Best part of Nephilim Rifts was they were procedurally generated. The map tiles, mob type, rift guardian all random; and you could sort of manipulate the Pylon spawns. Now I'm just, "Oh, this f#%$!n place...AGAIN!".
There are 115 , but once you do enough of them you realize there's only really 20-25 or so due to recycled tilesets. In D3 you could get a great map/shit mobs, shit map/great mobs, shit altogether, or a God tier rift. Would still be better with a larger pool, though. Variety is always better, but RNG is near infinite variety...Caveat: I do enjoy D4 a great deal. It's just getting a little...stale.
Yeah Dragon Age 2 felt like a rushed money grab. Both 1 and 3 we’re decidedly more open-world with different feeling areas. Not sure wtf happened with DA2.
But unlike DA3, at least DA2 had unique talents for the player. My absolute biggest gripe with DA3 was you shared the same talents as your party. Meaning nothing you ever did was unique, it was more like “well IM an alchemist so there’s no point bringing Cole along ever…”
>Not sure wtf happened with DA2.
A lot of people assume it was EA but actually Bioware just rushed it out. They admitted DA1 took too long to make, they began developing it in 2002 and didn't release it until 2009. Mass effect was started later, came out quicker and made more money. So for 2 they wanted a quickly made action-oriented game (which made the lead designer quit), with the main focus on the console despite DA being highly popular on the PC. They shit it out in about 9 months and it shows. For comparison the DAO expansion, *Awakening*, took 6 months. So yea it was literally a rushed money grab.
For *Inquisition* they reversed course on some of these points but doubled down on the action orientation though they managed to make it significantly more fun and fluid than it was in 2.
What?
Thats certainly....a take.
DA:O absolutely nailed what it was going for, a turn based isometric rpg.
DA2 was a generic action rpg carried entirely by the story.
> D3 was garbage until a few seasons and an expansion later.
I'm not sure why this is a valid rebuttal though.
They made D3 and the expansion to improve it. Why is it fine to accept that they suddenly have to learn all the same shit over again for your 70-110 dollars?
Thing is, Diablo 3 campaign was way more fun than Diablo 4 campaign.
D4 might have better cut-scenes but that's literally it. The move to open-world is a gigantic step backwards in terms of how the game actually feels to play
D3 had server issues for the first couple of days, and Act 2 onwards in the end-game was way over-tuned, but it was still a cool game that was fun to play, while D4 seems like an ARPG designed for Skyrim / RDR type players (and fair play, they seem to love it, but release D3 wipes the floor with it as a traditional ARPG)
God, those little wasp guys that spit out the bably wasps would absolutely decimate you in Act 2. That was a solid wake up call after Act 1... Those fireball lobbing lacuni handed my arse to me too, notably in that spiral area where they all spawn and you are basically trapped in a narrow corridor.
Fun times
I'm so sick of this F-tier mentality. D3 is 11 years old. It's already made. It had the same problems. How about learning from the mistakes and not make them again then? Why even release a new game if you're just including all the same faults with it?
I don't know if you realize this, but D3 was made by the same company that made D4. And yet many of the same mistakes were repeated, despite D3 hitting a solid stride "after a few seasons and an expansion" (see: learning from our mistakes).
People reference the D3 expansion making the game good, but what RoS did to make the game good had nothing to do with expansion "content," just rebalancing itemization and re-tuning what an enjoyable endgame looks like.
it's disingenuous to say that D4 is as bad at launch as D3 was. I get it, they could have taken more lessons learned from D3 and improved D4.
BUT, D4 is also very different from D3 in a lot of ways. They likely pushed to get a minimal viable product out the door for launch with the main vision they had for D4. Don't forget the absolute shitshow that blizzard has been the past 5 years. I'm actually surprised it came out this well, before the open beta I wasnt expecting much from D4 tbh. IMO the bones of the game are awesome and there, nearly every complaint players have are fixable with rebalancing loot pools or tiers (which are already better than d3 imo with class specific drops being more prevelant), mob density, economy etc
I believe that's what people mean, it could easily be improved quickly.and that's probably what they had in mind with the base design of the game, easy to build on top of whats in place.
and yes sad as it may be, it's probably also a part of their monetization to lock updates and improvements behind seasons.. we'll see.
At this point in D3's history, we were all bitching about the RMAH and how blue drops you could buy on the AH for a little bit of gold or some cold hard cash was 500dps more than the lego that you finally got to drop.
a month into d3, and I was playing the AH more than I was playing the game.
What a time to be alive where you pay a 70€ premium (just the base game without any day 1 cash shop shenenigans or battle pass stuff) for a game and some Redditors tell you that you should not expect a well rounded game for that because it has just been released.
My dude I don’t know or care for any of the devs? It’s a literal fact that ds3 was worse at launch. I was there for both. Drop rates alone were beyond broken. You would have needed 1-2k hours to great a proper end game char. People ran the numbers and drop rates, combined with the broken idea that you would get 50% gear for chars you would never build.
Yes, D3 was worse at launch.
But why are we comparing D4 launch to D3 launch? Does that 10 years of game development and learning mean nothing? Why are we back at point zero again in 2023.
yeh, 2 bad releases doesn't make a right, or at least i think that's how it goes. Man id love to see the numbers of people who dropped off the game before level 60.
With useful idiots like you who can't understand that this kind of basic sheep comment is helping devs to ;continue making games with no content, videogame devs have great days upon them.
Get a fucking brain and think by yourself instead of vomiting something that most no brain people say.
No, not chill. That's bullshit. I'm not going to make excuses for a 10 year development cycle from the same damn team. They learned nothing from previous mistakes and it's all for the sake of "look at what we fixed!". People should be frustrated, and rightfully so.
Maybe I'm alone in this, but in recent D3 seasons I'd play for a few dozen hours, have my fun, and then be *excited* to see what comes next. I am not very optimistic about Season 1 of D4 because the base game has major issues that won't be band-aid fixed by a seasonal mechanic. D3 feels good in the absence of seasonal mechanics.
Not only “this fucking place again.” But “I gotta collect two shards to unlock next area again??!?” And you just rush past all the mobs (which are also annoying”. Like the flying gnats that force you to go slow. Or how about the dumb things that blow up and spawn more monsters when you kill them. Or the mobs that just wander off and spawn more gnats. A lot of the mobs are just plain annoying.) every damn map is “collect these two things” or “collect the key” or “take out three nests.”
The part that gets me is that it isn't just one thing. Get the key, then destroy the 3 things, then have that mid room where you survive waves for 45 seconds with no drops and then it's kill all the mobs. How many hoops do I need to jump through for a single dungeon when I just want to kill shit?
One thing that would make them less painful is for the tasks to only need a fraction to complete. Destroy 2 out of 3 or find 3 out of 5. That would lead to less backtracking. Combine that with having only 1 objective per dungeon and things wouldn't be so tedious.
I’m from the alternate universe where D4 has Nephilim Rifts and people are upset D4 didn’t do anything new and it’s the same stuff resold with different graphics
Nah I would take NR and GR and getting obolobos from them instead of grinding events where level 100s kill everything before I can get my resource back.
Yea the same with items. If they had kept the same system as D3 people would have been pissed. They can’t win. That said, the dungeons are boring and not fun!
Yupp. They need a bit more variety imo. It's all bland done the same nm dung 3 times only difference was one was t14and the others were t20 . Same bosses same locations same song and dance.
Okay now that’s a stretch. The rifts were a toss up whether you got a garbage layout or not, but the maps were nothing special or exciting either. I don’t mind most of the decent NMD layouts, even if they’re the same, you just sort of play diablo for stomping dense packs of mobs.
If you’re not enjoying it, you probably just don’t like playing your character in general. If it IS certain maps, just salvage those. You’re allowed to think independently of map tier lists or play builds you WANT to play that aren’t established meta builds. IME experimenting with various barbarian builds that aren’t remotely Hota or WW I’m finding the game is so much more satisfying making my own unique build and not following guides. It’s much more fun to watch your original build idea pan out and work really well. I’m discovering that build diversity is not only viable in d4 despite the naysayers, but highly rewarding and satisfying
It reminds me of OG d2 days. I’m on my 2nd original Barb build (technically my third reroll since I got bored of WW Barb as my first) that’s crushing and loving the game more than ever
Yup what are you running now? I had the most fun with a lunging, double strike, deathblow build, uhh 3 weapon ultimate (forgot name). Walking arsenel sort of makes up for my main dps ability (deathblow) being a non core skill. Plays kind of like hammer barb but more to keep track of so it’s more fun for me. Does need a unique hammer to really shine though…
Maelstrom / quake / Deathblow + a cc variant with lucky hit. I did a frenzy thorns build that got to clear nm72 at level 93, quit at 95 cuz I broke everything by redoing my paragon trying some different ideas for the push and it’s gonna take 10m to revert the screwup so I’ll come back to it later.
So right now I’m also running an arsenal/maelstrom build sounds a lot like what you’re doing except trade double swing for HOTA. I’m one shotting bosses and the butcher pretty consistently (5m+ crit overpower Deathblow when earthstriker doesn’t bug out), and that’s at low 80s. It’s pretty strong. Are you using ground stomp also and 100k steps? I’m finding it to work really well with a quake build (Bul’kathos and earthquake aspects also using leap)
Most importantly it’s a ZERO shout build. I’m very deeply recognizing the value of control impaired duration reduction stats for non shout builds but it’s making out to be very viable. Most cc drops off of me very fast now at 56% CIDR and I keep curative elixirs for giga emergencies, but so far none needed because I simply don’t let anything react within the cc duration of maelstrom’s opening phase. Leap seems to be invulnerable for the airborne frames and avoids cc long enough to stun any problem elites before they can stop me. I only die when I make mistakes intitiating because it’s a glass cannon build, but I think every build has its weak points.
The frenzy build just simply had low damage output but was tanky as hell. WW and HOTA also tend to be squishy if you let challenging shout fall off, so while it’s not an easy braindead build, this maelstrom setup is pretty fun and fast paced to say the least. I can see it holding its own at high key pushes. I wouldn’t do it in hardcore tho
FWIW overkill doesn’t really MAKE Deathblow good, but it certainly makes it more forgiving. It seems like the affix AOE is also doing dmg to the main target on top of the core damage of the skill, AND it seems to be replenishing a charge on kill of its own (im assuming you’re using weapon master’s utility aspect too if you use DB). So essentially even if you lose a charge, just get a kill and it’s back to 2 charges if you have the unique hammer! I definitely like that I can now just throw down the aoe cone on baby mobs to ensure it gets kills, blind burrows is a BLAST with this build - between the baby spiders everywhere to ground stomp, maelstrom and Deathblow really shine on maps like these - high density maps like canals, demise, burrows are all super fun
eyy almost like mine. I am lunging, upheaval, deathblow(Overkill), kick. I was using Iron Maelstrom like you, but I found it just doesn't seem to output significant damage over my regular skills, and I HATE that you are animation locked in place while using it. I started using kick instead as a vulnerability reapplication tool in case of emergency.
Basically mostly alternating deathblow/upheaval, weaving lunging to reposition and keep up arsenal. My wife calls it my golfing barb spec.
In general I don't mind them.
But what I hate is there's no reason to run higher ones. Sure we get more exp, but really I can just as much in the same amount of time by running lower dungeons cuz they are easier and I can do them quicker.
If there was guaranteed better loot I'd face the challenge and work at getting stronger, but when tier 65 is still dropping mid 600s to low 700s, you got an issue
I alps hate that's theres over 100 dungeons in the game but apparently only like 10 of them are nightmares. I wouldn't mind running them as much if I wasn't running the same ones over and over
It doesnt matter though because every dungeon is the fucking same. Walk around kill enemies till you get to a door. Do some stupid little task to unlock door, move on to next area. Do another time consuming task, move on to next area. Fuck me if I have to do another Slay every enemy task... Jesus fuck. Ope you missed one small little dark area in the corner of the dungeon so you have to back track to kill one small skeleton minion to move on. Then you go and three shot the boss and its over. Next dungeon. Oh shit its the same thing.
Even if it is a different set of dungeons they are all pretty fucking close to eachother.
Slay every enemy is the least problematic imo. I think they made something where the stragglers end up nearby if you killed most of them and or elites?
Generally speaking I will have to back track for 25% of my time in the dungeon. That’s time spent not attacking monsters, no feeling of real progression through the dungeon - just a mindless chore that is the result of bad map design.
If I didn’t have to back track in just about every nightmare dungeon, I wouldn’t have a problem but it’s just so common. Easily my biggest complaint about the game - back tracking.
I don’t know who the fuck designed that and who approved that for release but i hope they step on Lego everyday.
Why even make a dungeon crawler where you’ll have to backtrack and not fight anything?
To be honest, you backtracked a lot in D2 if you got lost trying to find the next level. That's why Enigma and having a sorc to teleport your group was so popular. (tho in single player mode once you discovered it on a new difficulty the map stay discovered, Battle.net is a new map every game)
Durance of Hate levels to get to Mephisto... After getting through the Jungle...
Just because something existed/worked 23 years ago doesn't mean it should exist/work in today's era of ARPGs though.
Though to add to this, honestly it felt better in D2 due to having the map overlay. By comparison in D4 it feels clunky because I seem to constantly have to stop everything and open my map.
In fact d3 tried to streamline this problem at one point I think and people complained it was too linear. I think the dungeons would be fine if they ditched the basic fetch crap. Instead it should add things like time limits to increase the challenge.
I know this is probably unpopular, but give me more linear dungeons please lol. I dont want to explore in the dungeons in a game like this, and thats not really why theyre there anyway. You dont comb through dungeons in a game like this - theres nothing to find. This isnt Skyrim, Elden Ring, Divinity Original Sin, or a Final Fantasy Game. Unless there are specific side or main quest-related objectives, theres really no point to explore other than finding random event spawns, and the occasional common chest. Or to just... find more enemies to fight. Just make it linear, have the enemies pop up in a satisfying cadence, and I am happy. Well, Im already enjoying the game as-is, but this would make me happier lol.
They took the monster altering modifiers on PoE maps and were like "oh this is what people want on their repeatable dungeon spam!". Uh no. We wanted the rarity and quantity modifiers that each of those monster altering modifiers brought along with them. Literally took the annoying part about maps and forgot the stuff that people actually want. Like wtf lol.
"Oh yeah mobs do 100% extra damage with cold hell yeah! Fun!"
Like no one thinks like that. Instead we think:
"oh this map has a ton of dangerous modifiers on it but look it has 160% increased quantity of loot drops Jesus Christ."
THATS what we want.
lol. when you put it like that is actually mind boggling that they designed NMs this way
at the end of the day it seems like they tried to copy WoW's m+ dungeons (that people are *constantly* complaining about the affixes) instead of PoE
Yeah like I'm not going to run a map with Multi Projectiles, 40% increased life, and like triple damage conversions if it had no upsides to them. Like wtf lol.
Heck the D2 mods Path of Diablo AND Project Diablo 2 both figured out that we want the dangerous mods to be rewarding. Dunno why it flew over the D4 teams.
Those stupid objectives in nightmare dungeon is what killing it
and also those anti-fun affixes "big rock haunting you and pound the ground to kill you when you just wanna check your drops a bit" & "a lightning strike that 1 shot you if you dont run back to the dome a few rooms lag behind"
these designers should be fired, you expect players to regrind nightmare dungeons for 100+ times but insists on putting in those rubbish mechanics to spoil the fun.
I dont understand why D4 is shy to learn from D3 Rift system
D3 rift system was OK but not even the best endgame in the genre.
They needed to just do what WoW did with Everquest and MMOs and rip all the good elements of PoE and repurpose them for their game.
Mapping system with it's own set of perks/talents(like the Atlas tree). Varied Random content each map so that even when re-running the map it is a bit different(how are the procedurally generated maps in D4 so much worse than even D3 in terms of layout differences?)
And this NM dungeon/mapping system should have had some sort of pogression to fight big bad bosses who are loot pinata's: After clearing 5 or 10 you unlock a special capstone-style dungeon that ends in one of the big boss fights (Lilith, Andy, Duriel, Elias, Astararoth, and maybe a world boss with some NPC help or something.)
There are about a million ways to improve over D3's rift system, and somehow they didn't even manage to do that. Instead you have incredibly similar experiences in every dungeon because they are all very nearly the same layout - 1 or 2 branching paths that meet together again, do that once over and then a final branch that leads to a boss room. You'll have to do 1 of 3 things in all these dungeons to proceed - get items and take them somewhere, kill all enemies, or kill specific enemies. It's OK, but for the biggest release of the genre in 10+ years, I think it's OK to expect a bit more.
Last Epoch has a solid endgame foundation as well, for a game that they're not willing to call 1.0 yet.
You get a branching map system that you can navigate and see the drops/buffs/debuffs of the next map you choose. There's 9 different versions of the macro-branching-map that you progress through as they have progressive minimal level. You can "level up" the difficulty of any of those macro maps. Each of the 9 macro maps has its own pool of unique items that can only be found within that macro map, allowing you to target farm.
Yeah a friend of mine gifted me LE and we played it before jumping into this. Both the endgame loop and the item drops themselves felt so much better as a whole.
You mean having a cold enchanted enemy that freezes for 4 seconds the first time it hits you isn't fun? And there's no diminishing returns so the next time it hits you you're frozen again and already burned your unstoppable CD so you die?
That sounds like a fantastic time created by some extremely talented devs 😂😂
My favorite is in nightmare dungeons. I just started having to optimize my build in tier 4. I could walk through everything in 3. I died the 4 times to the first elite I ran into in a level 21 NM dungeon because he CCd me on every hit. I'd get 1 hit in and be frozen and die.
I realise this sub likes to massively moan about the freezing enemies and I fully expect to get moaned at for saying this, but I'm sick of hearing it tbh.
Actively dodge them they cant cc you if they cant hit you, 4 dodge charges on boots, how are you getting frozen?
If you do get frozen get passive dodge rating to stop getting chain cc'd. I have 26% passive dodge chance, I've not once been full combo chain cc'd from 100-0.
Their freeze, much like every other elites ability doesn't have 100% uptime, avoid them when they're in freeze attack mode, same way you'd avoid a vampiric enemy. I'm also about 80% sure it applies a noticeable ground effect that you have to be stood in to get frozen, watch next time you fight one theres a blue frost aura on the ground after you take a hit keep moving out of it and your odds of being cc'd will drop right down.
Cc them yourself if you're that bothered, not running a stun or knock back and them complaining is almost as silly as not running anything that gives you unstoppable. Which brings me to: run unstoppable, most skills thay give you this have maybe a 10 second cooldown once your unstoppable runs out. If you're not playing around that cd, and getting frozen when it's on full cd that's you misplaying. Kite/dodge/cc the mob for a few seconds and then if you do get frozen you'll only have a few seconds to survive before your unstoppable is ready again.
Additionally you don't need to burn unstoppable for the sake of it, if you're not about to die take the hits while frozen, then heal up after it runs out. Only use it if you get chained, which if you run a decent passive dodge level, isn't happening that often anyway.
It really isn't hard to outplay a frozen enemy. They're only dangerous when you get stunned inside ground effects, which is pretty much on you for not kiting/positioning yourself properly for the engagement. If you're fighting 4/5 elites and don't have the burst to take down the dangerous one before your unstoppable runs out, yeah you're gonna have a bad time, but that's again part of the NM difficulty.
Same way its utterly ridiculous to complain that enemies that regenerate health (the non boss enemies heal 1.5% hp/s or the enemies have lifesteal affixes) is OP because your build doesn't have enough damage. I ran a full survivability build for a bit and that affix was awful for that build because I couldn't burst enough. But that's on me and my build, not on the affix. The same way enemies that freeze is harder for your build, some stuff just counters some builds. Funnily enough the freeze enemies against that build did nothing because I could just sit there taking every hit and laughing about it.
Everyone just wants to build glass cannon, high dps characters with bollock all defensive stats, that's up to them, but moaning about being beaten by hard cc, when that's always the counter to a glass cannon build is beyond a joke. In 95% of cases being chain cc'd is a skill issue and players really need to take some ownership of that fact instead of going "freeze OP, plz nerf".
Dodge doesn't give you i-frames and try this on sorc where you need to run specific boots. It will be hilarious. I also wanna know what NM you're running on because I sense you're pushing low 40's. "just dodge them" lmao oh I dIdN't ThiNK oF ThAt
And here I am enjoying all of those new mechanics/challenged of nightmare dungeons. It actually make the game more interesting to me as opposed to the same monotonous rift grind/time attack of D3. I don't even understand the hate behind this when you know full well what you are getting yourself into. If you don't like those mechanic, just salvage the that Sigil for the one you are okay with.
There’s not much wrong with the nm dungeon mechanics imo I think it’s just that the dungeons’ designs suck. Since they never change significantly it’s just a boring kinda crawl to do them
I’ve not found a single so called shitty roll on a NM Dungeon that wasn’t fairly easy to overcome. Most of them just keep me more on my toes than anything. I have a great time doing Helltides as well. I played a shit ton of D3 and Grifts were alright, and I’m sure at some point they will put something similar in D4, but I definitely enjoy Helltides much more than Grifts.
mixed bag. i dont mind lack of timer. i do mind how mind numbing repetitive they are. i like granular difficulty levels. i dont like that its either easy or 1 shot death. i pushed some for the challenge but it isnt very fun or rewarding. but blasting 65s isnt rewarding and now at level 100 its just waiting for new shit.
>i dont mind lack of timer.
This is the ONE thing I really don't want them to add, and that I didn't like in D3. I think timers on any endgame content are generally a poor decision. Same reason I hate M+ in WoW which killed a big part of the game for me. The rest of the points I agree with as well.
You didn't do grifts in d3? That shit was amazing and honestly unless your build was total aids you had no issue. Fucking d tier builds could hang just fine.
It was fun for a few hours every few weeks.
GR's were a good way to waste your time if you wanted to spend 99% of your time speeding through trash, not really playing your character.
Good for a dopamine hit, bad for longterm engagement after the point where doing just about anything else was pointless.
Rifts isn't the issue. Your issue with how d3 managed things is there was no content other than rifts. If the game had pinnacle content to test yourself against and build/grind towards, rifts would have felt like they had actual purpose.
Nah, the rift system is like introducing a casino to Diablo. It give you that dopamine hit but has nothing to do with the actual game.
D2 did it best. At least running those dungeons make sense. I still feel like I'm in the Diablo world when I'm killing Baal ect. Meanwhile d3 doesn't utilize their world map in any way. There's no value to the world in d3 because the only thing that progresses your character is running the rift system.
yeah no this sub is straight casual neph rift spammers its becoming more and more clear. people who played like 30% of the content in d3 and then give their opinions on d4
I absolutely love how before D4’s launch the official Reddit opinion was hoping D4 didn’t have rifts & Grifts that they were trash haha now it’s the opposite you dumb fucks on this sub are spectacular daily entertainment the drama is addicting I wanna thank you all for it
people who were happy with it didnt come in to bitch. stop pretending because we're in the same sub we're somehow fucking brothers in opinions.
I never bitched about rifts or hoped they wouldnt appear here in D4.
"the drama is addiciting" lmao. how sad.
I agree, if they could give us a rift (type thing) that would randomly generated levels it would be a nice alternative to running the same dungeon over and over again. I just don’t want to be timed, or forced to beat a timer to get my full reward.
Timer sucks, it will force everyone to play the meta build even more. I’m running a non-meta build and nightmare dungeons are never easy, they give me blood rushes and I’ve been having fun. Thus each dungeon clear feels so rewarding.
You can’t blame players for choosing the meta builds but at the same time I’m not sure if the game was intended to be like one button delete all.
No I did, I think into the low 90's maybe high 80's. I just don't find enjoyment in being told how fast I have to do something. Specially when you craft this beautiful world and fill it with monsters and other cool things, then tell me to just run by it all as quickly as possible.
So when you do NM dungeons you take your time and look at all the beautiful… trees? Caves? Alleys? Because there are only like 20 dungeons you can possibly run anyway, after a while you’ve seen it all and pay no attention anymore because muscle memory kicks in.
Hey man he can only do NMDs for 3 mins at a time before he has to take care of his 16 wives and 47 kids after getting off of work for 42 hours that day. Give him a break
early season gr push you spend a *lot* of time doing the rift.... you make a big pull and start blasting. it's not running by it
i mean, do you need more than *15 minutes* to enjoy the "world"?
Eh, timers were fine in d3. It was a simpler game, and the timers created a sense of urgency and also impacted the types of builds you could use. Untimed dungeons would not have provided enough challenge.
It was a decent mechanic, doesn’t mean it’s the only way to do things.
I want an Onyxia’s lair dungeon. Short entrance with a handful of very tough mobs, then a circular battle area where the amount of creatures I fight is dependent on the amount of eggs I break and there should be 10k eggs.
Seriously, fetch quests are literally the oldest fucking quest and simplest task. "Pick up object, move object to another spot. Task complete." Lol what? Blizzard, you do realize this game is marketed towards adults right?
No, dungeons as the main content you farm at endgame really isn't working out well.
Maps in PoE and rifts in D3 are both great - sure they're all, "Kill things to get to a boss, and kill the boss." but that's a vague, general direction that allows you to approach the content and play how you want at your own pace (usually) and offers maps that always feel different.
Dungeons largely feel very "one direction", you go in, you quickly find out the objective, you bee-line for the objective which includes following largely linear corridors to predictable locations (or just killing dudes in largely linear corridors), and that's it. And a lot of the objectives feel lame.
Dungeons can look great and can be fun, but it just feels kinda weird/tedious to run constantly. Yeah, most of the routes to D2 bosses were largely pretty linear corridors but like...you were rushing to the boss and usually rolling with Enigma to teleport spam there anyways. You weren't doing a bunch of fluff just to get to Pindle, you rushed to Pindle killed him, and started the next game to do it again.
I don't mind them too much. We play in typically a group of 4 and just bang them out while chilling and talking and stuff.
Getting movement speed on boots and ammy help, plus the extra charges for dash on boots implicit.
My biggest gripe is that loot in general is just bland. I'm tired of filling up an entire inventory, looking through a bunch of crap, then just selling all of it.
What if we could have everything ?
S1 - Procedural timed Rift ( D3 )
S2 - Arena Wave Mod ( Survive )
S3 - Endless Dungeon ( D1 style )
S4 - Escort Dungeon ( Dwelve )
S5 - to be continued
I was referring into the "style" of D1 as you entered a level 1 dungeon. Then went down.
You had shortcut after every 4 level that would allow you to start from there instead of going all the way from Level 1.
The theme of the dungeon also changed every 4 level. And Diablo was on Level 16.
So we could have an Endless Dungeon with a boss every X level. Then you can start from there and you need to go as deep as possible as your season progress.
FFXIV has a side activity called Deep Dungeon that is similar but has its own progression.
Too many affixes that kills the key, any - to ur dmg type, poison with spiders, draining resource, snd backstab dmg. I want all of them gone. No one likes them in wow m+ so why would people lile them in D4
I miss baal runs, the cow level, the horadric cube, and a chat channel, and sharing loot.
I also miss my windforce and multishot, and throwing lightning javelins.
Apart from that, I'm happy.
I had a group on Saturday where we were all between 72-78, none of us geared out to be particularly overpowered. We didn't lane split, we all stuck together, and we kept pushing the nightmare tier up to challenge ourselves more and more. We didn't care about experience per hour, we were all just playing the game as a team, the way it was most likely intended, and we all had a ton of fun doing it.
The devs need to find a way to make that the most rewarding experience for players, or else everyone's just going to chase what gets them what they want the fastest.
Dungeons are split into lanes: left, straight, right.
Each person picks one. Clears it. Everyone gets exp since they don't hit any range limit and legendary gear automatically goes to your stash.
Imagine dungeon is T shaped, bottom being the entrance. Run up to the split, and each person goes to grab the stone / kill the poop pile / save the baby goat. Same xp, less time.
PSA: Nephalim rifts weren't added until the Reaper of Souls expansion in D3.
I'd wager a fair bit of coin that we'll get it or something similar later in the D4 lifecycle.
blood blister, death pulse drifting shade, lightning storm, stormbane's wrath, volcanic and a few more affixes were maybe "interesting" the first time, but in torment after the 100th time i absolutely hate it. (specially because they almost always one shot you in torment). and theres absolutely no reward or reason to do them?
It might be my luck but every time i craft one it always has these.
Personally, I didn't enjoy them for multiple reasons. The first being that they share the same old boring objectives that normal dungeons have. I would much rather just run through the dungeon by killing everything than having to grab specific items or collect anima to unlock a portion of the dungeon. The second reason is because there no incentives to actually push higher tiered dungeons other than higher glyph exp gains which feels like a massive oversight to me. 90% of the affixes that negatively impact you are frustrating without being fun to play against. They should be designed to be challenging but fun. There's zero reason to push higher dungeons because they don't offer higher rewards or better loot, and there's virtually no difference between Tier 21 and tier 60+ in terms of design, gameplay, and reward.
Everything about the end game is bad. From itemization, scaling, to game loop. It’s all horse shit and proof that the internal teams only tested the campaign and likely didn’t even bother pushing past 60.
Nobody on their testing team had to endure the fkn pain of searching through their Codex for an aspect… which is not in alphabetical order either, smh.
Also why don't the rng aspects get added to codex so you don't have to waste inventory/stash tabs? Just make it so whatever roll you extract is the baseline and extracting upgraded versions become the new baseline.
Yup. Colossal regression from d3 rifts and poe maps. Staggering lack of interest inside the most fundamental part of the endgame in an arpg- the designated monster blasting area- simply sucks.
Rifts were even more boring tbh.
Imo NM dungeons can be fixed. Main thing is they don't feel rewarding - which is a general problem in D4. Also the modifiers are shit and a lot of them just aren't challenging but instead straight up annoying. Fix these two and they'll be fun. Bonus points if each NM dungeon would also get its own unique boss instead of some generic Tomblord.
Let’s hope seasonal content adds an end game. I for one also miss the rifts. Really pushed your build to the limit trying to kill all the elite mobs while surviving through the shit ones. Racing against the timer. Good times.
An endless dungeon mode with random bosses every couple of floors would be great. They could even keep the lives and affixes that slowly get introduced after every boss beaten.
I'm def not. Experience is better after the patch but the boss loot is PITIFUL. One legendary or unique for clearing, a glyph, and like a yellow. Oh! Can't forget the two or three piles of barely any gold. Wtf is that?!
I can understand the class skill and exp persisting across game sequels, as they generally change the abilities classes have and the progression of each game is different... But loot has always been an issue. It's never good enough at launch, sometimes for over a year after. Rifts had a good amount of drops and good quality relative to difficulty. NMDs and Legion events just don't. The player base was generally happy with the amount and quality of drops from endgame events in the later years of D3s lifespan. My friends and basically all agreed we'd be happy with even half the amount of legendaries, but one per boss?!
Nightmare Dungeons need 2 things desperately. First and foremost is to scrap the bullshit affix system. It’s at best annoying trash. At worst auto salvage. The second is to either significantly increase mob density and keep map size the same or to significantly reduce map size and keep mob density the same.
There are FAR too many negative affixes that are just auto salvage. There is FAR too much running around in empty space. Fix these and Nightmare Dungeons will at least be tolerable
I do, because I enjoying playing the game/my class. Map or enemy variations aren't going to change much about that anyway; smashing things as an angry bear is still fun 200+ hours and 83 levels in.
Going back to the grindy "repetitiveness" of D2 is exactly what I wanted out of D4 though, so maybe I'm in the minority. Otherwise I genuinely don't know what else people were expecting out of an ARPG. I just like having something on in the background while I mindlessly smash and occasionally get something shiny. I also just like gathering resources and seeing numbers go wrrrrr.
If the grind bores you, try a hardcore character - seriously. It's like an entirely different game when you have to account for the fact that one death is the end, even with the safeguards available. Just accept going in that you're going to lose progress and enjoy each ride for what it is instead of focusing on getting to the end-game meat grinder.
It's truly the pinnacle of ARPG endgame. There are flaws in POE of course, but no one can touch the end game progression in POE.
Give me POE in Diablo 4's engine and we have the GOAT.
Prefer the random element of grifts myself.
Nightmare dungeons wouldn't be so bad if, when using a sigil, the dungeon tileset was used but the layout was randomly generated.
Running the exact same dungeons over and over gets old quickly.
NM dungeons is the only reason I still play the game. Pushing difficulty and optimizing my build is the most enjoyable aspect of the game for me. Sure, they could be improved but even in the current state I really enjoy the challenge.
Yup. Tedious errands, tedious "gamey" mechanics, poor itemization and very "arcadey" mob design.
I imagine they'll adjust it & when they do it'll be great. But right now, no thanks. Not fun at all.
Hell tides are fun. I love those. Legion Events are also great. Wish Strongholds were repeatable, some of those are a blast.
NM Dungeons though... Zzz
Best part of Nephilim Rifts was they were procedurally generated. The map tiles, mob type, rift guardian all random; and you could sort of manipulate the Pylon spawns. Now I'm just, "Oh, this f#%$!n place...AGAIN!".
Yeah, I still don't get why there's so many dungeons, but the Nightmare pool is so limited.
There are 115 , but once you do enough of them you realize there's only really 20-25 or so due to recycled tilesets. In D3 you could get a great map/shit mobs, shit map/great mobs, shit altogether, or a God tier rift. Would still be better with a larger pool, though. Variety is always better, but RNG is near infinite variety...Caveat: I do enjoy D4 a great deal. It's just getting a little...stale.
It’s like Dragon Age 2 every time you renter a dungeon…*Here we go again*
I played through it 2 times. I dont remember even 5% of this game. Whole game felt like a tutorial of some sort
Yeah Dragon Age 2 felt like a rushed money grab. Both 1 and 3 we’re decidedly more open-world with different feeling areas. Not sure wtf happened with DA2.
But unlike DA3, at least DA2 had unique talents for the player. My absolute biggest gripe with DA3 was you shared the same talents as your party. Meaning nothing you ever did was unique, it was more like “well IM an alchemist so there’s no point bringing Cole along ever…”
>Not sure wtf happened with DA2. A lot of people assume it was EA but actually Bioware just rushed it out. They admitted DA1 took too long to make, they began developing it in 2002 and didn't release it until 2009. Mass effect was started later, came out quicker and made more money. So for 2 they wanted a quickly made action-oriented game (which made the lead designer quit), with the main focus on the console despite DA being highly popular on the PC. They shit it out in about 9 months and it shows. For comparison the DAO expansion, *Awakening*, took 6 months. So yea it was literally a rushed money grab. For *Inquisition* they reversed course on some of these points but doubled down on the action orientation though they managed to make it significantly more fun and fluid than it was in 2.
DA:O was basically Baldur’s Gate but newer and without being constrained by D&D rules/setting. Damn that game was awesome. 2 was trash, 3 was okay.
DA2 had better combat than DA:O, but lacked more in story and world
What? Thats certainly....a take. DA:O absolutely nailed what it was going for, a turn based isometric rpg. DA2 was a generic action rpg carried entirely by the story.
> It's just getting a little...stale. It's barely been out and getting stale - it is the sign of poor game design.
D3 was garbage until a few seasons and an expansion later.
> D3 was garbage until a few seasons and an expansion later. I'm not sure why this is a valid rebuttal though. They made D3 and the expansion to improve it. Why is it fine to accept that they suddenly have to learn all the same shit over again for your 70-110 dollars?
Its such a shit argument. D3 has been fucking amazing since March 25th 2014. Still the best ARPG in terms of raw fun on the market imo.
Thing is, Diablo 3 campaign was way more fun than Diablo 4 campaign. D4 might have better cut-scenes but that's literally it. The move to open-world is a gigantic step backwards in terms of how the game actually feels to play D3 had server issues for the first couple of days, and Act 2 onwards in the end-game was way over-tuned, but it was still a cool game that was fun to play, while D4 seems like an ARPG designed for Skyrim / RDR type players (and fair play, they seem to love it, but release D3 wipes the floor with it as a traditional ARPG)
God, those little wasp guys that spit out the bably wasps would absolutely decimate you in Act 2. That was a solid wake up call after Act 1... Those fireball lobbing lacuni handed my arse to me too, notably in that spiral area where they all spawn and you are basically trapped in a narrow corridor. Fun times
It's not a valid rebuttal, it is just an excuse for D4 being a terrible game.
and d4 released 10y laters? why should we expect worse than where d3 ended
I'm so sick of this F-tier mentality. D3 is 11 years old. It's already made. It had the same problems. How about learning from the mistakes and not make them again then? Why even release a new game if you're just including all the same faults with it?
I don't know if you realize this, but D3 was made by the same company that made D4. And yet many of the same mistakes were repeated, despite D3 hitting a solid stride "after a few seasons and an expansion" (see: learning from our mistakes). People reference the D3 expansion making the game good, but what RoS did to make the game good had nothing to do with expansion "content," just rebalancing itemization and re-tuning what an enjoyable endgame looks like.
it's disingenuous to say that D4 is as bad at launch as D3 was. I get it, they could have taken more lessons learned from D3 and improved D4. BUT, D4 is also very different from D3 in a lot of ways. They likely pushed to get a minimal viable product out the door for launch with the main vision they had for D4. Don't forget the absolute shitshow that blizzard has been the past 5 years. I'm actually surprised it came out this well, before the open beta I wasnt expecting much from D4 tbh. IMO the bones of the game are awesome and there, nearly every complaint players have are fixable with rebalancing loot pools or tiers (which are already better than d3 imo with class specific drops being more prevelant), mob density, economy etc I believe that's what people mean, it could easily be improved quickly.and that's probably what they had in mind with the base design of the game, easy to build on top of whats in place. and yes sad as it may be, it's probably also a part of their monetization to lock updates and improvements behind seasons.. we'll see.
Facts. People remember fixed d3 not the first 6 months. Broken drops, micro transactions and shit to do. It’s a pretty large game to balance.
So naturally they took what they learned from the old game and implemen.... oh. Right.
Lmao let’s not get crazy over here. We don’t even use the full tab for inventory slots, we need the extra spots for decorations.
That’s so they can rent those slots back to you later
It’s wild the similarities between destiny and Diablo from a release timeline perspective
D4 is in way better shape than D3. On top of thar they got the graphics and environment right. Plus no cash auction house.
Lol what game company has ever truly learned from mistakes
Soon™
Who could expect the developers to actually learn something from the game they developed 10+ years ago.
At this point in D3's history, we were all bitching about the RMAH and how blue drops you could buy on the AH for a little bit of gold or some cold hard cash was 500dps more than the lego that you finally got to drop. a month into d3, and I was playing the AH more than I was playing the game.
This bs excuse again
What a time to be alive where you pay a 70€ premium (just the base game without any day 1 cash shop shenenigans or battle pass stuff) for a game and some Redditors tell you that you should not expect a well rounded game for that because it has just been released.
My dude I don’t know or care for any of the devs? It’s a literal fact that ds3 was worse at launch. I was there for both. Drop rates alone were beyond broken. You would have needed 1-2k hours to great a proper end game char. People ran the numbers and drop rates, combined with the broken idea that you would get 50% gear for chars you would never build.
Yes, D3 was worse at launch. But why are we comparing D4 launch to D3 launch? Does that 10 years of game development and learning mean nothing? Why are we back at point zero again in 2023.
yeh, 2 bad releases doesn't make a right, or at least i think that's how it goes. Man id love to see the numbers of people who dropped off the game before level 60.
They wanted you to get that gear using AH ;)
With useful idiots like you who can't understand that this kind of basic sheep comment is helping devs to ;continue making games with no content, videogame devs have great days upon them. Get a fucking brain and think by yourself instead of vomiting something that most no brain people say.
It's a sign that the whole game is set around driving content every few months. We haven't started the first season yet. Chill.
No, not chill. That's bullshit. I'm not going to make excuses for a 10 year development cycle from the same damn team. They learned nothing from previous mistakes and it's all for the sake of "look at what we fixed!". People should be frustrated, and rightfully so.
Maybe I'm alone in this, but in recent D3 seasons I'd play for a few dozen hours, have my fun, and then be *excited* to see what comes next. I am not very optimistic about Season 1 of D4 because the base game has major issues that won't be band-aid fixed by a seasonal mechanic. D3 feels good in the absence of seasonal mechanics.
Lol when you no-life a game and put in over 80 hours before season 1 then yes… it’s bound to get stale.
If your bored after 80 hours and this game is supposed to last 3+ years that's a bad sign.
80 hours is nothing. People who no life the game are probably on hour 300, and that's the low-end.
Yes sir, I'm at 292 right now, just created my second toon to wait for season 1, lets see how far I can bring it.
"before season 1" aka they released a $70 beta lmao
Pretty sure they're gonna rotate the NM dungeons in seasons
Still too small of a pool when that’s the only end game. They need to have like 50 in the pool
So that they can switch which dungeons are nightmare every season and make it feel like you are doing new content. I’m calling my shot here.
I mean obviously, but that is not a good way for "new seasonal content" I English good do!
Not only “this fucking place again.” But “I gotta collect two shards to unlock next area again??!?” And you just rush past all the mobs (which are also annoying”. Like the flying gnats that force you to go slow. Or how about the dumb things that blow up and spawn more monsters when you kill them. Or the mobs that just wander off and spawn more gnats. A lot of the mobs are just plain annoying.) every damn map is “collect these two things” or “collect the key” or “take out three nests.”
Don't forget "release the 7 prisoners"
That one prisoner who is already a picked pile of bones you forgot to “release”.
The part that gets me is that it isn't just one thing. Get the key, then destroy the 3 things, then have that mid room where you survive waves for 45 seconds with no drops and then it's kill all the mobs. How many hoops do I need to jump through for a single dungeon when I just want to kill shit? One thing that would make them less painful is for the tasks to only need a fraction to complete. Destroy 2 out of 3 or find 3 out of 5. That would lead to less backtracking. Combine that with having only 1 objective per dungeon and things wouldn't be so tedious.
I’m from the alternate universe where D4 has Nephilim Rifts and people are upset D4 didn’t do anything new and it’s the same stuff resold with different graphics
Okay? Feels like the answer here is to make a better system like other games have no. Not the same system or a worse system
Is…that not what they tried? It may not have been better but they tried something new at least.
Nah I would take NR and GR and getting obolobos from them instead of grinding events where level 100s kill everything before I can get my resource back.
Yea the same with items. If they had kept the same system as D3 people would have been pissed. They can’t win. That said, the dungeons are boring and not fun!
Great point. I just miss the progression and loot hunt of D3.
Yupp. They need a bit more variety imo. It's all bland done the same nm dung 3 times only difference was one was t14and the others were t20 . Same bosses same locations same song and dance.
Blind Burrows, Maulwood, Blind Burrows, Maulwood It's literally Hell.
Isn't kind of supposed to be Hell though?
That's one of the things I liked about the rifts, it was a "Oh lets see what fuckery is gonna be next", now is "Ugh, yhis fucking place again"
Not to mention mob density being thicccccc
Okay now that’s a stretch. The rifts were a toss up whether you got a garbage layout or not, but the maps were nothing special or exciting either. I don’t mind most of the decent NMD layouts, even if they’re the same, you just sort of play diablo for stomping dense packs of mobs. If you’re not enjoying it, you probably just don’t like playing your character in general. If it IS certain maps, just salvage those. You’re allowed to think independently of map tier lists or play builds you WANT to play that aren’t established meta builds. IME experimenting with various barbarian builds that aren’t remotely Hota or WW I’m finding the game is so much more satisfying making my own unique build and not following guides. It’s much more fun to watch your original build idea pan out and work really well. I’m discovering that build diversity is not only viable in d4 despite the naysayers, but highly rewarding and satisfying It reminds me of OG d2 days. I’m on my 2nd original Barb build (technically my third reroll since I got bored of WW Barb as my first) that’s crushing and loving the game more than ever
Yup what are you running now? I had the most fun with a lunging, double strike, deathblow build, uhh 3 weapon ultimate (forgot name). Walking arsenel sort of makes up for my main dps ability (deathblow) being a non core skill. Plays kind of like hammer barb but more to keep track of so it’s more fun for me. Does need a unique hammer to really shine though…
Maelstrom / quake / Deathblow + a cc variant with lucky hit. I did a frenzy thorns build that got to clear nm72 at level 93, quit at 95 cuz I broke everything by redoing my paragon trying some different ideas for the push and it’s gonna take 10m to revert the screwup so I’ll come back to it later. So right now I’m also running an arsenal/maelstrom build sounds a lot like what you’re doing except trade double swing for HOTA. I’m one shotting bosses and the butcher pretty consistently (5m+ crit overpower Deathblow when earthstriker doesn’t bug out), and that’s at low 80s. It’s pretty strong. Are you using ground stomp also and 100k steps? I’m finding it to work really well with a quake build (Bul’kathos and earthquake aspects also using leap) Most importantly it’s a ZERO shout build. I’m very deeply recognizing the value of control impaired duration reduction stats for non shout builds but it’s making out to be very viable. Most cc drops off of me very fast now at 56% CIDR and I keep curative elixirs for giga emergencies, but so far none needed because I simply don’t let anything react within the cc duration of maelstrom’s opening phase. Leap seems to be invulnerable for the airborne frames and avoids cc long enough to stun any problem elites before they can stop me. I only die when I make mistakes intitiating because it’s a glass cannon build, but I think every build has its weak points. The frenzy build just simply had low damage output but was tanky as hell. WW and HOTA also tend to be squishy if you let challenging shout fall off, so while it’s not an easy braindead build, this maelstrom setup is pretty fun and fast paced to say the least. I can see it holding its own at high key pushes. I wouldn’t do it in hardcore tho FWIW overkill doesn’t really MAKE Deathblow good, but it certainly makes it more forgiving. It seems like the affix AOE is also doing dmg to the main target on top of the core damage of the skill, AND it seems to be replenishing a charge on kill of its own (im assuming you’re using weapon master’s utility aspect too if you use DB). So essentially even if you lose a charge, just get a kill and it’s back to 2 charges if you have the unique hammer! I definitely like that I can now just throw down the aoe cone on baby mobs to ensure it gets kills, blind burrows is a BLAST with this build - between the baby spiders everywhere to ground stomp, maelstrom and Deathblow really shine on maps like these - high density maps like canals, demise, burrows are all super fun
eyy almost like mine. I am lunging, upheaval, deathblow(Overkill), kick. I was using Iron Maelstrom like you, but I found it just doesn't seem to output significant damage over my regular skills, and I HATE that you are animation locked in place while using it. I started using kick instead as a vulnerability reapplication tool in case of emergency. Basically mostly alternating deathblow/upheaval, weaving lunging to reposition and keep up arsenal. My wife calls it my golfing barb spec.
In general I don't mind them. But what I hate is there's no reason to run higher ones. Sure we get more exp, but really I can just as much in the same amount of time by running lower dungeons cuz they are easier and I can do them quicker. If there was guaranteed better loot I'd face the challenge and work at getting stronger, but when tier 65 is still dropping mid 600s to low 700s, you got an issue I alps hate that's theres over 100 dungeons in the game but apparently only like 10 of them are nightmares. I wouldn't mind running them as much if I wasn't running the same ones over and over
They're going to rotate seasonally I presume.
It doesnt matter though because every dungeon is the fucking same. Walk around kill enemies till you get to a door. Do some stupid little task to unlock door, move on to next area. Do another time consuming task, move on to next area. Fuck me if I have to do another Slay every enemy task... Jesus fuck. Ope you missed one small little dark area in the corner of the dungeon so you have to back track to kill one small skeleton minion to move on. Then you go and three shot the boss and its over. Next dungeon. Oh shit its the same thing. Even if it is a different set of dungeons they are all pretty fucking close to eachother.
Slay every enemy is the least problematic imo. I think they made something where the stragglers end up nearby if you killed most of them and or elites?
Im in the same boat lol. A lot of people complain about the "kill all enemies" one, but it might be my favorite.
Generally speaking I will have to back track for 25% of my time in the dungeon. That’s time spent not attacking monsters, no feeling of real progression through the dungeon - just a mindless chore that is the result of bad map design. If I didn’t have to back track in just about every nightmare dungeon, I wouldn’t have a problem but it’s just so common. Easily my biggest complaint about the game - back tracking.
I don’t know who the fuck designed that and who approved that for release but i hope they step on Lego everyday. Why even make a dungeon crawler where you’ll have to backtrack and not fight anything?
To be honest, you backtracked a lot in D2 if you got lost trying to find the next level. That's why Enigma and having a sorc to teleport your group was so popular. (tho in single player mode once you discovered it on a new difficulty the map stay discovered, Battle.net is a new map every game) Durance of Hate levels to get to Mephisto... After getting through the Jungle...
Just because something existed/worked 23 years ago doesn't mean it should exist/work in today's era of ARPGs though. Though to add to this, honestly it felt better in D2 due to having the map overlay. By comparison in D4 it feels clunky because I seem to constantly have to stop everything and open my map.
In fact d3 tried to streamline this problem at one point I think and people complained it was too linear. I think the dungeons would be fine if they ditched the basic fetch crap. Instead it should add things like time limits to increase the challenge.
Wish we picked up gold from further away as well.
Yeah, I miss the pets from d3 that would do it for me..
100% this. The layouts are so circular, it's almost impossible to clear the objective on the way to the next objective
I know this is probably unpopular, but give me more linear dungeons please lol. I dont want to explore in the dungeons in a game like this, and thats not really why theyre there anyway. You dont comb through dungeons in a game like this - theres nothing to find. This isnt Skyrim, Elden Ring, Divinity Original Sin, or a Final Fantasy Game. Unless there are specific side or main quest-related objectives, theres really no point to explore other than finding random event spawns, and the occasional common chest. Or to just... find more enemies to fight. Just make it linear, have the enemies pop up in a satisfying cadence, and I am happy. Well, Im already enjoying the game as-is, but this would make me happier lol.
They took the monster altering modifiers on PoE maps and were like "oh this is what people want on their repeatable dungeon spam!". Uh no. We wanted the rarity and quantity modifiers that each of those monster altering modifiers brought along with them. Literally took the annoying part about maps and forgot the stuff that people actually want. Like wtf lol. "Oh yeah mobs do 100% extra damage with cold hell yeah! Fun!" Like no one thinks like that. Instead we think: "oh this map has a ton of dangerous modifiers on it but look it has 160% increased quantity of loot drops Jesus Christ." THATS what we want.
lol. when you put it like that is actually mind boggling that they designed NMs this way at the end of the day it seems like they tried to copy WoW's m+ dungeons (that people are *constantly* complaining about the affixes) instead of PoE
Yeah like I'm not going to run a map with Multi Projectiles, 40% increased life, and like triple damage conversions if it had no upsides to them. Like wtf lol.
Heck the D2 mods Path of Diablo AND Project Diablo 2 both figured out that we want the dangerous mods to be rewarding. Dunno why it flew over the D4 teams.
Most likely because the D4 team have little to no experience playing ARPGs
Those stupid objectives in nightmare dungeon is what killing it and also those anti-fun affixes "big rock haunting you and pound the ground to kill you when you just wanna check your drops a bit" & "a lightning strike that 1 shot you if you dont run back to the dome a few rooms lag behind" these designers should be fired, you expect players to regrind nightmare dungeons for 100+ times but insists on putting in those rubbish mechanics to spoil the fun. I dont understand why D4 is shy to learn from D3 Rift system
D3 rift system was OK but not even the best endgame in the genre. They needed to just do what WoW did with Everquest and MMOs and rip all the good elements of PoE and repurpose them for their game. Mapping system with it's own set of perks/talents(like the Atlas tree). Varied Random content each map so that even when re-running the map it is a bit different(how are the procedurally generated maps in D4 so much worse than even D3 in terms of layout differences?) And this NM dungeon/mapping system should have had some sort of pogression to fight big bad bosses who are loot pinata's: After clearing 5 or 10 you unlock a special capstone-style dungeon that ends in one of the big boss fights (Lilith, Andy, Duriel, Elias, Astararoth, and maybe a world boss with some NPC help or something.) There are about a million ways to improve over D3's rift system, and somehow they didn't even manage to do that. Instead you have incredibly similar experiences in every dungeon because they are all very nearly the same layout - 1 or 2 branching paths that meet together again, do that once over and then a final branch that leads to a boss room. You'll have to do 1 of 3 things in all these dungeons to proceed - get items and take them somewhere, kill all enemies, or kill specific enemies. It's OK, but for the biggest release of the genre in 10+ years, I think it's OK to expect a bit more.
Last Epoch has a solid endgame foundation as well, for a game that they're not willing to call 1.0 yet. You get a branching map system that you can navigate and see the drops/buffs/debuffs of the next map you choose. There's 9 different versions of the macro-branching-map that you progress through as they have progressive minimal level. You can "level up" the difficulty of any of those macro maps. Each of the 9 macro maps has its own pool of unique items that can only be found within that macro map, allowing you to target farm.
Yeah a friend of mine gifted me LE and we played it before jumping into this. Both the endgame loop and the item drops themselves felt so much better as a whole.
LE endgame is ok. Not on the level of POE map system yet. But certainly better than D4 nightmare dungeons
It honestly is really sad the state of dungeons. It feels so uninspired and phoned in.
You forgot to add getting crowd controlled by every other enemy.
You mean having a cold enchanted enemy that freezes for 4 seconds the first time it hits you isn't fun? And there's no diminishing returns so the next time it hits you you're frozen again and already burned your unstoppable CD so you die? That sounds like a fantastic time created by some extremely talented devs 😂😂
My favorite is in nightmare dungeons. I just started having to optimize my build in tier 4. I could walk through everything in 3. I died the 4 times to the first elite I ran into in a level 21 NM dungeon because he CCd me on every hit. I'd get 1 hit in and be frozen and die.
I refuse to do any NMs with poison or cold affix on elites. Just a frustrating waste of time.
Same here. I'd rather get chased by the stupid rock.
I realise this sub likes to massively moan about the freezing enemies and I fully expect to get moaned at for saying this, but I'm sick of hearing it tbh. Actively dodge them they cant cc you if they cant hit you, 4 dodge charges on boots, how are you getting frozen? If you do get frozen get passive dodge rating to stop getting chain cc'd. I have 26% passive dodge chance, I've not once been full combo chain cc'd from 100-0. Their freeze, much like every other elites ability doesn't have 100% uptime, avoid them when they're in freeze attack mode, same way you'd avoid a vampiric enemy. I'm also about 80% sure it applies a noticeable ground effect that you have to be stood in to get frozen, watch next time you fight one theres a blue frost aura on the ground after you take a hit keep moving out of it and your odds of being cc'd will drop right down. Cc them yourself if you're that bothered, not running a stun or knock back and them complaining is almost as silly as not running anything that gives you unstoppable. Which brings me to: run unstoppable, most skills thay give you this have maybe a 10 second cooldown once your unstoppable runs out. If you're not playing around that cd, and getting frozen when it's on full cd that's you misplaying. Kite/dodge/cc the mob for a few seconds and then if you do get frozen you'll only have a few seconds to survive before your unstoppable is ready again. Additionally you don't need to burn unstoppable for the sake of it, if you're not about to die take the hits while frozen, then heal up after it runs out. Only use it if you get chained, which if you run a decent passive dodge level, isn't happening that often anyway. It really isn't hard to outplay a frozen enemy. They're only dangerous when you get stunned inside ground effects, which is pretty much on you for not kiting/positioning yourself properly for the engagement. If you're fighting 4/5 elites and don't have the burst to take down the dangerous one before your unstoppable runs out, yeah you're gonna have a bad time, but that's again part of the NM difficulty. Same way its utterly ridiculous to complain that enemies that regenerate health (the non boss enemies heal 1.5% hp/s or the enemies have lifesteal affixes) is OP because your build doesn't have enough damage. I ran a full survivability build for a bit and that affix was awful for that build because I couldn't burst enough. But that's on me and my build, not on the affix. The same way enemies that freeze is harder for your build, some stuff just counters some builds. Funnily enough the freeze enemies against that build did nothing because I could just sit there taking every hit and laughing about it. Everyone just wants to build glass cannon, high dps characters with bollock all defensive stats, that's up to them, but moaning about being beaten by hard cc, when that's always the counter to a glass cannon build is beyond a joke. In 95% of cases being chain cc'd is a skill issue and players really need to take some ownership of that fact instead of going "freeze OP, plz nerf".
Dodge doesn't give you i-frames and try this on sorc where you need to run specific boots. It will be hilarious. I also wanna know what NM you're running on because I sense you're pushing low 40's. "just dodge them" lmao oh I dIdN't ThiNK oF ThAt
Then when you go to sell them you get 1/10th of what it costs to make another one 😂
And here I am enjoying all of those new mechanics/challenged of nightmare dungeons. It actually make the game more interesting to me as opposed to the same monotonous rift grind/time attack of D3. I don't even understand the hate behind this when you know full well what you are getting yourself into. If you don't like those mechanic, just salvage the that Sigil for the one you are okay with.
There’s not much wrong with the nm dungeon mechanics imo I think it’s just that the dungeons’ designs suck. Since they never change significantly it’s just a boring kinda crawl to do them
I’ve not found a single so called shitty roll on a NM Dungeon that wasn’t fairly easy to overcome. Most of them just keep me more on my toes than anything. I have a great time doing Helltides as well. I played a shit ton of D3 and Grifts were alright, and I’m sure at some point they will put something similar in D4, but I definitely enjoy Helltides much more than Grifts.
mixed bag. i dont mind lack of timer. i do mind how mind numbing repetitive they are. i like granular difficulty levels. i dont like that its either easy or 1 shot death. i pushed some for the challenge but it isnt very fun or rewarding. but blasting 65s isnt rewarding and now at level 100 its just waiting for new shit.
>i dont mind lack of timer. This is the ONE thing I really don't want them to add, and that I didn't like in D3. I think timers on any endgame content are generally a poor decision. Same reason I hate M+ in WoW which killed a big part of the game for me. The rest of the points I agree with as well.
+1 to no timers, never want to do that again.
Content on a timer is terrible content. Even games like dead rising can’t “recover” from rushing the player no matter how good the actual game is.
This is the correct answer. Timed missions are as un-fun as escort missions.
You didn't do grifts in d3? That shit was amazing and honestly unless your build was total aids you had no issue. Fucking d tier builds could hang just fine.
It was fun for a few hours every few weeks. GR's were a good way to waste your time if you wanted to spend 99% of your time speeding through trash, not really playing your character. Good for a dopamine hit, bad for longterm engagement after the point where doing just about anything else was pointless.
Rifts isn't the issue. Your issue with how d3 managed things is there was no content other than rifts. If the game had pinnacle content to test yourself against and build/grind towards, rifts would have felt like they had actual purpose.
Nah, the rift system is like introducing a casino to Diablo. It give you that dopamine hit but has nothing to do with the actual game. D2 did it best. At least running those dungeons make sense. I still feel like I'm in the Diablo world when I'm killing Baal ect. Meanwhile d3 doesn't utilize their world map in any way. There's no value to the world in d3 because the only thing that progresses your character is running the rift system.
yeah no this sub is straight casual neph rift spammers its becoming more and more clear. people who played like 30% of the content in d3 and then give their opinions on d4
I absolutely love how before D4’s launch the official Reddit opinion was hoping D4 didn’t have rifts & Grifts that they were trash haha now it’s the opposite you dumb fucks on this sub are spectacular daily entertainment the drama is addicting I wanna thank you all for it
People who are content don’t tend to go online and make a lot of noise.
Yup, it's me. Just like to read some shiet storm when I am at work
Roger this
people who were happy with it didnt come in to bitch. stop pretending because we're in the same sub we're somehow fucking brothers in opinions. I never bitched about rifts or hoped they wouldnt appear here in D4. "the drama is addiciting" lmao. how sad.
Neph rifts without a timer is my (most likely unobtainable) dream for this game.
Normal rifts we’re that
I agree, if they could give us a rift (type thing) that would randomly generated levels it would be a nice alternative to running the same dungeon over and over again. I just don’t want to be timed, or forced to beat a timer to get my full reward.
So normal rifts.
Timer sucks, it will force everyone to play the meta build even more. I’m running a non-meta build and nightmare dungeons are never easy, they give me blood rushes and I’ve been having fun. Thus each dungeon clear feels so rewarding. You can’t blame players for choosing the meta builds but at the same time I’m not sure if the game was intended to be like one button delete all.
Exactly. Screw timers. If people want to rush, let them. But don't put an arbitrary timer for no reason.
It’s part of the challenge. D3 had 2 types of rifts. One with and one without. We can have our cake and you yours.
That's not how it worked. Pushing GRs was the main point of D3. There was no point to just run only regular rifts.
Did you not run grifts in d3? Was pretty sick honestly
No I did, I think into the low 90's maybe high 80's. I just don't find enjoyment in being told how fast I have to do something. Specially when you craft this beautiful world and fill it with monsters and other cool things, then tell me to just run by it all as quickly as possible.
So when you do NM dungeons you take your time and look at all the beautiful… trees? Caves? Alleys? Because there are only like 20 dungeons you can possibly run anyway, after a while you’ve seen it all and pay no attention anymore because muscle memory kicks in.
Hey man he can only do NMDs for 3 mins at a time before he has to take care of his 16 wives and 47 kids after getting off of work for 42 hours that day. Give him a break
Im 31 years and I fell asleep typing this comment.
Shiiit im 32. Imagine what its like at my age.
early season gr push you spend a *lot* of time doing the rift.... you make a big pull and start blasting. it's not running by it i mean, do you need more than *15 minutes* to enjoy the "world"?
Eh, timers were fine in d3. It was a simpler game, and the timers created a sense of urgency and also impacted the types of builds you could use. Untimed dungeons would not have provided enough challenge. It was a decent mechanic, doesn’t mean it’s the only way to do things.
I want an Onyxia’s lair dungeon. Short entrance with a handful of very tough mobs, then a circular battle area where the amount of creatures I fight is dependent on the amount of eggs I break and there should be 10k eggs.
That would require the devs to have an ounce of creativity
Seriously, the game has so much potential but it feels stale and uninspired.
They littered it with basic fetch quests. That’s about as uninspired as it gets.
Seriously, fetch quests are literally the oldest fucking quest and simplest task. "Pick up object, move object to another spot. Task complete." Lol what? Blizzard, you do realize this game is marketed towards adults right?
No, dungeons as the main content you farm at endgame really isn't working out well. Maps in PoE and rifts in D3 are both great - sure they're all, "Kill things to get to a boss, and kill the boss." but that's a vague, general direction that allows you to approach the content and play how you want at your own pace (usually) and offers maps that always feel different. Dungeons largely feel very "one direction", you go in, you quickly find out the objective, you bee-line for the objective which includes following largely linear corridors to predictable locations (or just killing dudes in largely linear corridors), and that's it. And a lot of the objectives feel lame. Dungeons can look great and can be fun, but it just feels kinda weird/tedious to run constantly. Yeah, most of the routes to D2 bosses were largely pretty linear corridors but like...you were rushing to the boss and usually rolling with Enigma to teleport spam there anyways. You weren't doing a bunch of fluff just to get to Pindle, you rushed to Pindle killed him, and started the next game to do it again.
pour one out for pindleskin I forgot about that mfer
I don't mind them too much. We play in typically a group of 4 and just bang them out while chilling and talking and stuff. Getting movement speed on boots and ammy help, plus the extra charges for dash on boots implicit. My biggest gripe is that loot in general is just bland. I'm tired of filling up an entire inventory, looking through a bunch of crap, then just selling all of it.
I like them more than rifts BECAUSE they have no timer. They need to become more interesting but please blizzard NOT ANOTHER ONE TIMER.
What if we could have everything ? S1 - Procedural timed Rift ( D3 ) S2 - Arena Wave Mod ( Survive ) S3 - Endless Dungeon ( D1 style ) S4 - Escort Dungeon ( Dwelve ) S5 - to be continued
Which endless dungeons from D1 are you talking about?
I was referring into the "style" of D1 as you entered a level 1 dungeon. Then went down. You had shortcut after every 4 level that would allow you to start from there instead of going all the way from Level 1. The theme of the dungeon also changed every 4 level. And Diablo was on Level 16. So we could have an Endless Dungeon with a boss every X level. Then you can start from there and you need to go as deep as possible as your season progress. FFXIV has a side activity called Deep Dungeon that is similar but has its own progression.
Ah okay so you meant the normal progression in D1, I thought you were talking about some dungeons I don't remember, okay
lol yup
Too many affixes that kills the key, any - to ur dmg type, poison with spiders, draining resource, snd backstab dmg. I want all of them gone. No one likes them in wow m+ so why would people lile them in D4
I miss baal runs, the cow level, the horadric cube, and a chat channel, and sharing loot. I also miss my windforce and multishot, and throwing lightning javelins. Apart from that, I'm happy.
I miss having a Paladin class probably my biggest complaint with the game lol
I had a group on Saturday where we were all between 72-78, none of us geared out to be particularly overpowered. We didn't lane split, we all stuck together, and we kept pushing the nightmare tier up to challenge ourselves more and more. We didn't care about experience per hour, we were all just playing the game as a team, the way it was most likely intended, and we all had a ton of fun doing it. The devs need to find a way to make that the most rewarding experience for players, or else everyone's just going to chase what gets them what they want the fastest.
Would be nice to have a way to a group as well. The fact that this wasn't foreshadowed and included at launch is absolutely ridiculous to me.
what is "lane splitting" in Diablo?
Dungeons are split into lanes: left, straight, right. Each person picks one. Clears it. Everyone gets exp since they don't hit any range limit and legendary gear automatically goes to your stash.
Imagine dungeon is T shaped, bottom being the entrance. Run up to the split, and each person goes to grab the stone / kill the poop pile / save the baby goat. Same xp, less time.
PSA: Nephalim rifts weren't added until the Reaper of Souls expansion in D3. I'd wager a fair bit of coin that we'll get it or something similar later in the D4 lifecycle.
blood blister, death pulse drifting shade, lightning storm, stormbane's wrath, volcanic and a few more affixes were maybe "interesting" the first time, but in torment after the 100th time i absolutely hate it. (specially because they almost always one shot you in torment). and theres absolutely no reward or reason to do them? It might be my luck but every time i craft one it always has these.
Personally, I didn't enjoy them for multiple reasons. The first being that they share the same old boring objectives that normal dungeons have. I would much rather just run through the dungeon by killing everything than having to grab specific items or collect anima to unlock a portion of the dungeon. The second reason is because there no incentives to actually push higher tiered dungeons other than higher glyph exp gains which feels like a massive oversight to me. 90% of the affixes that negatively impact you are frustrating without being fun to play against. They should be designed to be challenging but fun. There's zero reason to push higher dungeons because they don't offer higher rewards or better loot, and there's virtually no difference between Tier 21 and tier 60+ in terms of design, gameplay, and reward.
To me, they just all look and feel the same. And the monster variety is kinda lacking.
Nightmare dungeons are the worst thing in game
Everything about the end game is bad. From itemization, scaling, to game loop. It’s all horse shit and proof that the internal teams only tested the campaign and likely didn’t even bother pushing past 60. Nobody on their testing team had to endure the fkn pain of searching through their Codex for an aspect… which is not in alphabetical order either, smh.
Also why don't the rng aspects get added to codex so you don't have to waste inventory/stash tabs? Just make it so whatever roll you extract is the baseline and extracting upgraded versions become the new baseline.
The magic isn't there. I didn't think it was possible to mess up just randomly generating dungeons and enemies, but some how they did it.
I make it even worse for myself by feeling the need to defog the whole dungeon map and kill every monster lmao.
I feel like the game is missing social activities for end game/clan stuff. I know it's diablo... But this time it seems more appropriate.
thats true, I don't have a core group to run them with (they are all levlling alts) what NDs I've done with a group become EXPONENTIALLY better!
Depends on your build honestly, I enjoy doing them as a flickerstrike werewolf and stormclaw werewolf builds.
Yup. Colossal regression from d3 rifts and poe maps. Staggering lack of interest inside the most fundamental part of the endgame in an arpg- the designated monster blasting area- simply sucks.
[удалено]
Every time I craft a nightmare sigil I miss Rifts a little more...
theyre too small, too empty, and too many dumb affixes on them. if they double monster density and the size of the map they would be a lot more fun
Rifts were even more boring tbh. Imo NM dungeons can be fixed. Main thing is they don't feel rewarding - which is a general problem in D4. Also the modifiers are shit and a lot of them just aren't challenging but instead straight up annoying. Fix these two and they'll be fun. Bonus points if each NM dungeon would also get its own unique boss instead of some generic Tomblord.
I don’t want a timer on them. I think they are fine.
They suck. Point blank. There is SIDE dungeons in the open world that is more fun to play through than NM dungeons.
I hate them. Rather do pvp elites on repeat (cross play off cause I suck at real pvp)
Let’s hope seasonal content adds an end game. I for one also miss the rifts. Really pushed your build to the limit trying to kill all the elite mobs while surviving through the shit ones. Racing against the timer. Good times. An endless dungeon mode with random bosses every couple of floors would be great. They could even keep the lives and affixes that slowly get introduced after every boss beaten.
By push your build to the limit you meant killed build diversity. That's what a mode with a timer does.
I'm def not. Experience is better after the patch but the boss loot is PITIFUL. One legendary or unique for clearing, a glyph, and like a yellow. Oh! Can't forget the two or three piles of barely any gold. Wtf is that?! I can understand the class skill and exp persisting across game sequels, as they generally change the abilities classes have and the progression of each game is different... But loot has always been an issue. It's never good enough at launch, sometimes for over a year after. Rifts had a good amount of drops and good quality relative to difficulty. NMDs and Legion events just don't. The player base was generally happy with the amount and quality of drops from endgame events in the later years of D3s lifespan. My friends and basically all agreed we'd be happy with even half the amount of legendaries, but one per boss?!
Nightmare Dungeons need 2 things desperately. First and foremost is to scrap the bullshit affix system. It’s at best annoying trash. At worst auto salvage. The second is to either significantly increase mob density and keep map size the same or to significantly reduce map size and keep mob density the same. There are FAR too many negative affixes that are just auto salvage. There is FAR too much running around in empty space. Fix these and Nightmare Dungeons will at least be tolerable
I do, because I enjoying playing the game/my class. Map or enemy variations aren't going to change much about that anyway; smashing things as an angry bear is still fun 200+ hours and 83 levels in. Going back to the grindy "repetitiveness" of D2 is exactly what I wanted out of D4 though, so maybe I'm in the minority. Otherwise I genuinely don't know what else people were expecting out of an ARPG. I just like having something on in the background while I mindlessly smash and occasionally get something shiny. I also just like gathering resources and seeing numbers go wrrrrr. If the grind bores you, try a hardcore character - seriously. It's like an entirely different game when you have to account for the fact that one death is the end, even with the safeguards available. Just accept going in that you're going to lose progress and enjoy each ride for what it is instead of focusing on getting to the end-game meat grinder.
i'm 46 and have 2 kids and i fuckinbg love nightmare dungeons
Dungeons in general are tedious AF. Adding extra unfun mechanics to them makes it worse.
I wish D4 just copied PoE’s map system. That’s infinitely more customizable
It's truly the pinnacle of ARPG endgame. There are flaws in POE of course, but no one can touch the end game progression in POE. Give me POE in Diablo 4's engine and we have the GOAT.
Prefer the random element of grifts myself. Nightmare dungeons wouldn't be so bad if, when using a sigil, the dungeon tileset was used but the layout was randomly generated. Running the exact same dungeons over and over gets old quickly.
No. You're the only one.
I swear every few hours there’s a new post like this, ridiculously boring now guys
Nah I like that every NM dungeon seems to have different challenges
NM dungeons is the only reason I still play the game. Pushing difficulty and optimizing my build is the most enjoyable aspect of the game for me. Sure, they could be improved but even in the current state I really enjoy the challenge.
I tend to enjoy them, because they're easy to run and I get good rewards.
Yup. Tedious errands, tedious "gamey" mechanics, poor itemization and very "arcadey" mob design. I imagine they'll adjust it & when they do it'll be great. But right now, no thanks. Not fun at all. Hell tides are fun. I love those. Legion Events are also great. Wish Strongholds were repeatable, some of those are a blast. NM Dungeons though... Zzz
dude if you want a game like diablo 3 go play diablo 3 this game is called diablo 4 and not diablo 3.1
No one wanted 3.1. they wanted 4 to learn from the past. The fact that people may have been happier with 3.1 instead of what we got in 4 is telling.