The “F2P”, AH, Trading, In game shop, special currency. Those were predictions. Way too much money in that kind of stuff for Blizz to just pass up.
Classes, PvP, Open World Semi-MMO were hopes and predictions.
I got some stuff right.
Every day that passes right now, it seems more and more of my worst fears about D4 are confirmed. They’re “looking into” an auction house.
There are many games with AH functionality and they work fine. Blizz completely screwed up the d3 loot system in 1.x and compounded that horrible mess with a less than stellar ah/rmah approach that quickly created rampant inflation. They never built in a gold sink or item sink (not even from power creep). Only perfect items sold on the AH and sold for big bucks and less than perfect items… no one wanted them.
Build a solid loot system in D4 and an AH won’t be a problem
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I’m not sure. I lost a lot of hope after watching Rhykker interview with David Kim and he was just like “We took away stats because we don’t want players to have to do math. We don’t want them (players) to look at two pieces of gear and one has +10 damage and the other has 100% increased damage and wonder which is better. So we took that away.” You know… This kind of reminded me when Jay Wilson was doing the interview and they were taking away stat points for a person allocate as it only gave “illusion of choice” with no actual choice.
How about instead of taking all this stuff away and simplifying every single thing you come up with innovative designs to improve and extend these features? Try to remember what made these systems fun in the first place.
For “math choices” it was all about optimization. It’s not about which is better (+10 damage or 100% increased). It’s about that it’s a small optimization that a skilled player can make and in doing so have a slightly stronger character than someone who didn’t optimize. Those different stats where you couldn’t really work out which one is always better provided a system where it wasn’t required to make the best choice to have a strong character, but allowed for players who were interested in meticulously picking out stats for each item to completely optimize their character and would be slightly stronger for it. It was a system that rewarded game knowledge but didn’t hurt the casual player.
Stat points for most cases were “choice illusion”. But this system is so easy to improve on that it was kind of ridiculous they got rid of it. It’s just basic character progression that a person is allowed to invest in as they level. It gives you excitement to level and progress (At least D4 is bringing some of this back with talents and skill points).
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I only hope they dont start that torment 1-16 s*it again
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I fight for full trading lol. Maybe I’m not imaginative enough to think of a way to implement no trade/full trade and it still be satisfying, but I definitely haven’t seen a good one posted in the forums yet and I have read every single one. I just don’t see any pros for the player in a restricted trade environment and a bunch of pros for the company Activision.
I don’t think the goal should be “balance”. The goal should be for Blizzard to make a decision. The worse thing they could do is be indecisive and come up with some half-baked compromise. Unless it’s some stroke of genius (it happens) most compromises end in both parties focusing on the negatives of the compromise over the positives.
I don’t think you have to worry too much about balance. There shouldn’t be an infinite end-game like Diablo 3 has. Infinite anything is (almost) always something you don’t want to implement. Without the infinite scaling “difficulty” balance becomes easier. There will be some imbalance of course, but outside of exploits or unexpected combinations it wouldn’t be anything too major.
It’s a Diablo game, a loot-finding game, which by definition requires it to be a “busy-simulator.”
For all the complaints I’ve had about Diablo 3 over the years, I’ve played the hell out of it. Diablo 4 will be a good game. The problem is that people are aiming for the stars with their expectations and desires, so even if D4 strikes all the way to Pluto, they will be pissed off crying brats about it 
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I mean… I can’t really blame the “pissed off people”. Blizzard is really good at getting people hyped. And when the content doesn’t measure up to the hype there will be a lot of backlash. They are using Diablo 2 to hype up Diablo 4. I honestly believe that blizzard can only blame themselves if the atmosphere/graphics is all they have to offer Diablo 2 fans and it blows up in their faces. And to be honest, it really looked that way at blizzcon. Not saying D4 won’t be successful, but they probably shouldn’t have led the D2 fans on if they weren’t expecting to implement some of the major D2 mechanics.
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Yeah, you’re right, I guess. It’s not like the AH in WoW was ever a problem.
Damn straight. I never thought of it in those terms. It does explain why we all feel so very strongly about this franchise.
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Yep, if D4 is 90% D2 and 10% D3, the D2 fanbois will rage and downvote and 0% review the game on every site they can find, just because of that 10%. And the fact that the game didn’t make them feel like D2 did when they were 11 and oh it was so dark and scary!
OK boomers.
Lol. Not quite. Right now the game looked 10% D2 and 90% D3 and there are very few topics actually “raging”. Most are just constructive feedback. In fact, I see way more people raging at d2 fans than I see d2 fans raging at d4. D2 ‘fanbois’ have only ever raged from D3. Guess what they were called before that? ‘blizz fanbois’. Sorry, but your analysis that d2 fans are an impossible crowd to please or is an unreasonable group of people just doesn’t hold up. It’s almost like you are completely making things up.
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Damn… it’s nice to see some balanced discussion in here. 
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What I saw on the videos of D4 looked like somebody put DarkD3 over D3. It looked bad. I hope that was just an alpha.
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You make a good point there. It felt very depressing. I remember when I first reached the Dulgur Oasis in D3, I was so happy to see a more tranquil environment. It became my favorite hunting ground pre-adventure mode. It’s still dark, but it had a very magical feel to it. It’s all good with the dungeons of act 1, and the hellish areas in act 3, but those areas aren’t strictly beutiful even though they’re well made. I’m a bit on the fence about the whole dark, dark, grim-dark, colorless vibe from what I’ve seen of D4 so far. At least from the ouside open world area. The dungeon and cave stuff looked just fine.
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I always thought it sucked how many of my friends stopped playing early on in Act 1 of D3. They just didn’t like the way it looked, and some had never played other Diablo games.
I want D4 to be great. But, with D3 they got feedback on what the community didn’t like from the moment it was revealed. And some of those things remain complaints to this day.
I worry that they are going to get another jerk in there working on “my dream” instead of something the bulk of the community wants.
I really really hope they do a good job though.
This is basically my biggest concern for D4, that it’s already too late for input. Rather than listen to the bulk of the community, as you said, I think they’ve already mapped it all out and won’t be wasting their time trying to appease us. Not that we all agree, of course, which doesn’t make their jobs any easier.
half of all the complains are posted by players with haste indeed.
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