Diablo 4 feedback - monster traits

General Discussion
122

My problem (again) is that they focus way too much on the visuals and ignore the function

The arcane beams are fine, I’m fine with “affixes” (in general) the way they were made in D3, it’s just (again) I’m not fine with the idea that ONLY ELITES should have those, makes the game too “skippable” for everything else and just care about a minion that has a “star” on it’s head or has a “gummy bear” blue or yellow contour, or whatever the hell is or will be used… It’s just bad to have people run around and ignore most stuff and just focus on those :thinking:

And lastly but not the least, here’s a thing I wish ppl were talking more about: all mob families (and subtypes) should have a common trait, for example undead family has X and all skeletons have also Y in addition compared to fiends or zombies that have Y1 or Y2

THAT’s how you make a “nicely challenging game” where you simply know that each single mob you’re gonna face has at least 2 things to maybe/potentially care about. Now the “how much” may differ but still, a fallen, a skeleton, a spiderling, or a horned demon aren’t the same (and they shouldn’t). Those things shouldn’t do the same damage amount, shouldn’t gonna behave the same, aren’t gonna die in 2 hits of same type attack/s all the time altogether (some skeletons might dodge a physical shot here & there, some spiderlings may be highly resistant to an DoT of certain type or try to surround first before landing the first blow, demons may have some elemental resistance by default and be stronger but “wait in line most of the time” and do “taunting or intimidating animations” half the time when not in direct contact, who knows…, some snakes might even try to choke you by jumping on you and you have to use some CC or hit effect to get rid of, .e.t.c.)

THAT is what is important, mobs are more than just a visual… Don’t do the “lazy thing” and think of a well-defining trait on each mob/type with and “come up” with a nicely filled table… Not everything has to have a trait but at least most of the non-regular should have, and regulars should just behave different enough so they don’t feel the same all over again (In D3 you could get hit by a cultist, skeleton, mighty-looking demon in act 3, a fallen, and that largely be the same scenario: same damage taken, same attack speeds, same patterns of damage dish out, literally just a re-skinned same mob)

THAT is the bad part, the “beams rotating” can be an “augmentation” that some mobs could have, and some not, not just be an ELITE-exclusive affix ffs, some mages could just as well place 10 of those things at a time as far as I’m concerned as long as it makes sense for them to do so

And at the very end really depends on the affix itself, would I like to see a “waller” type mobs in D4 ?, definitely (the way you balance it is make those walls breakable, heck you could even ab/use those for your advantage as long as you “flip” your expectation ASAP and adapt earlier), but as far as the arcane (or storm, or whatever) beams are concerned, they can be just a plain good ol’ environment hazard IMO

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123

Not interested in mods. I don’t need nor desire such challenge in video games. I found D1 and D2 pretty easy. By easy I mean I didn’t fail at things at a semi consistent basis, yes I died, that’s how I play, ut every boss went down on all difficulties when started the encounters. I didn’t spend weeks trying to down a boss like in WoW raiding. I never got angry or frustrated at any lack of progress outside of not getting useful upgrades for a two week period once in D2.

To me they are easy games. D3 has artificial difficulty that is beyond D1/D2 but it’s all numbers nothing else. I don’t count that and consider D3 easy as well, even vD3. So yes they are all easy games.

124

As long as you make one of those things a resistance I am on board :smiley:

I think it would be nice if more than the “infrequent” elites had access to random affixes (as in, beyond their inherent affixes). An elite might get 2-3 random affixes, but maybe throw in another tier of enemies, a normal enemy with a single extra affix, and maybe limit that affix pool a bit, so zombies can roll from 3 different affixes, whereas a Hell Knight got access to some other 3 affixes. So they feel thematic for the enemy type, and not total randomness.
While elites still got access to the entire pool of affixes.
So we have more variation in the general enemies. Maybe in a group of 10 skeletons, 1 might be Fast, and another has a Cold slowing attack. They are not elites, but together they form something that is a bit like encountering an elite.

125

Absolutely, there are 5 types of mobs by default (regular, archer, brute, caster, elite) but I’d personally increase it to 7 or 8 even

Adding Champion mobs (but this is not new, D2 had these), and Engineering/utility (these would be “new”) the “pool” gains a lot of dynamic and loses “pattern” a bit tbh

This kind of mobs would be mostly intended to “interact” with more mob types at once, or excel at utility instead of damage output. BUT, in order to not have them completely take things over, make their impact preventable or interruptible (by having the majority of their spells channeled for example). It also may not be the hardest/toughest of it’s kind but should probably be a high priority to take care of first

If interested, there’s a thread where I talk about (kinda) mob design and an explanation of an algorythm, but may have been a bit of TL-DR material :thinking: :smiley:

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