Diablo 4 feedback/suggestions

General Discussion
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I really would love the devs to read this and take the feedback on board so I’m gonna try and explain everything as best I can and try keep it to the point as much as possible, as I really do feel this game is extremely important to me after trying to get into classic and latest wow expansion but dropping off. I love the idea of Diablo mmo style game and I’m totally here for it! So I have come to give some time and effort to what I think will be quite a long post. I really hope Diablo 4 devs take player feedback on board, so far every video I’ve watched on D4 after playing D2 looks great so I felt it was worth it to make this post.

I’ve been playing Diablo 2 and absolutely loving it. A lot more than I thought I would! It’s amazing that when you have great ai, and a hard game, farming the same areas over and over again can still be engaging and fun. I only hope Diablo 4 steps it up here and is genuinly a difficult game with great boss mechanics and ai and you really have to think about, strategize, plan, and build for different circumstances and enemies. Respecting their movesets and attacks. I even like immunities! I would love to see immunities in D4 but also more options for ways to break immunities. Would be cool to have a merc in D4.

I want to talk about D2JSP and trading items. I think p2w sucks and I don’t like it in D2R. Ladder seems pointless as it will clearly be people who have paid for stuff that will get ahead. I think Blizzard should make an effort to take it down and I understand why things are account bound or soulbound now. It also sucks going to streams and seeing the floor carpet bombed with pgems cause everyone is there helping a streamer out to roll items when the rest of us have to do it the hard way. It feels unfair. D2JSP also encourages botting and hacking. Unfortunately the money you can make off these items can and does outweigh the minimum wage in some countries so their will always be a stong drive to sell items for real money. I do however want to have trading.

Here are my suggestions

  • Only able to trade GG item or “god” drop with people who were on your friends list BEFORE it dropped, otherwise must be traded on auction house
  • able to trade GG items with people in party if they were with you when it dropped
  • side note: items drop for everyone but each player has a few seconds to pick up their individual drops

There might still be workarounds for trading items with a stranger for real money but I think the first suggestion will make it very difficult. At the very least stuff like this would keep it to a minimum. Please take down any websites like D2JSP that exist for Diablo 4 even if Blizzard are gonna turn a blind eye to D2JSP. Ladder for D2R is gonna suck if they do though.

I’m loving how items are seeming to be a lot like D2. Itemisation in D2 is amazing. Uniques with fixed stats are great to hunt down to become powerful early on. Then moving on to really min maxing every stat and refining and tuning the build perfectly will come with getting legendaries in D4, with perfectly rolled affixes and stats and mixing with perhaps rares or even a magic item. Like 3/20 Javazon gloves in D2 are blue but still BiS. Or a rare can roll all res and 2+ all skills and like fcr or ias or something making it really powerful even compared to a unique. And being able to find these in D4 and attach a legendary affix to a rare I think is a great idea! I think having abilities from classes available to other classes through strong items like enigma in D2 is also a really cool idea and what I believe people are looking for to create some really crazy builds, but still with balance cause the abilities already exist. PVP balance is important though! But I’d rather everything be OP first and then stuff buffed to bring it in line as opposed to nerfing everything down to boring mode.

I also want a DIFFICULT game! I can’t stress this enough. It’s not enough just to have bigger health bars and more damage to deal with it. In D4 interviews they said they were taking things from already existing games and implementing them and if they worked they keep them but not ruin a Diablo experience. I think this is great but I do think innovation and trying new things is important. Fundamentally Diablo will not be the same as it once was, this should be embraced and not shyed away from!

My suggestions here are to look at other dungeon crawler games with a dark fantasy backdrop. Dark Souls was clearly inspired by Diablo and I think Diablo should take notes from Dark Souls! I want difficult enemies with awesome movesets and bosses that I have to respect all the mechanics. In D2 you get to a point where you can skip most of the enemies with teleport then nuke down a boss without really doing anything. D2 is not perfect to say the least (drop rates are terrible! There’s literally a breaking the 4th wall joke called the “secret cow level” which we have to “farm” instead of actually play the game because the mob density is so good there it will finally make high runes drop! Maybe reduce the drop rates on runes so they work in the normal game… honestly cows sucks and I farm it all the time when I’d rather be farming the cooler levels).

So please take inspiration from other metroidvania, dark fantasy rpgs. Games like Hollow Knight or Dark Souls. The boss is my treat and the end of the level, something I very much look forward to not being boring! And hey, if people want hell difficulty to feel like D2, well the mobs are pretty decent for a 20 year old game, bosses however become too easy. Wow had 15 difficulty levels for mythic dungeons! This is how many you really need for all types of players. I’m asking that there be 1 difficulty level above hell where you really have to respect the mechanics of all mobs and bosses for a true Dark Souls style experience that I can always have fun using my level of skill to kill monsters. I think mobs should always be hard even in hell but a raid boss difficulty with super hard bosses is ideally what I’m after.

I also want to have to kill my way to bosses. I think going into a dungeon should be a full clear each time as I really don’t enjoy all the skipping and rushing that exists in Diablo 2. I think rushing someone should be: skipping perhaps some areas and less important side quests and just being there on a powerful character and helping someone kill things quicker. You should still have to go through the game properly and not just afk in Baal runs.

Now I’d like to talk about level 85 areas.

In Diablo 2 a lot of the game is viable to farm. I love the gameplay loop of building a character. Completing hell was hard the first time! I needed help and it felt like a real achievement to finally get through the whole game. I was finally powerful enough with good gear and my friend and me got through Diablo and Baal and it was a blast! Now I had to start farming content. I realised I wasn’t strong enough for good clear speed on harder content so I started with Mephisto and Pindle. Once I had better items either dropped or traded for and gearing my merc, I moved on to ancient tunnels, the pit, mausoleum and countess runs. The first time I tried to kill Nilithak I realised it was impoossible! A new challenge and I welcomed the puzzle I needed to solve. A natures peace ring really helped me here and now I can farm keys! There’s even some hipster lvl 85 areas like maggot lair. I haven’t even started ubers yet!

What I would love to see in hell difficulty in Diablo 4 is EVERY dungeon to be a level 85 area. And the open world to be lvl 83 or 85 too! I want to be able to farm anything and everything and never feel like it’s a waste of time. Maybe even a way to encourage switching it up and farming a veriety of stuff, like quests that appear in camps that ask for all the dungeons to be cleared in a certain area for an extra reward (please not daylies but repeatable content yes. There is a big distinction between the sandbox nature of D2 and logging in to a list of daily chores, please keep it sandbox). This way even if a dungeon is desirable to farm because it has slightly more mob density, meaning this becomes the ONLY thing people farm, it would be outweighed by the extra reward you get from turning up in a camp and taking quests to farm the dungeons nearby for extra reward.

A small note on rewards. I think rewards could or perhaps should always be more opportunities to roll on great items. Like gambling in D2. Being able to gamble a large amount of the games items including GG uniques (special god drops could be only dropped from certain bosses or other content specific drops are still cool though) I think is the way to go. Like the shards of hatred in pvp zones. I would love to be able to use these to roll for gg items. That way pvp isn’t any more powerful at getting items drop, just another way of doing so, perhaps with the added benefit of knowing if you have a very powerful character you can be very succesful at pvp and perhaps be rolling on items in a timely manner because you have earned the right through gear and skill.

I heard the dev team mention they were also thinking about pvpve modes. My suggestion here is this: A mode where you get teleported to a war between heaven and hell, you get to choose a side and it’s pretty much like alterac valley or something where each team is trying to push up a long valley against each other. Kind of like a super awesome war that involved pushing a bridge and taking down towers and some of the epic moments you hear from war stories, that is replayable and has different consequences and moments play out each time, depending on how the teams are playing and what objectives they are completing. Or maybe a unreal tournament style assualt mode (google this, or maybe you remember return to castle wolfenstien assault mode?). Not sure why battle royale games or Titanfall specifically haven’t tried to bring assualt mode back but hey, I’m just a player not a dev I guess ¯_(ツ)_/¯ if you have any friends on the Titanfall dev team let them know their game is perfect for Unreal Tournament assualt mode! :slight_smile: I digress.

One small thing. Would really love to see some customisation on the Druid bear and wolf forms. It kind of sucks having so much customisation or wearing cool gear but you hardly ever see it and every druid kind of looks the same most of the time cause you spend most of your time as a bear or wolf. The wolf also looks a bit gangly in the arms for my liking and the bear perhaps a bit stubby legged lol. I think they’re cool but if I had other options for different body styles of wolf and bear or at least different skins, I’d welcome it. I would definitely like to look different to other druids.

Ok! That’s all my suggestioons for now. I will come back and read replies, would love to hear what others think and really hope the devs are influenced by some of my feedback. In general though, especially after playing D2R and having an understanding of D2 items and gameplay, going back and watching the Diablo 4 interviews and gameplay fills me with confidence that the game is going to be really special. It certainly seems to be taking some of the best things from D2 and I’m really glad uniques are making a comeback. Sorceress returning with blizzard etc super cool! The sequel to D2 I think everyone wanted. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it! And there are games like Lost Ark coming out now. Diablo should really focus on the hardcore dark fantasy arpg fanbase this iteration of Diablo. The accesible Diablo has been made, it was D3. Now let’s have a go at a focused experience for a core fanbase of Diablo and Dark Souls and metroidvania and even mmo fans who are done with the genre looking to companies like Blizz to give us experiences that scratch this itch because we no longer can play or enjoy large clan based mmos. I really think the problem with wow is its played badly by its player base. I would just start fresh with a new game, Diablo has a chance here to do this and I think it should do what it seems to be doing and focus on an audience that clearly exists and is dying to play a game like this.

Edit: “I really would love the devs to read this and take the feedback on board so I’m gonna try and explain everything as best I can and try keep it to the point as much as possible”
Well this didn’t end up happening xD I guess I had a lot to say as I’m clearly passionate about D4 being a great game! I hope this gets to where it’s supposed to be.

Thanks for reading! See you in HELL <3

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:rofl: 0-poster types up an essay of ideas and he thinks Blizzard will pay attention to even one of them.

Not new here, is he?

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Well I guess posting a lot doesn’t stop you from wanting to be flagged as a troll. Maybe they’ll remove your right to post, that would make me :rofl:

You really think any dev is reading 856 of your posts? That’s also pretty :rofl: tbh

Listening to the vocal minority of verbal diarrea is a mistake dev companies often make. But the squeeky wheel gets the grease. Hence why I took the time to come and post.

However, taking on board ideas from people who don’t often post would be far more valuable since forums are usually flooded by people with nothing better to do than complain and hate post.

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They are more likely to read if your post ideas for D4 are under the devs post for D4 updates.

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This is the only good idea. This already happens in D3. I will guarantee it will happen in D4 even with restricted trading.

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While I also really want a hard game in D4, D2 is not exactly an example of a hard game. Also, which AI?

Just dont allow any kind of trading in D4 tbh. Only allow sharing between players who were present when an item dropped.

Yes please.
Make it a toggle; FFA, Timed Allocation and Permanent allocation. Like how PoE handles it.

Most definitely yes.

Completely agreed.
No endless teleporting etc. And enemies should try to punish you for trying to run past them.

Yeah, should be the goal. At endgame scale the entire world to the same endgame difficulty.

Really disagree here. Items should come from monsters. Not from clicking on an NPC 10000 times in a town.
It just adds to the experience to see a great item drop after a boss fight. Vs. buying/cubing a bunch of items and then 1 of them being great. The very foundation of A-RPGs imo.

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that leads us to the problem that the game either has to decide which roll on an item is GG which is impossible or that we have to separate bad vs good items through item tiers which contradicts something you are saying later

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Thanks for taking the time to read my post and address some of the points I made.

What I meant by this is for a 20 year old game the ai impresses me. The little grunt looking guys run around all scared after you take a few out kinda like the grunts in halo! The cold immune casters in chaos sanctuary back up a lot when you try to melee them, as does the unique on top seal but with more haste and gusto, a powered up “unique” version. Stigian dolls run at you suicidally and explode! Projectiles are slow allowing me to dodge with movement and actually use cover. Once aggroed enemies do come and seek you out in a staggered manner allowing you to split them up round corners and take them out a little easier. Can be very useful that they work this way if you are getting lasered by 10 ghosts at the same time. They also go invisible. Some even have teleport and teleport around which can be randomly given to a unique making fights different and interesting when you’re repeating content. Flame breath attacks, powered up groups with extra speed, stun attacks like lister in throne room who dual immune I have to watch my merc get pounded up against a wall again and again while I feed him rejuves! I really don’t remember anything like this in other arpgs tbh especially not D3. They’ve always been clickfests with very little strategy or movement involved or having to judge and read monsters individually. Having knowledge of each monster type really helps with taking them out safely. I think the ai in D2 especially since it is so old is perhaps overlooked and newer AAA games should be ashamed of themselves that they can’t even be up to this standard. Diablo and Baal also have, be it simple, a moveset that if you haven’t got good gear does have to be respected somewhat. Nilithak with corpse explode!? You don’t agree? It’s really cool to see such a well designed game that is 20 years old. Is it up to the skill level and standards that we want 20 years later, no, but it was a great flippin start considering newer games I don’t have as much fun in.

I should have been more specific here. I also want item drops to be the main way of getting cool gear. But it would be cool to have extra rewards for picking up quests that reward us for doing a variety of content so people don’t find certain dungeons that are better for farming than others, and this dungeon becomes the only thing people farm. In these cases perhaps the rewards we recieve, instead of being boring currency or something that doesn’t end up turning into real end game BiS or close to BiS items we are hunting, they allow us chances to roll on nearly every item in the game making reward systems outside item drops interesting. I heard they are adding crafting. I’m not against other ways of getting loot that isn’t just rng gambling for stupid odds. I think the drop chances in D2 are not fun in a lot of cases. they are too harsh. I tried getting 3/20 gloves shopping using the best guide and I’m probably 15-20 hours in and haven’t gotten them. Loading in and out of a shop is flippin horrible… It’s actually why I came to make this post. I want D4 so badly to be fun and not this.

In reply to Lolli42

I guess you’re right. Some yellows would reach the rarity of legendaries when you are looking for perfectly rolled stats, and would therefore become as valuable if not more than a legendary. Maybe just allow blues and under to be traded not on auction house then. I would like an auction house and some trading and sharing gear between my characters though.

I have thought however that it can be kinda boring knowing I can completely gear every character with just one class. Some class specific drops could also be cool, so you DO have to earn it on each new character.

There was a couple other things I forgot to mention.

I would really like charms to exist in D4 they are another fun thing to collect and tune a build with. Being able to fill gaps in your build unlike gear. But a seperate charm inventory would be very welcomed.

I’d also really like Transmogs like in wow to exist. This makes more items in the game viable to collect and more content viable to do as you are hunting down cool cosmetics for the perfect outfit.

Thanks for the replies.

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Chances all this will be read are next to none. To increase them [slightly] you should make TLDR version first and add details further. However even this isn’t a solution. Best thing to get some attention from the devs is to write 1-2-3 days after official D4 Blog Updates (again, short messages have much more chances to be noticed) and only on the related topics.

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Hey sir,
U had written down many good ideas and hopes for d IV.

I agree and support more or less (i want to have a great and mostly free trade system; maybe with carravans [another topic here] or/and like the trade system from the game: Silkroad) all of your suggestions. While reading, i realized that u are a passionate diablo player with knowledge about the glory from d2. So devs should hear and respect ur/his wishes. Players like him are the whole base and the living heart from the ingame community.

One point u mentioned i want to point out, the customisation of the druid wolve/bear form. Never read about it before, but u are totally right.

To have the possibility of adapting/customize the shape form would be something new and very cool! Missing it would feel wrong.

Thank u 4 ur thread.

Hell is coming brother

Edit:
What tanks better?
A plain werwolve or
a werwolve with an armor?

What is dangerous?
A plain bear or
a bear with an axe?

It’s dark fantasy, with undeads, horses with armors and so on. Should be possible to customize the druid shapeshifting forms too. :metal:t4:

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For all we know, development of the game may be paused for months now, thanks to all the BS going on at Blizzard HQ.

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“One more thing we wanted to make clear: even though we aren’t holding BlizzConline in February, we’ll still be making announcements and updates for our games. We’re proud of our teams and the progress they’ve made across our games. We have a lot of exciting upcoming news and releases to share with you. You’ll continue hearing about those through our franchise channels, with the talented people on the BlizzCon team playing a part in supporting these efforts.”

“While we are still planning to deliver a substantial amount of content from Blizzard next year, we are now planning for a later launch for Overwatch® 2 and Diablo® IV than originally envisaged. These are two of the most eagerly anticipated titles in the industry, and our teams have made great strides towards completion in recent quarters. But we believe giving the teams some extra time to complete production and continue growing their creative resources to support the titles after launch will ensure that these releases delight and engage their communities for many years into the future.”

“For Diablo, our plan to enter an era of unprecedented content scale for the franchise has experienced a strong start with the September release of Diablo II: Resurrected, the return of one of the most acclaimed titles in PC gaming history. First week sales of the title were the highest recorded for a remaster from the company. On mobile, Diablo ImmortalTM is in public testing and remains on track for release in the first half of next year. With Diablo IV set to be the foundation for great experiences for PC and console fans over many years, we believe the pieces are in place to expand and serve the Diablo community better than ever before.”

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Why make a feedback post to a game not even out yet ? We don’t know it all about the game or how it’s gonna act.
While D2-D3 has had it’s time and can have certain things that might be good, I would love a fresh game total.

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Diablo 2 is also fun because it serves role-playing aspects.
It was designed from the beginning to be a game, not an end-game grind. The grind is just something the players look for themselves, and it was intensified by focusing on the bosses as a target, because the drop rate was simply much higher.

In D2, because there are no rankings or comparisons, you also have the chance to include things that are typical for role-playing games.

Thus, the classes are totally different to play, have different speeds and different demands. It feels totally different and you have a real choice.
Of course, that’s no longer possible when it’s turned into an end-game comparison and competition game.
Everyone has to be trimmed down to make it work, there’s no other choice.
And that’s exactly how it feels. Only the effects are different, or the basic playstyle of melee or range.

These things clash, because they are different genres that are tried to be brought together here. This only works very badly, especially if the RPG is subordinated.
But if it wasn’t subordinate, then there would be no balance, unless you build extra talent trees etc. for the integrated sports game.

And then the RPG would still have to be served quite differently in world building and as a basis for further content that does not serve spirals and competition, but the game as a world.

That’s why you always choose the simple way and put the sports game on the throne. The consequences can be seen in WoW, D3 and D4 will also fall ill as an RPG game and sink.
That is very simple logic.

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Thanks for reading and your positive contribution to the thread.

This makes me think about some of the more crazy builds in D2 that use an ability from another class. Like Enigma. Having Bear Sorc and Barb builds, it would actually be really cool to see a unique Sorc bear form with magical runes glowing on its body or unique Barb bear form that actually wears some armour or keeps holding weapons when switching to bear. Or if teleport is given to other classes through an item that it might be a different looking effect altogether, like a shadowy effect for Rogue or plant effect for Druid. This would really play into class fantasy and make finding and using items like this that much more awesome.

In reply to LordByron

Perhaps you’re right, but you said it yourself, this is what players want from Diablo. Cooperation and competition are 2 of our greatest and most interesting traits as human beings imo. It’s fun to have both of these constructs in a game that I put so much time into, as I want to share the experience with others and use the power I’ve gained to compete with others.

Some things I forgot to mention previously.

I’d really like scaling to exist when going to help lower level players with pve. I’m not sure about pvp scaling because of how it worked out in wow. I’d like to keep pvp on but not get dumpstered by much higher levels. I think this could be resolved by only matchmaking with people around my level in the open world.

Pvp is also really important to me. I wouldn’t even be considering playing with any seriousness unless there was end game pvp. It just doesn’t seem worth it to me to work on a character, getting them to peak efficiency, just to kill monsters faster.

I would really like to be able to run a pvp and pve build and be able to switch between them easily. And also be able to switch between my pvp and pve gear easily. You’re able to switch to a different weapon set in D2, I would like this for all my gear so I can always have my pvp gear with me and not have tons of stuff in my inventory. And if I only need to switch 2 or 3 items, then I should be able to toggle these items seperately not have to switch my entire set, or I’m back to dragging things on to myself out from my inventory. It always sucks when you’re tied into only being able to enjoy one or the other properly because being efficient at both requires a respec and you can’t carry that much gear around with you and it’s annoying to drag it all on everytime.

And arena dueling ONLY really isn’t that fun either. The fact D4 is going to include world pvp and pvp zones and even talking about adding interesting pvevp game modes! This is awesome and is probably the feature that excites me the most.

I really, REALLY, hope that the D4 dev team take pvp seriously, keep balancing and adding content for pvp. This was seriously neglected in wow and a lot of bad decisions made along the way.

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Just not possible. Simply doesn’t work in an APRG game unless it is turned into a MOBA. PVP always failed in all ARPGs and will fail in D4 too.

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Only a Sith deals in absolutes

Oh one more thing while I remember!

I don’t mind picking up lots of stuff off the floor, and I don’t mind having some inventorry tetris if the devs decide to go this way instead of each item taking up 1 slot. I would very much like a way to scrap items though into some sort of scrap stuff that gets stashed separately and doesn’t go in my inventory. That way if I need to get rid of a few items before a boss so I can pick stuff up, I don’t have to throw things on the floor and get stuck in decision paralyisis. Instead I just decide what items I think are the cheapest and scrap them into currency or perhaps materials for crafting or something.

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We have town portals for a reason.

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Why use a town portal if I can scrap it for cash or crafting mats in my inventory just before a boss and not miss any xp. If I’m happy to lose some of the value from not selling it to a vendor, I’d be very happy with a way of NOT TP’ing was my entire point to be honest if you’re forcing me to unpack it with your negative snarky 1 sentence post with no reasoning why you think it should stay this way and have zero innovation or improvement on current game design we’ve ALREADY experienced for many many years.

Also the devs clearly disagree with you. Proof being world pvp zones, pvp in the open world and arena. And the inclusion of future pvevp modes. Pvp is BACK BABY!

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Im on about extra stash space not being needed.