Diablo IV Announcement Discussion

The more I think about D4 in its current shape, and the more I comeback to my initial post where I was saying that I feel Blizzard tries to mix things between World of Warcraft and Diablo way too much since Diablo 3 came out.

The Legendary items from D3 are still labelled “Legendary items” in D4. In D3 it was already a direct consequence of how they were spelled in World of Warcraft, and it was a straight difference of how they were named in Diablo 2.

In Diablo 2 those legendary items were called “Uniques” , and what may have seemed like a small difference suddenly appears as a major change because it was just the start of some bigger ones that ended up being a direct influence of what the current World of Warcraft game is.

This is where I come back, once again, to my initial point, where I think the biggest issue the Diablo license has to face as a whole is the current generation of developers who seem to be deeply rooted and influenced by World of Warcraft and its success.

And the whole philosophy in the current development of Diablo IV tend to say the same. The way they want to make it more like a “MMO” rather than a true Hack’n’Slash game such as how Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 or Path of Exile are.
When they announce an “open world”, “World Bosses” with dozen of players involved in the combat at the same time, and so on,
It’s weird because they claim having a will to come back to the roots of the series but in another hand they don’t seem to know what those roots are. In a way it may be understandable as Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 were both made by developers which are no longer in the Blizzard company (as far as I know).

And I felt the same when I heard they have some ideas about adding some sort of “end game” content that might be tied to what “Paragons levels” are in Diablo 3.
I feel like they share the same common understanding of “end game” content they had to make Diablo 3 and World of Warcraft (post Wrath of the lich-king), which seems to be necessarily tied with an “infinite progression”.
They really need to understand that a vertical progression isn’t mandatory in any kind of hack’and’slash/aRPG games, and Noxious point it out perfectly well in his video.

And this is why we can see a bunch of people who was just too young to enjoy or to know a game like Diablo 2 at his time, or just wasn’t the kind of players to enjoy that kind of game at all, who tend to argue the biggest weakness of Diablo 2/LOD was its lack of end-game content.
And they tend to say that because they seem to see it only throught the lens of this “common understanding” of what end-game content is and should be linked to : an infinite progression and power increase.

And with all of those things in mind, it gives a huge hint of why the recent Blizzard games/extensions all seem to be made with the same philosophy, which tend to limits creativity.

It’s really sad and I hope they’ll take the best out of those feedbacks.

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I’ve been looking looking forward to feel like this and the reveal confirmed it, I’m officially hyped! Now its up to Blizzard to nail it right :sunglasses:

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Looks promising, but 2 things:

  1. Please bring back character customisation and identity. Respeccing skill and talent points should have a significant cost. A significant enough cost such that sometimes, it’s easier to make a new character to try a new build. Do not make it possible to max all the skills with one character. Specialisation is key to replayability. And above all, none of this D3 stuff where everyone is an identical Jack of All Trades with a quick change of trousers, and character “builds” do not exist beyond your choice of class.

  2. Do not make the shared world mandatory. Diablo has always supported playing alone in your own private world if you so choose, and should continue to have that option. Having “PKKillah”, “SePhIrOtH”, and who knows how many other randoms running around in your world whether you want to see them or not will be a deal breaker for a segment of the playerbase. It doesn’t matter if they can’t affect you, their mere presence in your game, out of your control, will be a big turn-off. There are enough games you can go to if you want to be forced to deal with randoms.

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I Liked a lot the overall mechanic and art style… and I hope:

1- Lots of Runes, Lifesteal effect, bonus damage, bonus defense, summoning cows… possibilities that allow me go for kiting, tank, hybrid, glass canon, full cc, support.

2- Talent tree should have greater level cap. Would be awesome to spend 15~20 points in one talent and compare with people that distributes their points.

3- Dodge mechanic scares me, sounds like someone that shouted “Let’s put a dodge system in this game” one week before Blizzcon. It’s a step forward that grants you invulnerability. It should be used to dodge AoE and CC >>BEFORE<< it hits you, not to leave it. The distance should change too, barbarian shouldn’t go as far as sorceress with dodge.

4- World bosses should be killed by teams competing with others, the team that deals more damage get all loot or stuffs like that while the boss kills everything. This is a good PvEvP, I hope it don’t become like a random pvp arena with monsters that has no loot just to tell “Hey, we have PvEvP !”.

They need to use character nsne and not player name as well, player names are terrible.

Add mod support and an offline campaign.

Feedback - Barbarian
D4 barb is so much same as d3 barb
I think that is one of reason why people say “D4 is just like skined d3”
So many skills from d3 barb are back
Like berserk, hammer of acient, call of acient, frenzy.etc
If you guys have no plan to change those skill sets, at least, i suggest graphical change.
I think the concept Barb in d4 should be :

  1. master of weapon arts
  2. brutally crush mobs
    Hammer of acient :
    Summoning hammer and hit looks like magicain not warrior also, it ruins my gear appearance. Please make it just hit down with my own gear.
    Berserk :
    When i play d3 all of character looks same
    Because they turn into saiyajin form.
    It was misery that “saiyajin skills” are essential to play in higher level ,and it ruins gear appearance.
    Please make it different from d3.
    For example, when berserk is on, just get red effect not turn into saiyajin.
    Call of acient :
    I am curious this skill suit on Barb.
    It makes Barb like coward magician kid hide on granpa not savage warrior.
    Instead, how about this :
    When skill is activate, the acient soul appears at just back of barb and he or she follow the player’s skills for few seconds? like shadow

The 4-weapon sys is very cool to me.
It makes sense rupturing mobs with sword
then hammer. Making players use different weapon with each skill is very cool.
Keep it till the end of game

Let hardcore players have no trade restrictions since no one would ever buy an item on a character that could be deleted at any moment.

Those graphics are so good, the level of detail, i love it
Now you probably didnt have good look or you meant that they dont look cartoonish enough.

Here’s another one that came to mind:

  • NO limited-time events, ergo limited-time rewards/achievements associated with said events

Everything added to the game should ALWAYS be accessible, regardless of the player being able to consume the content on day 1 or several months later.

I’m so fed up with games where the rarest and coolest events occur while I’m on a business trip, in the hospital, having a prolonged Internet outage etc. Then, when I get back, everything is over. The fabled experience that everybody’s talking about is in the past, never to return ever again.

And the worst part - once enough of those missed opportunities accumulate, the player starts to feel so far behind the community, so dissociated, that they no longer see a reason to continue playing a game where they are the odd man out, be it gear-wise, cosmetics-wise, achievements-wise and so forth.

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Exactly! Plus, all the content created for these “limited time events” should pile up over time, and give more stuff for “new/returning” players to do, available whenever they wanna pursue them.

This adds flexibility to the whole experience and helps keep things fresh.

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Hello!

I am a very big fan of D3. And this game looks incredible. But I am very saddened at the stance blizzard has taken with China, Hong Kong, and the hearthstone casters. I understand those decisions are made by the top CEOs and management and not by the wonderful devs that are making this amazing game.

I am not thrilled that I heard there will be mtxs and no offline mode. I hope the mtxs are cosmetic only, but we will see.

I will not get this game on day one due to the many “balance” changes that are plaguing online games nowadays. But I will keep it on my radar.

All I ask is for a way to respec our skills and stats whenever we want, or in a forgiving timeframe. And a vampire class would be awesome.

Devs, you are the good guys. Keep up your amazing work.

After many years of waiting I am incredibly happy to see the new game in the series. I have played Diablo 1, 2 and 3 for many years, but for me Diablo 2 was a true gem. It had many awesome systems (Runewords, cube, skill system and statistics which required planning!). On the other side in my humble opinion Diablo 3 was weakest of the series (flashy and colorful graphics, oversimplified skill and character systems, paragon levels and rifts which made the rest of the game redundant and lastly the drop rates which felt like game is trying to reward me once every 5 seconds of gameplay).

I am very happy to see that Diablo is comming back to its dark and gory roots. I mostly liked what I saw in the early gameplay, but there were cases where the graphics were too flashy and Diablo 3 like.

If there’s one piece of feedback I can give, it is regarding the skills. For me the forced selection of 6-7 skills, and lack of ability to switch them during fight (unlike in D2) was the worst part of Diablo 3. It simplifies the game and makes other skills inaccessible, rather than making sure that players can quickly adjust their gameplay depending on the situation. If you must have only one bar with 1-5 skills + mouse clicks, please think about a way to switch bars and let players add skills to them. This would be very useful for players who would like to use a different set of skills for minor mobs, bosses and for PVP. It would engage players more than having 7 buttons to press.

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Just wanted to drop in and say something from a business model standpoint:

Buying convinience IS as bad as buying power. No MTX is ideal… leaving purchases to just xpacs would be the nicest gift you could give us blizzard…

But let’s be real. We live in a rusty age of gaming where the least scummy practices we see are from indi games. If you need to monetize some garbage and not reward is for in game achievements. Please just make it cosmetic only.

Selling power sucks.
Selling convenience sucks.

Lore Question! What happened to the Nephalem of D3 into D4? It feels like there is a big gap in Power levels, so did their Powers get Diminished again by Heaven closing its Gates, or something else? Did all those Blood Shards get collected to form the Worldstone again to tune powers? D3 left the Nephalem as the most Powerful Champions of both Heaven & Hell, yet everyone seems weaker now; even the Prime Evils are separated and weaker now since no longer combined into the Prime Evil. With the return of Lilith, who wanted to make the Nephalem her personal Army, how can this question be left unanswered? Or has it…

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Reaper of Souls, Act V ended with Tyrael stating that “within the [Nephalem Hero] beats a mortal heart, that will one day be tempted to corruption. On that day, will [they] have the strength to resist? Or will [they] be our doom?

With Diablo IV comes Lilith:

Daughter of Hatred

The daughter of Mephisto awakens burning urges in the hearts of those around her, be it demon, human or beast. Profound fears, unchecked rage, repressed impulses, sinful desires---all are brought forth violently and irresistibly by her mere presence.

Source: Meet Your Maker

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Not really. I made far more money selling hc gear on the rmah than sc gear.

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That’s a lie because you couldn’t sell gear for money on the hardcore AH

well, I just gave you the short version. Everyone made money from selling hc gear. You sell the gear on the ah, exchange the hc gold for sc gold from the many people offering gold exchanges, then sell the sc gold on the rmah. I just didn’t want to give the long version. hc farming and selling was much more profitable than sc.

Another idea for improving skill tree.

[Skills]

Make every skill with basic dmg only. After leveled up we are getting +1 skill point and every skill would have 2-3 ways to upgrade it (each way has 5 lvls max).

Example:
D4 Barb Bash
(Current)
Bash the enemy with your weapon, dealing 42-51. Has 20% chance to stun for 0.5s. Generates 9 Fury.

(After improve)
Basic: Bash the enemy with your weapon, dealing 42-51.
Option 1. Generate 9 Fury (1 lvl)
Option 2. Has 20% chance to stun for 0.5s. (1 lvl)

Level up: basic dmg goes up and we chose between 2 choices: 20% chance to stun for 0.5s OR generate more Fury per hit. With every next point spent numbers go up.

I spent my +1 point for option 2:
Basic: Bash the enemy with your weapon, dealing 52-61.
Option 1. Generate 9 Fury (1 lvl)
Option 2. Has 25% chance to stun for 0.8s. (2 lvl)

And up to 5 lvl, or balance 1/4, 2/3, 3/2… what we need.

If we’ll have limited amount of points we’ll have to chose what option we want to level to max lvl 5 and what we can sacrifice or we don’t need for our build.