Hi all! I have read a lot of good opinions on this matter, just highlighting the one that I think of as a fine example of analysis:
Bisso's full post with picture samples.
Also the OP is explaining these things pretty good aswell.
I work as a photographer so i know a thing or two about lighting, color tones and contrast...and i have to tell you, you guys are perfectly right about the matter at hand!!
These things just wont change, it's a given fact how 99% of the people see a picture, how they focus on a given composition, like when the frame of the picture is dark and something's happening in the middle that is lighter...like in Diablo general. Ofc it's darker if its more contrasty and less glowy-unicorny. Ofc most of the horror elements can come from someone's nostalgia, let's not talk about that.
BUT....BUTTTT...the problem roots elsewhere I think.
You almost all concerned about visuals, and forget about the fact that developers are playing and studying other games aswell. They even said it in Blizzcon and some summaries also include a point saying this. Meaning: they have to live up -to some degree- to other games.
There are monsters that need to be hit, even targeted sometimes, loot that needs to be picked up. As a QoL change, in many games they highlighted key elements to be more easy to process for your eyes.
THIS is what's happening that's all. The devs just tuning the game for an average player, and they go straight against the face of what they wanted to do. Horror = contrast. it doesnt matter if it's TOO MUCH LIGHT or TOO DARK, what's important is the ratio. Easy game, no crying children = highlight everything, make it rewarding, progression in an instant.
They have to decide if they want to make a Dark Souls game or Sims 2 withe weapons and demons.
Horror can come from the feeling of desperation aswell. If you don't see what need to be hit in the first 1 second for example.
Imagine if in Alien movie, you could see the monster in 1 second.... peace.
I am totally for the darkness in storytelling, voice acting, music, graphics and the world. However what some people are longing for is the more hardcore feel of the old Diablo games, basically the feeling of being less powerful, compared to the things around you. For many people, myself include, this would be a negative thing. The aspect that makes Diablo III combat so satisfying in some cases (Uliana's set is a great example) is that you are that incredibly powerful being. This doesn't mean, that the game should be super easy, that there should be no challenge. But if we make the game so difficult, that you feel genuinely threatened by monsters, would create a great atmosphere, but as an ARPG it would not be satisfying to play.
BUT what I would LOVE, is a "true hardcore" mode where, should you choose it, the game becomes more challenging and the atmosphere more hostile. Maybe the area that your character lights up could be smaller, monsters not flash when hit, and maybe it could be it bit more zoomed in. Everything you need to make it more immersive. As an optional experience I feel this would be great.
Something similar to the modes in some horror games, where key objects don't get highlighted, hints and tutorials, maybe some helpful HUD elements are disabled.
To me the diablo 3 gameplay and the feels of the atmpshere kills me. im not even exited to diablo 4 until they fix their engine for a proper dark diablo game. they need to reset their game visual wise and ingame depht as well the demo lacked complicated runewords ( Not that complicated but actually just that u can missplay and fuck up ur item if u dont place them correctly) Basically i just want a real sucessor of diablo 2 not another D3 with darker graphics that its not even scary still. or hard to play. diablo was never an easy game before diablo 3 came out and ruined everything blizzard needs to stay to the roots of the base of the foundation of the game u can't just make the game super easy mode out of nowhere when the game has always been Normal - Difficult with time the game gets harder and harder but with d3 u just feel unstoppable during ur entire playthrought and its really not fun to play
To me the diablo 3 gameplay and the feels of the atmpshere kills me. im not even exited to diablo 4 until they fix their engine for a proper dark diablo game. they need to reset their game visual wise and ingame depht as well the demo lacked complicated runewords ( Not that complicated but actually just that u can missplay and fuck up ur item if u dont place them correctly) Basically i just want a real sucessor of diablo 2 not another D3 with darker graphics that its not even scary still. or hard to play. diablo was never an easy game before diablo 3 came out and ruined everything blizzard needs to stay to the roots of the base of the foundation of the game u can't just make the game super easy mode out of nowhere when the game has always been Normal - Difficult with time the game gets harder and harder but with d3 u just feel unstoppable during ur entire playthrought and its really not fun to play
Not sure why people keep saying this about D3. D3 was only “easy mode” if you purposefully made it easy. They allowed you to adjust the difficulty to whatever you wanted from the start. If it felt too easy? Immediately switch to Hell difficulty or higher to make it more challenging. Except this isn’t what most people did. Most people kept it easy or just barley hard enough to find good gear and then slowly ramped up difficulty so it never felt “hard”. But that was their choice.
You’re talking about the game forcing you into it being challenging from the beginning, without choice. Like D2 did. The Problem is Blizzard wants to cater to a larger audience, so they have to make at least an optional “easy mode” for that crowd from the start. If you like the game to be harder, just ramp up the difficulty in settings. *thumbs up*
To me the diablo 3 gameplay and the feels of the atmpshere kills me. im not even exited to diablo 4 until they fix their engine for a proper dark diablo game. they need to reset their game visual wise and ingame depht as well the demo lacked complicated runewords ( Not that complicated but actually just that u can missplay and fuck up ur item if u dont place them correctly) Basically i just want a real sucessor of diablo 2 not another D3 with darker graphics that its not even scary still. or hard to play. diablo was never an easy game before diablo 3 came out and ruined everything blizzard needs to stay to the roots of the base of the foundation of the game u can't just make the game super easy mode out of nowhere when the game has always been Normal - Difficult with time the game gets harder and harder but with d3 u just feel unstoppable during ur entire playthrought and its really not fun to play
Not sure why people keep saying this about D3. D3 was only “easy mode” if you purposefully made it easy. They allowed you to adjust the difficulty to whatever you wanted from the start. If it felt too easy? Immediately switch to Hell difficulty or higher to make it more challenging. Except this isn’t what most people did. Most people kept it easy or just barley hard enough to find good gear and then slowly ramped up difficulty so it never felt “hard”. But that was their choice.
You’re talking about the game forcing you into it being challenging from the beginning, without choice. Like D2 did. The Problem is Blizzard wants to cater to a larger audience, so they have to make at least an optional “easy mode” for that crowd from the start. If you like the game to be harder, just ramp up the difficulty in settings. *thumbs up*
While i do agree with what you say about the difficulty, Diablo 3 (and the whole series really) does not scales difficulty in a good way for my taste.
Why do i say this? well, the whole series as far as i remember (been a long while since i played D1 and D2 though), scales mostly along the lines of %, like, OK so on this difficulty you have X% less resistance than before, X% less dodge, receive X% more damage, etc... For me, as much as i love all the Diablos, it's a bad way to do it, as far as the system for not getting hit, has never really been skill based, you have dodge and blocks %, but a lot of the time, there is no skill to not receiving damage. So, i don't really like the mix of getting one shoted and dif goes up, while not being able to evade that damage... I'm not a particularly good player, neither a fan of the souls game, but i would love to se a Diablo game that approaches combat in a more tactical way, something closer but not exactly like god of war maybe, as it is moire tactical (PS4 God of War BTW) but still no too dark souls like.
Do you think that "dark" only needs to darken the game screen? It's very simple, just change the game screen to black. Is there something darker than black? I think the real dark style should be experienced mainly in the plot. For example, in D2, there is a plot where NPCs in the entire village are slaughtered .The plot here makes people feel uneasy and can drive people’s emotions. Of course, the game The style of the picture is also important, but you can't just pursue the darkness in the picture. The plot part is also very important. However, if the game screen is too dark, it is not necessarily a good thing. I think the current style is pretty good
I am totally agree with Derplol; Blizzard, please stop making the monsters glow when you hit them!
What made Diablo 3 feel less dark than its predecessors is coming back in Diablo 4.
You can turn that off changing some browser settings, at least in D3, dunno why it works but it does.
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Those Who Do Not Know True Pain Cannot Possibly Understand True Peace...
What I don't get with this stuff is, why not just add a toggle? Like I've never understood why more games don't just have an "advanced UI" option. Have these things on my default but then the gamers who are like "I dislike this" just let them go into options and turn it off? It would take next to no work to create and I see pretty much zero downside as this benefits those who doesn't like such things while having 0 effect on those that do.
I think that the music, color/light tones, and art of Diablo 4 are getting the darker feel, but when the monsters illuminate when you hit them or highlight when you target them, it kills the mood. If they removed the glow and replaced it with more subtle gore/blood effects, it would make the game feel more immersive. I don’t need the monster to turn white to know I hit it.
For some reason, I feel like this was talked about at some point during blizzcon and I feel like they said there's toggles or something. The overall tone is an improvement imo from the last one, but I agree that this looks excessive.
It's probably a tricky balance, too. They could do nothing but rely on gore and that would not read well in a lot of environments (anything dark, or with warm colors). In D2 monsters turned blue, green, red, etc., based on status defects and subtly turned white when you moused over them. Just toning it down in general would probably be the best bet.
Agreed. And while on the subject, I also deter outlining with a colored line, like say there's a thin red line around the silouette of the mob you are mousing over. They are great QoL features for many games I'm sure, but they are also totally immersion breaking. Generally, I would love for Blizzard to just take a chance on it and just not have any such features at all, or to let the user disable them in an "Accessability" menu or something. Let me be confused about what exact mob I am attacking. Let me have monotone please. Not everything needs to sparkle.
Furthermore, stop the homogenization. Stop implementing every market trend into the product. Dare to be one of a kind and not apply the "formula" each time. It's like with movies that now just swap out directors/producers/writers from one project to the next, even within the same franchise. Nothing hardly ever feels like its own, anymore. Nothing feels like LotR, or the original Star Wars movies. Cause those were created in large part by one person with one vision, not just the sum of the overlap of 50 people's visions.
Furthermore, stop the homogenization. Stop implementing every market trend into the product. Dare to be one of a kind and not apply the "formula" each time. It's like with movies that now just swap out directors/producers/writers from one project to the next, even within the same franchise. Nothing hardly ever feels like its own, anymore.
The funny thing is that part of the franchise's original appeal was the cult appeal of being nonstandard--so much so that it created its own standard, aesthetically and gameplay-wise. If any non-indie company had an IP they wanted to do things like this in, Diablo would be it.
But yes, I really agree that the option for this kind of readability is needed in the game for accessibility, which is very important, but that a toggle seems a very quick/easy thing to add that would probably make everyone happy.
I think the idea of trying to imitate another game's aesthetic gets away from the core problem, which is that Diablo 3 got away from the identity of the franchise by a wide margin.* It doesn't need to imitate something else, it needs to be itself. Many of these games people cite were, themselves, largely derived from the original Diablo.
*Still v fun game, not saying it's poorly designed or even that it's visually bad, just not Diablo imo. The xpac definitely returned to some idea of it and I applaud the passion of the whole team that put everything they had into it. Wyatt Cheng I think feels like he (along with many others) really steered it back after launch, but Jay Wilson was not a good choice for 1.0.
The diablo franchise as a whole revolved around the idea of manipulation, the prime evils were never seemed like they were after power, but rather just doing evil things in order to spread hell through out sanctuary, which is why they were always so hard to find, an actually perfect example of this was Belial of all demons, he hid in the shadows and corrupted from within turning the citizens on each other, he used his position to completely control the country while looking innocent and helpful.
It is what Diablo did with King Leoric and what Mephesto did with the Zakarum priests.
Ba'al manipulated Darius into believing what Tyrael did was wrong and to free him, and then later impersonating Tyrael and manipulating Darius into telling him about the world stone.
They all spread their influence, their battle was not with Heaven or the angels, their battle was with all of Sanctuary, the Angels on the other hand, there battle was to stop the demons at all cost, which is why they intervene.
I feel like the Diablo franchise really needs to get back to this premise, no more flashy villains who act like bosses, I wanna open a door and hear FRESH MEAT, and say "Oh f*ck!"
Yes, that was one of my gripes with 3--the first two (esp 1) were structured such that humans (and the player) are sort of swept up in a small part of a cosmic drama that begin long before them and will likely continue long after them. This sense of mortality, isolation, unknowability, and a sort of helplessness all hit on what it means to have Gothic storytelling.
Much of the greater story for the first games couldn't be known or understood until the final acts, and much of the (very good) lore could not be understood unless you analyzed NPC dialogue, in-game art in various locations, out of game books, bits from other sources outside the game, etc. In most games I would say this is a problem, but Diablo was sort of a fringe experience where the gameplay was good but if you were really into it, you had to dig--which would lead to communities like this one and many others.
It also extends to the magical arts and the cosmic forces. The idea of a character like Deckard Cain--a highly knowledgeable guide, sage, teacher--was inherently valuable not because we thought he was funny or quirky as a character, but because his role was intrinsic as gatekeeper to cosmic and magical knowledge that he didn't necessarily practice but devoted his life to understanding.
Diablo 3 (again a good game in many ways) went the direction of just overtly telling you you're the chosen one, you're a super hero--the whole time you know about nephalem, you know about angels and demons, you know about these great mysteries that honestly should not be common knowledge, and it seems like every villager does, too. You're already a supercharged Mary Sue. The Gothic dialogue about mortality, about isolation in a vast and unknowable and uncontrollable universe, about limited understanding of the great mysteries and cosmic powers, does not apply to you, the player, and very loosely applies to the NPCs.
Hi all! I have read a lot of good opinions on this matter, just highlighting the one that I think of as a fine example of analysis:
The devs just tuning the game for an average player, and they go straight against the face of what they wanted to do.
Bisso's full post with picture samples.
Also the OP is explaining these things pretty good aswell.
I work as a photographer so i know a thing or two about lighting, color tones and contrast...and i have to tell you, you guys are perfectly right about the matter at hand!!
These things just wont change, it's a given fact how 99% of the people see a picture, how they focus on a given composition, like when the frame of the picture is dark and something's happening in the middle that is lighter...like in Diablo general. Ofc it's darker if its more contrasty and less glowy-unicorny. Ofc most of the horror elements can come from someone's nostalgia, let's not talk about that.
BUT....BUTTTT...the problem roots elsewhere I think.
You almost all concerned about visuals, and forget about the fact that developers are playing and studying other games aswell. They even said it in Blizzcon and some summaries also include a point saying this. Meaning: they have to live up -to some degree- to other games.
There are monsters that need to be hit, even targeted sometimes, loot that needs to be picked up. As a QoL change, in many games they highlighted key elements to be more easy to process for your eyes.
THIS is what's happening that's all.
Horror = contrast. it doesnt matter if it's TOO MUCH LIGHT or TOO DARK, what's important is the ratio.
Easy game, no crying children = highlight everything, make it rewarding, progression in an instant.
They have to decide if they want to make a Dark Souls game or Sims 2 withe weapons and demons.
Horror can come from the feeling of desperation aswell. If you don't see what need to be hit in the first 1 second for example.
Imagine if in Alien movie, you could see the monster in 1 second.... peace.
Art director Diablo 4 is the same Diablo 3 John mueller https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/John_Mueller. i think "badass mechanics "Bringing marvel cinematic Universe in D4.
Agreed
To me the diablo 3 gameplay and the feels of the atmpshere kills me. im not even exited to diablo 4 until they fix their engine for a proper dark diablo game. they need to reset their game visual wise and ingame depht as well the demo lacked complicated runewords ( Not that complicated but actually just that u can missplay and fuck up ur item if u dont place them correctly) Basically i just want a real sucessor of diablo 2 not another D3 with darker graphics that its not even scary still. or hard to play. diablo was never an easy game before diablo 3 came out and ruined everything blizzard needs to stay to the roots of the base of the foundation of the game u can't just make the game super easy mode out of nowhere when the game has always been Normal - Difficult with time the game gets harder and harder but with d3 u just feel unstoppable during ur entire playthrought and its really not fun to play
Not sure why people keep saying this about D3. D3 was only “easy mode” if you purposefully made it easy. They allowed you to adjust the difficulty to whatever you wanted from the start. If it felt too easy? Immediately switch to Hell difficulty or higher to make it more challenging. Except this isn’t what most people did. Most people kept it easy or just barley hard enough to find good gear and then slowly ramped up difficulty so it never felt “hard”. But that was their choice.
You’re talking about the game forcing you into it being challenging from the beginning, without choice. Like D2 did. The Problem is Blizzard wants to cater to a larger audience, so they have to make at least an optional “easy mode” for that crowd from the start. If you like the game to be harder, just ramp up the difficulty in settings. *thumbs up*
While i do agree with what you say about the difficulty, Diablo 3 (and the whole series really) does not scales difficulty in a good way for my taste.
Why do i say this? well, the whole series as far as i remember (been a long while since i played D1 and D2 though), scales mostly along the lines of %, like, OK so on this difficulty you have X% less resistance than before, X% less dodge, receive X% more damage, etc... For me, as much as i love all the Diablos, it's a bad way to do it, as far as the system for not getting hit, has never really been skill based, you have dodge and blocks %, but a lot of the time, there is no skill to not receiving damage. So, i don't really like the mix of getting one shoted and dif goes up, while not being able to evade that damage... I'm not a particularly good player, neither a fan of the souls game, but i would love to se a Diablo game that approaches combat in a more tactical way, something closer but not exactly like god of war maybe, as it is moire tactical (PS4 God of War BTW) but still no too dark souls like.
Do you think that "dark" only needs to darken the game screen? It's very simple, just change the game screen to black. Is there something darker than black? I think the real dark style should be experienced mainly in the plot. For example, in D2, there is a plot where NPCs in the entire village are slaughtered .The plot here makes people feel uneasy and can drive people’s emotions. Of course, the game The style of the picture is also important, but you can't just pursue the darkness in the picture. The plot part is also very important. However, if the game screen is too dark, it is not necessarily a good thing. I think the current style is pretty good
You can turn that off changing some browser settings, at least in D3, dunno why it works but it does.
Those Who Do Not Know True Pain Cannot Possibly Understand True Peace...
What I don't get with this stuff is, why not just add a toggle? Like I've never understood why more games don't just have an "advanced UI" option. Have these things on my default but then the gamers who are like "I dislike this" just let them go into options and turn it off? It would take next to no work to create and I see pretty much zero downside as this benefits those who doesn't like such things while having 0 effect on those that do.
For some reason, I feel like this was talked about at some point during blizzcon and I feel like they said there's toggles or something. The overall tone is an improvement imo from the last one, but I agree that this looks excessive.
It's probably a tricky balance, too. They could do nothing but rely on gore and that would not read well in a lot of environments (anything dark, or with warm colors). In D2 monsters turned blue, green, red, etc., based on status defects and subtly turned white when you moused over them. Just toning it down in general would probably be the best bet.
Agreed. And while on the subject, I also deter outlining with a colored line, like say there's a thin red line around the silouette of the mob you are mousing over. They are great QoL features for many games I'm sure, but they are also totally immersion breaking. Generally, I would love for Blizzard to just take a chance on it and just not have any such features at all, or to let the user disable them in an "Accessability" menu or something. Let me be confused about what exact mob I am attacking. Let me have monotone please. Not everything needs to sparkle.
Furthermore, stop the homogenization. Stop implementing every market trend into the product. Dare to be one of a kind and not apply the "formula" each time. It's like with movies that now just swap out directors/producers/writers from one project to the next, even within the same franchise. Nothing hardly ever feels like its own, anymore. Nothing feels like LotR, or the original Star Wars movies. Cause those were created in large part by one person with one vision, not just the sum of the overlap of 50 people's visions.
The funny thing is that part of the franchise's original appeal was the cult appeal of being nonstandard--so much so that it created its own standard, aesthetically and gameplay-wise. If any non-indie company had an IP they wanted to do things like this in, Diablo would be it.
But yes, I really agree that the option for this kind of readability is needed in the game for accessibility, which is very important, but that a toggle seems a very quick/easy thing to add that would probably make everyone happy.
I wish D4 would look a bit like path of exile.. it looks a bit more dark and scary
"Do you guys not have phones?"
Look like PoE ?
I think the idea of trying to imitate another game's aesthetic gets away from the core problem, which is that Diablo 3 got away from the identity of the franchise by a wide margin.* It doesn't need to imitate something else, it needs to be itself. Many of these games people cite were, themselves, largely derived from the original Diablo.
*Still v fun game, not saying it's poorly designed or even that it's visually bad, just not Diablo imo. The xpac definitely returned to some idea of it and I applaud the passion of the whole team that put everything they had into it. Wyatt Cheng I think feels like he (along with many others) really steered it back after launch, but Jay Wilson was not a good choice for 1.0.
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ModeratorThe diablo franchise as a whole revolved around the idea of manipulation, the prime evils were never seemed like they were after power, but rather just doing evil things in order to spread hell through out sanctuary, which is why they were always so hard to find, an actually perfect example of this was Belial of all demons, he hid in the shadows and corrupted from within turning the citizens on each other, he used his position to completely control the country while looking innocent and helpful.
It is what Diablo did with King Leoric and what Mephesto did with the Zakarum priests.
Ba'al manipulated Darius into believing what Tyrael did was wrong and to free him, and then later impersonating Tyrael and manipulating Darius into telling him about the world stone.
They all spread their influence, their battle was not with Heaven or the angels, their battle was with all of Sanctuary, the Angels on the other hand, there battle was to stop the demons at all cost, which is why they intervene.
I feel like the Diablo franchise really needs to get back to this premise, no more flashy villains who act like bosses, I wanna open a door and hear FRESH MEAT, and say "Oh f*ck!"
https://www.deviantart.com/aerisot
Yes, that was one of my gripes with 3--the first two (esp 1) were structured such that humans (and the player) are sort of swept up in a small part of a cosmic drama that begin long before them and will likely continue long after them. This sense of mortality, isolation, unknowability, and a sort of helplessness all hit on what it means to have Gothic storytelling.
Much of the greater story for the first games couldn't be known or understood until the final acts, and much of the (very good) lore could not be understood unless you analyzed NPC dialogue, in-game art in various locations, out of game books, bits from other sources outside the game, etc. In most games I would say this is a problem, but Diablo was sort of a fringe experience where the gameplay was good but if you were really into it, you had to dig--which would lead to communities like this one and many others.
It also extends to the magical arts and the cosmic forces. The idea of a character like Deckard Cain--a highly knowledgeable guide, sage, teacher--was inherently valuable not because we thought he was funny or quirky as a character, but because his role was intrinsic as gatekeeper to cosmic and magical knowledge that he didn't necessarily practice but devoted his life to understanding.
Diablo 3 (again a good game in many ways) went the direction of just overtly telling you you're the chosen one, you're a super hero--the whole time you know about nephalem, you know about angels and demons, you know about these great mysteries that honestly should not be common knowledge, and it seems like every villager does, too. You're already a supercharged Mary Sue. The Gothic dialogue about mortality, about isolation in a vast and unknowable and uncontrollable universe, about limited understanding of the great mysteries and cosmic powers, does not apply to you, the player, and very loosely applies to the NPCs.