Ty. Was on my phone. I don’t click on videos on my phone, so was unaware.
So, I finally listend to the whole video and I like it.
Your voice and your vibe are really smooth DiEoxidE.
Wyatt is also really smooth, so it was nice listening to you both.
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I know that your chat / interview was primarily about Immortal, but I still found the parts about Diablo 3 the most interesting.
One thing that stuck with me (probably because it is something that I contemplated a lot about and because it is a topic I find very interesting) is when Wyatt said that if he could make D3 again from the beginning, that he would not want to have the Skill Rune System and instead he would have put these skill changing effects on legendaries instead, which is what they are doing in Immortal to also make legendary items meaningful.
Yeah, that is much better than D3’s rune system, though not the best solution either. The ARPG Last Epoch has imo the best skill customization system in the game, with skill specific skill trees, where each individual skill has its own skill tree and its own skill points.
Something like that in Diablo 3 would have been amazing.
Legendaries still could be amazing, even without massive multipliers and without skill-specific special powers, and with special powers that are more universally useful:
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But it was also interesting to gain some insight on how the devs think and what their thought process was on issues like enemies health & damage scaling and player power growth in D3, like when Wyatt mentioned that power increases below 15% feel less meaningful but allow for better balance and to prevent power creep/inflation, while power increases above 15% are better suited for temporal bonuses like in Rogue-like games where they reset the progression with every run.
It is good to hear that in Immortal they are going with smaller numbers than in D3.
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So thanks again for sharing the talk.
Maybe there can be more in the future? What do you think?
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IMHO, I prefer skill runes or a skill tree that I can unlock and build on my way up to max level.
I think there is one very big clarification between D3 and DI leveling. The latter is a much slower experience. If D3’s 1-70 were as slow as DI, you wouldn’t feel overwhelmed with rune unlocks.
DI has a lot of systems you access along the way to 55 — so you feel like you are ‘getting’ new stuff on the go. Finding a new legendary does make you smile, the storyline keeps you moving up in level, and you can try new skills that unlock. Those systems and the quest line will distract you. Though around level 40ish, you just want to get past the tutorial and work on your build/gear, as there has really been little decision making thus far.
As a fresh player, I had no clue what to expect from legendary items in DI. A skill tree / rune system helps the player imagine their goals, it is like going to a restaurant and seeing the menu.
I believe some players might feel overwhelmed with all of DI’s systems AND a skill tree/rune system. The other thing is that it is hard to conclude what is better when the trash dies so quickly and the questline/tutorial ensures you power up your character. Challenge Rifts are an easy way to benchmark your PvE gear and skills.
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Makes me happy he isn’t involved in D4…
As you say, Last Epochs system is much better. And as bad as D3s runes are, they are still a lot closer to Last Epochs system than if everything was on items.
That is a good view for sure, and good they realized that.
Not every item needs to be a noticeable upgrade. Some of the enjoyment in an A-RPG comes from realizing after 5 upgrades, how much stronger you have really become, even if each individual upgrade was not huge. As in building a character over a 1000 incremental steps.
For temporary upgrades in a rogue-like it can certainly be different. Although rogue-lites often use exactly this system of small incremental upgrades you only notice in the long run.
I agree, this system is my favorite by far. And i find the passive mastery system to be excellent too. I didn’t realize for a long time that I could invest into passives that weren’t on my mastery. When I discovered this, I was like… holy crap! Lol the same feeling when you enable elective mode in D3.
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This is pretty much the solution to a problem I have with D:I, and im assuming for most people as well. And I think you and Wyatt spoke a lil about it too. One major issue I have is that at times there is just too much crap on the screen, and it doesnt help that my fat thumps will cover the bottom corners on a 5-6 inch phone.
I do think D:I is doing well, aesthetic-wise, if that makes sense… There are many times where im like “damn would be awesome if this was in D3(PC)”. I’m not a phone and console guy, I dont think D:I will do well financial-profit-wise, just my opinion, I’m sure there’s an audience waiting for D:I, i just dont think there’s a ton of them, could be wrong could be right, I guess we’ll find out a few months after the game comes out officially.
If I had the choice between Immortal’s itemization & Skill System being put into D3 on the one side, and D3’s current itemization & Skill System on the other, I think I would prefer Immortal’s way of doing it, because in the end it allows for much, much more character customization and build diversity.
But if you would also would give me the choice between the latter two and Last Epoch’s Skill System + more universally useful powers on legendaries, then my choice would be definitely be LE’s Skill System + universally useful special powers.
Yeah, not every item has to be a noticeable upgrade. Some definitely should, but not all.
I like a mix of both smaller, incremental, but regular power increases, like from Level-ups where you can spend points into Passive Skills, Attributes and Skills, and then larger, more noticeable, but more irregular power increases from finding a much more rare item.
These two things perfectly feed into each other, because you know you still make progress by getting minor upgrades everytime you play (assuming that it would take quite a long time to reach max character level), but you are still going for these very rare items that give you a large power boost.
Right, Rogue-lites, not Rogue-likes.
Yeah, and I also wondered why the devs have not copied that idea of each Skill having their own skill tree into Diablo 4 yet.
Wolcen also has a similar Skill System where each individual Skill has its own points. That idea is just too good to not put it into D4 as well in one way or another.
Wyatt acknowledging the power behind Rogue likes at 47:12! That’s the future folks. Once you fix account trading/sharing by requiring real life ID so that each person is locked to his one and only account, you can push such game where there’s no global meta, only personal meta. A game for which online guides won’t be of much help. Now, that would be cool indeed!
Wyatts ‘designing to a number’ is a great point.
But that is also Blizzards usual ‘systems’ thinking. Fitting everything into neat, static systems, at all cost.
Even if you have a rune system, nobody says it must have 5 runes per skill. That is a self-made rule/problem.
Nor does each skill tree in Last Epoch need to be the same size (no idea if they are).
Wyatt “The pace of receiving skill runes were too fast…”
NO! Lvling was too fast. You designed your game that way. Not some inherent flaw in character building.
Btw, gearing is also too fast, so the great argument about “gear giving everyone a unique journey through the game” (which I strongly agree with and support), falls flat. Nobody has a unique journey in D3. We are all seeing the same items drop within a few hours. So that supposed flaw in runes exist for items as well. Not because runes or items are flawed. But the game pacing is.
Wyatt: “There is some really good parts to the 6 part sets”. No… just no. They were deeply flawed from the very beginning.
Wyatt: “Nobody wants to hit one thing” (single target vs aoe talk). Sigh. Extreme failure of game design and balancing, when you make that conclusion 
Somehow lots of other games manage to make single target skills useful. Including other Blizzard games!
How about a game where you want both single target and aoe skills, in the very same build. Mindblowing, I know.
Wyatt throws out the good old “Make the most efficient thing to do also the most fun thing to do”. A classic, and eternally true.
Looking at Diablo 3, with paragon, GRifts etc. did you succeed? And did you actually try to make the most efficient the most fun, or did you mostly double down on efficiency? You streamlined dungeon layouts, removing fun, to make it more efficient, instead of rewarding doing those larger maps. Adding endless amounts of harmless monsters, again for efficiency reasons, instead of making it rewarding to kill those fewer, harder enemies. Kinda turning the whole concept on its head. It would have been like the Ever Quest example of lvling in a single spot, and instead of making quests more rewarding, you made sure the single-spot farming was the only way to play the game, to avoid complaints about low efficiency :S
No system can survive extreme farming. Only solution here is content diversity. Doesnt matter if Rifts were a good system originally (it was, whereas GRifts was not; due to timers and removing loot drops… a fairly basic concept in A-RPGs, taken away… for efficiency reason…). After doing 1000 Rifts, it simply cant hold up.
Speaking of which, trying to make each Rift more unique, with different modifiers, goals etc. as they might be in D4, is also a good approach.
(Not trying to attack Wyatt here, he is great, going out in the wild, talking with players, defending ideas, admitting mistakes. Fantastic. We could use more of that. Love Wyatt, but still going to criticize the arguments :P)
In other news, Wyatt acknowledge the power behind cooking. D4s future is being a cooking simulator.
No really, rogue likes are good, rogue lites are usually even better (there is a reason they are taking over the genre). Diablo obviously has common roots with rogue-likes, through Diablo 1. But it doesnt mean, in any way, that being a rogue-like/lite is The future. No more than CoD or Battle Royals are The future.
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I hope some of you don’t forget that Wyatt Cheng is not the developer for D4, D2R, and D3.
Whatever thought and the neat idea that he has at this moment will never get implemented to D2R, D3, and D4. It is Immortal exclusive unless he gets transferred to Diablo 4 in the future.
Also, compare to the D4 direction, obviously, I prefer the Immortal direction more, although I feel that D3 leveling is much better as I prefer a skill get better in term of usage (rune) when you level up instead of your X skill deals more damage when you level up.
And good to know that the original D3 Legendaries are meant to be a glorified boring stat stick, and I glad that they fixed it up in RoS.
P.S. Skill + Rune effect + Legendary power >>>>> Skill + Legendary power.
I can’t wait to play Diablo Immortal.
Listening some more to the video. So instead of fixing the insane power inflation they “hide” it. It surel sounded like that.
As in, enemies get more defense, so your high dmg numbers are reduced. Sounds good, right?
However if your dmg goes up 1,000,000,000%, but enemy defense also goes up 1,000,000,000%, to counter it, that is still crazy dmg inflation! Even if the numbers are kept in check.
It still means your character with “only” 100,000,000% is useless.
Endless power, endless scaling, endless power creep does not feel good. Even if you become incredibly clever and build in an automatic number squeeze (which, as clever as it is, it also one of the oldest systems in RPGs). Instead, keep those numbers in check. Then sure, also have monsters get more defense over time, that part is totally fine. As long as it does not grow exponentially.
Got to that part in the video. That 15% number takes on a different meaning in his WoW example, as he seems to say an entire raid tier is 15% dmg increase. Quite different from every single item being a 15% dmg increase.
15% dmg increase from ~13 item slots is not exactly astronomic power creep. Which btw makes me wonder if the number is correct, since WoW have had some fairly significant power creep, albeit nothing compared to D3 of course.
Yes, it is. ARPGs have to embrace randomness. It’s their true nature. It’s also the way to raise the skill cap and get rid of the boring meta.
Players in HS get bored a few weeks after each new expansion. Guess why? Because you have to play the same meta decks for months.
Not necessarily true. Ideas, systems, and mechanics have been shared across multiple Blizzard IPs. DI is no different, unless he specifically stated this, every thing in DI could be seen in D4.
Well, D4 doesn’t have a skill + rune system, so what he said about the D3 skill + rune system doesn’t and won’t be apply to D4.
That doesn’t mean nothing else can’t happen in D4.
Doesn’t that mean it precisely applies to D4. Wyatt was arguing against a rune system, and neither D:I or D4 has that system afaik.
I mean, I really hope a bunch of the stuff Wyatt said does not apply to D4, but Beefhammer is right that Blizzards ideas on “what went wrong in D3” is likely shared between D:I and D4. For better or worse.
I doubt it unless they decide to change the D4 skill tree to D3 rune system from nowhere.
Wasn’t referring to the skill trees. All the other stuff like that faction war, PvP Battlegrounds, the paragon system, skill synergies. No reason all or some of those things couldn’t be added.
Well, I was referring to his word in the video where he was talking about the D3 skill + rune thing though.
But yeah, those things you mentioned most likely will make into D4 but in D4 version.
This taps into the problem emulation faces when it comes to mobile games these days. You need a fairly decent PC to actually run things like Bluestacks, LDPlayer, Nox, Memu, or whatever, and even then you’re going to have compatibility issues between different hardware and whatever workarounds software take potentially conflicting, too.
The actual answer that is needed to extend to the reach of mobile game and potentially work around disabilities is for companies like Google or Apple to release their own official mobile game players for the major OS. I’d argue you should be able to drop an APK into Chrome, for example, and play whatever game in the browser window. Instead, I consistently see games struggle as users encounter crashes and various errors they can’t do anything about because maybe their phone has aged out or it isn’t numerous enough for the devs to care about/replicate. This is a bit harder to justify when it turns out Windows users are consistently facing the same crashes since it’s one of the dominant brands. I’m also not going to buy the argument that it’s impossible to do when the aforementioned emulators are probably 85-90% close just acting independently and tinkering. Nonetheless, there are inefficiencies exactly because they’re out of the production loop.
tl;dr version: Every mobile should actually be a PC game by default because the big players are also big in the PC market.