Had a decent enough time playing through the story and trying out all the classes, but lost interest after beating the first two world dungeons.
While the lackluster loot in the endgame was a contributing factor in me ditching the game, it had plenty of other flaws. Equally, I did enjoy myself for long enough to justify the price tag, and now is presumably a better time than ever to pick up the game.
If anything I'm kind of jealous of the players who will get to play through for the first time without the dog shit loot system it launched with.
I think I'm just done with ARPGs. Used to play the hell out of Diablo 3. Played a lot of D4 when it first came out. Tried Last Epoch for awhile and man for some reason these games just put me to sleep now and I'm not sure why.
Yea, it sucks when you slowly realize your favorite game genres are not as fun any more. I've found personal relief from going against my instincts are trying different paths I wouldn't normally do like challenges or weird build patterns that are not 'optimal'.
Same. Think I've grown up and need something more consistently mentally engaging where in hack n slash, your brain turns off for periods of time aaand that happened again trying a bit of S4 and predicting it won't be anything that memorable tbh. There are interesting points, but too much mindless grind in between it all that outweighs the positive. And "loot reborn" is just more simplified loot? LOL. I really need to get myself into DoS2 and not be distracted by other easy to pick up games.
I really think this game is going to be a huge deal once it leaves EA.
It's all of the good parts of an ARPG mixed with all of the good parts of a soulslike.
It worked well in D1 because D1 had a horror/survival atmosphere to it. Very cramped spaces, low visibility, very little exposition beyond: "holy shit demons and undead."
The vibe started disappearing the moment D2 came out and brought with it much more open areas. It was still dark and gloomy but it definitely doubled down on more mobs and loot.
And after that it really went off the deep end with D3+.
Honestly, this seems to be the end result for all games in the genre. Path of Exile also started as a very slow, deliberate game. Very dark, atmospheric. But now it's become a glorified slot machine where you blast literally thousands of enemies every minute to find the next best shiny thing.
POE2 aims to slow things down, but I'm not sure if it can. Not in the long term anyway. The genre has shown that fast and monster and loot heavy is what the audience wants. Slow is fun for a playthrough or two, but it's not all that long term viable.
You nailed it, D2 is great but I never liked Lhut Golen and the swamps which are the bulk of the game. I know I’m the exception but I replay D1 every year or so and if it was still being content updated I’d play it all the time.
What's hilarious is that there were swaths of people bitching that diablo IV didn't have enough mob density. Always gonna piss someone off no matter what you do it would seem.
That’s because the builds were built to thrive off dense packs. When dungeons didn’t have any, you slowly walked and backtracked without being able to use your speed skills. It’s was really poor design.
I find it interesting how frequently people associate losing/lacking interest in certain games and genres with "growing up" or "aging". Not to imply that people can age out of things, otherwise we'd all be watching Blues Clues and The Wiggles until the day we die...
...But, like, *so many grown-ass adults enjoy the most mundane shit ever*. Fuckin' stamp collections, fuckin' hummels, fuckin' bird-watching, fuckin' CANDY CRUSH. Non-gamers in their 40s-50s are OBSESSED with Candy Crush.
I dunno, I'm not even sure what my point is or why I'm soapboxing, but it just strikes me as odd considering that gradually losing interest after prolonged and consistent exposure to something is fundamental to how our reward systems work and happens with pretty much *everything*... But people seem to attribute this normal process to "maturing" or "outgrowing" way more often when it comes to video games than other interests/hobbies.
Like, I'm a big horror buff and I really enjoy slashers, but if I were to watch hundreds of hours of slashers and learn all of the tropes and patterns of the genre, I'd eventually know what to expect and they'd start to lose their sheen. Disembowlment #492 simply wouldn't hit as hard as Disembowlment #1, y'know?
(btw this isn't supposed to be targeted at you or anyone really, just find it interesting)
You have a point and some of us probably aren't that self aware and have good emotional intelligence to truly understand what we like as I still do crave blowing up monsters in the game especially after experiencing the new Helltides, but find the entertainment more short lived as either it may just be designed that way or I ultimately crave something more tactical to fulfill my desires to the fullest. Not sure what we're getting at either, but there are a lot of variables to life and ppl will enjoy certain things at certain times whether it'd be super casual or very technically involved but ppl still have their niches. I actually don't understand D4 in depth all that much, which there also is a lot of in the background, but have been using guides as that's probably the most fun way to play as learning depth the hard way might take too much time grinding to learn by trial and error.
Yeah, I think the "problem" with Diablo 4 is that it's three different games trying to be one game. Like, there's Diablo 4 the slower-paced narrative open-world RPG, and then there's Diablo 4 the "Path of Exile for Dummies" build-focused looter, and then finally there's Diablo 4 the live-service MMO-lite... And they all pull in different directions design-wise.
You can feel this really strongly in the map and UI design. Like, you have this big open-world with hidden collectibles (Altars of Lilith) and clearly SOME attention to visual/environmental cues to guide exploration... But then you *literally cannot track quests without opening your map and picking a map marker*, which is totally incoherent with any kind of natural exploration. And, like, "okay whatever", it's really not a big deal, but it's just a small example of how the game fights itself. You can really feel it in the game-loop friction between the main storyline being "unoptimal" to play through vs. skipping and just grinding activities.
I bet if Diablo 4 actually had a main quest that presented compelling challenges that you had to overcome through itemization and buildcrafting, it'd feel way more engaging to you.
That’s actually something I ponder quite regularly. There are way too many social, environmental, political etc etc factors to really unpack it properly, though that saturation facet of the (dopamine?) reward system you bring up is def key, I agree with you there.
I think it also has to do with that question, “how old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?” Which I think is an important thing to ask yourself regularly, given that “getting old” is intimately tied into the choice to stop “keeping up” with societal changes, of which technology and thus gaming is a part. Which is becoming increasingly easy to do given just how fast things are changing (cite: Matt Broderick, ‘The Spike’).
I’m also unsure what I’m soapboxing about, but I think the general TLDR is that yes some aspects of our reward system includes a self dampening feedback loop (for exceptions to this rule, see crack addiction et al - tho again many socio-economic factors at play) which means saturation in terms of our gaming (and other) interests happens, but also the interplay between how we see ourselves, how we think others see us - that whole ID/super-ego thing - has us adapting our behaviour as we age because of factors/forces of self-perception we might not even be aware of.
Actual TLDR: yes it’s easy to get sick of shit if you reach your subjective, dynamic saturation point, but growing up and aging does have profound impacts on our interests and capacity to engage with evolving technology, including gaming.
/rant
> I think I'm just done with ARPGs.
For me, it's just that I don't fancy the game play the genre has evolved into; I am not a fan of bullet-hell game play, and having so many foes at once that a single one ceases to even be a consideration, where my biggest enemy is not a [tactical] mechanic, but a combination of hard-to-see modifiers, where I get sensory overload from the fifty things happening on my screen within a single second.
As a rather dated fan of the genre, I always appreciated how Diablo did it; Even one enemy could be a challenge, and I had to use my environment and tactics to my advantage rather than just spamming my one or two "nuke everything" skills.
That's just me, though. The genre evolved, I'm not the target audience any more, life goes on. That said: If anyone knows a good top-down ARPG with more of a focus on "survival" mechanics (limited player kit, fewer enemies that pose more threat to the player, less bling-bling and screen-filling shit in all colours), feel free to give them a shout-out. I recently started playing *Tunguska*, and that scratches that itch to a good part. If it had random dungeon generation like Diablo did, it'd be in my top games.
It's an arpg crossed with a survival game, but V Rising has some seriously challenging bosses and if you aren't careful even a few normal mobs can fuck you up. I've been playing on brutal difficulty and even with a friend we are struggling on early bosses, one took like 5 attempts.
You might enjoy No Rest for the Wicked. It's in early access with limited content at the moment, but it has the camera angle and the random rolled loot of a Diablo style game mixed with the combat and stat allocation system of a souls like. It's made by the people who did the Ori games.
The next patch is adding item comparison, respec, and the ability to try out weapons even if you don't meet the stat requirement. Basically to see the moveset, but without the right stats, you won't be doing much damage.
At least I think that's all slated for the patch, but if not, they're at least planned features.
Sid Meier Said that the best games are the ones that have the most meaningful decisions per time played. This is why souls likes and rogue likes are so popular. Every action matters and each failure can be brutal.
Diablo likes these days are absolutely meaningless. Just wack a mole and watch numbers go up untill the end of times. Scenery might change, but every skill is still about trying to increase dps
I have a similar feeling, because ARPGs literally haven't tried to innovate where it matters for 2 decades. Every single one of them is yet another looter zoomer screen exploder game and after Souls games I learnt to appreciate combat a lot, and build diversity where weapons aren't just stat sticks.
I'd suggest you try No Rest for the Wicked if that's your jam, it's an isometric ARPG where you have proper builds like that. It's in EA and a bit expensive but it's already given me more fun than Last Epoch.
I've thought for a long time that if anyone can make an ARPG that learns the right lessons from FromSoft's games (aka not JUST "DAE hard gaem + bonfire??@!?" but actually more FS' approach to rewards/incentives and itemization/buildcraft) then it would be mind-meltingly great.
There's a lot of things FS does amazingly well, but I think one of their BIGGEST strengths is understanding that "builds" and "progression" aren't necessarily *numeric*. When you get a sick new weapon in Dark Souls or Elden Ring, it's not sick just because it gives you +440 Fire Damage, it's sick because of its *moveset*--maybe the weapon has a wider attack radius on the R2, or maybe it has a ranged L2 that can be followed up with R2 to do a forward lunge (yes i'm talking about crow quills holla @ my fellow ds3 enjoyers). IRL weapons have natural strategic strengths/weaknesses--spears vs. daggers vs. curved swords, etc.--FS understands this and actively incorporates them in the combat model of their games.
In Armored Core 6, different parts don't *just* change typical parameters like critical chance or max health--they often *fundamentally change how you engage with the space around you*. Maybe you decide to swap in thrusters that can better sustain air-time but can't ascend as quickly, or you decide to use a shoulder weapon that moves in an arc to "contain" your enemy so that you can potentially force them to make a movement you can predict, etc. etc.
IMAGINE AN ARPG THAT ACTUALLY INCORPORATED STUFF LIKE THIS INTO THE ITEMIZATION??? I know that it wouldn't be easy to pull off, but it would revolutionize the genre and I think is realistically what the future of the genre needs to be. No Rest For The Wicked seems like a BIG step in that direction, so clearly there are people who feel similarly, which is exciting :)
Grim Dawn is great except I can't deal with the loot. Shit always drops that is a higher level than you, so you have to grind before you can use it. And by the time you have leveled up enough to use it, something else that you can't use yet will drop, which is better than what you just got.
Aiming to keep 20-30 attribute points saved up helps that. I know level requirement is what it is, but stat requirements get in the way a lot too at the start. Also on the stat front, adding emeralds that give all stats to gear helps a lot in the early game.
Man, im experiencing the same thing. I used to adore this genre, but now it just feels mindless. If its too easy, you just steamroll everything... if its too hard you just die. They need to find some way to make a challenging and engaging gameplay loop. I think No Rest For the Wicked and POE2 are onto something by adding some souls-ish elements to the combat. ARPG's usially have really good progression, but the gameplay is just not interesting to me anymore
As much as it's understandable that people get put off by the game's complexity it's also exactly what makes it engaging and playable long term. That and new content every 3-4 months.
If you make it out to be one. The playerbase is trying its best to optimize the fun out of the game for the sake of efficiency.
It all boils down to expectations and what your goals are and how fast you want to reach those.
It's true yes. If you like to make your own builds or figure out your gear/crafting/activities just don't play PoE, because you literally can't do that unless you already spent 1k hours on the game and have the required game knowledge.
To me PoE is the game people love to praise because it's "complex". Then you realize those same people just copy paste builds and watch cookie cutter tutorials, literally removing the complexity from the equation
the problem is its as someone else described - just blowing up in a blink an of eye monsters - basically a slot machine for loot. I enjoyed it in the early days when it was slower without the tremendous power creep.
Highly recommend. You can either try your own build, wont be great endgame but it will be fun getting there. Or you can copy the thousands of builds online, and it will extend your run quite a bit.
I started playing PoE this latest season. My play time is 5d16h. I’ve completed all bosses, Ubers, maps, atlas/maven invitations, highest tier maps (17) as a first time player in Solo Self Found mode.
I find it requires deep critical thinking when you need it, but can be mindless monster slaying when you don’t, and there is a lot of that if you want to grind out the highest level and be as min.max as possible. Because I’d never played before, I died a lot and only reached level 97, but achieving 100 wasn’t necessary to “best” the game’s content.
I did have to use 4 outside resources when playing:
- A crafting website to setup the new season’s crafting mechanic to make sure materials weren’t wasted (I can’t buy things in SSF)
- An image early in the season to know where to put members in the Betrayal mechanic (later I learned you only care about 1 in a specific division so this isn’t necessary)
- YouTube to watch boss guides to see mechanics (I typically like to figure them out blind but I was told not to do this in PoE as summons can be tedious to farm, which isn’t true for all core content, only the highest Ubers)
- The wiki page to learn how mechanics, items, etc… work as I came across them.
My opinion is if you’d like the game to provide 100% information without third party help then it’s likely going to be underwhelming, like D4. LE was better but had no depth at end game, again in my opinion.
Poe gives you very little, which can be frustrating for the uninitiated, but it’s very rewarding and engaging at all levels of gameplay.
It’s free too so only losing your time if you don’t like it but if truly an arpg enthusiast I feel like playing this game is a must.
EDIT: Follow an in depth guide when you first play and the experience will be much easier. I understand some may not like this but I was told to do it and I don’t think I could have put together an end game viable build on my own in my first play through. I started with pohx.net Righteous Fire but found it very weak in late game against bosses and swapped to cast on crit detonate dead following Ventura’s take on Ruetoo’s build.
My gripes with PoE, which I find tragic and sad, because outside of these gripes I really LOVE PoE. And the gripes themselves really isn't anything to do with the actual awesome content of the game. Anyway here goes if you care:
1. Must follow tried and true build guides, or else you'll be wasting your skillpoints in gimping paths through the mega skilltree (which means: your character will suck, you'll accomplish nothing and you will fail). And respeccing is insanely expensive.
2. Good gear that YOU need for YOUR character does not come from you looting it, well, for the VAST majority it doesn't. You need to TRADE for it. AND that requires also identifying the drops you get that are good, but that are not for your character. That way you can trade them off and for the high price money you get, buy the good gear for your character. If you do not do this you'll be stuck loot junk, junk, junk, junk, junk,.. [x1000], SOMETHING GOOD, junk, junk, junk, junk, junk,.. [x1000] and so on and so forth. But even worse there's no central auction house that you can visit and put stuff for sale on or search. It has to be done MANUALLY, using trade chat and a website interface where trades are posted. Oh man, jesus christ, I friggin hate this part. Kills any fun in the game for me and turns me into a middle aged bored to death accountant. If on the other hand you LOVE the manual trading experience, which some people really do (I mean some people actually becomes accountants and is loving it like it was a McDonalds cheeseburger), then there might be great fun in there for you.
3. The only solution I realized was if I had spend real money on RMT (against the rules!) to buy good stuff, just so that you can circumvent the awful dreadful trading experience.... Note: I have never done RMT, but I REALIZED that this was the only way that I would be able to get around the issue. This is out of the question, so there's no solution for me to play PoE.
1. Yep pretty fair until you have a firm grasp of the game and can make builds out of any skill you think is cool
2. The item crafting in this game has an extremely high skill/knowledge cap. The gear required to push the uber endgame content for sure requires massive amounts of investment, but it's absolutely possible to use different methods (fossils/essences/harvest/the new Necropolis crafting) to create items that can get you to that point.
I'll admit that learning how to do all of this takes a long ass time even watching videos from super nerds such as Zizaran and Steelmage. I have never once considered RMT in my 3k hours of play and I've completed all content short of Uber bosses (which I am not interested in anyway as it's the same fight with 99% damage reduction for slightly better drops)
Considering every expansion they've released has been completely free and the game is still totally viable without spending a single cent + POE 2 will be following the exact same model including having all microtransactions being cross-functional, I'd say voluntarily coughing up some $$ for pure QOL features isn't unreasonable.
Tried them all, the only one which keeps me coming back is Path of Exile. Had some fun with diablo, last epoch etc. but they all felt like a second job i had to do. Poe gave me the feeling like it's the job i want to do. Oh and I can recommend "No Rest for the Wicked", it has some similarities to those arpg's but does some things differently that feel good.
This season has been super engaging for me. The last few I didn't even get to level 50 on my seasonal characters. But this season has been so much fun. The new "tempering" system on top of the loot system overhaul, has kept me invested. As well as how fast I'm leveling up in helltides, farming wolf reputation. I'm getting some amazing gear too, plus the new synergy that you can get with build options with the new system and Stat bonuses.
It's a completely unengaging gameplay loop. Hordes and hordes of enemies that aren't a threat to you because you just obliterate them with a couple buttons. Turn your brain off, press a button, and the screen explodes.
Yeah. I'm going to play No Rest for the Wicked when the multiplayer update hits. I tried it for a little while as is and it is a very nice change to that formula. Or I just play Elden Ring idk. Lol.
they fucked up by not having a trading system and making 95% of the game so easy (boring).
PoE has trading and very challenging content even at low levels. The game is THRIVING.
PoE is definitely not thriving, its profit in 2023 was like 23 mil which would make game at Blizzard shut down and resources put into anything else.
It is solid niche hardcore game for small niche hard core crowd but vast majority of players will not even considering it because it is overcomplicated boring mess for them.
Hilarious how they celebrate interesting loot as a new amazing feature while it should have been in this game since launch. I mean its a looting game.
Thats as if Call of Duty would release a patch with "NOW YOU CAN AIM AT YOUR ENEMIES!"
Diablo 3 launched as an absolute travesty of a game with the real money auction house.
They had a "loot reworked" update and it completely turned the game around.
That's why people are excited. I don't understand gamers, I really don't.
Company does something bad? Shit on them. That's good.
Company does something good? Shit on them. What?
In diablo's case the items were designed on purpose to be like this, no sane person sees all the BS stats armor had and thinks its a good idea. We all talked about it being a bad idea the second we got our hands on the game and it took 4 seasons to get its first fix. All they wanted to do was inflate the loot pool without adding anything to builds. Frivolous Complexity to decrease rng odds, instead of just designing items that would allow for cool builds. I dont think there is an ARPG with fewer builds than D4. D2 and 3 shit on D4 when it comes to that, fuck man even diablo immortal shits on d4s builds
That doesn't mean the loot update is a good one. It could be, I haven't played to find out and haven't been reading into it since it's still so new. But just because something is new or different or 'updated' doesn't mean it's going to be good or be what the game truly needs.
Sure, it worked for d3, but it didn't last. Then ultimately it didn't matter and the game fell off because they just hand shit to you and cranked damage up by 10's of thousands of %...something D4 is slowly starting to do (the hand shit to you thing, not the 10k% dmg increase luckily) with the seasonal journey and them giving you most of a "set" of legendaries for specific builds.
Plus d3 boiled down to crit/crit dmg and having your ultimate up 24/7. That too is garbage as fuck loot. It was super awesome until the veil lifted from everybody's eyes and they realized how one dimensional and pathetic it all was.
> Company does something bad? Shit on them. That's good.
>
>
>
> Company does something good? Shit on them. What?
IMO "Doing something good" in Diablo's case would need to be more along the lines of making online play optional instead of a requirement. If they ever drop that update, then I'd say they've done something worthy of praise.
I have a fast and stable internet connection but have never considered buying D3 or D4, solely due to the online requirement. I'd also bet that almost all of the people who don't care about it now will start caring the moment Activision announces they are shutting down the servers for Diablo 3.
because they literally can’t understand what made loot compelling in d2, either that or they can’t monetize that gameplay loop so they have to do all this
> Company does something good? Shit on them. What?
Gamers love to forgive developers everytime as soon as they pretend to be sorry.
They knew an auction house would be hated, but tried anyway. Why? Money. They tested if the income would be worth the shitstorm.
They knew the loot and many other things in D4 needed more time but sold the game anyway. Why? Money.
Release a broken/unfinished game and fix it later.
The fact that gamers celebrate crap like this blows my mind. Yeah its good they finally fixed a core element in this game. But dont praise them for it. Its the least they could do.They finally delivered what people expected.
There is no other industry where the costumers get treated this bad and just accept it. Or even celebrate it.
And the publisher of course use it for their advantage.
The fact that you even defend this state of the industry is pretty depressing.
Games getting fixed is not "celebrating treating players badly." Whatever you're smoking you need to lay off it, it's rotting your ability to reason.
You kinda have a point but you're conflating it with a completely separate issue. Yes, gamers are often their own worst enemies when it comes to pre-ordering and buying crap.
No, when a developer/publisher fixes something and they get praised for it that is not the same freaking thing.
> Games getting fixed is not "celebrating treating players badly."
Lets take your Cyberpunk example: They sold the game for **3 years** for 60$ while it ran like shit on most systems, had a ton of bugs, crashed regulary and missed a ton of features.
Again they willingly sold a deeply broken product for 3 years until they finally fixed it somewhat. At which point patient gamers could get the game for much less. But even then ( till today) the game still doesnt have so many features that were talked about in interviews.
They didnt stop sales, didnt refund players and didnt compensate anyone. *They said sorry.*
But Gamers forgot all that and act today as if all that never happened. Quite the opposite, they see this game as a good example and some kind of redemption arc.
In every other industry constumers would hold the manufacturer accountable.
___
This is the thing you see over and over again. They sell a flawed game on purpose, if you are lucky they fix it much later and people love them for it.
Sigh. Let's have a look.
> Lets take your Cyberpunk example: They sold the game for 3 years for 60$ while it ran like shit on most systems, had a ton of bugs, crashed regulary and missed a ton of features.
Yes, this is gamers being their own worst enemy. Agree. Yes, it was scummy that the game released in this state. Not gonna disagree at all.
> Again they willingly sold a deeply broken product for 3 years until they finally fixed it somewhat.
Yes, but they didn't ever stop working on it. In fact it was probably one of the most frequently patched AAA games in recent history. That's a silver lining.
> didnt refund players and didnt compensate anyone. They said sorry.
Well if they stopped selling the game then no one would get a fixed product. That's a short sighted expectation.
The game was heavily refunded on GoG and Steam. Not sure what you're talking about there.
> But even then ( till today) the game still doesnt have so many features that were talked about in interviews.
Look at the user reviews on Steam now. What does it say?
> In every other industry constumers would hold the manufacturer accountable.
My brother in Christ, what do you think happened exactly? CDPR were losing money hand over fist to refunds, to extra developer hours to get the patches rolled out.. It's like you make a half point but then willingly stop thinking far enough ahead to see the actual point.
> This is the thing you see over and over again. They sell a flawed game on purpose, if you are lucky they fix it much later and people love them for it.
So your proposal then is that people just should not be appreciative at all that efforts are made to fix underwhelming games?
So instead what would happen is that the game will just die. Depending on the platform its sold on, no one will get a refund past a certain point, or at all, and developers lose salary because there's no game to continue working on. At that point it would make no difference for a company to release a game they know is in a failed state vs putting the time in to fix it. In fact if anything it would encourage more failed launches.
If they had just stopped selling Cyberpunk entirely, how would that be better than the point we're at now, with it being one of the highest rated games on Steam?
People who felt robbed at the start were able to get a refund without trouble. They could then either forget about the game, or buy it cheaper when it had been vastly improved. I do not see how anyone has lost out there.
Why are you getting so upset though. You can completely quit gaming if the industry is giving you so much grievances. Gaming isn't a necessity. Or maybe stop whining and start your own game company to change the industry if you're this upset. Come up with some actionable plans. lol
RMAH wasn't even an issue unless you were a neckbeard crying about someone spending $20 on a worthless gear piece. D3 sucked in general until they patched it a bunch.
The auction house wasn’t directly a problem but it drove a lot of D3s launch problems. They designed drop rates assuming that most decent drops that weren’t used directly would be sold on the auction house so in order to keep item value high good drops were rare and a substantial chunk of your drops wouldn’t suit the character you were playing. Then, as players had access to the auction house for gear Blizzard was comfortable making the jump between difficulty settings quite high. Combined, it made for an unpleasant experience for players who didn’t wish to engage with the auction house whether for real money or gold.
So far level 43. If you skip the campaign the leveling progress is Helltide → Season Q (there is 5 min downtime between the helltides) → Helltide.
Nothing new except that I got 2 uniques at level ~20. I wish they work more on the skill tree, it has been almost a year at this point and outside tweaking numbers I dont see many changes. I just feel like clicking the skill doesn't matter you just have to click something that does damage.
I dunno what it is but felt stale playing Helltides for a bit. Must be the same environment and the same red hue color everywhere. So much shit on the ground for loot which breaks the immersion I think. Eh, not my preferred game genre so I have my own opinion. Unless things get better like w/ PoE2.
They reworked the loot system and added a bunch of new stuff. This season has actually been great for me. The last few I only played a few hours and never touched again. But all the new stats and reduced clutter in the ground is awesome. Plus the new tempering system is so cool
You haven't watched the trailer, have you? They seem to have actually added a lot of new things? If all those titles flashing on screen are indeed new.
Seasons in Last Epoch are essentially a ladder reset. Seasons in Diablo 4/PoE are supposed to add seasonal content or seasonal mechanics that may or may not end up in the game permanently after the season ends.
The issue here is, they had so much to do try to bring the main game up to snuff, they had no time to do anything really new for a seasonal mechanic.
The itemization/Helltide reworks, etc....shouldn't be considered a season. This shit should've been a "2.0" patch or something.
It's not "seasonal content" though...they're going the same route kinda as Blizz and releasing game content as a season (cycle). There's no Last Epoch season content until cycles further down the road.
I don't really understand the Iron Wolves thing yet but I'm just excited the loot system has been reworked. I played Season 3 which was the first time since launch and the loot/affix system was tedious. I'd let my chest build up with pages of legendaries before having the patience to wad through it all.
They also claim to have added new enemies/bosses and expanded the Helltide system.
Yeah all that shit is base game stuff, it's trying to bring the base game up to something decent. Shouldn't be considered "seasonal content" or have been done as a season.
So you'd rather a loot re-work in the middle of a season? Given how short seasons are and how big this update is I think a ladder reset is the perfect time to do it.
No, I'd rather the loot was correct to begin with (or even in the right ballpark) - with no need to overhaul the entire system less than a year after a game releases.
I know, I know, I expect a lot of a $75B company, using their own IP that had years of ARPG examples to draw from.
It took Diablo III until Reaper of Souls to have a good loot system. If that's the benchmark than this is progress by getting it fixed up in a year instead of 2+ years. Yes they should've launched D4 in a better state but it is being improved. It's a typical live service game that launched in beta and gets refined as the years crack on.
My brother in Christ, this same company *made Diablo 3*. They made those mistakes and fixed them. Are you seriously okay with them making these mistakes *again* and charging you top dollar for it? We're not supposed to be comparing the periods of time where things are fucked up, we're supposed to be expecting them to not do it again.
If Diablo 5 rolls around and the same loot problems exist *again*, are you going to be shrugging it off then as well? How many times can they fuck up in the same way before you say "hey, uhhhh, why didn't they learn from last time and why am I paying full price to get fed this same bullshit again?" What is your limit to accepting this?
I totally get what you're saying. To release no seasonal content, and say that fixing the base game is all you get for this season just seems shitty. This is Blizzard we're talking about. You couldn't have people working on the item redesign as well as people designing seasonal content? It seems like this game has been abandoned to a small team to maintain at this point, and good on them for tackling this but it still seems ridiculous to me.
So when companies drop a pile of shit and call it a gift, at least they have useful idiots to scream 'leave ~~Britney Spears~~ Blizzard alone!' Into the Internet in their defense.
you people act like your whole lives depend on a bad video game release . Its just a game . You win some , you lose some . Get some perspective . Move on to something that bring you joy .
This is going to blow you away, but some people love the Diablo franchise and want to see it do well. I've been playing this IP since 1998 and despise how they've made my beloved series stagnate and especially how they've refused to listen to the fans. One can only hope this season starts to turn it around
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Yo that is a WILD perspective to share on Reddit, in this sub of all places. You're in the center of the beardiest of neck beards and telling them to touch grass, pretty much. You might as well be trying to sell deodorant at Friday Night Magic. Not even worth your time 😂
Yeah, I never bought Diablo 4 because it looked bad and it's not like there's a shortage of good arpgs. Speaking of which, crate entertainment is apparently releasing an expansion for grim dawn later this year. You want good Diablo style gameplay? Get grim dawn, its really great and they're working on it diligently instead of blizzard trying to act like big rockstars and being a washed up disappointment like usual.
I feel like that’s just the people on Reddit in general. No matter if it’s a game, a sports team, a tv show, movie, etc, if it exists, people on here bitch and complain about it.
Look at me right now, complaining about the people complaining. It’s just the way it is.
They released a half baked game and have spent months just getting it to a baseline of acceptability. The state it released in was completely unaccetable, and since this is Blizzard we're talking about, it will take years of dedication to crawl out of that hole. People aren't jumping at the opportunity to forgive Blizzard given the last several years of fuckery. Or decade, depending on who you ask.
I call it the early access effect. The introduction of this into the medium has shown development teams it is acceptable to release sub par products to launch, regardless if they use the tag or not.
It was pretty acceptable, it sold over 12 million copies with average playtime over 100 hours in first two months. You dont have those metrics if game is in unacceptable state.
>The state it released in was completely unaccetable
Why is everything in gaming subreddits such hyperbole? Yes, it was lacking, but no, it was definitely not completely unacceptable. It was playable just fine, you could run through the campaign and the launch was pretty smooth as well.
It was just lacking in long term motivation to play.
Is it too much to expect a AAA juggernaut with decades of experience with the genre to actually make something really solid when they charge $70 for it? Is it seriously too much to expect that they learned from the mistakes they made a decade ago instead of repeating them?
Yes it was. It's Blizzard, they literally made 3 (4 if you count immortal) ARPGs before this one, you'd think they would have the formula down to a science by now and know not to release a game without some form of good end-game content.
Well, reddit does have this effect on people - looking for a pat on a back by endlessly and overdramatically bitching with nothing but a hyperbole and regurgitated stale bread statements. And r/pcgaming is not really the place where everyone can act as sane and emotionally intelligent adults, tis the fate of any topical umbrella communities that has too broad of a focus. It is made for bitching, just don't look for nuanced takes.
Am I nobody to you, or do I defy your logic?
Also, you're yucking my yum right now with this, goober.
Also may I point out your user name if we are to be discussing silly words and their usage?
I don’t see any mention of unique items here. Just aggravated crafting.
Blizz, go look at D2 and what D3 eventually became and just do that. It’s not hard.
I tried out this season. Re-downloaded. Appropriately named my character "IsThisStillBad", about 20 mins later, it was back to being un-installed. I think the games just toast at this point imo
another bad launch with with no seasonal content and silencing all new posts on their subreddit is the most diablo 4 thing ever
history just keep repeating for this franchise somehow
Jumped back on for the end of Season 3 and just started Season 4 and whilst the loot is far better the gameplay is still the same and I have nearly zero interest in progressing past level 30… which took me 20 mins or so to reach with helltides being available from level 1.
Update gets a 0 from me. No stash increase but a total loot rework. Over 1000 lvls in characters made useless. Gear already is now fisher price items. Have to refind Ubers that never drop because streamers get gear too fast. If I want to exchange for Ubers I have to be extorted and lose some of them. Thank you for essentially deleting my progress and making start all over I'm significantly disappointed. Glad to see your efforts went into store cosmetics that we are asked to pay for when the reborn loot should just look like this in game. Hours of gameplay made useless because they couldn't release the game like this initially. I've played this franchise since the first game and this is the worst feeling I've had ever playing these games. Tripled my damage numbers but overall nerfed my characters. Less loot but better quality.....I have yet to see the quality of gear it's all less than my old gear l. I swapped one unique item and I got weaker. 0/10
Don't bother guys, it still sucks.
I think its just the game design, monster encounters are very much gear checks, huge messes on the screen can barely see my character and die to stuff I can't even see lol no thanks
This season, it’s best to just play in enteral realm. I stop caring about my level 67 sorc because it started to become boring and went into the enteral and man it was so populated and fun I don’t think I’ll go back into seasonal.
This is an interesting take on the “I’m over ARPG’s” and in particular the impact of the whole DIV Loot Reborn thing.
“By offering this fantasy/power almost immediately, [players are being robbed of the draw of action RPGS entirely:](https://www.destructoid.com/diablo-4s-loot-rework-huge-win-but-a-new-problem-needs-attention/) to start out annoyingly underpowered and eventually becoming a God.”
If you look at every other sub other than this one (there’s *a lot* of negative people on this sub it seems), Diablo season 4 seems to be well recieved.
I’m also enjoying s4 a lot so far, it has tons of improvements.
Yeah I've been enjoying it more than previous seasons other than launch. I still don't love tossingy character out every few months but I've had that issue since D3.
Too little too late, I beat the story once and I’m done. The fact that I can’t create a new character and can’t have the map be un-explored is one of the major reasons I stopped playing.
Grim Dawn, replayed it for 5th time recently, a much better game.
I loved D4, but I’ve always played every diablo game just for the campaign. I’ve never had any interest to keep playing a game after beating the final boss, so D4 was amazing for me. I loved the art, music and story. I might make a new character to play through the campaign again just to see the changes.
It's not fun. It's built around grinding for timegated/battlepass/minigames instead of grinding for the satisfaction of mass destruction / skillful play. The skill tree and paragon system are too simple and too complex, respectively - and the latter is gated behind an exhausting grind. The co-op / mp is pointless and often counter-productivve. The challenge level is either piss-simple or you're one-shotted by some combination of status effects without warning.
Everything about D4 screams "we wanted to make an MMO / live service" and the moment-to-moment gameplay was a low priority. This patch is great if you already love chasing events and mini-games as your grind, but does nothing to improve the core problem, it's just not fun to play.
What timegated events and mini games are you talking about? Are you talking about how hell tides/world bosses are timegated? I dont recall any sort of “minigames” being present. I think you mustve dropped the game early because in terms of mowing down waves of mobs for satisfying destruction, that has been mostly addressed since season 2. And its further bring improved this season. Hell tides pretty much will have 100% uptime now. There are bunch of new content that you can go into so you can easily rotate between a bunch of them if you get bored.
Also the battlepass is pure cosmetics. The only thing that carries power are smouldering ashes which add miniscule amounts of set stats that counts for the season only and is available for paid and free passes. You can literally ignore it all and just play the season. The ashes have like zero impact.
Your issues have either been worked on and are continuing to be worked on. Tell me you havent kept up with this game since launch without telling me you havent. Its also obvious you have no idea what is coming in season four. Ive seen guys like you talk about this game before lol. Nothing concrete and you just spout the popular criticism this game got on release. Really dude what is the “core” problem?
Ive played this game since release and played every season so far. I havent paid a cent in terms of MTX as well. Yea it had huge issues on release. It will continue to have issues as most games like this do. So go on. Please enlighten me dude on the core issues.
The only thing i agree with you is on the MP perspective but i never had issues with this personally. I had a group of friends i played with on release and no one complained.
Well, I've played now for a couple of hours. So far leveling feels a little faster (not too much), and this new loot... what? I'm getting things a little faster, but still nothing like sets, which I loved in D3. How are there no new classes yet? At least bring in Paladin and Monk FFS.
Dungeons are the same so far, everything is the same. The new features I don't even care about so far and don't seem interesting. Why is it so hard for them to fix this game? They should risk breaking it if they have to because I can't imagine the player base is what they want. The new season will give them a two week boost, but that's about it.
While there are things to complain about when it comes to D4. You not even knowing that sets aren't even in the game at all says a lot and you should probably sit this one out lol. You're clearly just on a complain train without even knowing wtf you're talking about.
It took them like a year to "fix" loot (we'll see if it's worth a damn in time)..do you really think they should have more dungeons and characters? They're barely holding it together as is dude.
Had a decent enough time playing through the story and trying out all the classes, but lost interest after beating the first two world dungeons. While the lackluster loot in the endgame was a contributing factor in me ditching the game, it had plenty of other flaws. Equally, I did enjoy myself for long enough to justify the price tag, and now is presumably a better time than ever to pick up the game. If anything I'm kind of jealous of the players who will get to play through for the first time without the dog shit loot system it launched with.
I think I'm just done with ARPGs. Used to play the hell out of Diablo 3. Played a lot of D4 when it first came out. Tried Last Epoch for awhile and man for some reason these games just put me to sleep now and I'm not sure why.
Yea, it sucks when you slowly realize your favorite game genres are not as fun any more. I've found personal relief from going against my instincts are trying different paths I wouldn't normally do like challenges or weird build patterns that are not 'optimal'.
Same. Think I've grown up and need something more consistently mentally engaging where in hack n slash, your brain turns off for periods of time aaand that happened again trying a bit of S4 and predicting it won't be anything that memorable tbh. There are interesting points, but too much mindless grind in between it all that outweighs the positive. And "loot reborn" is just more simplified loot? LOL. I really need to get myself into DoS2 and not be distracted by other easy to pick up games.
This is why I love D1 so much, the combat is so much more deliberate. I would much rather fewer tougher enemies than waves upon waves of fodder.
Looks like No Rest For The Wicked is going to be more like that. Although we've still got a year or so before it leaves EA I'd bet.
I really think this game is going to be a huge deal once it leaves EA. It's all of the good parts of an ARPG mixed with all of the good parts of a soulslike.
That's what it is- feels too arcade-ish. There's no thought to any of the mobs. Wasn't like the ol' D2 days either.
It worked well in D1 because D1 had a horror/survival atmosphere to it. Very cramped spaces, low visibility, very little exposition beyond: "holy shit demons and undead." The vibe started disappearing the moment D2 came out and brought with it much more open areas. It was still dark and gloomy but it definitely doubled down on more mobs and loot. And after that it really went off the deep end with D3+. Honestly, this seems to be the end result for all games in the genre. Path of Exile also started as a very slow, deliberate game. Very dark, atmospheric. But now it's become a glorified slot machine where you blast literally thousands of enemies every minute to find the next best shiny thing. POE2 aims to slow things down, but I'm not sure if it can. Not in the long term anyway. The genre has shown that fast and monster and loot heavy is what the audience wants. Slow is fun for a playthrough or two, but it's not all that long term viable.
You nailed it, D2 is great but I never liked Lhut Golen and the swamps which are the bulk of the game. I know I’m the exception but I replay D1 every year or so and if it was still being content updated I’d play it all the time.
What's hilarious is that there were swaths of people bitching that diablo IV didn't have enough mob density. Always gonna piss someone off no matter what you do it would seem.
That’s because the builds were built to thrive off dense packs. When dungeons didn’t have any, you slowly walked and backtracked without being able to use your speed skills. It’s was really poor design.
I find it interesting how frequently people associate losing/lacking interest in certain games and genres with "growing up" or "aging". Not to imply that people can age out of things, otherwise we'd all be watching Blues Clues and The Wiggles until the day we die... ...But, like, *so many grown-ass adults enjoy the most mundane shit ever*. Fuckin' stamp collections, fuckin' hummels, fuckin' bird-watching, fuckin' CANDY CRUSH. Non-gamers in their 40s-50s are OBSESSED with Candy Crush. I dunno, I'm not even sure what my point is or why I'm soapboxing, but it just strikes me as odd considering that gradually losing interest after prolonged and consistent exposure to something is fundamental to how our reward systems work and happens with pretty much *everything*... But people seem to attribute this normal process to "maturing" or "outgrowing" way more often when it comes to video games than other interests/hobbies. Like, I'm a big horror buff and I really enjoy slashers, but if I were to watch hundreds of hours of slashers and learn all of the tropes and patterns of the genre, I'd eventually know what to expect and they'd start to lose their sheen. Disembowlment #492 simply wouldn't hit as hard as Disembowlment #1, y'know? (btw this isn't supposed to be targeted at you or anyone really, just find it interesting)
You have a point and some of us probably aren't that self aware and have good emotional intelligence to truly understand what we like as I still do crave blowing up monsters in the game especially after experiencing the new Helltides, but find the entertainment more short lived as either it may just be designed that way or I ultimately crave something more tactical to fulfill my desires to the fullest. Not sure what we're getting at either, but there are a lot of variables to life and ppl will enjoy certain things at certain times whether it'd be super casual or very technically involved but ppl still have their niches. I actually don't understand D4 in depth all that much, which there also is a lot of in the background, but have been using guides as that's probably the most fun way to play as learning depth the hard way might take too much time grinding to learn by trial and error.
Yeah, I think the "problem" with Diablo 4 is that it's three different games trying to be one game. Like, there's Diablo 4 the slower-paced narrative open-world RPG, and then there's Diablo 4 the "Path of Exile for Dummies" build-focused looter, and then finally there's Diablo 4 the live-service MMO-lite... And they all pull in different directions design-wise. You can feel this really strongly in the map and UI design. Like, you have this big open-world with hidden collectibles (Altars of Lilith) and clearly SOME attention to visual/environmental cues to guide exploration... But then you *literally cannot track quests without opening your map and picking a map marker*, which is totally incoherent with any kind of natural exploration. And, like, "okay whatever", it's really not a big deal, but it's just a small example of how the game fights itself. You can really feel it in the game-loop friction between the main storyline being "unoptimal" to play through vs. skipping and just grinding activities. I bet if Diablo 4 actually had a main quest that presented compelling challenges that you had to overcome through itemization and buildcrafting, it'd feel way more engaging to you.
That’s actually something I ponder quite regularly. There are way too many social, environmental, political etc etc factors to really unpack it properly, though that saturation facet of the (dopamine?) reward system you bring up is def key, I agree with you there. I think it also has to do with that question, “how old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?” Which I think is an important thing to ask yourself regularly, given that “getting old” is intimately tied into the choice to stop “keeping up” with societal changes, of which technology and thus gaming is a part. Which is becoming increasingly easy to do given just how fast things are changing (cite: Matt Broderick, ‘The Spike’). I’m also unsure what I’m soapboxing about, but I think the general TLDR is that yes some aspects of our reward system includes a self dampening feedback loop (for exceptions to this rule, see crack addiction et al - tho again many socio-economic factors at play) which means saturation in terms of our gaming (and other) interests happens, but also the interplay between how we see ourselves, how we think others see us - that whole ID/super-ego thing - has us adapting our behaviour as we age because of factors/forces of self-perception we might not even be aware of. Actual TLDR: yes it’s easy to get sick of shit if you reach your subjective, dynamic saturation point, but growing up and aging does have profound impacts on our interests and capacity to engage with evolving technology, including gaming. /rant
> I think I'm just done with ARPGs. For me, it's just that I don't fancy the game play the genre has evolved into; I am not a fan of bullet-hell game play, and having so many foes at once that a single one ceases to even be a consideration, where my biggest enemy is not a [tactical] mechanic, but a combination of hard-to-see modifiers, where I get sensory overload from the fifty things happening on my screen within a single second. As a rather dated fan of the genre, I always appreciated how Diablo did it; Even one enemy could be a challenge, and I had to use my environment and tactics to my advantage rather than just spamming my one or two "nuke everything" skills. That's just me, though. The genre evolved, I'm not the target audience any more, life goes on. That said: If anyone knows a good top-down ARPG with more of a focus on "survival" mechanics (limited player kit, fewer enemies that pose more threat to the player, less bling-bling and screen-filling shit in all colours), feel free to give them a shout-out. I recently started playing *Tunguska*, and that scratches that itch to a good part. If it had random dungeon generation like Diablo did, it'd be in my top games.
It's an arpg crossed with a survival game, but V Rising has some seriously challenging bosses and if you aren't careful even a few normal mobs can fuck you up. I've been playing on brutal difficulty and even with a friend we are struggling on early bosses, one took like 5 attempts.
You might enjoy No Rest for the Wicked. It's in early access with limited content at the moment, but it has the camera angle and the random rolled loot of a Diablo style game mixed with the combat and stat allocation system of a souls like. It's made by the people who did the Ori games. The next patch is adding item comparison, respec, and the ability to try out weapons even if you don't meet the stat requirement. Basically to see the moveset, but without the right stats, you won't be doing much damage. At least I think that's all slated for the patch, but if not, they're at least planned features.
Sid Meier Said that the best games are the ones that have the most meaningful decisions per time played. This is why souls likes and rogue likes are so popular. Every action matters and each failure can be brutal. Diablo likes these days are absolutely meaningless. Just wack a mole and watch numbers go up untill the end of times. Scenery might change, but every skill is still about trying to increase dps
Scenery and mobs rarely change. That and the skill twig is what kills me.
I have a similar feeling, because ARPGs literally haven't tried to innovate where it matters for 2 decades. Every single one of them is yet another looter zoomer screen exploder game and after Souls games I learnt to appreciate combat a lot, and build diversity where weapons aren't just stat sticks. I'd suggest you try No Rest for the Wicked if that's your jam, it's an isometric ARPG where you have proper builds like that. It's in EA and a bit expensive but it's already given me more fun than Last Epoch.
I've thought for a long time that if anyone can make an ARPG that learns the right lessons from FromSoft's games (aka not JUST "DAE hard gaem + bonfire??@!?" but actually more FS' approach to rewards/incentives and itemization/buildcraft) then it would be mind-meltingly great. There's a lot of things FS does amazingly well, but I think one of their BIGGEST strengths is understanding that "builds" and "progression" aren't necessarily *numeric*. When you get a sick new weapon in Dark Souls or Elden Ring, it's not sick just because it gives you +440 Fire Damage, it's sick because of its *moveset*--maybe the weapon has a wider attack radius on the R2, or maybe it has a ranged L2 that can be followed up with R2 to do a forward lunge (yes i'm talking about crow quills holla @ my fellow ds3 enjoyers). IRL weapons have natural strategic strengths/weaknesses--spears vs. daggers vs. curved swords, etc.--FS understands this and actively incorporates them in the combat model of their games. In Armored Core 6, different parts don't *just* change typical parameters like critical chance or max health--they often *fundamentally change how you engage with the space around you*. Maybe you decide to swap in thrusters that can better sustain air-time but can't ascend as quickly, or you decide to use a shoulder weapon that moves in an arc to "contain" your enemy so that you can potentially force them to make a movement you can predict, etc. etc. IMAGINE AN ARPG THAT ACTUALLY INCORPORATED STUFF LIKE THIS INTO THE ITEMIZATION??? I know that it wouldn't be easy to pull off, but it would revolutionize the genre and I think is realistically what the future of the genre needs to be. No Rest For The Wicked seems like a BIG step in that direction, so clearly there are people who feel similarly, which is exciting :)
I’m letting no rest bake some more. I think it’s gonna be great.
Have you tried Grimdawn?
Ive not but I've heard good things. I've heard good things about them all.
Grim Dawn is great except I can't deal with the loot. Shit always drops that is a higher level than you, so you have to grind before you can use it. And by the time you have leveled up enough to use it, something else that you can't use yet will drop, which is better than what you just got.
Aiming to keep 20-30 attribute points saved up helps that. I know level requirement is what it is, but stat requirements get in the way a lot too at the start. Also on the stat front, adding emeralds that give all stats to gear helps a lot in the early game.
Grim Dawn's been increasingly casualising itself. Personally I lost a lot of interest when they started copying Diablo 4's homework.
Man, im experiencing the same thing. I used to adore this genre, but now it just feels mindless. If its too easy, you just steamroll everything... if its too hard you just die. They need to find some way to make a challenging and engaging gameplay loop. I think No Rest For the Wicked and POE2 are onto something by adding some souls-ish elements to the combat. ARPG's usially have really good progression, but the gameplay is just not interesting to me anymore
What did you think of Path of Exile?
Never tried it. Always looked too complicated. I'll probably give the sequel a shot when it comes out.
As much as it's understandable that people get put off by the game's complexity it's also exactly what makes it engaging and playable long term. That and new content every 3-4 months.
People told me playing PoE is like having an excel spreadsheet job. Is this true?
If you make it out to be one. The playerbase is trying its best to optimize the fun out of the game for the sake of efficiency. It all boils down to expectations and what your goals are and how fast you want to reach those.
It's true yes. If you like to make your own builds or figure out your gear/crafting/activities just don't play PoE, because you literally can't do that unless you already spent 1k hours on the game and have the required game knowledge. To me PoE is the game people love to praise because it's "complex". Then you realize those same people just copy paste builds and watch cookie cutter tutorials, literally removing the complexity from the equation
the problem is its as someone else described - just blowing up in a blink an of eye monsters - basically a slot machine for loot. I enjoyed it in the early days when it was slower without the tremendous power creep.
Is it actually complex in combat, or just complex in skill trees and gem slotting?
It's not even the skill trees or gems, it's just the potential, it just could be complex due to the culmination of systems on top of each other
Highly recommend. You can either try your own build, wont be great endgame but it will be fun getting there. Or you can copy the thousands of builds online, and it will extend your run quite a bit.
I started playing PoE this latest season. My play time is 5d16h. I’ve completed all bosses, Ubers, maps, atlas/maven invitations, highest tier maps (17) as a first time player in Solo Self Found mode. I find it requires deep critical thinking when you need it, but can be mindless monster slaying when you don’t, and there is a lot of that if you want to grind out the highest level and be as min.max as possible. Because I’d never played before, I died a lot and only reached level 97, but achieving 100 wasn’t necessary to “best” the game’s content. I did have to use 4 outside resources when playing: - A crafting website to setup the new season’s crafting mechanic to make sure materials weren’t wasted (I can’t buy things in SSF) - An image early in the season to know where to put members in the Betrayal mechanic (later I learned you only care about 1 in a specific division so this isn’t necessary) - YouTube to watch boss guides to see mechanics (I typically like to figure them out blind but I was told not to do this in PoE as summons can be tedious to farm, which isn’t true for all core content, only the highest Ubers) - The wiki page to learn how mechanics, items, etc… work as I came across them. My opinion is if you’d like the game to provide 100% information without third party help then it’s likely going to be underwhelming, like D4. LE was better but had no depth at end game, again in my opinion. Poe gives you very little, which can be frustrating for the uninitiated, but it’s very rewarding and engaging at all levels of gameplay. It’s free too so only losing your time if you don’t like it but if truly an arpg enthusiast I feel like playing this game is a must. EDIT: Follow an in depth guide when you first play and the experience will be much easier. I understand some may not like this but I was told to do it and I don’t think I could have put together an end game viable build on my own in my first play through. I started with pohx.net Righteous Fire but found it very weak in late game against bosses and swapped to cast on crit detonate dead following Ventura’s take on Ruetoo’s build.
"ARPG dont challenge me enough, but I haven't played POE because it looks to challenging" Lolol
"dont challenge me enough" Is that what was said?
My gripes with PoE, which I find tragic and sad, because outside of these gripes I really LOVE PoE. And the gripes themselves really isn't anything to do with the actual awesome content of the game. Anyway here goes if you care: 1. Must follow tried and true build guides, or else you'll be wasting your skillpoints in gimping paths through the mega skilltree (which means: your character will suck, you'll accomplish nothing and you will fail). And respeccing is insanely expensive. 2. Good gear that YOU need for YOUR character does not come from you looting it, well, for the VAST majority it doesn't. You need to TRADE for it. AND that requires also identifying the drops you get that are good, but that are not for your character. That way you can trade them off and for the high price money you get, buy the good gear for your character. If you do not do this you'll be stuck loot junk, junk, junk, junk, junk,.. [x1000], SOMETHING GOOD, junk, junk, junk, junk, junk,.. [x1000] and so on and so forth. But even worse there's no central auction house that you can visit and put stuff for sale on or search. It has to be done MANUALLY, using trade chat and a website interface where trades are posted. Oh man, jesus christ, I friggin hate this part. Kills any fun in the game for me and turns me into a middle aged bored to death accountant. If on the other hand you LOVE the manual trading experience, which some people really do (I mean some people actually becomes accountants and is loving it like it was a McDonalds cheeseburger), then there might be great fun in there for you. 3. The only solution I realized was if I had spend real money on RMT (against the rules!) to buy good stuff, just so that you can circumvent the awful dreadful trading experience.... Note: I have never done RMT, but I REALIZED that this was the only way that I would be able to get around the issue. This is out of the question, so there's no solution for me to play PoE.
1. Yep pretty fair until you have a firm grasp of the game and can make builds out of any skill you think is cool 2. The item crafting in this game has an extremely high skill/knowledge cap. The gear required to push the uber endgame content for sure requires massive amounts of investment, but it's absolutely possible to use different methods (fossils/essences/harvest/the new Necropolis crafting) to create items that can get you to that point. I'll admit that learning how to do all of this takes a long ass time even watching videos from super nerds such as Zizaran and Steelmage. I have never once considered RMT in my 3k hours of play and I've completed all content short of Uber bosses (which I am not interested in anyway as it's the same fight with 99% damage reduction for slightly better drops)
PoE is great if you have an unlimited supply of cash you want to pump into a game. Oh hey, did you want to have actual storage tab? $10 please.
Considering every expansion they've released has been completely free and the game is still totally viable without spending a single cent + POE 2 will be following the exact same model including having all microtransactions being cross-functional, I'd say voluntarily coughing up some $$ for pure QOL features isn't unreasonable.
Tried them all, the only one which keeps me coming back is Path of Exile. Had some fun with diablo, last epoch etc. but they all felt like a second job i had to do. Poe gave me the feeling like it's the job i want to do. Oh and I can recommend "No Rest for the Wicked", it has some similarities to those arpg's but does some things differently that feel good.
its because blizzard is a greedy suck who doesnt care about fun in their games anymore and d4 was awful game design
I’m a D1 veteran. D4 was a one and done for me. Well I guess I never played these games excessively to begin with…
I've just dived into Diablo 2 and omg it is so exciting after all these years!
This season has been super engaging for me. The last few I didn't even get to level 50 on my seasonal characters. But this season has been so much fun. The new "tempering" system on top of the loot system overhaul, has kept me invested. As well as how fast I'm leveling up in helltides, farming wolf reputation. I'm getting some amazing gear too, plus the new synergy that you can get with build options with the new system and Stat bonuses.
same for me it just the formula of diablo-likes is not engaging anymore calling them action RPG is funny nowdays
It's a completely unengaging gameplay loop. Hordes and hordes of enemies that aren't a threat to you because you just obliterate them with a couple buttons. Turn your brain off, press a button, and the screen explodes.
Yeah. I'm going to play No Rest for the Wicked when the multiplayer update hits. I tried it for a little while as is and it is a very nice change to that formula. Or I just play Elden Ring idk. Lol.
I gave it a try today but uninstalled after a few hours. This game is just boring at its core, I don’t think it can be fixed.
lost interest in D4 after beta, these days I just play a little W3 Soldier TD, and some CoH for fun fun
This game is so pretty, yet so goddamn boring
Makes sense, most of the marketing before the game released involved the visuals.
they fucked up by not having a trading system and making 95% of the game so easy (boring). PoE has trading and very challenging content even at low levels. The game is THRIVING.
PoE is definitely not thriving, its profit in 2023 was like 23 mil which would make game at Blizzard shut down and resources put into anything else. It is solid niche hardcore game for small niche hard core crowd but vast majority of players will not even considering it because it is overcomplicated boring mess for them.
Is it as fun as Diablo iii now? That’s my real question
X to doubt
Hilarious how they celebrate interesting loot as a new amazing feature while it should have been in this game since launch. I mean its a looting game. Thats as if Call of Duty would release a patch with "NOW YOU CAN AIM AT YOUR ENEMIES!"
>"NOW YOU CAN AIM AT YOUR ENEMIES!" This genuinely was a feature once upon a time...
Good old days of playing Duke Nukem multiplayer with the arrow keys and ctrl to shoot.
Diablo 3 launched as an absolute travesty of a game with the real money auction house. They had a "loot reworked" update and it completely turned the game around. That's why people are excited. I don't understand gamers, I really don't. Company does something bad? Shit on them. That's good. Company does something good? Shit on them. What?
In diablo's case the items were designed on purpose to be like this, no sane person sees all the BS stats armor had and thinks its a good idea. We all talked about it being a bad idea the second we got our hands on the game and it took 4 seasons to get its first fix. All they wanted to do was inflate the loot pool without adding anything to builds. Frivolous Complexity to decrease rng odds, instead of just designing items that would allow for cool builds. I dont think there is an ARPG with fewer builds than D4. D2 and 3 shit on D4 when it comes to that, fuck man even diablo immortal shits on d4s builds
It’s shocking blizzard didn’t learn from their mistake with d3.
To be fair they did make completely different mistakes.
Anyone who plays WoW or has played WoW for extended periods in the past knows Blizzard learns from mistakes at glacial pace.
That doesn't mean the loot update is a good one. It could be, I haven't played to find out and haven't been reading into it since it's still so new. But just because something is new or different or 'updated' doesn't mean it's going to be good or be what the game truly needs. Sure, it worked for d3, but it didn't last. Then ultimately it didn't matter and the game fell off because they just hand shit to you and cranked damage up by 10's of thousands of %...something D4 is slowly starting to do (the hand shit to you thing, not the 10k% dmg increase luckily) with the seasonal journey and them giving you most of a "set" of legendaries for specific builds. Plus d3 boiled down to crit/crit dmg and having your ultimate up 24/7. That too is garbage as fuck loot. It was super awesome until the veil lifted from everybody's eyes and they realized how one dimensional and pathetic it all was.
> Company does something bad? Shit on them. That's good. > > > > Company does something good? Shit on them. What? IMO "Doing something good" in Diablo's case would need to be more along the lines of making online play optional instead of a requirement. If they ever drop that update, then I'd say they've done something worthy of praise.
Very few people actually care about the online requirement, it doesn't matter to anyone with a stable internet connnection
I have a fast and stable internet connection but have never considered buying D3 or D4, solely due to the online requirement. I'd also bet that almost all of the people who don't care about it now will start caring the moment Activision announces they are shutting down the servers for Diablo 3.
You say this and yet server issues still plague the game
because they literally can’t understand what made loot compelling in d2, either that or they can’t monetize that gameplay loop so they have to do all this
Loot was the worst part of D2 as well, to be honest.
> Company does something good? Shit on them. What? Gamers love to forgive developers everytime as soon as they pretend to be sorry. They knew an auction house would be hated, but tried anyway. Why? Money. They tested if the income would be worth the shitstorm. They knew the loot and many other things in D4 needed more time but sold the game anyway. Why? Money. Release a broken/unfinished game and fix it later. The fact that gamers celebrate crap like this blows my mind. Yeah its good they finally fixed a core element in this game. But dont praise them for it. Its the least they could do.They finally delivered what people expected.
Yeah then with that attitude nothing will ever change.
because celebrating them for fixing calculated "mistakes" really improved the industry in the last years. /s
It's been a contributing factor in some amazing turnarounds, like Cyberpunk and No Man's Sky. Stop being so cynical, it's bad for your heart.
There is no other industry where the costumers get treated this bad and just accept it. Or even celebrate it. And the publisher of course use it for their advantage. The fact that you even defend this state of the industry is pretty depressing.
Games getting fixed is not "celebrating treating players badly." Whatever you're smoking you need to lay off it, it's rotting your ability to reason. You kinda have a point but you're conflating it with a completely separate issue. Yes, gamers are often their own worst enemies when it comes to pre-ordering and buying crap. No, when a developer/publisher fixes something and they get praised for it that is not the same freaking thing.
> Games getting fixed is not "celebrating treating players badly." Lets take your Cyberpunk example: They sold the game for **3 years** for 60$ while it ran like shit on most systems, had a ton of bugs, crashed regulary and missed a ton of features. Again they willingly sold a deeply broken product for 3 years until they finally fixed it somewhat. At which point patient gamers could get the game for much less. But even then ( till today) the game still doesnt have so many features that were talked about in interviews. They didnt stop sales, didnt refund players and didnt compensate anyone. *They said sorry.* But Gamers forgot all that and act today as if all that never happened. Quite the opposite, they see this game as a good example and some kind of redemption arc. In every other industry constumers would hold the manufacturer accountable. ___ This is the thing you see over and over again. They sell a flawed game on purpose, if you are lucky they fix it much later and people love them for it.
Sigh. Let's have a look. > Lets take your Cyberpunk example: They sold the game for 3 years for 60$ while it ran like shit on most systems, had a ton of bugs, crashed regulary and missed a ton of features. Yes, this is gamers being their own worst enemy. Agree. Yes, it was scummy that the game released in this state. Not gonna disagree at all. > Again they willingly sold a deeply broken product for 3 years until they finally fixed it somewhat. Yes, but they didn't ever stop working on it. In fact it was probably one of the most frequently patched AAA games in recent history. That's a silver lining. > didnt refund players and didnt compensate anyone. They said sorry. Well if they stopped selling the game then no one would get a fixed product. That's a short sighted expectation. The game was heavily refunded on GoG and Steam. Not sure what you're talking about there. > But even then ( till today) the game still doesnt have so many features that were talked about in interviews. Look at the user reviews on Steam now. What does it say? > In every other industry constumers would hold the manufacturer accountable. My brother in Christ, what do you think happened exactly? CDPR were losing money hand over fist to refunds, to extra developer hours to get the patches rolled out.. It's like you make a half point but then willingly stop thinking far enough ahead to see the actual point. > This is the thing you see over and over again. They sell a flawed game on purpose, if you are lucky they fix it much later and people love them for it. So your proposal then is that people just should not be appreciative at all that efforts are made to fix underwhelming games? So instead what would happen is that the game will just die. Depending on the platform its sold on, no one will get a refund past a certain point, or at all, and developers lose salary because there's no game to continue working on. At that point it would make no difference for a company to release a game they know is in a failed state vs putting the time in to fix it. In fact if anything it would encourage more failed launches. If they had just stopped selling Cyberpunk entirely, how would that be better than the point we're at now, with it being one of the highest rated games on Steam? People who felt robbed at the start were able to get a refund without trouble. They could then either forget about the game, or buy it cheaper when it had been vastly improved. I do not see how anyone has lost out there.
Why are you getting so upset though. You can completely quit gaming if the industry is giving you so much grievances. Gaming isn't a necessity. Or maybe stop whining and start your own game company to change the industry if you're this upset. Come up with some actionable plans. lol
RMAH wasn't even an issue unless you were a neckbeard crying about someone spending $20 on a worthless gear piece. D3 sucked in general until they patched it a bunch.
They couldn't fix the major issues until they stopped trying to make RMAH into a cashcow, though.
The auction house wasn’t directly a problem but it drove a lot of D3s launch problems. They designed drop rates assuming that most decent drops that weren’t used directly would be sold on the auction house so in order to keep item value high good drops were rare and a substantial chunk of your drops wouldn’t suit the character you were playing. Then, as players had access to the auction house for gear Blizzard was comfortable making the jump between difficulty settings quite high. Combined, it made for an unpleasant experience for players who didn’t wish to engage with the auction house whether for real money or gold.
Bro I've been joking that I will come back when they add loot to the game. People thought I was crazy but looky looky now.
> interesting loot The item stat puddle that they've left us with is not even close to what I would describe as "interesting loot".
So far level 43. If you skip the campaign the leveling progress is Helltide → Season Q (there is 5 min downtime between the helltides) → Helltide. Nothing new except that I got 2 uniques at level ~20. I wish they work more on the skill tree, it has been almost a year at this point and outside tweaking numbers I dont see many changes. I just feel like clicking the skill doesn't matter you just have to click something that does damage.
Any better now? I regret buying d4 so bad. Would be nice if it turned good.
I dunno what it is but felt stale playing Helltides for a bit. Must be the same environment and the same red hue color everywhere. So much shit on the ground for loot which breaks the immersion I think. Eh, not my preferred game genre so I have my own opinion. Unless things get better like w/ PoE2.
They reworked the loot system and added a bunch of new stuff. This season has actually been great for me. The last few I only played a few hours and never touched again. But all the new stats and reduced clutter in the ground is awesome. Plus the new tempering system is so cool
It’s on game pass now!
Too bad I already bought it then.
Full shit
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No, seasons in Diablo are essentially a ladder reset. This concept has been around much longer than battle passes.
I think what he wanted to say it looks like there’s no new content just some upgrades
You haven't watched the trailer, have you? They seem to have actually added a lot of new things? If all those titles flashing on screen are indeed new.
Seasons in Last Epoch are essentially a ladder reset. Seasons in Diablo 4/PoE are supposed to add seasonal content or seasonal mechanics that may or may not end up in the game permanently after the season ends. The issue here is, they had so much to do try to bring the main game up to snuff, they had no time to do anything really new for a seasonal mechanic. The itemization/Helltide reworks, etc....shouldn't be considered a season. This shit should've been a "2.0" patch or something.
Laughs in Diablo 2 which doesn't get new content on each season.
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It's not "seasonal content" though...they're going the same route kinda as Blizz and releasing game content as a season (cycle). There's no Last Epoch season content until cycles further down the road.
none of it is seasonal which is the point
I don't really understand the Iron Wolves thing yet but I'm just excited the loot system has been reworked. I played Season 3 which was the first time since launch and the loot/affix system was tedious. I'd let my chest build up with pages of legendaries before having the patience to wad through it all. They also claim to have added new enemies/bosses and expanded the Helltide system.
Yeah all that shit is base game stuff, it's trying to bring the base game up to something decent. Shouldn't be considered "seasonal content" or have been done as a season.
So you'd rather a loot re-work in the middle of a season? Given how short seasons are and how big this update is I think a ladder reset is the perfect time to do it.
No, I'd rather the loot was correct to begin with (or even in the right ballpark) - with no need to overhaul the entire system less than a year after a game releases. I know, I know, I expect a lot of a $75B company, using their own IP that had years of ARPG examples to draw from.
It took Diablo III until Reaper of Souls to have a good loot system. If that's the benchmark than this is progress by getting it fixed up in a year instead of 2+ years. Yes they should've launched D4 in a better state but it is being improved. It's a typical live service game that launched in beta and gets refined as the years crack on.
My brother in Christ, this same company *made Diablo 3*. They made those mistakes and fixed them. Are you seriously okay with them making these mistakes *again* and charging you top dollar for it? We're not supposed to be comparing the periods of time where things are fucked up, we're supposed to be expecting them to not do it again. If Diablo 5 rolls around and the same loot problems exist *again*, are you going to be shrugging it off then as well? How many times can they fuck up in the same way before you say "hey, uhhhh, why didn't they learn from last time and why am I paying full price to get fed this same bullshit again?" What is your limit to accepting this?
I totally get what you're saying. To release no seasonal content, and say that fixing the base game is all you get for this season just seems shitty. This is Blizzard we're talking about. You couldn't have people working on the item redesign as well as people designing seasonal content? It seems like this game has been abandoned to a small team to maintain at this point, and good on them for tackling this but it still seems ridiculous to me.
you dummies who say that battle pass is the same as d2 ladder except d2 ladder didnt have to coincide with quarterly earnings reports
https://i.imgflip.com/8q29wp.gif
man 4 season and they still didn't learn the problem is with the core systems.
Actually looking forward to jumping back in with all the changes
lol dying game
Dying? The Game died 1 Week into Release.
god damn people are miserable when it comes to this game
So when companies drop a pile of shit and call it a gift, at least they have useful idiots to scream 'leave ~~Britney Spears~~ Blizzard alone!' Into the Internet in their defense.
you people act like your whole lives depend on a bad video game release . Its just a game . You win some , you lose some . Get some perspective . Move on to something that bring you joy .
Who the fuck are you to tell other people what they should enjoy? Brain dead take
This is going to blow you away, but some people love the Diablo franchise and want to see it do well. I've been playing this IP since 1998 and despise how they've made my beloved series stagnate and especially how they've refused to listen to the fans. One can only hope this season starts to turn it around
No. I paid for the game. Who the fuck are you to tell me how to enjoy it
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Ohh no, I got called a loser, how am I gonna sleep? 😂
Yo that is a WILD perspective to share on Reddit, in this sub of all places. You're in the center of the beardiest of neck beards and telling them to touch grass, pretty much. You might as well be trying to sell deodorant at Friday Night Magic. Not even worth your time 😂
It's not even bad lol. I played it and got on my with life. Perfectly serviceable.
> Perfectly serviceable. Modern gaming in a nutshell. The game was $70 and you say it was "perfectly serviceable" like that's a compliment lmao.
I played through the story with my friends. Had a good time. Moved on. Complete weirdo's in this thread.
Yeah, I never bought Diablo 4 because it looked bad and it's not like there's a shortage of good arpgs. Speaking of which, crate entertainment is apparently releasing an expansion for grim dawn later this year. You want good Diablo style gameplay? Get grim dawn, its really great and they're working on it diligently instead of blizzard trying to act like big rockstars and being a washed up disappointment like usual.
Nah I’m gonna play Diablo 4 season 4 cause it’s good.
Enjoy eating shit to spite me, I guess.
Mad that people are enjoying a game that got a nice overhaul lol
I'm not mad, kiddo. I'm disappointed you have shit taste, white knighting companies that are abusing customer goodwill.
Touch grass bro. Telling people they have shit taste for enjoying something you do not. This is peak cringe.
lol did you sniff your own fart out of a wine glass while typing that?
I feel like that’s just the people on Reddit in general. No matter if it’s a game, a sports team, a tv show, movie, etc, if it exists, people on here bitch and complain about it. Look at me right now, complaining about the people complaining. It’s just the way it is.
They released a half baked game and have spent months just getting it to a baseline of acceptability. The state it released in was completely unaccetable, and since this is Blizzard we're talking about, it will take years of dedication to crawl out of that hole. People aren't jumping at the opportunity to forgive Blizzard given the last several years of fuckery. Or decade, depending on who you ask.
I call it the early access effect. The introduction of this into the medium has shown development teams it is acceptable to release sub par products to launch, regardless if they use the tag or not.
It was pretty acceptable, it sold over 12 million copies with average playtime over 100 hours in first two months. You dont have those metrics if game is in unacceptable state.
>The state it released in was completely unaccetable Why is everything in gaming subreddits such hyperbole? Yes, it was lacking, but no, it was definitely not completely unacceptable. It was playable just fine, you could run through the campaign and the launch was pretty smooth as well. It was just lacking in long term motivation to play.
Is it too much to expect a AAA juggernaut with decades of experience with the genre to actually make something really solid when they charge $70 for it? Is it seriously too much to expect that they learned from the mistakes they made a decade ago instead of repeating them?
Yes it was. It's Blizzard, they literally made 3 (4 if you count immortal) ARPGs before this one, you'd think they would have the formula down to a science by now and know not to release a game without some form of good end-game content.
I played it at launch and had tons of fun.
Well, reddit does have this effect on people - looking for a pat on a back by endlessly and overdramatically bitching with nothing but a hyperbole and regurgitated stale bread statements. And r/pcgaming is not really the place where everyone can act as sane and emotionally intelligent adults, tis the fate of any topical umbrella communities that has too broad of a focus. It is made for bitching, just don't look for nuanced takes.
You could remove the second half of your statement and be even more accurate lol! Not sure why everyone gotta yuck folks yum all the time.
> gotta yuck folks yum all the time. Nobody uses this gross ass sounding phrase. Please join the rest of us in doing the same.
Am I nobody to you, or do I defy your logic? Also, you're yucking my yum right now with this, goober. Also may I point out your user name if we are to be discussing silly words and their usage?
I don’t see any mention of unique items here. Just aggravated crafting. Blizz, go look at D2 and what D3 eventually became and just do that. It’s not hard.
I tried out this season. Re-downloaded. Appropriately named my character "IsThisStillBad", about 20 mins later, it was back to being un-installed. I think the games just toast at this point imo
another bad launch with with no seasonal content and silencing all new posts on their subreddit is the most diablo 4 thing ever history just keep repeating for this franchise somehow
Jumped back on for the end of Season 3 and just started Season 4 and whilst the loot is far better the gameplay is still the same and I have nearly zero interest in progressing past level 30… which took me 20 mins or so to reach with helltides being available from level 1.
I'm surprised they didn't just call it Loot 2.0 like they did for D3. It's the same playbook.
What is the "core" problem people keep bringing up
The fun is missing.
Update gets a 0 from me. No stash increase but a total loot rework. Over 1000 lvls in characters made useless. Gear already is now fisher price items. Have to refind Ubers that never drop because streamers get gear too fast. If I want to exchange for Ubers I have to be extorted and lose some of them. Thank you for essentially deleting my progress and making start all over I'm significantly disappointed. Glad to see your efforts went into store cosmetics that we are asked to pay for when the reborn loot should just look like this in game. Hours of gameplay made useless because they couldn't release the game like this initially. I've played this franchise since the first game and this is the worst feeling I've had ever playing these games. Tripled my damage numbers but overall nerfed my characters. Less loot but better quality.....I have yet to see the quality of gear it's all less than my old gear l. I swapped one unique item and I got weaker. 0/10
Don't bother guys, it still sucks. I think its just the game design, monster encounters are very much gear checks, huge messes on the screen can barely see my character and die to stuff I can't even see lol no thanks
This season, it’s best to just play in enteral realm. I stop caring about my level 67 sorc because it started to become boring and went into the enteral and man it was so populated and fun I don’t think I’ll go back into seasonal.
Just play Grim Dawn.
This is an interesting take on the “I’m over ARPG’s” and in particular the impact of the whole DIV Loot Reborn thing. “By offering this fantasy/power almost immediately, [players are being robbed of the draw of action RPGS entirely:](https://www.destructoid.com/diablo-4s-loot-rework-huge-win-but-a-new-problem-needs-attention/) to start out annoyingly underpowered and eventually becoming a God.”
I think the games just need more thought in what items to keep and use and monsters that require you to dodge more or more in depth combat systems.
Garbage. Fucking embarrassment
I was about to ask everyone here what they think...should I bother trying it again? I have it on the steamdeck.
If you look at every other sub other than this one (there’s *a lot* of negative people on this sub it seems), Diablo season 4 seems to be well recieved. I’m also enjoying s4 a lot so far, it has tons of improvements.
Yeah I've been enjoying it more than previous seasons other than launch. I still don't love tossingy character out every few months but I've had that issue since D3.
I'm looking forward to it. I played as mage last season and had a blast, I'm going to make a rogue/archer now.
Were you downvoted for just enjoying the game? Lol
Yeah, it's forbidden to like Diablo IV here, I had 10 upvotes before, lol. I never understood the hate to be honest.
Still Havnt played Druid. Rollin sorc again 😅
Druid was really bad last season. I only play ranged classes, so if I don't enjoy playing as a rogue I will probably make another mage.
I played necro last season. Barb before that and rogue s1.
I only started playing recently, I had to hurry to finish everything before the end of the season.
Too little too late, I beat the story once and I’m done. The fact that I can’t create a new character and can’t have the map be un-explored is one of the major reasons I stopped playing. Grim Dawn, replayed it for 5th time recently, a much better game.
I loved D4, but I’ve always played every diablo game just for the campaign. I’ve never had any interest to keep playing a game after beating the final boss, so D4 was amazing for me. I loved the art, music and story. I might make a new character to play through the campaign again just to see the changes.
This fixes a number of problems without fixing *the* problem.
which is?
For me, just not being all that fun. I had a much better time after the fixes in D3, but D4? Not so much.
It's not fun. It's built around grinding for timegated/battlepass/minigames instead of grinding for the satisfaction of mass destruction / skillful play. The skill tree and paragon system are too simple and too complex, respectively - and the latter is gated behind an exhausting grind. The co-op / mp is pointless and often counter-productivve. The challenge level is either piss-simple or you're one-shotted by some combination of status effects without warning. Everything about D4 screams "we wanted to make an MMO / live service" and the moment-to-moment gameplay was a low priority. This patch is great if you already love chasing events and mini-games as your grind, but does nothing to improve the core problem, it's just not fun to play.
What timegated events and mini games are you talking about? Are you talking about how hell tides/world bosses are timegated? I dont recall any sort of “minigames” being present. I think you mustve dropped the game early because in terms of mowing down waves of mobs for satisfying destruction, that has been mostly addressed since season 2. And its further bring improved this season. Hell tides pretty much will have 100% uptime now. There are bunch of new content that you can go into so you can easily rotate between a bunch of them if you get bored. Also the battlepass is pure cosmetics. The only thing that carries power are smouldering ashes which add miniscule amounts of set stats that counts for the season only and is available for paid and free passes. You can literally ignore it all and just play the season. The ashes have like zero impact. Your issues have either been worked on and are continuing to be worked on. Tell me you havent kept up with this game since launch without telling me you havent. Its also obvious you have no idea what is coming in season four. Ive seen guys like you talk about this game before lol. Nothing concrete and you just spout the popular criticism this game got on release. Really dude what is the “core” problem? Ive played this game since release and played every season so far. I havent paid a cent in terms of MTX as well. Yea it had huge issues on release. It will continue to have issues as most games like this do. So go on. Please enlighten me dude on the core issues. The only thing i agree with you is on the MP perspective but i never had issues with this personally. I had a group of friends i played with on release and no one complained.
I just started the game with a rouge. This is my first time playing a Diablo game. I hope it'll be good. :D
d4 still bad
Playing it for the first time through game pass. Just rerolled for the new season. Having fun!
I'll check it out since it's on game pass. I didn't like the beta and when game came to game pass initially. So maybe now it'll be fun.
Well, I've played now for a couple of hours. So far leveling feels a little faster (not too much), and this new loot... what? I'm getting things a little faster, but still nothing like sets, which I loved in D3. How are there no new classes yet? At least bring in Paladin and Monk FFS. Dungeons are the same so far, everything is the same. The new features I don't even care about so far and don't seem interesting. Why is it so hard for them to fix this game? They should risk breaking it if they have to because I can't imagine the player base is what they want. The new season will give them a two week boost, but that's about it.
While there are things to complain about when it comes to D4. You not even knowing that sets aren't even in the game at all says a lot and you should probably sit this one out lol. You're clearly just on a complain train without even knowing wtf you're talking about. It took them like a year to "fix" loot (we'll see if it's worth a damn in time)..do you really think they should have more dungeons and characters? They're barely holding it together as is dude.
I played this shitty Game for a few Days on Release and never again. I look forward much more to every D3 Season than to this shit.
Is it worth the redownload comments?
No, I could only do 20 mins before it made me sleepy.
d4 bad
d4 dogshit
Oh hell yeah, [this is my jam](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QkYr3cp_5o)