While four additional difficulty levels are greatly appreciated, I feel there’s some key design choices that make combat feel too easy no matter what difficulty your game is set to.
Namely, being able to use potion & heal while stunned/frozen/etc… This not only doesn’t make sense from a realism perspective, but it means you can ignore the necessity to run unstoppable/stun-break effects, and ignore positioning your character to avoid freeze orbs and other boss/elite mechanics.
Boss/elite mechanics should feel punishing when un-avoided, not like a minor nuisance or a temporary dps pause.
Just my thoughts on the matter, feel free to share aspects of combat design you feel need adjusting, thanks for reading.
Edit: I also feel like potion-ing should either have a short “cast time” or cool-down.
Andariel and Duriel can 1 shot you if you don’t avoid most of their attacks. If that’s not punishing I don’t know what else could be.
This is a fantasy ARPG, dude. If you want realism go play Red Dead Redemption 2.
Let’s not forget this game has a Hardcore mode and mechanics are thought with both Softcore and Hardcore in mind. It is very easy to say the game isn’t punishing mistakes or bad positioning from a Softcore perspective. You don’t care if you die because you just respawn, for Hardcore it is all the loot and hours played being thrown away.
If you feel like you are so good at the game come and play Hardcore, especially this season. Curious about your next thread after that…
So was Diablo 1. And in D1 you wouldn’t want to walk into a group of monsters, because they would stun-lock you (unless you were much stronger). You had to pick your fights and not get outnumbered. The game felt tactical because of it.
In D4 impairment mechanics felt similar (before being nerfed). You saw a big monster taking a swing at you, you had to jump away. You saw an elite, you knew a CC attack is incoming (even if the ground was obscured, you knew it is coming). You had to move around or have countermeasure. Now I don’t even care about having unstoppable skill ready at hand, because I can wait it out and drink a potion. I have died many times in softcore this season, I don’t recall any instance where it was because of CC.
I’d love for CC to be reverted back, but I guess I’m out of line. After all this game is meant to be an industrial meatgrinder simulator.
Personally I’ve always been for making it more difficult.
But since launch they have been making it easier and easier.
To the point that you can roll your face across the keyboard and win.
But I’m mostly ignored… which is probably for the best lol.
You see… it doesnt even matter anymore what they do. Someone always complains about it being to hard or to easy.
Now it’s you who complains about CC not being punishing enough. While tons of people complained about CC being absolutey atrocious where unstoppable was mendatory in s1.
Meanwhile most people not playing sb cant even get to t4. Ask these people if the game is hard or easy.
Ask the people who cant beat lilith. Ask people who need carries for t4 bosses.
Ask actual people in the game. But most people dont care about other people. Thats the problem with these self centered " I want this and that" threads.
There needs to be balance for everything. I dont see a lot of people complaining about game being to easy now so I would say difficulty is okay.
They surely should buff some classes tho. Everything besides SB is garbage tier.
I agree it feels odd to use a potion while CCd.
But I also think having to rely on unstoppable to be able to play the game comfortably was really bad design and felt awful.
So, I am fine with it.
Darks Souls is that way. There is also Elden Ring. Say hi to Malenia for me. Please do not ask them to crapify this game further however, i have had enough of monster cc and stupid ground effects.
Umm what? I’m doing Spiritborn and the difficulty went up significantly in 2.0. Hard is actually hard. I tried Expert and got owned by normal monsters and had to go back to Hard. Maybe it’s a specific Jaguar skill sets being under powered without gear boosts? I feel like the game is actually challenging for once.
It was the other way before and it felt absolutely horrible. The problem with that concept is how many layers of CC you could have come down on you. Frozen then dead happened almost constantly. Or CC’d pools etc. I agree with you in principal but having played both ways it is WAY better now IMO.
Same, I too would prefer CC to matter but the problem is it goes against high monster density
So it’s either the one or the other (both can’t work together apparently)
The game is easy baseline, it’s scaling that makes it hard (artificially), so depends what you consider to be your criteria for it being or not being easy
For example - can my P111 Shred Druid clear T2 Pits ? (and most other characters I see in T2 for that matter ?), yes they can
Can it kill Tormented Bosses (and most other T2 chars I see) ? - probably not and not yet (just tried and failed a one attempt :P)
So if the argument is - is the game easy (baseline) ? - yes, if the argument is - are bosses i.e. the “entire content” easy ? (arguably no, but there are broken builds that trivialize everything)
IF on the other hand we’re talking about difficulty leveling ? - I’d say it’s about right, died like 15 times (give or take) and the most of those like 11-12 were either undergeared engagement against Hellbournes or looting right next to fire enchantment death explosion
Hence I said before - I’m happy with the game overall (the leveling experience at least on Expert felt just about right), but yes there are problems with balancing of the Endgame
If you’re talking about leveling experience then yes, the game is finally where it’s supposed to be (or somewhere near it)
At least once boss fights (like Stronghold boss fights) felt like actual boss fights and therefore respective
I always hated this argument cause it’s the wrong focus of things
HC should’ve been treated like a different game entirely, for example add an additional affix on gear pieces on HC or some extra gems for survivability but keep the baseline game challenging
It’s always been the wrong way => HC viability prioritized and then the regular game operating at 40-60% difficulty of what it realistically should’ve been
I think difficulty and world scaling is juuuust right as long as you don’t play the evade spiritborn. But if you do play the evade spiritborn, try to stay away from people playing other builds. It’s absolute cancer on the eyes, and it ruins the fun for people who just want to play the game.
