Diablo IV Quarterly Update - Q3 September 2020

General Discussion
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Honestly taking the existing system, and putting it on a tree wallpaper doesnt make it any more interesting.

Proccing “enchantments” to passively cast is not interesting and is generally lazy. In Diablo 3 items would do this, and it was rarely interesting or game changing then, devoting skill points to do this seems uninspired to me.

The Barbarian switching weapons mid swing without input from the player is not game changing, its animation changing, once again not interesting especially when you consider the practical effects masking the weapon you are holding anyway. In Diablo 2 a barbarian felt different than any other class because of the skill tree, and the items they could use. Dual wielding two grandfather swords with iron skin felt much different than blasting frozen orbs from a wand with energy shield. They greatly impacted your gameplay, and look and feel of the character and made sense to the lore of the class. Changing mana from blue to white or making the barb pull out an axe when doing one ability and a sword for another ability is simply uninteresting.

The most recent skill tree does not appear to give even as many options as the runes did in diablo 3. In D3, you had a handful of runes that sometimes changed the way that skill worked, from the looks of this new tree each spell may have one or two nodes to choose from, and I imagine if you are speccing meteor you would invest in every single node for that ability. That isnt a meaningful decision. It seems that the only meaningful decision from this tree is to choose which base skill you want to use.

I think it would be much more interesting for the sorc to choose a base element, then choose a primary skill for that element maybe have 2 or 3 choices here, then have two or more possible paths for each skill. For example, you choose to be a lightning sorc, then you choose between chain lighting, charged bolts, or ball lighting. Lets say you choose chain lightning, you then have choices to make that fundamentally change how that ability works. Do you put more points into increasing its shock proc chance and fire rate? or perhaps you increase its base damage and decrease its fire rate as a trade off, leaving you to make up for the speed deficit with gear. Then maybe there are other nodes that change it to splitting on impact or bouncing to more targets. perhaps there is a node to increase a stun chance and duration, or another makes the target vulnerable to a frost attack? These kinds of choices are what we are looking for Blizz.

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307

I wouldn’t want D4 to have 100 as max level if it wouldn’t fit the game. If there is not enough content to support level 100 or even the end game couldn’t provide the experience needed. If it takes going through the story multiple times which is something that the majority wouldn’t go for. So just putting max level at 100 in D4 just to make it fit isn’t a good idea.

It gets interesting if you are wanting it just to prevent an infinite system of leveling, more to follow.

That depends on how they use that infinite leveling system. If they go linear and basically copy and paste D3’s paragon then I would agree with you on that. But if they go nonlinear, where there is a soft cap on the paragon points in each area of combat power. Where spending more than the soft cap causes a huge diminishing returns to kick in. Then have paragon points to be used to unlock cool customization options for skills and cosmetics for the character.

With the paragon system that I propose above you could still complete a build and move on to the next one. As long as itemization is done right where players that want perfect gear would still need to take a lot of time to find it. Then D4 will be just fine.

I am not sure how their itemization system will be in D4. The part of it I hope I would love to learn more about it is crafting. If crafting is gonna be a huge part of itemization in D4 then we might have ways of taking near GG leveling gear and making it useful at endgame.

Disagreed, Open trade mode won’t work because it goes against what Blizz wants to do with D4. They don’t want third party sites prospering from D4. Nor do they want more bots in D4. Trust me the bot population would soar well beyond what it is here in D3 if you have an open trade mode.

Plus they don’t want to be splitting the player base into two modes. One person playing Open Trade and his friend in a solo self found type of mode. One would have to leave their comfort zone to play with the other. That is not a good idea. Blizz’s idea of limited trade will work out fine.

If rune words are to return I like the overall idea of rune words that was mentioned at Blilzzcon. I just want to know what type of progression system will be in place for runes and rune words.

I would hope that part of the fantasy of playing your build and character would include not being tied to a certain weapon in order to have the best damage.

Only if they have their own special inventory that doesn’t take up any of the character’s inventory. Something like the Talisman system of D3 that was never put into D3.

That depends on the content and how the game is designed. It would be okay for them to raise the level cap per expansion if the starting cap is low like level 50. Then after some four or five expansions we have level 100 and a campaign that fits level 100 along with a deep endgame system with plenty to do in the game.

Under the previous version of ADA I seen that if you had x demonic power you got y fire resistance.

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Yes, this is why i have the idea of shared skills (a common skill tree apart from the class one). This would allow a bigger amount of builds and play styles.

As for the sorceress, if what the special hability does is to cast the skill in a passive way, it isn’t too interesting. I think that add effects that modify the skills is a more interesting thing: like the current runes on D3 but it would allow much more variation for each skill. The idea should be combine both skills in an interesting way.

This example might not be very good but the idea would be something like: if you have hydra on the active slot, the hydra would cast the passive skill, but if the hydra is in the passive slot, then the skill would cast x3 (per hydra’s head) with less damage or would cast the skill more than once in a chain or something like that. A rain skill + fire ball would give a storm of fire balls.

This are just some bad examples, i am sure they could come up with something far better.

309

Ancestral/Demonic/Angelic
You could make the Demonic/Angelic into a more cosmetic, but cool looking thing where:

  • players with enough Demonic points have a darker, more Demonic like skin and when maxed out Demonic horns
  • players with enough Angelic points have a lighter, more Angelic like skin and when maxed out a bright aura

Demonic players see the world as a darker, less colorful place whereas Angelic players see the world brighter than neutral players.

Players can chose which path to follow. Solving a quest in an evil way earns you Demonic points. Solving a quest in a good way earns you Angelic points. There is also the possibility to solve a quest in a neutral way.

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310

Path of Wolcen 2 is pretty much all I’m gathering from d4 at this point.

Will still buy it and play though for sure.

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The sorceress enchantment system feels like just having three additional passive slots for the skills. I guess it goes hand in hand with the skill tree, which forces you to take different skills. And combined with the enchantment system it forces you to think what you want to do with the skills you didn’t want in the first place. Let’s you you go for Charged Bolts, because you like the skill (don’t underestimate the role playing aspect!). The skill tree forces you to take fireball (I guess), a totally unrelated skill (see also my other post about the skill tree). Now you have a skill you don’t want to use. But wait! Thanks to the enchantment system, you don’t have to use it actively, but can use it as a passive! Sorry for the sarcasm - I hope you get my point anyway.

The point is - again - that the player is forced to take choices that are ment to be interesting only. There is no role playing or “immersion” aspect to it.

I thought about that and came up with the idea that the sorceress should have a special relationship with her weapon (be it a staff or a sword, does not matter). The barbarian has an arsenal - that’s great, because it makes that role playing sense. What if you moved the enchantments onto the weapons? The sorceress is enchanting her weapon, to be not just a powerful artifact, but her personal and customized actifact. The next idea I had is the power of combinations. Think about Final Fantasy VIIs materia system - about the support materia. You can combine the support materia with seemingly any other materia to modify it in a general way. In Diablo 4, you could make the spell AOE, or multi-target, or multi-projectile, or cheaper or with a trigger-effect like on hit or what have you. I had the idea of the modifier being a “lense” (a physical modification) or actually being an enchantment (a magical modification) of the weapon, helping you to channel in the spell energy in another way. That makes a lot of role playing sense to me. What if that lenses or enchantments have to be crafted and set in or inscribed into the weapon permanently. The knowledge itself, how to craft the lense or how to enchant, could itself be skills in the skill system. But to not force the player to take one of these, there should always be a trade-off, like AOE being weaker then the single target spell and so on.

Another way to enforce the sorceress-weapon-relationship would be to combine the lenses/enchantments with a weapon-level, like “relationship level”. You have to use the weapon for some time to be able to modify it - or modify it further.

Modifing a minion spell like hydra would modify the spells of the minion. Modifing a fire bolt to a fire ball (AOE) for example.

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312

Please don’t do paragon level !!!

  1. endless levelling is repeated effort with no fun
  2. stupidly high stats could ruin the game design and make players irrelevant
  3. cheaters/bots who are 24/7 on gain huge advantages from their high levels
  4. it makes the new players almost impossible to catch up
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313

I like the enchantment system but it should be applied to all classes. Deciding if a skill should be active or passive seems kind of cool.

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Some thoughts on Diablo IV end-game content

  • End-game content should range from challenging to extremely hard to near impossible.
  • There should be a variety of end-game content specific for solo players and a wide variety of different end-game content specific for groups of different sizes.
  • To conquer end-game content players need to use combination of skills, for example by making different enemies have different weaknesses so it’s not just dodging and attacking with your one big damage skill. A few simple weaknesses could be:
    • weakness to a freeze attack followed by a physical or fire attack
    • weakness to back attacks
    • weakness to charge attacks, for example when dealing with a group of skeletons with shields in formation
    • weakness to counters, i.e. monsters telegraph their special attacks and players have an interval where they can counter the attack
  • Launch new end-game content every 3 months. Put some of the current end-game content on ice for a while and bring it back after a while with some refinements.
  • Make sure a player cannot at any time get so powerful that the hardest end-game content becomes easy.
  • It’s ok if some parts of an end-game challenge are not randomized, as long as the end-game challenge changes every 3 months.
  • Make each monster behave as uniquely as possible, especially in end-game content.
  • Create boss battles you’ll remember.
  • I would highly recommend not to reuse easy content for end-game by just increasing the monsters hp and damage.
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315

I like the idea of combining skills. This requires modification skills and modifiable skills. Maybe the modifications don’t need to be skills at all. Could also be physical items (like lenses). Anyway, thumbs up for combos! :slight_smile:

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316

About the clips of the meteors, displaying the active and passive aspect: The meteor should not have that rag doll effect on the killed enemies. It does not fit and looks like D3. There should be flattend and burned corpses after the impact. The rag doll effect works for some spells, but not here I feel.

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I wanted to share a revised idea based on some of the other thoughts I’ve seen so far. I can’t embed links still… so hopefully someone that can will embed and link to this post?

imgur. com/RmRS6WA

To reiterate the reason… the talents feel incredibly linear at the moment, but the theme is super strong. I don’t expect a revolutionary talent system, but I do hope they find ways to make this feel a little refreshing from a traditional talent tree.

This concept will help create a sense of individuality for characters while not having a huge impact on the design they currently have.

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There are a lot of posts here asking for an entire skill tree for EACH skill. It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard in a long time. Making 1,000 different viable and balanced specs for each class not the best use of development time, and I honestly don’t even think its feasible, especially for the initial release of the game. It might actually make the game worse by giving players way too many options too early on, thereby making the leveling process too time consuming and decisions becoming too difficult (for players that don’t want to spend days simming a character before they actually level one). I can’t think of anything more annoying as a (relatively) casual player than leveling a character through one of 1,000 specs only to discover its completely unviable by the middle of the leveling process, and then not being able to change my build.

This could be something considered in an expansion, but not for every skill, just a select few skills for each class to add variations of gameplay, after the devs have already gotten a great sense for how players are interacting with the game.

What made D2/exp. endlessly repayable was not a massive labyrinth of differently skilled characters. At the end of the day 90%+ of characters in each class were maybe one of 3 - 5 builds. What made the game far more fun was the unique way various items interacted with skills (esp. after rune words were introduced) and the difficulty of actually finding the best items. Also the ability to trade, so that you could swap things you didn’t particularly need for something of equal (or if you were good at it, better) quality, and your gear wasn’t entirely useless if you decided to change spec or make another character your main.

Effectively, class variations in D2 were a function of gear, vs. the endgame in D3, where you basically found every legendary item without too much trouble, and improving gear was just finding a better version of the same item. That coupled with a skill tree that lacked avenues for diversity resulted in the endgame not being anywhere near as compelling as D2. The D3 endgame just felt like a grind and wasn’t rewarding at all.

So I think the focus for the original game should be on item diversification vs. a massive amount of skill diversification (which can maybe come later).

319

If only that was the case :confused:

I found a picture of a better Diablo 4 skill tree tbh

Way more splitting paths, way more branches that crosses each other.

Indeed.
Better and safer to assume that what they show is what we get. Or, more likely, we get a dumped down version of what is shown. That was true in D3 development.

Edit; hah, apparently that tree is called Dragon Blood, and its sap looks like this. Talk about immersion!

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320

I can safely participate in Blizzconline cosplay now covering my costume with Dragon blood resin. That was definitely the missing piece haha.

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321

Now that would be really cool, if charms were integrated into the skill tree where you place them in designated charm slots on the skill tree.

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322

Yes, maybe something like an attunement to an element: can set an element and all the skills get a modification related to that element. Also, skills of that element could have a bonus, like cost less resources or something.

I also like this.

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Yeah, in practical terms its the hardest possible way to design the game and literally the opposite of what PoE does, which regardless if people like or don’t like the game can’t argue that the devs have no issues constantly adding to the pool of skills, items, and mechanics in the game for people to make builds with. PoE doesn’t use skill specific systems, skill explicit affixes, or skill locked mechanics. Instead its all modular using tag categories and this means that new skills, new items, new talents, etc… can all work with old skills, old items, and old talents. This is the key behind the diversity and the ability of the devs to constantly add new content.

Going the other way and building systems top down explicitly from the skill will have the opposite effect. Devs have to go into each skill and give it an option A, B, C, etc… compounding the work just for what would come standard in the game let alone the scale of ever adding anything new.

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Last Epoch is doing it, so it is feasible.

I’d certainly take skill diversity over item diversity if I had to choose (since you can get very far in a itemization system with normal affixes only, so less handcrafting is required). Though you cant get both, so no need to choose.

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So I saw Meteor in this blog.

Plea to the developers: PLEASE make Meteor bombing a thing again in D4. Meteor on the whole has been a very big disappoint since Reaper launched, and that sucks because it’s one of my favorite spells.