The LACK of endgame activities, that change up your gameplay meaningfully and is on par with Nightmare Dungeons in terms experience gain for time invested and glyph leveling, is the main issue with the game. You have 1 avenue of meaningful progression and that is it. Helltides come in second only if you are targeting specific items slots for Uniques. Other than that, is an ok way to farm experience.
Loot in the game will be added, tested by the players, and balanced by the devs over the course of D4’s entire lifespan. Same goes for stats in general. This isn’t the main issue. It is a secondary one as the way you get the gear is more important than gear itself on a basic enjoyment level.
The list of Endgame Activities:
Nightmare Dungeons: repeat until sick and tired
Helltides: get uniques and get crafting mats if needed. ignore the rest of the time.
World Bosses: get weekly cache and get crafting mats to socket items. ignore most of the time.
Legion Events: worthless as there is nothing meaningful or unique that is rewarded that can’t be done in Nightmare Dungeons or Helltides.
Tree of Whispers: worthless as it isn’t something you actively target and cache rewards are laughable.
Endgame activities that are needed:
Bonus Levels: add the Cow Level, Dark Whimsyshire, and Greed’s Lair. Maybe add portals to Hell that randomly pop up that end in a boss fight.
Gladiator Colosseum: there is a huge untapped space in southern Gea Kul and on the outskirts of Gea Kul. Put one there and add challenging solo boss fights ranging from captured monsters to named champions with unique challenging fight mechanics. Make it REPEATABLE content that is as rewarding as a Nightmare Dungeon. Maybe add a questline that takes you into the bottom of the Colosseum to investigate strange activities and it turns into a new Dungeon.
Unending Dungeon: Use the Lost City of Ureh in Hawezar to add in this unending dungeon. As you explore the dungeon, the first 10 levels are just underground ruins. Then the next 10 levels turns into caverns. After the caverns, you eventually reach a portal that leads to Hell at the higher levels. You can design up to the first 30-40 floors then after that each floor is randomized tile sets of hell and hellish landscapes. Every floor has unique nightmare dungeon affixes just for that floor and every 3 levels there is a boss that gives Nightmare dungeon rewards (glyph experience and loot). Every 10 levels, there is an even harder boss that drops Legendary weapons with affixes that are themed around the boss fight.
Uber Bosses: Add 5 Uber Bosses into the game that scale with levels 55-100. Make them less difficult than Uber Lilith but rewarding and REPEATABLE.
Add in Crafting. Introduce a questline for a wondering Named Blacksmith that lets you craft Magic and Rare items. Add recipes that drop from all the different endgame content you have so it gives a reason to do them.
Add in a fun minigame like Fishing from Diablo Immortal. Fishing poles are gear that have qualities. Fish can be crafted into food buffs and have qualities. The rarer the fish, the better the food buff that is crafted from it. Stuff like this is needed to break up the normal kill, loot, repeat gameplay in order to prevent burnout but still keep players playing D4.
These are just some examples. Overall, the game needs more endgame activities to prevent burnout and make the game more fun to play for longer. Grinding Nightmare Dungeons until you vomit and beg for mercy isn’t a fun experience long term and shows how disconnected the Devs are from what is actually considered fun. Expanding the endgame activities is WAY TOO IMPORTANT to leave it for an expansion. The game feels dead now. It needs to happen as soon as humanly possible and not just in the first expansion.
After i switched to wt4 at 64 i havent found a weapon, that is better than the randem 804 ilvl staff, that dropped 15 Minutes in.
I changed all other EQ slots maybe once or twice.
I am lvl 80 right now and the last ~10 level and around 50 - 60 NM Dungeons i did not change a single item.
easy fix: Ilvl you can find is bound to level.
Level 70: 650 - 750
Level 80: 700 - 800
Level 90: 750 - max
Level 100: 800 - max
If group play Nightmare Dungeons are the baseline, then:
Helltides: Rewards for time spent are a joke. I open a chest and get 1 lego, and 2 yellows, and maybe 2 pots. Not happening, I did them for rerolls and resented it, and now that they drop from salvage, I don’t do them at all.
World Bosses: Too easy, also completely unrewarding for the take they take. Should shower you with loot, especially if it’s gated at once a week.
Legion Events: Kinda meh, I forgot they existed. I don’t want to follow a zerg train around, and open some boxes at the end. Bored to tears with this content.
Tree of Whispers: If you are going to shove dailies down my throat, they need to be STUPID rewarding. Nobody likes chores in wow, and I still don’t like them here.
that’s farming activities not end-game activities. are the same as NephalemRifts in D3, farming.
end-game is where you proove your build in competition(direct or indirect) with other players, e.g. pvp(but is trash in D4) or GreaterRifts with LEADERBOARDS.
More endgame activities actually help smooth out the grind to level 100. Adding higher ilvl gear won’t make the game more fun. I agree that level 70 is a bit soon and should be level 90 when you start finding perfect rolls.
leaderboards are already in the works. their time is coming.
thats why blizzard needs to keep the chase going until level 90. another difficulty tier and it only drops Ancestral items would be preferable at level 85. also the loot can be good but if you repeat the same activity over and over, that will also drive players away.
It’s a mix of things that make the game uninteresting to a good amount of the player base. End-game activities, loot, seasonal themes, stash space, alt regression, too many affixes, too many aspects, etc. Basically too many leaps you have to make beyond 50 that get boring really fast and it all adds up.
Endgame content is one thing, but then you have to worry about having enough materials (& gold) to upgrade your gear, enough gold to possibly respec your character, elixirs to make, NM sigils to craft, Waypoints you haven’t unlocked yet, Aspects you still need to complete a build, the list goes on and on. Forget about uniques, that’s a whole other story. If they wanted World of Diablo they should’ve made it, instead of trying to give us both worlds of an ARPG and an MMORPG and basically half-***ing it.
Damage has already been done, people forget how horrible D3 launch was, and how it lost the majority of the player base because they didn’t fix it fast enough. Some people came back to play when they introduced seasons and eventually themed seasons, but the damage was done, the player base was a fraction of what it was at launch. Now we all know people lose interest in games all the time, its just par for the course of any video game, but Blizzard seems to have a habit of not listening to players at all, and when they finally do it’s 5 years down the line.
Probably sooner. Season 1 Malignant Hearts isn’t compelling content. Its downright boring. I will say if it doesn’t shape up in 3-4 months, the game will be dead. Blizzard needs to release a road map of their future content that they plan to add for the next 6 months. This way it gives players hope for future improvements and gameplay additions now. Blizzard cant expect the average person to wait until the game gets better without knowing that certain things are in the pipeline.
Nope. Like many, you’re off base. There isn’t a singular problem with D4. The entire foundation of the game is set up for failure. How all the systems interact with one another and come together to deliver the final product is a complete failure. Without sweeping changes to the foundational structure and design concepts of the game, you can’t make D4 worth while.
I honestly don’t care about end game activities. That’s an easy fix. What I care about are exciting classes to play. Exciting items to find. Combat that flows and make sense while giving me agency to over come challenges in the game through the use of builds and itemization.
Instead, what I got with D4 is all the same old D3 design concepts, except with less skill options, stale and uninteresting items, and an incredibly homogeneous combat experience across class builds. And to add insult to injury, a UI that looks like it was designed in 2005 and has no modern quality of life features other games have.
The insane amount of conditional affixes are a big problem this game has, although i agree it also needs more content, as well as more stash, and lodouts, etc
Whats the point of doing a end game with no carrot to chase?
Do you think scoreboards is enough of a end game to keep people playing?
Because no matter how great your end game is. If the loot is not good, people don’t care. This is ARPG and the foundation of a good one is a great loot systems to chase.
So Diablo 2 or PoE is your game then? You describing your perfect game, is the same thing I think about when I think about D4. There is nothing foundationally wrong with Diablo 4. It has a good core with its classes, gameplay, and items. All that is needed is adjustments made over time to bring them to where they need to be.
I was right about Renown being a problem during beta and people thought I was crazy. Now I am saying D4 needs to expand its endgame. Time will prove me right again.
At what point during the level up process does the carrot stop working in Diablo 4 for you?
They need to indeed vary endgame content, so that we we can pick the activity according to loot desired.
For exemple, at some point , we will need to be able to craft Aspects from materials. Or collect rare Codex pages. Because, right now, certain aspects are hard to find, and can be frustrating if you need to change it of find a better version.
But with every season adding more aspects, at some point the chance for a specific one will be very very diluted.
So we need specific loot table, or crafting.
I’d rather farm 10 000 Goatman for ingredients to craft a desired Aspect, than blind-looting hoping for RG drop.
what exactly makes them boring and can you cite an example of a fun item to find?
ok so you don’t like the Occultist and his services. either run around with the overleveled legendary or not at all. that is fun for you?
If you like slow methodical gameplay that gives meaningful choices, maybe the endgame in ARPGs in general just isn’t for you. Baldur’s Gate 3 seems to be a good RPG based on DnD 5th edition rules. Maybe that is more your game and playstyle.
Its slower to level up and gear out solo but it isnt the worst experience.
Exactly and this is why I suggested Crafting. Maybe they can add back the Mystic to help with crafting certain aspects but it requires a lot of hard to get materials to make a desired aspect.