D3 Feedback/D4 Suggestions

[Kokolums]

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.

You don't know what you are taking about.

First of all, don't lump D3 in with D2 or D1. D3 was SO bad that they outright scrapped the second xpac. D3 failed.

Second of all, Blizzard has driven off the majority of ARPG fans. Its YOU that is on your own little island of what makes an ARPG good. Diablo is a cornerstone franchise and should have a massive massive playerbase.

Second of all, don't compare the multiplayer version of D2 in 2000 with what is required from a multiplayer version in 2020. Yup, D2 had offline play. But, for its time, D2 was the BLEEDING EDGE of multiplayer online ARPG. That gave it a massive value-add. There is no value add in D3. And there is no value add in mostly singleplayer D4.

What exactly is the selling point in your version of D4? Complete this sentence: You need to put aside all other video games and pick up D4 because ____________

There is no answer to that with singleplayer D4. The ARPG market is flooded with singleplayer ARPG. They are all cannibalizing each other's playerbases. That is a recipe for failure. You've got to step up and do something different. And Diablo can do that by focusing on multiplayer and community.

Diablo should have a massive following.

This reminds me of talking to people about WoW. WoW once had like 12-14 million players. Blizzard drove them ALL off in an insane devotion to antisocial play. Then we get down to like 2-3 million today, and when you suggest they should return to social play, they say "don't drive off the playerbase, you are on your own little island with your opinions". I mean holy crap. They've already driven almost everyone off.

Honestly, i think the Blizz devs would rather let WoW die before actually fixing the game and rebuilding the social scene. And I think they are dong it to Diablo as well. Its SOOOOOO stupid. Its like watching Yahoo! mismanage itself in its final years.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

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.

Unrelated but did they say D4 would have controller support?

[Kokolums]

The very existence of Twitch and Discord should clue you in that gamers want a social experience. Elements of Twitch and Discord could be found in the old bnet 20 years ago. Blizz needs to just return to its roots and provide a social ARPG. Customers do not want solo play. Blizz tried to force it down customers throats and people just flocked to Twitch and Discord in response. They need to give it up. Make a social ARPG.

[SirBeef]

Unrelated but did they say D4 would have controller support?

Yes on both Console and PC. Since D4 is being developed from day one to be on console, and the UI is the same, with a movable on on PC, and controller support, I suspect we will have cross play for those interested in online play or have friends that prefer the opposite of how you choose to play Diablo.

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The very existence of Twitch and Discord should clue you in that gamers want a social experience. Elements of Twitch and Discord could be found in the old bnet 20 years ago. Blizz needs to just return to its roots and provide a social ARPG. Customers do not want solo play. Blizz tried to force it down customers throats and people just flocked to Twitch and Discord in response. They need to give it up. Make a social ARPG.

Where and when have I ever said they are not? Unless the game is a MP game first, like team shooters, BR, MOBAs, MMOs, and the like, games where the single player experience is nothing close to how the game is expected to be played, and it has a SP mode, more often than not, the SP mode is more popular. D3 is very social, even has it's own player chat for everyone to see. You gain exp and drop rate bonuses when grouped up to the point that those interested in competition or just keeping up, feel they have to play with groups. You can set you game to open to the public and just play with randos every time you play. Yet, SP is the most popular way to play. I guess most people just don't want to socialize. I have never play online in D2, never grouped up with anyone more than just my wife in D3, even then it's rare becasue we have two vastly different play styles and sense of direction when exploring or running rifts.

I have never felt I have missed out because guess what, I can't stand most human beings to begin with, and I like to do things at my own pace. I don't need to feel pressured to go faster or miss out on loot becasue I had a shitty connection back in the D2 days. I play plenty of social games and do plenty of socialization, usually joking about always being the blue team in HotS, or picking on a Widow not using an aimbot becasue they can't hit me when I'm standing still, and in WoW with my friends when we raid. I get plenty in games I choose to get it. ARPGs have never been a genre I wanted to play with others, no have I ever needed to. D1, was a solo game that allowed MP, just like D2 was, D3 was, and D4 will be. If you want to be social in D4 you will have every opportunity to do so, just like you did in D2.

[Kokolums]

D3 is very social, even has it's own player chat for everyone to see.

Just stop it. D3 is a dead game. As I said, even Blizz admitted its a dead game by cancelling the second xpac. Its annoying that people cannot admit this.

[SirBeef]

Just stop it. D3 is a dead game. As I said, even Blizz admitted its a dead game by cancelling the second xpac. Its annoying that people cannot admit this.

Where did I make that claim that it is alive and thriving like it was back in 2012 or 2014? Jesus you are insufferable. You should go back to civil war preparations. Since you clearly have no clue what you are talking about in regards to D3 becasue your hate boner gets in the way. D3 has a chat system, a grouping system, a random grouping system. It encourages players to group with group play bonuses. It does everything D2 did in that regard. You seem to ignore that becasue it doesn't fit you pathetic narrative.

Look man it's OK to not like D3 or the direction D4 is going. But you cannot ignore that that social features, while in game for D3 as opposed to in app for D2, are still there. Just like you cannot ignore that most Diablo game players splayed solo, and offline if they have the chance. Spare me that all the online players were social crap since that is only the online players which were far less than 50% of all players. Just like with trade, sure the people involved in trade think it was a booming activity, yet Brevik stated that participation was so low he wished he added an AH to make trading easier and happen more between players.

[Kokolums]

Where did I make that claim that it is alive and thriving like it was back in 2012 or 2014? Jesus you are insufferable. You should go back to civil war preparations. Since you clearly have no clue what you are talking about in regards to D3 becasue your hate boner gets in the way. D3 has a chat system, a grouping system, a random grouping system. It encourages players to group with group play bonuses. It does everything D2 did in that regard. You seem to ignore that becasue it doesn't fit you pathetic narrative.

Why don't you ask me what I think instead of telling me what I think? Why don't you read my posts in this thread? A chat system, grouping system, group play bonuses are fine. For the year 2000. Those are bleeding edge. In the year 2000. That separates you from all other ARPGs. If someone wants a social ARPG in the year 2000, they will pick D2 because of such features. (And they went BACKWARDS on a lot of that in D3. Those features are WORSE in D3).

In the year 2020, its not enough to JUST do those things to win over the social players. A lot of games do those things. Again, D4 needs a VALUE ADD. It needs a value add. When people ask "why should ignore all other ARPGs and play D4 instead?"

And my answer (which you are obviously ignoring) was the list of NEW bleeding edge social features I already posted.

1. Picture in Picture / split screen with advanced ability to click on things and inspect things live right in the other player's window and racing timers.
2. Ghost saves that can be raced.
3. A major city hub that connects ALL Blizzard games for cross-pollination between Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft, and overwatch titles.
4. Observer mode with dynamic chat and ability to click on things in the other players window
5. A "helper" tag system that is right in the face of new players where veteran players can make themselves available to assist and help and answer questions from new players.

And I've got several more.

Its like a circular argument with you. You dismiss and ignore all the bleeding edge new social features I offer, then say Diablo is already packed with social features and that I have no clue. I'm fixing ALL the problems with the Diablo franchise.

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

I've been asking for that for 20 years and it never happens. I doubt it'll ever happen. Shocked leaderboards went in.

[mrgreenthump]

MOST IMPORTANT!!!!!!!! DO NOT LET Jay Wilson TOUCH IT!

We give crap to Jay, but he did what was asked. Was it wrong, yeah. But don't put all the blame on him.

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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.

You are still misunderstanding his point. We don't want solo to be as good as multiplayer. We just don't want another D3 where solo is not worth anyones time. I know people play D3 solo, but just knowing you'd be so much better playing with people, is killing the mood. Hell BFA is more solo friendly than D3. That is why we say we want a more solo friendly experience.

[Kumorii]

You are still misunderstanding his point. We don't want solo to be as good as multiplayer. We just don't want another D3 where solo is not worth anyones time. I know people play D3 solo, but just knowing you'd be so much better playing with people, is killing the mood. Hell BFA is more solo friendly than D3. That is why we say we want a more solo friendly experience.

I've only played D3 solo... what is unfriendly about it? Speed?

[Essem]

The brilliance of the PoE gem system is that you can make new skills more easily since every class can potentially use it.

The way D3 and D4 looks to be structured is that skill are locked in to the class. It makes it harder to make new skills to keep the game fresh, because it will be only for a fraction of the classes.

Same with support gems new ways to modify your existing skills which D3 dont have.

[Kokolums]

Why should I play D3 over other ARPGs? There never was an answer to that question.

Why should I play Path of Exile over other ARPGs? Well if you want complex huge skill trees, it might be the game you want. But I think the real answer is they release meaningful game updates on a regular and pretty quick basis. Blizzard was very very slow on updates in comparison. Path of Exile players can always look forward to new stuff to do all the time, which sets them apart.

The last good game Blizzard released was Hearthstone. Why should I play Hearthstone over other card games? Well, Hearthstone was the only one that had full support for both phones and PC. If you wanted that, there was only one place to get it: Blizzard. So it was a pretty big success, especially since it had such a tiny dev team.

You always must have a value add.

[SirBeef]

Why don't you ask me what I think instead of telling me what I think? Why don't you read my posts in this thread? A chat system, grouping system, group play bonuses are fine. For the year 2000. Those are bleeding edge. In the year 2000. That separates you from all other ARPGs. If someone wants a social ARPG in the year 2000, they will pick D2 because of such features. (And they went BACKWARDS on a lot of that in D3. Those features are WORSE in D3).

In the year 2020, its not enough to JUST do those things to win over the social players. A lot of games do those things. Again, D4 needs a VALUE ADD. It needs a value add. When people ask "why should ignore all other ARPGs and play D4 instead?"

And my answer (which you are obviously ignoring) was the list of NEW bleeding edge social features I already posted.

1. Picture in Picture / split screen with advanced ability to click on things and inspect things live right in the other player's window and racing timers.
2. Ghost saves that can be raced.
3. A major city hub that connects ALL Blizzard games for cross-pollination between Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft, and overwatch titles.
4. Observer mode with dynamic chat and ability to click on things in the other players window
5. A "helper" tag system that is right in the face of new players where veteran players can make themselves available to assist and help and answer questions from new players.

And I've got several more.

Its like a circular argument with you. You dismiss and ignore all the bleeding edge new social features I offer, then say Diablo is already packed with social features and that I have no clue. I'm fixing ALL the problems with the Diablo franchise.

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I've been asking for that for 20 years and it never happens. I doubt it'll ever happen. Shocked leaderboards went in.

All you are doing is asking for shit you want to see not fixing anything. Diablo is a SP game that offers MP. The vast majority play solo and don't want to socialize.

1) PiP is unnecessary and seems like too much of an investment for a feature that will hardly get used.
2) Ghost save exist in the form of challenge rifts. Neat, don't see how it encourages social activity since solo players can enjoy them just fine.
3) 0 need for this when we have Battle.net, Discord, and Twitch.
4) Twitch.
5) Who's going to man the bat phone? Sorry but as much as I like to help people in game when I see a question I know the answer to, I'm not going to be at the beck and call of new players. I'd rather play the game than be the Diablo tip line.

So how is this fixing anything? It's almost conservative thinking of create a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. This is just a laundry list of things you want, on a forum rarely, if at all visited by Diablo Devs/CMs. I'd say come to the official forums and post this but it wouldn't fly very far. But for shits and giggles, the perceived issues with D4 are itemization, skill trees(twigs as some are calling them), the ability through time, to max out all active abilities, weapons not really being different in terms of range/speed, a hard level cap tied to endgame, endgame being the samey(running the same stuff over and over, and the big one, the shared world and forced MP in regards to seeing and having other players show up in people's games.

That last on in particular, is one of the biggest issues people have with the game and flies contrary to your self appointed position of fixer-in-chief by making the game more social. Most people don't want that in their Diablo.

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We give crap to Jay, but he did what was asked. Was it wrong, yeah. But don't put all the blame on him.

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You are still misunderstanding his point. We don't want solo to be as good as multiplayer. We just don't want another D3 where solo is not worth anyones time. I know people play D3 solo, but just knowing you'd be so much better playing with people, is killing the mood. Hell BFA is more solo friendly than D3. That is why we say we want a more solo friendly experience.

How would I be so much better playing with others besides speed of things? I can't stand playing ARPGs with others and I don't care about leader boards. So while I could progress faster, something I don't really care about either, I Don't really see a benefit that offsets the negative of grouping with others.

[Kokolums]

That last on in particular, is one of the biggest issues people have with the game and flies contrary to your self appointed position of fixer-in-chief by making the game more social. Most people don't want that in their Diablo.

I think its incredibly obvious people want social in their Diablo (and video games in general). As I said, Blizzard went out of their way to destroy social in all their titles. Did the players cheer this decision? No, back in the day, there were multiple 25 page threads on the official forums begging for social. Threads locked at page 25, so they just kept opening new ones. There was an outcry for social. Blizzard refused. Eventually, the players flocked to twitch and discord. And from there, they started noticing other non-Blizzard games and left Blizzard behind entirely.

What you want in 2020 is PiP / split screen and all of those features housed within Blizzard's ecosystem so that players notice other Blizzard games and you cross-pollinate between Diablo / Starcraft / Warcraft and Overwatch.

Twitch and discord are HUGE enemies of Blizzard.

[Zigrifid]

I only hope they keep Rifts and GRs and the drops are based on our class like it is now and not in D3 vanila,thats all i want from D4

[SirBeef]

I think its incredibly obvious people want social in their Diablo (and video games in general). As I said, Blizzard went out of their way to destroy social in all their titles. Did the players cheer this decision? No, back in the day, there were multiple 25 page threads on the official forums begging for social. Threads locked at page 25, so they just kept opening new ones. There was an outcry for social. Blizzard refused. Eventually, the players flocked to twitch and discord. And from there, they started noticing other non-Blizzard games and left Blizzard behind entirely.

What you want in 2020 is PiP / split screen and all of those features housed within Blizzard's ecosystem so that players notice other Blizzard games and you cross-pollinate between Diablo / Starcraft / Warcraft and Overwatch.

Twitch and discord are HUGE enemies of Blizzard.

No I'm good. I don't need nor want that shit.

[Coldkil]

I only hope they keep Rifts and GRs and the drops are based on our class like it is now and not in D3 vanila,thats all i want from D4

They already said it's not going to be like this. Endgame is around dungeons scaling more or less like M+ in WoW (which in turn is grabbed by D3 GRs, whne most of the D3 team moved into WoW for the Legion release. This the reason why we got M+ and World Quests).

They'll have modifiers depending on the level, won't have a timer (WOHOOO) and will be capped at a certain threshold. I'm sure people will make leaderboards or even Blizzard themselves will support it, cause there's nothing wrong with that, but speedrunning/meta won't be a crucial part of the game.

[SirBeef]

They already said it's not going to be like this. Endgame is around dungeons scaling more or less like M+ in WoW (which in turn is grabbed by D3 GRs, whne most of the D3 team moved into WoW for the Legion release. This the reason why we got M+ and World Quests).

They'll have modifiers depending on the level, won't have a timer (WOHOOO) and will be capped at a certain threshold. I'm sure people will make leaderboards or even Blizzard themselves will support it, cause there's nothing wrong with that, but speedrunning/meta won't be a crucial part of the game.

They haven't denied that GRs wont return. They are looking into all options for endgame activities. Currently they just have the keyed dungeons. I expect a speed running activity seperat from keyed dungeons. Which may be a rift like system.

[Coldkil]

They haven't denied that GRs wont return. They are looking into all options for endgame activities. Currently they just have the keyed dungeons. I expect a speed running activity seperat from keyed dungeons. Which may be a rift like system.

Don't think so. I mean, speedruns are likely to return, even in an unofficial way. But they stated they have seen the shortcomings of an infinitely scaling dungeon so the game will have a "difficulty cap". They can increase the dungeon key max lvl if needed.

I can see also the infinite dungeon becoming an optional activity, but i don't believe they're gonna make everything GR-like

[SirBeef]

Don't think so. I mean, speedruns are likely to return, even in an unofficial way. But they stated they have seen the shortcomings of an infinitely scaling dungeon so the game will have a "difficulty cap". They can increase the dungeon key max lvl if needed.

I can see also the infinite dungeon becoming an optional activity, but i don't believe they're gonna make everything GR-like

No one said they would be infinitely scaling. I just said they have not ruled them out. Normal and keyed dungeons are not timed. They understand the desire for speed runs. Timed dungeon feature like GRs could be a possibility. I wouldn't have an issue as there would be plenty other options. Currently it's the only option.

I would love as opposed to a timed speed run activity an endless dungeon feature. Where you run through one existing dungeon after another. You can end your run after completing or continue moving forward. Only caveat is you are not allowed to port out. You go I with what you have, if you run out of potions, better hope for some to drop.