Hey, thanks for the blog post.
So here is some feedback
Itemization
In general, itemizationin D4 does look better than in D3, however, imo D4’s itemization is still (at least slightly) worse than D2’s Itemization. In many ways, I think it is mediocre, while is some other things it is either slightly above average or slightly below average. Nevertheless, it not as good as it could be, at least from what you have shown so far.
What is good about it is that the special affixes on legendaries are no longer so insanely powerful as they are in D3 and I also like a some of the new normal affixes like “Increased Gem Strength” or “Increased Damage while Healthy”/“Increased Damage against Healthy Enemies”. And seeing Crushing Blow making a return is also a nice thing.
Sadly, this is kinda where the positive stops.
Angelic/Demonic/Ancestral Power
ADA Power is not really a good replacement for an Attribute System.
You need to stack up ADA Power on your gear, in order to gain access to other affixes on your gear.
ADA Power also has a resemblance to Mainstat from D3, which was one of D3’s most disliked features.
If you want ADA Power to replace an Attribute System, then turn ADA Power into an Attribute System in which you can spend points into, but don’t let it roll on items as an affix. At least make it so that a large portion of your ADA Power comes from an Attribute System.
Now, having said that, even if ADA Power would be an Attribute System, it still would imo not be a good one.
A very simple and imo better Attribute System is to have 4 distinct Attributes that focus on distinctively different aspects:
- Offensive Attribute (various forms of “Increased Damage Output” that also can differ from class to class, e.g. Spell Damage, Melee Damage, Increased Damage against Enemies outside of Melee Range, Critical Hit Chance, Crushing Blow, Increased Attack Speed)
- Defensive Attribute (various forms of “Reduced Damage Taken”, that can differ from class to class, e.g. Dodge, Energy Shield, Maximum Life, Resistances, Armor, Block)
- Resource Management Attribute (Increased Maximum Resource, Reduced Resource Costs, Cooldown Reduction)
- Utility Attribute (e.g. Movement Speed, CC Resistance, Faster Hit Recovery, more Dodge Rolls, etc)
Being able to spend points into something like that is much more exciting than ADA Power that randomly rolls on items.
Critical Hit Damage / Crushing Blow Damage
I am really worried about this. Please be very careful with these affixes.
In Diablo 3, the existence of Critical Hit Damage in combination with Critical Hit Chance lead to these two affixes becoming mandatory, because the synergistic effect was so strong.
Maybe Critical Hit Chance can be good on its own, without needing Crit Damage, so that Crit Damage does not even need to exist in the game, except maybe on a few legendary items and only in small amounts, so that Crit Damage is not mandatory to use in combination with Crit Chance.
Something similar applies to Crushing Blow Chance and Crushing Blow Damage. Maybe Crushing Blow Chance can be good on its own without needing to have Crushing Blow Damage as well.
Imo Crushing Blow Damage and Critical Hit Damage are not needed, because if Crit Chance and CB Chance are not viable on their own, then you always need to focus on both X Chance and X Damage, which reduces customization options, and if they are already useful on their own, then X Damage just makes them too synergistic and too powerful.
So maybe roll back on Crit Damage and CB Damage and/or only let them spawn on a few legendaries.
Skill-specific Effects on Legendaries
imo Skill-changing Effects (like “Cast Nova at your Teleport location”, or “Fireball launches 3 Projectiles” or “Upheaval ignites the ground”) do not belong on legendary items, but on the Skill System.
Please have a look at Last Epoch’s and Wolcen’s Skill Systems. They put these Skill-changing Effects on the skill system while also giving options to customize the Skill (via Skill Points) with more generic options like “increased damage”, “increased AoE” or “reduced resource costs”, which gives you a choice on how to improve the skill.
Having these Skill-changing Effects on legendaries makes the legendary feel mandatory or at least it makes you feel as if you are missing out on something if you don’t use that particular item.
However, the more Generic Effects like “Using Storm Skills increases the Damage of Earth Skills for x seconds”, or “Your Physical Attacks Chill Enemies” or “Chance to spawn a Lightning Trap” are fine, since they have a broader application for more builds, skills and/or classes.
Maximum Number of Affixes on Items
In D2, rare items could have up to 6 affixes. Getting a rare with 6 affixes happened more rarely than getting a rare with 4 or 5 affixes, but you still did get them from time to time.
It made rare items feel a lot more beefy. Basically, what legendaries are in D4, that have been rare items in D2 – at least in regards to the amount of affixes, not the special affix – so rare items in D3 and now in D4 feel like a downgrade compared to D2, which is kind of a letdown.
Letting rare items to have a chance to have 5 or 6 affixes would make them much more interesting imo.
On a sidenote: some legendaries also could have a lot more than just 6 affixes. Look at some of D2’s uniques and runewords. They felt beefy and awesome, but I currently do not get that feeling from D4’s legendaries that much, which is sad.
Sockets
This one here is more of a thing that I personally dislike, rather than a broader part of the community, but why do sockets need to be in the same affix pool as other affixes? Why can’t they be a separate thing on their own?
If every item that can roll with sockets either always rolls with the maximum amount of sockets it can have, or if the maximum amount of sockets can be added by e.g. a blacksmith, it would allow for a lot more customization, because the sockets would not take away a spot from the other affixes.
So my feedback on this would be to let there be a way for items to always have the maximum amount of sockets and have sockets separate from the other affixes, to have more customization options.
Legendary Consumable
This was not a part of this blogpost but in one of the last ones iirc, but I still wanna mention it briefly:
A special consumable that adds a legendary affix to a rare item (iirc it was David Kim who suggested it some time in the past) will blur the lines between rare and legendary items and thereby giving them less of a distinct identity.
So instead of that, maybe this consumable can work like an Exalted Orb from Path of Exile, which adds one random NORMAL Affix to a rare item (and rare items only!) and you can put up to 2 or 3 of these orbs for up to +2 or +3 normal affixes on a rare.
This is an idea worth stealing and it also allows rare items and legendaries to keep a distinct identity.
Talent Tree / Skill Tree
Yes, this is indeed one of the things that I and many in the community are very interested in.
I personally am not too satisfied with D4’s current Active Skill System and also not with the Passive Skill System.
A month ago or so I posted a thread about how D4’s Active Skill System seems to be a worse version of D3’s Skill System and a lot of people agreed with that assessment.
Yes, there is the sense of progression (via Skill Points) in D4’s Skill System, which is good, but there are other skill systems in other ARPG’s already that are much better than what D4 has to offer at the moment and I was seriously surprised why you did not copy and iterate on these ideas.
As in regards to the Talent Tree (Passive Skill System), I think there are also better ways to do it.
My issue with the Passive Talent Tree is that you have to spend points into pre-required Talents that you maybe do not even want to use, just to get to the Talents you wanna have. I think the Talent Tree should rather be like the current Active Skill System - which is rather a Skill List than a Skill Tree - where you can spend points into anything you want without being required to put points into pre-required Talents.
Also the Major Gameplay and Mechanic Changing Talents at the end of the Tree could be separate and require you to spend several points at once to unlock them (aka Spend 5 points into the Endless Winter Talent to unlock it), instead of requiring you to go through the tree with its pre-required talents to unlock them.
Next Blog Post
You asked what we are interested to hear about in the next blog post and this is my personal list of things that interest me to hear about:
Very interested in hearing about
- Active and Passive Skill Tree and possible revisions that will be made on it in the future or that have been made
- Attribute System
- Why only 6 skills? Would it be possible to increase the number of active skills to 7, and if not, why?
- Will there be a separate resource for the Dodgeroll/Sidestep Ability?
Medium interested / medium priority to hear about
- Will there be something like Faster Hit Recovery (from Diablo 2) or will characters have something like their own stagger-meter like bosses that microstun them?
- Will damage dealing skills have a Weapon-Damage component and an Innate Skill-Damage component (aka will some of a skills damage come from the skill itself and another part from the weapon?
- Any plans on changing how the Health Potion work? Going forward, will Health Potions have a cooldown, 2 or 3 charges or will they be spamable?
- Will magic items be useful in the endgame, and if yes, how do you plan to do so?
- Will skills like Wrath of the Berserker first start their cooldown once their effects have expired to prevent them from having 100% up-time? (A feature that already is in D3 on skills like Spirit Walk or Serenity).
- Will Energy Shield be a defensive affix in D4?
Thank you!!
Edits: typos, spelling & structure