Diablo IV

[Swigen]

Back on topic: It’s really creepy that people are looking for sex appeal in this gaem. Everyone knows it’s only ok to derive pleasure from mass murder and over the top gore.

Yes.

Yes.

No!

Ugh! God NO! Fucking GROSS!!

YES!

 

[Grotesque]

this is probably a demo they cobbled together as fast as possible using the Diablo 3 engine/gameplay loop

lead systems designer said they're working on D4 "for several years".

Just look at the all the released ingame screenshots and gameplay trailer. You think all those 3D assets come from thin air?
Maybe they worked just on assets and left itemization out until 1 month before Blizzcon but this is whishful thinking because deep down inside all of us want a good Diablo game.

 

[Viata]

The head disappears before the sword even hit it.

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

Some art

Spoiler

 

[Gerrard]

Daily reminder that Action RPG is not synonymous with Diablo-like

Explain that to the retards who keep calling these games "action RPGs".

 

[Shadenuat]

Back on topic: It’s really creepy that people are looking for sex appeal in this gaem. Everyone knows it’s only ok to derive pleasure from mass murder and over the top gore

Violence lost its power and appeal long time ago. Due to being normalized into core gameplay of most genres and media.

At this point people don't feel much towards violence; what they feel is mostly impulses from game feedback, like motion and sounds. The act of violence itself is meaningless because it is everywhere.

Also, u sure ur in the right thread?
Because it's Diablo not eroge; it's a game where you kill monsters with axes and magic. Lilith is not Bioware waifu, she is a boss in the game you will have to kill. Do we remember what is the key emotion most people praise the original Diablo for? Its bosses too, like Butcher, or Diablo himself?

It's dread. You don't fuck them; they're supposed to fuck you.

 

[Machocruz]

Didn't the cenobites in Hellraiser embody pleasure as well as pain? Not exactly Instagram models, those folks

 

[Damned Registrations]

All of this made me play D1. In first few levels I found 2 handed axe and it's double damage.
it's not magical
it's not set piece
it doesn't proc lighting when I use health potion
it just does more damage than sword and so I used it and it felt like progression.

then I found Butcher and he killed me twice. but I found a bunch of magical staves and that helped. then I switched to axe.
First boss in game killed me. Twice.

but then in Leoric tomb many skeletons shot me, so I switched back to sword and shield. then I found relic mace against skeletons, and it was good. I also learned how to use healing spell and town portal. had to ration scrolls before it.
I also bought leather armor. A white item for 350 gold. Since i only had cloaks and rags.

Neat that Leoric had crown Griswold said he maid for him; too bad no mithral sword.

I think action RPGs went into wrong direction. They need to scrap everything and begin from the basics. Because their basic gameplay lost appeal.

Yeah, starting as a hopeless hobo is something old games did a lot, and it's something that was way better. Can't get that back, though. It might confuse people. Modern games are like liquid food replacement that is pumped into your veins by IV--it will keep you alive, but you won't even get to taste it.

Even roguelikes have trended in this direction, sadly. You could go through an entire game of Nethack without ever finding a better weapon than a silver saber+5. Even if you did find an 'artifact' it was often something as simple as having bonus damage to giants. These days roguelikes throw amazing shit at you on the first floor of the dungeon. And the more mainstream you get the more this trend continues. By the time you get to mobile games you've got like 6 different tiers of weapons from normal to legendary and you're already getting like at least the 4th tier in the first ten minutes, with the first 3 tiers being things you'll never use, just there to make other stuff seem more special. Such a waste.

 

[Sykar]

All of this made me play D1. In first few levels I found 2 handed axe and it's double damage.
it's not magical
it's not set piece
it doesn't proc lighting when I use health potion
it just does more damage than sword and so I used it and it felt like progression.

then I found Butcher and he killed me twice. but I found a bunch of magical staves and that helped. then I switched to axe.
First boss in game killed me. Twice.

but then in Leoric tomb many skeletons shot me, so I switched back to sword and shield. then I found relic mace against skeletons, and it was good. I also learned how to use healing spell and town portal. had to ration scrolls before it.
I also bought leather armor. A white item for 350 gold. Since i only had cloaks and rags.

Neat that Leoric had crown Griswold said he maid for him; too bad no mithral sword.

I think action RPGs went into wrong direction. They need to scrap everything and begin from the basics. Because their basic gameplay lost appeal.

Good post. To me the problem in a nutshell is that D3 and D4 play the same from start to finish. You pwn everything except bosses and even most bosses can be done without dying if you are not a brain dead retard. Meanwhile in D1 and D2 you start as a gimp where you barely scrape by in a lot of circumstances, dying is easy and you can get erased in a split second if you are not paying attention. You play carefully and try not to draw too much attention, use choke points, etc. Such tactics are lost in D3 and D4, I guess that is not... "epic" enough.
You have hardly any skills, your mana regenerates very slowly and you your equipment is a patchwork of whatever crap you can find and it takes until nightmere if not until hell depending on drop luck until it starts going together. The feeling of progression is lost in D3 and D4, it just gets shinier and more... "epic" but that can be hardly called progression.
The problem is, if it is constantly "epic" then it really never is "epic". Epic to me was staring as a sorcerer with my Charged Bolt Staff and ending up with my Archangels Staff of Apocalypse or Dreamflange/Stormshield and wearing my Thinking Cap, Awesome Full Plate of Sorcery, etc. It was fun that some of the best stuff were in fact blues, not uniques. Even better some of the most powerful uniques had severe enough drawbacks that you had to build around them like Constricting Ring.

 

[Swigen]

Back on topic: It’s really creepy that people are looking for sex appeal in this gaem. Everyone knows it’s only ok to derive pleasure from mass murder and over the top gore

Violence lost its power and appeal long time ago. Due to being normalized into core gameplay of most genres and media.

At this point people don't feel much towards violence; what they feel is mostly impulses from game feedback, like motion and sounds. The act of violence itself is meaningless because it is everywhere.

Also, u sure ur in the right thread?
Because it's Diablo not eroge; it's a game where you kill monsters with axes and magic. Lilith is not Bioware waifu, she is a boss in the game you will have to kill. Do we remember what is the key emotion most people praise the original Diablo for? Its bosses too, like Butcher, or Diablo himself?

It's dread. You don't fuck them; they're supposed to fuck you.

Earlier in the thread I revealed that I found the succubi in Diablo 1 sexy when I was a kid. You tellin’ me how to enjoy this gaem?!

 

[Kem0sabe]

Game has been redesigned several times already, latest one was a souls type game. So i do believe this was a cobbled together demo to show alongside the cgi trailer they originaly planned to release without gameplay.

So the calender is 2020 wow expansion, 2021 overwatch expansion/sequel, 2022 diablo 4.

 

[Sentinel]

Diablo 4 with Luis Barriga as the Director (current iteration) has been in development since 2016.

 

[hello friend]

Diablo 1 took things too far wrt chokepoints. So much of the game was spent popping moles in a doorway. Diablo 1 is a fantastic game, but I played it years after playing Diablo 2 and I think people might have rose tinted goggles. At least playing a warrior turns the last third of the game into a chore, and something I will never do again. It never got hard, but it sure was tedious.

Just started playing Diablo 2 again because of this thread. It's so fun. PM me if you want to group.

 

[Sentinel]

Apparently Allen Adham, founder of Blizzard and one of the most important figures of WoW Classic is Executive Producer on Diablo IV. Apparently he actually liked Diablo 3. A lot. It may be time to panic.

https://www.gameinformer.com/blizzc...g-diablo-iv-with-allen-adham-at-blizzcon-2019

Talking Diablo IV With Allen Adham At Blizzcon 2019
by DANIEL TACK on Nov 02, 2019 at 09:00 PM

I caught up with Blizzard co-founder Allen Adham at Blizzcon 2019 for a few questions about our upcoming return to Hell.

How far away is release?

We're not releasing any specific timing. But I will tell you that while we've been working on Diablo IV for several years, we still have a ways to go. So we do want to set proper expectations. It's a big, beautiful, contiguous open world. It's packed full of creatures. It's really grounded in the quests and the content that are an order of magnitude beyond anything we've done before. Yeah, it's going to take some time for us to get it right. You know, at Blizzard we don't compromise on quality.

With that in mind, why announce now? Why not a year down the line?

It's funny, you're the first person that's actually asked me that question. Most people have asked, why didn't you announce last year or you know earlier. So we have been so excited to share this game with the world. We've been working on it for a while now. And it feels so sort of, I don't know, cathartic to finally just be able to announce it, speak about it openly. It's far enough along that it does satisfy that value that we have of when we tell the world about one of the games we're working on we also want them to turn around and be able to play the demo. And so we are very happy with where we're at, very happy with the demo and feel like the reason to announce it now is that we have this great sort of story to tell. We have this great demo you can play. It's time for us to tell our players and our community.

Have you ever considered making Diablo a service kind of game similar to say, World of Warcraft where it's just one core title supported by continual expansions?

I will say that the team that that is making Diablo IV is ambitious. It's an ambitious game. Our hope then is that when we're finished with Diablo IV we can take that team and produce expansions at a higher cadence than anything we've done in the past. We know that our players want more content at a higher rate. We want to deliver more content at a higher rate. And it has been a goal of this team and the way we're building this team out to deliver that. So I think you'll see more of that in Diablo IV than you've seen in the past from us.

Is this going to be a standard box model then, with expansions and DLC?

What we're willing to talk about today, given that we're still kind of thinking things through, but I think we're willing to go on record and say clearly, we have a base sort of game like you're used to with expansions like you're used to, hopefully at a higher cadence. And beyond that, we have some ideas but nothing specific to share.

Have you ever thought about where you can take things in terms of watchability? Farming monsters is cool but it doesn't often have those "big moments".

We do and in fact, that's exactly how we characterize it internally when we talk about the possibility of esports or another sort of media we always frame it in terms that it may or may not turn out to be that there's an esports approach to Diablo but the way we always think about it is we want to make sure that it's highly watchable. And we think that it is and we think that Diablo IV more than previous Diablos because of the fidelity of the engine, the beauty of what you see, the customization of the characters, that RTC (real-time camera). The opportunities to see and celebrate what you look like, they should make Diablo IV as watchable as anything Diablo has ever produced.

Is it a challenge to integrate these raid-style experiences in a game where sometimes combat can be distilled into spamming one button and watching everything die?

That speaks to really a broad challenge for Diablo IV given the long history we have with Diablo 1, 2, and 3 and all the many amazing things we've done with the franchise, how do you take that and push to the next level while staying true to your roots? And so one of the answers to that was bigger world bosses. We have an encounter team and the sole purpose of this team is to make the world boss encounters amazing. And so you see Ashava. It's new for our team to think in that way. So that adds to the complexity to these big bosses, but they're coming up with some pretty amazing ideas. One of them is the stagger bar, where if you crowd control repeatedly a large boss rather than just either allow it to go through or block it, you build up stagger over time. After a certain amount of time, if everybody is sort of crowd controlling these world bosses, then something special happens, either their mode changes or some piece breaks off or things like that. I think there is an opportunity for us to make them really mechanically interesting and that's one of the challenges that you know, sort of rising to push Diablo IV beyond anything we've done before.

Has there ever been a thought that players could keep something from season to season?

There has. You know, the idea of overlaying a meta on top of seasonal roles. There is an idea, we have a bunch that we're thinking about. I don't think we have anything specific to share at this point but we're thinking along those same lines.

Is the paragon system coming back?

That's a hallmark of Diablo. I have close to a level 600 paragon demon hunter. We love the idea that people who love our games can play for hundreds, even thousands of hours and for Diablo, the paragon system is central to that.

So you've obviously drawn from much of Diablo's history for Diablo IV, what's the coolest new thing specific to Diablo IV?

Mechanically they're a bunch of them. I'll give you a few. But the one that pervades everything is that vast open world. That's the kind of thing that we're only able to do in the Diablo series now for the first time because of the modern engine that we're running. So when you see the demo, or you see the gameplay trailer, there's that scene where you emerge from the dungeon and you look out over that vista and you see that long horizon line, it looks like a skybox, that's all real. And so what you're seeing is the actual geometry of the world, and you could run all the way through there seamlessly. And so that sense of open-world and the scope and scale of it along with how grounded and how real wanted the world to feel, will make the tone of the game very different. But also by adding multiplayer invites in that social element. You can either solo or you can group, we imagine most people will do both depending on the mood that they're in. Your dungeons you can go down with friends or you can go in a private instance and play those sorts of deep dark dungeons and experience Diablo the way many people like to, completely by themselves. So those are really big aspects. And then there are lots of other things that you'll see such as the return to PvP, or the return to trading, the world bosses, and then there are things that are more subtle like the class design.

The game is now open-world. Does that mean we're not using the traditional Act structure and that you could theoretically walk from the beginning of the game to the end? Assuming nothing killed you of course.

That's right. It's an open-world game. We're delivering the story nonlinear, you can choose to follow kind of the main questline or you can choose to walk in a totally different direction. So yeah, it's a pretty different, pretty interesting take on it. We think it's really fresh, and people will be able to then interact with the game kind of how they prefer.

So trading. A high-level friend joins your game, can just hand off a bag of Stone of Jordans?

No, it won't work quite like that. They'll be sort of level restrictions. There's also, you know we have a long history of making large scale multiplayer games at Blizzard and so we've got some pretty good learnings. Sometimes we got it right. In Diablo 3, we tried some things and we learned a lot of lessons the hard way there. And so we've taken those lessons and applied them to the trading system here. We want to be very careful about capturing the good things that come with the player to player trading, while not short-circuiting the core loop, which is making sure that people have the opportunity to earn the best items themselves and feel those rewards are well earned, feel satisfied. And we have a bunch of great ideas on how to do that through a combination of bind on pickup and bind on trade.

With the ability to trade, is there any concern about third-party sites cropping up where players will sell each other gear?

We've talked a little bit about it. We think that way we're doing it again, I would point if we have some experience in some of our other franchises, to have a pretty good sense of where to strike that balance so that those kinds of systems don't become a thing. We think we're in a good place conceptually. We have some more work to do, I would say on trading before we lock the systems all the way down, so I think it's something we're thinking about, but not we're not currently overly concerned.

Sure. So for end game loot, is it going to be like the primal/ancient system where you're trying to hunt down that one awesome roll?

I would say that end game we're imagining players have a whole lot of different things that they can do. And so if you think about that new open-world structure, you can continue to explore and play the game. There will be seasons, the traditional loot chase, PVP. So we're imagining that there'll be a variety of different ways to play. And then there will be the key dungeons, which will let you kind of continue to play dungeon content at progressively harder and harder difficulty levels. So our goal was actually to provide a sort of spectrum of things that players can do for many, many years to come. And let them play the end game the way they like.

For the world bosses, is there any concern that players are just going to flip from game to game to farm the boss over and over?

That's a good question. No one's asked me that question. If I'm being totally honest, I don't know that we've worked that problem directly. Luis (game director Luis Barriga) would be a great person to ask that question. I will relay that comment to him and make sure we design with that in mind.

 

[Valky]

This looks kind of neat but Blizzard is a trash developer so I'm not having any expectations. Probably just sunk money into graffix so I would be fooled into thinking it looks good.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

This looks kind of neat but Blizzard is a trash developer so I'm not having any expectations. Probably just sunk money into graffix so I would be fooled into thinking it looks good.

If this looks neat to you just download D3 as it's that same game.

 

[Efe]

lilith looks like a lava lamp to me.

 

[eviltentacle]

Diablo 2 is where the real decline began, Diablo 1 had massive succubus titties, Diablo 2 had gremlin peen.

 

[Zeriel]

Apparently Allen Adham, founder of Blizzard and one of the most important figures of WoW Classic is Executive Producer on Diablo IV. Apparently he actually liked Diablo 3. A lot. It may be time to panic.

He's one of those old guys on the management track I mentioned. This is the same guy who rejoined a few years ago after leaving around 2004~, the same guy who last year during the Diablo: Immortal blizzcon said in an interview that their best devs are not only making mobile games, but also playing them, and was proud of that. Money money money.

 

[Cryomancer]

MrLLamaSC impressions of D4.

For those who doesn't know, MrLLamaSC is one of the greatests(if not the greatest) D2 speedruner who owns a lot of world records.


Around 10 minutes, he talk about how he disagrees that the idea of being able to max out all skills is a good idea.

Around 14 minutes, he mentions a mechanic of for eg, if is raining your fire skills deal less damage and electric skills deals more damage. I personally like the idea. In Dark Souls 2, Shrine of Amana was extremely hard for me as a pyromancer but as a hexer was a cakewalk. But i understand why some people would not like this suggestion.

Then he produces to mention the tallent tree. HE would like more branching. Not like PoE. He mentions that Last Epoch has a good in between skill like and PoE too much brenching.

Around 18 min - HE loved the combat.

Around 20 min - He mentions that is not a big fan of potions on cooldown, he probably prefer healing over time like myself or PoE potion system but din't specified and he mentions that he liked he hardcore mode.

Around 24 min - He mentions the difficulty curve and talks that he prefer when Druid shapeshift is more "constant" like D2, i agree with then. He also liked that he doesn't like scaling because it kills the possibility of the player engaging harder content. Around 27 min, Oblivion is used as a example of game with awful scaling and i strongly agree.

33 min - Starts to play as Druid. In nutshell, liked the Tornado changing the weather, and he loved the "molten boulder without the fire", he mentioned that he loved the cast time and roll time. He also mentions that he personally doesn't like cooldowns(like myself)

37:20 - A amazing explanation to why cooldowns are bad. He mentions that he uses tons of skills in D2 despite D2 has no CDs, it changes the "is better to cast A or B"

But agains, weather change is really cool and praises the combat

39:35 - Flying wolf bug

41:45 - Using boulder to push the enemy off the map. Amazing. MAp kill.

44:00 - He uses runewords as activations. He din't liked, i personally disagree. IMO activation rules are a amazing new idea.


50 min - HE prefer Diablo 2 inventory tetris but he liked the separed inventory system with quest item and material inventory. And he mentions that the problem with D2 charms is that they fill your inventory.

55 min - Started Sorceress and mentions that sorceress tee looks better than Barb because offers more choices. And he thinks that trees should have more things.

Only watched 1 hour at moment. Honestly i have work to do and will only watch the rest tomorrow.


TL;DR - A lot of good and bad.

He found the Sorceress very lackluster and got disappointed because the unique skill who he liked has cooldown on it. He mentions lastly on 1 hour that skills are too dependent on gear like d3 and he doesn't like it. He thinks that gear should enhance builds like d2. Not determine builds.

 

[Sentinel]

Diablo 2 has CDs.
His argument is "I don't like cooldowns because it removes the skill of knowing what is best to use", but that is easily countered with "Cooldowns are good because they emphasize the importance of when to use the skills". It's a pretty weak argument. In an ARPG cooldowns might be useful early on when the difficulty is still palpable to punish a player for not properly using skills, but later in the game you're killing shit faster than it can spawn and cooldowns become more of an annoyance than an actual valuable restriction.

I don't understand why they don't just let the class's resource be the restricting factor instead of this weird cooldown shit.

 

[Viata]

Diablo 2 has CDs.

It was called casting delay, no?

 

[Sentinel]

Diablo 2 has CDs.

It was called casting delay, no?

Yes, still functioned as CDs.

 

[Cryomancer]

Diablo 2 has CDs.
His argument is "I don't like cooldowns because it removes the skill of knowing what is best to use", but that is easily countered with "Cooldowns are good because they emphasize the importance of when to use the skills". It's a pretty weak argument. In an ARPG cooldowns might be useful early on when the difficulty is still palpable to punish a player for not properly using skills, but later in the game you're killing shit faster than it can spawn and cooldowns become more of an annoyance than an actual valuable restriction.

They added in few spells with high particle effects due HW limitations. Because in heavily mob areas, having 100 Blizzards loaded in memory causes massive lag

And cooldowns only force you into "same rotation spam".

Yes, still functioned as CDs.

Not true. I can play as a wind druid with Hurricane around me 24/7 despite the 6 casting delay on it...

--------------------------------------------------------------------

I really hated that Diablo III has a lot of cooldowns and stats linked to gear. I love when powerful skills has his drawbacks and cost of gettin then. For eg, the Strongest Dark Magic on Dark Souls 2 can deal massive damage ( link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3m6IdCiUtY )

But

• Requires 4 Attenument slots. So you could have easily 100+ Dark Orbs or be able to cast Climax
• Require high STATS, mainly FHT
• Costs all souls and only does significant damage if you sacrifice at least 5k souls
• Require a long quest in a covenant
• Require facing DarkLurker, the strongest boss VS hex in the game

This skill on D3 would be just a skill that everyone gets at a specific level, no effor required, deals 50000% of the sharpness of your axe in damage and had 180 seconds cooldown On D2, would be a high level skill that requires a lot of investments in synergies to deal massive damage and his effectiveness will depend the mob and situation.

 

[Damned Registrations]

His reasoning is dumb. You still have to consider which skill is better to use when they have cooldowns, and it's a more complicated decision because it has to account for not just what is best right now, but what will be best for the next 20 seconds or whatever is applicable to the cooldown. Only a moron would use all his skills as soon as they come off cooldown without regard for when they'll be most effective and then bitch about how he has no choices to make.