Please note that this is a dedicated thread intended for player discussion and we may not respond to or immediately answer questions in this thread at this time. We may consider questions or feedback here for future inclusion in Quarterly Updates, and look forward to reading your thoughts!
If you’d like to recap or revisit previous posts on the announcement or ongoing insights on Diablo IV development, you can see everything here:
I worry that the Diablo 4 open world will be as dead as it is in retail wow - since it will probably be cross-realm scaling sharding phasing garbage - no integrity leads to no social interactions (you will never meet the same people again, so no one cares).
I can understand that some Diablo-franchise fans want that solo gameplay, but since Blizzard announced Diablo 4 as an mmo, which I personally am really excited about - it will either be a good mmo, which genre-wise must mainly rely on strong social aspect (as vanilla wow was and classic wow is now - with realm communities, famous realm players, random outdoor meetings which may lead to a relationships, etc.), or a semi-mmo/semi-single abomination with a sharding open world where interactions between players don’t matter (as retail wow, destiny). I would guess, the developers enjoyed the mmo-part of testing the zone because they kinda know each other already, and they probably did it via single realm that could fit their team - meeting each other from time to time, collaborating on dungeons/events, doing pvp - it’s like a server of friends (you could see something similar during the streams of classic wow closed beta on Twitch). But they have to create an environment for a complete strangers to develop such bond between them.
The other thing is - if they implement any automatized “convenience”-systems like dungeon finder, I hope there won’t be a thing when you press a “ready”-button and teleport to a dungeon or a world event from any place in the world, which kills the meaning of travel and devalues the world’s size and danger.
A question (a suggestion?) for the future: will you be able to rotate a camera somehow? Maybe choose a direction of it, or an angle (at least off-combat?), like it was in the cutscene from the Blizzcon demo, so you can see a landscape and decide which way you want to go, which visible object to explore?
That last image in the update is exactly what I hope to see in a Diablo game. There’s a lot of things changing in D4, we’ll just have to wait and see when we get to play it. I’m hoping it’s not too far of a departure from the expectations of fans.
Take your time, do it right. I personally don’t want to see what happened with D3 repeat itself. Too many bad decisions early on led to a game that felt more torchlight than Diablo until the release of RoS.
Hello, I really like where ITEMS AND PROGRESSION are going, however, I should point that Legendary items descriptions need more love. Some of the examples have 5 different colors in their description and it is making it super hard to focus on what really is important. I am sure you guys are having discussions about this because Legendary items descriptions already look super problematic and confusing.
Very pleased with development so far. The balance of Ancestral, Demonic and Angelic stats is interesting. The feel that our actions will make a difference in Sanctuary is promising. The restrictions on seeing large groups of players may ease some of the “World of Diablo” fears.
I absolutely hate the idea of mounts. 100% against mounts. I would prefer Waypoints, as it always has been. Mounts just feel like a way (and probably is) to monetize the game. I can accept that if that money fuels development.
I’m a pretty antisocial gamer. I don’t want to be FORCED to socialize and group up.
In D3 I’m happy to chat in clan or communities and group up at times, but I really don’t want that to be a necessity.
So I’m worried about being forced to go into areas with other people. If I want to play alone, I don’t want to be bothered by strangers, or worse, by encounters with friends who thought I was offline.
I have a few friends in D3 who always want to group up if they see me on. Sometimes I’m happy to, sometimes I say no, and sometimes I’d rather not deal with socializing with them, so I set to appear offline so I can do my own thing without being bothered.
It sounds like in D4, I won’t be able to do that anymore, because even if I set “appear offline”, I’ll still encounter people. Not a big fan of that. Sometimes I just want to do my own thing without having to socialize.
I really hope it’s set up in a way that social/group stuff is possible and even beneficial, but not really absolutely necessary. And that encounters are infrequent enough that I don’t have to worry about accidentally bumping into friends if I want to be left alone.
Hi Diablo team,
great to see that you understand Diablo-way of play… i mean that i want to be only one who can save the world, that means i need to travel the world of diablo alone or with only few others, not with thousands…
Another point that you can think about - pls make dead more meaningfull - we want to afraid of it once more (not like in D3)… have some ideas… if you die, you have some % chance to be robbed by monsters (some part of gear perhaps) and you need to fight with monsters near by you corpse to have some % chance to get your gear back… or just take some XP or something… i want to afraid of dead even in normal mode. not only in hardcore where death is permanent…
Thanks and wish you all best - keep in good work and we will never forget
the ability to approach the game with a different mix of story and side content tailored to your own appetite will make playing (and re-playing) the campaign more enjoyable than it has been in previous ARPGs.
So basically combining Story & Adventure modes.
Yeah I like it. Story mode won’t feel like the albino child anymore.
perhaps the most popular open world feature was Camps . These are locations of importance that have been overrun by enemies, which once cleansed turn into friendly outposts with NPCs and a waypoint location. While there is a backstory to each camp, most of the storytelling is visual and quests don’t directly send you to them. For example, one of the camps in the zone was a town afflicted by a curse that turned villagers into piles of salt. Another was a crypt, haunted by a spirit that possesses the bodies of various undead—jumping from skeleton to skeleton until you defeat him.
Perfect time to properly introduce UREH.
We find that the game stops feeling like Diablo and the world feels less dangerous when you see other players too often or in too high numbers.
Yeah no kidding. Keep everyone OUT of my game unless I say so.
The classes especially are going down a promising path that we’re excited about.
Except we’re once again stuck with the BORING Sorceress. You should’ve taken more cues from the Wizard and expanded upon the awesome concept of a magic-weaver who pushes the envelope - instead of this back-to-bland Fireball thrower.
Definitely a lot more information than the last quarterly update, so this was well worth the wait imo. I’m definitely interested in our interactions with camps.
We think the ability to approach the game with a different mix of story and side content tailored to your own appetite will make playing (and re-playing) the campaign more enjoyable than it has been in previous ARPGs.
Does this mean that we could replay the campaign mode without creating new characters? If so, that’d be awesome.
Items are looking pretty good, although it looks like items tier rare and below will rarely roll with four affixes. If that’s the case, then I would hope that legendaries roll with predetermine properties that unique to each legendaries. Otherwise, rare tiers and below won’t have much place in the endgame.
Looking forward to the next update for sure, especially the ones concerning music, skills/talents, and perhaps even a hint(s) regarding the last two classes that have yet to be revealed).
They didn’t though. Diablo 4 was announced as an Arpg with mmo aspects, not as an actual mmo game.
Great update. Love the fact that you’re sharing the process and early looks into the game and how you go about testing systems. Really looking forward to playing and am more than happy to wait as long as needed for you all to get it just right!
In the end, Diablo is a game of itemization. This is, in my opinion, why Diablo 3 went from a 9.5/10 game down to a 8. Itemization in Diablo 3 FAILED MISERABLY. I don’t think anyone would argue with this; even items still being pumped out are useless, like the new Stone of Jordan.
It is hard to evaluate the items until we see a talent tree and skills, but I take your point. I believe Legendary Items have random stats, like how much they add to angelic, demonic and ancestral power, which means we may need a specific legendary with a specific stat.
I HOPE legendary affixes are static in D4, because the fighting through a layer of RNG to get the legendary, a layer of RNG to “roll” the right angelic/demonic/ancestral power, and a layer of RNG to get a good “affix” roll is going to SUCK hard. That’s not fun.
I hope the D4 Development team is cognizant that multiple (3-4) layers of RNG aren't particularly fun.
All of their values except the basic Attack and Defense seem interesting
The legendary affixes seem great! They don’t use specific abilities and force the player into a certain build. Instead they use categories and allow players to figure out by themself what works the best.
The only issues I personally got are percentages as values and the lacking amount of affixes.
Was it just me, there would only be absolute values on all the items and 2-3 more on each.
The insight about the development cycle, focus on milestones and blocking out the world was also very interesting btw.
Thrilled to see the talent tree update for next time!
I think this is a good point. You want itemization to be as complex and in-depth as possible, but you want to do it in a way where you don’t ruin an amazing item by simply getting the wrong “power” on it.
Being able to add a 4th affix on a a rare with three great affixes, would be awesome by the way. As long as the rare won’t be made sub optimal as soon as I get a legendary for that slot of gear.
I am stoked about your design philosophy of how to tell the story. D3 Story really did not have an impact on me, but having the characters do gestures when telling smaller stories, and having the RTC is just great!
And it still seem like your overall thematic is kept since Blizzcon. That I am really happy about. Looking forward to follow how D4 will develop. Current trajectory is great!
I am still not sold on itemization. I seems like every affix is just a percentage of something arbitrary. What is wrong with affixes like +5 life, +20% fire res, adds 10-16 cold damage? Also the icon artwork seems really… bad? I can’t really see any art direction at all and it looks like D3. The boots doesn’t even look like boots and the weapons look all bland. I think that is because all icons being the same size. Why not just make them larger?
And what is going on with these very high values, 2000 attack damage in these early stages?
With that being said, I like where they are going with world building and story telling. I hope for a dangerous world with every enemy being somewhat challenging and an impactful death penalty, making every decision matter
