I have never understood why none of the ARPGs, maybe there is one I don't know about, have embraced more of a model where you are actually taking back the world. D4 would be much more interesting to me if the world was restored as you fought with other players to push back everything. It is actually one of the things that kept me playing The Division 2, fighting to retake checkpoints, or whatever they called them, until it breaks when you realize it is just rinse and repeat at the same location since nothing ever changes. Give me seasons about expanding to new areas or trying to recapture areas lost during a failed season by the masses and I would be interested. In D4 I walked like 4 feet and something I completed instantly reset which just made me laugh.
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Diablo IV - The Real Official Thread
- Thread starter Blade-Runner
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I have never understood why none of the ARPGs, maybe there is one I don't know about, have embraced more of a model where you are actually taking back the world. D4 would be much more interesting to me if the world was restored as you fought with other players to push back everything. It is actually one of the things that kept me playing The Division 2, fighting to retake checkpoints, or whatever they called them, until it breaks when you realize it is just rinse and repeat at the same location since nothing ever changes. Give me seasons about expanding to new areas or trying to recapture areas lost during a failed season by the masses and I would be interested. In D4 I walked like 4 feet and something I completed instantly reset which just made me laugh.
NightReaver
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Much easier and cheaper to just throw in some new mechanics for a season and let people rerun the same content all over again. Tbf even back in D2 people had zero problem just rerunning the same content over and over again.
StoleMyOwnCar
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Started playing this recently with a friend, because it was on Game Pass. Game Pass thus far has just kept on giving, I'm pretty impressed. For $10, quite a bargain.
As far as this game itself, I'm kind of ambivalent so far. I got to about level 30 doing main story with a friend. Everything thus far just... kind of feels unimpressive. Like all of the skill durations are so short. I get my Call of the Ancients as an "ultimate" ability and it lasts... uh... 6 seconds? Lol what? All of my shouts last almost no time, even after I've taken all of the perks to upgrade their timer. And for some reason in this game the 6 active ability limit just feels terribly restrictive. In D3 it felt fine... here it does not. I don't know why. Whenever I get a legendary drop, it also just... generally feels underwhelming and useless. Diablo 3 a legendary could change the entire game for you. In this one, doesn't really do much.
Thus far what I'm using the most on this Barbarian I made is Furious Charge (with the rune that decreases cooldown for enemies hit; otherwise I reckon it would practically be unusable). Except on some bosses it literally does actually seem unusable lol because it can't push them back so it doesn't even hit them. I took the resource gen shout because my friend says that they are always out of resources. Except I feel the same way. This barbarian just basically seems to be running on empty 24/7. This is my current skill setup, not sure if there is an easier way to get it other than taking it image by image.
I didn't take this build from anywhere, just put together something on the fly, so maybe that's my issue. Also seemed to me like a lot of bosses were made for ranged characters in mind, because they create a death field for melee units? My barb has been generally staying alive through boss encounters thus far, but some fights came close, with unavoidable magic death circles everywhere. Had to revive my mage friend in one of them, but mostly because they were zoning out. A lot of melee enemies just seem to also hit like absolute trucks even through all of my armor. Dunno, so far the game just feels really meh. But Diablo 3 before postgame can be a little like that, too. I guess I'll see how this one evolves.
As far as this game itself, I'm kind of ambivalent so far. I got to about level 30 doing main story with a friend. Everything thus far just... kind of feels unimpressive. Like all of the skill durations are so short. I get my Call of the Ancients as an "ultimate" ability and it lasts... uh... 6 seconds? Lol what? All of my shouts last almost no time, even after I've taken all of the perks to upgrade their timer. And for some reason in this game the 6 active ability limit just feels terribly restrictive. In D3 it felt fine... here it does not. I don't know why. Whenever I get a legendary drop, it also just... generally feels underwhelming and useless. Diablo 3 a legendary could change the entire game for you. In this one, doesn't really do much.
Thus far what I'm using the most on this Barbarian I made is Furious Charge (with the rune that decreases cooldown for enemies hit; otherwise I reckon it would practically be unusable). Except on some bosses it literally does actually seem unusable lol because it can't push them back so it doesn't even hit them. I took the resource gen shout because my friend says that they are always out of resources. Except I feel the same way. This barbarian just basically seems to be running on empty 24/7. This is my current skill setup, not sure if there is an easier way to get it other than taking it image by image.
I didn't take this build from anywhere, just put together something on the fly, so maybe that's my issue. Also seemed to me like a lot of bosses were made for ranged characters in mind, because they create a death field for melee units? My barb has been generally staying alive through boss encounters thus far, but some fights came close, with unavoidable magic death circles everywhere. Had to revive my mage friend in one of them, but mostly because they were zoning out. A lot of melee enemies just seem to also hit like absolute trucks even through all of my armor. Dunno, so far the game just feels really meh. But Diablo 3 before postgame can be a little like that, too. I guess I'll see how this one evolves.
Armenius
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I think the issue is they tried to make the gameplay slower and more methodical than D3, but forgot to actually test and balance all the layers of offense and defense they put into the game. Despite them also wanting to make critical hits less important, they're just as important as ever, especially with the Lucky Hit mechanic layered on top of that.
For legendaries, before completing the capstone dungeons to unlock World Tiers 3 and 4 you want to collect them so you can extract their legendary aspect powers. You need to complete or skip the campaign to unlock the capstone dungeons (level 50 for WT3 and level 70 for WT4 are recommended). The aspects are basically the replacement for item sets, and you'll need to optimize them when you go for higher world tiers. Extracted aspect powers are generally more powerful than the ones you unlock from doing dungeons, but can only be used once, which is why you want to collect legendaries early on.
Don't sleep on upgrading equipment as you're moving through the campaign. There are big jumps in item equipment levels as your character levels up. A 320 blue item is probably better than a 280 yellow, for example. You can upgrade your equipment at the blacksmith to stretch out the life of your leveling items, too, but I don't waste the mats and gold going beyond the second upgrade. As a melee character you want to try and keep your armor absorption above 30% (hover your mouse over the armor stat to see it), and keep an eye out for armor with "reduces damage from close/distant enemies" affixes. You can also fit Chipped Skulls into your jewelry to buff your armor stat.
StoleMyOwnCar
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I don't know of a game where crits aren't important these days. Maybe Nikke lol.
Yeah right now I just feel like these skills are a lot more boring. Maybe I'm built wrong, but I'm not really having a blast at any point. It's just kind of repetitive wailing on one enemy after another. Face is just mostly like this:
It's bad per se, just kinda... eh? Diablo 3 also kind of needed sets to get up and going, not sure about this one.
This is something I wish they would do better, though. Makes legendaries found at this level (what few I do anyway...) feel even more worthless. Few levels later, some random blue or yellow is just straight up replacing it, or otherwise I'm doing no damage or just taking chunks of damage. I'll have to look into skulls and stuff, thanks for the advice.
aeonrevolution
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That was a massive thing that bother me as well about the legendaries. In D2 and D3 you might have an oddball unique that you could ride out the entire first campaign playthrough. That doesn't exist here.
Nebell
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So in a game that's build around constantly getting new items, you are bothered that you don't get to keep one item for the entire campaign playthrough?
I'm sorry but I can't take complaints like that seriously. This game is just not for you.
P.S. to answer the other guy, the game gets a lot faster for all classes once you get higher level.
Armenius
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It was more so Diablo II than III where you could find a unique legendary and carry it through Hell. After the itemization update in Diablo III a lower-level version of the same unique will become worthless due to the item scaling, but you can hold onto it longer due to the simpler mechanics compared to Diablo IV. In D4 legendary items are not unique, they just roll more and higher leveled affixes compared to rare items, which is why it makes no sense to carry them other than for their aspect. Once you unlock World Tiers 3 and 4 unique items will start to drop that are more like D3 legendary items. It's just a different type of itemization that people need to adapt to.
aeonrevolution
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Oh, I didn't mean through all 3 difficulties in D2. There was stuff you could roll through all of Normal with though because the items actually had unique properties.
Armenius
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Had a hard crash when I was trying to finish Act VI last night. Got the whole buzzing sound loop and everything. That's never happened before. Happened right after the cutscene started after you escape from Lilith's nightmare near the end. I needed to go to sleep, anyway...
After playing through nearly the whole campaign with all the raytracing effects turned on, I have to say I'm more impressed with the shadows than I was originally. It seems like the ray traced particles hit the CPU really hard, though. Areas with a lot of dust, sand, or embers flying around seem to cause some bad hitching. I will have to play with them on and off to see if those are even worth it.
After playing through nearly the whole campaign with all the raytracing effects turned on, I have to say I'm more impressed with the shadows than I was originally. It seems like the ray traced particles hit the CPU really hard, though. Areas with a lot of dust, sand, or embers flying around seem to cause some bad hitching. I will have to play with them on and off to see if those are even worth it.
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I'm just not sure I'd play the game with everything on. I went from a constant 150 fps to dropping below 60 fps. I just can't play at that frame rate anymore.
Nebell
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I have a 4090 laptop. With DLSS Balanced and Frame Generation I get about 100-120 fps out in the world. That's with RTX and everything fully maxed out at 4k.
But I have yet to see any visual changes with RTX. My eyes are terrible at seeing fps above 120 as well as hard to spot details.
But I have yet to see any visual changes with RTX. My eyes are terrible at seeing fps above 120 as well as hard to spot details.
Armenius
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Run through an area with the options turned off, then run through the same area again with them turned off. Margrave or Yelesna in Fractured Peaks at night is a pretty good area to see the lighting changes in action. Cerrigar in Scosglen is another good area to test.
Went back to Diablo 3, as their new season started.
I got hit with an "Account Silenced" because multiple people reported me for abusive language. No appeal according to Blizzard.
Except that I streamed the entire thing today, and didn't utter a word. And the thing came in the middle of my play, so it wasn't even as if my account was hacked. (Strangely enough, it came about 15 minutes after I took first place on a Conquest.)
I got hit with an "Account Silenced" because multiple people reported me for abusive language. No appeal according to Blizzard.
Except that I streamed the entire thing today, and didn't utter a word. And the thing came in the middle of my play, so it wasn't even as if my account was hacked. (Strangely enough, it came about 15 minutes after I took first place on a Conquest.)
GoldenTiger
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Wow, lame. Is that permanent?!
No. The time is dependent on the total people who report you.
I'm assuming some streamer wanted to take #1, and I got there first, and got a few of his watchers to falsely report me.
Just the fact though, that you can do this, and a player has no ability to appeal is stupid. Like, at least have it in the chat window, where actual words are said, and Blizzard's program can check to see if multiple people complained around the same area, rather than just being able to click on the leaderboard to submit complaints.
(And this isn't me just being sour about saying something misinterpreted. I have the entire thing on stream, and you can see I don't say anything the entire play session.)
Welcome to Blizzard these days. Overwatch2 is pretty bad now with AI bots handling all reports and it being slow to appeal if at all possible.
This can happen in WoW too.
Naturally their support has gotten shittier and shittier so good luck getting a human to unfuck your account in a meaningful timeframe.
GoldenTiger
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Delightful.
May 14 in the new season start, which is supposed to be a huge itemization overhaul.
Armenius
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It's Diablo. I don't know what you're expecting to change. Aside from the usual balance changes and some QoL updates, it's the same game as it was on release.
That_Sound_Guy
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I hate defending Diablo and their practices recently but the vanilla Diablo 3 is wildly different (and improved) in its current release state. So its possible Diablo 4 may have the same fate. I am still holding out on purchase of D4 for this reason.
Exactly. My hope was after some time it would turn into a good game.
Armenius
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I ran into the Butcher last night on my hardcore seasonal character in the first dungeon I did after completing the WT3 capstone at level 47. Luckily he spawned right next to a Channeling Shrine, so I took him down with relative ease and finally got the achievement for killing him on hardcore. My heart was still going a mile a minute since I ran into him on my first hardcore character at level 17 and had no such luck.
I did find out that the ray traced particles are causing the stuttering I was experiencing. I noticed that the seasonal construct kicks up a lot of particles, and it's really bad in areas like the Dry Steppes. There are occasions when the flames in dungeons look amazing with the ray traced particles, but the occasional stuttering isn't worth it. Maybe I'll try again when the construct is no longer following you around.
I had to drop from DLAA to DLSS Quality, but I think the graphical improvements are worth it for the most part. It stays pegged at my 117 FPS limit most of the time, only occasionally dropping into the 80s.
I did find out that the ray traced particles are causing the stuttering I was experiencing. I noticed that the seasonal construct kicks up a lot of particles, and it's really bad in areas like the Dry Steppes. There are occasions when the flames in dungeons look amazing with the ray traced particles, but the occasional stuttering isn't worth it. Maybe I'll try again when the construct is no longer following you around.
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Armenius
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Details on Season IV and the changes that affect the game as a whole (both Eternal and Seasonal Realms). It all sounds like good stuff. They brought back greater rifts in what they call The Artificer's Pit which will drop the best materials for honing your equipment.
https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/diablo4/24077223/galvanize-your-legend-in-season-4-loot-reborn
https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/diablo4/24077223/galvanize-your-legend-in-season-4-loot-reborn
Do you guys remember when D3 did the major drops 2.0 change or whatever? That's what I'm hoping for here.
horrorshow
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I plan to hop in about a week or two after Season 4 drops, so I guess end of May....
*fingers crossed
*fingers crossed
Yep... and it did make everything much better for D3. However, I still think the itemization on D2 is what we should be going for. I despise targeted loot for you character. Most of the fun of D2 was finding a Unique item that was actually unique.. it would make you go make another character based off that item alone.
I could go on and on about D3/4 and how it's just mindless numbers now instead of skill building. I'm not grinding for an extra 2% crit damage. If I'm gonna grind for items it better be a meaningful upgrade.
Yes! Finding a random chase unique for a build you didn't even have yet was the WHOLE reason for endgame D2 for me.
Armenius
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There is that aspect in Diablo IV too, you just don't get uniques to drop until you unlock WT3 and 4, and they're still only relevant to the class that had the item drop. For example: I am currently running a Rabies build on a Druid, but I recently had a unique staff drop that combines Claw and Lightning Storm that I am respeccing my build to take advantage of. I initially went with Rabies due to the seasonal aspect that reduces the cooldown on it the more enemies it infects. Combined with stacks of cooldown reduction and damage over time affixes on my equipment, it murders screens of enemies rather quickly.
I had that experience as well on my druid when it first dropped, but playing a sorc in D2 and then having a stormshield drop so I was motivated to make a paladin, that was the good stuff there. That's what kept me playing back in the day.
Leveling up and getting you into the end game faster sounds great, also love the Codex changes. I skipped Season 3 and quit pretty quickly during season 2. This seems like it could actually hold my attention for a few weeks. I still think they should get rid of legendary aspects and just build out the skill tree, but I'll take it. I want the original D3 rune system before the game launched in D4 where you slot powers into the skill tree. If aspects were like that it'd be cool. I don't really want them on my gear, just put them in the skill tree as an item that doesn't run out or get thrown away.
To be fair, that's kind of splitting hairs at this point. It seems like they took some inspiration from Last Epoch for the advanced affixes, overall it seems like a really good update.
Armenius
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The aspect library is my favorite change, too. It is a pain in the ass keeping and juggling legendaries around in case you find a better BIS piece, since extracted aspects are stronger and they can only be used once.
You mean you're not going to miss have stash tabs full of legendary aspects!? I want to sit in town for hours and organize my stash!
The new update just seems really counter productive and redundant. " Lets reduce the amount of affixes on items but introduce greater affixes and more ways to modify" They said they were going to simplify, yet they introduce so much more bloat. It's overly complicated and not in a good way. How about we make items meaningful again. Uniques are basically just randomized stats/affixes like what rare items used to be in D2. Sometimes those could roll better than end game uniques, but still Unique or runewords were the way to go. Very rarely was a full set worth getting for endgame. At least with D2 you could have multiple viable end game builds per class doing ubers and dclone and everyone wasn't all going for the same exact gear.
Armenius
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I'm skeptical in the reduction of the number of affixes on found gear, too, but just weeding through all the drops I get in a regular play session shows that the majority of them are superfluous. I probably end up salvaging more than 99% of the equipment I find in a typical level 1-100 journey. Decreasing the amount of drops and making them more meaningful sounds like a good thing, to me.
In D2 everybody was going for the same runewords and there was more of a meta in that game than there is in D4. I feel like there is much more flexibility in how you build your class in D4 than there was in D2, especially when you got to Hell difficulty in D2.
Uniques in D4 always roll with the same affixes that synergize with the unique aspect attached to them. The only thing randomized about them is how high the affixes and aspect roll when you pick them up. You can't even enchant them to reroll their affixes. Only legendaries are randomized in what affixes they get.
In D2 everybody was going for the same runewords and there was more of a meta in that game than there is in D4. I feel like there is much more flexibility in how you build your class in D4 than there was in D2, especially when you got to Hell difficulty in D2.
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aeonrevolution
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It's definitely a trade off between a set meta, and the flexible builds. Part of me thinks that a bit of magic is lost with the online community when no one can rally around certain items and think, "Oh shit that's cool. I need to build that".
Could just be nostalgia though.
Could just be nostalgia though.