Games like this aren’t just about hard.
If we just make it hard, give NPCs a lot of HP, a lot of damage, etc., or make the gameplay more and more hectic and add more and more effects to create some artificial level of difficulty, then that has absolutely nothing to do with a good and fun and immersive gameplay experience and will only get everyone on their nerves to the maximum.
And the creators don’t really understand a challenge. If that’s what the players express, they’ll get sports games in front of them. As if we have a baton race here, like the Olympics. But that’s not what is meant by challenging gameplay.
The core of a game must always be preserved, and in this case a role-playing game, and it must not be changed in such a way that you have a competitive game as a basis, that is poison for the actual game, which then moves totally into the background and is worthless.
If you want to give the players a challenge and a difficulty, then this must be connected with the entire gameplay and world building to strengthen the role-playing game as a compound and not to exchange it for sports and performance games according to the motto who creates GRIFT 562 is the coolest…
Therefore it is said again and again. Out with the much too high speed. Away with the completely overloaded effect thunderstorms. Away with the principle that the player is the combine harvester and the NPCs are the huge cornfields that he mows down. Away with the principle of Baal runs.
Things like hitstun have to go in. The pace should be more between D1 and D2. Make NPCs more valuable, but less and make the fight more tactical. Retreat in combat is a long time a soldies means to not lose control and to attract the mobs a little, but never too many.
Role distribution pure, not a perfect balance. Classes (also within by skilling) need other approaches in combat and must not feel as if you always just bomb everything away, only with other effects and in the worst case still runs a kill counter, which then also distributes rewards if you have grilled 100 mobs in 5 seconds.
The NPCs need a return value and a recognition value. They must stand for themselves and only they have certain abilities and also do not always appear everywhere, but are authetically placed in the world.
The player should play an RPG and feel immersively involved. His abilities must be in line with the world and should not have any power, as if you were a god who descended from heaven and mixes up everything here. This is gaming experience for 7 year olds.
So it has to be the power of the player over his avatar, connect credibly with the world, even then if he is very strong at some point, it has to stay steadily in a usable ratio and not get out of hand.
This means that the beginning of course feels heavier and you grow through skills upgrading slowly, but well noticeable. RPG just.
Difficulty and challenge as not through artificial overload and sport, but through the normal process of a role-playing game and its immersive and exciting factor, as well as through skill expansion and only accompanied by items. Not the other way around!
D3 has totally failed here, for example. D2 was also partly a bit over the target. D1 was better here from the gameplay, but had the problem again on the side of the development possibilities of the skills of the characters, but was still better balanced in the ratio mob strength against skills of the players and thus it had the best atmosphere of all Diablo titles so far.
Because the atmo suffers to the point of 0, no matter how well the environment is made, if you don’t sink into it, because you sweep through this game world in good old sports game fashion.
I hope the developers understand this and don’t implement the demand for challenge and difficulty again in such a way that we players are simply presented with a stupid basic principle of a sports game and then only an overload in everything takes place.
No if, then through the process of a good world and the process of an RPG.
And there’s no other way to do that than by throttling everything. A reasonable balance between the player, the NPCs and the game world, so that it fits together.
And here I already have great concerns, when I see what has been shown so far.
Again and again you find there, D4 is already too far beyond this measure and should be rebuilt again in the area.
But in no case should it blow up this way even more. That will bury the whole game world and the actual role-playing experience before it has even begun.
Out with the speed, with the overloading, with the combine harvester principle and the exaggerated abilities etc…
