The overwhelming amount of comments on the Forums. Diablo 2 was critically acclaimed and the popularity is arguably what spawned the abundancy of ARPG titles. Please note I am not saying people want D2 with some updates, but rather using that as a jumping off point to build from conceptually.
Diablo 3 is a pile of hot garbage. They got very lucky with their roll out of Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls as they ported the game to consoles and fixed a ton of problems with the game. The release of Diablo 3 was worse than the release of Cyberpunk with the RMAH overshadowing the plethora of other problems the game had.
Popularized by the success Diablo 2 had, popularized by a general increase in audience to video games, popularized by its eventual release to new platforms increasing market share, and sales abroad.
You should probably look at the attrition Diablo 3 experienced and how many people quit very early on either never to return or only when reviews came out for Reaper of Souls.
Diablo 2 is where it needs to stay, in the past. I am not arguing for Diablo 2 with new graphics. They should have looked at the successes they had from Diablo 2 and incorporated that into Diablo 4. They should definitely not have recreated an older version of Diablo 3, which it seems where D4 is and is headed.
Hate to break it down to you but the game is already D3
And while being that, transferred over the worst part of D3, the “Rifts”
That endless re-running and endless “plowing” that can’t take a breather and see
Can’t make a clap without hitting something, WT4 is THAT polluted with creeps
The endless hunger for “plowing” is exactly what brought us here and it’s terrible. The sooner this obsession stops the better it is for everyone (including poor devs that sunk in hours to create the content cause people like this play 50 hours first 3 days, beat everything and then ask for “more”
Like, can we spend at least 2 minutes talking about quality and actual balance between mobs, builds, game mechanics & stuff, rather than being obsessed with “efficiency” ?
It’s also unusually weird that exactly those that ask for “more” refuse to make the game slower/deeper to begin with
I honestly think that it is much too much like D2. There are some things that you mention that are more like D3, I think I can list more.
First off, the “rifts” haven’t truly been ported over. They kind of have, but we don’t have the random, procedurally generated endless loop of them that we had.
“Plowing” might be more like D3. But what else?
Here’re stuff that’s much more like D2:
The grinding is way worse. Grind for materials, for aspects, unique or rare items. Tiny drop chances. In D3 the grinds were limited, you did bounties for mats, then rifts for item farming. This is much more similar to D2, where you grind X to find Y, grind A to find B, collect enough of C to grind D, etc. It’s tedious. Most people played D2 through the story, or with friends, didn’t engage with the grind to this degree. They shouldn’t have brought it back.
Skill trees. These didn’t need to come back. I don’t need to put 5 points in one ability, just let me pick the ability or not pick the ability.
Costly respeccing. It costs gold, and it costs time. It is a pain in the butt, and much closer to D2 than the D3 system.
Limited levels. Much closer to D2 to have a level 100 cap that takes forever to reach. Unlike D3 at all.
General item bloat. The sheer scope of affixes. While it’s worse in D4 than in D2, it’s closer to D2. D3 had “loot 2.0” that usually dropped things that worked for your class. Now everything is just a crapshoot like it was in D2. Playing for hours, getting hundreds of items that are all terrible is much more like D2 than it is like D3.
It’s the only viable direction for the game. D3 is a decent standalone game but I would much prefer D4 to reflect D2. That’s never going to happen. Last Epoch will fill that void tho.
They need to make this Diablo 3 but with some semblance of an endgame meta loop for itemization. It’s really the only hope it has.
I wanted D4. I didn’t want Diablo 2.5 or Diablo 3.5 myself. I wanted something that improved on the genre, that had something interesting to offer over it’s predecessors, possibly to take the best ideas from both D2 and D3 (and possibly other games) and expand on them.
It didn’t have to be game breaking by any means, but I figure they could take the mundane tasks everyone complained about within various games and just improve upon the concept, or run with a good idea everyone loved and expand on it. It may get there eventually, but it definitely won’t be this year I feel.
This is inaccurate by game design, it is accurate however by the “standards” of community
Blame the “speedrunners” that killed Countess X times before getting X combination of runes so they can “warpzone” the rest of the game, not the game. In other words promoting an “alternative way” to zip-past the game (for the most part) without really engaging
Here’s the difference though - D2 can work both ways, works even if you don’t “zip” or skip, it feels right, it gets harder and more complex as levels pile on (as opposed to easier and reducing the engagement in the game, except few/several pieces of mobs or CC)
This is the whole point, having a different character from other people. Sadly didn’t work but it’s not a bad thing. This also WOULD’VE WORKED well, if not perfectly, if the game was kept harder as on release
Also they should probably double-down on it, i.e. make it 8 or 10 levels high, so people are forced to pick whether they want to upgrade their most used skill to the max or invest into more passives for some increase of versatility. Right now players can have both so what’s the point
Perhaps with the dumbed-down difficulty sadly, as is - you might have a point
Limited levels is good, fast leveling is bad. Whilst both things are sort-of correct in D4, the devs didn’t embrace the game and tried to “metamorph” it into something else
And speaking of which, wasn’t the devs only, it was the “pros” that gave feedback, probably the worst decisions in the game came exactly cause of these
This is a mixed quote with very half-truths but not true in general
Getting hundreds of items i.e. shower, for hours - i.e. shower = that’s D3, not D2
While loot in D2 was “crapshoot” it had design behind it, not everything is item, some things were components to be using. D4 needs MORE of that, if you (or anyone else for that matter) for the game to thrive and move away from the “shower” and “crapshoot” that you yourself implied
Here’s an example:
Jewel: CC duration +10%, Strength +5%
Then you insert that into whatever socket (weapon, armor, not sure if jewelry) and you get CC duration and Str% as opposed to the “standard” things
Those dropped more rarely than regular items and sockets, perhaps even runes, but AT LEAST there were some things to do for “fine tuning” in D2. In D4 you get an item with 3/4 affixes about right and then gamble (sometimes forever, sometimes a little less) to “perfect” it
I think the sad fact is that D4 is massive step back in a lot of ways from D3. It’s more grinding, it has lower QoL, and is lacking impactful items. It’s impossible to manage loot without spending most of your time sifting through crap.
But it also doesn’t satisfy D2 fans like yourself.
This is my opinion, but I’m sure most modern players expect it to be more like D3 than it is, because D3 is the more recent, and more popular, entry in the series.
All in all, it’s a failure. It’s not enough like D3 for me, and it’s not enough like D2 for you. They should have just picked one.
They should have picked either. The devs scrapped everything that was good in the predecessors and made this underwhelming garbage. Devs, go back and work on d2r.
But then people cry about things that were present in D2
For example, in D2, when you were in full gear, you would stomp any content, even the “hardest” bosses would be trivial
Yet if they do that currently, people cry about the game not having any challenge, because those people dont understand ARPGs and just want an isometric Dark Souls
ARPGs are about starting weak, barely able to kill anything, and at the end becoming a GOD. That’s what D2 was, and thats what ARPG should be. Its also why the most successful D4 Season was S2, because you could become OP with the right gear and build
D3 has a lot of issues, but with RoS, they fixed that, and the game lasted 10 years, even with all the other issues
Now i dont want an updated D3, but i do want an ARPG.
In a nutshell. It’s not fun. It’s unfun to grind so many things just to be able to do the content you want, it’s unfun to grind reputation, it’s unfun to not be able to save builds, it’s unfun to have to pay to respec, it’s unfun to have to run to the other side of town to get to a vendor, it’s unfun to have to sift through a bajillion item affixes.
Among many, many other things.
D3 had its flaws, but levelling up and running rifts and bounties was fun, and having a reasonable chance of getting good gear was fun. Collecting powers in Kanai’s cube was fun, where as hoarding aspects is not.
EDIT: My wife and I would play seasons for a couple of months. We’re not power users, so it took us a couple weeks of casual playing to level up together, then several weeks or more of doing bounties and rifts to get to the build we wanted to target. This was fun. D4 presents us with an annoying amount of grind before we get to any of the fun stuff.
