Diablo 4 NEEDS to be a difficult game. For longetivity and replayability.
For the love of god Blizzard, please don’t listen to the casuals who want Diablo 4 very similar to Diablo 3, it will kill the game. What made Diablo 2 so fantastic is the hardcore community of dedicated players. If you don’t have this hardcore community back, you will lose your entire fanbase.
Look at what every streamer is saying about Diablo 4. Darker, more punishing, more complexity, and difficulty. Ie, they want Diablo 4 more like Diablo 2 and for good reasons. There were some bad stuff about Diablo 2 like lack of endgame, but other concepts were legendary like itemization.
This is a game rated M for mature, for adults. Not little kids or teenagers. We want to work for our rewards, not be given all legendaries for mindlessly grinding rifts like Diablo 3. Diablo 3 has literally NO skill involved. The only thing holding you back from completing a rift lvl 80 vs a rift lvl 120 is gear and RNG of pylons. It’s the same gameplay all the way up, just gear limiting what skills are viable for what you can clear. This needs to change.
I really hope you’re listening to the right people. Because some people on the forums/reddit are asking for a little kid version of Diablo and want the game to be super casual friendly. Which I think you need to head into the opposite direction. You will get your money with a difficult game which will keep people coming back. Not an easy mindless mobile ARPG that a 4 year old can play and get dopamine rushes from shiny legendaries and shiny MTX.
Thoughts?
edit: Theres a reason why theres only 5 people playing Diablo 3 right now, and why PoE is growing in the hundreds of thousands every season and ITS FREE. (Hint: trading, difficulty, complexity).
I definitely agree, a slower, more difficult game would be nice.
That said.
Diablo 3 actually has more difficulty packed into it than Diablo 2 has. Every piece of content in diablo 2 can be, and has been, beaten by naked characters on hardcore mode. Diablo 2 has nothing compared to the ever scaling difficulty of greater rifts that D3 has. You say D2 had no end game and youre exactly right. D3 did have this end game, and it was difficult, more difficult than anything in any other ARPG, and so you shouldn’t totally turn your nose up at it. D3 did not do everything wrong.
Bear in mind that Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 are the two games I play the most, even today. I am currently playing D2 ladder and Path of Diablo, and waiting on season 19 to start. Diablo 3 has more difficult end game, even if the core game mode and world exploration becomes trivial at a certain gear point. You just need to realize that normal rifts and bounties are meant to be speed farmed and high GR is the end game progression.
Compare this to my bone necro who kills every end game boss in a few bone spears on D2 Ladder. The entirety of D2 is just gg easy farming.
Yeah that’s literally what I just said. This is a game rated M for mature. So why is it designed for little kids, and teenagers?
Example 1: Trying to fit dry humour and corny jokes into a horror game. Completely ruins immersion.
Example 2: Not dark enough, reduced gore, no brutal screams, no terrifying demons.
Example 3: Linear gameplay. You see an item with green arrow up on attack/defense you equip. You don’t even read the stats. NOT COMPLICATED AT ALL. MEANT FOR LITTLE KIDS.
Example 4: No trading. “I want the game to make all my decisions for me!” Little kid trait again.
Example 5: Memes. WTF is thunderfury doing in a diablo game? What is a deadmou5e amulet doing in a diablo game with super cartoony/weebo/little kid designs?
Example 6: Simlicity. Inventory, management takes 0 thought. Thinking about what items to pick up takes 0 thought. You salvage everything in 2 seconds, it takes 0 thought. This needs to be a game designed for adults who actually think properly. Not see a green arrow up and get a dopamine boost “Omg better gear!!!”.
The idea that D2 had a bunch of difficulty is a weird one imo.
Otherwise I agree, difficult, strategic combat, and build complexity is great - Diablo need a lot more of it
I dont care a whole lot about darkness. Unimportant for the gameplay.
Okay. Why don’t you add to the discussion instead of pointing fingers?
I’m not trolling I’m 100% serious. Casuals will ruin the game. It ruined Diablo 3 (Everyone whining about trading, now look how dead the game is). It ruined world of warcraft (mop, wod expansions plummeted subscription growth).
Do you really want the game to make decisions for you? Do you really just want to have 1 cookie cutter build and equip any item with a green triangle arrow that points up, not even reading the stats? Do you really just want 2 cooldowns and spam buttons 1-2 and pickup cool shiny legendaries while you’re in you’re shiny MTX?
Diablo 4’s items need more thought. I want to have a set of gear, and calculate in my head what specific stats I need to look for to make my char better, what specific attack based stats would synergize with my builds, maybe I just need a little faster hit recovery because I stand in the middle of packs and do AoE from the centre. Maybe I need more cast speed because I teleport around a lot and need to cast quick before anything can touch me. Maybe I’m a barb and need to stack damage for a 1 and done ability.
Or maybe I should just equip the item with the green arrows pointing up and continue slaying monsters because thinking about itemization and trading promotes “unfun” gamestyles amirite?
Not to good at math are you …I think you need to actually do a little factchecking . The fact of the matter is the numbers you see for Bnet and currently playing games on Bnet is VERY misleading . Currently there are 20kish players on Bnet playing 16kish games this is all games that are supported by the old Bnet not just D2 .For D2 you can not get accurate numbers but when trying to you need to take into account the bots ,There are chant bots ,baal bots, Spam bots ,Chaos bots , Channel bots . PvP bots. so the number of people actually "Playing " D2 is a hell of a lot less than people realize. I played for a bit yesterday and had a hell of a time finding a game with “Live players” there are so many chant bots in norm I could join a game and in the 15-20 minuets a chanter is in a game not one other person joined on 4 different games .In those games the new norm is to have a un quested bot make the game so those who join can quest.
Edit:Also the numbers for D3 are very misleading when you look for a game and see XXX numbers of players that is counting only game with players that actually have a party spot open. That is not counting any of the full games being played nd only showing you games that have chars . within the level range decided by the match making system .
Umm. Buddy go to twitch right now and look at how many people are watching Diablo 3. Less than runescape. Way less than Poe (which is a free game btw).
Diablo 3 lost all of it’s players, and you casuals still can’t figure out why.
I literally made a diablo 2 fresh char game 3 days ago and levelled with 3 other players all the way to act 3.
edit: There are 78 more titles on twitch with more viewers than Diablo 3. Many including FREE games. For a title that sold more than 30 million copies, thats pretty pathetic.
1 it’s now also finished within a week by the elitists…each season.
2 mobblasting is, for me, everlasting fun.
-i was never bored in my casual fun for the last years.
-just adapt your pace, that way you won’t be keeping outplaying new content.
This is like the only development philosophy I ever comment on here because I still must respectfully disagree.
It doesn’t need to be drastically punishing I always appreciated the cliche " easy to learn difficult to master " concept. But I still find it so odd that a compelling feature in games for people is that its super easy and they can just run through it at will unless they " choose" a higher difficulty level.
What is so wrong with a challenging game that requires a bit of strategy/thinking and effort to play? It makes it compelling and interesting for me.
Umm, Buddy Who the F cares how many people are watching a game. I have NEVER watched a game on twitch does that make me any less of a player? In fact I think it makes me more of a player. I have always been of the frame of mind why would I watch someone else play a game when I can be playing it . If any thing I think watching people play makes YOU more of a casual player than someone who actually plays the game.
It is completely fair to let newcomers learn the game. There is no need to be Dark Souls from the very first minute (as much as I love those games).
I agree that difficulty should not just be hidden behind difficulty levels though (actually, the fewer difficulty levels the better)
I agree. It becomes a bit of a confusing/mess of a system when you try to integrate and scale a ton of difficulty levels and it really isn’t as easy to do as it sounds conceputally .
to me, griftlevels are welcome, because they let me notice when i’ve improved my build but i don’t use them to adapt my build to push…fun builds are more important.