Just a little background for me, I enjoy both ARPGs and MMOs and I tend to take a more min/max approach to gaming even though I only have time to play for a 2-3 hours a day now (a little more on weekends sometimes). Similar games I’ve played are D2, D3, WoW, Lost Ark, Grim Dawn, POE and FFXIV. I’m writing this mainly to give feedback for all the issues (IMO) I’ve encountered with the game. I leveled my first character (a Sorc) with some friends and got it to T4 but wasn’t really having fun. A friend suggested it may be the class so I leveled a second character (Rogue) and realized I still wasn’t having any fun so I effectively quit the game today.
The start of the game is great, the story was good (far better than D3,) the graphics are gorgeous, the character customization and sound design are passable. There aren’t enough bugs to complain. Technically and artistically, the game is fine. Virtually all of my problems with the game come from the game systems and gameplay.
Level scaling - This topic has been beaten to death but it has no place in an ARPG. It feels absolutely TERRIBLE to level up, put a point in a passive and be weaker than the enemies around you. It feels like outside of glyph / rare paragon nodes, you lose power every time you level in the endgame. This system seriously needs to go and there should just be static levels per zone. I get that there are upsides (being able to play with friends) but we really need a better solution because level scaling makes character progression feel absolutely terrible outside of gear.
Dungeons - Dungeons are horrible. The core gameplay loop of most ARPGS endgame is that you’re shoved into an instance and allowed to kill loads of enemies. POE does this, D3 does this, even Lost Ark does this. Here in D4, you’re forced to run around each dungeon, constantly backtracking in order to fulfill pointless and repetitive criteria. It really just feels like an arbitrary timesink. Being forced to walk back for 3 minutes to pick up a second bloodstone while killing 0 mobs is not fun, it is miserable. The dungeons have different art, but they all have very similar objectives and many have the same bosses. In T3 the bosses just fall over, and after you have gear in T4 they just fall over there too. The loot they drop is also terrible, so please do not just multiply their hp by 3x and call it a day. Dungeons being terrible is a huge issue because dungeons are a core part of the game, and they’re inferior (IMO) to the core endgame grinds of virtually every other ARPG / MMO out there.
Helltides - This is my favorite endgame activity, but there should be increased density during these. I’m not really fond of the mystery cache not showing on the map and having to alt tab to pull up a map of their spawn points, but I’ve been told that some people “like to drive around on their mount for 10 minutes to random spots to look for the cache and having them on the map would ruin the mystery,” so this may just be personal preference. I’d rather everything be shown on the map and have the lesser chests buffed so that the mystery cache isn’t just always the best option.
Itemization - damage to frozen, damage to slowed, damage to vulnerable, damage while near, damage while far, damage to stunned, etc etc etc. There’s no reason to have so bloody many affixes that do the exact same thing under slightly varying conditions. Why not get creative here? Why no increased AOE or more projectiles? Chance to proc some cool stuff? The pace of gearing up is also terrible. Once I hit 48 and entered T3, I found near-optimal gear very quickly and didn’t replace anything for almost 7-8 levels, then I repeated this same process in T4 and very quickly ran out of things to upgrade. There also need to be far more uniques and legendaries, and legendaries in general need to be less “premade” for certain builds.
Skill Tree - The skill tree feels like it is 1/3 as comprehensive as it should be. It’s very telling that you can be around level 15 on an alt and have every active ability in the game. There are also only 2 major customization options per skill. Even D3 had 5 options, and the options were far more impactful on the actual gameplay in most cases.
Balance - Some skills are vastly better than others. Blizzard, for example, is completely awful compared to ice shards, not only in single target but also in AOE.
General feel of combat - There is a definitive lack of AOE / mechanic creep. By this I mean that your blizzard at level 15 is going to feel almost exactly like your blizzard at level 70. There are very few ways to make it bigger. I would like to see items / passives that do things like, “Your blizzard has a 3 second cooldown but now has 400% increased AOE.”
Stash - 4 tabs max is a joke. I’ve already filled mine up twice and I only have 2 characters in the 70s. There should also be a gem bag and a bag for keystones.