Hello everybody, this is my point of view about Diablo 4 , after what we have seen at Blizzcon 2019
I have a couple of question and a couple of considerations to make.
Topic 1
How difficult will be Diablo 4?
You will start at level 1…of course, starting with nothing and getting loot and experience little by little, so I would like to think about how difficult should be to progress into the game.
I would like to spend a considerable amount of time, between one and two months, playing the game before reaching the final challenge, the final Boss in the campaign. I am talking about playing 3-4 hours focusing on progressing each day.
I want a challenge, when I will start at level 1 I don’t want to oneshot monsters, I want to be scared of fighting big tough creatures. What I have in mind is that you will need to grind some gear even in order to fight the first elite pack on your path.
This consideration lead to a suggestion: Less monster density
Human mind has been shaped by evolution in order to remember only a restrict number of things and this included monsters. I think each enemy you fight should leave a memory, and to do so you need to encounter a limited number of monsters on your path. Be surrounded by 10 skeletons and not taking any damage will remove the emotions from the fight, no satisfaction to have slain them and no emotion during the fight, this event will leave no memories. What I would like to find in D4 are emotions in every fight. You find the first skeleton on your path, you are at level 1 and you will struggle to survive, we need to remember that this game is all about getting gear to progress into the game, so you fight the first skeleton, you kill him with difficulties, then you find a group of 5 skeletons and you know that in your actual condition you will die, depressing, isn’t it? But around you there is an entire world reach of opportunities and loot, so instead of going directly into the 5 skeletons you will start looking around for easier preys in order to find an item that will eventually increase your strength. This should happen every time you face a new enemy during the progression of the game.
Topic 2
Rewarding loot
If the enemies are difficult to kill, they should be worth it the time spent in order to kill them. This is another reason why will be important to fight less monsters. In this scenario each monster slain will potentially give you an upgrade on your gear. Killing 10 enemies in 10 seconds and having one item will leave you with frustration, the killing is not worth the time, let just skip them and go for the magic chest\boss\main event of the guest. Killing one monster in 10 seconds and dropping one item will leave you with opposite feelings, you have bitten a tough enemy and that single enemy has given you a reward for that single kill. This is even useful if you want to characterize the monsters in the story, less numbers, more time for detailed history of the enemies.
Different type of monsters=different type of loot.
What is the loot? The loot is something that the enemy has with him when you kill him. If you face a “fallen” is difficult to imagine that he has with him one of Baal legs ( a mythical item), he will more probably drop a pair of gauntlets (normal item) stolen from a dead warrior.
And if you kill Lilith or another unique monster what should you drop?
I think they should drop something unique.
We will take Lilith as an example…
If you look at her what do you think will be a unique drop from her, or we can say, what do you think you will take from her dead body?
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Unique mythical crown
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Unique mythical shoulders
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The legendary gem on her chest
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Her heart (mythical crafting material)
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Her blood (mythical crafting material)
To be clear, a unique item is an item that can be dropped only from one unique monster, is linked to that monster.
And this lead us to the next topic…
Topic 3
End game and end game loot
Why I should play the game over and over again?
We need to divide this topic in two sections:
1)What do we want: To become more powerfull
You slain monsters, you get loot (items and materials) you get stronger.
How?
At the moment we know that we have 4 things that will make our character stronger and stronger
- Gear
- Experience levels
- Skills points
- Talents tree points
GEAR
I think we all agree that this should be the major one.
Gear at the moment is divided into normal-magic-rare-legendary-set piece-ancient legendary-ancient set-mythical.
The progression of the gear at the beginning is quite fast, you find an upgrade often when you have normal items, magic and rare, then you start to collet legendaries and you will start to find upgrades less frequently, what can you do now to avoid waiting for the benevolence of the RNG God?
Crafting
Of course, there are different levels of crafting and here I will just give some examples of what I would like to be able to craft and how.
Blacksmith
With the blacksmith you should be able to craft normal, magic, rare, legendary and set items made specifically for the blacksmith like in D3, but with more choices and linked more on the characteristics of the classes than on the single skills.
For legendary and set items you will need to find a recipe.
Legendary recipes will give a legendary affix to whatever item you choose to craft, helmet, chest, pants…etc.
An example…
Legendary recipe: “King of the werewolves” Whenever you are in the werewolf form your companion wolves’ number is double
- normal+magic+rare material
- Gold
- 100 wolf fangs (legendary material) can be dropped by every wolf
- 1 head of the prime wolf (mythical material) dropped by a unique monster “The prime wolf”
Horadric cube
Horadric cube is meant to be use for crafting crazy magic stuff!
So, I have this idea that I want to share. We have runes, right? Runes are placed into sockets on a single item and will lead to a boost in the power of our build. This is an important part of customization of the end game build.
An example of how I would like to use the horadric cube:
Horadric cube secret recipe: “The power of hatred” the sockets on these items now are linked.
- Helmet (1-2 sockets)
- Chest (1-6 sockets)
- Pants (1-4 sochets)
- Heart of Lilith (mythical material)
- Heart of Mephisto (mythical material)
- Heart of Duriel (mythical material)
So now your helmet-chest-pants sockets are linked and you can form a longer rune word or use different combination of gems.
Experience levels
For me looking at the experience bar filling up and reach the next level with an upgrade in the power of my character is something rewarding.
I would probably like a simple system like in D2, a difficult level cap to reach but not really mandatory to be reached.
Skills and talents tree points
I think we can talk about this two together.
You will acquire more points levelling up your character and trough your gear.
I think for the end game is important to let the people gain a lot of this points.
How can you increase the skill or talents points when you have reached level 40 (actually the cap level for D4)?
The answer is with your gear and with the help of the horadric cube
An example:
Horadric cube secret recipe: “Power through knowledge”
- Any item
- 10 Horadric scroll (legendary material)
- 1 head of the Prime wolf (mythical material)
Now that item give you one point for the skill “Shred”.
2) Why do we want to become more powerfull:
PVP, uber bosses, customize dungeon, special events with leaderboards…I will talk about this in the second part…I am too exhausted now…
Thank you for your time guys and let me know your thoughts about D4 and my ideas.