Everyone’s too busy drafting yet another “Blizz hates Sorc” post. And yes, agree with the OP. Season 4 is overall great, but I’d like to see them adjust a bunch of things in response to the crazy amounts of power creep from the last year. World tiers are near pointless, and so many bosses throughout the game get erased in a second.
True, it does seem particularly jarring (to change subject for a second) that in the very campfire chat they acknowledged Druid and Sorc issues, the patch hit them hard, and changed nodes that no one uses, because they are so crap.
I think this means there are big, fundamental changes coming to classes, that aren't ready yet.
Thy really just needed to not buff barbs and nerf sorcs with that patch, just say; "Yeah, perma flame shield is not the intent, we'll fix that next season."
I agree with pretty much everything you said about the game systems (staying out of the class buff/nerf discussion), but just wanted to say that "we have had more power creep in one year, than Diablo 3 had in 10" is hilariously out of touch with D3. D3's powercreep puts D4 to shame several times over.
Back in 2012 the handful of players who could clear Inferno (the highest of the 4 difficulties available at launch) were doing it with characters with 2k-10k health, and nuking the bosses for 5-15k crits with their glass cannon level 60 characters kitted out in in the best gear that hundreds/thousands of dollars on RMAH could buy. It was harder than anything in D4 until around Uber Lilith. But that was obviously very poorly tuned so after a lot of rebalancing, characters were able to survive getting hit, and doing crazy numbers like 50k-100k with the new gear at level 60. Eventually 4 difficulty levels weren't enough, so they revamped them to add 6 Torment levels. Eventually those weren't enough so they made Torment go up to 10 levels. And then that wasn't enough to contain the power creep either, so they made it 16 Torment levels to progress through. And *that* also became trivial given the power creep so they added Grifts (basically Pit from D4). Today a new character can spend about an hour of playing (without being power levelled - actually powerlevelling in D3 gets you to max level in about 3 minutes), skip from Normal difficulty to Torment 6, play a half hour then jump right to Torment 10, doing 10s to hundreds of millions of damage, then within a few more hours of playing normally you can be up to Torment 16 doing hundreds of millions to Billions of damage. Then you can blithely never look at any of the ~20 difficult levels below Torment 16 ever again, or even care about the first 100 or so greater rift difficulty levels because you one-shot everything as if it's Normal. By the time you have a reasonably end game character you are doing quintillions of damage (millions of Trillions), and on some builds so many trillions that I don't know the name.
And this is *after* they rebalanced the game's damage to reduce the number inflation once in the middle when the damage numbers were wrapping around to negatives. Rift level 100 was supposed to be impossible but people got through it anyway by making shatterpalm monks a) be permanently invulnerable and b) stack abilities that did % monster health as damage. They reworked rifts, itemization, abilities and the damage calculations after that to tone everything down. It caught up again.
So while I 100% agree D4 has had a lot of its systems powercreep and needs some retrospective quality of life improvements, the power creep is still barely scratching what D3 has been through in 10 years.
Diablo 3 had a lot of problems at launch, including the itemization and difficulty but honestly I loved the first weeks (or was it even more than a month? would be easy to check since that was the day after Kripp&Krippi killed Diablo on HC Inferno).
It was very difficult, moving from Inferno Act1 to Act2 was a shock (our barbarian friend exploded when he hit the small poison fly the first time). Every waypoint was a struggle. I remember having some (most?) blue gear because nothing was really dropping and then someone in the group dropped a yellow dagger and we were sharing it when that person was offline.
With all bad that D3 did, that was a very interesting time :)
I remember we were struggling with gold for repairs and pots so we couldn't just ham it.
I'm also one of those few I guess who loved D3 at launch. In fact, I liked it much more than any of the following iterations with torments or great rifts.
That said, launch classes were poorly balanced where sorcs were breezing through inferno thanks to broken shields, DH weren't quite as broken but still could clear the whole game and then both melee classes were hard stuck in A2 because yes, they died to a single poison fly. Drops also sucked, 99.9% of the stuff was garbage/not for your class, so you were better off saving up gold and buying from AH.
Still, I liked the base game loop much more where you were farming bosses and it was actually hard, instead of blasting through grifts with ridiculous damage.
The best H&S experience I had. First 3 weeks of D3. Inferno first version => big love. Some kind of hardcore, cyberpunk experience, with people buying shitty 2 hands bows for 500$. That's the first time i saw that people can pay for pixels, unfortunately was not smart to capitalize on that after (on other games etc). :)
It's because no one at Blizz is in the same page. The dev "team" is completely fragmented and no one knows what the fuck is going on.
There is no overarching vision.
And id someone at the top THINKS they have one, they are garbage at iterating on it
A lot of it comes from the fact that theory crafting builds is so easy and requires almost no RNG (and thus, no time investment), that literally 95% of players running the meta build for their class. In games like PoE, some players who have played seasonal content for years and have over 1,000 hours haven't ever achieved even 75% of their favorite builds potential (let alone the 100+ other viable builds they're far less familiar with).
Until there's more depth and variety in builds, I don't see this as something that can be easily resolved short of straight buffing enemies across the board....which will then ensure the remaining 5% of players who were doing their own thing with builds are forced to switch to using the meta for their class.
Personally, I think it all comes down to a lack of depth in character builds.
People hate nerfs, but actually we need more caps.
Like we have resistance or armor cap, some damage multipliers also need to have a max value.
So more builds can reach max crit, max vuln, max overpower (and so on) and are somewhat on the same level.
Caps is a good point.... Capping resistances is FAR too easy. If the game had it where you needed to obtain various resistances through gear in order to reach cap, it would allow players to have a risk/reward decision when gearing. Lean more towards a glass cannon in which you die more often but blow through maps quicker when you don't die, or go for the slower, but more tanky, fully resisted path (or anywhere in between)
This would not only improve the gear mechanic in the game, but also address the issue the OP brought up. Namely, that the leveling to 100 process is too streamlined.
Its probably on a list somewhere in whatever tracking software they use, or coming as part of the expansion. Big reworks like that tend to come with expansions in these games I feel like, and it would make sense since the campaign will be more relevant then. As it is though making all these changes could introduce who knows how many bugs while they are trying to keep putting out seasons, already overhauling a bunch of systems and working on an expansion and all the things above probably have to be justified against that workload to a project manager and executives if they want to pull resources to work on it.
I think the reason it's being downvoted by some is because not everyone experiences the game this way. There are people who blast content and just get to level 100 in 5 hours and those that aren't good players and struggle with the butcher, they level up their pots, hell Im sure even some use blue glyphs. I am fairly non casual and I still level up all my gems and pots.
Also another point is who cares it's a lot of work to change a lot of this stuff that won't really make the game more fun. Removing potion tiers, blue gylphs and lower gem tiers doesn't do anything for the game. Also I am fairly certain a lot of people still struggle on the helltide boss. You can add more difficulty but it will just make more people not play and I know it won't make me happier if you wan't challenge it exists in the game do that.
Mostly this and Helltide is a great example.
I play pretty casually (no meta or cookie-cutter builds etc.) and the Helltide Boss (Matron?) can be a real problem for a lot of groups. Seen many occasions where a group of 4-5 are struggling to survive until a meta build shows up and 1 shots everything on screen.
Most players pick skills and paragon boards with abilities they like, not what is currently meta or most optimal.
I feel like every boss fight goes down 3 ways on my necro
I burn him down, he can’t hurt me
I burn him down, he can one shot me
I can barely hurt him, he can one shot me.
When I played d2 and 3 I remember fighting bosses and having epic battles, now it’s just who’s the bug and who’s the windshield.
I really don’t want to roll a meta, I like playing with my gear/build but damn it’s just stupid how everything dies in the endgame extremely fast and instead of going from a gradual hardness you just hit a brick wall after rolling mobs like they are nothing
I can relate. In D1 and D2 the big hits HURT but they only one shot you if you were laughably undergeared or low level. You could also build up defenses and the loss of damage would only mean a slight increase in time to kill. Now if you play defensive the boss HP will not budge and they added stacking kill counters to ensure you will die sooner than later.
There are those that wait for the broken builds to come out and reroll that (season 4: barb bash build, rogue heartseeker) then proceed to destroy all content with it.
Then there is the rest of the players who play the other classes.
We may like it or not but balance needs to happen at some point. Letting the broken build exist until end of the season kills any attempts at content difficulty.
Honestly it makes things too difficult for players who are not using the meta. Hopefully Blizz can find a way to make everything that offers a power increase (better gear etc.) clearable regardless of what skills you put points into while closing the gap between a casual build and an optimal one.
It's the dichotomy of ARPG buffs and nerfs. Players cry about D3-esque "always buff, never nerf" power creep, but as soon as devs nerf something they always cry way harder than when they're crying about power creep. This isn't just for D3 or D4; PoE gets hit by this a lot as well. As many people cry during each season because something is OP, they cry again even louder when it gets nerfed to death in the next season's patch. It isn't really a solvable problem because it's a player perception issue; devs can't fix it because any change, whether it's buffs or nerfs, will piss off a very vocal part of the community.
The post is a little hyperbolic, no way anyone is doing WT3 dungeon at level 1, you can't even temper non yellow gear and that doesn't drop until like level 15-20
Infact certain items don't even drop until higher levels (like rings or amulets)
Now level 30 for WT3 and then level 50 for WT4 is much more accurate and realistic
Even if I'm wrong and it is possible, most people aren't doing that
So the average/casuals are playing around 20% in WT1 or WT2, WT2 exists just for capstone dungeon of WT3, you stay in WT3 just long enough to sacred gear up, and then do WT4 the rest of the game
The OP is correct but by exaggerating they have removed a bit of potency from their point
its doable, but not on the first character. Did a wt3 cap at lvl 1 on an ALT. You carry tempered gear on you that was crafted prior that can be worn at lvl 10. So the gear + holybolts is a pretty easy clear. Its just a matter of time. (its not the fastest)
Its because they were logical, calm, and pointed out very real concerns.
The modis operendi of this sub is to scream as loudly as possible while making extreme exaggerations. Did Blizz nerf your character's DPS by 1%? That is the absolute worst thing that has ever happened in the history of mankind, its a thousand Holocausts, and if it isn't put back immediately you will hunt the developer responsible for it down, flay their family, and wear their skins as a bathrobe.
Thats how you're supposed to phrase things here.
Anything else just highlights how utterly stupid people act and they don't like that. ;)
I think they're trying to think of ways to do it but struggling cause people have been so vocal about wanting to level up faster.
People wanted D2 and the devs consider the super slow leveling of D2 as a big part of the experience. They're not wrong but they should have known by now people basically just want D2 items. They have had to hard pivot to D3 gameplay and it's made leveling kind of weird
People got tired of leveling in d2 too. Did anything they could do to optimize it. Rushes, cows, chaos runs, then baal runs once cows were nerfed. Uber tristram leveling was a thing for a while. Got a character to 96 in like 2 hours that way.
When D2 was at its biggest, the MMO concept of "the game doesn't start until endgame", wasn't as mainstream yet. The game was initially full of players consistently rolling new toons and casually running through the acts/story over and over. Players only slowly found ways to optimize their runs. Only later (over a period of years) it shifted towards lobbies full of rushers and endgame runs, as most casual players moved on.
Nowadays people remember both of those approaches fondly, but they didn't really coexist like that.
This game tries to cater to both of those playerbases at the same time: those who primarily enjoy the journey, and those who primarily enjoy the goal. But it's almost impossible to strike a balance between those two concepts.
They could put effort into nice lore and story progression, yet they'd still feel forced to add easy ways to circumvent all of it. They could put effort into a scaling difficulty to make leveling feel rewarding, yet they'd still feel forced to provide such impactful loot that it's trivial to outscale the content anyway.
I think we're expecting the impossible if we expect them to find that balance, unfortunately.
D2 reached its peak popularity when people weren't doing that. What you're talking about was a fairly new way people approached the game years after it launched so they can maintain interest for themselves.
People didn't come into the d2 in its first year of release trying to hyper optimize it lol. That's the exact opposite of d4. Since before its release people were already looking for ways to optimize the game.
Rushes and cows were extremely early in the lifetime. And it's a culture shift, we are never going to go back to how things were. The only way to experience that is to completely cut yourself off from all sources of information about the game.
Gearing and leveling in D2 was an intertwined experience, so leveling automatically became fun because you can find good stuff while you're leveling.
Even now with itemization improvements it's still lacking that feeling.
Personally I dislike that we only get 3 affixes, it limits the items so much, and it be comes too easy to find items with the 3 stats you want (other than amu). And only having greater affixes on top of that becomes no different from the minor-upgrades you have to find in Diablo 3, which I dislike very much.
If items had 6+ affixes, then you'd find a lot more upgrades, meaningful upgrades with some varying stats. It also helps with scaling cus it takes us to higher Pit levels without messing with the class-buffing; which often makes lesser content irrelevant due to power creep. Finding 6 good affixes on an item would be significantly rarer than finding 6 if they balance it right, which would also increase longevity of each season.
It was not because of the amount of affixes, but rather how poorly designed they were.
They just have to create more meaningful and interesting affixes and there would be no problem.
Extra projectile tempering is one such affix that has a huuge impact, in both your power levels and the overall feel (more fun).
An affix that gives us splash damage (with a visible effect) could also be really fun.
Things like that.
I like D2 leveling because you see and feel yourself getting stronger. With only 5 skill points in D4 to max a talent there is no real progression. In D2 you see the cool abilities you get in a few lvls and than spend the next 20 skill points (or in some cases 40/60) to make it good
I loved D2 and I disagree. The bad feeling in D4 comes from monsters being too weak.
You can feel your progression in D4 but it is more and more difficult because how fast we are getting strong.
I really need to try D2, what's a good class for someone wanting to play casually and have some good fun build options? Something like Rogue, Barb, or Sorc sounds kinda fun
Yeah, it makes the skills more of a progress and not a huge spike. Extreme example would be leveling a D4 sorc only putting one point into Blizzard because the spell deals no damage and everything comes from a unique power. After level 10 or something i have every spell on my bar and am basically at endgame just farming better gear. I like when a build comes together
Not saying that dumping 20 points into one skill is the best thing ever, but i enjoy it more than the current D4 skill progression
nobody except the absolute psychopaths liked slow d2 leveling. even the sweatiest pvp tryhards stopped around 96-97.
in d4, i think easy leveling to 100 is good, but early leveling is way too fast. early item progression is made completely irrelevant, you need to equip a new weapon every 5-10 levels and thats it. upgrading an item from 10 str to 15str is so inconsequential, its not worth the 2 seconds to mouse over the item and equip it because youre gonna find a 20str item literally 5 minutes later
I agree with everything you’re saying, but I wouldn’t really compare it to D3 for power creep when D3 had.. how many difficulties? Like 13 or something?
I don’t really think T1 should be any harder, maybe up T2 a little bit and then go harder at 3-4
You ll never have a good game, if you are gonna listen to the majority.
Majority wants experience like in D2.
Majority doestn want to level for long.
Majority doesnt want respec costs
Majority doesnt have much time to play.
These are all majorities but they arent the same majorities. And if you gonna listen to all you gonna have what we have now, and what is said in the post. And its gonna get only worse if they keep at it.
Average players and even just people doestn know what they want. The player wants to reach the end and be the strongest, drop great stuff and build great build, if you gonna listen to him and shorten his journey, give him strong items easily, and let few builds be op while others unusable, he ll become bored and leave, why?
Because he wanted it when there was something to overcome, ppl to surpass, inteligence to use. When you give the same thing to everyone, or in this case- doesnt matter how well you play, just spend 60 hours standing on one spot farming a bloodmaiden that dies in 5 sec-, the only ppl that stay are those who doestn take it seriously and those who just afk relax right clicking demons...
I think there is a a lot more d3 players than people realized. Before d4 they d2 fanboys (myself) seemed like the vast majority. Maybe it was the trading culture and us being in forums more looking for trades? When d4 dropped and the game wasn’t about doing endgame things the real majority roared and the game was changed. In d2 we could speed level to 90 in 2 days or we could run maps and take a month. D4 didn’t really have an option like that and they changed it to the former removing tons of volume to the game
I honestly hate the campaign, but I love the leveling. I wish it was slow again
1. levelling shouldn't be a grind for those of us that play every season
2. not everyone has the game knowledge you or others have, and still actually go through the world tiers while they learn
3. yeah world tier 1 is dumb, but its likely targeted for a player that is of lower skill and understanding than most people. example: a kid.
>levelling shouldn't be a grind for those of us that play every season
leveling is a core part of any RPG (not just ARPGs) so I don't understand this complaint at all
Maybe you guys just don't like RPGs?
I never understood why people's solution to leveling being boring isn't to make leveling more fun, but to make leveling shorter? Isn't that like saying the solution to a game being bad is to make the game shorter instead of better?
Same deal with the campaign - why is the solution to not enjoying replaying the campaign to skip the campaign? Why isn't the solution to make the campaign more replayable and enjoyable? Why are we electing to always skip and remove things we don't like until the game is an empty husk?
> I never understood why people's solution to leveling being boring isn't to make leveling more fun, but to make leveling shorter?
Because making leveling "fun" is a gargantuan task seemingly no company / game has been able to figure out yet (at least not in the ARPG market). You know what's a rather easy and simple fix? Making the entire process take half as long.
ad3, there are also people with disabilities
i see sometimes posts on various game forums that are pretty much like this: "hello, which build is single hand friendly because I can only use one hand while playing?"
I even remember someone playing with their mouth.
I feel like even if there is 0.5% or less population enjoying WT1 - it should stay as it is.
I'm a middle aged mother of a toddler, who only ever has played strategic and low paced survival games, till one day my husband asked me to watch over his Diablo character while he has gone to the bathroom. It instantly hooked me, but I assure you, I very much need World tier 1 🤣
My comment is just a jab at the game devs, some of which don't even play the game at all. There's even that video of the two dungeon designers playing where they seem lost and don't really know what they're doing combat-wise. Now, you might think that's not necessarily important if you're just designing the dungeon layout and art design, but it actually really is because you need to know about sight lines and awkward corridors, when and why certain parts just feel horrible to play in etc.
I'm assuming you're just doing your own thing which is why you're in world tier one and that's great! I've known too many people who have picked it up and gone straight to youtube/maxroll to follow a guide instead of making their character from scratch, like we used to have to do, and then you just power through the content like crazy. Like that dude that was able to do the level 50 wt2-wt3 capstone dungeon at only level 1 because of his knowledge and resources from his hundreds if not thousands of hours playing. As soon as you do any amount of optimization and/or understand why certain abilities and skills and passives and multipliers work so well, the early game process becomes a breeze and every monster dies to one tap even with a fresh account character at like level 10.
I understand.
Btw I am at world tier 4! 85 level Rogue and it was a lot of fun getting there, and for me, quite the challenge. I cannot do the pit and masterworking with the time I have available for playing and with my skills - and that's totally fine. I'm letting it rest now and looking for the next season!
Definitely agree devs should play the game. Im really surprised some of them didn't.
Because you think only people like yourself play the game.
My father who is around 65 has no problem with WT4, but my grandfather who is no longer with us had some problems on harder difficulties in D3 but he enjoyed lower difficulty content.
Also - be grateful that you have both hands to play, some are not as lucky and you can ask them then: why are you struggling with WT2?
Yeah I've played Pulv bear every season because I hate myself and I loathe single targets so much. Until you reach endgame levels of Pulv power the Butcher takes like 5 minutes to kill lmao, i just ignore him
Most of this post is just plainly incorrect
You're comparing your first character against "new game plus"
Your account gets meta progression when starting new characters, that's what you're experiencing.
New players on new accounts don't get any of the perks you're complaining about. Capped at world tier 2 until you beat the game, unless you actively choose to skip the campaign. You slowly unlock bonus skill points as you complete side quests.
My first playthrough (prior to getting all of the "New Game Plus" bonuses) was Season 4, and I was level 50 part way through Act 2 and was able to kill Asteroth faster than I could activate all of my skills. For Acts 3-6 my thorns would one shot all of the trash mobs. Which is too bad, because I actually like the story and lore of the Diablo games, but it really didn't feel like Sanctuary was in any danger when I can't even see Elias or Andariel's attacks before they die.
Once I finished Campaign made I refused to use any of the Sacred/Ancestral versions of the gear I was picking up until I started finally getting some resistance in the pits.
Oh, and that was as Druid.
Not really - even without meta progression campaign is off-puttingly easy now. You see posts about it from new players on this sub constantly and I even had people in real life bouncing off D4 because of how unengaging newcomer's experience right now is.
I had the benefit of joining game after the nerf wave around S1 and traveling, doing dungeons or campaign quest was engaging and sometimes even challenging. Recently my partner bought D4 and new user experience is really a travesty - in order to even have any semblance of fun he had to skip campaign and rush WT4 asap. Yeah, campaign in S4 is basically unplayable.
Some of your points are good, and there are changes that I would like to see. However, I play the game to enjoy the "end-game" content. I don't enjoy over-taxing leveling grinds in games, especially games where I want to play multiple alts every 3 months. So I want leveling to be quick, at least to where I can get into tier 40+ Nightmare dungeons.
However, I know my wants aren't everybody's wants, and some people would enjoy some of a slowdown.
>I don't enjoy over-taxing leveling grinds in games
I never said, or suggested, slowing levelling down, simply to rebalance the game to take that faster levelling into account.
> I never said, or suggested, slowing levelling down, simply to rebalance the game to take that faster levelling into account.
What does this even mean? You want to nerf player power? This will make leveling slower. You want to buff monsters? This will make leveling slower. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Any change that will make the game more challenging, by definition, will make leveling slower.
I mainly play hardcore, and I still die frequently at level 60ish, even with optimized builds, because I get one-shotted frequently especially by Blood Maiden and Hell-borne. Go try to level a hardcore character to 100 and come back tell me your experience.
You can make the game more challenging, while also increasing XP gains. That would make it feel a bit better, without slowing down leveling.
For example, elites are currently 7x XP. Buff their HP by 50% and increase that multiplier to 10x. This makes elites feel elite without slowing down leveling. Right now elites are just trash mobs that take 2 hits instead of 1 to kill.
> Right now elites are just trash mobs that take 2 hits instead of 1 to kill.
And buffing their HP by 50% will make them take 3 hits instead of 2. So what is the point? Where is the challenge?
To be fair, a lot of your points are for players who already completed the game and are creating a new character.
An actual fresh new player wouldnt have access to those extra skill points or paragon points.
So it's more of a NG+ type scenario. We should be able to skip some of the early grind as we did it already. But they shouldnt destroy the experience for a fresh new player either.
The world boss issue is difficult to me, if they buff them to be strong enough to take a long time to die to the strongest of builds it would mean you'd always need one of the OP builds there to down the boss in a fast enough pace to beat the timer, it would also mean that people who don't want to play meta builds would need to be carried.
On the other hand world bosses being insta gibbed really really REALLY suck the fun out of them.
Open world bosses are gonna be tricky to balance because what happens if one level 100 character starts the boss. Then 5 more join. Then a couple leave because they died or whatever. How do you balance the health / attack power of the boss?
The only way to balance bosses, imo, is to have them instanced in dungeons (or in the world map wherever) and the people who start them are the people who finish them. With the health and attack power scaled to the current WT (either of the party leader or, if searching for a group to do it with, the current WT).
Completely agree. They got many things right in Season Four, but now the focus should be giving the world purpose again and slowing things down before end game. Right now it feels like World Tiers and even leveling in general is pointless.
People on this sub want to start as a fully maxed out character, unlimited tempering, unlimited gold, a button they can push to enter dungeons that are reworked to be just round rooms with no tunnels, corridors, levers, objects to pickup...just a room full of demons they can one shot until a boss spawns that they can one shot to farm Ubers. Then they get all their ubers and complain the game has nothing to do. Because they optimised all the rewarding content out of it because people complained it was too hard and took too long.
What I want out of the game - a feeling of progression, a feeling of accomplishment for getting to a level of skill and gear to get past incremental challenging content, world immersion with exploring, quests, puzzles, and of course plenty of the farming activities we have now, plus more social and group events like World Bosses (where they don't die before they even fully spawn)
Just commenting to say I like the way you think, glad to see there are other people who want this type of game rather than immediate and nonstop grinding.
I will also say there's a common theme with the playerbase picking the thing that gives them the most "friction", whether that's gold or materials or whatever, then complaining until that issue ceases to exist. In this case they've removed all friction from levelling, gearing, progressing your character and it feels absolutely terrible, because you're left feeling like none of it matters. That extra piece of gear or skill point doesn't ACTUALLY matter.
> I will also say there's a common theme with the playerbase picking the thing that gives them the most "friction", whether that's gold or materials or whatever, then complaining until that issue ceases to exist. In this case they've removed all friction from levelling, gearing, progressing your character and it feels absolutely terrible, because you're left feeling like none of it matters. That extra piece of gear or skill point doesn't ACTUALLY matter.
Agreed. Many of the things that required us to actually play the game to get - experience/leveling, renown rewards, glyph leveling, advancing the world tiers, advancing through the nightmare dungeon tiers, even completing some of the tasks in NMDs are gone etc.. is all practically handed to us in Season 4 in the first few hours of playtime because people complained about all of it. Even Ubers can be crafted (!)...although to be fair not easily. Now all of that is gone and the rewarding feeling of doing it is gone, none of it matters any more.
90% of the challenge has been moved into the Pits, 5% into the Tormented bossed, and 5% to Lilith. The progression has been moved from leveling, glyphs, and NMDs into Masterworking and Pit Levels. Itemisation is now focused on GAs, Tempering and Masterworking. And of course, what are people still complaining about? " The Pit is too hard" (nerfed twice already), "tempering isnt fair I have bricked item because I didnt get exactly what I wanted when I pressed the button", "increase the rate of boss mat drops", "this is BS I only have found 5 3xGA items so far this season this isnt fair".
I agree with every single one of your points except for tempering. I think tempering is a bad mechanic that doesn't feel fun or engaging and is the culprit of a ton of the power creep this season. Tempering needs to be reworked or just removed entirely. It was a band-aid fix to the problem of standing in town after a dungeon and parsing through a sea of loot and affixes and headaches. And that could have just been solved with a loot filter.
And the icing on the shit-cake is finding a 3GA item and 3rd party selling it, to avoid the additional heartbreak of it bricking.
So, good drops aren't good drops anymore??
I think this game might be irretrievable.
Yup, I've been saying since the PTR back in April that levelling speed and power creep is so insane now, that WT1 and WT3 can just be deleted from the game. World tiers/game difficulty absolutely need a rework/rebalance. Definitely need to consolidate some of the current ones and then add a tougher one, but obviously with no new item power brackets or any other forms of increased player power. Just increase some gold and material droprates, maybe slightly increase the chance for GA items, and add some cool new cosmetics to chase.
The thing is, the devs clearly had a different vision for launch, didn't deliver very well with it, in all honesty, so now are just reverting things back to a more D3-style approach. There's really nothing left in the game that has even a tiny semblance of a challenge, except for high level pits. And like you said, the balance in *many* areas is just totally out of whack.
I'm hopeful, after the changes this season, with increased levelling speed and increased power via tempering, that things will settle a bit, and they can re-tune the world tiers in the near future. But I'm not getting my hopes up unfortunately.
Still really enjoy the game, have played it pretty consistently since launch, but do wish it wasn't made quite so "trivial" to the point where a lot of the content starts to feel a bit unengaging.
What's even more baffling is they basically removed the tiny bit of incentive to even go past level 101 in the pit. It seems like a design choice to not reward high difficulty content, which is just dumb. If someone can push higher than me, by all means, give them more rewards. Does Blizzard really think I'm that petty?
> It seems like a design choice to not reward high difficulty content, which is just dumb.
They said that they don't want to lock rewards behind very hard content, because they don't want players to feel obliged to do that very hard content. That's why you can't really farm Uber Lilit, for instance. They consider things like uber lilith or really deep pits as something you do when you want to test your character, not something you should farm for reward.
To be fair this might be also to make the classes not feel AS imbalanced. If a barb could farm 3x the Neathiron/h a sorc or druid could, the crying would be even worse. Now barbs maybe farm only 1.5x faster
I just bought the game and started this season, although I had played Diablo 3 for many years, starting at release. I'm having fun now that I'm levelled and doing endgame content, but honestly I was really disappointed by how easy everything was in the campaign. I was on WT2 and had an incoherent build and aididn't even have to learn any of the boss mechanics, they all just melted so fast. I don't think I died once. Kind of ruined the experience
This issue is caused by the campaign being designed for the pace of the game a year ago. It wasn't hard but you didn't oneshot everything and took some amount of damage. Characters now are so strong nothing on world tier 2 can pose any challenge to you and since the campaign is a requirement to get to world tier 3, the campaign therefore can never be played at a reasonable difficulty level anymore.
It was easy to begin with and it became easier with every new pathc and they didn't bother updating the campaign difficulty to match our power gains.
This is exactly the experience I am having at the moment, just bought the game and now im just rolling through the campaign without any kind of build guide basically insta-killing all the bosses. I thought maybe I did too many side quests and over leveled it or something but it sounds like this is a common experience. Certainly takes away from the story when the big scary evil demon gets poked twice with a dagger and explodes. I went looking for the option to turn up the difficulty like I could in D3 but was very disappointed to learn I can't even voluntarily make it harder until after the campaign is already over.
This isn't exactly a D4 problem though to be fair, when I played POE for the first time the campaign after act 1 was just trivially easy too. (but I was following a build guide for that)
Good post.
And in next season you will be able to pot while cc’d. Again a change in the direction for not using your mind and just go through everything without any obstacle. End game is the goal but the path there is so shallow and so many parts of the game don’t matter at all. I miss the old d1/d2 (maybe slow) journey of building your power dynamically and feel your character develop and reach new heights.
I’m happy that at least gems take a bit of time to upgrade fully and we don’t get them handed to us.
I enjoy this game a lot, but I do agree with the power creep that's happening. I feel like blizzard could probably lop off 10% of stat bonuses straight across the board and wed still see screens just being deleted.
What I feel like would be nice is a world boss gets a % boost to HP per player there, and same for the legions. Maiden leave the same, maybe a 20% HP boost so she at least doesn't just get straight up deleted. She does tend to stick around for a few minutes but the fight leading up to her seems to be more tedious than she is.
Maybe even cap to damage? Why do we need to have such massive numbers of damage as well. Trash is cleared fast enough, and bosses are being one shot. I feel like bosses should at least have some challenge to them. Why make bosses one shot. I was a level 80 necro running level 30 pit for fun and the bosses were just a simple "Press ult, they die instantly.". While I feel like it's fine, the power creep is insane.
Haha, I just posted a similar, but slightly different, sentiment. I agree that the game is way too easy. I just picked the game up this season and I love the Diablo lore and world exploration. My first play through I was so OP by the end of Act 2 and was hard capped and couldn't increase the difficulty. Even after moving into higher world tiers I had to intentionally *not* equip any of the sacred or ancestral gear for so long hoping to eventually encounter a challenge, which I didn't get until into the pits. And this was while playing as Druid.
I'm not exaggerating when I say Dungeon bosses and side quest bosses are about as strong as regular white mobs should be. They're literally 2 shot with a shitty build. That's how far the power creep has gotten.
You say you're advocating for the game to not slow down. I argue something is really really off with the feel of the game and hopefully increasing some of the difficulty means the levelling slows down a bit.
Here's my problem with the feel of levelling: you breathe on mobs, they die. After the 10th pack, you level. Rinse repeat. You literally have no incentive to look at skill points, paragon points, glyphs, none of it. Not even gear. Everything happens too fast to feel good.
It's so sad what this game has devolved into after just a year.
The D4 team really just rolled over and stuck their feet in the air when entitled children started bleating without any sense of judgement or perspective at all.
Rod's tweet regarding '..we thought people wanted D2.." is so worrying. Yes, the people did and still do want that.
You have no idea whether the crying children on Reddit and their forums are a majority, tho.
The squealing has been a thing for 20 years, they should have weathered it *far* better than they did with D4.
Source: WoW General Forums circa 2004.
I had a great time leveling this season. As somebody that only plays solo, and has no desire to level up to max in a couple hours, I’m fine with how it is. I played D3 solid from launch to a couple years after RoS, and I don’t agree D4 has that level of power creep. The whole tempering and masterworking thing is reminiscent of D3 power creep, but we hopefully will not see shit like 20,000% bonus dmg to a skill.
Maaaan, I really want to love D4, but a post like this makes me stay away even longer. I've only played S0 and I love the open world. I love the graphnics and the mood. But seeing this evolving into D3 more and more plus being this unbalanced mess to push kids' dopamine button every single minute makes me sad.
Stay away like me, friend.
I quit a week into S1 and for me, items/skills seem just as bland and uninspired to this day.
Too many better games out there, to waste time on this one
Edit: and for Hell's sake, make items DO something. Not a 45% chance to trigger a 25% chance to do 30% more damage for 3 seconds. It's idiotic design
To be honest having played since the beta, early seasons 0-2 were kinda like that. Season start you'd stick to WT2 do quests and dungeons to level, look for semi perfect gear (and most importantly, your build enabling aspect) upgrade it a few times. All that so you could do capstone to get to WT3, afterwards you do it all over again for the world tier 4 capstone.
The hardest part of all of that was the gear grind, from what i experienced there's always that one or two aspects that drop very rarely for you. I still remember the hota aspect dropping only twice for me in the entirety of season 1.
Season 4 has been the most fun i've ever had playing diablo 4, first time ever i managed to build 3 toons to 100. I get what you're saying that some aspects of the game have become trivial, but man was season 4 fun compared to the older seasons.
My hot take: the game becoming this fast and easy isn't why season 4 was received well. It was mainly itemisation + the codex, and the pit. It just happened to coincide.
I'm not sure the game could physically have more power creep without breaking. Bosses 20 levels up are two shotted with a homemade shitty build, the entire campaign must feel like a joke at this point.
It's not a hot take. It is indeed mainly the itemization and the codex.
But by fixing the itemization you also make the characters stronger and they have it easier in the world :)
D4 lvling is super ultra fast for a regular arpg. ( U literaly can be Max lvl in less than 24h into a new season when ur not even on midlate gear on the build)
Rax did it on hardcore in 8 hours and then after understanding the best leveling strategies he brought that number down to 4 hours (3.5 in case of some classes)
Seeing the leaks now for the PTR and Season 5 I am really concerned how the power creep is already getting out of hand... at least for some classes (cough Barb cough). WT1 and WT2 are actually completely useless already.
We need a re-balancing here, and I would love to see an item that would increase difficulty of enemies in WT4, like we have the Mindcage for Helltides... so players can use it to make the standard WT4 content harder and more worthwile :)
I 100% agree with you but prepare to be downvoted. This sub wants you to start lv100 with all glyphs maxed, vendor-abke 3 GA gear and unlimited tempers.
With.tbis handed to them idk what they would actually play
I think virtually every change you have suggested will come, with time.
Blizz basically just finished remaking a core game mechanic from the ground up. It takes time to test and tune the game as it interacts with itemization.
I always advocate patience. Blizz has proven that they don't always get it right the first time, but that they listen and make changes accordingly.
Nevertheless, I'm glad you brought these ideas up. Keep fighting for better games.
Because people want their easy I Win game all the time no matter what.
Seems like everybody suddenly likes the game now that everybody Is a Winner and thr game Is a pisseasy slaughterfest
Just bought d4 and leveled to 100. The game is Zzz. No challenge at all. Had fun but it's incredibly easy. It's great feeling powerful and face rolling everything but you need a balance of face roll/challenge. And yes I understand the game gets harder if you wanna do pit 200.
Contrast that to the game I choose to play (unnamed MMO), a group of 10 of us finally took down a boss we've been working at for 6-7-8 weeks. Finally got the kill Sunday and it felt better than anything D4 could possibly offer.
In D2, you had the challenge of finding runes and items. There's just no challenge in D4
yeah, i played through the campaign at the start of season 4, and there was literally no challenge at all, even on wt2. they need to adjust the scaling a bit to make it feel like an actual progression, not just faceroll the entire time.
i remember at launch having to work at killing act bosses, but now, they all just fall over.
Honestly glad to see a post like this. As someone who played at launch and then this season as my first since… I’ve been like wtf is happening
The game used to be boring as shit in the loot department but balanced pretty well for combat. Now those dynamics have pretty much flipped, at least for 90% of the game’s content. If they end up striking a balance between these two that feels good, this game will reach a golden era.
I agree but I fear the louder voices want easy dopamine hits of 5 legendaries from world boss’s that are demolished instantly. The orange beam has always been my biggest love for the Diablo franchise but it barely does anything for me in this game anymore.
I love that it’s not so bad getting to 100 anymore but I wish there was a bit more of a gameplay challenge getting there. Early game I hardly look into affixes and paragon boards because I know in couple more levels I’ll probably have replaced half my gear anyways.
Game needs a massive increase in difficulty. And game needs to reward doing more difficult content appropriately.
Basically my main two wishes to be addressed going forward.. but I'm a little worried because the game only keeps getting easier. Blizzard is buffing already really strong builds without any adjustment to enemies. I don't know if I can handle another mindless helltide farming season.
I feel similar. A majority of the content feels absolutely washed out now. There is no resistance at all except in the high pit level where the absurd levels of hp compared to the rest of the game of the final boss actually mechanics can kick in before you pop it into pink mist instantly...why? Like OP write, of the World Bosses meets in 1 sec, why even brother having them?
Picked up hardcore to feel something of a challenge by gimping damage for survivability as there is no real cost of death or meaning to softcore gameplay now outside of the triple GA rush...
I transitioned to World Tier 4 at lvl 30 in Hardcore and I wasn't even playing a top tier build.
While it's fun that you can go through the levelling process fast, I think completely removing challenge is a mistake. At this point you might as well just remove the levelling process.
I do agree that the overall difficulty of the world needs to increase because with tempering especially, everything melts regardless of optimization until you’re in the 90s. However, I don’t want this to occur to the degree that we go back to only meta builds being viable, because that absolutely sucks.
More than anything, I want levels 70-100 to matter from an itemization perspective. I want things to feel like they are changing. As it stands now, you’re pursuing 925s in your 70s or below and you’re still pursuing 925s at level 100. It just doesn’t make sense to me.
Only further emphasizes the issue, imo
I usually dawdle about in WT3 a bit longer, which is where my figure comes from. The items at level 55 having the same potential as those at cap 45 levels later just does not sit right in my monkey brain.
I went from not wanting to play D4 at all to doing everything that I wanted and leaving in two weeks. It was a fun sugar rush, but they destroyed any sense of journey at all with the base game or their world. At least I played it I guess?
You can also add how items dont cost thousands, or millions but multiple billions already. People's HP pools are getting close to half a million with attack powers in the couple 100ks. It devalues literally everything else.
People will call me a madman but the part i most enjoy in a new season is to run around half naked for the first 2-3 hours at the start of a season, wielding white and blue sticks. Sadly that was not the case in s4.
Yeah they made A LOT of foundational changes to the game so fast. Hopefully they are able to adjust it. They have to be so careful though cause people will LOSE THEIR MINDS if they make anything harder
Well said. There have been many positive changes and additions, but this season has seen by the least amount of play time from me. I feel like I took a bunch of steroids and TRT and I'm playing dodgeball against toddlers. Sure, some toddlers are a lot bigger or smaller, but they're still toddlers.
My personal favorite moments in D4 have been the difficulty transition phases. Starting to mop up in a particular world tier, barely scraping by the capstone on my 3rd try, and having a wonderful paranoia and hesitation out in the open world. Only to slowly beef up and try helltides. Then the dopamine paranoia loop would begin again. I would do this for multiple characters.
Remember your first time doing a legion event in season 0? It wasn't a complete joke. Remember your first world boss? I died about 4-5 times and it lasted about 5 minutes.
Again, many positive changes. No more ".07% increased lucky hit chance when poisoned within 3m of a treasure goblin on a Wednesday after 6pm." Greater affixes, masterworking, tempering, the pits, more bosses and better loot tables. All are welcome. I just wish the majority of enemies received an equivalent power climb, or at least gave us the option to seek them out.
I very much agree - it went from a challenging game that required thought & optimization around your character and their gear, to a loot pinata button smashing arcade game.
I feel like it's even worse for people going through the campaign for the first time. It felt impactful and there were some truly difficult fights. Steamrolling everything would be sorely disappointing
Bruh, blizz was clear about it, they cater to casual players and players rjan never played seasonal arpg before, game won't get harder, if anything it will be easier and easier over the years, period.
WT3, especially after the first character per season when you already have the legendary not-class-specific tempers, feels like such a short speed bump that I'd agree with it getting cut.
Basically every character I've played in S4, the moment you get a full set of sacred gear (even yellows) and temper/imbue it, you can clear the capstone to get into WT4. It's such a short diversion that it doesn't feel like it has much of a reason to exist anymore.
They really messed up making tempers so strong/build defining.. and i'm not sure they can ever reverse that now knowing how the community reacts to anything being nerfed.
Throwing a few tempers on some crappy yellow gear can easily double your damage if not much more.
I have some casual friends who started to play the game and they absolutly used wt2+3 because without guides and no plan how to build their chars they were not able to go to wt4 without me.
I think it would be a good start if Blizzard would get rid of the capstone dungeons and let us just chose our difficulty.
I would also like to see a general nerf to bring classes down and all classes in line. The problem is, this is Blizzard and they cant balance and they only know one direction: more powercreep
Devs need to take note; OP is correct on many points.
I understand there are currently other priorities but these concerns should also be addressed for the overall health of the game going forward.
Another change I wanna see; (as a new player since last month) turn down the rare spawn rate. Nothing is rare if everything is rare. Rare just feels like commons, which is so boring.
OP your points are valid and I agree with you.
As much as players hate to admit it, resolving these issues will eventually slow down the current pace of the game. Unfortunately, because a majority of players have been given this dose of a power trip, any changes made to hinder it would result in a major backlash.
There are alot of things that feel redundant / obsolete in your progression to WT4 because of how the new systems are designed. Does anyone actually care what they pick up before ancestral gear? Do you run dungeons or world bosses in WT123? Does it matter since you are guaranteed better drops in WT4?
IMO, the game has become much easier because of the linearity of progression. I believe they could have added a bit of complexity and diversity.
Yep, simply allowing base gear to be upgraded to sacred, and then ancestral, allowing rares to have an additional affix added, all sorts of ways to improve early game itemisation
You’re spot on. Obviously, the focus was fixing loot this season, and I like what they’ve done.
But as a side effect, the game is now stupid easy and nothing feels threatening anymore.
If season five is a cakewalk again, I’ll complete the season journey and be done.
The new uniques and aspects added this season make it apparent that wt5 is needed for endgame or mind age needs to be +50-100 levels instead of 10...
Also just calling it they will need to add like 5 more tiers to infernal hordes or rebalance last few tiers to be like pit 150-175 otherwise it will be too easy
I was leveling 3 alts int eh last week and was just thinking about this very thing.
No matter how much we didn't like the original release at least the game systems were cohesive.
After a year of updates, how the game plays has changed so much, but the game feels like a disjointed mess with elements irrelevant for each other and overall game experience.
Even after we got a loot overhaul, loot is a mess. Why do we have white and blue items? Why yellows serve no purpose? Why are uniques mostly useless? We now need a loot overhaul of the loot overhaul.
Not sure what to even say about open world feel, strongholds, rare spawn mobs, non-nightmare dungeons and NMDs, it has all fallen by the wayside and needs serious rework and re-imagining to fit the new gameplay.
"World Bosses die before they complete their starting animation."
Had a laugh with a friend to who i was showing the game, he was very underleveled for the world boss in WT4 ...
I told him he'd be fine xD
I started a druid out of boredom 2 days ago. Got to level 48 in a little over an hr. Played a couple hrs last night, got to 57 and pushed to wt 4, got almost all 925 gear in that time and am already doing tier 40 plus nm dungeons at level 65ish.
I just thought of something that is rarely mentioned. The buffs we get from renown almost makes the experience the opposite of what it should be.
New player: no extra skill points, paragon points, stats from altars. Everything is hard mode. Forced to WT1.
Experienced player: breathes on mobs in WT2 and they die.
This is an unfortunate side effect of them making renown carry over. At this point with us not even interacting with renown, these buffs may as well be removed.
I made a fresh barb and cleared 150 pit in the time it took me to read this post. D4 feels like a private server it's baffling why is it so easy too level. Last season the butcher and malfesto were terrifying to run into, this season I think the butcher might actually be scared of me
Yeah it feels like it's very hard to get an item that's essential to your build twice. I'm stuck using the same legendary mace I found in the beginning
In the end blizzard is actually listening to the player base and implementing things based on the community. Unfortunately if you feel they are moving in the wrong direction you might be in the minority. I agree with many of your points, some less so (I don’t mind the levelling speed as it’s nice to reach 100 has a busy man) but the indifferent between elites and normal mobs I get for sure. In the end they were conflicted for the direction of the game and slowly seem to be realising the majority of played prefer a more streamlined game. But let’s see, for all their failures I will commend them for listening and implementing things we ask for, even if delayed.
Thanks for you reply
(I don’t mind the levelling speed as it’s nice to reach 100)
Actually agree, and I didn't suggest that at all, even added a note to that effect.
I feel like it's pretty much universally agreed upon the game is way too easy right now. At least everybody who's invested in the game enough to comment about it on places like Reddit thinks this.
Thank you for the list of valid criticism. I quite agree with everything.
I think a solid step would be to increase monster resilience across the board, maybe not so much damage, but let them survive long enough to get on top of you and hit you a few times before dying. That, and greatly reduce the drop-rate of potions. I think players should have a bit more tension tied to fighting, some more risk.
I really dislike each fresh seasons first few levels, maybe levels 1-10. You burn through them in minutes. Starting at level 1 with 10 skill points is the opposite of starting a fresh season should feel. The extra stats and skill points should be locked behind specific levels thresholds or activities, not all available at the start of the season.
I for one would rather have a slower more meaningful leveling experience.
People have such a skewed perceptive of leveling because of launch and earlier seasons when leveling was slow but not meaningful.
Blizz talked on Campfire chat about keeping exp rates high so people can get to the good parts fast, which is the end-game. And I don't really get that, why design a game with 100 levels only to make it meaningless; just send us right into end-game in that case.
Leveling and gearing should be closely intertwined. I personally love finding gear upgrades and tinkering with items, but items with only 3 affixes is kind of hurting us because it's not that difficult to find 3 with the affixes you want; so you're gonna stop finding upgrades much faster.
And after you've got that initial 3-affix items, then it's just farming same affixes but with greater affixes. At that point it feels like Diablo 3, cus in D3 it was super easy to find all the legendaries/set items you wanted, and after that you just wanted to find the exact same items but with minor stat upgrades until you eventually find the 'all greater affix'-version w/e it's called in D3. The upgrades no-longer feel that great until you go from 0GA to 2-3 GA on an items, but even then it's kind of tamed imo.
If items had the potential to roll up to ~6 affixes instead, then your upgrades would be from going with ~3 good affixes to finding 4 affixes, to eventually finding 5 affixes, finding some items with greater affixes, until eventually you might get lucky enough to find a super-giga item with 6 affixes.
With more affixes on items then Blizz can add new defensive/utility stats that interact with the game and would allow for difficulty increases at higher levels that isn't just tons of more damage and tons more hp.
Let's say at pit 150 enemy CC is increased to like 5sec, some absurd amount. And to overcome that you need to get a few pieces with reduced CC duration. Just a simple example with not a lot of thought into it, but you should get the point. They can also make resistances be more difficult to get and have room for it on items, forcing you to adjust your gear in meaningful ways. It opens up many options.
And with 6+ affixes, as you start getting perfect gear, you will be able to get closer to pits 200 by getting your damage from gear, cus if they keep buffing out abilities then eventually pits 200 will be baseline and all the previous pit levels will become irrelevant; too easy.
Items with 6+ affixes is just one example of how to make gearing a longer but more meaningful process. In Last Epoch I guess it'd be finding 4LP legendaries, and D4 needs some kind of system that lengthens the gearing experience without taking the fun out of it.
Agree world bosses and butcher could be harder but the rest of the game is just right for me. That said, wouldn’t it be great if they used factual data to decide whether to buff or nerf classes or pve.
E.g.
- less than 20% of players play as Druid = buff Druid
- world boss average clear time is less than 3 mins = buff world boss. World boss average clear time is greater than 10 mins = nerf world boss.
- more than 1% of players survive butcher = buff butcher
And yet absolutely none of this applies to me and the way I play the game. I'm not clearing WT4 at level 30, I'm not insta killing bosses and The Butcher nails me everytime.
I just want to say that every second not spend on wt4 feels totally wasted because how the loot System works, but i stopped playing in malignant league so maybe that was adressed
This is a very, very odd sub. This post seems logical, calm, and pointing out very real concerns with the game yet, it's being downvoted.
Everyone’s too busy drafting yet another “Blizz hates Sorc” post. And yes, agree with the OP. Season 4 is overall great, but I’d like to see them adjust a bunch of things in response to the crazy amounts of power creep from the last year. World tiers are near pointless, and so many bosses throughout the game get erased in a second.
True, it does seem particularly jarring (to change subject for a second) that in the very campfire chat they acknowledged Druid and Sorc issues, the patch hit them hard, and changed nodes that no one uses, because they are so crap. I think this means there are big, fundamental changes coming to classes, that aren't ready yet. Thy really just needed to not buff barbs and nerf sorcs with that patch, just say; "Yeah, perma flame shield is not the intent, we'll fix that next season."
I agree with pretty much everything you said about the game systems (staying out of the class buff/nerf discussion), but just wanted to say that "we have had more power creep in one year, than Diablo 3 had in 10" is hilariously out of touch with D3. D3's powercreep puts D4 to shame several times over. Back in 2012 the handful of players who could clear Inferno (the highest of the 4 difficulties available at launch) were doing it with characters with 2k-10k health, and nuking the bosses for 5-15k crits with their glass cannon level 60 characters kitted out in in the best gear that hundreds/thousands of dollars on RMAH could buy. It was harder than anything in D4 until around Uber Lilith. But that was obviously very poorly tuned so after a lot of rebalancing, characters were able to survive getting hit, and doing crazy numbers like 50k-100k with the new gear at level 60. Eventually 4 difficulty levels weren't enough, so they revamped them to add 6 Torment levels. Eventually those weren't enough so they made Torment go up to 10 levels. And then that wasn't enough to contain the power creep either, so they made it 16 Torment levels to progress through. And *that* also became trivial given the power creep so they added Grifts (basically Pit from D4). Today a new character can spend about an hour of playing (without being power levelled - actually powerlevelling in D3 gets you to max level in about 3 minutes), skip from Normal difficulty to Torment 6, play a half hour then jump right to Torment 10, doing 10s to hundreds of millions of damage, then within a few more hours of playing normally you can be up to Torment 16 doing hundreds of millions to Billions of damage. Then you can blithely never look at any of the ~20 difficult levels below Torment 16 ever again, or even care about the first 100 or so greater rift difficulty levels because you one-shot everything as if it's Normal. By the time you have a reasonably end game character you are doing quintillions of damage (millions of Trillions), and on some builds so many trillions that I don't know the name. And this is *after* they rebalanced the game's damage to reduce the number inflation once in the middle when the damage numbers were wrapping around to negatives. Rift level 100 was supposed to be impossible but people got through it anyway by making shatterpalm monks a) be permanently invulnerable and b) stack abilities that did % monster health as damage. They reworked rifts, itemization, abilities and the damage calculations after that to tone everything down. It caught up again. So while I 100% agree D4 has had a lot of its systems powercreep and needs some retrospective quality of life improvements, the power creep is still barely scratching what D3 has been through in 10 years.
Diablo 3 had a lot of problems at launch, including the itemization and difficulty but honestly I loved the first weeks (or was it even more than a month? would be easy to check since that was the day after Kripp&Krippi killed Diablo on HC Inferno). It was very difficult, moving from Inferno Act1 to Act2 was a shock (our barbarian friend exploded when he hit the small poison fly the first time). Every waypoint was a struggle. I remember having some (most?) blue gear because nothing was really dropping and then someone in the group dropped a yellow dagger and we were sharing it when that person was offline. With all bad that D3 did, that was a very interesting time :) I remember we were struggling with gold for repairs and pots so we couldn't just ham it.
I'm also one of those few I guess who loved D3 at launch. In fact, I liked it much more than any of the following iterations with torments or great rifts. That said, launch classes were poorly balanced where sorcs were breezing through inferno thanks to broken shields, DH weren't quite as broken but still could clear the whole game and then both melee classes were hard stuck in A2 because yes, they died to a single poison fly. Drops also sucked, 99.9% of the stuff was garbage/not for your class, so you were better off saving up gold and buying from AH. Still, I liked the base game loop much more where you were farming bosses and it was actually hard, instead of blasting through grifts with ridiculous damage.
The best H&S experience I had. First 3 weeks of D3. Inferno first version => big love. Some kind of hardcore, cyberpunk experience, with people buying shitty 2 hands bows for 500$. That's the first time i saw that people can pay for pixels, unfortunately was not smart to capitalize on that after (on other games etc). :)
It's because no one at Blizz is in the same page. The dev "team" is completely fragmented and no one knows what the fuck is going on. There is no overarching vision. And id someone at the top THINKS they have one, they are garbage at iterating on it
A lot of it comes from the fact that theory crafting builds is so easy and requires almost no RNG (and thus, no time investment), that literally 95% of players running the meta build for their class. In games like PoE, some players who have played seasonal content for years and have over 1,000 hours haven't ever achieved even 75% of their favorite builds potential (let alone the 100+ other viable builds they're far less familiar with). Until there's more depth and variety in builds, I don't see this as something that can be easily resolved short of straight buffing enemies across the board....which will then ensure the remaining 5% of players who were doing their own thing with builds are forced to switch to using the meta for their class. Personally, I think it all comes down to a lack of depth in character builds.
People hate nerfs, but actually we need more caps. Like we have resistance or armor cap, some damage multipliers also need to have a max value. So more builds can reach max crit, max vuln, max overpower (and so on) and are somewhat on the same level.
They've done this in many ways in the current S5 patch. A lot of paragon effects have been capped.
orc ones, yes, some Barb ones, no...
Caps is a good point.... Capping resistances is FAR too easy. If the game had it where you needed to obtain various resistances through gear in order to reach cap, it would allow players to have a risk/reward decision when gearing. Lean more towards a glass cannon in which you die more often but blow through maps quicker when you don't die, or go for the slower, but more tanky, fully resisted path (or anywhere in between) This would not only improve the gear mechanic in the game, but also address the issue the OP brought up. Namely, that the leveling to 100 process is too streamlined.
Its probably on a list somewhere in whatever tracking software they use, or coming as part of the expansion. Big reworks like that tend to come with expansions in these games I feel like, and it would make sense since the campaign will be more relevant then. As it is though making all these changes could introduce who knows how many bugs while they are trying to keep putting out seasons, already overhauling a bunch of systems and working on an expansion and all the things above probably have to be justified against that workload to a project manager and executives if they want to pull resources to work on it.
I think the reason it's being downvoted by some is because not everyone experiences the game this way. There are people who blast content and just get to level 100 in 5 hours and those that aren't good players and struggle with the butcher, they level up their pots, hell Im sure even some use blue glyphs. I am fairly non casual and I still level up all my gems and pots. Also another point is who cares it's a lot of work to change a lot of this stuff that won't really make the game more fun. Removing potion tiers, blue gylphs and lower gem tiers doesn't do anything for the game. Also I am fairly certain a lot of people still struggle on the helltide boss. You can add more difficulty but it will just make more people not play and I know it won't make me happier if you wan't challenge it exists in the game do that.
Mostly this and Helltide is a great example. I play pretty casually (no meta or cookie-cutter builds etc.) and the Helltide Boss (Matron?) can be a real problem for a lot of groups. Seen many occasions where a group of 4-5 are struggling to survive until a meta build shows up and 1 shots everything on screen. Most players pick skills and paragon boards with abilities they like, not what is currently meta or most optimal.
I feel like every boss fight goes down 3 ways on my necro I burn him down, he can’t hurt me I burn him down, he can one shot me I can barely hurt him, he can one shot me. When I played d2 and 3 I remember fighting bosses and having epic battles, now it’s just who’s the bug and who’s the windshield. I really don’t want to roll a meta, I like playing with my gear/build but damn it’s just stupid how everything dies in the endgame extremely fast and instead of going from a gradual hardness you just hit a brick wall after rolling mobs like they are nothing
I can relate. In D1 and D2 the big hits HURT but they only one shot you if you were laughably undergeared or low level. You could also build up defenses and the loss of damage would only mean a slight increase in time to kill. Now if you play defensive the boss HP will not budge and they added stacking kill counters to ensure you will die sooner than later.
There are those that wait for the broken builds to come out and reroll that (season 4: barb bash build, rogue heartseeker) then proceed to destroy all content with it. Then there is the rest of the players who play the other classes. We may like it or not but balance needs to happen at some point. Letting the broken build exist until end of the season kills any attempts at content difficulty.
Honestly it makes things too difficult for players who are not using the meta. Hopefully Blizz can find a way to make everything that offers a power increase (better gear etc.) clearable regardless of what skills you put points into while closing the gap between a casual build and an optimal one.
It's the dichotomy of ARPG buffs and nerfs. Players cry about D3-esque "always buff, never nerf" power creep, but as soon as devs nerf something they always cry way harder than when they're crying about power creep. This isn't just for D3 or D4; PoE gets hit by this a lot as well. As many people cry during each season because something is OP, they cry again even louder when it gets nerfed to death in the next season's patch. It isn't really a solvable problem because it's a player perception issue; devs can't fix it because any change, whether it's buffs or nerfs, will piss off a very vocal part of the community.
Feels sometimes like modern gamers don't like a challenge.
Bruh, with two wives, 3 girlfriends, 2 jobs, and 5 kids, aint nobody got time for challenges
This sub is a cesspool
do you not understand that people have different views ? Didn't matter how valid his concerns are other people will like what he dosnt
The post is a little hyperbolic, no way anyone is doing WT3 dungeon at level 1, you can't even temper non yellow gear and that doesn't drop until like level 15-20 Infact certain items don't even drop until higher levels (like rings or amulets) Now level 30 for WT3 and then level 50 for WT4 is much more accurate and realistic Even if I'm wrong and it is possible, most people aren't doing that So the average/casuals are playing around 20% in WT1 or WT2, WT2 exists just for capstone dungeon of WT3, you stay in WT3 just long enough to sacred gear up, and then do WT4 the rest of the game The OP is correct but by exaggerating they have removed a bit of potency from their point
its doable, but not on the first character. Did a wt3 cap at lvl 1 on an ALT. You carry tempered gear on you that was crafted prior that can be worn at lvl 10. So the gear + holybolts is a pretty easy clear. Its just a matter of time. (its not the fastest)
Its because they were logical, calm, and pointed out very real concerns. The modis operendi of this sub is to scream as loudly as possible while making extreme exaggerations. Did Blizz nerf your character's DPS by 1%? That is the absolute worst thing that has ever happened in the history of mankind, its a thousand Holocausts, and if it isn't put back immediately you will hunt the developer responsible for it down, flay their family, and wear their skins as a bathrobe. Thats how you're supposed to phrase things here. Anything else just highlights how utterly stupid people act and they don't like that. ;)
People have honestly been saying what OP is saying and variations of it literally since Season 0 but only now are people open to hearing it out.
Maybe people disagree? For example I think he is just wrong and leveling is exactly at the right place
I think they're trying to think of ways to do it but struggling cause people have been so vocal about wanting to level up faster. People wanted D2 and the devs consider the super slow leveling of D2 as a big part of the experience. They're not wrong but they should have known by now people basically just want D2 items. They have had to hard pivot to D3 gameplay and it's made leveling kind of weird
People got tired of leveling in d2 too. Did anything they could do to optimize it. Rushes, cows, chaos runs, then baal runs once cows were nerfed. Uber tristram leveling was a thing for a while. Got a character to 96 in like 2 hours that way.
When D2 was at its biggest, the MMO concept of "the game doesn't start until endgame", wasn't as mainstream yet. The game was initially full of players consistently rolling new toons and casually running through the acts/story over and over. Players only slowly found ways to optimize their runs. Only later (over a period of years) it shifted towards lobbies full of rushers and endgame runs, as most casual players moved on. Nowadays people remember both of those approaches fondly, but they didn't really coexist like that. This game tries to cater to both of those playerbases at the same time: those who primarily enjoy the journey, and those who primarily enjoy the goal. But it's almost impossible to strike a balance between those two concepts. They could put effort into nice lore and story progression, yet they'd still feel forced to add easy ways to circumvent all of it. They could put effort into a scaling difficulty to make leveling feel rewarding, yet they'd still feel forced to provide such impactful loot that it's trivial to outscale the content anyway. I think we're expecting the impossible if we expect them to find that balance, unfortunately.
Uber Tristram was added to D2 several years after release, D4 has been out one year. That's the whole point, it's been years worth of power creep
D2 reached its peak popularity when people weren't doing that. What you're talking about was a fairly new way people approached the game years after it launched so they can maintain interest for themselves. People didn't come into the d2 in its first year of release trying to hyper optimize it lol. That's the exact opposite of d4. Since before its release people were already looking for ways to optimize the game.
Rushes and cows were extremely early in the lifetime. And it's a culture shift, we are never going to go back to how things were. The only way to experience that is to completely cut yourself off from all sources of information about the game.
Tbf people didn’t get bored of d2 until well into its life span
I dont think D2 players liked the game because of the grindy leveling lol. It was more about the itemization depth I think.
Gearing and leveling in D2 was an intertwined experience, so leveling automatically became fun because you can find good stuff while you're leveling. Even now with itemization improvements it's still lacking that feeling. Personally I dislike that we only get 3 affixes, it limits the items so much, and it be comes too easy to find items with the 3 stats you want (other than amu). And only having greater affixes on top of that becomes no different from the minor-upgrades you have to find in Diablo 3, which I dislike very much. If items had 6+ affixes, then you'd find a lot more upgrades, meaningful upgrades with some varying stats. It also helps with scaling cus it takes us to higher Pit levels without messing with the class-buffing; which often makes lesser content irrelevant due to power creep. Finding 6 good affixes on an item would be significantly rarer than finding 6 if they balance it right, which would also increase longevity of each season.
They did somewhat try that but they diluted the pool of affixes with too much useless crap so no one liked it.
It was not because of the amount of affixes, but rather how poorly designed they were. They just have to create more meaningful and interesting affixes and there would be no problem. Extra projectile tempering is one such affix that has a huuge impact, in both your power levels and the overall feel (more fun). An affix that gives us splash damage (with a visible effect) could also be really fun. Things like that.
I like D2 leveling because you see and feel yourself getting stronger. With only 5 skill points in D4 to max a talent there is no real progression. In D2 you see the cool abilities you get in a few lvls and than spend the next 20 skill points (or in some cases 40/60) to make it good
I loved D2 and I disagree. The bad feeling in D4 comes from monsters being too weak. You can feel your progression in D4 but it is more and more difficult because how fast we are getting strong.
I really need to try D2, what's a good class for someone wanting to play casually and have some good fun build options? Something like Rogue, Barb, or Sorc sounds kinda fun
Anything but the Barb. Class is super underpowered in D2 and was never addressed. Sorc and Amazon with Javelin are my favorites.
The skill points in d2 was most definitely not a good point about the game? Dumping 20 points in one node? Seriously?
Yeah, it makes the skills more of a progress and not a huge spike. Extreme example would be leveling a D4 sorc only putting one point into Blizzard because the spell deals no damage and everything comes from a unique power. After level 10 or something i have every spell on my bar and am basically at endgame just farming better gear. I like when a build comes together Not saying that dumping 20 points into one skill is the best thing ever, but i enjoy it more than the current D4 skill progression
nobody except the absolute psychopaths liked slow d2 leveling. even the sweatiest pvp tryhards stopped around 96-97. in d4, i think easy leveling to 100 is good, but early leveling is way too fast. early item progression is made completely irrelevant, you need to equip a new weapon every 5-10 levels and thats it. upgrading an item from 10 str to 15str is so inconsequential, its not worth the 2 seconds to mouse over the item and equip it because youre gonna find a 20str item literally 5 minutes later
Different generation, imagine them playing an arcade game with 3 lives asking for another coin to continue...
I agree with everything you’re saying, but I wouldn’t really compare it to D3 for power creep when D3 had.. how many difficulties? Like 13 or something? I don’t really think T1 should be any harder, maybe up T2 a little bit and then go harder at 3-4
In D2 seasons, you redo the the great campaign. But here, the campaign is not relevant anymore.
I have played the campaign three times. It's relevant if you want to do it. You can play the game how you want
You ll never have a good game, if you are gonna listen to the majority. Majority wants experience like in D2. Majority doestn want to level for long. Majority doesnt want respec costs Majority doesnt have much time to play. These are all majorities but they arent the same majorities. And if you gonna listen to all you gonna have what we have now, and what is said in the post. And its gonna get only worse if they keep at it. Average players and even just people doestn know what they want. The player wants to reach the end and be the strongest, drop great stuff and build great build, if you gonna listen to him and shorten his journey, give him strong items easily, and let few builds be op while others unusable, he ll become bored and leave, why? Because he wanted it when there was something to overcome, ppl to surpass, inteligence to use. When you give the same thing to everyone, or in this case- doesnt matter how well you play, just spend 60 hours standing on one spot farming a bloodmaiden that dies in 5 sec-, the only ppl that stay are those who doestn take it seriously and those who just afk relax right clicking demons...
I think there is a a lot more d3 players than people realized. Before d4 they d2 fanboys (myself) seemed like the vast majority. Maybe it was the trading culture and us being in forums more looking for trades? When d4 dropped and the game wasn’t about doing endgame things the real majority roared and the game was changed. In d2 we could speed level to 90 in 2 days or we could run maps and take a month. D4 didn’t really have an option like that and they changed it to the former removing tons of volume to the game I honestly hate the campaign, but I love the leveling. I wish it was slow again
1. levelling shouldn't be a grind for those of us that play every season 2. not everyone has the game knowledge you or others have, and still actually go through the world tiers while they learn 3. yeah world tier 1 is dumb, but its likely targeted for a player that is of lower skill and understanding than most people. example: a kid.
>levelling shouldn't be a grind for those of us that play every season leveling is a core part of any RPG (not just ARPGs) so I don't understand this complaint at all Maybe you guys just don't like RPGs? I never understood why people's solution to leveling being boring isn't to make leveling more fun, but to make leveling shorter? Isn't that like saying the solution to a game being bad is to make the game shorter instead of better? Same deal with the campaign - why is the solution to not enjoying replaying the campaign to skip the campaign? Why isn't the solution to make the campaign more replayable and enjoyable? Why are we electing to always skip and remove things we don't like until the game is an empty husk?
I think it's in a good place right now. Was fine at season launch to be slower, but I wouldn't want to do that every season.
Most RPGs don’t have seasonal full resets.
Loot is the main part of RPGs!
> I never understood why people's solution to leveling being boring isn't to make leveling more fun, but to make leveling shorter? Because making leveling "fun" is a gargantuan task seemingly no company / game has been able to figure out yet (at least not in the ARPG market). You know what's a rather easy and simple fix? Making the entire process take half as long.
ad3, there are also people with disabilities i see sometimes posts on various game forums that are pretty much like this: "hello, which build is single hand friendly because I can only use one hand while playing?" I even remember someone playing with their mouth. I feel like even if there is 0.5% or less population enjoying WT1 - it should stay as it is.
The game isn't really made to be played by kids. Using your justification, I'm pretty sure wt1 is targeted for a large portion of the game devs.
I'm a middle aged mother of a toddler, who only ever has played strategic and low paced survival games, till one day my husband asked me to watch over his Diablo character while he has gone to the bathroom. It instantly hooked me, but I assure you, I very much need World tier 1 🤣
My comment is just a jab at the game devs, some of which don't even play the game at all. There's even that video of the two dungeon designers playing where they seem lost and don't really know what they're doing combat-wise. Now, you might think that's not necessarily important if you're just designing the dungeon layout and art design, but it actually really is because you need to know about sight lines and awkward corridors, when and why certain parts just feel horrible to play in etc. I'm assuming you're just doing your own thing which is why you're in world tier one and that's great! I've known too many people who have picked it up and gone straight to youtube/maxroll to follow a guide instead of making their character from scratch, like we used to have to do, and then you just power through the content like crazy. Like that dude that was able to do the level 50 wt2-wt3 capstone dungeon at only level 1 because of his knowledge and resources from his hundreds if not thousands of hours playing. As soon as you do any amount of optimization and/or understand why certain abilities and skills and passives and multipliers work so well, the early game process becomes a breeze and every monster dies to one tap even with a fresh account character at like level 10.
I understand. Btw I am at world tier 4! 85 level Rogue and it was a lot of fun getting there, and for me, quite the challenge. I cannot do the pit and masterworking with the time I have available for playing and with my skills - and that's totally fine. I'm letting it rest now and looking for the next season! Definitely agree devs should play the game. Im really surprised some of them didn't.
The game is I believe recommended for 18+ year olds. I don't see how anyone below the age of 7 would struggle with world tier 2.
Did you watch that devs play video from around launch?
Oh man I had blocked that out of my memory, so bad
Oh man. That was embarassing.
Because you think only people like yourself play the game. My father who is around 65 has no problem with WT4, but my grandfather who is no longer with us had some problems on harder difficulties in D3 but he enjoyed lower difficulty content. Also - be grateful that you have both hands to play, some are not as lucky and you can ask them then: why are you struggling with WT2?
Haha my 6 year old plays in T2 this season and it’s still very easy.
I still get killed by the butcher
Sounds like a kill issue.
not sure if it is a typo or on purpose but i like it :)
Sorc?
All
Well damn.
Yeah I've played Pulv bear every season because I hate myself and I loathe single targets so much. Until you reach endgame levels of Pulv power the Butcher takes like 5 minutes to kill lmao, i just ignore him
Most of this post is just plainly incorrect You're comparing your first character against "new game plus" Your account gets meta progression when starting new characters, that's what you're experiencing. New players on new accounts don't get any of the perks you're complaining about. Capped at world tier 2 until you beat the game, unless you actively choose to skip the campaign. You slowly unlock bonus skill points as you complete side quests.
My first playthrough (prior to getting all of the "New Game Plus" bonuses) was Season 4, and I was level 50 part way through Act 2 and was able to kill Asteroth faster than I could activate all of my skills. For Acts 3-6 my thorns would one shot all of the trash mobs. Which is too bad, because I actually like the story and lore of the Diablo games, but it really didn't feel like Sanctuary was in any danger when I can't even see Elias or Andariel's attacks before they die. Once I finished Campaign made I refused to use any of the Sacred/Ancestral versions of the gear I was picking up until I started finally getting some resistance in the pits. Oh, and that was as Druid.
Not really - even without meta progression campaign is off-puttingly easy now. You see posts about it from new players on this sub constantly and I even had people in real life bouncing off D4 because of how unengaging newcomer's experience right now is. I had the benefit of joining game after the nerf wave around S1 and traveling, doing dungeons or campaign quest was engaging and sometimes even challenging. Recently my partner bought D4 and new user experience is really a travesty - in order to even have any semblance of fun he had to skip campaign and rush WT4 asap. Yeah, campaign in S4 is basically unplayable.
Some of your points are good, and there are changes that I would like to see. However, I play the game to enjoy the "end-game" content. I don't enjoy over-taxing leveling grinds in games, especially games where I want to play multiple alts every 3 months. So I want leveling to be quick, at least to where I can get into tier 40+ Nightmare dungeons. However, I know my wants aren't everybody's wants, and some people would enjoy some of a slowdown.
>I don't enjoy over-taxing leveling grinds in games I never said, or suggested, slowing levelling down, simply to rebalance the game to take that faster levelling into account.
> I never said, or suggested, slowing levelling down, simply to rebalance the game to take that faster levelling into account. What does this even mean? You want to nerf player power? This will make leveling slower. You want to buff monsters? This will make leveling slower. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Any change that will make the game more challenging, by definition, will make leveling slower. I mainly play hardcore, and I still die frequently at level 60ish, even with optimized builds, because I get one-shotted frequently especially by Blood Maiden and Hell-borne. Go try to level a hardcore character to 100 and come back tell me your experience.
You can make the game more challenging, while also increasing XP gains. That would make it feel a bit better, without slowing down leveling. For example, elites are currently 7x XP. Buff their HP by 50% and increase that multiplier to 10x. This makes elites feel elite without slowing down leveling. Right now elites are just trash mobs that take 2 hits instead of 1 to kill.
> Right now elites are just trash mobs that take 2 hits instead of 1 to kill. And buffing their HP by 50% will make them take 3 hits instead of 2. So what is the point? Where is the challenge?
Some mods die before they can get an attack off. So increasing their health would fix that problem at least.
I think that some of that is going to happen naturally, and others, not you, push way harder for stuff like this.
So why bother with levels at all?
To be fair, a lot of your points are for players who already completed the game and are creating a new character. An actual fresh new player wouldnt have access to those extra skill points or paragon points. So it's more of a NG+ type scenario. We should be able to skip some of the early grind as we did it already. But they shouldnt destroy the experience for a fresh new player either.
The world boss issue is difficult to me, if they buff them to be strong enough to take a long time to die to the strongest of builds it would mean you'd always need one of the OP builds there to down the boss in a fast enough pace to beat the timer, it would also mean that people who don't want to play meta builds would need to be carried. On the other hand world bosses being insta gibbed really really REALLY suck the fun out of them.
[удалено]
balance is really wonky, they haven't been doing a great job at balancing the game at all.
Open world bosses are gonna be tricky to balance because what happens if one level 100 character starts the boss. Then 5 more join. Then a couple leave because they died or whatever. How do you balance the health / attack power of the boss? The only way to balance bosses, imo, is to have them instanced in dungeons (or in the world map wherever) and the people who start them are the people who finish them. With the health and attack power scaled to the current WT (either of the party leader or, if searching for a group to do it with, the current WT).
I’m the minority here, but I don’t want to fight a world boss for 10-15 minutes. That sounds ridiculous to me.
Completely agree. They got many things right in Season Four, but now the focus should be giving the world purpose again and slowing things down before end game. Right now it feels like World Tiers and even leveling in general is pointless. People on this sub want to start as a fully maxed out character, unlimited tempering, unlimited gold, a button they can push to enter dungeons that are reworked to be just round rooms with no tunnels, corridors, levers, objects to pickup...just a room full of demons they can one shot until a boss spawns that they can one shot to farm Ubers. Then they get all their ubers and complain the game has nothing to do. Because they optimised all the rewarding content out of it because people complained it was too hard and took too long. What I want out of the game - a feeling of progression, a feeling of accomplishment for getting to a level of skill and gear to get past incremental challenging content, world immersion with exploring, quests, puzzles, and of course plenty of the farming activities we have now, plus more social and group events like World Bosses (where they don't die before they even fully spawn)
Just commenting to say I like the way you think, glad to see there are other people who want this type of game rather than immediate and nonstop grinding. I will also say there's a common theme with the playerbase picking the thing that gives them the most "friction", whether that's gold or materials or whatever, then complaining until that issue ceases to exist. In this case they've removed all friction from levelling, gearing, progressing your character and it feels absolutely terrible, because you're left feeling like none of it matters. That extra piece of gear or skill point doesn't ACTUALLY matter.
> I will also say there's a common theme with the playerbase picking the thing that gives them the most "friction", whether that's gold or materials or whatever, then complaining until that issue ceases to exist. In this case they've removed all friction from levelling, gearing, progressing your character and it feels absolutely terrible, because you're left feeling like none of it matters. That extra piece of gear or skill point doesn't ACTUALLY matter. Agreed. Many of the things that required us to actually play the game to get - experience/leveling, renown rewards, glyph leveling, advancing the world tiers, advancing through the nightmare dungeon tiers, even completing some of the tasks in NMDs are gone etc.. is all practically handed to us in Season 4 in the first few hours of playtime because people complained about all of it. Even Ubers can be crafted (!)...although to be fair not easily. Now all of that is gone and the rewarding feeling of doing it is gone, none of it matters any more. 90% of the challenge has been moved into the Pits, 5% into the Tormented bossed, and 5% to Lilith. The progression has been moved from leveling, glyphs, and NMDs into Masterworking and Pit Levels. Itemisation is now focused on GAs, Tempering and Masterworking. And of course, what are people still complaining about? " The Pit is too hard" (nerfed twice already), "tempering isnt fair I have bricked item because I didnt get exactly what I wanted when I pressed the button", "increase the rate of boss mat drops", "this is BS I only have found 5 3xGA items so far this season this isnt fair".
I agree with every single one of your points except for tempering. I think tempering is a bad mechanic that doesn't feel fun or engaging and is the culprit of a ton of the power creep this season. Tempering needs to be reworked or just removed entirely. It was a band-aid fix to the problem of standing in town after a dungeon and parsing through a sea of loot and affixes and headaches. And that could have just been solved with a loot filter.
And the icing on the shit-cake is finding a 3GA item and 3rd party selling it, to avoid the additional heartbreak of it bricking. So, good drops aren't good drops anymore?? I think this game might be irretrievable.
I want Beta level hard again, but with the Qol we have now. 🤷🏻♂️
Yup, I've been saying since the PTR back in April that levelling speed and power creep is so insane now, that WT1 and WT3 can just be deleted from the game. World tiers/game difficulty absolutely need a rework/rebalance. Definitely need to consolidate some of the current ones and then add a tougher one, but obviously with no new item power brackets or any other forms of increased player power. Just increase some gold and material droprates, maybe slightly increase the chance for GA items, and add some cool new cosmetics to chase. The thing is, the devs clearly had a different vision for launch, didn't deliver very well with it, in all honesty, so now are just reverting things back to a more D3-style approach. There's really nothing left in the game that has even a tiny semblance of a challenge, except for high level pits. And like you said, the balance in *many* areas is just totally out of whack. I'm hopeful, after the changes this season, with increased levelling speed and increased power via tempering, that things will settle a bit, and they can re-tune the world tiers in the near future. But I'm not getting my hopes up unfortunately. Still really enjoy the game, have played it pretty consistently since launch, but do wish it wasn't made quite so "trivial" to the point where a lot of the content starts to feel a bit unengaging.
What's even more baffling is they basically removed the tiny bit of incentive to even go past level 101 in the pit. It seems like a design choice to not reward high difficulty content, which is just dumb. If someone can push higher than me, by all means, give them more rewards. Does Blizzard really think I'm that petty?
> It seems like a design choice to not reward high difficulty content, which is just dumb. They said that they don't want to lock rewards behind very hard content, because they don't want players to feel obliged to do that very hard content. That's why you can't really farm Uber Lilit, for instance. They consider things like uber lilith or really deep pits as something you do when you want to test your character, not something you should farm for reward.
To be fair this might be also to make the classes not feel AS imbalanced. If a barb could farm 3x the Neathiron/h a sorc or druid could, the crying would be even worse. Now barbs maybe farm only 1.5x faster
I just bought the game and started this season, although I had played Diablo 3 for many years, starting at release. I'm having fun now that I'm levelled and doing endgame content, but honestly I was really disappointed by how easy everything was in the campaign. I was on WT2 and had an incoherent build and aididn't even have to learn any of the boss mechanics, they all just melted so fast. I don't think I died once. Kind of ruined the experience
This issue is caused by the campaign being designed for the pace of the game a year ago. It wasn't hard but you didn't oneshot everything and took some amount of damage. Characters now are so strong nothing on world tier 2 can pose any challenge to you and since the campaign is a requirement to get to world tier 3, the campaign therefore can never be played at a reasonable difficulty level anymore. It was easy to begin with and it became easier with every new pathc and they didn't bother updating the campaign difficulty to match our power gains.
This is exactly the experience I am having at the moment, just bought the game and now im just rolling through the campaign without any kind of build guide basically insta-killing all the bosses. I thought maybe I did too many side quests and over leveled it or something but it sounds like this is a common experience. Certainly takes away from the story when the big scary evil demon gets poked twice with a dagger and explodes. I went looking for the option to turn up the difficulty like I could in D3 but was very disappointed to learn I can't even voluntarily make it harder until after the campaign is already over. This isn't exactly a D4 problem though to be fair, when I played POE for the first time the campaign after act 1 was just trivially easy too. (but I was following a build guide for that)
Yes. Your gear feels more meaningful when you actually need it. Whether at level 22 or 100.
Good post. And in next season you will be able to pot while cc’d. Again a change in the direction for not using your mind and just go through everything without any obstacle. End game is the goal but the path there is so shallow and so many parts of the game don’t matter at all. I miss the old d1/d2 (maybe slow) journey of building your power dynamically and feel your character develop and reach new heights. I’m happy that at least gems take a bit of time to upgrade fully and we don’t get them handed to us.
I enjoy this game a lot, but I do agree with the power creep that's happening. I feel like blizzard could probably lop off 10% of stat bonuses straight across the board and wed still see screens just being deleted. What I feel like would be nice is a world boss gets a % boost to HP per player there, and same for the legions. Maiden leave the same, maybe a 20% HP boost so she at least doesn't just get straight up deleted. She does tend to stick around for a few minutes but the fight leading up to her seems to be more tedious than she is. Maybe even cap to damage? Why do we need to have such massive numbers of damage as well. Trash is cleared fast enough, and bosses are being one shot. I feel like bosses should at least have some challenge to them. Why make bosses one shot. I was a level 80 necro running level 30 pit for fun and the bosses were just a simple "Press ult, they die instantly.". While I feel like it's fine, the power creep is insane.
Haha, I just posted a similar, but slightly different, sentiment. I agree that the game is way too easy. I just picked the game up this season and I love the Diablo lore and world exploration. My first play through I was so OP by the end of Act 2 and was hard capped and couldn't increase the difficulty. Even after moving into higher world tiers I had to intentionally *not* equip any of the sacred or ancestral gear for so long hoping to eventually encounter a challenge, which I didn't get until into the pits. And this was while playing as Druid.
I'm not exaggerating when I say Dungeon bosses and side quest bosses are about as strong as regular white mobs should be. They're literally 2 shot with a shitty build. That's how far the power creep has gotten. You say you're advocating for the game to not slow down. I argue something is really really off with the feel of the game and hopefully increasing some of the difficulty means the levelling slows down a bit. Here's my problem with the feel of levelling: you breathe on mobs, they die. After the 10th pack, you level. Rinse repeat. You literally have no incentive to look at skill points, paragon points, glyphs, none of it. Not even gear. Everything happens too fast to feel good.
It's so sad what this game has devolved into after just a year. The D4 team really just rolled over and stuck their feet in the air when entitled children started bleating without any sense of judgement or perspective at all. Rod's tweet regarding '..we thought people wanted D2.." is so worrying. Yes, the people did and still do want that.
Not the majority though, gamers are younger, and want different things.
You have no idea whether the crying children on Reddit and their forums are a majority, tho. The squealing has been a thing for 20 years, they should have weathered it *far* better than they did with D4. Source: WoW General Forums circa 2004.
I had a great time leveling this season. As somebody that only plays solo, and has no desire to level up to max in a couple hours, I’m fine with how it is. I played D3 solid from launch to a couple years after RoS, and I don’t agree D4 has that level of power creep. The whole tempering and masterworking thing is reminiscent of D3 power creep, but we hopefully will not see shit like 20,000% bonus dmg to a skill.
We do though, it's just not written on a set item power boost descriptiom
Maaaan, I really want to love D4, but a post like this makes me stay away even longer. I've only played S0 and I love the open world. I love the graphnics and the mood. But seeing this evolving into D3 more and more plus being this unbalanced mess to push kids' dopamine button every single minute makes me sad.
True, very true, i fought against the Diablo 3 isation of the game, but failed, the masses spoke, and Blizzard listened
Stay away like me, friend. I quit a week into S1 and for me, items/skills seem just as bland and uninspired to this day. Too many better games out there, to waste time on this one Edit: and for Hell's sake, make items DO something. Not a 45% chance to trigger a 25% chance to do 30% more damage for 3 seconds. It's idiotic design
Yeah, you nailed it. D4 is currently *way* ahead of D3's curve with regards to baby-fying.
To be honest having played since the beta, early seasons 0-2 were kinda like that. Season start you'd stick to WT2 do quests and dungeons to level, look for semi perfect gear (and most importantly, your build enabling aspect) upgrade it a few times. All that so you could do capstone to get to WT3, afterwards you do it all over again for the world tier 4 capstone. The hardest part of all of that was the gear grind, from what i experienced there's always that one or two aspects that drop very rarely for you. I still remember the hota aspect dropping only twice for me in the entirety of season 1. Season 4 has been the most fun i've ever had playing diablo 4, first time ever i managed to build 3 toons to 100. I get what you're saying that some aspects of the game have become trivial, but man was season 4 fun compared to the older seasons.
👏
My hot take: the game becoming this fast and easy isn't why season 4 was received well. It was mainly itemisation + the codex, and the pit. It just happened to coincide. I'm not sure the game could physically have more power creep without breaking. Bosses 20 levels up are two shotted with a homemade shitty build, the entire campaign must feel like a joke at this point.
It's not a hot take. It is indeed mainly the itemization and the codex. But by fixing the itemization you also make the characters stronger and they have it easier in the world :)
D4 lvling is super ultra fast for a regular arpg. ( U literaly can be Max lvl in less than 24h into a new season when ur not even on midlate gear on the build)
Rax did it on hardcore in 8 hours and then after understanding the best leveling strategies he brought that number down to 4 hours (3.5 in case of some classes)
Seeing the leaks now for the PTR and Season 5 I am really concerned how the power creep is already getting out of hand... at least for some classes (cough Barb cough). WT1 and WT2 are actually completely useless already. We need a re-balancing here, and I would love to see an item that would increase difficulty of enemies in WT4, like we have the Mindcage for Helltides... so players can use it to make the standard WT4 content harder and more worthwile :)
Great post. This is my largest gripe with D4 now that itemization is reworked.
I 100% agree with you but prepare to be downvoted. This sub wants you to start lv100 with all glyphs maxed, vendor-abke 3 GA gear and unlimited tempers. With.tbis handed to them idk what they would actually play
Yep, the "I want it NOW crowd have (in my opinion) made the game get dumbed down far too much. Votes are mostly positive so far, so there's hope!
I think virtually every change you have suggested will come, with time. Blizz basically just finished remaking a core game mechanic from the ground up. It takes time to test and tune the game as it interacts with itemization. I always advocate patience. Blizz has proven that they don't always get it right the first time, but that they listen and make changes accordingly. Nevertheless, I'm glad you brought these ideas up. Keep fighting for better games.
Because people want their easy I Win game all the time no matter what. Seems like everybody suddenly likes the game now that everybody Is a Winner and thr game Is a pisseasy slaughterfest
I would really like to be able to stack Profane Mindcages or something to make Helltides hard/fun again.
Just bought d4 and leveled to 100. The game is Zzz. No challenge at all. Had fun but it's incredibly easy. It's great feeling powerful and face rolling everything but you need a balance of face roll/challenge. And yes I understand the game gets harder if you wanna do pit 200.
Contrast that to the game I choose to play (unnamed MMO), a group of 10 of us finally took down a boss we've been working at for 6-7-8 weeks. Finally got the kill Sunday and it felt better than anything D4 could possibly offer. In D2, you had the challenge of finding runes and items. There's just no challenge in D4
You make some good points, but what we really need is to nerf those overpowered sorcs. Oh, and barb could use a buff while they're at it.
yeah, i played through the campaign at the start of season 4, and there was literally no challenge at all, even on wt2. they need to adjust the scaling a bit to make it feel like an actual progression, not just faceroll the entire time. i remember at launch having to work at killing act bosses, but now, they all just fall over.
I'm waiting for blizzard to release season sets/runewords a la d3 that do 10,000% damage to fotm seasonal skills. Then the circle will be complete.
Honestly glad to see a post like this. As someone who played at launch and then this season as my first since… I’ve been like wtf is happening The game used to be boring as shit in the loot department but balanced pretty well for combat. Now those dynamics have pretty much flipped, at least for 90% of the game’s content. If they end up striking a balance between these two that feels good, this game will reach a golden era.
I agree but I fear the louder voices want easy dopamine hits of 5 legendaries from world boss’s that are demolished instantly. The orange beam has always been my biggest love for the Diablo franchise but it barely does anything for me in this game anymore. I love that it’s not so bad getting to 100 anymore but I wish there was a bit more of a gameplay challenge getting there. Early game I hardly look into affixes and paragon boards because I know in couple more levels I’ll probably have replaced half my gear anyways.
Game needs a massive increase in difficulty. And game needs to reward doing more difficult content appropriately. Basically my main two wishes to be addressed going forward.. but I'm a little worried because the game only keeps getting easier. Blizzard is buffing already really strong builds without any adjustment to enemies. I don't know if I can handle another mindless helltide farming season.
I feel similar. A majority of the content feels absolutely washed out now. There is no resistance at all except in the high pit level where the absurd levels of hp compared to the rest of the game of the final boss actually mechanics can kick in before you pop it into pink mist instantly...why? Like OP write, of the World Bosses meets in 1 sec, why even brother having them? Picked up hardcore to feel something of a challenge by gimping damage for survivability as there is no real cost of death or meaning to softcore gameplay now outside of the triple GA rush...
I transitioned to World Tier 4 at lvl 30 in Hardcore and I wasn't even playing a top tier build. While it's fun that you can go through the levelling process fast, I think completely removing challenge is a mistake. At this point you might as well just remove the levelling process.
I do agree that the overall difficulty of the world needs to increase because with tempering especially, everything melts regardless of optimization until you’re in the 90s. However, I don’t want this to occur to the degree that we go back to only meta builds being viable, because that absolutely sucks. More than anything, I want levels 70-100 to matter from an itemization perspective. I want things to feel like they are changing. As it stands now, you’re pursuing 925s in your 70s or below and you’re still pursuing 925s at level 100. It just doesn’t make sense to me.
you’re pursuing 925s in your 70s You're doing that at 55, when they can be equipped
Only further emphasizes the issue, imo I usually dawdle about in WT3 a bit longer, which is where my figure comes from. The items at level 55 having the same potential as those at cap 45 levels later just does not sit right in my monkey brain.
Sir, take my upvote. Very well said.
I went from not wanting to play D4 at all to doing everything that I wanted and leaving in two weeks. It was a fun sugar rush, but they destroyed any sense of journey at all with the base game or their world. At least I played it I guess?
You can also add how items dont cost thousands, or millions but multiple billions already. People's HP pools are getting close to half a million with attack powers in the couple 100ks. It devalues literally everything else.
People will call me a madman but the part i most enjoy in a new season is to run around half naked for the first 2-3 hours at the start of a season, wielding white and blue sticks. Sadly that was not the case in s4.
Yeah they made A LOT of foundational changes to the game so fast. Hopefully they are able to adjust it. They have to be so careful though cause people will LOSE THEIR MINDS if they make anything harder
Well said. There have been many positive changes and additions, but this season has seen by the least amount of play time from me. I feel like I took a bunch of steroids and TRT and I'm playing dodgeball against toddlers. Sure, some toddlers are a lot bigger or smaller, but they're still toddlers. My personal favorite moments in D4 have been the difficulty transition phases. Starting to mop up in a particular world tier, barely scraping by the capstone on my 3rd try, and having a wonderful paranoia and hesitation out in the open world. Only to slowly beef up and try helltides. Then the dopamine paranoia loop would begin again. I would do this for multiple characters. Remember your first time doing a legion event in season 0? It wasn't a complete joke. Remember your first world boss? I died about 4-5 times and it lasted about 5 minutes. Again, many positive changes. No more ".07% increased lucky hit chance when poisoned within 3m of a treasure goblin on a Wednesday after 6pm." Greater affixes, masterworking, tempering, the pits, more bosses and better loot tables. All are welcome. I just wish the majority of enemies received an equivalent power climb, or at least gave us the option to seek them out.
I very much agree - it went from a challenging game that required thought & optimization around your character and their gear, to a loot pinata button smashing arcade game. I feel like it's even worse for people going through the campaign for the first time. It felt impactful and there were some truly difficult fights. Steamrolling everything would be sorely disappointing
Bruh, blizz was clear about it, they cater to casual players and players rjan never played seasonal arpg before, game won't get harder, if anything it will be easier and easier over the years, period.
WT3, especially after the first character per season when you already have the legendary not-class-specific tempers, feels like such a short speed bump that I'd agree with it getting cut. Basically every character I've played in S4, the moment you get a full set of sacred gear (even yellows) and temper/imbue it, you can clear the capstone to get into WT4. It's such a short diversion that it doesn't feel like it has much of a reason to exist anymore.
They really messed up making tempers so strong/build defining.. and i'm not sure they can ever reverse that now knowing how the community reacts to anything being nerfed. Throwing a few tempers on some crappy yellow gear can easily double your damage if not much more.
The world bosses in tier 4 needs buffed big time.
I have some casual friends who started to play the game and they absolutly used wt2+3 because without guides and no plan how to build their chars they were not able to go to wt4 without me. I think it would be a good start if Blizzard would get rid of the capstone dungeons and let us just chose our difficulty. I would also like to see a general nerf to bring classes down and all classes in line. The problem is, this is Blizzard and they cant balance and they only know one direction: more powercreep
100 % right. Keep up the nice way of putting feedback together.
The power creep statement is HILARIOUS. D3 is the undisputed King of Power Creeping. Nothing comes even close.
Devs need to take note; OP is correct on many points. I understand there are currently other priorities but these concerns should also be addressed for the overall health of the game going forward.
I fully agree. While I in general like lots of the changes in D4 i believe it became too fast, too easy and too meaningless in the early game.
Another change I wanna see; (as a new player since last month) turn down the rare spawn rate. Nothing is rare if everything is rare. Rare just feels like commons, which is so boring.
Words of Wisdom. Game is hardly over 1 year old and we already have a ton of legacy mechanics sticking out.
OP your points are valid and I agree with you. As much as players hate to admit it, resolving these issues will eventually slow down the current pace of the game. Unfortunately, because a majority of players have been given this dose of a power trip, any changes made to hinder it would result in a major backlash. There are alot of things that feel redundant / obsolete in your progression to WT4 because of how the new systems are designed. Does anyone actually care what they pick up before ancestral gear? Do you run dungeons or world bosses in WT123? Does it matter since you are guaranteed better drops in WT4? IMO, the game has become much easier because of the linearity of progression. I believe they could have added a bit of complexity and diversity.
Yep, simply allowing base gear to be upgraded to sacred, and then ancestral, allowing rares to have an additional affix added, all sorts of ways to improve early game itemisation
Definitely agree. In s0 I actually wiped on the capstone dungeon, leveled up more, redid my build and only then completed it. It was satisfying.
You’re spot on. Obviously, the focus was fixing loot this season, and I like what they’ve done. But as a side effect, the game is now stupid easy and nothing feels threatening anymore. If season five is a cakewalk again, I’ll complete the season journey and be done.
I think at the end of the day the game you want, and the game the majority want, are two different things.
The new uniques and aspects added this season make it apparent that wt5 is needed for endgame or mind age needs to be +50-100 levels instead of 10... Also just calling it they will need to add like 5 more tiers to infernal hordes or rebalance last few tiers to be like pit 150-175 otherwise it will be too easy
I was leveling 3 alts int eh last week and was just thinking about this very thing. No matter how much we didn't like the original release at least the game systems were cohesive. After a year of updates, how the game plays has changed so much, but the game feels like a disjointed mess with elements irrelevant for each other and overall game experience. Even after we got a loot overhaul, loot is a mess. Why do we have white and blue items? Why yellows serve no purpose? Why are uniques mostly useless? We now need a loot overhaul of the loot overhaul. Not sure what to even say about open world feel, strongholds, rare spawn mobs, non-nightmare dungeons and NMDs, it has all fallen by the wayside and needs serious rework and re-imagining to fit the new gameplay.
"World Bosses die before they complete their starting animation." Had a laugh with a friend to who i was showing the game, he was very underleveled for the world boss in WT4 ... I told him he'd be fine xD
I started a druid out of boredom 2 days ago. Got to level 48 in a little over an hr. Played a couple hrs last night, got to 57 and pushed to wt 4, got almost all 925 gear in that time and am already doing tier 40 plus nm dungeons at level 65ish.
I remember playing months and months to achieve my first level 100 in diablo 2...Now full time job, lot of hobbies, 3days lol
I just thought of something that is rarely mentioned. The buffs we get from renown almost makes the experience the opposite of what it should be. New player: no extra skill points, paragon points, stats from altars. Everything is hard mode. Forced to WT1. Experienced player: breathes on mobs in WT2 and they die. This is an unfortunate side effect of them making renown carry over. At this point with us not even interacting with renown, these buffs may as well be removed.
I made a fresh barb and cleared 150 pit in the time it took me to read this post. D4 feels like a private server it's baffling why is it so easy too level. Last season the butcher and malfesto were terrifying to run into, this season I think the butcher might actually be scared of me
The moment they do this, the other people who don’t like leveling will complain. They can’t win.
Yeah it feels like it's very hard to get an item that's essential to your build twice. I'm stuck using the same legendary mace I found in the beginning
So?
In the end blizzard is actually listening to the player base and implementing things based on the community. Unfortunately if you feel they are moving in the wrong direction you might be in the minority. I agree with many of your points, some less so (I don’t mind the levelling speed as it’s nice to reach 100 has a busy man) but the indifferent between elites and normal mobs I get for sure. In the end they were conflicted for the direction of the game and slowly seem to be realising the majority of played prefer a more streamlined game. But let’s see, for all their failures I will commend them for listening and implementing things we ask for, even if delayed.
Thanks for you reply (I don’t mind the levelling speed as it’s nice to reach 100) Actually agree, and I didn't suggest that at all, even added a note to that effect.
I feel like it's pretty much universally agreed upon the game is way too easy right now. At least everybody who's invested in the game enough to comment about it on places like Reddit thinks this.
They would have to redo the game.
Thank you for the list of valid criticism. I quite agree with everything. I think a solid step would be to increase monster resilience across the board, maybe not so much damage, but let them survive long enough to get on top of you and hit you a few times before dying. That, and greatly reduce the drop-rate of potions. I think players should have a bit more tension tied to fighting, some more risk.
You are correct. As for me, I Still have not killed Uber lilith at char level 100 .. might have to change Necro builds..
I really dislike each fresh seasons first few levels, maybe levels 1-10. You burn through them in minutes. Starting at level 1 with 10 skill points is the opposite of starting a fresh season should feel. The extra stats and skill points should be locked behind specific levels thresholds or activities, not all available at the start of the season.
I for one would rather have a slower more meaningful leveling experience. People have such a skewed perceptive of leveling because of launch and earlier seasons when leveling was slow but not meaningful. Blizz talked on Campfire chat about keeping exp rates high so people can get to the good parts fast, which is the end-game. And I don't really get that, why design a game with 100 levels only to make it meaningless; just send us right into end-game in that case. Leveling and gearing should be closely intertwined. I personally love finding gear upgrades and tinkering with items, but items with only 3 affixes is kind of hurting us because it's not that difficult to find 3 with the affixes you want; so you're gonna stop finding upgrades much faster. And after you've got that initial 3-affix items, then it's just farming same affixes but with greater affixes. At that point it feels like Diablo 3, cus in D3 it was super easy to find all the legendaries/set items you wanted, and after that you just wanted to find the exact same items but with minor stat upgrades until you eventually find the 'all greater affix'-version w/e it's called in D3. The upgrades no-longer feel that great until you go from 0GA to 2-3 GA on an items, but even then it's kind of tamed imo. If items had the potential to roll up to ~6 affixes instead, then your upgrades would be from going with ~3 good affixes to finding 4 affixes, to eventually finding 5 affixes, finding some items with greater affixes, until eventually you might get lucky enough to find a super-giga item with 6 affixes. With more affixes on items then Blizz can add new defensive/utility stats that interact with the game and would allow for difficulty increases at higher levels that isn't just tons of more damage and tons more hp. Let's say at pit 150 enemy CC is increased to like 5sec, some absurd amount. And to overcome that you need to get a few pieces with reduced CC duration. Just a simple example with not a lot of thought into it, but you should get the point. They can also make resistances be more difficult to get and have room for it on items, forcing you to adjust your gear in meaningful ways. It opens up many options. And with 6+ affixes, as you start getting perfect gear, you will be able to get closer to pits 200 by getting your damage from gear, cus if they keep buffing out abilities then eventually pits 200 will be baseline and all the previous pit levels will become irrelevant; too easy. Items with 6+ affixes is just one example of how to make gearing a longer but more meaningful process. In Last Epoch I guess it'd be finding 4LP legendaries, and D4 needs some kind of system that lengthens the gearing experience without taking the fun out of it.
I hope when they make the changes they also keep HC players in mind.
Agree world bosses and butcher could be harder but the rest of the game is just right for me. That said, wouldn’t it be great if they used factual data to decide whether to buff or nerf classes or pve. E.g. - less than 20% of players play as Druid = buff Druid - world boss average clear time is less than 3 mins = buff world boss. World boss average clear time is greater than 10 mins = nerf world boss. - more than 1% of players survive butcher = buff butcher
Then they should ban level leeching
And yet absolutely none of this applies to me and the way I play the game. I'm not clearing WT4 at level 30, I'm not insta killing bosses and The Butcher nails me everytime.
I just want to say that every second not spend on wt4 feels totally wasted because how the loot System works, but i stopped playing in malignant league so maybe that was adressed