“There is no knowledge that is not power.” - Shao Khan
Hi, I am a fan of Blizzard and the Diablo franchise since the very first game and I am extremely excited that Diablo 4 is in the works and especially that Blizzard seems to be listening to at least some of the feedback this time around, since i feel like Diablo 3 was a major letdown in almost every possible sense and i REALLY want D4 to be the best game that it could possibly be.
The fact that D4 is being handled the way it is makes me hopeful enough to want to write this post and try to point out a few observations with regards to itemization which I feel are absolutely critical to D4’s long term success. I am from Serbia so English is not my first language and I hope you will bear with me for a bit.
Before I dive into a few matters of itemization and PvP - let me try to set one record straight and perhaps give you some food for thought: the notion that each system needs to be designed in a fashion that caters to the understanding of a “new player” is probably the single worst design philosophy you can have for a game that is going to be played for years and years to come. Think of it this way - someone who has been playing your game for 6-7 years is no longer a “new player” at that point. If you design each system in the game around players who will play the game for 3 months and quit - you are designing a game that will be interesting for 3 months exactly. And to a veteran ARPG player it might not be interesting at all even for a day if you get this part wrong.
Diablo, and other modern ARPGs which followed in its footsteps are first and foremost knowledge-based games. When you discuss sources of power, you always forget one major source of power - knowledge. A Diablo player feels pride in having knowledge of various systems and details, no matter how trivial, that will always put them ahead and enable them to create stronger characters. Instead of taking this aspect out, you should work towards making it even more pronounced.
You can still make the game fun and rewarding to people who will enjoy the campaign and then perhaps do some of the end-game content for a few months - but please make sure to have a chunk of content that has a feel of “exclusivity” to it. You have to design content for players who want to play the game for years. Instead of oversimplifying each system to cater to “new players”, how about trying to design systems that are interesting and engaging enough for even new players to WANT to understand and figure them out and then EVERYONE is going to be rewarded!
***** Itemization:
The updates regarding itemization have made me hopeful for the franchise for the first time in a while. I think you are heading in the right direction - please keep brainstorming ways to add complexity to the game, even if completely superficial. You need to give players something to sink their teeth into! The system with three powers which act as a requirement for unlocking modifiers is not the most amazing design I’ve ever seen, but it sure beats having nothing interesting at all. The more of these interconnected systems - the better. The only concern is that the source of these three stats is items only - this could be a huge problem since you have no flexibility like you had in Diablo 2 where if you couldn’t get say, enough Strength from items, you could still get it from the points you gained through leveling, charms, and gems.
Make sure to allow for this flexibility in D4 - at the very least, give the players the ability to gain these new stats through gems, sacrificing use of runewords which are going to be good for PvP. An interesting choice to make right there.
The thing you are doing with rare items and having them upgradable is great! It’s important to try and make all item types potentially useful. This means that any colour but orange is not instantly a “trash drop” in a players mind. Here are some ideas how to accomplish this:
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White items:
Make each craftable Legendary correspond to a white base item type, and make recipes use their corresponding white base as one of the required ingredients for crafting. Other ingredients could be a generic “essence” item that you get from breaking down Blue items and the final ingredient could be a legendary “organ” type of thing that you get from numerous bosses in the game. This way you could potentially get excited about seeing just the right white item that you need for your craftable. -
Magic items:
See above. If you make it so that magic items are exclusively used to break down into a component that is used for each crafting recipe, this gives them a purpose.
In addition, you could limit the number of modifiers on blue items but allow higher rolls on them, and you can have them roll potentially unique combinations of modifiers. For example, you could have legendary items able to roll a single elemental resistance up to 30 as a rule, rare items a single elemental resistance up to 40 and magic items roll up to two single resistances up to 50. So lets say your build requires only a high Fire and Lightning resistance to cap those two and its complete - if you can find a Blue that has exactly that, forge it with a legendary power using one of those consumables and complete your build.
Its extremely important to have restrictions in terms of which stat can roll on which item slot, and to vary the amount of rolls and roll combinations based on rarity like in the previous example.
While on the topic of resistances, make sure that most items can roll only a single resistance or a couple of single resistances on them, requiring the player to mix and match in this way. “All resistances” is a very bad stat, and should be avoided, except for a handful of legendaries that could have a small amount of “allres” (lets say +15) just as a cool unique novelty. If “allres” is the norm like it was in D3, your choice becomes “do I want more allres or less allres” which is not even close to an interesting choice. Instead, whether an item with fire resistance is good for you or not depends on which resistances you already have which is a lot more interesting. This further makes it so that when choosing between two items to equip, knowing which one is better requires some intimate understanding of your own character, and you can’t get a clear-cut answer from a guide or a friend.
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Rare items.
I think you got this covered. By being able to upgrade Rares to include a legendary power is the best idea ever. You have to be careful that this doesn’t obsolete legendary items or make them feel less cool. Read on. -
Legendary items:
The current gig with Legendary items each having a spell effect or a proc is actually rather dull on its own, and you have to make sure to have interesting stats that give legendary items a unique identity. The “legendary effect” system is rather gimmicky and is a little more than adding damage and a cosmetic effect. The decision then again comes down to “do i want this thing that does more damage or this thing that does less damage”? That’s not really a choice.
Another thing that i think is very bad is having any sort of “smart loot” in relation to legendary items. The stats on a legendary item should not be unpredictable and random, sometimes granting mana and sometimes granting fury, for example. This completely destroys the unique identity that legendary items must have. One of the reasons D2 Uniques were memorable, was the fact that you could actually memorize their modifiers since they were static.
The biggest reason why it would be hard to remove smart loot is the fact that you forced having a different resource for each class, introducing five stats which are completely useless to all but one class each. If you simply replaced these with modifiers that universally increase resource regeneration or cutting down resource costs across all classes, you could get rid of that smart loot nonsense all together, most likely, and then carefully hand-craft legendary items with static combinations.
This is a typical D3 legendary item:
- Legendary power
- 5 random attributes
Not memorable. Please go for static attributes on legendaries so that players can learn which items have the things that their build needs. Knowledge is power.
Another important concern is that legendaries are not completely obsoleted by upgraded rares. To make sure legendaries remain relevant, make sure to create an exclusive pool of stats which can only roll on legendaries, giving them at least a niche use for certain builds.
Here are some interesting modifiers that you can consider adding to legendary item stat pools, in addition to other stats and the “legendary power”:
- Cannot be Frozen
- Cannot be Poisoned
- Cannot be Cursed
- Curse Reflect
- %damage Goes to Mana (or whatever your resource is)
- x% Lifesteal
- flat amount Fire Absorb
- flat amount Lightning Absorb
- Instant Block (no Block animation frames)
- Truestrike (your attacks cannot be Evaded)
You can also have interesting items that grant one powerful thing at the expense of another. Here are a few simple examples of such potential legendary items, one giving you a huge amount of hit points and lifesteal at the cost of disabling passive health regen, and the other increasing your physical damage taken but giving you other powerful things in turn:
~Offering of Blood~ (Chest Armor)
- 140 Armor
- +1000 Health
- +1% Lifesteal
- Cannot Regenerate Health Passively
- 2 Sockets
~Crown of Thorns~ (Helmet)
- 42 Armor
- +2 to All Skills
- +1 Talent Point
- +190-230 Thorns Damage
- +20-30% Fire Resistance
- Physical Damage Taken Increased by 10%
- No Sockets
In the case of the second item, you could find another item which decreases physical damage taken by 10% thus countering this negative effect.
***** A note on potions:
Here is a potential solution to removing cooldown from potions: limit the amount of potions you can carry to 12 at a time (perhaps have a legendary belt that increases this to 15). Also make them much harder to get but craftable. If potions are harder to come by, you will think of them as a valuable resource and will not want to spam out too many of them for a single fight.
***** A note on skill customization and progression:
When discussing character customization, you often list skills as a layer of customization on top of items and talent specialization. This is either ignorant or dishonest, since having the ability to eventually unlock each skill rank of each skill amounts to absolutely no customization or specialization.
Items have a potential to be a good source of customization, and talents seem a little underwhelming at the time, but skill customization/specialization is completely non-existent. I’m not saying that your must do something about this but at least be honest about it. Unless you limit the number of skill points one can obtain in a characters life-span, this is not a source of character customization.
It could at the very least be a source of character progression, though, given that you make it take months or years to unlock all ranks on a single character. Instead, I would rather limit it, and have more specialized characters as a result. Also, make sure not to have any of that “infinite progression” nonsense. Just have a progression that is slow enough for the vast majority of players not to reach the very end of it, thus making it “infinite” for 90% of players, if that makes sense. Examples: level 99 in D2, level 100 paragon cap in vanilla D3.
***** PVP Ideas:
Players can tag themselves as Hostile while in town, instead of turning Hostile against one player at a time. Game should prioritize putting hostile players in a layer together with other hostile players, so that non-voluntary PvP not the norm.
- Hostile players can attack and be attacked by other players
- Non hostile players will almost never see hostile players but there can be a small chance that this happens
- Hostile players drop blood coins on death
Looting blood coins adds this currency to your clan bank and it can be used to purchase 1 hour clan-wide buffs such as 50% Magic Find and other things that promote group play within a clan.
Players who belong in the same clan or group cannot hurt each other while hostile in open world, making it possible to have clan fights around world bosses.
I also hope 2v2 and 3v3 arena style PvP modes exist.
That mostly covers most of my concerns. Good luck developing D4 and I hope you take some of the itemization feedback to heart because this is going to be a crucial part of the game.
You have to get it right this time, Blizzard. You owe it to yourself and the fans. You are on the right track.
Peace out!