I posted in the feedback forum, but Id like to post this here fresh off my forum vacation for letting it be known how feedback goes unnadressed.
Lets take a look at my PTR Experience
Drop rates are terrible . GOOD ancestral dont drop enough. For the 100000th time. We need more because:
Tempering and Master working are still horrible RNG grind fests. No increase to material drops , and because of the limited ancestral drops ( see point 1 ) this system continues to be Pain and frustration .
No endgame activities. - The seasonal powers are mediocre at best, and there is STILL nothing to do once you get them . Its still , level to 100 , pits to level glyphs, then the endless grind for materials via boss runs to engage in the endgame crafting system.
No build variety. There are one or two specs for each class that blizzard is literally FORCING us to play at this point with itemization . Im looking at EQ/DD for barbs Ball lightning for sorc, and Wolves for druid etc. There is no experimentation allowed, no cool interactions between spells, NOTHING. Just more damage, cast twice, bigger size.
I can keep going but, for what ? These have been the same criticisms since launch. Again I ask, at what point is it ok to not be cool with this ?
I played the PTR two nights for about 3 hours each. I was not impressed with the witch powers, changes to Sorcerer including the so called two new off-hands strictly for ball lightening.
Seasonal content, if it comes with no information it will be a major snooze fest as it was in the PTR. Not one seasonal quest came up when I played, no way to know how to kick them off, etc.
Right now, I will play eternal during S7 and for the first time not buy the battle pass. Enough couching up cash with these mediocre seasons and expansions.
I dont get the D4 devs, it’s just so clear to everyone that there is literally no endgame content. Mopping the floor with Duriel isnt endgame, the dude drops in 1 second.
The endgame gameplay loop in D4 goes like this = farm endgame gear from uber bosses → i have endgame gear now → so I can farm uber bosses faster for more endgame gear?
Makes no damn sense.
D4 is literally one massive endgame content away from making this game truly a great game. But no, the devs would rather focus creating pirandinho so that I can pee on Duriel and he drops.
They don’t understand PTR is for testing not farming/loot chase. Simple concept goes right over their collective heads. This is why decisions being driven by metrics is absolutely horrible.
They seem to be going the D3 route with some of this. The big difference is the equivalent of Ancestral in D3 (Ancient) drops ALOT more often and when it does it is rarely not an upgrade to regular legendary it replaces as it does not have a bloated affix pool with so many useless and undesirable ones. I can fill my inventory in D3 and have 5 or 6 ancients. I have filled my inventory 5 or 6 times in D4 and no Ancestral or the one I do get is “life per useless” or some random resist that is not needed. This is what is turning players off to the loot chase in D4.
200 hours? not even halfway to P300. And they want you to do that again every season. This allows them to use the metric to show their superiors who have never played a game in their life that this draws in the customer and keeps them Playing for endless hours. They see it as good for short term gains. What they miss is most of us see it as incentive to do something else when things get ridiculous.
as an entertainment provider, customer retention and customer engagement duration are the main KPIs to showcase in quarterly and annual reports to persuade investors.
the D4 devs should explore more innovative gameplay than just raising their C++ signed 64-bit integer to 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 and asking players to reduce that number to 0 as a game feature.
Unfortunately legendaries drop like candies… i would prefer to change ‚normal’ legendary into rare/yellow item and ancestral would be only legendary item in the game. It would make less beams on the ground, less drops (rares don’t drop)/more meaningful on Torment.
That’ll never happen with the current hierarchy of items. It’s no different than other games going from copper, iron, bronze, steel, etc. the fact they’ve turned rare and magic items into materials upon dropping in Torment 1 and higher just further reinforces this.