Apart from skills and weapon leech, health can only be recharged through reg, or through fountains, waterfalls, healing potions that are not lying around all the time, but should also have a value.
And of course depending on the class also through skills, although it should be in an RPG of course so that a barbarian has no such ability but has a better general health regeneration and has much more Life and a eg Necro can heal himself via Life Leech, even on his own servants and a druid possibly has a healing spell or a regenerative plant skin can conjure on his skin.
But here healing orbs and such fun, makes the game just an unrealistic Bubble Bobble interlude.
On the way, a herbalist can also offer her services and sell us a healing herb, which increases the Hp Reg.
It should not be driven on the track to torpedo the game with such a means again. Such things only make the game worse and deprive the system behind it of many options and weaken it.
I am against healing orbs. It would harm the game and immediately lead it down a wrong path.
We will clear 10x screens at a time in our Super Mario Cart inspired mounts to collect Nephalem Coins. These are in game collectable NFTs that your character loses when hit.
Letās take away decisions in combat and place them before combat. Great game design.
Note: I am in favor of having alchemy as one of the main crafting systems in D4, crafting various long-term buff potions. But that doesnt have to take away from in-combat decisions. They can co-exist.
I want a globe-globe that spawns more globes which spawns smaller globes and when picked up and each picked smaller globe spawning a wild turkey attacking for 200% weapon damage with a chance of killed monster dropping a health potion.
Well, the thing is, what do you want to do with the game?
If we are aiming for an action-driven numbers game, then healing orbs would be a good way to implement this in order to keep the speed nice and high. Also healing potions are orbs from the inventory depending on how you can use themā¦ I get itā¦
If we primarily want an RPG with a strong atmosphere that we perceive because we play much slower, then there is no need for healing orbs. They would be rather ridiculous anyway and seem unreal.
As always, the 2 game interpretations get in the way here.
My understanding of such a game is clear. No sports game, no numbers race, but a lot of RPG in aRPG and slower, simply to understand the game as such and then be able to fill it with all options to that effect.
This sports game track will simply not serve that. It will run there as always. Game unimportant, Endgame(so the sports game) is above everything. Thatās inevitable, all these games of the last years have proven that again and again.
And if I think about it even for a moment, itās immediately obvious that itās going to happen. Things just cancel each other out. You can build a decent RPG if you put a second genre on top of it that is directed against the RPG, yes, has to be directed, because otherwise it canāt work at all.
You canāt build an RPG with a sports game as the engine, no matter what kind. That will never work. In that case, the RPG can only be of an accompanying, ornamental nature, which will have to completely adjust for the competition. There is no other wayā¦
At most, it works the other way around, since the sports part is actually very light fare that can relatively easily be included even as a side game without a determining factor.
If you want to make the effort, why not. There is also PvP as a side workā¦
D4 looks like a game for grown ups from last blog post. Putting arcade mechanics in it like orbs or Super Mario movement/attack speed like in PoE would be a meme. Itās okay for D3, but not for D4. These are different games and people often forget that.
What on earth gave you that impression in the blog post?
If anything, it is hard to imagine a more kid-oriented message than āReturn to darkness!!1oneā.
While I 100% agree with this view in general, I really dont see how something like health orbs goes against RPG, or make it a sports game. Not anymore than healing potions, healing skills etc.
It is just a gameplay mechanism, it does not turn the game any more, or any less āsportyā (which the game should stay the heck away from).
Technically, thatās a nostalgia-oriented message directed at people that think D3 is a childrenās game and that PoE was a better sequel to D2 than D3 was.
Which sounds very much the same as a kid-oriented message.
The more focused your game is on gore, brutality, headshots, ādarknessā and all that, the more the marketing seems to be directly targeted at children tbh. Also seen with Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto etc.
The biggest difference between D3 and D2 for me at least was pace of the game.
D3 is more fluid with a fast combat pacing. Having the globes made more sense for that style of game play.
I thought I recall them saying they were changing the system to something more passive rather than potion or globe dependent, but I could be wrong. I mean you would still have health potions, but there was going to be some sort of passive system that would work along side world drops but not have either system dependent on them.
Meaning they might want to keep the smoother fluidity of gameplay akin to D3 but with some roots of D2 implemented with regards to gearing and spell work.
But who knows. I guess we will see when it is made more public and closer to open beta.
Actually thatās because of the Life Tap curse. The life leech affix is never high enough, to help you stay alive against Ubers on itās own. As soon as Life Tap drops youāre in a pickle, if you donāt re-apply it quickly.
Yes, life steal is certainly strong in Diablo 2 as well. Although it does have itās limitations, for example it only helps melee and/or physical damage builds, except smite (although smite does benefit from life tap). As such caster type builds recieve 0 benefits from utilizing life steal.
That said itās still a desirable ability. Thereās no question on that.
D3 life globes are just annoying and clutters up the graphics. Gear with life on hit or life on kill does the same, and doesnāt create clutter.
Lost ark style little buff-globes in various flavours that gives you a tiny little advantage for a while also isnāt really improving things imo. Clutters the place up, makes you go around and fetch them, and are not strong enough to alter your playstyle.
For same reason I mostly donāt really care for health potions with extra little buffs like they have in D3, as they mostly worked in the background, it was not something that altered your playstyle. A couple exceptions are supports with kulle-aid to break down walls for dps, and firebirds wizard with the cc-immune potion that could protect you from cc through the damage cycle. Things like that would be nice, but Iād prefer them on the potion rather than as random drops: in part due to clutter, in part so that you can plan around it, and it becomes a strategy rather than RNG.
If we are going to have RNG spawned temporary buffs (Iād be cool without them as well), I prefer them rare, short and powerful, like pylons in D3 that completely alters the way you play for a short while, and creates a moment of excitement when you find them. No flavour of time though please, and not so strong scaling that it allows you to clear way above your power level like condi in D3 (the other D3 pylons are fine though). But pylons create much more exciting gameplay than a constant flow of +3% damage for 1 min globe, +5% movement speed for 2min globe, etc etc.
I think life restoration is a really really important point to get correct in D4.
When you give the players too much access to life restoration then the only way they die is with one-shots / high burst damage moments.
I hope that D4 leans into a bit more of a death by a thousand cuts style of fighting where the expectation is that you can start a fight without full HP and expect to survive by playing well.
I like the idea of having life on hit on melee weapons, where maybe with the Barb arsenal system youād have one weapon with life on hit and youād be using a specific attack trying to keep your health high while having a different weapon without LoH that is all damage stats so you can do big damage.
I think the life pots with a CD is also a good idea, it gives us the iconic pots and doesnāt compel the player to just spam a button but you actually strategically pick the right moment to get the life restoration.
Sorc having stuff like energy shield could be a good way to keep them survivable without giving them high levels of life restoration.
It could be a good thing if there are different strategies for survivability for each class that helps add a bit of flair.
