What makes an (A)RPG a good one and what is D4 missing to be one?

General Discussion
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So there has been a lot feedback from fans about D4 and opinions are very different. Here I am trying to explain, why I think, D2 is still played after 20 years, while D3 will probably not be touched anymore in 8 years from now on, which are the same basic things, I think have to be changed in D4 still.
First of all an ARPG is obviously a subset of RPGs, just with the emphasis on action and typically different camera angles and controls. Because of that, you can naively find some general topics, which seem to be most important for an ARPG, like for example

  • Mechanics

  • Immersion

  • Loot
    But these are not really the fundamental differences between D2 and D3, but more like symptoms of a very severe misconception about RPGs IMO.

An ARPG is NOT only about finding loot and then destroy your enemies with that pure force you obtained. The common thing between all RPGs is, that you are weak in the beginning and stronger later on, but that’s not the point !

It is rather, that you give the player a problem (e.g. your weak, your enemies are strong) and the player is provided with several ways to fix this problem, like:

  • Gain more levels

  • Get other items (NOT only better items, but items, which are better in the situation)

  • Get better at game mechanics / skills

  • Obtain different skills in the game

Now you are provided with all of that in D2 and D3 in the first play through. But in D2 you have A LOT more little problems, you all have to solve to make progress, and which immerse into the game. This ranges from very specific fighting mechanics, like block rate and faster hit recovery, over the lack of resistances, all the way to super detailed stuff, like a tetris inventory.

I am not saying a tetris inventory makes a game better! But the success for an (A)RPG player is NOT to have higher damage numbers after a level up! Imagine mobs in ARPGs do not fight back. Then you gain your levels and get stronger, but the game is super boring.

Rather than increasing numbers, it is solving problems and overcoming inconveniences the game throws at you, that keeps players motivated and addicted. If you ONLY have loot and numbers as a reward, the numbers will undergo inflation very quickly and make any comparison/improvement on them worthless. And then loot is just a very short reward, without any further sense.

A different part of the same misconception is, that a lot of Blizzard devs already said, they want that every level up feels powerful. Why? A smooth and slow increase of power feels far more realistic and rewarding in the end, than getting power for free by just getting a bit more XP. It should be a challenge to become stronger, otherwise the problem for the player to get as strong as the enemies is not a real problem at all. Then leveling just costs time, but is super worthless otherwise. There are even people who say, D3 should start at max level :smiley: That’s not the sense of an RPG! Leveling should be a challenge/problem, call it whatever you want.

That being said, I think D4 needs MORE DETAIL, which brings more small difficulties to the gameplay, like:

  • Hit recovery! EDIT: To correct myself: I don’t think a 1:1 version of hit recovery is super important. Someone posted a nice idea about a stagger bar for a player, which I think is a nice solution.

  • Block Rate!

  • NO long cooldowns! By having long cooldowns, you introduce a perfect rotation to every build and thus already solve the player’s problem to choose from the active skills.

  • Don’t restrict the number of active skills! Another player’s choice already made by the devs… why would you ever do that? It cancels more creativity in the playstyle and simplifies the game.

  • More stats and Itemisation! With only Defense and Attack as stats and items, which have green and red arrows on it, saying which one is better for you, AGAIN solve problems, a player should solve, instead of an algorithm.

  • A certain degree of commitment to the build you choose! If you can respecc for free as often as you want, there is no problem to solve. Respeccing whenever you need it, is just like going into the options menu and lowering some difficulty settings. Instead rather implement some creative and innovative respec system. EDIT: E.g. paying your respec with a level gives a lot of cool possibilities, like gain your XP back in special quests / challenges / PvP restricted to players who just lost their level due to the respec.

  • More details about stats/the char in general! Part of the players development through out the game is, to understand the own character. If your stat system is too flat and simple, there is no progress to be made for the player, because one can grasp the whole chars mechanics after 5 hours playtime.

I could go on and on and on, but IMO the worst thing you can do to an ARPG is implementing too convenient mechanics / systems for the player. It flattens the game and solves problems, the player should solve, not the devs!

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:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Right because it’s been out for a couple years already, and everyone and their granny has played it to death.

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No, but there has been a lot of feedback though… I mean even though our informations about the game are limited, the feedback even already influenced some design choices, according to Blizzard’s quarterly updates.

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That definition would work for the vast majority of games.
What sets A-RPGs apart from other games kinda is the character building and loot.

But of course most games need challenge to be even remotely interesting.

And A-RPGs in particular need depth, to make the essential character building and loot finding interesting. That is what makes it more than just numbers going up. The decision on which numbers go up, which numbers synergize with each other etc.

As for the suggestions

I dont have a preference one way or the othre. Hit recovery is fine, but also perfectly fine if it is not there. It risks hurting the combat flow.
Tbh, the best thing here seem to be having some hits interrupt your character, large hits. While normal hits dont. I would then not let you get out of it by equipping faster hit recovery though. Instead, try not to get hit by those attacks - or gear for survival so you dont die while stunned.

Block rate. Sure. Should have that.

Depends on what long cooldowns are. Cooldowns in the 1-30 sec range can be perfectly fine. Longer than that should be used with great care. There is no reason that cooldowns themselves would result in ‘perfect rotations’.
In any case, the majority of skills should not have cooldowns.

Limiting skills forces hard choices to be made, which can be a good thing. Where exactly that limit should be is a difficult question though. Certainly more than 6 skills imo.

Yep. There has to be hundreds of interesting affixes (BEFORE counting legendaries). Really one of the most important aspects for a good A-RPG. Grim Dawn did this really well. D2 did it okay. D3 clearly did it horribly.

Super important indeed. Respec needs to be somewhat limited. It is okay if you can respec an endless amount over time, but there has to be a cost/cooldown (probably both) so you cant just respec between each encounter. That makes the idea of creating a build lose all meaning.

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I think the restriction on the number of skills should come from a restriction of skill points you can invest, not on “you can have 6 active skills, for no good reason”.

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D4 is missing Beta version. Would need one to tell you more.

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Exactly. You should’ve stopped right there.

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You’re of course right, I am just judging on what we know so far. I just think that the general philosophy shifts towards simpler games with higher rewards, coming along with a big misconception about what made the most successful RPGs in the past so great. D3 devs have proven to not understand it, retail WoW devs have proven not to understand it. The current D4 dev team seems to listen to the community, but still sentences like “we want every level up to feel powerful” (no exact citation here), seems to me, that they still don’t get, what exactly felt so rewarding about these old games.

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I’d rather not see hit/block recovery come back.

As far as I’m concerned being able to be stagger-locked is not and never will be a fun mechanic, even for a “this is an early problem you’ll be able to overcome later” type of mechanic.

For me an aRPG should be about depth of character customization and player choice to build your character in many different ways with many different playstyles and mechanics.

I should choose if I feel like I need more survivability or damage or whatever rather than the game dictating that as a melee if I don’t get enough Hit Recovery I’m just going to have a bad time.

That feels like it takes choice away from the player.

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Well, you can just circumvent the problem then with good positioning. Look at good D2 players, hit recovery does not kill them, but only bad players like me :smiley:

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I think that combat flow and feel is crucial for arpg fun factor in addition to rpg depth. That’s one feature that actually keeps me coming back to D3 and not other arpgs like path of exile which has far more depth but not as smooth or interesting combat.

It can’t be just about solving problems to overcome enemies. It should feel fun and dynamic as well - the “action” in arpg.

For example many folks love whirlwind barbarians and often try to replicate the diablo 3 whirlwind gameplay feel in other arpgs like Wolcen, PoE, grim dawn etc. But if it doesn’t feel as good playing it in those games or requires you to invest countless hours just to get to the point where it feels the same then it’s not for everyone. Then again I know that some find it more rewarding to spend 80-100 hours to get to that whirlwind barb I’m PoE versus 10-15 or less in D3.

My 2 cents. Interesting post. I do agree with your comments about creating challenges for players to overcome. Coming back to D3 last year after a long hiatus, the thing I enjoyed most was set dungeons, seasonal journey, and collecting portraits, wings and pennants. Breaking into GR ladders was another mini goal I found fun achieving once but after that it gets old.

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Positioning wont much matter when you’re playing a melee that can’t help but be in range of getting stagger-locked by the enemy.

Having control taken away from the player, even for a short duration, just isn’t a terribly fun mechanic and needs to be used rather sparingly as a result, not as a common mechanic that virtually any mob can do to you.

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Very well said! The best description of what a Diablo game is, was suppose to be and should be.

People complain about the stamina bar in D2, specifically speed runners who build and keep characters for less than a day. The stamina bar simply adds a little challenge in act 1 normal, then it really isn’t much of a problem after that. It’s a micro challenge in a game with hundreds of micro challenges before defeating hell Baal.

I am an avid D2 LoD player and I love developing my characters, which is a long and drawn out process because I play mostly self found with a little in game trading.

For me there are 5 stages to playing a D2 LoD character. First is to grind for gear and experience to get to hell. Second is grinding act 1 hell for gear and experience to fly to Chaos, then onto Baal. Third I grind all the lvl 85 areas (except lvl 2 sewers) for experience and gear and I do that until lvl 90. Once 90 tings (not some obnoxious fog horn) I then only grind act 4 and 5 lvl 85 areas and Nilh, and I do this until I either die (I only play hc) or 99, which is the final challenge.

This takes me 3 - 6 months per character. It depends on the RNG god and my available time. When that character is complete I make a new one. There are at least 50 builds in D2 LoD that can be used to 99, each one very different that the next. Do the math, Blizzard, and see ‘1 reason’ why D3 is dying, and why D4, on the course it is, likely will, too.

Long and short of it, I love putting in a lot of thought, effort and skill into my character development.

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I’d rather not see hit/block recovery come back.
As far as I’m concerned being able to be stagger-locked is not and never will be a fun mechanic, even for a “this is an early problem you’ll be able to overcome later” type of mechanic.

Hit recovery makes the gameplay realistic. There is this huge hit landing on you - and you suffer because of that. D4 right now is a brainless faceroll of everything. All monsters mean nothing - big, small, doesn’t matter. One monster or 10 around you - doesn’t matter. Looks terrible. And yes - D3 was/is a SHT in this matter. Some people call this a game – https://youtu.be/w9_nGsDmJ8k?t=105 . But I don’t see any game here. Make such gameplay video for D4 and try to avoid financial disaster upon the release.

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Most ARPGs I end up hoarding skill/stat points until I find a build I like. D3 made moving between builds enjoyable.

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For me, first and foremost is gameplay. Does the combat feel smoot and visceral. Does the character move with ease. Is the gameplay intuitive.

If not then it’s a bad game to me no matter anything else.

Second are classes fun orr interesting to me. There needs to be a variety of classes or archetypes that one can build into.

After that I prefer some leeway with experimentation with respecc options. If too strick or not present I may give one class a go through the campaign and bee done.

Next would be are the menus and systems intuitive and or explained so you are not overwhelmed or confused. I have no issues with complexity as long as it’s explained as opposed to having to research online. Not talking about figuring out recipe combinations, but systems in general.

Story doesn’t really matter to me. If it good it a bonus. Immersion doesn’t matter to me since I really don’t get immersed in video games.

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One very important feature for good ARPG’s is customization (and related to that is balance).

Customization means to have a variety of viable (not necessarily optimal !!!) skills, items, passives, attributes, etc to choose from.

It means that e.g. the 2nd, 3rd, etc best items should not be too much weaker than the #1 best item, so that even if you do not wear the #1 best item, your build is still viable. In terms of numbers that means that when an optimal BiS item has a powerlevel of 100, then a viable item has a powerlevel ~80-90 or maybe ~75-90.

That same goes for things like skills, passives, attributes, etc.

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There are also some other issues I have with D4’s current itemization, which currently I think is the worst thing I have seen so far from what has been shown.

One issue is ADA Power and Attack and Defense, but many people have talked about that before, so here are some other issues i have with D4’s itemization:

Rare & Magic

  • apparently, from what I know, rare items are only going to have 4 affixes, which is too little imo and it is similar to the 4 primary affixes of D3. It just makes rare items fell too sleak imo.
  • rare items are gonna get made endgame viable by adding legendary affixes on them via a consumable, which makes them more like legendaries, rather rare items being useful and unique in their own way.
  • magic items are gonna be useless, as least that is how I understood their design intend

Legendaries

  • Legendaries gonna have 1 legendary affix and a few randomized affixes on them (at least that is how I understood how they wanna design it). Uniques (D2’s legendaries) almost always had predetermined affixes, which gave them a unique identity. Also some/many uniques in D2 had several, and not just 1 “legendary affix”.
  • From what we have seen in D4, legendary items gonna only have 2 normal affixes aside from the legendary affix. Two is way, way too little (however, their affixes could get more at higher level versions of that item). Legendaries could have much much more affixes, depending on what suits their fantasy. Also, not every legendary needs to have the same amount of affixes.
  • And this here is an absolute no-go: skill specific affixes on legendaries. Yes, they are not as powerful as in D3, but still it will make you feel missing out on something if that is being put on an item. Skill changing effects belong on the skill and the skill system, not on items.

Runewords

  • this tbh is probably just nostalgia, but I prefer D2’s runewords over D4’s iteration of RW’S. Runewords felt just cool. They were basically Uniques(Legendaries, but you could choose your base item for it. And it made white items much more useful and interesting.

Other Things

  • this one here is probably nostalgia as well, but it would be cool imo if the +x to all skills affix woulf be more common, like in D2 (also +x to [class] skills and +x to [specific skill].
  • this here is a personal preference and I know that many people do not agree with it, but I personally would like it if each item, regardless of white, magic, rare or legendary could have the maximum amount of sockets, like 3 sockets on a 1h weapon, 6 sockets on a chest armor, 3-4 on a helm, 2 on a belt, 1 on jewelry, etc. And imo sockets should be separate from the other normal affixes. Maybe you first have to add them with the help of a blacksmith, but more sockets for everything just allow for more customization.

There might be a few other things that I forgot atm, but this is a good start of the issues I have with D4’s itemization.

But there is also good stuff in it, like the return of Crushing Blow or the addition of new affixes like “increased damage against enemies outside of melee range”, that I quite like, which sadly doesn’t even offset the negatives from my perspective.

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Well the definition of a good ARPG is a moving target. Different strokes for different folks - Trying to make a game fit “all” might make it less successful.
What does D4 need, really I have not seen enough of a finished product to make a determination.

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The whole “but it’s realistic!” is a cop-out argument unless you want to start talking about not including a whole host of other features from Diablo 2 because they aren’t realistic like stat requirement on gear.

Diablo isn’t a game striving for a high degree of realism, and the mechanic is simply just not a fun mechanic.

A game doesn’t have to resort to those sorts of mechanics in order to not be brainless.

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Running through monsters like they don’t exist you say to be “not brainless”? Sorry, but it is. D3 is a really brainless game because of that (ok, brainless it this very aspect) - and because of that it doesn’t have a feeling of danger while D2, and especially D1, has it. Try to run through them without armor: they will catch you and tear you apart, and you literally feel how it happens. In D3? Nothing like that. Everything is “smooth” without armor or with it - just your “sanity meter aka HP bar” goes down slower or faster. In D3 there is only 1 monster who does it right: a bull, because he has that charge ability which, suprisingly, actually hits you as it should be. Everything else is a circus.

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