I love the updates and the game is looking amazing. Thank you, Blizzard for sharing. I’m ready to play this game right now 
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One quick note on the items - setting the spend furry for more damage was cool to see as it was familiar. That being said in loving the new legendaries being things I don’t know /recognize. 
I’m guessing you’re already planning to implement this - I fed like to be able to form parties with my friend list. How many people can you have in a group though? I’m hoping more than 4 will be allowed for end game content. 5-6 would be great! I’m curious to know what type of set bonuses you guys are planning on, if any. I love putting sets together, I would just love to see them be nice and have the legendaries take the spotlight. And maybe keep the sets small. So only have 3-4 pieces, and maybe make them exclusive? So you can only have one set active at a time. I’m definitely interested in hearing more about the skill trees!! Thank you for the update!!!
Honestly, it sounds like you want d2 remastered not d4.
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I don’t want anything like Diablo 3. I wouldn’t play infinite rifts on Gauntlet Legends and I don’t want to do that in Diablo either, there needs to be more interesting choices and options. I’m not looking to purchase $60 console games that are also released on pc. It’s too simple for a Diablo pc game.
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My feedback on the items is that they don’t need to be so rigidly designed. The Magic and Rare items weren’t even worth looking at. The Legendary items were all designed the same way. 4 affixes and 1 legendary affix. The 4 affixes seemed as if they were just randomly selected.
I also don’t think legendary items need to be restricted to specific abilities for specific classes. The first item that specifically worked with “Teleport” could instead work with “Movement Abilities”. It could be an item that all classes could use. If more items were designed like that, then players would have more freedom to make creative builds.
The legendaries had 4 regular affixes. Instead of just picking randomly from the number of existing affix options, they should have some sort of synergy with the legendary affix. Like if an item that has an on-crit effect, then it should have crit chance on it. I also think you guys could make special white affixes that are only featured on certain legendaries. You could even make negative affixes to off-set a strong white or legendary affix
I also think the legendary affixes were pretty bland overall. This is a new game, and it is your chance as devs to be more creative than “increased damage”, “increased crit chance”, “if you crit, do damage”, “this specific ability is better now”.
A few ideas for potential legendaries that I thought of off the top of my head are things like a ring that constantly drains your life, but makes you stronger. A helmet that changes the elemental damage of all your abilities to Frost. Boots that create skeletons who burst out of the ground to grab/bind enemies along your path or within a certain range.
What is the point of calling them legendaries if they aren’t even particularly special?
I hope there will be some cool legendary cosmetic effects as well. Like maybe an item that imbues the player with dark power. It could create a dark red aura around the player, decrease their maximum health, and add some dark damage to their abilities that they use.
This game looks like it has the potential to be phenomenal. Hopefully the loot gets a bit more interesting and less constrictive. The game will suffer overall if players are just stuck with choosing between a small handful of items that work for their abilities, while discarding the hundreds of other items that don’t work with their abilities. Allowing players to be creative with builds is what will make this game last a long time.
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I think what you ment was d2 was in improvement on d1
D3 wasn’t in your mind ?
Like I said in my posts all had good and bad bits if Devs take good from all 3 games and improve on it get rid of the crappy bits d4 should be better than all 3
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Not going to waste time in providing feedback as I remember the Diablo 3 development quite well in that regard.
In any case I’ll just hold my breath and if D4 is actually good I’ll be happy. Otherwise I have no real expectations on the matter.
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I would like to know more about the weapon customization for something unique to each player regardless of being the same class. Since this is the next iteration of Diablo I would expect the opportunity for players to be able have a weapon they can call their own based upon crafting material and affixes. Everyone should be able to make a weapon unique to their desired fighting style.
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No, I thought D3 regressed compared to D2 in almost every way possible.
There are a few things cool about D3 (such as rand events, lore scrolls and cinematics) but I was disappointed. I don’t want to play a game without a significant loot hunt and I don’t want to play game where I feel like I’m in a tiny box (6skills and youre exactly like anyone else) on what I can do and the limited combat depth feels like an arcade game. What happened to runes was awful.
Sometimes I want to use my brain to advance instead of linearly going along until I need better gear; removing curses, auras, spell charges, 0skills, item mods, as many skills as you want, skill points removed a lot of the possibilities so you’re forced to play an action style. And then linearly grinding linearly improving rares (d2 has PLENTY of things that are useful in the late game that you can find as early as lvl 1, progression is not linear). I don’t like how linear everything is until you get to the very well defined ending (box) that the devs set; like why do I need to DESTROY everything in the game easily when I’m a low level? People die at low level sometimes in D2, hardly possible in D3.
What’s the point of even playing without a loot hunt and when the end is already known. It’s not very interesting with 6 skills and removing everything.
Please make all the resources mana (one resource). An individual resource for each class is unnecessarily complicated and doesn’t add to the game (and then you lose options like spamming and gear options; seriously, just mana is absolutely fine and better). Also resource regen via using skills isn’t fun either, I don’t want to use junk skills to “regain rage”.
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Sad I probably won’t buy this game even though I am a huge fan of diablo. I miss diablo 2 and the ability to use ALL the abilities you put points into whenever u wanted to. I absolutely hate this u get 6 skills and that’s it. U play a sorc and want to make a lite/cold build. Sweet. I can use any of those abilities you want as long as I put a point in them. If I don’t put a lot of points in them then they will be weaker. That’s fine. That’s my play style. Then I look at what it has become. U can choose any 6 abilities. Set pieces will matter. And if there r no set pieces then legendaries will decide what r good builds. I could take nova from d2 and make it a viable build. (Which I did). Try doing that to d3 with a skill without set bonuses for them or legendaries that buff up like 15000000% to make them the only viable option. And sadly I see diablo going to exact same route. I think I’ll just hold my breath for ashes of creation 
Then if there is no market or ability to trade. That will 100% seal it for me. I like to trade and have interactions with the diablo community which is non existent in d3. In d2 it was and is still very prominent and guess what.”, that game is still alive. If I find an upgrade, when my friends get online and we play, I like to give my old gear away to make the co op play more enjoyable for both of us. Diablo has gone way down imo and I just wish you would do this game justice. So far u have failed this game
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You understand a lot of us played and finished D2, and we don’t want to replay the same game with the exact same mechanics. What you’ve described is a carbon copy of Diablo 2. I’m honestly surprised there is no “light radius” mentioned. I suspect you’re blind to the many flaws of D2.
I hope you realize you're an extreme minority; but I too would embrace a D2 Remaster; Just not as Diablo 4.
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Yes exactly.
Lol. Ya right dude, D2 has more current players on pc than D3. You’re a minority, nobody wants to play Diablo 3 again as Diablo 4. Obviously D4 shouldn’t be an exact copy of D2 but it should be like D2. Inspired by D2. Not make a new arpg and pretend that D2 didn’t exist besides the npcs.
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I am very doubtful of your statistic. Where did you find it?
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Google “player counter diablo 3”, it won’t let me include links.
Until a few months ago Diablo 2 would tell you how many players were online and D2 has more players on pc than D3 according to the best available info.
I know it’s not perfect and you’re going to refute it cause you love Diablo 3 apparently.
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PLEASE give the option to remove, dim, or alter the glow effect when you strike a mob. The pulsing bright red/white outline is obnoxious. A settings option for that please?
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My point is, when I join a game. And I see 3 bararians. I don’t want them all to be WW. Because it’s the top build. I want to see different abilities. I loved the fact I could join a game in d2. And see a melee enchantress warewolf sorc. Which gives new ideas to what else you can do. D3 and what it seems like d4 is doing as well is u get 6 abilities and if I don’t use these exact 6 abilities, u won’t have the dmg or the tankiness to compete. Vs Diablo 2 I could put a point into every single ability from every tree, and use them all and make runewords that could further customize my builds and change my play style. Diablo 3 has completely lost that for me
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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
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Thank you for sharing an update with us! I noticed that the legendary items feel a little… bland, to be put mildly. One of the features which D3 got right, was a nice little text explaining the history of said weapon or item. Are there plans to reintroduce this into D4 Legendary and Mythic items?
I, and I hope am not alone in this, have a bit of a “lore-tooth” and personally love to read about the origins of legendary items.
Thank you!
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I strongly encourage the Dev team to reconsider the “mounts” in the game, the fear I believe the diablo community has is the idea of not enough monsters to kill in-between areas. mounts encourage too much travel time so “here’s a mount to get you to the action faster” .
Diablo 4 needs to have the same feeling as all of its previous games of slaying all the demons of hell and not this feeling of let me mount up so I can get the demon slaying because there isn’t enough here.
again the mounts could be fine if there isn’t really a “NEED” for them.
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The item graphics look terrible. The items are tiny and the font doesn’t feel like a medieval game but from a corporate email. Larger more detailed item graphics would be better
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