I feel like MMO genre has created this whole "max level is required before endgame" idea. The idea that you can't be "endgame viable" because you aren't level capped. This idea comes from another idea, one that sounds good on paper, that you get your skills slowly over time as you level. Conversely, in diablo 2, the endgame grind was a whole number of things. Sure, loot was important, but getting to level 99 was a feat reserved for only the most dedicated players (or bots). Heck, you want reasons for players to log in every day? Ways to make them feel like even if they didn't find a GG item that their effort was worth something? The Diablo 2 endgame has that just from continually gaining exp. You don't have to gain a ton from every level up in order to make those levels worth it. Sometimes it's even better to start feeling like your level ups don't matter quite as much, because that naturally shifts the game into the loot or other systems that make a bigger difference.
I usually get bored when a level up isn't worth anything. Then again, that could just mean that the gameplay is not that engaging, but I would rather have a clear goal to work toward in the form of a game changing special ability or something at the end of that grind than just hoping for marginally better equipment. It was the same as grinding for Hellfire rings, I wasn't willing to put in a crap ton of grinding for a mere chance at having that tedious effort rewarded.
Making endgame start at max lvl is just lazy game design. It's much easier to scale the difficulty when 90% of your maps are at the same difficulty level.
I loved the diablo II leveling system. You could reach reasonably fast level 90 at which point your char was mostly finished and you could move on to create a new one and try a new build. And there were lots of builds to try out, so it never really got boring.
" feel like MMO genre has created this whole "max level is required before endgame" idea" I'm not sure that's true. Vanilla WoW, and now Classic WoW proved that leveling can be part of the fun as well.
It's more of a post-WoW MMO thing, since MMOs prior to WoW didn't so much have that thing where the only level that matters is the last. Everquest did somewhat, but it wasn't as much of a hard line.
This is by far your best feedback video in your Improving D4 series! Again.. great work. You can be proud of yourself beeing a part of making sure Blizzard really has to think about their actions during the development process.
Dark souls style mechanics, condensed to a specific dungeon encounter. Example: A very, and progressively more difficult dungeon experience with worthwhile end boss rewards. If you die in the dungeon, you lose everything you've found in the dungeon, and a powerful boss or champion spawns where you died. Instead of all mobs re-spawning like dark souls, a horde of mobs spawn in every time a player dies. And I mean a horde. Effectively setting back progress for everyone in the instance. If a player dies again before killing their corpse/grave champion spawn, the items they dropped are lost forever. Limited potions per life. You have to make difficult choices. Finish the dungeon or retreat with what you have? All of the items gathered need to be decrypted outside of the dungeon. These dungeons could be solo, pve or, pvp. You can try to steal each other's drops and kill each other. People can choose to work together or betray each other ala the dark zone in the division. The idea is to create many variables and outcomes. Chaos, paranoia distrust, loss, victory, memories.
Wow - this video was amazing. I played D2 hardcore exclusively on US East HC for at least 8 years and tapering off over the next few when I went to college but I feel you have your finger on the pulse of what exactly made Diablo 2 great and where those systems could and should have been improved upon in D3/ hopefully for D4 such as the depth D2 had, PoE expanded upon massively and that D3 lacked, etc. Hearing you perfectly described so many of the aspects that made the gear hunt in D2 so great with specific gear examples etc was such an awesome nostalgic blast from the past. The diminishing returns, but still always one incrementally better item out there is the exact point I made while discussing D2 with a friend just earlier today! THE COMMUNITY interaction is such a massive part of what really made that hunt exciting and engaging just as you described meeting random people in chat and the barter that took place. Watching multiple trade requests so I could trade something I had that guy1 wanted for an item i didn't want nor need but I also saw guy2 trading the item I really want for what guy1 was offering and using both of those to my advantage. Anyway, like you I could rant for hours on this topic and you have already done such a nice job here, so I just want to say from one D2 fan to another I feel ya brother and don't think I could agree with you more! I just came across this video but will definitely be checking out the rest in the series, good work, keep it up!
The trading value point really stuck. "one mans trash is another mans treasure" lets gooo blizzard Another great video, i really like the community event idea! Downside is.. if i keep watching all your videos im going to get so hyped with high expectations for this game lol..
Yeah word is they are experimenting with a "Linited trading system." That being most items can be infinitely traded but certain items will have a limited number of times they can be traded
MrSnap If they want to create an open world the need for crafting and trading needs to be there. For example, introduce blacksmithing, tailoring, jewel crafting etc etc. you can only have 1 major prof and 1 minor prof. This will make people create alts to level up professions. Force interaction between players who want weapons armors Rings to be crafted. Create a diverse economy. We’re gold and mats can be traded. This could add so much more interaction between players and add more depth to the game. Do you? Level up to reach set items at level 30? Do you lvl up your professions? Do you farm for better legendaries? Farm mats to craft certain legendaries or sets? Or craft legendaries or sets or weapons and sell them for gold, mats or other items? The possibilities can be endless!
MrSnap haha true. Like in D2 when you get a good amount of mf and drop into low lvl games and just stoke out some people with stuff you don’t want but they desperately want. Makes both parties days
Budget, resource costs, how much would these features convert to money compared to the half assed game that will be launched, all this shit gets evaluated. So many shitty games we have now were AMAZING before launch, but the slowly got shaped as a product by publishers to get more money using less. Diablo 4 will not be different.
And then we might as well call the game Poe 4 instead of Diablo 4. Don't get me wrong I love aspects of PoE but the game allways felt shallow even tho it has a lot of customisation. I don't need another PoE game in diablo universe, blizz needs to find a way to make d4 unique and so good that the guys from PoE want to change the game to be more like d4 not the other way around. Diablo 4 has to inspire again and reshape the entire arpg genre that they pretty much created with d1 and d2. So yeah I agree about the Pillars part but I rly hope they don't copy other games and just make a game the entire arpg genre will revolve around for years to come
@@FrozenTub3 lol poe is infinitely deeper than d3 and also deeper than d2. not hating on d2 at all, i mean im comparing an odl game that isnt updated anymore with content to a modern game which is still updated. but u get my point
@@ynsmdd8678 I know its deeper, I played it quite a lot as well but a lot of the items,systems feel boring. A lot of thisgs for the sake of having more things is not allways for the better. And the gameplay past lvl 80 is boring, you either one shot the entire screen or some random combination of affixes one shot you. I love playing till like level 80ish, sometimes maybe close to 90 and then I usually start a new toon cuz I am bored. It shouldn't be like that, and I hope d4 will not be like that.
One distinct thing about d2 was the light sprinkling of world puzzles, like Tal Rasha’s Tombs, Tristram Stones, etc., which was not there at all in D3. The thing about these is that they were known by everyone but still created a small moment where you would stop and think about something asymmetrically from the grind. Something similar in D4 could be like a dungeon only being accessible while it’s raining at a specific location, or after a mob bleeds over some object, or after X conditions are met. Like Tristram stones, the sequence is random and discovered by doing other content. RNG in the open world through systems like this could dictate and change what’s available to you in a specific way, adding an additional element of discovery and more reason to play, as well as add value to certain builds/classes (like in my above example, druids could access a rain-gate at anytime since they can cause it to rain). Asymmetrically designing classes like this makes them feel better and makes the game funner.
Hahaha, ya, I remember when D2 launched tho i don't think it was to heavily like that. People were trading rares and everything at the Trading Post games. I miss that old school battle.net style
Mac Derpson If they want to create an open world the need for crafting and trading needs to be there. For example, introduce blacksmithing, tailoring, jewel crafting etc etc. you can only have 1 major prof and 1 minor prof. This will make people create alts to level up professions. Force interaction between players who want weapons armors Rings to be crafted. Create a diverse economy. We’re gold and mats can be traded. This could add so much more interaction between players and add more depth to the game. Do you? Level up to reach set items at level 30? Do you lvl up your professions? Do you farm for better legendaries? Farm mats to craft certain legendaries or sets? Or craft legendaries or sets or weapons and sell them for gold, mats or other items? The possibilities can be endless!
@@joseherrera4840 I see where your hearts at but i truly believe this might be a little too much for this game. That idea pretty much sounds like the game would have to convert it self to a heavy MMO like status. Make no mistake tho, im not saying your idea is bad, but, the heart and soul of diablo games has always been in the hunt for a better upgrade. If anything, i would really like the idea that only sets can be crafted if you find the plans to them, kind of like how d3 had it.
In addition about keyed dungeon affixes just a thought: Rolled affixes on keyed dungeons: (20:08) affect the loot that drops. For example; high hp monster affix, Has an increased chance of dropping items with +vit / +hp
I just want the game to have as much replayability as possible. I want super rare loots that don't grant my characters any power at all but because they are rare, I should be excited about getting them. D3 gives me none of that. Runewords in D2 of course helps with that greatly. I want to be able to make and use super dumb builds that can get through the 'normal' endgame (like Hell Baal in D2). I believe that, for a RPG like D2, if all builds break the game, it's a good game. The current skill point system in D4 doesn't help at all. I want to have an impactful combat system that allows me to have long fights with bosses. Dodging attacks from bosses is something that feel satisfying to do. Both D2 and PoE do this very well (for PoE, not counting the super uber boss fights, just to Kitava). I also don't want enemies to just melt because I raise my hands in their vicinity, that's just weird.
preach! anyway, it almost feels like pre d3 release all over again... the long time arpg players/d2 veterans telling them devs why their direction of game design is flawed and offer lots of ideas and explanations how to do better (and those devs act like they listen)... but ultimately they keep doing what they did in the first place and all the casuals and firsttimers be like "wait till its released" "have faith" "they got this" ...and then we end with the shitshow called d3 (tbf over the years it has become a "decent" game, but not worthy to be called diablo and not a good arpg at all, its a decent arcade-hack&slay).
@@realitycheck908 bro^^ what are u talking about? picking on my last sentence while ignoring everything prior to that... to me personally d3 was a crap game and i touched it exactly 2 times (release and when RoS got released)... objectively speaking tho its a decent arcade-hack&slay that can be entertaining for some ppl (not for me tho). learn to read edit: phew... getting called a casual actually triggered my inner ~25k hour d2/8k hour PoE arpg nerd... come at me m8, we meet outside of tristram :D be ready to get roflstomped 50:0
@@realitycheck908 first off, decent =/= good... then i called d3 a "decent" arcade-hack&slay which implies 2 things... 1. decent in quotation means its actually not even that. 2. on top i called the father of ARPG games (the diablo frenchise - in this case d3) a arcade-hack&slay, which is an insult by it self. but i see u just misunderstood me :) we are on the same team.. i will still get u for that casual line :D have a nice day
I like that having the best items not tradable so you can't go out and buy the best gear you have to earn it for an example I spend like 40+ hours farming for a certain item and all you do is either trade for that item or someone gives it to you do what took me 40+ hours to get you spent 5 mins to buy it
I want to add to the point you made about people watching the top level content even tho they may never do it I played runescape for some time, never in any way competetively but I still tuned in to those end-game raid bosses, and there were thousands of people watching these streams even tho it was something that required hundreds of hours to get to and I'm sure this happens in WoW too, you were spot on about people looking for goals or even just wanting to see what it's like to play the game "for real"
I think pvp should be the end game.. this is the absolute best endgame, it was the endgame in d2 for sure (people leveling to high levels usually did so for advantages in pvp)
I agree with you but I also liked a lot PvP while leveling like in WoW vanilla and Dark Souls which are the two other game that I had a tons of fun doing PvP outside of D2.
This is a brilliantly articulated and researched video. I'm a diehard D2 fan from the days of yore, and I 110% agree with everything you say. From the sounds of the devs, it seems like they really want to make D4 what D3 should have always been, but it's thanks to people like you to keep them on that track. My hat off to you, sir.
MrLlama for President!! Ok, maybe not for president but definitely for D4 dev team! I played a ton of D2, and till today i prefer D2 over D3, without a doubt, mainly because of all the arguments you gave in this series. I agree with you a 100% in everything! About D3, one thing that made me play for a little bit more was the challenges (i.e.: finding all the monsters, killing x monster under some time, killing bosses without being hit, ...). The problem was that every time i got closer of completing them Blizz added a lot more that were almost impossible to complete and/or nonsense. But it was a cool feature overall. Thanks for the videos!
itemization is the key for this game we call Diablo series. D2 is the father of the series showing us the way. Is not World of worcraft! Diablo 4 looks really nice but the items looks so Diablo 3 style, i dont like it at all. Ofc there is no qeustion witch diablo is the best in itemization style, its obvious. And i dont really understand why no stats points, no lvl req and durability, and unlimited trades. Make no sense. Blizzard can have a really top game just following the d2 itemization style with more adds more balance and a game play of our era. Just hire Llama this guy is a book of knowledge.
Could you please elaborate more on your Diminishing Returns chart? I feel like Diablo 3's loot already functions that way with the 80% mark being the completion of your set and supporting items, 98% being the optimisation of those items, and the remaining 2% or so coming from Primal Ancient Legendaries Great video! Just wanted a bit more details on the above
for example if you put 100%mf on, it's worth 80%mf, if you have 200% mf, it's worth 140% in reality. gamepedia.cursecdn.com/diablo_gamepedia/9/95/MF_Graph.jpg?version=cdac965777efd1ee9eb58c5bb4cd591a other example: armor increase (shout) or faster cast increase +20%. 20% increase is nice. But once you reach 120%, +20% increase will only boost 8% more. Because it's 20% of the base, not +20% of your current speed. It's a mechanic comparable to diminishing returns.
As soon as I saw "boss gauntlet" on your outline, I was on fire. That sounds like a really cool idea. I remember when I had the boss-mod for D2 where you would leave the Rogue encampment and instantly run into Andy^^ But this could be awesome, like a "dungeon" on its own. Going through the bosses in random order, and the farther you get, the harder the bosses become, and you can train yourself with their mechanics while they become ever more deadly to test your character's AND your own limit as a player. I love it!
Discovered your channel when I heard of D4 announcement and I must say I hope Blizzard watches these videosd and takes alot away from them. Great ideas overall for stuff to be in the game. The value of perfect items vs one stat off is huge like items that have 2-3 variable buffs 3/3 perfect that item is worth 5x the value of that same item with 2/3 perfect and that would be 2x as valuable as one stat perfect etc, it's what made the grind worth it, even the runewords in D2 were kind of the same way.
I was actually thinking about this earlier. What was great about building a character in Diablo 2 was the fact that making choices meant giving something up to get something. Every character was the character that you wanted it to be and that made it truly unique to you.
I like what you said at about 10 minutes about watching. For example, when I watch you I play Diablo 2. I just put your videos on while I play. For example, I’m right now working on a new char while you play in the background.
Lead developer Zaven said you would choose to run or salvage dungeon keys. I suggest you can choose to save keys and combine their affixes. You could combine multiple keys together and create a "Uber" dungeon and make it much more difficult and rewarding.
THANK YOU SO MUCH for making these cool and engaging videos, @MrLlamaSC! I really hope the devs are taking some sort of inspiration on all the work and thoughts you put into Diablo 4. The Diablo community deserves vocal front figures like you to represent the players' perspectives. :)
I like 21:25. Talking about leaderboards for # of completed dungeons. Having a static amount of difficulties is great too. It could also be similar to PoE's map system. You want a Tier 4 Key for this dungeon? Well the only way to get it is by running T3 Keys, and to get T3, you gotta do T2, etc. Make it so the more dungeons you complete, the higher chance you getting a higher tier key like PoE does with it's maps. Have a Tier 0 key that can drop anywhere that can be used on any dungeon. So you can gather up ten T0 Keys, to try to grind to the T1 keys for a specific dungeon. Tons of grind, but tons replayability!
I think cosmetic rewards can tie a lot of the end game content together for the community. Things like achievement-specific account titles or mount cosmetics can signal to other players "I actually did this end game thing. I didn't just trade for this item." Whether that achievement be gathering a bunch of crafting mats, doing X number of different mythic dungeons on Y difficulty, completing a boss gauntlet (or getting the fastest time on the leaderboard for your class), there's a lot of room to allow various players to flaunt their achievements. I think this can also promote a lot of community engagement. Things like "Holy shit! The guy with [X title/cosmetic that represents a #1 spot on some sort of leaderboard] just ran through town!"
He gave a point that we should be able to show off our gear to others and I can't agree more. I always missed that in PoE and D3. In D2 there was the battle.net lobby (chat channel), or in WoW there was IF, Org, Shattrath or Dalaran (I haven't played beyond WotLK.) What's also cool in D2 is that HC characters were distinguished on the chat channel with their red name, unique title and ofcourse their action pose which made them that much cooler!
Thank you for this Mr Llama, i hope both Chris Wilson and Shely see this for insight into how to improve in the ARPG genre. One thing i would definitely add to this list is something to make sub communities(clans, groups, guilds, whatever) more meaningful. i feel like in both D3 and PoE, i don't feel like i'm really *helping* my clan by doing content, or collaborating much, outside of just chat, or sharing loot, etc. Would be great to have incentive to grow your clan by completing certain tasks/weeklies/dungeons/etc to give the clan new perks, or abilities. Similar to user-level achievements/awards/trophies, to have clan-level achievement brings a lot to the replayability and sense of community!
You have/gather so much creative ideas, so nice to hear. 100% agreed on what you said. I was thinking about the PvP leaderboard the other day. What if they would do something with ears ? Like, you kill someone, and you get 1ear + you steal x% of his. It would reward killing good PvP players. Getting 500 ears at the end of the season = this trophy, 1000 ears = this PvP voiceline/emote, getting 5000 = your footsteps leave blood, etc.
Great video and 100% love the fact that someone mentions the points on PvP and thinking in exactly the way as i do! Love it. I am actually a LoL player kind of person but love the Diablo Lore and stuff, i loved D3 to the point where it had nonsense to keep grinding when the only thing you could get was just a higher +1 stat on the same set item or so, so i got bored. What i always had as an idea or what i would've liked is that like you said pvp and pve kinda connects with the grinding for items so i me as kinda of a competetive person in outplaying other players or stuff had an intention to grind to the late game for my PvP gear and test with other players. So for me as a kind of Player i would love to have a good PvP System ( you could argue that if i like pvp and stuff why dont i just play LoL but i love the diablo style and lore and beeing able to have PvP in there with PvE and that Lore and Style and stuff would be just one hell of a good game. Just my thoughts btw
Hey, Here’s my take on Endgame // Replay-ability. This is just my personal opinion, not me saying THIS IS HOW IT SHOULD BE! Ideas and personal opinions, that’s all. The state of Diablo3: One thing that I found in Diablo 3 was that it truly lacked good endgame content and replay-ability. It takes between 1h to 3hours to level from 1-70, this is way too fast and specially an issue since there is no character customization/Building/Sacrifices to be made, it’s simply something you have to get out of the way so that you can unlock everything your class has to offer at level 70 in skills/skill-runes. at level 70 you pretty much gets handed a set which lets you explode in power… within the first 10-15hours of the season start you got all the other sets, uniques you need to be able to build all the other builds as well… what is there then left? Gaining perfect rolls on your items, Augments(Statboost on your gear) And finally but not least, the eternal unsatisfying paragon farming to be able to grind higher level greater rifts or perhaps compete on the leaderboard top 10 if you like to farm paragon against the bots out there. 😊.. So paragon/infinite scaling greater rifts is pretty much the endgame of Diablo 3. Unique builds & Sacrifices along the way: In Diablo 3 you don’t have to make ANY sacrifices on your character, once you hit level 70 you have all skills/runes unlocked and you can switch at will, so once you have leveled for example a wizard.. you don’t ever have to level another wizard(till next season.) One of the big reasons I play ARPGs is to create unique builds I find fun, which involves making sacrifices and hard choices to make your build flourish and come together into something that is amazing/fun… or trash and then you try again. This is some of the things I hope to see. Talents: I hope there is going to be a massive amount of engaging cool talents where you have to make sacrifices or hard choices, where you won’t be able to unlock everything, just a set amount. And in case you do mistakes there should be a few options(expensive options) to remove a few points to try and make it work. A bit like in Path of exile.. not that it should be as big or complex as PoE, but each class could have it’s own talent tree. Skills: I really hope you don’t just get all skills handed to you or are able to unlock all skills to your class through “Skill tomes” as they stated in their Q&A. I hope you have to make skill choices. Skill modifications: This is something I find extremely important, this will create a huge amount of variation in builds in the playerbase and make your character/build seem unique to the other players you meet out in sanctuary or friends you team up with to fight monsters. This can be done in many ways, through talents, skill runes, support gems, uniques, sets. What if we had skill trees for each skill?, lets say you choose to use a fireball in your build, then you get a skilltree for your fireball skill, like your class talent tree where you can choose “Skill talents” that modifies the way your fireball skill work? That combined with unique items that modifies your skills would create a massive amount of possibilities to create unique and fun builds that truly feel unique and special. Allowing players to create special and unique builds adds a lot of replay-ability to the game. Seasons: Seasons/Leagues or whatever you want to call them also gives a lot of replay-ability and keeps players around, but there needs to be changes to the game each league, this is something GGG does really well with Path of Exile where they add new uniques, game modes and so on to each League, if they find them a success they let them stay in the next leagues.. which keeps new content coming. To be able to sustain and do this however I feel like Blizzard need to find a way to get continues revenue in on Diablo 4.. even if this comes down to MTX/Cosmetic sales a subscription or something. This needs to be done for a business to justify keeping developers around working on the game between each season. (Absolutely no “Pay for Power”!) Races: Would it be interesting to create smaller seasons/leagues where we have races? who reaches the furthest within 5hours-10hours-24hours-48hours-1week? Who gets to the last boss and kill it first? Who reaches max level first? Rewards? An accomblishment/Mark on your profile? I would love these kinds of races. :) GreaterRifts/Dungeons/Endgame monster killing: I hope they come with a good variety of endgame monster killing options, so that it doesn’t end up in a way so that greater rifts/Infinite scaling dungeon is truly the only way to progress and if you are doing it any other way then you are truly missing out on progress for your character. I like the idea around the Mythic+ kind of key they have talked about. It should just not be the end all be all, the game should move you towards other places/Dungeons/whatever it might be to progress your character. To end this post I would like to state that I like that they are looking towards their older games D1, D2 and D3 for what they did well to try and build on that in D4. However I also really hope they keep an eye on the competitors out there like Path of Exile(4.0 coming up) Lost Ark( I know this is more of an MMO), Grim Dawn and so on.. even last epoch and wolcen eventhough they are not really released. They all individually add something special and cool to the genre which could be great ideas/concepts for the future of Diablo 4.. A lot has happened in the ARPG genre over the years, specially after Blizzard created the iconic Diablo 2. My 2cents, please take this as my personal opinions and not me trying to state that there are no other way, everyone has their own right to their opinions 😊 /UbiNax
pillar 6: immersive atmosphere, not sacrificed by such things as arial fonts, blinking monsters on hit or yellow/blue tinted unique monsters for gameplay accessibility
I think the local trading in an open world could be a spam Fiesta in the chat. I think if zones for trading were divided by class it could make unique areas for certain class trades. So barbarian trades in zone 1 and druid trades in zone 2, etc. That somewhat groups items together by class but doesn't mean you wouldn't see a sorc in the barb area trading for their alt.
Loved your presentation. Hope Blizz devs take you and their community seriously. I played D2 a lot when I was a teenager, loved it. After that, I crossed to Baldurs Gate and kinda never came back. One thing you touched that has a huge potential for improvement is Secure Online Economy. I believe developing it on the Etherium Blockchain and everything that goes with it would be a major gamechanger. Imagine truly owning your items or whichever other digital assets where you put 1000s of hours+ electricity+your own skill to find a (1/100 in the world) unique item, certain valuable content or even digital community where you actually can make a living by trading it on the decentralized marketplace that can't be hacked and actually making a living by participating in this huge economy that is built on decentralized networks. I'm very excited about the prospects of merging the gaming with this new technology and I'm interested in what are your thoughts on that. Here is one useful article for people who are new to the Blockchain Gaming Technology and what it can offer: www.altcoinbuzz.io/blockchain-gaming/blockchain-game-reviews/blockchain-gaming-and-crypto-items-will-be-huge-heres-why/
Awesome video, i hope D4 devs are humble enough to listen to your feedback. Not saying they need to implement your ideas but i'm pretty sure you are offering a view they didnt have before (based on the demo).
You make the BEST Diablo content. I really like your approach of looking at stats and weighting important properties.You know what makes theese kind of games good. Too bad BLIZZARD lost their knowlegde or willing to make games in such a high quality. It is like they have the knowledge to make a 90-99% game, but sacrifice 10% - 20 % for profit. I am so tired of those profit descisions that lower the quality of games. I am from Germany and our good export market is based on quality for a fair price. IT WORKS! Offer best quality possible and let people pay the price thats worth it. It is so simple. I am afraid most game companies those days need very hard punishment for selling those crappy microtransactions, streamlined, dumbed down games made for the casual gamer. Growing up in the 90`s and early 2k`s I am shocked about how the game industry changed. That beeing said: DO NOT BY LOW QUALITY GAMES. DEMAND THE BEST FOR YOUR MONEY LIKE IT WAS USED TO BE SOME YEARS AGO.
When it comes to trade "Hubs", great example is ESO trading system when trading guilds need to bid for trader and profit from sales in order to do so. One of best community driven trade systems imo.
There should be NO limited-time events, ergo limited-time rewards/achievements associated with said events. Everything added to the game should ALWAYS be accessible, regardless of the player being able to consume the content on day 1 or several months later. I'm so fed up with games where the rarest and coolest events occur while I'm on a business trip, in the hospital, having a prolonged internet outage etc.
I disagree. As long as limited time events do not offer any power they can be cool. There are a lot of things that just don't work long term and just become stale and abandoned, but when done as a short event they become memorable. And if the rewards are cosmetic/achievements, then you don't really miss out much if you can't participate, but it's great experience for people who can. And these events can keep community alive for a very long time. I think the best example was PoE Royale on april fools day. No one expected it to be real and I think if it was made permanent without any changes - it would've been dead in a month with tons of people complaining about a lot of different things, it'd require constant attention to keep it alive with fixes, changes etc. But as a one time event it was wonderful and people still remember it.
The ideas regarding the puzzles for the players to discover and solve together is absolutely great. The ideas regarding donating stuff (for a specific purpose) is absolutely great. The ideas about seasons in general feels very strange to me. I feel like if there's new elements (items, dungeons etc.) releasing every new season, doesn't that immediately take away alot of focus from implementing the really important pieces to the base game, the things that will determine the games longevity for example? Let's say that there's new items dropping every new season, isn't that taking away a bit of focus from what we all think is necessary? The chance to grind for loot. What I mean is that the base selection of gear/items/loot will be smaller (to small?) if the focus is on seasons and the progression you can make in seasons with the new items. Also, seasons might take away the overall relaxed chilled feeling about the game. The focus shifts alot when these things are being implented in a game, especially if they are being implemented to the core of the game.
Hi Mr Llama, Long one incoming! Listening to this, and the long talk with Chris Wilson one thing that really stood out to me is something I always considered a wasted opportunity (in that no-one really does this with their environment), and that is using environment to actually effect the game. Specifically I am referring time of day / the weather, I think it would be incredibly cool to be running through a map it's 7:32, the sun in the game set's at 7:32, so I'm 4% more likely to get a dusk monster, then in my zone it starts RAINING! that means it's 12% more likely that I'll encounter a swamp style monster. OH MAN, It's Raining AND dusk, that means I might hit Boss DuskSwampy. The neat thing being that DuskSwampy has a 4% chance to drop my BIS Ammy which is +shadow damage and - enemy water resist!!!
This would then allow situations where zones which were typically hot, get a cold snap / frost / fog hit it and all the sudden General chat would blow up: GUYS, Sector 12 is hitting rain!!! EVERYONE GO TO Sector 12 because DuskSwampy might be spawning, or a previously un-accessible instance could appear. This would be cool because then an AWESOME mini-event is happening not because it's timed (oh the world event is starting because it's 7:45 on a Friday), or because someone sold a SOJ, but PURELY random, which is what ARPG's are, you sometimes just...Hit that circumstance where it's a frost level, but for some reason a Fire started there and an ultra-rare fire monster spawned in the frost zone.
This would do multiple things in that it would foster a community, when these events happen people would congregate into these areas, AND to that you would have zones that people normally hate going to, becoming valuable if they littered these unpopular areas with hidden aspects.
Loving the videos. Keep them coming. I thought some cool ideas could be: PVP with an optionally higher cost/wager (if you die you drop a random item - owch!). What about horse racing? That sounds like an awesome idea with lots of optional variants. Or how about world bosses that attack towns and villages and kill the npc's until you get there and take them out. This could stop you from accessing quests or merchants until you defeat them and revive the NPC's with potions or something. I like the idea of elite mobs with more than simple frozen orb, fire chain affixes. But how about tactical mobs that have a sniper bunker that hits you from up on top of one of those cliffs and you've got to climb it and deal with monsters that shove you off the cliff and stuff like that? What about mobs that drain your resources (mana, fury, spirit) and get stronger the more you generate? What about monsters that seduce you based on your gender? What about monsters that steal an item off you and make themselves stronger with it? What about permanently invisible monsters that you have to guess where they'll be? What about monsters that reduce your light radius dramatically? What about monsters that heal if you hit them with a certain type of damage? What about monsters that confuse your directions so that your inputs for movement are reversed and you start moving in the wrong direction? Lets get creative D4 developers!
WE NEED STATIC DIFFICULTY LEVELS. Static difficulty levels add a better feel for monster strength distribution & monster hierachy in the game. Monster strength always proportional to player strength does damage to monster identities. Sometimes the player just shouldnt be able to kill certain bosses without leveling first! Content patches could include new areas with stronger monsters. MAKE-ME-BLEED. "Something like magic-find or increased-gold we want to do, so right now we have them in gems, but what we don't like is when they compete against damage affixes" - David Kim, Blizzcon 2019. I think thats a bad decision, David! Compromises are actually really important and add flavor and depth to the game. This applies to itemization as well as player skills/attributes. I'd like to remind you of great items with negative item stats like "Goetterdammerung" in D1 or "Andariel's Visage in D2". The world of Diablo is a hostile place, why should items be excluded from that hostility?! There could even be a whole new item category "cursed items" - items with insane stats, but also great disadvantages. TRANSMOG RUINS ITEM-IDENTITIES. Players shouldnt be able to change the overall look of items. Each unique item could have a certain amount of different skins. The standard skin you get when you find the item in-game, and additional skins players can afford in store. This would be a good monetization scheme. EMBRACE THE BRAIN. Dont make players feel too comfortable. Let them have to think. I dont want funky green symbols which tell me that an item is better than the other one. Item stats should have more stats to them than Attack and Defense. VISCERAL=YES HAPTIC=NO? The most important moments of item-finding in Diablo are the discovery itself ... and the act of identifying. Click-scroll-click-item actions are simple, but important. The "clumsy" handling of scrolls and potions add a haptic, "earth-bound" aspect to the game (I dont like the transcendental TP- ID- style of D3). It would do the overall "visceral" feeling of D4 a great favor. ENDLESS LEGENDARY LOOP Break the item categories down to a few, (e.g. Normal Magic Rare and Unique). Many item categories soften the impact and importance the seperate categories. There should be some uniques which are really unique. Please let players find a lot of dirt in dirty Sanctuario and make a unique-find something really unique. LET US TRADE EVERYTHING. Free trade is a major aspect of the freedom many players felt in Diablo II. Also: Do you know how bad it feels to find a super rare items twice, if you arent allowed to trade it? Its going straight to waste.
@@mrsnap7097 i really wish they listen, my hopes are prettly low though. everything points towards simplicity/d3.5. they dont seem to want a classic arpg ala d2
+1 to local trade. It would be great to keep it regional or local. Both RL and in game. I used to LOVE playing Hardcore for the trading! We were a small trade community who liked different things out of the game, like plus vitality and resistance items often overlooked now had more value for us. Imagine being in Scosglen and you want to find a better weapon because now you're struggling a bit. Go to the local trade town that is full of heroes trading gear rather than merchants who sell nothing good. Maybe there are different stands or buildings you can enter. Some have weapon signs above the doors, others have amulets etc etc. You enter the building you want and see a few shoppers and 10 different stands of weapons. These stands can be costing a character gold per hour, but he is farming near by anyway. it's a way someone locally can basically share their stash view to advertise his trade items while he is clearing content in the background anyways. I want his axe, so I make an offer and he agrees to meet for a transaction. I pick the place and murder him for his axe!! Jk.. but yes I do like the thought of local and there are a lot of ways you can make trading more interesting then spamming general chat or AH Furthermore let's say you make X amount of fair transactions in that local town, maybe you get promoted to "regional Baron" where you only pay a fraction of the trade fee now. That way it rewards those people who only want to play the trading game
What i also liked about d2 was that lvl 99 was so incredibly hard to reach I never actually did it - it was end game content that you did not need to complete the story, but had to grind hard to reach it. Since max lvl I have ever reached was like 95 or 96, I always felt like there is still some area to play and try even harder not to die, not to loose experience etc
I love the idea of the community's efforts directly unlocking new content. Would be so cool if they could tie the reason into something lore based as well.
A good season idea would be to have one or two dungeons scale past the 5 level max to like 10-15 to see how far you could push it. Where 10(15) would be almost mathematically impossible, unless you have basically the perfect gear and build to do it. Reward being and dungeon done past 5 would give 50% chance or something at dropping double craft mats or an extra item. And doing the max level 10-15 would give an absurd reward like guaranteed quad items or guaranteed mythic or w.e
Idea: Crafting recipes that UNDO the binding that an item has, so it can be equipped after a trade. Bound items are cheaper, because you have to do the unbinding recipe yourself. This replaces a sales-tax effect that would be used to keep the economy from exploding too fast. High-tier items could consume other high-tier items in the unbinding. Also possible: Partial bindings. The items binds to a player on equip, but also to other players who share a random hidden attribute. This creates some open sub-economies while leveraging the unbinding recipe as a sort of shipping-cost. There could also be recipes that permanently or temporarily change a character's binding attribute. The binding attribute would have to be preserved across character rerolls, to prevent reroll-scumming.
Amazing video MrLLama. I hope D4 developers watch this and learn something from it. I know it might not be much, but I'd like to give you some feedback on the video. In my opinion, the endgame is directly related to the emotions of the player, that the player feels motivated to do something and that, from time to time, finds rewards that encourage him to continue playing, without feeling that he has reached the end of the goal. Having said that, I understand that the biggest obstacle is frustration. My concern about what you've said here is about making things difficult to achieve. What I mean is that a player like me, who has other obligations: work, family, etc., who can only dedicate x hours to the game and who would like to play more, may feel frustrated if season after season is losing unlockable content just because they couldn't dedicate enough hours to the game. In other words, what incentive can a season have for a player with a limited time to play them if they knows they will never be able to finish them, in the sense of getting all the unlockable benefits of the season? I think you need to be careful not to set goals that are too unfathomable, with time intervals that are too demanding, or the player who finds himself in a situation similar to mine may feel frustrated and abandon him. But this I don't mean that should be easy, of course, just that they have to find a sweet spot. D2 sweet spot. I understand that I seem to be referring to a very particular personal situation, but I think players who can devote infinite hours to the game are not the majority. Maybe they are and I am a minority, I don't know, maybe it even don't care to the purpouse of what I am saying. In any case, thank you for the video and devote your time and effort to trying to make D4 the game we all hope it will be.
Great end game ideas. Like global (server ) events. Make items meaningfull. Great shako reference. I would like to keep "secret rushing tech" like D2 act 2 skip and uber lv rush, only so few can do. Keep it dark. Duriel and butcher used to scared me
Humble intro there but honestly with the credit you earned in the speedrunning community over the years I think you very much are an authority on arpgs and even though you can't expect them to see this I still think they should. Few people know their own game better than you and after diablo 3 and immortal I'm pretty sure that includes their own team so there's definitely something for them to take away from this be it some new idea's or some proper balance decisions. Thankfully they seem much more open about feedback on this one though so we'll find out NotEvenSoonTM.
I want to see more opportunities to roleplay and get players to have a more active role in world building and player quests. Like someone crafts and needs a bunch of items. In a local town or a reclaimed camp someone can then post a quest for crafting materials on a board and someone can grab that quest and fulfill it. Maybe NPC quests also appear and people locally signup for them and when another person joins a party is created for it. It would give people a a reason to explore the world seeing where people need help and if quest are popping up that requires a party.
With all these positive advice towards a better D4 i just pray and hope Blizzard is taking it to their heart. If they do care for feedback, they should be ready to take some of their layouts back to step 1.
Super late to this party, but one more player type which maybe is an overlap of different ones you mentioned: the completionist. Personally, I love to play a game to do all the things in the game, which means whatever there is to do that is worth doing that gets me some meaningful feeling of accomplishment, that stuff I love. I love achievements and collecting things, whether items, or fully playing characters, or experiencing highest levels of boss fights or gameplay. I love a game that is challenging enough to make this a fight and gives that real sense of accomplishment, and has lots of that content that doesn’t feel JUST like stupid grinding, though a bit of that isn’t bad. I’d love to see an expansive achievement and collection system that could include elements of the lore and story, cosmetics, gear, characters, and gameplay experiences - timed challenges, high difficulty, high complexity, etc. As far as achievements go, I really dislike ones which depend on playing a certain way by default - playing in a co-op game, playing hardcore, etc. - which outside a few of these gets annoying if you dislike that playstyle. Some things in any game you only experience in a group, I get it, but D4 should make almost everything available to single player only - which it seems like they are doing. Also, donation or work-toward community goals reminds me of Ann Qiraj in WoW vanilla, I’d like to see cooperation and potentially group based competition and cooperation that you’d have to take part in that is meaningful
hey mrllama i love your videos i just had a really great idea for dungeons make dungeons have 3 grades : NORMAL NIGHTMARE HELL maybe 4th INFERNO with that you wouldnt have an infinite grind and if tuned correctly and hell be like superhard real endgame this could be real fun + you can bring back our OG difficulties
One of the most sure fire way to increase replayability is still PERMANENT choices. D2 made you experiment with the same hero with different stats and skill trees by forcing you to make new characters. Another important thing missing in D3 was the power of elements. E.g Resistance to Fire, and Fire imbued damage, changes your character, your build and how you can be specialised in certain mobs or certain affixes and why the game can skew certain areas where you are USEFUL in parties and you have a some sort of value added into the group. When D3 made all weapons the same, all elements the same, everyone just find the best damage in weapons, the game becomes bland with no identity for your character because everyone else around you can do the same. Sure some hardcore gamers say they want solo, they don't like grouping, that's fine, just create the system to lock the best items that will only drop for groups, where difficulty would increase exponentially, and more affixes appear on unique mobs, like immune to cold, immune to physical but the rewards are higher than if you decide to solo.
I agree. Bind on anything ruins value. Best part of Diablo was low drop rate not bound to player items. Also, when they when from 8 player games down to 4 player games the experience diminished. Trade rooms, or group leveling made you feel part of a community. Diablo 3 felt more like a solo game than a multi player game. I would find myself creating a game just to run rifts at my current torment level. There was no " I'm looking for a cow game to join so I can reach level 40 so I can move on to a new difficulty". Or, "I'm looking for a hell rush so I can reach chaos sanctuary and level to 60 for Baal runs". Rushing people was a way I made a living (in game items usually for forge runes) so I had currency to trade for better items. I'd say bring back larger player rooms and unbind items. Let me look for trist runs to get level 15. Let me find tomb runs for level 20. Give me a sense of community!
One point on trophies: you ought to have a few slots to display your best trophies, or something like that, and not a list with all the trophies you missed from seasons you weren't playing greyed out as a permanent trigger for your completionist desires.
In your point on power gain, you talked about small incremental gain from items apposed to extreme gain. I could swear I've heard blizz devs, not exactly sure who, talking about how players saw that as a negative aspect in enjoying finding items and overall considered that a negative. However, im assuming that concept applies to their games that don't include those other factors like trading/fixed power scaling.
I feel poe does really well in pretty much all of the things your end game content slides say. The only thing is that I play PS4 and yes there is less of a community because we suffer bad lag issues n blue screen problems when playing anything other than solo... We have to build differently to pc in order to play with friends in order to play without any great lag or crash issues... But I have a group of friends who I play with/hang in chat with and even if playing solo we always jump into a friends game to give each other gear/currency if to help each other finish challenges or difficult maps/bosses or helping one another by doing their labs for their new chars if their char isn't quite capable yet. I never feel stifled for choice of builds which is important for me which as u mentioned was poorly done in d3 but amazing in d2... I had one of almost every build thinkable in d2 at some point even full meme builds that are not truly viable but still fun. Yes the passive tree in poe is daunting at first and scared crap out of me so I religiously followed a guide... But it didn't take too long for me to say hell with the streamers and went my own way, no guide just my own understanding and am happy to say my build has my own choices in the passive tree, gems, items and have done all content including getting my wings this league even though I spent 2 weeks away on holiday mid league. I played d3 because I love diablo games n have done since d1 came out but due to certain circumstances PS4 is my only option for gaming and when poe came out that was the end of my d3 days even though I was competitive in wd class with my highest being top 15 solo grift one season. D3 is so lacking compared to poe and the changes poebrang in this league with the master missions building up have given even more customization to end game content allowing u to do what end game content you want n when. I have high hopes for d4 but am worried that when it comes out n I buy it (cuz I def will) I won't play it for long before going back to poe... Blizzard has to work hard to get me back from GGG..... poe is just that good imo
It would be nice if D4 can include rune words that are created randomly. Meaning whoever created a new rune word in either 2-6 sockets items, got to keep it the perfect stats. It can be remake again in 1 in 5000 or more chance. The new rune words will now bear the name of character that created it.
There are other, equally valid perspectives on what Diablo 4 should be. But this video series is the one I identify with the most so far. Hopefully Blizzard will do an internal showing of these videos during a meeting somewhere down the line.
![[GUIDE] FINDING RUNES - Diablo 2 Resurrected](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/GV_zNk2C3hQ/mqdefault.jpg)
![[GUIDE] FINDING RUNES - Diablo 2 Resurrected](/img/tr.png)
![[Live] : ONE FIGHT NIGHT 26 วันนี้!! “คริสเตียน vs อาลิเบก”](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/UlIiZ3t8nHQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Thanks so much for putting the time and effort into giving this great feedback that represents a lot of d2 players like myself.
Agreed.. some streamers are supporting mtx and no crafting for Pete's sake
I WISH that Diablo 4 devs could see this... like, hopefully
I WISH they actually adressed it.
they obviously see it
There's a better way, him becoming a part of Blizzard crew as [End] In-Game Systems Director xD
@@realitycheck908 its not the same team
@burbon Are you an idiot? What makes it obvious that they see it.....?
Man you are our voice for D4. Keep it up ma
I feel like MMO genre has created this whole "max level is required before endgame" idea. The idea that you can't be "endgame viable" because you aren't level capped. This idea comes from another idea, one that sounds good on paper, that you get your skills slowly over time as you level.
Conversely, in diablo 2, the endgame grind was a whole number of things. Sure, loot was important, but getting to level 99 was a feat reserved for only the most dedicated players (or bots). Heck, you want reasons for players to log in every day? Ways to make them feel like even if they didn't find a GG item that their effort was worth something? The Diablo 2 endgame has that just from continually gaining exp. You don't have to gain a ton from every level up in order to make those levels worth it. Sometimes it's even better to start feeling like your level ups don't matter quite as much, because that naturally shifts the game into the loot or other systems that make a bigger difference.
I usually get bored when a level up isn't worth anything. Then again, that could just mean that the gameplay is not that engaging, but I would rather have a clear goal to work toward in the form of a game changing special ability or something at the end of that grind than just hoping for marginally better equipment. It was the same as grinding for Hellfire rings, I wasn't willing to put in a crap ton of grinding for a mere chance at having that tedious effort rewarded.
Making endgame start at max lvl is just lazy game design. It's much easier to scale the difficulty when 90% of your maps are at the same difficulty level.
I loved the diablo II leveling system. You could reach reasonably fast level 90 at which point your char was mostly finished and you could move on to create a new one and try a new build. And there were lots of builds to try out, so it never really got boring.
" feel like MMO genre has created this whole "max level is required before endgame" idea"
I'm not sure that's true. Vanilla WoW, and now Classic WoW proved that leveling can be part of the fun as well.
It's more of a post-WoW MMO thing, since MMOs prior to WoW didn't so much have that thing where the only level that matters is the last. Everquest did somewhat, but it wasn't as much of a hard line.
Blizzard should have a fund that pays people like you, who is essentially doing their work for them.
They know all this stuff. They have differing priorities.
it's actually a great idea mate
This is by far your best feedback video in your Improving D4 series!
Again.. great work. You can be proud of yourself beeing a part of making sure Blizzard really has to think about their actions during the development process.
Dark souls style mechanics, condensed to a specific dungeon encounter.
Example: A very, and progressively more difficult dungeon experience with worthwhile end boss rewards.
If you die in the dungeon, you lose everything you've found in the dungeon, and a powerful boss or champion spawns where you died.
Instead of all mobs re-spawning like dark souls, a horde of mobs spawn in every time a player dies. And I mean a horde. Effectively setting back progress for everyone in the instance.
If a player dies again before killing their corpse/grave champion spawn, the items they dropped are lost forever.
Limited potions per life.
You have to make difficult choices.
Finish the dungeon or retreat with what you have?
All of the items gathered need to be decrypted outside of the dungeon.
These dungeons could be solo, pve or, pvp. You can try to steal each other's drops and kill each other.
People can choose to work together or betray each other ala the dark zone in the division.
The idea is to create many variables and outcomes. Chaos, paranoia distrust, loss, victory, memories.
Making runescape's oldschool wild with unknown items and boss groups sounds like the most fun I could imagine
I actually really like this idea.
Wow - this video was amazing. I played D2 hardcore exclusively on US East HC for at least 8 years and tapering off over the next few when I went to college but I feel you have your finger on the pulse of what exactly made Diablo 2 great and where those systems could and should have been improved upon in D3/ hopefully for D4 such as the depth D2 had, PoE expanded upon massively and that D3 lacked, etc. Hearing you perfectly described so many of the aspects that made the gear hunt in D2 so great with specific gear examples etc was such an awesome nostalgic blast from the past. The diminishing returns, but still always one incrementally better item out there is the exact point I made while discussing D2 with a friend just earlier today! THE COMMUNITY interaction is such a massive part of what really made that hunt exciting and engaging just as you described meeting random people in chat and the barter that took place. Watching multiple trade requests so I could trade something I had that guy1 wanted for an item i didn't want nor need but I also saw guy2 trading the item I really want for what guy1 was offering and using both of those to my advantage. Anyway, like you I could rant for hours on this topic and you have already done such a nice job here, so I just want to say from one D2 fan to another I feel ya brother and don't think I could agree with you more! I just came across this video but will definitely be checking out the rest in the series, good work, keep it up!
Simple way to have best end game: Secret Llama Level
Haha love it. But please not those flashy Fortnite Llamas :'D
@@rob1n1337 Champion of Chaos 2 Llamas xD
oh shit tbh even makes a lil sense given cows lmao...maybe throw ONE llama npc in a new cow level or something..
The trading value point really stuck. "one mans trash is another mans treasure" lets gooo blizzard
Another great video, i really like the community event idea!
Downside is.. if i keep watching all your videos im going to get so hyped with high expectations for this game lol..
Yeah word is they are experimenting with a "Linited trading system." That being most items can be infinitely traded but certain items will have a limited number of times they can be traded
MrSnap If they want to create an open world the need for crafting and trading needs to be there. For example, introduce blacksmithing, tailoring, jewel crafting etc etc. you can only have 1 major prof and 1 minor prof. This will make people create alts to level up professions. Force interaction between players who want weapons armors Rings to be crafted. Create a diverse economy. We’re gold and mats can be traded. This could add so much more interaction between players and add more depth to the game. Do you? Level up to reach set items at level 30? Do you lvl up your professions? Do you farm for better legendaries? Farm mats to craft certain legendaries or sets? Or craft legendaries or sets or weapons and sell them for gold, mats or other items? The possibilities can be endless!
MrSnap haha true. Like in D2 when you get a good amount of mf and drop into low lvl games and just stoke out some people with stuff you don’t want but they desperately want. Makes both parties days
@@joseherrera4840 not a big fan on crafting in arpg
@@joseherrera4840 crafting in arpg is a NO
You re practically handing in the game for them right here. They d be smart to hire you on this D4 project to make DIABLO legendary again
Budget, resource costs, how much would these features convert to money compared to the half assed game that will be launched, all this shit gets evaluated.
So many shitty games we have now were AMAZING before launch, but the slowly got shaped as a product by publishers to get more money using less.
Diablo 4 will not be different.
You know, the guy already exists and he's lead dev in Grinding Gear Games :) Chris Wilson
And then we might as well call the game Poe 4 instead of Diablo 4. Don't get me wrong I love aspects of PoE but the game allways felt shallow even tho it has a lot of customisation. I don't need another PoE game in diablo universe, blizz needs to find a way to make d4 unique and so good that the guys from PoE want to change the game to be more like d4 not the other way around. Diablo 4 has to inspire again and reshape the entire arpg genre that they pretty much created with d1 and d2.
So yeah I agree about the Pillars part but I rly hope they don't copy other games and just make a game the entire arpg genre will revolve around for years to come
@@FrozenTub3 lol poe is infinitely deeper than d3 and also deeper than d2. not hating on d2 at all, i mean im comparing an odl game that isnt updated anymore with content to a modern game which is still updated. but u get my point
@@ynsmdd8678 I know its deeper, I played it quite a lot as well but a lot of the items,systems feel boring. A lot of thisgs for the sake of having more things is not allways for the better. And the gameplay past lvl 80 is boring, you either one shot the entire screen or some random combination of affixes one shot you. I love playing till like level 80ish, sometimes maybe close to 90 and then I usually start a new toon cuz I am bored. It shouldn't be like that, and I hope d4 will not be like that.
One distinct thing about d2 was the light sprinkling of world puzzles, like Tal Rasha’s Tombs, Tristram Stones, etc., which was not there at all in D3. The thing about these is that they were known by everyone but still created a small moment where you would stop and think about something asymmetrically from the grind. Something similar in D4 could be like a dungeon only being accessible while it’s raining at a specific location, or after a mob bleeds over some object, or after X conditions are met. Like Tristram stones, the sequence is random and discovered by doing other content. RNG in the open world through systems like this could dictate and change what’s available to you in a specific way, adding an additional element of discovery and more reason to play, as well as add value to certain builds/classes (like in my above example, druids could access a rain-gate at anytime since they can cause it to rain). Asymmetrically designing classes like this makes them feel better and makes the game funner.
Lol d2 trading in a nut shell "Nice, wyw?" "wyg?" "shows item" "nty" Diablos minons get weaker.
Hahaha, ya, I remember when D2 launched tho i don't think it was to heavily like that. People were trading rares and everything at the Trading Post games. I miss that old school battle.net style
@@bradboling5079 Ha naa old trading was just SOjs and peffect skulls
Mac Derpson If they want to create an open world the need for crafting and trading needs to be there. For example, introduce blacksmithing, tailoring, jewel crafting etc etc. you can only have 1 major prof and 1 minor prof. This will make people create alts to level up professions. Force interaction between players who want weapons armors Rings to be crafted. Create a diverse economy. We’re gold and mats can be traded. This could add so much more interaction between players and add more depth to the game. Do you? Level up to reach set items at level 30? Do you lvl up your professions? Do you farm for better legendaries? Farm mats to craft certain legendaries or sets? Or craft legendaries or sets or weapons and sell them for gold, mats or other items? The possibilities can be endless!
@@joseherrera4840 I see where your hearts at but i truly believe this might be a little too much for this game. That idea pretty much sounds like the game would have to convert it self to a heavy MMO like status. Make no mistake tho, im not saying your idea is bad, but, the heart and soul of diablo games has always been in the hunt for a better upgrade. If anything, i would really like the idea that only sets can be crafted if you find the plans to them, kind of like how d3 had it.
WUG?
In addition about keyed dungeon affixes just a thought: Rolled affixes on keyed dungeons: (20:08) affect the loot that drops. For example; high hp monster affix, Has an increased chance of dropping items with +vit / +hp
I think that's the point,make a dg harder so you have increase drop rate or smth...
there should be a dungeon key affix "no minimap + reduced lightradius" that would be interesting together with a more complex dungeon
Really love these deep dives into game design and creation. Great job Llama!!
Quick, someone project this onto blizzard's wall
"Perfect Gem Activated"
You just had to remind of us thousands of wasted clicks, didn't you?
I just want the game to have as much replayability as possible.
I want super rare loots that don't grant my characters any power at all but because they are rare, I should be excited about getting them. D3 gives me none of that. Runewords in D2 of course helps with that greatly.
I want to be able to make and use super dumb builds that can get through the 'normal' endgame (like Hell Baal in D2). I believe that, for a RPG like D2, if all builds break the game, it's a good game. The current skill point system in D4 doesn't help at all.
I want to have an impactful combat system that allows me to have long fights with bosses. Dodging attacks from bosses is something that feel satisfying to do. Both D2 and PoE do this very well (for PoE, not counting the super uber boss fights, just to Kitava). I also don't want enemies to just melt because I raise my hands in their vicinity, that's just weird.
preach!
anyway, it almost feels like pre d3 release all over again... the long time arpg players/d2 veterans telling them devs why their direction of game design is flawed and offer lots of ideas and explanations how to do better (and those devs act like they listen)... but ultimately they keep doing what they did in the first place and all the casuals and firsttimers be like "wait till its released" "have faith" "they got this" ...and then we end with the shitshow called d3 (tbf over the years it has become a "decent" game, but not worthy to be called diablo and not a good arpg at all, its a decent arcade-hack&slay).
@@realitycheck908 bro^^ what are u talking about? picking on my last sentence while ignoring everything prior to that... to me personally d3 was a crap game and i touched it exactly 2 times (release and when RoS got released)... objectively speaking tho its a decent arcade-hack&slay that can be entertaining for some ppl (not for me tho). learn to read
edit: phew... getting called a casual actually triggered my inner ~25k hour d2/8k hour PoE arpg nerd... come at me m8, we meet outside of tristram :D be ready to get roflstomped 50:0
@@realitycheck908 first off, decent =/= good...
then i called d3 a "decent" arcade-hack&slay which implies 2 things...
1. decent in quotation means its actually not even that.
2. on top i called the father of ARPG games (the diablo frenchise - in this case d3) a arcade-hack&slay, which is an insult by it self.
but i see u just misunderstood me :) we are on the same team.. i will still get u for that casual line :D have a nice day
I like that having the best items not tradable so you can't go out and buy the best gear you have to earn it for an example I spend like 40+ hours farming for a certain item and all you do is either trade for that item or someone gives it to you do what took me 40+ hours to get you spent 5 mins to buy it
I want to add to the point you made about people watching the top level content even tho they may never do it
I played runescape for some time, never in any way competetively but I still tuned in to those end-game raid bosses, and there were thousands of people watching these streams even tho it was something that required hundreds of hours to get to and I'm sure this happens in WoW too, you were spot on about people looking for goals or even just wanting to see what it's like to play the game "for real"
I think pvp should be the end game.. this is the absolute best endgame, it was the endgame in d2 for sure (people leveling to high levels usually did so for advantages in pvp)
I agree with you but I also liked a lot PvP while leveling like in WoW vanilla and Dark Souls which are the two other game that I had a tons of fun doing PvP outside of D2.
Excaly if all heroes are well balanced witch they shuld be i see no problem for pvp endgame
This is a brilliantly articulated and researched video. I'm a diehard D2 fan from the days of yore, and I 110% agree with everything you say. From the sounds of the devs, it seems like they really want to make D4 what D3 should have always been, but it's thanks to people like you to keep them on that track. My hat off to you, sir.
Dang I'd like to have the money to make a game with you as game design advisor. No shit. Loving this series, hope it makes an impact.
Actually, I had some Ideas. Might come back to this in a few years ;P
MrLlama for President!!
Ok, maybe not for president but definitely for D4 dev team!
I played a ton of D2, and till today i prefer D2 over D3, without a doubt, mainly because of all the arguments you gave in this series. I agree with you a 100% in everything!
About D3, one thing that made me play for a little bit more was the challenges (i.e.: finding all the monsters, killing x monster under some time, killing bosses without being hit, ...). The problem was that every time i got closer of completing them Blizz added a lot more that were almost impossible to complete and/or nonsense. But it was a cool feature overall.
Thanks for the videos!
itemization is the key for this game we call Diablo series. D2 is the father of the series showing us the way. Is not World of worcraft! Diablo 4 looks really nice but the items looks so Diablo 3 style, i dont like it at all. Ofc there is no qeustion witch diablo is the best in itemization style, its obvious. And i dont really understand why no stats points, no lvl req and durability, and unlimited trades. Make no sense. Blizzard can have a really top game just following the d2 itemization style with more adds more balance and a game play of our era. Just hire Llama this guy is a book of knowledge.
I think you nailed a lot of points. This is one good feedback for Blizzard!
Could you please elaborate more on your Diminishing Returns chart? I feel like Diablo 3's loot already functions that way with the 80% mark being the completion of your set and supporting items, 98% being the optimisation of those items, and the remaining 2% or so coming from Primal Ancient Legendaries
Great video! Just wanted a bit more details on the above
for example if you put 100%mf on, it's worth 80%mf, if you have 200% mf, it's worth 140% in reality.
gamepedia.cursecdn.com/diablo_gamepedia/9/95/MF_Graph.jpg?version=cdac965777efd1ee9eb58c5bb4cd591a
other example: armor increase (shout) or faster cast increase +20%. 20% increase is nice. But once you reach 120%, +20% increase will only boost 8% more. Because it's 20% of the base, not +20% of your current speed. It's a mechanic comparable to diminishing returns.
As soon as I saw "boss gauntlet" on your outline, I was on fire. That sounds like a really cool idea. I remember when I had the boss-mod for D2 where you would leave the Rogue encampment and instantly run into Andy^^
But this could be awesome, like a "dungeon" on its own. Going through the bosses in random order, and the farther you get, the harder the bosses become, and you can train yourself with their mechanics while they become ever more deadly to test your character's AND your own limit as a player. I love it!
Discovered your channel when I heard of D4 announcement and I must say I hope Blizzard watches these videosd and takes alot away from them.
Great ideas overall for stuff to be in the game.
The value of perfect items vs one stat off is huge like items that have 2-3 variable buffs 3/3 perfect that item is worth 5x the value of that same item with 2/3 perfect and that would be 2x as valuable as one stat perfect etc, it's what made the grind worth it, even the runewords in D2 were kind of the same way.
I was actually thinking about this earlier. What was great about building a character in Diablo 2 was the fact that making choices meant giving something up to get something. Every character was the character that you wanted it to be and that made it truly unique to you.
i played d2 back in the day, found this channel after blizzcon, u got urself a sub sir! cant wait to go back to d2
I like what you said at about 10 minutes about watching. For example, when I watch you I play Diablo 2.
I just put your videos on while I play. For example, I’m right now working on a new char while you play in the background.
Blizzard hire this man now.... You need this man on your diablo team asap.
This is a good cover letter (video), I hope you get Project Lead for diablo 4. 😂 For real tho! Much love Lama!
Seriously though, I'd play the shit out of any game that would have these things.
Thank you MrLlama for all those videos on Diablo IV I really hope they will hear your summaries. You are our voice. Thank You!
You're the best MrLlamaSC. Representing the D2 community properly.
Lead developer Zaven said you would choose to run or salvage dungeon keys. I suggest you can choose to save keys and combine their affixes. You could combine multiple keys together and create a "Uber" dungeon and make it much more difficult and rewarding.
THANK YOU SO MUCH for making these cool and engaging videos, @MrLlamaSC!
I really hope the devs are taking some sort of inspiration on all the work and thoughts you put into Diablo 4. The Diablo community deserves vocal front figures like you to represent the players' perspectives. :)
I like 21:25. Talking about leaderboards for # of completed dungeons. Having a static amount of difficulties is great too. It could also be similar to PoE's map system. You want a Tier 4 Key for this dungeon? Well the only way to get it is by running T3 Keys, and to get T3, you gotta do T2, etc. Make it so the more dungeons you complete, the higher chance you getting a higher tier key like PoE does with it's maps.
Have a Tier 0 key that can drop anywhere that can be used on any dungeon. So you can gather up ten T0 Keys, to try to grind to the T1 keys for a specific dungeon. Tons of grind, but tons replayability!
I think cosmetic rewards can tie a lot of the end game content together for the community. Things like achievement-specific account titles or mount cosmetics can signal to other players "I actually did this end game thing. I didn't just trade for this item." Whether that achievement be gathering a bunch of crafting mats, doing X number of different mythic dungeons on Y difficulty, completing a boss gauntlet (or getting the fastest time on the leaderboard for your class), there's a lot of room to allow various players to flaunt their achievements. I think this can also promote a lot of community engagement. Things like "Holy shit! The guy with [X title/cosmetic that represents a #1 spot on some sort of leaderboard] just ran through town!"
He gave a point that we should be able to show off our gear to others and I can't agree more. I always missed that in PoE and D3. In D2 there was the battle.net lobby (chat channel), or in WoW there was IF, Org, Shattrath or Dalaran (I haven't played beyond WotLK.)
What's also cool in D2 is that HC characters were distinguished on the chat channel with their red name, unique title and ofcourse their action pose which made them that much cooler!
highly paid professional system designer virgin: let's dumb everything down
llama chad: i'm gonna end this man's whole career.
Thank you for this Mr Llama, i hope both Chris Wilson and Shely see this for insight into how to improve in the ARPG genre. One thing i would definitely add to this list is something to make sub communities(clans, groups, guilds, whatever) more meaningful. i feel like in both D3 and PoE, i don't feel like i'm really *helping* my clan by doing content, or collaborating much, outside of just chat, or sharing loot, etc. Would be great to have incentive to grow your clan by completing certain tasks/weeklies/dungeons/etc to give the clan new perks, or abilities. Similar to user-level achievements/awards/trophies, to have clan-level achievement brings a lot to the replayability and sense of community!
You have/gather so much creative ideas, so nice to hear. 100% agreed on what you said.
I was thinking about the PvP leaderboard the other day. What if they would do something with ears ? Like, you kill someone, and you get 1ear + you steal x% of his. It would reward killing good PvP players. Getting 500 ears at the end of the season = this trophy, 1000 ears = this PvP voiceline/emote, getting 5000 = your footsteps leave blood, etc.
Blizzard , can we offer this man a job already?? 👏🏽
Great video and 100% love the fact that someone mentions the points on PvP and thinking in exactly the way as i do! Love it. I am actually a LoL player kind of person but love the Diablo Lore and stuff, i loved D3 to the point where it had nonsense to keep grinding when the only thing you could get was just a higher +1 stat on the same set item or so, so i got bored. What i always had as an idea or what i would've liked is that like you said pvp and pve kinda connects with the grinding for items so i me as kinda of a competetive person in outplaying other players or stuff had an intention to grind to the late game for my PvP gear and test with other players. So for me as a kind of Player i would love to have a good PvP System ( you could argue that if i like pvp and stuff why dont i just play LoL but i love the diablo style and lore and beeing able to have PvP in there with PvE and that Lore and Style and stuff would be just one hell of a good game. Just my thoughts btw
Hey,
Here’s my take on Endgame // Replay-ability.
This is just my personal opinion, not me saying THIS IS HOW IT SHOULD BE!
Ideas and personal opinions, that’s all.
The state of Diablo3:
One thing that I found in Diablo 3 was that it truly lacked good endgame content and replay-ability.
It takes between 1h to 3hours to level from 1-70, this is way too fast and specially an issue since there is no character customization/Building/Sacrifices to be made, it’s simply something you have to get out of the way so that you can unlock everything your class has to offer at level 70 in skills/skill-runes.
at level 70 you pretty much gets handed a set which lets you explode in power… within the first 10-15hours of the season start you got all the other sets, uniques you need to be able to build all the other builds as well… what is there then left?
Gaining perfect rolls on your items, Augments(Statboost on your gear)
And finally but not least, the eternal unsatisfying paragon farming to be able to grind higher level greater rifts or perhaps compete on the leaderboard top 10 if you like to farm paragon against the bots out there. 😊..
So paragon/infinite scaling greater rifts is pretty much the endgame of Diablo 3.
Unique builds & Sacrifices along the way:
In Diablo 3 you don’t have to make ANY sacrifices on your character, once you hit level 70 you have all skills/runes unlocked and you can switch at will, so once you have leveled for example a wizard.. you don’t ever have to level another wizard(till next season.)
One of the big reasons I play ARPGs is to create unique builds I find fun, which involves making sacrifices and hard choices to make your build flourish and come together into something that is amazing/fun… or trash and then you try again.
This is some of the things I hope to see.
Talents: I hope there is going to be a massive amount of engaging cool talents where you have to make sacrifices or hard choices, where you won’t be able to unlock everything, just a set amount.
And in case you do mistakes there should be a few options(expensive options) to remove a few points to try and make it work. A bit like in Path of exile.. not that it should be as big or complex as PoE, but each class could have it’s own talent tree.
Skills: I really hope you don’t just get all skills handed to you or are able to unlock all skills to your class through “Skill tomes” as they stated in their Q&A.
I hope you have to make skill choices.
Skill modifications: This is something I find extremely important, this will create a huge amount of variation in builds in the playerbase and make your character/build seem unique to the other players you meet out in sanctuary or friends you team up with to fight monsters.
This can be done in many ways, through talents, skill runes, support gems, uniques, sets.
What if we had skill trees for each skill?, lets say you choose to use a fireball in your build, then you get a skilltree for your fireball skill, like your class talent tree where you can choose “Skill talents” that modifies the way your fireball skill work? That combined with unique items that modifies your skills would create a massive amount of possibilities to create unique and fun builds that truly feel unique and special.
Allowing players to create special and unique builds adds a lot of replay-ability to the game.
Seasons:
Seasons/Leagues or whatever you want to call them also gives a lot of replay-ability and keeps players around, but there needs to be changes to the game each league, this is something GGG does really well with Path of Exile where they add new uniques, game modes and so on to each League, if they find them a success they let them stay in the next leagues.. which keeps new content coming.
To be able to sustain and do this however I feel like Blizzard need to find a way to get continues revenue in on Diablo 4.. even if this comes down to MTX/Cosmetic sales a subscription or something.
This needs to be done for a business to justify keeping developers around working on the game between each season.
(Absolutely no “Pay for Power”!)
Races:
Would it be
interesting to create smaller seasons/leagues where we have races? who
reaches the furthest within 5hours-10hours-24hours-48hours-1week?
Who gets to the last boss and kill it first?
Who reaches max level first?
Rewards? An accomblishment/Mark on your profile?
I would love these kinds of races. :)
GreaterRifts/Dungeons/Endgame monster killing:
I hope they come with a good variety of endgame monster killing options, so that it doesn’t end up in a way so that greater rifts/Infinite scaling dungeon is truly the only way to progress and if you are doing it any other way then you are truly missing out on progress for your character.
I like the idea around the Mythic+ kind of key they have talked about.
It should just not be the end all be all, the game should move you towards other places/Dungeons/whatever it might be to progress your character.
To end this post I would like to state that I like that they are looking towards their older games D1, D2 and D3 for what they did well to try and build on that in D4.
However I also really hope they keep an eye on the competitors out there like Path of Exile(4.0 coming up) Lost Ark( I know this is more of an MMO), Grim Dawn and so on.. even last epoch and wolcen eventhough they are not really released.
They all individually add something special and cool to the genre which could be great ideas/concepts for the future of Diablo 4..
A lot has happened in the ARPG genre over the years, specially after Blizzard created the iconic Diablo 2.
My 2cents, please take this as my personal opinions and not me trying to state that there are no other way, everyone has their own right to their opinions 😊
/UbiNax
pillar 6: immersive atmosphere, not sacrificed by such things as arial fonts, blinking monsters on hit or yellow/blue tinted unique monsters for gameplay accessibility
You are awesome! Great analysis!
Love it man!! Keep it up.
I think the local trading in an open world could be a spam Fiesta in the chat. I think if zones for trading were divided by class it could make unique areas for certain class trades. So barbarian trades in zone 1 and druid trades in zone 2, etc. That somewhat groups items together by class but doesn't mean you wouldn't see a sorc in the barb area trading for their alt.
Loved your presentation. Hope Blizz devs take you and their community seriously. I played D2 a lot when I was a teenager, loved it. After that, I crossed to Baldurs Gate and kinda never came back. One thing you touched that has a huge potential for improvement is Secure Online Economy. I believe developing it on the Etherium Blockchain and everything that goes with it would be a major gamechanger.
Imagine truly owning your items or whichever other digital assets where you put 1000s of hours+ electricity+your own skill to find a (1/100 in the world) unique item, certain valuable content or even digital community where you actually can make a living by trading it on the decentralized marketplace that can't be hacked and actually making a living by participating in this huge economy that is built on decentralized networks.
I'm very excited about the prospects of merging the gaming with this new technology and I'm interested in what are your thoughts on that.
Here is one useful article for people who are new to the Blockchain Gaming Technology and what it can offer: www.altcoinbuzz.io/blockchain-gaming/blockchain-game-reviews/blockchain-gaming-and-crypto-items-will-be-huge-heres-why/
Awesome video, i hope D4 devs are humble enough to listen to your feedback. Not saying they need to implement your ideas but i'm pretty sure you are offering a view they didnt have before (based on the demo).
You make the BEST Diablo content. I really like your approach of looking at stats and weighting important properties.You know what makes theese kind of games good. Too bad BLIZZARD lost their knowlegde or willing to make games in such a high quality. It is like they have the knowledge to make a 90-99% game, but sacrifice 10% - 20 % for profit. I am so tired of those profit descisions that lower the quality of games. I am from Germany and our good export market is based on quality for a fair price. IT WORKS! Offer best quality possible and let people pay the price thats worth it. It is so simple. I am afraid most game companies those days need very hard punishment for selling those crappy microtransactions, streamlined, dumbed down games made for the casual gamer. Growing up in the 90`s and early 2k`s I am shocked about how the game industry changed. That beeing said:
DO NOT BY LOW QUALITY GAMES. DEMAND THE BEST FOR YOUR MONEY LIKE IT WAS USED TO BE SOME YEARS AGO.
When it comes to trade "Hubs", great example is ESO trading system when trading guilds need to bid for trader and profit from sales in order to do so. One of best community driven trade systems imo.
There should be NO limited-time events, ergo limited-time rewards/achievements associated with said events.
Everything added to the game should ALWAYS be accessible, regardless of the player being able to consume the content on day 1 or several months later.
I'm so fed up with games where the rarest and coolest events occur while I'm on a business trip, in the hospital, having a prolonged internet outage etc.
I disagree. As long as limited time events do not offer any power they can be cool. There are a lot of things that just don't work long term and just become stale and abandoned, but when done as a short event they become memorable. And if the rewards are cosmetic/achievements, then you don't really miss out much if you can't participate, but it's great experience for people who can. And these events can keep community alive for a very long time. I think the best example was PoE Royale on april fools day. No one expected it to be real and I think if it was made permanent without any changes - it would've been dead in a month with tons of people complaining about a lot of different things, it'd require constant attention to keep it alive with fixes, changes etc. But as a one time event it was wonderful and people still remember it.
Or require you to spend 400 dollars on in app purchases to get the limited time item or unit during said limited event. It's so ridiculous
i sumbled upon some of your videos recently. gotta say, you have to be the happiest guy on youtube :)
Only get this 1 life, gotta be happy!
The ideas regarding the puzzles for the players to discover and solve together is absolutely great. The ideas regarding donating stuff (for a specific purpose) is absolutely great.
The ideas about seasons in general feels very strange to me. I feel like if there's new elements (items, dungeons etc.) releasing every new season, doesn't that immediately take away alot of focus from implementing the really important pieces to the base game, the things that will determine the games longevity for example? Let's say that there's new items dropping every new season, isn't that taking away a bit of focus from what we all think is necessary? The chance to grind for loot. What I mean is that the base selection of gear/items/loot will be smaller (to small?) if the focus is on seasons and the progression you can make in seasons with the new items. Also, seasons might take away the overall relaxed chilled feeling about the game. The focus shifts alot when these things are being implented in a game, especially if they are being implemented to the core of the game.
Great video keep it up man!!!
Again, Blizzard. Hire this mans. He understands. Put him together with someone who advocates simplicity and you’ll find a great middle ground.
Hi Mr Llama, Long one incoming!
Listening to this, and the long talk with Chris Wilson one thing that really stood out to me is something I always considered a wasted opportunity (in that no-one really does this with their environment), and that is using environment to actually effect the game. Specifically I am referring time of day / the weather, I think it would be incredibly cool to be running through a map it's 7:32, the sun in the game set's at 7:32, so I'm 4% more likely to get a dusk monster, then in my zone it starts RAINING! that means it's 12% more likely that I'll encounter a swamp style monster. OH MAN, It's Raining AND dusk, that means I might hit Boss DuskSwampy. The neat thing being that DuskSwampy has a 4% chance to drop my BIS Ammy which is +shadow damage and - enemy water resist!!!
This would then allow situations where zones which were typically hot, get a cold snap / frost / fog hit it and all the sudden General chat would blow up: GUYS, Sector 12 is hitting rain!!! EVERYONE GO TO Sector 12 because DuskSwampy might be spawning, or a previously un-accessible instance could appear. This would be cool because then an AWESOME mini-event is happening not because it's timed (oh the world event is starting because it's 7:45 on a Friday), or because someone sold a SOJ, but PURELY random, which is what ARPG's are, you sometimes just...Hit that circumstance where it's a frost level, but for some reason a Fire started there and an ultra-rare fire monster spawned in the frost zone.
This would do multiple things in that it would foster a community, when these events happen people would congregate into these areas, AND to that you would have zones that people normally hate going to, becoming valuable if they littered these unpopular areas with hidden aspects.
Loving the videos. Keep them coming. I thought some cool ideas could be:
PVP with an optionally higher cost/wager (if you die you drop a random item - owch!).
What about horse racing? That sounds like an awesome idea with lots of optional variants.
Or how about world bosses that attack towns and villages and kill the npc's until you get there and take them out. This could stop you from accessing quests or merchants until you defeat them and revive the NPC's with potions or something.
I like the idea of elite mobs with more than simple frozen orb, fire chain affixes. But how about tactical mobs that have a sniper bunker that hits you from up on top of one of those cliffs and you've got to climb it and deal with monsters that shove you off the cliff and stuff like that? What about mobs that drain your resources (mana, fury, spirit) and get stronger the more you generate?
What about monsters that seduce you based on your gender?
What about monsters that steal an item off you and make themselves stronger with it? What about permanently invisible monsters that you have to guess where they'll be?
What about monsters that reduce your light radius dramatically?
What about monsters that heal if you hit them with a certain type of damage?
What about monsters that confuse your directions so that your inputs for movement are reversed and you start moving in the wrong direction?
Lets get creative D4 developers!
WE NEED STATIC DIFFICULTY LEVELS.
Static difficulty levels add a better feel for monster strength distribution & monster hierachy in the game. Monster strength always proportional to player strength does damage to monster identities. Sometimes the player just shouldnt be able to kill certain bosses without leveling first! Content patches could include new areas with stronger monsters.
MAKE-ME-BLEED.
"Something like magic-find or increased-gold we want to do, so right now we have them in gems, but what we don't like is when they compete against damage affixes" - David Kim, Blizzcon 2019.
I think thats a bad decision, David! Compromises are actually really important and add flavor and depth to the game. This applies to itemization as well as player skills/attributes.
I'd like to remind you of great items with negative item stats like "Goetterdammerung" in D1 or "Andariel's Visage in D2". The world of Diablo is a hostile place, why should items be excluded from that hostility?! There could even be a whole new item category "cursed items" - items with insane stats, but also great disadvantages.
TRANSMOG RUINS ITEM-IDENTITIES.
Players shouldnt be able to change the overall look of items. Each unique item could have a certain amount of different skins. The standard skin you get when you find the item in-game, and additional skins players can afford in store. This would be a good monetization scheme.
EMBRACE THE BRAIN.
Dont make players feel too comfortable. Let them have to think. I dont want funky green symbols which tell me that an item is better than the other one. Item stats should have more stats to them than Attack and Defense.
VISCERAL=YES HAPTIC=NO?
The most important moments of item-finding in Diablo are the discovery itself ... and the act of identifying. Click-scroll-click-item actions are simple, but important. The "clumsy" handling of scrolls and potions add a haptic, "earth-bound" aspect to the game (I dont like the transcendental TP- ID- style of D3). It would do the overall "visceral" feeling of D4 a great favor.
ENDLESS LEGENDARY LOOP
Break the item categories down to a few, (e.g. Normal Magic Rare and Unique). Many item categories soften the impact and importance the seperate categories. There should be some uniques which are really unique. Please let players find a lot of dirt in dirty Sanctuario and make a unique-find something really unique.
LET US TRADE EVERYTHING.
Free trade is a major aspect of the freedom many players felt in Diablo II.
Also: Do you know how bad it feels to find a super rare items twice, if you arent allowed to trade it? Its going straight to waste.
Agreeeeeeeeeeee, ball is in their court now. Theyre getting the feedback to make an excellent game. Now we wait.... uh... 5 years? :)
Lol insert *one eternity later meme*. But I agree, LET. ME. TRADE. EVERYTHING.
@@mrsnap7097 i really wish they listen, my hopes are prettly low though. everything points towards simplicity/d3.5. they dont seem to want a classic arpg ala d2
@@hunzukunz dude if they would remaster d2 graphics the way theyre doing wc3 that would be insane
@@mrsnap7097 no sorry we don't want graphic of d2 lol. The darkness of it yes. But the graphics? we are in 2019
+1 to local trade. It would be great to keep it regional or local. Both RL and in game. I used to LOVE playing Hardcore for the trading! We were a small trade community who liked different things out of the game, like plus vitality and resistance items often overlooked now had more value for us.
Imagine being in Scosglen and you want to find a better weapon because now you're struggling a bit. Go to the local trade town that is full of heroes trading gear rather than merchants who sell nothing good. Maybe there are different stands or buildings you can enter. Some have weapon signs above the doors, others have amulets etc etc. You enter the building you want and see a few shoppers and 10 different stands of weapons. These stands can be costing a character gold per hour, but he is farming near by anyway. it's a way someone locally can basically share their stash view to advertise his trade items while he is clearing content in the background anyways. I want his axe, so I make an offer and he agrees to meet for a transaction. I pick the place and murder him for his axe!! Jk.. but yes I do like the thought of local and there are a lot of ways you can make trading more interesting then spamming general chat or AH
Furthermore let's say you make X amount of fair transactions in that local town, maybe you get promoted to "regional Baron" where you only pay a fraction of the trade fee now. That way it rewards those people who only want to play the trading game
Great stuff MrLlamaSC, you put a lot of effort into this and came up with pretty reasonable ideas
What i also liked about d2 was that lvl 99 was so incredibly hard to reach I never actually did it - it was end game content that you did not need to complete the story, but had to grind hard to reach it. Since max lvl I have ever reached was like 95 or 96, I always felt like there is still some area to play and try even harder not to die, not to loose experience etc
MrLSC, thank You.
You wake up my love for D2 again. Installing it atm :D
Great presentation! I hope Blizzard sees this !
I love the idea of the community's efforts directly unlocking new content. Would be so cool if they could tie the reason into something lore based as well.
A good season idea would be to have one or two dungeons scale past the 5 level max to like 10-15 to see how far you could push it. Where 10(15) would be almost mathematically impossible, unless you have basically the perfect gear and build to do it. Reward being and dungeon done past 5 would give 50% chance or something at dropping double craft mats or an extra item. And doing the max level 10-15 would give an absurd reward like guaranteed quad items or guaranteed mythic or w.e
Amazing. This needs more views. I hope d4 can achieve something to this lvl because a game like this I could see myself becoming a hardcore player of.
Idea: Crafting recipes that UNDO the binding that an item has, so it can be equipped after a trade. Bound items are cheaper, because you have to do the unbinding recipe yourself.
This replaces a sales-tax effect that would be used to keep the economy from exploding too fast. High-tier items could consume other high-tier items in the unbinding.
Also possible: Partial bindings. The items binds to a player on equip, but also to other players who share a random hidden attribute. This creates some open sub-economies while leveraging the unbinding recipe as a sort of shipping-cost. There could also be recipes that permanently or temporarily change a character's binding attribute. The binding attribute would have to be preserved across character rerolls, to prevent reroll-scumming.
great breakdown man, glad you are doing this, hopefully blizz takes a look at it
BLIZZARD HIRE LLAMA NOW
Seriously. They probably wouldnt even have to pay him. Hes already doing work for free.
@@Ponzini77 That's the problem. Why do it for free?
I think your puzzle idea is AWESOME
Amazing video MrLLama. I hope D4 developers watch this and learn something from it. I know it might not be much, but I'd like to give you some feedback on the video. In my opinion, the endgame is directly related to the emotions of the player, that the player feels motivated to do something and that, from time to time, finds rewards that encourage him to continue playing, without feeling that he has reached the end of the goal. Having said that, I understand that the biggest obstacle is frustration.
My concern about what you've said here is about making things difficult to achieve. What I mean is that a player like me, who has other obligations: work, family, etc., who can only dedicate x hours to the game and who would like to play more, may feel frustrated if season after season is losing unlockable content just because they couldn't dedicate enough hours to the game. In other words, what incentive can a season have for a player with a limited time to play them if they knows they will never be able to finish them, in the sense of getting all the unlockable benefits of the season? I think you need to be careful not to set goals that are too unfathomable, with time intervals that are too demanding, or the player who finds himself in a situation similar to mine may feel frustrated and abandon him. But this I don't mean that should be easy, of course, just that they have to find a sweet spot. D2 sweet spot. I understand that I seem to be referring to a very particular personal situation, but I think players who can devote infinite hours to the game are not the majority. Maybe they are and I am a minority, I don't know, maybe it even don't care to the purpouse of what I am saying.
In any case, thank you for the video and devote your time and effort to trying to make D4 the game we all hope it will be.
I stopped playing command and conquer online after I learned there was no limit to the level of your buildings and units. Totally ruined it for me.
Great end game ideas. Like global (server ) events. Make items meaningfull. Great shako reference.
I would like to keep "secret rushing tech" like D2 act 2 skip and uber lv rush, only so few can do. Keep it dark. Duriel and butcher used to scared me
Humble intro there but honestly with the credit you earned in the speedrunning community over the years I think you very much are an authority on arpgs and even though you can't expect them to see this I still think they should. Few people know their own game better than you and after diablo 3 and immortal I'm pretty sure that includes their own team so there's definitely something for them to take away from this be it some new idea's or some proper balance decisions. Thankfully they seem much more open about feedback on this one though so we'll find out NotEvenSoonTM.
I think you might underestimate the value of your opinions and contributions to the developers. You are a legend in the D2 community.
I want to see more opportunities to roleplay and get players to have a more active role in world building and player quests. Like someone crafts and needs a bunch of items. In a local town or a reclaimed camp someone can then post a quest for crafting materials on a board and someone can grab that quest and fulfill it. Maybe NPC quests also appear and people locally signup for them and when another person joins a party is created for it. It would give people a a reason to explore the world seeing where people need help and if quest are popping up that requires a party.
With all these positive advice towards a better D4 i just pray and hope Blizzard is taking it to their heart. If they do care for feedback, they should be ready to take some of their layouts back to step 1.
Love presentation! 90% is a good guideline for every h'n's game
31:48 ♫ We're meant to be together ♫
so many great ideas. great video
Super late to this party, but one more player type which maybe is an overlap of different ones you mentioned: the completionist. Personally, I love to play a game to do all the things in the game, which means whatever there is to do that is worth doing that gets me some meaningful feeling of accomplishment, that stuff I love. I love achievements and collecting things, whether items, or fully playing characters, or experiencing highest levels of boss fights or gameplay. I love a game that is challenging enough to make this a fight and gives that real sense of accomplishment, and has lots of that content that doesn’t feel JUST like stupid grinding, though a bit of that isn’t bad. I’d love to see an expansive achievement and collection system that could include elements of the lore and story, cosmetics, gear, characters, and gameplay experiences - timed challenges, high difficulty, high complexity, etc. As far as achievements go, I really dislike ones which depend on playing a certain way by default - playing in a co-op game, playing hardcore, etc. - which outside a few of these gets annoying if you dislike that playstyle. Some things in any game you only experience in a group, I get it, but D4 should make almost everything available to single player only - which it seems like they are doing.
Also, donation or work-toward community goals reminds me of Ann Qiraj in WoW vanilla, I’d like to see cooperation and potentially group based competition and cooperation that you’d have to take part in that is meaningful
We love you Mr. Llama
hey mrllama i love your videos i just had a really great idea for dungeons
make dungeons have 3 grades : NORMAL NIGHTMARE HELL maybe 4th INFERNO with that you wouldnt have an infinite grind and if tuned correctly and hell be like superhard real endgame this could be real fun + you can bring back our OG difficulties
One of the most sure fire way to increase replayability is still PERMANENT choices.
D2 made you experiment with the same hero with different stats and skill trees by forcing you to make new characters.
Another important thing missing in D3 was the power of elements. E.g Resistance to Fire, and Fire imbued damage, changes your character, your build and how you can be specialised in certain mobs or certain affixes and why the game can skew certain areas where you are USEFUL in parties and you have a some sort of value added into the group.
When D3 made all weapons the same, all elements the same, everyone just find the best damage in weapons, the game becomes bland with no identity for your character because everyone else around you can do the same.
Sure some hardcore gamers say they want solo, they don't like grouping, that's fine, just create the system to lock the best items that will only drop for groups, where difficulty would increase exponentially, and more affixes appear on unique mobs, like immune to cold, immune to physical but the rewards are higher than if you decide to solo.
I agree. Bind on anything ruins value. Best part of Diablo was low drop rate not bound to player items.
Also, when they when from 8 player games down to 4 player games the experience diminished. Trade rooms, or group leveling made you feel part of a community.
Diablo 3 felt more like a solo game than a multi player game. I would find myself creating a game just to run rifts at my current torment level. There was no " I'm looking for a cow game to join so I can reach level 40 so I can move on to a new difficulty". Or, "I'm looking for a hell rush so I can reach chaos sanctuary and level to 60 for Baal runs".
Rushing people was a way I made a living (in game items usually for forge runes) so I had currency to trade for better items.
I'd say bring back larger player rooms and unbind items. Let me look for trist runs to get level 15. Let me find tomb runs for level 20. Give me a sense of community!
Everything, I want everything in this video! Love it llama! Blizzard needs to add all of this!!
One point on trophies: you ought to have a few slots to display your best trophies, or something like that, and not a list with all the trophies you missed from seasons you weren't playing greyed out as a permanent trigger for your completionist desires.
In your point on power gain, you talked about small incremental gain from items apposed to extreme gain. I could swear I've heard blizz devs, not exactly sure who, talking about how players saw that as a negative aspect in enjoying finding items and overall considered that a negative. However, im assuming that concept applies to their games that don't include those other factors like trading/fixed power scaling.
I agree to alot of what you present and hope that the d4 devs will try to include these ideas into the game.
I feel poe does really well in pretty much all of the things your end game content slides say. The only thing is that I play PS4 and yes there is less of a community because we suffer bad lag issues n blue screen problems when playing anything other than solo... We have to build differently to pc in order to play with friends in order to play without any great lag or crash issues... But I have a group of friends who I play with/hang in chat with and even if playing solo we always jump into a friends game to give each other gear/currency if to help each other finish challenges or difficult maps/bosses or helping one another by doing their labs for their new chars if their char isn't quite capable yet. I never feel stifled for choice of builds which is important for me which as u mentioned was poorly done in d3 but amazing in d2... I had one of almost every build thinkable in d2 at some point even full meme builds that are not truly viable but still fun. Yes the passive tree in poe is daunting at first and scared crap out of me so I religiously followed a guide... But it didn't take too long for me to say hell with the streamers and went my own way, no guide just my own understanding and am happy to say my build has my own choices in the passive tree, gems, items and have done all content including getting my wings this league even though I spent 2 weeks away on holiday mid league. I played d3 because I love diablo games n have done since d1 came out but due to certain circumstances PS4 is my only option for gaming and when poe came out that was the end of my d3 days even though I was competitive in wd class with my highest being top 15 solo grift one season. D3 is so lacking compared to poe and the changes poebrang in this league with the master missions building up have given even more customization to end game content allowing u to do what end game content you want n when. I have high hopes for d4 but am worried that when it comes out n I buy it (cuz I def will) I won't play it for long before going back to poe... Blizzard has to work hard to get me back from GGG..... poe is just that good imo
your graph game has really upgraded from whatever that was in the itemization video ;D
an idea need simple shapes
It would be nice if D4 can include rune words that are created randomly. Meaning whoever created a new rune word in either 2-6 sockets items, got to keep it the perfect stats. It can be remake again in 1 in 5000 or more chance. The new rune words will now bear the name of character that created it.
There are other, equally valid perspectives on what Diablo 4 should be. But this video series is the one I identify with the most so far. Hopefully Blizzard will do an internal showing of these videos during a meeting somewhere down the line.