The game seems wonderful so far. I am a bit old to play everyday and 8 hours sessions. but it seems really well built for 2-3 hours sessions.
Playing hardcore right away is also great because it gives a bit more meaning to the gears you find. I feel it is hard to care for the gear as it seems to rotate quite often in early levels, basically just caring about the colors of the gear "number goes up, I switch".
So yes, the gear part does not seem to be the core thing that keep me entertained. For me, it is more about the skill builds, you can have 3 characters from the same class and they'd feel very different to play.
One thing that I fear has gone the wrong way from D1 -> D4 is that every class has become a secret spellcaster.
It seems I'm not the only one not really inspired by D4
Not sure if he is in any sort of form a valid person to consider as feedback for the general audience. He is just very hardcore and stuck in d2
that seems a bit unfair. he obviously prefers d2 to d3 and d4 but hes clearly tried to be as unbiased as he can in all his review videos. otherwise he straight up admits his bias when he applies them.
also seeing as i personally have similar tastes to him when it comes to diablo i valued his feedback pretty highly.
i mean his point still stands, for the wider player base reviews like that arent to helpful
if you play D2 to this day regularly, then you either found your sweet spot gamedesign wise or you are fully immersed in nostalgia. or any mixture of both. either way you like the game, so any divergence of that is viewed very critical at that point. he might speak to people with similiar preferences (of which there a plenty so it definetly has its place), but thats it.
just look at this thread, there are plenty of folks to write things like "d3/4 did that somehow worse" or "its not as natural as D2" without giving ANY real reasoning other then heavly nostalgia tainted views. which is a fine opinon to have, but sadly blizzard tried to make a game that has innovations as well as catering these types of players, which is kinda impossible in the first place and so we only ended up with a quite decent game, but nothing more. the only real risk they took was the open world with lvl scaling, and that doesnt seemed to go all to well with the majority of players as far as i can tell. which again wouldnt be to bad if there was more stuff to concentrate on instead.
hate it all you want, D3 was bringing just as much fresh air to the genre as D2 did in its days. D4 doesnt do that, and thats its greatest failing imho.
I mean his point of view is probably valueable for his targeted audience (his viewers), which is considerably large and will likely mostly consist of people who either still play D2 or at least like D2 but don't play it anymore for whatever reason. I think it's pretty unfair to reduce everything to "nostalgia clouded opinions" when a lot of why those people like D2 are born from specific design choices, which were thrown out of the window by D3/D4. This is mainly how itemisation works imho, which was rather interesting in D2 (Manitou already explained it somewhat) and very uninteresting in D3/D4 because you are looking for the same things on all items and upgrades are just higher numbers of the same stats. It's the WoW formular, which I have always found boring. It has nothing to do with the Diablo franchise, really. On the topic of "diverging from D2 is seen critical" I also disagree. It's not that diverging in and of itself is bad. It's that good systems are abandoned for bad ones and people are using D2 as comparison because D3/D4 are sequels so D2 is the first thing they could compare it to. A lot of people who liked D2 like PoE for example (and a considerable amount who doesn't as well) and I would say PoE does diverge a lot from D2. It brought fresh air into the genre when D3 failed to do so. Can you explain how D3 brought fresh air into the genre other then sparking a bunch of other studios to create ARPGs for disappointed Diablo fans?
as i tried to point out, its a mixture of nostalgia and/or just found the game that hits your sweet spot. i never wanted to say that his points arent valid, only that if a person who famously loves a game (D2 in this case) prefers said game over something else, that doesnt make the other thing a bad thing. its the same when for example Grubby went back to WC3 or Flash to SC1 from SC2. SC2 is still a great game, and their departure only tells you that they prefer the game they loved previously, nothing more.
as for D2 itemization: that proves my point exactly, you (and loads of other ppl obviously) love the complexity, as do I in this specific case. but just as many enjoy a more clear cut path to BiS gear. ARPGs in general attract a lot of more casual players that just wanna dumb a few hours here and there without the infamous "spreadsheeting". i am 100 % certain that there a plenty of players that like the more straight forward itemization in D3/4. there is no obvious "better" way to do it, and one side of the coin will always be more satisfied than the other. and in the case of a AAA dev like blizzard you can bet that they are going to cater whoever is giving them more money in the long run. and i never said that anybody doesnt like divergence from D2, people dont like divergence from systems they liked previously (which again, are many D2 features for many). i dont even want to say that nostalgia is a bad thing in any way, just that everybody should be conscious about it and things arent as clear as they are for one self
As for innovations in D3: limited skill slots, combined with a faster playstyle free respecs with the rune system for every skill endless scaling endgame with greater rifts (until they jumped the shark and everyone did 150s) no more collecting of potions/scrolls setsboni that change the way you play your class and im sure i missed some, and some of the above were somewhere else first but D3 did a lot of bold things in its time
It seems I'm not the only one not really inspired by D4
Not sure if he is in any sort of form a valid person to consider as feedback for the general audience. He is just very hardcore and stuck in d2
that seems a bit unfair. he obviously prefers d2 to d3 and d4 but hes clearly tried to be as unbiased as he can in all his review videos. otherwise he straight up admits his bias when he applies them.
also seeing as i personally have similar tastes to him when it comes to diablo i valued his feedback pretty highly.
i mean his point still stands, for the wider player base reviews like that arent to helpful
if you play D2 to this day regularly, then you either found your sweet spot gamedesign wise or you are fully immersed in nostalgia. or any mixture of both. either way you like the game, so any divergence of that is viewed very critical at that point. he might speak to people with similiar preferences (of which there a plenty so it definetly has its place), but thats it.
just look at this thread, there are plenty of folks to write things like "d3/4 did that somehow worse" or "its not as natural as D2" without giving ANY real reasoning other then heavly nostalgia tainted views. which is a fine opinon to have, but sadly blizzard tried to make a game that has innovations as well as catering these types of players, which is kinda impossible in the first place and so we only ended up with a quite decent game, but nothing more. the only real risk they took was the open world with lvl scaling, and that doesnt seemed to go all to well with the majority of players as far as i can tell. which again wouldnt be to bad if there was more stuff to concentrate on instead.
hate it all you want, D3 was bringing just as much fresh air to the genre as D2 did in its days. D4 doesnt do that, and thats its greatest failing imho.
I mean his point of view is probably valueable for his targeted audience (his viewers), which is considerably large and will likely mostly consist of people who either still play D2 or at least like D2 but don't play it anymore for whatever reason. I think it's pretty unfair to reduce everything to "nostalgia clouded opinions" when a lot of why those people like D2 are born from specific design choices, which were thrown out of the window by D3/D4. This is mainly how itemisation works imho, which was rather interesting in D2 (Manitou already explained it somewhat) and very uninteresting in D3/D4 because you are looking for the same things on all items and upgrades are just higher numbers of the same stats. It's the WoW formular, which I have always found boring. It has nothing to do with the Diablo franchise, really. On the topic of "diverging from D2 is seen critical" I also disagree. It's not that diverging in and of itself is bad. It's that good systems are abandoned for bad ones and people are using D2 as comparison because D3/D4 are sequels so D2 is the first thing they could compare it to. A lot of people who liked D2 like PoE for example (and a considerable amount who doesn't as well) and I would say PoE does diverge a lot from D2. It brought fresh air into the genre when D3 failed to do so. Can you explain how D3 brought fresh air into the genre other then sparking a bunch of other studios to create ARPGs for disappointed Diablo fans?
Can you explain what makes D2 itemization good? I remember uniques and/or runewords being BiS in most slots. Rares/magic items only have a few good affixes. Magic items can roll the highest possible numbers but I remember that being only useful for physical class weapons.
D4's problem with itemization is the opposite. There are way too many things to look out for that going through loot feels like a chore. For every build, every item slot has a different set of top affixes to look out for and a number of secondary ones in case you don't get one of the top ones. Looking at a bunch of guides, there are differences in their list of top affixes because there are way too many to look out for. I'm of the opinion that they need a lot less.
D3's "bad" systems are not necessarily bad. They are just not to your taste. D3's biggest strength is the emphasis on the action. It minimized the amount of pace-killers that force you to alt-tab to view spreadsheets in the middle of the game. I can log in, wreck shit, and log out without wasting my time with spreadsheets and wikis and forums and whatnot. I think the issue that TaKeTV and uummpaa highlight is that people with your taste can be extremely dogmatic in your beliefs. D3 gets a lot of unfair hate from certain corners. Plenty of people loved the changes in D3/D4 and the overall market has grown substantially from the people who played D2 way back when. D3 minimized the downtime and eliminated a lot of pain points. Sure, there is an audience who loved the downtime and the pain points (that's why PoE and those other ARPGs came into being) but it's unfair for the players who love D3 to frequently be characterized as shallow.
On July 06 2023 03:12 andrewlt wrote: Sure, there is an audience who loved the downtime and the pain points (that's why PoE and those other ARPGs came into being) but it's unfair for the players who love D3 to frequently be characterized as shallow.
On July 06 2023 01:28 uummpaa wrote: as for D2 itemization: that proves my point exactly, you (and loads of other ppl obviously) love the complexity, as do I in this specific case. but just as many enjoy a more clear cut path to BiS gear. ARPGs in general attract a lot of more casual players that just wanna dumb a few hours here and there without the infamous "spreadsheeting". i am 100 % certain that there a plenty of players that like the more straight forward itemization in D3/4.
I think actually itemization in D2 is more straightforward than D4. D3 really was a no-brainer as you just picked a set you wanted to use, which pretty much defined your entire build and then just farmed better versions of the same set, that's it. In D2 most builds will be perfectly fine without BIS gear and for less experienced players it's perfectly fine to just grab whatever they think is fine, going up the magic -> rare -> set/legendary ladder. The affixes are way more straightforward too (with a few exceptions which don't really matter for casual play). You can play the same build with 5 different item sets and you'll be fine, for 99% people there's absolutely no need to search for ultra rare BIS pieces to do all of the content in the game at all difficulties. In D3 and D4 that's pretty much impossible as you need some very specific stuff to be able to clear harder difficulties - especially because of seemingly "endless" content requiring constant gear treadmill so that your build is never actually done. This takes away real skill in my opinion and just focuses on the grind. I kinda like the fact that in D2 you can clear all difficulties without even using a single magic item, which MrLlama proved by beating hell with hardcore Amazon and not buying anything and only items he could use were stuff he found on the ground (and it had to be of "broken" quality to boot).
When is the point where I really start dumping gold into gear? I'm lvl 58 with my Ice Shard Sorc now and natural upgrades (ie items I find which are directly better than items I have) have slowed down significantly. Didn't really start hardcore NM dungeon grinding yet as I was busy exploring the map to have 2k renown in all regions. Have been saving tons of legendarys so far but not really doing anything with my gear beside upgrading weapon and offhand to +3 regularily
On July 06 2023 20:16 Harris1st wrote: When is the point where I really start dumping gold into gear? I'm lvl 58 with my Ice Shard Sorc now and natural upgrades (ie items I find which are directly better than items I have) have slowed down significantly. Didn't really start hardcore NM dungeon grinding yet as I was busy exploring the map to have 2k renown in all regions. Have been saving tons of legendarys so far but not really doing anything with my gear beside upgrading weapon and offhand to +3 regularily
I started dumping gold into gear around level 75-80, when I was getting end-game legendary gear that was pretty much perfect except for a single affix that I wanted to keep re-rolling until I got a better affix. That's what I used my tens of millions of gold for.
It seems I'm not the only one not really inspired by D4
Not sure if he is in any sort of form a valid person to consider as feedback for the general audience. He is just very hardcore and stuck in d2
that seems a bit unfair. he obviously prefers d2 to d3 and d4 but hes clearly tried to be as unbiased as he can in all his review videos. otherwise he straight up admits his bias when he applies them.
also seeing as i personally have similar tastes to him when it comes to diablo i valued his feedback pretty highly.
i mean his point still stands, for the wider player base reviews like that arent to helpful
if you play D2 to this day regularly, then you either found your sweet spot gamedesign wise or you are fully immersed in nostalgia. or any mixture of both. either way you like the game, so any divergence of that is viewed very critical at that point. he might speak to people with similiar preferences (of which there a plenty so it definetly has its place), but thats it.
just look at this thread, there are plenty of folks to write things like "d3/4 did that somehow worse" or "its not as natural as D2" without giving ANY real reasoning other then heavly nostalgia tainted views. which is a fine opinon to have, but sadly blizzard tried to make a game that has innovations as well as catering these types of players, which is kinda impossible in the first place and so we only ended up with a quite decent game, but nothing more. the only real risk they took was the open world with lvl scaling, and that doesnt seemed to go all to well with the majority of players as far as i can tell. which again wouldnt be to bad if there was more stuff to concentrate on instead.
hate it all you want, D3 was bringing just as much fresh air to the genre as D2 did in its days. D4 doesnt do that, and thats its greatest failing imho.
I mean his point of view is probably valueable for his targeted audience (his viewers), which is considerably large and will likely mostly consist of people who either still play D2 or at least like D2 but don't play it anymore for whatever reason. I think it's pretty unfair to reduce everything to "nostalgia clouded opinions" when a lot of why those people like D2 are born from specific design choices, which were thrown out of the window by D3/D4. This is mainly how itemisation works imho, which was rather interesting in D2 (Manitou already explained it somewhat) and very uninteresting in D3/D4 because you are looking for the same things on all items and upgrades are just higher numbers of the same stats. It's the WoW formular, which I have always found boring. It has nothing to do with the Diablo franchise, really. On the topic of "diverging from D2 is seen critical" I also disagree. It's not that diverging in and of itself is bad. It's that good systems are abandoned for bad ones and people are using D2 as comparison because D3/D4 are sequels so D2 is the first thing they could compare it to. A lot of people who liked D2 like PoE for example (and a considerable amount who doesn't as well) and I would say PoE does diverge a lot from D2. It brought fresh air into the genre when D3 failed to do so. Can you explain how D3 brought fresh air into the genre other then sparking a bunch of other studios to create ARPGs for disappointed Diablo fans?
as i tried to point out, its a mixture of nostalgia and/or just found the game that hits your sweet spot. i never wanted to say that his points arent valid, only that if a person who famously loves a game (D2 in this case) prefers said game over something else, that doesnt make the other thing a bad thing. its the same when for example Grubby went back to WC3 or Flash to SC1 from SC2. SC2 is still a great game, and their departure only tells you that they prefer the game they loved previously, nothing more.
as for D2 itemization: that proves my point exactly, you (and loads of other ppl obviously) love the complexity, as do I in this specific case. but just as many enjoy a more clear cut path to BiS gear. ARPGs in general attract a lot of more casual players that just wanna dumb a few hours here and there without the infamous "spreadsheeting". i am 100 % certain that there a plenty of players that like the more straight forward itemization in D3/4. there is no obvious "better" way to do it, and one side of the coin will always be more satisfied than the other. and in the case of a AAA dev like blizzard you can bet that they are going to cater whoever is giving them more money in the long run. and i never said that anybody doesnt like divergence from D2, people dont like divergence from systems they liked previously (which again, are many D2 features for many). i dont even want to say that nostalgia is a bad thing in any way, just that everybody should be conscious about it and things arent as clear as they are for one self
As for innovations in D3: limited skill slots, combined with a faster playstyle free respecs with the rune system for every skill endless scaling endgame with greater rifts (until they jumped the shark and everyone did 150s) no more collecting of potions/scrolls setsboni that change the way you play your class and im sure i missed some, and some of the above were somewhere else first but D3 did a lot of bold things in its time
Forgot healing orbs, which D4 has a hybrid system of (potions drop, but with a hard limit). Overall I definitely prefer D3's and D4's potion management to D2's, which is just obnoxious. Mana and -potions is the one point where D2 is really weak imo, your char is an addict until lategame and you have to micromanage his addiction.
In general D4 tries to hit a sweetspot between complexity (D2) and arcade (D3) and I don't think it pleases either crowd fully as a result. It's still alright in most aspects though, had a good start technically and Blizz even post Atvi has a good track record when it comes to post game support. So let's see where it goes.
On July 05 2023 19:31 Manit0u wrote: On the topic of D4 bringing fresh ideas I still think they went about it in a wrong way. For years now I was of the opinion that Blizzard should do a Diablo MMO, a WarCraft ARPG and StarCraft FPS, to keep the IPs fresh and get them rolling to mix things up a bit. Unfortunately they kinda screwed it up, D4 is an ARPG/MMO hybrid which wouldn't be bad in itself but they kinda took some of the worst ideas of both genres and mashed them together, resulting in a weird experience.
I think the worst thing is that most common problems people seem to have with D4 have been reported early on and there's no sign of them getting fixed (and it doesn't seem like they're huge issues that would be hard to fix, mostly just QOL stuff). Instead they're already announcing new seasons and expansions before the first season has even started...
Reminds me a bit of Blood Bowl 3 release, where it also suffers from issues in core gameplay, they even delayed season 1 to address some of them (but plenty still remain) and some of the most requested fixes/changes won't be made until season 2 which is a bizarre way of doing things IMO.
Oh well, probably gotta wait a year or two and it'll be a good game.
One of the recurring concerns with new Diablos (3, immoral) was that the fans largely hated MMOs. They mad their mobile MMO in D:I and the hardcore crowd largely hated it again (but it sold a lot in China). I think D4 is as close as people may find it likeable, because fundamentally Diablo was inspired by horror games and an MMO is about as far from that as possible.
I also don't think cutting into your own market with one of your branches is really good, especially considering that games are complex products and that you want atmosphere and game design to match. It worked for Warcraft because WC3 was very over the top and already implementing a lot of RPG elements successfully.
On July 05 2023 19:31 Manit0u wrote: On the topic of D4 bringing fresh ideas I still think they went about it in a wrong way. For years now I was of the opinion that Blizzard should do a Diablo MMO, a WarCraft ARPG and StarCraft FPS, to keep the IPs fresh and get them rolling to mix things up a bit. Unfortunately they kinda screwed it up, D4 is an ARPG/MMO hybrid which wouldn't be bad in itself but they kinda took some of the worst ideas of both genres and mashed them together, resulting in a weird experience.
I think the worst thing is that most common problems people seem to have with D4 have been reported early on and there's no sign of them getting fixed (and it doesn't seem like they're huge issues that would be hard to fix, mostly just QOL stuff). Instead they're already announcing new seasons and expansions before the first season has even started...
Reminds me a bit of Blood Bowl 3 release, where it also suffers from issues in core gameplay, they even delayed season 1 to address some of them (but plenty still remain) and some of the most requested fixes/changes won't be made until season 2 which is a bizarre way of doing things IMO.
Oh well, probably gotta wait a year or two and it'll be a good game.
One of the recurring concerns with new Diablos (3, immoral) was that the fans largely hated MMOs. They mad their mobile MMO in D:I and the hardcore crowd largely hated it again (but it sold a lot in China). I think D4 is as close as people may find it likeable, because fundamentally Diablo was inspired by horror games and an MMO is about as far from that as possible.
I also don't think cutting into your own market with one of your branches is really good, especially considering that games are complex products and that you want atmosphere and game design to match. It worked for Warcraft because WC3 was very over the top and already implementing a lot of RPG elements successfully.
I don't think it would necessarily be cutting into your own market. Games get stale and need replacements over time (WoW has been dying for some time now) and I think switching it up a bit might be healthy for the franchises. Nothing wrong in having darker 18+ MMO in form of Diablo (Age of Conan and Hellgate:London are good examples of darker MMOs that were fine) which would be perfect for all the people who love customizing their character etc. On the other hand a more light-hearted ARPG just focusing on the core mechanics in form of WarCraft ARPG would suit people just fine.
For Diablo MMO they could really go into weird places. Just like WoW revolutionized the genre and then had a bunch of clones they could do the same for Diablo, veering away from the standard MMO formula as we know today. Maybe doing something like Bloodborne or other Souls-like but MMO, where you haven't got as much grind but some hard and epic fights in a dark universum. Would be epic.
But it's all mustard after the meal now. Not really worth discussing any more. I just hope they can fix and salvage D4 somehow because it seems it's hemorrhaging players and from what I've seen/heard over the interwebz quite a lot of people aren't even interested in seasonal play and won't be returning for it. There also seems to be a lot of disgruntled people who don't know how seasonal content works and are super disappointed that their eternal char and achievements won't count towards seasonal progress for the first season.
I know I might sound rather negative but I'm simply just disappointed. They had all the feedback they needed, a lot of people being in contact with them and telling them about stuff that simply won't work or won't be received well and they still went with it. Also, for a company that's stealing concepts from all over the place it seems like they didn't even do the basic research about stuff that actually works in other games in the genre. It looks like they picked some random elements from other games and tried to mash them up together, which wouldn't even be half bad if they actually took the right elements out and not mostly bad or boring ones.
I've played almost all ARPGs out there and to this day I think that Titan Quest/Grim Dawn have the best class/skill progression system and the best "paragon" system in form of constellations (which would be 100x more interesting than statues of Lilith and aspects if they did something similar).
On July 07 2023 05:58 FaCE_1 wrote: why the first 30min of the video is "starting soon" lol
It gets even worse. Diablo 4 starts at about 54/56 minute mark. Before that is Diablo Immoral content. IDK anything about it, I don't own a phone you see.
I'm not really the target audience for seasons. Some interesting stuff but I'll just come back in a later season. I think 4 seasons a year is too many but again, I'm not their target. Will finish sorc in a week or so and start alternating some other game with the rogue. Just going to wait until later in the year before I take up the game again.
On July 06 2023 20:16 Harris1st wrote: When is the point where I really start dumping gold into gear? I'm lvl 58 with my Ice Shard Sorc now and natural upgrades (ie items I find which are directly better than items I have) have slowed down significantly. Didn't really start hardcore NM dungeon grinding yet as I was busy exploring the map to have 2k renown in all regions. Have been saving tons of legendarys so far but not really doing anything with my gear beside upgrading weapon and offhand to +3 regularily
You can start as early as low 50s. I just put a limit on how much I would spend on enchanting before giving up. If I don't get anything good, I just vendor. It wasn't until sometime in the 80s that I was willing to spend 5M-10M on one item to get a good affix. I wasted 20M on my current pants and just settled on damage reduction while injured. I really wanted damage reduction while close (it had damage reduction while burning, distance and vanilla damage reduction already). Only 758 though.
Same with upgrading. Going to +3 is fairly cheap so I started doing it in the 50s once I get some decent sacred gear with decent affixes (weapon, offhand, CDR, MCR, crit damage). I didn't go for 5/5 until maybe level 80.
so i think they somewhat confirmed before but they explicitly stated now for seasons
Once you have completed the Campaign, any Seasonal character will start the game with:
The option to skip the Campaign. Your Mount available immediately. All previously discovered Altars of Lilith unlocked, and the corresponding Renown for them. All previously discovered areas of the map revealed, and the corresponding renown for them.
EPT
