Diablo IV

[racofer]

Imagine still believing Blizzard 2020 can make a decent game

 

[DeepOcean]

Warcraft I and II, StarCraft 1 and Brood War, Diablo I, they were good slick games, Blizzard was still making games at that time, they are all slick games with a purpose in mind to accomplish. After Diablo II , however, things changed in Blizzard, it wasnt about making good games anymore but to create a sheep corral to keep milking gamers forever and any mechanic and design choice that didnt contribute to the maximum number of sheep to milk "engaged" for the maximum amount of time possible, it was discarted. Diablo II is still seen with good eyes because it was on the transition phase but they learned and applied Diablo II lessons on World of Warcraft and we have this cancer of games as service now.

Make no mistake, this trend wont change with Diablo IV, it will be a microtransaction, "engagement" focused game like Diablo III, the only reason they even changed the art style from Diablo III is because other games as service like Path of Exile are kicking their ass in "engagement", so Blizzard needs to ape them.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

I've lost count of how many times I've forgotten that this game is being made. Considering my father referred to the Diablo II manual as my Bible, it shows how far this franchise fell with "Diablo" III.

 

[Grotesque]

remember the hype when Diablo III was nearly released?

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

DIV will look like a mix of BG3, FO4, Elder scrolls online, and Doom Eternal but with diablo abilities, spell cool offs and mobs and lots of sucubi/incubi romance as Lilith is horny being denied.

unless they just get really lazy and make it like the latest League of angels shit. Just afk your way to the end.

 

[Infinitron]

https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/diablo4/23583664/diablo-iv-quarterly-update-december-2020

DIABLO IV QUARTERLY UPDATE—DECEMBER 2020

Hello, and welcome once again to the Diablo IV Quarterly Update—our last for 2020!

Progress on the game continues at a steady clip and we’re excited about several big updates and revisions that the team’s worked on for a long time that we are trying to complete before the holidays. Today’s topic centers on one such major revision, which also happens to be the most requested topic this year: Itemization.

Items are the lifeblood of Diablo. They are the element of the game that captures your imagination and keeps you playing and wondering, “What if?” after you put the game down. Whether it’s anticipating the next piece of perfectly rolled godly gear or kicking around item combinations in your head like a mad scientist, items are undoubtedly a major part of what makes Diablo so compelling and so different from other games.

Understanding how important it is to get itemization right, we paid special attention to early player feedback about this part of the game. We knew that many more iterations awaited between what we showed you at BlizzCon 2019, our follow-up blogs, and the final game release. We also knew from past Diablo entries that we will need to have the time and resources to make these iterations—thankfully, we have that baked into our current schedule. Getting all of your feedback encouraged us to move some of that iteration time forward so that we could get our newest direction in front of you sooner.

Lead Game Designer Joe Shely is going to walk us through all of our major itemization updates today. We’ve reviewed every aspect of itemization from top to bottom and reworked elements that we felt weren’t living up to their potential—from the individual stats that our classes tap into to the visual representation of items in your inventory. Of course, it’s still early and we still have lots more playtesting and iterating to do, but we think this direction puts us down a more solid foundational path and we couldn’t be happier to share it with you today.

You can keep tabs on what we’re up to on social media, and as always, please tell us what you think of this update on our forums and all your favorite places to talk Diablo! We’re probably hanging out there too, and we’ll continue to look out for popular topics to tackle in future blogs.

Speaking of which, our next update will take place during BlizzConline, rather than in blog form. We’ve read speculation about what it could be and want to ensure you that it is something chunky indeed. Without spoiling the surprise, Iet’s just say it involves a new version of the campfire scene we showed you last BlizzCon.

Thank you all, and see you in Hell!

-Luis Barriga,

Game Director, Diablo IV

Spoiler

Today we're going to look at some changes to items in Diablo IV and update you on a few things we've shared in our previous development blogs. In deciding what changes to make, we focused on three core ideals:

• First, we want to strengthen class identity by providing intuitive fantasy hooks. Items and skills that lean into the fantasy of your class are best.
• Second, we want to support deeper customization through our itemization. Items should support and enhance your class, not define it.
• Finally, we’re landing on overall depth somewhere between Diablo II and Diablo III. We aim to provide years of things to discover and countless ways to build a class.

Skill Tree
Since releasing the last quarterly blog post on the skill tree, we've been reviewing all of your feedback. Our team has also had a lot of hands-on time with our skill trees in frequent internal playtests, including an extended progression playtest. Based on this, we're confident that it's a solid direction, so we're going to iterate on it and make further improvements. For example, we're increasing the clustering of related skill nodes, so players don't have to go across the tree to find skill upgrades for their builds.

The ability to re-specialize or 'respec' your skills is a tricky one to balance. Like many of you, we want choices to matter and characters to feel different from each other—not just one click away from being identical to all the others. We also want to encourage players to experiment with different skills when they start playing, and discover builds that are right for them. In Diablo IV, you will be able to respec your skills and passives. The number of times you can do this will be unlimited, but it won’t be free. It will be easy to do when you first start a character; as your character grows, the effort and cost required to respec will grow too. In the end-game, changing your build will require a significant investment, to appropriately match the time and effort you’ve put into defining your character.


Primary Stats

After gaining a level, our barbarian has received 5 Stat points and 2 Skill points to spend.

When you gain a level, you'll receive points to spend in Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity, or Willpower, along with your skill points. Of course, most Barbarian builds are going to benefit from a healthy measure of Strength, but as you build out your character and decide on skills and synergies you'll want to mix in other attributes.


As a Barbarian, each point of Strength will increase the damage of your skills, while Willpower improves Fury generation, and Dexterity grants critical chance. Meanwhile, as a Sorceress, Intelligence increases skill damage, Willpower grants critical chance, and Dexterity hastens mana recovery. Each stat also confers a secondary defensive bonus.

You can supplement your character's stat build with items to give you a little more Willpower here, a little more Strength there, but the vast majority of your stats will come from how you choose to spend your points.

And here's where it gets really interesting. Many of the nodes in each class skill tree have additional effects if you meet specific primary stat thresholds. You'll get the baseline effect of these nodes when you spend the skill points to unlock them, but get enough of the corresponding primary stat and the bonus effect will activate.



You'll want to think carefully about how to allocate your stat points to activate these effects.

Now, let's talk items!

Weapon Types

Characters in Diablo IV use their weapons to perform skills and channel magical power.

But something was still missing. Wands should be faster than quarterstaves, and swords and maces should do different things. To see what that feels like in action, we've added weapon speeds and inherent characteristics to all weapons in our latest internal test environment.


Two different weapon choices for a level 20 Sorceress.

In general, one-handed weapons excel at letting you attack and reposition quickly, while slower two-handed weapons deal more damage. You can really feel the differences between them.



You can opt for a Staff to cast more damaging Frost bolts, or a Wand to channel them more quickly.

In addition to speed, each type of weapon has an inherent physical characteristic. For shields this is block value, meaning that any shield you find in Sanctuary is going to have block, in addition to any magical affixes it may have. As physical properties, these traits are consistent across all weapons of the same type and cannot be modified.


The physical characteristics of a weapon are shown above the separator in item tooltips. Here we see examples of a shield, wand, and axe.

You might notice another thing about these items: they're high-resolution renders of the actual equipment. In a game like Diablo, icons are important. They often contribute as much to the identity of a cool piece of loot as the in-game representation on your character. Items that don't appear on your character, like rings, are defined by their icons. We've upgraded all of them.

Item Qualities

Magic items can now have the most powerful regular affixes, while Rare items get up to five, and Legendary items have four regular affixes and one legendary affix.

Back to Top

Legendary Affixes

Can't decide between making your Chill effects Freeze faster or more damaging ground effects for your boots? No problem! Legendary affixes aren't restricted to a specific slot.

You'll notice a variety of our affixes in the examples above, including elemental resistances and sockets for gems and runes, which can appear on items in place of another affix. And of course, Attack comes from your weapons while Defense comes from your armor. With the increase to the maximum number of affixes available on items, we'll also be adding new affixes to the game to make sure there's plenty of diversity.

Uniques

Three Unique items available at level 20. A Unique will always appear with the same affixes.

We still like the idea of Mythic items, but we don't want to create an item quality that invalidates all others, so they're out for now. One of the things we loved most about them was the promise of getting random legendary powers on an item, so we folded that into our baseline legendary design.

With the addition of the skills and passives tree, primary stat points, and changes to items in Diablo IV, we can’t wait to see all the builds you’ll create. Maybe you'll focus on skills augmented by Uniques we designed, create something from scratch out of different legendary affixes, discover a creative pairing of primary stats with specific skills, or even incorporate the odd Rare or Magic item to maximize a specific affix to great effect.

We’re excited to read through the community feedback on the updates in this blog. As always, please remember that none of this is final as the game is still actively in development. Your constructive discussions around these features will continue to help Diablo IV, and we greatly appreciate your support and thoughts about the game. We will continue working on itemization throughout the development of Diablo IV and we are looking forward to seeing you at BlizzConline next year! We have lots to share in 2021 regarding some of our other features and we can’t wait to tell you all about them.

-Joe Shely,

Lead Game Designer, Diablo IV

 

[Reinhardt]

DIV will look like a mix of BG3

So they will return to the roots and make Diablo tb like they wanted from the start?

 

[Fedora Master]

The itemization seems better at least.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Meh. If you have to be connected to just play then its shit. Bored just looking at it.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Not sure why they want stats to do different things depending on what class you're playing. That's dumbly inconsistent, and makes them irrelevant. They should just do way with abstractions at that point, and make statistics directly improvable (attack, damage, attack speed, mana regeneration, etc.). If stats have no purpose but for combat, abstracting them provides no value. This still feels like mostly Diablo III, with some minor regard for the two games in the series that were actually good.

 

[Cryomancer]

D4 seems a HUGE incline in relation to D3. Itemization is much better. Stats are back, skill trees too. And the staves gives more damage while wands more casting speed.

 

[Reinhardt]

AND YOU CAN BE THE DRAGON!(or not)

 

[Cryomancer]

AND YOU CAN BE THE DRAGON!(or not)

IDK but honestly Dragon's don't fit diablo universe lore well. The unique ""dragon"" is Trag'Oul

 

[Saerain]

I do wish it didn't seem like the druid is comic relief. The witch doctor of this installment, I guess.

 

[Cryomancer]

I do wish it didn't seem like the druid is comic relief. The witch doctor of this installment, I guess.

Sadly, Druid has so much potential...

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Was it recycled?

 

[Citizen]

My wishlist for DIABLO 4 druid

Can I become a chonky bear that just runs around spamming meteor showers?

 

[Cryomancer]

My wishlist for DIABLO 4 druid

Can I become a chonky bear that just runs around spamming meteor showers?

And earthquakes

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

Diablo 4 will be a blast!

 

[Infinitron]

 

[ADL]

I'm sort of interested in this given the shared world MMOish approach they're taking with it but besides that, I'd much rather play Last Epoch, Grim Dawn or Path of Exile (in that order) given what I've seen so far.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Blizzcon... lol. A total zoom event?

When you compare it to Diablo 2 or Diablo 3....

Yeah.... wouldn't know about D3 due to that online fucking bullshit! So meh!

Can you play Diablo 3 without Internet?
At an event in Irvine on Tuesday, Blizzard told us that Diablo 3 will be online only. Without an internet connection, you can't play the game at all. "There's no offline play, you have to be connected to the internet."

Why is Diablo 3 online only?
Because the way the game was originally designed, items could be auctioned to other players for real money. ... The only way to prevent that kind of cheating in the PC version of the game - without fragmenting the player base (as seen in Diablo 2) - was to make it online-only.

Soooo.... let's ask about Diablo IV

Blizzard has confirmed that Diablo 4 will not be playable offline. The news was confirmed during a BlizzCon 2019 panel on Saturday, where lead designer Angela Del Priore was asked whether the game would support “a full offline mode.” “We are not going to support an offline mode,” Del Priore said.

BLIZZARD....
FUCK YOU YA FUCKING CUNTS!!


Blizzard says it was wrong to allow offline play in Diablo II

Go figure (circa 2013 statement). So D2 Resurrected? Online only as well or what?

eh fuck blizzard. Sorry, but reliable internet isn't everywhere. Fuck off..

And here's more big stuff you all probably wanted to know. The original Diablo II is being preserved. No Warcraft III Reforged "one version" nonsense. So what about any Activision always-online shenanigans, or general Activision silliness? "Offline play is in," Gallerani confirms. "No microtransactions, no sell you some cool wings, no sell you some pets...no." It's confirmed for $39.99 MSRP.

Guess, when I see it then I'll believe it.

 

[ADL]

eh fuck blizzard. Sorry, but reliable internet isn't everywhere. Fuck off..

Not defending always online authenticated DRM bullshit by any means, but by the time Diablo 4 ships, I'd imagine this won't be true with http://starlink.com almost fully deployed.

 

[Zeriel]

I'm sort of interested in this given the shared world MMOish approach they're taking with it but besides that, I'd much rather play Last Epoch, Grim Dawn or Path of Exile (in that order) given what I've seen so far.

Ironically it's the shared world that makes me really leery of it.

Also having just watched that trailer, it's hilarious how they just can't resist uglifying and manning-up any female character from past games. What more can you expect from 2021?

 

[Grampy_Bone]

can't resist uglifying and manning-up any female character from past games.

Verdict: True

Spoiler