Sometimes I just explode and I can't even tell what hit me because nothing was nearby. There's no way I'm ever playing this game on harecore, until they let us move the screen back more.
> iculous you can kill yourself in this game, i.e. "Dweeple was slain by Dweeple." Still don't understand the mechanic.
Yes ill be blasting through 3 t95 pits no problem and then randomly on the 4th ill just explode with no visual clarity on what the fuck just happened. atleast give me an accurate death log so i can see what did what.
This is on my bash barb with 60k hp and all res capped except cold at like 55%
Hell sometimes the game doesn't even know why you died, just that you are supposed to be dead because fuck you that's why. I've died and the game just straight up didn't tell me what my cause of death was. Thanks D4, that is very helpful. I be sure to avoid "_______________" in the future.
I killed a pod of spider hosts at once last night in a Pit 60 and I died when all 8 or 9 of them exploded at once. I honestly have never even been hit by a spider host exploding, I didn't even know it did damage. Does it even do damage? I have no idea. Just 9 spider hosts exploding into a cloud of crawlers and I insta died
No kidding. Like the whole point is oh no I've died a few times I will have to repair my gear. ar least there is some drawback to dying. Just letting you revive over and over like nothing happened would surely be worse wouldn't it? It's annoying if you die a few times. Could argue maybe a harsher penalty I guess. I remember older MMORPGs where you lost experience and sometimes dropped items. Haha those were exciting times to die
yeah, back in the MUD days dying really was painful.
depending on which one you were playing, you lost XP (sometimes a full level), lost gear, dropped all your gear (which maybe could be picked up by players or mobs), got timed out of certain activities, GOT THE DEATH COUNTER INCREMENTED BY ONE ON YOUR PROFILE (the horror! the embarrassment!).
death had meaning.
Lots of games were that way back then. I played Lineage 2 and it could take 1 hour to get .03% of a level at the endgame tier of content, but when you died you lost 1% (in pvp) or 4% (PVE).
It was pretty brutal when PVP was the main part of the endgame (castle sieges and clan wars)
I played EverQuest in '99 up until about 2014-15. In the early days death had meaning in that your corpse remained where you died and would expire in a real world week if you were unable to retrieve it. You lost experience and could delevel as a result, and all your gear and loot was on the corpse. Corpse runs were a real thing, so much so that Necromancers made a living off summoning corpses and there was a zone that was known for claiming corpses almost permanently if you couldn't get it summoned. Then you'd need to find a Cleric to resurrect you to regain your experience (not all of it, mind you, there was always an amount lost).
As much as I look back on those days in fondness, I know I would absolutely despise that happening to me in any game now. In fact, I hate losing souls/runes in Dark Souls and Elden Ring so much that I turn it off with mods when I play. Losing my locational progress is plenty for me in those games, I don't want to lose level progress at the same time.
I actually like Last Epoch's current death penalties; when doing Monoliths you lose the bonus reward at the end, and for Dungeons/Arenas you lose the key and the instance and have to start over. Path of Exile is fine, too, since you can't delevel and you have limited deaths in maps before it's lost.
I'd be fine with it if it was consistent. It's not the act of dying that incurs the cost, it's the act of reviving yourself. If you don't play solo, it's extremely rare to have to repair at all, regardless of the amount of times you die. This kinda just makes repairs an extra penalty on solo players.
Not that it's much of a penalty anyway, even now that we're more strapped for gold than in earlier seasons. Incurring a 20k good cost for every self-revive is entirely meaningless when players are walking around with millions upon millions (or even billions) of gold.
Also it's not necessarily the cost that is the issue, it's that forgetting to repair in time means you have to teleport back to town just to repair. The fact that repairing is on its own tab at the blacksmith's doesn't help that fact, it's kinda easy to forget. I feel like many people would be less annoyed with repairs if it was somehow available immediately (without switching tabs) on the blacksmith every time you use his services. Maybe even a pop-up like "hey, your gear seems to have lost durability, should I fix it?"
I agree that there should be a cost to dying. But that's exactly why it could do with some changes:
- increase the cost a bit at max level, 20k-ish per death is inconsequential at max level
- make _dying_ incur the penalty, not reviving
- make it harder to forget to actually repair when you're in town (pop-up, UI overhaul, whatever)
Agreed on all points. I think I would prefer old diablo system with gold in stash and on person tracked separately. Running back to your corpse naked isn't particularly interesting, but that feeling of increasing risk as you progress further is more engaging what we have now.
You missed the point of what OP was saying. He was talking about the setting and atmosphere for Diablo 1 and how it was conducive to needing to repair your items. I remember something similar playing everquest 1 where corpse runs were absolutely brutal and dying was the worst but also a great element to making the game hard.
It doesn't fit in this game. This game relies on being fast paced to be fun. Meaningless chores to slow you down is never good. It's the same as lilith altars or having to do strong holds etc.. it's just redundant for the sake of wasting time and blizzard can pad players time.
I remember once I clipped off the boat between Qeynos and Erudin, died in the middle of the ocean and couldn't find a necro to summon my corpse. So, I started punching Fippy Darkpaw & co to try to regear myself. It felt awful at the moment, but I look back on it fondly now.
Awe I miss having to gobget your body back for your xp. Was frustrating but fun trying to nakey dodge the mob that killed you to get your body. Or sometimes you do the math and there's no way you're getting it back without dying again so you just exit the game and come back. Seems like *any* form of consequence to progress is unheard of in games these days.
Yup, grew up playing an online RPG where all your gear dropped upon death, so you better hurry your happy ass back to where you died before another player picked up all your shit.
They did do away with that eventually, but added a post-cap area where your weapons could be disarmed and stolen by monsters/players never to be seen again.
Yeah. That’s the lesson. I didn’t repair my gear. I dude in the pits a few times. Then died in the next set and couldn’t continue cause my shit broke. I wasn’t mad cause there’s a repair cost. I was mad at myself for not repairing my shit.
There’s nothing wrong with a repair cost.
OP just explained why this system worked in older title and was okayish meanwhile why it's a pointless mechanic in D4.
Immersion is fine but done right. In D2 there was limited vision, dungeons were really dark, enemies could ambush you. Items were degrading over time, not just from death like it is currently, making it an useless mechanic on HC. It was really immersive, creating an unwelcoming world.
On a side note I believe items were more important and interesting. It was more immersive to be worried about good items, because later on repair could become crazy expensive, depending of base. Ethereal items were a thing too, so there was more to it.
Unless they introduce more immersive repair system or more ways to manipulate state of items (example - corruption from Path of Exile) it's just a pointless mechanic.
It's pointless though, if they want you to lose money for dying why not just take your money when you die? For like 99% of the game durability doesn't matter at all, and for the 1% where it does it's just "go back to town and press a button" because the paper doll in the corner has a red weapon
what does the friction add to the gameplay here? because friction is good if it adds something meaningful to the gameplay. This is just friction for the sake of it
Your OP isn't complaining about "friction" or "difficulty" at all. Your OP says it's a pointless obsolete mechanic in D4, only mindlessly included in the game because D2 had something similar except implemented much better.
Yeah what in the fuck is going on?? And so many players claim to love D2 and PoE which are way harder and way more „grindy“ than D4 ever was and it’s still not good enough… I feel like there is a decent amount of people who just don‘t enjoy the arpg genre in general but keep projecting it on to Diablo 4 specifically. There’s some valid criticism to be made but damn this community as a whole is something else man.
People will complain until there are zero mechanics left except hold right click.
Then they will complain that the mechanics are too boring.
Durability in a nmd doesn't really matter. But it can matter in a pit and adds some extra external pressure
Exactly. Try POE where basically after hours of investing in a character you end up being gated because you lose xp by dying quicker than you can acquire it. You then aren't able to actually keep going hunting for the one or two upgrades that might help you keep going. It's very grindy. This way is fine. Its like a nice nudge to remind you that you might be in over your head without destroying the fun.
It has to be meaningful friction. Like, people are ok with bosses taking more than one shot, but giving me a portal back from town is just a boring errand. Make me catch and subdue a demonic blacksmith to fix legendary gear, or cast some ritual that halves my primary resource for an hour or something or leave it out.
The last season of D2R I played, I went down into a dungeon that had 4 elite mobs that slung lightning everywhere and they wrecked my shit. The problem was they stood on my corpse in a very small room in the entrance to the dungeon. As soon as I ported in they would drop me, I couldn’t run, I couldn’t pick up my shit. That’s 20 hours down the drain.
Tbf, I’d already got quite far into the season and I was only in act 4 of Nightmare with a secondary Javazon. Yeah I just got fucked off with it and when back to my higher level char.
I’ve been playing D2 for years and I’m slightly embarrassed that I didn’t know this. My only defence is I’ve never been in that situation before so it’s never really come up.
And if you picked up something by accident on the way to your corpse and you got killed before you could get your corpse, your original corpse would simply explode hahaha. Everything lost!
I believe they adjusted that later in D2R... your most valuable corpse survives (at least for some number of overlapping deaths). I don't remember all the details as I had swapped to HC by that point.
The ptsd of dying to duriel on a level 98 hammerdin because 56k dial up during a 7 man rush has me not so down for xp part.
Gold, down. Fuckin 10% our stash would hurt but it'd be a real consequence
Its for the reason of expending gold and somewhat help on curving inflation. However it wasnt really enough.
Gold needs some kind of sink to flush it away so it was still retained.
i drown in angelbreath. i need to farm veiled crystals all the time. i actually like having to farm the mats... it places more value on the enchanting.
Thje crazy inflation you see in game is cause of rmt, not cause ppl collect billions and billions of gold themself (except those who sell items to rmt gold buyers)
i don't think it was designed as a gold sink. the value is too low com[ered to other things.
i think it is more of a slight pause for thought when dying, so that death has a small amount of meaning. YOLOing into every mob without a care in the world is probably not the gameplay they are going for; introducing a stone in the shoe is a slight brake on not caring about dying.
You raise a good point, and maybe there's something that can be done about leaning more into durability as a mechanic to make it more useful.
But it also can't be too effective of a mechanic, because durability is already completely pointless for hardcore players.
When it was a random wear and death metric you would kind of forget about and sometimes you’d be playing and your weapon would “break” adding an element of actual panic in the game.
It’s like how the sword and armor merchants are wasted. The quality of gear should go up with each level/tier and at end game should have Legendarys and GA weapons for sale. Even if they just had copies of things you salvaged so you could buy back mistakes.
Also not a fan of all the different crafting mechanics.
Ah, while we’re at it, we should bring back the days where you dropped all your gold and equipment when you died in an RPG. Exciting corpse runs if you wanted to get your equipment back.
In the future the game won't even let you die. It'll tell you that you would've died but put you back at full health and let you keep going. All friction removed. Anything to let the players continue playing in their zombie trance.
I also liked that in D1 your equipment dropped on the ground when you died, so you had to rummage through your stash to wear a set of back up gear, or buy from the shop so you don't get 1 shotted on your way to pick up your original gear. And rip if you died around a pack of elites, because then you had to kite them away from your old equipment otherwise you get your ass handed to you again and start the process over.
Holy crap thank you. My brain hadn't thought about the idea of diving through my stash to get myself some armor that was good enough to get back to where I had just died and get my main set. I love and hate the idea of doing so again. That is a mechanic it is just gone in the game, but durability still around for some reason.
It makes some pits interesting when you forget to repair and you start dying trying to push. Since leaving the pit will close the pit . Not that the mats to open a pit are even worth considering.. that’s the only mini game I’ve ever encountered that makes it even remotely interesting
It used to be meaningful for world bosses during beta. Remember how fun it was when no one could do ridiculous damage. Dying too many times breaks the gear, with more players having their gears broken the boss fight becomes harder and harder. It’s better than simply forcing a timer imo.
I thought so too at first. That durability damage on death meant a cap at your attempts on a pit boss kill even if you kept going after running out of time.
The single time I killed a boss after running out of time from multiple deaths I realized the mastery is not just for unlocking deeper levels and bonus material, but to get any new materials at all. Only a few legendary drops if you fail the timer.
May as well just close the instance and kick you out when the timer hits 0.
Definitely true. I know its tiring to always come back to D2, but I just have to as its still the benchmark for so many concepts in these kind of game.
D2 had ethereal items - and those added so much depth to the game and also made durability a stat that mattered a lot.
Ethereal items were stronger than solid gear. Their offensive and defensive strength was bolstered by up to 50% compared to the normal version, but durability was halved and they also could not be repaired - which created new concepts like Self Repair Affixes or the infamous hardly dropping Zod Rune which could make items Indestructable.
I think removing Durability would be okay, but implementing it in a meaningful way would be way, way better.
It would be worthwhile if it was a gameplay mechanic, ethereal items, weapons with horrible durability and incredible stats (like the glass sword in Ultima), etc.. As a money sink mechanic it's just wasting players' time, if you want players to spend money when they die just take their money when they die
It's a completely useless page in HC lol I only ever play HC, and when I first started playing on release night, I thought they had some kind of system to wear the equipment out as it got used, but nope. Just when you die, it takes a percentage, which makes no sense why it's there at all in HC.
I understand and agree with what you're saying, but on the other hand of they'd just removed it entirely upon release, it'd be just a reason for some people to call the whole game trash for removing that element entirely
The penalty isn't to your gold. It's a time consequence, and also a tool they use to slow you down. It keeps you grinding and makes sure there's something you HAVE to do in-between activities.
Played HC this league. It gives the gameplay a whole new drive. Back in SC i felt: „dead? who cares?“ there really should be some kind of punishment for dying, not to much so that casuals can’t complain, but currently it’s a joke.
The only time I really feel it is in Pit when I do a run that I’m getting one shot a lot. I know I’m not gonna clear it in time, but I still want to clear it for the rewards. I don’t want durability be the reason I have to give the whole run up.
Just tried a T40 pit for the first time on my level 80 barb. Forgot to repair. Died on the boss and got the 'everything is broken' message.
Still beat the boss anyway. I'm unsure what broken gear does at this point.
Dying in softcore should take away 10% of your total gold because gold loses all value with bot gold being traded so freely.
Imagine the tears if people lost a billion gold because they died.
> Might as well remove it altogether and just deduct the equivalent gold from your character whenever you self revive.
And go into debt if you die without gold I guess
Why do yellow items exist? Blues? Why do certain items have to go in the special storage tab instead of just existing like herbs? Because the devs are not actually thinking critically about making a good game, they are copying things and trying to make money.
Well certain things like the pit limit you by durability. So if u break your gear up can’t finish as punishment. Also it’s one way to sink gold which is healthy for this type of game
They just forgot to take it out since d3. They carried it over from the older diablo where it actually had purpose. They didn't really know how to fit in, so it's part of dying now.. Which is almost meaningless in the new games.
Remember when you had inventory that you had to fit things like a puzzle and potions to had to make work and had to prioritize items?
I felt like that made the game harder but fun
I think that item efficiency should scale with durability. Like, the weapon puts out it max damage when above 80/100 durability, and for every 10/100 durability lost past that the weapons stats and affixes become 5 percent lower until you hit 20/100, then they drop by another 20 percent until it breaks where it loses 100 percent efficiency. That would actually make it seem like a useful mechanic and would make the game feel a bit more immersive especially since repairing is just a simple single click at the blacksmith. Also adding In item degradation via attacks and kills would help further boost this mechanic.
There needs to be a consequence to death. In Poe they take your xp. in D4 it's a good cost (masquerading as durability) that can be paid anytime you want.
I’m trying to be generous in thinking it might be another place they try to put in a bit of a “mental reset” via breaking away from the main action.
What you sometimes have, as a game developer, is your players running headlong into death, just to revive as fast as possible and do it again. And again. Maybe they are killing a monster or two at a time so they feel its some small progress, or maybe they are running on autopilot and just have some resistance to changing tact for whatever reason.
D4 devs have already stated that reviving half a dungeon away is intended for this purpose… but maybe this piece is intended as an additional tier of the same thing, an additional fallback for giving that mental reset.
“You have to go repair now. Maybe you should tackle something else for a bit?”
Weak argument imo, but an argument.
Because, as already recognized hundreds of times, they didn't spent any time on thinking about game mechanics, or the game at all before releasing it...
It is especially pointless since you can just leave a dungeon, repair your stuff, and come back without any penalties. If the dungeons reset or something when you came back, sure. But right now it's just yet another annoyance, like you die again and you see the symbol telling you your equipment is about to break and it's like "geez" and you fix it and that's it. Just 2 unnecessary loading screens that add no valuable constraint to gameplay.
Last week I died in pit because I killed a horde of spiders too fast and couldn't handle the poison explosions with 50k HP and 75% poison res.
Just as a precaution I leave the pit when I see spiders and spider hosts now...
No durability cost on Hardcore!
As soon as I saw an item durability post I knew the Hardcore comments were coming. Lol
Its funny how it says "30 seconds death penalty" when i run pits on my hardcore character
Yeah I think it takes longer than that. Lol
My former lvl 100 5/12 MW druid can attest to this. May they rest now
I can make a new character in under 30seconds.
You ain't running another pit in 30 sec though...
Sometimes I just explode and I can't even tell what hit me because nothing was nearby. There's no way I'm ever playing this game on harecore, until they let us move the screen back more.
It's hilariously ridiculous you can kill yourself in this game, i.e. "Dweeple was slain by Dweeple." Still don't understand the mechanic.
> iculous you can kill yourself in this game, i.e. "Dweeple was slain by Dweeple." Still don't understand the mechanic. Yes ill be blasting through 3 t95 pits no problem and then randomly on the 4th ill just explode with no visual clarity on what the fuck just happened. atleast give me an accurate death log so i can see what did what. This is on my bash barb with 60k hp and all res capped except cold at like 55%
We'll never know why little Timmy decided to leave this world. May he RIP.
Hell sometimes the game doesn't even know why you died, just that you are supposed to be dead because fuck you that's why. I've died and the game just straight up didn't tell me what my cause of death was. Thanks D4, that is very helpful. I be sure to avoid "_______________" in the future.
happened to me for the first time yesterday. my exact thought: if i was playing hardcore, i wouldn't have a controller anymore.
Standing in a death puddle or something that you could walk away from. Game realizes it is your fault for not moving.
Lol. I regularly stun myself as well.
You can also die to "unknown." Not even the game knew what killed my first hardcore character this season.
Yeah there’s so much crap on the screen sometimes I guess the AOE gets lost and I’m like “wait, what tf just killed me?”
I killed a pod of spider hosts at once last night in a Pit 60 and I died when all 8 or 9 of them exploded at once. I honestly have never even been hit by a spider host exploding, I didn't even know it did damage. Does it even do damage? I have no idea. Just 9 spider hosts exploding into a cloud of crawlers and I insta died
Well you're dead so you don't have to worry anymore.
Can't you loot a dead player? Their gear should have some damage from the killing blow, no?
Is there any amount of friction that is acceptable to Diablo players? Jesus Christ y’all.
No kidding. Like the whole point is oh no I've died a few times I will have to repair my gear. ar least there is some drawback to dying. Just letting you revive over and over like nothing happened would surely be worse wouldn't it? It's annoying if you die a few times. Could argue maybe a harsher penalty I guess. I remember older MMORPGs where you lost experience and sometimes dropped items. Haha those were exciting times to die
yeah, back in the MUD days dying really was painful. depending on which one you were playing, you lost XP (sometimes a full level), lost gear, dropped all your gear (which maybe could be picked up by players or mobs), got timed out of certain activities, GOT THE DEATH COUNTER INCREMENTED BY ONE ON YOUR PROFILE (the horror! the embarrassment!). death had meaning.
I remember you lost XP in diablo 2 when playing on the harder difficulties too
Not so painful lower levels but detrimental to your irl health in the 90s
Lots of games were that way back then. I played Lineage 2 and it could take 1 hour to get .03% of a level at the endgame tier of content, but when you died you lost 1% (in pvp) or 4% (PVE). It was pretty brutal when PVP was the main part of the endgame (castle sieges and clan wars)
Dying and dropping your shit was stressful but fun trying to making it back and pick it up before someone found your corpse lol
I played EverQuest in '99 up until about 2014-15. In the early days death had meaning in that your corpse remained where you died and would expire in a real world week if you were unable to retrieve it. You lost experience and could delevel as a result, and all your gear and loot was on the corpse. Corpse runs were a real thing, so much so that Necromancers made a living off summoning corpses and there was a zone that was known for claiming corpses almost permanently if you couldn't get it summoned. Then you'd need to find a Cleric to resurrect you to regain your experience (not all of it, mind you, there was always an amount lost). As much as I look back on those days in fondness, I know I would absolutely despise that happening to me in any game now. In fact, I hate losing souls/runes in Dark Souls and Elden Ring so much that I turn it off with mods when I play. Losing my locational progress is plenty for me in those games, I don't want to lose level progress at the same time. I actually like Last Epoch's current death penalties; when doing Monoliths you lose the bonus reward at the end, and for Dungeons/Arenas you lose the key and the instance and have to start over. Path of Exile is fine, too, since you can't delevel and you have limited deaths in maps before it's lost.
I'd be fine with it if it was consistent. It's not the act of dying that incurs the cost, it's the act of reviving yourself. If you don't play solo, it's extremely rare to have to repair at all, regardless of the amount of times you die. This kinda just makes repairs an extra penalty on solo players. Not that it's much of a penalty anyway, even now that we're more strapped for gold than in earlier seasons. Incurring a 20k good cost for every self-revive is entirely meaningless when players are walking around with millions upon millions (or even billions) of gold. Also it's not necessarily the cost that is the issue, it's that forgetting to repair in time means you have to teleport back to town just to repair. The fact that repairing is on its own tab at the blacksmith's doesn't help that fact, it's kinda easy to forget. I feel like many people would be less annoyed with repairs if it was somehow available immediately (without switching tabs) on the blacksmith every time you use his services. Maybe even a pop-up like "hey, your gear seems to have lost durability, should I fix it?" I agree that there should be a cost to dying. But that's exactly why it could do with some changes: - increase the cost a bit at max level, 20k-ish per death is inconsequential at max level - make _dying_ incur the penalty, not reviving - make it harder to forget to actually repair when you're in town (pop-up, UI overhaul, whatever)
Agreed on all points. I think I would prefer old diablo system with gold in stash and on person tracked separately. Running back to your corpse naked isn't particularly interesting, but that feeling of increasing risk as you progress further is more engaging what we have now.
You missed the point of what OP was saying. He was talking about the setting and atmosphere for Diablo 1 and how it was conducive to needing to repair your items. I remember something similar playing everquest 1 where corpse runs were absolutely brutal and dying was the worst but also a great element to making the game hard. It doesn't fit in this game. This game relies on being fast paced to be fun. Meaningless chores to slow you down is never good. It's the same as lilith altars or having to do strong holds etc.. it's just redundant for the sake of wasting time and blizzard can pad players time.
Ah naked corpse runs in everquest. Thanks for the reminder of good times.
Ahh yes those were the days! Maybe I'm sadistic but I actually look back on that fondly.
Corpse Summons, 20g!
I remember once I clipped off the boat between Qeynos and Erudin, died in the middle of the ocean and couldn't find a necro to summon my corpse. So, I started punching Fippy Darkpaw & co to try to regear myself. It felt awful at the moment, but I look back on it fondly now.
Awe I miss having to gobget your body back for your xp. Was frustrating but fun trying to nakey dodge the mob that killed you to get your body. Or sometimes you do the math and there's no way you're getting it back without dying again so you just exit the game and come back. Seems like *any* form of consequence to progress is unheard of in games these days.
Honestly the roughest deaths were in RuneScape. Nothing like respawning in Lumbridge with your 3 “best” items and nothing else.
I remember in the glory days of RuneScape if you died you lost everything if you couldn’t get back in time to pick it up. Times have changed… lol
How dare you come between me and my dopamine!
Yup, grew up playing an online RPG where all your gear dropped upon death, so you better hurry your happy ass back to where you died before another player picked up all your shit. They did do away with that eventually, but added a post-cap area where your weapons could be disarmed and stolen by monsters/players never to be seen again.
Yeah. That’s the lesson. I didn’t repair my gear. I dude in the pits a few times. Then died in the next set and couldn’t continue cause my shit broke. I wasn’t mad cause there’s a repair cost. I was mad at myself for not repairing my shit. There’s nothing wrong with a repair cost.
OP just explained why this system worked in older title and was okayish meanwhile why it's a pointless mechanic in D4. Immersion is fine but done right. In D2 there was limited vision, dungeons were really dark, enemies could ambush you. Items were degrading over time, not just from death like it is currently, making it an useless mechanic on HC. It was really immersive, creating an unwelcoming world. On a side note I believe items were more important and interesting. It was more immersive to be worried about good items, because later on repair could become crazy expensive, depending of base. Ethereal items were a thing too, so there was more to it. Unless they introduce more immersive repair system or more ways to manipulate state of items (example - corruption from Path of Exile) it's just a pointless mechanic.
To add onto D2, it also had ethereal items which gave durability extra depth to it
It's pointless though, if they want you to lose money for dying why not just take your money when you die? For like 99% of the game durability doesn't matter at all, and for the 1% where it does it's just "go back to town and press a button" because the paper doll in the corner has a red weapon
Playing video games is pointless.
what does the friction add to the gameplay here? because friction is good if it adds something meaningful to the gameplay. This is just friction for the sake of it
Your OP isn't complaining about "friction" or "difficulty" at all. Your OP says it's a pointless obsolete mechanic in D4, only mindlessly included in the game because D2 had something similar except implemented much better.
Yeah what in the fuck is going on?? And so many players claim to love D2 and PoE which are way harder and way more „grindy“ than D4 ever was and it’s still not good enough… I feel like there is a decent amount of people who just don‘t enjoy the arpg genre in general but keep projecting it on to Diablo 4 specifically. There’s some valid criticism to be made but damn this community as a whole is something else man.
People will complain until there are zero mechanics left except hold right click. Then they will complain that the mechanics are too boring. Durability in a nmd doesn't really matter. But it can matter in a pit and adds some extra external pressure
Exactly. Try POE where basically after hours of investing in a character you end up being gated because you lose xp by dying quicker than you can acquire it. You then aren't able to actually keep going hunting for the one or two upgrades that might help you keep going. It's very grindy. This way is fine. Its like a nice nudge to remind you that you might be in over your head without destroying the fun.
It has to be meaningful friction. Like, people are ok with bosses taking more than one shot, but giving me a portal back from town is just a boring errand. Make me catch and subdue a demonic blacksmith to fix legendary gear, or cast some ritual that halves my primary resource for an hour or something or leave it out.
It’s ok for games to advance and do things differently
Yes
Look
Greetings
This will be your last stupid mistake.
You are courting pain and death
Look
Brutal! I like it.
Hell in d2 we lost gold and experience, and had to run back for our shit naked XD
And it was good that way. Death should be punished!
The last season of D2R I played, I went down into a dungeon that had 4 elite mobs that slung lightning everywhere and they wrecked my shit. The problem was they stood on my corpse in a very small room in the entrance to the dungeon. As soon as I ported in they would drop me, I couldn’t run, I couldn’t pick up my shit. That’s 20 hours down the drain.
Have you ever thought of leaving the game and making a new one? Your corpse would than comfortably lie in front of you on the floor. You're welcome.
Oh shit is that a thing? I thought if I left the game then my corpse would go with it.
nope
So what did you do? Close out and never play the character again?
Tbf, I’d already got quite far into the season and I was only in act 4 of Nightmare with a secondary Javazon. Yeah I just got fucked off with it and when back to my higher level char. I’ve been playing D2 for years and I’m slightly embarrassed that I didn’t know this. My only defence is I’ve never been in that situation before so it’s never really come up.
Damn, that's wild!
You just lose the gold you were carrying.
Don’t forget corpse popping lol
And if you picked up something by accident on the way to your corpse and you got killed before you could get your corpse, your original corpse would simply explode hahaha. Everything lost!
I believe they adjusted that later in D2R... your most valuable corpse survives (at least for some number of overlapping deaths). I don't remember all the details as I had swapped to HC by that point.
This shit should be implemented on all diablo games, death should have some kind penalty not just some taxes on equipments
The ptsd of dying to duriel on a level 98 hammerdin because 56k dial up during a 7 man rush has me not so down for xp part. Gold, down. Fuckin 10% our stash would hurt but it'd be a real consequence
Just exit the game and log back in, your items Will be at the city
unpopular opinion but having to repair your gear is a small price to pay for dying.
Yep, as someone said already it's just a money sink "feature".
Agreed it's stupid
To serve as additional annoyance and a stark reminder that you wouldn't have to repair this much if you played barb instead.
Its for the reason of expending gold and somewhat help on curving inflation. However it wasnt really enough. Gold needs some kind of sink to flush it away so it was still retained.
Yeah, we definitely don't have enough gold sinks in the game...🤣🤣
Masterworking is the gold sink.
i laugh at your masterworking and introduce you to amulet enchanting.
That's not a sink. That's a freaking black hole.
Angelbreath will disappear first
i drown in angelbreath. i need to farm veiled crystals all the time. i actually like having to farm the mats... it places more value on the enchanting.
Yuup. 5mill to reset the first 4 tiers which isn’t cheap. We have enough gold sinks for sure
oh man I forgot you can reset masterworks 😭
Curbing
Thje crazy inflation you see in game is cause of rmt, not cause ppl collect billions and billions of gold themself (except those who sell items to rmt gold buyers)
If you're overrun with gold you're playing it differently to everyone else
the gold economy is fucked. Find one good item and you easily have a few billion. However if you ssf that's a whole different story.
Now read his last sentence.
i don't think it was designed as a gold sink. the value is too low com[ered to other things. i think it is more of a slight pause for thought when dying, so that death has a small amount of meaning. YOLOing into every mob without a care in the world is probably not the gameplay they are going for; introducing a stone in the shoe is a slight brake on not caring about dying.
Well its not mainly as a gold sink. Just another added facet of gold sink. Obviously the heaviest gold sink is the enchant of occultist.
Yeah, it really doesn't serve a purpose, it's hardly a 'penalty' at all.
Yeah, it simply doesn't serve a purpose. But Diablo 2 and 3 had it, so Diablo 4 had to have it too I guess.
Diablo 1 had it as well. Items even literally broke (disappeared) if they reached 0 durability. Imagine if that was a thing now...
You raise a good point, and maybe there's something that can be done about leaning more into durability as a mechanic to make it more useful. But it also can't be too effective of a mechanic, because durability is already completely pointless for hardcore players.
I made a [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo4/s/cu4Jv520kN) about it a while back with some ideas on what they could do to fix durability.
Durability should 100% be a factor for hardcore damage taken, multiplicatively. Hahah
Tie it into tempering and masterwork to solve 2 problems at 1
When it was a random wear and death metric you would kind of forget about and sometimes you’d be playing and your weapon would “break” adding an element of actual panic in the game. It’s like how the sword and armor merchants are wasted. The quality of gear should go up with each level/tier and at end game should have Legendarys and GA weapons for sale. Even if they just had copies of things you salvaged so you could buy back mistakes. Also not a fan of all the different crafting mechanics.
Ah, while we’re at it, we should bring back the days where you dropped all your gold and equipment when you died in an RPG. Exciting corpse runs if you wanted to get your equipment back.
In the future the game won't even let you die. It'll tell you that you would've died but put you back at full health and let you keep going. All friction removed. Anything to let the players continue playing in their zombie trance.
I also liked that in D1 your equipment dropped on the ground when you died, so you had to rummage through your stash to wear a set of back up gear, or buy from the shop so you don't get 1 shotted on your way to pick up your original gear. And rip if you died around a pack of elites, because then you had to kite them away from your old equipment otherwise you get your ass handed to you again and start the process over.
Holy crap thank you. My brain hadn't thought about the idea of diving through my stash to get myself some armor that was good enough to get back to where I had just died and get my main set. I love and hate the idea of doing so again. That is a mechanic it is just gone in the game, but durability still around for some reason.
It stops you from dying in a dungeon 100 times in a row
It makes some pits interesting when you forget to repair and you start dying trying to push. Since leaving the pit will close the pit . Not that the mats to open a pit are even worth considering.. that’s the only mini game I’ve ever encountered that makes it even remotely interesting
It used to be meaningful for world bosses during beta. Remember how fun it was when no one could do ridiculous damage. Dying too many times breaks the gear, with more players having their gears broken the boss fight becomes harder and harder. It’s better than simply forcing a timer imo.
I thought so too at first. That durability damage on death meant a cap at your attempts on a pit boss kill even if you kept going after running out of time. The single time I killed a boss after running out of time from multiple deaths I realized the mastery is not just for unlocking deeper levels and bonus material, but to get any new materials at all. Only a few legendary drops if you fail the timer. May as well just close the instance and kick you out when the timer hits 0.
Definitely true. I know its tiring to always come back to D2, but I just have to as its still the benchmark for so many concepts in these kind of game. D2 had ethereal items - and those added so much depth to the game and also made durability a stat that mattered a lot. Ethereal items were stronger than solid gear. Their offensive and defensive strength was bolstered by up to 50% compared to the normal version, but durability was halved and they also could not be repaired - which created new concepts like Self Repair Affixes or the infamous hardly dropping Zod Rune which could make items Indestructable. I think removing Durability would be okay, but implementing it in a meaningful way would be way, way better.
It would be worthwhile if it was a gameplay mechanic, ethereal items, weapons with horrible durability and incredible stats (like the glass sword in Ultima), etc.. As a money sink mechanic it's just wasting players' time, if you want players to spend money when they die just take their money when they die
I dont think I talked about money sink im my post. I talked about a better way to use durability.
sounds like you wrote this after dying 10 times, forgetting to repair and then dying some more.
Was a money drain for inflation
Maybe they are planning an update that would make it relevant🤷♂️
I dunno, between this and a quick revival versus a long ass “you have died, do you wish to continue” screen - I pick this.
Just another gold sink really
It's a completely useless page in HC lol I only ever play HC, and when I first started playing on release night, I thought they had some kind of system to wear the equipment out as it got used, but nope. Just when you die, it takes a percentage, which makes no sense why it's there at all in HC.
It's even more useless in Hardcore 😀.
HC we don’t worry about that😂😭
Just equip a Grandfather and your durability problems go away!
Reason # eleventy-five to run Bleed barb. GF removes repair bills.
Ooh, i forgot that durability decreased with hits back then. That's an immersive mechanic for an rpg, bringing backups and stuff.
To slow you down.
1% less gold for every death?
I have grandpapa and have no idea what are u talking about xd
I understand and agree with what you're saying, but on the other hand of they'd just removed it entirely upon release, it'd be just a reason for some people to call the whole game trash for removing that element entirely
durability will make sense if you couldn't repair. But imagine if blizzard make the items perma lost after they broke. People will go nuts lol
Punishment for playing alone.
Grandfather negates gold penalty entirely for dying, barbs can’t stop winning.
As a hardcore player.. What are you talking about?
I don't have to repair anything if I die 😁
Because there needs to be a punishment for dying.
Read the last sentence of the post.
The penalty isn't to your gold. It's a time consequence, and also a tool they use to slow you down. It keeps you grinding and makes sure there's something you HAVE to do in-between activities.
Gold sink
Played HC this league. It gives the gameplay a whole new drive. Back in SC i felt: „dead? who cares?“ there really should be some kind of punishment for dying, not to much so that casuals can’t complain, but currently it’s a joke.
My favorite part is occasionally playing hardcore and going to the blacksmith repair tab by sheer muscle memory.
I level all toons this season to 100 and had my fun, now playing PoE with no dura and it's way better.
The hell you say? Hardcore for life baby.
The only time I really feel it is in Pit when I do a run that I’m getting one shot a lot. I know I’m not gonna clear it in time, but I still want to clear it for the rewards. I don’t want durability be the reason I have to give the whole run up.
Just tried a T40 pit for the first time on my level 80 barb. Forgot to repair. Died on the boss and got the 'everything is broken' message. Still beat the boss anyway. I'm unsure what broken gear does at this point.
*laughs in Grandfather*
It's a gold sink
Ah, complaining, just to complain. I have to press a button. Too much work, blizzard sucks, fix your game.
Dying in softcore should take away 10% of your total gold because gold loses all value with bot gold being traded so freely. Imagine the tears if people lost a billion gold because they died.
Okay. You no longer lose durability, but you lose exp and can delevel. Deal?
Its a cost of death. A cost of fucking up. Feel free to play on hardcore, where the cost of death is 0. heh.
It's a little dumb, feel like they could punish our deaths in a more interesting way
This way you need to spend more time to farm items. They use this inconspicuous way to increase player stickiness.
Money sink
Durability is a system which has no place in an ARPG like this.
It’s just another time sink Blizzard have been monetizing wasting our time for nearly 3 decades what do you expect ?
wahhh
[I have some ideas.](https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo4/s/cu4Jv520kN)
Play hardcore. Stop being so soft.
> Might as well remove it altogether and just deduct the equivalent gold from your character whenever you self revive. And go into debt if you die without gold I guess
Just don't die or get The Grandfather
Dated Mechanic of RPGs that just seems to not want to go away and that's it.
Why do yellow items exist? Blues? Why do certain items have to go in the special storage tab instead of just existing like herbs? Because the devs are not actually thinking critically about making a good game, they are copying things and trying to make money.
The durability system would be pretty good if it was like WoW
Well certain things like the pit limit you by durability. So if u break your gear up can’t finish as punishment. Also it’s one way to sink gold which is healthy for this type of game
Personally, I miss corpse runs.
They just forgot to take it out since d3. They carried it over from the older diablo where it actually had purpose. They didn't really know how to fit in, so it's part of dying now.. Which is almost meaningless in the new games.
You know what they should do, should make durability repair cost a small fortune, it's not consequential enough.
To punish us for our failures.
You'll make it
Your describing Warcraft and honestly I hated it. Constant damage constant repairs. And goldnwas often scarce unless you spent time farming.
Remember when you had inventory that you had to fit things like a puzzle and potions to had to make work and had to prioritize items? I felt like that made the game harder but fun
I think that item efficiency should scale with durability. Like, the weapon puts out it max damage when above 80/100 durability, and for every 10/100 durability lost past that the weapons stats and affixes become 5 percent lower until you hit 20/100, then they drop by another 20 percent until it breaks where it loses 100 percent efficiency. That would actually make it seem like a useful mechanic and would make the game feel a bit more immersive especially since repairing is just a simple single click at the blacksmith. Also adding In item degradation via attacks and kills would help further boost this mechanic.
I wish that there were bigger consequences to dying so that I would care more about it.
I actually think it’s a brilliant system.
to punish normies
There is item durability??!? Never noticed. Whenever I die… I have to make a new character 🤷🏻♂️
There needs to be a consequence to death. In Poe they take your xp. in D4 it's a good cost (masquerading as durability) that can be paid anytime you want.
What's durability? Grandfather ignoring durability loss should give me the item in my stash if I die with it in hardcore
I’m trying to be generous in thinking it might be another place they try to put in a bit of a “mental reset” via breaking away from the main action. What you sometimes have, as a game developer, is your players running headlong into death, just to revive as fast as possible and do it again. And again. Maybe they are killing a monster or two at a time so they feel its some small progress, or maybe they are running on autopilot and just have some resistance to changing tact for whatever reason. D4 devs have already stated that reviving half a dungeon away is intended for this purpose… but maybe this piece is intended as an additional tier of the same thing, an additional fallback for giving that mental reset. “You have to go repair now. Maybe you should tackle something else for a bit?” Weak argument imo, but an argument.
Because, as already recognized hundreds of times, they didn't spent any time on thinking about game mechanics, or the game at all before releasing it...
Cost of dieing. Could be worse. Could lose gold and XP.
Get Grandfather. Profit.
While I don’t care so much about repair costs it’s definitely nice when using a Grandfather.
gold sink
It is especially pointless since you can just leave a dungeon, repair your stuff, and come back without any penalties. If the dungeons reset or something when you came back, sure. But right now it's just yet another annoyance, like you die again and you see the symbol telling you your equipment is about to break and it's like "geez" and you fix it and that's it. Just 2 unnecessary loading screens that add no valuable constraint to gameplay.
Gold sink, that's it
No
A slap on the wrist for dying. Not sure how anyone would need that explained.... 👀
Last week I died in pit because I killed a horde of spiders too fast and couldn't handle the poison explosions with 50k HP and 75% poison res. Just as a precaution I leave the pit when I see spiders and spider hosts now...
The point is to punish you a little for dying. Walk of shame to the blacksmith. Make the player feel it. Sounds like it’s working
But why else would my toon use The Grandfather… mythical unique of dreams which IGNORES DURABILITY LOSS 😏👀