[Constructive Feedback] Thoughts on the ONE thing that imo invalidates 80% of any past or future changes introduced

PC General Discussion
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Hello,

With this post I would like to summarize things that have been mentioned in different shapes or forms that eventually boil down to the ONE thing I believe hinders the game a lot. This effectively makes not only past mechanical, content and system changes obsolete, but also threatens to invalidate most of the future plans for the expansion or other content going forward if this thing does not get changed (I haven’t of course played the 2nd expansion, I just want to share it as soon as possible if it might help the development cycle somehow to avoid more needless reworks later on).

I’ll start with saying that, leaving aside “more powers” and “on a Thursday night 30 degrees left” initial skill and itemization memes aside, the game has/had a lot of quite decent mechanics, additions, ideas added, but most of them did not solve the problems they were trying to address and only sounded good “on paper”. Which lead to many attempts of system reworks, itemization v2, endgame v4 etc. Were those changes bad by themselves? Not necessarily. They just… got devoured by the current essence of the game and that ONE thing, not having a chance to be interacted with and played with.

That ONE thing is “numbers and progression pacing”.

Let me make the following analogy - I am kid, I get Tetris as a present. I am super excited, I play the crap out of it for 2 years. I grow up a bit and I get my next present - an 8-bit Nintendo. This feels like a great improvement - graphics, controls, possibilities. Super awesome! I play with it for 3 years, complete many games - Mario, Donkey Kong, shooting Ducks, etc. A few years later I get Sega Mega Drive 2 as a present. Wow, again a big upgrade - new and better controller, graphics, another set of games, etc. Then I get a PS1, a whole new generational level , etc. Leading up to PS5. this happens over the course of 15 years for example. I have enough time to play each console, to explore its opportunities, to organically become bored and worn out of each, until next one comes and also each new console changes in a meaningful way everything I can do.

What happens in D4 - you start the game = you get your Tetris. You haven’t even beaten a few levels of it and in 2-4 hours you get your PS1 = your legendaries that just obliterate everything. 10 to 20 hours later you get your Super PS5 Pro Limited edition = you get everything that is needed to blast T1-T4. Your build as gameplay style is complete - even an ilvl 450 unique that unlocks it is enough. And then for the next 50-250 hours your ingame progression feels like just getting a sticker for your ultra PS5 Pro, or getting a yellow button cap instead of a black one - it’s the same console, same gameplay, everything is exactly the same.

Most of the systems introduced so far felt like they were meant to be part of that gradual journey from Tetris to PS 5 Pro. But they couldn’t, as there is no journey. There is no black or white - you either obliterate or get 1-shot. There is no in-between. The new 23 or whatever number of new monster affixes - have I noticed AI changes? DO I know what they are? Did this change my gameplay? No, I just noticed instead of green puddles there are now orange sawblades - it looks visually different but changes nothing - I still either dominate or get 1-shot.

New monsters - nobody cares. 80% of the new powers and skills - nobody cares. New stats for sustain (life regen/leech etc) - apart from 1-2 gimmicky builds - nobody cares. So much wasted development time, because there is no “zero-to-hero” progression. Just ADHD-brain-targeted zug-zug fiesta. And one would say “just go higher difficulty or handicap yourself somehow but not using X or Y” - sure, but this won’t change the pacing - I will still either 1-shot monsters or they will 1-shot me. The whole pacing and reward scheme is off, totally off. Why the numerical progression is like “5 → 500 → 50k → 50b → 1928391283T”. What would happen if we have numbers inbetween? Stop with those insane multipliers, make it more gradual and add staggered system/mechanical changes along the way, then the feeling of progression will still be preserved, because you won’t progress just number-wise but feeling-wise, and at the same time those systems will have time to shine and not just be born doomed and dead.

These are just personal thoughts, I am not saying they should be valid for you, but I really do care for the game and hope it gets that thing right. It is not mutually exclusive with D4 being for casual gamers.

Peace!

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You have to realize 99% of forum users are never going to read past the first paragraph.

There is alot that invalidates any changes in the game. For the most part they do it to themselves due to releasing an incomplete product that falls victim to the whims of marketing. We cannot view game development as in the past. It has changed to marketing development.

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TL;DR

1 - The pacing in the game is too fast. Items are front loaded, and you’re able to complete all content (bar pit grinding) within essentially 30-40 hours.

2 - They need to slow it down some, more gradual climbing, not spikes. Otherwise all of the changes for the game are pointless.

End

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It’s been awhile but I think the original game was slower paced. I’m not sure where it changed. The real big changes was VOH, again I’m guessing on that. I pre-ordered VOH. I had no time to play until December of that year so I missed a lot of the growing pains and OP Spiritborn.

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Started around S2, when their philosophy was to rush you through 1-50 and get you to the endgame faster. However the issue they ran into was you needed to be able to progress once you hit level 50. So they started to alter itemization.

They fixed that issue early on by just front loading and having a lot of items drop, along with introducing smart loot and weighted stats. Then they added crafting to the mix to go even further beyond. VoH mostly had the number crunch, but the front loading was already in the game by then.

Overall I’d say the classes in general are more balanced (according to the devs specifications, not the players mind you). Doesn’t mean the pacing can’t be slowed down, but then we get into more tiered item levels per torment tiers to stagger it out. Which is mostly not what they’re looking to do.

There’s no easy solution the entire player base will agree to either.

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I remember one monster people farmed for the weapons. They were very high ilvl at the time. Everyone was there farming, some were selling and some used the items. Then like all thing, it got fixed.

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Pretty much sums up the state of the game. It’s baffling that some people say things like “D4 came a long way”. Like, in what way? The game has 0 progression post max lvl.

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I think what you see as a failure is their hook and gimmick.

isometric ARPGs tend to be slow.

Diablo 4 is the opposite; you get right into the game after a light snack of a story.

The reason why this sells so well is because for players who aren’t very interested in the story and just want to either blast or theorycraft this meets that niche demand. While I’m still a mildly disgruntled older person with the game I will say that they’ve really done great honing on this particular hook. From tempering and masterworking to gear refinement the fact that it is fast is absolutely the point; it’s closer to an idea playground than it is a traditional game in the genre.

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Yep, it’s been a while but I remember it vividly as that was my most beloved time with the game. Itemization was absolutely horrendous, but density was lower, speed was lower and you could feel and see everything you do. I remember first time I used barb’s Upheaval, it was such a magnificent experience - it was slow but impactful (of course there were faster less smashing alternatives with a similar killing speed result), but basically you could see skill animation, particles, skill impact, monster hits, etc. And the idea about skill points increasing the size or intensity of the skill made sense - you could visually see the progression. Now you equip a few legendaries and suddenly you’re Megatron Laser Beam Battlecruiser Ion Cannon Death Star shooting avatar :smiley:

And it’s ironic, because at the moment Titan Quest 2 is getting some pretty good traction and it’s really well received and anticipated, and that game’s combat atm is exactly (or close to) D4’s combat at launch. Of course, we know nothing of TQ2’s endgame, but if such combat can generate hype and income, then it means there’s a niche for that, we don’t need every ARPG being a disco on wheels.

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The game was good when it was level 1 to 100, but the change to 1 to 60/1 to 300 made it much more powerful quickly. Especially with the glyphs, you reach 5 nodes and 5 glyphs and you’re at T4 destroying everything, even without decent equipment, which is frustrating.

  • They gave in to an audience that wanted the game to be faster. Another example is the rain of mythic monsters we have now.

- The 1 to 100 game needed some adjustments, especially after level 50/60 where we no longer had progression. They made a very simple item upgrade system, without depth, which made the game boring and dull in that part.

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You could only get 925 gear from Duriel

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No this was one of the blinking icon monsters that would spawn. I think it dropped axes only. Barbarian and Druids could use the weapon. The rest of the players were there to just vendor it. This particular tactic was early launch. It didn’t last long. I believe it was North of Gea Kul.

I found a video. It was in beta so it was really long long ago.

https://youtu.be/SjcAW0JTNQ0?si=DC9bsOIJUEG_RzN4

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The expansion changes so much, we don’t know if something like this is wasted time yet or not. A lot of what we’ve seen has been a prelude for the expansion patch changes.

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Yep. Some other big points where they accelerated progression:

  • Introduction of tempering
  • Adding second multipliers to Glyphs
  • Doubling most Legendary Nodes
  • Increasing most damage passives from about 3-4% to about 6% per point
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I more or less agree, and I’ve done my own analysis in the past.

You see, Torments aren’t difficulties, but rather part of the game’s progression.
Like floors in a dungeon, the idea is that you progress through them.

Now, if we look at games like Diablo 2, each map you traversed (as part of the normal progression of the game) was slightly more difficult than the previous one, so each map in Diablo 2 was also like a floor in a (massive) dungeon.

In other words, we could say Diablo 2 had dozens of floors, while Diablo 4 only has 4 (or 5).

This makes the progression in Diablo 4 feel extremely rushed and lacking in scale.
So, it’s not about the numbers themselves, but rather the lack of steps.

This means that Diablo 4 desperately needs many more floors to even remotely approach a good progression experience. But players hate the idea of ​​Torments, so even if it’s the right decision, adding more Torments (both in the middle and above) is something that will be rejected.

And, ironically, the idea of ​​a stackable consumable item that slightly increases the game’s difficulty (Mindcages) is very popular… so… Players want more Torments, they just don’t want to call them Torments.

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The floors analogy was bad when you made a whole thread about it and it’s still bad now. D4 scales the difficulty every time you level up and for each world tier. You could argue it has 480 floors currently (60 levels, 8 world tiers) and will have at least 700 with the expansion (70 levels, 10+ world tiers since they mentioned additional Torments, plural). You can say some of those floors are too ‘short’ or not steep enough, but they exist and your analogy conveniently ignores them completely.

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So why not increase the time spent on each step, instead of adding 20 more steps?
They should incorporate the design philosphy less is more.

With the skill changes coming with LoH, it might help bring more meaning to the overall experience of the game.

Just look at Grand Theft Auto 5 for example, the game was very grounded and solid, until a later update ruined and turned everything meaningless, when you can buy yourself a hover bike with missiles.

Thats the complain OP has, everything just feels so ungroudned and meaningless, when you become the embodiment of shooting an entire screen worth of depth away.

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It’s NOT an analogy, it’s the evolution of a dungeon crawler.

In Diablo 1, the difficulty increased with each floor… Diablo 2 applied that to an ““open world””, making each new map the equivalent of a new floor. Instead of connecting through a ““door””, you only connected them through bridges or caves.

Torments are the evolution of that concept. Now it’s not just one map that increases in difficulty, it’s the entire world.

This is why Diablo 4 feels bad when it comes to progression… it’s like only advancing 5 maps in Diablo 2… you haven’t done anything!!

The need to present it as “an analogy” is to make it easier to understand. It’s not easy to see when you’re too used to thinking of torments as difficulties, especially when connecting the idea with the difficulties in Diablo 2. Your mind is trained to see the wrong connection.

They are not a difficulty selector, they are the steps of the progression.
And that’s a fact. Not an analogy.

Because that way you don’t achieve a sense of constant progression.

Spending too much time on a floor will make you feel stuck.

Furthermore, you create another problem. At a certain point, one level will be very easy while the next is very difficult. That limbo is extremely uncomfortable, and in fact, I’ve already experienced it in Diablo 4. That point where you can only choose between: killing everything in one hit and take minutes to kill a mob is not fun at all.

To solve the problem of that limbo, you need difficulties closer together in terms of difficulty… but if they are too close, you will get through them very quickly, so you definitely need more of them.

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It is an analogy. You are comparing what are not literally [floors] to [floors] as a way to explain something. That’s the textbook definition of an analogy. You even in your reply call it

This is again drawing a comparison (in this case an equivalence).

Anyway, you once again completely ignored the entire point about non-Torment world tiers and levels 1-60, so there really is no hope with you. Cheers.

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As I already explained, it is and it isn’t.
They’re not “just like floors”; they’re the evolution of floors.

I’m using an analogy to make it easier to understand (Because, as you are clearly demonstrating, it is difficult to digest.)
I’m literally comparing cars to carts just to penetrate that mental conditioning.

And you’re ignoring logic…

A world that adapts to your level isn’t a world that grants you progression; it’s a world that seeks to give you a constant experience. And in fact, D4 fails to give it to you. As someone who always starts at the most difficult point, I can say: it’s anything but constand. And even in the situation where this system works well, it has significant disadvantages (which is perhaps why it stops at level 60).

Now… fixing this is a huge task, and the benefits would be small… that’s why I ignore it.

Now… Extending the T0 difficulties to TX would even be a good idea, because it would effectively create 4 sub-torments for each Torment (i.e., 16 floors).

I’m sure the vast majority would be happy with those extra torments that aren’t called torments.