Diablo 4 facing a new aRPG king - Lost Ark

Some people love all kinds of weird things. Doesn’t make it good.
In MMOs, having stuff like Gear Sets locked behind only raids, just make endgame less interesting for more people, narrowing endgame to a single activity, keeping the only interesting itemization away from non-raiders.

Moving away from MMOs and into A-RPGs/Diablo, don’t hide “game changing” items (which should potentially be any item) behind difficulty. It doesn’t need to. To make higher difficulty more rewarding in endgame we already have the perfect mechanism; dropates.
Maybe MMOs should start using that too, instead of the silly item scaling. Though the lower amount of RNG in them, likely means they still need more item tiers to compensate. But might not need the, like 10?, different item tiers in each patch, that WoW has introduced in the last expansions, making a mess of progression, and making power creep unsustainable until they do their periodic number squishes.

It’s an overall easy raid people farm daily as part of their daily roulettes. Not only that but it’s also been made a mandatory raid in the MSQ after patch 5.3 (because it’s just that important story-wise).

So yeah, I wipe to that boss at least a few times a week because someone thought it would be funny to break all the ice. They usually just do it once though, wouldn’t wanna get kicked or reported for disruptive gameplay.

So, I hear Lost Ark is having the best launch ever! :partying_face:

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It’s good for a particular population of players. For others it’s a mechanic they’ll never experience themselves, but that won’t be a problem since they aren’t into that competitive aspect of the game.

Having activities aimed at different player groups is of tremendous importance. This guarantees everyone will find something to enjoy your game for.

Different end game activities are indeed good. And then “reward” those activities equally/same. Dont make your raid gear better than your solo or group content of the same difficulty. And definitely don’t make it so raid gear can only be used in raids, and solo gear can only be used solo :rofl: Wanting to do one of these one day, and one of the other the next day is not bad, it is a good thing, and should not be punished.

And this is the primary reason I stepped away from WoW retail. Was fine with Normal and Heroic raids, but now with Mythic raids and Mythic+ Dungeons giving much better loot that only a smaller percentage of the player base could ever hope to obtain… hard pass.

Content doesn’t have to emulate shaving with a cheese grater, just because you can, doesn’t mean everyone else will or should have to as well.

Bragging rights… sure. Cosmetic rewards/pet/mount rewards… perfectly fine. Gear that vastly overpowers anything the average “raider” can achieve… absolutely not.

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As I told you, you are speaking of something else.

What I explained above isn’t concerning the general gear distribution. It’s simply a more advanced competitive game that may drag some dedicated players to it too and would be played by absolutely all streamers since these enjoy competition and would theorycraft with their viewers builds a few has access to.

Yeah, it is a too many item tiers issue. Blizzard has this nonsense idea that there must be 15% (or whatever it is) power jump between tiers, so having that many tiers leads to crazy power jumps overall.
Keep the damn scaling low!
Mythic raid doesnt have to offer particularly better gear than Heroic raids. Those who like Mythic raids are likely fine with merely having the best gear around, even if it is only a few % better than Heroic, at most.
If you already completed the current Mythic raid, you dont exactly need better gear anyway.
And for the “competition”, the Mythic gear doesn’t exactly matter, since the World Firsts happen so fast (1-2 weeks) that players have not really gotten much of the new gear anyway.

But then, also have solo and small group content that is as difficult as heroic or mythic raids, that can offer those same rewards there too. Someone playing well solo, and spending the time (since, lets be real, mythic raiding takes time, it is not only skill), should be able to get those 2% better items too.

Who knows what you are talking about. This particular line of discussion was about item rewards from raids and other endgame. Which is concerning the gear distribution. So that is what I am talking about.

So, completely irrelevant for basically anything.

Nothing impressive about Lost Ark. It is also more of a MMO. Not like Diablo all that much.

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Streamers bring a lot of profit since they advertise the game for free. Targeting this audience won’t do any bad to the game. Besides, they won’t be the only ones enjoying such mechanic - many other competitive and dedicated players will aim to discover more “locked” items.

Eh, strong disagree there. Catering to silly streamers do a lot of harm to games.

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Pretty much. Oddly enough, I think the fact that the game is isometric is what leads to some folks calling it similar to Diablo games.

Isometric combat is a big feature for the aRPG audience.

I’d give you a counter example: Make D4 a non-isometric non-cool combat game and I, just as many other aRPG players, am instantly passing on it.

You are so tone deaf and wrong. First you act as if you play one game, you have no time for a second game. Now you say you can only like 1 genre.

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Isometric is just a camera angle. I greatly prefer isometric for the genre, for the overview it gives of the battlefield. But it is not particularly an A-RPG thing. Many CRPGs use it too, and most RTS use similar camera angles as well. Starcraft is not more of an A-RPG because of that.

Hellgate was very much an A-RPG despite its different camera angle.

But uh, give me Diablo with Dark Souls combat and look… Ill take that… Charge me anything!
(not as a replacement for the A-RPG D4 of course)

Btw, Lost Ark officially has beaten D3 on having the most butchered launch. Diablo is doomed. It was like the one thing it was best at.

Diablo 4 doesn’t need to compete with or dethrone any game, it just needs to be a good game all on its own. And you don’t achieve that by copying or cloning other games and trying to outrank them.

Diablo 4 will be good and have a unique selling point if you build it to be a game like D1 and D2 and not an end-game suspect of the last decade.

Who cares what others do? In the field of games, it’s not about competition, it’s about doing your cool thing and thus building for yourself the most awesome game you can imagine and not going by what might please others… With this, you steadily fail in the art.

When I write a book, a novel for example, I have to live the story and just write it down. If I start to write the book according to some ideas to serve God knows what, it will usually be bad.

D4 should completely separate itself from this speed games and again find its old soul, its basic principle, which has totally messed up with D3 and there is currently not even on the market … Today we find for the most part only these junky dazzling works without substance in any end-game scenarios, which are all worthless.
RPG you look in vain and the game is no longer the way, but the same garbage somewhere at the end…

It’s like watching, for example, the movie Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit seen as a whole work, so let’s say 16 hours, only the very last minute of the last battle and that again and again…
And then you want to claim you’ve seen a great movie…
But the film is what makes it…

That’s how today’s MMORPGs and aRPGs are made.
We just keep watching the last minute of the battle and again the battle and again the battle and again…

But what makes RPGs is everything before that. That’s the movie, that’s the journey and the story, the content and the experience.
D4 is going to bring in a whole different fan base here when they get back to the true RPG and a lot more players who will get to experience what it means to get a real RPG for the first time and not this last minute of battle in the continuous replay… called Endgame…

Then you don’t need to worry, because currently you have a unique position in the market. What’s missing is what many many people have been longing for for ages.

If you just do the same crap again, then you will have to face the competition and end up being another soulless clone, which won’t be much good… that’s already certain when it’s like this.
These end-game games set up in the RPG segment, are all basically good for nothing, because they are sports games… an orgy of never ending spiral for nothing…

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I am not a fan of this type of games. Isometric is a must for me personally, just as fast paced combat booted on a good engine.

LA manages to satisfy my combat demands on paper and that draws me to it.

D4 has great combat too and even better physics, but it’s a game still in development while LA has a solid player base and is kicking content. While D4 releases LA may change a lot to accommodate for the western audience.

:100:

:100: :100:

Yes please. It shouldn’t even need to be said, but apparently it needs to be said a lot.
If only Blizzard would understand.

You can like it all you want. But you liking a game does not mean that game becomes an A-RPG :smiley: You seem to want to only like A-RPGs, so if you like something, it must have to be an A-RPG. Ever considered that you don’t like A-RPGs, but instead really like korean MMOs and fast Rogue-lites?

LA is clearly an aRPG. Not a Diablo-like though.

I personally enjoy both aRPGs and cRPGs like Baldur’s Gate, and I don’t enjoy MMOs due to their co-op nature. Rogue-lites are aRPGs too.

The future however is aRNGs.

Then stay away from lost ark, protip :v

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