BlizzCon 2019: Liveblog Diablo IV: Systems & Features Panel

Blizzard Posted 2019/11/02 at 2:10 PM by Serrinne

Wowhead's DiscordNews WebhookLiveblogClassesFirst up: Sorceress, Master of Magic

Deals Damage from a distance - shows some video of Conduit Skill - invulnerable, deal damage, infinite teleport

Chill Mechanic: Targets hit chill, stacking movement speed reduction, stacks up high enough that it freezes the enemy

Barbarian is back!

Arsenal system - 4 weapons equipped, means more item affixes and more legendaries than other classes.

Druid is a Shapeshifter

Uses Earth and Storm magic.

Shifts happen when you use a particular school of magic

Bonuses attached to shape shifting can be timed with use of skills

Skill Point System

Skill point system - goals is increased sense of power progression, power, and customization
Skill points - pretty straight forward - either pick new skills or rank up existing skills.

Skill points granted on level up and on discovery of skill point tomes.

Bottom of the tree is most powerful - from simple to more complicated play styles.

Uses example of a cold branch on the wizard tree - i.e. skill that says instead of freezing, you get a bonus to damage.

Open WorldOpen World/Shared World

Dungeons are not open world - max party size 4, still 'private'

Campaign areas start as private, only to you and your party. Once you've completed the campaign objective for that area, the world becomes shared.

What does open world mean? Seeing players outside your party, public events, huge shared bosses

Collectibles, open world pvp, other players, crafting materials - all in the Open World.

How many players? Achieving a certain feeling - it should feel like a bleak and dangerous place so on occasion you'll see one or two other players but mostly be alone. Exceptions will be something like world boss event where more players will be seen in a certain area. Towns are the same.

Grouping/Solo Play

Example of playing D4 with other players: You can jump into parties - party leader's state in the campaign area is shared with the party. Not stuck in your own story mode.

Clans will exist - with clan banners.

In game voice chat for parties and clans.

2 player couch co-op on consoles supported.

What about more solo players? Nothing has to be done in a player, all the best content can be done solo or in a group - nothing stopping you from doing everything on your own.
The level to which you engage with others is totally up to you. It's just as viable to play alone.

New Dungeon MechanicsTalking about Dungeons

Lots of dungeons in D4 - we want them dark, dangerous, and scary.

Dungeons are randomly generated.

Wants a tension between risk and reward in D4 dungeon crawling.

Randomly generated buildings OR exteriors.

Seamless exploration - this means no more loading screens to go from one floor to another! We can blend randomly generated tile sets together - dungeons can be sprawling interconnected areas.

As you're crawling your way through dungeons, there will be random events and dungeon objectives.

Random events: no longer restricted to a certain place in the world - i.e. Altar of Bishibosh in Whispering Woods or Altar.

Dungeon objectives - creates a sense of identity for a specific dungeon to set them apart from one another. Objectives are completed by doing specific things in the dungeon like killing a specific mob. Doing more objectives changes the dungeon i.e. once you complete an objective, the final boss could be alerted and send more mobs at you, etc.

End game dungeons: We know doing one thing over and over again is not great. Look for Varied Content, Strategic Depth, and Player Agency.

Adding a new item called a Dungeon Key - for a specific dungeon, upgrades a specific dungeon to an End Game Dungeon - improves quality of drops.

Dungeon keys can roll a specific affix for that dungeon.

Example - Lightning Pulse - adds a lightning pulse which chases you through the dungeon until you complete a particular objective - can't be killed until that particular objective is done.

Plan is to haven hundreds of dungeons in the game. Upgrades to dungeons, changes in difficulty and affixes, will require different builds, skills, etc.

Monsters and BossesMonsters

Fallen lunatics are back!

Skeletons - in D4, new item called Skeletal Ballista

Elites: new category of affixes

Enhancing Affixes - so for a mob that shoots arrows, they can gain Multishot. But if it's on a Fallen Shaman, instead of resurrecting one brute, he resurrects three.

Boss: Tomb Lord - resurrector, blinds you with storm of bone, etc.

New to D4 - Evade ability available to all classes. A dash and a strike back - good to get out of things.

Unstoppable - Break out of crowd control and become immune.

Boss: Ashava - first world boss. VERY LARGE!

New Stagger system - your CC will work in a different way against bosses - it stacks up, building up a stagger bar, when that bar fills, a unique behaviour happens per boss. For Ashana for example, it breaks off her arm blades, making the next boss attack safer.

Legendaries and ItemizationLegendaries

More item affixes the higher the quality

Addition of Mythic quality items

New affixes - damage to far away enemies, + one rank to a talent (adds to maximum rank)

We want legendaries to be equal or great to set items.

Example: Teleport items -Damage reduction when you teleport, gain crit when you teleport, infinite but random teleport, nova when you teleport.

But lots of legendaries will work for lots of skills, not necessarily that specific.

Mythic items: equip limit one but 4 legendary powers on them.

Runes and Runewords coming to D4 - 2 types, condition runes and effect runes.

Combine one of each to form a runeword. i.e. "When you freeze an enemy, activate the next rune" "When the run is activated, reduce damage" becomes, damage reduction when you freeze an enemy.

Q&A

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Comment by oblivionazglets go baby! looking forward to this oneComment by jjanchanThis will be a great panel - showcasing not just new classes and zones, but systems. It’ll probably shed light on how different gameplay will be compared to Diablo 4.Comment by Chibimishaso hyped for D4... hope all the bad stuff from d3 is goneComment by IllbeanDon't have a virtual ticket, but i sure would like to see this part about D4Comment by SaruzeufelI really hope there is an ingame shop to buy premium weapons and unlimited lives for an hour via my phone billComment by ShivhaGive me shamanComment by SatanikhJust leaving this here for the giveaway! :D XDComment by BubblepieThis is gonna be interesting!Comment by BathroomBuddhawonder what the other two classes are..Comment by terryhintzblizzcon this year is stackedComment by KondeyDiablo sounds so good right nowComment by HarribooI just hope it won't be about chasing "titanforging" like you had in Diablo 3 after a while with Ancients and Primal Ancients.Comment by syphynsaysShaman class would be awesome!Comment by unoshiReally looking forward to this.Comment by Ibokd4 it's on.Comment by prophet001I just hope it won't be about chasing "titanforging" like you had in Diablo 3 after a while with Ancients and Primal Ancients.Comment by Gloom"Arsenal system - 4 weapons equipped, means more item affixes and more legendaries than other classes."
Wonderful.
Let's arm ourselves to the teeth.Comment by EiprilAll of this is very interesting. Cant wait to play D4 myself <3Comment by OppaKenDruid! So excited!Comment by MountaholicDruid is WoW and Druid in D4 I am hyyyyyyppppppeeeeeeeeeedddddddd!

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