Yeah the style of the elite affixes from D3 need to be gone completely. It would hurt the immersion greatly from how compelling the D4 art direction is based in a bit more of a realistic darker approach - having purple rotating lasers and rotating lightning lasers (which were in the rogue gameplay and were very cartoony - maybe that has changed completely now seeing this blog update) would just visually take away from the atmosphere. But I definitely get that the art does have to be stylized because if its too realistic the game will not age well. I get there needs to be readability but I’m sure there are plenty of other avenues to go down for champion/elite affixes. It can simply come in the form of them just doing special actions such as a telegraphed slam or charge ability or if there needs to be something rotating it can just look like a spiked/wooden/metal contraption being placed down - it could have spikes or spew fire out of it.
Truth. No offense to the gameplay though because obviously people enjoy the complexity of things.
It might age well, I still play older games, and enjoy original graphics. Those are good suggestions, it seems like an application of skulls/blood on things, and turning purple lasers red might help too.
PoE doesn’t have complex gameplay/combat, it is extremely shallow - the gameplay with 99% of builds is the same. The game has complex systems though, but there is a lot of fluff and unneeded complication there too. So, overall PoE is one big mess in which you can find particular things interesting.
Diablo 4 on the other side is shaping as a game with a plan and vision for the future. It’s important we continue to offer our feedback so the D4 team has easier time making the right decisions.
Bring back Stygian Dolls! Hard Core players love them. Just when you think your safe the last one blows up next to you and kills you! One of the biggest pains in D2, D4 needs them back!
Well, we had a recent contest about predicting when the D4 blog would come out…
So, how come your guess was wrong, and mine was closer, when you should have known the exact time and date the blog would be / was published, having been to the future and seen it, and won the competition?
It’s almost as if your claim to be a time-traveller might not be 100% true.
People miss all of the fun of poe by following builds, the whole point of all of those options is trying new things you come up with yourself(it was one of the biggest downsides of it’s always online features that it restricted character experimentation). One of the things I look forward to in d4 is room for more build types than three. I hope the importance of item character interactions makes a noticeable return, along with the cool looking new skill tree.
That’s true. The problem of PoE is that it has complexity e.g. in the skill tree just for the sake of complexity. Even if you know what build you want to try you need a web tool to calculate the optimal path. Complexity should IMO be in clearly understandable decissions not in complex graph networks. I hope D4 will find a way of allowing build experimentation without a UI that requires a navigation app.
Even a calculator doesnt account for big passive interactions, play style, skill gem interactions, or other side effects. The web exists to allow you to mix attributes in a structured manner, optimality is definitely important, but it is the variety and personalization afforded that makes it a good system in an arpg. It’s true that poe can suffer from it’s own wealth of options, but poe learned much from d2 including it’s mods. The mods in that game allowed for more possibilities, while the base game is structured, and polished while providing many options. But simply starting d2 with mods is a rare experience for new players. As ive said a few times, d4’s story I think offer’s the most potential, but I only expect a reasonable amount of variety from d4. D2’s rune words are a precursor to poe’s skill gems, and I think show what items can bring to characters. Plus item dependence can force randomness, and adaption on players which can be fun.
I agree. What I wanted to say is that if it is to hard to come up with a valid build people will naturally follow build guides from the internet. Blizzard is good in simplifying complex tasks. Sometimes they oversimplify things (-> D3). D4 needs to have enough choice (in skills, attributes, items, rune words, …) to allow for a lot of interessting builds while being ‘managable’ for the average human. 
Well said, it will probably be hard to get something that is easy to learn but hard to master. Poe frequently suffers from this problem even if it does other things well. Also introducing all of this well will be challenging.
One thing the art blog really helped me with was understanding why it’s unlikely we will get a belt or shoulder slot for itemization. Given the very clean aesthetic of most of the armor set artwork, allowing for those slots wouldn’t really work well with their art direction. I do think Diablo 4 needs an extra item slot though, so I’d like to suggest the developers look into adding a trinket slot.
Trinkets
- Trinkets drop from monsters and come in normal item rarity types - white, magic, rare, legendary, unique.
- Visually, trinkets are small monster trophies that clip onto the belt area of the art sets we’ve seen so far. They could be skulls, fetishes, claws, feathers, medallions, etc… in terms of their appearances when added to the armor.
- Trinkets have their own special monster family affix depending on which monster family they were obtained from. A monster family affix gives bonuses to players when fighting a particular monster family.
- Trinkets are the only item in the game that can drop randomly from killing other players in which case the monster family affix gives bonuses when fighting other players instead. If a player obtains a trinket in this way, other nearby players are notified, and if that player is killed before escaping the fields of hatred that trinket can drop in addition to any shards the player possesses. Ears of course, are the most likely visual for pvp obtained trinkets
If they do feel at some point they need extra item slots I don’t think it would be bad to have different glove slots (left vs right) as for some of the art I’ve seen mixing and match gloves would be potentially artistically interesting. Another suggestion I might make is that the character login screen be the lair scene. Those lair scenes are very well done in my opinion and would make for a great design for differentiating class logins. I wasn’t particularly fond of how D3 constantly changed my zone background in adventure mode and the lair scenes might allow players to essentially “choose your own login background”.
Please don’t have the strength in number for D4. Even without it partying in a group is always better xp.
Interessting. My initial thought was those are just your wardrobe screens (where you customize your character appearance) depending on where you are in the open world currently. Did they talk about a lair system somewhere? I think I somehow missed that.
Nevermind:
We call this our Lair scene. Players will customize the look of their character here in our exciting new Wardrobe system that allows you to mix and match hundreds of armor components unique to your class, alongside custom color palettes to create the class fantasy that best represents your character.
It would be great if this lair is more than a wardrobe though.
I wonder what armor types means
Full transmog?
your short post is very important to me.
because it showed once again d2 was dangerous and hard to play.
on each corner u could die. this dangerous feeling - scare of death - hopefully come back in d4.
the quartal art update sounds good.
but the 4 female rogues [edit: not barbs]… i would go to date them. all of them has cute faces.
i am not sure if that is good for a horror game.
and like most other said before. d4 is an adult game, so pls don’t censore content like the
( . ) ( . ) from the Succubus
the art from the skeleton lord is the right way. and the music from the rouge and barbarian videos sounds very good too.
thank u for developing d4. looks great at all!
I look forward to it
Good post, I hope it get called a ward or something serious as opposed to trinket. I could get behind belts if the buckles were kept reasonably sized or the design wasn’t too over the top. Maybe pauldrons should be part of the armor to keep visuals clean?
The female barbs are just part of the fantasy. Reading about the real Amazons (the Scythian women) were mostly horse archers. So Herodotus states anyway. Supposedly could not marry until they had killed an enemy. A recent DNA test of a female found in a warriors tomb showed she was 13 years old when she died.
Their tattoo’s were awesome! I wish I could link the photo’s.
Being buried in the Atlai mountains in the permafrost they mummified quite well.
I did mange to get a link to work.
On a different note, people seem nice, but I still hope there is an option to turn off multiplayer. I find my immersion broken easily in online play in arpgs. Seeing a boss immediately killed by another player as soon as I see it, or another player running in circles near or around me or zig zagging around naked can take me out of gameplay very easily. Also maybe some way to re roll the over world via some gameplay event with a chance to “re curse the land” or something would be nice. I like to play online or with others, but I don’t like being forced to play online. It’s fantasy, sometimes I like to feel like the protagonist as opposed to just one of many saving the land. Even in dark souls you can just unplug your internet if people are being unpleasant or if you just want to enjoy the atmosphere and take it slow. I am glad to see that no one has been pushing auction houses though.
+1 Dman
We had a heated discussion about optional multiplayer here today already:
*and I was told I’m just a minority and it’s only in my head and no one cares… 