Diablo IV Quarterly Update - Q1 March 2022

General Discussion
41

Yep! Ha! The first computer game I played was at work on a PDP1170 DEC machine, some sort of ASCII Star Trek game - at the time the TRS 80 and Heathkit were the only home computers around.

That is a concise post by the way! Good effort.

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42

This! My utter most desired thing about D4. Gameplay reasons aside, the lantency is another reason why I wish they would make a single player mode (single player, not offline mode. I understand the piracy fighting reasons). I mean playing single player in D3 with 150+ ping is bad enough, imagine multiplayer with that condition. I’m in Asia and currently the South Korean server is the only one and it’s just bad at connection to other asian countries. I’m willing to sacrifice the world boss (which I’m sure I’d love to be participate in) and other multiplayer contents if necessary.

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43

I love you right now, do it Blizzard.

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44

I second your concerns. I have not played the game you mentioned but I think my biggest fear for Diablo 4 is a shared world, a :rabbit2: :brain:ed wanna be MMO.

I hear what they say that this won’t happen, but I’ve seen many a corporation change it’s tune due to monetization factors.

45

Looks incredible. D4 is shaping up to dominate the arpg space.

One thing I’d really hope for is even more interactive objects (not just loot popping vases and chests). Like, how about allowing us to snuff out torches by clicking on them (or turn them back on again)? Stuff like that. Let us play with the environment, not just break stuff for gold.

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46

I felt distracted each time water or wet area on the ground lights up bright white, because the player camera at that moment moves briefly into the line of reflection of the source light.

The theme is dark, and when the char moves around, this constant on/off bright white reflection seems really out of place, and for me an unnecessary visual distraction.

And judging by the videos there seem to be abundant places, puddles or wet floors where this will happen constantly when moving around.

Other than that: keep it up :slight_smile:

47

I really liked this update and appreciate the hard work and communication. With that said, I understand you want to see more functionality aspects and I agree, I hope next update provides more.

At this point I have no real worries about the environment, art, presentation. Well I mean I am sure I will disagree with the inventory system and wish it was more like D2 inventory tetris, but that is what it is. Now I want to see if they can quell my remaining concerns.

  • Is itemization going to be engaging and build promoting, or just boring dps stat blobs? D2 makes each item slot feel special and purposeful, as well as provide deep enough mechanics to make differing affixes matter. Hopefully D4 can follow suit and improve upon this.

  • Will dungeons be more than just linear halls? Hopefully they have a variety of linear ones, medium sized ones, and bigger more maze like ones reminiscent of D1 and D2.

  • Will enemies and their affixes be a straight copy of D3? Will there be lasers and poison pools on every enemy type and in every part of the world? Hopefully they will address this and make more understated and enemy enhancing affixes that don’t feel out of place.

Those are my main concerns, though of course I want to know more about the skill tree progress, end-game progress, level cap, runes, new functionality, socketing, etc.

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48

Your memory serves you better than mine. :shushing_face:

49

The art is of course looking superb. I think they’ve found their stride with the look and feel of the game.

Yes, I almost forgot about that, that would be devastating and cheapen the atmosphere and environment that the art is creating. I think there are certainly ways to keep AOE mechanics in the game but using it without neon-light-shows and that are contiguous with the environment without breaking the believability.

Don’t get me wrong though, I think there is a time and room for flashy spectacular spells especially for the heroes and bosses etc. But D3 champion affixes are just something else…not something for a game that should make you believe you’re in an immersive world but more for an arcade-like experience.

Yes! It’s great because there is still an artistic style that isn’t trying to be overtly “realistic” nor trying to look like certain popular FPS cartoonish games, but is as they say “believable”.

Definitely still a concern for me as well. I hope they keep gathering our feedback with additional updates on itemization and builds.

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50

I do to, but I also want to be surprised by systems and classes when it releases. I hope they don’t spoil too much in giving us so many details.

51

It was just a bit of running around smashing stuff. They showed nothing, calm dkwn xD. It does look good but it would be nice to get a release date too i’ll add onto prev post too.

52

Hello there,

I want to share my 2 cents, too. Even if I want to tell everything I noticed. Not only as far as graphics are concerned.

The visuals are fine. There is not much cause for criticism, but much room to praise you for the good work. So two thumbs up from me. I play since the early days of Diablo I and already some years before when graphics weren’t the best. But I tell you that the best games do not have good graphics. At most an appropriate. When I play the old games like Diablo I, Settlers I, the original Doom, Day of The Tentacle, NES or SNES games I often think that the developers in the early years focused more on bringing their idea to life than blinding people with graphics. Glad that they did not have the opportiunities.

But here I am very happy to get back a lot of atmosphere. Once because of the graphics and once for the outstanding music which has a great impact. I think this alone would make me endure the game for a long time. Chapeau! I would love to have a game again which makes me sit here in the evenings with only some candles burning, a volume that devours me and graphics which make think that I am in danger. So much that I get a heart attack when my dog (of whom your game made me forget that he still is near) pokes my arm with his cold nose.

First Video, Scosglen:

The music is nice. I would like to listen to it somewhere in the game. But it seems like it rather fits for a dungeon or cave or something like that than in the open world (?). In this area you have the opportunity to bring some different wild landscape sounds. Variety?

I love how the gras, lanters and other parts of the landscape move because of the wind. Good work / idea! Maybe you can bring that to the water or the rooftops (!), too. Unfortunalety you cannot hear the wind and the water does not reflect the circumstances, either. Neither in hearing nor in watching the waves.

For me the barbarian jumps over the river too fast. I don’t know. The jump doesn’t feel good. Let us walk through the river and instead feel that we get wet with an appropriate sound. The following ladder climbing is good. I love the pace which gives you time to soak up the surroundings and dive into the landscape. You get slowly excited / feared by what comes into the screen step by step.

The water (especially in the background) could need a rework.

I think less “dungeon music” and more natural sounds could fit in the whole scene. That would bring in, that the “dungeon sound” isn’t used to often and keeps being special.

Second video, Orbei Monastery:

Isn’t that the same music?! Again, I think a more “scene based” music would make the atmosphere more “monastery”. I don’t like that uniformity.

Is it possible to let the wooden barrels burn (a bit) or fall to ashes when they are hit by a fireball (as it were with other elements)? I could imagine that the animation is different. That the caster is using another version of the cast for these kinds of targets.

In addition when the character in the video hits the first objective at 0:05, can you please think about that the nearby - and OBVIOUSLY very dry - bush catches fire for a certain amount of time? At 1:04 again.

I like the transition when the character walks into or out of the shadows!

Is it possible to make the nearer surroundings move when you cast?

Third Video, Kyovashad:

Perfect play with light sources. I love it. Especially how the character himself is affected.

Looks like it is a bit windy. Unfortunalety this does not effect the flames of the torches and fires in their moving. I recognized however that some fires burned out, that is pretty nice! All the more incomprehensible is it that other flames do not seem to be effected at all.

At the beginning and the end of the video you can see how the footsteps whirl up snow. Very nice. That should work for water (puddles, Scosglen) or sands or dusty undergrounds (monastery) , too, shouldn’t it?

Fourth Video, Forgotten Places in the world:

Very nice visual feeling. I asked myself if it should be possible that candles on the ground turn out light when someone steps through them or in a fight. Maybe you could work with some more stbale lights in walls or chandliers additionally so that these sources of light remain. The music is fine, too and I like the detailed sound of armor that is falling to the ground at minute 0:56! I also love that you hear the worn armor from the character from time to time! Very good work in detail.

What I wonder about is the white light on the ground. From 0:42 to 0:50 it looks like the moon is mirroring on the ground. Isn’t that a dungeon?

Fifth Video, Wretched Caves:

Again there is this white light on the ground, it is a cave, isn’t it? However the atmosphere is very good. Can’t wait to see how fights will look in those areas. I hope that enemies and objects do not highlight when hovering over them with the mouse. In my opinion that would disturb the mood.

Sixth Video, Flooded Depths:

Somewhere here I read that opening doors slow the gameplay. I can only hope that gameplay and combat will not be too fast and follow the current state of mind of society which is not able to concentrate on a thing longer than two seconds. Please let us see and feel the graphics and sounds you create as the blows we deliver to our enemies. Give them time to work on us. It would be nice to see and even more to hear that my iron axe hits the enemy shield, armor or body or wheather he is out of blood and flesh or maybe something wooden. And I don’t think that it is possible if there is too much and too fastpaced action at once.

In Diablo I you could clearly hear and feel when a fallen one got hit or fell dead to the ground. You even could hear his armor pieces falling to the ground. In Daiblo III there is only an undetermined mass of somehow bad looking pokemons you senselessly whirl through not noticing anything. Atmosphere = zero.

When in Diablo I a heavy armor plate dropped on the ground you god damn heard it was a massive piece of iron that dropped to the ground. Thank god my foot wasn’t underneath! In Diablo III in sound like my keyring falls to the ground (and more important every items has the same sound -.-).

Again that white light on the ground in “Depths”.

I like the climbing and hope that you do not give ingame hints with big, glowing arrows hinting at the start and ending points.

Here now you can see that the water is affected by the heros steps. So it seems that this only works in deeper waters respectively in the previous videos this is actually no water but looks like?! In the first video from 0:12 to 0:20 the hero walks through several puddles.

Thanks for reading

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53

Yes the translator has failed here.
I originally wanted to express that you just get away from giving people the feeling that they should quickly get into an endgame.
Quite the opposite. The game itself must represent the end game and be fulfilling and profound on its own. And that’s also where you should start expanding it.
That’s what makes a game like this interesting. Otherwise you could save yourself the effort and just build a pure competitive game on one level. Only then it wouldn’t be an aRPG, but a kind of sports game.
D2 was the best aRPG for completely different reasons, without an endgame and exactly because of that… because it was enough to be a game with fullness, from one cast, etc.

Not that you can’t incorporate some sort of competition, as a side playground as well as PvP. But as soon as such an endgame dominates the game itself, the game will automatically devalue further and further to the point of complete insignificance.
It only works if the game itself always remains the focus and the rest is subordinate.

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54

Very telling update. Text is reassuring and well written. It feels like you worked hard on random generated with less narrow pathing connectors.

I like how you want to balance this update with the less dense and flatter areas of the previous updates (which I generally find convincing).
I liked Joat’s comment earlier. Here are my comments for the devs :

Technical

  • Lots of work done on the Terrain, well done. But static terrain also leaves me with questions. We will see some areas once. Is there any kind of variations that can happen to the terrain whatsoever? (not talking about bestiary or npc). Even though I was wishing for randomness, I can understand static boundaries of connected regions one-to another/or of a city. But could the content the region swap for example like d2’s act1/act2 town gates? Can some blocks/houses/rocks switch position to other spots?

  • Tavern : I think furniture, planks and dimensions are too big from a european point of view. Objects look spread without density. Furniture are usually thinner and compact. We can see the problem with the constant shabby edges/lines of the planks and cupboards. Compared to the straight lines like in d2’s tavern (and size of furniture) https://i.ibb.co/cwg406G/d2-worldbuildinga2.jpg
    A game need straight lines to rest the eyes

  • 5th video (Flooded Depths) : this video shows multiple problems in once imo :

    • the ceilings are too high in too many of the indoor content (especially houses and taverns). Some of the content should be 1 storey high. Architecture was compact in Europe because easier to heat and maintain. Large volumes are also weaker against the wind. All the current views have high ceilings. I think it’s a world building mistake. It’s not coherent compared to the amount of work and materials. Even some caves could be tighter in height.
    • Raising the walls to 15 meters to avoid seeing behind is lazy design. Why not cutting the walls at 3 meters and darkening behind it? I understand some rooms can be much higher and it’s fine, but not everywhere. You already cut some pillars and a few walls (at human height) when the character moves within them. The player knows it’s for visibility purposes. I feel like North american dimension standards still trick the way you dimension things.
    • In d2, a room remains black until the character step in the room. Everything remains black and hidden behind a wall or a behind a turning corner. Areas should be blacked out behind walls AND doors.

What’s visible is the actual field of view. And I think it helps tremendously to impersonate the immersive character’s view point while keeping the isometric view. It helps to create a tension at every encounter. Showing the terrain in advance like in d3 make anticipation and planning a easier, thus defeating the idea of not knowing what is behind an obstacle.
https://i.ibb.co/1mx8x9s/d2-roomilluminations.jpg

I’m fine with removing d2’s light radius. I’m simply saying that currently, the illumination of the rooms of d4 is still identic to d3, and one should look at what d2 was doing.

World building, cultural coherence

  • Character standing on the staircase (2nd visual) : I think this visual symbolizes many wrong ideas, it is the least convincing for me. Not believable, cheap tricks like fog and dramatic cliff, over sized fence, what are those pillars and ropes about? In this scene we don’t know if we are inside, outside, in Occident, Orient, day or night… It tries to be everything so it ends up being nothing. Is this is a repeatable block ? it’s a generic RPG scene we see everywhere.

  • 5th visual : I think bison’s heads in town are out of place. Those large animals don’t fit dry environments, they don’t survive. Same with most of your american western assets : It’s out of place. I personally don’t believe mixing symbols of various cultures being a good idea. It goes against the idea of 5 distinct “cultures”. And again, the idea of fighting the devil is the main plot, the main fantasy. You need a world you can identify, which must be totally believable in order to make the plot pop out.

  • 1st video (Scosglen) : Statue out of place. It could be fine if it were a quest in which the statue is ONE ancient unique artifact found with with we interact. But it’s too big : I would try to make things desirable, not so bold, big and extravagant. (Apart from that it’s a brilliant and convincing environment)

  • 2nd video (monastery) is not convincing imo. A monastery is a humble and isolated place to live ; not one where the faithfuls come. Stained glass and European architecture was less common in dryer lands. The surroundings looks very poor compared to the monastery.
    Too big statues, too many, too expensive for such surroundings, not matching the idea of a parred down/spare monastery. The monastery decorations look unfortunately roman (classique or neo-classique) which is again weird/wrong for the region and epoque. If they were ruins, roof tiles would be gone because of damaged framework. Lighting and terrain looks convincing.
    I do not know what’s behind the curtain but in a nutshell, early Christianity in dry regions was looking different (Then Islam took on before the middle age.) https://i.ibb.co/MgqKcXt/christianity-dry.jpg You can see the more low profile architecture.

  • Perhaps it is tricky to name the places before you design them. The origin of Names carry connotations, geographic origins and time that could disturb a healthy and evolving development. This is also why I believe designing a d4 logo too early was not the best idea but that’s another story.

  • 4th video “Forgotten Places in the world”. For me, this video raises the question of too large architecture in general, large amount of matter, amount of human resources and material required to raise and erect such colossal architecture. I think the dimensions are not linked enough to the world. As opposed to modern fantasy monsters, evil in the middle age does not seek size and power, but seeks control and enslavement. Evil is rather deceitful, plays low-profile and viciously hides rather than being a proud ostentatious megalomaniac (I’ve communicated about it). Evil is lazy, and prefers to corrupt, being nasty than to courageously fight/work and build. So I don’t think it builds coherence to the world. The way evil spreads is more appropriate in d1 and d2 in my opinion — Content “Ok” if very late end game imo. I like the less corridor-like maze though.

  • 5th video (Wretched Caves) : very coherent, readable.

  • 6th video (https://youtu.be/9fJBEl96lic?t=72) and 3rd video (Kyovashad) 0:52 . Bridge pillars structures look wrong. In engineering, beam-colums arrays need longer longitudinal gaps than transversal gaps. The bridge needs to be either narrower or half of the columns have to be removed so that it’s structurally coherent. I know these habits comes from Warcraft but I would not do it in Diablo. (https://youtu.be/fGqO_f6OBJU?t=5).

  • 6th video : Eastern Europe architecture (round domes) seems too modern/recent . I also find Victorian architecture impossible and way too recent. Not only styles/techniques are too recent, but most constructions in an given environment and period are hundred years older. These scenes could be used in a “fantasy” way like a d2’s “dreamed” arcane sanctuary; but even so, I think it’s dangerous.
    Slavic huts and Asian scenes are outstanding, beautifully unfolded : congratulations.

In general I think there’s nothing wrong copying reality (books, archives, history if it fits the time span). Adding a personal touch can harm. Being creative is often more about how to better articulate (traps, destruction, weather, interactive quests…)than adding something that harms cultural coherence. In a given geography, humans have crafted objects, cities and civilization the way they were for reasons. Furthermore, how can the music composer deliver without a coherent and understandable world. Composers, quest and plot makers may be the chefs d’orchestre who have the recipe, who can trigger the emotions. Not necessarily world builders who have to provide plain ingredients. Same as a client in a shop who does not know what he wants, the composer needs to know what the world builder wants.

  • I think the game also need lacks solemnity. Pared down, humble simpler shapes like these : https://i.ibb.co/6Bs8FnR/simpledetails.jpg
    I am not just meaning low density areas. I’m saying visually basic and homogeneous shapes (cube, rectangle…) to rest the eyes from the constant chaos. Like we use to see in d1/d2.
    For a long time I try to express that details can be in basic shapes. You don’t necessarily need complex geometries to have details. Simple shapes does not mean boring : there can be interaction, moving pieces of stone in the wall, frescos (d2), HQ texture/bumb, sounds, weather, Inside of the house can be packed with special effects for quests, etc.

I understand both the excitement and impatience of some but I am not on “beautiful enough” ship. Art has to be coherent, neither “just” beautiful nor striking. Beauty is not necessarily what makes fall in love, I think it needs to be touching. A coherent world are what allow the fantasy of the plot, of the magic, of effects, quests and monsters to shine and surprise the audience.

I am not worried when there is time to discuss problems and to understand the reasons behind the devs decisions. I think it’s great because there is here a lot of to discuss, to praise and to criticize. I’m just trying to be honest. Thank you for this update.

55

2 days later and only 53 replies. It’s clearly the update no one wanted and no one cares about. Extremely embarrassing for a so-called AAA game in development.

Take a hint, Blizzard.

56

everything looks great! shadows, physics, all of the areas, weather, interactive environment, etc… over 100 dungeons sounds cool, but it’s really more about how many tile sets and identifiable layouts there are. there are over 100 areas in d2, and it only feels like there are a handful of different ones. like… when the randomly generated differences between instances of the same dungeon provide the same degree of distinction as differences between two different dungeons, who really cares that they’re labeled as separate dungeons? i think that part needs clarification.

and here are a few things that bothered me… small, but i hope they’re fixed:

  1. character shadow at the start of one area doesn’t render until he starts moving
  2. hidden foreground elements appearing and disappearing is distracting/jarring
  3. gold pickup color too yellow, especially given the actual color of the gold
  4. rope clips through character while climbing across
  5. no water splash when jumping off the ladder
  6. door/chest opening distance way too far.
  7. some areas are too desaturated or low contrast? not sure. it’s fine if it’s due to the weather effects, but some areas clearly have color but things are just super muted… and some “dark” areas have gray shadows for no reason… hopefully there’s a slider bar or something?
  8. some ladder climbing looks unnatural… not entirely sure why… maybe there needs to be some slight random variation in the movements?
57

I think a fair number of us understood this was going to happen. They’ve fired their lead designer and had to change hands to new leadership, then get them up to speed. The whole company has been going through a cultural revolution with mass firings and the imposition of a whole new corporate culture with heavy handed, zero tolerance tactics. People were airing years of personal drama and dirty laundry right out in the open on the internet with the intent to create a total guano storm. It’s going to disrupt things. And in an effort to placate the loudest complainers and salvage what’s left of their reputation, we’ve seen the parade of virtue signaling posts where all of these politically-driven priorities suddenly got pushed to the fore and teams all ended up redirected to work on these new priorities instead of their previous ones.

Naturally, the means they’ll have minimal progress to show on those old priorities because they’ve not been focused on making progress on them. They’ve been focused on ensuring 100% conformity to the new corporate culture, pacifying the loudest voices, dealing with the lawyers, and trying like hell to save their PR. Not to mention, not kill a massive acquisition by Microsoft that stands to make shareholders absolute truckloads of money. So, you will like the cultural revolution or you’ll find a new job. And because they still had this deadline, they trotted out some safe art they’ve had done for a long time and used that to fill the quarterly update which they posted at the last possible second - because again, this isn’t their priority. Conforming to new ESG goals is their priority.

That’s not to say the art is bad. It’s not. I wrote a fair review of it earlier, but we do have to acknowledge the elephant in the room here, which is that developing mechanics for D4 and communicating clearly about them to fans isn’t a priority for them right now. Keeping the WoW cash cow giving milk and getting Immortal out ASAP to establish a new revenue stream are the main gaming-related priorities they have right now.

(and now, I fear I may have derailed the topic =/ )

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58

You people are so cooked lol.

Nobody is standing around waiting to hear your opinion and adjust accordingly. Get over yourself.

59

Yeah, it’s not like they specifically asked for feedback or anything…

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60

Just no robots in Diablo please at this point anything is possible. xD