DiabloFans

Quote from Fresiki»

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.

Quote from Derplol»

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.

See screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/vMwz2BV.jpg

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.

Idk my random thoughts:

1. Could either bee a hood or a sort of templar knight helmet (see these).

2. I could see these being a shaw or that extra bit you see on monastic cloaks overhanging the shoulders (see these shaws/monastic cloak).

3. These could either be the ends of robe sleeves--fantasy games often stylize them overhanging hands a little bit--or gauntlets.

My first guess is that since we already have 3 melee or melee-adjacent classes, that this would be some additional ranged magic class. Maybe like a Vizjerei mage specializing in demon summons and enhancements, or something more generic.

My second guess is that since they go pretty hard on the paladin (or paladin-adjacent) melee/holy magic class every game and in most of the books, it's just going to be that.

I guess that's two obvious answers but meh.

Regarding your courier system idea:

1. There's definitely big value in adding diverse activities, but I think devs have to be careful that the activities are actually replayable without feeling "oh it's this minigame again."

In WoW, they add a lot of minigame type world quests (they're objectives that spawn across the expansion's entire open world and have 24 hr respawn cycles or smaller, some 2 or 3 hrs). These include puzzles, timed activities, kill x y amount of times, fetch quests, kill rare spawns, etc.

Although I think most people enjoy the varied, new content like puzzles and timed activities at first, they generally avoid them within a couple weeks of a new expansion or patch introducing it, and general chat turns into "ugh this thing again."

Longterm, players always end up maximizing whatever is the quickest and simplest end to efficiently get whatever valuable thing is rewarded. In WoW's case, people basically just do the quick and easy rare spawn kills, then the kill x of y monster quests, then the fetch quests or puzzles, depending on which is quicker.

2. The rewards have to be able to justify the time/effort investment without the content feeling mandatory because the rewards are too good. I'm not informed enough on D4's character progression to make any points here, but I think it's important to think about.

3. You make a good point here, and I think this is worth discussing:

(after blizzconline 2021 update) - i felt this idea would make even more sense after the information displayed in this blizzcon, since this encampments will be improvable, you could make them improve faster with and this way opening new townportals or crafting recipes. one think thought, these encamptments should not be permanent, haveing somekin of event that can and will probably destroy them or at least weaken them (a demon or heaven invasion, so they will never stay the same adding even more randomness in the game. This ideai i think is the better of the 2 because it makes so much sense and the part of mount equipment and dismounting on attacks is already on their plans.

Any world upgrade rewards (like camps that you mention) add the appeal of immersion and visual progression. One of my criticisms of D3's endgame systems is that most of them you just jump in a portal into some random realm and do a thing. It made the game (to me) feel less grounded, more fantastic, and not as rooted as the first two.

I like this idea you bring up of camps being able to degrade, but the camps would have to have a function or value in terms of character progression to make them worth sustaining in an area. Like, when they're maintained, a passive buff to drops in the surrounding overworld area and dungeons, or a buff to xp (ONLY if they're doing something like paragon leveling again--otherwise XP buffs would be useless for endgame), or a passive reduction in certain crafting types while at the camp. (I'll admit here I haven't really kept up with news so this might already be a thing.)

The lack of permanence is also critical like you point out--if you can just upgrade them all the way and they never degrade, it sort of just becomes an assumed endgame system. Like upgrading vendors in D3--once you do it all on your main (and it doesn't take long) you just never think about it again and most of the vendors don't really have much additional depth beyond itemization quirks.

I don't really know anything about the ancestral system, so I can't comment there.

Quote from VegasRage2»

Hello again to all in this fine year of 2021.

D2 Resurrected, D4, no one here, what in the burning hells?!

Well, here is a moment of zen for any who happens upon it.

Neither games are really accessible to consumers yet, so there's that. But yeah, this site subsisted for years with no news or new game before D3 and had daily new posts and threads, so I see no reason for that to be the sole limiting factor here. Tbh it's probably because social media is more visible and accessible to people.

Imo fansites separated from RL identities and greater socially connected accounts and contexts were an amazing and freeing thing for many, and I think they were good mixing areas for people who would never normally talk to be excited about something. Social media brings in the context of your RL friends, families, and other connections in a way that prevents you from reinventing yourself, or fosters connections that prevent people from really getting to know good intention strangers.

Oh well.

Quote from Demolition 13»

Why would anyone at Blizzard think it was a good idea to do anything with D2 while they have D4 underway? Even if it was possible? (It's not).'Hey, I know we're spending a lot of time and money on making the best D4 we can, but let's simultaneously distract ourselves and the fans from that work and siphon away some of our customer base for D4 by releasing a remastered D2!" "Genius! Here's a huge bonus for you!" Come on, it's like Apple working on the Iphone 12, but there's a hardcore group who just loved and old phone made by another manufacturer, so they're going to rehash a version of it just for them. Not gonna happen.

It could be argued that it's important to look at their products in terms of IPs and not individual installations. For instance, the Warcraft IP making money off a WoW expansion, WC3R (lol), a movie, microtransactions, swag/toys, etc., is all a win. All of it represents either an increase or a continuation of maintaining capital for them as a company.

Investors may or may not see it that way. They might want an individual thing to excel as well as it possibly can. But in the long term, I think this is also something that is considered at quarterly calls because it's more indicative of longterm success. Box sales are just a blip on the radar--if you base all your success on them, you'll just be chasing temporary highs.

This is why I argue BlizzCon and maintaining Blizzard IPs as a lifetime fan/family identity is more important than just selling the next big thing.

Another thing could be argued--I don't think a D2 remaster would ever have the staying power to upset the multi-million dollar box sales of a major new installment. If Blizzard did it, much like the SC remaster, it would probably be either a labor of love or just for existing fans. I don't think any of their remasters have turned huge quarterly profits on the scale of a major release.

It's a big name game that carries with it multiple generations of gamers. The outlets will all post the press kit assets. That's pretty much how it's always been.

When I want to see more than the same confirmed facts, I usually go to a fansite or reddit. That usually solves it for me since communities around a single topic usually filter this down to unique information/takes or topical reading.

But by all means go for it!

Quote from Jetrall»

Rebjorn - I think that's a fantastic idea and one that would truly benefit the community and the players. Thinking about this makes me wonder why Blizzard hasn't done something along these lines (though, I suppose I wouldn't consider them particularly supportive to mods, unlike other developers like Bethesda). If Blizzard is truly as profit-driven as it seems to us, that leads to the question: if there were a profitable way to do this, why haven't they done it?

Certainly, there is a degree of risk involved in greater support for modding / releasing source code, but I imagine the potential for profit could easily outweigh these risks, especially considering D2 is an older property. Perhaps, then, the potential for profit isn't as significant as we believe. I find it doubtful they haven't at least considered possibilities like this - so perhaps they have done analysis and found that the profits just aren't there for some reason (or the risks are larger than we have considered).

Maybe, for example, they are concerned about drawing attention away from their newer properties (i.e. D3, D4, Diablo Immortal, etc) by shifting player focus back onto D2 - cannibalizing some of their own audience. This could make sense, considering they are surely aware of the legacy of D2 compared to the somewhat lukewarm perception of D3, D4, and Immortal.

They also may simply prefer to maintain greater control over their properties - something which supporting modding on an older title might undermine. It's harder to justify DRM, paid DLC's, and micro transactions on a new title if you're actively supporting modding on an older (arguably, more popular) title. This higher level of control and propriety over games is, unfortunately, gaining in popularity. It may be less beneficial for players, but it is a safer bet for the developer and shareholders.

Ultimately, I think that your idea is great - arguably, better than Blizzard attempting a remaster / remake (as I agree that the fanbase and modders are more likely to put in the effort to crafting a more soulful and honest experience) - but it would likely require a major shift in Blizzard's direction... something which isn't likely to happen if they're content and profiting off of their current model.

In short, this is a great idea but, if Blizzard is as greedy as it seems, I doubt it will happen (sadly). Not enough control over the product, maybe too much doubt about losing audience from their newer games.

Quote from Jetrall»

EDIT: For what it's worth - I was able to 'resurrect' my account by sending a message to the forum's support email (support@diablofans.com) and asking for it to be connected to my Twitch account. It took a few weeks, but it allowed me to re-accedd my old account, even though I had never 'consented' to the account being carried over... I wonder if this is true for other old members as well?

Yeah, I had to do something similar to this to get my old account connected to Twitch.

Diablo3.com actually existed as a blog for a bit before it got the vbulletin treatment. I think mockery said that once. There was an odd subtle tension between mockery's site and... god, I forget that other one. It wasn't medievaldragon's, it was that older one. I think it was founded in 2001. It's still around and dated as hell, lol.

Welcome back Jetrall! Miss those days!

Quote from spoofdaboss»

If i use the staff to open the chamber..

but can't kill duriel

save and exit...

switch to nightmare mode.. maps reset...

go back to hell mode..

will i have lost the staff and duriels chamber will be closed? then will i have to find all the pieces again?

You don't need to change difficulties to reset the map. You just need to make a new game. Changing the difficulty doesn't affect your quest progress in any other difficulty--it's all tracked separately.

I'm pretty sure once you use it to open the chamber on any difficulty, it remains open regardless of if you've beaten Duriel. But it's been a while.

Quote from Bleu42»

D4 is quite literally years away. At least three is my guess, closer to 4 most likely. What we saw is pre alpha. 2020's blizzcon most likely will show us at least 1 of the remaining classes to be announced, probably both. 2021 Blizzcon will either show the 2nd, or just the rest of the systems they decided on. Might get some beta news after, and if we're lucky a launch sometime late in 2022. 4

Yeah I would bet money on both classes being playable next year at the con. I can't imagine them not having a playable class and having to develop itemization, combat, etc., with only three classes. I feel like it would be like the baseline for moving forward on many fronts.

Also agree with @WishesHeHadBeta on the timeline. Makes sense on many fronts.

It's also usually the case that what we see at BlizzCon is usually a bit behind what they actually have internally. For instance, the next wow raid area they showed off in one of the panels was already datamined showing a lot more progress before the event.

Quote from Sinclair»

The only reason we got shown Diablo 4 this early in the devolpment cycle was to avoid/erase the cluster fuck that was Blizzcon 2018 and it's mobile/microtransaction disaster again. As cool as the statue is it is in no way tied to the actual game's release.

It was going to be announced last year but they delayed it at last second. It would've been announced regardless, probably.

Quote from NoVaRoCk»

https://www.blizzardgearstore.com/stores/blizzard/de/product/diablo-lilith-24.5--premium-statue/281877?categories=collectibles%2Cstatues-%26-replicas

Blizzard offers Lilith Statue with a deliverydate of 30.8.2020

so we can hope for a near releasedate of the game itself??

They said the game isn't even Blizzard Soon(TM) soon, so...probably like 2022 like most are saying.

Welcome back