What would be the 5 big focus points you'd love to see a developer tackle?
Would story be important to you? What would you like to see in terms of combat? How important is the Diablo'ish Endgame to you? How about Level Design, is procedural generation vital in these kinda games to you? What do you expect in terms of loot from an ARPG? What keeps you playing these games for years on end? Are there things from games like Souls, Monster Hunter or Breath of the Wild you'd love to see within this genre? Just think of anything that might pop into your head - If you're playing todays RPGs, are there things that bother you that you'd love to tell a developer about? Do any games have any systems that you're absolutely in love with that you'd like to tell me about?
Really awesome of you to reach out like this, and I agree that it's a shame to see so many games in the genre essentially say
"this is how Diablo did it, so this is how it must be done". I feel like MMOs suffer the same issue, where they all look at WoW and include so many MMO staples as though a game can't work without them. I think my 5 points to consider would be:
1) Multiplayer at all times - Just because this seems to be the "next big thing" for Diablo 4. I'm not convinced it's a good idea. If you pursue this route, please ask yourselves
"does the presence of other players add or detract from the experience right now?" in every gameplay situation. It's where MMOs like The Elder Scrolls Online and SWTOR made mistakes imo. The MMO genre is shifting heavily towards solo play for 90+% of the time, with optional group content mostly at end game (dungeons, raids, PVP etc). And now Blizzard wants to add a similar MMO flavour to ARPGs with Diablo 4. But while running into other players around specifically designed group events (world bosses, group-designed dungeons, limited time open world events like Guild Wars 2 had etc) is a time when other players are helpful, there are definitely times when being surrounded by them is a hindrance: Dungeons designed for solo play, but you happen to be in here at the same time as someone else so now the difficulty is trivial; Quests where the devs are tacitly asking you to pretend the other players don't exist, because the quest giver is acting like you're the sole hero and the only one helping them out right now; towns and open world environments where the atmosphere and immersion can be hindered by other players with their shiny end-game armour and MTX flaming wings running around in circles. I would love an MMO developer to be brave enough to restrict MMO elements to key areas, like only a handful of (or maybe even only one) social hubs, and content specifically designed for groups, phasing you into and out of group servers when needed, but keeping the game world mostly solo. It would allow them to solve with MMO issues like respawns, mob density, quest outcomes (big changes to locations that reflect your decisions are almost impossible) etc, and I think they'd be praised for it. It would also raise questions as to whether it's "truly" an MMO, but so be it if the game is better for it and the big group content and social hubs are still there. So certainly when it comes to adding MMO elements to an ARPG, consider whether it actually improves the game, and perhaps use it sparingly if you use it at all.
2) Character Creator - I have no idea why this
still hasn't happened properly in an ARPG. I know we play these games from a zoomed out perspective where our character is hard to see in detail outside of vanity cams, but gamers obsess over character appearance in first person games like TES, Fallout, and Destiny, where we see even
less of our avatars than we do in ARPGs. I have no doubt that a great CC in an ARPG will be really appreciated, and become a distinguishing feature to stand out against the crowd of ARPGs without this feature. We all know how popular transmog/fashion systems are in these games now - it's clearly a feature that would be loved.
3) World Design and its use in End Game - As a fan of lore and world building, I think open worlds can add a lot to immersion and environmental story telling, and I think ARPGs are a great fit for it if you can look past the "Diablo didn't do it that way though" mindset. It's always seemed like a great next step to me for the genre, so I'm happy to see Diablo 4 pursuing it, but sad that they're also filling it with so many players concurrently. While I think procedural dungeons are important to the genre, for the loot grind in an endlessly replayable short-burst game mode, I think a slower-paced open world end game system can be popular too. Especially coupled with player-housing and/or town building, if the open world is used for resource gathering and hunting down new building plans. There are players that adore creative building systems (just look at Fallout 4's Settlement creations in a Google search), and Wolcen demonstrates well how a town construction system can play out as another form of progression, unlocking and upgrading buildings with specific benefits. I think open worlds offer a lot of opportunities to ARPGs for those reasons.
4) Combat "Feel" and Boss Fights - Animation quality, screen shake, visual effects. It's so important to hooking players in right from the start, and when combat is something we spend so much time engaged in with this genre, it's really important to get it right. Diablo and Wolcen both do a great job at this, and Path of Exile 2 seems to be making it a big priority. I'd also like to praise the end-of-chapter boss fights in Wolcen here, because whereas Diablo's bosses still tend to be fairly easy to battle mechanically, and the only challenge comes from raising the game difficulty level (which merely increases boss HP and damage), Wolcen has created some fantastic multi-phase boss battles that really require you to pay attention, much like Dark Souls bosses do. I loved having to actually
try and win for a change =P Made the victories feel amazing. Path of Exile 2 also seems to be focusing a lot on boss mechanics and multi-phase battles, but it's too early to see how well they've handled them. It's definitely a direction I appreciate though, over mostly face-tanking bosses and not standing in stupid the Diablo way.
5) Build Diversity - Probably the most important one for me, because I love theory-crafting! I get that Path of Exile's passive tree looks terrifying to some people, but it looks amazing to me. I do think there's a lot that could be done to condense it though,
without simplifying it. There are a huge number of tiny stat increases on separate nodes, and I often think I wouldn't mind at all if clusters of them were condensed into one node that you could invest 5-10 points into, massively reducing the size of the grid. That's not an easy change PoE could make, because it then makes moving across the board to the big nodes far faster, but if it was something a new game wanted to design around from the start - a far less daunting passive tree in appearance, but with just as many skill point investment choices - I think that could be a great compromise. I also want to stress how much I love the class-less (or mostly class-less) systems in PoE and Wolcen. I get that classes have become a big part of Diablo's identity, but build freedom is so much more exciting when you can mix-and-match skills and weapons and playstyles imo.
Good luck with the game! I love how open you are about challenging genre staples going into this, so I can't wait to see what you all come up with =)
