D3 Feedback/D4 Suggestions

[Thelxi]

While playing some other AARPGs, I had some thoughts on this subject. Maybe others do too. If this reaches the devs great, if not oh well.

Going from D3 to D4, there are only two things I want D4 to be:

More Solo Friendly
I just logged into D3 today (end of season) to check out my character on the LB, just to confirm what I am about to type out here: lots heroes with 120-130 clears, 3k paragon, 150 gems and 150 augments.

This post will probably be too long anyway so I am not going to go into great detail why this is atrociously prohibitive to any reasonable competitive solo player, but let me just point out that most people playing D3 probably don't realize just how big of a boost in power 10k+ mainstat is, not to mention the actual gem levels. For me personally there is a brick wall once I am in full augments and have pushed my build to its limits: start farming paragon/gems in groups or quit the season. You can guess what my choice usually is.

Bounties are a culprit here as well, but a very minor one. Again I don't think I have to explain this in great detail, but I'll add that bounties are just not very fun to do. If you keep a similar forgotten soul sink/reroll progression system, I suggest you make it a bit less tedious. I'm not being sarcastic btw; just tune whatever secondary progression system is planned for D4 to be a bit faster than what bounties are in D3.

Better Controls
Being forced to bind both left click and right click to skills, and being restricted in which specific skills can bind to what, is honestly the single most stupid design decision I have ever tolerated in any video game. It is inexcusable for this reason alone: you can circumvent this BS with macros, K+M alternatives and even controllers. Why you imposed such clunkiness on K+M players without the means or knowledge to solve this problem themselves is beyond me.

If you are going to be inspired by one feature of Chromaticon, please let it be the controls. Being able to bind movement to any key(s) you want is great, and being able to bind multiple skills to the same button is even better.

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With that out of the way, I also have some thoughts about endgame. Playing other AARPGs made me appreciate post-RoS D3's seasonal endgame a lot. I think that its pacing is particularly perfect. I'll give an outline of what I do every season and what I think works extremely well in D3. I hope this remains intact for D4:

-Leveling: 0 to 5 hours
-Getting Starter Build Online: <1 to 10 hours
How long it takes me to get a 6p together and whatever other crucial legendary is necessary to start farming at a decent torment level.
-Level Gems/First Augment: 5-10 hours
Here the real (and finally efficient) farming begins. First I level my gems and then I level my first augment. While farming and pushing to whatever augment level I decide on (this season it was 114 on my DH for 115 augments) I always get at least 1 well-rolled ancient I can augment, and so the ball starts rolling.
-Augmenting: ~20-30 hours
-Pushing

Usually it takes me 40-60 hours to be in full augments and ready to push. Of course luck plays a big role in how fast this is, how easy/hard rolling decent and augmentable ancients is for my specific build etc. Not to mention the LoD builds, which take much longer. Every single season though, this is a blast for me, and every season is a chance to play a class I haven't played in a while. This endgame is perfect imo, and I hope seasons play similarly in D4.

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Lastly I wanted to type out a few things about PoE, but this is getting too long. Just don't make D4 an economy based game. Feel free to draw inspiration from other aspects of PoE though, like the passive tree or labyrinth/ascendancy.

[Coldkil]

Fully agree with everything. Just adding my 2 cents on the points brought up.

- solo VS group: the problem lays in the endgame structure. Since character progression is directly tied to being able to clear higher GRs, it's just automatic that group players that can reach higher levels in an easier way will end "winning" solo leaderboards. The only solution is to either make the ladders disconnected from character power (basically, having a cap to Paragon/Gems) or to make a mode akin to SSF that's in PoE with its own ladders. Both work, and in D4 dungeons should be capped in levels from the news we have.

- controls: nothing to say, they should just make us able to bind left click to move only and leave other 6 buttons (or whatever) for the skill slots. I don't know how gamepad will be in D4, but from people playing in D3 on console everyone told me it's been really good.

- endgame: they really need to step up the seasons game. I'm fine with endgame being dungeon farming, but they need to add more of them over time, more items, more legendary powers, more events. And possibly new mechanics.

Lastly, yes, the talent trees are barebones at best. They need to be expanded quite a lot.

[Kokolums]

Solo friendly really is out of the question.

The core appeal of Diablo 2 was that it was (at the time) on the bleeding edge on online social play. I mean honestly, if you want solo play, you really should play some other ARPG. Diablo is not for you. D2 offered 8 player games and an online gamer community in battle.net that blew away everything else out there in terms of social activity. I sometimes think people are trolling when they demand solo play. You can't possibly understand what made Diablo so fun when you say that.

If you want a solo ARPG that's very very very well done, go play Torchlight 2. I mean, no-one played TL2. But its there for you.

[taishar68]

Solo friendly really is out of the question.

The core appeal of Diablo 2 was that it was (at the time) on the bleeding edge on online social play. I mean honestly, if you want solo play, you really should play some other ARPG. Diablo is not for you. D2 offered 8 player games and an online gamer community in battle.net that blew away everything else out there in terms of social activity. I sometimes think people are trolling when they demand solo play. You can't possibly understand what made Diablo so fun when you say that.

If you want a solo ARPG that's very very very well done, go play Torchlight 2. I mean, no-one played TL2. But its there for you.

Who are you to define what someone else thinks is fun? I hate playing in groups in D2 or D3. And this is 2020; Diablo does not need to be on the cutting edge of social activity any longer. That's why the game is designed with very little group content, unless you want it.

I want to see some traction in gear acquisition. Make it more about skills and stats than ubiquitous items that drop way too easily. In D2, it was a matter of "if" and with D3 it is a matter of "when". I'd like it more like the former.

I'd also like to see slower combat; not turn based or anything silly, but I'd like strategy, placement and skill to be more of a factor than power creep.

[Kumorii]

Who are you to define what someone else thinks is fun? I hate playing in groups in D2 or D3. And this is 2020; Diablo does not need to be on the cutting edge of social activity any longer. That's why the game is designed with very little group content, unless you want it.

I want to see some traction in gear acquisition. Make it more about skills and stats than ubiquitous items that drop way too easily. In D2, it was a matter of "if" and with D3 it is a matter of "when". I'd like it more like the former.

I'd also like to see slower combat; not turn based or anything silly, but I'd like strategy, placement and skill to be more of a factor than power creep.

Not speak of the fact that there were a big meta game when it comes to trading. That topped with shared loot made it so playing in group isn't optimal and in fact detrimental to character progression.

Most people i know and through my own experience joind group play only for lvling and xp farming. Anything outside of that was done solo or with close friends.

He's right that there is a milestone in social play. But that was because of battle.net more so than diablo2.

[Kokolums]

I've got an entire LIST of game enhancements to push Diablo forward as a social game. I wrote up this list TWENTY YEARS AGO. But Blizzard went in a completely opposite direction.

1. Picture-in-picture / split screen

This is a HUGE social enhancement. The idea here is you can race other players to goals. These can work in the same game or while players are in different games. You can race LIVE to complete Act 1, or rift race, etc. You can click on the other screen to inspect their char. Timestamps for reaching certain objectives in races would be included.

2. Super Mario Kart "ghost" saves

In Super Mario Kart for the SNES, you could actually save a recording of your race. Then you could start a new race but have a transparent "ghost" of your old racecar overlayed atop your current race. So you could race against the recording. Putting this into Diablo would mean a static map that is the same as the one the ghost recording used. You could then play against it and see if you could do better. You could share ghost recordings with other people. Preferably, you can only share them with people in-game, not just upload them somewhere. Timestamps here as well.

3. PvP

Well, Pvp wasn't offered in D3. Pretty self-explanatory. I would like a version of PvP built around World Quests. You go out and fight a world quest and along the way, others might join in and help you or try to kill you. There can be open areas, or cul-de-sacs, or dangerous mobs on the edges you try not to aggro (or try to aggro). But there will of course be structured PvP.

4. A major city where you can meet other D3 players, but also see avatars of Starcraft, Overwatch and Warcraft players.

It would be a communal town for all the major games. This is great to help cross-pollenate between all the different Blizzard games. You meet some friends there, and they are on Overwatch but you want to show them the new mogs or new ghost replays you got, so they logon to D3.

5. Observer mode

Allow people to login to D3 and enter observer mode where they can watch others play. Observer mode would come with its own chatroom for observers to discuss what is going on. The chatroom would have an option to be visible to the player(s). Observers could click on items, inspect players, get a summary of what is going on, etc. Twitch took a lot of this and made it a thing but Twitch can never be as interactive as having it actually in the game.

5. in-game leaderboards

I'll mention this. I wanted this for 20 years and they did finally put it in. This can be enhanced if you tie in ghost saves of the top players stuff or observer mode options on the leaderboard. Leaderboards should be expanded to include objectives like "most high runes found" (using D2 as an example).

6. "Helper" tags.

Players have the option to toggle a "Helper" flag. Players flagged as helper could be contacted to help with anything from learning the game, clearing objectives, leveling, gearing, etc. Helping simple should be simple, straightforward and open to encourage people to play. Helper tags do that. It is critically important that it is incredibly easy for new players to login and search for players with a helper tag toggled on.

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Who are you to define what someone else thinks is fun?

BLIZZARD defined it, not me. BLIZZARD created Diablo 2 and it reached amazing success by being an extremely social game. The real question is who are YOU to want to destroy that? I don't go to some chess forum and tell them they need to remove pawns from the game. Why are you coming here trying to change THE core aspect of Diablo?

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If I was made Game Director tomorrow, I've got a whole laundry list to pull Diablo into a correct direction. I have a slew of systems and new features to push it forward. There's a LOT of work to do.

[Coldkil]

Solo friendly really is out of the question.

The core appeal of Diablo 2 was that it was (at the time) on the bleeding edge on online social play. I mean honestly, if you want solo play, you really should play some other ARPG. Diablo is not for you. D2 offered 8 player games and an online gamer community in battle.net that blew away everything else out there in terms of social activity. I sometimes think people are trolling when they demand solo play. You can't possibly understand what made Diablo so fun when you say that.

If you want a solo ARPG that's very very very well done, go play Torchlight 2. I mean, no-one played TL2. But its there for you.

Yet most people played solo all the time if not for trading. Same with PoE and D3. I agree that Blizzard aims toward group play, but in reality most people play solo and that's something they need to consider. You don't want the majority of your playerbase to get screwed.

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Lol, nearly all these suggestions are horrible and have nothing to do with Diablo or ARPG in general. I mean, they're not stupid ideas or so, but all you get from this is "i want a competitive race game where i can see myself being better than others".

Observer mode and "helper" though are really good ideas.

[Thelxi]

you really should play some other ARPG. Diablo is not for you.

Video games can be a great tool for people who might lack the social skills or opportunity, and Blizzard has without a doubt given many lives meaning. There are many ways to make the argument for them to continue going down this path with their games. Apathetically telling people to play a different game, not it. All this does is help people understand why you appreciate and maybe need this kind of design.

If you want a solo ARPG

Misunderstanding and misquoting people, also not great. I don't want D4 to be a solo AARPG, I want it to be more solo-friendly. I think it's pretty clear from my post that I don't think a 10k+ mainstat advantage is an acceptable incentive for people to start farming in groups. If you want to make an argument for it being an acceptable incentive, to the point where you see people in gear 20+ tiers higher than what they can squeeze out on the solo leaderboards, feel free.

[SirBeef]

Solo friendly really is out of the question.

The core appeal of Diablo 2 was that it was (at the time) on the bleeding edge on online social play. I mean honestly, if you want solo play, you really should play some other ARPG. Diablo is not for you. D2 offered 8 player games and an online gamer community in battle.net that blew away everything else out there in terms of social activity. I sometimes think people are trolling when they demand solo play. You can't possibly understand what made Diablo so fun when you say that.

If you want a solo ARPG that's very very very well done, go play Torchlight 2. I mean, no-one played TL2. But its there for you.

D1-3 was played solo by most of the players. Couch co-op, was more popular than grouping in parties of 3-4.

Devs already stated D4 can be played solo and all the best gear can be acquired solo. So maybe Diablo isn't for you.

[SirBeef]

Video games can be a great tool for people who might lack the social skills or opportunity, and Blizzard has without a doubt given many lives meaning. There are many ways to make the argument for them to continue going down this path with their games. Apathetically telling people to play a different game, not it. All this does is help people understand why you appreciate and maybe need this kind of design.



Misunderstanding and misquoting people, also not great. I don't want D4 to be a solo AARPG, I want it to be more solo-friendly. I think it's pretty clear from my post that I don't think a 10k+ mainstat advantage is an acceptable incentive for people to start farming in groups. If you want to make an argument for it being an acceptable incentive, to the point where you see people in gear 20+ tiers higher than what they can squeeze out on the solo leaderboards, feel free.

It will be just like the others, you can completely play it alone, outside of world bosses/zone events. Although you are not required to group up with others, they will be public areas that will be filled with other players. The thing we need to see is if there is any built in benefit to grouping, like more exp, or more drops due to being in a group. Hopefully that is not the case. But they have been clear that you can play alone and not miss out.

[mrgreenthump]

Solo friendly really is out of the question.

The core appeal of Diablo 2 was that it was (at the time) on the bleeding edge on online social play. I mean honestly, if you want solo play, you really should play some other ARPG. Diablo is not for you. D2 offered 8 player games and an online gamer community in battle.net that blew away everything else out there in terms of social activity. I sometimes think people are trolling when they demand solo play. You can't possibly understand what made Diablo so fun when you say that.

If you want a solo ARPG that's very very very well done, go play Torchlight 2. I mean, no-one played TL2. But its there for you.

Did you even play D3? That game is so anti-solo that it makes no sense to play it in solo at all. You do bounties 4x slower, you get less XP, less loot, you loose on synergies, gear you get is randomized still and to top it all off.. you are on the same leadersboards as people that play in groups but push in solo.

You can have advantages when playing in a group. But to a point. You essentially ruin the game if you feel like when your friend logs off, you better do the same, even though you'd like to continue playing. Same when logging on and there are no friends playing, you just log off or afk till friends are online.

If you need the game to give you as big of an advantage as D3 does for you to play with friends, you better find better friends to play with.

[SirBeef]

Did you even play D3? That game is so anti-solo that it makes no sense to play it in solo at all. You do bounties 4x slower, you get less XP, less loot, you loose on synergies, gear you get is randomized still and to top it all off.. you are on the same leadersboards as people that play in groups but push in solo.

You can have advantages when playing in a group. But to a point. You essentially ruin the game if you feel like when your friend logs off, you better do the same, even though you'd like to continue playing. Same when logging on and there are no friends playing, you just log off or afk till friends are online.

If you need the game to give you as big of an advantage as D3 does for you to play with friends, you better find better friends to play with.

Play D3 solo exclusively, just like D2. Haven't really had a problem since I give no shits about leaderboards or competition. Pretty much like most players. Thise interested in competition will do what is necessary or they don't really care about competing.

[Coldkil]

Play D3 solo exclusively, just like D2. Haven't really had a problem since I give no shits about leaderboards or competition. Pretty much like most players. Thise interested in competition will do what is necessary or they don't really care about competing.

The problem with D3 is that even if you don't care about competition, the gameplay is designed around climbing GRs, which as you say, many people have no interest on. So either you partake to the "meta" if you want to progress your character or just stop before, which translates into basically getting your set and legendaries because that's how you define a build.

It's not solo firendly in this case because progression is tied to be in a group. If you're in a group, you can go further and playing solo only won't bring to those levels anyway soon.

Fortunately D4 won't have half of this crap since dungeons will be level capped and there's no timer. If people still want to race, they can do it easily but has no effect on your character progression. Until they bake another Paragon system where if you bot 24/7 you're gonna get so much advantage it trumps any other activity.

Division 2 got it right: you have 1000 levels of SHD which are exactly like paragon, are pretty fast to farm and most importantly there's no season/standard separation. Once you reach level 1000 you have capped all skill points (like 800 in D3). After that you can level up infinitely, there's a couple achievements but that's it. You get a crate with random loot in it every level but it's totally not efficient to farm that also due to how loot works.

[schwank05]

Solo friendly really is out of the question.

The core appeal of Diablo 2 was that it was (at the time) on the bleeding edge on online social play. I mean honestly, if you want solo play, you really should play some other ARPG. Diablo is not for you. D2 offered 8 player games and an online gamer community in battle.net that blew away everything else out there in terms of social activity. I sometimes think people are trolling when they demand solo play. You can't possibly understand what made Diablo so fun when you say that.

If you want a solo ARPG that's very very very well done, go play Torchlight 2. I mean, no-one played TL2. But its there for you.

I agree completely D2 was my first Online game and I loved it. But after playing D3 on Console I will never touch any Diablo game on PC ever again, the experience is 100% more enjoyable and plays so much better than on PC.

[Daronokk]

Solo friendly really is out of the question.

The core appeal of Diablo 2 was that it was (at the time) on the bleeding edge on online social play. I mean honestly, if you want solo play, you really should play some other ARPG. Diablo is not for you. D2 offered 8 player games and an online gamer community in battle.net that blew away everything else out there in terms of social activity. I sometimes think people are trolling when they demand solo play. You can't possibly understand what made Diablo so fun when you say that.

What a load of crap. Sure multiplayer was nice but it didn't make solo play any less possible or fun.

[SirBeef]

The problem with D3 is that even if you don't care about competition, the gameplay is designed around climbing GRs, which as you say, many people have no interest on. So either you partake to the "meta" if you want to progress your character or just stop before, which translates into basically getting your set and legendaries because that's how you define a build.

It's not solo firendly in this case because progression is tied to be in a group. If you're in a group, you can go further and playing solo only won't bring to those levels anyway soon.

Fortunately D4 won't have half of this crap since dungeons will be level capped and there's no timer. If people still want to race, they can do it easily but has no effect on your character progression. Until they bake another Paragon system where if you bot 24/7 you're gonna get so much advantage it trumps any other activity.

Division 2 got it right: you have 1000 levels of SHD which are exactly like paragon, are pretty fast to farm and most importantly there's no season/standard separation. Once you reach level 1000 you have capped all skill points (like 800 in D3). After that you can level up infinitely, there's a couple achievements but that's it. You get a crate with random loot in it every level but it's totally not efficient to farm that also due to how loot works.

Not one did I feel pressured by the game or felt I needed to group to take advantage of the bonus exp and efficiency to climb GRs. Ever. You know there are far more players like me than those that care about that stuff. Yes people care and feel forced to take advantage, but most don't bother. So, just like how D2 encouraged group play and trading relatively few participated. D3 is no different.

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What a load of crap. Sure multiplayer was nice but it didn't make solo play any less possible or fun.

Only well after the fact for those that really invested themselves and found out the droprates were superficially low to encourage group play and trading. But for the vast majority, we just played solo, offline and didn't care.

[Biomega]

Not one did I feel pressured by the game or felt I needed to group to take advantage of the bonus exp and efficiency to climb GRs. Ever. You know there are far more players like me than those that care about that stuff. Yes people care and feel forced to take advantage, but most don't bother. So, just like how D2 encouraged group play and trading relatively few participated. D3 is no different.

Obviously whether or not you care is a separate question, but the real problem lies in how big the differences are. In D3, they're MASSIVE - the increased amount of gear, materials, and experience you get in group play vs. solo play is staggering. That still doesn't mean you have to CARE about that (I certainly don't) but it's nevertheless a core reality, and that reality informs how people feel about it. PARTICULARLY with a ranking system like GRs that gives you a direct measure to compare again. Which, again, you don't HAVE to care about, but simply because it exists will change the way people feel about things.

It's like, say, air travel - you don't HAVE to care about traveling to a different country for a day vs. for a week, but simply because you CAN get there in a day already changes the way everyone looks at travel times.

[Coldkil]

Not one did I feel pressured by the game or felt I needed to group to take advantage of the bonus exp and efficiency to climb GRs. Ever. You know there are far more players like me than those that care about that stuff. Yes people care and feel forced to take advantage, but most don't bother. So, just like how D2 encouraged group play and trading relatively few participated. D3 is no different.

Agree. My point was just about how D3 design was wrong as a concept and it translated into some sort of "forced group play" whole it was basically random matchmaking for the most part.

D2 did it way better imho.

[Kokolums]

Agree. My point was just about how D3 design was wrong as a concept and it translated into some sort of "forced group play" whole it was basically random matchmaking for the most part.

D2 did it way better imho.

The WRONG way to do social is to do it with randoms. It can work, but its very very tricky. Its better than solo but when you have a group of regulars you start to build backstory and history among the group which pulls players in.

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Misunderstanding and misquoting people, also not great. I don't want D4 to be a solo AARPG, I want it to be more solo-friendly. I

Well, we've been having THIS argument for 20 years, too.

Solo play cannot exist alongside multiplayer play. If you do that, people will naturally gravitate towards playing solo. It will devour multiplayer play. This is EXTREMELY bad because people do it for the convenience but then suddenly get incredibly bored without social interaction and QUIT. Solo play destroys the game. This has been a point of argument for 20 years. Some people refuse to believe this is the case, but it most certainly is. People must be forced to go into multiplayer situations. The vast majority of the playerbase actually play for the social interaction, even if they don't know it. They think they want solo, but they don't.

And I will not ever budge from this view no matter how many times I hear it told to me by new players that weren't around when this debate started. You are treading over ANCIENT ground when you talk about adding solo options. This stuff was being argued about when Bill Clinton was president.

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D1-3 was played solo by most of the players. Couch co-op, was more popular than grouping in parties of 3-4.

Devs already stated D4 can be played solo and all the best gear can be acquired solo. So maybe Diablo isn't for you.

D1 was kinda actually a disaster. It was beautiful to look at for a mid 1990s game, and moving about in a 3d world was revolutionary. But the problem was that the entire game was on your computer. So the first thing people did was hack the game files, give themselves god mode, and kill the final boss in 5 minutes. They felt an immediate rush at how awesome this experience was. Then they quickly said "this game is a joke" and left. There was an immediate outcry from the playerbase to fix the glaring problems with D1 because no-one could resist hacking the game to death.

D2 came along and provided the client-server mode to prevent hacking the game where you gave yourself god mode. There were still hacks, and Blizz worked to fix them and ban players. For its time, in 2000, its was quite a revolutionary experience. It was on the bleeding edge of social play. Effectively, you were forced to group to advance your character, because the most efficient way to 99 was to play in groups. So most everyone did. That meant running cow games in the original version, or Baal runs in LoD. And it often turned into a proto chatroom itself, with people sitting in Baal's throne room going blah blah blah about this or that while they wait for waves of mobs to spawn. And then of course there was battle.net, where you met fellow gamers. You chatted with them on bnet, showed off what your toon looks like, and sometimes your friends would switch to starcraft and, because of strong social bonds, you would wind up buying starcraft as well to join them in the new game. So you had some early beginnings of cross-pollination between games. There were also literally "helper" builds in D2 like fire enchant sorcs. People would literally create public helper games on bnet where they would guide people thru the game and park the sorc on the side to provide new toons with high level fire enchant. Having named games was a massive social feature which allowed players to even create helper games.

D3 came along and was a major step backwards. Bnet was gone, or rather turned into a glorified launcher with no social. They almost didn't even include chat channels in the game, and when they did they were incredibly primitive and actually a step back from D2 chat. There was no comparable social activity in the game where you could sit around and chat while waiting for mobs to spawn or attack or portals to open. It had a max of 4 players in a game instead of 8. There was no PvP which was a HUGE social draw. A lot of people LIVED for D2 PvP and they just erased that group from existence. It was a sterile environment of single player runs with no talking. Helper builds were gone. Helpers games could not be created. Without an ability to build social bonds, tons of players got bored and left. Humans are social creatures and are drawn to social games.

If D4 is a solo experience, its a dead game.

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Right now, the BIGGEST selling point of Blizzard games is they are actually free (as long as you are willing to do a little gold farming in WoW and convert that gold into bnet balance). I will have enough bnet balance from that to get D4 for free. Will I play it? If its mostly a solo game, probably not. I have Torchlight 2 sitting around. Its wonderfully designed but it is effectively single player so i don't touch it.

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At the peak of my time playing D2, I was mostly in Baal games chatting and killing, or making enchant games with my sorc and boosting people and chatting. I did this because I really couldn't get this type of fun anywhere else. Blizzard had a value add in social play and it was crack.

[SirBeef]

wall of nonesense.

The vast majority of Diablo players from 1-3 played offline, 1&2, or solo, all three. Deveau were surprised to couch co-op was more played than online for console players. D4 will, just like the other 3 allow players to choose to solo, which most prefer, or group play. D4 will be successful. You seem to exist on your own little island where only what you experience or feel is reality for everyone.