|OT| Diablo IV
- Thread starter Stevey
- Start date
Reposting from the Steam thread as way more relevant here 
I hope they don't bring the wrong lessons from PoE / D2 / Grim Dawn. I enjoyed D2 back in the day but PoE and GD kept some really dumb, old systems from it. It is not fun to dump point after point into passives, and it's not fun to spend 10-15 hours developing a character to find out if you like a build or not only to have to start over if you don't. I think the only reason PoE does as well as it does is because there's no other real competition in the same slot, D3 is its' own thing (I sort of like it and play it each season but would gladly move on to something better), Grim Dawn is basically competing for the same crowd but on a smaller scale. A solid, expansive A-RPG in that style with modern design would do wonders.
It's impossible to tell from the trailer but D4 gameplay looks like it is slowed down a lot from D3 (which is fine), but the core systems are super important. Grim Dawn and PoE are both slower and more strategic and it doesn't make up for the boring stuff they are built on. For all its' launch problems and design flaws, D3 has probably the best skill / build system in A-RPGs. If they'd gone a different route than "huge 16,000% multipliers on sets" I think it could have had even better legs.
There's also the ethical consideration. I really want the new CoD but have refused so far due to their straight up unethical ways (both in lying about not having mtx/loot boxes in previous games before adding them, and the Chinese political statements). D4 would be harder to resist IF it's done well but I could still live without it. I find it hard to imagine Activision will ever really change for the better though, I can't think of a single instance when they really have over the years and years.
Then again, maybe nihilism will take over and I'll just buy the fun things to have fun with.
I hope they don't bring the wrong lessons from PoE / D2 / Grim Dawn. I enjoyed D2 back in the day but PoE and GD kept some really dumb, old systems from it. It is not fun to dump point after point into passives, and it's not fun to spend 10-15 hours developing a character to find out if you like a build or not only to have to start over if you don't. I think the only reason PoE does as well as it does is because there's no other real competition in the same slot, D3 is its' own thing (I sort of like it and play it each season but would gladly move on to something better), Grim Dawn is basically competing for the same crowd but on a smaller scale. A solid, expansive A-RPG in that style with modern design would do wonders.
It's impossible to tell from the trailer but D4 gameplay looks like it is slowed down a lot from D3 (which is fine), but the core systems are super important. Grim Dawn and PoE are both slower and more strategic and it doesn't make up for the boring stuff they are built on. For all its' launch problems and design flaws, D3 has probably the best skill / build system in A-RPGs. If they'd gone a different route than "huge 16,000% multipliers on sets" I think it could have had even better legs.
There's also the ethical consideration. I really want the new CoD but have refused so far due to their straight up unethical ways (both in lying about not having mtx/loot boxes in previous games before adding them, and the Chinese political statements). D4 would be harder to resist IF it's done well but I could still live without it. I find it hard to imagine Activision will ever really change for the better though, I can't think of a single instance when they really have over the years and years.
Then again, maybe nihilism will take over and I'll just buy the fun things to have fun with.
Looks like Diablo II artistically. A bit slow as others have said, maybe like it's more beat 'em up style than constant clickety click crowd control and kiting to accommodate console/action game users better (but obviously still have decent point & click controls on PC). They better have more classes added before launch, I like none of those and only 3 is laughable anyway. Overall it looks good but it doesn't look nearly as amazing as Lost Ark Online does when you first see it. They should have looked at that game if they wanted it more like a beat 'em up. Maybe Lost Ark Online is a horrible grind (I dunno) or worse artistically but overall even after all these years it's been showcased it still looks like next gen material in comparison when it comes to such ARPGs. Crazy skills, diversity, synergies, situational functionality tweaks operated on the fly as you see fit and epic set pieces with tons of awesome shit and moving parts to go with it.
Edit: again, obviously not talking about how much of a grind or p2w or f2p it may be, just the crazy style of gameplay and grand scale of the set pieces. I don't see much difference between Blizzard's model and f2p games when it comes to services/monetization outside the fact they also charge 60 up front anyway.
Edit: again, obviously not talking about how much of a grind or p2w or f2p it may be, just the crazy style of gameplay and grand scale of the set pieces. I don't see much difference between Blizzard's model and f2p games when it comes to services/monetization outside the fact they also charge 60 up front anyway.
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There was a a lot of hype around Lost Ark a few months ago but last I heard it was unbelievably grindy / expensive / slow past the early game, to the point where most streamers went to something else, which is in step with F2P KR games to be fair to it I guess. I highly doubt Diablo 4 would go the F2P route but again, Acti-Blizzard not renown for their decision making at this point.
I've been watching the streams/watching interviews all day, I have to say that almost everything Luis Barriga and David Kim have said has very much impressed me.
Game looks very impressive both from an aesthetic standpoint and in terms of game design, although it's quite obvious that the latter aspect is still being worked on and they're not entirely sure what the game will end up as (which is normal for any game but probably more so for one of this type and scale).
GGG is going to have free reign for the next couple of years though, I don't expect Diablo 4 before late 2021.
Game looks very impressive both from an aesthetic standpoint and in terms of game design, although it's quite obvious that the latter aspect is still being worked on and they're not entirely sure what the game will end up as (which is normal for any game but probably more so for one of this type and scale).
GGG is going to have free reign for the next couple of years though, I don't expect Diablo 4 before late 2021.
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I have the virtual ticket and watched the presentation about Diablo IV after the Opening Ceremony
They showed off a bunch of stuff but the thing I thought that was pretty cool was they're going to basically use a skill tree system similar to Diablo 2 and bring back the runeword system but without the hidden aspect of it. They're seemingly going back to D1, D2, D3 and grabbing Good things and ignoring bad stuff (Hyper focus on sets in D3 was mentioned a lot of times for example)
They showed off a bunch of stuff but the thing I thought that was pretty cool was they're going to basically use a skill tree system similar to Diablo 2 and bring back the runeword system but without the hidden aspect of it. They're seemingly going back to D1, D2, D3 and grabbing Good things and ignoring bad stuff (Hyper focus on sets in D3 was mentioned a lot of times for example)
Guess I'm the one that's not so positive, I guess I expected more in term of gameplay systems.
The main point is that it feels like an evolution of Diablo 3, with some elements taken from Diablo 2 and other games, but they feel like hand-picked elements.
The potion system is still dead simple, without mana potions. A stark contrast with Path of Exile. They do spice it up taking the on-drink effects bonuses to unique items. Still a far cry from the flask system, a far more ellaborated and thought-out system.
Use of spells is massively limited by cooldowns, not by mana/rage etc. On multiple streams I saw all the abilities being on cooldown except the basic one. This, along with the lack of mana potions feels like players are much more limited on how they can choose to cast spells compared to Diablo 2,
The spells themselves are obviously thought to mesh well with gamepad controls, and seeing how the point and click spells have evolved on the moba genre it makes me sad that none of the ultimates they showed had a very innovative way of controlling it, with a pointer.
Regarding the leveling side.. talents are a step forward compared to Diablo 3, they don't seem fleshed out at all, with two lines per class (it's not even a tree) it looks like a big step down compared to more modern arpgs, but nothing is known about how picking spells and powering them up works.
The open world can be good, the terrain doesn't seem to be randomized at all, which is a shame, although understandable. It will be interesting to see how that drives the multiplayer interactions (it's pretty clear that the game is designed to be always-online) The longevity of the games seems like it will be driven by randomized dungeons, we'll see how that compared with the imaginative design of PoE I fully expect Blizzard to pump content in the form of dungeons for a very long time.
This feels like an direct evolution of Diablo 3, While has taken some hints from the modern arpgs, I think it needs a lot of work and I don't think it innovates enough to be elevated above the current games in the genre (I'm not convinced the open world is such a keystone feature), especially not on the points that I thought Diablo 3 was especially weak at.
Since it's still long way off, there is still opportunity to change the systems, but I'm not holding my breath.
I haven't enjoyed a lot a Blizzard game since WoW, and I think that game massively changed them, from being trend setters in design to being trend followers and polishers, fingers crossed for this one.
The main point is that it feels like an evolution of Diablo 3, with some elements taken from Diablo 2 and other games, but they feel like hand-picked elements.
The potion system is still dead simple, without mana potions. A stark contrast with Path of Exile. They do spice it up taking the on-drink effects bonuses to unique items. Still a far cry from the flask system, a far more ellaborated and thought-out system.
Use of spells is massively limited by cooldowns, not by mana/rage etc. On multiple streams I saw all the abilities being on cooldown except the basic one. This, along with the lack of mana potions feels like players are much more limited on how they can choose to cast spells compared to Diablo 2,
The spells themselves are obviously thought to mesh well with gamepad controls, and seeing how the point and click spells have evolved on the moba genre it makes me sad that none of the ultimates they showed had a very innovative way of controlling it, with a pointer.
Regarding the leveling side.. talents are a step forward compared to Diablo 3, they don't seem fleshed out at all, with two lines per class (it's not even a tree) it looks like a big step down compared to more modern arpgs, but nothing is known about how picking spells and powering them up works.
The open world can be good, the terrain doesn't seem to be randomized at all, which is a shame, although understandable. It will be interesting to see how that drives the multiplayer interactions (it's pretty clear that the game is designed to be always-online) The longevity of the games seems like it will be driven by randomized dungeons, we'll see how that compared with the imaginative design of PoE I fully expect Blizzard to pump content in the form of dungeons for a very long time.
This feels like an direct evolution of Diablo 3, While has taken some hints from the modern arpgs, I think it needs a lot of work and I don't think it innovates enough to be elevated above the current games in the genre (I'm not convinced the open world is such a keystone feature), especially not on the points that I thought Diablo 3 was especially weak at.
Since it's still long way off, there is still opportunity to change the systems, but I'm not holding my breath.
I haven't enjoyed a lot a Blizzard game since WoW, and I think that game massively changed them, from being trend setters in design to being trend followers and polishers, fingers crossed for this one.
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Yeah I'm surprised they allow for stacks of up to 50 per slot, seems ridiculous and might as well make it infinite ala D3 at that point, which is why I'm thinking it's just temporary and they haven't really thought about it too much.
The right-click seems to always be resource dependent and have no cooldown. The other abilities all seem to be cooldown based except for the Sorceress who has Blizzard and Meteor without cooldowns, I assume the lack of cooldowns is her class gimmick.
During Rhykker's stream David Kim spoke a bit about this. This is all very early (he said the demo is literally everything they have, and even the reason why they didn't allow people to pick skills is because they didn't have finished effects and whatnot) so it is subject to change.
Max level is 40, you get "one or more" skill points per level. That said, the idea is that players will be able to max out every skill by finding Skill Tomes out in the world, players will not be able to respec skills. Talents on the other hand are one per level and players are able to respec them, but can't get more of them, aside from artifacts (iirc). Artifacts will be the main way to customize characters/builds, with "hundreds" of artifacts adding tons of different effects to skills, talents, synergies, etc. and to allow all different kinds of custom builds to be viable by staying away from "X skill deals 5000% more damage." (On that note, it was also mentioned that this kind of power creep happened in D3 because the developers didn't want to nerf things, whereas the D4 team says they will specifically nerf things that are too strong.)
I think that's the central ethos of their design, and from my perspective I think that's totally valid: low commitment but still allowing for a lot of differentiation, to the point where they even mentioned support builds possibly being a thing.
Kim also mentioned 'Dungeon Keys', which work similarly to PoE's maps. They will be based on an existing dungeon (but scaled up) and then affixes will apply modifiers to the mobs, bosses, etc. It seems like that will be D4's alternative to D3's Greater Rifts and will provide with more variety/longevity.
For some more info here's a summary on Reddit of Quin's and Rhykker's Q&A with devs:
This is actually one of the most regrettable gameplay regressions going from 2 to 3.
(And I really didn't expect them to fix it. They aren't going to design and balance 2 entirely seperate skillsets for PC and console)
So things this thread has shown me:
1. Blizzard cgi team is still on point
2. Yep, that reminds of the Diablo2 colour palette alright, but with 3d and better graphics
3. 1 and 2 are not enough to get me interested, at least not in the diablo style clickfest that is arpg. My wrists are more weary of those kinds of games than i was doing diablo2 marathons in highschool over a weekend with friends.
4. Always online is a no go for me, even if I rarely lose connection, it's a privacy/principle thing
1. Blizzard cgi team is still on point
2. Yep, that reminds of the Diablo2 colour palette alright, but with 3d and better graphics
3. 1 and 2 are not enough to get me interested, at least not in the diablo style clickfest that is arpg. My wrists are more weary of those kinds of games than i was doing diablo2 marathons in highschool over a weekend with friends.
4. Always online is a no go for me, even if I rarely lose connection, it's a privacy/principle thing
I mean yea I'm aware it can be fast, but my point wasn't that fast = good either, and that in PoE is usually specific end game builds which I've never gotten to (partially because those weren't the builds I wanted to try). The game for most of the pre-farming stage is slower
I just don't think the "build" mechanics of PoE are very good, objectively, and it succeeds because the other competition is equally flawed in other ways.I have given PoE honest tries multiple times over the years and pretty much always the same conclusion.I'm not real sold on what I've seen so far of D4, it really depends how annoying they make trying out things and grindy it turns out to be. The combat looks fine enough for an early early version.
Path of Exile stopped being "slow" ages ago. The early game window where you were more deliberate and methodical, with little resistances, increased chance to miss and slow mobility has shrunk so much that these days you are a couple of lucky drops away in Act I from overcoming it. It's just not that kind of game anymore, for better or worse (I liked when the game was harder, but there is so much content now that it doesn't make sense to make the first hours of every character so redundant).
Having watched a couple of hours of D4 now it's pretty clear they are just building on D3 with a very light D2 coat of paint. Console UI and controller focus are obvious and in this genre they are always a burden, limiting movement options and the ability to leverage your mouse movement and ability to precisely control your character and spells.
Beyond the art-style the only thing that separates it from feeling like a straight up D3 expansion are the shared instances and timed events (inlcuding the more open areas of course), and honestly the MMO feel is the last thing I enjoy from the genre. Skill progression is obviously very early, so it's impossible to say how separate talents and runes drastically change progression from D3, but at least it feels like a slightly more open system. Itemization is probably not even in early stages of development from what I've seen, and skills look completely underwhelming (except for a couple of the Shaman stuff), but that's hardly final and I'm sure there will be at least 2 more classes.
My initial complaints about D3's always online were always that the game never justified its permanent connectivity like a proper gaas game did (as much as I hate those), and I think to this day I was proven right for as much shit as we caught back then because 'hurr durr always online durm hurr durr h8rz'.
It was never a competitive game, so the sanctity of its item integrity was moot. There was nothing in terms of regular content, balance patches, multiplayer quality of life, seasonal events, or anything remotely similar to what you would expect a connected game to do. The game launched without even a cosmetic system in place. Like, that was shit online games already did to justify their existence back in 2012, and even after the RoS expansion, the online integration with seasons and cosmetics felt more like life support than an online platform to build on, and it was prove right once again
when they couldn't even find ways to monetize it (because the hooks in the game itself were not even there at the start), and when the second XP got cancelled and all we got was a $15 underwhelming extra character class that added nothing to the game.
They really just bet everything on the RMAH just to grab a quick buck in lieu of a secondary item market and that completely undermined everything else they did. They greedily tried to solve a problem they had for a decade before the game launched because they missed out on that money train instead of trying to smartly anticipate modern solutions to leverage their always online crutch. That's how games like Path of Exile managed to leave a game that sold 30 million copies from the biggest company in the world behind in terms of active userbase and time spent.
There is to this day absolutely zero reason why a separate offline mode wouldn't have been the better experience and that's just a bummer because we never had the game we deserved and they never accomplished the game they wished for anyway. They fucked themselves over to spite us and everybody lost. I think the game got to a pretty good place after all, and I was secretly thankful that Blizzard didn't find ways to fuck it over with lootboxes or item store or micro-transactions, but every time I wanted a new session I was greeted with a permanent 120ms latency for what was essentially an offline game and that's just the shit icing on the turd cake.
So it's hard to find any excitement for D4 when you actually know today how Blizzard leverages always online gaas instead of having to wonder if they will. On top of that, the lack of fresh ideas and talent behind the wheel is pretty evident from this Diablo 3.5 showing. It really doesn't feel like it's pushing ideas from the next stepping stone in my favorite genre, it feels more like spinning wheels appealing to a nostalgia I wanted a decade ago with D3, not now that I know what Blizzard has become.
It's pretty as hell and production values will be through the roof, so I'm not gonna hold most of the other minutia against it because either this is as far forward as they can push the genre right now, or this is not at all representative of what the game will look like at all. Tough shit for me whatever the answer might be. Even with how crap Blizzard has been lately, this should feel like the next pillar in the ARPG pantheon, instead it feels like redundant compromise where you are just waiting for the other shoe to drop i.e. when they announce their mtxs, and you see the final form of the game pulls more and more away from the core tennants of what made Diablo 2 such a jewel.
Having watched a couple of hours of D4 now it's pretty clear they are just building on D3 with a very light D2 coat of paint. Console UI and controller focus are obvious and in this genre they are always a burden, limiting movement options and the ability to leverage your mouse movement and ability to precisely control your character and spells.
Beyond the art-style the only thing that separates it from feeling like a straight up D3 expansion are the shared instances and timed events (inlcuding the more open areas of course), and honestly the MMO feel is the last thing I enjoy from the genre. Skill progression is obviously very early, so it's impossible to say how separate talents and runes drastically change progression from D3, but at least it feels like a slightly more open system. Itemization is probably not even in early stages of development from what I've seen, and skills look completely underwhelming (except for a couple of the Shaman stuff), but that's hardly final and I'm sure there will be at least 2 more classes.
My initial complaints about D3's always online were always that the game never justified its permanent connectivity like a proper gaas game did (as much as I hate those), and I think to this day I was proven right for as much shit as we caught back then because 'hurr durr always online durm hurr durr h8rz'.
It was never a competitive game, so the sanctity of its item integrity was moot. There was nothing in terms of regular content, balance patches, multiplayer quality of life, seasonal events, or anything remotely similar to what you would expect a connected game to do. The game launched without even a cosmetic system in place. Like, that was shit online games already did to justify their existence back in 2012, and even after the RoS expansion, the online integration with seasons and cosmetics felt more like life support than an online platform to build on, and it was prove right once again
when they couldn't even find ways to monetize it (because the hooks in the game itself were not even there at the start), and when the second XP got cancelled and all we got was a $15 underwhelming extra character class that added nothing to the game.
They really just bet everything on the RMAH just to grab a quick buck in lieu of a secondary item market and that completely undermined everything else they did. They greedily tried to solve a problem they had for a decade before the game launched because they missed out on that money train instead of trying to smartly anticipate modern solutions to leverage their always online crutch. That's how games like Path of Exile managed to leave a game that sold 30 million copies from the biggest company in the world behind in terms of active userbase and time spent.
There is to this day absolutely zero reason why a separate offline mode wouldn't have been the better experience and that's just a bummer because we never had the game we deserved and they never accomplished the game they wished for anyway. They fucked themselves over to spite us and everybody lost. I think the game got to a pretty good place after all, and I was secretly thankful that Blizzard didn't find ways to fuck it over with lootboxes or item store or micro-transactions, but every time I wanted a new session I was greeted with a permanent 120ms latency for what was essentially an offline game and that's just the shit icing on the turd cake.
So it's hard to find any excitement for D4 when you actually know today how Blizzard leverages always online gaas instead of having to wonder if they will. On top of that, the lack of fresh ideas and talent behind the wheel is pretty evident from this Diablo 3.5 showing. It really doesn't feel like it's pushing ideas from the next stepping stone in my favorite genre, it feels more like spinning wheels appealing to a nostalgia I wanted a decade ago with D3, not now that I know what Blizzard has become.
It's pretty as hell and production values will be through the roof, so I'm not gonna hold most of the other minutia against it because either this is as far forward as they can push the genre right now, or this is not at all representative of what the game will look like at all. Tough shit for me whatever the answer might be. Even with how crap Blizzard has been lately, this should feel like the next pillar in the ARPG pantheon, instead it feels like redundant compromise where you are just waiting for the other shoe to drop i.e. when they announce their mtxs, and you see the final form of the game pulls more and more away from the core tennants of what made Diablo 2 such a jewel.
Blizzard's attitude towards always online in Diablo games has always come across as a bit "We know better than you." And granted, sometimes devs do understand the shape of a problem way better than their audience. But what this boiled down to was Blizzard really not caring about the audience of Diablo games that just wanted to play on their own. They didn't matter anywhere near as much as online players being inconvenienced. They've expressed regret for allowing Diablo 2 to be played offline.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #18
You can still play solo in D3, but you have to be online which kind of doesnt really make sense.
I know a lot of people dont agree with always on, but for me, I solo through the game once then tend to party up with a clan or randoms as you get better loot that way.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #19
Some early development shots.
www.wowhead.com
Diablo IV Sneak Peek Development Gallery
Diablo on Facebook has shared several early development photos of the world of Sanctuary in Diablo IV.
www.wowhead.com
I know I ranted about this game earlier in the thread, but it's looking not that terrible all things considered. Still too early so nothing there is even close to final.
But, I have to say, it's alarming that they are surprised that people want to rebind their keys and especially LMB to move instead of attack. I have to wonder if Blizzard even plays other games in the genre or understand it. I'm not ready to have the controller limiting the PC version conversation either, but if anyone has the resources to do it properly at least it's them.
But, I have to say, it's alarming that they are surprised that people want to rebind their keys and especially LMB to move instead of attack. I have to wonder if Blizzard even plays other games in the genre or understand it. I'm not ready to have the controller limiting the PC version conversation either, but if anyone has the resources to do it properly at least it's them.
The cinematic looks cool and interesting. There was certainly a time when I would have pre ordered this one immediatly. Blizzard was a trustworthy titan in the industry, focused on awesome games. That is long gone imo. D4 will have to stand and proof itself before I buy it.
I also find it disappointing they didn't bother explaining any pros or cons on why they discarded for any variant of "objects may have different sizes in the inventory".
It seems my fears are coming true: blizzard only cares about replicating the diablo 2 aesthetic, while taking d3 as the base for everything else. This completely ignores why has the rest of the genre followed Diablo 2 in terms on gameplay systems,
We're talking about Diablo IV Quarterly Update—February 2020
It seems my fears are coming true: blizzard only cares about replicating the diablo 2 aesthetic, while taking d3 as the base for everything else. This completely ignores why has the rest of the genre followed Diablo 2 in terms on gameplay systems,
We're talking about Diablo IV Quarterly Update—February 2020
I'm really glad that they're considering controller support (and it seems like couch co-op) on PC.
ARPGs are one of the few types of games that my SO and I can play together for a long time. They have depth to keep interest, are accessible enough for her, and have the gameplay loop that draws me in. For that reason, I played the helllllll out of Diablo 3 on console, but never even finished it on PC.
This is coming from someone who used to play D2 pretty seriously, getting into theorycrafting my builds and sharing them. It took a while to break into it, because you have to have money to do that. I got lucky and popped someone, looted them, and suddenly had well over 100 SOJs to play with. God, trading was so brutal, but weirdly exhilarating...
ARPGs are one of the few types of games that my SO and I can play together for a long time. They have depth to keep interest, are accessible enough for her, and have the gameplay loop that draws me in. For that reason, I played the helllllll out of Diablo 3 on console, but never even finished it on PC.
This is coming from someone who used to play D2 pretty seriously, getting into theorycrafting my builds and sharing them. It took a while to break into it, because you have to have money to do that. I got lucky and popped someone, looted them, and suddenly had well over 100 SOJs to play with. God, trading was so brutal, but weirdly exhilarating...
I haven't (just not gonna ever preorder games, nuts to that), but I watched some videos/streams and read up on it and sounds like, from what people know, it's not for me. Seems like respeccing won't be a viable thing once you hit endgame, and some rumors that PvP is heavily featured in their content which I also actively don't want.
Also balance is screwy right now, barb takes forever to come online, and being stuck at 25 makes the itemization kind of feel weird. Even though the endgame starts at 50, and the level cap in demo is 25, it feels like we're still missing 90% of the actual details of what the game quality will be like. Just mechanically it looks fun, but Diablo 3 seasons have really spoiled me in how much feeling fair and respecting my time make an ARPG fun. It's so easy to respec and grind for something there, pretty much always feel like I'm getting a good value on my time.
Also balance is screwy right now, barb takes forever to come online, and being stuck at 25 makes the itemization kind of feel weird. Even though the endgame starts at 50, and the level cap in demo is 25, it feels like we're still missing 90% of the actual details of what the game quality will be like. Just mechanically it looks fun, but Diablo 3 seasons have really spoiled me in how much feeling fair and respecting my time make an ARPG fun. It's so easy to respec and grind for something there, pretty much always feel like I'm getting a good value on my time.
Jesus... Diablo 4 Standard Edition is $90.00 CAD. That should dissuade my FOMO, I think.
I have had some stuttering basically everywhere so far even on my 3080 so not sure if that's the game or the net, but that's just playing as "solo" as I can in always-online. Even the dungeons I've done have had stuttering. The cities were terrible but I assumed that was the servers, although really not sure why that would impact drawing the city and NPCs in. A ton of pop-up etc.
The basic combat seems fine, the game looks great, but I'm still not touching the full release until we know what the other 95% of the game is like. Not being able to respec is a dealbreaker if what the devs said some months ago is still true (it costs too much gold to respec at high levels), and too much focus on PvP when I never want to see the words or interface or anything for PvP on my game at all, ever, would be bad too.
I also hated the mount, run 6 seconds, dismount, gather/fight for 2 seconds, mount, repeat nonsense that Lost Ark an MMOs have devolved into and don't love seeing the over world look like it's more of that (unless you don't have to dismount/mount I guess?). Leveling up in ARPGs can almost always feel fine/good but it's the longer term stuff I care about.
The basic combat seems fine, the game looks great, but I'm still not touching the full release until we know what the other 95% of the game is like. Not being able to respec is a dealbreaker if what the devs said some months ago is still true (it costs too much gold to respec at high levels), and too much focus on PvP when I never want to see the words or interface or anything for PvP on my game at all, ever, would be bad too.
I also hated the mount, run 6 seconds, dismount, gather/fight for 2 seconds, mount, repeat nonsense that Lost Ark an MMOs have devolved into and don't love seeing the over world look like it's more of that (unless you don't have to dismount/mount I guess?). Leveling up in ARPGs can almost always feel fine/good but it's the longer term stuff I care about.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #32
CE came today.
This thing is massive and weighs a ton (SIGIL big box for comparison)
Changed the thread from news to OT.
Anyone here play? I'm on PC, only got a Barb to lvl51, done the story, just doing dungeons and Altars now.
This thing is massive and weighs a ton (SIGIL big box for comparison)
Changed the thread from news to OT.
Anyone here play? I'm on PC, only got a Barb to lvl51, done the story, just doing dungeons and Altars now.
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I sorta play, I finished the campaign a while back and have been farming T3 but the endgame balance is pretty bad right now. With season starting in 11 days I'll probably only hop on to find altars since those carry over.
It feels like in D3, the game was balanced around average player builds being strong, whereas in D4 it feels like it's balanced around strong builds being average. That along with the gold sink, tedium of actually respeccing, power locked behind paragon glyphs, etc. it isn't super fun to keep grinding. In D3 I could use literally any build I wanted and still farm T16, in D4 I can use 1 of 2 builds and it's still dangerous.
It feels like in D3, the game was balanced around average player builds being strong, whereas in D4 it feels like it's balanced around strong builds being average. That along with the gold sink, tedium of actually respeccing, power locked behind paragon glyphs, etc. it isn't super fun to keep grinding. In D3 I could use literally any build I wanted and still farm T16, in D4 I can use 1 of 2 builds and it's still dangerous.
It feels like the D4 designers were trying to appeal to the more hardcore PoE / Grim Dawn ARPG crowd but like... it's Diablo, it's going to be massively successful in the end unless it was TRULY unplayable, and you can never really do enough to satisfy the hardest core of fans anyway. The game holds together OK through the campaign and then the balance just kinda goes into serious mode if you want to progress.
D3 started off as incredibly punishing and ended up as, IMO, the best ARPG for non-story playing out there. It's absurdly friendly to trying builds and making anything work. And while it has years and an expansion behind it, the D4 leads absolutely should have learned from the problems of other ARPGs and not made the game so exclusionary. It sucks I just can't really try a conjuration build, or a frozen orb or blizzard or meteor build, if I actually want to do anything besides (slowly) kill stuff in the open world. Even then, does paragon power keep up with monster power if you aren't optimizing your loot for the few stats that are helpful out of the massive pool? It's lousy to go farm endgame and end up weaker than you started. They did all this work and talking about the huge variety in the talent tree and paragon boards and then balanced the game so you can't actually use any of it.
D3 started off as incredibly punishing and ended up as, IMO, the best ARPG for non-story playing out there. It's absurdly friendly to trying builds and making anything work. And while it has years and an expansion behind it, the D4 leads absolutely should have learned from the problems of other ARPGs and not made the game so exclusionary. It sucks I just can't really try a conjuration build, or a frozen orb or blizzard or meteor build, if I actually want to do anything besides (slowly) kill stuff in the open world. Even then, does paragon power keep up with monster power if you aren't optimizing your loot for the few stats that are helpful out of the massive pool? It's lousy to go farm endgame and end up weaker than you started. They did all this work and talking about the huge variety in the talent tree and paragon boards and then balanced the game so you can't actually use any of it.
I like that D4 is dangerous at higher levels. At least for now when the game is only a month old. It is infinitely better than the campaign where nothing was ever difficult and the first boss you fought was just as hard as the final boss of the game.
They made a deliberate decision to slow down the combat and make it a little more tactical. You are not meant to just run in and pull 3 elite packs and then curbstomp them instantly. The best experiences I'm having right now are when I'm doing a nightmare dungeon that is at a tier that is just within/at the boundary of what I can accomplish. The combat gets tense and frenetic and there's still a chance to die if you make a mistake with your position or cooldown usage or even if the game just fucks you with a bad combo of stuns/freezes/explosions or something like that. In contrast I find that doing regular dungeons (to unlock aspects) is boring as shit and I absolutely do not find it engaging. At level 74 currently I am not even bothered about my final endgame build. That will only start to matter after level 85 or so when 800+ drops become more common. Till then I'm using suboptimal gear and gems (for example, my weapons have lifesteal instead of crit damage that everyone else uses) and it's fine.
That said, powercreep will happen. They will introduce more legendaries, more uniques, higher world tiers and better gems so I expect other broken builds will emerge. The screen clearing power that you had in D3 will return.
I have some other issues with the game which I am baffled got through into the final release. Mostly quality of life stuff really. How did nobody in the entire dev team spanning years of work not realize that manually having to refund 150 paragon points one at a time is insanely bad design? How did they ship it like that? How did they not realize that bag and stash space is far too low? You currently cannot go through a single dungeon without filling up your bags even when you ignore blues and whites. Was this not an issue for them when they were testing the game? Did they not feel the need to collect loot while playing to see that bags are too small? How is it that all the bags have 3 rows of items but aspects only have 2 rows? There are no labels for aspects and all of them look the same so finding the one you want is so painful. Honestly, there's a whole bunch of UI problems in the game and especially with mouse+keyboard that they should have done better with.
The other aspect I don't like is that it feels like they didn't stop to think which part of the repetition would be fun. When you're making an ARPG and you know that seasonal resets will happen you should always ask yourself if repeating something is actually fun for players. I'm talking about the renown system of course, but it applies to everything in the design going all the way to even things like unskippable cutscenes. It might okay the first time but nobody wants to repeat it the 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 15th time. So for renown their original plan was just "do everything all over again" before they got so much pushback and now they're letting fog of war and altars of lilith persist but it's still not enough. Having to repeat side quests will suck because of how uninspired most of them are and how so many start from random drops you're supposed to find around the world. Having to repeat many (or all) dungeons again to unlock aspects will feel like a burden. And Blizzard should understand this. Mark my words, a day will come when aspect unlocks will be account wide and a one time job. Blizzard doesn't even know this now but it is a change they will make. Until then players will have to suffer through a very tedious part of the game in every season.
The itemization could use a bit of tuning too but I'm not actually sure what needs to be done. Currently the most common way to get gear is to find a yellow ancestral item with 3 good rolls and 1 bad one, and then reroll the bad one to something good. And when you have a good yellow after doing that you imprint an aspect and get your legendary. And it's good that they've given you a way to make legendary items which aren't totally dependent on actual legendary drops but at the same time the only thing you're ever really farming for now are uniques. Most legendary drops you get now will not beat your jerry rigged yellow so that feels a bit bad. Not sure how this can be made better when the aspect system exists and any interesting legendary property they introduce can always be imprinted onto non legendary items.
Another issue I have, and this might be more of a personal opinion, is that leveling is currently too slow and the season is starting too quickly. Seasons were always going to be a thing but I think they should have waited maybe 3 months to let people actually do everything in the game before starting new journeys. To at least get one character to max level and spend some time farming on that character to 'complete' their build in terms of item drops and all. And I understand this totally depends on how much time one is able to put into the game. I'm at 74 and I do not expect that I will get to 100 before season 1 starts, let alone 'finish' my desired builds. At the same time there are probably people with 3 level 100s who have run out of stuff to do and would lose interest without the new seasonal chase. But I do suspect that a large majority of people will not finish their first character and many will probably drop them because they know they can't do it so might as well wait for the new season. And tied to this is the leveling speed which, IMO, is very slow. So again, this is an issue that can be mitigated if you are able to spend large amounts of time in the game and/or have friends who are always around to level up with. They addressed this to an extent with the nightmare dungeon XP buffs recently but I don't feel like it's enough. It's especially a problem below level 50. If you have friends who can carry you through capstones as soon as you roll an alt then it'll take 30-40 minutes to reach level 50. If you don't then you will be stuck doing that part of the game for so many hours. There is no gem of ease to help you either.
D3 got lots of quality of life updates by the end and while I can understand not having everything that game had, it should have been something of a baseline for D4.
Anyway, all that said, I still like the game a lot. They've nailed the combat feedback which is the single most important aspect of an ARPG and what you spend 95% of the time doing. The combat animations, sound and physics work perfectly together to make the combat feel really great. It's something many other games of this genre can't seem to get right. Everything else surrounding this is really well done too... the art, the music, the production values and voice acting and everything was top notch. And I expect that a lot of this friction with the design issues and UI management will be smoothed out in the coming months.
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The only reason I played as much as I did so far despite the, IMO, overwhelming problems, was because the core mechanics of the game are indeed fun. They have a very solid foundation, and I still played less hours in D4 on one character than I did in D3 last season on one character, because the game just isn't balanced around having fun. And it's not from skill difficulty - I feel like if I beat Sekiro, I can appreciate good (sometimes bad) difficulty. The "difficulty" in D4 is from bad design and just leads to massive restrictions.
It's not like D3 wasn't dangerous if you were pushing, the problem is D4 removed choice. D3 you decided if you wanted to push basically the "high score" because that was largely the only benefit - if you wanted to just play, or just farm, you could make your own build and not have to "net deck" at all to feel like you were making progress. D4 removes that (in my case I had to look up a build to even unlock the T3 difficulty which is where the endgame STARTS, and I love making my own builds). The combat in D4 is less mobs-of-enemies but D3 had tactical fights if you pushed the high end as well, like the exploding palm builds where you're kiting enemies around, timing cooldowns, making sure to proc certain things in certain order. D4 has "apply vulnerable and use your highest damage ability" as the core for every build pretty much, and then a bunch of things that surround that.
The biggest problem with itemization right now is you keep leveling up, making enemies stronger, while item power doesn't increase (the cap increases at T3 and T4 but it's likely you'll see high item levels way before you go to T4, and from T4 to max level it's all the same item pool). So progress comes from RNG (same as any ARPG) but you can LOSE power from leveling, in the endgame, which is godawful. This is tied into your point about leveling so slow - the game has like 4 endgame points but they all kinda feel poorly implemented because none of them are the "true" endgame, so they all have balance and progress issues. D3 solved this by 70 being the endgame, full stop, paragon levels didn't scale up enemies, your difficulty setting did. The only other "endgame" was GR pushing but that is basically score attack for ARPG.
The easiest solution for D4 would be to add more granular difficulty back in, because that's a huge problem with build variety right now. There are classes with skills you simply cannot use if you want to play solo in T3-T4, even in the open world, but especially in nightmare dungeons (even if you aren't pushing very far). It's weird they basically copied GR tier for the NM dungeons but then ignored the fact D3 has T1-16 for the outside difficulty which matches GR up to rank 70.
I should say, I don't have an issue with people looking up the best builds, even when it's not required (like D3). I have an issue when it feels like that's the ONLY way to play the endgame, which is the only part of an ARPG I really care about. PoE had this issue in spades, Grim Dawn kind of does do (and has a similar multiple-end-game issue to boot), the indie ARPG Chronicon didn't as much but was still really reliant on grinding before you could even try a build.
Obviously, the game is fine if you don't care about your own builds (or your "own build" happens to align with one of the currently possible T3+ builds) or just the campaign, but like I said I really only play ARPGs to play with different builds in the endgame and D4 just is bad for that right now. It's maybe better than PoE or Grim Dawn but leaps worse than D3, their own game.
lol they nerfed sorcs. Took a hammer to almost 100% of the aspects they use, and to all the damage affixes they use. Also nerfed Druid Unstoppable bear time, and a bunch of other nerfs. You also get less XP now because they nerfed XP from higher level enemies and you won't find any anymore anyway.
The level scaling they had was bad - leveling up and ending up weaker was always obviously dumb, Oblivion proved this years ago. But the only thing they added bonus xp to was Whispers which I have to imagine isn't making up for the rest.
The entire patch is nerfs to everyone and maybe some builds remain same-ish. It's staggering. They buffed some skills but nothing even close to enough to make new builds viable from what I see.
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The level scaling they had was bad - leveling up and ending up weaker was always obviously dumb, Oblivion proved this years ago. But the only thing they added bonus xp to was Whispers which I have to imagine isn't making up for the rest.
The entire patch is nerfs to everyone and maybe some builds remain same-ish. It's staggering. They buffed some skills but nothing even close to enough to make new builds viable from what I see.
Diablo IV Patch Notes
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I thought (or hoped) that they would quietly add the gem of ease into the game. Instead they nerfed the shit out of powerleveling.
And everything else.
And everything else.
I just tried my 65 Arc lash sorc.
In overworld, it's a bit of a wash, because enemies are now 6 levels below me - I do slightly more damage and am slightly less squishy than I was last night TO ENEMIES SIX LEVELS BELOW ME. I was doing some whisper quests and my xp bar literally didn't move after 3 of them, supposedly the thing they boosted xp for.
In NMD, it's a huge nerf. I did a 17 last night and I was squishy but it wasn't too hard to manage my cooldowns and get through it. Today, my short cooldowns have an extra 2-3 seconds between casts, I'm way squishier, and do way less damage. It took me more than twice as long to get through a 17 NMD than it did last night.
I don't have BIS gear (outside of my boots which don't add a ton of dps) but I have way better gear than the average person that doesn't have much experience with ARPGs or is just doing "whatever". The cooldown nerfs alone feel clunky and brutal, everything else is just pain on top. There is no interest for me in playing my sorc anymore, I wanted to get to T4 at some point but fucking why, now? Doubt I could even get through a level 70 ascension dungeon anyway based on how I kept almost dying to random stuff in the NMD.
In overworld, it's a bit of a wash, because enemies are now 6 levels below me - I do slightly more damage and am slightly less squishy than I was last night TO ENEMIES SIX LEVELS BELOW ME. I was doing some whisper quests and my xp bar literally didn't move after 3 of them, supposedly the thing they boosted xp for.
In NMD, it's a huge nerf. I did a 17 last night and I was squishy but it wasn't too hard to manage my cooldowns and get through it. Today, my short cooldowns have an extra 2-3 seconds between casts, I'm way squishier, and do way less damage. It took me more than twice as long to get through a 17 NMD than it did last night.
I don't have BIS gear (outside of my boots which don't add a ton of dps) but I have way better gear than the average person that doesn't have much experience with ARPGs or is just doing "whatever". The cooldown nerfs alone feel clunky and brutal, everything else is just pain on top. There is no interest for me in playing my sorc anymore, I wanted to get to T4 at some point but fucking why, now? Doubt I could even get through a level 70 ascension dungeon anyway based on how I kept almost dying to random stuff in the NMD.