![]() As a side result, the Sorcerer becomes an even stronger class because they can move around much quicker in dungeons that need backtracking or extensive monster clearing. Having an advanced character and having to deal with 300 monsters in a dungeon, chasing every single monster down, is an awful experience. The one I have the most issues with is the “Den of Evil” kind of kill-all-monsters objective. My main criticism regarding dungeons is that some objectives are very poorly designed. We know there’s going to be some kind of Nightmare sigils which update dungeons to become very similar to Diablo III’s Greater Rifts, so I think it’s still more of an ARPG experience in terms of the overall design. I don’t even know if doing them in a group offers any advantage, maybe it offers even disadvantages. I think the dungeons are easily soloable. I do know that MMO dungeons are kind of like a 30-minute ordeal type of thing a lot of the time, and you have to rely on group members. I haven’t really done the Mythic+ dungeons in World of Warcraft all that much. Kripp: I kinda have to take your question and move it into more of my experience. WH: Dungeons are one of the other highly discussed systems coming out of the Diablo IV Beta, and it's clear that this was one of the mechanics you were most passionate about - given the MMO influence you just talked about in Diablo IV, do you think dungeons might be saved by implementing something like the wildly popular Mythic + system, or do you think that this would MMO-ify the ARPG genre too much? ![]() We don’t know how much of that will become reality in Diablo IV, though. For me personally, Path of Exile has moved me in a direction of a mostly single-player experience paired with some kind of odd multiplayer interaction. ![]() I imagine that those players made up a considerable portion of the player base back then. When they announced the 1-year subscription, at one point you got Diablo III for free. On the other side, if we go way back, I think a lot of Diablo III’s core player base is actually World of Warcraft players. It’s like you’re hyping up to eat some delicious Chinese food, but then all your favorite Chinese restaurants are closed and you need to eat something else which might be close, but not quite the same.Ĭoming from Diablo I to III going into Diablo IV, some players may have an unwelcoming experience. To me, this game experience was quite an unwelcoming surprise just because I was expecting an ARPG but it was more of a 70/30 experience. Kripp: I had some experience with Lost Ark in that regard, which is a very MMO-like ARPG experience. How do you feel about that encroaching influence - do you think it's good or bad for the growth of the ARPG genre as a whole? WH: Speaking of World of Warcraft, It's clear that Diablo IV and many new ARPGs have quite a bit of MMO influence to them, from the multiplayer aspect to things such as world bosses. Maybe Blizzard tries to define it with Diablo 4. To answer your question, I don’t really know what a finely tuned casual ARPG experience really is. ![]() But, similar to World of Warcraft, this part of the experience won’t be as important once we reach higher levels. The casual experience starts at very early levels, and the Beta wasn’t too great with that, which could have an effect on the casual gamers’ motivation to reach the end-game. You certainly feel your character getting weaker as it levels up in the first dozen levels - at least in the Beta. I imagine that they have a pretty good curve for the level scaling that constantly happens in the game, but in the first few levels it seems really wonky. For the casual crew, I think the early experience is a little bit weird. The idea that people will be able to play Hardcore and have playstyle decisions, 4-5 build options per class, that’s a bit distant into the future. In the very best case we will have like two builds per class, but until there’s like some iterations and some really fine balancing done, I think people will kind of in a way be forced to play what is effective over what they want to play. There will definitely be a build that vastly outperforms every class, and it really requires quite a lot of balance for there even to be multiple options. The screws aren’t quite tightened on balancing, skills being equal in power and in terms of clear speed. I think from a Hardcore perspective, the build depth potential is definitely there - though it definitely needs finer balancing for playstyle-oriented decisions to be made. I’m actually not sure if any game has really defined it. Kripparrian: It’s pretty difficult to say what the casual ARPG experience is supposed to be like.
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