While running around last night, looking for Altars of Lilith and unexplored regions and being pulled into world events, I had a moment of clarity.
Diablo IV is Diablo plopped into an Ubisoft-style sandbox blatantly designed to keep players running on the hamster wheel, and it’s worse for it. There’s just a bunch of busywork, the world still feels kind of empty (there was a period when I was traveling between Altars of Lilith where I didn’t run into a single monster for a couple minutes), and some of the content that are world events (for example, “kill all the monsters in this named area of the map”) could easily have been non-repeating (a stronghold, for example, to go with the example I gave) content.
News flash: Diablo games have always been a hamsterwheel and busy work. That is what people like about them. Except now, the very front of each new character’s experience has a couple checklists to bash out.
I think it was because it was never this blatant. I don’t think previous Diablos were such obvious collectathons with “Get these altars!” “raid these dungeons!” or “explore these regions!”.
No, they weren’t. But they appeal to functionally the same mentality. These games are grindy and repetitive. There is a comfort and solace to that. It helps people relax. I am convinced it’s key to their popularity.
Yeah, I think part of it was, in previous Diablos, you picked what you wanted to do. Go for end game gear? Power level? Collect keys for trade? You can do all of those things, but it was your decision.
Now, they give you a list that you gotta fill for region completion.
I’d say the “chore list” idea started in Diablo 3:
Bounties for cache that had specific items that you’d possibly need (RRoG being the main one)
Stupid power markers and tasks to get your “free” complete set
I’d even quantify Rifts here as well to some degree because they level your items - you could argue otherwise though and be right
D4 does do this a bit more, for certain, but it also provides a lot of options depending on what you feel like doing also (Bounties, Renown, Alters, Hellrifts, Nightmare Dungeons, World Bosses sometimes) so… it feels somewhere between 2R & 3 imo on the options.
Ya it reminds me of an assassin’s creed game from like a decade ago. Sadly imo it’s an insult to Blizzard’s own efforts with the game world they created which is superb (art direction/world design). I don’t think monsters have to be littered every square inch of the world, but I do believe in its current form and the way the objective-hamster-wheel activities are tacked up like an ubisoft game and a few other things, the world seems pointless to engage in.