Not sure how there is no logic behind killing the monsters. But that is this genre. Kill, loot, repeat. You can add some different systems and nuance, but in the end it will always be kill, loot, repeat. If that’s not your thing there are plenty of story driven RPGs and visual novels you can play.
Agreed. Spellcasters should not feel like they are just using the same stuff and able to carry a maul around like a barbarian. The Diablo 3 method really took away from the feeling of being a caster.
Also noticed the salvage on items, so it would be nice to hear more about that system. Crafting can be fun, but needs to be useful without completing overshadowing item drops.
Class → Skills (points) → Stat (points) distribution → Items
Seems to be the hierarchy?
What is the main stat for the unannounced classes?
Wouldn’t the primary stat aid the primary role for the archetype while the alternative stats can be extensions of already predefined capacities of classes?
How about hybrid classes hypothetically needing all stats yet less of them?
Aren’t the possibilities for what can be done with attribute based stat systems helpful!
How they are built against also matters.
So higher armored targets would be more susceptible to rapid lower damage swings and lighter armored characters more susceptible to harder hitting swings.
While things may initially be perceived as equal they are not always equal as opposites are identically equal in their difference.
With variables factoring in from even the setting of the present encounter of the environment. Would a druid outside in a rainstorm have a terrain buff that basically makes it their territorial to rumble in? Need I find myself through or around the woods because of such?
Is that druid incapable of calling a storm somewhere without such beneficent predicament?
What happened to trying out a skill and if you liked the way it felt much like swinging a sword or aiming a projectile velocity weapon you decided to play that way and enhance that anyway you could?
Shouldn’t the stats as they are despite being untouched raw potential have a specific playstyle enhancing nature to them? At what point does someone that invested in nothing but strength hit how much harder than someone that perhaps split between other thresholds?
Wouldn’t strength be better off raising minimum and or also maximum range values?
Would getting four or eight stat points help alleviate the burden of envisioning the depth attainable from each level and the basic attribute selecting?
Can’t every single skill used simple tie into its effectiveness with the present value of a given stat?
What if your favorite skill to use required this ‘dead stat for my class’
Wouldn’t that piss you off all the more? That now to be the best at using a specific skill or hell make it so that some skills for example lets consider the barbarian and arsenal system.
How much dexterity is needed in order to use weapons that require dexterity to use proficiently and as a result a skill that requires weapons that require dexterity to use proficiently?
Perhaps wizards that want to hold heavy shields might need a lot more strength in order to do it?
If that strong but stupid wizard came along one day and was able to lift and hold the shield and it saved him another day to live…
Not nit pickity nitty pickins clickity clickster
For a Barbarian stacking str, int still would offer more defense with logarithmic growth as seen in D3.
Back in D3 classic, 3000 armor and 300 resistance was merely 50% damage mitigation for each specific defense layer which has a small diminishing return for benefits on further additive stack of armor and resistance value. Difficulty scale of the highest measure will force the player to allocate some of the stats to the defensive one, that was the case with D3: RoS endgame as well; int classes have str rubies on gear while str/dex stacking diamonds for resistances.
I have no worries about player skipping that one defensive stat for sure because what makes you think you can position without hassle to spam freely when you can not tank some damage? Or wouldn’t your damage bursts get affect from suffering crowd control effects at all?
Attaching the entirety of power to character stats is as useful as attaching the entirety of defense to the equipment, player will break the system easily without making any choice. That’s what I sort of fear.
That’s what I like to speculate on but I think, we’re not talking on same thing. I’m more of an okay with player be able to dump onto some stats of their own choice mainly, and increase their secondary priority as difficulty increases whenever needed. Game shouldn’t force them or hold their hand from the start
An int based Barbarian can be a tank, thanks to increased resistances and his defense on equipment. This barbarian type can choose to spam and sustain his skills by acquiring wil stat next to int, just so he can tank damage by positioning.
However, dexterity giving him crit damage and str giving him direct damage increase, he can not neglect anything even if he wishes to play int-wil based.
Efficiency will be a concern and he’ll be forced to switch back to traditional str-dex if his previous build were to not supported by stat threshold bonuses properly.
I still think direct damage increase shouldn’t be paired with crit chance or attack speed unless we’re talking about a very fragile glass cannon character here with dodge coming from dexterity only his/her main protective line.
To be rather elusive, characters’ main stats can be made into indirect increases to damage (piercing enemy defenses, debuffed enemies, tied to resource regen) without creating more than one direct damage increasing sources.
End of the line is I wouldn’t wanna encourage player to play a glass cannon by dumping damage increasing stats and neglecting the only direct effective health spiking stat to cheese the content.
It’s a rather harsh and strict opinion of mine that might not work, but I certainly remember what happened back in D3 classic. Players only stacked main stat and tried to cheese the content because items were hard to acquire and they faced a rather very complicated ordeal where they have no idea about the possible pool of stats because everything was random.
You have to take into account many variables. The next variables could be the cost for attack, physical damage reduction and critical hits. One large attack would cost less than two smaller attacks, when you use resources. But two smaller hits could have more chances to score a critical hit.
When trying to make balance you have to look at many things. That would be the goal as the designer, to make sure everything comes out comparable. You do this by looking at fractions and how affixes interact with them.
You only add extreme situational mechanics, when you want to destroy balance. Having the player need to be in forests, when most of the game doesn’t happen in a forest, would be pretty bad.
I would give weapons and armor strength restrictions, then have strength also raise physical damage by a percentage. Both could be balanced accordingly, when you take into account fractions.
Example : 1/4 Talent + 1/4 Attribute + 1/4 Skill + 1/4 Weapon = Total
The attribute should make entire sense for your build. When you’re casting a spell that requires more intelligence, then intelligence should raise the damage of that ability. But maybe willpower reduces the cost of that ability and dexterity allows you to cast it much quicker.
Strength could be your polar opposite and you can give up spell power for higher defenses. Because you chose an ability that requires intelligence, the attribute that would opposite should still be desirable. Otherwise there’s a problem with your design and you need to rethink the importance of those attributes.
You work with fractions to find what seems reasonable. But that requires you to understand what elements you have decided upon. And how much a person needs to invest in that attribute as well, would be decided by the designer.
Lets say each fractions maximum would be 100 and you wanted 50% of that maximum needed as a requirement for Longbows. Then the player would need 50 Dexterity to equip Longbows. You then use the same fractions, with the same things you want on a comparative level.
Wizards who focus on Strength to raise Defense, shouldn’t be Glass Cannon. That would the trade you took, by making your attributes more even. A person who makes all their attributes even, should be average across the board.
Since the other attributes also offers defense, there is still no real value in picking int. It is not like it is the defensive choice. It is just worse than the other attributes in all scenarios.
If int for a barb offered a higher defense than the other 3 attributes, at least there would be some sense to their system, even if it would still be a bad one imo.
Should be possible to make a melee sorc imo. Who could maybe use a maul.
What about intelligence applying to shouts? When a shout increases damage, the damage increased would be boosted by intelligence. But the damage of your abilities would be boosted by Strength. It would be comparable to Sorceress with Strength, using Enchant Weapon to boost her attack power.
The difference would be most abilities rely on strength for a barbarian, but the sorceress would rely on intelligence for most abilities. They would be polar opposites, but have the same balance. You would be forced to make a sacrifice, that would still increase your damage.
My problem with that system (even if it is better than what was shown), is that, as you also say, shouts is a fairly small part of the Barbs arsenal. And weapon focused skills are a small niche for wizards. They are important niches, that should both be viable, but hardly something that will make int an interesting choice for most barbs, or str interesting for most wizards.
Whereas, if int helps with all barbs AoE abilities, including shouts for sure, and str helps with all wizards single target attacks. Then both will be very desired for all barbs and sorcs.
No class should have a primary attribute imo. All 4 should be completely viable choices on their own. Depending on what skills, item affixes etc. you are going for.
Zdps barbarians in D3 stack int on top of their resistances. By logarithmic growth stacking too much strength for defense will have diminishing returns on the terms of percentage gain per stat which mellows out the benefit compared to having some resistances. When you stack too much defense let’s say 10k, another +1000 defense may give you only 0.2% damage mitigation where investing in your low resistance values with +100 all resistance would give you 1.5% damage mitigation.
It’s all about difficulty scale and what can you substitute the protection in a double layered damage mitigation system. By the looks of this and considering effective hitpoints, investing in defensive stats is never really a waste.
Back in D3 classic only thing that matered was stacking resistances because even intelligence characters were lacking it but today with power creep they can sustain themselves pretty well without investing further into it and look for another benefit to spike effective hitpoints.
Just, by direct damage increase benefits everything revolves around dumping everything in main stat and I doubt creating more direct damage increasing stats would solve any of this problem.
Not exactly a problem in D4 however, since even if your return on defense gets too low, you still got 2 other affixes to choose from, before you need to pick int.
Also, hopefully zDPS is not a thing in Diablo 4.
It looks like a waste compared to the alternative, better choices.
If there is a pure defensive attribute, which I obviously dont think there should be, then at least make sure it beats ALL the other attributes on its defensive value. By a fairly significant margin. It then might become the good old Vit/life attribute however, which is another thing that should not be brought back imo. Another benefit of having each attribute both offer offense and defense, is that each of those benefits can be smaller. With less risk of becoming nearly mandatory, as it sometimes happens with the +life attribute in some games.
Well, the attributes I mentioned earlier would not benefit everything at the same time.
I don’t actually see a problem here. A barbarian that relies on strength to do damage, can increase their damage further with shouts. You don’t have to use shouts or intelligence at all with your build, but that could be an option.
I don’t see a problem there.
Barbarians primary attribute is Strength because they use physical attacks. The main archetype that uses weapons to do damage, relies on strength to increase that damage. Other attributes should also be important, but strength resonates with that particular archetype.
Sorcerers primary attribute is intelligence because they use magical attacks. The main archetype that uses spells to do damage, relies on intelligence to increase that damage. Other attributes should also be important, but intelligence resonates with that particular archetype.
I agree that all attributes should be important. But it depends on the build.
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Not all barbs should use str if they want to do dmg. Having Str+int as an ooption is nice, but there should also be int+will, or pure int, etc.
It shouldnt be. Nor should str give physical dmg, for a character that relies mostly on physical dmg.
Now, if barb has all kinds of dmg effects, with phsycal only being a part of it, then a physical dmg attribute might be more interesting. But you might risk recreating the D3 problem of all builds having to focus on 1 dmg type then. Hence why I like the separation with single target vs. aoe better. Seems easier to make both of those highly useful (I know, D3 failed hard at that - which is also why I on purpose wanted the single target attribute to be stronger than the AoE attribute).
If people connect str with physical dmg, then give the attribute another name instead. Same for int.
Maybe call str Focus, and int Reach or whatever. Although, int would work just fine with its current name. Intelligent use of your weapon, to hit more targets, or intelligent use of your spell casting, to hit more targets. I find the names unimportant though. Can be named whatever.
Yeah, should depend on the build. Not the class.
Willpower could effect Resource and Cooldown. Allowing you to use powerful abilities more often, which could be just as important for builds. it doesn’t always have to be an increase with damage numbers.
Dexterity could be an increase with movement and attack speed, which could be just as important. Having the ability to attack faster or move around the field easier, could be crucial for a particular build.
There are three archetypes that have been around forever. I’m not saying that the other attributes shouldn’t be important, but newbie players know that warriors use strength.
I almsot edited my post to clarify, as I realized how misleading that is. Yeah, certainly a sorc could have a potential melee build, and while I think a maul is a bit out there, it is possible that could be a build. Perhaps there is Enchant and other spells that help the melee build.
My point was that the sorceress shouldn’t have a fireball that does 10 - 20 damage with nothing, then equip a massive maul and have it do 100 - 200 damage because they have a maul with high attack (and nothing on it that gives to spell damage or anything).
The wording in the blog makes it sound like they are going this route, like Diablo 3, which concerns me. It is really boring to see a strong two handed sword and it fits almost all builds, whether it is a barbarian, a knife throwing assassin, or a spell casting sorceress.
True. I certainly havent argued that all attributes should directly increase your dmg. Quite the opposite. I have said they should all offer an offense benefit.
Of the 4 attributes I mentioned, only 1 increased dmg directly, unless dmg is added to int as well:
Str: Single target dmg
Dex: Proc chance (and maybe also attack speed)
Int: AoE Radius (and maybe a small aoe dmg increase)
Will: Resource cost reduction (I dont think it should give CDR, we dont really need an easy CDR source tbh).
And heck, if people like the idea of str doing X on barb, and int also doing the same thing on sorc, then I guess you could switch the str and int effects around for sorc, so int was the single target dmg increase, while str was the AoE increase. Dont personally see the point though.
Call it something else than strength then.
I did assume that was what you meant. Just wanted to say it shouldnt be impossible for sorcs to use a maul. Most sorc builds just shouldn’t want to, because it wouldn’t benefit them.
Imo, add two dmg values for each weapon.
“Kinetic dmg” (or whatever name), and “Spell power”.
Most mauls would have high kinetic dmg and low spell power. Most wands would have the opposite. Staves might come in both types (and we still need weapons that can work well for hybrid builds, especially a concern for the druid I would guess, but also some barb and sorc builds). So a hybrid staff shouldnt be extremely far behind other weapons, then hybrid builds will suffer.
There should always be a few exceptions/rule-breakers too imo. Like a unique caster axe with high spell power.
The point would be you need to invest in two attributes. You would require Strength for Attack and Defense, while you require Intelligence for Magic and Resistance. Giving one up also decreases your Defense or Resistance. It gives the attributes a reason to be chosen.
It’s an intuitive word.
Why would you change it?
But a sorc wont want physical attack in most cases, nor would a barb want spell dmg in most cases (although, maybe more cases at least). So it wouldn’t really accomplish this goal (which I strongly agree is the goal; making it highly valuable to spend your points on multiple attributes).
Those attributes would just be really weak. Why not create attributes that all classes, and lots of builds, would have a strong desire to get.
Well, if it gives people the wrong impression of the effect, then it isn’t that intuitive.
I am not saying it needs to be changed though. Quite the contrary. But it could be changed if people dont like the name.
A sorcerer could want defense and a barbarian could want resistance. You are essentially giving something up, whatever you decide to choose. You need to have every attribute desirable and defense is more reliable than evasion.
You seem to be misunderstanding something. I don’t think primary attributes should be more powerful than the other attributes. I just think the primary attribute would be common sense for newbies.
When you play the fighter class in dungeons and dragons, the primary and suggested attribute would be strength. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make a dexterity based fighter or multi-class into something else.
It just seems very unlikely that an attribute only giving a defensive benefit, will be able to compete with one that gives both an offensive and defensive benefit. You are not giving anything up by not choosing the pure defensive one, since all the other ones also have a defensive element.
Unless of course the defensive attribute offers more defense than the others. Which certainly would be a huge upgrade over what Blizzard has shown.
That however, is not the case in Blizzards blog post. You get the same defense and All Resist per point for both Barb and Sorc.
If the primary attribute isnt stronger, then it isnt really primary, is it?
Also, if it isnt stronger, and you misleading newbies, if you call it their primary attribute. That seems worse.
Anyway, I would not be so afraid of making it hard to understand for newbies. None of these systems are particularly complex, and as long as respecs are available early in the game, you cant make permanent mistakes.
D2s attribute system was bad partly because it was newbie traps. Like placing points in Energy.
But if all attributes give something that is useful, such as in my example, then it would be hard to screw yourself over completely, by picking any of them.
Of course, if you put all points into strength, boosting single target dmg, and then dont use any single target skills… then you screw yourself over. But no need to make newbies more clueless than they are. Everyone can figure that one out. And the tooltips for the skills should also be there to help them.
(Same would be true with the physical/magic separation btw, if a barb went str, that boosted physical dmg, and then only used magic abilities. Cant protect people who dont read the tooltips 
nor should we)
Dungeons and Dragons tend to have a fairly bad attribute system (at least the older versions, I dont know if that is still true in newer versions). Exactly because most attributes are heavily class-dependent, even when exceptions exist. Int barbs just cant compete with str barbs.
Best attribute system I have seen yet is the one used in Pillars of Eternity. Where you can make a useful str barb (called Might there, but same thing really), OR an int barb, dex barb etc. Or of course, mixing them. Hence my proposed attribute system being heavily influenced by it.