Diablo 4 Charm Concept - New Item Type

General Discussion
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Not sure who you’re calling a clown since youre being so vague (scared to be direct), but I assume it’s me since you’re referring to D2 fans with disdain. Poor guy is scared to call me a clown, I see you. To that I say why should I care about you? Please tell me unless youre scared still

Ya, D2 fans probably will complain if they replace it with something worse than what’s in D2. Just use the D2 system for once instead of innovating another giant turd into the game.

Wouldn’t it be bold and novel to use the D2 system in a game released in 2020 or 2021? It doesn’t have to be new to be novel and interesting, plus D2 fans (at least myself) WOULD LOVE some catering to instead of being given something we don’t want all of the time and being asked to accept it.

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They actually had something like that planned for D3 already:

https://imgur.com/BiJyRwQ

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He is like me and a lot of other players that want an improvement over what D2 did. D4 must not become a copy and paste of D2. That is not a sequel but an extension of D2. That just has a new story, new gear, etc… added to existing stuff along with a coat of paint (better graphics). That wouldn’t be good for D4 if that did happen.

Good point you should have an inventory of charms that are so important that they take up every space. You should have your inventory filled with nothing but charms by the time you reach around level 10. So that way if you need to pick up new gear you would have to put some of your charms in the stash. Then go back and forth to pick up all of the gear. I guess you would love that constant travel back and forth, right. Oh let’s really make it interesting you have to back to town without any portals.

I wonder how long even you would be willing to do that. That is unless you are saying that players shouldn’t be picking up new gear after level 10 if the game was designed like I said

One more thing, FYI it was Jay and company that decided to cut charms due to them being nothing more than just stat sticks. They didn’t want more stat sticks.

They can still have their own special inventory as you seen one of the features of D4 was things like quest items will have their own inventory. Then charms can be there as well along with gear having its own page. Nothing wrong with that at all.

D4 needs to be an improvement over D2 and if they have charms they need to do them better. Charms have to bring something to the table that normal gear doesn’t bring. Then each tier of gear can bring something different to the table.

Yeah we know you want D4 to be a prettier D2 clone. Where if it isn’t done the D2 LOD way it isn’t done in D4. Sorry but Act/Blizz didn’t make that game nor will make that game.

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I think that Charms/Bracelets could have a one cool feature which is choose on equip, in fact thought to experiment with that kind of an affix in the Gen, but avoided for complexity reasons:

Here’s an example of how it could function though:

On Equip choose 1:

  • +15Mana
  • +10-15 Fire Damage
    ** On Equip choose one:
  • While below 65% HP gain 15% ability power
  • While above 65%HP gain 30% bonus lifesteal
  • +25% melee damage but -15% from ranged attacks
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I’ve been doing it happily in D2 for decades. It’s like you’re telling a story about charms based on anecdotes you’ve read about, like you’ve never experienced charms in D2.
*You throw away crappy charms
*My inventory usually has plenty of space until I am farming more in hell
*I always keep 10 spaces free and I’m never going back and forth due to room.

Jay’s design of charms WAS nothing more than stat sticks because he did the talisman. That’s what I’ve been saying. These half measures aren’t good because then they are just another gear slot, they need to come back into the game at 1 or 0. D2 is better with charms, D3 would be better with charms, and I suspect this would be true for D4 too.

Well they probably should since 20 year old D2 is more popular on pc than their latest iteration of Diablo. I don’t want it to be a prettier D3 clone which is exactly what it looks like, more junk.

D2 charms is not trading inventory space for stats - it is in a direct way but the true tradeoff is time for power, maximizing killing speed. I find that about 10 spaces doesn’t impeded me hardly in regards to time so this maximizes my run speed.

What am I supposed to be picking up anyway, garbage to take for salvage? That’s awful and THAT’s the game system that should go, not charms. Other gear you pickup and take back to town at the end of your run to ID and sell or you id it right there and drop it. If it’s a keeper stick it in your stash real quick. It’s really simple and noobs have a ton of space as they won’t have that many charms until much later in the game. I pretty much never have an interrupted run with 10 spaces open. I hardly ever get two items that are both large that I want to keep before I go back to town.

I want to pick up runes, gems, charms, and valuable items. Not horde a mass of GARBAGE to take back for salvage. :nauseated_face:

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TLDR: Charms could function as “Rule Breakers”

With any power system, we need to make sure that it has a specific purpose and brings something unique and interesting to the game. I think given how little we actually know about how the loot system in D4 is going to work, this is a very difficult discussion to have. We don’t understand the power systems that will be included. Predominantly, it seems we have one faction that wants D2’s system back and another which recognizes the flaw of using inventory space as character power slots is an inherently bad idea, and which opposes that, but generally has no issue with something called “charms” being added to the character sheet itself.

I’m in the second camp. Inventory bag space is limited so your time out in the game world collecting loot is limited. There’s an inherent balance there. Player power is strictly controlled based on what can go in the character sheet. Player time in the battlefield is controlled (in a soft sense) by inventory space. When you use inventory space as a power system, players feel obliged to give up their inventory space for power. In this system, filling your inventory with charms isn’t a choice. It’s a requirement to be competitive, and it disrupts the balance of both the character sheet and the bag space systems. Each part of the game’s design has it’s own purpose and they shouldn’t be mixed.

I have no issue with a thing called “charms,” or really any other name Blizzard may choose, but I think that if they’re going to add a power system, it needs to have a specific purpose and be intentionally balanced and restricted. I’m not interested in power gain for the sake of bigger numbers. Ultimately, Blizz will just increase the monsters’ numbers to account for it, and it effectively adds nothing of real value. All we get is bigger numbers and an increasingly complex equation for Blizzard to attempt to balance, and that’s not a good thing. If you’re going to add charms, they need to provide a meaningful choice and add to build diversity.

Given the caveat in paragraph 1 about the unknown nature of the D4 power systems, I think charms could be interesting as small effect “rule breakers.”

  • Adding max elemental resistance
  • Adding +1 to skills (individually or all skills, perhaps)
  • Adding magic find (assuming the D3 system with no MF elsewhere in the power system)

The idea here is that there would be only a very small number of slots, but you could use them to break limitations on power systems, either offensive or defensive, in a very controlled way that lets you customize your character. Again, this can’t be an exhaustive list because we don’t know what the power systems in D4 will be, but the idea of a rule breaker is unique and compelling.

Implementation could take on about a dozen different forms, but I think a couple of them are reasonable:

  1. Having a set number (say 2-4) character sheet slots specifically dedicated to charms, like the rings and amulets which can be filled with charms. Balance is provided by limiting the number of charms, what effects could go in each slot, or by the effects available themselves. Perhaps you could render yourself immune to a single element, but at the cost of all other potential effects charms might have.
  2. Having a grid, such as the D3 talisman concept Clueso cited here: https://imgur.com/BiJyRwQ. In this version, charms would have various power levels based on size and players would play a mini-Tetris game with their charms. They could have many small/weak charms, or a few large/strong charms, or some mix of the two, and similar to the 1st option, balance of the numbers might be such that you could render yourself immune to a single element, but at the cost of skill power boosts, no magic find, or whatever other benefit charms might provide.
2 Likes
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Biased much? 20 chars

It’s not inherently a bad idea, that’s your subjective opinion. If not, prove it.

Literally been like that in Diablo 2 for 20 years and people love it. This is one of those things that D3 fans say they don’t want until it’s put into the game. The people that are saying nay to charms are people that haven’t played a lot of D2 imo.

But the salvaging GARBAGE has to stop so we don’t have to pick up a bunch of bs to compete for room with the charms. SALVAGING is awful, a poor crafting system. Crafting should be done with runes, gems, and materials in the game; not through collecting lots of garbage to salvage. Talk about a waste of time inventory management mechanic and you all are complaining about charms haha.

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Read the whole argument. My second paragraph explains why D2’s implementation was a bad idea. As I have said at least 3 times to you, and as others have said to you in this thread, the D4 developers are not going to simply recreate D2 with shinier graphics. If that’s your expectation, you’re going to be disappointed. They’re going to make a new game.

“Bias” is not an excuse for intellectual laziness and a refusal to even hear or consider ideas you disagree with. If you have a substantive criticism of what I put forward, then by all means, post your opinion. I enjoy hearing other opinions because it allows me to test my ideas for flaws and improve them. But I’m not going to waste time with closed-minded people who have no interest in actually debating ideas and making D4 better.

Edit: Also, nice stealth edit after I’d already replied.

I played D2 from the day it was released. I put in many hours across many characters. I’m well aware of how D2 played. It’s also an appeal to authority fallacy that you’re using to dodge my point about power systems that you didn’t read or didn’t care to address.

This is an entirely unrelated issue which should be discussed in it’s own thread. It has nothing to do with the merits of D2’s charm system.

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Stealth edit? I edited before you replied, you just replied really fast.

I reread the second paragraph and that sounds like a subjective opinion. While I agree that inventory space is a function of time, I think trading some power for some invetory space is absolutely fine. If charms make you spend too much time managing your inventory you should put a few charms in your stash for your alts. My goal would be to maximize my speed.

Also, I think your post was a bit wordy to read the whole thing. Do you think you could have wrote more concise or simply for readers? It would help get your message across via increasing the readability. I didn’t read all of it, maybe the first sentence of each paragraph and more of some paragraphs because it is a lot of words.

When you present both sides to an argument and call one inherently bad, ya I would say biased. You start out the paragraph as if you’re going to be an arbiter of fairness, it’s fine to pick a side. I just don’t think calling charms inherently a bad idea is fair or smart as it’s been proven to be a system many enjoy in Diablo 2.

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I read your 2nd paragraph and don’t think you’re right. What else do you want me to say about it.

Without charms you think you’re going to play for 10-15 minutes and fill up your inventory and need to go to town for something? Let’s just never go to town and grind forever. I bet that’s what the devs want.

If the other choice is to fill your inventory with GARBAGE for salvage then charms are way better.

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Good Lord, what are they teaching students in school? It is a standard format to present the relevant sides of an argument and then present one’s own opinion and rationale. That’s standard persuasive writing that at least used to be taught in the 8th grade.

And you did stealth edit. You replied with a snarky comment requiring the (20 char) extender tag, then filled it in later.

That’s why there’s a TLDR, why I used bullets and lists, and why I used bold text to highlight the key points. Frankly if you can’t spare the time to read through the reasoning behind an argument, how can you assess it’s merits?

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Nah, you don’t even need your first paragraph. It’s unnecessary and just makes your argument weaker by making the post look more like a wall of text. Concise = good. wordy = bad. This is what they taught us in Tech Writing but it’s true for all writing.

A player should have the discipline and critical thinking skills to be able to resist filling the entire inventory with charms. The goal is to maximize speed and you don’t do that by filling the entire inventory with charms. That’s not a good PvM strategy and not one I’d ever do, players give themselves enough room to do runs.

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You are the one touting how great they are so players should have every space in their inventory from level 10 on filled with nothing but charms. Then the game could be balanced around needing them at that point. So you would lose to much power or survivability if you didn’t have your inventory filled with charms.

Now if they are not that great. Or just mere stat sticks like D3 was gonna do, even though the charms in D2 took up inventory space and D3 didn’t. Then those differences don’t matter because they would still be glorified stat sticks.

That is what Jay didn’t want.

What were charms in D2 (non unique) more than just stat sticks. Where you got things from them that didn’t appear on other pieces of gear. Charms should add things that other pieces of gear don’t give. Even magic and rare charms should do it as well. Heck it could even be a much higher stat on a super rare charm that you won’t get on gear. Maybe a high faster hit recovery or a higher % of chance of uninterruptible attack.

Those charms can do the same thing in an inventory specially designed for charms.

Things in D2 sold for gold which could be used for a variety of things.

I have played a lot of D2 myself and from time to time still do. Although it only play with the mod Median XL Sigma.

You don’t like the idea that we don’t love the fact that they took up inventory space to have them. You don’t like the idea of charms having their own inventory. Trust me with their own inventory that would be much smaller than the character inventory would mean that you wouldn’t be able to hold a lot of charms. So now some tough decisions must be made.

Why not have them all filled with charms. And even have the entire game balanced around needing all inventory spaces loaded with charms. After all that would be great because you have traded your entire inventory for power. Sure it will mean more times you have to travel back to town. But you don’t care about that anyway.

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The idea of charms being a regular inventory slot has been generally derided by everyone in this thread. I don’t think its a bad idea. What is unique about that? Well, its multiple slots for a generic item instead of specific items for one slot.

Sometimes in this type of game, you get some really good items… but they leave you woefully deficient in some particular area like poison resist that can easily be filled with charms.

It kinda depends on how everything plays out… but lets say I get a great item, Its got 5 of the most desired affixes… I just wish it got poison resist instead of fire resist. To get a randomly generated item like this again with the poison resist is unlikely in the near term. So you either don’t use that item yet or you try to shuffle around all these other items to fill in the gaps. It becomes cumbersome. It leads to gear hoarding. You start looking at all your stash gear… this item has the right stats but its on the wrong item slot… etc etc. Charms functioning as a sort of wild card brings something to the game even without any sort of unique feature or inventory trade off.

Its a better way to implement that sort of thing compared to a cumbersome rerolling, socketing, augmenting system. Grim Dawn for instance, each item can be socketed and augmented… Its basically a free affix slot that can be used to fill gaps. There is value in that. Its cumbersome as s**tin Grim Dawn while you are leveling up and still finding gear, to go recover sockets, buy augments because this item that you found as a different resistance than what it is replacing.

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That’s cool that you like to collect gold in D2, sometimes if I don’t get a drop I’ll pick up a piece of trash or two to sell for gold as well. You must know then that your inventory isn’t full of charms at lvl 10. Until the mid 20s in fact a large chunk of your inventory is a combination of tomes, potions and charms combo with plenty of storage.

Well, I’m pretty sure that D4 is going to be as accessible and dumbed down as possible again so I’m sure there won’t be any charms. They would help save the game from becoming trash though. If they are just extra gear to pick up with their own inventory slot then that’s pretty dumb imo.

If inventory is used to cart around rare items to take back for salvage that is going to be so sad that Diablo gave up charms again so people could carry around trash. Talk about removing anything interesting from the game for the most boring system imaginable. This isn’t great for crafting or gameplay imo.

Nice! It sure could help fill in holes.

Ya, I’m interested in what the charm nay sayers think inventory is going to be used for if not holding charms? How many items do you think you’re going to find that you want to keep per 15 minutes? You don’t need nearly all the room they’ve shown at one slot per item.

Why are people citing Jay Wilson as if he is an authority on great arpg game design? He’s either bad at what he does or he doesn’t care about Diablo. I thought the consensus was that he failed miserably and called Brevik, the father of Diablo, an explitive loser. Ya, the D3 team didn’t want to introduce charms with a talisman cause then it’s just like collecting gear for more gear slots; there’s no tradeoff with that system and it isn’t interesting, just more stuff to find.

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The idea of the charms being perishable is nice i think, at least you would always be watching for charms that could replace the ones you already have.

I really do agreed that this current system of D3 is trash, you just go grabbing every damm thing that drops without thinking just to press a butom and they become salvage, not even this using space.
At least in D2 you had to think what was worth taking, even if it was just to sell a mace, or a giant scythe that had value on it to make gold, and thats why the tetris system was so important, it adds weight too the decision to pick something or not too. For instance, the Grim Dawn is a much better mechanic then D3 wich is just mindless and stuped.

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Actually I wasn’t talking to or about you Stollin As you seem to to have missed this I’ll tell you it was Avalon, As for referring to Diablo II with disdain nope that was sarcasm as I prefer Diablo II myself in fact I’m still playing Diablo II rather than play Diablo III And and last but not least there are plenty of elitists who’d rather play Diablo III rather than play Diablo II which is and will remain the better game especially if they :face_with_symbols_over_mouth: up Dialbo IV like they did Diablo III

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I was talking from the stand point of having your entire inventory filled with nothing but charms by level 10 for D4, not D2. Then we can see how well players would love to walk or ride back to town just to unload some charms then walk or ride back to pick up what they need or want.

Charms in D2 were just stat sticks like gear. Only the unique ones had special properties.

You can’t carry around trash, or anything else if every slot is filled with charms. And the game is balanced from level 10 on around needing that many charms. Where D4 could be called D4 Land of Charms.

Great idea inventory should be used only for charms. Make it impossible for you to pick anything up other than charms. Make all gear pieces in D4 like regular clothing in other games. Then Charms can be the end all be all of what you character needs right.

If this game had charms and a talisman system. You would have a trade off. Do I use that 1x1 charm or that 1x2 charm. Both have special abilities that could be useful to the character. Using one might fill your talisman. Where the other would allow for one more 1x1 charm.

I would love to see them along with all other types of gear or socketable items give you something different. Where they are more than just mere stat sticks.

So then I guess when you first played D2 or started a new character you didn’t pick everything up at level 1, even though your character would be a melee fighter.

You along with other players might love item tetris. But the majority doesn’t that is why they don’t want it to return.

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It’s all about the game’s design, no matter how you whine and pull it. D2 supposed to have a slower pace on loothunting and charms in the inventory worked to balance utility between PvE and PvP.
D3 offered a much faster loothunt depending on highly randomized outcomes of crafting system; inventory filled of charms wouldn’t fly here so they came up with Talisman system to scrap it later.

I can’t imagine myself keeping charms in my inventory at D3, that would greatly dent my salvage ability if no compensation has been given. Although, D3 was heavy on PvE, I wouldn’t count on inventory stacked charms to return at any point in D4’s lifespan.

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its not that i love the tetris inventory (i do enjoy it of course), but i find it more immersive too, even if we are talking about a fantasy world. The space problem is easily solved giving more inventory (like bags or saddlebag to put on the mounts) and like they said, make charms depleatable with some kind of durability so the hunt for a better charm or a repleacement would always be there. The hunt must go one.
The advantage of charms (even if a few become stat stickers) is that you are not forced to use one piece of equipement if you can thake the bonuses you want from else where.

Of course in the very begining i would grab everything to check but as game progress you need to start selecting what you are going to pick up. In the D3 like i said you just go grabbing everything mindlessly, in the endgame you just pick up legendarys but even they are useless and go straight to salvage, what os legendary there is in this?

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