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one thing I'd like to see in diablo IV is to make exploring as incentivizing as being able to rush through content. One of the reasons I prefer to play Grim Dawn over Path of Exile and Diablo III is because I can take my time and immerse myself in the world of Grim Dawn, exploring things even when I've explored them before because I'm rewarded with loot and experience to become stronger.
THIS. Path of Exile nailed it when it comes down to gameplay, but immersion story? Not so much. Worst is: Wraeclast had so much potential... No, it actually has potential. In future xpacs, they could highlight the lore and immersion more. But that is me asking an different focus of the game, and PoE's focus is on the gameplay aspect.
João Baptista The lore is actually quite in-depth and has a lot of content. It's just not as accessible. I believe there's a community who are quite obsessed with the lore of PoE. I'm not much of a lore-person, but I've heard that the easiest way to go about looking for PoE lore (besides the obvious cutscenes and narration stones/papers) is to check out item descriptions.
There are a lot of great things about POE. The skill tree is epic. The way you can socket gems to create spells with all different kind of abilities is revolutionary. That you can take fireball and add greater multiple projectiles to it and shoot 6 fireballs. The reactive gems are fun. Cast on crit was orgasmic before it was nerfed. You'd crit a bunch of times and the screen would fill up with spells shooting all over everything. The problem with POE is the basic game mechanics are not quite right. Everything is just a little bit clunky. There is no way to tell what killed you. I got hit by some red thing. Was that fire? Lightning? Something else? No clue. Was it something else i didn't notice that really got me? Did i lag? Hardcore is unplayable unless you have a great internet connection. There is no way to play offline. Just started playing Grim Dawn hardcore its fun. I started Veteran Hardcore right from the start. Kept making characters and dying and learning. I have a 70ish shaman summoner and a 55+ soldier (shockwave). Its really cool how you can mix and match 2 classes.
my problem with poe is that The Skill tree is nice and all till you've spent 8 hours on a character/build only to realize you don't have enough resistance/Defense and you get completely 1 shot. There's also NO way to respec, unless you're willing to spend a literal ass load of currency to buy orbs of regret which only let you rollback 1 point. I could understand if OoR let you roll back maybe 8 or 10 points but only 1 you'd be better off just remaking your character. Having to much control over your stats can be disadvantageous than just plugging points into Strength Dex Vit Eng. If GGG Refined their system to be more like the one portrayed in the video it could be a lot better for no so hardcore players.
Kevin Khem It was designed to make asians and teens addicted. Despite me being an asian, I kinda hate how Blizzard is trying hard to appeal to us. I dont even consider asians as gamers since they fit the description of an addict more rather than a gamer.
@@dragonslayerornstein2834 When you say Asians I think you're not being appropriately specific. You are mostly really talking about people living under the PRC.
+El Rocky Raccoon Thanks for the support. Let's hope Diablo 4's project manager is a bit more willing to listen to the community, learn from experienced veterans, and be more open-minded than Jay Wilson seemed to be.
Indigo Gaming i appreciate your desire for more depth and balance to the game, but you are asking for hacknslash WOW which would be a mess, and not much of an arpg anymore. far from diablo.
+HatelivesNextDoor Very little of what I said is like WoW. The theme would be Grimdark, the combat traditional hack n slash, not hotkey mashing tab targeting, minimal player count outside of public events and hubs if playing online, proper replayable campaign with randomized quests and procedurally generated environments. The last thing I would want out of Diablo 4 would be another WoW.
Blizzard won't deliver a decent Diablo IV for sure. Just won't happen. Blizzard will disagree it looked less like Diablo in terms of horror, darkness and brutality. They've seen the insane success of WoW. They're not going to try the 'DOOM of RPGs' anymore. Honestly, I've got my hopes set on developers like the one behind Grim Dawn. It's not quite diablo 1 style awesomeness, but it's better than Diablo 3 in so many ways already. Pacing, flow and physics in combat of Grim Dawn is amazing. Best I've played in decades. Divinity Original Sin is great, but I don't think it would work in real-time.
"Just left clicking" is basically what you do in all ARPGs. Your left click is always your main attack. In typical fashion, you usually also have an area attack if your main attack isn't AOE, a movement ability, and a few defensive cooldowns. All the best builds in the most popular ARPGs use this same formula. Sure this isn't always the case, you can definitely build a character that uses more than a single main attack. But this is also true for all hack and slash ARPGs, including Grim Dawn. Sounds to me like you didn't really try anything besides some simplified cookie cutter builds, and even then you didn't get very far because in GD there is no way you can clear Ultimate with just left clicking.
comedyman112 Grim Dawn has plenty of spells. I actually use them all the time. I think you might not have really tried. Only using left click spamming in Grim Dawn will get you killed very quickly. It doesn't have boring combat. It has a decent challenge and excellent difficulty curve.
Although this video sumarizes really well what would make the "perfect" ARPG, Blizzard will never do another "good" Diablo game. Why? Because it wouldn't sell well. The perfect ARPG would only please a very specific demographic that Blizzard is not interested in targeting. Look for example at Heartstone, at Overwatch. Blizzard is focused in developing high-successful selling games. Blizzard's vision as a company changed eons ago thanks to the success of WoW. Companies like to sell lots of games and let's face it, people in general like easy and friendly games. Look for example at StarCraft, the game is struggling to stay "true" to the franchise. In the other hand, look at WoW, Blizzard will never ever release another WarCraft RTS game. I highly doubt the next Diablo game would be as engaging, challenging and immersive as the first 2 games were.
+WhiplashGames Yeah, after posting this, I scrolled down to realize there's a couple of comments that express pretty much the same thoughts. We might even agree that the next game to bring ARPGs to a whole new level isn't likely to be Diablo4, or at least with a very very low chance. At this point, indi companies are making "better" games in that regard. I have a lot of respect for the man who made this video, you can clearly see how much effort he had put into it. However, it is kind of depressing to know that a game like the one he described may not see the light of day. Let's hope I'm completely wrong.
The vision of Diablo died with Blizzard North. The creative visionaries moved on, which is why we've gotten so many other ARPGs. The success that Blizzard once had with World of Warcraft will not be replicated. Blizzard knows that, which is why their payment structure hasn't changed. World of Warcraft's success isn't the reason for a lack of another "true" Diablo game.
Barry Pockrus I'm not saying that Blizzard is now incapable of making "good" games because WoW was successful. However, because of WoW, Blizzard became a huuge ass company. Their games cannot be "passion" projects anymore (I don't know exactly how to phrase this), they rather do successful marketing-driven strategies. They must pay their servers' maintenance and all their employees, attend sponsorships and international events (making movies and whatnot is Blizzard into now, etc). They need money, that's their primary focus, they are a company after all. This is the main reason why WarCraft will never have another RTS game, because they won't invest money in something that will not provide profit returns. Excuse my poor ass English, this is a complex topic and requires vocabulary I'm not familiar with.
Branco Diaz I won't deny Overwatch is a fun game, but that game caters to bigger audiences. Overwatch has no content for a AAA game, the gameplay was copied from TF2 and inspired in MOBA theme. It is Blizzard's direct response to MOBAs popularity. The same thing can be said about Heartstone, all its mechanics already exist in MTG, it is a fun game designed to appease casual players. Of all demographics, the biggest one are casuals. The more casual is a game, the bigger its playerbase. I'm not saying that's bad thing though. A "perfect" ARPG wouldn't be a casual game. That's my point.
In my perspective what should absolutely must comeback to the Diablo franchise is the "what you see is what you get" in respect to the equipment used in battle. They achieve it pretty well in D2, you equip the axe, and your character will use it. In D3 you equip a sword on your monk and he will punch (WTF?). This is the first mistake in D3 that make think "WTF U have been doing all those years". I understand the logic that they use to define changes in the game series, to atract new younger players. But if you betray the original concept your old players (the ones that are adults and actually pay will end up playing another kickstarter clone franchise) and by the way i see a lot of interest games in your references so i will check up
Yeah that was very jarring. You get used to it by the end, but it makes no sense and removes really any difference a weapon type makes other than the almighty DPS.
L4ch Your comment may be the hidden gem of this comment stream, possibly the video itself. All the points Indigo laid out can be summed up as "Stop treating us like we don't know any better." A sword cuts, not bashes. Hell and its hordes are twisted and perturbed, not vaguely evil-looking. My character should be mine, not a variation of best practices. We want the Dark-Soulsification of our games! We want weight in both our decisions and our gameplay! We have been kited and rollercoastered for more than a decade now, and it's time to get our games back! When a game says Rated M, I expect to need a cigarette after the tutorial. Otherwise, it's just an E game with a potty mouth.
Also, Rares should be your best items (depending on rng). Uniques should have unique build-around abilities, but not necessarily be the best in-slot item. There should be a reason for white items, whether that to be crafting sources or imbueing. There should be multiple ways to upgrade items; sockets, quests, Stat - boosts, abilities, elements, even skills depending on certain items.
Excellent video editing skills, great transitions and a meaningful script, narrated by a good sounding voice -- what else is there to ask for? Only that the developers actually see it and take points, I think. Nice job, man.
As to loot...what I liked best about Diablo II's loot system is that there were a lot of different types of loot, and they all had their own thing. Unenchanted items with sockets could be great with stacked gems or with the proper rune word. Magic items could have the most powerful effects, such as Cruel giving 300% extra damage (until 1.10 added some of the most powerful rune words, this was one of the best options available). Rares could have a lot of different effects. Set items grew more powerful as you got the whole set. Unique items could have very powerful bonuses. A system like that, where X type isn't necessarily better than Y type, but they each have their pros and cons, would be great for me (similar with spells - each spell has pros and cons, as opposed to weaker and stronger versions like Fire Bolt and Fireball). I would add a crafting system similar to Path of Exile where you can change the type of loot, change the magical properties, or enhance the magical properties with various crafting materials. I'm not against crafting items (with something better than the Diablo crafting experience) and using different materials for different purposes. I do think a bigger loot table than what Diablo 2 had would be nice, and to not skew towards runes being the most powerful at the high level.
This is a very important point. I think vanilla Diablo 2 exemplified the point in ARPG design where finding random loot was both your best bet for a potential gear upgrade and an actually rewarding experience by itself. You could never tell what your endgame gear was going to be, and that was the beauty of it. You could never have perfect gear, but on the other hand it always made your options for upgrade open, which drove the endgame boss runs: you could still improve your gear that way. Lord of Destruction 1.07-1.09 shifted the game very seriously towards using unique items, runewords and crafting which were both more powerful than the vast majority of magic/rare gear you could find, and more predictable, making the gearing process more deterministic. This, at the time, was not a bad change per se, but it also kickstarted a much more significant shift towards endgame gear determinism and made random loot magic/rare loot far less relevant. Patch 1.10, as you correctly pointed out, pushed it yet further, with the core gear coalescing towards overpowered uniques and runewords leaving the random parts mainly to charms and whatnot. Unfortunately, this trend has largely carried over to the modern open-economy games such as Path of Exile, where unless you're playing SSF your endgame gearing looks a lot like grocery shopping where instead of incremental upgrades you just farm currency and punch in the uniques or desired rare mods for the needed slots in the shop indexer and buy the needed items that are very close to optimal for your ideal build. You pretty much never find upgrades among your personal loot in non-SSF conditions, and even then you're typically better off farming divination cards and crafting (especially now that you have a ridiculous freedom of crafting with significant safety nets) for higher determinism if you make a specific build (which is always more effective in the endgame than relying on random gear). I think the truly chaotic Diablo 2 era of all-random loot will never return, for better or for worse. Indeed, many players lamented the fact that it put them at the mercy of RNGesus, but that was also what made looting the most gratifying experience in a genre focused on looting.
Let me tell you why Blizzard will never make a good Diablo game anymore that would satisfy the "old" d1 and d2 fans. Blizzard nowadays has a pattern and its gona follow that at all costs, because it pays the best. 1. graphics: minimalistic, cartoonish. They would never make a game now that is realistic in any way. wow, hearthstone, d3, overwatch, hots, all of them has basicly the same graphics. They clung to it in d3, they will not change it. 2. gameplay: simple as possible. Nowadays blizzard always make games that can be played on most of the gaming platforms, because that brings the most money. This means the game can not be complicated to controll or to learn. Forget hardcore players.
No game should be complicated to control or learn, ever. The controls should be simple to understand, but difficult to master. Use the Souls series/Bloodborne as an example; easy to understand controls, but difficult to master them in a effective manner. Same goes for all of Blizzard's current games: WoW, HotS, OW, SC2, and even D3. The controls and gameplay is easy to learn, but actually doing anything effectively or 'gitting gud' takes time, practice, and dedication. WoW has mythic raiders who dedicate to developing skill with their chosen class and learning how best to defeat well built boss fights meant to challenge your ability to the fullest. OW, HotS, and SC2 have ranked which can even lead to getting serious bank via tournaments; even Hearthstone could lead you to cash if you're good enough. I can't really speak for Diablo as I never played D1 or 2, D3 and Reaper of Souls were my only experience with the series. But I can speak for, and defend, the rest of Blizzard's games. I would really enjoy if D3 was more dark, gritty, and grim though.
These are lovely ideas! I'm actually a game designer, and my dream is to work on Diablo IV. I have the first act written and a basic outline for the other ones, plus a spreadsheet with heaploads of info. ^-^
Indigo Gaming You really do seem like you know your stuff when it comes to video-games (especially RPG’s), Indigo Gaming. I would love to play one of your indie titles. 😀
Great video. Really enjoy you sharing the same, if not greater passion for this genre as I. I can feel the next great ARPG around the corner. They learned a lot of do nots from D3 and I feel D4 will truly bring it once Blizzard gets the ball rolling.
justin just dont even trust anymore blizzard, with what they done at last, overwatch plain copy paste of TEAM FORTRESS 2 (but failling hard to compete) heroes of the storm (samething) ... all that just show how fuckin greed they are to copy what are and was great income from their competitor, and what they did with sc2, killing horribly the success of it with expansion, d3 expansion was just plain empty from what they were used to do (looking at d2). tho we all know blizzard north quit and what remain are just the garbage brain. if you are looking for a new arpg, well just go for what you have now because, that wont be blizzard who will bring back those nostalgic great gaming time
Just because Overwatch takes some inspiration from TF2 doesn't mean it's a fucking copy paste lol, just because it's in the same genre doesn't mean it's a copy paste because that would make literally every game ever made a copy paste of another game, also if Overwatch taking inspiration from TF2 means it's a copy paste then it's also a copy paste of Quake and Counter-Strike and a lot more arena shooters and first person shooters of old, you can't be taken seriously yet here I am.... taking... you... seriously.... What the fuck is wrong with me?
"They learned a lot of do nots from D3 and I feel D4 will truly bring it once Blizzard gets the ball rolling." I seriously doubt that. Isn't the Diablo 3 marketplace still present in the Asian version? Mark my words, by the time Diablo 3 goes free2play, they probably bring it back everywhere... Did they change the art style to be more brutal after the initial criticism? Hell no. Most updates were trying to counter poor game balance and bad initial game design choices that still come back to haunt them regularly. It's also a game that's heavily influenced by modern '(search for and) play a net build' nonsense, instead of encouraging a larger variety of play styles. As for loot drops in D3, don't even get started. Games like Borderlands, Grim Dawn and Path of Exile do a superior job there. I'd agree with the general sentiment of this video of mixing the best of various games, but honestly I have zero confidence Blizzard will do so.
@Kukighost: You're being biased. Overwatch is a good game, but there's no denying it has largely copied TF2, including game modes, almost exactly. It doesn't play like a reskin, so there's that. But to pretend it's something new or original is just really silly Blizzard fanboy behaviour. The biggest difference between Overwatch and TF2 is how Overwatch has taken inspiration from MOBAS in a somewhat limited way. I don't think copying and pasting is always bad, but Overwatch definitely got the universal treatment people give to Apple and their iPhones man. It's overrated. (Also, and this is just my opinion, the game should have been free 2 play IMHO or definitely a lot cheaper).
I would prefer the ending be based on your actions rather than your class. My own character is my own. I'll decide his or her ending. That's what RPG's are all about.
I'm a minority in the online Diablo community because I am a filthy casual who only came back to the franchise with the port to consoles. I played D1 and D2 but the formula became stale to me and I was playing on consoles these days. I love couch coop in D3. My wife and I have put in a lot of quality time on the couch and I hope that D4 would continue to be console friendly and support on couch multiplayer. I would like to see the game remain frantic but I agree that more pacing and exploration would improve the game drastically. I'd like to see more horror aesthetics. Honestly, I'd be happy with more Acts and classes added to D3 for a long time to come rather than a sequel today. A random addition that I'd like to see are mounts. I love mounts in games. Random, I know...
2 things I'd like to add; 1) Story (I think you sort of touched on this) but with much less predictability with what will happen. We all saw Belial's disguise the moment we saw the kid. Maybe in the higher difficulties, the story changed up a little bit so you're surprised by the difference when the opposite of what you expect happens. 2) Few skills but that would be altered and augmented into several different viable forms. Firebolt could become Fireball, Inferno, or start to shotgun multiple attacks per cast, Molten Core, or set an enemy ablaze only to each have their own mutations. That way even if you replace the same class and skills they end up playing differently to suit different play styles.
Your presentation is top notch , It got me really into it , I salute you for that Your ideas are very creative and thoughtful , It combined the best of things together , i do dissagree on few very small pointers , But all and all , Very very well done
Really good outlook on a possibility. A few items I'd like to bring up: -On unidentified items, totally agree that having some reward to actually having to ID an item and subsequently making it something beyond right clicking it, has a lot of value. I'd suggest also that an unidentified item can be "used", albeit with partial/minimal effects. -Item Rarity: One thing about original D2, not LoD, is the excitement of finding a good rare item. At any point in the game it can set you over. Rares in any new game should have the ability to be completely randomized. This adds value to an item type (rare) past early levels, and opens up opportunity for builds other than having a particular item/set used with particular skills.
Yeah LoD, when they took away class identity by giving us enigma and other awful runewords. Where they took away our inventory space and gave us charms... No thanks, give me a classic option.
All main house Blizzard games have always had that quirky cartoon style-- the point is Diablo was made by Blizzard North, which was as you all know a completely fresh developer. They don't exist anymore, and now we're stuck with Blizzard main trying to comically make a serious gritty gothic horror.
Greybeard Games exists though, with the lead programmer and Designer for Diablo and Diablo II - David Brevik. Maybe he could join up with some of the other people who used to be on his team.
Diablo 1 is my favourite premise/aesthetic ever. It's contained and simple, but that enables its atmosphere to be forever seared inside your head. You enter a monastery and you keep walking down, level by level, until you reach Hell. This kind of monolithic concept isn't easy to pull off though. It's hard to keep out features as a choice, rather than due to constraints of budget and technology. When you're at a buffet it's hard to not splurge around and eventually ruin your meal. This is the reason I think that Arkham Asylum is head and shoulders above City. I believe the next Diablo, or any game for that matter, should strive to contain itself as much as possible. But not for containment's sake. Developers should try to find reasons to restrict themselves into creativity. Doing it for yourself though maybe is too hard. Crazy idea but maybe this is the role of the publisher of the future? I.e. the publisher who takes on the responsibility of restricting their developer in certain parameters, not for the bottom line, but for creativity's sake. And alter the parameters with every release, through trial and error. Such a publisher-developer combo sounds to me like they could usher in the next golden age of gaming.
In the industry we call this a "Design Doc". I am new to your channel and went in with low expectations but your insurmountable levels of self awareness in the start of the videos were comforting.
Not sure if this is even complete or formal enough to be considered a design doc, I consider it more of an elevator pitch -- if you had a 20 minute elevator ride, that is...
Mrfiufaufou not true learning A.I but some strategy in how enemies behave Say you encounter a band of skeletons, its a mixed group, you've got some sheild bearers, melee skeletal warriors, and some kind of range option (for the purposes of this model lets say at least one mage, and lets make skeletal mages more than just skelatal archers that shoot elemental spheres rather than plain old arrows, they can heal, and empower skeletons, and even can use some abilities that D3 gave to champion mosters (read illusionist, mortar, minion and one of the elemental enhancements)) Normal mode they behave like any other Diablo game, nightmare the ranged skeletons scatter, each taking up a possition that allows them to fire on the player, the melee warriors rush the player, falling back to be healed by the mage when injured, and returning to the fight quickly, the sheild bearers form a sheild wall between the player and the mage making sure that if the player doesn't have a mobility skill they can't get to the mage, ensuring that until that mage goes down, the entire group has healing and buffs, and you take debuffs, and for the sake of adding difficulty change how sheilding skeletons opperate, the sheild absorbs all attacks comming from the sheild side, but they lower the sheild to try and strike at the player then raise their sheild quickly Now based on what I described does that not sound like a tough fight? My thinking is some enemies get smarter while others stay the same, zombies don't get a boost to the inteligence, in this manner, but all demons do, and a few animals do as well (khazra and Laccuni)
+Grand Admiral Thrawn -- That would be an interesting progression, where you're tactics and playstyle would have to evolve moving up the difficulties as well as your build and equipment. I like it.
Indigo Gaming yeah, you could even bring back a staple DnD tactic where different monsters take different weapons (mace for skeleton sword for humans and some demons, something with fire for ghosts, ect.)
On map generation, add in rare one life challenge dungeons. You can come across random dungeons out in the world, when you enter the cave/dungeon a magical door slams behind you, you progress down through infinite levels with increasing difficulty and of course increasing loot chance. You could even have random bosses/mini-bosses in there too. If you die you are resurrected at the entrance and the door is locked permanently. These dungeons would be rare spawns on map generation/seeding. You could even include these for for Hardcore characters, a death inside the challenge dungeon wouldn't be permanent since the whole point of the challenge dungeon is to test yourself, not die and see how deep you can go.
Nice blueprint. Very well thought out. I imagine it would be a huuuuuuuuuuuuge game tho, bordering on whether it would be an MMO or social Action RPG. But maybe that's what we need, a hybrid genre with best of both worlds.
In terms of art style there's something so charming about the 2D sprites and landscapes from Diablo 1 and 2. Meanwhile I personally find 3D graphics a little tacky for top down styled games - what I would love for the next diablo if they took a more hand drawn style to the setting and characters. Something like Pillars of Eternity's art style would be perfect, where it's made out of 3D objects but rendered in 2D and looks absolutely stunning
i love the idea of having a dungeon where people could enter that the deeper you go the better loot there is but the whole thing is both pve and pvp and if you don't make it back to a exit alive you lose the items you would gain. it might be kinda hard to do but i think it would really add some good areas for groups of friends to travel with a challenge
Just discovered this channel and I'm amazed by the quality. Good content and good exposure. As a game designer myself, I really enjoy your chats. Try to keep the chapter title a bit shorter, though (3 seconds) to not lose the pace
one thing I think they need to do for the next diablo is make the combat a lot slower, remember the old diablo 3 gameplay waaaay back before it got overhauled?
Pepperidge farm remembers and so do I. Now unless you're farming at the rate of a John Deere G-Series Wheeled Harvester, you feel like you are doing it wrong.
You're right, didn't realize so much had changed even in the Wilson Diablo 3. The early gameplay videos seem a lot more like the original games in pace and speed. Too bad they had to turn it into Dance Dance Revolution.
I like the idea of having a HUB area you can improve. Finding new NPC's while out in the world, adding/upgrading facilities/buildings that kind of thing. You can add a element of randomness to that too, maybe you find a smith and a alchemist and next time you might get a healer and a gerneral goods merchant. Just a thought.
The biggest problem imo with diablo 3 is that items are replaced far too often. In diablo 2 it took ages to find new gear, I'd either have to really progress the game of spam shops. Also, runes please.
Nikolaos Giannoulatos you must ha e not played vanilla diablo 3 ....they went from impossible grinding for certain classes (hight tear monk gear was ridiculously expensive and rare) to such piles and piles of gear that youd think yellow is the new white....
Thank you. I tried to preface the video with the caveat that you can't just design a perfect game from the ground up without any tweaks, concessions or improvements, but as a rough concept, I'm glad it was well received.
I think what would be stupidly useful would be the ability to use your pet/companion to venture back and forth between the storage box. I also think that with a notice board in town that pet/companion could easily pick you up a quest relevant to your area. Just a thought. I always thought going back to town was backwards thinking in most games. Although it has a purpose, I enjoy throwing myself into endless action instead of worrying about selling my loot. In some games, knowing you can't sell any loot until you get to the NEXT town rather than teleport back was an incentive to carry on in hopes that a traveler was somewhere on the road or that you aren't heading the wrong direction all together. I don't think this is always the best solution, but a big issue in Diablo is the fact that you can literally leave Hell whenever you want... which makes Hell far less intimidating. The flip side: Harder to balance your potion system that way, unless a way to refill flasks was an incentive to search for; which in Path of Exile, if I'm not mistaken, each flask had unique properties in terms of temporary boosts and also different ways to refill such as getting kills. (It has been ages since I've played any of these games.)
I think your "always pushing forward" idea could be pretty cool in sort of a "raid" mode, where you have to get as far as you can in a high-difficulty mode without the safety net of going back to town. Could be interesting for hardcore players.
Now that would be really interesting as an optional challenge instead of a core experience. I think I like that more. Diablo is such a fun game, but I personally enjoyed stuff like Torchlight and Grim Dawn more. Diablo though, the fourth entry could be killer.
Awesome breakdown of a truly fantastic game idea. Most of which wouldn't be that tough to do. Unfortunate that Blizzard is more interested in making games that SELL more than games that are made well.
I'm glad to see someone else be able to see that even Diablo 2 took a step back from the gothic horror It was a great game and still kept a lot of the demon horror stuff, but it wasn't anything compared to how dark and gothic Diablo 1 was.
+Lord Thornton Eddington I love Diablo 2, but in playing the first two games again, I have to say Diablo has a much more consistent Gothic Horror tone.
Now that's a funny coincidence. I'm really enjoying your channel, watching these older videos, and then, all of a sudden, I see an illustration I did a long time ago pop up in this video!
Actually, there are no known ex-Blizzard staff working at GGG. Their core development team (including the lead dev/director/CEO Chris Wilson) is comprised of hardcore D2 and MtG nuts, though, mostly local New Zealanders.
You got me with the pacing thing. One of my biggest problems with D3, especially later on in the game, is that the game basically becomes a murderblur of lights and blood.
Awesome video, please do keep up the good work. I'm a fan of the aRPG genre and played hundred of hours of Diablo 3, Path of Exile, Torchlight II and Grim Dawn (that I'm full on hype mode for the expansion that's coming early 2017).
Excellent job this is really well put together. From the music you used, to the editing and your comprised ideas in a concise and easy to listen to tone. You should be the next D4 Creater, or ARPG developer. You are very easy to listen to while grinding on games. I will check your other content out now
Got a bit creative here, so this will be a long one: 16:30 also could be like this - you can use an item you don't know but at some risk. It may be cursed (which impedes your gameplay in a manner), or may work in unintended ways (gets weaker, works differently, etc). Not only that you might require sages for something, but you might actually add up certain aspects of identification that come along when the item is shown to certain people - a blacksmith could unlock a tier of attributes for any armor, sword, mace, etc. but an artisan of swords could add up more features. A master of a specific craft for the item could add more insight to the item to unveil its ultimate properties. Similar items could be made of different materials that different artisans could master. Such artisans could be found randomly generated on maps or some of them which address a broader range of items, in towns. Some might require rescuing from mobs, too. Some craftsmen could improve the qualities of an item if certain materials would be presented to them, or as rewards. A degree of crafting could also be mastered by the player themselves to have better understanding of crafting materials (more loot availability, and higher tiers unlocked) and identification or improvements provided on their own. Some identifications might require the item to be used for a certain duration, which could change the properties of the item or hurt the player if the player isn't proficient enough to use the item (obscurity on the item level at first could also make the risk/reward dynamic greater). For instance a staff that is used by a player with low energy tiers and not enough spellcrafting proficiency, along with less skills that synergize with the weapon, and a lower level than the item itself could reduce the staff's durability properties, make it backfire on themselves once every often, take a longer time to provide the basic identification of the weapon, get cursed by the weapon (being unable to unequip it and triggering dangerous and demonic situations once every often), reduce the overall spell synergy benefits of the weapon, etc. Most of these effects could be unveiled when the player manages to fully identify the weapon. Such scenarios would make many weapons viable over a longer duration as they unlock more and more benefits, and make rerolling, and grinding obsolete as focusing on improving the ways in which items are acquired would make a broader range of items more viable than an otherwise very limited pool of weapons which are desperately looked for by all players. Unique items in this aspect could present challenges that are unlike any other items, in a way that they require a very intricate system of property unlocking that they are constantly viable, but also very difficult to wield and maintain (only the worthy can wield them - not only that a character is strong or not, but also thoughtful of the item in question). And also, the item type (color) could be hidden for a long time until it is known to the player. The player, therefore could only know that their armor is a hauberk, and their weapon a spiked mace when they pick it up for the first time. A vendor, on the other hand could provide items that are unlocked to a particular tier, so gold could provide shortcuts and sure-fire ways of ascertaining mods that they definitely want from their item.
Good video. Editing must've been a ton of work! I'm gonna give some criticism, but before I do, I wanna say that I agree with a lot of things you said and I like many ideas, e.g. how the skilling would work. Prepare for a long comment, I'm passionate about Diablo :) I think that just picking things you liked from games and throwing them together doesn't make for a good game. There are too many concepts in this video (esp. the MP part). When you say that the game should have some mechanic, you gotta tell us what it's purpose is; what is the intended aesthetic that follows from the mechanic. Check out the MDA framework: www.cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/MDA.pdf it's a very short paper on a simple concept. For example companion/mercenaries: I agree with you on tone and setting and I think that having a companion completely conflicts with it (i.e. being alone is more grimdark than having a nanny with you). I get the sense that your main point of having it, is to serve the convenience role the pets had in Torchlight. I agree that the pets in TL were convenient, but they serve a purpose that can be achieved a different way (e.g. your proposed inventory enlargement). Going to town in D1 was a mechanic which served to pace the player, to interrupt combat. The frequency of town visits was a function of loot drops. Whenever you do a miniboss like Leoric, there is so much loot that you have to have a town break. On the surface, the pet in TL removes the need for frequent breaks, but it makes it economical to pick up and sell lower quality items (e.g. selling blues, whereas in Diablo you'd only sell yellows) and you wanna head to town to improve items on one of the many NPCs frequently anyway and there are other options to slow down after fighting, e.g. fishing; also IIRC you needed to talk to NPCs in town very regularly to progress through the main quest line in TL, so these are pre-programmed resting periods. D2 also did this to a smaller extent. In D1, when you're at the lowest levels of hell, going back to town gives you a short reprieve of the deadly enemies down below; this is a function of tone/setting and difficulty, which I haven't experienced in other ARPGs. If you think back to D2, then going back to town due to a full inventory was more often necessary than you needed a break from battle. But why is that? Maybe you had your inventory 20% full of charms and 20% full of consumables, therefore having only space for a handful of loot drops. Therefore the whole loot system would have to be changed to have proper pause timing. Too difficult? Add a pet. That's essentially what TL did. What is the point of renting out your mercenaries? What aesthetic are you trying to invoke in the player with that mechanic? When playing solo, I'd have to check out the current stats of the mercenaries of my offline friends and decide whether it's worth it to hire them. What happens to merc level? Do you have to level them or are they always your level? Does the gear of your friends' mercs scale down to your player level or can you just hire terminators to pull you through the game? This convolutes the game, but for what gain? ------- Saying that you'd have the "characters able to have a wide array of viable builds, rather than be locked into a few workable molds" is obviously something we all want, but it's not obvious how to achieve that. Has any ARPG actually done that yet? That's a hard problem that warrants it's own video. I don't think that the paragon system is a cause of grind, but rather a symptom of D3 not having any endgame besides grinding for the sake of grinding. D2 and D1 weren't much better in that regard; reaching lvl 99 was equivalent to grinding paragon levels. D2 simply lasted longer since you had only 3 reskills per character and had to start new characters whenever a patch would warrant a new build which wasn't viable before and you wanted to try it. So what's the big difference between giving the player tiny stat point boosts when he grinds after beating the game and giving him cosmetic items? Instead of implementing that system and content in the game, I'd rather spend time on working out how an ARPG could have a long lasting and at least modestly interesting endgame. You have multiple characters in D:OS, but elemental type puzzles would mean that every class in D4 would need access to every element, thus making them feel similar and hurt diversity. As a distraction from combat, I liked the hidden loot in TL, which would be in areas not shown on the minimap. (Note that having these distractions from combat reduce the need for combat pauses in town due to loot overload and therefore reduce the need for a shopping pet) Having cooldowns on spells was necessary in D1 and D2, because you could potion spam. IMO mana is an archaic gameplay element which is very well supplanted by the many different resource types in D3. The big downside of mana is that it replenishes slowly and if it does not, then you can't name it "mana", because players expect it to behave like mana in all previous games. The energy system from the rogue in WoW was very good, because it replenishes very predictively while allowing frequent skill use. It is one of the best alternatives, a real hybrid between mana and cooldowns. All other alternatives (e.g. rage/wrath/hatred etc.) are suboptimal and need further tweaking to find new resource systems which work very well. Having life as a resource should be tried more often IMO. Btw I love the idea of automatically instancing friends together in town. It might have some troubles when your friends have friends which are not on your friends list and they interact with each other (trade etc.), how would you show that happening in your own instance of town? But it may be doable. Online only was very likely a business decision at Actiblizzard. Having suits tell you how your game needs to be is a reality. The other side of the coin is where you're independent, but then you have to think about fracturing your probably already small player base. No game will ever again have the same market position as D2 had, back in the days. How would you have public events when you're usually in your private instance of the game? Having a dozen random players fight together seems to conflict with your stated tone and setting of the game. Are you designing an ARPG or an MMORPG? Why would you have open world PVP areas and also dueling/PVP arenas? How does open world PVP fit into a Diablo game with a party size of 4? Again this is an MMORPG element which I don't see contributing to D4. Why do you want to go back to potion spam? Why is that superior to health globes and ubiquitous life leech skills? "There should always be multiple ways to acquire good equipment." Why? How? Crafting in D3 was a disaster. At first, it served to give players respite from the horrible loot drops and later on with better loot it became useless, so they started to drop more unique recipes so that you could actually create some useful items, some of the time, but it would require tons of resources which you'd acquire through grinding. In the end, what does it add to the game, except more clutter? "Money shouldn't ever become worthless". Not that easy to do! PoE did it by doing away with gold and having consumables be money. Clutters the inventories a bit, but it seemed to work when last I played. The strong point of dropping gold, is to give players a carrot whenever they click on anything, be it enemy or destructible, without having it to be an actual item or even worth a lot. It's a bandage for boring combat. Yet another topic which warrants a video in which one questions whether gold drops are even necessary in an ARPG. Why should the player be able to buy good mediocre items from shops even into the endgame? The shops are there to keep you over the water in the early game, where the random loot drops might not give you anything workable. After that, the loot drops are usually better. If they weren't, then you'd need to spend time sitting in town and comparing items from vendors. Is this actually fun? Did it add fun or immersion to restart games in D2 and visit all vendors? If the starting equip wouldn't be utter crap, then you wouldn't even need vendors to sell you items at all! Why would you have socketable items but also detailed crafting? Do those two systems not serve the same purpose? I completely disagree on item identification. It is an archaic gameplay element which was copied from pen & paper RPGs without thinking about it. It took decades until gamedevs finally noticed that it doesn't add much, while being a chore. The only upside is that it adds a tiny amount of tension ("oh boy, this item might be good!"), which is why they left it as a time cost for legendaries in D3. But you already have that tension when you see a sword on the ground in orange text, with an orange ray and glow. It's enough to have items be unidentified on the floor and identified once in your inventory. You don't need a second artificial tension.
Thanks for watching, and yes it was a ton of editing, scripting and recording work. :) I might address each point you make at some point down the road, but let me just say I appreciate your passion for the Diablo franchise and you bring up some good points. Everybody has their own biases and leanings, but you would have to look at what points you or I have, and see what they bring to the table -- also weighing in if you are wanting a please-all design or a very tightly focused theme-driven game. Thanks for contributing to the conversation.
Very interesting. You can definitely see the work you've put into this. great work! Also a little feedback: I kinda missed a summary here with all your key points at the end. Perhaps I missed it (lost my attention a bit around 15 minutes or so and skipped some points after) or is there another part coming? Other than that great.
+Terrorbird Yeah there was no section-end summary this time. I was trying out a more seamless format as believe it or not there is an audience dropoff at every new section title card on my videos for some reason.
After watching the "redemption of Diablo 3" video, where the lead designer of Reaper of Souls talks about how they "redeemed" Diablo 3 with their changes, I have lost all hope for this series. According to him, the lessons they learned are: - Players want to play as super powerful demigods - Players primarily play for the loot and want lots of it - Players don't want Diablo to be a difficult game On top of that, not a single word on the cartoony WoW-style, the unkept promises for PvP, the missing identity and uniqueness of characters (due to the awful skill system and no stats points being attributed by the player) and the utter inflation of loot with loot 2.0 that takes away all excitement for finding things since you constantly find better equipment.
Haven't watched the 'redemption of Diablo 3' video yet, but one thing I liked about Reaper of Souls was the music was MUCH better than the base Diablo 3 game. Diablo 1's music you can probably still mentally hear if you think about it. Music is vital.
Your first two points were a perfect description of my own for D4 but I diverged a bit with the combat system. I love the multiple juggling of cool downs and resource management keeping your mind active during combat (at least until you're geared to the point one of those inhibitors becomes a moot point. I would love the Paragon system to mean more to you as a player than stats on a character, I would personally rather it affect your character to do new things along its class line to increase variety through long term play. It feels as though D3 built the game based on playing the game for 60 hours or so split between story mode and multi player but I think they under estimated how long people would play this game. They have had to invest in that thought now that the game has been out four going on five years. With your trading thought, I love the idea of that returning but I would also love a more in depth form of crafting to create more unique items throughout your gameplay. I would also do away with classes and give players three trees to build from, including Magic, Melee and Range to where a player could build the character they wanted to play as, but i do know balancing that type of system is a bear. I only point to things like this knowing people will play this type of game for years so it needs to be diverse enough to keep people entertained through their endless grinding. Give reasons and rewards to grind other than higher gear and bigger monsters.
One of the things I missed the most in Diablo 3 from a game design perspective was the Light Radius mechanics from 1 and 2. It, combined with the gothic style created a great kind of tension and uneasiness that Diablo 3 missed out on completely.
Very professionally done video. Filled with content, good examples and visuals! Your voice is good and the audio is very good. You were losing a bit of clarity in speech towards the end, might have been a separate take, but that's the only criticism I can offer :) In short, I really enjoyed the entire piece! Thank you!
I do have a suggestion! (loved your ideas btw): what about the amazing Nemesis system already present in Diablo 3 for consoles? With a bit of rework it has the potential to spawn truly fearsome creatures roaming the servers that can be hunted down by parties in exchange for money, loot, or any kind of reward (similar to mercenaries and PK parties in MMORPGs). I envision them as true legends, with most of the player base fearing them. Just imagine playing a game with a reasonable small chance of a Nemesis creature to show at any point, growing stronger everytime it gets a kill.
I did actually really enjoy the Nemesis system on console. I always felt my heart sink when I heard the horn sound, and got ready to face it. I think it's a pretty cool idea, although I might make it a little less common so you can't ALWAYS expect one to come around when you die.
I wish people like you could make diablo 4... interesting most of the people know how to make a good game but those who can actually make it like blizzard dont care at all about these ideas. Make it easy to play and a lot of micro transaction. You guys remember the first diablo 3 gameplay ? When the Siegebreaker kill the barbarian by Eating he's head ? :D I bet diablo 3 was like you saying in this video just in the marketing guys said if the game is to gore we have to put the 16+ on and we gonna lose a lot of buyer...
For me, the feeling of stepping into to darkness as a nobody, and rising as a champion, was crucial for me. The original warrior was a defeated veteran returning home and find it twisted by evil(sounds familiar). Like you said hearing the stories of Farnam and the butchered guy at the entrance of the cathedral set the tone. In real life, the story is always incomplete, and I enjoyed finding legends and tales(Halls of the blind, Poisoned well, Lachdanan
I think it would be cool if on different difficulty levels, that different things happen. For example, on Normal difficulty, you might enter a town besieged by an army of demons. A captain of the guard asks for your help in defending the town. Both you and the guardsmen, through a hard fought battle, slay the demons and save the town. But on Nightmare, you approach the familiar town ready to help the guard save the city. You see the captain, and just as he finishes asking you for help, the demons manage to get through this time and kill the captain and his men. On Hell, you would approach the town, but it is destroyed. People are dead, or dying, and the town is aflame. This would add something interesting to look forward to, and take away the dread of having to play through the whole same game over and over again.
+Chris Jackson I think it's an interesting idea for sure, and in fact it's already been done in a way. A lot of people (including me) forgot that the original Diablo had randomized questing. Sometimes the town well was poisoned and you had to go down and find the source of it, other times you started the game and the well was clean. Sometimes you'd find a dying person outside the cathedral which started you on the Butcher quest, other times he wasn't there and a different quest would appear instead. I think many devs don't do this anymore as they would be "hiding" content from players, but I think it's brilliant when I find new and exciting things to do in games I'm replaying, especially at higher difficulty levels.
As soon as you put ANY element of team-based gameplay by adding healer classes and stuff you RUIN the game. The idea in the beginning was dog eat dog, you kill a boss someone can steal the drop. They can hostile you anytime they want. The end of the day it doesnt matter how good your MF was or how unstoppable you were PVM. It was all about PVP, and nk'ing and stealing gold to quickly gamble rings. That's how you played. 4 years later you show someone a screenshot of their ear, that's right.
I could see that could be a group of people's experience, but that wasn't everyone's experience. Most people played PvE primarily, and there has been healing since the vanilla version of Diablo 1 (Heal Other), so it's been a staple since the beginning.
Indigo Gaming yeah but id be upset if everytime i login i cant do top level runs because i dont have a tank a dps a support and a specialist grouped with me, that would suck especially when you feel like you carry the whole time
Indigo Gaming i played PvE most of the time. The Pally is my homie and 2/3 trees are ally auras. Dont get me wrong Im not saying get rid of battle orders and enchant im saying sometimes less is more. Theres a difference between between immersed in a game, and oversaturated with choring tasks disguised as quest rewards.
Elements that make you stronger when you group with other players are good. The holy trinity of MMOs is not what you should have in a hack-and-slash. Things like auras, war cries, Amazon magic, enchant weapon, etc. are all great. I agree there shouldn't be a healer class, and there shouldn't be a necessity to have any one class or role present for a character to be effective in solo or group play. It should just be incedental increases in power thanks to buffs the other class gets normally for themselves.
I would like to see a dynamic campaign that progresses even when logged off so you can start playing and there will be demonic incursions and other events around the map and if you clear a town out for example, new and unique traders and companions will appear there for recruitment. Also whenever you level up I would like to see non-combat skills such as lore for identifying items, blacksmithing for crafting, and bartering for reducing prices and opening up new trade items from merchants.
I *really* love the concept of tier-based identification that requires different things than just using a scroll. It makes so much more sense as well. I'd also like it if you could *use* the gear before identifying it though, but that there's a slight chance of a curse, that you can get removed from some holy person in a town, and only through identifying will you see any curses or effects on the item.
I like that idea. Like maybe you could discover its effects through longterm use, but if it has a negative effect you might not realize it right away. Those types of risk/reward concepts really intrigue me.
Yeah, maybe have that be an optional way of identifying. Kinda like Nioh's familiarity system, except it'd actually just tell you more about the equipment the more you use it, to actually show the character becoming more familiar with the gear. It'd feel like there's a lot of depth there, and it would also mean you wouldn't be forced into looking for a sage who may not spawn if you're unlucky, for example. There's a lot of really interesting concepts that have yet to be tried out in the ARPG genre, and the wave of indie ARPG devs that has come out the last few years is positive because we get to see whether crazy stuff works or not.
I do like some of the experimentation that indie ARPGs are trying, and Nioh's system had some interesting quirks like you said, unfortunately from what I've seen in the limited time I've played the game, the loot itself was fairly boring, but that's not a mark against the system itself.
Yes, I completely agree. The loot did not make that game better, but an improvement on familiarity so that it means more than "20% stronger now!!" would be amazing
There is one thing I have seen in every game Diablo which is the use of scrolls to teleport to town. What I enjoy about having to purchase town portal scrolls is one they were expensive, two you have to use them wisely to get the loot you have back to town to sell otherwise you would have to trek back to town, and back down again. I literally got angry when I started to see town portals being used without penalty which took a very big part of strategic value of the game from me. I also noticed how your pets were able to go to town, trade, and sell off my junk which I really dislike. It's as if the dev wanted the player to just keep looting without thinking about if they had enough portal scrolls to use. I for one enjoy, and still enjoy playing Diablo simply because I felt like my hand wasn't being held. I often forgot while playing Diablo to purchase town portal scrolls, and curse myself for being so foolish, and I quickly learned after the third time this happened to always make sure I had plenty of coin, and space to keep a few portal scrolls on hand. Why did the developers have to remove this feature. All it did was kill of one of the cool game mechanic's I enjoyed, and forced me to keep a close eye on my inventory.
Lovely in depth video. Though I think CDs should still exist for certain exotic abilities and not just ults. Like for example, certain summons, a high cast time but highly damaging ability or in the case of Median XL, the Paladin's bubble, which made you completely immune to damage, but is also a very early unlock. Something else from Median XL which I loved was the higher utility of energy. Energy also increased spell damage for certain abilities. Imo incorporating attributes for ability effects can help diverse builds and let you play either as a glass cannon, a stout defender or a fine medium. Likewise weapon/armor/shield/trinket values also affecting certain abilities or effects. Having a cool item with an active or passive which somehow works with your hero because of the unexpected synergy with some of your spells is amazing! That's the type of crazy stuff I loved from Diablo 2 and its mod Median XL. It sounds stupid, it may not be the most effective, but it works and it's fun! Something to also give a higher incentive to do quests, is to lower the vendor prices when doing quests for a certain hub and have a branching effect on other hubs. That would make gambling a viable thing to do in a hub which offers lower tier items, but due to the much lower costs, you can gamble more and thus get a chance of getting something good. Overall I definitely agree with the majority of points you made.
Thanks for commenting. I don't mind cooldowns at all, I'm just not a fan of the MOBA and sometimes MMO of stacking cooldowns, mana, and other limiters on top of each other so it becomes almost a resource management strategy game over an action game. I'm personally totally cool with some cooldown abilities here and there, but I find it quite frustrating when I have full mana but no cooldowns ready or vice versa and I'm just helplessly hitting hotkeys to try to do SOMETHING, because I haven't waited for the stars to align just right. I also mentioned having variable cast time like you mentioned, which would help prevent spamming powerful abilities. I haven't yet tried Median XL, I've gotten recommendations for it several times. Maybe I'll stream it sometime.
You've got some really good ideas, and I think most of the community would agree with you on most of those points. The problem is implementation of some of them from a coding stand point. Especially your idea for randomized maps. The problem is: You want a randomized map. The reality is that procedural generation will eventually look like the same pieces put together after you play it enough times. Because that's exactly what it is, regardless of how you code it. Doing it any other way would lead to discontinuity in the story line, or balance issues with consistent difficulty, and of course each building you might see has to be programmed and built and (possibly) scripted in, so program bloat turns into a real concern. If you take four times the data storage to run half the gameplay time, the community won't like that. Also, loot systems are tough to balance. You have to appease both those willing to play more than a full time job, but you also have to be able to give the guys who play for an hour before bed each night a sense of progress. D2 did that, D3 does that, from what I've seen of PoE, it also does that. I haven't played far enough into either Torchlight to comment on them. And really the only way you're going to see how a proposed gear system works is by trying it. Your idea for vendors selling "mid game" gear is interesting, but what do you call mid game? Some would say that a player in D3 with a full set and all the right legendaries is at end game. But there are others who would argue that is the mid game, and only once you have all your pieces properly itemized with stats are you end game. And there are others would say that you aren't at end game until you hit full ancients. Now there's going to be that group going for primal ancients. So anything that has to do with gear is very subjective, and hard to get a concrete "this is better" style. Emblems in WoW were probably the best system I've seen in a game due to it's lack of RNG while requiring a decent amount of time. And I might be out to lunch, but I like the ability to respec at any time. I love playing with weird builds, or trying new ideas just to see if it sticks. In WotLK, I played a hybrid Dk B/F/UH build with four other dudes in similar builds that grabbed all the group buffs in each tree, took Frostborne, and we rotated the tank healing the tank with Deathcoil. I also used an UH build with Obliterate as it's main damage. Sometimes I used a Druid with a Boomkin/Resto hybrid. So keeping respec costs to almost nothing is better, IMO. Diversifying into a talent tree more like D2 or PoE would be better than D3, but balance becomes an issue. There will always be a best choice, and so everyone will take that best choice, so putting extra choices that are not the best choice doesn't really diversify much. That's always been the crux of the RPG universe, regardless of the structure. Overall, well thought out. You should try going into the game development world. And to everyone who thinks Blizzard just ignores the community, remember that there are millions of people in that community, and just because you haven't seen your ideas put into a game, doesn't mean they ignore the other millions-1 people that they have. Even 10,000 people liking one thing, you've got millions-10,000 people who don't. They have an entire department just for handling community feedback, and they have to do their best to weed out really loud single voices and listen to the community as a whole. If you think you can do better, go take the job.
Hey Indigo Gaming! First time commenting on your channel and I have to admit that I'm impressed by your ideas and all the work you put into this video! If just half of the ideas you offered will be implemented in a new Diablo game I'd buy it full price just like 3 on release day (I was too young for 1&2 on releases but played 2 alot :P). Anyway, thanks for the video, it's nice to have new systems and features even after playing so many games, especially RPGs or games with RPG factors are often too similiar and forget to merge with other great features.
First off, I'm also an old-school Diablo fan who grew up on the first two offerings in the franchise, and was similarly disenfranchised with D3's theming and certain mechanics and issues. Here's a few things I would add to the discussion at hand which you might consider, from my own experiences in gaming. * Core difficulty levels which cannot be changed, as you suggest, but have certain instanced content be capable of offering additional challenges for additional rewards. For example, you might choose to go in with 'Monsters are x times more numerous' in exchange for a 5% increased quality of magic and rare items. This wouldn't be applicable along the 'main quest', and the main world you traverse in, but these extra areas, tucked away somewhat off the beaten path, would give players an opportunity to really show what they are made of. You would have to unlock the challenge features, either through hitting a certain level, achieving a certain portion of the main quest, or perhaps unlocked through certain achievements or feats of strength that make sense for the challenge. For example, the above example of more numerous monsters might be locked behind a challenge to kill a large number of enemies in a short period of time, proving to the game, or at least to your character, that he or she is capable of handling the swarming minions of wretched vileness. It could also be portrayed as a measure of confidence, or perhaps overconfidence, in the in-game character's personality. Having conquered so many foes before, he or she feels more confident in taking on this additional challenge, perhaps to his downfall. After all, pride goeth before the fall, and this gives the player the opportunity to demonstrate their hubris, and the game an opportunity to extract its price. * Skill synergies between skills of different characters. This is a big thing I think could really help the multiplayer system. And I'm not just talking environmental synergies, although you can certainly do that (for example, one character spraying enemies with oil while another uses a fire-based ability), but key synergies or combos that different characters can engage in. I'm reminded of the Combo system from Chrono Trigger, where two or three characters could use a specific skill and combine their effects into a greater whole. Consider this: Have you seen FF XIV's combo system, where a character can engage in combos where the second and third ability gains some boost based on the skills used before it? Why not use that across different characters? So, for example, you have a roguish type with a backstab ability, but have it do, say, 25% more damage if the enemy in question was just hit by an aggro-generating attack from a different character within the past couple of seconds. Along with permitting the formation of guilds or clans, and a friend network, this would really help drive the multiplayer gameplay in ways that the classic Diablo franchise never did, but to the betterment of the game, in my opinion. This would also dovetail into the companion system, giving your companions the ability to augment what you already do. * Here's an idea for potions: It is the potion vial itself which contains the essence of magic of... whatever it does. And, like items, can be augmented with the right materials. You can then find common, magic, rare, and even unique potion vials, be able to potentially affect their prefixes and suffixes, and potentially even attach runes or even runewords to them. In effect, they are as much a piece of your equipment as your weapons and armor. Normally only refilled via an alchemist in town for a price, but one of the rare abilities might be to slowly refill based on enemies killed, giving you the 'life stolen per hit' mechanic that some prefer, but making it the exception and not the norm. Something like Path of Exile's potion system, simply improved upon a bit better.
Personally I believe that the permanence of the skills in diablo 2 was perfect. You got one chance to reset it in normal, one in nightmare, and one in hell. I know this is not very "noob" friendly because they will use it without knowing what they just wasted, but it is a learning experience. This permanence would allow for different builds to be required and add variety to all characters because if you are just a mix of a character you will get destroyed. In diablo 2 I played a lot of necromancer and I focused on summoning until after I beat act 2 then went back to Akara and changed my skills to cater to poisoning which is more viable at higher levels and I hope this is how it will be if blizzard decides to go back to the diablo series and not be focused on sales and more on the quality of the game.
I agree. Some sort of limitation or penalty makes decisions matter more. That's why games like Dark Souls work so well and have gotten so popular, everything has an actual risk to it.
I think the ultimate ability is a cool idea, but I'd want it to still be risk reward feeling. Maybe after the ability, a certain penalty is afflicted upon you. The penalty would be based on the ult you just used, so it would make the game less about "saving you ult" and more about "should I use it." It would punish players for underestimating an opponent while still providing some sort of "last leg"
great stuff! they only thing i really miss is the Diablo II " server list " and main chat system, where you can talk to ppl in your region and browse thru the server list. also, the old system of trading, that died with the D3 arrival.
Man this channel is fucking amazing. How the hell do you have this few subs is weirdly and negatively amazing. Great content and keep the grind going, just discovered you so at least I have a nice backlog.
+Pythagoras Mom Thank you! Still building up a collection of videos, and some of my early stuff is a little rough, but there are some good ones if I don't say myself.
This was well conceptualized and put together, although if you don't mind some feedback; I think you made the mistake of getting horribly convoluted near the end, and I personally think you kind of just threw things in that were unneeded, especially if you're trying to have your voice heard to any potential devs. I think also it's important to remember and at least keep in mind games the quasi casual consumer-base of this generation. But the video in general is great, and I can tell you put a lot of work and thought into it; this would for sure be the best Diablo game if they followed this groundwork, you earned your self a sub my man!
Visit my GOG Partner page for curated list of over 100 games ► indigogaming.link/
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Watching this after Diablo Immortal’s announcement :/
I know right? It sucks.
I love games where my character is just a random adventurer. I hate it when I get treated like ''the chosen one''.
The worst is an MMO where you're "the chosen one", along with 10 million others.
Indigo Gaming Sums up WoW right now x)
***** I never really played those. First person is something I never liked.
No where in Diablo 3 are you treated as "the chosen one".
***** So untrue. The whole Nephalem thing is so special snowflakey
This video has more theme and mood than D3.
dont most vids? :/
wow your editing skills are good
one thing I'd like to see in diablo IV is to make exploring as incentivizing as being able to rush through content. One of the reasons I prefer to play Grim Dawn over Path of Exile and Diablo III is because I can take my time and immerse myself in the world of Grim Dawn, exploring things even when I've explored them before because I'm rewarded with loot and experience to become stronger.
I love it when games reward you for taking your time and not blitzing through it.
THIS. Path of Exile nailed it when it comes down to gameplay, but immersion story? Not so much. Worst is: Wraeclast had so much potential... No, it actually has potential. In future xpacs, they could highlight the lore and immersion more. But that is me asking an different focus of the game, and PoE's focus is on the gameplay aspect.
João Baptista
The lore is actually quite in-depth and has a lot of content. It's just not as accessible. I believe there's a community who are quite obsessed with the lore of PoE. I'm not much of a lore-person, but I've heard that the easiest way to go about looking for PoE lore (besides the obvious cutscenes and narration stones/papers) is to check out item descriptions.
There are a lot of great things about POE. The skill tree is epic. The way you can socket gems to create spells with all different kind of abilities is revolutionary. That you can take fireball and add greater multiple projectiles to it and shoot 6 fireballs. The reactive gems are fun. Cast on crit was orgasmic before it was nerfed. You'd crit a bunch of times and the screen would fill up with spells shooting all over everything.
The problem with POE is the basic game mechanics are not quite right. Everything is just a little bit clunky. There is no way to tell what killed you. I got hit by some red thing. Was that fire? Lightning? Something else? No clue. Was it something else i didn't notice that really got me? Did i lag? Hardcore is unplayable unless you have a great internet connection. There is no way to play offline.
Just started playing Grim Dawn hardcore its fun. I started Veteran Hardcore right from the start. Kept making characters and dying and learning. I have a 70ish shaman summoner and a 55+ soldier (shockwave). Its really cool how you can mix and match 2 classes.
my problem with poe is that The Skill tree is nice and all till you've spent 8 hours on a character/build only to realize you don't have enough resistance/Defense and you get completely 1 shot. There's also NO way to respec, unless you're willing to spend a literal ass load of currency to buy orbs of regret which only let you rollback 1 point. I could understand if OoR let you roll back maybe 8 or 10 points but only 1 you'd be better off just remaking your character. Having to much control over your stats can be disadvantageous than just plugging points into Strength Dex Vit Eng. If GGG Refined their system to be more like the one portrayed in the video it could be a lot better for no so hardcore players.
i like the idea more of an adult game and sound effects.. d3 feels so childish
Kevin Khem It was designed to make asians and teens addicted. Despite me being an asian, I kinda hate how Blizzard is trying hard to appeal to us. I dont even consider asians as gamers since they fit the description of an addict more rather than a gamer.
Good point. Most people who have played Diablo I are in their forties now.
I changed the settings on my monitor to reduce saturation and make the game darker, so it looks more like Diablo 1 :)
i think true diablo fans are all adults now
@@dragonslayerornstein2834 When you say Asians I think you're not being appropriately specific. You are mostly really talking about people living under the PRC.
This video needs more attention. Blizzard should see this.
+El Rocky Raccoon Thanks for the support. Let's hope Diablo 4's project manager is a bit more willing to listen to the community, learn from experienced veterans, and be more open-minded than Jay Wilson seemed to be.
With both Jay Wilson leaving, and Steven Parker already long gone to Sony, there is hope for fresh ideas over at Blizzard.
Indigo Gaming i appreciate your desire for more depth and balance to the game, but you are asking for hacknslash WOW which would be a mess, and not much of an arpg anymore. far from diablo.
+HatelivesNextDoor Very little of what I said is like WoW. The theme would be Grimdark, the combat traditional hack n slash, not hotkey mashing tab targeting, minimal player count outside of public events and hubs if playing online, proper replayable campaign with randomized quests and procedurally generated environments.
The last thing I would want out of Diablo 4 would be another WoW.
And their response will be "You think you want all of this, but you don't."
Blizzard won't deliver a decent Diablo IV for sure. Just won't happen. Blizzard will disagree it looked less like Diablo in terms of horror, darkness and brutality. They've seen the insane success of WoW. They're not going to try the 'DOOM of RPGs' anymore. Honestly, I've got my hopes set on developers like the one behind Grim Dawn. It's not quite diablo 1 style awesomeness, but it's better than Diablo 3 in so many ways already. Pacing, flow and physics in combat of Grim Dawn is amazing. Best I've played in decades. Divinity Original Sin is great, but I don't think it would work in real-time.
PHeMoX you barely use any spells in grim dawn. The fighting is so boring, just left clicking
"Just left clicking" is basically what you do in all ARPGs. Your left click is always your main attack. In typical fashion, you usually also have an area attack if your main attack isn't AOE, a movement ability, and a few defensive cooldowns. All the best builds in the most popular ARPGs use this same formula.
Sure this isn't always the case, you can definitely build a character that uses more than a single main attack. But this is also true for all hack and slash ARPGs, including Grim Dawn. Sounds to me like you didn't really try anything besides some simplified cookie cutter builds, and even then you didn't get very far because in GD there is no way you can clear Ultimate with just left clicking.
comedyman112 Grim Dawn has plenty of spells. I actually use them all the time. I think you might not have really tried. Only using left click spamming in Grim Dawn will get you killed very quickly. It doesn't have boring combat. It has a decent challenge and excellent difficulty curve.
Biggest problem with grim dawn is is its not an MMO
- - Neither is Diablo III.... so who gives?
I hope they will make the graphics so it looks dark and creepy like in D1 and D2 but in 3D like the game "Agony"
Although this video sumarizes really well what would make the "perfect" ARPG, Blizzard will never do another "good" Diablo game.
Why? Because it wouldn't sell well. The perfect ARPG would only please a very specific demographic that Blizzard is not interested in targeting.
Look for example at Heartstone, at Overwatch. Blizzard is focused in developing high-successful selling games. Blizzard's vision as a company changed eons ago thanks to the success of WoW. Companies like to sell lots of games and let's face it, people in general like easy and friendly games.
Look for example at StarCraft, the game is struggling to stay "true" to the franchise. In the other hand, look at WoW, Blizzard will never ever release another WarCraft RTS game.
I highly doubt the next Diablo game would be as engaging, challenging and immersive as the first 2 games were.
+WhiplashGames
Yeah, after posting this, I scrolled down to realize there's a couple of comments that express pretty much the same thoughts.
We might even agree that the next game to bring ARPGs to a whole new level isn't likely to be Diablo4, or at least with a very very low chance. At this point, indi companies are making "better" games in that regard.
I have a lot of respect for the man who made this video, you can clearly see how much effort he had put into it. However, it is kind of depressing to know that a game like the one he described may not see the light of day. Let's hope I'm completely wrong.
The vision of Diablo died with Blizzard North. The creative visionaries moved on, which is why we've gotten so many other ARPGs.
The success that Blizzard once had with World of Warcraft will not be replicated. Blizzard knows that, which is why their payment structure hasn't changed. World of Warcraft's success isn't the reason for a lack of another "true" Diablo game.
Barry Pockrus
I'm not saying that Blizzard is now incapable of making "good" games because WoW was successful.
However, because of WoW, Blizzard became a huuge ass company. Their games cannot be "passion" projects anymore (I don't know exactly how to phrase this), they rather do successful marketing-driven strategies. They must pay their servers' maintenance and all their employees, attend sponsorships and international events (making movies and whatnot is Blizzard into now, etc).
They need money, that's their primary focus, they are a company after all. This is the main reason why WarCraft will never have another RTS game, because they won't invest money in something that will not provide profit returns.
Excuse my poor ass English, this is a complex topic and requires vocabulary I'm not familiar with.
Crimson Blade what of overwatch? that game is awesome and the lore, gameplay seem to be very thought out.
Branco Diaz
I won't deny Overwatch is a fun game, but that game caters to bigger audiences.
Overwatch has no content for a AAA game, the gameplay was copied from TF2 and inspired in MOBA theme. It is Blizzard's direct response to MOBAs popularity.
The same thing can be said about Heartstone, all its mechanics already exist in MTG, it is a fun game designed to appease casual players. Of all demographics, the biggest one are casuals.
The more casual is a game, the bigger its playerbase. I'm not saying that's bad thing though.
A "perfect" ARPG wouldn't be a casual game. That's my point.
This is by far the best presentation by far, well done man.
+Mikey P Thank you, glad you enjoyed.
+Mikey P it was so good you had to say "by far" 2 times
In my perspective what should absolutely must comeback to the Diablo franchise is the "what you see is what you get" in respect to the equipment used in battle. They achieve it pretty well in D2, you equip the axe, and your character will use it. In D3 you equip a sword on your monk and he will punch (WTF?). This is the first mistake in D3 that make think "WTF U have been doing all those years". I understand the logic that they use to define changes in the game series, to atract new younger players. But if you betray the original concept your old players (the ones that are adults and actually pay will end up playing another kickstarter clone franchise) and by the way i see a lot of interest games in your references so i will check up
Yeah that was very jarring. You get used to it by the end, but it makes no sense and removes really any difference a weapon type makes other than the almighty DPS.
also elemental properties were just a name in d3 :c
L4ch Your comment may be the hidden gem of this comment stream, possibly the video itself. All the points Indigo laid out can be summed up as "Stop treating us like we don't know any better." A sword cuts, not bashes. Hell and its hordes are twisted and perturbed, not vaguely evil-looking. My character should be mine, not a variation of best practices. We want the Dark-Soulsification of our games! We want weight in both our decisions and our gameplay! We have been kited and rollercoastered for more than a decade now, and it's time to get our games back!
When a game says Rated M, I expect to need a cigarette after the tutorial. Otherwise, it's just an E game with a potty mouth.
Also, Rares should be your best items (depending on rng). Uniques should have unique build-around abilities, but not necessarily be the best in-slot item.
There should be a reason for white items, whether that to be crafting sources or imbueing.
There should be multiple ways to upgrade items; sockets, quests, Stat - boosts, abilities, elements, even skills depending on certain items.
Excellent video editing skills, great transitions and a meaningful script, narrated by a good sounding voice -- what else is there to ask for? Only that the developers actually see it and take points, I think. Nice job, man.
As to loot...what I liked best about Diablo II's loot system is that there were a lot of different types of loot, and they all had their own thing.
Unenchanted items with sockets could be great with stacked gems or with the proper rune word.
Magic items could have the most powerful effects, such as Cruel giving 300% extra damage (until 1.10 added some of the most powerful rune words, this was one of the best options available).
Rares could have a lot of different effects.
Set items grew more powerful as you got the whole set.
Unique items could have very powerful bonuses.
A system like that, where X type isn't necessarily better than Y type, but they each have their pros and cons, would be great for me (similar with spells - each spell has pros and cons, as opposed to weaker and stronger versions like Fire Bolt and Fireball).
I would add a crafting system similar to Path of Exile where you can change the type of loot, change the magical properties, or enhance the magical properties with various crafting materials. I'm not against crafting items (with something better than the Diablo crafting experience) and using different materials for different purposes.
I do think a bigger loot table than what Diablo 2 had would be nice, and to not skew towards runes being the most powerful at the high level.
This is a very important point. I think vanilla Diablo 2 exemplified the point in ARPG design where finding random loot was both your best bet for a potential gear upgrade and an actually rewarding experience by itself. You could never tell what your endgame gear was going to be, and that was the beauty of it. You could never have perfect gear, but on the other hand it always made your options for upgrade open, which drove the endgame boss runs: you could still improve your gear that way.
Lord of Destruction 1.07-1.09 shifted the game very seriously towards using unique items, runewords and crafting which were both more powerful than the vast majority of magic/rare gear you could find, and more predictable, making the gearing process more deterministic. This, at the time, was not a bad change per se, but it also kickstarted a much more significant shift towards endgame gear determinism and made random loot magic/rare loot far less relevant. Patch 1.10, as you correctly pointed out, pushed it yet further, with the core gear coalescing towards overpowered uniques and runewords leaving the random parts mainly to charms and whatnot.
Unfortunately, this trend has largely carried over to the modern open-economy games such as Path of Exile, where unless you're playing SSF your endgame gearing looks a lot like grocery shopping where instead of incremental upgrades you just farm currency and punch in the uniques or desired rare mods for the needed slots in the shop indexer and buy the needed items that are very close to optimal for your ideal build. You pretty much never find upgrades among your personal loot in non-SSF conditions, and even then you're typically better off farming divination cards and crafting (especially now that you have a ridiculous freedom of crafting with significant safety nets) for higher determinism if you make a specific build (which is always more effective in the endgame than relying on random gear).
I think the truly chaotic Diablo 2 era of all-random loot will never return, for better or for worse. Indeed, many players lamented the fact that it put them at the mercy of RNGesus, but that was also what made looting the most gratifying experience in a genre focused on looting.
Let me tell you why Blizzard will never make a good Diablo game anymore that would satisfy the "old" d1 and d2 fans.
Blizzard nowadays has a pattern and its gona follow that at all costs, because it pays the best.
1. graphics: minimalistic, cartoonish. They would never make a game now that is realistic in any way. wow, hearthstone, d3, overwatch, hots, all of them has basicly the same graphics. They clung to it in d3, they will not change it.
2. gameplay: simple as possible. Nowadays blizzard always make games that can be played on most of the gaming platforms, because that brings the most money. This means the game can not be complicated to controll or to learn. Forget hardcore players.
No game should be complicated to control or learn, ever. The controls should be simple to understand, but difficult to master. Use the Souls series/Bloodborne as an example; easy to understand controls, but difficult to master them in a effective manner.
Same goes for all of Blizzard's current games: WoW, HotS, OW, SC2, and even D3. The controls and gameplay is easy to learn, but actually doing anything effectively or 'gitting gud' takes time, practice, and dedication.
WoW has mythic raiders who dedicate to developing skill with their chosen class and learning how best to defeat well built boss fights meant to challenge your ability to the fullest. OW, HotS, and SC2 have ranked which can even lead to getting serious bank via tournaments; even Hearthstone could lead you to cash if you're good enough.
I can't really speak for Diablo as I never played D1 or 2, D3 and Reaper of Souls were my only experience with the series. But I can speak for, and defend, the rest of Blizzard's games. I would really enjoy if D3 was more dark, gritty, and grim though.
you do know that the team that made diablo 1 and 2 is not the same as the one that made diablo 3 right ? :P
These are lovely ideas! I'm actually a game designer, and my dream is to work on Diablo IV. I have the first act written and a basic outline for the other ones, plus a spreadsheet with heaploads of info. ^-^
Thank you. Good luck with designing games. I did a few indie projects back in the day. Hopefully one day I can get back into it again too.
Indigo Gaming You really do seem like you know your stuff when it comes to video-games (especially RPG’s), Indigo Gaming. I would love to play one of your indie titles. 😀
Great video. Really enjoy you sharing the same, if not greater passion for this genre as I. I can feel the next great ARPG around the corner. They learned a lot of do nots from D3 and I feel D4 will truly bring it once Blizzard gets the ball rolling.
Thanks Justin! I hope you're right. Itching to get my mitts on some more ARPG goodness myself.
justin just dont even trust anymore blizzard, with what they done at last, overwatch plain copy paste of TEAM FORTRESS 2 (but failling hard to compete) heroes of the storm (samething) ... all that just show how fuckin greed they are to copy what are and was great income from their competitor, and what they did with sc2, killing horribly the success of it with expansion, d3 expansion was just plain empty from what they were used to do (looking at d2). tho we all know blizzard north quit and what remain are just the garbage brain. if you are looking for a new arpg, well just go for what you have now because, that wont be blizzard who will bring back those nostalgic great gaming time
Just because Overwatch takes some inspiration from TF2 doesn't mean it's a fucking copy paste lol, just because it's in the same genre doesn't mean it's a copy paste because that would make literally every game ever made a copy paste of another game, also if Overwatch taking inspiration from TF2 means it's a copy paste then it's also a copy paste of Quake and Counter-Strike and a lot more arena shooters and first person shooters of old, you can't be taken seriously yet here I am.... taking... you... seriously.... What the fuck is wrong with me?
"They learned a lot of do nots from D3 and I feel D4 will truly bring it once Blizzard gets the ball rolling."
I seriously doubt that. Isn't the Diablo 3 marketplace still present in the Asian version? Mark my words, by the time Diablo 3 goes free2play, they probably bring it back everywhere... Did they change the art style to be more brutal after the initial criticism? Hell no. Most updates were trying to counter poor game balance and bad initial game design choices that still come back to haunt them regularly. It's also a game that's heavily influenced by modern '(search for and) play a net build' nonsense, instead of encouraging a larger variety of play styles. As for loot drops in D3, don't even get started. Games like Borderlands, Grim Dawn and Path of Exile do a superior job there. I'd agree with the general sentiment of this video of mixing the best of various games, but honestly I have zero confidence Blizzard will do so.
@Kukighost: You're being biased. Overwatch is a good game, but there's no denying it has largely copied TF2, including game modes, almost exactly. It doesn't play like a reskin, so there's that. But to pretend it's something new or original is just really silly Blizzard fanboy behaviour. The biggest difference between Overwatch and TF2 is how Overwatch has taken inspiration from MOBAS in a somewhat limited way. I don't think copying and pasting is always bad, but Overwatch definitely got the universal treatment people give to Apple and their iPhones man. It's overrated. (Also, and this is just my opinion, the game should have been free 2 play IMHO or definitely a lot cheaper).
I'd also add the return of character specific endings. Really hated the mass generalized ending for all.
I would prefer the ending be based on your actions rather than your class. My own character is my own. I'll decide his or her ending. That's what RPG's are all about.
I agree
I'm a minority in the online Diablo community because I am a filthy casual who only came back to the franchise with the port to consoles. I played D1 and D2 but the formula became stale to me and I was playing on consoles these days. I love couch coop in D3. My wife and I have put in a lot of quality time on the couch and I hope that D4 would continue to be console friendly and support on couch multiplayer. I would like to see the game remain frantic but I agree that more pacing and exploration would improve the game drastically. I'd like to see more horror aesthetics. Honestly, I'd be happy with more Acts and classes added to D3 for a long time to come rather than a sequel today. A random addition that I'd like to see are mounts. I love mounts in games. Random, I know...
Mounts aren't that crazy of an idea. Sacred 1 & 2 (underrated games, btw) had mounts and worked pretty well.
"Things I like about all the games I played, mashed into one," might have been an alternative title.
2 things I'd like to add;
1) Story (I think you sort of touched on this) but with much less predictability with what will happen. We all saw Belial's disguise the moment we saw the kid. Maybe in the higher difficulties, the story changed up a little bit so you're surprised by the difference when the opposite of what you expect happens.
2) Few skills but that would be altered and augmented into several different viable forms.
Firebolt could become Fireball, Inferno, or start to shotgun multiple attacks per cast, Molten Core, or set an enemy ablaze only to each have their own mutations. That way even if you replace the same class and skills they end up playing differently to suit different play styles.
Your presentation is top notch , It got me really into it , I salute you for that
Your ideas are very creative and thoughtful , It combined the best of things together , i do dissagree on few very small pointers , But all and all , Very very well done
Really good outlook on a possibility. A few items I'd like to bring up:
-On unidentified items, totally agree that having some reward to actually having to ID an item and subsequently making it something beyond right clicking it, has a lot of value. I'd suggest also that an unidentified item can be "used", albeit with partial/minimal effects.
-Item Rarity: One thing about original D2, not LoD, is the excitement of finding a good rare item. At any point in the game it can set you over. Rares in any new game should have the ability to be completely randomized. This adds value to an item type (rare) past early levels, and opens up opportunity for builds other than having a particular item/set used with particular skills.
diablo 2 lod HD . perfect
HD and a new Addon would be perfect
try Path of Diablo, its a really good d2 mod, wich diversifies the amount of builds and adds more endgame content
Can confirm, currently playing Path of Diablo's ladder.
I'm guessing i won't be getting that mod on my Macbook... :(
Yeah LoD, when they took away class identity by giving us enigma and other awful runewords. Where they took away our inventory space and gave us charms... No thanks, give me a classic option.
The dark ambiance of 1.
The gameplay of 2.
The budget of 3.
Best diablo game ever.
All main house Blizzard games have always had that quirky cartoon style-- the point is Diablo was made by Blizzard North, which was as you all know a completely fresh developer. They don't exist anymore, and now we're stuck with Blizzard main trying to comically make a serious gritty gothic horror.
Greybeard Games exists though, with the lead programmer and Designer for Diablo and Diablo II - David Brevik. Maybe he could join up with some of the other people who used to be on his team.
Diablo 1 is my favourite premise/aesthetic ever. It's contained and simple, but that enables its atmosphere to be forever seared inside your head. You enter a monastery and you keep walking down, level by level, until you reach Hell. This kind of monolithic concept isn't easy to pull off though. It's hard to keep out features as a choice, rather than due to constraints of budget and technology. When you're at a buffet it's hard to not splurge around and eventually ruin your meal. This is the reason I think that Arkham Asylum is head and shoulders above City. I believe the next Diablo, or any game for that matter, should strive to contain itself as much as possible. But not for containment's sake. Developers should try to find reasons to restrict themselves into creativity. Doing it for yourself though maybe is too hard. Crazy idea but maybe this is the role of the publisher of the future? I.e. the publisher who takes on the responsibility of restricting their developer in certain parameters, not for the bottom line, but for creativity's sake. And alter the parameters with every release, through trial and error. Such a publisher-developer combo sounds to me like they could usher in the next golden age of gaming.
And then we got Diablo Immortal............................. Damn it man! Your ideas would make an awesome D4! Lets hope the dream is not dead yet
We can hope!
In the industry we call this a "Design Doc". I am new to your channel and went in with low expectations but your insurmountable levels of self awareness in the start of the videos were comforting.
Not sure if this is even complete or formal enough to be considered a design doc, I consider it more of an elevator pitch -- if you had a 20 minute elevator ride, that is...
when it comes to difficulty what I want to see, is the enemy A.I gets smarter with each difficulty, rather than buffing monster health the A.I buff
Deepmind and the developers of it are working with Blizzard sc2 AI at the moment, true learning AI. Can't wait what will happen in 5 years :)
Mrfiufaufou not true learning A.I but some strategy in how enemies behave
Say you encounter a band of skeletons, its a mixed group, you've got some sheild bearers, melee skeletal warriors, and some kind of range option (for the purposes of this model lets say at least one mage, and lets make skeletal mages more than just skelatal archers that shoot elemental spheres rather than plain old arrows, they can heal, and empower skeletons, and even can use some abilities that D3 gave to champion mosters (read illusionist, mortar, minion and one of the elemental enhancements))
Normal mode they behave like any other Diablo game, nightmare the ranged skeletons scatter, each taking up a possition that allows them to fire on the player, the melee warriors rush the player, falling back to be healed by the mage when injured, and returning to the fight quickly, the sheild bearers form a sheild wall between the player and the mage making sure that if the player doesn't have a mobility skill they can't get to the mage, ensuring that until that mage goes down, the entire group has healing and buffs, and you take debuffs, and for the sake of adding difficulty change how sheilding skeletons opperate, the sheild absorbs all attacks comming from the sheild side, but they lower the sheild to try and strike at the player then raise their sheild quickly
Now based on what I described does that not sound like a tough fight? My thinking is some enemies get smarter while others stay the same, zombies don't get a boost to the inteligence, in this manner, but all demons do, and a few animals do as well (khazra and Laccuni)
+Grand Admiral Thrawn -- That would be an interesting progression, where you're tactics and playstyle would have to evolve moving up the difficulties as well as your build and equipment. I like it.
Indigo Gaming yeah, you could even bring back a staple DnD tactic where different monsters take different weapons (mace for skeleton sword for humans and some demons, something with fire for ghosts, ect.)
On map generation, add in rare one life challenge dungeons. You can come across random dungeons out in the world, when you enter the cave/dungeon a magical door slams behind you, you progress down through infinite levels with increasing difficulty and of course increasing loot chance. You could even have random bosses/mini-bosses in there too. If you die you are resurrected at the entrance and the door is locked permanently. These dungeons would be rare spawns on map generation/seeding.
You could even include these for for Hardcore characters, a death inside the challenge dungeon wouldn't be permanent since the whole point of the challenge dungeon is to test yourself, not die and see how deep you can go.
That's an interesting idea, I like it.
Nice blueprint. Very well thought out. I imagine it would be a huuuuuuuuuuuuge game tho, bordering on whether it would be an MMO or social Action RPG. But maybe that's what we need, a hybrid genre with best of both worlds.
In terms of art style there's something so charming about the 2D sprites and landscapes from Diablo 1 and 2. Meanwhile I personally find 3D graphics a little tacky for top down styled games - what I would love for the next diablo if they took a more hand drawn style to the setting and characters. Something like Pillars of Eternity's art style would be perfect, where it's made out of 3D objects but rendered in 2D and looks absolutely stunning
Bigger world, more content. Better procedural generation and randomized content. More diverse environments. Less grind.
Also, improve the monster AI.
i love the idea of having a dungeon where people could enter that the deeper you go the better loot there is but the whole thing is both pve and pvp and if you don't make it back to a exit alive you lose the items you would gain. it might be kinda hard to do but i think it would really add some good areas for groups of friends to travel with a challenge
Kinda like the Dark Zone in The Division. I could see it working.
Very cool video love the ideas
empy (:
Just discovered this channel and I'm amazed by the quality. Good content and good exposure. As a game designer myself, I really enjoy your chats. Try to keep the chapter title a bit shorter, though (3 seconds) to not lose the pace
one thing I think they need to do for the next diablo is make the combat a lot slower, remember the old diablo 3 gameplay waaaay back before it got overhauled?
Pepperidge farm remembers and so do I. Now unless you're farming at the rate of a John Deere G-Series Wheeled Harvester, you feel like you are doing it wrong.
You're right, didn't realize so much had changed even in the Wilson Diablo 3. The early gameplay videos seem a lot more like the original games in pace and speed. Too bad they had to turn it into Dance Dance Revolution.
I like the idea of having a HUB area you can improve. Finding new NPC's while out in the world, adding/upgrading facilities/buildings that kind of thing. You can add a element of randomness to that too, maybe you find a smith and a alchemist and next time you might get a healer and a gerneral goods merchant. Just a thought.
Wow, some real effort is put in this video! Wish i had money to support you. Thanks!
+Alexander Bukh Thanks! Means a lot. I appreciate it.
Woah the overall construction of this video in terms of content and editing is fantastic. Well done! Subbed :D
Thank you very much! I hope you enjoy my future content.
The biggest problem imo with diablo 3 is that items are replaced far too often. In diablo 2 it took ages to find new gear, I'd either have to really progress the game of spam shops.
Also, runes please.
Nikolaos Giannoulatos you must ha e not played vanilla diablo 3 ....they went from impossible grinding for certain classes (hight tear monk gear was ridiculously expensive and rare) to such piles and piles of gear that youd think yellow is the new white....
This was a surprisingly good video. You set a high goal at the intro and I believe you achieved it. Great pacing and editing also, congratulations.
Thank you. I tried to preface the video with the caveat that you can't just design a perfect game from the ground up without any tweaks, concessions or improvements, but as a rough concept, I'm glad it was well received.
Brilliant! start a kickstarter!
To be honest this video as a kickstarter idea of a game would make a fortune :)
Totally agree - i would pay good money to fund a kickstarter like this.
the kickstarter might make a fortune off the success of all these other games, but the game wouldn't. im quite sure about that.
I think what would be stupidly useful would be the ability to use your pet/companion to venture back and forth between the storage box. I also think that with a notice board in town that pet/companion could easily pick you up a quest relevant to your area.
Just a thought. I always thought going back to town was backwards thinking in most games. Although it has a purpose, I enjoy throwing myself into endless action instead of worrying about selling my loot. In some games, knowing you can't sell any loot until you get to the NEXT town rather than teleport back was an incentive to carry on in hopes that a traveler was somewhere on the road or that you aren't heading the wrong direction all together. I don't think this is always the best solution, but a big issue in Diablo is the fact that you can literally leave Hell whenever you want... which makes Hell far less intimidating. The flip side: Harder to balance your potion system that way, unless a way to refill flasks was an incentive to search for; which in Path of Exile, if I'm not mistaken, each flask had unique properties in terms of temporary boosts and also different ways to refill such as getting kills. (It has been ages since I've played any of these games.)
I think your "always pushing forward" idea could be pretty cool in sort of a "raid" mode, where you have to get as far as you can in a high-difficulty mode without the safety net of going back to town. Could be interesting for hardcore players.
Now that would be really interesting as an optional challenge instead of a core experience. I think I like that more. Diablo is such a fun game, but I personally enjoyed stuff like Torchlight and Grim Dawn more. Diablo though, the fourth entry could be killer.
Awesome breakdown of a truly fantastic game idea. Most of which wouldn't be that tough to do. Unfortunate that Blizzard is more interested in making games that SELL more than games that are made well.
I even got a shiver in the part you talk about tiers of identification, and wondering what it could be. Nicely thought about.
+Tomé Silva Thank you!
I'm glad to see someone else be able to see that even Diablo 2 took a step back from the gothic horror
It was a great game and still kept a lot of the demon horror stuff, but it wasn't anything compared to how dark and gothic Diablo 1 was.
+Lord Thornton Eddington I love Diablo 2, but in playing the first two games again, I have to say Diablo has a much more consistent Gothic Horror tone.
Now that's a funny coincidence. I'm really enjoying your channel, watching these older videos, and then, all of a sudden, I see an illustration I did a long time ago pop up in this video!
Diablo 3 was a HUGE disappointment. Looks like all their old talent is now at GGG.
which is owned by the chinese
Actually, there are no known ex-Blizzard staff working at GGG. Their core development team (including the lead dev/director/CEO Chris Wilson) is comprised of hardcore D2 and MtG nuts, though, mostly local New Zealanders.
So much work has gone into these videos, deserves more subs and views.... I really enjoy the content!
Nice job, I like most of the ideas.
Thank you, glad you liked it.
You got me with the pacing thing. One of my biggest problems with D3, especially later on in the game, is that the game basically becomes a murderblur of lights and blood.
+Shrike I completely agree.
Awesome video, please do keep up the good work. I'm a fan of the aRPG genre and played hundred of hours of Diablo 3, Path of Exile, Torchlight II and Grim Dawn (that I'm full on hype mode for the expansion that's coming early 2017).
+Diêgo Duarte Thanks Diego. Been a long time fan of ARPGs too. Thanks for watching!
Excellent job this is really well put together. From the music you used, to the editing and your comprised ideas in a concise and easy to listen to tone. You should be the next D4 Creater, or ARPG developer. You are very easy to listen to while grinding on games. I will check your other content out now
+Bra The Ele Thanks very much! I'm glad you enjoyed.
Ooh, this should be interesting. Starting the video now, will likely offer some commentary in another comment.
Look forward to your commentary, if you get around to it.
Got a bit creative here, so this will be a long one:
16:30
also could be like this - you can use an item you don't know but at some risk. It may be cursed (which impedes your gameplay in a manner), or may work in unintended ways (gets weaker, works differently, etc). Not only that you might require sages for something, but you might actually add up certain aspects of identification that come along when the item is shown to certain people - a blacksmith could unlock a tier of attributes for any armor, sword, mace, etc. but an artisan of swords could add up more features. A master of a specific craft for the item could add more insight to the item to unveil its ultimate properties. Similar items could be made of different materials that different artisans could master. Such artisans could be found randomly generated on maps or some of them which address a broader range of items, in towns. Some might require rescuing from mobs, too. Some craftsmen could improve the qualities of an item if certain materials would be presented to them, or as rewards. A degree of crafting could also be mastered by the player themselves to have better understanding of crafting materials (more loot availability, and higher tiers unlocked) and identification or improvements provided on their own. Some identifications might require the item to be used for a certain duration, which could change the properties of the item or hurt the player if the player isn't proficient enough to use the item (obscurity on the item level at first could also make the risk/reward dynamic greater). For instance a staff that is used by a player with low energy tiers and not enough spellcrafting proficiency, along with less skills that synergize with the weapon, and a lower level than the item itself could reduce the staff's durability properties, make it backfire on themselves once every often, take a longer time to provide the basic identification of the weapon, get cursed by the weapon (being unable to unequip it and triggering dangerous and demonic situations once every often), reduce the overall spell synergy benefits of the weapon, etc. Most of these effects could be unveiled when the player manages to fully identify the weapon. Such scenarios would make many weapons viable over a longer duration as they unlock more and more benefits, and make rerolling, and grinding obsolete as focusing on improving the ways in which items are acquired would make a broader range of items more viable than an otherwise very limited pool of weapons which are desperately looked for by all players. Unique items in this aspect could present challenges that are unlike any other items, in a way that they require a very intricate system of property unlocking that they are constantly viable, but also very difficult to wield and maintain (only the worthy can wield them - not only that a character is strong or not, but also thoughtful of the item in question). And also, the item type (color) could be hidden for a long time until it is known to the player. The player, therefore could only know that their armor is a hauberk, and their weapon a spiked mace when they pick it up for the first time. A vendor, on the other hand could provide items that are unlocked to a particular tier, so gold could provide shortcuts and sure-fire ways of ascertaining mods that they definitely want from their item.
Good video. Editing must've been a ton of work!
I'm gonna give some criticism, but before I do, I wanna say that I agree with a lot of things you said and I like many ideas, e.g. how the skilling would work.
Prepare for a long comment, I'm passionate about Diablo :)
I think that just picking things you liked from games and throwing them together doesn't make for a good game. There are too many concepts in this video (esp. the MP part).
When you say that the game should have some mechanic, you gotta tell us what it's purpose is; what is the intended aesthetic that follows from the mechanic.
Check out the MDA framework: www.cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/MDA.pdf it's a very short paper on a simple concept.
For example companion/mercenaries:
I agree with you on tone and setting and I think that having a companion completely conflicts with it (i.e. being alone is more grimdark than having a nanny with you).
I get the sense that your main point of having it, is to serve the convenience role the pets had in Torchlight.
I agree that the pets in TL were convenient, but they serve a purpose that can be achieved a different way (e.g. your proposed inventory enlargement).
Going to town in D1 was a mechanic which served to pace the player, to interrupt combat. The frequency of town visits was a function of loot drops. Whenever you do a miniboss like Leoric, there is so much loot that you have to have a town break.
On the surface, the pet in TL removes the need for frequent breaks, but it makes it economical to pick up and sell lower quality items (e.g. selling blues, whereas in Diablo you'd only sell yellows) and you wanna head to town to improve items on one of the many NPCs frequently anyway and there are other options to slow down after fighting, e.g. fishing; also IIRC you needed to talk to NPCs in town very regularly to progress through the main quest line in TL, so these are pre-programmed resting periods. D2 also did this to a smaller extent.
In D1, when you're at the lowest levels of hell, going back to town gives you a short reprieve of the deadly enemies down below; this is a function of tone/setting and difficulty, which I haven't experienced in other ARPGs.
If you think back to D2, then going back to town due to a full inventory was more often necessary than you needed a break from battle. But why is that? Maybe you had your inventory 20% full of charms and 20% full of consumables, therefore having only space for a handful of loot drops. Therefore the whole loot system would have to be changed to have proper pause timing. Too difficult? Add a pet. That's essentially what TL did.
What is the point of renting out your mercenaries? What aesthetic are you trying to invoke in the player with that mechanic?
When playing solo, I'd have to check out the current stats of the mercenaries of my offline friends and decide whether it's worth it to hire them. What happens to merc level? Do you have to level them or are they always your level? Does the gear of your friends' mercs scale down to your player level or can you just hire terminators to pull you through the game?
This convolutes the game, but for what gain?
-------
Saying that you'd have the "characters able to have a wide array of viable builds, rather than be locked into a few workable molds" is obviously something we all want, but it's not obvious how to achieve that. Has any ARPG actually done that yet? That's a hard problem that warrants it's own video.
I don't think that the paragon system is a cause of grind, but rather a symptom of D3 not having any endgame besides grinding for the sake of grinding. D2 and D1 weren't much better in that regard; reaching lvl 99 was equivalent to grinding paragon levels. D2 simply lasted longer since you had only 3 reskills per character and had to start new characters whenever a patch would warrant a new build which wasn't viable before and you wanted to try it.
So what's the big difference between giving the player tiny stat point boosts when he grinds after beating the game and giving him cosmetic items?
Instead of implementing that system and content in the game, I'd rather spend time on working out how an ARPG could have a long lasting and at least modestly interesting endgame.
You have multiple characters in D:OS, but elemental type puzzles would mean that every class in D4 would need access to every element, thus making them feel similar and hurt diversity.
As a distraction from combat, I liked the hidden loot in TL, which would be in areas not shown on the minimap. (Note that having these distractions from combat reduce the need for combat pauses in town due to loot overload and therefore reduce the need for a shopping pet)
Having cooldowns on spells was necessary in D1 and D2, because you could potion spam. IMO mana is an archaic gameplay element which is very well supplanted by the many different resource types in D3. The big downside of mana is that it replenishes slowly and if it does not, then you can't name it "mana", because players expect it to behave like mana in all previous games.
The energy system from the rogue in WoW was very good, because it replenishes very predictively while allowing frequent skill use. It is one of the best alternatives, a real hybrid between mana and cooldowns.
All other alternatives (e.g. rage/wrath/hatred etc.) are suboptimal and need further tweaking to find new resource systems which work very well.
Having life as a resource should be tried more often IMO.
Btw I love the idea of automatically instancing friends together in town. It might have some troubles when your friends have friends which are not on your friends list and they interact with each other (trade etc.), how would you show that happening in your own instance of town? But it may be doable.
Online only was very likely a business decision at Actiblizzard. Having suits tell you how your game needs to be is a reality. The other side of the coin is where you're independent, but then you have to think about fracturing your probably already small player base. No game will ever again have the same market position as D2 had, back in the days.
How would you have public events when you're usually in your private instance of the game? Having a dozen random players fight together seems to conflict with your stated tone and setting of the game. Are you designing an ARPG or an MMORPG?
Why would you have open world PVP areas and also dueling/PVP arenas? How does open world PVP fit into a Diablo game with a party size of 4?
Again this is an MMORPG element which I don't see contributing to D4.
Why do you want to go back to potion spam? Why is that superior to health globes and ubiquitous life leech skills?
"There should always be multiple ways to acquire good equipment." Why? How?
Crafting in D3 was a disaster. At first, it served to give players respite from the horrible loot drops and later on with better loot it became useless, so they started to drop more unique recipes so that you could actually create some useful items, some of the time, but it would require tons of resources which you'd acquire through grinding.
In the end, what does it add to the game, except more clutter?
"Money shouldn't ever become worthless". Not that easy to do! PoE did it by doing away with gold and having consumables be money. Clutters the inventories a bit, but it seemed to work when last I played.
The strong point of dropping gold, is to give players a carrot whenever they click on anything, be it enemy or destructible, without having it to be an actual item or even worth a lot.
It's a bandage for boring combat.
Yet another topic which warrants a video in which one questions whether gold drops are even necessary in an ARPG.
Why should the player be able to buy good mediocre items from shops even into the endgame?
The shops are there to keep you over the water in the early game, where the random loot drops might not give you anything workable.
After that, the loot drops are usually better. If they weren't, then you'd need to spend time sitting in town and comparing items from vendors. Is this actually fun? Did it add fun or immersion to restart games in D2 and visit all vendors?
If the starting equip wouldn't be utter crap, then you wouldn't even need vendors to sell you items at all!
Why would you have socketable items but also detailed crafting? Do those two systems not serve the same purpose?
I completely disagree on item identification. It is an archaic gameplay element which was copied from pen & paper RPGs without thinking about it.
It took decades until gamedevs finally noticed that it doesn't add much, while being a chore.
The only upside is that it adds a tiny amount of tension ("oh boy, this item might be good!"), which is why they left it as a time cost for legendaries in D3.
But you already have that tension when you see a sword on the ground in orange text, with an orange ray and glow.
It's enough to have items be unidentified on the floor and identified once in your inventory. You don't need a second artificial tension.
Thanks for watching, and yes it was a ton of editing, scripting and recording work. :)
I might address each point you make at some point down the road, but let me just say I appreciate your passion for the Diablo franchise and you bring up some good points. Everybody has their own biases and leanings, but you would have to look at what points you or I have, and see what they bring to the table -- also weighing in if you are wanting a please-all design or a very tightly focused theme-driven game.
Thanks for contributing to the conversation.
You guys give youtube as a platform a whole new meaning. Thanks.
Very well thought out points. Thanks for taking the time to share them.
Very interesting. You can definitely see the work you've put into this. great work!
Also a little feedback: I kinda missed a summary here with all your key points at the end. Perhaps I missed it (lost my attention a bit around 15 minutes or so and skipped some points after) or is there another part coming? Other than that great.
+Terrorbird Yeah there was no section-end summary this time. I was trying out a more seamless format as believe it or not there is an audience dropoff at every new section title card on my videos for some reason.
love this video man. Fantastic job! Diablo for life
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed. I do love me some Diablo if I do say so myself.
Did not expect this level of production quality. Very impressive stuff and interesting ideas. Subbed.
Thank you! I appreciate that.
After watching the "redemption of Diablo 3" video, where the lead designer of Reaper of Souls talks about how they "redeemed" Diablo 3 with their changes, I have lost all hope for this series.
According to him, the lessons they learned are:
- Players want to play as super powerful demigods
- Players primarily play for the loot and want lots of it
- Players don't want Diablo to be a difficult game
On top of that, not a single word on the cartoony WoW-style, the unkept promises for PvP, the missing identity and uniqueness of characters (due to the awful skill system and no stats points being attributed by the player) and the utter inflation of loot with loot 2.0 that takes away all excitement for finding things since you constantly find better equipment.
Haven't watched the 'redemption of Diablo 3' video yet, but one thing I liked about Reaper of Souls was the music was MUCH better than the base Diablo 3 game. Diablo 1's music you can probably still mentally hear if you think about it. Music is vital.
@@Weremoogle Music is, all the ambient audio is. I miss Diablo II's heyday.
"Omnipresent darkness scarcely thwarted by the torch..." Good gawd the writing in this clip is blowing my mind. Out-freaking-standing!
Someone quick toss this video to blizzard, or give him his imaginary job IRL
Your first two points were a perfect description of my own for D4 but I diverged a bit with the combat system. I love the multiple juggling of cool downs and resource management keeping your mind active during combat (at least until you're geared to the point one of those inhibitors becomes a moot point. I would love the Paragon system to mean more to you as a player than stats on a character, I would personally rather it affect your character to do new things along its class line to increase variety through long term play. It feels as though D3 built the game based on playing the game for 60 hours or so split between story mode and multi player but I think they under estimated how long people would play this game. They have had to invest in that thought now that the game has been out four going on five years.
With your trading thought, I love the idea of that returning but I would also love a more in depth form of crafting to create more unique items throughout your gameplay. I would also do away with classes and give players three trees to build from, including Magic, Melee and Range to where a player could build the character they wanted to play as, but i do know balancing that type of system is a bear. I only point to things like this knowing people will play this type of game for years so it needs to be diverse enough to keep people entertained through their endless grinding. Give reasons and rewards to grind other than higher gear and bigger monsters.
The victory has defeated Blizzard. Dark souls was more true to d2 than d3 to d2.
One of the things I missed the most in Diablo 3 from a game design perspective was the Light Radius mechanics from 1 and 2. It, combined with the gothic style created a great kind of tension and uneasiness that Diablo 3 missed out on completely.
What ruined Diablo 3? Greed did
Very professionally done video. Filled with content, good examples and visuals! Your voice is good and the audio is very good. You were losing a bit of clarity in speech towards the end, might have been a separate take, but that's the only criticism I can offer :) In short, I really enjoyed the entire piece! Thank you!
It might have just been my speech pattern breaking down after 45+ minutes of takes, but thanks for the high praise! Glad you enjoyed.
i liked and agreed with all your ideas
I do have a suggestion! (loved your ideas btw): what about the amazing Nemesis system already present in Diablo 3 for consoles? With a bit of rework it has the potential to spawn truly fearsome creatures roaming the servers that can be hunted down by parties in exchange for money, loot, or any kind of reward (similar to mercenaries and PK parties in MMORPGs). I envision them as true legends, with most of the player base fearing them. Just imagine playing a game with a reasonable small chance of a Nemesis creature to show at any point, growing stronger everytime it gets a kill.
I did actually really enjoy the Nemesis system on console. I always felt my heart sink when I heard the horn sound, and got ready to face it. I think it's a pretty cool idea, although I might make it a little less common so you can't ALWAYS expect one to come around when you die.
I wish people like you could make diablo 4... interesting most of the people know how to make a good game but those who can actually make it like blizzard dont care at all about these ideas. Make it easy to play and a lot of micro transaction. You guys remember the first diablo 3 gameplay ? When the Siegebreaker kill the barbarian by Eating he's head ? :D I bet diablo 3 was like you saying in this video just in the marketing guys said if the game is to gore we have to put the 16+ on and we gonna lose a lot of buyer...
+Nerulon Skyven What I find ridiculous is that Diablo 3 IS an M for Mature game. So they didn't broaden the audience OR nail the grimdark tone either.
Indigo Gaming The only mature part in that game was diablo's ass in the diamond gate cinematic :D
+Nerulon Skyven 3mature5me
For me, the feeling of stepping into to darkness as a nobody, and rising as a champion, was crucial for me.
The original warrior was a defeated veteran returning home and find it twisted by evil(sounds familiar). Like you said hearing the stories of Farnam and the butchered guy at the entrance of the cathedral set the tone. In real life, the story is always incomplete, and I enjoyed finding legends and tales(Halls of the blind, Poisoned well, Lachdanan
"Mahw-nah cost"
It's "Manner cost"
-Everyone from Britain.
7:54 100% accurate D3 "Too much of the good thing, hazy blurr"
disappointed yet?
I think it would be cool if on different difficulty levels, that different things happen. For example, on Normal difficulty, you might enter a town besieged by an army of demons. A captain of the guard asks for your help in defending the town. Both you and the guardsmen, through a hard fought battle, slay the demons and save the town. But on Nightmare, you approach the familiar town ready to help the guard save the city. You see the captain, and just as he finishes asking you for help, the demons manage to get through this time and kill the captain and his men. On Hell, you would approach the town, but it is destroyed. People are dead, or dying, and the town is aflame. This would add something interesting to look forward to, and take away the dread of having to play through the whole same game over and over again.
+Chris Jackson I think it's an interesting idea for sure, and in fact it's already been done in a way. A lot of people (including me) forgot that the original Diablo had randomized questing. Sometimes the town well was poisoned and you had to go down and find the source of it, other times you started the game and the well was clean. Sometimes you'd find a dying person outside the cathedral which started you on the Butcher quest, other times he wasn't there and a different quest would appear instead.
I think many devs don't do this anymore as they would be "hiding" content from players, but I think it's brilliant when I find new and exciting things to do in games I'm replaying, especially at higher difficulty levels.
As soon as you put ANY element of team-based gameplay by adding healer classes and stuff you RUIN the game. The idea in the beginning was dog eat dog, you kill a boss someone can steal the drop. They can hostile you anytime they want. The end of the day it doesnt matter how good your MF was or how unstoppable you were PVM. It was all about PVP, and nk'ing and stealing gold to quickly gamble rings. That's how you played. 4 years later you show someone a screenshot of their ear, that's right.
I could see that could be a group of people's experience, but that wasn't everyone's experience. Most people played PvE primarily, and there has been healing since the vanilla version of Diablo 1 (Heal Other), so it's been a staple since the beginning.
Indigo Gaming yeah but id be upset if everytime i login i cant do top level runs because i dont have a tank a dps a support and a specialist grouped with me, that would suck especially when you feel like you carry the whole time
Indigo Gaming i played PvE most of the time. The Pally is my homie and 2/3 trees are ally auras. Dont get me wrong Im not saying get rid of battle orders and enchant im saying sometimes less is more. Theres a difference between between immersed in a game, and oversaturated with choring tasks disguised as quest rewards.
+robmiester I can agree with that. I was just pointing out that team synergy and party buffs/abilities were present in the old games as well.
Elements that make you stronger when you group with other players are good. The holy trinity of MMOs is not what you should have in a hack-and-slash. Things like auras, war cries, Amazon magic, enchant weapon, etc. are all great. I agree there shouldn't be a healer class, and there shouldn't be a necessity to have any one class or role present for a character to be effective in solo or group play. It should just be incedental increases in power thanks to buffs the other class gets normally for themselves.
Wow. There is some great content on this channel. I couldn't believe it when I saw your subscriber number. Keep Growing!
sorry the best diablo sequel is diablo immortal. prove me wrong. #ihavephones
I hell want to play the game with your concept, you've understand all
This is actually really well thought out and I like that you added visual aids to give a more clarified idea. Blizzard could take some notes!
I would like to see a dynamic campaign that progresses even when logged off so you can start playing and there will be demonic incursions and other events around the map and if you clear a town out for example, new and unique traders and companions will appear there for recruitment.
Also whenever you level up I would like to see non-combat skills such as lore for identifying items, blacksmithing for crafting, and bartering for reducing prices and opening up new trade items from merchants.
+Longtimer49 That sounds more like a persistent world a la Asheron's Call or something. Could be interesting as an online mode.
I *really* love the concept of tier-based identification that requires different things than just using a scroll. It makes so much more sense as well. I'd also like it if you could *use* the gear before identifying it though, but that there's a slight chance of a curse, that you can get removed from some holy person in a town, and only through identifying will you see any curses or effects on the item.
I like that idea. Like maybe you could discover its effects through longterm use, but if it has a negative effect you might not realize it right away. Those types of risk/reward concepts really intrigue me.
Yeah, maybe have that be an optional way of identifying. Kinda like Nioh's familiarity system, except it'd actually just tell you more about the equipment the more you use it, to actually show the character becoming more familiar with the gear. It'd feel like there's a lot of depth there, and it would also mean you wouldn't be forced into looking for a sage who may not spawn if you're unlucky, for example.
There's a lot of really interesting concepts that have yet to be tried out in the ARPG genre, and the wave of indie ARPG devs that has come out the last few years is positive because we get to see whether crazy stuff works or not.
I do like some of the experimentation that indie ARPGs are trying, and Nioh's system had some interesting quirks like you said, unfortunately from what I've seen in the limited time I've played the game, the loot itself was fairly boring, but that's not a mark against the system itself.
Yes, I completely agree. The loot did not make that game better, but an improvement on familiarity so that it means more than "20% stronger now!!" would be amazing
There is one thing I have seen in every game Diablo which is the use of scrolls to teleport to town. What I enjoy about having to purchase town portal scrolls is one they were expensive, two you have to use them wisely to get the loot you have back to town to sell otherwise you would have to trek back to town, and back down again.
I literally got angry when I started to see town portals being used without penalty which took a very big part of strategic value of the game from me. I also noticed how your pets were able to go to town, trade, and sell off my junk which I really dislike. It's as if the dev wanted the player to just keep looting without thinking about if they had enough portal scrolls to use.
I for one enjoy, and still enjoy playing Diablo simply because I felt like my hand wasn't being held. I often forgot while playing Diablo to purchase town portal scrolls, and curse myself for being so foolish, and I quickly learned after the third time this happened to always make sure I had plenty of coin, and space to keep a few portal scrolls on hand.
Why did the developers have to remove this feature. All it did was kill of one of the cool game mechanic's I enjoyed, and forced me to keep a close eye on my inventory.
Lovely in depth video. Though I think CDs should still exist for certain exotic abilities and not just ults. Like for example, certain summons, a high cast time but highly damaging ability or in the case of Median XL, the Paladin's bubble, which made you completely immune to damage, but is also a very early unlock.
Something else from Median XL which I loved was the higher utility of energy. Energy also increased spell damage for certain abilities. Imo incorporating attributes for ability effects can help diverse builds and let you play either as a glass cannon, a stout defender or a fine medium. Likewise weapon/armor/shield/trinket values also affecting certain abilities or effects. Having a cool item with an active or passive which somehow works with your hero because of the unexpected synergy with some of your spells is amazing! That's the type of crazy stuff I loved from Diablo 2 and its mod Median XL. It sounds stupid, it may not be the most effective, but it works and it's fun!
Something to also give a higher incentive to do quests, is to lower the vendor prices when doing quests for a certain hub and have a branching effect on other hubs. That would make gambling a viable thing to do in a hub which offers lower tier items, but due to the much lower costs, you can gamble more and thus get a chance of getting something good.
Overall I definitely agree with the majority of points you made.
Thanks for commenting. I don't mind cooldowns at all, I'm just not a fan of the MOBA and sometimes MMO of stacking cooldowns, mana, and other limiters on top of each other so it becomes almost a resource management strategy game over an action game. I'm personally totally cool with some cooldown abilities here and there, but I find it quite frustrating when I have full mana but no cooldowns ready or vice versa and I'm just helplessly hitting hotkeys to try to do SOMETHING, because I haven't waited for the stars to align just right. I also mentioned having variable cast time like you mentioned, which would help prevent spamming powerful abilities.
I haven't yet tried Median XL, I've gotten recommendations for it several times. Maybe I'll stream it sometime.
Amazing work on this video, subbed! We can only pray for some of these changes
+Vandals Thanks. We can hope, right?
You've got some really good ideas, and I think most of the community would agree with you on most of those points.
The problem is implementation of some of them from a coding stand point. Especially your idea for randomized maps. The problem is: You want a randomized map. The reality is that procedural generation will eventually look like the same pieces put together after you play it enough times. Because that's exactly what it is, regardless of how you code it. Doing it any other way would lead to discontinuity in the story line, or balance issues with consistent difficulty, and of course each building you might see has to be programmed and built and (possibly) scripted in, so program bloat turns into a real concern. If you take four times the data storage to run half the gameplay time, the community won't like that.
Also, loot systems are tough to balance. You have to appease both those willing to play more than a full time job, but you also have to be able to give the guys who play for an hour before bed each night a sense of progress. D2 did that, D3 does that, from what I've seen of PoE, it also does that. I haven't played far enough into either Torchlight to comment on them. And really the only way you're going to see how a proposed gear system works is by trying it. Your idea for vendors selling "mid game" gear is interesting, but what do you call mid game? Some would say that a player in D3 with a full set and all the right legendaries is at end game. But there are others who would argue that is the mid game, and only once you have all your pieces properly itemized with stats are you end game. And there are others would say that you aren't at end game until you hit full ancients. Now there's going to be that group going for primal ancients. So anything that has to do with gear is very subjective, and hard to get a concrete "this is better" style. Emblems in WoW were probably the best system I've seen in a game due to it's lack of RNG while requiring a decent amount of time.
And I might be out to lunch, but I like the ability to respec at any time. I love playing with weird builds, or trying new ideas just to see if it sticks. In WotLK, I played a hybrid Dk B/F/UH build with four other dudes in similar builds that grabbed all the group buffs in each tree, took Frostborne, and we rotated the tank healing the tank with Deathcoil. I also used an UH build with Obliterate as it's main damage. Sometimes I used a Druid with a Boomkin/Resto hybrid. So keeping respec costs to almost nothing is better, IMO. Diversifying into a talent tree more like D2 or PoE would be better than D3, but balance becomes an issue. There will always be a best choice, and so everyone will take that best choice, so putting extra choices that are not the best choice doesn't really diversify much. That's always been the crux of the RPG universe, regardless of the structure.
Overall, well thought out. You should try going into the game development world.
And to everyone who thinks Blizzard just ignores the community, remember that there are millions of people in that community, and just because you haven't seen your ideas put into a game, doesn't mean they ignore the other millions-1 people that they have. Even 10,000 people liking one thing, you've got millions-10,000 people who don't. They have an entire department just for handling community feedback, and they have to do their best to weed out really loud single voices and listen to the community as a whole. If you think you can do better, go take the job.
Truly awesome video, the amount of work you must've put into editing this really shows! Subbed and excitedly awaiting for the next video :)
Hey Indigo Gaming! First time commenting on your channel and I have to admit that I'm impressed by your ideas and all the work you put into this video! If just half of the ideas you offered will be implemented in a new Diablo game I'd buy it full price just like 3 on release day (I was too young for 1&2 on releases but played 2 alot :P).
Anyway, thanks for the video, it's nice to have new systems and features even after playing so many games, especially RPGs or games with RPG factors are often too similiar and forget to merge with other great features.
Thanks for the kind words, I'm glad you liked the ideas and presentation I put forward.
You talked about resource cost vs cool down and the need to pick one or the other. This is how I feel about stat gating vs level gating on gear.
+Axetwin I agree, multiple gates on abilities or items is kind of redundant.
First off, I'm also an old-school Diablo fan who grew up on the first two offerings in the franchise, and was similarly disenfranchised with D3's theming and certain mechanics and issues. Here's a few things I would add to the discussion at hand which you might consider, from my own experiences in gaming.
* Core difficulty levels which cannot be changed, as you suggest, but have certain instanced content be capable of offering additional challenges for additional rewards. For example, you might choose to go in with 'Monsters are x times more numerous' in exchange for a 5% increased quality of magic and rare items. This wouldn't be applicable along the 'main quest', and the main world you traverse in, but these extra areas, tucked away somewhat off the beaten path, would give players an opportunity to really show what they are made of. You would have to unlock the challenge features, either through hitting a certain level, achieving a certain portion of the main quest, or perhaps unlocked through certain achievements or feats of strength that make sense for the challenge. For example, the above example of more numerous monsters might be locked behind a challenge to kill a large number of enemies in a short period of time, proving to the game, or at least to your character, that he or she is capable of handling the swarming minions of wretched vileness. It could also be portrayed as a measure of confidence, or perhaps overconfidence, in the in-game character's personality. Having conquered so many foes before, he or she feels more confident in taking on this additional challenge, perhaps to his downfall. After all, pride goeth before the fall, and this gives the player the opportunity to demonstrate their hubris, and the game an opportunity to extract its price.
* Skill synergies between skills of different characters. This is a big thing I think could really help the multiplayer system. And I'm not just talking environmental synergies, although you can certainly do that (for example, one character spraying enemies with oil while another uses a fire-based ability), but key synergies or combos that different characters can engage in. I'm reminded of the Combo system from Chrono Trigger, where two or three characters could use a specific skill and combine their effects into a greater whole. Consider this: Have you seen FF XIV's combo system, where a character can engage in combos where the second and third ability gains some boost based on the skills used before it? Why not use that across different characters? So, for example, you have a roguish type with a backstab ability, but have it do, say, 25% more damage if the enemy in question was just hit by an aggro-generating attack from a different character within the past couple of seconds. Along with permitting the formation of guilds or clans, and a friend network, this would really help drive the multiplayer gameplay in ways that the classic Diablo franchise never did, but to the betterment of the game, in my opinion. This would also dovetail into the companion system, giving your companions the ability to augment what you already do.
* Here's an idea for potions: It is the potion vial itself which contains the essence of magic of... whatever it does. And, like items, can be augmented with the right materials. You can then find common, magic, rare, and even unique potion vials, be able to potentially affect their prefixes and suffixes, and potentially even attach runes or even runewords to them. In effect, they are as much a piece of your equipment as your weapons and armor. Normally only refilled via an alchemist in town for a price, but one of the rare abilities might be to slowly refill based on enemies killed, giving you the 'life stolen per hit' mechanic that some prefer, but making it the exception and not the norm. Something like Path of Exile's potion system, simply improved upon a bit better.
Love your content man. Relaxing tone and plenty of info. Great stuff
Personally I believe that the permanence of the skills in diablo 2 was perfect. You got one chance to reset it in normal, one in nightmare, and one in hell. I know this is not very "noob" friendly because they will use it without knowing what they just wasted, but it is a learning experience. This permanence would allow for different builds to be required and add variety to all characters because if you are just a mix of a character you will get destroyed. In diablo 2 I played a lot of necromancer and I focused on summoning until after I beat act 2 then went back to Akara and changed my skills to cater to poisoning which is more viable at higher levels and I hope this is how it will be if blizzard decides to go back to the diablo series and not be focused on sales and more on the quality of the game.
I agree. Some sort of limitation or penalty makes decisions matter more. That's why games like Dark Souls work so well and have gotten so popular, everything has an actual risk to it.
I think the ultimate ability is a cool idea, but I'd want it to still be risk reward feeling. Maybe after the ability, a certain penalty is afflicted upon you. The penalty would be based on the ult you just used, so it would make the game less about "saving you ult" and more about "should I use it." It would punish players for underestimating an opponent while still providing some sort of "last leg"
I agree, wouldn't want people to drop an Ultimate every minute on the dot, it should be something you only use in desperation.
great stuff! they only thing i really miss is the Diablo II " server list " and main chat system, where you can talk to ppl in your region and browse thru the server list.
also, the old system of trading, that died with the D3 arrival.
Man this channel is fucking amazing. How the hell do you have this few subs is weirdly and negatively amazing.
Great content and keep the grind going, just discovered you so at least I have a nice backlog.
+Pythagoras Mom Thank you! Still building up a collection of videos, and some of my early stuff is a little rough, but there are some good ones if I don't say myself.
This was well conceptualized and put together, although if you don't mind some feedback; I think you made the mistake of getting horribly convoluted near the end, and I personally think you kind of just threw things in that were unneeded, especially if you're trying to have your voice heard to any potential devs. I think also it's important to remember and at least keep in mind games the quasi casual consumer-base of this generation. But the video in general is great, and I can tell you put a lot of work and thought into it; this would for sure be the best Diablo game if they followed this groundwork, you earned your self a sub my man!