Gonna start this by saying I was firmly of the belief that all I had to look forward to this morning was another out of season April Fool’s joke. My faith in Diablo as a series had been utterly crushed by the showing last year, and I came into a friend’s stream of the opening ceremonies and virtual ticket panels expecting to be disappointed.
Needless to say I wasn’t, both the reveal trailer and the gameplay had me hyped in a way I hadn’t been since that day in 2008 when D3 was revealed for the first time. I liked everything I saw. The darker, grittier tone to the world and art design, the building upon of D3’s already excellent combat gameplay, the promise of bigger areas to explore and more to do, I hung on every word of that panel eager to hear more details.
But then the day went on, and news from the show floor and people playing the actual floor demo came out and, well… basically character stats have been reduced to Attack, Defense, and Life, and items similarly have been reduced to Attack, Defense, 1-2 mods, and unique property if it’s a unique. Yikes. (there would have been an image here but alas, lowly peasants are not allowed to link anything in their posts)
That feeling of unease and dread set in. How? How could they get so much else right and then get something like this so, so wrong? Did they learn nothing from how badly Diablo 3 streamlining game systems and itemization hurt character building and build diversity? I honestly couldn’t believe it. I felt the hype leaving me, it was a shock to see our characters stats and the loot reduced to 3 single numbers.
Please seriously reconsider ‘dumbing down’ things this far. Part of what made 2 and other games in the genre so fun was the ridiculously indepth character build and theorycrafting, and the sad state of itemization and overly streamlined stats hurts this in more ways then one. When you condense down the ultimately number-driven fabric of the characters and builds we put so many hours into perfecting, including their core stats like Strength, Dex, etc., and the various defenses, resists, and other things that make my WW barb different from someone else’s WW barb, into simplified Attack and Defense ratings, it kills almost all of the uniqueness between characters or even illusion of player choice that any of these properties on their hard-earned gear mean anything for their character.
When you see your resists cap out or your health orb drain out and fill back up to accompany your new higher HP totla or your chance to resist CC increase in your stat sheet when you put on a new item, it makes you feel like that item is actually worth using, like it 's a notable upgrade that matters. The stats and having all of them visible and not consolidated into one monolithic rating matter more than you realize for giving players a sense that every upgrade they make has real weight and worth. Having just two ‘core stats’ of Attack and Defense ends up reducing finding an upgrade to GREEN ARROW GOOD, RED ARROW BAD which…it means nothing. You’re not making meaningful tradeoffs like sacrificing some survivability for more magic find, or stacking dodge chance or resists in favor of some DPS, all of which you can easily see at a glance with a full stat sheet available to you, you’re just constantly trying to boost the 3 numbers and making no meaningful build choice at all. It’s reductive, it’s boring, and just not as fun. In this case, less is not more, it’s just less and that’s sad.
Now I’m not saying you should go completely over the top and bring in a full stat spread like we’re Dark Souls or a traditional CRPG, but simply going back to how D2 did it, where the player has full control over how they allocate their core stats, and where items can meaningfully have an impact on how your character improves with their numerous mods and being able to see that impact they have as your core stats and various defenses, resists and such increase, would be much preferred over the overly minimalist, insultingly streamlined stuff you’ve got going now. Heck, even D3’s way of handling stats was better, even if there was far too much emphasis on pumping your core stat and vitality and only your core stat and vitality as far as stats went.
As for itemization, simplifying items down to core stat + two random mods at most in total (at least, that was the most people in the demo ever saw) is also just something that irks me. When you got a godly rare in D2 and saw the big list of mods it had, it got you thinking, ‘how can I make use of all these good rolled mods?’ You moved items around, got items to complement the new godly rare, and your character improved for it, even if a couple of the mods weren’t really used or factored into the build. But the D3 style ‘core stat + 1-2 random mods + unique mod if unique’ design just doesn’t do that. There’s less possibilities overall for truly interesting items, and it ends up resulting in rares and blues being mostly worthless once you start getting uniques, simply because they get that unique mod on top of the paltry core stats + 2 random mods they get.
Honestly, don’t be afraid of giving the player like 6 or 7 random mods, or an item not having core stat at all being a potential way an item can roll. It makes the loot feel more unique and special when they get an amazingly rolled rare in the first hour of the game that easily carries them for 10 or 15 levels. Not only does the item having more stuff on it just look more appealing and pleases the little lizard part of the brain that goes ‘oooh, shiny’, but it just makes the overall experience of seeking out that ridiculous perfect rolled set of boots with all resist, movespeed, can’t be frozen, etc. all the more enticing.
Basically the gist of this all is, Less isn’t more, it’s less, especially in a game that you will spend potentially hundreds of hours building a single character on. You want to go back to Diablo’s roots, what makes Diablo, Diablo. Well I feel pretty confident in telling you that the minimalist, streamlined, seemingly ‘made for console’ itemization and character building just isn’t Diablo. I think a lot of people felt the same way today.