Diablo 3 vs Diablo 4

General Discussion
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I posted this over on D4 forums but would like to get the D3 community’s vibes as well.

I’m a very casual player of Diablo (and ARPG in general) games. I generally play through the campaign and leave it at that BUT generally prefer “Adventure” mode where I can just run dungeons and do boss fights. I don’t really care about min/maxing gear and I’ll generally just pick what looks thematically fun to play.

In that context I’ve been comparing my experience with Diablo 4 in relation to my time with Diablo 3. I’ve also played Diablo 2 but that experiences isn’t really considered in this comparison.

I’ve been playing the expansion, albeit rather slowly (an hour or two every week or so). I’ve entirely just been following the campaign quests, so entering dungeons when told to do so, and encountering boss fights when they happen. Last night I was working on the Chapter 2 boss (don’t remember its name) and it was the catalyst for thinking about my biggest pain points for playing D4 compared to D3. I played some D3 after last nights boss fight and confirmed some of my thoughts.

As a casual player I’m not going to bother with getting technical about the game design, only share my vibes when comparing my experiences. In a nutshell:

  • D4 boss fights feel less refined compared to D3. The dance feels almost semi-random. Yes there are tells for when you’re about to get hit, but it’s often poorly shown. For example, last night’s fight there were circles that needed to be dodged but the color contrast was so minute it was a pain to see them clearly.
  • Moving around the fight was mechanically clunky. There were times when I would right click hold to move only to have my character stand there doing nothing. This happens regularly throughout nearly all my attempts at the boss, a lot of times resulting it getting killed. Not fun.
  • There were so many mobs on the screen that it was difficult to navigate. And this seems to happens with a lot of the boss fights I’ve done in D4 where adds don’t really add much to the fight other than annoying collision hazards.
  • There are so many mobs on the screen that it was difficult to see anything. The clutter is just not a fun game mechanic and it makes the fight more like a visual mess of pixels.
  • The number of mobs out in the open world seemed without any sense of planning. Just lots of mobs everywhere. No tactical or strategic game design was utilized in their placement and grouping. In some cases in last nights dungeon I could sear that they just keep coming in waves no matter where i was or what path I took.

I was so annoyed by the end of my play session last night that I hoped into D3 and jump into a simply boss kill run in adventure mode. Despite being tired I was able to engage with the game play in a way that I felt was entirely more enjoyable and when I got to the boss fight (Skeleton King) it was painfully clear to me how much better and refined the game play design was.

Whats going on at Blizzard that there has been such a decrease in seemingly basic game design?

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Who cares about D4 here?

Good game, bad game, don’t know, I can’t play it on my computer.
I didn’t read your post but…
If you don’t like D3, don’t play it ,same thing about D4 and other games.

Why complain about a game you don’t like on a forum, when those who complain are often in the minority?

If I don’t like a game, I don’t play it, and I go play another game or do something else.

And I save time by not complaining on the forums

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Talking about the games on the games forums is literally what the forums are for.

:rofl:

If you don’t like talking about games, good, bad, or otherwise, then don’t respond to posts about them.

:man_shrugging:

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In the good forum, for sure

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That’s to talk about other games non Diablo related.

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I’m comparing D3 and D4 and my experiences with both. TLDR: I find D3 to be the better experience.

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I would have to agree. There are certainly more snowflakes in D4.

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I don’t play any Diablo with other players except on rare occasions with a friend, so I wouldn’t know.

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That is how they are supposed to be played.

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This could be a good forum for D4, since we are on the D3 forums.
I can already see some coming with their “Without this kind of topics the D3 forums would be dead” :slightly_smiling_face: Anyway.

Maybe, I don’t know, but I don’t care about D4, and I think I’m not the only one here.

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Then don’t engage with a thread about it I guess.

:man_shrugging:

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Lol shall we try and get along here? At least they didn’t make the starting phase worse like they did in SC and not improve on anything in 10 years… a freaking shuttle or 2 or 3 or 4??? Whaaaat???

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Sure.

That said, its fine if you don’t like the topic. No need to complain about it though.

On a forum where engagement is pretty sparse, I would think most sincere engagement would be appreciated.

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The forum is “full” of “D3 vs D4” threads :wink:

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Then it seems like a topic people are interested in talking about.

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And if you respond to any of them, some one will invariably say “why necro an old thread.”
So…

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There is necro (ed ?) a thread and necroed a thread.

Some “D3 vs D4” threads are not that old.

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Well… as long as things don’t start appearing when you’re smashing it with pure brilliance and SUDDENLY 1 hit dead… whaaaaat? Like in PoE.
I hope they change drop rates in D4 so that you don’t feel like switching from T2 or 3 back to T1 because rng thinks you deserve nothing good for over 20 or 30 levels because that’s how long it takes for the game to kill your character. And even then… you kill the boss and it drops… yep you guessed it, nothing!

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I can always come back to D3 and have great time, it’s one of the best games ever made.

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“Take your brain, put it next to your keyboard, enjoy it!”