DiabloFans

I *think* there was some rumor that the D2 remaster was going to be announced a year earlier than it actually was--I'm glad they didn't. This feels like the right amount of lead time for release. Very excited

Also, it is highly validating to see it succeed in streams like it did. It has always had strong brand recognition/loyalty. It's good to see that is still true and that the thing itself is also good.

It's been a LONG time, but in a sort of yes thing on the ubers comment, this is why ebotdz was good for fighting ubers (i think it was usually on a smiteadin--i tried on a fury druid and it felt like i just couldnt keep health up but that may have just been because i was a kid and didnt understand what was going on lol). i dont think it applied open wounds per say but it did prevent enemy healing.

i think poison does this too but enemies can be immune to poison.

Oh nice! Thanks!!

The way the light works with the ground textures is just so good x.x I can't wait to see A5 stuff with how detailed the art was for that entire xpac. Or like Travincal and the temples in A3.

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.

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.

me, waiting for my dual ebotdz fury druid and 81k lite sorc with a p 5/5 lite die griffs

It's just a remaster, so yes the endgame is what it was--baal runs, mfing, ubers I would guess. They aren't changing the game.

In full honesty I just skimmed the video until I saw what I figured this referred to, which is that covered boat. Interesting. If it's actually in the game's files, maybe an unimplemented asset? I think the patch after the base building patch is the sea/boat update, so maybe it'll be included in that.

Quote from Jetrall»

Welcome back. Some of us old-timers are around trawling the boards still.

WHY HELLO THERE OLD FRIEND!

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.