I might be wrong, if so forgive me. However, I remember they saying in the last dev talk that NM dungeons objectives have changed and now most of them are the good and old KILL BOSS, but I couldn’t find this explicit in the patch notes.
Are we getting this?
Details on dungeon changes can be found under the Dungeons section of the Gameplay Category.
Diablo IV Patch Notes — Diablo IV — Blizzard News
There’s a lot of info in these notes, so easy to miss!
A lot of the things they mentioned in the last stream are summed up in the patch notes with:
" * Many Dungeons have received visual updates and layout improvements.
Developer’s Note: We’ve received feedback that some Dungeons lacked visual diversity and required quite a bit of backtracking to complete, making them feel cumbersome. We believe our adjustments to Dungeons in these areas will remedy player frustration but will continue to listen to community feedback and make additional changes as needed."
For some reason I thought they said the stream was going to be 2 hours.
We were allowing for that, but the team was able to move through the presentation more quickly. Overall, the patch notes will bring everything from both streams into focus and give you the big picture.
This is the thing that I am most curious about. The dungeon design was absolutely atrocious, and considering they were essentially what the game is focused around doing, them being so terrible to experience was a huge disappointment.
They need to be far more differentiated in sizes, and more randomized in layouts everytime you run them. Fixing the unlock mechanics is a huge thing as well. They are not fun to do to begin with, and even less so once you have done them 10 times. Bosses need to be unique for each dungeon. Having environmental effects, and differing “arenas” to fight them. Unique things to see and find in dungeons is needed. Hidden rooms, secret bosses, unlockable optional areas, and for Nightmare Dungeons, glyph experience not tied to rushing the boss, but instead on exploring the dungeon.
Especially since they didn’t really make any gameplay changes that matter to the skill play for characters.
The big picture is folks will most probably feel weaker on the weaker builds, and a bit weaker on the stronger builds.
This is very uncalled for, considering we were promised itemization reworks and character balance. Just making folks weaker without enabling many others builds across all characters is a very poor take.
There will most probably be backlash on this. And that will be the overall consensus thus this is happening for a second time in a row.
Way too early to tell. They changed so much and even changed monster toughness to reflect that. Impossible to tell how it feels at end game.
These are the overall first impressions, and if what most folks already suspect confirms, it will be pretty poor for the game.
Thanks for the answers! Can’t wait to see the results!