Diablo IV - The Real Official Thread

It’s likely this won’t be out for 3-4 years. This of course brings out the rumors and speculations out in full force.

It all goes down easier if you have a wait and see approach. I expect the game to mature a lot and get excellent fidelity in the final product. But even if they don’t, I’m not buying until reviews come in anyway really pushing the wait and see angle.
 
It’s likely this won’t be out for 3-4 years. This of course brings out the rumors and speculations out in full force.

It all goes down easier if you have a wait and see approach. I expect the game to mature a lot and get excellent fidelity in the final product. But even if they don’t, I’m not buying until reviews come in anyway really pushing the wait and see angle.

While I'm not saying you are incorrect, I always thought those intro cinematics were done pretty close to the finished product, if only so they depict stuff that is still in the game as this tends to shift alot during developpement, but who knows.
 
I'm just hoping they still allow oddball resolutions like in D3.

I'd hate to lose the ability to play in 3840x1080
 
Just fired D3 up for the first time in ages. Still able to cruise through T21 or whatever the hell the top end is with my demon hunter
 
They need to go full steam ahead on this thing and get it out in two years, it's absurd that they're not pushing way harder to get it done, looks like the best product they've had in years.
 

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It’s likely this won’t be out for 3-4 years. This of course brings out the rumors and speculations out in full force.

It all goes down easier if you have a wait and see approach. I expect the game to mature a lot and get excellent fidelity in the final product. But even if they don’t, I’m not buying until reviews come in anyway really pushing the wait and see angle.

I can't think of any game that was first shown and playable 3-4 years before being released.

18 months is far more realistic. They're giving themselves room for delays and managing expectations. 3-4 years would make revealing it now utterly pointless
 
I can't think of any game that was first shown and playable 3-4 years before being released.

18 months is far more realistic. They're giving themselves room for delays and managing expectations. 3-4 years would make revealing it now utterly pointless

You haven’t been paying attention and you don’t know your history.
History: Diablo 3 was announced in June 2008 and wasn’t released until May 2012 (with the beta is 2011). One month less than 4 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_III#Development
Paying Attention: during Blizzcon they explicitly stated that: "this game is not coming soon. Not even Blizzard Soon”. An 18 month timeline would be "Blizzard soon" by any and all accounts.

This game will not release within 18 months.

EDIT: Having something playable is a narrow view as well. "Blizzard Dota" was "playable" in 2010, but didn't "fully release" or become HotS until 2015. I'm certain they are saying what they are saying because there isn't a lot done past what was shown. Which was a ten minute max demo run.
 
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Lack of respecs is the problem. The tree is huge and new players have no idea what is important or not.

Huh? You get 20 respec points as quest rewards and there's literally a currency for respeccing passive points.

It's not a game you can just jump into without having a clue what you're doing, but what ARPG can you do that for?
 
Diablo 3 :ROFLMAO:.

Sure, there's no real penalty for respeccing, but even so, you can't just pick things at random and just throw on whatever gear and expect to be successful.

Hell, if anything, I would say the gear and gem synergies in POE are much more complex than the passive tree.
 
Sure, there's no real penalty for respeccing, but even so, you can't just pick things at random and just throw on whatever gear and expect to be successful.

Hell, if anything, I would say the gear and gem synergies in POE are much more complex than the passive tree.
The last time I played Diablo 3 was on a Seasonal hardcore character I knew nothing about (Necromancer) and I was able to get up through Torment VII with nothing but found gear (no crafting or rerolling) and picking skills I thought sounded good.
 
"A return to darkness" D2 had plenty of goblins in Kurast, not exactly scary or dark. Sorceress looks like Princess Jasmine.
 
a Seasonal hardcore character I knew nothing about (Necromancer) and I was able to get up through Torment VII with nothing but found gear (no crafting or rerolling) and picking skills I thought sounded good.

smh

This is exactly why I don't touch D3..
 
smh

This is exactly why I don't touch D3..
To be fair I understand the appeal of the game of being able to just jump in. But there is also a serious difficulty curve spike past Torment VII that does require you to play the RNG system to get optimized gear. I died the moment I stepped into Torment VIII with that Necromancer. The one time I made it to Torment XIII was after I had been spending countless hours feeding the Horadric Cube, farming mats and rerolling my set items to get the optimal loadout. It felt good once I got there, but I felt like I had wasted too much time getting there for not a whole lot of payoff, which is why I quit. I don't understand the mindset of those who push even further past Torment XIII.
 
To be fair I understand the appeal of the game of being able to just jump in. But there is also a serious difficulty curve spike past Torment VII that does require you to play the RNG system to get optimized gear. I died the moment I stepped into Torment VIII with that Necromancer. The one time I made it to Torment XIII was after I had been spending countless hours feeding the Horadric Cube, farming mats and rerolling my set items to get the optimal loadout. It felt good once I got there, but I felt like I had wasted too much time getting there for not a whole lot of payoff, which is why I quit. I don't understand the mindset of those who push even further past Torment XIII.

I'm not sure what's changed but the last two or three seasons I've been able to get my Wizard characters up to Torment 16 before season's end. The current season I'm at Torment 8-9 with my Demon Hunter. The changes they made have allowed you to progress quite nicely.

It just gets old after several years but the season's have made it better. Time for e new Diablo.
 
Sure, there's no real penalty for respeccing, but even so, you can't just pick things at random and just throw on whatever gear and expect to be successful.

Hell, if anything, I would say the gear and gem synergies in POE are much more complex than the passive tree.

There's an entire subset of players that don't seem to actually like ARPGs, they just like action games where they feel OP. D3 is perfect for these players because of the runaway power levels and because there are no concrete choices to make.

For seasonal play they literally give you a set with such astronomical damage values that it kinda does ensure that you can just throw them on and be successful. Here's a random WTF patch note:

Barbarian

Getting into Path of Exile is not hard: you just pick a class and go. Literally the first thing you do in the game is pick up a weapon that can link your default skill to a support gem, and then they give you a support gem in a shiny chest in that same starting zone. Whatever gems they give you will be supported by your starting position on the passive tree (melee damage, bow damage, various defensive options, etc.).

But many players are afraid to play the game and risk "wasting" their time by building even one shitty character. 20 minutes playing an ARPG is "wasted time" while 20 minutes spent playing a battle royale and not winning is just gaming. *shrug*
 
It's going to be so different by the time it comes out. This build they showed is really more of an advertisement IMO.
 
To add onto what has been said and also my own previous statements and posts:
I'm certain there is a lot yet to be done and what we saw was tiny in comparison to what has to be completed.
As an example we saw zero quests being completed and I think it's probably not even possible to complete a quest in the game yet. That isn't to say that those things haven't started to be designed or thought up yet, but the mechanics of them working in game are likely not even working. (Yes I realize they showed you could "get" quests" but there is a big difference in programming between just talking to an NPC and all the checks necessary to complete a quest and well actually doing the quest itself).

Almost all the demo was centered primarily around combat. Showing the "world event" where you can team up with 15-30 other players was in comparison easy to program and design for in comparison with doing a lot of the other mechanics. It essentially was just programming routines for one mob (as well as graphic assets) and having it scaled to fight that many opponents. I think it's likely that at least some of the combat mechanics that were shown will make it to the final product. Even if the way you get them and when you get them will be vastly different (it's unlikely that a beginning character will start off with 5 skills with meteor being among them as an example).

-Creating all the map routines I think will be more complex for Diablo IV. Hopefully has learned from D3 that their tile based approach still lead to the randomly generated portions of the game still feeling samey. I'm sure that area of the game will be an undertaking for some time as they may be working with actually having 3d generated locations that are of course controlled via AI to have specific routines instead of tiles allowing for more diversity. If they aren't doing that I would say that's a missed opportunity now 10 years on, but for sure they must know that having samey environments is undesirable and would feel like a failure if not addressed.
-I imagine that quests will likely be overhauled a lot as well. As they're learning that people aren't particularly interested in fetch quests but they also want to have more branching than just the main story line which more or less is a race to the finish. D1/D2 had more branching than D3, albeit both of those games didn't have a lot of quests in general (D1 with barely over half a dozen in total).
-I'm sure there is a lot more to do with combat. They might be done with the design phase of combat. But there likely still has to be all the programming, animation, and graphics design assets that must be completed. That is in addition to however the various skill trees will work. They showed what it looks like, but allowed zero interaction with it. I assume that's mostly because it isn't done yet. And the associated skills (although being designed) have not been actually programmed in at all.
-Itemization probably also has to be done. I'm sure they've barely scratched the surface with that.
-The face custom creator also likely needs to be completed. I'm guessing the two face types allowed in the demo will be replaced with a full custom face creator (they did mention already in the streams that you'll be able to choose any skin color you want to be more inclusive). I'm uncertain if they will allow both genders for all classes, but I will assume so because Blizzard wants to be seen as "non-sexist and inclusive". The pre-made faces were likely just assets directly made by hand by modellers and isn't "backed" by a full face creation engine.
-Locations still need to be finalized. Everything right now is a bullshot and a lot of it is hard programmed locations like towns. I'm sure parts of tile sets are completed but only parts.
-The same for monsters and monster types. We saw maybe 10. And that's even including the reel Blizzard put together, not just the demo.

All in all what we saw was really just a tiny teaser. They didn't show more because there isn't more to show. Those saying 18-24 months I think are being optimistic. The fun game will be revisiting posts in a few years and seeing who's right.
Blizzard has never been fast on these things. Even Diablo Immortal which is "just" a mobile game was announced, shown, and even demoed to streamers last year still hasn't come out yet. That may be in part due to the climate of how gamers took the Immortal announcement, but I'm also certain that it's because it's much like this game, that what was shown was just a VERY small vertical slice and a lot of the coding and assets still have to be made even if large portions of the design document are completed (which I imaging is also still getting worked through).
So, I'm all for talking about D4. Dare I say I'm excited for an update. But I also don't expect to have anything to talk about really for a few years other than conjecture and best guesses.
 
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I'm stoked for Diablo 3 Season 47 in 2022 while we wait for this to become a remote reality. :whistle: Then when it launches, waiting 3 more months for the servers to be accessible. /remembers D3 launch failure
 
Do you think a true pvp mode will be nice to see in D4?

D3 PVP is a joke and more of just a time killer until you're ready to get back to grinding.

I'd like a nice queue system for PvP.

POEs random PVP areas were a fun way to switch up the tone. Unfortunately with the lack of people in each zone, it was also pointless IMO.
 
There's an entire subset of players that don't seem to actually like ARPGs, they just like action games where they feel OP. D3 is perfect for these players because of the runaway power levels and because there are no concrete choices to make.

For seasonal play they literally give you a set with such astronomical damage values that it kinda does ensure that you can just throw them on and be successful. Here's a random WTF patch note:



Getting into Path of Exile is not hard: you just pick a class and go. Literally the first thing you do in the game is pick up a weapon that can link your default skill to a support gem, and then they give you a support gem in a shiny chest in that same starting zone. Whatever gems they give you will be supported by your starting position on the passive tree (melee damage, bow damage, various defensive options, etc.).

But many players are afraid to play the game and risk "wasting" their time by building even one shitty character. 20 minutes playing an ARPG is "wasted time" while 20 minutes spent playing a battle royale and not winning is just gaming. *shrug*

PoE is a different beast honestly. I remember D2 at least the trees felt intuitive. The bottom tree skills were generally the strongest and you couldn't really go wrong with maxing the bottom tree skills (things like Hydra, Frozen Orb, Bone Spirit, Hurricane, etc). Then you have some shit like PoE where nodes SOUND good but in reality without heavy item investment your build will be total ass or could be total traps.

I'm really hoping D4 goes back to it's D2 roots with a bit of D3 arcadey feeling sprinkled in.

And lastly Diablo has always been the better multiplayer experience in the ARPG genre. PoE multiplayer? lol. A joke honestly. But that's fine for certain types of players but it doesn't jive with the "Diablo" experience imho (grabbing a group of friends to go slay demons)
 
So without sounding mean, we're talking about moving this to the Video Card section?

The Diablo 4 thread? Not sure what that has to do with video cards.
My response? It’s direct conjecture and subjective opinion on Diablo 4 development which also doesn’t have anything to do with video cards.

I guess forum mods can do whatever they want for lols.
 
Do you think a true pvp mode will be nice to see in D4?

D3 PVP is a joke and more of just a time killer until you're ready to get back to grinding.

I'd like a nice queue system for PvP.

POEs random PVP areas were a fun way to switch up the tone. Unfortunately with the lack of people in each zone, it was also pointless IMO.
I absolutely don't care about PvP in my ARPG, so it doesn't matter to me. PvP in POE is nothing but fleas jumping after each other constantly.
 
Do you think a true pvp mode will be nice to see in D4?

D3 PVP is a joke and more of just a time killer until you're ready to get back to grinding.

I'd like a nice queue system for PvP.

POEs random PVP areas were a fun way to switch up the tone. Unfortunately with the lack of people in each zone, it was also pointless IMO.

Even though it was meant as an April fools joke and tongue in cheek commentary on the gaming industry, the Path of Exile: Battle Royale mode was actually really fun and is a form of PVP that I would actually play if it was further developed.

Unless your ARPG has completely separate PVP balance (either through a completely different game mode or just a different ruleset for skills when they interact with other players) then PVP will just not be that interesting, and that's a lot of extra work for something that may be appealing to only a small subset of players.

 
Even though it was meant as an April fools joke and tongue in cheek commentary on the gaming industry, the Path of Exile: Battle Royale mode was actually really fun and is a form of PVP that I would actually play if it was further developed.

Unless your ARPG has completely separate PVP balance (either through a completely different game mode or just a different ruleset for skills when they interact with other players) then PVP will just not be that interesting, and that's a lot of extra work for something that may be appealing to only a small subset of players.




I didn't even know BR was in the game.

I just remember one of the chapters(forrest area) had a small section that you could pounce on players once you enter it.
 
I didn't even know BR was in the game.

I just remember one of the chapters(forrest area) had a small section that you could pounce on players once you enter it.

It was only available for April 1st, 2018, so it's not in the game now. There's an interesting write-up on it here. Probably the most amusing part of it was that they committed to the joke and actually changed the game's Steam logo to include the "Royale" title.

Our plan was to make the following changes to Path of Exile:
  • Create a gigantic island with a bunch of tilesets jammed together.
  • Populate the island with monsters and chests full of items.
  • Use the existing cut-throat rules combined with a shrinking play area.
  • Add support for up to 100 players per game instance. The existing limit was 32, as we used to pack the visibility data for a tile into a 32-bit integer.
  • Make some server optimisations to distribute the large Royale instances over servers uniformly.
  • Add a quick spectator mode for players who have been eliminated. (This is different to the type that would be used for race events in the future)
  • Repurpose an existing but unreleased Rhoa Dinner hideout decoration as a prize.

So the point is that PVP can actually be pretty fun in ARPGs, but the let's-zeal-each-other-in-the-face-with-BotD-zerkers-until-someone-dies "duels" from D2 are probably the wrong way to go about it unless that's the shallow depth you're looking for.
 
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