Echoing Hatred Explained

PC General Discussion
1

Echoing Hatred is a new pinnacle endgame system coming in Lord of Hatred.

Disclaimer: These are some pieces of information based on rumored leaks, past examples, confirmed leaks, and everything stated in this post is from a beta version of the system, and nothing is expected be as is on launch.

Echoing is a new Horde/Arena mode.

It has ties to the ladderboard system. Player scores will be involved/tracked.

As soon as the event begins, players will fight off infinite waves of monsters. Waves of monsters will spawn ona fixed timer regardless of whether the previous wave has been defeated or not.

Players must not only survive for as long as they can, but also slay monsters as fast as they can. Monsters get more and more difficult the longer the player spends inside the game mode.

How do plays end the run? The run is finished when one of two things happens: either the player dies, or the “Overwhelm” meter fills up entirely. Overwhelm is a mechanic specific to this game mode, which, when there are too many unslain monsters on screen, the Overwhelm bar fills up, and the run is over. This is to ensure two things: 1, Hardcore players can end the run without killing off their HC character. 2, super tanky builds don’t just tank everything without having to actually kill anything, and just stay alive in the arena for an infinite amount of time because they found immortality. Players actually have to do enough damage to kill stuff as the Echoing Hatred progresses to advance the system.

The system is based on a score that is tied to a leaderboard. The longer the player survives in the Echoing Hatred without dying or filling up the Overwhelm mechanic, the better the score. In some Beta versions of this system, players can actually increase their score by killing monsters and picking up orbs (killing bosses gives more orbs) in addition to lasting a long time in the run.

The longer players spend inside the EChoing Hatred, the harder the content becomes, gradually progressing infinitely up the “Pit” difficulty. Monsters will have more health and do more damage, so it’s a very good system to test your endgame builds, and it’s a leaderboard friendly.

1 Like
It just needed to be a D2 ladder
2

So
 Echoing Nightmares, 4 years later. John Yang has unspooled his travel pack onto the dusty D4 conference table. (Yes he left Blizzard a few months before S26, but I’m going to imagine there was overlap. :face_with_tongue:)

old opinion

In D3 it’s an integral mid-progression system meant to complement/diversify the GR loop - it provided a way to mitigate GR fatigue by quickly adding limited augments to gear while engaging in a different game mode
 doubles as insta-XP-boosts for alts.

Sounds like in D4 it’ll be a Leaderboard thingy, plus whatever individual loot it might reward. I wonder if there’ll be pylons; different tile sets; goblin shrines; and random boss spawns. The sky’s the limit, in principle, but that :backhand_index_pointing_left: :backhand_index_pointing_up: kind of spice (or equivalent) should be the floor IMO.

Infernal Hordes was the original hand-me-down draft version
 probably couldn’t be adapted to Leaderboards because of the stupid ‘pausing to read underwhelming shrine effects’ built into it
 and I guess replacing it with draft #2 was seen as too confusing and/or disruptive to the existing grind. (Unless
 it does replace it?)

Game director said "NEW" end game content is coming, but it's just echoing hatred?
Game director said "NEW" end game content is coming, but it's just echoing hatred?
3

This is EXACTLY the same as the Echoing Nightmare in D3. EXACTLY.

More copy/paste content from an incompetent team.

So predictable. does anyone have an original thought or idea anymore?

4

I don’t find picking up orbs to be necessary.

1 Like
5

Conan? What are you doing here?

You are supposed to be in Conan Exiles making sure the Lumurians or Setites don’t get out of hand


Omg! Who is watching the bar!

I know this is going to completely fly over most peoples heads but it makes me lol.

:rofl:

6

That’s Blizzard’s specialty from the golden age of Blizzard (no joke).

By the way, if I’m not mistaken, this game-mode was quite well received in D3, so they’re at least copying what’s good.

I also know that the sets return in the form of an amulet (or something like that), which could be a copy of Diablo Immortal
 something I’ve wanted them to copy since day one, to be honest.

7

That struck me as the one potentially tedious thing in it. :rofl: And it’s the one ‘innovation’ I noticed (over D3) & it was simply cloned from Infernal Hordes.

8

‘Echoing Nightmare’ type gauntlet is a solid concept. A lot of fun layering is possible atop it.

In D3, 2 of 3(?) tile sets were stupid - but didn’t matter b/c it’s not directly competitive. If they’re thinking of having a few fixed layouts in D4, they better know people are going to immediately re-roll the bad ones - so might as well plan accordingly. Different layouts could be the basis for strategic variance (something both Pit & IH sorely lack) which could prompt players to think for a moment about different combinations inside the gauntlet & whether it’s worth attempting (rather than re-rolling).

There’s a ton more innovation possible compared to D3’s version
 which was part of an end-of-life ‘burst’ of system releases now frozen in time. Hopefully John Yang & some other vets are being allowed to cook. :cook:
:diya_lamp::diya_lamp::diya_lamp:


Attention to detail in ‘Draft #1’ (IH) doesn’t inspire confidence
 beyond even the Pillars of Pausing and the Orbs of Dillydallying. In Raxx’s Nov.5 interview with Colin & Zaven (queued)
:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUEJSzp8-ng&t=1374


Colin, who was apparently vamoosed as Systems Lead this past summer (right before John Yang was onboarded in that position) recounts how he was telling Zaven just “a month or two ago
 this [fracking] Infernal Hordes door
 it takes forever to open.”

Unless it’s a permanent flaw with the engine or a mysterious & deep dependency in the code which no one has cracked yet
 whose job was it to shepherd this system into an optimal state, Colin? :thinking: One [fracking] year went by, Colin.

9

This game is not going to be an esport no matter how hard you try Blizzard.

10

If they wanted to make an Esport, they would have made StarCraft 3. This comment would be appropriate for a game like Heroes of the Storm, but D4 never had any Esport ambitions. This comment would be as a clueless as saying “God of war Ragnarök would never be an Esport with this DLC!”

The concept was in D3, and who’s Blizzard to be at fault for taking ideas that worked in their past games and innovating on them in their new games? Didn’t the Diablo 2 community expect D4 to just be a copy/paste of D2 with modern graphics? GGG copies/pastes assets in PoE 2 from PoE 1 all the time; it’s like 90% of their game. WoW has been doing it for years. Elden Ring “the GOAT” is has copied/pasted assets all throughout, including assets used & unused from DS3 and Bloodborne. Echoing hatred isn’t even copying assets from D3 or base D4; all the tile sets and enemies would likely be original to LoH. All they did was take the Arena idea, which LE also borrowed from D3.

Exactly, but you probably shouldn’t expect orbs to be in Echoing Hatred because the content isn’t released yet, and it’s still technically in playable alpha that hasn’t received PTR testing yet (if at all), it’s most likely will receive numerous changes and fixes by the time you see it. Also, the idea orbs are from D3, not from the actual Echoing Hatred gameplay. I made that clear in the disclaimer. Blizzard would make a system with less friction than the gauntlet because they actively seek to remove any/all forms of friction from D4. If you only played D4 at launch, you might find this statement surprising, but if you play every season consecutively, it’s an obvious reality of the mindset at Blizzard.

11

Not at all clear what’s from gameplay and what’s speculation TBH. :face_with_tongue: Also, what’s the sourcing for all this - is it an anonymous Discord leak or something?

No orbs in Echoing Nightmare though, and that’s the main inspiration for the game mode as described. So ‘orbs’ would either be imported from D3 GR’s or from IH (which was itself cribbed from D3 Echoing Nightmare). Since IH is closer to home & GR’s aren’t arenas, IH is likelier.

A note on D3 'orbs'...

Progression ‘globes’ in D3 GR’s can be annoying. Sometimes the dispersal pattern is ridiculous & prompts you to waste time moving to the globes. But since GR’s are about ‘moving toward something’ as part of progression (the next floor/ elite group/ pylon) it’s already the main thrust of the activity. You optimize your flow by deciding whether a potential errant globe is worth backtracking for, or if you should keep moving ‘forward’. It’s a meaningful part of the strategy.

In an arena layout (like Echoing Nightmare, or Echoing Hatred per your description), your main goal isn’t to ‘move towards’ the next exit or pylon, and is only minimally about ‘moving closer to’ the next elite pack (nothing like in a GR). So directional movement is not part of the flow - in fact, it’s kind of a debuff. Ideally, you want to move in as small a radius as possible, and attack with as large a radius as possible.

The idea of picking up a monster’s shiny turds for progression is silly. The kill should be it. At least in GR’s, you have to kill the last Rare elite minion to get the full progression, so the globes become part of strategy to figure out if there’s a straggler worth hunting down or if you should zoom past the sea of low-progression non-elites in front of you. The different inherent values of mob types also become part of that strategy. These details were carefully considered.

In an arena, you’re in a room, and waves of mobs are coming at you, and you’re going to kill all of them, period, until you’re overwhelmed. Progression orbs are stupid here - unless they provide perks during combat (filling a role similar to pylons). Perks would be interesting.

I’ve heard D4 devs talk about their love of ‘picking stuff up’ just to feel like you’re accomplishing something, and it’s a pretty lame philosophy actually.

12

Yep, 2.5 years and counting. Diablo help us if someone up there has an original thought. We would log in to Sanctuary froze over.

In D3 there was a purpose for doing these. It dropped a gem based on how far you got to a maximum to augment gear with stats. This explanation does not say there is some purpose for it in D4. If it is the same as D3 might as well rename it D3R.

I bet the CTRL, C and V keys are worn out on their keyboards.

13

And to be honest, I wish they had copied the legendary gems too, but they haven’t (yet).

I don’t think the CTRL C V keys are even dirty yet.

14

If this is more than an unsubstantiated & anonymous Reddit rumor
 getting rid of the Pillars of Pausing alone counts as ‘innovation’ for this studio. Ofc they would’ve had to - to make sense as a Leaderboard system. D3 copy-paste is an upgrade. IH was a downgrade on Echoing Nightmares, conceptually.

Armory was (in theory) an upgrade
 Uber bosses (in theory)
 we’re going to get a cube (right?)
 all kinds of copy-pasta turn out to be upgrades for this game.

It was not a ‘release-ready’ game when it came out
 then they crashed into the atrocious state of the itemization (unsurprising, for a game still in alpha)
 then they took half a year to revamp just the item affixes (= the Blacksmith rework)
 and right now we’re at a stage when they seem to be onboarding and/or promoting more vets (look at hiring notices & who shows up on livestreams) 
 and a vet is in charge/ & an imported bean counter overlord has left
 we’re almost out of alpha, I can feel it. :folded_hands: :palms_up_together:

Gimme copy-pasta systems - improve on them if possible - and give me melée, and something interesting to work on in the endgame. Not asking much. And invite Diablo the Lord of Terror to join us one of these years.

15

The first notice of an Arena mode was in the Expansion Survey. Much of what was in the Expansion Survey turned out to be true, including the Arena mode represented as Echoing Hatred. The survey gave detailed information about this mode, but Arena modes had existed in D3 and Last Epoch before, with similar ideas in abstract. But expect the monsters and assets to be different. But this kind of system would be unique in D4 to other game modes. Same with fishing.

I found this out recently, but Fishing was actually a popular game mode from Diablo immortal. I never paid attention to that game.

Blizzard bringing back old ideas from D2 & D3 isn’t inherently bad. When they released the Paladin, few people were like, “Blizzard just copy/pasted recycled old ideas from D2” and when they released the Spiritborn, not many people said, “Finally, an original class, thank the lord they didn’t give us the Paladin.”

I’m sure with the introduction of new crafting & itemization such as the Horadric Cube & Talisman as well as the return of fan favorites like Chaos Uniques and Sanctification, D4 would have a purpose. Beyond leaderboards, Fishing and Endgame Meta Progression, we don’t know what other forms of endgame are coming. Most likely we will see new NMDs and Lair Bosses but I’m talking about new original game modes. Echoing hatred is original content to D4, pretending that D3, DI, and LE don’t exist because those games are not relevant right now. Blizzard may or may not surprise, but with what I’ve seen and what I know, LoH would be a popular expansion to the community.