This is not an RPG game, much like Diablo 3 (and i’m 99% sure that it’s the same engine so I will call it Diablo 3.5), rather it’s a isometric Action game, please allow me to elaborate:
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Character progression and stat allocation - one of the reason why Diablo as a franchise was so successful was the homage that it paid to D&D especially on the “Character Sheet” aspect of the game. Diablo 3.5 removes this concept and replaces it with a linear progression devoid of any customization/PERSONAL flavor, optimized for console with it’s “ease of use/accessibility”. When the Game makes the decision on how your character grows (stat allocation) all immersion is killed and the RPG aspect is killed. In addition to this there is also a practical problem, some might say - people are just going to find the min/max guide and copy it - well not all people first, second on the second beta I played Necro with Corpse explosion and minions, a build that does not require resources and my character was getting stat allocation on attributes that provided benefit to Essence, in other words I was getting less benefit per level, as fewer points from the overall pull provided a bonus. Paragon system will allow us to take attributes in a more customizable way, which supposedly will lead us to “cool” and “powerful” rewards… this is very sterile and unnecessary complex way to mitigate the lack of artificial character personalization, that only creates the illusion of meaningful progression and masks the badly design grind element of akin to a mobile game!
Let us allocate the stats ourselves. If you want a diverse way on how to get more stats beyond levels, give them to us like rewards from completing strongholds, this will add a small deterministic reward + the random lootbox that we currently get.
Play a bit of Last Epoch and steel some stuff from them as their game actually is an ARPG. You want the “Cool” and "“Powerful” rewards from the paragon system, well add them as a random scroll that unlocks a power from a world boss or something - again check the Blessing system from Last Epoch. -
Itemization - there is none at the moment, let me elaborate it by listing a real weapon from the game:
217 Item Power - arbitrary value/stat that has no real meaning to a human or any sort of fantasy element aka immersion killer
+6% to Close Enemies - 1st Condition
Lucky Hit - Up to a +1.5% chance to execute injured non-elites - 2nd Condition
3.5% Crowd Controlled Enemies - 3rd Condition
3.0% Damage to Vulnerable enemies - 4th Condition
How is this a fantasy item? This is a flow chard with 4 If/Then conditions… Looking at this extreme linearity it seems that you have created a system where your character has to have X amount of overall Item Power to be able to kill enemy/do content Y… Did you feed your math formula to ChatGPT and ask it to create randomly generated items based on a templates for body armor, weapon and jewelry?
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Skill tree - there is none, again please look at Last Epoch if you don’t want to look at Diablo 2. Also adding points to a skill has little to no power difference as you have reused the shitty D3 system, where the damage of your skill depends on the weapon that you use… My Sorcerer’s Fireball deals more damage, because she yields a two handed hammer that also weights 3 times as her…
Characters need specific attributes to be able to physically use gear, a two handed hammer should require a lot of strength be very slow and do heavy damage and roll high chances of affixes such a crushing blow for example.
A spell or skill should scale with something logical - again take a look at Last Epoch - Whirlwind/Warpath in LE scales with channeling, melee, physical and movement amplifiers, whereas Meteor scales with Elemental Damage, as well as Fire damage, Spell Damage, Chance to ignite etc. or simply put the Attributes and Magical Properties of an Item should provide bonuses to spells and abilities -
Seasons - This is some soft version of an MMO, having seasons makes less sense than the rest of the design decisions that you have made, no one will want to replay D4 Campaign every 3 months and do all side stuff and Lilith alters etc. By the looks of it it’s a big world (AI generated based on a single temple for the zone) better try to make it more alive with different events and monthly bonuses like that shake up the meta temporarily, but please try and understand that just because someone is doing Seasons, doesn’t mean that you have to have seasons in the game.
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The MMO Aspect - this was a huge mistake, it kills all kind of emersion… I was exploring the world and hunting for some events and saw one. Upon entering I started fighting against a mini boss like mob that was quite challenging for me (leveling a Barb at that time) and as I was like 1 or 2 min in the fight, focused not to get killed, some random Sorc comes and one shots the mini-boss, WTF… I mean there was loot but I wasn’t excited about it anymore and honestly I felt that I need to step away from the game, because all immersion was gone.
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Price, I feel that the game was priced in such a way to cover all the marketing campaigns around it… BTW those were useless, everyone knows what Diablo is, yes younger people might not have played D2 or don’t have very clear picture what was it all about but still the general perception of IP was quite positive and probably a bit mysterious and instead of capitalizing on that you decided to flood the market with marketing crap and achieved two things - 30 years + people got annoyed, especially by the armada of payed YouTube Videos with titles like D4 is revolutionizing X and then proceed to talk 15 min about something that exists in D3 and the young adults got on the hype train to only be presented with a soulless products that plays nice but bares no emotional attachment…
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