Diablo IV

[covr]

That Chinese dude confirmed that enemies will scale to your level in the "open areas" and hinted that you'll only be able to bump into higher level enemies during some endgame shit.

I hate that level scalling shit. No buy from me and I love H&S games

 

[Old Hans]

That Chinese dude confirmed that enemies will scale to your level in the "open areas"

never trust the word of a china man.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

That Chinese dude confirmed that enemies will scale to your level in the "open areas"

never trust the word of a china man.

Indeed.. 14:30. Someone better warn skeletor.

 

[Loog]

That game still doesn't click for me, but I do commend Blizzard for releasing an open Beta. All doubts will be cleared in a month.

That's the thing. People will probably enjoy the first 25 levels during the beta. Art and music is nice, combat feels ok, they'll drop their first legendary (maybe one coming from D2) and it'll feel ok.
Pretty sure YouTube "reviewers" and game "journalists" will love this.

The shit comes later when you reach mid game and the game become incredibly boring + you realize how empty it is.

Having played the end game beta, I'm now sure I won't play the game at release.

 

[Loog]

And also, a quick overview of the itemization I already posted elsewhere. Not sure if it was already discussed here, CBA to check:

Now, regarding how the itemization works.

• You have 3 tier of items: normal, Sacred and Ancestral
  • This is akin to diablo 2 where you have 3 tier of bases: normal, exceptional, elite
  • Sacred starts dropping on mobs lvl 50+ (world tier 3)
  • Ancestral starts dropping on mobs lvl 70+ (world tier 5 - torment)
  • High level mobs (70+) can still loot normal / sacred items
• You have the classic items qualities: white (normal), Magic (blue - 2 affixes), Rare (yellow - up to 4 affixes), Legendary (orange), Unique (Gold-ish)

• The range of each affixe only depends on the item tier. For example
  • Overpower Damage on a normal item will roll between 27 and 48%
  • Overpover Damage on a Ancestral item will roll between 33 and 78%
• This means that:
  • item quality (blue / yellow / etc.) does not affect the range of the affixe
  • a normal 'tier' item may have better roll than lvl 70+ ancestral item
  • the required level to equip an item has no effect on the affixes ranges

• While I don't have the range for the base attribute of items (weapon damage, armor, resistance on jewelry) it seems very high. An Ancestral weapon could deal 1K6 or 2K4 "base" dps.
  • The required level to equip a weapon has no correlation with the base damage.
    • A lvl 60 sacred weapon could deal more base damage than a lvl 85 one.
• A sacred weapon with good roll could have higher base damage than a badly rolled ancestral weapon

• Unique items are just items with a predetermined set of affixes (always the same 4 - roll are random withing the range of the item tier)
  • They do however have a special and unique power
  • Unique items can have affixes that wouldn't normally roll on this item slot (like attack speed on helmet)

• You can extract a legendary power of a legendary item and imprint it on an other item (rare or legendary).
  • Both items have to be of the same tier (you can't extract a power from a sacred item to imprint it on an ancestral item)
  • It does not work on uniques
  • You can imprint it on another item slot (for example, offensive power can be imprinted on weapons, off hands, rings, amulets, gloves but not on boots, helmets, shields, etc.)
  • Most of the legendary powers have a range (deal [30-50]% more damage on CC enemies, etc.). That value is saved during the extraction / imprint process.
  • Once you imprint a power on a item you can't re-extract it (but you should be able to override it)

Now, something I noticed. It seems blizzard implemented some affixes categories (quite similar to D3 with Main and Secondary affixe list but in D4 there's no tooltip or information explaining this at the moment). For example, the 2 handed weapons for my classes have those possible affixes:

• category 1
  • +X% Core Skill Damage
  • +X% Critical Strike Damage
  • +X% Vulnerable Damage
• Category 2
  • Up to X% Chance to Execute Injured Non-Elites
  • +X% Damage Over Time
  • +X% Overpower Damage

Any rare or legendary weapon will always roll 1 or 2 affixes from category 1 and 2 to 3 affixes from category 2. I tried to get a weapon with Core Skill Damage / Critical Strike Damage / Vulnerable Damage. It does not seems to be possible.

It seems to be working the same way with all items.

 

[Loog]

Personal though: Main concerns are the lack of content ( / season duration) and horrible itemization. By itemization I mostly mean the process you go through to aquire gear. I'm also not sure about the unique items design since I was dropping the same 6-7 uniques over and over again so one have to assume that most items were not in the beta.

Also, in D4, XP is very very fast once you know how to farm efficiently. I reached level 100 in a couple weeks by playing very casually (aka not every day). Once you're level 100 you don't have much to do. Refarm the same legendaries you already dropped 20 times but this time at lvl 100. Then what?

As it is now, seasons are going to last 2 weeks. Maybe less once we figured how to min max this.

And reducing XP to artificially extend the leveling process seems dumb.

But the worst part is the freaking gear. The range of the affixes is so insane, it doesn't make any sense. I was using a lvl 60 unique weapons and drop the same one but lvl 85... for some reason it did less damage.

Also, you will drop so many legendaries at some point that you won't even bother picking them up since they'll go directly in your chest once you leave the zone. Then you'll have to spend 5 min to sort through all the trash items.

And ideally you should also also look at all yellows to find a potential upgrades as they can act as base for legendaries power. But without a loot filter that means you'll have to look at 10-15 items after each event and go through all of them. Same thing in dungeon (5 min per run maybe?) where you'll loot more rares then you have space in your inventory forcing to make a pause mid dungeon to go through all your loot, hope for an upgrade and trash the rest.

It's an horribly boring process.

It's also worth mentioning that you'll keep dropping items that are 40 level under your character level and, unlike in D2, you won't have any use for those: just trash taking inventory space that you'll have to sort through.

On the positive side combat feels great but it's really imbalance. It was beta so hopefully it'll be tweak but I can't help to wonder what the devs were smoking when design some utterly worthless abilities while allowing others to 2 shots a world boss (hope you like big numbers and 120M crit....)

 

[Reinhardt]

hope you like big numbers and 120M crit

glad to see it's just like diablo 1

 

[Late Bloomer]

 

[Grunker]

butchered versions of legendary tracks

 

[Dadd]

 

[RPK]

butchered versions of legendary tracks

no kidding. 5 seconds of the Tristram theme was more than enough.

 

[Morblot]

But the worst part is the freaking gear...

So it's like Diablo 3 after they "fixed" it.

 

[Wilian]

butchered versions of legendary tracks

Isn't that the purpose of lofi tracks?

 

[Perkel]

progression system explained:

 

[Dadd]

Good to see Blizzard paying homage to the Codex

The inventory design is awful. The character model, which can be seen in the middle of the screen, wastes so much inventory space. Who designed this shit?

 

[Morblot]

Who designed this shit?

Some woman probably. Anyone but a disgusting white male.

 

[Perkel]

Quick summary of progression system:

1. Stat system:
- 5 stats
- Each stat does something for class

2. Skill tree :
- +1 point per level,
- each skill has associated branches that change how skill work
- up to level 50
- once you hit level 50 no more points
- at level 50 around 20-30% of tree is filled
- you can fill whole tree with points

3. Paragon system:
- it's not D3 paragon system
- above level 50 you get 4 points per level up to 100
- you start on unified board and choose path.
- board has small/medium/huge points and legendary points that kind of make it more like POE skill tree
- if you reach end of board you can move to another board which you can rotate.
- each board has 1 legendary skill

4. Codex of Power.
- powers that can be added to weapon/armor
- each dungeon has a power to gain
- only one such power can be added to item
- general and class specific powers

5. Items powers
- each legendary comes with unique power much like codex of power
- that legendary power can be extracted from item and put into other item
- transfered powers always have lowest roll possible to make sure unique items always are better.
- there are some powerful legendary items powers that can't be extracted

6. Items tiers
- normal<magic<rare<legendary<mythic
- sets aren't the best like in D3
- mythics are super rare to find and are upgrade over base version of legendary
- magic items much like in D2 can have the best rolls possible for singular prefixes/affixes
- rares have the most prefixes/affixes but can't get best rolls possible.

7. Renown.
- system that gives shared XP/Gold and skill points
- it's shared between every character making new character easier to start from higher skill level
- it's earned by conquering sanctuary world objectives like dungeons, marking teleports etc.

8. Respec.
- it is possible to respec
- it cost gold
- "at some point it will be cheaper to reroll new character than to respec"

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

Overall it is pretty interesting system imho. It's multitiered system that seems to make sure that you can't specialize enough into one thing to overpower everything else in progression system (aka POE problem of ultra specialization).

Due to it's many layers finding upgrade seems to be much more interesting than just waiting for bar to fill or RNG god to grace you with it's splendor:

- much like in D3 every unique item is useful as you can extract it's power
- if you can't find upgrade in item or level slowly builds up you can do specific dungeon for specific power reward
- before 50 and above 50 divide mean that below 50 characters will be more general while above 50 comes specialization.
- you can still specialize below 50 character with codex of power and unique powers but that requires first to collect specific items and do specific dungeons.

 

[Loog]

progression system explained:

Kind of shitty video with old info (some of it being inaccurate).

Quick summary of progression system:

A few corrections:

2. skill tree

It's a cute tree designed to give you the illusion of choice when in fact you'll probably max out (5 points max per active skill, usually less for passive down to 1) the 6 skills on your bar (more or less, one point in generator is usually enough but you get my point) + relative passives.

In the end it's just D3 system with a new coat of paint (pick 6 skills + skill upgrades/ runes + passives).

Also worth noting that most of the builds available during beta were also similar to D3 build in the fact that you use one damaging skill and 5 "support skills".

For example, I reached max level and did some NM dungeon 120+. I had

* A generator that I didn't need / use at all
* a passive that was reducing damage received (cyclone armor)
* Hurricane (8 or 9 sec duration, 15 sec CD iirc) that was doing absolutely no damage (decent to proc stuff though)
* Two useless wolves (passive) doing no damage and getting one shot because there's nothing else worth using
* The wine pet (passive) to poison enemies which was useless after I got the proc to poison on hit via paragon. And since there's nothing else worth using I kept it

So that the 5 supports skills.

And then 100% of my damage came from tornado.

tldr: shitty talent tree. It's a D3 reskin.

4. Codex of power

That's not really progression but more of a way to gear your rerolls while leveling. The power you got there are just a subset of the legendary power you can drop (cf my previous post). For example, if you got a legendary power that give between 25% and 50% bonus Crit damage you will have to way to obtain it:
- extract it from a dropped legendary item
- obtain it from the codex of power after clearing the proper dungeon

BUT, the codex of power version will always roll the minimum value (so 25% in our example) which make it quite useless for a proper build.

All codex powers can also be dropped on a legendary items. The opposite is not true.

5. Items power

The guy don't know what he's talking about.

"that legendary power can be extracted from item and put into other item" ONLY if it's the same item tier and proper items slots (again, cf my previous post)

"transfered powers always have lowest roll possible to make sure unique items always are better" that's just false. You keep the same value. However codex power always have the lowest roll.

"there are some powerful legendary items powers that can't be extracted" again, that's not true. Unique items powers however can't be extracted.

6. Items tiers

- sets aren't the best like in D3 => there's not set item in D4
- mythics are super rare to find and are upgrade over base version of legendary => they're rare when you're lvl 30 maybe...At max level that approximately half your drop.
- magic items much like in D2 can have the best rolls possible for singular prefixes/affixes => again, that's false
- rares have the most prefixes/affixes but can't get best rolls possible. => false. Again.

8. Respec.
"at some point it will be cheaper to reroll new character than to respec" => that wasn't the case in beta. A full respec was worth ... maybe an hour of farming

Another shitty content creator making shitty videos ...

 

[Loog]

Overall it is pretty interesting system imho. It's multitiered system that seems to make sure that you can't specialize enough into one thing to overpower everything else in progression system (aka POE problem of ultra specialization).

Well yes and no. Once you pick the 6 skills you want to use you max them + related passive skills. There's not really any choice to make here. And if you change your mind you can respec for a little bit of gold.

Usually that means 1-2 damaging skills, 4-5 support skills.

Then you pick the right gear (legendary powers / uniques items) to improve those skills (the damaging ones) + survivability.

And then paragon add more of the same. More resources, more defense, more damage. That's it. And depending if the skills you're using there's a very clear path to take, not many choice unless you're going for a RP build.

Example of paragon rare or legendary nodes I used:
- more damage to poison enemies
- chance to poison enemies on hit

What does this change gameplay wise? Nothing.

 

[racofer]

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/g...access-by-buying-a-kfc-sandwich/1100-6512194/

 

[JBro]

You can cancel your KFC order for a free beta code.

 

[Late Bloomer]

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/g...access-by-buying-a-kfc-sandwich/1100-6512194/

Hmmm maybe they are courting the black audience. I thought they were just virtue signaling. Guess not.

 

[LizardWizard]

 

[taxalot]

Don't you guys eat food ?

 

[d1r]

Don't you guys eat food ?

I don't think that you can call American "food" food.