Diablo IV - The Real Official Thread

That looks pretty sweet. My personal preference would be a little more color palette. To much gray but that is just me. (y)
 
I’m growing increasingly more annoyed the skill buttons and health/mana globe are on one side. Lack of visual balance.
 
Blizzard is commencing quarterly updates on the development of the game.

https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/diablo4/23308274/diablo-iv-quarterly-update-february-2020

It's funny (sad funny), all I can think when I see this stuff is how Act 1 in D3 started out like it was going to have all this lore and story...and then we discovered that each subsequent Act was more of a rush job than the one before. All the cool systems and stuff that they tested during beta were stripped of depth and streamlined by the time it got to release. They showed stuff almost exactly like the skill trees and talents pictured below last time, so it's difficult to give them the benefit of the doubt this time. Just makes it tough to get excited about is all I'm saying.

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It's funny (sad funny), all I can think when I see this stuff is how Act 1 in D3 started out like it was going to have all this lore and story...and then we discovered that each subsequent Act was more of a rush job than the one before. All the cool systems and stuff that they tested during beta were stripped of depth and streamlined by the time it got to release. They showed stuff almost exactly like the skill trees and talents pictured below last time, so it's difficult to give them the benefit of the doubt this time. Just makes it tough to get excited about is all I'm saying.

View attachment 226228

Agreed, I almost wish they wouldn't show us updates, just the finished product. Mostly because what we are seeing now wont be in the final game.
 
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New developer diary up:
Blizzard
The art style seems to be leaning a bit PoE (Path of Diablo IV?). Not that I'm complaining, as long as it's polished.
 
20 min gameplay vid on YouTube.

Whoops- got a chance to watch and it's actually an old video (and probably posted). I'll try to not dupe stuff in the future!
 
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I know there is no love lost between Blizzard and the PC Gaming community, and I of course realize that they are a shadow of what they once were.
Still hope this is good though.
 
I know there is no love lost between Blizzard and the PC Gaming community, and I of course realize that they are a shadow of what they once were.
Still hope this is good though.
They have to get the loot drops perfectly right. Particularly, legendaries randomly popping out of chests, boxes, and any enemy you encounter.
 
They have to get the loot drops perfectly right. Particularly, legendaries randomly popping out of chests, boxes, and any enemy you encounter.
Please don't take this as hostile, because it's not: but that is a very simplistic view of the situation.

I'm old enough that I was around for every Diablo launch and bought each game at or near launch. I've played each of the three extensively in their time. In the case of Diablo 2 and 3, an absolute excessive amount.

Loot drops is one part of the equation.
But itemization is another. How do you make characters feel powerful without being broken? I feel like Diablo 2 figured this out way better than D3. D3 at launch was designed to be an absolute slog, grind fest, that eventually got some-what fixed. D3 is now all about sets and set bonuses. D2 was more about uniques and rares combined together with runes and a few smaller sets. D2 felt like it has more choice in itemization. D3 feels like it has very little choice in itemization and if you don't have a 6 piece set then you're not really even playing the game (and even then you have to have the right one or you're playing a sub-optimal build). D3 is still missing a lot of elements that make gear based action RPG's good.
-They also have to make each character feel powerful, but balance it across other classes. This becomes more important for not just PVE content but PVP content as well.
-In character design leveling has to feel meaningful. I actually like D3's system, but a lot of people don't/didn't. They want skill trees. They want attribute points. How do you offer flexibility in builds but not make them either "optimal" or "un-optimal". D2's big problem was that although there was flexibility in points and trees, really there was only 1-2 builds per class that were "the best". And if you didn't research and know that, you'd end up with a character that wasn't optimal. Leading to people essentially not assigning points unless they needed to. D3 largely "fixed" this, but people perceived those changes as a lack of choice.

Level Design and Monster design is also paramount.
-Powerful is fun. But there also has to be a challenge for the loot grind to have meaning. How do you have diverse content and stop people from grinding the same things over and over? In the course of my playing D2, I basically got every single loot drop (including incredible rares, that often people never saw or had). But the way you obtained all this junk was doing cow runs over and over while also doing Mephisto runs and Pindleskin runs which can be a very uninteresting loop. D3 tried to mix it up with Rifts and greater rifts that are random, but basically people are just playing the same loop over and over and is that fun or interesting?
-How do you keep "the same areas" feeling fresh and different?
-How do you have interesting monster designs that are challenging without being annoying?

This is just scratching the surface. In short, Blizzard has their work cut out for them. Lets hope they're up to the task. I don't envy them.
 
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I'll chime in and add to that above list soundtrack. 1 and 2 felt pretty unique. 3 just felt like a bland fantasy game soundtrack.
 
Seems like an interesting system with the active skills as the branches and passives as the roots. Pretty clever really.
 
On the loot discussion, I'll throw in my two cents; I hope they go more D2 style in the higher quality stuff. I don't like how set items are pretty much the end-all in D3. I did find a ring that gave bonuses to each legendary or higher if no set bonus, but it wasn't enough to compensate for the power of a decent set build. I feel like it would be more varied it the sets weren't all powerful.
 
On the loot discussion, I'll throw in my two cents; I hope they go more D2 style in the higher quality stuff. I don't like how set items are pretty much the end-all in D3. I did find a ring that gave bonuses to each legendary or higher if no set bonus, but it wasn't enough to compensate for the power of a decent set build. I feel like it would be more varied it the sets weren't all powerful.

Diablo 2 set items and Runewords were the end all though...

Last I heard they were focused more on the balancing skill structure and character build quality equally or greater than having it be heavily item based like in Diablo 3. Which is a good thing.

Also, from the article,
"

We are exploring some big changes in this space for two reasons:


1. We agree with the feedback that a character’s power is currently too dependent on items. We plan to put more of the player’s power back into the character to make build choices more impactful, rather than have the majority of player power coming from the items they have equipped. That said, it’s important that we strike the right balance so that itemization choices always feel meaningful.


2. We’ve also had very mixed team feedback regarding core itemization. We’re currently looking at how to best differentiate our various item qualities. For example, should Magic quality items have higher affix stats than Rare items"?
 
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Hopefully the tree is much larger, and the roots much deeper on release. I like the creativity but this isn't much choice so far.
 
Choice does not matter, someone will post and great build online and everyone will copy it and ignore the rest as usual.
 
Choice does not matter, someone will post and great build online and everyone will copy it and ignore the rest as usual.
I freaking hate this abut these games. Though, POE has a decent system. But still, if you don't plan it out right, you're going to have to reroll. You're somewhat forced into a build. Every league I'll try my own build, and it usually falls apart pretty quickly.
 
I do not care for the convoluted POE skill tree system at all. It works for the hard core players but the majority do not want to spend half their time trying to figure out what path/passives to take or have to respec and try a different one. I hope they don't go to far with it.
 
I do not care for the convoluted POE skill tree system at all. It works for the hard core players but the majority do not want to spend half their time trying to figure out what path/passives to take or have to respec and try a different one. I hope they don't go to far with it.

I played a lot of POE and did my own builds, but yeah generally it was better to follow the meta. Once you play a bit and understand the passive tree, skill system, crafting. Try building around a unique and a skills in the Path of Building, it's fun. I made a Totem build a couple seasons ago I got to T15 with that wasn't meta. (To be fair, I have about 600 hours of play time).
 
Choice does not matter, someone will post and great build online and everyone will copy it and ignore the rest as usual.

Sad but true. I tend to avoid any build guides until I have completed at LEAST one playthrough just so I can enjoy experimenting and finding what best suits my play style. The new system sounds like it it going to open up a ton of build options, so hopefully will increase replayability significantly.
 
Choice does not matter, someone will post and great build online and everyone will copy it and ignore the rest as usual.

Well, that's a defeatist attitude don't you think?

I've found that once I got older, I no longer cared what other people did. Sure if I find a cool build, I might try it, but rarely do I stick with a build that I find without modding it to my own personal taste. For me, it really doesn't matter if the build sucks or not, as long as its fun for me.
 
Well, that's a defeatist attitude don't you think?

I've found that once I got older, I no longer cared what other people did. Sure if I find a cool build, I might try it, but rarely do I stick with a build that I find without modding it to my own personal taste. For me, it really doesn't matter if the build sucks or not, as long as its fun for me.

I tried some of the builds at one point but I didn't like their style, skills or passives needed. I found what I liked and built the best character I could from then on and carried that over from season to season.
 
Sad but true. I tend to avoid any build guides until I have completed at LEAST one playthrough just so I can enjoy experimenting and finding what best suits my play style. The new system sounds like it it going to open up a ton of build options, so hopefully will increase replayability significantly.

I agree, decided to play this season of D3 because a few friends came back to it, and don't like the set that I got through the chapters. So I used the couple of sets I found recipes for and made my own build. It's not amazing but I got through Slayer (well almost, I need to do a set dungeon). And it's been fun trying something new and strange (at least to me).
 
I think the problem is FOMO when playing seasons. People tend to go the lemming mentality when they see someone doing "better" than them. Play what you like, who cares if it isn't what the cool kids are doing.
 
Looking at how the new skill tree works, it will be interesting to see how they handle gear sets and skill bonuses. I hope you will be able to easily respec if you find a really good set that takes advantage of specific skills. I'm sure all the system dynamics will become clearer as we get closer to release though.
 
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