at least in Baldur’s Gate.

They did, but casters are also often overpowered in those games. Partially because spells with expensive reagents costs need to be very powerful to offset that.

That doesn’t translate as well to a hack and slash Diablo game where we’ll just farm insane amounts of mats so we can effectively ignore those costs.

DnD/Pathfinder mechanics in general doesn’t always translate over to Diablo because of Diablo’s focus on everything being about combat.

If you look at strength as a stat in Baldur’s Gate, there is no functional combat difference between a character with 8 strength and a character with 15 strength.

They both have no change in THAC0 or bonus damage. The only reason to care about strength at that point is a non-combat reason: Carry weight. The character with 15 strength can carry 3x as much weight.

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Stoneskin on 3.5e gives DR 10/+5. It means that if you are facing a army of longbowmans dealing d8 damage, they will deal no damage until the spell is dispelled… If wasen’t by the expensive reagent, i would cast it every single encounter on pfkm.

They recharge with resting, not with just time. If you goes to a pocket dimension and sleep there and come back in the same time, the spell is recharged.

Give a high damage reduction to anything except cold, stop mana regen and make it bleed mana. Also make enemies that can dispel this defenses Twisted Barricade on DS2 gives temporary immunity and nobody uses because takes a lot of int/fht, a lot of atn slots and lasts only 1.5 seconds.

IWD is extremely combat focused.

Composite longbow for eg require 18 STR to be used

https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Composite_Longbow

And it makes perfectly sense.

Anyway, i realized that this is not a good suggestion. Blizzard would have to develop two completely separated games…

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That’s kind of the problem.

You’re talking about not just old school aRPG mechanics here, but rules steeped in tabletop mechanics which just requires a vastly different set of mechanics to even what the older Diablo games did.

The good news is at least there in the last 5-6 years there has been a resurgence of RPGs built on old school design like Kingmaker and Pillars of Eternity.

So even if we don’t get a Diablo game like that, it’s not as though we’re lacking for options in general.

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Why not?

Because it sucks.

/thread

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I don’t agree. Diablo 1 is a streamlined version of other 90s RPG’s. But D1 still amazing in any aspect(except length. Is to short)

Path of Exile is the best modern Diablo-like ARPG here but still too similar to D2 LoD, not to D1(best diablo imo), i will probably die and never experience the same atmosphere of D1 in a ARPG again.

Only for small studios. Big studios still wanna insist in “modernized mechanics”. For example, THQ Nordic who owns Gothic IP decided to “remake” g1, they only released a TEASER but the TEASER was the worst thing ever. Gothic is all about immersion, freedom and story. I will not write 50 line long dialog about why the remake is a trash. Nocturnal Rambler has a amazing post about it. They already killed all RPG elements on Gothic with ArcaniA(who has cooldowns on runes that should’t even work past G3 and characters being 100% tied to his gear) and the studio who did id din’t had good results.

https://thenocturnalrambler.blogspot.com/2019/12/gothic-remake-playable-teaser-feedback.html

At least we have mods. Dark Mysteries, Golden, L’hiver, Returning, etc. But my fear is if they decide to do like Blizzard and remove G1 from GoG/Steam to force people to use the inferior product.

If Blizzard din’t had removed the WC3 classic, nobody would hate then that much(nor play the remake)

And honestly, the graphics of this old games modded looks way better than modern ones

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Diablo 1 uses a very different set of rules compared to games like Baldur’s Gate.

Trying to compare them would be like comparing Doom Eternal to Rainbow Six Siege. Sure they’re both first person shooters, but there is a lot of difference in the details between how those 2 games work within that genre.

and Diablo isn’t even a full blooded RPG, which puts it further away from other 90s RPGs.

There’s still plenty of games though, and the games themselves aren’t exactly small scale games.

There’s a lot of content in a game like Pillars of Eternity or Pathfinder Kingmaker.

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Absolutely no reason to waste resources developing two games to appease a small amount of players. Because this is exactly what would have to be done. There are other games out there though.

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And might & magic, and ultima, and daggerfall, etc(…) all of this games are different BUT i mentioned other games as a example here, not only TTRPGs.

Is not a small amount of players. pfkm was responsible for massive finantial gains to THQ Nordic, one of the biggest European publisher.

If for everyone who believes that not all RPG’s should be wow clones.

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Just look at D3, it had none of what you suggested and did very well. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be appreciated by many, and possibly by some non older game playing D3 players, but it’s not really needed these days. All I’m saying is it would be like making a second game just to overhaul all those systems, for ultimately what would end up as a small fraction of the playerbase, at a way to high cost.

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Offline mode with mod support. If people want it, they’ll make it. The end.

1 Like
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That is a charges with cooldown system.

Making potions take a second do drink would be a positive thing though.
But for gameplay feel, the healing probably should begin the moment you click the button, even if the drinking part takes a second.

Having two drastically different rulesets doesnt sound like a good idea though. But D4 could certainly look for inspiration in older RPGs.

Yeah. Gaming has pretty much never been better. As long as companies are making games like Pillars and Kingmaker, then I couldnt care less what Activision, EA etc. are spending their money on (well, I’d like Activision to spend theirs on a good Diablo 4 :P)

Indeed.

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No, is not.

Cooldowns are “The minimum length of time that the player needs to wait after using an ability before they can use it again. This concept was first introduced by the text MUD Avalon: The Legend Lives.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_video_game_terms#cooldown

Ammo in a FPS is not cooldown , nor resting to recharge. On D&D, if you got attacked before you rested to regain your power, you can spend all eternity and never regain spell slots.

Only on initial sales. Still has low user score on metacritic and PoE is the most played Diablo like game and most viewed on twitch.

You are right. And it is far more easy to implement.

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We’ve been over this ad nauseam. User score are useless especially when it was review bombed.

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Metacritic could have better anti review bombing protections like Steam does.

But look to Diablo 1. Is 4.5/5 on GoG and nobody reviewbombed it after WC3 refunded fiasco.

https://www.gog.com/game/diablo

But since Blizzard products won’t allow detailed reviews, we can’t have a better metric than metacritic. Talking only about CDs for eg, on the top RPG’s from rpg codex, none of the games on the top 30 has cooldowns. DOS1 appears on the 32th place. They also don’t like much diablo like games(Diablo 2/1 appears on the 70th/76th place)

https://rpgcodex.net/article.php?id=11193

Anyway, Saidosha is right. A offline mode with mod support would be the best possible thing. People will mod out modern mechanics and mod in old school mechanics on it.

But imagine Blizzard seeing more people playing “d1 mechanics” for d4 than d4. It happened with Old School Runescape in relation to runescape.

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We’ve already established the idea sucks.

Let this lame thread die already.

1 Like
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I only use critic reviews when talking about reviews. I never give user reviews any credence do to how easy it is to just leave 0/10 game sucks D2 is better or 10/10 reviews without even playing the game. I know critic reviews can be biased as well which is why I don’t bother with scores personally. But the critics saw the games equally.

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I would let this thread die BUT…

Can you name a review writing a single line review and copy pasting with different accounts? Anyway, critiques are AWFUL. Mainly critiques from US. Here is a critic complaining that you need to use elemental defense vs enemies who deals a lot of elemental damage on PoE

A game needs to be viewed according to his proposal. For example, Diablo 3. Is a amazing as a wow clone and is horrible as a D1/D2 sequel. Many journalists don’t understand this and gave negative reviews to good games only because they expect the same thing on every game.

Note that Diablo 1/2 is good rated among critiques AND users. Diablo 1 for eg, is rated 4.5/5 on GoG. The same score of Gothic 1/2. If Diablo 3 was launched on gog, who has better anti reviewbomb policies(ie - you need to own the game and play the game for some time and there are mods and bans on mac address), my guess is that his score would be 2/5. Just like his metacritic user score and other sequels from beloved games who tried to copy wow mechanics, like ArcaniA…

OwlCat will playtest more his new game and avoid launching a game with the same difficulty of kingmaker due negative feedback from fans(not most bugs got fixed and they even changed some encounters to be more easy because the game even on normal was very hard), if wasen’t by user reviews, they would’t be able to get this type of information and improve.