Oh, I guess we are agreeing! I just objected to the idea that “normal = free respecs”. I think the D4 system is a good approach to this idea that shifting skill points around makes the game easier. You pay for that benefit.
So there have been some interesting updates recently, buried in a bunch of stuff we already knew. Most interesting stuff I’ve heard:
- They are planning to have new story content every 3 months, which sounds like it will take the form of a series of side quests that introduce the season mechanics (not sure how this works with non-season characters)
- You can skip the campaign with new characters once you’ve beaten it, just like D3 adventure mode
- Bonuses from Altars of Lilith won’t reset for seasonal characters, so you don’t need to hunt them all down again (though it sounds like you might still get renown / xp from finding them?)
- About 80 hours to complete the battle passes with each season, but the expectation is that you will not be max level when you do that. It sounds like they view endgame as start at level 50, with levels 51-100 being a longer but not infinite period of additional progression
- Respec costs from the beta are basically final - they will be relatively cheap early, more expensive later, but never so expensive that you can’t adapt your character to your evolving playstyle. Sounds like it will make it too expensive to swap skill sets on a whim, but will still allow you to correct issues with your build even at max level.
- Next week’s livestream will have some additional endgame something or other that we haven’t seen
Any other drips or drabs that people have heard about in the recent news?
I think all of these are exciting and I like what they imply about the approach the devs are taking.
I do hope they give us a “build designer” interface where we can play around with gear, skill points, paragon points, and equipped gear all at the same time without committing to any changes, and be able to see the effects on our character sheets and equipped skills as well as the expected respec cost. Then let you implement the respec with one click. I think that would be really useful to avoid both the annoying “pull off a tier 3 skill point to be able to respec a tier 1 skill point” thing and also to prevent dumb mistakes in the process of respeccing.
That’s great to hear. I was already sick to death of playing follow-the-question-mark garbage in the beta, having to do the entire game like that with every character would have likely completely killed the game for me. I know it did in D3 until Adventure Mode, and that was not as bad as D4 is in that regard.
I don’t know if I’d ever skip the campaign. In D3, I took every character through the campaign once before moving them on to other things, like Adventure mode. There’s something I like about being able to directly compare my experience with each as I go.
Having said that, the world design makes it easy to do as much or as little of the campaign as quickly or as slowly as you want, so that’s something to keep in mind. Toss in a campaign piece from time-to-time as you go and you’ll end up completing it just for the sake of them being in the general vicinity of where you are adventuring.
I didn’t realize that the strongholds would unlock whole new areas/quests, though. That was something I heard from this video I watched today.
I only did one stronghold during the beta, and I didn’t notice anything, but that may be because it was at level 25 and you couldn’t access anything else or advance further beyond that. Anyone notice anything new unlock after a stronghold in the beta?
There was a stronghold that had to be cleared to access a dungeon that I was sent to by a different quest. Not sure if I saw any affects of other strongholds, but clearing that one seemed to make it so that villagers came back to the town and I could talk to them.
Also, looks like they released an update on how they are addressing some of the beta feedback:
Changes to dungeons sound pretty good, but I’m mystified by them disabling the dungeon reset button. I wonder how you reset dungeons or whether you always have to find sigils to do a dungeon you’ve done before.
Oh, that’d be cool. I thought I remembered something like that mentioned a long time ago, that the world would change/react to what you do. Didn’t catch it in the beta.
They sent out a new email about individual accomplishments in the beta:
Must have spent a couple hours in queue as the PS5 says I had 41 hours of gameplay in the beta, although maybe the 39 hours listed above is actual play in the world as opposed to character creation. And 56 deaths is a new high for me! Of course, Ashava killed me about 28 of those times, but still. That’s some pretty bad boss battles to have died 56 times over five characters only to level 25. Geesh, I got sloppy.
This email again suggests I should pre-order, even though I already own the Ultimate edition. Silly Blizzard.
Dove into the retrospective to note that they’ve done the expected nerf on the Sorcerer Chain Lightning and the Necro’s minions not dying often enough. Those two things practically made those classes my top two choices going into launch so now I’m up-in-the-air again. Not a bad decision to tone them down, but it becomes less clear what I’ll want to play.
Whoa: “The Butcher has been re-evaluated for difficulty and will present a greater challenge in World Tiers III and IV.” A greater challenge? Oh boy, he would have slaughtered me had I not run like mad in the beta, so this doesn’t bode well.
They added an explanation of the dungeon reset button:
Developer’s Note: While Diablo IV’s Sanctuary is home to over one hundred dungeons, the Open Beta only had the subset offered in Act I’s Fractured Peaks for players to explore, and a level cap that isn’t a full representation of the experience at launch. There are many reasons to complete a variety of dungeons, including collecting powerful affixes in the Codex of Power, and players will still be able to repeat dungeons by partying up with others and having them start the dungeon. We also wanted to make sure that resetting the dungeon wasn’t a way for Hardcore players to avoid death when experiencing a challenge in a dungeon. Still, we know it can be fun to repeat a specific dungeon and the team is looking at a more permanent solution to this, like having some reasonable cap on how many times the same dungeon can be completed in a row to better support that style of play. In fact, in the full game, players will acquire Sigils that will unlock Nightmare Dungeons which are specifically designed to be completed repeatedly and are optimized to be highly rewarding and replayable. We’ll have more to share on this in the future.
EDIT: I get the reasoning, but this is a bit disappointing. Maybe it won’t matter because we’ll just be advancing up to nightmare sigils before we’ve exhausted all solo dungeons. But I hope they just put in “veteran sigils” or something.
They just don’t want people leveling by finding an easy dungeon layout and grinding it over and over. I have no problem with that.
you’ll never get a direct comparison of characters doing that in D4 since you unlock attribute points for all your characters as you build renown and find shrines. future characters will always be more powerful on their first play through the campaign.
Future characters in the same season, yes. Otherwise only Lilith shrines persist. Without this change they could incentivize degenerate gameplay grinding the same dungeon over and over on initial characters in each season.
There’s real game design chops behind the decision, even if you don’t agree with it.
wasn’t saying anything about that either way, just that the comments saying Equisilus plays campaign with each character to compare, won’t give a fair comparison since each additional character will feel stronger than the previous.
Perhaps not, but it’s just for my own sake and not to make any particular judgment about them. The same could be said for the stash items enhancing later characters while the first character you make has to scrounge up every last thing on their own. I know it and can adjust my perception of the characters.
In regards to what stusser said, I agree wholeheartedly. Honestly, I didn’t even realize there was a ‘reset’ button on dungeons and I’m quite okay with it going away to limit repeated grind on easier dungeons. I’m all for progress with a purpose and repetition, when there are other options available, isn’t it.
This is the sort of shit that tempers my expectations. I have been playing Diablo 2 most mornings when I get up since a week or so before the D4 beta, and while this is the first time I’ve seen it, I’m placed in a queue just to get into Battle.net. What the what?
I just want to play some Diablo 2 before I have to run errands!
It’s a sunday morning at 6am - who the fuck is up besides fools like me?
Me, but I’m not on Bnet, so not my fault!
This confirms my hypothesis that old people aren’t really moving slowly, they are just traveling through time faster and appear slow to younger people.
Yeah, with a company the size of ABK, with the resources they have, they should have a lot of slack built into their servers to handle spikes in user access. They have the past usage stats, they have sales stats, and they better not have any wait queues when I take time off to play D4 during the early access period. If they do, by George, I’ll grumble a lot and shake my cane!
That’s really amusing, thanks for sharing that! :)
Nobody else wants to post their beta stats?
I doubt many of us played too much of it, I personally got to level 20 and then immediately quit. The email said I played 8 hours but that feels high.