I’d like to forwardly note that I am a 40 year old player who has followed and obsessively played all games within the Diablo franchise since I was 13 when I first began playing Diablo 1. I was never really a part of the streaming generation, but I was a large part of the forum generation that preceded it. I have written many very successful & memorable guides for these games, mainly for Diablo 2 through d2jsp. Most older Diablo franchise veterans would likely recognize my name from the Amazon guides I’ve written in the past, which were largely dominant within that genre. I have invested not just hundreds or thousands of hours, or years into these games, but decades of solid play time. I bring all of this up as to point out to Blizzard that “They shouldn’t take feedback like this from the elder statesmen of their fanbase so lightly” because we are the ones from where the arpg genre first spurred its success. We are the ones who have played these games the longest. We are the ones with the largest margin of game experience to be able to most accurately compare & contrast what makes a game good and what makes a game boring.
Understand that this is sincere feedback. I am trying to give positive feedback.
As an older gamer I am able to recognize the model that Blizzard was aiming at for Diablo IV, and I accept it. I have all of these suggestions here & there of how I think Diablo IV could be tweaked to be a better game, just like anyone else does. But I GET the model they were aiming at, so we are going to cut past all of that and aim directly at the one critical problem that I see existing within that model that was aimed at.
Yes, I am talking about the flow of the game. The flow of the character’s progression both XP wise and gear wise. I see many posts written around this same topic, however I feel most of them are not identifying & accepting the model that Blizzard aimed at for the feel of Diablo IV’s progression. This is where my post & feedback is different.
I get the idea behind the game’s intended progression, which I accept. However, there is a serious problem that begins to occur around levels 60 to 65 for those who chose to play the game solo, organically, trying to enjoy the story and all NPC interactions. Let me detail my experience with Diablo IV in the first two weeks here. Keep in mind I am one of those players who thought “I want to play solo and pace through the game enjoying all the stories for the first time through”
- I begin play in T2 at lv 1. I’m having A LOT of fun. Early game, dungeon bosses and such were actually difficult. I found myself cursing and getting mad while dying over and over to some dungeon bosses before learning how to kill it. Yelling things aloud like: "This bull*** is dealing too much damage! What were they thinking when they designed this!?"* That’s when I realized I was having fun, because the game was challenging.
- I’m getting up around levels 20-30 and my character becomes very stable within the progression to where I’m not having problems surviving and killing bosses anymore in T2. The game starts to feel moderately easy, which I guess I expected in T2.
- I’m headed into levels 40+ while still in T2 trying to finish the campaign while hitting side quests and such along the way. I remember at this point thinking “Boy, I’d really like to kick it up to T3 right now because things are feeling really easy to where my brain is shutting off because there is no real threat of dying during any of this.” But then T3 requires beating T2 to unlock. It put me in a situation where I felt like I needed to ignore side quests & events & dungeons and just run through the campaign as quickly as possible to be able to unlock T3 so the game was challenging again. Things scaled way too quickly with player power while being forced to stay in T2 to complete campaign. It was just too easy. When you fight these end campaign bosses, it is rewarding when they are difficult. A game story feels shallow and unrewarding when campaign big boss fights like Lillith are simply way too easy.
- The campaign is very long. I was lv 55+ or something like this before I was able to complete the T2 campaign. A long campaign is great when it is stimulating, when it is challenging. But I felt like it kept me in T2 waaay too long considering how easy everything had become.
- I begin T3 and honestly I felt no change in the game’s difficulty. I did start getting better XP and gear drops for awhile, but it quickly tapered off again, much harder than even the campaign walkthrough in T2. I’m walking around T3 nightmare and I’ve maxed my renowns, have all the maps unlocked, completed nearly every dungeon, participated in all the new events, and it really starts to feel like there isn’t anything else to do. Even the XP & Gear find upgrades begins to really really slow down.
- This is where the critical problem begins: I remember hitting lv 60+ and thinking: “There isn’t anything else to do, the XP gain is slow, I’m not finding any gear upgrades to make the XPing faster, and the Capstone to open T4 is recommended lv 70, but this is taking forever, let’s try to unlock T4.” So I go and try to do the Capstone dungeon at lv 60. Very first mob is an overwhelming impossible to deal with situation so I immediately just leave with the realization that I’ll probably need to hit lv 70 before doing that, or maybe group up in a big party with a bunch of guys around lv 60-65 to push through to get to T4. But then it occurs to me that why would I want to unlock T4 if it’s as difficult as the Capstone dungeon, if I can’t do that content solo? I’m sure I’d be able to beat the Capstone at lv 60 with a party, but when I get to T4 I want to play solo, which I won’t be able to do. This is placing players in a situation where they have to choose between (A) force playing in a big party to get into T4 while under-leveled which will require them to keep playing in parties while under-leveled in T4 until they are adequate level, which is just a hassle to have to do and in no way convenient with how the game is situated. Probably the biggest problem here is forming a party to begin with, seeing as how for some reason no one ever uses the local chat, and there is no public LFG “Looking For Group” posting sections to allow players to form parties for content, like there are in other games. The other option is (B) just continue playing solo until you hit lv 68-70 to where you can go in and solo the Capstone alone to get to T4 and continue to be able to solo functionally for progression.
- This is where the critical problem becomes exasperated: It was grindy enough getting from around lv 60 to 64-65 while in T3 with few mentionable gear drop upgrades to make killing/XPing easier, often just finding the same things over and over again that are not helpful or new or exciting. But when you hit the lv 64-65 marker in T3 while working towards the Capstone, progression becomes absolutely abysmal. I was relating it to the feeling in Diablo 2, when you hit the end game in Hell difficulty, you have a full end-game setup, it’s very very rare to ever find or trade for a meaningful upgrade, and you’re farming endless Chaos/Baal runs lv 94+ for super slow XP gain.
Keep in mind that I am pointing this out in reference to the players who wanted to solo through and play organically while enjoying the game’s content instead of using classic Diablo rushing & XP exploits. This is a bad place for an XP/Patience check to occur, halfway through the game. And keep in mind, this is coming from a player who has been playing the Diablo franchise for decades. I have leveled several characters in Diablo 2 to lv 99, which is highly renowned to be one of if not the most difficult XP completions out of any game ever. I am no stranger to understanding what it is and what it means to grind XP in a game, but even a player like myself is pointing out that this is a bad place for an XP/Patience check to occur.
When hitting this wall half-way through the game, I found myself thinking exactly this: “This is really boring. I’d like to progress to the end-game so I can begin working on polishing characters over time with the better gear drops. I am not looking forward to facing this half-way point wall again and again with each new character I make.” ← THIS feeling right here, is going to kill the game for a great deal of the player base. They’re going to stop playing and likely won’t buy any expansions moving forward. This truly is a bad place for an XP/Patience check to occur. Sure, the more hardcore players will stick around regardless, but the large pool of potential casual player base are going to bow out when feeling this same feeling at this point in the game.
I can’t stress enough that the slow grind is ok, it is expected, and it is wanted in the actual end-game, when players are farming for that gambling feel of finding ultra godlies and for small stat gains for their characters in pve or pvp. But it is a very bad feel when it occurs as a speedbump roadblock that prevents you from entering the end-game, and it isn’t even a difficulty/stat check dealing with difficult monsters, but rather a patience check grinding easy encounters for XP for a ridiculously long amount of time. Things need to keep progressing forward until the actual end-game or things get boring very quickly.
I don’t know what needs to be done to remove this mid-game speedbump/roadblock but it has to go. Players are getting burnt out and leaving before staying long enough to see what’s in store for the end-game in T4 Torment. Out of all the things that other people are complaining about who are not accepting the model of Diablo IV’s intended progression, this is the one thing that even when accepting the design of the intended progression, players definitely are within reasonable boundaries to claim that this mid-way portion of the game’s journey is simply flat out boring and it takes waaay too long to push through.