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

[Butterland]

I do not look forward to not being able to reach max level unless I play for years.

Yet, you enjoy D3? Infinite paragon levels? Infinite Greater Rift levels?

Or expensive respec costs. I want to be able to easily swap skills.

Token in D2 do this.

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.

Max level in D3 means nothing. It's the equivalent of reaching level 60 in D2 where you can finally equip most of your gear.

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.

D3 is the stupidest neverending grind. It's fun for 18 hours, and then you realize the next 200 hours will barely change anything about your character.

[GreenJesus]

Yet, you enjoy D3? Infinite paragon levels? Infinite Greater Rift levels?

Token in D2 do this.

Max level in D3 means nothing. It's the equivalent of reaching level 60 in D2 where you can finally equip most of your gear.

D3 is the stupidest neverending grind. It's fun for 18 hours, and then you realize the next 200 hours will barely change anything about your character.

Yep.. it's just "get more paragon levels so you can do a greater rift one level higher until you finally realize it's pointless and wait till next season to do it again"

[PixelFox]

This is Blizzard. What you've seen so far of D4 is going to be iterated on over and over and over until they get it to be at least as fun as D3 was on release, which is to say it's not going to be perfect but it almost certainly will make most people happy.

There could be a year of beta, and beta may still be a year away.

[GreenJesus]

This is Blizzard. What you've seen so far of D4 is going to be iterated on over and over and over until they get it to be at least as fun as D3 was on release, which is to say it's not going to be perfect but it almost certainly will make most people happy.

There could be a year of beta, and beta may still be a year away.

Lol... uh... how was release of D3 "fun"?

[Beefhammer]

I agree it ultimately was not big of a deal, but the idea was there, and could have been fleshed out.

The developers of D3 had the choice of either a) focus more on meaningful decisions or b) embracing the portal spam and lack of decision making.

Since they clearly went with b), I ask why didn't they make inventory much bigger?
If in D2 it was more or less meaningless as long as you had TPs and patience to go back and forth, how much more meaningless did it become in D3?

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Indeed, but the concept was there to be improved.
Again, D2 isn't some kind of gospel, but it had some cool ideas worth improving, many of which were dropped for pure convenience.

Maybe a limitation of the engine?

I find the meaningful decision angle way over blown in D2 talk. The only meaningful decision was talent points and that was due to no respecs. Skill points were mostly endurance and main stat only.

But that's just my opinion. While D3 lacked that permanent choice, it made up for it in spades in fun combat and build options. Sure, people went to sites to get a limited amount of best builds, but I had so much fun building fun builds independent of the sets.

[Martymark]

I've played 9999 hours of D2 and 9999 hours of D3.

But after Reforged, I'm not buying D4 unless it has fantastic reviews, and my friends personally give it fantastic reviews.

[Craaazyyy]

well hopefully d4 will not be a fucking +5 main stat video game with 0 items in it

[Trifle]

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.

I don't think I ever got a character to max level in D2, but it simply didn't matter... you didn't need require that many talent points for any build really, so getting to 70 - 80 tended to be good enough.

I liked D3 eventually, but the launch was a bit of a clusterfuck. I blame the AH for skewing the economy, once they got rid of that (+ a few other changes) things improved immensely. Although I wasn't a fan of how class sets pigeon holed you into specific builds, that seemed counter to the original design of picking the skills you liked.

[Azerate]

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.

Thank you OP for this thread. These are my thoughts exactly. I even wanted to create an exact same thread a couple weeks ago, but I just concluded that with the general hate towards D3 and the "elite gamer" culture of this forum I'd just get shat on, so I decided not to do that.

I love Diablo 3 and still play all the seasons as they come out to this day, and even outside of that, still like to load it up for 15 minutes here and there to farm for some obscure item that I'm missing in a cube on one character or something like that. I only really got into a couple games in my life, and what actually surprised me myself, D3 entered that short list of games.

Now the whole marketing scheme for D4 is that it's gonna be completely different (better, supposedly) than D3. As someone who loves D3, and only checked out the legacy games such as D1 and D2 more recently and not enjoyed them, I'm worried that D4 just won't be fun for me, and D3 will be dead.

One thing that still gives me hope is that I usually enjoy games made by Blizz and I hope that will also be the case for D4.

Imagine playing an ARPG for any of this. I don't understand that at all - storytelling in a game about repeatedly mowing down thousands of pointless enemies for loot in order to kill those same enemies faster, why on earth would you care about the "freedom of exploration"?

Again, my thoughts exactly. Personally I don't really look for stories in my games. It's okay to have some background narrative, but I just want to play. If I want a story I watch a movie or read a book.

did you mean reach max level in a couple of hours? Because levels in D3 are entirely pointless passed about 2 hours into a season.

And why is that wrong? Everyone can cap at their own pace, and then you have the open ended gameplay after unlocking all the abilities etc. Gives everyone more options and still allows the hardcore players to go for high paragon or w/e.

im afraid they will do some normal/nightmare/hell system again.. Its sucks to down the endboss within 10 hours imo.

The endboss should be the endboss of the endgame. Not something you blitz past durng lowlvl.

Im hoping Lillith is the shaper of d4, not the kitava.

The idea that having different difficulty levels in a game is something bad is something I will never understand. I think what D3 has currently is great. There's like 20 of them counting all the torments, and then you can further increase the difficulty level for rifts only. From what I've seen, people who are against difficulty levels in games are just elitist gatekeepers who believe the general populace shouldn't be allowed to actually progress through the game.

Yet, you enjoy D3? Infinite paragon levels? Infinite Greater Rift levels?

Token in D2 do this.

Max level in D3 means nothing. It's the equivalent of reaching level 60 in D2 where you can finally equip most of your gear.

D3 is the stupidest neverending grind. It's fun for 18 hours, and then you realize the next 200 hours will barely change anything about your character.

Here's the thing though: infinite paragon levels and gr levels are this bonus system laid on top of the main game. Unless you want to compete for high ranks on the highscore, you aren't really compelled to go for 10000 paragon levels. As I mentioned above, I complete every season journey and do some side stuff in between seasons. I don't think I ever went over 1000 paragon level in a season, and my non-season paragon level is something around 1300 from casual solo play. At the same time, my character has all abilities unlocked, and decent gear.

This is Blizzard. What you've seen so far of D4 is going to be iterated on over and over and over until they get it to be at least as fun as D3 was on release, which is to say it's not going to be perfect but it almost certainly will make most people happy.

There could be a year of beta, and beta may still be a year away.

Here's where I sort of agree with the majority (for once ) D3 at release was complete shit and I quit it after like a week of playing. The only progression that made sense back then was just farming in game gold to buy items on the awful AH. Difficulty curve was shit and the game showered you with junk items for classes other than the one you were playing. How anyone enjoyed it back then (maybe except people making real life money by selling rares) is beyond me. I returned to D3 after adventure mode was added and been having a blast since.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Video games have become like this in a lot of ways. All you can do is.. for one.. don't buy it before you can even play it or see a review of it. That is like the worse thing you can do these days. Do not line these peoples pockets with the money of a great game before a product is even in hand. Next.. like I said.. just wait for a review. By this time you probably have someone you somewhat trust in the review game. Or a friend you know will absolutely buy it and give you a real talk on it.

From there sure.. risks still exist but that is just life. Being there from the first day isn't that important if it is a good game. Good games will last and mere hours of play won't end you.

[cparle87]

D3 has a bigger inventory and less size variation. This is convenient but has adverse effects in how you play.

You mean not having to make alt characters just to hold all your stuff and having to make games just to throw your stuff on the ground and switch characters to pick them up! But making sure you don't swap characters too much or the game will think you're botting and disconnect you and make you lose everything you had on the ground? Sounds good to me. Item management is without a doubt the worst part of D2 and every time I play it I can't help but be constantly thinking "D3 did this so much better."

[Nurvus]

Maybe a limitation of the engine?

I find the meaningful decision angle way over blown in D2 talk. The only meaningful decision was talent points and that was due to no respecs. Skill points were mostly endurance and main stat only.

But that's just my opinion. While D3 lacked that permanent choice, it made up for it in spades in fun combat and build options. Sure, people went to sites to get a limited amount of best builds, but I had so much fun building fun builds independent of the sets.

Again, D2 came out first, and it had some interesting concepts (not many decent game to compare to) that I was disappointed when I saw D3 give up on instead of improving.
This means they were flawed in D2, but instead of making it better, were given up entirely.

D2 was extremely flawed, but I expected D3 to improve upon some of the concepts instead of throwing them away.

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You mean not having to make alt characters just to hold all your stuff and having to make games just to throw your stuff on the ground and switch characters to pick them up! But making sure you don't swap characters too much or the game will think you're botting and disconnect you and make you lose everything you had on the ground? Sounds good to me. Item management is without a doubt the worst part of D2 and every time I play it I can't help but be constantly thinking "D3 did this so much better."

Most D2 systems had a decent concept but poor implementation, sometimes with silly workarounds and creating unhealthy behaviors, but when D3 came out so many years later with so many good and bad examples to learn from, I was disappointed with many of the choices made - D3 gave up on a lot of concepts with potential.

That being said, D3 is a more enjoyable game in the long term, at least for me - it simply could be so much better if it hadn't thrown away so much.

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I've played 9999 hours of D2 and 9999 hours of D3.

But after Reforged, I'm not buying D4 unless it has fantastic reviews, and my friends personally give it fantastic reviews.

I'm sadly inclined to agree.

[OokOok]

If they actually said "We want to go back to D2 roots" it'll flop, 100%. Everything Blizzard is releasing these days is a flop "BUT CLASSIC MAN BUT CLASSIC!!!!" also flopped. "BUT DURR WC3 REMADE" ya it flopped too "OK BUT WOW HAS LIKE 1000000000 SUBS STILL!!" No it's flopping.

Anyways, D2 wasn't made by anyone at Activision Blizzard, it was made by the guys of Blizzard North that were never actually technically apart of Blizzard, they were bought in and then all moved on to other projects out of Blizzard/let go. Trying to make a game based on another game from years ago that no one worked on, will flop.
The only way they could make D4 successful is by remastering D2 and not touching anything like they did with WC3, just make it look good that's it. $$$

[Chromell]

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.

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

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Imagine playing an ARPG for any of this. I don't understand that at all - storytelling in a game about repeatedly mowing down thousands of pointless enemies for loot in order to kill those same enemies faster, why on earth would you care about the "freedom of exploration"?

Weird. Does it bother you that someone enjoy something you don't think they should enjoy in a game? Because it certainly seems that way. Also, D2 really is amazing in all those topics.

[Darkeon]

I feel ya.

Best course of action is to wait for the initial month or so worth of reviews and then either jump on it, or not.

Jumping in with day one purchases or pre-purchases, especially lately with Blizzard products, seems to be an unsafe bet.

[Nite92]

No, it's not too early to be worried about this. Angrily worried? Of course not - but vocally voicing it calmly? Absolutely the perfect time!

You want devs to potentially hear your potential concerns BEFORE they make mistakes, not after.

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That's where I'm standing on that odd word choice. =/

This would be the FIRST time I'd ever hear somebody say the words "Exploration" and "Diablo" in the same sentence. It's not designed for that... it's designed to be a repetitive dungeon crawler.

When I hear "Freedom to Explore" I think Elder Scrolls... not Diablo. Freedom to Explore means finding unique things in a vast area. Diablo has never done that... in fact, it's the opposite. It's a set series of dungeon blocks that are randomly placed together with equally random-sets of creatures in it. Diablo 2 even mroeso simply because it was all fixed-level crap via doing an outdated "Try it on Hard Mode!" model of game design.

You are 100% correct. The problem is, first people complain about no updates. We get an update about the actual design process. Next complaint: No gameplay update. That is not a valid criticism, especially since the last look at gameplay is just like 4 months old.

Be vocal about what you disagree with, that they have said or implied, and not just guesswork.

[Aphrel]

The idea that having different difficulty levels in a game is something bad is something I will never understand. I think what D3 has currently is great. There's like 20 of them counting all the torments, and then you can further increase the difficulty level for rifts only. From what I've seen, people who are against difficulty levels in games are just elitist gatekeepers who believe the general populace shouldn't be allowed to actually progress through the game.

The.. CURRENT iteration?!

Still sane exile?

[thilicen]

i'm taking a bad until proven otherwise approach to d4 (and elder scrolls 6).

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

[Kumorii]

Lol... uh... how was release of D3 "fun"?

Inferno difficulty was actually difficult and you had to think about enemy attacks and positioning. I found that incredibly fun. Then people whined so much about how difficult it was so it got nerfed and later removed. Compared to D2 it was fairly similar when it was a new game, you took time and explored every zone and optional dungeon and play through the campaign.

First playthrough of any diablo game is the best one imo.

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

It's Bethesda?
Literally all their games are fucked up and require modders to fix it... will happen to ES6 too.

Just wait till the fanbase have fixed the broken game. Which doesn't take long.

[Coldkil]

Inferno difficulty was actually difficult and you had to think about enemy attacks and positioning. I found that incredibly fun. Then people whined so much about how difficult it was so it got nerfed and later removed. Compared to D2 it was fairly similar when it was a new game, you took time and explored every zone and optional dungeon and play through the campaign.

First playthrough of any diablo game is the best one imo.

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).