Yes, can never go wrong if they take inspiration on some of the great historical designs.
Good god I hope that’s not the reason, Isak. The reason Skelos gave earlier, trying to streamline build balancing around a meta, makes some sense. I don’t like it, but it makes sense. I’d rather they allowed for more balancing build diversity instead of focusing on meta build balancing, but I’m willing to wait and see how it develops further.
Diablo IV RULES! First I’d like to say that I can’t wait for the game to at least go into Beta. Second, I’m sorry for this criticism, but can you PLEASE do away with the yellow looking lighting on the character info screen. Having a more normal in-game lighting or even a normal modern room lighting and perhaps the ability to turn the character 360 would be nice.
~ Thanx for all your hard work and keep us covered in blood and listening for all hope of a release date 
What will hold up his pants? 
Just a thought but if you can do two different types of UI layouts for PC it should be for Console also.
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Yes Olbat, I know the historical period and think for a dark gothic horror game the gauntlets are a perfect fit. Sanctuary does not have to fall in the dark age times as this was still pretty primitive in terms of sophistication of design and craftmanship. D2 used renaissance armor quite a lot. You know it’s just a matter of opinions and I respect you like the older stuff.
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New monster family looks great, but apart from skulls and ear-necklace they don’t really visually strike me as cannibals. Although, the one could argue that cannibals don’t have their ‘unique’ style…
Maybe try to give their clothes more made-from-human-body look? (ex. replace some leather parts with stitched shreds of skin idk)
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MTX can definitely influence which item slots are to be left active, but this is not something bad in this case - no one really cares whether he equips a belt, boots, or whatever.
However, you are completely right in the general case - MTX shaping games is as bad as it can get.
It a little worrisome but not too bad, it’s not set in stone. Probably for play balance and something to add in future expansions? We will see.
So Keybinds will be possible but does that mean that we can switch skills during combat that are for example in cooldown or are we still restricted to a mere 6 spells just like D3 until the engage with enemies is over?
It’s highly unlikely to happen (but you could switch weapons).
Probably because a big portion of the playerbase play on consoles.
Personally I felt this update was meh. Didn’t really offer me insight into anything important and most of those changes might aswell have been tweeted out instead.
I’ve read the Quarterly Update for Diablo 4 and I must say it appears like the game is going in a decent direction based on the bits and pieces of information shared.
My personal opinion:
What I liked:
- Art Design by Igor Sidorenko illustrating the Cannibal Tribe is very nice. Really love the art-style and fairly disturbing imagery. Fits decently into the Diablo world, but could be even a notch more disturbing and more medieval themed. IMO it should be slightly more medieval, plausible, hopeless, disgusting and less “Lord of The Rings” fantasy.
- Really like the “Cannibal Tribe” Monster Family Design. It fits very well into Diablo, a world where certain humans have become poisoned by evil that amplifies everything bad in us humans. I like the “Mad Max” vibe to this fantasy. Its gory, gritty, plausible and unsettling. Great monster design idea.
What I didn’t like
- Developing D4 for both PC and Consoles simultaneously is inevitably going to gimp the PC version, no matter what any of the devs say. It’s just the reality, regardless if you’re in denial or not. Skill Trees already shape up to be aimed at 3-year old children. Item and affix design is so simple, I could not believe you could go any simpler than D3, but i was proven wrong lol. Blizzard went from having a passion for making awesome games, to having a passion of making millions if not billions of money.
- I am not a fan of homogenized item size for every piece of gear. I like the idea of AAA-quality item-art with individual item sizes aka Belt using 2x1 squares, boots using 2x2, Body armour using 2x6 squares, Long Pike-Type Weapon using 2x8 squares etc. We obviously understand its more “convenient” to have a homogenized item size for every piece of gear, but having a huge two-handed axe using the same space in your inventory as gloves is not adequate in my opinion. Bigger Items that use more inventory squares also allow for more item-detail on larger pieces which improves immersion. Inventory management is a significant aspect of a game that revolves around loot that lands in your inventory.
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Having homogenized item sizes making all items occupy the same space is like dictating that all Art-Pieces in the world should use the same canvas dimensions. Don’t forget, making games is a form of Art-Expression, and convenience should be used where appropriate, and I think this is not the right place for “convenience over individualism”.
- I am not a fan of the UI design, and I hope this is just one prototype of many, and the final design will be more “Thematically Dark and Diabolic” and have much less “Console-Vibe”.
Suggestions and Ideas that are right down the alley of “Isometric-ARPG-Enthusiasts”:
- I hope you guys will have randomness to Monster Abilities like “Auras” they can roll once a monster is generated as “champion” or other kind of “elite”. It would be really cool if encounters are different and vary in danger-levels every time we enter an area in the world. Having an Elite Cannibal roll with a dangerous aura that empowers his surrounding Melee-Combatants with a powerful buff, turning them into a deadly encounter is an amazing way of “randomizing” the world and its dangers. It allows for dynamic combat and highly randomized encounters on every single play session.
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Turning a seemingly easy-to-kill enemy horde of “trash-mobs” into a dangerously enhanced encounter just by spawning a pack-boss as an elite with a random aura buff is not only opening the door for strategic and tactical combat opportunity, but also allowing for content to remain relevant despite having a difficulty cap.
- It would be very cool to have all Monster-Families be associated with specific weapon, armour, and jewellery types heavily tied to the middle-ages and other eras throughout our real human history. Now you could associate every Monster-Family Loot Drop Table with specific bonuses that are distinct to their Monster Family. This would allow players to farm Base-Items for specific targeted crafting for mid and end-game items. It would also be an opportunity to allow for targeted farming of Unique and Set items that would be more likely to drop in a specific zone that is likely to spawn monsters from a specific family which drops the item-base-type you’re after for normal, ethereal, magic, rare, unique and set items.
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I think all unique and set items should have a chance to drop everywhere at any moment, but it would be great to allow min-maxer-type gamers to focus on farming specific areas or content to get the items they are after on a hopefully long journey of character leveling and character building.
- Talent Skill Trees and Actual Skill-Skill-Trees (lol…) should be more elaborated. Currently it is very WOW-Like, and everyone will go down the same path, because there is no choice to be made, other than how many points will i allocate while traveling down the same path as everyone else. This is BS.
- I remember You guys mentioned something like “Eventually we want every player to have all of the skill tree maxed out in every category”. Please DON’T do this. This is ridiculous. You MUST create real skill trees, where players must make crucial decisions and every decision should come with a benefit and a price to pay to get that benefit. A Lightning Sorceress should be a Lightning sorceress and very different from a Fireball-Sorceress. Allowing players to just maximize every single skill eventually, defeats the purpose of having any kind of skill tree at all. A skill tree is a tool to enhance diversity among same-class-builds and allow for specialization and sense of “identity”. D3 failed at this miserably, and so does WOW, dont force this paradigm onto D4 please. NOT AGAIN!
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please please please for the love of all that is diablo, remove the monster pinball blinking effect. it looks ridiculous and sticks out like a sore thumb. unnecessary and total immersion killer. everything else is spot on but my god that blinking all around really is ugly and screams cheap arcade phone game
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I see no reason why it shouldnt be possible, since you can strenghten skills by investing points into them, so there is balance for say weaker skills but room for more utility.
Sure people care. Some people still expect some rpg in their arpgs, even if it’s only really during the first play through. I still remember the excitement of getting upgrades for every slot when I first played D1 D2 and D3, and I hope to have the same in D4 for every slot. I don’t want to have to buy a cosmetic item to have something show in game. Gloves, shoulders, bracers, boots…everything should drop in game. Making something like glove or shoulders only available for purchase would be asinine. Making them part of a shared slot (arm slot) would be just as bad imo.
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I prefer the blog format - it stays “as is” and we can easily reference it in the future.
For me the hidden “gem” in the article was this one:
So, while we will only stick to the corner configuration on consoles, we will offer both left and center positions as options on PC.
One thing I’d like to comment on regarding Angela’s update is many of us would prefer that you not choose to limit something based on what is assumed as ‘preferred’ between the two platforms. In this case it sounds like you’ll default to center on PC but allow both options and default to the corner on TV but not allow the option to change it.
If your intention is to keep the two as close as possible, why not allow both options on both modes but set different defaults? Assuming everyone plays similarly based upon the limited feedback you received and limiting choices based on that feedback (for no other reason) seems like a pitfall.
For example, when playing on a big screen (TV), I could be playing in my living room sitting pretty far away from the TV where looking to the corner wouldn’t be a long stretch. Alternatively I could be playing in my game room (still only talking playing on TVs) where we sit a few feet away from dedicated 55" (in our case) or 65" TVs. In the latter case, even though we’re sitting in front of TVs with our consoles (or game PCs as they are also attached to the TVs), the size/distance is pretty similar to sitting in front of a monitor at a desk.
Hopefully I made my comment clear. In any case, I’d ask that you move away from the mentality of limiting a choice on one platform that’s going to be implemented on the other - at least with regard to options that can be selected. Choose the appropriate defaults, but let the gamers choose the options appropriate to them - where feasible, of course 
Thank You for you consideration!!
You basically want no restriction on skill slots at all - what’s the fun in that (if one can use every skill of his arsenal)? No sacrifice is no fun. You have to fall in sub-optimal situations or otherwise every battle will be the same. 
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Howdy!
Please do a technical update that focuses on the game’s engine, DirectX Raytracing? HDR support? 4k? Ultrawide support 21:9 or 32:10(Forgot this last one).
Please consider the Necromancer class and add a shotgun!
Thank you so much for the updates I really like the idea of family trees. I do want to recommend adding elemental effects to them based off region or weather or daynight/cycle.
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