After well over a hundred hours, likely closer to two or three, I can honestly say this. There are so many small nit picks, or quality of life features, that D3 has over D4. Maybe someday, the lessons learned over a decade of making D3 the most rewarding and enjoyable ARPG for me can be applied to D4. However, even with that I will say D4 has a systemic problem that will always keep it hamstrung behind D3.
Loot in D4 is too random. It has the enchant system, without the preview screen mind you, but the cost of doing that to sacred and ancestral items requires a material that is only farmed in one specific, time gated way - helltides. This functionally makes the mechanic not viable. Meaning loot is pure RNG, and that’s just not fun. Too much time is spent in town trying to figure out if this item is good for my build, another build, an alt and their builds or is just garbage.
D4 caps you at level level 100, meaning you only get a finite number of paragon points. It also caps your glyph levels, meaning after you’ve level’d all glyphs to 21 there’s no need for the altar in nightmare dungeons anymore. This functionally makes it possible to be “done.” Which is weird, because the primary reason I like to play the game, and D3, is the pursuit of more power. Just one more level. One more rift. One more infusion. D4 doesn’t offer that infinitely. That might be fine for some, but for me makes me want to play D3 over D4.
So, here I am now… about to load up D3 again to play some more of the current season before they start resetting. I’ll probably play those, too, and won’t look back on D4 unless they fix one or both of the problems listed above. If they let us swap out every stat on our items for stats we want - the ones that matter for our build - then loot will matter again. They can make it ridiculously expensive, I’ll grind it out. Sadly, I don’t think they will. Too many people will think that’s a bad design choice, and these same people will quit D4 to go play PoE or PoE2. Whilst I’d play the game, and pay for nearly every microtransaction… my interests will be ignored.
I hold out more hope that D3 might get a cross-progression patch. I’d love to be able to hop between my computer and PS5 and play my same characters in D3.
Good to hear, but I gotta say D3 really burns you out fast. It’s the “one more rift” gameplay that you may seek in D4 as well, but perhaps developers didn’t target that when designing their fourth installment this time.
Maybe they wanted to allocate rewards in a different pattern spread across different tasks. That reward model worked with Diablo 2 and many other ARPG titles such as PoE before. To be rewarded properly, just keep hitting different tasks instead of sticking to one that you are best at. You eventually find something you like and figure a build out for your needs. There’s nothing wrong with player reseting their build when they hit 100 to find their comfortable tasks and continuing their item hunt either.
D3 has probably made me appreciate D4 more, in a way. It has many issues, some which I expect Blizzard wont ever fix, they will probably just make things worse over time.
But I have seen how bad things can be, and in that light, Diablo 4 is a more decent effort.
Like, I find this amazing. It still feels a bit crazy to me that I should be amazed when you can actually complete games, but that is the world we live in now.
And this is great. The itemization has a ton of issues, not at least in the balance (dear lord, vulnerability need a complete makeover!), but so much better than D3s. Might even be better than D2s too, at least with a few fixes. Not up there with the best in the genre, but still, for a Blizzard game, it is refreshing.
The one thing I do agree with in the above is; materials gated behind a single activity… bad Blizzard, bad!
I’m not a fan of D3’s infinite paragon, myself, so the idea that you eventually “cap” in D4 isn’t bad on paper. The problem inevitably lies in what’s offered in alternative. There aren’t a lot of builds. That’s cemented by a small number of skills. That’s further augmented by their bland take to itemization. Experimentation is further discouraged through respec costs. In effect, just because you hit 100 on a Rogue shouldn’t mean you’re done with Rogues forever. There should be dozens of viable builds to try, and if you don’t want to do Rogue, pick another class. Of course, I can also 100% understand that certain class’ aesthetics and skill selections won’t jive for everyone. I’ve never been drawn to Druids or Necromancers, for example.
Activities being real-world time gated IS a problem, though, and with how the game is currently designed, you need a third-party site to track things. I’ve pretty much hated this in every game I’ve played that’s had it. I refuse to schedule my life around a game. There are alternative ways to prevent people from spamming content, even if something as simple as rift key farming in D3.
But really, what some perceive as lack of QoL just strikes me as the usual listening too much to the D2 crowd. They love to bemoan handholding or crow that modern gamers wouldn’t have lasted back in the day. As someone who lived through it, I’ll just say bad game design then doesn’t justify bad game design now. Trying to pretend D3 didn’t exist isn’t doing D4 any favors. I’d say there’s a reasonable argument to be made that D4 released too soon and we’re already seeing some folks celebrate Blizz “listening” to things that should’ve been common sense by now or at least recognizable to someone who isn’t a sadomasochist.
Of course, the entire concept of seasons with exclusive content, it also another real world time gated system. That so far has affected 3 of the 4 Diablo games
Just uninstlled D4. Feels bad but its such a boring game. Renown every season no thanks. WOW side quests and 100 boring dungeons each season no thanks. Nightmare Dungeons = mythic plus, pass.
Hate carying boxes around or killing all enemies and backtracking, not fun. Cant filter any loot. Hit 58 on day 3 and i was 64 as of tonight before I uninstalled. 4/10. Cant wait for the last d3 season before I quit all blizzard games.
Maybe in 2 years d4 will be good, hopefull, I guess it has some good bones.
Been playing D3 for 9 years on console since Mosquiera came to the rescue. Still playing it. Still loving it. Heard some dialogue between Lyndon and Kormac the other day I hadn’t heard before. Now that was a wow moment that put a smile on my face. I may play it the rest of my life
D3 didn’t felt rewarding and fun untill RoS, sesons and a plethora of patches and hotfixes. There’s a 13 page patch incomeing for D4 and had 11 hot fixes allready. They are working on it. It will become better. People are just too impatient these days.
The thing is D3 at that time tried to figure out what is work or not, and D4 should be able to tell which modern features are needed or necessary if they actually do some cross-reference on late D3, but somehow they didn’t.
It is almost like the D4 team doesn’t learn anything from the D3 early failures, and now they emulating D3 early days route when they can just skip it just by studying D3’s past history and improvising it.
What i comprehed from all this is, that they are so hellbent on this whole live service type of game stuff, that they intentionaly made a very basic, unoptimised game. Just so they can upgrade it frequently and want us to feel that these changes are actually impactfull.
I think it less impatience and more people are upset. A $70 game with secondary cosmetic and battle pass monetization made by a AAA company shouldn’t be released in an unpolished beta state.
After 3-4 years of being a D3 beta tester, I am going to wait on buying D4 seeing as the same bad early design is happening on this game too.
That’s interesting that the cost of using the enchant system is time gated this way. I’m in no way a fan of playing games where I need to be playing a certain time to enjoy certain content. There’s a reason why I don’t have free to air TV hooked up anymore. I just watch everything on streaming when I want to.
I had a feeling that D4 end game wasn’t for me. Will still try it… when I get around to buying the game on sale of course. But it’s looking more like a campaign experience for me.
D4 is very grindy. Going from level 75 to 100 feels like 3000-4000 paragon. Last night was the first time I was like, can I really do these last 25 levels? Do I WANT TO? I’m doing it more for a point of reference than for fun. I did switch the game over to the new PC. Running ultra with DLSS maxed looks amazin. That is def. helping the cause.
Sure, but I watched their panel - nothing that I want to make it to D4 is in the pipe. Loot is still going to suck, level 100 is still going to be the end. QoL is not the reason D4 feels like a chore to play, for me.
If you, or others, enjoy it… go play it. I’ll continue in my D3.
Diablo 3 doesn’t burn me out in that way. Diablo 4 did.
