What can elemental learn from diablo

There's already a bunch of hero-only loot in the game, from quests and other sources (goodiehuts, high-level monsters).

1. I think the loot system in Diablo is terrible, mostly because of the randomness. Even things like set items are actually a bad idea. Having better distinction between items by adding more unique magical enhancements would be nice, but I don't really see a problem with buying powerful items in cities. If the price is set at the proper amount, then there should be a good trade off between doing quests and getting semi-random rewards and saving up gold to buy exactly what you want.

2. Not true. People complain that many level ups you don't gain anything (because attribute and skill points were removed). Also leveling slows down majorly after level 30. This was done to help out casual players who are probably going to play the game only a small amount and then quit.

4. I agree that more visual effects, more items, more visual customization is always better. 

I don't really feel like the RPG mechanics of FE are flawed, but rather the balance between heroes and units is something that needs more work. Diablo isn't the best example to look at in my opinion.

Also, I think you should compare to games you have actually played, since Diablo 3 isn't anything special. 

Regarding the point about loots: I'm not sure if they changed it in D3 (haven't bothered getting it), but in Diablo and Diablo 2 you tend to buy a lot of your equipment in the city until the very very end when you're farming for super gear to fit a build. That's because most of the stuff you find is wrong for your char class, and you end up selling it for gold and buying what you need instead. I remember repeatedly starting new games and poping by shops to see if they have a good magical enchantment for my weapon build. So I'm not sure if you want to be recommending Diablo's system for that.

Yep and many skills and runes are not very useful, because in most cases only more damage is important. Who cares if you can slow enemies with a slow time if you can be invulnerable with a diamond skin and kill them with a wave of force? The attribute points of the equipment make it worse. You get + 3 in your main attribute per level but a SINGLE item increases the attribute by 20+ points and every attribute point increases the damage by 1 %.

First off, thinking of D3 as an rpg kinda insults every real rpg. RPG means Role Playing Game - You could just as well call Unreal an rpg... but well... whatver.

on leveling: The main difference between an action-rpg(like diablo or mass effect) and a good strategygame is that playing the latter you are required to make choices. In D3, there are NO choices to make on leveling or choosing abilities - you just play for x seconds/minutes/hours to get the next thing. Same for ME2, where you respec between every two missions.

on loot, equipment: that is already in the making and as stated above, in the game. Even city artifacts, if you want to call them that; just visit the wildlands. Of course, you are right, more is always nice - but only, if it makes a difference. Noone needs five thousand swords with marginally different stats...

on "fashion": The difference between action-rpg and strategygame with lots of rpg elements is, again, everything is about choice. You want your cool haircut to be shown? don't wear a helmet. On action-rpg, you either use invisibility-stuff on the helmet like in d3 or just ignore the completely worthless bonus it gives like in ME2(which is designed so you don't wear one). Here, you either take that bonus armor, resistance or whatever, or you don't.

Colours of equipment already change with either hero colours(on champions) or faction colours, and above that, all you can wish for is different looks on different alignments, races, factions or to some small amount, gender(and women don't need bulges on armor, they only make things complicated and, in battle, dangerous). Already in the making, to some extent. Above that, i don't see the benefit of being able to modify the looks of things ingame. No need for changing colours on the fly, putting funny chicken-symbols on your armor or tinting it pink. Switching equipment and designing your units is already a lot.

How can one compare/bring ANYTHING from lamest ARPG game of the year in this soontobe masterpiece?

What can FE learn??? 

1. Force the player to always be online. Dont call it DRM, its for the users benefit

2. IF you cant find any good loot just buy it in the shop. Instant win.

GO FOR IT FROGGIE

I largely disagree with you on all points that aren't already present to some degree.

1. Totally random loot? Meh, I'd rather have really characterful loot that shows up randomly. They already have some cool stuff at higher levels, and I would like more unique gear, but in terms of RNG gear drops. No. Finding a [Serrated] [Broadsword] of the [Holy] [Aardvark] for +2.2 damage +7.3% Spell Resist and +3 [INSERT SKILL YOU DON'T USE] would be really lame. You know those wolf hides? Yeah. They would be really expensive wolf hides.

2. Grinding? Fun is not what I would call grinding. Grinding is the reason that all... ALL... MMO games go from interesting story and some neat levels to... "I have to kill another 42 Umberdroths for my turn in for the Master quest!". They become jobs,  and it is the grinding that is the very reason that I do not play MMOs. Ever.

3. Ease/ Speed of play. See: "Turn-Based-Game". This is an entire genre which is designed with depth of strategy, player choice, and multiple avenues of victory in mind. I think you could argue that good pacing is important (which it is), and it is important that a player can easily learn the fundamentals well enough to compete on Normal difficulty. That said, not only do I think that "Speed of Play" is directly counter to what a Turn Based strategy is, it also runs directly counter to the very presence of that "Fun" Grinding mechanic. Also not really where you see "Click Fests".

4. Design. Yep. I agree. I like having different styles of things, and would love to have some "Armor Aesthetic" choices during faction creation that impact the overall styling of your faction.

5. Characters. Yep. Character is important, and that's why they are giving all champions unique abilities, and they are going through the faction differentiation to the extent that they are.

This is interesting to me.  For the record I'm not a Diablo fan boy or anything, like I said I don't have the game or plan to play it anytime soon.  

It seems to me that this thread really broke down to a diablo sucks, don't bring that shit in here, vibe. Which is cool, everyone can hate on Diablo.  But that doesn't mean there is nothing from its game design that can be learned from it.

Don't get me wrong I don't want FE to be Diablo with armies.

But let me come at it in another way.  Stardock is awesome.  Really, really awesome.  No company I know of has put out a bad game then paid back their fans by giving them a free game.  But here is the downside for Stardock, the people in this beta aren't going to pay for this game.  We are either getting it for free or at a discount.  This game can't just appeal to the small number of people in these forums, it has to appeal to a larger base of gamers.

Giant Bomb just did about four hours of coverage for D 3.  Tom Chick just talked about Diablo for 2 hours in his quarter to three podcast.  Sales estimates for Diablo range between 3 and 5 million copies.  Fallen Enchantress doesn't have to have that kind of buzz or sales to be successful.  But there must be a reason Diablo is that successful. Identifing what things people like in Diablo then analyzing if or how  those things can improve FE seems like it could be helpful.  

Stardock is being really good to us by giving us a free game, it seems like the least we could do for them is help them make a great and successful game.

The problem with suggesting things from Diablo is that the devs can't really see something they like in that game and add it to this one. All the devs have certainly played Diablo, but it is a totally different engine and a totally different game. The loot in this game for instance takes up alot of memory. Each item therefore must be carefully thought out. A loot list as big as even the one in the first Diablo is unreasonable to expect in this game. That sort of game only has a quest and loot economy, while this game has a strategic economy. That means this game would be impossible to balance if we were going through truck loads of loot after every dungeon or battle. It just doesn't translate to this game structure. The UI is also a moot point to bring up.

The developers here are working on improving what we have and will continue to do so. It takes time and they are using a much smaller team. That means incremental changes. Same as the AI and content. They will get added, but a small team can only do so much in a month. Personally I think the devs are working too hard. I say they should all stop working on the weekends. I just know Brad and Derek will be on the forums before Monday, probably reading this. That is how you lose perspective. I would much rather they go see The Avengers 10 more times this weekend and think about adding Vibranium Shield to the loot. Some of my best ideas for the game come from taking a step back.

One thing that Diablo does that Elemental could do is progressive unlocks.  Say that you have to win a game with a particular race to unlock the next race.  Or maybe you have to do something specific in game (cast 25 fireballs) to unlock a pyromancer soveriegn trait.  This would add some game-to-game progression that could add to the addiction level of Elemental.

I hate that crap.  Let me play the game I bought, how I want to play it.  The Total War series has done that too - you have to play one of the major factions before you can play a minor one.  Words cannot describe how much I hate that nonsense.

I wouldn't want those sort of "unlocks" either.

Yep Stardock could learn from Blizzard that it is important for the player to feel his character is getting better, but i think Stardock is on the right track with the "go big or go home" design goal.

That is a boring game design in my opinion and too many games (Diablo 3, Mass Effect 2, ...) use it to unlock higher difficulty levels and other things, but if i want to play on nightmare difficulty from the beginning in diablo 3 i should be able to.

FE is a sandbox game. Progressive unlocks (and Achievements) are not in any way making the game more fun (for me). I would like as many options as possible to set up the game, but no limits. I would like sliders for overall difficulty, monster denseness, monster aggressiveness, monster strenght, how much CPU time the AI should get+++

First off, I like Diablo series myself, but I'm still waiting my Diablo 3 from Amazon 8-) , nevertheless, the huge success of Diablo comes - it is simple to learn, it has addictive elements for the masses, it is clean and polished, it was made for a long... long time... and ofcourse, finally, it was hyped as hell. The latter one being one of the more important points in the success.

Now while I like Diablo, I hate most MMO-s, I love strategy games, civ series are simply my favourites, but the most time I have spent on Civ IV mods, both Fall from Heaven to Fall Further to Rise from Erebus, but also such as Rise of Mankind. I love complex games. And even though there wouldn't be hundreds of millions customers for good slightly more complex games like FE(compared to sims which sold how many copies??? I still can't believe that lol...), then I still believe there is a reasonably large audience for such games, and they are hungering for a polished game for their taste.

To be honest, I enjoy this game more than Vanilla Civ IV but less than Fall from heaven/Fall further, even though the latter had an AI, which had no idea of his tools and power at his disposal, and also not worth mentioning the many crashes on the LAN games, but hey, it was still sweet getting beat up by my girlfriend myself being Hyborem - simply epic.

Anyhows, the problem with Fall further, and currently FE, has any of you ever experienced AI doing Tremor on you? Or Tornado? Or any other really abusive strategy? . The most they have done is occasionally one hit my hero with their hero(crit.). The problem is that hardcore players like myself don't like super powers, if we don't get hit by the same super powers ourselves. That doesn't mean I don't like having such things in the game, I just want the AI to abuse them same way as I do, and that without giving them a +X% bonus to everything. Because this is what wakes me up and I start thinking, hmm, I need a new more refined plan...

Preferably, I discourage anyone to learn from Diablo at all concerning game design. I hate that game for the simplistic grind it transformed good old rogue-like games into. Especially don't learn from the latest iteration that could be best described as "mediocre cellphone game".

Thanks everyone for your replies to my post. Even though many people here seem to find Diablo distasteful this thread didn't devolve into personal attacks and in fact some people have had some really good input for the developers.

This is an excellent community.  (Also the team should take the weekends off, your right.)

Let me boil this down to a more interesting question. Is there a game, with interesting mechanics, that the developer should look at?  Not a 4X game, but something you wouldn't normally associate with a turn based fantasy game.

Just to be clear, I want Fallen Enchantress to be the best turn based fantasy strategy game ever.  Period.  I'm not trying to suggest that the game should be more of a tower defense game or a moba, but game development doesn't happen in a vacuum and a good idea is a good idea.

I think the idea of a meta game is interesting.  Like a new game plus feature.  Finish a game as Altar and hero recruitment is discounted in further play throughs.  I think this is the kind of thing that would work with the multiplayer DLC that we may or may not get.  

Its not that far from achievements which we will probably get from stardock games someday since they are going to be selling on steam.

From what I've seen it seems built for the consoles.  You like rogue likes?  If you haven't tried it Tales of Maj'Eyal is good and free to play.

I do think there's something to learn from Diablo 3 about loot.  Maybe randomly generated loot it s a bad idea, for reasons others have point out above, but I do think that FE could benefit from a massive amount of hand-generated loot.  Gambling is in human nature, and we like to whack that pinata over and over to see what comes out this time.  It can only be a surprise if there's a large pool of pre-generated loot to draw from.

I know you said "not a 4X game" but I'm going to pull out Dominions 3 anyway, which is kind of a 4X game.  The aspect of Dominions 3 I'd like to see FE "borrow" is the sheer craziness in the range of summoned units available.

• A huge list of summoned units in general.  I know 3D art is vastly more expensive than 2D art, but I'm okay with reused models.  Just colour them differently, give them different weapons, scale the unit size, etc.  I'm 100% okay with that.
• Some truly horrific late-game summoned units.
• Unique late-game named summons.  These can only exist once at any given time.
• A random aspect to summons.  In Dominions 3, there are spells like Bind Arch Devil.  There are several, unique named Arch Devils in the game.  You get one of them, determined randomly, and their stats vary.

Go big or go home! 

Diablo 3 is targetting the masses, and in particular they seem to be trying quite hard to attract World of Warcraft players (including offering free Diablo 3 for people who buy WoW quite a few months in advance). Everything I have seen indicates that Blizzard are doing this to a much greater extent than Diablo 2. And as a result they have also in some ways made the game simpler and more accessible. Certainly they don't care about a lot of what the hardcore Diablo 2 players wanted hence the lack of mods, must always be online, etc. All done towards the goal of being able to sell as many million copies as possible, which is of course a worthy goal for a company.

FE is very different. It just isn't possible for it to target the masses. Civ 5 can JUST about get away with it but thats because it is very well known (being the 5th iteration of the best known turn based strategy game). But for a new franchise to target the masses would be silly. Instead FE needs to pick a smaller but more easily targetable market, in this case turn based fantasy strategy fans.

Which is all cool but I'm not sure that there is a big overlap between what turn based fantasy strategy fans and the much bigger population of WoW fans want!  They are both fantasy but beyond that? So I'm not convinced there is all that much for FE to learn in general from Diablo 3, although of course there may be a few small scale mechanics which have valuable lessons.

If you want speed of play then just play an RTS game (that is what they are there for) with the exception of games like Total war which have both TBS and RTS in the game.  Remember your playing a TBS game it is not for ADD people.

EDIT:  Oh and the main thing that D3 can teach FE is what not to do.  FE can learn from other games like AOW, AOW:SM, MOM, CIV, GAL CIV2, Total War, Warlock, as well as others but the one game that it does notneed to learn from is D3.

I hate progressive unlocks in games. I really hope that FE does not do this. 

A year ago you would have never convinced me that I would take time off from a newly released Diablo III, to play a EFE beta. Yet thats what Im doing today. D3 is good but not great, lots of fluff I like substance, debth choices and gameplay. Im hoping that EFE dilivers. So far it looks good.

I dropped Skyrim for FE quite a while ago, and I am still playing FE. The only thing that could give me a break would be Kings Bounty: Warriors of the North, but its not arriving for a while it seems.