DiabloFans

Diablo IV: Systems & Features Panel Recap

The Diablo IV systems and features panel was a deep-dive into the inner workings of the game that had a Q&A at the very end. This panel revealed a surprising amount about Diablo IV considering how early in development the game still is.

Classes

During the class section of the panel, we learned about the unique mechanics for each of the three revealed classes, and much more information on how the skill/talent system will work.

• Sorceress

  • Whenever the Sorceress uses cold abilities on an enemy, they apply a stacking chill effect to the target. Once the chill stacks high enough, the enemy is frozen solid for a short time.

• Barbarian

  • The Barbarian is able to equip 4 weapons at any given time, given that they are a weapon master. They may have two 1-handed and two 2-handed weapons to use, and they may even assign specific skills to use specific equipped weapons.

• Druid

  • When the druid switches into a form, they gain a short buff. For example, changing into warebear will provide the druid with a short term damage reduction buff.
• Whenever players level up, they will gain 1 or more Skill Points to invest into their Skills. Players may use these Skill Points to either unlock new Skills or empower one of their existing skills.
• Players may find Skill Point Tomes in the world that will provide them with additional skill points.
• Each class has a unique talent tree that is filled out from top to bottom. There are super powerful abilities at the bottom of the trees, such as the Sorcerer's talent to change their freeze effect into a huge burst of damage.

Sharing The Open World

When it comes to the open world of Diablo IV, there are many questions regarding how the multiplayer and single player aspects of the game will work.

• Dungeons in the game are private, and you will not run into other players while dungeon-delving. The party size for dungeons is set to a maximum of 4 players.
• Certain areas of the open world have a maximum amount of players that will appear on your screen at any given time. The regular areas have a smaller player cap, but entering into a public event or boss area will significantly increase the amount of available players. This system works seamlessly.
• Campaign areas in public zones are private until after the campaign objective has been completed.
• Towns have a very large player cap.
• The entire game can be played completely solo.
• Clans are in the game, and include a Clan bank system.
• Emotes in chat were mentioned, but we are unsure if this will take the form of emotes like the ones found in Heroes of the Storm.

Dungeons

• Dungeons have randomly generated interiors/exteriors and exist in the game for use in the campaign or as various areas to explore, but become re-playabe in the end game.
• Dungeons have seamless exploration with no loading screens. Dungeons transition from level to level in a natural way, which gives the sense of a sprawling dungeon to explore.
• Random events make a return, but are not restricted to specific places in the world. Random Events can even be found within Dungeons
• End game dungeons have varied content with an emphasis on strategic depth and player agency. Keys for specific dungeons drop in the end game, and these keys contain random affixes which greatly change how you may play a Dungeon--such as a lightning pulse that follows you throughout the dungeon until the objective has been completed.
• The higher the difficulty of the content, the better quality of items that drop. Drop rates remain unchanged.
• Players will get many dungeon keys, which gives them control over which dungeons are the dungeons they wish to run.

Monsters

• Monsters belong to a set family. For example, the Fallen Lunatic belongs to the Fallen "family," which have a unified theme. Same with the Skeletal family, which work together through varied weapons to attempt to murder you horribly.
• The Skeletal Ballista is a group of skeletons working together to use a massive bow against you.
• Elite affixes make a return, such as Frozen and Mortar.
• Enhancing affixes are new, and change base on a monster's base power. For example, if the Skeletal Ballista has the Multi-shot affix, it will have a spread fire shot instead; however, if another monster has the Multi-shot affix, than the creature may summon more monsters if they typically only spawn one.
• Bosses are powerful, but thankfully Diablo IV re-introduces the evade mechanic seen within the console version of Diablo III. Using this evade allows you to dash a short distance in order to avoid damage, or even reposition yourself for a better attack.
• Certain spells can give you and your allies Unstoppable, allowing you to avoid stuns or break crowd-control effects.
• Bosses have a Stagger mechanic. By hitting bosses with crowd control abilities, you fill up their stagger bar. When the bar reaches max, the boss has suffers an effect that may make them easier to fight. For example, the world boss Ashava in the demo will lose one of its arm blades when you stagger it, making the sweep attack far less dangerous.

Items

• In Diablo IV, the item progression is: normal, magic, rare, legendary/set, ancient legendary/set, and mythic. Mythic items are the most powerful items in the game, and contain four different effects on them; however, you can only equip one.
• Better quality items increase the amount of affixes on them, such as critical strike chance/damage.
• + Rank to a talent points is a returning affix found on items, and is capable of giving you talents that you don't have. You can also increase the rank of a talent past the regular cap in this way.
• The goal is to have legendary items equal to or greater than the power level of set items, giving players flexibility in their gearing choices.
• There are a bunch of legendaries with effects that change how your skills work. For example, the Sorcerer may get items that make Teleport give the caster a damage barrier, create a rift that increases critical hit chance, remove the cooldown but teleports randomly, or even give teleport a damaging nova.
• Runes and Runewords make a return, and work as a condition/effect. In other words, you may find one rune that has a condition (such as 'when you freeze an enemy, activate the next rune'), and one that has an effect ('reduce a random skill cooldown by 15%).
• They are investigating how to give progressions to runes.

Q&A

• For monetization, they will sell the base game and expansions. They refuse to sell any kind of power.
  Customization of your character comes in the form of items, skills, and talents.
• There is no offline mode, but nothing in the game will require partying with other players.
• Trading is available, but the current strategy is to have 3 different types of trade-able items:
• Freely can be traded.
• Traded just one time.
• Cannot be traded.
• The plan for balancing PvP will be to tweak several nobs on specific skills that may cause problems. Certain skills are going to be better at PvP than PvE, and likewise.
• Affixes on items have random values within a range, and they want to add a way to customize affixes on items.
• The game will have seasons, with the goal to change up the player experience from season to season with new legendary items and spotlights on other legendaries.
• Yes, hardcore is in the game.