Hi,
Avid Diablo fan, since the days of D1, and have played pretty much all the titles ever since.
I have also sunk quite a few hours into D4 and D4 VoH, so I feel like I am well equipped to give you my thoughts and some needed feedback.
I would easily place D4 VoH as the strongest Diablo game in the franchise, outside of the D1 nostalgia, which is hard to beat.
I feel like the avenues of progression are many, the game runs smoothly (outside of the periodic stability issues), the sound and music is phenomenal and only rivaled by D1s creepy atmosphere, and there is always something to do. The cinematics are classic Blizzard, and the campaigns and storytelling are above decent, and overall, I am very happy with VoH.
BUT
That is only early to mid- game.
As soon as you go into late and end- game, VoH is easily the worst title I have played.
I wish developers would understand, that insanely bad RNG on eg. masterworking, tempering or dropchance in general, to try and prolong the game, over adding actual content, actually seems to be the dominant factor in burnout and players leaving.
I will give you a personal example,
I player for 3 days straight, farming boss mats over and over till I had enough mats to summon a total of 250 bosses. 70 Andarial and 70 Duriel ish, and the rest split among the other bosses.
I ended up with not a single upgrade, and only 2 mythic drops and about 700mill gold.
I then proceded to try and masterwork my Ebewaka helm in the attempt to get just 2 rolls in damage reduction. I spent 600mill till I ran out of obducite, and still didnt get the 2 rolls I was looking for.
So to sum it up. I spent 3 days power farming for: 2 trash mythics, 0 upgrades and 0 progression of any sort.
Can you honestly say that, you considder that good game design?
The issue with late game is, that progression dont just slow down, it comes to a full stop, and then its a random chance roll for progression once or twice per week.
I dont even see any ancestral legendaries along the way either.
the 250-300 paragon grind is also hardly worth it tbh.
So, after moving to late game, the incentive to play are almost non-existant. Actually, Id go as far as say comepletely non existant, hence I stopped playing, and VoH has been bleeding players more than any other iteration of the game.
Best game til late game, worst game after that point.
Now, normally I would play an alt once I got to late game, but this seasons insane imbalance makes that seem like a step-back as well. And while I understand that bugs happen, these types of bugs would have been so easily caught if you actually tested the game.
If you dont wanna put resources into testing, or even have people like the Maxroll guys weigh in, this is what happens.
People play for 2 weeks and then leave.
As for end-game. A dev said during the campfire, that you like the idea of hard to get items that people have to grind for, and while I dont disagree with you, I think you have to reconsidder how big of a grind, cause 3 days of 16-18 hour days with 0 progression feels insanely bad.
I also wanna add, that the only 1 scroll tempers is the worst feat of the game. How would you feel, finally finding that rare neck that you farmed 2 weeks for, just to have it fail at tempering, and having to trash it. That should never happen. Ever! EVEREVEREVER!
Hope you considder these types of experiences for the future. Cause it means I definetly wont play till next season, and I also wont put any money into the game till I see changes.
Much love,
//