I look forward to Diablo 4, but I'm afraid I won't enjoy it

[Unholyground]

So, Blizzard wants to go back to Diablo 2 roots.
Now, I enjoyed Diablo 3 a lot more than Diablo 2 even though Diablo 3 has glaring issues.
I do not look forward to not being able to reach max level unless I play for years. Or expensive respec costs. I want to be able to easily swap skills.
I really like the playstyle of Diablo 3 where you can get the max level in a couple of days and then just enjoy grinding end game and getting cool upgrades.
I'm not that kid anymore who played games for 18 hours and slept for 6. I realized this while playing Wolcen. I don't want to waste my time.

They said they are keeping what worked in D3 but want to make build variety actually a thing in D4 so that no one build for a class always outshines the rest. If they can accomplish that goal I think it will be a great step above both D2 and D3.

[Hellobolis]

If they fuck up ES6 so help me.. :|

let's just say that with the way bethesda is now, it's probably designed as a cash shop first and a game second.

they will also probably want to put some form of multiplayer in, but as you can see with fallout that just causes problem after problem.

so between those two things, just pray to whatever divine you prefer some form of free modding will remain.

[bigbleach]

So, Blizzard wants to go back to Diablo 2 roots.
Now, I enjoyed Diablo 3 a lot more than Diablo 2 even though Diablo 3 has glaring issues.
I do not look forward to not being able to reach max level unless I play for years. Or expensive respec costs. I want to be able to easily swap skills.
I really like the playstyle of Diablo 3 where you can get the max level in a couple of days and then just enjoy grinding end game and getting cool upgrades.
I'm not that kid anymore who played games for 18 hours and slept for 6. I realized this while playing Wolcen. I don't want to waste my time.

Whoa, what kind of mutant are you..? I don't think I've ever seen a person say they enjoyed D3 more than D2 without them having played D2 before. When you line them up next to eachother, D3 does function better by todays standards. However, if you played D2 back in the day and then played D3, it is laughable at best at how terrible D3 stacks up to D2. Hopefully... D4 will not go the route D3 did. D3 launched, Imho, great, and that is ignoring the issues with the real life money BS through the AH. That is ignoring how legendary items basically didn't drop. I played 6 months of D3 and did not receive 1 legendary item by drop, until they started rolling out fixes. Inferno felt harder than Hell in D2. What D3 is now... ugh. I enjoy it for short periods of time. Very short. Like, the time it takes to level and complete a set to start grinding... I only last like 2 weeks per season. I could install D2 right now and play for the next few weeks single player and have a blast. I really hope they do d4 justice.

- - - Updated - - -

You need some perspective and additional information. Leveling to cap is easy in D3 now. It wasn't always that easy, Vanilla D3 it was common to ni be 60 after you beat Diablo on normal difficulty. Even in RoS it was common to beat Malthael before 70. Now with a gem of ease and adventure mode one can level to 70 in under an hour. Not to mention adventure mode provides so much more experience than the campaign.

So while it is easy now, that was not the case for the first few years. It was after RoS launched and development shifted from D3 to D4 that things became easy.

Hmm.. I had beaten the prime evil by the low 30s and was moving into hell by lvl 60...

[Egomaniac]

So, Blizzard wants to go back to Diablo 2 roots.
Now, I enjoyed Diablo 3 a lot more than Diablo 2 even though Diablo 3 has glaring issues.
I do not look forward to not being able to reach max level unless I play for years. Or expensive respec costs. I want to be able to easily swap skills.
I really like the playstyle of Diablo 3 where you can get the max level in a couple of days and then just enjoy grinding end game and getting cool upgrades.
I'm not that kid anymore who played games for 18 hours and slept for 6. I realized this while playing Wolcen. I don't want to waste my time.

Really doesn't sound like you are looking forward to D4 at all.

[tikcol]

I found Inferno to be a total mess. Only a couple of builds could exploit the game and do it "without problems", or you ran a shield barb. Difficulty was not much of an issue because itemization was shit and basically unfarmable until you bought stuff from AH - the few things that were good in an ocean of useless drops.

Also, ARPG and difficulty often don't go hand to hand because the final objective is efficiency and not the challenge. You don't farm the highest difficulty by default, you farm the one that nets you the best rewards over time (which MAY be the highest).

They did changes but the real core issues have never been addressed and the idea of "don't nerf, buff the rest" translated into a bloated mess of difficulty levels which are just thresholds you jump by 5 when you equip the set items of choice.

It's kinda obvious how any game at release is just fun for most people, as it's new. For D3, since they nailed combat perfectly, it was a really good first impression. But then all the design flaws and long term issues appeared and destroyed the game despite different tries to fix them (but you can do only so much without redoing the core systems from scratch).

It was designed from the ground up to entice you to use the AH which was the main problem. Also didn't help that on launch 95% of all legendaries were complete and utter trash and the ones that weren't trash, were basically stat sticks with some stat that usually couldn't exist on the piece.. Like attack speed on helmet and whatnot.

That said I enjoyed the early d3 days the most, for a while until I realised I was playing the game so I could log off and enter the auction house to buy better gear. Because god forbid you ever got anything of worth back then yourself.

The only thing I got was some 700 damage yellow sword I sold for 250$. 1 week later Blizz nerfed something or released better items and that same sword was worth nothing. I still feel for the guy that bought it

[apples]

It was designed from the ground up to entice you to use the AH which was the main problem. Also didn't help that on launch 95% of all legendaries were complete and utter trash and the ones that weren't trash, were basically stat sticks with some stat that usually couldn't exist on the piece.. Like attack speed on helmet and whatnot.

That said I enjoyed the early d3 days the most, for a while until I realised I was playing the game so I could log off and enter the auction house to buy better gear. Because god forbid you ever got anything of worth back then yourself.

The only thing I got was some 700 damage yellow sword I sold for 250$. 1 week later Blizz nerfed something or released better items and that same sword was worth nothing. I still feel for the guy that bought it

playing the D3 AH was pretty fun

im pretty sure i made more money doin it than workn at my shitty job too

[Coldkil]

It was designed from the ground up to entice you to use the AH which was the main problem. Also didn't help that on launch 95% of all legendaries were complete and utter trash and the ones that weren't trash, were basically stat sticks with some stat that usually couldn't exist on the piece.. Like attack speed on helmet and whatnot.

That said I enjoyed the early d3 days the most, for a while until I realised I was playing the game so I could log off and enter the auction house to buy better gear. Because god forbid you ever got anything of worth back then yourself.

The only thing I got was some 700 damage yellow sword I sold for 250$. 1 week later Blizz nerfed something or released better items and that same sword was worth nothing. I still feel for the guy that bought it

Same here - though i just plainly (and maybe stupidly) refused to play with the AH. Once i bet Diablo Inferno, i just stopped playing because the game was a complete mess. Overall i have more than 1k hours on D3, thanks to RoS and seasons, but even that didn't last that long.

[Nizah]

Max level in a couple of days? in diablo 3? max level? what did i just read

[Coldkil]

Max level in a couple of days? in diablo 3? max level? what did i just read

I suppose it was referred to lvl 70, not Paragon. Which takes more like 3 hours and not 2 days

[Vilendor]

I'm more worried about them making a soulless, boring, creatively bankrupt game instead of small details like how hard is to respec. Because lets face it, they scrapped god knows how many concepts for how many years and they stuck to the current version because the huge uproar after the Immortal announcement and because they had to show something on the next Blizzcon.

For me it looked like the most generic boring crap with literally no concept where to develop it.

[Beefhammer]

I'm more worried about them making a soulless, boring, creatively bankrupt game instead of small details like how hard is to respec. Because lets face it, they scrapped god knows how many concepts for how many years and they stuck to the current version because the huge uproar after the Immortal announcement and because they had to show something on the next Blizzcon.

For me it looked like the most generic boring crap with literally no concept where to develop it.

1. They scrapped one concept. The MMO D3 Blizzard North was working on. Similarly, the original D4 was a souls like 3rd person game, scrapped for the classic isometric design a few years ago.

[Vorkreist]

Not looking forward to D4 based on what they showed. So far it looks like another shallow trash like D3 that could never compete with what Poe brings.

[Biomega]

You never needed to reach max level to enjoy D2 endgame content though, few items required a high level requirement also.

That's just as arbitrary as saying you don't need to reach max paragon in D3, though. There was an effective level in D2 where true endgame began, which was in the 70s as most high-end uniques required that level.

The reason you could "have fun" before that was because people were less discerning and less used to a higher level of quality content. D2 is stupidly repetitive, there's literally nothing to do but run zones from the story over and over again. Anyone who goes "lol Rifts, D3 sucks!" but holds up 500 hours of Mephisto runs as the gold standard is suffering from severe nostalgia bias.

The comparison with WoW Classic is somewhat apt. We were different people when WoW first released, with different experience and different expectations. From today's perspective, Vanilla WoW was RIDICULOUSLY bad in so many ways, and retail is a massive improvement over it in so many ways. Does that mean Retail is a perfect game, though? Not even close. You can be better than something else but still fall short; same with D2 and D3.

As for D4, time will tell. Like with many established IPs, the real problem isn't just advances in design, it's also a different audience. That's why new Star Trek isn't like TNG - you don't have the audience for it anymore. New players of Diablo aren't going to be satisfied with D2's approach. It'd be confusing and overwhelming to so many people, it'd be a financial disaster for the company. The people who'd appreciate a new D2-like game are a tiny minority now. The rest want a more accessible, more casual game, which is what Blizzard's overall formula is increasingly turning towards. They may lose the more hardcore crowd, but compared to the influx of new, less sophisticated customers, what does that matter to the company?

[slime]

It's worth it even for just that first play through. And if you are the type that likes seasons in Diablo - even better for you.

[Orlong]

So since you've gotten older you want to deprive the kids of today from having a hobby they can spend a lot of their excessive free time in?

Thats the problem. "Kids" shouldnt be playing Diablo games. They are made for adults, hence the MA rating. Also if youre talking about people 18 and over, they shouldnt have excessive free time. They should be either going to college and doling a lot of studying, or they should be working full time

[tankbug]

Not looking forward to D4 based on what they showed. So far it looks like another shallow trash like D3 that could never compete with what Poe brings.

Not if you're the type of gamer that wants to read a book or watch instruction videos on how to play a game before starting up a character, but people like me don't have time for that.

[Vorkreist]

The people who'd appreciate a new D2-like game are a tiny minority now.

Except Poe's growing success proves it wrong. The retarded design of D3 is the minority in terms of what people generally want from an arpg.

[Biomega]

Except Poe's growing success proves it wrong. The retarded design of D3 is the minority in terms of what people generally want from an arpg.

Nobody is saying D3 got it right; D3 has massive problems.

But PoE is not a huge mainstream game either, at least not in terms of paying customers. Of course you'll get more total players in a free game, but that doesn't really say much about how many people would play it if it wasn't free - and that's what matters.

Blizzard operates on different scales. It's not a niche company anymore, it's a mainstream AAA developer. Their goals are orders of magnitude removed from PoE, and their design will reflect that. Of course people that are super into the D2-style design still exist, but there's also SO MANY MORE other, more casual players that are just waiting to be roped into a new AARPG. And it's THOSE people Blizzard is most concerned about.

PoE may stack up favorably against D3 (which is an older title now with barely any development going into it) but the point isn't to capture the D2 audience - it's to get the largest possible audience, whether they were into D2 or not.

[Vilendor]

1. They scrapped one concept. The MMO D3 Blizzard North was working on. Similarly, the original D4 was a souls like 3rd person game, scrapped for the classic isometric design a few years ago.

Thanks, God.

[Just1c3]

First of all Time enjoyed is not time wasted, if you do not enjoy the leveling aspect of ARPGs at all, then maybe it's not your ideal genre? As far as I know, Diablo 3 Is the only big ARPG that easily level caps you? Not sure about Grim Dawn, didn't get to play it much. The journey in an ARPG is just as important as the end game is, it's the primary growth of your character where you learn all sorts of new spells and abilities.

I personally do not enjoy the easy level cap experience of diablo 3. Getting to max level in a few hours (Yes, it only takes hours in D3) just to grind the same rifts over and over isn't fun to me. That being said, I am sure Diablo 4 will have the same system, because it's Blizzard and it's easier to balance. And if not, you can still play Diablo 3 (Until they pull a WC3 Reforged on it or shut down the servers. )

I mean, the only question I have about this is... once you've leveled to 70 a few times, does it REALLY need to still take a long time the seventh, eighth, twentieth time around? Is there anything new or interesting you're really missing by just shooting to cap?

Like, I disagree pretty hard with the argument that it's "all about the journey" if you've already DONE the journey quite a few times. It shouldn't be a pain in the dick slog for EVERY character you create, EVERY time. D3's leveling takes a fair amount of time if you're just starting the game for the first time and you're smart enough to refuse all plvl offers. If you're DETERMINED to go it on your own, you can get a decent amount of play time out of the leveling experience. It's less than other games, but I mean, my contention is that games like PoE/Grim Dawn are bound and determined to waste your time maybe a little bit more than they should. That's just me, maybe other people like pain in the ass grindy slogs. To each their own, I guess.