I feel as if instead of creating a game that focuses on engaging the player, they created a game that focuses on hooking the player…
My only suggestion is: learn to edit.
You could have made points without the complete novel. You have some decent thoughts but you needed an editor to slash most of your points and then suggest you target the ideas that would actually hit people.
You meandered EVERYWHERE and REALLY needed an editor.
*please note that I usually HATE it when people go “uhhh couldn’t read this wall of text” when it’s like… a paragraph.
But it looks like you were trying to lay down several points and you probably thought you were being very smart and thorough whereas in reality for most people… this is extremely tangential and rambling.
You could have hit your main points VERY hard with 1/3 the text and with a lot more PUNCH. Just something to think about, going forward.
If I had to guess, the syntax suggested English as a second language - otherwise, a tad rambling. “Meandering” is a stretch (could’ve consolidated by moving a couple sections) because within sections the themes & supporting points are pretty well organized. “Extremely tangential” is just false. You might want to look up what that means, just saying.
I sincerely found OP’s post more well thought-out than yours, and actually less scattershot. And nobody “[needs] an editor” to post in a casual forum… the reading of a post is extremely optional (to borrow your adverb).
Exactly. THIS is like exhibit A of what I was ACTUALLY trying to communicate.
That’s your opinion. And I think differently.
I am more of… Thank goodness, there’s a new Diablo game after D2 and D3. And this Diablo 4 is not a Diablo-wannabe game. It is a Diablo game.
And D4 to me is not D2 and not D3. D4 is D4. It has its own mechanics. I appreciate D4 as it is as how appreciate D2 and D3 back then.
Are you referring to Trade? D3 ditched Real Money Auction House becoz it’s a mistake. Blizz would never go back to its same mistakes.
These (Whispers, HT, NMD. Pits) are games within the game. They should add more types. The more the better instead of 1 type of game.
I dont get the Evolving part. Our toons evolves along the way. It starts from killing Lilith from the Campaign in WT2 with Legendaries. Then evolved into Sacred Legendaries to destroy Capstone Elias in WT3. Then evolve to Ancestral Legendaries as you start WT4. Then evolve to have Uniques after slaying Uber Bosses. Continuous evolving til you kill level 200 Tormented Uber Bosses and Uber Lilith. Are you stucked somewhere becoz you dont recognize the evolution of your toon and the Monsters (Level 1 to Level 200) to kill?
Before you face the Final Boss of the game which is Uber Lilith, there are bosses that you needed to face along the way. You need to face Tormented Uber Bosses first. But before that, you need to face regular Uber Bosses first. Of course, you need to kill Capstone Elias before Uber Bosses. And WT2 Campaign Lilith before WT3. These are the stuffs you need to kill ALONG THE WAY. You dont go straight to Uber Lilith.
Are you playing this game with no direction? Hey, there are Season Journey Objectives Chapter 1 to Chapter 7. Try that.
Yep, that’s another part of it… It’s really a sum of more smaller parts but even with the current (somewhat limited) monster “set” I don’t think they can make it even with reworked dungeons and loot (they need to evolve if that’s what was about to be a more significant part of the game)
Had they released the game more complete (monster evolutions and gear specific-ish to WT4) they may not have been put in a position to really “redo” everything from scratch and “innovating 24/7” while also doing changes to be game (baseline) time and time again
The thing that “pis*es me of” the most… Start a new season, get bombarded with items that were supposed to “advertise the game” at the very first opportunity there can be (hey you won your first Helltide, here’s a chest with 15 items to what the game “can” be like if you invest your time in it :P)
But thing is - being busy and being engaged are not the same thing
They have to “balance” to “let go” a bit more here and there (and do it for the right reasons at the right time as well)
The question is - does it combine the “best of both worlds”, I think that’s not quite the case. I mean they tried at first to “recreate” the Normal/NM/Hell triplay from D2 by doing WTs (i.e. justify 100 levels by making players replay content 3 times)
But it was obvious case that WT4 monsters were nowhere near ready to take on the “challenge”. And that’s what I think they’re ditching
With new cap of 60 I don’t think there will be WTs any longer. BUT, here’s the thing
Are Pit runs really that fun ?, I mean are GRs revisited really that great and fun to play ?, something tells me not quite to be the case (as mentioned above - keeping players busy does not mean that they’re having fun OR that they’re being properly engaged)
Oh well, we’ll see what they do with the Exp., some things are obviously gonna change (hopefully for the better)
You can’t have “parallel gameplay” in the game. That’s absolutely the worst thing that can happen. ALL of those “mini games” have to correlate/belong somewhere
And the reason behind is quite simple: all of the player’s effort (regardless where or on what it is) should feel like it matters
This leads also to another key point/concept as well: it should NEVER be to the player to decide whether they get rewarded, hurt themselves, or waste their time completely trying to achieve something that won’t happen (that risk/reward/instruction system should be “sharp as attack” and subtly embedded - via loot drops or stuff like that - within the game system itself)
It’s really a simple concept of:
- Things should happen just because you play the game (rather than being forced to playing the game in a specific manner for specific things to eventually happen)
It should never feel as “you don’t have enough gold cause you haven’t done enough Whispers” kind of thing, OR - you struggle at level 75 now cause you haven’t leveled up your Glyphs on Paragon
I mean some of it CAN be intuitive as soon as a “screwup” happens, BUT… Should almost never be “probable” for players to screw themselves up by doing a wrong thing for a longer time or going in a wrong direction
Adding a bunch of not necessarily connected “mini games” would increase the risk of doing and achieving exactly that
The game should work as if having that “list” embedded within it. That “list” should feel like more a part of the game and not a “note from a boss on the side desk” with your weekly tasks
That can be (and is more easily) achieved by incorporating all those “mini games” within the main game (i.e. Overworld and it’s drops and events, give or take)
The first part of the post was more of a “story-mode engaged” type of writing (it’s all written in a hypothetical scenario analysis). May have repeated myself a couple of times sorry for that
Tried to separate the repeated sentence with a horizontal line but I think may have put it in the wrong place
And yes, English is not my first language as you can tell
You have NO CLUE, what you are talking about. For ex. PoE is NOT like D2, at all. First of all the theme and production values are not there. PoE doesn’t have the charm of D2:LoD. It’s skill gem system is terrible. Their passive three is a monstrous bloat. Their combat animations are awful. Combat in D2 wasn’t slow, but TACTICAL. For ex. in D2, it was often possible to AVOID damage by a bit skill, or positioning. LOTS of D2:LoD fans got their items from D2jsp, so it wasn’t about Magic Find runs, either. The closest successor of D2:LoD is not PoE, but Grim Dawn, but it has it’s problems too, mostly because of their ancient Titan Quest engine, and a tiny budget. PoE is full of monstrous bloat, so that without researching, you have no clue, how to play well. Additionally, even basic spell/skill effects in PoE look like crap.
I’m sorry but David Brevik himself called POE a spiritual successor to D2 and even called it D2.5. He was one of the creators of D2. His opinion matters more than yours.
https:/ /www. youtube. com/ watch?v=t5lWxo3rjvM
He maybe spoke about systems, but not about the theme, look & feel. If you ask a coder, he will tell you that tic-tac-toe, is very similar to chess. Well, not when you play them.
Guys, the goal is not to replicate D2, the goal is to “extract” the key concepts/pillars/cornerstones that D2 was designed/developed around so it can be “reimplemented” (and evolved on) further
The goal is not to focus on “similarities or changes” of all the small systems there may or may not be in other games (like PoE), the goal is to find a key piece (“secret sauce” if you like) that made D2 be D2
So far I’ve identified like 3-4 of them:
- At all times possible have a “secondary” system for both => long-term goals and short-term “borrowed power” rewards (former represented by runewords i.e. the “long term secret lab project” that you have, latter represented by charms and jewels - stuff that aren’t just gems but can be much more effective on occasion)
** Basically if want to be 100% correct - there are 3 games going in parallel, all intertwining in same core gameplay but there are 3 “timelines” with different length going on (regular gameplay, short-term power gain, long-term “special” goal) at each and every point in the game during it’s gameplay overall - Relatively strict power-asset checkpoints, i.e. “Starting point” of a challenge in a game progresses relatively often… you CAN “stay in place” and do one thing over and over to get an extra level on your character BUT you CAN’T acquire a better (more late-game based) gear… , if want to get a better gear can only find it somewhere down further against better/stronger monsters
- Everything happens just by playing the game (no “special lanes” to unlock something that otherwise doesn’t occur. Very, VERY few special activities in the game in total)
- Most of the time gear exists to “ease up” otherwise would-be difficult content but it never truly “defines total power” of your character
Some people focus too much on specifics (for example will claim 2nd point above as false cause they’re used to trading - again - that DOESN’T represent the game design baseline, we just need the “core”)
The important part is to “extract” things that are easier (baseline and generic concepts, not the exceptions), to replicate and evolve further
D2 simply has an almost NORMAL design. The complexity is not huge, but it’s not low. Almost everything feels logical, almost realistic, at times. For ex. D2 has ammo for shooting weapons. It has some strange quirks, like armor is dodge rating and intelligence doesn’t matter, that was wrong. Monsters don’t telegraph any attacks, which increases immersion. There is no damage number spam in the UI. The story is simple, but EACH dialogue, is well written and well delivered, with many memorable lines. Each class almost perfectly fits the main theme. All names, are carefully designed, so that even NAMES feel right, and fit the theme. The UI, uses a classic dual panel pattern, like in Norton Commander. There are many memorable monster designs, and there are no HUGE monsters. Monster sounds are unique for each monster, and distinct, contrary to to the D3’s, generic growls. There is no BLOAT of convoluted end-game systems. The end-game, EMERGES from the core, basic systems. The inventory system looks great, with large, beautiful artwork, and it requires some management, like in real backpacks. D2 also assumes that you are not a total moron, who only wants to see a BIG DAMAGE number. -_-
Those are all adding up to the “pot” but the key/core/most-important thing (again) IMO was a very clever/slick/simple system of playing a “tripple timeline” all at once
- The regular game
- The short-term use-this now to gain advantage (or overcome an ad-hoc problem)
- The long-term gameplay (collect pieces for your “homebuit secret weapon” that will propell you much further)
Those 3 things intertwined in one simple (very basic) gameplay concept that any other game is yet to replicate IMO…
D2 doesn’t have subtrees for every skill, D2 doesn’t have “skill conversion” items or skills (very very few, like the Unique Cedar Bow that makes all arrows Immolation and that’s a rare one), D2 doesn’t have a “passives” system at all (AT ALL), unless counting it as a part of the baseline skill tree (there were those)
The key/big one was that:
- Affecting a tripple timeline gameplay while playing a simple game
- Constant gear and monster evolution (clear concept of sense of accomplishments that simply pleases people regardless if the game is efficient or not, long or short, fast or slow)
All the things you mentioned can’t be “extracted and replicated” further, those are characteristics (more or less) that are like very specific for D2 (only work in Gothic setting, only work in Mideval setting, e.t.c.)
Exactly this, a “by-product” of the “tripple timeline intertwined in simple gameplay” concept I mentioned before
Here is your TLDR version:
- Game was rushed out because it changed dramatically late into development
- Game challenge is all over the map and mostly non-existent except for artificial challenges like Uber Lilith or the broken Pit Bosses
- Game is missing a ton of standard features to make it feel social such as Group-Finder/Match Making, and General Chat.
- End-Game content is very limited and Blizzard’s “fix” is to make you arbitrarily farm mats/gold from content that is a cakewalk so players have a “reason” to do open world stuff.
- Itemization is still a mess with a lot of affix bloat. The Tempering system is still heavily criticized for notoriously bricking GAII and GAIII items especially.
- Blizzard cannot figure out what to do with Unique items. They started off so very bad then made them worthwhile, then bad again, now they added a bunch and made having multiples mandatory for a lot of builds. So much for Unique. This makes item budgeting with an ever expanding Aspect system REALLY hard.
- Renown and Altars were just a collosal waste of effort to develop.
- Leveling speed keeps getting jacked up, however you realize that there really is no point to World Tiers and item tiers real quick now.
- One shots for all! Game balance is out of whack between enemy and player one shots.
- We have really only had 2 real Seasons this entire time - Season 2 and Season 3. Season 1 was just get Barber = win game. Season 4 has not been a Season at all. Season 5 undoubtedly will also not be a Season and be extremely short.
- Progression feels odd and stagnant at times. The Skill Tree stopping at 50, not allocating attributes, and then this convoluted clunky AA system “Paragon Boards” tacked onto the end of the journey.
- Blizzard seems to communicate more via Twitter than to their actual player base playing the game on the forums. There are not Class CMs that engage with the community and take feedback. Having a healthy relationship with the playerbase is good for the company and players. It makes players feel like they are being listened to and bond with a person who is an ambassador of the company. Likewise, the company becomes more personible instead of being a conglomerate corporation. To their bottom line however, it would increase as development decisions would be more precise and player engagement would increase.
- Last but not least, the Odd Season Team. Painful. Really. Painful.
That’s the worst part. This means that they never had any clear vision, no core ideas, nothing. The saddest part is that now, I hear that their problems are the result of “too much D2”, like they are crapping on a classic, which they completely don’t understand. They seem to think that D2 is “slow leveling” and “dark graphics”. hahaha
They also think that gems and mats should be in the Stash, because that’s how it was done in D2. Then, they realized, that it was because of the Horadric Cube, which they removed. hahaha
D2 has something essential, progression. You gain one more level up to level 99. And each point is fundamental, even more so at the end of the game where you don’t have much to increase your damage other than runes. Another factor is the synergy between your skills, so your main skill receives bonus to your basic skill, a great idea, that doesn’t make anything useless. D2 had a wide variety of types of weapons, with different damage and speed of attacks, which changed the entire immersion in the game, it was normal to have different equipment for different bosses .
No, end-game in D2 is not about skill points, but about “skiller” charms. You would know that, if you played it. Synergies as in D2, are a bad idea, because they greatly limit build variety.
Limits the builds???Never. Look at the mechanics of the spirit nat, there is synergy between the skills since you can change their tags.
-If you had 100 skill points and if each basic skill gave synergy we would have hundreds of builds. For example, I could receive firebolt burning damage on my frozen orb and I wouldn’t need to place an enchantment just for that.
I played D2, I wasn’t a professional player, but I played.
Don’t forget Torches, Jewels, Runewords for you and your Merc and overcoming Immunities…and Magic Find. Hammerdin with MapHack and Enigma out front should-a told you.
Ah, yes, you are gonna bring THE ONLY somewhat broken build in D2: Hammerdin with Enigma. That was a SINGLE major flaw, which they never fixed.
Lol there were A LOT of broken builds in D2 and it was fun for a while but the game itself was an enigma (no pun intended). Finding your Runes and gear solo was almost impossible and mind-numbing. You had to Trade pretty much and you needed that Runeword or Charm or Jewel or what not to be effective even, the problem though was as soon as you got that item, there really was no progression.
For example, my Poison Nova Necro was great but hits a brick wall. Only way to get past that wall were Charms, Runewords, and Jewels to break Poison Immunity. You went from absolutely could not kill, to obliterate everything. My Auradin was the same way. I lost count of how many different builds I had.
Not hating on D2, was agreeing with you on Synergies. It was a good idea in D2, but implemented not always the best way to promote diversity. Grim Dawn handled this better.