The developers from Blizzard Entertainment are back with another quarterly update for the upcoming isometric aRPG Diablo IV, this time focused on itemization, paragon updates and visual effects of the game. The last quarterly update, from October 2021, took a deep dive into the sound design.
In Diablo IV, players will see the return of +Skill Rank affixes. As players invest points in skills, they grow in potency, and finding items with +Skill Rank can speed that along. As a bonus, when the player equips an item with +Skill Rank for a skill they haven’t learned, they will have access to that new ability.
Legendary and Unique Items remain a core part of the Diablo item chase experience. Diablo IV will see some foundational changes to the way the feature works by allowing legendary powers to appear on multiple item slots. Now, if you’re searching for a legendary power, like Martial Arts—which enhances the Barbarian’s kick ability—you may find it on rings, chestplates, or helmets; there’s no need to hunt for a specific item type any longer.
So what happens if you find a power on, say, an axe but you could really use it on a piece of jewelry instead? That’s where the team is introducing a new Artisan, the Occultist.
The Occultist can extract a legendary power from a Legendary item, crystallizing it into Essence while destroying the item in the process. That Essence can then be implanted into another Legendary item, overriding the power that was present in the item at that time. Essence material can also be stored and used at a later time.
In Diablo IV, the team places a stronger emphasis on character power that is earned by all the little decisions you make while leveling up and exploring the world of Sanctuary as compared to the gear you are wearing.
The Paragon Board unlocks for each class at level 50 and is a distillation of the heavy emphasis on character customization, ensuring that you can have plenty of control over how your hero grows. Your hero begins their journey through the Paragon system at the central starting tile of their class’s intro board, and from there, you make selections radiating outward. Once your hero reaches a gate tile, you’ll choose which new paragon board you would like to attach to at that location. The desired outcome is a personalized set of bonuses that will empower your hero and honor your dedication to their progression, that will remain fun to tweak and adjust over many playthroughs.
Check out the blog post to see how the system works in great detail, including Normal, Magic, Rare and Legendary Tiles as well as Glyphs and Sockets.
In the chaos of combat, you’ll need to be smart—seeing a Legendary item drop is exciting, but picking it up is not as important as reacting to a monster’s attack that can one-shot Hardcore characters! The team’s goal is to balance the primary, secondary, and tertiary reads to help you understand what is happening. Thus, the visually loud FX is reserved for powerful skills, like ultimate abilities, while weaker skills meld into the background. Each class has abilities that range from low to high in costs, cooldowns, and power. In tandem, classes have a range of visual intensity that increases with skill power.
To enhance the feel of combat, the developers have made several improvements to the way damage is applied in the game. In previous iterations of Diablo, an area-of-effect (AOE) or melee skill would be a single area of damage that is applied on a single frame. Thanks to the gameplay engineers, the game can now animate target areas over multiple frames, which allows the team to line up the animated target areas with the animated VFX that play out.
“Additionally, we have revamped the way we apply hit effects to monsters, so impacts flow with the direction of a spell or melee attack. We use data defined in the animation and animated target area to find the most accurate place to hit a monster, and where to apply a directional physics force to the ragdoll. In so few words, if you hit a goat-man in the knee, the blood spray would come from his knee. The physics force applied to the goat-man’s knee would send it flying as if you kicked the legs out from under him.”
Check out the full blog post for more details on the changes done to combat, abilities and special effects.
