Hey everyone!
I know, another opinion piece on this game, when will it end?! And I’m sure that this will just simply sink beyond all the posts being made in here but here goes nothing!
Just to preface, I’ve played thousands of hours of ARPGs. Between Diablo 2 (classic and remastered), Path of Exile, and Diablo 3, I’ve put in near 6000 hours total and in Diablo 4, I am currently pushing Tier 40+ nightmare dungeons with a rend/rupture build. So while I’m not SUPER deep into the endgame, I have put enough time to see where this is going.
Diablo 4 is a game that has so much potential! The story is interesting enough, the gameplay feels great, it has the amazing dark fantasy design and environment, and it has a great foundation to build upon!
However, the game is not without its flaws. Whether it’s the class balance, the restriction of viable abilities in the endgame, the removal of some QoL from D3, or its fear of innovating and/or even borrowing ideas.
Let’s talk about the good things first:
Gameplay - It’s visceral and satisfying! As per Blizzard’s standards, gameplay is some of the best in the series. The sound design is awesome, the visual effects are great, and each class is interesting in their own way! While the gameplay is definitely much slower and more methodical than the insanity that is D3 combat (whose gameplay is also satisfying), it’s a welcome pace in my opinion.
Story - While stories in ARPGs are typically lackluster or not too important because most people just want to reach the endgame and grind, the story in here was good. Not great or anything mind blowing, but it kept my attention. Definitely some plot points that were headscratchers, but cutscenes and cinematic were great!
Environment - The zones are all really cool! The scenery can be as beautiful as it is gruesome, with bodies strewn about or being able to access a viewpoint to see the outside of a huge decrepit temple, or a city being razed. Great sights to behold, they definitely did a good job bringing back how dark the world of Diablo can be.
Now here are some areas to improve. This is more specific and maybe nit-picky, but these are things that I think had a good intention in design but just missed the mark of being good or great:
Itemization/Stats - This is a hot topic because some people feel as if the stats on items don’t matter. I disagree but not completely. There are some points here. Resistances and dodge feel kind of arbitrary as of right now, it doesn’t feel like they matter too much. On the other hand, armor feels super important, and so do damage stats. Any + to skills, crit chance, cooldown reduction, crit damage, damage vs a specific state of the enemy, all feel very weighty and they definitely contribute to how much damage you do. Defenses are weird right now because it feels like straight damage reduction (whether it’s plain or during an effect like bleeding an enemy or being fortified) is just straight up better in combination with armor, while resistances and dodge chance feel like an afterthought. Even stacking cold resist, those cold enchanted monsters HURT. They are definitely a bit overtuned. With dodge, you’re banking on not getting hit, then when you do get hit, you just die. I think resistances and dodge need to be buffed in some way to make them feel like they matter.
Gearing - Another hot topic. Right now, for whatever reason, it is more efficient to gear up in vanilla WT4 dungeons than it is to push nightmare dungeons (which is another topic I’ll get into). There is no difference in power between farming a vanilla T4 dungeon and farming a T40 nightmare dungeon. I do notice that more sacred and ancestral drops come from higher nightmare dungeons, but the item level is similar to the items that drop in vanilla dungeons. Vanilla content also has the chance to drop high item power stuff as well, so just by the power of numbers, it’s just better to speedfarm regular ol’ dungeons than pushing nightmare dungeons. This definitely one of the bigger flaws that leads into my next topic.
Rewards - Right now, outside leveling glyphs faster, there are no rewards that makes pushing nightmare dungeons worth it. The items that drop aren’t any better than what you would get from a regular dungeon. The experience from nightmare dungeons feels miniscule when you’re killing stuff that’s 20-25 levels higher than you, and the gear drops don’t feel good when I see a 740 power ancestral drop that isn’t as good as something I got when I was doing a vanilla T4 dungeon for tree of whispers rewards (which I think shouldn’t drop anything lower than sacred stuff, but the fact that it has a chance to drop normal level rare/legendary items in the box in WT4 is silly). It kind of leads into the same issue of Vanilla D3 Inferno difficulty drops when it initially came out, which was awful. You had the chance to drop ilvl63 items but most times you got gear that was completely suboptimal for inferno difficulty.
My suggestion for this is the make the drops’ item power floor raise in relativity to the nightmare dungeon difficulty, probably capping it once the monsters hit level 100 or 103 or something then after that make legendary or unique drops have a higher chance to drop in even higher nightmare dungeons to give people something to strive for. Path of Exile does this right by making higher tier maps have a higher drop floor so higher ilvl level gear that can roll better drop more. There’s reward for the increasing difficulty besides simply “the challenge”. There also just needs to be more rewards in general. Right now, I don’t feel the need to push to 100 outside of more paragon points and glyph leveling.
Legendary Powers/Aspects- This is something I’m kind of divided on. On one hand, these can make builds interesting. On the other hand, you cannot function without them. It feels really bad when you don’t have a legendary power that is crucial to your build. Unfortunately, I don’t think that there are enough powers in the game that change the way you play, it can only enhance what the build already does. Which is fine but it also doesn’t inspire innovation or creativity in builds.
Speaking from a barb’s perspective, when they disabled the berserk ripping and edgemaster’s aspects, it felt REALLY bad. Then there’s the fact that most endgame barb builds have to run the 3 shouts plus the aspects associated with them because they’re way too good, which removes the diversity from the rest of the builds, but that doesn’t mean shouts necessarily need to be nerfed. I think other abilities need to be brought up to that level so people are encouraged to try more things. Obviously, there will always be a best build that people will more than likely flock to, but there are so many cool and interesting abilities not being used because the shouts just completely overshadow them or the aspects for those other abilities are underwhelming. I think they could consolidate war cry and rallying cry into one shout then tone it down to keep it in line with other abilities and that could open up another skill that can be used and buff or reduce the cooldown of other abilities so people can be encouraged to try them!
Build Diversity/Balance - I think overall there is good diversity. Some classes definitely need some help, Necromancer comes to mind specifically because the their minion builds and blood builds are so wildly underwhelming while their bone builds are super strong. Once again, not a call for nerfs but buffs for the other builds so they can shine too! The nerfs, I think, have been in good faith to try to keep the game from becoming too much like Diablo 3 but some of them have been pretty heavy handed and needed more testing before just slapping them on. Whirlwind is just a mess, and going back to my previous points, the shouts are almost necessary in most barb builds to have in the endgame because they’re too good not to have.
Vulnerability - I think this is honestly one of the bad effects you can inflict on a monster, only because pretty much everyone can inflict some sort of vulnerability. I am unsure if everyone has access to the Exploit glyph, but this seems like a bloat stat if everyone can apply it without really thinking about it. It doesn’t add anything interesting, it just simply makes the monster take more damage. To me it just makes more sense to increase everyone’s damage by 20% across the board because that’s what vulnerability is. And it feels bad to not have it because it’s just a straight damage increase. Maybe make it more class specific to encourage more group play? I’m not sure, but if you’re not using some sort of vulnerability, you’re just handicapping yourself.
Lack of trade/community interaction - Another divisive topic. I can agree that gearing your character solely through trading is not great, but it can open up a lot of communications and interactions between players searching for items for their builds that they can’t seem to find. Having it be an open world with all these players running around but no way to effectively communicate via a public channel or some sort of group search function is so detrimental to the community aspect of a game like Diablo. There have always been lobbies in Diablo games, and even with as old a system as Diablo 2, lobbies could provide a specific farm you could have been looking for. There doesn’t need to be lobbies like that in d4 but perhaps a group search looking for like-minded people to push nightmare dungeons with or farm tree of whispers or hell tides together, just something to include the large Diablo community. A new way to meet new people or make friends!
Other nitpicks - greed shrines are kind of worthless and they need a substantial buff, there isn’t enough density in dungeons, nightmare sigils should open a portal to the dungeon rather than have to run to each dungeon, dungeon bosses are boring because it’s the usually same 4 or 5 for over 100 dungeons (really?? But not saying there should unique bosses for every fight, but a little more variety would be nice!), full clear objective dungeons are no fun and this should work more like Greater Rifts where you kill enough monsters and a boss shows up, when you clear story mode and start a new character the map should be revealed with all waypoints available along with reduced renown grind. I’m sure there’s more but that’s all I got for this part.
Now onto the more critical stuff. This is stuff that I think can either make the game thrive or fail.
Full Resetting Renown every season and re-exploring the map - For the love of God, please don’t do this. It is not a fun grind especially when there’s so much power locked behind it. 10 skill points and 20 paragon points being locked like that AGAIN is so ridiculous to even think about. I’m cool with the individual renown rewards being reset. That’s fine, but everything else?? I am pleading with you, Blizzard, along with every other player. Do NOT do this. Just make it like adventure mode in D3! Map revealed with all way points available. This will help reduce the tedious grind in an already grindy game.
Perhaps a solution is to lock the points behind level milestones, every 10 levels until 70 should give a number of rewards from the account wide renown rewards. Maybe make potions and skill point bonuses every 10 levels until 50, then starting at 55 unlock 5 paragon points every 5 levels until 70 when you can unlock all 20 extra paragon points. But this should only work for people who already completed the renown grind in the eternal realm or in a new season if they haven’t done it on the eternal realm yet.
Season Themes/mechanics - I don’t want to suffer through a content drought like in D3. I don’t want to just grind Nightmare Dungeons every season. Give me something that changes how we play, even slightly. A new mechanic or event that can take place in dungeons and the world. No, not double goblins. Keep the game fresh by trying new things! This game has such a great foundation to work off of, now you can experiment and try new things! I understand there will be one-off story content but please bring something new to the table to keep us playing!
Make harder content more rewarding - I shouldn’t be getting any more sacred pieces pushing T50 nightmare dungeons or higher. Maybe cap off the gear scaling after a certain very high tier and make the rest a challenge with rewards at the end of each milestone. There should be a hard floor with item power scaling starting at World Tier 3 and 4, then increasing as you push higher nightmare dungeons. Base dungeons shouldn’t give the same gear as the hardest content in the game and be better for farming at the same time.
I think that’s all I got. Im sure there’s a lot more!
I want this game to succeed so much. There’s a lot of good here and because this game is still in its infancy, there’s still time to make this game great!
TLDR: game is solid, with several kinks to iron out, it could be even better!! But there’s some critical changes that need to be made or the game will fall flat during its first season.