I agree with almost everything @DeathBringer posted! Thanks for the nice and huge sumup!
1 CDs absolutely!!!
2 yeah some remodeling and signature appearance would be nice - but ok - its no main issue for me
3&4 as this comes together for me! In D2 you could try to speedrun through the game but even on lowest difficulty there were good chances to reach a point were you moved forward through the “necessary storyline” too fast, therefor were underleveled and undergeared and had to go back as forward was not possible anymore. I realy want that challange back! IMHO there should be no chance to beat a higher level of difficulty before finishing the one before! And this should not be accomplished by just blocking the option but by making it difficult enough so you are forced to improve your char to get through the game!
5 agreed!
6 agreed!
7 mostly agreed! this is an issue we’ve had in D2 and D3. At some point (endgame) its getting a pure grind! no matter if you do a full day of mephi speedruns in D2 or griftruns in D3 its the same over and over again with a very small RNG chance that at one day you might get the one item you want… and at least for the people who cant/dont want to spent weeks and month of hours of farming this is getting anoying! So IMHO there needs to be a different way to get it! It shouldn’t be easy! But it shouldn’t be just pure grindtime!
8 yes the rng factor of D2 was nice, but I guess having an open world can be fun aswell and if the dungeons are really becoming rng that would be a nice solution for me! on the one hand we would have the open world which we will learn to know and on the other hand we would have dungeons where we never rly know what to expect.
9 --> 4
10 If we don’t get paragon but a lvl-cap like in D2 GRifts could stay in my opinion. As at some point (D2 ~lvl80-85) you don’t just get better by playtime but you do need to improve your skills and gear, it would be a good option that there is always sth challanging!
I’m looking forward on news regarding the progress of D4! At least ATM I get a feeling compared to D3 Bliz is moving in the correct direction! Keep it going!
BR
I largely agree with the author of the feedback. And also I was thinking about the pace of the game. In this form, everything suits me.
The only thing I would like a small (namely small) participation of the mounts in the battle. For example, the paladin’s (will it be in game, aha?) charge on a horse in a crowd of enemies with their scattering and/or stunning. And after applying this skill, the character would have already fought on foot. For the barbarian, it would be possible to make hooks that would catch several enemies and drag them to some distance, after which he would dismount.
P.S. Sorry for my English, it’s not perfect.
I have an idea of random events around the world of sanctuary where the ground splits apart and tough minions of hell come running out with unique elite mobs and once there all dead you can enter the dungeon to hell to do another event. Many things the devs could do with events like this.
Agree with everything except point #2.
And that is why you don’t tie core function to items. Skill trees provide the means to give core function to a player. If i as a monk want exploding palm I pick it from a skill tree. If i want to improve it I allocate more points into it. If I want the cold variant to do even more damage I can put skills into elemental/Cold skill. But there might be an item in the game Bill’s dagger of Awesome - Makes damage over time skills inflict all damage instantaneously.
Thats a good monk, customized by the player to be a exploding palm monk. Further specialized into cold. All directed by the player, involving decisions to allocate power as it was gained through a skill tree. And an item that would be desirable for many classes and would probably be incorporated into many builds.
I prefer that to the laundry list of must have items to create Uliana exploding palm monk. And until every item on the list is acquired it sucks. As soon as the list is complete a exponential increase in power.
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Just want to say that I agree with this very wise D2 veteran!
I didnt see you mention anything about augmenting gear? Another tedious job of leveling legendary gems as high as you can to add a main stat to gear. Without doing this, you can not compete competitively.
The games current state is like this, unless you have 8 hrs a day to farm paragons, GR’s and augments you wont be able to compete anywhere near the top of the leaderboard.
What is your thoughts on this?
the devs are going down the same rabbit hole that was d3 dev.
items with 1000+ damage with multipliers. check!
all the attributes the items have are specific for a build, like they are telling you what build you should do. check!
magic and rare can’t compete with the number of affixes of legendaries in late game. check!
All your damage comes from items. check!
where are the resistances and damage types?
from the updates I feel like I already bought this game back in 2012
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ppl seem to think attack is a dmg number, its not , if a skill does 200 dmg then u add 1000 attack that skill might do 250 dmg now. So its not a crazy dmg increase, also i noticed in the demo the legs had lower attack numbers to balance out the leg power.
I know I’m in the minority but I generally think there is too much nostalgia with D2 and look at the practicality of the changes in D3 as generally good. I played D2 from the start like everyone else and obtain every item possible including all the hacked items, runewords and so on. There are points that to me make D3 fail to itself… not to D2. Ultimately the nostalgia of D2 is way greater than it actually was. When it came down to it, only 2 things kept it going:
- Ladders (for those that cared – not me)
- PVP (which was my thing)
Other than that the game literally has no end game. We made something out of nothing because there was nothing else.
So back to D3 some of the pros:
- An obtainable level cap. This is actually a pro. Making it possible for all players to have access to all the same gear and skills is actually very good. It means there are more players at the top able to be creative, collaborate, and compete. It also means that the top players will be based on skill and not amount of hours played. Paragons muddy that of course – different problem.
- Being able to reconfigure your skills. Super important. How much I loathed accidentally selecting the wrong skill. Stupid. And then you have to reroll. But aside from that, build diversity and theory crafting is just that much better. And… who’s got the time for this rigidity.
- Combat smoothness was improved and D4… is so far slow and clunky. That said, again, I was unusual. I had a barb with an entire inventory of +5% run charms so I was faster than the servers at that time in PVP. Most people though I had hacks – not the point. PVP was really fast paced in D2. Don’t get the confused. Point is that slower is not necessarily better. I think D3 has a good pace when it is capped around 50-75%. Higher is just cartoonish slower is just sluggish.
- Items are easy to get. This again is a huge plus. The argument that the best uniques should be super rare actually hurts the game. The fact that it is achievable to make a decent build again adds to play style diversity. I’m enjoying that fact that I can play 10-15 different play styles. The ancient and primal items were actually a good touch to let hardcore players be noticeably better than casuals. IMHO the items with the best stats should be the hardest to get. Not necessarily that a specific unique item should be impossible to find. More on that below.
Where D3 failed:
- Sets should never have been the backbone of build design. In the earlier days of D2 and D3 the fun of every build being different because uniques and rares were the main focus made the game way more interesting and diverse. Both of them later went down a fairly silo’d path which was disappointing.
- Again in the earlier days of D2, rares could actually have better stats then uniques. I actually thought the premise of rares being stronger than uniques was great because it forced the best builds to ALWAYS be different. There was real excitement in getting a rare because no 2 rares were the same. If they combined the old rares + being able to imbue legendary powers on items… that would be really compelling.
- Last but not least… power modifiers in the 1000s… This one thing killed the entire game. It made the difference of one item be 10 torment levels. But more importantly it forced out every skill that was not tied to one of these bonuses. Early D3 was way more interesting that way because people always chose the skills they really liked for their play style and not the skills that were supported by items. There weren’t many builds that were grossly stronger than everyone else. Even now you can see how hard it is to balance the builds they do promote because a 50% change can jump 5 grifts when you apply all the crazy multipliers. It’s out of control. It appeared D4 was following this path of keeping the modifier down but I haven’t kept up with everything. The other problem with 1000%+ boosts is that it made it impossible to balance PVP. Without PVP it’s just grinding for numbers. Which… some people like… but PVP really was a huge part of D2 and it really brought all kinds of crafty people out with all kinds of tactics.
I don’t have much to say about some of the other complaints. They could go either way for me… like paragon levels, skill trees, attributes, cooldown… i mean, they were fine for me. People complain about paragons but in seasons they makes sense. In non-season less so. But that could have been mitigated by having non-paragon leaderboards as well.
And a final note… D2 was 20 years ago… I don’t have that kind time anymore. It is what is it. I tried PoE and realized I’m not going to drain my life into a 1 million skill tree. I think D3 offered a lot of great value for casual players while still giving hardcore players things to work on that are meaningful. Seasons, grifts, ancients, primals, paragons and so on. Sure there is always room for improvement. Saying it should be impossible to get to level 99 is just trading paragons for an old problem. The person with the most time will do the best rather than skill. There are hundreds of ways to make the game have progress. But like I said, you combine the old rare mechanics + better crafting and no more 1000% bonus and you have a real game again. It’s not that complicated. It is possible to make a game that is fun for casuals and hardcore players.
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I 100% agree with the OP.
But I do not follow you on your pros of D3.
1.2.4. - Altogether … challenge makes the virtual life (and the real life as well) interesting and entertaining. You have to spend time and effort to make things valuable. This thing does not change.
- Fast pacing makes game arcade. It is not immersive. Immersion is what made D1 and D2 legends … not just action.
I didnt read it all, but YES TO YOU SIR. I’m almost certain that everything you said is valid and wanna point out that: the items need to be more like D2 and fudge Crit runes. Sincerely fudge that system.
A bit late reply, but… the last thing I want in Diablo IV is complete random RNG item drops!
Have we already forgotten the launch of Diablo III ? It had total random RNG item drops. People got so frustrated and outraged by this (next to the cluster Eff up that is the Real Money auction house), that the game was dead in the water a couple months later!
Blizzard had to scramble and start on a complete loot revamp to revive the game!
It wasn’t until after they launched the loot revamp update, that the game spiked back into popularity!
Times have changed. People don’t have the time anymore to grind 18 hours a day, every single day to hopefully get an item drop they want in a month or two!
Same as people no longer have the time to spend 6-10 hours straight in a RAID dungeon in MMO’s.
I don’t mind rare loot drops and having to work for it! As long as when said item finally drops, that it’s actually for the Class I am currently playing.
Last thing I want in an ARPG is an Auction House, where you are forced to trade rare loot to get an item you want for your class.
All it does, is play straight into the hands of the RMT industry, creating a Real Money black market for items!
That is why Blizzard tried it first with the Real Money Auction House at the start of Diablo 3, to control the RMT business themselves. It outright backfired! and rightly so!
The rest of the stuff the OP mentioned, like Cool downs, look and feel of the game, etc. I can fully agree on.
To be fair, they were happily enjoying the profits their cut of every RMAH sale made until FinCEN changed international money-laundering / tax laws which would have made Blizzard responsible for too much stuff. Them wanting to avoid the financial hassle of tax reporting is why the AHs were shut down, not anything to do with player disappointment of loot availability.
I do agree though that I much prefer to find my own loot than farm currency to buy it from someone else who got it to drop. Heck, I’d even be happy with hard to obtain materials going towards a crafted item that has guaranteed stats, i.e. something you’re constantly working towards, rather than relying on RNG not being too capricious.
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Trading is kind of a headache.It encourages bots and duplicate systems and trade scammers.I suggest that they make it so every self found item can be repaired indefinitely like what we have now whereas every traded item has limited uses.Like say it loses durability on death and cannot be repaired.So its like only good for 30 deaths.This will keep “prices” low while you will always still be better off finding the item yourself.
I think D3 did a lot of things right.We already have all that materials towards a crafted item that has guaranteed stats.Its the reforge in the kanais cube.Its the convert set item on the kanais cube.Maybe they go a step further and you can convert your bracers with chance on hit to do 1000% thorn damage to boots with the same affix.That would make build diversity better since you now can equip other bracers and have that affix on boots where in general you might not have a good “choice”.
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You have many valid points, but there are a few i dislike, offensively.
For me spamming potions are clear sign of overly difficult content and unbalanced game. Content should be aimed toward adjusting gear and getting stronger in order to beat the game. Sure using a potion once or twice is ok, but D2 was IMO horrible in this regard.
Personal opinion. I love how they look.
Other than that I mostly agree with your points. 50% Maps of the in d3 are annoying since they impair movement and fluid behaviour. If the game slowed down this would have been less of an issue. Too slow isn’t great as well, for instance I quite enjoy 1 shotting stuff once in awhile. This should not count for end-game content.
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I dont get it, every D2 player complains about the pace of Diablo3, and everytime i check a stream of D2 i only see people Tping all over the map to speedrun something, way worst than a GoD DH can do in d3. In many of the points that you spoke about i agree but you need to understand that this game needs to be appealing to New and Olders players, there needs to be a middle ground or else the game will die fast, and the only ones playing would be the people that still play d2 and d3.
Diablo 2 was great, Diablo 3 is great. As others have said, a lot of people seem to confuse time spent with difficulty. I would love to play PoE but I don’t have the time that I used to be able to put into D2 20 years ago. Diablo 3 has it’s problems but clearly it was in a large sense a success, to say otherwise is delusional. You all wouldn’t be here if it was such a “failure”. Diablo 3 is undoubtedly fun, even now all these years later there is still mileage in it as evidenced by all the players returning for the start of each season.
That said, even if I personally could never commit the time needed to delve as deep as others I do think D4 should offer that possibility. Which is to say, there needs to be a good balance of D3 accessibility with a greater ceiling for a hardcore time sink (or complexity, whatever you wish to call it). Sets are likely the issue, they should perhaps be available for the casual player to strive for and achieve a viable (early) end-game build but perhaps their power should be toned down so the very heights of the game are only achievable through your own (or rather the community’s) experimentation with gear/skills etc.
After diablo 3 D2 is just too dated for me to boot up anymore, as much as I myself have nostalgia for it, I’d much rather player D3 with its more focused end game. People need to accept that D3 is a fantastic game in its own right and has much to recommend it. Blizzard should think carefully about jettisoning all of what made D3 also great.
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1.2.4. - Altogether … challenge makes the virtual life (and the real life as well) interesting and entertaining. You have to spend time and effort to make things valuable. This thing does not change.
3. Fast pacing makes game arcade. It is not immersive. Immersion is what made D1 and D2 legends … not just action.
That’s cool if that’s what you look for. What I’m saying is that D3 allowed everyone to get to a playable level relatively easy by both having a simple level cap to unlock and relatively easy drops. Then being able to configure your skills and swap gave was way more freedom to experiment and find out your favorite play style or chose the right play style for the job. Honestly, variety is way more fun. Playing 1/64th of a game because you are locked into a specific character and build is a waste of your time and money. And frankly you should value that more cause you only got so much of that.
As someone who played countless hours of D2 and WoW, I can say I personally don’t feel less fulfilled by this baseline. D3 just doesn’t have enough compelling endgame options for the “arcade” style as you put it to not look boring. They added Grifts which was great. Challenge rifts which was a joke… and then stopped. IMHO the best games are as they say easy to learn but hard to master. But again as others have said, don’t confuse hours spent with mastery and fulfillment. Or I should say find that ultra-rare drop that happens once a year is just boring luck. Why is that your ideal of fun? Your challenge should be PvE or PvP not PvRNG…
I find it super interesting to look at how creative the top players and theory-crafters are and being able try it out is very fulfilling. I’m personally hoping for a similar balance with more endgame options.
We don’t have to want the same things and that’s cool. We’ll just have to see what they produce.
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I don’t mind rare loot drops and having to work for it! As long as when said item finally drops, that it’s actually for the Class I am currently playing.
True. I don’t mind either but if it’s gonna be that difficult IMHO it should at least be tied to something specific like a certain boss or event. Not just random all day. Literally that’s what the cube solved for without them needing to put in real content to solve it. It really was a clever and cost effective dev option.