On June 16 2023 06:26 andrewlt wrote: Even in the overworld, drive-bys are hilarious when one ice sorc passes by another fighting mobs.
That's the weakness of the build, though. It has no sustain, no generators and no good basic skill to spam. If you're doing content that you can't kill or almost kill with your burst, it can be painful to fight mobs until your cooldowns reset.
Yeah, I even specced frost bolt into more mana generation. Otherwise it's typically shield + nova = one group dead, walk up to the next group, deep freeze to clear it, shield + nova is now off cd. Not the worst but also not the smoothest, fire sorc didn't have such good burst but way better sustain. Gotta try lightning now once I find some items with +lightning dmg.
My Flurry rogue has gotten his statsticks together, and is starting to pick up some big paragon bonuses.
Next big one will be vulnerable on hit from the glyph (probably going to grind it to 15 today) so I don't have to basic attack mobs once, and hopefully dropping another accelerating aspect so I can attack faster.
Haven't quite hit the ceiling on flurry rogue yet, since I'm hitting for well over 100k per flurry now and still have a lot of room to grow.
So there is a sizeable patch coming before Season 1 starts. Also we will have to do max Renown for Paragon points every season, which blows. Also Gems are being addressed in Season 2.
This is probably a simple Yes or No question: Can you level up a glyph (from completing nightmare sigil dungeons) after you've already placed the glyph on the paragon board in a glyph socket?
Or does the glyph have to still be in storage?
I'm worried that if I put a good glyph in the paragon board now, I can't make it better later.
On June 17 2023 09:34 FaCE_1 wrote: you can lvl up glyph in your paragon.
You can also add/remove it freely.
Another note, having to redo the renown each season is really bad. Nobody like this system
Ya I intend to play season 1 and hearing this news just makes me not want to play the game right now since I will have to do it all over agin soon. Ugh.
On June 17 2023 09:34 FaCE_1 wrote: you can lvl up glyph in your paragon.
You can also add/remove it freely.
Another note, having to redo the renown each season is really bad. Nobody like this system
Does this mean that any new characters created during a new season will not have the "bonuses for all characters in the realm" stuff already completed?
That doesn't affect any pre-created characters though, right? Current characters won't lose their renown or bonuses when a new season comes out?
On June 17 2023 09:34 FaCE_1 wrote: you can lvl up glyph in your paragon.
You can also add/remove it freely.
Another note, having to redo the renown each season is really bad. Nobody like this system
Does this mean that any new characters created during a new season will not have the "bonuses for all characters in the realm" stuff already completed?
That doesn't affect any pre-created characters though, right? Current characters won't lose their renown or bonuses when a new season comes out?
(Also, thanks for the glyph info!)
Yeah, when the first season begins, seasonal characters will be created on a new realm (currently: eternal realm) and you will have to rediscover every waypoint, every statue of lilith, get renown to 5 again in all 5 regions and won't be able to skip story immediately upon creation.
All current characters are on the Eternal Realm, so any future characters created on it (non-league) will still get all the unlocks you currently have unlocked. ------------------------------------------------------ With that said, yeah I was extremely disappointed with the news of having to refarm renown every season. I'm going to play season 1 definitely, and I plan on making a character with overpower/fortify gameplay, but I do not see myself playing more Diablo 4 until either they ease up on these renown requirements or I take a long, healthy break from the game... like 6-9 months or more.
On June 17 2023 09:34 FaCE_1 wrote: you can lvl up glyph in your paragon.
You can also add/remove it freely.
Another note, having to redo the renown each season is really bad. Nobody like this system
Does this mean that any new characters created during a new season will not have the "bonuses for all characters in the realm" stuff already completed?
That doesn't affect any pre-created characters though, right? Current characters won't lose their renown or bonuses when a new season comes out?
(Also, thanks for the glyph info!)
Yeah, when the first season begins, seasonal characters will be created on a new realm (currently: eternal realm) and you will have to rediscover every waypoint, every statue of lilith, get renown to 5 again in all 5 regions and won't be able to skip story immediately upon creation.
All current characters are on the Eternal Realm, so any future characters created on it (non-league) will still get all the unlocks you currently have unlocked. ------------------------------------------------------ With that said, yeah I was extremely disappointed with the news of having to refarm renown every season. I'm going to play season 1 definitely, and I plan on making a character with overpower/fortify gameplay, but I do not see myself playing more Diablo 4 until either they ease up on these renown requirements or I take a long, healthy break from the game... like 6-9 months or more.
This appears to be incorrect.
· They realize rediscovering the map with each new character doesn’t feel great and recollecting alters of Lilith does not feel great. Your map will not be reset for the new season. You will have to get the waypoints again, but they will be visible on the map if you already got them. You will NOT have to recollect alters of Lilith. All stat bonuses collected from alters and fog will also stay with you. They will preload you with that renown in the next season. Alts for season one will also benefit from these changes. Side quests right now will reset, but they will reevaluate if players think these are not fun to complete again. Same with strongholds. This may change as seasons progress.
· They are still making decisions on what else will and will not ‘carry over’ into the next season (implying that some other things will).
· Once you complete the campaign on one character once, you never have to complete it again, even in new seasons.
On June 17 2023 09:34 FaCE_1 wrote: you can lvl up glyph in your paragon.
You can also add/remove it freely.
Another note, having to redo the renown each season is really bad. Nobody like this system
Does this mean that any new characters created during a new season will not have the "bonuses for all characters in the realm" stuff already completed?
That doesn't affect any pre-created characters though, right? Current characters won't lose their renown or bonuses when a new season comes out?
(Also, thanks for the glyph info!)
Yeah, when the first season begins, seasonal characters will be created on a new realm (currently: eternal realm) and you will have to rediscover every waypoint, every statue of lilith, get renown to 5 again in all 5 regions and won't be able to skip story immediately upon creation.
All current characters are on the Eternal Realm, so any future characters created on it (non-league) will still get all the unlocks you currently have unlocked. ------------------------------------------------------ With that said, yeah I was extremely disappointed with the news of having to refarm renown every season. I'm going to play season 1 definitely, and I plan on making a character with overpower/fortify gameplay, but I do not see myself playing more Diablo 4 until either they ease up on these renown requirements or I take a long, healthy break from the game... like 6-9 months or more.
· They realize rediscovering the map with each new character doesn’t feel great and recollecting alters of Lilith does not feel great. Your map will not be reset for the new season. You will have to get the waypoints again, but they will be visible on the map if you already got them. You will NOT have to recollect alters of Lilith. All stat bonuses collected from alters and fog will also stay with you. They will preload you with that renown in the next season. Alts for season one will also benefit from these changes. Side quests right now will reset, but they will reevaluate if players think these are not fun to complete again. Same with strongholds. This may change as seasons progress.
· They are still making decisions on what else will and will not ‘carry over’ into the next season (implying that some other things will).
· Once you complete the campaign on one character once, you never have to complete it again, even in new seasons.
Well then, fuck me. They must've corrected themselves at some point in the later half of that dev talk, because that is quite literally what they said earlier on in the show. I watched it 3/4ths of the way through and just closed the tab. Wasn't interested at all when they started talking about their patching philosophy and what constitutes a hotfix, what will come before or at season 1 patch and what is scheduled for season 2 patch.
A pretty honest review. One of the things he mentions really struck me, and that is D4 lacking the addiction factor of ARPG titles. I can definitely concur here as 3 days in, lvl 38, finished act 2 and I don't really feel like I want to play this game any more... Minutes of walking around just for a fight that ends in a few seconds, the world looks nice but also very bland and you see the same annoying mobs over and over again, it's depressing really. In other Diablo titles at least you had a bigger change in scenery and different sets of mobs to fight as you progressed to new areas - in D4 I wouldn't really know I'm in a different area without checking the map (which is sometimes annoying as few times I thought I was doing stuff to progress renown in one area and it turned out to be a different one).
To be honest at this point Halls of Torment feels more like a Diablo game than Diablo 4...
It feels like the changes that are coming up that might not make it in until season 1 or season 2 are changes that should've been figured out during beta and implemented for day 1 patch upon release.
For me personally, I think about how much time I spend in different categories: (1) combat, (2) travel, (3) picking up and sorting loot, (4) thinking about and tweaking my build. The ratio is just off for me.
I want way more combat and for the combat to be more sustained. Going from pack to pack blowing them up in a few seconds is not ideal for me. Traveling within dungeons is too much. The good combat experiences are the events where waves of enemies spawn one after another and also the story bosses that actually took more than 5 seconds to kill. Or parts of a dungeon where there are actually a ton of monsters, lots of elites, ambushes, etc. But those are exceptions.
But then a lot of my game time is spent on loot. I'd kill for loot to be picked up automatically and to be able to program ways to process it automatically, like if it doesn't have at least 2-3 desirable affixes, or its power level is too low, then it automatically gets marked as trash. It really feels like I'm playing BW again with 12 unit max selection, and I'm babysitting dragoons so they don't bug out and run the wrong way, etc etc. Like why is this interface so clunky and dumb in 2023? What a waste of time, and so tedious. You can try to make a game of it and see the skill in it, like "how fast can I scan all these items and process them correctly" but I'm just not into it and it's hard for me to imagine that most people are. I play entire sessions where I don't look at loot at all, I just think "I'm playing today to gain exp and glyph exp, and if I sell a perfectly rolled item and miss out on it, then so be it." Luckily I'm still blowing up packs 3 levels above me, but if I don't look at loot for long enough I imagine I'll start to slow down and be forced to fish for upgrades.
On the other hand, thinking about and tweaking my build is a fine way to spend time out of combat. It's just that, in the grand scheme of things, it's time consuming to process all the loot you find in order to maintain different sets of gear for different builds. Also time consuming to level another class. WoW is similar in this way, where they work so hard to create dozens of viable and fun specs, but an individual player can't play them all the same way you can play whatever champion you want in League of Legends. They're locked behind huge time commitments of grinding in order to bring them to a competitive level or have the build fully come together and play the way it should. IMO it should be my own skill that takes time to develop, not having access to the build. So again I feel like the game design is fundamentally flawed.
To the extent my issues are responded to with "well that's just diablo; it's not for you" then so be it. I wouldn't want to completely remove travel or completely remove manually processing loot, and I wouldn't want to make combat feel too exhausting and slow paced, and I wouldn't want access to other classes and builds take zero time to set up. But each one of these things is a knob the devs can turn in order to tune the game experience to what they think is perfect and I just cannot understand them at all for tuning the game the way it is; it's not even close to what my tuning would be. Still, I had fun, but the gameplay loop has not captured me long term. I'll be moving on to FF16 and looking to come back to D4 in a few seasons if there's a lull in game releases.
I dont want to write a really in depth review I think but some points
Good:
- generic / simple story. Still presented nicely. Act 1 was good, Act VI was greatness. Everything between was a bit generic but still not un-interesting which is good enough for me. Act VI was 9/10 though. - anything technical. Engine, gameplay, graphics, audio, music, responsiveness of skills. BESIDES THE HORSE - atmosphere. Its absolutely nailed and potentially too grim for some but I love it. Its really diablo. - incredibly well rounded base for a game to achieve greatness
bad:
- ressource generation, leveling experience and general skills and cooldowns / management feel like a chore and repetetive. - character progression. You basically get 20 and you dont change skills ever. This includes item progression up to a certain point - missing pinnacle bosses. I am sure there is content coming but from 60 - 100 you have basically ZERO intention to play cause its super uninteresting
including:
nightmare dungeons | lack of XP, lack of mobs , lack of fun helltides | where is the density? where is the hell? BORING. BOSSES. I understand we aint in D2 and the story doesn't allow for everything but I'd rather farm 3000x mephisto over "tomb lord, brood mother, skeleton king, bramble" .. Those bosses feel meaningless in a diablo universe, but that might be my taste
bosses and their mechanics in particular as well as dungeons. They are clearly going in the direciton of lost ark with less MMO but they should have learned more from it. Boss and mechanical design on Lost Ark and dungeons (outside of group mechanics) is incredible. D4 has absolutely zero mechanics outside of "dodge this" slightly. And most of the time I feel like a lot of mechanics are not actually "easy" to dodge cause they dont actually give you the time. Would need to find footage of which mechanics. ELIAS as capstone was mechan ically ALRIGHT but also not good.
Worldbosses are another very BAD mechanical design. They dont need to be challenging but they are simply outplayed by being close.
overall lack in density/too little mobs. If you want to bring down XP, nerf it per mob. Give us mobs to slaughter. I am playing to shred and not backtrack 30%, slay 20% and run searching for something 50% of the time.
SCALING. I think story-progerssion should be more linear and people should be able to outlevel content if they choose to. Make allo ther zones outside of story or leading to it scale.
Scaling up to a certain point and how armor / DR works. I dont have the solution but as an example:
10000HP / 5000 armor vs echo of lilith @ LVL85 - you dont stand a chance, you get 1 tapped 10000HP/ 5000 armor vs echo of lilith @ LVL100 - you can tank multiple hits.
Players from WOW will understand this I've heard. A mob above your level is basically unbeatable which shouldnt be the case. Bosses should have mechanics to play and dodge and superior players should be able to beat good bosses and not have level/gearchecks. PoE is a good example that you can more or less beat anything if you are mechanically sound.
Note: Ill admin you can probably play through the lilith fight if you are mechanically PERFECT but I am not sure due to the zone-destruction feature. In any case, this type of scaling needs to go IMO.
Thats more or less all rn from the top of my head between casts.
On June 18 2023 02:13 NonY wrote: It feels like the changes that are coming up that might not make it in until season 1 or season 2 are changes that should've been figured out during beta and implemented for day 1 patch upon release.
For me personally, I think about how much time I spend in different categories: (1) combat, (2) travel, (3) picking up and sorting loot, (4) thinking about and tweaking my build. The ratio is just off for me.
I want way more combat and for the combat to be more sustained. Going from pack to pack blowing them up in a few seconds is not ideal for me. Traveling within dungeons is too much. The good combat experiences are the events where waves of enemies spawn one after another and also the story bosses that actually took more than 5 seconds to kill. Or parts of a dungeon where there are actually a ton of monsters, lots of elites, ambushes, etc. But those are exceptions.
But then a lot of my game time is spent on loot. I'd kill for loot to be picked up automatically and to be able to program ways to process it automatically, like if it doesn't have at least 2-3 desirable affixes, or its power level is too low, then it automatically gets marked as trash. It really feels like I'm playing BW again with 12 unit max selection, and I'm babysitting dragoons so they don't bug out and run the wrong way, etc etc. Like why is this interface so clunky and dumb in 2023? What a waste of time, and so tedious. You can try to make a game of it and see the skill in it, like "how fast can I scan all these items and process them correctly" but I'm just not into it and it's hard for me to imagine that most people are. I play entire sessions where I don't look at loot at all, I just think "I'm playing today to gain exp and glyph exp, and if I sell a perfectly rolled item and miss out on it, then so be it." Luckily I'm still blowing up packs 3 levels above me, but if I don't look at loot for long enough I imagine I'll start to slow down and be forced to fish for upgrades.
On the other hand, thinking about and tweaking my build is a fine way to spend time out of combat. It's just that, in the grand scheme of things, it's time consuming to process all the loot you find in order to maintain different sets of gear for different builds. Also time consuming to level another class. WoW is similar in this way, where they work so hard to create dozens of viable and fun specs, but an individual player can't play them all the same way you can play whatever champion you want in League of Legends. They're locked behind huge time commitments of grinding in order to bring them to a competitive level or have the build fully come together and play the way it should. IMO it should be my own skill that takes time to develop, not having access to the build. So again I feel like the game design is fundamentally flawed.
To the extent my issues are responded to with "well that's just diablo; it's not for you" then so be it. I wouldn't want to completely remove travel or completely remove manually processing loot, and I wouldn't want to make combat feel too exhausting and slow paced, and I wouldn't want access to other classes and builds take zero time to set up. But each one of these things is a knob the devs can turn in order to tune the game experience to what they think is perfect and I just cannot understand them at all for tuning the game the way it is; it's not even close to what my tuning would be. Still, I had fun, but the gameplay loop has not captured me long term. I'll be moving on to FF16 and looking to come back to D4 in a few seasons if there's a lull in game releases.
I'd like to adress some things here:
In terms of time distribution I would generally agree with you. There is too much unneeded time spent looking up loot and such. Blizzard has had way more time than needed to implement at least THE SIMPLEST item filter system. Look at PoE or other games. Its really not that hard and D4 even has the advantage of items dropping identified so you can (as you named) filter by affixes etc. This needs to be implemented.
On the other hand: Going from pack to pack and blowing it up. I am a zoomer I do like this. I think sustained fights should be bosses and/or sidebosses in dungeons, not actual elite. An elite can be a bit more tanky and depending on mods dangerous but shouldnt be something that keeps you sustained all the time for minutes like a high butcher or anyhting. PoE does disagree though and moved towards rares being more hard to bring down. So thts preference I guess.
Last point I actually agree and disagree at the same time.
I do feel you when you say "they are locking builds behind time invetsment" which I agree. But I disagree that it should be available from the start. I would say character progression in D4 is horrible. Leveling feels like a chore because your build doesn't come together AT ALL until you hit LVL50 for a lot of classes/builds or even until paragon boards. This should change.
In the end though I feel like build and/or power increasing later with equipment and time investment is fine. I wouldnt want to feel the same in terms of build on level 35 compared to 85. I just dont want to have to level to 50+ just to play a build .
On June 18 2023 02:15 TaKeTV wrote: D4 has absolutely zero mechanics outside of "dodge this" slightly. And most of the time I feel like a lot of mechanics are not actually "easy" to dodge cause they dont actually give you the time. Would need to find footage of which mechanics.
This to me seems might be the case because some of the bosses have "floor is lava" mechanics coupled with trash summons and/or bullet hell which makes it sometimes hard to see and sometimes just damned if you do, damned if you don't.
On June 18 2023 02:22 TaKeTV wrote: I do feel you when you say "they are locking builds behind time invetsment" which I agree. But I disagree that it should be available from the start. I would say character progression in D4 is horrible. Leveling feels like a chore because your build doesn't come together AT ALL until you hit LVL50 for a lot of classes/builds or even until paragon boards. This should change.
In the end though I feel like build and/or power increasing later with equipment and time investment is fine. I wouldnt want to feel the same in terms of build on level 35 compared to 85. I just dont want to have to level to 50+ just to play a build.
This is very much true for me too. Not even 50 but I can already see that my build will be pretty much decided by what items will drop for me (as I don't have unlimited hours grinding for exactly what I want) and this introduces a feeling of uncertainty and also anxiety because I might have fun with certain skills but no items to support this playstyle, or even if I find those items as I level up everything that's going to drop might not be for me and I'll be outpaced by the content soon enough.
I think they should really decide on what the supposed "max level" is. Is it 50, when you no longer keep getting skill points? Then why have 100 levels instead of completely separate paragon system and max level for items being 50? If it's 100 then why the sudden switch from skill points to the paragon board?
It's like a bad mix of incompatible games (in this case trying to mix systems from D2, D3 and Diablo Immortal), a Frankenstein's monster of a creation that's super confusing and not really something to look forward to.
Another thing that's extremely confusing and unnecessarily complex are all the damage types and conditionals on them... % dmg to crowd controlled enemies, % dmg to chilled enemies, % dmg to stunned enemies, % dmg to frozen enemies (is chilled/stunned/frozen/immobilized also crowd controlled?), bonuses against far and close enemies and other shit like that. This makes it super hard to track and assess the worth of an item, not to mention much less likely to find what you need since the number of potential affixes is unnecessarily bloated.
I don't really think it's bad, it's just a bit mediocre. I've seen worse mob density, worse dungeon design, worse skill design, worse item design, worse graphics, worse soundtrack and worse atmosphere. But I've also seen these things done better, just usually not by the same game.
Considering that the monetization hasn't been as bad as predicted (so far) and that I lowkey expected them to really screw up it's alright.
EPT
