** Diablo 4 Thread **

[Teaf]

We know most of the end-game already:

• Nightmare dungeons (120+ scalable dungeons)
• Helltides (region-wide events)
• Whispers of the Dead (world quests)

I'd imagine the gameplay loop will be mostly be the nightmare dungeons; you'll complete the campaign around level 45 to 50, then you'll start farming keys for nightmare dungeons and progressively working your way through the tier levels of keys, progressing to your character to level 100, and always chasing the gear upgrades. The paragon board unlocks at level 50 and you'll be completing that also.

This is the concern I have currently with the nightmare dungeons as if they don't introduce a lot more variability to them and we're only going to get the same 4-5 tiles we're seeing the beta, with no random events, and the same "locked door" scenario to complete the dungeon for each of them, it'll get boring very fast.

 

[Teaf]

I don't mind the level scaling personally, but I get why some don't. I like the idea that when I hit level 100 I can still grind and find a challenge in any area of the world (including the starting areas) - but, I hope they don't use that as a method of end-game. Such as, in some ARPGs, you'd only find the very last levels of the campaign are high-level, and the beginner zones are fixed at a lower level. I don't want them to use the excuse of "well the whole world scales, you can play anywhere so there's loads of content to do" as an excuse to not have better end-game systems in place because they classify the world itself as a scaling end-game.

 

[Teaf]

then there are the cellars which are all identical.

I forgot about those They were awful. I liked the ones in Diablo 3 as even though they weren't exactly massively different, they were still different enough to see some variation. In D4 however it's literally all the same with the exception of sometimes the cellar is mirrored horizontally.

 

[Teaf]

The variations in terms of tile set aesthetics doesn't bother me that much since, as people are saying, we're just in one area in the beta so the general theme of the dungeons will be similar. What is a massive issue though is how much the dungeons tiles repeat as seen here, here, and here. It won't really matter what the aesthetic theme is in another area of the world as if that area also only has the same handful of tile sets for their aesthetic then we'll see the same repetition.

There's just not enough tiles to produce a varied set of dungeons. Like in the first one I linked the whole dungeon is basically the same 5 tiles. They aren't even rotated or mirrored to try to be different, it's just an identical copy/paste.

 

[Teaf]

I don't mind scaling upwards (i.e., mobs that were level 1 are now level 20 if that is my character level) but I hate the other way around. I shouldn't be able to just walk from the starting area to the last area in the game and expect to not get pasted because everything around me scales down to my level.

 

[Teaf]

That's how they've done it isn't it? I'm sure I came across some mobs that were a higher level than me, but never lower than me.

It's interesting how they scale in a party as well, I see them at my level, but my friend who was a level or two lower than me sees them at his.

Yeah, I believe it's always monsters scale up and not down, which I'm fine with I get why others aren't though, such as the "my character doesn't feel any more powerful if everything keeps scaling with me" argument. I did see the "a level 5 character killed a monster is 2 seconds while it took me 8 seconds at level 25" argument (or similar variants of that argument) quite a few times, but as Tombstone points out, I think this is just a balancing problem where the monsters health scaling is off.

 

[Teaf]

How did people find the legendary drop rates? I see quite a few comments on Reddit, the official forums, and in feedback videos from streamers that there were too many legendary items dropping.

 

[Teaf]

No, the main issue is that on the level 6 player's client they see the monsters as lvl 6, but on my client I see them as lvl 25. So on my end it looks as if the lower level player can kill much higher level monsters. Immersion breaking stuff.

Do you think it would help if they didn't show the character level next to the players name? So you'd just naturally assume they are around the level you are.

 

[Teaf]

I wonder how that works mechanically when they hit a monster. It takes off a percentage of the monster's health, rather than an absolute number?

A level 10 character will see a bear and it has 1,000 health for them. Their attack hits for 60 damage, so they deal 6% damage to the enemy health bar.
A level 25 character will see a bear and it has 9,000 health for them. Their attack hits for 500 damage, so they deal 5.5% damage to the enemy health bar.

Other players' clients are notified of the percentage drop in the monsters health, not the actual figure of the damage that was done.

 

[Teaf]

Wolcen has just been reworked massively worth a look again and I just love the setting on Inquisitor in the steam summer sale as well £12 is utter bargain.

Ohh, that's why I see a bunch of streamers playing Wolcen. Hopefully the rework is positive.

 

[Teaf]

The game really eats memory. Dropping my texture settings to medium drastically helped with the stuttering (this is with 32GB of system memory and 10GB GPU memory) as before I did that it was really bad. No doubt they'll be still performing lots of optimisations, I think they mentioned that the game was still unoptimised. Wouldn't be surprised if the client we're using is months old.

 

[Teaf]

"Beta has become a twisted word": Blizzard responds to Diablo 4 early access feedback

More than a million people crashed into the Diablo 4 early access beta over the weekend, myself included, and I hopped …

www.eurogamer.net

Eurogamer had a Q&A with Joe Shelley and Rod Ferguson after the beta addressing some of the concerns.

Joe's comments about the negative reaction to dungeons has not made me any more hopeful we'll see better variation

 

[Teaf]

You can still read the end-game thread on Unddit or in r/diablo4eng if anyone's interested.

 

[Teaf]

Separate download from the closed beta last weekend?

Just a small update update if you have last weeks client, nothing huge.

 

[Teaf]

Patch notes for the weekend beta (not many changes though, mostly just some bug fixes).

 

[Teaf]

To be honest I never saw any notification of a world boss in chat or on my screen as a system message, the only thing I could see was the icon in the world boss area appeared and it has an inverse progress bar showing how long until it spawned. When it wasn't up or when the event wasn't soon active there no was icon at all.

 

[Teaf]

New driver is out for Nvidia users for Diablo 4 if anyone was having any issues.

 

[Teaf]

I saw something here the other day, what was the item level stuff about with regards to drops?

I think some people were theorising that drops are based on your currently bagged item level, so holding higher level items in your inventory gave a higher range of natural drops; but, I don't think this is the case and drops are actually based on the monster level.

reddit says that driver doesn't target the correct exe name so doesn't recognise d4

Reddit - Dive into anything

www.reddit.com

Thanks for the heads up! Hopefully they get a fix out for that.

 

[Teaf]

https://twitter.com/RodFergusson/status/1638911812577169409

Rod confirmed drops are tuned higher in the beta, so we'll see less legendaries in live (thankfully).

 

[Teaf]

Bit disappointed as I felt as a casual player, it really helped to improve the game play. I just don't have the time to spend hours and hours grinding away, hoping I get a new piece of equipment. In the beta I found something new and interesting every 30 minutes or so. Even if it wasn't a direct improvement in stats, I found something which allowed me to try a new play style, with new skills. If they are going to reduce the drops, I wont be buying it on day one.

You'll never be able to keep up the pace of getting a new and interesting item every 30 minutes though. The better your items get, the longer it's going to take to get another item to replace it. Eventually your gear will be so good it could take days to find an upgrade. If you have loot dropping like a pinata from every monster all you do is reach that point faster where upgrades are extremely scarce and suddenly you are very quickly at where you say you don't want to be - spending hours and hours grinding away finding nothing.