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Diablo IV(4)

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  • QuickbladeQuickblade Member Posts: 957
    scriver wrote: »
    jjstraka34 wrote: »
    The concept art for some of the Sets looks amazing:

    Lol those pauldrons

    https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ShouldersOfDoom

    Not the only offender, by far, but certainly the most popular.
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    Another big reason people look back fondly on Diablo 2 is the story.....such as it is. However, this is all in presentation on the surface level. Diablo 2's very simple story was given ALOT of weight by telling it through the eyes of a hapless bystander named Marius. The narrative story in Diablo 3 is junk food at best.

    HOWEVER......the real juice as far as lore goes in Diablo 3 is in the details. And it's actually pretty wonderful. Every talent in the Passive Skill section has a quote. Every Legendary Item tells a story. Every Class Set has one for every piece. The little vignettes scattered around the world are also very well done. So yeah, the straight-line story in Diablo 3 is pretty much garbage. But the little stuff (of which there is endless amounts)?? It expands the lore of the Diablo universe more than the first two games and all the novels combined.
    JuliusBorisovBelleSorciere
  • BallpointManBallpointMan Member Posts: 1,659
    jjstraka34 wrote: »
    Another big reason people look back fondly on Diablo 2 is the story.....such as it is. However, this is all in presentation on the surface level. Diablo 2's very simple story was given ALOT of weight by telling it through the eyes of a hapless bystander named Marius. The narrative story in Diablo 3 is junk food at best.

    HOWEVER......the real juice as far as lore goes in Diablo 3 is in the details. And it's actually pretty wonderful. Every talent in the Passive Skill section has a quote. Every Legendary Item tells a story. Every Class Set has one for every piece. The little vignettes scattered around the world are also very well done. So yeah, the straight-line story in Diablo 3 is pretty much garbage. But the little stuff (of which there is endless amounts)?? It expands the lore of the Diablo universe more than the first two games and all the novels combined.

    I dont know. Maybe I lack an appreciation for it since it's been awhile, but I wouldnt really consider D2's story as anything above "meh". The world/lore are great in general for the Diablo universe, but the actual game's main story? Pretty meh insofar as I've seen.
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    edited November 2019
    jjstraka34 wrote: »
    Another big reason people look back fondly on Diablo 2 is the story.....such as it is. However, this is all in presentation on the surface level. Diablo 2's very simple story was given ALOT of weight by telling it through the eyes of a hapless bystander named Marius. The narrative story in Diablo 3 is junk food at best.

    HOWEVER......the real juice as far as lore goes in Diablo 3 is in the details. And it's actually pretty wonderful. Every talent in the Passive Skill section has a quote. Every Legendary Item tells a story. Every Class Set has one for every piece. The little vignettes scattered around the world are also very well done. So yeah, the straight-line story in Diablo 3 is pretty much garbage. But the little stuff (of which there is endless amounts)?? It expands the lore of the Diablo universe more than the first two games and all the novels combined.

    I dont know. Maybe I lack an appreciation for it since it's been awhile, but I wouldnt really consider D2's story as anything above "meh". The world/lore are great in general for the Diablo universe, but the actual game's main story? Pretty meh insofar as I've seen.

    No, in-game it doesn't really extrapolate beyond "we're now heading East" or "we must now move to the jungles in the West". You are just going to new locales to fight monsters in. Frankly, this is why Adventure mode in Diablo 3 is so refreshing. It dispenses with the idea you need a story at all. Of course you want to experience all the little tidbits once or twice, but after it's all said and done, you are here to kill monsters and get loot drops. What I'm referring to in regards to Diablo 2 is that the cinematics SPECIFICALLY make the story seem better than it is.

    But Blizzard has been the king of video game cinematics for the entirety of their existence. And recently, they have absolutely outdone themselves. The recent one to end the War Campaign in WoW, the trailer for Shadowlands, and especially Diablo IV (seriously, those 9 minutes were better than the last 6 Hellraiser movies) has me convinced they have the talent to make their own feature films in this style. The phrase "By Three they Come" has almost become iconic before the game is anywhere near done. Unless it is an absolute disaster, I would expect Diablo IV will become my most played game of all-time.
    BelleSorciere
  • QuickbladeQuickblade Member Posts: 957
    jjstraka34 wrote: »
    jjstraka34 wrote: »
    Another big reason people look back fondly on Diablo 2 is the story.....such as it is. However, this is all in presentation on the surface level. Diablo 2's very simple story was given ALOT of weight by telling it through the eyes of a hapless bystander named Marius. The narrative story in Diablo 3 is junk food at best.

    HOWEVER......the real juice as far as lore goes in Diablo 3 is in the details. And it's actually pretty wonderful. Every talent in the Passive Skill section has a quote. Every Legendary Item tells a story. Every Class Set has one for every piece. The little vignettes scattered around the world are also very well done. So yeah, the straight-line story in Diablo 3 is pretty much garbage. But the little stuff (of which there is endless amounts)?? It expands the lore of the Diablo universe more than the first two games and all the novels combined.

    I dont know. Maybe I lack an appreciation for it since it's been awhile, but I wouldnt really consider D2's story as anything above "meh". The world/lore are great in general for the Diablo universe, but the actual game's main story? Pretty meh insofar as I've seen.

    No, in-game it doesn't really extrapolate beyond "we're now heading East" or "we must now move to the jungles in the West". You are just going to new locales to fight monsters in. Frankly, this is why Adventure mode in Diablo 3 is so refreshing. It dispenses with the idea you need a story at all. Of course you want to experience all the little tidbits once or twice, but after it's all said and done, you are here to kill monsters and get loot drops. What I'm referring to in regards to Diablo 2 is that the cinematics SPECIFICALLY make the story seem better than it is.

    But Blizzard has been the king of video game cinematics for the entirety of their existence. And recently, they have absolutely outdone themselves. The recent one to end the War Campaign in WoW, the trailer for Shadowlands, and especially Diablo IV (seriously, those 9 minutes were better than the last 6 Hellraiser movies) has me convinced they have the talent to make their own feature films in this style. The phrase "By Three they Come" has almost become iconic before the game is anywhere near done. Unless it is an absolute disaster, I would expect Diablo IV will become my most played game of all-time.

    Actually you start in the far west and keep going east and more east. The jungles are in the far east. Well, then you go to Hell. And then back into the world at Harrogath.

    What convinces me Blizzard should make their own feature films is the HOURS of cinematics they've got for SC2. Even ignoring in-game cutscenes, videos of the actual cinematics runs for something like 4-6 hours PER campaign.
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    edited November 2019
    Diablo fans should feel lucky in contrast to Starcraft. I mean, there is NOTHING on the horizon for that series. Now given, they put alot into those 3 releases for Starcraft 2, and frankly, the narrative from Starcraft>Brood War>Wings of Liberty>Heart of the Swarm>Legacy of the Void is, from a story perspective, the best thing they have ever done, and it's probably the best sci-fi saga in gaming (beats the pants off Mass Effect if you ask me). But I wonder if it simply didn't live up to Blizzard's financial expectations. They have twice worked on Starcraft titles that weren't RTS games and canceled both of them.

    And I wonder if it had anything to do with the Protoss chapter closing things out. It seems to me that the real excitement was for the initial release (which was always going to be Terran) and that the Kerrigan/Zerg title was going to be the big ticket item. I wonder if the numbers bear out that people just tuned out near the end. The only thing really propping the series up at this point is the fact that it is basically a professional sport in Korea.
    BallpointMan
  • KamigoroshiKamigoroshi Member Posts: 5,870
    Nah, best sci-fi saga in gaming history has to be Star Ocean. Closely followed by Xenosaga. Honoraby mentioning goes to the old Phantasy Star titles here. Starcraft on the other hand is truly a lackluster as far as story telling goes.
  • SorcererV1ct0rSorcererV1ct0r Member Posts: 2,176
    Nah, best sci-fi saga in gaming history has to be Star Ocean. Closely followed by Xenosaga. Honoraby mentioning goes to the old Phantasy Star titles here. Starcraft on the other hand is truly a lackluster as far as story telling goes.

    Depends what you consider "sci-fi", i mean, mechas and space swordsman particularly makes me extremely uninterested in the story. I mean, a X ton humanoid robot will have less armor, mobility, acceleration and be far more expensive than a X ton military vehicle. See a humanoid robot flying faster than a Jet despite having a far worse drag coefficient

    And swords, swords was mostly BACKUP weapons in medieval times. Far worse vs armor than polehammers, maces and even axes, far worse than other weapons VS bigger animals, see a androgynous guy wish a sword destroying a empire capable to creating droids fully capable of understanding natural language and aim and fire projectile traveling about light speed makes me consider if this is really "sci-fi" and the guy in question has access to more adequate weaponry.

    I honestly don't know why so many jrpg's prohibits the player to use cool magical powers in magical worlds or cool tech in sci-fi settings And this is not restricted to JRPG's, i don't like much Witcher for eg, hate the beginning of Risen 3 before you can join the guardians, and would hate if fallout new vegas forces me to use a katana for the entire game and FNV is my favorite shooter rpg.
    jjstraka34 wrote: »
    Diablo fans should feel lucky in contrast to Starcraft. I mean, there is NOTHING on the horizon for that series. Now given, they put alot into those 3 releases for Starcraft 2, and frankly, the narrative from Starcraft>Brood War>Wings of Liberty>Heart of the Swarm>Legacy of the Void is, from a story perspective, the best thing they have ever done, and it's probably the best sci-fi saga in gaming (beats the pants off Mass Effect if you ask me). But I wonder if it simply didn't live up to Blizzard's financial expectations. They have twice worked on Starcraft titles that weren't RTS games and canceled both of them.

    Starcraft is popular in Asia, but on West is not. Unfortunately MOBA killed the RTS genre.
    jjstraka34 wrote: »
    HOWEVER......the real juice as far as lore goes in Diablo 3 is in the details. And it's actually pretty wonderful. Every talent in the Passive Skill section has a quote. Every Legendary Item tells a story. Every Class Set has one for every piece. .

    I strongly disagree. There are a HUGE dissociation of lore and game. The best game in therms of lore item description and gameplay is IMO dark souls, a random ring says that a boss is blind? You can use it in your favor.

    Some skills on D3 goes COMPLETELY AGAINST ESTABLISHED LORE.

    Examples? Only talking about my favorite class. Necromancer. Not only Bone Spirit dealing physical damage makes ZERO sense, one of the examples is

    "Bone Golem" on D3. It makes no sense. If you read the D2 manual, the lore behind clay golam is "While it is fairly simple for a Necromancer to animate dead tissue, it is another matter entirely to instill the spark of life into inanimate objects. The Clay Golem is the simplest form of this complex art, creating a servant directly from the earth to serve the Necromancer."

    And looks like on D3, Ice Golem is obtained at higher level than a Bone Golem. Why? Why imbue the spark of life in ICE is harder than do the same thing that you already did with skeletons?

    This not talking about sense of progression of your character's maestry of life and death.

    Necromancer on D2 start with a single weak skeleton and after gradually increasing his maestry over life, death and undeath, he end the game with a huge undead army. On D3, a necro learn how to create a skeleton and can create 7 skeletons scaling with the size and sharpness of his axe. After becoming level cap(like everyone else), unlocking above god nephalem power, etc, finding a amazing boot who increases his IQ by 564654765654643*10²³%, he can reanimate 7 skeleton who are strong as the weight and sharpness of his axe. The unique difference is that one can throw bigger numbers that means nothing and are inflated like Zimbabwe currency.

    ?u=http%3A%2F%2Forig11.deviantart.net%2F9de7%2Ff%2F2010%2F062%2F6%2F7%2Fnecro_skeleton_army_by_kurosephkagetsuki.jpg&f=1&nofb=1

  • QuickbladeQuickblade Member Posts: 957
    ?u=http%3A%2F%2Forig11.deviantart.net%2F9de7%2Ff%2F2010%2F062%2F6%2F7%2Fnecro_skeleton_army_by_kurosephkagetsuki.jpg&f=1&nofb=1

    I'm hardly one to talk, since I'm not playing legit either (hacking out an enchantress sorc to play like a bowazon), but that is not a legit pic. That's like 20-30 more skeletons than is theoretically legally possible, with the max being 19-20 each around 53 skill or so.

    Actually, the skill calculations (God I love the Amazon Basin) say that 35 skeletons takes 99 skill levels. More specifically, (skill level/3 +2).
  • SorcererV1ct0rSorcererV1ct0r Member Posts: 2,176
    edited November 2019
    Quickblade wrote: »
    ?u=http%3A%2F%2Forig11.deviantart.net%2F9de7%2Ff%2F2010%2F062%2F6%2F7%2Fnecro_skeleton_army_by_kurosephkagetsuki.jpg&f=1&nofb=1

    I'm hardly one to talk, since I'm not playing legit either (hacking out an enchantress sorc to play like a bowazon), but that is not a legit pic. That's like 20-30 more skeletons than is theoretically legally possible, with the max being 19-20 each around 53 skill or so.

    Actually, the skill calculations (God I love the Amazon Basin) say that 35 skeletons takes 99 skill levels. More specifically, (skill level/3 +2).

    You are ignoring that torches and other things adds to your skill level and that prior to some update, necromancers could have much more minions.

    A video that i found. Not top gear but -



    And i used the image to make the point that "Necromancer on D2 start with a single weak skeleton and after gradually increasing his maestry over life, death and undeath, he end the game with a huge undead army. On D3, a necro learn how to create a skeleton and can create 7 skeletons scaling with the size and sharpness of his axe. After becoming level cap(like everyone else), unlocking above god nephalem power, etc, finding a amazing boot who increases his IQ by 564654765654643*10²³%, he can reanimate 7 skeleton who are strong as the weight and sharpness of his axe. The unique difference is that one can throw bigger numbers that means nothing and are inflated like Zimbabwe currency."
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    I'm not sure what the max number of skeletons is, but I do know that reaching level 99 in Diablo, whole technically possible, is not really possible in any normal person's spare time. Getting to 98 is ridiculous enough, and 99 is a whole other ball of wax after that. It's almost impossible to do without botting while you are away, and is one of the reasons there are so many on the official servers. I guess there is technically botting in Diablo 3, but without an economy it doesn't really much matter unless you are actually interested in getting to the top of the leaderboards, which has to be a minuscule portion of the player base. The botting in Diablo 2 still funds a black market of items sold for real money that somehow still exists to this day.
  • SorcererV1ct0rSorcererV1ct0r Member Posts: 2,176
    jjstraka34 wrote: »
    I'm not sure what the max number of skeletons is, but I do know that reaching level 99 in Diablo, whole technically possible, is not really possible in any normal person's spare time. Getting to 98 is ridiculous enough, and 99 is a whole other ball of wax after that. It's almost impossible to do without botting while you are away, and is one of the reasons there are so many on the official servers. I guess there is technically botting in Diablo 3, but without an economy it doesn't really much matter unless you are actually interested in getting to the top of the leaderboards, which has to be a minuscule portion of the player base. The botting in Diablo 2 still funds a black market of items sold for real money that somehow still exists to this day.

    Yes, my highest level character on D2 was a lv 85 bone necro(classic), apparently you need 3500 Baal runs to level up from 98 to 99.

    One of the many things that i hated with the post runewords D2 experience is that is far too easy to kill a prime evil. IS EXTREMELY rare to see someone in classic above lv 90. Without OP gear, everything is more fun. I never completed 100% of D2 naked, but i did some baal runs naked and plan to try make a hardcore naked challenge on the next ladder.
  • SkatanSkatan Member, Moderator Posts: 5,352
    I still remember how I had to exit the game when a skelliemancer joined because I knew sooner or later it would glitch me out and I would die. So better to exit before losing exp, heh.. It's easy today to forget how extremely slow internet was back in the day :)

    I watched all your link @SorcererV1ct0r, thanks for sharing! I watch the whole Rhyker stream too. very interesting.

    Two comments:
    1: The game looks fantamazing and I confident I will buy it and play through the campaign at the very least.
    2: The dev Kim seem to dodge the question, but they may dumb down the stats even more and just completely remove them. He explains that all you ever see is "attack" and "defense" when Rhyker asks abou the STR/DEX etc and tells us they don't want to make the game about math choice. This is not my preference unfortunately, since I much preferred the math part of the game. I do think DII failed utterly in the long run with stats tho since no one ever used anything but VIT, but to remove them completely and even remove the different stats for attack % and damage calculus is a bit sad. D3 already added their DPS calculations that removed the need for the player to do their own math: attackspeed and damage with proc effects to determine which choice of weapon and gear to use. With what Kim is saying it seems unfortunately that they will stay true to the more modern concept of having one piece of gear (or two/several) being what you aim for rather than finding your own mixture of stats and gear.
    BallpointMan
  • BallpointManBallpointMan Member Posts: 1,659
    Skatan wrote: »

    Two comments:
    1: The game looks fantamazing and I confident I will buy it and play through the campaign at the very least.
    2: The dev Kim seem to dodge the question, but they may dumb down the stats even more and just completely remove them. He explains that all you ever see is "attack" and "defense" when Rhyker asks abou the STR/DEX etc and tells us they don't want to make the game about math choice. This is not my preference unfortunately, since I much preferred the math part of the game. I do think DII failed utterly in the long run with stats tho since no one ever used anything but VIT, but to remove them completely and even remove the different stats for attack % and damage calculus is a bit sad. D3 already added their DPS calculations that removed the need for the player to do their own math: attackspeed and damage with proc effects to determine which choice of weapon and gear to use. With what Kim is saying it seems unfortunately that they will stay true to the more modern concept of having one piece of gear (or two/several) being what you aim for rather than finding your own mixture of stats and gear.

    Speaking to point 2 - it does seem interesting to me that in a game in which loot is one of the absolute driving forces for playing the game, that they would consider simplifying the loot system. If anything, I would think making it more complicated might be beneficial (I think of games like Borderlands, in which loot is moderately complicated - and it works).
  • SorcererV1ct0rSorcererV1ct0r Member Posts: 2,176
    Skatan wrote: »
    I<...>" when Rhyker asks abou the STR/DEX etc and tells us they don't want to make the game about math choice. This is not my preference unfortunately, since I much preferred the math part of the game. I do think DII failed utterly in the long run with stats tho since no one ever used anything but VIT, but to remove them completely and even remove the different stats for attack % and damage calculus is a bit sad. D3 already added their DPS calculations that removed the need for the player to do their own math: attackspeed and damage with proc effects to determine which choice of weapon and gear to use. With what Kim is saying it seems unfortunately that they will stay true to the more modern concept of having one piece of gear (or two/several) being what you aim for rather than finding your own mixture of stats and gear.

    D2 did attributes poorly but that doesn't means that there aren't good attribute systems. VtMB, NWN/BG/etc, Fallout 1/2, etc did attributes right.

    And some mods like path of diablo made ENERGY useful.

    Eg, path of diablo > https://pathofdiablo.com/wiki/index.php?title=Poison_and_Bone_Spells
    Energy: +1% Magic damage per 2 points
    Energy: Bone Spear casts 2 additional spears while having 100+ total Energy (includes energy from gear).


    Anyway, i wanna be able to beat this game NAKED. Like i can on D1/D2.
  • SkatanSkatan Member, Moderator Posts: 5,352
    I know there's plenty of great attribute systems, I wasn't comparing to non-Diablo games since Blizzard kinda seem to do their own Blizzard thing.

    Was just streaming some mrllama guy and he was talking about this, that some things are just a thing in the past, and when it comes to arpgs and stats, perhaps it's like that. It's more streamlined without them, less consequence for your actions, thus removes potential frustration from gamer curled people who has grown accustomed to less punishing games. And the sad truth is, I'm now one of them to a degree.

    Anyways, no point in speculating to much. We just have to wait and see what the devs come up with. It will surely be better than D3 (and I still had loads of fun with that for a while).

    Also, Blizz really should make feature films. I've been saying that since the cinematics for W3 and after these ones for D4 it just enforce that. They are the fricking masters at cinematics.
    BallpointManBelleSorciere
  • SorcererV1ct0rSorcererV1ct0r Member Posts: 2,176
    Skatan wrote: »
    IWas just streaming some mrllama guy and he was talking about this, that some things are just a thing in the past, and when it comes to arpgs and stats, perhaps it's like that. It's more streamlined without them, less consequence for your actions, thus removes potential frustration from gamer curled people who has grown accustomed to less punishing games. And the sad truth is, I'm now one of them to a degree.
    .

    Diablo always was very streamlined. I mean, compare Diablo 1 with any 90's RPG. Ultima? Baldur's Gate 1? Might & Magic? Wizardry? Daggerfall? David Brevik on GDC said i don't remember where that he found 90s RPG's too complex and decided to simplify the character creation.

    HE simplified a lot the RPG elements on D1, but at least maintained D1 RPG elements

    For those who wanna see the complete conference, here is

    Ultra casual gamers are playing on candy crush. PEople who purchase a game called "diablo" wanna at least the bare minimum of choice & consequence. See BUThesda. They simplified a lot with fallout 4, sold relative well, but when simplified more, with 76, nobody liked and the price droped a weak after the launch
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    Fallout 76 has many problems but over-simplification wouldn't even make the list. It wasn't even pretending to be an RPG. It's a mutilplayer survival game.
  • SorcererV1ct0rSorcererV1ct0r Member Posts: 2,176
    edited November 2019
    jjstraka34 wrote: »
    Fallout 76 has many problems but over-simplification wouldn't even make the list. It wasn't even pretending to be an RPG. It's a mutilplayer survival game.

    Dark & Light is a survival game and i see much more RPG elements on it than on FL 76 or 4 or even most post wow mmos or D3...
    Post edited by SorcererV1ct0r on
  • SorcererV1ct0rSorcererV1ct0r Member Posts: 2,176
    Sorry for posting it in the wrong thread. Only a curiosity. Did you knew? Jay Wilson din't implemented necromancer on D3 because according to him, necromancer was too good on D2?
    diablowiki wrote:
    "If we were going to bring him back, curses, skeletons, corpse explosion—you’re done. That’s the class. We felt the job was so well done that we didn’t know that we could do a lot to improve him,, and that choosing to make that class was more or less like putting handcuffs on ourselves and wouldn’t allow us to create new and original gameplay. So we decided to go with a new pet class. We focused with the witch doctor on having him play differently enough from the necromancer so that, say if someday in the future we want to add some of the old classes back to Diablo III, I don’t like those doors to be closed." https://www.diablowiki.net/index.php?title=Necromancer

    So, what he did? Took away everything cool about necro and added witch doctor, who can only use poison and create boring zombies(the most BORING type of undeads). The DLC who added necro years later, was awful. Bone golems goes against the notion of imbuing the spark of (un)life in a inorganic material from previous games lore, revive only lasting for 10 sec, corpse explosion scaling with %WD not mob's HP(everything scales with WD on D3), lack of attract, bone wall, bone prison, etc.

    ?u=https%3A%2F%2Fvignette3.wikia.nocookie.net%2Fdiablo%2Fimages%2F7%2F73%2FNecromancer.gif%2Frevision%2Flatest%3Fcb%3D20110520064457&f=1&nofb=1
    ""While it is fairly simple for a Necromancer to animate dead tissue, it is another matter entirely to instill the spark of life into inanimate objects. The Clay Golem is the simplest form of this complex art, creating a servant directly from the earth to serve the Necromancer. The intense drain this places on the psyche of the caster only allows him to maintain a single Golem of any type at a time." sources > http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/skills/necromancer-summoning.shtml#claygolem and https://diablo.gamepedia.com/Necromancer_(Diablo_II)

    IMO Diablo 2 and M&M VIII had the best implementation of necromancer. You can criticize M&M 8 - day of destroyer for anything, dated graphics for his time, lack of difficulty, easiness but the necromancer implementation was amazing. Sure, on 7 you can if join in dark side, learn dark magic and become a lich, but is not as if your char is a dedicated necromancer. Was one of the most popular classes on D2.


    Druid was also very popular and i knew that if it come to D3, it would be very boring. Hurricane and transformations on cooldown would ruin the class. I wish that Druids become more D2 like on D4.



    Spells like 3.5e finger of death/wail of the banshee, animate daggers/spears/crossbows/etc, improved IA, blood magic, inhuman transformations like become a vampire or lich(not depending on a set), auras that damage living and heal undead, etc, etc, etc; there are countless of ways to improve necromancer. But since Jay Wilson only know WoW, he din't realized that...

    He could just ask D2 fans what they wanna see new in necro. I believe that nobody will say "make my corpse explosion, bone spear, etc tied to the size and sharpness of my axe"
  • AdulAdul Member Posts: 2,002
    The trailers did a great job of replicating the old-school Diablo vibe, but one thing to keep in mind is that Diablo 1 & 2 were developed by Blizzard North, a studio that disbanded many years ago and most of the Diablo team moved on to other projects outside of Blizzard. I think those of us who are looking for a D2-like experience in a deeper sense than what is achievable through surface resemblance are best to temper our expectations.
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    I think those looking for a D2 experience should.....play Diablo 2. It exists. It's as good as it ever was. You can play it on official servers or with any number of mods. But as I said before, it's been nearly 20 years. We aren't going back to the time of Baldur's Gate 2, Morrowind, Mandate of Heaven, Diablo 2. And not for nothing, but between Path of Exile and Grim Dawn, they have everything a D2 player is looking for. Diablo IV will be it's own game. I like re-playing old stuff as much as anyone on Earth, but the series can't just constantly look to the past.
    JuliusBorisovBelleSorciereSkatan
  • SorcererV1ct0rSorcererV1ct0r Member Posts: 2,176
    jjstraka34 wrote: »
    I think those looking for a D2 experience should.....play Diablo 2. It exists. It's as good as it ever was. You can play it on official servers or with any number of mods. But as I said before, it's been nearly 20 years. We aren't going back to the time of Baldur's Gate 2, Morrowind, Mandate of Heaven, Diablo 2. And not for nothing, but between Path of Exile and Grim Dawn, they have everything a D2 player is looking for. Diablo IV will be it's own game. I like re-playing old stuff as much as anyone on Earth, but the series can't just constantly look to the past.

    Translating. "Diablo IV should aim to be like Jay Wilson's version of Diablo"

    Anyway, "play diablo" as you recognized is a 20yo game. I can't play in on M$ windows fullscreen, only on Linux with WINE. And Grim Dawn is more akin to titan quest, a game with a lot of boring skills on cooldowns. Path of Exile, despite being the most similar game to D2, still has his differences. For example, you are much more gear dependent on GD than on D2 or D1.
  • BelleSorciereBelleSorciere Member Posts: 2,108
    Translating. "Diablo IV should aim to be like Jay Wilson's version of Diablo"

    Anyway, "play diablo" as you recognized is a 20yo game. I can't play in on M$ windows fullscreen, only on Linux with WINE. And Grim Dawn is more akin to titan quest, a game with a lot of boring skills on cooldowns. Path of Exile, despite being the most similar game to D2, still has his differences. For example, you are much more gear dependent on GD than on D2 or D1.

    @jjstraka34 said nothing to imply that Diablo IV should aim to be like Jay Wilson's version of Diablo. It should also be obvious that right now there is no currently playable game that resembles Jay Wilson's version of Diablo. Diablo III is virtually a different game at this point.

    As far as Grim Dawn goes, have you even played it? It uses similar systems and the same engine, but playing the two is like night and day. To say they're too similar does a disservice to both.

    Also, cooldowns are fine, and allows for balanced implementation of skills like Diablo 3's Monk skill "Epiphany" or the Wizard's "Archon." Those skills would not exist in a game without cooldowns, and they're good skills.

    Anyway, I guess I'm off to dress my Barbie dolls or something.
    SkatanJuliusBorisov
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    edited November 2019
    Jay Wilson's team got the loot wrong. The combat engine was flawless from the get-go. I doubt the AH was soley their idea. It's no secret Diablo 3 sucked until Reaper of Souls, when Josh Mosquera and Wyatt Cheng were put in charge. They were asked in a meeting how to fix the game and Josh flat-out said "we have to get rid of the AH". The suits didn't want to hear it, but he was adamant. Here's the thing: the corporate heads in Activision are horrible, but the actual people making the games at Blizzard still obviously care very deeply about what they are making. Mosquera moved on to another company, and Wyatt Cheng is in charge of Immortal. I believe both these guys were on the D3 team from the beginning. Point being, an entirely new set of people are making Diablo 4. I happen to also know that much of the Diablo 3 team went to work on WoW sometime before Legion, which became readily noticable when World Quests revealed themselves to be like Adventure Mode bounties. The team who made the game you hate isn't making this one.

    Jay Wilson is made out to be some kind of devil for some comments he made about Dave Brevik and/or Max Schafer, but those guys have also had a mixed track record since Diablo 2. Hellgate: London and Marvel Heroes sucked. As much as I like Torchlight, they are absolute carbon copies of Diablo 1 and 2. Runic Games went out of business, and the IP has been turned over to Arc, who is making Frontiers. People are complaining about D4 becoming too MMO-like, but that is EXACTLY what Blizzard North was designing their D3 to be.
    BelleSorciereSkatanJuliusBorisov
  • SorcererV1ct0rSorcererV1ct0r Member Posts: 2,176
    edited November 2019
    Translating. "Diablo IV should aim to be like Jay Wilson's version of Diablo"

    Anyway, "play diablo" as you recognized is a 20yo game. I can't play in on M$ windows fullscreen, only on Linux with WINE. And Grim Dawn is more akin to titan quest, a game with a lot of boring skills on cooldowns. Path of Exile, despite being the most similar game to D2, still has his differences. For example, you are much more gear dependent on GD than on D2 or D1.

    @jjstraka34 said nothing to imply that Diablo IV should aim to be like Jay Wilson's version of Diablo. It should also be obvious that right now there is no currently playable game that resembles Jay Wilson's version of Diablo. Diablo III is virtually a different game at this point.

    As far as Grim Dawn goes, have you even played it? It uses similar systems and the same engine, but playing the two is like night and day. To say they're too similar does a disservice to both.

    Also, cooldowns are fine, and allows for balanced implementation of skills like Diablo 3's Monk skill "Epiphany" or the Wizard's "Archon." Those skills would not exist in a game without cooldowns, and they're good skills.

    Anyway, I guess I'm off to dress my Barbie dolls or something.

    You are right that i missunderstood hum.

    But cooldowns are not fire. This D3 skills could work like PoE vaal skills. Where you need to charge by filling the skill rune with enemy souls. Summon skeleton and VAAL summon skeleton are very different. One creates a undead squad. Another creates a undead army.

    There are tons of ways to balance skills on games without CDs. I rather have the strongest dark magic only obtained after i did a amazing long quest, killing the strongest boss VS dark, and it costing 4 ATN slots and all of my souls, also having few casts per rest(Dark Souls 2 style) than having it given for free for everyone at lv X and being just a skill scaling with the size and sharpness of my axe on 180 sec cooldown(Irvine Blizzard style), hell i have almost 200 hours on Dark Souls 2 and din't managed to get all pyromancies yet(Outcry is missing and is the hardest to obtain), but i an fine. Get power should not be easy and powerful magic should't be cost free.

    Diablo 1 > Diablo 2 > Diablo 3.

    IMO after Diablo 4 will be :

    Diablo 1 > Diablo 2 > Diablo 4 > Diablo 3.
    jjstraka34 wrote: »
    Jay Wilson's team got the loot wrong.

    Loot and
    • Character progression
    • Replay value
    • RPG elements
    • Artstyle
    • The idea that everything needs to be %WD(i never saw anyone on D1/D2 complaining that "my fireballs scale with the size and sharpness of my axe"
    • Class identidy(nobody liked the witch doctor)
    • Gameplay loop
    • (...)

    RoS made loot more interesting but ALSO made loot ludicrous inflated.
  • BelleSorciereBelleSorciere Member Posts: 2,108
    edited November 2019
    I love Vaal skills but those are likely balanced around the average time to kill that many mobs. It may not feel like a cooldown, but it is in fact a cooldown.
    Loot and
    • Character progression
    • Replay value
    • RPG elements
    • Artstyle
    • The idea that everything needs to be %WD(i never saw anyone on D1/D2 complaining that "my fireballs scale with the size and sharpness of my axe"
    • Class identidy(nobody liked the witch doctor)
    • Gameplay loop
    • (...)

    RoS made loot more interesting but ALSO made loot ludicrous inflated.

    Nah, he did fairly well on many of these things. Not all, obviously. Character progression is fine, RPG elements are fine, art style is fine, the use of weapon damage for all skills was actually something that needed to at least be tried, and class identity for the other classes was fantastic.

    Also, RoS loot is fine.

    It's okay for games to be fun, dude.
  • SorcererV1ct0rSorcererV1ct0r Member Posts: 2,176
    edited November 2019
    It's okay for games to be fun, dude.


    Well, having someone in my party dealing 0,0001% of my damage because he lacks full set, having another one becoming useless because his weapon broke and having to constant watch a "skill bar" to see what skills the developer allow me to use, doesn't sound like a fun experience for me.

    PS : Please. Name one RPG element on D3. Even shooters has better RPG elements than D3. At least on BAttlefield, is rare to see someone at lv cap...
    PS 2 : Arstyle is a matter of taste. I hate carnival suit looking armor, hate bikini armor, hate 50kg, bigger than the head pouldrons.
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    edited November 2019
    Love how now that Path of Exile is going mobile, apparently the internet consensus in the ARPG community is that mobile games are perfectly ok, even awesome. The more divorced we get from the Diablo Immortal announement, the more I'm ashamed I was even slightly upset about it. We now know how disingenuous the outrage actually was.

    I have long defended Path of Exile's microtransactions. It's how they keep the lights on. But now they have gone full holier than thou, somehow suggesting their cosmetics and loot-boxes are more pure than everyone else's and it's really turning me off. There is no evidence Blizzard will go beyond cosmetics in Immortal. They have never ONCE sold an actual piece of gear in any of their games, and I doubt they'd start now.
  • BelleSorciereBelleSorciere Member Posts: 2,108
    Victor: You create a character by selecting their class and gender and give them a name. You find gear in the game itself which you can choose to use, sell, salvage, etc. You can transmogrify and dye your items so your armor and weapon have a consistent look. Paragon levels allow you to customize your character to a degree, after leveling up to the level cap.

    Also, if someone is doing 0.0001% of your damage, it's not because he lacks a full set. It's because he lacks good gear entirely, never mind zero DPS builds.

    As far as bikini armor goes, I can't find any on my characters. Early game, yes, and female witch doctor, yes, but she shows less skin than the male witch doctor.

    The art continues to be fine. It's definitely nowhere near as cartoonish as people insist.

    jjstraka34: When Rhykker was thrilled about the mobile game I was disappointed given his past views on Immortal. I do not entirely disagree with you on the mobile Path of Exile issue, but I think there are a few factors at play:
    • Fans frequently have an adversarial relationship with Blizzard
    • "Path of Exile 2" was announced prior to the mobile game and at the same event.

    I suspect that if Blizzard had announced Diablo IV last year (and they should have) the anger over Immortal would have been less or none.

    That said, I wasn't ever angry about it. I'm cool with more Diablo and I'm cool with mobile games.
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