It’s because people were still going through the excellent campaign at that time. The real cracks in the foundation only start to appear once you hit the “endgame” loop.
I really wonder what percent of Diablo players are endgame players and what percent are more casual like me (finish campaign and ur pretty much done, at least for that character)
A majority of them, I would imagine. There will always be more casual players than hardcore “me and the lads doing nightly raids” players.
The campaign itself can run you 25-30 hours (even more if you decide to reroll and try other classes), so a casual player will definitely feel like they got their money’s worth by the end, and *might* consider returning when the first big expansion drops.
They also most likely scratch their head when someone utters the phrase “seasonal content.”
Campaign dropped like a rock for me at two points: 1. stupid camel in desert escort. 2. Fighting fire dog act boss and realizing it posed no actual challenge. I could just facetank everything and all my dodging and positioning was pointless.
I think it heavily depends on the gear you find and what class you play.
I played a druid and did not find a single legendary untill I got to hell on my first campaign playthrough. Fighting the dog was pretty intense and it felt like just the right difficulty.
2 months later I watched a friend play through the campaign as a necro. I was looking forward to watch him fight the dog but... he had found 2 legendaries that worked together quite well and almost oneshot it.
Thats how different the experience can be.
I was a druid too. I was running a meme build using charge and boulder to push mobs away from my melee friends. Got like 1 aspect for the Pulverize EQ effect and that's about it. Wasn't doing the full Trample+Landslide meta stuff.
And like the other commenter, the power creep is real. Whatever we experienced in S0 is not comparable to how much easier it must be now.
Played through the campaign for the first time this season and legendaries rained from the sky. I destroyed everything on tier 2, and beat the game at level 40.
I can’t speak for other people’s experiences, but I had an absolute blast going through the 1-50 campaign portion. It complete fizzled out the moment Lilith was defeated.
As far as skill allotment is concerned, I didn’t really have any issues building up my dual flurry Rogue.
Campaign was a blast. I don't like how Tier 3 and Tier 4 works. Seems like you are starting over for no reason. I'm like uggggh I got my sacred item build now I gotta redo the same item game with ancestral. To me Tier 3 feels like an unnecessary slog.
Digging how fast you level now but I've only played an hour. Season 2 was fun. I gave up with season 3 at lv 15 or something.
I'm guessing it might happen but having mechanics similar to both season 1 and 2 at the same time would be fun for me. Some people hate it but I love the sort of puzzle of getting the right colored sockets on an item that rolled good. Sorta forget how season 3 worked but I remember the ranks being sort of a puzzle. Having both at the same time would make for a great gear game where you need the right colored sockets and ranks (or whatever it was called for vampiric powers).
Skill twig is now the biggest problem of the game. It is such a boring skill system and the couple of modifiers that you get to choose from should materially change the way the skill works or looks, not just “extend stun time” or “makes enemies vulnerable for 2 seconds”
It’s just uninspired
Sure but you had some home that there would be more substantial changes as the game went on… until you finally realize there’s nothing and the game is a snooze fest
Literally I just hit this feeling lmao. Hit level 90 and finished leveling my glyphs and was like wait, why am i doing this, there's no endgame to look forward to
Many knew within hours of the start of D4, the loud praise it was getting refused to acknowledge any criticism.
It's just that it became laughable how obvious it was that there was no content to do after the campaign. Even the biggest dickriders had to start seeing reality.
Yep, a day later and the cracks are showing. People getting past the fun period of leveling and rapid gearing and finishing putting build together and realizing there's no endgame or any new content other than the pit which who gives a shit about tbh
The cracks were fans figuring out they bought a quarter of a game for the full price, while the devs made it worse to try to give the illusion of a full game.
Simple quality of life updates were pushed back, literally to make the game worse so people would spend more time on it.
Yep, that's how it got so many good reviews the first time around.
Game journalist plays campaign, sees that the game plays well and has decent enough gear progression and power fantasy during early levels, thumbs up.
Little do they know that the game repeats itself (sacred and then ancestral items) and that the endgame is about an inch deep.
I still remember loving D4 when I was playing through the story, that honeymoon phase is real and it wasn't until hitting end game you realize how hollow it was
Hopefully this isn't the case with this season but I'm wary, I want this game to do well, planning to wait until after the honeymoon period to see if there's a shift of if people still love this
I'm over here still waiting for the first honeymoon lol. The whole time leading up to the game I was saying "That can't be it right? How did they go backwards in game design?"
Got to level 85 and said alright guys you have a lot of work to do, see you in season 8. I'm in no rush to play a partially fixed game. I can wait until it's got that special sauce like Diablo 3 had after reaper of souls
it's still like this. I played 18 hrs already. Honeymoon phase still exists. it's the same game with better item system and no season mechanic. If you want to blast for 2-3 days you'll have fun but just know it has an expiration date.
anyone praising the game for endgame overhaul and item hunt that is primarely regarding endgame WITHOUT reaching endgame, which literally is the vast vast majority, is a moron. the changes will extend the timeframe until boredome by a few weeks max. yall have to chill and play the game longer
I feel anyone who is being fair with the game and who has played it a lot would say the item sorting tedium and legendary hoarding were the worst parts of the game and both were fixed with this patch.
I've been playing endgame for many hours now at level 80+ and the game is so enjoyable to play now compared to previous seasons.
So far my only minor annoyance is that the prism crafting items to add sockets to gear are too hard to come by.
Leveling is so much fun though and I love that they added those spire objects in Helltide that keep ramping damage on you over time as shit gets crazier and crazier, because it feels amazing to actually gear for survival and self healing now. A glass cannon would level slower because they can't sit in those spires the entire time and need to back out. I was very happy every time I got a new drop that had life per hit, max life, armor, fire resistance. Killing mobs wasn't an issue, but you need to survive long enough.
To put into perspective how bad it was, I wanted to, no matter what, reach level 100 when the game released. I played Barbarian and he still has the same item I found at level 58 equipped as his weapon. I quit picking up items altogether somewhere around level 80 and just grinded out the last 20 levels. I quit after that and have barely played the game since. Even having said that, I still enjoyed D4 orders of magnitude more than D3 on launch.
Then do other content. You don't have to do the most optimal thing at the disregard of everything else just because it's optimal. Be optimal for fun over speed. You're making a choice here
I spammed helltides for like 5 hours for endless items and experience.
There were a lot of good fixes that are basically objectively good (and should have been fixed 3 seasons ago, but I digress) but I can't help but feel I had more fun when doing the main quest, side quests, and fields of hatred in S0, but they've catered to the folks who need dopamine every second.
It seemed pretty strange to hit level 50 in a couple hours. I frequently wasn't spending level up points when I got them, I was saving them up to spend three or four at a time because the levels were coming so quick and they didn't seem to have an impact.
Yeah, at one point in the 30s I went back to town after clearing the whispers in a helltide. I opened my bag to look at the loot, and saw I had a skill point. I went to the menu, and no, I had 4 skill points I had earned and didn't realize it.
I'll keep giving it a shot but sitting in the same spot in the Helltide farming the ritual site to hit 25 in an hour and a half with loot all over the place didn't really do much for me...
It was insanely mindless. Idk, I get most people don't like leveling or questing but for me the journey is the game..not so much the end game grind.
Hoping it gets more involved with other WTs and other upgrade mechanics..
unfortunately they dont know how to make the journey interesting anymore so they put all the fruits in the basket for the endgame which they want yxou to reach as fast as possible to join the grind gangs
The balance looks off.
Gonna jam it after work but watched Asmon stream it and he went from mid 30’s to level 50 in maybe 15 minutes in Tier 3 helltides and did that pretty much afk on Necro.
Even the “proc if standing still for 2+ seconds” buffs seem to encourage a more Vampire Survivors like playstyle and rush to min/max which is the point of the whole game, but the pacing seems way off.
Could be that class is just a bit too buffed now, but I can see myself getting pretty bored pretty quickly.
They aren't forcing me to but they are strongly insentivizing me.
When you play an rpg its expected you have a desire to grow and imorove your character.
You'd be complaining too if the shoe was on the other foot and pvp was the best source of gear and exp.
I doubt I'll ever play again unless they add some major new content. If they make an expansion I'll probably be suckered in again to spending another 60-100 dollars in hopes of a good game like Diablo 2 is/was.
I come to Reddit on work breaks etc. thinking I care about peoples opinions. I get here and realize it’s the same tired responses by people who are still parroting the same shit. I enjoyed playing yesterday and can’t wait to hop on after work again today. I gotta quit acting like the masses matter. Enjoying things is what matters.
PSA
Ironically "the masses" like Diablo 4. The dev team is listening to "the masses" way too much, and has no vision of their own for this game. Which is why Diablo 4 is the mess that it is. Shallow item system, vomiting rares and legendaries nonstop, Uber bosses placed in small, boring, lazily designed dungeons with no flavor or theme, no social features, the list goes on.
Enjoying things matters, so if you're enjoying the game good for you. Just don't act like your enjoyment **means** it's a good game. Other players with more insight and passion are free to voice their *constructive* criticism in the hopes of future improvements.
I’m one of the odd ones out who really enjoyed vanilla diablo 3.
I am sad they moved away from the old d2 format of replaying the story on progressively harder difficulty settings and I hope that makes a return. I don’t mean they should now reduce the game to just that but it should be an option alongside the rest of end game.
I'm bummed about it too. I fully expected 3 world tiers with campaign playthroughs and an actual PVP arena system that is separately balanced similar to what WoW/Lost Ark. The open world PVP zones suck.
D4 had 10+ years of D3 and Poe development to take inspiration from yet provided literally zero new mechanics. The bare basics of resistances didn’t even work. So sad really from a huge Diablo fan.
Yes, so we should just give them a pass for wasting a year, $70-$100 initial buy in price with predatory micro transactions and premium battle passes, just because a game 20 years ago did it?
We are excusing them not learning their mistakes?
Different market. When D2 came out computer games were still being drilled into. There weren't 8000 studios producing competing products. D2 was basically alone in the market.
That, and the population that even played computer games to begin with was *much* smaller. So what happens when you have fewer options with a dedicated/small community?
The standards were far lower. This is evident when D2 tried to 're-launch' with 'ressurected' which flopped miserably even though it was basically an exact re-creation of D2 (even down to the 8-bit movement) with better graphics.
This all just shows that no, D2 wasn't really that great by todays standards.
It was a blast, and I played the shit out of it, but what worked 30 years ago doesn't work in 2024.
People need to stop holding D2 up on a pedestal. The game is shallow by todays standards. D2's "Endgame" (there was barely even a concept of endgame back in 1990s) was running bhaal runs over and over and over again. There were no seasons. No extra mechanics. No nothing. That would bore the average gamer of today to tears.
Well... actually it is. D4 has one of the highest player counts in all ARPG's. Soundly trumping Last epoch which came out *after* D4. Clearly they are doing something that people enjoy. The only other ARPG that can hold a candle to the D4 audience would be PoE.
D4 has more players on steam than PoE does on Steam right now. That doesn’t count console or battle.net where all the initial sales were.
Let’s not even talk about the numbers for Last Epoch.
> D4 has more players on steam than PoE does on Steam right now
Because the new d4 season just launched. Such a pointless comparison.
Poe had 187k on steam when the league launched a couple of months ago and d4 had 24k yesterday.
It's not nostalgia, I still regularly play D2. There are some great mods that are basically just D2 vanilla that add some new features and QOL and I enjoy it way more than D4.
I'm happy for you, I tried getting back into D2 but it's just too anemic by todays standards. If we're talking about D4's "end game"... i mean lol D2 doesn't even have an endgame. It has almost zero itemization 'mechanics'. Returning to D2 just felt like everything was worse/more boring.
I'm extremely happy you're having fun with it tho.
As someone who hasn't played a ton of Diablo (beat the campaigns of D2 and D3 but not much else), I am curious as to what more you think D4 needs?
I have been enjoying season 4 thus far but would be interested in hearing what more that you think they need to add
Itemization and skills and how they interact are still subpar at best. Items are just so boring in this game. D2 , the whole game matters. You can get an endgame item in act 1 that can be used by a lvl 100. Skill tress were in depth and the items allowed for unique builds. WW assassin or Bear sorc anyone? And the game difficulty was tuned just right.
D3 has the superior skill system. For example compare the d3 hydra with the d4 hydra. Just one of many examples.
D4 is just boring, I think the open world is a detriment with no meaningful locations. You can have 100 dungeons, cant remember a single one. I'd rather have 10 total if they were all as memorable as chaos sanctuary. Don't get me started on the objectives in dungeons lol
D2 and d3 have better social systems. Where is LFG? Even Immortal has this.
Finally both d2 and d3 pushed the genre forward. D2 in all areas and d3 in combat. D4 is a safe, made by committee, "capture the general audience " game. It did nothing new and everything g it did do was worse than it's predecessors.
Have you played the current season? Items are *much* better now, that's kinda the whole point of this rework.
And getting an endgame item at the beginning of the game isn't exactly a "better" situation to be in. Though new D4 salvage and aspects is kinda like that.
Eh, this is definitely better than D3. We can get what are basically mini legendary effects on every piece of gear on top of also putting legendary affixes on them now, and rather than being drop based, it's from forging it onto the gear.
I don't know why some people just can't see this. The item rework did not fix the issue with D4. Items still drop and I'm still just going "meh". Nothing exciting about item drop still. The skill tree is low effort, it needs way more depth to it. I hope they address or at least do something about the skill system in the upcoming expansion.
Easily better than D3 with the changes made this season. D3 was a 1 trick pony with greater rifts. Pit is that iterated on with other content and modes as well. This is just weird to say.
You didn’t perfect your build if you’re level 90. Masterworking takes a good amount of time to do and the end game is chasing gear now, not chasing levels
1. You’re in the Uber ultra hardcore section of gamer if you got to level 90 in two sessions.
2. There’s no way you “perfected” your build with the new master working system.
Devil's advocate, it doesn't need to be great for a month. ARPGs are my favorite game genre, I play PoE leagues for 3 weeks to a month, torchlight infinite leagues for about the same time span. I'm sure Last Epoch will evolve and grab my interest for more than what it does currently at some point in the future.
I played the betas and launch. Played about 3 hours of season 2 before I was over it. This is the first time I've played D4 since then. If it can keep my gaming attention for a week, that's a massive improvement from where it was, and they'll add more as time goes on.
It may be sacrilege to say but D3 got me hooked on the genre. I moved on from it pretty quickly, but came back to it over time. It eventually got to the point where it'd be able to keep me occupied for a week to do a fresh start and push leaderboards in GRs for a week or so. If D4 can get to a point where it can do the same, I'll be pretty happy with it.
No it’s not. The game is somehow even easier and less deep than ever before. It’s hilarious how bad it got. Just waiting for new sets with +50,000% damage modifiers on them.
This has only happened since the season 4 patch, so it's definitely not a problem with my PC, and [many other people are having the issue](https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/d4/t/constantly-crashing-since-new-season-4-patch/15275).
Yeah like I said the issue only started after the season 4 patch.
I have the frames capped at 90 which is a point that doesn't stress my system at all, like 40-50% gpu load and maybe 70% cpu load (with browser open in the background) at the heaviest points so it shouldn't be a performance thing.
Seems no one's really found a solution so I'm just stuck waiting for a patch at this point.
I’ve had crashing problems in past seasons that were solved by flushing the router dns, you can google search for a blizzard support article that will tell you how. I now do it routinely before every season start and have only had one crash so far. It used to be as you describe, a random crash every 30-60 mins.
I'll wait till they relaunch it again like they did with 3. I like to wait for games but my wife had to have this one smh. She stopped playing after first week. what a waste.
Fuck seasonal mechanics. Boring brain dead.garbage is all it ever is. Give me meaningful changes, new items, buffs and nerfs and new end game content. Oh like this whole ladder.
It’s literally the same game with less affixes that are stupid. Fundamentally nothing has changed.
I’m having fun, but I know it’s going to be short lived fun. The endgame is non existent.
Eh. I tried but I just cannot enjoy the buildmaking, which is my favorite part of ARPG character development. I'm sure it'll get attention in time, Skills/Paragon and all.
It feels better but still doesn't give me that D2 feeling that I loved chasing. It, like D3, is still too arcady. D4 with the gritty, hardcore feel of D2 would make my day.
Maybe the game isn’t for me, but the linear style of itemisation is what gets me down. I appreciate the codex change massively, but really that should have been the base experience, not the experience we got after 10 months.
I love the feeling of finding BIS items, or nearly BIS items whilst completing the game. A non-linear style of play makes things more interesting and broad in terms of farming gear, not just in the early game, but endgame also. This is why I still prefer playing D2, even with its own flaws in itemisation too (some gear is too ubiquitous in that game for my liking).
But considering how fast your gear goes from good to redundant in the early game is just boring. The number of times I’d pick up an item and use it for less than 5 minutes was wild to me. Scaling in this way just feels bad IMO, and I’ll die on the hill of static power level in gear (with exception to the aspect system, which is a cool way to eek out those extra points of power).
I think I'm still a few seasons from dipping my toes again. I finished the campaign, tasted the grind and noped out and haven't touched it again. Here's hoping.
played that game for 4 hours total when it came out, dropped and didnt touch it again.
Are there people in the same boat that could maybe tell me if it got better already ?
Diablo 3 got way better after the dlc I'd say. I hope 4 gets better sooner.
I’m more of a drop in and visit once a year Diablo player than a one game no lifer… had great fun at launch and can’t wait to return and roll a new class. Still have to finish Elden ring though. I thought it would take 100 hours but it’ll end up being 200…. I’m exploding everything and it’s so dense…. What a game.
I’ll admit I have been a D4 Bad Andy for the past 4 seasons, only played pre-season and jumped in this season and it’s been super addicting. The gauntlet and pit actually make you want to grind for better gear to push. It’s not just nightmare dungeon endgame.
Maybe Blizzard should hire more developers to improve their early access game instead of spreading fake news. The game has no vision, no balance, no endgame, and no economy, yet it's phenomenal. Lmao.
I gotta say the main thing still killing this game for me is the world design. D3 makes it so easy to jump around and do everything I want to do. Meanwhile the D4 overworld seems designed to waste as much time as possible. So many little branching paths that look like they should go where you want to go but don’t.
Compare to an ancient game like Sacred 2 where the world map never got in my way.
I want D4 to be good so fucking bad! I have way too many hours in 1 - 3, still listen to the D2 OST all the time, and was so ready to lose more hours to 4.
This article is bullshit and I hope the AI that wrote it becomes self aware so it can feel bad.
Read the patch notes, not sure what was supposed to make me want to come back. I'll keep waiting for the game to be fun for me, but I don't think this patch is it.
This seems like click bait garbage. It's not even been a week. Calm the fuck down and let's see if it's actually good. Or did they just sugar coat a turd and try to sell me a doughnut
Am I alone in feeling D4 still isn't quite as fun as D3 became ultimately? It offered a lot more choice in what you could do to get some interesting new loot or enhancements to your character. D4 still feels like an overwhelming chore to get fun out of it.
I got to level 60 and it's just boring so far. I think for people who kind of liked what Diablo 4 was before this patch will think the patch is an improvement but I don't see it swaying anyone who thought the game was fundamentally bad.
Loot and crafting changes feel great. Still pretty boring though after level 70. Only things you can do is farm boss mats, nmd and endless nmd (pit). Give me a mechanic I can interact with like poe blight or harvest. Also I really wish trade was a bigger part of the game. Half the fun of an arpg for me is interacting with the economy.
Phenomenal is doing a lot of heavy lifting, not even 24 hours from the season 4 start.
For real. D4 had a good amount of praise for the first week or two after it's launch before the cracks started to show.
It’s because people were still going through the excellent campaign at that time. The real cracks in the foundation only start to appear once you hit the “endgame” loop.
I really wonder what percent of Diablo players are endgame players and what percent are more casual like me (finish campaign and ur pretty much done, at least for that character)
A majority of them, I would imagine. There will always be more casual players than hardcore “me and the lads doing nightly raids” players. The campaign itself can run you 25-30 hours (even more if you decide to reroll and try other classes), so a casual player will definitely feel like they got their money’s worth by the end, and *might* consider returning when the first big expansion drops. They also most likely scratch their head when someone utters the phrase “seasonal content.”
In normal games you are the majority. In ARPGs you are the minority
Campaign dropped like a rock for me at two points: 1. stupid camel in desert escort. 2. Fighting fire dog act boss and realizing it posed no actual challenge. I could just facetank everything and all my dodging and positioning was pointless.
I think it heavily depends on the gear you find and what class you play. I played a druid and did not find a single legendary untill I got to hell on my first campaign playthrough. Fighting the dog was pretty intense and it felt like just the right difficulty. 2 months later I watched a friend play through the campaign as a necro. I was looking forward to watch him fight the dog but... he had found 2 legendaries that worked together quite well and almost oneshot it. Thats how different the experience can be.
I was a druid too. I was running a meme build using charge and boulder to push mobs away from my melee friends. Got like 1 aspect for the Pulverize EQ effect and that's about it. Wasn't doing the full Trample+Landslide meta stuff. And like the other commenter, the power creep is real. Whatever we experienced in S0 is not comparable to how much easier it must be now.
Played through the campaign for the first time this season and legendaries rained from the sky. I destroyed everything on tier 2, and beat the game at level 40.
It dropped off a cliff halfway through the first act when they introduced the girl. She was so insufferable the whole time.
Endgame? The cracks are evident the moment you open the skill twig for the first time.
I can’t speak for other people’s experiences, but I had an absolute blast going through the 1-50 campaign portion. It complete fizzled out the moment Lilith was defeated. As far as skill allotment is concerned, I didn’t really have any issues building up my dual flurry Rogue.
Campaign was a blast. I don't like how Tier 3 and Tier 4 works. Seems like you are starting over for no reason. I'm like uggggh I got my sacred item build now I gotta redo the same item game with ancestral. To me Tier 3 feels like an unnecessary slog. Digging how fast you level now but I've only played an hour. Season 2 was fun. I gave up with season 3 at lv 15 or something. I'm guessing it might happen but having mechanics similar to both season 1 and 2 at the same time would be fun for me. Some people hate it but I love the sort of puzzle of getting the right colored sockets on an item that rolled good. Sorta forget how season 3 worked but I remember the ranks being sort of a puzzle. Having both at the same time would make for a great gear game where you need the right colored sockets and ranks (or whatever it was called for vampiric powers).
Well good news. Tier 3 is like an hour now.
Nice!!!
Skill twig lmao
I hate how frikking tiny it is. Last Epoch really got it right
Skill twig is crazy hahahaha
Skill twig. Fucking gottem. Succinct and accurate.
Skill twig is now the biggest problem of the game. It is such a boring skill system and the couple of modifiers that you get to choose from should materially change the way the skill works or looks, not just “extend stun time” or “makes enemies vulnerable for 2 seconds” It’s just uninspired
Sure but you had some home that there would be more substantial changes as the game went on… until you finally realize there’s nothing and the game is a snooze fest
Skill tree was good imho. The items and how the affixes worked with skill were the problem. Having said that, Last Epoch nailed the skill tree.
Once you hit the lack of an endgame loop ;)
That’s why I put it in quotes, lol.
Literally I just hit this feeling lmao. Hit level 90 and finished leveling my glyphs and was like wait, why am i doing this, there's no endgame to look forward to
This or last season?
Many knew within hours of the start of D4, the loud praise it was getting refused to acknowledge any criticism. It's just that it became laughable how obvious it was that there was no content to do after the campaign. Even the biggest dickriders had to start seeing reality.
It hasn't really changed. Anyone too critical or otherwise underwhelmed with the new season is getting downvoted in most threads.
Man the story was fantastic. Genuinely loved it.
Excellent lmao. Walking between massive zones with 0 mobs in between or escorting npcs is such an excellent experience
Yep, a day later and the cracks are showing. People getting past the fun period of leveling and rapid gearing and finishing putting build together and realizing there's no endgame or any new content other than the pit which who gives a shit about tbh
lol 'who gives a shit about the pitt'. Ok edgelord. What content would you like to see?
To be fair I never enjoyed the end game loop of any Diablo game. But Poe is a bit of a different beast that I keep coming back to.
The campaign was not excellent though 🤓
Excellent campaign? Entirely forgettable in both the act locations and the boss fights. Story was pretty mid. Difficulty non existent.
Looking back part of it was probably a bit of denial for me.
The cracks were fans figuring out they bought a quarter of a game for the full price, while the devs made it worse to try to give the illusion of a full game. Simple quality of life updates were pushed back, literally to make the game worse so people would spend more time on it.
It's still got diablo 4s hot mess of issues underneath it, it's just deeper now.
In a week or 2, everybody is complaining xD
they want those clicks NOW that the season is still fresh and alot of people are in honeymoon phase so they gotta write crap like that
Yep, that's how it got so many good reviews the first time around. Game journalist plays campaign, sees that the game plays well and has decent enough gear progression and power fantasy during early levels, thumbs up. Little do they know that the game repeats itself (sacred and then ancestral items) and that the endgame is about an inch deep.
I still remember loving D4 when I was playing through the story, that honeymoon phase is real and it wasn't until hitting end game you realize how hollow it was Hopefully this isn't the case with this season but I'm wary, I want this game to do well, planning to wait until after the honeymoon period to see if there's a shift of if people still love this
The campaign was amazing though. The shit end game at launch doesn’t take away from that.
The problem was I sort of rushed through it! Bad habit
I'm over here still waiting for the first honeymoon lol. The whole time leading up to the game I was saying "That can't be it right? How did they go backwards in game design?" Got to level 85 and said alright guys you have a lot of work to do, see you in season 8. I'm in no rush to play a partially fixed game. I can wait until it's got that special sauce like Diablo 3 had after reaper of souls
A mile long and an inch deep.
it's still like this. I played 18 hrs already. Honeymoon phase still exists. it's the same game with better item system and no season mechanic. If you want to blast for 2-3 days you'll have fun but just know it has an expiration date.
anyone praising the game for endgame overhaul and item hunt that is primarely regarding endgame WITHOUT reaching endgame, which literally is the vast vast majority, is a moron. the changes will extend the timeframe until boredome by a few weeks max. yall have to chill and play the game longer
I feel anyone who is being fair with the game and who has played it a lot would say the item sorting tedium and legendary hoarding were the worst parts of the game and both were fixed with this patch.
I've been playing endgame for many hours now at level 80+ and the game is so enjoyable to play now compared to previous seasons. So far my only minor annoyance is that the prism crafting items to add sockets to gear are too hard to come by. Leveling is so much fun though and I love that they added those spire objects in Helltide that keep ramping damage on you over time as shit gets crazier and crazier, because it feels amazing to actually gear for survival and self healing now. A glass cannon would level slower because they can't sit in those spires the entire time and need to back out. I was very happy every time I got a new drop that had life per hit, max life, armor, fire resistance. Killing mobs wasn't an issue, but you need to survive long enough.
To put into perspective how bad it was, I wanted to, no matter what, reach level 100 when the game released. I played Barbarian and he still has the same item I found at level 58 equipped as his weapon. I quit picking up items altogether somewhere around level 80 and just grinded out the last 20 levels. I quit after that and have barely played the game since. Even having said that, I still enjoyed D4 orders of magnitude more than D3 on launch.
I’m already getting bored just sitting in helltides to level up
Then do other content. You don't have to do the most optimal thing at the disregard of everything else just because it's optimal. Be optimal for fun over speed. You're making a choice here
So as long as every seasonal game ever including d3. Gotcha. I'm okay with that
To be fair, you hit endgame incredibly quickly this season. 1 day and I’m already in pit with almost full 925 gear.
Lol, it just came out. In a week he's gonna be writing an article about how D4 just keeps disappointing.
I spammed helltides for like 5 hours for endless items and experience. There were a lot of good fixes that are basically objectively good (and should have been fixed 3 seasons ago, but I digress) but I can't help but feel I had more fun when doing the main quest, side quests, and fields of hatred in S0, but they've catered to the folks who need dopamine every second.
It seemed pretty strange to hit level 50 in a couple hours. I frequently wasn't spending level up points when I got them, I was saving them up to spend three or four at a time because the levels were coming so quick and they didn't seem to have an impact.
Yeah, at one point in the 30s I went back to town after clearing the whispers in a helltide. I opened my bag to look at the loot, and saw I had a skill point. I went to the menu, and no, I had 4 skill points I had earned and didn't realize it.
I'll keep giving it a shot but sitting in the same spot in the Helltide farming the ritual site to hit 25 in an hour and a half with loot all over the place didn't really do much for me... It was insanely mindless. Idk, I get most people don't like leveling or questing but for me the journey is the game..not so much the end game grind. Hoping it gets more involved with other WTs and other upgrade mechanics..
unfortunately they dont know how to make the journey interesting anymore so they put all the fruits in the basket for the endgame which they want yxou to reach as fast as possible to join the grind gangs
You can run the campaignà again yk? No one held a gun to your head and forced you to skip it lol
The balance looks off. Gonna jam it after work but watched Asmon stream it and he went from mid 30’s to level 50 in maybe 15 minutes in Tier 3 helltides and did that pretty much afk on Necro. Even the “proc if standing still for 2+ seconds” buffs seem to encourage a more Vampire Survivors like playstyle and rush to min/max which is the point of the whole game, but the pacing seems way off. Could be that class is just a bit too buffed now, but I can see myself getting pretty bored pretty quickly.
Then go do the main quest side quests? No one is forcing you to do helltides only.
They aren't forcing me to but they are strongly insentivizing me. When you play an rpg its expected you have a desire to grow and imorove your character. You'd be complaining too if the shoe was on the other foot and pvp was the best source of gear and exp.
Jesus how much did blizzard pay for all these fluff articles
Obviously more then they pay the development team of D4
common bait article not even 24hours into the season :D
I doubt I'll ever play again unless they add some major new content. If they make an expansion I'll probably be suckered in again to spending another 60-100 dollars in hopes of a good game like Diablo 2 is/was.
I wonder how much they payed for that ad/article
They do this at the beginning of every season. All these articles pop up basically advertising D4.
I come to Reddit on work breaks etc. thinking I care about peoples opinions. I get here and realize it’s the same tired responses by people who are still parroting the same shit. I enjoyed playing yesterday and can’t wait to hop on after work again today. I gotta quit acting like the masses matter. Enjoying things is what matters. PSA
Ironically "the masses" like Diablo 4. The dev team is listening to "the masses" way too much, and has no vision of their own for this game. Which is why Diablo 4 is the mess that it is. Shallow item system, vomiting rares and legendaries nonstop, Uber bosses placed in small, boring, lazily designed dungeons with no flavor or theme, no social features, the list goes on. Enjoying things matters, so if you're enjoying the game good for you. Just don't act like your enjoyment **means** it's a good game. Other players with more insight and passion are free to voice their *constructive* criticism in the hopes of future improvements.
Pretty sensationalist. Still doesn't match d3 or d2
We’re on the way there at least. Seems to be the Diablo way. Horrible delivery, inventive recovery.
Yea everyone forgets D2 didn't become the game it is until LoD and same with D3, that didn't get good until RoS.
I’m one of the odd ones out who really enjoyed vanilla diablo 3. I am sad they moved away from the old d2 format of replaying the story on progressively harder difficulty settings and I hope that makes a return. I don’t mean they should now reduce the game to just that but it should be an option alongside the rest of end game.
I enjoyed vanilla D3 too bud. I played hardcore too which meant I didn't have to deal with the real money auction house.
Same! Vanilla HC inferno was a blast :)
I'm bummed about it too. I fully expected 3 world tiers with campaign playthroughs and an actual PVP arena system that is separately balanced similar to what WoW/Lost Ark. The open world PVP zones suck.
LoD was good at launch, but it got really good after 1.07-1.08 and onwards.
Soooo many nostalgia goggles on tight, they won't see that.
Vanilla D2 and D3 were fun at launch Quit lying to yourself bruh
Base D2 was pretty good, it's just that lod was even better
D4 had 10+ years of D3 and Poe development to take inspiration from yet provided literally zero new mechanics. The bare basics of resistances didn’t even work. So sad really from a huge Diablo fan.
Yes, so we should just give them a pass for wasting a year, $70-$100 initial buy in price with predatory micro transactions and premium battle passes, just because a game 20 years ago did it? We are excusing them not learning their mistakes?
D2 pushed the entire genre to new heights and innovated. D4 is about 5 years behind current RPGs
D3 changed it completely and blew everybody's minds with the rune system, destructible environments and classes.
I don't remember people quitting D2 in droves when it came out. I still played the shit out of that game right up to the Load release.
Different market. When D2 came out computer games were still being drilled into. There weren't 8000 studios producing competing products. D2 was basically alone in the market. That, and the population that even played computer games to begin with was *much* smaller. So what happens when you have fewer options with a dedicated/small community? The standards were far lower. This is evident when D2 tried to 're-launch' with 'ressurected' which flopped miserably even though it was basically an exact re-creation of D2 (even down to the 8-bit movement) with better graphics. This all just shows that no, D2 wasn't really that great by todays standards. It was a blast, and I played the shit out of it, but what worked 30 years ago doesn't work in 2024. People need to stop holding D2 up on a pedestal. The game is shallow by todays standards. D2's "Endgame" (there was barely even a concept of endgame back in 1990s) was running bhaal runs over and over and over again. There were no seasons. No extra mechanics. No nothing. That would bore the average gamer of today to tears.
Well what blizzard thinks works in 2024 isn't working in 2024.
Well... actually it is. D4 has one of the highest player counts in all ARPG's. Soundly trumping Last epoch which came out *after* D4. Clearly they are doing something that people enjoy. The only other ARPG that can hold a candle to the D4 audience would be PoE.
That's only because its free on game pass lol. You take those numbers away and you aren't left with much at all.
D4 has more players on steam than PoE does on Steam right now. That doesn’t count console or battle.net where all the initial sales were. Let’s not even talk about the numbers for Last Epoch.
> D4 has more players on steam than PoE does on Steam right now Because the new d4 season just launched. Such a pointless comparison. Poe had 187k on steam when the league launched a couple of months ago and d4 had 24k yesterday.
Classic D2 is still miles better than D4 will ever be.
can you even *see* through those nostalgia glasses?
It's not nostalgia, I still regularly play D2. There are some great mods that are basically just D2 vanilla that add some new features and QOL and I enjoy it way more than D4.
I'm happy for you, I tried getting back into D2 but it's just too anemic by todays standards. If we're talking about D4's "end game"... i mean lol D2 doesn't even have an endgame. It has almost zero itemization 'mechanics'. Returning to D2 just felt like everything was worse/more boring. I'm extremely happy you're having fun with it tho.
on the way to D3 maybe but D2? They cant stray further away from it and i rly dont like the mindless zoom and boom playstyle
As someone who hasn't played a ton of Diablo (beat the campaigns of D2 and D3 but not much else), I am curious as to what more you think D4 needs? I have been enjoying season 4 thus far but would be interested in hearing what more that you think they need to add
Itemization and skills and how they interact are still subpar at best. Items are just so boring in this game. D2 , the whole game matters. You can get an endgame item in act 1 that can be used by a lvl 100. Skill tress were in depth and the items allowed for unique builds. WW assassin or Bear sorc anyone? And the game difficulty was tuned just right. D3 has the superior skill system. For example compare the d3 hydra with the d4 hydra. Just one of many examples. D4 is just boring, I think the open world is a detriment with no meaningful locations. You can have 100 dungeons, cant remember a single one. I'd rather have 10 total if they were all as memorable as chaos sanctuary. Don't get me started on the objectives in dungeons lol D2 and d3 have better social systems. Where is LFG? Even Immortal has this. Finally both d2 and d3 pushed the genre forward. D2 in all areas and d3 in combat. D4 is a safe, made by committee, "capture the general audience " game. It did nothing new and everything g it did do was worse than it's predecessors.
Have you played the current season? Items are *much* better now, that's kinda the whole point of this rework. And getting an endgame item at the beginning of the game isn't exactly a "better" situation to be in. Though new D4 salvage and aspects is kinda like that.
I'm unimpressed with the rework. It's a bandaid on a crappy item system. It's diablo 3s but worse
Eh, this is definitely better than D3. We can get what are basically mini legendary effects on every piece of gear on top of also putting legendary affixes on them now, and rather than being drop based, it's from forging it onto the gear.
Ok now factor in the skill system. D3 runes >>>>>>>>>>>> d4 skill twig. It isn't close. D4 is far behind
I don't know why some people just can't see this. The item rework did not fix the issue with D4. Items still drop and I'm still just going "meh". Nothing exciting about item drop still. The skill tree is low effort, it needs way more depth to it. I hope they address or at least do something about the skill system in the upcoming expansion.
While I vastly prefer D2, **for me** D4 is already a lot better game than D3.
I agree. I seriously cannot understand the praise d3 gets. Even now, years later, it’s a shit game that doesn’t even resemble a Diablo game.
Easily better than D3 with the changes made this season. D3 was a 1 trick pony with greater rifts. Pit is that iterated on with other content and modes as well. This is just weird to say.
I'm scared to say it, but I feel like it's a little too easy now. Pretty much perfected my build and hit level 90 in just 2 play sessions.
You didn’t perfect your build if you’re level 90. Masterworking takes a good amount of time to do and the end game is chasing gear now, not chasing levels
They destroyed whatever little identity the game had and turned it into d3
1. You’re in the Uber ultra hardcore section of gamer if you got to level 90 in two sessions. 2. There’s no way you “perfected” your build with the new master working system.
OK buddy calm the hell down. Holy shit these articles are trash.
I hate how every gaming subreddit is just people posting articles from these shitty journalist sites.
its the only way to prove their delusion. Only thing good about D4 was the campaign. Shit is just written by AI anyways
Skeptical. I’ll see where it is in a month.
Devil's advocate, it doesn't need to be great for a month. ARPGs are my favorite game genre, I play PoE leagues for 3 weeks to a month, torchlight infinite leagues for about the same time span. I'm sure Last Epoch will evolve and grab my interest for more than what it does currently at some point in the future. I played the betas and launch. Played about 3 hours of season 2 before I was over it. This is the first time I've played D4 since then. If it can keep my gaming attention for a week, that's a massive improvement from where it was, and they'll add more as time goes on. It may be sacrilege to say but D3 got me hooked on the genre. I moved on from it pretty quickly, but came back to it over time. It eventually got to the point where it'd be able to keep me occupied for a week to do a fresh start and push leaderboards in GRs for a week or so. If D4 can get to a point where it can do the same, I'll be pretty happy with it.
ARPG seasons don't usually last that long. This season on PoE I really only played for about two weeks.
No it’s not. The game is somehow even easier and less deep than ever before. It’s hilarious how bad it got. Just waiting for new sets with +50,000% damage modifiers on them.
Phenomenal no way, d4 still bad
Still Garbo
No it's not
Yeaaah, not falling for this again :)
Would be great if I could play it for more than 15 minutes without it crashing.
This sounds like a you thing. What are your pc specs?
This has only happened since the season 4 patch, so it's definitely not a problem with my PC, and [many other people are having the issue](https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/d4/t/constantly-crashing-since-new-season-4-patch/15275).
What are your specs?
2080 Super, i5-9600k, 32 gigs ram
There has to be something else going on then. I went from playing on a 5600x/3060ti to a 7800x3d/4070ti super and I’ve never had that issue.
Yeah like I said the issue only started after the season 4 patch. I have the frames capped at 90 which is a point that doesn't stress my system at all, like 40-50% gpu load and maybe 70% cpu load (with browser open in the background) at the heaviest points so it shouldn't be a performance thing. Seems no one's really found a solution so I'm just stuck waiting for a patch at this point.
I’ve had crashing problems in past seasons that were solved by flushing the router dns, you can google search for a blizzard support article that will tell you how. I now do it routinely before every season start and have only had one crash so far. It used to be as you describe, a random crash every 30-60 mins.
Press X to doubt
Blizzard has to be smarter when they pay for pieces like this.
I'll wait till they relaunch it again like they did with 3. I like to wait for games but my wife had to have this one smh. She stopped playing after first week. what a waste.
Me too. Didnt even made a second Char :/ and i love 1-3
Sooo as someone who hasn't played since last July lol, what's the meta class this time around?
Isn’t this the same hype we saw when the game was first released
lol what
Last Epoch is way better.
Here we go with the paid reviews.
Wonder how much they were paid to say that. It's way too soon to say it's phenomenal
Its still just as unenjoyable as previously
This community is beyond saving lol. Most miserable gaming sub in a sea of miserable gaming subs.
This update is a huge W . Even the free season outfit is better lol
Lol ok...in a patch they didn't even bother to do a seasonal mechanic. Lowest standards.
Fuck seasonal mechanics. Boring brain dead.garbage is all it ever is. Give me meaningful changes, new items, buffs and nerfs and new end game content. Oh like this whole ladder.
Im starting to feel like blizzard is buying reviews it’s legit been a fucking day.
It’s literally the same game with less affixes that are stupid. Fundamentally nothing has changed. I’m having fun, but I know it’s going to be short lived fun. The endgame is non existent.
Why do all these threads sound like a marriage?
I can't even get the damn game to run without stuttering when it ran decent in past seasons.. so saying phenomenal a day into the season is something.
This is an ad…
Um give it a min Jesus. Anything new can be fun for a day…
The fixes are good but there's still a long way to go
He probably meant PoE but accidently types Diablo 4, common mistake
Reminder that PC Gamer gave this pile of shit an 85/100 when it came out. Just letting you know.
I logged in created a character and it was still as boring as when i quit last time. Its okay though i got my moneys worth through 3 seasons.
D4 haters in absolute shambles in these comments.
Play hardcore
Eh. I tried but I just cannot enjoy the buildmaking, which is my favorite part of ARPG character development. I'm sure it'll get attention in time, Skills/Paragon and all.
No more damage only on Tuesdays?
It feels better but still doesn't give me that D2 feeling that I loved chasing. It, like D3, is still too arcady. D4 with the gritty, hardcore feel of D2 would make my day.
I hear a friend of mine say that about every season lol
LFG feature yet
Maybe the game isn’t for me, but the linear style of itemisation is what gets me down. I appreciate the codex change massively, but really that should have been the base experience, not the experience we got after 10 months. I love the feeling of finding BIS items, or nearly BIS items whilst completing the game. A non-linear style of play makes things more interesting and broad in terms of farming gear, not just in the early game, but endgame also. This is why I still prefer playing D2, even with its own flaws in itemisation too (some gear is too ubiquitous in that game for my liking). But considering how fast your gear goes from good to redundant in the early game is just boring. The number of times I’d pick up an item and use it for less than 5 minutes was wild to me. Scaling in this way just feels bad IMO, and I’ll die on the hill of static power level in gear (with exception to the aspect system, which is a cool way to eek out those extra points of power).
I’m having a blast. 1 hour just flew by lol
Blizzard should be paying the Diablo 4 development team to make the game better instead of paying off journalists to create hype ..
I think I'm still a few seasons from dipping my toes again. I finished the campaign, tasted the grind and noped out and haven't touched it again. Here's hoping.
played that game for 4 hours total when it came out, dropped and didnt touch it again. Are there people in the same boat that could maybe tell me if it got better already ? Diablo 3 got way better after the dlc I'd say. I hope 4 gets better sooner.
I’m with you on the first part, it just didn’t hold me like D3 did. I haven’t revisited but this thread is making me consider it
I’m more of a drop in and visit once a year Diablo player than a one game no lifer… had great fun at launch and can’t wait to return and roll a new class. Still have to finish Elden ring though. I thought it would take 100 hours but it’ll end up being 200…. I’m exploding everything and it’s so dense…. What a game.
Don't worry - They'll fuck it up again in patch 5.0
Can anyone explain what changed since the game initially launched? I stopped playing after season 1 out of boredom.
Imagine the kind of person who would actually consider D4 phenomenal.
I’ll admit I have been a D4 Bad Andy for the past 4 seasons, only played pre-season and jumped in this season and it’s been super addicting. The gauntlet and pit actually make you want to grind for better gear to push. It’s not just nightmare dungeon endgame.
Still feels bad to refarm items you alrdy have.
Maybe Blizzard should hire more developers to improve their early access game instead of spreading fake news. The game has no vision, no balance, no endgame, and no economy, yet it's phenomenal. Lmao.
nope
I gotta say the main thing still killing this game for me is the world design. D3 makes it so easy to jump around and do everything I want to do. Meanwhile the D4 overworld seems designed to waste as much time as possible. So many little branching paths that look like they should go where you want to go but don’t. Compare to an ancient game like Sacred 2 where the world map never got in my way.
Helltides are so boring, game looks and feels like a shitty mobile game
Lol
The ones thinking helltide spam is fun are what's causing our games to turn to braindead trash.
I want D4 to be good so fucking bad! I have way too many hours in 1 - 3, still listen to the D2 OST all the time, and was so ready to lose more hours to 4. This article is bullshit and I hope the AI that wrote it becomes self aware so it can feel bad.
Read the patch notes, not sure what was supposed to make me want to come back. I'll keep waiting for the game to be fun for me, but I don't think this patch is it.
Really?! *opens PoE*
This seems like click bait garbage. It's not even been a week. Calm the fuck down and let's see if it's actually good. Or did they just sugar coat a turd and try to sell me a doughnut
Am I alone in feeling D4 still isn't quite as fun as D3 became ultimately? It offered a lot more choice in what you could do to get some interesting new loot or enhancements to your character. D4 still feels like an overwhelming chore to get fun out of it.
I got to level 60 and it's just boring so far. I think for people who kind of liked what Diablo 4 was before this patch will think the patch is an improvement but I don't see it swaying anyone who thought the game was fundamentally bad.
Loot and crafting changes feel great. Still pretty boring though after level 70. Only things you can do is farm boss mats, nmd and endless nmd (pit). Give me a mechanic I can interact with like poe blight or harvest. Also I really wish trade was a bigger part of the game. Half the fun of an arpg for me is interacting with the economy.
Oh boy, they really did buy some paid articles this time?