⭐ DIABLO IV - Feedback Collection Thread

General Discussion
255

You are right there must be differences in weapon types.
But at the sametime I don’t know if in an Arpg we can expect too much on the exact physics of items.
I would love to go all out and for the people that played Pen and Paper games, Ice Law tables had Weapon versus Armour so to put it simply a Dagger has to do less damage to someone wearing Plate as they should know how to move in it and in doing so take less damage, but Crits had ways around it. A high value Crit could say. A brilliant move, you found a gap in the Armour and puncture a Lung.
The other point is true with I think a War Mattock, it’s a short version of a halberd the spike that could puncher Plate and deal more damage.
It compounds damage by using Crit Tables and I know D100 or percentile Dice are not an option here, but Crits had Puncture, Fire, Blunt even Tiny Animal attacks and many more.
A ranging from A-E, a simple and short version here.
0-20 low added damage 29-65 medium 66 some extra and an odd effect 67-99 high damage added, with 100 almost always out right kill in some gruesome way. Each of them adding a flavor text.
The A-E range on the first table was based from your Attack versus the opponents Defence giving you a total to check on the table.
So after you rolled and got your total, the table may have a few or many 0-1 damage moving up to say 2-5 and at some point 5+A crit all the way up to say 30+E Crit.
Weapons even had Fumbles but that’s even more complex.
Maybe if I have a Point here at all it’s even though I would love to see this much complexity, I don’t see it happening here, as long as it’s not to simple just for the sake of it.

Maybe a simple way to do it is Robes have no speed debuff same for basic leather but as you add bolk and weight up to say plate there is a small 2% debuff to your movespeed.
This could add a layer of itemization, if a magical Robe had high def of some type there is a small movespeed debuff -1%, in the Plate Magical properties it cancels out the Debuff of normal Plate so you have no penalty.

256

A core strength of the loot based ARPG sub-genre is that there is no end to the interesting effects and mechanics that people can imagine and thus build and expand a game with. However, the fact that people can easily conceptualize cool ideas masks the difficultly of actually implementing them in a viable way and the pitfalls that doom an itemization to not being able to.

This leads into why one of the biggest problems Blizzard has with its design philosophy, which is that using oversimplified character scaling stats to keep things easy to understand at the cost of not keeping control over the scaling and number inflation in their games kills the mathematical viability of cool ideas. Look at what happens when you remove a piece of gear from a D3 character. How are they suppose to create interesting trade-offs that can matter when losing a source of massive scaling will never be worth it?

They need to spend less focus on trying to dictate and control the options that player have and more on controlling the scaling these options have so that it creates a healthy environment for a strong ecology of items.

2 Likes
257

Just opened a thread, without seeing this one here, so I am gonna post my feedback here and hope the other one gets closed:

I just read the new “System Design in Diablo VI (Part 2)” and I have to say, it is awesome and absolutely motivating, to see, that the dev team seems to be really listening to the community! The changes are good for the game, they add depth and thus CHOICES for the player and I think this is very important for the old fans to come back and play the new Diablo title and also for new fans to have a longer motivating game experience.

That being said, I think there are still things, which could be improved in the current D4:

  1. Active skills do not provide the player with choices

  • No active Skilltree:

    • Players should make choices and if the choice was not optimal, they should regret and pay for it. One possibility is an active skill tree, similar to D2, Titan Quest, Wolcen, Grim Dawn etc… and a way to respec, like paying with a level, paying with (bind on pickup) mats, dropping from certain bosses, or similar systems.

  • Cooldowns too long:

    • Given 2-3 spells with CDs longer than 5 secs and maybe a shield/more passive skill, I am already left with only a boring ressource-free or -generating skill and one other skill for most of my playtime

    • CDs longer than a few seconds generally provide you with a perfect rotation, which you have to think about once and never again

  • Not enough active skills in skillbar:

    • This is only a personal preference I have to admit, but I don’t like being forced to play with at most 6 skills at once
  1. Diminishing Return

  • In endgame, items, levels, skills etc. should increase logarithmically (or logarithmic like) in their power, such that finding perfect endgame items will not make you 30% stronger, because then people can’t play together, if they have drastically different playtimes

  • No infinite system, because also monsters should not become exponentially stronger in the endgame. This only leads to dmg numbers in the billions and brain afk grinds

  • Low droprates for endgame items
    I have become more of a casual gamer, I feel like (might change within the first weeks after D4 release though), but when I compare the feeling, when a unique in D2 drops and when a legendary in D3 drops, I have to say, I rather don’t get all the gear I want within one ladder season, than not appreciating 99% of the drops

  1. Depth in fight mechanics

  • I don’t want D4 to be like D2, but one thing, which was really good IMO was the difficulty. And it was a hard game, not because monsters had 1bio life and dealt 100k dmg per hit, but because of mechanics like

    • Hit Recovery

    • Faster Cast Rate

    • Hit Chance

    • Blockrate

    • Immune monsters (safely replaceable by very resistant monsters IMO)

    • Freeze/Chill (luckily that’s already in D4)

    • Curses/Debuffs/Bleed that are really scary (like bleeding + vulnarability in PoE, blood mana curse in D2 [get damage when spellcasting])

  • Really challenging bosses with different mechanics/abilities, which apparently has never been part of Diablo games and thus is a chance to improve a lot at this point

  • Maybe not a gameplay mechanic, but: no flashy lights, when hitting monsters (or at least make it optional, please!). Why destroying this nice graphical atmosphere with that arcade/comic effect?

  1. Still itemization
  • The new system design sounds perfect to me, the only concerning thing I have seen in the demo is, that there were a lot of skill altering suffixes on the items. These are super cool to play, but should be dealt with very carefully in endgame, because otherwise too many builds will eventually depend on specific items
1 Like
258
259

An idea i always had is that monsters could become stronger when they kill players (we win xp when we kill them, so they should get xp when they kill us).

This could be an insteresting thing over all for world bosses. They could get a buff or something that make them stronger per each player they kill. But it doesn’t need to be just strongger, it could give them new skills/attacks they can use to kill even more players.

Some monsters could even be created around this idea. LIke a monster that suck the souls of the players or another that possess the character and get their body (the character would die), and if we want to go back and kill them, now we would fight against our own character, with their skills, gear, etc.

1 Like
260

I wouldn’t mind a nemesis like system. So say after a while of killing goatmen, some Huge elite goatman shows up and chases you down. You can’t out run his aggro radius and have to deal with him. These would be slightly more powerful than normal champion packs or rares. Kind of like whatever it’s called on console where a monster that killed someone on your friends list shows up in your game, but associated with enemy types you deal with. They could drop a special item for killing them too. Would make playing when you are bored a bit more interesting.

4 Likes
261

This is post is a new idea for the skill tree or an addition to it.

One thing I enjoyed about Grim Dawn is the constellation tree they have. Where you can go deeper into a tree and unlock abilities that can be put onto your skills. So when you use your skill you have a chance to proc this ability.

So the idea is, since we are Nephalem (a mix of both heave and hell), what if there was a tree that had abilities that could be put on skills. This tree or map or lore looking back round has with it, new powers, that started in the middle and you could either choose to go up to unlock heavenly abilities or go down to unlock hellish abilities that you could put onto your skills.

Here’s an example:
You have a Druid with rabid bite that has a DOT (damage over time) effect that does poison damage over 2 seconds.

You go to this new tree of abilities and you cross over Andariel and in her constellation or less evil diagram or what have you, it says “all DOT effects have a chance to release a poison nova when full damage is complete (so after 2 seconds).” You decide you like this since you’re using rabid bite and want this ability on your rabid bite and put points into Andariel to unlock the ability and equip it to your skill rabid bite skill!! Dun dun dun!

So now when you hit with rabid bite and the DOT finishes you have a chance to release a poison nova! Hell yeah!

So using the lore and all the angle’s and demon’s in the game plus even Nephalem characters, like Rathma, weapons that they had like Tyreals El Druin, Deckard Cain’s texts. There can be many different abilities.

The tree could actually go three different directions then. Like a pie chart. One area for Hell, Heaven and Sanctuary. Some people may not even know half of the angle’s and demon’s and may even want to check on the lore to find out who they are, bringing them closer to the game.

Another way to look at this is when you unlock skills for your character, that skill itself has another window that opens and it’s this new chart and just that skill can unlock certain Heave, Hell or Sanctuary abilities. And it’s different for each skill. As in only certain angle’s, demon’s and human’s show up with abilities specific to that skill.

Maybe this chart/tree or what have you doesn’t unlock till near the end of the game and the only way to get points for these is to do some end game content. Maybe you could unlock all the abilities over a long period of time playing the game? Fixed amount of points? What would you call these points? Simply Heave, Hell or Sanctuary points? Paragon points? What do you guys/gals think?

Thank you for your time.

6 Likes
262

Hi

Back in the early 90s I used to enjoy playing MUD games, specifically Angband (Still active today!) One of the more interesting features this game had was that every play through was different - the dungeons you traversed were randomised, and each time you went down the level increased in difficulty.

While I do like Rifts and GRs in Diablo 3, part of the problem for me is that over time you learn the maps and generally know the lay out. I think some of the elements from those MUD games could easily translate well into D4, giving it something a few players of old have asked for - endless dungeons. I appreciate that aligning GFX may be difficult if things are random, and perhaps Angband being ASCII made it work, but I am confident that Blizz could pull that off and give players a good place to grind - Endless dungeons, randomised, increasing in difficulty the deeper you go.

263

That’s a great idea you still have the % chance if it’s low, could be the best option for an infinite progress system, if done correctly only small boost in power by changing the effect of one spell/skill and it’s lore friendly.

You can maybe work it in your powers to make it more customizable, only unlocked with the correct amount of angelic, demonic or ancestral powers?
That maybe too much people are already of the mind that things are locked to them.

Instead of the Grim Dawn constellation make it the Tomes from Deckard Cain’s Library.
Then you can even link them to quests finding out more Diablo Lore as to go.
Or if you find Tomes as you level it unlocks them, but only to be used in end game. Giving more reasons to go back to older content in search of the Lost Tomes of Deckard Cain.
Linked to the achievements and so on.

6 Likes
264

I do like this idea but did they not do this in vanilla d3 with the enrage timer? I mean different to an extent but similar…i am familiar with the nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor and granted it was cool to have a mob move up in ranks and some power, i just hope they would keep a leash on it, as both games had very frustrating encounters when these mobs got super powered! I do like this idea though as i would really like to see some new and different mob systems in d4…beyond the normal trash/elites/bosses

2 Likes
265

Sounds cool! I know lots of ppl would like more depth when it comes to skills and the effects, but I think we sometimes forget that Bliz does have this system in D3 except its extremely simplified (ie. the skill runes but you cannot buff them up).

I honestly think that Blizz needs to add depth to these skills. I really like the idea of developing a skill to the point that I am ready to stop, not when blizz tells me (ie. you can put 10 points or all of them if you wish). I think that goes back to d2 that you can put 20 points into a skill or choose to spread your skills wide… I would love to build a character that is just all out fireball and do massive damage with fire. It really gives you control over how you build your character (ie. this is my minion necro, so im going to pile all my skills into minion skills and forego damage spells).

I do like your idea here because once you choose a pathway, then your future choices can atleast be supported by certain tree of damage , so if I do build some fireball sorc I could have different options (ie. heaven direction could change my fireball to radiant dmg that wouldn’t be blocked by fire resistance, or demon path would have poison or dot like dmg, etc.)

Cool idea!

2 Likes
266

I had a similar idea D4 Shared Skills. And i agree that have something like this could be better than a paragon system, since this is an horizotal progression that allow to create more unique characters instead of just get more power.

I fotgot about the enrage thing, it was cool except for the instant kill part. Sure, it could have a limit. An idea could be that if they become too strong, the monster is moved to a shared area and becomes a world boss :open_mouth:

1 Like
267

I like what you’re saying here. Lets go a little deeper on the Deckard Cain writings and discoveries of demons.

When Leah was betrayed and killed what did happen to Deckard Cain’s books/tomes? I know Leah was using them to study the evils and figure out where Azmodan was going to start his attack on Sanctuary. So from what I know, I might have missed something, Deckard Cain’s tomes are lost? Kept by someone else? Maybe Tyreal kept some of the tomes? I don’t know why Tyreal knows quite a bit since he’s been fighting hell for a long time…anyways.

In D4 lets say we stumble across one of Deckard Cain’s many books, scrolls or tomes. As we pick it up it goes into a separate tab, a lore tab if you will. As we find more through exploring, talking to towns people, quests, finishing dungeons etc. They go into this lore tab. Deckard wrote much of these to help fight hell’s minions, and I believe he wrote some on angels or found other ancient texts talking about angels and about other Nephalem.

Which going back to skills in my previous, post talking about Andariel’s poison nova, if we pick up a tome talking about Andariel’s abilities, this would make sense we could use this knowledge to our advantage, unlocking her ability. Eh?

If we have a skill and click on it and it opens a separate ability tree or what have you (Diablo lore chart, Nephalem tree, insert cool name) Andariel’s ability will be open to us to use on that certain skill it works with.

Another example:
You find a tome and it’s all about Azmodan. You read it and it unlocks more abilities lets say to all AOE (area of effect) spells. So now when you click on your meteor, whirl wind, or tornado skill, it opens up this new chart and you go to down to Azmodan and it says “All AOE spells leave behind a dark pool that deals x amount of damage for x seconds.” You decide I like this and equip it to said AOE skill. Now whenever you use it, the spell leaves behind that dark pool of Azmodan’s…poo.

Another example:
You find a tomb talking about Deckard Cain himself asking you to stay awhile a listen. You click on one of your buffing skills: auras, shouts, ice armor, tree skin etc and you see Deckard Cain over on the right on the Nephalem side of the chart and it states “All support skills gain increased mana, fury, spirit regen of x per second.” You like that and you put that on one of your support skills.

There’s so many different ways to do this. But I do like using Deckard Cain’s writings to unlock abilities. I believe it makes sense.

Where would these tomes, scrolls or books drop? Would they be trade able? Am I digging too deep here? Instead of a chart with all three of the different domains, Heaven, Hell and Nephalem. Maybe just have a page for each? Separate them? Turn to Hell’s page and you can see all of the abilities and lore for each demon, creature of Hell you’ve unlocked and haven’t unlocked? On the page maybe just right click on the ability and it’ll show all the skills it can be attached to? Only one ability per skill?

Going back to what you said ShoRim, what about being able to go back to certain areas in Diablo we haven’t been able to visit? For example areas in D1 and D2. D4 is going to bring almost the entire world of Diablo to life, it would be neat to visit old places and find lost tomes of Deckard Cain. This also leaves room for expansion opening new areas, new lore and new ablilities. And we stay in touch with Deckard Cain…for as long as his writings live on…he’ll never be gone.

Thank you for your time.

6 Likes
268

This is great. This is basically how d1 worked. One way to unlock spells in d1 was to find tomes. It would be really cool to bring this back as a means to upgrade your skills/spells.

D3 tomes basically unlocked legendarys that served no purpose other than cosmetic. Although cosmetic grinding is interesting to me, i do like your idea as it could unlock higher tiers of skills earlier on.

Giving players lots of different pathways to build their character will keep ppl invested in the game. Not to mention lots of players like to shake things up now and then. So i like the finding of these as an rng element

3 Likes
269

I would like to know what happen to the characters (player characters but also other NPCs) of the previous games. Maybe when we visit the places they use to be, we can find other NPCs that talk about them, or tomes/scrolls, or any other reference, like a tumbstone or something (but it would be nice if it was in the area they were and not in a random place, unless it has a story about how they got there).

Another thing would be to build old places. And they could even create some kind of rift (like the darkening of tristram event) that allow us to play a part of the old games. It could be done with key dungeons or something like that.

3 Likes
270

Personally, I would like to see return of the corpse mechanic from D2.

In all acts, except 4, there were enemies with reviving abilities. Depending on your play style, it often added a new depth to the game. In order to not be overrun or backstabbed, corpse removal was a thing, either by destructive skill or ice element. All in order to deny enemies assets.

Amazon and Sorc were the only chars I didn’t played as, but five out of seven classes, could utilize enemies corpses. Paladin and Druid regained health and mana from them. Druid could additionaly buff his wolves with them. Assasin and Necro weaponized them in various ways. Even Barb could search corpses for potions and more loot. And in Assasin and Necro’s case, the type of corpse was important as well.

D3 completly removed that. There are some strange meat packages that Necro uses there, but they are all the same. What’s more, I tried detonating one of the packages left by the fallen, and shaman revived them anyway, so it doesn’t work as resource denial either. It’s just bland.

1 Like
271

It sounds even better as it gets fleshed out, but to stop it being to powerful and to have you in a loot hunt that lasts longer I think making it for 1 spell/skill at a time prevents itt giving too much to soon. and in the Nephalem tree as you put it can also have many chapters with pages on the different monster families.
Things that we learn as we level on the lower creatures and as we grow we find out more, this part would just come from the interaction we have with them, if you kill them fast you may not see some of what they are capable of. The completionist in me is coming out or is that just OCD. lol.

So as I see it at this point the Tomes of Deckard Cain can have a Bestuary as well as Hell/Demonic, Heaven/Angelic and Sanctuary/Ancestral Powers, the Learnings of skills, unlocked Plans a World Map as seen by the character using it Fog of War type of thing and whatever else the Devs see fit to put here.

It would have to be done in a way that if people don’t want to sit and read the full text still unlock whatever is found, maybe at the end of a dungeon or zone the Tomes of Deckard Cain Icon at the bottom of the screen changes color, showing you that new information is there.
There are already narrations on things in D3 they can be used as a base of the needed text, no need to voice act them unless there is high demand form the community.

It can even be a story told in Pub that leads you on a Quest, so many options to build the story from and as stated bring back things from the rest of the Diablo Universe D1, D2 and D3. just not Whimsydale and the like.

I think it comes down to a LAG issue, too many corpses is just another thing to manage. Same as in Looter Shooters when bullet marks on walls fade, mostly a number thing I could be wrong.

3 Likes
272
1 Like
273

My thoughts on the super unique/world bosses of the demo and dancing the fine line of believable fantasy:

274

That would be great, i loved the Greater Mummy from D2. I think that mob would fit great with the monster families: buffing and supporting the others like they did in D2.

I just had the idea of, what if the enemies (or at least some) had something like the powers they talk about. That made me remember D&D with the caothic, neutral, lawful thing.

Monsers that have a caothic aligment, could work better alone and be very strong. While the lawful ones could work better in teams, buffing each other: maybe we could find monsters that move in formations and buff each other, with generals that support from behind.

1 Like