First off for the 400 hour things: That’s a completely insane amount of time. I could get several characters to 60 in Classic WoW in that amount of time and that’s a 15 year old MMO(Not even my first 60 back in 2004 took that long). Even for a first playthrough, that’s way too much.
As for losing items on death, that should just be left to hardcore mode. I can get having to go and recover your body like Diablo 2, but there shouldn’t be item loss if you can get it back.
Especially considering, as you note: sometimes your latency has the final verdict regardless of how well built/played your character is. I really don’t want to lose items on my character due to something that was 100% outside of my control just because.
This also goes double if Diablo 4 has build defining items. Back in D2 if my Assassin ever lost her Chaos Claw, the build would be literally unplayable until I got it back.
At the end of the day a video game, including the risk and rewards inside of it, need to be fun above all else. This isn’t a mechanic I can say I feel would be much fun. There’s a reason why the harsher death penalties got separated out into normal vs hardcore, because it takes a certain type of player to enjoy that.
What about having a hire mercenary team for corpse recovery feature. That way, it’s just a little bit more taxing on that gold sink.
At the end of the day it IS a video game and needs to be fun. That is where the discrepancies appear. Everybody has their own version of the word and there can’t be as many versions of the game. Well I mean I suppose they could have hundreds of builds to select from but yeah. A lot of people get frustrated from failure because they’re too attached. Buddha will explain that the more attachment you have to anything the more you suffer when you no longer have it. Eventually, you don’t get to have anything. Thus the whole attachment = suffering understanding. I suppose it is ok to allow people to pretend that they do, though.
If they want it more taxing on the gold sink, just make death take away a portion of gold that can never be recovered. That number can be tweaked as they like.
Hiring mercenaries should be more about getting an ally to run around with rather than for body recovery. I would also say they should be more like Diablo 2 where you actually hire them and there can be a gold maintenance cost in the way of revivals. Just expand on them a bit more to avoid the whole situation where the Act 2 merc was the best one in the game because of their auras.
Having hardcore is sufficient for the people who want a harsher death penalty. It’s a system that’s worked just fine since Diablo 2.
We don’t need harsher death penalties for normal than existed in Diablo 2.
I’m not advocating for that. Softcore is easy mode and that’s fine. I myself prefer the challenge of hardcore and that’s what I’ll play from the launch.
What happens when a person accidentally gets in to deep, and dies while surrounded. Is the only reason they’re going back to their body for the pile of gold that dropped? They still have the items to clear the mobs to reach that gold?
My personal belief is that game pacing is one of the most critical aspects for Diablo 4 especially since they are planning on having seasons. If a season lasts three months, I would say that an average player should complete the season journey (or the basic elements that will allow a player to engage with endgame content) in 6 weeks. That will allow average players to enjoy the endgame elements for half the season.
I base the 6 week time frame on someone playing 8 hours per week which equates to 48 hours. Also that is based on players starting from level 1 and obtaining everything they need solely through killing monsters. Players can proceed faster or by engaging things like trading, crafting, gambling, etc.
Some might feel that that is too long for a season, but I feel that is underestimating just how important pacing is for the game.
There are enough complaints that the season journey in D3 is too short. If people complete that too fast then endgame will hit more of a grind because at that point you’ve leveled/mostly leveled your character and are looking for only incremental upgrades; and,
It would slow down the itemization progression. I’m not downplaying problems with D3’s itemization, but a significant problem is how players are able to skip over much of the item progression in a matter of hours. That makes the item progression irrelevant as you get to endgame items ridiculously fast.
Honestly, I don’t think there are easy solutions to slowing down progression, and by that I mean no matter what the developers do some group of players are going to be effected and/or upset. Harsh death penalties, especially experience loss, will negatively impact more casual players; restrictions on power leveling or being carried would impact group play; etc. It may not be easy, but I believe it to be one of the highest concerns for D4.
And on another note, Blizzard really has to up their game when it comes to seasons. While I have issues with PoE, its Leagues are the gold standard in my opinion when it comes to seasonal concept. Having the season introduce a new mechanic of some sort that stacks with previous mechanics not only provides a more involved seasonal experience but adds to non-seasonal play as well. D4 needs more than just one off concepts and balance changes.
They don’t need to have their items on them, but they shouldn’t be lost if the player doesn’t recover their body. Much like in Diablo 2, the body should be there without the gold next time you log in back in town.
That’s all that normal mode needs to do. You still want to avoid dying but there isn’t a harsh penalty like hardcore that comes with it.
Harsh penalties being fun is a hardcore thing. Let that stay in hardcore mode rather than trying to impose that mode’s idea of fun on everybody.
The same way we got our bodies back in Diablo 2 if they were surrounded.
Maybe you can lure the mobs away, or use backup items to try to clear it, or maybe you’re a caster and your baseline spells aren’t completely useless without gear.
Plus like I noted: If all else fails the next time they log back in back in town they should simply be handed their body without any gold recovery, but get all the items back.
That’s reasonable. But wouldn’t it encourage social interaction if in town they could hire player mercenaries to help them with their corpse recovery? Oh you thought I was only speaking of the idea NPC hireling, you anti-social devil you
Given that I don’t see Diablo as an inherently multi-player game, I don’t think the game should go to any extreme lengths to “encourage” players to group up. The main benefit to grouping up should be that you enjoy playing with other players.
When I want a more social experience, I’ll play a game that offers a far better one than hiring players to escort me to my corpse =P
Open world doesn’t have to mean more multiplayer though. Skyrim, The Witcher 3, etc. There’s a pretty solid list of single-player open world games.
I know they want to do the whole pseduo-MMO thing in this case but to be honest I don’t think it’s going to add any value to us as players. This wont be like World of Warcraft back in the day where you had a relatively small server population that you garner a reputation based on who you are as a person and how good you are at your class.
It wont be much different from me playing Overwatch. Sure I’m playing with 11 other people, but I’ll likely never meet those people again and half of them could probably be bots and I’d never notice because they don’t ever talk(and in some cases, I suspect being bots might make them play better =P).
It’s a rather anti-social social experience, if that makes sense.
I had better social gaming back in the day on Counter-Strike than I do on most modern games. At least there I had a few servers I would constantly play on, and get to know the regulars there.
Have you ever ahead of the curve in WoW bfa without a dedicated guild using completely random players? Absolute gold in entertainment value. If of course failure doesn’t frustrate you and you appreciate difficulty in overcoming challenges.
So I’m going to guess that you’re not to thrilled about the world event mob spawning? Most of the blizzcon attendees said that was their favorite part of the demo. I’m guessing I will rather enjoy doing them as well. Just a meh for you?
BfA was such a dumpster fire I barely played it, and most of my raiding experience in WoW as a whole comes from when I was in a dedicated guild. Which given that I did the whole hardcore raiding thing back in the early days of WoW, I’d say I’m pretty well accustomed to the whole idea of failing several times to the same encounter =P
As for world events I need to see more about it. If they do what WoW did with world bosses in recent years and it’s just a “go hit this thing for 30 seconds while it gets zerged, and then come back next Tuesday to repeat” then it’ll be a meh from me.
Those sorts of events I barely even consider multiplayer. It’s like being in a room with 100 people but everybody is standing off to the side and nobody is really interacting with each other.
Call me old fashioned but my social interactions generally involve…interaction =P
The issue with interaction is the abundance of toxicity that has engulfed the communities involved in online / multiplayer gaming.
You missed out on some pretty good raid mechanics in BFA. Where literal voice coordination was necessary. I did the AOTC thing solo and it was a blast. Anyway, I think they’re going to be investing heavily into the types of things similar to world events that make use of the open world aspects. I just may have to get in touch with my old gaming squad if things get really good. We use to rally entire servers against us because our roster was THICK. But I also rather enjoy the solo experience, so we’ll see which one is more entertaining.
First you interact with fellow warriors, then you’re invited to the legions brotherhood, and the next thing you know you’re trying to overthrow the Emperor of Mankind.
Sorry, been reading the Horus Hersey (currently on book 3)
What’s even the point in “social interaction” if there is no interacting? What’s the point of all the other players in the game if they could be replaced with AI bots and you’d likely never notice provided they were coded decently well?
The game should offer some tools to cut toxic players out of your gameplay, though in my experience it’s also not actually as bad with toxicity as some people claim it is.
I’m not saying you specifically, but in my experience a lot of those people are themselves the source of a lot of their toxicity they encounter.
