Diablo 4 announced

[Fanatical Meat]

Not much info but a long trailer and some game play footage in second video

Diablo 4 announced

Blizzard today announced the next in their fantasy action-RPG series. Two trailers suggest it's returning to the darker, bloodier days.

www.rockpapershotgun.com

 

[Borealis7]

yeah i watched that part of the BlizzCon opening ceremony, but to be honest, i will never be able to play another Action RPG after playing as much Path of Exile as i have. any other game which isnt PoE will just look pale and simplified in comparison, plus its completely FREE.
Sure, D4 will sell boat-loads and make billions for Activision/Blizzard but i highly doubt the gameplay will appeal to me.

i did like the cinematics though, those were great.

 

[daveybrat]

Well i watched the trailer for it and my opinion is.......

"Here Activision, take my money!"

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Just read about the shared world, there will be no offline mode which doesn’t bother me but I’m sure there will be much drama about this (what Gamer doesn’t have a constant internet connection?)
One thing that struck me is the shared world means no difficulty settings. There will be different zones with different difficulty but no client side difficulty setting.
I suspect this means it will be nearly impossible to die in the game.

 

[Zenoth]

A lot could change until release. We still have probably 3 up to maybe 5 years to go before it comes out. I still remember that the initial Diablo 3 gameplay reveal video with the Barbarian was different enough compared to how the game turned out at release (D3 actually had a gorier aspect to it at first when they revealed it, and it was more violent). I still remember the Siege Breaker beast (currently in Act 3 as a mini boss) in that video appearing as a mini boss in Act 1 and seeing it grabbing the Barb with one hand and biting him in half. It turned out that this was never kept in the actual final game and the Siege Breaker never even made any appearance in Act 1 at all, and was moved to Act 3. And the game overall became less violent and had zero dismemberment or 'death animations' for your character (except they did keep most of the gore for the trash monsters) outside of just generically dying with ragdoll physics.

So who knows how D4 will turn out like. I suspect that they will do their best to keep the 'open, shared world' thing going, but everything else will be looked upon multiple times, revised, changed or even cut out in parts during the development. The trailer is the only thing that I consider 'final' from what we've seen of the game this year, since that's releated to the story and chances are that most the story (at least the major beats and events of its campaign) is already set in stone.

 

[Stg-Flame]

I played D2 and Lord of Destruction for over a decade straight. I never played D3 because of the auction house and the always online (mainly the always online nonsense) and just like all other titles, I'm going to leave this one alone until about six months after launch. Six months is usually enough time for a company to release some solid patches and fix most of the issues.

 

[Aikouka]

One thing that struck me is the shared world means no difficulty settings. There will be different zones with different difficulty but no client side difficulty setting.
I suspect this means it will be nearly impossible to die in the game.

The game will have difficulty modifiers, but you may not be a fan of how they're implementing it. The current plan appears to be a modification of World of WarCraft's Mythic+ key system. Essentially, in Diablo IV, keys will drop for specific dungeons that increase the difficulty of the dungeon. I'm not necessarily sure how the numbers will change in association with the key's level, but they did note how keys may also contain affixes that add difficulty. (WoW's Mythic+ keys also do this.) They showed off an example of an untargetable lightning shard that follows the player around and tries to deal damage to them throughout the dungeon.

Although, I'm not sure if this is really what players will really want. I guess it all depends on how often keys will drop and how can you ensure that the key is difficult enough for you? It's like.. if you're regularly playing the equivalent of Torment XIII, you don't want a key that's equivalent to Torment VI.

 

[EXCellR8]

I feel like D3 took a small eternity to come out and then it was just alright. DLC made it better and overall it's real good but...

I agree with others though in that Path of Exile gives it a run for its money and it's way more game, especially when you consider how frequent the developers are adding and changing things. When I first fired it up I was also taken by surprise at how polished it felt. I also like the darker demeanor and less "storybook" vibe in conjunction with the macabre locales and violent tones.

 

[shortylickens]

I'd just like to point out the last Warcraft game was released in 2002.

 

[zink77]

I'd just like to point out the last Warcraft game was released in 2002.

Technically only if you are counting RTS, otherwise Warcraft "never ended" because world of warcraft is still going strong to this day. Last expansion was 2018.

Either way games spying on everyone and being forced online when you're paying for the game is redacted. They are just stealing games using internet.

There is a zero tolerance policy for profanity in the tech sub-forums.

Iron Woode
Super Moderator

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Oh god not this again.
Let’s wait until it’s complete to decide if the game is being stolen from you/us.

 

[zink77]

Oh god not this again.
Let’s wait until it’s complete to decide if the game is being stolen from you/us.

Uhh you're too ignorant to participate in this discussion. This has been going on since 1997 with Ultima online, the reason we have DRM and steam to begin with is because the battle was won 20 years ago by fools who told the game industry they were incapable of perceiving the agenda.

The long term agenda of the computer and software industry of which game industry is apart has always been to get rid of software from the end user so they could increase profits. That's why we have all these abusive practices in games. The internet allowed game companies to divide games into two pieces, instead of getting complete games they came up with marketing bs labels to get people to confuse the public and it worked.

This is why windows 10 has drm in it. The average computer user today is none too bright which is why our basic rights and freedoms for computing in privacy are being stripped from us.

Personal insults are not allowed.

AT Mod Usandthem

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Uhh you're too ignorant to participate in this discussion. This has been going on since 1997 with Ultima online, the reason we have DRM and steam to begin with is because the battle was won 20 years ago by fools who told the game industry they were incapable of perceiving the agenda.

The long term agenda of the computer and software industry of which game industry is apart has always been to get rid of software from the end user so they could increase profits. That's why we have all these abusive practices in games. The internet allowed game companies to divide games into two pieces, instead of getting complete games they came up with marketing bs labels to get people to confuse the public and it worked.

This is why windows 10 has drm in it. The average computer user today is none too bright which is why our basic rights and freedoms for computing in privacy are being stripped from us.

New forum rules, not that I care but I recommend editing your first sentence.

 

[zink77]

New forum rules, not that I care but I recommend editing your first sentence.

Except there's nothing ad hominem about it, claiming you don't know what you're talking about is reasonable. That's what ignorant means.

Here's an article claiming "victory" over stealing games from the public.

"Making piracy and pre-owned games problems of the past
10 Years Ago This Month: Gaming execs kill two birds with one server-based stone"

Making piracy and pre-owned games problems of the past

The games industry moves pretty fast, and there's a tendency for all involved to look constantly to what's next without…

www.gamesindustry.biz

So yeah to kill the used game market and piracy, the literally prevented you from owning the game and getting a complete set of game files, how nice of them.

Wrong.

AT Mod Usandthem

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Except there's nothing ad hominem about it, claiming you don't know what you're talking about is reasonable. That's what ignorant means.

Here's an article claiming "victory" over stealing games from the public.

"Making piracy and pre-owned games problems of the past
10 Years Ago This Month: Gaming execs kill two birds with one server-based stone"

Making piracy and pre-owned games problems of the past

The games industry moves pretty fast, and there's a tendency for all involved to look constantly to what's next without…

www.gamesindustry.biz

So yeah to kill the used game market and piracy, the literally prevented you from owning the game and getting a complete set of game files, how nice of them.

Make a thread about it, stop crapping on random threads about it.

 

[shortylickens]

Everyone is ignorant, just on different subjects.
Abe Vigoda said that.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I tried to warn but nevertheless he persisted.

 

[bguile]

A lot could change until release. We still have probably 3 up to maybe 5 years to go before it comes out. I still remember that the initial Diablo 3 gameplay reveal video with the Barbarian was different enough compared to how the game turned out at release (D3 actually had a gorier aspect to it at first when they revealed it, and it was more violent). I still remember the Siege Breaker beast (currently in Act 3 as a mini boss) in that video appearing as a mini boss in Act 1 and seeing it grabbing the Barb with one hand and biting him in half. It turned out that this was never kept in the actual final game and the Siege Breaker never even made any appearance in Act 1 at all, and was moved to Act 3. And the game overall became less violent and had zero dismemberment or 'death animations' for your character (except they did keep most of the gore for the trash monsters) outside of just generically dying with ragdoll physics.

So who knows how D4 will turn out like. I suspect that they will do their best to keep the 'open, shared world' thing going, but everything else will be looked upon multiple times, revised, changed or even cut out in parts during the development. The trailer is the only thing that I consider 'final' from what we've seen of the game this year, since that's releated to the story and chances are that most the story (at least the major beats and events of its campaign) is already set in stone.

I'm glad you mentioned the Siege Breaker's appearance on the initial D3 reveal. I was a diablo 2 fan, so when they announced Diablo 3 I couldn't wait. And that initial reveal made it seem like it would be everything I wanted. Loved the art style, loved the gameplay, thought the witch doctor would be an interesting class, and seeing the final part with the Siege breaker had me super excited. As time went on, and more details about the game came out, I became less and less interested, and eventually decided to wait. Then the whole auction house debacle, and details of the story came out, and I lost interest. Every once in a while I think about picking up D3, but still just can't. I've tried PoE, and it's a good game, but I never really could get into it.

The initial gameplay from D4 has me fairly excited, I like alot of the stuff they are doing, or going back too, but it's still a long long way from release. It looks promising though.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

The game will have difficulty modifiers, but you may not be a fan of how they're implementing it. The current plan appears to be a modification of World of WarCraft's Mythic+ key system. Essentially, in Diablo IV, keys will drop for specific dungeons that increase the difficulty of the dungeon. I'm not necessarily sure how the numbers will change in association with the key's level, but they did note how keys may also contain affixes that add difficulty. (WoW's Mythic+ keys also do this.) They showed off an example of an untargetable lightning shard that follows the player around and tries to deal damage to them throughout the dungeon.

Although, I'm not sure if this is really what players will really want. I guess it all depends on how often keys will drop and how can you ensure that the key is difficult enough for you? It's like.. if you're regularly playing the equivalent of Torment XIII, you don't want a key that's equivalent to Torment VI.

Thank you for an explanation of the mechanic and admittedly it’s early.
Here is my fear, game ends up like any modern mmo where it’s really difficult to “die” as in if you put any effort into the game you’ll do more than fine and finding difficult keys is well difficult, like you need to kill a million things to get one. That would really suck to deal with.

I don’t want to claim I’m a super hardcore gamer but I want some challenge.
Weird how we all have expectations about a game and those expectations can be so different. Friend of mine told me he had a great time playing Skyrim with cheats on where he could down a Dragon in one well placed shot. To my ears that sounds shockingly dumb, why bother playing the game it’s a damn dragon it’s supposed to be tough.

 

[bbhaag]

I played D2 and Lord of Destruction for over a decade straight. I never played D3 because of the auction house and the always online (mainly the always online nonsense) and just like all other titles, I'm going to leave this one alone until about six months after launch. Six months is usually enough time for a company to release some solid patches and fix most of the issues.

@Stg-Flame You still play? I'm on USEast non-ladder and could use some help.

To keep it on topic I'll give D4 a chance. The cinematic and in game play looked pretty good. I mean these are VERY early teases. Unlike some members I'm not going write the game off immediately based on what has been released so far.

 

[Majes]

The trailer for this was awesome.

I truly have some high hopes for this game, but Blizzard hasn't had any talent in ARPG game design for a long time now. They had the perfect template to build off of with D2 and pretty much changed everything good about it. Diablo went from a game that you could play for years to a game you could finish in 2 days.

But there's good news. The answers are out there. Since D3 failed so utterly in so many ways other games filled the market. All the developers have to do is look at Path of Exile, Grim Dawn, Torchlight, Marvel Heroes, and many others. Take the best parts of those games and drop the rest.

Are they going to do that? I doubt it. I'm thinking this might go back to the basics and more resemble D2 than any of the other current offerings. I'm intrigued by the open world, and I understand that they need to do some new things to stand out.

Here's the thing though... Path of Exile had their 4.0 announcement ready LAST YEAR if D4 had been announced. They are light years ahead of Blizzard and they know it. I'm so pumped to see what they've been working on two weeks from now at ExileCon.

 

[Borealis7]

how can you say D3 failed when it generated billions of dollars for Activision/Blizzard? the same can be said for any Call of Doody 4,096 and Ass-Ass-in's creed 2,097. they may not be innovative, original or unique games, but they are a huge commercial success for their developers. as long as there are millions of gamers who don't care as much as we do about extraordinary gameplay, this will go on and on.

 

[DeathReborn]

Every major update for PoE I try it out again but I just can't get past the seeing other players thing, I want a nice SP ARPG and PoE along with D4 just aren't it. I will have to stick to things like Grim Dawn & hope that more non-online ARPG's comer along.

I am going on holiday to Morocco in a few months and D1 + D2 are both on my laptop, D3 always had issues with connectivity abroad so that's why online games just don't work for me that well.

As far as games failing or not, I am fairly sure most people refer to the content being bad/sloppy/lazy rather than the umpteen fools buying it year in year out propping up the bad publishers. Trends have changed, a 6 hour campaign today is if anything a luxury, 30 years ago it was a demo/shareware version. Cookie cutter development is todays money maker.

 

[Majes]

how can you say D3 failed when it generated billions of dollars for Activision/Blizzard? the same can be said for any Call of Doody 4,096 and Ass-Ass-in's creed 2,097. they may not be innovative, original or unique games, but they are a huge commercial success for their developers. as long as there are millions of gamers who don't care as much as we do about extraordinary gameplay, this will go on and on.

I technically said that D3 failed in many ways. It certainly wasn't a commercial failure except that it lost most of its market share to other games. Now Blizzard has said that they believe the market can support many ARPGs, but they would be lying if they said they weren't jealous of Path of Exile or the money it brings in.

The Diablo situation is similar to Star Wars in that it has a huge cult following, but the latest releases have been "lackluster". It will continue to make money, but is it really a success if the fan base declines and future versions make less and less?

 

[zinfamous]

I'd just like to point out the last Warcraft game was released in 2002.

You are mostly correct. The actual last Warcraft game was released in 1995.