We know this is coming, and we are almost assuredly getting the announcement later today. Blizzcon 2019 is where they will announce it, and we know because the artbook is arriving and folks are getting Diablo IV art and interviews with the people working on it.
Notes I took during the presentation/gameplay video (linked above):
Really embracing the horror elements this time.
Bigger focus on world-building.
PvP zones and other players to trade with (online).
Isometric (anything else would be uncivilized).
Developed for PC and Console (PS4/XBO).
Barbarian, Sorceress, Druid revealed to kick things off.
Gameplay Notes:
Terrible place to live.
Looks fantastic!
Character selection around the campfire!
Bear Mode.
Mounts to ride around the big open spaces.
More interactive environments.
It looks like Diablo III’s smooth combat.
I bet that’s Cain’s grave and his brother.
Blizzard News Item:
Inference from the text on the news page:
Five zones, interconnected and explorable.
Use mounts to roam and explore from zone to zone.
Fully supports the single-player experience. Keyed dungeons offer end game content for solo.
Five classes planned for launch.
I would suggest upfront that we keep this discussion for folks that are excited about Diablo and want to talk about the upcoming game, and leave the Hong Kong protest topic (and Blizzards mis-management of that situation) to the relevant thread.
Sounds like a plan (for you). I can understand your point of view very easily, I just don’t share it.
I put a note in the OP to suggest we keep the topic about Diablo, since we already have a thread to discuss Blizzard’s ill-fated handling of the Hong Kong protests.
Some people just want to discuss the game. If the political stuff is allowed in the same thread that will not be possible. Same as Epic store discussion in the Rebel Galaxy Outlaw thread, it just derails any discussion. So please, keep it out of this thread.
Yes, and Monster Hunter is so satisfying! But at its core, it’s just 4 random dudes, hanging out, and possibly trying to not die if playing Diablo hardcore mode as it should be played.
Also end-game Diablo is only about rushing through a level to get to the boss, if I recall correctly.
Yeah, Grim Dawn (and Titan Quest before it) are some of my favorite ARPG work. Diablo 2 is still in my top 3 with them though. I think my biggest issue with Diablo 3 ended up being the scaling difficulty - something I thought was awesome when it was first announced but after a few years with it I think it was a mistake. I do think you should be able to set your difficulty for the story mode without having to beat it though. I also think unlocking skills MMO style was a mistake in the end. I have many thoughts about Diablo III, whereas I view the second game as nearly perfect in it’s field.
End-game Diablo III is really just about getting the right equipment for your “build” so you can bump up your Torment difficulty level as high as possible. It’s not great design all these years later. I do like Seasonal play, and would like to see some form of that continue.
I hope this is absolutely no story mode in Diablo 4. Let me go straight to an open world adventure mode as that is way more fun than the boring story I had to slog through in Diablo 3 to get to the good stuff.
I don’t think the problem is with the difficulties per se, it’s that there’s no other scaling. A Torment 1 difficulty monster in Act 1 Zone 1 does the same damage and has the same health as an equivalently-sized monster at the end of Act 5. Thus from a difficulty perspective everything in the game is always the same. There are very few “hard” zones or areas.
The old difficulty system (which was basically just NG+ tiers) would have been fine (although I do prefer it scaling to near-infinity) if they just got rid of the part where you have to redo the entire campaign and all its side quests. I don’t feel it’s a problem to say, for example, that Diablo’s options are level 40, 70, 100, 130, … and if you’re not in a close enough range to those and not skilled enough to compensate for it, fight somebody else for a while. Unfortunately MMOs these days have adopted a general “you should be able to do any content whenever” attitude which to me just makes them tend to feel endlessly bland and unrewarding.
