Official Blog: System Design In Diablo IV (Part II)
David Kim has returned with Part II of the Diablo IV System Design blog! There are several changes to itemization in Diablo IV since we last saw it at BlizzCon, including the addition of Angelic, Demonic, and Ancestral Power as additional affixes on items.
Originally Posted by David Kim (Official Post)
In Part I, we addressed many of the open questions from the community about the Diablo IV game designs we revealed at BlizzCon. I recommend checking that out if you haven’t already.
Itemization is a huge core part of any Action RPG. We’re focusing specifically on itemization in this blog because it’s a complex and nuanced topic. Let’s start with two key principles that guide us as the Diablo IV development team.
First, we agree that adding depth and customization to your character through itemization is incredibly valuable and important to the game. This has been the most-discussed topic since we revealed Diablo IV. To be clear—we believe Diablo IV itemization should be deep and rewarding and that’s one of our highest priorities. Another important philosophy across the whole game for our team is the concept “Easy to learn, difficult to master.” This core philosophy helped many of us become the hardcore gamers we are today, and one we want to embrace throughout the Diablo IV development process.
Second, we agree with the feedback that Diablo IV shouldn’t just mimic the itemization in our previous Diablo games. Our plan is to take the best parts of previous games and improve upon them while introducing new elements to make Diablo IV unique. We don’t want to create an exact copy of Diablo II or Diablo III. It’s worth calling out that, on this subject, there was a lot of mixed feedback and differing opinions, and we acknowledge that means there’s no single approach that everyone in the community will agree on.
That said, thanks to your feedback, we have some potential changes we’re actively discussing internally regarding itemization that we’d like to share with you today. Again, we feel it’s important to stress that this is very early design, and we’re sharing this with the community far sooner than we ever have before. There will be problems with these ideas we’ll have to iterate through, and what’s presented below is almost certainly not final. The reason we’re sharing this so early is because we want to involve the community in our process and learn as much as we can from your feedback, as soon as possible.
Let’s get to it!
Affixes in Diablo IV
We went through so much great community discussion, including a fair amount of conflicting feedback, and we’ve had dozens of hours of discussion on this topic. We were left with two major takeaways. First, item affixes should be a meaningful part of character power. Second, they should create interesting choices when deciding which items to equip. Our previous focus was on making each affix geared toward specific builds, so that the “perfect item” would vary depending on the build you were pursuing. We still like this overall direction, but we understand it can also feel like your choices are limited because you end up chasing a list of “best-in-slot” items.
Here are the changes we’re considering:
- We’re increasing the total number of affixes on items, including Magic (Blue), Rare (Yellow), and Legendary (Orange). This should raise the overall importance of non-Legendary affixes on your character’s overall level of power.
- We are also introducing three new stats:
- Angelic Power, which increases the duration of all beneficial effects (like self-buffs or healing)
- Demonic Power, which increases the duration of all negative effects (like debuffs or damage over time)
- Ancestral Power, which increases the chance of on-hit effects (aka increased proc chance)
These new stats can appear as affixes, such as +15 Angelic Power. In addition to providing the above-stated benefit, we want these new stats to also act as pre-requisites for empowering certain other affixes. If you don’t have enough of a specific power, you can still equip the item, but you may not benefit from an affix linked to that power.
Here are a couple of work-in-progress examples to better illustrate what these affixes do (again, none of this is final and could change considerably):
Each of the three Powers will have a list of affixes that are attuned to it, so depending on which stats you care about, you might want to focus on Angelic, Demonic, or Ancestral Power. In the examples above, you would need 50 Demonic Power to get an additional rank in the Devastation skill, 55 Demonic Power for 25% Fire Resistance, or 60 Demonic power for an additional 2 ranks in the Char to Ash skill. If you wanted to build around Crushing Blow, you’d need to stack at least 55 Ancestral Power instead, while 40 Angelic Power would be required to gain 25% Cold Resistance.
We think these changes will address those two main takeaways pretty well. Legendary powers should no longer completely dwarf the strength of your affixes, and the affixes themselves provide more interesting choices because their strength depends on how much of the relevant Powers you’ve accumulated on the rest of your gear. You might find an amulet with the perfect stats for your build, but some of its Affixes may require Demonic Power when you’ve previously focused on Ancestral. Maybe your current amulet is the primary source of your Ancestral Power, so equipping a new amulet would mean potentially making sacrifices elsewhere.
With this system, it will be easy to identify items with good stats, but it will take some thought and planning to decide whether the item is good for your build. The best items for your character will really depend on what you currently have and how you’ve built that character, making it more difficult to just look up the right answer online.
At the same time, we think this system keeps items approachable, even if you make suboptimal itemization decisions. You may be weaker, but doing so won’t completely break your character. We can also introduce this mechanic gradually and naturally as you level, rather than making it a requirement to understand at the beginning.
Attack/Defense Changes
Based on your feedback, we’ve changed Attack to only be found on weapons, Defense to being only on armor, and we’ve removed both Attack and Defense from jewelry entirely. The goal here is to better embrace the fantasy of each type of item.
We like the Attack and Defense stats as a way to convey power progression on items. A core part of any ARPG is the quest for more power. Just as we have skill ranks, talent trees, character levels, and so forth, Attack and Defense allows us to reflect your power growth in items as well.
To be clear, Attack/Defense is not the end of the story of an item’s power, but it does fulfill the “easy to learn, difficult to master” design philosophy by giving players a broad sense of whether the item is an upgrade. Players who are optimizing their character will still need to take the additional affixes on an item into account, as their benefit to your build can outweigh the raw Attack or Defense of an item. Solely picking your items based on Attack and Defense will almost never be the optimal way to play, but it does provide a good starting point for newer players.
It’s important to reiterate here that items are just one part of a character’s overall power. Our goal is to spread out power across different sources, including skill ranks, your character’s level, talent trees, items, and the endgame character progression system (which, like everything else, is still in development).
Ancient Legendary Replacement
In our last post, we mentioned that we were looking at some potential changes to Ancient items based on your feedback. We are going to remove Ancient Legendaries from the game in their current form entirely.
Our newest proposal hits a couple different feedback points: addressing the usefulness of Rare (Yellow) items as well as increasing the depth and complexity of player gear choices in the endgame.
We will be introducing a new type of consumable item (which we haven’t yet named). This item would be earned by killing monsters, just like other items. It would have one random Legendary affix on it, drops only in the late endgame, and can be used to apply that affix to any non-Legendary item.
This means a few things:
- We create an “elective mode for items” that is experienced after players have had time to experience Rare and Legendary items normally, as well as familiarized themselves with a variety of affixes
- This adds a way to introduce new methods of play without adding even more power to endgame items
- Rare items with the best affixes on them are always useful and retain value
More Feedback
We want to remind you one last time for good measure that none of this is final—we haven’t even tried most of this in a working build yet! We’d love to get some constructive feedback on these approaches, as well as the general direction we’re headed for itemization. We’ve never shared this level of detail this early before, but we look forward to reading what you have to say.
Thanks,
David Kim
Lead Systems Designer
These look like great changes. I love the idea of adding legendary affixes to rares !!!
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.
We will need a huge amount of stash space.
Which we never get...
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.
Legendary items are still the top tier from what I read since they STILL offer more properties than rares. In the true endgame, say after 2k hours, you won't have upgraded rare items on you. Upgraded rares would be just the step to perfect legendaries.
Magic -> Rare -> Upgraded rare/set/legendary -> Legendary with perfect rolls/mythics
Can’t we have items that can be levelled your through use? So you could potentially start with all common items and over time these items would become magical, rare, legendary. The just add a durability mechanic that renders them unsuable if you don’t keep the weapon repaired and it “breaks”
I guess it would be a little bit cool if your beginners set items at the start of the game went from “Ravey’s beaten battle gear” to “Legendary Wrath of Ravey’s battle suit” ... you get the idea.
make the items more personable to the player using them.
Dear god no durability mechanic please, It adds nothing to the game.
I cannot comprehend the changes, so I just state a wish: More - MUCH more diversity. I do not know, if it can be avoided, but it is pretty boring, when the game goes meta in days. Yes, I could just ignore the advices @ the web, but i can't leave the cheese alone, when it's right in front of me.
A more free combination of skills and items would increase the options - hopefully so much, that it will be hard even for the brainy D4-fans to crack the best comboes.