Diablo IV - Page 35

On October 07 2022 21:42 Simberto wrote:
The core problem is the goal of that loot system.

We would try to figure out a loot system that is most fun to play.

Blizzard is trying to figure out a loot system that leads to maximum amounts of money being spent. (Usually indirectly, but in the case of the RMAH also directly)

I do not, for a second, doubt that they have very smart game designers working on this. They just have a different goal then we would.

On October 07 2022 21:42 Simberto wrote:
The core problem is the goal of that loot system.

We would try to figure out a loot system that is most fun to play.

Blizzard is trying to figure out a loot system that leads to maximum amounts of money being spent. (Usually indirectly, but in the case of the RMAH also directly)

I do not, for a second, doubt that they have very smart game designers working on this. They just have a different goal then we would.

On October 07 2022 23:39 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:
The direction of the loot system was simplication to make it more WoW friendly so they could have the largest user base. The green arrow this item is better is a direct port from WoW no? But at the same time having items with stats that are impossible to understand the iteractions or needing to sim in path of building to figure out what the best combinations are doesn't really make your game better.

On October 07 2022 09:09 andrewlt wrote:
Yah, I figured a few of us were getting a little heated trying to be concise with our posts and I thought I needed a wall of text to better explain where I was coming from. From the time I joined TL quite a while ago, I think I registered for only one other online community. Everything else I'm using predates my TL join date. I don't mind playing with and interacting with other people online inside the game. But I'm just reluctant to register to yet another forum to play another game. And we all know to avoid the official Blizzard ones. That's where I'm coming from with my opposition to trading. Without an AH, I just don't know how it can be done without using outside communication tools. In-game chat channels just don't work, even having trading dedicated ones.

On October 08 2022 00:32 ProMeTheus112 wrote:

Not on vanilla wow : S it's not that simplistic cause there are pros and cons and lots of choice for stat customization really for almost any class. I don't know which game has a stat system that is impossible to understand or needing to simulate before playing to figure out.

As for the money maximizers, usually they're going for shorter term profit and don't mind hurting the business then move the money.

On October 07 2022 12:43 Manit0u wrote:


While this seems like a good idea originally it's made completely void by the fact that no matter how strong the 6 affixes on the rare items you get they'll never trounce all the extra features you receive from set items in D3. And equipping a full set doesn't leave much room for other items...

It wasn't really helped by the fact that you only ever care about just 1 stat for the most part and that different damage types and resistances were pretty much irrelevant. Turned whole itemization into a no-brainer as you no longer had to sacrifice power for resists/protection or having to diversify your damage output to be able to deal with various resistances and immunities.

Kinda boring if you ask me...

On October 08 2022 00:32 ProMeTheus112 wrote:

Not on vanilla wow : S it's not that simplistic cause there are pros and cons and lots of choice for stat customization really for almost any class. I don't know which game has a stat system that is impossible to understand or needing to simulate before playing to figure out.

As for the money maximizers, usually they're going for shorter term profit and don't mind hurting the business then move the money.

On October 12 2022 22:09 Archeon wrote:
On itemization: Imo you don't need to understand itemization that much to get through d2. Like most of the important ones are self-explanatory (resistances, damage, life, elemental damage) and the less important ones are still working under "more is better" (FHR, faster block speed, attack speed, mf, FC, elemental pierce, ds, cb). There's just enough there to make itemization a bit more of a choice and less of a "click the green arrow". If I'd change anything about itemization in d2 I'd increase some drop rates and have an ingame wiki that explains how elemental pierce, cb and ds work, but overall I think this is the best item system I've seen in an ARPG.

On PoE: Artstyle and style wise PoE is imo really darn close to d2 if it had 3d graphics. Some of the levels like the second level of the temple of the moon feel more like d2 to me than some areas of d2:R. In terms of the tree of madness I don't like how you need a tool to get the differences because there's no way to overlook what your build looks like in the end else. It adds depth, but imo you could reduce the amounts of nodes a lot and make each node stronger and have the same amount of meaningful decisions but a lot less manual work. Grim dawn f.e. has a similar system but does this a lot better imo.
I also don't like the itemization at all tbh. It's still probably my 3rd favorite ARPG mainly due to how good the level design, world design and overall gameplay until the build comes online is.

On October 13 2022 06:51 andrewlt wrote:
D2 was also much easier than vanilla D3's inferno, where they made the asinine decision to have MMO raid style progression. The gearing requirements were much higher, unless you play a class like DH that can dodge everything. And even then, you have to play perfectly because some overtuned crap like Belial will just 1-shot you. And you have to save your tumbling move for emergencies because with bad RNG, you can't dodge all the projectiles and stuff being thrown at you without it.

Having rifts as the endgame doesn't help either. It made the game competitive and people would whine if one class can do level 50 rifts and another class can only do level 40 rifts. Once you get higher, almost everything is a one-shot so you have to dodge everything or spam skills that make you temporarily invulnerable or skills that would stop enemies from doing anything. It forced Blizzard to have to attempt to kinda balance D3, which they never had to do with D2 absent very edge cases like vanilla Barb WW and Necro CE.

From what I remember of D2, armor was pretty useless for the squishier chars like sorc and necro. It was all about resists and block rate/speed. Stuff like magefist or frostburn were BiS because almost nothing that spawned on that slot was really useful for a sorc. Int was mostly a newb trap that didn't really do much either. And life/mana steal were incredibly OP on the physical damage builds. Did they ever buff elemental damage? I remember it being weak and you only want it because of a lack of alternatives.

MF was a mistake. Since endgame in any ARPG is an item hunt, you never want to incentivize your player base to equip weaker gear with more MF over stronger gear with less MF. That's a terrible dilemma to give players.

On October 13 2022 06:51 andrewlt wrote:
D2 was also much easier than vanilla D3's inferno, where they made the asinine decision to have MMO raid style progression. The gearing requirements were much higher, unless you play a class like DH that can dodge everything. And even then, you have to play perfectly because some overtuned crap like Belial will just 1-shot you. And you have to save your tumbling move for emergencies because with bad RNG, you can't dodge all the projectiles and stuff being thrown at you without it.

Having rifts as the endgame doesn't help either. It made the game competitive and people would whine if one class can do level 50 rifts and another class can only do level 40 rifts. Once you get higher, almost everything is a one-shot so you have to dodge everything or spam skills that make you temporarily invulnerable or skills that would stop enemies from doing anything. It forced Blizzard to have to attempt to kinda balance D3, which they never had to do with D2 absent very edge cases like vanilla Barb WW and Necro CE.

From what I remember of D2, armor was pretty useless for the squishier chars like sorc and necro. It was all about resists and block rate/speed. Stuff like magefist or frostburn were BiS because almost nothing that spawned on that slot was really useful for a sorc. Int was mostly a newb trap that didn't really do much either. And life/mana steal were incredibly OP on the physical damage builds. Did they ever buff elemental damage? I remember it being weak and you only want it because of a lack of alternatives.

MF was a mistake. Since endgame in any ARPG is an item hunt, you never want to incentivize your player base to equip weaker gear with more MF over stronger gear with less MF. That's a terrible dilemma to give players.

On October 13 2022 23:09 Archeon wrote:
Don't get me wrong, D2's itemization definitely has it's flaws, among others how strong runewords are in comparison to uniques and sets and that there are some huge outliers that a lot of builds revolve around (insight, infinity, enigma to name a few). Overall I really don't like how item dependent physical chars in comparison to magic/elemental chars are. But it's still miles ahead of pretty much any other ARPG I've played and I've played a lot of them.

On October 13 2022 23:09 Archeon wrote:


Armor was mainly low prio on ranged chars because the majority of ranged attacks that actually hit you weren't physical and you were often running anyways (if you weren't teleporting). Energy is imo still a good thing to level early on and then get rid off later via reset when you have gear that adds mana. The problem with it is more that there's a ton of it on later gear imo and stuff like insight just replaces it.

I don't have a problem with stats being weaker or stronger, it still creates dilemmas like "do I want 20 all res or 500 armor more on my chest? Do I still want all-res if I'm close to the cap in fire res anyways or is there some item I could swap my fire res boots to?". Similarly I don't mind MF at all, because it really makes you question your build and how much you can get away with until your killspeed and survivability suffer. I think it's a good way to reward players that can get further with less tbh.

I also don't think grifts was what made balance discussions, it's just fairly normal nowadays. They didn't have to balance d2 because at the time nobody really cared about PvE balance.

Don't get me wrong, D2's itemization definitely has it's flaws, among others how strong runewords are in comparison to uniques and sets and that there are some huge outliers that a lot of builds revolve around (insight, infinity, enigma to name a few). Overall I really don't like how item dependent physical chars in comparison to magic/elemental chars are. But it's still miles ahead of pretty much any other ARPG I've played and I've played a lot of them.

On October 14 2022 06:35 andrewlt wrote:
In D2, the endgame is leveling your char to 99 and the item hunt. In D3, the endgame is leveling paragon levels and the item hunt. The issue I have with MF is that it provides a disincentive to actually use the drops you find. It totally dampens the excitement of finding a "better" item just to see that is has less MF than your current one.

On October 14 2022 06:35 andrewlt wrote:
I think that people cared about balance in D2, just nowhere near what it is today. Blizzard only had to take care of clear outliers. In D3, they had to balance the chars more closely to each other. And they did it by constantly buffing the weaker sets of the underperforming characters. And that of course resulted in pretty ridiculous levels of power creep every season. Hitting certain set bonuses in D3 just jumped your power by ridiculous levels.

On October 14 2022 21:58 Manit0u wrote:


Yeah, the power spikes in D3 were really surprising. I still remember to this day, going through the campaign for the first time and everything seems OK. There's a bit of challenge, it's kinda fun and all. Then I get some nice rare drop and all of a sudden it changes from having to struggle a bit to one-shotting everything. Later on when you complete your set it's also a huge power spike. It was kinda sad to see some main bosses getting one-shot even before they appeared on the screen on torment difficulties.

I'm not really a fan of gear being the main driving force behind builds. I find games more interesting where the main strengths of your build come from skill choices etc. and then you use gear to supplement and elevate that. Not the other way around.

Feels bad when you need some very rare and specific items for your build to work. I'd rather have a working build regardless of gear and then having the journey of refining it through finding better gear and seeing how far I can take it. This way instead of huge power spikes you get small incremental upgrades, which for me give a better sense of progression based on the work I'm putting in instead of having random jumps that feel (and mostly are) more based on luck than anything else.

I remember how disappointed I was in D3 with my sorc set. Where I had this meteors randomly falling down the skies even beyond my screen, doing like 250 billion AOE dmg. Was cool for 5 seconds but got boring really fast when I realized I could just walk around doing nothing and everything died. Very anticlimactic.