Hello everyone, hello folks
So, decided to get in the D4 early Beta and see what the game’s about, and must say I LOVE what I’ve encountered so far but think the game should go “up a notch” or two
1st things 1st, don’t copy other games (no PoE stuff, no LE stuff, well, except controller bindings which are much superior, no other game stuff, just pure D4 as is but make it a bit “trickier”)
I love the combat, the pace, feels like if you commit a bit too long on one mob on one spot you’ll get punished and that’s simply great, it’s not about “farming”, it’s about being smart in combat which is great thing to have (but at lvl25 cap can’t quite project what happens later on so will see about that tbh)
Would like to suggest a couple of suggestions (and what to also ignore cause there are really bias-based feedbacks out there tbh)
1 - DON’T change mob density, keep it as is “mixed” (as is) as possible… Don’t just make/allow people to “AoE forever” with couple of items, keep things trickier, award single-target builds to some extent and not just AoE (that is #1 reason why I love so far what I’ve encountered)
2 - DON’T nerf builds that come up (unless Hydra damage which is another story of it’s own :P), like the Icy blades “CM”… Better approach would be to instead to “counter”, think of ways to how to be “disruptive” to such stuff… Give it another affix here and there and try an affix that punishes builds like that that revolve around CD reductions (basically make it stop CD reduction cycle, say “Cursed”, well except Evade which should remain on 5 sec CD ofc.), alternatively could make a “75% reduced stun and freeze” mob type also
3 - Continuing the “identity” of the game (which I’d assume and would suggest to keep as it is = Nasty Mobs), would suggest a couple improvements and give the whole topic of resistances another look
A - Give mobs defensive affixes/stats (not just offensive ones), give them something like resistances to elemental damage, resistances to distant damage, resistances to physical/melee, resistances to stun
Don’t just scale armor on level (and/or HP), make it less of a general/gradient factor and then factor in these kinds of “deviations” (in other words embrace the asymmetric growth)
Not every type of damage has to work on every mob (is fine to have a mob that has 75% fire resistance for example), and not every type of damage stops to work on every mob (if desired the reason to do so)
Now, to “spice things up” just add another type of “unavoidable” or let’s call it “sacred” damage or whatever that simply isn’t affected by armor nor resistances (some weapons have it by default, and some weapons have the chance to do so), basically that’s the “minimal damage” component but would affect skills also… It’s a nice touch to make player “consider” when having trouble vs certain stuff
B - Consider adding “augmentations”, that is basically an “armor on top of armor”, or “removable armor” if you like, kill the armor first and mob later (shielded skeletons have this for example)… Could think of like a couple more types of that: mystical armor, bionic armor (first has resistances vs elemental damage and takes less damage from elemental damage but can be removed by CC, and the bionic armor gives the mob unusually high regen rate but again CC removes it easier, both armors could stop working while frozen but probably not removed though)
This should give the game a nastier/greater challenge and make players being more honest about their builds/progressions (and perhaps keep some CC options also)… Also, this is not about “whole dungeon” kind of thing, this is about individual/augmented mob, a small chance but still some chance to have it happen (could be a bigger one, could be a smaller one, doesn’t matter, make that one “slightly foggier than others” spider resistant to shadow, e.t.c.)
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Now the “hot topic” for resistances, think the fact that there was an attempt address (some of it) is a good idea, but think the approach is the opposite of what should be the case tbh:
Instead of “scaling up” resistances along with armor “contribution” and then scaling down as levels go up, should’ve been the other way round - reduce elemental damage output in general and then cap resistances on lesser cap % (say 50%), then ON TOP OF THAT add some defensive affixes of type (grant barrier reducing incoming elemental damage by X, kinda similar to “damage taken reduced by X” from D2)
Alternatively can make it even more impactful (cap resistances initially at say 40% and then scale up that cap with Intelligence as primary stat up to a certain point)… Which brings us to the next and final point:
Primary stats feel clunky and “fillers”, don’t feel impactful enough… Think the “base” should be less and then being impactful by these (max resource, crit chance, overpower %, and similar)
Reason being early game, the vast majority of “primary stat” affixes feel clunky and not impactful… If players can actually FEEL the difference between 30 and 50 willpower, or FEEL the difference between 30 and 50 dexterity, str, int, THAT would be great tbh…
Long-story-short, make the game a bit more complicated/impactful but keep doing what is done (keep “inventing” and not copy from others)
Can’t wait to try out the other 2 classes, and see you in hell folks 