If you were a game designer in 2023 how you would design Diablo IV

PC General Discussion
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I am asking because it seems a lot of people are engaged in the talks of what I like/don’t like about Diablo IV. All this is well and good, yet I sense that people are not reflecting upon themselves enough in the process of these talks and loosing the relevant point.

To make things more clear, let me ask here, everybody who is having any issues about the game they have, and the ones who do not, what approach would they have in creating an ARPG game sequel of Diablo III in 2023. If you are the Headmaster of the Diablo IV developenemnt team, what you would go for? Would you innovate, would you rebound to die rolls and turn based-systems? Would you focus on graphics performance, gameplay, or maybe even social aspects? Will you mix them, exclude some of them probably?

And most important, Why?

<as somebody said: I am all Ears>

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I have a feeling - just hear me out here.

This post will get to the bottom of everything, turn the tide, and make Diablo great again. The veritable birth of the MDGA - “mudgah”- movement.

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Here is an in depth suggestion to improve the overall endgame on nightmare dungeons:

  • Make sigils independent from dungeons
  • Sigils can be applied to any dungeon transforming it into a nightmare dungeon
  • Sigils can be improved (like gear is) up to 2 positive random effects and 8 negative random effects
  • The harder the sigil, the better is the “minimum item power level” it can drop
  • Introducing Boss Tokens. Boss Tokens can be merge with sigils and it will create a random encounter with a challenging version of a boss inside the nightmare dungeon. For example: Andariel’s token. If you merge it into a sigil, you will encounter Andariel somewhere inside the dungeon and it will be a challenging fight
  • Bosses from Tokens slain will have a really small chance (0.5%) to drop a super unique
  • Introducing Challenging Nightmare Sigils. Those sigils are rare have no positive effects and 10 random negative effects. Also there will be no revives (acting like a roguelike dungeon).
  • Challenging Nightmare Sigils will drop much better loot, have higher chance of dropping unique items and on completion players will have a really small chance (0.5%) of getting super uniques
  • QOL: When using a nightmare sigil players will be teleported inside the nightmare dungeon (not the entrance) and will receive a 2 minutes invincibility bubble until they make any action like move, attack or gain XP (1 loading screen)
  • QOL: If players uses a sigil on the same Dungeon they already are, reset the dungeon with the new affixes the sigil has and move the players to the beginning of the dungeon. (1 loading screen). If playing coop let players vote for the reset (like it is when using nightmare sigils)
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I posted this before, but here’s a start:

DIV Improvements

QOL

  • Bigger Stash/More Tabs
  • Gem Tab
  • Higher Resource limits
  • Salvaging of items should be moved to the character to be able to do it in the field
  • Horse Inventory

SKILL SYSTEM

  • Resources should be expanded to all classes to be able to be used
  • Skills should be made to support those resources
  • Less reliance on cooldowns and more geared towards resource costs
  • More options for each skill to branch out and be customized
  • More levels for skills to be upgraded
  • Continue to give a skill point for characters all the way to 100, and expand the skillboard to have more choices to grab.

PARAGON BOARD

  • This really feels like a time-wasting system. Most of the time you are grabbing +5 to a stat nodes, and then you can grab a magic/glyph/legendary node every now and then.
  • How about “building your own board(s)? You have to hunt for the board slots/nodes to install in them?
  • Glyphs are way too monotonous to upgrade, and once they are upgraded, you are done. It is more of a chore you have to do, than something you want to do. Part of it is the majority of glyph levels do absolutely nothing. It would be far better if there were less levels, but far more impactful levels for them.
  • There are far too few glyph options to choose from. What I mean is that once you have decided on your build, most of the glyphs are useless, and you only need to level the few that matter for your build. This is also a problem with the too limited choices for builds for each character.

DUNGEONS

  • These need to be extremely expanded, in depth, breadth, randomness, a reason to explore them to the end.
  • The unlock mechanics need to be expanded upon dramatically, or dropped entirely. Right now Dungeons are extremely repetitive and boring. Nightmare Dungeons do not change this up at all. Sure, they add a few minor effects to the mobs/dungeon, but the experience of running the dungeon remains the same.
  • More “Butcher-like” experiences within dungeons are needed. And by that, I don’t mean extremely challenging fights that pop out of nowhere (those are good, but better used as a rare surprise, like the butcher is). Rather, I am referring to things that happen out of the norm that surprise you during a run.
  • Dungeon affixes should not be the minimum roll all the time. It should be the minimum of what you have found currently. As well, every affix should have a dungeon for it. Maybe simply have multiple affixes per dungeon and you pick one upon completion? Trying to hunt for an affix on top of a better item as well just feels bad when you are trying to run a build.

BOSSES

  • Dungeon Bosses need to be expanded upon. From their rooms that you fight them in (more environmental effects are needed, like lava/quicksand/falling pillars/dropping pits/etc), but the environments themselves need to change from flat, featureless locked arenas. Having different actions that you need to take in order to combat the boss is a far better thing than facetanking it until it is dead, dodging every now and then. There is a reason why legion/fortification bosses or the story bosses are more desirable, and it is because many of these fights are somewhat unique or have neat effects to the fight itself. This can expand to the World Bosses as well as to a degree to the random bosses that spawn in the overworld as well. They are nothing but damage sponges with a few effects to watch out for and dodge. They are extremely boring to fight.

MOBS

  • There need to be more types of mobs, as well as more “personality” to them. Right now, they feel very “samey” no matter the type.
  • Less crowd control, or far more affixes that the elites have access to.
  • The effects of their flashy attacks need to be less “arcadey” feeling, and more like it should be a part of the world.
  • I would like to see more differentiation between mobs for strengths and weaknesses. Having some mobs strong/immune to Vulnerable/Critical/Overpower/etc. Would make fights more interesting, as well as punish those builds with an over-reliance on 1 type of damage.

EVENTS

  • Events are far too repetitive. There needs to be more randomness to them, from the length of time they run, to the different waves of monsters that appear, to the placement of the “fixtures” in the events.
  • Remove the giant chest that pops at the end and the popup in the middle of the screen.

QUESTS

  • Quests should be looked at. Remove the “farming” quests from the quest list, or at least expand them to feel less of a slog or an MMO fetch quest feel.
  • Quests should be moved to after the story finishes. The campaign is a “we have to hurry to stop Lilith before bad stuff happens” and in the middle we have little Timmy asking us to pause to look for his grandfather or Jennifer asking us to hang an amulet on a tree. It just feels wrong. Having the quests occur after the story makes sense with the ending, as well as giving players something to do at the end.
  • There needs to be better rewards to quests beyond items and experience. Where are the Charsi quests to imbue items? Where are the quests that unlock skills and stat points? Maybe quests to unlock additional carrying capacity or stash slots? Quests that allow you to further customize a skill in some way (permanently reducing resource costs, or cooldown or somesuch?). This gives you a reason to hang on to your build in some way. Quests to unlock paragon boards? Or alter paragon board nodes? Quests to add an affix to items? There is so much you could do with the quests beyond what was done.

STORY

  • I would like to be able to replay the story with the same character. It was well done, but having the option to start a new world tier and running through the story (at a harder difficulty) would be great).

ITEMS

  • More Gem Options and more gem effects when slotted
  • Gems being slotted into more items/more sockets for gear
  • More item types allowed for every class to be able to use
  • Yellow items should have a 3-5 affixes to spawn, legendaries maybe 4-6
  • Seeing Charms back, but with their own Charm slot(s) (so you can’t run with an inventory full of them, but having a reduced amound, maybe 1 of each size or some such) would be nice
  • More affixes would be nice
  • Maybe having quests to be able to put a second aspect on an item?
  • There definitely needs to be some sort of fix to the affix system. With so many granular affixes, items just feel monotonous to look through. I honestly think that most of the specific ones should be moved to the paragon board exclusively, and have items with more open-ended affixes.
  • Items should have more differences between each other. Heavy vs. Light armor. Reach with weapons. Mobs that are strong vs. types of weapons.
  • More abilities to upgrade/alter specific items

CLASSES

BARBARIAN

I am only speaking to the barb, as it is the only class I have played so far.

ARSENAL

Arsenal system should be opened up to allow any item that fits to go into the slot. Ie. Any Two-Handed Weapon can go in either Two-Handed slot. Allow people to carry 2 Two-Handed Swords, or Mauls or Pikes, or a Sword and an Axe. 1 Handers already allow this, why not Two-Handers. This could allow more interesting skill decisions, as some skills may require specific classes of weapons to use.

EXPERTISE

Expertise system needs to be expanded. Once it is maxed out at level 10 for each weapon, it is done, and there is no need to really touch it again. Having the option to further customize attacks via leveling up the weapons on use would be a great addition that allows for further non-experienced based leveling.

There is also the option to expand it to Bows/Staves/Scythes/Shields/Armor as well.

SKILLS

There needs to be far more done with skill options. Especially with skill choices that simply give a small percentage to damage/defense/life/resource. These skills feel wasteful, even if the game “requires” them for certain builds to feel viable.

Basic Skills really need something to make them more customizable for people to use. Right now the resource generator/spender system feels really bad. The skills people “want” to use are the spenders, but they “have” to use the generators in order to do it. And they are only able to do it in short bursts, before moving back to the generators which just feel bad to use, having no real utility, design, or damage. Their only function is to generate resource, and feel bad to do so.

I would be fine to see Shouts remain with cooldowns, as long as the other skills move more towards the resource management side of things.

How about a way to get both (or multiple if they get expanded) twig options to a skill? Maybe a special unlock? Or even item affixes that allow it? Or a paragon board slot that allows you to pick a skill for this to happen to?

Allow more skill options to be chosen for your hotkeys. Allow the option to have different attacks/abilities that you can use based on the situational need.

“Ultimate” abilities are currently bad. The cooldowns are so large, that they are relegated to being unused or charging for a majority of game time, only being used for a very short “burst damage” against bosses/elites. They feel real bad to have on your hotbar, as opposed to having a skill you can actively use more often.

Where is the option to let you have a wider targeting arc for Death Blow? Or how about upgrades to Whirlwind to allow you to hit farther enemies (or the aspect that lets you pull enemies to you?) How about a skill that lets you set a skill to retaliate for free upon a hit?

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They updated it to 99999 in the 1.0.4 patch.

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  1. Remove battle.net / online only as requirement for playing the game (battle.net DRM is fine)
  2. Balance all classes and abilities so that all were fun to play (though I personally tend to go for magic using classes)
  3. Focus on main quest and side quests for a “story” mode/difficulty AND a post-campaign adventure mode where one can grind after the heftiest items until one turns black and blue. Make sure that there were reasons to actually go all the way up to level 100 for those who want to try that. Add companions with their own side quests for campaign only. Or maybe have a companion tied to the main quest?
  4. Remove events, simply because they quickly become extremely tiresome and repetitive. Change some of them to side quests, maybe? Add a proper journal so that it would be easy to see which quests that are unsolved and which have been done.
  5. As sum of the points above: make the campaign more like an RPG, and continue the post-campaign as a purely an ARPG.
    In the campaign, maybe go back to D1, where single player had save functions and such, so that one might try out different leads in a conversation, for example?
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Amazing this is all coming :slight_smile: I agree with all this.

On uber uniques devs stated they are working on other ways to obtain them not just the 1/800k drop rates

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why remove event they are voluntary?

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Well, not as long as you stumble into them even by mistake (I tend to say to the wife “don’t go th… never mind”). :wink:

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Must have missed that one, heh.

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but you can run buy it . I run through them not doing them on the way to dungeons all the time. Well now we can be lazy and tele to them but before lol.

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True. I guess it’s kind of compulsory: “Event joined” feels almost like a side quest and therefore must be done. :wink:
The main point is that some of them are quite good, and could be used as quests, “once-only”. IMO they lose their replayability/break immersion after you, e.g., have saved those adventurers in a dungeon for the zillionth time.

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I get it it. Thats me when helltides come up and Im already doing something else its fight or flight situation.

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the base of this game is not bad I don’t think its story is good but I don’t think it’s bad either I would change the story:

  • A REALLY threatening presence like a shadow of the supreme evils almost guiding lilith.
  • If everything is corrupted and dark nothing is dark and the presence of corruption misses the point, the game needs the SACRED to make the profane look bad and this game lacks that too much. just look at how good and evil are portrayed in D2.
  • LESS is more, having less NPC with more presence and that makes us care about them and not a bunch of irrelevant tokens.
  • More subjective moments and SERVELY without super-duper genius girl Lea 2.0 explaining and doing everything for us.
    For game play:
  • An RPG has to have IMMERSION in the character he has to look like his and therefore the rules are to the meta should be avoided. And an RPG has to have a feeling of the past that said the lvl scale is the WORST IDEA you can have in an RPG.
  • at least 2 skils of each element with at least 4 glyphs in each and with scale 1-10 that allows leveling like any arp from lvl 1-100 and not 1-50.
  • I would reformulate the paragom to be a passive tree 1pt per lvl and would place the aspects that today are items INSIDE this passive tree as the main nodes of the PoE.
  • Seriously wouldn’t have the spender generator system, or everything would be mana or close to that, being able to bring things like Rage in a secondary mechanism like PoE does. I think the idea of a simple skill replacing the basic attack is good, but it should NEVER be forced into a ridiculous rotation and mechanics typical of MMOs and mobas.
  • If a skill has a CD greater than 8 seconds it should not exist in an ARPG and ultimates belong to MOBAS and we knew that since D3 RoS where “utimates” were introduced and either all are useless or are permanent/CD-0 through the class sets.
  • D4’s itemization base is WAY superior to D3’s and that being said I would minimize the internal RNG of items and make more comprehensive unique items like D2’s (Stone of Jordan for example) with little or NOTHING targeting a specific skill.
  • Exchanges of everything and an AH PoE system is what it is thanks to the huge trade that the game has which generates interaction between players.
  • Innovations:
    -I would create an item crafting system based on D2 runes not wearing them soketed but having them be used to modify item affixes or create items with certain affixes, and allowing specific runes used in the specified order to create the runewrolds like in D2 .
  • Undoubtedly 5 classes for a AAA game is a shame I would bring 2 more classes, one with divine aspects like Paladin or Monk or even a new Avanger type, and would bring a unique diablo class like Amazon or Demon Hunter or witch Doc.
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You can run through them if you want, even if you enter the circle or start it. Don’t need to stay and complete them. I often skip if I’m on my way to a legion event or world boss.

Like the username btw.

Let’s see…I’m still waking up so I may add to this later, but top of mind for me at the moment:

  • more stash space and equipment inventory space. I’d actually be fine buying it for platinum and earning additional pages via seasons (as d3 had it)
  • more char slots (possibly already in s1 patch like they did with d2r’s first season)
  • allow the equipment inventory tab to hold aspects and consumables if those tabs are full already (easier to have organized mules)
  • aspects sort by legendary power rather than item power
  • aspects which don’t scale by item power (i.e. the ones with a raw amount of health/barrier/dmg) needn’t have level requirements
  • reduce gold scaling formula for enchanting
  • have enchanting show possible affixes and their ranges like in D3
  • people have been begging for a reset all paragon button, but I’d like a reset paragon board button too, which’ll be considerably cheaper.

May add some more later.

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Id design it with the gamer dad in mind, make cookie cutter builds that the gamer dad (casuals) can just select and all level up skill points/paragons go the the correct order to make the gamer dads feel like they are power and gaining power each day they play.

Also, I would have added a pet for normal game - 100% pick up coins, deluxe version - 110% pick up coins, gems, - ultimate edition - 150% pick up coins, gems, and auto salavage or sell white/blues as they drop.

Id add a solo self found mode that rewards more xps each tier starting at wt1 (150%), wt2 250%, wt3 350% and wt4 500%

I’d require the capstone dungeons to be completed in solo mode only.

I’d have a hoverboard as a mount for ultimate edition players (able to hover over/down anything - rocks, water, hills and even pebbles)

I’d change the items that drop to be equipable at level 1 (fun alt dad gamer style).

I’d basically make the game “easy mode” which is a very fun enjoyable mode for old gamer dads like me

i’d also add a weekly chest in town where you can 1 time a week open the chest and get some random USEFUL item depending your level/world tier - per character on account

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Well, I am a developer and I’ve already been posting various subject topics.

This one involves the relative concept of “fun”.

This one is more recent about the damage system of the game.
Also, making Vulnerability additive solves nothing.

I can cover every subject if players are interested. There’s a lot wrong with this game.
I planned on coding a character builder for a more hands-on view of better class skill designs.

EDIT: Oh. AI is the future of ARPGs. The dynamics of the genre are perfect for AI driven manipulation.

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Dungeons will be rotated. from what I read

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Core key aspects of ARPGs

  • No character or level scaling
  • Full open Trade league, it’s an Loot hunting Trading game.
  • SSF (Solo self found) for the small niche of players that like that.
  • Far more unique ways to build your character instead of pigeon hole skill design. (D2 has infinite powerful builds per Class) D4 has 1 maybe 2 per Class. So Class design is atrocious.
  • Ways to save builds in loadouts so you can easily switch builds with 1 button to another saved build.

This is the main start.

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Yea but it’s pointless. You want players to always feel like their exploring something different. The moment they sense that repetition in dungeon crawling. The illusion is broken.

It’s incredibly important for ARPGs to disguise their repetitive nature and 30 isn’t near enough. Esp when each dungeon seems to be made of 3-4 tilesets at best with one transition room.

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