It’s very early in development to talk about such things. We will hear about those late 2020 - Q1 2021.
I love that we can change the UI of the heal/mana/skills bar to left or center. At first I though they will give no such thing, but I’m glad there is an option to chose whatever you like. It would be even better if we can manually move those wherever we want on the screen ( ala WoW addons ).
I really would like to see more information on where the complexity will come in into this game. This is what worries me most.
The skill tree looks super simple.
The itemization with attack/defense looks very simplified.
The UI looks simplified (to support controllers)
An ARPG needs complexity somewhere to keep you want to play and dive into the mechanics. Please provide some info on how this will not be an too simplified game.
UI feedback:
I love the new look items have in the inventory, it makes them feel more real and the design of the item background gives a great ancient looking twist to them.
What I also like are the diffrents fonts of letters used in the game. It appears to me a more stylized approached was made to letters that are “part of the world” and text that is part of the UI to help the player understand what’s going on, where modern types of font was used. For example text in the inventory is something, that my druid thinks of, while damage numbers and the time in the top right is just for me. At the same time I feel like the things that are not stylized in a diabloesque way should be minimized for the game to be as immersive as possible.
In addition I do think most of the time giving the player as much choice as possible is fantastic, for example with the left mouse button and the positioning of the acion bar (PC player, but I actually want to use the left sided bar!).
To give some critique as well:
The lighting of the character is a little overtoned imo, feels like he stands sideways to the sunset :'D
Seeing the inventory of the druid made me think that every item should look on its icon as it looks on the druid. The chest piece is a great example, I know how an item will look on my druid, because I can see its icon. Meanwhile I pick up a steel helmet, put it on and suddenly it becomes a dead deer… Not very immersive. I do hope that’s just a thing left to do on your list, but better to say it now than feel sad about it later i guess.
And while maybe not problem of the UI department I understand the missing of a shoulder piece for more freedom in design, it still would be good to at least give us a belt slot, as this is an item I can see every person living a thousand years ago use. (Hell I don’t even know how a character in D3 wears gloves on both hands and bracers as well, as they are a piece of equippment for archers as steelgloves are for knights. No one would wear both, that’s just an itemslot for the sole purpose to have an extra item slot, while a belt in D4 is a reasonable item for every character to use. Plus it doesn’t need to be visible at all costs)
Family feedback:
Giving monsters synergies with similar enemies is a great way to vitalise the world and make it more realistic as well as distinguish Diablo 4 from other ARPGs since that is a feature that’s sady not used much. I don’t remember the exact functionality of the skeleton family and how they can make this walking skeleton bow even stronger, but I recall it having me in awe how good the combat in this game could feel if monsters aren’t just dumb puppets running at me and die, but actually having intelligence (to a degree) and being smart themselves in “how do we kill this guy that slayed thousands of us before? Let’s use a trick here!” On top of that I do hope the days of randomised enemies in dungeos are gone, because we would lose such a good feature of combat.
As for the cannibals I like the no-long-range idea, it gives them (most likely) something that not much others families have in common with them. Also it adds to the end-game dungeon idea, that I can pick which dungeon I want to run based on enemies (and maybe layouts). So if I played a meele build that can’t rush past enemy meele units I would have a hard time against a wizard heavy family. Of course I would go and fight the cannibals instead! So that’s a design idea I hope you will pursue in the future!
As said, having families is good. But you can’t use randomised enemy compositions any more, because it would destroy the family idea, which brings us to a problem: Right now there are 4-5 famlilies I belief. In order to not get stale, because you end up with the same 5 enemy composition all the time, there have to be quite a lot of them! I mean… that’s my biggest concern in this whole update right now! You HAVE to not only design combat that is cool and fun with 5 groups of enemies but with MANY of them (well on the other hand, I wouldn’t want to fight my favorite group of enemies in only a single little spot, so we probably don’t need 500 families i guesss 
). I don’t know how big this world and game end up getting but having a decent amount of families is a priority in their design for me.
A little thing to add here, the cannibals look as if they are hard to differentiate from the ground. (well of course they are, they wear brown to hide themselves because they are hunters… perfectly fine) I think that’s something one needs to see in person to say and I’m confident you guys are able to design monsters in a fitting way, lorewise and players-wise.
I love the look of what you’re doing! 
I really like how neat the Character Screen is, and the controller support is so cool. BTW one of my favourite functions of controller support in Divinity Original Sin is the area loot function that Larian Studios made 
. It would be cool to have something like this in Diablo 4 as well, it makes picking up loot so much easier on controller!
Your second point: oh god I hope they don’t to that, that would just limit your build in annoying ways - like bleed immunity in PoE.
I know the game is in early development and i don’t mind controller support but it feels like you guys are sacrificing features and complexity just for the consoles sake. Which doesn’t feel right. Please don’t turn this into a mobile game. You will have Diablo immortal for this purpose.
I’m really worried about the game being a simplified version of d3 which was already too simple as an ARPG to begin with. ARPG PC gamers want more depth, more complexity, they want to spent hours theory crafting builds, trying to figure talent point paths, skill modifications, points to even further modify spells and having options, lots of options to chose from and trying to figure out what works best for them and create a UNIQUE build.
What scares me the most is this talent tree that has less nodes than other arpg’s have to a single skill modification… People will just run the same no brainer skills and everyone will be the same with zero effort put in their character build.
Also skills dont seem to have any modification system (runes) like d3. Do you really plan to make d4 a one week game ? i want to play d4 and sink in thousand of hours while i’m trying to figure out how to min-max my character’s potential and the best build i wanna play the best talents etc.
i would like to see stats str dex etc way bigger talent trees, skill modifications
PLEASE think about re-working the talent tree and skill system while there’s still time.
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Regarding the UI:
Maybe the 7th slot can be locked while leveling up so people wont be too OP and you can unlock it only after you hit max level and you complete some end game achievement. So this way the player actually feels the accomplishment and gets rewarded and also the game helps him prepare even more for the harder content to come in the deepest dungeons.
Give the player the ability to move things around like other games do for so long. like TERA , blade and soul etc. Why trying to guess which ui position would be best when you can just give players the option to position the ui themselves.
I undestand that this is something about probably trying to figure out gear affixes etc but Its kinda strange to see the character without gloves feels like the character has empty gear slots. And the whole character image you showed above gives the impression that he isnt using any armor to protect himself just clothes.
Could you show us what details panel looks like? i really hope there’s a panel where you can see every single thing about your character. Block chance, crit chance-dmg, resistances etc everything , because this attack defense thing looks really really poor like a mobile game.
Thats all for now. This is already a huge post so i wont say more. Keep up the good work !
Agree, and i would also add, if the focus is to have both ways of using the game, with M&K or with controller, on both PC and Consoles, than I don’t see a reason to keep the gaming profiles separate at this point. Why not having the same account for both platforms? This way, we could switch from pc to consoles for our solo/online/coop without any need to replay again the game from start on both platforms.
I for one have D3 on both platforms, but it bothers (and limits) me a lot to not be able to play with everything i have on PC, on my console. I play on the console only to have some coop fun with friends because of that, and for everything else i play on PC.
Hey, like always thanks for the info! Looking forward (real forward) to playing this…
I know this wasn’t covered in today’s post but something that really concerns me is trade. After Diablo 3 Blizzard seems to be scared of adding trade back into the game, but I really think we need to see unrestricted trade return in Diablo 4. Part of what makes an item valuable is your ability to trade it to another person for currency or other items. And this convoluted system of certain items being tradeable and certain items being un-tradeable is just going to end up being worse than having no trade at all. The issue with unrestrcited trade wasn’t the fact that it existed. It was the fact that it was too automated and streamlined. I’m not asking for the return of the auction house, in fact I don’t want the auction house back. But I do want to be able to sell/trade/buy items I find without having restrictions placed on them. Having a loot-based game where you can’t trade your items just makes your items lose any value they have.
Dear lord no. Trading is terrible for the gameplay imo.
The items have value for your characters.
I have to say that the talent tree might be one of the simplest ones I have seen in recent years.
It does not have to be as silly as the poe one, but there has to be something more than what you made now. It is really a big letdown. Almost looks pathetic 
PS - I think Diablo, PoE 2, Grim Dawn, Wolcen have taught all of us what’s possible in the genre. I can’t wait to see what else the D4 team has in store!
Copy and paste from my previous post, should have seen this one first
I just looked through it all and it’s looking good. Those Cannibals remind me of those folk from Wrong Turn and Judge Dredd (Stallone version). I know it’s only in it’s EARLY stages, I am getting more and more geeked.
I wish D4 had actual stats though instead of Attack and Defense, but it does say that it’s a work in progress. Plus, maybe that will be better than the usual attribute stats (str, dex, con, wis, int, cha, agil, vit, etc.).
Skills and an actual talent tree? Yes Please. Thank you very much.
The items look sweet and so does the animation and the overall environment.
Seriously, I am with many folk when I say “please Blizzard take all the time that is needed to make D4 as epic as possible.”
Couch Co-Op on PC too, please
Preach. I’m noticing with Wolcen that the Dodge mechanic incorporated into movement is a necessity for skill-based encounters.
well, it looks like they are actually trying to give us tactical combat
but as rhykker said, hard to say if they can really hold this promise or if we will just blast through everything like in current arpgs^^
Flails!!!
Will there be flails/morning star and similar chain based weapons?
P.s. Also, non-tetris equalized invetory slots are worse by a mile.
P.s. 2: Controller in a Diablo game is a travesty 
I kinda like most of it, but… yea, no point of talking about that, we need to iron out the “bad” stuff, right?
First one I really agree with the in-game cutscenes. In D3 (and even in D4, when the character was crawling through the cave) it just does not fit the game and they do not look good, even though you are trying. It pulls you out of the game, out of the atmosphere you are building with the isometric view. Suddenly you have to take a break, seeing something totally different, than you were watching. That’s fine, when you are being shown the CGI cinematic as that’s after you complete something and you kinda need a little break and these look GLORIOUS. But the ingame stuff is just… eeeh… however hard you’ll try, they will never look good, as the graphics are not there yet, it’s cringy. So please, stay out of it. Just take a look at the first 2 games and how these created the tension before bosses. You could sense it from the epic area, that something is coming, but you didn’t know what it will be… and then, when you saw it, you were geniunely scared, because you did not have time to prepare and you had to act right now. That’s what we want and that’s what the game needs.
Secondly… yeah, the passive skill tree is way too simple. And having no tree or basically no system to the skills itself is not a great idea as well I fear. I would love the next Diablo to come up with something revolutionary, just like D1 and D2 did.
Thank you so much for this update!
Just a few thoughts immediately after reading the blog:
I am assuming that discussion of player armor slots, talents, etc. is still in the future and that what we are seeing in the pics are still the beginnings of this development. I can be patient and wait for these discussions. I don’t want to jump to conclusions on the player characters just yet.
UI: I absolutely love the flexibility of rebinding all the player keys. This is so important, given the diverse population of players the game will have. I sometimes feel stifled in D3 because I don’t have the options of putting control where I want it, on both my keyboard and the screen.
Cut scenes: I will admit, I adore Blizzard cut scenes! They are always so well done, and I think they really add to the initial questing and intro of lore into the games Blizzard produces. That being said (shades of Ion here ) I would also like an option in the game settings to turn them off after I’ve seen them once. Specifically, an option in the background that would not interrupt gameplay if you choose to turn them off.
I will have more feedback later, when I’ve had time to think and read comments. Again, thank you so much for the efforts your team is making in keeping us informed of what is going on in D4 development!
I still can’t get used to Lvl40 being the max. It’s too low and feels underwhelming.