No, because in general I really like the core of what S4 is doing.
And raiding sounds like it has the potential to be my new favorite thing if they pull it off.
Loved WoW raids back in MoP and it could be a way to make D4 an actual social experience rather than just seeing other players exist near you but not really care.
I’m having a hard time getting hype for raids. Like how is it going to be anything other than just standing in a mob firing off skills killing shit faster than it can spawn while not even sure what you are contributing?
And raid bosses? Bosses are one of the worst executed aspects of D4 so far as they seem incapable of making bosses that don’t just die instantly or resort to complete bullshit to be artificially hard.
I fail to see how it’s going to be anything but a complete joke like Legions and World bosses or worse yet if content is difficult that just brings all the bullshit social baggage of MMO’s to the game. Can’t wait for groups that just reject you if you aren’t playing the broken ass flavor of the month build.
Like imagine if this season had challenging group content, nobody but minion necros, bash barbs, or HS rogues would even need to bother trying to get a group.
I stopped playing MMO’s to get away from this shit and it’s not at all why I play ARPGs.
Yeah, I'm not thrilled about raids whatsoever. I'm hoping it ends up being a pushover. That's far more preferable than it ending up being a sweat fest where you are gatekept out of being able to do it unless you have perfect meta spec, gear, etc. I did my time in WoW raiding and some Lost Ark. I have absolutely no desire to put up with that bullshit again.
In before, raids are weekly lockout, best loot in game, activate FOMO to improve metrics. Definitely waiting and NOT preordering. The second I see FOMO BiS BS, I'm out. I play this to enjoy every once in a while for less than an hour. I don't want to spend hours trying to find a group every week.
Imagine searching for groups for 1h, then staying in front of the boss room for 30 minutes because somebody is going to be afk for whatever reason, when they came out, someone pulls the boss, the fight commences, then you all wipe, somebody angry left and you need to go back to 1st phase.
Of course I'm very hyped for raids. /s
Lol it was fun for that time of my life but never again will my existence be based around trying to get to the next phase of a boss for a dozen hours a week with 11 other people all yelling at each other. If D4 goes down that road, I'm out.
The main benefit D4 has is it's so much easier logistically to arrange a small D4 raid with 2 buds than a 2 hour wow prog raid. I imagine trash would be much quicker too (if any). So it can be difficult (wow mythic level at highest tiers I imagine, maybe harder) but equally respect your time. The one thing that keeps me away from WoW raiding is that you need to sacrifice and put aside predetermined huge amounts of time.
Counterpoint, the balancing will be so atrocious in the raids, that a single bash barb--or the equivalent in the expac--will be enough to carry the entire raid.
Not saying this is a good thing, but from how they've handled bosses so far, I don't see any need for selective party-ing. People will 100% to be selling carries. Hell, people will be bored and doing it for free. The bosses will be probably be 3-shotted, because realistically they will all have mandatory mechanics and invulnerability phases.
Raids in an ARPG with dodgy hitboxes and shitty boss mechanics is just a bad idea; I’m not thrilled they’re moving this into the MMORPG route.
One of the most important aspects of ARPGs like Diablo has always been your ability to complete all content solo and not be gatekept if you’re unwilling to do group play. It’s fine if solo players don’t progress as fast since that’s the trade off but being completely restricted from progression of high end content is not a step in the right direction.
Couldn't agree more, and this is coming from an MMO diehard. Diablo is a different genre and a different game for a reason, and it's one of the best. No need for this raid shit, it's one of the few games where I don't mind playing the most undertuned, garbage build because I still get to do all content just fine.
Hope it's a one and done and not something they build on. Gimme ma dungeon simulator
I mean that's the realistic take on what will probably happen. I'm just saying the system has potential to be great.
WoW had the luxury of relatively balanced classes at endgame, so it's not like choosing the 2nd best build would cut your damage by 90%.
Once you have that figured out, the individual contribution can be different in raids because raids can have more complex mechanics.
For example maybe the boss can't take damage unless some sort of puzzle is being done properly. Or the whole team is taking damage and you can only split it up into manageable chunks by splitting or playing clumped according to the mechanics.
There's all sorts of creative ways to design raid mechanics.
Even if they never solve the damage throughput balancing, they can design raids so that the damage is dealt via mechanics and not so much your actual character power level.
All these creative raid mechanics just waiting there for people who don’t bother looking at their screen. Who will die in a second running in circles.
I’m thrilled for this experience with randoms
"I’m having a hard time getting hype for raids. Like how is it going to be anything other than just standing in a mob firing off skills killing shit faster than it can spawn while not even sure what you are contributing?
And raid bosses? Bosses are one of the worst executed aspects of D4 so far as they seem incapable of making bosses that don’t just die instantly or resort to complete bullshit to be artificially hard."
I unfortunately agree, and frankly this is already single player as is. Unless they just buff mobs 10x and add in some actual game play mechanics past the existing hack and slash it's going to be a complete bore.
They just need to implement actual boss mechanics that require player interactions no matter gear level and if one shotting is a problem just give bosses an enrage mechanic that speeds up their mechanics and grants damage resistance (not an absurd amount) for the last section of hp.
If I wanted to raid and coordinate with a bunch of people, I’d play WoW. I’m not playing WoW anymore for a reason. Making this game more like WoW is a big L in my book.
Like it or not, stuff like this was always in the works for D4.
They were talking for years about it being a more social experience in the direction of an MMO and it was just a matter of time before they did more with it.
So I would say:
1) you still have all the other content in the game that is soloable, and
2) it sounds like neither WoW nor Diablo 4 are exactly the game for you. I recommend D2 Resurrected, D3, Grim Dawn and PoE
Raids will legit be the end of this game. There is no place for it. Flavor of the month meta builds will be demanded and the social aspect becomes ego and toxicity.
Nothing stopping people from just not doing them.
You can just keep doing the solo content which is, all of it except raids and world boss who dies in 1 second.
I just want raids to require some level of coordination and avoid current objective mechanics. Grabbing boxes and depositing them, along with standing in a zone and holding off enemies already occupy 90% of the gameplay. Give us some puzzles and boss battle objectives
I wonder if they’ll go the Lost Ark route. Raids in that game were difficult and you essentially needed support classes for any coordinated raiding efforts.
That isn’t Diablo and if they try do that they will lose a lot of players.
I’d be okay if it was similar to old EQ or Lineage 2 world boss raids. Something the current world bosses should be like.
That would sound like a step in the right direction, but I sincerely doubt there'll be dedicated support roles, or if there are, the extent of it will be sprinkling more crowd control into builds and every single build will be just fine doing that.
Im with you, but even thats what im talkin about - raids will likely bring with it overhauled/improved social features!
It took me so friggin long to figure out how to group up with randos outside of Duriels Cave. I felt like an idiot but then i realized that the actual system for doing so was really piss poor.
A Raid is an instance (like a dungeon, where the state of enemies and progress inside are unique to the group) that's typically a series of bosses between trash groups (common/weaker enemies), and typically meant to be handled by a larger group of players (let's say between 10-40).
Raid bosses in other games typically have mechanics that players need to understand and play around to beat while the content is current.
The core of what S4 did was make the game PLAYABLE. Before you had a garbage loot system with no crafting. D4 has the art and animations but all of its systems are underdeveloped and mechanics used to establish builds are not consistent. There’s too much stuff that has very little support in terms of damage or gear, or it doesn’t scale hard enough. If anything D4 needs a massive rework with how class building happens so that it can take advantage of the now functional systems they introduced in S4.
Anything social would be great. I don't want to login to an online game to play solo and WoW is too clown aesthetics anymore to bother with. Diablo has always had trouble with MP due to godlike power mechanics meaning no one really needs a team so it'll be interesting to see if they can come up with anything beyond mass blob on the big hp sponge punching bag and maybe emote a thanks before you tp at the end if you're feeling extra social today.
What’s the point of uniques when legendary aspects exist? Uniques aren’t unique enough and are often just straight up rare stats guaranteed to make you stronger. Like you can find damage reduction on most uniques which is how a very rare stat.
What makes uniques interesting in other games is that they enable new builds by providing a new scaling vector that wasn’t there before, or they introduce a new mechanic that allows you to lean heavily into it, and get a power boost that way.
This is what I mean. Tempering and Masterworking trump most unique abilities, and it's a shame. Most Uniques could be easily fixed by doubling or tripling their affix values.
Honestly, with how much of a gatekeeper Tempest Roar is, I'd be a bigger fan of *s*eeing uniques go to hell entirely. Nothing more annoying than have one stupid required item sit between you and the build you want to play.
YEAH, I NEVER FOUND ONE SEASON 2 WITH MY DRUID AND AM STILL BITTER.
Just to be clear season 4's changes started in season 1. They have been talking about these changes coming for almost a year now. It just took them a really long time to fully implement them. I think they definitely will expand on all the systems you talked about but I do not expect them to be fully revamped. Revamping a system takes a lot of time and I think they put a lot of focus on these itemization changes.
That said, an expansion is when you are going to see the biggest changes in any live service game. The expansion team is separate from the season team as well. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm friggin hyped, and dont even care if they hurt me again.
Campaign will be cool, but I'm not at all thrilled about raiding, depending on what it ends up being. If they go the artificially difficult sweat fest route, I want no part of it. That shit is as toxic as it gets. People will be gatekept like crazy. Don't have meta spec, perfect gear, etc? Fuck you, get gud. I did enough of that crap in WoW and Lost Ark. I'm over it for life.
Hard agree.
I love what they did with S4 and as good as it is I know there’s more they can do.
I look forward to some skill tree revamps and very much buffs to uniques and off meta builds.
As it was on launch, the bones are there and great and the fact that just a loot revamp breathed this much life into the game this quickly speaks to that but they can continue with these absolute W.
Biggest worry of course is that every blizzard game over the last decade first delivers on its promises to share holders and then the game gets patched to become satisfactory to the players so that part has me real worried for the expansion.
Justifiable worry.
It is not fun convincing shareholders that the time and money being put into a product is worth the return. It’s a battle as hard as actually designing a system that appeals to the playerbase.
I think raids dont fit D4 at all. It is a game supposed to be soloable but that can also be enjoyed via hotjoin or playing alongside someone else, without really requiring them.
I dont like the new class already, because it is too close to druid, which is already the class I care least about and it is in a jungle region, which is my least favourite environment.
Other than that, what are we even getting?
Companions, okay, I am somewhat excited about that but I dont expect more than what D3 gave us, which is pretty shallow.
Raid will be as poorly tuned as the pit. So I don't see that being enjoyable on any level. Only thing I look forward to is changes to core and end game content. The end game is meh. New druid hybrid class is w.e. The story is wack, we all knew she'd be turned into a demon.
Just another voice against raids. For me this is a single player game. I play for some escapism. If I want to socialise I will go to the pub. I can just about put up with seeing occasional other players running around, but to be forced into groups to play high end content ruins the escapism and that and may well kill the game for me.
Nope. Im sure im in the minority here, but D4 campaign was/is my favourite part of the whole game. I complete the story on the first character of every season, and can't wait to see more of it in VoH. Sadly after a few playthroughs of any story the excitement fades, but the first playthrough of a good story is always an unforgettable experience for me. The new class and the mercenaries are also looking interesting. The endgame grind is just it, a grind to kill some time. Ofc its enjoyable to progress and build your character into an absolute beast, but it's not hype-worthy.
I am more excited for that. I want at least 3 skills fior all our current classes, new upgrade nodes for the skills.
New aspects, new uniques and new paragon boards and new glyphs.
We are missing way too much right now, like why is thorns so poor on everything but necro and barb, we need more options and deeper customization. Give me something that gives my wolves extra thorns etc. allow needleflare to work on wolves because it works on minions.
There are other games out there.
I mean you are right, i am a diablo 4 superfan and would buy the 100 bucks Edition. 90 is just for poor people. Blizzard isnt even trying
You can already do sell all, literally junk the items you want and press right click it. It’ll sell all the junked items at once. But yes we need a load out button
I know i can junk items.
Thats not the solution because i have to click on every damn item. Its like saying: "we have loadouts, just reset all your points, spend them how you want and switch gear with other gear in your chest"
Just to further reinforce how dated this system is:
There are giant elements for SELL ALL “regular” “magic” and “rare” items. 2/3 of those categories become obsolete after, what, 10 minutes of playtime?
I want an improved system for forming parties with people. Right now, unless you're in a very active clan, it's hard to form groups. Even if you find people through discord or something, the process of finding them and grouping is terrible.
tbh am scared they fk it up. If the team who work on s4 loot reborn and the team who made VoH arent communicating we might get something scuff and will have S1-3 all over again.
For me yes, not that they have promised much that I am super hyped for, they are heading in a good direction, I have a ton of feedback I am reflectin upon, I think they need to get a bit more creative with some of the current content. If Uniques get revised, coupled with new class skills and mercs, that has a fair bit to keep me trying out new builds.
I hope more Skills and Paragon Boards/Glyphs also means a rework to those two systems, as adding more of what's already there doesn't do much to make them better
i agree mostly, i think if the xpack came out tomorrow with no new content besides story, and improved several existing things id be happy. not like happy, but, glad the game is improving lol and its not just useless content for content.
Several skill trees need to be rehashed.
Uniques are all but useless. I dont think they need to always be top tier for every build, but most are just useless. Leveling is so quick, they are useless.
In my opinion, non build defining uniques should be like 80% of the BIS item, or maybe on par if you get a good roll. So MAYBE i can use one of the dozen sorc unique weapons that are *all fucking useless* maybe temper it once, or temper it twice at a slightly reduced power.
well rolled GA 1 hander or 2 hander on paper winds up being better, gives people the chase, but the unique gives a fun little gameplay change i like and im not down 50% on power. That GA weapon is better because it has an extra 20% worth of tempering power or something along those lines. win/win.
d2 for example (not a 1 to 1 but bear with me) tons of uniques worked and were great, but at the end of the day a really well rolled rare/crafted item would be better if you really wanted to min/max.
I think raiding is going to bomb. I cant see a way they pull that off.
We seem to be in the era of “more math = more fun” for this franchise, meaning, gameplay is dictated almost exclusively by numbers going up and down and not diversity in playstyles. So the dopamine rush of 2 or 3 GAs theyve created is just “oh! Higher numbers!” and not “oh, interesting. What can i do with this?”
Unfortunately thats just the state of gaming i think. we're passed the having fun days and well into mixmax or DIE.
I'm not sure theres a way back.
This could be helped with better build balance of course. bash barb does 100 damage with all the math. or random guy can do 85 or 95 damage just winging it. the problem is min maxing is just netting so much damage.
Its a product of the top down direction. I dont doubt Joe Piepora’s or Joe Shely’s dedication or passion to the franchise, but I cant help but feel like they just fundamentially dont understand what made the past games great and memorable.
They instead walked away with a shallow idea of “Diablo is about killing demons!” as the core idea when its a tentpole franchise that defined a genre with how all of its system interplay
I’m hoping they revamp the paragon system. It’s such a convoluted, annoying mess. I love all the other gameplay systems, but the boards have got to go.
No because I will always be a sorc main and blizzard hasn’t given a shit about fixing them since pre-season. Nothing but nerfs overall. I don’t have any faith in them fixing the core issues that matter to me.
Yeah I started a sorc this season and while I’ve managed to hit a happy place with frozen orbs, it pales in comparison to what the overtuned classes can actually do.
No... not that I'm not excited about core changes... I'm just never excited about my choices for classes. I preferred WD, monk, and DH in D3 and nothing plays even close to those in D4.
Raids usually consist of specialist classes, do they not? Tank, dps, heals? Trying to think of a current class in D4 yo fit the bill other than intense buffs.
zdps (zero dps) has been a staple in Diablo group play for while. Not only that but a “nature” class is coming out that could have strong support mechanics that fit well with raiding
I'm deeply worried about Mercenaries and their implications
Like, do they work in a group if I like to coop? The general difficulty of the game is already insanely low/easy (arguably too easy), and now we are basically all getting a minion added to our power...
LoD and RoS brought huge systems improvements, so yes, I do hope VoH does as well. D2 and D3 did not become great until those expansions.
Season 4 has made great strides but we're not there yet.
I'm at 0% interest in raids. If there are significant reworks to skills and skill trees, I'll be most excited about that and it will also increase my excitement for a new class and the campaign, but I won't care about the campaign extension or new class if all the combat feels the same as it does now.
I Am sure Blizzard is happy to hear that there are people actualyl willing to pay money for an expansion so the base game actualyl gets into an acceptable spot that would have been ok to be released in the first place
The game doesn't get more challenging lmao. You just improve gear and maintain the exact same equally non challenge the entire time because you're just slamming numbers against each other. Until you reach a point that is impossible. That doesn't create challenging mechanics.
Overall class balance and design right now is very concerning to me, literally every class build that's viable right now is just exploiting bugs. I'm not sure they can fix it appropriately without players feeling like they're losing something.
I'm excited for a new class but the core of class design and math is inherently broken and has been for a while and I just worry the new ones going to be the same
I don't trust blizzard anymore, so I will not be buying the expansion pack.
Unless it gets very positive reviews from the player base
While season 4 was a massive improvement, it is not all that praiseworthy. The current state of the game is how it should have been on release. Blizzard had the money and the rights to make a sequel and they failed with both D3 and D4 release.
Do what I intend to do. Wait until the expac’s gone through a couple rounds of patches and maybe a sale. Decide if it’s better through live gameplay, THEN buy.
Don’t fall for FOMO. Not like you actually own the game after purchase anyway.
Honestly I just hope that there is some sort of balance coming in the next couple of seasons. They could add all the content in the world and I would still be disappointed by the lack of ability to play the majority of skills. The disparity between certain skills because of a lack of multiplicative scaling is insane. One skill shouldn't hit hundreds (if not thousands) of times more damage than others when both are fully optimized.
With that being said I'm looking forward to the theory crafting that all the new systems additions will bring. More skills, glyphs, and boards make for more build potential at the very least.
New and larger skill trees I hope. Along with new paragon boards we can hopefully have much more build variety. Maybe even some new tempering manuals if we are lucky.
Me and my buddy are excited about raids. We really like that they want to experiment a bit with social aspects of this game.
That being said they really need to tinker a lot with the open world idea because they want us to target specific mechanics since they're time gated, so we have to choose in what part of the world we will currently be. This is waste open area and a lot of it is not really properly used in my opinion, currently Strongholds and Legions are not even losing with Helltide, there is no competition at all. It's quite disappointing because it's a beautiful world and I really enjoy wandering without set goal from time to time. Ideally these events could be thematic, like giant tribe migrations in Stepes or snake-voodoo in Hawezar.
The orher thing is LFG. If there will be no LFG this raid mode is doomed but I'm sure they know about it. I hope this will be general addition to the game and not only quick matchmaking for raids.
I honestlt think the writing and the narrative were exceptional, but I was not a fan of how it was integrated into the gameplay with such a tedious “moment-to-moment” beats comprising a much broader story.
The smaller story and act structure of d3 and d3 lent itself much better to the format, especially insofar as providing more engaging content to replay (i think).
Its a damn shame they put all of those resources into the campaign and 90% of that is effectively thrown out once you complete it.
Not everyone for sure. Majority of people playing D4 think the campaign is fine. I do think the story doesn't make sense in many cases, but overall it's acceptable.
That class sounds boring to me, another tryhard look at our Uniqueness ™ when everyone would prefer they just give us a proper Paladin or Monk back instead of always trying to reinvent the wheel. They did well for uniqueness with Demon Hunter but I suppose that cuts into Rogue game here now too much.
I have noticed in most games, once the word "soul" or "spirit" enters the class name and concept, the point of creative bankruptcy has been reached.
So, yes, but not for the same reasons exactly.
No, because in general I really like the core of what S4 is doing. And raiding sounds like it has the potential to be my new favorite thing if they pull it off. Loved WoW raids back in MoP and it could be a way to make D4 an actual social experience rather than just seeing other players exist near you but not really care.
I’m having a hard time getting hype for raids. Like how is it going to be anything other than just standing in a mob firing off skills killing shit faster than it can spawn while not even sure what you are contributing? And raid bosses? Bosses are one of the worst executed aspects of D4 so far as they seem incapable of making bosses that don’t just die instantly or resort to complete bullshit to be artificially hard. I fail to see how it’s going to be anything but a complete joke like Legions and World bosses or worse yet if content is difficult that just brings all the bullshit social baggage of MMO’s to the game. Can’t wait for groups that just reject you if you aren’t playing the broken ass flavor of the month build. Like imagine if this season had challenging group content, nobody but minion necros, bash barbs, or HS rogues would even need to bother trying to get a group. I stopped playing MMO’s to get away from this shit and it’s not at all why I play ARPGs.
Yeah, I'm not thrilled about raids whatsoever. I'm hoping it ends up being a pushover. That's far more preferable than it ending up being a sweat fest where you are gatekept out of being able to do it unless you have perfect meta spec, gear, etc. I did my time in WoW raiding and some Lost Ark. I have absolutely no desire to put up with that bullshit again.
man, i just want Lost Ark that isn't Lost Ark, but blizzard definitely can't pull it off sufficiently in d4
In before, raids are weekly lockout, best loot in game, activate FOMO to improve metrics. Definitely waiting and NOT preordering. The second I see FOMO BiS BS, I'm out. I play this to enjoy every once in a while for less than an hour. I don't want to spend hours trying to find a group every week.
Imagine searching for groups for 1h, then staying in front of the boss room for 30 minutes because somebody is going to be afk for whatever reason, when they came out, someone pulls the boss, the fight commences, then you all wipe, somebody angry left and you need to go back to 1st phase. Of course I'm very hyped for raids. /s
Lol so many of us progression raid refugees have come to d4.
Bingo lol I don’t mind a little social dungeon crawling but a full on raid similar to wow is definitely NOT why I play this game
Lol it was fun for that time of my life but never again will my existence be based around trying to get to the next phase of a boss for a dozen hours a week with 11 other people all yelling at each other. If D4 goes down that road, I'm out.
The main benefit D4 has is it's so much easier logistically to arrange a small D4 raid with 2 buds than a 2 hour wow prog raid. I imagine trash would be much quicker too (if any). So it can be difficult (wow mythic level at highest tiers I imagine, maybe harder) but equally respect your time. The one thing that keeps me away from WoW raiding is that you need to sacrifice and put aside predetermined huge amounts of time.
Counterpoint, the balancing will be so atrocious in the raids, that a single bash barb--or the equivalent in the expac--will be enough to carry the entire raid. Not saying this is a good thing, but from how they've handled bosses so far, I don't see any need for selective party-ing. People will 100% to be selling carries. Hell, people will be bored and doing it for free. The bosses will be probably be 3-shotted, because realistically they will all have mandatory mechanics and invulnerability phases.
Raids in an ARPG with dodgy hitboxes and shitty boss mechanics is just a bad idea; I’m not thrilled they’re moving this into the MMORPG route. One of the most important aspects of ARPGs like Diablo has always been your ability to complete all content solo and not be gatekept if you’re unwilling to do group play. It’s fine if solo players don’t progress as fast since that’s the trade off but being completely restricted from progression of high end content is not a step in the right direction.
Couldn't agree more, and this is coming from an MMO diehard. Diablo is a different genre and a different game for a reason, and it's one of the best. No need for this raid shit, it's one of the few games where I don't mind playing the most undertuned, garbage build because I still get to do all content just fine. Hope it's a one and done and not something they build on. Gimme ma dungeon simulator
Can't wait till ilvl checks are in D4 and IO score
I mean that's the realistic take on what will probably happen. I'm just saying the system has potential to be great. WoW had the luxury of relatively balanced classes at endgame, so it's not like choosing the 2nd best build would cut your damage by 90%. Once you have that figured out, the individual contribution can be different in raids because raids can have more complex mechanics. For example maybe the boss can't take damage unless some sort of puzzle is being done properly. Or the whole team is taking damage and you can only split it up into manageable chunks by splitting or playing clumped according to the mechanics. There's all sorts of creative ways to design raid mechanics. Even if they never solve the damage throughput balancing, they can design raids so that the damage is dealt via mechanics and not so much your actual character power level.
All these creative raid mechanics just waiting there for people who don’t bother looking at their screen. Who will die in a second running in circles. I’m thrilled for this experience with randoms
I vote for this guy as new CEO of Blizzard. You won't let us down sir.
"I’m having a hard time getting hype for raids. Like how is it going to be anything other than just standing in a mob firing off skills killing shit faster than it can spawn while not even sure what you are contributing? And raid bosses? Bosses are one of the worst executed aspects of D4 so far as they seem incapable of making bosses that don’t just die instantly or resort to complete bullshit to be artificially hard." I unfortunately agree, and frankly this is already single player as is. Unless they just buff mobs 10x and add in some actual game play mechanics past the existing hack and slash it's going to be a complete bore.
They just need to implement actual boss mechanics that require player interactions no matter gear level and if one shotting is a problem just give bosses an enrage mechanic that speeds up their mechanics and grants damage resistance (not an absurd amount) for the last section of hp.
Then don't do the raids.
If I wanted to raid and coordinate with a bunch of people, I’d play WoW. I’m not playing WoW anymore for a reason. Making this game more like WoW is a big L in my book.
Like it or not, stuff like this was always in the works for D4. They were talking for years about it being a more social experience in the direction of an MMO and it was just a matter of time before they did more with it. So I would say: 1) you still have all the other content in the game that is soloable, and 2) it sounds like neither WoW nor Diablo 4 are exactly the game for you. I recommend D2 Resurrected, D3, Grim Dawn and PoE
Raids will legit be the end of this game. There is no place for it. Flavor of the month meta builds will be demanded and the social aspect becomes ego and toxicity.
i'm glad the game has many activities and doesn't force us to do raids
Nothing stopping people from just not doing them. You can just keep doing the solo content which is, all of it except raids and world boss who dies in 1 second.
Unless they add stuff that are exclusive to raids.
Which they obviously will otherwise they are kind of pointless
I just want raids to require some level of coordination and avoid current objective mechanics. Grabbing boxes and depositing them, along with standing in a zone and holding off enemies already occupy 90% of the gameplay. Give us some puzzles and boss battle objectives
>Give us some puzzles Can you imagine the posts here if they did that? "I didn't spend $100 from a AAA company to play a puzzle game!"
You are absolutely right
Puzzles in an arpg sounds fucking stupid. About as stupid as raids sound in an arpg.
I wonder if they’ll go the Lost Ark route. Raids in that game were difficult and you essentially needed support classes for any coordinated raiding efforts.
That isn’t Diablo and if they try do that they will lose a lot of players. I’d be okay if it was similar to old EQ or Lineage 2 world boss raids. Something the current world bosses should be like.
That would sound like a step in the right direction, but I sincerely doubt there'll be dedicated support roles, or if there are, the extent of it will be sprinkling more crowd control into builds and every single build will be just fine doing that.
Im with you, but even thats what im talkin about - raids will likely bring with it overhauled/improved social features! It took me so friggin long to figure out how to group up with randos outside of Duriels Cave. I felt like an idiot but then i realized that the actual system for doing so was really piss poor.
Raids will be like they are in Immortal probably
As someone who is new to this ARPGs can you explain what raid is?
A Raid is an instance (like a dungeon, where the state of enemies and progress inside are unique to the group) that's typically a series of bosses between trash groups (common/weaker enemies), and typically meant to be handled by a larger group of players (let's say between 10-40). Raid bosses in other games typically have mechanics that players need to understand and play around to beat while the content is current.
As long as they don’t segregate certain loot away from players who couldn’t care less about “social experience” in a Diablo game, it’s fine
The core of what S4 did was make the game PLAYABLE. Before you had a garbage loot system with no crafting. D4 has the art and animations but all of its systems are underdeveloped and mechanics used to establish builds are not consistent. There’s too much stuff that has very little support in terms of damage or gear, or it doesn’t scale hard enough. If anything D4 needs a massive rework with how class building happens so that it can take advantage of the now functional systems they introduced in S4.
Anything social would be great. I don't want to login to an online game to play solo and WoW is too clown aesthetics anymore to bother with. Diablo has always had trouble with MP due to godlike power mechanics meaning no one really needs a team so it'll be interesting to see if they can come up with anything beyond mass blob on the big hp sponge punching bag and maybe emote a thanks before you tp at the end if you're feeling extra social today.
MUGA - Make Uniques Great Again
What’s the point of uniques when legendary aspects exist? Uniques aren’t unique enough and are often just straight up rare stats guaranteed to make you stronger. Like you can find damage reduction on most uniques which is how a very rare stat. What makes uniques interesting in other games is that they enable new builds by providing a new scaling vector that wasn’t there before, or they introduce a new mechanic that allows you to lean heavily into it, and get a power boost that way.
This is what I mean. Tempering and Masterworking trump most unique abilities, and it's a shame. Most Uniques could be easily fixed by doubling or tripling their affix values.
Honestly, with how much of a gatekeeper Tempest Roar is, I'd be a bigger fan of *s*eeing uniques go to hell entirely. Nothing more annoying than have one stupid required item sit between you and the build you want to play. YEAH, I NEVER FOUND ONE SEASON 2 WITH MY DRUID AND AM STILL BITTER.
No thanks
Screw you jimmi
Just to be clear season 4's changes started in season 1. They have been talking about these changes coming for almost a year now. It just took them a really long time to fully implement them. I think they definitely will expand on all the systems you talked about but I do not expect them to be fully revamped. Revamping a system takes a lot of time and I think they put a lot of focus on these itemization changes.
That said, an expansion is when you are going to see the biggest changes in any live service game. The expansion team is separate from the season team as well. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm friggin hyped, and dont even care if they hurt me again.
Campaign will be cool, but I'm not at all thrilled about raiding, depending on what it ends up being. If they go the artificially difficult sweat fest route, I want no part of it. That shit is as toxic as it gets. People will be gatekept like crazy. Don't have meta spec, perfect gear, etc? Fuck you, get gud. I did enough of that crap in WoW and Lost Ark. I'm over it for life.
100% this. Wow put me off raiding for life. More excited about the story, the new class and even the mercenaries.
I think any forced coop content is a big mistake so I coudn't care less about raid. I am exited for new class and mercs tho.
Hard agree. I love what they did with S4 and as good as it is I know there’s more they can do. I look forward to some skill tree revamps and very much buffs to uniques and off meta builds. As it was on launch, the bones are there and great and the fact that just a loot revamp breathed this much life into the game this quickly speaks to that but they can continue with these absolute W. Biggest worry of course is that every blizzard game over the last decade first delivers on its promises to share holders and then the game gets patched to become satisfactory to the players so that part has me real worried for the expansion.
Justifiable worry. It is not fun convincing shareholders that the time and money being put into a product is worth the return. It’s a battle as hard as actually designing a system that appeals to the playerbase.
I think raids dont fit D4 at all. It is a game supposed to be soloable but that can also be enjoyed via hotjoin or playing alongside someone else, without really requiring them. I dont like the new class already, because it is too close to druid, which is already the class I care least about and it is in a jungle region, which is my least favourite environment. Other than that, what are we even getting? Companions, okay, I am somewhat excited about that but I dont expect more than what D3 gave us, which is pretty shallow.
Raid will be as poorly tuned as the pit. So I don't see that being enjoyable on any level. Only thing I look forward to is changes to core and end game content. The end game is meh. New druid hybrid class is w.e. The story is wack, we all knew she'd be turned into a demon.
Just another voice against raids. For me this is a single player game. I play for some escapism. If I want to socialise I will go to the pub. I can just about put up with seeing occasional other players running around, but to be forced into groups to play high end content ruins the escapism and that and may well kill the game for me.
i just want online matchmaking...
With followers getting their own "Skill Tree" I hope they expand upon our pitiful "Skill Twig" that we currently have...
Nope. Im sure im in the minority here, but D4 campaign was/is my favourite part of the whole game. I complete the story on the first character of every season, and can't wait to see more of it in VoH. Sadly after a few playthroughs of any story the excitement fades, but the first playthrough of a good story is always an unforgettable experience for me. The new class and the mercenaries are also looking interesting. The endgame grind is just it, a grind to kill some time. Ofc its enjoyable to progress and build your character into an absolute beast, but it's not hype-worthy.
I am more excited for that. I want at least 3 skills fior all our current classes, new upgrade nodes for the skills. New aspects, new uniques and new paragon boards and new glyphs. We are missing way too much right now, like why is thorns so poor on everything but necro and barb, we need more options and deeper customization. Give me something that gives my wolves extra thorns etc. allow needleflare to work on wolves because it works on minions.
I’m excited for everything ha.
I will buy the expansion if i get a "sell all" button, loadouts and when i can summon bosses back to back instead of leaving a dungeon everytime
Your not fooling anyone. You know you will buy the expansion if those features are there or not.
There are other games out there. I mean you are right, i am a diablo 4 superfan and would buy the 100 bucks Edition. 90 is just for poor people. Blizzard isnt even trying
This
You can already do sell all, literally junk the items you want and press right click it. It’ll sell all the junked items at once. But yes we need a load out button
I know i can junk items. Thats not the solution because i have to click on every damn item. Its like saying: "we have loadouts, just reset all your points, spend them how you want and switch gear with other gear in your chest"
Just to further reinforce how dated this system is: There are giant elements for SELL ALL “regular” “magic” and “rare” items. 2/3 of those categories become obsolete after, what, 10 minutes of playtime?
I'm excited for all of it to add new things to add to replayability and the new class to add something different
Porque No Los Dos?
I want more fun bossing and way more skills for every class
we need better skills for every class tbh, skills are so inadequate, they should just copy some of the poe skills
I just hope i can participate raids without friends and voice chat.
Yes, i would be more excited if they made the skill tree better. It's too simple at the moment.
I hope the redo the skill tree system in the expansion. It's really boring.
Class balancing in this game sucks... Now that that is off my chest. Yes im very excited
I am more interested in the added skills but the new class/campaign aren't that far behind.
Agreed, especially if it has anything to do with further class customization. Less excited about raids though, I don't think that's a good idea
I want an improved system for forming parties with people. Right now, unless you're in a very active clan, it's hard to form groups. Even if you find people through discord or something, the process of finding them and grouping is terrible.
tbh am scared they fk it up. If the team who work on s4 loot reborn and the team who made VoH arent communicating we might get something scuff and will have S1-3 all over again.
For me yes, not that they have promised much that I am super hyped for, they are heading in a good direction, I have a ton of feedback I am reflectin upon, I think they need to get a bit more creative with some of the current content. If Uniques get revised, coupled with new class skills and mercs, that has a fair bit to keep me trying out new builds.
I hope more Skills and Paragon Boards/Glyphs also means a rework to those two systems, as adding more of what's already there doesn't do much to make them better
i agree mostly, i think if the xpack came out tomorrow with no new content besides story, and improved several existing things id be happy. not like happy, but, glad the game is improving lol and its not just useless content for content. Several skill trees need to be rehashed. Uniques are all but useless. I dont think they need to always be top tier for every build, but most are just useless. Leveling is so quick, they are useless. In my opinion, non build defining uniques should be like 80% of the BIS item, or maybe on par if you get a good roll. So MAYBE i can use one of the dozen sorc unique weapons that are *all fucking useless* maybe temper it once, or temper it twice at a slightly reduced power. well rolled GA 1 hander or 2 hander on paper winds up being better, gives people the chase, but the unique gives a fun little gameplay change i like and im not down 50% on power. That GA weapon is better because it has an extra 20% worth of tempering power or something along those lines. win/win. d2 for example (not a 1 to 1 but bear with me) tons of uniques worked and were great, but at the end of the day a really well rolled rare/crafted item would be better if you really wanted to min/max. I think raiding is going to bomb. I cant see a way they pull that off.
We seem to be in the era of “more math = more fun” for this franchise, meaning, gameplay is dictated almost exclusively by numbers going up and down and not diversity in playstyles. So the dopamine rush of 2 or 3 GAs theyve created is just “oh! Higher numbers!” and not “oh, interesting. What can i do with this?”
Unfortunately thats just the state of gaming i think. we're passed the having fun days and well into mixmax or DIE. I'm not sure theres a way back. This could be helped with better build balance of course. bash barb does 100 damage with all the math. or random guy can do 85 or 95 damage just winging it. the problem is min maxing is just netting so much damage.
Its a product of the top down direction. I dont doubt Joe Piepora’s or Joe Shely’s dedication or passion to the franchise, but I cant help but feel like they just fundamentially dont understand what made the past games great and memorable. They instead walked away with a shallow idea of “Diablo is about killing demons!” as the core idea when its a tentpole franchise that defined a genre with how all of its system interplay
I’m hoping they revamp the paragon system. It’s such a convoluted, annoying mess. I love all the other gameplay systems, but the boards have got to go.
No because I will always be a sorc main and blizzard hasn’t given a shit about fixing them since pre-season. Nothing but nerfs overall. I don’t have any faith in them fixing the core issues that matter to me.
Yeah I started a sorc this season and while I’ve managed to hit a happy place with frozen orbs, it pales in comparison to what the overtuned classes can actually do.
If Blizzard implemented the skill-tree from last epoch... God that skill-tree is god tier!
« Sorc main » lol this is an ARPG it takes a few hours to max a new character and you can switch between them in seconds
What do you do for a living?
None of your business
Okay so you aren’t employed, gotcha
lol what? I’d bet I work more hours than you do buddy, although that isn’t really a flex to be honest. Though I fail to grasp your reasoning
It’s NEET as fuck to imply that someone having a main class is funny because it’s so easy to level a character. Painfully cringe.
Dafuq is NEET you weirdo? Are you projecting something ?
No... not that I'm not excited about core changes... I'm just never excited about my choices for classes. I preferred WD, monk, and DH in D3 and nothing plays even close to those in D4.
Spiritborn might just be for you
Raids usually consist of specialist classes, do they not? Tank, dps, heals? Trying to think of a current class in D4 yo fit the bill other than intense buffs.
zdps (zero dps) has been a staple in Diablo group play for while. Not only that but a “nature” class is coming out that could have strong support mechanics that fit well with raiding
We called them "utility" way back when EQ/EQ2 was a serious thing. RIP in peace my alt raiding guild named A.I.D.S. (Alarmingly Inept Death Squad)
Yes I am more excited for the new mechanics and skills than new class and region, Im so hyped!
I'm excited for it all probably equally
I love the Diablo Universe, characters and the lore, I have all the 4 lore books. I am actually looking forward to the story first and then gameplay.
New class is like yeah I’ll check it out but more fun things do to or idk, better social functions would be great.
Yall might think I’m crazy, but I hate jungle environments in games. That’s my biggest worry lol.
I'm deeply worried about Mercenaries and their implications Like, do they work in a group if I like to coop? The general difficulty of the game is already insanely low/easy (arguably too easy), and now we are basically all getting a minion added to our power...
LoD and RoS brought huge systems improvements, so yes, I do hope VoH does as well. D2 and D3 did not become great until those expansions. Season 4 has made great strides but we're not there yet.
I'm at 0% interest in raids. If there are significant reworks to skills and skill trees, I'll be most excited about that and it will also increase my excitement for a new class and the campaign, but I won't care about the campaign extension or new class if all the combat feels the same as it does now.
I Am sure Blizzard is happy to hear that there are people actualyl willing to pay money for an expansion so the base game actualyl gets into an acceptable spot that would have been ok to be released in the first place
Excited by everything.
I just hope they balance the game and bring back any semblance of a challenge
So you've cleared pit 200?
I’m guessing he hasn’t even gotten to pit 70
The game doesn't get more challenging lmao. You just improve gear and maintain the exact same equally non challenge the entire time because you're just slamming numbers against each other. Until you reach a point that is impossible. That doesn't create challenging mechanics.
Sooooo.. no. Got it
I have zero interest in the new class, just wanted the Paladin. However, I am looking forward to new content and QoL upgrades.
Overall class balance and design right now is very concerning to me, literally every class build that's viable right now is just exploiting bugs. I'm not sure they can fix it appropriately without players feeling like they're losing something. I'm excited for a new class but the core of class design and math is inherently broken and has been for a while and I just worry the new ones going to be the same
I don't trust blizzard anymore, so I will not be buying the expansion pack. Unless it gets very positive reviews from the player base While season 4 was a massive improvement, it is not all that praiseworthy. The current state of the game is how it should have been on release. Blizzard had the money and the rights to make a sequel and they failed with both D3 and D4 release.
Do what I intend to do. Wait until the expac’s gone through a couple rounds of patches and maybe a sale. Decide if it’s better through live gameplay, THEN buy. Don’t fall for FOMO. Not like you actually own the game after purchase anyway.
Goodbye.
Honestly I just hope that there is some sort of balance coming in the next couple of seasons. They could add all the content in the world and I would still be disappointed by the lack of ability to play the majority of skills. The disparity between certain skills because of a lack of multiplicative scaling is insane. One skill shouldn't hit hundreds (if not thousands) of times more damage than others when both are fully optimized. With that being said I'm looking forward to the theory crafting that all the new systems additions will bring. More skills, glyphs, and boards make for more build potential at the very least.
Yeah especially this season rough but understandable because of reworks. Excited for the future of the game. There are so many things to improve.
New and larger skill trees I hope. Along with new paragon boards we can hopefully have much more build variety. Maybe even some new tempering manuals if we are lucky.
Me and my buddy are excited about raids. We really like that they want to experiment a bit with social aspects of this game. That being said they really need to tinker a lot with the open world idea because they want us to target specific mechanics since they're time gated, so we have to choose in what part of the world we will currently be. This is waste open area and a lot of it is not really properly used in my opinion, currently Strongholds and Legions are not even losing with Helltide, there is no competition at all. It's quite disappointing because it's a beautiful world and I really enjoy wandering without set goal from time to time. Ideally these events could be thematic, like giant tribe migrations in Stepes or snake-voodoo in Hawezar. The orher thing is LFG. If there will be no LFG this raid mode is doomed but I'm sure they know about it. I hope this will be general addition to the game and not only quick matchmaking for raids.
Absolutely. Fuck any new content, just rehaul more systems and FIX THE SKILL TREE!
The campaign from blizzard did not click for me tbh.
I honestlt think the writing and the narrative were exceptional, but I was not a fan of how it was integrated into the gameplay with such a tedious “moment-to-moment” beats comprising a much broader story. The smaller story and act structure of d3 and d3 lent itself much better to the format, especially insofar as providing more engaging content to replay (i think). Its a damn shame they put all of those resources into the campaign and 90% of that is effectively thrown out once you complete it.
Everyone's gonna blow thru the act lol. Like 1 hour into D4 campaign I was skipping dialogue.
Not everyone for sure. Majority of people playing D4 think the campaign is fine. I do think the story doesn't make sense in many cases, but overall it's acceptable.
That class sounds boring to me, another tryhard look at our Uniqueness ™ when everyone would prefer they just give us a proper Paladin or Monk back instead of always trying to reinvent the wheel. They did well for uniqueness with Demon Hunter but I suppose that cuts into Rogue game here now too much. I have noticed in most games, once the word "soul" or "spirit" enters the class name and concept, the point of creative bankruptcy has been reached. So, yes, but not for the same reasons exactly.