Diablo 4 feedback (From a former D2 No. 1 HC ladder player)

General Discussion
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Diablo 4 Devs (@kiemmaki):

Good Morning! I just want to give some feedback about Diablo 4 I saw that could be changed. To give some history of myself as a Diablo player, I started playing Diablo II in 2001 and have been the No. 1 Us East Hardcore Ladder Druid for multiple ladders over the duration of Diablo II’s lifetime. I beat Diablo I as well as reached Paragon 1400 in Diablo III before I stopped playing. With that said after watching multiple interviews and multiple streamers stream the Diablo 4 demo, there was a few glaring things I’d like to point out that the community would agree upon before a firestorm of negative comments come if they aren’t changed before the release of the game.

  1. Skill cool downs/potion cool downs. To elaborate on why this issue is massive, for starters, many people are saying this looks like a Diablo 3 re-skin when it comes to game mechanics but how I personally feel is these cool downs take away from the playability of the game. If I’m slightly under geared and I have to use all my skills, while they are on cool down what am I supposed to do as a player? Run around in a circle around what I’m trying to defeat? As a player, I want to always be engaged in the game play and not have to constantly wait for my skills to be ready to cast again. I truly feel if you go the route of adding mana potions back in (since you already have health potions), then softcore AND hardcore players will feel more in touch with the game and more drawn to it. For Diablo I and II players, everything that was Diablo III we won’t want to see exist in Diablo IV.

  2. The Barbarian and Druid are way too bulky. They look like WOW characters and need to feel more like realistic human’s and less cartoonish. Take for example the Druid. In Diablo II, he was skinny, tall, and had a signature look with red hair. In Diablo 4, he looks like a dwarf straight from World of Warcraft and I keep mistaking him as the barbarian. Please take into consideration changing the characters to make them look like real humans similar to how the sorceress looks.

  3. Levels. Keep it easy. 1-99 like Diablo II. The paragon levels were boring and redundant and if a bad ARPG player spent their life on Diablo III, eventually they would hit such a high paragon level that they would outmatch a player with a lower paragon level and way better gear. Think about playability. Players want to work towards something and no Diablo fan wants to see paragon return. I promise you that in my 20 years dedicated to the Diablo series, that’s very important.

  4. Slow the game down. I shouldn’t have to take 5 minutes to level my character to max level. During Diablo 2, I spent 18 hour days of grinding getting my Druid to level 97 on hardcore. The mobs were difficult. There was always a sense of, my character might die so I need to be extra prepared. I won’t want to play a game where I can 1 shot bosses even with the best gear. The Diablo community wants a challenge. Look back to a normal lv 20 necromancer from Diablo II fighting Duriel, it’s going to take you a few trips, lots of mana potions, health potions, but once you kill Duriel, it feels awesome getting to Act III.

  5. I feel the monsters are too Diablo 3-like. They seem kind of fake and I was hoping to see them as more menacing. Bigger doesn’t always mean scarier. Take the minion who guards the stones in the stony field. It was a fallen but every normal hardcore character was afraid of him due to his damage outputs.

  6. Trading. Just make it open trading. If you really want to restrict an item, do the top tier ones from say world bosses but don’t mess with anything else. Please.

  7. Drop rates. Don’t make it easy. We all want a challenge. I don’t want a end game character in a day. I want to work hard for it and spend weeks or months getting this gear. Self finding an Enigma from Diablo 2 took literal weeks finding the 3 socket archon plate or mage plate, and then finding the Jah and Ber.

  8. Maps. Diablo 2 was completely RNG which made replayability super fun. Diablo 3 had the same map over and over which made campaign mode awful. All my friends quit D3 it was that bad.

  9. I saw a post about a fast paced game style. Don’t do that. Keep it slow paced. Diablo 1 and 2 were very slow and the point was it was supposed to be hard. We don’t want to see groups of mobs we just mow down.

  10. No greater rifts. In my opinion, stay far away from it. That only introduces power creep and eventually that’s all players will do. Look at Diablo 3 as an example. Everything else is pointless while everyone is just pushing the leader boards attempting to get easy legendary and set drops. It also encourages botting and that’s something nobody wants.

You guys are doing a ton of stuff right but I feel like it was paramount to point out glaring issues that I had to spend time to address so this game can be the most successful Diablo game. If any viewers are reading this, please also bring what I brought up to the Developers attention so we can together can make Diablo 4 our dream game based off passion.

Thanks!

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Good morning Deathbringer,

First, just to clarify, I am not a Developer :slight_smile: but I will make sure that your detailed and constructive feedback is heard. Thanks a million for the time and effort you did put into this.

Kind regards

Kiemmaki

What’s your opinion?

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“this looks like a Diablo 3 re-skin when it comes to game mechanics”

confirm.

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I agree with you except this point.

I do not want a 100% RNG game for people too broke to visit a casino to satiate their gambling addiction.
D3 tried this and you can see the result, most people only play during the season start to complete the journal as that is the only set of goals they can accomplish with effort. The progression is just too random.

There must be a way to get the items and with the affixes you want! The price can be steep and the materials can come from D2 über Tristram boss level opponents but the option should be there.

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Yea. By trade.
If you won’t find an item for you then sell it and when someone else finds item for you then buy it.
Pure random works with a functional trade system and that is a fact.
Geting all items in 1 day makes people leave. That also was proven by diablo 3.

You don’t want to put in effort? Well tought luck because there are no rewards for finishing last. Welcome to Life 1.0.1

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I think I should have better clarified what I meant by that. I was talking strictly about map RNG because the item RNG was too much from Diablo 3. I would have to find the same item 1,000 times until I got the stats I wanted and it just took the fun out of the game. I wouldn’t want to find say… A stone of Jordan ring with intellect when I needed strength (Speaking strictly in Diablo 3 terms). I feel like the Diablo 2 item system worked very well because you were getting the base item and the stats plus/minus a few +vit or +str levels that didn’t make a big impact.

Also as a side note, a small percentage of the player base only plays Hardcore mode but it’s big enough for Diablo (and video games in general) to implement a Hardcore mode. I don’t think alienating the hardcore community is good because every time you log onto the character, your risking a dead and a character you cannot resurrect so if I find, like I said, a SOJ with stats that don’t go with my character, I’m going to be frustrated in a negative way that I found such a rare drop and it was for nothing. Yes, I could trade it, but then I’d see myself trading most of the time, not self finding my gear, and the game would become stale quick.

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I can only agree on what Deathbringer wrote down, except for the fact, that I personally think, the most important things, needed in D4 are in the following order:

  1. Itemisation: An ARPG needs item depth (Str, Dex, Int, Will, Stam, …) and no green or red arrow indicating, which item is better. There should be very simple items, that can be better than powerful rare ones, e.g. for a boss you could suddenly need a ton of resistance, or for some areas you might want faster hit recovery or “cannot be frozen” (please bring a hit recovery!). Also a good ARPG should have +Str,+ Dex, (+Int), attack(cast-)rate, deadly strikes, crushing blows, +min. dmg, +max. dmg, +%dmg, +X absolute dmg, … on items, instead of “Attack” on shoes or rings. Sorry, but that doesn’t even make sense.

  2. Hit recovery, Block rate, attack-/castrate! Without them you can jump into mobs completely brain afk without being punished.

  3. No cooldowns on Skills for many reasons!

  4. More variety in the skillsystem and more choices to make. (especially for the endgame) Btw, I think this is a very important feature of an ARPG, but 1)-3) are just super fundamental and crucial. Without them it’s simply action, without RPG.

  5. Trading

  6. Gamespeed. It looks like a good speed in the demo, it shouldn’t be faster in the endgame.

  7. Monsters could be slightly more grim, light radius could be smaller, gold for legendary item color apparently is less comic-ish than a shiny orange, characters should look human.

To cut a long story short, the action part of D4 looks super cool, now the “only” thing missing, are the RPG elements. There I would love to see, that the team takes more ideas, which already work so good in other games, like PoE, D2, Titan Quest, … and reinterpret them. The dungeon keys, similar to PoE maps for example sound super cool to me!

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D2/PoE fan i see? Needing all these stats is cool but i dont like gear swaping like it is in D2 (one gear for ubers, one for speed farming etc). There should be other way to do it. Or maybe you just collect gear like some items have heavy all resistance, other has ‘cannot be frozen’ etc.
And yeas they should remove cooldown, let these
stronger skills just use more mana or what ever but you can then use legendary item to reduce mana cost on that skill.
I like the idea items now only have just attack, not strenght, dex, int. If they do weapons just for that class like in D3, then it’s fine i guess.

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[Diablo iv - Constructive feedback on gameplay]

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I agree with everything Deathbringer said.

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All of the points presented by DeathBringer are spot-on.

Just forget Diablo III. In fact, completely retcon it out of Diablo IV’s story. The Diablo fan community consensus is overwhelmingly unanimous on the point that Diablo III is simply a bad game with bad systems and bad design in almost all areas. Just ditch it. Clinging on to the mistake that was Diablo III is only going to harm future Diablo games. The best thing that can be done is to wipe it from the official series lineage.

Look at how many fans of Diablo have returned to the forums in response to Diablo IV’s media release. And notice that they all say the same thing about Diablo III: That it’s bad and Diablo IV is currently looking in its style (not specifically artwork) like Diablo III.

That Diablo series fan reappearance and commentary is the writing on the wall screaming at you to ditch Diablo III influence and use Diablo II as the basis for Diablo IV and then build from there. Don’t let pride and arrogance control your senses. There is nothing good to be salvaged or carried over to Diablo IV from Diablo III. Sincerely. Most of us bought and played Diablo III out of hope for a good experience and because it was what was available, and not because it was anything worthy of the Diablo series. D3’s design was a grave mistake and unless you recognize it as such you will only perpetuate its flaws.

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Give us complex character building with a complex skill trees.

Give us creatures that are designed and presented with integrity and realism, and nothing like huge monster in the DIV gameplay that does a cheesy and cringy goofy cartoony roar. That’s an 7 or 8 year-old’s idea of cool. But for a game that’s supposed to be serious in its presentation, like Diablo, it’s just friggin lame and painful to witness.

Give us a very challenging first-time playthrough, and not the garbage waste-of-time first playthrough that Diablo III offers. Even at max available first-run difficulty, Diablo III doesn’t begin to present even a micro challenge. And no challenge means no fun. Do you think I’m going to replay a game that was no fun to play through the first time? I’ll tell you plainly: I did not. Having the first run be a cakewalk was a blisteringly incompetent decision.

Give us low loot and very low special loot drop rates. In Diablo 3, every creature is a pinata filled with iridescent look. It makes loot drops meaningless, without valuable experience, without excitement, without pleasure. It’s infuriating how it it robs players of a meaningful and valuable experience by such a stupid and sophomoric design, and it says something bad about the people working on the games. I want it to mean something when a coloured loot drops. It means nothing in Diablo III, devaluing the play experience tremendously.

Keep the game slow-paced, with stark and dire environments. Some brighter environments can also work in a serious and dark game, if they’re done with sincerity. The thing is Blizzard doesn’t have a history of making games with sincerity - Blizzard is known in particular for making goofy, cartoony, insincere games. Well, that isn’t Diablo. Diablo, consisting of Diablo and Diablo II, is a series of realistic presentation, sincerity and integrity of visual, audio, and narrative designs. Diablo III didn’t have any of that, and instead was Blizzardified into a goody cartoony insincere pretentious pile of fairy crap, and that’s what made it a terrible game.

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Blizzard, please remember and take heed that Blizzard didn’t create the Diablo series and the series isn’t renowned and loved for anything Blizzard have, so far, contributed to it. You should be respecting of that and what it means.

Diablo is a renowned series because of the particular high quality style achieved by former Blizzard North developers. If Blizzard wants to make a quality Diablo game, you’re going to have to be faithful to what Diablo’s creators established and not try to Blizzardify the series, spiting what made it good. Leave your egos at the door, please.

With Diablo III, Blizzard sent out the strong message that Blizzard is a one-trick pony developer that can’t think or work outside of its tropes. Recognize the mistake that was feeling smug about Blizzard’s tropey style, thinking that smearing it on anything makes an impressive product, and make the decision to not repeat that mistake. Get rid of the over-exaggerated and hyperbolic character designs and animations. That’s cheese has no rightful place in a real Diablo game.

When making Diablo IV, think Integrity. That means to not think like Blizzard, but to tune into what Condor / Blizzard North were after. I think it might be key that Blizzard hires David Brevik, Erich Schaefer, and Max Schaefer as consultants for Diablo IV. Remember, check your egos at the door and don’t humour smug delusions about your abilities and personal vision like was done during Diablo III’s development. Diablo isn’t your personal game, and it has yet to be proven that Diablo can be a Blizzard game.

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Blizzard will never be able to do great Diablo game anymore!

Diablo series belong to Condor and no one else!

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I dont think good items should be super-super rare. The best items should be rare and hard to get but not uber-super rare. There should be allways that feeling you may get that drop next coner what you where looking for. 80-90% of the season time i want to play whit best in slot gear, then it’s just matter of getting the same item whit
better stats. It’s not fun if you play 90% of season whitout the build you dont like just because you dont have the items what supports that build.

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I’m calling bullshite on your opinion on esthetics. Druid looks absolutely awesome and so does barb. They did find the right balance between cool and realistic.

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Nope, the greatest items in the game must be super uber hard to find.
Enigma was a dream for alot of player back in the days and to these days too. That’s why this game is still olayable 20+ years later!

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I also think, they have to be super rare, especially with a big player base. You can still have strong, cool items to enjoy your build. That would be the great advantage of an item system like in D2. You are not only looking for green and red arrows on the item, not only wether items are generically better or not, but have gear for specific situations, in which it is good. If you have this diversity, you can specialise your gear enough, not to be dependent on having super endgame stuff for you build to work.

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To be fairly honest. Diablo 2 end-game content is fast pace as crazy, especially in softcore.
teleporting with any character through a map to get to dia/baal get quick xp and doing it mostly for ilvl that pretty much done in mere seconds.
In fact… starting the game, login, creating a game and getting into action right off the bat is done in less then 40 seconds.
Most modern games take at least 2~5 minutes.
And getting to a boss in diablo 3, that also takes several minutes Especially Rift Guardians.
i’d say on average most people make it to a boss in diablo to in the 10-12 minutes.
as for 10-12 minutes on end-game diablo 2 characters. 2 to 3 games of full runs
Pits lvl1, Andy, mephi, Diablo all the ilvl 80+ drop zones. 3~4 minute run.
So… i halfy? agree with your point.
Diablo 1 is slow paced yes.
Diablo 2 Early game is very slow pace i can completely agree BUT!
Diablo 2 end-game is nowhere near slow pace.

But yes, Diablo 2 is a Very brutal hard game from the start.
Rakanishu who has lightning when you hit him (he protects the cairn stones)
since you have no resistances early game it really hurts and can easily kill you.
This is why a lot of speed runners or people with extensive knowledge of the game alway hunt for topaz, and shield with 3 sockets for early game so they can get those lightning resistances early on because act 2 on a new solo run character is absolute hell to go through with the beetles.

The core of what is missing here the itemisation.
Synergy within items and builds such as having runewords that give +1 to whirlwind or +1 to zeal or +1 to bear form.
Creativity, The fun part of Diablo is Creating your own character. that is part of the creativity, The same goes with loot.
Crafting, creating runewords, while having a very harsh drop rate in this game, runes are rare, most people never even see from ohm up to zod drop. they trade with people who get them from bots who run 24/7.
this is literally what makes a RPG an RPG.
People should look more towards those classic games, Look at Quest for glory.
You play your own style you could train lockpicking or get more mana or have brute force. these are all those kind of options that make your character you.
This is what Diablo 2 has and is missing in Diablo 3, This is solely why Diablo 3 failed. and Diablo4… is going into that direct its not RPG anymore… its a mmorpflbikfur its oversimplified nonesense without meaning.
Diablo2 the meaning was you’d get to the end. Alive if possible. it was hard brutal every corner had a challenge.
Pygmy dolls that run at crazy speed to you and then explode!
Souls that were invisible and they did crazy lightning damage and then you saw them but is too late to react to them.
its these fine happy little accidents that made diablo 2 a perfect gem for what it is.
oversimplifying things isn’t always good because you take the choices away from the players. you rip the creativity out of the game.
Diablo 4 will be fun for a short time… because its new…

But in comparison to Diablo2 which has been out for 19 years, and has 20.000 players on Europe alone every single day after each seasonal reset.
that is not counting in the modded communities. PoD has 500~1000 players daily (on peak hours when both Eu and US are awake).
There is a more private community from pvpgn that has nearly 500 players they just avoid the bots and dupes and all the bot bull**** from closed battle dot net.
Then you had those guys from Ladderhall that pvp on open b dot net,
you have the LLD(low level duels) community always lurking around. Median XL.
Man to be honest… there is probably 100.000+ active diablo players each year. counting out the bots, or people that log in on a blue monday and then quit after 2 weeks.
There is no other 19 year old game in existence that has this.
The people that don’t like diablo is new blood, its too old. incompatible has issues
playing in windowed mode on 800x600 sucks.
Huge lack of content, beyond ubers and pendamonium event.

i’d bet. if blizzard would make a new expansion to this day for diablo 2 for 60 dollars/euros.
it would be wildly successful. 20million copies sold first 2 weeks.
i’d stick my hand in fire for that.
anyone that has ever played diablo 2 would instantly return just to have a look.
And it would make its own commercial in the gaming industry.

“20 year old Diablo 2 game gets a NEW EXPANSION!”
picture that, they won’t even need to market it the gaming industry would just do it for them.
they could build whole new engine for it, increase the resolution make it Fog-of-war like beyond 1024x724. so its super dark unless you have a crazy amount of +x light radius.

Sorry, i’m rambling on.
its just right there. for the taking! for blizzard!
and they go like… "“nope don’t want it. too much effort. we want to make console gamers happy since they are our biggest audience now pc-gaming dead.”

Sorry for the long post.

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Diablo II/Initial release date
June 29, 2000
“Soon my friend soon.”

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And please!!! Remove the Power Ranger transformations from char!
If i play with Barbarian i wanna a Barbarian. Not a Hulk with 3 eyes! In demo we can see Barbarian transform in ugly big guy with horns in his head!!! Why is this, if player dont have that kind of helmet???
If i create a Mage i wanna play with Magic. Not a Walking in the Air ghost!!!

If i wanna play with “Transformations” i play with Druid. Only in that char make sence.

Remove the “Transformations” from chars. We WANNA Diablo 4. Not teletubbies\powerRanger\Ninja transformations!!! Please!!!

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Trust me it will and will be played even when DIV be released and forgoten!