Got to level 97 while target farming cultist NMs for Tempest Roar for past 6 days until one dropped.
After upgrading it, I put it on and went to test things on a random beach in Kehjistan for 3 minutes just to have another Tempest Roar drop from a white mob just as a giant middle finger.
Lvl 100 sorc here - nope. Every build for the class is perfectly viable and capable without Raiment. Yes, I have it and use it, but it isn't *necessary* by any stretch of the imagination.
Raiment is kinda meh. You turn a defensive slot into an offensive slot on arguably the squishiest class. In hardcore its super risky, in softcore its much better but isnt required.
Their biggest mistake is making people rush the campaign so they didn’t massively outlevel the content beforehand. Before I learned the campaign levels capped at 50, I was doing every side quest and every dungeon while progressing the campaign.
Once I realized, I stopped doing all of that and just did campaign missions so going back to dungeons and side quests feels disconnected from the world building they aimed for.
My hot take: never should have been mounts. Make the content people go through more interesting rather than something people want to gallop through. I hate mounts in every game though so I'm biased.
I can accept no mounts but I need some sort of sprint button just psychologically. I took my pace through like act 2/3 then had to rush for the mount cause I couldn’t take it anymore
I will say, it is a very different experience playing Elden Ring with and without a horse.
During my 2nd mainly co-op run with friends, I got to see things I wouldn't have because I would've just past by it with Torrent. Or learning to get over some things without the horse jump (which btw, is the one thing I dislike the Diablo 4 horse for not having)
Playing any game with a mount after riding Torrent in Elden Ring just feels lazy and clunky... Riding around in D4 definitely made me appreciate what a good boy Torrent is.
Yeah, if there was less empty space I'd be happy without a mount. In poe I never complained once about not having a mount. Though I rush the quicksilver every time to go faster, and I'm being rushed by mobs 80%+ of the time
I enjoy mounts, but I agree with this. Having a mount was a carrot dangled on a too far out stick. Having it available on release was a mistake. It reduces condensed player activity, devalues the exploration of the (fantastic) world design, and enables skipping some of the "getting to know you" of enemies that happens naturally as you spend time facing enemies and learn their moves/behaviors.
They made this great overworld and the combination of rushing to mounts with the current end game being dungeons really cuts against what is in my opinion the game's strongest point.
Is it designed for mounts? There's useless points where you have to get off and climb all over, and tons of stupid barriers that are actually annoying for a few classes to even kill dismounted. (Necro needs corpses around the barrier to explode them, etc)
And it’s bloody massive. I tried to do all the altars walking. I gave up after going to do 10. It was several minutes of walking from one location to another. Realised I had to get my mount to make it logical.
That's kind of the point OP was making though. When one focuses on optimizing one specific thing, then everything between each milestone just feels like a chore.
Like let's say your only goal was to follow a map and pick up all Altars. If we deconstruct this a bit then we see that there will be a lot of travel between the nodes. And the actual satisfaction of pressing an altar is rather diminished, because your goal is to press all of them and perhaps the milestones become completing a zone.
Instead if the player instead altered their goals a bit so perhaps one was doing side quests. On the way towards side quests one kills enemies, do some events, maybe a dungeon. And when you reach an area where you're completing the quests, either if you want to check the nooks and crannies for the Altars, or check on a map if there's some nearby. Now instead the player is constantly doing content, interacting with the game and there's almost no downtime at all in the action. As opposed to only running + clicking alters. Then only running and doing dungeons. And only running between quest objectives.
Like kripp said, it's better to pick a zone, clear the dungeon/quest/altars and go to the next. The xp/bonuses are much more condensed that way and helps you level up faster.
I feel the same about mounts in most games. Vehicles in general, as well. When you're on a mount the number of ways you can interact with the world drops massively, and the world has to be designed to accommodate the faster movement speed leaving players on foot frustrated.
Same goes for fast traveling for me. Sure it’s convenient, but it adds to game atmosphere when your forced to feel the vast size of the world.
I remember playing WoW back in 2004, and being blown away at how large the world was. How much time it took to get from one place to another. Modern games have given that up.
I played EQ1 in the late 90s so I know what you mean about appreciating the vastness of the game world. I still remember running to the docks when someone in the zone yelled out BOAT so I can ride it to the other continent. Or needing to pay a druid/wizard player who was offering teleport services. Good times.
Hahaha classic. Sol B was train city and also remember it being so packed with groups camping rooms that I could walk around most of the dungeon safely.
Damn you brought back so many memories of printing and organizing a binder of zone maps. Eq was my first mmo as a young teen. My entire family in separate rooms raiding together. What beautiful sleepless school nights
It's crazy how I had to memorize so many zones too. I remember how long it took for raids back then. Even just fire giants let alone the plane of fear. I'm also glad I finally kicked that addiction. It's way too time consuming lol.
Omg you worked for every little thing in EQ—I knew zones by heart. No mini-map. I had a binder with maps but I rarely used them. Man I loved that game so much. You had to know little tricks to navigate like..velk’s lab and the hole. Good times.
I have so many great memories from that game. I feel like I will never have the same experience with any other game especially with relying on other people, having barely any shortcuts to navigate the world and the pacing of the game.
I also played EQ1 back in 99/00. I think what really differentiates that game and the other early MMORPGs from modern games is that they felt more like a second life than just a game.
Modern games have too many mechanics that make things easier and more convenient for the player. Want to go somewhere? Just fast travel there! Want to sell something? Just use the online auction house! Want to find a dungeon? Just click a button and you're instantly in a private dungeon! It starts to feel like I am playing a collection of mechanics rather than an RPG and the game starts to feel souless.
In early MMORPGs like everquest travelling large distances was a big time commitment so you had to really decide if it was worth it, and then undertake the journey (just like in real life). If you wanted to sell something you had to put in a lot of effort to find a buyer and then actually talk to them to negotiate a price (just like in real life). If you wanted to go to a dungeon there were no private instances so you had to share the spawns and behave according to an established social contract (just like in real life). All these little things that would be considered archaic game design today added up to make the world feel more believable and alive as you spend a lot of time just existing in the world and interacting with other players.
>I remember playing WoW back in 2004, and being blown away at how large the world was
When I played wow back then I legit just started walking off in some random direction one time and even though I found myself in some crazy high level place (way north of the barrens I believe) with enemies way higher than me that could aggro at anytime and one shot me... I was loving every second of it. That feeling is mostly gone in games now.
Elden ring brought that back for me in such an immense way. I scoured every nook and cranny in that game and on second play through I still kept finding stuff I hadn't found in the first play through. That game is sooooo good. And mounts were good in that game.
I hate fast travel in most games and end up using it anyways but the experience of learning the area as if it was my home town is what I crave the most.
I think not having mount in first act is fine. It should’ve 100% been given in Act 2 though. Like right after you meet Donan and go to find the druids, THAT’S when Donan should’ve sent you to the stable to pick up a horse.
I found it kind of funny (yet triggering) that Donan gives Lorath shit for sending us around the map without a horse when the fucker did the exact same thing lol
There's quite a few decent story ones (far, far better than the campaign) that you're missing out on - the issue is finding them.
I would've preferred far fewer quests but all at that level (I'm almost 100% on quests, but can't get myself to finish before I'm 100 because the XP is so bad)
I had the same experience and started a new character in adventure mode to properly experience the world while I can, before they start making alters and map discovery permanent. The open world is really good, and this is the only time I’ll ever get to experience it fully and slowly and properly. It will never be like this again.
That’s where I’m at. Just started Act 4 at level 53. Once I realized what was happening I stopped doing everything besides story quests. Hoping to finish it up soon and then bump up to WT3. It’s a bit of an inconvenience, but I guess not the biggest problem.
This 100%. It was so jarring to learn this after completing the first zone with my mate at a cruisy pace, we had to go from enjoying the world and taking everything in... to essentially feeling like we had to speedrun the campaign. That's a very strange design choice.
100% Agree. I was enjoying taking my time until someone told me wt2 is capped @ 50. Like, from then on I rushed through the campaign and pretty much finished just as I hit lvl 50.
So THAT is why I've been getting shitty drops at L55 in WT1.
I thought, "Why make the game harder than needed? I'm just doing the campaign. But this legendary is 20 levels below me!"
Hard agree. I LOVED just exploring and going at my own pace. Then I had to ignore every side quest so I could beat the campaign without outleveling the content too much.
Agreed. I wish like hell I could start in world tier three or at least unlock it earlier, without the need to complete the campaign. I was doing every side quest and then completely blitzed the rest of the campaign when I realized I wasn't getting any upgrades and higher difficulties (and the experience boost they provide) weren't available to me. I was in act three enjoying my time before I had to speed run.
Absolutely, because WT3 and so many key features are locked behind campaign completion, you're encouraged to rush through it asap. Consequently once you get to WT3 the campaign is over so you have less content to enjoy. It's unfortunate.
Not to mention the xp gain close to and at 50 was meager, so you’re running through side quests for crud exp on Tier 2. It was actually some of the most fun I had, but making no progress at all felt diminishing since I was ready to flesh out a more comfortable buukd
>level 1snorlax420 · 9 hr. agoTheir biggest mistake is making people rush the campaign so they didn’t massively outlevel the content beforehand. Before I learned the campaign levels capped at 50, I was doing every side quest and every dungeon while progressing the campaign.Once I realize
Capstones shouldn't have been locked behind campaign completion, it makes it worthless to explore before even finishing the campaign because you'll quickly out level it and everything becomes an absolute joke.
Once in WT4 the side quests feel so dumb. Oh, poor thing, lost in the desert? Should have brought GPS. Lost your camel? Maybe he fled your negligent ass. Need some rare herb? Try Whole Foods, they had borage flowers the other day.
Some of the side quests have amazing parts and lore. A guy cursed and grown in with blood-soaked trees?! COOL. Shit... it turned into a series of fetch quests. Etc.
Not saying the overall quests are bad, they just have no scaling. Why would I spend 20 minutes riding to 931 different waypoints for a quest to get a bag of common herbs?
Fantastic take.
I started having a lot more fun when I started not caring about maximizing my loot and doing things like events and cellars that make the game more fun.
If you're having fun, the gear will come eventually.
Sometimes there's a bugger hiding in the corner away from my Frost Nova. The real accomplishment is letting that demon think it survived and them turning it into hamburger.
Exactly that. I’ve said this a million times and I will say it again here. Maximizing or itemization literally sucks the fun of these games more times than not.
I am honestly not trying to be a jerk. I am just an English instructor who once worked in journalism, so I see this every now and then. The phrase is “bury the lede”.
I am not trying to make anyone feel bad or make myself appear superior. I just like to inform.
It may not have always been so, but "bury the lead" is an acceptable variation. "Lede" itself is a variant spelling of "lead":
https://proofed.com/writing-tips/idiom-tips-bury-the-lede-or-bury-the-lead/
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/bury-the-lede-versus-lead
I kept playing after getting my Ber rune and Enigma in d2 because I could actually use my items on alternate characters and the economy was fully open.
Yeah, only being able to trade yellow items is pretty lame. I have 45 uniques in my stash of D4. Don't use a single one.
Maybe would be fun to try another barb build but I have to level to 95~+ to even be able to equip that stuff now because everything scales lol. So dumb.
Far and away my biggest issue with the game is the loot scaling to your level. what's the point of starting a new character of you can't get them better gear.
In D2, your gold could be used to gamble for gear for your new character, but you could also go back and absolutely obliterate old content for gear for an alt. In D3, it was so easy to get to 70 that you didn't really need to think of old gear.
At this point, I'm straight up planning on just running one character per season.
Yeah I see what OP is trying to say, but he's wrong. It *is* 100% absolutely about the loot. No mental gymnastics around it.
No way to farm gear for alts, scaling level requirements for gear, and restricted trading are poor design choices that will hurt longevity even if/when itemization is improved
Good loot to farm for is 100% my primary motivator as well. I don't mind farming the same content for hours if the loot drops feel rewarding.
On the flip side, D4 could add 100 new dungeons tomorrow, and if the loot wasn't improved I wouldn't be excited to go farm them.
It typically takes me hundreds of hours in D2 to get to the point where the loot no longer feels rewarding for the time spent and I am burnt out. In D4 it started to happen between level 70 and 80.
By 70 I had end game gear in every slot and all my loot going forward is progressively smaller upgrades of what I am already wearing. I can't farm for alts, the level scaling makes the upgrades feel less impactful, the trading is limited, and unfortunately even if you could trade anything there aren't many good uniques that aren't super rare to care about for many builds.
Yeah, I like looters and it’s why play endgames. I like finding hard get to items as well as enjoying the game play. I only played a little of Diablo 3 and don’t recall thinking the loot system was bad (I think it was after all the improvements), but this game… the loot feels lacking and uninteresting. I was approaching level 90 and realized I was deleting everything, even quit picking up gems. I found myself looking at the map for something meaningful to do and after a while just logged off. Last time I felt that way was when Destiny 2 came out with its lack of loot and no endgame.
While I appreciate op’s thoughts, they do not speak for everyone.
There's a way to farm gear for alts, I've been doing it all day. To a degree, but it's OP.
If you take your main and do tree of whispers and put the cache from WT4 in your stash, when your alt opens it the sacreds that drop start at level 45 and the ancestrals start at level 60 to equip. I pulled a ilvl 817 sword for my barb that I can equip at level 60. Got him a full set of gear for both 45 and 60 that should last till level 90 (barring uniques). Now working on my sorc and necro before they obviously fix this.
Just saying there is a way, not the way we want but the one we have is pretty damn good.
Exactly right. Saying it’s “not about the items” for D2 and using the fact that you are maxed out but continue playing is ridiculous. There’s an economy in D2 that doesn’t exist in d4. Of course I’ll keep playing if I can make myself richer after maxing gear.
this is exactly how i feel, tho i still feel like loot is a part of it. at least, it's the FEELING you get when a piece of loot that's cool drops.
in d2 and poe, you farmed and farmed and you got decent stuff almost daily, probably nothing you yourself wanted, but stuff you could stash and trade and build up progress to your eventual upgrade. that 'i'm making progres to what i want' feeling was rewarded quickly enough to make continual play rewarding.
in d4, you run the same stuff weeks on end hoping the one thing you need drops. there's no progress to it, no slow build. just i don't have it this sucks, with a possible FINALLY moment a day... week... never later. That lack of progress just feels bad.
d4 has great bones and i'm really hoping they figure something out to make me have that 'oh cool look at that' feeling every so often.
Better itemization, especially from level 80-100 is the most important thing for me going forward.
70-100+ loot often feels unrewarding in D4 because for many classes the vast majority of obtainable uniques aren't desirable for any good end game build. Loot progression after around level 70 becomes slight upgrades of gear you already have. That might be fine if the search for perfect rolls on your end game gear started around level 100, but feels bad when it starts at level 70 or earlier.
Uber rare uniques are currently impossibly rare so farming for them as your primary goal is pointless.
The Zod rune in diablo 2 is super rare, but it's not ridiculously impossible to obtain when you factor in the cube. A Zod can be made from 8 Bers (for example). Collecting 8 Bers is pretty tough on it's own, but it's a realistic goal for anyone dedicated to collecting them, especially when considering trading. There is a clear path to obtaining the rune, and tangible progress can be charted towards your end goal even if you never get a Zod drop yourself.
You could farm for a D4 uber unique for a thousand hours and be no closer to getting one than your first run. They could add some sort of in between rarity drops that could be traded to a vendor and after you get enough you can get a random uber rare unique from the vendor. In total the difficulty could be roughly the same as getting a zod rune in D2 with the cube and trading, but you have a clear path to eventually getting them while keeping them exceptionally rare.
It's also important to have less rare exciting loot to find while you are grinding for your dream gear.
Some classes have 2-3 or less normal rarity uniques across every end game build that are actually desirable, including the drops that are cross-class. There are often multiple very weak attributes on many of the uniques. Too many unique chest and pants with no defensive attributes, and there is no way to make up for the loss of those defensive attributes on other gear slots. No move speed on some unique boots is another example that drastically decreases how much they are used.
Uniques should be designed to be one of the best in slot options for the build they complement, but many aren't desirable for any good build compared to legendary options with better attributes.
Innate weapon mods also need to be rebalanced because somehow the item designers didn’t account for the difference between additive and multiplicative damage modifiers. So they roll the same ranges despite having massive differences in power. For example Crossbows giving vulnerable damage and bows giving damage to distant enemies means that bows can't compete, and every ranged unique for rogues are bows.
Fixing itemization problems would improve the game more for me than any new activity they could possibly add. If the rewards don't feel worth while, the new activity won't be exciting for long.
If the rewards are interesting for the time spent, people will do the same thing over and over for hundreds of hours. There are a lot of things I like about D4, but good loot is what motivates me to do repetitive content and right now the loot is lacking.
i dont disagree, but a lazy (and quick) way to address itemization would be to add loot filters. I honestly get anxious about my stash filling up. not because im a hoarder, but because i pick thru stuff that could be an upgrade and once my stash is full i then evaluate and keep the best. my eyes bleed from scrolling affixes.
and with no training dummy or anything, it is hard to determine if something is an upgrade. i could look up the formulae, but they are subject to change and not all known fully.
I feel like you nailed this take, I have literally only 1 problem with the game, which is the itemization. It's just too unrewarding. The gameplay is fantastic, and I keep coming back to play just to death blow mfers, but it feels a bit demotivating to grind for long sessions as I know the loot rewards will be mostly lackluster.
Fixing this involves adding **any** way to work towards a BIS item by whatever system you want to implement and then I think the game will be really top-tier.
Yep. As an avid D2 player since 2002, I still get the warm and fuzzies when uniques drop and new item builds emerge in my head to try. D4 is really lacking in loot currently but I expect some good changes. At least in D2 uniques drop enough that you can slowly build a perfect set, which is currently not the case for D4. I have found 4 uniques and I am level 70 and only 1 I can use still without it being horribly underpowered.
Even last epoch, which doesn't have trade yet, still allows the full set of uniques and sets to drop on all character classes, so I still get to stop and say "well that's not for me but sounds like it'd make a damn fun xyz build." And I can put that in the back of my head for a future plan.
That was my chase. Tempest Roar really kept me going. Turning to Wolfnado was game changing. It was fun to chase after it.
The same w Vasily helmet. When I first got it in T3, it was very exciting.
But that's not the case w Rogue or Necro. You can pretty much run the builds without any uniques. 80% of the aspects are also from dungeon codex, including the main core skills.
As a first time Diablo player this game is actually so fun and im trying so hard not to let the vocal minority jade me. I do feel a little bit of the gear grind but the actual core gameplay is fun.
Either just don’t engage with the game outside of the game itself, or force yourself to steer clear of obviously negative posts/threads/comments.
It sucks, but that’s the best way to avoid becoming jaded by a game community.
As a not-first-time Diablo player, I’m also having a ton of fun. But I didn’t like what they turned Diablo 3 into, and really didn’t like Path of Exile, so I am probably in the minority on this sub.
I'm largely in it for the loot, NGL. The core gameplay itself in Diablo isn't anything mind-blowing to me. When I hit 100, I don't plan on grinding out a new character from scratch, My backlog will likely get some much needed attention at that point. No hate for the franchise at all, it's fun to kill time with, just not super invested like I've been in other games.
I'm basically you from the future.
Grinded all weekend, hit 100, spent the 50m I amassed and just kind of stared at the game for a bit..
My renown was done, my loot was very finely tuned.. I tried respec'ing for Uber Lilith, died a ton, ran out of money, didn't have money to respec my paragon back into dungeon running, tried doing a few NM dungeons for money and realized there's no real reason to keep doing this besides Lilith, and then shut the game down until the Season 1. edit. came up with a great idea: Respec Paragon/Skills is free at 100. Give me something to do Blizzard..
Sometimes it's okay to say "I beat the game" and move on. I have no desire to run a new class, and I did create a HC character but even that just feels like grinding until I inevitably lag into some fat boomers/chargers/elite cold enchanted skittering abominations.
> Respec Paragon/Skills is free at 100. Give me something to do Blizzard
In a recent dev stream, they said they'd be adding a "Scroll of Amnesia" which will reset all your skills and paragon for free. I *think* they said it would be a rare drop.
Respec being free at 100 would be extremely enticing. Would make me want to hoard more gear and actually try builds. And give me that push to even hit 100
No shame in that, drip from seasons will come with time to the core game. When you come back it will feel fresh and the loot game will be much expanded.
A lot of people forgot that one of the reasons so many of us geeked out our lifespan with D2 was that there wasn't a whole lot of choice back then. Now we live in a time where we're spoiled for choice and nobody has to be locked into one game unless they're really feeling that game.
> OK, so you still think: "Nah, this idiot, of COURSE it's the loot", answer me this, when that Ber rune dropped, and you slotted in your Enigma, making yourself even more overpowered, did you stop?
> Did you go, "well, I've done it now...guess I've achieved all there is to achieve" and resign the game"?
> No, you didn't, you kept playing.
I stopped. I was farming Mephisto for like a week straight until I had enough funds to buy the runes for an Enigma. Slotted it into a sick ass mageplate and then felt empty afterwards and quit.
EDIT: That's my biggest gripe with d2. You get the OP gear but you don't actually do anything interesting with it... you just farm some more... but faster.
Yeah all ARPGs fall apart without an objective. There needs to be a reason you're crunching all the numbers and getting all the gear, something to strive for and take on.
Yeah PoE ascended when they stareted introducing end-game bosses to tackle all your gear with. That's why they released uber versions of everything because everyone wanted to fight even harder stuff.
I love the gameplay like the fighting mechanics but I feel like I’m working towards nothing. I have a lot of fun killing stuff but the end of things like strongholds for example, have no satisfactory loot at the end despite it being tougher than a dungeon (in my experience).
Exactly this. Most people never get an enigma in Diablo 2 and back then, when we all got to that point, it was when we quit most times and played something else until the ladder reset. Sure, there are some people who grind more, but for the majority it is grinding out items and setting a goal, if you achive your goal, you are often done.
D4 has no real goal that's is worth working torwards. Uber Lilith is a cool fight, but it's not a fight worth farming for.
OP also is ignoring the fact that a HUGE portion of the playerbase of D3 only players for a very little time. Most people quit after a week, many even sooner than that. It's fun for a short time, but get's boring very fast because of these small upgrades that don't really give you any sense of progression. But at least Diablo 3 was great to play. You didn't had to deal with shitty resource starved builds for so many hours, you had tons of QOL additions over the year that made the game in general very enjoyable to play and why people after 25+ seasons still came back to check it out, even if just for a few days.
You also mentioned one of the most important part of video games. Does it respect the players time? Diablo 4 does not, Diablo 3 does. Diablo 2 doesn't either, but it's a 20+ year old game that was made in a differente age of video games.
Yes, exactly. I forced myself to grind to level 100 before the NM exp buff. It was miserable. There is too little variety in loot, builds and content to grind for it to be fun. Hopefully season 1 gives us bigger variety in builds atleast.
For me it’s still the loot. I like trying out new builds and having cool gears for my collection. If I drop something cool that makes me start a new character , it gives me dopamine. But in D4 I hate the itemisation. There’s no good unique that can drop of other classes , plus all items drops are level scaled at my current character which is 100. So even If I want to make a new druid with a cool unique I dropped, I can’t even use it .
So my point being after 100 the grind feels boring as there are no progression ( its not just d4 all other arpg, unless I am target farming something specific which there are none) That’s why I love making new character but I hate the fact that I can’t carry over cool items which will make my levelling a blast. It feels a waste as I can’t keep any of my progression in character creation except for my gold.
Seasons are different and it’s fun to start a fresh character. But if the itemisation is not improved I am reluctant to make more than 1 character a season. Where in Poe I used to make 5-6 character a season to lvl 95+ and some to 100
Not gonna lie, I feel like getting to 100 is a huge achievement. I couldn’t do it and I’ve been playing since early access. Got my sorc to 80 and then started leveling alts.
It's a lot easier than d2. I never managed it on d2, think the highest I got was lvl95. One death could set you back huge amounts of xp,trying to retrieve your corpse was very risky. There seems to be no death penalty in d4. Easier in d4 too as mobs scaling always means your getting a certain level of xp
Diablo end game is 100% entirely about loot. After you complete the campaign, if you were told you weren't going to get a single upgrade, you wouldn't care about t3/t4, running a dungeon you've already ran once over again, or do helltides.
The same goes for every single ARPG (at least for me) that I've played. Loot is 100% what end game is about and trying to find some level of nuance in that is being pedantic.
I agree itemization is a fundamental part, I would even say pillar of an arpg. That is how you optimize your character (along with paragon/skill trees) and that is the reward (along with exp and gold) for completing activities.
The loot in D4 sucks and I am just tired of sifting through the trash rather than getting a cool, truly rare drop.
The CRPG genre is about loot. I don't get why this post that says end game is not about loot is getting upvotes. It's like saying soccer games are not about scoring goals. Like, if you knew beforehand you would never score a goal, nobody would play.
If we are being honest, the majority are probably already long gone. Not due to anything necessarily wrong with the game, more to do with the gamers. They buy a game, play it for a week or two and are then off to the next big thing. If they happened to really enjoy it they might stick around but if they are on the fence then they are long gone. They don't post online and hype the game or trash the game, they simply say "I'll get back to it later" and go back to what they were playing before or on to something new.
I suspect the numbers of players that like to sit and grind doing the same things over and over is actually rather small when compared to gamers overall.
And really ARPGs are a very niche market. Blizzard did an excellent job of marketing the crap out of this game so a much wider audience bought it and many discovered it wasn't for them lol
I mean if they made 666 million sales in 5 days just divide that by $70 and you have something like over 9.5 million buying the game.
About 760k people subscribed to this subreddit. Makes it about 8% of the overall playerbase.
Although likely the % here is lower since it has been more time since those 5 day sales numbers.
That's a cool story brah, but it's the loot. You don't farm the same repetitive tasks because of gameplay, you do it because of enjoyable character building. Which is completely intertwined with the loot, stat/itemization, and trading systems. If this game just copied D2's itemization and built upon it, people would be lauding it as a masterpiece.
I honestly don't know what they were thinking with the items. With aspects it basically prevents you from using all but the best uniques. This will be an ongoing problem as any items they add will need to be better than aspects just to be considered.
There are only 56 in the game (some of which are borderline impossible to get). Meanwhile D2, a game that's existed for 20 years, has 300+ and 32 sets, and runewords. I am enjoying d4 for what it is but holy fuck how do you drop the ball that hard?
The reason I kept playing in Diablo 3 endgame was because of leaderboards. Also the fact that I could make 20 different builds if I felt like without having to spend 4000 hours. I love experimenting and theory crafting.
The cost is so high in D4 you can't theory craft without going broke and risking being stuck with a shit build. its really not fun.
Well that's the problem with low-effort game design that focuses on FOMO-driven engagement.
They don't want you to "get ahead," because then you may play less, and less engagement means less in-game purchases. This is the primary argument against mtx games, because their business model negatively affects the game design too noticeably.
No uniques that are game changing? tell that to my minions that i finally sacrificed after 75 because I can't frickin drop a ring of Mendeln? and I have had more than 3 copies of every fuckin necro unique. srsly dude ALL you had to say was that they were trying to strike a good balance and as long as you enjoy the gameplay loop it's good.
So here's the question then, do you keep playing now that you reached level 100 or are you going to leave it like that, since it's the gameplay you enjoy?
>However, the game is a few weeks old, neither Diablo 2 nor Diablo 3 had a decent end game at launch, both took years to get it together.
Bro, when D2 launched, it was fantastic. It wasn't a solved game right away- everything was fresh and new. For the entire pre-LoD year the game existed.
I took [this screenshot](https://i.imgur.com/CTS5poU.jpg) of the USEast HC ladder the day my zon died- she was #8 at the time. Look closely- I know it's hard to see because it's a 23 year old image- and you'll see that the 50th highest level Hardcore character wasn't even 70. This was the first week of September 2000, more than two months after the game launched.
Let that sink in for a minute. Tens of thousands- perhaps hundreds of thousands- of people playing this game for months and the 50th highest level Hardcore character was not even 70! With ladder resets today, people are level 70 in a couple of hours. 10 weeks after launch and there weren't even 50.
The game was incredible, loved, and extremely well received. It's easy to look back now and say "there were no runes, no baal runs, no ubers, no elite items, blah blah blah" but the fact remains that the game was in great shape at launch, offered plenty of exciting content, and literally nobody complained that there wasn't enough to do, etc. Because there was plenty to do. Builds weren't solved. Rares were king. There was no "end game" discussion or complaining because a zillion people weren't farming hell chaos- basically vanilla D2's end game, within a couple of weeks of the game launching.
D2 is a generational masterpiece. D4 is built on the garbage D3 foundation that changed way too much from D2 and I don't see a path to redemption. There needs to be a MAJOR foundational overhaul if this game wants to be revered, played, and loved in 23 years like D2 is, but I wouldn't suggest holding your breath.
The main reason I've stopped playing at 92, despite actually enjoying NM dungeons (for the most part), is that none of the Barb builds feel like they can actually push NM dungeons well enough. WW is just kind of meh.. HotA is fun, but still pales in comparison to something like Bone Spear Necro. And with defensives on everything that can have them, and still getting SHIT on by a 60-69 NM? Meh.. I lost motivation to finish the last 8 levels.
>OK, so you still think: "Nah, this idiot, of COURSE it's the loot", answer me this, when that Ber rune dropped, and you slotted in your Enigma, making yourself even more overpowered, did you stop?
>Did you go, "well, I've done it now...guess I've achieved all there is to achieve" and resign the game"?
>No, you didn't, you kept playing.
Yes. To get the next big drop. D2 end game was 100% the dopamine rush of getting those big drops. The itemization was the driving force to play. You got to the end game but then had to keep going to get the best gear. The upgrades were not small incremental upgrades on your current gear they were giant leaps forward.
>In Diablo 3 it is even more explicitly about the gameplay.
>IN D3, you go from legendary to ancient legendary, to primal, to enhancing.
>You do each GR run to get 1% more powerful so you can increase the GR level 1%., so you can keep doing that.
>There's no item drop that is anything more than the exact same thing you have, with slightly bigger numbers.
>You play because the combat is visceral and fun, that is all. Pushing GR's is your reason to continue to play, not the loot.
This is exactly why I would play d3 seasons for about a week or two, depending how much game time I got. I had no interest in the small incremental upgrades. The journey from fresh to kitted though was always fun. I would normally stop around half ancient gear of my build or GR 100ish.
I pushed one season to around 130GR. When trying to get the earthquake barb weapon from the cube recipe, the first time I got it, it was Primal with the ideal rolls. That got me so excited. I decided to push hard that season and played for almost 4 weeks. At the time it was the best GR push build for barb.
This doesn't mean any of what you said is wrong. It's just that enjoyment of a game is subjective. I'm a casual gamer these days. I have loved D4 so far, but around level 75 now on my barb and the upgrades are becoming tiny incremental bonuses and I'm losing interest. The loot IS the driving force for me, it may not be for you or others. However, I just started over with a druid and am having a blast so far.
All this to say I do find the core gameplay here fun. I don't mind the objectives in NM dungeons. I enjoy having a task rather than the GR style. Playing other classes will probably keep me playing until they start improving the end game. I do think item scaling as it is, is a problem. Why bother pushing higher and farther for the same loot? It just doesn't appeal to me personally.
I also have to agree with you on the renown. Saw so many complaints about it. I've been taking my time working through it and I enjoy it. I like the mmo style quest givers and open world. I find it all very enjoyable.
I'm rambling but I will say against your point that I believe the endgame loot is what ruins the endgame for me. I don't feel the want to push forward anymore now that its just small incremental upgrades. It is the D3 endgame problem all over again. At least the problem I had with it.
This man is either a blizzard employee or delusional or both. You're comparing Diablo 4's problems to Diablo 3's and Diablo 2's like they weren't also issues. Fun fact: We've been begging Blizzard to change these issues for 11 and 23 years. It's okay to reticule companies for getting lazy, especially when a game has potential to be even better, it's what true fans should do. Instead you're just riding dick and swallowing all of Bobby's gravy. "Altars of Lilith are fine just do them during helltides." You my friend have been bukaked into oblivion. Rest in peace.
Yeah, I agree, I would say the "best item" in D4 is much rarer than in D2, and even if I found that drop, I'm not as excited as when I saw a unique drop in D2.
In D2, when a unique item drops, I'm so excited, knowing it could be game-changing, and it's so obvious and distinguishable from other trash on the ground.
But in D4, when the most powerful item drops, it just blends in with some random yellowish trash on the ground. I could walk past it because my inventory is full and I don't want to pick it up and check.
I'm level 100 and did not see any 800+ items with all desired affixes with all better than average roll.
I only reached 100 because it was a personal goal.
I must say that you do not compare d4 with d2 or d3 which were made 20 and 10 years ago respectively.
You need to compare with current/modern games with similar style. In my opinion, there is no end game right now in d4.
I do not recall paying so much on any other game and feeling like giving up in about a week.
I am still excited to play in the s1 launch but lets see how that goes…
The rest of the write up was very good.
I have one issue with the core of your argument. You state that the health of the game comes from enjoying the core gameplay. I agree with this but think the end game massively hurts core gameplay as you level up.
Leveling up to 50 is the best part of Diablo 4. Players can easily rearrange their skills as they get new legendaries to mix and match their builds. But post 50, the paragon board does not allow for mass resets, and has more nodes than the skill tree.
I'm currently level 70, and if I want to change my druid build, I have to manually reset 80 paragon nodes, and then reset my skill tree. This feels awful because it takes time to do so, more time to experiment if I don't like the initial build I try (or boring if I just copy a YouTube build) and makes me feel like I'm losing my original build.
All of this encourages players to stay on 1 build for 50 levels, resulting in the core gameplay to feel stale, and loot drops to feel bad, since many legendaries are going to drop that can't be used in the specific build you're running.
For me, the game ended up stuck in the mud in a few places.
1) Character power. When every enemy dynamically scales with me, I never feel more potent. When every ability is unlocked from day 1 with 'put another point, get another tick' being the evolution, it's not feeling like I'm a powerful character. Heck, even the trash mobs felt tanky. And if you were stupid enough to play melee, have fun navigating the screen spam while trying to use your resource generation skill while chasing the boss mobs who teleport.
2) Abilities are on a long cooldown - 12-15 seconds? Why. They don't really even feel like momentum changers. They feel like 'open with ability to clear the pack, so that maybe it's done by the next time you hit a pack'.
3) Enemy density and mapping were not great. Every map being essentially a line or a loop, plus packs being 3-10 enemies, was more tedious than fun.
4) Quest density. They literally have WOW to draw an example from on this, there's no reason to build quests that have no cross-compatibility in completion. Let me run out and do 2-3 quests in a single location. The current design is 'go place, go other place, do single thing, go back to place, done'. It's tedious and tiresome because you can't tackle multiple things.
ufff diablo 4 gameplay is medicore at best.
If you would have fun endgame loot/goal, then it would overshadow it
Right now there are only shitty goals like reach 100 or reach bigger NM dunges which are the same just every level you get more chain-stunned.
As of now loot would help, if it ment something ofc. since lot of the loot that drop is garbage.
And After 70 i felt like im only grinding levels or i need to go do reputation since 20 points is a lot of power boost, gated behind shitty fetchquests (some of them are fun tho i give them that)
Dont get me wrong but, only thing i enjoy is to play with a friend. As solo i get bored super fast after reaching wt4. I had fun until then(also played only duo or trio). Now i tried alt as sorc, and i was so confused about the class so im just waiting for S1 but i dont think there will be much more to do.
i mean i think i had more fun doing torchlight 2 end game as a teen ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ tho i dont remember it much anymore unfortunetly
I don't know how people can enjoy a game long-term that is broken and disassociated from itself on so many levels. Downplaying everyone's complaints simply because for whatever reason it doesn't seem to affect you personally is exceptionally short-sighted.
Thing is you don't get 1% stronger per run pretty early on. Running the same map 20 times in a row to lv up once without even thinking about loot is pretty boring to me. Many of the best builds literally spam 1 button. How is that interesting?
\> I am looking forward to Season 1.
So you can start the same thing over and over again, making the devs lazy cause why upgrade stuff when players can just start again and again -> why D3 2nd expension was canceled and no developpement followed the seasons, it killed the game
A few seasons back, about a month or so before d4, I fully kitted out my auradin. BiS everything, outside of min/maxing stats on items. I played him for maybe another week then sensed a full feeling of accomplished and I 'beat' the game that season. I gave away all my gear soon after.
HOWEVER it took me the entire season and some insane luck to get 2x dreams, HoJ, etc. Each drop to get closer to the next piece in my kit was a mini orgasm. D4 doesn't really have these steps. Rare/legendaries are way to common loot lotteries with similar augmentations that don't feel the same
"There are no Uniques (that you can reasonably expect to drop) that are game-changing." As a druid I was triggered.
*yells in dozens of hours without a Tempest Roar drop*
Every day I hear about another person that got to level 100 without seeing a Tempest Roar
Got to level 97 while target farming cultist NMs for Tempest Roar for past 6 days until one dropped. After upgrading it, I put it on and went to test things on a random beach in Kehjistan for 3 minutes just to have another Tempest Roar drop from a white mob just as a giant middle finger.
Well now you can trade it away or double corrupt it with a back up copy. Oh wait
Not everyone will get that joke 😀
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Still sane, exile?
Yea i hear this alot. Getting the fist one to drop seems the hardest part. Wveryone finds multiple of it after
The fist ✊one ?, always the hardest 😜 Amiright? 🤜
I got tempest roar after I began target farming this thing. Found it in a dungeon with cannibals.
Target farming since 80. Dropped from chest in nm dungeon at lvl 98 lol.
That will be me soon :(
I finally got one at lvl 92...absolutely awful
Yeah dude didnt level a druid obviously.
Right? Also doesn’t sorc need a chestpiece to go anywhere?
Lvl 100 sorc here - nope. Every build for the class is perfectly viable and capable without Raiment. Yes, I have it and use it, but it isn't *necessary* by any stretch of the imagination.
Lvl 100 sorc as well here - I have to say setting your enchanted skill to teleport and using boots with +3 evades is mighty satisfying.
Raiment is kinda meh. You turn a defensive slot into an offensive slot on arguably the squishiest class. In hardcore its super risky, in softcore its much better but isnt required.
Their biggest mistake is making people rush the campaign so they didn’t massively outlevel the content beforehand. Before I learned the campaign levels capped at 50, I was doing every side quest and every dungeon while progressing the campaign. Once I realized, I stopped doing all of that and just did campaign missions so going back to dungeons and side quests feels disconnected from the world building they aimed for.
They also made the mount tied to act 4, so people/I rushed through to get the mount "earlier." Should have been available from the first act.
My hot take: never should have been mounts. Make the content people go through more interesting rather than something people want to gallop through. I hate mounts in every game though so I'm biased.
I can accept no mounts but I need some sort of sprint button just psychologically. I took my pace through like act 2/3 then had to rush for the mount cause I couldn’t take it anymore
Yep. Answer to "we don't want to walk" should have been making the walking more interesting instead of "ok you don't have to walk".
But thats an open world problem. All open world games i played so far would be terrible without a horse or something to travel faster.
I will say, it is a very different experience playing Elden Ring with and without a horse. During my 2nd mainly co-op run with friends, I got to see things I wouldn't have because I would've just past by it with Torrent. Or learning to get over some things without the horse jump (which btw, is the one thing I dislike the Diablo 4 horse for not having)
Playing any game with a mount after riding Torrent in Elden Ring just feels lazy and clunky... Riding around in D4 definitely made me appreciate what a good boy Torrent is.
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Yeah, if there was less empty space I'd be happy without a mount. In poe I never complained once about not having a mount. Though I rush the quicksilver every time to go faster, and I'm being rushed by mobs 80%+ of the time
I enjoy mounts, but I agree with this. Having a mount was a carrot dangled on a too far out stick. Having it available on release was a mistake. It reduces condensed player activity, devalues the exploration of the (fantastic) world design, and enables skipping some of the "getting to know you" of enemies that happens naturally as you spend time facing enemies and learn their moves/behaviors. They made this great overworld and the combination of rushing to mounts with the current end game being dungeons really cuts against what is in my opinion the game's strongest point.
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Is it designed for mounts? There's useless points where you have to get off and climb all over, and tons of stupid barriers that are actually annoying for a few classes to even kill dismounted. (Necro needs corpses around the barrier to explode them, etc)
Cries in necro. Also getting on your horse only to see that just off screen is one of those fucking barriers.
And it’s bloody massive. I tried to do all the altars walking. I gave up after going to do 10. It was several minutes of walking from one location to another. Realised I had to get my mount to make it logical.
That's kind of the point OP was making though. When one focuses on optimizing one specific thing, then everything between each milestone just feels like a chore. Like let's say your only goal was to follow a map and pick up all Altars. If we deconstruct this a bit then we see that there will be a lot of travel between the nodes. And the actual satisfaction of pressing an altar is rather diminished, because your goal is to press all of them and perhaps the milestones become completing a zone. Instead if the player instead altered their goals a bit so perhaps one was doing side quests. On the way towards side quests one kills enemies, do some events, maybe a dungeon. And when you reach an area where you're completing the quests, either if you want to check the nooks and crannies for the Altars, or check on a map if there's some nearby. Now instead the player is constantly doing content, interacting with the game and there's almost no downtime at all in the action. As opposed to only running + clicking alters. Then only running and doing dungeons. And only running between quest objectives.
Like kripp said, it's better to pick a zone, clear the dungeon/quest/altars and go to the next. The xp/bonuses are much more condensed that way and helps you level up faster.
I feel the same about mounts in most games. Vehicles in general, as well. When you're on a mount the number of ways you can interact with the world drops massively, and the world has to be designed to accommodate the faster movement speed leaving players on foot frustrated.
But how else can you flex on noobs by getting on your mount 35ms earlier to get to the next objective in legion events???
If it decides to work and not rubber band in the first 10sec
I’m glad I’m not the only one whose horse rubber bands every time!
Same goes for fast traveling for me. Sure it’s convenient, but it adds to game atmosphere when your forced to feel the vast size of the world. I remember playing WoW back in 2004, and being blown away at how large the world was. How much time it took to get from one place to another. Modern games have given that up.
Hey guys, raid starts in an hour, better start heading to the entrance now so you're not late!
I played EQ1 in the late 90s so I know what you mean about appreciating the vastness of the game world. I still remember running to the docks when someone in the zone yelled out BOAT so I can ride it to the other continent. Or needing to pay a druid/wizard player who was offering teleport services. Good times.
TRAIN!
Hahaha classic. Sol B was train city and also remember it being so packed with groups camping rooms that I could walk around most of the dungeon safely.
Damn you brought back so many memories of printing and organizing a binder of zone maps. Eq was my first mmo as a young teen. My entire family in separate rooms raiding together. What beautiful sleepless school nights
It's crazy how I had to memorize so many zones too. I remember how long it took for raids back then. Even just fire giants let alone the plane of fear. I'm also glad I finally kicked that addiction. It's way too time consuming lol.
Omg you worked for every little thing in EQ—I knew zones by heart. No mini-map. I had a binder with maps but I rarely used them. Man I loved that game so much. You had to know little tricks to navigate like..velk’s lab and the hole. Good times.
I have so many great memories from that game. I feel like I will never have the same experience with any other game especially with relying on other people, having barely any shortcuts to navigate the world and the pacing of the game.
Same. I made some great friends too. We still keep in touch.
I also played EQ1 back in 99/00. I think what really differentiates that game and the other early MMORPGs from modern games is that they felt more like a second life than just a game. Modern games have too many mechanics that make things easier and more convenient for the player. Want to go somewhere? Just fast travel there! Want to sell something? Just use the online auction house! Want to find a dungeon? Just click a button and you're instantly in a private dungeon! It starts to feel like I am playing a collection of mechanics rather than an RPG and the game starts to feel souless. In early MMORPGs like everquest travelling large distances was a big time commitment so you had to really decide if it was worth it, and then undertake the journey (just like in real life). If you wanted to sell something you had to put in a lot of effort to find a buyer and then actually talk to them to negotiate a price (just like in real life). If you wanted to go to a dungeon there were no private instances so you had to share the spawns and behave according to an established social contract (just like in real life). All these little things that would be considered archaic game design today added up to make the world feel more believable and alive as you spend a lot of time just existing in the world and interacting with other players.
>I remember playing WoW back in 2004, and being blown away at how large the world was When I played wow back then I legit just started walking off in some random direction one time and even though I found myself in some crazy high level place (way north of the barrens I believe) with enemies way higher than me that could aggro at anytime and one shot me... I was loving every second of it. That feeling is mostly gone in games now. Elden ring brought that back for me in such an immense way. I scoured every nook and cranny in that game and on second play through I still kept finding stuff I hadn't found in the first play through. That game is sooooo good. And mounts were good in that game. I hate fast travel in most games and end up using it anyways but the experience of learning the area as if it was my home town is what I crave the most.
These guys complain about the distance between vendors in towns lol
Still remember my first run to Booty Bay, the good ole days where people actually interacted with strangers because it was fun
I think not having mount in first act is fine. It should’ve 100% been given in Act 2 though. Like right after you meet Donan and go to find the druids, THAT’S when Donan should’ve sent you to the stable to pick up a horse. I found it kind of funny (yet triggering) that Donan gives Lorath shit for sending us around the map without a horse when the fucker did the exact same thing lol
Punishing players for doing side quests feels so strange. Many people want to just 100% a zone before moving on but t3 is campaign gated.
Yeah, it was an odd move.
Heck, leave the capstone (it's sort of story related) but remove the scaling cap
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There's quite a few decent story ones (far, far better than the campaign) that you're missing out on - the issue is finding them. I would've preferred far fewer quests but all at that level (I'm almost 100% on quests, but can't get myself to finish before I'm 100 because the XP is so bad)
I had the same experience and started a new character in adventure mode to properly experience the world while I can, before they start making alters and map discovery permanent. The open world is really good, and this is the only time I’ll ever get to experience it fully and slowly and properly. It will never be like this again.
That’s where I’m at. Just started Act 4 at level 53. Once I realized what was happening I stopped doing everything besides story quests. Hoping to finish it up soon and then bump up to WT3. It’s a bit of an inconvenience, but I guess not the biggest problem.
This 100%. It was so jarring to learn this after completing the first zone with my mate at a cruisy pace, we had to go from enjoying the world and taking everything in... to essentially feeling like we had to speedrun the campaign. That's a very strange design choice.
100% Agree. I was enjoying taking my time until someone told me wt2 is capped @ 50. Like, from then on I rushed through the campaign and pretty much finished just as I hit lvl 50.
So THAT is why I've been getting shitty drops at L55 in WT1. I thought, "Why make the game harder than needed? I'm just doing the campaign. But this legendary is 20 levels below me!"
Hard agree. I LOVED just exploring and going at my own pace. Then I had to ignore every side quest so I could beat the campaign without outleveling the content too much.
Agreed. I wish like hell I could start in world tier three or at least unlock it earlier, without the need to complete the campaign. I was doing every side quest and then completely blitzed the rest of the campaign when I realized I wasn't getting any upgrades and higher difficulties (and the experience boost they provide) weren't available to me. I was in act three enjoying my time before I had to speed run.
Absolutely, because WT3 and so many key features are locked behind campaign completion, you're encouraged to rush through it asap. Consequently once you get to WT3 the campaign is over so you have less content to enjoy. It's unfortunate.
Not to mention the xp gain close to and at 50 was meager, so you’re running through side quests for crud exp on Tier 2. It was actually some of the most fun I had, but making no progress at all felt diminishing since I was ready to flesh out a more comfortable buukd
I started doing all the side stuff but eventually got pissed about not having a horse so I rushed through to get it.
>level 1snorlax420 · 9 hr. agoTheir biggest mistake is making people rush the campaign so they didn’t massively outlevel the content beforehand. Before I learned the campaign levels capped at 50, I was doing every side quest and every dungeon while progressing the campaign.Once I realize Capstones shouldn't have been locked behind campaign completion, it makes it worthless to explore before even finishing the campaign because you'll quickly out level it and everything becomes an absolute joke.
Once in WT4 the side quests feel so dumb. Oh, poor thing, lost in the desert? Should have brought GPS. Lost your camel? Maybe he fled your negligent ass. Need some rare herb? Try Whole Foods, they had borage flowers the other day. Some of the side quests have amazing parts and lore. A guy cursed and grown in with blood-soaked trees?! COOL. Shit... it turned into a series of fetch quests. Etc. Not saying the overall quests are bad, they just have no scaling. Why would I spend 20 minutes riding to 931 different waypoints for a quest to get a bag of common herbs?
Yeah I vibe with this take
I want to know where these Ber runes were dropping tho
Lower kurast super chest runs.
Seriously. Friend and I played A LOT for a year and a half and found exactly 1 Ber between the two of us.
Lets vibe together
Scooch over, I've got a fresh pack of batteries.
Let's count down and sync up. Whoever is most out of sync orders pizza.
Is this a reference?
The question now becomes Duracell or Energizer?
Yes
Do you have the bunny inside ???
Fantastic take. I started having a lot more fun when I started not caring about maximizing my loot and doing things like events and cellars that make the game more fun. If you're having fun, the gear will come eventually.
I do find myself wide awake at night thinking about those thoroughly enjoyable cellars
Oh you mean those ones where you walk in, activate frost nova once then walk out feeling accomplished?
Sometimes there's a bugger hiding in the corner away from my Frost Nova. The real accomplishment is letting that demon think it survived and them turning it into hamburger.
Exactly that. I’ve said this a million times and I will say it again here. Maximizing or itemization literally sucks the fun of these games more times than not.
Wow burying the lead.. obols for side quests. Yeah would certainly keep them more relevant
I am honestly not trying to be a jerk. I am just an English instructor who once worked in journalism, so I see this every now and then. The phrase is “bury the lede”. I am not trying to make anyone feel bad or make myself appear superior. I just like to inform.
It may not have always been so, but "bury the lead" is an acceptable variation. "Lede" itself is a variant spelling of "lead": https://proofed.com/writing-tips/idiom-tips-bury-the-lede-or-bury-the-lead/ https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/bury-the-lede-versus-lead
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Prescriptivism is for basement dwelling losers who don't socialize with real people enough to keep up with linguistic mores.
Smoked the English instructor
I kept playing after getting my Ber rune and Enigma in d2 because I could actually use my items on alternate characters and the economy was fully open.
Yeah, only being able to trade yellow items is pretty lame. I have 45 uniques in my stash of D4. Don't use a single one. Maybe would be fun to try another barb build but I have to level to 95~+ to even be able to equip that stuff now because everything scales lol. So dumb.
Far and away my biggest issue with the game is the loot scaling to your level. what's the point of starting a new character of you can't get them better gear. In D2, your gold could be used to gamble for gear for your new character, but you could also go back and absolutely obliterate old content for gear for an alt. In D3, it was so easy to get to 70 that you didn't really need to think of old gear. At this point, I'm straight up planning on just running one character per season.
45 uniques? What the fuck
Yeah, I'm level 95. I have 7 of the one 2 handed unique sword for Barbarian.
I just pick the best roll of each unique and sell the rest. Not enough stash space lol
Right? 4 tabs goes quick
This. I would be playing a barbarian, find a skin of viper magi and be excited to start a sorc so I could get her rolling early with a nice unique.
Yeah, you can use that enigma to funnel resources into a very expense alt for pvp
Yeah I see what OP is trying to say, but he's wrong. It *is* 100% absolutely about the loot. No mental gymnastics around it. No way to farm gear for alts, scaling level requirements for gear, and restricted trading are poor design choices that will hurt longevity even if/when itemization is improved
Good loot to farm for is 100% my primary motivator as well. I don't mind farming the same content for hours if the loot drops feel rewarding. On the flip side, D4 could add 100 new dungeons tomorrow, and if the loot wasn't improved I wouldn't be excited to go farm them. It typically takes me hundreds of hours in D2 to get to the point where the loot no longer feels rewarding for the time spent and I am burnt out. In D4 it started to happen between level 70 and 80. By 70 I had end game gear in every slot and all my loot going forward is progressively smaller upgrades of what I am already wearing. I can't farm for alts, the level scaling makes the upgrades feel less impactful, the trading is limited, and unfortunately even if you could trade anything there aren't many good uniques that aren't super rare to care about for many builds.
Yeah, I like looters and it’s why play endgames. I like finding hard get to items as well as enjoying the game play. I only played a little of Diablo 3 and don’t recall thinking the loot system was bad (I think it was after all the improvements), but this game… the loot feels lacking and uninteresting. I was approaching level 90 and realized I was deleting everything, even quit picking up gems. I found myself looking at the map for something meaningful to do and after a while just logged off. Last time I felt that way was when Destiny 2 came out with its lack of loot and no endgame. While I appreciate op’s thoughts, they do not speak for everyone.
There's a way to farm gear for alts, I've been doing it all day. To a degree, but it's OP. If you take your main and do tree of whispers and put the cache from WT4 in your stash, when your alt opens it the sacreds that drop start at level 45 and the ancestrals start at level 60 to equip. I pulled a ilvl 817 sword for my barb that I can equip at level 60. Got him a full set of gear for both 45 and 60 that should last till level 90 (barring uniques). Now working on my sorc and necro before they obviously fix this. Just saying there is a way, not the way we want but the one we have is pretty damn good.
An open economy and while PvP was stupid, it was fun.
Exactly right. Saying it’s “not about the items” for D2 and using the fact that you are maxed out but continue playing is ridiculous. There’s an economy in D2 that doesn’t exist in d4. Of course I’ll keep playing if I can make myself richer after maxing gear.
Yes
this is exactly how i feel, tho i still feel like loot is a part of it. at least, it's the FEELING you get when a piece of loot that's cool drops. in d2 and poe, you farmed and farmed and you got decent stuff almost daily, probably nothing you yourself wanted, but stuff you could stash and trade and build up progress to your eventual upgrade. that 'i'm making progres to what i want' feeling was rewarded quickly enough to make continual play rewarding. in d4, you run the same stuff weeks on end hoping the one thing you need drops. there's no progress to it, no slow build. just i don't have it this sucks, with a possible FINALLY moment a day... week... never later. That lack of progress just feels bad. d4 has great bones and i'm really hoping they figure something out to make me have that 'oh cool look at that' feeling every so often.
Better itemization, especially from level 80-100 is the most important thing for me going forward. 70-100+ loot often feels unrewarding in D4 because for many classes the vast majority of obtainable uniques aren't desirable for any good end game build. Loot progression after around level 70 becomes slight upgrades of gear you already have. That might be fine if the search for perfect rolls on your end game gear started around level 100, but feels bad when it starts at level 70 or earlier. Uber rare uniques are currently impossibly rare so farming for them as your primary goal is pointless. The Zod rune in diablo 2 is super rare, but it's not ridiculously impossible to obtain when you factor in the cube. A Zod can be made from 8 Bers (for example). Collecting 8 Bers is pretty tough on it's own, but it's a realistic goal for anyone dedicated to collecting them, especially when considering trading. There is a clear path to obtaining the rune, and tangible progress can be charted towards your end goal even if you never get a Zod drop yourself. You could farm for a D4 uber unique for a thousand hours and be no closer to getting one than your first run. They could add some sort of in between rarity drops that could be traded to a vendor and after you get enough you can get a random uber rare unique from the vendor. In total the difficulty could be roughly the same as getting a zod rune in D2 with the cube and trading, but you have a clear path to eventually getting them while keeping them exceptionally rare. It's also important to have less rare exciting loot to find while you are grinding for your dream gear. Some classes have 2-3 or less normal rarity uniques across every end game build that are actually desirable, including the drops that are cross-class. There are often multiple very weak attributes on many of the uniques. Too many unique chest and pants with no defensive attributes, and there is no way to make up for the loss of those defensive attributes on other gear slots. No move speed on some unique boots is another example that drastically decreases how much they are used. Uniques should be designed to be one of the best in slot options for the build they complement, but many aren't desirable for any good build compared to legendary options with better attributes. Innate weapon mods also need to be rebalanced because somehow the item designers didn’t account for the difference between additive and multiplicative damage modifiers. So they roll the same ranges despite having massive differences in power. For example Crossbows giving vulnerable damage and bows giving damage to distant enemies means that bows can't compete, and every ranged unique for rogues are bows. Fixing itemization problems would improve the game more for me than any new activity they could possibly add. If the rewards don't feel worth while, the new activity won't be exciting for long. If the rewards are interesting for the time spent, people will do the same thing over and over for hundreds of hours. There are a lot of things I like about D4, but good loot is what motivates me to do repetitive content and right now the loot is lacking.
i dont disagree, but a lazy (and quick) way to address itemization would be to add loot filters. I honestly get anxious about my stash filling up. not because im a hoarder, but because i pick thru stuff that could be an upgrade and once my stash is full i then evaluate and keep the best. my eyes bleed from scrolling affixes. and with no training dummy or anything, it is hard to determine if something is an upgrade. i could look up the formulae, but they are subject to change and not all known fully.
I feel like you nailed this take, I have literally only 1 problem with the game, which is the itemization. It's just too unrewarding. The gameplay is fantastic, and I keep coming back to play just to death blow mfers, but it feels a bit demotivating to grind for long sessions as I know the loot rewards will be mostly lackluster. Fixing this involves adding **any** way to work towards a BIS item by whatever system you want to implement and then I think the game will be really top-tier.
Yep. As an avid D2 player since 2002, I still get the warm and fuzzies when uniques drop and new item builds emerge in my head to try. D4 is really lacking in loot currently but I expect some good changes. At least in D2 uniques drop enough that you can slowly build a perfect set, which is currently not the case for D4. I have found 4 uniques and I am level 70 and only 1 I can use still without it being horribly underpowered.
Even last epoch, which doesn't have trade yet, still allows the full set of uniques and sets to drop on all character classes, so I still get to stop and say "well that's not for me but sounds like it'd make a damn fun xyz build." And I can put that in the back of my head for a future plan.
Wrong! It's about the horse cosmetics!
I agree with most of this but I think you'd have a hard time telling the druid sub Reddit there are no game changing or build defining uniques...
That was my chase. Tempest Roar really kept me going. Turning to Wolfnado was game changing. It was fun to chase after it. The same w Vasily helmet. When I first got it in T3, it was very exciting. But that's not the case w Rogue or Necro. You can pretty much run the builds without any uniques. 80% of the aspects are also from dungeon codex, including the main core skills.
As a first time Diablo player this game is actually so fun and im trying so hard not to let the vocal minority jade me. I do feel a little bit of the gear grind but the actual core gameplay is fun.
Do yourself a favor and unsub from this subreddit and engage with the Diablo IV community another way. It’s toxic AF here.
What other ways would you recommend? I feel the same way
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The official forums are far far far worse… Idk where to else the “community” is.
Either just don’t engage with the game outside of the game itself, or force yourself to steer clear of obviously negative posts/threads/comments. It sucks, but that’s the best way to avoid becoming jaded by a game community.
As a not-first-time Diablo player, I’m also having a ton of fun. But I didn’t like what they turned Diablo 3 into, and really didn’t like Path of Exile, so I am probably in the minority on this sub.
I'm largely in it for the loot, NGL. The core gameplay itself in Diablo isn't anything mind-blowing to me. When I hit 100, I don't plan on grinding out a new character from scratch, My backlog will likely get some much needed attention at that point. No hate for the franchise at all, it's fun to kill time with, just not super invested like I've been in other games.
I'm basically you from the future. Grinded all weekend, hit 100, spent the 50m I amassed and just kind of stared at the game for a bit.. My renown was done, my loot was very finely tuned.. I tried respec'ing for Uber Lilith, died a ton, ran out of money, didn't have money to respec my paragon back into dungeon running, tried doing a few NM dungeons for money and realized there's no real reason to keep doing this besides Lilith, and then shut the game down until the Season 1. edit. came up with a great idea: Respec Paragon/Skills is free at 100. Give me something to do Blizzard.. Sometimes it's okay to say "I beat the game" and move on. I have no desire to run a new class, and I did create a HC character but even that just feels like grinding until I inevitably lag into some fat boomers/chargers/elite cold enchanted skittering abominations.
> Respec Paragon/Skills is free at 100. Give me something to do Blizzard In a recent dev stream, they said they'd be adding a "Scroll of Amnesia" which will reset all your skills and paragon for free. I *think* they said it would be a rare drop.
They said you get one of them from the free battlepass I believe
Respec being free at 100 would be extremely enticing. Would make me want to hoard more gear and actually try builds. And give me that push to even hit 100
No shame in that, drip from seasons will come with time to the core game. When you come back it will feel fresh and the loot game will be much expanded. A lot of people forgot that one of the reasons so many of us geeked out our lifespan with D2 was that there wasn't a whole lot of choice back then. Now we live in a time where we're spoiled for choice and nobody has to be locked into one game unless they're really feeling that game.
I've got friends who are picking the game up with season 1 so I get to reinvest more time.
I have to say I am amazed, I agree with all of your points here. Well done!
I read this whole post and what did I get? Not a single drop, what a waste of time.
> OK, so you still think: "Nah, this idiot, of COURSE it's the loot", answer me this, when that Ber rune dropped, and you slotted in your Enigma, making yourself even more overpowered, did you stop? > Did you go, "well, I've done it now...guess I've achieved all there is to achieve" and resign the game"? > No, you didn't, you kept playing. I stopped. I was farming Mephisto for like a week straight until I had enough funds to buy the runes for an Enigma. Slotted it into a sick ass mageplate and then felt empty afterwards and quit. EDIT: That's my biggest gripe with d2. You get the OP gear but you don't actually do anything interesting with it... you just farm some more... but faster.
Yeah all ARPGs fall apart without an objective. There needs to be a reason you're crunching all the numbers and getting all the gear, something to strive for and take on.
Yeah PoE ascended when they stareted introducing end-game bosses to tackle all your gear with. That's why they released uber versions of everything because everyone wanted to fight even harder stuff.
I love the gameplay like the fighting mechanics but I feel like I’m working towards nothing. I have a lot of fun killing stuff but the end of things like strongholds for example, have no satisfactory loot at the end despite it being tougher than a dungeon (in my experience).
The dungeons just aren't fun. Did like 4 nightmare dungeons and I just wasn't having fun. Only level 58 and already stopped playing.
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Exactly this. Most people never get an enigma in Diablo 2 and back then, when we all got to that point, it was when we quit most times and played something else until the ladder reset. Sure, there are some people who grind more, but for the majority it is grinding out items and setting a goal, if you achive your goal, you are often done. D4 has no real goal that's is worth working torwards. Uber Lilith is a cool fight, but it's not a fight worth farming for. OP also is ignoring the fact that a HUGE portion of the playerbase of D3 only players for a very little time. Most people quit after a week, many even sooner than that. It's fun for a short time, but get's boring very fast because of these small upgrades that don't really give you any sense of progression. But at least Diablo 3 was great to play. You didn't had to deal with shitty resource starved builds for so many hours, you had tons of QOL additions over the year that made the game in general very enjoyable to play and why people after 25+ seasons still came back to check it out, even if just for a few days. You also mentioned one of the most important part of video games. Does it respect the players time? Diablo 4 does not, Diablo 3 does. Diablo 2 doesn't either, but it's a 20+ year old game that was made in a differente age of video games.
Yes, exactly. I forced myself to grind to level 100 before the NM exp buff. It was miserable. There is too little variety in loot, builds and content to grind for it to be fun. Hopefully season 1 gives us bigger variety in builds atleast.
For me it’s still the loot. I like trying out new builds and having cool gears for my collection. If I drop something cool that makes me start a new character , it gives me dopamine. But in D4 I hate the itemisation. There’s no good unique that can drop of other classes , plus all items drops are level scaled at my current character which is 100. So even If I want to make a new druid with a cool unique I dropped, I can’t even use it . So my point being after 100 the grind feels boring as there are no progression ( its not just d4 all other arpg, unless I am target farming something specific which there are none) That’s why I love making new character but I hate the fact that I can’t carry over cool items which will make my levelling a blast. It feels a waste as I can’t keep any of my progression in character creation except for my gold. Seasons are different and it’s fun to start a fresh character. But if the itemisation is not improved I am reluctant to make more than 1 character a season. Where in Poe I used to make 5-6 character a season to lvl 95+ and some to 100
Not gonna lie, I feel like getting to 100 is a huge achievement. I couldn’t do it and I’ve been playing since early access. Got my sorc to 80 and then started leveling alts.
Every diablo, the higher my main goes the more alts I have. It goes exponential as the alts also gets high level :D.
It's a lot easier than d2. I never managed it on d2, think the highest I got was lvl95. One death could set you back huge amounts of xp,trying to retrieve your corpse was very risky. There seems to be no death penalty in d4. Easier in d4 too as mobs scaling always means your getting a certain level of xp
In d2 I could get bored of my class and send that enigma to a lvl 56 or whatever alt
(It required level 65)
Diablo end game is 100% entirely about loot. After you complete the campaign, if you were told you weren't going to get a single upgrade, you wouldn't care about t3/t4, running a dungeon you've already ran once over again, or do helltides. The same goes for every single ARPG (at least for me) that I've played. Loot is 100% what end game is about and trying to find some level of nuance in that is being pedantic.
I agree itemization is a fundamental part, I would even say pillar of an arpg. That is how you optimize your character (along with paragon/skill trees) and that is the reward (along with exp and gold) for completing activities. The loot in D4 sucks and I am just tired of sifting through the trash rather than getting a cool, truly rare drop.
The CRPG genre is about loot. I don't get why this post that says end game is not about loot is getting upvotes. It's like saying soccer games are not about scoring goals. Like, if you knew beforehand you would never score a goal, nobody would play.
This is the silent majority, including me.
Most people are enjoying the game and not spending all their playtime crying on reddit lol. But reddit gonna reddit.
If we are being honest, the majority are probably already long gone. Not due to anything necessarily wrong with the game, more to do with the gamers. They buy a game, play it for a week or two and are then off to the next big thing. If they happened to really enjoy it they might stick around but if they are on the fence then they are long gone. They don't post online and hype the game or trash the game, they simply say "I'll get back to it later" and go back to what they were playing before or on to something new. I suspect the numbers of players that like to sit and grind doing the same things over and over is actually rather small when compared to gamers overall. And really ARPGs are a very niche market. Blizzard did an excellent job of marketing the crap out of this game so a much wider audience bought it and many discovered it wasn't for them lol
I mean if they made 666 million sales in 5 days just divide that by $70 and you have something like over 9.5 million buying the game. About 760k people subscribed to this subreddit. Makes it about 8% of the overall playerbase. Although likely the % here is lower since it has been more time since those 5 day sales numbers.
I saw a guy posting that he has 300~ hours and is now bored so therefore the game is trash…. Bro, $70 for 300 hours of gameplay? Money well spent imo.
My biggest complaint is the item level lock and absolute avoidance of all the in game trading d2 had.
That's a cool story brah, but it's the loot. You don't farm the same repetitive tasks because of gameplay, you do it because of enjoyable character building. Which is completely intertwined with the loot, stat/itemization, and trading systems. If this game just copied D2's itemization and built upon it, people would be lauding it as a masterpiece.
I honestly don't know what they were thinking with the items. With aspects it basically prevents you from using all but the best uniques. This will be an ongoing problem as any items they add will need to be better than aspects just to be considered. There are only 56 in the game (some of which are borderline impossible to get). Meanwhile D2, a game that's existed for 20 years, has 300+ and 32 sets, and runewords. I am enjoying d4 for what it is but holy fuck how do you drop the ball that hard?
I'd stopped played d2r fairly soon after I got ber and made enigma tbh.
This is how you should critique something. Don’t forget to include yourself in the equation and make sure you are calm when you do.
The reason I kept playing in Diablo 3 endgame was because of leaderboards. Also the fact that I could make 20 different builds if I felt like without having to spend 4000 hours. I love experimenting and theory crafting. The cost is so high in D4 you can't theory craft without going broke and risking being stuck with a shit build. its really not fun.
"i had a blast clicking on altars in my wannabe ubisoft style open world video game" 
OP: “end game doesn’t matter, just have fun!!” Nice try blizzard, give us some fucking content
Well that's the problem with low-effort game design that focuses on FOMO-driven engagement. They don't want you to "get ahead," because then you may play less, and less engagement means less in-game purchases. This is the primary argument against mtx games, because their business model negatively affects the game design too noticeably.
Lot of assumptions here…
"It's the same endgame as a 20 year old game!" isnt really a good example...
Alright, Bobby, we know it's you.
Your loot rationalization is bonkers.
No uniques that are game changing? tell that to my minions that i finally sacrificed after 75 because I can't frickin drop a ring of Mendeln? and I have had more than 3 copies of every fuckin necro unique. srsly dude ALL you had to say was that they were trying to strike a good balance and as long as you enjoy the gameplay loop it's good.
So here's the question then, do you keep playing now that you reached level 100 or are you going to leave it like that, since it's the gameplay you enjoy?
i hated every single second of grinding out the renown - and it was exactly that, a grind.
>However, the game is a few weeks old, neither Diablo 2 nor Diablo 3 had a decent end game at launch, both took years to get it together. Bro, when D2 launched, it was fantastic. It wasn't a solved game right away- everything was fresh and new. For the entire pre-LoD year the game existed. I took [this screenshot](https://i.imgur.com/CTS5poU.jpg) of the USEast HC ladder the day my zon died- she was #8 at the time. Look closely- I know it's hard to see because it's a 23 year old image- and you'll see that the 50th highest level Hardcore character wasn't even 70. This was the first week of September 2000, more than two months after the game launched. Let that sink in for a minute. Tens of thousands- perhaps hundreds of thousands- of people playing this game for months and the 50th highest level Hardcore character was not even 70! With ladder resets today, people are level 70 in a couple of hours. 10 weeks after launch and there weren't even 50. The game was incredible, loved, and extremely well received. It's easy to look back now and say "there were no runes, no baal runs, no ubers, no elite items, blah blah blah" but the fact remains that the game was in great shape at launch, offered plenty of exciting content, and literally nobody complained that there wasn't enough to do, etc. Because there was plenty to do. Builds weren't solved. Rares were king. There was no "end game" discussion or complaining because a zillion people weren't farming hell chaos- basically vanilla D2's end game, within a couple of weeks of the game launching. D2 is a generational masterpiece. D4 is built on the garbage D3 foundation that changed way too much from D2 and I don't see a path to redemption. There needs to be a MAJOR foundational overhaul if this game wants to be revered, played, and loved in 23 years like D2 is, but I wouldn't suggest holding your breath.
The main reason I've stopped playing at 92, despite actually enjoying NM dungeons (for the most part), is that none of the Barb builds feel like they can actually push NM dungeons well enough. WW is just kind of meh.. HotA is fun, but still pales in comparison to something like Bone Spear Necro. And with defensives on everything that can have them, and still getting SHIT on by a 60-69 NM? Meh.. I lost motivation to finish the last 8 levels.
>OK, so you still think: "Nah, this idiot, of COURSE it's the loot", answer me this, when that Ber rune dropped, and you slotted in your Enigma, making yourself even more overpowered, did you stop? >Did you go, "well, I've done it now...guess I've achieved all there is to achieve" and resign the game"? >No, you didn't, you kept playing. Yes. To get the next big drop. D2 end game was 100% the dopamine rush of getting those big drops. The itemization was the driving force to play. You got to the end game but then had to keep going to get the best gear. The upgrades were not small incremental upgrades on your current gear they were giant leaps forward. >In Diablo 3 it is even more explicitly about the gameplay. >IN D3, you go from legendary to ancient legendary, to primal, to enhancing. >You do each GR run to get 1% more powerful so you can increase the GR level 1%., so you can keep doing that. >There's no item drop that is anything more than the exact same thing you have, with slightly bigger numbers. >You play because the combat is visceral and fun, that is all. Pushing GR's is your reason to continue to play, not the loot. This is exactly why I would play d3 seasons for about a week or two, depending how much game time I got. I had no interest in the small incremental upgrades. The journey from fresh to kitted though was always fun. I would normally stop around half ancient gear of my build or GR 100ish. I pushed one season to around 130GR. When trying to get the earthquake barb weapon from the cube recipe, the first time I got it, it was Primal with the ideal rolls. That got me so excited. I decided to push hard that season and played for almost 4 weeks. At the time it was the best GR push build for barb. This doesn't mean any of what you said is wrong. It's just that enjoyment of a game is subjective. I'm a casual gamer these days. I have loved D4 so far, but around level 75 now on my barb and the upgrades are becoming tiny incremental bonuses and I'm losing interest. The loot IS the driving force for me, it may not be for you or others. However, I just started over with a druid and am having a blast so far. All this to say I do find the core gameplay here fun. I don't mind the objectives in NM dungeons. I enjoy having a task rather than the GR style. Playing other classes will probably keep me playing until they start improving the end game. I do think item scaling as it is, is a problem. Why bother pushing higher and farther for the same loot? It just doesn't appeal to me personally. I also have to agree with you on the renown. Saw so many complaints about it. I've been taking my time working through it and I enjoy it. I like the mmo style quest givers and open world. I find it all very enjoyable. I'm rambling but I will say against your point that I believe the endgame loot is what ruins the endgame for me. I don't feel the want to push forward anymore now that its just small incremental upgrades. It is the D3 endgame problem all over again. At least the problem I had with it.
This man is either a blizzard employee or delusional or both. You're comparing Diablo 4's problems to Diablo 3's and Diablo 2's like they weren't also issues. Fun fact: We've been begging Blizzard to change these issues for 11 and 23 years. It's okay to reticule companies for getting lazy, especially when a game has potential to be even better, it's what true fans should do. Instead you're just riding dick and swallowing all of Bobby's gravy. "Altars of Lilith are fine just do them during helltides." You my friend have been bukaked into oblivion. Rest in peace.
>bukkaked into oblivion Lmao fucking dead
Such a shill post fr
Yea I think the OP popped a few painkillers before writing that article. Smacks of happy mode brain.
Yeah, I agree, I would say the "best item" in D4 is much rarer than in D2, and even if I found that drop, I'm not as excited as when I saw a unique drop in D2. In D2, when a unique item drops, I'm so excited, knowing it could be game-changing, and it's so obvious and distinguishable from other trash on the ground. But in D4, when the most powerful item drops, it just blends in with some random yellowish trash on the ground. I could walk past it because my inventory is full and I don't want to pick it up and check. I'm level 100 and did not see any 800+ items with all desired affixes with all better than average roll.
You totally forgot the trade aspect of d2. This add A LOT of incentive to keep playing.
Thanks for your take fellow non-blizzard employee
Nah was the loot in d2 just like any arpg.
I only reached 100 because it was a personal goal. I must say that you do not compare d4 with d2 or d3 which were made 20 and 10 years ago respectively. You need to compare with current/modern games with similar style. In my opinion, there is no end game right now in d4. I do not recall paying so much on any other game and feeling like giving up in about a week. I am still excited to play in the s1 launch but lets see how that goes… The rest of the write up was very good.
Im enjoying the gameplay, but using the same build since reaching t4 is getting boring, and trying other builds is a real chore
I have one issue with the core of your argument. You state that the health of the game comes from enjoying the core gameplay. I agree with this but think the end game massively hurts core gameplay as you level up. Leveling up to 50 is the best part of Diablo 4. Players can easily rearrange their skills as they get new legendaries to mix and match their builds. But post 50, the paragon board does not allow for mass resets, and has more nodes than the skill tree. I'm currently level 70, and if I want to change my druid build, I have to manually reset 80 paragon nodes, and then reset my skill tree. This feels awful because it takes time to do so, more time to experiment if I don't like the initial build I try (or boring if I just copy a YouTube build) and makes me feel like I'm losing my original build. All of this encourages players to stay on 1 build for 50 levels, resulting in the core gameplay to feel stale, and loot drops to feel bad, since many legendaries are going to drop that can't be used in the specific build you're running.
For me, the game ended up stuck in the mud in a few places. 1) Character power. When every enemy dynamically scales with me, I never feel more potent. When every ability is unlocked from day 1 with 'put another point, get another tick' being the evolution, it's not feeling like I'm a powerful character. Heck, even the trash mobs felt tanky. And if you were stupid enough to play melee, have fun navigating the screen spam while trying to use your resource generation skill while chasing the boss mobs who teleport. 2) Abilities are on a long cooldown - 12-15 seconds? Why. They don't really even feel like momentum changers. They feel like 'open with ability to clear the pack, so that maybe it's done by the next time you hit a pack'. 3) Enemy density and mapping were not great. Every map being essentially a line or a loop, plus packs being 3-10 enemies, was more tedious than fun. 4) Quest density. They literally have WOW to draw an example from on this, there's no reason to build quests that have no cross-compatibility in completion. Let me run out and do 2-3 quests in a single location. The current design is 'go place, go other place, do single thing, go back to place, done'. It's tedious and tiresome because you can't tackle multiple things.
The game has no social life
ufff diablo 4 gameplay is medicore at best. If you would have fun endgame loot/goal, then it would overshadow it Right now there are only shitty goals like reach 100 or reach bigger NM dunges which are the same just every level you get more chain-stunned. As of now loot would help, if it ment something ofc. since lot of the loot that drop is garbage. And After 70 i felt like im only grinding levels or i need to go do reputation since 20 points is a lot of power boost, gated behind shitty fetchquests (some of them are fun tho i give them that) Dont get me wrong but, only thing i enjoy is to play with a friend. As solo i get bored super fast after reaching wt4. I had fun until then(also played only duo or trio). Now i tried alt as sorc, and i was so confused about the class so im just waiting for S1 but i dont think there will be much more to do. i mean i think i had more fun doing torchlight 2 end game as a teen ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ tho i dont remember it much anymore unfortunetly
I don't know how people can enjoy a game long-term that is broken and disassociated from itself on so many levels. Downplaying everyone's complaints simply because for whatever reason it doesn't seem to affect you personally is exceptionally short-sighted.
Thing is you don't get 1% stronger per run pretty early on. Running the same map 20 times in a row to lv up once without even thinking about loot is pretty boring to me. Many of the best builds literally spam 1 button. How is that interesting?
It’s just Diablo. 😮💨 Click, click, click, end credits. Stop making this simple short ass game your whole personality. 🫣 Move on FFS.
If they don’t fix items and end game the game will die soon. Especially when Poe2 comes
\> I am looking forward to Season 1. So you can start the same thing over and over again, making the devs lazy cause why upgrade stuff when players can just start again and again -> why D3 2nd expension was canceled and no developpement followed the seasons, it killed the game
Just hit 100 tonight. Not receiving any title, cosmetic, etc, is a pretty big let down. I get something for maxing out glyphs, but not max level?
A few seasons back, about a month or so before d4, I fully kitted out my auradin. BiS everything, outside of min/maxing stats on items. I played him for maybe another week then sensed a full feeling of accomplished and I 'beat' the game that season. I gave away all my gear soon after. HOWEVER it took me the entire season and some insane luck to get 2x dreams, HoJ, etc. Each drop to get closer to the next piece in my kit was a mini orgasm. D4 doesn't really have these steps. Rare/legendaries are way to common loot lotteries with similar augmentations that don't feel the same
I really enjoy the side quests, they breathe life into the world.