I have been playing diablo since diablo1. I have never intentionally deleted characters. In preparation for season 24 i deleted most of my characters… Because who cares? I feel no connection to them since seasons are the only way to obtain new rewards I am certainly not going to play non season. I cleared out my stash of items as well because why do i need all this gear? i havent touched it in years. And they are out dated since you keep changing things anyways.
While this problem existed in diablo2 as well when they introduced seasons you never wanted to play non seasons. But back then your characters were only saved as long as you kept logging in so if you took a break to play another game RIP all your stuff.
I feel no level of connection to any of my characters. Even choosing a name seems pointless because the design of these games we dont care about our characters. My original cast of characters in WoW have history, there are memories tied to them. I cant say that about diablo3. Other than maybe my first character who struggled for 6 months to find a weapon so I could do more damage since this flawed game is purely based off your weapon… But i caved. I was never going to use the auction house but the bad game design and drop rates forced my hand. Thats the only memory I have is bad RNG design forcing the AH on players.
What a shame that a game doesn’t cater to your needs. It was your choice to delete chars. D3 isn’t just about weapon damage at all… another dead thread.
Really? You have 827 paragon on Normal and Level 70 in seasons. You can pretty much get all your characters and gear back in a day. Deleting your characters wasn’t much of a sacrifice or proved any point. Sorry mate.
I have two characters that have many memories and friendships associated with them dating back to 2012. I generally rebirth one of them each season because of history behind them.
Instead of complaining, if you’d tell us what you’d prefer instead, we could have a productive discussion.
Look, I’m not a huge fan of the season concept. It’s got a lot of downsides. No one plays non-season. With only 3 months per season, you don’t develop that class RP connection to a character. You’re playing a build rather than a character. Gear outdates as the dev team patches, and Smart Loot throws gear at you so fast you don’t really treasure the gear you earned already - again because the drop rates are based on a 3 month season and SSF with no trading. All valid complaints. Some I agree with. Others, not so much.
But end-game systems are design choices. Each has its trade-offs. So again, tell us what you actually want in the end-game and we could have a productive discussion, rather than you just baiting smart mouthed trolls.
It’s linked to skills, gems, enchants and dmg from armour too but yea i guess it is.
It gave me years of enjoyment even though i only played for short intervals. If it isn’t fun anymore move on i guess or wait for the next game. No point in being sad over a game.
Threads like this brighten my day they really do xD
While in most cases (with the exception of thorns builds mentioned earlier) the main weapon damage is the basis of your total damage output, it’s still rather pointless if the other modifiers on the weapon don’t complement the build. That’s why your whole damahe output is a combination of a lot of modifiers and multipliers. A high damage weapon with no useful modifiers is useless compared to a low damage weapon with many useful modifiers.
That’s why you don’t see for example axe wielding wizards, those weapons are useless for them.
Because the leveling process is functionally non-existent. The game effectively starts at level 70 after a few hours’ of introductory tutorial, and is effectively 100% item-driven.
Because the season journey hands you a full end-game set that bypasses most of the game’s difficulty levels within a relatively short time. Even with poor rolls, that set puts you into ~T10ish (out of 16 torment levels).
Because the Smart Loot system provides for high-drop rates of powerful end-game items which are essential to creating functional builds.
Because the Smart Loot system also dramatically reduces the RNG factors that otherwise would greatly widen the power of any particular drop, making it much easier to get a “usable” item.
We have a lot of premises with D3 that specifically make it the way it is, and which dramatically limit the RP potential of a game, and the time you’d invest playing it. It seems to have a more arcade-like feel, which is why the OP feels that he has no connection to his character after the “Game Over” (end of season) screen. Just put another quarter in and start over. RPGs aren’t supposed to feel like that, so I understand that complaint.
This is why discussing what we actually want in an end-game is critical. Personally, I’d love to see new content, because I’m a story-driven player. I like the RP elements of this type of game. But that’s very expensive and time-consuming to develop, and players binge through it rapidly, so we need to define “end-game” as what the player does after he’s “beaten the game” by completing the story and reaching max level.
My thoughts on the end-game:
I want the leveling process to be much longer and to matter. The game starts at level 1, not at max level.
D4’s open world should have enough content that I will not have completed it all by max level. This means side quests and optional content so that I don’t play the story on rails and get bored after the first run through. Each character has a unique experience as he levels.
D4 needs human opponents. Fighting an AI is only fun for so long. Humans are much more ingenious enemies. The devs have said they will include opt-in open world PVP via the Fields of Hatred. I’d also suggest always-on PVP servers for those who want that experience. For those of us who might want to dabble: structured PVP like duels, jousts, tournaments, small-team arenas, or large-team battles. These would include balanced teams, win objectives, etc.
Open world bosses. The devs have already told us these will be in. I’m greatly looking forward to huge battlefields with massive demons. This is effectively the ARPG version of MMORPG raiding. The only thing I worry about here is looting, and people getting unearned rewards (ie loot ninjas and leechers).
PVE competitions. Ultimately these will come down to races against pre-arranged dungeons (like D3’s rifts) where you go for the fastest time, or hold-out type events where successively more difficult waves spawn and you try to survive as many waves as possible. Both could have leaderboards. These could be solo or small-team just like D3 does.
Lastly, we have to address the item hunt which classically was the Diablo end-game. D3 has made it clear to most players that we want to have access to different play styles and builds and we want it earlier rather than later. D3 made those builds revolve entirely around sets. D4 must avoid doing this. D4 must shift player power gain towards skill points and the skill tree and away from items. This way, your skill choices define your build, not the set and legendaries you’re wearing. This means that when you hit max level, you can still find items that make your build more powerful, but you’re not locked out of trying something til you play many hours leveling that character first. Anything “build defining” (like legendary affixes), need to be plentiful and accessible. But feel free to gate very powerful items behind max-level challenges. I’d prefer to avoid ultra-low drop rate RNG because it promotes unhealthy obsessive grinding and botting, but I understand Diablo is defined by such things.
I agree that seasons were not meant to be end game content originally, but factually the game has moved in the direction of seasons being end game content as that is the only new content being released for this game with a target of any kind.
They’ve kind of blurred and meshed together over the years.
I think the OP has a really good point - there is nothing about D3 that makes you feel committed to the characters you create.
There is no such thing as build identity since it can be completely changed with 0 consequences in 10-30 seconds as often as you like.
You didn’t go on some epic journey with that character to obtain the loot they have, you “earned” it all in an afternoon.
There is no compelling long form endgame loop in D3, apart from GRs, so if you aren’t into GRs there is absolutely nothing for you do in non-season other than bounties which don’t have anywhere near the same reward curve (or really season for that matter).
And ultimately, this is where Diablo 4 must succeed. If the item hunt is played out over an epic campaign, over multiple keyed dungeon levels, and various other endgame systems, and players still haven’t found the item or items they really want to complete their builds, then D4 will have succeeded where D3 failed and you would feel more tied to the characters you create and feel the rush of excitement that happens when you finally do find that item.
And this is the best way to make an item hunt long form. You don’t make the viability of your build completely dependent on having certain items. You can make items rare that way without completely ruining the concept of “building a character”. Limited respec, or costly respec also plays a role in fostering this long-term character identity and commitment.
One thing that might be very interesting is to make skill ranking and build commitment a part of the endgame. Traditionally in these games you put points into skills as you level up, but the issue there is you haven’t really played with enough skills to know what you really want that character to be. If we reversed this and let players respec freely until they hit max level (where it begins to scale in cost), and part of the endgame character progression system is a skill ranking system that allows you to further customize your skills beyond the choices you initially make in the skill tree, then that would go a long way to promoting a satisfying way of building out a character.
When Diablo 3 was released, there was no endgame. This generated a lot of anger in the players because the cake recipe was already made with Diablo 2, all you had to do was make the cake (I know that this was caused by ‘development hell’)
Gradually, with each patch, Blizzard has improved the endgame to satisfy players (with good reason). These ‘get a better endgame’ questions were the most common things on these forums.
If the seasons and all the rest of the endgame still doesn’t satisfy the players, what does Blizzard have to do to please these guys?
Tbf, Diablo 3 endgame revolves around rifts. If Diablo 3 had more viable endgame options, that’d be great imo, but alas it does not. Not much to be done on that, which is why I hope that Diablo 4 has plenty of viable endgame activities.
Now regarding seasons; they already confirmed that seasons will be making a return in Diablo 4. The only question remains is that will season simply be a mode that’s for players who want a fresh start (and maybe allow for players to get an early access to unique rewards and events that will eventually make it’s way to the game as a whole in due time), or will seasons offer exclusive rewards and/or events as a means to entice players into it?
There are many things I like about D3 more than PoE. I like D3’s combat, art-style, story/lore, artisan system, skill variety (not skill system), better than I like PoEs. So then why do I consistently play more PoE than D3? One reason, endgame.
PoE has a progressively harder, somewhat story-based, endgame that unlocks new item progression as well as character progression.
D3 has GRs which get progressively harder, but you skip all meaningful progression in them because you complete the seasonal objective and go straight to lvl 70-100. If GRs were less random, told a coherent story, got progressively harder, and loot dropped more rarely asking you to eke out a little bit of performance to get to the next one, and that cycle continued up to some maximum level where you had a shaper/atziri/maven like boss encounter, I would 100% be playing D3 as my main game today and not PoE.
Just because Blizzard gave players a better endgame than what they started with does not mean the way that endgame is implemented, and the multiple cascading effects it had on itemization rewards and character building as a result, is good - especially when compared to the other competitors that have emerged in the market - PoE, Lost Ark, Last Epoch, Grim Dawn all do endgame better than D3.
To me the role of seasons should be to add things that spice up the gameplay.
Economy reset
Adds new items to the game and balances old items (nerfs, buffs, but no power creep)
Adds new keyed dungeon affixes to the game to keep that system feeling fresh.
Adds new shared world quests/bounties/experiences to keep that system feeling fresh.
Adds small endgame features along the way that didn’t make it into launch, but aren’t important enough to be delayed for the next expansion: follower emanate system is a good example of this in D3.
Changes crafting metas.
The seasonal rewards are fine, but secondary to the above imo.
D3 endgame is terrible. Is it better than at release? Maybe, though it isnt clear cut. More reasonable conclusion probably is that it is better and worse in various areas.
It is all about GRifts. So it is bad due to a singular focus. Lack of diversity. That is the main flaw of D3s endgame.
But on top of that, GRifts themselves are badly designed. They are time trials. Speed is the only thing that matters in them. Which is a weird thing to do in an A-RPG, where speed already rules supreme. Once again, a lack of diversity.
Then you get rid of items dropping from enemies. A very weird thing to do in an A-RPG.
Just for clarification, but are you saying that only season-play should benefit from what you’ve listed; or the game as a whole instead benefits from the changes, and the implementations of such changes coincides with a season’s rotation? Because if it’s the former, then I’d have to strongly disagree. If it’s the latter then I can agree to an extent.
I think it was super cool in vanilla. I mean that unpassable Inferno campaign. That was the intended endgame: beat it if you can. This was something Diablo 2 really missed: a purpose for your best-it-slot gear that you keep hunting for in the endgame.
However D3 casuals massive whine ruined it all. Alas.
100% the latter. Non-season should get all changes season gets, so that you are continually designing balanced content that expands the base of the game. I feel like it’s a waste of development resources to pursue game changes that only exist in the seasonal structure because it presumes that players that come late to the game should somehow have a lesser experience than someone playing a season.