Just my hopes - diablo 4

General Discussion
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I’d like to preface this with a couple points :slight_smile:

  • im super stoked about how many people are not ranting but actually leaving feedback and opinions
  • of course i would love to see d2 remastered but these opinions are based on what i’d enjoy most in d4s mechanics before the fluff of meta/optimal means arise for xp/item farming
  • thankyou in advance for taking the time to read this wall of nonsense and for any feedback. I encourage you guys to post ideas on your wants rather than cutting up anyone elses :slight_smile:

My post got removed on the d4 talk #1 when they turned off comments, so i’ll cover the majority of that as issue #1

spells are not attacks
What i wrote was a bit of a story to paint the picture. And my opinion on the matter is that it opens up much, much more gameplay options to have attacks deal attack damage and spells deal spell damage.
If d4 was a mashup of d2 and d3 we have 2 routes.
A freshly created necromancer gets a wand to give him a raised skeleton, good iconic skill to start with… After a few levels i have a small army and more points dont increase the size, so now in the d2-centric game: A) i need to upgrade my wand for either more or better skills, maybe skills that are handy but not what i want to ‘waste’ permanent investment points into, or maybe that illusive 2 open socket wand with skills on it to make a rune word out of. Or in the d3 relative game B) i equip a rare crafted 2h sword because my minions attack speed basically doesnt change but my damage per hit will skyrocket.
After you play even just 1 character through diablo 3s method it feels stale, it just feels like a checklist. Even though the basis of the story is a problem with itemization itself, I really hope they go back to the older formula so if you throw out a fireball, raise a skeleton, summon a magic hammer or set a trap on the ground, that your 2h claymore has very little/not at all to do with the damage of said spell.

The flipside of this explanation for clarity.
An amazon uses 2 skills that each scale in drastically different ways due to this mechanic.
Strafe/Multishot and Explosive Arrow.
If you use a hunters bow, it has low damage but very fast attacks. Strafe and Multishot uses raw dmg and flings it at many enemies, so you’d be very quickly wasting mana to shoot alot of super weak attacks out. Heres where it gets fun though, Explosive Arrow is a spell and an attack meaning you have your initial attack hit for those few extra points of raw damage but realistically all the dmg comes from flinging these huge explosions out very fast hitting an entire group of enemies all at once.
If you made an over-the-top 6socket hydra bow into the Breath of the Dying rune word now suddenly your strafe/multishot can clear the screen each click but the explosive shot only deals that initial massive dmg to your target, the explosion hits the group the exact same.

By keeping these typings seperate you open up so many more combinations of both skill choices and itemization and hybrids of the 2.

#2 Having a levelcap and when
Using a style of starcraft 2’s coop commanders leveling is nice, has many advantages, gives both leveling purpose and ‘paragon’ purpose then finally prestige to cap the infinite scaling from getting out of hand… But to me, it just doesnt feel good using styles or methods of leveling in a hack n slash game…
Leveling should happen over time as you play the game, it should contribute to your build, and provide buffs and help in more ways than just stat points, but have a limit. And my current favorite system is d2. Borderlands, WoW, D3, and even several phone games all use different takes on what rewards are offered, but diablo 2 feels really good to me. A highest level rather than a “cap”.

If you find boots of a static nature like set or unique at lvl10 but require level 20, it gives you drive to get that level to use them. Where as diablo 3 its merely an item to cube for the power or a nice boost for 4 levels until the same exact item drops again with higher stats, so your incentive to level is just to get optimal gear, and no longer to get ‘that item you want’
You’ll hear it time and time again in wow, in destiny, on forums and such… You create a character and get to level cap to ‘start’ your game… Instead of starting your game with your character selection at the campfire.

And when I say it should help in more ways than just stats, my example comes from both d2 and WoW and several other rpg’s that have hit chance… the higher your level relative to the mob should give you a bonus, but unlike WoW and Borderlands and the rest, you shouldnt be drastically penalized for being underleveled as it discourages other means of play such as speedrunning. Be sure to keep as many ‘ways to play’ as the systems allow.

Heh. Been looking this over and coming back to it to add or change things since the first post that we now have 2 posts on Itemization. So i’ll post a second comment to keep the iterations going.

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I like the separation of spell vs weapon, though in the case of Explosive Shot I feel like it should have been a hybrid ability.

Just as it doesn’t make sense my fireball hits harder because I have a sharper sword, neither does it make sense that my arrow doesn’t hit the target harder when I have a better bow(or in the case of explosive arrow, apparently doesn’t hit at all).

What it should have done is: Deals normal weapon damage to one target then explodes, dealing X damage to all targets within Y yards.

With the explosive radius damage being independent of weapon damage.

2 Likes
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How you’re describing explosive arrow is exactly how it does work :slight_smile: the target you hit gets full damage of all your perks and bonuses as well as that explosion, where as only the surrounding enemies take the explosive spell dmg.

As for new content:
Going with attack and defense being segregated to their items improves the clarity in a meaningful way, so thats a bonus! But i really cant stress this enough that in the beginning levels of a character it will certainly be the same as the necro story i wrote above. Early levels include such mundane bonuses to items that if im on a druid and really want to focus on my pets out of the gate, easiest way to do that will be to equip myself a 2h weapon for just raw stats boost.

As for the new powers being added to items that may unlock perks/skills/mechanics it almost feels like a way to show a rare item with 4-5 stats when really it only has 2 and a demand to equip similar items trapping you into a loop of using items for stats rather than stats for stats.

If stats are the key that unlock an item, it shouldnt be on the item itself, we used to need strength or dex to unlock the item for use and paired that with a level requirement. The new system doesn’t seem to rely on levels as a true requirement and you still dont allocate stats so the unlock for items is just other items.

As for itemization “standards” in d3, i really hope that system is also reworked in its entirety. Bracers for example were almost never used as an offensive item, witch doctors had Lakumba’s, demon hunters used wraps of clarity, barbs were the real only unique class… until newest season used either nems/strongarms or a dmg boosting bracer for boldertoss/seismic slam etc. Now its pretty standard to use mortics lol.
And going back to vanilla d3, everyone tried to get Lacuni Prowlers for the extra stats And just straight dps boost.

Each slot should have every option available to you in order to make swapping items around viable. If you lock resistances to boots and skills to a chest and hit recovery to your helm. 100% of the time the most viable option will be to exploit the fact that we cant get those stats anywhere else.

Having mechanics be built around breakpoints could be a simple yet very in depth means of providing deep character customization.
As a base example, you see an item grants 30% faster cast speeds, so naturally you cast 30% faster, but maybe at 15%, 35% and 80% you shave off 1/10th of your cooldown of your ability independent of cooldown rates (which i havent a clue how to word correctly for a discussion… but cooldowns feel awful in a diablo game).
Breakpoints would be a better means of managing stacking effects as well. Seeing 15% attack speed on an item and 15% on another item SHOULD mean 30%, it feels silly to goto your character sheet and seeing 26.55% only to get another 15% for like 33.89% yada yada… In no time at all stacking effects that you want is irrelevant. The stats themselves shouldnt make the build bad or sloppy, the fact that better optimization should allow for your build to be that much better.

Thats all i got for now, stay classy guys and keep making posts about what you want and why you want it :slight_smile: its been good reading most of these posts!