What should D4 retain from D3/D2?

General Discussion
22

D2:
Resistances on monsters (seriously, do it! No immuneties however)
Limited respeccing (though not as limited)
Mercs

D3:
Combat flow

There are plenty of things that could, to some degree, be taken from both games, just heavily altered.
Like the idea of somewhat affecting dropped gear, like the Mystic in D3, is good. But maybe not to the degree, and with little effort, that you could with the Mystic. Visiting the Mystic was pretty much the first thing you did whenever equipping a new item.
Also nothing wrong with GRifts in D3, they are only bad because they are the single end-game option. There must be very different types of end-game, to allow for different types of builds to be viable. It cant all be timed runs.
Likewise with D2 boss runs.

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23

Nothing at all from Diablo 3

It should do what Diablo 3 didn’t do, and be an updated, modernized clone of Diablo 2

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They should also keep and expand upon the consumables (ramaladni’s gift).
Like, if there was a series of consumables in D3 that could be collected and then used on ancient items. Making them a little better with each use until the ancient transforms into a primal.
1 consumable for resetting the mystic reroll status.
1 consumable for a guaranteed higher roll when enchanting (of the same stat).
1 consumable that adds 1 extra primary affix to the item once it is primal (max of +1 extra affix).

If they made primals crafted items through the use of consumables instead of very rare drops, i would be happy. I would know that i can always get a small upgrade to my gear from investing time into the game, instead of relying on rare luck. It would have to take quite a bit of time to craft one primal though, so that we cannot max out our builds too quickly.
It would be like PoE i know, but without the RNG element. Rewarding time instead of luck. And they shouldn’t be tradeable.
They could have some sort of system like this in D4 where there is only 1 tier for each legendary type (leg, set or mythic), with the consumables being the long-term grind instead of the gear itself, used to turn them into primals.

25

No. PLEASE GOD NO. No more of this foolishness that creates power creep with people being level 2345. It’s so stupid.

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As it’s fitting here, I’d like to link my idea for implementing the changes suggested by David Kim, and retaining the good from D2: “Effect & Focus” - Runes, Power Imbues & Sockets: Mechanic suggestion
In short:
I suggest changing the rune mechanic from “ Trigger & Effect ” to “ Effect & Focus ”
This will make effects always usable.
While at it, change the “runes” in d4 to be “Jewels” (Or “Charms”).
So we have Effect Jewels and Focus Jewels .
This frees runes to be the Consumable items mentioned in blog post - “consuming” a rune would be etching it to the weapon.
And now runes can also be merged to construct more complex runes (Like in d2, but actually very different).

This is seriously a Brilliant idea!

I’d love to see this actually implemented into the game.

It could also prompt the return of ‘rune-wards’
As etching a specific order of runes would alter the item you appended them to, completely.

It could even be made more streamlined, where the player could combine runes before hand through crafting to make a rune-ward etching consumable.

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I would like to see runes, runewords and socketable grey items return

1 to 6 socket weapons depending on the type
1 to 5 socket shields and 1-4 socket armors from Diablo II

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WHAT SHOULD D4 RETAIN FROM D3

ONLINE ONLY MODE, to keep patching consistant and avoid and OFFLINE dupes / hacks and to prevent the split of playerbase between OFFLINE/ONLINE.

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Nothing they should learn from them and all the modern ARPGs and make D4 into a massive world with new modern ARPG mechanics. Stop living in the past

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30

omg yes… it was so tedious to only be able to pick up one or two items and return to town cuz your inventory was full of charms…

yes i think that’s what some us mean about Diablo 1 & 2 darkness. Having only the light radius to light up a certain amount of area and being able to barely see what’s outside of that. definitely gave it that eerie vibe!

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If there is a paragon system, perhaps certain points allow you to open up charm slots, equipping your charms within the paragon system rather than inventory?

32

Why do you constantly repeat yourself?

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I am advising what i would like to see retained from D3 thats all. I think its a great model of implementation and it should continue as it has so many advantages

35

It is nice that Blizzard has employees who respond to people

Which is better then

“Asks Square Enix a question and is ignored completely”

37

Then there is no point. You may as well create another inventory slot called “underwear.” Charms you had to think of the tradeoff of stash space vs stats. “Is this worth 3 spots for what it does?”

I hated charms but I hate increasing gear slots even more. D3 has 13 gear slots compared to D2 which had 7. It makes grinding for gear more tedious, set bonuses requiring more gear to find, and each found gear being less impactful

38

Everything. The closer it will be to Diablo 1&2 the better.

The further it will be the worst.

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  1. cube; with more recipes and including extracted powers.
  2. Legendary Gems
  3. Runes and jewels from D2 with cube having recipes to combine jewels and to combine runes.
  4. Jeweler to remove gems, runes and jewels from socketed gear and to craft jewelry and gems.
  5. Rifts but only to level 25 to unlock secondary powers in legendary gems. D4 does not need to turn into a contest to hit the highest level rift.
  6. Enchantress with D3 abilities.
  7. Paragon but only if levels are geometric or exponential where hitting the next level becomes increasingly difficult and eventually becomes a several season project.
  8. pets that pick up gold, crafting materials, jewels and everything else that is not weapons or armor to place in characters carried inventory. Alternative: make crafting material, gem, jewel and rune pickup automatic like gold. The player still needs to make decisions about whether to pick up a weapon or piece of armor or keep fighting.

Followers are not really necessary but need to be more closely tethered so that when the player runs they stay close by. D2 followers actually got strong enough to do some damage. D3 followers were basically only useful as damage sinks via unity. Making followers smart enough to really act sensibly would take to much computer RAM. If present, they really only represent a mobile weapon.

Charms are not really necessary with jewels, gems and runes.

More slots on weapons and armor would allow more customization.

No consumable ranged weapons like arrows, bolts, knives, axes, etc. Was a handicap for some classes in D2 because the items had to be carried in inventory.

No mercs. For mercs to be useful takes too much RAM. Mercs that get killed quickly because they are stupid are a waste of gold. Mercs that are too aware of mortality run and are not worth gold. To hit the happy medium takes lots of program which uses RAM.

Make D4 a fun game to play with lots of customization of gear, allocation of stats, lots of choices about skills and lots of different ways to get experience. Personally if there are no leaderboards other than seasonal quest leaderboards and leaderboards on completing the season journey, I’ll be happy. All leaderboards should keep solo and team list separately like GR leaderboards in D3.

40

Yes to the first.

When it comes to combat pace I would rather go back to Diablo 1, though the animations, visuals, etc from D3 can stay. We should move much slower. Things shoukd die much slower - a speed of gameplay like D3 speed farming shouldn’t exist IMO.

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Or the tradeoff in charms could just be the new charm you found and which charm it should replace, if any. It doesn’t need to be an inventory space trade off to be a compelling choice.

A D2 mod called Path of Diablo added a charm inventory and its great for those types of items to have their own space to duke it out on their own merits.

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Jewels. These were awesome and much more interesting than normal gems.

Legendary gems, levelable or static is fine.

More item enhancing consumables like rammalammadingdong

Open trade of anything you find

Private loot (balanced nicely between self found and trade economy, no D3 raining legos).

Eight man parties (or more)

Strength, Dexterity, Vitality, and Magic/Energy stats and allocation but implemented much better than in D2 and not at all like D3.

A pace of combat somewhere between Diablo 1 and 2

Kanai’s cube, but that is just how you equip legendary powers. They are no longer found on items.

Uniques instead of legendaries. Let legendary powers compete with other legendary powers. Let uniques and rares duke it out on the merits of their affixes. Legendary powers appliable to rares means rares are BiS, just need to find good ones. Bad move. Rares and Uniques should be viable in any slot, depending on build and affixes that can roll for that slot.

Useful crafting (cube or otherwise)

Diablo 1 atmosphere and music. Bring back kight radius. Make the world darker outisde of that radius when appropriate. In D2 overworld was lit, but dungeons were dark except light radius and other light sources. If there will be day/night cycle this will be better.

Limited respec exactly like D2.

A type of content like normal Rifts - completely randomly generated, no timer. They would be something to do if you got bored of the dungeons or overworld farming. Perhaps they could be endless dungeons and every floor got harder and harder. If you die or exit, it ends. Sort of a guantlet, untimed. Who knows though, maybe dungeons and their keys will scratch this itch completely.

Magic Find as an affix, averaged across party for group content.

Mercenaries like in D2, but more equip slots (same as player) and D3 talent trees for them, but even better. Active in group play like in D2.

Monster resistances! I am okay with monsters not having immunities, but definitely give them resistances, and have elite affixes grant resistances like in D2. Perhaps base monster type being resistant to fire and then having an elite version that is fire enchanted should be the only scenario where immunities can exist.

If you’re going to give every class its own special resource, dont make end game builds all about finding ways to not have to think about resource. If you have them, commit to the design choice, or don’t have them.

If you’re going to have cooldowns, dont make endgame builds all about never having to wait for cooldown. If you have them, commit to the design choice, or don’t have them.

Paragon, infinite, but with approproate mathematical limits for each affix (meaning DR and you’ll never hit the limit), no attack/defense, and far, far less paragon levels attainable in the scope of a season. Maybe 100 on the high end, with 10-15 points before an affix becomes DRed heavily. Add tons of options for affixes, so every build has something they like, and its not all cookie cutter across classes.

And most importantly… Necromancer.

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43

Replayability are you seriously joking??? D3 has no replayability, D2 is much more replayable than D3.