Diablo 4 / IV / IIII / Fore / Cope / Seethe

Daidraco said:

Dungeons are supposed to have a 24 hour cooldown so you just dont run the most optimal one like people did in beta for gold. This also leads me to believe we'll have, or eventually have, a cash shop item that resets dungeons.

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In Immortal how they addressed this in late beta was overhauling the dungeons to make all reward/optimal for time invested nearly similar.

The dungeons weren't made exactly similar, but the weaker dungeons were buffed in rewards to be on par with the strongest dungeons for rewards, which the beta testers pointed out was WAY out of line with the rest of the dungeons. This homogenization of reward would be undetectable and have no real impact on gameplay besides making sure there is no true best dungeon-- so it was a harmless answer.

This was the best solution Blizzard had at the time.

I'm not sure if slapping a 24h timegate is the better approach.

While I don't particularly like the "normalization" answer they used in Immortal, timegates to address it while leaving the dungeons unbalanced isn't much better. People will still find out what the best dungeons are and run them in a particular order, even with the 24h gate. So all you have done is reduce access, as the player will STILL create their own priority list based around the 24h timegate. It'll just involve more dungeons.

Maybe Immortal had the better answer here. Albeit like you said in another post, if timegates will be monetized somehow, then the decision to use hard lockouts and timegates on dungeon access makes perfect sense.

How could being able to pay with real $$$ to bypass a dungeon lockout (behind which "better/optimal" rewards are gated) NOT be classified as "paying for power"?

It's obvious some think Blizzard will always eventually just poison the well, you know, because they just can't help themselves, but saying or implying it over and over is not a compelling argument. It just doesn't make any sense, in the context of what has already been promised for D4, in writing, ad nauseam.

Not saying I think the lockout is a good solution. Far too early for me to even care about arguing that point.

Obviously you are arguing from a goodwill position and believe Blizzard. You brush off other positions as not compelling and not having evidence.

For me, "They will do what they said long before the game came out" is not compelling either. I have no incentive to believe them, even less considering the long term trajectory of the studio.

Not sure how much difference the lockout will really make anyway. It's only for normal dungeons, which seems like something you do as a last resort when you're out of stuff to craft the keys to nightmare ones (which have no lockout besides the key required). Kind of like normal vs. greater rifts in D3.

The real issue still is that the dungeons shown so far were complete trash. Fixing the worst of the bunch that made you spend more time backtracking than clearing is a start but they have a long way to go.

If dungeon gameplay is as weak as it was during the beta they better be as useless as GW2 dungeons were, because I'm not drudging through that experience repeatedly.

Mr Creed said:

... because I'm not drudging through that experience repeatedly.

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Might be the wrong game for you, you are going to be repeating the same world events, the same world bosses, and the same dungeons over and over and over and over. Normal dungeons will absolutely be things you need to do repeatedly.

Brodhi said:

Might be the wrong game for you, you are going to be repeating the same world events, the same world bosses, and the same dungeons over and over and over and over. Normal dungeons will absolutely be things you need to do repeatedly.

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There is a pretty good chance this game is not for me. I strongly dislike the MMO-ification of arpgs. Just talking on terms of dungeons, lockouts and raids already puts me on alert.

I do expect to get my money's worth out of the base game, figuring a 100 hours to play through the campaign with most of the classes. The live service part sounds like something I will opt out of quicky. I stuck around for about a month in Lost Ark, and I expect D4 to be mostly like that in the end.

Edit: When I say I don't do that repeatedly, then I mean the dungeon experience I had in the beta. They were pretty dull. But I've only seen a few low level dungeons so we'll see. Lost Ark or WoW dungeons even at low level were certainly more interesting.

Odd to compare MMO dungeon to ARPG dungeon. The latter has never had depth. Its something you went in cleared, maybe for a quest, maybe not, then left. Half the time you never entered them unless there was something in there you needed or it was a path to go somewhere else. They were never interesting, some annoying as hell(maggot layer).

I can only hope its not their game play loop. Granted rifts(both regular and GR) were basically dungeons on demand. So wouldn't be shocked, that instead of just spawning it in town, you have to run around to go to them(to make it more open world and give a reason to even own a mount, instead of sitting in town all day).

Cinge said:

Odd to compare MMO dungeon to ARPG dungeon. The latter has never had depth. Its something you went in cleared, maybe for a quest, maybe not, then left. Half the time you never entered them unless there was something in there you needed or it was a path to go somewhere else. They were never interesting, some annoying as hell(maggot layer).

I can only hope its not their game play loop. Granted rifts(both regular and GR) were basically dungeons on demand. So wouldn't be shocked, that instead of just spawning it in town, you have to run around to go to them(to make it more open world and give a reason to even own a mount, instead of sitting in town all day).

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The game moves towards the MMO side, so it makes sense to compare them. They are gutting procedural area generation, which I always found helpful in keeping it interesting. All arpgs have some key areas that are generally same-ish, but that's far from most areas. D4 moves towards more fixed layouts pretty hard. I'll see if the proclaimed 120 dungeons offer enough variety, but those in the beta were very copy paste so I am not holding my breath.

TJT said:

This is why POE MAPS works so well and why Bliz should totally copy it. It stuns me that they didn't.

1. Maps!
   1. You can do multiple goals simultaneously! (Getting EX as well as map pieces).
   2. Variety you have some control over.
   3. Tangible goals for your grind. Not neverending nonsense.
   4. League Mechanics to mix it up.

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Rifts are essentially the "mapping" mechanic of PoE, they're just less moddable than they are in PoE.

But I agree, mapping/rifting is a great mechanic that needs "copied" in an ARPG style game. It's essentially the only way to keep the "grind" going/interesting, as long as you give the players the ability to mix it up with various mechanics, mods, difficulty levels, etc.

Mr Creed said:

The game moves towards the MMO side, so it makes sense to compare them. They are gutting procedural area generation, which I always found helpful in keeping it interesting. All arpgs have some key areas that are generally same-ish, but that's far from most areas. D4 moves towards more fixed layouts pretty hard. I'll see if the proclaimed 120 dungeons offer enough variety, but those in the beta were very copy paste so I am not holding my breath.

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The 120-150 Dungeons also makes it difficult to make any meaningful changes this close to launch. That would have needed to have been in the initial design to make the launch date. The QoL changes to some of the worst dungeons we got are really all that is possible right now.

So as said hopefully the later game dungeons are a bit better and it's not as copypaste as the open beta impression gave.

Mr Creed said:

If dungeon gameplay is as weak as it was during the beta they better be as useless as GW2 dungeons were, because I'm not drudging through that experience repeatedly.

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I think that will be the endgame though, or a facet of the endgame for sure. If the nightmare versions of these dungeons do not change up the experience enough interest will die off a lot faster.

moonarchia said:

Necros are proper skaven goths with an army of skellingtons, so I don't give a fuck about anything else.

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Hateyou said:

It doesn’t seem like it would be that hard to just do some decently laid out dungeons and populate them with some named, events, and final boss like Grim Dawn did.

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It would be cool. Especially as you said they are moving towards having MMO mechanics in the game.

The ones I've seen so far look just like every other diablo dungeon though. Like I said, some have ojectives in them, or have to go through them to get somewhere else, but otherwise it feels like just randomly generated dungeons scattered here and there, that you go in clear for loot and leave, like usual. I never played grim dawn so I cant compare.

My main , concern if you want to call it that, is what the end game loop is. Are they just going to copy rifts since they did pull alot of d3 or just do d2 with boss runs. Will be curious what it is and if it will add to my hours afer I level and farm some gear before you get into that loop. I could end up being done after the leveling and farming some gear/doing free battle pass, or if the loop is interesting enough doing that for a bit before ultimately getting bored and being done until season(if they have those). Time will tell.

But dude they increased random dungeon events occurrence by 60% !!

Don't you guys like random events?

Hateyou said:

I wish ARPG dungeons were designed better. Grim Dawn had some cool ones, so it can be done. Last Epoch has kind of a cool idea with the one I did of theirs where you are warping back and forth between a normal and decayed version to get around walls that exist or don’t exist in one or the other. Like Link to the Past’s dark/light world mirror.

The couple dungeons I watched in D4 were terrible uninspired. The couple I did in Lost Ark were literally just one room and were stupid. They were low level though so maybe it has good ones later, idk.

It doesn’t seem like it would be that hard to just do some decently laid out dungeons and populate them with some named, events, and final boss like Grim Dawn did.

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If you didnt stick with Lost Ark long, you missed out on some real gems for dungeons. As far as "Story" dungeons go - hands down they are the best as far as I can tell from a top down perspective. The problem with them is that they become god awful after a few runs because they are just that, story dungeons. D4 had that one in the lower right for beta, but in comparison to say Phantom Palace - Diablo 4's story dungeon is laughably dull. Video for comparison below.

Outside of story dungeons - I do wish there were dungeons that were designed for multiple people in a group. Not necessarily required, but something that was more intuitive if you have people with you. Sort of like a New World dungeon or something. But between Grim Dawn, Diablo 4, Epoch, hell, any ARPG - Im pretty much of the opinion that they could all do better. Its a shame that this genre, for whatever reason, doesnt seem to be innovating much even though its been around for decades at this point.

How bad is the rogue nerf with imbue ?

I played necro in beta, I was already getting annoyed at the wizard skels that took damage as they cast and had to repeatedly be summoned every fight so if they're making pets die more I'm out on that.

Was hoping to pick something other than sorc because it feels like everyone is going that direction and it seems like all these changes push me further towards sorc. I'd love to play something different but I don't want to suck just to be different.