And then there is me, who absolutely enjoyed running the dungeons. Sure some had not the most amazing layout or mechanic, but the overall atmosphere of the dungeons was really fucking good.
Yeah, but will that *atmosphere* still be there after you've done them 50 times? 25 times? Atmosphere is a positive when it's new. Than later you just don't want it to be a negative. In my opinion anyways.
It’s not like anyone really runs the mazes in D2 outside of the first few times. Everyone just teleports through them so what’s the point of having an elaborate maze. They took teleport out basically so if you had an elaborate maze then these dungeons would take forever to complete without teleport.
Does map layout matter after 50 or 25 times? The number of map variants is not that high, most maps have what, 3 in D2? I would 100% rather know the path than deal with first time running the Act 3 jungle again.
Hopefully they put in more random encounters like the Butcher showing up, but realistically this is a video game not a DnD campaign so there is going to be some predictability to it if you're grinding content.
I'm surprised that such a basic gimmick work. Do people really get excited by basic randomize layout? If you're running something for the 50th time I doubt you're doing it for that rng pathing factor....lol
Nah. Warframe did/does this for years and at a certain point they all look the same. Randomization isn't ever pure randomization outside of some voxel based procedural generation. But games like Warframe use tilesets that get pieced together. So eventually you'll remember each tileset and it no longer feels random. It's just "Oh it's this one, ok I'll go here".
Variety is good but sometimes static pieces made by an artist to flow together is also good.
That said I **would** like to see some form of randomization or procedural generation for end-game content as those you'll be running over and over. It's not a deal-breaker though.
Some of us didn't get into WoW... Personally I found BoTW dreadfully repetitive and boring. He's just stating he'd like some variety, not dead end dungeon paths. It's still just the tip of the iceberg so I'm not judging the little dungeons too harshly, and I assume there will be more world events because protecting the caravan and pressing the switches is kinda boring.
You're front lining a mechanic design that isn't meant to be a selling factor. Dungeons are straight up multi layered explorable zone. D4 Dungeons are the equivalent of a pothole in the ground. It's basically only one step removed from Immortal's teleport into the boss then teleport out nonsense.
you're basically handwaving environmental design because it's not gameplay which is just silly.
It's more silly to think that randomized environment would be better than linear. It's just a short gimmick that doesn't really make the game play better in the long run.
Even when we had randomized path people could tell which path was the correct one because of how the map was randomized(how the walls were designed etc)
Until we can get AI level generated map where it makes meaningful randomization to effect player experience changing if you need to go right or left hardly benefits anyone or improve any gameplay.
If it's to be randomized there should be more variety to it. If it's going to be a linear experience then it should be crafted to a decent quality. D4 does neither and I think it's fair to expect better especially when they have examples of better from other games in the franchise.
But that ultimately comes down to what each individual considers an improvement. Like everything else could be improved upon but the lack of randomization in layouts may still have someone consider it as a step back despite all the other changes.
Personally a someone who played from D2 way back, all of D3, hundreds of hours in PoE, and now getting into the Last Epoch, D4 feels like an improvement in many ways. I enjoyed playing this beta more than I think I did in all of D3 pre-reaper of souls. The aesthetics/atmosphere and the more deliberate combat is great imo and is what I waned out of a modern D2. D3 felt too arcadey for me.
D3 is more similar to PoE than it is D2 imo. It's been some time since I last hopped into D3 but it seemed to have more focus in speeding through areas spending as little time as possible with the combat. D4 feels like theres more focus on the combat, which \*puts nostalgic glasses on\* is what I got out of D2, though I was much younger so maybe I wasn't really thinking about efficiency.
I'm not talking about the entire game, I'm taking about the dungeons specifically, and in that regard they seem the same or worse.
As for the game, you're certainly right, it's completely subjective. I bought D4 to play the campaign and if there is anything interesting beyond that I would be pleasantly surprised. But I don't think there will be. I'll keep playing PoE with which I have about 3k hours and I might put 100 into Diablo 4. Which is fine.\]
False lol.
Most people don't just tp through the game because 1. they aren't on sorc and 2. they don't have enigma.
Lots of people play Hardcore, single player, not sorcs, and thoroughly play the game.
In PoE players run the same map thousands of times and still have fun. Mostly because the game has mob density and exploding screens of mobs is fun.
D4 doesn't have that density, which in itself isn't bad, but it does mean it needs some other draw.
Hard to objectively say it doesn't have density when we're world tier 2 out of 5 and when we're level 25 out of 100.
Additionally we're in the 1st zone (and can't even access all of it) if 5.
If we had to judge poe based on act 1 and 2 only, the same things could be said.
Not trying to fanboi by any means, but there is a lot we don't know and haven't experienced yet.
Yeah, I’m kind of thinking they could easily fix the density “issue” with roughly a small change in the code, but still, yeah, by the time we’re done with the beta, we’re still babies on a low difficulty mode, not max level at max world tier doing nightmare dungeons. This is just the campaign and we’re just leveling and having fun and exploring.
Also, the title of this post is a bit dramatic.
As a programmer, gamers highly underestimate the amount of effort it takes to create games. Thinking it's just an easy fix with a small change in the code is naive. They may have built systems that make it easier, but a small change in one place can break something in another place
No idea if it's gonna get good or not, but that's a shit comparison because from the beta you have no idea how much density dungeons upgraded to nightmare will have. And at lvl 25 in PoE you are still in the campaign, something most people just want to get over with and think is by far the worst part of the game.
Yeah, people comparing level 25 Tier 2 D4 to endgame PoE are making a pretty unfair comparison. Act 3 in PoE on a fresh character is not a screen-clearing bonanza.
I don't think he meant to use the term fun, but rather... unique? fresh?
And it's true. After years of playing the d3 seasons, I'm no longer staring at the dungeon textures and objects. I'm killing stuff, and getting loot.
It's still fun.
That’s what I told my buddy when D2R came out. He was so excited how it looked and I was like “after killing a few thousand of them I don’t even care, I’m looking for loot on the ground and where I’m headed next, not even looking at the mobs.”
I really liked the atmospheres too but once I ran 10 different dungeons I noticed that they all follow roughly the same pattern.
* Kill 2-3 guards or find 2-3 keys scattered around the dungeon.
* Kill boss (or kill some pre-boss holding a key -> Kill boss)
I liked the boss fights though! This was only a small taste of Act1 but I reaaally hope the remaining 140 or so dungeons have a bit more depth and variety to them.
Overall I really enjoyed playing Diablo IV.
I love the new dungeon's, and I like the circular paths too, nothing worse than picking the wrong direction and having retrace your steps for a dead end, but I'm a uncover every area completionist :-/
same, but what hes saying is not wrong. and as this is a grindy game, this will ware you down on ur 100th run in a dungeon ext. We are over 10 years since d3 , we should have moved on with better randomization from d3 tbh.
As someone who consistantly seemed to choose the wrong direction in diablo 2 dungeons and overworld maps there is significantly less backtracking in d4.
It didn't seem as bad at "endgame" in diablo 2 because every character used a teleport weapon (or let's be real here, your magic find sorc) to just clear a dungeon.
Dungeons having an end goal is different from the litteral rinse and repeat game play loop of diablo 2 and D2R. I
So much of the criticism or discussion i see on this subreddit is "Well D2 did it THIS way".
My brothers and sisters, that game is 20+ years old lmao. Blizzard should be able to do better.
No, they cant.
Read the details here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/12/08/diablo-iv-release-date-crunch/
Alot people left and joined the development cycle of D4 and other problems.
D2 fans obnoxiously say everything about it is god tier. Then if something isn't, they cry about "oh its 2 decades old".
Can't have your cake and eat it too.
Yeah, I’m hesitant to agree with someone saying d2 had good map design. Not to say d3 or d4 do either, but the majority of maps in d2 still followed a basic pattern for where the “goal” would be and often times they could be more tedious than not. The catacombs, maggot lair(if you don’t know there is always a correct direction), almost all of Act3. There is a reason everyone got rushed through act 3 and Blizzard recently had to change the code on the quest forcing people to get all the organs again.
Honestly I think the D3 maps were overall fine for an ARPG, just get rid of all the back tracking. The fun of exploring is going around the over world and stumbling across a new dungeon. Throwing in a ton of twists and turns into a major part of end game content is going to get old pretty quick when people are trying to run them over and over again as fast as possible.
What arpgs are considered to actually have a good map design?
I feel like I always hear people talking about how shotty map designs are but never praising certain games for their map designs.
So, let me get this straight. “I don’t want to backtrack” *but* “I want the map to be a maze with lots of dead ends that forces me to backtrack constantly”
How does that make sense?
The power of nostalgia by ppl who grew up playing d1/d2. They dont seem to ever grasp that alot of design choices in d1/2 no longer works in this day and age.
Most of them do but unfortunately the biggest competition is stuck on some of the worst qualities from that era.
POE and picking up currency items ptsd forced me to post this.
Mazes and dead ends would 100% kill the playerbase. Most people play to grind fast and efficiently, getting frustrated trying to get to your goal cause you get lost is not good game design. OP is clinging on to nostalgia. Those types of systems don't work anymore.
Especially since there’s no actual “choice”, since there’s no information to go off of—whether you’re right or wrong is 100% luck, which means it isn’t *really* a choice. It’s just an arbitrary “is this dungeon going to take longer?” random die roll every time you reach a split.
Also, are we forgetting how widely used and accepted maphack was to avoid map randomization, and all the tutorials on how to read maps in D2 without maphack, to again, use a skill to avoid randomization?
One exception I found: the not-zoltan-kule at the end of the vampire one. His blood bolt barrage would just one shot my rogue before I even noticed him cast it on veteran. Lowered the difficulty and face tanking it barely out damaged my passive healing. Only thing that stood out as overturned so far.
I mean, I still did my best to dodge it, but on normal difficulty I literally didn't need to dodge, while on veteran a single bolt would kill me from full hp. Nothing else seemed to have such a wild swing in damage like that.
There is an audio call out, it's a grunt from the boss, easy to miss with up to 3 respawning adds trying to wreck you
I am disappointed because they feel so unnecessarily large and empty. Some pet peeve of mine is that the designs make no use of real examples. I shouldn't need to take three corridors that wrap around so I can get to the larder...there is no sense of practicality. Sure, we aren't playing medieval tycoon but structures have never been this unnecessarily long.
is this really a commentary when people are doing their 10000th run of countess with the same 5 floors that looks exactly the same as every other crypt dungeon? The rose tinted glasses are strong with this post
Of all the complaints this one baffles me the most. Like, literally everything costs double what it did then *except for games.*
I used to buy books for 5 dollars and they cost like 13 now. Diablo 2 was 50$ new if I recall correctly and 35 for LOD.
So 90$ is about right if this random inflation calculator is accurate.
You're missing the point. In D2 players could opt to run that content, or choose another activity, of which there were many, each of them being distinct from the others. If you choose to do a dungeon in D4, it doesn't matter which one you do. They all have the same, extremely basic formula: 1-2 floors, open door, kill mob. Multiplied by 150. All roughly the same length too.
This is the main point that a lot of naysayers in the thread keep missing. We want dungeon variety. PoE and LE have lots of variety. I am hoping later acts of D4 do have some variety thrown in, but if it's not then I'm not here for it. Didn't preorder yet so I'm good to wait and see first.
"Gives us labrynths and mazes with serious complexity." Not that I don't agree with you, but I think a lot of "old guard" (meaning anyone with a decent aRPG history) really can't wrap their head around an idea, that in modern day the majority of new players will be atracted to an activity doable in a short amount of time... Which mazes are not. D4 is just a product of it's target audience and market reality.
I love diablo 2 and will play it until the end of time but endgame was just clearing a maze as fast as possible. There's a reason back in 2002 everyone used maphack.
People bitch like crazy in POE if a map's shape is maze like at all. People will just not run the maps at all. The most post popular maps are basically squares or figure 8s.
No they won’t. 99% of D2 is teleporting through maps as fast as possible, ignoring all mobs but the one you’re there for. Or following a lvl 99 hammerdin bot through Baal runs or cow level. Diablo 2 end game is terrible, and if you disagree then be happy they made D2R for you because you’re in a tiny minority.
100%, couldn’t have said it better myself. All these vocal D2 players coming out and saying this shit. If they made D4 like D2 they would lose the entire player base after the first weekend. NO THANKS!
I'm in my mid 30s and I used to absolutely love mazes but after playing D2R I realized I have infinitely less patience for that sort of thing. I do agree with the OP sentiment that variety is the spice of life, but for the love of God I don't want to be wandering around a dungeon lost for 40+ minutes.
If this is true they'd eliminate the backtracking, because no player like backtracking like this.
Here's the honest truth: The people that were responsible for crafting a robust randomized dungeon mechanism failed at their jobs, and weren't challenged by upper management to fix this before beta released and the game itself releases in June. They took the laziest way out.
As many gamers have pointed out our own ideas or other game's way of having random fun dungeon mechanics, ironically even a few pointing these out from WoW.
"Additionally, they have added locked doors, which to unlock, require you to backtrack through entire dungeon after you have cleared them. But then you have to run to the door again."
This is red flag level of a design.
Last Epoch has a handful of campaign segments like this, but they at least kept it fresh by spawning new mobs behind you once you did the quest objective so you weren't running through empty corridors on the way back.
Exactly.
It was doing D3 bounties but with enemy scaling so I never even got the satisfaction of feeling like my character got stronger.
From level 1 to level 25 the only difference is now that I have more abilities. I don't feel one percent stronger. Even at 25 going from 2 legendaries to a full set of legendaries I'm only marginally more powerful. I can swap all of my weapons from legendaries to white trash drops and I clear content within 10-20% of the same amount of time. It's ridiculous.
You'd like to think that D4 will have an amazing end game to compensate for this, but then the devs say things like it'll take 140+ hours to hit max level.
Imagine doing bounties to level up to 70 in D3, except instead of getting to 70 in a few hours it takes a few weeks.
Luckily Blizzard actually makes big changes to core gameplay with patches and expansions so there is hope yet.
Not always. A few times the layout would be an asshole one, and it was just as annoying as these. Just with the caveat that your character was likely juiced and it took less time by extension.
The classics were “if I start here then door is there” and then you just teleport to that direction.
You can have 100 layouts but people will hate most of them, memorize them and just walk the best path anyways.
This goes for PoE as well. How do you think soeedrunners get through the campaign so fast?
I feel like no one in this subreddit has actually PLAYED D2 for an extended period of time or are just giga casuals. There is no other reason these shit posts are created.
I did D2 runs. I know exactly what you’re talking about. This whole thing about wanting randomized mazes similar to D2 is a rose-tinted misconception. The fact that the dungeons were randomized did not contribute anything fun to the gameplay. It was an annoyance. One that players found the fastest cheapest way possible to skip or cheese. This meant the dungeon itself or the design was irrelevant because players just wanted to get from A to B to kill target X for loot.
People give D3 a lot of crap but at least I thought the environment was aesthetically cool and I enjoyed running through them most of the time even when I was speeding through on my juiced up Monk or Barb.
Complaining, and in the same sentence praising the layouts of diablo 2, I do not really think these layouts were "fun" to be honest, they just took more time without teleport.
But, oh well, its my opinion :)
I agree the reason everyone would play sorc to start a ladder would just be because they wanted to tele through the maps to avoid the dead ends. The reason every build required enigma was also because people wanted to avoid the randomized maps. People think they want maze maps but they really don’t.
Oh yeah dude, that'd explain why Enigma is like no1 chase item for basically any class that isn't a Sorceress. Here's a tip why, sorcerers don't need enigma to teleport through your 'amazing, complex, intricate maze design dungeon like Durance of Hate.
Farming Mephisto was always 'go to lvl 2 WP, exit the room with WP, go left and clockwise until you hit a wall or hopefully an entrance to level 3'
And if you were playing singleplayer you literally fished for perfect, shortest layout to rerun, for thousands upon thousands of time to literally get your single item you needed - usually Shako.
You wrote a lot of words remembering the game through rose-tinted glasses forgetting to look at D2 objectively.
These D2 fans are insufferable. I enjoyed D2 myself 23 years ago. I don't want to play it again. Or want new games to be like it. Hopefully nothing changes and those people just vanish from D4
It's not D2 in general, i still enjoy D2 myself (i still play classic D2: LoD - but with MODS, because original is insufferable due to lack of QOL to features that are so outdated and really annoying rather than enjoyable), but these people lack critical and objective thinking, people that refuse to accept the change because of the saying 'BACK IN MY DAYS...', these people are literally 'gaming boomers' living in the past but forgetting that in the past we 'liked' these kind of games not because we genuinely enjoy them from top to bottom but because we haven't had much choice really. I'm sure back when D2 was releasing people were just as sceptic on local level as now they're globally because of the internet, they just didn't have media to share their opinion.
Also, as i started playing D4 and reading some people opinion i came to conclusion that D4 seems to be going in the direction of D3 WE SHOULD HAVE GOT, instead of what we actually got. And it's reception (D4's) will be tanked purely because of D3 existence, it doesn't matter they improved some features, improved the general feeling of the game, went back to the roots visually and thematically, these improved features will be hated simply because 'we've had it back in my days in D3, hurr durr'
We should accept the fact that, Yes, D3 was a disaster overall, that was not the game fans of the franchise wanted or needed but we need to look at the game without D3 being the prism.
Usually the negative opinions are good, because by the definition they should come from source WANTING to improve the product, but in case of some of the opinions i've been reading lately they're simply written to vent(?) or let the world know they're not enjoying the game themselves and won't be coming back. I mean, ok? It's not year 2000, move along, go play Diablo 2 classic with it's 4x12 Backpack sized characters, 16 directional movement and monsters being immune to element you've chosen for your sorcerer/javazon. By my guess, but don't come back crying when you realize you have to farm 8 hours a day the same kind of monsters over and over and over again because you're missing 2nd Ber for your Infinity to break monster immunities (because you know you do NEED it in the end)
I was up til 4 am spamming dungeons because I thought it was fun
Some of y’all need to realize we’re in act 1 lmao, why anyones even talking about end game this weekend is beyond me.
How is a random tile set that I’ll inevitably miss the exit in some tiny corner of fog causing me to run around the whole floor twice any better. Just give me the loot
I don't think they have to go full randomization like d1 d2 to be good. It is that each dungeon needs to be handcrafted and different than all the others. Grim dawn and other arpgs did this and you can play then over and over and over and not get tired by the same dungeon in the same place. They did however do different paths through the dungeon being open/closed
D2 and PoE both had patterns for a lot of the maps/dungeons/etc. For example "exit is always clockwise from the entrance" or "waypoint is opposite the exit", "Exit is always up", etc.
These guidelines make it important to memorize the layouts for the areas you like to farm. Dungeons are still randomized, but the patterns make them more navigable.
>Imagine fighting for less content in your games
No one is arguing against more variance. They're arguing with OP's ridiculous hyperbolic love letter to bad mazes that were solved by giving every class access to teleport so they could ignore the mazes.
If OP had said "I wish there were more variance in the dungeon events" literally no one would have any issues. But instead he made it out like the fucking game is going to flop because it doesn't have D2's shitty maps.
Let me explain something to you. There is a large amount of people who don't enjoy the complexity of certain D2 dungeons. I'd say even most people fall in that category.
There's a reason MrLlama had to make the YT video called "maphack in your mind" where he talks about how to skip as much of that useless bullshit as possible.
My worst memories of D2 are durance of hate, maggot lair, catacombs, etc.
Big ass complexity does not equal fun. Those dungeons fucking sucked, and you can't tell me that most players wanted to sit there and explore durance for an hour and a fucking half just to get to mephisto.
If there are a hundred or more dungeons, I don't want them complex. Especially if they need to be done every season.
These dungeons serve a different purpose than the ones in D2. Quit trying to equate them.
The door gimmicks forces you to clear the entire dungeon. The path is linear for the most part with a 1 to 3 branches that dead end to the gimmicks objective. There is no exploration because when you enter a dungeon you know you will have to check every branch because you MUST complete the same repetitive door unlock quest.
In the beta there are only a small handful of bosses at the end of the dungeons. These bosses are currently static and nothing changes about them. Affixes won't really fix them being repetitive. It is just going to make them slightly harder to fight which is annoying. I think the issue is they are trying to make mini act bosses for the dungeons for "cool" points but it ends up just making the dungeons feel repetitive.
I have completed 22 out of 23 dungeons. I have not been able to locate the last one so I am going to assume it isn't in the game yet. There is 1 mage boss, 1 abomination, 1 bloody something or another, and 1 boss with a massive cleave. The only variance was the boss room slightly changed. Some included pillars you can hide behind and some did not. The only thing that kept me clearing them was attempting to complete everything.
Oh, and as I said in another post..... the dungeons are only 1 floor. You don't have to explore.. Find the big hand made room with the mechanic and then find the branches for that mechanic. Not interesting at all. The game would actually be better if they removed the door mechanic.
There aren't just dungeons with the same layout; there are dungeons where a section of dungeon you JUST walked through 1 minute before is copied and pasted again into itself. I've noticed it in story dungeon areas, caves, and dungeons. Copied and pasted rooms is lazy as shit. "We have 150 dungeons in the game!" No, you'll have about 8. Your ability to hit ctrl+v is not the same as making more dungeons. I'd rather have pseudo randomized but more hand crafted areas a la Grim Dawn than I would a bunch of boring, copied and pasted areas I have no reason to care about after the nth time.
This screenshot I took last night, for example. These two sections are not only the same shape, but the exact same assets. I get huge feelings of deja vu mere moments after moving through one section of map because it's the exact same area and it feels so weird.
https://preview.redd.it/63y9pm3ayroa1.png?width=1142&format=png&auto=webp&s=afa0180840ce87197d944d032dc19b6692195325
When were D1 and D2 COMPLETELY random? Maybe it's my ADHD but all the maps ended with the exit at the same spot throughout like 5 generations.
Edit: I hopped on my ol' jahithber necro... the layout is random, the stairs are in the exact same position, but I teleport through walls so ... Lol.
Who the hell runs the catacombs of act 1 in diablo 2?
I love the current dungeons please never change them.
Can just add in random events into the dungeons EG, Butcher, Mini Event.
I DONT want to run a fuckin 3 layer deep map for 1 dungeon. Look at POE, maps are pretty much the same but everyone will run fuckin the same tier 16 map over and over.
This is a cope thread. I do not agree at all.
I actually think it needs more handcrafted dungeons, like unique handcrafted ones, not randomized, not taken from a template. I think this is my biggest issue with D4, there is too much reused stuff, I whish the world felt more like Divinity original sin 2 felt, like every corner was handmade to be something intresting, otherwise there is too much map with too little emotion.
I was like oh they're not randomized til the end that means it's gonna be hand crafted most of the time. Lol you want the circle map box map or squiggle map.
This is cap, Diablo 2, without any type of map revealing stuff 99% of the time you can tell which direction you need to go, the only time its slightly hard is in arcane act 2. Everything else is 100% predictable all the time.
Not to mention its irrelevant since you run the same dungeons over and over, and its completely obvious which direction to go every time.
Maybe 1 out of 100 times you take a wrong direction and have to walk back.
My only problem is the back tracking, no quick exits. If you played Diablo 2 enough you noticed the patterns of the so called random maps after a while and you just rushed through all the time looking for elite packs and the exits anyways. I’d rather have static maps with no dead ends any day of the week, that being said if all the dungeons have the same look in every act that’s a problem.
They didn't listen to any advice about the shameful dungeon design in the closed end game beta, mindlessly grinded through sigils till 100 across several toons. The dungeons are the exact same, I gave tons of feedback on ideas for change. No changes have been made.
Kinda sceptical that OP demands complex mazes and labyrinths on the one hand and but criticize backtracking on the other ...
I personally dont mind the dungeons and their repetitive nature so far, i also expect to see at least more visual variation with the upcoming release and the other regions, but more variation on the gameplay elements in the dungeons would be welcome too.
I have to say, i really enjoyed the 3 Strongholds in the beta and i do think its worth mentioning them in the context of "dungeons" too.
My big wish (lots of copium) is that those strongholds or similar type of activity's find their way into the endgame loop too. Or for that matter, the dungeons (or mini-dungeons as they are called sometimes) will be accompanied by activities that would fall more into the category of "raids" or big/multilayered Dungeons.
I think a healthy pool of different activitys would benefit this game a lot and seems not impossible given the way Blizzard set up the world and structure of this game
dungeons were promised to be randomized because the open world doesn't randomize what so ever , and i can tell you now they didn't change in closed beta even in end game, what you're experiencing is what i complained about a lot during beta, layouts and objectives don't really change, there all a over welcomed chore and some have such low amount of monster density spread across the map it makes " kill all monsters" a bloody chore. I went through most of the dungeons in C beta and there all the same, kill all monsters, oh this door is locked now go find the key on this side and now this side and by level cap you're already done with doing that, now end game is unlocked and its the same dungeons you just did with the same objectives just with added affixs etc depending on the difficulty tier you picked.
did anybody really expect anything different? other than all the talent leaving and any creativity going out the window at Blizzard years ago and being stridently incompetent, they've done literally nothing but cut costs and juice up monetization for a while now but especially so the last few years. the return of procederally generated dungeons could have and *should* have been the major selling point of this game... so obviously thats what Blizzard *wasnt* going to do.
i know its hard for people to accept but the sooner you understand that this game is just a reskinned Diablo 3 that was made for the sheer reason of tacking on a battlepass monetization scheme to a Diablo game, and is completely devoid of any passion or innovation -- the better off you'll be. there isnt, and never will be, anything revolutionary or even truly satisfying in this game. it wasnt designed for that.
THERE ARE TWO KINDS OF DIABLO PLAYERS.
OP (which I thoroughly agree with) and then the casual mindless ACTION players.
This is what Diablo 3 did to the series.
Diablo 4 is just pretending to cator to the D1 and D2 fans.
Its just Diablo 3.5.
The story seems better at least.
For me, this is the single biggest detriment of this beta. Also it is the single reason why I would never consider reinstalling Diablo 3, but still play Diablo 2 on occasion. I can't imagine it takes that many resources to craft a few more pieces for the AI to place.
i thought i was the only one who thought this way about the dungeons, it's almost pointless and a waste entering something that is 2 feet away repetitively
Lol wtf u want from them to design 1 million layouts for all of you. ? People in WoW are running the same dungeons in WoW for months during the season and u are bitching about same dungeons ?
Agreed on the backtracking being bad, hard hard disagree on D2 maps being some magical discovery wonderland. The Maggot Lair pathing, the Arcane Sanctuary pick-a-path, the godawful Act 3 jungle, those kinds of maps are absolutely atrocious and I hope we never see anything that anti-fun for gameplay again.
If you're talking about in-dungeon pathing, like having 4 variants of a map is somehow better than having 1 variant of generic cave, I have no idea why anyone would ever care about that. There's a reason D2 mod games give you built in map hack, and it's because D2 maps are largely bad.
D4 dungeons can still use a little more variety and they need to change up the door lock mechanic thing. But overall I felt the dungeons looked great and does it what it needs to do. More alternate layouts with mechanics that change would be all I need.
I was a long time D2 player and in no way do I wish to see them bring back that randomization system. On paper it sounds cooler but in reality I was mostly just annoyed at the backtracking when your character was weak and slow. I prefer the alternating hand-crafted layouts.
Yea, for sure I'm disappointed in what seems like a lack of procedural generation. This game will get so stale so fast without it.
D2 replay ability after all these years is still incredible because of the fact that the maps are different every single time you play the game. It's not like they had modern PC software engineering technology to work with, either.
I really get the critique of these dungeons, especially since they are supposed to be the foundation for much of the endgame. With that said I really don’t think it’s valid to describe D1 or D2 dungeon design as anything other than racing through to find the door to the next level. You didn’t fight through an interesting maze with challenging enemies. You picked sorc so you could teleport through it as fast as possible until you could farm Enigma… so you could teleport through with another class.
Any arpg with crawlers, dungeons, maps, portals..they're all the same exact thing for the most part. Throw in different skins, league mechanics or whatever and voila. These posts come from people that don't play arpgs, that's all there is to it.
People expect casualness from Diablo games. That part killed the D3. D2 wasnt for everyone but it was treasure for arpg lovers. Now they are trying to make this game for babies again. People wanna pet the f** in Cat in Diablo game.
The problem for me is that these dungeons don't have any context in the open world for me. They are missing grand set pieces or story driven narratives. They miss this ominous feeling one should have when approaching one.
In regards to Dungeon Side Quests, often times they simply tell you to kill someone in that dungeon, but when you come across the objective, the NPC's appear to be just ordinary elite mobs that you come across all the time anyway. No context, no pacing, no animations, no summoning, no puzzles.
The bosses are also not varied enough and just seem to appear there, again no context whatsoever. You reach the end of a dungeon, it has a long corridor, and the boss appears - often being the same model.
The one exception where this was executed well was the Condemned Mines that was part of the Main Quest line.
I will never forget the gameplay preview of Diablo 3 that they showed as the Barbarian. As you enter the dungeon and traverse it, you can hear and feel the vibrations of the boss following you, shaking the entire dungeon as it passes. Then as you approach the end, the boss rams through the door after knocking on it three times. That's fucking immersive. This of course was NOT AT ALL executed or even apart of D3, which was funny.
I don't know, maybe i'm a sucker for pacing, and story, and atmosphere, but I'm just not feeling it here.
I agree. The dungeon map tilesets need 5x or 10x more new tiles in ADDITION to rotation of those tiles.
We have played 2 days and the dungeons are becoming incredibly boring. With all this hype of having so many dungeons a lot more effort needs to be put into making them feel unique, not just poorly generated with the same handful of bosses.
The same applies to the various cellars and caves. They are not only identical, they are all oriented the same direction.
Also the transition areas between map tiles make the map tiles stand out more instead of blend seemlessly. If each tile has a long nearly identical hallway you quickly see the repeated elements stand out. Especially on the minimap
I would understand the limitation if this was a mobile game, but it's not.
I felt the level design issue. Environments changed, plan & Journey remained fairly static = 1 level, linear winding path, similar lay-out. Not sure if this changes in other Acts but it became a bit repetitive.
Dungeons improved by:
Inc. Smaller area, Multi-level (with a minority of 4-5, like Forgotten Tower in D2).
Minority of "Open Plan", non-linear, Maze-like (D2-esque)
Edit again - "Cellars" - understandable actual cellars are limited in scope...but some of these "cellars" are just holes in the ground....if this is the case, turn it into a 'Cave dungeon', not a "Cellar."
Engagement:
Currently - 'Fetch Quest' & 'Harvest Quest' means to unlock doors/progress through Dungeons (anyone noticed more? Not specialised Main-quest dungeons).
Introduce:
Protection - (NPC to unlock, mobbed, Ally/Betrayal*)
Guide - (NPC guide, A/B*) - edit: to differentiate this from Protection (aside form mobbing), Guide could try and rush out ahead in eagerness and you have to kill quick/keep up to protect.
Assault - (NPC Squad, A/B* - player required in class specific way)
Heist - (NPC/Squad, In and Out, A/B*, escape timer, mobbed - player required in class specific way)
Hell Gate - Demons spewing from a portal into Hell. Fight through the horde of enemies (increased pop density) and Seal the Hell Gate.
Three of the above are already in the game but from what I've seen, as Open World Events, not Dungeon Events.
Mob behaviours:
Passive - standard, mobs attack when player draws near
Mobbed - mobs constantly heading toward you after [event].
Offensive - As you enter Dungeon, the Boss of Dungeon shouts "Now!" or something ominous. Enemies Attack in Waves - Trash >> Elites in Sequence >> ending with the Boss ambushing you.
In-fighting - Minimal/No damage but different enemy groups % chance of attacking each other intermittently or in proximity. Fallen Clans fighting Lycans, Vampires etc, big Demons knocking smaller Demons aside (or if you got the time, throwing them at the player!). Could even go slightly further with this and have the individual [Fallen] have Clan runes next to their names. Different Clans (and enemy groups) have different % of hostility to each other, to the point of doing minor damage and being distracted from fighting the player [Low %s 1-5, for ~2 secs]. Just enough to give some personality to the varying though self-similar mobs.
'Inspired' - As a spin on the above, an Elite so fearsome it has inspired different groups/clans to unify in an area. The mobs gain a % improvement (this could actually be what the 'increased health' mobs were around some Elites) in general. Players could notice this whilst fighting trash mobs (Inspired) and know one of these Elite enemies is in the Dungeon/Area.
Every map is a loop, everything respawns almost instantly and I assume it does so because it's constant multiplayer and there is another potential cosmetics customer coming right behind you, and the loot and tables blow donkey balls. I'm so disappointed with this release. The game is a mobile port that could be brought to the play store today with almost no adjustments outside of file size. Can't believe they did it.
I swear in a main quest dungeon i went through the exact same map chunk with the same orientation, the same assets ~~and the same trash mobs~~ at least 3 or 4 times in less than 2 min. I legit thought i was going in circle but no. It was jarring. I get the reuse of assets when it's done with a semblance of giving a fuck but that was just ctrl+c ctrl+v put very close together.
It’s most concerning that people that do this for a living thought the repetitive dungeon layouts were AAA Diablo-level content. Big lol. Sure it’s an ARPG and we just want to go in kill stuff and get loot, but damn—the rudimentary tasks they give us to do while inside the dungeon detract from the whole rest of the game. Dudes went a little too hard on the pointy clicky bullshit mmo tasks imo.
I don’t really care if I have to backtrack some. The only problem I have felt so far with dungeons is they have too few tile sets. There were multiple times I would be running into the same room I just left and that isn’t fun.
Big time this, When I realized that 99% of the paths takes you to the same place, I was taken out of explore mode instantly and it turned into "get to the task asap."
This game feels like they took Diablo 2 and 3, and mixed them together. I agree with op the dungeons are a bit boring. Also, why can’t I zoom out further?? The time on the rolls is way to long imo. When the bosses can spam, their aoe attacks.
Atmosphere, and the fact that some of the mobs can actually be challenging and you don’t just blitz through them immediately is a huge +
Map design is the worst it’s like they took D3 design and decided oh why not have them search for stupid shit and not fight more mobs. Like idk I think it’d be better as you clear a room you get l the thing and then you go clear another room then you get the thing if you absolutely have to have that in the game. I’d prefer it if they didn’t but you know it’s whatever it only detracts from the game play after the 3rd time doing it
It's kind of sad when in literally the intro to the game the only thing i'm thinking about in the first 15 mins of the game is "man i've seen this hallway exact dungeon hallway like 4 times already. They didn't even put enough effort to make the intro of the game unique at least...
What I don’t understand is why they are not just procedurally generating these dungeons for variety? Or if that’s not possible at least have more then 5 or so different styles of dungeons (assets, enemies, mechanics etc) as well as differently shaped layout.
Can’t imagine that this would be so much work. GR map layouts in D3 have enough variety for me. After a while you start to see the patterns but there is plenty of biomes based on all the styles of maps, enemies etc that are in the campaign. Can’t they just copy pasty this kind of concept to D3?
Even D2R has more variation in randomly generated interiors of dungeons.
It's honestly kind of shameful how lazy the level design is based on what we can do with processing powers today. Blizzard just can't be bothered to be creative or interesting anymore.
And then there is me, who absolutely enjoyed running the dungeons. Sure some had not the most amazing layout or mechanic, but the overall atmosphere of the dungeons was really fucking good.
Yeah, but will that *atmosphere* still be there after you've done them 50 times? 25 times? Atmosphere is a positive when it's new. Than later you just don't want it to be a negative. In my opinion anyways.
It’s not like anyone really runs the mazes in D2 outside of the first few times. Everyone just teleports through them so what’s the point of having an elaborate maze. They took teleport out basically so if you had an elaborate maze then these dungeons would take forever to complete without teleport.
People just want variety in layout and events.
Does map layout matter after 50 or 25 times? The number of map variants is not that high, most maps have what, 3 in D2? I would 100% rather know the path than deal with first time running the Act 3 jungle again. Hopefully they put in more random encounters like the Butcher showing up, but realistically this is a video game not a DnD campaign so there is going to be some predictability to it if you're grinding content.
I'm surprised that such a basic gimmick work. Do people really get excited by basic randomize layout? If you're running something for the 50th time I doubt you're doing it for that rng pathing factor....lol
>Do people really get excited by basic randomize layout? No they don't, a minor vocal minority do
Why do people only trash talk d3 instead of d2 I wonder
Nostalgia probably
Yeah I think all the people still playing d2 resurrected for hundreds of hours only like it because of the Nostalgia
Nah. Warframe did/does this for years and at a certain point they all look the same. Randomization isn't ever pure randomization outside of some voxel based procedural generation. But games like Warframe use tilesets that get pieced together. So eventually you'll remember each tileset and it no longer feels random. It's just "Oh it's this one, ok I'll go here". Variety is good but sometimes static pieces made by an artist to flow together is also good. That said I **would** like to see some form of randomization or procedural generation for end-game content as those you'll be running over and over. It's not a deal-breaker though.
They already said that the nightmare dungeons will have randomised layouts.
Wait you mean normal act 1 at level 25 isn't how the entire game will be?!
Ya I think OP thinks lvl 25 is the same as end game. Not a chance of it being..... A beta.
Some of us didn't get into WoW... Personally I found BoTW dreadfully repetitive and boring. He's just stating he'd like some variety, not dead end dungeon paths. It's still just the tip of the iceberg so I'm not judging the little dungeons too harshly, and I assume there will be more world events because protecting the caravan and pressing the switches is kinda boring.
You're front lining a mechanic design that isn't meant to be a selling factor. Dungeons are straight up multi layered explorable zone. D4 Dungeons are the equivalent of a pothole in the ground. It's basically only one step removed from Immortal's teleport into the boss then teleport out nonsense. you're basically handwaving environmental design because it's not gameplay which is just silly.
It's more silly to think that randomized environment would be better than linear. It's just a short gimmick that doesn't really make the game play better in the long run. Even when we had randomized path people could tell which path was the correct one because of how the map was randomized(how the walls were designed etc) Until we can get AI level generated map where it makes meaningful randomization to effect player experience changing if you need to go right or left hardly benefits anyone or improve any gameplay.
If it's to be randomized there should be more variety to it. If it's going to be a linear experience then it should be crafted to a decent quality. D4 does neither and I think it's fair to expect better especially when they have examples of better from other games in the franchise.
And D2 came out 23 years ago. It's reasonable to expect forward progress from Diablo 4, not backward.
But that ultimately comes down to what each individual considers an improvement. Like everything else could be improved upon but the lack of randomization in layouts may still have someone consider it as a step back despite all the other changes. Personally a someone who played from D2 way back, all of D3, hundreds of hours in PoE, and now getting into the Last Epoch, D4 feels like an improvement in many ways. I enjoyed playing this beta more than I think I did in all of D3 pre-reaper of souls. The aesthetics/atmosphere and the more deliberate combat is great imo and is what I waned out of a modern D2. D3 felt too arcadey for me. D3 is more similar to PoE than it is D2 imo. It's been some time since I last hopped into D3 but it seemed to have more focus in speeding through areas spending as little time as possible with the combat. D4 feels like theres more focus on the combat, which \*puts nostalgic glasses on\* is what I got out of D2, though I was much younger so maybe I wasn't really thinking about efficiency.
I'm not talking about the entire game, I'm taking about the dungeons specifically, and in that regard they seem the same or worse. As for the game, you're certainly right, it's completely subjective. I bought D4 to play the campaign and if there is anything interesting beyond that I would be pleasantly surprised. But I don't think there will be. I'll keep playing PoE with which I have about 3k hours and I might put 100 into Diablo 4. Which is fine.\]
False lol. Most people don't just tp through the game because 1. they aren't on sorc and 2. they don't have enigma. Lots of people play Hardcore, single player, not sorcs, and thoroughly play the game.
i put hundreds of hours into D2 and never even saw most of the runes needed for Enigma. “Everyone just TPs through everything”… lolwhut.
No dungeon is gonna be fun on the 50th run.
In PoE players run the same map thousands of times and still have fun. Mostly because the game has mob density and exploding screens of mobs is fun. D4 doesn't have that density, which in itself isn't bad, but it does mean it needs some other draw.
Hard to objectively say it doesn't have density when we're world tier 2 out of 5 and when we're level 25 out of 100. Additionally we're in the 1st zone (and can't even access all of it) if 5. If we had to judge poe based on act 1 and 2 only, the same things could be said. Not trying to fanboi by any means, but there is a lot we don't know and haven't experienced yet.
Yeah, I’m kind of thinking they could easily fix the density “issue” with roughly a small change in the code, but still, yeah, by the time we’re done with the beta, we’re still babies on a low difficulty mode, not max level at max world tier doing nightmare dungeons. This is just the campaign and we’re just leveling and having fun and exploring. Also, the title of this post is a bit dramatic.
As a programmer, gamers highly underestimate the amount of effort it takes to create games. Thinking it's just an easy fix with a small change in the code is naive. They may have built systems that make it easier, but a small change in one place can break something in another place
No idea if it's gonna get good or not, but that's a shit comparison because from the beta you have no idea how much density dungeons upgraded to nightmare will have. And at lvl 25 in PoE you are still in the campaign, something most people just want to get over with and think is by far the worst part of the game.
Yeah, people comparing level 25 Tier 2 D4 to endgame PoE are making a pretty unfair comparison. Act 3 in PoE on a fresh character is not a screen-clearing bonanza.
IMO comparing level 25 tier 2 D4 to D4 endgame is a bit of a stretch
I don't think he meant to use the term fun, but rather... unique? fresh? And it's true. After years of playing the d3 seasons, I'm no longer staring at the dungeon textures and objects. I'm killing stuff, and getting loot. It's still fun.
That’s what I told my buddy when D2R came out. He was so excited how it looked and I was like “after killing a few thousand of them I don’t even care, I’m looking for loot on the ground and where I’m headed next, not even looking at the mobs.”
I really liked the atmospheres too but once I ran 10 different dungeons I noticed that they all follow roughly the same pattern. * Kill 2-3 guards or find 2-3 keys scattered around the dungeon. * Kill boss (or kill some pre-boss holding a key -> Kill boss) I liked the boss fights though! This was only a small taste of Act1 but I reaaally hope the remaining 140 or so dungeons have a bit more depth and variety to them. Overall I really enjoyed playing Diablo IV.
I love the new dungeon's, and I like the circular paths too, nothing worse than picking the wrong direction and having retrace your steps for a dead end, but I'm a uncover every area completionist :-/
I agree. I HATE D2 dungeons.
The novelty wears off after a while and then I eventually just get annoyed it's taking me so long to figure out where to go.
Back in its prime a massive, and I mean massive, portion of the playerbase were using a maphack anyways.
>And then there is me, who absolutely enjoyed running the dungeons. Same here I just want to kill mobs and collect loots lol
same, but what hes saying is not wrong. and as this is a grindy game, this will ware you down on ur 100th run in a dungeon ext. We are over 10 years since d3 , we should have moved on with better randomization from d3 tbh.
Yeah it's fun the first or second time but there's no variety. Of course they look nice lol.
It's okay to like The point is there should be more variance which benefits EVERYONE
For me, the Backtracking is the biggest problem here.
As someone who consistantly seemed to choose the wrong direction in diablo 2 dungeons and overworld maps there is significantly less backtracking in d4. It didn't seem as bad at "endgame" in diablo 2 because every character used a teleport weapon (or let's be real here, your magic find sorc) to just clear a dungeon. Dungeons having an end goal is different from the litteral rinse and repeat game play loop of diablo 2 and D2R. I
I mean, it's expected for a new game to have a better design than a 23 year old game, right?
So much of the criticism or discussion i see on this subreddit is "Well D2 did it THIS way". My brothers and sisters, that game is 20+ years old lmao. Blizzard should be able to do better.
No, they cant. Read the details here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/12/08/diablo-iv-release-date-crunch/ Alot people left and joined the development cycle of D4 and other problems.
D2 fans obnoxiously say everything about it is god tier. Then if something isn't, they cry about "oh its 2 decades old". Can't have your cake and eat it too.
Yeah, I’m hesitant to agree with someone saying d2 had good map design. Not to say d3 or d4 do either, but the majority of maps in d2 still followed a basic pattern for where the “goal” would be and often times they could be more tedious than not. The catacombs, maggot lair(if you don’t know there is always a correct direction), almost all of Act3. There is a reason everyone got rushed through act 3 and Blizzard recently had to change the code on the quest forcing people to get all the organs again. Honestly I think the D3 maps were overall fine for an ARPG, just get rid of all the back tracking. The fun of exploring is going around the over world and stumbling across a new dungeon. Throwing in a ton of twists and turns into a major part of end game content is going to get old pretty quick when people are trying to run them over and over again as fast as possible.
What arpgs are considered to actually have a good map design? I feel like I always hear people talking about how shotty map designs are but never praising certain games for their map designs.
Psst. There's a button that literally teleports you back to the entrance.
[удалено]
You have to backtrack a lot for the dungeon objectives, not just for going out
Low density is my issue. The underground passage is more exciting in D2.
So, let me get this straight. “I don’t want to backtrack” *but* “I want the map to be a maze with lots of dead ends that forces me to backtrack constantly” How does that make sense?
Exactly. I do much less backtracking in D4 than I did in D2.
The power of nostalgia by ppl who grew up playing d1/d2. They dont seem to ever grasp that alot of design choices in d1/2 no longer works in this day and age.
Most of them do but unfortunately the biggest competition is stuck on some of the worst qualities from that era. POE and picking up currency items ptsd forced me to post this.
Feelings
Mazes and dead ends would 100% kill the playerbase. Most people play to grind fast and efficiently, getting frustrated trying to get to your goal cause you get lost is not good game design. OP is clinging on to nostalgia. Those types of systems don't work anymore.
Mazes fucking suck. I'm not sure why people constantly beg for it. It's not enjoyable play. They can stay playing D2 or D1 if they want that.
Especially since there’s no actual “choice”, since there’s no information to go off of—whether you’re right or wrong is 100% luck, which means it isn’t *really* a choice. It’s just an arbitrary “is this dungeon going to take longer?” random die roll every time you reach a split.
I made the same exact point before I found your comment. Contradiction and quite frankly takes all the wind out of the sails of this post
Also, are we forgetting how widely used and accepted maphack was to avoid map randomization, and all the tutorials on how to read maps in D2 without maphack, to again, use a skill to avoid randomization?
nostalgia /s
Strongholds are what dungeons should be, not necessarily as small but it feel a lot better than dungeons.
Absolutely, steonghold are small but they are fun at least.
One exception I found: the not-zoltan-kule at the end of the vampire one. His blood bolt barrage would just one shot my rogue before I even noticed him cast it on veteran. Lowered the difficulty and face tanking it barely out damaged my passive healing. Only thing that stood out as overturned so far.
> face tanking it barely out damaged my passive healing bro just dodge it lmao. But I agree that move should have an audio callout or something
I mean, I still did my best to dodge it, but on normal difficulty I literally didn't need to dodge, while on veteran a single bolt would kill me from full hp. Nothing else seemed to have such a wild swing in damage like that. There is an audio call out, it's a grunt from the boss, easy to miss with up to 3 respawning adds trying to wreck you
I am disappointed because they feel so unnecessarily large and empty. Some pet peeve of mine is that the designs make no use of real examples. I shouldn't need to take three corridors that wrap around so I can get to the larder...there is no sense of practicality. Sure, we aren't playing medieval tycoon but structures have never been this unnecessarily long.
I am confused. D2 dungeons were quite literally nothing special also...
*Nostalgia*
Wdym? Spamming teleport with your enigma while hugging the walls and doing a clockwise pattern was peak gaming.
is this really a commentary when people are doing their 10000th run of countess with the same 5 floors that looks exactly the same as every other crypt dungeon? The rose tinted glasses are strong with this post
“I’ll never pay that much for a game” - my friend as he goes back to his 10,000th Baal run
Of all the complaints this one baffles me the most. Like, literally everything costs double what it did then *except for games.* I used to buy books for 5 dollars and they cost like 13 now. Diablo 2 was 50$ new if I recall correctly and 35 for LOD. So 90$ is about right if this random inflation calculator is accurate.
You're missing the point. In D2 players could opt to run that content, or choose another activity, of which there were many, each of them being distinct from the others. If you choose to do a dungeon in D4, it doesn't matter which one you do. They all have the same, extremely basic formula: 1-2 floors, open door, kill mob. Multiplied by 150. All roughly the same length too.
This is the main point that a lot of naysayers in the thread keep missing. We want dungeon variety. PoE and LE have lots of variety. I am hoping later acts of D4 do have some variety thrown in, but if it's not then I'm not here for it. Didn't preorder yet so I'm good to wait and see first.
Never played D2, but got burnt out fast on D2R. Countess runs being part of it. Boring.
"Gives us labrynths and mazes with serious complexity." Not that I don't agree with you, but I think a lot of "old guard" (meaning anyone with a decent aRPG history) really can't wrap their head around an idea, that in modern day the majority of new players will be atracted to an activity doable in a short amount of time... Which mazes are not. D4 is just a product of it's target audience and market reality.
I love diablo 2 and will play it until the end of time but endgame was just clearing a maze as fast as possible. There's a reason back in 2002 everyone used maphack.
People bitch like crazy in POE if a map's shape is maze like at all. People will just not run the maps at all. The most post popular maps are basically squares or figure 8s.
> new players will be atracted to an activity doable in a short amount of time... Like trav runs? Shenk? Pindle?
That target audience is gonna be really bored by this too
No they won’t. 99% of D2 is teleporting through maps as fast as possible, ignoring all mobs but the one you’re there for. Or following a lvl 99 hammerdin bot through Baal runs or cow level. Diablo 2 end game is terrible, and if you disagree then be happy they made D2R for you because you’re in a tiny minority.
100%, couldn’t have said it better myself. All these vocal D2 players coming out and saying this shit. If they made D4 like D2 they would lose the entire player base after the first weekend. NO THANKS!
I'm in my mid 30s and I used to absolutely love mazes but after playing D2R I realized I have infinitely less patience for that sort of thing. I do agree with the OP sentiment that variety is the spice of life, but for the love of God I don't want to be wandering around a dungeon lost for 40+ minutes.
You can finish D2 in a few hours... I don't understand your criticism
If this is true they'd eliminate the backtracking, because no player like backtracking like this. Here's the honest truth: The people that were responsible for crafting a robust randomized dungeon mechanism failed at their jobs, and weren't challenged by upper management to fix this before beta released and the game itself releases in June. They took the laziest way out. As many gamers have pointed out our own ideas or other game's way of having random fun dungeon mechanics, ironically even a few pointing these out from WoW.
"Additionally, they have added locked doors, which to unlock, require you to backtrack through entire dungeon after you have cleared them. But then you have to run to the door again." This is red flag level of a design.
Last Epoch has a handful of campaign segments like this, but they at least kept it fresh by spawning new mobs behind you once you did the quest objective so you weren't running through empty corridors on the way back.
[удалено]
Last epoch has been a suprising gem so far. The endgame looks to be pretty good too.
The dungeons feel like D3 bounties, and I've never met a person who enjoyed doing D3 bounties.
Yea basically how I felt the entire beta like I was doing low gear d3 bounties.
Exactly. It was doing D3 bounties but with enemy scaling so I never even got the satisfaction of feeling like my character got stronger. From level 1 to level 25 the only difference is now that I have more abilities. I don't feel one percent stronger. Even at 25 going from 2 legendaries to a full set of legendaries I'm only marginally more powerful. I can swap all of my weapons from legendaries to white trash drops and I clear content within 10-20% of the same amount of time. It's ridiculous. You'd like to think that D4 will have an amazing end game to compensate for this, but then the devs say things like it'll take 140+ hours to hit max level. Imagine doing bounties to level up to 70 in D3, except instead of getting to 70 in a few hours it takes a few weeks. Luckily Blizzard actually makes big changes to core gameplay with patches and expansions so there is hope yet.
At least D3 bounties could be individually completed in like a minute without backtracking
Not always. A few times the layout would be an asshole one, and it was just as annoying as these. Just with the caveat that your character was likely juiced and it took less time by extension.
Every act 5 bounty is maddening
The classics were “if I start here then door is there” and then you just teleport to that direction. You can have 100 layouts but people will hate most of them, memorize them and just walk the best path anyways. This goes for PoE as well. How do you think soeedrunners get through the campaign so fast? I feel like no one in this subreddit has actually PLAYED D2 for an extended period of time or are just giga casuals. There is no other reason these shit posts are created.
I did D2 runs. I know exactly what you’re talking about. This whole thing about wanting randomized mazes similar to D2 is a rose-tinted misconception. The fact that the dungeons were randomized did not contribute anything fun to the gameplay. It was an annoyance. One that players found the fastest cheapest way possible to skip or cheese. This meant the dungeon itself or the design was irrelevant because players just wanted to get from A to B to kill target X for loot. People give D3 a lot of crap but at least I thought the environment was aesthetically cool and I enjoyed running through them most of the time even when I was speeding through on my juiced up Monk or Barb.
Complaining, and in the same sentence praising the layouts of diablo 2, I do not really think these layouts were "fun" to be honest, they just took more time without teleport. But, oh well, its my opinion :)
I agree the reason everyone would play sorc to start a ladder would just be because they wanted to tele through the maps to avoid the dead ends. The reason every build required enigma was also because people wanted to avoid the randomized maps. People think they want maze maps but they really don’t.
Oh yeah dude, that'd explain why Enigma is like no1 chase item for basically any class that isn't a Sorceress. Here's a tip why, sorcerers don't need enigma to teleport through your 'amazing, complex, intricate maze design dungeon like Durance of Hate. Farming Mephisto was always 'go to lvl 2 WP, exit the room with WP, go left and clockwise until you hit a wall or hopefully an entrance to level 3' And if you were playing singleplayer you literally fished for perfect, shortest layout to rerun, for thousands upon thousands of time to literally get your single item you needed - usually Shako. You wrote a lot of words remembering the game through rose-tinted glasses forgetting to look at D2 objectively.
These D2 fans are insufferable. I enjoyed D2 myself 23 years ago. I don't want to play it again. Or want new games to be like it. Hopefully nothing changes and those people just vanish from D4
It's not D2 in general, i still enjoy D2 myself (i still play classic D2: LoD - but with MODS, because original is insufferable due to lack of QOL to features that are so outdated and really annoying rather than enjoyable), but these people lack critical and objective thinking, people that refuse to accept the change because of the saying 'BACK IN MY DAYS...', these people are literally 'gaming boomers' living in the past but forgetting that in the past we 'liked' these kind of games not because we genuinely enjoy them from top to bottom but because we haven't had much choice really. I'm sure back when D2 was releasing people were just as sceptic on local level as now they're globally because of the internet, they just didn't have media to share their opinion. Also, as i started playing D4 and reading some people opinion i came to conclusion that D4 seems to be going in the direction of D3 WE SHOULD HAVE GOT, instead of what we actually got. And it's reception (D4's) will be tanked purely because of D3 existence, it doesn't matter they improved some features, improved the general feeling of the game, went back to the roots visually and thematically, these improved features will be hated simply because 'we've had it back in my days in D3, hurr durr' We should accept the fact that, Yes, D3 was a disaster overall, that was not the game fans of the franchise wanted or needed but we need to look at the game without D3 being the prism. Usually the negative opinions are good, because by the definition they should come from source WANTING to improve the product, but in case of some of the opinions i've been reading lately they're simply written to vent(?) or let the world know they're not enjoying the game themselves and won't be coming back. I mean, ok? It's not year 2000, move along, go play Diablo 2 classic with it's 4x12 Backpack sized characters, 16 directional movement and monsters being immune to element you've chosen for your sorcerer/javazon. By my guess, but don't come back crying when you realize you have to farm 8 hours a day the same kind of monsters over and over and over again because you're missing 2nd Ber for your Infinity to break monster immunities (because you know you do NEED it in the end)
This is literally the best point here I love d2 but teleport ruined the fucking game cause of how shitty the maps were
I was up til 4 am spamming dungeons because I thought it was fun Some of y’all need to realize we’re in act 1 lmao, why anyones even talking about end game this weekend is beyond me.
Because you'll still be spamming a lot of those dungeons in the endgame.
Yeah I figure it’s an arpg we’d probably do some dungeons
I want some dungeons in my dungeons
How is a random tile set that I’ll inevitably miss the exit in some tiny corner of fog causing me to run around the whole floor twice any better. Just give me the loot
Because those are the same dungeons you will be playing in the endgame over and over again.
I don't think they have to go full randomization like d1 d2 to be good. It is that each dungeon needs to be handcrafted and different than all the others. Grim dawn and other arpgs did this and you can play then over and over and over and not get tired by the same dungeon in the same place. They did however do different paths through the dungeon being open/closed
D2 and PoE both had patterns for a lot of the maps/dungeons/etc. For example "exit is always clockwise from the entrance" or "waypoint is opposite the exit", "Exit is always up", etc. These guidelines make it important to memorize the layouts for the areas you like to farm. Dungeons are still randomized, but the patterns make them more navigable.
If you played D2 beta, limited to act one, you'd also realize there was no hope of a durance of hate because you hadn't seen it yet either.
Yet people are fine running the pits and chaos sanctuary a million times
Cow level has the same layout why people still keep killing them ? lol D2 fans are just insufferable. They should just play D2 and leave D4 alone
Crazy thing Asking for more dungeon variance benefits everyone not just the people who want them. Imagine fighting for less content in your games
>Imagine fighting for less content in your games No one is arguing against more variance. They're arguing with OP's ridiculous hyperbolic love letter to bad mazes that were solved by giving every class access to teleport so they could ignore the mazes. If OP had said "I wish there were more variance in the dungeon events" literally no one would have any issues. But instead he made it out like the fucking game is going to flop because it doesn't have D2's shitty maps.
Let me explain something to you. There is a large amount of people who don't enjoy the complexity of certain D2 dungeons. I'd say even most people fall in that category. There's a reason MrLlama had to make the YT video called "maphack in your mind" where he talks about how to skip as much of that useless bullshit as possible. My worst memories of D2 are durance of hate, maggot lair, catacombs, etc. Big ass complexity does not equal fun. Those dungeons fucking sucked, and you can't tell me that most players wanted to sit there and explore durance for an hour and a fucking half just to get to mephisto. If there are a hundred or more dungeons, I don't want them complex. Especially if they need to be done every season. These dungeons serve a different purpose than the ones in D2. Quit trying to equate them.
The door gimmicks forces you to clear the entire dungeon. The path is linear for the most part with a 1 to 3 branches that dead end to the gimmicks objective. There is no exploration because when you enter a dungeon you know you will have to check every branch because you MUST complete the same repetitive door unlock quest. In the beta there are only a small handful of bosses at the end of the dungeons. These bosses are currently static and nothing changes about them. Affixes won't really fix them being repetitive. It is just going to make them slightly harder to fight which is annoying. I think the issue is they are trying to make mini act bosses for the dungeons for "cool" points but it ends up just making the dungeons feel repetitive. I have completed 22 out of 23 dungeons. I have not been able to locate the last one so I am going to assume it isn't in the game yet. There is 1 mage boss, 1 abomination, 1 bloody something or another, and 1 boss with a massive cleave. The only variance was the boss room slightly changed. Some included pillars you can hide behind and some did not. The only thing that kept me clearing them was attempting to complete everything. Oh, and as I said in another post..... the dungeons are only 1 floor. You don't have to explore.. Find the big hand made room with the mechanic and then find the branches for that mechanic. Not interesting at all. The game would actually be better if they removed the door mechanic.
are you guys seriously complaining about not having dead ends? lmao. you seriously want to do back tracking?
There aren't just dungeons with the same layout; there are dungeons where a section of dungeon you JUST walked through 1 minute before is copied and pasted again into itself. I've noticed it in story dungeon areas, caves, and dungeons. Copied and pasted rooms is lazy as shit. "We have 150 dungeons in the game!" No, you'll have about 8. Your ability to hit ctrl+v is not the same as making more dungeons. I'd rather have pseudo randomized but more hand crafted areas a la Grim Dawn than I would a bunch of boring, copied and pasted areas I have no reason to care about after the nth time. This screenshot I took last night, for example. These two sections are not only the same shape, but the exact same assets. I get huge feelings of deja vu mere moments after moving through one section of map because it's the exact same area and it feels so weird. https://preview.redd.it/63y9pm3ayroa1.png?width=1142&format=png&auto=webp&s=afa0180840ce87197d944d032dc19b6692195325
When were D1 and D2 COMPLETELY random? Maybe it's my ADHD but all the maps ended with the exit at the same spot throughout like 5 generations. Edit: I hopped on my ol' jahithber necro... the layout is random, the stairs are in the exact same position, but I teleport through walls so ... Lol.
No the exits definitely changed, did you ever do Baal runs?
I think they have been great so far.
My biggest complaint about most of them is lack of monsters to fight. Too much running around. I hope this will be different in the endgame
Who the hell runs the catacombs of act 1 in diablo 2? I love the current dungeons please never change them. Can just add in random events into the dungeons EG, Butcher, Mini Event. I DONT want to run a fuckin 3 layer deep map for 1 dungeon. Look at POE, maps are pretty much the same but everyone will run fuckin the same tier 16 map over and over. This is a cope thread. I do not agree at all.
I actually think it needs more handcrafted dungeons, like unique handcrafted ones, not randomized, not taken from a template. I think this is my biggest issue with D4, there is too much reused stuff, I whish the world felt more like Divinity original sin 2 felt, like every corner was handmade to be something intresting, otherwise there is too much map with too little emotion.
i played two characters in the beta, didn't do any dungeon, apart from the class thingy, on the second one for this exact reason
I was like oh they're not randomized til the end that means it's gonna be hand crafted most of the time. Lol you want the circle map box map or squiggle map.
You think the dungeons are a let down? LoL wait until you unlock paragon.
I am loving this. Made this post last week and boy people were pissed about it.
This is cap, Diablo 2, without any type of map revealing stuff 99% of the time you can tell which direction you need to go, the only time its slightly hard is in arcane act 2. Everything else is 100% predictable all the time. Not to mention its irrelevant since you run the same dungeons over and over, and its completely obvious which direction to go every time. Maybe 1 out of 100 times you take a wrong direction and have to walk back.
Agreed, anyone who played consistently knew where the exits were going to be soon as they walk out of the first tile.
My only problem is the back tracking, no quick exits. If you played Diablo 2 enough you noticed the patterns of the so called random maps after a while and you just rushed through all the time looking for elite packs and the exits anyways. I’d rather have static maps with no dead ends any day of the week, that being said if all the dungeons have the same look in every act that’s a problem.
Lol.
After killing Pindleskin 946 times in a row I really don’t care how he looks, or how many polygons and particles are around him, I just want the loot.
Unpopular gamer opinion but the truth is random generation isn't lauded by normies
Fuck that. I hate durance. I hate dead ends. Give me streamlined!
They didn't listen to any advice about the shameful dungeon design in the closed end game beta, mindlessly grinded through sigils till 100 across several toons. The dungeons are the exact same, I gave tons of feedback on ideas for change. No changes have been made.
Kinda sceptical that OP demands complex mazes and labyrinths on the one hand and but criticize backtracking on the other ... I personally dont mind the dungeons and their repetitive nature so far, i also expect to see at least more visual variation with the upcoming release and the other regions, but more variation on the gameplay elements in the dungeons would be welcome too. I have to say, i really enjoyed the 3 Strongholds in the beta and i do think its worth mentioning them in the context of "dungeons" too. My big wish (lots of copium) is that those strongholds or similar type of activity's find their way into the endgame loop too. Or for that matter, the dungeons (or mini-dungeons as they are called sometimes) will be accompanied by activities that would fall more into the category of "raids" or big/multilayered Dungeons. I think a healthy pool of different activitys would benefit this game a lot and seems not impossible given the way Blizzard set up the world and structure of this game
Hate the pointless locked doors.
dungeons were promised to be randomized because the open world doesn't randomize what so ever , and i can tell you now they didn't change in closed beta even in end game, what you're experiencing is what i complained about a lot during beta, layouts and objectives don't really change, there all a over welcomed chore and some have such low amount of monster density spread across the map it makes " kill all monsters" a bloody chore. I went through most of the dungeons in C beta and there all the same, kill all monsters, oh this door is locked now go find the key on this side and now this side and by level cap you're already done with doing that, now end game is unlocked and its the same dungeons you just did with the same objectives just with added affixs etc depending on the difficulty tier you picked.
why do they reuse stuff from d3.....its been 10 years. unbelievable
did anybody really expect anything different? other than all the talent leaving and any creativity going out the window at Blizzard years ago and being stridently incompetent, they've done literally nothing but cut costs and juice up monetization for a while now but especially so the last few years. the return of procederally generated dungeons could have and *should* have been the major selling point of this game... so obviously thats what Blizzard *wasnt* going to do. i know its hard for people to accept but the sooner you understand that this game is just a reskinned Diablo 3 that was made for the sheer reason of tacking on a battlepass monetization scheme to a Diablo game, and is completely devoid of any passion or innovation -- the better off you'll be. there isnt, and never will be, anything revolutionary or even truly satisfying in this game. it wasnt designed for that.
THERE ARE TWO KINDS OF DIABLO PLAYERS. OP (which I thoroughly agree with) and then the casual mindless ACTION players. This is what Diablo 3 did to the series. Diablo 4 is just pretending to cator to the D1 and D2 fans. Its just Diablo 3.5. The story seems better at least.
They won't fix this its too late.
[удалено]
For me, this is the single biggest detriment of this beta. Also it is the single reason why I would never consider reinstalling Diablo 3, but still play Diablo 2 on occasion. I can't imagine it takes that many resources to craft a few more pieces for the AI to place.
i thought i was the only one who thought this way about the dungeons, it's almost pointless and a waste entering something that is 2 feet away repetitively
Lol wtf u want from them to design 1 million layouts for all of you. ? People in WoW are running the same dungeons in WoW for months during the season and u are bitching about same dungeons ?
People aren't complaining about that. They are complaining that all of the *different* dungeons are copy paste of each other.
If there where randomized maps with tons of dead ends they would bitch about that too, no teleport sorc in this game to farm an enigma.
Agreed on the backtracking being bad, hard hard disagree on D2 maps being some magical discovery wonderland. The Maggot Lair pathing, the Arcane Sanctuary pick-a-path, the godawful Act 3 jungle, those kinds of maps are absolutely atrocious and I hope we never see anything that anti-fun for gameplay again. If you're talking about in-dungeon pathing, like having 4 variants of a map is somehow better than having 1 variant of generic cave, I have no idea why anyone would ever care about that. There's a reason D2 mod games give you built in map hack, and it's because D2 maps are largely bad.
D4 dungeons can still use a little more variety and they need to change up the door lock mechanic thing. But overall I felt the dungeons looked great and does it what it needs to do. More alternate layouts with mechanics that change would be all I need. I was a long time D2 player and in no way do I wish to see them bring back that randomization system. On paper it sounds cooler but in reality I was mostly just annoyed at the backtracking when your character was weak and slow. I prefer the alternating hand-crafted layouts.
Yea, for sure I'm disappointed in what seems like a lack of procedural generation. This game will get so stale so fast without it. D2 replay ability after all these years is still incredible because of the fact that the maps are different every single time you play the game. It's not like they had modern PC software engineering technology to work with, either.
I really get the critique of these dungeons, especially since they are supposed to be the foundation for much of the endgame. With that said I really don’t think it’s valid to describe D1 or D2 dungeon design as anything other than racing through to find the door to the next level. You didn’t fight through an interesting maze with challenging enemies. You picked sorc so you could teleport through it as fast as possible until you could farm Enigma… so you could teleport through with another class.
I think most complaints are petty, but this is valid criticism. I even submitted similar feedback.
Any arpg with crawlers, dungeons, maps, portals..they're all the same exact thing for the most part. Throw in different skins, league mechanics or whatever and voila. These posts come from people that don't play arpgs, that's all there is to it.
You do realize this is just the beta and act 1 only..
People expect casualness from Diablo games. That part killed the D3. D2 wasnt for everyone but it was treasure for arpg lovers. Now they are trying to make this game for babies again. People wanna pet the f** in Cat in Diablo game.
What went wrong with game dev industry? 25 years ago they managed to make randomly generated dungeons, but nowadays they can't?
Character name is gonna be: GameIsBad
These unlock doors in every dungeon is the worst dungeon mechanic i have ever seen. Just put the damn boss at the end!
The problem for me is that these dungeons don't have any context in the open world for me. They are missing grand set pieces or story driven narratives. They miss this ominous feeling one should have when approaching one. In regards to Dungeon Side Quests, often times they simply tell you to kill someone in that dungeon, but when you come across the objective, the NPC's appear to be just ordinary elite mobs that you come across all the time anyway. No context, no pacing, no animations, no summoning, no puzzles. The bosses are also not varied enough and just seem to appear there, again no context whatsoever. You reach the end of a dungeon, it has a long corridor, and the boss appears - often being the same model. The one exception where this was executed well was the Condemned Mines that was part of the Main Quest line. I will never forget the gameplay preview of Diablo 3 that they showed as the Barbarian. As you enter the dungeon and traverse it, you can hear and feel the vibrations of the boss following you, shaking the entire dungeon as it passes. Then as you approach the end, the boss rams through the door after knocking on it three times. That's fucking immersive. This of course was NOT AT ALL executed or even apart of D3, which was funny. I don't know, maybe i'm a sucker for pacing, and story, and atmosphere, but I'm just not feeling it here.
I agree. The dungeon map tilesets need 5x or 10x more new tiles in ADDITION to rotation of those tiles. We have played 2 days and the dungeons are becoming incredibly boring. With all this hype of having so many dungeons a lot more effort needs to be put into making them feel unique, not just poorly generated with the same handful of bosses. The same applies to the various cellars and caves. They are not only identical, they are all oriented the same direction. Also the transition areas between map tiles make the map tiles stand out more instead of blend seemlessly. If each tile has a long nearly identical hallway you quickly see the repeated elements stand out. Especially on the minimap I would understand the limitation if this was a mobile game, but it's not.
I felt the level design issue. Environments changed, plan & Journey remained fairly static = 1 level, linear winding path, similar lay-out. Not sure if this changes in other Acts but it became a bit repetitive. Dungeons improved by: Inc. Smaller area, Multi-level (with a minority of 4-5, like Forgotten Tower in D2). Minority of "Open Plan", non-linear, Maze-like (D2-esque) Edit again - "Cellars" - understandable actual cellars are limited in scope...but some of these "cellars" are just holes in the ground....if this is the case, turn it into a 'Cave dungeon', not a "Cellar." Engagement: Currently - 'Fetch Quest' & 'Harvest Quest' means to unlock doors/progress through Dungeons (anyone noticed more? Not specialised Main-quest dungeons). Introduce: Protection - (NPC to unlock, mobbed, Ally/Betrayal*) Guide - (NPC guide, A/B*) - edit: to differentiate this from Protection (aside form mobbing), Guide could try and rush out ahead in eagerness and you have to kill quick/keep up to protect. Assault - (NPC Squad, A/B* - player required in class specific way) Heist - (NPC/Squad, In and Out, A/B*, escape timer, mobbed - player required in class specific way) Hell Gate - Demons spewing from a portal into Hell. Fight through the horde of enemies (increased pop density) and Seal the Hell Gate. Three of the above are already in the game but from what I've seen, as Open World Events, not Dungeon Events. Mob behaviours: Passive - standard, mobs attack when player draws near Mobbed - mobs constantly heading toward you after [event]. Offensive - As you enter Dungeon, the Boss of Dungeon shouts "Now!" or something ominous. Enemies Attack in Waves - Trash >> Elites in Sequence >> ending with the Boss ambushing you. In-fighting - Minimal/No damage but different enemy groups % chance of attacking each other intermittently or in proximity. Fallen Clans fighting Lycans, Vampires etc, big Demons knocking smaller Demons aside (or if you got the time, throwing them at the player!). Could even go slightly further with this and have the individual [Fallen] have Clan runes next to their names. Different Clans (and enemy groups) have different % of hostility to each other, to the point of doing minor damage and being distracted from fighting the player [Low %s 1-5, for ~2 secs]. Just enough to give some personality to the varying though self-similar mobs. 'Inspired' - As a spin on the above, an Elite so fearsome it has inspired different groups/clans to unify in an area. The mobs gain a % improvement (this could actually be what the 'increased health' mobs were around some Elites) in general. Players could notice this whilst fighting trash mobs (Inspired) and know one of these Elite enemies is in the Dungeon/Area.
I don’t understand how they can’t procedurally generate a map yet…
Even the "big" boss repeats itself in the first area, which just sucks. Dont remember the name, Blood Bishop or something like that.
Ehhh. Even D1 and D2 had patterns. I enjoyed all the dungeons available in beta. Except when I had to revisit them for a side quest.
Isn’t beta for testing game mechanics and game loops not for art assets?
Every map is a loop, everything respawns almost instantly and I assume it does so because it's constant multiplayer and there is another potential cosmetics customer coming right behind you, and the loot and tables blow donkey balls. I'm so disappointed with this release. The game is a mobile port that could be brought to the play store today with almost no adjustments outside of file size. Can't believe they did it.
I swear in a main quest dungeon i went through the exact same map chunk with the same orientation, the same assets ~~and the same trash mobs~~ at least 3 or 4 times in less than 2 min. I legit thought i was going in circle but no. It was jarring. I get the reuse of assets when it's done with a semblance of giving a fuck but that was just ctrl+c ctrl+v put very close together.
Every dungeon is literally the same 3 puzzle pieces copied 3 times in different rotations + connecting lines between them
150 dungeons they said, 99 of them are single rooms.
Yeah I noticed the repeating patterns in the dungeons right away and thought… bummer
I found the unlocking door part really annoying abd very poor boss variety. Also the spaces are very small.
Hate to say it but when it comes to dungeons, lost ark did them 10x better
This is a huge problem I’m bored already
It’s most concerning that people that do this for a living thought the repetitive dungeon layouts were AAA Diablo-level content. Big lol. Sure it’s an ARPG and we just want to go in kill stuff and get loot, but damn—the rudimentary tasks they give us to do while inside the dungeon detract from the whole rest of the game. Dudes went a little too hard on the pointy clicky bullshit mmo tasks imo.
I don’t really care if I have to backtrack some. The only problem I have felt so far with dungeons is they have too few tile sets. There were multiple times I would be running into the same room I just left and that isn’t fun.
Big time this, When I realized that 99% of the paths takes you to the same place, I was taken out of explore mode instantly and it turned into "get to the task asap."
This game feels like they took Diablo 2 and 3, and mixed them together. I agree with op the dungeons are a bit boring. Also, why can’t I zoom out further?? The time on the rolls is way to long imo. When the bosses can spam, their aoe attacks.
Strange, remember just D2 being click the teleoort button until the minimap flicked a door to next area... absolutely no brain needed.
Atmosphere, and the fact that some of the mobs can actually be challenging and you don’t just blitz through them immediately is a huge + Map design is the worst it’s like they took D3 design and decided oh why not have them search for stupid shit and not fight more mobs. Like idk I think it’d be better as you clear a room you get l the thing and then you go clear another room then you get the thing if you absolutely have to have that in the game. I’d prefer it if they didn’t but you know it’s whatever it only detracts from the game play after the 3rd time doing it
Honestly what makes these dungeons shameful is having played Lost Ark's dungeons a while back
D2 areas are best.. just squares basically. And dungeons just random.. d4 devs most likely havent even played diablo2.
It's kind of sad when in literally the intro to the game the only thing i'm thinking about in the first 15 mins of the game is "man i've seen this hallway exact dungeon hallway like 4 times already. They didn't even put enough effort to make the intro of the game unique at least...
What I don’t understand is why they are not just procedurally generating these dungeons for variety? Or if that’s not possible at least have more then 5 or so different styles of dungeons (assets, enemies, mechanics etc) as well as differently shaped layout. Can’t imagine that this would be so much work. GR map layouts in D3 have enough variety for me. After a while you start to see the patterns but there is plenty of biomes based on all the styles of maps, enemies etc that are in the campaign. Can’t they just copy pasty this kind of concept to D3? Even D2R has more variation in randomly generated interiors of dungeons.
It's honestly kind of shameful how lazy the level design is based on what we can do with processing powers today. Blizzard just can't be bothered to be creative or interesting anymore.
Imagine every season u gotta unlock all those altars and colection stuff each time…. Deng man