A casuals (or semi-casuals) journey to 100

PC General Discussion
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So I’ve been vocal in the past about finding D4 to be pretty boring unpolished and lackluster and stopped around 75.

A Necro friend asked me to help him farm for his Ring of Mendeln and I thought I still need a Tempest Roar so I figured give D4 another shot.

Together, we grinded from ~75 to 100 together. Which means we spent a couple hours each night doing endless Sigil dungeons, helltides, maybe a Legion Event… (literally the only content available, which in itself is sad)

The end result, this was one of the worst leveling and progression experiences I’ve ever had. The loot itself became absolutely pointless by the mid 80s, both our characters were beyond too powerful for the content, even if we did forgo the golden +3 sigil level rule and tried ones many times stronger than us.

At one point I wanted to respec to try and change things up, but the fact you need to destroy your current build to remake a new build make that more a pain than it was worth. Perhaps if I had a single extra loadout just so that I could build this spec on the side and use it when ready that would have been helpful.

By the time we both hit 100, the process was so godawful that the very idea of repeating this again in a couple days is completely off-putting.

Diablo 4 might have a decent foundation to build up from, but the game as it stands today, even from what Season 1 is looking like, does nothing to make me want to repeat this grind again.

And the funny thing, we both hit 100, neither of us got the unique we retuned for lol.

The combat in D4 is great, the world is pointless (Helltides might as well be an instance option in a menu to teleport to) and the content loop is extremely boring, easy and repetitive, even for ARPG standards (also those last 5 levels are a damn slog)

Maybe the game will get better in a few seasons, but the idea of waiting 6-mon to a year for a triple A title from a company like Blizzard is baffling why anyone would defend that.

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110% agree with you :+1: :+1: :+1:

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One, if you are already at Level 100 you are not casual. The time it takes you go through a first run of D4 is 100+ hours. Casual is, at worst, an hour or two a night. That means you should not even be above Level 50.

Two, part of the reason for seasons is to try new builds. That is why you have 5 extra slots (presuming you play all five classes). You are going to have gear, aspects, etc. that you can save for them when they migrate to Eternal.

Three, you are probably right about the loot. The number of stories about bad loot on the forums is… rather extensive. Part of the problem is that many published builds use Uber Uniques (like Harlequin Crest) or damage busters (like Tempest Roar and Ring of Mendeln). So, people go looking for them as opposed to whatever is below that.

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It doesn’t. Most of the problems with the game are foundational and built into the systems. You can’t improve the game without reworking the entire structure of the game.

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We both gave up or free time after work each night with the intention of grinding until we hit 100 or got our Unique drops. We didn’t need them, but we both wanted to be playing a different build than we were overall.

A causal deciding to put in 2-3 hours every night in a group can knock out levels fairly quickly, if you are both efficient and experienced in arpg’s in general. I’m sure the couch co-op players aren’t ever going to hit 100, and nor was I, until we had to challenge ourselves to do it.

There is no world where the current system for rebuilding your character is in any way fun. I respect not wanting to having a dozen loadouts you can swap to at will, but at least give me a placeholder where I can start the 2nd build and be able to move to it when it’s ready, not completely cripple my character in the meantime while I get it ready.

Yeah the loot sucks lol. No target farming for build defining items and pretty much once you are into your 80s you are down to micro min/maxing or straight up just ignoring the gear as a whole.

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Cool so you never got a D2 character to 99 pre terror zone. It was easy to get to 100. Maybe aarpgs arnt your jam and thats ok.

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yeah but you can gain meaningful power in d2 and other arpg’s…at lvl 80 in d4, you may literally already be done.

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What’s the rush? I’m halfway through 75 and just chugging along.

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There was no rush. I had quit out of boredom at 75 and only came back at a friends request. Had his ring dropped that night I would have left again the next day.

It was pretty much out of spite that we pushed to 100 at this point lol.

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And in D4 its the same. The paragon board gives you meaningful power if you built it out correctly.

Some people maybe done their journy at lv 80 in D4 and thats ok.

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Some people in this forum think level scalling in this game is bad and its “too hard” “You become weaker as yoiu level up”. I always laugh

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I had a lot more fun in D1/2 and PoE than I ever had in D4 pushing characters, so maybe D4 just isn’t a very good arpg.

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Or maybe you just didnt find it fun. Nothing will ever be as good as d2. At least this isnt a d3 clone.

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It’s true it’s hard to beat D2. But you would think with 10 years of development and the WoW and Diablo IPs at it’s back, Blizzard would have been able to do a better job than this.

But I respect your point, it honestly just wasn’t as fun for me as prior arpgs, but that might not be true for everyone.

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I dont know if it was in dev for 10 years but 5-6 seems about the ballpark for development.

Its missing 100 uniques and an mf system.

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Level scaling does suck BIG TIME, and in many different ways! It is NOT rewarding at all. I get the reason behind it, but it is an epic fail and lazy game mechanic for any game. Blizzard should have an opt in system for players to enable level scaling, and also syncing players to group up with friends or other players like in WoW, and just eliminate the ridiculous level scaling across the board as the standard default in Diablo 4.

Removing the level scaling in Diablo 4 would improve the game 1 million percent!

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If you were doing decent damage at 80+, you dont sound casual at all to me. Nice try though

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wrong not d2 h ttps://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/diablo-ii-lord-of-destruction

but i guess you mean d2re and is also garbage the same of d4

h ttps://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/diablo-ii-resurrected

my guess aarpgs arnt your jam and thats ok.

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Semi-casual? Have a basic understanding of how to play and make your character work?

That really wasn’t the point.

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In the end, every player comes to the same terms of realizing how shallow and poorly designed D4 really is. I quit after early access and haven’t logged in since. Interesting seeing stragglers still quitting.

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