well D4 was a dissapointment why delay league becuz of it?

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

Spoiler

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Nubatron wrote:

Aloe vera feels like an optional mode for Kleenex. Opt in if you like it, else stick to the dry original content. :)

And then those so-called flushable wipes. I hate that that's not true, because they're great.

Okay so this is a rare occasion where I have absolute superior experience over you and I plan to enjoy every single moment of it. The MMO aspect of Diablo IV is minimal, at least from my Australian/Oceanic experience.

I saw a handful of people in the main town (each act area has multiple towns), a few running around, and of course never any others in dungeons. The town part was actually one of my favourites because a big part of the game is showing off not just your gear (the inspect function is a bit of harmless voyeuristic fun) but also your titles. There are a heap of achievements and each unlocks a two-word title. You can mix and match them to come up with hundreds of amusing combinations. Since 'trash' was one of the easiest suffices to get (just dismantle enough items), titles like 'Lonely Trash' and 'Nocturnal Trash' were fairly common. I did see one that was simply 'The Goat' that made me laugh. I enjoyed unlocking and customising my titles per character. Twisted Witch. Lonely Slayer. Bubbly Echo...etc.

In the overworld, there are, or at least were in the beta, strict limitations on player capacity. As I said, I didn't see many even in the relatively cramped first act area -- relatively, because good lord was it big. So I imagine with all the acts open, they will fiddle with that cap so that the experience is roughly the same: mostly you're alone, but if there's an event nearby, people might cluster towards it. I had fun with these events, communicating with a few basic emotes and then just moving on.

There are world tiers, and you will only see players on those tiers in your version of the game. I suppose people could smurf but eh, there are more rewarding games for that sort of behaviour.

Also, due to enemy scaling, you can do any of the first three acts in any order. There should be no early game crowding or easy targets for griefing. Especially once mounts are a thing -- saddle up and fuck off.

It was generally in everyone's best interest to cooperate with group events, be they small ones like defending a caravan or a bigger deal like liberating a town overrun with goatmen. As with GW2, everyone who participates gets their reward. It's hardly realistic but eh it's a game. There are and should be limitations on how realistic a game is if the cost is fun/entertainment/satisfaction. If there is any aspect to Diablo IV I'd consider modern MMO-ish, it's that allocation of loot for participation. And I don't consider it a bad one.

So your concern about players griefing in the overworld seems unfounded to me, and if any company is aware of the pitfalls of it it'd be Blizzard. Their entire design philosophy is 'if the player puts the controller down or quits the game, we need to address why' (insane approach but there you go). We will see.

Quests can spawn instanced versions of otherwise public areas. For example, one quest had me chasing a possessed dude through the main town of chapter one and into a dungeon under it that simply didn't exist in the normal version. This is something I encountered in GW1 and 2 but obviously never in an ARPG. I dig that kind of design pretty hard.

Now to the meat of the issue: dungeons. I spent more time in those than in the overworld. They are, of course, instanced. They are the true 'Diablo' experience of Diablo IV, and most are large enough to feel like mini acts. At no point in my dungeon running did I feel like I was playing anything close to an MMO. Other than the bosses (which are tuned for AoE/ranged, whether I like it or not), the whole thing felt perfectly fine alone. The overworld is, in a way, a giant nexus hosting these significant dungeons.

To my knowledge, there is a player cap of 12 for World Bosses, or at least the one in the beta. That is hardly 'massive' (let us not forget what that the first M stands for and why it does not apply to every single game we play online). I did jog past the spawn area for her at one point, and a few players were gathering five minutes out of her spawn time. I liked seeing that but didn't stick around. I had my own shit to do.

Now this was on my local server, which as I said I think was OCE since I saw Australians, Kiwis, Koreans and Japanese -- I had chat turned off entirely but I can tell the naming conventions pretty easily. It's possible the American or European ones had or will have more congestion and griefing, but I don't quite see how. PvP will likely be opt-in. There was ONE example where I was doing the same overworld quest as someone else and I had to wait 30 seconds for the target npc/enemy to spawn. No bigs.

So all in all, I'd say the multiplayer aspect of it, at least going from the beta, was no more intrusive or immersion-breaking for me than all the glowing shit in Lioneye's Watch or Sarn or Oriath.

I am not trying to convince you here -- a non-starter is a non-starter and I respect that. I just want to illustrate, from my very experienced MMO perspective, why Diablo IV is not comparable to a true MMO in any way. It is not Lost Ark and anyone making that comparison should be disregarded as superficial and uninformed. It's a simple ARPG with a sprawling world you share at any given time with just enough people not to feel completely alone in it.

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

Potassium. :)

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

You can mix and match them to come up with hundreds of amusing combinations. Since 'trash' was one of the easiest suffices to get (just dismantle enough items), titles like 'Lonely Trash' and 'Nocturnal Trash' were fairly common. I did see one that was simply 'The Goat' that made me laugh. I enjoyed unlocking and customising my titles per character. Twisted Witch. Lonely Slayer. Bubbly Echo...etc.

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innervation wrote:

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

You can mix and match them to come up with hundreds of amusing combinations. Since 'trash' was one of the easiest suffices to get (just dismantle enough items), titles like 'Lonely Trash' and 'Nocturnal Trash' were fairly common. I did see one that was simply 'The Goat' that made me laugh. I enjoyed unlocking and customising my titles per character. Twisted Witch. Lonely Slayer. Bubbly Echo...etc.

What is the most titles a game could allow a character to have before it tips over the line from 'fun, flavorful character rp' to 'ridiculous and distracting'?

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

That said plenty of people still name their characters stupid shit. No stopping that, lol.