The Core of Diablo

[Cahir]

For Diablo 4, a legendary item just means "rare, with a legendary power", so yeah, they don't feel very unique. However, in World Tiers III and IV onward you can find Unique items. These have their attributes and powers set in stone and cannot be modified. So, when you drop Harlequin Crest (yes, the Shako exists in D4, saw the screenshots), it will always have what you expect it to have.

Ok, you really got me there. What is World Tier III and IV and how can I get there? Is it happening after finishing game on Veteran, like a general difficulty level where you could unlock Hardcore and Hell in previous games? If yes, does it mean I cannot drop Unique item on my first playthrough on Veteran?

 

[O_Bruce]

I played on these difficulties in closed beta, so things were a bit different. But in the final game, it seems you need to beat the story first, then clear a very specific dungeon (if I recall, it would be level 48+, not below that. Needs to be done on Veteran difficulty, aka World Tier II), to unlock World Tier III. Once that's done you can go to Kiovoshad, interact with World tier Statue and change the tier to III. This is basically where the endgame begins.

And unfortunately, unique items starts to drop from World Tier III forward

 

[mlnevese]

Also make sure to turn on in the game settings the two options that will extend the description and make a full comparison between itens. It's under gameplay options and comes turned off by default. It makes choosing your itens much simpler.

 

[Antimatter]

PC Gamer took a firm stance on D4 and their editors continue in the same vein.

Just brutal here:

The way I used to enjoy Diablo games has been replaced, and it sucks

The reek of corporate BS overpowers even the sulfurous fumes of Hell itself.

www.pcgamer.com

"Diablo gave rise to the entire action RPG genre, and it's basically been all downhill from there. When I was just a kid in the '90s who was definitely too young to be journeying beneath Tristram Cathedral and meeting figures like The Butcher who would haunt my nightmares for years, I remember, above all, that it was actually scary. A small part of me believed there might be some genuine essence of evil in this 480p, 256-color world. That maybe just by playing it, I was truly risking my eternal soul.

The lonely first 30 minutes of Diablo 4, an extended tutorial, almost gave me that feeling again—at least, as much as any game can when you're in your 30s. It's grimy. It's gory. It's performatively sacrilegious, with a priest getting his brains bashed out with his own holy symbol as we zoom in on his blood splattering across the stained glass of a church. Lilith bids us to be "free in sin," and I found myself strapping in for some real, dark, heavy metal shit. That's my jam.

But it's not even an hour later that I'm being reminded this game has a battle pass. Shopkeepers have a timer telling me when their inventory will reset, like so many "pay to wait" mobile games. There's a guy named "PeterGriffinhehehe" running around town in armor that has been dyed the color of a Chuck-E-Cheese automaton. To their credit, the writers and environment designers do their absolute best to gently lay me back into a pool of blood and baptize me with their dark fantasy imaginings again, but I have to tune out so much 2023, AAA, always online garbage at any given moment to even buy into it a little bit.

...

Can I play an offline character who doesn't get ads for cosmetic mounts, doesn't see characters with mood-ruining names running around, and doesn't really care what's available in the latest paid, seasonal content? Well, no. That's the direction this franchise has gone. You're always online. You're always thrown into shared instances in hub cities and the open world. I can play through the story as a solo player, but that's clearly not what the decision-makers at Blizzard care about. They want to pull me into a Diablo ecosystem, where I'll be grinding the same content forever, having paid cosmetics paraded in front of me by my fellow denizens of purgatory to stimulate my FOMO gland."

 

[O_Bruce]

That's a drama queen if I've ever seen one.

 

[O_Bruce]

First of all, a bit of apology to Cahir for the disinformation. Yesterday I accidentally found out that you, in fact, can imprint a new legendary power on an item that had one before. It just replaces one power with the other. I am not sure about the limitations of that, so I will say no more so as to not misinform people.

But the main reason I am posting this is that I have finished Diablo IV story and started some endgame activities on Nightmare difficulty. So, my positives and negatives on game so far:

Positives:
- Story is probably the best Diablo series had to offer so far. It is pretty down-to-earth for the most part and that allows my brain to appreciate some drama between characters. Didn't expect to have feels from Diablo game of all things, but here we are. That being said, I am pretty sure had I beaten the story multiple times I will find some problems with the story, but for the first playthrough, I am satisfied. I find Acts I, II, V and IV to be really strong, with III and IV being a weak ling story-wise.
- Combat system. It takes Diablo 3's as a base and improves over it. What we got is a generally slower, but more methodical combat, where your positioning, using the dodge button, and priority when targetting enemies matters more than, in for example, D3 or PoE. Even some normal-tier enemies can have abilities that knock you down, renders you immobile/unable to use skills, or give you debuffs. Because the combat system retains many of better D3 qualities, fighting enemies is very satisfying.
- Meaningful character progression. What I mean is that your choices when building up character matter. How you spend your skill points, paragon points, what you take from a unique character class mechanics, and obviously what kind of loot you use.
- Speaking of loot, aside from legendary powers, it really matters what kind of affies are the best for your build. Characters oriented around critical strikes will prioritize different affixes than characters using Overpower (like my Druid, for instance) or characters build around Thorns damage. Or damage-over-time. And so on.
- The world of Sanctuary. Not only it is huge, it feels more alive than ever despite it's sorry in-story state. Gameplay features because of the world size aside, it allows you to see how Lillith's (and Inarius') actions are affecting the people of Sanctuary, either directly or indirectly.
- There is a massive amount of content on day 1. It's only going to grow as more seasons and expansions roll out.
- There are many progressions systems and you start to see more synergies between them in the endgame
- The difficulty isn't super easy D3-style.

Negatives:
- Boss fights don't feel as iconic or memorable as they should. And in particular, I can hardly think of really iconic attacks that were present in past Diablo games. Think of Mephisto's Skull Missile. Diablo's Red Lightning. Andariel's Poison Spray. Belial's ground explosions. Azmodan's Annihilating Orb. Malthael channeling Prime Evils' power. In Diablo 4, no boss attacks feel quite iconic and that's a problem for me.
- Some lacking elements in itemization. The game lacks runewords (which were present in D4 demo ar announcement day!) or set items. After my last interaction with Cahir, I thought up a way Set items could be included without breaking the game as they did in D3, so now I think it's a shame they're not there.
- Not enough options to choose from when creating characters. I think it should be way more and I know for a fact that some options could be included but for some reasons, you don't have that option. For instance, you cannot recreate your Sorceress the way she was present in D4 demo, again, at announcement day.
- You don't have the ability to view cutscenes again. And that option would be priceless. I loved cutscenes in particular when my character is present in them, full in-game cinematic style, and interacts with characters.
- Occasional bugs, but highly irritating ones - namely, game freezing at random times, requiring me to ctrl+alt+delete.

Other:
- The game is always on-line and has some mmo elements. This might be a problem for some. For me personally, it didn't affect my experience negatively. The story and overall mood didn't suffer for me.
- The story, while I consider good, could go even further. There were some ideas that could be explored further. Or risks/consequences for character, particularly for main character.
- The difficulty seems uneven even on the same setting. For me, at first it was easy-ish, then it got progressively harder and then more easy again. I have no idea why, it might be due to how my chracter's build progressed. Or not.

 

[Cahir]

Thank you for your overwiev, @O_Bruce, it's very insightful. I still haven't finished the game, so I will post more detailed analysis when I'm done, but generally the more I play the more my excitement wane. Not sure if this will change in later acts, because I mostly do side content at the moment, but my main gripe so far, is that locations, dungeons, caves ot pillars look almost the same (maybe except the main story locations) and it's getting more and more tedious getting through them. I also agree with boss fights and also I'm pretty sure I fought the same boss twice in different dungeons (I remember killing Blood Bishop twice).

But the game is still fun!

 

[mlnevese]

Diablo IV Patch Notes

We will continually update this article with all patches the development team implements for Diablo IV.

news.blizzard.com

 

[O_Bruce]

Recently I earned every prize I could from the fame as a progression system, finished level 70+ key dungeon and now I am ready to try World Tier IV.
Interestingly, as I progress the game, I thought that One problem with the itemization was lessened, but the other one became more apparent. What I mean that affixes on my stuff become naturally bigger over time, and that made looking at them more exciting. On the other hand, I think legendary items should be re-named or something, because they're too common for that monicker. How about Imbued items? As in, imbued with special powers?

On the other hand, I had about 4 unique dropped, one of which was guaranteed, I think. From what I can tell, some uniques are nice for general builds, while the other ones help you with your specialization. Unfortunately, for now, I only used unique boots. But I have seen Frostburn gauntlets (which aren't much use for me since my Druid build isn't focused on crowd-controlling etc.), an armor that made Werewolf form my default form and giving bonuses related to it (again, I'm using Werebear). The guaranteed one was from beating the game's story, I think.

In other news, I have Pulverized the Butcher today. You can see the footage and how my build plays there:

 

[mlnevese]

That and class powers will probably be the most changed aspects in the coming years. They were still messing with that in Diablo III not long ago

 

[mlnevese]

Anyone else having fun with all the drama over Diablo IV patch 1.1? People have really short memories. This is almost a remake of what happened when Diablo III was released.

 

[O_Bruce]

What is the drama about?

 

[mlnevese]

What is the drama about?

They nerfed damage output and resistances substantially... Also they fixed the bugs that allowed some builds to deal over 2 billion damage. And you can no longer add a level 1 to your level 80 party because he'll make nearly 0 experience...

I have not completed the main quest, but my solo character now must go back to a city very often to replenish my healing potions...

 

[O_Bruce]

I need to test how things are right now. Though if a OP build is possible because of bugs, then I am 100% for it being fixed and nerfed.

 

[O_Bruce]

Ok, after an nearly hour of testing (insane amount of time, I know), I experienced higher difficulty when engaging with one of the endgame mechanics - D4's equalivement of Terror Zones. It wasn't anything near unplayable though. As for clearing the ordinary in-game dungeon, I see no increased difficulty, it's slightly easier now because instead of monsters being on my character level (78), they are instead level 75. This means I deal more damage to them than usual, they do a bit less to me.

I cannot say much about nerfs and buffs, because a significant portion of my D4 experience was with 1 character, with 1 build that I managed to get to work. For reference, some changes affected this build of mine, there were some buffs and nerfs. For instance, my ultimate skill (Grizzly rage) now gives me unstoppable status (meaning: immunity to crowd control) for 6 seconds instead of its entire duration. It nerfs the ability and makes me look at it as something to use in a pinch, rather than something you just want to use. Despite this, with the right legendary power and spirit offering, the skill is still can be really powerful.

Maybe the patch hurt other character classes more, I don't know. I have heard that Druid was the weakest class, so maybe the nerf hammer didn't hurt me as much.

Another thing I want to notice, I recall when Path of Exile got hit with a patch that raised the difficulty of game overall and people really disliked that. Maybe that's the similar situation here.

Finally, the first season starts on 20th, so I guess I may see how different character class plays at different stages of the game

 

[Antimatter]

Blizzard Admits It Messed Up With Diablo 4’s Disastrous Nerf Patch, Announces Upcoming Sweeping Changes - IGN

Blizzard has addressed the backlash to Diablo 4’s controversial nerf patch, promising a new patch to revert many of the changes it made.

www.ign.com

"Patch 1.1.1 is expected within the next two weeks, perhaps just a couple of days after another livestream set for Friday, July 28. This patch hones in on improving the power of the Sorcerer and Barbarian classes in particular after both suffered drastic nerfs. Specifically on the Sorcerer, players can expect a boost to survivability, Blizzard said.

The patch will also increase the density of monsters in Nightmare Dungeons and in Helltides, two key endgame activities. Addressing inventory concerns, 1.1.1 will add an additional stash tab in which players can store items. The elixir stash size will be brought up to 99. 1.1.1 also brings character respec costs down by about 40%, so players feel more inclined to try out new builds.

Crucially, the upcoming patch will adjust XP gain from level 50 to 100 after players complained about hitting a brick wall from around level 70. “We are not trying to slow down the game,” game director Shely insisted. “We want level 100 to feel like an achievement, not feel like a job,” game director Joe Piepiora added."

“Ultimately, ARPG games are about power fantasy, and about us inviting players to break the game to some extent, and find fun toys we’ve made, do crazy things with them, and we need to make sure we’re not punishing players for doing that,” Shely said.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1682510897598832641

 

[O_Bruce]

"It should be okay to finish a game. But that's a non optimal profit outcome"
1. It still is okay to just finish the story in Diablo IV. Nobody ever is claiming otherwise
2. That's reach coming out from D2 dev. Majority of battle.net players in Diablo II don't play through the game or story at all - they have their characters "rushed" through it by players, who did, and are rushing other characters it for profit - for hellforge drop, specifically. This is a status quo for years. D2 dev should have known that. Majority of people are playing Diablo II for endgame, skipping beating the story 3 times. That's the reality.

"It makes no sense to slow down the teleports out of dungeons in Diablo 4"
Diablo IV has the Butcher. In Diablo II, you could instantly run away, skipping the fight through town portal. In Diablo IV, it is more difficult to run away because he'll most likely interrupt you. What slowing the teleporting out of dungeon does it making more difficult to you to get out of difficult situation, such as the Butcher fight.

By non existent god, I am so glad that, while I like Diablo, I am not part of its retarded community.

 

[O_Bruce]

Ok, few things about Diablo games:

Diablo III has announced PTR for the next patch, along with the next season. The most interesting thing for me is Solo Self-Found mode and the possibility to compete with other SSF characters. The other interesting thing is a power cap to Paragon system. Previously, the Paragon was something that allowed theoretically infinite growth in power, which made grinding for paragon levels a priority. Many people didn't like that, myself included. Buuut, if Diablo IV was any indication, many people might be a little, tiny bit upset about this. Since, you know, with a power cap, they won't be able to reach absurd Greater Rift levels anymore...

Speaking of Diablo IV, Season of the Malignant is now for some time, and having reached World Tier IV recently, clearing the story associated with the season... I must say I am let down by it. The season doesn't add that much in terms of the content, the questline isn't compelling enough (even though there are some good elements in it, like voice acting). Frankly, I really hope the future seasons would improve, because if the seasons are going to look like this, then I don't think Diablo IV initial price and in-game shop for cosmetics is justified. If, however, we are going to get much better seasons in the future, then I might be wrong.

Another thing about Diablo IV, I am having fun playing as sorceress, but it is mostly because I get to explore the character class I haven't explored as throughfuly yet. What I noticed, regarding the controversial patch is that some people might have a point with difficulty, because on Wolrd Tier IV, I found out I have much harder time staying alive than I did when I played Druid. I am still not sure about it, because one contributing factor might be I get on WTIV while underleveled (character level 64 vs. monsters level 75 and above), with the other factor might be old good git gud scrub.

Ultimately, I think my enjoyment from Diablo IV is deffinitely not because of the season, but because I'm trying new character class, and I like to explore and experience the world of Sanctuary as a whole. I also am trying to avoid playing every day, since I want to experience the game because I want to enjoy it, rather than out of habit.

And finally, Diablo II: Ressurected. I happen to have some footage and screenshots with my Druid run on my PC. I am just to lazy to actualy write down an update. Sorry!

I also know that not many people give a hook about Diablo, when Baldur's Gate III reigns supreme. Have fun, people!

 

[Antimatter]

I'm happy to hear you're having fun in D4. It's never bad to have a few good games, not everyone should play only one game. I'm sure I'll get to D4 later. Your insights help create an opinion about D4, so very appreciated!

 

[mlnevese]

I'm still playing D4. Sometimes I just want to sit on the couch and play or play something together with my wife Also I can have more fun now that my barbarian can give more than 5 steps without needing a healing potion