Diablo 4 Proposal Attack Lifecycle Trigger Before After

General Discussion
101

Skills being tied to gems instead of classes is one of the main things that turns me off from PoE. I know that some people like it that way, but it is not for me. It takes away too much class identity and for me personally it is too ‘sandbox-y’.

The other side of the coin is also less class identity and less interesting itemization.

I think it is fine if you have items that proc Skills on Hit / on Attack / on Kill / when you Get Hit / etc, and also too have oSkills that give e.g. +x to Fireball (as long as this Fireball has only e.g. 3 Charges), but a PoE-style approach to procs and Skills/oSkills goes way too far.

For example procing Tornados on Hit on a Windforce Bow (Legendary) or a Thunderstorm on a “Legendary Thunder Hammer” perfectly fits thematically (even if it are just a “Flavor Affixes”), or giving oSkills on some Legendaries (see images below) is fine since then you have to sacrifice an equipment slot for making a build around that…

https://imgur.com/YWUAoWD
https://imgur.com/PwJuB0F
https://imgur.com/LvFTqF0

… but giving every class access to all skills is way too sandbox-y (for my personal taste) and also would not feel like Diablo imo, and on top of that would also decrease class identity.

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102

D2 players are mostly botters, the majority. And it has always been like that in the past 10-15 years.

The more easier to make a bot, the more easier the game. Current aRPGs are full of bots doing better than players, because they are games with simple gameplay, but that doesn’t make them bad.

From what we’ve seen about Diablo 4 the “hard to master” part isn’t present atm. We’ll see how that goes in the future when they open the game for public testing.

103

No, that is not how anything works. Computers being efficient at chess doesn’t mean chess is an easy game.

Yeah, sadly Blizzard abandoned their mantra a long time ago.
These days it is ‘easy to learn, braindead/boring to master’.
To be fair, the easy to learn, hard to master mantra fits RTS better than most genres, and probably what it was created for.

104

Very creative powers !
I like the ide of transfering one affix to another, just like captain crimson does.

105

It’s not. It takes a lot of time to make a good Chess bot. And far less time for Diablo aka Diablo is way more simple than Chess.

That’s the concern here - Diablo 4 will fail to become something more than a simple game with MTX for whales.

106

Even though there is a lot that Blizz can learn from D2 still that doesn’t mean that D2’s skill system couldn’t be improved upon. Also I was mentioning the only way to make all skills viable. If each had their own skill tree then the attack and defense skills wouldn’t have to be made in a way where some or higher level than others. And it would be superior, imo to skill gems because it would be easier to balance. That is because you would know what nodes are in the skill tree of that skill and could balance things around it.

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107

D1 and D2 does fit that mantra, there is enough difficulty that it is hard to figure out (pre synergies) a strong build that is viable to beat the game. But easy enough to let some beat it with less than the best builds.

108

I took inspiration from some of D3’s effects as well as from Grim Dawn and PoE.

For me personally, Grim Dawn and PoE are too clunky in their gameplay and I don’t like their visual style, but I really admire what the PoE devs have come up with in regards to Keystone Passives and some of the special effects on their Unique Items.

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Though, there is a difference between transferring / converting and the way some of the powers in my concept art or on the Captain Crimson Set work.

Converting is e.g. when you have 250 Arcane Power and you convert 30% of that Arcane Power into e.g. Energy Shield (like for each 1 Arcane Power converted you gain e.g 50 Energy Shield), which would convert 75 Arcane Power into 3.750 Energy Shield and leave you with 175 Arcane Power…

… while something like Captain Crimson gives you a bonus based on your RCR and CDR without actually converting it.

Both are found in the concepts, like the Thunder Hammer that converts 35% of its Base Weapon Damage into Lightning Damage, as well as giving you additional Lightning Damage on your Lightning Resistance (without converting it)…

… or Windforce that gives you additional Attack Speed, +x Physical Damage and +x Cold Damage based on your Movement Speed (also without converting it).

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But I agree that these kinds of powers are very interesting and I hope to see more of them in D4. Though I also hope that there are gonna be more “generic special powers”, because not every legendary needs to convert one affix into another or give bonuses based on other affixes.

I have a ton more concept art as well, many also with more “generic special affixes”.
Some people also prefer more simple bonuses, and that is fine.

I thing what Shadout was trying to say is that it is simple, but not easy.

109

From what we saw until now about Diablo 4 we know it’s an easy game with mechanics created for the casual players, no next gen systems and no announced competition. This is a good short term strategy for pushing a lot of sales on release, but long term it’s a suicidal philosophy.

ARPGs have to aim making dedicated players from the casual players with the dedicated players being presented with long term gaming goals defined by the game’s systems. Going the other direction (casual mechanics only) is suicidal, because the interest of the casual player in 2022 isn’t the same as in 2000 due to huge gaming market and competition.

The winning formula for aRPGs is to evolve into aRNGs with all systems in the game besides the fundamental ones being procedural. This is what me and OP are preaching here and in other threads.

Procedural is the counter to boringness. Strong class identity is the counter to homogenizing gameplay. A game having easy to learn mechanics, but such setting long term opportunities for the player to evolve his game is the counter to making players leave after first playthrough. A game built aiming highest skill cap possible is the counter to meme game design with short term income oriented goal.

Diablo 4 developers have the opportunity to create a really good product for all types of players be it casual, regular, dedicated or competitive. They have enough time to implement easy to learn and hard to master systems that will catch the player interest for long time. Heck, the game being delayed for 4-5 years more won’t make a difference if it releases as a finished product that aims to give the aRPG fans long term entertainment.

I’d say we as a Diablo community are very lucky that the things started moving in the right direction for the company before D4 was released. MS will raise the bar higher demanding more from the D4 production team and with our help the game would be 10/10 on release.

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110

D2 pre-synergies is still fairly easy. You can bruteforce yourself through most problems.

But there is more of it than in D3 of course. Not so much because of the combat difficulty, since both are just pretty easy there, but D3 adds to the lack of “mastery” with its handholding item design (through its set items and legendaries), and seamless progression scaling.

Honestly, there is not that much Blizz can learn from D2.
And yeah, especially not from the skill system - except a bunch of “how not to do it”.

Indeed.

Yep.

Often the opposite. Handcrafted content beats procedural any day of the week.
Procedural only really got one benefit; Quantity. Hence why it should be used appropriately and sparingly. Such as for map layouts.

Using chess again, it would not be a better game if each piece had random rules/behavior each time you played. Very much the opposite. It would have died a long time ago, being considered a silly mess of a game.

111

Handcrafted basic rules is what the procedural steps on.

The truth is no one can stop games evolving. ARPGs are far more boring genre than aRNGs. Once gaming companies realize what a few of us here already know they’d make fortunes. It’s about to happen in the next years and it will be the dominating genre until AI ARPGs appear.

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112

True. Evolving just doesn’t mean “aRNG”. That would be more like disintegrating. But you can believe whatever you want to believe of course. If only we had a time traveler around there would be no need to guess.

On the other hand, some game genres have been disintegrating for decades, so it certainly might happen. I dont think anyone would be too surprised if D4 ends up being another step backward for the genre.

113

The genre is dead from a long time ago. Stepping forward/backward won’t make any difference.

D4 will sadly fall in that trap of high expectations and low result since only a handful of people know how that to be avoided and from what we’ve seen such people aren’t present among their development team. Note that I am not saying their development team is bad, it’s just that it won’t elevate the genre since in order to do this one has to have the right vision.

I will do my best of course to continue explaining why aRPGs have to evolve into aRNGs so that we reach that state in time faster. It’s okay if you personally don’t find procedural content fun, but the majority of aRPG players aren’t like that. Otherwise they would just play Chess instead.

114

After D3 I bet most people have lowered their expectations tremendously tbh.
Blizzard will probably find new ways to go even lower though :frowning:

Or you know… they would play A-RPGs, and not A-RNGs, as they have been doing so far, and many of them are still doing.

Seems like what you want is a different genre from A-RPGs, instead of evolving it. Which is fine of course. But it sure seems like arguing that A-RPGs should instead be car racing games.

115

Just a lot better, different only regarding which systems are to be procedural.

116

About accepting Bots as a feature, and modular design, I highly recommend to try the excellent space drone simulator called Nimbatus to feel how it can be powerful as a user experience.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/383840/Nimbatus__The_Space_Drone_Constructor/

Me playing (2 minutes videos)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eRm9nLVUzs&t=5s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFS7xo11gHg

There is a programer mode where no human interaction is allowed.

You have to automate your build so it can handle all situations (fighting enemies, rescue, …etc).

These two short videos show really simple gameplay, but if you want to cover all the use cases there are dozens of components you can use, proximity detectors, altimeters, logic gates, shields, lasers, magnets, …etc.

I’d like a Diablo 4 Fully automated league built-in the game.

Start the game, monitor your automated build playing by itself, find errors, correct the behavior by adjusting the build, restart the game, …etc.

This is the kind of end-game loop I’m willing to play.

Far more interesting than the so-called end-game loop “Do a greater rift and sell all that useless legendary garbage already seen 1 million times”.

Just saying.

One side note, if you like modular design for skills, be sure to play to Nova Drift

https://store.steampowered.com/app/858210/Nova_Drift/

While it is a different genre (space ship), the way you can mix skills is very interesting.

Every level

  • You gain 1 reroll
  • You can pick 1 skill among 7 random skills
  • You can reroll the 7 random skills until your rerolls are depleted

You can apply granular modifiers to the game

  • more enemies
  • more bosses
  • more environment threats (asteroids, blackhole)
  • …

in order to increase

  • experience
  • wild skills proposed (rare skills)
  • unlock new skills (rewards)
  • unlock new bodies (rewards) // equivalent to traits

On traits and free skills, the new expansion of Star Wars the Old Republic will use something similar

https://www.swtor.com/legacyofthesith

Players can now separate their Class Story from gameplay style for an even greater customization experience. This frees up Advanced Class options as characters can choose any Advanced Class within the Tech or Force playstyle! Play as a Trooper wielding a Sniper Rifle, or a Sith Inquisitor with a lightsaber in each hand, or even secretly use Dark Side powers while posing as a member of the Jedi Order.