This is a continuation of the feedback. For the first part My mini review/feedback - PC General Discussion - Diablo IV Forums (blizzard.com)
Communication
-The campfire chats: The constant communication is good; With respect to your/our time you can do away with the names for the Q/A since Adam F, seems to struggle reading them, instead gather a list of questions from the forums (moderations can help with this)
-Free codes, platinum, or something nice; It goes a long way in building back the fan appreciation.
The game plan
-This is building off part 1, while the 1.1.1 changes are great, I think the team is missing the mark when it comes to the development of the game, by that I mean the focus seems to be on balance tweaking +/- bonus/damage here or there when it should be in the lets add more cool stuff mode. It’s very apparent when Adam J talked about being worried about balance (This isn’t StarCraft where balance is essential).
Diablo is one of the ARPG OG, so people expect it to be a leader in the genre instead of a play-it-safe/more of the same. A lot of innovations have come out in the genre i.e. Torchlight (pets who go to town and sell gear for you) and yes Path of Exile/2).
Embracing the chaos (let’s add cool stuff mode)
-Instead of tweaking +dmg here or there it comes back to the gear/aspects. You’ve heard it before from the community, “The loot is boring!” and it’s true. the “+dmg while X” is just not that exciting. Uber uniques are what aspects should be; It’s fine if there were a few which can’t be extracted, but the majority should be build-altering.
A change in philosophy for new aspects/uniques, the team should go from asking does this just add damage in a different way to does this fundamentally change how the class can be played and use that as the guiding star. If I were a necro and found an aspect that turned all my minions into golems; that is some cool stuff. (I know it’s scary for you from a “balance” perspective) but the game needs to get to that point first, and then balance the craziness.
And honestly, if there was a lot more freedom in this regard, you’d probably see a lot more classes clear NM dungeons 100 pre-patch, and fewer people optimizing for damage through crit/vul.
Speaking of aspects, it would be nice to have them stack and not be limited to a certain slot; How cool would it be to have ice shards bounce around X times based on how many slots you had it in, again you could balance after the fact instead of bouncing 4 times per slot 1 per slot, making it less crazy but someone who really wants to embrace ice shards would have that.
Some design critique
Environment
-maps are very static. In D3 there were chandeliers (traps) which K.O mobs, more breakables, so bringing more environmental interactions is needed.
-The rock thing that follows you around to do the lighting damage needs to be toned down a lot, this is very apparent for melee classes, and it just makes fights longer as dragging mobs or the rock away doesn’t always work.
Boss/Elites
-Great to see resource drain and freeze gone. There is a reason why these things just suck, and it goes to the core design, it takes control away from the player. Resource drain skill control/freeze everything control. Less interaction is a no-no, so food for thought as you’re rethinking them (terrifying also annoying I get the intention, but in most cases you’re just running back into emptiness for no reason)
Sound
-I gave you praise last time, this time you get a bit more critique. There needs to be a better audio cues for annoying 1 shotters like charge beast and corpse bow.
That’s all for now thanks for listening/reading.