First of all i would like to thank you for creating D4 and trying to involve us players in the process. Im personally really excited about the news that there will be D4 and its going back to the darker roots of Diablo series, but i cant shake some of the ideas i consider OFF or Not suitable for D4 i saw regarding the game.
I grew up on playing D2 (12y) nad after that also tried D3 (1y) and when i saw the new D4 it seems more like D3 with a bit of D2 at the moment.
So i would like to share my opinion about the current D4 and i would also ask the communicty to comment what you see out of the character in the current D4 concepts. Below you can read my suggestions, notes, what i see not suitable at the moment.
I will try to make a comparison what is the most painfull point for me at the moment compared to D2-D3-D4
I watched lot of streams including
Where David Kim Lead Dev answered a lot of questions regarding D4
Items
D2:
In D2 when we were looking for items there were lot of different affixes which made the item (even rare) a lot better option compared to other items such as +1 to all skills or magic dmg reduction, or all resist, or % to put curse on mob (so for example some class skills like bone dagger). Almost every affix were meaningfull and gave you boost
D3:
Whenever you looking for loot you just chase higher stats such as higher crit chance higher crit damage, the point here is there were a few stats which ruled over all other stats and made other item affix just crap. Most of the affixes dont give you boost.
D4
Here it seems the affixes a bit more balanced but still more like D3 most of the affixes seems useless and thus the items will be worthless
Skills
D2:
Skills were building on each other, gave ++ boost to the next skill in the skill tree which made it meaningfull to go just for Cold themed Sorc for example.
D3:
Dont have any kind of in depth in skills, you just pick the best skills for the items and thats it you are settled,
D4
Seems to be more like D3 even tho now you have some sort of skill tree points, it seems its still far from ideal the system, I would really love to see build where you dont have to be stuck with just one BEST build, thats ruining the experience since if you want to advance in higher levels you allways have a best build for all case and thats makes the game booring.
Skill Effects
D2:
In diablo 2 all skill effects were more complete and fited well to the theme
D3:
Rockets, Lazers, booring mechanics,
D4
In D4 Mechanics of most chars looks amazing and im really happy about the Druind and Barbarian how it looked during the demo, However Wizzard seemed to be off and more D3 like with the Conduit skill and the Homing Ice shard?? Just please dont, If you culd implement more complete skills to these characters as it looked for the Druid and Barb the game would be lot better in overall.
Key Dungeons
About key dungeions i would just complain about the execution. It does not seems like its a system which have a lot of in depth. It also feels out of the character.
D2:
In diablo 2 what made a pack of monsters really strong? The affixes they ad on them. Some of them had cold aura, some of them cursed you, some of them charged off lightings if you hit them, which made it really difficult to kill them.
D3:
In D3 the whole mob affix went wrong, they are allways easy to kill, and felt like its garbage compared to d2, all the affixes d3 had is throwing fire balls, cold balls, lazers, walls its just not gonna cut it.
D4
Again is more like D3, throwing fire balls, cold balls etc.
However In some of the videos i saw a Skeleton Ballista with multi shot, thats the kind of mob affix i would like to see more, Such as give auras to mobs, or Cold/Fire/Poison Nova, give them curses, on death effects, in key dungeons, these kind of ideas are more fit for Diablo theme and its a lot more grounded then just throwing some random fireballs.
This is not a final/complete list and im not a professional, but please check this list out and think what could be more D2 like instead of D3 like in the current Diablo 4.
Thanks for hearing out and please comment if you have good ideas.
+X% Increased Chance of Blocking/+X% Faster Block Rate
+X% Faster Hit Recovery
Damage Reduced by X
Magic Damage Reduced by X
Half Freeze Duration
Poison Lenght Reduced by X%
Misc:
Mana
Light Radius
X% Damage Taken Goes To Mana
Mana after each Kill
X% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Maximum Stamina
Heal Stamina Plus X%
Hit Causes Monsters to Flee 12%
Socketed (X)
Increased Stack Size (+X)
X% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
X% Damage Taken Goes To Mana
Ignores Target’s Defense
Knockback
Prevent Monster Heal
X% Faster Cast Rate
Attacker Takes Damage of X
Indestructible
Repairs 1 Durability every X Seconds
Replenishes 1 Quantity Every X Seconds
X% Faster Run/Walk
X% Slower Stamina Drain
X% Extra Gold
X% Life Stolen per Hit
X% Mana Stolen per Hit
Replenishes Life X
Requirement -X%
Dex
Energy
Str
Life
Spell Charges (Don’t think it’s necessary to add every spell here)
Spell Procs (same as above)
+Skills (Either entire trees of skills or individual ones)
D4 Affixes (Known so far)
Defensive:
x Max Life.
x% Damage Reduction.
x% Dodge Chance.
x% Damage Reduction from Enemies within Melee Range.
x% Damage Reduction from Enemies out of Melee Range.
x% Fire Resistance
x% Lightning Resistance
x% Cold Resistance
x% Poison Resistance
x% Reduced Damage from Elites, Bosses, and Players
x% Reduced Duration of Enemy Control Impairing Effects
Offensive:
x% Attack Speed.
x% Critical Strike Chance.
x% Critical Strike Damage.
x% Increased Duration of Control Impairing effects.
x% Damage.
x% Physical Damage.
x% Damage to Stunned Targets.
x% Damage to Immobilized Targets.
x% Damage to Vulnerable Targets.
x% Damage to Enemies in Melee Range.
x% Damage to Enemies out of Melee Range.
x% Damage to Slowed Targets
x% Increased Damage against Elites
x% Fire Damage
x% Cold Damage
x% Lightning Damage
Hit Effect: Up to x% Chance to Slow
Hit Effect: Up to x% Chance to Slow on Crit
Hit Effect: Up to x% Chance to Stun
Hit Effect: Up to x% Chance to Stun on Crit
Resource Management:
x% Cooldown Reduction
+x Maximum Mana (Sorcerer Only)
+x Maximum Fury (Barbarian Only)
x% reduced Fury cost for skills (Barbarian Only)
x% reduced Spirit cost for skills (Druid Only)
x% reduced Mana cost for skills (Sorcerer Only)
Other:
x% Movement Speed
x% increased movement speed for 6 seconds on Elite kill
+x rank to (insert skill here)
So, D4 Affixes looks a awful lot to D2 Affixes, yet you say “Here it seems the affixes a bit more balanced but still more like D3 most of the affixes seems useless and thus the items will be worthless”.
The only thing that D4 doesn’t really have compared to D2 would be spell procs and spell charges really, and that can still happen.
The biggest issue with D4 affix already is the crit chance and crit damage… This already tells a lot about D4 and what you need to aim for… cirt and crit dmg… which will lead 2 affix rule them all kind of situation. But i really hope i will be wrong…
In D2 you didnt had these affixes and thats why all other affix was more viable option.
You don’t know what items have those affixes, you don’t know what max values we can get on those, and you don’t know the actual impact the other affixes have on your character damage.
So no, the mere existence of those 2 affixes does not lead to “2 affix rule them all” kind of situation.
These stats rule D3 because we can stack a whole lot of them, and there’s essentialy nothing else to increase our damage. In D4 we have a completely different deal with skill ranks and +Skill affixes. Provided they don’t overdo it, Crit hit Chance and Crit Hit Damage can be just another set of stats.
Agree with this one. Hopefully the D4 team finds a way to make the accompanying effects properly representative of the skill without going over the top with the light show. It contributed negatively to the feel of d3 imo.
Erm, I think we will all agree that Juggernauts are not necessarily easy to kill. Couple that with the Waller or Jailer and Arcane, Frozen or Frozen Pulse affixes, and if your mobility skill is on cooldown, you can find yourself in a lot of trouble before you know it.
Honestly, Show me a game where crit chance and crit dmg not rule over all the affixes ? Please provide some title so i can re search that game. Sounds interesting what you state above.
I really hope they don’t add crit dmg to the game. D2 had Deadly strike which benefitted the melee classes, and it worked perfectly. Casters always dealt more raw dmg but with DS and Crushing blow melee were beasts too. I hope they bring this mindset back.
I agree that the D4 preview does look alot more like D3 than D4 but its a very early build so we’ll have to wait and see. I for one really do not want the numbers all over the screen and the mobs flashing white when you hit them. Atleast I hope they make something that can turn off those features.
I’m in the opposite camp as far as the Druid and the Barb go. I cant stress enough how horrible a design I think it is to combine all the aspects of one class. Barb using every weapon at once? Druid seamlessly transitioning to wolf and bear while casting goes so far from what made D2 great. Specializing your class made D2 great. All they would have needed to do is add the talent tree that augments all the skills and makes them all viable. Maybe add a few more and it would be a perfect system.
Juggernauts are not so easy to kill just beause they are immune to debuff effects, what makes most of buffs not to proc on them. So, we can see how really powefull we are only against them, as most of other monsters are killed instantly by our debuffs on them…
Juggernauts are imune to crowd controls only. Which in turn makes them imune to some debuffs that need crowd control to trigger (like Bane of the Trapped). Immunity to Bane of the Trapped alone makes enemies way stronger.
But Juggernaut also makes enemies take 30% extra damage from all sources.
Well i aggree with the Juggernauts, but other mobs are worthless. On the other hand I think that kind of mob affixes are not fitting the Theme of the original Diablo 2
out of mechanics, you mean.
-the LORE must be preserved.
-the immersion must be improved: more Real Life and historic references.
-the cutscenes may have the epic immersion of those of D2.
-complexity kills an aRPG imo. so not more of it please.
Complexity for its own sake is bad for any game, but the game also still needs some depth to it. Too much simplicity is also a bad thing.
The real strength of a Diablo game comes from character building and the fact that there is just so many ways to build a character. It’s why we don’t really see people talking about playing “mains” like it’s World of Warcraft. Most of us probably play several characters regardless of which Diablo game we’re playing(even if one might be better geared than the others).
With Diablo 3 the problem I have is I when I checked out S19 I didn’t really feel like I got to build the character my way. I had room to play around while leveling up, but as soon as I got my set I became locked. I had to play a Multi-Shot build, because that’s what my set boosted.
Even if I farm other sets I’m at the mercy of what they buff. I really like Chakram but oops, sorry that’s not a skill that’s any good so I can’t build around it and actually get anywhere. Chakram hits for tens of thousands while Multishot hits for billions of damage for me right now.
Thankfully they’re getting rid of the stupid “sets grant +28790432% damage bonuses” thing in Diablo 4, but too much simplicity anywhere can have this effect that there’s not really many different and interesting ways to build a character.
and every aspect of it is important. Base character stats, skills, talents, and items.
I find Diablo 3’s character building rather restrictive for a genre where character build variety is one of the cornerstones.
I think part of it is that the game is mostly designed around blitzing rifts as fast as possible. That means you get very few builds that aren’t building around some big screen clearing nuke to clear mobs as quickly as possible.
It also helps that Diablo 2 has PvP that was more worthwhile. That meant that even if my Charge Paladin wasn’t as efficient at clearing packs of mobs as my Lightning Sorceress, I could still hit bosses and players hard and I didn’t have to go through 5-15 minutes of killing thousands of mobs to get to either of those things.
So much about Diablo 3 just feels like it’s all set up to make my character building more restrictive rather than more free.
Though I don’t think just because there is more a focus on action than RPG in Diablo that means the game shouldn’t strive for complexity where it adds to character building.
Complexity for its own sake is bad in any game, but complexity is not inherently bad to an aRPG.
Even in pure action games, the best ones have some complexity to their mechanics. The game should be easy to get into, but should have a lot of depth for those who want to go all in on it.
I didn’t really want to bring this game up because I really dislike it and it has a reputation around here, but Path of Exile is not in any way rulled by Critical Strike or Critical Damage, and both can roll on gear.
But I have to ask you: What other game besides D3 is rulled so much by crital strike/damage? I honestly don’t know any.