Diablo 4 is the best DIABLO game but i've now lost interest in the franchise

D4 is NOT a bad game in general. it only becomes bad when additional context is given.

comparatively D4 has excelled over all past diablo games.

1. graphics. modern graphics, good animations. its unfair to compare them but d4 simply is beautiful to look at.

one may argue, oh but the cinematics are lacking. yeah, the entire game only has 2 FMVs. it "balances out" a little by having awesome in game cinematics. sure its no god of war level, but its still damn good.

2. skill/talent/paragon system. they went back to a more D2 styled system where players have limited points and are limited to level 100. i like limits, it makes players make meaningful build choices.

yeah sure you can argue the balance is shit but the concept behind it is really good. its the best system in all diablo games

3. end game. d4 kicks d1 and d2 end game in the ass hands down. i would argue d1 and d2 had no real end game content. perhaps uber diablo was the only real end game content they had. personally d3's endgame was more fun and way less tedious, d4's endgame tho does have variety.

4. itemization and crafting. ok maybe this is where it falls apart a little. there are so many conditional mods, where you get extra damage on every tuesday but only if it rains and when the eye of sauron is looking at your direction. it feels bad. if we're talking about the old d1/2/3 players, d4 itemization is pure shit.

BUT, if you view it from the lens of a new player, a casual/super casual. its much more straightforward. just see the arrows pointing up, use it!

5. campaign and story. for a diablo game its interesting that i cant remember the name diablo mentioned even ONCE in the game. theres even a meme on people finishing the game and asking, who's diablo? i digress. to me i personally feel d1/d2 story is more interesting, but all diablo/arpg storys ultimately are just events that happen to push you to the next. i really dont feel any anticipation. this is not the fault of the game. this is because i am an arpg lover and i want to kill shit more than care about the campaign. that said, d4's campaign is actually good and has depth. we actually connect to NPCs a slight bit. seeing some old faces reappear in d4 really is a nice kick in the feels.

currently i see a lot of hate towards d4. i understand it. despite me saying d4 is a good game and a good diablo game. it is a BAD arpg. i will defend D4 all the way if you want to say its a bad game. it really is not, the reality is if you do not like D4, D4 simply is not for you. i can say the last of us IS a good game, but i have no interest in playing it. does it make it a bad game? no.

quake 3 arena has NO story and is just blasting enemies. is it a bad game? ask someone who plays for the story and they'll say its shit. ask someone who plays only competitive and they'll say its the bomb. i thoroughly loved q3a back then.

i will NOT defend d4 when seen from the perspective of a modern ARPG. there simply are too many out there that does things better. i m seeing influx of new players singing praises of other titles like GD and LE. D4 really is the best thing to happen to ARPG genre.

i would say d4 is a 7/8 out of 10 game
but a 5 or 6 out of 10 ARPG

i initially wanted to boycott the game as i didnt like d3. the thing that brought me to d4 was the devs. the devs constantly posted updates. they shared their ideas and vision. i saw a lot of fire and passion. i knew that the original diablo team, responsible for d1/d2 were long gone. the ones who ran d3 were still around but the ones who were doing d4 were new.

i bought the game as a way to tell the devs, i am SUPPORTING YOU GUYS. sure the money goes to actiblizz and they wont know my intentions but its a little something i wanted to do regardless.

i knew going in that the devs were really green.

its apparent when the dev legit thought that having closed access to their game gave no benefit to those players in a race, ignoring the fact that with closed access, you get to test and try out all classes/builds. optimize the best build. explore all areas and optimize pathing. try fighting bosses and learning their attacks/patterns. thats a HUGE advantage. sure everyone starts of with zero gear, but having such knowledge can give insane amounts of advantage.

but i was still supportive. its stupid, but i chalked it up to the devs being green.

the first crack in my trust happened when the devs announced they were disqualifying everyone who participated in the closed access from participating in the event. this made me feel disappointed in many ways. for starters, its a knee jerk reaction. its simply unfair. its a punishment for people who did nothing wrong. another reason why i felt it was bad was because despite barring all these people. it still isnt fair for the playerbase.

why? coaching is a thing. knowledge sharing is a thing. the knowledge gained is still valuable. a player could pay one of the closed access players to gain coaching/insight on how to play efficiently. or the closed access players could share the knowledge with his guildies/close friends and have them gain advantage instead.

on top of that, many streamers were handing a perfect solution to the devs on a silver platter. just delay this race until the first season/ladder.

the devs were tonedeaf to this solution. it made me wonder, are they so green that they cant see the value in delaying it? everyone would be on equal footing. OR. could it be uppermanagement's decision.

the devs can be as passionate all they want. but ultimately if actiblizz asks them to bend over, they have to.

with the recent season/patches and dev talks. it really feels that the devs are now a husk of their former selves.

gone are their spark. their passion.

one simple question that was asked. what made them decide to make the exiting dungeon time increase a few seconds? they answered with a non answer.

i do not know for certain how much of it is due to their inexperience or is it due to "upper management".

but one thing that i m certain of is i have lost interest.

MS's involvement could be a good thing. it could improve the game. but it is too late.

i've checked out. d4 might be the last actiblizz game i played/purchased. i played it for a good 1-3 weeks and i m done.

i still would recommend it to new players. its like fast food. but if you want something more rich, d4 isnt it. it's really fitting that d4 partnered with kfc to promote their game.

and thats my 2cents on the game. i really hope for the best for the devs. my support for them now is purely moral support and nothing more further than that.

in the current state its a mess, but has a lot of potential. its ok as a filler, until poe2 is out. if they fix a lot of issues until the end of year we maybe can non-stop play diablo and poe.

what i really dont like is all the mmo shit, like the horse. the open world ok but its useless.

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Latze wrote:

in the current state its a mess, but has a lot of potential. its ok as a filler, until poe2 is out. if they fix a lot of issues until the end of year we maybe can non-stop play diablo and poe.

what i really dont like is all the mmo shit, like the horse. the open world ok but its useless.

when they first revealed their intention to have mmo aspects, i HATED it.

as someone who played ARPGs mostly single player i really hate forced multiplayer

it started in d3, where they had bounties, in order to get a special reward you needed to complete 5(?) quests in different regions.

you could definitely do it alone, but the best way was to have a full party of 4, each person doing 1, if you completed 1, you're supposed to help the others complete the one theyre doing. this repeats till all 5 quests were done. this cuts down the time needed to get the bounty reward by a huge amount.

in d4 its no different there are many "fetch a key in opposite sides of the map" quests.

what's worse is world bosses. sure you can do it solo, but it will be much more harder.

even in regular "mapping", if you play solo, if you die, you lose "a portal". but in a party, a teammate can revive you so you dont "lose portals". its HUGE. if you died solo, you had to run all the way back from the entrance of the map.

i also dislike the horse. they could have buffed our movespeed or made more portals. NO use a horse. which has cooldowns. which has a stupid "run faster if your mouse is at the edge of the screen". gets stuck on minor obstacles.

when youre finally enjoying the horse ride, you get blocked by a bloody barricade that forces you to dismount to remove it.

so yeah as an ARPG i really dislike it.

I don't think D4 is a bad game but I think comparing it to D2 20 years shouldn't be in the least bit fair and yet I still consider D2 a better arpg simply due to far superior itemization - D4 itemization is convoluted but ultimately shallow.

D3 vanilla had more build diversity than D4 due to 5 runes on each skill vs a convoluted but shallow skill tree.

There's also a fuckton of cynical (often predatory) tactics aimed at maximizing profits which will always undermine the potential quality of the game: Marketing blitz with a rushed and incomplete game, battlepass/fomo seasons with a sprinkling of dark pattern strats, no diablo in a diablo game (will he be in expansion 1, 2 or 3 based on the molasses story pace?)

But yes, it looks prettier than the previous diablo games. I'll also concede nightmare dungeons are a decent (albeit very finite) endgame compromise between braindead rifts and poe maps.

I think the setting has run its course. There’s not enough to play with which is why everything “endgame” ends up being “X, but tainted by evil seeping from hell”. The same area, but it’s red for a while. Nightmare this, malignant that, this thing Of Hatred. It’s tired.

They should consider making some bold changes to disrupt the fundamentals of their universe, or just abandon it and build a new setting with the capacity for weirdness, not the boring, restrictive angels vs demons thing.

its pretty good, give it a year or two to bake

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GusTheCrocodile wrote:

I think the setting has run its course. There’s not enough to play with which is why everything “endgame” ends up being “X, but tainted by evil seeping from hell”. The same area, but it’s red for a while. Nightmare this, malignant that, this thing Of Hatred. It’s tired.

They should consider making some bold changes to disrupt the fundamentals of their universe, or just abandon it and build a new setting with the capacity for weirdness, not the boring, restrictive angels vs demons thing.

i used to consider myself a diablo fan. diablo is very story centric.

my biggest issue with diablo now, is not about how bad it's end game is. tbh i have zero interest in diablo endgame as i would go for other games for my "arpg fix".

instead, i actually want diablo series to have an epic finale. end it on a high note.

the ending of starcraft series made me almost want to cry, seeing how they concluded the series was just so damn satisfying. the ending imo was perfect.

as for diablo.... it keeps going on and on. due to the nature of their entire premise, they cant diverge from demons vs angels vs human/nephilims as anything new would be outside of their pre established lore.

POE is kinda open, where the devs can toy with the concept of gods, demons, inter dimensional demons, parallel universes. theres many paths the devs can explore for new campaigns. they could even pluck concepts from leagues. such as venarius from a different universe directly invading wraeclast. beyond demons gaining a permanent foot hold on wraeclast. so many different possibilities.

diablo? diablo now exists only to milk the players. we will never see a proper ending.

Diablo 4's story was really good.

Despite the namesake villain not being there, Lilith and Inarius' motivations really felt grounded and riveting. The side characters (Namely Lorath) are written well that I can't help but feel for them.

On top of that, the gameplay is pretty rock solid.... for the first 30 hours.

After that... the gameplay gets so repetitive, the mechanics are incredibly frustrating (Long CDs, Out-of-screen one-shots, and so much more). Dungeons are really visually pleasing, but mechanically? The same set of objectives get repeated and shuffled for every other dungeon.

I like the game if I only focused on the campaign... but the game after that is just boring.

If it was just the campaign, I'd give it a 9/10. I really enjoyed it. After that? Probably lower.

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exsea wrote:

i knew going in that the devs were really green.

its apparent when the dev legit thought that having closed access to their game gave no benefit to those players in a race, ignoring the fact that with closed access, you get to test and try out all classes/builds.

they dont play action rpgs. the lead dev of the game talked openly about his experience playing the action rpg genre and he basically doesnt have any. if you or i bought a new copy of D3 RoS right now within 6 hours we could have a higher level character than he has ever had in the game, and he has never played poe.

they dont understand why something like that is a problem because they dont understand arpgs, theyve never played them properly. they release something, the players who are actually fans of the genre tell them its wrong, why its wrong and how to fix it, then they react. thats how it works, same way diablo 3 worked, they need the players to tell them how an arpg works, they have no idea because they dont play arpgs.






personally i think the item system is horrendous, the skill system is worse than d3s. i thought it had the worst campaign of any arpg ive ever played. i think the gameplay is terrible, the monster encounters have no feel, the builds have no feel, i think the combat is even worse than grim dawn which is very rigid and 1 dimensional, but still somehow better than d4.

the endgame should be good, the idea of the open world and all the things to do are great in terms of it being planned out on paper and then executed graphically. but actually playing them is terrible, the combat is so bad and the monsters are so bad, and then the way the monsters are spread through the dungeons and the silly things you have to do in the dungeons to progress? awful.

i dunno m8s, for me it might be the worst diablo game of the lot and i think its genuinely a bad game.



i expected everything else about it to be trash but i thought the campaign would be fun to play through at least once and the gameplay would feel good. i expected those 2 things to work and they would carry everything else being meh like they did in d3. but actually those are 2 of the worst aspects of the game.







i think like d3 it will be bad for a while and then enough time will pass that the players will have told them how to make an arpg that works and it will be fixed enough that its like d3 is now, a fairly bad game thats fun to play for a while. d3 is like a macdonalds cheeseburger, its a total piece of shit but it tastes good when you are hungry and once every few months thats enough to make you happy for an evening. d4 isnt like a macdonalds cheeseburger yet, its like eating a handful of dirt from your yard. it will get there tho.

the new d3 season is out soon, its gonna be 10x more fun than diablo 4 and ill be playing it for sure.

d4 crafting is bleak compared to D2, which didn't have much complex crafting in the first place
d4 endgame before s1 was basically running demise/burrows, nightmare dungeons weren't worth it, world bosses sucked, since S1 you basically ran the same dungeon all the time if you knew what you were doing or you were just running around tons of useless dungeons in a hope that you'll get some uldurs/mercy sigils, world bosses were pointless once again
even with d2r you had terror zones and uber content bossing that were worth doing and you had more variety
graphics are definitely better in D4, though to me graphics is the least important characteristic of the game, it's like why would I care if the game is not that fun? at least the visuals are good? nah, screw that
sadly d4 simply doesn't have the depth on any level to be fun for more than a few weeks after the start of the game, even S1 was already boring as hell, made me return to poe as soon as I had free time for ARPG's