I really just hope they add slow time again to the sorc like the wizard had in d3… such an underrated skill, being able to slow down the enemys and their projectiles is huuuuuuge. Dont get ride of slow time!°
I have an idea for Diablo 4. This is more of a mechanic for the achievement system. The achievement system to me was always more of an afterthought. Cool stuff that I could see if I had completed something but had no real award for completing. It was end game content that maybe I could achieve but was never a real focus for me.
The Idea: during the character selection either create as the character backdrop, or have a link to a character backdrop, with the character standing or sitting before it. The backdrop wall (tavern wall, some type of residence, castle wall) that players could place trophies gained from these achievements. A mounted head, mounted bone, weapon that a player would immediately, and represent the status of their achievements on the character selection screen.
New players would have a blank wall, as they progress through the story they gain items, trophies, to place on their wall. As they complete harder levels of that same boss, maybe the mount design gets more decorative. The cube was a way tracking collections (which I had always found fun in other games and wished that the mats for equipment had some type of collection system).
Having a visual status that folks would see during the character selection may really drive them to pursue end game achievements and content. Maybe make these walls visible to others as well when they inspect a player.
3 Likes
Yes that’s much better than the D3 Flag item that you change once in a Blue Moon.
The dash looks beyond gimmicky and is not diablo. Blizzard stop trying to turn the game ive played for years of my life into a cheap mobile knockoff.
Doesn’t look close to a mobile knockoff.
I started to play diablo 2 single player like 10 - 12 years old. I was too stupid to play it effectively. Even on battle net few years later i didn’t know how to play. I reached maby 10% of possibilities that game gives but it was great (i even didn’t know that there is so much more to do). Now i’m old, still play diablo 2 and know something about it (partly thanks to tutorials etc). Please give people game which will require time to get it and solve hidden mechanics. Maby some children will not understand them all, but it is possible that they will love it anyway and will play it all life 
I’m too one of those that try to explore every inch of the maps, and one of the things that made me love Grim Dawn are those secret areas that dont show on the map and have a few secret dungeons or mini quests. Hope we see something like that in D4.
1 Like
That would be fun 20 years ago. Right now, the next day after the secret patch you’ll have a guide on the net.
Now, if they make secret areas randomly generated throughout the world (never having a duplicate), that would be another level. I thought about this in the past, but if I have to say “Y” or “N” on it, I lean more to “no” since this is an aRPG, not a quest, and the observation of the player has to be tested during a battle, otherwise there would be bots specifically made to seek and find these secret areas, and open the chests there.
Since there will also be bots for combat, the existsnce of bots should not determine whether secret areas is a good thing tbh.
Not sure I think they are particularly great either however. They can be fun enough in Grim Dawn, but not more than that.
Maybe a better way would be “secret areas” in plain sight. Like, maybe a dungeon has a locked door somewhere. You might get the key randomly as a drop in the dungeon, or by killing a rare spawn.
Or maybe even get the key somewhere else in the world, where you have to go back and look for that door again later on.
1 Like
Let’s hope it won’t be that profitable to use these due to good combat mechanics and hard to get BoA rewards dropping from endgame dungeons requiring skill.
This would make a nice PoE League - accumulate keys and open dungeons. I don’t think I’ll enjoy it for longer than 3 months though, but if it’s designed really well as a mechanic I might. Things have to be tested in that direction.
[quote=“Skelos-2150, post:1, topic:5986, full:true”]
Warning: This is a very long post requiring more than an hour to read. Below are stated the contents of the post, so you can go to the part you are most interested in if you don’t have much time. There is no TLDR.
First, I want to say a big “Thank you!” to the whole Diablo 4 team for developing and creating such an epic game! This is the best aRPG ever by far, light-years ahead from everything else until now ever produced in this genre. Bravo D4 team! You’ve got my approval. And when you’ve got the approval of someone so critical about that stuff like myself, you are surely on the right track with your game.
From what I saw and read in the last 3 days about Diablo 4 I can say with 100% certainty that this time the development team of Diablo 4 is designing the game with a plan in their heads. The random stream of (un)conscious thoughts that brought us RMAH, trials, endless paragon with an absurd curve, bounties, sets as top tier, set dungeons, challenge rifts with no tier progression snapshotting low-skilled builds, are replaced with a very deep understanding of what is being built this time.
Second, I want to say to the whole Diablo community that now is the time to support the Diablo 4 team with constructive opinions. Whether or not you like something about the game, put your arguments in a way that will deliver productive discussions. I would love to see such discussions organized by streamers who love and care for Diablo. There is no better time to improve Diablo 4 with our feedback as of now. The forges are burning hot and this time is for real.
Last, I am very happy that the Diablo 4 developers will be listening to the community through their quarterly discussions on crucial topics. There is nothing better than building a game together with your player base! I wish you all the best Diablo 4 team. Keep up the good work in the years to come!
Chapters:
1. Console feel
2. Seasonal experience
3. Itemization
4. Runewords
5. Trading & competition
I am going to go in-depth with these topics below and explain the problems I see there, but also defend the current iteration of some of the systems that are creating much tension in the Diablo community. Many posters want something exactly the way it was in previous Diablo games without realizing that the current version of it in Diablo 4 is better. I hope my post will change the vision of at least a tiny percent of these people.
So, here we go…
1. Console feel
I am a PC gamer. I communicate with the machine through keyboard and mouse. And if a key is not working properly or my mouse has dust beneath it, it is of utmost importance for me to fix these, because besides being a PC gamer, I am also a competitive gamer.
The most competitive games online have a top-down view and I am extremely happy this is the case in Diablo 4, just as it was in previous games from the series.
An isometric top-down view compared to other types of views allows the player to have a full awareness of what is going on around him. Such kind of view is great for games with complex and diverse paths. But do we have such in Diablo 4?
From what I saw of the gameplay shown at the panels, the dungeon corridors and paths are linear and narrow. Just as in console games. It creates the feeling that you are going through a tunnel made by some evil trapper, not randomly spawned by nature. This tunnel is the same no matter if you go left or right - its size, width and appearance are not that random as these would be in nature.
Maybe this kind of stuff is not that common to witness, but my fear is that the random procedural map/tiles generator is not on the level I want it to be. Or it is, but it is creating console-like environments, because consoles have more priority than PC profits wise.
Diablo 4 needs superb randomization of map areas, zones and dungeons. This should be always a top priority for an aRPG game, especially one of the caliber of Diablo 4. I wrote many times the random generation of maps in D3 lacks quality. I don’t want to witness the same in Diablo 4.
Another console-like feature in Diablo 4 is the UI. One of the most hated D3 features from all the community was its UI. Why not simply give us the freedom to move the UI in Diablo 4 as we want it to be?
I for example want my skill bar in center bottom. Other person would want it in different position. Some would prefer life/mana orbs in top left, while the map in bottom left. Why lock everyone in a console-like UI? If your concern is competition related, then simply give us 5-6 options for UI we can switch between. The majority of PC players will surely prefer a different one than console players. And your game will look great on Twitch no matter the UI positions. Don’t lock everyone within the same UI!
Last in this section are the flashing effects when hitting enemies. If I want flashing effects every second I’d go to a trance party, the music there is better kappa. Again, as many of us mentioned thousands times in the D3 topics - the solution is pretty simple - give us an option to turn off the flashing effects. Allow us to experience the Diablo 4 world without constant flashes when fighting. It may look cool on Twitch and promote your game, but think about those people like me who find this annoying.
2. Seasonal experience
The Seasonal experience in Diablo 4 will be the game’s main focus. The itemization, which I am discussing in next chapter, and other systems in the game speak for this pretty well. The Diablo 4 team wants the players to have different gameplay experience with each new Season by creating unique Seasonal mechanics serving for meta game shifts. Finally! Seasons will feel different than Non-Season and the item farming and build priorities will switch not due to power creep rather due to new interesting mechanics introduced with each new Season! Very, very cool!
This however means the dedicated NS players will be somewhat left behind compared to D3, but is this really a problem if everyone is having much more fun due to completely fresh Seasonal experience changing on regular basis?
What that regular basis would be, namely would Seasons refresh each month, or each two or three months is still unknown and will largely depend on how popular the game would be. The more popular and played Diablo 4 becomes, the more shorter Seasons we might enjoy since the Diablo 4 team would become larger and capable of delivering us more content per year.
Personally I would enjoy a flat one month Seasons as in Hearthstone. Here is what I would like to see from such monthly Seasonal experience:
- During first week the player is making the step to legendary items
- During second week the player is creating his endgame build with legendary items
- During third week the competitive player is ranking at the LB, while other players continue to improve their characters
- During last week a major world event with multiple world Bosses happens in-game and all players aim to finish that event together as a team fighting separately through the world, which is now cursed and each player receives unpredictable unique changes to his own skills, which will be there until all world Bosses are alive aka Season’s end
Such world event at the end of the Season would serve for new gameplay experience for all groups of players accessible only during that time of the Season. In-game AI could properly “evolve” each character’s skill bar into new one depending on how the player interacted with the game environment until now.
3. Itemization
The majority of posts in the last days regarding the Diablo 4 itemization are mainly negative. Every player has the full right to be concerned whether we are getting a good itemization or not, simply because the itemization is the core of the aRPG game. You can have the perfect aRPG game in all other aspects, but if its itemization is not good, well, it is going to be a bad game.
But is this the case with the Diablo 4’s itemization or are the majority of posters simply not looking deep enough?
Contrary to what you expected to see in this chapter aka me hating the Diablo 4 itemization, I would try to explain why the current itemization in Diablo 4 lays the foundation for the perfect Seasonal experience everybody would enjoy.
In the previous chapter I wrote that the philosophy of the Diablo 4 developers is to create meta game shifts with each new Season. This would be done optimally if the legendary items are the highest tier of items in the game.
The current item tier structure in Diablo 4 is this:
Normal (white) -> Magic (blue) -> Rare (yellow) -> Set (green) -> Legendary (orange) and Mythic (red)
The concern of many players is that such item tier structure makes rare items redundant for the end-game. If Diablo 4 adopts the D2 itemization the item tiers would allow magic and rare items for end-game builds. But is this really needed?
What makes interesting the legendary items are their special properties modifying our skills and gameplay in unique ways. If we remove completely the legendary items from the game encouraging the players to min/max only magic and rare gear, what would happen with the idea of a meta game shift when a new Season starts?
Think about this… Take a break and think about this… Then take a longer break and think about this some more…
That is right - the meta game shift won’t be that impactful, because the special properties of the legendary items are missing.
A min/maxing done entirely with legendary items would receive the biggest impact from a meta game shift serving for highest possible skill cap.
The more we rely on legendary affixes the bigger the meta game shift with each new Season:
Magic & Rare only -> Magic, Rare, Legendary on the same item tier -> Legendary only
Why we need a meta game shift and what is this exactly?
Simply said, if using A, B and C skills with A’, B’ and C’ items is optimal during Season S, it won’t be optimal when next Season SS occurs.
An impactful meta game shift would guarantee the ABC combo is not optimal during Season SS meaning that the player would need to solve the itemization again. And again in SSS. And again… A fresh theorycrafting and itemization game with each new Season.
That sounds like a skilled aRPG game and would be best achieved with the current tiered itemization the developers have decided to use.
But what about the simplified Math?
Simplified Math doesn’t take the min/maxing away. It has no relation to it. Item stats serving for complex Math calculations only force the players to use online tools to “solve” the game. Complex min/maxing could be done entirely with a simple Math. And the more simple is the Math, the more newcomer friendlier is the itemization. Instead of having hundreds of “damage” stats on the items requiring a PhD in Math to properly solve, we have “Attack”.
And having one stat for damage doesn’t mean we won’t be able to min/max. The legendary item special properties serving for unique gameplays guarantee we would experience a complex min/maxing game in Diablo 4. It just won’t depend on complex Math. And there is no need to. Diablo 4 is an action-RPG, not a math-RPG.
So, we have the perfect itemization in Diablo 4?
Not quite. I am seeing potential pitfalls with the mythic items, which may turn to what sets are in D3 if not properly designed.
We would be able to wear only 1 mythic item in Diablo 4. That means the developers understand the great power behind mythics.
If mythic items are designed to force us equip specific combos of legendaries after we find them then this would be the D3 sets case. If mythic items are just legendaries with 4 special properties instead of 1 then everything would be okay as long as these 4 properties roll randomly and are not designed to force us into specific gear. I have no idea what their current design philosophy with mythic items is, but I hope they are aware of the situation where they might turn these into D3 sets.
Last, I am against ancient versions of sets, legendaries or whatever other items. I am against tiered versions of items in general since these are simply more raw stats. And this type of game should be left to those who grind paragon in D3 - just remove them the 20k paragon cap and let them grind stats for life in D3. But please, don’t do it in D4 masked behind tiers of items.
Don’t require from your players to grind simple stats when you have such an amazing possibilities for creating end-games for all groups of players.
4. Runewords
I like the addition of cause-effect runewords in Diablo 4. I mean who doesn’t? It’s a very nice implementation and I would love to remain as it is now - simple - 1 cause and 1 effect. This would force us to choose more instead of binding dozens of effects mindlessly to a single cause.
But what about those D2 type of runewords? Some community members want the strongest items in Diablo 4 to be again the runewords from D2… Let’s grind for runes and combine them into powerful items… Sounds good on paper, but is it actually?
What the D2 runewords effectively do is lower the drop rates variance. Let’s say player A grinds 10 hours in a D2-like game with runewords and finds runes A, B, C, D, E, F, while player B grinds 10 hours in same D2-like game without runewords seeking item X, but doesn’t finding it. Now, player B goes to sleep waiting tomorrow to grind again for X, while player A who’s after the same item X (which is buildable with runes in his game) puts runes D, E, F in the cube creating G, and after that uses A, B and G to make the runeword “GAB” aka the item X.
Reducing the variance is fun, but this could be done with crafting too. There is no need to implement D2 runewords just for the sake of reducing the variance.
One of the reason for this is because the runewords themselves create unnecessary complications. If we have 1k legendary items and replace them with 1k runewords, every time a player wants to create a specific item has to open a spreadsheet and look at exact runeword for this item. And when the meta game changes, the player has to look again at other rune combinations.
The runeword mechanic was good in D2, because there wasn’t a crafting system for reducing the item variance and there weren’t any meta game shifts, so everyone’s cat knew JAH-ITH-BER is a powerful combo each Season.
So, no D2 runewords in Diablo 4 then?
Well, not quite. You forgot the most unique quality of the D2 runewords - they become known when you successfully assemble one. It happens so that because of the Internet guides everyone knew JAH-ITH-BER was powerful, but what if you don’t have access to Internet and you play D2 alone offline? How would you know this?
The only way is through a trial and error - and what better game for the dedicated players than this one?
Here comes my suggestion about how to implement D2 runewords in Diablo 4:
Make specific runes (blank ones) drop only in Seasonal mode. Let’s say we would have 6 such runes for 4320 permutations of 3 letter runewords. Players would be able to insert these in 3-socketed items to “guess” a runeword. And if there are 78 runewords not bound to item type or class, the player would complete one runeword on 55 attempts at average. In order not to have larger communities artificially grouping to reduce the waste of potential runes, each runeword needs to be unique per account and per Season.
This would mean same item X would be runeword “GAB” for player A and runeword “ALK” for player B in Season S. In Season SS item X would not be “GAB” for A nor “ALK” for B, rather something else that each player has to find out for himself.
Now you have an interesting game for the players accumulating more wealth than the others during the Season. And it doesn’t involve grinding for stats.
The items created with such type of runewords would be the most powerful items in the game (2-3 times more powerful than mythic), but only usable for the world event at the end of the Season, not for something else. Once the world event and Season ends, those items would become dust since in the new Season these runewords won’t mean anything.
The most dedicated players during the Season will naturally have the highest chance to properly guess a runeword thus wearing the most exceptional items during the world event and being recognized by everyone, because of this.
5. Trading & competition
The current trading format and its interference with the competition is the biggest problem in Diablo 4 currently. It seems to me the Diablo 4 developers have forgotten the D3 RMAH days, because they are not only allowing trading between the players, but implementing shared stashes for clans, which are going to amplify the bad effects from trading tremendously. I will go into more details below, but first I want to make clear which groups of players lose and which benefit from trading in an aRPG game in general.
Casual and new players benefit since trading for them is usually a social activity during which they receive less for what they offer from the pro traders, but they don’t notice this since they don’t know the actual value of the items traded.
The pro traders are those playing the trading game within the aRPG game caring mostly to make profitable deals and later receive real money from these.
The regular players are separated in their preference for trading. Some like it, others don’t.
The dedicated players are usually skilled as traders since they play much and know the value of items, and it may seem to some of them that trading is a good tool for them to acquire more wealth, but in reality trading absolutely destroys the meaning to be a dedicated player since all the time you put into the game makes no difference when the whale can buy everything you have with real money.
The whales are the players that don’t have time to grind the game and prefer to spend real money to acquire the items from the pro traders. Trading is obviously of utmost importance to them.
The competitive players dislike trading since it effectively changes the drop rates and a game can not be competitive if it has both drop rates and trading.
The above is the general case. We can draw important conclusions from it, namely that:
- Trading is good for new/casual players, pro traders and whales
- Trading is always bad for dedicated players although many of these don’t realize it
- Trading is bad for competitive players when it interferes with the competition
How is the trading currently structured in Diablo 4?
- Always tradeable (gold, runes, gems, crafting mats, consumables)
- Tradeable once (magic and rare items)
- Not tradeable (legendary and mythic items)
- Shared stash/bank in clans
In every online game making a clan popular and famous is the top priority of the clan leader and the clan members. Here is how this is going to work in Diablo 4 with such type of trading system:
- A clan leader will choose the majority of members based on their skill level
- Higher skilled members mean more popular clan
- After assembling a team of highly skilled members, support clan members will be chosen
- Support member is one that funnels the shared clan stash with all possible items with taking only the absolute necessary things for himself in order to farm
- Being a clan support member won’t be much fun, but we already know that when no fun activities are introduced in aRPG games players refer to botting
- The clan leader together with some other members will manage those brotherhood type of support members guaranteeing constant flow of needed items in the clan
- The fourth clan category of members is those of the whales aka the gold mines of the clans that will be there for personal fame as being part of a top clan without having the needed skills, but having the money
- The clan leader will choose the whales based on their RL money they are willing to donate to the clan
- The whales will buy needed stuff from other third parties when there is urgent need to do this aka when the support members all go offline at the same time suddenly (when banned) and supply the clan stash with gold that the skilled members could use for gambling
The expected proportional share of clan members:
- 1% is clan leader
- 75% are skilled members
- 20% are support members
- 4% are whales
Clans will be a real powerhouse in Diablo 4 with this type of trading system, especially because one can get legendary items from gambling. Botting and third party trading will flourish and competition will be crippled, because there is no SSF mode.
But the whales will be happy. And the whales are those spending most on MTX, right?
So, the current Diablo 4 developers philosophy in a nutshell about the groups of players is this: Glorify the whales and the casuals, disregard the dedicated players and cripple the competition, so that the truly competitive players go back to other games. We can always do this obviously, but I’d prefer to compete fairly in Diablo 4 too.
Such trading system however won’t allow for a fair competition as long as:
- Trading is enabled from the start of the Season so conquest competition is crippled
- There are no stat caps for PvE, PvP and PvPvE competitions ensuring that the whales and the botters have stat advantage
And if you want more people to follow Diablo 4 the competition has to be fair (no stat advantages from trading/botting/account sharing), engaging (high skill cap) and accessible (not requiring huge time investment), not spoiled by those investing RL money to buy stuff from third parties or run bots.
Thank you for reading,
Skelos
[/quote]I like a lot of that myself 
1 Like
Hello,
I did not see anything related to my idea, but it could be great to have this: when you store your build in amory, if by mitake you lost one item, you could still see its type and its stats, so that you will be able to compare with the replacement item.
I wish I could have this in D3 >.>
I think this post here is about D4, not D3.
Yeah I know, I wrote this for D4.
I think it’s too late to request feature on D3 (that’s why my wish I could)
This paragraph is interesting.
I just started the D2 remake in Grim Dawn
Can we get a game that feels like real time as if I am actually playing the game? D3 gives a ton of loot that is useless. Can we make gears be more rarer in general across all classes and types? And movement speed is too fast. I dont see the point of rushing through everything. And as for druid, who wants to play a bear? One reason people play this game is bc of looks. Can we just have bear hands or a feature of bear instead of whole transformation?
1 Like
Rushing through is the mindset of the majority of players in all games these days.
Hello all! I know this is an old conversation and I know Diablo 4 will be releasing next year as I am typing this, and that most of the game may already be completed and/or already planned out but I was hoping maybe one of the Blizzard employees or someone associated with Blizzard would see this and read it and give it some real thought. Thank you for reading!
Diablo 4 Gameplay Loop Ideas
Dillon Hamilton
Overview
My Name is Dillon Hamilton, and I have some ideas/ideology for a Diablo 4 gameplay loop that may be a catch with people. You have my full permission to use at your will at any point in time in the game any ideas/ideology written here. (Appreciate the read!)
Goals
- The only goal in mind here is to get people caught in the gameplay loop and, wanting to play more as well as get them addicted/very interested in continuing the gameplay loop. The loop Can only be done with a maximum of 4 people(?).
- Another goal would be to get players to play most of, if not all content in the game (if possible).
In-depth Activities
Act 1 Activity (considering there are acts as in diablo 2 and 3)
The Act 1 Activity would be kind of like a rift from diablo 3. The Rift (insert name here) will be progressed via killing monsters, elite(?) and all, however elites(?) will not drop orbs as they did in Diablo 3(instead the progress would be directly added to the bar). When the progress bar reaches 100% a random act miniboss will spawn in (or maybe a random made boss from a list for this specific activity or for act activities?). The activity can only be accessed from the obelisk (or another structure of some sort?) which requires 3 tokens (or insert key item here) that can only be obtained from activities that are strictly:
• Killing World Bosses
• Completing Main Quests (which are repeatable?)
• Completing Bounties (if bounties do not exist, then killing main Act bosses?)
The token(s) would need to be crafted (by some way or not?) into a single token which the obelisk (or key structure/vendor) would use to start/enter the activity. The crafted token would require materials and in game-currency to some degree acquired by playing, and not be able to be acquired with real money/currency.
The tokens drop rate would depend on difficulty (at lowest ~10% and at max ~75-85%?). When the Obelisk (or other activated structure?) is activated, a portal will appear so the Activity can be accessed.
Act 2 Activity
The Act 2 Activity would be located in a dungeon in a zone (picked by a dev for some reason?) where the dungeon is randomly located in the zone, however the Activity is always located in said dungeon (and said dungeon is always located randomly in said zone of Act 2). The Act 2 Activity in said dungeon will be accessed by a structure (of some sort?) and would require 1 token from Act 1 Activity from each person wanting to cooperate in said activity. Act 2 Activity can only be accessed from said dungeon in Act 2 exclusively. The Act 2 Activity consists of going through a Randomly Generated Level opened by the Act 2 Mechanism used to access the activity, and the objective would be to kill ~80% of all monsters in said Randomly Generated Level, however after the first floor is cleared a new portal will open at the end of the floor, which leads to another Randomly Generated Level, where the objective would be the same except, when the second Randomly Generated Level objective is complete a random World Boss(if that is a feature that releases?) will spawn in.
Act 3 Activity
The Act 3 Activity would be located in the Act 3 hub and would be accessed by a random vendor (new vendor?) which opens a portal to a type of proving grounds (similar to the Echoing Nightmare Season 26 event of Diablo 3) where the Objective is to Survive a certain time limit where the monsters will scale depending on how long you have survived, up to a certain limit in this activity though. The scaling would scale only up to ~25%. At the end of the time limit a Main Act boss will appear and will be scaled to +25% of current difficulty.
Act 4 Activity
The Act 4 and final act activity would be located in a random dungeon in act 4 where the zone contains the dungeon(randomly), and the said dungeon will always contain the act 4 activity (same as the act 2 activity). The player(s) will need 1 token/key item obtained from the act 3 activity boss. When the Act 4 activity obelisk(mechanism?) is activated, the player will then be asked to use 1 Act 3 activity token/key item and then the player will then select a tier (something equivalent to greater rifts in Diablo 3) which will allow the player to access endless difficulty content. After the player selects the difficulty/tier a portal will open which will take the player to a Randomly Generated act 1 level from any act 1 dungeon/zone (of the sort) and will activate a 30-minute timer. The player(s) will then have to defeat monsters to progress a completion bar that when it fills to max the Act 1 main boss will spawn at whatever difficulty/tier was selected (possible time added to the timer for defeating monsters/elites and maybe bosses?). After the Act 1 main boss is defeated, a portal will open to another Randomly Generated Level except the level will be of act 2 dungeons/zones only and will repeat until Act 4 Randomly Generated level and then main act boss is defeated. After The act 4 main act boss is defeated in the Act 4 activity one last portal will appear and it will lead to an Exclusive area only accessible in the Act 4 Activity, in which An Exclusive boss will be fought that can only be fought in the Act 4 Activity.
In-Depth Loot, Experience and Enemies
Act 1 IDLEE (In-Depth Loot, Experience and Enemies)
• Act 1 Activity Loot
Any Loot can drop (character class prioritized like in Diablo 3?) with your character level loot dropping only (level 60 max level drops level 60 loot only etc.). Loot would drop with a +1 version of each possible rolled stat on said piece of loot/gear to minimum chance of roll (example from diablo 3 is: damage % roll on weapon ranges from 6-10% at max level). Example of a piece of loot from Diablo 4 non-act 1 activity would be: weapon rolls damage% from 1-10% except in act 1 activity, minimum would be increased by 1% on said weapon/loot piece, so act 1 weapon rolls damage% from 2-10% instead(This applies to all possible stat rolls on every piece of gear to reward players for playing the activity in a way that won’t require the activity to be played to get strong gear/loot). The Act 1 Activity Boss has a chance depending on difficulty to drop a (key item inserted here)/token that will allow players to access the Act 2 Activity exclusively by completing the Act 1 Activity. Token drop rates would be at lowest difficulty ~10% and at max difficulty ~75-80% drop rate (changes will be made where necessary of course).
• Act 1 Activity Experience from Enemies
Experience from enemies will not give more Experience per kill than non-act 1 activity enemies, however, would be scaled by difficulty as most commonly.
• Act 1 Activity Enemies
Enemies in Act 1 Activity will be random from list of enemies in game excluding bosses (or a chosen list from devs?). Enemies in Act 1 Activity will be scaled ~5-10% higher (this includes only health/damage?) and the Act 1 Activity Boss would be a random act miniboss(or a list of bosses made specifically for Act Activities?) as mentioned above.
Act 2 IDLEE
• Act 2 Activity Loot
All level/loot drop mechanics apply to this Activity (example is at max level only max level gear will be dropped) as well. The changes that would take place would be that the minimum stat rolls on gear/loot would be +1 higher minimum base than the Act 1 Activity (example of an item in Diablo 4 would be a weapon that rolls with 1-10% damage outside of Act 2 activity however, inside the activity the same roll would roll 3-10% damage.) The Act 2 Boss will drop a token (insert key item here) that can only be used to access the Act 3 Activity and the token/key item obtained from Act 2 would have at the lowest difficulty ~10% drop rate and at max difficulty it would have ~75-80% drop rate.
• Act 2 Activity Experience from Enemies
Experience from enemies in Act 2 Activity will not give more experience than non-act activities but will scale based on difficulty as most commonly.
• Act 2 Activity Enemies
Enemies in Act 2 Activity would be random from list of enemies in game excluding bosses (or chosen list from devs?). Enemies in Act 2 Activity will be scaled ~10-15% higher (this includes health/damage?) and the Act 2 Activity would be a random world boss (if possible).
Act 3 IDLEE
• Act 3 Activity Loot
All level/loot drop mechanics apply to this activity as well. The changes that would take place would be that the minimum stat rolls for gear/loot would be +1 higher than the Act 2 Activity (example would be a weapon rolling damage% in a non-Act activity would roll from 1-10% and inside the Act 3 Activity that same roll would range from 3-10% damage). The Act 3 Main Boss will drop a token (key item inserted here) that allows the player to access the Act 4 and final act activity. At lowest difficulty the key item/token has ~10% to drop and at max difficulty token/key item has an ~75-80% to drop.
• Act 3 Activity Experience from Enemies
Experience from Enemies in Act 3 Activity will not give more experience than non-act activities/enemies but will scale based on difficulty as most commonly.
• Act 3 Activity Enemies
Enemies in Act 3 Activity would be random from list of enemies in game excluding bosses (or chosen list from devs?) Each wave of enemies spawn in scaling stronger up to ~25% and at the end of the timer for the Activity, a random Main Act Boss will spawn scaled to +25% of current difficulty.
Act 4 IDLEE
• Act 4 Activity Loot
In this Activity no monsters will drop loot except for the very last boss, (similar to Diablo 3 Greater Rifts) but the last boss will drop loot somewhat equivalent to all the bosses combined(amount). As for the loot that drops in the end the changes that may (or may not) take place will be that the minimum stat roll for any piece of gear/loot will be +2 higher than the Act 3 Activity (and maybe the maximum will get increased by something along the lines of +5% maximum and/or equivalent?) For example, a weapon rolls with 1-10% damage outside of act activities, but inside Act 4 Activity the same roll will be 5-10% damage (or possibly 5-15% damage?). The act 4 Last Boss will also have a chance of dropping a Legendary Gem that can be socketed into jewelry only, the chance of drop would at lowest tier be a 0% chance and at +50% scaling according to the highest-level difficulty the game normally allows (essentially +50% more difficulty) the drop rate would be 100%.
• Act 4 Activity Experience from Enemies
The Enemies will give more Experience per kill the higher tier/difficulty the player selects. It will scale with the difficulty/scale (along with a possible player count bonus?).
• Act 4 Activity Enemies
The enemies in Act 4 Activity will be random but will only be random from the act zone/dungeon area you are currently in excluding bosses. All Enemies will be as strong as the selected tier/difficulty (along with a possible player count bonus?)
I know this post was long but thank you for giving it a read!
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Hi Dillon Hamilton and welcome to the forums!
D4 is scheduled to release in Q1 2023.