I find that compared to all the other Diablo games, the action in D3 is relatively fast past. I don’t think it’s always been like this. The dungeon crawler seemed pretty slow during early Vanilla but at some point it went it Mario Cart mode.
For D4 do you guys want to see a slower paced game or do you enjoy the faster game play? I’m on the fence about this as I use to enjoy the slower pace but after playing so many years in fast mode, I see it’s hard to go back. Thoughts?
Well, I will mark it down just like any other game I have played.
Keep in mind, when a game is new, most people are likely to take their time when they first go through the game.
Once you get the basics figured out, you have figured out how things work, then the game typically speeds up, till you reach a point where you found some of the top gear pieces, you have learned the maps, the quirks of the levels, you know the best way to max your efficiency, etc. At that point it is a fast pace.
I saw the same thing with D2, though admittedly most builds did not cross the map quite as fast as D3 does, still you had a faster sense of purpose after learning the game pretty well.
I have experienced this with other games too. Dungeon Siege I and II as an example. I got to where I would go through it pretty quick, once you get leveled up enough to sustain your character. Problem with that game is that if you go through the map without killing stuff, you could end up with a mob after you in time. lol
But I feel its still a normal result of most of these games.
I think having it be slow, foreboding, etc. in campaign would be great; then, as you get into endgame content, levels, and gear, being able to move faster is a progression I quite enjoy. This was D2, essentially. Good atmosphere, having to be at least somewhat careful in a regular playthrough, then being able to teleport nonstop at the endgame.
Good question MerLock - I tend to like the RPG aspects therefore a little slower is my preference. This is a ARPG though so design wise I think D4 might be a little faster than my preference (which is OK too). It’s hard to get immersion in a real fast type game though. I also hope they ditch 70 as a level cap since mobs can level up with players, no more play balance issues.
I’m not sure how true this is when we still had inferno mode. It just seemed like a slug fest where we were lucky to kill anything in inferno.
For those who used the AH were you guys ever geared enough to breeze through inferno?
Certainly better than when gearing, but not quite like it is now. But comparatively speaking, you did get faster as you got better gear.
Yes, inferno was a pain! But in retrospect, fixing some of the issues that made it messed up, mostly the items with the wrong primary stat and the enrage mechanics it was a challenge to go forward still. (I kinda liked that level of difficulty)
When my wife got a scorn drop with strength (she was intel) my game got a lot easier! Ha!
Just a bit slower and a LOT more bloody. I want particles of death and mayhem flying every where. I want basic attacks and then a super destroying attack or protection. i don’t want to have to press 5 different skill buttons to finally do one thing if even then. This game is broken and its not “Diablo” it is “Setablo”.
The pace in the early- and mid-game is actually quite slow, too slow if you ask me. It just gets very, very fast pace when you have your endgame set build with insane amounts of RCR and CDR, especially in regards to movement skills.
For example basically unlimited Vault for UE MS DH’s, Leapquake, Dashing Strike Monks, etc, etc.
So in some regards D3 could be faster:
… and in other aspects it could and should be slower:
So imo D4 should be faster than D3’s gameplay without sets and legendaries, but slower than D3’s gameplay with sets and legendaries.
I hope that made sense.
I think I’d like a pace somewhere in between. I think especially some of the D3 elites feel insane: Ground hazards everywhere, spinning arcane beams and walls being raised around you, all while you frantically try to nuke it down and lifesteal. That feels like too much. The regular enemies mostly feel fine, though sometimes they lunge at you like someone shot them out of a cannon. Sometimes in D3 there’s so much happening on screen so fast that I dont even notice I’m standing in something.
I havent honestly never thought the pace. I dont see it very important. Pace is definitely somekind of “new modern design” maybe I see Diablo too old-school.
It all depends on how interesting it is to fight with mobs. If you move slowly but there is no challenge in your fight, it becomes boring fast. So people want to run as fast as possible because with the lack of interesting combat they want at least to get as much loot as possible.
Fight boreness with Roguelike Design. Add Challenge by adding 1 extra life. Thats what I think. Diablo doesnt need to mess around with “pace” imho.
It needs to, if blizz wants to keep people playing. Because D3/POE endgame speed makes it old really fast, people just stop playing. Only those who like “slot machines” stay.
To prevent player’s leaving I would use Seasons for that. Sorta try to build some “mini-hypes” for each Season.
Seasons won’t help much if the very gameplay is boring.
One Celebrity and you will stay to see it. Whether the gameplay is boring or no.
Slow, I’m for slow because in the end it has to be about the RPG in an RPG. Today everything is focused on competition and endgame, even the mindset.
If you want to build a good aRPG, then this mindset must be out of the head such games around endgame and competition to build and the way only quickly want to get behind.
Everything else ends up in a different genre and is no longer an RPG with its focus and core content.
And while you then without endgame and competition thinking, a real heavy, slow, immersive and good masterpiece of RPG builds, where the path is the goal and its core content around class, story and development of skills and you basically immediately so prepared, that you can constantly expand it as a world and not as a sports game, then you can also build up to the next add on fitting a certain end game that in the end also deals with the world and the development and includes as a side work a shallow itemization, but that does not determine the game.
Everything else is no longer an RPG.
If we actually only want to leave the world behind us and not understand it as the content and underpin it with the RPG elements, fill and prepare the gameplay accordingly, then we also have no real game. It then seems more like wanting to get through, like ballast to finally increase the numbers on the last level, to constantly have seasons that break the development and competition with more and more effects and speed and overload goes hand in hand. In short, a sports game, so a different genre.
In an RPG it must also be kept simple to some extent in terms of effects and numbers and speed greatly throttle and the hardness up, so that you also perceive the world as a world. And so you build it further and further, without constantly just adding a shovel of effects, but to keep it simple again, well implemented to fit the classes and still new things not with overload tries to do well, but with mechanics to make it interesting.
Thus keeping a certain map on which an RPG can thrive and not tip over into a sports game with way too much pace and classes that look like superheroes from a comic book, enemies that aren’t enemies but walking cones that are there for number generation.
You won’t be able to create useful RPGs this way anymore, it’s impossible because the genres get in each other’s way. Either sports or RPG. Both don’t work, they’re too different.
You can build an RPG and link it strongly to survival, that’s more like it. But I can’t bring together 2 more or less fundamentally different areas… One of the two must stand back here and in D3 it was the game itself and thus the RPG.
If you want to tie a little sport in the endgame of an RPG, then it must also be subordinate to the game and feel more like PvP in the end, so as a separate only tied thing that otherwise has no impact on the content of the actual game.
Whether you could do that and how you could do it would have to be seen first. But for that the RPG game must first sit and enjoy the absolute priority.
It must be built from the beginning then in such a way that one can expand this principle of a RPGs also meaningfully and interestingly and without on always more numbers and overloading and speed to set, but on the RPG contents, mechanics, history and the basic basis of a way also by development, however with borders and with very slowed down time factor.
RPGS are paths and it needs here the focus on it and not on getting through.
Especially the MMORPGs are currently all more or less dead. Here, too, the actual core element was replaced by sports game in the end game and just as shi… they are. The WoW world is one big graveyard and the whole game mechanics of an MMORPG has disappeared and the sports part with M+ makes the game faster and faster and more pointless.
They cheat the whole RPG community and rob them of their genre and replace it with a simple profit machine…
Yeah no. I don’t play games because celebrities play it. I play because gsmes are fun. Seasonal resets aren’t really fun. Sometimes the theme is but it gets boring fast. PoE and a GDC a while back posted their numbers that proves just that. Sure you get spikes at the start but withing 2 weeks it drops off dramatically and by 4 weeks in you are left with your correct base of not many players.
Speed of combat has a part in that. If you can just zip through content fast because of the speed then you rat it up too fast and are done or get bored too soon. Likewise, if it’s too slow, you might not finish or tire of not accomplishing your goals.
I think D4 looks fine for combat pace. Only the Rogue so far looks to be a faster paced combatant. As for seasons, I don’t mind themes to change things up. However, I’d be more in favor of MMO style content patches. Like the first patch/season could be return of the Ice King(I know I keep using it but I like it). A long forgotten Ancient awakens and brings all of Sanctuary into winter. Zones can be snow covered, weather can include snow and Blizzards(no pun intended), new ice enemies are present, the Ice Kings minions attackt outposts/settlements we need to reclaim. New dungeons(s) are added, a new world boss(for the patch/season only) teams the lands, new themed items and uniques, new transmogs and cosmetics, and finally a final dungeon where we finish off the Ice King himself. We get a little new story progress, a new theme, new items, and new content all the while progressing our current characters.
Of course there can still be a reset mode for those interested, and new or levelling players will see the changes and have access to the content while leveling up. I find this more of a win-win situation than having fast combat and seasonal resets. Since you can have slow or fast paced combat while adding new and interesting stuffs as opposed to just resetting every damned time.
ARPGs are always light on the RPG and focus more on the A. Focusing too much on the RPG is not necessarily good. And MMOs are alive and well.