Tyrr
Liturgist
- Joined
- Jun 25, 2020
- Messages
- 2,632
full price game + season pass & micro transactions
level-scaling
forced multiplayer
endless grind 'endgame'
ugly character models
mediocre, unfinished story
So yes. Blizzard drones will love it.
-
Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.
"This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.
Diablo IV
- Thread starter Wulfric Pinewood
- Start date
level-scaling
forced multiplayer
endless grind 'endgame'
ugly character models
mediocre, unfinished story
So yes. Blizzard drones will love it.
Is actually D3+FFX+Lost Ark
Perkel
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2014
- Messages
- 16,237
I mean, end game content is completely different to D3. D3 end game was just rifts which is pretty much POE map system but with different coat of paint and you can't choose what you will face. D4 end game content looks like D3 adventure mode but scaled up imho something i really liked about D3 rework in 2.0 as I hated campaign. You can do side quests, hell tides, three of whisper quests, do dungeons, do some group events with other players, world bosses from time to time and if you want PVP as there are some areas that enable pvp with set of rules to follow.
D4 "base game" has pretty much most expansive end game content from all arpgs. Obviously it can't match end game content of say POE with it's 10 years of expansions but for a base game there is something to do.
S.H.O.D.A.N.
Learned
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2020
- Messages
- 441
Apparently, the mount speed in this game is governed by the distance of the cursor from the mount model - more distance, more speed. You move faster left and right, than up and down, for obvious reasons.
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2012
- Messages
- 29,808
Well at least they did that like the classics.
Perkel
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2014
- Messages
- 16,237
Some early end game content thoughts. This is from Tier 3 difficulty. IDK if something new shows up on T4. With T3 you get world bosses and hell tides that were not present on T2. If you finish campaign once you can skip it with new character and go straight to end game with new one starting from lvl1.
- It is interesting that after campaign ends actually world acknowledges that. It is weird that you can see that in arpg and not in most of big RPGs. Basically campaign is evil encroaching on sanctuary from 0 to 100 while after campaign you have outright 100, people comment on state of the world etc.
- This naturally leads to some different additional quests that were not available in campaign. There aren't many of them but they exist.
- "Hell Tide" is pretty neat idea. Basically region of world is taken over by hell tide and whole region changes from default to sort of hell version of it (but not totally hell), rain changed to blood, instead of plants, boxes or carins you get pillars of souls etc. basically elements of hell. Monsters change there from default monsters to hell demons. As you kill them they drop some resource. Then you can find chests there that require X amount of resource that give you rewards. Hell tide lasts for 60 minutes until it moves to other region. The gameplay feels like some league mechanic in POE but the neatness of it comes from the fact that this hell encroaching also affects towns. So once that happens you can see people defending themselves, people talking about hell tide etc. So it is not just cheap pallet swap like POE. Chests are marked with what is mostly likely in them
- Three of Whispers quests are more like achievement based ones. So you do stuff which gives you points toward goal but they are restricted to specific region. So sometimes it is kill X something, sometimes light 4 pillars in different parts of map, sometimes kill demon etc. Once you finish task you go back to tree for reward. You get to pick 1 of 3 boxes containing different choices of equipment.
- Event quests are there from start of game so they are not really end game but they never end so they are as viable in end game as they were at start of game. They vary a lot from refugees defense, stopping summoning etc. You do it and if you do certain tasks in it well you get better reward.
- Sidequesting can be really varied. From just find me a thing in place X, to banish demon from child in ritual. Some are one off some have whole chains of quests attached to them where some character will offer you few quests following some sort of mini story. They are one off though so hardly can be called end game system but hey I am in end game and there is truck load of them still so... Definitely there are way to many of them to finish in campaign everything and like I said before new quests pop up after you finish campaign.
- Boosting dungeons. You find those items that allow you to transform some dungeon into nightmare version of it. Each much like POE map system has attached benefits and maluses to it. So in one you have 50% more gold but all enemies use poison in other one something else etc. Tried once but this pretty much feels like rolling maps in POE.
- World bosses. Did it once with like 16 people but I didn't really like it. Too many people at once and enemy attacks were too telegraphed. There are multiple ones in game so maybe this one just sucked. I also did it on nightmare not on highest tier so maybe they are easy there, hard to tell.
- Just fucking around on map. I mean there is not much to say. If you like endless mode or something just walk around map and fuck things up as you go, loot will be worse than in events or other avenues but you will still progress.
- Finishing exploration. Map is huge and when you finish campaign there will be plenty to explore around. There are like dozens of strongholds to free each having it's own theme (like those), finding some shitty statues for bonuses etc.
Oftentimes you combine some at the same time. Like doing hell tide in region with Tree of whispers region and firing up some group event.
Overall I like it. Much like I said before it is D3 adventure mode on steroids and I liked adventure mode, for a base game there is plenty to do and reasons to smash.
- It is interesting that after campaign ends actually world acknowledges that. It is weird that you can see that in arpg and not in most of big RPGs. Basically campaign is evil encroaching on sanctuary from 0 to 100 while after campaign you have outright 100, people comment on state of the world etc.
- This naturally leads to some different additional quests that were not available in campaign. There aren't many of them but they exist.
- "Hell Tide" is pretty neat idea. Basically region of world is taken over by hell tide and whole region changes from default to sort of hell version of it (but not totally hell), rain changed to blood, instead of plants, boxes or carins you get pillars of souls etc. basically elements of hell. Monsters change there from default monsters to hell demons. As you kill them they drop some resource. Then you can find chests there that require X amount of resource that give you rewards. Hell tide lasts for 60 minutes until it moves to other region. The gameplay feels like some league mechanic in POE but the neatness of it comes from the fact that this hell encroaching also affects towns. So once that happens you can see people defending themselves, people talking about hell tide etc. So it is not just cheap pallet swap like POE. Chests are marked with what is mostly likely in them
- Three of Whispers quests are more like achievement based ones. So you do stuff which gives you points toward goal but they are restricted to specific region. So sometimes it is kill X something, sometimes light 4 pillars in different parts of map, sometimes kill demon etc. Once you finish task you go back to tree for reward. You get to pick 1 of 3 boxes containing different choices of equipment.
- Event quests are there from start of game so they are not really end game but they never end so they are as viable in end game as they were at start of game. They vary a lot from refugees defense, stopping summoning etc. You do it and if you do certain tasks in it well you get better reward.
- Sidequesting can be really varied. From just find me a thing in place X, to banish demon from child in ritual. Some are one off some have whole chains of quests attached to them where some character will offer you few quests following some sort of mini story. They are one off though so hardly can be called end game system but hey I am in end game and there is truck load of them still so... Definitely there are way to many of them to finish in campaign everything and like I said before new quests pop up after you finish campaign.
- Boosting dungeons. You find those items that allow you to transform some dungeon into nightmare version of it. Each much like POE map system has attached benefits and maluses to it. So in one you have 50% more gold but all enemies use poison in other one something else etc. Tried once but this pretty much feels like rolling maps in POE.
- World bosses. Did it once with like 16 people but I didn't really like it. Too many people at once and enemy attacks were too telegraphed. There are multiple ones in game so maybe this one just sucked. I also did it on nightmare not on highest tier so maybe they are easy there, hard to tell.
- Just fucking around on map. I mean there is not much to say. If you like endless mode or something just walk around map and fuck things up as you go, loot will be worse than in events or other avenues but you will still progress.
- Finishing exploration. Map is huge and when you finish campaign there will be plenty to explore around. There are like dozens of strongholds to free each having it's own theme (like those), finding some shitty statues for bonuses etc.
Oftentimes you combine some at the same time. Like doing hell tide in region with Tree of whispers region and firing up some group event.
Overall I like it. Much like I said before it is D3 adventure mode on steroids and I liked adventure mode, for a base game there is plenty to do and reasons to smash.
Last edited:
Perkel
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2014
- Messages
- 16,237
Game has weird scaling.
- Game has upscaling. Meaning monster scale to you from below not from above. So with your lvl 15 guy you can walk into lvl 30 stronghold and be killed in seconds but you won't find monsters below your level in old locations. Thing is that most of the world is scaled to around lvl 30 so above that you have effectively scaling down and up but by that time you are kitted with aspects which negate mostly scaling.
- This scaling shenanigans goes to lvl 50 in T2 upon reaching it, it doesn't scale above that but you either don't receive much XP which forces you to do quest for T3 world where depending on your kit you will be suffering on just getting by at start.
- On T3 there seems to be scaling but from what I play i barely feel it. I was struggling at start but after few gear upgrades I am doing even better now than on end of T2.
Story wise it is pretty well explained. As you start game plot starts and evil starts to grow and as you go forces of evil get stronger and stronger as plot moves on. Thought it naturally feels a bit wrong if you fight exact same mobs without any new models etc.
Overall I don't like it. At around lvl 40 I was really struggling making progress and got to point where mobs really punished me. Normally in such situation I would just do lower end content and reorganize but here you effectively can't do that. Weirdly it punishes the most casuals as those are the ones without skill to put 2+2 and make their build X times better so for them probably it is worse and worse as it goes.
- Game has upscaling. Meaning monster scale to you from below not from above. So with your lvl 15 guy you can walk into lvl 30 stronghold and be killed in seconds but you won't find monsters below your level in old locations. Thing is that most of the world is scaled to around lvl 30 so above that you have effectively scaling down and up but by that time you are kitted with aspects which negate mostly scaling.
- This scaling shenanigans goes to lvl 50 in T2 upon reaching it, it doesn't scale above that but you either don't receive much XP which forces you to do quest for T3 world where depending on your kit you will be suffering on just getting by at start.
- On T3 there seems to be scaling but from what I play i barely feel it. I was struggling at start but after few gear upgrades I am doing even better now than on end of T2.
Story wise it is pretty well explained. As you start game plot starts and evil starts to grow and as you go forces of evil get stronger and stronger as plot moves on. Thought it naturally feels a bit wrong if you fight exact same mobs without any new models etc.
Overall I don't like it. At around lvl 40 I was really struggling making progress and got to point where mobs really punished me. Normally in such situation I would just do lower end content and reorganize but here you effectively can't do that. Weirdly it punishes the most casuals as those are the ones without skill to put 2+2 and make their build X times better so for them probably it is worse and worse as it goes.
Reinhardt
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2015
- Messages
- 31,904
are you playing as diablo or what?
copebot
Learned
- Joined
- Dec 27, 2020
- Messages
- 387
The game kind of expects you to put together a real build to the point to which you overcome the scaling. This isn't really like D3 in which you could do anything until max level, at which point you really had to get a set together. I built a scuffed traps/twisted blade build on my rogue just because it was what I had the pieces for and it worked pretty well on T2. I didn't finish the campaign on SC as rogue until I got to level 50 though, and it involved a fair number of detours to get traits to round out my build. For a while I was also using caltrops but no death trap just because I had gear that really benefitted from stacking a ton of traps on the ground all at once. I'm now trying out a shadow clone build because I got a sacred unique that buffs it. The way the stats work, it's a little tough to just swap to an entirely different build without an entirely different gear set. I could not swap to a ranged build without being crappy for a while just because of how many affixes there are.
Survivability seems to be pretty high overall UNLESS you get stunned. There are also some boss abilities that just chunk you. However, because you are kind of forced to take some defensive effects because some slots do not permit offensive traits, it's not really possible to make a fully squishy glass cannon build.
The other thing is that the scaling slows to a crawl in T3 and you pile on paragon points from reputation and levels that help you to way outscale it. It's hard to get gear that actually does anything, and once you find a piece it's harder to get the right affixes than it is to just shift the legendary power to it.
Survivability seems to be pretty high overall UNLESS you get stunned. There are also some boss abilities that just chunk you. However, because you are kind of forced to take some defensive effects because some slots do not permit offensive traits, it's not really possible to make a fully squishy glass cannon build.
The other thing is that the scaling slows to a crawl in T3 and you pile on paragon points from reputation and levels that help you to way outscale it. It's hard to get gear that actually does anything, and once you find a piece it's harder to get the right affixes than it is to just shift the legendary power to it.
Last edited:
Yeah, are we the baddies?
Saravan
Savant
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2019
- Messages
- 926
Side quests mostly consist of fetch quests as far as I have seen (but I could be wrong). There are many dungeons but there are very few variations of them. World bosses provide no challenge, I assume like everything else in the game to cater to the widest casual group. Things like hell tide is a neat idea, but it's all drowned by some exceptionally bad game design - chiefly the itemisation and the level scaling.
Perkel
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2014
- Messages
- 16,237
They very widely. But they aren't full rpg quests. Still it is better than just random do map X to progress from poe.
I guess this subject goes to whatever you want arpg to be. If you want it to be slot machine without story, just jumble of systems then it is not great. If you want arpg with some theme, story, reasons to beat demons etc. this gives you context.
ArchAngel
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2015
- Messages
- 21,222
No but you babysit a bunch or retards during the main story line.
Reinhardt
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2015
- Messages
- 31,904
THEY are the baddies?
The hatred for level scaling in what is essentially a MMO-lite will always be astounding to me. Why the hell would you want to outlevel content and entire zones? Leveled zones in MMOs have always been fucking stupid and you shouldn't have to choose between playing a dozen alts and playing the content you managed to miss without facerolling everything. Anyways I hit endgame and helltides really make use of the open world. This is way better than mapping in Path of Exile. Dungeons need a lot of work but it's nice having 500 different things to do every login and being able to target farm loot.
The future is now and you ain't a part of it if you're still whining about level scaling. That ship sailed about a decade ago and thank fucking god for that. Seethe grandpas.
Rate retarded all you want I'm not the one throwing away content over muh dmg numbers and vertical progression.
The future is now and you ain't a part of it if you're still whining about level scaling. That ship sailed about a decade ago and thank fucking god for that. Seethe grandpas.
Rate retarded all you want I'm not the one throwing away content over muh dmg numbers and vertical progression.
Last edited:
You know what's retarded? Being level 100 and being stuck in a single zone or two doing the same dozen activities because your numbers are too big to enjoy anything else. Being level 60 and one-shotting everything in Goldshire wasn't fun twenty years ago and it's not fun now.
Tyrr
Liturgist
- Joined
- Jun 25, 2020
- Messages
- 2,632
Why let characters level up when the world just adjust to the character level anyway? Just to get a dopamine kick when you hear the leveling sound?
With level scaling the level is just a pointless number to trick the player. To give him the illusion of progression.
With level scaling the level is just a pointless number to trick the player. To give him the illusion of progression.
ArchAngel
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2015
- Messages
- 21,222
Tyrr
Liturgist
- Joined
- Jun 25, 2020
- Messages
- 2,632
Another point about level scaling: For it to work as intended every character and class at a certain level has to be equally powerful. If some classes or builds are more powerful than others the game has huge balancing problem.
For example, do you balance the scaling for the optimal build? If yes then it forces everyone to play as this build. If not then playing the optimal build becomes boring. The same applies to different classes.
Without level scaling players with weaker builds/classes can just level up more to complete the content. Level scaling makes this impossible.
For example, do you balance the scaling for the optimal build? If yes then it forces everyone to play as this build. If not then playing the optimal build becomes boring. The same applies to different classes.
Without level scaling players with weaker builds/classes can just level up more to complete the content. Level scaling makes this impossible.
Perkel
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2014
- Messages
- 16,237
Level scaling is just cheap excuse of proper balancing. Always was and always will be. Instead of balancing each zone thinking about how players may play it what kind of numbers are needed etc. for fun game you have just level scaling.
D4 scalling is not the worst one but definitely isn't a plus. It's detriment to pretty good game overall.
ArchAngel
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2015
- Messages
- 21,222
Devs that forced you to travel along these are.
Saravan
Savant
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2019
- Messages
- 926
Even if you accept level scaling, which is fucking retarded and completely warps power progression, the itemisation is straight up D3. Completely uninspiring stat stick. I can’t see a shred of innovation or creativity. D2 which was made more than two decades ago with no competing ARPGs to compare with had better ideas.
Perkel
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2014
- Messages
- 16,237
It seems that I start to warm up to base item stats and affixes.
My problem with base stats and affixes on items was that they felt insignificant and by that some of them felt completely useless. Meaning wearing one piece vs other was not really a difference. After reaching lvl 50+ I think that is no longer true. At start of the game rolls are uber small and even at start of the game with character having small total life etc. it doesn't matter. But at 50+ Stats starts to matter a lot as difference between bad and best roll increase up and up and up.
Another thing is that previously I didn't have access to blacksmith upgrade. Meaning you can take item and upgrade it 3 times at start and when you get to 50+ 5 times. Upgrades aren't that big but they work on EVERY stat on item.
So previously +3 to fury (on my 100fury limit barbarian) was joke i wouldn't even consider. But now I get rolls on items in vein of 7-10. With 2-3 items i can get roughly 30% more. That seems interesting but with upgrades suddenly those 7-10s change into 12-15 so at best nearly 50% more. Add to that 10 from tree and fury reduction again around 20-30% and suddenly you get double resource.
There are other stats like that. Armor always at start was like 1%. I mean who the fuck would invest into 5% better armor stat. Armor is very important in game as it handles both physical as well as elemental damage reduction (50% of whole res) but 1% is nothing. Even if you stack multiple pieces you get at best 7%. Aka nothing.
Now enter lvl 50+ gear and suddenly you can have 30% more armor almost equivalent of running Determination aura in POE and probably more because it has effect on elemental damage as well.
------------
passive tree (lvl50+)
Paragon tree seems to be POE tree. It seems pretty barebones if you look at singular boards as most of stats are just +5 to strenght or other stat but I didn't know how glyphs worked when you insert them into that board. Turns out that glyphs power is directly aped from POE jewels and they have activation requirement. So for effect to start working you need in range of say 3 or 4 +25 to dex. The difference from POE jewels is that each glyph has base stat and requirement. Base stats always work regardless of requirement. So like each point of dex in range of glyph gives you +0.1% to crit strike but requirement gives you some flat bonus and some of those can be major. Kind of how people in POE want to use those memories jawells to change rest of nodes into different stat or get another like %fortify effectiveness.
My weapon master glyph has "If you use weapon master skill it randomly removes 2sec from cooldown on other weapon master skill." aka something that actually can change how you play.
The other part about it that is pretty hard to spot is that all those base stats overrepresent them to eye it so it feels like it is filled to brim with shit. But the thing is that you get 4 paragon points per level not 1. So with 50 levels you get 200 points + other points you get from quests etc. If you want to focus only on major powers you can go from one board to another in 2-3 levels picking up rare nodes that are equivalent of POEs bigger nodes (but not the biggest ones). So it is kind of more spread out unlike POE tree and stuff hidden behind glyphs which then transforms those base stats into useful stuff.
I'm yet to make statement about it as I don't have many paragon points to play with and theory craft so final verdict may change. So far it is much better than i expected.
D4 itemization isn't D3 itemization, like at all. Only thing resembling it are aspects from legendries but even those are changed in how they work and function.
My problem with base stats and affixes on items was that they felt insignificant and by that some of them felt completely useless. Meaning wearing one piece vs other was not really a difference. After reaching lvl 50+ I think that is no longer true. At start of the game rolls are uber small and even at start of the game with character having small total life etc. it doesn't matter. But at 50+ Stats starts to matter a lot as difference between bad and best roll increase up and up and up.
Another thing is that previously I didn't have access to blacksmith upgrade. Meaning you can take item and upgrade it 3 times at start and when you get to 50+ 5 times. Upgrades aren't that big but they work on EVERY stat on item.
So previously +3 to fury (on my 100fury limit barbarian) was joke i wouldn't even consider. But now I get rolls on items in vein of 7-10. With 2-3 items i can get roughly 30% more. That seems interesting but with upgrades suddenly those 7-10s change into 12-15 so at best nearly 50% more. Add to that 10 from tree and fury reduction again around 20-30% and suddenly you get double resource.
There are other stats like that. Armor always at start was like 1%. I mean who the fuck would invest into 5% better armor stat. Armor is very important in game as it handles both physical as well as elemental damage reduction (50% of whole res) but 1% is nothing. Even if you stack multiple pieces you get at best 7%. Aka nothing.
Now enter lvl 50+ gear and suddenly you can have 30% more armor almost equivalent of running Determination aura in POE and probably more because it has effect on elemental damage as well.
------------
passive tree (lvl50+)
Paragon tree seems to be POE tree. It seems pretty barebones if you look at singular boards as most of stats are just +5 to strenght or other stat but I didn't know how glyphs worked when you insert them into that board. Turns out that glyphs power is directly aped from POE jewels and they have activation requirement. So for effect to start working you need in range of say 3 or 4 +25 to dex. The difference from POE jewels is that each glyph has base stat and requirement. Base stats always work regardless of requirement. So like each point of dex in range of glyph gives you +0.1% to crit strike but requirement gives you some flat bonus and some of those can be major. Kind of how people in POE want to use those memories jawells to change rest of nodes into different stat or get another like %fortify effectiveness.
My weapon master glyph has "If you use weapon master skill it randomly removes 2sec from cooldown on other weapon master skill." aka something that actually can change how you play.
The other part about it that is pretty hard to spot is that all those base stats overrepresent them to eye it so it feels like it is filled to brim with shit. But the thing is that you get 4 paragon points per level not 1. So with 50 levels you get 200 points + other points you get from quests etc. If you want to focus only on major powers you can go from one board to another in 2-3 levels picking up rare nodes that are equivalent of POEs bigger nodes (but not the biggest ones). So it is kind of more spread out unlike POE tree and stuff hidden behind glyphs which then transforms those base stats into useful stuff.
I'm yet to make statement about it as I don't have many paragon points to play with and theory craft so final verdict may change. So far it is much better than i expected.
D4 itemization isn't D3 itemization, like at all. Only thing resembling it are aspects from legendries but even those are changed in how they work and function.
Perkel
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2014
- Messages
- 16,237
Also tip:
I thought music was either boring or shite as I couldn't quite remember single thing about it from campaign other than fmv ones that were typical hollywood choir orchestra schlock. Turns out that default mastering of game is retarded and gameplay sounds and pretty much everything else are completely overshooting music. You need to set "effects" in sounds tab to like 20 of 100 to hear properly music. After I changed that i noticed that it does actually have fantastic music which is very reminiscent of D2 music style, same type of tribal undertones i loved about D2 music. Especially western parts of sanctuary are great.
Fractured peaks music aka starting area imho has most forgettable music.
I thought music was either boring or shite as I couldn't quite remember single thing about it from campaign other than fmv ones that were typical hollywood choir orchestra schlock. Turns out that default mastering of game is retarded and gameplay sounds and pretty much everything else are completely overshooting music. You need to set "effects" in sounds tab to like 20 of 100 to hear properly music. After I changed that i noticed that it does actually have fantastic music which is very reminiscent of D2 music style, same type of tribal undertones i loved about D2 music. Especially western parts of sanctuary are great.
Fractured peaks music aka starting area imho has most forgettable music.
As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.