Here’s a long one:
Video on the content below: Diablo IV: A Deep Dive into a Shallow Pool - YouTube
Trading:
Totally don’t mind limits, but I disagree with their current iteration. I would push for not trying to ride the line of single-trade to no trade, but I would simplify the structure. Either it’s tradeable always or it’s tradeable a set amount of times. Say we can trade Mythic items like 1 - 2 times before they bind.
I also hope there’s a decent in-game way to trade efficiently.
Itemization/Crafting/Some End-Game/Customization-ish:
One thing they haven’t really made clear is what role crafting will play in the end-game and what form that will actually take. There doesn’t need to be a super deep crafting meta where that’s all you play, because as it’s been said forever, you kill stuff in Diablo. That is totally fine. I do think however, that crafted items should compete with things you can just get in the world at some level. D3 is only really now trying to do this. See Capt. Crimson’s. Whether that’s affixes you can only get via crafting, or specific items that are only available through that particular means. Now, here’s what I want to know:
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How do we get crafting mats?
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If the rune system stays as it is as well as socketing, will there be a place to go old-school runewords, but update the affixes to the new system? Like instead of Enigma granting teleport, maybe it just offers a unique modifier to that skill, and it’s Sorc Only. (Just an idea)
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How will low-level items be useful? (goes back to crafting & using mats.) In D3 we pick up all the garbage, and salvage it, but it would be nice to hit a balance with the D2 system of socketed whites that we can just remove the runes/gems from instead of straight up destroying it. It also creates a loop of being back in town a lot, and i know D4 has an emphasis on world.
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When they say Legendaries will skew the meta, it sounds like it will be a lot like D2 where there’s more obvious +Skills or granting another talent like a Hellfire amulet does.
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When they’re differentiating rares from legendaries, does that mean a legendary will strictly have a modifier on it and the more straight +skills stop at rares?
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Make vendors matter. A little. They should be a decent source for random gear up to rares.
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Horadric cube - maybe because of world it takes over some vendor functionality, like combining gems? Also it could be another stash section per se that you use on your travels without hogging space.
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Really like the split inventories, but it might help to just make everything take only one cell.
Skills
Super like how you can advance them, but will there be any skill-changing effects that make the meta skill choices matter more? Like, if I chose skill A because it has a more immediately better benefit over B that I have to wait until a later rank for. What I don’t want is for things to have very obviously better damage or at least to have something compete where I do have to sit there and think about it. Updates to the system:
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End Cooldown meta. Switch to resource management (possibly via talents or ranked skills) that don’t leave your skill bar unusable. I appreciate strategy, but I want things to do in the meantime. Generators are cool, and they should be integral to strategy. If you can generate with Ice bolt and Cc in the meantime, that’s amazing.
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Bring back Mana pots, or make all potions hybrid. Ex. Restores Hp + resource.
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Super like the combat dodge and more purposeful combat.
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I appreciate wanting to get rid of some of the math choices by making affix comparison less ambiguous, but don’t go too far with this.
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I hope Attack/Defense are just placeholders
Side note: It’s like some people weren’t paying attention at all with the skills… they use points and unlock slots. I think the biggest thing is that skills can progress without forced interactions like in D2. I see this as a positive.
Talent Trees
These need to be WAY bigger to really be impactful because you can only path one way down, and the nodes don’t do much. If you took PoE’s web of complexity, and distilled everything a certain class wouldn’t use out of it keeping only the stuff that makes a difference, you’d still have something going on that’s more impactful.
End Game
World bosses are not end-game. It’s an activity in the world that you walk by with an opportunity to do. I think the dungeon system has an opportunity to be pretty awesome, but I hope the scaling is controlled. Some things that could work are more farmable instances or raids. Here’s some points though:
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Complexity doesn’t immediately mean better. I’d rather there be a slow introduction to things, and barriers to get into various levels of content. Whether that’s gear, skill cap, whatever.
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Don’t infinitely scale
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Use Area Levels.
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Have things at the end-game that not everyone can do. It’ll help create a sense of accomplishment if you can separate yourself in that way.
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Make the talent nodes at the top highly competitive with a lot of gray area in the middle defined by utility. That means, it doesn’t matter HOW i get there, but I did and there’s some variance in the path.
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how impactful will season mechanics be? Obviously it’s still very early, but it would be nice to have a line separating Non-Season vs Season again in some way.
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don’t hide details. It’s super helpful to see things like the details panel in any Diablo game.
I hope that dungeon keys can compete with PoE mapping without the craziness of the Atlas. If you think about it too, a lot of PoE end-game just modifies the crafting system anyway. That’s the main reason anyone does Bestiary or Delve.
Some major gripes system-wise I had with Diablo 3 were:
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The combat style almost didn’t really suit having long-form cooldown skills because it broke the flow of everything too often. On top of that RCR hasn’t really made a huge difference unless it was targeted at a skill like Multishot.
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Loot fantasy was gone. Finding items wasn’t exciting anymore, and they’re pretty flat outside of the one power they have
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Shallow affix pool
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Progression based on weapon damage & skill multipliers without modifying the skill at the base.
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Iteration within the system created more issues and ambiguity because relics of older patches weren’t totally gone
Overall impression though? Really like where we could be going. Obviously this build probably won’t be anything like the release, but I can’t wait to stream & play this until I have an eerie red glow dominating my vision.
**shameless plug: me @ twitch: Twitch **