I was a huge fan of diablo 1 & 2 back then and it is without a doubt an legendary rpg. But i think such game concept should be left in the past. New concept could be if they mix DS gameplay with diablo mechnanics and atmosphere - but then it will be a completly different game.
I really agree to the points you bring up in the video. Even though D1 was mechanically simple and the story telling wasn't maybe top notch but it was the mood that made it tick. The feel of brooding darkness and danger, along with the feel of apocalyptic events occuring behind mortals back as read in the tomes found in the cathedral. D2 Felt more adventurous, but as you nicely put it still it felt like being done by a darker mind. It was grandiose and fun, yet still in the back there was this twisted feeling, specially felt it in the first act, with the baroness, and corruption spread by Andariel. Sadly D3 Felt really flat when it goes to story telling and mood, so much so that i stopped playing after the 3rd act since i got dissapointed at each step. Not even the modern, very comfortable style of play could not stop me from just sighing and being annoyed at each story milestone. As some of the folks here stated, Grim Dawn really felt to me as a spiritual successor of the series. It had this dark ambiance, brooding feel of looming danger, and sense of corruption that touched the land, with people looking for shelter in jails and organizing in groups to survive.
lol Blizzard artist are not that deep to make a game like this. Over the years Blizzard has filled their company with low paidfan boys and nerds from overseas like china and korea who dream of just being in Blizzard..
Ikr! Be it the India inspired ambiances in Diablo 1 & 2, the Wagner shoutouts in D2 Lord of Destruction or the fantastic atmospheric tracks in The Burning Crusade, Matt Uelmen composed some of the best soundtracks out there. I really like the other composers from Blizzard, but Uelmen and his knack for leitmotivs and eerie ambient backgrounds is over the top
I agree, one of the main appeals of Diablo was the dark foreboding feeling one got as you ventured your way deeper into dungeons. I fondly recall being terrified during Hardcore A3, hearing the whispers of pygmies, not sure where or when they would rush in from the darkness.
diablo 3 for me is like diablo for kids and wtf with female diablo at the end, diablo with tits wtf was that im rly sad they done this to one of my favorite game series
See I don't get that. i was never scared or off put by the games. I was an unkillable mass murdering monster hunter. What's the point of a horror theme if I can mow down everything in front of me without issue?
Honestly, I'm unsure why I watched the entire video. I don't even play Diablo. It's just fun to listen to well structured videos with compelling arguments.
some of his points are made because hes not as skilled as some, like for example you should be able to beat act 1 on nightmare at lvl 35 with any class and gear, your build just has to not suck.... but yeah, most of his points are valid, granted not 100% valid, but more well thought out than most diablo 2/1 fan boys, or the d3 fan boys.
Diablo 2 is amazing... I like Diablo 1 better in a nostalgia way used to play it on ps1 coop....dont play Diablo 3 unless you like games that hold your hand
If Blizzard takes the suggestions in this video, they'll probably run the risk of alienating their existing D3 fan base. The reason for this is the expectations D1 and D2 set for gamers don't really apply to D3's current audience. I think it's mostly to do with the games atmosphere. D1 wasn't great because of the fast gameplay and character build variety. It was great because of the atmosphere. The opening cinematic really sets the tone before you start the game and the gritty darkness and eerie music holds you there while playing the game. Playing this game in a dark room with a headset just felt right. It's amazing how well D1 nailed the atmosphere. The enemies didn't taunt you like petulant children either. Look at The Butcher. Ahhhh!!! Fresh meat!!! and them proceeds to chase you around around and hack you to bits. The butcher gave you a reason to fear him and he didn't run his mouth to do it. For many, the Diablo IP is synonymous with foreboding atmosphere. While I believe D2 lost some of the atmosphere, it brought new things like character builds, item sets etc to the table. But even there, parts of the game still retained that foreboding atmosphere, especially acts 1 and 3. I've only played the starter edition of D3 but from what I've seen, the atmosphere is almost non-existent. It's not just the bright colours, cringeworthy dialog and the childish taunts already mentioned in the video. What about the numbers (colourful numbers no less) which pop up on the screen? The messages that pop up (ie. 50 kills BRUTAL!!!) or notifications you destroyed 8 objects. The starter edition areas were so easy, I was never in danger of dying. No early game enemies were a threat like the butcher in D1 or coldcrow in D2.That companion wouldn't shut up. The health globes are littered everywhere. There was no sense of dread or danger which were established in the first two games. The foreboding atmosphere was completely gone. D3 fanboys will probably call me nostalgic but it's unlikely they even have a clue of the expectations the first two games set up. People who started with D3 have no such expectations of atmosphere. They will expect D4 to be a campy killfest where damage numbers and epic loot are the order of the day. Trying to go back to Diablo's roots will alienate that audience. Trying to bring back the old audience will also be risky as some of them will have moved on to other ARPGs and may not even be willing to give D4 a shot.
I learned my lesson with Diablo 3 wow edition. I'll never again buy a game until i tested it first. They had me with D3, they won't have me with D4. If it's not like D1/D2 i ain't touching it.
what i liked about diablo 1/2 was the tone and art of the game, the feeling of loneliness and weakness. I think that mercenaries was a mistake. it was also a mistake to make the player the super duper ultra master cool nephalen. When i finish D3, i was like "well, that's colorful!" desapointed...T-T
new blizzard ideas for wow/diablo 3 were " CHAMPION " " HERO " COMMANDER " i really enjoyed being just a weakling trying to fight evil, not being a commander, a hero that everyone runs to when something goes wrong(HI TYRAEL ON D3) They killed cain, worst move ever. They made tyrael, this...badass dead serious guy in diablo 2 ,into an annoying bastard, really,i'd rather this game wasnt released
d3 is not "colorful" (check whimsy), what it doesn't live up to is the original atmosphere. After we've killed diablo 2 times already its hard to stay immersed in the game. I like the cinematics, they were gr8. Somehow d3 is 10 times bigger (as hdd space) then d2, yet it feels 100 times smaller as a universe... Nothing new, heck they even removed all the things we liked from the previous...
Your point about cooldowns is SO spot-on. I hadn't thought about it before, but you're right. Over-focusing on cooldown-based skills takes the fun out of a combat system.
I just have a couple of things to say about this topic if you all don’t mind…and if you do mind, too bad! :) In concerns with the overall graphical appeal of Diablo 4, Blizzard really needs to dip back into the gritty, dark, gothic, foreboding atmosphere that Diablo 1 and 2 possessed. I don’t want to see a reminder of Warcraft and Heroes of the Storm. Blizzard needs to stop making all their games look alike. Allow Diablo to justly stand apart. I also have a thing or two to say about the voice acting. It would be nice if the selection of voice acting, especially in regards to the demons, bad guys etc…didn’t have the same gargled, deep throat, death metal growling in every enemy. Look at Path of Exile, especially the character known as Lady Dialla-she had a distinct sarcastic, snide, belittling attitude that perfectly captured what that character was all about. ( “Not a cockroach” ) A good example of voice acting done right in Diablo 3 was the character Zoltun Kule. He was a dick, and I enjoyed killing him in Diablo 3. Those kinds of things make a game worth playing. You have to develop a hatred for the bad guys so when the time comes to kill them it’s all the more glorious.
D2 was about surviving the horrors of hell, D3 was about slaying as many weird demon-things as quickly as possible and moving to the nest area. Basically, a big part of what made D2 feel so dark and hopeless and which contributed to the tone and atmosphere of the game was its difficulty. To anyone execpt D2 veterans, some monsters in that game became absolutely terrifying because of their ability to kill you extremely quickly and because D2 actually had a consequence for death, that I would call rather nasty.
I agree with most of what you say... I disagree... With my opinion being that Diablo's major corruption and decline was with more focus on it having a primary multiplayer game at its core. I believe it works most effective when it is designed, built, and implemented as a contained single player experience first, and then has a multiplayer aspect molded to the complete experience for further enhancement of altered paradigms due to growth of scale. And the exploration of how the community plays out that growth.
This video screams to me "PATH OF EXILE". Specially the part about items, potions and building your character. If you haven't played it try it out. It's a game made by people who truly understand what made Diablo great.
Still Path of Exile falls into the same problem of having lots of ways to build your character but in the end a lot of fun builds aren't viable, simply because there's no items that gives interactions with it for pumping out it's effectiveness in the endgame. I like the changes made to the Focus & Restraint items set in D3 because it helps unlocking interesting builds out of the class sets' meta, but that kind of philosophy should have been there from the start. Plus you have not only to find the specific legendaries you need, but then have them as Ancient quality to make it work, which asks for far more farming than getting a class armour set, thus penalising experimentation, which dumb since that's why they dumbed down the stats and talents systems in the first place. And finally it uses up your ring slots and restrict you from using any other set bonus, so some builds that would need certain rings' effects or another 2 piece set bonus get screwed. Hack & slash nowadays are built around farming for those specifics items that makes this or that build viable, then farming for these same items with better stats. So it's a bit disheartening when as a player you think of a cool build then find out that the developers didn't and then never created any powerful item to make it viable in the end game, and so around some point the meta gets stuck. When designing these kind of things, you have to think about both the items that drastically changes gameplay and necessitate to build around them, and the items that just supports an available build.
Builds dont have to do end content to be fun tho. You can create a new character for that and use that other fun build to farm maps, thats what i do on every league at least. And that last part you are saying, Poe devs do exactly just that to help new builds on every league. They may nerf some builds but they still buff other skills to make up for that, thus making more things viable. The thing about PoE is that the changes on items are as important as the changes on the skill tree, you may have the same stats on your legendaries but if the skill tree changed you have to think of an alternative. Just go and see how much the game changed on 3.0 with just some prefixes on items on the patchnotes. .And trading is a thing on PoE, you dont need to farm for an expecific item, just for the currency requiered to buy it. There is a reason why the people who hated D3 and are not playing D2 moved to PoE. The game is the best Hack n slash out there and its also free. Blizz will need to really think hard to top that, legacy isnt as strong as it was before.
yup, better pocion sistem, better economy, rare items are better than uniques, but some uniques change the way your skills work. you can customize your skills whit games, you can make a single powerful arrow shot or a 5 arrow explosive shot whit increased area of effect that burns enemies and trasfer burn to other objetives. some unique items will turn your fire spells intro cold spells. stuff like that. Auras support team play. you can also custom your summons, not just whit stat buff but also whit unique items or pasives. for example death aegis lets your bonus from your shield apply to your summons, any buff, like reflec damage, curses on hit. chanse to block. endless
Pretty much everything, expect the story. It was totally ruined after act 5. In act 4 killing the Beast just felt wrong somehow and I shuddered to think the consequences, but then you kill all other gods in pretty shallow power fantasy, forgetting pretty much everything about virtue gems, and thamathurgy. Honestly, they are not just loot but also the center of the story. They gave humanity god like powers to play with, which eventually lead to cataclysm, and other horrifying events.
I gotta say I agree with most of what you're bringing up here, and I understand that D2 is key to your perspective. but I was a bit shocked that nothing of Diablo 3 was brought up during your gameplay portion. I can understand if you personally didn't like it, but was there anything at all you thought they did correctly in the slightest from a design perspective? not poking the hornets nest, just understand you're one of the few UA-cam channels where game design discussion, aesthetic, and maturity intersect harmoniously.
Same here. There are some badly exploited but interesting concepts in D3, specially from the latest patches, like trying (miserably) to give more usefulness to off-set items and builds. See another post in this comment section where I developed it a bit. But yeah, I had hopes that this video, being from Feb. 2017, didn't talk more about D3, the changes it has gone through, and the success (and shortcomings) of Path of Exile and Torchlight 2.
diablo 1 is the best imo it was so dark and atmospheric and omg the music and sound design! I really liked that in diablo 1 it wasn't about melting hundreds of enemies but like a dozen at most. if you were an appropriate level to your dungeon level, every group of enemies felt potentially dangerous. I also liked that every class had access to every ability through spell tomes. I miss my spellsword warrior. having said all that diablo 2's pvp kept me addicted for years, I was actually ranked as one of the best pvpers on d2jsp
Diablo 4 is going to be a cartoonish mess of a game. Blizzard has given up on good narrative and turned both Starcraft and diablo into kids stuff. Happy endings, characters with serious plot armor and all. Overwatch has baby characters and it is mega successful. The trend will not end there. These are fine games. Just very lively and colorful. :D Dark stuff is pretty rare in AAA games. I mean, basically only darksouls and a few others do it well. Look at the evolution of dragon age. Minus a few raunchy lines of dalogue and sex. The violence is super cartoonish compared to origins.
I don't know about that, Blizzard's brand took a major hit by releasing such a shitty take on a Diablo 2 sequel. Overwatch is also not a great comparison, as that game was specifically released to cater to a wide audience across just about every age group. I'd advise waiting on D4 to actually come to fruition before coming to a hasty conclusion. Trends tend to shift about as often as the wind.
Ya, Starcraft 2 was derivative trash. Fun campaign, great mechanics, but the story was the best part of the original. I will say that their Nova campaign was good, bit of a return to form -- especially when juxtaposed next to the main campaign. Diablo 3's story was just embarrassingly bad. Did anyone predict that the kid emperor in Act 2 would've been the final boss? Oh, everyone? Oops. You know what's scary, when the final boss talks to you throughout the whole act, hamming it up as badly as possible, revealing all of their plans and cackling like a moustache twirling villain. Oh, that's not scary? Oops.
I don't really mind the flashy look of Diablo 3. In fact, it's inevitable if we wanna have healing firestorms and mid-air potion explosions like you're talking about. My problem with D3 was the difficulty. D3 has two difficulties; stupidly easy, and boringly grindy, and there's very little way to tell when the game will be one or the other, and the differences between them just aren't the same as in previous games. Back in D2, the levels of difficulty lived up to their names; enemies would have new resistances, new immunities, elemental damage, and virtually every encounter was a boss pack. In D3, increasing the difficulty just makes enemies progressively more tanky, have more boss modifiers, and if you increase the difficulty way far up, you might even die once or twice. But other than that, increasing difficulty in D3 either resulted in enemies being slightly more tedious to kill, or everything being absurdly tanky. There was never any need to change up your build, use a different strategy, use a different merc, etc. because pretty much every enemy just died if you kept hitting it. That's not to say D2 was perfect either; the body-retrieval mechanic is hands down one of the most baffling, nonsensical, anti-fun game mechanics ever designed for a video game. It's worse than Dark Souls; the game is essentially asking you to buy a new armor and weapon set with every death, or run naked into the thing that just killed you when you were fully equipped. This can easily lead to an unwinnable situation if, say, 3 boss packs pile on top of your multiple corpses, which just isn't fun or necessary.
"There was never any need to change up your build, use a different strategy, use a different merc, etc. because pretty much every enemy just died if you kept hitting it. " I love how you put it xD Yep, D3 is a grind fest. I'd love to see gear and abilities that are situational and that need to be switched and changed around to tackle engagements in different ways. I'd love to see environmental interactions that affect the battles with both mobs and bosses in interesting ways. And I'd love to see different classes having different approaches to rooms all together, Mages blinking through walls and go invisible to engage from better terrain, or Barbarians closing the distance by making a bridge with a near by pillar, or Monks Parkouring up cliffs and catch some Demons by surprise. So much is possible with this incredible engine. It's completely underutilized.
I also would like to see cursed weapons, the sort of thing that gives you a great advantage with a crippling weakness Example. Elemental Sword. Low level (10-18) no stat costs, can be used by any class Does 250 normal damage per hit and 300 fire damage per hit, Fast swing speed Maybe offers stat buffs -but- On killing an enemy has a decent (5-40%) chance summons a 1200 health fire golem, who does the Sorceress, blaze skill, but longer, does 600 damage a hit, and runs at least as fast as the player, and does not get tired, who will do nothing but hunt the player down, and kill them, until it is killed ,as in no it won't despawn after you die, or the player rage quits Or even something as simple as a charm that gives you a bonus to one stat at the cost of another +20 strength -20 dexterity
Hey there, i played Diablo II LOD allot, mainly because other people were playing with me and because it was fun. The story was at it's best in the Diablo II original game, the LoD expansion didn't measure up in my opinion. In terms of gameplay the patch 1.10 started the synergy craze that could have just been replaced with the implementation of new skills. I adapted to every patch of the game tough i prefer the patches before 1.10 . My favorite character was the Assassin, but i was always forced to have 2 Sorceresses and 2 Paladins in this game just to get items and past certain areas. The beauty found in Diablo's early game (before the hell difficulty) was eventually replaced with rushing. The late game didn't provide the wonder and the diversity Diablo had in the early parts of the game, it was almost clear what you needed, a fully decked out Lightning Sorceress with an Infinity on your merc, to get past stuff fast, and for the Uber Mephisto you needed a Paladin Smiter with life-tap gloves. To reach that point of course you needed another Paladin, this time specialized in blessed hammer and a cold Sorceress for the easy MF at Mephisto in nightmare and hell, it was a grind i tell you. To be honest with you, after beating all the game has to offer i started giving away items for free to people, they didn't have value anymore to me, unless i needed them for a build, i don't think item values can be really determined since if you finished all the game has to offer and you find excess items that you have nothing to do with, you might end up giving them for free like i did. A time limit to the ladder is one way to keep the values of the items fresh, tough i never liked that idea in D2 and i don't like it in PoE either. I enjoy Path of Exile, but i seem to get bored at the amount of grind i have to go trough, even more than in D2, a slower grind since you can't rush a boss with guaranteed drops, and no matter how good your character is, the end game is still deadly. Compare that to Diablo 2 (especially before 1.10), the game had a different approach, if you were good enough you could finish the game without optimized gear, without relying on trading, the game was more free in terms of builds, you could create hybrid characters and *have fun*, experiment, and eventually when you got items the enemies became less of a threat, till, eventually, you dispatched them with ease, it was rewarding, killing all the monsters in the game fast never made me want to stop playing the game, having everything just made me start helping others and trying out new crazy builds, compare that to PoE, tough, i'm sure you know how marketing for a f2p game works, keep the gamer playing, keep the stakes high, more game time equals a higher chance of that player purchasing something. In conclusion, i think that the player character should have the possibility to reach a power spike above any enemy in the game as to dispatch them with ease, while this should not happen super fast, it should not require a life-time investment either, or trading for that matter, since some people want to play solo. The game mode for solo play should have an increased item drop since you can't trade those items anyway. Cheers!
Poor Diablo 3. Pretty much every video on this subject boils down to: don't do anything like what that game did. hahaha here's my thoughts on your video though: Diablo 4 needs to take a HUGE amount of time developing classes. I think a major fault of BOTH D2 and D3 is that each class really had only 1 or 2 at most successful long term builds. I find that to be frustrating. let me clarify: if you make a sucky build, then of course you should suck. haha but if you are focusing on one of the trees that you really like and come to find out that it is extremely underpowered, that is ridiculous. multiple builds should have the possibility, if managed properly, to be just as successful as the other options.
Alexander Risager I know what you mean, to a point. I don't think every class will ever be perfectly balanced and amazing. I recognize that. however, in both d2 and d3 there are abilities and even trees that are pretty much classified as useless because other trees or abilities completely outshine them. that's the thing I don't really like. I want a larger portion of abilities to be meaningful at most stages of the game. does that make sense? idk. to clarify: I'm not saying that an end tier ability should be the same power as a low tier ability. I am instead saying that in their respective realms, each ability should be on level ground with its same tier counterparts. the games tried to accomplish this, but usually only 1 or 2 ever had any lasting value.
I see your point, and I do agree that I would become boring if nothing changes, but thankfully d3 try to change things every 3 months, with nerfs and buffs. Now i must admit I have never played d2 so I am not really in any position to compare. The more I think about the less qualified I feel. idk i just really like d3 cause I like competitive games, so I get frustrated with all the hate it gets
Thanks for the reply! I appreciate having good conversations about this game. I actually really enjoyed D3, for what it is worth. I got a little frustrated by the abilities and classes, and also got MAJORLY frustrated by how commonly the legendary and set items dropped. I wanted them to feel rare! but aside from those gripes, I did enjoy my time playing the game. Diablo 2 is still the better game for a variety of reasons (you really should try it out at some point), but I would never say that D3 is bad.
I've only played Diablo 3, mainly because its the only one available on playstation 4. I love the game. I didn't know the fourth was in development. I hope the console version of D3 sold well enough that they port the new title to PS4. :)
There are really only 3 extremely important things to make a great Diablo game. #1 The tone of the game. The dark and evil feel is a must. #2 There must be certain loot that is almost unobtainable. Ex. Crown of Ages, Tyreal's Might, high runes. This keeps a great incentive to play more. #3 The difficulty of the game needs to be amped up again. D3 became so easy over the years and wasn't fun. There was nothing to grind for.
What made diablo so special was the feeling and mood you got from it combined with that it was challenging. A big thing i remember from d2 was opening a door and dreading what would be on the other side xD i never got that in D3.
100% agree on theme and tone. Disagree on skill interactivity but I like that you were getting creative - skill bonuses were actually positive imo and hyper-specialization gave you a reason to play multiple chars while also combining with the skill tree to enable truly unique chars. Overall, this assessment is spot on, hope some Blizzard teammembers see this!
Good video. But I don't agree that you have to be level 40+ to complete act 1 on Nightmare. If you've actually been playing the game and found a few good pieces of gear like Sigons set for instance, you would have no problems completing Act 1 on any character. People do more Baal runs because they get rushed to Act 5 normal then get rushed to Baal in Nightmare and Hell.
Therein lies the core problem everyone seems to overlook. Why does the next game need to be Diablo 4? Each entry ends the same -- you fight your way through thousands of enemies to finally face and mop the floor with Diablo. Why not branch out into the lore and finally change the antagonist? I mean, he has been defeated 3 times already, and his plans are getting dumber and dumber with each game. I think the lore is deep enough to focus on something else at this point.
I agree with everything you said the only thing I’d like to add in is that diablo already has a cannon backstory describing the beginning of the universe and the world stone. So that may be something you’d enjoy reading into on the diablo wiki page. A game setting out the prequels of the three games and sticking to its roots of the original two is something that we would all want so great job in embodying that into your 4 points. Have a good one!
You make some very good points, I especially agree with the cooldown vs resource management part, and the section where you talk about the pantomime bosses or as you call them bond villains.
I totally agree about the need to make skill interaction richer. You could even make it interact with gear, i.e. to make your build successful, you need to combine with special gear that you create along the way.
I was a bit surprised that it didn't come up in this video but one of the greatest features of the first game was randomized dungeon creation. Sure it was a some what simple cut and paste approach but you never knew exactly which quest would be available, the layout of the area or even exactly which enemies might be available. In comparison Diablo 3 was very linear with only a few side dungeons that randomly appeared but what was in those dungeons themselves seemed to be always the same. Considering D3 was pretty sure and just expected you to replay the game 3 times on increasingly hard difficulty settings it drastically hurt the game imo. To me the maps being randomly created in some way is perhaps the most important aspect with a close second being far more abilities and classes. D3 didn't really have too many abilities to choose from and only a handful of classes even with the expansion. While D1 didn't really have much either D2 had way more to choose from, classes that were vastly different from each other as well. I kind of hope Diablo 4 has at least 8 classes if not 12 to start with.
the thing I liked about the first two was how devious and manipulative the demons were. Many times you get the suspicion that the demons are letting your character 'win' by taking a fall to further their plans. Which just adds to the feeling of overall dread, as evil is never fully defeated and your actions just buy the world some more time if you are lucky but more often than not the heroes just get played and are outmatched while an indifferent heaven gazes on. The ending of the Diablo 3 just breaks that by turning the heroes into ultimate untouchable badasses
i know this is a little aged but i love this assessment. diablo was the first online game i ever played. i miss the old necromancer bone spear builds and summons lol
Considering the overwhelming success of D3, it's unlikely D4 will ever look like what you're suggesting. Path of Exile is what you want out of a top-down Diablo-style game.
d3 is known as a piece of crap, just judging by the amount of players that still play it you can tell Not mentioning everyone knows that d3 sucks, because everyone say it, its a meme at this point. Season start> everyone logs in, next week 80% of the players are gone because they remembered why they quit in first place
i reckon it would be a good idea that instead of having different difficulties, that the game was 15 acts long (expansion included in this math) with 5 different acts but the first run through of the act you are restricted to certain areas and each time you play through the act it expands or explores different areas of the map maybe not have the final boss apear in each act until the third time you complete it, also a bounty system closer to that of final fantasy 15 wherein completing bounties progresses you to harder bounties would be a great end game challenge as apposed to just another grind for mats, an infinite dungeon would be awesome as well getting harder and darker the further down you trek with no time limit, make monsters less densely populated but stronger so that you can actually pay attention to how cool the map is when playing, heavily reducing self healing in conjunction with the stronger more spread out minions will help you feel like you are making a difference in clearing out hell,quality over quantity (think of it like a movie Logan vs John Wick) both good movies but the combat in Logan feels way more personal then the slaughterfest that is John Wick (love both movies).
Nightmare Countess runs are better than normal Ball runs at 30. You can farm for four socketed swords and polearms on the walks and if you cant find what you need you can use a white sword or polearm from nightmare and use the socket quest on them from normal. The countess will drop the runes you need to make some nice mid lvl runewords.
I personally don't mind the focus on single skills to optimise the build, as was done in D2, as this allows for replayability. You create new chracters just to try new skillsets of a class. Replayability is an important aspect of ARPGs, this also means characters should only be able to reskill at large cost - see POE. Gear trading is vital for a living community - which leads to rarity. Gear needs to be rare to incentivise trading. On the whole D4 should look at POE. They do so much right.
the one thing D3 did do well was the viability of skills, but they kinda threw that out the window with sets that boosts your damage by 1400% using THAT one skill
One of the simplest ways to improve skill synergies in Diablo 2 would have simply been to have more. Have synergies for almost every other skill. Enough that you could hit level 100 and still not have all of the synergies for your favourite skills. This way, players can choose just about whatever skills they want without having to worry about points being 'wasted' because the skills they picked don't have synergies with one another. Obviously even better would be if each skill have a unique or semi-unique synergy with any other skill for a given character. Or, you could eschew synergies altogether and have skills also scale with player level, so that any skill can be useful at high levels. Though this model would still encourage maxing skills one at a time, rather than diversifying. One thing I enjoyed in D2 was making weird characters, like an enchant-focused sorc, or a pure-passive/magic 'zon. Then you go to D3, and suddenly that's not possible because weapon choice doesn't actually matter anymore - they're just stat-sticks now.
I believe there is a problem that newer generation horror games have. Many horror games back in the day were pixalated and the whole "wtf is that!" feel is mostly lost when they are high definition. Diablo added to this having great sound design to make the lack of graphics seem more fitting. Diablo 3 feels much too clean.
I am holding my breath for D4. I loved D2 and D3 was pretty good but super casual (though still fun for what it was) but POE has been my main go-to for a long time now and while not perfect, I think it addresses nearly all the problems listed in this video. I think that GGG really took a hard look at what made the older ARPG's fun and improved on what could have made them better.
I particulary enjoyed doing normal/nightmare chaos/baal runs when leveling, its like low level pvp in some ways, players without the best gear/stats/level in the game just playing together and doing stuff/leveling, it was rewarding and fun, doing tristam runs, tal rasha's runs, i really enjoyed all of those until the game became empty.
There are a lot of great things about D3. Gameplay fluidity for example. It's so smooth it plays amazing compared to the previous game and compared to Path of Exile for example. Also the item drop system is really good now in my opinion. When D3 first came out it took me 2 months before I found my first legendary. Way too rare. Some may argue that it's a loot fest now but I think that's what it should be. D2 droprates were also way to rare. Auction house was terrible but it works in WoW so I guess if they rethink it it could work but tread carefully. So I think they should: go back to the dark gothic theme as in d1 and d2, keep gameplay fluidity and respec ability like in D3, no auction house, d3 drop rates. Less linear. Awesome dark cinematics like D2. WAAAY more areas. More different things to do. More expansions during the years after. absolutely no micro transactions.
i love poe and i play it to death but i would love a really dark slow, scary descent into hell kinda of game. like diablo 1, and instead of gearing of for power u are gearing up for surviving
I have to say this in response to one of the last points mentioned in this video. Progressing into nightmare does in no way require you to reach level 40+ to move forward comfortably. I hit nightmare sub 30 pretty much every time i play through, and nightmare even feels easier than normal does to be honest. The difficulty kicks back in when you reach hell (well maybe act 5 nightmare as well, but your resistances should be so high for NM at that point...) If you're struggling in nightmare before the upper 40s then you need to look at your playstyle and make corrections.
Also need to do away with set bonus the way it works in D3. Full set of 6 that forces your hand. How is any build suppose to get +3000%-4000% increased damage for one ability plus all runes unlocked and even -50% damage taken? That right there killed any idea of "build" to Blizzard build and they couldn't even balance the 3-4 class sets within them self. They should be limited to 2-3 piece sets with such things as a general buff to some aspect, rather then a single ability. Example 3 set: 2 piece - chance to gain 20 mana on crit, 3 piece - spending 100 mana increases your crit by 5% for 2s and stacks 2 times. You can use this with any build if spending lots of mana (think abilities that spend all your mana on use or channeled ability) and having a crit reliance.Think whirlwind barb or sleet storm wizard. Another thing would be to allow buffs to be more of a permanent thing with a permanent cost that can enhance your build but not need to be taking up 1 or 2 of you 6 abilities slots just to make that slot glow and have to be pressed once every 5m-10m. That is a waste of space. Also could of had all the 120s CD abilities in one group and give a single dedicated special ability slot that lets you assign only one to it. Still allowing the other one or possibly two super long CD abilities be used as well but on your standard 6 ability slots if that is what you wanted. Runes... stop having us choose between +200% damage or 10% chance to freeze, immune to freeze afterwards for 5s. This is a no brainer. Make runes interesting by changing how they work and not damage. The rune that gives the highest damage will always be picked then. Only time a rune should change damage is if it is an equal shift. Give runes that change how an ability functions, such as lower damage, higher fire rate or ability now pierces targets or something along the lines of the wizards meteor runes. Last note... wtf are generators and spenders any more? Every build comes up with it's own method of generating resource. This just makes generators pointless as they do almost no damage and take 5-10 uses to refill your resource so you can use your spender 2-3 times? That is how D3 started out before try set bonus defined builds and it was super clunky and slow. So I ask now... what role does generators and spenders fill if most builds can just free spam spenders with out even thinking about resource? Maybe if generators were THE ONLY WAY to get resource but were not garbage damage compared to spenders... could have some interesting synergies of utilizing two different abilities fill out a cycle (similar to the concept of rotations in MMO games) This could lend to the other two types of abilities be defense short CD, offensive short CD and then your 2-4 "ults" 120s CD abilities. Now we got 4/6 slots filled, "ult" slot filled and 2 free slots to use how ever you want. Just add in some ability changing uniques that compliment some sort of talent tree that lets you scale your defenses and damage type... BOOM! got a build that is actually a build and you can possibly make many different successful builds that work to push high end content. LAST THING: make Crit Chance and Crit Damage the same stat!!! one stat only. very simple 1:10 ratio. now gear that can roll CC&CD don't become a slot hog and force your itemization. OR just allow pieces that can have both just get one extra affix on it. simple. no need to rip vitality because there are not enough affixes.
What I want for D4? Pretty much this. And while they are making it, I want a Diablo spin-off. Offline solo campaign, Skyrim style! And with you just choosing male or female to play as, and expand the tree into your liking, and, no cap on each ability, so when you max out a character (!) you could spend all points on just one thing. The setting would be after Diablo 3, in a time when angels and demons are just myths. And you play as a the decendant of Tyrael. As soon as the evil starts to roam free, you are "awakened" with powers.
I'd say start with giving players an offline SP mode. I know this is an issue of DRM but it really is one of those things that makes the game a main stay. If the power goes out, or the internet is down, you break out your laptop and play the game. Basically Diablo II is there when other modern games can't be. The second thing is I think that Diablo 2 hit the nail on the head with limiting skill choices with the trees. It gave you this sense that you were specializing, like some master training in the wilderness. This implemented the RPG idea of choice making through the mechanics of the game instead of dialogue. Finally, I wouldn't go prequel. I would do a straight up remake of Diablo 1 but improved. This way Blizzard doesn't have to keep trying to find a new way to make Diablo somehow come back from defeat. Players who were too young to play Diablo 1 can finally experience the story without having the immersion breaking lack of mechanics (like not being able to run) Older players will appreciate the nostalgia and enjoy new bits of lore and gear that enhance the new experience.
no, heavy two handed swords (or weapons) have no place being wielded by scrawny sorceresses or mage types. that was one of the major let downs for me with d3, seeing a wizzard chick with a 2h axe bigger than her, getting the damage for -insert spell here- from the weapon ...like wtf is that?! also specific fighting skills should require specific weapons, like Jab (amazon in d2) should only work with a javelin or long piercing weapon (rapier), or a smash skill, should only work with a greathammer, etc. the part with different effect skills working together is cool, like in Divinity Original Sin, but must be very controlled, or else you get chaos. the color tones and music should be d1-d2 indeed, and for the love of god, no more dmg numbers on screen!
If they DO keep the story from 3 going into 4 atleast with the rest of your awesome points to return or evolve to. . . I'd LOVE to see the freed evils REALLY team up to onslaught heaven and sanctuary, SEE the utter zerging of 2 different realms at once like in it's past, finding out JUST how the evils almost won multiple times. AND to see Mephisto use his silver tongue on Imperious aka Valor into pride. To actually SEE his namesake ability put to cunning and jawdropping use would be INSANE!
A game called DIABLO kinda has to have the big guy himself in it. The thing is that at this point he's not that threatening anymore, especially after going evil super sayan in D3 and still getting his ass handed to him. Maybe we could play AS Diablo in the next game, see things from his perspective, his view of the world, maybe see him go through a character arc of some sort, make the character a bit more three dimensional. After the events of the last game he could easily be reborn in the body of a human and we could experience his struggle to regain his power, while experiencing life as a mortal being with all the good and bad things that come with it.
+ Classes should all feel and play different, for example I don't want my Monk to be able to use heavy/steel armor, i want him o be able just to wear cloth armor or no armor at all, and then get his armor and protection through tattoos maybe, why not. The way you learn skills also, sorceress should maybe find spells like in D1, Barbarian should maybe learn skills from NPCs. Every class should have like, an unique ability, like in D1 where warrior could repair equipment, rogue could disarm traps, we need that back. For example, necromancer could gather body parts from enemies he likes, and make his own, unique golem. I could talk about stuff like these all day :D Really loved this video btw.
Because it's not true. You needed a lot more to beat Baal normal than A1 NM. 60 was more for Hell. NM was really fast and easy with LoD addOn because you were already strong enough for the whole A1-A4 due to Baal normal being so high
I liked the combat on PS3, since I can't see myself get into clicking on where to go and what to do on a mouse, like I'm giving orders than controlling the character. Wish they allowed all weapons to be used visually with the attacks. Using the Monk with a staff, but you're still just punching instead was kinda weak, but mixing my buttons to feel like I'm doing combos was cool. This is aesthetic and not functional, though it can be, but it would make the gameplay feel more authentic. I'm already annoyed by shooters having bayonets on guns, but you don't use them, except Borderlands and Call of Duty.
I don't agree with a permanency ball and chain, but fully respec'ing one's character should come at a high cost. Tie this directly with gold as a means of further adding meaning to having it.
Neat little game dynamic - all characters start with no class. They start with cotton clothes, and a stick. As they level up, they can invest in stats; with a stat or combination of stats that are high enough... they can begin to progressively 'buy-in' to classes; which exist in a tree. normal --> apprentice --> magic adept --> mage --> sorcerer --> arch-magister normal --> recruit --> soldier --> veteran --> warrior --> martial master normal --> coin lifter --> lurker --> assassin --> shadow walker --> shadowlord normal --> graverobber --> dark adept --> dark mage --> death weaver --> necromancer normal --> student --> awakened --> daemon touched --> daemon expert --> daemonsbane normal --> acolyte --> holy person --> bishop --> high priest --> prophet of the divine
I like power leveling like d2 had with uber runs if there is viable things to do at higher level. I dont want a easily obtained max level either. I played D2 for 10+ years and never had a max level character. I love that. I want those higher levels to matter. I also dont like D3s power leveling because i can be max level in like 15 minutes.. thats dumb. I liked D2s because it got you to like 91-92 then you had to grind for the rest if you wanted them. And the power level (ubers) took many different things to set up. You had to have a properly geared smiter. you had to have the organs, you had to use placement of the bosses, then you needed a necro and properly geared hammerdins. There was a lot to cordinate to pull off an uber run. It was fun and worth it for currency. I loved that. The pvp in D2 was fun and crazy and chaotic that was amazingly fun to do. BRING IT BACK!
I would say "Don't get too hung up on balance" They balance D3 so finely that in the end there are only 1 or max 2 viable builds for each class in the game. They fret and fuss over 1% issues and remove player choice. If someone is prepared to grind 300 hours - let them be a bit OP, if someone wants to try an offbeat combo of skills, then give them the drops to make it worthwhile sometimes. I've played D2 through about 10x and hundred s of hours grinding all sorts of builds and item combos, some are easier than others, some are hard and just interesting to play. Some you can face-plant your way through mobs, others take more care and attention. That's fine. Titan Quest, D2, Torchlight, Grim Dawn, PoE - all the other games currently in this genre allow players to make mistakes, get a little OP or find ways of coping with slightly sub optimal builds. In D3 I spend hundreds of hours grinding for that one - only viable last piece of equipment to complete that one - the only - viable build for that class. The only build that even nearly works... and that makes for an increasingly dull end game.
Disagree with the last point. I enjoyed having to prepare for the next difficulty by running bosses and revisiting locations that i was now able to mostly breeze through. And if you were smart about it, you didn't have to be lvl 50 to get through act 1 on nightmare, it's more about being high enough level to benefit from the xp runs on the next difficulty.
diablo 4 : 1. charms 2. runewords 3. more violence and blood 4. pvp events 5. a more dark and gothic looking game 6. more stash tabs 7. ALL the characters from the beginning. 8. easter eggs from diablo 1 and 2 . 9. support for 8 + players like in diablo 2 10. maybe dedicated servers
I wonder why you didn't take any point from PoE success, they came up with so many awesome ideas. Classless giantic skilltree, getting rid of difficulties and making new acts out of old ones by changing story (and actually continuing story of the characters from this act), and slightly enemies and terrain and many other things.
Music and sounds of the 1st still resonates in my head!! I wished the 4 was as dark as the #1 with the wealth of the second. Diablo3 is a good game, but not the esperience the others provided. I am now hopeful.
PoE does everything you mentioned and far, far more. It's one of the most extensive game mechanics systems I've ever seen, and the most extensive skill tree probably ever in any game that I'm aware of. D4 stands no chance of matching it
1. Find the original designers 2. Failing # 1 , resurrect our first accounts from the data base prior to 1.1O , with all characters and account items intact. ( one per customer should suffice ) 3. Stop fucking nerfing shit ! 4. Let maphack be optional. 5. Give carte blanche to the original designers. 6. Implement 2-4 for D2 LoD, add 3D and camera control to D4 . * I appreciate the energy you put into the video and subject, good on ya.
Grim Dawn lacks ladder characters and its developed as single player game with multiplayer added. End game also sucks. POE is kinda meh for me, for some reason cant get myself to like it. Last Epoch is the game im hoping to be real successor for Diablo 2.
I disagree on the point about gold. Path of Exile, an indie Diablo style game, scrapped gold altogether. They replaced it with orbs that can customize your items in random ways (ie, upgrade a normal to a rare, re-roll attributes on a magic item, rearrange item sockets...etc). People instead trade items for these orbs through chat channels rather than any kind of auction house. I consider that much more fun than getting charged a fortune on repair costs or having to cough up exorbitant gem combining fees.
Isn't the limitations of the technology at the time the reason why Diablo 1 & 2 look the way they do, e.g. dark and foreboding? Video games at the time had access to less contrast, colour spectrum, and resolution than games today so perhaps this contributes to how the games came off and how people remember them today?
I do like the gameplay of Diablo 3. I really enjoy the fluid and chill gameplay rotations/control. The tone and atmosphere needs big improvement though. Back to a dark and gritty tone!
I found Diablo I BGM, ambient sounds and overtone to be WAY darker...I mean the dialogue leading up to the Butcher alone was pretty gruesome...Nothin' quite like the first imo...but I love the Tristram ref in DII...hated DIII for some reason I could never place...
They should just get the original team to return to make the fourth game. People that working on diablo 3 were people from the Blizzard team under Activision where they were more familiar with RTS than RPG. People that don't understand the franchise, don't understand the horror element, the replayable value linked to the limitless character builds that you can do, and the indirect story unfolding before you. It was dark, bloody and self paced game. I miss it so bad and lament the failure (for a veteran player of diablo franchise) of the 3rd installation, to hit the right tones to ensure it keeps the points that made the first two become classic games. I still go back to play the first two games every so often because of its awesomeness. I hope Blizzard entertainment understand this and allows for the core team to help create the next installment if there is ever one.
I actually liked Diablo 3 along with the other games. A lot of people complain that it's very different from the other games, and although I agree, I still enjoyed the atmosphere and gameplay of Diablo 3, despite how different it is.
Diablo 1 and 2 HD remasters playing as smoothly as Diablo 3 would be the only thing I need before I die. I would play them for the next twenty years probably. How do I know this? I still play Diablo 2 once or twice a year all this time later. Also, I could have watched two hours of this video type. I honestly wish your videos were a little longer, but I get it. I find myself wanting more...always. Wait....ruined by Runewords? You do realize that's most people's favorite part of Diablo 2, right?
I agree that the dark tone of the first and second games were appealing and would really love to see more synergy between classes or skills that you wouldn't expect to go together. I have to say though I honestly hated getting locked into builds in Diablo 2 and never want to see that again. Permanent skills were the worst part of the game. Gameplay would get stale unless you constantly make new characters, which just isn't fun. I don't mind some cooldowns, especially ones where reduction can come into play like with vengeance and rain of vengeance with buff management or short term, but these builds like trang oul and LoN FoK where you only deal damage every 30 seconds or more are just miserable. And I'd love to see trading come back, but not in a way where you can pay real world vendors into making you OP, which we saw in D2. Maybe between friends or clanmates. Thanks for sharing your take though.
Excellent deconstruction.. You've covered the main points admirably,and far more issues than I could have thought of... For my own two cents,apart from various niggles with Diablo 3,most of which you've covered,I didn't like the look of the armour and weapons in Diablo 3..they looked ,for the most part like Final Fantasy reject material....Diablo 2 armour and arms looked like metal..like traditional medieval gear taken to the nth degree I suppose..I would like Blizzard to give a more solid look to the armour and weapons,give them a more realistic,chrome like,or dull metallic and solid,less papery appearance... Also the music in Diablo 2 was so perfect..Those guitars and strings are perfection..I can't remember much about the music in D3...other than it was at it's best when covering traditional riffs...
I disagree with your harsh statement on cooldowns, but respect it, as the way Blizzard uses cooldowns is... reckless and hurts the product. I prefer the way certain skills in Black Desert work, where they have cooldowns, but can be used while cooling down, at the cost of not having all the secondary effects, or all of the damage they would normally have. I feel a system like that, applied well, would allow them to get their rocks off on cooldown skills, while also giving players something to manage/do with their time.
Enjoy the video? Thumbs it up and tell us what you think of the Diablo franchise - let's chat!
Grim Dawn is the new Diablo franchise for me. :D Blizzard lost a fan after what they did with D3. Such a shame. =/
I still think of Grim Dawn as the proper sequel to D2. Blizzard should be looking hard at Grim Dawn.
I was a huge fan of diablo 1 & 2 back then and it is without a doubt an legendary rpg. But i think such game concept should be left in the past. New concept could be if they mix DS gameplay with diablo mechnanics and atmosphere - but then it will be a completly different game.
I really agree to the points you bring up in the video. Even though D1 was mechanically simple and the story telling wasn't maybe top notch but it was the mood that made it tick. The feel of brooding darkness and danger, along with the feel of apocalyptic events occuring behind mortals back as read in the tomes found in the cathedral.
D2 Felt more adventurous, but as you nicely put it still it felt like being done by a darker mind. It was grandiose and fun, yet still in the back there was this twisted feeling, specially felt it in the first act, with the baroness, and corruption spread by Andariel.
Sadly D3 Felt really flat when it goes to story telling and mood, so much so that i stopped playing after the 3rd act since i got dissapointed at each step. Not even the modern, very comfortable style of play could not stop me from just sighing and being annoyed at each story milestone.
As some of the folks here stated, Grim Dawn really felt to me as a spiritual successor of the series. It had this dark ambiance, brooding feel of looming danger, and sense of corruption that touched the land, with people looking for shelter in jails and organizing in groups to survive.
lol Blizzard artist are not that deep to make a game like this. Over the years Blizzard has filled their company with low paidfan boys and nerds from overseas like china and korea who dream of just being in Blizzard..
Bring back the horrifying music !!!
Ikr! Be it the India inspired ambiances in Diablo 1 & 2, the Wagner shoutouts in D2 Lord of Destruction or the fantastic atmospheric tracks in The Burning Crusade, Matt Uelmen composed some of the best soundtracks out there. I really like the other composers from Blizzard, but Uelmen and his knack for leitmotivs and eerie ambient backgrounds is over the top
The Indian music was fucking weak and racist
I don't even remember any music from Diablo 3. I liked music in both diablo 1 and 2.
right. i liked the old music.
and bring back eerie and horrifying gameplay !!!
I agree, one of the main appeals of Diablo was the dark foreboding feeling one got as you ventured your way deeper into dungeons. I fondly recall being terrified during Hardcore A3, hearing the whispers of pygmies, not sure where or when they would rush in from the darkness.
That, and the amazing ambiance given to these games by Matt Uelmen's soundtrack.
Yes, great music.
diablo 3 for me is like diablo for kids and wtf with female diablo at the end, diablo with tits wtf was that im rly sad they done this to one of my favorite game series
See I don't get that. i was never scared or off put by the games. I was an unkillable mass murdering monster hunter. What's the point of a horror theme if I can mow down everything in front of me without issue?
You must be referring to D3 or had someone spot you a bunch of gear.
They need to remove all of the WoW influences - from ALL Blizzard Games.
Alterius Zhang except WoW of course
Ketan Gopichand no, including.
They can't, the was Blizzard with their cartoon style, then there was Blizzard North, with the Diablo style. Blizzard North is no more.
Especially those pauldrons. They look like brazilian carnival performers with those chunky, oversized things
Honestly, I'm unsure why I watched the entire video. I don't even play Diablo. It's just fun to listen to well structured videos with compelling arguments.
some of his points are made because hes not as skilled as some, like for example you should be able to beat act 1 on nightmare at lvl 35 with any class and gear, your build just has to not suck.... but yeah, most of his points are valid, granted not 100% valid, but more well thought out than most diablo 2/1 fan boys, or the d3 fan boys.
Go. Play. Diablo. They're so fantastic.
Diablo 2 is amazing... I like Diablo 1 better in a nostalgia way used to play it on ps1 coop....dont play Diablo 3 unless you like games that hold your hand
If Blizzard takes the suggestions in this video, they'll probably run the risk of alienating their existing D3 fan base. The reason for this is the expectations D1 and D2 set for gamers don't really apply to D3's current audience. I think it's mostly to do with the games atmosphere.
D1 wasn't great because of the fast gameplay and character build variety. It was great because of the atmosphere. The opening cinematic really sets the tone before you start the game and the gritty darkness and eerie music holds you there while playing the game. Playing this game in a dark room with a headset just felt right. It's amazing how well D1 nailed the atmosphere. The enemies didn't taunt you like petulant children either. Look at The Butcher. Ahhhh!!! Fresh meat!!! and them proceeds to chase you around around and hack you to bits. The butcher gave you a reason to fear him and he didn't run his mouth to do it. For many, the Diablo IP is synonymous with foreboding atmosphere. While I believe D2 lost some of the atmosphere, it brought new things like character builds, item sets etc to the table. But even there, parts of the game still retained that foreboding atmosphere, especially acts 1 and 3.
I've only played the starter edition of D3 but from what I've seen, the atmosphere is almost non-existent. It's not just the bright colours, cringeworthy dialog and the childish taunts already mentioned in the video. What about the numbers (colourful numbers no less) which pop up on the screen? The messages that pop up (ie. 50 kills BRUTAL!!!) or notifications you destroyed 8 objects. The starter edition areas were so easy, I was never in danger of dying. No early game enemies were a threat like the butcher in D1 or coldcrow in D2.That companion wouldn't shut up. The health globes are littered everywhere. There was no sense of dread or danger which were established in the first two games. The foreboding atmosphere was completely gone. D3 fanboys will probably call me nostalgic but it's unlikely they even have a clue of the expectations the first two games set up.
People who started with D3 have no such expectations of atmosphere. They will expect D4 to be a campy killfest where damage numbers and epic loot are the order of the day. Trying to go back to Diablo's roots will alienate that audience. Trying to bring back the old audience will also be risky as some of them will have moved on to other ARPGs and may not even be willing to give D4 a shot.
Very nicely said, I wish Blizz will took the suggestions of people like you seriously & don't repeat the mistakes of the past.
I learned my lesson with Diablo 3 wow edition. I'll never again buy a game until i tested it first. They had me with D3, they won't have me with D4. If it's not like D1/D2 i ain't touching it.
what i liked about diablo 1/2 was the tone and art of the game, the feeling of loneliness and weakness. I think that mercenaries was a mistake. it was also a mistake to make the player the super duper ultra master cool nephalen. When i finish D3, i was like "well, that's colorful!"
desapointed...T-T
new blizzard ideas for wow/diablo 3 were " CHAMPION " " HERO " COMMANDER "
i really enjoyed being just a weakling trying to fight evil, not being a commander, a hero that everyone runs to when something goes wrong(HI TYRAEL ON D3)
They killed cain, worst move ever.
They made tyrael, this...badass dead serious guy in diablo 2 ,into an annoying bastard, really,i'd rather this game wasnt released
d3 is not "colorful" (check whimsy), what it doesn't live up to is the original atmosphere. After we've killed diablo 2 times already its hard to stay immersed in the game. I like the cinematics, they were gr8.
Somehow d3 is 10 times bigger (as hdd space) then d2, yet it feels 100 times smaller as a universe...
Nothing new, heck they even removed all the things we liked from the previous...
Your point about cooldowns is SO spot-on. I hadn't thought about it before, but you're right. Over-focusing on cooldown-based skills takes the fun out of a combat system.
I just have a couple of things to say about this topic if you all don’t mind…and if you do mind, too bad! :)
In concerns with the overall graphical appeal of Diablo 4, Blizzard really needs to dip back into the gritty, dark, gothic, foreboding atmosphere that Diablo 1 and 2 possessed. I don’t want to see a reminder of Warcraft and Heroes of the Storm. Blizzard needs to stop making all their games look alike. Allow Diablo to justly stand apart.
I also have a thing or two to say about the voice acting. It would be nice if the selection of voice acting, especially in regards to the demons, bad guys etc…didn’t have the same gargled, deep throat, death metal growling in every enemy.
Look at Path of Exile, especially the character known as Lady Dialla-she had a distinct sarcastic, snide, belittling attitude that perfectly captured what that character was all about. ( “Not a cockroach” )
A good example of voice acting done right in Diablo 3 was the character Zoltun Kule. He was a dick, and I enjoyed killing him in Diablo 3. Those kinds of things make a game worth playing. You have to develop a hatred for the bad guys so when the time comes to kill them it’s all the more glorious.
0:12 HIS OLDER BROTHER
Diablo should be a horror game first and foremost. Then you can add the rpg elements.
-Horror game- first and foremost? I think you played d1 and d2 with 5 years old and never played again
Diablo 1 is the best diablo.
#1
Don't let today's Blizzard make it.
The most important thing Diablo 4 should learn is it should not be like Diablo 3
D2 was about surviving the horrors of hell, D3 was about slaying as many weird demon-things as quickly as possible and moving to the nest area. Basically, a big part of what made D2 feel so dark and hopeless and which contributed to the tone and atmosphere of the game was its difficulty. To anyone execpt D2 veterans, some monsters in that game became absolutely terrifying because of their ability to kill you extremely quickly and because D2 actually had a consequence for death, that I would call rather nasty.
I agree with most of what you say...
I disagree... With my opinion being that Diablo's major corruption and decline was with more focus on it having a primary multiplayer game at its core.
I believe it works most effective when it is designed, built, and implemented as a contained single player experience first, and then has a multiplayer aspect molded to the complete experience for further enhancement of altered paradigms due to growth of scale. And the exploration of how the community plays out that growth.
This video screams to me "PATH OF EXILE". Specially the part about items, potions and building your character. If you haven't played it try it out. It's a game made by people who truly understand what made Diablo great.
Still Path of Exile falls into the same problem of having lots of ways to build your character but in the end a lot of fun builds aren't viable, simply because there's no items that gives interactions with it for pumping out it's effectiveness in the endgame.
I like the changes made to the Focus & Restraint items set in D3 because it helps unlocking interesting builds out of the class sets' meta, but that kind of philosophy should have been there from the start. Plus you have not only to find the specific legendaries you need, but then have them as Ancient quality to make it work, which asks for far more farming than getting a class armour set, thus penalising experimentation, which dumb since that's why they dumbed down the stats and talents systems in the first place. And finally it uses up your ring slots and restrict you from using any other set bonus, so some builds that would need certain rings' effects or another 2 piece set bonus get screwed.
Hack & slash nowadays are built around farming for those specifics items that makes this or that build viable, then farming for these same items with better stats. So it's a bit disheartening when as a player you think of a cool build then find out that the developers didn't and then never created any powerful item to make it viable in the end game, and so around some point the meta gets stuck. When designing these kind of things, you have to think about both the items that drastically changes gameplay and necessitate to build around them, and the items that just supports an available build.
Builds dont have to do end content to be fun tho. You can create a new character for that and use that other fun build to farm maps, thats what i do on every league at least. And that last part you are saying, Poe devs do exactly just that to help new builds on every league. They may nerf some builds but they still buff other skills to make up for that, thus making more things viable. The thing about PoE is that the changes on items are as important as the changes on the skill tree, you may have the same stats on your legendaries but if the skill tree changed you have to think of an alternative. Just go and see how much the game changed on 3.0 with just some prefixes on items on the patchnotes.
.And trading is a thing on PoE, you dont need to farm for an expecific item, just for the currency requiered to buy it.
There is a reason why the people who hated D3 and are not playing D2 moved to PoE. The game is the best Hack n slash out there and its also free. Blizz will need to really think hard to top that, legacy isnt as strong as it was before.
These casuals never did VLLD, LLD, or MLD in D2
Let's be honest. Path of Exile already addressed all these issues.
yup, better pocion sistem, better economy, rare items are better than uniques, but some uniques change the way your skills work. you can customize your skills whit games, you can make a single powerful arrow shot or a 5 arrow explosive shot whit increased area of effect that burns enemies and trasfer burn to other objetives. some unique items will turn your fire spells intro cold spells. stuff like that. Auras support team play. you can also custom your summons, not just whit stat buff but also whit unique items or pasives. for example death aegis lets your bonus from your shield apply to your summons, any buff, like reflec damage, curses on hit. chanse to block. endless
Pretty much everything, expect the story. It was totally ruined after act 5.
In act 4 killing the Beast just felt wrong somehow and I shuddered to think the
consequences, but then you kill all other gods in pretty shallow power fantasy,
forgetting pretty much everything about virtue gems, and thamathurgy.
Honestly, they are not just loot but also the
center of the story. They gave humanity god like powers
to play with, which eventually lead to cataclysm, and other
horrifying events.
Pleaseee go back to the D1-D2 gothic horror roots, not the POS wow-like garbage D3 was.
I gotta say I agree with most of what you're bringing up here, and I understand that D2 is key to your perspective. but I was a bit shocked that nothing of Diablo 3 was brought up during your gameplay portion. I can understand if you personally didn't like it, but was there anything at all you thought they did correctly in the slightest from a design perspective? not poking the hornets nest, just understand you're one of the few UA-cam channels where game design discussion, aesthetic, and maturity intersect harmoniously.
Same here. There are some badly exploited but interesting concepts in D3, specially from the latest patches, like trying (miserably) to give more usefulness to off-set items and builds.
See another post in this comment section where I developed it a bit.
But yeah, I had hopes that this video, being from Feb. 2017, didn't talk more about D3, the changes it has gone through, and the success (and shortcomings) of Path of Exile and Torchlight 2.
The feature I loved the most was removed. The auction house.
diablo 1 is the best imo it was so dark and atmospheric and omg the music and sound design!
I really liked that in diablo 1 it wasn't about melting hundreds of enemies but like a dozen at most. if you were an appropriate level to your dungeon level, every group of enemies felt potentially dangerous.
I also liked that every class had access to every ability through spell tomes. I miss my spellsword warrior.
having said all that diablo 2's pvp kept me addicted for years, I was actually ranked as one of the best pvpers on d2jsp
Diablo 4 is going to be a cartoonish mess of a game. Blizzard has given up on good narrative and turned both Starcraft and diablo into kids stuff. Happy endings, characters with serious plot armor and all.
Overwatch has baby characters and it is mega successful. The trend will not end there.
These are fine games. Just very lively and colorful. :D
Dark stuff is pretty rare in AAA games. I mean, basically only darksouls and a few others do it well. Look at the evolution of dragon age.
Minus a few raunchy lines of dalogue and sex. The violence is super cartoonish compared to origins.
I don't know about that, Blizzard's brand took a major hit by releasing such a shitty take on a Diablo 2 sequel.
Overwatch is also not a great comparison, as that game was specifically released to cater to a wide audience across just about every age group. I'd advise waiting on D4 to actually come to fruition before coming to a hasty conclusion. Trends tend to shift about as often as the wind.
Ya, Starcraft 2 was derivative trash. Fun campaign, great mechanics, but the story was the best part of the original.
I will say that their Nova campaign was good, bit of a return to form -- especially when juxtaposed next to the main campaign.
Diablo 3's story was just embarrassingly bad. Did anyone predict that the kid emperor in Act 2 would've been the final boss? Oh, everyone? Oops.
You know what's scary, when the final boss talks to you throughout the whole act, hamming it up as badly as possible, revealing all of their plans and cackling like a moustache twirling villain. Oh, that's not scary? Oops.
Fortunately it looks like they are gonna go back to their roots
More of these retrospectives please. It's nice to see a quality made video, well thought out and presented with such knowledge. Thank you.
I don't really mind the flashy look of Diablo 3. In fact, it's inevitable if we wanna have healing firestorms and mid-air potion explosions like you're talking about. My problem with D3 was the difficulty. D3 has two difficulties; stupidly easy, and boringly grindy, and there's very little way to tell when the game will be one or the other, and the differences between them just aren't the same as in previous games.
Back in D2, the levels of difficulty lived up to their names; enemies would have new resistances, new immunities, elemental damage, and virtually every encounter was a boss pack. In D3, increasing the difficulty just makes enemies progressively more tanky, have more boss modifiers, and if you increase the difficulty way far up, you might even die once or twice. But other than that, increasing difficulty in D3 either resulted in enemies being slightly more tedious to kill, or everything being absurdly tanky. There was never any need to change up your build, use a different strategy, use a different merc, etc. because pretty much every enemy just died if you kept hitting it.
That's not to say D2 was perfect either; the body-retrieval mechanic is hands down one of the most baffling, nonsensical, anti-fun game mechanics ever designed for a video game. It's worse than Dark Souls; the game is essentially asking you to buy a new armor and weapon set with every death, or run naked into the thing that just killed you when you were fully equipped. This can easily lead to an unwinnable situation if, say, 3 boss packs pile on top of your multiple corpses, which just isn't fun or necessary.
"There was never any need to change up your build, use a different strategy, use a different merc, etc. because pretty much every enemy just died if you kept hitting it. "
I love how you put it xD
Yep, D3 is a grind fest.
I'd love to see gear and abilities that are situational and that need to be switched and changed around to tackle engagements in different ways. I'd love to see environmental interactions that affect the battles with both mobs and bosses in interesting ways. And I'd love to see different classes having different approaches to rooms all together, Mages blinking through walls and go invisible to engage from better terrain, or Barbarians closing the distance by making a bridge with a near by pillar, or Monks Parkouring up cliffs and catch some Demons by surprise.
So much is possible with this incredible engine. It's completely underutilized.
I also would like to see cursed weapons, the sort of thing that gives you a great advantage with a crippling weakness
Example.
Elemental Sword.
Low level (10-18) no stat costs, can be used by any class
Does 250 normal damage per hit and 300 fire damage per hit,
Fast swing speed
Maybe offers stat buffs
-but-
On killing an enemy has a decent (5-40%) chance summons a 1200 health fire golem, who does the Sorceress, blaze skill, but longer, does 600 damage a hit, and runs at least as fast as the player, and does not get tired, who will do nothing but hunt the player down, and kill them, until it is killed ,as in no it won't despawn after you die, or the player rage quits
Or even something as simple as a charm that gives you a bonus to one stat at the cost of another
+20 strength
-20 dexterity
Hey there, i played Diablo II LOD allot, mainly because other people were playing with me and because it was fun. The story was at it's best in the Diablo II original game, the LoD expansion didn't measure up in my opinion.
In terms of gameplay the patch 1.10 started the synergy craze that could have just been replaced with the implementation of new skills. I adapted to every patch of the game tough i prefer the patches before 1.10 . My favorite character was the Assassin, but i was always forced to have 2 Sorceresses and 2 Paladins in this game just to get items and past certain areas. The beauty found in Diablo's early game (before the hell difficulty) was eventually replaced with rushing. The late game didn't provide the wonder and the diversity Diablo had in the early parts of the game, it was almost clear what you needed, a fully decked out Lightning Sorceress with an Infinity on your merc, to get past stuff fast, and for the Uber Mephisto you needed a Paladin Smiter with life-tap gloves. To reach that point of course you needed another Paladin, this time specialized in blessed hammer and a cold Sorceress for the easy MF at Mephisto in nightmare and hell, it was a grind i tell you.
To be honest with you, after beating all the game has to offer i started giving away items for free to people, they didn't have value anymore to me, unless i needed them for a build, i don't think item values can be really determined since if you finished all the game has to offer and you find excess items that you have nothing to do with, you might end up giving them for free like i did. A time limit to the ladder is one way to keep the values of the items fresh, tough i never liked that idea in D2 and i don't like it in PoE either.
I enjoy Path of Exile, but i seem to get bored at the amount of grind i have to go trough, even more than in D2, a slower grind since you can't rush a boss with guaranteed drops, and no matter how good your character is, the end game is still deadly. Compare that to Diablo 2 (especially before 1.10), the game had a different approach, if you were good enough you could finish the game without optimized gear, without relying on trading, the game was more free in terms of builds, you could create hybrid characters and *have fun*, experiment, and eventually when you got items the enemies became less of a threat, till, eventually, you dispatched them with ease, it was rewarding, killing all the monsters in the game fast never made me want to stop playing the game, having everything just made me start helping others and trying out new crazy builds, compare that to PoE, tough, i'm sure you know how marketing for a f2p game works, keep the gamer playing, keep the stakes high, more game time equals a higher chance of that player purchasing something.
In conclusion, i think that the player character should have the possibility to reach a power spike above any enemy in the game as to dispatch them with ease, while this should not happen super fast, it should not require a life-time investment either, or trading for that matter, since some people want to play solo. The game mode for solo play should have an increased item drop since you can't trade those items anyway. Cheers!
Poor Diablo 3. Pretty much every video on this subject boils down to: don't do anything like what that game did. hahaha
here's my thoughts on your video though: Diablo 4 needs to take a HUGE amount of time developing classes. I think a major fault of BOTH D2 and D3 is that each class really had only 1 or 2 at most successful long term builds. I find that to be frustrating. let me clarify: if you make a sucky build, then of course you should suck. haha but if you are focusing on one of the trees that you really like and come to find out that it is extremely underpowered, that is ridiculous.
multiple builds should have the possibility, if managed properly, to be just as successful as the other options.
I like your feedback on the class system! Thanks for commenting :)
Wow you are exactly the type of person I'm talking about in my comment
Alexander Risager I know what you mean, to a point. I don't think every class will ever be perfectly balanced and amazing. I recognize that. however, in both d2 and d3 there are abilities and even trees that are pretty much classified as useless because other trees or abilities completely outshine them.
that's the thing I don't really like. I want a larger portion of abilities to be meaningful at most stages of the game. does that make sense? idk.
to clarify: I'm not saying that an end tier ability should be the same power as a low tier ability. I am instead saying that in their respective realms, each ability should be on level ground with its same tier counterparts. the games tried to accomplish this, but usually only 1 or 2 ever had any lasting value.
I see your point, and I do agree that I would become boring if nothing changes, but thankfully d3 try to change things every 3 months, with nerfs and buffs. Now i must admit I have never played d2 so I am not really in any position to compare. The more I think about the less qualified I feel. idk i just really like d3 cause I like competitive games, so I get frustrated with all the hate it gets
Thanks for the reply! I appreciate having good conversations about this game. I actually really enjoyed D3, for what it is worth. I got a little frustrated by the abilities and classes, and also got MAJORLY frustrated by how commonly the legendary and set items dropped. I wanted them to feel rare! but aside from those gripes, I did enjoy my time playing the game. Diablo 2 is still the better game for a variety of reasons (you really should try it out at some point), but I would never say that D3 is bad.
I've only played Diablo 3, mainly because its the only one available on playstation 4. I love the game.
I didn't know the fourth was in development. I hope the console version of D3 sold well enough that they port the new title to PS4. :)
It's all rumours at the moment, Diablo 4 is not confirmed.
Actually Blizzard have said in the past that there would not be a Diablo 4.
And yet they're hiring people for an unannounced project, while also asking them about their love for Diablo I and II...
There are really only 3 extremely important things to make a great Diablo game.
#1 The tone of the game. The dark and evil feel is a must.
#2 There must be certain loot that is almost unobtainable. Ex. Crown of Ages, Tyreal's Might, high runes. This keeps a great incentive to play more.
#3 The difficulty of the game needs to be amped up again. D3 became so easy over the years and wasn't fun. There was nothing to grind for.
I'd be fine with it if they went back to D2's tone. That gritty, dark, terrifying tone that always had me a bit on edge as I played the game.
What made diablo so special was the feeling and mood you got from it combined with that it was challenging. A big thing i remember from d2 was opening a door and dreading what would be on the other side xD i never got that in D3.
Diablo IV is going to have microtransactions. Guaranteed.
100% agree on theme and tone. Disagree on skill interactivity but I like that you were getting creative - skill bonuses were actually positive imo and hyper-specialization gave you a reason to play multiple chars while also combining with the skill tree to enable truly unique chars. Overall, this assessment is spot on, hope some Blizzard teammembers see this!
Subscribed! Loved the video man, keep up the good work!
Good video. But I don't agree that you have to be level 40+ to complete act 1 on Nightmare.
If you've actually been playing the game and found a few good pieces of gear like Sigons set for instance, you would have no problems completing Act 1 on any character.
People do more Baal runs because they get rushed to Act 5 normal then get rushed to Baal in Nightmare and Hell.
Therein lies the core problem everyone seems to overlook. Why does the next game need to be Diablo 4? Each entry ends the same -- you fight your way through thousands of enemies to finally face and mop the floor with Diablo. Why not branch out into the lore and finally change the antagonist? I mean, he has been defeated 3 times already, and his plans are getting dumber and dumber with each game. I think the lore is deep enough to focus on something else at this point.
two words... brand recognition
I agree with everything you said the only thing I’d like to add in is that diablo already has a cannon backstory describing the beginning of the universe and the world stone. So that may be something you’d enjoy reading into on the diablo wiki page. A game setting out the prequels of the three games and sticking to its roots of the original two is something that we would all want so great job in embodying that into your 4 points. Have a good one!
easy sub, awesome videos man this is the content and delivery I've Been missing, keep it up 👌🏼
diablo 3 felt noobed down
Severely.
You make some very good points, I especially agree with the cooldown vs resource management part, and the section where you talk about the pantomime bosses or as you call them bond villains.
ty for watchin!
I totally agree about the need to make skill interaction richer. You could even make it interact with gear, i.e. to make your build successful, you need to combine with special gear that you create along the way.
I was a bit surprised that it didn't come up in this video but one of the greatest features of the first game was randomized dungeon creation. Sure it was a some what simple cut and paste approach but you never knew exactly which quest would be available, the layout of the area or even exactly which enemies might be available. In comparison Diablo 3 was very linear with only a few side dungeons that randomly appeared but what was in those dungeons themselves seemed to be always the same. Considering D3 was pretty sure and just expected you to replay the game 3 times on increasingly hard difficulty settings it drastically hurt the game imo. To me the maps being randomly created in some way is perhaps the most important aspect with a close second being far more abilities and classes. D3 didn't really have too many abilities to choose from and only a handful of classes even with the expansion. While D1 didn't really have much either D2 had way more to choose from, classes that were vastly different from each other as well. I kind of hope Diablo 4 has at least 8 classes if not 12 to start with.
the thing I liked about the first two was how devious and manipulative the demons were. Many times you get the suspicion that the demons are letting your character 'win' by taking a fall to further their plans. Which just adds to the feeling of overall dread, as evil is never fully defeated and your actions just buy the world some more time if you are lucky but more often than not the heroes just get played and are outmatched while an indifferent heaven gazes on. The ending of the Diablo 3 just breaks that by turning the heroes into ultimate untouchable badasses
i know this is a little aged but i love this assessment. diablo was the first online game i ever played. i miss the old necromancer bone spear builds and summons lol
Considering the overwhelming success of D3, it's unlikely D4 will ever look like what you're suggesting.
Path of Exile is what you want out of a top-down Diablo-style game.
d3 is known as a piece of crap, just judging by the amount of players that still play it you can tell
Not mentioning everyone knows that d3 sucks, because everyone say it, its a meme at this point.
Season start> everyone logs in, next week 80% of the players are gone because they remembered why they quit in first place
you have no idea what you are talking about... :D
lol thats exactly whati i do, they even managed to make the necro boring
Im still playing and enjoying d3 and lot of my friends are :D
boobs
i reckon it would be a good idea that instead of having different difficulties, that the game was 15 acts long (expansion included in this math) with 5 different acts but the first run through of the act you are restricted to certain areas and each time you play through the act it expands or explores different areas of the map maybe not have the final boss apear in each act until the third time you complete it, also a bounty system closer to that of final fantasy 15 wherein completing bounties progresses you to harder bounties would be a great end game challenge as apposed to just another grind for mats, an infinite dungeon would be awesome as well getting harder and darker the further down you trek with no time limit, make monsters less densely populated but stronger so that you can actually pay attention to how cool the map is when playing, heavily reducing self healing in conjunction with the stronger more spread out minions will help you feel like you are making a difference in clearing out hell,quality over quantity (think of it like a movie Logan vs John Wick) both good movies but the combat in Logan feels way more personal then the slaughterfest that is John Wick (love both movies).
Nightmare Countess runs are better than normal Ball runs at 30. You can farm for four socketed swords and polearms on the walks and if you cant find what you need you can use a white sword or polearm from nightmare and use the socket quest on them from normal. The countess will drop the runes you need to make some nice mid lvl runewords.
I personally don't mind the focus on single skills to optimise the build, as was done in D2, as this allows for replayability. You create new chracters just to try new skillsets of a class. Replayability is an important aspect of ARPGs, this also means characters should only be able to reskill at large cost - see POE. Gear trading is vital for a living community - which leads to rarity. Gear needs to be rare to incentivise trading. On the whole D4 should look at POE. They do so much right.
the one thing D3 did do well was the viability of skills, but they kinda threw that out the window with sets that boosts your damage by 1400% using THAT one skill
One of the simplest ways to improve skill synergies in Diablo 2 would have simply been to have more. Have synergies for almost every other skill. Enough that you could hit level 100 and still not have all of the synergies for your favourite skills. This way, players can choose just about whatever skills they want without having to worry about points being 'wasted' because the skills they picked don't have synergies with one another.
Obviously even better would be if each skill have a unique or semi-unique synergy with any other skill for a given character.
Or, you could eschew synergies altogether and have skills also scale with player level, so that any skill can be useful at high levels. Though this model would still encourage maxing skills one at a time, rather than diversifying.
One thing I enjoyed in D2 was making weird characters, like an enchant-focused sorc, or a pure-passive/magic 'zon. Then you go to D3, and suddenly that's not possible because weapon choice doesn't actually matter anymore - they're just stat-sticks now.
I believe there is a problem that newer generation horror games have. Many horror games back in the day were pixalated and the whole "wtf is that!" feel is mostly lost when they are high definition. Diablo added to this having great sound design to make the lack of graphics seem more fitting. Diablo 3 feels much too clean.
I am holding my breath for D4. I loved D2 and D3 was pretty good but super casual (though still fun for what it was) but POE has been my main go-to for a long time now and while not perfect, I think it addresses nearly all the problems listed in this video. I think that GGG really took a hard look at what made the older ARPG's fun and improved on what could have made them better.
I particulary enjoyed doing normal/nightmare chaos/baal runs when leveling, its like low level pvp in some ways, players without the best gear/stats/level in the game just playing together and doing stuff/leveling, it was rewarding and fun, doing tristam runs, tal rasha's runs, i really enjoyed all of those until the game became empty.
There are a lot of great things about D3. Gameplay fluidity for example. It's so smooth it plays amazing compared to the previous game and compared to Path of Exile for example. Also the item drop system is really good now in my opinion. When D3 first came out it took me 2 months before I found my first legendary. Way too rare. Some may argue that it's a loot fest now but I think that's what it should be. D2 droprates were also way to rare. Auction house was terrible but it works in WoW so I guess if they rethink it it could work but tread carefully. So I think they should: go back to the dark gothic theme as in d1 and d2, keep gameplay fluidity and respec ability like in D3, no auction house, d3 drop rates. Less linear. Awesome dark cinematics like D2. WAAAY more areas. More different things to do. More expansions during the years after. absolutely no micro transactions.
i love poe and i play it to death but i would love a really dark slow, scary descent into hell kinda of game. like diablo 1, and instead of gearing of for power u are gearing up for surviving
I have to say this in response to one of the last points mentioned in this video. Progressing into nightmare does in no way require you to reach level 40+ to move forward comfortably. I hit nightmare sub 30 pretty much every time i play through, and nightmare even feels easier than normal does to be honest. The difficulty kicks back in when you reach hell (well maybe act 5 nightmare as well, but your resistances should be so high for NM at that point...)
If you're struggling in nightmare before the upper 40s then you need to look at your playstyle and make corrections.
Also need to do away with set bonus the way it works in D3. Full set of 6 that forces your hand. How is any build suppose to get +3000%-4000% increased damage for one ability plus all runes unlocked and even -50% damage taken? That right there killed any idea of "build" to Blizzard build and they couldn't even balance the 3-4 class sets within them self. They should be limited to 2-3 piece sets with such things as a general buff to some aspect, rather then a single ability.
Example 3 set: 2 piece - chance to gain 20 mana on crit, 3 piece - spending 100 mana increases your crit by 5% for 2s and stacks 2 times. You can use this with any build if spending lots of mana (think abilities that spend all your mana on use or channeled ability) and having a crit reliance.Think whirlwind barb or sleet storm wizard.
Another thing would be to allow buffs to be more of a permanent thing with a permanent cost that can enhance your build but not need to be taking up 1 or 2 of you 6 abilities slots just to make that slot glow and have to be pressed once every 5m-10m. That is a waste of space. Also could of had all the 120s CD abilities in one group and give a single dedicated special ability slot that lets you assign only one to it. Still allowing the other one or possibly two super long CD abilities be used as well but on your standard 6 ability slots if that is what you wanted.
Runes... stop having us choose between +200% damage or 10% chance to freeze, immune to freeze afterwards for 5s. This is a no brainer. Make runes interesting by changing how they work and not damage. The rune that gives the highest damage will always be picked then. Only time a rune should change damage is if it is an equal shift. Give runes that change how an ability functions, such as lower damage, higher fire rate or ability now pierces targets or something along the lines of the wizards meteor runes.
Last note... wtf are generators and spenders any more? Every build comes up with it's own method of generating resource. This just makes generators pointless as they do almost no damage and take 5-10 uses to refill your resource so you can use your spender 2-3 times? That is how D3 started out before try set bonus defined builds and it was super clunky and slow. So I ask now... what role does generators and spenders fill if most builds can just free spam spenders with out even thinking about resource? Maybe if generators were THE ONLY WAY to get resource but were not garbage damage compared to spenders... could have some interesting synergies of utilizing two different abilities fill out a cycle (similar to the concept of rotations in MMO games) This could lend to the other two types of abilities be defense short CD, offensive short CD and then your 2-4 "ults" 120s CD abilities. Now we got 4/6 slots filled, "ult" slot filled and 2 free slots to use how ever you want. Just add in some ability changing uniques that compliment some sort of talent tree that lets you scale your defenses and damage type... BOOM! got a build that is actually a build and you can possibly make many different successful builds that work to push high end content.
LAST THING: make Crit Chance and Crit Damage the same stat!!! one stat only. very simple 1:10 ratio. now gear that can roll CC&CD don't become a slot hog and force your itemization.
OR just allow pieces that can have both just get one extra affix on it. simple. no need to rip vitality because there are not enough affixes.
excellent video! makes me want to play D2 again
This dude understands Diablo. Good ideas dude.
What I want for D4? Pretty much this. And while they are making it, I want a Diablo spin-off. Offline solo campaign, Skyrim style! And with you just choosing male or female to play as, and expand the tree into your liking, and, no cap on each ability, so when you max out a character (!) you could spend all points on just one thing. The setting would be after Diablo 3, in a time when angels and demons are just myths. And you play as a the decendant of Tyrael. As soon as the evil starts to roam free, you are "awakened" with powers.
2:55 loved the LOTR quote
I'd say start with giving players an offline SP mode. I know this is an issue of DRM but it really is one of those things that makes the game a main stay. If the power goes out, or the internet is down, you break out your laptop and play the game. Basically Diablo II is there when other modern games can't be.
The second thing is I think that Diablo 2 hit the nail on the head with limiting skill choices with the trees. It gave you this sense that you were specializing, like some master training in the wilderness. This implemented the RPG idea of choice making through the mechanics of the game instead of dialogue.
Finally, I wouldn't go prequel. I would do a straight up remake of Diablo 1 but improved. This way Blizzard doesn't have to keep trying to find a new way to make Diablo somehow come back from defeat. Players who were too young to play Diablo 1 can finally experience the story without having the immersion breaking lack of mechanics (like not being able to run) Older players will appreciate the nostalgia and enjoy new bits of lore and gear that enhance the new experience.
D3 was my first diablo game and I really enjoyed it. Should I go back and try D1 and D2?
What's the background music that you used?
no, heavy two handed swords (or weapons) have no place being wielded by scrawny sorceresses or mage types. that was one of the major let downs for me with d3, seeing a wizzard chick with a 2h axe bigger than her, getting the damage for -insert spell here- from the weapon ...like wtf is that?!
also specific fighting skills should require specific weapons, like Jab (amazon in d2) should only work with a javelin or long piercing weapon (rapier), or a smash skill, should only work with a greathammer, etc.
the part with different effect skills working together is cool, like in Divinity Original Sin, but must be very controlled, or else you get chaos.
the color tones and music should be d1-d2 indeed, and for the love of god, no more dmg numbers on screen!
lesson 1 ... don't make a mobilega........
never mind....
If they DO keep the story from 3 going into 4 atleast with the rest of your awesome points to return or evolve to. . . I'd LOVE to see the freed evils REALLY team up to onslaught heaven and sanctuary, SEE the utter zerging of 2 different realms at once like in it's past, finding out JUST how the evils almost won multiple times. AND to see Mephisto use his silver tongue on Imperious aka Valor into pride. To actually SEE his namesake ability put to cunning and jawdropping use would be INSANE!
A game called DIABLO kinda has to have the big guy himself in it.
The thing is that at this point he's not that threatening anymore, especially after going evil super sayan in D3 and still getting his ass handed to him.
Maybe we could play AS Diablo in the next game, see things from his perspective, his view of the world, maybe see him go through a character arc of some sort, make the character a bit more three dimensional.
After the events of the last game he could easily be reborn in the body of a human and we could experience his struggle to regain his power, while experiencing life as a mortal being with all the good and bad things that come with it.
damn, bro, you're so right, well said, and EVERYTHING said what needed to be said! GREAT!!
+ Classes should all feel and play different, for example I don't want my Monk to be able to use heavy/steel armor, i want him o be able just to wear cloth armor or no armor at all, and then get his armor and protection through tattoos maybe, why not.
The way you learn skills also, sorceress should maybe find spells like in D1, Barbarian should maybe learn skills from NPCs.
Every class should have like, an unique ability, like in D1 where warrior could repair equipment, rogue could disarm traps, we need that back. For example, necromancer could gather body parts from enemies he likes, and make his own, unique golem.
I could talk about stuff like these all day :D
Really loved this video btw.
I had several 60+ lvl characters in D2 and don't recall having to be 40+ lvl to beat nightmare Act 1...
Because it's not true. You needed a lot more to beat Baal normal than A1 NM. 60 was more for Hell. NM was really fast and easy with LoD addOn because you were already strong enough for the whole A1-A4 due to Baal normal being so high
This guy is DEAD RIGHT on his gameplay points! I love all of his suggestions!
I liked the combat on PS3, since I can't see myself get into clicking on where to go and what to do on a mouse, like I'm giving orders than controlling the character. Wish they allowed all weapons to be used visually with the attacks. Using the Monk with a staff, but you're still just punching instead was kinda weak, but mixing my buttons to feel like I'm doing combos was cool. This is aesthetic and not functional, though it can be, but it would make the gameplay feel more authentic. I'm already annoyed by shooters having bayonets on guns, but you don't use them, except Borderlands and Call of Duty.
I don't agree with a permanency ball and chain, but fully respec'ing one's character should come at a high cost. Tie this directly with gold as a means of further adding meaning to having it.
Neat little game dynamic - all characters start with no class. They start with cotton clothes, and a stick. As they level up, they can invest in stats; with a stat or combination of stats that are high enough... they can begin to progressively 'buy-in' to classes; which exist in a tree.
normal --> apprentice --> magic adept --> mage --> sorcerer --> arch-magister
normal --> recruit --> soldier --> veteran --> warrior --> martial master
normal --> coin lifter --> lurker --> assassin --> shadow walker --> shadowlord
normal --> graverobber --> dark adept --> dark mage --> death weaver --> necromancer
normal --> student --> awakened --> daemon touched --> daemon expert --> daemonsbane
normal --> acolyte --> holy person --> bishop --> high priest --> prophet of the divine
I like power leveling like d2 had with uber runs if there is viable things to do at higher level. I dont want a easily obtained max level either. I played D2 for 10+ years and never had a max level character. I love that. I want those higher levels to matter. I also dont like D3s power leveling because i can be max level in like 15 minutes.. thats dumb. I liked D2s because it got you to like 91-92 then you had to grind for the rest if you wanted them. And the power level (ubers) took many different things to set up. You had to have a properly geared smiter. you had to have the organs, you had to use placement of the bosses, then you needed a necro and properly geared hammerdins. There was a lot to cordinate to pull off an uber run. It was fun and worth it for currency. I loved that. The pvp in D2 was fun and crazy and chaotic that was amazingly fun to do. BRING IT BACK!
I would say "Don't get too hung up on balance" They balance D3 so finely that in the end there are only 1 or max 2 viable builds for each class in the game. They fret and fuss over 1% issues and remove player choice. If someone is prepared to grind 300 hours - let them be a bit OP, if someone wants to try an offbeat combo of skills, then give them the drops to make it worthwhile sometimes. I've played D2 through about 10x and hundred s of hours grinding all sorts of builds and item combos, some are easier than others, some are hard and just interesting to play. Some you can face-plant your way through mobs, others take more care and attention. That's fine. Titan Quest, D2, Torchlight, Grim Dawn, PoE - all the other games currently in this genre allow players to make mistakes, get a little OP or find ways of coping with slightly sub optimal builds. In D3 I spend hundreds of hours grinding for that one - only viable last piece of equipment to complete that one - the only - viable build for that class. The only build that even nearly works... and that makes for an increasingly dull end game.
Disagree with the last point. I enjoyed having to prepare for the next difficulty by running bosses and revisiting locations that i was now able to mostly breeze through. And if you were smart about it, you didn't have to be lvl 50 to get through act 1 on nightmare, it's more about being high enough level to benefit from the xp runs on the next difficulty.
diablo 4 :
1. charms
2. runewords
3. more violence and blood
4. pvp events
5. a more dark and gothic looking game
6. more stash tabs
7. ALL the characters from the beginning.
8. easter eggs from diablo 1 and 2 .
9. support for 8 + players like in diablo 2
10. maybe dedicated servers
I wonder why you didn't take any point from PoE success, they came up with so many awesome ideas. Classless giantic skilltree, getting rid of difficulties and making new acts out of old ones by changing story (and actually continuing story of the characters from this act), and slightly enemies and terrain and many other things.
Music and sounds of the 1st still resonates in my head!! I wished the 4 was as dark as the #1 with the wealth of the second. Diablo3 is a good game, but not the esperience the others provided. I am now hopeful.
PoE does everything you mentioned and far, far more. It's one of the most extensive game mechanics systems I've ever seen, and the most extensive skill tree probably ever in any game that I'm aware of. D4 stands no chance of matching it
1. Find the original designers
2. Failing # 1 , resurrect our first accounts from the data base prior to 1.1O , with all characters and account items intact. ( one per customer should suffice )
3. Stop fucking nerfing shit !
4. Let maphack be optional.
5. Give carte blanche to the original designers.
6. Implement 2-4 for D2 LoD, add 3D and camera control to D4 .
* I appreciate the energy you put into the video and subject, good on ya.
Just play Path of Exile. Its the true successor of D2.
Grim Dawn lacks ladder characters and its developed as single player game with multiplayer added. End game also sucks. POE is kinda meh for me, for some reason cant get myself to like it. Last Epoch is the game im hoping to be real successor for Diablo 2.
Hell, Torchlight 2 is closer to Diablo 3 than Diablo 3. Torchlight 2 doesn't get the attention it deserves.
I feel like the passive system in Path of Exile is too convoluted and I find it hard to get excited about.
Yeah, just pay $60 to look like you're not a level 1 at max level.
i actually really liked D3
I can't be the only one who loved Low level tristy runs and high level baal runs!
I disagree on the point about gold. Path of Exile, an indie Diablo style game, scrapped gold altogether. They replaced it with orbs that can customize your items in random ways (ie, upgrade a normal to a rare, re-roll attributes on a magic item, rearrange item sockets...etc). People instead trade items for these orbs through chat channels rather than any kind of auction house. I consider that much more fun than getting charged a fortune on repair costs or having to cough up exorbitant gem combining fees.
Isn't the limitations of the technology at the time the reason why Diablo 1 & 2 look the way they do, e.g. dark and foreboding? Video games at the time had access to less contrast, colour spectrum, and resolution than games today so perhaps this contributes to how the games came off and how people remember them today?
I do like the gameplay of Diablo 3. I really enjoy the fluid and chill gameplay rotations/control. The tone and atmosphere needs big improvement though. Back to a dark and gritty tone!
What game is that around 9:20? Great video by the way.
Thanks Jeff - it's Tyranny...released this year. Great game if you ever get the chance to play it.
The synergy system does have drawbacks making you have a narrow character...
I found Diablo I BGM, ambient sounds and overtone to be WAY darker...I mean the dialogue leading up to the Butcher alone was pretty gruesome...Nothin' quite like the first imo...but I love the Tristram ref in DII...hated DIII for some reason I could never place...
They should just get the original team to return to make the fourth game. People that working on diablo 3 were people from the Blizzard team under Activision where they were more familiar with RTS than RPG. People that don't understand the franchise, don't understand the horror element, the replayable value linked to the limitless character builds that you can do, and the indirect story unfolding before you. It was dark, bloody and self paced game. I miss it so bad and lament the failure (for a veteran player of diablo franchise) of the 3rd installation, to hit the right tones to ensure it keeps the points that made the first two become classic games. I still go back to play the first two games every so often because of its awesomeness. I hope Blizzard entertainment understand this and allows for the core team to help create the next installment if there is ever one.
I actually liked Diablo 3 along with the other games. A lot of people complain that it's very different from the other games, and although I agree, I still enjoyed the atmosphere and gameplay of Diablo 3, despite how different it is.
Diablo 1 and 2 HD remasters playing as smoothly as Diablo 3 would be the only thing I need before I die. I would play them for the next twenty years probably. How do I know this? I still play Diablo 2 once or twice a year all this time later. Also, I could have watched two hours of this video type. I honestly wish your videos were a little longer, but I get it. I find myself wanting more...always. Wait....ruined by Runewords? You do realize that's most people's favorite part of Diablo 2, right?
I agree that the dark tone of the first and second games were appealing and would really love to see more synergy between classes or skills that you wouldn't expect to go together.
I have to say though I honestly hated getting locked into builds in Diablo 2 and never want to see that again. Permanent skills were the worst part of the game. Gameplay would get stale unless you constantly make new characters, which just isn't fun. I don't mind some cooldowns, especially ones where reduction can come into play like with vengeance and rain of vengeance with buff management or short term, but these builds like trang oul and LoN FoK where you only deal damage every 30 seconds or more are just miserable.
And I'd love to see trading come back, but not in a way where you can pay real world vendors into making you OP, which we saw in D2. Maybe between friends or clanmates. Thanks for sharing your take though.
Excellent deconstruction..
You've covered the main points admirably,and far more issues than I could have thought of...
For my own two cents,apart from various niggles with Diablo 3,most of which you've covered,I didn't like the look of the armour and weapons in Diablo 3..they looked ,for the most part like Final Fantasy reject material....Diablo 2 armour and arms looked like metal..like traditional medieval gear taken to the nth degree I suppose..I would like Blizzard to give a more solid look to the armour and weapons,give them a more realistic,chrome like,or dull metallic and solid,less papery appearance...
Also the music in Diablo 2 was so perfect..Those guitars and strings are perfection..I can't remember much about the music in D3...other than it was at it's best when covering traditional riffs...
Great video!
I hope Blizzard listen to you!
I personally like POEs take on the skill system with gems you can swap out.
I disagree with your harsh statement on cooldowns, but respect it, as the way Blizzard uses cooldowns is... reckless and hurts the product. I prefer the way certain skills in Black Desert work, where they have cooldowns, but can be used while cooling down, at the cost of not having all the secondary effects, or all of the damage they would normally have. I feel a system like that, applied well, would allow them to get their rocks off on cooldown skills, while also giving players something to manage/do with their time.