But they do? Increased beneficial effect duration, increased negative effect duration, and increased proc chance. Now, how valuable the actual bonuses from angelic/demonic/ancestral power will be, I don't know, but they do provide an actual bonus themsleves.
Yep ty missed that.
While communication like this should be the norm, it's not among most game developers. So because of that, I'm very grateful Blizzard has taken this route. On to the feedback for this post;
Demonic, Angelic and Ancestral.
These are, for all intents and purposes, main stats now. They serve the exact same purpose as main stats, in that if you don't have enough of a given one on a character, you can't wear the item. Except in this case you instead don't have access to the bonus on the item affiliated with that stat, which is almost the exact same drawback as the main stat system. So unless you don't have another item to fill that slot, there's no reason as of yet to even wear the item, if you don't have enough of the stat.
While I'm happy the affix pool is getting diversified, I'm not a fan of these stats as of yet. As I stated these are main stats with a different name, and in their current state they are actually worse then main stats, as the bonuses they provide are yet to be seen if really useful.
Attack / Defense Changes.
Hopefully I don't sound too harsh here, but these are far and out two of the laziest affixes possible. Blizzard is assuming that affixes will be too confusing to new players (even though new players have been able to figure out affixes in ARPG's for over two decades), so a simple green arrow and / or higher number is the solution to a non-problem.
I'm not praising the changes made here, because they don't actually solve anything. As of right now, 'attack' will only be found on weapons. This number, this one sole stat, will determine the base damage of a weapon. No attack speed, no damage range, crit chance, spell power, cast speed ect. Defense is only on armor now, but I have to see any interesting affixes, such as physical vs. magical defenses, dodge / block / parry / evade ect. They're non interesting, boiled down stats, in my opinion.
Consumable legendary affix item.
I'm actually pretty confused on why this change is taking place. If the goal is to change what some may consider 'mandatory' legendary affixes (most likely the ones that change how skills function) to be more obtainable, then it fails unless the drop rate is higher then the legendary that the power is also found on. However I believe the goal is instead to alleviate the obvious problem that's being carried over from Diablo3; mandatory BiS items associated with skills. However instead this change causes two major problems; that 'mandatory' power is still present, just in a different package, and with that power given the ability to be affixes to other items, why even wear the initial legendary in the first place?
I've typed it out before somewhere but it won't hurt to do it again. Legendary powers that directly impact / change specific skills should, in my opinion, be put into the class skill tree instead. This would help to fill out the skill tree, as well as give more choice to the player without re-introducing the Diablo 3 problem of always BiS items. If you wanted to add a legendary staff to the game that causes spells with projectiles to fire additional ones, that's fine. That's even a fun power and it introduces more choice. If I want my fireball to fire extra projectiles, I could use this staff. OR, I could invest in my skill tree in one of the many options to augment my skills, such as another fireball fired at the same time, and use a different item in it's place.
Having legendary items with powers also in itself offers a chance at balance, because there could and should be downsides to consider. Maybe this axe steals a chunk of life with every hit and is really nice for a defensive build, but it's on the low side of damage. A proposed system like this circumvents this entirely, and I'm currently concerned Blizzard just accidentally killed off legendaries. Why EVER wear a legendary, if I can just get the affix I'm after and put it on a rare item with better stats?
Lastly, the removal of ancient legendaries. Finally some good news, they not only did not provide anything of use, they hurt the game as a whole.
Alrighty, can't wait for the next update =D
Edit; missed out on the 3 stats new bonuses, edited to be snarky.
Really so even Primal ancients can be crafted? Great.
A primal ancient item: https://i.imgsafe.org/124d5672b9.jpg
The item was acquired via kanai's cube upgrade a rare.
Main Stats max is 1300
One hand damage roll range is 1582 -2328
Max Damage is still 10%.
An actual FIRST person Diablo could work I think, but a 3rd person perspective like that screenshot wouldn't do anything to enhance the franchise. You're essentially trading not being able to see behind you to being able to see farther ahead, might as well keep it isometric at that point.
However like I said, a skyrim / dark souls type first person might be cool.
Good luck to Chris, I'm happy and maybe even a little envious that he was able to be a part of Blizzard as he did. If anything I actually feel inspired reading what he wrote.
Because I love to be disappointed, my theory on why they didn't say anything at gamescon about blizzcon is that they didn't want to step on gamescon's toes about THEIR convention. Maybe they were just being polite
Blizzcon Season 8 announcement with unique map icons for every vendor!
And another new Season portrait that makes your paragon level unreadable. Again.
Seriously though it would have been nice if they'd at least bothered to say 'look forward to Blizzcon' or SOMETHING at Gamescon instead of keeping fans they knew were waiting for a potential announcement waiting for each segment.
Oh well, watching D2 was a cool retrospect kind of thing. I loved it in its day but looking at the game now, wow there is so much wrong with it that the rose tints forget.
We can only hope nobbie, we can only hope.
Qualifies as teaser, because of the barcode. Here's what I think happened (may contain traces of humor):
- Cancel the originally planned D3X2 because it sucked
- Fire Boyarsky
- Write new plot with a Cain redemption story and revamp the itemization (once again)
- Give away the best parts of the original D3X2 for free (Kanai's Cube, Sescheron etc) while making a new D3X2
- Announce the new D3X2 at gamescom in August
- Reveal all of D3X2 at Blizzcon in Novmber and celebrate its 20th anniversary
In that thread someone points out that 'cain lives' can be a play on the 'kaine lives' seen in C&C.
It's said in the actual post, but I guess it's good to reiterate: this is probably just crazy speculation and very unlikely an actual hidden hint of the franchise's (lore) future. Take it with a grain of salt - it's meant to be a more fun discussion rather than a serious one imho.
The theories posted there (specially this one on Belial) are particularly crazy and entertaining.
So I saw this post yesterday, the 6th, at about 8:30 pm. Was Blizzard just really late in posting this? Or maybe the date is wrong?
Nicely done! I just feel the burning need to point out that it wouldn't matter, at all, if this Necro used int as it's main attribute. It would be perfectly fine to have three classes use int, while strength and dex have two classes. This is of course because of smart loot. It wouldn't matter if there's 72 classes that use int and 3 that use dex, if you were playing a dex class 85% of your drops would be still be dex.
It's usually the opposite; set changes are retroactive, while stand alone legs have to be found again.
Love patch 2.2, the changes have been great. However, there's a couple things that are really starting to bother me;
1: Numbers.
Vanilla had me feeling like 1 million crits were huge and I got excited when I saw them, and I used to see ~5m crits with a full party buff. Now, that's already turned into 1 billion crits being the norm, and the 5-10B crits being the exciting ones. I think even one more expansion of this number inflation is too much. Should we be expecting Trillion crits to be regular? Because that's ludicrous, and I think even the current numbers need to be addressed, let alone the potential ones.
2: Sets bonuses.
While I understand Blizzard's idea to make them the end game, end-all-be-all items, I don't like it. I realize it's probably a huge pain in the ass for balance reasons, but why on earth to sets need to do 300%, 500%, 750% more damage with skills? It creates a TON of problems; with Rolands set my shield bash and sweep attack hit for the hundreds of millions at least, which is fun. What isn't fun? My generator hitting for 7 million, any of my damage cooldowns hitting for 10-15 million, or put another way, everything else I have hitting for ~.01% of the two buffed skills. There's absolutely no reason to have these insanely high modifiers for skills with the set bonuses, and even the stand alone legendaries. It completely trivializes everything else.
3. Set slots.
I might be the only one, but it bothers me to no end that a set takes up HALF of our slots, and with un-interesting items by themselves. A quick example would be Rolands set again. Alrighty, 6p bonus! Now what do I have to play with and move around to make the build of my liking? My weapon / off hand, bracers, belt and jewelry. You can forget any legendary helms, shoulders, chests, gloves, pants, and boots, since you can only pick one of those slots (and give up a jewelry slot). Want to wear RoRG and magefists? Well that's pretty dumb, since cindercoat beats out magefist every time. Want to wear RoRG and any other piece for your crusader? Sorry, not going to beat FnR.
TLDR; The numbers have already gotten astronomical, and need to be addressed. Instead of balancing sets and unique legendaries, we have sets that you absolutely NEED, even if it's just to play some higher greater rifts than the T6 equivalent. Oh and while wearing those sets? Say goodbye to being able to mix and match all those cool, unique legendaries we all wanted back in Vanilla, since they were all plain and didn't do anything.
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You're really clinging to them saying they don't want to repeat D3's release, but it seems you're forgetting Diablo 3 originally began in 2000. It took them 12 years and a complete revamp / start over to make Diablo 3.
D4 won't take 12 years, but you're likelier to have a golden comet smash in your backyard then get a D4 release in two years. What we saw was barely fit to be called pre alpha.
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Yea dude, thus why I said "at least 3".
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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
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MTX are a necessary evil. If they're cosmetic only.
What I don't like about MTX is that I'd rather all that cool art / pets just be in the game as something very rare to find. However since they obviously need to continually make money to support the game, then sure do pets / mounts.
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3/15/2022
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They kind of had this in D2. For example the beds in the abandoned houses would drop loot if you click on them, but they didn't highlight or have a name, you just clicked them to move and pop, loot.
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Runes and runewords provide a LOT of different, good things to the game.
End game chase items, some very very rare so something to look forward to dropping.
A form of trading currency, since some were so rare and they'd be taken out of the economy by being used.
Could have potentially been a form of mystery, with a new runeword being something to hunt for.
Had another use besides being used as a whole runeword - gave player options for adding small stat increases in their gear.
I'm personally pretty disappointed in how their systems are being developed so far. I think they got the art right, and I'm sure combat feels good, but that's about it. I don't want to get all hyperbolic, but I'm REALLY insulted they are choosing to call this system 'Runewords'. A trigger and effect system? Sure. But they chose to cannibalize such a beloved part of D2, and something people have been begging for?
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For D4 I believe they've said cross play / platform would be nice but no plans, so I'm assuming no.
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Not to be all negative but there are a couple worrisome things I've seen so far;
Minor things;
Not super stoked about 3 tiers of legendaries; Legendary, ancient and mythic or whatever they were. That's essentially the exact same system as what's in D3 currently, and while I didn't catch whether a legendary can drop in all 3 states or not, it still creates the same problem of 'a leg dropped, however it's not mythic or at least ancient so that sucks'. Also SOJ has been dropping as a regular legendary in the demo, so if it can't be mythic then that's just wasted potential.
More major things;
Very, very small amount of stats on items so far. Not a fan of an item just giving more 'attack' and 'defense', and hey it's got 3% attack speed. If that's really how it's going to be stat-wise, they've made it on par with D3, yet even more boring. Armors just have 'Attack' and 'defense', Weapons don't have damage ranges, or attack speeds, just a single 'weapon attack' rating. Didn't see anything about resistance stats on gear, let alone anything defense wise such as dodge / block / parry / resistance. Worrisome as a whole so far for actual items.
Runewords! God damnit I have to say this one just really irritates me. They ALLLMOST got it right, one of the funnest gear / drops from D2, because man when I saw runes drop in the demo I actually cheered. However they've said a couple times that 'runewords' exist, but really what they mean is you can socket a trigger and an effect. That is NOT runewords my dudes, and what's frustrating is you can have both this new rune system, while STILL creating hidden items found through using specific runes in a specific order. The existence of this system almost certainly means there wont' be extremely rare runes for chase drops either.
No character stat screen currently. I haven't found anything saying this is just a WOP which means that currently, D4 is the LEAST complicated game out D2 / 3 / 4 by miles. The 'stat screen' so far is literally 3 stats at the bottom of the character page, attack defense and life. I'm pretty there's mobile games with more then that.
The MMO aspect. It's one of those ideas that sounds cool at first, but doesn't hold up after you talk about it. Can you turn it off? What about any sort of community created challenges, which will be ruined by the rng of having random players just in your game world? Giant outdoor bosses are awesome, but HAVING to have a party / random players just personally sucks. Make the bosses super difficult, I'm for that 100%, but not mandatory party bosses.
Crafting. Unless I'm just 100% wrong about how stats will be at launch, I don't see crafting in D4 being good at all. Hell, as it stands now, D3's crafting is better simply because of more stats to choose from / balance.
Drop rate and rare gear. Again, if things stay the course we'll once more have a Diablo game where rare items are absolutely worthless in the end game, and serve only as gold / crafting mat fodder. With such few stats, there won't be any 'downsides' to wearing only legendaries, and with 3 tiers of legendaries plus sets, I just can't believe them when they say they won't be raining constantly.
No mimimap overlay, just a full map and a small corner one. Do I have to say more?
So I'm excited D4 finally got an announcement, but now I'm anxious to see how it turns out.
Edit; Rhykker's video states that it sounds like max level will be 40 currently. That's just... I mean there's a proven formula that's worked for years; Max level 99 or 100, and the last 10 or so are for the hardcore people who play the most, because you end up in the end game around 70 +. Cmon Blizz, dont' 'leave room' for expansions, this isn't WoW and we don't need level increases for expansions.
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I've had some major contention with the way loot works in D3 for years now. So, here's a quick wish list of things I want Blizzard to avoid in a D4;
1) Rares being useless. The philosophy that rares *can* be as good in a slot as a unique I originally hated before D3 launched. Having been 7 years, and having played poe for a couple years now, I realize it's actually a very smart idea. Getting that perfect stat-ed, perfect rolled rare can actually be in itself a chase item, leaving something to look forward to dropping.
2) Main stat + Vit on every unique. Why even have these stats exist if they're on EVERYTHING. There's a good way to balance uniques, and that is to make a unique item be rolled around it's unique effect, while missing stats that something like a rare item could offer. This chest is amazing because of XYZ unique effect, but it's missing vitality, or resistance, so now I have a choice and a trade off.
3) Uniques 'power' being an absolute mandatory buff to a skill. This actually creates SO many problems. Firstly, you now HAVE to have this unique if you want to use a certain skill. Oh you really like this skill? Well unless you've obtained the power bracelet of 900% damage to that skill, why even try to use it? Secondly, now you don't get a choice of anything else in that slot. Thirdly, this is actually one of the root problems of having uniques rain all day long in D3, because players NEED that item to even enjoy using a skill.
4) Set bonuses in general. Really just read #3 on why these have been badly implemented in D3, the issues are the same; mandatory items that eat up slots that you HAVE to have to be effective. While I'll only miss them if they aren't in D4 on a nostalgic level, there IS a way to balance their power. The amount of pieces would have to be lowered in my opinion, probably 3 in total such as jewelry / armor / weapon. But the real balancing would be the set bonus. Take Tal Rasha set. You *could* have the set bonus be something that players can form their own builds around, such as taking the convention of elements buff and putting that on the Tal Rasha set; "you gain 30% damage to an element until you use a skill that matches that element, and then it rotates to the next element. These elements are Fire, Cold, and Lightning." Doesn't lock you into a skill, doesn't force you to 'wait for a window'. Just a suggestion.
5) Current Crafting. D3's crafting is just... not engaging. It's far too simple. Honestly just copy + pasting the way POE handles crafting would work. That system, while complicated at first, works VERY well to balance the line between deterministic crafting and RNG. You could change the currency orb system to where you have the same options, but at the bench and they would just cost different amounts of dropped mats.
6) Stats. D3 uses main stats to tell players who gets to wear what items. Vitality is also on everything, making both of these just a shoulder shrug when you see them. There's also a huge problem with resistances. Why on earth it was decided to add complication to resistances is beyond me. Not only does it create something that's harder to balance since the max resistances can vary so wildly, it's also confusing without a good reason. Is 97 to all resis good? I don't know, I have 19,000 resis!
'Main' stats need to instead provide the same bonus to every class, which in turn makes them sought after depending on what build you're trying to make. Instead of 'oh I'm a Demon Hunter, I have to stack dex', the player could instead say 'I want to play my Demon Hunter differently, so I'll stack strength for armor', without wrecking their damage because they didn't use the stat they 'have to'.
7) Gold pieces as currency. D3's currency is gold, and that system just flat out does not work. First off, in an effort to balance the fact that the only currency drops from the very first act of the game in the same form as the end game, you start off with 1-3 gold pieces dropping, and end up with millions in the end game. Second problem, it's easily farmed by bots, because it always drops. It's also not 'taken out of the economy' with any great rate. People just accrue more and more.
A quick suggestion would be to replace gold as it currently is, with a variety of single drop items that are fairly rare. A gold bar could drop (hypothetically a rare occurrence even at the end game) that would actually have value. It could have multiple uses; using it on an item could re-roll the stats. It could be used in crafting for the highest end crafts. It could be used to augment whatever rift / map style end game we get to make it more difficult / give better rewards. Anyone who's played POE might notice I just essentially suggested chaos orbs or exalted orbs, and for good reason; that system kicks ass. Not only would something like this be constantly pulled out of the economy because of it's multiple uses, it also introduces a very badly needed item in the form of a currency to trade with.
8) Dropped items that are just armor / weapons. There needs to be more then *just* armor and weapons to drop. The above mentioned currency item is a start. I'd also add even rarer types of the gold bar I suggested, such as say Crystal Orbs, Unobtainium Chunks, you name it.
We can actually take a look back at D2 for this category; Gems dropped, Runes, Charms, and Jewels. This all adds to the ever important part of a loot based ARPG; 'what could drop next'. POE has a dropped item, the divination card. They're essentially pieces to a whole item, with varying rarity. Sure the chances of that awesome giant 2 handed greatsword dropping are very low, but hey you've found 3/7 of the cards that'l turn into it. Maybe you could trade some players for the other cards? Adding a system of 'pieces' of an item could be another fun thing to add to this category.
9) D3's Gambling. A fun side mechanic from D2, but it's my opinion that it's FAR too prevalent in D3. That of course is just another symptom of D3 HAVING to drown you in uniques because otherwise builds won't work. It could be kept in D4 for sure, but I would make it pretty expensive to do so, so it's not spammable, keeping it leaning towards it's use from D2.
10) Ancient uniques. The idea that 'yay omg this awesome weapon dropped..... buuuuuut it's not its super mega rad elder void touched sun forged ancient version' just sucks. There's no good reason to carry this system over, because there shouldn't be a situation where we NEED to introduce power creep.
11) Not having Runewords. I, let it be known, LOVE runewords. It adds SO MUCH to the game! Hear me out. First, runes introduce chase items. Those highest end runes are what we dreamed of dropping back in D2 days. Secondly it's a pseudo deterministic system of getting an item since you get to choose which runeword to make, and what base item to use it in. Runes themselves are a form of trading currency. Runes also act on their own to augment gear, so there's a choice between gaining that stat or waiting for that 3 socket shield to drop so you can make that runeword, as an example. It also is an untapped potential for adding actual mystery to the game. Every season could see the introduction of say 1-3 runewords, but the players would have to find out what they are. And if runes cannot be unsocketed then it would be fun seeing if people are willing use their highest runes to try and find out the new runeword.
12) Uniques raining down. I honest to god forgot until this point that they're called legendaries in D3, it's been a quick minute for sure. Either way, I think it can be agreed upon that they need to drop far, far less. For a really, really bad example of what good drop rate would be, lets say it's Friday night and we sit down for a good 5 hours of playing some D4. I'd like to think somewhere in the realm of finding 4-5 during that time would be ideal. That's not accounting for people who will sit by their stash for 3 out of those 5 hours, and also not for the super speed clear people on the other end of that spectrum. I'm sure others would want double or triple that, it's just how I feel on that matter.
There's even more topics to cover, but this a good summery of what I'd personally like to see in that hypothetical D4.
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Glad I didn't remove Dfans from my top bar, surprised to check back and it's actually alive
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I forget how I found this site. According to my account that was 7 and a half years ago. Man, I checked this site multiple times a day, for YEARRRRSSSS. Getting drip-fed information was excruciating. I won a closed beta key from here, and I remember being absolutely stoked. I remember getting into some heated arguments as well haha. Hell, I defended stuff like the RMAH for awhile even.
I've said my thoughts on D3 awhile back, so no need to re-hash them here. Suffice it to say, my views on Blizzard as a whole have done a 180. It IS very sad to watch your favorite hobby, your favorite pastime wither. And I'm definitely surprised to see Diablofans going away.
I pretty much stopped frequenting this site about two years ago, when I picked up PoE. But it always held a spot in my chrome bar, and once every couple of months it felt like, I'd check in, only to see the latest threads have their last reply be days old.
Sad to see you go Dfans, you will be missed. (Bleu42 on poe / steam).
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I'm curious where you're getting the 50 million units sold number? The most I can find is 30 million, and that's D3 and RoS combined.
Either way I agree with you, Blizzard has no idea what it's doing anymore. They quite literally pulled their top guys from all their games to start working on mobile. So, get ready to not see anything great for the PC for years and years to come.
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And here I am just reading through the next POE expansion announcement that'l come out in 3 weeks. The 3rd this year =D
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I think you're absolutely right OP. Forgetting a D4 for a second, if Blizzard is for some ungodly reason trying to only stay with D3 for the future, they need to let it's players mod it.
Unfortunately, Blizzard views you all as children; gigantic babies who need their hands held, and there's no freakin way they'd let you add any sort of actual modding.
(side argument, I wouldn't call poe's personal leagues modding. I get what you're saying, but modding is still very very different then choosing some additional difficulty options when making your own league.