Diablo IV Will Be Heavily Influenced by Diablo II

Megalith

Megalith

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According to an article regarding “the past, present, and future of Diablo,” Blizzard is currently hard at work on the fourth title, which has already gone through one major revision. While Diablo IV was initially conceptualized as an over-the-shoulder action game reminiscent of Dark Souls, the team behind “Fenris” is now aiming for something truly worthy of the Diablo name by reverting to one of the franchise’s most popular entries for inspiration.

“There’s a lot of people who felt like Diablo III got away from what made Diablo Diablo in terms of art style and spell effects,” said a current Blizzard employee, adding that Fenris is aiming to look more like the beloved Diablo II. Said another: “They want to make this gross, make it dark, [get rid of] anything that was considered cartoony in Diablo III… Make what people were afraid of in Diablo II, but modern.”
 
I liked Diablo 2 because:
- the skill tree system didn't punish you for NOT picking a particular path. Yes some enemies had immunities/high res against certain stuff, but there were still ways to get past them if you were running solo.
- AN ACTUAL CUSTOMIZABLE SKILL TREE
- even some trash drops could get you decent gold
- gold actually was useful
- yes it was a grindfest, but you rarely ever had a run that left you empty handed with nothing but trash drops. So it didn't FEEL grindy. Even if you didn't need something now, you could use it later or sell it for the gold.
- Crafting didn't leave you with random garbage or nothing to show for it. (like some MMO's where you grind for crafting mats, hit the button and POOF! Absolutely nada thanks to RNG)

When Diablo 3 first dropped, I played a few hours into it and....found none of those things. Has this changed? I might actually fire it up again if it has.
 
SamuraiInBlack said:
. . . . When Diablo 3 first dropped, I played a few hours into it and....found none of those things. Has this changed? I might actually fire it up again if it has.
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Nope, it never changed. Every time that I check it is still just a pointless grind. :(
 
Blizzard is slowly strangling in its marriage to Activision, I somehow doubt their reputation is slavagable.
 
Twisted Kidney said:
Blizzard is slowly strangling in its marriage to Activision, I somehow doubt their reputation is slavagable.
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I feel like your typo is almost intentional. Inferring blizzard is a slave to Activision. I do think Activision has become what they fought back in the Atari era. Corporate boardroom line up is a bunch of ray kassars.
 
Just tell me there's no micro-transactions and you have a deal. No loot boxes, no micro-transactions, no nothing not even cosmetics cause the moment you do this you make the game grindy and nobody likes to grind. NOBODY!
 
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SamuraiInBlack said:
I liked Diablo 2 because:
- the skill tree system didn't punish you for NOT picking a particular path. Yes some enemies had immunities/high res against certain stuff, but there were still ways to get past them if you were running solo.
- AN ACTUAL CUSTOMIZABLE SKILL TREE
- even some trash drops could get you decent gold
- gold actually was useful
- yes it was a grindfest, but you rarely ever had a run that left you empty handed with nothing but trash drops. So it didn't FEEL grindy. Even if you didn't need something now, you could use it later or sell it for the gold.
- Crafting didn't leave you with random garbage or nothing to show for it. (like some MMO's where you grind for crafting mats, hit the button and POOF! Absolutely nada thanks to RNG)

When Diablo 3 first dropped, I played a few hours into it and....found none of those things. Has this changed? I might actually fire it up again if it has.
Click to expand...
Gold had value?
 
Played Diablo I, wished it was longer but loved the gameplay/mechanics. Played Diablo II, took longer than I expected to play through and some parts were a bit drawn out but overall loved it. Played Diablo III, kept playing hoping it'd get better. It didn't. It's like it lost its magic somehow. Hopefully they can get it right back on track with Diablo IV but the video game industry anymore seems to not be able to recreate/recapture that "magic" older games had.
 
That is what fans want. So I’m doubtful they’ll go with it.

On the other hand reading that it was conceptualized as being over the shoulder Dark Souls esque (which is a dumb idea) but it made me think something similar to Hellgate London could be interesting if done right.
 
SamuraiInBlack said:
I liked Diablo 2 because:
- the skill tree system didn't punish you for NOT picking a particular path. Yes some enemies had immunities/high res against certain stuff, but there were still ways to get past them if you were running solo.
- AN ACTUAL CUSTOMIZABLE SKILL TREE
- even some trash drops could get you decent gold
- gold actually was useful
- yes it was a grindfest, but you rarely ever had a run that left you empty handed with nothing but trash drops. So it didn't FEEL grindy. Even if you didn't need something now, you could use it later or sell it for the gold.
- Crafting didn't leave you with random garbage or nothing to show for it. (like some MMO's where you grind for crafting mats, hit the button and POOF! Absolutely nada thanks to RNG)

When Diablo 3 first dropped, I played a few hours into it and....found none of those things. Has this changed? I might actually fire it up again if it has.
Click to expand...


Diablo 3 has changed significantly since vanilla. The game is in a great spot! I've been playing since vanilla.

I'm super excited about D4. I'm actually considering booting up D2LoD again.
 
I wouldn't mind a 1st/3rd person sandbox rpg in the same universe with a little less item grind. Doesn't have to have a "4" in the title either.
</blasphemy>
 
SecretStash said:
I wouldn't mind a 1st/3rd person sandbox rpg in the same universe with a little less item grind. Doesn't have to have a "4" in the title either.
</blasphemy>
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Diablo has always been a loot grind!

I have a feeling that the next Diablo is going to be very similar to Destiny 2.
 
yes diablo is a grind game like many others. if you don't grind, then get everything straight away, whats there to keep you playing?

i felt that the real issue with d3, is after that grind, what do you really do with the loot? greater rifting and time clearance and how far you can get? yeah thats okay, but i wanted some proper pvp.

In the older diablos you had pvp, where you actually get to make use of your gear for the fun stuff. (no cheating for pvp of course)


pointless grinding to no end is what was wrong with D3 imho.

As soon as i got decent gear for story clerance, doing achievements, and doing some greater rifts to my satisfaction, what else did i have to look forward to? pvp? oo.. wait... :(
 
Moogle Stiltzkin said:
yes diablo is a grind game like many others. if you don't grind, then get everything straight away, whats there to keep you playing?

i felt that the real issue with d3, is after that grind, what do you really do with the loot? greater rifting and time clearance and how far you can get? yeah thats okay, but i wanted some proper pvp.

In the older diablos you had pvp, where you actually get to make use of your gear for the fun stuff.

pointless grinding to no end is what was wrong with D3 imho.

As soon as i got decent gear for story clerance, doing achievements, and doing some greater rifts to my satisfaction, what else did i have to look forward to? pvp? oo.. wait... :(
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I enjoy the seasons play. Forces a refresh, some new challenges and what not.
 
Megalith said:
“There’s a lot of people who felt like Diablo III got away from what made Diablo Diablo in terms of art style and spell effects,” said a current Blizzard employee, adding that Fenris is aiming to look more like the beloved Diablo II. Said another: “They want to make this gross, make it dark, [get rid of] anything that was considered cartoony in Diablo III… Make what people were afraid of in Diablo II, but modern.”
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That's good. And that imperatively has to include the writing and voice-acting. Diablo 3's writing and voice-acting was also cartoonish, being campy, throwaway, insincere, goofy...

There’s no chance of an ominous, grim, real-feeling atmosphere with writing and voice-acting like Diablo 3's.

I think it’s a good thing that Chris Metzen is gone from Blizzard now. He was amazing at art, but he absolutely sucked at writing and I think was a core driving force in Blizzard’s downward spiral into pukey uninspired fantasy tropes delivered through pukey soft cartoonish presentations.
 
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Zepher said:
Be cool if it were a mobile version.
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Will-Smith-Get-Out.gif
 
I hope D4 can go back to its roots. I did play D3 and its expansions - once. I just had no interest in running through again. D1 - played it many times through. D2 - same.
The last game of this type I played was Grim Dawn. I thought it was a lot better than D3. That said, I haven't gone back and played it.
 
SamuraiInBlack said:
I liked Diablo 2 because:
- the skill tree system didn't punish you for NOT picking a particular path. Yes some enemies had immunities/high res against certain stuff, but there were still ways to get past them if you were running solo.
- AN ACTUAL CUSTOMIZABLE SKILL TREE
- even some trash drops could get you decent gold
- gold actually was useful
- yes it was a grindfest, but you rarely ever had a run that left you empty handed with nothing but trash drops. So it didn't FEEL grindy. Even if you didn't need something now, you could use it later or sell it for the gold.
- Crafting didn't leave you with random garbage or nothing to show for it. (like some MMO's where you grind for crafting mats, hit the button and POOF! Absolutely nada thanks to RNG)

When Diablo 3 first dropped, I played a few hours into it and....found none of those things. Has this changed? I might actually fire it up again if it has.
Click to expand...

My thoughts exactly. That and the single player story line was a bad joke. Just awful. Not to say that D1 and 2 had a storyline worthy of a literary award, but it was at least interesting.

I found that for the most part people who said that D3 was wonderful at launch hadn't played the old ones. Guess it wasn't so bad when you had no comparison. I have no idea what it is like now. Not interested in the slightest anymore. Too many bad memories.
 
Part of what made the franchise legendary was the marriage of a turn based RPG and an action game, the problem with Diablo 3 was the absence of a compelling deep RPG system, Loot is the goal, not what defines your character. Blizzard tried to treat loot as if was the RPG that defined your character and it failed miserably to the point the game felt like it had no soul, while absolutely fun especially on console, PC wise it was just a button mashing brawler that felt far from the heart and essence of what made Diablo great.

Diablo 3 was a financial success not a critical success, that they needed, preorders sold based on the expectation it was a game like Diablo 2 which it was far from..... Combine that with error 47 and a RMAH and difficulty scaling that only led people playing 2 classes and very specific builds and it became a compounded senario where they pissed off the core fan base and the newcomers to a certain extent, enter GGG and POE, that clearly stole the ARPG crown.

After I heard rumors of Diablo 4 initially becoming a ripoff of Dark Souls, I honestly lost faith in them with the Diablo franchise, it was bad enough it was the most neglected fanbase and franchise they had. They seem to be content with making a game far from the principles that the original 2 games became famous for........

Honestly at this point I don't even want a Diablo 4 as I'd rather remember the foundness of the original 2 without the series being bastardized any more than they already have been. To me its like Dragon Age after origins and the expansion the series doesn't exist.
 
1Nocturnal101 said:
Honestly at this point I don't even want a Diablo 4 as I'd rather remember the foundness of the original 2 without the series being bastardized any more than they already have been. To me its like Dragon Age after origins and the expansion the series doesn't exist.
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Pretty much. I want a Diablo 4 because I enjoy the story and characters but if their just going to churn out another pile of shit. Then no.

Unfortunately, the people who enjoyed the first two games are NOT their target audience any longer. Hell, they had an interview with one of the developers and he flat out said, Diablo Immortal is for the Chinese audience, that's where the money is.

Money over substance and quality, that's the age we live in now.
 
I've liked all the diablo games. Played diablo 3 through several times with different characters, maybe 5 times total. Haven't played since. I had a good time. But there wasn't any reason for me to keep playing. I know some people keep going on harder and harder difficulties and better and better loot but there didn't seem to be an endgame reason for that so I didn't ever get into it. I was disappointed that pvp didn't make it into the game and they didn't make more expansions. (I didn't care much about new characters, I wanted more story/quests to play).
 
SamuraiInBlack said:
I liked Diablo 2 because:
- the skill tree system didn't punish you for NOT picking a particular path. Yes some enemies had immunities/high res against certain stuff, but there were still ways to get past them if you were running solo.
- AN ACTUAL CUSTOMIZABLE SKILL TREE
- even some trash drops could get you decent gold
- gold actually was useful
- yes it was a grindfest, but you rarely ever had a run that left you empty handed with nothing but trash drops. So it didn't FEEL grindy. Even if you didn't need something now, you could use it later or sell it for the gold.
- Crafting didn't leave you with random garbage or nothing to show for it. (like some MMO's where you grind for crafting mats, hit the button and POOF! Absolutely nada thanks to RNG)

When Diablo 3 first dropped, I played a few hours into it and....found none of those things. Has this changed? I might actually fire it up again if it has.
Click to expand...
It's completely different now vs launch. Skill system is more or less the same, but otherwise it's still a pretty fun game.
 
SecretStash said:
Gold had value?
Click to expand...

Yes. Depending on character build and how often you got hit/were hitting things, gold would determine if you were advancing in the story or if you were going to grind lower level tombs/runs to fix your gear.

Some of my characters were making it rain on entire economies just trying to get a run or a quest done, depending on what I had them geared with and how much it cost to fix it.
 
The best thing about D2 other than spell synergies were the strange loot strategies. Wearbear sorceress, ww assassins... Faith zons, 4x Lightning faceted monarch's on a javazon... Lower resist wands on sorceresses etc.

D3 turned it into a hello kitty stat point bonanza ala WOW. I don't want to build for fucking dex. If I did I'd play Wow.
 
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