Crafting materials storage: I think this should be a separate account wide thing. You loot them like D3 into a tab that doesn’t take up inventory space then when you visit the towns, you can deposit them if you want into a separate account wide place in the stash. This way you can have access to them on other characters but your entire stash isn’t filled with other characters gear.
Available Classes: The Sorcerer, Barbarian, and Druid were announced. I’d personally like to see Necromancer and Demon Hunter return. As far as new classes, I wouldn’t mind seeing a Rogue/Cutthroat/Assassin class that can pick locks, is fast paced, and can stealth assassinate things. I would have said give the Monk back but that seems more anime and not dark and gritty that I think D4 is going for. The Demon Hunter is more ranged and is more like a WoW hunter. As for how lock picking could work, there could be special chests you can open if you crafted a key, got a key to drop, or brought a Rogue with. There could also be an extra area in a dungeon that has a boss that can only be opened with keys or a Rogue.
Game looks amazing, the design and UI I was really a fan of. Tonally it feels amazing.
Graphics;
I had this one point, where I watched the game on google chrome on my PC and it looked really washed out, and then watched it on HDR TV and it looked incedible. This reminded me of the D3 Dark mod which was kind of banned. Please consider adding filters to the game, or additional graphical options beyond the standard that adjust the darkness and sharpness of the game. It can make a world of difference.
The Characters & Design;
I really liked how the Characters had completely different mechanics, for example the Barbarian having more items which will separate him by allowing extra powers. The Druid shapeshifting allowing for changes in passive ability on the fly.
Perhaps you could consider allowing the Sorcerer to use mana potions exclusively?
Perhaps you could add the assassin with no resource that focuses on combination strikes and cooldown skills?
Boss FIghts;
The boss fights looked good, I think the dodge mechanic use should be limited as much as possible though, I don’t want the dodge mechanic to be a must except in sequenced events, other wise cd on dodge is gonna get my HC character deaded.
Also one of my biggest peeves in Diablo 3, cut scenes and load screens in the middle of boss fights i,e Diablo shadow realm… please make sure this does not happen unless it absolutely is a must.
The world and story;
I have one concern and that is how the story works when there are 30 players on screen, this really bothered me in Diablo 3, where I am the one Nephalem that was prophesized yet there’s four of us in the party. Please just Narate the story for multiplayer.
The Inventory;
While its cool having single slots for everything and arguably more space, because the thumbnails on items are so small, they look like whatever the opposite of epic is, you need to have better images of the items so when I see them in the inventory I am in awe of them. Also the design of these thumbnails in general is pretty bland, you try putting a D3 Azurewwrath in that thumbnail.
Diablo 2 players want charms, this is something that I hated, I have a suggestion, charms are basically jewellery peices, you get 5 charm slots displayed abover the character on the character screen where charms can be equiped.
Skill Tree;
I loved the design of the inventory and skill tree from an art perspective, it’s really paying homage to Diablo & D2, thanks.
I liked the concept of by levelling skills they get new attributes, I think this will add a great deal of extra customization, like if at level 3 leap rather than further buffing damage it gains break, and maybe at level 5 it gets stun & damage boosts. I think I took this away from the panel, so maybe I need to get a break on one of my skills but don’t want to create the leap damage barb, I simply level to level 3 and two skill points are moved somewhere else, I think that’s what David Kim was alluding to and it sounds great.
The Itemisation;
This is a HUGE concern, Diablo 3’s itemization sucked, it sucked in Vanilla and it sucks now. If I could i’d still go back and play Vanilla with the current drop rates I think it’d be compltely playable. But “Smart loot” is not smart it’s actually really dumb.
If the itemization is just attack and defense that would be really sad, so please look into this and add more meaningful stats that have menaingful customization. Diablo 2 should be the baseline for items.
Difficulty and Diversity;
While the damage taken was low in the demo, I liked the difficulty especially that killing each monster wasn’t a cake walk like diablo 3, I think that should be a thing, no one wants damage scaling to be 10000% on anything and 700 monster kill streaks where most of what you kill is trash.
As long as you stay away from that 10000x damage scaling, then rare items can stay “relatively” relevant. Perhaps even allow +25% damage to skills on items and give that a break point of like 200%.
I’d also like if the damage buffs are smaller can make any skill relevant, as I really want to make that Druid wolf build, Druid looks amazing. I don’t want that Diablo 2 skeleton build that fails to scale. Diablo 3 didn’t get much right, but the pet build especially on the necro was awesome, the active management of pets was a great mechanic especially with scaling damage where each hit increase to a certain point to make them relevant.
From my understanding of watching various streams, even the D2 streamers said it doesn’t look like Diablo 3 when playing it, so I am more hopeful. Sure its isometric and 3d, the skills are animated at high quality but that’s where the simlarities end.
There is two player couch co-op, this means you can both play on the same screen together. It’s like Diablo 3 on console.
Do you normally play Diablo 3 with all stats on screen?
I’m curious because I play with everything minimalised, I don’t have damage numbrs or anything after I have my build is complete, perhaps it’s the minimalist vs maximalist view because I have heard both opions alot, I love the bar moved to the left as it makes more of the screen viewable and in my eyes makes the game seem more immersive.
Awesome cinematic, oldish graphics, darker and bloodier atmosphere, promising gameplay/build customization, runewords (even though I’d like to see some D2 runewords type). Just not a big fan of the MMO stuff but I’m hoping it won’t affect too much end game if not played a lot/at all.
One thing though, about the atmosphere and casual/hardcore gamers thread. I recently started playing Metro 2033. At the beginning, you have to chose between several difficulty levels, one of which is kind of a more immersive version : almost no HUD, smaller inventory, etc. I found the idea awesome, since the game is meant to be immersive, and it does work perfectly.
What if you would something similar in D4 ? Some kind of survivor experience.
Or just letting people play with settings, for example :
Enable/disable damage numbers
Adjust light radius from 1 to 100
Enable/disable highlighting enemies when pointing them with cursor
Detailed or minimalist HUD (just life/mana/minimap for expl)
Adjust spells brightness from 1 to 100
Enable/disable quests’ tips
Etc…
TBH, my “scariest” gaming experience was Diablo 1, for several reasons :
you never see where the enemy is coming/shooting from (kinda the same stuff with ballista’s skeletons)
you see nothing in early game (light radius) and you generally HEAR enemies before SEEING them (much scarier that way)
you walk slower than enemies (for the most part)
you never know what you’re going to fall into
To resume : the less knowledge and the less senses you feel from what’s coming to you, the more terrified you are. And this is something we want, at least for HC gamers.
Like you said at D4 presentation, that feeling who everyone had meeting The Butcher for the time in D1 was so thrilling. Because you don’t KNOW what is in that door before opening it up. And THAT’s scary. THAT’s what we want from a game pretending to be bloody/dark/scary.
Of course, I acknowledge that people who will play D4 will be both some good old Diablo fans from D1/D2 (who 99% disliked/hated D3 for the WoWish aspect) and others that really enjoyed D3 for some reasons. So you can’t make the game one way or another, you have to make decisions, disappoint some. But letting the opportunity to chose the atmosphere ppl want to play in would be, I think, a good compromise.
PS : please bring back Javazon. Or some kind of melee/ranged character depending on the build you’re going for.
PS2 : make rare items, with really unlikely affixes, better than legs/sets. Some items in D2 were in that case and they were the most expensive ones. I found it really cool to see a top tier item possessed by just a bunch of people. Not OP but just above best legs/sets.
Diablo 4 looks good but I wonder if goblins will be in d4 and if gems are going to be like they were in d2? And if attack potions are going to be in d4 like in d2 and I hope greyhallow island and the ruins of sescheron and leorics manner are going to be in d4 because those where my favorite areas to play in love the way this going so excited
But what was so incredibly good in Diablo 2 was the feeling to play a SINGLE-player game that was also playable in a multiplayer mod (aka online).
The multiplayer aspect was just a “plus”, a bonus enjoyable by everyone as they wish, but not necessarily forced to.
I really think this is something to consider in your development of Diablo IV instead of being fully against a single player mod.
In Diablo 2 the online mod was then seen like an extra game where all the things I was doing by myself, alone, a few moment ago, were suddenly doable with others people, friends, or unknown people.
To me it seems much more entertaining than having to do things that require (or is designed to) to be with other people. At the end, even if the game was fully playable alone most of the players ended up going online just to enjoy the game with others. And the whole experience remained the same, things were just slightly easier and faster (but also more funny, in a way), obviously.
here’s my suggestions… obviously some people may disagree with me…
-rogue with both ranged & dual wield melee - can use bow/xbow/throwing + stabbing/slashing 1h weapons seamlessly… still 1 less item slot than barbs.
-templar with lance & 1h/shield - charge, zeal, blessed hammer, auras
i’m normally a pet class person but if there’s only 2 more classes on launch, these would round out the archetypes best with the things i miss most from d2. the druid will have to suffice for now.
-followers were well done in d3… allow them for solo play.
-make respec’ing talents cost a LOT a LOT of gold… or require an obnoxious collection of drops for a ritual… better to re-roll a new character for the sake of identity (and keeping low level items or crafting materials relevant) rather than having 1 of each class and collecting different sets of gear to just change who you are as a person with what you wear. but it’s still useful to have ways to fix mistakes in your talent trees
-allow for atypical builds… one of the things that made d2 great and kept me interested was making characters like the shout barb or the enchant sorc… i understand why it doesn’t fulfill class fantasy for a barb to dual wield necro wands but it kept things a lot more interesting for me… i’m the kind of player that tries to make a non-ranged DH… is that so wrong?
-keep rares competitive for stats, and only use legendaries for specific legendary powers… and don’t make any legendaries that both have no special power and also have more affixes than the rares… so if we don’t have a build-defining legendary in every slot, we can still care about the other things that drop. in d2, people occasionally even kept blue amulets with +3 skills for certain builds… it made loot far more interesting to have options and real choices rather than just a slightly higher or lower stat of the 1-2 items that must be in that slot. if nothing else, make certain affixes sell for a lot so picking up certain blues/yellows actually matters rather than just being worthless.
-don’t create build-oriented items for nearly every slot. it makes it so there’s only 1 combination of gear, limiting diversity dramatically…
-make blues/yellows infinitely tradeable (and remember, occasionally useful)… legendaries/sets infinitely tradeable with party members for a set duration after it drops and then only once (to anyone) thereafter, and mythic untradeable.
-the reason why identifying blues/yellows is pointless in d3 is because the items themselves are pointless in d3. hauling items back to town to identify them is still interesting if there’s a chance you might get one that you’ll actually keep. i don’t at all mind having scrolls to identify in a dungeon to decide if i want to take up inventory space or not… but if i’m definitely keeping it because i’m going to salvage it (or if i’m definitely not picking it up no matter what anyway), it won’t matter. not sure how crafting/salvaging will work, but i think it would be best if there were reasons you would want to pick up some items and not others… in d3, you always pick up stuff to salvage or you always ignore anything that isn’t a legendary. you don’t actually care what it is.
differences from d3 i really appreciate: different objectives in dungeons rather than only kill elite packs quickly, variety in monster density (no longer a problem with new dungeon objectives), families and synergistic behaviors, progressive increases in quality of endgame items rather than the droprate of items in the hopes that you’ll eventually find one of higher quality than the last one, skill ranks with +skill affixes, the return of magic find (but not a the cost of power), the return of increased attack (and cast?) speed, the return of support builds, and allowing legendary affixes to include other classes’ skills.
things from d3 i’m glad we’re keeping: treasure goblins, elite packs with affixes, health orbs with potion cooldown, resource and cooldown management systems, crafting (assuming the rest of the itemization doesn’t render it pointless), shared stash, pet abilities that summon and command when pressed again, town portal on a button
things i’m not very excited about but understand why they’re there:
having to choose 1 of a selection of spells within each of 6 categories. if i want teleport for travel, i can’t have another desired defensive? what if i want to make a druid with vines, birds, and wolves? is it too overpowered? or is it just a side effect of wanting people to only choose 1 ultimate? perhaps buttons 1, 2, 3 can allow for any combination from those 3 sections… and you still are locked into choosing a primary, secondary, and ultimate?
infinite dungeon difficulty progression (if there are no real distinct tiers of content, there’s no clear mark for what is “viable” and what isn’t… and saying a build is “viable for beating the campaign” isn’t exciting… there needs to be a distinction between the majority endgame and the minority endgame so that builds can complete the majority endgame can be considered viable. a smooth progression won’t allow for anything but the best… there should be a clear maximum end game degree of difficulty where a very diverse set of builds can be viable, and then people can push the infinitely progressive challenges for marginal improvements from there… in d3, it felt more like there were only 4 or so viable builds per class for beating what was considered trivial endgame content, and only 1-2 viable builds per class for the real end-game content, and then maybe only a couple viable builds out of all classes to really push the hardest stuff… hopefully having diverse dungeon objectives will allow for different builds to be more and less viable for different types of gameplay…
talent trees are cool, but not sure how interesting the choices are. it’ll depend on how many points you can allocate, but if everyone definitely gets the final ability at the bottom of a tree branch, how much actual choice is there?
i know rune words aren’t fleshed out yet, but the reason why it was important for us to have mythic-level runeword items in d2 was because you could build up to them over time. finding the runes to put together a big runeword would be better than just waiting for a whole complete item to drop with a massively lower droprate. it allows for more decision making on whether to hold onto them or use them for a lesser runeword or use the runes for one character or the other… perhaps the highest runes could be soulbound and used for mythic items.
I’m looking forward to a Diablo 4 forum where we can help give feedback. For now I’ll add my voice here. Been a fan since Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction. The Diablo 4 cinematic and gameplay trailers look so great and promising!
My main criticism so far is that there seems to be almost too much focus on the theme of “darkness”. I think dark and gritty needs to be balanced with realism and believability. In other words, the world (Sanctuary) can’t just be an inhospitable wasteland. There must be villages, towns, and cities that have some kind of security to chaos. I’ve seen it stated that there are villages, towns, cities, and religions and factions, so I’m not too worried yet. I do hope and assume there will be plenty of world building and background lore involving human factions and kingdoms. I’m thinking (aesthetically) Braveheart, Vikings, and Kingdom of Heaven, in terms of towns, villages and cities, factions, nations and tribes.
I think it’s also safe to hope for all 7 prime evils to feature in this game. They’re so important to the overall lore. And the game just feels incomplete if any of them will be missing. Diablo 3 seemed to feel lackluster knowing Mephisto, Baal, Andariel, and Duriel would be missing from the beginning. Pretty sure I saw Duriel for a couple seconds in the gameplay trailer
I’d also like to say that Diablo 3 wasn’t terrible. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible. You can add a tiny tiny bit of the charm from that game to Diablo 4, ie, good people in said factions, kingdoms, tribes, towns, villages, etc. It looks like you might be doing that with the man speaking in the gameplay trailer, who I assume is a Horadrum speaking at the grave of Deckard. If you don’t like the term charm, then I’d recommend, like I said, believable and realism balanced with darkness.
Also, I’m a Diablo 2 druid fan, so you can say I’m extremely hyped and happy to see the druid return. Some nitpicking concerns (and I know the game is a work in progress, but just to add my voice to I assume others) the wolf animations seem stiff, a little unnatural, and too orderly (the way they walk in unison side by side). I’d say let them wander, like in Diablo 2. Not too far from the druid but a little bit. And the werebear looks awkward or silly on two legs. I’d say put him on all fours and have him on two legs when fighting. And maybe give the werewolf a tail (like the Skyrim werewolf) I think that would look a little better.
Again, overall everything looks so great. Thanks Blizzard!
PS. Tell the Heroes of the Storm people to put the druid in their game already, please and thank you!
In one of the streams I watched, a player chased down and killed a Treasure Goblin. I don’t remember if it was Bluddshed’s or Quin69’s. In a conversation between Lead Systems Designer, David Kim, and Rhykker, David confirmed there will be Goblins.
I hope that this game will again be more for the hardcore gamer than for the casual. This game genre thrives on its difficulty, sophistication, and complexity. Therefore, I hope for an even deeper character development, which consistently maintains the player’s decision and ensures diversity between the individual characters of all players. If necessary, offer the possibility to redistribute the skill points at some points of the story (e.g. 3 times during the whole story) and after finishing the story retain the character as a complete work, which has decided the victory over evil with all its skillful abilities etc. (Otherwise possibly only over real money or the leveling of a new character).
Plus an item system that, unlike in D3, has a much lower droprate to emphasize the peculiarity of legendary items. After all, it’s no shame to explore the world of Diablo with rare (yellow) items, and after a lot of work, time, and bloodshed, to find the one special piece by chance that in principle prevails over the majority of rare items.
These are the mechanics in the game, which gave me this unique experience, which before hardly any game could offer me. Wish me this united in one game, Diablo 4 !
The attack n defense i agree with Mr. Llama thoughts on this. Remember most people playing Diablo are adults we like challenges it is what makes the rewards that much sweeter. The attack n defense is very D3. Great job though so far
From what I saw, I reserve real judgement from the lack of having any decent amount of information, but I must say, I am intrigued.
The gameplay of D3 with building upon the great itemization and (hopefully) character progression systems of D2 is what D3 should have been. D3, while it got better from RoS on, was simply a completely flawed system from release with regards to itemization and character progression. Why would your character be nothing but the items you are wearing and 90% of what the items did was just raise the damage of skills? I think the original developers of D3 had no idea how important character progression is.
Let us all hope that this new team understands the importance of character progression and giving lots and lots of items that augment that progression in unique and fun ways, in the thousands upon thousands of forms that progression can be made.
It’s all about killing monsters, finding fun items and making unique characters.
But yeah, I’m going to need a lot more information before I can really start contributing any real substance.
Edit: Oh yeah. I forgot to say, DO NOT WORRY ABOUT DEADLINES. Set that straight with Activision now. D4 needs to be RIGHT before you release it. Don’t take the release of this game lightly. You guys are walking a tightrope with this series. If you screw up this release, you might as well kiss Diablo goodbye. I don’t care if you have to delay the game two years past the current time you’re thinking. Just get it right.
Edit again:
Okay, after some more research, I would like to add a few things, mostly regarding character progression. Do NOT let us have all of the skills on one character. That diverts from character uniqueness. Also (and I know this is still really early), give more skills to choose from. I wouldn’t mind seeing at least two to three times as many skills and for each character to have access than no more than two of them per category. That way, you have incentive to create more characters outside of ladders. Just like in D3, if your character has access to every skill, then the entire character just becomes their gear. I know it sounds contradictory, but it really takes away from the depth of each individual character when you give them access to every single skill that class can have.
The talent trees also need to be expanded further. Again, I know it’s early, but in the areas that D3 greatly lacked, D4 needs to really shine.
As a HUGE Diablo fan, I am so excited for this! Diablo III let me down a bit after coming from D1/Hellfire , D2/ LOD. I was used to the dark gore and small groups of tough combat. Diablo III took a little bit of an arcade turn with it, doing billions of damage to 100’s of monsters. I mean it is fun, but it’s not Diablo. Seeing the Open World with this game I am a little nervous but I am also excited to see what else you come up with. Good choice on the Druid class. I kind of hope you come up with a new class instead of an already existing one but I would also love to see the Assassin again. I feel like in Diablo IV a class like that could really shine!.
Can’t wait to see more and hopefully play this beauty one day soon!
Aesthetically it looks amazing though I think d3 does as well. The only thing I dislike about d3 visually is the spell fx. They look awesome but they are a bit too intense and colorful hopefully d4 can tone it down. I’m not really sold on the shared world but I will try to keep an open mind. I think it would be really cool to have abilities that combine. For example if the sorcerer shot a fireball and the Druid shot some lightning they could make a lightning fireball that had it’s own interesting properties. Anyway looks awesome, keep it up, happy developing.
I don’t know if someone from dev team will read my few words but I hope that yes and it will be helpful.
About D4, it’s look really good! Finally whole scenery is dark as it should be.
Just remember to add some nice PVP system with rankings/rewards so that will force us to prepare another build for PVP and drop more items that will works for this build = more endgame
Also there should be added some nice crafting system with much of recipes and crafting materials which different drop rates, one materials should drop normally but some of them should be really rare that we can farm some specific boss = more endgame And also talismans from D2 will be good idea I think?
About classes, you should add of course some range dps character as it’s missed already and necromancer would be nice to see as always
So thanks for attention and I hope that we will play this max in 2 years
Здравствуйте ) Как бы двоякие ощущения хотя я искренне рад 4 части и куплю ее … , с удовольствием почитал бы где можно оставлять идеи по поводу 4 части, а в остальном …
1 - вот эта тяга обязательно всех скооперировать мне не нравится , как бы нефалем один ну или небольшая компания до 4 человек и то по желанию , тут же не армия выступила против сил зла а отыгрыш одного героя после каких то событий, краха в его жизни(убили семью) или его мире… , да и вообще кому то что то объяснять как что делать такое себе удовольствие.( ну не Total war это)
2 - PvP камон эта игра про битву против зла , хотите пвп идите в мортал комбат не надо его навязывать разрабам , пусть основу нормальную запилят игра не про пвп !
3 - снова упрощение только атака и стойкость … дело не в арифметике у вас , дело в ваших скрытых механиках о которых знают единицы (простой пример легендарный камень апающий скорость и т.д. вы и сами знаете )
ну или механика чародейки заезженая где попало, когда тебе необходимо пианино , и знание анимации игры и когда они заканчиваются и начинаются другие …
4 - порталы фигня и не разнообразно запилим пещеры с разными эфффектами которые можно пройти только компанией , але а как же те кто играет по одиночке их большинство !!!
5 - Аукцион\ транзакции - я понимаю что нужны бабки на контент , в 3 части есть крылья и петы с крайне низким вариантом получения - но все же получения , сделайте их платными - типа захотел выбить иди ищи \ не захотел купил за 60-100р , а в магазин штук 50 вариантов итого 5 косарей , так же с крыльями еще 5000 р. за 50 вариантов по 100р (седло на лошадь которое только внешка и на игровой процесс не влияетпо 1$ 50 видов и цветов), и будут вам бабки и игроки довольны .
6 - консоли … ну незнаю как там Хбокс и ПС4 , но на свиче все взломано весь шмот, 150 вп закрыт любым классом за 30 секунд портал Карл !!! (ну мож потому что там и не надо постоянный инет)
7 - судя по демке волшебница с её шаровой молние-телепортом будет в топе и снова будет единственным топом и спидранером …
8 - почему чародейка только девушка, друид только мужик , а варвар м\ж плюс внешки , какая то несправедливость …
9 - развитие ремесел крутая мысль мне нравится , но только не так как в линейдж…
My feedback is that the D4 team should bring back the D2 Itemization, instead of the Attack and defense system. The D2 Itemization brings depth and more choices to the players.
The game looks/feels/plays amazing. D3 already had the best combat in any ARPG ever and you’ve managed to improved it. The tech is there and it shows.
Cons:
Itemization is bad. Diablo 3 had bad itemization. Diablo 4 dumbs it down quite a bit more. This saddens me greatly.
Now, I realize there are many different complaints and worries within this topic. For me, the MOST pressing matter is:
Items need to have Attack/damage/Armor values. These need to have randomized roll ranges.
Attack/Defense “simplifications” need to go. Give us a complex character sheet, which we can open and analyze if items picked up are better or worse. Absolutely hated the D3 auto-comparison, and D4 makes it even worse.
DPS meters on Weapons are a disgrace to the genre and a disservice to variety.
Armors/Rings/Amulets should’nt increase Attack/Defense based on simply existing (specially jewelry). Add STATS to them. + Armor/ +Life/ +Damage Reduction +XX-XX Fire Damage.
If you’re going the “items drop scale to player’s level” route, this means we’re getting 40 full sets of scaled items (for 40 player levels). While this is what already happent in D3, it’s simply ridiculous, because you drop way too many items anyway. Changing gear every 30 seconds isnt what ARPGs should be about. This modern “instant gratification” itemization you went for in Diablo 3 is precisely what kills the genre.
You’re making everything in this game awesome, but not the most important part: Items.
Do not over simplify it. Go back to the stat system, skill system and loot systems of diablo 2. Diablo 3 dropped the ball in all of these aspects and just wasnt all that engaging like the 2nd one was. So far it just looks like a reskinned diablo 3 and thats not a good thing.
