Diablo IV

[Immortal]

It's your choice whether you want to see the glass as half-empty or half-full.

Is it really a problem that you can group with your friends regardless of your levels or is this a solution to the problem? I grouped with a level 25 when I was level 13 and it was great. He wasn't overpowered, I wasn't underpowered. It was just like I was playing a brawler like Double Dragon at the arcades and someone else joined the game.

All the progression systems still function perfectly. You don't get any less XP because you're partied with a high level player. You both get your own drops appropriate for your level. You don't feel weaker the higher level you are until your items are getting old but the system to extract the legendary aspect from an item then attach it to a new one means you can keep your favourite item for quite a long time. It does all scale but it seems to be done really well.

Your argument is basically "This design lets me play with my friend.. there's no downsides so stop complaining!"

But there is a huge downside to this.

There's something cool about going somewhere you shouldn't .. overcoming or getting your ass handed to you.. bringing higher level friends or getting stronger yourself.
I have fond memories having my more powerful friends help me through difficult content or me helping my friends through content they shouldn't be in.

Rushing people through acts or power leveling them..

All of this is gone.
You've even lost all motivation to catch up to a friend or a group of friends who are ahead of you because you joined a week late, these motivations to achieve something are important.. or pausing your miller box loot hunt to go help a friend in a similar boat.

Now, everything is catered and scaled to your level at all times so you are never inconvenienced. It's so gay and boring.

Frankly - I completely and wholeheartedly reject the "I work 30 hours a day with 12 kids so I can't be inconvenienced at all in my video games! Cater to me!" type arguments - it's literally killing game enjoyment for everyone else.

 

[Jimeh]

I mean, fuck, this sites slogan is "doesn't scale to your level" and I get it. I prefer a goblin to be a goblin forever and to fight harder monsters rather than scaled monsters as the game progresses.

But, at the same time, It wouldn't break the lore to leave Candlekeep in Baldurs Gate and walk straight into a Red Dragon. Is it just luck that in RPGs you always run into enemies appropriate to your level? All BG1 and you never run into any level 20 monsters yet wander down to Amn and suddenly you'll never find a level 1?

Like, it's just a game. You just suspend disbelief. Ian McKellen plays a wizard in LOTR but do you think he goes home and shoots lightning bolts into his boyfriends asshole? Just accept the fantasy. Focus on the story and the sound and graphics and just enjoy the ride without picking it to bits. There's plenty of immersion if you allow it.

Power leveling is fun but you'd have to agree it's breaking the game. I beat BG with a solo character because, for some reason, you get 6 times more XP when you don't have to share it around. But if you think about the roleplay, how does that make any sense? Surely there would be more experience to be had from working as a team and establishing some party coordination and tactics?

I don't think there's really any downside. In games there's sort of no wrong answers, lots of ways to do the same things. PoE removing gold and using ID scrolls and stuff for money is perfectly valid but there's nothing inherently wrong with good old gold, either.

If you make act 1 of 5 exclusively for level 1 to 20 then at end game you end up with only 20% of the content. I think its better to keep it open and let people do any of the 140 dungeons in the whole game rather than just the 25 in act 5. It's easy to see the reasoning behind the decisions made for D4.

At the end of the day, you can play whatever you want. If you're still having fun with PoE or something then that's awesome and you should keep playing. But I've played everything and I'm bored of everything and can't wait to play more D4 because it's a new game with its own take on things and it all seems to work really well for the type of game it is.

 

[Storyfag]

Is it really a problem that you can group with your friends regardless of your levels or is this a solution to the problem? I grouped with a level 25 when I was level 13 and it was great. He wasn't overpowered, I wasn't underpowered.

Grouping with others regardless of level is not a problem. Being scaled down to not being overpowered, even slightly, compared to them is a fuckhueg problem, which, as noted before, SWTOR and GW2 managed to avoid.

Being scaled down so as to become worse than the low level friend is... a whole new, ahem, level of problem.

 

[ItsChon]

I don't mean to turn this into a PoE thread but I'm genuinely curious, and this does relate back to Diablo 4. I always assumed that after you played Poe for a few months, did one-two builds to max level/completion, you would understand enough about the games systems to start to plan a build, albeit with some help/assistance. Is this not the case? Does it really take years of playing to understand the systems well enough to make a viable build that can complete most if not all end game content?

 

[ItsChon]

Let me just put here a video:

This guy had some great fucking videos. He had less than a hundred thousand subscribers, but I've already seen multiple people on the Codex cite his videos. Interesting how people who are interested in incline get pushed towards the same mediums/interests.

 

[Hobo Elf]

But, at the same time, It wouldn't break the lore to leave Candlekeep in Baldurs Gate and walk straight into a Red Dragon. Is it just luck that in RPGs you always run into enemies appropriate to your level? All BG1 and you never run into any level 20 monsters yet wander down to Amn and suddenly you'll never find a level 1?

There are a few things going on here. First of all some kind of scaling is unavoidable, but it should make sense. In BG1 you see low level shitmonsters close to Candlekeep because we assume that the local authorities have done their job and cleaned the area from the most dangerous foes, otherwise it wouldn't be safe to live in. Most of the roads in BG1 are populated by low level bandits, which makes sense. You go deeper off into the wilderness and it gets more dangerous. Having some kind of internal logic makes it feel more immersive than the cabbage field next to grandmas hut having infinitely scaling goblins.

Also there is a big difference with D&D scaling encounters vs lazy PC games scaling monster stats. A goblin is still a goblin no matter what level it is inflated to. In D&D when you encounter higher level enemies this comes with new and different threats that you have to deal with, which means that you may need to adjust your tactics.

 

[Reinhardt]

But, at the same time, It wouldn't break the lore to leave Candlekeep in Baldurs Gate and walk straight into a Red Dragon. Is it just luck that in RPGs you always run into enemies appropriate to your level? All BG1 and you never run into any level 20 monsters yet wander down to Amn and suddenly you'll never find a level 1?

go play sword coast legends, nigger. perfect game for you. you will meet your lvl 1 red dragon there.

 

[Reinhardt]

Does it really take years of playing to understand the systems well enough to make a viable build that can complete most if not all end game content?

it does. especially if you can't figure how to navigate skill map even with search button.

 

[Angthoron]

I don't mean to turn this into a PoE thread but I'm genuinely curious, and this does relate back to Diablo 4. I always assumed that after you played Poe for a few months, did one-two builds to max level/completion, you would understand enough about the games systems to start to plan a build, albeit with some help/assistance. Is this not the case? Does it really take years of playing to understand the systems well enough to make a viable build that can complete most if not all end game content?

You can figure out a lot of things, sure. And if you're taking part in the community, if you look into theorycrafting and such, absolutely, you might figure it out within one-two leagues' time.

However, if you approach it as a regular old ARPG, you will definitely not. There's a ton of edge cases, old league mechanics, vague skill gem interplay, etc, etc, that will take you ages to figure out and master. I thought I had it figured out, and then, all of a sudden, I found out that one tiny difference ruined my entire build. Yes, I overlevelled one of my skill gems. Oops.

Or, say, does it feel natural to you that you must make absolutely certain that your HP has to be 1 below 50% for the build to work at all? Yes, there are gems that do this, but, the gem says "50% of your HP", and your dependencies are at 50% -1hp, will it work or not?

Yeah, good luck figuring all this on your own without either a massive amount of experimenting, or a massive amount of theorycraft participation/using 3rd party calc tools.

 

[Angthoron]

I mean, fuck, this sites slogan is "doesn't scale to your level" and I get it. I prefer a goblin to be a goblin forever and to fight harder monsters rather than scaled monsters as the game progresses.

But, at the same time, It wouldn't break the lore to leave Candlekeep in Baldurs Gate and walk straight into a Red Dragon. Is it just luck that in RPGs you always run into enemies appropriate to your level? All BG1 and you never run into any level 20 monsters yet wander down to Amn and suddenly you'll never find a level 1?

Like, it's just a game. You just suspend disbelief. Ian McKellen plays a wizard in LOTR but do you think he goes home and shoots lightning bolts into his boyfriends asshole? Just accept the fantasy. Focus on the story and the sound and graphics and just enjoy the ride without picking it to bits. There's plenty of immersion if you allow it.

Power leveling is fun but you'd have to agree it's breaking the game. I beat BG with a solo character because, for some reason, you get 6 times more XP when you don't have to share it around. But if you think about the roleplay, how does that make any sense? Surely there would be more experience to be had from working as a team and establishing some party coordination and tactics?

I don't think there's really any downside. In games there's sort of no wrong answers, lots of ways to do the same things. PoE removing gold and using ID scrolls and stuff for money is perfectly valid but there's nothing inherently wrong with good old gold, either.

If you make act 1 of 5 exclusively for level 1 to 20 then at end game you end up with only 20% of the content. I think its better to keep it open and let people do any of the 140 dungeons in the whole game rather than just the 25 in act 5. It's easy to see the reasoning behind the decisions made for D4.

At the end of the day, you can play whatever you want. If you're still having fun with PoE or something then that's awesome and you should keep playing. But I've played everything and I'm bored of everything and can't wait to play more D4 because it's a new game with its own take on things and it all seems to work really well for the type of game it is.

Running into a red dragon outside of Candlekeep isn't level scaling.

Level scaling is running into a red dragon at L1 and beating it up to death in one round with starting gear. And then doing the exact same thing with the exact same result while having equipped +1 and +2 gear and coming back just before you go for the endgame.

Level scaling is when you kill that same dragon and he drops a rat's ass and a sword at L1, and then dropping 10 rat's asses and a sword +1 at L10.

This is level scaling. "Does not scale to your level" comes from the times of Oblivion, where you'd have the same bandit wear either trash or daedric gear, all depending on your level. When you could beat the game at L1 without resting, and have an easier time doing so.

Level scaling creates boring, dead worlds. Sure, you are now able to see all of it because everything is "just the right level of challenge" to you, but my god, why would you? It's boring. Why would you explore that cave over there when you know it'll just give you "level appropriate reward" generated by an RNG machine? Do you explore every UbiSoft game to a 100% completion? Check every box, every nook and cranny?

This is the quintessential UbiSoft Game Design. You can remove the levels, what's even the fucking point of having them?

 

[Jimeh]

Storyfag,
You don't actually get scaled down. It's weird. It's sort of like the same monster has a different level for each player.

ItsChon,
I don't think so. The skill tree is huge but when you get a point to spend you start off with just 2 options and they're both good and branching off from your class starting point which tends to be all stuff you'd want. You shouldn't have any trouble beating the 10 acts of the game but endgame is sort of broken since it starts to rely on trading items via a 3rd party site instead of actually finding your own stuff. If you don't trade you'll probably get stuck around level 90 endgame.

Hobo Elf,
Well, it seems sort of hard to believe that the locals killed the hard stuff and forgot the easy stuff, but I'm happy to suspend disbelief here.

As far as tactics goes, there doesn't tend to be much going on in BG besides scaling HP and weapon enchantments, on the fighter side. Casters will start to use some AOE or CC but the tactic is pretty much "focus on the casters first".

You'll find monsters in D4 with various perks, resists, special moves, etc. It's not really a tactics game but you'll want to improve your level and AC and resists and stuff, like in most RPGs.

Reinhardt,
Played it. Diablo4 is better.

 

[whocares]

I will not eat the bugs. I will not live in a pod. I will not use 2FA.

 

[Grunker]

or do like a true man and play hardcore so lack of endgame grind is a naturally occurring consequence of your old man hands

This is the quintessential UbiSoft Game Design. You can remove the levels, what's even the fucking point of having them?

It actually looks to be quite a bit worse in D4 currently. It currently looks like - though we can't know it - that you get progressively weaker as you level up and monsters begin to scale. At least many reports from the beta have been that they feel less powerful at level 25 than level 10.

 

[Reinhardt]

Hobo Elf,
Well, it seems sort of hard to believe that the locals killed the hard stuff and forgot the easy stuff, but I'm happy to suspend disbelief here.

easy stuff breeds faster. how many petty thieves and how many serial killers in the world? no one will mobilize an army just to take care of few gobbos, but dragon is different story.
also don't forget - bg 1 starts in the region on the werge of war, lone bear is not main focus of local authorities.

 

[Jimeh]

Angthoron,

You can remove the levels, what's even the fucking point of having them?

This could be the ultimate realization for any RPG player.

The enemy has 10 life and you deal 5 damage a hit. Go up a level, enemy has 20 life but you deal 8 damage. Oh, wow, the difficulty is increasing!

What's the point, indeed.

I mean, doesn't the original DOOM have enough progression? You find new weapons, you fight harder monsters. It even translates pretty well into a roguelike.

Look at the xcom games. They originally had confusing damage like 34-79 damage a hit and 342 life, the new ones are like "fuck it, who can understand the maths behind that? You start with 3 life and do 1 damage!!"

I think the fun of RPG game progression IS included in Diablo4. You get loot, you level up and make a skill build. You kill the boss and win the game and get a new "paragon" board of perks, new tier of items drops and you can go back and farm any dungeon you like with extra difficulty mods you apply with items.

It's like, what's really missing? You don't really need levels, just progression. It's got both, anyway!

Edit: There's an interesting game called Sil-Q which is based on Angband and actually does away with level-ups and you directly spend your XP on skills and abilities, instead. Your HP only goes up if your CON does. It's a very different way of doing things but it works really well. You don't even need to kill anything because you get just as much XP for discovering a monster for the first time as you do from killing it. Then you keep getting less XP for seeing or killing until they're worthless.

 

[Angthoron]

I don't mean to turn this into a PoE thread but I'm genuinely curious, and this does relate back to Diablo 4. I always assumed that after you played Poe for a few months, did one-two builds to max level/completion, you would understand enough about the games systems to start to plan a build, albeit with some help/assistance. Is this not the case? Does it really take years of playing to understand the systems well enough to make a viable build that can complete most if not all end game content?

The above statement is your brain when its devoid of zoom-zoom autism.

Everyone who tries to sell you PoE as some unapproachable arcane mystery that requires a PHD to not shit your pants the moment you step outside the first village is either a) an idiot who looked at a jpg of the skill tree once, got scared, and now parrots what the cool kids are saying about muh complexity, or b) a zoomer (as in playstyle not generation, but I would hazard a guess there's a lot of overlap) who only sees grinding out the idiotically unrealistic endgame challenges each league as the only way of playing.

Here's the thing - not reading up anything, just jumping into the game and randomly distributing points according to what seems fun will carry you through the campaign just fine. And contrary to another lie the zoom autists like to push, it's a fine campaign, one of the best in the diablo-like genre.

Then, armed with your basic understanding and some viable net build, you should be able to reach the endgame, defeat most of the endgame bosses that don't require any ridiculous hoop jumping (uber elder can fuck right off), and feel good about yourself for essentially beating the league. And not do it literal hundreds of times like the zoomers do to get the cookie for completing the "endgame grind."

And after that, maybe a couple instances of that, you should know enough about the game to just get the feeling to play a certain kind of build and be able to figure out how to make it work. With the caveat that you should still look up some builds afterwards for ideas about uniques and various obscure interactions that probably exist and can take your idea to the next level.

Endgame bosses beat with self-made first-time char? Do you mean Kitava, or do you mean Elder, Shaper, ubers, etc?

You can definitely beat Kitava, but the others, yeah, no, not really. And it's not even because they're so challenging, more because of the mechanics of reaching them. Grind pre-reqs, get 9 portals, wipe on mechanics you didn't expect 9 times while barely making a dent, go back to grinding? Nah, thanks.

 

[Storyfag]

Storyfag,
You don't actually get scaled down. It's weird. It's sort of like the same monster has a different level for each player.

Irrelevant. The end result is as if you were scaled down.

 

[whocares]

I will not eat the bugs. I will not live in a pod. I will not use 2FA.

 

[Reinhardt]

Storyfag,
You don't actually get scaled down. It's weird. It's sort of like the same monster has a different level for each player.

Irrelevant. The end result is as if you were scaled down.

fren: hey, can you help me with this boss? you are higher level than me.
you: sure!
fren: FAG, Y U SO WEAK!!! WE BOTH DIED BECAUSE OF YOU!

 

[Angthoron]

Angthoron,

You can remove the levels, what's even the fucking point of having them?

This could be the ultimate realization for any RPG player.

The enemy has 10 life and you deal 5 damage a hit. Go up a level, enemy has 20 life but you deal 8 damage. Oh, wow, the difficulty is increasing!

What's the point, indeed.

I mean, doesn't the original DOOM have enough progression? You find new weapons, you fight harder monsters. It even translates pretty well into a roguelike.

Look at the xcom games. They originally had confusing damage like 34-79 damage a hit and 342 life, the new ones are like "fuck it, who can understand the maths behind that? You start with 3 life and do 1 damage!!"

I think the fun of RPG game progression IS included in Diablo4. You get loot, you level up and make a skill build. You kill the boss and win the game and get a new "paragon" board of perks, new tier of items drops and you can go back and farm any dungeon you like with extra difficulty mods you apply with items.

It's like, what's really missing? You don't really need levels, just progression. It's got both, anyway!

That's why genre distinction exists. Someone wants Doom, someone wants BG, someone wants Bloodborne. All three are distinct, different experiences. Trying to homogenize them, or trying to make one too much like the other, to cater to a wider audience, only ends up ruining what made the whole thing special to begin with.

I mean, what if we went the opposite way? Let's make every Souls-like to have turn-based combat from nu-Xcom instead. Wouldn't that be swell? So much challenge, so much variety, so many encounters!

Except no, that would be ridiculous.

The problem with modern ARPG design is that it's all about the endgame, not the road to max level. That's where the zoom-zoom mentality comes in in full force. When you make a second character in D3, PoE, D4, whatever, will you still be carefully exploring the world? Or will you cut as many corners on the way to the endgame? I don't want to waste my time on the part of the game that's irrelevant to my overall experience, if the overall experience is the endgame.

Also, PoE's campaign gets decent around Sarn. Pre-Sarn, holy crap, I can't believe they've not redone the whole early game since "early access"

 

[Storyfag]

Angthoron,

You can remove the levels, what's even the fucking point of having them?

This could be the ultimate realization for any RPG player.

The enemy has 10 life and you deal 5 damage a hit. Go up a level, enemy has 20 life but you deal 8 damage. Oh, wow, the difficulty is increasing!

What's the point, indeed.

I mean, doesn't the original DOOM have enough progression? You find new weapons, you fight harder monsters. It even translates pretty well into a roguelike.

Look at the xcom games. They originally had confusing damage like 34-79 damage a hit and 342 life, the new ones are like "fuck it, who can understand the maths behind that? You start with 3 life and do 1 damage!!"

I think the fun of RPG game progression IS included in Diablo4. You get loot, you level up and make a skill build. You kill the boss and win the game and get a new "paragon" board of perks, new tier of items drops and you can go back and farm any dungeon you like with extra difficulty mods you apply with items.

It's like, what's really missing? You don't really need levels, just progression. It's got both, anyway!

Edit: There's an interesting game called Sil-Q which is based on Angband and actually does away with level-ups and you directly spend your XP on skills and abilities, instead. Your HP only goes up if your CON does. It's a very different way of doing things but it works really well. You don't even need to kill anything because you get just as much XP for discovering a monster for the first time as you do from killing it. Then you keep getting less XP for seeing or killing until they're worthless.

I could go through all these "thoughts" and tear you a new one for each. But I am pressed for time. I will just comment that you are full of shit and/or retarded.

Yes, not every RPG needs levels, or hp and damage increasing with levels. No, D4 is not doing it properly. SWTOR and GW2 did. Sort of, but still imperfectly. And I don't think the Diablo franchise should be the one going that way.

 

[Reinhardt]

Also, PoE's campaign gets decent around Sarn. Pre-Sarn, holy crap, I can't believe they've not redone the whole early game since "early access"

fuck off, nigger. twilight strand still best area in the game!

 

[Tyrr]

Level scaling is a mechanic to make progression of the player's character meaningless. To remove all progress made. You level up, get more damage, HP, etc. and then the scaling takes all that away at the same time.
It's very stupid if you think about it. If you don't want the characters in your game get stonger, just don't add player progression in the first place.

 

[Latelistener]

Bought Wolcen for like $2-3, which is suppose to be a shit tier ARPG and was pleasantly surprised.

After that watched some D4 gameplay from the beta and still can't believe people will be buying it for $70-100. Feels and looks like an indie game from Steam.

Is the story decent?

Depends on what you expect, but I haven't got very far. Dialogues are sometimes cringeworthy, but overall premise and lore are interesting although not new. Feels like it was heavily inspired by Warhammer.

Spoiler

 

[Daedalos]

Scaling will only feel abit weird leveling... endgame scaling has always been there with rifts, maps etc.

Scaling is a non-issue really, since leveling aint fucking hard anyway, but it will present a decent challenge now instead of being a total pushover.

also old areas will stay relevant