Introduction
Hello,
I want to start by saying that I am a big Diablo Fan, with almost 10 000 hours of Diablo 2, I remember watching my big brother playing Diablo 2 when I was 7 years old and then I started playing Diablo 2 when I was 8 years old. Diablo 2 is one of my favorite games and I also think it is the best game ever made. In 2012 I started to play Diablo 3 and I have almost 8000 hours in Diablo 3 (mostly played in Vanilla). In 2020 I have gone back Diablo 2 again and I also have started playing Path of Exile and I have almost 400 hours of PoE.
The reason for the post
I am making this post as feedback and to express my opinion as someone who has played ARPGS, specifically Diablo 2. I do not believe I am always correct, I do not think the D4 Devs need to hear this to make a great game, nor do I believe my opinions should even matter to them. I simply offer this as feedback in hopes of sparking ideas and generating discussion that can be useful.
Table of content
- Itemization
- Talents
- Skills
- Endgame
- Leveling
- Other thoughts that other games are doing.
- Itemization
Let’s start with itemization. Itemization is the most important system in an ARPG If the itemization is bad the game also becomes bad. D4:s current itemization system is very simple and shallow. The reason why D4:s current itemization is very simple is because of the fact that you will be fully geared with Legendaries and that is a shallow itemization because the magic and rare items are not even close to the legendary item. In Diablo 2 every tier of items was useful, such as white/grey, magic, rare and unique. And I think that D4 needs to copy the D2 Itemization idea where every tier of an item is useful in some regard to each other.
Here is the reason why D2:s items were so good:
White/Grey: Grey and White items were used to form Runewords. But white items were also used for some class-specific items, an example of that is necros wand, sorc wand, druid helm, barbarian helm, paladin shields, which gave like 2-5 affixes. These items could be useful for a very long time. Also, you had the quest reward where you could upgrade a white item to a rare item from act 1.
Magics: Magic items were also useful because magic items could roll the highest affixes but only up to 2 affixes, 1 prefix, and 1 suffix. Blue items could be very good for some niche build where you focused on getting as many skill levels to one specific Skill, an example of that is the Amazon javelin skills.
Rares: Rare items could roll 6 affixes, but not as high rolls as magic items. Here could you make a decision if you want to have higher rolls to your affixes by using magic items or if you want more affixes, then you could take the rare items. An example of that could be if you needed to hit a certain threshold of elemental resists.
Uniques: Unique items were items that had UNIQUE affixes that no other item could have, which gave them this identity. These affixes were static affixes which varied in ranges of the items affixes. Unique items could be build defining items that you need to form a certain build, because of the static affixes. An example of that is the Unique were you could become a bear when you for example played a Barbarian.
Sets: Set items in D2 were not that good, but their purpose was to make it easy for new players to get a build going by using sets. Set items were also used in some niche cases where you wanted Tal rashas armor for MF.
This gave every tier of rarity a strength and a weakness. This also makes these items more valuable than Diablo 3:s rarities, where only sets and legendaries are good, where there is almost no point of having White, magic and rare items, they could drop as materials instead of an item because they are so useless compared to sets and legendaries.
I would like to see that Diablo 4 goes back to the Diablo 2 itemization system where every rarity has a purpose and useful even for the endgame. I would also like to see that they are going back where uniques/legendaries have static affixes that always roll on this specific item and these affixes are build defining.
Different bases
I would also like to see that they are going back to where armors and swords have different base types and these base types have some special affix on it.
Weapon Bases
Sword Examples: (These affixes are just examples.)
Cutlass gives you 1.25 Attack speed and gives you the open wound affix.
Long sword has 1.10 attack speed and it also gives you the slashing affix.
Scimitar has 1.50 attack speed
Short Sword has 1.20 attack speed and it also grants you the impale affix.
Axe Examples: (These affixes are just examples.)
Hatchet has 1.05 attack speed and it also gives you an X % bleed chance.
Tomahawk has 1.10 attack speed and it also gives you 10 % more bleed dmg.
Viking Axe has 1.30 Attack speed and it also gives the ability to spread your bleed to nearby enemies.
Double axe has 1.05 attack speed and it gives you the deadly strike affix.
This gives players more choices if each sub-weapon type has a static affix. This also gives the game more depth and complexity. but also more customization because you have more options to choose from depending on what build you are pursuing. The more depth and complexity the better the game stays relevant and fresh because it gives you as a player more things to consider into your build.
Armor bases
For Armor, you could have something similar to how Path of Exile is doing with their armors, where armor could have:
-
Armor
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Armor + Evasion Rating
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Armor + Energy Shield
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Evasion Rating
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Evasion Rating + Energy Shield
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Evasion Rating + Armor
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Energy Shield
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Energy Shield + Evasion Rating
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Energy Shield + Armor
I think that Diablo 4 could do something similar to their armors and give these armor affixes some specific meaning. This also gives the player more choices on what items you would like to get.
Affixes Feedback:
Something that I also would like to see is that weapons have dmg ranges, like 30 - 78 dmg, where you could modify your dmg with these affix:
- Adds (3-4) to (5-8) [Fire Damage].”
- Adds (3-4) to (5-8) [Cold Damage].”
- Adds (3-4) to (5-8) [Lightning Damage].
- Adds (3-4) to (5-8) [Physical Damage].”
- Adds (3-4) to (5-8) [Poison Damage].”
- Adds (3-4) to (5-8) [Storm Damage].”
- Adds (3-4) to (5-8) [Earth Damage].”
This also means that your weapon ranges could different elemental damages. so if you have normal dmg (physical dmg) and an affix that says Adds (3-4) to (5-8) [Poison Damage]. then you also have poison dmg on that weapon. Which gives more flat dmg on that weapon. So you scale your weapon dmg with these (3-4) to (5-8) poison dmg, and then you could have 60 % physical or poison dmg to even more boost the overall dmg.
Also, I think attack speed is important to different weapons so it divides weapons to weapons. Because it is kinda weird if a 2hand mace is a fast as a Dagger.
Resists
Resist capping is also important in ARPG, it gives you that puzzle to solve. Swapping your gear around to hit these certain thresholds.
Affixes to avoid:
Affixes that ruined Diablo 3 were Critical hit damage, Critical hit Chance, and cooldown reduction I would like to see that Diablo 4 does not fall into the same trap as what D3 did. I am not a fan of the high numbers that Diablo 4 legendaries have, where a 2handed mace have 2300 weapon attack. it makes the game more difficult to balance and it also incentives power creep if you increase the max level to 50 in a future expansion.
- talent trees
Next up are the talent trees. Diablo 4 current talent trees are very shallow where you only can go down one path. I would like to see that every class talent tree is as big as the wolcen tree. In practice does that mean that every class has its own wolcen tree. The reason for a big tree is that it gives the players more ways to spec their characters and it also gives the characters more customization. It also increases the depth and complexity of the game if you have more options to choose from when your building your character. Something I would like to see is game-changing nodes so your character does something unique, an example of that is that you use life instead of mana/fury/spirit.
- Skills
Cooldowns:
I think that Diablo 4 should stay away from long cooldowns because that is a problem with Diablo 3. The reason why it is a problem because you are being forced to get cooldown reduction on every single piece of gear because these long cooldown abilities are often very powerful and to compensate for that you need to give them a cooldown.
Customization
I think we can expand the skill customization that D4 has presented so far. A game that seems to have the most exciting skill system is Last epoch where every skill in the game has its own skill tree where you can customize the outcome of your skill by choosing nodes in the skill tree and that is super interesting. I also think that Diablo 4 could do something similar to their skill system.
Skill Decisions
I don’t like that you could potentially max out every single skill in D4, I love it when you have to make decisions, of course, you can have a respec system where it cost a lot of materials or other rare resources to respec your skills. The reason why I love that you cannot max out every single skill in Diablo 2, is that it makes your character unique and it also gives you that identity that my Barbarian is different from other barbarians. It also makes the game more replayable because you can play as the same class but another spec. It also makes it so that you can have different characters for different types of content (Endgame).
- Endgame
In my opinion, it needs to be a variety of endgame activities.
The key dungeon sound really cool and fun. But I feel that you can also add Uber bosses, bosses that are really hard and difficult who drop specific items that you only can find by killing them.
Another Endgame system could be something similar to Delve from Path of Exile, but instead of going deeper into the mine you are going deeper into hell, so you start at the surface and then you are going deeper into the depth below, where you at some point reach Hell.
- Leveling
From Level 1 to max level
Leveling needs to meaningful, in Diablo 3 Leveling from 1-70 is basically pointless because the gear that you have found along the way to level 70 is obsolete when you reach level 70, so I hope that Diablo 4 copies Diablo 2:s approach to the early game where you can find a very good item early on that you can hold on to.
Paragon
I do not like paragons if they go to infinity, but do like the fact of a finite system, but something that I have thought about is that you can have paragon levels as some sort of ascendancy, so when you get to max level you can ascend into a subclass to that class you are playing, and that ascendancy has its own talent tree, so you get even more customization. For example, if you are playing a barbarian and then when you get to max level you can ascend into a subclass of your choice and that ascendency have its own talent tree that you can level up by getting more “paragon” levels to a finite max paragon level.
- Other thoughts that other games are doing.
Something that Path of Exile is doing well that Diablo 4 can learn from is that they are implementing things for everybody in a new league/season. So, for example, they are implementing new:
- Crafting system
- Endgame boss that only 10 % of the player base can reach.
- Lore
- items
- Skills
- talent changes
- nerfs/buffs
- endgame content
That is it for me I hope you enjoyed my thoughts, feel free to add something you want to see changed or other feedback that I have missed.
i have played diable since diablo 2 in 2000, i love this franchise! i had diablo 3 since launch day , and bought it launch day for Xbox and the game only gets better with every update Woot woot CAnt wait for Diablo 4 ! ( well I can wait that was my hole thing , I can wait for a finished polished game, not a rush, hype up like destiny 1 ( all destiny did, was cut up a finished product just to make DLC) For real I know it can be hard to get on board with the best testers click, but id love to be involved, ( i have beta tester status on halo 3 in steam ! now my next goal is diablo 4 )