Taking a little break from the doom and gloom of the economy...
So I figure why not cover a game who's entire premise is that hell has spilled forth into our world of Sanctuary and we have to fight back. What a perfect time to play a game about impending apocalypse!
I've always been a pretty big Blizzard stan all the way back to the glory days of Warcraft 1/2. I've still got my Warcraft 1 box and the manual (which is surprisingly high quality). They don't make um like they used to, amirite? Back in those days the gaming section of every store was separated into PC and MAC games, and PC games were always the best. Remember those days? I member.
I bought Warcraft 1 for $30 because Warcraft 2 was $50 and I figured I'd buy the cheaper initial iteration first to see if I liked it. That was obviously a mistake... as the sequel in gaming is basically the opposite of the sequel in movies. It's 'always' better. Although I will admit there was a certain level of extreme unit bias dopamine to be had by starting from the ground floor of one of the most popular franchises ever (WOW).
Speaking of WOW
I still had $270 on my battle.net balance from selling WOW gold in 2016 during one of my classic gaming grinds. Luckily I have crypto and Hive now to keep me busy so I'm not too worried about that happening this time.
I used to wait YEARS for blizzard games to come out. I was telling people for legit years before WOW came out that once it did I'd be disappearing into the blackhole of gaming for a while. Not only was I correct in that assessment, I got way more than even I bargained for. Don't ask me my /played
In any case I preordered the ULTIMATE EDITION for $100 because why not? I still have $170 dollars left that are impossible to spend except on the battle.net store. Might as well splurge.
Used to be $50 was a standard price for games like this (full studio big budget games). $50 was the standard for quite some time. Then $60 was the new standard. I feel like that one lasted over a decade as well. Now we are creeping into $70 territory plus addons. Inflation amirite?
Then again if you actually do the math a move from $50 in 1995 to $70 in 2023 is only a 1.2% inflation rate per year. Go figure.
Ug I've already written 400 words and haven't even made it to the intro yet...
buckle up this one gonna be long.
Intro starts off strong.
The introductory cutscene to the game is a staggering 7 minutes and 45 seconds long. It also plays like the intro to a movie. Very high production value. It begins with 3 greedy treasure hunters and one wounded monk sprinting through a dungeon away from screeching baddies. They scramble to open a sealed door, hoping on the other side they will find treasure beyond measure and escape the demons in pursuit.
It doesn't quite work out as planned.
Pretty sure I saw this exact kill scene in the last season of Stranger things.
Clearly they are pulling out all the stops and making a lot of references to popular horror culture. Love to see it.
Is it just me or does the leader have major Game of Thrones vibes?
Like a cross between two characters...
Please hold.
In any case it turns out there was no treasure, boys.
Nope just a summoning circle that requires their blood to summon the Demigoddess of Hatred.
From the shadows a voice begins the summoning with the blood of our "heroes". The way the blood moves with the CGI and physics engine is creepy as hell. Quite on point for the Diablo brand. This is refreshing considering they've missed the mark on previous iterations.
I can only describe this summoner as...
Pinhead hold the pins.
And so the vaginal blood portal births our anti-hero Lilith
Wow... wow. What an entrance.
I gotta admit I was thinking maybe it was a bit woke of them to go with another female bad-guy this time around, especially considering they already pulled that tired move in the last game, but I actually think it works this time. It's not forced.
The lore
Normally the Diablo series follows somewhat of a script:
- Demons bad.
- Angels good.
- The eternal conflict rages on, spilling into Sanctuary (mortal realm).
- The secret order of the Horadrim banish the evil.
- Usually the three "prime evils" (main bad guys).
- Diablo (Lord of Terror)
- Mephisto (Lord of Hatred)
- Baal (Lord of Destruction)
- Usually the three "prime evils" (main bad guys).
I find it a bit refreshing that in this game they've gone completely off-script
Rather than making it about the prime or lesser evils they bring in Lilith and Inarius, the demon and angel that essentially spawned the entire mortal realm of Sanctuary where the bulk of all the storylines take place (with heaven or hell often being the end-zones of the game). Through their unholy union the entire world was born... apparently... I actually didn't know about this lore until now but it seems to have been around since the beginning of the series.
https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/Nephalem
YOUR KIND ARE WEAK AND THIS WORLD HAS BEEN WASTED ON THE CRUSADES OF THE UNWORTHY.
The funny thing about this iteration of the game is that it is quite unclear if the demon Lilith is actually the bad guy. You'd think that with a title like "daughter of hatred" (child of Mephisto) it would be pretty obvious... but it's not because the angel Inarius who's supposed to be on your side... well he's kind of a pretentious dick, and it's hilarious.
Inarius believes he needs to correct his mistake to be welcomed back to heaven, and I get the feeling he'd be willing to destroy all of Sanctuary to get what he wants. There is heavy foreshadowing that the angel that's supposed to be on your side is going to do something arrogant and make the problem much worse, and that his banishment is very much permanent. It's a somewhat interesting storyline, especially compared to what they came up with in Diablo 3 a decade ago in 2012.
The bad taste of Diablo 3
D3 was a failure in a lot of ways, and I'm still pretty salty about it. I actually had the ear of one of the tippy top lead developers at Blizzard. He was in my friend group and we played a lot of WOW back in the day. Every once and a while we'd set up a BBQ and get the crew back together IRL.
In any case I gave him a lot of ideas for D3, and a lot of those ideas became reality... so seeing the game somewhat fall apart in the beginning was extra cringe. I bring this up because the biggest initial problem was an issue with the economics.
Indeed, the biggest failure of D3 in my opinion stemmed from the real-money auction-house (RMAH) in which players could sell items up to a max of something like $255. Also gold could be sold for money there as well. I'm not sure of the details, but I bet it was a regulation nightmare.
KYC/AML nightmare confirmed.
In any case the search functionality on the both AH's (gold/$) was really bad, and I suspect that insiders were exploiting it for personal gain. On top of that in game items never expired, meaning you could always sell your gear if you found better gear.
This created an instant hyperinflationary scenario where as soon as the best gear was found, it stayed in the economy permanently and drowned out all other lesser gear. There were no mechanics to balance the economics.
This kind of enraged me because I made it very clear to my friend that WOW had already solved this problem with BOE gear. BOE means bind-on-equip, meaning once you equip an item it can not be traded within the economy again. This would of fixed everything, but he was all like "nah we don't want to go in that direction". Your funeral man. Just talking about it now I'm still salty to this day.
The solution to all these problems is obviously crypto.
This is largely why I haven't participated in the videogame scene since 2017. Even though I have an extremely overwhelming gaming hyper-focus I really feel like one day crypto will flip the scales, and when it does, every game will be integrated with crypto or it will be crap. We simply don't have the templates/infrastructure to make that paradigm a reality yet.
In a decentralized game, it would be impossible for "insiders" to game the system and profit from it. It would be impossible for one foolish centralized agent to make a dumb call that ruined the game for everyone. These are the upgrades I look forward to, and it appears that I will be waiting a while longer considering the state we find ourselves in.
Jumping back into the D4 discussion
I always like to focus on the technicals, tactics, and economics of a game like this. For the most part all RPGs have a mindless hack and slash element to them that results in a kind of slot-machine gambling situation. Kill lots of baddies over and over and hope to get those phat loots that empower your avatar and allow you to kill even badder baddies that drop even better phat lootz.
Rinse and repeat.
Diablo IV is no exception. It's going to be a grind, but that grind has been watered down in a lot of ways that cater to mainstream adoption. For example, users love instant gratification, so any mechanic that upgrades the old UX into something that is slightly less boring and less grindy usually results in a win for the game.
One of the ideas I gave for D3 was having HP drop as you're killing mobs so players don't have to keep popping back into town to stock up on potions. This feature kind of worked, but they've made it even better in D4:
On the left we can see I have 5/5 potions that I can use at anytime. These potions heal instantly for a flat amount of HP and then on top of it heal about 35% over a few seconds. This HOT (heal over time) prevents the user from potion spamming and surviving a situation that they really shouldn't have survived. These potions drop randomly as you fight within Sanctuary. Often.
On the right you'll see that boot icon. It looks they are giving every single class a free dash that players can use to avoid avoid damage or escape from being surrounded by the enemy. This is a great base-skill to give everyone because it means they can make the game a lot harder and position-based. Players will have to know what they're doing to avoid getting wrecked. The skill refreshes every 5 seconds, and even stacks a second time after level 10, allowing a double dash in short time periods and creating a cooldown buffer so those with steady hands will always have that one last ace in the hole to play.
Difficulty
Traditionally in Diablo you have to start at the first difficulty, which is 'Normal'. Then if you beat the game you can go to Nightmare. then if you beat the game on Nightmare you can go to Hell difficulty which is very challenging and requires very good gear.
In D4 there is a new difficulty right at the beginning that allows advanced players like me to make the game harder right at the start for XP and gold bonuses. Again it's a really nice addition and fits the mantra of "easy to learn hard to master". Give the newbies and easy mode they won't complain about but give the more experienced players a bit more of a challenge with an incentive to actually do use the option.
I ended up picking the "Veteran" difficulty and it was still pretty easy. Had no idea what I was getting into with the boss fights and didn't die once. Stopped playing after I got through the entire main questline at level 22.
As many gamers already know, the "real game" doesn't really start until you beat the game once and trudge on into "Nightmare" mode. That's when stuff actually starts getting challenging and you actually have to pay attention to things like your gear and skill specializations.
Ultimately my favorite part of the game so far is the skill-tree.
They did it right this time and it actually looks really good. In fact they even threw in a reference that we crypto folks already know all about.
That's right boys and girls...
The skill tree in Diablo IV is full-on decentralized. They even use the word "nodes" in the description. How cool is that?
How it works
Every time you level up you get a skill point. No surprises there. That's just typical RPG mechanics. However, each node has very important labeling and ramifications.
Basic >> Core >> Defense >> Conjuration >> Mastery >> Ultimate
I'm looking online for more information on this... and there is actually a lot of misinformation because the skill trees weren't like this at all during the alpha version of the game. I think they've done a damn good job coming up with this iteration. It's very clean and a really good way of doing it. Top notch.
It looks like the first two nodes of every class are going to be "Basic" and "Core". Perhaps even other classes will have "Defense", "Conjuration", and "Mastery", but for now all I can say for sure that this is the mage/wizard/sorcerer class. I tend to always pick this class as I like to have access to burst damage and heavy AOE with the ability to kite. Mages are the best.
In any case what happens is as you level up you gain access to more nodes down the decentralized skill tree. You can choose any abilities you want, but there are synergies if you stick with a certain theme. The theme I picked was frost-mage because it's a very solid archetype for staying alive when you're not really sure what you're up against.
I picked up frost-bolt first, which is the basic skill that costs no mana. I was actually a bit of a noob in this department and kept leveling up frost-bolt instead of unlocking the "core" node at level 3. I would have been a lot more powerful if I had picked up the abilities there that actually cost mana to use.
Also using hydra on muh frost build.
Even though "hydra" is a fire ability I found this epic armor piece that allows me to cast two hydras at once. It ended up being so good I had to use it in my build. This is a good example of the gear you find having a direct effect on the skills one uses. I perhaps should have respecced to fire entirely but I wasn't feeling it and the beta was still easy mode even on the veteran difficulty.
Synergy
Ice spec gets a lot of synergy from freezing enemies and critical strike, which reminds me a lot of WOW ice-mages. If it's not broke don't fix it I suppose. Abilities with cooldowns like frost-nova and ice-shield have no mana cost, but you have to wait like 15 seconds to use them again which can get you into trouble.
After putting 5 points (5 levels) into a skill: a big upgrade opens up for that ability. Then you put one last point into a forked ability. This forked ability has to be chosen over the other, you can't choose both. For frost-bolt the forked ability is a choice between these two options:
- Hitting a chilled target restores 4 mana.
- Hitting a frozen target makes it
vulnerablefor 3 seconds.
Depending on what you're going for in the build depends on what you should pick. For example if you want to be better at killing bosses the mana restoration is better because they are often immune to being frozen so the other skill doesn't help you at all in a boss fight. However if you're just farming elites you'll crank out more damage with the other ability.
What does it take to respec?
The cost to change your build is extremely cheap, especially early game. If you know what you're doing you can change your build on the fly as you go for maximum output.
Not only can you reset all your skills with the menu above fairly cheaply, but you can also reset individual skills by right-clicking them on the skill tree window for an exponentially cheaper price than resetting them all. This allows you to tweak your build whenever you want even if you're in the middle of a dungeon. It's a pretty nice convenience that I'm sure many speedrunners will find useful.
Stats
These are the generic stats of your character. Not much to it just a basic display of how powerful you are. If you hover over your armor you can see that regular armor also helps mitigate non-physical attacks by the displayed percentage. This is something I haven't seen before as usually only elemental resistances will mitigate non-physical attacks. They are calling this the "armor contribution".
The defensive abilities are pretty standard and don't need much explaining.
One subject of note is that it's going to be possible to stack gear that mitigates ranged damage only or melee damage only. As a mage I would definitely want to mitigate ranged attacks because it's much easier to stay away from the sword-swingers. However a close range character like a barbarian might be thinking the opposite.
There's also not much to say about the Utility section either. All pretty straightforward although I'm still not 100% sure what a 'lucky hit' is... although sometimes my frost-bolt will seemingly randomly completely freeze an enemy. If that's the kind of thing that lucky hits do I definitely need more of that stat because freezing enemies is clutch as an ice mage as I said before.
One of the big issues with D3 is that the PvP was a huge disappointment, but I get the feeling that it's going to be done correctly in this game. I'm not even sure if you can fight another person in the beta but the foreshadowing I'm seeing for PvP looks pretty solid so far.
Main stat point
Similar to many iterations before it, each class is going to have a main stat that is much better than the others. For a sorcerer this will always be INT. Stacking intelligence will always give you whatever intelligence gives all the other classes... plus increase damage by a percent multiplier.
A rogue that stacks INT would only get resist to all elements... which would result in a terrible build. A rogue needs dexterity to get the damage multiplier, while a barbarian needs STR. It is in this way that classes differentiate themselves on a basic level.
On average a sorcerer will be able to resist magic spells better than other classes. Barbarians will mitigate more physical damage, and rogues will randomly dodge more and have a higher critical strike rating. This is all pretty standard stuff for anyone who's played WOW or other Diablo games, or just RPGs in general.
The offensive abilities are of extreme note.
In a hack and slash game the time it takes you to kill stuff is the ultimate metric of the item casino. Kill stuff faster get more loots. A good offense can also be the best defense because if you kill things quickly they don't have time to damage you at all. Understanding the offensive abilities is critical.
In this case there are some new stats that I'm personally not used to because I haven't played RPGs in a while, so I have no idea if these things are unique to Diablo IV or were repurposed from other archetypes.
Overpower and Vulnerable damage are news to me.
"Vulnerable" is pretty straight forward. There are several ways to make the enemy "vulnerable" that you can learn while playing and reading what your skills do. However, "overpower" is a bit weird.
As a sorcerer I might not have to worry about this one considering it seems to be based on HP, and sorcerers traditionally have low HP compared to other classes. Seems like more of a Barbarian or Druid thing. Interesting mechanic though to be sure.
There are also dungeons scattered throughout the world that you have to complete to make your skills better. All part of the grind I suppose... interesting farming progression.
The map is pretty polished as well. Random events pop up that you can partake in and it will even group you up with random players on your server participating in the same event. This adds a much needed social dynamic to the game that can often be lost during the solo-grind.
It's pretty easy to navigate the world and complete quests.
You can set waypoints and teleport around to certain areas.
All standard stuff.
Alright I think I'm done rambling.
Conclusion
3500 words later, my biggest takeaway from all of this is the decentralized node skill tree with forks. This is definitely something that looks like it belongs directly within a WEB3 game. I can almost guarantee this skill tree will be copied by crypto gaming. It's too good to not.
I used to wait in anticipation for games like this to come out, but I could care less this time around honestly. 6/6 can wait, and I can already tell I won't be obsessively playing Diablo IV like I normally would on other Blizzard launches. Perhaps I've outgrown it, but honestly what I really think is happening is I'm trying to hold out and be a part of a crypto thing rather than get sucked back into some WEB2 nonsense.
At the end of the day ideas can't be owned. There's a lot to be learned from traditional centralized corporations, and I think this game is a good example. Hell, they created a decentralized node tech tree just for us. How cool is that? Thanks Blizzard. Great template.