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Diablo IV

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,982
You guys actually think killing the exact same enemy over and over again to farm a particular rare drop is good gameplay? What the fuck is wrong with you? Dark Souls loot from enemies is fucking awful aside from the tail cuts. Which are video gamey bullshit, wow what a coincidence!
 

Viata

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Water Play Catarinense
Different drops should be done by killing an enemy using specific weapons. That removes the "gotta do this for hundreds of time hoping something good drops".
 

S.torch

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Jan 4, 2019
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think killing the exact same enemy over and over again to farm a particular rare drop is good gameplay?

What? Best weapons and armors in Dark Souls are not dropped by farming a ton, you get them after exploring a location, completing a quest or doing a particular task like the tail dragon.
Some of them are get by killing the same enemy, but these are not the best ones.

Killing the same enemy gain and again, is actually what you do in Diablo 2. There are no more ways to get the best items.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
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Messages
14,982
think killing the exact same enemy over and over again to farm a particular rare drop is good gameplay?

What? Best weapons and armors in Dark Souls are not dropped by farming a ton, you get them after exploring a location, completing a quest or doing a particular task like the tail dragon.
Some of them are get by killing the same enemy, but these are not the best ones.

Killing the same enemy gain and again, is actually what you do in Diablo 2. There are no more ways to get the best items.
Which items are the best is irrelevant since there's no real difference between the best weapon in the game and a fucking club +15. People who want something cool, like the baldur side sword, or channeler trident, or black knight weapons, or the demon spear, etc. will need to farm their fucking brains out.

Changing the drop mechanics so the best staff drops from the unique monster with a staff doesn't change the behaviour of farming one dude over and over again. It just means everyone wants to farm different monsters so if you're in a group it'll be 8 fucking necromancers. What you ought to do is make the loot require varied gameplay that is actually fun, like having you go through a randomly generated dungeon with varied enemies that are actually dangerous.
 

Grunker

RPG Codex Ghost
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Not that story is particularly important in these games, but I enjoyed D1+D2 atmosphere and story more than I thought I would
If it wasn't important people wouldn't be bothered with D3 so much, and Blizz wouldn't hire Witcher designer to try and bring back in D4 what was lost in D3.

I'm not bothered by Path of Exile's shitty story at all. And while the atmosphere is pretty decent it doesn't hold a candle to D1 or D2.

The reason Diablo 3 bothers me that much is that the story os downright insultingly horrible, and its predecessors showed that it didn't have to be, and just as importantly, it has pretty terrible gameplay as well.

I'm not saying aesthetics don't matter - obviously they do and D1 and D2's are a really, really nice treat - but these games can be good even if they fail in that department.
 
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Grunker

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Lord of Destruction's story and atmosphere doesn't hold a candle to D2 core either (in fact the opening cinematic is really meh and kind of weird given the excellent stuff that preceded it), but again, didn't bother me that much.
 
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Grotesque

±¼ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Divinity: Original Sin Divinity: Original Sin 2
"Brevik and the Schaefer brothers all stated that even during the development of Diablo 2, there was a constant battle over its gory, satanic aesthetic between Blizzard North and Blizzard Entertainment"

lol
 

Cryomancer

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If anything it would make farming items you need much easier and varied instead of just rushing a single area 100 times.

Yes, but for her change add a single variable to a creature who has level, hit points, resistances, attacks, spells, IA, casting speed, defense, attack ratting, etc and do like other 65436537653654 games do will take too much effort... Anyway, i an not asking for realistic mechanics. I an asking for immersive mechanics. Both are completely different things. For example, on shooters. ArmA 3 is a realistic game. Battlefield 1, just a immersive one. You have situations like for eg, a K-bullet being able to damage a A7V from his frontal armor, but unable to OHKill with a headshot on the plate armored guy. Exactly because the plate armored guy is a limited resource and a realistic projectile penetration vs armor would require a lot of work to do.

I honestly don't like the end game of D2. Farm the same boss over and over to the chance of getting a better loot is not fun IMO. Re play the game and do the normal/nightmare/hell journey again in other hands, sounds extremely more fun.

Some of them are get by killing the same enemy, but these are not the best ones.

The Black Witch's Staff is the unique good eqquipment who require farming a enemy to obtain IMO on DS2.

Sadly they hardly bring anything. In a game that will be always online and always multiplayer, you will hardly know some atmosphere.

At least the crazy Zimbabwe level of number inflation and wow art style is not present on D4.
 

Nathir

Liturgist
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Aug 3, 2017
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1,090
While the base characters look good for now, there's no telling how over the top the armors might end up later in the game. Also the monster design is very bad and similar to D3.
 

Cryomancer

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While the base characters look good for now, there's no telling how over the top the armors might end up later in the game. Also the monster design is very bad and similar to D3.

The game also has most post wow mmo bullshit. Cooldowns( a lot of people are asking for his removal https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d3/t/this-companys-obsession-with-cooldowns/6859 ) , wow like itemization where gear is used to inflate numbers not to deflect blows and give magical effects, and some enemies art style looks very wowish.
 

Grunker

RPG Codex Ghost
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I'm not saying aesthetics don't matter - obviously they do and D1 and D2's are a really, really nice treat - but these games can be good even if they fail in that department.
Good like cheeseburgers.

1) Cheeseburger implies accessibility and lack of complexity. Path of Exile certainly ain't that.

2) I'm a student of the great George Motz, King of the Universe, Master Of All That Is, Worthy Of Eternal Praise, so your implication that cheeseburgers are somehow inferior offends me greatly.
 

S.torch

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People who want something cool, like the baldur side sword, or channeler trident, or black knight weapons, or the demon spear, etc.

The Black Knight Sword and Greatsword, Velka's Rapier, Drake Sword, Demon's Greataxe, the Dark Hand, Gough's Greatbow, Dragonslayer Greatbow, the Avelyn, Demon's Catalyst are just some examples of rare weapons that can be found without farming. You're comparing this with Diablo 2, in which you have to farm everything. And the rare weapons? need to be farmed to death.

At least the crazy Zimbabwe level of number inflation and wow art style is not present on D4.

The "wow art style" is very present, you need to pay attention to the details though.
 

Swigen

Arbiter
Joined
Dec 15, 2018
Messages
1,014
Y’all are talking about the most meaningless shit. Look here, does anyone know if there are lulls in the action where you pick up a note or a diary and a disembodied voice starts reading it so you can let go of the keyboard for a minute and drink yore whiskey? HUH?!? DOES ANYBODY KNOW?!?!
 

Sentinel

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Ommadawn
https://us.diablo3.com/en/blog/23232022

System Design in Diablo IV (Part I)
David Kim 11/19/2019 184
JX6NP85V08Y51572717118509.jpg

I have learned over years of experience that the player community is an incredibly valuable resource to draw upon when designing and refining a game. By working together, we can achieve great things. The biggest challenge with parsing community feedback is that with so many opinions, the takeaways are rarely unanimous. Diablo IV is still very much in active development, but we plan to keep you in the loop as we continue to design and iterate so that you can be a part of what we’re building. I am so incredibly appreciative for all the feedback we’ve received so far and I’m eager to dive into some of the most talked about topics.



Itemization
We’re still working through all the feedback that came in regarding itemization and we’re actively discussing ways to add more depth and complexity to base items (including Rares), ways to add greater variety to item affixes to make those powers interesting and your choices meaningful, and ways to give players more freedom to choose how to customize items, so you can have fun exploring a wide range of effective gameplay possibilities instead of just looking up “the optimal build” online.

We’ll go into way more depth regarding itemization in a separate post soon, but we don’t want to leave you hanging until then—so we’re going to update you on a few other topics now.

These are some of the topics that we’re seeing come up most often, but if we’re missing something, please let us know and we will try to share our thoughts on those subjects as well in future updates.

Elective Mode in Diablo IV
There’s a misconception that Diablo IV will lock skills to specific slots because of the BlizzCon demo user interface. Like many other things in the demo, the UI is not final and we will support Elective Mode-style skill selection. Skill selection and assignment will always be completely open for all players.

Ancient Items
We completely agree with the community sentiment—Ancients as they are don’t really serve a clear purpose in Diablo IV. We should have done a better job of explaining the role of Ancient Items in Diablo IV. We had a preliminary direction to share, but you’ve brought up some great points, so we’re revisiting our designs with your feedback in mind. We hope to have more details to share in the follow-up itemization update.

Endgame Progression System
We haven’t decided whether the character leveling and experience system should be finite or infinite. We’ve been discussing the pros and cons of both and would love to hear your thoughts. There seems to be some concern around infinite being worse because it will eventually overshadow all the power granted by other sources. However, we can control how much power each system gives, whether it’s infinite or finite.

For example, say we’re talking about thousands of hours of gameplay . . . within those thousands of hours, we could choose to create a finite system that grants 1,000,000 times more power than an infinite system, making it practically impossible for the infinite system to catch up in power.

Also, power increase doesn’t need to be linear throughout the ranks—it can slow down as players reach higher levels. We believe the more important question is what experience feels best for players, and we can playtest various approaches to tuning to find the power curve that makes the most sense.

We have a couple reasons for having a different experience system in addition to a level cap. A level cap gives us the ability to grant players a sense of completion. But for players who want to go deeper into the game, a second experience system allows us to capture the fun of achieving those really difficult endgame goals and ranks. We can also introduce additional depth through this system, because players will be more experienced with the game at this point. Ultimately, our goal is to create a meaningful system that provides clear choices depending on your preferred playstyle in the endgame.

Sources of Power
The community has shared many good points on the topic of power sources and we’re reevaluating how much power comes from each source at any given time.

However, we want to clarify that in Diablo IV, power doesn’t come mostly from items. We want to have a good mix of power sources: characters naturally get stronger as they level up, skills have ranks that increase power, talents provide specific playstyle choices and additional character power, and of course items grant power and meaningful choices as well.

Something else to keep in mind is Legendary powers are just one part of an item’s power, and they won’t invalidate all other Affixes due to how powerful they are. For example, two to three normal Affixes are currently equivalent in power to a Legendary power on most items.

Keyed Dungeons
A big question that’s come up is exactly how Keyed Dungeons are different from Rifts. Keyed Dungeons introduce greater challenges as their tiers increase through Dungeon Affixes. The majority of dungeons are real places in the world, and players will know some information about them including what types of monsters, events, and layouts to expect. With this information, as well as the specific Dungeon Affixes being displayed on the key, players will be able to strategize their approach beforegoing into the dungeon. We believe this is the biggest change from Diablo III Rifts: the added planning and strategizing that takes place before you decide to run a Keyed Dungeon.


Please continue to share your thoughts—we want you to be involved in the Diablo IV design process. I personally believe in making the best decisions for the game based on the strongest design ideas, no matter where they come from. My biggest hope is for us to be able to constructively discuss and iterate on the topics that are most important to the community—so keep the feedback coming!

See you in Hell,

David Kim

Lead Systems Designer

The Diablo IV Team
 

Wunderbar

Arcane
Joined
Nov 15, 2015
Messages
8,809
think killing the exact same enemy over and over again to farm a particular rare drop is good gameplay?

What? Best weapons and armors in Dark Souls are not dropped by farming a ton, you get them after exploring a location, completing a quest or doing a particular task like the tail dragon.
Some of them are get by killing the same enemy, but these are not the best ones.

Killing the same enemy gain and again, is actually what you do in Diablo 2. There are no more ways to get the best items.
Which items are the best is irrelevant since there's no real difference between the best weapon in the game and a fucking club +15. People who want something cool, like the baldur side sword, or channeler trident, or black knight weapons, or the demon spear, etc. will need to farm their fucking brains out..
no one demands you to farm in Dark Souls. Balder swag sword or Channeler's trident aren't all that great or gamechanging, and as you've already said some club +15 would be better at killing shit.
Most of those rare items are surprise drops first, reward for farming second. Farming isn't an integral part of gameplay loop.
 
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Cryomancer

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Jul 11, 2019
Messages
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Location
Frostfell
This sounds pretty solid. Who is David Kim?

Amazing. See at 6:30



"However, we want to clarify that in Diablo IV, power doesn’t come mostly from items. We want to have a good mix of power sources: characters naturally get stronger as they level up, skills have ranks that increase power, talents provide specific playstyle choices and additional character power, and of course items grant power and meaningful choices as well."
 

Shadenuat

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2011
Messages
11,955
Location
Russia
Designer learns basic design with players. Grass continues to be green.

I am not sure how to feel about that developers have little idea how they want to design the game themselves. It is an obvious desire to please all parties. But that is simply not realistic.
 

Cryomancer

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
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Messages
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Frostfell
Designer learns basic design with players. Grass continues to be green.

I am not sure how to feel about that developers have little idea how they want to design the game themselves. It is an obvious desire to please all parties. But that is simply not realistic.

I an liking what he is doing. I mean, what is better?
A ) Jay Wilson Approach - D2 is amazing in everything, we will not gonna to reinvent the wheel. Procedes to replace char progression with a wow loadout system, changes the artstyle, gameplay, itemization, etc, etc, etc and he knows what is best. Also heavily criticize """problems""" that nobody else criticized about D2
B ) Starcraft pro player approach - Maybe i don't know much about ARPG's, lets study what players want.

If i an putted to develop a RTS, i would listen to RTS players to see what they want. And honestly, is impossible to please everyone. For eg, some people love D2 runewords and some hate(i)
 

Shadenuat

Arcane
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Messages
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Russia
I am p sure all love runewords. It's just that most don't like post 1.10 runewords. Cause those are op one-dimensional garbage.
 

Cryomancer

Arcane
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Frostfell
I am p sure all love runewords. It's just that most don't like post 1.10 runewords. Cause those are op one-dimensional garbage.

The problem of runewords is that you have a set goal of runewords(Even pre 1.10). On classic D2, you expect to find decent rolls on rares and it made the itemization once replaying the game kinda different...
 

Generic-Giant-Spider

Guest
I would've liked to have seen Diablo's item finding go like this:

A lot of unique items would be forged by a blacksmith or something in a town much like Griswold in D1. These would be your safe bet items, maybe not top of the line, certain rare items and their mods could beat them out, but still nevertheless great and are mostly static in their affixes.

Then some unique items that drop from monsters are very, very good, but because it comes from a demon from Hell there's a high chance it is corrupted and cursed. D1 flirted with this idea that some items had drawbacks, and I'd have loved to see that explored more. Wearing the Undead Crown slowly drains you of your life but allows you greater command of more high level undead, Duriel's Shell provides great fire resistance but at the cost of chilling/randomly immobilizing you, the Butcher's Cleaver provides massive physical damage but it cannot be used with a shield and is notoriously slow, etc.

Maybe you could find ways to lift the curse from these items by having a Holy figure bless it to purge it of its wickedness or something. Due to the strength of evil that is within it, this would require great willpower and would only be able to be done a limited amount of times per difficulty from that NPC. Any further would require a lucky encounter with a shrine.

Obviously this shit will never happen but I always thought it would have been cool and thematically fitting.
 

abija

Prophet
Joined
May 21, 2011
Messages
2,892
For example, two to three normal Affixes are currently equivalent in power to a Legendary power on most items.
And this why you don't put someone like David Kim on a Diablo game.

B ) Starcraft pro player approach - Maybe i don't know much about ARPG's, lets study what players want.

If i an putted to develop a RTS, i would listen to RTS players to see what they want. And honestly, is impossible to please everyone. For eg, some people love D2 runewords and some hate(i)

"We listen to players, we want to get back to the roots" is the kind of marketing crap they used to sell D3 to far more players than there are even remotely interested in the genre.

Also, maybe you should listen to your own advice and look into what starcraft players think about DK.
 

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