DIABLO 4 - Bad Item and Character Power Design

PC General Discussion
381

This isn’t true. At the high end of the curve, the cost people offer / are willing to pay doesn’t scale at the same rate as the actual rarity of the item. The only way to ensure it did would be to set prices algorithmically, but that would t make any sense since certain combinations are more important that others.

If you are able to see items from tens of thousands of sellers, it will completely overwhelm your own self-found stuff and make the loot chase all about collecting the currency. This might be ok if the currency can only be acquired through trade or very rare drops, but it doesn’t work if you just use gold.

382

So there are some projectiles that you wouldn’t want 3 of? There are some skills where being able to split them in 3 would change how you build around them?

Which decisions are those? Are there mutually-exclusive aspects you have to choose between? From what I’ve seen, the legendaries might transform some skills and therefore change the other skills/passives you use with them, but there is still tons of depth to those choices because it’s only affecting one skill. Mixing and matching legendaries might cause you to choose different defensive skills or cooldowns or different skill runes, but there are still many choices to be made about which passives to invest in and which skill combinations to run.

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383

By having other legendaries equally as interesting or stronger. You can still have modifiers like “does more dmg based on max resource” which would impact builds like bone spirit differently than spear. Etc. Still have the “does more dmg based on distance”. Those impact playstyles differently. You can have CDR related ones. Resource gain. Permanent auras. Add procs with more interactions like a burn effect on any melee attack but then more gear to stack burn dmg modifiers.

384

But most of these choices aren’t mutually exclusive. You can have 10-12 aspects depending on your class and most aspects have different slots available. The most interesting choices are about which aspect should be on amulet or 2-hander. Maybe in the very late game there’s a question about which specific aspects work best with your build… but the build itself comes from the skill tree choices and the paragon points, so it’s pretty weird to say that all the interesting choices are made on the items.

The rest of your examples are the ways in which rare items support your build. Those make for interesting item choices, but again those choices are driven by your choices in the skill tree. They make it more interesting to focus on certain skills/passives, rather than less interesting.

So again, I’m not clear on what you are suggesting here. How are my choices for building a Necro or Barb or w/e made more interesting by having aspects buff more skills? How does doing that solve the issue of the skill tree being “too bland”?

If you’re saying that you’d prefer to have more aspects that compete with each other for slots, that seems reasonable. It’s not because the skill tree is lacking, though, but because the aspects that buff specific skills are less interesting

385

i don’t agree. i like the way it actually goes.

I really prefer farm to find the specific items which will improve my build, instead of just putting points.

What i could see in the betas was a fine balance between skill tree and the items. I find your suggestions dangerous for the game.

386

It’s absolutely both. They shrunk even from d3. D3 had 5 skill runes per ability. D4 has 2.

The legendaries are all modifiers of passive dmg. The paragon board is the same. Almost all uniques are that. The tree is that.

There are VERY few things that change how abilities function. That’s the issue. Therefore build diversity is non existent. To make it worse, the legendary modifiers have some for a specific skill so they shrink choice even more.

D4 has drastically fewer options than d3, which is sad considering that d3 made build diversity low with sets having way too much power. Even then, it has wayy more and more interesting legendaries and sets and skill runes options.

Skill tree layout is bad in general. Now you can’t even get builds without a generator. You just waste pts in it

387

I haven’t looked into it too extensively and I am sure there is some info that still isn’t out there but I think we just got 2 skill runes per ability because some of those skill runes were used as legendary aspects instead.

At any rate I don’t really get why is is appealing to put all the power into the character over the loot. Why is this such a big deal to some people? To me the fun of the game is chasing the loot. The loot in this game so far seems more appealing and interesting than in any other game. I wouldn’t get that same feeling if the loot was only “add X amount to resistances”.

388

Completely disagree. Its the D4 systems that are cool and interesting and D2 systems that are outdated and boring. If D2 had good systems, i would still be playing D2R. D2 Andys are a special breed.

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389

How many skill runes were ever usable on any one ability? Sure, you had more choices of what your active abilities looked like, but passive buffs to them or to circumstances are just as important for how a build plays. You act like the passives are all just, “deal 10% more damage.” But they aren’t, they carve circumstances in which you deal more, encouraging you to find items that complement that, skills that work together in those circumstances.

Even if you always put 3 points in any passive you use and 7 points in each of your active skills, the skill tree alone still gives just under 1 trillion options. Most of them don’t make a lot of sense, but that’s the number even without considering investing only a point in some active skills to open up more passives. Active skills + rune choices + selecting 3 passives in D3 is almost exactly the same number of possibilities, but there was no way to trade active powers for passive ones, no way to transform skills or add meaningful gameplay bonuses through paragon, and no class mechanics to add extra variety, like the book of the dead or the enchantment system.

390

I’m not saying power should be into the character over the loot. I’m saying the loot needs to be more game changing and dynamic and not just +dmg modifiers.

Lets take an ‘extreme’ example, which is actually pretty close to D4 anyways… Lets say you want to play bone spear on necro. Lets say your passives in the skill tree in each area that bone spear isn’t in, is just +100% bone spear damage. Now, lets say each gear slot you have a legendary, and each one is just +100% bone spear damage on each slot. Now, lets say your paragon tree gives +100% bone spear dmg.

Literally none of this changes the way you play. You have two ‘skill runes’. One is “first target hit is made Vulnerable” and the other is “+crit strike and 2 more are fired if it crits”.

So you pick one of those two things, and everything else is automatically laid out for you because there’s nothing else to choose between and nothing changes the way you interact with your bone spear.

It’s simply…+dmg modifiers, you run around and click the same bone spear from lvl 1 to lvl 100, no matter what gear you have, no matter how you spec, etc.

I simplified this, but this IS how the game is built. This has been discussed on multiple streams, like Quin’s stream, etc. It’s not a choice when there are 6 options for 6 gear slots, and they are all +dmg to your spender. You can have 50 options, but which one has the higher % number, pick that one. Same with the passives. Same with paragon.

Yes, I realize there always will be meta builds. I’m a meta chaser so I get that, but take a look at POE. They have many interesting builds that are capable. The reason they aren’t played is because they’re too expensive to get online or the more casual players want to play something simplistic. (Also fine). They do have the options there for the tryhards who want to do those other builds, though. They are available and viable and potentially optimal for certain content.

Diablo 4 needs multiple types of end game content so that many builds are viable as well. Example, speedrunning builds, boss builds, dungeon builds, etc. Diablo 3 only has 2 types really, grift pushing has an optimal build for each class and then speed farming has an optimal build plus a couple support builds. The more end game modes there are, the more builds are viable.

To note, diablo 4 has a couple of exceptions. They have a unique that makes blood surge also detonate at each minion when you blood surge. THIS is an example of a really good unique/legendary power that fundamentally changes how the build can be played. Maybe you wouldn’t even use minions on blood surge without this unique.

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391

The codex will have just a small part of the available aspects.

Most you will have to farm yourself.
And dont forget, codex rolles on aspects are basic so you might have to be lucky to get a better rolled one drop.

392

D2 had powerful items without makeing them absolutly mandatory for your build.

Is that so hard to get?

393

lol i dont even need to look up the aspects to tell you, you are wrong.

394

Build defining items are awesome, sorry y’all like boring d2 items /shrug.

395

Stop talking S H I T !

ht tps://d4planner.io/skilltree/Barbarian/

396

But it also means you don’t have to start from nothing and can make a basic build even if you have terrible luck.

397

Thats just copium. And you know that when you understand the term.

398

It’s called reality.

The future is now old man

399

How about paragon boards? They said a lot of our powers will come from that too.

400

This sentence right here sums it up well… and i agree with you. This type of design is what i was hoping for in D4…