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On March 22 2023 02:17 BluemoonSC wrote:
i also don't really understand his gripe with not being able to quickly assess which rares are good vs bad - you should know what affixes you want for your build, it's not rocket science to identify an item being instantly garbage. this is basically advocating for a green arrow for total power and i don't think that's a good idea.
In the review he did mention Barb might have a higher dmg potential at the end game, it was just much less effort clearing the beta content with a sorc. His sorc build was pretty broken tbh, I built something similar and basically cleared everything while ignoring all the boss mechanics.
With the item affixes, I think he was mainly saying the UI is bad and requires scrolling to see everything on an item.
I think his biggest issue with the game is the scaling of monsters to accommodate the open world concept, where player's level differences can cause a lot of issues. The world bosses also require you to join up with random people so the content won't be as challenging given there will be way less coordination compared to an actual raid group, and the game will be balanced around that.
I don't know how much of this will matter after reaching the end game where everyone's levels are the same. The end game will probably just be single player dungeons with a bunch of mods similar to PoE's maps system. The bigger concern is most likely going to be the dungeon design, right now there is a lot of backtracking involved with grabbing keys/objectives to open the boss room, it doesn't feel great atm.
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I think the level scaling issue could be a problem if the game uses ladder resets like in D3/POE. Then you'd experience the level scaling stuff over and over. Have they mentioned if seasons / resets will be a thing?
RE: melee, I thought the interesting point he made was on Fury vs Mana. Since Fury goes down when not in combat, but Barb has less damage uptime (has to chase boss, dodge more), while Mana goes up when not in combat (regenerating), Barb has to do a lot more DPS to compensate. IDK if this is true (I didnt play Barb), and is probably addressed in end game, but yea
still, if the issue is Kripp being an idiot and building wrong, that in and of itself is an interesting point towards the complexity of D4's systems. at least we can acknowledge Kripp is good at these types of games (despite being Hearthstone brained), yet he could go wrong in this beta period. Personally I think complexity and systems that can be broken = fun for build making, as long as there is enough variety
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SoCal8908 Posts
Interview with Rod Fergusson on Eurogamer
Rod Fergusson: People are seeing dungeons at the baseline level. It'll be interesting the feedback once people get to experience what it means to go through sigils and get to see now there's more monsters, now they have a different ability, now you're being debuffed this way and they're being buffed that way. And it's going to feel like a much different experience.
cool article, really hoping that the above is the case with dungeons.
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Game being too complex usually means it's hard to balance, and something broken will ultimately become the cookie cutter build until it is nerfed.
D2 is probably notorious for this given there is only one or two top builds for efficiently farming the end game with each character, and yet people still seem to enjoy the game. PvP on the other hand would probably not be competitive.
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On March 22 2023 04:56 Glacierz wrote:
Game being too complex usually means it's hard to balance, and something broken will ultimately become the cookie cutter build until it is nerfed.
However, that doesn't mean removing complexity equals a well balanced game. That is a logical fallacy. D3 removed all complexity and the balance was still horrendous. If both options end up broken I would much rather have some broken complexity.
On March 22 2023 04:19 EchelonTee wrote:
still, if the issue is Kripp being an idiot and building wrong, that in and of itself is an interesting point towards the complexity of D4's systems. at least we can acknowledge Kripp is good at these types of games (despite being Hearthstone brained), yet he could go wrong in this beta period. Personally I think complexity and systems that can be broken = fun for build making, as long as there is enough variety
Good point and gives some hope.
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On March 22 2023 04:56 Glacierz wrote:
Game being too complex usually means it's hard to balance, and something broken will ultimately become the cookie cutter build until it is nerfed.
D2 is probably notorious for this given there is only one or two top builds for efficiently farming the end game with each character, and yet people still seem to enjoy the game. PvP on the other hand would probably not be competitive.
yeah, D2 is a fine enough model. even if there are broken builds it doesn't feel restrictive. though that kinda has more to do with the player meta and it not feeling like a hyper competitive game. could feel different since D4 is much more online
also, regular balance patches and meta shake ups is, cautiously, a good thing. helps keep things fresh. at least with a complex system there's more potential. if you're pessimistic about Blizzard balancing though then yeah it could be pretty bad
Kripp basically had your take, saying that there would be a few broken builds that deal massively more damage than the rest
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Yeah, D2 worked that way because the playerbase was different. People weren't following youtube and twitch streamers and whining a shitstorm when their favorite classes and builds could only do greater rift 100 while some other class can do greater rift 102.
Frequent seasons on a live service game will eventually powercreep all sorts of problems into the game because that is just the nature of live service games. Not everything creeps at the same rate but the devs need to give players a reason to hunt for the shiny new legendaries and use the shiny new additions to the game. And any new areas need to challenge the people who have farmed the previous areas to hell and back.
I'm likely to buy the game and play for a few years. I played D3 long enough for the powercreep to get ridiculous but not long enough for it to totally destroy the game for me. I simply grew tired of it. Same with D2, though its powercreep wasn't as bad. I'm just hoping the powercreep isn't too bad while I'm still playing. They should have taken some lessons from D3 and WoW, hopefully.
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United States12235 Posts
On March 22 2023 08:37 andrewlt wrote:
Yeah, D2 worked that way because the playerbase was different. People weren't following youtube and twitch streamers and whining a shitstorm when their favorite classes and builds could only do greater rift 100 while some other class can do greater rift 102.
Frequent seasons on a live service game will eventually powercreep all sorts of problems into the game because that is just the nature of live service games. Not everything creeps at the same rate but the devs need to give players a reason to hunt for the shiny new legendaries and use the shiny new additions to the game. And any new areas need to challenge the people who have farmed the previous areas to hell and back.
I'm likely to buy the game and play for a few years. I played D3 long enough for the powercreep to get ridiculous but not long enough for it to totally destroy the game for me. I simply grew tired of it. Same with D2, though its powercreep wasn't as bad. I'm just hoping the powercreep isn't too bad while I'm still playing. They should have taken some lessons from D3 and WoW, hopefully.
I think the emphasis on story kept D2 runs pretty fresh as well. The linear progression of Normal > Nightmare > Hell was standard for every character and provided clear goals, and often Hell Baal was the point where players would feel comfortable retiring a character if they weren't inclined to make the aggressive push into ultra-endgame. In D3, it's common for many characters to skip multiple difficulties on the way to Torment XVI, and even more common for many characters to not interact with the (terrible) story at all. There's no "anchor" and so progression feels more disconnected, and frankly worse, in my view. The infinite treadmill of Greater Rifts merely enforces this because there will always be a wall beyond you, and after a while the GR ranks blur together until you ultimately burn out.
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Were there really that many torment levels at the end? What a terrible system. They really screwed it up by taking the 3 difficulties from Diablo2 and adding additional ones. I think greater rifts serve a purpose in the endgame, and it's better than running the same Hell Act 5 levels in D2 that were well suited to your build. However, the systems in place encouraged players to rush to the endgame. I could be wrong, but I think D3 was a longer game than D2 as well so asking players to complete 4 runs (before the torment change) before endgame was just so tedious.
I think they should have compressed the number of difficulties. Design the leveling curve so that completing the story in 1, maybe 2, difficulty levels is all it takes to reach max level. And no rifts and such until max level. So players just need to finish the story 1-2 times per character then decide whether to do endgame content or retire the character.
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On March 22 2023 10:27 andrewlt wrote:
Were there really that many torment levels at the end? What a terrible system. They really screwed it up by taking the 3 difficulties from Diablo2 and adding additional ones. I think greater rifts serve a purpose in the endgame, and it's better than running the same Hell Act 5 levels in D2 that were well suited to your build. However, the systems in place encouraged players to rush to the endgame. I could be wrong, but I think D3 was a longer game than D2 as well so asking players to complete 4 runs (before the torment change) before endgame was just so tedious.
I think they should have compressed the number of difficulties. Design the leveling curve so that completing the story in 1, maybe 2, difficulty levels is all it takes to reach max level. And no rifts and such until max level. So players just need to finish the story 1-2 times per character then decide whether to do endgame content or retire the character.
I think the beauty of D2 was that by the time you finished all 3 difficulties (hell being very challenging) your character was nowhere near the max level. The endgame WAS reaching max level and if you managed that and wanted to continue you could be building towards the "perfect" character by hunting the same gear but with best stats (so you have +20% attack instead of +19%).
I guess nowadays people expect every game to get you to max level quickly and then invent bazillion ways to entertain you from there on out. This is a flawed design IMO. I think it's perfectly fine if not everyone can reach max level or finish the story at highest difficulty. Especially in a shared world doing it the D2 way would be way better, where high level chars would actually garner some respect and people who had chars near max or at max level could team up to clear the hell difficulty.
In D2 I think it was something like that: lvl 86 was for your standard players that completed hell, lvl 94 was for more hardcore and dedicated players, reaching lvl 99 was pretty rare as it required some serious dedication to your character. All in all the power level difference between lvl 86 and 99 wasn't that big but the amount of player investment into the char was vastly different and thus garnered way more prestige.
When everyone is max level with BIS gear it makes for a boring world and experience.
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With all the praise of D2, don't forget the downsides as well!
-The game was absolutely infested with bots, most of them being Hammerdins, scripted to TP down to Hell Baal and kill him in about 3 minutes.
-The Runewords were outright impossible to get at times, who really wants to spend a 1000 hours of Andyruns just to get a single High Rune? The solution was duping.
-Getting to Pndemonium Diablo and the ultimate boss fight required you to be both lucky and patient. Selling "Stones of Jordan" to pop "Diablo walks the Earth" is pretty stupid, tbh.
-Limited item storage and Mules... Aaaaaargh!
But yes, playing the game from scratch was very fun. The endgame though...🙄
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On March 22 2023 17:27 Slydie wrote:
With all the praise of D2, don't forget the downsides as well!
-The Runewords were outright impossible to get at times, who really wants to spend a 1000 hours of Andyruns just to get a single High Rune? The solution was duping.
Yeah, this is an interesting conflict in Diablo, I think. There is the idea of super rarity/trading vs, making sure everyone has access to builds. I much prefer Diablo III RoS in this regard. Where no, there was no real trading but I could get everything I needed by farming/gambling myself.
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on the point of d2 runewords, i think if the drop rates were adjusted ever so slightly it would have been perfect.
ive by no means played thousands of hours in d2r but ive been fairly lucky and still managed to make my own enigma and half an infinity. i think the rate could be a little higher though and you still wouldnt lose the excitement of seeing a high rune finally drop
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On March 22 2023 18:09 evilfatsh1t wrote:
on the point of d2 runewords, i think if the drop rates were adjusted ever so slightly it would have been perfect.
ive by no means played thousands of hours in d2r but ive been fairly lucky and still managed to make my own enigma and half an infinity. i think the rate could be a little higher though and you still wouldnt lose the excitement of seeing a high rune finally drop
They have actually massively increased the drop rate since the mid 2000's in multiple patches. The only reason you can build those rune words in D2R yourself is because of these changes (and they are good imho). Back when the drop rates were low I remember finding a single one in a recorded playtime of more than 2000 hours. That's just insane if runewords require multiple of these runes, especially considering the absurd power level they held.
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SoCal8908 Posts
On March 22 2023 17:27 Slydie wrote:
-The Runewords were outright impossible to get at times, who really wants to spend a 1000 hours of Andyruns just to get a single High Rune? The solution was duping.
I think that the conversation around dungeons is hilarious because people did this and D2 is still drawing comparisons from the community for D4.
Path of Exile has 120 maps and each one is the same, maybe flipped horizontally or vertically. I've personally run 1000's of strands and they never get old.
D3 rifts had predictable layouts. Not everyone's favorite example but they did that so you could complete the timer without wandering aimlessly.
Complaining that all of the dungeons are the same each time that you run them is just comedy when you compare to the "gold standard"
(Killing 100% of monsters needs to go tho)
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United States12235 Posts
I actually have a love-hate relationship with Runewords on a design level. Players LOVE Runewords to a truly fanatical degree, and sure they're fun to make, but they created several fundamental issues:
- Individual Runes, save for a couple of exceptions, became inherently worthless (you only want to use them for trading, for Runewords, or for Cubing higher Runes... for Runewords)
- Gems, which were supposed to vie for use with Runes, again save for a couple of exceptions in the early game, also lost nearly all their value (they needed to invent Cube recipes for them later)
- In many cases, Runewords (like Lore, Stealth, and Insight) were cheaper and more powerful than much-rarer Unique and Set items, which again distorts value
I'm sure one of the designers on LoD probably thought "hey wouldn't it be cool if you put Runes in a certain order in a certain piece of gear and it transformed into something really powerful?" which is definitely cool but it has unforeseen economic ripple effects. I also think there was intended to be fun in millions of players openly experimenting with different Rune/item permutations and reporting their findings, but that quickly fizzled even at launch with the official Arreat Summit site publishing all active Runewords and players datamining the remaining disabled ones.
I don't know what is the "right" place for Runeword power. Maybe a "poor man's Unique"? This is stuff that I'm sure the designers on D4 will more closely consider and balance, particularly with item economy being something that can be modeled more effectively today and reinforced with telemetry.
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On March 22 2023 14:14 Manit0u wrote:Show nested quote +On March 22 2023 10:27 andrewlt wrote:
Were there really that many torment levels at the end? What a terrible system. They really screwed it up by taking the 3 difficulties from Diablo2 and adding additional ones. I think greater rifts serve a purpose in the endgame, and it's better than running the same Hell Act 5 levels in D2 that were well suited to your build. However, the systems in place encouraged players to rush to the endgame. I could be wrong, but I think D3 was a longer game than D2 as well so asking players to complete 4 runs (before the torment change) before endgame was just so tedious.
I think they should have compressed the number of difficulties. Design the leveling curve so that completing the story in 1, maybe 2, difficulty levels is all it takes to reach max level. And no rifts and such until max level. So players just need to finish the story 1-2 times per character then decide whether to do endgame content or retire the character. I think the beauty of D2 was that by the time you finished all 3 difficulties (hell being very challenging) your character was nowhere near the max level. The endgame WAS reaching max level and if you managed that and wanted to continue you could be building towards the "perfect" character by hunting the same gear but with best stats (so you have +20% attack instead of +19%). I guess nowadays people expect every game to get you to max level quickly and then invent bazillion ways to entertain you from there on out. This is a flawed design IMO. I think it's perfectly fine if not everyone can reach max level or finish the story at highest difficulty. Especially in a shared world doing it the D2 way would be way better, where high level chars would actually garner some respect and people who had chars near max or at max level could team up to clear the hell difficulty. In D2 I think it was something like that: lvl 86 was for your standard players that completed hell, lvl 94 was for more hardcore and dedicated players, reaching lvl 99 was pretty rare as it required some serious dedication to your character. All in all the power level difference between lvl 86 and 99 wasn't that big but the amount of player investment into the char was vastly different and thus garnered way more prestige. When everyone is max level with BIS gear it makes for a boring world and experience.
I can't agree with that. D2 was better in getting to the endgame but D3's endgame was better. Baal runs are boring compared to greater rifts. From what I remember, sorcs leveled to 99 on that first area in act 5 because it is easy for them. Each char goes to an area that is easy for them and plays that one area nonstop. I don't know how people can praise that and then call rifts boring. At least rifts can pull enemies and pick environments from the entire game instead of beating the same enemies in the same area again and again.
Max level is a good dividing point between the story and the endgame. It allows the devs to give different progression paths while going through the story and going through the endgame.
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i lean towards d2 having a better endgame than d3.
as already mentioned before, when "endgame" starts in d2, youve just finished hell and youre somewhere in the level 80s with mediocre/average gear that youve found along the way. the entire d2 endgame revolves around not only trying to hit max level, but actually trying to "complete" your character. max level isnt actually even a target for most players, because thats another level of dedication. most players would be satisfied with getting completing their bis items, although many players struggle to even get this far.
compare that to d3, where you can have all of your bis items within a couple days of farming and your focus turns to min/maxing individual stat lines WAY quicker in d3 and thats what makes d3's endgame boring. for me its less about the dungeon runs and more about the purpose/reward of running them. a javazon could spend months doing runs hoping to see that elusive griffons or ber runes which would allow the character to finally go wherever she pleases. when the griffons finally drops with the worst possible roll, youre still happy because its still a griffons. in d3, you have your primal or ancient or whatever is the highest tier right now within a couple of days and youre not excited unless it gives you the exact mods you want.
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On March 23 2023 02:08 evilfatsh1t wrote:
i lean towards d2 having a better endgame than d3.
as already mentioned before, when "endgame" starts in d2, youve just finished hell and youre somewhere in the level 80s with mediocre/average gear that youve found along the way. the entire d2 endgame revolves around not only trying to hit max level, but actually trying to "complete" your character. max level isnt actually even a target for most players, because thats another level of dedication. most players would be satisfied with getting completing their bis items, although many players struggle to even get this far.
compare that to d3, where you can have all of your bis items within a couple days of farming and your focus turns to min/maxing individual stat lines WAY quicker in d3 and thats what makes d3's endgame boring. for me its less about the dungeon runs and more about the purpose/reward of running them. a javazon could spend months doing runs hoping to see that elusive griffons or ber runes which would allow the character to finally go wherever she pleases. when the griffons finally drops with the worst possible roll, youre still happy because its still a griffons. in d3, you have your primal or ancient or whatever is the highest tier right now within a couple of days and youre not excited unless it gives you the exact mods you want.
I think it is interesting that you admit that the D2 endgame was ALL about gear farming and item management. The gameplay of the necessary grinding was absolutely horrendous, and most would eventually realize they were wasting their time.
At a more philosophical level, D2 is much more about expectation and hard grinding to complete that impossible build than actually playing it when it is finally done.
Btw, I stopped before High-rune drop rates were made more reasonable, at worst, the odds of getting one were in the millions.
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EPT
