Your hardcore example is exactly what Diablo 2 was like at launch. It was still addictive as hell though. Dying constantly meant having to start over, but luckily playing through Act 1 was really fun in Diablo 2, and the way the character progression is designed, you get character levels pretty fast early in the game, so it’s fun to start over and play through Act 1 and 2.
But they kept going back to smooth out the difficulty spikes. When the expansion came out, they smoothed out most of the difficulty spikes on Normal difficulty. I remember that being a huge modifier in how we were playing the game. Instead of it being a game about someday maybe beating Diablo on Normal difficulty, that part of the game was smoothed out so most hardcore characters could do it, and it became more about surviving in the next difficulty tier. And then years later they released another big patch that introduced Runes and other changes, and then they had it smoothed out enough that we could get more than half our characters through that difficulty tier too, and only die in Hell difficulty.
One downside, those early days when the challenge was in normal difficulty in hardcore, i do miss those days because later on, getting through normal and nightmare became a little bit more of a chore once the dangerous spikes got smoothed out. I miss having it be a more compact experience. Live. Die. Repeat. Instead it became: Live. Finish Normal. Finish Nightmare. Die. Repeat.
The skills all do different amounts of damage. It’s keyed off your weapon damage so that it scales as you gear up, but one skill might do 350% while another does 120%. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the skill with less damage hits more enemies or attacks faster - it might generate resource or have a different cool down, it might have secondary effects or a unique shape, it might get different boosts from one or more passives or interact / interleave well with another skill. The skill system in D3 is outstanding, it’s just designed to be more like building a Netrunner deck than building a character.
I think they should do the work to make characters feel unique by giving some weight to skill choices, but then again I always loved playing and tweaking the quirky magic deck instead of the flavor of the month.
It might be enough to have a set series of challenges or dungeons you can tackle where your build is fixed for the whole sequence, then ratchet up the complexity of the sequences with dungeon affixes or immunities on elites or w/e so that you really get this rigorous test and can clearly measure achievement. This would be more like mini-campaign in the style of an adventure mode act, but with the idea being that when you beat sequence 1 you can move on to sequence 2 and not before. That would let you really get a sense of accomplishment when you make a build that can play through sequence 5 or 6 or 12 or w/e.
GRifts don’t provide that kind of feeling because they are mostly gear/paragon level checks, they don’t contain much excitement other than the end boss, and they are designed to be run over and over. They are great for that purpose, but the game also needs a sense of progression other than “did I do it fast enough this time?”
Talking about making hardcore too easy: I started playing a hardcore character in D3 just a few days ago and they are up to 53 now, and not quite done the regular campaign (not particularly dawdling either). Diablo died in about 5 seconds for each of the 3 stages and my health didn’t waver at all. It seems I am not allowed to set the difficulty to something challenging until I complete the story.
I think I got rather lucky with the combination of legendaries that dropped. Though I do admit it is strangely fun just vapourizing stuff.
The difficulty ramps up pretty well starting at level 60. It’s entirely possible to die between level 60-70 if you run into the wrong set of skills on a few enemy packs. Before level 60 it’s pretty much impossible to die.
As far as I can tell, the hardest I can do is play at Expert (which I am at). I can’t unlock Master until I have a hardcore character beat the story mode, and I can’t unlock Torment until I get to level 60 (which at this rate might happen before I finish the last Act).
Does that happen automatically or is it because Torment levels unlock?
Its automatic, there is a huge power curve between 60 and 70.
Monster have like 100x more hp at 70 than 60. So, if you have bad equipment, monster will do way more damage than you have hp and you will have problem killing stuff.
Yay! This makes the PC version actually viable. I wonder if they’ll automatically switch the whole inventory interface when you switch to controller? Or maybe they’re going with the controller inventory even with keyboard and mouse? I personally see no reason except nostalgia to keep the old inventory tetris interface around.
As @ravenight says, they are not going back to differently sized items.
They are also trying to maintain the same UI for mouse/controller on PC, with different flows.
There’s a gif of WIP mouse/controller skills UI. I think the inventory will be a similar grid.
Actual game play in the last minute of the trailer for those interested. Missing the UI though.
Looks good. It’s silly, but I am glad that it appears they went back to the graphics reflecting your actual weapons, unlike in 3. I did like D3, but not sure this will be an instant buy for me.
So the actual gameplay in there looked alright except for the mount. I’m not sure how I feel about maps being designed around mounts. Yes there were some times in D3 where I wished we could get to the other side of the map faster after already having cleared the way, but it wasn’t that often that I felt that way.
I just hope they don’t make a lot of maps with backtracking and non-fighting areas that make mounts useful.
