Considering “combat” involves spending 5 seconds burning down some weak mobs with your skills before moving to the next group a majority of the time, chances are you will be done with combat before you even have to say anything. Unless you’re in a fight with a major enemy, but that combat is infrequent.
To get an idea of what I’m talking about, watch this short 46 second video which shows a few combat encounters with a Necromancer. You’ll notice each individual fight doesn’t last very long. If you need to take a break in the action, you have ample opportunity to do so. It’s not a game where I ever felt like I was trapped in a long session that I couldn’t get out of, at least not most of the time. There are events that can last a minute or so that you will lose out on rewards if you abandon them early, and there are boss fights that last longer, but the combat is generally very fast-paced and you go from group of enemies to group of enemies at your own speed.
But yes, online multiplayer games generally don’t allow you to pause the game. None of the previous Diablo games did either if you were in multiplayer mode. This game just doesn’t have any other kind of mode.
Let me add, this is a debated topic in the Diablo community.
I just searched for this, but the discussion there, funny enough, matches pretty much exactly what we’re talking about. Your concerns about the drawbacks from this being an online-only multiplayer game, and the inability to pause, are mirrored there. Some of the same points I made were made there too. I swear I didn’t read this before any of my comments.
I guess I hadn’t realized how much of an MMO this game is. It’s a shame, because I don’t really see the point of multiplayer, but it’s not as if there aren’t other games I could play.
I agree but I played the beta (one anyway) and they really let you play solo if you want. You will see other players running around but they really do not affect you. 95% of the time it felt like I was playing a solo game.
I’m not a fan of always online games but my internet is pretty solid. I worry more about the servers being slammed at the start and then they turn the servers off some years from now and you can never play again.
And dying is generally not too painful to the player. If you need to bolt from the computer to handle some emergency and your character dies it’s not too terrible to resume once the crisis at home is averted.
First, it is still a correct answer to the actual question, in that it’s a microtransaction with a specific game benefit in a general, not a specific sense. Thus my equivocating on the whole Yes?No?
Second, I did specify “Top Players” - the sorts that are going all in, and who will be playing more hours than any filthy casual like myself (and probably most posting here) will ever do. It is likely that by play hours per day we’ll never catch up to them, although the 4 day head start makes it worse.
But of course I agree with the sentiment - I also don’t care about having BiS (Best in Slot) gear across the board, but I also won’t be trying to get into the multiplayer raids, instancing and competing for any sort of world firsts and the like. I’m also not competing for viewers on a twitch stream or eSports sponsorship.
For those that are looking for those things, or the people following them, then yeah, that 4 days means a whole lot of pay-to-win. It’s just they’re a different crowd than the SDMB players, who (correctly) are complaining that they just want to play the game, not deal with other people.
Hear hear! To the anti-social types of the world, unite… oh wait. Ummm. Anti-socials, bunker down in the security of your well equipped abodes! Yeah, that’s the ticket.
I am long done with multiplayer. Seems I am not a good team player anyway so no one will miss me. I studiously avoid games that are multiplayer only. That’s why I tried the open beta for Diablo a while back. I was pleased to see I could go solo and enjoy the game despite its multiplayer hook.
Events would pop up, and you can go do them or avoid them. If you join other people, you get a bonus and it’s sort of fun to quietly cooperate.
A couple of times I was invited to do a dungeon from a random person. I did one in a 3 person group. It went well enough, we seemed to finish faster, but it was a bit annoying because it was hard to stay together. Especially when a treasure goblin appeared and I chased it down. It seemed like dungeons weren’t particularly group-friendly, which seems backward.
The raids I did (the world boss) were like the events, where just showing up with other people you were kind of a soft group, and shared rewards. Except you really needed to be in a group because that thing was a nightmare. Especially in the last test, where we were capped at 20 but the monster was meant for level 25.
Grouping up is definitely optional. I expect to do a lot of group stuff myself, but just because I made a bunch of friends when I was playing Diablo Immortal and we plan to team up in D4 as well. Though even that will likely involve just the occasional scheduled meet ups at various times. I’ll probably be doing the game solo 95% of the time.
I was starting to get excited for this from ads I’d seen recently, but reading this thread it sounds like it’s an MMO. That’s a hard pass for me if it is.
Are there things to do daily to keep you engaged? An example would be if there’s a reward from doing something and then you can’t do it again for 16 hours. That kind of thing is my second biggest deal breaker. (First being needing to group with other players.)
It’s not. It’s an ARPG. They’re very different, if you mean MMORPG. It’s just like the previous Diablo games, except you have to be online, can’t pause, and you’ll see other players now and then. You have the option to do group play but even the original Diablo had that. It’s very much set up to be a solo game. Think of it as a solo game a bunch of people are playing together, where you will see other people now and then and can group up if you want. (Though most other players will also be interested in keeping to themselves.)
I’m not sure what you mean. Here’s an article explaining what the endgame will be like. (The stuff you can do after completing the regular campaign content.)
First time daily login bonuses and stuff like that. The other side of the coin would be repetition penalties for dungeon XP that get reset daily. Chests getting ransacked such that they stop offering loot after a certain amount of repetitions until you wait for a certain amount of time for the chest to refresh.
One easy way to distill it down is to ask if I play 7 hours on Saturday, will that be able to make the same amount of progress as playing one hour a day every day of the week? Or does the daily login get an advantage in progression?
The only thing I can think of might be battle pass but I’m not sure exactly how that will work. And that might be tied up with the micro transaction nonsense anyway to earn cosmetics so many people would ignore it anyway.
Diablo has never worked that way and there’s no indication it will in D4 either.
One reason why I gave up Diablo Immortal and was looking forward to D4 was because I got sick of that “log in each day for a bonus” crap. The behavior you describe is typical for a free to play game that tries to get you into an addicted mindset so that you have to play each day and then get enticed into spending money to get ahead of the tedium.
Diablo 4 is not that kind of game. It’s a game you spend money on in order to buy a copy, then play however and whenever you want. The micro transactions (which are criticized, as such things usually are) are an extra way for Blizzard to make money from people who can’t help buying things to make them look shiny, but it’s not built into the actual game progression. It’s not the kind of game you’re worried about. I’m sick of those games too.
For those considering buying the game here is the Reddit Diablo IV Review Megathread (basically a place where they aggregate all the reviews they can find in an easy to scan list with the highest scores at the top and descending to the lower scores).
Not exactly but kinda-sorta-maybe-not sure? I do not claim to understand the ins-and-outs of this but here is one explanation:
The takeaway is that it all sounds pretty standard for a live service game, with one twist — there’s a heavy focus on seasonal content that, as per Diablo tradition, can only be accessed by starting a fresh seasonal character. Oddly, Blizzard does not go out of its way to explain this, perhaps assuming that it will be taken as read by the Diablo community, but it has been confirmed in previous interviews.
Seasons in Diablo 4 will be quarterly, with the first coming in “mid to late July” — a matter of weeks after the game’s launch on June 22. You’ll need to complete the game’s campaign on one character before you can access it. The season will introduce fresh questlines, separate from the campaign narrative, as well as new gameplay features that will change the experience of leveling and developing your new character — all of which will be exclusive to the season and will be retired at the end of the three months. Your seasonal character, however, will be moved to the Eternal Realm at the end of the season, where it will remain playable. Each season will also bring standard patch content like balance changes and quality-of-life improvements. - SOURCE
Note that the above is after you complete the main campaign which seems substantial (I have seen 50+ hours tossed around). This is something else which you can choose to do or not. Not sure how you access that stuff either (pay cash for it and/or some other mechanism).
Can’t wait. Reviews are stellar. I’ve avoided watching any of the cinematics and didn’t play the beta so its all fresh. I have a fairly beefy system so I hope it can handle ultra at 4k.
As much as I enjoyed the game I couldn’t talk myself into paying extra for early access, so less than a week to go for me. ETA this is definitely not an MMO, it is no different than D3.
