Text / Mobile game that little thing Sam
Last weekend, the long-awaited "Diablo 4" opened the last round of external testing before release.
In this test, Blizzard opened up the three classes of Wizard, Ranger, and Barbarian, as well as all game content from the prologue to the end of the first chapter. If nothing else, by June this year, this work will be officially released, revealing all the suspense surrounding itself.
No matter from which point of view, the work "Diablo 4" carries a very important significance: on the one hand, after falling into a series of turmoil such as high-level turmoil and uncertain acquisitions, Blizzard, which has not shown itself in a positive image for a long time, urgently needs a new work to "redeem" itself; In addition, for the dark like derived from the series, the return of the main game after ten years is also the best opportunity to attract players to return and revive the category.
Especially since last year, works such as "Diablo: Immortal" and "Torchlight: Infinite" have successively landed in the global market, which has brought the market's attention back to this classic category. Coupled with the end of "Diablo 4" as a flag-bearer, the dark like that has been silent for many years seems to be getting closer and closer to his "second spring".
01 Diablo 4: Legacy and change go hand in hand
As a series sequel to Blizzard's "Ten Years of Grinding a Sword", the first feeling of "Diablo 4" is more like "returning to the original intention".
This impression is particularly strong in visual perception. Compared with "Diablo 3", which is bright and bright, and uses cartoon graphics that many players criticize as "wrong", the overall style of "Diablo 4" returns to the iconic "dark and deep" tone in "Diablo 2", and some details are more realistic and thicker.
From the moment you enter the game, you can clearly feel a grotesque atmosphere that gradually oozes: the color is cold and gray, the town is lifeless, and the internal organs and plasma everywhere give people a lot of impact and tension. In addition, the plot performances such as "human sacrifice" and villager riots in the early plot also played this violent and bloody horror to the fullest.
With the blessing of next-generation technology, the graphics level of "Diablo 4" has been qualitatively improved compared with the previous work. Not only that, under the classic 45° top-down view design, Blizzard added a large number of main perspective cutscenes in the form of real-time calculations, and through the "cinematic" camera switching between characters and scenes, the original weak narrative experience was fully supplemented, and the sense of substitution was also strengthened.
In addition, this work also has a lot of changes in terms of character builds. On the basis of inheriting the "Smart Drop" mechanism of the previous game, the "Dark Gold" equipment and talent tree system in "Diablo 2" has also returned.
In addition, players can extract special affixes from legendary equipment through the "extraction" function and assign other parts to achieve a "custom set" effect, further improving the flexibility and freedom of equipment build.
The more obvious innovation lies in the design of the map. In this game, Blizzard chooses to pinch multiple areas into each other in an attempt to move closer to the "open world". In addition to the explorable range becoming quite large, there are also "high and low depth" elements in the scene, which can control the character to climb up and down, or jump back and forth between cliffs.
Although these environmental interactions do not account for much in the game, more like embellishments that complement the big world experience, the scene design of "everything you can see" is still quite fresh in the series. However, the lack of a mount system during the testing phase also made the running chart process a little long and boring, which is a small regret.
To further populate the open-world exploration experience, Blizzard chose to add some MMO elements to Diablo 4. For example, other players who occasionally appear in the map, as well as the "regional prestige" system that exists in each area, need to unlock some rewards through task checklist-style collection, and even give people a sense of déjà vu of World of Warcraft.
On the other hand, "Diablo 4" directly removes the single-player mode in the previous game, and during the exploration process, some world bosses will be refreshed at a fixed time, and you need to "crouch" on time to attack them.
Although these elements do not weaken the core experience from the current point of view, it is more like an attempt and supplement to the gameplay. However, "Dark" is moving closer to the MMO direction, which will inevitably cause some controversy among the player group. After all, whether the solution of "open world + MMO" is suitable for public taste is itself a proposition that varies from person to person. In addition, whether the gameplay innovation will affect long-term operations, and whether some "strong social" designs will bring new contradictions, are all potential issues that Blizzard needs to weigh before release.
02 Is it a good idea to merge Diablo with MMOs?
Multiplayer screen, boss fights, and the Battle Pass system and PVP that are likely to appear after the official release... Simply listing these elements, even if the subject is changed from "Diablo 4" to "Diablo: Immortal", it seems that there is not much sense of contradiction. Looking back, "Immortal" chose to develop the MMO route, in addition to the inevitable trade-offs based on mobile features, it may also be "throwing stones and asking the way" for "Diablo 4".
In Immortal, this attempt is more thorough: for example, in the early days of the server, some dungeon dungeons in the game required a team of 4 people to enter, and players needed to be "forced" to match and socialize; In addition, it includes daily tasks, large and small secret places, and automatic pathfinding, which have distinctive mobile game features. According to some player feedback, some daily quests in Immortal also limit output to balance the game's "liver" and ensure that player progress is as uniform as possible.
Although "Immortal" has caused a lot of controversy due to the issue of the Krypton degree of the legendary gem after its launch, the feasibility of "MMO+ Dark like" has been fully verified. After removing the paid elements and then kneading them into the main game, leaving room for experimentation and buffering, Blizzard's "chess" is still relatively stable.
Of course, before that, there were also some cases of "overturning". For example, South Korean manufacturer LINE Games' "Undecember" released last year also attracted attention through similar selling points. However, due to factors such as MMO factors affecting the experience and unreasonable design of paid points, it suffered a decline in word-of-mouth, and the current Steam praise rate is only 48%.
It is not difficult to see that for the dark like category, there is currently no standard answer to this "solution". Once the paid design intervenes contrary to the original intention of the gameplay "equipment driven", such changes are likely to cause imbalance.
In contrast, making an article about the "cool point" of the dark like itself may be a more secure choice.
In this regard, "Torchlight: Infinite", which landed in overseas markets last year, may be one example. In this work, which also comes with its own IP, Xindong has come up with a rather interesting set of ideas: remove the elements other than the core gameplay as much as possible, and pursue the "extreme" of skills and equipment build while simplifying the farm process.
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In fact, its experience is closer to that of a single-player work - no stamina system, no PvP, no important resources and no output limits, players only need to cycle through the process of entering the map to fight monsters, brushing equipment - adjusting build.
At the same time, from the build design of Torchlight: Infinite, you can also see many shadows of POE (Path of Exile), such as the exaggerated talent tree and the "connection" setting between skills. Based on this, Xindong greatly simplifies the difficulty of the original hardcore operation through the key design of a single active skill and multiple passive skills; And the arrangement and combination between multiple classes and hundreds of skills, the depth of the build can be imagined.
The emphasis on the dark like "original taste" route also won "Torchlight: Infinite" a good result in the overseas market. In addition to topping a number of overseas free lists on the day of its launch, it has also successively entered the best-selling head in major markets such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. From this point of view, although "doing addition" has gradually become the mainstream of the category, there are still enough market opportunities for more "back to basics" designs.
03This year may be the year of "dark like"
As mentioned at the beginning of the article, with the global success of "Diablo: Immortal" and the boost of the release of "Diablo 4" within the year, this IP that witnessed the rise and fall of Blizzard has been "raised again".
Even if Blizzard temporarily withdraws from the mainland market, it is likely to cause a lot of difficulties for domestic players to experience "Diablo 4". But on the mobile side, there are already products such as "Torchlight: Infinite", which has just passed the version approval at the beginning of the year and will be launched in May, trying to act as a replacement. In the past, the dark like, which few people dared to touch in the domestic market, may usher in a real "big year".
If you trace the roots, the gameplay category of Dark Like is the product of players' self-cultivation in the process of IP development, and gradually develops and grows in the "window period" before the sequel, and extends different design branches. But the reality is that the previous work "Diablo 3" was also a product of 11 years ago. When the innovation space based on the framework of the previous work gradually comes to an end, it is naturally Blizzard and "Diablo 4" that can stand up and break the "ceiling".
Fortunately, after many rounds of ticket skipping and the turmoil of the team's senior management leaving one after another, the current "Diablo 4" still looks like it is enough to support this "golden signboard". What's more, even after many years, the number of players in this series is still huge: according to official data, the total play time of players in the early beta phase for pre-order users alone has reached 20 million hours, and 1 million people have upgraded their accounts to level 20.
Such a performance can undoubtedly also give a "shot in the arm" for the dark like market. It is foreseeable that after the official end of "Diablo 4", a new round of exploration around the Dark Like category will also begin. Whether it is continuing to develop in the direction of MMO, or "sticking to the heart" like "Torchlight: Infinite", it will bring more possibilities to inject "living water" into the category of Dark Like that has lasted for 20 years.
"Torchlight: Unlimited" has now opened the May Open Beta reservation activity, identify the QR code above or click "Read Original" at the end of the article to jump to the reservation page.