Hey,so I really want to ask for the profesional opinion of an actual game dev in regards to this picture here,do any of you think this is good game design? I am unironicaly getting gaslight even by friends that this is somehow good design that adds complexity…am I insane here thinking this is a huge mess??
God…titan quest 2 and grim dawn 2 cant come out soon enough
It is an huge mess and just adds a ton of bloat. Grim Dawn already gets some criticism for having too many damage types, those stats are way worse.
if you want some unsolicited “non game dev” answer: no
it’s not good design, it’s not depth or complexity, it’s lazy, easy and the most boring type, and having many of them doesn’t make it better or more complex, it just highlights how pointless and uninspired it is
incremental %/stat upgrades are the most boring form of upgrades
obv you need some way to boost you dmg, so it doesn’t mean you can’t have any, but if all your game/system does is 1% here 2% there, it’s just 
non arpg example could be Bulletstorm vs Doom 2016,
bulletstorm did incremental regular stat upgrades, not a bad game, had lots of other fun parts; but the upgrade system was boring, “might as well not have been there”, could have just have plopped in an upgraded version of the weapon at XYZ points in teh game that automatically dealt those 20% more dmg or whatever
meanwhile in doom it “completely” altered your weapon shots/modes, adding variety, and what you could do/adjusting your gameplay to some of it
(even if you can end up with X always superior than Y)
(somewhat) incremental stat upgrades is a necessary evil, since you do need some of it to get more of XY,
but it shouldn’t be all you have, and you shouldn’t try to “compensate” by just slapping on 15-25 different stats, you then equally “Upgrade” with +1% here +2% there… or worse… fractions 
More than any of the above, i.e. bloat or boring design, this seems to really limit build diversity, flavour and build customisability, which are, like, some of the main draws to ARPGs in my opinion.
Let’s say you have developed a fondness for lightning magic through your experience with other games. And so you’re really excited to try a Lightning Sorceress in D4. Have fun having your dreams shattered. Now, full disclosure, I haven’t played D4. The Diablo franchise can kiss my ass at this point. But I have keept an eye and an ear out for its design and gameplay. If you’re playing a Sorceress, apparently one of the best ways to reduce incoming damage is “less damage from Burning enemies”. So if you’re playing a pure. flavourful Lightning Sorc, you now have to squeeze burning damage in there somewhere to even play the game “the right way”. Then you get to the damage increases. Let’s say that Lightning gets you access to stun so you’ll have the damage vs stunned covered. Want more damage? Since you already HAVE to have burning for survivability, you should get dmg vs burning somewhere too. Then, you HAVE to get dmg vs vulnerable or you’re not playing the game right (dmg vs Vulnerable is the most easily accessible damage multiplier from what I heard so you have to have it). From what I understand, Frost Nova is a good source of Vulnerable for Sorc. So now you have to put Frost Nova in your Lightning build. In addition to the burning source you need to survive. Are you even playing a Lightning build anymore? Cause at least 2 of your 6 buttons or however many you can have are already occupied by other elemental sources.
This will be the case for pretty much every build. You don’t get to build the way you like. You need to tick specific status effect checkboxes cause all the damage increases are conditional. You have to have vulnerable so whatever good source of vulnerable your class has, you have to get it. Then whatever status effect damage multipliers you can get, like poison or immobilise, you need to squeeze in as many as you can to have good damage. Plus your survivability will also be heavily dependent on status effect. D3 completely fucked up its damage system by making all increases multiplicative, and D4 seems to have swung way too hard in the other direction. “You want to deal good damage? Jump through these hoops for our amusement, else you don’t get any.”
The complexity itself is not so much of a problem. A lot of people think Grim Dawn is rather complex.
The problem is the conditialization of all those damage increases. “+xx% damage to enemies who are having breakfast” vs “+xx% damage to enemies who are sleeping on the couch” nonsense.
Since the statuses which have to apply to enemies are not present on every skill, the most valuable skills become precisely those who are able to confer such statuses. That severely limits the build potential, because it makes those skills mandatory for each build.
I think the main mistake of D4 devs is that they are not, or didn’t have among them, serious arpg players.
Imo these conditional damage types are good for skills, bad for items.
For skills it can give them identity and a designed way to be used. Furthermore it can be a cool way to do other things like cdr instead of dmg. Like dealing dmg vs bleeding enemies reduces cooldown by x. To me, that is cool as a skill stat. As an item stat, fuck no.
The fact that literally every modifier in Diablo 4 is conditional is one of the primary reasons I’ve shelved it for now.
+33% overpower damage? Oh boy, a 1% average damage increase since overpower only happens 3% of the time and the chance can’t be raised! Let me just toss it on the pile of “+x% chance of something happening on a y% chance of something happening to an uninjured distant elite but only if he’s doing the hanky panky under a full moon on a leap year”.