[FEEDBACK] There are still systems-level problems with D4, and 2.1 doesn't fix them. Suggestions inside

Blizzard gave themselves zero flexibility in design with Aspects. The Item Budget Economy is fixed. You only have a certain amount of slots and each of those slots can only have a single Aspect. Unique/Mythic items take place of one of these Aspects. Certain Slots can only have Certain Aspects on them.

Now, if you got rid of Unique items for the sake of an argument, even then, you have far too many Aspects that are “needed” for any given build and not a lot of flexibility. Certain Builds and Skills require more investment and have more support with Aspects than others.

Unique and Mythic items complicate things as does introducing more and more Aspects. You STILL only have the same amount of slots and a build that required every Item Slot with certain Aspects to be viable still requires that while they have now ADDED Aspects/Uniques you need to (but cannot) incorporate into your build.

It is not interesting nor is it fun. There are a lot of Unique Aspects and Aspects in general that should be moved into the Skill Trees and Paragon system. These are any Aspects that fundamentally activates a Build or Skill to any appreciable degree. Earthquakes are a prime example as you do not have any ability to even cause a Quake without Aspects. Dust Devils are similar.

If we are talking about specific Skills, Shouts have 9, count them, 9 points of Passive investment, a Glyph, and 2 Resource Aspects. Who even puts 5 points into Shouts when all these required multiplicative Passives exist in your Tree? Unless you are using Yen’s the idea of making investments for a single Shout is a pipe dream.

There is plenty more that are issues there, but I would go a step further and do the following:

  • Boots can have (2) Aspects. You can have a Movement and a Utility Aspect.
  • Unique Boots can have a Movement Aspect added to them always.
  • Rings can have (2) Aspects. You can have an Offensive and a Resource Aspect.
  • Unique Rings can have a Resource Aspect added to them always.
  • Amulets can have (2) Aspects. You can have Any Aspect and a Utility Aspect.
  • Unique Amulets can have a Utility Aspect added to them always.

This would mean that you will always have (2) Resource Aspects, (1) Utility Aspect, and (1) Movement Aspect - even if all of those aforementioned Slots have Uniques in them.

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This is the main issue of Diablo, at least, the functionality of the aspects and unique MUST come from Skill Tree/Talent Tree. Maybe, legendaries aspects should boost that functionality in damage and effect.

I did a post giving feedback about this, we should be able to extract a GA from an item and implement this in the gear we want. Masterworking to improve the GA extracted. The idea is we could create the perfect item, because, now we’re not playing an ARPG, we’re playing Grinding Fiesta on unhealthy levels.

I don’t know if this is a real issue. I couldn’t give an opinion here.

Back to the first point. But, I don’t want a forest talent like PoE, I pref something more squishy and handy, like Grim Dawn.

Next points address to this btw.

As I said before, there are TOO many things too keep an eyes. The game needs something more practical to build, like, focus on 1 to 3 button to spam, and other two should be our main buffs to use, so, in that way, you know what every buffs do and you realy warn on keep these buffs up and not 21093982713453 effect that will not fit on UI.

Edit: Great Post btw

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They need to remove all multiplicative damage and make it additive. They need much of skills power to be in the skill itself and then aspects can change how you approach that skill like changing its behavior or element like runes did in D3. Right now everyone is just pigeonholed into stacking the most multipliers you can and many of them being bugged. This is not a healthy meta.

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Just sell $60 cookbooks instead of making good games.

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Even those cookbooks are fail. Diablo themed recipees and they dont bring the heat? Where is the diablo hotsauce in my stew? Terrible uninspired recipees with no vision so just like their game. Well done I guess which is probably how u could this stew? Well done until it has no flavor.

It might sound like a weird suggestion, but if you have any SSD’s installed in your computer make sure their firmware is up to date to potentially resolve odd crashes.

And of course, also consider updating the Motherboard BIOS/UEFI.

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Additive is basically the same issue. You just take the highest value with the highest average uptime. The problem is not multiplicative damage sources, it is how abundant they are which almost makes it a pre-requisite to just grab every multiplicative bonus you can, especially when they are so easy to access. This makes builds that have access to the most Multiplicative Bonuses clearly winners over anything else.

The game just needs better design. Blood Rage capping DwB multiplicative is great, but every single build will take that even if it isn’t bleeding. Hemmhorage however is only for Bleeding. There is something that can be learned grom Hemmhorage.

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This is wrong thinking because if multiplicative is more rare then u just make it even more valuable. My new way of designing aspects puts most the power in the skill already and aspects are a way to just change the behavior and element of skill. Its no longer just stacking numbers though numbers can be still involved in other ways. We can make this work without having any multiplicative numbers. If you get A B and C aspects to stack up to F damage then go to a system where you just start at E damage with 5/5 in skill then isnt this a way to streamline the whole process and make game fun again instead of number stacking? Its much easier to balance this way as well.

Multiplicative damage is ruining the game in bugs and design and paragon and skills and such. Its too good and hollows out everything else.

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Well thought out post, Crescendo. The one area you didn’t touch on explicitly are the items themselves. Nothing in this game gives me an adrenalin rush. When they first introduced Mythic Uniques that were attainable, they maxed all their stats and I hated that strategy.

Now 4 GA’s will be nearly perfect stats in the next season or much more close, so the reality is - we will get further away from that amazing drop and simply be looking for 1, 2, 3, 4 GA’s. There is nothing exciting about that to me, but maybe I’m alone in this. The itemization, more than anything else, will move me away from this game. I just don’t like what I see in the future.

I do think some of your suggesstions could really help and even allow for more stats on pieces of gear, which would help, but equipment needs to keep their inherent ranges or I’ll never be amazed by a drop. Unfortunately, they seem to be moving the other direction with this, but perhaps this is what the majority want.

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Making it more rare is only a partial fix. By capping the Multiplicative contributions, you can control damage quite a bit. While I agree with you on Skill Trees, if you put all of the Multiplicative Damage there, builds that make use of grabbing these Skills will undoubtedly overshadow all other Builds, which is a similar issue we have now.

This is a problem with HoTA and Earthquakes. Even if you do not have a build that features them, you want to take it. Even if you don’t want to focus on Overpowering, you sort of have to now. Heavy Handed, Wallop, Belligerence, Warpath, Counteroffensive, Brute Force. That is a lot tied specifically to 2H Bludgeoning and Overpowering.

The way it should work is basically you should pick one or maybe 2 that best fits your build. Obviously grabbing all of them will produce the best results. Builds that really cannot Overpower, use 1H, and not use at least a 1H Mace though get the shaft. Not including a Basic Attack hurts you quite a lot. The list goes on…

EDIT:

I have to mention that Cut To The Bone is one of the few things done correctly as it ONLY applies to Bleeding. Having exclusive Multiplicative sources to prevent power creep overlap is ideal. One of the worst things that have tried to do with Bleed is to kind of force you to invest in Critical Strike Chance, Critical Hit Damage, and Overpower with Gushing Wounds. If Bleed was balanced without and, it would be progressive.

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The whole skill system/item design/resource system is a failure and needs to be redone from the ground up honestly.

Skills need to determine what you do.
Items enhance what you do with those skills.
The Paragon Board should further push what you can do, but offers more specific bonuses (the “damage on Tuesdays” thing).

The point is all the unique effects for skills should be on the tree, while items (aspects) should be generic bonuses that can apply to multiple different skills/classes. Items should be less restrictive per class and offer a variety of different playstyles between them. The Resource system needs to be entirely fixed, as the generator/spender paradigm is garbage, and massive cooldowns just make the gameplay boring, as well as make taking long cool-down skills (the ultimates) a terrible option.

The need to add synergies between skills, to encourage different playstyles, depending upon which skills you want to play with, as well as add ways to upgrade and further customize those skills (either with specific power-up or different effects) so that you can gain ownership over your character more.

As well, they need to enhance the mobs so that specific damages are less/more effective against them, to encourage the use of different skills based on the situation you are in. Adding more variety to mobs, bosses, boss attacks, events, dungeons and such is necessary to keep people playing more, making replayability more of a thing, as currently the game has none.

There is so much this game needs to fix, and has needed fixing right from the beginning, but I am not sure the devs actually understand the genre to be able to do it. So far what they have shown doesn’t convince me they do, and they sure as hell aren’t capable of going over-and-above expectations for releases to get the game to where it needs to be anytime quickly, let alone offering more than what people expect.

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Problem #5 is supremely interesting to me… I’d watch a well-produced documentary on it, if anyone had access to the data.

You know who else it would help to solve it? The devs. :rofl:

Poor fellas… idk that there’s a single person in that place who understands what the number beast in the basement is actually doing. They just keep throwing meat scraps at it & scurrying away.

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They went full MMO like where everyone and their mother runs with the same items. You are forced to because blizz dictates how much damage skills do with aspects and lack of skilltree customization. Eg Tornado , if you dont take its aspect your dmg will be 0 compared to other who take it. Aspects needs to go from items to the skill tree this way the can remove legendaries and make rare and uniq items interesting and skill altering which doesnt affect your dmg output much if any at all.

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Tbh I don’t even know where the right place to post this is. :joy: I feel like the forums used to have a lot more Blizzard CM presence back in the day and despite being filled with an equal amount of crapposting, sometimes things would get done or see blue replies. I probably just wasted my time and would have done as well just asking ChatGPT to write this all up for me, but my dumb*** posted it here on the off chance something comes of it, hahaha.

Not sure if I’m being called the schmuck or Blizzard is, but :man_shrugging:. The D4 team already reinvented nearly the entire game, so changing a few of the remaining systems actually doesn’t seem that far out of line to me. Besides, Blizzard always reinvents their RPG game systems with every Xpack. Updating the above systems with the next expansion would be a great time to do it.

Agreed. It’s D3 all over again but worse now since skill-modification runes don’t even exist in D4 either. Entire builds are gatekept behind items and your character doesn’t have any inherent power at all. The devs also said they wanted to get away from set items like in D3, but what is the current itemization system in D4 but set items by a different name/color? Builds now require 5-7 hard-locked items, and if you don’t have them, you can kiss that build goodbye. It’s really unhealthy game design.

Agreed! The devs mention that they want uniques to be build-changing items, but…legendary affixes are the same thing now. Show me a Spiritwave Necro that doesn’t use Fastblood aspect, for example. It changes/defines the build just as much as the required unique for that build (Blood Artisan’s Cuirass). Transferring at least some skill power and customization to the tree would help alleviate this annoying, D3-esque bottleneck.

Note that I don’t think D3 is in a bad spot now either, but it definitely has a lot of flaws that D4 shouldn’t recreate – itemization being the biggest influencer of skill power being one of them.

Bro, PREACH! :mega: :mega: :mega:

Appreciate it, and agreed. Keep cookin’. Hopefully Blizz hears one of us!

You get it! Appreciate the feedback.

Yo, send me the job posting for this and I’m in.

I think the big difference is eliminating multiplicative means those chase upgrades (whether nodes, affixes, or whatever) only give power jumps, but the scale remains identical. What you said regarding limiting the amount of multiplicative sources would definitely help, though. Only having 2-3 per build instead of the zillions we have now would be an upgrade. Would still like to see multiplicative completely eliminated, though, because if it exists in any form it’s always going to be mandatory, but regardless, I could settle for only a few sources. :sweat_smile:

I agree with you! Part of the lack of adrenaline rush is that every time an item drops, I can’t actually use it until I spend 30 minutes playing menu-slot-machine at vendors in town to make it better than the item I’m currently using. But yeah, I think you’re right with your points too. Even mythics don’t feel that special to me now if they don’t have the right GAs. :man_shrugging:

Agreed on all points. It would require even more substantial systems changes than what I proposed, but I think everything you mentioned was accurate. I especially agree with the bolded part.

YES! Preach it too!

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Your note is great about the skills. I think 2 GA and 3 GA items are not very effective. You already use a good 1 GA item, then you find another item with 2 GA (which is relatively difficult) and one with no critical chance, that will increase your critical chance by 4%, when we are at the end end this is almost zero or increase your critical damage pool from 2000 to 2100.

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That was a lot to read! But I won’t complain, as my own posts tend to be bloated with hope too, haha.
Joking aside, everything you wrote was very interesting to read, makes sense to me, and is exactly how feedback needs to be handed over.

I am also just a dude, and just yesterday I posted my own version of this in a different subforum and feel like it needs to be promoted here: Suggestion 💭 How to make the talent tree, aspects and uniques have more purpose

Only items & skills and it is a similar summary of the problems you listed, but I have also created some examples to give a clear picture of how I would envisage changes to the design. I am interested in what you think about it.

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I’ll give it a look! Thanks for chiming in here as well. :slight_smile:

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The idea wasn’t very well thought out.
I have always thought the exact same thing.

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Yep, exactly. It’s the same sins of D3 itemization that the devs specifically said they wanted to avoid. Ugh.

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