As you all know the game just got much harder. For ye casuals that can feel stressful and combat may feel slow at first. The changes to season 8 mean a few good things.
First thing is that progression now feels rewarding as players have to work and earn for accomplishments in game.
The second thing is that much of the existing content in the game including the boss ladder, and any future updates in seasons 9 and 10 to the NMDs and Inferno Hordes will be treated as proper, endgame content in Torment 4, aspirational to a difficulty one will feel proud accomplishing rather than just being in T4 by default, mindlessly blasting trivial content.
And the final point is that the upscaling in difficulty could by toned down through the means of power creep, and that power creep could be obtained by long tail-end progression systems, likely something new. And in addition to that, they can add a 6th paragon.
We would obviously need to see major updates and systems added to the game before any of this would be worth considering a good omen. Season 8 will hopefully be a short season and we wouldn’t have to wait long until season 9 when we get some juicy endgame added to the game when D4 becomes an actual worth while dungeon crawler again.
The 9th season isn’t even out yet. I have been saying this for about a month now (long before season 8) that season 9 promises to do more than season 8. Season 9 could potentially fix the (current) game before the second expansion comes out and we will see if that expansion ever amounts to anything. Season 10 will be another season 5 2.0 it seems. Unironically 5x2.0 =10.
sry, that was a typo. I guess i subconsciously want to remove myself from the mess that is the 8th. I will edit it right now, don’t wanna curse the 9th season to be like this mess.
I admit, and I have been admitting this since the PTR that season 8 is not my favorite season, but I will play it nonetheless, mostly for the cosmetics. My favorite thing about season 8 is that it’s only 2 months long. The boss ladder system is a much needed update to the game, however I wish there was more meat on the bone apart from that. Hopefully season 9 will deliver on that with much needed changes to NMDs because those should be a massive time sink in the game but sadly they just aren’t worth doing. I actually sometimes run normal dungeons just for the 5 grim favors and a chance to farm Butcher.
If you’ve ever played PoE or LE, you’d know that their endgame systems are Mapping and monoliths which are NMDs but better. Blizzard has allegedly been reworking NMDs for a long time now so they have been cooking something that will finally fix the game. After season 9, I swear doing Inferno Hordes would feel useless and pointless and you might not think that about them now but you’ll see why season 10 will fix that problem and turn Hordes into an actual endgame system even if you think it is one already.
They really need to remove the 1 shots from bosses. 10 minutes into a t4 boss fight to die at the end to lag is rage enducing. Also, super rare ancestral uniques are good for rmters, and bad for gamers.