What Diablo IV Needs

General Discussion
1

Here’s some things I think that would make Diablo IV an amazing game for everyone!

Item Rarity:

In D3 I played with my girlfriend, brother and sister and we all found leorics crown a total of 6 times in one hour. We didn’t find another legendary in that time that wasn’t that. This was extremely annoying. The item isn’t legendary, it isn’t even that rare. Not to mention the fact that all rare, magical, and common items serve no purpose throughout the whole game except being a temporary item on your follower or being scrapped hundreds of times.

This is somewhere I think Diablo IV has a chance to make it right by taking a note from D2, I have played the game all the way through 8 times and there are legendary’s I’ve only seen once, set armor I couldn’t believe I was looking at. Tyraels Might and Duriels armor and so many unique legendary items I may never find again. Truly nothing could compel me to play the game more than the hope of finding items I have never seen any more or trying builds I had never played before, which brings me into my topic…

Skills and Attributes:

D3 was extremely frustrating for a classic D2 player like myself. I wanted freedom in my skill choices and my strength and instead I found that I had no choice but to unlock everything to finally use what I want to use, which by the time I had gotten the best armor in the game it made no sense to use a frenzy barbarian over the whirlwind.
It took me forever to max out my necromancer’s summoning skills and finally have around 12 skeletons in diablo 2. That was rewarding for me. I kept putting points into it trying to get that number to increase and the same goes for my mages. It kept you going throughout the whole game to improve your skills, not just hunt for better versions of the gear you are already wearing.

Difficulty:

Lets just start off by saying that I played diablo 3 all the way through on expert because the game wouldn’t let me make it harder and i still beat Azmodan in 12 seconds. Thats as hard as i could make the game until i reached level 70. I couldn’t start playing the game until I had already beaten it. But in contrast, look at Diablo 2. That game was hard growing up, even the normal monsters took a couple of hits and the bosses were so hard you would have to go to town and stock up on potions. My first time playing through it must have taken me about 30 minutes to take diablo on, it was such a challenge and when you finally beat him you were so happy! D3 was so bad with creating 20 difficulties just to make the game challenging in the late game and nobody wants to play at that point.

Gameplay:

Now I know that they have already talked about making Diablo IV darker like D2 I wanted to touch up on that and say that D3 was so colorful and childish I felt like King Tommy stuck in Froopy Land. No seriously though, D2 scared me when I was younger, seeing skulls in Akara’s tent and the darkness surrounding you everywhere you went, the corpses on the ground and the dead trees. These caves and ruins filled with creepy monsters in the dark with nothing but a torch to see them with. That dark feel with the rain being so heavy on the map it almost looks like ink in a dark world. Not to mention the creepy music in every ACT, I actually did like the music in D3 from New Tristram and Westmarch, ACT 1 & 5. But seriously, no more bright colors and flashy moves that would give somebody a seizure. Diablo is a game of demons and devils and we like those dark and creepy with creepy music while we cleanse the world with our godlike characters.

What I liked about D3:

I don’t want to sound like all I do is hate the game so let me share some things I really like about D3…

Treasure Goblins, Personalization (though it should be harder to customize I think), Wings, Bigger Stash, legendary item powers, blacksmith crafting, more NPC involvement and interaction, side quests, secret quests, account bound items, shared stash, Rifts, bounties, adventure mode, shrine stacked abilities. And of course I think that the story was really well done and I have no criticism of it.

Let me know what you think

2

Item rarity doesn’t work when trading isn’t allowed

3

Sorry but what do you mean it doesn’t work?

If you are talking about how nobody can share items so everyone should be able to find the same legendary, I disagree. The fact that we all found the same item and I found it twice in a row shows that it is not hard to find and not legendary at all. What I want for D4 is items to actually be rare and legendary. When you find a legendary item in the beginning it should be much harder and shouldn’t be easily surpassed by a higher leveled magical or “rare” item 30 minutes later.

If i misunderstood I would appreciate it if you would elaborate on your point.

4

Like how d3 is set up now, they don’t allow trading so they had to increase the drop rates drastically to make sure the specific gear you want will eventually drop. Before in D2, all that matters is finding good items, no matter if you can use it or not, because it still had trade value and you could then trade it for something you can use. So it didn’t really matter if you never saw a specific rare item drop because you could find it by trading.

5

I like that they made legendary and set items account bound but I still see no reason why they can’t make the drop rate similar to D2…

players are getting to paragon level 800 after playing the 10-15 hours of campaign. They are willing to put in the time and that is already shown. It doesn’t make sense to me to have 6 leoric’s crowns, it doesn’t make sense to have an endgame character keep grinding for the same items he already has but perfectly rolled and find it 100 times before becoming a little stronger.

This brings up something i forgot to even mention in my original post. Who’s idea was it to have every endgame character have the same armor and same weapons in D3? Thats why the game is screwed up, because in order to get to the end of the end you have to have the same armor as all the other players playing the same class.

6

But with D2 you can literally play hundreds of hours and not even see a single item from the set your build requires. Instead you will end up with a collection of random, but rare and valuable items that you can trade for gear to close any holes you might have in your build. What’s also different is D3 modifies the type of item being dropped based on your character class. So if you play as a barb, the chances a set dropped being barb specific is much higher since other high value items are worthless to you when you can’t trade them.

Basically if d3 had d2 item rarity, it would require the equivalent to winning the lottery to have your exact end game build drop for you.

7

What Diablo 4 needs - is for its developers to have a clear vision of how THEY want the game to be, and to have the ability to realize that vision.

What sucks about latest Blizzard games is that they turned development into a marketing research. They look at metrics and graphs, they collect and systemize consumer feedback and suggestions, and they feel compelled to bend over and incorporate all of that into the game.

Instead of designing a GREAT GAME, they design a game that satisfies the perceived needs and wants of their audiences. Instead of having a great game designer vision, they treat it like a number of popular features that will work fine if mish-mashed together.
Instead of designing a new game, they feel compelled to “go back to their roots” or whatever and at least on the surface copy previous titles, restricting the creativity even more.

What you get as a result is a game that feels recycled. That’s kinda what happens with WoW in the last years.

Look at CD Project Red, for example. Or Sony Santa Monica.
Do you EVER see those studios collecting your feedback or committing to “Ongoing communication” or any such things? No! They simply make their Witcher, God of War, or Cyberpunk 2077, and you honestly know very little about those games before they release.
But you know that they’re going to be a complete experience. You know it’s going to be awesome. So you don’t have ANY urge to go and tell those studios what they should do and “What their game Needs”

What Diablo 4 needs - is to stop listen to you, or the marketing team, or any feedback and fanbase wants and wishes. And to be its own game.

Sadly, that’s now what is going to happen.

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8

okay not equivalent to the lottery but why shouldn’t it be a challenge? I just did a necro on D3 and in 40 hours I had all the endgame gear I needed to compete with the best of the best. It wasn’t hard and it wasn’t even fun

9

This is the truth honestly. Game devs are supposed to be able to tell us what a good game looks like, and then prove it by bringing their ideas to market. Though this might also be a result of previous games not meeting expectations and they are doing this for PR purposes

10

Partly agree with you on this. By making legendaries and set items account-bound the drop rates should be more like D2 and D3.
However, in D4 there seems to be no magic find boost on items, and the wider varieties of endgame items than both in D2 and D3, I think they need to adjust the drop rates, especially in endgame, especially with rares and legendaries. And don’t forget there’s still Mysthic items and many other crafting materials.
So overall I think in endgame, Mysthic items should be as rare as the uniques in D2; Legendaries should be somewhere between rares and legends in D2. And no white or blue items if they serve no purpose in crafting.

11

Honestly I agree with you. I like the idea of items that I may never see drop because it makes them that much more interesting and valuable. But the current systems in D3 have pretty much set a new standard where end game items are predetermined and any other rare items you find is basically garbage. In my opinion it severely hurts the entire loot system, before in D2 you would be happy finding anything of high value, but d3 you only care about high value items for your build. It makes it boring

12

I agree with most of your points, especially about CD projekt red but in my opinion those game development companies haven’t messed up yet, they haven’t started down the path that blizzard is going down and the only way back is to listen to the community because you’re right they are playing a numbers game and not caring about what actually makes a good game.

I think you could take the call of duty franchise as a good example. The classics were so good and well loved and treyarch became “corrupt” and made crappy games for a long time and only had semi-decent games at best, but after a long time of not listening to the fans they made some big changes and started taking criticism and feedback, lo and behold we now have a call of duty game that will be played for a long time that everyone loves, and the next game they are releasing this year is supposed to be really similar to the classic black ops. I don’t know what the future holds but I do know its going in a better direction for that example.

I think D3 had a lot wrong with it, D2 was a classic that so many people loved and I still play to this day. So many players want a game like diablo 4 and with the opportunity to express this blizzard has at least considered some people’s requests into the development of the game. I do believe it makes a difference in the long run. Maybe Diablo 4 will fail, maybe diablo 5 or whatever comes after from the series will fail too but eventually I think the company can learn to please it’s fanbase.

13

See, this is the problem of you not trusting them to make a good game in the first place, then.
And the thing about this - that if they’re already unable to make something good, then no matter how much guidance or feedback you throw at them - they’ll still never make anything good.
But if they CAN make something good after all, then this marketing constraint will simply suffocate any creativity and talent, and you won’t get anything good either way.

Incorporating marketing research to that extend - is aiming for mediocrity. Marketologists notoriously suck at game design.

You may be increasing your chances to make an OK game if you do it more technically and analytically. But you’re completely removing any possibility of making a great one.

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14

Nobody had trust issues with blizzard from 1997-2012. We all know they are capable of making good games, at least 10 years ago. The problem is they failed to meet massive expectations with Diablo 3 and have just had PR disaster after PR disaster since. The customers have every right to be asking wtf are they doing

1 Like
15

Thank You!

something i forgot to mention is the use of runewords and magic find…

In diablo 2 I had armor with 4 sockets and perfect topaz’s to boost my magical find, i put everything into magical find like my amulet and rings and boots and that character found some of the best items I have ever found. It made it so hard and so fun to find some amazing loot.

For endgame purposes runewords should be brought back and runes should still be hard to find. This put a whole new level on players who want to go above and beyond in the game

16

Hell, just look at POE for the closest comparison?
Do you see THEM asking for your feedback or sucking up to the fanbase wants?
Not really.

Every season they bring something new to the table which nobody really ever asked for. And sometimes they mess up, but sometimes they make the game better. They keep the latter and discard the former, and that made POE slowly evolve into a greater and greater game.

Blizzard doesn’t want to take risks, they want to play safely into the known strengths of Diablo series, and this means that they never have a chance to discover something AWESOME through trial and error.

They still percieve themselves as the Top Dog on the market, but they have long since became mediocre and inconsequential.

When was the last time that Blizzard did something genre-defining with their games? Probably it was Overwatch Lootboxes, which isn’t so much a gameplay innovation as a business practice that they popularized (not even invented).

Otherwise, Blizzard is falling farther and farther behind when it comes to making something EXCITING.

17

That’s about the time when they stopped thinking creatively and taking risks - and started designing games methodically and analytically.

They bacame the McDonalds of the game industry. Offering bulk and optimizing production rather than innovating and offering something new.
And McDonalds is fine. It’s tasty. for a while. But once you taste a great Burger elsewhere - you don’t really want to go back.

18

I don’t see why we should trust them…

D3 was really bad and based off their decisions with warcraft and even some things in starcraft 2 its really hard to keep letting them do things their way without trying to change it. Not to mention the fact that Rod Fergusson was in charge of the gears of war franchise after Cliff Bleszinski left and gears has become the worst its ever been for true fans of the franchise, I can write a book on all the things wrong with gears 4 and gears 5 and how much inconsistency it has in the story and game. And he left gears to work on diablo 4, i know he’s not in charge but I’m not going to sit back and let another one of my all-time favorite game franchise’s to be ruined. It certainly doesn’t hurt to try and give feedback to blizzard, especially when they ask for it.

19

Again, if they’re incapable of making a good game without you - then no amount of feedback that you give will fix that. They will screw up implementing the features that you request, or they will also listen to another guy who’s requesting something that you feel is completely stupid - but he yells loudly enough for them to pay attention.

If the designers are incapable of making a game themselves - then your feedback is wasted.
But if they are CAPABLE of that… Because remember, D4 is designed by different people than D3, and so far we can say they’re more talented. So if they have what it takes to make the game good - then your feedback has only a possibility to distract them and bring them off-course.

It’s Detrimental.

20

I would argue that I’m only doing my part as a true fan of the diablo franchise and adding my request as a Diablo 2 fan along with hundreds of other players posting on these forums getting blizzards attention to make D4 better with the elements from diablo 2 that the majority of players want. You’re right, this forum may not even be noticed by anyone important but if anything its sharing what D4 should be and arguing to come to a conclusion that perhaps somebody else will write about that will get noticed by somebody important. Words have an effect too, its never too late for a big company to start caring about what made them big in the first place, the fans