The itemization shown so far for D4 is terrifyingly bad

General Discussion
21

It’s pretty obvious that you both are keyboard warriors, and as much as it makes for an entertaining read, I suggest you both get back on track in your upcoming comments. That said, I agree that the itemization seems to be lacking greatly.
I came to this topic because I was worried about the issue, and was going to post my own topic unless I could find someone already discussing the issue.

So far I don’t understand the argument that complexity would off casual players? If that was the case then how the hell is it that PoE is, and continues to be so very successful, and that is even with a F2P business model ?;O

PoE is the perfect guiding light example when it comes to itimization, with constant changes in a game that has scheduled content changing events every third month for free on top of that.
Why is that possible for a F2P startup, but not for a multimillion$ established company like blizz?
I personally think it is because Blizzard proved with D3 that they are loosing their capability to make a world captivating enough for you to not care as a casual player, whether or not you need to learn the complexity to be good, or first, or ranked or whatever.
In PoE as a casual player, so much stuff is happening, but you can still enjoy the climb even just through the story alone, and then you have the time whilst doing that, to take a bite at the complexity along the way, and some things you spend time on, some you dont.
Every player is his/her own after all.

To say something positive I think at least they are finally moving in the right direction in regards to reintroducing a more complex socket system (runes), and also finally dropping the wimsyshire cartoon bs, returning to the theme roots we all know and fell in love with when we started our Diablo journey the first time.

And to those of you who didn’t play diablo 1 and 2 I just want you to know, that when some of us say we are worried it is because we still remember that first yellow drop from a random dungeon (hell sometimes even the first blue), and we remember that feeling of finding something special. The feeling of our character radically improving and changing. We wish to feel that again, and we wish that for you as well! Believe us when we say: “we wan the best for us all, you included”

So yea all in all, I’d definitely buy it if it shows some promise to finally adding some more complexity to the game again in regards to more tierlevels of gear quality, as well as more varieties of stats, more alike to PoE.

What do you guys think?, remember don’t be a prick :smiley:

22

I think a complex game like D2 can still be enjoyable for casual players. Just explain in tutorials, how for example “hit recovery” and other mechanics work… People are not dumb and most of them have fun thinking about what they are doing. Problem with lots of deep RPGs is the lack of explanation for casuals, because hardcore fans want to find out by themselves.

Well, then just give a comprehensive, optional tutorial…

23

I highly doubt that itemization that was shown in Blizzcon is finalized. I wish to say that I don’t believe that its only “hardcore” fans of ARPG that likes some complexity in their gameplay.

24

Maybe the term “Casual gamers” is an empty shell with everybody putting a lot of sense into it?

We all expect “Casual Gamers” to be some people that want their hand held through the entire game, not experiencing any frustrating moment, and without having too much of a choice to do.
Some people say there are maybe 80% casual gamers…

I think that people corresponding to that exaggerated caricature are in fact less than 5%.
People aren’t dumb. There’s just some of them that won’t have pleasure to do the math beneath a point and find the perfect optimized character.

I agree with someone who said something like this :
When a game is good, everybody talks about it and plays it and everybody, even the players that aren’t from the playerbase for that game, will give it a shot. So the game has to be good.

People don’t want the game to be a walk in the park. They want to have the feeling of having achieved something.
The only probleme is that we all have a different definition of achievement, considering our own perception of ourselves.

But I understand the need for this term “Casual”, we need to speak about the game corresponding to everyone needs, even the less experimented gamers.

But in fact instead of talking about a game that should fits to casual gamers whatever they are, we should say : The game should be accessible to a vast audience.

Accessibility ≠ Complexity
If well guided, and if there is a good learning curve, you can obtain more from people you thought wouldn’t tackle this kind of complexity at first.

Accessibility ≠ Difficulty.
These two are just a bit correlated, but not that much really.

The game should be deep, and polished, with a lot of room for self improvement.
The game should offer different layers of satisfaction, so everybody would find a point where they get satisfaction back from their investment in time and efforts.

And I think, whatever the complexity of the base game, you’ll always find people to make tutorials and share builds and such on the internet, for those that don’t want to do the math, but still want to roll over the mobs in the highest difficulty.

2 Likes
25

Still awaiting blizz for confirmation that they’ll actually try somewhat to satisfy people looking for depth this time.

26

To this alone i can add somthing key word beeing YOU and WHE

YOU dont want us making math equasions on how gear works but WHE want that. Same goes for YOU trying to force us to play the game as you want.Some like to play only crafting, some like to play only tradeing, some like to play the whole game let us decide what whe want just give us the options to do so. Simple as that for achiving a great game.Im a meta crafter in Poe i maby play 1-1,5 months of a league till i min-max my character after that its meta crafting and why??? becouse i enjoy it.Other play the whole league top to bottom and they enjoy it. Dont enforce the playstile YOU want when whe pay you for a product that WHE enjoy , YOU may enjoy it your own way other have other plans. Think ive sed it all.

1 Like
27

Yea, I truly hope not. Everything looked boring but I mean they had to reveal us something so probably they didn’t even really touch items yet.

28

The main issue here is they make the mistake (as do most players) of thinking casual = stupid.

It doesn’t, it just simply means they don’t play lots of hours… Thats all it is. doesn’t indicate skill levels or their intelligence.

Making things too simple is just as boring for any casual player as it is for anyone who classifies as hardcore. Just gives casual players even less reason to play the game when they get the time.

3 Likes
29

Well I hope at least they really go away from the D3 model where the whole build was based upon your weapon damage and having the right items that synergize together with doing millions or even billions of damage. Once you had them T16 is a walk in the park. Without just forget it.

I hope they will go back to a situation where at least 50% of the damage of the character comes from the level and the skill tree. That this can be enhanced with various combinations of items where no combo is 20 times better as the rest so there is only one often boring play style per class or maybe two that are often still based upon partly the same items and skills.

Now these can easily be more complex to understand, as long as they are easy enough to use and try so you get a feel for the complexity over time and what you like to play and that all those styles are also mostly viable. Not as in D3 you play this style with these items or just go home.

3 Likes
30

If Blizzard wants a game that’s easy to balance and where PvP is fun, they have to go away from the weapon damage model and just use the D2 model where skill points were what mattered. With weapon damage and the D3 model they’ll have the same problem with powercreep as D3 did.

2 Likes
31

They have already said that they will be making Legendary Items equal to or even better than set items. That is so far a step in the right direction into making build diversity far better than it is in D3.

32

Not if one or two legendaries are still way better as the rest and gives you 400 times more damage and survivability as others. The problem with D3 is the basis that damage is calculated on, more as the items as such. Though an Ilvl itemization is more fun in my eyes as the D3 way, same items all during the game and for same level all the time.

Then again that did make sense for D3 that is an action game with very little RPG elements. I hope D4 will go back to being first a RPG game with loads of action elements though and yeah that means also a much more diverse item base and way less impact of items on your build, instead as in D3 them defining your build.

1 Like
33

But this is precisely what Blizzard intends to avoid in Diablo IV.

They want to try to avoid the power creep of Diablo 3 by trying to make a more evenly balanced legendary items base. I think the said something along the lines of they want to avoid creating BIS (Best-In-Slot) items that immediately void the very existence of all other items.

34

They will fail at that though if implement the same style of basing to much of the powers off item damage. There are always and will always be some outliers and if all the damage is based of that as a base it will always be those few items that will rule and their combination. You can only stop that a bit by basing big part of damage on player level, not being sure you will be able to drop a certain item at all in your game and making respeccing of skills not super easy. All things that are there in other RPG’s.

1 Like
35

or you want that your franchise is known for their not casual and quality games, u can sell 1 million dacias or 10000 porsche carrera! i think the 2 companies get their bennefits and have their sector very clear, just blizzard was blizzard now activision!!