Diablo IV

[Jimeh]

I haven't researched it as much as I could have, but of things I have seen that turned me off:

MMO-lite gameplay (this is present almost everywhere, but main ones are the shared world, "world bossses" whose stats are completely out of par with the players and not meant to be tackled by a single person, etc)

You can play solo, you can play multiplayer. That's Diablo? People have soloed the world bosses. So, you see people in town. That makes it easier to find people to play with. Ignore them, if you want. "Oh, it breaks immersion to see people with silly names in the world." Look, if you can imagine that you're a 7 foot tall barbarian instead of a 5 foot manlet then you can imagine these names are of an exotic tongue, native to the land.

Dumbed down stats, "single offense stat, make big number get bigger" design. This is very mobile-esque, and it's funny to look back at D3 and see people calling that dumbed down, when it was more complicated than here.

A single offense stat?! OMG that's so mobile. It's not like fighters have been using STR for damage rolls since forever. There's actually a fair amount of depth to the damage calculations but the "bad" thing is that it's mostly all useful. The exception that comes to mind is "damage to close" and "damage to distant" since you might not do one of those but mostly everything you get on an item is useful enough you can pretty much not even bother to read them while leveling. Refinement probably becomes more important at end-game but uniques tend to have stats that support the legendary aspect so I guess you could complain that item upgrades are always stuff you want and that makes you mad, for some reason.

The rune system/build specs are largely gone. Talent trees are fun and all, but if you are destroying a large amount of build customization to get there... well...

They're adding MORE customization. There are 2 "runes" to pick for each active skill. More could easily be added. The paragon board absolutely shits on D3 paragon system.

They bragged about putting game-defining abilities on legendaries. This honestly isn't good design. It sounds so at first if you think they are adding those game-changing abilities on TOP of the baseline game experience, but what they seem to have done instead is move core perks that were part of the rune system onto legendaries, so you aren't even properly playing your class until you get said legendaries. This is huge decline.

Again, this is just so Diablo. There have been legendary aspects on uniques since forever. Especially in D3 where you could extract them to wear as an item. Plus, D3 ended up being entirely based around set bonuses. There was no builds beyond taking the skills your set item added 10000% damage to.

Did you have a better design in mind you could share?

 

[Reinhardt]

 

[KIss My Ass]

Badur's Gate nerds are fuming that Diablo has completely overshadowed their beloved games. Diablo 4 is an RPG and it will be wonderful. Haters gonna hate.

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

Badur's Gate nerds are fuming that Diablo has completely overshadowed their beloved games. Diablo 4 is an RPG and it will be wonderful. Haters gonna hate.

They have been seething since people started telling them (correctly) that Baldurs Gate isn't very good

 

[Reinhardt]

diablo 4 is shit. how exactly bg3 being shit too can fix it?

 

[abija]

Dumbed down stats, "single offense stat, make big number get bigger" design. This is very mobile-esque, and it's funny to look back at D3 and see people calling that dumbed down, when it was more complicated than here.

The rune system/build specs are largely gone. Talent trees are fun and all, but if you are destroying a large amount of build customization to get there... well...

Not sure where you got the single offense stat, make big number get bigger but everything regarding core/combat/utility stats is more complex than in D3 (https://maxroll.gg/d4/getting-started/stats-for-beginners).

The talent tree (from what I saw in public betas, not including the paragons) adds both complexity and customization over D3. My issue is the skill variety. While it's cool that you can get X interesting different combinations by pairing a skill with other various nodes in the tree I don't give a shit if I don't like that skill. Double (triple) that issue for the hybrids (rogue/druid).

They bragged about putting game-defining abilities on legendaries. This honestly isn't good design. It sounds so at first if you think they are adding those game-changing abilities on TOP of the baseline game experience, but what they seem to have done instead is move core perks that were part of the rune system onto legendaries, so you aren't even properly playing your class until you get said legendaries. This is huge decline.

Since we are comparing with D3, most of the runes needed their legendaries. A lot of the legendary powers in D4 have deterministic ways to get them and overall seems there's way more to mix and match and get some interesting combination.

Not sure if the game is going to be better than D3, but sure looks like "add complexity over D3 by any means necesary" was on the todo list.

 

[whydoibother]

Dumbed down stats, "single offense stat, make big number get bigger" design.

From what I saw, you have +damage from primary stat, + damage from damage type (fire, lightning, etc), + damage vs status (burning, stunned, etc), + damage vs vulnerable (probably KING stat), etc.
So you can build a character to do massive damage against poisoned enemies, for example. Its not just single offense stat. Though it does seem like it will be a damage race again, with the end result being either you one shot enemies, or they one shot you.

 

[Perkel]

Yeah seriously the best part about playing new games is exploring what it offers. The moment you search for build you lose that fun and you are playing effectively someone else game not yours.

This goes double for ARPG like diablo.

I'd bet money that almost everyone who says this is the first to copy popular ARPG builds online, rage at an unorthodox item build/hero position in Dota, netdeck in card games and mooch off combo videos in the latest FG

It's true, nonetheless.

It took years for me to figure it out. Because default is what you say shitload of idiots copying shit and reading on gamefaqs destroying their own fun. The second worst modern thing about gaming are achievements, the idea is good but it ended up as horrible participation awards.

Dumbed down stats, "single offense stat, make big number get bigger" design. This is very mobile-esque, and it's funny to look back at D3 and see people calling that dumbed down, when it was more complicated than here.

"Attack" used to be actual meaningful number. They changed it. Now each weapon have damage and speed and "attack" you see is just different form of DPS calculation that has no bearing on gameplay other than to inform you how much more or less damage your character does after all additional bonuses/maluses.

MMO-lite gameplay (this is present almost everywhere, but main ones are the shared world, "world bossses" whose stats are completely out of par with the players and not meant to be tackled by a single person, etc)

Never understood this argument toward Diablo. I mean D2 was literally posterboy for multiplayer ARPG and overall multi for ARPGs is important as seen by pretty much every arpg outthere.

Leaving aside validity of feature itself as someone that likes to play alone from my own testing it doesn't really change anything. Meat of the game is in dungeons, map is just a way to travel to those dungeons. Moreover it is not like whole map is multi, just zones of it are. None of those are required to be completed from my experience.

As for interaction with it itself from my own experience they are fine. Kind of like breathers from constant grinding while you traveling to next dungeon. They are often varied and don't really provide much loot. Tried that world boss fight but imho it was boring or at least that one was boring and just skipped it.

 

[Modron]

Yeah achievements should just be story related mainline stuff, the second you start peppering your games with lots of missable ones you're encouraging people to use guides. It's refreshing when games don't have them, especially linear ones. Also they kind of killed off in game unlockables, extras, fun cheat code, alternative mode shit, et cetera. Collect 83 random gizmos to get a popup with small jpeg in it, congratulations.

Even worse than that is publishers do use them to justify reducing content in future games because their data shows only 1% of players did this or 3% of players did that.

 

[Perkel]

Yeah like there is an era before achievements filled with games that provided you extra fun stuff for doing things in game (best example Tony Hawk games) and era after it with no fun but shitty jpegs.

 

[zerotol]

Never understood this argument toward Diablo. I mean D2 was literally posterboy for multiplayer ARPG and overall multi for ARPGs is important as seen by pretty much every arpg outthere.

Leaving aside validity of feature itself as someone that likes to play alone from my own testing it doesn't really change anything. Meat of the game is in dungeons, map is just a way to travel to those dungeons. Moreover it is not like whole map is multi, just zones of it are. None of those are required to be completed from my experience.

As for interaction with it itself from my own experience they are fine. Kind of like breathers from constant grinding while you traveling to next dungeon. They are often varied and don't really provide much loot. Tried that world boss fight but imho it was boring or at least that one was boring and just skipped it.

You could perfectly play D2 as solo self found in single player which i did

 

[zerotol]

The biggest problem for me is how generic mmorpg (barf) this looks.

diablo 2 resurrected is going to be superior on every front

 

[Perkel]

Never understood this argument toward Diablo. I mean D2 was literally posterboy for multiplayer ARPG and overall multi for ARPGs is important as seen by pretty much every arpg outthere.

Leaving aside validity of feature itself as someone that likes to play alone from my own testing it doesn't really change anything. Meat of the game is in dungeons, map is just a way to travel to those dungeons. Moreover it is not like whole map is multi, just zones of it are. None of those are required to be completed from my experience.

As for interaction with it itself from my own experience they are fine. Kind of like breathers from constant grinding while you traveling to next dungeon. They are often varied and don't really provide much loot. Tried that world boss fight but imho it was boring or at least that one was boring and just skipped it.

You could perfectly play D2 as solo self found in single player which i did

I mean you could and I mostly did but D2 legacy is battlenet, trading, pvp, coop and so on. It's literally the game that started online stuff for arpgs.

 

[Mortmal]

I could have sworn they said they were not allowing for that by pumping up enemy armor values to keep damage numbers low.

Doesn’t matter. At $70 + battle pass this is a wait for a deep sale game for me. My prediction is that players will tear into this game regarding high level balance across specs and classes. You aren’t going to play how you want, in the end.

Do they even put their games on sale ever ?

 

[lycanwarrior]

Another Blizzard employee bites the dust.

 

[Artyoan]

I could have sworn they said they were not allowing for that by pumping up enemy armor values to keep damage numbers low.

Doesn’t matter. At $70 + battle pass this is a wait for a deep sale game for me. My prediction is that players will tear into this game regarding high level balance across specs and classes. You aren’t going to play how you want, in the end.

Do they even put their games on sale ever ?

I bought D2:R for $13 recently on sale. Only knew it was on sale from someone here mentioning it.

 

[lycanwarrior]

Blizzard: It's not like Diablo Immortal. Pinky swear!

 

[Fedora Master]

Don't you guys have money??

 

[Kem0sabe]

30$ for a cosmetic armor set... And the horse armor price is even more hilarious. Blizzard can't help themselves but try to milk this from day 1, they know they will break 10 million sales in less than a month.

 

[luj1]

diablo 2 resurrected is going to be superior on every front

in recent patches it was heavily casualised. you can break immunities easily and other shit

not to mention several iffy animations inferior to the original

real old school gamers play neither d4 nor d2r, they play modded d2

 

[Great Deceiver]

30$ for a cosmetic armor set... And the horse armor price is even more hilarious. Blizzard can't help themselves but try to milk this from day 1, they know they will break 10 million sales in less than a month.

Earlier today the game had 1 million concurrent viewers on Twitch. Decline enablers win again

 

[Modron]

real old school gamers play neither d4 nor d2r, they play modded d2 d1

Fixed that for you.

 

[DemonKing]

30$ for a cosmetic armor set... And the horse armor price is even more hilarious.

I've never understood the mindset of anyone who pays for cosmetics. By their very nature games are transient things that will eventually be replaced by the next big thing so spending real money on something that will be irrelevant or even inaccessible a short time into the future and has no meaningful impact on gameplay doesn't seem like a good investment to me.

 

[Great Deceiver]

30$ for a cosmetic armor set... And the horse armor price is even more hilarious.

I've never understood the mindset of anyone who pays for cosmetics. By their very nature games are transient things that will eventually be replaced by the next big thing so spending real money on something that will be irrelevant or even inaccessible a short time into the future and has no meaningful impact on gameplay doesn't seem like a good investment to me.

FOMO

There's a reason why the game is an MMO and you see other people zipping by on their 20 dollar horse armour or 30 dollar cosmetic set

 

[DemonKing]

There's a reason why the game is an MMO and you see other people zipping by on their 20 dollar horse armour or 30 dollar cosmetic set

Funny though what they think makes them look special makes me think they're idiots...I guess I should be grateful for those suckers for subsidising game support for the rest of us.