Yet another [Feedback] post regarding your latest quarterly update (US)

Greetings.

First off I would like to mention that I highly appreciate that Blizzard is showing that they are actively listening to community feedback.
Now, whether or not that is a good or bad thing, is another case and can be a post in and of it self entirely, however, for the sake of the argument currently, my initial thought is going to be, that, it’s a good thing.

Speaking of my thoughts, this post will carry with it, my thoughts about the recent quarterly update and, as I wrote in my last post in response to the Blizzcon reveal, I am no body special, just a very long term fan of the Diablo franchise, so bear with me, this will be a big one :D, please do read it all and I would very much love a constructive discussion on the topics at hand!.

Table of contents:

  • The Ancestral, Angelic & Demonic Power System
  • Legendary Items
  • The New Skill Tree
  • The New Sorceress Enchantment System
  • End Game Progression System

The Ancestral, Angelic & Demonic Power System

You are correct in the assessment that many people, including my self, felt that this system wasn’t “cool enough”.
For me specifically, I wasn’t a fan of this as a whole, due to it feeling like you were trying to reinvent the wheel about a basic stat system that already worked, e.g. strength, dexterity, intellect etc.
I still believe this to be the case to some extent and it will be reflected in my response to this, however, I will admit, that the idea of these powers have grown on me since, as they do, in fact, have quite a bit of potential.
Additionally, and for me personally, I don’t necessarily mind a system that needs to be bookkept, as long as it doesn’t require me to utilize a multitude of third-party websites to keep track of things, and that the thing I need to “book keep” is easily trackable within the game it self.
This goes for all game systems to be honest, Path of Exile is notorious for their third-party community driven websites amongst many other things, and these are borderline required to even play the game, and this has been an increasing annoyance for me in this game (and I’ve played PoE since 2013).

So for my actual feedback, and there are many ways you can go about solving the problem you presented in the post. Things like visual fidelity & intuitiveness as well as, here’s an idea; removing the entire power trio from items as item stats entirely, but rather introduce them in another fashion :
How about; instead of having the Ancestral, Angelic & Demonic Powers being stats on the item, it would instead be as item “imbues”, this could then be gated behind the economy as well to promote another layer of player trading.
Imagine a world where you are killing monsters and you, for the lack of a better word, dropped an “Ancestral Token”.
The player could bring this Ancestral Token, to some dark altar or shrine and the player would be able to imbue their item of choice with the powers of the ancestors. Maybe it doesn’t need to imbue the item, but rather the Item Slot specifically.

This solves the issue of excessive player book keeping and adds an extra layer to the player trade market and if the imbue would rather imbue the Item Slot, this would also remove the wonky situation of having part of your character not work because an item was broken and thus no longer be granting the bonuses.

Legendary Items

When you say things as:

“We agree with the feedback that a character’s power is currently too dependent on items”

Where do you base this from? Diablo IV? Diablo 3?. There aren’t a whole lot of items in Diablo IV currently, so must be Diablo 3, however, needless to say, this is a good sentence as this is a very specific issue within Diablo 3 indeed.

I like this a lot, Itemization should be impactful and meaningful but shouldn’t be the core deciding factor in character power, good step in the right direction.

About the Magic vs Rare item affix ranges, there should most definitely be flavor surrounding items, and item rarity shouldn’t necessarily be exempt from this.
Magic items could absolutely have higher affix ranges or even different affix pools compared to other rarity types.

This is a step in the right direction about item relevancy. Every single item rarity should have a relevance in the game across the board and I wrote about this in my aforementioned post within the Runewords section, even white items needs to matter more than just salvaged goods.

I still have a big hope that we will see actual Runewords as well as different but impactful item base types with more than just 3 sockets, but I’m saving that for the next update :stuck_out_tongue:

The New Skill Tree

Massive step in the right direction, really good work.

There are still room for improvement though and I would personally LOVE to see more depth and complexity within this system, please trust that your players can handle more complex systems than this :D. Right now, the skill tree is way to linear and merely provides an illusion of choice.

I do like that the numbers shown are very small in size, this is a perfect example of when to keep things simplistic. Also to mention; Synergies!, where are they? please consider bringing them back in some form! (I have a suggestion for this at the bottom of this section).

I was watching MrLlama and he had a great idea to go about this… Instead of having just the one skill tree for each class, you should consider making a tree for each specific specialization and or “Mastery” I’ve heard this a few times on a few streams already and while some people would love a tree like this for every single spell in the game and as cool as that could be, I will agree that this may be a bit over the top.

Ideally I’d prefer a middle ground between what we have been shown now and the Skill Tree of Path of Exile and MrLlama shared a tweet with his iteration of this skill tree and I think this is the way to move forward.

The idea of having a tree for each specialization on every character seems so cool and would provide much more character depth than what currently has been shown and I would assume it would be very fun for you guys to work on as well to be creative with skills. Do some wonky sh*t :smiley:
Let us make a powerful meteor for single target boss farming or let us make a meteor shower for AoE mob grind purposes, the world is your oyster.

Additionally to carry on the back of the ideas provided by MrLlama and Quinn as well as a few others, I want to add my own pitch.

Considering this is a tree, a literal tree, I want to take a moment to ask you:

What is usually a thing within dark cultures like, witchcraft, voodoo practice etc?:

  • Decorated Trees and miscellaneous Ornaments.

What do we already have that we could possibly decorate this tree with?:

  • Runes, Charms, Jewels, Gems, Tokens etc.

Imagine if we could socket these things into our skill trees for additional benefits… you could have runes be embedded into the stem and the rest could hang from the branches.

What if these additional benefits could create targetable new branches between notables or drastically change how the core mechanic of a skill functioned, or add never before seen synergies to your skills and character?
Maybe even these could provide cross mastery skill tree synergies?:

I mentioned changing a meteor from single target boss killer to AoE mob grinder, what if these ornaments could transform this meteor from Fire to Cold and now it’s an area control ability that freezes mobs around you… Be bold, daring and creative, don’t be afraid to make mistakes, take chances, the players will love and hate you for it, but most importantly, as shown from the community within Path of Exile, they will ultimately respect you more.

The New Sorceress Enchantment System

Yes, yes and YES!

Very very good, I like everything about this idea of having each class being unique in their own way, go absolutely full send in this direction, assuming you will provide this feature to every single class available in the game.
I can’t really add much other than my initial reaction to this because I want to see more.

SO MUCH POTENTIAL :smiley:

End Game Progression System

I am a bit conflicted on this, mainly due to the fact that I’ve seen first hand what abomination the Paragon system is, so naturally I just noped right out from this idea entirely, however, if you can make something that isn’t Paragon, but provide what you mentioned, then I am open minded.

I fully agree with “Easy to learn, Difficult to master”. Full send on this as well.

In closing

To anyone who have read this entire Wall of Text, thank you.

I will try and see if I can make a TLDR and add it here at the bottom, but knowing my self, I probably won’t xD as my TLDR’s are basically already this entire post.

Thank you for the update and I am looking forward to the itemization update in December :wink:

Kindest Regards

A long term fan.

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Welcome to the forum, Dare!

Why you prefer having more trees instead of having one BIGGER tree? There isn’t any benefit to multiple trees besides it would be easier for new players to orient themselves.

It can be either, personally I enjoy the Skill Tree of Path of Exile a lot due to its complexity and I like the Diablo 2 Skill tree more than shown here, the current iteration of this new skill tree is still way too linear and provide little to no actual player choice and creativity in building your character.

Thematically it makes sense to give a tree to each specific specialization, they can however make it even bigger in the style of PoE’s skill tree, but that would be visually daunting on newer players.
It’s much more intuitive to have a section somewhere in the skill tree pane that allows you to switch between Fire, Frost and Lightning trees for example.
Similarly for the druid, have a tree for each Elemental, Wolf and Bear trees maybe ?

That’s just their Alpha-concept of it atm. It will have more branches later.

That’s what I mostly dislike about multiple trees - they “force” the players into specializations instead of making them think out of the box.

What if I don’t want any of these main skills, but I want to play a Druid and I want my build to use high to reach nodes from all these 3, but I can’t make it due to these not being in one tree (so I could shortcut for the points I have)?

You see where I am going - more trees means less build diversity.

Yet another reminder that General Discussion threads get buried within 12 hours, that’s why they have a STICKIED Feedback thread just for the Q3 update…

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The same reason why you say this, is the same reason why I say, that you can’t be sure of that either.
One thing we can be sure of, is that it is most likely going to change from now to release.

This is a good point, however, I think we’re coming from a very similar place of reference. I’m all for 100% player creativity and a massive full tree that wouldn’t necessarily be tied to one specific element, the only reason I mentioned the masteries or each individual specialization is because that is what Diablo has thematically done, always.

This is why I mentioned the addition of the ornament system, they could serve this exact purpose, now whether or not this is necessary is another story, time will tell.

I disagree about it resulting in less build diversity, right now you only have one or two linear paths to take for each skill on the tree, by having a tree for each specialization you create much more room for diversity.
Who says the “main” skills are locked, maybe you can freely arrange a skill at the base of the tree to build around?.

Loads of potential with this though!

Right now we are in Alpha. Let’s discuss things as concepts.

What I mean is it’s better to have one tree with 90 nodes instead of 3 x 30 due to what I wrote above - more build diversity due to the ability to jump from branch to branch not only from the bottom.

Even if you could re-arrange branches, a single tree is superior.

Yes, we could have the following branch/node manipulations:

  • Rearranging
  • Cutting/corruption to strengthen the rest
  • Mutation/combos

I love this idea! We need more gem types too. Why did Diablo 3 get rid of the Sapphire and Skull?

Sapphire (Blue)
Topaz (Yellow)
Ruby (Red)
Emerald (Green)
Garnet (Orange)
Amethyst (Purple)
Diamond (White)
Onyx (Black)
Skull (Grey)

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You do know that PoE has jewel sockets on the skill tree right. I think that jewel sockets in a skill tree for D4 wouldn’t fit at all.