Casual Dad D3 Player For Years - Why I Left Diablo 4

PC General Discussion
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I will do my best to keep this brief, however I think that my experience isn’t unique and requires a certain amount of explanation. My goal with this post is to provide legitimate feedback to the Devs. I’m not angry, I don’t hold any ill will to Blizzard but I am disappointed. Very disappointed.

I came to Diablo 3 relatively late, I did play on launch for a little bit but that was because I got it for free with the annual WoW sub. At the time I was more interested in WoW.

When I did come back to Diablo 3 I had a blast! The game ran great on my PS4, the classes were different from each other and I always felt like there was more gear to grab. After completing the game I moved to Seasons, picked up the game for my Nintendo Switch and continued to enjoy Diablo 3.

When Diablo 4 launched I was beyond excited. Here was a NEW Diablo game, I was stoked to build sets, try the new abilities, level characters, run end game Torment style dungeons and most importantly get loot. Eagerly I loaded Diablo 4, played through the campaign, which I liked well enough but near the end something happened. I noticed I wasn’t really having fun, the mobs were sort of hard, they scaled with my level which was weird and the drops were unsatisfying.

Thinking the problem was me I continued to play past 50 and into deeper world tiers. That’s when I dawned on me, there was nothing really to play for. The gear is super confusing, in Diablo 3 I knew to build Green sets, spec my character against that Green set mechanic and then use gems to either do more damage or survive longer. It all made sense. In Diablo 4 I never really feel like I know what gear to use. People say look for X stat on yellows… yellows!? What’s going on? And even when I get Legendary gear it doesn’t feel good. I have never over dozens of hours of Diablo 4 replicated that feeling of completing a set in Diablo 3.

If I were to make any suggestions it would be the following:

Make sets, cool sets that look amazing and do a specific thing
Make the stats easy to understand Barbarians stack STR, Rogues stack DEX something like that
Make new sets for the season that look cool and do crazy damage and dive deep into the look/feel of the class they are for
Remove scaling, it’s weird and doesn’t feel good, sometimes I want to just plow through mobs.
Do more with the open world, I would love to do more World Bosses. Have a social space for people to chill in and show off there sets and gear. I love to envy high end players, gives me something to shoot for.
Lean into class uniqueness
Make the dungeon grind easier to access like the Greater Rift system in Diablo 3
Add group finder for dungeons
Make paragon tree deeper with more points to achieve instead of being extra levels

Anyway I’m sure others have said similar things. I never post on forums but I’m just disappointed and I hope someone at blizzard reads this. I can’t be alone.

Diablo is about killing mobs fast to get cool looking powerful gear and I would love to do that in Diablo 4

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I’ll agree on we need an itemization overhaul, but as for sets I don’t like them personally, just like the game holding your hand into a build they made meta. I prefer to test builds for myself personally.

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If the loot hunt and scaling are your biggest gripes with this game, then I’d suggest you try Diablo 2 or Resurrected. By far the best game in the series, in terms of itemization.

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Hmm not sure D2 would be their speed.

It is slow, clunky and a heavy resource management game at the start. They might hate it before they get geared up and the game starts to become more enjoyable.

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I don’t really understand what’s so “clunky” about D2 compared to 3 or 4. I’ve played all of them, and the only thing I’d call clunky is the need to select a skill before using it in the original Diablo 2. You can just instantly use them in Resurrected. The combat is very fast paced.

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Sorry I should have mentioned Diablo 2. Diablo 2 is clearly different from 3, but it still had a better feel to me than Diablo 4. I also liked how in Diablo 2 it was super easy to join games with other players, maybe it’s nostalgia but I enjoyed the aesthetic and music of Diablo 2 and I also felt like I understood Diablo 2 more. The stats the gear, I’m sorry if I’m articulating this well. It may be purely a subjective experience thing, but at this point I’d much rather that Diablo 3 or Diablo 2 than 4. Which I guess I still can, I was just hoping for more than what we got. Everyone keeps talking about Path of Exile, maybe I should try that.

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You sir, are clearly a man of refined taste.

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Well… if we are talking about a first play-through.

Melee attacks miss most of the time.
A lot of enemies can put you into hit recovery.
You really have a low mana pool.
Only 8 potion slots for small potions at the start.

Dont get me wrong. I love all of this about D2. The game gives us itemisation options to overcome these clunky things.

OP said they like to feel powerful when they play Diablo. Really in D2, characters briefly feel powerful in Nightmare, and then in very late Hell, they feel powerful after getting proper late game items.

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D2 itemization is a hodgepodge of different systems that were introduced over the life of the game. It’s fine if you were playing through the years that these systems were introduced and had time to learn which bits were actually useful. If you’re new and come to them all at once, it’s kind of a mess.

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Some get this conclusion quickly, some take a lot longer. But we all get to this same conclusion.

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There are some mechanics, that aren’t properly explained ingame, true. But at least it ain’t a mess of conditional modifiers, on top of mechanics that aren’t properly explained ingame.

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He makes alot of good points here but stat one I dont follow. Each character has a clearly defined main stat that increases your damage.

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When has any Diablo game properly explained its mechanics ingame? D2 is famous for the Lying Character Screen.

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I think the sets are not in because they would take away from the cosmetics shop.

Imagine if every class had 3 or 4, or more sets. That would be 20 more complete looks they could use in the shop.

It’s better to sell the looks than to apply them for free to various sets.

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Speaking as a fellow casual who could have easily written your post, I can’t recommend PoE to you. It is free to play, so don’t let me stop you, but if you think D4 isn’t easy to get into in terms of itemization, PoE is worse. Doing a little research on its systems and consulting some build guides before starting is highly recommended.

Otherwise, I’m with you man. I played a seasonal Rogue to 86 after leveling a preseason sorcerer to 74, and I’m just bored. Started D3 season 29 the other day, don’t know when or if I’ll be back to D4.

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Sets are not in game because they dint know how to implement them as they wanted yet. Sets are coming. They have said this.

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It seems harder because in D3 the game was super easy even on hard mode. Some players like that, but for me it cheapens the leveling process by turning it into a chore instead of a fun experience. Even the Butcher on hard mode is easy, which is really disappointing. IMO this hurts the player because he doesn’t really learn how to play his class since he really doesn’t have to think about rotations or dodging anything. I saw this in retail WOW constantly because that game made leveling super easy and then players didn’t know what to do when they hit a mythic dungeon or raid.

D3 has different color gear as well. Your legendary 37 can be stronger than a blue 76. You also had stats that were important like damage, vitality and toughness which were important depending on the build you were going for. Since D3 other ARPGs have come out offering far more complexity than D3 had and it seems to be a hit with players and makes the game far more interesting.

Please no. That was a horrible addition to D3 that doesn’t need to be replicated in D4.

I don’t see what’s hard to understand about stats in D4. The stats are not hard to understand, but you do have to do SOME reading to understand how they work. If you think this game’s stats are hard to figure out, then you are in for a shock if you pick up some other ARPGs.

I’m playing D3 season 29 right now and I have yet to run into a mob that is lower level than me. The mobs are so easy to kill that frankly I don’t even understand why they bother putting a value on them. For D4 on WT4 they stop scaling to your level at 55 and stay five levels below you from there on out. If that’s not easy enough for you then just take your high level character to WT1 and have at it.

What’s so hard about accessing NMD? Pick the level you want , right click the sigil and then tab to it.

Hard no on that as well. Endless paragons is a bad idea and even D3 put in a paragon cap for their latest season.

No offense, but it sounds like you just want another super easy, watered down game with no difficulty or complexity. There are many that post here who think D4 is too easy as it is and are probably laughing at any notion that this game is hard or complex. IMO the game difficulty is fine as it is. I certainly have no issue with more bosses as the late part of the game needs more work in that area. They said that was going to be addressed in season 2 and the fixing of broken stats should also help make the grind easier.

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Grim Dawn felt like a nice follow up to D3…that said I’ll put D3 in my rotation once that altar goes eternal.

Anyway, I’m a fellow casual dad. I’m enjoying D4 still but if I wasn’t it’s be GD or D3, FWIW.

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You can. Its just not as ultra casual friendly.

Minus the looking cause all nonpaid skins look like :poop: :slight_smile:

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You have this Exactly right! My husband and I play casually, and we’re tired of the incessant feeling of having to fight for everything. It takes too long to progress after level 50, and there’s no cool stuff to get

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