I went through the survey that recently showed up when logging into D4. It reminded me of every terrible survey I’ve ever taken at work only to have management completely ignore everything the employees say. Only somehow even worse.
The questions were very repetitive, some seemed the same with only a few words changed. They were also heavily focused on the in-game shop over the actual game itself. I sense the hand of the Marketing Dept., always a sure sign of being out of touch.
Almost nothing in them addressed issues like game balance, itemization, classes, skills, etc.
The game is now two years old. In those two years we’ve seen several major overhauls to try to keep it competitive with other games in the same genre. It’s concerning that one of the original ARPG series and for many (including me) the entry point into this type of game is playing catchup to other, newer games in the genre. What’s outright damning is that it’s still missing features that existed in previous games in its own series. Leaderboards took over two years to develop? We’re still limited to six stash tabs, but have to buy them every season? You are allowed to build on what came before you, especially if you’re the company that created it.
Class balance remains uneven to outright broken. Every season brings a large swath of changes that are then almost always undone by the next one. I pity anyone on the Eternal Realm who drops in casually and finds the build they’d spent time working on is now powerless. Skills are overly simplistic, with very few actual choices besides the choice of being able to do anything in the game or not.
Itemization is still terrible. Every item is a multi-stage lottery. First, you need the right type of item, then it has to drop with at least one of the rarer affixes on it that you need. If you have two common ones and are missing the rare one, expect to waste roughly 50 million gold or more hoping to re-roll it and get it to hit in one of the two re-roll options you get. Tempering just added another phase to the lottery ticket, as you have to get two of the right affixes there or you’ll end up junking what might have been a better item because you bricked a roll, ran out of tempering, used the one scroll re-roll you’re able to use on it, and still couldn’t get the rolls you needed. And after that have fun watching your gold disappear as you masterwork, get the wrong increase, and have to reset over and over. We keep hearing that you want people to spend less time in town and more time slaying demons, but your design does nothing to encourage this.
On top of this are the unique/mythic items. Farming uniques is a frustrating experience given that some of them seem to drop far less frequently than others. If you need one for your build you’re stuck farming materials to try again. I’m all for the changes that keep it from being a party leech-fest, but having to farm 12 of every material is ridiculous. Malignant hearts are the only ones that seem to drop regularly due to all the activities they drop in. Several uniques are found on multiple bosses…but others only on one.
Rune drops are also ridiculous. If we’re supposed to get a mythic by crafting it, having it cost 6 each of a magical, rare, and unique rune is for most players an all-season task. Often I don’t even have one of the unique runes I’m supposed to be equipping on my character by end of season. Why not allow us to use gems to craft those?
The seasonal gems that have been in the last several seasons are a step in the right direction by giving solid armor and resistances…but not the highest bonuses of a diamond and skull. An option to upgrade these to make them in-line with the best gems would be a nice end-game touch. Especially since the majority of uniques in defensive slots like chest and pants give no armor or resistance benefits.
I honestly was debating even playing this season, as I’ve seen nothing that’s really new for several of them now. Escalating Nightmare Dungeons are just 4 level Pits instead of 3 level ones. Powers have been done to death now. The endgame has never been there and making your bosses resist damage and your item drops have artificial scarcity to extend it is not a substitute for actual content.
The design team really needs to decide whether this is a casual game for low-intensity gamers or a competitive ARPG in the market. Trying to be both is just making things worse. From there, you can start looking at balancing classes and items so that characters of the same level aren’t grossly different in power level.
And the next time you’re putting together a survey, ask about the game, not the cosmetic shop. If there’s no game to play there’s no point in buying cosmetics.
