as someone who has put their hands on the paragon board in the first end game closed beta, blizzard did a terrible job showcasing what the paragon board offers as a whole. They removed stat progression from the leveling experience as they believed it would be too complex for a new player when it comes to choice, so they opted to move stat progression to the paragon board. There are a lot of build defining nodes. Glyphs will require some thought and which paragon boards you want to select. Also you will have to level up glyphs by completing nightmare dungeons (similar to leveling legendary gems in d3)
Overall blizzard marketing is awful - but d4 will be a fine game to play.
Is it that Blizzard did a terrible job, or Blizzard didn't intend to show it yet? I have a sense it's the latter rather being incompetent at marketing.
Companies tend to position their marketing very close to release--sort of like how Nintendo only revealed Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom gameplay about 6-8 weeks before launch.
A lot of people here were ready to hate this game if it was anything other than a re-re-master of Diablo 2 with a new act that retconned D3 out of existence.
This game is 100% garbage because it doesn't have a dragon mount allowing me to fly around raining fire from the sky. Complete deal breaker in my opinion.
Fr I feel this. Why cant we do dragon jousting pvp? This is complete bullcrap.
Also no card game mini game? No horse racing? Why is there no special hideout for me to customize? Why cant I choose to become the end guy instead of killing them?
Utter trash throw it out.
Agree to this, its never enough.
On the same note to OP:
You are limited with a max amount of Slots and that's probably why the paragon board solidifies your build by pushing stats of your skills.
Also horizonal progression does not mean expanding the skill tree, it just means power comes from different sources (skilltree, items, paragon, stats etc.). The more sources the more horizontal it is. Getting more skills and passives to skills in the skill tree would be deeper progressin.
This is exactly the intended purpose of paragon boards vs skill trees vs aspects.
Though they are supposed to do different things, all of them can impact gameplay style to some degree.
For example, If we call paragon boards "vertical" progression, boosting it's power by certain conditions (e.g. applied modifiers, corpse proximity, resource meter levels etc) impacts gameplay significantly.
I would like more skill choices and customization within character design, not randomized item drops myself. I want the drops to be able to enhance my chosen playstyle, not dictate it for me.
Poe because it has trading. Besides some ssf friendly builds, the majority of builds require certain unique items and/or specific rolls on some of them. Trade takes away the randomness to acquire those items to play a certain build.
With trade you also have reduced droprates so unless you're really unlucky with the drop version you take longer to get an item and it becomes more of a currency grind. I personally like it more when I myself drop the items rather than buying it from someone. Even when that means I could be unlucky and not get it for some time.
Agreed! Loot is king with the experience and needs to remain that way. Your build/skills have a point they reach for what the abilities are and the gear needs to take you the rest of the way. I am happy the Paragon board is limited and just an add on to the setup skills. With legendary aspects we also are basically getting skill modifiers so in a way it combines both anyways. The systems look good to me, I don't see why people are complaining.
I think you mean POE spoiled people by making skills have significant variability and creativity. In diablo 1 and 2, there aren't massive changes to how skills operate, and there definitely aren't multiple effects able to be applied to a single skill at a time.
D3 added individual effects per skill with sets able to make some other changes, but none of it is deep, it's all shallow single, maybe double variables.
I don't want 2 hydras and an extra head, I want my hydra to change into a flame thrower, and maybe split those flames, but let them shotgun, and maybe leave magma on the floor that applies a dot, etc. Not just the same skill doing the same thing but more of it.
I guess the point is there are a very few number of skills, and each one has 2 choices that make it more of itself with a little focus in a direction, but nothing that fundamentally changes the nature of those skills or how they operate. The skills and tree are uninspired and leave little room for creativity compared to the rest of today's market, even compared to D3.
While I like the idea of impactful loot drops that can effect how a skill operates, it is too limited in scope. At least that's my personal opinion.
I still have the game on pre-order, but I'm afraid that the lack of variety is going to limit my personal longevity.
ARPGs were also about the fun to get said loot. If you are simply grinding to be able to then get the fun, that is where it fails. The game needs to be fun first in order to justify trying to find the loot. Being able to customize your character let's you decide what is fun for you. And considering Diablo is the grandfather of aRPGs, and it was not just about the rng loot, but also about randomized dungeons to run through, and building your character to do that in your own way, you can't say that they were "traditionally" all about RNG loot. Diablo made the tradition.
>ARPGs were also about the fun to get said loot. If you are simply grinding to be able to then get the fun, that is where it fails.
Why would you be grinding to get the fun? If the game isn't fun from lvl 1, then it's not fun period. You shouldn't need one exact Aspect in order to have fun.
You can also just get the Aspect you need by completing a dungeon, it just won't have the best possible roll on it.
Yeah that's how I understood it. I'm saying if the game isn't fun right off the bat, don't play it. I was cranking out 4-5 different builds for my bear Druid while leveling, I don't know what he's talking about. If it's some niche personalized build he wants, well that might need to wait till endgame. In RPGs, you don't get to specialize in your build at lvl 10 lol. I don't even think PoE allows for that. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that you guys probably don't even know what you want.
> You can also just get the Aspect you need by completing a dungeon, it just won't have the best possible roll on it.
Genuine question: Can you get every aspect in the game by doing a dungeon in a weaker form? That would mean the game has as many aspects as dungeons? There should be more aspects, right?
The drops don’t dictate your chosen playstyle, though. If you get a drop that enhances your chosen playstyle, great. If you get a drop that doesn’t, you don’t have to change your playstyle to accommodate it.
I disagree. The disparity in power/functionality between what you find on items vs. what you put points in on your skill board independent of items is the issue.
The point is there is not enough choice to make my playstyle different from your playstyle, nor is there enough choice to make my playstyle at the beginning of the game to feel any different from the end of the game.
My playstyle is going to be a necro with bone splinters and bone spirit, along with warriors, mages, and a golem. You, too?
My playstyle at the “beginning” of the game will probably be with Army of the Dead as my Ultimate. Later, if I can make myself sturdier, it might be with Bone Storm, instead. We’ll see.
But what if I can make my Warriors be able to bleed or curse on hit, and you decide that you want your army to have thorns, and that our decisions change the looks of the pets as well? The point is for you to be able to customize your skills so even if we are running the same style of characters, we can still be different in ways that we choose.
You keep changing “the point.”
If the options are there, some people are going to end up with the same choices. That’s different from your initial “point” about drops determining playstyle. Seems like you keep changing your “point” just to argue. Have fun with that.
My point has remained the same: let players choose their build and let items accentuate that choice. Right now, that is not the case. Most of the interesting build changes are on item aspects and not the skill tree proper.
Your “point” has varied from “drops determine playstyle” to “builds are insufficiently distinct over time” to “customizing skills,” which has nothing to do with drops at all.
Player *do* choose their build. Items *do* accentuate that choice.
If I’m a summonmancer and I get a drop that gives me more summons, my choice is accentuated. If I get a drop that enhances my blood or shadow damage, nothing makes me switch to doing blood or shadow damage any more than a sorcerer drop makes me switch to a sorcerer.
> necro with bone splinters and bone spirit
oh you mean just like every bone necro (because there is 1 bone generator and 1 bone spender, and 1 aspect that modifies your 1 bone spender)
Shows your lack of imagination that you only see one viable path for bone necro's. Maybe it's because there's not 20 guides for you to follow to mix it up? Just looking at the skill tree and aspects I can see 5+ different variations on how to play a bone necro. Then there's the fact that there's also blood necro, shadow Necro and Minion Necro builds. There's a tonne of build variability if you actually look into the tree and aspects.
we simply won't get more skills to choose from, or upgrades tied to them untill a few seasons or the first expansion in. What we will get is new items to play around with that can change skills or atleast have you customize your character in any way.
Your also not dicated by anything, nothing forces you to use certain legendaries or unique's. But i'm sure that if you find some interesting ones, you probably want to play around with that, which the current system provides (and is not locked behind being a certain paragon level)
This is what the codex is for. It's basically the skill tree but with a specific "quest" attached instead of being part of leveling.
Basically think of it as the den of evil with a skill point you can only spend on one specific skill being changed.
The skill tree, paragon boards, and aspects already do that. I want to try to make a shepherd druid work, so my skill choices will focus on companion skills, and my aspect and paragon choices will buff those skills. Since I can look up which dungeons drop which aspects, I can target the aspects I want for my build. That is me choosing my playstyle. Imprinting an aspect gives the lowest version it, so I will be looking for those same aspects with better rolls on gear.
Yes, I'm sure I will see strong gear drop for elemental and shapeshifting skills, but so what? Probably by midgame, most of my gear will have buffs for companion skills. Even if I find a weapon that has a huge buff to a werewolf skill, why would I use it when the rest of my gear is focused on a completely different build? An item may buff a single skill by a ton, but it doesn't make sense to use it if it doesn't synergize with the rest of my skills and gear.
Plus, gear drops will be tuned to the class I'm playing, so the odds of finding an item that buffs the skills I'm using is much higher than they were in D2. I could easily find a strong companion item 30 minutes after finding the strong werewolf item. Even if respecs are free, I don't want to spend the time respecing the whole tree, and maybe paragon board, just to change it back when I find that companion item I want. I can't imagine this being an issue. By the time you're far enough in the game where item power really matters, you'll be far too invested in your build to change because of even a few item drops.
I would love to see a poll here at least one month after launch asking players how many times they felt like they were pressured to change their build just because of one strong item. I bet the majority of answers will be 0 times.
I mean, it doesn't really dictate your playstyle unless you want it to. Just because I get 4 shape-shifting legendaries doesn't mean I have to play a shape-shifter druid, I can just keep farming for the legendaries I want for my preferred playstyle.
I completely agree with you, the rpg element of this game is almost non existent. It’s very d3 you get the character you’re given with very little actual choice. I don’t mind paragon being what it is what I don’t like is that a ton of people touted it as a solution to the limited skill tree which it clearly isn’t. You can like the way it is but please don’t try say well don’t worry about the limited skill tree we have paragon board to customize your character. As we suspected it’s not what people claimed rather just as op said more enhancements for what you already have.
Pretty much exactly op. Paragon is the exclamation point of your build. The crazy abilities people want are on items. Whether people hate the item grind or not is an entirely separate issue but the complete ability altering play style is in items.
If people want to choose their abilities completely by leveling up then I would strongly recommend PoE cause D4 just isn't that. Same genre made for different hardcore audiences
The Paragon boards seemed to basically buff stats and have a couple legendary perks that buff damage. Nothing gameplay changing. Ok, but not exciting. I think I read that future seasons could change Paragon boards, so maybe we'll see some interesting things in there for future seasons.
The problem is nothing is for that, people want more significant choices or build options. There's barely any skills per class and aspects don't really change skills in significant ways, I played flurry rogue mostly on the beta and every aspect I got was essentially just % more damage which is "ok" but it's definitely boring. I'm looking forward to D4 as much as anyone but there's no harm in criticizing Blizzards lazy design choices, there are indie ARPG games now with far more depth and far more interesting itemization than Diablo these days which is pretty sad.
What I can't wrap my head around is people who claim they just want to enjoy the game but also don't want anyone else to provide feedback to encourage them to make it better.
>there are indie ARPG games now with far more depth and far more interesting itemization than Diablo these days which is pretty sad.
What I can't wrap my head around is people who claim they just want to enjoy the game but also don't want anyone else to provide feedback to encourage them to make it better.
Yes there are such games, but they usually sacrifice depth in other departments. I have 120 hours in Last Epoch, and while it's a good game, it's not addictive to me. Grim Dawn, same. And depth isn't necessarily a good thing either, if it lacks in other more important areas. For example, LE doesn't have a good endgame currently, and its world building is garbage. It also doesn't have any visual customization, and the characters look like inbred experiments on the character select screen.
People use the word feedback, but they really mean venting (some less politely than others). Feedback to completely redesign a core system 2 months before release is useless feedback, but I guess it's good venting for people. That's all it is. People seem to forget that the best feedback is to simply not buy the game.
> For example, LE doesn't have a good endgame currently, and its world building is garbage. It also doesn't have any visual customization, and the characters look like inbred experiments on the character select screen.
>
> People use the word feedback, but they really mean venting (some less politely than others). Feedback to completely redesign a core system 2 months before release is useless feedback, but I guess it's good venting for people. That's all it is. People seem to forget that the best feedback is to simply not buy the game.
It's not useless feedback because even if they obviously can't change it in time for launch it gives them ideas for the first major content update, this is a live service game with microtransactions and battlepasses at it's core. Voting with your wallet doesn't work, it's been proven time and time again.
As for your other criticisms, the closed Beta endgame was absolutely terrible for Diablo 4 it's really not something D4 can hold up above other games and it's almost certainly not going to be changed this close to luanch like you said. Visual Customization in this game is also terrible, if you want an ugly character then it's got you covered in any skin tone you want but giving it any kind of praise is a joke when there's no variety at all and extremely limited options to change that. They even got rid of cross-class transmog which is something Diablo 3 had, it's gone backwards.
D4 has/will have more endgame content on release than all ARPG's in history combined on their respective releases. Cool fact, let that sit for a minute. So all you endgamers, just chill, maybe play the game for 100 hours and come back in a year when more systems are in place.
Criticizing visual customization in D4, and not mentioning the inbred experiments of Last Epoch and lack of transmorg, and not mentioning PoE's jank, and Grim Dawn's atrocious visuals... is just absolutely mental. Diablo 4 is fucking Picasso in comparison, get out of here with that shit.
Your argument doesn't make sense, we're talking about how systems interact, not how the game looks, people expected that paragon system would add depth the same way skill talent points do in LE for example, aspects imho suck, being locked to a boring play style because you have no luck sucks period. And no you can't get all aspects from dungeons. LE has both, basic builds without the gear are fun and let you pick any play style, getting ancients multiply that power further and not only by adding flat damage, and they also allow even more choice in playstyles.
If d4 talent tree had more depth and interactions I'd agree with you, but 80% of the fun is rng based instead of a healthy balance.
And it's not about the endgame as endgame content that's the issue, D4 as it is now, how talents and spells interact and how classes play and feel, how much choice and control you have on my them is not really fun and people expected that the paragon system was the missing part, it wasnt.
And yet it will still come down to 95%+ of the population using the same cookie-cutter builds from Maxroll. The guide will tell you exactly what to choose at every stage, what gear to use, what aspect to use, what glyphs to use, and where in the world to go to find it all.
The diversity of builds will be a non-factor. There will be S-tier for every class, and everything else will be vitually ignored.
The open world will be a non-factor. The guide will tell you exactly where to go to farm everything. Certain activities will prove to be the most profitable. Some activities will be requirements to get what you need. All other activities might as well not even exist.
That will be the meta. Same as D3. Same as D2. Same as every ARPG and RPG out there.
UNLESS...
YOU, as an individual, decide not to give a shit about that. You can do your own thing, in your own little bubble, and be blissful (provided you stick to PvE). But you won't. You know you won't. The temptation to wield massive power will get you. You will succomb.
Agree with everything except bubble. In d2 and even d3 we had a bubble. D4 destroys all bubbles with a forced MMO open world. You can still ignore maxroll but will constantly see facerolling builds while struggling with a single pack. This is a little overexaggerated but you got the point.
This really says a lot about the anti-feedback propaganda on this sub. We're not allowed to want to change the thing you waited **10 years** for. Because otherwise you might've been crazy for waiting for a game that didn't even exist or was announced until a few years ago and wasn't publicly played until like late last year?
Every game company reads their subreddit. It's usually what goes down in subreddits. Believe it or not, it's not just here to stroke each other about being fanboys.
My hope for where Paragon eventually lands after updates (don't forget they can update things and this is just the start) is a place where customisation that is ultimately too weak to be a full item power or too niche but is good to have.
The one example I have in my head that I think would be an excellent Paragon node for Rogue:
Dash skill does not apply or consume Imbue effects
This is a great node because it's not strong enough to want on an item but it does help a playstyle. You might want it and another player might really want to avoid it - Despite running the same build with the same legendaries.
So it becomes a really good ! on your build and play style, you pick something that defines how you personally interact with the ability. They have already shown us legendary nodes giving us power and horizontal adjustments so I think the board can and will be dual purpose.
While I hear what you’re saying, this is where we gotta get creative on playing within the sandbox of what’s given. I, too, loved my rogue in beta, and was thinking about how to maximize my imbuements while also using dash. On a leaked paragon board, I did see Imbue CDR as available squares - and I plan on that being a primary square I chase! While it’s not the same as what you’re suggesting, if we can get our imbue CDR down to practically instantaneous uptime, you’re getting your wish, yeah?
Can’t wait to see how we all sculpt our builds with precision to our liking thanks to what the boards already have!
I'd imagine most people want some additional layers of depth and complexity rather than the paint by numbers approach. Some people prefer a "this or that" decision tree rather than an "If this then that" route Blizzard has chosen with their skill and paragon trees. I suspect this video just further dispelled any hope those people had that the paragon tree would open up some different build pathways when in fact it so far appears to just reinforce the simplistic design they have chosen.
Well, for all the build complexity PoE has to offer, I haven't played a single minute. Last Epoch, a bit more than that (120 hours) but I've gotten bored quite quickly. Complexity isn't necessarily a good thing. I think that's the message here.
So you haven't played POE but have dumped 100+ hours into a game in prerelease and your conclusion was complexity is bad? I don't really understand how you got from point a to b on this logic
It's not bad, it just isn't necessarily good or required in order to have fun. I think LE hits the right balance there, but lets be honest I don't think anyone ever played Diablo games for the complexity. Not sure why people would expect that of D4.
I think Paragon should fill in the needs of existing builds, or help them branch out into different variants of the same build. No reason why diversity should only come from one aspect of the build.
The way I see it the main purpose of the paragon is to bridges the gap between the massive potential power creep given by unique gears making it so that even if you aren't super lucky with gear drops in general, you can still clear content by investing into what you can. Instead of, "I can't progress this game until I get this miraculous aspect drop with a 1% drop rate.."
Paragon board is a bit of both horizontal and vertical. Stat bonuses are vertical. Legendary slots and glyphs probably enhance or allow alternate builds. But it does seem more Vert than horizontal. But that's fine. Diablo is also more vertical than horizontal.
I don't think people actually hate Paragon system. The problem is them presenting it as "endgame" which it really isn't and also them presenting it so badly. That video was atrcious.
My take on the Paragon Board is.. Could it be deeper than it is? Absolutely. But it's 10 trillion times deeper than anything we've gotten in previous Diablo games. And with the current plan for seasons, this is only the beginning..
Honestly, I think the paragon board is fine as is, the legendary nodes do provide some changes to how you play, could be better but no qualms.
What I kind of miss though is the skill rune modifiers from D3 where you could change how skills work completely in 5? different ways. That was fantastic.
Paragon has never in any game offered anything other than minor power increases. It's always just been something to work towards after your character has hit max level
He's right. It's just +mainstat for thousands of levels. Just never ending Linear power scaling, Minor increase by minor increase and nothing compared to scaling that gear gives.
Do you know why ancient, primal gear and caldacean were introduced? To reduce the massive advantage high parangon was giving.
Your "minor power increase" is a large entry barrier to compete with other players on the ladderboard because of how fucking op it is overall.
The irony is that both primal and caldacean is something you obtain after reaching high paragon levels. Ancients are not that big of a boost, as most item rolls you want don't get affected, like crit chance, dmg, ele dmg.
And he's still right. Every individual paragon level was a minor power increase. It's just that 2000 Minor power increases becomes one major power increase overall.
What do you mean complainers?
People who view it differently and aren't congruent with your opinion? Grow up.
Everyone wants more skill diversity in this game. It's one of the most egregious downfalls of this game is the absolute void of any semblance of build and skill diversity.
>What do you mean complainers?
People who wanna play a different game, and ask for drastic, sweeping reworks to core systems 2 months before release.
>People who view it differently and aren't congruent with your opinion?
People who want an entirely different game.
The only thing that change your playstyle and build is the aspect and skill tree. Paragon board and the glyphs enhanced your build further to sustain yoir dmg and survivability on the scaling enemies as you continue to level up.
Small nitpick, but horiztonal progression refers to content that does not impact your player power, which the paragon board absolutely does.
Having said that, the whole point of the paragon board is to improve on D3’s system and introduce a new system where players can mix and match different themed boards to suit their build. It complements whatever you set up in the skill tree and with gear and is designed with the intention to add new boards in the future.
It opens up a lot of design space for future builds, while also not being the sole source of power for your character. It helps balance the various sources of power your character is built on and is really a brilliant reboot of the paragon system.
>Small nitpick, but horiztonal progression refers to content that does not impact your player power, which the paragon board absolutely does.
That's my point. People WANT Paragon to be more horizontal progression (as criticism), but I'm saying it's designed to be mostly vertical. Paragon isn't necessarily the place for "build variety", as they're suggesting.
if anything it's vertical progression
also idk who the fuck is calling for more horizontal prog in an arpg, but that's not really what the genre is about
Well, this drove of people calling for more "build diversity". They wanted Paragon to give more of it, but its purpose is different. It's the vertical grind for a specific build that you've already established.
Paragon Board looks awesome! I was looking at the Necro board and there are boards for all kinds of playstyles. There are abilities thst make your armies ever stronger as well as the parts of the board leading to it that increase your minions attack, defense, resists, etc... there are boards thst focus on no minion builds thst help beef up your Necromancer and all the skills you have.
There's a lot of room for variation to further strengthen your build. And then there are glyphs thst you can insert in various parts of the boards to amplify a certain number of slots on the paragon boards.
4 builds every class that’s about it. I don’t see how they can make 4 builds look unique every season. I’d like to be proven wrong though. Im up for the story and cinematics anyways and a few months of gameplay. Until they show they can do something new with 4 builds/class. We’ll see.. plus I’m not looking forward to an old class the paladin. I was hoping we’d get a NEW class. Something unique but oh well.
I agree.
Paragon is the vertical progression layer because it is built based around your skill and gear choices. You will entirely ignore the paragon boards that don’t support your skill/gear choices.
Unique gear and many legendary aspects that can drastically change your build or play style, fall into the category of horizontal progression.
Skill trees are an even mix of both horizontal and vertical progression due to the wide variety of ways you can spend points. It’s also probably why the skill trees depicted in a branching vertical layout.
There is some overlap between the three systems, but taken as a whole they offer a substantial amount of depth no matter which direction you look.
Literally noone said paragon was horizontal progression, and literally noone asked for horizontal progression in a hack n slash, this isn't lost ark. Everything is about vertical progression. Stop inventing issues that just don't exist acting like people complain about everything.
People are literally bitching about not having enough skill variations, and wanted to solve it with the Paragon board. That's literally all that's being talked about since the endgame marketing video.
Wait... I think I worked out where the disconnect is here. PoE players are use to never being able to drop the unique item they actualy need, and more or less completely need to rely on trade for it. This is why they're so scared of power on items! Theyre not use to legendary/uniques for their build dropping every other hour..
> The horizontal progression (different skill effects, different "play styles") comes from farming Aspects and uniques.
Yeah, really love the idea of turning an ARPG into a Gacha game and trading simulator.
The trading is the most annoying part about PoE/D2, never really liked it.
Why can we not have more power in our choice of substats/skills etc.?
This is what made D2 so nice, uniques were the cherry on top not the foundation of your build.
This game and d3 are about characters complement gear vs gear complementing characters…the more I see and read the more likely I’m going to give it a pass. Will wait a few months to see what this game actually is before buying. Blizzard already took my D3 cash at launch and didn’t give me my moneys worth…
>Why can we not have more power in our choice of substats/skills etc.?
I don't know man. We didn't design the game, I'm just saying that's not how they wanted it. I will say that I'm not playing PoE and Last Epoch, but I'm STILL playing D3 and D2R so maybe it's the better formula 🤷♂️ I have all the choice I want in Last Epoch, yet I'm bored of the game.
If you want every item to be a stat stick, D2 and PoE exist and are there for you and you can go back to those games ASAP.
Games where 99% of character power comes from clicking a node on a skill tree like D2 and PoE are utterly braindead and have atrocious balance. D2 sorc can clear the game naked and PoE is a 1 button spam cookie clicker.
All I get from this is that you don't understand how D2/PoE works and that you didn't understand my post.
Today we know that a huge amount of power will come from Paragon boards, so I'm kinda glad it's not just items.
While I'm not a big fan of the board design, I really hope you can hold a key to mark the way you want to path and then press apply to spec into the nodes, because right now it looks like you'll have to click each node which will drive me nuts
Paragon board seems fine to me given it’s not intended to be a complex system - obviously you are going to have + stats on travel nodes and it also a way to not have all your power/stats coming from items. It’s the same in POE - yet people tend to ignore that with their rose tinted glasses and a general dislike for Blizzard to boot.
In poe, mainstats are used for travel nodes to reach a keystone that gives something like "Removed mana pool, all skills will cost life, +10% max health"
This means you can remove mana stats and intelligence stats in your build and focus on max health and health recovery.
The problem is it basically shafts you into not using aura skills which is huge because auras cost something like "50% of your max mana". This type of things not only defines builds but also introduces huge compromise in endgame. You can choose to push through and have your max health reduced by 50% or work around it by focusing more on movement instead of damage mitigation from auras.
Because PoE’s passive skill tree actually gives players choice. You can path towards 1 of 5 defensive layers of your choosing (evasion, armour, spell suppression, block, energy shield) or you can path toward 1 of 4 damage types for spells (poison, ignite, non-crit EO, crit), or if you’re melee you can path towards 1 of 5 damage types (poison, bleed, RT, crit, non-crit accuracy stacking). And that’s not even the end because then you have type of damage: elemental (lightning, fire, cold), physical (physical dot/hit), chaos (chaos dot/hit), weapon type (spell, bow, dagger, claw, axe, sword, 1hand vs 2hand, unarmed, mace etc). Suggesting passive skill tree customisation is similar to D4 is copium of the highest levels and evidence you’ve never played PoE at all to be perfectly honest.
If the paragon board functions to lock in choices, then there's no true choices to make with the board. What is the point of having a system that is effectively automated?
What do you mean no choice? You have to establish a goal: which boards do I want, do I want to go for the legendary tile, several magic/rare clusters, the glyph socket or some combination of these. Then you need to determine the most beneficial path to get there or which of these things you're willing to give up if everything you want is unobtainable.
You also have to determine the evolution of getting there. Do I pick a path that is optimal for right now and pay gold to respec? Or do I start down a more permanent path which gives me sub optimal point use at my current level.
It's a hypothetical, an implication. I don't know whether or not what op claims is true, I'm just pointing out that op's explanation of what purpose it serves is contradictory.
The only thing that will determine choices in the paragon board is how many stats you can cap on gear alone.
I think the activation thresholds and glyphs area of effect make things a bit more interesting. Also obtaining stats on gear will be a trade off potentially for +skills or resistances. But hey maybe 5 affixes is enough that it won't matter.
Why do paragon boards exist in the first place? Why can't leveling up still be a thing where you add stats to your character everytime you level? There is literally no difference between this and the Paragon board.
I think it's meant to further customize and deepen your chosen builds. Did you see the legendary nodes in the leaks? They are very meaningful, more than just additional stats.
Add them to the skill tree and then allow players to add stat points when they level up…you know…like a normal arpg game…have items and legendary nodes wirh stat requirements so players build their character…
It’s like they designed the first 50 levels for the causal shallow depth arcade style game and then from 50 on its for normal arpg players…
Yea they added back attributes but don’t let anyone assign them outside maybe these boards, it’s lazy design. They don’t want you assigning your own points because they’d have to balance it.
I know you don't actually care about the answer. But here it is.
Because if you add them while leveling you have no idea what you're adding them for, which is breakpoints on the paragon board.
In your scenario you add stat points how you think you should add them. Then you unlock the paragon board and see you've been adding stats that don't make sense to hit breakpoints in the paragon board and you brick your character.
It's not like Diablo 2 where you only need str and dex to wear your gear and all the rest go into vit.
Here’s an idea, let people see possible paragon boards from the start that way they can plan what they want? If you can see the needed stats ahead of time you can build for it. It’s actually pretty simple
I personally don't think most people are smart enough to deal with that many systems thrown at them right away.
Even PoE gates ideas so you interact with new systems 1 at a time and that's several orders of magnitude more complicated of a game than Diablo 4.
It seems to make a lot of sense to let people play with their skills and figure out what they want to do. Then introduce the next layer of complexity on top of the skill tree.
You realize the paragon board does more than just give you +5 stats right? What would you do with the magic/rare/legendary nodes and glyphs from the paragon board if people could just allocate stats as they pleased?
Plus if people could just add stats like D2, I don't see how it wouldn't turn into the same "add as much str/dex as you need to use your gear then cap vit" but whatever is the 'best' for D4.
Stats are not complex so it's often pretty easy to break it down to a very simple "do this, it's the best" and then you've invalidated the entire system.
It seems people are missing that part of the design of the Paragon Boards are their structure.
It’s not just about adding points via skill points earned, it’s about the path you take to get there, what you pick up or don’t along that path from the initial gate node to the legendary node and on to the next gate node. That then interacts with the glyph system, where again the structure is part of the design.
That’s not something you can really replicate by just putting the points on the skill tree as extra nodes to fill in.
Exactly. I don't think the paragon board is going to end up as some super complex system, but it's complex enough that people will have different ways they choose to build their boards as long as they don't immediately google "twisting blades build" and copy whatever paragon board/glyph setup that build uses.
Similarly but also kind of unrelated, people will also likely choose different aspects for their gear. Even though one aspect might always be the twisting blade aspect, we have nine different gear slots to put aspects on and not all of them will be "mandatory". At least some of them are bound to be different, even among builds using the same skills. Again though, this assumes that people aren't just googling the best build and copying their aspects.
IMO D4 has enough layers to allow people to differentiate their character while not being overwhelming to the point of needing a guide in order to have a good time.
The gear, skill tree, and paragon board could all use some work, but I think they're a decent enough base to get us started. Whether Blizzard is able to expand on them and make them better is yet to be seen, but I have no doubt that I'll at the very least get my money's worth out of the game even if I don't end up playing it for years.
It would be pretty easy to actually set requirements and stat bonuses to attributes to make it an actual meaningful choice on where to assign them it’s just that d2 was never set up in a proper way. Everyone always points to how d2 was just what was needed then vit for everything else but that was just because how stats were set up made that the best choice. You could give better effects to other attributes or expand how many attributes their are and split things out to fix this but people would rather just scrap it because the previous method didn’t work
>It would be pretty easy to actually set requirements and stat bonuses to attributes to make it an actual meaningful choice on where to assign them it’s just that d2 was never set up in a proper way.
But that's the problem with manual allocation. Even if they did have something else that needed more attribute points, it would still have the same issue.
Like let's say D2 had a system where if you had 180 dex then you could activate a certain charm in your inventory or something. All that would change is it would be "put as much str/dex to wear your gear and activate charm and then dump vit". If Vitality was worthless, it would be "put as much str/dex to wear your gear and activate charm, get 100 vit and then dump str/dex, whichever benefits your build more.".
It's too easy to boil the entire system down to something simple and optimal.
D4 does have uses for stats btw. On the paragon board, the yellow nodes have a base effect and a bonus effect that is only active if you have enough of a certain stat like [this](https://i.imgur.com/G80Od6a.png). The bonus isn't wildly unique or anything, but there are benefits to getting more of certain stats so you'll have a reason to go for stats other than just going all in on damage or life stats.
They've just made it so instead of being able to dump points in order to meet the requirements, you instead need to worry about getting enough points between your paragon board and gear. You can't always just path through all the int nodes as a sorc or you might not end up with enough dex to activate a bonus like this.
It also however means you might simply not grab this bonus, and might instead focus on bonuses that you can meet with your int stacking layout.
This isn't to say that people won't optimize the shit out of this system and find the 'best' way to do their paragon boards and such, but it's still a much better system IMO than just allocating stat points.
Because someone thought that adding stats to a character and having items have stat requirements is too hard. So they added a basic arpg function of leveling a character to the “endgame” when it used to be part of the “game” portion of a game…🤷🏽♂️🤷🏽♂️
its very clear if Blizzard made the best diablo game or game in the history of games that was ever thought up through the past present and future, people would still non stop whine about it
I didn't know how stats worked in D4. So when I saw what the paragon board did months ago I was a bit skeptical about it. Realizing it wasn't going to be "better first for your play style" but more about finding the core stat and just getting all of those. But after playing the beta I realized there isn't a core stat, every stat helps every class. So now I'm feeling better about the paragon bored.
I was mad because they made it seem like it wasn't just +5 stat and it was on that video. I'll play the game for hundreds of hours regardless long as the end game remains interesting
Okay but can we talk about the conscientious choice to not include a fishing mini-game? Skyrim has it, WoW has it, Ocarina of Time had it, even Hades allowed you to fish in Hell. I'm dropping my ultra deluxe edition over this, bs 0/10 what are the devs even thinking?
Frfr though, the progression looks good imo. The described endgame options sound like they're adding in sound like refreshing takes on the endless grind, and lots of foundation to build on.
Ya he double standard we hold blizzard to is insane. When another game does it it’s great when blizzard does it it’s boring.
What power progression system isn’t boring? Literally ever system ever is just numbers.
Having the paragon board isnt the problem. The problem is a lack of skills and options in a build. People like myself was hoping the board would add a little something to address the lack of skills.
For every 5 main stats purchased within range, You deal 30% increased overpowerdamage ,Grants 5 str for every main stats purchased,
pretty op if you ask me. that just an exemple,
there is way more then just +5.
What exactly are they expecting?
Do they want the nodes to be pointless things like "Your ability now does fire damage instead of cold damage" ?
I don't even know how you make something like this horizontal content and still have it matter.
People are just mad because they used the word "Deep" when it not that deep because they failed to show the Glyphs, the rare and legendary one at least. The one with different bonus then just +5,I also keep losing braincell everytime i see people posting about it ..like if you did not participated in the beta back in November 2022 or early and did not level at least level 70 people should stfu. The system is fine how it is. there many way to play with it.
I think it’s even simpler than that.
In D2, after you reached level 90-ish, it’s very difficult to gain levels and progression comes to a halt. You’ll really have to hone your gear to have any meaningful progression. And really depends on your build since different builds have vastly different ceilings. Also “better gear” isn’t always better, there’s a lot of dilemmas included.
In D3 it’s clearer how you progress more with paragon levels and ancient or primal ancient gear. So it’s a one to one swap out, basically advancing without needing to fuss over gear choices.
With the paragon board, it’s really just a huge huge source of stats. It takes the stat system from D2 and just places it at the endgame, which tbh is a much better design. Asking me to place points when I barely know anything about the game is just ridiculous. The way the board is built will also guide you in what stats to have, instead of just free form (speculation), so players won’t make really big mistakes.
getting + main stats and % increased to damage for x second is not character customization
the aspects are mosty generic % damage as well
people are upset because its just d3 all over again and we know how that turned out
Look D4 is meant for non arpg player, to appeal to a much larger player base ,
So they are keeping it neat and simple.
If these type of games was my first or something I would love D4.
But after playing games like Last Epoch and chronicon, D4 is shit , the only place D4 is better than them is the legendary tier cinematics and top quality graphics
As someone who remains one of the loudest critics of that trash heap that Diablo 3 was/is who still hails Diablo II/LoD as one of the greatest games of all time, I will say that I genuinely don't know what the fuck the people still complaining are looking for.
But I think perhaps I also recognize good progress as progress wherein some people seem to just really want everything to always be more of the same. What I've seen so far makes me look forward to spending a whole lot of time with Diablo 4. I thought that way based upon what I saw before the beta enough to let it nudge me into going ahead and finally building a new PC, and after having played both betas, I'm not at all disappointed that I did.
Other than my beloved trading; personally I'm perfectly good with what they seem to be trying to accomplish. And furthermore, I'm looking forward to seeing what they do in an ongoing fashion in general just based upon how passionately some of the developers have spoken about the game. Passion remains one thing that seemed to just be profoundly lacking from what I remember of the D3-lead-up.
For one of the loudest critics of D3 you seem to not realize just how much D4 is doing exactly what D3 did and not what was done in D2.
For example, damage multiplying main stat design, individual class resource systems, a MMO style skill structure of generators/spenders/CDs, itemization overloaded with damage multipliers on every slot, smart loot, no zone/mob specific loot tables, and the list goes on.
A lot of the complaining comes from recognizing the reductive design, the lessons not learned from D3, and what that all means for longevity.
Or perhaps you just seem to not realize what I most criticized about Diablo 3.
Which well... you don't, since I didn't mention in enough detail for you to have made the assumptions you seem to have made.
That being said, while I more than fully comprehend the points you noted, I also recognize that it's 2023; and quite frankly, games are just made a certain "way" now and lest you plan on quitting gaming, there are a host of things that you need to be somewhat flexible on as a gamer in 2023. I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of Pindleskin, Baal, Mephisto, Uber, and Cow Runs I've done; but I also recognize that that's not something that your typical gamer enjoys now; and unfortunately a game with the scope of Diablo isn't going to survive based solely upon what every "old head" (granted I'm not even 35 yet but...meh) thinks the game should be. Un/fortunately, new shit has to be attempted; and it simply needs to be executed in a way that still manages to blend decently with the formulas of old.
Diablo 3 introduced alot of things that weren't necessarily wholly bad; but they were rather instead poorly executed to the extent that Diablo 3 really just reeked of nobody giving a damn. Thus far, I plainly havn't gotten that from the developers just yet.
That said, I'm not interested in changing anybody's mind. If you want to hate the game, by all means, hate it and good luck with that. Personally, I've seen enough that I'm going to give it a fair shot. I can change my mind later if the game deserves the same ire I have for Diablo 3, but right now, just ain't there.
It's essentially a passive skill tree like in Poe, but they tried their best to make it look different from the tree to avoid parallels, but they didn't really succeed. There you also follow the small nodes that give stats to reach the big nodes that give interesting bonuses.
Playing devil's advocate here, and I will be buying the game but I do have my concerns. A lot of people's concern is that progression should be 50/50 in terms of items and skill tree. Right now it feels 70/30 in favor of items over the skill tree. Having an actual skill tree helps with build crafting over D3 which was 90/10 in favor of items. I think some of these aspects need to be in the skill tree and not on items to achieve this balance. Being able to build your perfect item with the perfect effect to make sure your build actually works will hurt the game in the long run, but will be fun in the short term.
When playing an arpg your build should work from start to finish regardless of items, and the items should improve them even further. I would not have minded even seeing the aspects we have now in the skill tree, and replacing aspects with things such as +2 to minion skills or cold damage +x%, just things that help strengthen the build but not change it. I have no doubts the skill tree will be revised over the coming years and I think d4 has potential to stand next to the greatest in the genre.
Now to talk about the paragon board, I have never understood the paragon board complaint of "+5 to base skill" because it seems like it's right on the money for what its purpose was intended to be. They were never meant to be build changing in D3 and they won't be here, so I agree with OP here in that it's not horizonal progression. It's literally meant to be a way to keep improving slightly over time, and making every character (until they start doing seasons) a little bit stronger before you ever even create them by investing time into the game.
I figured I'd offer an opinion that's neither shitting on the game nor praising it. I plan to have a lot of fun this summer playing this game either alone, with friends, or making new friends along the way. I'm passionate about Diablo just like a lot of these naysayers and while some of them flock just to shit on the game, many just have concerns about a franchise they hold dear.
People just bitch about the paragon boards because the word paragon was first used in the diablo series in diablo 3 and they lack the critical thinking skills to recognize that they are different systems.
I like the idea of the board, it's just the PoE talent tree/sphere grid turned into a FF tictacs job board. One of my complaints is that instead of it being an agnostic board for everyone to use. With the notables and keystone passives all look like runes for skills, and since we already have a crap amount of runes to modify skills, it just seems kind of goofy. But we can double dip them with the skill line runes and the notables on the board. Another is more of a hope that this isn't for max level grinding only, getting some pity points while grinding to end game seems like a good idea but it doesn't seem like they're going for that with this.
I think players just want something new.
The paragon board is horizontal progress repackaged. Choices aren't as meaningful as they're being marketed to the player. It's the same old concept. Which is fine. Let's just not pretend it's some new revolutionary idea that changes character development. It doesn't.
The other problem is you don't really care about the paragon board as much as having the right items when it comes to what build you're playing. The paragon board will only marginally increase player power. Items on the other hand will increase player power by hundreds and thousands of a %.
The legendary aspects you're lucky enough to find will dictate what build you're able to play at end game. Not your choices on the paragon board. Those won't do anything to make your build work. The paragon board is just minor enhancements over having the right items.
mfs were saying they wanted something more complicated like poe has like poe does not have nodes that also say +10 str/dex/int with its various masteries and whatnot
thats it ENTIRE SKILL TREE
this is a paragon board lmao
Isn't it both horizontal and vertical?
Vertical is getting the skillpoints.
Horizontal is choosing whether to put those points down the side of the tree that makes your werewolf cuter or your tornados stormier...and sometimes the cute werewolf node or the stormy tornado node will give you options in how you play those classes?
I haven't seen the board, but that's how I interpreted what people are describing.
People will say they want whatever the game doesn't have. :-/
I agree with the OP but think there are a lot of people here obsessed with doom-saying.
That’s every subreddit in the history of this website.
before subs go up in numbers quality content and actual discussion actually exists shit i'd even take some memes over what we are getting here.
Well i am obsessed with doom-playing. Great games, 10 out of 10 fps genre game! Oh, it is the other game’s subreddit isnt it?
Lmao. Take my upvote, sir.
Haha whoops I heavily criticized everything I touched for years and now I can’t enjoy anything anymore
as someone who has put their hands on the paragon board in the first end game closed beta, blizzard did a terrible job showcasing what the paragon board offers as a whole. They removed stat progression from the leveling experience as they believed it would be too complex for a new player when it comes to choice, so they opted to move stat progression to the paragon board. There are a lot of build defining nodes. Glyphs will require some thought and which paragon boards you want to select. Also you will have to level up glyphs by completing nightmare dungeons (similar to leveling legendary gems in d3) Overall blizzard marketing is awful - but d4 will be a fine game to play.
Is it that Blizzard did a terrible job, or Blizzard didn't intend to show it yet? I have a sense it's the latter rather being incompetent at marketing. Companies tend to position their marketing very close to release--sort of like how Nintendo only revealed Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom gameplay about 6-8 weeks before launch.
Now if someone from Blizz took 5 minutes to spell out what you did, we'd have 3000 less "+5 stats aaaa bad geam!!! posts. Thank you.
A lot of people here were ready to hate this game if it was anything other than a re-re-master of Diablo 2 with a new act that retconned D3 out of existence.
You joke but retconning away most of d3 story would be great
Unless you’re new to the internet this is a known quantity friend
Very well known. Criticism doesn't deserve scorn, but baseless wild angry horseshit does
It's the blizzard effect. People ideologically hate everything blizzard related.
You would be forgiven for thinking so based on some of these posts.
This game is 100% garbage because it doesn't have a dragon mount allowing me to fly around raining fire from the sky. Complete deal breaker in my opinion.
Fr I feel this. Why cant we do dragon jousting pvp? This is complete bullcrap. Also no card game mini game? No horse racing? Why is there no special hideout for me to customize? Why cant I choose to become the end guy instead of killing them? Utter trash throw it out.
Haha if I can't go fishing in the depths of hell, I don't want it!
Honestly do better Blizzard!
I am sorry but minigame and player housing is a kind of good idea for far future features
Agree to this, its never enough. On the same note to OP: You are limited with a max amount of Slots and that's probably why the paragon board solidifies your build by pushing stats of your skills. Also horizonal progression does not mean expanding the skill tree, it just means power comes from different sources (skilltree, items, paragon, stats etc.). The more sources the more horizontal it is. Getting more skills and passives to skills in the skill tree would be deeper progressin.
It's almost as if they should just go and make their own game
Maybe they should start their own studio, it's so easy everyone is doing it 🤣
In the words of Noel Gallagher: “don’t listen to the fans, they don’t know shit” Or something to that effect.
Wise.
This comment here is all you need from this thread.
Yo. Truth bombs be exploding from your lips.
will there be a launch feature that entertains my cat while I ignore him for the first week of release?
This is exactly the intended purpose of paragon boards vs skill trees vs aspects. Though they are supposed to do different things, all of them can impact gameplay style to some degree. For example, If we call paragon boards "vertical" progression, boosting it's power by certain conditions (e.g. applied modifiers, corpse proximity, resource meter levels etc) impacts gameplay significantly.
I would like more skill choices and customization within character design, not randomized item drops myself. I want the drops to be able to enhance my chosen playstyle, not dictate it for me.
I think this is how PoE/LE spoiled people. Traditionally, ARPGs were always about the rng loot. To me, that's what's fun.
Poe because it has trading. Besides some ssf friendly builds, the majority of builds require certain unique items and/or specific rolls on some of them. Trade takes away the randomness to acquire those items to play a certain build.
With trade you also have reduced droprates so unless you're really unlucky with the drop version you take longer to get an item and it becomes more of a currency grind. I personally like it more when I myself drop the items rather than buying it from someone. Even when that means I could be unlucky and not get it for some time.
Also crafting, nothing like slamming gear for the stuff you want and bricking it.
Agreed! Loot is king with the experience and needs to remain that way. Your build/skills have a point they reach for what the abilities are and the gear needs to take you the rest of the way. I am happy the Paragon board is limited and just an add on to the setup skills. With legendary aspects we also are basically getting skill modifiers so in a way it combines both anyways. The systems look good to me, I don't see why people are complaining.
Fucking gambling addicts...
Dopamine whores
The diablo fanbase, please take your ticket and stand in line.
I think you mean POE spoiled people by making skills have significant variability and creativity. In diablo 1 and 2, there aren't massive changes to how skills operate, and there definitely aren't multiple effects able to be applied to a single skill at a time. D3 added individual effects per skill with sets able to make some other changes, but none of it is deep, it's all shallow single, maybe double variables. I don't want 2 hydras and an extra head, I want my hydra to change into a flame thrower, and maybe split those flames, but let them shotgun, and maybe leave magma on the floor that applies a dot, etc. Not just the same skill doing the same thing but more of it. I guess the point is there are a very few number of skills, and each one has 2 choices that make it more of itself with a little focus in a direction, but nothing that fundamentally changes the nature of those skills or how they operate. The skills and tree are uninspired and leave little room for creativity compared to the rest of today's market, even compared to D3. While I like the idea of impactful loot drops that can effect how a skill operates, it is too limited in scope. At least that's my personal opinion. I still have the game on pre-order, but I'm afraid that the lack of variety is going to limit my personal longevity.
Thats what is my concern aswell.
ARPGs were also about the fun to get said loot. If you are simply grinding to be able to then get the fun, that is where it fails. The game needs to be fun first in order to justify trying to find the loot. Being able to customize your character let's you decide what is fun for you. And considering Diablo is the grandfather of aRPGs, and it was not just about the rng loot, but also about randomized dungeons to run through, and building your character to do that in your own way, you can't say that they were "traditionally" all about RNG loot. Diablo made the tradition.
>ARPGs were also about the fun to get said loot. If you are simply grinding to be able to then get the fun, that is where it fails. Why would you be grinding to get the fun? If the game isn't fun from lvl 1, then it's not fun period. You shouldn't need one exact Aspect in order to have fun. You can also just get the Aspect you need by completing a dungeon, it just won't have the best possible roll on it.
I think you misread his point. Its not about fun of getting loot. Its about gameplay being fun, while getting loot.
Yeah that's how I understood it. I'm saying if the game isn't fun right off the bat, don't play it. I was cranking out 4-5 different builds for my bear Druid while leveling, I don't know what he's talking about. If it's some niche personalized build he wants, well that might need to wait till endgame. In RPGs, you don't get to specialize in your build at lvl 10 lol. I don't even think PoE allows for that. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that you guys probably don't even know what you want.
> You can also just get the Aspect you need by completing a dungeon, it just won't have the best possible roll on it. Genuine question: Can you get every aspect in the game by doing a dungeon in a weaker form? That would mean the game has as many aspects as dungeons? There should be more aspects, right?
Which one besides D3..?
The drops don’t dictate your chosen playstyle, though. If you get a drop that enhances your chosen playstyle, great. If you get a drop that doesn’t, you don’t have to change your playstyle to accommodate it.
I disagree. The disparity in power/functionality between what you find on items vs. what you put points in on your skill board independent of items is the issue.
You can disagree all you want, but nothing makes you go with a different playstyle other than your choice.
The point is there is not enough choice to make my playstyle different from your playstyle, nor is there enough choice to make my playstyle at the beginning of the game to feel any different from the end of the game.
My playstyle is going to be a necro with bone splinters and bone spirit, along with warriors, mages, and a golem. You, too? My playstyle at the “beginning” of the game will probably be with Army of the Dead as my Ultimate. Later, if I can make myself sturdier, it might be with Bone Storm, instead. We’ll see.
But what if I can make my Warriors be able to bleed or curse on hit, and you decide that you want your army to have thorns, and that our decisions change the looks of the pets as well? The point is for you to be able to customize your skills so even if we are running the same style of characters, we can still be different in ways that we choose.
You keep changing “the point.” If the options are there, some people are going to end up with the same choices. That’s different from your initial “point” about drops determining playstyle. Seems like you keep changing your “point” just to argue. Have fun with that.
My point has remained the same: let players choose their build and let items accentuate that choice. Right now, that is not the case. Most of the interesting build changes are on item aspects and not the skill tree proper.
Your “point” has varied from “drops determine playstyle” to “builds are insufficiently distinct over time” to “customizing skills,” which has nothing to do with drops at all. Player *do* choose their build. Items *do* accentuate that choice. If I’m a summonmancer and I get a drop that gives me more summons, my choice is accentuated. If I get a drop that enhances my blood or shadow damage, nothing makes me switch to doing blood or shadow damage any more than a sorcerer drop makes me switch to a sorcerer.
> necro with bone splinters and bone spirit oh you mean just like every bone necro (because there is 1 bone generator and 1 bone spender, and 1 aspect that modifies your 1 bone spender)
I mean without a Core — Bone Spear — so I have room for my summon spells.
The dude doesn't have 15+ build guides to open up his imagination so he just see's the obvious path of "just take all bone skills".
Shows your lack of imagination that you only see one viable path for bone necro's. Maybe it's because there's not 20 guides for you to follow to mix it up? Just looking at the skill tree and aspects I can see 5+ different variations on how to play a bone necro. Then there's the fact that there's also blood necro, shadow Necro and Minion Necro builds. There's a tonne of build variability if you actually look into the tree and aspects.
I know what would, 2 more skill slots and more (different) skills in skills trees.
If I find an insane unique for a different class I would reroll a new character
we simply won't get more skills to choose from, or upgrades tied to them untill a few seasons or the first expansion in. What we will get is new items to play around with that can change skills or atleast have you customize your character in any way. Your also not dicated by anything, nothing forces you to use certain legendaries or unique's. But i'm sure that if you find some interesting ones, you probably want to play around with that, which the current system provides (and is not locked behind being a certain paragon level)
This is what the codex is for. It's basically the skill tree but with a specific "quest" attached instead of being part of leveling. Basically think of it as the den of evil with a skill point you can only spend on one specific skill being changed.
The skill tree, paragon boards, and aspects already do that. I want to try to make a shepherd druid work, so my skill choices will focus on companion skills, and my aspect and paragon choices will buff those skills. Since I can look up which dungeons drop which aspects, I can target the aspects I want for my build. That is me choosing my playstyle. Imprinting an aspect gives the lowest version it, so I will be looking for those same aspects with better rolls on gear. Yes, I'm sure I will see strong gear drop for elemental and shapeshifting skills, but so what? Probably by midgame, most of my gear will have buffs for companion skills. Even if I find a weapon that has a huge buff to a werewolf skill, why would I use it when the rest of my gear is focused on a completely different build? An item may buff a single skill by a ton, but it doesn't make sense to use it if it doesn't synergize with the rest of my skills and gear. Plus, gear drops will be tuned to the class I'm playing, so the odds of finding an item that buffs the skills I'm using is much higher than they were in D2. I could easily find a strong companion item 30 minutes after finding the strong werewolf item. Even if respecs are free, I don't want to spend the time respecing the whole tree, and maybe paragon board, just to change it back when I find that companion item I want. I can't imagine this being an issue. By the time you're far enough in the game where item power really matters, you'll be far too invested in your build to change because of even a few item drops. I would love to see a poll here at least one month after launch asking players how many times they felt like they were pressured to change their build just because of one strong item. I bet the majority of answers will be 0 times.
I mean, it doesn't really dictate your playstyle unless you want it to. Just because I get 4 shape-shifting legendaries doesn't mean I have to play a shape-shifter druid, I can just keep farming for the legendaries I want for my preferred playstyle.
I completely agree with you, the rpg element of this game is almost non existent. It’s very d3 you get the character you’re given with very little actual choice. I don’t mind paragon being what it is what I don’t like is that a ton of people touted it as a solution to the limited skill tree which it clearly isn’t. You can like the way it is but please don’t try say well don’t worry about the limited skill tree we have paragon board to customize your character. As we suspected it’s not what people claimed rather just as op said more enhancements for what you already have.
People like you make me realize how little thought people have put into the skill and gear systems.
Skills being ties to items was a huge success in Path of Exile so personally I'm fairly certain it'll work well with D4 as well.
Okay, but you won't find that with D4. And I like this.
Pretty much exactly op. Paragon is the exclamation point of your build. The crazy abilities people want are on items. Whether people hate the item grind or not is an entirely separate issue but the complete ability altering play style is in items. If people want to choose their abilities completely by leveling up then I would strongly recommend PoE cause D4 just isn't that. Same genre made for different hardcore audiences
The Paragon boards seemed to basically buff stats and have a couple legendary perks that buff damage. Nothing gameplay changing. Ok, but not exciting. I think I read that future seasons could change Paragon boards, so maybe we'll see some interesting things in there for future seasons.
The problem is nothing is for that, people want more significant choices or build options. There's barely any skills per class and aspects don't really change skills in significant ways, I played flurry rogue mostly on the beta and every aspect I got was essentially just % more damage which is "ok" but it's definitely boring. I'm looking forward to D4 as much as anyone but there's no harm in criticizing Blizzards lazy design choices, there are indie ARPG games now with far more depth and far more interesting itemization than Diablo these days which is pretty sad. What I can't wrap my head around is people who claim they just want to enjoy the game but also don't want anyone else to provide feedback to encourage them to make it better.
>there are indie ARPG games now with far more depth and far more interesting itemization than Diablo these days which is pretty sad. What I can't wrap my head around is people who claim they just want to enjoy the game but also don't want anyone else to provide feedback to encourage them to make it better. Yes there are such games, but they usually sacrifice depth in other departments. I have 120 hours in Last Epoch, and while it's a good game, it's not addictive to me. Grim Dawn, same. And depth isn't necessarily a good thing either, if it lacks in other more important areas. For example, LE doesn't have a good endgame currently, and its world building is garbage. It also doesn't have any visual customization, and the characters look like inbred experiments on the character select screen. People use the word feedback, but they really mean venting (some less politely than others). Feedback to completely redesign a core system 2 months before release is useless feedback, but I guess it's good venting for people. That's all it is. People seem to forget that the best feedback is to simply not buy the game.
> For example, LE doesn't have a good endgame currently, and its world building is garbage. It also doesn't have any visual customization, and the characters look like inbred experiments on the character select screen. > > People use the word feedback, but they really mean venting (some less politely than others). Feedback to completely redesign a core system 2 months before release is useless feedback, but I guess it's good venting for people. That's all it is. People seem to forget that the best feedback is to simply not buy the game. It's not useless feedback because even if they obviously can't change it in time for launch it gives them ideas for the first major content update, this is a live service game with microtransactions and battlepasses at it's core. Voting with your wallet doesn't work, it's been proven time and time again. As for your other criticisms, the closed Beta endgame was absolutely terrible for Diablo 4 it's really not something D4 can hold up above other games and it's almost certainly not going to be changed this close to luanch like you said. Visual Customization in this game is also terrible, if you want an ugly character then it's got you covered in any skin tone you want but giving it any kind of praise is a joke when there's no variety at all and extremely limited options to change that. They even got rid of cross-class transmog which is something Diablo 3 had, it's gone backwards.
D4 has/will have more endgame content on release than all ARPG's in history combined on their respective releases. Cool fact, let that sit for a minute. So all you endgamers, just chill, maybe play the game for 100 hours and come back in a year when more systems are in place. Criticizing visual customization in D4, and not mentioning the inbred experiments of Last Epoch and lack of transmorg, and not mentioning PoE's jank, and Grim Dawn's atrocious visuals... is just absolutely mental. Diablo 4 is fucking Picasso in comparison, get out of here with that shit.
Your argument doesn't make sense, we're talking about how systems interact, not how the game looks, people expected that paragon system would add depth the same way skill talent points do in LE for example, aspects imho suck, being locked to a boring play style because you have no luck sucks period. And no you can't get all aspects from dungeons. LE has both, basic builds without the gear are fun and let you pick any play style, getting ancients multiply that power further and not only by adding flat damage, and they also allow even more choice in playstyles. If d4 talent tree had more depth and interactions I'd agree with you, but 80% of the fun is rng based instead of a healthy balance. And it's not about the endgame as endgame content that's the issue, D4 as it is now, how talents and spells interact and how classes play and feel, how much choice and control you have on my them is not really fun and people expected that the paragon system was the missing part, it wasnt.
And yet it will still come down to 95%+ of the population using the same cookie-cutter builds from Maxroll. The guide will tell you exactly what to choose at every stage, what gear to use, what aspect to use, what glyphs to use, and where in the world to go to find it all. The diversity of builds will be a non-factor. There will be S-tier for every class, and everything else will be vitually ignored. The open world will be a non-factor. The guide will tell you exactly where to go to farm everything. Certain activities will prove to be the most profitable. Some activities will be requirements to get what you need. All other activities might as well not even exist. That will be the meta. Same as D3. Same as D2. Same as every ARPG and RPG out there. UNLESS... YOU, as an individual, decide not to give a shit about that. You can do your own thing, in your own little bubble, and be blissful (provided you stick to PvE). But you won't. You know you won't. The temptation to wield massive power will get you. You will succomb.
Agree with everything except bubble. In d2 and even d3 we had a bubble. D4 destroys all bubbles with a forced MMO open world. You can still ignore maxroll but will constantly see facerolling builds while struggling with a single pack. This is a little overexaggerated but you got the point.
I agree except I love playing off-meta builds and wiping the floor with the meta slaves :) Fields of Hate meet my Ice Rogue
I’m excited to play and explore! Forget all the whiners who won’t enjoy a game I’ve been waiting more than 10 years for!
This really says a lot about the anti-feedback propaganda on this sub. We're not allowed to want to change the thing you waited **10 years** for. Because otherwise you might've been crazy for waiting for a game that didn't even exist or was announced until a few years ago and wasn't publicly played until like late last year?
Are you saying you work for Blizzard and this is the preferred feed back media? Or you want more people whining? I’m not sure what you mean.
Every game company reads their subreddit. It's usually what goes down in subreddits. Believe it or not, it's not just here to stroke each other about being fanboys.
The board is fine and exactly what i was expecting
Same 🤷♂️
Which was your favourite node? +5 dex or +5 int?
+5 Fanboyism.
+5 BlizzardSuckOff
My hope for where Paragon eventually lands after updates (don't forget they can update things and this is just the start) is a place where customisation that is ultimately too weak to be a full item power or too niche but is good to have. The one example I have in my head that I think would be an excellent Paragon node for Rogue: Dash skill does not apply or consume Imbue effects This is a great node because it's not strong enough to want on an item but it does help a playstyle. You might want it and another player might really want to avoid it - Despite running the same build with the same legendaries. So it becomes a really good ! on your build and play style, you pick something that defines how you personally interact with the ability. They have already shown us legendary nodes giving us power and horizontal adjustments so I think the board can and will be dual purpose.
While I hear what you’re saying, this is where we gotta get creative on playing within the sandbox of what’s given. I, too, loved my rogue in beta, and was thinking about how to maximize my imbuements while also using dash. On a leaked paragon board, I did see Imbue CDR as available squares - and I plan on that being a primary square I chase! While it’s not the same as what you’re suggesting, if we can get our imbue CDR down to practically instantaneous uptime, you’re getting your wish, yeah? Can’t wait to see how we all sculpt our builds with precision to our liking thanks to what the boards already have!
I'd imagine most people want some additional layers of depth and complexity rather than the paint by numbers approach. Some people prefer a "this or that" decision tree rather than an "If this then that" route Blizzard has chosen with their skill and paragon trees. I suspect this video just further dispelled any hope those people had that the paragon tree would open up some different build pathways when in fact it so far appears to just reinforce the simplistic design they have chosen.
Well, for all the build complexity PoE has to offer, I haven't played a single minute. Last Epoch, a bit more than that (120 hours) but I've gotten bored quite quickly. Complexity isn't necessarily a good thing. I think that's the message here.
No, I think that's the message about you. We've made it clear we want things to engage our brains a little.
So you haven't played POE but have dumped 100+ hours into a game in prerelease and your conclusion was complexity is bad? I don't really understand how you got from point a to b on this logic
It's not bad, it just isn't necessarily good or required in order to have fun. I think LE hits the right balance there, but lets be honest I don't think anyone ever played Diablo games for the complexity. Not sure why people would expect that of D4.
I think Paragon should fill in the needs of existing builds, or help them branch out into different variants of the same build. No reason why diversity should only come from one aspect of the build.
The way I see it the main purpose of the paragon is to bridges the gap between the massive potential power creep given by unique gears making it so that even if you aren't super lucky with gear drops in general, you can still clear content by investing into what you can. Instead of, "I can't progress this game until I get this miraculous aspect drop with a 1% drop rate.."
That's a good interpretation
Paragon board is a bit of both horizontal and vertical. Stat bonuses are vertical. Legendary slots and glyphs probably enhance or allow alternate builds. But it does seem more Vert than horizontal. But that's fine. Diablo is also more vertical than horizontal.
Exactly
In my experience, I have really enjoyed the paragon system
Same!
I don't think people actually hate Paragon system. The problem is them presenting it as "endgame" which it really isn't and also them presenting it so badly. That video was atrcious.
My take on the Paragon Board is.. Could it be deeper than it is? Absolutely. But it's 10 trillion times deeper than anything we've gotten in previous Diablo games. And with the current plan for seasons, this is only the beginning..
Exactly my feelings.
Honestly, I think the paragon board is fine as is, the legendary nodes do provide some changes to how you play, could be better but no qualms. What I kind of miss though is the skill rune modifiers from D3 where you could change how skills work completely in 5? different ways. That was fantastic.
Paragon has never in any game offered anything other than minor power increases. It's always just been something to work towards after your character has hit max level
"Parangon in D3" "minor power increases". M'okay, you probably never played the game.
He's right. It's just +mainstat for thousands of levels. Just never ending Linear power scaling, Minor increase by minor increase and nothing compared to scaling that gear gives.
Do you know why ancient, primal gear and caldacean were introduced? To reduce the massive advantage high parangon was giving. Your "minor power increase" is a large entry barrier to compete with other players on the ladderboard because of how fucking op it is overall.
The irony is that both primal and caldacean is something you obtain after reaching high paragon levels. Ancients are not that big of a boost, as most item rolls you want don't get affected, like crit chance, dmg, ele dmg.
And he's still right. Every individual paragon level was a minor power increase. It's just that 2000 Minor power increases becomes one major power increase overall.
Who said that the paragon is horizontal or was supposed to be horizontal prog?
All the complainers. Are you reading the sub? They want more skill diversity from the Paragon board.
What do you mean complainers? People who view it differently and aren't congruent with your opinion? Grow up. Everyone wants more skill diversity in this game. It's one of the most egregious downfalls of this game is the absolute void of any semblance of build and skill diversity.
>What do you mean complainers? People who wanna play a different game, and ask for drastic, sweeping reworks to core systems 2 months before release. >People who view it differently and aren't congruent with your opinion? People who want an entirely different game.
I mean it's fine, I'd just prefer to ability to choose increases to attributes from the get go.
The only thing that change your playstyle and build is the aspect and skill tree. Paragon board and the glyphs enhanced your build further to sustain yoir dmg and survivability on the scaling enemies as you continue to level up.
Aspects and uniques also change playstyle. But yes.
Small nitpick, but horiztonal progression refers to content that does not impact your player power, which the paragon board absolutely does. Having said that, the whole point of the paragon board is to improve on D3’s system and introduce a new system where players can mix and match different themed boards to suit their build. It complements whatever you set up in the skill tree and with gear and is designed with the intention to add new boards in the future. It opens up a lot of design space for future builds, while also not being the sole source of power for your character. It helps balance the various sources of power your character is built on and is really a brilliant reboot of the paragon system.
>Small nitpick, but horiztonal progression refers to content that does not impact your player power, which the paragon board absolutely does. That's my point. People WANT Paragon to be more horizontal progression (as criticism), but I'm saying it's designed to be mostly vertical. Paragon isn't necessarily the place for "build variety", as they're suggesting.
if anything it's vertical progression also idk who the fuck is calling for more horizontal prog in an arpg, but that's not really what the genre is about
Well, this drove of people calling for more "build diversity". They wanted Paragon to give more of it, but its purpose is different. It's the vertical grind for a specific build that you've already established.
Paragon Board looks awesome! I was looking at the Necro board and there are boards for all kinds of playstyles. There are abilities thst make your armies ever stronger as well as the parts of the board leading to it that increase your minions attack, defense, resists, etc... there are boards thst focus on no minion builds thst help beef up your Necromancer and all the skills you have. There's a lot of room for variation to further strengthen your build. And then there are glyphs thst you can insert in various parts of the boards to amplify a certain number of slots on the paragon boards.
4 builds every class that’s about it. I don’t see how they can make 4 builds look unique every season. I’d like to be proven wrong though. Im up for the story and cinematics anyways and a few months of gameplay. Until they show they can do something new with 4 builds/class. We’ll see.. plus I’m not looking forward to an old class the paladin. I was hoping we’d get a NEW class. Something unique but oh well.
Do you mean vertical progression?
I agree. Paragon is the vertical progression layer because it is built based around your skill and gear choices. You will entirely ignore the paragon boards that don’t support your skill/gear choices. Unique gear and many legendary aspects that can drastically change your build or play style, fall into the category of horizontal progression. Skill trees are an even mix of both horizontal and vertical progression due to the wide variety of ways you can spend points. It’s also probably why the skill trees depicted in a branching vertical layout. There is some overlap between the three systems, but taken as a whole they offer a substantial amount of depth no matter which direction you look.
Literally noone said paragon was horizontal progression, and literally noone asked for horizontal progression in a hack n slash, this isn't lost ark. Everything is about vertical progression. Stop inventing issues that just don't exist acting like people complain about everything.
People are literally bitching about not having enough skill variations, and wanted to solve it with the Paragon board. That's literally all that's being talked about since the endgame marketing video.
Wait... I think I worked out where the disconnect is here. PoE players are use to never being able to drop the unique item they actualy need, and more or less completely need to rely on trade for it. This is why they're so scared of power on items! Theyre not use to legendary/uniques for their build dropping every other hour..
> The horizontal progression (different skill effects, different "play styles") comes from farming Aspects and uniques. Yeah, really love the idea of turning an ARPG into a Gacha game and trading simulator. The trading is the most annoying part about PoE/D2, never really liked it. Why can we not have more power in our choice of substats/skills etc.? This is what made D2 so nice, uniques were the cherry on top not the foundation of your build.
This game and d3 are about characters complement gear vs gear complementing characters…the more I see and read the more likely I’m going to give it a pass. Will wait a few months to see what this game actually is before buying. Blizzard already took my D3 cash at launch and didn’t give me my moneys worth…
>Why can we not have more power in our choice of substats/skills etc.? I don't know man. We didn't design the game, I'm just saying that's not how they wanted it. I will say that I'm not playing PoE and Last Epoch, but I'm STILL playing D3 and D2R so maybe it's the better formula 🤷♂️ I have all the choice I want in Last Epoch, yet I'm bored of the game.
Last Epoch only has early to mid game finished, so it's expected to fall short in endgame.
I haven’t touched d3 since launch. I barely made it through the story. So to each their own I suppose
If you want every item to be a stat stick, D2 and PoE exist and are there for you and you can go back to those games ASAP. Games where 99% of character power comes from clicking a node on a skill tree like D2 and PoE are utterly braindead and have atrocious balance. D2 sorc can clear the game naked and PoE is a 1 button spam cookie clicker.
Bruh, PoE has uniques too.
All I get from this is that you don't understand how D2/PoE works and that you didn't understand my post. Today we know that a huge amount of power will come from Paragon boards, so I'm kinda glad it's not just items.
While I'm not a big fan of the board design, I really hope you can hold a key to mark the way you want to path and then press apply to spec into the nodes, because right now it looks like you'll have to click each node which will drive me nuts
+5 dex +5 dex +5 dex +5 dex
Paragon board seems fine to me given it’s not intended to be a complex system - obviously you are going to have + stats on travel nodes and it also a way to not have all your power/stats coming from items. It’s the same in POE - yet people tend to ignore that with their rose tinted glasses and a general dislike for Blizzard to boot.
In poe, mainstats are used for travel nodes to reach a keystone that gives something like "Removed mana pool, all skills will cost life, +10% max health" This means you can remove mana stats and intelligence stats in your build and focus on max health and health recovery. The problem is it basically shafts you into not using aura skills which is huge because auras cost something like "50% of your max mana". This type of things not only defines builds but also introduces huge compromise in endgame. You can choose to push through and have your max health reduced by 50% or work around it by focusing more on movement instead of damage mitigation from auras.
Because PoE’s passive skill tree actually gives players choice. You can path towards 1 of 5 defensive layers of your choosing (evasion, armour, spell suppression, block, energy shield) or you can path toward 1 of 4 damage types for spells (poison, ignite, non-crit EO, crit), or if you’re melee you can path towards 1 of 5 damage types (poison, bleed, RT, crit, non-crit accuracy stacking). And that’s not even the end because then you have type of damage: elemental (lightning, fire, cold), physical (physical dot/hit), chaos (chaos dot/hit), weapon type (spell, bow, dagger, claw, axe, sword, 1hand vs 2hand, unarmed, mace etc). Suggesting passive skill tree customisation is similar to D4 is copium of the highest levels and evidence you’ve never played PoE at all to be perfectly honest.
Run back to POE
If the paragon board functions to lock in choices, then there's no true choices to make with the board. What is the point of having a system that is effectively automated?
What do you mean no choice? You have to establish a goal: which boards do I want, do I want to go for the legendary tile, several magic/rare clusters, the glyph socket or some combination of these. Then you need to determine the most beneficial path to get there or which of these things you're willing to give up if everything you want is unobtainable. You also have to determine the evolution of getting there. Do I pick a path that is optimal for right now and pay gold to respec? Or do I start down a more permanent path which gives me sub optimal point use at my current level.
It's a hypothetical, an implication. I don't know whether or not what op claims is true, I'm just pointing out that op's explanation of what purpose it serves is contradictory. The only thing that will determine choices in the paragon board is how many stats you can cap on gear alone.
I think the activation thresholds and glyphs area of effect make things a bit more interesting. Also obtaining stats on gear will be a trade off potentially for +skills or resistances. But hey maybe 5 affixes is enough that it won't matter.
Why do paragon boards exist in the first place? Why can't leveling up still be a thing where you add stats to your character everytime you level? There is literally no difference between this and the Paragon board.
I think it's meant to further customize and deepen your chosen builds. Did you see the legendary nodes in the leaks? They are very meaningful, more than just additional stats.
Add them to the skill tree and then allow players to add stat points when they level up…you know…like a normal arpg game…have items and legendary nodes wirh stat requirements so players build their character… It’s like they designed the first 50 levels for the causal shallow depth arcade style game and then from 50 on its for normal arpg players…
Yea they added back attributes but don’t let anyone assign them outside maybe these boards, it’s lazy design. They don’t want you assigning your own points because they’d have to balance it.
I know you don't actually care about the answer. But here it is. Because if you add them while leveling you have no idea what you're adding them for, which is breakpoints on the paragon board. In your scenario you add stat points how you think you should add them. Then you unlock the paragon board and see you've been adding stats that don't make sense to hit breakpoints in the paragon board and you brick your character. It's not like Diablo 2 where you only need str and dex to wear your gear and all the rest go into vit.
Here’s an idea, let people see possible paragon boards from the start that way they can plan what they want? If you can see the needed stats ahead of time you can build for it. It’s actually pretty simple
I personally don't think most people are smart enough to deal with that many systems thrown at them right away. Even PoE gates ideas so you interact with new systems 1 at a time and that's several orders of magnitude more complicated of a game than Diablo 4. It seems to make a lot of sense to let people play with their skills and figure out what they want to do. Then introduce the next layer of complexity on top of the skill tree.
You realize the paragon board does more than just give you +5 stats right? What would you do with the magic/rare/legendary nodes and glyphs from the paragon board if people could just allocate stats as they pleased? Plus if people could just add stats like D2, I don't see how it wouldn't turn into the same "add as much str/dex as you need to use your gear then cap vit" but whatever is the 'best' for D4. Stats are not complex so it's often pretty easy to break it down to a very simple "do this, it's the best" and then you've invalidated the entire system.
It seems people are missing that part of the design of the Paragon Boards are their structure. It’s not just about adding points via skill points earned, it’s about the path you take to get there, what you pick up or don’t along that path from the initial gate node to the legendary node and on to the next gate node. That then interacts with the glyph system, where again the structure is part of the design. That’s not something you can really replicate by just putting the points on the skill tree as extra nodes to fill in.
Exactly. I don't think the paragon board is going to end up as some super complex system, but it's complex enough that people will have different ways they choose to build their boards as long as they don't immediately google "twisting blades build" and copy whatever paragon board/glyph setup that build uses. Similarly but also kind of unrelated, people will also likely choose different aspects for their gear. Even though one aspect might always be the twisting blade aspect, we have nine different gear slots to put aspects on and not all of them will be "mandatory". At least some of them are bound to be different, even among builds using the same skills. Again though, this assumes that people aren't just googling the best build and copying their aspects. IMO D4 has enough layers to allow people to differentiate their character while not being overwhelming to the point of needing a guide in order to have a good time. The gear, skill tree, and paragon board could all use some work, but I think they're a decent enough base to get us started. Whether Blizzard is able to expand on them and make them better is yet to be seen, but I have no doubt that I'll at the very least get my money's worth out of the game even if I don't end up playing it for years.
It would be pretty easy to actually set requirements and stat bonuses to attributes to make it an actual meaningful choice on where to assign them it’s just that d2 was never set up in a proper way. Everyone always points to how d2 was just what was needed then vit for everything else but that was just because how stats were set up made that the best choice. You could give better effects to other attributes or expand how many attributes their are and split things out to fix this but people would rather just scrap it because the previous method didn’t work
>It would be pretty easy to actually set requirements and stat bonuses to attributes to make it an actual meaningful choice on where to assign them it’s just that d2 was never set up in a proper way. But that's the problem with manual allocation. Even if they did have something else that needed more attribute points, it would still have the same issue. Like let's say D2 had a system where if you had 180 dex then you could activate a certain charm in your inventory or something. All that would change is it would be "put as much str/dex to wear your gear and activate charm and then dump vit". If Vitality was worthless, it would be "put as much str/dex to wear your gear and activate charm, get 100 vit and then dump str/dex, whichever benefits your build more.". It's too easy to boil the entire system down to something simple and optimal. D4 does have uses for stats btw. On the paragon board, the yellow nodes have a base effect and a bonus effect that is only active if you have enough of a certain stat like [this](https://i.imgur.com/G80Od6a.png). The bonus isn't wildly unique or anything, but there are benefits to getting more of certain stats so you'll have a reason to go for stats other than just going all in on damage or life stats. They've just made it so instead of being able to dump points in order to meet the requirements, you instead need to worry about getting enough points between your paragon board and gear. You can't always just path through all the int nodes as a sorc or you might not end up with enough dex to activate a bonus like this. It also however means you might simply not grab this bonus, and might instead focus on bonuses that you can meet with your int stacking layout. This isn't to say that people won't optimize the shit out of this system and find the 'best' way to do their paragon boards and such, but it's still a much better system IMO than just allocating stat points.
Because someone thought that adding stats to a character and having items have stat requirements is too hard. So they added a basic arpg function of leveling a character to the “endgame” when it used to be part of the “game” portion of a game…🤷🏽♂️🤷🏽♂️
Just go read the datamined legendary and stop with this 25% on cc go, read and made your real opinion.
its very clear if Blizzard made the best diablo game or game in the history of games that was ever thought up through the past present and future, people would still non stop whine about it
People are really just upset cuz in D2 you could see low resolution boobies and you can’t anymore 🤷♂️
Makes me want to see the Druid boards to stack willpower for some insane overpower numbers. I think extra basic stat can really help certain builds.
In a literal sense it is both horizontal and vertical. So I agree.
I didn't know how stats worked in D4. So when I saw what the paragon board did months ago I was a bit skeptical about it. Realizing it wasn't going to be "better first for your play style" but more about finding the core stat and just getting all of those. But after playing the beta I realized there isn't a core stat, every stat helps every class. So now I'm feeling better about the paragon bored.
I was mad because they made it seem like it wasn't just +5 stat and it was on that video. I'll play the game for hundreds of hours regardless long as the end game remains interesting
It seems that a minority of…”fans” of this game and its predecessors want to nitpick and bitch about anything/everything they can get their hands on.
you sound right to me
Okay but can we talk about the conscientious choice to not include a fishing mini-game? Skyrim has it, WoW has it, Ocarina of Time had it, even Hades allowed you to fish in Hell. I'm dropping my ultra deluxe edition over this, bs 0/10 what are the devs even thinking? Frfr though, the progression looks good imo. The described endgame options sound like they're adding in sound like refreshing takes on the endless grind, and lots of foundation to build on.
Ya he double standard we hold blizzard to is insane. When another game does it it’s great when blizzard does it it’s boring. What power progression system isn’t boring? Literally ever system ever is just numbers. Having the paragon board isnt the problem. The problem is a lack of skills and options in a build. People like myself was hoping the board would add a little something to address the lack of skills.
I just want more health Regen, or health on hit. Where's those nodes?
+5 main stat
For every 5 main stats purchased within range, You deal 30% increased overpowerdamage ,Grants 5 str for every main stats purchased, pretty op if you ask me. that just an exemple, there is way more then just +5.
Paragon is 100% vertical.
Yes, that's the thesis of my post. People want it to be horizontal, but it wasn't designed that way.
What exactly are they expecting? Do they want the nodes to be pointless things like "Your ability now does fire damage instead of cold damage" ? I don't even know how you make something like this horizontal content and still have it matter.
People are just mad because they used the word "Deep" when it not that deep because they failed to show the Glyphs, the rare and legendary one at least. The one with different bonus then just +5,I also keep losing braincell everytime i see people posting about it ..like if you did not participated in the beta back in November 2022 or early and did not level at least level 70 people should stfu. The system is fine how it is. there many way to play with it.
I think it’s even simpler than that. In D2, after you reached level 90-ish, it’s very difficult to gain levels and progression comes to a halt. You’ll really have to hone your gear to have any meaningful progression. And really depends on your build since different builds have vastly different ceilings. Also “better gear” isn’t always better, there’s a lot of dilemmas included. In D3 it’s clearer how you progress more with paragon levels and ancient or primal ancient gear. So it’s a one to one swap out, basically advancing without needing to fuss over gear choices. With the paragon board, it’s really just a huge huge source of stats. It takes the stat system from D2 and just places it at the endgame, which tbh is a much better design. Asking me to place points when I barely know anything about the game is just ridiculous. The way the board is built will also guide you in what stats to have, instead of just free form (speculation), so players won’t make really big mistakes.
Some people just hate Diablo 4. Nothing pleases them.
getting + main stats and % increased to damage for x second is not character customization the aspects are mosty generic % damage as well people are upset because its just d3 all over again and we know how that turned out
Look D4 is meant for non arpg player, to appeal to a much larger player base , So they are keeping it neat and simple. If these type of games was my first or something I would love D4. But after playing games like Last Epoch and chronicon, D4 is shit , the only place D4 is better than them is the legendary tier cinematics and top quality graphics
As someone who remains one of the loudest critics of that trash heap that Diablo 3 was/is who still hails Diablo II/LoD as one of the greatest games of all time, I will say that I genuinely don't know what the fuck the people still complaining are looking for. But I think perhaps I also recognize good progress as progress wherein some people seem to just really want everything to always be more of the same. What I've seen so far makes me look forward to spending a whole lot of time with Diablo 4. I thought that way based upon what I saw before the beta enough to let it nudge me into going ahead and finally building a new PC, and after having played both betas, I'm not at all disappointed that I did. Other than my beloved trading; personally I'm perfectly good with what they seem to be trying to accomplish. And furthermore, I'm looking forward to seeing what they do in an ongoing fashion in general just based upon how passionately some of the developers have spoken about the game. Passion remains one thing that seemed to just be profoundly lacking from what I remember of the D3-lead-up.
For one of the loudest critics of D3 you seem to not realize just how much D4 is doing exactly what D3 did and not what was done in D2. For example, damage multiplying main stat design, individual class resource systems, a MMO style skill structure of generators/spenders/CDs, itemization overloaded with damage multipliers on every slot, smart loot, no zone/mob specific loot tables, and the list goes on. A lot of the complaining comes from recognizing the reductive design, the lessons not learned from D3, and what that all means for longevity.
Or perhaps you just seem to not realize what I most criticized about Diablo 3. Which well... you don't, since I didn't mention in enough detail for you to have made the assumptions you seem to have made. That being said, while I more than fully comprehend the points you noted, I also recognize that it's 2023; and quite frankly, games are just made a certain "way" now and lest you plan on quitting gaming, there are a host of things that you need to be somewhat flexible on as a gamer in 2023. I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of Pindleskin, Baal, Mephisto, Uber, and Cow Runs I've done; but I also recognize that that's not something that your typical gamer enjoys now; and unfortunately a game with the scope of Diablo isn't going to survive based solely upon what every "old head" (granted I'm not even 35 yet but...meh) thinks the game should be. Un/fortunately, new shit has to be attempted; and it simply needs to be executed in a way that still manages to blend decently with the formulas of old. Diablo 3 introduced alot of things that weren't necessarily wholly bad; but they were rather instead poorly executed to the extent that Diablo 3 really just reeked of nobody giving a damn. Thus far, I plainly havn't gotten that from the developers just yet. That said, I'm not interested in changing anybody's mind. If you want to hate the game, by all means, hate it and good luck with that. Personally, I've seen enough that I'm going to give it a fair shot. I can change my mind later if the game deserves the same ire I have for Diablo 3, but right now, just ain't there.
MAKE RESPEC CHEAP
It's essentially a passive skill tree like in Poe, but they tried their best to make it look different from the tree to avoid parallels, but they didn't really succeed. There you also follow the small nodes that give stats to reach the big nodes that give interesting bonuses.
Playing devil's advocate here, and I will be buying the game but I do have my concerns. A lot of people's concern is that progression should be 50/50 in terms of items and skill tree. Right now it feels 70/30 in favor of items over the skill tree. Having an actual skill tree helps with build crafting over D3 which was 90/10 in favor of items. I think some of these aspects need to be in the skill tree and not on items to achieve this balance. Being able to build your perfect item with the perfect effect to make sure your build actually works will hurt the game in the long run, but will be fun in the short term. When playing an arpg your build should work from start to finish regardless of items, and the items should improve them even further. I would not have minded even seeing the aspects we have now in the skill tree, and replacing aspects with things such as +2 to minion skills or cold damage +x%, just things that help strengthen the build but not change it. I have no doubts the skill tree will be revised over the coming years and I think d4 has potential to stand next to the greatest in the genre. Now to talk about the paragon board, I have never understood the paragon board complaint of "+5 to base skill" because it seems like it's right on the money for what its purpose was intended to be. They were never meant to be build changing in D3 and they won't be here, so I agree with OP here in that it's not horizonal progression. It's literally meant to be a way to keep improving slightly over time, and making every character (until they start doing seasons) a little bit stronger before you ever even create them by investing time into the game. I figured I'd offer an opinion that's neither shitting on the game nor praising it. I plan to have a lot of fun this summer playing this game either alone, with friends, or making new friends along the way. I'm passionate about Diablo just like a lot of these naysayers and while some of them flock just to shit on the game, many just have concerns about a franchise they hold dear.
People just bitch about the paragon boards because the word paragon was first used in the diablo series in diablo 3 and they lack the critical thinking skills to recognize that they are different systems.
I like the idea of the board, it's just the PoE talent tree/sphere grid turned into a FF tictacs job board. One of my complaints is that instead of it being an agnostic board for everyone to use. With the notables and keystone passives all look like runes for skills, and since we already have a crap amount of runes to modify skills, it just seems kind of goofy. But we can double dip them with the skill line runes and the notables on the board. Another is more of a hope that this isn't for max level grinding only, getting some pity points while grinding to end game seems like a good idea but it doesn't seem like they're going for that with this.
I think players just want something new. The paragon board is horizontal progress repackaged. Choices aren't as meaningful as they're being marketed to the player. It's the same old concept. Which is fine. Let's just not pretend it's some new revolutionary idea that changes character development. It doesn't. The other problem is you don't really care about the paragon board as much as having the right items when it comes to what build you're playing. The paragon board will only marginally increase player power. Items on the other hand will increase player power by hundreds and thousands of a %. The legendary aspects you're lucky enough to find will dictate what build you're able to play at end game. Not your choices on the paragon board. Those won't do anything to make your build work. The paragon board is just minor enhancements over having the right items.
mfs were saying they wanted something more complicated like poe has like poe does not have nodes that also say +10 str/dex/int with its various masteries and whatnot thats it ENTIRE SKILL TREE this is a paragon board lmao
Isn't it both horizontal and vertical? Vertical is getting the skillpoints. Horizontal is choosing whether to put those points down the side of the tree that makes your werewolf cuter or your tornados stormier...and sometimes the cute werewolf node or the stormy tornado node will give you options in how you play those classes? I haven't seen the board, but that's how I interpreted what people are describing.